A new study from Australia found that pet cats kill 230 million native animals every year.

Pet cats should not roam outdoors because they kill millions of native animals every year. A new Australian study, the first of its kind to quantify the damage wreaked by pet cats, has estimated that cats in that country kill 230 million birds, reptiles, and mammals every year, as well as 150 million introduced species, mainly rodents.

The study, published in the journal Wildlife Research and funded by the National Environmental Science Program, analyzed data from more than 60 studies on cats. Rather that rely on the traditional method of conducting cat studies, which meant analyzing the stomachs of cats that had been killed, this one used GPS trackers, video collars, scat analysis, and owner surveys to create a more detailed picture.

It found that feral cats in Australia kill an average of 576 native species per year, while pet cats kill an average of 111  approximately 40 reptiles, 38 birds and 32 mammals. (There are no estimates for the number of frogs or insects killed.) The pet cats kill only 25 percent of what the feral cats do, but because pets live at much higher densities, their "predation rate per square kilometer in residential areas is 2852 times larger than predation rates by feral cats in natural environments."

Dr. Sarah Legge, professor at the University of Queensland and study lead author, put it bluntly while speaking to the Guardian:

"If we want native wildlife in our towns and cities  rather than introduced rodents and birds  then there are choices to be made. All we need to do is keep pet cats contained... If we accept that feral cats in the bush are a problem, then we have to accept that pet cats in town are also a problem."



There is no evidence to suggest that pet cats help to control populations of rodents and sparrows, as pet owners sometimes like to claim. Up to one-third of cats escape outdoors at night without their owners even realizing they're gone, as one Adelaide study found. And based on scat analysis, it's estimated that cats bring home only 15 percent of their prey, which means they're killing far more than what the owners see.

BirdLife Australia says it's happy for the study, as it confirms the major threat that cats pose to birds. Spokesman Sean Dooley said there was evidence that "an entire colony of fairy terns  a nationally listed threatened species  had been wiped out by one feral cat and a domestic cat in Mandurah in Western Australia. He said the introduction of a cat curfew in Victorias Dandenong Ranges had helped superb lyrebirds to recover there."

An indoor cat can be just as happy as an outdoor one, the scientists say. Cats do not need to roam to feel content, and in fact can be much healthier and safer  both to themselves and to wildlife  if contained.
Jesse Ketchum Early Learning and Child Care Centre, one of the seven licensed child-care centres in Toronto providing free-of-charge care for children of essential and critical service workers, reopened its doors Thursday following a COVID-19 outbreak.

The facility at 7 Berryman St., which is near Bay Street and Davenport Road, suspended service on Tuesday, April 28 after several staff members and children there contracted coronavirus.

While closed, all of the centres rooms, as well as the entryway, were deep cleaned.

Childrens Services also performed infection control audits at Torontos six other emergency child-care centres.

Before reopening, Childrens Services and Toronto Public Health worked together to ensure all health and safety policies and procedures would be followed, including incorporating updated guidelines from the Ministry of Health. Staff members at the child-care centre were also retrained to ensure full compliance with all health and safety policies and procedures.

Further, all returning staff members are required to provide a clearance letter from Toronto Public Health.

Taking a phased approach to reopening on Thursday, Jesse Ketchum Early Learning and Child Care Centre opened three of its rooms. At this point, there is enough space for 21 children.

Two more rooms are set to open in the coming weeks.

Altogether the child-care centre can accommodate 30 kids, but will only be open five days a week from 6 a.m. to 8:30 p.m.

To be extra safe, staff members will be required to wear surgical masks when it is impossible to be two metres or six feet apart.

A number of health and safety protocols are already in place at Jesse Ketchum Early Learning and Child Care Centre including daily screening, increased infection control measures, reduced group sizes, and limiting the number of people in the centre.

Childrens Services along with Toronto Public Health will continue to conduct ongoing reviews of all of emergency child centre practices at this location.

Joanna Lavoie is a reporter with toronto.com. Reach her via email: jlavoie@toronto.com
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15) - The Quezon City government relaxed the liquor ban after more industries were allowed to reopen under the modified enhanced community quarantine in Metro Manila.

According to Executive Order No. 31 signed by Mayor Joy Belmonte, alcoholic beverages can be sold in stores between 1pm and 5pm daily.

The city government also ordered high-volume retailers such as supermarkets and groceries, and low-volume retailers such as sari-sari stores and kiosks to limit the amount of alcoholic drinks.

Under the executive order, alcoholic drinks may be bought in volumes for personal consumption only, and must be consumed inside homes.

On Sunday, the Quezon City Police District and the city government reminded the public on the limitations per transaction for the duration of the MECQ.

Further, retailers must require any buyer to present a valid government-issued ID or a valid business permit for purchases intended for redistribution.

The city-wide liquor ban took effect last March 26 under the Executive Order 24 Series of 2020 which prohibited the sale and distribution of alcoholic beverages and other intoxicating products, and regulated the consumption within Quezon City during the period of the enhanced community quarantine in the entire Luzon.

The city government of Pasay and Marikina City also previously declared the lifting of liquor ban in their respective areas with restrictions on sale and consumption.

Metro Manila was placed under MECQ on May 16, while the government continues to address the rising COVID-19 cases in the area.
UNHCR distributes emergency aid in Tripoli to assist vulnerable people during Ramadan, and as war and COVID-19 present new threats.  UNHCR/Mohamed Alalem

Amidst deteriorating security conditions, as well as restrictions on movement due to COVID-19, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, has provided emergency assistance to some 3,500 refugees and internally displaced Libyans during the last two weeks. The assistance package helped some 1,600 urban refugees, more than 700 refugees being held in detention and close to 1,500 displaced Libyans in different sites across Libya, and included one months worth of food and hygiene kits.

The distributions are supporting some of the most vulnerable people with help during Ramadan  an important moment to show solidarity as people are struggling with their daily needs. They have been organized in coordination with local authorities and partners, LibAid and the International Rescue Committee, and other UN agencies.

Refugees told UNHCR staff that they were desperate for help. Many had been supporting themselves through daily labour, which has had to stop because of the curfew and other restrictions related to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. A snapshot survey by the Mixed Migration Centre suggests some 75 per cent of refugees and migrants lost their jobs in March and April. Before Ramadan, some said they could only afford to eat one meal per day. Others formerly received extra assistance from relatives through international money transfers but were now struggling as this had stopped in recent weeks. Some are facing eviction threats from their landlords as they have fallen behind with rental payments.

Food prices spiked in most cities in Libya soon after COVID-19 measures were implemented, for example, the average cost of tomatoes has gone up by more than 200 per cent in some places, while the cost of peppers has increased by around 40 per cent.

Shortages of basic items, such as eggs, vegetables and wheat, are being reported in cities across Libya, as the country struggles to import produce in the face of global supply chain breakages and conflict in the western part of the country blocks supply routes.

Prices for hygiene items have gone up by at least 60 per cent, with prices for gloves and masks having more than tripled.

Meanwhile, UNHCR is continuing to provide support to the Libyan authorities and displaced Libyans during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The ongoing conflict and continued shelling, despite calls for a humanitarian pause, has severely impacted the countrys fragile health system and medical services, which have limited resources and face shortages of basic equipment and medicines.

Many hospitals or health facilities, located in areas close to the conflict, have also been damaged or closed. UNHCR and partners continue to conduct public health awareness campaigns amongst refugees, asylum seekers, through posters, text messages and social media, aimed at mitigating the risks of exposure to COVID-19.

UNHCR and partners have also provided generators, ambulances, prefab-containers and tented clinics in support of local healthcare services across the country. Core relief items, including mattresses, blankets, kitchen sets, jerry cans, tarpaulin, clothes and solar lamps, have been distributed to the health authorities in Misrata. Soap has been distributed in settlements for some 20,000 internally displaced people in Benghazi, as well as in several detention centres in the eastern part of the country where hygiene conditions are very poor. Hygiene kits have been distributed to several hundred displaced Libyan families in Ain Zara, western Libya.

UNHCR echoes the appeal of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres urging warring parties across the world to cease their fighting in support of the response to the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic. UNHCR also calls on the international community to come forward with further funding to meet the rising humanitarian needs as result of COVID-19. As part of the wider UN appeal, UNHCR called on States last week to provide some US$745 million to assist forcibly displaced populations around the world impacted by the pandemic.

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Vietnamese consumers have bought made-in-Vietnam fashion products and other goods but few technology products have been popular until the appearance of V-smartphones.

The first call for Vietnamese to use made-in-Vietnam products was made 10 years ago. Many people, describing themselves as patriots, shifted to Vietnam-made products instead of imports which were believed to be far better.





Bitis footwear, Cho Lon plastics, Rang Dong lamps, P/S toothpaste and Viettien garments were Vietnamese brands chosen by many Vietnamese.



But there was no Vietnamese technology brand among them. Why?



Analysts believed that the major reason was price. The common characteristic of the Vietnamese products favored by Vietnamese was the reasonable price. This means that Vietnamese did not have to think much before deciding to buy these products.



They did not have to weigh Bitis shoes against imitation Adidas sportswear, Cho Lon Plastics toys against Chinese toys, P/S toothpaste against foreign brands.

The first call for Vietnamese to use made-in-Vietnam products was made 10 years ago. Many people, describing themselves as patriots, shifted to Vietnam-made products instead of imports which were believed to be far better.

The price differences were minor, and in most cases, Vietnams products were cheaper. Meanwhile, when buying these Vietnamese products at low prices, Vietnamese were happy because their spending could help develop Vietnams production.



However, the explanation was not true for Vietnamese-made smartphones.



Vietnamese refused a lot of Vietnamese smartphone brands, though they were cheap. This was attributed to low configuration of products and low quality products. Smartphones now are called the center of digital life, so consumers have to think carefully before they buy one.



Two years ago, Vietnamese-made smartphones were at a disadvantage compared with foreign brands.



But the appearance of Vsmart products in the market has changed everything.



In late 2018, the first four smartphone models with Vsmart brand, the hi-tech brand of Vingroup, were launched into the market. The cheapest model was priced at VND2.5 million only.



In late 2019, the Vietnamese smartphone brand once again stirred up the public when slashing the price of Vsmart Live, a mid-end model, by half.



The move by Vsmart caused a big change to the market: Chinese models, which were favored thanks to low prices, have been put at a disadvantage in competition with the new Vietnamese brand.



In early 2020, Vsmart caused excitement in the market with Joy 3 model. As many as 12,000 Joy 3s were sold within one day.



The key to success of Vsmart, according to analysts, is the pricing strategy. Having a reasonable price of over VND2 million, but Joy 3 has stronger configuration than rivals from China.



A report of GfK, a market analysis firm, released on April 11 showed that Vsmart has 16.7 percent of Vietnams market share. The pricing and post-sale strategies have brought success to the smartphone manufacturer.

Chi Mai

Cooperating with Pininfarina, Vsmart targets high-end smartphone market With the agreement announced on May 4, Vsmart has become the second brand of Vingroup cooperating with a leading Italian industrial designer.
Covid-19 is not just ravaging the world, it is also threatening the existence of the worlds only surviving horse-mounted cavalry regiment.

In this era of restructuring and cost-cutting, 61 Cavalry Regiment is on the verge of being downsized to a squadron of 232 horses. It will be based out of Delhi instead of Jaipur and will be deployed for ceremonial duties. With its stunning horses, the regiment is the show opener for all Republic Day and Army Day parades.

Army Chief General MM Naravane is studying a serious proposal to merge three in-depth recce squadrons with its tanks and personnel with the 61 Cavalry headquarters in Jaipur and raise a new armoured regiment. It is this new regiment that will carry the illustrious 61 Cavalry name.

The 61 Cavalry is identified world over with horses. No other army has a horse-mounted cavalry anymore. The Regiment has a rich history and sporting tradition. Why do you want to change it into an Armoured Regiment with tanks?" says an officer closely following the development.

Col Billy Sodhi, the oldest surviving veteran of 61 Cavalry calls the move petty.

Horses are lucky for any army. How much money do you think they can save by reducing 32 or 50 horses from our stables? Yes, the army needs to modernize, but some traditions need not die. A link between the past and the present needs to be kept alive, he said.

But there are many within the Army who say the move was long overdue. They argue that a Regiment that won its glory in the Battle of Haifa (Israel) is better utilised in operations rather than ceremonials or sporting tasks.

I am certain that the gallant Rajputs of Kachhwaha , the Jodhpur Lancers and Mysore Tigers will be happy to see the double-headed eagle (the regiment emblem) soar in preparation of war rather than stand as ceremonial lance men in Cavalry dinners and Polo matches, says the group defending the change.

The last time the Horse Warriors were used during a war was in the 1971 Indo-Pak conflict where they undertook mounted patrol work. But it's riders are also active tank men who train for operational readiness apart from ceremonial and equestrian sport duties.

The 61 Cavalry plays a big role in keeping polo and equestrian sport in the country alive. It is the most decorated regiment in the Indian Army with one Padmashree, 11 Arjuna Awards and nine Asian Game Medals.

The key principle of the Shekatkar Committee, that was instituted to suggest ways to enhance the combat potential of the armed forces, was to replace tradition with pragmatism. Its recommendations are being closely studied and implemented by the Ministry of Defense.

The Horse Warriors arent riding into the sunset without a fight though. Sources say the Regiment is trying to convince the Armys top brass that they are more than just show horses.
Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre

SC allows liquor shops to reopen in Tamil Nadu

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 15: The Supreme Court on Friday stayed Madras High Court order of closure of liquor shops in Tamil Nadu and has issued notice to petitioner and others.

While hearing the case, the court observed that it is for the state to take these calls. Next hearing will be after four weeks. The High Court had allowed the sale of liquor only through online system and home delivery.

Noting that there were huge crowds before the shops and no social distancing was maintained, a bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Satyanarayana passed the order on a miscellaneous petition filed by advocate G Rajesh, besides a plaint from Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM).

Take call on online sale of liquor by May 15: Delhi HC

The bench said there was total violation of its interim order issued on Wednesday, when it declined to stay a government order allowing resumption of sale of Liquor through the latter's outlets.

Besides the guidelines issued by the state government and the TASMAC, the sole retailer of liquor in Tamil Nadu were also violated, it said.

However, the court allowed online sale of liquor and door delivery till the lockdown to check spread of coronavirus was over.

The court had earlier issued guidelines for the sale of liquor through neighbourhood shops. It had ordered a six-feet gap between those queuing up to buy liquor, capping the sale to two bottles per person. It had also asked the state government to check the Aadhaar cards of buyers.

This would ensure that social distancing norms are followed, the court also said.

We will not issue orders, but states should consider home delivery or indirect sale of liquor to maintain social distancing, the Bench comprising, Justices Ashok Bhushan, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and B R Gavai said. After liquor stores were allowed to open, huge crowds were witnessed outside the stores.

Several shops had to be forcibly closed as social distancing norms had been flouted. In several places, the police also had to resort to lathicharge.

Opposition leaders DMK chief M K Stalin and actor-turned-politician Kamal Haasan had slammed the K Palanisamy government, saying the opening of liquor shops will lead to further spread of the virus.
The Nebraska Supreme Court on Friday took care of all but one leftover in the case of an Omaha man convicted based on the Raising Canes Texas toast that spilled out of his pocket during a 2016 murder.

The high court upheld the conviction of LeAndre Jennings, 32, in the December 2016 killing of Mike Brinkman.

But one big question remains from the killing: Who was the other gunman?

Authorities have said they think they know the identity of the tall, lanky counterpart to Jennings, but they didnt have enough evidence to corroborate that he was at Brinkmans house.

One other big mystery remains: Who, if anyone, told Jennings that Brinkman had $200,000 in cash in a safe in the basement?

In the melee of that Dec. 22, 2016 murder, the robbers took a lesser amount of cash  leaving the $200,000 behind. But its presence had friends and attorneys in the case questioning whether that was the motive for the robbery.

The case shocked many both because of its timing (just before Christmas) and location: in an otherwise quiet, upscale neighborhood near 180th and Q Streets.
The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala this year is likely to be delayed by four days, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday. The monsoon is expected to hit the southern state by June 5, four days after its normal onset date. "This year, the onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to the normal date of onset.

The monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on 5th June with a model error of plus or minus 4 days," the IMD said. The onset of monsoon over Kerala marks the official commencement of the ...
Jennifer Aniston was reportedly undergoing quarantine with former husband, Brad Pitt. Rumors of them adopting children together are also circulating on social media.

Ever since their little moment during the SAG Awards last year, Pitt and Aniston have been on fire as they attract more attention.

Now, Aniston has been allegedly carrying Pitt's child. They reportedly had a little babymoon hosted by George Clooney in Italy at his luxurious villa situated in Lake Como.

Clooney had significant involvement. "George is stoked that Jen and Brad are back together and happily offered up his home. He even had the region's best doctor on hand to help Jen with her illness and treated her to all sorts of natural remedies and stomach-soothing drinks."

Aniston is thoroughly enjoyed the treatment she and Pitt were serviced at Clooney's property. The Hollywood A-listers then went on a hike and rode a yacht in the area of Lake Como.

Coincidentally, Brad Pitt was not in attendance at the BAFTA awards and reports allude to Aniston's pregnancy as his personal cause. Aniston is currently struggling with her love life, which was why Pitt did not want to leave her hanging in the United States.

A source divulged to the publication OK! USA, "They've realized they still love each other and very much want to be in each other's lives forever." The insider added that they are "ready to make up for lost time."

Pitt is making attempts to compensate to the "The Morning Show" actress for his sin of having an affair with Jolie.

Also Read: Brad Pitt Speaks Out About Cheating on Jennifer Aniston With Angelina Jolie

The "Friends" actress is said to be suffering from severe morning sickness. This explained Pitt taking Aniston to Italy so that she could take her time to rest.

The source narrated both of their feelings, "Jennifer Aniston feels like a goddess and has told friends he's more than making up for leaving for Angelina Jolie. Brad's only too happy to do it. He wants to enjoy every second of this precious time together and doesn't even care that he missed out on accepting his award. For the rest of his life, he's vowed that Jen and their little one come first."

In an interview with Vanity Fair, Aniston said that divorcing from Pitt before was not correlated to the fact that they did not have children.

Aniston said, "A man divorcing would never be accused of choosing career over children. That really pissed me off. I've never in my life said that I didn't want to have children."

The former married couple mended their relationship and are now friendly with each other following Pitt's split with Angelina Jolie. Although the "Once Upon a Time in Hollywood" actor himself previously clarified this year that the friendship between him and Aniston is merely platonic, rumor mills are still speculating about their alleged reunion.

However, the fact-checker celebrity website Gossip Cop has now busted the truth and clarified that Aniston did not have a romantic reunion with Pitt, and neither she is pregnant nor she went on a trip to Italy with him.

Brad Pitt's Daughter Calling Jennifer Aniston "Mummy"

Thirteen-year-old Shiloh Jolie-Pitt has been accustomed to her father's close friend and former wife Jennifer Aniston after spending more time with her.

According to the insider, the newfound friendship between Shiloh and Aniston after hanging out before the global lockdown has led to Shiloh being fond of calling her "mummy."

However, a representative for Aniston debunked the claims, "This is just another complete fabrication and has no relationship to reality."

Related Article: Brad Pitt Speaks Out About Cheating on Jennifer Aniston With Angelina Jolie

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WEST HAVEN  A town resident faces up to 10 years in federal prison after investigators found a gun where he was staying while out on bond from previous charges, federal authorities said Thursday.

Cedric Ceddyo Goodwin, 31, of West Haven, was arrested Thursday and charged on a federal criminal complaint with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, according to a news release from the office of U.S. Attorney for Connecticut John Durham.

The complaint alleges that in the early morning hours of Sept. 22, 2019, Goodwin tried to go into a bar on Crown Street in downtown New Haven. When a security worker did a pat-down search of Goodwin, a gun magazine fell from his right ankle area, authorities said. Goodwin allegedly picked up the magazine and left the area.

The security worker told nearby New Haven police officers what happened and the officers quickly found Goodwin.

Authorities said as the officers walked up to Goodwin, they heard something hit the ground. The officers detained Goodwin.

A search of the area led officers to a firearm magazine with eight rounds of ammunition. He was arrested on state charges.

But with Goodwins criminal history including felony convictions on narcotics, weapon, robbery and assault offenses, authorities said, he was picked up on a federal criminal complaint that charged him with possession of ammunition by a convicted felon on March 10.

Goodwin was released on a $100,000 bond and other conditions, including that he remain at the home of a third-party custodian on Sanford Street in West Haven, authorities said.

Law enforcement recently learned that Goodwin was engaged in narcotics trafficking activity and was in possession of a firearm, authorities said. Investigators did a court-authorized search of Goodwins home Thursday afternoon.

During that search, investigators found a gun, several rounds of ammunition, multiple baggies of suspected heroin, marijuana and items used to process and package drugs for street sale, according to authorities.

The charge of possession of a firearm carries a maximum term of 10 years in prison.
Sport Sauber at 50: a Swiss success story

Peter Sauber, Copyright: Mandoga Media

15.05.2020 22:20:26 - Sauber celebrates half a century of history today, as the company marks the 50th anniversary of its founding on the 15th of May, 1970. Since that day, when Peter Sauber started the eponymous brand, the name has become a familiar one in motor racing, moving from hillclimbs to circuit racing before achieving success at the highest levels of sportscar racing and making the move to Formula One at the beginning of the 1993 season.



(live-PR.com) - In this time, the team helped launch the careers of many fast drivers, including past (and likely future) World Champions; and it extended into a business comprising thriving Engineering and Aerodynamics arms.



The Sauber Group of today has built on the know-how matured in racing to become a trove of expertise, a concern capable of competing on the world stage not - In this time, the team helped launch the careers of many fast drivers, including past (and likely future) World Champions; and it extended into a business comprising thriving Engineering and Aerodynamics arms.The Sauber Group of today has built on the know-how matured in racing to become a trove of expertise, a concern capable of competing on the world stage not just on the track, but in industry. A restructuring of the group brought stability and investment and, under the leadership of CEO, Frederic Vasseur, both core and third-party business are thriving, pushed by a relentless drive to diversify the Groups business and be a player outside the automotive and motorsport worlds.



In Sauber Engineering, it boasts the most advanced Swiss company in the field of additive manufacturing, alongside top-end design, development and manufacturing capabilities; this enabled the company to become active in the healthcare, packaging and automotive sectors, among others, driving innovation and generating new business lines for the concern.



The Sauber wind tunnel, initially constructed to aid the teams motorsport efforts, is now the cornerstone of Sauber Aerodynamicss offering and the most advanced full-scale facility in the region. Widely recognised as one of the most advanced such structures in the automotive and motorsport world, it is in use by an array of clients from various sectors. It is a parable of technology transfer  from the race track to everyday life  one that keeps developing as the Sauber Group makes inroad in new sectors of business.



The Sauber Group also puts sustainability at the core of its effort. From the way the team goes racing to the innovative ways in which energy and waste are managed in its Hinwil facilities, the environment is central to the philosophy of the company. Certified as carbon-neutral since 2011, the company has been a pioneer in its sector, ensuring the various operational arms of the Group could operate in a clean, climate-friendly way. The unveiling of a full sustainability strategy in early 2020, encompassing the companys efforts for the environment and the communities it operates in, enables the Sauber Group to continue its growth in a sensible, positive manner, a way of doing things suited for todays world  and for the next 50 years of our history.



On the day of its 50th anniversary, the team looks back on a proud heritage of innovative design, entrepreneurial spirit and, first and foremost, passion for racing. The pride in what we have done, however, is not what drives us forward. For the focus of the Sauber Group is on driving forward, as the company prepares for the next fifty years of its history.



To celebrate this anniversary, the team unveiled a new commemorative logo and installed special branding at its Hinwil headquarters. Throughout the month of May and for the rest of 2020, features and exclusive content will appear on Saubers website and social media channels and media will enjoy access to the teams personnel.



A selection of former and current Sauber drivers have also sent in their congratulatory messages: the video is available on Saubers YouTube channel and below.



Frederic Vasseur, CEO Sauber Motorsport AG: Today marks an important milestone in the history of Sauber Motorsport. 50 years in this business is a long time, but Sauber has always managed to reinvent itself throughout all the challenges that it faced. At its core, its biggest strength is the people that built it and that still make sure it can compete at the highest level: its employees. Todays celebrations are a tribute to the hard work, commitment and passion for racing of each one of them  and a wish for the next 50 years to be even more successful than the last ones.



Kimi Raikkonen (race driver, car number 7): I want to wish the best to Sauber on the day of their 50th birthday. It is a team that means so much to me as it was here that I had my Formula One debut and I am thankful for the great times we had together. Obviously, there was a great team history already before I joined, and the team went on to do great afterwards; now we are together again, ready to write new pages of this history, and I hope there will be many more great moments.



Antonio Giovinazzi (race driver, car number 99): Sauber has been a really special and important team from me, so happy 50th birthday! I have a lot of good memories with the team, most obviously my debut in Melbourne, back in 2017. Its a special place to drive and itll always be the team where I have been an official Formula One driver for the first time. I wish for many happy moments and to hopefully celebrate a podium together soon.



Robert Kubica (reserve driver): Today is a very special day, marking the 50th year of a long history, not only in Formula One but in motorsports. This team has always been made of great people and it has been a pleasure to race for them. This is where I made my debut, back in 2006, which was the biggest opportunity for myself and my career. I have a lot of great memories from these days, and the victory in Canada in 2008 was definitely one of the greatest moments in my racing life. Id like to congratulate all the people who wrote the history of Sauber, but also wish all the best and good luck to the new people, the new faces I had the chance to meet upon my return to Hinwil, our home. I wish the team 50, 100 more years of great history in motorsport.



Tatiana Calderon (test driver): Congratulations to the whole team, I wish you all the best for the next 50 years. I have a lot of great memories with Sauber, but the most special moment is of course when I first jumped into a Formula One car, in Mexico back in 2018. It was a very special feeling, a dream come true. To work with the whole team at the track was an incredible experience that I will remember forever. As a child, I always dreamed to become an F1 driver and to be working with a team with as much history as Sauber.

just on the track, but in industry. A restructuring of the group brought stability and investment and, under the leadership of CEO, Frederic Vasseur, both core and third-party business are thriving, pushed by a relentless drive to diversify the Groups business and be a player outside the automotive and motorsport worlds.In Sauber Engineering, it boasts the most advanced Swiss company in the field of additive manufacturing, alongside top-end design, development and manufacturing capabilities; this enabled the company to become active in the healthcare, packaging and automotive sectors, among others, driving innovation and generating new business lines for the concern.The Sauber wind tunnel, initially constructed to aid the teams motorsport efforts, is now the cornerstone of Sauber Aerodynamicss offering and the most advanced full-scale facility in the region. Widely recognised as one of the most advanced such structures in the automotive and motorsport world, it is in use by an array of clients from various sectors. It is a parable of technology transfer  from the race track to everyday life  one that keeps developing as the Sauber Group makes inroad in new sectors of business.The Sauber Group also puts sustainability at the core of its effort. From the way the team goes racing to the innovative ways in which energy and waste are managed in its Hinwil facilities, the environment is central to the philosophy of the company. Certified as carbon-neutral since 2011, the company has been a pioneer in its sector, ensuring the various operational arms of the Group could operate in a clean, climate-friendly way. The unveiling of a full sustainability strategy in early 2020, encompassing the companys efforts for the environment and the communities it operates in, enables the Sauber Group to continue its growth in a sensible, positive manner, a way of doing things suited for todays world  and for the next 50 years of our history.On the day of its 50th anniversary, the team looks back on a proud heritage of innovative design, entrepreneurial spirit and, first and foremost, passion for racing. The pride in what we have done, however, is not what drives us forward. For the focus of the Sauber Group is on driving forward, as the company prepares for the next fifty years of its history.To celebrate this anniversary, the team unveiled a new commemorative logo and installed special branding at its Hinwil headquarters. Throughout the month of May and for the rest of 2020, features and exclusive content will appear on Saubers website and social media channels and media will enjoy access to the teams personnel.A selection of former and current Sauber drivers have also sent in their congratulatory messages: the video is available on Saubers YouTube channel and below.Frederic Vasseur, CEO Sauber Motorsport AG: Today marks an important milestone in the history of Sauber Motorsport. 50 years in this business is a long time, but Sauber has always managed to reinvent itself throughout all the challenges that it faced. At its core, its biggest strength is the people that built it and that still make sure it can compete at the highest level: its employees. Todays celebrations are a tribute to the hard work, commitment and passion for racing of each one of them  and a wish for the next 50 years to be even more successful than the last ones.Kimi Raikkonen (race driver, car number 7): I want to wish the best to Sauber on the day of their 50th birthday. It is a team that means so much to me as it was here that I had my Formula One debut and I am thankful for the great times we had together. Obviously, there was a great team history already before I joined, and the team went on to do great afterwards; now we are together again, ready to write new pages of this history, and I hope there will be many more great moments.Antonio Giovinazzi (race driver, car number 99): Sauber has been a really special and important team from me, so happy 50th birthday! I have a lot of good memories with the team, most obviously my debut in Melbourne, back in 2017. Its a special place to drive and itll always be the team where I have been an official Formula One driver for the first time. I wish for many happy moments and to hopefully celebrate a podium together soon.Robert Kubica (reserve driver): Today is a very special day, marking the 50th year of a long history, not only in Formula One but in motorsports. This team has always been made of great people and it has been a pleasure to race for them. This is where I made my debut, back in 2006, which was the biggest opportunity for myself and my career. I have a lot of great memories from these days, and the victory in Canada in 2008 was definitely one of the greatest moments in my racing life. Id like to congratulate all the people who wrote the history of Sauber, but also wish all the best and good luck to the new people, the new faces I had the chance to meet upon my return to Hinwil, our home. I wish the team 50, 100 more years of great history in motorsport.Tatiana Calderon (test driver): Congratulations to the whole team, I wish you all the best for the next 50 years. I have a lot of great memories with Sauber, but the most special moment is of course when I first jumped into a Formula One car, in Mexico back in 2018. It was a very special feeling, a dream come true. To work with the whole team at the track was an incredible experience that I will remember forever. As a child, I always dreamed to become an F1 driver and to be working with a team with as much history as Sauber. Author:

Alexander Sandvoss

Evelyn Kilb

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Our County Editor

Dave Hinton is editor of The News-Gazette's Our County section and former editor of the Rantoul Press. He can be reached at dhinton@news-gazette.com.
Seen above is an empty check-in counter for Jeju Air, the nation's biggest low-cost carrier, at Incheon International Airport, Feb. 5, when the spread of the COVID 19 pandemic started to raise fears in Asia. Yonhap



By Lee Min-hyung



The Korea Development Bank (KDB) is in a growing dilemma over how to "ensure fairness" when distributing its 40 trillion won ($32.56 billion) in coronavirus relief funds to sagging companies here.



Starting as early as the end of May, the fund will be allocated to companies primarily in the aviation and shipbuilding sectors  deemed as the biggest victims of the global pandemic.



The Financial Services Commission (FSC) and the Ministry of Economy and Finance  the two key authorities involved in fund management  said they would widen the number of industries for more virus-hit firms to receive the financial aid for their survival.



But the state-run lender and the two government authorities are faced with a conundrum over how to maintain fairness in terms of the capital supply.



Chances are that Korean Air and Asiana Airlines will become the first beneficiaries receiving the financial support from the state-run lender. In April alone, the government announced its plan to offer liquidity worth 3 trillion won to the nation's two-largest airlines suffering serious business setbacks.



The government also decided to provide 300 billion won to low-cost carriers (LCC) whose financial status is even worse than the major airlines after global fear of the pandemic ended up in the suspension of their cash-cow international flights.



But a controversy was sparked after KDB Vice President Choi Dae-hyun said the state-run lender "is not considering any plans to provide additional financial support for LCCs here." Against the backdrop of this recent comment, chances appear very slim for the small airlines to become beneficiaries of the financial aid from the relief fund.



This is also raising concern that the state-run lender is not being fair when it comes to offering the aid packages to companies with serious financial difficulties.



For now, the government authorities are holding internal discussions over how to handle the issue of fairness in managing the fund, but for now, no specific and objective standard on distributing money has been fixed.



"Even if we are a state-run lender, the KDB is a financial organization, so we have to judge the qualifications of companies before providing loans, even if their financial status worsen in the aftermath of the virus shock," a spokesman for the bank said.



"Regarding the LCC relief fund, we have executed 130 billion won out of the 300 billion won fund to five sagging airlines, and the rest will be provided for financing Jeju Airlines' planned acquisition of Eastar Jet," the official said. "But the remaining money is not being spent as overseas anti-trust authorities are delaying their review on the merger and acquisition."



Some critics argue that it is impossible for the government to salvage all the sagging airlines due to budget limitations.



They said the government needs to "pick and choose" certain companies qualified for support under strict standards.



"For instance, there are nine LCCs operating in Korea," an industry source said. "Doubts can be raised over whether it is really important for the government to save all of them at a time when calls are growing for the need to cut the number of airlines here."



The number of LCCs in Korea surpasses that of Japan, even though the former has smaller population and land area.


A man wears a protective mask as he walks past the New York Stock Exchange on the corner of Wall and Broad streets during the coronavirus outbreak in New York, March 13, 2020.

The New York Stock Exchange floor is reopening  sort of.

The decision to partially reopen the floor on May 26, which has been closed since March 23, involved a complicated stew of business, legal and medical issues that many larger businesses throughout the United States will be facing particularly those where people are required to collaborate in in person.

In the partial reopening, only about 80 floor brokers will be present, about 25% of the number prior to the coronavirus pandemic. Designated market makers that make the markets in the stocks will not be present, initially.

Everyone entering will be required to take a temperature test and sign a legal document stating they understand the risks, will follow the rules, and indemnify the NYSE against lawsuits. It also does not allow anyone entering the building to have arrived using public transportation, an issue since the vast majority of those who work at the NYSE take public transportation.

For the NYSE, the business issue is driving the decision. The floor brokers have been mostly unable to participate in the trading because the devices they use to trade are only available if they are inside the building. Because they can't participate, dozens of small businesses in the form of brokerage firms may not survive months of closure.

"The independent community can't wait to get back on the floor," David Shields at Wellington Shields told me. Shields owns a broker-dealer business that has a trading desk on the floor. "If they don't get back, they don't work, and they're gone," he said.

This is not a trivial issue. The NYSE floor is an integral part of the NYSE business model. The NYSE believes the floor offers price improvement and a competitive advantage against other exchanges and wants to preserve that advantage.

"When you add the trading floor in, you see much larger bids and offers, and so it makes those [closing] auctions even more efficient," NYSE President Stacey Cunningham said on our air this morning, explaining why she wants the floor brokers back.

The legal issues are also a major driver. The issue is a lack of a "safe harbor" provision from the state of New York or the Federal government that would indemnify the NYSE against lawsuits from people who may contract coronavirus on the floor.

David Franasiak, a lawyer at Williams & Jensen who advises clients in the financial services industry, said there is an attempt in Congress to provide legal protection against lawsuits for companies that re-open their firms, but this has not yet happened. "But that doesn't help employees who may contract coronavirus," he told me.

Without such a safe harbor the NYSE and other businesses have little choice but to require anyone entering their buildings to sign a document stating they understand the risks, and will indemnify them against lawsuits.

As for the medical issue, the NYSE is only requiring a temperature test  not a coronavirus test  as a condition of entering the building, despite the fact that the temperature testing will not pick up the significant number of people who contract coronavirus but are asymptomatic.

Why? The NYSE has not explained its thinking, but Franasiak said it was likely that the lack of clear federal and state guidelines has left firms like the NYSE to devise some of their own standards.

"Since there are no CDC guidelines on how to reopen, they at least have some kind of defense saying they did something," by requiring temperature tests, he said. He also noted that there may be issues with obtaining fast on-site coronavirus tests, as well as issues of accuracy that would still leave them open to legal risk.

"The legal teams are still likely going to require some kind of indemnification as a condition of entering, regardless of what kind of tests are being done," he said.

What does the Securities and Exchange Commission, which regulates the NYSE, have to say about the reopening? Brett Redfearn, director of the division of trading and markets at the SEC, said the NYSE will decide how to balance health and safety issues but that the SEC's job is to make sure any rule changes do not disadvantage any one party over another. "Our focus is on ensuring fair and orderly markets," he said.

The NYSE is not the only firm grappling with this issue. The Cboe has floated the idea of reopening its Chicago options trading floor on June 1st. Illinois's stay at home order expires May 31. CME, which also runs options as well as futures trading pits in Chicago, said it may also reopen soon after.

UBS' Art Cashin, who is celebrating his 55th year on the floor and who is also eager to return (despite recuperating from an auto accident in March), told me that the issues the NYSE is facing are issues all firms that require face-to-face contact must confront.

"Everyone wants a sign that we are going back to normal, that we are starting to heal," Cashin told me, adding that it doesn't negate the fact that there are substantial risks coming back on the floor.

"I honestly believe in my heart that it's being reopened to some degree at the request of the government and others to make an important part of the American economy function well," Cashin said on our air.
KTM has proven itself capable of producing competitive dirtbikes and popular streetbikes, and 2019 brought a next-gen Gran Turismo that targets the sport-tour genre for domination. Sure, the previous model set a pretty high standard, especially if you like your sport-tour machines heavy on the sport , but our Austrian friends managed to raise the bar even more with a handful of improvements in the 1290 Super Duke GT. Comfort and convenience were updated along with the instrumentation, all with even more race-tacular tendencies due to the revised V-Twin powerplant and improved electronic aids.

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Design

LED lighting

Cornering lights

Adjustable windshield

6.5-inch color TFT touchscreen

Stock paint-matched panniers

Adjustable ergonomics

Heated handgrips

Right. When it comes to aesthetics, nothing in the world looks quite like a KTM, and the 1290 Super Duke GT falls right into that look. Love it or hate it, the factory is certainly comfortable with its design choices from the sharply angular leading elements to the dramatic fuel-tank hump and down to the actual bones of the Beast. A new cyclops LED headlight pierces the night with backup from a horseshoe-shaped DRL strip and a pair of cornering lights that ride outboard of the headlight in the leading edges of the cheek fairing for a bit of extra visibility and safety. MY19 saw some slight aesthetic tweaks to the headlight mask and screen to set it apart from the previous year model.

The factory boosted comfort as well with new adjustable windshield and revised handguards, and if thats not quite enough to overcome the relatively small wind bubble they create along with the flared cowl, youve got heated handgrips that come stock for that extra bit of relief from the cold. KTM prioritizes low-resistance penetration over rider comfort; clearly, this bike is built for riders younger than myself, or at least, ones who are willing to sacrifice some comfort in the name of outright performance.

Behind the glass/plastic/whatever is the most visible bit of fandanglery to be found on the GT; the new, 6.5-inch color TFT touchscreen that presents all the important metrics alongside the KTM My Ride navigation software that helps you find your destination, no matter how far-flung. Bluetooth delivers wireless connectivity that networks with your smartphone for media playback and so you can handle those pesky phonecalls without letting them interrupt your ride.

A short-rise bar pulls the rider forward into an aggressive riding posture over the 6.1-gallon fuel-tank hump that drops off precipitously to a narrow waist that has tank, seat, and frame all pinched together to give your thighs a break, but it would be a mistake to expect any great improvement in the actual seat comfort. Those Austrians apparently have bulletproof bum-bums, cause the seat is still firmly on the firm side of the spectrum and would be the first thing Id look to change.

Behind the pillion slab is a small, spoiler-like J.C. handle that pairs with the subframe-mount, fold-up passenger footpegs to help keep your human cargo aboard. A combination mudguard/plateholder/winker assembly that finishes out the gear in the rear, and as always, I think a hugger and sideplate would make a marked improvement in the visuals out back.

Gotta give the factory its props on the stock panniers though. The Euros have finally recognized that tour is synonymous with dry storage capacity over here, and so the GT rocks a pair of paint-matched panniers that are big enough to swallow your full-face bucket. Kudos, guys. Kudos...

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Chassis

Razor-sharp handling

Semi-active WP suspension

Switchable Bosch 9ME Combined ABS

Lean-angle sensitive traction control

Welded Cro-Moly steel tubing makes up the Trellis frame and subframe section with a cast-alloy, single-side swingarm that articulates the rear wheel. The steering head comes stock with a damper that takes the edge off any kickback and helps keep the machine stable, and it rides with a 24.9-degree rake that delivers on the expectation of razor-sharp handling thatll let you drag a knee if you have the testicular fortitude for it.

WP suspension components come stock with a semi-active suspension system that crunches data from stroke indicators and accelerometers to dynamically dial in the appropriate damping levels, but leaves room for rider input with a trio of profiles, Comfort, Street and Sport. Inverted 48 mm forks buoy the front with a coil-over monoshock to support the rear.

Dual 320 mm discs slow the front wheel with a pair of Brembo M50 four-pot calipers to bind them. A 240 mm disc and twin-piston anchor slow the rear, and both ends are covered by not just any ABS, but the switchable Bosch 9ME Combined ABS that bundles cornering ABS and a supermoto mode together for improved safety.

Cast rims run with a 120/70-17 up front and a 190/55-17 out back, and the fact that theyre ZR-rated should tell you everything you need to know about the performance.

Frame: Chrome-moly Steel Trellis Subframe: Chrome-moly Steel Trellis Handlebar: Aluminum, Tapered,  28/22 mm Front Suspension: WP Semi-Active Suspension USD  48 mm Rear Suspension: WP Semi-Active Suspension Monoshock Suspension Travel Front/Rear: 125 mm/4.9 in; 156 mm/6.1 in Steering Head Angle: 24.9  Front/Rear Brakes: Disc Brake 320 mm/240 mm Front/Rear Wheels: 3.50 x 17, 6.00 x 17 Front/Rear Tires: 120/70ZR17; 190/55ZR17

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Drivetrain

1,301 cc V-twin engine

173 horsepower

106.2 pound-feet of torque

Quickshifter

Cruise control

KTM drives the 1290 Super Duke GT with an updated V-Twin powerplant that displaces a total of 1,301 cc and benefits from the addition of titanium valves and intake resonator chambers to help boost performance. A pair of 56 mm Keihin throttle bodies control the induction with RbW rider input and a host of fancy engine-control features that includes a lean-sensitive traction control (MTC) system and Ride Mode technology that lets you dial in for conditions and skill level.

Additionally, for the 2019 and 2020 models, the factory carried over the Supermoto mode to really make the GT come alive. Dont get me wrong; Im not suggesting any of the above is a substitute for a full-bodied riders skillset, but it should help you keep the thing dirty-side down long enough for you to develop said skills. The engine layout has a 108 mm bore and short, 71 mm stroke with dual over-head cams to time the poppets and dual-plug heads that help insure positive ignition and flame-front propagation. Oh, and that last helps with emissions as well.

All this is well and good, but more than anything else its the power figures that sell this engine. This sizzlin-hot lump generates a blistering 173 horsepower and 106.2 pound-feet. On a frikkin tour bike, no less. Needless to say, youll never get the most out of it unless youve got access to a closed-circuit course, not legally anyway. A six-speed transmission crunches the ratios, and a quick-shifter comes as standard equipment to make for easy/fast shifts up and down the range.

Engine: 2-Cylinder, 4-Stroke, 75 V-Twin, DOHC Displacement: 1,301 cc Bore x Stroke: 108 mm x 71 mm Power: 173 horsepower (128.7 kW) Torque: 106.2 pound-feet (141 Nm) Starter: Electric; 12V 12Ah Transmission: 6 Gears Fuel System: Keihin EFI, 56 mm Throttle Bodies Lubrication: Pressure Lubrication, 3 Eaton Pumps Cooling: Liquid Cooling Clutch: PASC Slipper Clutch, Hydraulically Operated Ignition: Keihin EMS with Ride-By-Wire, Dual Ignition

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Pricing

MSRP is shaking out at $20,599 in your choice of black or white. Its a lot of cash, but you get a lot of bike for the money.

Color: Black, White Price:  2019: $20,499  2020: $20,599

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Competitors

Something about the spikey panache of the 1290 Super Duke GT compels me to pull from the opposite end of the spectrum, so I went with the Ducati Multistrada 1260 for its almost feminine curves as my competitor.

Ducati Multistrada 1260

Although the KTM sort of simulates a birds beak in its own fashion, the Ducati carries a proper angry-bird fairing that looks a bit more mainstream if I do say so myself. The cheek fairings are actually more similar, if not quite as spikey, and the Ducs flyline describes a graceful S-curve the GT lacks.

Both rides rely on Trellis framing, and while Duc offers a fully-adjustable rear shock, it lacks the spanky automatic adjustment KTM brings to the table. Boschs cornering ABS is constant across the board, but it looks like only the Italian ride gets a hill-start brake augmentation, though KTM offers it as optional on the GT. Ducatis mill displaces 1,262 cc and, as respectable as the 155-pony and 95-pounds o grunt is, it falls shy of the absolute soul-crushing power KTM packs into the Super Duke GT.

Read our full review of the Ducati Multistrada 1260.

He Said

Wow. Just wow. Maybe KTM forgot it was making a tourbike, or more likely, decided to save on the R&D and just take what is actually a proper sportbike, throw some bags at it and call it good. Whichever the case, youve got to respect their commitment to performance. As usual, you can pencil me in as not a fan of the aesthetics or the hard seat.

She Said

My wife and fellow motorcycle writer, Allyn Hinton, says, This bike is based on the Super Duke R that had such a great showing at Pikes Peak in 2018 so you know it is built to perform. Honestly, KTM took a great performance machine, threw on some panniers, a big fuel tank, and a windshield and called it a tourer. Wherever your journey takes you, make sure the road is twisty.

KTM 1290 Super Duke GT Specifications

Engine & Drivetrain: Engine: 2-Cylinder, 4-Stroke, 75 V-Twin, DOHC Displacement: 1,301 cc Bore x Stroke: 108 mm x 71 mm Power: 173 horsepower (128.7 kW) Torque: 106.2 pound-feet (141 Nm) Starter: Electric; 12V 12Ah Transmission: 6 Gears Fuel System: Keihin EFI, 56 mm Throttle Bodies Lubrication: Pressure Lubrication, 3 Eaton Pumps Cooling: Liquid Cooling Clutch: PASC Slipper Clutch, Hydraulically Operated Ignition: Keihin EMS with Ride-By-Wire, Dual Ignition Chassis: Frame: Chrome-moly Steel Trellis Subframe: Chrome-moly Steel Trellis Handlebar: Aluminum, Tapered,  28/22 mm Front Suspension: WP Semi-Active Suspension USD  48 mm Rear Suspension: WP Semi-Active Suspension Monoshock Suspension Travel Front/Rear: 125 mm/4.9 in; 156 mm/6.1 in Steering Head Angle: 24.9  Front/Rear Brakes: Disc Brake 320 mm/240 mm Front/Rear Wheels: 3.50 x 17, 6.00 x 17 Front/Rear Tires: 120/70ZR17; 190/55ZR17 Dimensions & Capacities: Wheelbase: 1,482 mm  15 mm / 58.3  0.6 in Ground Clearance: 141 mm / 5.6 in Seat Height: 835 mm / 32.9 in Tank Capacity: 23 L / 6.1 gal Weight (without fuel), Approx: 209 kg/ 460.8 lbs Top Speed: 159 mph (est) Details: Color: Black, White Price:  2019: $20,499  2020: $20,599

Further Reading

KTM

Read more KTM news.
Assam is facing a swine flu crisis which has reportedly killed over 15,000 pigs in the northeastern state. According to an ANI report, the state government is planning to cull pigs to avoid further infection.

Despite the government taking measures to contain the infection, the disease is spreading to other areas and a high alert has been ordered by the government in 10 districts which are affected by the African swine flu.



To deal with the problem, the Assam government has also sought Rs 144 crore relief package from the Centre for farmers whose livelihoods come from rearing pigs.

National Hog Farmer

Assam Animal Husbandry Minister, Atul Bora, said, "We are very much concerned about the swine flu crisis in the state. Ten districts are already affected by the disease and the death of pigs is increasing every day. Over 14,000 pigs are already dead and the number is on the rise. We have alerted the Centre about this."

He added that initially only 6 districts were affected by the disease but now the infection has spread to a total of 10 districts. He said, "Despite taking all measures to prevent the spread, the disease is spreading to newer areas. So we are discussing new approaches to contain this."

For domesticated pigs, the rate of mortality is 100 percent if they get infected with African swine fever. The report further added that till now there has been no case where humans have caught the disease.

AFP

Bora also said, "The state government has also adopted biosecurity measures to contain its spread. The area under one-kilometre radius has been declared containment zone and 10-kilometre radius as surveillance zone."



YouTube

Looks like 2020 is not done yet.
Hyderabad, May 15 : The Telangana government has decided to allow automobile showrooms, automobile spare part shops and shops selling air-conditioners to re-open across the state from Saturday.

The decision was taken on Friday at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao to take stock of the Covid-19 situation and review the ongoing lockdown measures.

Registration offices and Road Transport Authority (RTA) offices will also function across the state.

The remaining lockdown restrictions will continue as it is, said a statement from the Chief Minister's Office.

As the Centre is likely to announce new guidelines for lockdown 4.0, beginning from May 18, it was decided to examine them and review the situation before finalising the next strategy.

KCR, as Rao is popularly known, declared that except in four zones in Hyderabad, there are no active coronavirus cases in the state.

"Coronavirus in Telangana has limited itself to four zones in Hyderabad city. LB Nagar, Malakpet, Charminar, Karawan Zones have Corona active cases. There are 1,442 families in these areas," he said.

The Chief Minister said some migrant labourers in Yadadri Bhongir, Jangaon, and Mancherial have tested positive for the virus but not people from these districts. Hence, these districts cannot be counted as areas having positive cases.

"There is nothing to be scared about corona. A majority of people have been recovering from the virus. In Telangana state, the percentage of people who died due to Corona was only 2.38 per cent. This is less than the nation's average of 3.5 per cent. Hence there is no need to be fearful about corona. We don't know how long this virus will be with us. Hence we have to adapt a strategy to live with it and we have no option," KCR said.

"We have to be on alert about those visiting from abroad, those coming here by trains. Conduct tests for those coming to Hyderabad by flights. If they test positive for the virus, send them to the hospitals for quarantine. Otherwise put them in home quarantine. For those reaching Hyderabad by air to go to other states, put them in special buses and send them to their respective states from the airport itself," he said.

He asked the official conduct tests on the migrant labour reaching here by trains and send people from other states, to their respective states.

He also directed officials concerned to take precautionary measures to prevent seasonal diseases that may break out during the rainy season, while continuing the efforts to contain the spread of coronavirus in the state.
The nationwide tally of confirmed COVID-19 cases crossed 85,000 on Friday with more people testing positive for the deadly virus infection from Kashmir to Kerala and from Karnataka to Bihar, even as indications emerged about greater relaxations in the fourth phase of the lockdown beginning Monday to contain economic costs of the pandemic.

Going by the numbers declared by different states and union territories, India has now surpassed China's official tally of 82,933 confirmed COVID-19 cases.

Though some new cases have emerged in the Chinese city of Wuhan -- the epicentre of the deadly virus -- less than 100 people are now undergoing treatment across China, which recorded 4,633 deaths due to COVID-19 but more than 78,000 have been discharged after recovery, as per their official data.

Globally, more than 3 lakh people have died and nearly 45 lakh have tested positive for the deadly virus since its emergence in Wuhan last December. While China and several other countries have begun reopening their economies, fresh concerns have begun mounting about a possible re-emergence of the virus.

India is now the 11th most affected nation in the world, but each one of the top-ten have one lakh or more cases. The US tops the charts with more than 14 lakh cases, followed by Russia, UK, Spain, Italy and Brazil with over 2 lakh cases each; and France, Germany, Turkey and Iran having over 1 lakh cases each.

In its morning 8 AM update, the Union Health Ministry said the death toll due to COVID-19 across India has risen to 2,649 and the number of cases has climbed to 81,970, registering an increase of 100deaths and 3,967 cases in the last 24 hours since Thursday morning. There are more than 51,000 active cases, while nearly 28,000 have recovered, giving a recovery rate of over 34 per cent.

However, a PTI tally of numbers reported by states and UTs, as of 9 PM, put the total number of confirmed cases across the country much higher at 85,538. This also showed at least 2,679 deaths and nearly 30,000 recoveries.

Jammu & Kashmir, Bihar and Karnataka breached the 1,000-mark in terms of the number of people having tested positive, while testing and containment measures were ramped up in places like, Kerala, Goa and Manipur that were being seen as being mostly virus-free till a few days back. Even a quarantine centre had to be sealed in Manipur.

On the other hand, large numbers of cases continued to get detected in big urban clusters. Maharashtra, the most-affected state, reported 1,576 new cases to take its tally to 29,100, while its death toll rose to 1,068. Tamil Nadu crossed the 10,000 mark with 434 new cases, while Gujarat saw 340 more people testing positive to push its tally to 9,932.

According to the Union Health Ministry, 30 municipal areas account for 79 per cent of India's coronavirus infection caseload.

At a meeting of a group of ministers chaired by Health Minister Harsh Vardhan, it was stressed that the focus of COVID-19 management strategy needs to be on the states with the highest number of confirmed cases and fatalities. Also, focus is needed on treatment and case fatality management, for which timely detection and contact tracing were the best way forward.

The Finance Ministry in the meantime unveiled the third booster dose, mainly consisting of measures aimed at helping farmers and for reforms in agriculture and allied sectors, of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Rs 20 lakh crore 'special package' for making India self-reliant in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Modi said the third tranche will help the rural economy and boost farmers' income.

India has been under a lockdown since March 25, which was initially scheduled to end on April 14 but has got extended twice -- first till May 3 and then till May 17 with some relaxations.

A final decision on the fourth phase is expected soon, but officials said there could be greater relaxations and more flexibility for states and union territories while measures being explored include gradual reopening of the railways and domestic airlines.

Schools, colleges, malls and cinema halls may not be allowed to open anywhere in the country, but salons, barber shops and optical shops may be allowed everywhere barring COVID-19 containment areas. E-retailers may be allowed to deliver non-essential items too.

Final guidelines will be issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs after going through the suggestions of various state governments. During his last interaction with chief ministers, Modi had asked them to submit their suggestions by May 15.

According to officials, Punjab, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Assam and Telangana want the lockdown to continue, while some states have sought powers to decide the zoning of districts -- green, orange and red -- as per the COVID-19 situation.

This request of the state governments may be accepted so that they can restrict or allow movement of people or economic activities in a particular place depending on the ground situation, an official told PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Monday, had said that the lockdown 4.0 will have a "completely different form", with new rules.

"No state wants complete withdrawal of lockdown but all want gradual resumption of economic activities," the official said.

Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka are among some states which are not in favour of complete resumption of train and air services, at least till May-end.

The railways have already started special trains to 15 destinations from Delhi and have been running several hundred 'Shramik Special' trains from different parts of the country to various places for transportation of migrant workers stranded due to the lockdown. Air India is also engaged in evacuation of thousands of Indians stranded abroad during the lockdown under the 'Vande Bharat Mission'.

However, there have been cases of people testing positive after reaching their native places using these trains and flights.

Officials said local trains, buses and metro services may start running with limited capacity in non-containment areas of red zones. Autos and taxis are also expected to be allowed in all zones with restrictions on the number of passengers, barring areas identified as 'containment zones'.

Maharashtra has favoured strict lockdown measures in Mumbai, its suburbs and Pune, and a complete ban on inter-state and inter-district transport.

However, Gujarat wants resumption of economic activities in major urban centres. Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala have also favoured opening up of economic activities.

Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, which have seen a spike in the COVID-19 cases after arrival of migrant workers, want the lockdown to continue with strict curbs on movement of people.

Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has urged Modi not to open state boundaries for the next few months, except for migrants or essential services.

Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal said the state has written to the Centre urging extension of the lockdown by two more weeks.

Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa said the Centre may announce many relaxations in the lockdown after May 17.

The Arunachal Pradesh government has decided to resume state transport bus service to various destinations from May 18, while the Haryana Roadways has already resumed bus services on select routes within the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Irish Nursing profession celebrated International Nurses Day 2020 on May 12, including at the Midland Regional Hospital in Tullamore.

Despite the busy activity in response to Covid-19, nurses and their colleagues across hospitals and community services took time to recognise and acknowledge the work of all nurses.

Each year, the International Council for Nurses (ICN) leads the celebrations. The theme for International Nurses Day 2020 is Nursing the World to Health. When this theme was decided no one could possibly have foretold how the world would come to rely on and value the nursing profession as they currently do, raising the profile of the profession exponentially and deservedly. Such a health crisis has never been experienced before even through the H1N1 Flu pandemic of 2009.

Irish nurses not only stood up to the challenge but embraced it and in many ways reorganised how they delivered care. Nursing by the bedside prevailed despite the apparent barrier of PPE. Nurses overcame this with various initiatives like wearing a photo of themselves on their gowns to maintain that all-important human touch. Smiling with your eyes became even more important to convey encouragement and reassurance to frightened patients.

The celebrations of 2020 are more poignant as on May 12, 1820, Florence Nightingale was born. Because of this the World Health Organisation declared 2020 The Year of the Nurse and Midwife.

To mark the occasion, the Nursing teams in Midland Regional Hospital Tullamore (MRHT) celebrated the day. On behalf of MRHT hospital management and the local community, Louisea Burke, Director of Nursing, and her Senior Nurse Management Team delivered bakery treat boxes containing a selection of cakes to nursing staff throughout the hospital. This token was given in appreciation of the care, compassion and commitment that nurses consciously provide to their patients. They encouraged nurses to take a well-deserved break with their colleagues and celebrate the development of nursing as a career alongside their own professional accomplishments.

Louisea Burke, Director of Nursing at MRHT commented: Health and wellbeing amongst nursing staff is utmost at all times but is particularly important during the COVID-19 pandemic. Nurses in MRHT are at the frontline in caring for all our patients throughout the year, Hospital Management and the Senior Nurse Management Team wanted to express their appreciation to them for the care, compassion and commitment that they deliver on a daily basis to patients.

To also mark this celebratory occasion, a distinctive word cloud was created which was displayed in the hospital and on all treat boxes. The word cloud contains descriptors including kind, compassion, caring, professional, words that local children, MRHT patients and colleagues have used to describe nurses in our hospital. These descriptors show the value that people place on our nursing staff and MRHT nurses must be proud of their value and strong connection with the local community.

This year, 2020, marks the Year of the Nurse and Midwife and celebrates the advancements in the nursing profession. In MRHT, nurses are continuously developing their practice in order to keep up to date with international and national evidence-based practice. Education, training and professional development amongst our nursing staff is a key priority to nursing management.

Ms Eileen Whelan, Chief Director of Nursing & Midwifery & Quality at the Dublin Midlands Hospital Group commented: I would like to thank every nurse and every student nurse for their commitment to patients during the COVID-19 pandemic. You have demonstrated tremendous courage and thank you to all the staff that have planned in advance of this pandemic.

"Many of you have reorganised services, you have moved services off-site including all of your staff team. You have been involved in upskilling and have redeployed to areas of greater need. You have been involved in implementing new triage systems to separate patients, to support greater patient safety. In addition, you have innovated your practice and directed all these changes in the interest of patients safety.

I would like to thank all nurses of all grades and specialities and advance practice but in particular I would like to thank the nurses who responded to the plea for help from the residential care facilities making a tremendous impact to a very vulnerable group of patients. Thank you for your courage.

"In addition while this is a time where social isolation is really important as nurses we never work in isolation. We are always part of a bigger nursing team and a wider healthcare family. Not everyone will be able to sustain the challenge of working through the pandemic at the same pace; look out for colleagues who may need help and I encourage anyone who is finding the environment too challenging to seek help when needed. It is both the courage and the teamwork that is making a difference in this COVID-19 pandemic - misneach agus meitheal. Thank you for your courage and teamwork.
(Newser)  A reality TV star is accused of procuring a forgivable loan meant to help small businesses continue paying their employees amid the coronavirus pandemicand then using the money to buy diamonds and a Rolex, pay child support, and lease a Rolls-Royce. Maurice Fayne, aka "Arkansas Mo" of VH1's Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta, applied for the federal government's Paycheck Protection Program loan for his business, Flame Trucking, and got $2,045,800 in late April, CNN reports. "The defendant allegedly stole money meant to assist hard-hit employees and businesses during these difficult times, and instead greedily used the money to bankroll his lavish purchases of jewelry and other personal items," says a prosecutor, per People. Adds a US attorney in a statement, "We will investigate and charge anyone who inappropriately diverts these critical funds for their own personal gain."

story continues below

Fayne, 37, faces federal bank fraud charges. His lawyer tells CNN, "There has been considerable confusion among small business owners about PPP guidelinesparticularly around the question of whether and how business owners are permitted to pay themselves a salary or take an owner's draw. I hope these issues to be better fleshed out in the weeks and months to come." But prosecutors say Fayne initially claimed in an interview that he had used the loan for payroll and business expenses, when in truth he had used $1.5 million of it on personal expenses. He later allegedly said he thought he was allowed to use the funds for "other business purposes" and "working capital." The AP reports that only 38% of small businesses received PPP funds, while about 75% of them applied. The program ran out of money in mid-April. (The Lakers, Ruth's Chris, and Shake Shack all returned their funds from the program.)
LONDON (dpa-AFX) - Royal Mail plc (RMG.L) announced Rico Back will step down as Group CEO and from the Group Board with immediate effect, and leave Royal Mail on 15 August 2020. Keith Williams will assume the role, with immediate effect, of interim Executive Chair. The company announced the appointment of Stuart Simpson as interim CEO of Royal Mail. Mick Jeavons will be interim Group CFO. The Board of Royal Mail plc has decided that no bonuses will be paid for 2019-20 to Executive Directors. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
More snow on the way in Pennsylvania; here's how much to expect
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TMSC) said on Friday it will build a semiconductor facility in Arizona, as concerns grow in Washington about the security of the technology supply chain which is largely centered in Asia.

Total spending on the project will be $12 billion with TSMC claiming it will directly create 1,600 jobs. Construction is planned to start in 2021 on what would be TSMC's second manufacturing site in the U.S.

The factory will be focused on producing so-called 5-nanometer chips, the latest in semiconductor technology being manufactured today.

TSMC's decision to build a new U.S. chip plant comes as President Donald Trump's administration continues to scrutinize the global technology supply chain upon which American firms rely on. In particular, the government has sought to reduce reliance on China, a feat that may not be so easy, experts previously told CNBC.

During his presidency, Trump has also looked to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.

While TSMC is a Taiwanese firm, it does have plants in China and has big Chinese customers such as Huawei.

The Trump administration was considering a rule earlier this year, that if implemented, would require companies using U.S. chipmaking equipment to apply for a license before supplying Huawei, according to a Reuters report in March.

"This deal bolsters U.S. national security at a time when China is trying to dominate cutting-edge tech and control critical industries," Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a tweet.

@SecPompeo: The U.S. welcomes TSMC's intention to invest $12B in the most advanced 5-nanometer semiconductor fabrication foundry in the world. This deal bolsters U.S. national security at a time when China is trying to dominate cutting-edge tech and control critical industries.

The United States' broader campaign against Chinese companies, such as the blacklisting of Huawei last year, has been broadly seen as an effort to slow down the advance of the world's second-largest economy in critical next-generation areas of tech.
PARIS and NEW YORK, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- France is not only considered to be a popular place for tourists but it is also considered as one of the places that generates the highest revenues for the software industry. As per the European software market, the demand for software services will be doubled, in comparison to the current scenario of software industries. France would seem to be one of the most in-demand places among other European countries for software services.

As a leading app development company in India, Hyperlink InfoSystem expands its business horizons; starting sales operations in France and Europe in partnership with local company Digivie Infosystems. The company offers web and mobile app development services as well as Salesforce solutions and other latest technologies like Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things, Blockchain solutions, Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and many more.

Since 2011, Hyperlink InfoSystem has been working with almost all industries and has served 2,300+ clients around the world. They have 250+ app developers, who have developed 3,200+ apps and designed 1,600+ websites with more than a 95% client retention rate. The company has also been listed as one of the top mobile app development companies by Clutch, a leading B2B Ratings and Reviews platform.

On this occasion, CEO of Hyperlink InfoSystem, Mr. Harnil Oza says, "I was planning to expand our business operations in France and discussed the same opportunities with local people in my network. At that time, I had connected with my old friend, Mr. Pawar and it was easy to explain him to partner with Hyperlink InfoSystem as he possesses a wealth of technical knowledge. We discussed the opportunity to work together and expand our sales operations with the team of Digivie Infosystems. And now we are all set to serve the app development market in France and Europe with the best solutions in the industry." He further added, "It's a great news for local businesses in France and European countries and both the teams are equally excited to satisfy their client requirements with the best solutions."

Hyperlink InfoSystem has worked with many big brands like Papa John's, Cartoon Network, Disney, Google for VR-based apps, Art of Living, etc.. And now with this huge announcement the company wants to get the same trust from the French and European businesses by serving them with exceptional IT solutions.

People who are looking for IT services, can email them directly at [email protected] and discuss the business opportunities.

About Hyperlink InfoSystem:

Hyperlink InfoSystem is an established and popular top web & mobile app development company based in New York, USA with its development center in India. The company's talented team of 250+ developers offer world-class services in the areas of Mobile app & Web Development, Blockchain Development, AR & VR App Development, Game App Development, Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Salesforce & much more. Since 2011, the company has successfully built 3,200+ mobile apps for more than 2,300 clients around the world.

Top Mobile App Development Companies in France:

https://topappdevelopmentcompanies.com/fr/directory/app-developers/france

https://topsoftwarecompanies.co/app-development/agencies/france

https://appdevelopmentcompanies.co/local-agencies/fr/app-developers/france

https://topwebdevelopmentcompanies.com/fr/top-10/app-development/france

Contact Details:

Hyperlink InfoSystem

Harnil Oza

+1-805-744-1224

[email protected]

New York Address:

One World Trade Center,

285 Fulton Street Suite 8500,

New York, NY 10007, United States

SOURCE Hyperlink InfoSystem
Horse racing here is set to resume next month behind closed doors, it has been confirmed.

The decision to bring forward the reopening of horse racing comes following discussions between Horse Racing Ireland and the Government.

As part of the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions, horse racing was scheduled to be part of the third phase, however a decision was taken today to move it to the second phase, beginning on June 8.

Only key personnel necessary to run the fixture will be permitted to be on site where they will be subject to Covid-19 protocols.

Race fixtures will resume in Ireland on June 8 behind closed doors and under strict Covid-19 protocols. Only key personnel necessary to run a meeting will be permitted to be on site. Horse Racing Ireland have issued the following statement: https://t.co/JqTrjpm9yd pic.twitter.com/tIu10uUU82  Horse Racing Ireland (@HRIRacing) May 15, 2020

All those in attendance will be subject to health surveying in advance and thermal temperature screening on entry.

Brian Kavanagh, chief executive of Horse Racing Ireland, said: We are grateful to be one of the sectors permitted to go back to work and acknowledge the responsibility on everybody in racing to ensure the events are run in a safe way.

We know from our own experience in March when we safely ran ten meetings behind closed doors  and from what is happening in other countries like France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and America  that racing can be staged safely within the requirements of social distancing.

The parade ring at The Curragh (Niall Carson/PA)

Among the new protocols that will be enforced when fixtures restart behind closed doors include:

 Only key personnel will be permitted to attend race fixtures

 All attendees will be subject to health screening in advance and thermal temperature screening on arrival  anyone presenting with elevated temperatures will be denied access and instructed to consult with their GP

 Mandatory wearing of face coverings for many attendees including jockeys, stalls handlers, medical professionals, security staff, those working inside etc

 Social distancing will be strictly enforced by a dedicated Covid-19 protocol officer at each fixture

Mr Kavanagh added: We will publish our full protocols tomorrow and will require any key personnel necessary to run a race fixture to read the document in full.

Racing at Fairyhouse (PA)

On Sunday we will release a revised fixture list up to the end of June, including confirmation on when the Classics, traditionally scheduled for this time of year, will be run.

Andrew Coonan, chief executive of the Irish Jockeys Association (IJA), also welcomed the news.

He added: This is a particularly busy and important time in the racing calendar and an additional 20 days of racing is very much welcomed.

Of course, the safety of the riders, staff and the general public is paramount and once we can ensure that they are protected I am confident we will be in a position to adhere to all the guidelines and best practices.
Gov Newsom May 14 2020 Presser on May Budget Revision View Photo

Sacramento, CA  Employee pay reductions and deep cuts are in Governor Gavin Newsoms newly revised budget, a reflection of hard times suddenly hitting home.

In submitting his 2020-21 May Revision budget proposal to the Legislature Thursday, the Governor emphasized that his proposal closes a budget gap of more than $54 billion swiftly brought on by the COVID-19 recession before which the state had a $5.6 billion surplus along with record reserves the state was previously discussing how best to balance.

In his opening remarks, the Governor stated that in nearly the blink of an eye the state had gone from regaling folks about its incredible economic vibrancy and output into having to deal with a historic crisis. Before COVID-19 concerns began to emerge, back in January he recalled that the state was boasting a $3.1 trillion a year economy, the nations largest and the fifth-largest economy in the world along with record low employment and job creation.

Newsom stressed that while California is entering into a time of uncertainty it is in a much better place than in 2003, or 2009, or 2011 because the state has become even more fiscally conservative by paying off the last of its previous Wall of Debt, paying down one-time obligations, reducing ongoing commitments and increasing reserves such as those intended to extend a social safety net, save for economic uncertainty, and invest in public education.

COVID-19 has caused California and economies across the country to confront a steep and unprecedented economic crisis  facing massive job losses and revenue shortfalls, Newsom acknowledged. Our budget today reflects that emergency. We are proposing a budget to fund our most essential priorities  public health, public safety, and public education  and to support workers and small businesses as we restart our economy, he continued. But difficult decisions lie ahead. With shared sacrifice and the resilient spirit that makes California great, I am confident we will emerge stronger from this crisis in the years ahead.

COVID-19 Impacts By The Numbers

The rapid onset of the COVID-19 recession in California has resulted in the filing of more than 4 million unemployment claims since mid-March, and an unemployment rate now projected to be 18 percent for the year. Compared to the pre-COVID January forecast, there is a $41 billion drop in revenues.

With a higher demand for social safety net services due to the pandemic that are increasing state costs, the $54.3 billion deficit is more than three times the size of the record $16 billion set aside in the states Rainy Day Fund, which he proposes dipping into annually over the next three years.

The May Revision cancels new initiatives along with canceling or reducing spending included in the 2019 Budget Act. It also draws down reserves, borrows from special funds, and temporarily increases revenues. Newsom added that the most painful cuts will only be triggered if the federal government does not pass an aid package now being spearheaded by House Leader Nancy Pelosi that helps states and local governments.

The Governor stated that negotiations will commence or continue with the states collective bargaining units to achieve reduced pay of approximately 10 percent, adding that the May Revision includes a provision to impose reductions if the state cannot reach an agreement. In addition, nearly all state operations will be reduced over the next two years, and nonessential contracts, purchases, and travel have already been suspended.

While the pandemic required an unprecedented shift to telework for state government, it has allowed state managers to rethink business processes, which is resulting in expanded long-term telework strategies, reconfigured office space, reduced leased space, and flexible work schedules for employees when possible.

An Education Needs Balancing Act

Newsoms May Revision includes $44.9 billion in General Fund support for schools and community colleges and $6 billion in additional federal funds to supplement state funding. It also proposes a new obligation of 1.5 percent of state appropriation limit revenues starting in 2020-21 to avoid a permanent decline in school funding, which grows to $4.6 billion in additional funding for schools and community colleges by 2023-24.

To address the decline in the constitutionally-required funding for schools and community colleges resulting from the COVID-19 recession, the May Revision proposes to reallocate $2.3 billion in funds previously dedicated to paying down schools unfunded liability to CalSTRS and CalPERS to instead pay the school employers retirement contributions.

It also tags $4.4 billion in federal funding to address learning loss and equity issues exacerbated by the COVID-19 school closures; pay for school modifications; preserve the number of state-funded childcare slots; expand access to childcare for first responders.

Also preserved are community college free tuition waivers and Cal Grants for college students, including the grants for students with dependent children established last year.

Following the release of the May Revision, State Superintendent Tony Thurmond shared, While the measures outlined in todays proposal are far from what our schools need, we also understand that our state is facing impossible choices under impossible circumstances. He somberly pointed out, In January, Governor Newsom proposed increasing K-12 education spending by $3 billion, the largest per-pupil allocation in state history. By last week, however, revised revenue forecasts estimated $19 billion less in Proposition 98 funding, the minimum guarantee to public schools under state law.

Family. Public Health, Small Business Support

For hard-hit families living paycheck to paycheck, the May Revision prioritizes funding for direct payments, and maintains the expanded Earned Income Tax Credit, which targets one billion dollars in financial relief to working families whose annual incomes are below $30,000, and includes a $1,000 credit for families with children under the age of six.

It keeps grant levels for families and individuals supported by the CalWORKs and SSI/SSP programs, prioritizing funding to maintain current eligibility for critical health care services in both Medi-Cal and the expanded subsidies offered through Covered California for residents with incomes between 400 percent and 600 percent of the federal poverty level. The proposal estimates unemployment insurance benefits in 2020-21 will be $43.8 billion  650 percent higher than the $5.8 billion previously estimated before the COID-19 crisis.

The May Revision also targets $3.8 billion in federal funds to protect public health and safety. It also proposes $1.3 billion to counties for public health, behavioral health, and other health and human services programs, and earmarks $450 million for cities to support homeless individuals.

Among the small business provisions, the proposal proposes doubling the small business loan guarantee program to $100 million. To support innovation and the creation of new businesses, it retains January proposals to exempt first-year businesses from the $800 minimum franchise tax. Options are being considered to support job creation such as assistance to help spur the recovery of small businesses and support for increased housing affordability and availability. There is also now a Governors Task Force on Business and Jobs Recovery.

Republican State Senator Andreas Borgeas representing the Mother Lode responded to the Governors budget that back in January he advised him to take a more fiscally prudent approach, warning him against alarming levels of new spending. Due to the pandemic, the pendulum has swung from a surplus in the billions to a $54 billion deficit. We must seek ways to ease financial burdens on businesses and provide clear opportunities for the safe reopening of our communities while focusing on Californians most fundamental needs, he stated.
Rico Back leaves the job at Royal Mail after agreeing his departure with the board

Royal Mail's chief executive Rico Back quit today after two years in charge marked by battles with unions over efforts to restructure the postal service.

In a surprise departure, the 66-year-old German businessman has agreed with the board to step down with immediate effect and will leave the company on August 15.

Hamburg-born Mr Back founded and ran the company's German arm GLS for almost three decades before taking over as group chief in 2018.

But Mr Back - dubbed 'the Flying Postman' because he commutes to Britain from Switzerland - attracted criticism for running Royal Mail from his 2.3million home overlooking Lake Zurich during the crisis, having left the UK after the lockdown.

It comes as Royal Mail revealed that revenue from UK parcels, international and letters dropped by 22 million in April when compared to the same month last year.

Mr Back will be replaced by a duo of Keith Williams, who becomes interim executive chairman, and Stuart Simpson, who will be the temporary chief executive.

Mr Back attracted criticism for running Royal Mail from his 2.3million home in this apartment block overlooking Lake Zurich during the crisis, having left the UK after the lockdown

Chairman Keith Williams said: 'Rico Back has made a significant contribution to the evolution of our business over his 20 years with us, particularly in building our international parcels business and developing our group strategy, which recognised the urgent need for change to create a sustainable business for the future.

'On behalf of the board, I would like to extend my thanks to Rico and wish him well in the future.'

Rico Back: Career of the 647,000-a-year flying postman Rico Back, 66, founded and ran Royal Mail's German arm GLS for almost three decades before taking over as group chief in 2018. He was appointed the first managing director of German Parcel in 1989, before establishing the European-wide firm General Parcel in 1992. Seven years later he led the sale of this to Royal Mail, and by 2002 a uniform brand called General Logistics Systems (GLS), was established. The Hamburg-born businessman became known as 'the Flying Postman' because he normally commutes to Britain from Switzerland each week. The married father-of-four used to spend his weekends at a luxurious 2.3million home overlooking Lake Zurich, before returning to Britain to work during the week. But when he flies to the UK he covers the costs himself, including those of his London accommodation. He took over as group boss from Dame Moya Greene in 2018, receiving 6million for changes to his contract. He was paid 647,000 last year but can earn up to 2.7million. Advertisement

Mr Back had promised a 1.8billion pound programme last year to transform Royal Mail into a sustainable, profitable operation by 2024.

But that turnaround plan has since been delayed by labour unrest and the uncertainty caused by the coronavirus crisis.

Mr Back said: 'It has been a privilege to lead a company that is so much a part of UK life at this crucial time in its history.

'I am proud of what I, together with our dedicated and loyal team, helped to build in Royal Mail and GLS.

'I look forward to seeing Royal Mail transform into a parcels-led, international delivery company that continues to touch the lives of millions across the world.'

The company also said today that costs rose by 40million, driven by overtime and agency resource costs due to coronavirus-related outlays.

Royal Mail said it would provide another update on measures to put the business on a sustainable long-term path along with full-year results on June 25.

Mr Back has attracted criticism for running Royal Mail from his home in Switzerland, having left the UK after the lockdown.

Critics had said Mr Back, dubbed 'the Flying Postman' because he commutes to Britain, was too far away to effectively run Royal Mail and called for him to resign.

Mr Back has been working from his 2.3million family home, a luxury penthouse overlooking Lake Zurich.

The father-of-four, who took over as Royal Mail boss two years ago, usually travels by air to the UK for the working week and returns to the property during weekends.

A view of Lake Zurich from the road outside the apartment block where Mr Back, 66, lives

But after the postal service's London office was shut on March 24, it is understood Mr Back returned to Switzerland and has remained there.

He took over as group boss from Dame Moya Greene in 2018, receiving 6million for changes to his contract.

He was paid 647,000 last year but can earn up to 2.7million.

Dame Moya oversaw the privatisation of Royal Mail in 2013 and also settled a long-running dispute on pay, pensions and a shorter working week for employees.

Critics have questioned whether he could effectively run Royal Mail, which employs 140,000 staff, while being partly based abroad.

However Mr Back and Royal Mail had defended the arrangement, saying he would be in the UK every week or 'as and when requested'.

When he flies to the UK he covers the costs himself, including those of his London accommodation.

Postman Neil Martin talking at a distance to the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall after receiving a letter addressed to postal workers from them at Birkhall on May 10

Three weeks ago, Royal Mail said it had halted all Saturday letter deliveries until further notice as it continues to suffer from staff shortages.

The move has meant people can now end up waiting two days for their post as letters already do not come on Sundays.

However the majority of parcels have not been affected by the service cutback.

Letters that have to be signed for as well as tracked items and those sent by special delivery are still being delivered on Saturdays.

The service restriction came after union leaders encouraged postmen to call in sick rather than risk catching the virus on their rounds.

Royal Mail workers have been designated as key workers to keep deliveries going during the pandemic.

In March, the Communication Worker's Union lobbied for deliveries to be cut back to just three days a week with homes receiving post every other day - but the plan was not implemented.
The M.blue valve is the only adjustable gravitational valve in the market with an integrated fixed pressure differential valve. It provides customization of the opening pressure during the most active time of the day, i.e., the upright body position. The integration of the fixed pressure differential valve addresses the posture changes.

"We are very pleased to be able to continue to provide healthcare teams with new and innovative solutions," said Chuck DiNardo, President of Aesculap, Inc. "With our strong partnership with MIETHKE comes an impactful collaborative effort to bring better Hydrocephalus solutions to patients, such as the new M.blue valve."

"The patient is our priority and we will continue to invest in research and development to create better solutions. Our focus on Hydrocephalus valves creates an expertise and openness to future developments that allows us to serve in a way that will improve the lives that we touch," said Christoph Miethke, CEO and Founder of MIETHKE, the manufacturer of Hydrocephalus valves for Aesculap, Inc. is located in Potsdam, Germany.

According to the Hydrocephalus Association, it is estimated that over 1,000,000 people in the United States currently live with Hydrocephalus.1 Shunt therapy is the most common way to treat Hydrocephalus, which is caused by excessive cerebrospinal fluid in the brain, causing build up and pressure that can lead to symptoms such as chronic headaches, vomiting, abnormal head enlargement and could lead to death. However, despite the shunts' life-saving purpose, implantation has been riddled with high failure rates, causing multiple revisions and surgeries for an individual with the condition.2 Using gravitational systems have demonstrated good clinical outcomes in patients and reduced revisions compared to other valves.3,4,5,6

"This newest addition to the valve portfolio continues our tradition of offering uncompromised pressure adaptation through our gravitational systems," said Odra Anderson, Product Manager for Aesculap, Inc. The M.blue valve is the smallest adjustable gravitational valve in the U.S. market. Its soft touch mechanism allows for comfortable adjustment. The design features an "active-lock mechanism" that protects from unintentional reprogramming7, not only after an MRI but also from everyday magnets such as smartphones8, toys9,10, tablets11, headphones12, nurse badges13 and hearing devices14,15. Its design is robust and durable, made with highly bio-compatible titanium,16,17 oxidized to display a shade of blue.

Aesculap is taking the headaches out of treating Hydrocephalus with our brand new gravitational valve system. To learn more, please visit www.aesculapusa.com/thenewblueusa

About Aesculap, Inc.

Aesculap, Inc., a B. Braun company, is part of a global organization built on meeting the needs of the changing healthcare environment. Through close collaboration with its customers, Aesculap provides advanced technologies and services for general surgery, neurosurgery and sterilization. Aesculap continues a proud heritage of leadership and responsiveness as we strive to deliver products and services that improve the quality of patients' lives. For more information, call 800-282-9000 or visit aesculapusa.com.

About The Christoph Miethke GmbH & Co. KG

The Christoph Miethke GmbH & Co. KG is a Potsdam-based medical technology company that develops innovative neurosurgical implants for hydrocephalus patients since 1992. The proximity to doctors and patients and the resulting understanding for each other is always the driving force behind further improvements to the products. The focus is on the best possible treatment of patients.

https://www.hydroassoc.org/about-us/newsroom/facts-and-stats-2/ Lutz BR, Venkataraman P, Browd SR. New and improved ways to treat hydrocephalus: Pursuit of a smart shunt. Surg Neurol Int 2013;4(Suppl 1):S38-50. Freimann FB, Sprung C. Shunting with gravitational valves--can adjustments end the era of revisions for overdrainage-related events?: clinical article. J Neurosurg 2012;117(6):1197-204. Tschan CA, Antes S, Huthmann A, et al. Overcoming CSF overdrainage with the adjustable gravitational valve proSA. Acta Neurochir ( Wien ) 2014;156(4):767-76; discussion 76. Lemcke J, Meier U, Muller C, et al. Safety and efficacy of gravitational shunt valves in patients with idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus: a pragmatic, randomised, open label, multicentre trial (SVASONA). J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry 2013;84(8):850-7. Kehler U, Kiefer M, Eymann R, et al. PROSAIKA: a prospective multicenter registry with the first programmable gravitational device for hydrocephalus shunting. Clin Neurol Neurosurg 2015;137:132-6. https://www.aesculapusaifus.com/sites/default/files/ifus/MBlue_SOP-AIC-5002159_%28TA015577%29.PDF Ozturk S, Cakin H, Kurtuldu H, et al. Smartphones and Programmable Shunts: Are These Indispensable Phones Safe and Smart? World Neurosurg 2017;102:518-25. Anderson RC, Walker ML, Viner JM, et al. Adjustment and malfunction of a programmable valve after exposure to toy magnets. Case report. J Neurosurg 2004;101(2 Suppl):222-5. Zuzak TJ, Balmer B, Schmidig D, et al. Magnetic toys: forbidden for pediatric patients with certain programmable shunt valves? Childs Nerv Syst 2009;25(2):161-4. Strahle J, Selzer BJ, Muraszko KM, et al. Programmable shunt valve affected by exposure to a tablet computer. J Neurosurg Pediatr 2012;10(2):118-20. Spader HS, Ratanaprasatporn L, Morrison JF, et al. Programmable shunts and headphones: Are they safe together? J Neurosurg Pediatr 2015;16(4):402-5. Fujimara R, Lober R, Kamian K, et al. Maladjustment of programmable ventricular shunt valves by inadevertent exposure to a common hospital device. Surg Neurol Int 2018;9:51 Chadwick K, Moore J, Tye G, et al. Management of patients with cochlear implants and ventriculopertioneal shunts. Cochlear Implants International 2014;15:4, 185-190 Pierson MJ, Wehrmann D, Albers JA, et al. Programmable shunt valve interactions with osseointegrated hearing devices. J Neurosurg Pediatr 2017;19(4): 384-390. Sidambe AT. Biocompatibility of Advanced Manufactured Titanium Implants-A Review. Materials ( Basel, Switzerland ) 2014;7(12):8168-88. Saini M, Singh Y, Arora P, et al. Implant biomaterials: A comprehensive review. World journal of clinical cases 2015;3(1):52-7.

SOURCE Aesculap, Inc.

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Some 547 members of the European Parliament voted for the decision.

The European Parliament has backed the European Commission's proposal that EUR 1.2 billion be lent to Ukraine as macro-financial assistance (MFA) to overcome the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic.

This decision was announced at a plenary meeting in Brussels on May 15.

Some 547 members of the European Parliament (MEPs) voted for the decision, 93 were against and 47 abstained.

Read alsoUkraine expects first IMF tranche in week or two, presidential official says

This decision was passed with the use of an expedited procedure, because MEPs were working remotely over restrictive measures amid the coronavirus crisis.

The MEPs approved the European Commission's proposal to provide a EUR 3 billion package in MFA to ten enlargement and neighborhood partners to help them to limit the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.

The MFA funds will be made available for 12 months in the form of loans on favorable terms and will be distributed to Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Jordan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Northern Macedonia, Tunisia, and Ukraine.

Of this amount, EUR 1.2 billion will be lent to Ukraine.

The funds will be allocated in two tranches. The maximum loan repayment term is 15 years. Also, this assistance will become possible if a memorandum of understanding is signed, which must be agreed upon by each partner country and the European Commission.

Together with the International Monetary Fund's support, the funds can contribute to enhancing macroeconomic stability and creating space to allow resources to be allocated towards protecting citizens and mitigating the coronavirus pandemic's negative socio-economic consequences.

Also, this decision must be approved by the Council of the European Union before it enters into force.

On May 5, the ambassadors of all EU member countries backed the allocation of the MFA package.
Instead of adopting the age-old sell in May and go away strategy, and focusing on months with traditionally stronger market growth, investors now could be more bullish about a stock rally, buoyed by optimism about a gradual reopening of businesses.

Traders are advised to stay cautious instead of following traditional market moves in May, Photo: Dung Minh

Market uncertainties sparked by the COVID-19 pandemic have led to an abrupt end of the bull market, leaving investors confidence plummeting through multiple selling sessions.

However, the unprecedented outbreak could set the stage for positive recovery signs. Some sectors that will benefit the most include e-commerce, retail, insurance, healthcare, aviation, and construction.

The current low oil price is acting as a boon for e-commerce retailers to upgrade their last-mile delivery services  one of the key catalysts to match customer satisfaction. Although weak demand will likely hurt retailers to some extent, experts believed that the low oil price may boost sales volumes by enabling more free shipping promotions or even same-day deliveries.

Notably, some brick-and-mortar players are developing their own omnichannels to catch up with e-commerce peers, such as Mobile World Investment Corporation, Masan Group, and VinCommerce. Experts also believed that supporting companies such as FPT Corporation, CMC Corporation, and Viettel Post will be given the green light to thrive.

Meanwhile, the government has banned exclusive COVID-19 insurance packages, taking one profitable business from insurers. However, they are now rolling out new and innovative products to weather the storm stemming from the pandemic.

Last year was the sixth in a row in which Vietnams insurance market witnessed a premium growth rate at over 20 per cent per annum. Hence, investors could opt for insurers due to their substantial potential down the road. Some market movers to watch include Bao Viet Holdings, PetroVietnam Insurance, BIDV Insurance, and Vietnam National Reinsurance.

Besides this, the demand for healthcare protection has surged dramatically during the crisis, leading to some investors betting big and believing in the defensive nature of those firms.

Although we do not expect that the pandemic will create a strong growth trend in personal care in the long term, such high demand will likely continue as consumers are used to practising good personal hygiene, noted researchers at KIS Securities. For example, traders should keep an eye on LIX Detergent which is seeing a bullish breakout since the end of March.

As VIR reported previously, the government has announced shifting eight expressway projects towards public investment, which might enforce appetite for construction stocks.

Hoa Phat Corporation (HPG) seems to be a prudent choice, as investors would bet big on Dung Quat Steel Complex to be a recipe for success of HPG, as well as a game-changer for the entire domestic steel market.

When the two phases of Dung Quat Steel Complex are completed, HPG will shorten the delivery time to Vietnams southern region from seven to three days, which could help the company achieve its 35-40 per cent market share target, said Tran Ba Trung, analyst at VNDIRECT.

Furthermore, firms providing construction stones will also receive much attention.

On the other hand, Vietnams lifted social distancing restrictions have drummed up support for non-essential services to re-open  explaining the recent rally of stocks like Sabeco and Habeco.

Also, the Ministry of Transport removed restrictions on the frequency of domestic flights and passenger distancing, calling for the restart of international flights, which would smooth the path of groups like Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet.

In April, trading value remained flat at average VND4.3 trillion ($187 million) per session on Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange but in terms of volume and liquidity saw jumps thanks to low stock prices. Around 285 million shares changed hand in each session in April, the all-time high, showing a strong bottom-fishing demand.

Seasonal effects will be likely ineffective this year and we dont recommend investors to not go short in May. Instead of a correction, we expect an upward sideways month ahead thanks to new local money, said Hieu Tran, analyst at KIS Securities.

The Ministry of Finance has proposed raising the 5 per cent capital ceiling on lending for securities purchases at banks, thereby easing the listing requirements for foreign-invested enterprises  a move to cushion the domestic economy. Other measures include extending the deadline for annual stakeholder general meetings for another three months to September 30 and reducing the approval time for treasury stock buybacks to one or two days from seven days as previously. VIR

Luu Huong

Moody's places five Vietnamese financial institutions on review for downgrade Moody's Investors Service has placed the long-term ratings and assessments of three Vietnamese finance companies and two Vietnamese banks on review for downgrade.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The labour wing of the RSS, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS), will hold a nationwide protest against the ordinances diluting labour laws promulgated by BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. The BMS also decided to protest against the increase in working hours in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa and Odisha.

The protest against the anti-worker measures taken on the pretext of meeting the challenges posed by Covid-19 will take place on May 20. The BMS said the social distancing norms would be adhered to during the protest. The organisation will also hold state-level conventions on May 30-31 to press for rollback of the anti-workers measures.

The BMS national office bearers web meeting strongly condemned the total withdrawal of labour laws in UP, MP and Gujarat. States like Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa and Odisha increased the working hours from eight to 12. Its learnt that many other states are also planning to follow the trend. This is unheard of and rare even in most undemocratic countries, BMS general secretary Virjesh Upadhyay said.

While the BMS had written protest letters to several chief ministers, Upadhyay said only Madhya Pradesh CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan agreed to meet its delegation.
There appears to be no end to the chaos being unleashed due to half-thought measures and contradictory messages emanating at the policy level in the government. Even while the country witnessed the conundrum of domestic migrants' transportation, happening at least 8 weeks late and at the most inopportune time, an ill-conceived plan of action has been rolled out for bringing back the Indians stranded overseas.

Once again, in a sudden notification issued on May 5, flights to evacuate Indians were announced from May 7 onwards with a slew of attendant procedures, costs, and conditions. Once again, the announcement comes without consultation with the affected people, embassies and states which are expected to comply with directions within 2 days. What is being proclaimed as a humanitarian measure is fraught with hardships for the stranded people and contradictions in their treatment as potential COVID-19 carriers.

It is not clear how the priority list of the countries was decided, some of them hotbeds currently (USA, UK), while several others that are still left out are virtually risk-free having almost completely eliminated the virus (Taiwan, Australia, South Korea). There appears to be no distinction in terms of containment measures for the evacuees taking into account the state of the pandemic abroad. It now appears that for those who cannot pay for quarantine in a hotel or hospital, would be sheltered in common facilities.

Now the contradictions:

While people staying in hotels have to stay on a single occupancy basis, those in common facilities would stay in groups. The entire notion of social distancing and cross-contamination gets defeated in the latter case

On the contrary, the Union Ministry of Health (MoH) in its two guidelines has significantly relaxed the requirement of institutional quarantine to actual COVID-19 patients who have mild symptoms. They are allowed to stay in self-isolation at home with self-monitoring and a caregiver. In another revision issued by MoH on May 9, mild symptomatic cases can be discharged in 10 days, without a test.

Compare this to the MHA SOPs for returning Indians, all persons must go through thermal screening on boarding and on arrival, mandatory institutional quarantine for a period of 14 days followed by a test. If found negative, an additional 14 days of self-monitoring at home. The passengers have to pay for the flight cost, to be fixed by the government, and also the cost of the institutional quarantine. For a person returning from the US, this easily adds up to 2 lakhs.

By no stretch can a potential carrier be riskier than an actual COVID-19 patient, yet the two ministries MoH and MHA (Ministry of Home Affairs) continue to issue widely different policies, much to the harassment of the people affected.

As per the current practice, even those persons who have been found to have come in contact with COVID-19 patients are allowed to self-quarantine themselves at home.

While the repatriation of migrant labourers is being cited as human consideration and their need to be in the comfort of their homes, there is little thought of the trauma that Indians stranded for even longer periods would undergo by an additional separation of 14 days from their families.

Many of these would be elderly, in frail health needing comfort and medical attention (for non-COVID-19 ailments), and emotionally disturbed. They could easily be permitted self-isolation at home on par with mild COVID-19 patients. For many, the quarantine institution itself may become a source of infection, looking at the way the virus has spread in healthcare facilities.

Considering that most of these people are already in a state of lockdown in their destinations, and many of these countries are no longer in the risk category (green zone equivalent), there should be no reason to confine everyone to institutional quarantine for 14 days. Instead, ease both their suffering as well as the substantial costs by permitting them homestay with reasonable monitoring and testing, if considered essential. The government should also release the COVID-19 facilities for housing actual patients or their contacts.

(The author is an expert in international travel and a visiting faculty with Delhi University on travel and tourism.)
China criticized US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo today, saying the US top diplomats comments on the coronavirus and China-Israel relations while in Israel this week were absurd.

Pompeo met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on Wednesday. Pompeos visit sought to forge ties with Israel's incoming unity government between Netanyahu and his former rival Benny Gantz. The visit also came amid US concern that a Chinese company will win the rights to build the largest water desalination plant in the world off the coast of Israel.

In Wednesdays joint press conference, Netanyahu and Pompeo surprisingly steered clear of Israels plans to annex parts of the Palestinian territory the West Bank, which they were expected to address.

Pompeo did talk about China, however, saying to Netanyahu, Youre a great partner, you share information, unlike other countries that obfuscate and try to hide that information  and well talk about that country too.

This was widely seen as a reference to the US belief that China is not being forthcoming about the coronavirus, which originated in Chinas Wuhan province late last year.

China took Pompeos comments in this context as criticism, and rebuked them today.

In a statement released by Beijings embassy in Israel that aimed to set the record straight, China said that the virus that causes COVID-19 did not necessarily come from China.

Scientists still havent identified the origin of COVID-19, the statement read. Historically, the place that first reported a case was often not its origin. Both the Spanish flu and AIDS illustrate this point.

China also denied covering up the extent of the outbreak, noting, "The United States is the epicenter of the pandemic.

The embassy also addressed its relationship with Israel, downplaying its significance and saying it does not merit security concerns, which Pompeo said. By the end of 2018, Chinas investment in Israel only accounts for 0.4% of Chinas investment across the world and 3% of the foreign investment flown into Israel, the statement read.

The statement ended with a plea to maintain warm relations between China and its Jewish friends.

We trust that the Jewish friends are not only able to defeat the coronavirus but also the 'political virus,' and choose the course of action that best serves its interests, it read.
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Accusing the Congress of "ideological bankruptcy", the BJP on Friday said if it had better ideas than what the Central government is doing to help different sections of the society during the COVID-19 crisis, then it should have implemented those measures in the states where it is in power.

The Congress has no work except issuing statements and is doing even in this time of crisis, BJP's national media head and Rajya Sabha member Anil Baluni said in a statement.

The BJP's sharp attack came after the opposition party accused the Centre of being "insensitive" and "inhumane" towards farmers, and demanded that the prime minister and the finance minister apologise for neglecting them in the COVID-19 economic package.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala also said, "the so-called Rs 20 lakh crore package" for offsetting the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be a "jumla package" and reflects the "voodoo economics" being followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Hitting back, Baluni said it was the Congress which has become "insensitive" by indulging in making baseless comments to "mislead" people.

"The Congress should have offered constructive support to the government in this time. But the party seems to have become a victim to ideological bankruptcy and insensitivity as well," he said.

The steps announced by the government will empower farmers and make them financially stronger as well, he said, adding that Modi believes that India's welfare lies in the welfare of farmers.

In the third tranche of the COVID-19 economic package, the government on Friday announced a slew of measures for agriculture sector, including a Rs 1.63 lakh crore outlay, and amendment to the stringent Essential Commodities Act to remove cereals, edible oil, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato from its purview.

Also, a new law will be framed to give farmers the option to choose the market where they want to sell their produce by removing inter-state trade barriers and providing e-trading of agriculture produce, the Union finance minister said while announcing the third tranche of the special economic package.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Teachers and staff at the Philadelphia High School for Creative and Performing Arts (CAPA) install signs with the photos and names of their graduating class of 2020 in front of the school as a surprise for the students. Students will eventually be able to pick up the signs at a later date when they receive their diplomas. Read more

Yesterday, President Donald Trump called for Pennsylvania to reopen (despite warnings from public health officials) during a visit to the state. As unemployment claims continue to rise, others are expressing their frustrations with the lockdowns that have caused massive job losses and pay reductions.

High school students and Muslims in the Philly area are both trying to figure out how to still honor traditions under stay-at-home orders and social distancing guidelines. And New Jersey beaches can soon reopen  but with restrictions.

 Lauren Aguirre (@laurencaguirre, morningnewsletter@inquirer.com)

The coronavirus pandemic has canceled many events, but high school graduations will go on. Theyll just look a little different. In Delaware County, Ridley High will still play Pomp and Circumstance over a loudspeaker, but the procession will take the form of a parade of cars circling the schools parking lot. The event will likely take hours, with time slots so not all of the 470 seniors arrive at the same time.

Across the country, traditional high school graduations are facing roadblocks due to social distancing measures, but some people are asking officials to reconsider bans on senior gatherings. Parents in New Jersey have circulated petitions pleading for more traditional ceremonies, and some superintendents are asking legislative leaders to allow in-person, socially distant ceremonies.

New unemployment claims are still at extraordinarily high levels as more workers file after losing their jobs or having their hours reduced. At the same time, parts of the nation and Pennsylvania are reopening from lockdowns.

Frustrations with the restrictions are being expressed as growing pressure to lift stay-at-home orders  including calls from President Trump  despite warnings from public health officials. Even when things begin to reopen in Pennsylvania, things may not look exactly the same as normal.

It seems like almost every aspect of life has changed due to the pandemic, and Ramadan is no exception. This year, volunteers at the Philadelphia Masjid work to distribute dinners around the region every evening during Ramadan. The program delivers hundreds each night. The large-scale halal dinner delivery is the first of its kind for the community here, said one organizer.

Normally in Philadelphia, large community iftars may draw hundreds of people to break their daily fast after sunset. Theres been a mix of emotions for many area Muslims. Some say that even with the pandemics limitations, it is still a time to reflect and give back, even if that means going without a community feast.

What you need to know today

Through your eyes | #OurPhilly

Getting outside (while still social distancing) can give you a good boost. And I would love going outside even more if I saw this cutie there. Thanks for sharing this very good dog, @carmenino!

Tag your Instagram posts or tweets with #OurPhilly and well pick our favorite each day to feature in this newsletter and give you a shout-out!

Thats interesting

Opinions

By extending the social and business hours of our society, we can make more use of our limited space. We can safely employ more people and do more of the things that make us feel human. The City of Philadelphia and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania can create more room for social distance by creating a 24-hour economy as soon as possible."  writes city planner Michael Fichman on why Philadelphia should become a 24-hour city to survive the pandemic.

What were reading

A group offering mental health sessions online for black men in Philly has reached more than 1,000 people during the pandemic. Learn more from Billy Penn.

Philly is making it easier for anyone to turn their block into a place of play this summer. WHYY has the details.

Philadelphia Magazine has a list of seven historic cemeteries you can explore to get some fresh air and history.

Your Daily Dose of | Dance

Rhapsody Taylor always wanted to be a star. Years of dance training led her to a degree at the University of the Arts. She had expected to be busy this month with rehearsals, shows, graduation. Instead, shell graduate into a virtual ceremony. For now shes living at home to save money, dancing in her room and occasionally the yard. She may have to get a regular job to tide her over until shows and productions begin again, but she wont stop dancing or pursuing her dream of appearing on Broadway.
The Ogun State Government has commissioned an additional 100- bed isolation and treatment centre for COVID-19 patients.

According to a statement released on the official Twitter page of the state, the centre, which is a donation from the private sector Coalition Against Covid-19 ( CACOVID), is located in the Oke-Mosan area of Abeokuta, the state capital.

Speaking at the event, the commissioner for health, Tomi Coker said the state government now has over 300 beds across its isolation and treatment centres.

She described the donation as a milestone in the states response to the pandemic.

Mrs Coker recalled how the state sprang into action to address its index case and prepare the four walls of the Gateway State in the event of any outbreak of coronavirus.

She said the present administration has strategically set up isolation and treatment centres in OOUTH, Sagamu, Ikenne and Iberekodo in Abeokuta for high risk and low risk cases respectively.

She said the new facility will basically take care of low risk cases.

Mrs Coker added that the private sector gesture will further boost the states capacity to fight the pandemic.

READ ALSO:

She said the donation of the equipment, including mobile x-ray machines, multi-parameter patients monitoring equipment, among others, will strengthen the states health sector.

In his remarks, the representative of CACOVID, Ademola Bilesanmi, described the pandemic as a global issue which called for the support of the private sector to complement government efforts.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), Nigeria currently has 5162 confirmed cases of coronavirus with 1180 persons discharged and 167 deaths.

Ogun State has 134 total confirmed cases, 72 active, 57 discharged and five deaths recorded.
As several states across the nation relax strict stay-at-home requirements, imposed to slow the spread of covid-19, and begin allowing more businesses to open, the question of whether the government can require people to wear masks has become explosive.

This was most apparent in Oklahoma, where on May 1, Stillwater officials were forced to revoke a mandate requiring businesses to ensure that anyone who entered was wearing a face mask. Within a few hours, store employees had been threatened with violence, including in one case with a firearm. That same day, a Flint, Mich., store security guard was shot and killed after turning away a customer whose child was not wearing a mask.

We looked into who does and does not wear masks, and why. Here's what we found.

- How we did our research

We drew on a nationally representative, multi-wave survey conducted by the online polling firm Lucid to examine who has changed their behavior to comply with public health recommendations to reduce the pandemic's spread. When we analyzed results from the first wave of 4,081 people, conducted in March, we found clear partisan differences. Respondents who live in states with Democratic governors were 16 percent more likely to report having changed their usual behaviors to combat covid-19 than Republicans.

In the second wave, which ran from April 14 to April 21, we asked 3,060 people about a wider range of possible actions, including asking respondents if they had been wearing a mask or scarf in public.

- Wearing a protective mask varies by party and by race and ethnicity

As you can see in the figure below, Republicans are less likely than Democrats to say they have been wearing a mask in public. An overwhelming majority, or 73 percent, of self-identified Democrats report that they do so, only 59 percent of Republicans and 58 percent of independents report doing so.

We also found that rates of mask-wearing differed by race and ethnicity. Communities of color reported that they were more likely to have taken this important step; 82 percent of Asian Americans, 71 percent of Latinos and 74 percent of African Americans said they had been wearing a mask or scarf, while only 66 percent of whites said the same.

- People who know someone who's had the virus are more likely to wear masks

We asked all of the respondents who said that they have worn a mask or scarf in public whether they worry about being mistaken for a criminal while doing so. The answers show a clear distinction by race and ethnicity, with 32 percent of Latinos and 30 percent of African Americans worried about this - more than either whites or Asian Americans, at 19 percent for both groups.

Reported mask wearing is even higher for black and brown men: 38 percent of Latino men and 36 percent of African American men worry about police perceptions when they wear masks.

Why are minorities more likely to wear masks in public despite recognizing that this may lead to discrimination? We believe that this is a result of the racial and ethnic inequalities in covid-19 infection and death rates. As has been widely reported, racial and ethnic minorities have been more likely to be infected and to die from the coronavirus than non-Hispanic whites.

Our study asked respondents if they, someone in their immediate family, someone at work, or someone they know personally outside their immediate family or work, had been sick with virus. Thirty-two percent of racial and ethnic minorities said yes, more than whites at 25 percent.

This may help explain the gap in mask wearing. Respondents who know someone who has been ill with the virus are 40 percent more likely to report wearing a mask in public than those who do not. Nevertheless, whites who know someone who's had the virus are 11 percent less likely to wear a mask than racial and ethnic minorities.

Even within racial groups, however, Democrats are more likely than Republicans to wear protective coverings. For example, Asian American Democrats are seven percentage points more likely to report wearing a mask or scarf in public than Asian Republicans. For African Americans, Latinos, and whites, that gap is 14 percentage points.

Recognizing these variations, policymakers may wish to fine-tune their public health messaging to reach different groups in different ways.

- - -

Sanchez is professor of political science at the University of New Mexico.

Vargas (@edwarddvargas) is an assistant professor in the School of Transborder Studies at Arizona State University.

For other analysis and commentary from The Monkey Cage, an independent blog anchored by political scientists from universities around the country, see www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/monkey-cage.
Israel takes advantage of pandemic to annex parts of West Bank: Palestine UN envoy

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 2:37 PM

Palestine's permanent representative to the United Nations Riyad Mansour says the Israeli regime continues to exploit the global preoccupation with the novel coronavirus pandemic to press ahead with its plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank in full coordination with US President Donald Trump's administration.

Mansour, in three identical letters addressed to UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres, the rotating President of the UN Security Council Sven Jurgenson and President of the UN General Assembly Tijjani Muhammad-Bande on Thursday, pointed to the crimes being committed by the Tel Aviv regime, including illegal annexation measures, saying such moves threaten the so-called two-state solution based on the pre-1967 borders.

"Israel continues to use the corona[virus] crisis ... to advance its annexation plans in full coordination with the current US administration," the diplomat highlighted.

He noted that Israeli officials have stepped up their provocative remarks boasting of their unlawful intentions, in complete contempt of the international law and demands and warnings of the international community, human rights organizations, and world leaders.

Mansour went on to say that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival Benny Gantz have signed a coalition cabinet agreement under which the Knesset (parliament) will be able to decide on annexation of parts of the West Bank as of July 1 in flagrant violation of the United Nations Charter, the international law and UN Security Council resolutions, including Resolution 2334.

The Palestinian UN representative stressed that US support for Israeli annexation plans have encouraged the Tel Aviv regime to get away with its crimes with impunity, while granting Israeli authorities the green light to annex all settlements in the West Bank and Jordan Valley, and ensure the regime's perpetual occupation.

"This will make impossible the establishment of a sovereign and independent Palestinian state," as affirmed by 32 US foreign policy specialists, Mansour said.

He stressed that if Israel is allowed to move forward with such illegal and unilateral plans, the measures will then bring about the end of the "two-state" solution and kill the existing agreements between the Palestinian Authority and the Israeli regime.

"In addition to the devastating effects of annexation on the national aspirations and rights of the Palestinian people, the measure poses a serious threat to regional peace and the international order," Mansour said.

The Palestinian diplomat stated that the international law and its importance for global peace and security will be put at risk if Israel's policies of land expropriation are not met with objections.

"It will convey a message that those who break law and even war criminals can do whatever they desire without any punishment," he said.

Mansour then urged the international community to adopt concrete steps to hold Israel accountable, prevent perpetration of more Israeli crimes, especially in light of the impending annexation plans, and protect the rights of the Palestinian nation.

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Three policemen sustained injuries after a mob of around 15-20 people attacked a patrolling police party with sharp weapons in Mumbais Antop Hill area on Thursday.

The incident took place after the police questioned the locals for the violation of lockdown restrictions and not taking adequate measures to prevent the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) in a red zone.

Over 15 people have been booked for an attempt to murder and rioting, bid to assault public servants, use of dangerous weapons and violation of lockdown restrictions. Later, a first information report (FIR) was filed at Antop Hill police station.

Trouble started on Thursday when a team of police personnel and State Reserve Police Force (SRPF) jawans, who were patrolling a red zone at Garib Nawaz Nagar in Antop Hills Kokari agar area, found that locals were violating lockdown restrictions with impunity.

Many local residents were seen roaming freely without following protocols to prevent the spread of Covid-19 outbreak such as wearing a mask and maintaining social distancing norms, despite the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) authorities declaring the area a red zone.

The patrolling policemen stopped a few people in the area for not wearing masks, which led to a heated argument. Around 15 people attacked the police party with sharp weapons. One sub-inspector and two constables sustained injuries in the attack, who have been admitted to a local government hospital. The accused will be arrested soon, said Pranay Ashok, deputy commissioner of police (operation), and spokesperson for Mumbai Police.
Indore, May 16 : The migrant workers' travails continue through their journey to home towns in Uttar Pradesh as two migrant women labourers delivered babies in a truck and train.

A woman belonging to a migrant labourers' group of UP returning from Mumbai delivered a healthy baby in a truck near Biaora town in Madhya Pradesh on Friday.

The 30-year-old woman Kaushalya, wife Manoj Kumar, a resident of Sant Kabir Nagar in Basti district went into labour after the truck left Indore. The driver took the group to the civil hospital with the new mother and her baby in the truck and admitted her.

The woman has been referred to Rajgarh for examination after the delivery, a health department source said. The woman has been tested for coronavirus. The workers were returning in a truck from Mumbai on Agra-Bombay Road to Basti district in UP.

Another case of a woman delivering a child in the labour special train near Satna has also come to light on Friday. She is also from Uttar Pradesh. Rekha, a resident of Vikrampur, Ghazipur, was travelling in a labourers' special train from Aurangabad with husband Brajesh Jaiswal. After the train left Maihar, she went into labour and gave birth to the baby near Uchhara. Other women in the helped her in the delivery.
Sumeet Bagadia

Coriander Seed is commonly known as 'Dhaniya' is a Rabi Spice sown/grown in the winter season during the months of October to December. The major states constitute Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat and the usual new crop harvesting period happens from February to April months of every year. The sowing of Coriander seed depends on the winter weather conditions during the said period. Cooler temperatures with good amounts of water content in the soil improve the yield for sowing and eventually increases the production during the harvest period. Price also plays a critical role that would determine how much sowing the farmers are ready to do in the above period.

Higher prices are generally forecasted to increase sowing of Coriander seeds while lower prices can possibly lead to crop switching to other crops such as Mustard, Garlic and Chana in the earlier mentioned states respectively. There are various variants of coriander seeds grown in India mainly Badami, Eagle, Scooter, Single Parrot, Double Parrot and Special green. Prices differ with different variants based on quality and moisture content in the coriander seeds.

The variant that is listed in the NCDEX exchange is the Badami Coriander seeds which are basically light brown in color. India is among the top producers and exporters of Coriander Seed in the international market. Other global market producers of Coriander seeds include Russia, Bulgaria and Italy.

NCDEX Coriander Future price has traded volatile during the month of April and May so far owing to lockdown situation in the major states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Rajasthan. This has led to near negligible arrivals in the domestic markets eventually leading to no major price discovery between the spot and the future prices.

But then prices have mainly remained on the lower side amid higher stocks from last year and the expectation of higher production for the year 2019-20.

Fundamentally for the month ahead, we are expecting NCDEX Coriander futures to witness downtrend as the demand during the current season is estimated to be lower due to continued lockdown situation in the said states due to rising COVID-19 cases on a daily basis. Current year masala millers buying has been only 60-65% of their total capacity which is not likely to support the prices in the coming month June.

Moreover, good monsoon forecasts in the current year could keep the market sentiment weak. The pending harvesting due to lockdown situation has been nearly completed and so far there have been no major crop damage reports. In addition, the export demand from India in the current period is lower due to higher supplies from global producers such as Russia and Bulgaria.

India also imports coriander seeds from Russia and Bulgaria during the June-August period due to higher medicinal value in the coriander seeds from the said countries compared with the native. But then, extremely lower prices of coriander could bring fresh buying from the downside. In consideration with the above factors, we are bearish on NCDEX Coriander Futures for the month ahead.

For short term prospects, one can initiate a short position in NCDEX Dhaniya (June) at CMP Rs 5,630 per quintal or rise in the prices till Rs 5,700 level, should be used as a selling opportunity for the downside target of Rs 5,100/4,900. However, the bearish view can be reversed if NCDEX Dhaniya (June) Futures close above the resistance of Rs 6,000. Overall, we maintain our bearish view in NCDEX Dhaniya (June) Futures for the month ahead.

The author is Executive Director at Choice Broking.

: 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
Nearly 200 protesters gathered outside the Michigan State Capitol on Thursday to call for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer to end the stay-home order and re-open the economy.

The Thursday morning rally was held under in the rain and under occasional cracks of thunder in downtown Lansing, despite the Capitol being locked and the legislature not in session.

Many in attendance were without face masks and disobeying social distancing recommendations.

A brief fight broke out on the steps of the Capitol after one protester pulled out a brown-haired that was hanging from a noose. The man was later identified as a candidate for a state House seat in this years election.

Organizers of the protest called the display hate speech and when one protester tried to take the doll, a skirmish broke out. No injuries were reported.

The protest lasted about five hours and total attendance was difficult to estimate.

Below is a look at more of the most recent developments in the COVID-19 crisis in Michigan:

Michigan coronavirus cases spike; officials cite testing backlog

Michigan health officials reported a spike in confirmed cases of coronavirus Thursday, May 14, though they say the increase is due to backlogged results and increased testing at correctional facilities.

The state announced an increase of 1,191 confirmed cases of COVID-19. That pushes the states total known cases to 49,582, including 10,164 cases in the city of Detroit.

Another 73 deaths were reported Thursday, though 35 of them occurred beyond the prior 24 hours and were late additions.

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Michigans mask mandate highlights political fault lines in coronavirus crisis

Three weeks after Michigan mandated mask use in enclosed public spaces, support for the rule has become a political and cultural divide as the state continues to battle the COVID-19 pandemic.

Anecdotal observation suggests a majority of Michiganders appear to be wearing masks in public indoor spaces such as stores and restaurant take-out counters. But even some who wear masks are not happy that its mandated.

Gov. Whitmer hopes to allow small gatherings in Michigan after May 28

Michigans governor hopes to be able to ease some of the states stay-home restrictions by the end of the month, including allowing small gatherings.

During a Facebook Life interview with MLive on Thursday, May 14, Whitmer said she would like Michigan to take the next step in re-opening after May 28, when her current stay-at-home order expires.

It really depends on what the COVID numbers are though in another week," Whitmer said. "As were making decisions about (May) 28, were going to continue to see our testing increase and hopefully our positive numbers go down and if thats the case then thats a very real possibility.

Dangerous syndrome in kids linked to COVID-19 under review in Michigan after 17 cases confirmed

Doctors in Michigan are watching a new set of symptoms in children that may be linked to the novel coronavirus.

Children with swollen lips or tongues, hands or feet, and other signs of inflammation throughout the body are causing alarm in the medical community. Doctors suspect the sickness comes several weeks after exposure or sickness from COVID-19.

In New York, the U.S. epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, more than 100 cases of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome, or PMIS, are being investigated as of Wednesday, May 13.

Michigan Medicine reinstates time sensitive procedures, outpatient visits

Patients with time-sensitive health care needs can get care through recently re-expanded availability at Michigan Medicine.

Hospitals across the country put a hold on many procedures and surgeries during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in March and April to avoid unnecessary potential exposure to the virus, with the exception of life-saving, urgent surgeries and procedures such as cancer treatments or transplants.

As coronavirus patient demand declines, the Ann Arbor-based health system said in a Thursday, May 14 news release it now can resume care, especially for those with conditions that may worsen with delays.

JBS meat plant in Michigan sends home older workers as it ramps up production

The JBS meat production facility near Plainwell is ramping up production after several weeks of long lists of absences and decreased production, union representatives said.

In April, the first cases of COVID-19 were reported among JBS workers. So many workers took sick days the plant was shut down for two days, said John Cakmakci, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 951 that represents Michigan workers.

In an effort to keep employees safe and still working, the union negotiated a $600 bonus and an extra $4 an hour.

Retail probably included in next wave of reopenings in Michigan, Gov. Whitmer says

Retail and pet grooming businesses could be among those that are able to reopen by the end of the month, Gov. Whitmer said during a Thursday, May 14 video interview with MLive.

If the number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to decline over the next two weeks, the governor said retail will probably be in the next phase, which she hopes Michigan will enter into after the current stay-home order expires at 11:59 p.m. May 28.

Any reopening during the pandemic would require appropriate safety protocols, including wearing masks and practicing social distancing.

NASCAR postpones June races at Michigan International Speedway

NASCAR announced Thursday that it will postpone the June 5-7 race weekend at Michigan International Speedway due to the COVID-19 pandemic. MIS has held a pair of NASCAR race weekends every year since 1974.

We want to thank our loyal fans who were set to attend our June race weekend, MIS President Rick Brenner said in a news release. The health and safety of our guests, stakeholders, employees and community are of the upmost importance. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we navigate these challenging times and we look forward to racing again soon at Michigan International Speedway.

Meijer expanding store hours starting Friday

Meijer is expanding its hours from 6 a.m. to midnight after scaling back its operating times in March amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The new midnight closing hour will go into effect Friday, with stores reopening at 6 a.m. on Saturday.

Whitmer extends executive orders for child care access, long-term care facility procedures

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed a pair of Executive Orders Wednesday night extending previously signed orders that provide protections to residents and staff at long-term care facilities and ensure access to child care during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Executive Order 2020-83 expands child care offerings in the state by allowing school districts and hospitals to operate disaster relief child care centers. Those centers will be licensed through the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) which will expedite provisional licenses for the facilities to expand child care access across the state.

5 coronavirus stimulus check scams and how to avoid them

Officials are warning residents about a rise in online scams related to the distribution of stimulus checks that are being distributed.

The FTC reports that it has received 18,235 reports of fraud costing victims $13.44 million. Google reported it is blocking 18 million scam emails every single day and 150,000 fraudulent stimulus check sites have already launched.

Diocese of Lansing announces plans to reopen public masses by end of May

The Diocese of Lansing announced Wednesday its plans to safely reopen churches for public masses by the end of May. The Lansing Diocese joins the Gaylord Diocese in taking steps to reopen churches.

Parishes across the diocese can have a maximum of 5 percent of their churchs seating capacity for daily masses, Monday through Saturday, from May 18-28, diocese officials said. On May 29, public masses are due to return with those able to attend Holy Mass increasing from 5 percent to 25 percent.

More Michigan coronavirus coverage here

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.
By Yimou Lee

TAIPEI (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) has "forgotten" its professionalism and neutrality in locking Taiwan out of the body for political reasons, Taiwan Vice President Chen Chien-jen said on Thursday.

Taiwan says China and the WHO have conspired for political purposes to keep it out of key meetings, that the WHO has not responded to requests for coronavirus information and has misreported the number of its infections.

The WHO and China have strongly dispute the accusations, saying Taiwan has been given all the help it needed, but that only China, which claims democratic Taiwan as one of its provinces, has the right to fully represent it in the WHO.

Chen, a U.S.-trained epidemiologist, said the WHO had been putting politics above health.

"Unfortunately, because of political reasons, Taiwan's 23 million people have become orphans in the global health system," he told reporters at the presidential office in Taipei.

"The WHO pays too much attention to politics and has forgotten their professionalism and neutrality. This is quite regrettable."

While the WHO has done good work and contributed to world health in the past, its record on the virus has not been as good, Chen added.

"On the Wuhan pneumonia, we mostly criticise them for acting too slowly," he said, referring to the central Chinese city where the virus first emerged late last year, before spreading worldwide to infect 4.3 million people and kill 295,000.

Chen, who was Taiwan's health minister during the 2002-2003 SARS crisis, said the world needed to be cautious with China's virus numbers, and urged Beijing to be more transparent.

He wished China well in its fight, however.

"Here I give my blessings to them and hope that they can contain the Wuhan pneumonia as early as possible and avoid a second wave," said Chen, who leaves office when President Tsai Ing-wen is sworn in for her second term next week.

Story continues

Taiwan has lobbied to attend next week's meeting of the WHO's decision-making World Health Assembly as an observer, but China objects.

In Beijing, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Taiwan's basis for participation in the WHO was damaged by the refusal of its ruling Democratic Progressive Party to recognise that the island is part of China.

There is no legal basis for a "non-sovereign region" to participate as an observer, Zhao added.

The United States has repeatedly clashed with China over its refusal to allow Taiwan full access to the body, helping to further fuel tension between Washington and Beijing.

Taiwan's tally of 440 virus infections and seven deaths is far lower than many of its neighbours, thanks to early and effective prevention work and an efficient public health system.

(Interactive graphic tracking global spread of coronavirus: open https://tmsnrt.rs/3aIRuz7 in an external browser.)

(Reporting by Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Writing by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez)
Envelop Risk, the UK cyber underwriting and risk analytics business, announced a Series A investment of approximately $6 million.

The funding round was led by artificial intelligence specialist investor Alpha Intelligence Capital (AIC), with additional support from existing investors including MS Amlin and Dymon Asia Ventures.

The financing will be used to expand Envelop Risks investment in proprietary machine-learning and data-driven underwriting activity in London and Bermuda, fueling growth into new global markets.

Envelop Risks underwriting solutions are focused on the global cyber reinsurance market, using artificial intelligence and data analytics. Although the company is based in Bristol, England, it operates as an managing general agent in Bermuda, which gets its capacity from MS Amlin and other undislosed insurers. (MS Amlin also owns a minority stake in the firm).

We are thrilled to have received the support of AIC, a recognized leader in AI investment, and are pleased to become their first major insurtech investment, said Envelop Risk CEO Jonathan Spry.

The current COVID crisis is posing important questions for the insurance industry, and we believe cyber re/insurance will benefit from demand for risk mitigation, allowing Envelop to become the partner of choice for insurers as growth opportunities and emerging risk business ensue in the new normal, Spry continued.

Envelop predicted that companies of all sizes will eventually choose to protect themselves against increased risk via robust cyber insurance policies. [W]e would like to move onto our next chapter and partner with underwriters globally to reach more companies at risk of cyber breaches, cyber attacks and other emerging areas of supply-chain complexity, said Spry.

We at AIC have been impressed with the Envelop teams ability to combine advanced algorithmic science with deep cyber-security domain expertise, said Antoine Blondeau, co-founder and managing partner of Alpha Intelligence Capital.

The resulting engine is foundational not just to cyber risk insurance but also to the broader specialty and emerging risk insurance ecosystem, he added. We look forward to supporting Envelop as it further expands its product and commercial reach globally.

Related:

Topics Mergers Cyber InsurTech Underwriting Funding Data Driven
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 05:00:40|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The United Nations Security Council on Thursday unanimously adopted a resolution extending the mandate of the UN Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA) until Nov. 15, 2020.

Abyei is a border town currently in the Abyei Area that is disputed by Sudan and South Sudan.

The Security Council first modified the UNISFA mandate in December 2011 to add tasks of supporting the Joint Border Verification and Monitoring Mechanism of Sudan and South Sudan, which gained independence from the former in July 2011. Enditem
Hsinchu, Taiwan, R.O.C., May 15, 2020  TSMC (TWSE: 2330, NYSE: TSM) today announced its intention to build and operate an advanced semiconductor fab in the United States with the mutual understanding and commitment to support from the U.S. federal government and the State of Arizona.

This facility, which will be built in Arizona, will utilize TSMCs 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication, have a 20,000 semiconductor wafer per month capacity, create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs directly, and thousands of indirect jobs in the semiconductor ecosystem. Construction is planned to start in 2021 with production targeted to begin in 2024. TSMCs total spending on this project, including capital expenditure, will be approximately US$12 billion from 2021 to 2029. This U.S. facility not only enables us to better support our customers and partners, it also gives us more opportunities to attract global talents. This project is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive U.S. semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading U.S. companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States and benefit from the proximity of a world-class semiconductor foundry and ecosystem.

TSMC welcomes continued strong partnership with the U.S. administration and the State of Arizona on this project. This project will require significant capital and technology investments from TSMC. The strong investment climate in the United States, and its talented workforce make this and future investments in the U.S. attractive to TSMC. U.S. adoption of forward-looking investment policies to enable a globally competitive environment for a leading edge semiconductor technology operation in the U.S. will be crucial to the success of this project. It will also give us the confidence this and other future investments by TSMC and its supply chain companies will be successful.

In the United States, TSMC currently operates a fab in Camas, Washington and design centers in both Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. The Arizona facility would be TSMCs second manufacturing site in the United States.






Description

GIS  14 May, 2020: The COVID-19 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill and the Quarantine Bill will help Government, with the support of every citizen, face the difficult situation arising from the novel coronavirus outbreak and work for a better future, stated the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Regional Integration and International Trade, Mr Nandcoomar Bodha, this evening, in the National Assembly in Port Louis, during his intervention on the COVID-19 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill.

This Bill, he pointed out, is designed to support the workers and the lower classes of society. Any worker should be in a position to retain his job, and it is what Government intends to ensure, he stressed. In addition, the Wage Assistance Scheme, put in place earlier during the lockdown, has shown Governments good will towards the workers, he said.

Minister Bodha highlighted that the Bill will provide the legal framework needed to ensure a smooth reopening of the economy. Despite the uncertainty created by the COVID-19, Government together with every Mauritian, needs to take their responsibilities so as to pull the country out of the present crisis.

He further recalled that, during the lockdown, Government made arrangements to airlift some 1 000 tons of medical supplies from Beijing, Guangzhou, Hong Kong, and South Korea and as at date, the country has millions of tablets of chloroquine, and enough tests for the population. He also reassured that Governments priority remains the safety and health of all citizens.

Speaking about Mauritians stranded abroad, he cautioned that the repatriation exercise must be done in an orderly manner. The country, he stated, has the necessary facilities such as quarantine and treatment centres to carry out this exercise properly. Moreover, more flights to London, Paris, Mumbai, and Chennai are scheduled, while others are being planned to Madagascar and Australia to bring back citizens. Government is also working on how to bring back Mauritians working on cruise ships, added the Minister.

#ResOu

Lakaz #BeSafeMoris
President Donald Trump steps off Air Force One upon arrival at Lehigh Valley International Airport in Allentown, Pa., on May 14, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Trump Says He Lost 5 People He Knew to COVID-19, Including 2 Close Friends

President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he knows five people, including two close friends, who have died from COVID-19.

While speaking to workers in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the president used his personal experience to contrast the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and influenza.

You can say what you want about the flu, but Ive never lost anybody that I know to the flu, Trump remarked, adding that nobody ever said they died.

But Ive lost five people that I know, he said. Two people were very good friends.

These people, who he described as friends, were older, and he wouldnt describe them as being in the greatest of health.

I wouldnt say their weight was perfect. Not perfect. But theyre gone, Trump told workers. Its just a terrible, terrible thing, he added.

Last month, the president said he lost four friends to the CCP virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged in China last year, including a close one.

Trump also called on Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf to reopen the state faster amid the pandemic.

We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening up a little bit here, Trump added. You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected, and they want to keep them closed. Cant do that.

According to PennLive, 24 counties in Pennsylvania are in the yellow phase of the states reopening plan, while 13 more are slated to reopen on Friday.

Youre going to be a nation of manufactures, and Pennsylvania workers will once again, youre going to lead the way. With your help, we will vanquish the virus. Well get our nation back to work, and we will build our glorious future with American hands, and American grit, and American pride, the president also said, adding that supply chains will be reinforced.

The United States will be prepared for future pandemics by replenishing the national stockpile and bringing manufacturing of critical supplies and equipment back to the country.

Wouldnt that be nice? Trump asked. My goal is to produce everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines.

Trump also toured the Owens & Minor Inc. distribution center, which the White House said has sent millions of N95 masks, surgical gowns, and gloves to hospitals and surgery centers across the United States. He went through the mask distribution center in the political swing state of Pennsylvania in an effort to highlight his administrations efforts to fight the coronavirus.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Washington, May 15 : Republican Senator Lindsey Graham has rejected US President Donald Trump's demand that his predecessor, Barack Obama, should be called to testify before Congress on the origins of the investigation into Russian election meddling.

"I think it'd be a bad precedent to compel a former president to come before the Congress," Graham, a close ally of Trump, told reporters on Thursday in Capitol Hill.

"That would open up a can of worms and for a variety of reasons I don't think that's a good idea." But Graham, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced that the panel will start hearings in June on the FBI's investigation into alleged Russian election interference and Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, reports Xinhua news agency.

In a tweet on Thursday morning, Trump tagged Graham, urging him to ask Obama to provide testimony about what the incumbent said "the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by far".

Trump and his conservative allies have recently ramped up attacks against the Obama administration, after the Department of Justice's controversial move to drop its case against Michael Flynn, a senior advisor to his 2016 campaign and his administration's first National Security Adviser.

Flynn admitted in December 2017 that he lied to the FBI about his discussions, including of US sanctions against Russia, with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak, but has since sought to withdraw that plea, claiming that he was the victim of prosecutorial misconduct.

Criminal charges against Flynn became part of the Russia investigation led by former special counsel Robert Mueller, which Trump has repeatedly called a witch hunt and hoax.

Russia has repeatedly denied meddling in US elections.

On Wednesday, Republican lawmakers released a list of names declassified by Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell, which showed that former Vice President Joe Biden and other top Obama officials requested the "unmasking" of Flynn's name from an intelligence report.

"I was never a part, or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office. Period. Not one single time," Biden said during an interview with MSNBC on Thursday night.

The move has sparked sharply different reactions, as some Republicans accused the Obama administration of abuse of power in order to go after a political opponent, while Democrats argued that the requests are not uncommon and were approved through standard process.

Biden and Trump are respectively the Democratic and Republican presumptive presidential nominees for this year's election.
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 08:41 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd827700 4 National natural-disaster,natural-disaster-Indonesia,flash-flood,landslide,West-Java,Banten,aceh,BPBD,disaster-mitigation,disaster-relief Free

Heavy rainfall throughout the week has caused floods and landslides in several provinces, as the rainy season is expected to be last longer than initially forecasted.

A downpour lasting from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday morning led to floods in Lebak regency, Banten, submerging dozens of houses in Cipanas district and destroying a bridge in Lebak Gedong district.

Luckily, no casualties were reported, Cipanas resident Memed said on Wednesday as quoted by Antara news agency.

Cipanas district head Oleh Najmudin said the 80-centimeter-deep flood struck at least 96 houses in three villages in the district  Sipayung, Talagahiang and Bintangresmi  at midnight while Muslims were having sahur (predawn meal).

Lebak Disaster Mitigation Agency (BPBD) immediately warned residents, especially those living along riverbanks and the foothill of Mount Halimun-Salak, about the risk of landslides due to high-intensity rainfall.

We hope this warning can reduce the risk of fatalities, BPBD Lebak head Kaprawi said, urging residents to temporarily move to safer places. The agency is gathering volunteers and equipment for search and rescue teams.

A child plays with his bicycle at the flooded Gubukan Cibereum village in Lebak, Banten on Thursday, May 14, 2020. Floodwater from the overflowed Cibereum River has inundated the village since Wednesday evening. (Antara/Muhammad Bagus Khoirunas)

The Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) issued a warning of extreme weather in several parts of Indonesia last week. The agency said the rainy season, initially forecasted to end in April, would stretching to May in Jakarta and June in other parts of Java.

The BMKG has also warned of extreme weather in other areas, including Aceh, Riau, Riau Islands, Bengkulu, South Sumatra, West Nusa Tenggara, South Sulawesi and several parts of Kalimantan.

Read also: BMKG warns of extreme weather in parts of Java as rainy season stretches to May or June

Overnight torrential rain also caused flooding and a landslide in Bogor regency, West Java, where dozens of houses in Sukamulih village were submerged. Meanwhile, dozens of others in Wangunjaya village were buried in a landslide.

Bogor Regent Ade Yasin said the floods had been caused by the overflowing Ciputih River.

I have instructed the local BPBD and district officials to disburse disaster aid and map areas affected by the disasters.

BPBD Bogor reported that at least one Wangunjaya resident had gone missing, presumably buried in the landslide. Four residents were also injured during the disaster.

The landslide in Wangunjaya displaced 69 families and damaged 14 houses, two public lavatories and a mosque.

Read also: High intensity rain triggers flooding in parts of Aceh, Central Kalimantan

Heavy rain on Wednesday afternoon also caused a flash flood and landslide in several villages in Central Aceh regency, Aceh. The landslide was triggered by unstable soil conditions at a nearby hill.

At least 11 houses were damaged, while water and mud from the flood carried away debris and objects as large as private cars.

Joint search and rescue team operates heavy machinery to clean flood materials at Paya Tumpi Baru village in Central Aceh regency, Aceh on Wednesday, May 13, 2020. Overnight torrential rain has triggered a flash flood that damages dozens of houses in the village. (Antara/Kurnia Muhadi)

We are waiting for the rapid assessment report from BPBD Central Aceh on the victims and material losses, said BPBD Aceh head Sunawardi.

Idrus Putra, the head of the affected Paya Tumpi Baru village, said 20 families were taking shelter in the village administration office. He went on to say that the village needed generators and clean water.

Since late April, flash floods have hit Tuva village in Central Sulawesi, Bireun in Aceh and Cilegon city in Banten. (syk)
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Indian Naval Ship Jalashwa has set sail for the Maldives to bring the second batch of repatriates under Operation Samudra Setu. The ship is expected to dock at Male port in the wee hours of Friday and begin embarkation of Indian citizens who have already registered with the Indian Embassy in the Maldives.

The ship will leave Male port with 700 Indian citizens on Friday night and expected to reach Kochi port on Sunday. Earlier, Jalashwa had brought 698 Indian nationals to Kochi on May 10. The vessel had completed disinfection and sanitisation processes with special attention to the areas occupied by the previous set of repatriated citizens.The second batch of repatriates includes 100 women and children. The Indian nationals listed for evacuation will be screened medically, allotted IDs and their baggage sanitised before boarding the ship.
Framers across the state have profusely thanked Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy for transferring YSR Rythu Bharosa amount on time and narrated how the present government and the earlier Dr. YS Rajsekhar Reddy government had shown deep concern for the farming community. During the video conference on the occasion of transferring the Rythu Bharosa-PM Kisan amount here on Friday, farmers of all the 13 districts thanked the CM for giving the investment incentive under unencumbered mode which would be very helpful for the purchase of seeds and other inputs during the pre-sowing and sowing operations.

After Dr. YS Rajasekhar Reddy, it was only the present government headed by YS Jagan Mohan Reddy that has been showing concern towards farmers on all fronts and has been transferring the money directly into the bank accounts bringing in transparency. Even tenant farmers are being given the Rythu Bharosa -PM Kisan amount which is a revolutionary step as it had never happened before and this has been benefiting SCs, STs, BCs, and Minorities to a great extent. This could have been possible only by making amendments in the relevant Act and tenant farmers along with those cultivating endowment, assigned and forest lands are also availing the benefit.

Two farmers have become very emotional while interacting with the Chief Minister and narrating the benefits they have been ploughing. One farmer from Prakasam district who thanked the Chief Minister for buying the product even in the times of corona had said that he hails from the tip of the tail end region and a small tank needs to be developed to get a permanent water source.

Also Read: COVID-19 lockdown: Dharmendra Pradhan lashes out at Congress, says it should be sensitive towards migrant labourers

The chief minister took details and asked the officials to work out the request made by the farmer and how the tank can be improved and brought to use. Another farmer while speaking about Dr YS Rajasekhar Reddy and his pro-farmer policies went emotional and narrated the benefits during his term with tears rolling down which was a moving scene.

One tribal farmer Saraswati said that the NREGS should be extended to agricultural work as well. The Chief Minister said that the scheme is that of the Centre and it has laid down guidelines under which agriculture work does not come under its purview.

We have been asking the Centre about it and it is for them to make a decision, the Chief Minister said. When the turn of Visakhapatnam came, the Chief Minister lost no time in asking the Collector about the enumeration work for releasing the payment. The Collector said that the work is going on and will completed in a day. He inquired about the situation there and the amenities being provided for the people in the affected areas. The farmers were very vocal and had said all the benefits they have been receiving under various schemes. Amma Vodi scheme was prominently mentioned by the farmers and appreciated the initiatives fo the Chief Minister for the welfare of the farmers. The Chief Minister wished all the ministers and public representatives present during the conference.

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As Israel's tourism sector continues to reel from the global economic downturn, Jewish National Fund-USA is launching virtual travel adventures to support Israeli tour guides while providing tour participants with an opportunity to 'visit' sites off the beaten path

With the latest predictions suggesting Israel's tourism industry could lose up to $1.16 billion due to the COVID-19 crisis, Jewish National Fund-USA is helping Israeli tour guides through an innovative new 'virtual travel' initiative.

In launching JNF Virtual Travel & Tours, the organization's travel department is offering s...
Dallas, TX, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TownSq (pronounced Town Square) recently supported three Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) undergraduates through a four-week externship program. The students built out a new data-driven product using AI algorithms to highlight unmet client needs, automate key processes, and provide recommendations to mitigate any emerging or detected risks.

The student participants included Nicolas Gomez Del Campo, 20, Peyton Greve, 22, and Moises Trejo, 22. TownSq worked with Amazon Web Services (AWS) engineers and architects from AWS Data Lab to support the externs technological innovations during the program.

Each year, qualifying students are selected to participate in the annual MIT Student/Alumni Externship Program to gain knowledge in their fields of expertise and to propel their future careers. The externships longevity is largely attributed to MIT alumni and participating companies like AWS, that commit time, resources, and intellectual leadership. In return, companies like TownSq receive fresh insights from MITs future technological innovators as they champion their visions.

The externship is a fantastic opportunity for TownSq to support the next generation of engineers, stated Luis Lafer-Sousa, president of TownSq US. The TownSq team is also grateful to have the best and brightest helping us solve complex problems by bringing powerful new technologies and algorithms to our industry.

An MIT alumnus himself, Mr. Lafer-Sousa has seen first-hand the success of participating in the program, stating I am consistently amazed by how much the students accomplish in a few short weeks and am humbled by the opportunity to work with them.

Senior engineers and principal architects from TownSq were invited to AWS offices in Seattle, WA, along with the three computer science students. Through the AWS Data Lab program, AWS accelerated and guided the development of TownSqs newest product while emphasizing Amazons culture and unique leadership principles. The output of the program is a working product that will prove disruptive for professional management companies and change how they run their businesses.

At AWS Data Lab, we pride ourselves in giving customers like TownSq the hands-on expertise to accelerate the process of architecting and building innovative data-centric solutions using AWS Databases, Analytics, and ML services, said Brian Mitchell, head of AWS Data Lab. TownSq and the students from the MIT externship program worked alongside AWS Data Lab Solutions Architects and Database and Analytics service experts to build a prototype in just a few days. The prescriptive architectural guidance and best practices helped TownSq take a prototype built in the AWS Data Lab to production within weeks.

In reflecting on his experiences with TownSq, senior Nicolas Gomez Del Campo shared, Ive worked at several other companies in the past. One thing that I would say stands out to me about TownSq is the collaborative environment that these guys cultivate. Ive [had the chance] to grow really, really quickly. Much more quickly than I have at past externships. And I think thats something really valuable that I would highlight in recommending TownSq to friends in the future.

TownSq is available now, on iTunes and Google Play.



About TownSq

TownSq is the leading, global solution for better community living. Designed as the single source of truth for managing communities, TownSq delivers the most complete, mobile community experience by helping you connect, collaborate and stay informed on everything happening in your community  from daily management and ongoing maintenance to community programs and events. Our communities use TownSq to empower community management teams, board members and residents to experience community their way www.townsq.io.
President Donald Trump is open to negotiations on another possible coronavirus stimulus bill, but not the one put forward by House Democrats, a White House spokeswoman said on Thursday.

The House of Representatives is poised to vote on an additional $3trillion stimulus package, which all sides acknowledge will go nowhere in the Senate despite the White House's reported interest in a second round of individual stimulus checks.

Even some moderate Democrats have expressed opposition to the 1,800-page bill set to go to a House vote on Friday, though Speaker Nancy Pelosi is confident it will pass in the Democrat-controlled lower chamber.

Pelosi acknowledged that the Democrats' massive HEROES Act has little chance of becoming law, saying on Thursday: 'We're putting our offer on the table, we're open to negotiation.'

Kayleigh McEnany told reporters at the White House that the president 'was taking his time' to weigh what - if any - more federal action was needed as Americans struggle amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Pelosi acknowledged that the Democrats' massive HEROES Act has little chance of becoming law, saying that it is her opening offer for negotiation

'He's open to it,' she added, saying he would like to see a payroll tax cut but that it was not a requirement.

The White House is also open to a new round of individual stimulus checks, similar to the ones that paid many citizens $1,200 as part of the $2 trillion CARES Act, sources told CNBC.

The massive House bill contains a provision for such stimulus checks, but also includes what Republicans call a Democrat wish-list of items, including amnesty for some illegal immigrants and provisions for widespread mail-in voting in November.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, called the bill 'a totally unserious effort.'

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell attends a luncheon on Capitol Hill on Thursday. All sides acknowledge that the House bill will not pass the Senate as written

Intended to stem the economic devastation caused by pandemic lockdowns, which have put more than 35 million Americans out of work, the package contains a laundry list of items.

The Democrats' HEROES Act includes:

Nearly $1 trillion in relief for state and local governments

Second round of payments of $1,200 per person, up to $6,000 per household

About $200 billion for hazard pay for essential workers

$75 billion for coronavirus testing and contact tracing

An extension of the $600 per week federal unemployment insurance benefit through January (the provision approved in March is set to expire after July)

$175 billion in rent, mortgage and utility assistance

Subsidies and a special Affordable Care Act enrollment period to people who lose their employer-sponsored health coverage

More money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including a 15 percent increase in the maximum benefit

More small business payroll assistance including $10 billion in emergency disaster assistance grants and a strengthened employee retention tax credit

Funding to expand voting by mail for the November elections

A ban on deporting illegal immigrants in 'essential' jobs and suspension of penalties for their employers on immigration-related violations

President Donald Trump is open to negotiations on another possible stimulus bill, but not the one put forward by House Democrats, a White House spokeswoman said

Republicans have called the House bill 'dead on arrival' and it is unlikely the Senate will take it up, though Senate Republicans are believed to be drafting their own proposal.

Some moderate Democrats have also criticized the measure, while the progressive wing of the party has complained that it doesn't go far enough.

Freshman Democratic Rep. Kendra Horn, a moderate who flipped an Oklahoma House seat from red to blue in 2018, blasted the House bill and said she won't vote for it.

'This is not the time for partisan gamesmanship, this is the time to find common ground and deliver help where it is needed most,' Horn said in a statement.

'In response to COVID-19, our relief efforts must be targeted, timely, and transparent. The HEROES Act does not meet those standards,' she added.

Rep. Tom O'Halleran of Arizona, the co-chair of the centrist Democrats' Blue Dog Coalition, expressed concerns about the way the lengthy bill was being rushed to a vote.

'While I recognize the many merits of the Heroes Act, I also know that this bill is over 1800 pages long, won't receive a hearing or markup, and hasn't passed through appropriate Committees of jurisdiction.' O'Halleran wrote in a tweet.

'I'm concerned that there hasn't been enough accountability or oversight in this process. I will continue to review this legislation to ensure that the allocated resources directly aid #AZ01 families,' he continued.

As recently as last week, the White House had halted talks with Congress over any further coronavirus stimulus package as it waited for more information about how U.S. state reopenings affect the economy.

However, the mood appeared to shift after Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell issued a stark warning on Wednesday that more dramatic fiscal action was needed to avoid long-lasting economic devastation.

The government's budget was supposed to be $4.6 trillion even before the pandemic hit. The response so far has added almost $3 trillion to that, but hasn't arrested the economy's drop.

The monthly federal deficit in April far exceeded anything on record (as seen in the chart above), when the government spent $737.8 billion more than it took in

That's made GOP defense hawks uneasy about the prospect of more aid amid ballooning deficits. And polls show Republican voters think the government is generally doing enough.

Republicans are now calling for a 'pause' before considering more aid, reflecting disunity between conservatives who feel enough has been done and more pragmatic lawmakers who favor steps like rescuing the Postal Service from looming insolvency, while delivering cash to revenue-starved state and local governments.

Underscoring the stakes, it's also becoming clear that the next coronavirus response bill will probably be the last.

'I think the bill we pass in June will likely be the last major bill,' said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. 'There may be some effort to pass a bill in September or October but it will get increasingly difficult.'

The House Democrat's bill ignores Trump's demand for a cut in the Social Security payroll tax. It also does not replenish the Payroll Protection Program that's been a favorite of Republicans and their business allies.

The measure is likely to pass Friday along party lines, though Rep. Kendra Horn, D-Okla., announced her opposition on Thursday, while New York Republican Peter King says he will support it.

The earlier bills, debated as the magnitude of the crisis was becoming clear, featured sweeping votes and debates notable for their bipartisanship and sense of common purpose. Now, disagreements about re-opening the economy, which appear to cleave along party lines, have crept into the debate.

At a Capitol news conference, Pelosi lambasted Republicans who've said they want to hold off for now on more relief spending. 'Its amazing to me how much patience and how much tolerance someone can have for the pain of others,' she said.

Pelosi told reporters she believed both parties 'and even down Pennsylvania Avenue' - a reference to the White House - understand 'the hardships Americans are feeling.'

She called the Democratic proposal 'our offer' and said while shes had no recent negotiations with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, the administration's chief bargainer, 'I'm sure that they'll come with something.'

White House officials quickly released a statement of their own. It said the legislation Pelosi unveiled Tuesday is 'more concerned with delivering on longstanding partisan and ideological wishlists than with enhancing the ability of our Nation to deal with the public health and economic challenges we face.'

McConnell said later Thursday on Fox News that there was a 'high likelihood' Congress would do another bill and said it would include GOP-sought language limiting legal liability for companies reopening for business. But he added, 'its not going to be a $3 trillion left-wing wish.'
Sis Ikarmola La Borde, newly elected President of Soroptimist International of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (File Photo).

Members of Soroptimist International of St. Vincent and the Grenadines convened their 33rd Annual General Meeting on Saturday 24th April, 2020, via Zoom.





Sixteen (16) of the twenty-nine (29) members registered their presence on the meeting platform, and they were able to complete the proceedings in under 2 hours.





Reports of the outgoing President Rene Baptiste, Secretary Josie-Ann Small, Programme Action Chairperson Miriam Roache and Treasurer Euna Thompson were all tabled and adopted.





Congratulations were extended to: sponsor scholar Ms. Zelacher Baptiste on her meritorious performance at the Intermediate High School; Sister Miriam Roache and Sister Christine Da Silva on their recent Awards for Women Development and Entrepreneurship respectfully at the Gender Developments Award Ceremony; and H.E. Dame Susan Dougan on the Award of the GCMG.





Dame Susan Dougan is a Soroptimist and will be inducted as the Clubs Patron as soon as it is convenient so to do.





Elections were held and the following persons were returned to hold office for the 2020- 2021 term: Sis Ikarmola La Borde - President; Sis Donnette ONeal - Vice President; Sis Josie-Ann Small - Secretary; Sis Euna Thompson  Treasurer; Sis Miriam Roache - Programme Action Committee Chair Person; Sis Christine DaSilva - Communications Officer; Sis Keisha Fraser- Membership Officer; Sis Lavinnia Gunn - Development Officer.





Sis Ikarmola La Borde will represent the Club at the Federation Level as Councillor, and Sis Miriam Roache and Sis Rene Baptiste (Immediate Past President) will do likewise at the Caribbean Regional level as the Soroptimist International Caribbean Network (SICN) Representatives.





The Club has set four (4) primary goals for 2020- 2021: rehabilitation of the Comfort Station; contribution of the Prison Project- "Standing up for Women behind Bars; a Membership Drive to recruit new members; continuing programmes with the Glebe Day Nursery, the Helping Hands Centre, Primary Schools Library Project, MCMH Wards Gift Giving, Secondary School Scholarship Programme, Support to WPP Autism and Speech Therapy Clinics.





New President Sis lkarmola will preside over the First Meeting in May, which is generally celebrated as Soroptimist Membership Day.




A low-pressure area designated as System 90L appears to be developing in the Straits of Florida, located between Southern Florida and Cuba. NASA's Aqua satellite measured cloud top temperatures within the developing system and found some stronger storms.

At 8:50 a.m. EDT on May 15, NOAA's National Hurricane Center (NHC) issued a Special Tropical Weather Outlook issued to discuss the potential for tropical or subtropical development near the northwest Bahamas.

The Outlook stated, "A trough (elongated area) of low pressure located over the Straits of Florida continues to produce disorganized shower activity and gusty winds across the Florida Keys, portions of southeast Florida, and the northwestern Bahamas. Gradual development of this system is expected, and it will likely become a tropical or subtropical storm on Saturday [May 16] when it is located near the northwestern Bahamas. Later in the weekend and early next week, the system is expected to move generally northeastward over the western Atlantic (Ocean)."

NASA's Aqua satellite provided information to NHC forecasters. One kind of data Aqua provides is infrared light to analyze the strength of storms by providing temperature information about the system's clouds. The strongest thunderstorms that reach high into the atmosphere have the coldest cloud top temperatures.

On May 15 at 3:45 a.m., EDT (0745 UTC) the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer or MODIS instrument that flies aboard NASA's Aqua satellite gathered infrared data on 90L. Strongest thunderstorms had cloud top temperatures as cold as minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 45.5 Celsius). As cloud tops continue to cool, they stretch higher into the troposphere. NASA research has shown that when cloud top temperatures drop to minus 70 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 56.6 degrees Celsius), storms have the ability to generate heavy rain.

The NHC Outlook stated, "Regardless of development, the disturbance will continue to bring heavy rainfall to portions of the Florida Keys, southeast Florida and the Bahamas through Saturday. Tropical storm-force wind gusts are also possible across portions of the Florida Keys, southeast Florida, and the Bahamas during the next day or so. In addition, hazardous marine conditions are expected along the Florida east coast and in the Bahamas where Gale Warnings are in effect. Dangerous surf conditions and rip currents are possible along portions of the southeast U.S. coast this weekend and early next week."

The NHC said that the formation chance through 48 hours and out through 5 days is high.

Tropical cyclones and hurricanes are the most powerful weather events on Earth. NASA's expertise in space and scientific exploration contributes to essential services provided to the American people by other federal agencies, such as hurricane weather forecasting.

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For updated forecasts, visit: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov.
Behind the scenes, the Quebec Jockey Club is working hard to resume live harness racing in the province.

At the end of the day, it is a determined chairman of the board that we have been able to hear over the last few days. Indeed, Claude Levesque and the members of his staff work tirelessly to finally have the possibility to race at 3R before long.

According to Mr. Levesque, "it is very important to mobilize and make as many contacts as possible with the government authorities. The Board meets every Wednesday morning at 9:00 a.m., and all members make a point of participating. There is a determination among all to get races at 3R as soon as possible this summer. There are no doors that we have not knocked on, contacts that we have neglected. We even hired a public relations firm, a kind of lobbying company with the government.

"Let people be reassured! We want races as soon as possible. And we'll be ready. Different scenarios were put together: for example, eight-race cards, with eight horses, one groom/person per horse, drivers dressing in their cars before showing up at the paddock. The neighbouring province of Ontario, which has received permission from its government, has put in place a number of measures of its own."

Authorities

"It is the Ministry of Health, or if you prefer the Department of Public Health that will ultimately give its approval. Without its authorization, it is impossible to proceed. We also count on the cooperation of the RACJ, which is essential for a return to the track. We are also in contact with other jurisdictions across Canada that could support us if necessary. Ms. Thomassin is also doing an important job in all of these steps. The town hall of Trois-Rivieres is also one of our contacts.

"If we got the Public Health ok tomorrow, we could quickly make qualifications and we'd be ready to race. Of course, the races would be done without spectators present at the racetrack, but we could rely on our television network to broadcast them and promote the sport. Incidentally, the inter-track betting works well on HPI, better than we could have anticipated and it will be even better when harness racing resumes all over Canada and the United States.

"We would like, and our horse people and our fans too, to be the first to return to the track; if not, it certainly won't be for lack of trying. But I am hopeful that we will be able to do so in a few weeks. We must not let go and continue to follow up with the decision-making bodies. "

It is clear that the leaders of the Jockey Club, led by Mr. Levesque, are at work for the return of the races in Quebec. Let's try to stay positive and be ready when the word GO is given.

Dans lombre, le CJQ travaille fort pour la reprise des courses

Au bout de la ligne, cest un president du Conseil dadministration determine quil nous a ete possible dentendre au cours des derniers jours. En effet, Claude Levesque et les membres de son etat major travaille sans relache, talonne les autorites, pour avoir enfin la possibilite dune reprise des courses a H3R avant peu.

Aux dires de M.Levesque,  cest tres important de se mobiliser et de faire jouer le plus de contacts possibles aupres des autorites gouvernementales. Le CA se reunit tous les mercredis matin, 9h, et tous les membres se font un devoir de participer. Il y a une determination chez tous pour quon arrive le plus vite possible a presenter des courses a H3R cet ete. Il ny a pas de portes que nous navons pas frappees, de contacts que nous avons negliges. Nous avons meme engage une firme de relations publiques, sorte de compagnie de lobby aupres du gouvernement. 

 Que les gens soient rassures ! Nous voulons et nous souhaitons des courses le plus rapidement possible. Et nous serons prets. Differents scenarios ont ete mis sur pied : par exemple huit courses, avec huit chevaux, une personne groom par cheval, des conducteurs qui porteraient le masque et qui shabilleraient dans leur auto avant de se presenter au paddock. La province voisine dOntario, qui a recu la permission de son gouvernement, a mis elle-meme sur pied plusieurs mesures dont nous comptons nous inspirer.

Les autorites

 Cest le Ministere de la Sante ou si vous preferez le departement de la Sante Publique qui donnera en fin de compte son aval. Sans cette autorisation, impossible de proceder. Nous comptons en outre sur la collaboration de la RACJ, indispensable a un retour en piste. Nous sommes aussi en contact pan-canadien avec dautres juridictions qui pourraient nous appuyer au besoin. Madame Thomassin fait aussi un travail important dans toutes ces demarches. La mairie de Trois-Rivieres est aussi au nombre de nos contacts. 

 Si on recevait le ok de la Sante Publique demain, on pourrait faire rapidement des qualifications et on serait pret. Evidemment, les courses se feraient sans spectateurs presents a lhippodrome et nous pourrions compter sur notre reseau de television pour les diffuser et favoriser le pari. Incidemment, le pari interpiste fonctionne bien sur HPI, mieux quon aurait pu anticiper et il sera meilleur encore quand les courses attelees reprendront un peu partout au Canada et aux Etats-Unis. 

 Nous aimerions, et nos gens de chevaux et nos amateurs aussi, etre les tout premiers a revenir en piste; si ce nest pas le cas, ce ne sera certainement pas faute davoir essaye. Mais jai bon espoir que nous y arrivions dici quelques semaines. Il ne faut surtout pas lacher et continuer de talonner les instances decideuses. 

Comme on le voit, les dirigeants du Club Jockey, M. Levesque en tete, sont au travail pour le retour des courses au Quebec. Essayons de demeurer positifs et detre prets quand le ok surviendra.

(QJC)
Nikol Pashinyan isnt even trying to do anything. Hes just filling his pockets. This is what ex-Ambassador of Armenia to the Vatican Mikayel Minasyan said in his video End of Lies-4 posted on his Facebook page.

Dear people, Im sure you know that there have been attempts to reach an agreement with me and everyone, and this was 100% true because there are such people, and those people are much more in number than those who didnt reach an agreement and went from being hated oligarchs to constructive and large owners. Understanding that he has been humiliated, Nikol Pashinyan has instructed prosecutors and investigators to frame a case of false delation against me, he said, stating that a criminal case has been instituted in relation to his first video, but not the second video which concerned the contraband plane.

According to Minasyan, it turns out that Armenia can send a contraband plane and even a criminal case isnt instituted in relation to this.

Minasyan also stated that Nikol Pashinyan has entangled Armenia in the international mafia system and is making money.

It is based on the following scheme: Armenia imports diamonds from India through smuggling and takes them to two or three factories where those diamonds become diamonds made in Armenia. Here is the evidence: According to official statistics, in the first quarter of 2020, Armenia had more than 20,000,000,000 in diamonds, but to have that 20,000,000,000, the country needed to have 1,400 workers, but there are only 400 registered specialists. Therefore, this was impossible to do with 400 workers, and this is why Armenia needed to have big factories, which it doesnt. There is only one figure-20,000,000,000 in diamonds and gold. This system was created and is managed by Nikol Pashinyan and his family, who have organized an international mafia system of import and export at the expense of Armenias international reputation, he said.

At the end of the video, Mikayel Minasyan asks Nikol Pashinyan to try to do his dark and loathsome family businesses at least within the borders of Armenia.
The BJP on Friday hailed the finance minister's announcement for the agriculture sector, asserting that it is a "liberation day" for farmers who will now have the "right to right prices" as it will create an enabling environment for them to get best results for their produce.

Welcoming the decisions announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP president J P Nadda described the proposed amendments to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, and the APMC Act, among other measures, as "far-reaching" agricultural reforms and lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for these "very effective" decisions.

"Today's announcements will hugely benefit farmers and enhance their incomes," he said.

Senior BJP leaders and Union ministers Prakash Javadekar and Ravi Shankar Prasad lauded the package.

Prasad said all the decisions announced in the last few days as part of the Rs 20 lakh crore special package is aimed at "rejuvenation" of India during the COVID-19 crisis and have one recurrent theme, which is "compassion" for the poor and marginalised, farmers and the MSME sector, with an aim to empower them and turn the challenging time into an opportunity.

"Today is liberation day for farmers," Javadekar told PTI and added that it was a 70-year-old demand of farmers that they should get the choice of whom to sell their produce as they were bound so far to go to a particular agency.

This "exploitation" will now be over and farmers can sell their produce by their choice, he said.

The Essential Commodities Act was promulgated in 1955 when there used to be scarcity of food, which is not the case now.

"We should not tie farmers to unnatural conditions and deprive them of their fair chance to get good price outside or within the country. That will be done.

"They will have the right to right prices as a farmer will not only choose his buyer but also the method. In any industry, nobody monitors sale but it was done in agriculture. It was discouraging," he said.

Prasad said the announcement made on Friday focuses on creating a resurgent infrastructure for farming, dairy, animal husbandry and fishing.

In an apparent rejection of criticism from some quarters that the central government has not handed over cash to the poor in this time of crisis, he noted that over Rs 52,000 crore has gone into hands of the needy through direct benefit transfer and other digital mode of payments.

Over Rs 1,000 crore was delivered by postmen through Aadhaar-enabled payments to the remotest regions of the country, Prasad said.

Javadekar said the announcements made in the last three days address immediate problems and also correct many wrongs done in the past.

Large sections of the needy population, including farmers, senior citizens and women, have been given cash by the government, he said.

In a series of tweets in Hindi, Shah said the Narendra Modi government would bring a central law to give farmers enough options to sell their produce at a better price.

"Modi government believes that India's welfare lies in the welfare of farmers. This unprecedented assistance given to farmers today shows Modiji's foresight to make the country self-sufficient by empowering farmers. For this, I congratulate @narendramodi ji and @nsitharaman ji," he said.

The home minister said he was confident that the decision of the Rs one-lakh crore 'Agriculture Infrastructure Fund' will give a new direction to the agriculture sector and the welfare of farmers of India.

"With the landmark decision of Agriculture Marketing Reforms, the Modi government will bring a central law that will give farmers enough options to sell their produce at a better price. He (the farmer) will be able to do barrier-free inter-state trade and through e-trading, his produce will reach every corner of the country," he said.
Shutdowns are having effects on food prices, including restaurants.

But customers seeing Covid and COVID-19 surcharges are voicing concerns.

Restaurant owners say theyre responding to higher costs and not taking advantage of people amid the pandemic.

Kiko Japanese Steakhouse & Sushi Lounge in West Plaines, Missouri said on a Facebook post it added a surcharge due to increased costs from its supplier on meat and produce.

READ ALSO: Bill Miller Bar-B-Q extending pandemic-era menu

Please understand we are not doing this to take advantage of you guys! the restaurant said. We are doing this hoping we can adjust the surcharge weekly rather than just raise all of our prices on our menu.

But after concerns from customers, the restaurant eventually decided to remove the surcharge and raise prices, the restaurant said on social media.

Other West Plaines, Missouri eateries, such as Bootleggers BBQ, are adding 5 percent surcharges, KYTV reported.

We absolutely hate doing this, but it is the only way to ensure our employees continue to have jobs! the BBQ joint said on social media.

Owner Brian Staack told the TV station its not a tax but small percentage to cover all of their extra expenses.

But Bootleggers also dropped the surcharge and increased prices on its menu.

We will update and print new menus at least once a week to reflect what is going on with the food supplies, it also added, saying prices would increase or decrease depending on costs.

A Michigan pub has been adding $1 per meal as a coronavirus-related charge, WXMI reported. According to the TV station, the owner and general manager said theyre just trying to survive and take care of their staff.

One commentator on the Kiko restaurant Facebook page suggested an alternative  using another name for the measure, such as "meat shortage surcharge."
The Delhi High Court has sought response of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Centre on a plea seeking action and suspension of operations of the Google India Digital Service in UPI through its application 'Google Pay' till it fully complies with interoperability.

Justice Asha Menon, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, issued notices to the RBI, the Centre and Google India Digital Service Pvt Ltd and granted them three weeks to file their responses.

The petitioner approached the high court after Google Pay did not allow him to contribute to the PM-CARES Fund, without making another VPA or UPI ID on its own app.

Petitioner Shubham Kapaley tried to use his already existing VPA/ UPI ID for other transactions as well, however, the same issue of denial of interoperability persisted.

The petition alleged that Google India's app 'Google Pay' was flouting the rules of Unified Payments Interface (UPI) interoperability and that it does not allow new users to use their existing Virtual Payment Address (VPAs) or UPI ID on its platform, which the consumer might have created through other UPI platforms or apps.

As per an earlier NPCI circular, no merchant can/ shall force the customer to create a VPA or register for UPI to avail any services on a merchant app.

The plea claimed that Google Pay insists consumers to create a new UPI ID or VPA to use its platform and sought initiation of action against Google India Digital which is provisioning its services by way of this app in the country.

It sought to direct RBI and Centre to conduct a thorough third party and independent investigation of the app to check compliance of every directive and guidelines issued by National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), which operates various digital payment instruments including UPI, and RBI.

The plea said that a hefty penalty of at least 10 times revenue of Google Pay, since start of its operations in India, be imposed and be contributed towards COVID-19 Relief Fund here.
File Photo

New Delhi: India has started the process of acquiring 24 state-of-the-art anti-submarine combat helicopters for the Navy following a $905 million deal with US company Lockheed Martin.

The MH-60R helicopters would replace obsolete Indian Navy Sea King helicopters acquired from England in 1971.

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The agreement that has been signed is less than half of the $2.6 billion package announced by the US State Department in April 2019.

The package also includes the cost of a variety of weapons systems, including choppers, their sensors and communications systems, as well as aircraft-capable Hellfire missiles, MK54 torpedoes and precision strike rocket systems.

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PhotoThese helicopters can also be used to fire naval strike missiles (NSMs) developed by the Norwegian company Kongsberg Defense and Aerospace.

NSM can intercept any warship from a range of 185 km. India was also hoping for an NSM training missile in the original package so that the missile system could be traded.

The deal is being struck directly by the US Navy, which has allowed Lockheed Martin to expedite the delivery of three MH-60R helicopters. This will provide training to Indian Navy pilots and engineers on these helicopters. The first batch of MH-60R helicopters will arrive to India from the US next year.
Araldite, a 70 years old leading Swiss adhesive brand believes in repairing not replacing because it knows everyone owns irreplaceable things. The companys #BondsThatLastForever campaign has attracted over one million views and is still going strong. Indians have connected with the companys philosophy that in every Indian home, there are items that are worth far more than their price. Should such things break, repurchasing a similar piece cannot compensate for the loss.

Araldite believes that the lockdown has taught society not to take relationships or material things for granted. Both can suddenly break. Yet connections can grow stronger when material things exchanged between people are looked after. In this challenging time, people cannot step out of their homes to replace broken items; however, should the need arise; they can quickly repair them with an adhesive. They have established and extended this thought through some simple yet effective DIY solutions to upcycle, repair and make essential home decor and furniture around the home on https://www.araldite.in/diy/.

The companys campaign is rekindling the relationship the firm has enjoyed with India. Araldite had been Indias favourite brand for decades. Its nationwide digital campaign is once again bringing this once beloved brand to the attention of Indians. Locked at home during quarantine with little to do, people are re-examining their lives. They are reliving their relationships with epic shows they grew up watching and with brands like Araldite that were inside every Indian home.

The adhesive of choice for an earlier generation, Araldite is making its presence felt among all Indians. Over one million people have been reached with the brand's message in less than three months. They have expressed their connection to the brand by showering its message with likes. Younger Indians especially received the companys digital marketing campaign well.

The companys digital-only launch was conceptualised, written, and directed by a leading advertising agency.

Speaking about the success of the campaign, Araldites Shenoy Muralidhara, Commercial & Country Director Huntsman Advanced Materials said "Our digital campaign struck a chord with Indian audiences. We owe the success of the campaign to our ability to understand the Indian worldview. In a country where bonds run deep, weve connected with the audience by demonstrating that its better to repair than replace.In India, ties to family and society mean everything to most people. Weve brought home the message that the strongest bonds are strengthened when the simplest things are exchanged. Such precious gifts can never be replaced. When they break, they ought to be repaired. Our product makes bonds that last forever; we believe that our audience has understood this well
An ongoing battle over the safety of migrant farm workers in Norfolk County has the potential to disrupt Ontarios food supply.

Farmers say the local health units COVID-19 self-isolation rules  which are stricter than anywhere else in Ontario  have already led to labour shortages and crops languishing in the fields.

Public health officials argue that following less stringent federal safety guidelines is too risky since large-scale outbreaks on farms could strain a medical system already dealing with the highest rate of COVID-19 cases in Ontario.

Now the dispute is headed to arbitration.

At a May 25 hearing before the provinces Health Services Appeal and Review Board, Brett Schuyler of Schuyler Farms Ltd. will argue that only allowing three migrant workers per bunkhouse during their mandatory self-isolation period hampers farmers ability to bring in the skilled offshore labour needed to ensure a steady supply of food to Canadians.

The Haldimand-Norfolk Health Units Section 22 order also requires farmers to submit quarantine plans for approval before they can book their offshore workers flights.

Norfolk is the only place in Canada that is doing this, said Schuyler, a Simcoe apple and cherry grower who normally employs more than 100 offshore workers.

The delay and uncertainty in approving isolation plans and the limitation of accommodations has reduced the number of workers able to travel to Norfolk County, he said.

Federal safety guidelines stipulate that migrant farm workers need to be able to stay two metres apart during their two weeks in quarantine. But the rules do not cap the occupancy of a bunkhouse that has been retrofitted to allow for physical distancing.

That the local health unit has imposed more onerous restrictions on Norfolk farmers puts them at a disadvantage, says Andrea Plumb of Lerners Lawyers.

Our client, Schuyler Farms, has a bunkhouse thats as large as 4,400 square feet and hes limited to three workers in that bunkhouse, Plumb said.

You could have a farm in Norfolk County thats subjected to this order, with its obvious implications, and you could literally walk across the street to Elgin County (to) a farm that is not subjected to these restrictions and is therefore at a significant economic advantage.

Plumb seeks to have the Section 22 order rescinded, which she said would level the playing field for Norfolk farmers.

Our client completely accepts the federal and provincial guidelines addressing this issue and is more than prepared to abide by those guidelines, which have obviously been drafted with considerable thought, Plumb said.

Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, Haldimand-Norfolks chief medical officer of health, defended the additional precautions as necessary to protect workers health and the food supply.

Food is also a public health priority, and if the workers are disqualified because theyre in self-isolation, that affects the agricultural enterprise and ultimately the food that is available, Nesathurai said.

He noted that Norfolk farms employ 4,500 offshore workers, more than any other county in Ontario, and their arrival represents a significant population increase for a county with 65,000 residents.

For people who return to Canada from a trip to another country, the advice is always to self-isolate alone, Nesathurai said.

Recognizing the challenges of agricultural enterprises, we had allowed for three people to self-isolate together. One of the reasons we want three in a group is we want to minimize the chances of people in that cohort getting sick.

He pointed to large-scale COVID-19 outbreaks among workers at a greenhouse in Chatham-Kent and a nursery in Kelowna, B.C., as well as inside meat processing plants in North America, as justification to proceed with caution in bunkhouses where workers share bathrooms, kitchens and common areas.

What were really trying to do is not only advocate for the community overall, but also for migrant farm workers so they can serve their self-isolation period with the highest level of comfort and security, Nesathurai said.

And that ultimately will reduce the likelihood of people in bunkhouses getting sick and the potential for extended isolation.

Disconnect between farmers and health unit

The order does not prevent farmers from putting up migrant workers off the farm during quarantine, such as in trailers or motel rooms. But Simcoe apple farmer Hayden Dooney says the health unit hasnt been receptive to scalable housing solutions such as, for example, dividing a bunkhouse with multiple bathrooms that normally houses 40 workers into three separate areas.

That would allow for nine workers to quarantine in the same bunkhouse, rather than three.

A bit of flexibility, Dooney said, could allow farmers to safely bring in their usual workforce, rather than having to cut back workers or find pricey alternate accommodations.

The thing that irks me more than anything is that they wont discuss this, Dooney said.

Nesathurai said hes not comfortable asking a large number of migrant workers to spend every moment together during quarantine.

This is also a compassionate issue, he said. Theoretically, when farm workers come from another country, they are not part of the same family. They dont have previous relationships with each other, and theyre going to have to remain in a close area with each other.

To Lynedoch vegetable farmer Jason Ryder, that reasoning shows Nesathurais lack of understanding of the reality on many farms. The same migrant workers work on Ryders farm year after year and are in touch with each other, and Ryder himself, all winter.

This is where the disconnect is between our industry and the chief medical officer of health, Ryder said.

My guys are very comfortable with each other. Theyre a family up here. If (Nesathurai) wouldve asked for advice, its simple to lay that out. Hes cut us off the team before he made a team.

That this dispute will be decided by a tribunal is a sign of how the relationship between the health unit and Norfolk farmers has deteriorated since the pandemic began.

Schuyler and fellow farmer Dusty Zamecnik are members of the countys agricultural advisory committee, but they say Nesathurai and other senior health unit officials have stopped talking with them.

I understand its a pandemic that weve never dealt with before, Zamecnik said. Im not trying to be, Oh, Im a farmer, I deserve a blank cheque and all the rules to not apply to me. But the rationale (for the added rules), were not seeing it. Its not coming from sound logic.

Norfolk County CAO Jason Burgess pushed back against suggestions that farmers have been shut out of the process.

Those discussions were had, he said of accommodating more workers per bunkhouse.

One person can communicate and the other person has to be receptive to the answers. And in some cases, when they dont get the answer they want, then they say that (the health unit) isnt listening.

Burgess said that while Schuyler and other farmers are making an economic argument against the tighter rules, his greater concern is what an outbreak on a farm could mean for the local health-care system.

In Norfolk and Haldimand combined, you have five ICU beds, he said. If you get a hot spot of 30 or 40 infections and 10 per cent of them need to go to hospital into ICU, that wipes out all our ICU capacity. It doesnt take much to swamp us.

Plumb pointed out that the county could lean on neighbouring urban centres for additional health-care resources should an outbreak happen.

Norfolk isnt going to be left to deal with this on its own, she said.

To date in Haldimand-Norfolk there have been three reported investigations of migrant workers with potential COVID-19 symptoms, but no confirmed cases. Farmers argue there is a greater health risk in using day labourers from Toronto or Hamilton who could unknowingly bring the virus onto the farm.

Forced to grow less food

Burgess said the county remains committed to the local agriculture industry.

My staff and the health unit are still trying to help the industry, and were going to continue to help the industry going forward, he said. Theyre going to be a big part of our economic recovery plan.

In the short term, however, with most farmers missing a sizeable percentage of their offshore workforce, Ontarios top source for dozens of fruit and vegetable crops is poised to produce much less food.

Theres not any farmer I talk to in the vegetable business, or in strawberries, who isnt growing less, Dooney said. Cuts anywhere from 20 per cent to 50 per cent.

Farmers are turning to students and day labourers to fill the gap, but migrant workers have specialized skills and are not easy to replace, Dooney added.

Schuyler said farms operate on thin margins as it is, and farmers are concerned about their financial viability in light of the pandemic. But he said thats not what is motivating his appeal.

I could care less about the economic consequences right now. Its about producing food for the country, he said. Food security is going to be a concern this year and is the story that will be talked about this summer when it is too late to set back the clock.

It might be early June before the appeal board renders a judgment. And while that will be too late for spring crops like asparagus, Schuyler says rescinding the health units order would have a tangible effect on the rest of the growing season.

There is still urgency. A lot of people are relying on this to go away in time for their crops, he said.

The sooner this gets dropped, the more food can be grown. Im confident of that.
By Trend

The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is constantly monitoring the detention conditions and health conditions of Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev, who were detained by the Armenian servicemen in Kalbajar district, Ilaha Huseynova, head of the PR department of the ICRCs representative office in Azerbaijan, told Trend.

In accordance with the ICRCs mandate, the conditions of detention and treatment with the people detained in connection with the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are monitored and assistance is rendered for the detainees to be in contact with their family members, Huseynova said.

The ICRC also maintains a dialogue with the people responsible for the places of detention by monitoring the health condition of the detainees and the process of rendering medical services to them, head of the PR department said.

The dialogue with the corresponding bodies is underway during the coronavirus pandemic, the topics of which are confidential, Huseynova added. The information about the health condition of these individuals is transmitted only to their family members.

The monitoring is carried out directly at the place of residence of these individuals, taking into account the rules and recommendations in connection with the existing situation, based on the principle of non-harm to the ICRCs activity related to the detainees, head of the PR department said.

During an operation in July 2014 in Shaplar village of Azerbaijani Kalbajar district occupied by Armenia, the Armenian special forces killed Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov, and took hostage two other Azerbaijanis, Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov. A "criminal case" was initiated against them. All of them intended to visit the native places and graves of their relatives. Afterwards, a "court" sentenced Asgarov to life imprisonment and Guliyev to 22 years in prison.

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
BGR

Our Sun isnt quite as old as other stars out there. However, scientists are already trying to pinpoint exactly when the Sun will die. Of course, it isnt as simple as throwing out a date. After all, were working with a massive ball of energy that weve still barely managed to scratch the surface of  The post Scientists think they figured out when the Sun will explode and kill us all appeared first on BGR.
About 9,000 employees of hotels and guests houses which operate under the umbrella of the Ghana Progressive Hoteliers Association (GPHA) have been laid off because of the lack of patronage of the facilities.



The development is as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has forced many of the facilities to shut down completely or operate at minimal capacity.



The National President of the association, Mr Charles Adu-Gyamfi, who made this known, explained that the GPHA, which has a membership of 400, employed about 12,000 workers before the advent of the novel coronavirus pandemic.



Speaking to the Daily Graphic last Wednesday when the association donated food and items such as Veronica buckets, sanitary items and towels to the Hanukkah Childrens Home at Baakoniaba, near Sunyani, he said: As I speak now, about 9,000 of such employees have been laid off, since we are operating way below our capacities.



Citing a personal example, he said: Even though I operate a hotel with 80 rooms, I am currently not getting more than two guests per night.



How can I continue to engage all my employees and pay them from my pocket? he asked rhetorically.



Donation



The items donated to the Hanukkah Childrens Home and three others were estimated at GH10,000.



The donation formed part of activities marking the 10th anniversary of the association.



Stimulus package



Mr Adu-Gyamfi said members of the association were grateful to President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo for putting in place stimulus packages such as free water for three months and a reduction in electricity tariffs over the same period for Ghanaians.



He, however, indicated that members of the GPHA were eagerly waiting for their share of the GH600 million stimulus package in the form of flexible loans to cushion them in the face of the current difficulties to enable them to continue to be in business.



Plan B



He called on the government to consider instituting another fund as a Plan B to offer further loans to SMEs in case the COVID-19 pandemic extended beyond a certain threshold.



There may even be the need to extend the 50 per cent electricity and free water relief and we hope the government will start thinking about such a measure, he said.



Taxes



The GPHA President appealed to the government to impress on its agencies that collected taxes, levies and fees from members of the association not to use the COVID-19 stimulus package to SMEs as a basis to compel them to honour such obligations.



He called on the government to ensure that Ghana returned to normal times before we are made to pay such taxes, levies and fees.



He said the COVID-19 pandemic had affected the hotel business, to the extent that many could not continue to operate without getting the required customers to break even.



He said it was in the light of the difficulties that the association pleaded with agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Ghana National Fire Service (GNFS), the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) and the metropolitan, municipal and district assemblies to suspend the collection of taxes, levies and fees for a while in order to give them breathing space to continue to operate.



Corporate social responsibilities



At the presentation ceremony itself, Mr Adu-Gyamfi said even though members of the association were currently going through difficulties, it was incumbent on them not to abandon their corporate social responsibilities.



He, therefore, called on other organisations to continue to support the needy in society to enable them to cope with the difficulties associated with the COVID-19 pandemic.



Gratitude



The Director of the home, Mrs Marriet Asagbo, said it was catering for 45 inmates, as well as 17 workers and their families who were not allowed to move out of the compound as a measure to keep them safe from the COVID-19.



She thanked the association for its gesture and called on others to go to the aid of the home to enable it to cope with the difficult times.

Source: Daily Graphic









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FILE PHOTO: A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu

By Stephen Nellis and David Shepardson

(Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd, the biggest contract chipmaker, said it plans to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona in an apparent win for the Trump administration's efforts to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China.

The plan, which will create over 1,600 jobs, comes as U.S. President Donald Trump steps up criticism of Chinese trade practices and Beijing's handling of the novel coronavirus ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

Trump has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas and now a steep economic slump brought on by the coronavirus is driving a government-wide push to end U.S. production and supply chain dependency on China.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross touted the deal as "another indication that President Trumps policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing."

TSMC is a major supplier to U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc and Qualcomm Inc, as well as Chinese firms like Huawei Technologies, which Washington has put on a trade blacklist.

"This project is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive U.S. semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading U.S. companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States," TSMC said.

While huge in terms of foreign investment in the United States, the plan is small by TSMC's standards. For 2020, TSMC's capex plan is $15-$16 billion.

The Taiwanese chipmaker said the plan was to build the plant over nine years.

"The budget... suggests the eventual scale won't be big," Bernstein analysts said in a note, adding revenue contribution from the plant will stay at around 3%-4%.

"The scale and technology is similar to what TSMC did in China, suggesting a balance between the US & China."

A U.S. Commerce Department official said TSMC's decision to locate the plant in the United States generated "good will" at the department, the drafter of a law that would, if implemented, severely restrict TSMC chip sales to Huawei.

Story continues

Credit Suisse analysts said proposed restrictions could threaten TSMCs 14% of sales from Huawei, escalate U.S.-China tensions and delay the rollout of the next-generation 5G mobile network.

"While it is hard to be certain, we believe that TSMC announcing a U.S. Fab could remove the threat of further Huawei restrictions in the very near-term at least," JP Morgan analysts said in a note.

Shares of TSMC, the world's most valuable semiconductor company with a market capitalisation of about $255 billion, exceeding Intel Corp's, closed up 1.7% on Friday, outperforming a 0.3% gain in the main Taiwan stock market.

ADVANCED CHIPS

The plant, the biggest foreign investment by TSMC, will produce the most sophisticated 5 nanometer chips, which can be used in high-end defense and communications devices.

TSMC manufactures the bulk of its chips in Taiwan and has older chip facilities in China and Washington state.

Its chips power Apple's iPhones and the iPhone maker works closely with TSMC to become the first to take advantage of new advances in its chip-making processes.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said chips from the new TSMC plant will power everything from artificial intelligence to 5G base stations to F-35 fighter jets.

Semiconductors play a key role in both consumer electronics and defense equipment. The vast majority of the most advanced chips are made in Asia, which has caused concern among U.S. officials as a strategic rivalry with China deepens over the origins of the deadly coronavirus.

While Intel has major manufacturing operations in the United States, it supplies only its own chips rather than making them for outside customers.

The Trump administration has been in talks with both Intel and TSMC to build a plant in the United States, and Intel said last week it was in discussions with the Department of Defense about improving domestic sources for microelectronics and related technology.

The TSMC announcement is not expected to derail the Pentagons efforts to bolster the supply chain for microprocessors, despite the Commerce Department's working on the TSMC deal independently, a person familiar with the matter said.

Apple and Intel declined to comment.

TSMC said that construction of the Arizona facility would begin in 2021 with production targeted to begin in 2024, and that it would be able to process up to 20,000 silicon wafers per month. Each wafer can contain thousands of individual chips. The investment will be made from 2021 to 2029.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the latest details of TSMC's plans.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco, and David Shepardson, Alexandra Alper and Mike Stone in Washington, Karen Freifeld in New York; Yimou Lee in Taipei; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Leslie Adler, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)
Ask Dr. Land: The pandemic dilemma  lives vs. jobs

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A complex and heated debate is raging across the land. Do we keep the economy shut down in the interest of saving as many lives as possible, at the same time risking the collapse of our nations economy with all the physical and emotional devastation that such an economic earthquake would bring with it? Or, do we open up our economy sooner rather than later in order to rescue our economic well-being while taking every precaution possible to protect the most vulnerable among us?

This choice has been presented too often by the secular media as a stark, binary choice  lives vs. jobs. Would that it were that simple a decision. In reality, it is a far more complex moral and ethical dilemma that involves severely damaging consequences whichever choice one makes.

The government mandated nation-wide shutdown of the economy was implemented in order to flatten the curve of the coronaviruss progress so as not to overwhelm our hospitals with a tsunami of potentially critically ill, contagious patients all at once. The shutdown was largely successful in achieving that goal, although New York Citys hospitals came perilously close to collapsing under the sudden onslaught of coronavirus patients they had to withstand.

Thankfully, the coronavirus, while wildly contagious, is not nearly as lethal as we first feared it might be. And, even though we want to do everything feasible to save as many lives as possible, we need to proceed forward with public policy decisions that seek to mitigate as much human suffering as possible. Therein lies the essential, excruciating moral dilemma.

As the economic shutdown has been extended by various states and local authorities, it has generated grievously painful unemployment numbers. As of May 14, 36.6 million Americans are now unemployed. The Washington Post has reported that 100,000 American businesses are now out of business  bankrupt through no fault of their own, but because the government mandated that they shutter their doors. And perhaps most gut-wrenching of all, it is now reported that 40% of the people in this country who make less than $40,000 a year have now lost their jobs. That means that Americans who have the least economic reserves and are the most vulnerable economically are suffering disproportionately in the greatest unemployment crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. Food banks across the nation are already struggling to meet the demands of families that no longer have food security sufficient to feed their families.

What we are witnessing in America is a vast human tragedy. We are talking about fellow Americans who have lost the savings of a lifetime in the bankruptcy of a small business, or the loss of their home by foreclosure after paying their mortgage payments for 10, 15, or 20 or more years.

Federal research reveals that in the last serious economic downturn in 2008, which is a minor ripple compared to these numbers, for every one point the unemployment rate went up, the suicide rate went up by 1%. If that research holds true, then tens of thousands of Americans will commit suicide in the coming months, in hopelessness and despair after losing their jobs, and in many cases, everything they owned. And they will have experienced this economic devastation not through bad business decisions, or flagrant or profligate spending, but simply because their government of the people, by the people, for the people shut down the economy.

Additionally, government research shows that the last government downturn generated a significant increase in drug abuse and addiction.

The cruel reality is that what we are facing in America is not a choice between saving lives vs. restarting the economy, but how many lives will be ruined or lost by rampant economic dislocation vs. people who will get sick and some will die from the Coronavirus. To present the dilemma as anything simpler than that is simply disingenuous.

So what do we do? It seems to me, in seeking to balance these compelling realities, the most morally prudent course of action is to make every effort to get our economy up and running at full speed as rapidly as possible, while at the same time taking extreme precautions to protect the most vulnerable among us. Those individuals in assisted living facilities, the elderly in general, and those living with life compromising conditions such as COPD, asthma, diabetes, heart disease, suppressed immune systems, etc. In other words, take the precautions we need to take to protect the most vulnerable and let everyone else get back to work while they can still do so.

In addition, we need to understand that America is a very diverse place, and our Coronavirus pandemic experience has illustrated this vividly. Approximately 43% of all Coronavirus deaths in the U.S. have occurred in just three states  New York, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, which together comprise approximately 11% of the U.S. population. On the other hand, the residents of California, Texas, and Florida, the three most populous states, while totaling 27% of the U.S. population, account for only 7% of the nations coronavirus deaths.

If there were ever a stark illustration of why one size does not fit all, this is it. Seldom has there been a stronger case to be made for American federalism than the states differing Coronavirus pandemic experience. The federal government should be allowing the various states, while being always mindful to protect the rights acknowledged and protected by the Constitution, to make whatever accommodations and arrangements they feel will best protect their citizens from serious illness as well as from economic devastation. In other words, what works and is appropriate for Texas and Florida may be very different from what is most prudent in New York or New Jersey. Lets give the elected representatives of the various states the freedom to adapt to the current reality in their states and to do which is best for the citizens of their states.
The Railways has received more than 1,000 approvals from states in the last 15 days to ferry migrants home, with most workers being received by Uttar Pradesh followed by Bihar, according to the official data.

Among the migrant source states, West Bengal has approved eight trains, Rajasthan 23, Jharkhand 50 and Odisha 52, the data shows.

From May 1, the railways has run 932 Shramik Special trains, ferrying more than 12 lakh migrant workers who were stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, officials said on Friday.

The operationalisation of these trains have also led to political mudslinging with the opposition accusing the Centre of charging the fare from migrants.

The Centre has, however, clarified that the fare is being shared on 85-15 ratio by the railways and the state governments.

On Thursday, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal had hit out at West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee for not allowing migrants to return and appealed to all the states to give railways approval to run more trains.

The railways has said that it has the capacity to run 300 such trains per day.

"Under the leadership of PM @NarendraModi, the total number of Shramik Special trains approved till date is up to 1,000. Yesterday, the Indian Railways ran 145 Shramik Special trains to help stranded labourers to reach their native place." Goyal said.

He went on to add that out of the total Shramik Special trains being run by the Indian Railways, nearly 75 per cent had its destination points either in UP or in Bihar.

Out of the 974 trains which have been operated so far, 169 are in transit while 805 have terminated at various stations. Ninety more are in the pipeline, an official said.

These 974 trains were terminated in various states like Andhra Pradesh (3), Bihar (201), Chhattisgarh (7), Himachal Pradesh (4), Jammu and Kashmir (5), Jharkhand (41), Karnataka (2), Madhya Pradesh (70), Maharashtra (5), Manipur (1),Odisha (45), Rajasthan (18), Tamil Nadu (1), Telangana (2), Tripura (1), Uttar Pradesh (387), Uttarakhand (4) and West Bengal (7).

The railways said on Friday that it has so far received 1,064 approvals from states to run migrants' trains. Uttar Pradesh has given the approval for 526 trains, followed by Bihar which has given the nod for 269 and Madhya Pradesh for 81 trains.

The number stands at 50 for Jharkhand, 23 for Rajasthan and nine for West Bengal.

"The Railways is ready to deliver workers to their homes by running 300 workers special trains daily, but I am sad that these trains are not being allowed by the governments of some states like West Bengal, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand, due to which Workers have to suffer away from home,"Goyal said in a tweet on Friday.

A Shramik Special train carries around 1,700 passengers, instead of the earlier 1,200, to ferry as many workers home as possible.

While initially these trains had no stoppages, the railways now allows up to three stoppages in the destination states.

While railways is yet to announce the cost incurred on these special services, officials indicated that the national transporter is spending around Rs 80 lakh per service.

Since the Shramik Special train service started, Gujarat has remained the top originating state, followed by Kerala.

Earlier, the railways drew flak from opposition parties for charging for these services.

In its guidelines, the national transporter has said the trains will ply only if they have 90 percent occupancy.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A bond issued by Egypts New Urban Communities Authority (NUCA), in which the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) invested EGP 500 million (29 million), has won The Bankers Deal of the Year 2020 - Africa award in the securitisation category.

The Banker, a sister publication of the Financial Times, lists the awards to celebrate the most impressive investment banking transactions across the broad spectrum of global capital markets.

The awarded issuance of EGP 4 billion was arranged by Sarwa Capital Holding for Financial Investments and Banque Misr, with the EBRD being a major participant and the only international investor to participate in the offering.

It was the second transaction under an EGP 10 billion local currency programme by NUCA with the aim of diversifying its sources of financing and accessing a cost-effective and flexible alternative to traditional bank financing.

The funds raised are particularly impactful, according to the EBRDs website, as NUCA has embarked on an ambitious investment plan to develop a number of new cities to accommodate Egypts growing population away from the narrow strip of the Nile Delta.

This will help stimulate the Egyptian economy and create new job opportunities for local people, said the EBRD.

In total, the EBRD invested EGP 1.5 billion in the programme.

The EBRDs head of infrastructure for Turkey, Middle East and Africa, Sue Barrett, said that the landmark bond programme will further support the deepening of the local debt capital markets in Egypt, and contribute to the much-needed diversification of investable EGP assets for the local and international institutional investor base.

NUCA has developed more than 20 new cities in Egypt, working closely with the private sector, including developers and contractors.

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Kabul witnessed a devastating tragedy after three gunmen, suspected to be members of terror group ISIS, attacked a maternity unit in the city, killing 24 people including mothers, nurses and newborns.

Surviving this tragic incident is a newborn baby who was shot twice in the leg, as reported by The Times.

The Times

The attackers entered the building in the Afghan capital disguised as police officers. They threw grenades and opened fire which led to the death of many including two newborn babies.

15 men, women and children were reportedly injured and the attackers were shot dead.

The baby who survived the double gunshot wounds was born just three hours before the attack but unfortunately, her mother died in the attack. The baby's father Rafiullah named her Nazia, after her late mother.



After getting shot in the leg, Nazia has a fracture. A director at the Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in Kabul, Dr Noor ul-Haq Yousafzai, told the Times, "We set Nazia's fracture, so she will be able to walk when she grows up. But to see a newborn baby, just three hours old, shot twice. Everyone is shocked. This is inhuman."

AP

After the attack on the Doctors Without Borders maternity unit, an Afghan mother has come forward to breastfeed 20 of the newborn babies who survived the attack. The woman named Feroza Younis Omar said, "All of us have been damaged by criminals who are destroying humanity in Afghanistan. I am one of those."

Security forces intervened which led to the gunmen getting shot dead, during a shootout which lasted several hours.

A clearance operation was then carried out by the armed Afghan security forces and babies covered in blood-soaked blankets were rescued from the scene.

AFP

One of the surviving mothers named Khadija, revealed that the gunmen stormed the maternity unit just hours after she had given birth and she hid under a table hugging her newborn son to save them both. She mentioned how the intensive care unit was filled with smoke and bullets. Luckily, both she and her baby survived the attack.



AFP

Till now, no terror group has come forward to claim responsibility for the attack but President Ashraf Ghani strongly believes that the Taliban and the Islamic State are to be blamed. He singled out ISIS, and the military has been ordered to switch their tactics from 'defensive to offensive'.



On the other hand, the Taliban has reciprocated saying that they are fully prepared to take down the Afghan forces.

At least twenty newborn babies were later transferred to Ataturk Hospital in the Kabul and families are awaiting to find out what will happen to their children.

AFP

There are no words left to describe how tragic this incident is and people responsible for the same should not have a moment of peace in their lives.




Haiti - Justice : A police officer incarcerated in the Penitentiary, the Phantom Group issues an ultimatum





Wednesday, May 13, Jack Lafontant the Government Commissioner to the Port-au-Prince Court of First Instance ordered the imprisonment of police officer Jean Pascal Alexandre at the National Penitentiary.



Remember that Jean Pascal Alexandre, a member of the Drug Trafficking Brigade, was arrested on May 8 on instruction from the Public Prosecutor's Office, accused of assassination, arson, destruction of public property and State security.



Thursday, following this imprisonment, members of the extremist group "Phatom 509" issued an ultimatum to the authorities in order to release their colleague whose arrest they consider to be illegal...



In addition Yanick Joseph, the former General Coordinator of the Haitian National Police Union in a recorded message announces the decision to suspend all ongoing discussions with the authorities until the release of police officer Alexandre.



See also :

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30755-haiti-security-the-group-phantom-509-soon-reported-as-an-terrorist-group-to-international.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30644-haiti-politic-the-group-phantom-509-target-of-the-justice.html

https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-30641-haiti-flash-violent-demonstration-of-police-officers-of-the-group-phantom-509.html



PI/ HaitiLibre


















The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit on May 14 to block Title IX amendments added in early May by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.

The suit was announced shortly after the U.S. Department of Education finalized a rule that will fundamentally change the way Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is enforced and implemented in schools across the country. Title IX is the longstanding civil rights law that prohibits sex discrimination in federally funded education programs.

Opponents of DeVos changes to Title IX object to several new rules that they say would will slash schools obligations to respond to reports of sexual harassment and assault, and discourage female students from bringing charges against their attackers.

Reports of sexual harassment (would receive) a different and more skeptical review than reports of harassment based on race, national origin, or disability  creating a second-class standard for reports of sexual harassment and assault, the ACLU said in a press statement announcing the suit.

DeVos new rules would force colleges to hold live hearings as part of sexual-assault investigations. The hearings would permit attorneys for students accused of sexual assault to cross-examine their accusers.

Advocates for victims say the trauma of public hearings would have a chilling effect on victims' willingness to come forward.

The new Title IX regulations are a blatant threat to the years of work to create safe, supportive academic environments for students across the gender spectrum, said Ashley C. Sawyer, policy director at Girls for Gender Equity, in a prepared statement. We want to do everything we can to ensure that the true spirit and original intent of Title IX remains, to ensure that everyone has meaningful access to education, without being hindered by sexual violence.

Pull Quote Advocates for victims say the trauma of public hearings would have a chilling effect on victims' willingness to come forward.

Specific provisions opposed by advocates of womens rights include new rules that:

Redefine sexual harassment to exclude conduct that until now was included in the departments definition and that would be recognized as harassment if based on race, national origin, or disability;

Direct schools to ignore many Title IX reports of sexual harassment and assault that occur off campus or during study abroad, including in students homes;

Require college and university students to report sexual harassment or assault to the right official or their complaints do not have to be even investigated; and

Allow  and, in some cases, require  schools to use a higher standard of proof for reports of sexual harassment and assault than is required for other harassment proceedings.

DeVos is a former vice president for the anti-LGBTQ group Focus on the Family, which promotes the use of so-called conversion therapy to turn lesbians, gays and transgenders into straights. Such treatment has been denounced by all major medical and psychological associations and many states have banned it. Focus on the Family was funded, at least in part, by DeVos billionaire parents.

Evangelical religions view women as vessels who were created to take care of men by bearing their children and maintaining their homes. Some hard-core believers say that victims of sexual assault likely bring it on themselves.

In a 2001 interview for The Gathering, which promotes fundamentalist Christianity through philanthropy, DeVos said that she and her husband Dick desire to confront the culture in ways that will continue to advance Gods kingdom.

Perhaps her changes to Title IX are a step in what she considers to be that direction.
Hundreds of thousands of tons of 'wonderful British produce' will be left to rot in the fields if 70,000 Britons do not step up to pick fruit and vegetables, Waitrose's head of food has said.

Rupert Thomas, the supermarket's director of trading, issued the dire warning as the country prepares for the start of the British berry picking season next month.

He said Britain would need to invoke the spirit of the Land Army, the name given to the 80,000 Britons who brought in the harvest during the Second World War.

Waitrose's director of trading said 70,000 workers are desperately needed to pick fruit and vegetables

As the coronavirus pandemic rages, farmers have been left without their usual source of migrant labourers, many from Eastern Europe, who usually make up 90 per cent of the workforce.

Thomas said: 'We don't have enough pickers for harvest season and if we don't find people in time, hundreds of thousands of tons of wonderful, healthy British produce will go to waste and the livelihoods of countless British producers will be put at risk.

'Crops will, quite literally, rot in the fields without committed pickers. Truly, your country needs you.'

A Waitrose spokesperson said: 'Visit pickforbritain.org.uk for nearby vacancies.'
With several accused testing positive post arrest, the prisons department has established four special jails in the state to quarantine those brought in fresh cases. The step has been taken to avoid spread of infection from new inmates to those already lodged in the jail.

The special jails have been established in Bathinda, Patti, Ludhiana and Barnala. In Ludhiana, the special jail has been established in Borstal Jail. The old inmates of borstal jail have been shifted to Faridkot Jail.

Kulwant Singh, superintendent of Special Jail, Ludhiana, said that the special jails Ludhiana is accommodating accused from 11 districts. A total of 274 accused have been already quarantined in these special jails.

Kulwant Singh added that accused arrested by the police in various cases would be sent to special jails for screening. The accused would then be placed under quarantine for 15 days in special jails. After 15 days of quarantine, the inmates will be shifted to jails of their respective districts, if not tested positive for Covid-19.

He further added that they would ensure social distancing in these special jails and inmates would be screened daily.

Earlier on May 2, as many as 200 inmates from Ludhiana womens jail were shifted to Pathankot after a woman facing trial in drug peddling case tested positive for the virus. Besides, 17 cops had to be placed under quarantine in Ludhiana after a vehicle-theft accused tested positive. Later, an accused in suicide abetment case also tested positive, prompting the quarantine of five cops.

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Germany's Federal Network Agency refused Nord Stream 2 AG in withdrawing the Nord Stream 2 project from the rules of the updated EU Gas Directive, the regulator said.

"The Bundesnetzagentur has today rejected the application of Nord Stream 2 AG for derogation from regulation for the section of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline located in German territory," the statement said.



The agency noted that the necessary condition for removing the pipeline from the rules of the updated Gas Directive was its implementation before May 23, 2019.

"Since the Nord Stream 2 pipeline had not been fully laid by 23 May 2019, the Bundesnetzagentur has rejected the application for derogation made by Nord Stream 2 AG. When it is put into operation, therefore, Nord Stream 2 will be subject to German regulatory requirements and European rules on unbundling, network access and cost regulation," TASS cited the report as saying.
The details are still being fine-tuned for local dispersal, but a USDA grant has made it possible for families to get free produce which will be given out at places such as local food pantries, churches and homeless shelters like Shared Blessings Transitional Homeless Shelter.

The shelter will be distributing 25 pound produce boxes at 518 Grove St., Bonne Terre, from 8 a.m. to noon on Saturday, or until about 600 boxes of fresh produce are claimed.

Shelly Bess, executive director of Shared Blessings, said Proffer Produce, based in Park Hills, is the conduit through which the USDA Farmers to Families food boxes are channeled.

From what Ive been hearing, this program could last through the end of June, if not through the end of the year, Bess said. The food is all grown in America, so there wont be tropical fruits or vegetables like bananas, but the intention is to help inundate the area with fresh vegetables and fruits to help American farmers. Its a real blessing.

She said the hope is to give more produce out on Wednesday.

Proffer is being extremely accommodating to make this as easy and accessible as possible, she said. Were looking for volunteers to help put the boxes in cars, everyone who comes for the boxes has got to stay in their cars.

Bob Proffer, owner of the family-owned Proffer Produce, said he credits the Trump administration for swiftly executing the USDA food program in response to the coronavirus pandemic, which has seen high unemployment rates, agricultural volatility and kneejerk changes in consumer spending that the food industry has done its best to quickly accommodate.

Proffer emphasized this isnt a free-food giveaway from his company. The USDA grant Proffer Produce received totals $5,170,000 which translates to about 2,500 tons of food, or 120 truckloads worth, that will be distributed mostly through Missouri, but also Mississippi, Illinois and Arkansas.

As part of the Coronavirus Farm Assistance Program Secretary, the USDA announced April 17 it would purchase and distribute up to $3 billion of agricultural products to those in need, partnering with regional and local distributors whose workforce is impacted by restaurant, hotel, and other food-related closures or slowdowns.

Agricultural Marketing Services Commodity Procurement Program is budgeted for an estimated $100 million per month in fresh fruits and vegetables, $100 million per month in a variety of dairy products, and $100 million per month in meat products according to the USDA webpage explaining Farmers to Families Food Boxes. The distributors and wholesalers, like Proffer, is distributing the pre-approved boxes of fresh produce, dairy, and meat products to food banks, community and faith-based organizations, and other non-profits.

Proffer said the produce boxes are like a Rubiks cube filled with Americans farmers products that need to move, things like celery, carrots, cucumbers, strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, zucchini, yellow squash, corn, cabbage, lettuce, Romaine, onions, potatoes. Other distributors bid on dairy, meat, prepared-meat or mixed boxes.

Theyve put this program together within 20 days, its probably one of the fastest turnarounds Ive ever seen in government, he said. Ive seen contracts for something like this take up to 18 or 24 months to write up before we can bid on it, and Ive never seen one done with the speed and magnitude of this.

Proffer said when USDA started the program, they turned to distributors to help identify the non-profits for dispersal.

I had four or five secretaries calling each of the chambers of commerce and city halls in the towns to find out if they had a food pantry, like Arcadia Valley, St. James, Ironton, Chillicothe, Potosi, St. Joe, Maryville, Bowling Green, he said. Some arent open more than two days a week, some are closed because of coronavirus. But more are coming on board.

Proffers said the programs only beginning, delivering anywhere from 30-40 boxes, up to 400 or so to each individual town for the next four or five weeks.

The response has been really big, we expect the demand will probably double in a weeks time. The need sounds pretty great out there, according to many of these food pantries, he said. Theyve only awarded the first piece of the program, theyre waiting to see what direction the coronavirus is headed in, and feeding more money into the program as its warranted.

Were supposed to report back to USDA how may different communities were hitting, how many boxes, how many people are taking them, which will all help determine the next phase of the program and how it plays out.

Proffer explained that an unfortunate aspect of the coronavirus is the pivoting consumer trends due to the disruption in the food industry, producing food in bulk  for restaurants, for instance  versus for individual consumers.

Grocery stores might want certain specifications met for produce they mean to stack and display, he said. They might want a zucchini between 6-9 inches long, the picker picks a 10-inch zucchini, well, restaurants arent going to care, its ingredients.

"And then there might be fruit thats a little blemished that wont sell in the grocery store, but a juice company can cut that part off and use the rest so it wont go to waste. A restaurant can cut that blemish off and use it for a dessert. Its still perfectly good, its just not pretty for the individual consumer.

Proffer said once restaurants either closed or slowed down, demand for the oddball stuff plummeted. And there was more disruption to the food industry in terms of packaging.

Back in March and April, when the pandemic really started to hit, even grocery stores were having a hard time, because people didnt want to pick up a single-displayed orange or apple, looking for the perfect ones that someone else might have touched, he said. People were buying bags of apples, bags of oranges, bags of potatoes, hoping no one else had touched it in the market.

We (at Proffer Produce) have two or three machines for bagging, and we ran them 24 hours a day, with three shifts around the clock for almost three straight weeks, we couldnt bag fast enough.

He added the meat packers felt a similar squeeze, as demand for, say, 30-pound boxes of hamburger patties diminished, and demand for individual, one-pound packages of hamburger skyrocketed.

If you have a meat-packing factory that produces half for restaurants and half for grocery stores, well, it takes a lot of time to switch gears on your packaging and retrofit everything, so you throw all the weight behind single-packaging rather than bulk packaging, he said.

Weve seen some weird things in the past three months here.

Proffer said theyll be doing their best to get the truckloads out to the non-profits for dispersal, and he hopes itll make a difference to the people in need, and to American farmers in general.

Sarah Haas is the assistant editor for the Daily Journal. She can be reached at 573-518-3617 or at shaas@dailyjournalonline.com.

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Two female researchers who have spent the last nine months in a remote cabin in the Arctic have now been left stranded there due to coronavirus.

Hilde Strom, 52, from Norway, and 59-year-old Canadian Sunniva Sorby have been surviving in a 215sq ft hut on the remote archipelago of Svalbard since August last year while researching climate change.

But now their trip has been extended indefinitely after the boat that was supposed to come and get them last week was cancelled due to coronavirus travel bans.

The pair anticipate that they will not leave the islands until September - and may have to spend a second winter in their remote home, 87 miles from civilisation.

Hilde Strom (left), from Norway, and Sunniva Sorby (right), from Canada, have spent the last nine months in a remote cabin in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard - and have now been left stranded there after their boat home was cancelled due to coronavirus

The cabin measures just 215sq ft, has no running water and only limited electricity, and is studded with nails to stop polar bears getting inside

The cabin has no running water with the pair forced to melt ice each day, and neither has had a shower since their stay began.

The only electricity comes from what they generate from wind and solar power.

'There have been tears,' Strom told NBC in a video call from the remote whaler's hut where she is living. 'You feel so small in this big environment.'

Though the possibility of the pair having to spend another winter in the cabin is remote, it would be made all the more extraordinary given that they are already the first team to spend even one winter in the Arctic without a man accompanying them.

Svalbard is fraught with dangers even for two people who have as much experience of cold environments as they do - Strom has spent 22 years living in the Arctic, while Sorby spent 23 years as a guide in the Antarctic.

Perhaps the biggest danger - aside from the cold - are polar bears which roam freely around the islands.

Strom and Sorby now face another four months in the Arctic with the possibility of having to spend another winter there and have already started rationing food

The hut where the pair are living, which was built in the 1930s for commercial whalers, is studded with nails to stop bears trying to get in or climbing on the roof.

They also have to carry a rifle with them wherever they go, in case one of the animals gets too close.

The pair have had at least 30 encounters with bears since the start of the project.

A rifle is not all they have to carry with them when the leave the hut. In fact, dressing to go out takes a total of 15 minutes with 20lbs of clothing worn each.

They also have to carry a flare gun and a Swiss Army knife for emergencies.

Not everything they brought with them is so practical, however. Each packed a little black dress and high heels to wear on celebrations while they were away.

'We dressed up for Christmas with our heels and our dresses outside with our rifles over us. It was ice cold,' Sorby said.

The pair - the first all-female team to over-winter in the Arctic - have been studying the effects of climate change as well as trying out electronic technology

While in Svalbard, the pair have been collecting data for various research organisations including NASA, the Norwegian Polar Institute, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, and the University Centre in Svalbard.

They are also testing solar and wind technology for various firms, which is how they are generating their electricity.

On top of the cold, the isolation, and the polar bears, the pair also had to endure endless hours of night - including 90 full days of complete darkness.

Still, they are trying to see the positive sign of things - saying the unexpected extension has given them more time to dedicate to their work.

Sorby added: 'We gave up our normal lives to come here, but it turns out this is more normal than the life back home.'
Donald Trump has blamed Xi Jinping's government for allowing the coronavirus to spread: AFP via Getty Images

Donald Trump said he not spoken to Chinese premier Xi Jinping during the coronavirus crisis  and that the US could cut off its relationship with China altogether.

I have a very good relationship, he said, but I just  right now I dont want to speak to him. I dont want to speak to him.

The president was being interviewed outside the White House by Fox Businesss Maria Bartiromo, who went on to ask if the US should stop issuing visas to Chinese students coming to study hi-tech subjects including quantum computing and AI.

However, Mr Trumps animus seems to come down largely to money, and specifically to the trade deal he struck with the Chinese.

There are many things we could do, said the president, we could do things, we could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? Youd save $500bn.

Look, at what point  and Ive said this for years, Ive said it with other countries also, Chinas not the only country ripping us off.

There are already moves underway to rein in US investments in China, albeit only incrementally. This week, the US governments main retirement fund, which manages hundreds of billions of dollars in assets for nearly six million workers, scrapped a plan to shift investments into Chinese companies. Mr Trump had complained that the move could jeopardise national security.

Bringing the conversation back to coronavirus after a long Trump ramble about NATO, Ms Bartiromo asked about Chinas allowing people to travel before cornering the market on protective equipment.

Mr Trump cut her off. Thats not the big thing. The big thing is they should have never let this happen. So I make a great trade deal, and now I say, It just doesnt feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry, and the plague came over. And it doesnt feel the same to me.

For all his complaints about Chinas behaviour, Mr Trump stayed agnostic about a conspiracy theory that the virus escaped from a Wuhan virology lab  a theory propagated by various public figures on the right despite an absence of evidence.

Story continues

Whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from China. And they should have stopped it. They could have stopped it at that source. I call it the source.

Ms Bartiromo wrapped up the interview with a blunt question.

How are you going to have a partnership with China when you cant trust anything they say and do?

It may be hard to do, said Mr Trump. Its okay, its okay with me. May be hard to do, but thats okay with me.
by Vladimir Rozanskij

Chechen President Ramzan Kadyrov (of Islamic profession) and the Mufti Rushan Abbasov, first vice-president of the Islamic Council of Russia among the most enthusiastic supporters of the Day of Prayer and Fasting launched by the High Committee of Human Fraternity and supported by the Pope. Support also from many Orthodox priests, Protestant Christians and Jews. The death of priests and monks continues in the Orthodox Church. An "anti-virus" cross.

Moscow (AsiaNews) - The "Day of prayer to free us from the coronavirus" supported by Pope Francis and the High Committee of Human Fraternity yesterday, was also widely supported also in Russia. Many Orthodox priests declared their adhesion with the Pope and the Catholics, specifying that the litanies and the moleben to ask for an end to the pandemic are already widely practiced by the Russian Church.

The president of the Russian republic of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov (of Islamic profession) was among the most enthusiastic about the papal initiative: "I am convinced that on this day people from different continents and representatives of various religions turn to the Most High. We ask the Creator to help us overcome the pandemic and the crisis it has caused. Only by uniting and overcoming the divisions that make us suffer, can we hope that the Most High will have mercy on us. "

Even Mufti Rushan Abbasov, first vice-president of the Islamic Council of Russia, recalled that we are in the blessed month of Ramadan, which even more fills the lives of Muslims with prayers. Muslims from Russia have already organized collective prayers with Muslims from other countries several times; we wholeheartedly support these initiatives, such as the appeal to common prayer proposed by the Pope of Rome, Francis ".

In the Orthodox Church many supported the initiative, as stated by the priest Aleksej Dikarev: "This proposal unites people of good will, who try to do whatever they can to overcome this crisis. The whole Russian Orthodox Church with its pastors and faithful pray for a speedy overcoming of this crisis, in particular by repeating the Akatistos to the Mother of God ". Russian Protestants, and Chief Rabbi of Russia Berl Lazar, also expressed their solidarity with the Pope's initiative.

In particular, the Russian Church prays remembering the many losses of these days, due to the coronavirus. On 13 May, a 46-year-old priest, the protoierej Vasilij Aleksandrov Andrej Kuraev, who served in the Trinity church in the village of Oktjabrskij, in the province of Moscow, also known as moderator of the blog of the proto-saxon, died. Vasily left his wife Matushka Julija with five children.

The protoierej Aleksandr Gridunov, from the Volgodonsk eparchy near Rostov, the protoierej Aleksij Penkov (photo 2), 52, of the Church of the life-giving Trinity in Konkovo, on the outskirts of Moscow, and the hieromonk Petr (Gribov) of the eparchy of Shuj, 55 years old.

In the monastery of the Life-giving Cross of Shuj, all 12 monks were infected with the virus. The monastery is located in a place that is difficult to access and even going to the hospital is rather problematic, and Father Petr died in his cell without being able to receive treatment.

In the monastery of Verkhoturja on the Urals, the number of people infected has reached 50; all 15 monks of the monastery of San Pafnuzio in the province of Kaluga were also found positive for coronavirus. In a parish of the Kurgan eparchy, that of the Nativity of Chastoozerje, the parish priest Fr. Aleksandr Shumilov thought of organizing a "processional race" of the faithful with the icon of Saint George the Winner, in honor of the Victory celebrated in these days and for the liberation from the enemy virus. Together with the banners of the saints, the parishioners waved the red flags with the hammer sickle (photo 3).

A Protestant bishop, Nikolai Mitrofanov, one of the main representatives of the Russian Union of Evangelical Christians (Russian Pentecostals), also died from the virus in the city of Yaroslavl on the Volga River. His confreres, Bishop Sergei Ryakhovsky and Bishop Andrej Dirienko gave the news, recalling that "There is no greater love than one who gives his life for his friends" (Jn 15:13).

The deputies of the State Duma, the Russian parliament, have decided to apply a special badge with a cross to be worn on their jacket (photo 4). The speaker of the Duma, Vjaceslav Volodin, explained that it is a sign that "removes the coronavirus". Even Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, had been wearing the white cross on his jacket for a few days, before being hospitalized for the virus.
Like so many families in Chicago and beyond, Dick Cagney has made countless memories over the years at White Pines Resort, a rustic retreat nestled in a state park roughly 100 miles west of the city. But on Wednesday, Cagney heard the news that came like a gut punch to so many of White Pines loyal guests: The resorts longtime owner, Beth George, said she has no choice but to close and file for bankruptcy because of the prolonged shutdowns tied to the pandemic.
West Bengal Chief Minister



Mamata Banerjee on Friday condoled the death of veteran Bengali writer Debesh Roy describing him as one who broke set patterns in fiction writing.

In a statement, Banerjee expressed her grief over the death of Roy on Thursday night and said the void after his demise will never be filled.

"In Bengali literature, Roy was known as a writer who broke set patterns in the world of fictions. He got Sahitya Akademi award for Teesta Parer Britanto. His other memorable works include Borisaler Jogen Mondal, Jajati, Manush Khun Kore Keno, Somoy Asomyer Britwanto, Logon Gandhar etc.

"He brought out the life story of a dalit leader in Borishaler Jogen Mondal in epic form," Banerjee said in her message tracing the literary contributions of Roy.

She expressed her heartfelt grief to the family of the deceased and his readers.

Roy died at a private hospital in the city on Thursday night at the age of 84 after being admitted there for treatment of old age related ailments like sodium potassium imbalance, sugar problem and breathing problem, his family members said.

The CM also expressed grief over the death of Padma Bhushan recipient, eminent writer and Bangladeshs National Professor Anisuzzaman at Dhaka on Thursday.

Anusuzzaman was the recipient of honours like Padmabhusan, Ananda Puraskar and Jagattarini medal by Calcutta University among many other laurels, Banerjee said and offered her condolences to his family and countless followers across borders.

She also dwelt on Anusuzzaman's role in the 1971 liberation war and the battle for mother tongue in Bangladesh.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Bengaluru, May 15 : Six special trains on Friday ferried 9,016 stuck migrant workers to their respective home states amid the nationwide lockdown, an official said on Friday.

The first Shramik special train and 49th from South Western Railway (SWR) zone left at 4.15 pm with 1,520 passengers for Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh, said a SWR zone official.

Friday's second train with 1,530 migrants departed at 5 pm for Bhagalpur in Bihar from Malur on the Bengaluru outskirts.

The third special train departed Chikka Bannavara station for Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh at 6.40 pm with 1,440 migrants.

The fourth train left Malur station for Barauni in Bihar at 7.35 pm with 1,549 passengers.

The fifth train from Chikka Bannavara left for Agartala in Tripura at 8.44 pm with 1,438 migrants.

The last train of Friday left at 9.50 pm from Malur to Koderma in Jharkhand with 1,539 migrants.

The SWR zone has operated 52 special trains so far to transport migrants back home.

The special trains are being run following the Union Ministry of Home Affairs permission for the movement of stranded migrant labourers, workers, students, tourists and others.

Amid the coronavirus scare, the Karnataka government has announced that all inter-state travellers arriving here will be compulsorily placed in institutional quarantine for a fortnight.

"You can stay in government hostels for free or in specific hotels at your own cost. You will not be allowed to go to your homes before 14 days," said an official statement shared by the SWR officials.

To drive home the message to passengers who boarded a special train in Old Delhi railway station for Karnataka on Thursday night, Karnataka Bhavan officials distributed pamphlets in Kannada and English about the quarantine requirements.

Official also sent out text messages to the travellers.

The railway zone has also texted 2.5 lakh people in multiple districts not to walk on the tracks to avoid accidents.
ST. LOUIS, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Saint Louis University will move to a standardized test-optional admission process for all undergraduate and most graduate programs beginning with students applying for admission to the 2021-2022 academic year. Test optional means that prospective students may submit standardized test scores, but those who choose not to will not be disadvantaged in any way in the admission process.

SLU is mindful that the fall 2021 class is challenged by test date cancellations during the COVID-19 pandemic, making it impractical to require scores. Our hope is that this gives prospective students and their families one less worry during this difficult time.

For students applying for the fall 2021 semester, SLU will not require ACT or SAT scores for freshman or transfer applicants, and will not require the GRE or GMAT for most graduate programs. Due to accreditation requirements, a few graduate and professional programs, including law and medicine, will still require pre-admission tests. And English proficiency tests will still be required for international students.

Though test-optional admissions is spurred by the challenges presented by the pandemic, the University believes it can serve as a catalyst to accelerate our actions in bolstering diversity and increasing access to a SLU education.

While test scores have been requested as part of the application process, those scores have never been the sole factor in admissions decisions. Moving to test optional will mean even more holistic admission processes that, in turn, will lead to more diverse applicant pools and more students of color on its campus. This goal, in turn, will strengthen the educational experiences of all SLU students.

"Studies show that a prospective student's high school grade point average is a much better predictor of college success than standardized test scores," said Kathleen Davis, vice president for enrollment and retention management. "We also know that standardized tests have historically disadvantaged those students with lower family incomes and less access to expensive test preparations services."

"As we move to a test-optional admissions process that should broaden access to groups of historically underrepresented and disadvantaged students, it helps us as an institution to live out our stated mission of pursuing truth in service to humanity," said Jonathan Smith, Ph.D., vice president for diversity and community engagement.

The University is committed to providing the resources necessary to ensure students from all backgrounds have the support they need to succeed in and out of the classroom and to graduate with a SLU degree.

Saint Louis University is a Catholic, Jesuit institution that values academic excellence, life-changing research, compassionate health care, and a strong commitment to faith and service. Founded in 1818, the University fosters the intellectual and character development of more than 13,000 students on campuses in St. Louis and Madrid, Spain. Building on a legacy of now more than 200 years, Saint Louis University continues to move forward with an unwavering commitment to a higher purpose, a greater good.

This news release was issued on behalf of Newswise. For more information, visit http://www.newswise.com.

SOURCE Saint Louis University
Saudi Arabia records lowest temperature in 30 years

Erdogan's visit to Ukraine scheduled for February 3

Russian peacekeeping contingent establishes order of passage through Lachin corridor

French Senate votes to ban hijab at sporting events

Armenian FM: All necessary conditions to be created for Demarcation Commission work

Olaf Scholz: Borders in Europe cannot be changed by force

Lavrov presents Armenian Ambassador to Russia, with the Order of Friendship

Bill Gates warns of pandemics far more serious than COVID-19

Macron: EU countries must work together on agreement for stability and security

Turkey Central banks and UAE sign agreement worth almost $5 billion

Blinken: Western countries need unity to stop Russian aggression against Ukraine

Iranian President performs evening namaz in Kremlin after talks with Putin

Turkish police detain women protesting price hikes in hygiene products

Delegation headed by Chief of the Cypriot National Guard General Staff has meetings in Armenia

Merkel refuses job in UN structure

Greece receives the first batch of French Rafale fighters

NEWS.am daily digest: 19.01.22

Azerbaijan hopes Pope to mediate in relations with Armenia

Talks between presidents of Russia and Iran start in Kremlin

Armenian FM: This is not first time Baku makes nonconstructive statements

Ombudsman: I urge not to give in to Azerbaijani manipulations, to visit Artsakh

Armenian FM: Armenia passes a package of proposals to Azerbaijan

France names the main favorite of presidential election

Garo Paylan concludes address in Turkey parliament in Armenian

Russian Foreign Ministry believes there is no risk of large-scale war in Europe

Dollar goes up in Armenia

Sharmazanov: Armenia ex-President Sargsyan did not decide to hold press conference, he did not change his mind

Blinken: Russia has plans to increase force on Ukraine borders

:       

Azerbaijani military participate in Turkish drills

Taliban say all conditions for recognizing legitimacy of government are met

Azerbaijan MFA statement distorts events of Armenian massacres in Baku 32 years ago

Karabakh ombudsmans office: Azerbaijans anti-Armenian, genocidal policy has clear chronology

US official, Barzani are photographed against backdrop of Greater Armenia and Kurdistan map

Armenia ex-defense minister, army General Staff chief, some others criminal case court hearing kicks off

FM: Most important direction continues to be international recognition of Artsakh

Armenia revenue committee chief on opening of Turkey border: Shall we live with closed borders? In fear?

US selects Los Angeles to host Summit of the Americas in summer 2022

Karabakh Foreign Minister: Return of refugees can only be like mirror

Iranian president arrives on official visit to Moscow

All CSTO peacekeepers leaves Kazakhstan

Artsakh Foreign Minister: Unacceptable to bracket NKAO and NKR together

Karabakh FM: Format of OSCE Minsk Group Co-Chairs' visits needs to be restored

Media: Air communication between Turkey and Armenia will start on February 2

Artsakh FM: Azerbaijan attack on Karabakh will mean attack on Russia

Gold prices hardly change

American professor angers Erdogan's son-in-law

Hovhannes Khachatryan is elected Armenia Central Bank Deputy Governor

15 years pass since Hrant Dink assassination

563 new cases of COVID-19 confirmed in Armenia

Guterres offers Merkel job at UN

Armenian church revamped in Iran

World oil prices going up

Newspaper: ECHR rulings increase after Armenia revolution in 2018

Newspaper: Armenia ex-President Sargsyan to give interview instead of press conference

Azerbaijan MFA falls into hysterical rage by France FM statement

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
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Employers around Albuquerque are starting to bring employees who have been working from home back into the office, but caution remains the priority as state restrictions start to loosen.

Earlier this week, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced New Mexico will relax certain restrictions on businesses across much of the state starting Saturday, citing increased testing capacity and declining infection rates from the COVID-19 pandemic.

The new rules allow nonessential businesses like offices and call centers to bring employees back into the office at 25% of their pre-virus staffing levels. The governor said offices should continue allowing employees to work from home where possible.

Its a balancing act, said Mark Epstein, president and CEO of True Health New Mexico.

To help the balancing act along, the health care organization has assembled a task force to help determine how to bring workers back to the workplace safely. Epstein said the company plans to send out a survey gauging employees concerns about returning to the office. So far, he said hes heard from employees who are comfortable working from home, as well as some who are excited to get back to a more collaborative environment.

There are times when the ability to simply walk down and have a quick conversation beats a Zoom meeting, Epstein said.

The company is also looking at staggering employees schedules to make sure only a limited number of the organizations 62 employees are in the office at any one time. Those who need to be in the office will be able to come back on a rotating basis.

True Health also will provide masks and put up barriers to protect employees when they deal with the public. Access to break rooms and bathrooms will be limited to a few people at a time.

Epstein said the companys culture has shifted in the past two months.

The environments changed, and we need to be able to react appropriately, he said.

Linda Qian, communications manager for Intel Corp., wrote in an email that the companys manufacturing sites, including its Rio Rancho campus, also are staggering workers shifts and providing employees with masks and thermometers to monitor their health.

It is also bringing workers back in phases, according to a blog post from Intel Vice President Darcy Ortiz.

Even businesses that arent able to reopen to the public just yet are starting to bring employees back into the office. Defined Fitness cant open its New Mexico gyms this weekend, but spokeswoman Maria Lamar said the company began phasing workers back into the office last week.

In addition to cleaning facilities and providing masks, the company is planning temperature checks for employees and gym members once facilities reopen.

Weve been extremely committed to the health and fitness of our entire community, Lamar said.
By Bethany Mandel

WASHINGTON (JTA)Back in Normal Times, when I would tell other parents in Jewish settings that we homeschool, I would be met with exhortations of I could never do that! Things have certainly changed in the past two months because now everyone does. Ive found myself suddenly running a lending library out of my house and a homeschool help hotline for friends on my WhatsApp.

When I used to explain homeschooling to those unfamiliar with it, it was hard to describe what life was like home with your kids all day, every day. For most parents, their only extended expe...
NEW HAVEN, Conn., May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cybrexa Therapeutics, an oncology-focused biotechnology company developing a new class of therapeutics through its alphalex tumor targeting platform, today announced that two posters featuring Cybrexa's pipeline will be presented at the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting II, which will be held June 22-24, 2020.



The following abstracts are now available on the AACR website at www.aacr.org .

Title: CBX-12: A low pH targeting alphalex-exatecan conjugate for the treatment of solid tumors

Session Type: Poster Session

Session Title: Emerging Drug Delivery Systems

Abstract Number: 3222



Title: CBX-13: Development of alphalex-toxin low pH targeting conjugates for the treatment of solid tumors

Session Type: Poster Session

Session Title: Emerging Drug Delivery Systems

Abstract Number: 3287

CBX-12, Cybrexa's lead candidate, is a conjugate that includes the highly potent and toxic topoisomerase I inhibitor, exatecan. CBX-12 demonstrated remarkable efficacy across HER2-negative solid tumors in preclinical models. CBX-12 displays enhanced stability in plasma in vivo, undergoing only 0.002% warhead release over 30 hours in circulation and demonstrating exquisite selectivity for tumor over normal tissues in mouse tumor models. "The tumor selectivity of this conjugate is critical to the long-lasting efficacy and safety profile CBX-12 demonstrated across preclinical models," said Vishwas Paralkar, PhD, Chief Scientific Officer of Cybrexa. "CBX-12 shows tremendous potential across a number of solid tumors and avoids the bone marrow and gastrointestinal toxicities associated with the warhead."

Cybrexa is also working on the CBX-13 program, a conjugate that includes the highly potent maytansine DM4. The poster presents data for potential CBX-13 candidates in HER2-negative xenograft models that are un-targetable by competing therapies. The candidates demonstrate single digit nanomolar potency in vitro.

Per Hellsund, President and CEO of Cybrexa, commented, "The preclinical results for CBX-12 and CBX-13 were striking and led us to accelerate the development of both programs. CBX-12 is on-track to enter IND-enabling studies shortly, and we look forward to testing the drug in a Phase I/II study in advanced solid tumors next year."

About the alphalex Technology Platform

The Cybrexa alphalex technology platform - which consists of a pHLIP peptide, linker, and small molecule anti-cancer agent (payload) - enables antigen-independent targeting of tumors and intracellular delivery of highly potent anticancer therapies, creating therapeutics that can revolutionize the standard of care. pHLIP peptides are a family of pH-Low Insertion Peptides that target acidic cell surfaces. pHLIP was developed at Yale University and the University of Rhode Island, and is exclusively licensed to pHLIP, Inc. alphalex represents the disruptive next generation in tumor targeting. View a video of the mechanism of action of the technology at www.cybrexa.com.

About Cybrexa

Cybrexa is a privately-held biotechnology company dedicated to developing next-generation tumor-targeted cancer therapies using its alphalex platform. The Company's lead candidate, CBX-12, an alphalex-exatecan conjugate, is expected to enter Phase I/II in 2021 in advanced solid tumors. Cybrexa also has other preclinical toxin conjugate programs as well as synthetic lethality programs. Cybrexa was founded by physician-scientists and has an experienced management team that has built numerous successful life sciences companies. For more information about Cybrexa, please visit www.cybrexa.com.

Media Contact

media@cybrexa.com

Investor Relations


A landlord in Odishas coastal Ganjam district, which has emerged as the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) epicentre in the state, has waived off Mays rent for all his 12 tenants.

Murli Mohan Acharya, a landlord from Berhampurs Somnath Nagar neighbourhood, has overnight become a symbol of generosity and benevolence amid the socio-economic disruptions caused by the raging Covid-19 outbreak.

He not only waived off his 12 tenants rents for May, but also distributed 25 kilograms (kg) of rice to each of them. The tenants earn their livelihood either as roadside snack vendors or run small-scale businesses.

All my 12 tenants are facing a lot of economic hardship because their businesses are shut since end-March when nationwide lockdown restrictions were imposed to contain the spread of Covid-19 outbreak. Of the 12, three have left for their native villages along with families. I acceded to my tenants request and waived off their rent for May. I also gave each family 25 kg of rice to tide over the crisis, as the state governments help has been few and far between, Acharya said.

Berhampur sub-collector Shinde Dattatreya Bhausaheb felicitated Acharya for his noble deed, and urged other landlords to take a leaf out of his book. We can change our society in a big way, even if 1% of landlords are willing to help out their tenants like what Acharya did, Bhausaheb said.

Earlier in March, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik had appealed to the landlords to either waive off or defer the collection of their rents by at least three months due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

Let each one of us rise and be there for one another amid these hard times. Lets show the world that Odisha cares, the CM had said. Patnaik had also urged to landlords that tenants should not be asked to vacate their accommodation for non-payment of rents during the healthcare emergency.

In April, two landlords in Bhubaneswar had waived off rent for their tenants.

Prashant Kumar Shreechandan, a landlord from Bhubaneswars Rasulgarh, had waived off the rent of his 26 tenants, which amounted to Rs 62,000, and promised the same for May if lockdown persisted.

Similarly, Jitu Jena, a landlord from Bhubaneswars Palasuni locality, wrote off the Aprils rent for his 10 tenants.

Were united in trying to prevent the spread of Covid-19. We need to fight each other amid this unprecedented crisis, said Jena.

However, not all landlords are as benevolent as Jena, Acharya, and Shreechandan.

For instance, Manmohan Pradhan, a landlord from Bhubaneswars Unit-1 area, almost doubled the rent of his tenant Mangaraj Sahoo, a driver, and gave him an ultimatum: either pay the increased rent or vacate the house.

Sahoo, who had taken up the accommodation on a monthly rent of Rs 3,000 seven months ago, lodged a complaint against Pradhan at Capital police station on May 10 after his rent was hiked to Rs 5,500.

While in April, a 60-year-old cancer patient in the coastal Balasore district had to spend over eight hours outside his rented house at Sahadevkhunta after the landlord refused to let him and his family members in as they had visited Bhubaneswar, another Covid-19 hotspot in the state.

Later, he was allowed to enter his rented premise after police intervened. However, his two sons, who had accompanied him to Bhubaneswar, were asked to stay away for 14 days.

A landlord also prevented a woman from entering her rented accommodation after her husband, a retired BSNL employee, died recently as he was denied admission to a few hospitals. The panic-stricken landlord suspected that the mans death is related to Covid-19 and his widow could be a carrier of SARS-CoV-2 that causes the disease.
The likes of Mugurungi and Madzima were no longer signatories of their divisional grants because she would want to go through every document to see if everything was in order. As you can see, there was no way she could have survived because she stepped on too many toes, another source said.
SAN FRANCISCO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Teamsters Joint Council 7 President Rome Aloise and California labor allies are calling on the California Employment Training Panel to deny a request set to be considered at its meeting this morning that would grant Space Exploration Technology Corp. (SpaceX) some $655,500 in government subsidies.

The letter, sent to the Employment Training Panel's Acting Chairperson Janice Roberts, states that as the recipient of billions of public dollars over the past decades for his companies, Elon Musk has used those dollars to "run businesses that tamp down on the collective bargaining rights of employees and disregard the safety of workers."

The letter was signed by Aloise, California Labor Federation Executive Secretary-Treasurer and Chief Officer Art Pulaski, Alameda County Labor Council Executive Secretary-Treasurer Elizabeth Ortega-Toro and Working Partnerships USA Executive Director Derecka Mehrens.

The letter notes an administrative law judge ruled last September that Tesla violated the National Labor Relations Act in 2017 when it illegally threatened and retaliated against workers who supported a union. Musk also violated Alameda County rules by reopening the luxury automaker's plant in Fremont this week despite the county's health concerns over COVID-19.

In stark contrast to Musk's companies, Teamsters Local 853 represents workers at Gillig, the last wholly owned and built-in-America bus manufacturer, which is adhering to state and county health guidelines for COVID-19 and working with the union to ensure workers are protected.

"Gillig is a company that in the past actually had the opportunity to get subsidies to operate outside of California, and turned them down, instead building a state-of-the-art facility to employ more union workers in Livermore. Musk's companies have already amassed billions in corporate welfare and are seeking more during a pandemic," Aloise said.

The authors noted in the letter, "At a time when too many hardworking Californians are lined up in miles-long food bank lines trying to feed their families, Mr. Musk is looking to fatten up at the public trough once again. He has a proven track record of enriching himself and his companies instead of being a good corporate partner who understands the value of operating a fair workplace. He and his company SpaceX are not deserving of taxpayers' dollars."

Contact:

Rome Aloise, (510) 915-6430

SOURCE Teamsters Joint Council 7
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Taiwan said on Thursday it saw little chance of attending the World Health Assembly (WHA) because of Beijing, just days before the global health body was to start a two-day event held in the form of a virtual meeting in the face of the coronavirus outbreak.

Vice-President Chen Chien-jen said political pressure from Beijing has made it difficult for the self-ruled island to get an invitation from the World Health Organisation (WHO) secretariat for the assembly starting on Monday.

"With [the involvement] of politics, the chance [of Taiwan] to take part in the event of course is not big," Chen said in a press briefing in Taipei, a week before he is to step down after four years in office.

Chen said that instead of respecting professionalism, neutrality and global health concerns, the WHO secretariat had bowed to political pressure by refraining from inviting the democratic island to the global health event.

Beijing, which considers Taiwan a wayward province that must return to the mainland fold, by force if necessary, has demanded that the WHO refrain from allowing the island to attend its annual event even as an observer as long as Chen's boss, President Tsai Ing-wen, continues to reject the one-China principle.

The mainland has also claimed that Taiwan needs to go through Beijing to attend the WHA because the island is not a state and under the United Nations regulations, statehood is required for UN memberships.

It said Taiwan was able to attend as an observer between 2009 and 2016 because Ma Ying-jeou of the mainland-friendly Kuomintang observed the one-China principle during his time as president.

The WHO has stressed that it needs approval from all its 194 members before it can send out an invitation to Taiwan.

Chen said public health is more important than politics as it is not only a human rights issue, but also a global concern that exclusion of any country would create a gap in the world health system given the fast infection rate of the pandemic.

Story continues

The coronavirus, which was first reported from the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, has become a global pandemic, with more than 4.3 million confirmed infections and a death toll of close to 300,000.

The United States is by far the worst hit with more than 1.3 million cases and over 84,000 deaths " a figure that has prompted Washington to blame Beijing, for covering up the initial outbreak, and the WHO, for acting too slowly in dealing with the pandemic.

The toll on America has also prompted the US to launch a global campaign to help Taiwan join the upcoming WHA event, citing Taiwan's initial success in containing the outbreak despite its close proximity to the mainland.

Taiwan now has just 440 cases and seven deaths, a small figure compared with most other countries in the world.

Chen thanked the US for its active support for the island over the issue but stopped short of explaining why Washington did not join Taiwan's diplomatic allies in raising a proposal for the island.

So far, only 14 Taiwan's allies have raised proposals in the WHA agenda this year to support Taiwan's WHO bid and none of the non-allies, including the US, have done that.

Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said Beijing firmly opposes to invite Taiwan as an observer to the WHA.

"The purpose of individual countries who insist on discussing Taiwan-related proposals is to seriously disrupt the agenda of the assembly and undermine the international anti-epidemic cooperation," he said on Thursday. "The international community, including China, is firmly opposed to this."

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.
Meghan Markle celebrated this year's Mother's Day with an extra special treat. Aside from spending it with her dear family Prince Harry and their son Prince Archie, another person made the day memorable.

A Mother's Day Treat

The recent holiday weekend was a special occasion in Meghan's life, having celebrated Prince Archie's first birthday and being a full-time mom for over a year now. This time, however, the presence of Doria Ragland made the celebration even more meaningful.

While Prince Harry, Meghan and Prince Archie are in quarantine amid the coronavirus pandemic, they were able to spend some time with Meghan's mom for this year's celebration of Mother's Day. The family reportedly remained cautious to follow the strict social distancing guidelines during their intimate gathering.

Last year's Mother's Day for Meghan was spent in England. Doria was with the couple, too. Back then though, Meghan had just given birth to Archie and was not fit enough to travel anywhere.

In their now-inactive social media account Sussex Royal, an intimate photo of Meghan and Prince Archie was shared with a special tribute to mothers all over the world.

"Paying tribute to all mothers today-past, present, mothers-to-be, and those lost but forever remembered," stated the caption of the post.

It also emphasized Meghan's first time to celebrate Mother's Day as a mom herself.

"We honor and celebrate each and every one of you. Today is Mother's Day in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Japan, and several countries across Europe. This is the first Mother's Day for The Duchess of Sussex."

This year's celebration of Mother's Day is definitely one for the books. While everyone is in quarantine, the small family of Prince Harry, Meghan, and Prince Archie celebrated it with one of the special women in their lives.

A Mother's Love

Doria Ragland has always been close with her daughter Meghan. She has provided her the constant support she needed as she transitioned to her life into the royal family after she got married to Prince Harry.

She was also there when Harry and Meghan decided to take a step back from their royal duties to seek a more quiet life.

Ragland was notably the only family member from Meghan's side to attend the couple's royal wedding in 2018. Moreover, she was present in London a few weeks before Meghan was due to give birth to Prince Archie.

Doria has always been a quiet inspiration and force behing Meghan's pursuit of her passions. While they may not have reunited as soon as Meghan and Harry moved to Los Angeles just before the lockdown, Doria has been in touch with her daughter.

In fact, Doria was reportedly a strong driving force that encouraged the couple to build ties with Project Angel Food. It is an organization dedicated to providing food and other necessities to ill individuals. The royal couple was spotted in April delivering food packages to people who were too sick to cook and shop for themselves amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Ragland played a huge role in the Duchess' great desire to give back. A source previously told People that Doria showed her daughter the importance of giving back.

"Meghan didn't have much when she was a child, but her mom made sure they always gave back," the source said.
Restrictions on crossing the German border imposed two months ago will be ended with Luxembourg tonight. RTL investigated what the reopening of borders means for Luxembourg.

Germany confirmed that borders with Luxembourg will already reopen at midnight between Friday and Saturday. Reports on the reopening of borders and potential restrictions varied and caused confusion on social media.

Germany's Ministry of the Interior for instance said that there will not be border checks any longer but also maintained that the principle of a "valid reason for crossing the border" continues to apply. The ministry conceded that the restrictions are eased for travel for familial or personal reasons.

Three official sources told RTL that all restrictions regarding border crossings for Luxembourgers will be lifted as on Saturday. The state chancellery of Rhineland-Palatinate confirmed that Luxembourgers will be able to enter Germany without any restrictions. Travelers of course have to respect the general sanitary rules.

Trier mayor Wolfram Leibe also told RTL on Wednesday that his city was looking forward to Luxembourgish visitors.

A spokesperson of Germany's federal police similarly explained in an email exchange with RTL that there will no longer be checks at the border.

According to the spokesperson, it is therefore not necessary to have a "good reason" to enter the country. Police will nevertheless carry out an increased number of checks inside the country - but this has already been the case before Germany officially closed its borders on 16 March.

EU nationals will not be quarantined in Germany

German officials decided that EU nationals will not need to be quarantined for two weeks when entering the country. The mandatory quarantine nevertheless applies to immigrants from outside of the EU.
Cate Blanchett played the elegant elf Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy.

But the actress, 51, wanted to make a far more rugged cameo, asking director Peter Jackson whether she could act out her secret dream role as the 'bearded lady'.

Speaking on Marc Maron's WTF podcast on Monday, the Oscar winner said that despite appearing in every LOTR film, her experience was too short.

'There's not many chicks in Tolkien': Cate Blanchett played the elf Galadriel in the Lord of the Rings film trilogy, but she also wanted make a far more rugged cameo as the 'bearded lady'

'For me it was super quick,' Cate said of her experience on set.

'There's not too many chicks in the Tolkien universe. I loved it so much and I did say to Peter [Jackson] and Fran [Walsh, producer], they were doing a banquet scene with a whole lot of, I think it was a whole lot of dwarves.

'I always wanted to play the bearded lady, so I asked them, "Could I be your hairy wife woman when you pan across the banquet table of dwarves?"'

Confession: Speaking on Marc Maron's WTF podcast on Monday, Cate said: 'I always wanted to play the bearded lady, so I asked them, "Could I be your hairy wife woman when you pan across the banquet table of dwarves?"' Pictured on February 17 in London, England

Unfortunately, she wasn't able to fulfill her bearded lady dreams due to timing constraints.

'Of course I couldn't because the timing shifted. But it takes them forever. For me, Galadriel was just three weeks,' she said.

Cate went on to explain that she only discovered J. R. R. Tolkien's books as a 'demi-adult'.

Bad news: Unfortunately, she wasn't able to fulfill her bearded lady dreams due to timing constraints. Pictured in The Fellowship of the Ring with Elijah Wood, who played Frodo Baggins

Despite her acting resume proving her good taste, Cate admitted she used to prefer the 'bad fiction you'd pick up in the supermarket'.

Cate first appeared as Galadriel in The Fellowship of the Ring in 2001.

Despite her relatively brief filming schedule, Cate was the only actor to appear in every LOTR and Hobbit film.
The Tripura government would distribute free textbooks to 14000 students enrolled in nearly 73 private Bengali medium schools in the state due to COVID-19 pandemic.

Estimated expenditure of Rs. 60 lakhs would be required for this initiative, said Education Minister Ratan Lal Nath.

In respect to the current COVID-19 pandemic, our government has decided to provide free books to all Bengali Medium privately run schools ( Class I to VIII). There are approximately 73 schools with 14000 students....., Nath wrote on his Facebook.

He added that the decision was taken after school authorities of many of the private Bengali medium schools requested the government to provide the books during the lockdown period.

After coming to power in 2018, the BJP-IPFT government introduced NCERT curriculum and textbooks from Class 1 to 12.

 We have introduced both NCERT curriculum and text books in our schools and even translated those books into Bengali. We are grateful to our teachers who had role in this job. In general, the private Bengali medium schools purchase these books. Only this year, we have decided to provide the books free due to lockdown situation,  he told the media at Civil Secretariat on Thursday late evening.

The schools that have already purchased the books, would be paid back through State Council of Educational Research and Training ( SCERT), he added.

The state government and its aided schools have demand of 25,37,107 textbooks from Class 1 to Class 8. But the state placed order for 26, 25,865 books this year explaining that those were kept for those who dont find the books available.

Till now, the government received 25,39,715 books. Of these, the government distributed 24,99623 books through school inspectors offices.

There are 4,398 government and its aided schools and 335 private schools in the state.

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Lockheed Martin Wins $904 Million Contract to Build Combat Helicopters for US, India

Sputnik News

00:00 GMT 15.05.2020

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - The United States awarded aerospace giant Lockheed Martin more than $900 million to build 21 maritime combat helicopters for India and three for the US Navy, the Defence Department said in a statement.

"Lockheed Martin Corporation of Owego, New York is awarded a $904,800,000.... contract for the production and delivery of three MH-60R Seahawk maritime aircraft for the US Navy and 21 MH-60Rs for the government of India", the release said on Thursday.

Earlier in the month, the company won more than $6 billion to produce interceptors and other equipment for the Patriot anti-aircraft and anti-missile defence system.

In April, the US military awarded a contract worth more than $500 million to Lockheed Martin to build eight F-16 fighter jets for Bulgaria.

The Seahawk is a maritime variant of the US Army's Black Hawk helicopters. The helicopters are part of a $3 billion security pact US President Donald Trump finalized with New Delhi during his visit to India in February.

 Sputnik

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Members of a Myanmar government investigative committee inspect an UN-marked vehicle that was attacked by gunmen, in Minbya township, western Myanmar's Rakhine state, May 13, 2020.

An investigative team formed by the Myanmar government to probe the shooting death of a local World Health Organization worker in volatile Rakhine state last month has begun its probe, local lawmakers said, but witnesses say they are afraid, and rights activists say they believe the government will use the process to blame its foe, the Arakan Army.

Unknown gunmen fired on a U.N.-marked vehicle driven by local WHO employee, Pyae Sone Win Maung, and Myanmar health department worker Aung Myo Oo as they transported COVID-19 test samples from the conflict zone to Yangon on April 20.

It is still not know whether the Myanmar military or the rebel Arakan Army (AA) was behind the shooting in Minbya township, though both sides have blamed the other for the ambush that killed Pyae Sone Win Muang and injured Aung Myo Oo.

The investigative team began their work on Wednesday in Rakhine's capital Sittwe.

We can say they have started their investigative work since they are in Rakhine state, state lawmaker Hla Thein Aung from Minbya township told RFA on Thursday. They have met with members of the state government. They also have met with the state parliament speaker.

The speaker suggested that they meet with persons concerned on the ground, he added.

State lawmakers also recommended that the investigative committee take measures to protect the safety of witnesses to the shooting.

As far as we know, the witnesses are scared of them, said Aung Win, a state lawmaker who represents Rakhine's Myebon township. They should show that they can protect the witnesses for whatever testimony they provide.

Both military troops and the AA fired the gunshots, so its difficult to conclude who was responsible for the shooting, he said. But weve got the witnesses, so it is essential to give them protection from possible danger on account of whatever information they provide.

Dr. Aung Thurein, a member of the investigative committee, told RFAs Myanmar Service that he was not ready to answer media questions.

Myanmar President Office's spokesman Zaw Htay told a press conference on May 1 that an investigation would be conducted to satisfy the international community because an employee from an international organization had been killed.

He also said that the probe would confirm that the AA was responsible for the attack.

Meetings are superficial

Aung Myo Min, director of the human rights education group Equality Myanmar, said Zaw Htays comments blaming the AA could undermine the objectivity of the investigative committee.

That the spokesman of the Presidents Office accused the AA is irresponsible, he told RFA. He said the committee is investigating the incident only to alleviate international pressure.

This statement could affect the objectivity of the committee, he said. It suggests that the committees work will be focused on finding proof that the AA is responsible, so it will limit its efforts to deliver justice and to determine the real parties responsible for the attack, depending on the situation on the ground.

Nearly 300 local domestic groups issued a statement on April 23 requesting that the government form an independent and objective committee to investigate the deadly incident.

Zaw Zaw Tun, secretary of the Rakhine Ethnics Congress, one of the organizations that appealed for justice, said it is not yet known whether the investigative committee members will meet with Myanmar and Arakan soldiers with regard to the shooting, but suggested that this would not affect the outcome of the probe.

They should have the authority to meet all the witnesses on the ground and all the parties involved in the incident to accurately assess what happened, he told RFA.

The meetings with members of the state parliament and state government are just superficial, he added. We want to know if the committee will have an opportunity to meet with troops from both sides. [But] if they cannot, it wont make any difference.

AA spokesman Khine Thukha told RFA on May 1 that the rebel force, which is fighting Myanmar troops for greater autonomy for the Rakhine people in the state, would not cooperate with the investigative committee, but would work only with an independent, international probe.

Myanmar military spokesman Brigadier General Zaw Min Tun said that soldiers will cooperate with the investigation.

The military will cooperate with the investigative committee formed by the Presidents Office and will help it conduct the investigation on the ground, he said. We believe it will produce objective findings.

Myanmar has launched a series of investigations of military misdeeds, but none have produced results judged meaningful by victims or human rights experts.

"The lack of independence of Myanmars judges, as well as the current constitutional and legal framework that prevents the civilian authorities from holding the military or its members accountable for human rights violations, significantly dim the prospects for any credible justice mechanism in Myanmar, Human Rights Watch said in a December 2019 analysis.

Myanmar State Counselor Aung San Suu Kyi (standing) addresses the judges of the International Court of Justice during a three-day hearing on the Rohingya genocide case against Myanmar at The Hague, the Netherlands, Dec. 11, 2019. Credit: Associated Press ICJ compliance report

Myanmar is scheduled, meanwhile, to submit its first compliance report to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) next week, a spokesman from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday, though he did not reveal the contents of the document.

The country faces a trial on genocide charges at the international tribunal for the alleged military-led expulsion of more than 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh amid a brutal crackdown on Muslim communities in northern Rakhine state beginning in August 2017. Myanmar has denied the genocide charges, largely without addressing the evidence or specific accusations.

In January, the ICJ ordered Myanmar to implement provisional measures to protect the Rohingya from genocide, preserve evidence of alleged crimes that could be used in later hearings, and report on its compliance with the measures until the court issued a final decision on the case.

The first report is due by May 23, with follow-up reports required every six months until the ICJ issues a final ruling.

I cannot say much, Chan Aye, director-general of the Foreign Affairs Ministrys International Organizations and Economic Department, told RFA. The only thing I can say is that we are going to submit the report before that date. We will submit it on time.

No progress

The Myanmar military, meanwhile, is conducting a court-martial of soldiers accused of killing Rohingya civilians in northern Rakhines Gu Dar Pyin village in August 2017, as recommended in the report of the Independent Commission of Enquiry (ICOE) that the Myanmar government set up to probe the crackdown.

Some of our work is related to the ICOE reports suggestions, Chan Aye said. The government formed the ICOE before the issues got to the ICJ.

Both the Office of the Attorney General and the military are working to fulfill the ICOEs suggestions, he added.

Khon Ja, coordinator of the Kachin Peace Network, said she has not seen any progress with human rights for the Rohingya, who are considered illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and subjected to systematic discrimination.

So far, I havent seen any progress, she told RFA. The international pressure could relieve some problems for the Rohingya.

Violations are still rampant in Rakhine and in southern Chin state, as we have seen, she said, referring to violence targeting civilians amid the armed conflict between Myanmar troops and the AA.

These crimes may not account for genocide, but they may account for war crimes, Khon Ja added. Many rights violations are occurring,

Reported by RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Ye Kaung Myint Maung. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin.
Infants in Ukraine born to surrogate mothers for foreigners are stranded because the countrys borders are closed under coronavirus restrictions, preventing parents from the United States, Europe and elsewhere from travelling to collect them.

Ukraines human rights ombudswoman has appealed to authorities to find a solution.

About 100 children are already waiting for their parents in different centres of reproductive medicine. And if quarantine is extended, then it will not be about hundreds, but about thousands, said Lyudmila Denisova.

Ukraine has a thriving surrogate industry and is one of the few countries that legally allows the service for foreigners.

Concern is high that a long border closure will place a burden on clinics and distress the parents.

The issue attracted wide attention after BioTexCom, the countrys largest surrogate operation, posted a video showing dozens of babies in bassinets arrayed in tight rows in two large rooms of its Hotel Venice where the clinic puts up clients.

At BioTexCom, a surrogate mother receives between $15,000 and $17,000 for giving birth to a baby.

Rafa Aires from Spain managed to get in before the lockdown. He was united with his daughter Marta but cannot leave as Kyiv has suspended almost all flights and he needs to finish the paperwork.

It means a stressful wait for his wife, Maria, who was unable to travel with him due to work.

Every day I make video calls with my wife for one hour or an hour and a half for her to see the baby, he said. It is very difficult.

Nurses and medical personnel in this hotel are wonderful. They make my life easier, he said.

BioTexComs video, which aimed to reassure absent parent that their little ones were receiving good care, showed nurses bathing and caressing them and spurred the government into action.

The issue remains unresolved, but we are developing a mechanism to get out of the situation, said Denisova, who met with foreign ministry representatives on Thursday.

Under the proposed mechanism, foreign parents would have to write a statement addressed to Denisovas office, which would then contact the ministry with a request to give permission to enter Ukraine.

About 50 clinics that offer surrogate births operate in Ukraine. The countrys economic struggles drive many Ukrainian women to become surrogate mothers.

The government says it can only permit parents to enter Ukraine if it receives a request from the relevant embassy.

Ukraines restrictions are to remain in place until at least May 22.
At least five persons were feared killed in an ongoing ethnic violence in Tinno community, in Lamurde Local Government Area of Adamawa State.

Residents told PREMIUM TIMES violence erupted following a disagreement between the Hausa community and Chabo tribe, after a motorcycle accident.

A source said, The violence began around 9:a.m Friday and the fighting is still going as of 3:p.m. You can hear the sound of gunshots from the background as we talk.

READ ALSO:

As Im talking to you now, we counted the corpses of five persons, and there are no security personnel drafted in the area yet, a resident of the area who asked not to be named for security reasons said.

The state police spokesperson, Sulaiman Nugroje, confirmed the incident but did not give details.
I applaud the decision by Linda and Quent Cordair to reopen their art gallery ("Going back to work, no matter what," April 28).

We live in a world where many people are silently standing by as government orders violate rights and destroy lives. Most of those opposing these orders appear ignorant and misinformed about the nature of the real threat we're all facing.

The Cordairs are doing a great job standing up for their rights. It's admirable to see them doing this in a responsible and thoughtful way that limits risk to a level even lower than grocery stores and other stores that are currently open.

I've bought a number of artworks from this gallery. I haven't bought anything from their store without seeing it in person first, so I understand the importance of their physical store in sustaining their business. I'm hopeful their courageous actions will keep them in business for years to come.

This virus was affecting the way we work and live before the government stepped in. I was working from home well before the stay-at-home order went into effect, as were many others. With the examples from Italy, Seattle, and subsequently New York, many people willingly remained at home and patronized local businesses less. This was already a major threat to businesses faced with challenging decisions.

It's unfortunate that these orders have gone beyond a threat to health and business, and made it a threat to our rights to life, liberty, and property. That has made the decisions even more difficult for business-owners like the Cordairs, who now have to fight for freedom in addition to fighting for the business they spent many years building.

I admire their courage in standing up to these orders and fighting for the values they worked a lifetime to achieve. It's inspirational, and worthy of the art in their gallery.

Chad Mills

San Francisco
2 Sisters Found Dead Under a Bridge in Georgia, Officials Searching for Vehicle

Two sisters were found dead under a bridge in Rome, Georgia, and now the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is searching for a missing vehicle.

The Floyd County Chief Deputy Coroner Connie Chandler identified the two victims as Vanita Nicole Vera Richardson, 19, and 30-year-old Truvenia Campbell, 30, according to Northwest Georgia News. They were found dead under the Etowah Bridge, officials said.

Police told CBS46 that both sisters were in a gold 1997 Toyota Corolla on Tuesday, May 12.

Initial reports from authorities said the victims had bags over their heads and shotgun shells were found in the area around where they died, according to the Coosa Valley News.

GBI Assistant Special Agent In Charge Brian Johnston told Northwest Georgia that the bodies were found by Georgia Department of Transportation workers while they performed routine maintenance on the bridge

Weve been called to assist on the investigation into two bodies that were found just over the bridge here that were apparently dropped over the bridge, Johnston said, according to CrimeOnline.

Johnson told the website that no suspects have yet been named. Were working on those leads right now. Thats about all the information I can give you right now, Johnston said.

Floyd County Schools spokesperson Lenora McEntire Doss issued a statement after Richardson was found dead. Richardson had attended Armuchee High School and was slated to graduate this year.

We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by the news of the death of one of our students, Vanita Richardson, who was scheduled to graduate next Saturday, read the statement, according to Northwest Georgia News.

We extend our deepest sympathies to the Armuchee Community and her friends and family at this time. Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Vanita will be remembered for being a fun-loving, humble, and motivated student who was making strong plans for her future.

The circumstance surrounding their deaths is still under investigation.

Anyone with information about the vehicle or the investigation should contact the Georgia Bureau of Investigations hotline at 1-800-597-8477.

Other details about the case were not provided.
Photographer and filmmaker Leonora Burke, from California, first learned about a tiny rat terrier puppy named Penny Loggins from some old neighbors who were fostering the miniature dog. During that time, Penny had already been bounced around a few foster homes following her rescue at Hancock Park in Los Angeles.

While the little energetic terrier might have initially struggled to find her forever home, Penny certainly stuck with Burke, who discovered quickly enough that sometimes, a puppy with too much energy is simply looking for bigger and brighter challenges.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Penny Loggins (@pennyloggins) on Oct 15, 2014 at 8:50am PDT

Sharing Pennys story with The Epoch Times via email, Lurke explained that the puppy, which was estimated to be around a few weeks old in 2014, was found by someone in the park, who took her to a PETCO.

A kind employee then took the puppy in until she could find a proper foster through the stores adoption fair. However, the puppy was returned by the first foster home. Soon after, the puppy, which needed a lot of care, arrived at Burkes former neighbors who fostered her for a month.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Penny Loggins (@pennyloggins) on Mar 23, 2018 at 11:07pm PDT

Burke, who caught sight of Penny, wanted to adopt her but found out that someone else was already filing the adoption papers at that time. I figured it wasnt meant to be but I told my friend I was happy she would have a home and to let me know if it didnt work out, Burke said.

However, 10 days after, Burke received a call that Penny had been returned within two days.

She had such bad separation anxiety that she cried all day and the adopters landlord said that the puppy had to go, Burke shared. I immediately went to meet her.

She then decided that she was going to keep Penny.

Burke, who got Penny home immediately, discovered that the 10- to 12-week-old puppy was smart and rambunctious and had more energy than the pooch knew what to do with. However, instead of holding that against the small dog, Burke decided to channel the energy into trying to train her new four-legged companion. For about six months, Burke taught her how to sit and some other basic dog tricks.

Penny, who happens to be a good learner, picked it up easily and then needed something more challenging.

I thought that since dogs have the cognitive ability of a toddler she might be able to learn shapes, Burke said. And then shapes became spelling and, last year, spelling became counting.

Like training a little child, it did take a lot of patience on Burkes part, but eventually, Penny started to count numbers from 1 to 3 using cute little letters. However, it doesnt just stop at that; the impressive dog can spell out what she is, which is D-O-G, and spell her name by laying down the letters in order.

(Courtesy of Leonora Anzaldua Burke)

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Penny Loggins (@pennyloggins) on Nov 24, 2016 at 9:29pm PST

Pennys antics go beyond just spelling and counting. The smart dog also keeps a watchful eye on her fellow canines. One of the ladies who works at the doggy daycare told me that Penny will come alert her to other dogs misbehaving and I have seen her keep other dogs in line when Im watching friends pups, Burke said.

Penny, who has been with Burke for the last five and a half years and will turn 6 in June 2020, is an extraordinary dog. The little dog just seems to get smarter by the year.

(Courtesy of Leonora Anzaldua Burke)

Burke mentioned that Penny is also quite attuned to what people want. The energetic dog is well behaved and doesnt have accidents or act out.

However, the last few weeks have been quite hard for Penny due to the quarantine measures. I noticed she seemed a little bored and down; so we started working on spelling DOG again. (Wed gotten a little lax and she forgot.), Burke said.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Penny Loggins (@pennyloggins) on Jun 16, 2017 at 3:52pm PDT

Although Burke has spent a lot of time and energy in caring for Penny, it has been worth it.

She is the sweetest, best behaved, smartest little critter and she makes my life better every day, Burke said.
Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy to Celebrate 2020 Graduates with Online Commencement Ceremony

Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy (LAVCA), an online public charter school, will celebrate the Class of 2020 during a virtual commencement ceremony on Monday, May 18th.

Monday's virtual graduation will celebrate the achievements of 104 students.

Collectively, the Class of 2020 reports it has been accepted to trade schools, colleges and universities across the country, including: the United States Military Academy West Point, Purdue University (News - Alert), Louisiana State University, Louisiana Tech University, and the National EMS Academy.

"Our personalized approach to teaching and learning really helps cultivate student success," said LAVCA Head of School Danielle Scott-Johnson. "The skills they've earned at LAVCA and the experiences they've had in an online learning environment are sure to benefit them in the months and years ahead."

Students enroll in LAVCA for a number of reasons-some are looking to escape bullying, some may have fallen academically off track, and others are looking for an alternative to the traditional classroom setting. LAVCA student access a robust online curriculum in the core subjects of math, science, English language arts, history, art and music as well as a host of electives. These live virtual classes are taught by state-licensed teachers.







Details of the graduation ceremony are as follows:

WHAT: Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy 2020 Graduation Ceremony

WHEN: Monday, May 18, 2020 11:00 AM CT

WHERE: Sign up to watch the graduation here: https://tinyurl.com/LAVCA2020Grad

About Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy

Louisiana Virtual Charter Academy (LAVCA) is a full-time online public school program that serves students in grades K through 12. LAVCA is available tuition-free to Louisiana students through a partnership between K12 Inc., the nation's leading provider of proprietary K-12 curriculum and online education programs, and Community School for Apprenticeship Learning Inc. (CSAL). Founded in 1997, CSAL is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to provide students with real-world experiences by giving them access to alternative forms of instruction. For more information about LAVCA, visit lavca.k12.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005006/en/




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Because Volvo 240s tend to keep running for many years, because so many 240s were built during their near-20-year production run, and because Volvo 240 owners love their cars enough to keep them alive, plenty of these squared-off Swedes remain on the street to the present day. That means used-up examples of the 240 continue to flow into the big self-service car graveyards I frequent, and this options-loaded, medium-high-mile 240 wagon in Colorado seemed worth documenting.

Just as everyone who cares about old Volvos today refers to the Amazon by its Swedish-market name rather than its American-market name (122S), so does every Volvo freak refer to any 240 wagon as a 245, regardless of the badging Volvo happened to have used in that model year. If you care about being exact, all US-market 240s were badged with "240" followed by the trim level from the 1986 through 1993 model years, no matter how many doors they had. The DL trim level was the bottom-of-the-line one in 1987.

This car got some nice optional features, despite being a lowly DL with three pedals. Look, an AM/FM/cassette stereo with digital display!

It also has factory air conditioning, which many Volvo buyers saw as a frivolous waste of money and gasoline, even as late as 1987.

This mileage figure is fairly typical for 240s of this vintage, though I've seen plenty of junked Volvos with far more miles on the clock.

This 2.3-liter, naturally-aspirated B230F straight-four made 114 horsepower in 1987. These cars didn't weigh as much as you might think (the boxy shape gave the impression of great bulk), just over 3,000 pounds in the middle 1980s, so they weren't as slow as that power number might suggest.

The slushboxification of the American driving public had made great advances by 1987, but a good-sized minority of 240 buyers still opted for the manual transmission. Sadly for this car, selling a high-mile (non-sporty) vehicle with three pedals can be nearly impossible. When someone trades in a non-turbo 240 with a manual at a dealership, its junkyard fate is all but assured.

Story continues

Many years ago, the owner of this car served in the Navy at NAS Lemoore in California's Central Valley. I see many military parking permits on the vehicles in this Colorado Springs yard, but most of them came from nearby Fort Carson. When I visit the Pick-n-Pull in Fairfield, California, the military permits tend to come from just-next-door Travis Air Force Base.

This shell-bead necklace will go to the crusher with the rest of the car.

Some junkyard shopper bought the roof rack.

That snow-covered mountain in the center background is the legendary Pikes Peak. I always enjoy shooting photographs at this yard.

Sure, go ahead and buy a minivan for your family instead of a new 240 that is, if you care nothing about the lives of your children!

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If the school year still begins after Labor Day, classes would start on Sept. 8, 2021, and end on June 17, 2022.

Under the pre-Labor Day plan, schools would open on Aug. 23, 2021, with the last day of classes on June 3, 2022.

Last year, with the General Assemblys repeal of the so-called Kings Dominion law, Virginia school divisions gained the ability to open before Labor Day without a special state waiver. The law, originally passed in 1986, was intended to protect millions of dollars of economic activity in the final weeks of summer.

Information about the proposed pre-Labor Day schedule was supposed to be presented at community meetings in March and April, but they were ultimately cancelled because of the health crisis.

School Board member Marcie Shea said should could see the benefits of an extended school year calendar as both an educator and mother of young children.

But she said she would want to consider public opinion before voting for such an option.

I know my experiences are not necessarily indicative of all our stakeholders, she said.
Prof Akin Abayomi, Lagos state commissioner for health, has confirmed that the Dubai returnee who died few days ago did not die from Coronavirus.

Few days ago, the health commissioners in a tweet said one of the Dubai returnees had died of Covid-19 complications.

Prof Akin Abayomi revealed that its been confirmed that the Dubai returnee did not die from Coronavirus.

He further disclosed that they were led to believing the man might have contracted Coronavirus, following the sudden nature of his demise.

Read his tweet below;
The global food flavors market is expected to grow by USD 2.75 billion as per Technavio. This marks a significant market slowdown compared to the 2019 growth estimates due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic in the first half of 2020. However, steady growth is expected to continue throughout the forecast period, and the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 4%.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005313/en/

Technavio has announced the latest market research report titled Global Food Flavors Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Request challenges and opportunities that influence COVID-19 pandemic Request free sample pages of the food flavors market

Read the 120-page report with TOC on "Food Flavors Market Analysis Report by Product (Natural flavors and Artificial flavors), Geography (Europe, North America, APAC, South America, and MEA), and the Segment Forecasts, 2020-2024".

https://www.technavio.com/report/global-food-flavors-market-industry-analysis

The market is driven by the premiumization in the food and beverage industry. In addition, the increasing demand for food flavors in processed foods is anticipated to boost the growth of the food flavors market.

The growing health consciousness among consumers has increased the demand for premium food products with new flavors. This is encouraging players in the market to offer different varieties of premium flavors for a wide range of food products and thus expand their customer base. For example, Mane, a France-based manufacturer of premium high-performing natural flavors, is offering new premium natural flavors such as Amarena, Burnt Sugar, Crema Fiorentina, and Mascarpone. Similarly, Germany-based Symrise offers a wide range of exotic and premium flavors, which are available in liquid, powder, and seasoning forms. Therefore, the ongoing premiumization in the F&B industry is expected to fuel the growth of the global food flavors market during the forecast period.

Buy 1 Technavio report and get the second for 50% off. Buy 2 Technavio reports and get the third for free.

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Major Five Food Flavors Companies:

Archer Daniels Midland Co.

Archer Daniels Midland Co. operates its business through segments such as Ag Services and Oilseeds, Carbohydrate Solutions, Nutrition, and Other. The company offers natural food flavors under its portfolio, WILD Flavors.

BASF SE

BASF SE operates its business through segments such as Chemicals, Materials, Industrial Solutions, Surface Technologies, Nutrition Care, Agricultural Solutions, and Other. The company offers flavors for the food and beverage industry under its portfolios, Divergan, and omega-3.

Firmenich SA

Firmenich SA operates its business through segments such as Perfumery, Flavors, and Ingredients. The company provides a wide range of food flavors under its TasteGEM portfolio for different kinds of products such as dairy, confectionery, soups, and noodles.

Givaudan SA

Givaudan SA operates its business through segments such as Fragrance and Flavour. The company produces different types of food flavors for various categories, which include sweet goods, savory, snacks, and dairy. Some of the food flavors offered by the company include citrus and vanilla.

Kerry Group Plc

Kerry Group Plc operates its business through segments such as Taste Nutrition and Consumer Foods. The company offers different varieties of flavors such as sweet flavors and their extracts, savory extracts, and distillates.

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Food Flavors Market Product Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024)

Natural flavors

Artificial flavors

Food Flavors Market Regional Outlook (Revenue, USD Billion, 2020-2024)

Europe

North America

APAC

South America

MEA

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report

Related Reports on Consumer Staples Include:

Global Chocolate Flavor Market Global chocolate flavor market by application (food products and beverage products) and geography (North America, APAC, Europe, South America, and MEA).

Global Wasabi Market Global wasabi market by application (food and beverages and medical and nutraceuticals) and geography (APAC, Europe, MEA, North America, and South America).

About Technavio

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With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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Though the usual Florida sunshine was hidden by thick clouds on Thursday (May 14), the mood at Pompano Park was more than sunny as the track hosted 13 qualifying races.

Horsemen lauded the efforts the track crew, as well as the efforts of The Florida Standardbred Breeders and Owners Association, the Florida Amateur Driving Club, and racing secretary Joe Zambito in putting together the program that went "without a hitch," according to Hall of Fame driver Wally Hennessey.

"Yes," echoed Hennessey, "all of the races went off 'without a hitch,' and all of us horsemen were very thankful that everyone put in a huge effort to put everything together and make this happen."

Hennessey drove four winners on the qualifying card, including wins with the impressive Mike Deters trainee Prairie Panther in 1:55.4 and the Jim McDonald sophomoree Ideal Perception in 1:56.3.

Hennessey had very high praise for this sophomore son of American Ideal, who won four of 11 starts and $56,588 last season to go along with a 1:51.3 mark at The Meadowlands.

"I think he's got a real chance to be very prominent this season ... easy to handle with a very high turn of speed. It was extremely windy today and nothing bothered this horse. I never had to ask him for anything. I think he going to be a very good one!"

Other prominent trainers and drivers who participated on the card were Mickey McNichol, Rick Plano  who drove a pair of winners, Gaston Lareau, Fern Paquet Jr.  who had a trio of wins, Frank Petrelli  who had a pair of wins, Dave Ingraham, Peter Blood, Jim Meittinis and Mike Micallef.

Micallef will be on this way to race at Pompano Park's "sister track," Scioto Downs, in a few days and appreciated the opportunity to get his horses tighter as that Ohio oval readies for a May 22 pari-mutuel opening.

"This was a blessing for all of us horsemen to get our horses ready with what we hope will be a 'virus' free summer. Hats off to all that made this happen!"

Pompano Park expects to be in action for their regular season as the "Winter Capital of Harness Racing" in early November.

(Pompano Park)
Gov. Kate Brown announced that 31 of 36 counties can reopen many shuttered businesses beginning Friday, even as a handful of those jurisdictions lack the number of contact tracers initially said to be required to investigate coronavirus infections.

The Oregon Health Authority earlier set a standard that each county in Oregon must have at least 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents.

But state officials said Thursday that wasnt a make-or-break requirement, particularly for counties with relatively few cases that meet other criteria and have the ability to add tracers if needed.

Rather than require them to basically hire people who wouldnt have a lot to do right now, we wanted to know that they had a solid plan for how to be able to ramp up that capacity quickly, said Patrick Allen, director of the Oregon Health Authority. And so it was a combination of whats their success today, whats their load of cases and whats their ability to add to those tracers.

The per capita targets for all Oregon counties total 631 tracers statewide. That number is about half of what some experts say is needed during the pandemic, and state health officials say they eventually want at least 800, if not more. In the early stages of the outbreak, when Oregon had fewer than 100 tracers, county health departments quickly became overwhelmed and officials dont want a repeat.

Oregon has had a comparatively low outbreak so far, with about 3,400 coronavirus infections and 137 deaths. Thursdays announcement underscores that Brown and public health officials wont strictly evaluate benchmarks and are trying to work with counties to not only reopen but remain open.

Its unclear how many counties failed to meet the per capita tracing benchmark because state officials have declined to provide a tally. But a review by The Oregonian/OregonLive of reopening plans submitted by each county suggests at least four may fall short.

Deschutes County, for instance, has only six contact tracers. Based on its population, the state health authority previously said it would need 30.

Deschutes so far has identified 91 infections and officials say theyve been able to conduct necessary contact tracing with their six workers.

Jill Johnson, a supervisor for the countys communicable disease programs, said Deschutes has plans in place to redirect staff and strike partnerships with area hospitals and clinics for more staffing.

We just dont want to have a whole 30 people with nothing to do, she said.

Training could be held immediately, and staff could be added within probably a couple of days or so, she said.

Its in everybodys best interest to make sure were ready to respond, she said.

Lane County also does not meet its per capita benchmark of 57 tracers. The county reported in its application that it had eight employees and could expand to 20. An additional pool of 200 staff and volunteers, including from the University of Oregon, could be tapped to go higher, if needed.

Lane County has identified only 61 infections.

Jason Davis, a county spokesman, said tracing capacity could be increased quickly to address any possible surge and that officials are well-prepared.

We certainly recognize that thats not enough to shoulder what could be a second wave, he said of the existing eight employees.

Its unclear if Douglas County, which reported 24 infections, meets the ratio. While 17 tracers would be needed, the countys plan identified 13 existing employees and three others who had been redeployed, for a total of 16. Three others were reportedly interested, depending on employment details.

A county spokesperson did not respond to an email.

Union County, meanwhile, submitted a plan for three tracers, not the four listed by the state. A spokesperson for the county didnt respond to an inquiry.

Union County has reported only four infections.

Dr. Dean Sidelinger, the state health officer and epidemiologist, said officials looked at contact tracing needs holistically. The state prerequisites listed not only per capita tracers, but also the ability to launch contact tracing on nearly all cases within 24 hours and ensuring a diverse workforce.

Thats how we made that decision: Looking at that paragraph as a whole, he said. We didnt look at one individual sentence. We needed to see that they met the criteria to be able to meet the needs of their community.

Meanwhile, state officials also expressed confidence in Oregons testing capacity as communities begin reopening and infections become easier to spread.

Oregon hospital labs and other facilities have the ability to process about 22,000 tests a week. State officials now recommend anyone with a cough, shortness of breath or difficulty breathing be tested, or anyone with two symptoms such as fever, sore throat, headache, chills, muscle pain or new loss of taste or smell.

Sidelinger said he believes there will be sufficient supplies to test anyone who gets sick going forward.

That is correct, he said. Our recommendations, which came out a week ago, recommend that providers test anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19.

While most counties can reopen Friday, five will not.

Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties have yet to seek approval from Brown. Officials also rejected plans for Marion and Polk counties, saying they havent seen a decrease in daily hospitalizations over the past two weeks.

Sidelinger said 24 Marion County residents and nine Polk County residents were admitted to the hospital between April 26 and May 9.

He said the state did not see the required downward trend. He said the daily hospitalization count for the two counties would not be publicly released to protect patient privacy.

As counties begin reopening, state officials will continue to monitor hospitalizations and other data to determine if a county needs to restore distancing measures.

Well take those situation by situation, Sidelinger said, so that we can try to ensure we are providing for the safety of individuals in Oregon and that we are not implementing measures that are going to be even more disruptive to the economy.

-- Brad Schmidt; bschmidt@oregonian.com; 503-294-7628; @_brad_schmidt

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Vietnam should only declare Covid-19 free nationwide when all Covid-19 patients have been cured and there is no longer any risk of infection from overseas.

Vietnam has been able to control Covid-19 in the community, but is not in condition to declare the end of the pandemic nationwide, VnExpress quoted Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Huy Nga, former head of the General Department of Preventive Medicine under the Ministry of Health as saying.

Assoc. Prof. Nguyen Huy Nga, former head of the General Department of Preventive Medicine under the Ministry of Health. Photo: TD

According to the Law on Prevention of Infectious Diseases, Vietnam, in order to be able to declare the end of an epidemic must meet the following conditions: no new case being detected after a certain period of time, meeting different conditions for each epidemic as prescribed by the Prime Minister, taking anti-epidemic measures in line with regulations, Nga cited.

He added that although Vietnam has controlled the Covid-19 pandemic in the community, the risk of infection is still there. In the time ahead, overseas Vietnamese will keep returning home. Even though they must undergo quarantine, there is still risk of contagion in isolation centers and in the community.

Vietnam should only declare Covid-19 free nationwide when all Covid-19 patients have been cured and there is no longer any risk of infection from overseas, Nga stressed.

Colonel Ha The Tan, deputy director of the Institute of Military Preventive Medicine. Photo: Ngoc Thanh

According to Colonel Ha The Tan, deputy director of the Institute of Military Preventive Medicine, Vietnam should continue to restrict, control and isolate foreign arrivals, with a view to avoiding the risk of infection import.

"When will Vietnam declare the epidemic end? We have decided that until the country meets all the conditions and no new cases of infection are recorded," Deputy Health Minister Nguyen Thanh Long told local media.

Its been 29 days that Vietnam has not detected any new infection of Covid-19. Out of 288 cases as of May 14, 260 have been cured and discharged from hospital, accounting for 90% of the case toll.

Vietnam's reputation for preventing the Covid-19 epidemic has been enhanced. The World Health Organization, the USs Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and international media have lauded Vietnams success in dealing with the pandemic. Hanoitimes

Anh Kiet
Meghan King Edmonds is getting real about her time in quarantine with three toddlers.

The former Real Housewives of Orange County star offloaded in a blog post on Friday detailing the difficulties she's encountered as a single mother following her split from husband Jim Edmonds last year.

In the post titled 'Diary of a single mom in quarantine...' Meghan, 35, reveals her children scream 'non-stop' and also describes her heartache at seeing son Hart - who has a brain injury and struggles with his motor skills - regress.

Single mom struggle: Meghan King is talking about life in quarantine with her three toddlers

'I forgot what silence sounds like. My kids scream non-stop. They can't verbally communicate well, even though cognitively they know what they want. And my house doesn't have carpetso there is nothing to muffle the sounds as they reverberate off every wall.' Meghan writes.

'There is nowhere to hide from the constant screaming. Not even the bathroom is safe. Try to pee in silence, let alone listen to yourself thinknever mind, don't waste your precious energy.'

Meghan shares daughter Aspen, three, and twin sons Hayes and Hart, 23 months, with Jim and is currently taking care of them at her home in Los Angeles while Jim stays at their other property in Missouri.

While the blonde beauty admits she has a nanny, and a beautiful spacious home, she still finds it very challenging with three extremely energetic and opinionated children.

'I forgot what silence sounds like. My kids scream non-stop. They can't verbally communicate well, even though cognitively they know what they want.' Meghan writes in her new blog

Managing: Meghan shares daughter Aspen, three and twin sons Hayes and Hart, 23 months, with Jim and is currently taking care of them at her home in California while Jim stays at their other property in Missouri

'I dont have a yard. There is no enclosed, outdoor space for my kids to run and play and burn off some of that toddler energy. And Im going crazy.

'So yes, I am incredibly fortunate but I'm still going nuts. Because I'm still a mom: a working mom. Im going through a divorce: a messy, public divorce. And I have three small children: one of whom has a disability.'

Meghan continues, 'I'm worn out. In addition to the mental toll this crazy time has taken on all of us moms, the anxiety is taking a toll on my physical health. When I feel witchy enough to leave all three kids with my nanny to go on a run outside, I get worn out because Im not used to that exertion.'

'I dont have a yard. There is no enclosed, outdoor space for my kids to run and play and burn off some of that toddler energy. And Im going crazy.' Meghan reveals

The TV personality goes on to talk about Hart's special needs and how the tot normally participates in speech therapy, physical therapy, and occupational therapy several times per week. But it's stopped since the coronavirus lockdowns.

'For me to try to takeover these therapies at home as a single-parent  it's impossible. Between trying to get my own work completed and fighting for Hart's focus (while also keeping the other two kids occupied), it just doesnt happen. Therefore I feel guilty. All the time' Meghan explains.

The mom-of-three admits that Hart's progress had plateaued back in February before the quarantine.

Full house: Meghan's daughter Aspen, three is pictured along with sons Hayes, 23 months

Meghan says: 'I'm worn out. In addition to the mental toll this crazy time has taken on all of us moms, the anxiety is taking a toll on my physical health.'

'It was the first time Id experienced a therapeutic plateau, and I felt very alone. Even special needs mamas dont talk about these plateaus so I was completely blindsided by this demoralizing development.



'But that demoralization was months ago. February. Now we are in May. And Hart has regressed. Thats right, Harts current status is below the level of that depressing plateau I just told you about. His balance is much worse than it was at the end of 2019.'

Meghan goes on to say she struggles to work, with the noise that her children make making it impossible to record her podcast.

On top of that, Meghan says she has very little personal space because daughter Aspen shares her bed with her.

'I have three bedrooms in my LA rental. The nanny takes one, the twins take another, and I take the third one with Aspen. Prior to this bed-sharing situation, I had her sleeping in my walk-in closet, but inevitably I granted the permanent transition to co-sleeping.. Its now been six months.'

Time to decompress: The former RHOC star finally made it to the beach with her kids this week amid the coronavirus quarantine

Meghan married Jim in her native St. Louis on October 24, 2014.

They split last year after Meghan accused the former MLB player of behaving inappropriately with their childrens nanny.

Jim and the nanny denied the allegations but he filed for divorce on October 25, 2019, the day after their fifth anniversary.

It was revealed last month that Jim is now in a relationship with Playboy model Kortnie O'Connor - who once had a threesome with Jim and Meghan.

Kortnie is now living with Jim in the St. Louis, Missouri home Jim and Meghan built together.

The duo have been seen working out together and drinking smoothies made in the gleaming spacious kitchen, sharing glimpses on their social media.
New Jersey is falling short in key areas when monitoring State Police for possible racial discrimination during traffic stops, according to a Thursday report by the state comptrollers office, which audits and investigates state agencies.

When State Police evaluate whether troopers pull over black drivers more frequently, officials do not compare those stops to the number of black drivers passing by overall, according to the report. They only compare troopers with other troopers.

Thats dangerous, the report said, because that could permit discriminatory conduct to go undetected system-wide as long as that conduct occurs consistently."

The federal government stopped monitoring the State Police for possible racial discrimination more than a decade ago, and some of the ways New Jersey agencies have continued oversight are working, according to the report. Video and audio of stops are well documented, for example, and the law is being followed overall.

But some weaknesses should be addressed, investigators wrote.

The last report from the state attorney generals office on traffic stops found that black drivers were involved in a disproportionate share of searches.

While black drivers accounted for just a fifth of total stops, they made up 39% of all post-stop activities, which can include having to exit the vehicle or having an officer use force, according to the data.

The disparity warranted further scrutiny, officials wrote.

Yet that analysis, the most recent available, only covered the first half of 2016.

Not knowing how black drivers have fared since made effective oversight difficult, and the report called on the state attorney generals office to publish the data in a more timely manner.

The state attorney generals office has also told the State Police to stop only comparing troopers traffic stops with other troopers at least ten times since 2012, according to the report.

State Police have acknowledged it would be preferable to compare stops with the number of drivers overall (or a similar benchmark), but the agency has taken no steps to do so," the report said.

The Attorney General and the State Police have zero tolerance for racial profiling," Leland Moore, a state attorney general spokesman, wrote in an email, and we will take swift action against anyone who engages in such conduct."

We are pleased that the Comptroller identified a number of strengths in the States oversight efforts, and we will be closely examining the full report to determine what additional actions are necessary," he said.

The State Police did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The report also noted that while State Police analysts do evaluate vehicle stops for unlawful discrimination, officials within the agency often failed to respond to their own investigators findings.

The lack of written, or at times, any, response ... is a serious weakness, the report said.

The comptrollers office also said that while State Police supervisors are stepping in when troopers violate policies, those interventions are inconsistent.

Some troopers were confronted for not following a rule, according to the report, while in similar circumstances another trooper was not issued an intervention." That invites the possibility of inappropriate, possibly arbitrary, factors guiding supervision, the report said.

In addition, troop commanders have failed to regularly sign statements confirming that they are abiding by recent reforms, according to the report. Those statements are required by law, and must be reported to the state attorney general.

State Police acknowledged theyve never signed those statements, the report said, but promised to do so going forward.

The state attorney generals office also promised to improve how it documented when a trooper searched somebody.

Thursdays report did say the state aims to post searchable data online at the end of the year, which will allow the public to analyze motor vehicle stop from 2009 through 2019.

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Blake Nelson can be reached at bnelson@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @BCunninghamN.

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BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Thursday spoke over the phone with Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin on COVID-19 prevention and control.

Wei said China and Belarus have been supporting and helping each other during the battle against the epidemic and the Chinese military is willing to continue its cooperation with the Belarusian military in epidemic prevention. The two parties also agreed to prudently advance the exchanges and cooperation between the militaries in all aspects.

Khrenin expressed Belarus' compliments for the great achievements accomplished by the Chinese government and the Chinese military in fighting COVID-19. The Belarusian Defense Minister added that they are willing to carry out exchanges on experience in battling the epidemic with China and will continue to deepen the pragmatic cooperation between the two militaries.
The young men depicted in the film, like Adnan and Mahmood and Sadek, have achieved something very powerful in the form of their relationships with one another. Residents of the camp on the island of Samos, these minors are typical of hundreds like them who say war is the only thing they remember. They are also typical because they are male and teenage: Although there are a great many girls and infants in the system, too, a large majority of the lost children in Greece are boys 14 to 17.

The teenage boys look like grown men at first, but 16 is not so very old. Unaccompanied minor is a euphemistic designation for the child who has lost everybody who might once have been able to take care of him. Many have been traveling for years and are reeling from trauma. In Container, for example, you hear Adnan describe watching his father tortured by a militia. I was detained and tortured for 46 days after my fathers death, he says. He doesnt mention how old he was when that happened.

Although the teenagers have the uncertain luck to stay in a container converted into a dorm rather than outdoors, you see in what proximity they sleep. Although the coronavirus has spared the Greek islands so far, Greek Migration Ministry officials this week confirmed two new cases on Lesbos in migrants recently arrived from Turkey. Conditions are ripe for an outbreak, and respiratory illnesses are already widespread among a population who is often cold, often rained upon. On Lesbos, I remember the camps sewage system overflowing whenever it rained hard, sending a river of human feces through the lives of 20,000 people. It is not exactly easy to wash ones hands, much less self-isolate.

Recognizing this emergency, Britain welcomed 47 vulnerable refugees this week, including at least one teenager. But there are more than 5,000 unaccompanied minors living across Greece. A significant proportion of them are either homeless or reside in the overflowing, dangerous camps on Lesbos, Khios and Samos, islands that cluster around Turkey like knuckles. Many of these minors are on long journeys that began far away in sub-Saharan Africa; others ran into the European border wall while fleeing war in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan. The boys interviewed in Container escaped the Islamic State.

These boys are tired and sad and at risk, but they sing on their bunk beds together as if they are not. The whole point of container dorms is that they create an interior where before there was nothing, only the outdoors. But close quarters dont translate to love unless you work at it: They shelter, singing, while they wait for their names to be called. Inside a six-sided metal box, these boys have forged the kind of intimacy that keeps you alive when your parents are dead.
Turkey has attacked Northern Iraq, according to repeated positions of the outlawed Kurdish workers ' party PKK. The two fighter jets destroyed according to the Ministry of defense of terrorist targets in the regions of Avasin and Baysan, as the Anadolu news Agency reported early Saturday morning. "The Mission has been successfully completed. The eagles of the heaven are always in service.

The Turkey had begun in mid - June, the air and ground operation "eagle claw" and "tiger claw" in Northern Iraq. It was directed against the PKK, the mountains in the Northern Iraqi Kandil-your headquarters and in Turkey, Europe and the United States as a terrorist organization.

The Turkey flies among other things, the air strikes in the Kandil mountains, in char, and in one of the Turkey as a Haftanin designated border region in Northern Iraq and puts troops on the ground. The Iraqi President's office had accused Turkey of violating the military action of the state sovereignty of Iraq.

Updated Date: 04 July 2020, 02:19
Five regions in New York State can begin a phased reopening when the shutdown orders expire on Friday, allowing construction, manufacturing and curbside retail businesses to commence operations after remaining closed for nearly two months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Andrew Cuomo has said.

New York State, the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US, has 343,051 confirmed virus cases. The 'New York Pause' is in effect till May 15 under which all non-essential workers are required to work from home and all people in New York to wear masks or face coverings in public, including when taking public or private transportation or riding in for-hire vehicles.

Governor Cuomo said on thursday that Central New York, the North Country, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier and Mohawk Valley Regions have met all seven metrics required to begin phase one of the state's regional phased reopening plan when 'NYS on PAUSE' orders expire on May 15.

"Phased opening does not mean the problem has gone away. It means we have controlled the problem because of what we did and because of our individual responsibility and individual actions and that has to be maintained and I would urge local governments to be diligent about the business compliance and about individual compliance.

"Then if you see a change in those numbers react immediately. React immediately. If you allow this virus to get ahead of us we will have a problem. So we'll have of the data. React immediately," he said.

These five regions can begin opening businesses for phase one, which includes construction; manufacturing and wholesale supply chain; retail for curbside pickup and drop-off or in-store pickup; and agriculture, forestry and fishing. Reopening refers to non-essential businesses and business activities. Essential businesses and business activities that are open will remain open.

The seven metrics that will define whether a region can re-open businesses are decline in total hospitalisations, decline in deaths measured by the three-day rolling average of daily new hospital deaths not exceeding 5, fewer than two new hospitalisations per 100,000 residents, hospital bed capacity regions must have at least 30 per cent of their total hospital beds available before a phased re-opening, availability of 30 per cent of ICU beds in a region, diagnostic testing capacity and contact tracing capacity.

"All the arrows are pointed in the right direction and now the question becomes focused on reopening - people have to get back to work and the state needs an economy - but we have to make sure we don't reopen too soon," Cuomo said.

"We are doing this in a calibrated way and monitoring the data, facts and metrics every single day and using the lessons we've learned from others who have already gone through this. And right now, based on our criteria, we have five regions that are poised to reopen beginning Friday," he said.

As they start to reopen certain businesses, the administration will continue to monitor the level of activity and make sure it does not create a second wave of this virus, Cuomo said.

Other regions in the state, including New York City, have not yet achieved the seven health-related criteria established by Cuomo to begin reopening.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said the city was making progress in combating the virus infections.

"Today is a very good day and you deserve the credit because it's because of your hard work that I get to tell you this good Every time you stay home, every time you socially distance, every time you use hand sanitiser even, every time you put on a face covering, you're helping to drive these numbers down and get us closer to a better place," he said.

The number of people admitted to hospitals daily for suspected COVID-19 is down from 78 to 59. Daily number of people in ICUs is also markedly down from 561 to 517.

"So that's a big movement there. That's a big jump in the right direction, bigger than we've seen most days, even when things go in the right direction so that is really important, and that means you're talking about fewer and fewer people fighting for their lives, he said.

Further, the percentage of people tested who are positive is down from 13 per cent to 11 per cent, he said.

The city has 186,293 confirmed virus cases and 15,349 confirmed deaths, people who had a positive COVID-19 laboratory test. The city's probable deaths - people who did not have a positive COVID-19 laboratory test, but their death certificate lists as the cause of death "COVID-19" or an equivalent - is 5,057 as of May 14.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pocket parks face renewed threat, says reserves group

Pocket parks on the Peninsula are under threat again, according to a group which fought to save them in 2015.

The Save Central Coast Reserves community group founder Ms Sue Chidgey said Central Coast Council's draft Local Strategic Planning Statement suggests the parks might be "better utilised" or "reinvested in alternative locations".

Six Peninsula were proposed for sale in 2015: at Mackenzie Ave and Jumbuck Close in Woy Woy, and at Pozieres Ave, Brisbane Ave and Albion St in Umina, and in Memorial Ave, Blackwall.

"My worry is that Council is again considering taking away the suburban small-pocket parks to replace them with large regional playgrounds," said Ms Chidgey.

"I'm very worried that our vital urban assets could be a risk again if Council approves its strategy about open space," she said.

"Every suburb should have reserves, playgrounds and green spaces for residents' wellbeing - to exercise, to sit in nature, for children to play.

"A mum should be able to put her child in a stroller and walk to a green space.

"Large regional parks cannot, and should not, replace small suburban reserves and residents should not have to get in a car and travel to access the benefits of a park.

"This is more and more important as the area moves to more medium density housing and it is also vital for the local environment and native animals and not put them at risk from the loss of urban green assets.

"I want residents to be aware that they need to cherish what they've got so they don't lose it.

"I don't want it to get to the point where we have specific parks being flagged and if this strategy about parks goes through it sets things up for that to happen.

"We have to nip it in the bud," Chidgey said.

Save Woy Woy Waterfront president Mr Ross Cochrane said the group was looking at the entire document and what it meant for the Peninsula as a whole.

Residents for Responsible Ettalong Development, Save Our Woy Woy and Umina-based Grow Urban Shade Trees community groups all issued statements saying they were examining the document.

The deadline to have the plan ratified by the State Department of Planning is July 1.

Council director Mr Scott Cox said a well-considered and consistent approach to planning was required to ensure that the forecast population growth was provided for and managed in a sustainable manner.

"The land use vision, planning priorities and 82 short, medium and long-term actions outlined in the Planning Statement will guide Council's future strategies, plans and policies and sets in place actions to be included in upcoming Delivery Programs and Operational Plans," Mr Cox said.
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One fallout of the COVID-19 crisis is its severe thrashing of our economy. Not only have all the impressive economic gains of the Trump administration evaporated, but we are now adding to our national debt in scary ways. I hope that all the bailouts are temporary means to solve a temporary problem.

To use an analogy: One of the saddest things about a midlife crisis is that permanent damage can be done to solve what turns out to be only a temporary problem. I pray that America wont adopt the permanent solution of socialism to solve our temporary coronavirus crisis.

One of the most frightening things about the bailouts is that some people find that they are receiving more money for not working than they did when they were working.

Long before the crisis, we have seen the rise of popularity of socialism among the young in America. A Gallup poll about a year ago found that four in ten Americans embrace some form of socialism. Yipes.

In short, if we are not careful, this crisis could end up greasing the skids toward socialism.

President Trump wants to see us inch back to work and to recovery. But many Americans want to see us embrace socialism. Long before the coronavirus crisis, NYC socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was arguing that the super wealthy should be taxed up to 70 percent of their income in order to fund the green new deal.

Dr. Richard Land, the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., knows firsthand what it is like to live in a socialist country. After graduating Princeton, he studied at Oxford to earn his Ph.D. He lived in the U.K. from 1972-1975 and experienced socialism there before Margaret Thatcher turned things around, beginning in the late 1970s. He said, It was horrible.

In a radio segment warning against socialism, he told me, In Great Britain, nothing worked.

Some people had been paying 91 percent taxes before Thatchers policies lowered it to 29 percent. She also privatized a lot of industries.

The results were amazing. Before Thatchers capitalist reforms, notes Land, England had the lowest per capita income in Western Europe. Because of her reforms, they ended up having the highest per capita income.

But, someone might ask, What about Scandinavia? Land notes that they too abandoned socialism because it doesnt work. Instead, they have capitalism with a liberal welfare state.

What about all the young Americans who claim to embrace socialism? Land notes that they are thinking of socialism as just being share and share alike. But thats not what it is. In socialism, the state becomes god. In a nanny state, you get the people more and more dependent upon the government for their very living.

That is what makes this present meltdown of the economy so frightening. There may be many on the marginal side of life who are content to rely upon the government  even as a way of life beyond the crisis.

Some people claim that the Scriptures advocate socialism. The Bible certainly promotes share and share alike. However, sharing is voluntary. Socialism involves government coercion and theft from Citizen As property on behalf of Citizen B. Meanwhile, the socialist government makes more money than either citizen in the administration of this theft by taxation and coercion.

Dr. Land observes, Some people have said that the Bible teaches socialism. Theyre wrong. Theyre simply wrong and theyre very simplistic. The Bible tells us a great deal about the nature of man, which is pretty basic. And the heart of man, according to Jeremiah, is deceitful and desperately wicked; who can know it?

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, once told me in a TV interview, [Socialism] is against human nature. The moment you tell people that the community will take care of you, they work less. It undermines character.

During the heyday of the Obama administration and their over-abundant spending on domestic programs, I asked Stephen Moore, an economist who has served both Presidents Reagan and Trump, about those who promote socialistic solutions because its the Christian thing to do.

Moore answered, I always laugh and sometimes frown when people say the Christian thing to do is to continue to spend money recklessly like we are doing now.If the government spends a dollar, that dollar has to come from somebody or somewhere.The real problem here is people say, Oh, its so Christian to be spending all of this money on all these programs, and I say, Wait a minute. Whos going to pay the cost? Isnt it Christian to care about your kids and your grandkids?

May the coronavirus crisis be a temporary one. And may we be on our guard against any socialist framework that will do irreparable damage as a solution to this, Lord-willing, temporary problem.
New Delhi: Army Chief Gen MM Naravane on Friday (May 15) said there were reasons to believe that Nepal objected to India's newly-inaugurated road linking Lipulekh Pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand at the behest of "someone else", in an apparent reference to a possible role by China on the matter.

In an interaction at a defence think-tank, Gen Naravane said there was no dispute whatsoever between India and Nepal in the area and road laid was very much within the Indian side.

"The Nepalese Ambassador mentioned that the area east of the Kali river belongs to them. There is no dispute in that. The road that we built is on the west of the river," the Army Chief said.

"There has never been any problem in the past. There is reason to believe that they might have raised the issue at the behest of someone else and that is very much a possibility," he said.

The 80-KM-long strategically crucial road at a height of 17,000 KM along the border with China in Uttarakhand was thrown open by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh last week.

Nepal on Saturday raised objection to the inauguration of the road, saying the 'unilateral act' was against the understanding reached between the two countries on resolving the border issues.

Talking about evolving security scenario in India's neighbourhood, Gen Naravane said the country will have to remain alive to a scenario of a two-front war along the Northern and Western borders but noted that he did not foresee possibility of every confrontation leading to such a situation.

On the Army's big-ticket proposal to induct youngsters for a three-year tenure under the Tour of Duty (ToD) concept, the Army Chief said the idea germinated following feedback from school and college students that they want to experience military life without opting a permanent career in the Army.

Gen Naravane said the ToD will help the Army in cutting down revenue expenses on account of payment of pensions and other benefits.

In replying to a question, he said the Army has received an order from the government to cut expenditure by 20 per cent from the current fiscal due to the COVID-19 crisis, adding the force is implementing it without compromising on its combat readiness.

Expenditure is being cut through a variety of measures including restricting large movements of troops, he said in the video-conference organised by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

On two separate incidents of face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops, he said there was no link between the two, adding "We are dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. I have not seen any concerted design into the face-offs."

"We (troops from both sides) are meeting at 10 different places and it is business as usual," he added.

On May 5, around 250 Indian and Chinese army personnel clashed with iron rods, sticks, and even resorted to stone-pelting in Pangong Tso area in Eastern Ladakh. Four days later, there was a similar face-off near Naku La Pass in North Sikkim.

On Thursday, the External Affairs Ministry said India remained committed to maintaining peace and tranquility along the border with China and noted that such incidents could have been avoided if there was a common perception about the frontier.

Asked about the possibility of India facing a two-front war along the borders with China and Pakistan, Gen Naravane said it is a possibility and that the country will have to remain prepared to deal with such a scenario.

"It is a possibility. It is not that it is going to happen every time. We have to be alive to all contingencies which can happen, various scenarios that can unfold. We have to remain alive to the possibility.

"But to assume that in all cases both fronts would be 100 active, I think that would be an incorrect assumption to make. In dealing with two front scenario, there will always be a priority front and a secondary front. That is how we look at dealing with this two front threat," he said.

He said the priority front would be addressed in a different manner while the secondary front will be kept as dormant as possible just to conserve resources to focus on the priority front.

"We should not look at a two-front scenario just as a military responsibility. A country does not go to war with its armed forces alone. It has other pillars like diplomatic corp and other organs of government which will come into play to make sure that we are not forced into a corner where we will have to deal with two adversaries at the same time and in full strength," he added.

"I think that's where the whole-of-the-nation approach will come into play," said the Army Chief.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Jeyhun Alakbarov  Trend:

Gilan Textile Park LLCs two enterprises producing medical masks and protective overalls opened in Azerbaijans Sumgayit city on May 12, Trend reports.

President of Azerbaijan Ilham Aliyev and First Lady Mehriban Aliyeva attended the opening ceremony.

For the first time, Gilan Textile Park LLC has begun to produce protective overalls; the daily production volume is planned to reach 6,000.

Presently, the products are manufactured for the domestic market, Director General of Gilan Textile Park LLC Mehriban Akhundova told Trend. "The products are made of non-woven material - high density polypropylene with a polyethylene protective membrane, which, in turn, improves the quality of products. So, the fabric is light, durable, waterproof and resistant to chemicals.

The manufactured protective coveralls protect users from viruses, infections, harmful chemicals or products, and processes that can cause vulnerability, the director general said. There is a great demand for these products in the world. Therefore, after meeting the local demand, medical masks and protective overalls are planned to be exported. Some 210 workers are involved in the production process in the enterprise.

Akhundova stressed that the enterprise has begun to produce disposable three-layer masks.

The middle layer consists of synthetic fabric, the director general said. They are resistant to various viruses and infections. At the initial stage, the enterprise plans to produce 140,000 masks daily.

Additional equipment will be installed here till late May, which, in turn, will increase the production capacity, Akhundova said. Thus, this indicator will be increased in stages up to 300,000 pieces. Thirty employees have been involved in the production process. After installing the additional equipment, the number of employees will reach 50 people."

The majority of the workers at the factory are women, the director general said. There are the cutting, sewing, packaging and quality control departments. Most workers live in Sumgayit. If the need for products increases in the future, then we may purchase additional equipment and increase the number of employees."

The need for medical masks and protective clothing has sharply increased in the world due to the coronavirus pandemic, therefore, there is a big shortage of these products in many countries.

The entire work in connection with the prevention of the coronavirus pandemic being carried out from the first days in Azerbaijan is under the constant supervision of President Aliyev.

Therefore, Azerbaijan has begun to manufacture the products, which are important in terms of protecting people's health and preventing the spread of infections. The commissioning of these enterprises ultimately shows that Azerbaijan thoroughly protects the public health at the state level.
A medical worker preparing a measles vaccine on September 10 in Auckland, New Zealand.

Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

More than 16,000 people have expressed willingness to be deliberately infected with the novel coronavirus to try to help bring about a vaccine faster.

The method of deliberately exposing people to a virus to test the effectiveness of a vaccine is called a human challenge.

There are ethical hurdles: The World Health Organization has previously said such methods could be effective but should not be used with pathogens that have high fatality rates and no cures or treatments.

The US Food and Drug Administration so far has not approved human-challenge trials for a COVID-19 vaccine.

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More than 16,000 people have shown interest in volunteering to try to speed up vaccine development for the new coronavirus by being intentionally infected with the virus, CNN reported this week.

They would do so in what is known as a human-challenge study, a method that can expedite a vaccine's development because it directly exposes participants to the virus instead of waiting months to see how many vaccinated people become infected in their day-to-day life compared with a placebo group, according to CNN.

According to the World Health Organization, human-challenge studies are not required for every vaccine's development but can be requested in some cases.

"Animal models are often quite imprecise in reflecting human disease, and many infectious organisms against which a developer might wish to develop a vaccine are species-specific for humans," WHO wrote in a 2016 report on human-challenge models.

There are ethical hurdles in this case, however, as WHO said in the report that the method should not be used for pathogens with high fatality rates or no treatments.

"For example, if an organism causes a disease with a high case fatality rate (or there is a long and uncertain latency period) and there are no existing therapies to prevent or ameliorate disease and preclude death, then it would not be appropriate to consider human challenge trials with such an organism," WHO wrote.

Story continues

Scientists working on a vaccine for COVID-19 in Keele, England.

Carl Recine/Reuters

The idea of using a human-challenge trial for COVID-19 was sparked by a March 31 article in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, CNN reported.

The article argued that while such a study would pose risks to its participants, "every week that vaccine rollout is delayed will be accompanied by many thousands of deaths globally."

"It's an idea that is controversial when people hear about it for the first time," the bioethicist Nir Eyal, who coauthored the paper, told CNN. "However, we show that if you select people in the right way and conduct the trial in the right way, it's surprisingly low risk and certainly within the bounds of what we already approve."

Now, more than 16,000 signatories from 102 countries have signed on to a nonbinding statement on a new advocacy website called 1 Day Sooner that said "I am interested in being exposed to the coronavirus to speed up vaccine development."

According to CNN, most of the signatories were young adults. It interviewed Abie Rohrig, a 20-year-old college student from New York, who said he was interested in participating "for the benefit of humanity."

The advocacy site also quoted anonymous signatories who described wanting to help bring about a vaccine quickly.

"I'm a young, healthy student and want to help develop a safe vaccine quickly, and am happy to volunteer to be part of this process," one signatory was quoted as saying. "The importance of this outweighs personal risks in my opinion."

Even if the vaccine were to work, a human-challenge study of the novel coronavirus would almost certainly give some participants COVID-19 since there would most likely be a placebo group as well.

That means that while the method could bring about an effective vaccine more quickly, it also presents risks. The virus, though far more severe in the elderly and those with underlying health conditions, has been associated with deaths or complications in young adults as well. Its full effects are unclear, and treatment options are limited.

Numerous promising vaccine trials and medications for COVID-19 are being developed or trialed around the world. If such a study were to move forward in the US, it would need to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration.

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Syracuse, N.Y. -- Central New York has been given the green light to reopen the economy Friday after the coronavirus shutdown, but its not full speed ahead, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said.

We need to be smart, McMahon said today, just hours after Gov. Andrew Cuomo swept into town and confirmed that the region had met the last of seven criteria to reopen at midnight.

Were going to be a little more together now and theres going to be more contact, so lets not take the success we have had as community for granted, MaMahon said.

McMahon announced that the county had performed more than 1,500 coronavirus tests since Wednesday in a last-ditch -- and successful -- effort to meet state guidelines on testing. The states reopening metrics require regions to maintain a monthly testing rate of 30 tests for every 1,000 residents, based on a seven-day average of new tests. In Central New York, that means an average of 775 tests a day.

The region is now hitting 1,048 tests per day on a seven-day average, McMahon said.

McMahon also announced that two more county residents had died of Covid-19, the illness caused by the virus. That brings the death toll since March 24 to 84.

As we certainly have a new chapter in front of us, at the same time the grim reality is that the virus is here and still impacting us today, he said.

The region, which includes Onondaga, Cayuga, Madison, Oswego and Cortland counties, joins the North Country, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley and Southern Tier as ready to reopen. The restart will proceed in phases, with businesses in industries such as construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade and others going first.

Businesses will need to tell the state, using an online form, theyre practicing safety guidelines as they reopen. That document will have to be on the premises so county inspectors can see if the business is approved, McMahon said.

Not everybody who can open on Friday will be reopening, Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh said.

Just because businesses can reopen doesnt mean they should, Walsh said. For businesses that do fall into phase one, you have to use common sense to do whats best for you and your business, and reopen in a way that works for you and most importantly that is done safely.

While phase one wont include in-store shopping or reopening bars, it will mean a broad spectrum of the economy will come to life again: home building and remodeling, distribution chains, manufacturing, McMahon said.

This is all going to begin tomorrow," he said. Thousands if not tens of thousands of employees will be getting back and starting to earn a wage. Thats going to generate economic activity, but there is risk with this. We have to balance it.

Central New Yorkers will have to be vigilant to avoid large gatherings and continue social distancing, McMahon said.

Even though were coming back together, were smart enough to come back together in a way that mitigates the risk, he said.

McMahon also gave an update on the numbers:

-- Confirmed Covid-19 cases are up to 1,523, an increase of 35 from the day before.

-- 21,828 tests have been done; results have come back on 20,694. With 1,523 positive tests, thats a positive rate of 7.4%.

-- Active cases rose by 21 to 785. The number of people in isolation and quarantine was 1,688, about 400 more than a week ago. McMahon said that number will continue to grow because the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued new guidelines that keep people in isolation longer.

-- Current hospitalizations remained at 56. Of those, 16 are in critical condition; one more than Wednesday.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Small businesses: Here are 3 steps you need to take to reopen under NYs new rules

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

CNY just had its deadliest week of coronavirus. The region could reopen for business anyway
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The death toll at nursing homes and adult care facilities on Staten Island and across New York City amid the coronavirus pandemic continues to increase, according to data released by the state Department of Health.

Of the 254 total deaths reported in nursing homes across the borough, 94 were patients who tested positive for the virus and 160 were patients presumed to have been infected based, in part, on their symptoms. A total of four deaths were reported at adult care facilities.

The Archdioceses Carmel Richmond Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in Dongan Hills is now reporting a combined 58 deaths, 56 confirmed and two probable.

The crisis was addressed in a recent statement by Stephen Hanse, CEO of New York Health Facilities Association, and the New York State Center for Assisted Living.

Preventing and containing the spread of COVID-19 is incredibly difficult in a long-term care setting," Hanse said. Nursing homes and assisted living communities are doing everything they can with the resources they have been given to slow the acceleration of the virus for our residents.

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

The second-highest number of deaths is being reported at Clove Lakes Health Care and Rehabilitation Center, in Castleton Corners, where a total of 34 deaths have been reported, including 11 positive cases and 23 probable cases, the data shows.

Here are the fatalities reported at other facilities:

Eger Health Care and Rehabilitation Center, in Egbertville: 31 deaths overall, one confirmed, 30 probable

New Vanderbilt Rehabilitation and Care Center, in Clifton: 26 deaths -- three confirmed, 23 probable

Silver Lake Specialized Rehabilitation Center and Home, in Brighton Heights: 25 deaths, all categorized as probable

Sea View Hospital Rehabilitation Center and Home, in Sea View: 24 deaths -- five confirmed, 19 probable

Verrazano Nursing Home, in Tompkinsville: 19 deaths -- 6 confirmed, 13 probable

Golden Gate Rehabilitation & Health Care Center, in Meiers Corners: 14 deaths -- 10 confirmed, four probable

Staten Island Care Center, in New Brighton: 12 deaths -- two confirmed, 10 probable

Richmond Center for Rehabilitation and Specialty Healthcare, in Stapleton: 11 deaths all categorized as probable

The deaths on the state list "dont distinguish between infections that may have originated in a particular nursing home and those that were introduced to the nursing home by already-infected patients coming from the hospital, Jon Goldberg, a spokesman for the Archdiocese, which runs Carmel Richmond, previously told the Staten Island Advance/SILive.com.

Out of a sense of responsibility to its residents, ArchCare committed early on to testing as many residents as test supplies would allow," Goldberg said in the statement.

A CRITICAL PIECE IN THE PUZZLE

In March, Dr. Ginny Mantello, the boroughs director of health and wellness, told the Advance/SILive.com that nursing homes were a critical piece in the puzzle to lessen the burden on hospital systems.

Mantello credits nursing home facilities across the Island for recognizing that keeping the coronavirus out of individual homes was an impossibility, and taking the approach that it was the homes moral duty ... their obligation to the community, to the hospitals, to everybody, to be able to help decant these patients out of the hospitals in an effort to reduce hospital overload.

The Knights of Columbus donated masks recently to Carmel Richmond Nursing Home, which has been the hardest hit facility in the borough. (Staten Island Advance/Rebeka Humbrecht)

POLS CALLING FOR INVESTIGATION

Fourteen Assembly members from both sides of the aisle are calling for a probe independent of the states Health Department (DOH) into New Yorks handling of COVID-19 in nursing homes across the state.

At the onset of the pandemic, one nurse at a borough facility told the Advance/SILive.com workers were frustrated and concerned about a lack of protective equipment, saying not a single worker has N95, not a single person."

Assembly members who signed a letter to the chairmen of the Committees on Health; Oversight, Analysis, and Investigation; and Aging, included Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) and Michael Reilly (R-South Shore).

.@NMalliotakis & I joined our @NYS_AM colleagues calling for legislative hearings on the crisis in NYS nursing homes.Thank you to our colleague, AM Kevin Byrne, Ranking Minority Member of the Assembly Committee on Health, for leading this effort. @Byrne4NYhttps://t.co/3fzL4LHpE2  Mike Reilly (@MikeWReilly) May 14, 2020

The letter stated in part: New Yorks nursing homes lacked a sufficient amount of personal protective equipment (PPE), proper protocols for infection response and containment, and adequate testing for patients and staff.

New York ranks 34th in the nation in the percentage of nursing home deaths due to the coronavirus. About 30% of all coronavirus-related fatalities on Staten Island have occurred in nursing homes.
Labor Department figures released this peg the countrys number of unemployment at an all-time record of 36.5 million -- a stark reversal from the once-hot job market of eight weeks ago before the coronavirus crisis took hold.

But many government contractors we reached out to over the past week have told us that their hiring plans are full-steam ahead, while some described changes in process to adapt to a world of remote work and social distancing.

Here is what some of them told us.

Amentum

Our headcount has increased since the beginning of the fiscal year by more than 3 percent. We currently have 600-plus openings -- we are actively hiring, Bob Rusidin, executive vice president of human resources, said via email.

BAE Systems Inc.

The British defense company's U.S. subsidiary says it has filled more than 2,500 roles so far this year and has more than 3,000 open positions.

During the COVID-19 pandemic we have not stopped our hiring, but we have modified our hiring practices, a BAE Systems Inc. spokeswoman said.

BAE is looking at hiring requirements to identify the positions that are essential to operations and the ability to deliver to.

For now, we are only hiring for these essential positions and are putting all other hiring on pause temporarily, she said.

The company has moved interviews and meetings online where possible and they are enforcing strict social distancing measures during the on-boarding process, including training. The moves are to protect current and prospective employees, the spokeswoman said.

Boeing Defense, Space & Security

To prepare for a smaller post pandemic market, weve also made tough decisions to reduce our commercial airplane production rates and reduce staffing levels across the enterprise, said a spokesman for the companys defense segment.

However, as we take difficult action, we also continue to hire in certain areas to meet key customer commitments. For example, we expect to fill more than 4,000 positions in support of our key defense, space and government services programs this year.

Booz Allen Hamilton

The firm has about 2,500 open requisitions to continue to support and are hiring to meet that demand -- especially for cleared technical professionals and particularly in areas like analytics, cybersecurity, digital, and engineering, a spokeswoman said.

Were using a combination of phone and video interview platforms so that candidates can feel connected with our teams. Weve also shifted to an all-virtual onboarding experience, including an immersive day-long remote orientation where new hires are introduced to our culture, their colleagues, and receive guidance on how to have a successful start at Booz Allen.

CACI International

CACI has optimized our virtual recruiting and onboarding strategy fueling the companys continued growth. Candidates have readily adapted along with our recruiting team to what is now our main stream approach to building our workforce of tech talent that is critical to national security, Chief Human Resources Officer Angie Casper said via email.

Our expanded internship program, the largest in the companys history, is building our workforce of tomorrow. These students and early-career professionals will help CACI add the talent to increase the expertise and invent the technology our customers need.

CGI Federal

A CGI Federal spokeswoman said the IT services firms federal subsidiary is averaging more than 300 open positions each week in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan region for experienced-level roles.

CGI saw its number of hires made rise by 42 percent on a sequential basis in the January-March quarter and sees that continuing into the April-June period, she added.

General Dynamics

General Dynamics is advertising on its careers page roughly 2,800 open positions for the IT services segment, while the Mission Systems business focused on hardware and other products has 340 job advertisements.

Officials for General Dynamics IT said the business "continues to hire talent at healthy and consistent levels despite the crisis" and that with virtual hiring processes in place, "our ability to hire and onboard talent has not been impacted by the pandemic.

"GDIT remains committed to early talent development and despite COVID-19 will launch a virtual internship program in June," they added.

A spokesman for GD Mission Systems said they currently have 463 open requisitions and 582 new employee starts since March 1, with 230 interns slated to begin onboarding Monday.

GD Mission Systems has also launched an FAQ page for job seekers that explains how the company is replacing many in-person interviews with phone or video interviews, but with some exceptions where that in-person interview is critical for the position.

If the exception is the case, social distancing and other cleanliness practices are encouraged but shaking hands is discouraged.

Telecommuting is also being highly encouraged for positions whose responsibilities can be carried out remotely. But some positions do require on-site work and GDMS will make candidates aware of that during the interview process.

Huntington Ingalls Industries

We look to hire over 3,000 people by the end of the year across the enterprise, a company spokeswoman told us, adding that its Technical Solutions business focused on government services has more than 300 open positions.

Technical Solutions recruiters are engaging in virtual career fairs and are using the hashtags TSDisHiring and TSDCares for a LinkedIn campaign.

Many new hires to TS are working from home until the time comes to transition back to the office.

ICF

ICF is actively hiring across divisions given our diverse client base and various markets we serve. In response to the global health crisis, we've also implemented a completely virtual interview and onboarding process, a company spokeswoman told us.

We've extended over 600 offers from January-April 2020. As of this week, we have over 500 job openings.

L3Harris Technologies

An L3Harris spokesman told us the plan is to hire 6,000 new employees this year, while 2,500 have already been brought on this year so far. In addition, the company has 1,400 open requisitions and anticipates 2,100 new openings.

The new hires are to address growth in existing programs, as well as to back-fill for normal attrition at locations around the globe, the spokesman added. New L3Harris hires include experienced professionals and new college graduates, primarily in technical, manufacturing and administrative positions. The company has 825 new college graduates starting this summer and more than 740 interns sponsored this year.

L3Harris is headquartered in Melbourne, Florida. But the company also touts the Washington, D.C. and Dallas metropolitan areas, plus those of Salt Lake City and Rochester, New York as major locations.

Leidos

A Leidos spokesman told us the company is advertising 3,737 open positions, with 2,521 of them being in an actively working state and 1,215 having accepted a future start.

Total of 5,659 new positions from January 2020 through last Friday 5/8.

CEO Roger Krone touted the companys hiring trends and pre-pandemic changes in approach as key to its continued growth and success in a May 5 earnings call.

To support our businesses' continuing growth, our talent acquisition efforts continue to attract and hire 100 or more new employees each week, Krone said. We hired over 1,800 in the first quarter. This result is made possible by our recruiting and onboarding programs, which adopted a number of virtual practices well before the current COVID-19 crisis.

Lockheed Martin

In a May 8 statement, Lockheed said it has hired more than 2,365 new in the U.S. since the COVID-19 crisis began and is actively recruiting for more than 4,600 roles. Lockheed has also allocated $320,000 in new funding to transition 13 existing apprenticeship programs into virtual ones.

ManTech International

A ManTech spokesman told us the company is using virtual means for continuing for interview and hire, while also using telework to conduct virtual new hire orientations. In addition, ManTechs online learning programs are going full-steam ahead.

We currently offer all employees free access to Skillsoft's more than 40,000 business and technology courses, which has been used by all 9,000 employees, the spokesman said. We also offer tuition-paid degree programs in cyber, cloud and analytics through our partnership with Purdue University Global. These initiatives are a major driver of employee satisfaction and loyalty, and a key selling point with prospective new hires.

Maximus

A Maximus spokesman said the company has hired 19,263 new employees so far this year with March showing the highest rate with most of that having been the works for some time to ramp up staff for the contract in support of the 2020 Census.

Maximus also expects to hire an additional 15,000 staff by the end of this year when factoring in current contract awards, new work pipelines for those programs and normal hiring cycles, the spokesman said.

New hire orientations are conducted via video conference and equipment is being shipped to them. For positions where that work cannot be done remotely, Maximus said it is taking every precaution to ensure a safe work environment under guidelines by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other government entities.

Equipment distribution is done in a way that supports social distancing, in many cases involving the use of a cart or distribution window to have the equipment placed by an IT professional, where they can then walk away and have the new hire collect their equipment without having to interact with one another, Maximus added.

Training classes have been thinned out to support social distancing. Trainers are using video conferencing and other technology tools to provide support to new hires from a safe distance.

Northrop Grumman

In an April 29 earnings call, CEO Kathy Warden said Northrop is actively recruiting for 10,000 new positions and hired more than 3,500 new people in the first quarter with 1,300 hires in March alone.

The company has also moved virtual as you might expect to accommodate most of that hiring, Warden said.

Open positions are both to support the companys current contracts and in anticipation of future awards, although the latter category only sees hiring if Northrop does receive those awards.

The labor market was very tight at the beginning of this year. As we were working through the last two months, we're seeing that attrition is dropping, as you might expect, as other opportunities are becoming more scarce, Warden said. We are in the process of looking at what that may present as both challenge and opportunity for us going forward.

Even with that backdrop, Warden said the company does expect significant headcount growth this year because of the program volume increases that we have, the sales growth as well as the anticipated awards in the latter half of this year.

PAE

A PAE spokesman said they have hired 1,186 new employees so far this year, while the company has approximately 1,120 openings.

PAEs work supporting the U.S. government is never done and were recruiting in this unprecedented time, Chief Human Resources Officer Patricia Munchel said. Weve successfully transitioned to both hosting and participating in virtual career fairs and have implemented several other innovative approaches to hiring to reach our target audiences around the globe.

Parsons

In an emailed statement, Parsons Chief People Officer Deb Fiori said the company has nearly 2,000 open requisitions across its federal and critical infrastructure businesses.

Ninety-percent of Parsons 16,000 employees began to work remotely on March 16. For hiring and onboarding, Fiori said Parsons is conducting interviews via video conferencing and nearly all phases of onboarding have gone virtual as well.

The company has also begun to deliver IT and other employee assets directly to their homes rather than out of a central office. They also have added enhanced IT support for virtual setup.

Offer letters also now contain qualifying language due to tentative start dates and location flexibility as the COVID-19 situation evolves, Fiori said.

We are pulsing employees through Waggl in various parts of our business to obtain inputs on their work experience with COVID and using this data to improve the experience weekly once onboarded, Fiori added. We are providing additional support to employees via virtual tools on overall employee well-being due to anticipated increased stress and anxiety once onboarded.

The company also is training managers on virtual assimilation, engagement and management of team members including new hires.

Peraton

A Peraton spokesman told us the company has hired 126 new employees over the COVID-19 crisis two months so far and has 447 current openings.

Primary job categories of interest include software engineer, systems engineer, network engineer, project and program engineer, field engineer, plus full stack developer and engineer.

Peraton is conducting interviews via phone and video, and has moved to virtual Skype new hire orientation to effectively onboard new employees, the spokesman added.

Science Applications International Corp.

An SAIC spokeswoman told us the company has hired roughly 2,000 new employees so far this year and that with 700 funded openings, we have not paused or slowed down our hiring efforts.

With a largely dispersed workforce prior to COVID-19, we already maintain an infrastructure that accommodates the virtual onboarding of our employees, the spokeswoman added. During the first quarter of this calendar year, we hosted six virtual hiring events and for the second quarter, we have 29 events scheduled, and we will continue to host virtual meetings throughout the year.

We are very pleased with the outcome of these events, and building on this success, weve shifted to virtual recruiting events only through the end of the calendar year.

Raytheon Technologies

An RTC spokesman told us the company currently has more than 2,700 openings across its defense businesses and many for engineering-related positions. Given the commercial aerospace market turmoil, the company is working with its employees on that side of the house to shift those with the necessary skillsets into those positions when possible.

Additionally, the company has significantly changed hiring, internship and onboarding programs through virtual interviews and virtual career fairs.

Some of our businesses are also hosting full virtual interview days, consisting of a virtual company overview by an RTX executive, followed by multiple virtual interviews with several hiring teams and approximately 125 candidates attending, the spokesman said.
Among Texas barbecue joints, Feges BBQ is unique in that it is located in the food court at Greenway Plaza, the sprawling campus of office buildings just east of the Galleria.

Known as The Hub, this food court serves thousands of office workers for breakfast and lunch, Monday through Friday.

Or at least it did.

With the stay-at-home order associated with the coronavirus pandemic, most office workers are now working from home and The Hub is closed both for lack of customers and for safety reasons.

Among the dozen or so food vendors in The Hub, this represents an existential crisis. Their entire clientele and revenue stream dried up within days. For Feges BBQ, it is an unexpected reversal of fortune for husband-and-wife owners Patrick Feges and Erin Smith, who opened to great fanfare in 2018.

Like most Texas barbecue joints, Feges and Smith have pivoted their business model to adapt to the changes wrought by the pandemic. But their location in a food court has greatly complicated that effort.

But first lets address the elephant in the room: Why open a Texas barbecue joint in a food court?

More Information Feges BBQ Pre-order online for curbside pickup at Greenway Plaza (weekdays) or at Spring Branch and Montrose pop-ups on weekends. See More Collapse

Its important to note that The Hub is not your typical food court usually associated with malls and airports. Its become something of an incubator for up-and-coming restaurateurs and chefs as a relatively inexpensive way to open a restaurant. Greenway Coffee, Burger Chan and Rice Box in addition to Feges BBQ are some of the heralded small food vendors located there.

For Feges and Smith, The Hub offered several benefits. The landlord shouldered much of the cost to build-out the kitchen and order counter. Also, being surrounded by office buildings meant there was a built-in clientele and never-ending stream of foot traffic. And because The Hub is only open for breakfast and lunch during weekdays, it offered a better work-life balance (weekends off!) to start a family.

Indeed, this all worked to plan with steady business and a stream of accolades including a two-star review from Alison Cook and a spot in Texas Monthly magazines Top 25 New Barbecue Joints in Texas. Pitmaster Feges came up with a tongue-in-cheek label for his restaurant: The best food court barbecue in Texas. Business progressed to the point where Feges and Smith recently announced a second location in a shopping center in Spring Branch.

Alas, if the food-court business model is particularly well-suited for a start-up barbecue joint, it is particularly ill-suited for a start-up barbecue joint during a pandemic.

Their customer base disappeared completely. Feges and Smith had enough money on hand to pay their seven employees for a week after they initially closed. Then, after briefly furloughing staff, they received a Payroll Protection Program loan and have brought their employees back on board to implement a radically different game plan to survive.

Though Greenway Plaza is still officially closed to the public  the doors are literally locked  some office workers are slowly returning and have access to The Hub. Feges and Smith have reopened the order counter in The Hub so the trickle of returning office workers can pre-order from a limited menu for pick up (the food-court seating area is still closed). They have also implemented a weekday, parking-lot curbside delivery system for anyone coming from outside Greenway Plaza.

On weekends, they pop-up at their upcoming location in Spring Branch on Saturdays and at Roost restaurant in Montrose on Sundays where they sell fully-cooked, chilled, and vacuum-sealed meats and sides that customers can reheat as necessary.

There are some indications that Greenway Plaza may re-open soon, which will hopefully restore the Feges primary customer base. For now though, as for most Texas barbecue joints, its a daily scramble to find new ways to survive until some sense of normalcy returns.

jcreid@jcreidtx.com

twitter.com/jcreidtx
NORTH CHICAGO, Ill., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- AbbVie (NYSE: ABBV), a research-based global biopharmaceutical company, today announced it will present data from studies evaluating the BCL-2 inhibitor venetoclax (VENCLEXTA/ VENCLYXTO), among others, from clinical trials across multiple blood cancers at the 25th European Hematology Association (EHA) Annual Congress, being held virtually from June 11-14, 2020. These data will span the company's investigational and approved oncology portfolio medicines across chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), acute myeloid leukemia (AML), acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL), multiple myeloma (MM), myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS) and myelofibrosis (MF).

"We continue to demonstrate the broad utility of our oncology portfolio  anchored by VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO and IMBRUVICA  with new, longer-term and clinically meaningful results presented at this year's EHA meeting," said Neil Gallagher, M.D., Ph.D., chief medical officer and vice president of development, AbbVie. "We are excited to share these studies with the global oncology community as they reflect our ongoing commitment to improving care for patients with various difficult-to-treat blood cancers."

Researchers will present during EHA data based on findings from the Phase 3 CLL14 trial evaluating venetoclax in combination with obinutuzumab in patients with previously-untreated CLL (abstract #S155). In March 2020, AbbVie announced the approval of venetoclax plus obinutuzumab in the European Union, based on data from the CLL14 trial.1 Additionally, several abstracts from studies of venetoclax in various tumor types will be presented, including:

Extended follow-up data from the Phase 3 MURANO trial on subgroup-analyses of venetoclax in combination with rituximab in relapsed/refractory CLL, including the impact of premature discontinuation/interruption of venetoclax on outcomes in these patients (abstracts #EP694 and #EP691)

New data on safety and efficacy will be featured from the CAPTIVATE study evaluating ibrutinib (IMBRUVICA) plus venetoclax in first-line treatment of CLL (abstract #S158)

Six-month update from the Phase 3 VIALE-C study of venetoclax in combination with low-dose cytarabine in previously untreated older patients with AML (abstract #S136)

AbbVie sponsored abstracts accepted by EHA include:

Abstract Session+ Ibrutinib First-Line Ibrutinib (Ibr) + Venetoclax (VEN) For Patients (Pts) With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL)/Small Lymphocytic Lymphoma (SLL): Efficacy And Safety Results From CAPTIVATE-MRD Study. Siddiqi et al. Abstract #S158 Oral Session: CLL  Targeted Therapy I Ibrutinib Treatment For Pediatric Chronic Graft Versus Host Disease: A Prospective Phase 1/2 Study. Zecca et al. Abstract #EP1387 E-Poster Session: Stem Cell Transplantation - Clinical Prognostic Biomarker Testing And Treatment Selections In Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia Pre- And Post-Approval Of Novel Agents. Mato et al. Abstract #EP712 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders - Clinical Application Of iwCLL Guidelines For Response Assessment In The Treatment Of Patients With Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia In The Real-World: An Analysis From The INFORMCLL Registry. Barrientos et al. Abstract #PB1908 Publication Only Abstract Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Venetoclax in CLL Extrapolating Progression Free Survival Curves In CLL Using Peripheral Blood MRD Measurements From Venetoclax Trials. Alexiou et al.; Abstract #EP708 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Efficacy of Venetoclax in Patients with Relapsed/Refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Primary Endpoint Analysis of the International Phase 3b Trial (VENICE I). Kater et al.; Abstract #S156 Oral Session: CLL  Targeted Therapy I Impact of Venetoclax Monotherapy on The Quality of Life of Patients with Relapsed or Refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Results from VENICE II Phase 3b Trial. Cochrane et al.; Abstract #EP701 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Phase 3b Study to Evaluate Debulking Regimens Prior to Initiating Venetoclax Therapy in Untreated Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Sharman et al.; Abstract #EP687 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Neutropenia Analysis of Venetoclax Monotherapy in Patients with Relapsed or Refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Pooled Data from VENICE-I and -II Phase 3b Trials. Anderson et al.; Abstract #EP718 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Fixed-Duration Venetoclax-Obinutuzumab for Previously Untreated Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia: Follow-Up of Efficacy and Safety Results from the Multicenter, Open-Label, Randomized, Phase 3 CLL14 Trial. Al-Sawaf et al.; Abstract #S155 Oral Session: CLL  Targeted Therapy I Characteristics and Outcome of Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukaemia and Partial Response to Venetoclax-Obinutuzumab. Al-Sawaf et al.; Abstract #EP699 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia and Related Disorders  Clinical Impact of Premature Venetoclax (VEN) Discontinuation/Interruption on Outcomes in Relapsed/ Refractory (R/R) Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (CLL): Results from the Phase 3 MURANO Study. Mato et al.; Abstract #EP691 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia And Related Disorders  Clinical Extended Follow-Up in BIRC3- Mutated Relapsed/Refractory Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (R/R CLL) Patients Treated With Fixed-Duration Venetoclax Plus Rituximab: Subgroup Analyses of the MURANO Trial. Kater et al.; Abstract #EP694 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia And Related Disorders  Clinical Systematic Literature Review and Network Meta-Analysis Comparing Therapies for Treatment-Naive Patients with Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Sail et al.; Abstract #EP725 E-Poster Session: Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia And Related Disorders  Clinical CLL2-GiVe, a Prospective, Open-Label, Multicenter Phase-2 Trial of Obinutuzumab (Ga101, G), Ibrutinib (I), Plus Venetoclax (Ve) in Untreated Patients with CLL With 17p Deletion / Tp53 Mutation. Huber et al.; Abstract #S157 Oral Session: CLL  Targeted Therapy I Kinetics of Response in the Peripheral Blood Predicts Long Term Responses to Ibrutinib + Venetoclax Treatment for Relapsed/Refractory CLL in the Bloodwise TAP CLARITY trial. Rawstron et al.; Abstract #S164 Oral Session: CLL  Targeted Therapy II Venetoclax in AML Long-Term Follow Up: Phase 1b/2 Study of Venetoclax Plus Low-Dose Cytarabine in Previously Untreated Older Adults with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Ineligible for Intensive Chemotherapy. Wei et al.; Abstract #EP554 E-Poster Session: Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical Timing of Response to Venetoclax Combination Treatment in Older Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia. Jonas et al.; Abstract #EP535 E-Poster Session: Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical Real-World Data (RWD) Cohort of Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) in the United States from an Electronic Health Record (EHR)Derived De-Identified Database. Flahavan et al.; Abstract #EP600 E-Poster Session: Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical Transfusion Burden on Older Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia Receiving Low-Intensity Treatments. Le Blanc et al.; Abstract #EP1739 E-Poster Session: Quality of Life, Palliative & Supportive Care, Ethics and Health Economics Phase 1b/2 Study of the IDH1-Mutant Inhibitor Ivosidenib with the BCL2 Inhibitor Venetoclax +/- Azacitidine in IDH1-Mutated Hematologic Malignancies. DiNardo et al.; Abstract #S143* Oral Session: Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical A Phase 3 Study of Venetoclax Plus Low-Dose Cytarabine in Previously Untreated Older Patients with Acute Myeloid Leukemia (VIALE-C): A 6-Month Update. Wei et al.; Abstract #S136 Oral Session: AML Randomized Trials Treatment Patterns and Outcomes of Newly Diagnosed Acute Myeloid Leukemia Patients Receiving Venetoclax Combinations Vs Other Therapies: Results from the AML Real World Evidence (ARC) Initiative. Talati et al. Abstract #PB1831 Publication Only Abstract Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical First-In-Human Study of a TRAIL Receptor Agonist Fusion Protein, Eftozanermin Alfa, in Patients With Relapsed/Refractory Acute Myeloid Leukemia and Diffuse Large B-Cell Lymphoma. Jongen-Lavrencic et al. Abstract #EP589 E-Poster Session: Acute Myeloid Leukemia  Clinical Venetoclax in MDS A Phase 1b Study Evaluating the Safety and Efficacy of Venetoclax in Combination with Azacitidine for the Treatment of Relapsed/Refractory Myelodysplastic Syndrome. Zeidan et al.; Abstract #S188 Oral Session: Myelodysplastic Syndromes  Clinical The Prognostic Impact of Cytogenetic Scores in Patients with Higher-Risk Myelodysplastic Syndrome Treated with Venetoclax and Azacitidine in a Phase 1 Study. Garcia et al.; Abstract #EP795 E-Poster Session: Myelodysplastic Syndromes  Clinical Venetoclax in ALL Safety and Efficacy of Venetoclax in Combination with Navitoclax in Adult and Pediatric Relapsed/Refractory Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia and Lymphoblastic Lymphoma. Jabbour et al.; Abstract #S116 Oral Session: Cellular, Antibody and Targeted Therapy Venetoclax in MM Updated Results from a Phase 1/2 Study of Venetoclax in Combination with Daratumumab and Dexamethasone, +/- Bortezomib, in Patients with Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma. Kaufman et al.; Abstract #EP940 E-Poster Session: Myeloma and Other Monoclonal Gammopathies  Clinical Updated Results from BELLINI, a Phase 3 Study of Venetoclax or Placebo in Combination With Bortezomib and Dexamethasone in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma. Kumar et al.; Abstract #EP939 E-Poster Session: Myeloma and Other Monoclonal Gammopathies  Clinical Evaluation of Minimal Residual Disease in Relapsed/Refractory Multiple Myeloma Patients Treated with Venetoclax or Placebo in Combination with Bortezomib and Dexamethasone: BELLINI Study Analyses. Moreau et al.; Abstract #EP975 E-Poster Session: Myeloma and Other Monoclonal Gammopathies  Clinical





The EHA 2020 Annual Congress abstracts are available at www.ehaweb.org.

AbbVie will also present data from 17 accepted abstracts during the virtual American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) Annual Meeting from May 29-31, 2020, including studies of ibrutinib, venetoclax and veliparib.

About IMBRUVICA

IMBRUVICA is a once-daily, first-in-class Bruton's tyrosine kinase (BTK) inhibitor that is administered orally, and is jointly developed and commercialized by Pharmacyclics, LLC, an AbbVie Company and Janssen Biotech, Inc. The BTK protein sends important signals that tell B cells to mature and produce antibodies. BTK signaling is needed by specific cancer cells to multiply and spread.2,3 By blocking BTK, IMBRUVICA may help move abnormal B cells out of their nourishing environments in the lymph nodes, bone marrow, and other organs.4

Since its launch in 2013, IMBRUVICA has received 11 FDA approvals across six disease areas: chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) with or without 17p deletion (del17p); small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL) with or without del17p; Waldenstrom's macroglobulinemia (WM); previously-treated patients with mantle cell lymphoma (MCL)*; previously-treated patients with marginal zone lymphoma (MZL) who require systemic therapy and have received at least one prior anti-CD20-based therapy*  and previously-treated patients with chronic graft-versus-host disease (cGVHD) after failure of one or more lines of systemic therapy.5

IMBRUVICA is now approved in 99 countries and has been used to treat more than 195,000 patients worldwide across its approved indications. IMBRUVICA is the only FDA-approved medicine in WM and cGVHD. IMBRUVICA has been granted four Breakthrough Therapy Designations from the U.S. FDA. This designation is intended to expedite the development and review of a potential new drug for serious or life-threatening diseases. IMBRUVICA was one of the first medicines to receive FDA approval via the Breakthrough Therapy Designation pathway.

In early 2019, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN), a not-for-profit alliance of 28 leading cancer centers devoted to patient care, research, and education, recommends ibrutinib (IMBRUVICA) as a preferred regimen for the initial treatment of CLL/SLL and it is the only Category 1 treatment for treatment-naive patients without deletion 17p. In February 2020, the NCCN Guidelines were updated to elevate IMBRUVICA with or without rituximab from other recommended regimens to a preferred regimen for the treatment of relapsed/refractory MCL.

IMBRUVICA is being studied alone and in combination with other treatments in several blood and solid tumor cancers and other serious illnesses. IMBRUVICA is the most comprehensively studied BTK inhibitor, with more than 150 ongoing clinical trials. There are approximately 30 ongoing company-sponsored trials, 14 of which are in Phase 3, and more than 100 investigator-sponsored trials and external collaborations that are active around the world. For more information, visit www.IMBRUVICA.com.

*Accelerated approval was granted for the MCL and MZL indications based on overall response rate. Continued approval for MCL and MZL may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials.

IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION

WARNINGS AND PRECAUTIONS

Hemorrhage: Fatal bleeding events have occurred in patients who received IMBRUVICA. Major hemorrhage ( Grade 3, serious, or any central nervous system events; e.g., intracranial hemorrhage [including subdural hematoma], gastrointestinal bleeding, hematuria, and post procedural hemorrhage) occurred in 4% of patients, with fatalities occurring in 0.4% of 2,838 patients who received IMBRUVICA in 27 clinical trials. Bleeding events, including bruising and petechiae, occurred in 39% of patients who received IMBRUVICA.

The mechanism for the bleeding events is not well understood.

Use of either anticoagulant or antiplatelet agents concomitantly with IMBRUVICA increases the risk of major hemorrhage. Across clinical trials, 3.1% of 2,838 patients who received IMBRUVICA without antiplatelet or anticoagulant therapy experienced major hemorrhage. The addition of antiplatelet therapy with or without anticoagulant therapy increased this percentage to 4.4%, and the addition of anticoagulant therapy with or without antiplatelet therapy increased this percentage to 6.1%. Consider the risks and benefits of anticoagulant or antiplatelet therapy when co-administered with IMBRUVICA. Monitor for signs and symptoms of bleeding.

Consider the benefit-risk of withholding IMBRUVICA for at least 3 to 7 days pre- and post-surgery depending upon the type of surgery and the risk of bleeding.

Infections: Fatal and non-fatal infections (including bacterial, viral, or fungal) have occurred with IMBRUVICA therapy. Grade 3 or greater infections occurred in 21% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. Cases of progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) and Pneumocystis jirovecii pneumonia (PJP) have occurred in patients treated with IMBRUVICA. Consider prophylaxis according to standard of care in patients who are at increased risk for opportunistic infections.

Monitor and evaluate patients for fever and infections and treat appropriately.

Cytopenias: In 645 patients with B?cell malignancies who received IMBRUVICA as a single agent, Grade 3 or 4 neutropenia occurred in 23% of patients, Grade 3 or 4 thrombocytopenia in 8% and Grade 3 or 4 anemia in 3%, based on laboratory measurements.

Monitor complete blood counts monthly.

Cardiac Arrhythmias: Fatal and serious cardiac arrhythmias have occurred with IMBRUVICA. Grade 3 or greater ventricular tachyarrhythmias occurred in 0.2% of patients and Grade 3 or greater atrial fibrillation and atrial flutter occurred in 4% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. These events have occurred particularly in patients with cardiac risk factors, hypertension, acute infections, and a previous history of cardiac arrhythmias.

Periodically monitor patients clinically for cardiac arrhythmias. Obtain an ECG for patients who develop arrhythmic symptoms (e.g., palpitations, lightheadedness, syncope, chest pain) or new onset dyspnea. Manage cardiac arrhythmias appropriately, and if it persists, consider the risks and benefits of IMBRUVICA treatment and follow dose modification guidelines.

Hypertension: Hypertension occurred in 19% of 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. Grade 3 or greater hypertension occurred in 8% of patients. Based on data from 1,124 of these patients, the median time to onset was 5.9 months (range, 0.03 to 24 months).

Monitor blood pressure in patients treated with IMBRUVICA and initiate or adjust anti-hypertensive medication throughout treatment with IMBRUVICA as appropriate.

Second Primary Malignancies: Other malignancies (10%), including non-skin carcinomas (4%), occurred among the 1,476 patients who received IMBRUVICA in clinical trials. The most frequent second primary malignancy was non-melanoma skin cancer (6%).

Tumor Lysis Syndrome: Tumor lysis syndrome has been infrequently reported with IMBRUVICA. Assess the baseline risk (e.g., high tumor burden) and take appropriate precautions.

Monitor patients closely and treat as appropriate.

Embryo-Fetal Toxicity: Based on findings in animals, IMBRUVICA can cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise pregnant women of the potential risk to a fetus. Advise females of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during treatment with IMBRUVICA and for 1 month after the last dose. Advise males with female partners of reproductive potential to use effective contraception during the same time period.

ADVERSE REACTIONS

B-cell malignancies: The most common adverse reactions (30%) in patients with B-cell malignancies (MCL, CLL/SLL, WM and MZL) were thrombocytopenia (54.5%)*, diarrhea (43.8%), fatigue (39.1%), musculoskeletal pain (38.8%), neutropenia (38.6%)*, rash (35.8%), anemia (35.0%)*, and bruising (32.0%).

The most common Grade  3 adverse reactions (5%) in patients with B-cell malignancies (MCL, CLL/SLL, WM and MZL) were neutropenia (20.7%)*, thrombocytopenia (13.6%)*, pneumonia (8.2%), and hypertension (8.0%).

Approximately 9% (CLL/SLL), 14% (MCL), 14% (WM) and 10% (MZL) of patients had a dose reduction due to adverse reactions. Approximately 4-10% (CLL/SLL), 9% (MCL), and 7% (WM [5%] and MZL [13%]) of patients discontinued due to adverse reactions.

cGVHD: The most common adverse reactions (20%) in patients with cGVHD were fatigue (57%), bruising (40%), diarrhea (36%), thrombocytopenia (33%)*, muscle spasms (29%), stomatitis (29%), nausea (26%), hemorrhage (26%), anemia (24%)*, and pneumonia (21%).

The most common Grade 3 or higher adverse reactions (5%) reported in patients with cGVHD were pneumonia (14%), fatigue (12%), diarrhea (10%), neutropenia (10%)*, sepsis (10%), hypokalemia (7%), headache (5%), musculoskeletal pain (5%), and pyrexia (5%).

Twenty-four percent of patients receiving IMBRUVICA in the cGVHD trial discontinued treatment due to adverse reactions. Adverse reactions leading to dose reduction occurred in 26% of patients.

*Treatment-emergent decreases (all grades) were based on laboratory measurements.

DRUG INTERACTIONS

CYP3A Inhibitors: Co-administration of IMBRUVICA with strong or moderate CYP3A inhibitors may increase ibrutinib plasma concentrations. Dose modifications of IMBRUVICA may be recommended when used concomitantly with posaconazole, voriconazole, and moderate CYP3A inhibitors. Avoid concomitant use of other strong CYP3A inhibitors. Interrupt IMBRUVICA if strong inhibitors are used short-term (e.g., for  7 days). See dose modification guidelines in USPI sections 2.4 and 7.1.

CYP3A Inducers: Avoid coadministration with strong CYP3A inducers.

SPECIFIC POPULATIONS

Hepatic Impairment (based on Child-Pugh criteria): Avoid use of IMBRUVICA in patients with severe baseline hepatic impairment. In patients with mild or moderate impairment, reduce recommended IMBRUVICA dose and monitor more frequently for adverse reactions of IMBRUVICA.

Please click here for full Prescribing Information.

About VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO (venetoclax)

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO (venetoclax) is a first-in-class medicine that selectively binds and inhibits the B-cell lymphoma-2 (BCL-2) protein. In some blood cancers, BCL-2 prevents cancer cells from undergoing their natural death or self-destruction process, called apoptosis. VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO targets the BCL-2 protein and works to help restore the process of apoptosis.

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO is being developed by AbbVie and Roche. It is jointly commercialized by AbbVie and Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, in the U.S. and by AbbVie outside of the U.S. Together, the companies are committed to BCL-2 research and to studying venetoclax in clinical trials across several blood and other cancers.

VENCLEXTA/VENCLYXTO is approved in more than 50 countries, including the U.S. AbbVie, in collaboration with Roche, is currently working with regulatory agencies around the world to bring this medicine to additional eligible patients in need.

Uses and Important VENCLEXTA (venetoclax) U.S. Safety Information6

Uses

VENCLEXTA is a prescription medicine used:

to treat adults with chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) or small lymphocytic lymphoma (SLL).

in combination with azacitidine, or decitabine, or low-dose cytarabine to treat adults with newly-diagnosed acute myeloid leukemia (AML) who:

are 75 years of age or older, or



have other medical conditions that prevent the use of standard chemotherapy.



This indication is approved under accelerated approval based on response rates. Continued approval for this indication may be contingent upon verification and description of clinical benefit in confirmatory trials

It is not known if VENCLEXTA is safe and effective in children.

Important Safety Information

What is the most important information I should know about VENCLEXTA?

VENCLEXTA can cause serious side effects, including:

Tumor lysis syndrome (TLS). TLS is caused by the fast breakdown of cancer cells. TLS can cause kidney failure, the need for dialysis treatment, and may lead to death. Your healthcare provider will do tests to check your risk of getting TLS before you start taking VENCLEXTA. You will receive other medicines before starting and during treatment with VENCLEXTA to help reduce your risk of TLS. You may also need to receive intravenous (IV) fluids into your vein. Your healthcare provider will do blood tests to check for TLS when you first start treatment and during treatment with VENCLEXTA. It is important to keep your appointments for blood tests. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have any symptoms of TLS during treatment with VENCLEXTA, including fever, chills, nausea, vomiting, confusion, shortness of breath, seizures, irregular heartbeat, dark or cloudy urine, unusual tiredness, or muscle or joint pain.

Drink plenty of water during treatment with VENCLEXTA to help reduce your risk of getting TLS. Drink 6 to 8 glasses (about 56 ounces total) of water each day, starting 2 days before your first dose, on the day of your first dose of VENCLEXTA, and each time your dose is increased.

Your healthcare provider may delay, decrease your dose, or stop treatment with VENCLEXTA if you have side effects.

Who should not take VENCLEXTA?

Certain medicines must not be taken when you first start taking VENCLEXTA and while your dose is being slowly increased because of the risk of increased TLS.

Tell your healthcare provider about all the medicines you take, including prescription and over-the- counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. VENCLEXTA and other medicines may affect each other causing serious side effects.

including prescription and over-the- counter medicines, vitamins, and herbal supplements. VENCLEXTA and other medicines may affect each other causing serious side effects. Do not start new medicines during treatment with VENCLEXTA without first talking with your healthcare provider.

Before taking VENCLEXTA, tell your healthcare provider about all of your medical conditions, including if you:

have kidney or liver problems.

have problems with your body salts or electrolytes, such as potassium, phosphorus, or calcium.

have a history of high uric acid levels in your blood or gout.

are scheduled to receive a vaccine. You should not receive a "live vaccine" before, during, or after treatment with VENCLEXTA, until your healthcare provider tells you it is okay. If you are not sure about the type of immunization or vaccine, ask your healthcare provider. These vaccines may not be safe or may not work as well during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

are pregnant or plan to become pregnant. VENCLEXTA may harm your unborn baby. If you are able to become pregnant, your healthcare provider should do a pregnancy test before you start treatment with VENCLEXTA, and you should use effective birth control during treatment and for at least 30 days after the last dose of VENCLEXTA. If you become pregnant or think you are pregnant, tell your healthcare provider right away.

are breastfeeding or plan to breastfeed. It is not known if VENCLEXTA passes into your breast milk. Do not breastfeed during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

What should I avoid while taking VENCLEXTA?

You should not drink grapefruit juice or eat grapefruit, Seville oranges (often used in marmalades), or starfruit while you are taking VENCLEXTA. These products may increase the amount of VENCLEXTA in your blood.

What are the possible side effects of VENCLEXTA?

VENCLEXTA can cause serious side effects, including:

Low white blood cell counts (neutropenia). Low white blood cell counts are common with VENCLEXTA, but can also be severe. Your healthcare provider will do blood tests to check your blood counts during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

Low white blood cell counts are common with VENCLEXTA, but can also be severe. Your healthcare provider will do blood tests to check your blood counts during treatment with VENCLEXTA. Infections. Death and serious infections such as pneumonia and blood infection (sepsis) have happened during treatment with VENCLEXTA. Your healthcare provider will closely monitor and treat you right away if you have a fever or any signs of infection during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have a fever or any signs of an infection during treatment with VENCLEXTA.

The most common side effects of VENCLEXTA when used in combination with obinutuzumab or rituximab or alone in people with CLL or SLL include low white blood cell counts; low platelet counts; low red blood cell counts; diarrhea; nausea; upper respiratory tract infection; cough; muscle and joint pain; tiredness; and swelling of your arms, legs, hands, and feet.

The most common side effects of VENCLEXTA in combination with azacitidine or decitabine or low-dose cytarabine in people with AML include low white blood cell counts; nausea; diarrhea; low platelet counts; constipation; fever with low white blood cell counts; low red blood cell counts; infection in blood; rash; dizziness; low blood pressure; fever; swelling of your arms, legs, hands, and feet; vomiting; tiredness; shortness of breath; bleeding; infection in lung; stomach (abdominal) pain; pain in muscles or back; cough; and sore throat.

VENCLEXTA may cause fertility problems in males. This may affect your ability to father a child. Talk to your healthcare provider if you have concerns about fertility.

These are not all the possible side effects of VENCLEXTA. For more information, ask your healthcare provider or pharmacist.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA.

Visit www.fda.gov/medwatch or call 1-800-FDA-1088.

If you cannot afford your medication, contact www.medicineassistancetool.org for assistance.

The full U.S. prescribing information, including Medication Guide, for VENCLEXTA can be found here.

Indication and Important VENCLYXTO (venetoclax) EU Safety Information7

Indication

Venclyxto in combination with obinutuzumab is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with previously untreated chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (CLL).

Venclyxto in combination with rituximab is indicated for the treatment of adult patients with CLL who have received at least one prior therapy.

Venclyxto monotherapy is indicated for the treatment of CLL:

In the presence of 17p deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients who are unsuitable for or have failed a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor, or

mutation in adult patients who are unsuitable for or have failed a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor, or In the absence of 17p deletion or TP53 mutation in adult patients who have failed both chemoimmunotherapy and a B-cell receptor pathway inhibitor.

Contraindications

Hypersensitivity to the active substance or to any of the excipients is contraindicated. Concomitant use of strong CYP3A inhibitors at initiation and during the dose-titration phase due to increased risk for tumor lysis syndrome (TLS). Concomitant use of preparations containing St. John's wort as VENCLYXTO efficacy may be reduced.

Special Warnings & Precautions for Use

TLS, including fatal events, has occurred in patients with previously treated CLL with high tumour burden when treated with VENCLYXTO. VENCLYXTO poses a risk for TLS in the initial 5-week dose-titration phase. Changes in electrolytes consistent with TLS that require prompt management can occur as early as 6 to 8 hours following the first dose of VENCLYXTO and at each dose increase. Patients should be assessed for risk and should receive appropriate prophylaxis, monitoring, and management for TLS.

Neutropenia (grade 3 or 4) has been reported and complete blood counts should be monitored throughout the treatment period.

Serious infections including sepsis with fatal outcome have been reported. Monitoring of any signs and symptoms of infection is required. Suspected infections should receive prompt treatment including antimicrobials and dose interruption or reduction as appropriate.

Live vaccines should not be administered during treatment or thereafter until B-cell recovery.

Drug Interactions

CYP3A inhibitors may increase VENCLYXTO plasma concentrations. At initiation and dose-titration phase: Strong CYP3A inhibitors are contraindicated due to increased risk for TLS and moderate CYP3A inhibitors should be avoided. If moderate CYP3A inhibitors must be used, physicians should refer to the SmPC for dose adjustment recommendations. At steady daily dose: moderate or strong CYP3A inhibitors must be used, physicians should refer to the VENCLYXTO summary of product characteristics (SmPC) for dose adjustment recommendations.

Avoid concomitant use of P-gp and BCRP inhibitors at initiation and during the dose titration phase.

CYP3A4 inducers may decrease VENCLYXTO plasma concentrations. Avoid coadministration with strong or moderate CYP3A inducers. These agents may decrease venetoclax plasma concentrations.

Co-administration of bile acid sequestrants with VENCLYXTO is not recommended as this may reduce the absorption of VENCLYXTO.

Adverse Reactions

The most commonly occurring adverse reactions (>=20%) of any grade in patients receiving venetoclax in the combination studies with obinutuzumab or rituximab were neutropenia, diarrhoea, and upper respiratory tract infection. In the monotherapy studies, the most common adverse reactions were neutropenia/neutrophil count decreased, diarrhoea, nausea, anaemia, fatigue, and upper respiratory tract infection.

The most frequently occurring serious adverse reactions (>=2%) in patients receiving venetoclax in combination with obinutuzumab or rituximab were pneumonia, sepsis, febrile neutropenia, and TLS. In the monotherapy studies, the most frequently reported serious adverse reactions (>=2%) were pneumonia and febrile neutropenia.

Discontinuations due to adverse reactions occurred in 16% of patients treated with venetoclax in combination with obinutuzumab or rituximab in the CLL14 and Murano studies respectively. In the monotherapy studies with venetoclax, 11% of patients discontinued due to adverse reactions.

Dosage reductions due to adverse reactions occurred in 21% of patients treated with the combination of venetoclax and obinutuzumab in CLL14 and in 15% of patients treated with the combination of venetoclax and in Murano and in 14% of patients treated with venetoclax in the monotherapy studies. The most common adverse reaction that led to dose interruptions was neutropenia.

Specific Populations

Patients with reduced renal function (CrCl <80 mL/min) may require more intensive prophylaxis and monitoring to reduce the risk of TLS. Safety in patients with severe renal impairment (CrCl <30 mL/min) or on dialysis has not been established, and a recommended dose for these patients has not been determined.

For patients with severe (Child-Pugh C) hepatic impairment, a dose reduction of at least 50% throughout treatment is recommended.

VENCLYXTO may cause embryo-fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. Advise nursing women to discontinue breastfeeding during treatment.

This is not a complete summary of all safety information. See VENCLYXTO full summary of product characteristics (SmPC) at https://www.ema.europa.eu/en/documents/product-information/venclyxto-epar-product-information_en.pdf. Globally, prescribing information varies; refer to the individual country product label for complete information.

About AbbVie in Oncology

At AbbVie, we strive to discover and develop medicines that deliver transformational improvements in cancer treatment by uniquely combining our deep knowledge in core areas of biology with cutting-edge technologies, and by working together with our partners  scientists, clinical experts, industry peers, advocates, and patients. We remain focused on delivering these transformative advances in treatment across some of the most debilitating and widespread cancers. We are also committed to exploring solutions to help patients obtain access to our cancer medicines. AbbVie's oncology portfolio now consists of marketed medicines and a pipeline containing multiple new molecules being evaluated worldwide in more than 300 clinical trials and more than 20 different tumor types. For more information, please visit http://www.abbvie.com/oncology.

About AbbVie

AbbVie's mission is to discover and deliver innovative medicines that solve serious health issues today and address the medical challenges of tomorrow. We strive to have a remarkable impact on people's lives across several key therapeutic areas: immunology, oncology, neuroscience, eye care, virology, women's health and gastroenterology, in addition to products and services across its Allergan Aesthetics portfolio. For more information about AbbVie, please visit us at www.abbvie.com. Follow @abbvie on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and LinkedIn .

Forward-Looking Statements

Some statements in this news release are, or may be considered, forward-looking statements for purposes of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. The words "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "project" and similar expressions, among others, generally identify forward-looking statements. AbbVie cautions that these forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those indicated in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, competition from other products, challenges to intellectual property, difficulties inherent in the research and development process, adverse litigation or government action, and changes to laws and regulations applicable to our industry. Additional information about the economic, competitive, governmental, technological and other factors that may affect AbbVie's operations is set forth in Item 1A, "Risk Factors," of AbbVie's 2019 Annual Report on Form 10-K, which has been filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. AbbVie undertakes no obligation to release publicly any revisions to forward-looking statements as a result of subsequent events or developments, except as required by law.

1 AbbVie Receives European Commission Approval of VENCLYXTO Combination Regimen for Patients with Previously-Untreated Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia. Published online March 12, 2020. https://news.abbvie.com/news/press-releases/abbvie-receives-european-commission-approval-venclyxto-combination-regimen-for-patients-with-previously-untreated-chronic-lymphocytic-leukemia.htm.

2 Genetics Home Reference. Isolated growth hormone deficiency. http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/condition/isolated-growth-hormone-deficiency. Accessed January 2020.

3 Turetsky, et al. Single cell imaging of Bruton's Tyrosine Kinase using an irreversible inhibitor. Scientific Reports. volume 4, Article number: 4782 (2014).

4 de Rooij MF, Kuil A, Geest CR, et al. The clinically active BTK inhibitor PCI-32765 targets B-cell receptor- and chemokine-controlled adhesion and migration in chronic lymphocytic leukemia. Blood. 2012;119(11):2590-2594.

5 IMBRUVICA U.S. Prescribing Information, April 2020.

6 VENCLEXTA (venetoclax) [Package Insert]. North Chicago, IL.: AbbVie Inc.

7 Summary of Product Characteristics for VENCLYXTO (venetoclax). Ludwigshafen, Germany: AbbVie Deutschland GmbH & Co. KG.

+ Presentations will be made available on the on-demand Virtual Congress platform as of Friday, June 12 at 08:30 CEST and will be accessible until October 15, 2020.



* Venetoclax is indicated in AML and CLL

SOURCE AbbVie

Related Links

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While the eyes of the world have been turned to the pandemic, we've actually been wondering how the progress of Chevrolet Thailand has been. In February we reported that Chevrolet Thailand has been dropping prices to dispose of existing stocks; one unit, the all-new Captiva, has even seen its prices slashed by half . Understandably, Chevrolet dealerships in Thailand were mobbed in a sale that can rival Black Friday.

Thailand, after all, is the manufacturing hub for South East Asia for pretty much every major auto company, and the departure of General Motors signals a major change. And that's because the Philippine market gets most of its Chevrolet units (particularly the Colorado and Trailblazer) from Thailand.

The pull out of Chevrolet from Thailand -lock, stock, and barrel- undeniably sent a shock to the regional auto industry.

And now we've got an update: Chevrolet has now sold off or reserved all of their Trailblazer SUV units in Thailand. It appears that Trailblazer stocks will no longer be replenished, as it is likely the factory is already being turned over to the new owners: China's Great Wall Motors.

As for the Colorado, it seems Chevrolet Thailand still has a few units left, and they're offering them to customers with a significant price cut of up to THB 204,000 (about PhP 322,000) off. Chevrolet Thailand is selling the Colorado X-Cab LT for THB 539,000 (about PhP 851,000), the X-Cab LT Z71 for THB 565,000 (about PhP 892,000) and the Trail Boss for THB 655,000 (about PhP 1,034,000).

According to Chevrolet Thailand, they've also run out of the Captiva units.

What was not mentioned was whether or not there are still some units inbound for export customers like the Philippine distributor of Chevrolet: The Covenant Car Company, Inc. (TCCCI). But by all indications, the incoming batch of vehicles (if any) will be the last ones.

As to where Chevrolet Philippines will get their units (we don't manufacture here) all indicators point to a mix of GM USA models, GM Korea models, and (most likely) SAIC-GM China models.
It was March 15 when Emily West lost her waitressing job in Akron, Ohio, and applied for unemployment insurance. Two months later, instead of government assistance, she only has credit card debt.

"Literally the day that I was laid off, I went home, I sat down and I applied for unemployment," said West, a 23-year-old part-time waitress whose paycheck provided groceries for herself, her fiancee and her 6-year-old daughter.

But she's now gone nine weeks with no income. The type of employment insurance West is qualified for is not traditional unemployment -- it's called Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, or PUA, and it was only launched in Ohio on Tuesday, nearly two months after the CARES Act, which established the assistance, was passed.

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.

"I've pretty much maxed out my credit cards because I've been buying paper towels and toilet paper and soap and stuff with my credit cards because I don't have cash," West said. "And that's just piling up, which is really stressful." Her family has been living off of the disability benefits her fiancee, a veteran, receives.

When West first applied for traditional unemployment insurance in March, she was denied. Because she primarily makes her money in tips, her hourly wages of around $4 an hour were too little to allow her to qualify for unemployment.

Like millions of Americans around the country, West has since learned that she can only qualify for PUA, a different kind of unemployment that is supposed to cover people who haven't historically been able to get unemployment, including West, or independent contractors like real estate agents and barbers, and gig workers like Uber or Lyft drivers.

And despite their large impact on the workforce -- nontraditional wage earners make up at least one-third of the American workforce, per government estimates -- in nearly half the country, people waiting for PUA have been stuck at the back of the unemployment line.

Story continues

MORE: Nearly 3 million Americans file for unemployment, bringing total to over 36 million

In 19 states, governments have either just started providing the benefits or still have yet to provide any assistance, a state-by-state analysis by ABC News shows.

For West, though, she has meticulously followed the government's instructions, watched Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine's daily press conferences, and set up Twitter alerts to track any news from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, getting any helpful updates about PUA has been a nightmare.

"I think me and a lot of other people don't feel heard by the government," West told ABC News. "And we don't feel represented as we should be because of the way it's been handled. A lot of our questions we've been posing are going unanswered."

In addition to Ohio, there remain eight other states in the U.S. that have yet to pay residents a dime of unemployment from PUA: Arkansas, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Kansas, Nevada and Wisconsin.

Of those states, roughly half are accepting applications. In states where applications for PUA haven't been fully rolled out, like Delaware, Hawaii and Nevada, the process is further behind.

It can take weeks for states to move from the initial stage of accepting applications to the final stage of payment.

In Wisconsin, applicants were told it would take 30 days.

PHOTO: Arnashia McCain uses her phone to copy phone numbers posted on the locked doors of a Georgia Department of Labor office, May 7, 2020, in Norcross Ga. McCain drives for Lyft and has been unable check on the status of her her unemployment claim. (John Bazemore/AP)

In Ohio, where West is one of 114,000 residents who have successfully submitted a long-awaited online PUA application since the form went live on Tuesday morning, the first payments should begin on May 20, about eight days after the system launched, said Bret Crow, a spokesperson from the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services.

The two-month delay in the system's launch largely stemmed from tracking down the right vendor to host the new system, said Crow. After narrowing it down to three different companies, Ohio eventually picked Deloitte to launch the new system.

Around the country, prospects have improved since the end of April, when 21 states -- double the current number -- were not issuing payments. Since the beginning of May, Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Idaho, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming have begun paying PUA to residents.

Total payouts have ranged from $21 million in Connecticut to $231 million in Pennsylvania, according to officials with the states' labor departments.

But tracking which states have applications available or have issued payments often doesn't tell the whole story. Even in states with PUA up and running, residents have described feeling lost in the bureaucratic process.

In Florida, for example, only half of the people who have had their applications processed had been paid as of May 13, according to data from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity.

And the 67,000 Floridians who either received payments or had their applications processed were the lucky ones, said Sunday Phillips, a real estate agent in Fort Lauderdale. Phillips first applied for unemployment on April 6 and has yet to hear a peep about the status of her pending application.

"I'm insolvent at this point. Two months without any income, no resources. I have nothing," she said, choking up. "Nothing, like nothing. I have nothing."

MORE: What to know about applying for unemployment insurance during coronavirus crisis

"And then when you call, these people are talking on scripts," Phillips said. "I've literally spent eight hours on the phone, trust me, back and forth. You spend your entire day just trying to find some economic relief."

On Wednesday, though, Phillips got a bit of good news. She was able to update details on her unemployment application without the system crashing, she said.

"That's some good news I really needed," Phillips said.

States pressured to build the plane while its flying

For many states, getting PUA up and running within the month after the CARES Act passed marked an accomplishment, even though it meant newly-unemployed Americans waited weeks without a paycheck.

In Idaho, getting payments out by May 8 required around-the-clock work from the state's IT crew, said Georgia Smith, a spokesperson for the Idaho Department of Labor.

"In our case, we've just been working really, really hard to try and get the payments out to people as soon as possible, but we've had to really retrofit a lot of our systems to be able to accommodate these programs," Smith said.

PHOTO: Jennifer Majano helps an job seeker fill out an application at a drive up job fair for Allied Universal, May 6, 2020, in Gardena, Calif. (Chris Carlson/AP)

The department has also been careful to avoid granting assistance to people who don't qualify for it, which would force them to pay the federal government back with interest, Smith said.

"Nobody wants that, especially now," she said.

That regulation is why some states have been slow to issue payments, officials say. In Alaska, the first round of payments, sent out May 8, were a small test batch to make sure everything worked well, according to Cathy Munoz, deputy commissioner of the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development.

In Arkansas, the PUA system is up and accepting applications, but it's still in the testing phase. Payments are the next step, said Zoe Calkins, communications director for the Arkansas Division of Workforce Services, though she didn't provide a timeline.

As of May 9, the state was sitting on 19,230 complete applications.

Other states, like New Hampshire, took a do-it-yourself approach and passed legislation to expand unemployment benefits on a state-wide level in late March, opening unemployment up to many more residents even before the CARES Act passed. Since March 24, New Hampshire has paid $78 million in benefits to people who would otherwise apply for PUA, though it's fronted by the state and will be reimbursed by the Department of Labor, according to Richard Lavers, deputy commissioner of New Hampshire Employment Security.

Meanwhile, in Illinois, where attempts to comply with the federal PUA system have been challenging, the state's application launch on Monday was met with an overwhelming response from people who have been waiting for two months to apply.

"I've called [the Illinois Department of Employment Security] over 200 times today alone," said Koy Cook, a 36-year-old barber in Champaign, the day after the application launched. Cook had received an error message on his application telling him, inaccurately, that he'd already secured benefits.

"So we had to wait all this time just to try, and now it's still going to be this bad?" Cook said.

Eventually, Cook reached an agent who told him to file an appeal, which he did.

Asked for comment, a spokesperson for the Illinois Department of Employment Security said theyve ramped up their call center by 100 representatives, with plans to add another 100 people shortly.

We understand some applicants are still having trouble connecting with agents, and we continue to improve our processes and expand capacity to ensure everyone is receiving the benefits they are due, said Rebecca Cisco, a public information officer with the department.

Cisco also said the program was put together in four weeks, though it wouldve taken a year to complete under normal circumstances, and noted that unemployment this year is 11 times higher than it was in March of last year.

The portal has now processed more than 50,000 PUA claims and payments are expected to begin next week, according to Cisco.

But for Cook, its been two months since his last paycheck, he told ABC News. Though he's kept up with his utility payments, he's resorted to missing credit card payments in order to pay for other necessities.

"If there's a credit card bill that's due, it's just going to have to be due. I don't have money to pay for those things right now," Cook said. "They'll either be understanding or they won't, but one way or another, there's not anything I could do about it."

For now, Cook said he was more comfortable staying home than going out looking for work and putting himself at risk of the coronavirus. But he's left feeling deeply dismayed with his state government for giving him hope but not following through -- especially at a time when "nothing else" is a sure thing.

"I've been trying to not complain because I get that whatever we're doing right now, and as much as it sucks how much money I've lost sitting at home, I also didn't go get put on a ventilator. So, there's that," he said. "But it's really reached a point where it's like, well, what, what else can I do?"

What to know about 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

Editor's Note: The number of states that have not yet issued PUA payments has been updated to reflect that New Hampshire has not launched PUA, but has been paying residents who would apply for PUA through a separate unemployment program in the state that similarly expands who can receive unemployment.

'We don't feel heard': 2 months in, many nontraditional workers still waiting for unemployment originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
West Bengal has approved six trains to take migrants from the state back home from Rajasthan, an official said on Friday.

These trains will take the residents of different districts of West Bengal from Rajasthan from May 18 to June 3, Jaipur Divisional Commissioner K C Verma said.

The first train approved by the West Bengal government to take workers from Rajasthan will leave Pali district on May 18, he said.

The officer said after this, on May 20, 28 and 30, three trains from Jaipur will depart for West Bengal. The remaining two trains will leave from Jaipur on June 1 and June 3 with workers and other migrants from Bengal.

Verma asked the migrant workers from West Bengal to get their registration done soon so that they can be systematically sent on these trains.

He said trains are also being operated continuously for Bihar and Uttar Pradesh.

Verma has urged the workers going to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar to get their registration done as soon as possible so that they can be sent to their destinations through these trains.

The divisional commissioner said that continuous arrangements of resources are being made for the workers.

He urged all the workers going to other states to wait in camps till the arrangements are made.

On Friday, 102 workers going to Uttar Pradesh were sent to Hathras through Bharatpur on buses from a camp in Dausa. Similarly, 195 workers of Uttar Pradesh were sent in five buses from camps in Bassi, Verma said.

He said that a train with more than 1,300 people left for Haridwar at 8 pm and another train having 350 passengers has left for Saharanpur.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indian Coast Guard (ICG) is prepared for maritime search and rescue operations as the Met Department on Friday warned that a cyclonic storm is likely to form over the Bay of Bengal, officials said.

The well-marked low pressure area over southeast Bay of Bengal is likely to intensify into a cyclonic storm over central parts of south Bay of Bengal by May 16, Regional Met Director G K Das said.

The Met Department issued a red warning for fishermen and advised them not to venture into north Bay of Bengal along and off Odisha-West Bengal coasts from May 18 and asked those out in the sea to return by May 17.

"All out efforts have been made in the maritime states of West Bengal and Odisha in coordination with the state administration and Fisheries Department," the Coast Guard said in a statement.

The Coast Guard ships and aircraft on patrol are directing fishing boats operating at sea to return to the respective harbours for safety, it said.

The weatherman warned that under the influence of the system, adverse weather is likely over Bay of Bengal and adjoining Andaman Sea and along and off Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and West Bengal coasts during the next five to six days.

The Met Department said that North and South 24 Parganas, Kolkata, Howrah, Hooghly, East and West Midnapore districts of Gangetic West Bengal are likely to experience light to moderate rainfall with a heavy downpour at a few places on May 19 and heavy to very heavy rain on May 20.

It warned of gale winds along and off West Bengal -- Odisha coasts at 65 to 75 kilometre per hour with gusts of upto 85 kmph on May 19 and upto 90 kmph on May 20.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On Thursday (14 May), Turkey made the wearing of masks in public mandatory in 10 more provinces.

Authorities announced the imposed requirement in Adyaman, Afyonkarahisar, Aydn, Balkesir, Bartn, Denizli, Duzce, Kastamonu, Mugla and Usak

In addition to these 10 cities, people without a face mask will also not be allowed to enter crowded streets and markets in Gaziantep, Izmir, and Adana.

From today (Friday 15 May 2020), all citizens in the province of Mugla must wear a mask when leaving their homes. This includes Fethiye.

The use of masks in marketplaces, markets, collective workplaces, public transportation vehicles, streets, parks, shopping malls, and in private vehicles is mandatory.

People not wearing masks will be fined.

This seems like a good time to give you an update on masks, where you can get yours and a reminder of how to safely dispose of them.

The things you need to know about masks

Free masks are no longer being issued by the government via pharmacies.

Last week, Ankara set a price limit of a maximum of 1 Turkish lira ($0.14) for disposable face masks, which are already being sold in markets and pharmacies. Pharmacy owner, Hediye Aylanc from GIZEM Pharmacy in Tasyaka told us I have stock of masks at 1 TL each. They are also bundled into packs of 50 for 50TL for ease of bulk buying

Fethiye State Hospital Infectious Diseases Specialist Hacer Dagdeviren told Gercek Fethiye that surgical, non-washable masks provide effective protection for four hours only and should be changed at the end of this period.

When putting on and removing the mask, you should only only touch the laces used to hold the mask in place and should not touch the front part.

Even when wearing a mask, it is very important to wash your face as well as your hands with soapy water entering your home.

Washable cloth face masks can be worn but must be washed after every outing.

Click here to watch a video about medical masks and fashion. Its in Turkish but youll get the idea.

There is currently no ruling about the wearing of perspex face visors without a mask.

There is currently no ruling saying children DO NOT have to wear masks.

Masks for those under curfew

Last week and this week, David Jaime who runs Corona Caring Fethiye, has been working with Fethiye Zabita to make sure those under curfew have masks to enable them to leave their homes for exercise on the allocated days.

From next week, as stocks are now available from pharmacies and markets (priced at 1 TL each), everyone under curfew needs to ensure the people who help them with shopping, purchase masks on their behalf.

Guidelines for the safe disposal of disposable masks and gloves

Government circular Covid-19 Precautions in the Management of Personal Hygiene Material Wastes such as Disposable Masks and Gloves published by the General Directorate of Environmental Management of the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization.

Please follow the rules below:

 Store your mask, gloves, handkerchiefs and other personal hygiene waste products separately on the balcony in tightly-tied, tear-resistant plastic garbage bags.

 Store this waste in small quantities, preferably on a separate balcony for at least 72 hours

 After 72 hours, you can dispose of these waste bags together with your normal daily garbage.

 Wash your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds every you come into contact with this waste

Source: Fethiye Belediyesi

#StayHealthy #StaySafe
The coronavirus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic has spread across the globe with unprecedented speed and lethality, killing hundreds of thousands of people and forcing countries entire populations to self-quarantine.

The virus technically termed severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), is believed to be zoonotic, but its origin is still in doubt. A new paper reports the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to solve the puzzle of the viruss origin. The paper was published on the preprint server bioRxiv* in May 2020.

AI has been widely employed during the pandemic, with its uses ranging from rapid diagnostics to contact tracing to drug simulation. The ability to rapidly compare, classify, and relate data has made it an invaluable tool. In fact, the researchers think this may yet provide the key to developing a virus vaccine.

Using AI-aided cluster analysis to track SARS-CoV-2 origin

To find the origin of the virus, the team decided to compare its genome with those of preexisting organisms. They downloaded 334 complete genome sequences of the virus from the GenBank database, using samples taken across the world - 258 from the United States, 49 from China, and the remaining 27 from other countries. For each set, they used the first released complete mapping of the viruss sequence from each country.

They also selected reference genomic sequences such as those from alpha and beta coronaviruses, from GenBank and Virus-Host DB. Sequenced genomes of the Guangxi and Guangdong pangolins were downloaded from the GISAID database.

Study: Origin of Novel Coronavirus (COVID-19): A Computational Biology Study using Artificial Intelligence. Image Credit: 2630ben / Shutterstock

Altogether, there were three sets of reference genomes selected at various taxonomic levels for use in a supervised decision tree method that has been recommended for the classification of novel pathogens. The method used is to scroll through the levels of classification from high to low, looking for the right slot for the SARS-CoV-2 genome at the genus and lower levels, and its closest relatives.

The reference genomes at each taxonomic level were fed to the AI, along with the viral genome sequences.

The AI-based analysis was then carried out by unsupervised clustering methods, using a hierarchical clustering algorithm along with density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise (DBSCAN). Two steps are involved: using the algorithms to achieve reference sequence clusters alone and then use the same parametric values to cluster a mix of both reference and SARS-CoV-2 genome sequences.

In other words, the method first shows the reference sequences with which the SARS-CoV-2 sequences group. Secondly, the settings are changed to observe corresponding changes in the groups formed. This will help pick up the nearest sequences to compare the similarities between genomes.

What Did the Study Find?

By progressively narrowing the search parameters, the team progressed from high to low levels of taxonomic classification. Beginning with the first reference set, which comprises viruses from 12 major classes at the highest level, the team found that the virus belonged to the Riboviria cluster, represented by the MERS virus (responsible for the MERS outbreak in 2012). Based on this data, they concluded that the coronavirus probably belonged to the Riboviria family.

At the next level, they analyzed the clustering of SARS-CoV-2 against 12 virus families within the Riboviria. The results show that the viral genome groups with the Coronaviridiae family. This class has four genera - the Alpha-, Beta-, Gamma-, and Delta-coronavirus families. SARS-CoV2 belongs to the Beta-coronavirus genus.

Within this genus, among 37 reference sequences, SARS-CoV-2 clusters with the Sarbecovirus sub-genus. This contains mostly SARS coronaviruses and bat coronaviruses, but also 5 Guangxi and one Guangdong pangolin sequence.

Interestingly, the study found that the amount of variation in the genetic code of the 334 samples, as compared to the reference samples, was practically constant for all the samples, which were collected across sixteen countries over a time period of three months.

With narrower cut-off parameters, SARS-CoV-2 continued to be clustered with Sarbecovirus, even while this cluster itself separates into two. At a very low cut-off, SARS-CoV-2 clusters only with 2 viruses based on whole-genome analysis - bat CoV RaTG13 and Guangdong pangolin CoV.

On narrowing the search still further, the AI found only one virus, which it could group with SARS-Cov2 - the bat CoV-RaTG13. This could mean that bats are the most likely reservoir host of SARS-CoV2.

Greater horseshoe bat (Rhinolophus ferrumequinum). Image Credit: ATTILA Barsan / Shutterstock

However, with a still lower cut-off, the AI did not group the virus with any other organism. Does this mean that the virus could originate from neither bats nor pangolins?

The study says this is a debatable question because SARS-CoV-2 and bat CoV RaTG13 (or Guangdong pangolin CoV, for that matter) genome sequences are so similar as to be less than that between, for instance, bat coronaviruses originating from the same host.

SARS-CoV-2 Probably from Bat or Pangolin CoV

They conclude, Therefore, SARS-CoV-2 is deemed very likely originated from the same host with bat CoV RaTG13 or Guangdong pangolin CoV, which is bat or pangolin, respectively. The study showcases the ability of AI to make sense of large volumes of data to pick out meaningful and useful patterns. It raises hopes that the same power can be harnessed to develop an effective vaccine against SARS-CoV-2.

*Important Notice

bioRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWSWIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATES



FREDERICTON, New Brunswick, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Trius Investments Inc. (TSXV:TRU.H) (Trius or the Company) is pleased to announce the following updates.

Investment Policy

Trius board of directors has adopted an amended and restated investment policy (the Investment Policy) to govern its investment activities and investment strategy.

The Investment Policy is robust and provides the Company with additional flexibility in light of volatile market and economic conditions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic, which the Company expects to persist for an uncertain period of time. The Company will initially maintain a focus on the healthcare and wellness sectors, although the Investment Policy allows for greater latitude when sourcing and structuring future investments and transactions, which will allow Trius to seize on opportunities amidst the volatility.

A copy of the Investment Policy will be posted on the Companys SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com.

Director Appointment

Trius has appointed Marisa Muchnik to its Board of Directors (the Board) as an additional independent director, subject to regulatory approval by the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV).

Ms. Muchnik is currently the Assistant General Counsel of Ferrero Canada Limited, a leading global chocolate and confectionary manufacturer. In this role, Ms. Muchnik advises the company on a variety of matters, with a significant focus on food law, advertising and marketing law, intellectual property law and general commercial matters. She previously practiced as an associate at Stikeman Elliott LLP for four years before joining Nestle Canada Inc. as in-house counsel. As such, Ms. Muchnik has extensive knowledge on food trends and regulatory requirements in the consumer packaged goods space.

Ms. Muchnik graduated from Osgoode Hall Law School with a Juris Doctor and received her Honours Bachelor of Arts from the University of Western Ontario.

Ms. Muchnik will replace Trius President and CEO on the Audit Committee, so that it is comprised entirely of independent directors.

Damian Lopez, Chair of the Board of Trius, commented: We welcome Marisa to the Board. In addition to bolstering Trius corporate governance, we are confident Marisas industry expertise will be useful in our evaluation of new investments and opportunities.

Financial Statements

Trius financial statements and related materials for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 have now been filed to SEDAR. The Company maintains a significant cash balance and is pleased to report the second consecutive year in which its first quarter has been profitable.

About Trius Investments Inc.

Trius is an investment issuer searching for new investments and/or business opportunities. Trius common shares trade on the NEX Board of the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol TRU.H.

Trius is a portfolio company of Resurgent Capital Corp. (Resurgent), a merchant bank providing venture capital markets advisory services and proprietary financing. Resurgent works with promising public and pre-public micro-capitalization Canadian companies.

For further information, please contact:

Joel Freudman

President & Chief Executive Officer

Trius Investments Inc.

Phone: (647) 880-6414

Cautionary Statements

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This press release contains forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws. Generally, forward-looking information can be identified by the use of words and phrases such as plans, expects schedules, estimates, intends, anticipates, or believes, or variations of such words and phrases indicating that certain actions, events or results may, could, would, might or will be taken or occur. Forward-looking information in this press release includes statements regarding financial and economic outlooks, potential transactions, opportunities and investment criteria, the appointment of a new director and Audit Committee member, and Trius strategic plans including targeted sectors for new opportunities. This forward-looking information consists of disclosure regarding possible events, conditions or results and is based on numerous assumptions that Trius management believes to be reasonable in the circumstances, including that Trius will be able to successfully execute its business plan and proposed transactions or investments.

The forward-looking information in this press release is subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that may cause Trius actual results or performance to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information, including but not limited to: volatility in financial markets and economic conditions; challenges in sourcing and executing transactions, whether in the Companys targeted sectors or otherwise, and on favourable terms or at all; regulatory approval processes; and other risks described in Trius continuous disclosure documents. There can be no assurances that the forward-looking information in this press release will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events may differ materially from those anticipated by such information. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking information. Trius does not undertake to update any forward-looking information in this press release, except as may be required by applicable securities laws.
The ministry sent a request to the Libyan Foreign Ministry, asking for the release of all the Ukrainians held in that country's prisons.

Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs says 14 Ukrainian sailors detained on board the Ruta tanker in Libya in 2017 and now kept in a prison in Tripoli may be placed under house arrest on June 11.

Director of the Consular Service Department of Ukraine's Ministry of Foreign Affairs Serhiy Pohoreltsev told UNIAN that the Ukrainian Embassy in Tunisia, which is also responsible for Libya, had been instructed to maximize efforts to resolve the sailors' issues after their relatives' appeal following the tanker crew's announcement of hunger strike.

Pohoreltsev said the Foreign Ministry had involved all the diplomatic and consular legal instruments to protect the rights and interests of the citizens of Ukraine. "Given the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Ukrainian side on March 23, 2020, sent an official request to the Libyan Foreign Ministry, demanding the release of all the Ukrainians held in that country's prisons. Now our diplomatic mission's request is under consideration by the Libyan side," he said.

In addition, during a telephone conversation on April 23, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba called on his Libyan counterpart, Mohamed Taher Siala, to help resolve the issue of the release of the Ukrainians and their return home.

"On April 29, 2020, Tripoli's appeals court decided to change the preventive measure for the crew of the Ruta tanker. In the case of payment of bail (approximately US$21,000 per each crew member for the crew of 14 sailors) and guarantees that the citizens of Ukraine will be present at the next hearing, which is scheduled for June 11, 2020, the sailors can be transferred under house arrest," Pohoreltsev said.

According to him, "despite all the challenges related both to the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic and the escalation of hostilities in Tripoli, the Ukrainian diplomats will continue to take all possible measures to protect the rights and interests of Ukrainian citizens who are in Libya."

Read alsoPirates attack container ship off Benin, kidnap Ukrainian crewman  MFA

As UNIAN reported earlier, relatives of the sailors and representatives of the Assol Seamen Relief Fund announced in Odesa on May 14 that the 14 Ukrainian sailors of the Ruta tanker, detained in 2017, had gone on hunger strike.

Late in April 2017, the Libyan naval forces seized the Ruta vessel flying under the Ukrainian flag, on suspicion of smuggling crude oil from Libya. The vessel belongs to an Odesa-based company. There were 14 Ukrainians on board the ship. They are residents of Odesa, Kherson and Mykolaiv regions.

The sailors have been kept in a prison in Tripoli for three years. Another four Ukrainian sailors who are members of the crew of the Captain Khayyam tanker (sailing under the flag of Sierra Leone) are held in another Tripoli prison.

According to Assol, the Libyan court did not issue a verdict on the Ruta crew, while a decision was made on the crew members of the second tanker. In particular, all crew members were sentenced to five years in prison and each must pay about US$80,000.

Libya declared an amnesty over the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the local authorities are reducing the number of people held in prisons to avoid their massive infection with the coronavirus. Only dangerous criminals, such as terrorists, are kept behind bars.

As a result of talks, many countries were able to return their citizens from Libya. In particular, Turkey repatriated its sailors who were changed in the same case as the Ukrainians.

Now, many of the Ukrainian sailors in Libya are seriously ill, in particular, two contracted hepatitis in prison, some had a stomach ulcer, many lost their teeth due to poor nutrition and lack of medical care. The oldest prisoner - the captain of the Ruta - is over 70 years old.

Representatives of Assol said they and the sailors' relatives had repeatedly contacted the Ukrainian authorities  President Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of the Presidential Office, the Verkhovna Rada, the Prosecutor General's Office, the Justice Ministry, the Security Service of Ukraine, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Ukraine and its Consular Service Department, but they had received either formal replies or their requests had been ignored.
Around 1 lakh migrants who had registered with the Mumbai Police have been sent back home while as many as 4 lakh of them are still awaiting their turn. Pranaya Ashok, DCP (ops) and spokesperson for Mumbai Police, confirmed the development and added that most of these people are migrant labourers.

Some migrants, however, have set out for their hometowns on foot or by private vehicles such as trucks and tempos, which is in violation of lockdown norms, as it is taking time for the government to make arrangements. We are trying our best to send them back as soon as possible. We request them to wait till their turn comes, said Ashok.

There have been multiple instances of migrants crowding near police stations or railway stations hoping to leave the city, following which police had to resort to mild lathi-charge go disperse them.

14,000 migrants in eight trains left for UP, Bihar

Since May 12 till Friday, a total of 14,000 migrants from zone 12 (Goregaon East to Dahisar East) of the Mumbai Police were sent back to Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in eight trains. About 90% of them were from UP, said a police officer.

13K migrants sent in nine trains from western suburbs

About 13,500 migrants from western suburbs (Bandra to Jogeshwari and Sakinaka) left in nine special trains on Friday. Manjunath Singe, DCP zone 8, said three of the trains departed from Bandra Terminus station.

Abhishek Trimukhe DCP zone 9 said, From my zone, about 4,500 people including kids were sent back in three trains for Unnao, Gorakhpur and Varanasi.

Ankit Goyal, DCP zone 10, said, On Friday, we sent 3,600 migrants to Basti and Banaras in three special trains from LTT station. Since the special train service started, we have sent around 15,000 migrants in 12 special trains.

508 positive cases in Mumbai Police

A total of 508 Mumbai Police personnel tested positive for Covid-19 till Friday whereas the number of cases in Maharashtra Police went up to 1,061. Of the patients, 174 personnel have recovered while 878 are being treated. A total of nine personnel have died including six from Mumbai, and one each from Pune, Solapur and Nashik rural.

Two additional CP went on leave

As the Mumbai Police are reeling under stress due to heavy workload to fight Covid-19 pandemic, two additional commissioners of police from western and central regions Manoj Kumar Sharma and S Veeresh Prabhu, respectively, went on leave on Thursday for health reasons.

A senior officer on condition of anonymity said, Sharma has quarantined himself after his readers report came positive for Covid-19.

Mumbai Police spokesperson and DCP (ops) Pranay Ashok said, S Veeresh Prabhus test was conducted on Thursday and his report is negative. He has viral fever and is taking rest at home, so the charge has given to additional commissioner of police Dnyaneshwar Chavan.

There is a lot of workload so they required rest for some days. So following rotation, both the officers are on leave said Ashok.

59 FIRs against 168 violators on Thursday

The Mumbai Police on Thursday lodged 59 FIRs against 168 people and arrested 105 of them for lockdown violations. Of these, 24 FIRs were for gathering in one place, 13 for unnecessary use of vehicles, 10 for not wearing masks and remaining against shops for operating despite being non-essential services. A majority of FIRs were in west region with 21 cases, while south region reported 15 cases and central 11 cases.

384 Covid-19 related cybercrimes

The Maharashtra Police registered 384 cases including 16 non-cognisable complaints for Covid-19 related hate speech, fake news and other cybercrimes till Friday. A majority of these crimes are committed through WhatsApp and Facebook, said Balsing Rajput, SP, Maharashtra Cyber.

(Inputs from Suraj Ojha and Manish K Pathak)
The NHRC has sent notices to the Punjab and Uttar Pradesh governments over reports of a migrant woman pulling a suitcase with her child sleeping half hung on it on the Agra highway during the ongoing novel coronavirus-induced lockdown.

The rights panel in a statement on Friday observed that it is aware of the unprecedented situation and that the central and state governments are working sincerely to address every issue coming up during the lockdown.

"But it is strange that the pain of the child and the family could be seen and felt by many enroute, except local authorities," the National Human Rights Commission of India (NHRC) said.

Had local authorities been vigilant, some relief could have immediately been provided to the aggrieved family and others facing similar hardships, it said.

"The incident amounts to violation of human rights and requires intervention by the NHRC," the rights panel said.

The NHRC said, accordingly, it has issued notices to the chief secretaries of Punjab and Uttar Pradesh and the district magistrate of Agra, seeking a detailed report within four weeks, including action taken against officials responsible, and relief and assistance provided to the victim family.

The commission observed that "several news reports about miseries of people have come to its notice during the lockdown, forcing it to intervene in order to sensitise central and the state authorities to deal with the situation with an approach of respect to human rights of the public at large, particularly the vulnerable sections of society".

However, media reports suggest continuing sufferings of people, particularly migrant labourers, whose long journeys are not coming to a halt, it said.

Referring to another reported incident of public authorities' apathy, wherein a woman migrant labourer had delivered her baby on a road and continued her journey within two hours after that while on way to Madhya Pradesh from Maharashtra, the NHRC said that "such incidents only indicate towards carelessness and inappropriate approach of local public authorities who do not bother to come forward to see the reality on the ground".
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You knew you werent alone in the fight, and that people were listening. That was great for the soul.

NICK CAPUTO, an emergency physician at Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx, praising state efforts to coordinate medical resources among hospital networks as the coronavirus epidemic intensified in New York City.
SAO PAULO - Brazils health minister resigned Friday after less than a month on the job in a sign of continuing upheaval over how the nation should battle the coronavirus pandemic, quitting a day after President Jair Bolsonaro stepped up pressure on him to expand use of the antimalarial drug chloroquine in treating patients.

Dr. Nelson Teich, an oncologist and health care consultant, took the job April 17 faced with the task of aligning the ministrys actions with the presidents view that Brazils economy must not be destroyed by restrictions to control spread of the virus.

Teichs predecessor, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, also had rejected the use of chloroquine, which also had been touted by U.S. President Donald Trump as a treatment.

Four government ministers who spoke after Teichs resignation defended the idea of patients being allowed to use the drug if they want to, including Economy Minister Paulo Guedes and the Cabinet chief of staff, Gen. Walter Braga Netto.

Officials say almost 15,000 people have died in Brazil from COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, though some experts say the figure is significantly higher due to insufficient testing. The peak of the crisis has yet to hit Latin Americas largest nation, experts say.

Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, who had no health experience until he became the Health Ministrys No. 2 official in April, will be the interim minister until Bolsonaro chooses a replacement. Brazilian media have said that Teichs ability to do his job had been weakened by the appointment of dozens of military personnel to jobs in the ministry.

Life is made up of choices and today I decided to leave, Teich told journalists in capital Brasilia. He did not explain why he left the job and refused to answer questions.

Braga Netto, the Cabinet chief, said Teich left the job for personal reasons. Bolsonaro did not comment.

Teichs resignation came one day after Bolsonaro told business leaders in a videoconference he would ease rules for using chloroquine to treat people infected with the coronavirus. Teich has frequently called use of the drug an uncertainty, and this week warned of its side effects.

The Health Ministry previously allowed chloroquine to be used in coronavirus cases only for patients hospitalized in serious condition.

At Bolsonaros urging, the countrys Army Chemical and Pharmaceutical Laboratory boosted chloroquine production in late March.

Researchers last month reported no benefit in a large analysis of the drug or a related substance, hydroxychloroquine, in U.S. hospitals for veterans. Last month, scientists in Brazil stopped part of a study of chloroquine after heart rhythm problems developed in one quarter of people given the higher of two doses being tested.

Governors who have recommended quarantine measures and refrained from touting the drugs unproven potential said Teichs resignation reflects Bolsonaros failure to manage the pandemic.

Rio de Janeiro Gov. Wilson Witzel, a former ally of Bolsonaro, said no one can do serious work with interference in ministries. That is why governors and mayors need to lead the pandemic crisis, and not you, Mr. President, Witzel said on Twitter.

The governor of Ceara, one of Brazils most hard-hit states, said Teichs exit brings enormous insecurity and concern.

It is unacceptable that in the face of this serious health crisis, the focus of the government is still on political and ideological discussions. That is an affront to the nation, Camilo Santana said.

On April 16, Bolsonaro fired Teichs predecessor, Mandetta, who had become the embodiment of challenges to the presidents opposition to governors quarantine recommendations and restrictions on businesses. Bolsonaro was eager to resume economic activity and warned failure to do so would cause Brazil to descend into chaos.

Teich took office pledging to balance health care concerns and the presidents economic worries. He did not openly challenge the presidents views, but did defend stay-at-home measures.

Miguel Lago, executive director of Brazils non-profit Institute for Health Policy Studies, which advises public health officials, said Teich wasnt able to build his own team, didnt have Mandettas political strength and wasnt willing to violate the scientific recommendations.

He clearly had limitations, Lago said. He would not challenge what has been consensus among the scientific community. He would never accept the chloroquine thing that Bolsonaro wanted him to do, to recommend publicly that chloroquine was a remedy to be used in the public health system.

Hours after Teich left the job, the Health Ministry began listing figures on chloroquine distribution as part of its main charts about government initiatives against the pandemic, alongside intensive care unit beds, personal protection equipment, tests and flu vaccines.

Risk consultancy Eurasia Group analyst Filipe Gruppelli Carvalho said that the Health Ministrys capacity for an effective co-ordinating role looks to have dropped with Mandettas exit, .

Ultimately, Teichs dismissal reinforces our view of increasing risks from the governments poor response to the pandemic, which could contribute to a weaker presidency and decline in support for Bolsonaro in the post-pandemic phase, he said.

The newspaper Folha de S.Paulo published an editorial after Teichs exit saying Bolsonaro is trying to put his own survival above state policies and national interest.

The resignation of another health minister  in less than a month and during the most serious sanitary emergency of contemporary history  exposes the downfall of a president that doesntt even pretend to govern the country, the newspaper said. As if the economic and sanitary calamities were not enough, he turned himself into a crisis to be faced.

After Teichs resignation was announced, pot-banging protests were heard in different regions of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.

_____

Associated Press writers David Biller and Diane Jeantet in Rio de Janeiro contributed to this report.
Radio and TV personality and entrepreneur, Caroline Sampson has finally given details of what led to her exit from YFM, where she had worked for over ten years, hosting Shouts on Y.



Many Ghanaians received with shock the sudden termination of her and a number of her colleagues appointments, when the news broke on social media. Many wondered what could have caused such a drastic decision from her employers, and this led to many speculations in the media space.



Caroline has finally opened up in a video on her YouTube channel, monitored by GhanaWeb, and chronicled what led to her sack. She explained that before the unfortunate incident happened, she and a number of her colleagues had already been home for over a month because of the coronavirus lockdown, and she had heard that the company was in some financial difficulties, so she expected some tough times ahead and she was making adjustments, such that when it happens it would be easier on her.



According to her, when she received a call from human resources to come in for a meeting, she thought that worst-case scenario, her salary would be slashed, which she was ok with especially knowing how the Coronavirus pandemic was causing many businesses to fold up, but what she didnt expect was a total termination of her contract.



Caroline revealed she was willing to take the pay cut if she had been offered because she understood times were hard.



Last week Thursday I had a call from HR, asking for me to come to the office on Friday. After the call, one of my colleagues called and asked if I was called, and I said yes I was, she kinda had her suspicions, and went on to mention the fact that this could happen and I was shocked because I was looking at worst case scenario being salary slash, and I wouldnt have had a problem with it because we are all going through it, she explained.



According to her, the call made her put things in perspective and reality dawned on her when she actually gave it a second thought that she could lose her job, but wondered why that would happen after all the years that she had been with them, and everything she had given to the station when she was their employee.



She furthered that she went for the meeting and as her colleague had told her on the phone, she was given the termination letter.



Caroline Sampson who has worked with the Global Media Alliance firm for close to ten years, also worked with Atlantis radio, hosting Continuous Drive and Mellow Cruise. She also worked with Citi FM, hosting; Room 973, Rhythms in the Citi and Citi Countdown.



Listen to Caroline narrate her story below





Source: Ghanaweb









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Nobody says where Meghan is, but she was on twitter this afternoon whining about MAH FREEEDDOMMMSMore behind the cutDr Fauci testified to the Senate yesterday, spoke the truth as a scientist. TidePodTrump attacked him, said dumb things. Nobody should listen to the man who looked at the eclipse and said inject UV light and disinfectant. Democrats have proposed another stimulus bill. TidePodTrump said it will be dead on arrival. Russiapublicans want to help re-elect T45 but dont want to help American citizens. T45 wants America to reopen under conditions that he refuses to live himself.They talk about Obamagate. Everything T45 is doing and saying now is to cover up how he failed during the first 8 weeks (and continues to fail). RE outlines the litany of things that we could be getting done (job career re-training, transportation infrastructure), but T45 is too busy being jealous of Obama. Flynn lied. T45 is touchy when people dig into his relationship with Russia.They talk about election and mail-in votes. Jared took time out from failing at everything else at life to say he wouldnt rule out delaying the election. [The election cant be delayed, stop the madness]. If T45 can mail-in his ballot to new residential state FL, then why cant everyone else. We need to vote en masse so that it overwhelms and overcompensates for T45 and his suppression efforts. Russia this, China that. Dictators work in interesting ways.They talk about Biden VP pick. Panel mentions Kamala but RE doesn't talk about any person. RE says theres a shift from demographic alliances, example Clinton-Gore, to a new mold of a personal partnership. How should Biden adjust campaigning re/covid impacts. RE is fine with T45 vs T45 race, let him hang himself. Its ok, for now, to let T45 be his own worst enemy. But Biden will need to change strategies when it gets closer to election.Her mom is Tamika Palmer and the attorney is Ben CrumpCovered a little bit on yesterdays show. Breonna Taylor was an EMT and part time nurse when police stormed her home in the middle of the night. Her mom and atty joins. Breonnas bf was also in the home. They called 911. Police first claimed they announced themselves then admitted they had a no-knock warrant and were in plain clothes not uniforms. Bf was a registered gun owner, shoots at door being opened by a battering ram. A hail of bullets, including into a neighbors apt, 8 bullets hit Breonna. Bf arrested for attempted murder, are black people not allowed 2nd amendment rights, plus KY is a Stand Your Ground state. Police thought they were making a narc bust. Police already had main suspect in custody, then raided the wrong home for accomplices. Its been 2 mos but no one from police dept has reached out to her mom. [Her feed is bad, couldnt really hear]. Neither Breonna nor her bf had any criminal history.Source links are below each video or section
Louisiana lawmakers wont try to force business interruption insurance policies to cover the widespread closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Rick Ward, a Port Allen Republican, shelved the proposal amid concerns it could crater the states insurance industry and embroil Louisiana in litigation.

In Senate Bill 477, Ward had sought to retroactively require insurance companies to pay for coronavirus losses since March 11 for any business that had a policy for business interruptions, even though most of those policies have exemptions for such an outbreak.

What the vast majority of business owners have found out was that a shutdown due to a virus or pandemic was an exclusion from coverage, Ward told the Senate Insurance Committee.

Sometimes extreme circumstances require some extreme measures to be taken, he said. In order to protect some of these businesses that are struggling at best and at worst are going bankrupt, that is something we should consider.

Republican senators on the committee, many of whom are business owners, said their business interruption policies wont cover the impact of the coronavirus. But they resisted trying to force the coverage, saying the policies fine print indicated the exclusions, even if they didnt notice them.

Committee Chairman Kirk Talbot, a River Ridge Republican, said he was surprised when he learned that his insurance policy wouldnt help him with losses related to the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus. Still, he questioned how lawmakers could force the companies to pay for losses if businesses didnt pay premiums to provide that level of coverage.

I think premiums would be outrageous if they did cover those things, so I dont think people would have had the coverage anyway, said Sen. Mike Fesi, a Houma Republican.

Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, a Republican, called Wards proposal dangerous. He said insurance companies cant afford it. The industry will bankrupt.

Because of the opposition, Ward stripped the retroactive coverage requirement from SB 477.

The rewritten measure, which was sent to the full Senate without objection, simply would require business interruption policies to include a form clearly listing the types of incidents that wont be covered by the insurance.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics COVID-19 Louisiana
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STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- After Mayor Bill de Blasio announced a new grading policy for New York City students, teachers are wondering if students will continue to be engaged in what they are learning.

Last month, de Blasio said the grading policy would be effective immediately -- changing the way final grades are submitted for students in kindergarten through eighth grade, as well as flexible options for high school students.

We want to make sure the grading policy we use now fits the moment were in now and the reality of our kids, our parents, our educators now, said de Blasio at the time.

According to the city, the goals for the new policy are to keep students engaged, uphold course requirements and maintain high expectations. The city plans to reach every student who may not be meeting standards by providing them extra support. The policy aims to provide flexibility for students and families.

I think this is designed just to make it more equitable for all students citywide, said Joseph Frusci, a teacher at Staten Island Technical High School in New Dorp. Youre going to get some students who have greater access to technology than others."

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

Students in kindergarten through fifth grade will receive either a Meets Standards or Needs Improvement final grade on their existing course requirements -- such as submitted assignments, projects and writing samples. Middle school students will receive a Meets Standards, Needs Improvement, or Course In Progress" grade.

Students in elementary and middle schools who cant demonstrate mastery or dont submit or complete work will be enrolled in summer programming, according to the new policy.

De Blasio and city Schools Chancellor Richard A. Carranza both explained that it is still unclear what summer school will look like for students due to the uncertainty of the pandemic.

That means that all students who pass the class  whether they receive a 100 or a 65  will get the same meeting standards final grade.

ARE STANDARDS TOO LOW?

Kim Russell, a social studies teacher for P373R, co-located at PS 58 in New Springville, said she does not have concerns about the system being unfair to those students who work hard to receive the same passing grade as those who do less work.

But she said she is concerned that kids may not learn as much because standards have been lowered.

That is the problem. If 65 is passing, a child who always does 100% now can do less work to pass, Russell said. Will little kids think like that? Hopefully not, but their parents will. Hopefully, they will still encourage their children to do their very best.

Under the former grading policy, parents were able to see the progress their children are making. Now, Russell said teachers will need to use more anecdotal evidence to inform parents of specific progress, since grades wont be given out.

She said she hopes the policy changes are temporary.

CHANGING LOW GRADES TO A PASS

High school students will continue to be graded using existing grading scales. As part of the new policy, high school students will also have the option after receiving a passing letter grade to convert that grade to a pass rating.

This means that if a student chooses to keep his or her passing letter grade, it will be included in the overall grade point average (GPA). Converting to a pass rating will not affect the GPA. High school students have until January 2021 to complete outstanding coursework, according to the grading policy.

If a student hands in work and its not the best work, and lets assume for the moment, they finish with a final grade of a D. instead of having that be on their transcript, they can have that grade changed to a P for pass, Frusci explained. So it wont be factored into their overall average.

He added that by making this blanket grading policy, it will allow the city to tackle disparities. Students will all be able to pass their classes so long as they meet standards despite their grades. And students in high school can appeal their grades to get a pass rating if theyre unhappy with their grade. The flexible grading policy is aligned to how the City University of New York allows students with low grades to appeal for a pass.s

It looks like theyre just making it more equitable for everyone during this crazy time of remote learning, Frusci added.

However, he said he wonders what colleges will do when looking at high school student transcripts and seeing a pass rating in place of a grade.

Do you think a college might hold that against them or not? he asked. I dont know how to take that. Im assuming given the fact that this is worldwide, this is a pandemic, I dont think the colleges are going to take that into account. I think that theyre just going to say, Alright, they passed the class. Theyre going to overlook it, its not factored into the GPA [grade point average] so well just move on.

He added that more goes into students abilities than their grades.

While flexibilities are being afforded to high school students, Frusci said that the work students are handing in hasnt been lacking. Some of his more shy students are more engaged, and some are handing in better-quality work now than they did prior to remote learning.

Its interesting how this is kind of allowing students to maybe feel more comfortable in class or now that theyre kind of working at their own pace a little bit, theyre a little more productive or meeting the general deadlines, the loose deadlines that we have to set, Frusci said.

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

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Donbas conflict Open source

Since the beginning of this day in the Donbas, militants fired on Ukrainian positions twice, as a result of which two soldiers were injured. The press service of the JFO headquarters reports.

So, the militants used mortars of 120 mm caliber, grenade launchers of various systems, heavy machine guns and small arms prohibited by the Minsk agreements.

In Luhansk region, near Orikhove, the invaders fired twice.

As a result of the shelling, two members of the Joint Forces were injured.

It is also reported that in the disengagement areas No. 1, No. 2 and No. 3, the silence mode is observed.

As we reported before, the Permanent Representatives Office of Ukraine at the UN demanded from Russia to follow the urge of the Secretary-General on the ceasefire in Donbas.

We urge the Russian Federation to adhere to the UN Secretary-General's call for a global ceasefire and to silence its guns in the east of Ukraine, the Ukrainian diplomats noted.
UKs National Health Service (NHS) said that a quarter of people who died in hospitals due to COVID-19 were diabetics, releasing the first breakdown of underlying health conditions among the fatalities. According to the NHS data, 5,873 people, out of the 22,332 patients who died in hospital in England between March 31 and May 12, suffered from either type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

The second-highest underlying medical condition was dementia, followed by serious breathing problems and chronic kidney disease. The latest figures have corroborated the earlier reports which claimed patients with underlying medical conditions are at higher risk of succumbing to the infectious disease.

Affects multiple organs

The novel coronavirus can infect multiple organs throughout the body including the lungs, pharynx, heart, liver, brain, kidneys, and intestines, researchers said in different reports. While SARS-CoV-2 has been classified as a respiratory virus, the detection of viral RNA in faecal specimens suggest that it might cause enteric infection.

According to a report published in Nature Medicine, some COVID-19 patients have suffered gastrointestinal symptoms such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea. Jie Zhou and colleagues at the University of Hong Kong demonstrated the active replication of SARS-CoV-2 in human intestinal organoids and isolation of infectious virus from the stool specimen of a patient with diarrheal COVID-19.

Although not as common as respiratory symptoms, gastrointestinal symptoms have been present in a substantial proportion of patients with COVID-19, wrote the researchers.

Read: UK Economy Shrinks By 2% In First Quarter, March Witnesses Record Fall

A separate report, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, highlighted that the virus preferentially infects cells in the respiratory tract but its direct affinity for organs other than the lungs remains poorly defined. The researchers quantified the viral load in autopsy tissue samples obtained from 22 patients died from COVID-19. As per the report, 17 patients out of 22 demonstrated more than two coexisting conditions and SARS-CoV-2 seemed to affect kidneys more than any other non-respiratory organs, even in patients without a history of chronic kidney disease.

Read: UK Rejects Calls To Publish Detailed Data Of Care-home Deaths Citing Privacy

Read: UK PM Johnson Launches New COVID-19 Alert System As Lockdown Rules 'modified'

(Image credit: AP)
Friday, May 15, 2020

Tyler Mongan, a member of our Emerging Fellows program envisions the alternative future scenarios of the Arctic region in his fifth blog post. The views expressed are those of the author and not necessarily those of the APF or its other members.

Sustaining the current geopolitical system in the Arctic will become increasingly challenging. Alternative scenarios will be shaped by continued collaboration and/or growing strategic competition. Regardless of what emerges, the Arctic Councils role in the region might be forced to either expand or become irrelevant. Five scenarios help frame what could arise in the region: (1) Sustained Current State, (2) Polar Cold War (3) Diplomacy Triumphs (4) Polar Commons, and (5) The Bering Plug.

A sustained current state would require the Arctic Nations to agree to keeping the Arctic open for the common good, while also yielding competition in favor of collaboration. However, the Arctic Council has limited powers to ensure that collaboration is sustained. Even if Arctic Nations verbally commit to cooperation, competition over sea routes and natural resources will continue to rise. The Arctic Council does not have the political or financial resources to mitigate the growing tension in the region.

A Polar Cold War might be on the Horizon. The US claim that the Arctic is in an era of strategic competition is a signal that tensions will grow in the region. Although the US is lagging behind in Arctic military developments it could shift course and seek to expand military operations in response to Russian and Chinese activities. Chinas maritime access has several choke points, but these will be alleviated as scientific and commercial BRI partnerships with Russia, Finland and Iceland continue to expand. These partnerships could also lay the foundation for a wider military strategy and Chinas Beidou-3 Satellite system is already in place to support the navigation of both missiles and Arctic ships. Russias military developments will expand to include the revitalization of cold war military installations. New airbases, radar stations and monitoring systems will bolster Russias already strong maritime presence in the Arctic. As the Polar Cold War scenario unfolds. The region will become militarized and Arctic Nations will seek to enclose their territories. The Arctic Council will play an increasingly smaller role in the region and bilateral and multilateral agreements will dominate.

A Diplomacy Triumphs scenario could emerge if the Arctic Council, or another multinational organization, is granted legal political powers to settle disputes and govern commercial and military operations in the region. In this scenario, as Arctic Nations pursue their national strategies, the tension in the region increases. However, diplomacy and legally binding cooperation keep things stable. Friction between Russia and US would become a norm, as Russia seeks to maintain its rights to a large portion of the Arctic and enclose its sea routes and territory.

To sustain a Polar Commons, the Arctic Nations agree to expand the role of the Arctic Circle to include legal governance over Arctic Circle developments. Military operations take the backseat to economic and scientific collaboration and cooperation. China expands the Polar Silk Road though bilateral and multilateral partnerships. The increased oversight and governance by the Arctic Council alienates Russia or the US, who are resistant to give up their rights to act unilaterally. In general, the Arctic is unenclosed, sea routes are open for international use, and economic developments are cooperative.

The rate of climate change and uneven ice melt could result in wildcard scenarios. Tides and wind could continue to create a much colder, ice covered Bering Strait. This Bering Plug is a growing possibility that would make access to, and development of the Northern Sea Route and North West Passage uncertain. Asian Nations would have inconsistent access to the new shipping route, decreasing Chinas maritime interests in the region. This would reduce Russias profits from transportation tariffs and curtail Russia-China developmental partnerships, shifting focus to Russia-European Partnerships. The Bering Plug would also reduce Russia-US tension that is created by maritime boundary lines and military operations through the straights. Overall, a Bering Plug might reduce some of the competition and strategic positioning in the region. If this is the case, then the current role of the Arctic Council might look similar for several years into the future.

Regardless, The Arctic region will continue to change in both climate and geopolitical landscapes. The emergence of these alternative scenarios will depend on the desired future outcomes of the Arctic Nations and the interplay of their national strategies.

 Tyler Mongan 2020
You are here: China

Chinese health authority said Friday that it received reports of four new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Thursday.

All the four cases were domestically transmitted and reported in Jilin Province, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.

Also on Thursday, one new suspected case imported from abroad was reported in Shanghai.

No deaths related to the disease were reported, according to the commission.

On Thursday, 14 people were discharged from hospitals after recovery, while the number of severe cases increased by two to 11.

As of Thursday, the overall confirmed cases on the mainland had reached 82,933, including 91 patients who were still being treated, and 78,209 people who had been discharged after recovery.

Altogether 4,633 people had died of the disease, the commission said.

By Thursday, the mainland had reported a total of 1,692 imported cases. Of the cases, 1,646 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 46 remained hospitalized with three in severe conditions. No deaths from the imported cases had been reported.

The commission said four people, all from overseas, were still suspected of being infected with the virus.

According to the commission, 5,211 close contacts were still under medical observation after 509 people were discharged from medical observation Thursday.

Also on Thursday, 11 new asymptomatic cases including two from abroad were reported on the mainland. No cases were re-categorized as confirmed cases, and 104 asymptomatic cases, including three from overseas, were discharged from medical observation.

The commission said 619 asymptomatic cases, including 35 from overseas, were still under medical observation.

By Thursday, 1,051 confirmed cases including four deaths had been reported in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR), 45 confirmed cases in the Macao SAR, and 440 in Taiwan including seven deaths.

A total of 1,009 patients in Hong Kong, 43 in Macao, and 383 in Taiwan had been discharged from hospitals after recovery.
The United States prison population remained stable in the early months of the year, decreasing by just 1.6 percent from January through March even as prisons emerged as incubators for the spread of Covid-19, according to a report released on Thursday.

The prison population in five states  Idaho, Iowa, South Carolina, West Virginia and Wyoming  was larger on March 31 than it was at the end of 2019, according to the study.

The report, which looked at shifts in the numbers of inmates in the federal prison system and in 44 states prisons, was produced by the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit research organization.

The steepest reduction was recorded in Vermont, where the prison population declined by 11.6 percent between Jan. 1 and March 31, followed by North Dakota and Oregon, where the number of prison inmates dropped by 9.8 percent and 8.3 percent. The smallest declines were in South Dakota, whose prison population dropped by 0.3 percent, and in Massachusetts and Ohio, whose declines were too small to register as percentages, according to the report.
Haryana recorded two deaths due to coronavirus  one in Faridabad and another in Sonepat  since Thursday evening, which took the states toll to 13 on Friday.

Senior doctors at Faridabad health department said that 17-year-old girl, who died on Friday, was suffering from blood cancer and also found infected with Covid-19.

On Thursday evening, a 75-year-old asthmatic woman from Sonepats Tharu village who had died on the way to civil hospital was tested positive for the virus, said officials.

It may be recalled that while there have been five Covid-related deaths in Faridabad, three in Panipat and two in Ambala, one each has been reported from Sonepat, Karnal and Rohtak.

Meanwhile, though the state bulletin did not mention it, a truck driver and its cleaner who were on their way back from Kashmir were also found positive and have been put in isolation at Ambala after the Kashmir administration informed their Ambala counterparts.

36 NEW CASES EMERGE

Haryana saw 36 new cases on Friday, including 12 from Sonepat. Most of these cases were contacts of vegetable sellers. A staff nurse of BPS medical college at Khanpur Kalan and a local, who is working at a Delhi hospital, were among the new cases in Sonepat.

Likewise, nine cases each were reported from Gurugram and Faridabad, two each from Kaithal and Panchkula and one each from Nuh and Rohtak.

MAN, DAUGHTER FOUND INFECTED IN KAITHAL

A 30-year-old man and his two-year-old daughter have tested positive for coronavirus in Kaithal.

IGP Hardeep Doon said the infected persons belonged to Dhand village and they had returned from Delhi on May 10. He said they had reported at the civil hospital in Kurukshetra and their test results came out positive on Friday. IGP Doon said they have been admitted to the Covid-19 hospital in Shahbad and their family members have been quarantined.

25 MORE DISCHARGED, RECOVERY RATE 54%

On Friday, 25 more patients were discharged after their treatment, taking the states recovery rate further up to 54.33%. While 13 patients were cured in Faridabad, five each in Gurugram and Faridabad and one each in Ambala and Panchkula were discharged. Total 464 patients have so far been discharged in Haryana, which now has 377 active cases.
Liverpool today became the first English city to refuse to return children to school next month as the Government faced a growing row over its plan to restart lessons.

The Merseyside port's council confirmed that from June 1 only the children of key workers and those deemed vulnerable would be allowed to attend - as they are now.

The local authority rejected ministers plans to restart lessons for some primary age groups before the summer.

The Government is facing stiff opposition from teachers unions and opposition politicians who oppose the reopening on safety grounds.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Government's plans at the daily press conference this evening, saying; 'I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so - and it is safe to do so.'

Union leaders met the Government's scientific advisers this afternoon, but speaking afterwards Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said it left many of their questions unanswered.

Earlier this week Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson branded the Government plan 'reckless' and this afternoon Steve Reddy, the city's director of children and young people's services, said he was writing to all parents to tell them not to expect schools to reopen for everyone on June 1.

In the letter Mr Reddy said: 'Our guiding principle is that schools can only reopen to other pupils when it is safe to do so and not a moment before.

'Only once we can be sure that schools are safe for both children and staff will they be able to open to more children. The safety of your child, and of our staff, is our top priority.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Government's plans at the daily press conference this evening, saying; 'I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so - and it is safe to do so'

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson (pictured today) said getting children back to school is 'vital' for their educational development and he has welcomed the efforts by many schools in England to prepare for a wider reopening

'Some parents have asked me when schools may fully reopen. This will vary from school to school. Each headteacher has to rigorously assess the risks of fully reopening for their particular school.

Downing Street rejects supplying teachers with coronavirus masks Teachers do not have to wear face coverings unless providing care for a child who has come into school with symptoms, Downing Street has said. The idea of teachers being supplied with masks as a way to calm coronavirus transmission fears was rejected this morning. The Prime Minister's official spokesman told reporters: 'Our guidance on face coverings is clear, they are for enclosed public spaces where you come into contact with people you don't normally meet such as crowded shops or public transport. 'Schools do not fall into that category. 'It is rare for a teacher to have to wear PPE, they should only be worn if providing close-contact care for a child with symptoms,' he said. He added: 'Any child with symptoms shouldn't be going into school in the first place.' Advertisement

'The size and layout of the school building, and the availability of staff, will affect their assessments. It will be the case that the schools will do it differently. Your child's headteacher will be in touch with you in due course.'

However at the press conference tonight NHS England's medical director of primary care said many vulnerable children would be better off at school.

London GP Dr Nikki Kanani said that 'risk is relative', adding: 'Some of our children who are more vulnerable need more support, need to be back in school to get the benefit of both the social environment but also the physical space as well.

'It is very important that we carefully get our children back to school because actually that is what is going to be good for them in the long run.'

This morning Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford told Good Morning Britain 'new cohorts' will not be brought into schools on June 1, although some children would return before the summer.

Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government would be speaking to parents and staff so they knew everything had been done to make the school environment safe and give them 'confidence to return'.

'We'd like to take a bit longer to do that, we think it will pay off in the end and that's the nature of the way that we would do things in Wales,' Mr Drakeford said.

But academy schools were told to 'start planning to reopen' in June. Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, which represents the semi-autonomous state schools stressed that they needed to 'rebuild parental confidence'.

But she said that the June 1 date to restart some primary school classes was just the beginning and not an 'absolute deadline'.

She told The Telegraph: 'My message to headteachers is that we should start planning to reopen.

'The planning needs to take a risk based approach, we need to make a full assessment of the risks which relate to site capacity and number of staff.

'We need to be building parental confidence as far as possible with families. Communication with staff, with parents and with communities is crucial.'

Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Trust, which has 35 primary schools across the country, said the trust plans to admit more pupils to its schools from June 1, the date proposed by the Government, saying the closure was disproportionately harming poorer children.

Mr Chalke, whose schools on average have 45 per cent of children eligible for free school meals (FSMs), said: 'The greatest risk to their health, for many of them, is their mental health. They're locked in.'

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said it was vital pupils were back in classrooms within weeks, both to allow key workers to keep working to save lives from coronavirus and to prevent youngsters missing out on vital learning.

Ministers have drawn up plans for a 'phased' return after the summer half-term, with some junior classes potentially going back from June 1.

'My kids won't be going, not until it's safe' Militant parents are refusing to send their children back to school, saying the Government's plans are not safe. Despite getting letters from schools confirming plans to restart classes, they are planning to keep their youngsters at home. Mum-of-four Lois Smith, 33, from Widnes in Cheshire, told the Mirror Online: 'My kids won't be going, not until it's safe. They aren't going back when there are still hundreds of people dying each day. 'I just think it's ludicrous to even think about sending them back. It's a parent's job to protect their kids, I don't care if I get fined. 'I haven't heard one person say they are going to send their kids in.' Advertisement

However, while most teachers have worked hard to help their pupils during the lockdown, education unions have told the Government to 'step back' from the plans  and urged their members not to co-operate.

Their main concern is over whether schools can safely enact social distancing, even with class sizes limited to 15 or fewer pupils.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis earlier insisted that social distancing can be done in schools.

He said it was vital pupils were back in classrooms to allow key workers to keep working to save lives from coronavirus and to prevent youngsters missing out on vital learning.

Mr Lewis told BBC Breakfast: 'Well I think one of the things teachers are able to do, both in the classroom and outside the classroom, and all of us as parents and people in society, is to continue to educate each other around social distance.

'So yes, even in a school environment I think it is important that we do what we can to encourage and explain and educate around social distancing.'

Minister for Children and Families Vicky Ford this afternoon said the potential reopening of schools to some pupils on June 1 depends on the scientific advice at the time.

In a question and answer session hosted on the parenting forum Mumsnet, she said: 'We will only do this provided that the five key tests set by Government justify the changes at the time, including that the rate of infection is decreasing.

'As a result, we are asking schools, colleges and childcare providers to plan on this basis, ahead of confirmation that these tests are met.

'The confirmation will depend on science advice at that time.'

It came after Mr Williamson demanded unions do their 'duty' and stop their opposition.

Writing for the Daily Mail, he said children need to start returning to classrooms 'in the interests of their welfare and education'.

Children in France, which went into an even stricter lockdown that Britain, have been back at school for a week and those in Germany and Denmark for the better part of a month.

Downing Street this morning also insisted that teachers would not require personal protective equipment to return to work.

Private sector says: We could reopen in weeks Private schools have been working around 'around the clock' using online learning  and are confident of successfully reopening on the Government's timetable. Despite taking a significant financial hit due to the pandemic, fee-paying schools have been leading the way in responding to the challenges, sector leaders said. Top schools including Eton College and the Perse School, Cambridge, have been posting free educational resources which are accessible to all young people. Professor Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said his 1,300 member schools were 'very pleased that there will be limited openings after June 1'. He added: 'They are enthusiastic about the idea that they can see pupils for things like university application discussions and to enable pupils to do those things that can't be done online, like coursework, science practicals and art.' Neil Roskilly, chief executive of the Independent Schools Association, which has more than 500 member schools, said: 'They have been working around the clock on online provision and plans to welcome back pupils to the classroom. 'The huge majority of teachers will be putting their interests first.' Advertisement

The National Education Union (NEU), which has 450,000 members, has described the Government's plans as 'reckless' and advised teachers to 'not engage' with the move.

The NASUWT, the UK's second largest teachers' union, last night threatened to sue school heads if teachers were 'expected to go into a school that is not safe'.

Ministers are concerned that if the unions sabotage a return to school, many of the most disadvantaged youngsters will lose out on vital education.

And there is an acceptance that many parents will be unable to return to work until schools are open again. Mr Williamson said extensive measures had been put in place for a secure return to school, adding: 'Safety comes first.'

Union chiefs have been offered a briefing with the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty this afternoon to reassure them the plans are safe for children, staff and parents.

In his article for the Mail today, Mr Williamson paid tribute to the skills of teachers, saying: 'Parents are doing a fantastic job helping children learn at home, but nothing can take the place of a teacher.'

But he urged unions to do their 'duty' and drop their blanket objections to a June 1 return, saying: 'All of us in education have a duty to work together to get children back to school.'

Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, said children from disadvantaged backgrounds faced a 'potential decade of educational disadvantage' unless schools went back soon. He added: 'The unions have got to engage on this.'

In an extraordinary intervention, former Labour education secretary David Blunkett accused the unions of 'working against the interests of children' by continuing to frustrate teachers who are desperate to get back into the classroom.

Lord Blunkett said he was 'deeply critical' of the NEU's approach, saying all sides had to 'work together to get over fear as well as dealing with the genuine risk'.

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: 'It is about how can we work together to make it work as safely  we can't 100 per cent  as safely as possible. Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children.'

Lord Blunkett said other workers, such as those in supermarkets, had accepted a level of risk in performing their jobs as he suggested teachers should do the same.

And he said the most disadvantaged pupils were being penalised, adding: 'They will not have tutors to be able to recover, they will not have parents who had higher education, they will rely entirely on us getting back to normal as quickly as possible.'

Boris Johnson ordered the closure of schools on March 18, just days before the wider lockdown.

Many schools have remained open to look after vulnerable children and those of frontline 'key' workers. But in practice, most have only had tiny numbers attending.

Under the Government's plans, children in reception, Year 1 and Year 6 could start to go back to school as early as June 1. Children will be placed in small classes and rigorous procedures are being put in place to limit spread of the virus.

Ministers hope to get all primary children back for a month before the summer holidays. Secondary pupils in Years 10 and 12, who have GCSE and A-level exams next year, will go back part time to allow for catch-up sessions with tutors.

Education sources said Mr Williamson was happy for his 15-year-old daughter, who is in Year 10, to go back to school.

Sir Anthony Seldon, former headmaster of Wellington College, said: 'Teachers want to and need to be back in schools. As long as the scientists say they can, it is utterly wrong for unions to try to block and discourage teachers.'

But union leaders yesterday insisted they had grave concerns about an early return to school.

Mary Bousted, joint general-secretary of the NEU, described the bid to reopen schools as 'nothing short of reckless'.

And in a letter last night Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, said it was putting schools 'on notice' that they faced potential legal action for 'breach of duty of care and personal injury due to foreseeable risk' if they asked teachers to go back to work too soon.

Gavin Williamson: For sake of all pupils, unions must do duty

By Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, for the Daily Mail

Rarely do I find myself nodding along in agreement with past Labour ministers but when I heard former Labour education secretary David Blunkett on the radio this week saying why it's important to get the most disadvantaged children back into schools as soon as we can, I thought he was making very good sense.

As Education Secretary, I pay attention when experts give me advice  I'd get into hot water very quickly if I didn't. If, based on the latest scientific advice, we can get a limited number of children back to school, then I believe it's my duty to do all I can to get them back there because being in school with a teacher is the best way to learn.

Of course safety comes first but we must also be aware of the potential damage to a child's education from not getting them back in the classroom.

It is now over seven weeks since schools were restricted to all but a very small number of children and until the rate of infection from coronavirus starts to come down, we cannot bring more students back.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Gavin Williamson called on unions to support moves to start a staged reopening of schools

In that time I've been constantly talking to heads and teachers' unions about how best to open schools in a phased and careful way. Later today I have arranged for union leaders to meet the Chief Medical Officer and other experts so they can be briefed on the scientific advice underpinning our approach.

The good news is that we are now past the peak of the virus. At the weekend the Prime Minister set out his roadmap for recovery and the second step of that plan is to start to get more children back into classrooms. Let me spell out why these proposals have put the interests of all our children first. The best place for youngsters to learn is in school and I have wanted to get more children back there as soon as possible. Parents are doing a fantastic job helping them to learn at home but nothing can take the place of a teacher.

It is known that the first few years of a child's education are so important.

It is during this time that young students begin to develop essential social skills and start to learn the basics that will have a huge bearing on how well they do later in life.

That is why younger children are at the head of the queue to go back to school, along with pupils who will be moving up to secondary school and those older pupils who are going to be sitting their GCSEs and A Levels next year.

Now I want to be clear, this is the first phase of a controlled and careful return to school. It's not happening overnight and it isn't going to happen without schools putting in place a range of protective measures to reduce transmission. The safety of children and their teachers is my No 1 priority.

I know some teaching unions still have concerns, just as I know parents and teachers have some worries.

I intend to carry on talking to all of them and working with them on any issues they may have.

Schools in other nations have achieved started to open following the pandemic. Above are children queuing using traffic cones at a primary school in Strasbourg, France

All of us in education have a duty to work together to get children back to school.

Let me reassure families that we are giving schools all the guidance and support they will need to welcome pupils back.

This includes keeping class sizes small, making sure children stay within small groups, and being rigorous about hygiene, cleaning and staggering break and mealtimes. We're also paying close attention to what they're doing in other countries, such as Denmark, where despite some initial concerns, children are back and adapting, as they always seem to do.

Children thrive and grow in schools best when they're enjoying being with their friends and teachers.

It is time to start bringing some of our children back in the interests of their welfare and education.

But this will be done carefully so it's right for our children, right for your family and those who work in schools and right for our communities.

If Europe can, why can't we? Denmark: Reopened primary schools and nurseries a month ago, and has seen infection rates continue to fall

Children kept in small groups of ten to 12, with minimum contact

Groups arrive at separate times, eat lunch separately, stay in their own playground zones and keep one teacher for all classes

Children sit two metres apart at individual desks and do not share water bottles or stationery Germany: Reopened schools for older children earlier this month and plans to allow younger year groups back in summer term

Students in final year were first back for exams, and told to disinfect their hands with sanitiser and sit at least two metres apart

A pilot scheme sees teenagers are disease-tested every four days, and swab their own throats France: Nurseries and primary schools were allowed back from Monday, with secondary schools to gradually reopen next week

Pictures at one school showed children sitting alone in 'isolation' chalk squares in their playground

Pupils aged 11 to 15 expected to wear face masks  made available for those who do not have them

Class sizes kept to 15 and creches capped at a maximum of ten children per group Arrows placed on the floor to safely guide pupils at a primary school in Paris, France Greece: Expected to reopen next week, but row has broken out over plans to install cameras in classrooms

Government wanted to allow live-streaming of lessons to allow smaller classes, with families deciding if their children attend school or learn from home

But teaching unions and opposition parties have objected over privacy fears and said scheme poses a 'serious risk' to students Sweden: Kept schools open for children under 16 throughout the outbreak

Pupils and teachers with any symptoms were urged to stay at home, and schools and colleges for older teenagers were closed

School premises cleaned at least once a day. Staggered break times, limits on assemblies and spaced out desks and chairs Finland: Allowed children back to school yesterday with strict social distancing and hand-washing rules

Arrival times staggered and unused spaces turned into classes to allow pupils to spread out

Schools will switch between classroom and distance teaching if infections spikes again Norway: Nurseries and primary schools reopened in April amid some opposition, but health experts said there had been no rise in infection rates

Children have been kept in small groups that have a minimum of physical interaction

Other schools and colleges across the country were allowed to reopen this week Switzerland: Allowed primary schools to reopen from Monday

Secondary schools and colleges will be allowed to open next month, provided authorities do not see a rise in infections A teacher wears a face mask with her pupils at a school in Chasne sur Illet, west France Netherlands: Primary schools partially reopened on Monday, along with nurseries, libraries, hairdressers and beauty salons OTHERS: Spain and Italy said schools will remain shut until September

In Ireland schools will remain closed until at least September, but nurseries could reopen in June Advertisement

Teachers' union threatens to SUE school chiefs if staff are put at risk by returning to classrooms too soon during coronavirus lockdown

By Josh White, Education reporter for the Daily Mail

Britain's second-largest teaching union last night threatened to sue school chiefs if teachers are 'put at risk' in the classroom.

The NASUWT, which has 310,000 members, has written to heads, academy bosses and local authorities, outlining their stance.

Along with the National Education Union, the NASUWT has been at the forefront of efforts to delay the reopening of schools until September, but their objections have been described by critics as 'political posturing' and 'scaremongering'.

Darren Northcott, the union's national official for education, told 5Live on Wednesday: 'There's a real risk here that some schools will believe that they can safely open from June 1, when we are very clear that they can't.'

Britain's second-largest education union, NASUWT, has written to schools threatening to torpedo plans for a June 1 reopening. It is headed up by Dr Patrick Roach, right. Its national official for education is Darren Northcott. The union says it has put the government 'on notice'

The union last night ramped up its attempts to torpedo the plans by threatening court action against school bosses, trust chief executives, and local authorities who ignore 'serious health, safety and welfare issues' in the classroom..

It came as the NEU also increased its pressure on ministers. The union said last night:

Teachers should keep online tuition 'to a minimum';

They should not do any online teaching that they feel uncomfortable about;

Teachers are worried about the security of online teaching;

And they should not be expected to carry out routine marking or grading of pupils'work

The NASUWT letter says the union is 'left with no alternative but to put employers and the Government on notice, by reserving our members' legal rights in the context of a tortious claim for breach of duty of care and personal injury due to foreseeable risk, and any other legal recourse available'.

Liverpools' Labour mayor may block return to class Pupils in Liverpool might not go back to school with the rest of England after its mayor warned he would not 'take risks with children's lives'. Joe Anderson vowed to 'resist' reopening after half term unless the city's infection rate had dropped. As of Monday, Liverpool had 1,515 confirmed cases, equivalent to 306 in every 100,000 people  higher than the overall rate in England of 244 per 100,000. Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson, above Labour councillor Mr Anderson said: 'This is a life and death decision. If we lose one child or one teacher or one teaching assistant or one school cook, that's one too many. Our levels of Covid-19 infections are higher than everywhere else and I'm not about to take risks with children's or teaching staff's lives. Only when we are convinced it's safe for children to return will we allow it.' The ex-social worker, who is running Liverpool from home after he was forced to shield for health reasons, was attacked by some online critics. One tweeted: 'We need 'can doers' to guide us out of this crisis and save jobs and the economy. 'Can't doers' like him should admit they're out of their depth and let others take over.' But Steve Rotherham, the Metro Mayor responsible for the whole region, said: 'Mayor Anderson is right that the safeguarding of our children, teachers and school staff has to be the number one priority.' Advertisement

'The NASUWT is clear that no teacher should be expected to go into a school that is not safe, and until it can be demonstrated that it is safe to do so, we will be continuing to support and advise members on that basis.'

Signed by union general secretary Dr Patrick Roach, the letter concludes: 'The NASUWT recognises that schools and employers have been placed in a situation where the wrong decision will result in people becoming seriously ill and dying, and will therefore appreciate that there can be no compromise on health and safety.

'If this means that schools are unable to open safely before September because they are unable to make arrangements to safeguard their staff and pupils, then that position must be accepted.' Despite undermining ministers' attempts to reopen the country's schools, the NEU says teachers should keep online tuition 'to a minimum' is necessary because face-to-face teaching 'cannot be easily replicated'. It also told members that 'no teacher should be expected to carry out any online teaching with which they feel uncomfortable or in the absence of agreed protocols'.

It is understood some teachers have privacy concerns, and fear their lessons could be recorded or manipulated by pupils. But Professor Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said: 'There are appropriate safeguarding policies in place and it is all going pretty well. So those pupils who are not receiving online teaching, simply because their teachers think it is risky, have every reason to feel very disappointed.'

The NEU adds that teachers 'should not be expected to carry out routine marking or grading', saying: 'To do so would be to disadvantage those who do not have the resources and support available at home to make that fair.'

For secondary school pupils, many of whom will be facing exams next year, the swingeing union restrictions state that teachers 'should not be asked to personally contact their students daily', except those who are vulnerable.

Neil Roskilly, of the Independent Schools Association, said the NEU's fears about online learning were 'theoretical'. He added: 'There's nothing unsurmountable for schools with good safeguarding policies. Schools are very used to dealing with safeguarding issues.'

A teacher wears a face mask during lessons at a Parisian school. Nurseries and primary schools in the country were allowed back from Monday

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign For Real Education, said: 'Many teachers are being courageous and still working but a minority are enjoying it.'

NEU joint general secretary Dr Mary Bousted said last night: 'The NEU is not against online working. Our members are using online learning to support their pupils. Our guidance is to help them do this safely for themselves and for their pupils.

'Arrangements for online learning must also protect teachers' and children's privacy and ensure children are kept safe while online. The NEU is supporting teachers and families to do the best they can with the resources available to them.'

ANDREW PIERCE: The Corbynite lover of communist Cuba who says the first word she learned was 'strike'

By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail

Mary Bousted, head of the National Education Union, sent members to Cuba

A clue as to the political philosophy of Dr Mary Bousted, the teachers' union leader trying to sabotage next month's return to school, can be found in her passion for communist Cuba.

The hard-Left joint general secretary of the National Education Union has authorised spending thousands of pounds of union money to send members on fact-finding trips to the one-party state.

The trips have understandably upset some members because of Cuba's disregard for human rights. A motion from teachers in Lewisham at last year's NEU annual conference demanded an end to their fees being spent on such jaunts.

The motion said: 'Cuba is a police state with no free elections, free speech or free trade unions... The trade union movement is controlled by the state, and the leaders of the single union CTC are appointed by the state and the Communist Party. The right to strike is not legally recognized, and in practice it is denied'

There was no embarrassing defeat of the motion because it wasn't called for debate  in October another NEU delegation is going back for a week-long visit.

It's no surprise, therefore, to find that Bousted backed the last Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn  a man who hailed the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on his death in 2016 as 'heroic'.

A former president of the TUC, she became one of the most powerful female trade unionists when, in 2017, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers  which she had led for more than a decade  merged with the National Union of Teachers. The combined 450,000 membership makes it the biggest education union in Europe.

Last year, under her joint leadership, the new union demanded the repeal of all legislation designed to curb the past excesses of the trade unions. It passed a motion arguing that flying pickets should be allowed to demonstrate outside school gates and that the closed shop should return, with teachers who refused to join unions dismissed.

Ms Bousted is shown on the picket lines outside Richmond College, London, in June 2011

'The Conservative laws have made solidarity strikes illegal and prevent unions taking political strike action,' stated the motion. 'These laws prevent us striking to defend the NHS [and] the anti-union laws prevent effective picketing.'

Bousted also backed the thousands of schoolchildren who skipped lessons several times last year to join the disruptive Extinction Rebellion environmental protests.

'We stand in full solidarity with all students striking or protesting against climate change [we] oppose any reprisals against students taking action to fight climate change, such as detentions, exclusions. The rights to strike and protest are fundamental democratic rights for students and workers alike,' she said.

When it comes to industrial action, Bousted has form. In 2011 she led the ATL union, which was founded in 1978, into its first national strike as part of coordinated action by unions against the coalition government's plans to change public sector pensions.

'We expect to be taken seriously and to have the political and industrial clout to make sure our voice is heard,' she cried.

It's hard not to hear her voice. During pension and pay negotiations, successive education secretaries held regular meetings with the bosses of the education unions. Perhaps thinking herself the smartest of them, Bousted seemingly did most of the talking whilst regularly picking fights with the minister.

'What I think I am doing is just telling it how it is,' she once said, revelling in her confrontational approach. 'People think I am strident because they don't like what I'm saying.'

She has previously clashed with Michael Gove, who was education secretary in David Cameron's coalition government, over his wish to restore traditional subjects

There was at least one stand-up row with Michael Gove, who was education secretary in David Cameron's coalition government. They clashed over Gove's wish to restore traditional subjects in the classrooms.

An English teacher before she moved into teacher-training, Bousted said she objected to focusing too much on traditional subjects which require pupils to learn material by heart.

'It's outdated, and fails to equip children for life in the modern world,' she said.

'If a powerful knowledge curriculum means recreating the best that has been thought by dead, white men  then I'm not very interested in it.' Bousted wanted less Shakespeare and more works from Caribbean, Indian and Chinese writers. Asked about her rocky relationship with Gove, she said: 'There was a lot of shouting and finger-pointing.'

No fan of Tory education secretaries, she never had any time for Tony Blair's government either  and opposed his drive towards academy schools. One senior Whitehall insider said that she picked fights for the sake of it. 'Mary Bousted regards the Conservatives as her professional, political, and philosophical foe.

'The latest posturing over the lockdown is entirely typical of her tactics.'

The insider added: 'It's all about the union, to hell with the teachers who want to get back in to the classroom  let alone the children. Bousted is typical of the breed of trade unionist who is a middle-class leftist.

'For her, it was school, university, and teacher training, and two decades running a union.' Bousted, 60, the second youngest of eight children, was brought up in Bolton in the 1960s. Her father was the headmaster of a local primary school; her mother, a die-hard Labour supporter, was also a teacher. She jokes that the word 'strike' was one of the first she learned as a child  after climbing onto her father's knee she used to scan the headlines as he read The Manchester Guardian, his daily newspaper.

Given Mary Bousted's determination to confront the Government, it is a word she will only too willingly put into action to try to get her way.
The Rotary Club of Westfield has raised $770 to purchase 250 face shields, which will be donated to the Childrens Specialized Hospital in Mountainside and Overlook Hospital in Summit.

Rotarian Phil Richardson announced that his alma mater, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has developed an inexpensive face shield for medical workers. The face shield is adjustable, lightweight and designed to be worn comfortably for long periods of time. It provides extended splash coverage and prolongs the usable life of N95 respirators and masks.

For those who wish to donate toward the face shield effort, checks can be made payable to: The Westfield Rotary Club Foundation Inc. and sent to The Rotary Club of Westfield, c/o The Westfield Area YMCA, 220 Clark St, Westfield, NJ, 07090. Please write For Face Shields on the check.
On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Shortly thereafter, five Arab states invaded to join Palestinian fighters in a campaign to destroy the new Jewish state. Lets put aside the real and imagined flaws of Israel today, and consider how unlikely the Jewish victory was in 1948. Algemeiner reports in its articlle May 14, 1948  Miracle or Catastrophe? that on November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states  one Jewish and one Arab. The Arabs had left no doubt beforehand that they would go to war to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. The CIA reported as early as September 1947 that Jerusalems Grand Mufti was reportedly making final preparations for a call to a holy war (jihad), which may start even before the UN General Assembly completes its deliberations.

On May 14, 1948, Israel declared its independence. Shortly thereafter, five Arab states invaded to join Palestinian fighters in a campaign to destroy the new Jewish state. Lets put aside the real and imagined flaws of Israel today, and consider how unlikely the Jewish victory was in 1948.

On November 29, 1947, the United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states  one Jewish and one Arab. The Arabs had left no doubt beforehand that they would go to war to prevent the establishment of a Jewish state. The CIA reported as early as September 1947 that Jerusalems Grand Mufti was reportedly making final preparations for a call to a holy war (jihad), which may start even before the UN General Assembly completes its deliberations.

Jamal Husseini, the Arab Higher Committees spokesman, told the UN that the Arabs would drench the soil of our beloved country with the last drop of our blood, and Abd al-Rahman Azzam Pasha, secretary-general of the Arab League, said, It will be a war of annihilation. It will be a momentous massacre in history that will be talked about like the massacres of the Mongols or the Crusades.

At the outset, the Jews appeared to have no chance. The Arab states vastly outnumbered the Jews and had easy access to weapons. The strongest Arab army, the Jordanian Legion, was led by a British officer. Israel faced a US arms embargo and was forced to smuggle weapons in from wherever it could. The new Israeli army did not have a single cannon or tank; the air force consisted of nine obsolete planes.

On the eve of the war, Israel had only 32,500 fighters mobilized, armed, and prepared for war. Chief of operations Yigal Yadin told the new governments leader David Ben-Gurion: The best we can tell you is that we have a 50-50 chance.

Ultimately, the Arabs only fielded about 50,000 troops, as did Israel. Nevertheless, the CIA believed Israel could not sustain a long war. In late April 1948, the CIA concluded, Without active aid from outside, the Jewish forces will be unable to defend themselves indefinitely against the Arab armies.

By late June, however, it became clear that the Arabs would not succeed in driving the Jews into the sea. At that point, the State Department, which had opposed partition, hoped to minimize the territory of Israel, and transfer the rest to Jordan (then Transjordan). As it would later, Israel won on the battlefield what diplomats tried to take from it.

Due to their aggression, the Arabs wound up with less territory than if they had accepted partition. Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria did not sign armistice agreements until the following year (Iraq never did). None of the Arab states would negotiate a peace agreement with Israel.

Israel gained more territory than it was allotted by the UN, but the cost was enormous. The economy was decimated and 6,373 Israelis were killed, nearly 1% of the Jewish population. Approximately 10,000 Arabs were killed. Had the West enforced the partition resolution or given the Jews the capacity to defend themselves, many lives might have been saved.

At the end of 1949, 40 of the 59 member states of the UN recognized Israel, an improvement over the 33 votes (out of the then-56 members) for the creation of a Jewish state two years earlier (with the Arab states predictably opposed to both).

The Palestinians refer to Israels Independence Day as the Nakba  the catastrophe  because they assert the Jewish state was created at their expense. The Palestinians dont acknowledge that it would have been a catastrophe for them even if the Arab states had driven the Jews into the sea, because the invaders had no interest in creating a Palestinian state; they wanted to divide the spoils among themselves. Despite losing, they still did so, with Egypt occupying the Gaza Strip and Transjordan seizing what is now referred to as the West Bank.

The Palestinians are victims of their own obstinacy. They rejected offers of statehood in 1937, when Britains Lord Peel proposed partitioning Palestine into two states. They turned down an even better offer in 1939 when the British were prepared to create a unitary Arab state. In 1947, they rejected the UNs partition plan to create a Jewish and Arab state. They subsequently squandered opportunities for statehood from 1949-1967, when they never demanded that Jordan and Egypt create a Palestinian state; in 1979, when Israel offered them autonomy; and, in 2000 and 2008, when Israeli prime ministers offered them a state in more than 94% of the West Bank and all of Gaza.

Palestinians and their supporters repeatedly say they object to the occupation of the territories Israel captured in 1967. If that is true, then why isnt their Nakba Day celebrated each June on the anniversary of the Arab defeat in the Six-Day War?

The reason is that the Palestinians consider the creation of Israel the original sin, and their focus on that event is indicative of their refusal to reconcile themselves with the Jewish state.

Despite the catastrophe, nearly two million Palestinians now enjoy full citizenship in the only democracy in the Middle East while their cousins in other Arab countries are denied citizenship and face persecution far beyond what they say they suffer in the West Bank. For example, journalist Khaled Abu Toameh recently wrote that the only apartheid in the Middle East can be found in Lebanon where Palestinians are barred from 72 regulated professions and cannot own property.

Israeli Arabs have no interest in living in a Palestinian state, which is little better. They see first-hand how Hamas and the Palestinian Authority deny their own people civil and human rights.

If the Jews had lost the war in 1948, it would have been more than a catastrophe; it would have been the genocide Azzam Pasha promised. Israel is much more powerful today than it was then; however, Israel still cannot afford to lose a single war.
As 50,000 stranded people returned home to Kashmir, the union territory administration has acquired 30,000 viral transport media (VTM) kits to ramp up the testing for coronavirus to ensure that the infection does not spread.

An Indian Air Force (IAF) plane brought in the 30,000 VTM kits to Kashmir on Friday, officials said.

They said the kits have been imported in bulk to ramp up the testing of people from Kashmir who are stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

"We had 13 travellers, who returned to Kashmir recently, testing positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. Foreseeing this possibility, additional kits were procured to ensure that we test more and more people so that the infection does not spread," the officials said.

They said over 50,000 people have returned home since the administration launched efforts to bring back people stranded abroad and in various parts of the country.

Srinagar Deputy Commissioner Shahid Iqbal Chaudhary said the VTM kits are much needed as the authorities will be able to expedite testing.

"We have had nearly 4,000 arrivals in Srinagar so far, with over 1,200 arriving on Thursday. Many of them have gone home after testing negative for COVID-19 but, sadly, 13 travellers tested positive," Chaudhary said.

He appealed to the people returning from outside the valley to exercise utmost caution.

"Nothing is more important than this," he added.

The Jammu and Kashmir administration has conducted over 63,000 tests for COVID-19 so far. Out of these,983 people have tested positive.

While 11 patients have died due to the infection, more than 450 have recovered. More than 1.03 lakh persons were put under various kinds surveillance and 26,603 were put in administrative quarantine facilities set up across the union territory.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Atty. Gen. William Barr during a news briefing at the White House on April 1. (Associated Press)

To the editor: Jonah Goldberg's intellectual legerdemain is in fine fettle in this week's column, focusing on the debate over whether history is written by the winners, as Atty. Gen. William Barr recently said in an interview.

In fact, the real problem is that President Trump and Barr are attempting to rewrite not history, but reality itself in real time.

Michael Flynn, Trump's first national security advisor, admitted he lied to the FBI. The Russians interfered on Trump's behalf in the 2016 election, and the Trump campaign accepted this help.

Trump and Barr deny these proven facts by casting doubt on the loyalty and patriotism of the FBI, claiming that the investigation was politically motivated.

This is the dangerous lie that Goldberg would have us believe, and which allows Russian President Vladimir Putin's minions to do it again for Trump's reelection in 2020.

Stevens Weller III, Encinitas

..

To the editor: Goldberg provides examples of "losers" writing history  American Indians, Hollywood writers targeted during the McCarthy era, and the New York Times' "1619 Project."

But these are not examples of the losers of history writing about their past. American Indians are not writing history, nor are slaves.

Beginning in the 1970s, American history has been interpreted mostly by progressive academics. They replaced a too "heroic" narrative of America's past with their catalog of selfishness and crime. Today, this view of America's past ideologically bolsters the progressive view of society and politics.

The "winners" are in fact writing history, Mr. Goldberg.

Jack Kaczorowski, Los Angeles
Appoints Crowe Soberman Inc. as Licensed Insolvency Trustee

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - HyperBlock Inc. (CSE: HYPR) ("HyperBlock" or the "Company") confirmed that the Company has filed an "Assignment in Bankruptcy" ("the Assignment") under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada).

The Company is no longer able to meet its financial obligations and has appointed Crowe Soberman Inc. as its Licensed Insolvency Trustee to seek settlement with its creditors. The Company confirms the Trustee may be permitted to act pursuant to Directives 12R and realize on estate assets; and that the Trustee may receive fees and disbursements that will be considered a super priority claim. The Trustee may act as Receiver, Agent or consultant, or in any capacity to any of the Company's secured creditors or to any creditor whose appointment of the Trustee to assist them that the Trustee would be considered as a "Receiver" as defined under Part XI of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act.

At the advice of the Trustee, independent Directors Ronald R. Spoehel and Bryan Reyhani have resigned from the Company's Board effective immediately.

About HyperBlock Inc.

HyperBlock is a crypto-asset enterprise operating a North American cryptocurrency datacenter and providing complementary product offerings, which include cryptocurrency mining, Mining-as-a-Service (MAAS), server hosting, and server hardware sales, depending on market conditions.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward Looking Information and Future-Orientated Financial Information

Certain information in this news release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities law. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "plan", "believe", "may", "should", "anticipate", "expect", "intend", "forecast" and similar expressions. The forward-looking information contained in this press release includes, but is not limited to, statements related to: the profitability and growth of the Company as a result of the recent deployment of Bitmain servers; the future status of the Company's current power contracts; the impacts of the Company's liquidity, debt maturities, and trade payables; and the potential revocation of the cease trade orders on the Company's securities. These forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this press release and are based on assumptions and estimates of management, which management considers reasonable, based on information available on the date hereof. Such assumptions may be incorrect. Actual future results may differ materially as forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to materially differ from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward looking statements. Such factors, among other things, include: general economic, market and business conditions will be consistent with expectations, fluctuations in general macroeconomic conditions; fluctuations in securities markets; risks relating to the Company's ability to execute its business strategy and the benefits realizable therefrom; the ability to retain personnel to execute the Company's business plans and strategies; the ability to retain auditors to perform an audit of the Company's financial statements; the presence of laws and regulations that may impose restrictions on the ability of the Company to operate its business, including securities laws applicable to the Company; the speculative nature of cryptocurrency mining and blockchain operations including but not limited to cryptocurrency prices, block rewards, and mining difficulties; and those factors described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Company's listing statement dated July 10, 2018 and the risks described in the Company's Management's Discussion & Analysis for the year ended December 31, 2018 dated December 12, 2019, each of which is available on the Company's issuer profile on SEDAR. There may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements and information. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information, or the material factors or assumptions used to develop such forward-looking information, will prove to be accurate. The Company does not undertake any obligations to release publicly any revisions for updating any voluntary forward-looking statements, except as required by applicable securities law. All forward-looking information contained in this news release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement.

For more information:

Crowe Soberman Inc.

insol@crowesoberman.com

1.877.929.2501

Debra Quinn

investors@hyperblock.co

1-800-613-4721

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55988
There are many unanswered questions about COVID-19. A Kansas State University infectious disease scientist and collaborators are offering a possible research road map to find the answers.

Jurgen A. Richt, the Regents distinguished professor at Kansas State University in the College of Veterinary Medicine, has co-authored a critical needs assessment for coronavirus-related research in companion animals and livestock.

The article, "A Critical Needs Assessment for Research in Companion Animals and Livestock Following the Pandemic of COVID-19 in Humans," appears in the journal Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases. Co-authors include Tracey McNamara from Western University of Health Sciences and Larry Glickman from Purdue University.

We need to address these challenges in a scientific manner -- in a proactive manner, not in a reactive manner. With COVID, every day something is new -- what was correct yesterday, could be wrong today." Jurgen A. Richt, Regents Distinguished Professor, College of Veterinary Medicine, Kansas State University

Richt is also the director of the university's Center of Excellence for Emerging and Zoonotic Animal Diseases, known as CEEZAD

Because of the rapid change of knowledge related to coronavirus, Richt and his collaborators wrote the article to stress importance of studying the ways that COVID-19 could spread between humans and animals. The scientists say that research should focus in several areas, including:

The potential for companion animals, such as cats and dogs, to carry the virus.

The economic and food security effects if the virus can spread among livestock and poultry.

National security areas, especially among service animals such as dogs that detect narcotics or explosives because COVID-19 is known to affect smell and cause hyposmia or anosmia.

"If dogs are susceptible and lose their smell and taste, it could affect our national security," said Richt, who also serves on an expert panel for the World Health Organization. "If livestock are also susceptible, it could significantly affect food safety and food security, too."

Richt's recent research has shown that pigs do not seem to be susceptible to coronavirus, but little is known if the virus affects cattle, sheep, chickens or wildlife. He is further studying if other livestock, such as cattle or sheep, may be susceptible to coronavirus.

The K-State Biosecurity Research Institute, or BRI, at Pat Roberts Hall provides the high-security laboratories needed for Richt and other scientists to study SARS-CoV-2, which is the virus responsible for COVID-19.

The BRI is a biosafety level-3 facility that houses important multidisciplinary research, training and educational programs on pathogens that affect animals, plants and insects as well as food safety and security.

"Time is of the essence when responding to a new biological threat, and everyone at the BRI greatly appreciates the continued support from K-State leadership who realized the importance of keeping us operational," said Stephen Higgs, director of the BRI and editor-in-chief of Vector-Borne and Zoonotic Diseases.

"Thanks to our dedicated and highly skilled BRI staff, we provided the safe, secure environment, training and infrastructure required for research on SARS-CoV-2. The paper explains why Dr. Richt's research in the BRI is so important to all of us and it was great that we were able to publish it so quickly and make it freely available."

Richt's own coronavirus research at the Biosecurity Research Institute focuses on four areas: animal susceptibility and transmission of SARS-CoV-2, therapeutic treatments, diagnostics and vaccines. Richt develops models to test therapies and has collaborated with researchers nationally and internationally.

He also is collaborating to test and develop potential vaccines that are safer and do not lead to vaccine-associated enhancement of the disease, which is an important issue for coronavirus vaccines.

One of his collaborative projects involves Sean Joseph with Scripps Research, Sumit Chanda with Sanford Burnham Prebys Medical Discovery Institute and Adolfo Garcia-Sastre with Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

The project has involved repurposing existing drugs that have been approved by the Food and Drug Administration for treating cancer, leprosy, Crohn's disease and other illnesses.

The researchers used a National Institutes of Health library of 12,000 drugs and tested them against COVID-19 in cell cultures to see if they inhibit SARS-CoV-2 replication. They have narrowed the list of drugs down to about 20 potentially effective drugs. Richt is now testing these potential antiviral drugs in preclinical models.

Another collaborative project with Nevan Krogan with University of California San Francisco and Adolfo Garcia-Sastre with Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai focuses on repurposing drugs based on coronavirus protein--host protein interaction studies.

"We are on the front end of studying whether these drugs, which look very promising in cell culture assays, can be used in COVID patients," Richt said. "We hope that the work we are doing presently will save lives."
A South Carolina middle school teacher has been placed on leave after a social media post accused him of being a Nazi who helped make travel arrangements for white supremacists at the Unite the Right rally in 2017.

Tim Manning Jr., 42, of Lexington, is the social studies teacher at Pleasant Hill Middle School that was named in a Twitter thread on Wednesday.

The Twitter thread, created by user Identify Dixie, alleged the teacher ran an alt-right account, identified as a Nazi, and took part in preparations for the Unite the Right rally.

Although Lexington County School District One did not reveal Manning's identity, the Manning family lawyer Elizabeth Millender confirmed it in a statement.

Millender said Manning had nothing to do with the 'repugnant Twitter account' referenced by the thread.

Twitter account Identify Dixie accused Tim Manning Jr. (pictured), a middle school social studies teacher from South Carolina, of assisting with the 2017 Unite the Right rally

The Twitter account claimed the Southern Poverty Law Center identified Manning as the man behind neo-Nazi user 'SCNazi'

'Today I'd like to introduce you to the Nazi who gloriously f***** up the Airbnb accommodations for the #UniteTheRight white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA in August 2017,' the thread read, adding a picture of Manning.

The thread claimed that Manning was confirmed by the Southern Poverty Law Center as the person behind an account titled 'SCNazi.'

Then, the account attempted to prove Manning's reported ties with white supremacist groups through 23 Twitter posts.

It accused Manning of helping a local chapter of the Daily Stormers Book Clubs, a neo-Nazi group, with travel accommodations for the Unite the Right Rally three years ago.

One post showed an anonymous user praising 'SCNazi' for his work in the neo-Nazi movement, despite the reported fumbling of travel arrangements.

Identify Dixie alleged that Manning helped set up travel arrangements for white supremacists attending the Unite the Right rally in 2017 (pictured)

The Unite the Right rally turned dangerous when a man supporting neo-Nazi drove his car through a crowd of people on August 12

Pictured: Police, EMS and other emergency services respond to a car running into protesters resulting in multiple casualties at the Unite the Right Rally

The Manning family lawyer insisted the teacher was not involved with the SCNazi account, and also said the family doesn't 'sympathize in any way with, fringe or otherwise prejudicial groups or associations.'

'They have absolutely nothing to do with the repugnant Twitter account referenced in recent blog articles and on social media,' Millender told The Post and Courier.

'They are not members of, nor do they sympathize in any way with, fringe or otherwise prejudicial groups or associations.

'Any insinuation that the Mannings are responsible for the subject social media account is tantamount to false light and will be dealt with appropriately in a legal manner.

'The Mannings are good, hardworking public servants.'

Identify Dixie claimed that Manning went by the username 'SCNazi' on internet forums and Soundcloud

Manning's wife, Melissa, also denied the allegations Thursday, the newspaper reported.

A Facebook post reportedly said Manning once worked as an assistant editor of Southern Partisan magazine, a neo - confederate publication with a history of controversial articles, The State reports.

In the past, the publication have used certain Bible verses to justify slavery.

Millender said Manning worked for Southern Partisan after college, but called the assistant editor title 'a misnomer.'

She said her client was a typesetter and a copy writer for Southern Partisan Magazine.

A Lexington County School District One said the district was taking the incident seriously.

Millender has vehemently denied any connection between Manning and the allegations made in the Twitter thread

The 2017 'Unite the Right' rally drew hundreds of white nationalists to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia.

The rally quickly became violent after white supremacists clashed with counter protesters who opposed the group's values.

Neo-Nazi James Alex Fields Jr. drove a car through a crowd of counter protesters on August 12, 2017, and killed 32-year-old Heather Heyer. He was sentenced to life in prison.
JERUSALEM (JTA)The first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary thought the term anti-Semite would be short lived and thus did not include it in the original edition of the massive lexicon.

A 1900 letter by the editor, James Murray, explaining why he omitted the term was discovered recently in the archives of the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem and placed online. The OED was first published in several installments between 1884 and 1928.

Murray, a British lexicographer, was writing to scholar and anti-Zionist Claude Montefiore, great-nephew of Moses Montefiore, one of the m...
Image: Karl Manke (Jeff Kowalsky / AFP - Getty Images)

A Michigan barber who opened his shop in defiance of the governor's coronavirus shutdown orders has had his licenses suspended by the state.

But the barber, Karl Manke, told NBC News on Thursday that he has received no notice from officials about the suspension and has no plans to close his shop in Owosso, about 37 miles northeast of Lansing, the capital.

"If we wait until we're absolutely perfectly safe, we'll never have the freedoms that we had," he said.

Manke, 77, owner of Karl Manke's Barber & Beauty, has been in the business since 1961, and he opened his own shop four years later. He said that in March, when Gov. Gretchen Whitmer first issued a stay-at-home order and closed all nonessential businesses, he shut down his shop.

The order was supposed to have ended in mid-April, but it has been extended. NBC affiliate WDIV of Detroit reported that the order has been extended to May 28.

Related: Wuhan Barber Has Customers Around the Block

Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Manke, who writes novels on the side, said that because bills and other expenses are piling up, he couldn't remain closed.

"I had no income. There was nothing coming in," he said, adding that places where he did book signings were also closed.

On May 4, he opened up his barbershop  a decision that has led to criticism. A commenter on the shop's Facebook page accused Manke of caring "more about your money than lives." Others have left messages telling him to stay home.

State Attorney General Dana Nessel said Manke's actions put the public at risk.

Nessel said that local police cited Manke for violating the order and that the state's Department of Health and Human Services issued an order requiring Manke to close his barbershop but that he didn't comply.

"Anytime you have a barber or other professional providing services to numerous citizens in close proximity to each other and those citizens are then returning to their various residences, there is a risk of contracting and spreading the virus," the attorney general said in a news release Wednesday. "It is paramount that we take action to protect the public and do our part to help save lives.

Story continues

Manke's professional license and the license for his shop "were summarily suspended and an administrative licensing complaint was issued," Nessel said.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak

Manke said he wears a mask and uses hand sanitizer regularly while working. He encourages his customers to wear masks and to practice social distancing guidelines. He said he isn't worried about getting sick.

"I've been through so many of these things. I remember as a kid my mother used to make us sit in the basement because of the polio virus. I've been through the Hong Kong flu and the swine flu," he said.

Since he opened his shop again, business has skyrocketed, and a lot of people support his decision, he said. One customer drove from California just for a haircut, Manke said.

"I've met people from every place across the country. Here in Michigan, they're coming from all over the state," he said.
The principles seem appropriate and sensible, said Campbell Fuller (pictured), head of communications & media relations at Insurance Council Australia (ICA). Clear guidance and information to employers and employees on how they can best maintain a safe workplace in the COVID-19 environment and reduce the risk of infection and spread is a positive initiative.

Joining the chorus of praise is the State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA), which says the move will protect Australias workforce and economy.

The State Insurance Regulatory Authority (SIRA) strongly supports the decision of the National Cabinet on Friday, April 24, to develop national work health and safety guidance on COVID-19, a SIRA spokesperson told Insurance Business Australia.

SIRA is committed to advancing the wellbeing and confidence of NSW businesses so that they can actively engage in the economy and society during the COVID-19 epidemic. It is important that businesses can operate safely, with the support they need, so that injured road users and workers can continue to recover and return to work.

Read more: Zurich CEO on SME support during COVID-19

A SafeWork NSW spokesperson said the National COVID-19 Safe Workplace Principles are underpinned by work health and safety legislation.

The work health and safety legislation may be enforced to ensure businesses take reasonable and practicable steps to protect the health and safety of workers and others within their influence or control, the spokesperson said.

SafeWork has developed a hub of materials to help employers and employees adhere to their obligations under work health and safety legislation and manage the risk of COVID-19 at work.

SafeWork NSW also has regulatory powers, as determined under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 and WHS Regulation 2017.

These powers include the right of entry to a workplace to investigate work health and safety matters, the right to request information, and to seize documentation or equipment relevant to an alleged work health and safety breach, the spokesperson continued.

The regulator also has inspectors that can issue improvement notices, prohibition notices and, in specific circumstances, penalty notices for failure to comply.

In addition to the National COVID-19 Safe Workplace Principles, SIRA has implemented a range of measures to support businesses and workers responding to the changing workforce and preparing for a post-pandemic environment.

Read more: SIRA on CTP and Green Slip insurance amid pandemic

These measures include two new vocational programs, the JobCover6 program and the Connect2work program.

The JobCover6 program encourages employers to provide short-term work opportunities to help injured road users and workers who are looking to gain new employment during the COVID-19 crisis, the SIRA spokesperson explained.

JobCover6 provides an incentive payment of up to $400 per week (or the wages paid to the worker, whichever is less) to an employer who can provide a worker with a short-term work opportunity. The incentive payments can be paid up to a maximum of 26 weeks ($10,400).

The Connect2work program encourages employers to provide work placements to assist workers who are unable to recover at their pre-injury workplace or who are looking to gain new work skills during the COVID-19 crisis.

Connect2Work provides a $200 weekly payment (for up to 12 weeks) to employers who can provide work placement for at least 15 hours per week to a worker, the SIRA spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that the body has existing programs designed to help with retraining and work trials if an employer is unable to provide suitable work. Additionally, SIRA can assist with the provision of equipment if a worker is required to work from home.

These programs will assist businesses that may need to adjust their approach to managing recovery at and return to work at this time, the spokesperson said.

The regulator announced it is working on further measures that will make it easier for businesses to protect their injured people and maintain their workers compensation obligations as they begin to reopen and recover from COVID-19.

SIRA will continue to adapt its response over the coming months to ensure that NSW businesses and injured people are supported, the spokesperson said. The SIRA website includes dedicated COVID-19 information for employers which provides further advice on the actions employers can take to minimise the impact of COVID-19 on their business and injured people.
Seven South Western Railway (SWR) zone special trains ferried 10,063 migrant workers back home to six Indian states amid Covid-19 pandemic, an official said on Thursday.

The first Shramik Special train from Hubballi left at 12.20 pm with 1,361 passengers bound for Jodhpur, said a SWR zone official.

Thursdays second special train with 1,550 migrants departed Chikka Bannavara station from the outskirts of Bengaluru at 3.30 pm to Muzaffarpur in Bihar.

Two trains, third and fourth special ones on Thursday, left Chikka Bannavara station for Gorakhpur with 1,520 and 1440 migrants at 4.50 p.m. and 6.35 p.m. respectively.

Similarly, Thursdays fifth special train departed Malur station for Katihar in Bihar at 6.15 pm with 1,462 migrants.

Likewise, the sixth train from Chikka Bannavara station to Jiribam in Manipur departed at 7.28 pm with 1,450 passengers at 8.30 pm.

Seventh special train from Chikka Bannavara to Udhampur in Jammu and Kashmir left at 10.39 pm with 1,280 migrants.

SWR is yet to share the departure details of eighth special train on Thursday, scheduled to leave for Jasidih in Jharkhand from Malur.

The special trains are being organised following the Union ministry of home affairs granting permission for the movement of stranded migrant labourers, workers, students, tourists and others.
People hold candles during a vigil in honor of Michelle Alyssa Go on Tuesday in New York. (AP)

Public spaces, particularly public transit, have long been fraught for women of color and nonbinary people.
After Western Australia woke to another day of no new COVID-19 cases, the states Premier Mark McGowan announced the ramping up of elective surgeries to 50 per cent of normal levels, and a new initiative to encourage east coast fly-in, fly-out families to move permanently to WA.

Speaking in Mandurah on Friday, Mr McGowan said there were now only seven active cases of COVID-19 in the state, six in the Perth area and the other in the Goldfields. The person who had been in intensive care was still in hospital but now testing negative for the virus.

Premier Mark McGowan addresses media in the southern coastal town of Mandurah. Credit:9 News Perth

Following an agreement at the national cabinet on Friday morning, elective surgeries would now be ramped up to 50 per cent across all three categories, at first categories 1 and 2, with special attention to those who had had a long wait.

The activity and consumption of personal protective equipment would be monitored over the next fortnight, with a view to increasing the activity to 75 per cent of normal levels.
She's been banging a saucepan every night for weeks now as part of the daily salute to frontline healthcare workers in new York City.

And Sarah Silverman shows no signs of losing enthusiasm for the 7 p.m. ritual.

The comedienne, 49, was back out on her apartment fire escape again on Thursday cheering and making noise with her neighbors.

Banging her pan: Sarah Silverman was back on her apartment's fire escape on Thursday to once again join in New York City's nightly salute to frontline healthcare workers

Silverman was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and blue skinny jeans with black ankle boots.

She added a black knit beanie pulled down over her long loose hair.

She once again had her implement of choice, banging metal tongs on a frying pan to create noise.

And as usual, she was joined in the salute by her pal Annie Segal.

Casual: Silverman, 49, was dressed in a gray sweatshirt and blue skinny jeans with black ankle boots. She added a black knit beanie pulled down over her long loose hair

Nightly salute: The comedienne enthusiastically cheered and made noise by banging on a frying pan with metal tongs at the 7 p.m. hour

Grateful: Silverman greeted her neighbors as the neighborhood gave voice to their support for their local heroes

Silverman, who wrote a best-selling memoir Bedwetter, wrapped filming on a rom-com shortly before the COVID-19 crisis began.

Marry Me, with Owen Wilson and Jennifer Lopez, was set for release this year but with Hollywood production and movie theatres shut down, it's unknown when it will come out.

Meanwhile, she's signed on to voice Candy Smalls, the highest-ranking elf in the North Pole, for Santa Inc. on HBO Max.

And she's featured in the star-studded Netflix documentary Have a Good Trip which explores the culture of psychedelics.

New role: Silverman has signed on to voice Candy Smalls, the highest-ranking elf in the North Pole, for Santa Inc. on HBO Max
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:54:35|Editor: huaxia

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--Just as Americans are desperate for the missing facts of the U.S. fight against COVID-19, the world is awaiting Washington's answers to a swarm of unanswered questions.

--the Fort Detrick lab is merely the tip of the iceberg of mysteries surrounding the U.S. administration's handling of the coronavirus epidemic in the country.



--In the face of the COVID-19 epidemic, the United States has indeed had sufficient time to prepare, but only ended up squandering two irretrievable months.



--As the international community is ramping up a collective fight against COVID-19, some in the United States have politicized the virus for personal and political gains domestically, while others have been busy mounting a smear campaign against other nations and international organizations on the global stage.



by Xinhua writer Guo Fengqing

WASHINGTON, May 15 (Xinhua) -- As the COVID-19 pandemic keeps ravaging across the globe, the United States has reported more than 1.4 million cases of infections and over 84,000 deaths, making it the country with the largest number of confirmed cases and fatalities worldwide.

Trucks used as storage for bodies of victims who died of COVID-19 are seen in New York, the United States, April 6, 2020. TO GO (Photo by Michael Nagle/Xinhua)

Such a worrisome situation has not only dealt a blow to the U.S. public and economy, but also revealed more serious and perplexing questions surrounding its response to the novel coronavirus crisis.

In a recent opinion piece published in the latest issue of The Atlantic, U.S. foreign policy writer George Packer lamented: "Every morning in the endless month of March, Americans woke up to find themselves citizens of a failed state."

It might be impossible to reverse time and make up for the squandered months and lost lives, but it's possible to complete the puzzle by picking up the missing pieces. Just as Americans are desperate for the missing facts of the U.S. fight against COVID-19, the world is awaiting Washington's answers to a swarm of unanswered questions.

IS IT STILL LIKELY TO TRACK DOWN "PATIENT ZERO?"

On March 27, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) restored the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases, a military center for biological research in Maryland state, to full operation.

However, the gloom surrounding the abrupt shutdown of the institute did not fade subsequently. In July, the CDC, citing "national security reasons," ordered the institute to halt research involving biological select agents or toxins, without providing more information.

An online petition was later submitted on the White House petition site, demanding the U.S. government explain the real reason for the closure of the institute, which has a history of multiple accidents, and clarify whether there was a virus leak from its Fort Detrick lab.

As a matter of fact, the Fort Detrick lab is merely the tip of the iceberg of mysteries surrounding the U.S. administration's handling of the coronavirus epidemic in the country.

The United States reported its first case of COVID-19 on Jan. 21, and the first death on Feb. 29, according to U.S. CDC data. On May 5, U.S. media disclosed that the novel coronavirus had infected as many as 171 people in Florida as long as two months before officials announced it had come to the state.

A man wearing a face mask takes a walk near the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. May 13, 2020.(Xinhua/Liu Jie)

In late April, health authorities of Santa Clara County in California confirmed that two patients had died of COVID-19 on Feb. 6, at least three weeks before the first official known U.S. death from the virus.

On April 30, Belleville Mayor Michael Melham tested positive for COVID-19 antibodies and believed he had contracted the virus in November, despite a doctor's reported assumption that what Melham went through was just flu, he said in a news release.

On March 11, CDC Director Robert Redfield told a hearing on Capitol Hill that some COVID-19 deaths have been diagnosed as flu-related in the United States.

Last week, the University of Washington revised up its projection of COVID-19 deaths in the United States to more than 134,000 through August. Regretably, the U.S. government has yet to make public the real epidemic data in a comprehensive, timely and accurate manner.

As of 8:30 a.m. Beijing Time (0030 GMT) on Friday, there have been more than 1,417,350 cases of infections and 85,884 coronavirus-related deaths in the United States, according to the latest tally compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University.

HOW MUCH EPIDEMIC INFORMATION IS CONCEALED BY U.S.?

On May 5, U.S. President Donald Trump and other administration officials said that the White House would wind down the coronavirus task force in the coming weeks and focus on restarting the economy.

Marine One carrying U.S. President Donald Trump takes off from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington D.C. May 5, 2020.



(Photo by Ting Shen/Xinhua)

The announcement caused so strong a backlash from the U.S. public that Trump said the task force would continue "indefinitely" with possible personnel changes one day later.

The inconsistency that the Trump administration has shown in disbanding the task force is a reflection of the U.S. government's incompetent response to the coronavirus outbreak in the country.

In the face of the COVID-19 epidemic, the United States has indeed had sufficient time to prepare, but only ended up squandering two irretrievable months.

On Jan. 3, the Chinese and U.S. CDCs talked over phone about the epidemic outbreak, and the U.S. side has since received updates on the epidemic from China on a regular basis.

As early as January, the White House received advice from experts and the intelligence services about the need for urgent mitigation measures against the spread of the virus. Nevertheless, it had chosen to play down the severity of the virus until early March.

Amid the coronavirus epidemic, several U.S. senators, including Richard Burr, who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, came under fire after multiple media reports revealed they had sold off their stocks shortly before the COVID-19 pandemic roiled U.S. financial markets.

Traders work at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) in New York, the United States, March 12, 2020. (Xinhua)

Days before his stock sell-offs on Feb. 13, Burr penned a Fox News op-ed with Senator Lamar Alexander, saying that "the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus."

Almost two weeks later, Burr told a gathering at a luncheon that the coronavirus is "much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," according to an NPR report.

As more data becomes available, a painful truth has emerged that the elderly and ethnic minorities are more vulnerable to COVID-19 than other groups of people in the United States.

At least 27,700 residents and workers have died from the novel coronavirus at nursing homes and other long-term care facilities for the elderly in the United States, according to a New York Times database.

In an article published on The Atlantic on March 25, Ed Yong said, "Rudderless, blindsided, lethargic, and uncoordinated, America has mishandled the COVID-19 crisis to a substantially worse degree than what every health expert I've spoken with had feared."

WHAT U.S. HAS DONE IN GLOBAL ANTI-PANDEMIC FIGHT

As the international community is ramping up a collective fight against COVID-19, some in the United States have politicized the virus for personal and political gains domestically, while others have been busy mounting a smear campaign against other nations and international organizations on the global stage.

On April 14, Trump announced that his administration would halt funding to the World Health Organization (WHO), defending his own handling of the outbreak after the administration has been scrutinized for downplaying the threat from the coronavirus early on and faulted for delays in testing.

The announcement was then met with strong backlash and criticism across the world. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the WHO regretted the U.S. decision, calling on all nations to be united in the common struggle against the common enemy.

Fauci, a top expert on infectious diseases in the United States, said on May 12 that the nation has not had the ongoing novel coronavirus outbreak under "total control" yet.(Xinhua/Liu Jie)

Richard Horton, editor-in-chief of The Lancet, tweeted, "President Trump's decision to defund WHO is simply this -- a crime against humanity," adding that "every scientist, every health worker, every citizen must resist and rebel against this appalling betrayal of global solidarity."

Since the coronavirus hit the United States, immigration authorities have deported thousands of migrants, some of whom tested positive for the virus after returning, leaving governments across Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean struggling to respond, according to The Washington Post.

In an email to the media outlet, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it had deported 2,985 people in the first 11 days of April, without answering questions about continuing deportations during the pandemic.

Once the chief architect of the international order that all but assured its primacy, the United States has now depicted itself a victim at the hands of everybody. In this case, China is the obvious choice for the Trump administration to blame, for the timely alarm it has sounded to the world about the danger of the novel coronavirus, and the tremendous valuable support it has provided for various countries worldwide.

"We can learn from these dreadful days that stupidity and injustice are lethal," said Packer. "The fight to overcome the pandemic must also be a fight to recover the health of our country, and build it anew, or the hardship and grief we're now enduring will never be redeemed."



(video reporters Zhang Mocheng,Hu Yousong,Zong Pingping,Zhao Xu)



(video editor Zhu Cong)


In a bid to support the government's Vande Bharat Mission, ITDC on Friday said it has offered one of its hotel in Chanakyapuri as self-quarantine facility for people coming from abroad.

The India Tourism Development Corporation (ITDC) has offered 50 rooms at special rates in Hotel Samrat.

The company has offered to support Vande Bharat Mission, the repatriation operation by the Indian government to bring back stranded Indians from different parts of the world in the wake of the coronavirus crisis, ITDC said in a statement.

The hotel is taking all required measures to sanitize the facility as per the guidelines issued by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, it added.

"Standing in support with the nation in this time of unprecedented crisis, we intend to offer support and care to the community. We have reached out to the government with a proposal to offer quarantine facility at one of ITDC's run hotels at Chanakyapuri,"ITDCCommercial & MarketingDirectorPiyush Tiwari said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Gov. Kate Brown is allowing nearly all of Oregons counties outside the Portland metro area to begin reopening Friday. Thirty-one counties got a green light to ease the governors stay-home order.

The governor has also said it is OK for retailers statewide to again serve customers, except at shopping centers and malls. Although stores in Multnomah County will be allowed to reopen, the county itself did not apply to more broadly restart its economy.

Multnomah County officials say they need more money, more contact tracers, more personal protections equipment and more time before they can hope to join 28 other Oregon counties that the governor approved to begin reopening Friday.

Here are more developments to know Friday:

BACK TO BUSINESS: Retail stores statewide can reopen with new safety standards Friday. They will look to businesses that remained open for examples on how to operate. Fitness centers are also adapting to new safety guidelines. Some casinos will take temperature checks of patrons and employees as they start reopening.

ECONOMY: Almost 1 in 5 Oregon workers has filed for jobless claims since the coronavirus outbreak began. Over the same time, the number of Oregonians applying for help to pay for food has exploded more than 40-fold.

CARE: A Washington woman who spent one month on a special life-support machine after she contracted coronavirus left OHSU Hospital. She was among the first coronavirus patients the hospital treated.

CASES: Some counties approved to reopen are still short of the governors initial staffing requirement for contact tracers to limit the spread of coronavirus. The Oregon Health Authority on Thursday reported three new deaths from the new coronavirus, as the states coronavirus caseload climbed to 3,479.

IN CUSTODY: A young person in custody at MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn has tested positive for COVID-19, becoming the first patient sickened by coronavirus at an Oregon juvenile correctional facility. Filings in a federal court case say inmates in the states adult prisons worry they will be transferred or lose privileges if they test positive for coronavirus.

COURTS: The Portland nursing home with the states deadliest coronavirus outbreak now faces a $1.8 million lawsuit in response to one residents COVID-19 death. Two Pacific City motels sued Tillamook County, alleging the countys ban on overnight lodging violates their constitutional rights.

TRANSIT: More people are hopping on TriMet buses and trains, according to ridership figures that show ridership is up for the second consecutive week. Bird and Lime e-scooters are also returning to Portland.

CANCELED: Oregons ban on large gatherings through September ended organizers hopes of staging Feast Portland. Bend Brewfest planners have also called off this years festival.

SCHOOLS: As coronavirus threatens school budgets, more districts are turning to pay cut-free furloughs, following the lead of Portland. The furloughs are covered by unemployment insurance programs.

#TEAMOREGON:

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Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Friday legislators "didn't want to be around" as dozens of demonstrators gathered at the steps of the state capitol to protest her stay-at-home order, prompting the building to close on Thursday.

"You know, the legislature apparently didn't want to be around for ... this activity that many of them incited, frankly, and so that's why apparently they decided not to come into work yesterday," Whitmer, a Democrat, told CNN's John Berman on "New Day."

Both chambers of the state legislature -- Senate and House -- were out of session on Thursday with plans to adjourn until next Tuesday. The House was out of session because they had already finished voting for the week, according to Gideon D'Assandro, spokesman for House Speaker Lee Chatfield.

Meanwhile, the Senate did not reply to CNN's request for comments as to why they had adjourned until next week. The chamber's online calendar shows that Michigan's 38 senators have been in session Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays for the last two weeks, with the same schedule planned for next week. The absence of the legislators led the Michigan State Police to close the Capitol to the public per protocol.

Although a Washington Post/Ipsos poll released earlier this week found 72% of state residents overall approve of Whitmer's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, several state Republicans have strongly objected to the measures and signaled support for the demonstrators by filing a lawsuit earlier this month.

Ahead of the demonstration, which included some armed individuals, Chatfield said on Twitter, "I disagree with many of the governor's decisions. I've been very open about that. I also support the right to protest," before condemning the death threats against the governor.

Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey echoed a similar sentiment on Twitter Tuesday, saying "There are many people who are confused and upset about what's going on. They have reached out and have done so without threatening harm. And we are listening to them."

Thursday's protest was the latest in a series of public backlashes against Whitmer, a Democrat, who early on in the Covid-19 crisis issued expansive executive orders closing non-essential business and restricting movement and has been steady in her policy of a slow economic reopening of the state amid growing calls to relax social distancing measures. Whitmer is facing at least one lawsuit against her restrictive measures from US Rep. Paul Mitchell, a Republican.

The protesters have been supported by President Donald Trump, who tweeted "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" in April and has continued to show support for protests of Democratic governors in recent weeks. Trump has frequently criticized Whitmer because of her criticisms of the federal government's response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Ahead of the rally, Whitmer on ABC's "The View" on Wednesday said that the protests would make it more likely that the state will have to keep restrictions in place longer.

Earlier this month, Whitmer extended the Michigan's stay-at-home order through May 28, while also unveiling a six-phase plan to avoiding a second wave of infections.

Whitmer also said on "New Day" she called on Vice President Mike Pence to help her discourage these protests during a recent call with the nation's governors.

"I've asked a couple of times and both times it was acknowledged that I had made the request. But I think that people, anyone with a platform has the responsibility to try to encourage people to do the right thing and to stay safe," Whitmer said.

CNN's Veronica Stracqualursi, Pual LeBlanc and Carma Hassan contributed to this story.
With majority of Muslims likely to focus on Coronavirus during Tahajjud (late-night prayers) in these last ten days of Ramadan, Borno Governor, Professor Babagana Umara Zulum has appealed to citizens in his state and other Nigerians not to forget supplication against boko haram, their sponsors, and those who support them in any way.

Governor Zulums prayer request was contained in a statement he authorized on Thursday, which was released by his spokesman, Malam Isa Gusau.

It is expected and rightly so, that in these last ten days of the glorious Ramadan, majority of fellow Muslims all over the world, are likely to focus their minds on seeking Allahs intervention for an end to the Coronavirus pandemic. Without doubt, the COVID-19 pandemic is one of the most severe threats to human existence, hence, accelerating prayers against it should be TOP-MUST.

"With that in mind, however, I will like to appeal to Muslims in Nigeria, particularly those of us in Borno state and rest of the northeast, not to forget the murderous activities of boko haram. We have two viruses with equal-lethal proportions.

"Therefore, our late night supplication should have twin-focus: prayers against Coronavirus and prayers against boko haram, their sponsors and those who intentionally support them.

"Without ignoring prayers for other individuals, families and societal needs and wants, we should please submit ourselves with absolute faith to continually, seek the divine help of our creator, the almighty Allah, before whom no disease is without cure and no crisis is without solution Zulum said as quoted in the statement."

The Governor went on to say:

Prayers against boko haram are particularly necessary at this time, when our gallant military heroes, together with other security agencies and the complementary support of courageous volunteers in the civilian JTF, hunters and vigilantes, are recording huge victories in the ongoing fight against the insurgents.

These armed forces and volunteers have earned our eternal gratitude and respect, and they certainly need and deserve our sustained prayers for more victories, their well being and the well being of their families the statement added.

Governor Zulum also urged citizens with economic means to intensify support for needy persons especially displaced orphans, widows, relations and neighbours during and beyond the Ramadan.
Bengaluru: The lockdown has worn down the patienc of Sandalwood. After waiting for two months, Puneeth Rajkumar's film French Biryani PRK banner will be the first Kannada film to release directly on the OTT (over the top) digital platform.

The actor will thus become the first star from Sandalwood to take Kannada cinema directly to the OTT platform without first releasing in theatres.

The film is slated for showing on July 24.

On Friday, Puneeth Rajkumar talked up the film, the third produced by his company: "We have whipped up a delicious tale for you all! On July 24, savour the world premiere of French Biryani on (Amazon) Prime."

The film will see multi-talented actor Danish Sait playing the role of an auto driver from Shivainagar.The movie is about a three-day narrative between Danish and Sal Yusuf, who plays a French expatriate. The film also stars Disha Madan, Nagabhusan and Sindhu Srinivasamurthy. The story is written by Avinash Balekalla.

French Biryanis opening on Amazon Prime will be of interest to many small budget movie makers who are looking for opportunities to reach viewers on Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hotstar.

French Biryani is bankrolled by PRK Productions and directed by Pannaga Bharana. Two earlier productions by the PRK banner, Kavaludaari and Maya Bazaar were major hits.

Films schedules in Sandalwood have gone awry following the stay-at-home curbs. Some 100 films under production are affected.These include big budget movies Raja Veera Madakari Nayaka, Kotigobba 3, Robert and Yuvaratna. Producer Rockline Venkatesh estimated the loss to industry at hundreds of crores of rupees.
Fish at a popular aquarium in Australia have begun to show signs of depression after the facility was closed to the public in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to marine biologists on staff at Cairns Aquarium in Queensland, Australia, a number of fish became lethargic and disinterested in their environment without human visitors to engage with through the glass.

Others decided to hide in dark corners of their tanks, and one fish in particular, a Queensland grouper named Chang, stopped eating for several weeks.

After the Cairns Aquarium in Queensland, Australia closed in mid-March due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of fish began to show signs of depression. Some hid in dark corners of their tank and others stopped eating, sometimes for several weeks

'A lot of people don't realize that animals can see outside of the tank and see the people, they actually really enjoy the human interaction,' Paul Barnes, a curator and marine biologist at Cairns, told ABC News.

According to Barnes, fish are curious animals and appreciate having new things to look at and explore, both in their tanks and outside of them.

'Just people going past the exhibits is a form of stimulation for these animals,' Barnes said.

'They like watching faces, the different colors people wear.'

To help the fish deal with their depression, aquarium management decided to hire an additional diver to swim with them and keep them company.

Fish are susceptible to depression in part because of how closely their neurochemistry resemble that of a human, with similar serotonin and dopamine fluctuations

Aquarium management were so concerned about the mental well-being of the fish, they hired an extra diver to come swim with them and keep them company

'We've got these leopard sharks, and they almost like being held or cuddled like puppy dogs,' Daniel Leipnik, Cairns' chief executive, told AAP.

'We normally have two divers, we now have three. So there's a bit more human contact going on, just to create that extra stimulation.'

Fish are so sensitive in part because of how closely their neurochemistry resembles a human's - 'so similar it's scary,' Troy University's Julian Pittman told the New York Times in 2017.

The depressive feelings are likely due to fluctuations in serotonin and dopamine similar to what humans when they're depressed.

Pittman even uses fish to test the effective of antidepressant medications, which he says he can measure by how active a fish is in the tank.

If the medication is effective, the fish will swim to the top of the tank and begin exploring, sometimes within a matter of a few minutes, but when the medication doesn't work, the fish will remain almost motionless in a bottom corner.
Correspondence released by the Government has highlighted tensions between the HSE and NPHET over governance.

Letters from HSE CEO Paul Reid to Jim Breslin, the Secretary General of the Department of Health, dated April 19, states Mr Reid was "extremely disappointed" in the Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan.

Mr Reid's major concern was around the National Public Health Emergency Team's (NPHET) public commitment to increase to 100,000 the number of Covid-19 tests per week, which he says was not what was agreed at Cabinet Sub-Committee level and in meetings with the Secretary General to the Government, Martin Fraser.

He added he was "regrettably, taken very much by surprise" by Dr Holohans letter, where he laid out the commitment, which he received after the NPHET press conference where the increase was discussed publicly.

"The directions as set out in the above letter and press conference are at odds with the process that we have been jointly engaged in. They are also at odds with the process in place with the HSE Board," Mr Reid wrote.

Given that all of this was agreed, I am extremely disappointed that these understandings appear not to have been respected.

"Im at a loss as to why this direction from the NPHET to the HSE was given and publicly communicated without completing the jointly agreed processes and without regard to appropriate governance."

Mr Reid said the directions set out effectively attempted to commit the HSE to an intensity of implementation "which bears absolutely no resemblance to that which we previously discussed and has taken no account of what can be achieved by when".

Mr Reid said the development pointed to "the need for far greater cooperation" between the agencies.

He also called for a meeting with Mr Breslin to discuss the matters raised in his letter as a matter of urgency.

Likewise, a letter from Ciaran Devane, HSE Chairman to Health Minister Simon Harris, dated April 20, called on the Government to intervene in the strained relationship between the two.

"I write to suggest improvements to the nature of the relationship between NPHET and its stakeholders, including the HSE," the letter reads.

"It has been clear to me and to the Board of the HSE for a while that operational requirements have at times not adequately been considered at the centre of NPHETs decision-making.

In this current situation a determination was announced in public which went even further than the letter which the HSE was surprised to receive after the event.

"Both cut across and pre-empted the process which had been agreed to develop the implementation plan in order to meet and exceed the target of 100,000 tests per week."

The letters were published following several requests from the Labour Leader Alan Kelly, who described their contents as "explosive" in the Dail and say raises serious concerns about governance.

When asked about the letter on Newstalk radioshow The Hard Shoulder, Mr Reid played down the issue, and said although there had been tensions, that is to be expected.

"I would be a fool to think there wouldn't be tensions between a major agency and a department and there will be more," Mr Reid said.

"The reality is, what we were working through them, of course, there were tensions, but this was about making sure we had capacity.

"The outcome has been, over the last number of weeks, to have a shared plan which we published today.

"Absolutely there have been tensions in between, many tensions in various stages as big agencies working with departments but the outcome has been what we wanted to achieve."
But she was best known for an altruism that showed in ways both large and small. When one woman went through a difficult pregnancy, Hunter presented her with a piggy bank for her baby. Miller recalled that she once took a homeless woman under her wing and helped her find work and housing. She was also active in the Lydians, a group of professional women within the church who contributed their earnings to pressing community needs.
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Millions of Britons are set to try and enjoy green spaces as the first weekend since the easing of lockdown promises to be a scorcher, with rural communities begging tourists to 'stay away' for fear of being swamped by crowds.

Tomorrow marks the first day much of the nation will have time to enjoy the slackened travel restrictions brought in by Boris Johnson on Wednesday.

Many have already seized upon these freedoms and were today pictured sunbathing and exercising in parks and on beaches. And climbing temperatures pushing 70F (21C) are likely to tempt millions more outdoors this weekend after seven weeks of being cooped-up at home.

But isolated towns and villages dotted around beauty spots, which have largely managed to insulate themselves from coronavirus, are anxious about being breached if people suddenly journey to rural areas.

A row has already exploded inside one of Devon's coastal towns after second-home owners flocked to the seaside to use their yachts.

Range Rovers and other luxury cars appeared in Salcombe - dubbed Chelsea-on-Sea - overnight with their vessels in tow, leaving the full-time population of largely elderly residents 'frightened' about becoming infected.

Britons took full advantage of the loosened lockdown today by heading to parks and beaches to soak up the sunshine (Weymouth pictured)

Two women on the beach at the seaside resort of Weymouth in Dorset on a day of warm sunshine after the coronavirus lockdown restrictions were eased

People on the beach in Brighton and Hove today. Tomorrow marks the first day much of the nation will have time to enjoy the slackened travel restrictions

People head to the coastal town of Weymouth after Boris Johnson allowed sunbathing and people to travel to beauty spots

Sun-lovers enjoy their extended freedom to sunbathe in London's Hyde Park today in the warm weather

Those in South East England will enjoy temperatures as warm as Spain's Costa Blanca on Sunday - and forecasters said the sunny conditions are set to continue in many areas over the next fortnight and may last into June (Bournemouth pictured)

Since Wednesday, Britons have been allowed to sunbathe, leading to people heading to the beach today

A woman goes for a walk alongside Bournemouth beach in Dorset today as temperatures rise and visitors head to the seaside

Boris Johnson has allowed people to exercise as often as they like, prompting fitness enthusiasts to head to Hyde Park to work up a sweat

A runner jogs alongside the Thames to the backdrop of the iconic Tower Bridge today

A row has already exploded inside one of Devon's coastal towns after second-home owners flocked to the seaside to use their yachts

A group of people go paddle boarding along the River Hamble in Hampshire on a sunny day this morning

The year-round residents of Salcolmbe have expressed anger at their town being used as a seaside bolthole for the wealthy during the pandemic.

Salcombe town councillor Tony Lang, 69, a window cleaner by trade, said: 'The rules are quite clear, they're not supposed to be here.

Britons will make 15m leisure trips by care this weekend An estimated 15 million leisure trips will be made by car in the UK this weekend after lockdown restrictions were eased in England, a new survey indicates. Nearly half of the journeys will be no more than 10 miles long, the RAC poll suggests. A total of 1,317 drivers were surveyed after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced on Sunday that some travel restrictions would be lifted. Some 46% of respondents said they planned to take a leisure trip by car this weekend. Taking into account the number of licensed cars on the road, the RAC calculated that an estimated 15 million trips will be made across Saturday and Sunday. One in five (23%) drivers said they were planning to drive up to 10 miles to reach their destinations. Some 11% will drive between 11 and 30 miles specifically to reach a beach, while 6% will travel a similar distance to get to a national park or other beauty spot. One in 20 drivers (5%) said they expect to drive more than 30 miles for recreation. Advertisement

'There have been quite a few of them coming down. It's a bit annoying because we've been relatively clear of it down here and the attitude seems to be, 'what's the problem, I don't have it'.

'But the trouble is no one knows if they have had it. I'm worried that people here may get the virus, there is an increased risk.. If we get people travelling from all over the country it's a greater risk.'

Several locals described the actions of second home owners as 'selfish.' Elsie Hardy said: 'I can't believe how selfish some folk are and I also think the police should be given more power to stop all this movement - but their hands are tied by Government rules.'

Hundreds of miles north, the Lake District is also urging would-be tourists to stay away and respect the communities who live there. Richard Leafe, chief executive of the Lake District National Park, this morning relayed the anxiousness simmering in these communities.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today: 'Our message would therefore be don't rush back to the Lake District. Normally at this time of year in May we could expect around two million people coming to the National Park and obviously if people come in those kind of numbers that's going to cause real concern in the communities that live and work in Cumbria about an increase in transmission of the disease.

'Cumbria already has a fairly high incidence of Covid so there's already real concern on the ground about the amount of people coming back to take their unlimited outdoor exercise, which in itself is a very good thing but if everyone tries to do it in one space, that could lead to problems in the Lake District.'

His fears were echoed by National Trust director Hilary McGrady, who urged people to travel to less well-known areas where crowds would be less dense.

Ms McGrady said: 'This really isn't the time for people to jump and go somewhere they're not familiar with. There are a lot of beautiful green spaces close to people within a half hour drive time

People head to the seafront in Bournemouth, Dorset, as temperatures climb this weekend

People enjoy the sunny weather at Potters Field near Tower Bridge in London today. Prime Minister Boris Johnson has said the public should be encouraged to head back to work if they can't work from the home, as the lockdown is gradually eased

A women takes a selfie while enjoying the sunshine at Hyde Park in London today next to the Serpentine

Two people go for a walk along the promenade at Lyme Regis in Dorset this morning on a sunny day for much of the country

A jogger out for a run this morning, ahead of what could be a warm weekend, as the sun shines at Nene Park, Peterborough

The wind direction is set to pivot which, instead of cold Arctic air, will blow warm tropical breezes towards the UK's shores (Friday, left and Sunday, right)

Boris Johnson's road map back to normality on Wednesday gave the green light for unlimited exercise and permitted people to drive to beauty spots - making tomorrow the first opportunity for many workers to enjoy these new freedoms (Wimbledon Common this morning)

Cyclists use rental Santander bikes on a cycle path in Hyde Park, London, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease

A cyclist passes the London Eye, as lockdown measures are gradually eased across the country. Forecasters said the sunny conditions are set to continue in many areas over the next fortnight

Cars queuing at KFC Belfast Yorkgate after the fast-food chain reopened over 100 stores yesterday for delivery and drive-thru orders. Other chains, such as Starbucks, have also opened many sites across the nation

'But I would absolutely concur this is about respect about people taking care of themselves but care of each other and we're all trying to do this as safely as possible that of course is our priority for our customers and our staff.

'Local communities are genuinely and rightly nervous about having large numbers of people arrive.'

While the National Trust's ticketed estates remain closed, they have opened 350 car parks and are planning more openings as furloughed staff are brought back to work.

Mr Leafe said that National Park staff would be patrolling Lake District car parks this weekend to ensure they were not overflowing.

Communities dotted around these beauty spots are braced for an influx of people as temperatures start to climb heading into next week.

The wind direction is set to pivot which, instead of cold Arctic air, will blow warm tropical breezes towards the UK's shores.

Those in South East England will enjoy temperatures as warm as Spain's Costa Blanca on Sunday - and forecasters said the sunny conditions are set to continue in many areas over the next fortnight and may last into June.

People sunbathe in the sunny weather at Potters Field, near Tower Bridge. Those in South East England will enjoy temperatures as warm as Spain's Costa Blanca on Sunday

Members of the public take a trip to the beach in Brighton and Hove as the lockdown is relaxed across the UK. Climbing temperatures pushing 70F (21C) are likely to tempt millions more outdoors this weekend

Staff wear protective face shields after a B&Q store in Chiswick adopted safety measures to protect customers and staff at the home improvement shop, as lockdown restrictions start to ease after seven weeks

People going for walks in the sunny weather at Potters Fields near Tower Bridge today. People are now allowed to exercise as much as they like, and also sunbathe in public areas

Cyclists ride through Battersea Park in London after the introduction of measures to bring the country out of lockdown

People enjoy the sunny weather while sat at Potters Fields near Tower Bridge today. Those in South East England will enjoy temperatures as warm as Spain's Costa Blanca on Sunday

Cyclists use a cycle path in Hyde Park, London, today. People are now allowed to spend as much time outdoors as they want, but must stay at least 2m (6'6") away from anyone they don't live with

The mercury is set to rise next week towards 77F (25C) in London by next Wednesday - closing in on the hottest day of the year so far which was set on Good Friday when Treknow in Cornwall hit 79F (26C).

Matthew Box, from the Met Office, said: 'Temperatures will have recovered to be mostly near normal. Parts of the south could see temperatures hit 20C (68F) or 21C (70F) in the South-East on Saturday and, more likely, Sunday.'

The forecast for Alicante, on the Costa Blanca, is for showers and temperatures reaching a maximum of 21C on Saturday. Barcelona is only expected to reach 20C (68F). Temperatures will get up to 64F (18C) in London today.

Today will be dry with sunny spells in central and southern England and Wales but cool breezes are set to keep temperatures in the mid-teens Celsius. It is due to be cloudier further north with more limited sunny interludes.

In its longer-range forecast for the next fortnight, the Met Office predicts most parts of the UK will see 'largely fine and dry conditions, with variable cloud and bright or sunny spells'.

Forecasters say: 'Temperatures look to take an upward trend over the next two weeks with most areas becoming warm, especially in the south and east.

'There looks to be a continuation of the settled weather as high pressure stays in control. Most places should remain largely dry with plenty of brightness or sunshine as well as light winds.'

From this morning, people began to head to the seaside resort of Weymouth in Dorset as the weather hotted up

A cyclist wearing a protective face mask passes the London Eye on an almost empty Westminster Bridge today. At the peak of the capital's coronavirus crisis, 213,000 people are thought to have caught the infection

The year-round residents of Salcombe have expressed their anger at their town being used as a seaside bolthole for the wealthy during the pandemic

A man exercises at Hyde Park in London this morning as the UK's coronavirus lockdown continues across the country

A cyclist is seen on Tower Bridge, London, today. An analysis by Cambridge University and Public Health England (PHE) suggested the disease could be eradicated in the capital within weeks at the current rate of transmission

Light traffic on the M25 during the easing of the coronavirus lockdown. The mercury is set to rise next week towards 77F (25C) in London by next Wednesday - closing in on the hottest day of the year so far

Urging the 'utmost caution', Sarah Lee of the Countryside Alliance told MailOnline: 'There is no doubt we need to work together to restart the rural economy when the time is right and it is safe to do.

'The countryside thrives when it is open for business. That being said, there are clearly very deep anxieties among many rural communities and as it stands, many feel we are not quite at the stage where we can cope with huge numbers of people travelling from afar, visiting isolated spots.'

But although some guidance has changed, the Met Police have reminded the public that larger groups playing team sports in parks are still not allowed, alongside parties and outdoor concerts.

Chief Superintendent Karen Findlay, Silver Commander for the Met's response to the Covid-19 pandemic, said: 'It is important to remind everyone that larger groups participating in, for example, games of football or other group sport in the park, outdoor concerts or parties, protest, marches or assemblies are still not permitted.

'The public can expect officers to be out patrolling this weekend; they will be supported by the Mounted Branch and our Special Constables as they continue to engage with the public, explaining the restrictions and encouraging people to comply with the rules.

'In the event of spontaneous or planned mass gatherings taking place in a public space this weekend, officers will engage and encourage people to comply with the conditions in order to reduce the risk to public health.

'The majority of Londoners are listening and adhering to the guidance set out, but where necessary, we will be turning to enforcement as a last resort. Our focus is on keeping people safe.'

Some would-be tourists said they would be steering clear of beauty spots after a flurry of social media posts hinted that they would be targeted by angry locals. One popular Lake District community group 'descended into hate' as people debated if tourists should be allowed or not.

A man commented on the Facebook page: 'There is going to be a lot of vehicle vandalism. One person wrote: 'I'm gagging to get up to the Lakes but I won't be going simply because I'm worried about my car being vandalised by angry locals while I'm up a hill.'

Another posted: 'This group has got really nasty... what has this virus turned us into? We were planning a trip up when everything has settled down but judging by the comments I do not think we'd be welcome.'
By Trend





Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 26 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.
 Flash

Leaders of foreign political parties have sent messages to China, calling for a common vision to build a community with a shared future for mankind while stepping up cooperation to fight against COVID-19 and address other risks and challenges.

In messages recently sent to the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, foreign political party leaders speak positively of China's achievements in curbing the spread of the epidemic and its contribution to the global fight against the virus, urging against politicization of the disease and stigmatization of other countries.

Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal K.P. Sharma Oli, who is also the country's prime minister, said that under the leadership of General Secretary Xi Jinping and the CPC, the Chinese government has taken strong and timely measures that helped effectively contain the spread of the epidemic in a short time, and has actively promoted international cooperation to fight the virus.

The Nepali government and people highly appreciate China's actions as well as its valuable support for Nepal, believing that China's anti-epidemic experience is worth learning for the world, and hoping to work more closely with China in epidemic response.

Noting that a friend in need is a friend indeed, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, leader of the Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna and president of the Southeast Asian country, said the Sri Lankan government and people thank China's generous assistance and experience sharing to help with the fight against COVID-19.

China's contribution in the global fight against the virus is plain and obvious, he said, stressing that the Sri Lankan side firmly opposes any stigmatization against China or the World Health Organization.

Sri Lanka stands ready to join hands with China to strengthen international cooperation in order to safeguard the life and health of all human beings, he said.

Ahmad Basarah, chair of the foreign affairs committee of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle, said that mankind shares a future facing the COVID-19 epidemic and Indonesia opposes the politicization of the epidemic and the use of it by some forces as a weapon to attack other countries and feed their domestic struggles.

Indonesia highly appreciates the efforts made by China to push forward the international anti-epidemic cooperation and urges the political parties in all countries to build consensus and strength for fighting the epidemic, said Basarah, who is also vice chairman of the Indonesian People's Consultative Assembly.

Saleem Mandviwalla, leader of the Pakistan People's Party and deputy chairman of the Senate, said that Pakistan firmly opposes the stigmatization of China by some countries, noting scapegoating for the epidemic stems from a Cold War thinking.

Pakistan thanks the CPC for sending letters to various Pakistani political parties to introduce China's anti-epidemic experiences, and Pakistan is willing to continue to deepen communications with the CPC, jointly push forward stronger anti-epidemic cooperation among political parties worldwide, and help build a community with a shared future for mankind, said Mandviwalla.

Irakli Kobakhidze, executive secretary of the Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia party, said that Georgia spoke highly of China's assistance to Georgian citizens in China as well as its medical and financial support for Georgia.

The ongoing pandemic calls for unity and joint efforts of all countries against the invisible enemy, Kobakhidze said, stressing that Georgia supports the initiative to build a community of common health for mankind proposed by Xi, and Georgia is willing to make contribution to stronger international anti-epidemic cooperation.
We cannot wait longer now: SC to hear Vijay Mallyas contempt case in January for final disposal

Suman Kumar, the CBI officer who brought Vijay Mallya down

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: Painstaking and meticulous" investigation and countless visits to London by CBI officer Suman Kumar finally bore fruit after three long years in the bank fraud case against flamboyant businessman Vijay Mallya.

Mallya, the high-flying owner of now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, on Thursday lost his application seeking leave to appeal his extradition to India in the UK Supreme Court, setting a 28-day clock on his removal from the UK.

The extradition case pertains to the alleged bank fraud of Rs 900 crore in IDBI Bank. The embattled liquor baron also faces probe in another case related to alleged fraud amounting of more than Rs 9,000 crore in a consortium of banks led by State Bank of India.

Coronavirus pandemic may impact Vijay Mallya's extradition timeline

Kumar was assigned the case against Mallya, known for his ostentatious lifestyle and who had made his way to the Indian Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member, as the DSP of Banking Frauds and Security Cell, Mumbai in October, 2015. Kumar is now an additional superintendent of police in the country's premier investigation agency.

Mallya was facing the media heat as his failing aviation company was finding it difficult to pay staff salaries and retain premium services it had promised to its customers with clamour for booking him increasing day by day, sources in the agency had said.

It was a tricky situation for the CBI as the lending banks did not file any complaint against Mallya in spite of serious allegations of fraud against him, they said.

The agency decided to go ahead and used its source-based information to register the first FIR against Mallya related to Rs 900 crore alleged loan fraud against him. And Kumar was entrusted with the probe.

The officer, who joined the agency as a 23-year-old sub-inspector, by then had an impeccable record as an ace investigator of white-collar crimes winning the CBI gold medal for best investigating officer in 2002 handed over by then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 2004.

Mallya faces extradition: Loses plea to appeal

Fifty-five-year-old Kumar, honed in traditional CBI style of investigation, had also received the Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 2008, outstanding investigator in 2013 and the President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 2015 when he took over the case.

In 2016, Mallya escaped the country causing an embarrassment to the agency and triggering an uphill legal battle in the courts of the United Kingdom to bring him back.

The then Additional Director, Rakesh Asthana, took over reins of the case as the Chief of the Special Investigation Team. He and Kumar proved to be a potent team investigating the case, making rounds of London to ensure not a single hearing is missed and coordinating with the Crown Prosecution Service which was representing the case in courts in London.

The job was difficult as India had an abysmal record in succeeding in extradition cases in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. The case was fought by the Crown Prosecution Service with active support from the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.

Kumar ensured a concrete case of fraud is established and a charge sheet is filed in India to make a strong case for Mallya's extradition. It was imperative that India had a case against Mallya which was punishable in laws of the United Kingdom.

Through his exhaustive probe, Kumar managed to establish alleged fraud and money laundering in his probe for which charge sheets were filed in India.

"We were not contesting a trial there. We had to convince the courts that a prima facie case is made out to justify extradition to India," a senior officer said.

Respite for Vijay Mallya as UK high court defers bankruptcy hearing

The findings reached by Kumar in his probe managed to achieve a conclusive argument in support of extradition of Mallya to India which culminated in the UK High Court denying him the leave to approach the Supreme Court to challenge his extradition.

Kumar was lauded by the CBI for his efforts in the case.

"CBI appreciates the painstaking investigation, the hard work and the meticulous efforts of Investigating Officer Suman Kumar, Additional SP, CBI in successfully pursuing investigation and extradition proceedings against the fugitive," the agency spokesperson said.
Dave will have only two one-hour slots in the day to see his wife and new baby, one mid-morning and one mid-afternoon, despite them living half an hours drive from the hospital. If anyone else in the family wants to come, her husband will have to give up one of his two one-hour slots. Despite these rather grim circumstances, post-birth discharges at hospitals at the moment are as quick as possible  one friend of the couples who recently gave birth was discharged within two days of her caesarean section. Depending on your circumstances, this might work better for some than others. Mrs Allan-Petale said the losses of education, visiting and total hospital time were not so frightening to a couple having their second, but she felt for first-time parents, and people coming from the country faced with the visiting restrictions.

Im lucky ... I am a second-time mum with mum friends with kids of similar ages, and I already have the network, she said. I feel bad for first-time mums because they might not be able to have a mothers group. Its isolating enough being a first-time mum but if you cant make new friends, its twice as isolating. This is the most fundamental experience of humans ... a rite of passage we seek to celebrate, and celebrate through sharing ... the pandemic has impacted these stories forever. Dr Zoe Bradfield, midwifery researcher She said the antenatal and breastfeeding classes had been extremely helpful for first-time parents. They offered a way to get partners involved and educated, and she and her husband had met friends through those classes they still had now. I think [the classes] are why I breastfed for 12 months. We learnt so much about how to hold the baby, what to do when you are struggling, which is hard to do through video, she said.

I am worried about breastfeeding rates for mums getting kicked out of hospitals a few hours after giving birth. If your milk is taking a while to come in, I think it will have mums turning to formula. But my hat goes off to medical staff ... they are just trying to do the best they can in this unusual time. New parent, midwife or obstetrician? Your COVID-19 stories wanted Mrs Allan-Petale is one of thousands of Australian women facing this new uncharted maternity system, and a national study has just been launched that aims to better understand how its impacting them, their partners and their healthcare providers. Led by Perths Curtin University, the study team also includes researchers from Deakin University, the University of Melbourne and Melbournes Burnet Institute, inviting pregnant women, their partners, midwives, midwifery students and obstetricians to complete a 10-minute online survey about their pandemic experiences.

Leader Zoe Bradfield, who spent 20 years as a midwife across rural and metropolitan Western Australia before becoming a midwifery academic and research fellow, said the research was sparked by the desperate cries of women she had spoken to over the past couple of months. Dave, Carmen and Ruby Allan-Petale in a more relaxed environment. This is the most fundamental experience of humans: making more humans, she said. Its a fundamental rite of passage that we seek to celebrate, and celebrate it through sharing it. The pandemic has impacted these stories forever. Some of those she had spoken to were worried about having only one support person with them in the birthing room, having to choose between their mother or doula, for example, and their partner.

Others were upset about having visitors limited after the birth. Some were fearful after hearing stories of eastern Australian states' plans, at one stage, to potentially separate pregnant women with COVID-19 from their babies after birth. There was also the vastly altered experience of coming home after the birth. Grandparents are being told to self-isolate, Dr Bradfield said. Becoming grandparents for the first time, absolutely bereft with not being able to hold this extension of themselves in their arms. Postnatally there has been a separation from midwives ... [care] has moved to maybe one quick home visit then phone calls, lots of PPE and masks; its just not the way we usually run our models of care.

Where outbreaks have been more severe, obstetricians have been working long hours and isolating from their families so that is another cost. The survey aims to fill a gap so future authorities faced with a pandemic are not flying so blind. There is currently no knowledge of how to redesign health services in pandemics; we have had a good guess but there really isnt evidence to support it, Dr Bradfield said. [The 2009 swine flu pandemic] was particularly dangerous for pregnant women, they were a cohort particularly at risk, and despite that we didnt shut down health services. We have never shut them down ever to the degree that we have in the response to COVID-19.
Rhetoric from President Trump and developments in US trade relations will be watched very closely in the short term and throughout the next few months.

The trade developments will have an important impact on all asset classes and especially Pound Sterling.

Increased tensions would tend to undermine the UK currency.

Trump dials up the anti-China rhetoric

In comments on Thursday, Trump reversed his previous position on global currencies and stated that a strong dollar was in the countrys interest at the present time.

This is a completely opposite position from last year when he derided the impact of dollar strength.

Politics will continue to dominate rhetoric, maintaining the threat of erratic commentary. Trump has continued to attack Chinas policies.

Im very disappointed in China, they should have never let this happen. So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesnt feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesnt feel the same to me,

Although he stated that relations with President Xi were good, he had no wish to talk to him at the moment.

We have a lot of information, and its not good. Whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from China, and they should have stopped it. They could have stopped it, at the source, it got out of control.

Trump also announced that the ban on Huawei would be extended for another year.

Congressional Republicans looking to legislate against China

Republican Senator Graham has introduced a COVID-19 Accountability Act which would require the president to make a certification to Congress within 60 days that China had provided a full and complete accounting to any COVID-19 investigation led by the United States, its allies or U.N. affiliate such as the World Health Organization.

U.S. national security adviser, Robert OBrien, and Larry Kudlow, the national economic adviser, have also warned against investment of federal retirement dollars in Chinese firms given the possibility of future sanctions will result from the culpable actions of the Chinese government over the coronavirus.

US sources have also mooted the possibility of cancelling Chinese Treasury holdings.

China-watcher, Bill Bishop, from Sinocism; commented What we may be watching is the convergence of the more hawkish (US) national security stream with the domestic political stream that now sees more value in blowing up the trade deal than keeping it.

ING analyses the outlook for trade

ING analyses the situation in its latest report. The million dollar question is whether President Trump will stick to verbal pressure or follow up and hike tariffs again or effectuate alternative protectionist measures.

Chinese imports from the US have crashed this year as an inevitable function of a slump in Chinese demand. There is a clause in the phase-one trade deal that in the event that a natural disaster or other unforeseeable event outside the control of parties, delays a party from timely complying with its obligations...the parties shall consult with each other.

In INGs view, the fact that China has not made reference to this provision is a potential indicator of good intentions, especially broadly favourable comments from Treasury Secretary Mnuchin after talks with Chinese trade representatives.

Having said that, it is clear that it is simply unrealistic to expect, in the midst of the deepest recession since the 1930s, that China could prop up it imports by $S200 billion in two years.

Image: China trade

The import data is, therefore, likely to give Trump perceived justification in calling China in default of the deal.

ING looks at the domestic economic and political dynamics of taking measures against China. In its view, low unemployment and record highs for equities last year made it easy to dismiss critics of the trade policies.

The economy and markets, however, are in a very different place now and it would be much more risky to take measures that are not welcomed by businesses and could damage both the economy and Wall Street. Trump will want to protect Wall Street indices.

We therefore expect Trump to wait a little more to see whether his verbal pressure on China works so that he can continue to claim he has cut a fantastic deal with China.

The political calculation is far from straightforward, however, especially if Trump can turn international opinion against China.

If the President thinks that China offers a scapegoat for the current crisis and could potentially boost his re-election chances, an announcement of new protectionist measures is a serious option.

Markets will remain very sensitive to trade risks

If US-China tensions increase further, there would be an important impact on currency markets.

The US dollar would tend to attract defensive demand with the Japanese yen and Swiss franc also seeing fresh buying interest.

The Chinese yuan would be likely to weaken sharply, especially given fears that a domestic dollar shortage would intensify. Commodity currencies would also weaken, potentially sharply, as global equity markets come under sustained selling pressure.

Image: S&P 500 index

Pound Sterling would also be vulnerable on risk aversion and fears over the global trade outlook.
Three men in central Vietnam  one in Ha Tinh and two in Nghe An  were awarded death sentences Thursday for drug trafficking.

The Ha Tinh Peoples Court sentenced 29-year-old Hoang Ngoc Tan to death after he was caught carrying six packs of heroin from Huong Son District in the province to Ho Chi Minh City. The drug was found in his motorbike trunk on October 7 last year by border guards.

Tan told the court that in September, he had been asked by a stranger on a social network to buy heroin in Laos and transport it to HCMC. Tan was promised VND70 million ($3,000) for the job. The heroin was brought into Vietnam via the Laos border.

In Nghe An, local 45-year-old Hoang Nghia Van and 37-year-old Cho Mua from Bolikhamsai Province in Laos were also sentenced to death for trafficking drugs. Mua Ba Va, 32, of the provinces Ky Son District, was sentenced to life for the same crime.

In March 2019, Van had met a woman named Nguyen Thi Ly in HCMC. Ly asked Van to buy drugs when he returned to Nghe An and promised to pay him VND17 million if he succeeded.

A month later, Van returned to Nghe An and stayed there until May 9. Then he went to Bolikhamsai in Laos to marry a woman and he met Cho Mua, a relative of his wife. Cho Mua agreed to purchase drugs for Van. After the wedding, Van returned to Vietnam and informed Ly that he has found a source. Ly said she would send Van VND2 billion ($86,000) to buy 15 kilos of ketamine.

On May 27, Van received the money from Ly and gave it to Cho Mua, who used it to purchase the ketamine from a Laotian. Mua hired Va to transport the drugs for $2,000. After receiving the drugs in the forest, Mua rode a motorbike carrying Va, who was holding the packages in the back. The two were caught in Huong Son District, Ha Tinh Province. Van was arrested as he waited for Mua to deliver the ketamine to him.

Police have not been able to find and verify the identity of Nguyen Thi Ly.

Vietnam is a key trafficking hub for drugs from the Golden Triangle, an intersection of Laos, Thailand and Myanmar and the world's second largest drug producing area after the Golden Crescent in South Asia.

Vietnam has some of the harshest punishments for drug trafficking, awarding death to those convicted of possessing or smuggling over 600 grams of heroin or more than 2.5 kg of methamphetamine and to those producing or selling 100 grams of heroin or 300 grams of other illegal narcotics. However this does not seem to have had a deterrent effect, with increasing drug trafficking cases coming to light in recent years.
T he Health Secretary has insisted it is safe to reopen schools from June 1 at the earliest as a teaching union delivered a fresh blow to the Government's plans.

Matt Hancock said the likelihood of catching coronavirus in schools is much, much lower than other age groups and that Covid-19 seems to spare children in almost every case.

I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so, and it is safe to do so, he told the Downing Street briefing on Friday.

It follows crunch talks this afternoon between unionists and the Governments scientific advisers as the furious row between teachers representatives and ministers continues to escalate.

Unions and the Government are at loggerheads over reopening schools / PA

The chairman of the British Medical Association (BMA) has also waded into the debate, saying the Government should not consider reopening schools until the case numbers are much lower.

In a letter addressed to Kevin Courtney, joint secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), BMA chairman Dr Chaand Nagpaul called current evidence on reopening schools "conflicting".

The NASUWT teaching union said the meeting raised more questions than answers and that no evidence was provided to suggest teachers are at low risk of becoming infected.

Dr Patrick Roach, its general secretary, said: No information was provided to change the widely held view that the evidence base for opening schools from 1 June is weak.

The NASUWT remains clear that no school should reopen until it can demonstrate that it is safe to do so.

He added: The meeting that we had earlier this afternoon frankly was not conclusive in relation to the evidence base to support the proposal for the wider reopening of schools. That evidence is flimsy at best, in terms of the international comparisons being used.

Mr Courtney called for the Government to set out the evidence in written form, adding "very many questions that were asked were not addressed" during the meeting.

Ministers want to reopen nurseries and primary schools for pupils in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 from June 1 at the earliest.

Teaching unions have warned it is not safe to reopen schools in June / PA

The Department for Education has set out guidance urging class sizes of no more than 15, staggered break time and pick-up windows, and for pupils to be taught in small bubbles with outdoor space utilised.

But a coalition of nine teaching unions have rounded on the plan and insisted it should be aborted, with the NASUWT threatening to sue the Government if it goes ahead.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson, who previously accused unions of scaremongering, is trying to break the deadlock and insisted this afternoon it was vital to lift the school gates.

Gavin Williamson wants to reopen schools from June 1 at the earliest / PA

Addressing the growing row on Friday night, Dr Jennie Harries, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said the risk to teachers and pupils was very small and diminishing with time.

Warning of potential longer-term health impacts of keeping classrooms shut, she added: Children who have been invited back to school are at key points of their education and their longer-term health risks of not getting good, basic education, which then takes them into work, employment in adult life and gives them a prevention opportunity from long-term conditions is really very important.

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Liverpool became the first major local council earlier to rule out reopening schools on June 1, telling parents it simply cannot do so until mid-June at the earliest.

But one of England's largest academy trusts has become one of the first school groups to say that it will press ahead and reopen from 1 June.
In the video, officers leading the woman out of the Atlantic Avenue-Barclays Center station in Brooklyn appear to wrestle her to the ground after she slaps away one officers hand. The police then appear to handcuff her as her daughter looks on.

Mr. de Blasio, at his daily news briefing, said that the encounter contained complexities but that the officers actions were inappropriate.

Whatever else was happening in that moment, we should never have a situation where a mom with her child ends up under arrest for that kind of offense, he said.

The mayor has acknowledged that several recent videos have highlighted the need for officers to be better trained in how to enforce social-distancing rules. But he has also said that the number of arrests and summonses for violations of those rules has been minimal and that the police would continue to play a role in enforcement.

[Coronavirus in New York: A map and the case count.]

Disney, citing pandemic, closes Frozen on Broadway.

Disney Theatrical Productions said on Thursday that its stage adaptation of Frozen would not reopen on Broadway once the pandemic eases, making the musical the first show to be felled by the coronavirus crisis.

Frozen had been the weakest of the three Disney musicals that had been running on Broadway  the others were The Lion King and Aladdin  and the company made it clear that it did not believe audiences would return in substantial enough numbers to sustain all of those shows.

This difficult decision was made for several reasons but primarily because we believe that three Disney productions will be one too many titles to run successfully in Broadways new landscape, Thomas Schumacher, the president of Disney Theatrical Productions, said in a letter to his staff.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  As the College of Staten Island (CSI) in Willowbrook is preparing for potential budget cuts, faculty members are urging the school not to cut staff or reduce course offerings for students.

Frank Sobrino, a spokesman for CUNY, said that without revenue support from the federal government, the state anticipates budget cuts would need to close a $13 billion shortfall.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is putting together a plan to cut spending by $10.1 billion, according to the Division of the Budget spokesperson Freeman Klopott, as reported in Gothamist.

Sobrino added that New York City already notified CUNY of significant cuts in the current fiscal year, and is looking at a $31.6 million reduction target for university system in the next fiscal year.

To date, badly needed additional federal support has not materialized, he said. CUNY joins in on calling on the federal government to take prompt action to support New York and stave off potentially deep cuts to our academic programs, campuses and our students.

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

George Sanchez, chair of the Professional Staff Congress (PSC) union -- CSI chapter, said the college was discussing the possibility of department chairs cutting 35% of adjunct faculty.

The best thing that happened was the president was asking for the department chairs to give a list of names for adjuncts that would amount for 35% of cuts in the different departments, said Sanchez. The chairs resisted that and it was quite a lot of back and forth, people saying, No, no no. What happened this [Monday] morning was the administration did not insist on that -- and basically it was business as usual.

Sanchez said he believes the pull-back from CSI was due to the resistance of department chairs.

I think the main reason was people were saying, Were not going to do anything without looking at the budget and they havent agreed to that yet, Sanchez added.

The union chapter chair said that New York City is the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic, and its affecting CUNYs college campuses.

I have to say the union is committed to trying to get the [CUNY] board of trustees and legislators to see that those proposed cuts may not be realized, Sanchez explained. There are bills in the New York State legislature, we still look at the federal government, we are really making the case that public education and higher ed in New York has to have more money.

He said that instead of CUNY notifying colleges of possible cuts, he wants the university to say the reductions are not acceptable.

Dont tell us about the $10 billion in cuts that Cuomo made. We want you [CUNY] to go back and fix it -- were looking at the government, the board of trustees to say no. But if nothing were to change, yes there would be real, severe cuts and it might end up affecting adjuncts severely, Sanchez added.

At CSI, there are currently 1,410 faculty and professional staff -- which includes 773 adjuncts, according to the Professional Staff Congress.

CSI had one of the lowest percentages -- 33.5% -- of undergraduate instruction provided by full-time faculty when compared to the other CUNY schools for the 2017-2018 school year, according to CUNYs year-end report. At 67%, it has one of the highest percentages of courses taught by adjuncts.

A spokesperson for CSI wouldnt confirm that the college has been discussing cuts to the adjunct faculty staff.

PLANNING FOR OPTIONS

According to a Tuesday announcement from CSI President William J. Fritz on the colleges website, he explained that, while there are no details on next years budget, the college has begun planning for options to better prepare for possible reductions.

The big unknown is whether federal stimulus money will offset potential cuts resulting from the pandemic, Fritz said in the announcement.

He added he and the provost have met with the Personnel & Budget Committee many times over the last few weeks to prepare them to plan for several layers of cuts. He said he trusts that academic administrators, in consultation with chairs, will make the best decisions possible when presented with different scenarios.

A cost of instruction analysis that was developed over the last year and shared with the deans and chairs will help inform decisions on where instructional and staffing changes could be most strategic and cost-effective, Fritz said in the announcement.

According to Cheryl Adolph, executive director for Institutional Advancement & External Affairs at CSI, said the college is preparing for several possible scenarios to maintain operations while minimizing impacts to our student population.

At a time when so many in our community are being impacted financially, it is important to maintain a public institution that offers a first-rate education for approximately $7,000 a year, said Adolph.

She said that Fritz emphasized the importance of the colleges role as an anchor institution on Staten Island in a recent letter to the editor to the Advance/SILive.com.

The president recognizes and values the critical role faculty and staff play in fulfilling the colleges mission to provide scholarship-driven education, in nationally ranked programs to students, said Adolph. The amount of the stimulus will ultimately seal the decisions that need to be made as we prepare for the next academic year.

CALLING FOR CUTS IS DANGEROUS

Last week, Barbara Bowen, president of the PSC union, said in a YouTube video that CUNY colleges have acted pre-emptively for cuts.

The union will not accept panicked, ill-informed plans to reduce course offerings for students and terminate critically-needed faculty and staff positions, Bowen said in the video. "Instead of demanding cuts, the administration should be defending the university.

Bowen said in the video that its dangerous to allow college presidents to call for cuts now before CUNYs budget situation is clear.

It is dangerous for all of us, above all, as it sends the message that cuts to CUNY are inevitable and acceptable, she said. They are neither. What the administration should be doing at this moment, instead is demanding new investment in CUNY if this terrible pandemic has shown us anything, it has show the critical importance of investing in the public sector and the common good in the institutions that serve and sustain people.

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

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Zareen Khan says people still assume Salman Khan helps her find work: "I cannot be a monkey on his back"
The Halifax County Sheriffs Office reported the following, according to Captain A.M. Harris:

Thursday

A man whose murder trial ended in a mistrial in 2012 is wanted for reportedly fleeing drug agents following a short chase in the Weldon area.

Agent C.A. Parker obtained warrants for the arrest of Tavaras Ivey, 41, of Weldon, after the officer attempted to stop him shortly after 8 p.m.

Ivey was driving a vehicle on Country Club Road when Parker attempted to stop him near Elm Street.

The driver refused to stop and a short chase ensued. At Ransome Circle the driver stopped and abandoned the vehicle. He fled into a wooded area.

Parker obtained warrants for Iveys arrest on charges of flee to elude and resisting a public officer.

Harris said this morning Ivey tends to frequent the Reeses Store Road area as well as the area of Weldon known as The Strip.

In October of 2012 a jury in Halifax County could not reach a verdict in Iveys murder trial in the 2009 shooting death of Corey Biscuit Graham. Graham was shot and killed in the parking lot of Interstate BP.

His attorney said at the time nine jurors were convinced Ivey was not guilty of the crime while three were convinced he was guilty.

Harris said agents encourage Ivey to surrender.

Anyone with information is encouraged to call Crimestoppers at 252-583-4444.

Shortly before 11 p.m., Parker and Agent D.J. Epperson were in the South Rosemary area when they noticed a person with outstanding warrants.

The agents conducted a traffic stop on Taft Street.

Audwin Parker Jr., 30, of Southgate Drive, had an outstanding warrant for driving while license revoked.

The warrant was obtained by Investigator B. Council with the Roanoke Rapids Police Department in December.

Parker was arrested and served with the warrant.

While serving the warrant on Parker, the person planning to post his bond  Kristen Martin of Halifax  was arrested and served with warrants for fictitious information to an officer and driving while license revoked. Those warrants were obtained by Lieutenant Jeff Baggett of the police department on March 7.

Martin had another warrant from March 7 for driving while license revoked, speeding and fictitious information to an officer obtained by Officer Matt Hunsucker of the police department.

Parker and Martin received July 17 court dates.

Shortly after 7 p.m., Agent R.E. Ball stopped a vehicle for a violation on Robinson Drive near Bolling Road. The driver was identified as Kevin Kirby Shearin, 43, of Roanoke Rapids.

During the search cocaine was seized. Ball arrested and charged Shearin for felony possession of cocaine and maintaining a vehicle for a controlled substance.

Shearin received a $1,000 bond and June 8 court date.

Wednesday

Shortly after 3 p.m., agents executed a search warrant in the 100 block of Carl Street of Roanoke Rapids.

Agents had received complaints of possible drug activity.

During the search of the residence, drug paraphernalia, a revolver and a shotgun was seized.

Harris arrested and charged Edward High, 39, of the residence, for possession of marijuana paraphernalia and resisting a public officer.

High received a $1,500 bond and a June 24 court date.

Agents will continue to follow up on this residence.

Around 11 p.m., Parker stopped a vehicle on West Fourth Street near Taylor Street in Roanoke Rapids for a motor vehicle violation.

The passenger was reportedly in the process of throwing marijuana and cocaine from the vehicle but it was recovered.

The driver, identified as Lorenzo Simmons, 27, of Gaston, was cited with a North Carolina Uniform Citation for failure to stop at a stop sign and received a June 22 court date.

The passenger, Shawn Bracy, 43, of Baltimore, was arrested and charged by Epperson for simple possession of marijuana, possession of marijuana paraphernalia and felony possession of cocaine.

Bracey received a $2,000 bond and June 24 court date.

Tuesday

Shortly after 9 p.m. agents conducted a follow-up investigation on a residence in the area of West Tenth Street when they noticed a vehicle come to a residence, stay a short time and leave.

Agent D.K. Newsome conducted a traffic stop on the vehicle near Green Street.



https://www.rrspin.com/news/2818-hcso-roundup-former-murder-defendant-sought-mdma-seizure.html#sigProId641938dcc1 View the embedded image gallery online at:

During the search of the vehicle, 73 dosage units of ecstasy, 17 grams of cocaine, 66 grams of marijuana, five dosage units of oxycodone, several items of drug paraphernalia and currency was seized.

Newsome arrested and charged Kenderick Vincent, 31, of Madison Street, with fictitious registration number plate, possession with intent to sell/deliver MDMA, possession with intent to manufacture/sell/deliver marijuana, felony possession of marijuana, felony possession of cocaine, possession with intent to sell/deliver cocaine, possession of drug paraphernalia, possession of marijuana paraphernalia, maintaining a vehicle for a controlled substance and two counts of simple possession of schedule II controlled substance.

Vincent received a $15,000 bond with a June 17 court date.
The coronavirus infection rate in London was already falling before the country went into lockdown, data shows.

Analysis by Public Health England and Cambridge University calculated the crucial reproduction rate, known as the R, peaked at 3 in the capital in late February.

But the R - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - plummeted to 2.3 in the days before March 23, when the UK shut down and the economy was crippled.

It suggests that COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered by simple social distancing and home working measures introduced a week earlier.

Epidemiologists tell MailOnline more white collar jobs in London meant more employees were able to abide by the work from home rules and isolate from others, making it easier to shut the virus out of the capital.

The analysis also suggests the R in London tumbled below 1 just days after lockdown, when the number of new cases began halving every three-and-a-half days.

London's reproduction rate is now just 0.4, with fewer than 24 people becoming infected every day. If cases continue to decrease at the current rate the virus will be virtually eradicated in the capital by June.

The team's model says only one death occurs in every 160 cases. This suggests, at the current rate, London's daily death toll will drop to a consistent level of zero in three weeks, which is the average time lag between someone being diagnosed, their condition becoming deadly and their death being recorded.

London's crisis is in stark contrast to the rest of the UK, where the R is closer to 1 - the dangerous level at which the disease could spiral out of control again. MPs said last night the data highlights the need to ease lockdown on a region by region basis.

London's R - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - fell from 3 to 2.3 in before lockdown on March 23, most likely because of simple social distancing and home working measures. Deaths hit their peak in April before plummeting by May

London's reproduction rate is now just 0.4, with fewer than 24 people becoming infected every day. If cases continue to decrease at the current rate the virus will be virtually eradicated in the capital by June

The cumulative number of cases has barely changed in London since the start of April, according to the projection by the Cambridge-PHE team which suggests almost 2million people have had the infection in the capital

Number of new daily cases: The team also estimated that London has recorded fewer than 1,000 new cases a day since April 19, and said the number of new cases by May 10 was likely to be no higher than 24

On March 23, 213,000 people were contracting coronavirus every day in London, the PHE and Cambridge modelling suggests.

That plummeted as soon as restrictions were brought in, falling to below 10,000 by April 7 and dropping to less than 24 this week.

But in the North East and Yorkshire, where the R is 0.8, double the level in London, there are still 4,000 daily infections.

Bim Afolami, the Tory MP for Hitchin and Harpenden, in Hertfordshire, said the Government should consider easing lockdown in London before the rest of the UK.

He told The Telegraph: 'If you look at other countries, they've often adopted regional approaches. If it makes sense from a health perspective, we need to consider it.'

Former Cabinet minister Theresa Villiers said: 'These figures are good news. They show lockdown measures have been working and I think they make the case for further easing of the lockdown in London.

'It's vital that we do find ways to let the economy recover  and London is the powerhouse of the economy.'

The analysis has been provided to a sub-committee of the government scientific panel SAGE.

A new cycle lane has been installed in Park Lane as part of efforts to rapidly expand London's cycling network in a bid to encourage people not to use public transport

The coronavirus is infecting people twice as fast in the North East of England than it is in London, real-time tracking of the reproductive 'R' rating shows

WHAT IS THE R NUMBER? Every infectious disease is given a reproduction number, which is known as R0 - pronounced 'R nought' - or simply R. It is a value that represents how many people one sick person will, on average, infect if the virus is reproducing in its ideal conditions. Most epidemiologists - scientists who track disease outbreaks - believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, has an R value of around 3. But some experts analysing outbreaks across the world have estimated it could be closer to the 6.6 mark. As an outbreak goes on, the R0 may be referred to more accurately as Re or just R, as other factors come into play to influence how well it is able to spread. Estimates of the COVID-19 R vary because the true size of the pandemic remains a mystery, and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment. As an outbreak progress the R may simply be referred to as R, which means the effective rate of infection - the nought works on the premise that nobody in the population is protected, which becomes outdated as more people recover. Advertisement

They estimate that 1.8million people in London (20 per cent) have already had the disease.

And they say between 10 and 53 people in the capital caught the virus on May 10. Their forecast also predicts that that number would have dropped to just 10 by today.

The data also suggested COVID-19 kills around 0.63 per cent of people it infects - a similar figure that has been quoted around the world, which would make it around six times deadlier than seasonal flu. But they admitted it could be as low as 0.49 or as high as 0.81 per cent.

But the Cambridge-PHE study showed a huge variation between different age groups, warning the virus has an infection-fatality rate of around 16 per cent of over-75s but saying it was below 0.018 per cent for anyone under the age of 44 - the equivalent of one death for every 10,000 cases.

For people between the ages of 45 and 64, the team said the death rate was around 0.28 per cent. While the rate was in the region of 1.8 per cent for people aged between 65 and 74.

The data also broke down the 'attack rate' - the number of people infected in total - for each of the regions in England, saying that around 12 per cent of England had caught the virus in total.

They say London has been the hardest-hit region, with around 20 per cent of the capital having caught the disease since Britain's outbreak began to spiral out of control, followed by the North West (14 per cent).

In the Midlands and the North East and Yorkshire, the rate is estimated to be 11 per cent. While the team say around one in ten people in the East of England have already had COVID-19. The rate is just 8 per cent in the South East and even lower (5 per cent) in the South West.

The real-time tracking of the R rate is the latest piece of evidence that northern towns are now bearing the brunt of the crisis after the virus was shut out of the capital.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson has insisted that keeping the R below 1 is the most important of five tests that must be passed before returning to normal life.

The R is used to measure how fast the disease is spreading, and if it rises above 1, cases would start to grow rapidly and the virus could spiral out of control.

The latest research suggests the R is below 1 in all corners of England, but there is variation between regions.

In the Midlands, the value is believed to be 0.68, but in the South West it is thought to be around 0.76.

The PHE and Cambridge researchers say the R is 0.71 in the East of England, 0.73 in the North West and 0.71 in the South East.

The scientists drew from data from death certificates, as well as NHS and PHE coronavirus test results to predict the reproduction number.

It comes after it was revealed that eight out of 10 of areas with the highest infection rates in Britain are in northern parts of England.

That gives the small industrial town of 67,000 people, tucked away on the on the Furness peninsula in the North West, a rate of 882 cases per 100,000

WHICH AREAS HAVE THE HIGHEST COVID-19 INFECTION RATES PER 100,000 PEOPLE? Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria ( 822) Lancaster, Lancashire (522) South Lakeland, Cumbria (488) Ashford, Kent (484) Gateshead, Tyne and Wear (478) Sunderland (478) South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear (448) Middlesbrough (447) Carlisle (431) Brent, London (429) ...AND WHICH AREAS HAVE THE LOWEST COVID-19 INFECTION RATES PER 100,000 PEOPLE? Hastings, East Sussex (47) Mendip, Somerset (50) Torridge, North Devon (51) Rutland, East Midlands (68) West Lindsey, Lincolnshire (80) North Devon (87) North East Lincolnshire (89) Rother, East Sussex (90) South Hams, Devon (91) Arun, West Sussex (91) Advertisement

The small industrial town of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, has an infection rate of 882 cases per 100,000 - almost double that in Brent (419), the worst-hit part of London.

At least 552 people in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, have caught COVID-19 since the outbreak began in February, according to the latest Government data.

That gives the small industrial town of 67,000 people, tucked away on the Furness peninsula in the North West, a rate of 882 cases per 100,000 - or 0.88 per cent.

To put this into perspective, Barrow's infection rate is more than double that of Wales (365), triple England's (244) and Scotland's (251) and quadruple the rate recorded in Northern Ireland (220).

Figures show that Cumbria is also home to the area with the third highest infection rate. South Lakeland - east of Barrow-in-Furness - has a rate of 488 cases per 100,000 people.

And the town with the second-highest rate is Lancaster (753), which is located on the other side of Morecambe Bay in Lancashire.

Experts are puzzled as to why this part of the North West has turned into a hotspot for COVID-19 but local public health officials say it may be skewed by higher testing figures.

The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust (UHMBT) covers three hospitals treating coronavirus patients - the Furness general in Barrow, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and the Westmorland general in Kendal in South Lakeland. The trust has recorded 156 deaths, according to NHS England statistics.

Colin Cox, the director of public health for Cumbria, claims the NHS trust began mass-testing its employees and patients at the end of February and has conducted 'three times' more swabs on average, which 'may explain a fair chunk of it'.

A total 61 people in Barrow have fallen victim to coronavirus, giving it a death rate of 91 for every 100,000  one of the worst outside of London.

Officials are stumped as to why the town has been plagued with so many cases, despite welcoming just a fraction of the tourists compared to the nearby Lake District.

Lee Roberts, deputy leader of Barrow borough council, said the figures were a 'big worry' given that lockdown measures are being relaxed today.

Some of the cases can be traced back to a 'super-spreader' house party before lockdown in March, where at least six people had the virus.

The first person to die from the illness in the town had been at the party, according to The Guardian. But how the disease managed to race around the town and infect hundreds more remains a mystery.

Mr Roberts believes high levels of deprivation are partly to blame for the high infection rate.

An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report this month revealed that people living in the poorest parts of the country are dying at twice the rate of those in the wealthiest regions.

Experts say this is because they are exposed to the virus more because they are more likely to work in jobs that cannot be done from home, live in overcrowded homes and use public transport more.

The poorest in society are also more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions and have compromised immune systems - putting them at an increased risk of falling badly unwell with coronavirus.

COVID-19 testing has been largely reserved only for those who fall seriously ill, with those who have minor symptoms being instead told to isolate at home and wait to get better.

Mr Roberts said: 'Most of Barrow is very compact: 40 to 50 per cent of Barrow is terraced housing and we've got a lot of flats, we've got a lot of deprivation, a lot of health inequalities.'

Figures show that Barrow has high levels of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) compared with the national average  both of which make COVID-19 symptoms worse.

'We have quite a lot of historic respiratory problems from people who worked in old industry, in the ship yards,' Mr Roberts added.

And the constituency has higher than average numbers of patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, which are all risk factors for the disease.

Barrow's population is also older than average, with 22.7 per cent of residents aged 65 to 90, compared with the England average of 18.3 per cent.

Coronavirus preys on the elderly, with over-80s 12 times more likely to fall critically ill after catching it, according to some estimates.

But Colin Cox, the director of public health for Cumbria, said the high infection rate may also be skewed by the fact Barrow is testing more people for the virus than other towns.

He told The Guardian: 'The rate of testing in Barrow has been two to three times higher than in many other parts of the north-west, so that will explain a fair chunk of it, but I don't think it will explain all of it.'

How Britain's R number plummeted when the lockdown was introduced and what it means for emerging from the other side

Prime Minister Boris Johnson last week put detailed science at the heart of Britain's coronavirus crisis and said the status of the lockdown now depends on the virus's reproduction number - known as the R.

Watching the number of new patients and the rate at which it goes up or down will be the best way officials can monitor how quickly the virus is spreading, which will in turn guide which risks the Government feels it can take in lifting lockdown.

The data that lays out Britain's R value will shape the lives of everyone in the UK over the coming weeks and months, and MailOnline here explains how:

What is the R number?

Every infectious disease is given a reproduction number, which is known as R0 - pronounced 'R nought' - or simply R.

It is a value that represents how many people one sick person will, on average, infect if the virus is reproducing in its ideal conditions.

Most epidemiologists - scientists who track disease outbreaks - believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, has an R value of around 3.

But some experts analysing outbreaks across the world have estimated it could be closer to the 6.6 mark.

As an outbreak goes on, the R0 may be referred to more accurately as Re or just R, as other factors come into play to influence how well it is able to spread.

Estimates of the COVID-19 R vary because the true size of the pandemic remains a mystery, and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment.

As an outbreak progress the R may simply be referred to as R, which means the effective rate of infection - the nought works on the premise that nobody in the population is protected, which becomes outdated as more people recover.

How does the reproductive rate compare to other infections?

SARS-CoV-2 is thought to be at three times more contagious than the coronavirus that causes MERS (0.3 - 0.8).

Measles is one of the most contagious infectious diseases, and has an R0 value of between 12 and 18 if left uncontrolled. Widespread vaccination keeps it suppressed in most developed countries.

Chickenpox's R0 is estimated to be between 10 and 12, but this is controlled in the UK by herd immunity. So many people catch it as children and become immune to reinfection that it is unable to spread among adults.

Seasonal flu has an R value of around 1.5 but it mutates so often - there are often one or more new strains each year - that people cannot develop total immunity to it. Recovering from one strain of flu does not protect someone from others.

Ebola has an R0 of between 1.4 and 1.8 - this is low but it has so far only spread in countries with poor health facilities and its extremely high death rate (50 per cent) makes it a threat.

Mumps has an R0 of between 10 and 12, making it highly infectious, but the measles vaccine (MMR) protects most people in Britain from catching it.

The R0 for whooping cough, known medically as pertussis, is estimated to be 5.5. The NHS urges mothers to have the pertussis vaccine during pregnancy because they are able to pass immunity on to their baby naturally.

How is it calculated? And can scientists ever be sure of the number?

The R is not a set number and scientists calculate it by studying how fast the virus spreads in its perfect environment and also in society.

While the biology of the virus and the way it spreads - whether through coughs or blood, for example - will have some influence, but human behaviour is a bigger factor.

Tracking the rise in numbers of new cases, and how quickly the number of patients is doubling, are two of the best ways to estimate the R, according to senior lecturer in mathematical biology at the University of Bath, and author of the Maths of Life and Death, Dr Kit Yates.

He told MailOnline: 'Most modellers will give uncertainty ranges with their estimates suggesting R could be as high as this or as low as that.

'The R0 is not a fundamental property of the virus. It will change depending on the community through which the disease is passing.

'[It] depends on three factors: the transmissibility (how easily the disease passes between people); the infectious period (the longer it is, the more chances there are for an infectious person to pass on the disease); and the population through which the disease is passing.

'The more people there are and the more densely packed they are the easier it will be for the disease to spread, so we can't just take the R0 measured in one country and use it in another.'

Dr Jennifer Cole, a biological anthropologist at the Royal Holloway university in London said: 'It's incredibly difficult to calculate [the R0] without doing it in retrospect.

She explained that detailed data can show how fast the virus has spread but they are most accurate when you're looking back in time, not at the present day.

'At the moment we don't have exact numbers but we have a rough idea,' Dr Cole added.

'As long as you can say the R0 is between one and two, or between three and four, that's broadly enough to make the decisions you need to on social distancing.'

Did Britain's R number plummet when the lockdown was introduced?

Imperial College London's COVID-19 Response Team estimated the R0 value for the coronavirus was 2.4 in the UK before lockdown started.

This meant that, before Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered the national shutdown on March 23, every 10 people who caught the virus would infect 24 others.

But scientists have since calculated that the rate has fallen below 1, meaning the crisis will peter out if the situation stays the same.

London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine researchers said in a paper published at the start of April that they thought the number was 0.62.

They surveyed 1,300 people about their movements and contacts and to judge how many people they were likely to have infected if they were carrying with the virus.

And England's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty told MPs in a Science and Technology Committee meeting last week the R was between 0.5 and 1.

His counterpart - the chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance - has also claimed it was at a similar rate, saying it is now between 0.6 and 0.9 across the UK.

In last night's Downing Street press conference, he suggested it was lower in London and added: 'It's not exactly uniform across the country'.

If the number is dropping, why are we still in lockdown?

Substantial drops in the virus's reproduction rate and the number of people infected are vital for the UK to even consider moving out of lockdown.

Number three on the Government's list of five criteria that must be met before lockdown can end is: 'Reliable data to show the rate of infection is decreasing to manageable levels across the board'.

While Sir Patrick and Professor Whitty say they believe the R is now below one, the Government is, arguably, lacking the 'reliable data' to prove it.

COVID-19 testing had, until last week, been restricted to only hospital patients and medical staff, meaning the true scale of the outbreak was unclear.

Tests are being rolled out more widely now to people who think they might have the virus and also to more than 100,000 random people across the population.

A landmark report published by Imperial College London on March 30 showed politicians in the UK how the virus's reproduction rate could change as the country progressed through lockdown, using models from other countries that had introduced strict social distancing measures earlier (pictured in series). That report came after one by the same team that estimated up to half a million people could die if the Government didn't act, which was credited with persuading Boris Johnson to order the nation to stay at home on March 23

DENMARK'S RATE OF INFECTION ROSE AFTER SCHOOLS REOPENED Authorities in Denmark sent children back to schools two weeks ago and, since then the rate of coronavirus spread has increased, officials say. The country has had a relatively small outbreak, with just 9,356 officially diagnosed cases and 452 deaths. As a result, it has endured a shorter lockdown and already started to ease restrictions. However, the country's infectious diseases agency Status for Smittetrykket I Danmark (SSI), has found that the reproduction rate of the virus has risen to close to 1 - which could trigger another outbreak - since schools were reopened on April 20. It has risen to 0.6 to 0.9 in that time, The Local reported. Research published earlier this week will cause governments to think twice before reopening schools after it revealed that children appear to be just as likely to catch and spread COVID-19 as adults. In its status report the SSI said: 'There is no indication that there is an actual acceleration of the epidemic'. Advertisement

Officials will now want to see the number of new cases being diagnosed stay low even as they scale up testing, which would show the virus is on its way out. If numbers continue to stay low and even to fall for weeks that would demonstrate the illness is spreading slowly.

Because so few people have had the disease and developed immunity, it is vital that the number of people currently infected drops as low as possible before lockdown lifts, to avoid those patients triggering another outbreak.

Bath's Dr Yates said: 'If the UK relaxes social distancing now, while most of the population is still susceptible, it runs the very real risk of a second wave.

'At the moment suggestions are that R0 might be around 0.7 which means we have a bit of room for manoeuvre in letting up on complete lockdown.

'Provided we keep R0 below 1 then the disease will continue to die out. The reason we are holding on to complete lockdown for so long is because we want to bring cases down to a very low level and the quickest way to do that is to keep R as low as possible.

'To some degree the impact of various different measures is quantifiable and modellers are running through a range of different scenarios in order to advise the government on the best policy.

'But until we actually go through the experiment of lifting the different restrictions we will not really know the effect on R. You can expect a great deal of caution in the measures the government start to relax. Expect it to be conservative initially.'

Movements in Government suggest the lockdown in its current state is likely to continue until June, after Scotland's First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, yesterday said she thought it would still be too soon for change at next week's three-weekly review, due to be held on May 7.

Professor Whitty did, however, offer a glimmer of hope in a science and technology committee meeting last week when he said the R being below one 'gives a 'little bit of scope for manoeuvre and ticking some things off while still keeping it below 1'.

How will testing 100,000 people track the R value after lockdown?

Sir Patrick Vallance, Britain's chief scientific adviser, yesterday confirmed officials will move forward by using random population testing and numbers of official cases to work out how the R value changes in future.

He said at the Downing Street briefing: 'At the moment we're using a calculated R looking at all sorts of things including contacts, looking at genomics, looking at data from ambulances, hospital admissions, and so on, to calculate the R.'

As part of its three-point 'test, track, trace' plan, at least 25,000 people are being enrolled into a plan to test a sample of the population each month for a year to see if they are currently ill with the virus, tracking it over time.

In a second branch of the tracking project, people in 1,000 households across the country will submit to monthly blood testing to see if they have immunity to the coronavirus from being infected with it in the past.

The Government will also test 100,000 random people in a one-off swab testing scheme, to get an idea of what proportion of the population is infected at present.

Public Health England is carrying out ongoing antibody testing in its Porton Down laboratory to build up an idea of how many people have had the virus in the past and how they have developed immunity to it, and up to 10,000 people will be sent home antibody testing kits to add to this data.

Early results from these nationwide surveys are expected early this month and will help gather a picture of how many people are getting infected with the virus and how fast it's spreading.

The London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine is also trying to estimate how much the virus is spreading by surveying people about their movements and social contacts in recent days and weeks.

It estimated in April that the R had dropped from 2.6 to 0.62 in the first month of the UK's lockdown.

Will health chiefs publish the R number every day?

Health chiefs have yet to reveal whether they will publish the R number each day, despite the Prime Minister putting the number at the heart of the battle in his speech yesterday.

But ministers in Germany - which has been widely praised for its rigorous approach to halting the outbreak - do provide a daily update.

Situation reports published by the Robert Koch Institute, the country's centre for disease control, show the R0 dropped below one on April 15.

The number fluctuates on a daily basis - it was 0.9 on Tuesday and 0.75 yesterday, meaning it may not be a reliable day-by-day measure, but could be useful to track over time.

Watching the R number as the country comes out of lockdown would be useful because it could reveal exactly how different measures affect the rate of infection.

The lockdown happened all at once but will be lifted piece by piece, meaning calculating how each restriction affects the number cannot truly be known until it is taken away.

Dr Robin Thompson, a mathematical epidemiology researcher at University of Oxford, said: 'A key challenge now is to identify measures that can be relaxed that have only limited impacts on the value of R. 'One of the reasons that this is particularly challenging is that interventions were first introduced in the UK within a few days of each other. As a result, it is hard to disentangle the relative effects of different interventions on the reproduction number.'
Malaysian prosecutors have dropped money laundering charges against The Wolf of Wall Street film producer and stepson of ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak in a move slammed by Human Rights Watch on Friday as a triumph for impunity and corruption."



Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he was worried the move could set a precedent in graft cases in which thieves will be let off if they return the stolen money."



Riza Aziz reached a settlement with the government and was discharged Thursday without being formally acquitted, meaning that prosecutors can revive the charge.

The anti-graft agency said in a statement that the government will recover USD 107.3 million of overseas assets involved in the case about 43 per cent of the USD 248 million Aziz was accused of having laundered from the 1MDB state investment fund and Riza is also required to pay an unspecified fine.

Riza was the third person in his family to be charged last year over the 1MDB graft scandal that helped Mahathir's alliance oust Najib's long-ruling government in May 2018 elections.

Both Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor face multiple graft charges, and are currently on trial. Najib says his family was targeted by Mahathir's government as political vengeance.

Riza's discharge came under current Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassin's government, which came into power in March amid political maneuvering and Mahathir's resignation. The new government includes Najib's party, which has several other leaders also facing graft charges.

Riza Aziz walking free is a triumph for impunity and corruption, and running roughshod over the rights and interests of the Malaysian people," said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watch's deputy Asia director.

I think letting Riza Aziz go is all about gauging the public's reaction for potential next steps that could involve Najib. No one should forget that putting a former Malaysian PM on trial was unbelievable to start with and this was never going to be an easy road," Robertson said.

Mahathir, a two-time prime minister, quit in February to protest his ally Muhyiddin's move to pull their party out of the ruling alliance and form a Malay-majority government with Najib's party and several others.

Mahathir, 94, said Friday that he couldn't accept the prosecutor's settlement with Riza. I am worried because there are many other thieves in this country," he said.

There is a possibility that in the future, the big criminals that stole a lot of money will be let off if they return the money."



Najib set up the 1MDB fund to finance development in Malaysia when he took office in 2009, but it accumulated billions in debts and U.S. investigators allege at least USD 4.5 billion was stolen from the fund and laundered by Najib's associates.

Prosecutors last year said USD 248 million misappropriated from 1MDB was channeled into bank accounts of Riza's company, Red Granite Pictures Inc., which produced films including the Martin Scorsese-directed film The Wolf of Wall Street starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

US investigators say Red Granite used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films. Red Granite has paid the US government USD 60 million to settle claims it benefited from the 1MDB scandal, and the US returned the money to Malaysia.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
OSLO (Reuters) - Chief negotiators from Norway and Britain met for the first time since Britain's exit from the European Union to discuss the future relationship of the two countries, Norway's Foreign Ministry said on Thursday.

"Britain is one of our most important trading partners and the government wants to maintain as tight a relationship as possible between our two countries also after Brexit," Norwegian Foreign Minister Ine Eriksen Soereide said in a statement.

Norway is a not a member of the EU. Representatives from Iceland and Liechtenstein which, like Norway, are members of the European Free Trade Association(EFTA) also participated in the meeting, which took place via video, the ministry said.

(Reporting by Victoria Klesty, editing by Gwladys Fouche)
The exchange was tense between the customer and Jesse, a Trader Joes employee sporting a white face mask and a flowery Hawaiian shirt.

Why arent you wearing the mask? Jesse asked the customer on a recent day at a store in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. I am not here to question what you believe in. These are the rules. I am just asking you kindly to wear the mask.

The customer, Genevieve Peters, who was recording the entire exchange, refused. We are in America here, she said, Land of the free. Then she turned her camera on other shoppers, who were less than amused: Look at all of these sheep that are here, all wearing this mask that is actually dangerous for them.

Jesse, identified only by his first name in the video, telephoned the police, who did not arrive. Finally, when Ms. Peters left the store, others burst into applause.
An impatient Mercedes driver has outraged online observers after he was filmed asking an ambulance crew treating a patient to move.

The man was filmed stuck in traffic at Earls Court, west London, on Saturday behind an ambulance which had pulled over and had its lights flashing.

Ambulances normally only have their lights going to signal paramedics are responding to an emergency.

But the Mercedes driver wasnt keen to wait. As a paramedic walks around the back of the ambulance he stops him and appears to ask him to move.

The Mercedes driver asks the ambulance to move. Source: Facebook/ Henry Beckles

A woman then steps into the back of the ambulance and is given assistance by a second paramedic.

Both parties get back into their respective vehicles and the ambulance moves forward.

The paramedic then steps out and walks up to the black Mercedes to speak with the man. He goes back to the ambulance but the Mercedes driver ushers him back.

The man filming the exchange claims this is the Mercedes driver justifying why hes asked the ambulance to move.

Regardless of what his reasoning is, the ambulance moves forward and the Mercedes drives off.

London Ambulance Service is yet to comment on the matter.

What sort of person is this?

Its not known why the Mercedes driver wanted the ambulance to move.

But people on Facebook were furious that the impatient driver asked the crew to move.

One man called him a bell end and another a stupid fool.

What sort of person is this? one woman wrote.

Another man called him inconsiderate.

A man driving a Mercedes speaks to a paramedic in Earl's Court, London.

Paramedics, not just in London, but around the world have suffered abuse due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, NSW introduced a $5000 fine for anyone caught spitting on a paramedic, police officer or any other frontline worker during the crisis.

Health Minister Brad Hazzard said the introduction of the fine was because workers had been subject to this disgusting, dangerous behaviour.

Story continues

It will not be tolerated, he said.

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.
Even if he wanted to, tech billionaire Peter Thiel couldn't escape the coronavirus and flee to his 193-hectare isolated estate on the South Island of New Zealand.

That's because the President Donald Trump donor and venture capitalist  who reportedly made over $1 billion off an early $750,000 bet on Facebook  is yet to build a property on the sprawling plot that he's owned for almost half a decade, according to records held by the local authority and nearby residents.

Thiel bought the plot at Glendhu Bay in 2015 for an undisclosed price through a New Zealand registered company called Second Star, in which he is the sole shareholder.

What's to say he hasn't built a monumental bunker deep under the plot? Well, in order to build a new residence among the rolling hills of his estate, which sits on the shores of the tranquil Lake Wanaka, Thiel would have to submit an application to get planning permission. He is yet to do that, according to a public database of planning applications that was analyzed by CNBC. Not all of these have to be made public, however.

Queenstown Lakes District Council confirmed in July 2018 that "no applications have been received from Mr Thiel nor his businesses."

Local residents told CNBC that they haven't seen any activity on the plot. "I have heard nothing and nothing is evident when you drive past the property or bike past it along the lakeside," said Julian Haworth, who lives in Wanaka.

However, CNBC understands that Thiel has been in contact with at least three architecture firms in New Zealand. The firms include: Sumich Chaplin, Mason & Wales and Fearon Hay, which has studios in Auckland and Los Angeles, where Thiel also has a home. None of the architects responded to a request for comment.

CNBC also reached out to Thiel and his representatives for this article but is yet to receive a response.
GOTHENBURG, Sweden, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Everdrone, a global leader in autonomous drone technology, today announced it is now deploying a drone system that delivers Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to the scene of cardiac arrests. In doing so, bystanders will now have the ability to initiate life-saving measures while awaiting professional medical care.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests affect some 275,000 individuals in Europe each year and carry a low survival rate of about 10%. Research suggests when CPR and early defibrillation is initiated within the first few minutes the survival rate could potentially increase to as much as 70%.

Now available to more than 80,000 residents in the Gothenburg area of Sweden, the service is part of a clinical study in collaboration with Sweden's national emergency call centre, SOS Alarm, and the Centre for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet (KI).

"By combining our state-of-the-art drone platform and know-how in the regulatory space, we are finally able to launch this life-saving application," says Mats Sallstrom, CEO of Everdrone. "The collaboration with SOS Alarm and KI has been absolutely crucial for the realization of the concept in terms of being able to perform a swift alarm response, and to manage the medical and ethical issues involved."

Critical Care in Minutes

The initial study will launch in June and run through the end of September 2020. Three drone systems will be placed in designated locations, ready to respond to emergency 112-calls immediately for emergencies occurring within a radius of 6 km.

"In the event of a cardiac arrest, the drone is dispatched at the same time as the ambulance and will certainly be the first to arrive on the scene. Our operators are ready to instruct bystanders on how to initiate the life-saving device," says Mattias Regnell, Head of Innovation and Research at SOS Alarm.

When the drone arrives at the designated location, the AED is lowered to the ground while the drone remains hovering at 30 metres altitude. This procedure eliminates several risks associated with landing a drone close to people.

"The method of lowering the defibrillator from the drone with the help of a winch is something we have been developing and testing for a long time," says Sallstrom. "We have performed countless test deliveries in recent months, and the results show that the method works very well."

Safety and Regulations

Everdrone is one of just a few companies in the world to be granted permission for urban drone operations thanks to the company's safety portfolio and a long-standing dialogue with authorities.

"Safety is at the core of everything we do at Everdrone. Even though the drones we use are extremely safe in themselves, we still need to foresee every conceivable fault scenario and put solutions in place to handle them. The system must contain a great many functions that overlap and complement each other, to ensure that no single point of failure can lead to an accident," says Sallstrom.

Everdrone's flight system features industry-leading obstacle avoidance functionality built on Intel RealSense technology, intelligent route planning to significantly reduce flight time over people, and a certified onboard parachute system to mitigate risk to people on the ground in the case of a bird strike or critical propulsion failure.

The research perspective

The outcome of the emergency operations will continuously be evaluated within a research study conducted by KI.

"We see enormous potential for this type of fully-integrated drone system. This study is unique, the first of its kind in the world, and we look forward to objectively evaluating the project together with Everdrone and SOS Alarm," says Andreas Claesson, Associate Professor at KI.

The results of the study will be presented by KI later this year, with the hope of expanding operations to other parts of Sweden and Europe by 2021.

The project has received funding from the Eurostars-2 Joint Programme with co-funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

PRESS MATERIAL

Still images

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/agozoxvw3pb78li/AABdnkqgKlZmW4PixLMo5qcBa?dl=0

Edited video (ready for publishing)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/v892lvgmzbtacst/AACmdE31tVcFUT_FS3_VZ2f3a?dl=0

Unedited video material (for local editing)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ka2a5d4nsz89i5r/AACoV25vLnbxgjAMrVVw5pHya?dl=0

ABOUT EVERDRONE

Everdrone AB develops technology for autonomous drones. The company's test and development facilities are located at Save Airport near Gothenburg. The company focuses on civil applications for commercial drones, primarily for use within the healthcare and emergency response sector. Everdrone also actively works with regulatory issues associated with drones specializing in urban operations.

To date, the company has performed more than 13,000 autonomous flights in laboratory and outdoor settings, as well as more than 1.4 million simulated flights. For more information, visit www.everdrone.com.

Contact:

Mats Sallstrom

CEO, Everdrone AB

+46-702-28-10-95

[email protected]

www.everdrone.com

Mattias Regnell

Head of Innovation and Research

SOS Alarm Sverige AB

+46-730-83-87-42

[email protected]

www.sosalarm.se

Andreas Claesson

Associate Professor / RN, Paramedic

Centre for Resuscitation Science, KI

Chairman of the Swedish Resuscitation Council

+46-70-494-05-46

[email protected]

www.hjartstoppscentrum.se

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

https://news.cision.com/everdrone-ab/r/autonomous-drones-are-now-delivering-defibrillators-to-80-000-residents-in-sweden,c3112538

The following files are available for download:

https://mb.cision.com/Main/19465/3112538/1248153.pdf Press release (PDF) https://news.cision.com/everdrone-ab/i/video,c2785566 video

SOURCE Everdrone AB
Eisner Camp in Massachusetts, a view of its lake seen here, is among 16 Reform movement overnight camps that will not open this summer.

(JTA)-Nearly all Reform Jewish summer camps, and at least one Conservative camp, will remain closed for the 2020 summer due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency has learned.

The landmark decision, made Thursday afternoon, will affect 15 Reform overnight camps across the country, which collectively served some 10,000 campers in 2019. The Reform movement, the largest in the United States, is the first to suspend its official summer camp network. It's the first time in more than 70 years that the movement is suspending its camps.

The Reform movement is also canceling all of its trips to Israel and other locations, as well as all in-person youth activities. A statement from the Union for Reform Judaism said that if it ends up becoming possible to open the camps, "doing so will be our top priority."

A handful of Reform camps not run by the Union for Reform Judaism are not bound by Thursday's decision.

"After months of carefully following and evaluating the evolving COVID-19 situation, the URJ has reached the heartbreaking, difficult, and values-based decision to cancel all in-person activities this summer," read the statement. "Although we have continued to plan, prepare, pray, and hope for another transformative summer, the risks posed by COVID-19 threaten our most sacred values: the health and well-being of our children, staff, and faculty that attend camp, along with their communities back home."

Ramah Darom, a Conservative Jewish camp in Georgia, is also canceling its 2020 summer. An email to the camp community said that Georgia's regulations currently would not allow them to operate the camp, which was scheduled to open in early June. The camp's medical committee decided that, even if regulations change, it would be "untenable" to manage the risk posed by COVID-19.

"My heart is hurting to have to share the news of the cancelation of camp this summer," Ramah Darom Director Geoff Menkowitz said in a video message Thursday afternoon. "We have been holding onto hope that it might be possible for us to still get back to camp this summer... It has become clear that camp as we know it and love it is not possible right now."

Overnight camp is a centerpiece of the American Jewish community, with children often attending and sometimes then working at the same camps that their parents attended. Lasting anywhere from a few days to eight weeks, camps generally include Jewish education, prayer, Israeli cultural activities and Hebrew-along with sports, arts and crafts, and the like.

Whether the camps can operate given the pandemic has been an increasingly pressing question. Some states are beginning to lift some of the restrictions they imposed to slow the spread of the disease, and mounting evidence suggests that children are less vulnerable than adults.

At the same time, public health officials say returning to business as usual would not be safe, and many camps require campers and their families to travel great distances to attend. Camp directors have told JTA that state and local social distancing regulations, as they are now, would prevent camps from opening.

There are more than 180,000 campers and staff at the more than 300 Jewish overnight and day camps across the country, according to the Foundation for Jewish Camp. Jeremy Fingerman, the foundation's CEO, said that each camp is going to have to make its own decision regarding the upcoming summer.

He estimates that Jewish camps could need $150 million to weather the coronavirus crisis, as the camps that have canceled programs have promised to refund or defer tuition. The Foundation for Jewish Camp is urging camps to cut costs and seek aid to tide them over. Fingerman told JTA that 46 camps have so far have received more than $12 million in government loans under federal economic relief legislation.

Charitable foundations have also pledged millions in donations to camps in the wake of the crisis.

"Hopefully it's one season at worst, but for so many people, they're yearning to connect with their camp friends, their camp communities," Fingerman said. "And we as a Jewish community yearn for them to connect and engage and experience joyous Judaism. We've got to find ways to help make that happen."

Fingerman said that FJC is looking into how to best provide a virtual camp experience for kids whose camps have canceled their programs. But he said it's more of a challenge than remote school classes, because camp ideally involves staying away from sitting at desks and looking at screens.

"If you go virtual, it's got to be experiential," he said. "It's not school. It's got to be camp. We're in the experiential education business but we're not going to deliver a classroom experience. We're going to deliver a camp and a bunk experience."

The director of a Reform overnight camp in Wisconsin, Solly Kane, said that the Reform movement made the decision to cancel camp outright, rather than push back start dates, because it's committed to communicating openly with campers and their parents, and did not want to delay what felt like a likely final decision.

"This was not an easy decision and I'm confident it was the right decision to make based on what we know and don't know at this time," said Kane, who directs the URJ Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute, known as OSRUI. "We wanted to share that information with our families as soon as we made that decision. We're committed to not disappointing our families multiple times."

Also Thursday, two Conservative Jewish Ramah camps, in Colorado and Wisconsin, announced that they would be delaying their start dates to at least July 1 and June 30, respectively, because of the pandemic.

But they are continuing to leave open the possibility that overnight camp will be possible for at least a portion of the summer.

"Based on the current situation, including available data, government regulations, and our health standards, it appears unlikely that we will be able to run camp at all this summer, though we remain hopeful that we can join together for at least part of the 2020 camp season," Ramah in Wisconsin's executive director, Jacob Cytryn, wrote in an email to community members. Ramah in Wisconsin has run every summer for more than 70 years.

In the Cleveland area, Camp Wise also has canceled this summer due to the coronavirus. The camp, according to its website, was founded in 1907.

"Camps are about groups of children and staff who are together every day," read a statement from Michael Hyman, president and CEO of the Mandel Jewish Community Center, which runs the camp. "For the well-being of campers, their families, our staff and the community, it was best to cancel the operation of all camp programs for the summer of 2020."
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San Antonio police arrested a 19-year-old more than 12 hours after an initial disturbance call led to a stand-off with officers.

Ricardo Guerrero was arrested on two counts of deadly conduct after he opened fire on his neighbor's house Wednesday night.
By Online Desk

Coronavirus cases in Tamil Nadu rose to 10858 on Saturday after 477 persons, mostly secondary contacts, tested positive. In the same day, a record 939 persons who had recovered from COVID-19 infection were discharged.

In a significant development after trading barbs of words, Congress leader met the migrant workers walking towards home from Delhi and arranged vehicle for them. West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee announced that the state government will bear the entire cost of migrant workers returning to the state on special trains.

Recording over 85,000 cases, India overtook Chinas coronavirus cases tally that stands at 84,031 according to Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Tracker. India now ranks 11th in the world in terms of coronavirus cases with 85,784 with 2,753 deaths.

Meanwhile, the death toll rose to 2,752 and the number of cases climbed to 85,940 on Saturday, registering an increase of 103 deaths.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the fourth tranche of Centre's Rs 20 lakh crore fiscal stimulus, which focussed on airspace and civil aviation sector.
The Mater has issued a statement saying it has reported all cases of Covid-19 positive results to the relevant authorities "on a daily basis".

The hospital was reacting to reports linking it to a large number of cases which were only reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre yesterday.

"At all times the Mater Hospital provided the information that the HSE required and met all legal requirements to report infectious diseases," the statement said.

"All of this information is correct and up to date.

"We are working with the HSE to understand why the provided data may not have been accurately captured.

"The Mater Hospital has also carried out comprehensive contact tracing on every single member of staff who tested positive for Covid-19 through our occupational health department in line with best practice.

"In excess of 300 staff at the Mater have tested positive for Covid-19 and a further 1,500 have self-isolated following contact tracing to protect patients, fellow staff and the public - despite the enormous impact this has had on our operations."

This morning, the Health Minister said the bulk reporting of Covid-19 cases by one hospital needs to be checked to see if it is a criminal matter.

Hospitals have a legal obligation to report cases of infectious diseases as soon as they are aware of them.

Simon Harris said it is "extremely disappointing" that this happened and he is awaiting a full report.

Last night, Chief Medical Officer, Dr Tony Holohan, said that there is an expectation and an obligation in the legislation for people to make those notifications.

We want to encourage appropriate reporting and timely reporting and comprehensive reporting, a high standard of collection of all the key information in respect of all the cases and to have that reported to us in as timely a way as possible.

He said he could not be certain the required contact tracing had been carried out for the cases who had tested positive in the hospital, but he expressed hope it would have been done.

I would like to think the contact tracing necessary in the hospital environment by the occupational health teams might have been carried out but I dont know that as a fact, he said.

Paul Moynagh, Professor of Immunology at NUI Maynooth, says it would be very concerning if contact tracing hasn't been carried out.
Through binaural low-latency Bluetooth transmissions, dual-microphone noise cancellation during calls, IP54 dust and water resistance, and other features, OPPO is optimizing the audio experience for active smartphone users.

"OPPO is committed to offering cutting-edge technology that brings an immersive sound experience to its consumers. The unique and futuristic aesthetic design of the Enco W31 provides consumers with a seamless experience. As we continue to expand our portfolio beyond smartphones, we look forward to delivering premium digital products to our tech-savvy consumers in the Middle East," said Ethan Xue, President of OPPO Middle East and Africa.

Binaural Low-Latency Bluetooth Transmission: The OPPO Enco W31 headphones feature binaural low-latency Bluetooth transmission, with Bluetooth connection stability and ultra-low latency. This ensures a fast and smooth transmission and delivers sound to both ears simultaneously, giving a highly synchronized audio. Meanwhile, system-wide optimizations intended to eliminate delay, incompatibility and other disturbances help boost signal quality for an undisrupted listening experience.

Dual-Microphone Noise Cancellation during Calls: OPPO Enco W31 features anti-wind noise chambers, two internal high-sensitivity microphones on each side, and an environmental noise cancellation algorithm designed to block out background noise during calls.

Ergonomic in-ear design and IP54 carefree listening: The earphone tip is designed ergonomically to bring a unique balance of comfort and stability. Having a rating of IP54, the headphones are professionally designed to be water and dustproof.

Immersive Audio Experience: In terms of audio quality, the OPPO Enco W31 headphones use dual composite thermoplastic polyurethanes (TPU) and graphene diaphragms designed to improve frequency response. Balance and bass modes are available to perfectly match your favorite music.

Smart connection and intelligent touch controls: Simply open the charging case to connect, and the headphones can sense whether they're being worn, then automatically pause or play audio in response. With the easy-to-learn touch controls, operating the headphones has become easier than ever.

The OPPO Enco W31 headphones are available in white color on OPPO's Official Website and official e-commerce partner- Noon for AED299. Consumers will be able to purchase the product exclusively on Noon until May 20th and benefit from a special flash sale that will take place on May 15th and 16th on the e-commerce website.

About OPPO

OPPO is a leading global technology brand, dedicated to providing products infused with art and innovative technology. Based on the brand elements of leading, young and beautiful, OPPO dedicates to the mission of letting the extraordinary users enjoy the beauty of technology.

For the last 10 years, OPPO has focused on manufacturing camera phones, while innovating mobile photography technology breakthroughs. Today, OPPO brings the aesthetics of technology to global consumers through smart devices, ColorOS, and Internet services like OPPO Cloud and OPPO+.

OPPO's business covers 40 countries and regions, and with 6 research institutes and 4 R&D centres around the world, as well as an International Design Center in London, providing an excellent smartphone photography experience to more and more young people around the world.

About OPPO MEA

In 2015, OPPO entered the Egyptian market. In 2016, OPPO set up its Middle East & Africa Sales Center in Cairo. The markets OPPO has entered in the Middle East and Africa including Egypt, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain, Kenya, Nigeria, and the Levant.

OPPO set up its factory in Algeria in 2017, which made OPPO the first Chinese brand setting up a factory in North Africa. Based on the insights of local consumers in each country, OPPO MEA has started the progress of localization. And the localization includes all the perspectives towards each market - product localization, to further meet the core needs of users; marketing localization, to better communicate with local young customers; and team localization, to know our local consumers also and provide better service to the consumers.

Within the last year, OPPO has started to adjust its product line in the Middle East region precisely. This has included the launch of its flagship OPPO Find X smartphone and the introduction of the OPPO Reno Series. OPPO will continue to evolve its local product line to offer more premium series to consumers in the region.

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For more information, please contact:

Judy Zhu

Regional PR Manager

OPPO

Email: [email protected]

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Linkedin Suherdjoko (The Jakarta Post) Semarang  Fri, May 15, 2020 12:13 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd83df6e 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,Central-Java,Ganjar-Pranowo Free

Farmers in Central Java have set aside 5 tons of rice and 500 kilograms of eggs to be donated to residents affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in another community-based movement promoting gotong royong (mutual cooperation), as harvest time came recently.

The farmers, under the Central Java Andalan Fishermen and Farmers Community (KTNA) handed over the donation to the Central Java administration, which will distribute the rice and eggs to those in needs in the province.

"The rice is from members of the KTNA. We set aside some of our crops after harvest time [for the COVID-19 response]," Central Java KTNA acting chairman Munaji told the province's governor Ganjar Pranowo during the handover ceremony on Thursday.

Read also: In Indonesia, rural helps urban to ensure food supply during coronavirus pandemic

Ganjar lauded the thoughtful gesture and said the donations were needed during the current crisis, as many people have lost their jobs and sources of income.

"I am extremely proud that amid the crisis we are currently going through, the farmers still have the willingness to work hand in hand to help those in need. This is a real form of gotong royong," said the governor. (vny)
Kerala: The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala likely to be delayed by four days, said the India Metrological Department (IMD) weather forecast on Friday. The weather report further stated that the monsoon is expected to hit the southern state on June 5, 2020.

Taking to its official Twitter handle IMD, said, ''Forecast for the 2020 SW Monsoon Onset over Kerala This year, the onset of s-west monsoon over Kerala is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to normal date of onset of 1st June. Its onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on 5th June with a model error of  4 days.''

Forecast for the 2020 SW Monsoon Onset over Kerala This year, the onset of s-west monsoon over Kerala is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to normal date of onset of 1st June. Its onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on 5th June with a model error of  4 days. pic.twitter.com/TRX1miwkUA  RWFC New Delhi (@RWFC_ND) May 15, 2020

On the other hand, Skymet Weather forecast also indicated of the delay which read South-West monsoon may make an onset over Kerala around May 28 (with a margin of error of +/- four days).

The onset date of Southwest Monsoon over Kerala this year is expected on 28th May with an error margin of +/- 02 days. #monsoon #Monsoon2020 #weather #WeatherForecast https://t.co/Q8Lgm02oEK  SkymetWeather (@SkymetWeather) May 15, 2020

The normal date of onset is June 1, but Skymet reiterated that the onset date has no bearing on its further advancement to other parts of the country.

The IMD has said that the low over the South-East Bay and adjoining South Andaman Sea has become well-marked, a step away from being called a depression. It may reach depression strength on Friday over the central parts of the South Bay and further intensify into a cyclone by Saturday evening.

The onset of Southwest Monsoon over Kerala has a standard deviation of 7 days which indicates that on maximum occasions the event occurs between May 25 to June 8. In the last 10years, the earliest arrival was on May 23 in 2009 and the most delayed on June 8, 2016.
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Amarc Resources Ltd. ("Amarc" or the "Company") (TSX-V:AHR)(OTCQB:AXREF) is pleased to announce that a National Instrument 43-101 Technical Report (the "Report") for the Company's JOY Project, British Columbia ("BC") (the "Project") will be filed today under Amarc's profile at www.sedar.com . It will also be available on the Company's website at www.amarcresources.com/ahr/Home.asp . The Report provides details on the potential of the Company's JOY porphyry copper-gold deposit district, along with proposed exploration plans for the PINE deposit, the MEX deposit target and a series of drill-ready high potential exploration targets.Amarc's 100%-owned 482 km2 JOY Project covers the northern extension of the prolific Kemess porphyry copper-gold district (the "Kemess District") in the Toodoggone region of north-central BC (see attached figures1). The Kemess District is well-known to Amarc's technical team through their association with Hunter Dickinson Inc. ("HDI"); its members are credited as being the first to recognize the District's true porphyry potential - acquiring both the early-stage Kemess North and Kemess South prospects and advancing them to significant porphyry copper-gold deposits, before selling the projects to a predecessor of Northgate Minerals ("Northgate"). Northgate went on to develop the Kemess South mine (BC's third largest gold producer), producing 3 million ounces of gold, and 750 million pounds of copper over a 13-year period to 20112. The southern area of the Kemess District is now held by Centerra Gold Inc. ("Centerra"), and includes the government-approved Kemess Underground Project (the deeper higher grade extension of the Kemess North deposit), the advanced stage Kemess East deposit as well as the mined-out Kemess South deposit. The resource road that services Centerra's deposits and the historical Lawyers and Shasta gold-silver mines, also provides access to Amarc's JOY Project.The PINE deposit and MEX deposit target on the JOY Project have seen several phases of historical drilling. Work by Amarc has identified significant expansion potential at both that requires drill testing. In addition, Amarc has defined seven large (approximately 1 to 8 km2), high potential porphyry copper-gold exploration target areas, each of which hosts multiple targets that are either drill-ready, or can rapidly be brought up to a drill ready status by the completion of focused surface surveys (see attached figure). A highly effective targeting strategy was achieved by combining and interpreting information from the Company's exploration surveys and extensive historical datasets. These datasets include results from soil geochemical sample grids, airborne magnetics and ground Induced Polarization ("IP") geophysical surveys, geological and alteration mapping and historical drilling. The large historical soils geochemical database (6,390 samples) was particularly useful.New Porphyry Copper-Gold Potential at PINE and MEXThe PINE deposit is a northeast-trending, 2.5 km-long porphyry copper-gold mineralized system located within an underexplored 6 km2 area of strong hydrothermal alteration, as defined by IP chargeability, alteration mapping and limited historical drilling. At the PINE deposit, shallow historical drilling (most holes record less than 175 m vertical penetration) indicates that mineralization is open both laterally and to depth, with many of the holes ending in mineralization and some showing a downhole increase in copper and gold grades (see attached figure). Examples of the historical results are: hole P97-08 that intersected 141 m of 0.17% Cu, 0.49 g/t Au, 2.0 g/t Ag and 0.001% Mo from 128 m, hole 92-40 that intersected 85 m of 0.14% Cu, 0.73 g/t Au, 0.6 g/t Ag and 0.002% Mo from 55 m, and hole 93-44 that intersected 82 m of 0.12% Cu, 0.52 g/t Au, 1.1 g/t Ag and 0.003% Mo from 37 m. In addition to the delineated drill-ready targets at PINE, untested areas of high IP chargeability and/or soil geochemistry lie between the widely-spaced historical holes and extend outward laterally, with the majority of the surrounding 6 km2 area of strong hydrothermal alteration remaining to be fully explored.Similarly, at the MEX deposit target widely-spaced historical drilling indicates that the system remains open both laterally and to depth.Newly Identified Porphyry Copper-Gold TargetsThe MEX Cluster, located between the PINE and MEX mineralized systems, includes a series of new targets (see attached figure), that are characterized by coincident anomalies defined by geochemical, geophysical and mapping surveys. These new, well-defined targets are a priority for early drill testing.Additional surface surveys are planned to prepare emerging drill targets at the Canyon South, Twins, SW Takla, Central Takla and the North Finley target areas for drilling. For example at Canyon South, a 1 km wide high-contrast >28 mV/V core of a 2 km-wide >18 mV/V IP chargeability anomaly closely coincides with a 500 m diameter magnetic high that is possibly related to an unidentified, and potentially mineralized, porphyry stock. Notably, two historical drill holes: PIN09-15, which encountered 11.43 g/t Au over 3 m (197.0 m to 200.0 m), and MEX12-013, which recorded 0.05% Cu and 0.18 g/t Au over 62.3 m (13.73 m to 76.0 m) are located on the periphery of the Canyon South target and on the opposite sides of the open 2 km-wide IP chargeability anomaly. Such an occurrence of gold  copper could be related to the outer regions of a porphyry system. A new IP survey is proposed to expand the coverage of the historical IP to define the full extent of the chargeability anomaly in preparation for drill testing.Amarc is planning the next phase of the JOY Project exploration to include core drill testing of drill-ready targets, undertaken concurrently with low-cost surface exploration work to efficiently bring the latter new exploration targets up to a drill-ready status.About Amarc Resources Ltd.Amarc is a mineral exploration and development company with an experienced and successful management team focused on developing a new generation of BC porphyry copper mines. By combining strong projects and funding with successful management, Amarc has created a solid platform to create value from its exploration and development-stage projects.Amarc is advancing the 100%-owned IKE, DUKE and JOY porphyry copper deposit projects located in different, prolifi
India has had the largest chunk of repatriations of Britons stranded overseas in the coronavirus lockdown, with nearly half of those brought home on 64 special flights coming from Indian cities.

The UK government said that more than 16,500 travellers have now returned to the UK over the past 38 days as part of a huge logistical operation to return stranded British nationals from 32 locations across the length and breadth of India.

The last currently scheduled charter flight left for London Heathrow from Amritsar today with over 300 passengers on board, Jan Thompson, Acting High Commissioner to India, said on Friday.

This unprecedented repatriation effort would not have been possible without the excellent support of the Indian government. Continued cooperation between our nations will be essential in the fight against this pandemic, she said.

The British High Commission in New Delhi described the repatriation process as a large and complex operation, with over 500 members of staff in India working around the clock to ensure flights operated smoothly and passengers could reach airports.

The strict lockdown in place across India meant it was vital to work hand-in-hand with the government of India and local authorities to transport passengers over large distances, the mission said.

One British national stranded in a remote village in Manipur had to travel more than 2,700 km for their flight home from New Delhi, it added.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, the UK government has helped 1.3 million Britons from around the world return on commercial flights and organised special charter flights from 27 different countries and territories.

The British High Commission said that while there were no further planned UK government charter flights from India, the situation will be kept under review.

The flights were organised mainly for British nationals and where possible, seats were also allocated to vulnerable non-British UK residents with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and to other foreign nationals needing to get to the UK.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Dorothy Day was an American journalist and Roman Catholic reformer. She was also the co-founder of the Catholic Worker newspaper and an important lay leader in its associated activist movement. The Catholic Worker Movement that she co-founded was a pacifist faith-based movement for social change that still exists today. The movement she helped define started during the Great Depression through the Vietnam War. In addition to leading this powerful movement, Day wrote newspaper columns, novels and plays, fed thousands of people and was arrested several times to protest various causes. Many called Day's beliefs unorthodox, particularly for her time. Her faith is just as unique and complex as her life.

Day lived among the poor. She came from a middle-class Protestant family. She was the third of five children of a resourceful mother and a remote father. From an early age, Day kept a diary where you could see her gift of poetic writing and a deep spiritual nature. Not only did she know the pain of poverty, she also knew the value of charity firsthand. She experienced the terrible 1906 San Francisco earthquake which took the newspaper plant where her father worked. Her father opened their home to worse-off neighbors. At an early age, she saw the value of loving thy neighbor.

Days social conscience really pulled her away from religion and toward politics. She later moved to New York to begin a journalism career where she started a reporting job and living on the Lower East Side. She really thrived in this community. It was then that she picked up her lifelong habit of chain smoking. Everyone that knew her recognized her for her fiery temper. While writing she felt a strong sense of brokenness of this world. It wasnt until later life that she became drawn to the Catholic Church.

One of the reasons she was so attracted to the Catholic Church was because it was the church in which the masses of poor immigrants belonged. She was beginning to move toward a simple life with her common-law husband, British biologist Forster Batterham, who was a confirmed atheist. Days happiness was leading her to pray constantly, say the rosary and attend church actively. Following the birth of her daughter, Tamar Teresa she became fully immersed in the Catholic Church. After baptizing her daughter, she began studying the catechism with a local nun. Fights with her husband began escalating until she decided to walk away for good. She was baptized the following day.

Day was a great pioneer of advocacy journalism. She wrote man muckraking investigative pieces to On Pilgrimage a long-running column that included personal reflections, Bible teachings and current events. She traveled across the country on a Bible toting her Bible, challenging the status quo in everything she did.

There were times that she broke the law by staging sit-ins. She also boycotted exploitative businesses. She didnt just challenge the status quo with her personal life, she also challenged it in her religious life. She was devoted to the Catholic sacraments and liturgy, and went to mass daily. She also challenged the Church as an institution, pointing out that it didnt live up to its own teachings. There was a time where she was asked to remove the word Catholic from her papers title in which she replied politely that Rome didnt have a copyright on the word.

Day has been a candidate for sainthood. During her life, she was compared to a saint for her unwavering religious faith and devotion to the poor. She found ways to touch the lives of people in greatest need, reflecting Jesus through her actions. We serve God by serving others and she had servants heart that did just that. She became a model for charity. Her deep faith in God and revolutionary vision of Christianity is something we can still learn from today. In the midst of the worlds poverty, she was an advocate for change, reflecting the light of God in all the work that she did.

Day is one of the countless examples of women who shaped history through their faith. Her legacy is remembered through her rock-solid faith, even in some of the toughest of circumstances. Unfortunately, too often, womens stories are not acknowledged but this doesnt mean they werent incredibly impactful, especially in the eyes of God. By definition, a strong woman is fearless when it comes to facing hard situations. They are confident in who they are and what they believe. In Days example of fearlessness, she helped and encouraged those she was around. Thats exactly who Day was, influential and grounded in their faith.

History richly affirms her value as well. We learn can learn important lessons through her life and ministry. She was a God-fearing woman that new the power of faith and helping her fellow neighbor, particularly those in greatest need. She trusted in God, proclaimed the Gospel and history was changed because of it.
Anuraag Singh By

Express News Service

BHOPAL: Yet another road mishap has happened in Madhya Pradesh and again the victims are migrant workers and their family members from Uttar Pradesh.

The latest mishap happened on Sagar-Chhatarpur Road in Buxwaha area of Chhatarpur district (around 225 km from Bhopal) on Saturday morning, when a truck carrying 20 migrants along with a commercial consignments of fabric rolls overturned.

While five persons died on the spot, one succumbed to the injuries at the hospital later. The deceased included four women and two men. The migrants were working in a shoe factory in Mumbai's Madanpura area and were returning to native Siddharth Nagar district of East UP following loss of jobs.

At least 16 others were hurt in the mishap and have been admitted at the Community Health Centre at Banda in Sagar district, the Sagar district police superintendent Amit Sanghi said.

Since the Sagar district is close to the spot, the cops from two police stations of the district rushed to start rescue operations. Disturbing visuals of the accident showed an infant crying near the body of his mother.

FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES HERE

This is the fifth major road accident within six days in MP, in which migrant workers returning to native UP from Maharashtra in the wake of nationwide Coronavirus necessitated lock-down have died.

So far, 27 UP bound migrant workers and kin have died in the five major road mishaps in MP in the last six days.

Accidents over the last six days have happened in Narsinghpur, Guna and Sagar districts.

This is the second time within a week that migrant workers hiding in a truck carrying commercial consignments have died in MP.

Earlier, on May 10, six migrant workers boarding a truck loaded with mangoes had died after the truck overturned in Narsinghpur district.

The two mishaps have exposed how overloaded trucks are causing deaths of migrant workers l, but the cops and transport department personnel in both Maharashtra and MP have failed to check these overloaded trucks whose drivers are charging Rs 2000 to Rs 3000 from each migrant worker for ferrying them to UP.
Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - The ministry of Health and Populations said here the country Thursday recorded 50 new positive cases of coronavirus (COVID-19), 34 cured and four new deaths
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray, some of his cabinet colleagues and NCP president Sharad Pawar on Friday discussed the coronavirus situation in the state and possible resumption of economic activities in some regions.

The meeting came two days ahead of the end of the current phase of lockdown on May 17.

Thackeray, who heads a Shiv Sena-NCP-Congress coalition government, held a review meeting about "current status of lockdown, the state's planning for the next phase and resumption of economic activities in some parts," an official statement said.

"MP Sharad Pawar Saheb took review of the economic package declared by the Centre, problems of migrant workers, employment and industries related issues even as discussion was held to decide policy direction," the NCP tweeted.

Industrial/businesses activities were resumed in orange and green zones of Maharashtra after April 20.

The government statement informed that permissions had been given to start 65,000 industries, while 35,000 industries have started operations and nine lakh workers have returned to work.

With migrant workers heading for their home states, the labour bureau has been activated to help the industries (find replacement workers), the statement said.

Except West Bengal, migrant workers are being sent to their states by trains, it added.

The electricity usage by industrial units in Maharashtra has gone up by 50 per cent (compared to that in the initial phase of complete lockdown), it said.

"In the meeting, discussion was also held about filling vacant posts in the health department and requirement of medical equipment," the government said.

"The discussions were held about areas where restrictions can be relaxed and how to observe restrictions in red and containment zones," it added.

Pawar mentioned in the meeting the letter he has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, seeking help for crisis-hit sugar industry.

The Maharashtra government has expressed its intention to extend till May 31 the lockdown in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad and Malegaon which have emerged as COVID-19 hotspots.

Besides Thackeray and Pawar, the meeting was attended by Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Water Resources Minister Jayant Patil, Health Minister Rajesh Tope and Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray, among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Amid the outbreak of novel coronavirus, the world remains under lockdown as a precautionary measure to stem the spread of pandemic. While many continue to stay under lockdown, a few countries have eased the restriction to revive the economy. Offices, restaurants are open following the social distancing norms. Here is a glimpse of how the world will be in the post-lockdown era. (Image: Reuters)

People exercise at a gym which has reopened with new social distancing and hygiene rules after months of closure due to an outbreak of the COVID-19, in Rome, Italy, May 25, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

Children take part in a lesson after schools reopened for grades 1-3 amid the coronavirus lockdown in Warsaw, Poland, May 25, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

Nathalie interacts with her husband Joseph behind a transparent plastic sheet inside a bubble room installed to visit residents in the garden of the Fondation Shadet Vercoustre retirement home (Ehpad - Housing Establishment for Dependant Elderly People) in Bourbourg near Dunkirk, amid the coronavirus outbreak in France, May 25, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

Bubble room has been installed for visits between residents and their families in the garden of Fondation Shadet Vercoustre retirement home in Bourbourg near Dunkirk, amid the ongoing pandemic in France, May 25, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

People in Domino Park are seen in circles painted as guidelines for social distancing in Brooklyn, New York City, U.S., May 24, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

Plastic circles are seen on the ground indicating where to stand to respect social distancing on a platform at the Gare du Nord train station in Paris, France, May 5, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

Modified lift switches are seen at a shopping mall after the Thai government eased isolation measures in Bangkok, Thailand May 20, 2020. (Image: Reuters)

People practise social distancing inside an elevator prior to arriving at work in Colombo on May 11 after the Sri Lankan government announced that private and state companies would reopen their offices after almost two months of lockdown, (Image: Reuters)

People wear protective face shields and masks at a bank getting ready to reopen in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 14. (Image: Reuters)

Employees observe social distancing during their lunch break at a factory of Renesas Semiconductor Co. in Beijing, China, on May 14. (Image: Reuters)

People have dinner as they sit next to stuffed panda dolls, used as part of social distancing measures, at the reopened Maison Saigon restaurant in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 13. (Image: Reuters)

People stand on signs to respect social distancing on a platform for the tramway in Nice, France, on May 11. (Image: Reuters)

Women are separated by dividers as they have their hair washed at Bella Rinova in Houston, Texas, on May 8. (Image: Reuters)

Social distancing signs are seen outside the Toyota Motor Manufacturing France plant in Onnaing, France, on May 7. (Image: Reuters)

People stand on social-distancing markers at a Mercedes car dealer in Brussels, Belgium, on May 6. (Image: Reuters)

An employee, wearing a protective face mask, sits on the automobile assembly line at the Renault automobile factory in Flins, France, on May 6. (Image: Reuters)

Guests have lunch in a noodle restaurant that reopened with social distancing measures in Bangkok, Thailand, on May 6. (Image: Reuters)

A restaurant tests servers providing drinks and food to models pretending to be guests in safe 'quarantine greenhouses' in which clients can dine in Amsterdam, on May 5. (Image: Reuters)
Over the phone, the voice of Marie Missoule Michaud's two-year-old son rings out in the background: "Papa, papa."

"He still asks for him. He looks for him all over," Michaud says.

Her son's father, Sony Innocent, 39, died two weeks ago from what Michaud believes were complications of the coronavirus, though he was never tested.

Michaud says it started with a fever Innocent attributed at first to the bouts of malaria he'd experienced since he was a child in Haiti. But when the fever went away, he got a bad cough.

Then, on April 30, his lungs started hurting, and he had trouble breathing.

Michaud called 911, but Innocent died as paramedics were putting on their protective equipment outside the couple's Montreal-Nord apartment complex.

Submitted by Marie Missoule Michaud

"I was screaming, and I could see police officers running so fast toward the house," said Michaud. "But it was too late."

She isn't sure how Innocent might have caught the virus. He worked at a plastics factory and had been deemed an essential worker, heading out every day while others stayed home.

Montreal-Nord, the borough where they'd settled, now has the highest number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Montreal, the epicentre of the pandemic in Canada.

It is also one of the poorest districts in Canada. The median income is $23,412, and the unemployment rate in the borough is typically between three and five points higher than the rest of the island.

Half the population is from a visible minority, and more than 40 per cent are immigrants.

'Completely predictable'

Montreal has now recorded more than 20,000 cases and more than 2,100 deaths  and with no immediate downturn in sight, the situation remains so grim that Premier Francois Legault has halted plans to reopen schools in the metropolitan region before the fall.

The first COVID-19 cases were transmitted by travellers returning from the province's early March break, cellphone data has shown.

Story continues

But two months later, the virus has spread quickly through poorer boroughs, including Montreal-Nord, MercierHochelaga-Maisonneuve and Ahuntsic-Cartierville, while early outbreaks in more affluent areas have been better contained.

For public health experts, the pattern was "completely predictable."

"Anyone who sees these health inequalities emerge is completely unsurprised," said Nicholas King, a professor at McGill University in Montreal who conducts research in public health ethics and policy.

Studies bear this out, he said: People living in low-income neighbourhoods are more susceptible to illness, for a number of reasons.

The neighbourhoods are densely populated, with more multigenerational families.

More residents work in jobs where they are likely to be exposed to illness  stocking shelves or working the cash register in grocery stores, or at the bottom rung of the health-care sector, as orderlies and cleaners.

Public health data suggests that's the scenario in Montreal, where 19 per cent of confirmed cases have been among health care workers, many of them in the hardest-hit boroughs. Twenty-four per cent of the more than 1,800 COVID-19 cases in Montreal-Nord have been health care workers, according to data compiled by the city's health department.

Dr. Nima Machouf, an epidemiologist and instructor in the school of public health at Universite de Montreal, said the pattern is clear: The contagion of Montreal's long-term care institutions, known as CHSLDs, has spread to the neighbourhoods where workers in those facilities live.

"The community transmission in low-income communities is a consequence of the spread in CHSLDs," she said.

At the plastics factory where Innocent worked the night shift, employees wore masks and were tested regularly. He seems to have caught it anyway, though how or where is not clear.

Michaud said she wanted to share her family's story because so many others in her neighbourhood are experiencing similar loss.

Her cousin  a patient attendant working through a placement agency  tested positive for COVID-19 last month. Her cousin infected her father-in-law, who lived with her, and he died in early May.

'Working-class folks are the essential workers'

Tiffany Callender, executive director of the Cote-des-Neiges Black Community Association, said the municipal and provincial governments should have anticipated the problem sooner.

Like Montreal-Nord, Cote-des-Neiges has a diverse population, with many residents working in low-paying essential service jobs. There, too, the number of cases of COVID-19 is on the rise.

"We have to consider how socioeconomics and employment and poverty play into COVID," said Callender. "Working-class folks are the essential workers."

A city bus that's been turned into a mobile coronavirus testing unit showed up in Cote-des-Neiges earlier this week, and two mobile testing sites were parked in Montreal-Nord on Thursday.

Callender welcomed the city's commitment to increased testing, but she said it should be handing out masks and taking other measures to ensure people are able to practise physical distancing.

Like other civil rights advocates, she said Montreal needs to keep race-based and socioeconomic data, to better understand how the virus is spreading, as Toronto is doing.

Montreal Mayor Valerie Plante said Thursday the "issue of inequality" has been a focus of discussions with the premier.

"Thank you for your openness to put targeted measures for the most vulnerable neighbourhoods and populations," she said at a Montreal news briefing where they were both present Thursday.

WATCH | Montreal mayor on 2 key COVID-19 decisions made by the province

Dancing and singing on Sundays

Michaud and Innocent worked opposite shifts  she in the morning, he at night  but on Sundays they were home together. She would dance as he sang along to Haitian evangelical music.

Submitted by Marie Missoule Michaud

The pair met and fell in love in the United States. Michaud was pregnant when they crossed the border into Canada in 2017 at Roxham Road, a well-trodden entry point for asylum-seekers coming from the U.S.

Michaud gave birth about five months later. She obtained refugee status, and the couple had been in the process of seeking permanent residency for Innocent.

Now she's making funeral arrangements, with help from the company Innocent worked for.

Michaud says she's finding reasons to keep her faith.

When she got the news that she and her toddler had tested negative for the coronavirus, "I thanked God," she said.

She's thankful, too, for the help she's getting with groceries and supplies from members of the community who are taking time to help grieving people like her.

"I'm in pain like everyone else," she says. "It's not just me."
The southwest monsoon is likely to hit Kerala on June 5, a delay of four days as compared to its normal onset date, the India Meteorological Department said on Friday.





The onset of monsoon over Kerala marks the commencement of the four-month long rainfall season from June to September.



According to the normal onset date, monsoon makes an arrival in Kerala on June 1.

"The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala this year is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to normal date of onset. The monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on June 5 with a model error of plus or minus 4 days," the IMD said.



The monsoon is likely to arrive over the Andaman and Nicobar islands by May 16, six days before its new onset date of May 22 due to a cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal.

Even last year, the monsoon had reached the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago on May 18, two days ahead of its then normal onset date of May 20. But due to its sluggish pace, it reached Kerala on June 8. It covered the entire country by July 19.



According to the IMD forecast, monsoon is likely to be normal this year.



The country receives 75 per cent of its rainfall from the southwest monsoon during June to September. It is not only crucial for farming in the country, but also for replenishing reservoirs, and more importantly to the economy which is still largely dependent on agriculture.

Northeast monsoon is another phenomenon that brings rainfall to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, parts of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh from October to December.



From this year, the IMD has also revised the dates of onset and withdrawal dates of the monsoon for several parts of the country based on the data from 1960 to 2019. The previous dates were based on the data from 1901 to 1940.

However, the onset date for monsoon over Kerala, which is June 1, remains unchanged.

In states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, monsoon will be delayed by 3-7 days compared to the existing normal dates.

For the national capital, the new normal onset date for monsoon has been revised from June 23 to June 27 -- a delay of four days. Similarly, dates have been revised for Mumbai and Kolkata from June 10 to 11, and for Chennai from June 1 to 4.

However, over extreme northwest India, the monsoonwill arrive a little earlier, on July 8, as compared to the existing date of July 15. The new date for monsoon withdrawal from south India is October 15.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Sixth Wave Innovations Inc. (CSE: SIXW) (OTC Pink: ATURF) (FSE: AHUH) ("Sixth Wave", "SIXW" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into non binding memorandum of understanding (the "MOU") dated May 14, 2020 with Neocon International Inc. of Halifax, NS ("Neocon") to design and produce a face mask which incorporates the Company's patent-pending virus detection technology ("SmartMaskTM") currently under development.

The Company is not making any express or implied claims that its product has the ability to eliminate, cure or contain the Covid-19 (or SARS-2 Coronavirus) at this time

SmartMask Background

On April 3, 2020, Sixth Wave announced the filing of Patent Application Number 63000977 - The Use of Molecularly Imprinted Polymers for the Rapid Detection of Emerging Viral Outbreaks, such as SARS-CoV-2 virus responsible for COVID-19, with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (the "Accelerated Detection Molecularly Imprinted Polymers Patent" or "AMIPs Patent"). SIXW filed a second application on April 17, 2020, covering a variety of practical devices designed to collect, among others, air, water and surface samples in various environments and deliver a rapid indication of the detected virus (the "AMIPs Device Patent").

A potential application described in the AMIPs Device Patent is the incorporation of the AMIPs technology into an N95 Compliant, or other mask / respirator. The envisioned SmartMask TM could provide the standard protective capabilities of an N95 mask, with the added interactive capability to alert the user that a target virus has been detected in the exhaled breath of the user.

The proposed method of alerting the user is a color change in the embedded AMIPs media, to be included in the face mask design. Based on prior experience with colorimetric media (namely, the Company's legacy Explosives Detection Polymer sold under the tradename "SAFE-T"), Sixth Wave believes that AMIPs media can be designed to deliver a positive test result using variable color codes, including optional fluorescence, within minutes of exposure to the virus exhaled in the breath.

The SmartMask

The capability of Molecular Imprinting technology to detect target molecules with a high degree of sensitivity (ability to detect minute traces of target substances) and accuracy (low false alarms and low false positives) is well established in the scientific literature. SIXW has an extensive history of developing the science in both inorganic and organic applications, including the detection of biogenic amines, cannabinoids, explosives and specialty metals applications.

Notwithstanding the foregoing, readers are cautioned that a SmartMaskTM prototype including the AMIPs technology, has yet to be completed. Independent third party laboratories will be engaged for advanced testing at the appropriate time.

Neocon is a Tier One designer and manufacturer of automotive trim level components, serving multiple international companies such as Nissan, Toyota, Hyundai and General Motors (see "About Neocon", below). Neocon has extensive experience in material science, quality systems and high-speed manufacturing including in-line thermoforming, robotic assembly and ultra-sonic assembly and has retooled a portion of its factory to produce N95 compliant masks. The company has already produced several versions of an N95 mask which will serve as the foundation product for development of the SmartMaskTM prototype under the proposed arrangement with SIXW. The existing Neocon N95 mask uses machined match-mold aluminum production molds with advanced thermoforming techniques as well as all-in-one assembly fixtures to produce a cost effective, high quality 3-ply mask suitable for high volume production.

"This collaboration between two Atlantic Canadian companies is a great example of how our local businesses can work together to potentially help in the fight against COVID-19," said The Honourable Geoff Regan, Member of Parliament for Halifax West. "I'm excited by the prospect of products that can change colour in the presence of the virus, and products that can potentially allow event organizers to know instantly if a guest has the virus. This partnership with Neocon will assist Sixth Wave with bringing this important testing technology to market and I wish them the best of success."

"We're extremely pleased to be working with Neocon," said Dr. Jonathan Gluckman, CEO and President of SIXW. "The combination of SIXW's experienced scientific team with the award-winning and globally recognized product innovation and manufacturing team at Neocon represents excellent synergy. Neocon has repeatedly been recognized with Nova Scotia's Exporter of the Year Award, and complements our experience engaging with international markets. Our proximity to Neocon is an additional advantage as a potential economic multiplier effect for the Halifax are, Nova Scotia, and Canada. We look forward to working together to design and manufacture the SmartMaskTM and potentially other AMIPs products aimed at meeting the broader needs for testing to ensure people's safety and return to work, school, and social activities."

"Neocon has committed engineering and manufacturing resources to fight the pandemic, and has been developing the complete engineering design for N95 certified and as required non-certified face masks," said Pat Ryan, President of Neocon. "This includes all cost effective and purpose appropriate materials as well as the high-speed manufacturing systems for producing and supplying to escalating market demand. The opportunity to now upgrade and transform that existing engineered product to "smart" status, with front-line remediation and response capabilities, is remarkable. I know that the team at SIXW shares our commitment to excellence, and we look forward to working together to respond to the challenges of ever-changing threat of novel viruses."

MOU

Pursuant to the terms of the MOU, the Sixth Wave will provide overall management of the project and allow for the use of the AMIPs technology for the development of the SmartMaskTM. Neocon will contribute engineering, manufacturing and technical resources to develop prototype masks, provide quality assurance and quality control expertise in prototyping and design development, assist in material selection, and design the manufacturing processing systems for the masks. Neocon will also assist with obtaining certification from regulatory authorities including, but not limited to the FDA and Health Canada. The parties have agreed to negotiate a definitive agreement in good faith detailing the terms of the collaboration in more detail. A subsequent press release will detail the terms of the definitive agreement once it is finalized and executed.

SmartMask Proposed Design Advantages

The contemplated SmartMaskTM prototype is intended to include a completely self-contained and non-invasive sampling device that can be used without training, electronics, or supplemental sampling equipment / reagents. Such a configuration would be an advantage over the current standard for virus detection, known as Polymerase Chain Reaction ("PCR") tests. PCR technologies often require deep nasal or throat swab-sampling via skilled personnel, and subsequent lab sample preparation and testing with a separate electronic device at the location or a laboratory removed from the sample site. By contrast, SmartMaskTM is envisioned as a practical device, compatible with extended daily use, with passive sampling capability and an easy-to-interpret results indicator such as color change.

The proposed SmartMaskTM configuration under development would additionally offer a marked advantage over other types of Rapid Detection Test ("RDT") technologies now in use for virus diagnostics. While conventional RDT's are fundamentally easy to use and provide rapid on-site diagnostics, they retain the need for invasive swab or blood sampling by skilled personnel. They are most commonly designed to detect antibodies produced in response to infection rather than the actual virus. These antibodies are a "lagging indicator" of the presence of the virus and can take days to weeks to develop in the human immune system. Moreover they have limited use during the early asymptomatic period during which the virus incubates and can be unknowingly spread to others which is a particularly vexing hallmark of COVID-19. By contrast, SmartMaskTM proposes to detect the active virus itself, thereby allowing the prospects for detection days to weeks earlier than conventional immunoassay-based RDT's.

About Neocon International

Neocon International is an award-winning manufacturer with over 25 years in the automotive industry, servicing all major auto companies and noted as an innovative Tier One design and manufacturing house taking projects from concept to prototype through to validation, verification, production system analysis and volume manufacturing. Specific expertise is centered on best-in-class material selection, quality control of designs, quality assurance of processes and on-time delivery with capable high-speed manufacturing using shuttle, in-line and rotary thermoforming, pressure forming, match tool molding, blow molding, injection molding, electroplating, robotic trimming, die cutting, ultra-sonic and one step fixture assembly and fabrication. Neocon has numerous supply, R&D and selling partnerships throughout North America with its' main headquarters located in the Burnside Business Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada.

For more information, please visit www.neoconinc.com.

About Sixth Wave

Sixth Wave is a development stage nanotechnology company with patented technologies that focus on extraction and detection of target substances at the molecular level using highly specialized molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). The Company is in the process of commercializing its AffinityTM cannabinoid purification system, as well as, IXOS, a line of extraction polymers for the gold mining industry.

Sixth Wave can design, develop and commercialize MIP solutions across a broad spectrum of industries. The company is focused on nanotechnology architectures that are highly relevant for detection and separation of viruses, biogenic amines and other pathogens, for which the Company has products at various stages of development.

For more information about Sixth Wave, please visit: www.sixthwave.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Jon Gluckman"

Jonathan Gluckman, Ph.D., President & CEO

For information, please contact the Company:

Phone: (801) 582-0559

E-mail: info@sixthwave.com

Cautionary Notes

This press release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements" including statements regarding the planned features of the AMIPs technology and the proposed SmartMaskTM technology. All statements in this release, other than statements of historical facts, that address future events or developments that the Company expects, are forward-looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual events or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements necessarily involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties, which may cause the Company's actual performance and financial results in future periods to differ materially from any projections of future performance or results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. In particular, successful development and commercialization of the AMIPs technology are subject the risk that the AMIPs technology may not prove to be successful in detecting virus targets effectively or at all, uncertainty of medical product development, uncertainty of timing or availability of required regulatory approvals, lack of track record of developing products for medical applications and the need for additional capital to carry out product development activities. The value of any products ultimately developed could be negatively impacted if its patent application is not successful. The Company has not yet completed development of a prototype for the product that is subject of its patent application and has not yet applied for regulatory approval for the use of this product from any regulatory agency.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55926
The protester whose display of a doll with a noose around its neck prompted an altercation at the Michigan Capitol Thursday is a candidate for state representative with a criminal record.

Multiple sources confirmed to MLive the man is James Chapman, who on April 21 filed to run for the 21st state House district as a Republican with a $100 filing fee. He is one of seven candidates  five Republicans and two Democrats  running for the seat, which is held by term-limited Rep. Kristy Pagan, D-Canton.

On Thursday, Chapman attended a protest against the states stay-at-home order organized by the group Michigan United for Liberty, carrying an American flag attached to a fishing rod with an unclothed, brown-haired doll hanging from a noose. He told a reporter with Sinclair Broadcast Group the doll was meant to identify Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

The Michigan Legislature and Whitmer are going to court over the coronavirus-related state of emergency.

A brief fight broke out when another protester attempted to take the doll. Lt. Brian Oleksyk, public information officer for the Michigan State Police, declined to identify Chapman, but said he spoke with police after the incident and that no one involved was injured or arrested.

Kevin English, a longtime acquaintance of Chapman, and Rosemary Otzman, editor of the local newspaper The Belleville-Area Independent, both identified Chapman as the protester carrying the doll on a noose Thursday.

Chapman was also previously photographed and identified with the doll at an April 15 rally by the Detroit Free Press.

MLive reporters attempted to contact Chapman at two addresses affiliated with him. At one address, a man answered the door and said that no James Chapman lived there. No one was home at the other residence. A number listed on Chapmans campaign finance filings was not accepting calls.

Chapman has had several run-ins with the criminal justice system over the last few decades, according to law enforcement records and local news reports reviewed by MLive.

In 1990, Chapman was found guilty of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder and a firearms charge and was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison, according to Michigan Department of Corrections records. He was also put on probation for a stalking charge in 2015.

Chapman was sentenced to six months in jail in 2018 after being found guilty of resisting a police officer, according to The Belleville-Area Independent. A Michigan Court of Appeals opinion summarized the incident, saying Chapman argued with and attempted to stab an acquaintance at a house in Van Buren Township and eventually dove into Belleville Lake in an attempt to evade police.

Chapman has also run unsuccessfully for several local and state political offices, Otzman said. She described Chapman as an extremely intelligent person, but said that "his emotions get away from him.

English, 59, of Sumpter Township, said he has known Chapman for more than 40 years. The two attended high school together, and English still sees Chapman on a regular basis at the township hardware store where English is a manager.

English said he instantly recognized Chapman from the photos of the scene at Thursdays protest. Having been in the area for so long, English is also aware of Chapmans troubled past and issues with local law enforcement.

Hes been in quite a bit of trouble around here in Belleville, English said, later adding, Personally, I would keep my distance from him.

The noose display was denounced by Michigan Republican Party Chair Laura Cox in a Thursday press call, who said MRP has not been involved in organizing any of the protests.

Ive seen that some of the protesters have turned violent, and that is something that we denounce in the strongest terms," she said, adding that while she understands frustrations over the stay-at-home order and Whitmers leadership, resorting to violence is never acceptable.

Thursdays protest was the fourth time in a month people gathered at Michigans Capitol building to express their concerns over the stay-at-home order that bars most in-person business and social gatherings. Other than the fight over the noose display, the protest was largely peaceful.

More: Police in Harrisburg prepare for another anti-shutdown protest Friday at the Capitol
Photograph: Shannon Stapleton/Reuters

Native American tribes in South Dakota have vowed to keep operating checkpoints to protect their people from the coronavirus, despite threats of legal action from the Republican state governor.

Related: Navajo nation reels under weight of coronavirus  and history of broken promises

The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux tribes installed multiple checkpoints on roads leading to their reservations in early April, as part of each sovereign nations comprehensive emergency response to minimize the spread of Covid-19.

They say restricting non-essential visitors and monitoring who comes in and out of their territory will aid contact tracing, and are essential tools in the fight against the global pandemic.

Tribal leaders in South Dakota are concerned about potentially devastating Covid-19 outbreaks like the one unfolding in the Navajo nation, where deep-seated structural, economic and health injustices have enabled coronavirus to spread widely and hampered efforts to curtail it.

So far, the number of confirmed cases remains low: one on the Cheyenne River reservation and two on Oglalas Pine Ridge.

Yet last Friday, Governor Kristi Noem threatened to sue the tribes. If the checkpoints are not removed within the next 48 hours, the state will take necessary legal action, she wrote.

Today I sent letters to two South Dakota tribes asking them to immediately cease interfering with or regulating traffic on US and State Highways and remove all travel checkpoints. (1/3)  Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) May 8, 2020

Noem, a staunch Trump ally, claimed that the tribes had broken the law by failing to consult authorities before imposing traffic restrictions on state and federal roads.

The tribes responded defiantly, arguing they had every right to implement measures on roads in tribal territory, no matter who built them, in order to protect the lives of their people.

Story continues

The checkpoints are part of a robust system to identify, isolate and track individuals, and make sure they are cared for properly. We are not restricting agriculture, commerce or residents, they are free to come and go, said Remi Bald Eagle, the intergovernmental affairs coordinator for Cheyenne River.

This is part of our holistic plan to make sure our members are protected  because we didnt see a plan from the state.

Noem is among eight governors who refused to issue a statewide stay-at-home order, claiming such edicts reflected herd mentality and it was down to individuals to decide whether to exercise their right to work, to worship and to play. Or to even stay at home.

Infections are on the rise in the state, with 3,663 confirmed cases including at least 39 deaths as of Wednesday, according to the New York Times database.

The governors threat evoked painful memories of previous US intervention at Pine Ridge during the 1970s, according to Chase Iron Eyes, spokesman for Oglala tribal chair, Julian Bear Runner. In 1973 federal agencies, including the FBI, were involved in an armed standoff with members of the American Indian Movement on the reservation.

On Sunday, hundreds of members of an Oglala warrior society gathered on the reservation borders amid fears state authorities would attempt to forcibly shut down the checkpoints, which are manned 24 hours a day by a private security firm.

They think they can come in and do what they did in the 1970s  disturb our peace, security and safety, but this is a different generation and the state has poked a sleeping bear, said Iron Eyes.

This is a very scary time and Covid-19, like climate change and extractivism, poses an immediate threat to our survival and well respond to protect our people.

In a press conference on Tuesday, Noem appeared to backtrack, acknowledging that any legal action must be federal.

This was followed by a second, less combative letter  sent only to Harold Frazier, chairman of Cheyenne River, again requesting that checkpoints on state and federal highways be immediately removed, but with no mention of legal action.

The governors spokesman declined to comment.

For now, the 24/7 checkpoints continue, with tourists and hunters among the few non-essential travelers being turned away.

Bald Eagle added: As one of our elders said, You dont lock the door once the wolf is in the room  you lock it before it gets in. Thats our philosophy.
Queensland Nationals MP George Christensen has risked inflaming already heightened diplomatic tensions with China by doubling down on his attempts to call the nation's ambassador before a parliamentary committee.

Mr Christensen, the chair of the joint standing committee on trade and investment growth, personally wrote to Beijing's top representative in Canberra, Cheng Jingye, requesting he attend a trade inquiry to answer questions about economic boycotts.

Nationals MP George Christensen has personally written to China's ambassador to Australia, inviting him to appear before parliamentary committee. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Trade tensions between the two nations have grown over the past week after Chinese authorities flagged potential tariffs of 80 per cent on Australian barley imports and suspended permits for beef supplied by three abattoirs in Queensland and one in NSW.

The Morrison government has attempted to play down any links between the decisions and its calls for an independent global inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hozpitality Group launched its brand-new platform which includes Jobs, Courses, Institutes, Alumni, Marketplace, Suppliers, and professional network. Hozpitality.com has helped millions of hospitality professionals to find a job in the past 12 years. With this new initiative, Hozpitality Groups aims to target aspirants who are keen on joining the hospitality industry and looking for options locally and Internationally. Students in Grade-12 are often befuddled about their career choices. The new Hozpitality.com platform promises to deliver the best suitable courses, institutes and career choices. Since the travel industry has expanded worldwide, there is a high demand of interest to study hospitality management. Seeing the rise of interest, most of the reputed colleges in the world has extended an arm of Hospitality Management courses in their institution.

The hospitality industry portfolio includes hotels, restaurants, night clubs, cruise ships, airlines, amusement parks, spa, cinemas, facilities management, and even retail. "A student with a hotel management degree can choose to enter any of the above-mentioned sectors. The hotel management colleges offer, degrees, diplomas, and masters. Students who are just finishing up Grade -12 can access new Hozpitality.com to research the industry courses, read the latest hospitality events, and connect with the Top hospitality schools. They can start building the professional network and join the Alumni of the preferred hospitality institute to understand the future path to success," said Vandana Raj Bhatt, Director Hozpitality Group.

"We will put Global Institute and Courses in front of over 1 million members around the world on our website. The listing of Full Time/Part time and Online Courses can be seen at https://www.hozpitality.com/top-rated-hospitality-courses. We also provide you a FREE Alumni Page where you can easily network with your Alumni's and stay connected, The Alumni pages can be seen at https://www.hozpitality.com/alumni," said Raj Bhatt, CEO, Hozpitality Group.

The new Hozpitality platform encourages the hotel institutes around the world to list their courses and create the profiles. Through the platform, the schools can publish the course details and contact the prospective students through the portal and recruit them for Bachelor, Masters, and Diploma courses. The Hotel Management schools can also connect with industry professionals to join the diploma courses to enhance and upgrade themselves. They can create an Alumni section under their mini-site to connect all their alumni under one platform, they would have the opportunity of featuring their notable alumni as well.

In the current situation when schools and colleges are closed and passing out students are worried about their future, Hozpitality.com brings the best opportunity to research, connect, and join distant learning courses. The alumni can look for the best industry jobs on Hozpitality.com and connect with the other global professionals. "At Hozpitality.com, we are creating a chain where a student is recruited to the best hotel management school, finds the best industry job, and then connect and stay connected with alumni and other industry professionals, seek guidance and grow. So, join us in Building the largest hospitality network in the world," added Raj.

About Hozpitality Group:

With the offices in Dubai, India and Canada and used by leading employers and recruiters to broadcast job vacancies in Dubai and across the globe, Hozpitality.com specializes in matching top candidates with attractive opportunities. Candidates who are interested in positions with hotel companies restaurants, airlines, night clubs, cruise lines, retail stores, or other positions in the UAE and beyond can also use Hozpitality.com to keep up with the latest industry news and information, as well as customize their CVs with the site's professional design services. Hozpitality.com is a Social Media and Networking platform focussed on the Hospitality Industry. Dedicated social networking, Job board and marketplace for everyone interested in the Hospitality Industry and Hospitality professionals with other people who share similar personal or career interests, activities, backgrounds or real-life connections.

Hozpitality allows users to share ideas, discussions, blogs, reviews, digital photos and videos, posts, and to inform others about online or real-world activities and events with people in their network.

Hozpitality also publishes and shares Latest Hospitality News, Announcements, Hotel openings, Promotions, Events, Hospitality Movements and Appointments and Hospitality announcements, Reviews, Blogs, etc. We provide an effective platform where all hospitality professionals can unite, network, benefit, and share.

To know more about the group, Please log on to:

www.hozpitality.com , www.hozpitalityplus.com , www.hozpitalityexcellenceawards.com

Contact:-

Raj Bhatt

CEO

HOZPITALITY.COM

A SUBSIDIARY OF VR ONLINE GROUP

P.O Box- 119395, Dubai, UAE

Phone:- +971-4-334-31-77, Fax:- +971-4-334-31-78

Email:- [email protected]

www.hozpitality.com, www.hozpitalityplus.com

SOURCE Hozpitality Group
GRAND RAPIDS, MI  Protesters are expected to rally against Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order Monday evening at Rosa Parks Circle in downtown Grand Rapids.

The event, titled American Patriot Rally-Sheriffs speak out, is scheduled to run from 5:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., and will feature remarks from at least one law enforcement official, Barry County Sheriff Dar Leaf.

Leaf, who has been in office 16 years, says he will not enforce the governors stay-at-home order because he believes it is unconstitutional.

Law enforcement has a duty  any law that they know is unconstitutional, they have a duty not to enforce it, said Leaf, who previously spoke out against Whitmers executive order during an April appearance on Fox News.

Mondays rally is being organized by American Patriot Rally, which describes itself as a movement dedicated to protecting Americas freedom for all future generations.

The group is listed as an organizer of the April 30 protest in Lansing that gained nationwide attention after protesters, some of whom were armed, entered the state capitol building.

Organizers are urging participants to exercise your 2nd amendment right as a show of support to law enforcement in their fight against tyranny, according to a Facebook post for the event.

Ryan Kelley, a 38-year-old self-employed real estate broker from the Grand Rapids area, is one of the organizers. He says the goal is to encourage police officers and sheriffs deputies to uphold the constitution and to not enforce the illegal executive orders.

The American Patriot Rally is not a Republican rally, were not a Democrat rally, he said. This is a rally for the United States of America. This problem that we have here that were all living through is not a political party issue.

Whitmer has faced an onslaught of criticism from Republican state lawmakers and many small business owners in response to her handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

The Republican-controlled Michigan Legislature sued Whitmer in the state Court of Claims after she extended her state of emergency order without their approval. She has also been ridiculed at three protests at the state capitol since April 15.

Despite that pushback, a poll released last month by the Detroit Regional Chamber found that Michigan residents approve of Whitmers response to the pandemic by a margin of 57 percent to 37 percent.

The poll surveyed 600 Michigan residents, nearly half of whom lived in the Detroit media market. Twenty percent surveyed were from the Grand Rapids market, and 11 percent were from Flint market. Others included were from markets in Traverse City, Alpena, Lansing and Marquette.

The Grand Rapids Police Department and Kent County Sheriffs Office will patrol the event. Officials with both departments made clear they are not associated with or participating in the rally.

While we understand everyone is feeling quarantine fatigue and respect peoples right to free speech, we encourage participants to practice social distancing and other health measures that will not only protect their health, but the health of others, Kent County Sheriff Michelle LaJoye-Young said in a statement.

Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Payne said he supports the right to free speech and expression. But he added that there are expectations for those exercising that right to do so in a safe manger.

This group, as with all others that hold expressive speech events in our city, will be held to that same standard, he said in a statement.

Leaf, the Barry County Sheriff whos speaking at the event, said he doesnt think his decision to not enforce the governors executive order sets a bad precedent for law enforcement.

We do law enforcement thats best for our community, he said.

If youre a single man and youre having an affair with a married woman, thats a felony. Do we enforce that? Do we go out and have a whole team of detectives go out and investigate that? So, theres all kinds of laws out there that we do not enforce.

He added, Weve always had officer discretion.

When asked whether hes worried that the event, by bringing together a large group of people in one area, risks spreading the coronavirus, he said: Theres a possibility. Am I worried about it? I dont want the virus any more than anybody else does. But If you have to chose between virus and liberty, whats your call going to be? I chose liberty every time.

Kelley said hes expecting participants to fill Rosa Parks Circle and flood over to the streets.

Weve already spoke with the police about closing down roads if we need to, and they said they would be there to work with us in the event Monroe Center or other areas need to be shut down, he said.

Leaf is not the only law enforcement officer in Michigan to speak out against Whitmers stay-at-home order, set to expire May 28.

Last month, sheriffs representing four northern Michigan counties  Leelanau, Benzie, Manistee and Mason  issued a joint press release, stating that Whitmers orders created a vague framework of emergency laws that only confuse Michigan citizens. Instead of strictly enforcing the orders, the sheriffs said they would deal with every case as an individual situation and apply common sense.

Earlier this month, Livingston Countys sheriff and prosecutor also criticized Whitmers executive order.

The Michigan Sheriffs Association says it is not keeping track of how many sheriffs say theyre not enforcing Whitmers stay-at-home order, said Executive Director Matthew Saxton.

I personally dont think any are openly defying the governor, theyre  doing what they think is right for the citizens that elected them to be sheriff," said Saxton, who formerly served as sheriff of Calhoun County.

While past protests against the governors stay-at-home order have featured Confederate flags, Nazi swastikas and nooses, organizers of the Grand Rapids rally say theyre encouraging attendees to only display the American flag.

We have said from the beginning that we encourage the use of American flags only, said Jason Howland, an event organizer and resident of Clinton Township in Macomb County.

That is important because this is not a partisan event. Regardless of who shows up to it, its not a partisan event. Its an event to bring about freedom.

Read more:

Michigan surpasses 50k confirmed cases of coronavirus

He has a criminal history and wants to be a Michigan lawmaker. Thursday, he carried a doll in a noose to the state Capitol.

Whitmer defends decision to continue coronavirus state of emergency, calls Capitol protest disturbing
Australian online retailer Kogan has acquired furniture company Matt Blatt for $4.4 million.

It comes after Matt Blatt shut its physical stores amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Matt Blatt, under Kogan, will now be an online-only store.

Visit Business Insider Australias homepage for more stories.

Aussie online retailer Kogan has acquired high-end furniture company Matt Blatt for $4.4 million.

Matt Blatt was founded in 1981 and remained family-run for nearly 40 years. During the 2019 financial year, it secured $46.5 million of revenue, with around 20 to 25% of it coming from online sales.

In March, Matt Blatt joined the string of retailers that shut their doors during the coronavirus pandemic.

"As creators of happy spaces  and happy experiences  the health and safety of our colleagues, community and customers is our priority. Unfortunately, right now, that means temporarily closing the doors to all our stores, to minimise the spread of COVID-19," Matt Blatt said in a statement at the time.

Now, under Kogan, Matt Blatt has now become an online-only store.

"We are pleased to bring the iconic Matt Blatt brand into new ownership, and relaunch the business as an online-only offering," Kogan CEO Ruslan Kogan said in a statement.

"Our acquisition of Matt Blatt gives us a springboard from which to expand our reach in the furniture and homewares market. We will be drawing on Matt Blatts decades of industry expertise and combining it with Kogan.coms technology, systems and infrastructure to deliver a market-leading offering."

Kogan started in 2006 and has expanded into several markets including mobile, internet, travel, energy and insurance. In 2016 the company bought Dick Smith's online retail business, after the electronics business announced the closure of its more than 360 stores across Australia and New Zealand.

Kogan even branched out to launch a superannuation fund in 2019. "Our mission at Kogan.com is to bring Australians the products and services they need at some of the lowest prices in the market," Ruslan Kogan said in a statement at the time.

"Kogan Super provides a no-frills, low cost, index-based offering with low fees enabling Australians to invest and grow their hard-earned money for the future."
Two looming questions await any discussion of Manitoba students returning to school after a lengthy pandemic lockout:

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Two looming questions await any discussion of Manitoba students returning to school after a lengthy pandemic lockout:

When? And how?

Its a foregone conclusion that the 2019-20 school year  at least, in terms of actual students and actual teachers sharing space in actual classrooms  has been written off as a result of Manitobas forceful but necessary effort to flatten the COVID-19 curve. Classes of the previously understood "normal" variety have been suspended at least through the end of the current academic calendar, and probably beyond that into a territory best described as "until further notice."

Its safe to assume the provincial education ministry will not green-light a return to in-school classes until its reasonably safe to do so. There will be tremendous pressure from parents and their employers, as summer breezes its way into autumn and the days on the calendar flip toward back-to-school season, for Manitoba to resume an educational routine that allows families to reclaim control over their working/schooling/domestic schedules.

But how schooling returns to more familiar and comfortable rhythms will not be an uncomplicated matter. The safety of students, teachers and school staff must be paramount, which means the anticipated 2020-21 school year  which will almost inevitably be complicated by the pandemics second wave  will bear only passing resemblance to the abruptly interrupted 2019-20 campaign.

Classrooms remain empty in Winnipeg schools. (Jonathan Hayward / The Canadian Press files)

For insights into the challenges involved, one need look no further than Quebecs rather hastened effort to return some students to schools effective May 11, and the breathtaking list of restrictions awaiting those youngsters whose families opted to take advantage of the optional-return opportunity.

Among the conditions included in a letter sent to parents prior to one Quebec schools reopening:

"Students must not expect to return to their regular class with their classmates."

"Once assigned to a class, students will spend their entire day (including lunchtime) in their assigned seats."

"No physical materials will be transported back & forth between home & school."

"When weather permits, recess breaks will be held outdoors & will entail... walking outside safely distanced from one another in a pre-arranged pattern."

It was a very different experience for students who returned to school in Quebec earlier this week. (Jacques Boissinot / The Canadian Press files)

"Parent volunteers will not be permitted in school."

"Bathroom visits will be monitored/escorted so that proper disinfection by our caretakers can follow before another student uses the facilities."

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And, perhaps most pointedly, in terms of leaving one pondering the point of the exercise:

"Activities completed while in school will not be evaluated or graded."

In terms of their regimentation and ability to inspire learning, Quebecs guidelines seem more suited to Shawshank than a scholastic institution  an exercise in warehousing children to allow parents to resume their familiar and necessary routines, rather than an advancement of educational achievement and social development.

And it leaves one wondering who  other than parents who, owing to practicalities that can no longer be put off despite the ongoing pandemic, have no choice  would opt voluntarily to send their kids back to class under such onerous conditions.

The good news for Manitoba parents is that bureaucrats and educators here have at least a couple of months to create the best possible framework for the resumption of in-school learning. When students do finally return to their classrooms for whatever constitutes the 2020-21 school year, the hope is that their new routine will meld caution and protection with innovation and opportunity, creating a learning environment that inspires rather than oppresses.

This will be, on many levels, Manitobas teachable moment.
As cases of Covid-19 spike, most states, including those ruled by Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), have asked the Centre to extend the lockdown by at least two more weeks and also sought more relaxations across all three zones to revive the economy. Prime Minister Narendra Modi had earlier this week asked the states to send suggestions on their respective strategies for lockdown 4.0, which comes into force from Monday.

He had said the new norms will be shared in advance, and the contours of lockdown 4.0 would be different from the previous ones. The lockdown was first enforced on March 25, ...
The caseload of COVID-19 in India has now reached 81,970. There are currently 51,401 active cases, with the death toll now reaching 2,649 in the country.

The caseload of COVID-19 in India has now reached 81,970 according to the data released by the Union Health Ministry. There are currently 51,401 active cases of the novel coronavirus infection, with the death toll now reaching 2,649 in the country. With 3,995 fresh cases, this was the second-highest rise in the number of cases recorded in a day in India. This was also the fifth consecutive day of at least 3,500 cases coming up, with the infection still surging in states like Maharashtra, Delhi, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Kerala, which had more or less controlled the number of cases, also witnessed 26 new cases in the last 24 hours.

Ban sale of tobacco products: Health Minister appeals to states and UTs

Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan has requested all state and union territory governments to ban the sale of all tobacco products to reduce spitting in public places and stop the spread of COVID-19 as well as for general health and hygiene purposes. Vardhan remarked that smokeless tobacco users also have the habit of spitting, which could not only cause tobacco-related diseases but also spread COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

India faces delayed COVID-19 survey due to faulty Chinese kits

Dr Manoj Murhekar, a member of the national task force against COVID-19 and director of the National Institute of Epidemiology, revealed to Reuters that India is facing a two-week delay in the survey that was to reveal the extent of the spread of the infectious disease in the country due to faulty Chinese antibody testing kits. Four other members of the research team revealed that hundreds of thousands of kits had to be returned to China after the results started showing up as inconsistent. The survey, which was taking 24,000 subjects into account, is now being conducted with indigenous testing kits, and the data is expected to be available by the end of May 2020.

PM-CARES Fund to back Indias COVID-19 vaccine development

The Indian government has allocated INR 100 crores from the Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations (PM-CARES) Fund to support the COVID-19 vaccine development initiatives. The allocated funds distribution and utilization will be overseen by the Principal Scientific Advisor, K Vijay Raghavan. There are about 25 vaccine development initiatives currently underway in the countrys academic institutions, industries and start-ups. About 10 of these vaccine development initiatives are getting support from the DBT-BIRAC (Department of Biotechnology - Biotechnology Industry Research Assistance Council), and its yet unclear which initiatives will be eligible for the PM-CARES Funds.

Indian experts see signs of community transmission

Prof. K Srinath Reddy, the President of Public Health Foundation of India (and ex-head of the Department of Cardiology at AIIMS), commented that the spread of the disease to people without travel histories or history of contact, and especially the spike in the recent number of cases, indicate that India is facing community transmission. Dr G Gurjuraj, Department of Epidemiology and Centre for Public Health, Nimhans, also mentioned similar points but insisted that theres nothing to panic about as long as the Indian government continues to fortify the measures taken to stop the spread of COVID-19 even after the easing of the lockdown.

For more information, read our article on COVID-19 and smoking.

Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health.
The country may continue to be divided into red, orange, and green zones, after the current phase of lockdown ends on May 17, but it could be the states deciding the classification, officials involved in the Central governments deliberations on the matter said.

To be sure, no decision has been taken on this. The Centre is currently evaluating suggestions from the states on the next phase of the lockdown (or if there should be one) and is expected to issue guidelines shortly.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

At the meeting between the Prime Minister and chief ministers last week, several CMs raised the issue of zoning and also pointed out that focusing on containment zones, and classifying them as red, orange, and green, would probably work better than classifying an entire district.

Also Read: Need to wait on resuming air travel: Niti Aayog member

The discussions, the officials added, are also looking at whether smaller areas within districts can be used for the classification. The aim is to open up more areas for economic activities.

One plan is for the Centre to define the three zones and leave the rest to the states, one of the officials said, asking not to be named. Under the current system, the union government divides different districts into red, orange and green zones based on the data provided by the state and then shares the details with the states every week.

At the meeting between the PM and the CMs last week, West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, and Punja CM, Captain Amarinder Singh asked the centre to give them more powers to demarcate red or orange zones to allow more economic activities.

According to functionaries present in the meeting, Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal proposed a division based on containment and non-containment zones.
The Delhi High Court on Friday sought the response of the AAP government on several pleas challenging the levy of 70 per cent "special corona fee'' on the MRP of all liquor brands in the national capital.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar issued a notice to the Delhi government and sought its response, by May 29, to the petitions which seek setting aside of the May 4 notification imposing the levy.

While issuing the notice, the court declined to grant any interim stay on the notification for now and decided to wait for Delhi government's reply, one of the petitioners, Lalit Valecha, said.

Delhi government standing counsel Ramesh Singh accepted the notice on behalf of the administration and said a detailed reply would be filed, indicating the levy was valid.

The Delhi government imposed the "special corona fee'' on alcohol, a day after allowing re-opening of 150 state-run liquor vends in the city from May 3.

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

Valecha, a lawyer, has contended in his petition that the "special corona fee'' is in excess of what has been authorised by law and accordingly it is being collected arbitrarily.
SIOUX CITY -- The inmate population of the Woodbury County jail has declined by about one-third compared to earlier this year, with some inmates being released in an effort to prevent a COVID-19 outbreak at the facility.

The Sioux City Police Department, meanwhile, is conducting fewer routine traffic stops in an effort to stem the number of infections in police officers. Data from the department indicates that traffic stops have been slashed by more than half -- in the first two weeks of March, some 986 stops were conducted. In the first two weeks of May, only 401 drivers were pulled over.

At a press conference Friday held in coordination with the Siouxland District Health Department, Woodbury County Chief Deputy Tony Wingert said the jail averaged about 220 to 230 inmates in January and February -- near its full capacity, in terms of the number of beds -- compared to about 150 today.

Some individuals in jail on lower-level crimes have been released or not booked into the jail at all -- a number of people who were due to report to jail on a mittimus order are now being put on electronic monitoring.

"Anything that we felt was a threat to society was staying in the facility," Wingert said of the jail population. "But if we had people possibly serving time on an OWI, we may have told them that we're going to suspend that time and they're going to come back later. First-offense drug offense, any kind of driving offense, any simple misdemeanor awaiting a trial (were released)."

The jail has yet to see an outbreak of the virus, but other correctional facilities have experienced large-scale illness among inmates elsewhere in the United States.

The decision to begin releasing inmates was the result of conversations between courts, public defenders and the county attorney, Wingert said. The jail population reductions began around the start of the outbreak.

"We got on top of it early, early in the pandemic. I guess I'm a worrywart, and I could see the writing on the wall," Wingert said.

Sioux City Police Sgt. Jeremy McClure, who was also at the press conference, said some 10 employees of the department have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Nine of them are considered recovered, including Police Chief Rex Mueller.

In an effort to reduce human contact and potential virus exposure, the department is not conducting the same number of traffic stops for lesser violations, he said.

"The emphasis now is on major traffic violations. We're trying to de-emphasize traffic stops for minor things such as equipment issues, headlights out, brake-lights out and such," McClure said. "We are still making traffic stops, but not near the number that we were making before."

Both the Sioux City Police Department and the Woodbury County Sheriff's Office have implemented procedural changes in response to the pandemic. When SCPD officers report for duty, their temperatures are taken, and those who show symptoms of illness are sent home until they are cleared by medical officials.

When members of the public call 9-1-1, dispatchers inquire whether emergency responders may face exposure to the virus, and calls and reports are handled over-the-phone as much as possible. Officers now wear masks while on the job, the police department lobby is closed to the public and fingerprinting services are not being offered.

"We currently are working on a method of taking some reports online, these would be minor incidents, such as thefts or property damage," McClure said. "And we're hoping to unveil that program at the end of the month."

Wingert said the sheriff's office is largely operating under the same procedures as the police department, though he said fingerprinting services will resume, by appointment only, next week.

The sheriff's office is also handling fewer civil service matters -- serving papers, evictions -- though Wingert said that will ramp back up in time.

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Every year on May 15, Palestinians around the world, numbering about 12.4 million, mark the Nakba, or catastrophe, referring to the ethnic cleansing of Palestine and the near-total destruction of Palestinian society in 1948.

The Palestinian experience of dispossession and loss of a homeland is 69 years old this year.

On that day, the State of Israel came into being. The creation of Israel was a violent process that entailed the forced expulsion of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from their homeland to establish a Jewish-majority state, as per the aspirations of the Zionist movement.

Between 1947 and 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians from a 1.9 million population were made refugees beyond the borders of the state. Zionist forces had taken more than 78 percent of historic Palestine, ethnically cleansed and destroyed about 530 villages and cities, and killed about 15,000 Palestinians in a series of mass atrocities, including more than 70 massacres.

Palestinians in 1948, five months after the creation of Israel, leaving a village in the Galilee [Reuters]

Though May 15, 1948, became the official day for commemorating the Nakba, armed Zionist groups had launched the process of displacement of Palestinians much earlier. In fact, by May 15, half of the total number of Palestinian refugees had already been forcefully expelled from their country.

Israel continues to oppress and dispossess Palestinians to this day, albeit in a less explicit way than that during the Nakba.

What caused the Nakba?

The roots of the Nakba stem from the emergence of Zionism as a political ideology in late 19th-century Eastern Europe. The ideology is based on the belief that Jews are a nation or a race that deserve their own state.

From 1882 onwards, thousands of Eastern European and Russian Jews began settling in Palestine; pushed by the anti-Semitic persecution and pogroms they were facing in the Russian Empire, and the appeal of Zionism.

In 1896, Viennese journalist Theodor Herzl published a pamphlet that came to be seen as the ideological basis for political Zionism  Der Judenstaat, or The Jewish State. Herzl concluded that the remedy to centuries-old anti-Semitic sentiments and attacks in Europe was the creation of a Jewish state.

Though some of the movements pioneers initially supported a Jewish state in places such as Uganda and Argentina, they eventually called for for building a state in Palestine based on the biblical concept that the Holy Land was promised to the Jews by God.

In the 1880s, the community of Palestinian Jews, known as the Yishuv, amounted to three percent of the total population. In contrast to the Zionist Jews who would arrive in Palestine later, the original Yishuv did not aspire to build a modern Jewish state in Palestine.

After the dissolution of the Ottoman Empire (1517-1914), the British occupied Palestine as part of the secret Sykes-Picot treaty of 1916 between Britain and France to divvy up the Middle East for imperial interests.

In 1917, before the start of the British Mandate (1920-1947), the British issued the Balfour Declaration, promising to help the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, essentially vowing to give away a country that was not theirs to give.

READ MORE: How Britain Destroyed the Palestinian Homeland

Central to the pledge was Chaim Weizmann, a Britain-based Russian Zionist leader and chemist whose contributions to the British war effort during World War I (1914-1918) made him well-connected to the upper echelons of the British government. Weizmann lobbied hard for more than two years with British former Prime Minister David Lloyd-George and former Foreign Minister Arthur Balfour to publicly commit Britain to building a homeland for the Jews in Palestine.

By giving their support to Zionist goals in Palestine, the British hoped they could shore up support among the significant Jewish populations in the US and Russia for the Allied effort during WWI. They also believed the Balfour Declaration would secure their control over Palestine after the war.

From 1919 onwards, Zionist immigration to Palestine, facilitated by the British, increased dramatically. Weizmann, who later became Israels first president, was realising his dream of making Palestine as Jewish as England is English.

European Jews arrive from the Nazi holocaust wave into the Palestinian Arab city of Haifa, five weeks before Israel is declared a state [Reuters]

Between 1922 and 1935, the Jewish population rose from nine percent to nearly 27 percent of the total population, displacing tens of thousands of Palestinian tenants from their lands as Zionists bought land from absentee landlords.

Leading Arab and Palestinian intellectuals openly warned against the motifs of the Zionist movement in the press as early as 1908. With the Nazi seizure of power in Germany between 1933 and 1936, 30,000 to 60,000 European Jews arrived on the shores of Palestine.

In 1936, Palestinian Arabs launched a large-scale uprising against the British and their support for Zionist settler-colonialism, known as the Arab Revolt. The British authorities crushed the revolt, which lasted until 1939, violently; they destroyed at least 2,000 Palestinian homes, put 9,000 Palestinians in concentration camps and subjected them to violent interrogation, including torture, and deported 200 Palestinian nationalist leaders.

At least ten percent of the Palestinian male population had been killed, wounded, exiled or imprisoned by the end of the revolt.





The British government, worried about the eruption of violence between the Palestinians and Zionists, tried to curtail at several points immigration of European Jews. Zionist lobbyists in London overturned their efforts.

In 1944, several Zionist armed groups declared war on Britain for trying to put limits on Jewish immigration to Palestine at a time when Jews were fleeing the Holocaust. The Zionist paramilitary organisations launched a number of attacks against the British  the most notable of which was the King David Hotel bombing in 1946 where the British administrative headquarters were housed; 91 people were killed in the attack.

In early 1947, the British government announced it would be handing over the disaster it had created in Palestine to the United Nations and ending its colonial project there. On November 29, 1947, the UN adopted Resolution 181, recommending the partition of Palestine into Jewish and Arab states.

At the time, the Jews in Palestine constituted one third of the population and owned less than six percent of the total land area. Under the UN partition plan, they were allocated 55 percent of the land, encompassing many of the main cities with Palestinian Arab majorities and the important coastline from Haifa to Jaffa. The Arab state would be deprived of key agricultural lands and seaports, which led the Palestinians to reject the proposal.

Shortly following the UN Resolution 181, war broke out between the Palestinian Arabs and Zionist armed groups, who, unlike the Palestinians, had gained extensive training and arms from fighting alongside Britain in World War II.

READ MORE: How Israels violent birth destroyed Palestine

Zionist paramilitary groups launched a vicious process of ethnic cleansing in the form of large-scale attacks aimed at the mass expulsion of Palestinians from their towns and villages to build the Jewish state, which culminated in the Nakba.

While some Zionist thinkers claim there is no proof of a systematic master plan for the expulsion of Palestinians for the creation of the Jewish state, and that their dispossession was an unintended result of war, the presence of a Palestinian Arab majority in what Zionist leaders envisioned as a future state meant the Nakba was inevitable.

Why do Palestinians commemorate the Nakba on May 15?

The British occupation authorities had announced that they would be ending their mandate in Palestine on the eve of May 15, 1948. Eight hours earlier, David Ben-Gurion, who became Israels first prime minister, announced what the Zionist leaders called a declaration of independence in Tel Aviv.

The British Mandate ended at midnight, and on May 15, the Israeli state came into being.

David Ben Gurion, centre, a Polish Jew, reads out what Israel called a declaration of independence on May 14, 1948. A photo of Herzl hangs in the backdrop [Reuters]

Palestinians commemorated their national tragedy of losing a homeland in an unofficial way for decades, but in 1998, the former President of the Palestinian Authority, Yasser Arafat, declared May 15 a national day of remembrance, on the 50th year since the Nakba.

Israel celebrates the day as its day of independence.

When did the process of displacement actually begin?

Though displacement of Palestinians from their lands by the Zionist project was already taking place during the British Mandate, mass displacement started when the UN partition plan was passed.

In less than six months, from December 1947 to mid-May 1948, Zionist armed groups expelled about 440,000 Palestinians from 220 villages.

Before May 15, some of the most infamous massacres had already been committed; the Baldat al-Sheikh massacre on December 31, 1947, killing up to 70 Palestinians; the Sasa massacre on February 14, 1948, when 16 houses were blown up and 60 people lost their lives; and the Deir Yassin massacre on April 9, 1948, when about 110 Palestinian men, women and children were slaughtered.

IN PICTURES: Remembering Deir Yassin

How many Palestinians were displaced?

As units of the Egyptian, Lebanese, Syrian, Jordanian and Iraqi armies invaded on May 15, the Arab-Israeli war was launched, and stretched until March 1949.

By the first half of 1949, at least 750,000 Palestinians in total were forcibly expelled or fled outside of their homeland. Zionist forces had committed about 223 atrocities by 1949, including massacres, attacks such as bombings of homes, looting, the destruction of property and entire villages.

Some 150,000 Palestinians remained in the areas of Palestine that became part of the Israeli state. Of the 150,000, some 30,000 to 40,000 were internally displaced.

Like the 750,000 who were displaced beyond the borders of the new state, Israel prohibited internally displaced Palestinians from returning to their homes.

Palestinian Arabs leaving the port city of Jaffa as Zionist forces advanced on the city [Associated Press]

In the years that followed the establishment of Israel, the state extended its systematic ethnic cleansing. Though armistice agreements had been signed with Egypt, Jordan, Syria and Lebanon in 1949, the newly founded Israeli army committed a number of additional massacres and campaigns of forced displacement.

For example, in 1950, the remaining 2,500 Palestinian residents of the city of Majdal were forced into the Gaza Strip, about 2,000 inhabitants of Beer el-Sabe were expelled to the West Bank, and some 2,000 residents of two northern villages were driven into Syria.

By the mid-1950s, the Palestinian population inside Israel had become about 195,000. Between 1948 and the mid-1950s, some 30,000, or 15 percent of the population, were expelled outside the borders of the new state, according to the BADIL refugee rights group.

Is the Nakba over?

While the Zionist project fulfilled its dream of creating a Jewish homeland in Palestine in 1948, the process of ethnic cleansing and displacement of Palestinians never stopped.

During the 1967 Arab-Israeli War, known as the Naksa, meaning setback, Israel occupied the remaining Palestinian territories of East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and continues to occupy them until today. While under the UN partition plan Israel was allocated 55 percent, today it controls more than 85 percent of historic Palestine.

The Naksa led to the displacement of some 430,000 Palestinians, half of which originated from the areas occupied in 1948 and were thus twice refugees. As in the Nakba, Israeli forces used military tactics that violated basic international rights law such as attacks on civilians and expulsion. Most refugees fled into neighbouring Jordan, with others going to Egypt and Syria.

Little children play amid lines of laundry drying out at Baqaa Camp in Jordan for Palestinian refugees of the 1967 war  some were refugees from 1948 [The Associated Press]

What is the situation today?

The more than three million Palestinians living in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem face home demolitions, arbitrary arrests, and displacement as Israel expands the 100-plus Jewish-only colonies and steals Palestinian land to do so. Palestinian movement is restricted by military checkpoints and the Separation Wall that has obstructed their ability to travel freely.

Palestinians wait to cross the Qalandia military checkpoint in the occupied West Bank as Israeli officers stand guard, in 2016 [Reuters]

The Gaza Strip, where some two million Palestinians live, has been under Israeli siege for more than a decade whereby Israel controls the air space, sea and borders; the Strip has also witnessed three Israeli assaults that have made the area close to uninhabitable.

READ MORE: Occupied words  On Israels colonial narrative

Within Israel, the 1.8 million Palestinians are an involuntary minority in a state for the Jews. Rights groups have recorded some 50 laws that discriminate against them for not being Jewish, such as ones that criminalise the commemoration of the Nakba.

Since the creation of Israel, no new Palestinian towns or cities were built within its borders, in contrast to the 600 Jewish municipalities that have been developed, according to Adalah, the legal centre for Arab Minority Rights in Israel.

Since 1948, some one million Palestinians have been arrested by Israel, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics. Additionally, some 100,000 Palestinian homes have been demolished (not including the Nakba or the Gaza wars), according to BADIL.

There are hundreds of checkpoints, roadblocks and flying checkpoints in the West Bank, and between Israel and the West Bank where Palestinians must show proof of identification and be searched [Reuters]

Today, there are about 7.98 million Palestinian refugees and internally displaced persons who have not been able to return to their original homes and villages.

Some 6.14 million of those are refugees and their descendants beyond the borders of the state; many live in some of the worst conditions in more than 50 refugee camps run by the UN in neighbouring countries.
A man has been caught on security footage taking selfies with a dinosaur skeleton after breaking into a museum in the middle of the night.

The man broke into the Australian Museum, in Sydney's CBD, after 1am on May 10 where he roamed around for 40 minutes.

Footage of the incident showed the intruder getting up close and personal with the exhibits, looking at dinosaur bones and taking pictures of himself with the head of a Tyrannosaurus-Rex.

The man broke into the Australian Museum, in Sydney's CBD, after 1am on May 10 where he roamed around for 40 minutes

He looked at dinosaur bones and took selfies with a Tyrannosaurus-Rex head

The man then wandered through the staff-only part of the museum and attempted to access many parts of the building.

He picked up a brown cowboy hat, believed to belong to a staff member, from a stand and put it on.

The man then left the premises.

He is described as being white with dark hair and aged in his early 20s.

He was wearing black shoes, a denim button-up shirt and denim trousers at the time of the break in.

The man then wandered through the staff-only part of the museum and attempted to access many parts of the building

'We're taking it very seriously,' Detective Chief Inspector Sean Heaney told 7news.com.au.

'He's entered into a place of significance, we're lucky he hasn't damaged any historical artefacts or anything that is expensive in there.'

Australian Museum is currently under renovation and police believe he got into the building by climbing scaffolding.

Anyone with information is urged to contact police.
Intl security in COVID-19 era can only be achieved through solidarity and cooperation: Nigeria ambassador

Baba Ahmad Jidda, Nigerian Ambassador to China. (Photo/China Daily)

Chinas responses to COVID-19 are exemplary and have prevented the spread of the virus both inside and outside the country, said Baba Ahmad Jidda, Nigerian Ambassador to China.

In an exclusive interview with Peoples Daily Online, the ambassador praised Chinas fight against the virus as well as its contribution to global efforts to bring the pandemic under control, calling for strengthened cooperation, solidarity and mutual respect in the international community, instead of fuelling discrimination and stigmatization.

China has put in place rigorous and comprehensive measures, such as the total lockdown of Wuhan and the entire Hubei province, he said, adding that the measures have so far been very successful, with low numbers of deaths and high numbers of recovered cases reported in China.

The cheering news of the upcoming opening of the Two Sessions, Chinas most important annual political events, shows that the challenges brought by the pandemic in China have been overcome, he noted.

In Nigeria, the ambassador said only two states, Kogi and Cross River, have not reported cases of COVID-19 infections, but the remaining 34 states and the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja, have recorded increasing numbers of confirmed cases due to the expansion and establishment of more testing centers in the country.

While Nigeria has put in place strict measures to prevent the spread of the pandemic, some challenges remain, he said, citing examples of difficulty in enforcing compliance with prevention and control measures and shortage of testing kits and other medical supplies, especially Personal Protective Equipment.

The envoy highly commended Chinas contribution to the global fight against the epidemic, such as the support shown by the Chinese government, companies and businessmen to Nigeria and other African countries during the outbreak.

China has not only donated medical supplies to fight the COVID-19 pandemic in Africa and other regions across the globe but has also dispatched medical experts to several countries, including Nigeria, to share its experiences in confronting the dreaded disease, he said, noting that the support has gone a long way in boosting the ability of the recipient countries to effectively fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

With virus-related discrimination and stigmatization on the rise, the ambassador called upon the international community to shun discrimination and stigmatization as they only help the virus rather than mankind.

Instead of focusing on the question of compensation or playing blame games, we should explore ways of promoting global solidarity in times like this, he said. Moreover, misinformation is counterproductive to the global efforts to bring the pandemic under control.

On the subject of further cooperation between Nigeria and the international community, the ambassador said Nigeria has set up an Economic Sustainability Committee to establish programmes aimed at overcoming the impact of the pandemic.

Further cooperation between Nigeria and the international community is pivotal to achieving Nigerias objective of economic diversification. This could be achieved through the completion of ongoing critical infrastructural projects such as power, road and railway in the country, he said.

These projects, he added, were mostly supported by the Chinese government through the mechanism of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and Belt and Road Initiative.

On the subject of the global impact of the outbreak, Jidda said the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing a change in the way many observers and international scholars think about international security.

It has shown that true international security can only be achieved through solidarity and cooperation, as no nation is an island, Jidda said, adding that the international political and economic order must be steered towards global cooperation, solidarity and mutual respect.

These are the principles that Nigeria, and indeed Africa, stand for. These are the principles that have allowed human societies to endure against all odds, he added.
Elite Pacific Properties Launches New Military Appreciation Program Weve strongly supported military families since our founding, and have a number of Veterans among our agents and property managers--our hope is that this program will help those who serve our country

A new Military Appreciation Program unveiled today by Elite Pacific Properties will offer the highest cash rebate of its kind on home sales and purchases in Hawaii to active-duty U.S. servicemen and women, as well as veterans, reservists, and their spouses.

Weve strongly supported military families since our founding, and have a number of Veterans among our agents and property managers, says Chuck Garrett, Vice President of Brokerage Operations and Business Development. Right now, with many Hawaii residents struggling with the loss of income and economic uncertainty, our hope is that this program will help those who serve our country.

Planned since 2019, Elite Pacific timed the launch to honor local military families during Military Appreciation Month this year. With the Department of Defense (DoD) recently extending a hold on moves through June 30 due to the COVID 19 crisis, and the annual May  August permanent change of station (PCS) season likely extending into the fall, this benefit package will provide welcome financial support for military families during a challenging relocation season, Garrett added. This is the first-ever such program offered by the company.

The Elite Pacific Military Appreciation Program offers:

Home Purchase/Sale Cash Benefit



A direct cash benefit is credited to the service member at closing based on the home sale price. For example: the benefit for a $500,000 sale is $3,025, and for a $1,000,000 sale the benefit is $6,250.

Long Term Property Management Discount



First month of management fee waived.

Vacation Rental Management Discount



10% discount on management fees for 12 months or a total of $5,000 whichever comes first.

Vacation Rental Guest Discount



5% of total stay, may not apply to some inventory.

Outbound Referral/Relocation Assistance



Placement with a similar benefit program when/where possible.

Hawaiis military community includes 112,625 veterans or approximately 8% of Hawaiis population of 1,415,872.

For active-duty personnel, the summer months are the busiest move season of the year, as hundreds of thousands of Defense Department and U.S. Coast Guard servicemen and women receive orders to new assignments across the nation and worldwide. The period of May 15 through August 31 is the annual peak move season, with more than 65 percent of moves occurring during this time frame.

To be eligible for the cash benefit, a service member must be registered in the program. To register, visit

http://www.elitepacific.com/map (website live on 5/15) or contact David Erickson, CRP, MRP at militaryappreciation@elitepacific.com / 808-913-1561.

Credit for Image: Courtesy of Elite Pacific Properties

Link to Military Appreciation site: http://www.elitepacific.com/map

Elite Pacific Properties: https://www.elitepacific.com/about/

PRESS CONTACT:

Liz Foley, CEO, The Privus Group  Public Relations

425 949 6300, liz@theprivusgroup.com

Chuck Garrett, VP, Brokerage Operations and Business Development, Elite Pacific Properties, tel. (808) 762-1473, chuck.garrett@elitepacific.com

PROGRAM REGISTRATION:

David Erickson, CRP, MRP

Business Development Manager, Elite Pacific Properties

militaryappreciation@elitepacific.com

808-913-1561.
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Gratomic Inc. ("GRAT" or the "Company") (TSXV:GRAT)(FRANKFURT:CB81) (WKN:A143MR) is pleased to announce that it is implementing an online marketing and awareness program through Agora Internet Relations Corp. ("AGORA").

The Company will receive significant exposure through millions of content brand insertions on the AGORACOM network and extensive search engine marketing over the next 12 months. In addition, exclusive sponsorships of invaluable digital properties such as AGORACOM TV, the AGORACOM home page and the AGORACOM Twitter account will serve to significantly raise the brand awareness of the Company among small cap investors.

Arno Brand, President and CEO stated, "AGORA has proven to be a leader in the online marketing space. We are delighted to have retained their services to expand our online presence as we look forward to developing our brand."

Shares for Services Program

The Company intends to issue shares to AGORA in exchange for the online advertising, marketing and branding services ("Advertising Services"). Pursuant to the terms of the service agreement, the Company will pay a total fee of $50,000 + HST, to be paid by way of common shares of the Company as follows:

$10,000 + HST Shares for Services upon commencement effective May 1, 2020 for initial set up of HUB, marketing materials and search engine programs;

$10,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of Third Month August 1, 2020;

$10,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of Sixth Month November 1, 2020;

$10,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of Ninth Month February 1, 2021;

$10,000 + HST Shares for Services at end of Twelfth Month April 30, 2021.

Per TSX Venture Policy 4.3 (Section 6.1), the deemed price of the securities to be issued will be determined after the date services are provided to the Company in each period and be based upon the undiscounted market price of the Company's common shares at the relevant time.

The initial share issuance of 141,250 common shares for the settlement of $11,300 of services to date is based on the closing price of $0.08 for the Company's securities on May 14, 2020.

The term of the Agreement is for 12 months effective immediately.

About AGORACOM

AGORACOM is the pioneer of online marketing, broadcasting, conferences and investor relations services to North American small and mid-cap public companies, with more than 300 companies served. AGORACOM is the home of more than 7.7 million investors that visited 55.2 million times and read over 600 million pages of information over the last 10 years. The average visit of 8min 43sec is more than double that of global financial sites, which can be attributed to the implementation and enforcement of the strongest moderation rules in the industry.

About Gratomic Inc.

Gratomic is an advanced materials company focused on mine to market commercialization of graphite products most notably high value graphene-based components for a range of mass market products. We have a Joint Venture collaboration with Perpetuus Carbon Technology, a leading European manufacturer of graphenes, to use Aukam graphite to manufacture graphene products for commercialization on an industrial scale. The Company is listed on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol GRAT.

For more information: visit the website at www.gratomic.ca or contact:

Arno Brand at abrand@gratomic.ca or 416 561-4095

"Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release."

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains forward-looking statements, which relate to future events or future performance and reflect management's current expectations and assumptions. Such forward-looking statements reflect management's current beliefs and are based on assumptions made by and information currently available to the Company. Investors are cautioned that these forward-looking statements are neither promises nor guarantees and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause future results to differ materially from those expected. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and, except as required under applicable securities legislation, the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. All of the forward-looking statements made in this press release are qualified by these cautionary statements and by those made in our filings with SEDAR in Canada (available at www.sedar.com).

SOURCE: Gratomic Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589973/Gratomic--Agora-Internet-Relations-Corp-Announce-Online-Marketing-and-Awareness-Program
Faye Brown was a quiet, stoic woman who rose each morning in a Raleigh prison, pulled on a pair of dress slacks and walked out the gates to catch a city bus  her routine for years.

At age 67, she had earned enough trust to work each day as a teacher and hair stylist at Sherills school of cosmetology, carrying a pair of scissors though she was serving a life sentence for murder and bank robbery.

At the end of each day, she caught the bus back to prison, where the younger inmates considered her a grandmother  an older, wiser prisoner who loved peppermint candy and held a vain hope she would be free one day.

She always admitted walking into a Martin County bank in 1975, carrying a loaded pistol and stuffing money into her purse. But she always resented the murder charge. As the robbers fled, Browns accomplice Joseph Seaborn hid in the back seat of their getaway car, and when a state trooper pulled them over, he fired a sawed-off shotgun through the window, killing Trooper Tom Davis.

She always said she didnt want to die here, said Pamela Humphrey, her friend at N.C. Correctional Institution for Women. Shed say Pam, we aint going to die here. She never gave up hope.

She came close in 2009, but was stopped by the N.C. Supreme Court the next year. On May 8, however, Brown kept her promise, technically. She died in a Raleigh hospital from COVID-19 complications  the first casualty at the Raleigh prison, which has reported 91 coronavirus cases as of Friday morning, according to the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

Last week, 20 former inmates gathered outside the Southeast Raleigh prison decrying her death and protesting crowded conditions. Inside, Humphrey and others waved to them, making heart shapes with their hands.

They told us her family was there, Humphrey said of her friends passing. I dont know if were being told that to appease us.

A small group of former inmates and supporters from the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women gathered across the street from the facility to protest prison conditions on Saturday, May 9, 2020. Their friend, 67-year-old Faye Brown, died there Wednesday, May 6 of COVID-19 complications. They have argued for early release of nonviolent offenders and those within two years of finishing their sentences to prevent the spread of the virus, citing personal knowledge of the conditions that make social distancing impossible.

I hope someday they forgive me

Brown grew up in Garysburg, a town of 932 sitting a few miles from Roanoke Rapids.

Story continues

For a 2005 TV documentary, Women on Death Row, she told an interviewer that she came from a large family of modest means, and that she thrived in school, making valedictorian at her eighth-grade graduation.

Her attitude changed when her parents shifted her to a majority white school nearby, where she felt unwelcome and gave up studying. She found a bad crowd and drifted into drugs.

On the morning of the robbery, she told the documentary crew, she had been up all night taking LSD, and she fell asleep in the front seat after exiting the bank. At his trial, Seaborn explained that he had fired the only shot, saying it was accidental.

I am truly sorry for your loss, Brown said in the documentary. I didnt mean to hurt you. Never meant to harm anyone, and I hope someday they will forgive me.

Convicted of murder in 1976, she initially got sent to Death Row. That got commuted to life in prison, and Brown began a bitter stretch in Raleigh, continuing her drug use and flouting the rules.

It wasnt until 1991, around the time of her mothers death, that she began to change, according to a profile in the Worldwide Womens Criminal Justice Network.

She earned a bachelors degree in prison, got certified to style hair and began teaching others at Sherills. She got two passes a month to visit her sister on weekends.

She steered the young inmates toward school programs, told them not to cross the correctional officers and warned them on which prisoners to avoid if they wanted to keep from trouble, said Christy Wells, her friend and former bunk mate at NCCIW.

Then in 2009, after 33 years in prison, Brown got a windfall that nearly freed her altogether. She came so close to officially leaving that she made it out the gate and into the parking lot before being called back.

It was that one time in your life when you feel like youre finally getting ready to live your life again, said Wells. Im sorry. Im going to cry.

In this 2009 file photo, Faye Brown, center, listens as special deputy Attorney General Tiare Smiley questions North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women superintendent, Kenneth Royster during a hearing in a Wake County courtroom.. Brown was one of several inmates who were given life terms in the 1970s that defined life as 80 years and was ruled eligible for release. The NC Supreme Court overruled that decision.

A bunch of hair stylists

In 2009, the NC Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bobby Bowden, a Fayetteville man convicted of murder in 1975. The justices held that the state was obligated to apply credits for good behavior toward his sentence.

This ruling cleared the way for other prisoners convicted between 1974 and 1978  including Faye Brown  when a life sentence meant 40 to 80 years.

Brown prepared for release, but Gov. Beverly Perdue ordered a halt on releasing 20 inmates serving time for murder, rape and assault.

Like most of my fellow North Carolinians, she said at the time, I believe life should mean life, and even if a life sentence is defined as 80 years, getting out after only 35 is simply unacceptable.

The idea of freeing Brown, regardless of her sentence or behavior, rankled many statewide. Willie Rogers, a retired highway patrol sergeant in Goldsboro, wrote a letter to the N&O reminding readers of the day he found Brown and her accomplices hiding in a soybean field with their weapons and stolen money.

Trooper Davis did not get a second chance, he wrote. So why should Faye Brown get one?

Emily Coward, then an attorney with NC Prisoner Legal Services, recalled Brown as soft-spoken and insightful, calm despite having so much on the line.

As they arrived in Wake County Superior Court, she was surprised to see the room fill up with spectators in black robes, all from Browns cosmetology school.

We were expecting the courtroom to be packed with troopers, Coward said. Instead, it was a bunch of hair stylists.

Brown won her case in Superior Court on a Monday morning in December 2009, and by that Monday afternoon, the Court of Appeals ordered her to stay put.

She didnt show a lot of emotion, Coward recalled. She was always kind and pretty reserved.

Then the Supreme Court shut the door for good in 2010, and Brown returned to her bunk at NCCIW.

She took her clothes off and she put a prison dress on with a pair of thermals, Wells remembered. She put a hair wrap around her hair, crawled up in her bed, read a book and cried.

Were still condemned

Brown beat cancer twice while in prison, Humphrey said.

She recovered, but in her waning days, she showed signs of weakness. Her legs would give out.

Once the virus broke out across its prisons, the state granted early release roughly 640 prisoners. As they protested last week, Browns friends said they remain in contact with people inside, and they report no efforts at social distance with inmates sleeping a few feet apart.

Brown was hospitalized April 19, one day after testing positive for the virus. Friends at the prison said she did not return.

Any death is deeply saddening, and we continue to work hard to deal with COVID-19 in our prisons, Todd Ishee, Commissioner of Prisons, said in a news release. The safety and health of the staff and the offenders in our custody remain our top priority.

Humphrey added a more personal eulogy.

She was a classy lady and a true friend in an atmosphere of friendlessness, she said. It seems that all the public wants to hear are the negatives. And yet they funnel thousands and thousands and possibly millions to educate us so we dont make mistakes again, and when we take advantage of those were still condemned.

As they protested, her friends on the outside wore T-shirts in solidarity, each with a tribute in cursive: Faye Finally Free.

Did you know you can help support our non-stop coverage of the coronavirus pandemic? Here's how your donation can fund journalists.
(JNS) We know you have many challenges as Jews in America. We here in Israel just have one question: Can you please explain to us your extreme hatred for the president? In Israel, we so appreciate what he has done for Israel and the Jewish people, yet in America, most of you despise him. Even many connected, Conservative and Reform, AIPAC-supporting, Federation Jews despise him. We Jews in Israel truly dont get it.

Fifty percent of our Jewish brothers and sisters have returned and now live here in Israel. It seems to us that U.S. President Donald Trumps turnaround in U.S. suppor...
Mumbai, May 15 : In the new short film, "The Twist", budding actor Ritwik Sahore plays Shlok, a standard X student who is asked by his classmate to be her dance partner.

"I am introverted by nature. So when I heard the script and realised that I have to dance a lot in the film, I was hesitant. It was awkward for me. But I have to say that our choreographer Shazeb Sheikh really made it happen. Also, Sanya (Malhotra) helped me, and it then became easy since we know each other from the set of 'Dangal'," Ritwik told IANS.

As the story of the short film revolves around a student, in the film Ritwik explored various shades of emotions as an actor, and according to him that was quite interesting. The film talks of how a teenager often finds it tough and irritating to deal with simple things like spending time with grandparents among many other such issues.

"It is true that generation gap exists among us in real life, but things become more visible when we are teenagers. I think we are more rebellious when we hit puberty. We think as if only we know the right thing, and mom-dad, dada-dadi are so outdated. But hey, it is the age and hormones. We are not bad sons or bad grandsons!" he said.

He added: "I can analyse and look at things in a more mature way because I have grown up, but my character in the film, Shlok, behaves in a certain way because of his age." Asked about an example of generation gap, he said: "How to use new apps on a phone is surely a problem for our grandparents. We have to teach them. It is a struggle for them. But I am mature now to understand they taught us how to walk, how to read and write, so we can teach them this much. My grandfather is quite cool with social media and he has learnt video calling now." 'The Twist' is directed by Uttara Krishnadas. It features Sushama Deshpande, Vaishali Joshi, Gayatri Salkar.

Starting his career in Bollywood with the film "Ferrari Ki Sawaari" in 2012, Ritwik was notably seen in "Dangal". In the 2016 Aamir Khan blockbuster, Ritwik played the younger Omkar, a character essayed by Aparshakti Khurana as an adult.

How is the young actor battling COVID-19 stress? "I want to keep my mind engaged. So I have started learning the guitar, I am watching shows. I am making videos on the mobile and try to keep myself busy. I was quite excited about a web series that was about to happen but now everything has stopped. But I do not want to feel depressed," he replied.

"The Twist" is released on the YouTube channel of Zee Music Company.

(Arundhuti Banerjee can be contacted at arundhuti.b@ians.in)
The Oregon Department of Corrections is expected to announce Friday that it will close death row and reassign the 27 men who live there to other housing in the state prison system.

The agency has considered the move since 2016, when a prominent prison reform group recommended that the unit be emptied to lessen the potential psychological harms associated segregated prison housing.

Jennifer Black, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, confirmed the plan late Thursday but declined further comment.

The men will be moved to the general population or special housing somewhere in the states prison system either because they are a danger to others or they themselves are vulnerable in part because of the crimes they committed, according to a source briefed on the plan but not authorized to speak on behalf of the agency.

Death row is located in a far corner of the penitentiary grounds. During a tour of the unit earlier this year, most of the men were in their cells; the unit was quiet. Adjacent to death row lies the death chamber, a mothballed space that has not seen an execution since 1997. The state has had a moratorium on executions since 2011.

Some of the most notorious criminals in Oregons modern history reside on death row, some for decades: Dayton Leroy Rogers, 66, considered Oregons most prolific serial killer; Jesse Compton, 43, whose rape and murder of a 3-year-old Springfield girl in 1997 led to the adoption of tougher child abuse reporting laws; and Christian Longo, 46, who was on the FBIs Most Wanted List for the 2001 killing of his wife and three young children in 2001.

The Vera Institute of Justice, a national research and policy nonprofit based in New York City, four years ago issued a report on Oregons prison system, recommending that death row be closed.

This week, Elena Vanko, a senior program associate with the group, said Oregons decision to dismantle the unit is part of a national trend away from capital punishment.

Death row, she said, is a form of solitary confinement where inmates dont get access to programming like their counterparts in general population. Decisions about where a prisoner lives should be made on their conduct in prison, not their sentence, she said.

The idea is to treat these people with death sentences the same in that sense, she said.

Jesse Merrithew, who represents two men on death row, said his clients were given a heads-up through very unofficial channels that change is coming.

No details, no timing as to where they are going, he said. The two are Jason Brumwell, convicted in the 2003 murder of a fellow inmate, and Bruce Turnidge, who along with his son, Joshua Turnidge, was convicted a decade ago in the Woodburn bank bombing.

Paige Clarkson, Marion County district attorney, said she was not briefed on the specifics of the plan but late Thursday said she opposed shifting men like the Turnidges off death row. She said prosecutors in her office seek the death penalty not only because some defendants pose a danger to the public, they also are dangerous inside of prison, too.

When we are talking about seeking the death penalty on the worst of the worst, those folks are a threat both inside and outside, she said.

They are not just dangerous in the community because they killed police officers, she said. They are dangerous inside the facility because their ideology is dangerous. And they can have contact with other inmates and influence them.

Sue Shirley -- whose parents Rod and Lois Houser were killed by Randy Guzek in 1987 in their Terrebonne home -- said she strongly opposed the move.

Four juries  48 jurors have agreed that that is the appropriate sentence and what is the motivation now? Shirley said. They have the distinction of being death row inmates. Why are they removing that disposition?

-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Bee Swarm in Arizona Kills 3 Dogs: Fire Officials

A swarm of aggressive bees attacked and killed three dogs in Arizona on Wednesday, according to the Tuscan Fire Department.

The attack happened in the southeast area of Tucson, on S. Calle Polar. The Tucson Fire Department warned the public to avoid the area as the fire crew were being dispatched to the site.

The department said in an update on Twitter that one of the dogs attacked by the swarm of bees had died and that the fire crew was foaming the bees before tending to the other dogs, which were removed from the area where they were attacked.

We never enjoy killing precious bees, but in these rare cases it is necessary, the fire department said.

The department initially said that the dogs might have a rough few days following the attack, but should survive. In an update, the department said the other two dogs had died. The other dogs passed away shortly after arriving at the vet. Please be mindful of your animals always, but particularly when there are bees on your property, the statement read.

Bee swarms are a recurring problem in Arizona, especially during the summer months when the weather starts to warm up, said Mesa Fire Captain Mike Castillo, reported Fox 10 Phoenix.

As the sun starts to come out throughout the day, what will happen is bees are transient and they follow the queen, and they basically create a hive around the queen. The queen will move to a location, and they will set up the hive in a cooler area. They may stay for a few hours to days, Castillo said.

In addition, during the summer months, the number of hives increase, and this means that colonies of bees will end up breeding new queen bees.

The Arizona State Universitys School of Life Sciences stated that bee swarms are usually tranquil insects that have little interest in harming humans, and if left alone, they usually go elsewhere and move on.

From NTD News
I think Rich Lowry is mostly right about Dr. Anthony Fauci in this column for Politco. Lowry says:

[Fauci] is neither the dastardly bureaucratic mastermind imposing his will on the country that his detractors on the right make him out to be nor the philosopher-king in waiting that his boosters on the left inflate him into. Hes simply an epidemiologist, one who brings considerable expertise and experience to the table, but at the end of the day, his focus is inevitably and rightly quite narrow.

And, of course, he is not an infallible epidemiologist.

Its foolish to criticize Fauci for focusing on the health aspects of this pandemic above all other considerations. As Lowry explains:

This is like saying the Commerce secretary is too consumed with finding business opportunities for American companies or the head of the Joint Special Operations Command has an unhealthy obsession with killing terrorists. What else are they supposed to do? As a breed, epidemiologists tend to be focused on the worst case. They dont want to be wrong and contribute to some deadly pathogen getting loose when their entire job is to keep that from happening. So they are naturally cautious. This, too, is as it should be. You probably dont want a risk-taking epidemiologist anymore than you want a highly creative, envelope-pushing accountant. For all these reasons, you wouldnt choose an epidemiologist to run your country, either. And Fauci isnt.

President Trump is running the country. If federal guidance has tilted too far in favor of trying to minimize health risks from the virus, and not far enough in favor of trying to sustain the economy, thats Trumps fault, not Faucis.

But critics of federal policy tend to be Trump supporters, and Trumps response to the Wuhan coronavirus is probably the most important policy of his presidency. Fauci provides a way for conservatives to blame someone other than Trump for that policy. Lowry puts it this way:

Since populist critics of the shutdowns dont want to criticize Trump, let alone say they think he blew one of the most consequential decisions of his presidency, they focus their ire on the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases rather than the president of the United States.

Its true that Faucis stature, reinforced by the media, put Trump in a difficult position. Although the president runs the country, he would have taken a substantial political risk had he not followed the doctors recommendations.

Nonetheless, it was Faucis job to provide Trump with his honest opinion about the most effective way to curb the pandemic. It was Trumps job to gather advice from other relevant experts, especially economists and to make the call, taking all advice into account.

My guess is that Trumps calculus was similar to Faucis. He simply didnt want to see hundreds of thousands of Americans die from the coronavirus and believed he could prevent this from happening with social distancing and shutdown measures.

With all that said, this interview of Fauci by Chris Cuomo, raises a good question. Fauci told Cuomo that he has a moral obligation to warn that a premature opening of the economy could lead to a rebound in COVID cases.

Okay. But a reader suggests that Fauci also had a moral obligation to advise Chris Cuomos brother, the governor of New York, to rescind his executive order that required nursing homes to accept Wuhan coronavirus patients (assuming Fauci knew about the order).

The interview revealed a close relationship between Fauci and the Cuomos that extends back 35 years. Indeed, Chris Cuomo thanked Fauci for calling him every day while he was suffering from the virus. (The fact that Cuomo violated social distancing policy while he was infected went unmentioned in the interview.)

Pursuant to his moral obligations, Fauci could have called Gov. Cuomo regarding his deadly order on nursing homes. Such a call might have saved many lives. As far as we know, there was no such call. Why not?


The entire film industry went into a state of shock when the news about Rishi Kapoors sudden demise broke out on April 30, 2020. The actor had been battling Leukaemia for two years before he succumbed to it. Today, Anil Kapoor took to social media to remember his fondest memory with the late actor.







Anils daughter Sonam Kapoor and Rishis son Ranbir Kapoor stepped into Bollywood together in Sanjay Leela Bhansalis Saawariya. Anil remembered that time and recalled how it is his happiest memory with the late actor.





He posted pictures from the premiere of the film and wrote, Remembering James...Sharing the launch of Sonam and Ranbirs careers with Neetu and Rishi is one of the happiest memories of my life... Rishi Kapoors demise has surely left a big void in the industry. RIP Rishi Kapoor.
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Linkedin Asip Hasani (The Jakarta Post) Surabaya, East Java  Fri, May 15 2020

Airlangga Universitys Institute of Tropical Diseases (ITD-UNAIR) in Surabaya, East Java, has completed six whole genome sequencing analyses of genetic data from SARS-CoV-2, in which four strains were found to be similar to the Chinese strain and two similar to the European strain.

ITD-UNAIR director Maria Ingelusida said data from two whole virus genome sequences had been sent to Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID), while the four others were in the finishing phase at the lab.

Four isolated sequences of the virus weve analyzed are closer to the Chinese clade and two are closer to the European clade, Maria told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

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Two people have reportedly been arrested over the Costa del Sol shooting of a British businessman.

Peter Andrew Williamson, 39, from Salford, Greater Manchester, was killed as he parked outside his luxury villa in Riviera del Sol near Fuengirola last November.

One of the men was held at his home on an upmarket estate near Murcia, south east Spain, according to a respected local Spanish-language newspaper.

He has been described as a British national. The arrest is said to have taken place on Monday but has only just been made public.

Peter Andrew Williamson, 39, (pictured) from Salford, Greater Manchester, was killed as he parked outside his luxury villa in Riviera del Sol near Fuengirola last November

Local paper La Opinion de Murcia said Civil Guard officers who made the arrest seized 21 kilos of cannabis resin from his home and he has already been remanded in prison on suspicion of murder after appearing before a judge in a closed-court hearing.

A separate report in respected national newspaper El Mundo said the second arrest had taken place at an undisclosed location in the UK.

No-one from the Civil Guard in Murcia or Malaga, the province where last November's shooting took place, could be reached for comment late last night.

Mr Williamson, known as Snaggle, was returning from the gym when he was targeted.

He died instantly from one of the seven bullets fired at him which hit him in the heart.

He was sitting in his UK-plated two-seater Audi when he was targeted outside his large detached home in a residential street in hills above the Med. Pictured: police tow away the car after the incident

He was sitting in his UK-plated two-seater Audi when he was targeted outside his large detached home in a residential street in hills above the Med.

Spanish business records show Mr Williamson, believed to have been shot from another vehicle that drew up beside him before speeding from the scene, was registered as a self-employed agricultural sector intermediary specialising in 'international trade.'

Police were focusing on the theory the Brit expat's murder may have been drugs-related although his family insisted he had nothing to do with crime.

Respected Malaga-based paper Sur reported shortly after he was shot dead that he had been arrested last March by Spanish police for using a transport firm to send cannabis resin from the Costa del Sol to an unidentified destination.

There was no official comment from Spanish police at the time about the reports.

Mr Williamson's murder was the second in less than a week in the area.

Days earlier a man was shot dead on a a residential estate known as Andasol a short drive from Marbella town centre.

Mr Williamson, known as Snaggle, was returning from the gym when he was targeted. Pictured: the scene of the shooting

In January last year a millionaire businessman who was close to the stars of reality TV series TOWIE and partied with the likes of Mohamed Al Fayed, was shot dead outside his luxury Costa del Sol home.

Marco Yaqout was gunned down as he drove into his garage in his trademark UK-plated Bentley.

His killer was waiting for him outside his villa on a quiet residential street in an upmarket neighbourhood in San Pedro de Alcantara near Marbella called Las Petunias.

English-speaking entrepreneur Marco was described at the time of his murder as the owner of at least five-well-known nightspots in Puerto Banus, including the TOWIE favourite TIBU, and Linekers.

Police announced in March they had arrested his suspected killers in an operation coordinated with police in Amsterdam which led to the detentions of six people and the smashing of one of Europe's most active hitman-for-hire gangs.
Salt Lake County, Utahs air pollution varies over the year, and at times it is the worst in the United States. The geography traps winter inversions and summertime smog throughout the Salt Lake Valley, but underserved neighborhoodsand their schoolsexperience the highest concentrations. Previous research has shown pollution disparities using annual averages of PM 2.5 levels, the tiny breathable particles that can damage lungs just hours after exposure. Children are especially at risk and experience more than just health effects; exposure to PM 2.5 affects school attendance and academic success.

A new study utilized a community-university partnership of nearly 200 PM 2.5 sensors through the University of Utahs Air Quality and U (AQ&U) network. U researchers explored social disparities in air pollution in greater detail than ever before, and their findings reveal persistent social inequalities in Salt Lake County. The paper posted online ahead of publication in the journal Environmental Research.

The researchers analyzed PM 2.5 levels at 174 public schools in Salt Lake County, Utah under three different scenarios: relatively clean, moderate inversion and major inversion days. Schools with predominately minority students were disproportionally exposed to worse air quality under all scenarios. Charter schools and schools serving students from low income households were disproportionally exposed when PM 2.5 was relatively good or moderate. The findings speak to the need for policies that protect school-aged children from environmental harm.

The persistence of these injustices  from the pretty clean, but health-harming levels all the way up to the horrific air daysat schools serving racial/ethnic minority kids is unacceptable, said Sara Grineski, U professor of sociology and environmental studies and senior author of the paper.

The authors expected social disparities on bad air days, but were surprised that they persisted on clean air days when PM 2.5 levels are still higher than recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

What makes this project so novel is the community-U partnership that gave us access to this larger network of sensors and helped provide the detailed study. If we had relied on Utah Department of Air Quality, wed only have had two monitors and would have missed the nuanced variability, said Casey Mullen, a doctoral student at the U and lead author of the study.

A higher-resolution snapshot

The worst PM2.5 episodes occur during the winter, when cold air settles into the Salt Lake Valley and high pressure weather systems act as a lid that seals in particulate matter from vehicle exhaust, wood-burning fires and emission from industrial facilities. Locals refer to these periods as inversions, which can last from a few days to a few weeks. The lowest elevations experience high concentrations of PM 2.5 for the longest time, impacting the residential communities disproportionately. The study compared the PM 2.5 levels at 174 public schools in 10-minute increments over 2-day periods during each of three events: a major winter inversion (poor air quality), a moderate winter inversion (moderate air quality) and a relatively clean, fall day (good air quality). The extensive AQ&U network made up of 190 PM 2.5 sensors is extremely sensitive each sensor collects PM 2.5 concentrations every second, then uploads the 60-second to a database that the public can access through the Us AQ&U website: https://aqandu.org.

The researchers broke down 174 Salt Lake County public schools with respect to race/ethnicity, economic status, and student age. They also distinguished between school type; Title I Status (schools serving majority low-income households), charter school type, and alternative or special education school type. The average student body was 31% Hispanic, 15% non-Hispanic minority, and 54% white and about 45% of the schools were Title I eligible. Just over half of the schools were primary schools, about 16% were charter schools, and about 5% were alternative or special education schools.

During relatively clean air days, racial/ethnic minority students were disproportionally exposed to high concentrations. At the school level, a 21% increase in the proportion of Hispanic Students was associated with a 12% increase in concentration of PM 2.5. Charter schools were exposed to 20% higher concentrations of PM 2.5 than non-charter schools. During a moderate air quality day, charter, Title I schools, and schools with greater proportions of minority students were exposed to higher concentrations of PM 2.5. During bad air quality days, exposure concentrations were higher for schools with larger proportions of minority students.

No one has yet looked at school type in terms of environmental justice. Charter schools are a new variable that intrigued us, said Mullen. Its starting to build on some other story  why did we find these inequities in charter and Title I schools?

Looking forward

This paper is one of many collaborations using the newly established AQ&U network.

This is the first publication from such a diverse cross-disciplinary partnership arising from AQ&U, although we anticipate this is the first of many, said Kerry Kelly, assistant professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and co-author of the study. We are enthusiastic about ongoing partnershipsto understand the effect of pollution microclimates on asthma exacerbations; to predict the severity of wildfire smoke plumes; and to engage student researchers and community partners in understanding the effect of sound walls on air quality.

In future studies, the researchers hope to fill in even more gaps in the sensors to get a better picture of the social inequalities in Salt Lake County, Utah and in other areas, especially with regards to school-aged children.

I see research like this continuing to build a wall of evidence that we have to do better in the way in which we regulate pollution exposure in the U.S. and worldwide, said Grineski. Evidence on top of evidence points to us having to do a better job of protecting people, especially kids, from pollution.

Co-authors of the study include: Timothy Collins of the Us Department of Geography; Wei Xing of the Us School of Computing; Ross Whitaker and Miriah Meyer of the Us School of Computing and the Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute (SCI); Tofigh Sayahi of the Us Department of Chemical Engineering; Tom Becnel and Pierre-Emmanuel Gaillardon of the Us Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Pascal Goffin of SCI.
President Donald Trump tours the Owens & Minor medical equipment distribution center in Allentown, Pa., on Thursday, May 14, 2020. The president has called for Pennsylvania to speed the process of reopening businesses after the coronavirus shutdown. Read more

You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected and [the governor wants] to keep them closed. President Donald Trump, speaking in Allentown on May 14, 2020

After touring a warehouse just outside Allentown filled with protective medical equipment, President Donald Trump on Thursday criticized Gov. Tom Wolf for keeping parts of Pennsylvania closed that Trump thinks are no longer threatened by the coronavirus.

You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected and [Wolf wants] to keep them closed, Trump told a crowd of workers from Owens & Minor, a company that manufactures and distributes masks, gloves, and gowns to health-care workers.

We wondered whether the statewide stay-at-home order Wolf issued on April 1 still applies to places hardly impacted by the deadly disease.

It all depends what criteria are used to determine whether the coronavirus still poses a threat.

The virus is still raging across Southeastern Pennsylvania, and not even Trump is arguing that Philadelphia and its suburbs are ready to reopen. Officials in Delaware and Bucks Counties, however, have asked Wolf to exclude their nursing-home populations when he rates their readiness.

Largely, when you look across the state, the hardest-hit area has been the Southeast of Pennsylvania, said Dr. David Rubin, director of PolicyLab at Childrens Hospital of Philadelphia, which has been tracking the differences in the outbreak across individual regions of the country.

Areas from Philadelphia to as far west as Lancaster, Berks, and Dauphin Counties, and north to the Lehigh Valley, have seen some of the worst outbreaks in Pennsylvania, he said.

Largely the rest of the state has had a pretty deceptively, sort of minimal experience with COVID, Rubin said.

That includes Allegheny County, the rural T, and the South, Central, and Southwestern parts of the state.

When you have someone in that area of the state ... upset that they are unable to work, theyre not wrong, Rubin said. But for those in the Southeast worried about a resurgence, theyre not wrong either.

 READ MORE: A top Pennsylvania Republican said coronavirus only threatens children in poor health. Thats not true.

Wolf has already moved 37 Pennsylvania counties into what he calls the yellowphase of reopening.

In these places, many businesses may resume in-person operations, and residents can leave their homes as long as they take precautions. Thirteen counties in Southwestern Pennsylvania moved into the yellow phase Friday. Twenty-four others in the Northern half of the state entered yellow a week ago. Another 12 counties will move into yellow on May 22.

Counties in the red phase of Wolfs reopening plan are still under lockdown, with stay-at-home orders in place and all but life-sustaining businesses closed. Counties that eventually make it to the green phase will ask businesses and individuals to follow guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the State Department of Health for limiting the spread of the virus, but will otherwise have no restrictions.

Yellow counties gyms, hair salons, and schools must remain closed, and gatherings of more than 25 people are prohibited.

Even still, yellow is the distinction several other Central and Eastern Pennsylvania counties are clamoring for.

 READ MORE: Pennsylvanias coronavirus data are less reliable, robust than other states

A key factor that determines whether a county qualifies for yellow privileges is whether it has fewer than 50 new reported coronavirus cases per 100,000 residents over a period of 14 days.

The number of people sickened with the virus in Lancaster, Lebanon, Dauphin, Franklin, and Schuylkill Counties disqualifies them from entering the yellow phase. But that fact didnt stop local leaders from announcing plans to reopen businesses anyway  with or without Wolfs blessing.

In a series of letters and tweets, the officials, including state lawmakers and county commissioners, begged Wolf to allow local businesses to reopen and better position themselves to survive the crisis. Officials from Dauphin, Franklin, and Schuylkill Counties later backed down. Lebanon officials were set to vote on reopening Friday. Lancaster officials held a news conference on the issue Thursday night but did not say what they will do.

Counties reversed course after Wolf called them cowardly and selfish and threatened to withhold their federal stimulus funds if they directed businesses and residents to defy his order.

Until recently, another nine counties found themselves in limbo.

 READ MORE: Still going in to work in Pennsylvania amid the coronavirus? Chances are, youre a low-wage worker, data show. | PolitiFact

They had reported fewer than 50 cases per 100,000 residents over a 14-day period, but until May 15, when Wolf announced plans to move them into the yellow phase soon, they remained stuck in the red zone. Those counties include: York, Adams, Perry, Juniata, Mifflin, Carbon, Wyoming, Susquehanna, and Wayne.

Officials from York and Adams Counties had been especially vocal about their frustration that businesses had not been cleared to reopen. Some officials said they didnt understand what was holding them back, given their success keeping coronavirus case counts relatively low.

Wolf had been asked about the discrepancy several times in recent days before he announced plans to move the counties into yellow by May 22, and his explanations lacked clarity. We had to read a 7,000-word Wolf administration document titled Process to Reopen Pennsylvania to figure it out.

A countys coronavirus case count is not the only piece of information Wolfs team uses to determine when its ready to move into the yellow phase. Hes said this publicly, but on recent calls with reporters, he hasnt listed the other factors. Carnegie Mellon University researchers advising the state compiled the list and rated counties in each category.

According to the document, the other factors are a countys ability to meet a surge in demand for intensive care, a countys density, the share of county residents who are over age 60, and the share of county residents who work in physically closed industry sectors, such as nursing homes.

When those pieces are considered, it appears York County was held back from reopening because of its population density, and Adams County was ordered to stay closed because it has an insufficient number of intensive care unit beds. Mifflin, Juniata, Perry, Carbon, Susquehanna, and Wayne Counties were also flagged because of limited ICU capacity.

We had to click through a link tucked at the bottom of a May 8 press release to find a May 7 PowerPoint presentation detailing how each Pennsylvania county rates on the Carnegie Mellon risk-assessment scale.

Wyoming County in the Northeast corner of the state has a small number of confirmed coronavirus cases and doesnt rate as high risk in any of the other categories. Before Wolf announced that Wyoming County would move into the yellow phase by May 22, it was unclear why Wolf wouldnt allow businesses there to reopen. County officials had announced plans to reopen without Wolfs approval and later backed down.

In the Process to Reopen Pennsylvania document, the state cautioned that the reopening process will be fluid and that the Carnegie Mellon rating system is not designed to make decisions but rather to inform decision makers.

Our ruling

Trump said Wolf wants to keep parts of Pennsylvania closed that have been barely affected by the coronavirus. Trump was likely speaking about counties in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania like Lebanon and Lancaster whose Republican lawmakers have been clamoring to reopen even though their coronavirus case counts remain relatively high. Those places have not been barely affected. Theyre battling active outbreaks. Trump was right, though, that until Friday, Wolf wanted to keep nine counties with relatively few cases closed. Those nine counties are now set to reopen in a week.

For these reasons, we rate Trumps statement Half True.

Our sources

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Trump comes to Pennsylvania and urges the state to reopen faster, May 14, 2020

State of Pennsylvania, Gov. Wolf, Sec. of Health: Pennsylvania on Statewide Stay-at-Home Order Beginning at 8 PM Tonight, Most Prudent Option to Stop the Spread, April 1, 2020

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Delco, Bucks call on Gov. Wolf to prioritize the Philly area, Pa.s economic engine, in coronavirus reopening and testing plans, May 5, 2020

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Gov. Tom Wolf clears 24 counties to move into first reopening phase; case decline in Philly is still very slow, May 1, 2020

State of Pennsylvania, Gov. Wolf Announces 13 Counties will Move to Yellow Phase of Reopening on May 15, May 8, 2020

State of Pennsylvania, Gov. Wolf Announces Reopening of 24 Counties Beginning May 8, May 1, 2020

Spotlight PA, Red, yellow, green: What to expect in each of Pa.s tiers for reopening, May 1, 2020

PA Post, Heres Lancaster Countys plan to reopen Friday ahead of the governors timeline, May 13, 2020

The Patriot News, Lebanon County commissioners push to reopen Friday, defying governors orders, May 13, 2020

Lancaster Online, Several southcentral Pa. officials say they'll reopen ahead of Gov. Wolf's timeline [update], May 10, 2020

Herald Mail Media, Franklin County commissioners divided on move to yellow phase, May 13, 2020

WNEP, Schuylkill County tells governor, 'We're reopening', May 10, 2020

WGAL, Some Pennsylvania counties back off plans to reopen against governor's orders, May 14, 2020

The Morning Call, Schuylkill County commissioners reverse on county reopening Friday, May 13, 2020

WGAL, Lebanon County commissioners to vote Friday on resolution to reopen early, May 13, 2020

WGAL, Some Lancaster County leaders say they will forge ahead with plan to reopen early, May 15, 2020

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Gov. Tom Wolf denounces Pa. counties reopening without his approval as cowardly, selfish May 11, 2020

WGAL, Some Pennsylvania counties tell Gov. Wolf they will begin reopening despite his orders, May 11, 2020

The Patriot-Ledger, Data doesnt support keeping businesses in York and Adams counties closed, Republican lawmakers argue, May 12, 2020

State of Pennsylvania, Process to Reopen Pennsylvania, May 12, 2020

Carnegie Mellon University, CMU Dashboard Will Help Inform State Decision-Makers During Pandemic, April 22, 2020

State of Pennsylvania, Gov. Wolf Announces 13 Counties will Move to Yellow Phase of Reopening on May 15, May 8, 2020

Carnegie Mellon University, Risk-Based Decision Support Tool, May 7, 2020

WNEP, Wyoming County wont reopen without Governors OK, May 12, 2020

The Philadelphia Inquirer, Coronavirus: Tracking The Spread, Accessed May 15, 2020

Staff writer Jonathan Tamari contributed to this report.

PolitiFact is a nonpartisan, fact-checking website operated by the nonprofit Poynter Institute for Media Studies.
Peopless Union For Civil Liberties (PUCL)

Press Release

May 15, 2020

PUCL is deeply concerned at the swiftness with which many states in the nation are dismantling the protection afforded to workers under their various labour laws. These laws provide many of the basic guarantees to workers a ensuring that employees get paid decent wages on time, have reasonable working hours, and are not subject to discrimination. They require employers to provide basic necessities such as drinking water and clean toilets to workers and protect them from accidents and occupational hazards and diseases. Labour laws are essential for ensuring fundamental rights for our workers - rights which are guaranteed by the Indian Constitution to all Indian citizens, at all times. PUCL believes that withdrawing these protections from the working population in an effort to entice new businesses, is an unconstitutional, immoral and unethical attempt to revive an economy at the expense of its weakest citizens.

Better Enforcement of Labour Laws Required, Not their Dilution

The country is currently witnessing a massive human tragedy as lakhs of migrant workers found themselves stranded during the lockdown, without any means of getting food or work. Much of this could have been averted had the laws on migrant workers been properly implemented, and all of them been duly documented. Many of these workers have not been paid for months. Again, had the laws relating to the timely payment of wages been enforced, many of these workers would not have been forced to take desperate measures like walking thousands of kilometres back to their homes.

As the country is slowly emerging from the lockdown, the working citizens of this country are at their most vulnerable, facing threats of mass layoffs and firings with depleted reserves of cash and food. This is the time when they most need the protection of labour laws to ensure that they are not unduly exploited. PUCL is alarmed by the ordinances cleared by Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat cabinets, which would indiscriminately suspend all labour laws except a few basic ones, for close to three years. Notifications by the governments of Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab and Haryana have also suspended crucial portions of their labour legislations. We fear that these moves would force a large proportion of our population to inhuman servitude and destitution, and condemn them in no uncertain terms.

Labour Laws ensure basic living conditions for a large section of the population

1. Remuneration for Work

Employers are mandated by law to pay workers no less than the minimum wages in a timely manner, and also supplement the incomes of their low wage employees with yearly bonuses drawn from their profits. In addition, laws on gratuity ensure that at the end of employment, due to retirement, death or disablement, the employees or their families are compensated for the length of their service. Workers covered by Employee State Insurance are entitled to half of their monthly wages as unemployment benefits for a maximum of two years, and the Employees Provident Fund allows them access to a small fund at retirement, or during an emergency.

We would like to point out that in actuality only a small proportion of all workers are enrolled in ESI and EPF, even in industry notified under EPF. For example in the brick-kiln industry, it is estimated that anywhere from 5-8 million workers do not get this benefit. Similar is the situation in relation to Gratuity and Bonus. The demand should be to make these protections universal; instead, these provisions are being suspended even for existing workers.

Most of the currently proposed labour law amendments guarantee only the minimum wages and have suspended all other benefits. We note that Punjab has also rolled back its latest increase in the minimum wage and other states may soon follow. UP and Gujarat propose to suspend gratuity, bonus, provident fund, and all other benefits, which are crucial to sustain the workers at this time. PUCL strongly opposes the move of these various governments to deprive workers of the protection of existing labour laws.

2. Working Hours

Factories Act mandates that working hours should be limited to 9 hours in one day, with a maximum of 48 hours per week. Any additional hours of work have to be compensated as overtime wages at twice the ordinary rate. A large number of states including Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have extended the workday to 12 hours per day, for the next 3 months, with no increase in the number of rest intervals. A majority of these states have also extended the workweek from 48 hours to a gruelling 72 hours. PUCL is distressed to note that the states of Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh have exempted their industries from having to pay overtime wages for these extended work hours.

Extension of working hours also goes against the stated aim of these labour law amendments to increase overall employment, because they effectively incentivize the employers to employ fewer workers than required, and compel them to work for longer hours.

It should be recalled that the demand for limiting the working hours to 8-hours a day and 48 hours in a week originated during the Industrial Revolution in order to protect the workersa health and safety by providing them with adequate amounts of rest and recuperation. Considering that the right to shorter working hours was the subject of the very first Convention of ILO aInternational Labour Standard (C001)a adopted by the ILO and ratified by India, PUCL is alarmed to see the clock turn back more than 100 years of workersa struggle. It is especially against the very requirement of health and immunity following Covid19; this is because simultaneous with the 12- hour workday, the rest time for the worker will now be available not after the first 4 hours, but after 6 hours of continuous work. This will have an adverse impact on the health and emotional state of the workers. Also given the high increasing rate of unemployment, this will further limit the employment opportunities. The hours work should be reduced to six.

3. Health, Safety and Welfare of workers

Factories Act, Mines Act and Dockworkers Act are some of the labour laws that enjoin employers to protect the health and well-being of their workers. These laws provide for clean, ventilated and adequately lit working spaces with drinking water, and toilets. An employer is also expected to provide first aid facilities, sitting spaces and creches. These laws also mandate inspections for safety and health, safe disposal of hazardous materials, notifications of industrial accidents and occupational diseases.

As a pandemic rages in our country, and with a living memory of the Bhopal Gas Disaster and the recent Styrene gas leak causing the death of 11 people and serious injuries to over 200 people in the LG Polymers India plant in Vishakapatnam on 7th May 2020, it is obvious that these measures not only secure the health and safety of industrial workers, but also of entire communities.

PUCL is disappointed to note that Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat have stripped or suspended these laws at a time when it is in the greater public interest to implement them with great vigour.

4. Grievance redressal machinery and the Right to Collective Bargaining

The central Industrial Disputes Act and the state Industrial Relations Acts primarily protect workers from uncompensated lay-offs and retrenchments, unreasonable changes in their working conditions, unfair labour practices etc. They allow for a system of labour courts, industrial tribunals and arbitration boards where the workers can raise an industrial dispute relating to wages, working hours, conditions of work etc, and get their grievances redressed. The Trade Unions Act recognizes associations of workers to act as their representatives and enter into collective agreements with the employers.

In view of the announcements by several states of the suspension of these acts, PUCL points out that the institutions established by these acts are critical for the smooth functioning of the industry, and provide a mechanism for social dialogue between the workers and employers. This machinery is essential for ironing out the tensions between the labour and the management, without having to take recourse to the lengthy and expensive litigation, or acrimonious strikes and lock-outs.

The suspension of these crucial laws violates the basic provision of labour law of the tripartite mechanism. We must remember that the highest level labour related bodies at the National (Indian Labour Conference) and International (International Labour Organisation) level are tripartite in nature. This is no way can be compromised.

5. Worker Welfare

In addition to these, there are many other labour laws which afforded some protection to the most vulnerable category of workers, such as pregnant women, migrant workers, contract workers, manual scavengers, and those working in the beedi industry, in mines and in the unorganized sector, who are now also left open to exploitation by industry owners.

Diluting labour laws will not attract additional investment

The justification given by various governments that existing labour laws are a deterrence to investment by industry, and by extension, to the prosperity of the state, needs to be examined more critically. The notion that stringent labour laws are the primary impediments to investments in states is highly debatable a manufacturing industries depend on a complex set of factors such as reliability of infrastructure, access to credit, availability of skilled workers, good governance and freedom from corruption.

Several studies have shown that strong labour market institutions and social welfare legislation are necessary to reduce inequalities and encourage inclusive growth[1], and that high levels of inequality can retard growth in developing economies[2]. Even the UN Trade and Development Report, 2019, warns governments against apromoting cuts to labour costsa as their aadjustment strategy of choicea when faced with economic downturns. Instead, the report encourages governments to adopt progressive fiscal arrangements, and expanded social insurance, among other measures for achieving Sustainable Development Goals.[3] An increase in the average wage of the worker will drive domestic demand, fueling growth in the economy.

Suspension of Labour Laws is Unconstitutional & violates International Covenants

The new industry regime ushered in by these changes, where employers can pay rock-bottom wages, hire and fire workers at will, coerce them into working long hours each day, and prevent them from unionizing, goes against the very grain of our constitution, and is also in violation of many international conventions. Such precarious working conditions are clearly violative of Article 21, the fundamental right of workers to live with dignity, as held by J Bhagwati in the `Peopleas Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of Indiaa (1982)[4] case.

The Supreme Court has held that Article 21 also encompasses the aprotection of health and strength of workers and just and humane conditions of work.[5]a

The rights of workers to non-discrimination, a living wage, safe and humane working conditions, and a decent standard of life and full enjoyment of leisure and social and cultural opportunities, is also enshrined in our Constitution through Directive Principles of State Policy[6].

The right to form trade unions and engage in collective bargaining is protected by Article 19(1)(c), which guarantees all citizens the right to form associations or unions for a lawful purpose. It is also a fundamental human right recognized by the Universal Declaration on Human Rights, 1948, enabling the effective participation of workers in economic and social policy.

PUCL strongly objects to the dilution of labour laws, the bulwarks of our legislative edifice against exploitative and extractive labour practices, as a strategy to kick-start economy. We demand that the President send back the UP and Gujarat state ordinances to the respective states. We further demand that the states of Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh revoke their notifications amending the Factory Act, Industrial Disputes Act and related acts. Vast sections of our working population are better served by a caring government that watches out for their rights as workers, assuring them secure jobs which meet their basic needs, rather than one that merely treats them as fodder for the ruthless engine of industry.

PUCL wishes to emphasise that the purpose for Indiaas industrialization and development cannot be to ensure profit for international companies, at the cost of the dignity, well-being and liberty of Indiaas working-class people. The aim of Indiaas development must be for the creation of sustainable growth with high levels of employment for the working-age population and good quality of living for all people living in India. What is required is the universal application of laws with adequate provisions of effective enforcement, transparency and monitoring, within the tripartite frame.

PUCL gives a call to all concerned citizens of India to rise up as one to oppose the dilution of labour law changes proposed by the Governments of UP, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Rajasthan.

On Behalf of PUCL:

Shalini Gera, Kavita Srivastava, Mihir Desai, Sanjay Parikh, ND Pancholi, D. Nagasaila, Rohit Prajapati, Seema Azad , R. Murali, YJ Rajendra, Lara Jesani, Arjun Sheoran, Ravikiran Jain, V. Suresh.

Sd/-

Mr. Ravi Kiran Jain, President, PUCL Dr. V. Suresh, Gen. Secy, PUCL

[1] Labour Markets, Institutions and Inequality - Building Just Societies in the 21st Century, edited by Janine Berg, ILO, 2015

[2] Inequality, Growth, and Investment, Robert J. Barro, National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) Working Paper No. 7038, Issued in March 1999

[3] Trade and Development Report 2019: Financing a Global Green New Deal, United National Conference on Trade and Development

[4] AIR 1982 SC 1473

[5] Occupation Health and Safety Association of India v Union of India (2014) 3 SCC 547

[6] Articles 39, 42 and 43
Mineral Area College President Dr. Joe Gilgour released a letter outlining the reopening of the college and plans to have fall classes on campus.

During the week of March 9-13, while Mineral Area College students and employees were on spring break, the leadership team of MAC met with professionals in health, IT, security, and local, state, and federal government to discuss the best options to keep the campus community safe. The decision was made to close all MAC campuses to the public and require employees to work from home. All classes moved online, and all services were still available remotely.

On May 4, Gov. Mike Parson began the process of lifting the state closures. MAC, though still closed to the public, has allowed employees to continue to work from home and all services are still available remotely.

The following is a timeline of campus reopening procedures and dates; all information is subject to change:

May 18 - June 8

 Assessment Center will be open, with limited seating, for Accuplacer testing by appointment. Students must bring and wear masks. Gloves will be required and provided.

 MAC Bookstore reopens with limitations on the number of shoppers allowed in the store. Online services will be launching soon.

 Employees may continue to work from home if approved by supervisor.

 All campus visitors and employees are encouraged to wear masks and should practice physical distancing. Any student or visitor requiring face-to-face interaction must wear a mask at all times. Employees and visitors may purchase masks from the MAC Bookstore.

 All public events scheduled on campus are cancelled through July 31.

June 1

 Some employees may be required to return on a limited basis. Supervisors will inform employees prior to June 1.

 Supervisors will communicate with employees needed to return to campus to provide on campus services. Supervisors may approve remote work for employees who are successfully completing the duties and responsibilities listed on their job description who have the resources (including a computer with reliable internet) needed to accomplish work from home.

 Masks will still be encouraged of all employees and visitors to campus. Employees and visitors may purchase masks from the MAC Bookstore. This decision will be reviewed closer to June 1.

June 8

 Summer semester begins, all summer courses are held online with exceptions for specialty programs as needed.

 Computer Lab (T106-A) open with limited seating. Masks and gloves will be required.

 Tutoring Services will be available by appointment only. Masks and gloves will be required.

 Employees may work from home if approved by supervisor.

August 3

 All employees will return to campus.

 All campus services will be open and normal operating hours will be observed.

 Fall classes will be available on-ground and online.

To ensure a safe campus, when returning to work on campus employees should:

 Use sick leave when you've had a fever, are experiencing respiratory symptoms, chills, muscle pain, new loss of taste or smell, vomiting or diarrhea, and/or sore throat.

 Practice healthy hygiene.

 Follow CDC guidance to protect yourself and others.

 Disclose travel to your supervisor and self-quarantine for 14 days following CDC travel guidance.

"We appreciate your patience and understanding during these uncertain times. Mineral Area College is dedicated to serving the educational and workforce needs of our community. As we reopen, we must prioritize the health and safety of our students and employees, and though it may take time, we will work to get back to normal operations," he said. "...Mineral Area College will continue to be here for our communities. No college can survive this long without strong community support. Thank you for being there all these years.
JINAN, May 14 (Xinhua) -- An airplane carrying a batch of anti-epidemic materials donated by a Shandong-based Chinese port company took off Thursday from south China's Guangzhou City for the Republic of Guinea to help the country fight COVID-19.

The materials, including 300 clinical thermometers, 100,000 medical masks and 500 items of protective clothing, were donated by a subsidiary of the Yantai Port Group Co., Ltd.

The company conducted strict quality checks on the purchased materials and ensured they met the international quality standards.

The Yantai Port has long established a partnership with its counterparts in Guinea. Over the years, the company has assisted the country in infrastructure development, creating 50,000 jobs for local people.
smartTrade Technologies, a pioneer in multi-asset electronic trading solutions, announces today that its Execution Management System (EMS) has been awarded as Best Multi-Asset EMS by Markets Media.

smartTrade's innovative and flexible multi-asset solution enables companies and, more specifically, buy-side firms to trade FX Spot, Forwards, Swaps and Precious Metals together with Fixed Income (i.e. Rates and Credit), Cryptocurrencies and Money Markets. Our solution encompasses over 130 connectors to a wide range of venues, advanced market data aggregation, and sophisticated execution capabilities. The smartTrade solution supports asset-specific workflows, such as Executable Streaming Prices (ESP) and Request for Stream (RFS) for FX, order staging, and off-exchange trade reporting for Fixed income, etc. Available as a fully hosted and managed solution, it allows a rapid time-to-market without customers needing to expend effort and resources on the IT infrastructure required.

"It is a great honor to be recognized in the Best Multi-Asset EMS category by the Markets Choice Awards," commented David VINCENT, CEO of smartTrade Technologies. "Clients appreciate that it easily integrates with other third-party applications and comes as an out-of-the-box solution which enables them to simplify their current trading environment."

About smartTrade Technologies:

smartTrade Technologies, pioneer of multi-asset electronic trading solutions, offers innovative technology allowing you to focus on your trading and grow your business while quickly adapting to changing market requirements.

smartTrade provides agile end-to-end trading solutions supporting Foreign Exchange, Fixed Income, Equities, Derivatives, Cryptocurrencies and Money Markets. Our solutions offer connectivity to over 130 liquidity providers, aggregation, smart order routing, order management, pricing, distribution, risk management and fully customizable HTML5 user interface.

smartTrade works with a variety of clients ranging from banks, brokers and asset managers to corporate firms. LiquidityFX for Foreign Exchange and smartFI for Fixed Income are provided as a fully managed and hosted service, colocated in all the main marketplaces globally.

smartAnalytics, our multi-asset Big Data analysis solution, allows the creation of historical or real time dashboards and reports to interact more effectively with markets and end customers.

For more information, visit www.smart-trade.net

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005028/en/

Contacts:

Lara Michel Head of Marketing smartTrade Technologies lmichel@smart-trade.net
Protais Mpiranya, the former commander of the Presidential Guard of the Rwandan Army, is wanted for taking part in the 1994 Genocide in Rwanda.

In April 1994, as violent Rwandan extremists were launching a bloody campaign of ethnic cleansing, Mpiranya led the Presidential Guard Battalion. He is accused of playing a key role in planning the genocide, including training military groups and distributing weapons.

The Presidential Guard, under Mpiranyas command, is accused of assassinating Prime Minister Agathe Uwilingiyimana and ten Belgian peacekeepers detailed as her bodyguards. Throughout the genocide, the Presidential Guard was reportedly a major driving force of lawlessness and destruction.

For these and other crimes the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwandanow known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunalsindicted Mpiranya on charges of genocide and war crimes and issued warrants for his arrest.

The United States is cooperating with other governments, the United Nations and the Residual Mechanism, to make it harder for Mpiranya and others sought for the killing to continue to elude justice. To achieve that end, the U.S. is offering a reward of up to five million dollars for information leading to his arrest.

If you or anyone you know has information on Protais Mpiranyas activities and whereabouts, you can provide it with complete confidentiality. Please visit the nearest U.S. embassy or consulate website to contact the Regional Security Office, email the U.S. War Crimes Rewards Program at WCRP@state.gov, or contact us via WhatsApp on +1-202-975-5468. You can also visit our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/warcrimesrewardsprogram or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/WarCrimesReward for photos of the wanted fugitives.

All credible reports will be investigated and the identity of all informants will be kept confidential.
All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) has urged Indian peasantry and rural workers to protest against the "pro-agribusiness anti-peasantry package" unveiled by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman through the third tranche of COVID-19 stimulus today. The Left organisation wanted peasantry and rural workers across the country to come out on May 16 at 9.30 am to protest against the "great betrayal of the peasantry by the BJP Government".

In a statement issued today, AIKS said the package ignores the fact that agriculture production in the country will be severely affected due to COVID-19. "At a time of crisis when the peasantry is badly in need of compensation at the real cost for the losses suffered due to lock down, when they lost their crops as they were unable to harvest and unable to reach markets in the towns, the package is silent on this except claiming that it has spent on procurement. The fact that market arrivals of wheat and other rabi crops are very low is being concealed," AIKS general secretary Hannan Mollah and president Ashok Dhawale said.

The association also criticised the central government of allowing free interstate trade for agricultural commodities and deregulating agri-business to promote free trade under the slogan of one nation, one market. "Who will be benefitted out of these reforms is pretty clear, not the peasantry and rural workers. The agribusiness corporate houses and multinational corporations will take the advantage. The Agriculture Produce Market Committees will be sidelined and the powers of the state governments will be eroded. The peasantry at large will be at the mercy of the Agri Business Corporations since there will not be any arrangements for price support and price stabilisation for crops", AIKS statement said.

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NEW DELHI (dpa-AFX) - Gold prices were flat to slightly higher on Friday as investors digested mixed data from China and cautiously watched rising diplomatic and economic tensions between the United States and China. Spot gold rose 0.25 percent to $1,734.82 per ounce, after having hit its highest since April 23 at $1,735.96 on Thursday. U.S. gold futures were marginally higher at $1,741.40. Industrial production in China was up 3.9 percent year-on-year year in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said. That exceeded expectations for an increase of 1.5 percent following the 1.1 percent decline in March. Retail sales fell an annual 7.5 percent - missing expectations for a drop of 7.0 percent after tumbling 15.8 percent in the previous month. Fixed asset investment sank an annual 10.3 percent, also shy of expectations for a decline of 10.0 percent after plunging 16.1 percent a month earlier. The jobless rate came in at 5.8 percent, down from 5.9 percent in March. Meanwhile, comments from U.S. President Donald Trump about China aggravated trade tensions. In an interview with Fox Business news, Trump threatened to cut off the whole relationship with China over coronavirus pandemic and said he was in no mood to talk to Xi Jinping. Chinese state media Global Times responded with an editorial titled 'Trump turns up election strategy nonsense with China 'cut-off' threat'. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
PHILIPSBURG:--- The director of USZV and its employees have been given carte blanche on the execution of the payroll support, which is based on the Ministerial Decree signed off by the Minister of VSA on Wednesday. USZV will also be paid an unknown sum of money on a monthly basis for the execution of the payroll support. While USZV is tasked with this payout the decree clearly states that USZV cannot use any money from the funds it manages for the payroll support. While Government is cutting back on finances one of the steps government could have taken to save money was to amend the law governing USZV and add the payroll support as a task instead of paying an undeclared monthly to USZV.

On Friday the Kingdom Council of Ministers approved 113.3 Aruban Guilders for Aruba as a soft loan. Conditions set by the Kingdom are structural reform of expenses and revenues for the Government of Aruba, the structural plan must be ready by June 15th, 2020. Salaries for Directors for Government-owned companies must be a maximum of 130% times the salary of the Prime Minister. The Kingdom Council of Ministers sets conditions for all the overseas countries such as 25% salary cuts for all Ministers and Members of Parliament, and 12.5% salary cuts for civil servants. The Directors of Government-owned companies can have a maximum of 130% times the salary of the Prime Minister.

Already the Ministers and MPs in Aruba are taking a 25% salary cut while St. Maarten, Ministers, and MPs are taking 20% cut, based on the demands of the Dutch Government St. Maarten Ministers and MPs will have to add another 5% to their salary cuts. Civil Servants on Aruba will be taking a cut of 12.5%. The approved 113.3 million guilders cover from May 15th to July 3rd, 2020. The Dutch Government has given the countries St. Maarten, Aruba, and Curacao up until Wednesday, May 20th, 2020 to take a decision on the proposed cut. These overseas countries have to also have the pension regulation in place by July 5th. While Aruba accepted the cuts and are on their way to reviving their economy unions on St. Maarten is still objecting to the cuts proposed by Government and now the Netherlands. With the conditions set forth, USZV Director Glen Carty will have to accept the gash that will placed on his salary. Other Directors such as the CEO of PJIAE, TELEM, and the Harbor Group of Companies will also have to accept the proposed cuts.

Workers in Aruba also agreed to give up 20% of their wages while the unions on St. Maarten disagree with any type of cuts for their members.

So far no the Kingdom Ministers have not taken any decision on stimulus for St. Maarten except transferring the 2018 and 2019 liquidity support.

BELOW TRANSLATED MINISTERIAL DECREE ON PAYROLL SUPPORT

BY MINISTER FOR PUBLIC HEALTH, SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT IN LABOR,

Having considered:

- that since March 2020 all economies worldwide have been severely affected by the consequences of the pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus;

- that the country of Sint Maarten is no exception;

- that in particular the tourism sector, on which the country of Sint Maarten mainly depends on in terms of national revenues, will be virtually stopped for the coming months;

- that in this context the government of the country of Sint Maarten has adopted the stimulation and lighting plan Sint Maarten;

- that one of the measures is the payroll support program, which provides urgently needed payroll support to employers to prevent mass layoffs, allowing the economy of Sint Maarten to start up again as soon as economic activities are resumed;

- that the payroll support program should now be implemented so that this support can be implemented in May 2020;

- that the Executive Agency for Social and Health Insurance (hereinafter: USZV) has the necessary expertise, experience and capacity to carry out large-scale payroll support and to provide financial accountability;

- that the Minister of Health, Social Development and Labor is empowered to order the USZV to carry out activities;

- that on May 2, 2020, the Council of Ministers approved the content of this regulation, including the conditions of the payroll support program, and instructed the Ministers of Finance and of Health, Social Development and Labor (hereinafter: the VSA) to undertake the payroll enterprise map program in collaboration with USZV;

that the National Budget Ordinance 2020 entered into force on 6 May 2020;

- that the payroll support program for April,

May and June 2020 form part of the 2020 budget;

Considering:

- Article 3 (i) of the National Ordinance Implementing Body

Social and Health Insurance;

- Article 1 of the National Ordinance on the Budget for 2020 and the appendix referred to there, the budget for the country of Sint Maarten for the year of service 2020, part of the ordinary service expenditure, cost center

4022, ledger account 44301, project code USZV; DECISION:

Article 1

USZV is instructed to execute the payroll support program and the Lockdown payroll support program (hereinafter: Lockdown variant) and to perform all actions for this purpose under the following conditions:

a. The allocation of payroll support and the Lockdown variant is based on the terms and conditions of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant approved by the Council of Ministers, which are attached as appendix 3 to these regulations and will be implemented by USZV as such.

b. Changes to the terms of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant are only permitted after approval by the Council of Ministers.

c. USZV carries out the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant on behalf of the country of Sint Maarten on the basis of the conditions as referred to in Articles 11 to 23 of this regulation.

d. USZV carries out the necessary administrative actions to implement this scheme.

e. USZV may at no time use financial resources to implement the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant, from funds it manages.

f. USZV may in no way be called upon to advance financial resources for the implementation of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant.

g. The country of Sint Maarten ensures sufficient and timely advance payments to USZV in order not to jeopardize the proper implementation of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant.

h. In the event of insufficient funding for the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant, USZV must suspend the implementation of the support programs until additional funding has been received from the country of Sint Maarten. USZV will end the program as soon as the Minister of VSA, after consultation with the Council of Ministers, command.

i. The country of Sint Maarten pays all costs and expenses for the implementation of this scheme, including the implementation of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant;

j. The country of Sint Maarten will pay an initial advance of NAf 20 million to bank account 87.227.104 of May 14, 2020, at the latest.

the bank of the windward island, uszv name, uszv will be one open a new bank account which, once opened, will be used exclusively for the implementation of these payroll support programs.

k. Based on the actual payment of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant, USZV informs the Minister of Finance about when and for what amount additional advances are required for the implementation of the support programs.

l. The Minister of Finance pays the additional advances within 3 working days after USZV's request.

m. Any surplus of advance from the Minister of Finance will be refunded by USZV as soon as possible after the end of the support programs. USZV does not use any of the advances for the support programs to offset the outstanding amount that the country of Sint Maarten has or will have with USZV in respect of the social and health insurance policies that USZV manages.

n. USZV can charge the costs associated with the implementation of this scheme to the Ministry of Finance. USZV proposes a fixed monthly amount.

o. For the use of financial resources other than the funds made available by the country of Sint Maarten, prior permission must be requested from and obtained from the Minister of VSA.

p. USZV does not perform any other tasks under the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant than those included in this scheme. Article 2 The Minister of the VSA remains at all times authorized to give further instructions for the implementation of this regulation to USZV. Article 31. When implementing the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant, the applicable statutory regulations, policy rules, instructions, and guidelines are observed by USZV.2. USZV reports monthly to the Minister of VSA on the way in which this scheme is implemented.3. USZV will maintain an orderly and transparent administration for the Minister of VSA in the implementation of the scheme. Article 41. USZV is responsible for the administration of all costs and expenses related to the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant and will provide the Council of Ministers with a monthly (cumulative) overview of all these expenses.2. USZV has Stichting Overheidaccountantsbureau audit the implementation of the payroll support programs in the interim monthly per payment period.3. USZV will arrange for an audit to be carried out by the Stichting Overheidaccountantsbureau after the programs have ended or upon the termination of these regulations. The Court of Audit audits the financial accounts and the decision-making process afterward.

USZV financially reports to the Council of Ministers on the execution of the payroll support programs.

Article 5

1. Upon request, USZV shall provide the Ministers of Finance and the USA with all information regarding the implementation of this regulation as referred to in Article 1.

2. Upon request, USZV will provide the Minister of VSA with access to the records kept in the implementation of this regulation as referred to in Article 1.

Article 6

1. On the basis of the conditions referred to in Articles 11 to 23, the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant apply to the support of eligible employers for the months of April, May, and June 2020. The country of Sint Maarten can decide to extend support after the Council of Ministers has decided to do so and sufficient resources are available.

2. The Council of Ministers has the right to stop, extend, or temporarily postpone the implementation of the payroll support programs and will notify USZV in writing.

3. The implementation of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant by USZV will expire by operation of law, despite an extension decision as described in the second paragraph.

December 31, 2020.

4. The implementation of the payroll support programs commences when the necessary financial resources are actually made available to USZV.

Article 7

1. The nature of the payroll support programs is to provide short-term financial support to eligible employers to avoid substantial job losses. Furthermore, USZV has to process many applications in a relatively short time while the terms of the payroll support programs have been developed in such a way that it should be easily accessible to employers who qualify where the evidence of correct information lies mainly with the employers with only a marginal check on correctness by USZV. Therefore, neither USZV, nor its director, nor its employees have held responsible or liable for the implementation of the payroll support programs and USZV implements the program to the best of its ability.

2. USZV, its director and its employees are not held responsible if:

(i) employers provide false information to USZV; (ii) employers payroll proceeds

support programs not in accordance with the use terms of the support programs; or,

(iii) due to the urgent need to process applications promptly, USZV makes mistakes in the calculation and / or payments to employers that cannot be remedied despite USZV's efforts to correct them.

USZV is only responsible for the injustice execution of the payroll support programs in case of gross negligence by USZV.

4. Barring gross negligence on the part of USZV, the country of Sint Maarten will indemnify and hold harmless USZV, its director and employees from all claims arising from the work and services performed by USZV under this scheme, and from and against all costs and fees of lawyers, as well as expenses and liabilities incurred in defense of such a claim or any action or procedure instituted thereon.5. In the event that an action or proceeding against USZV is instituted on the basis of a claim as referred to in the fourth, the country of Sint Maarten will, after notification by USZV, have this defended at the expense of the country of Sint Maarten by a lawyer or consultant who is satisfactory to USZV. USZV does not have to pay such a claim first to be compensated. Article 81. There is an advisory committee consisting of three members, one of whom is the chairman.

2. The Minister of Finance appoints the chairman and the other two members. A member is appointed on the nomination of the Minister of VSA.

3. The advisory committee assesses the objections of employers who have submitted requests for payroll support and the Lockdown payroll support that have been rejected in whole or in part.4. Employers on the exception list, as included in both appendix 1 and appendix 2, who have experienced a turnover decrease of at least 20% due to the Covid-19 pandemic, can submit their case to the advisory committee. If the committee approves such a request, the employer and the USZV will be notified by email. USZV processes this request within10 working days after approval by the committee.

5. The advisory committee draws up rules of procedure with the applicable procedures for the review of objections. The rules of procedure must be approved in writing by the Ministers of Finance and the USA, after or in consultation with the Council of Ministers.

6. USZV is obliged to follow the decisions or instructions of the advisory committee. Article 91. Should any condition of this scheme, or its application, be invalid or unenforceable, the remainder of this scheme will not be affected and any condition of this scheme will be valid and maintained to the fullest extent permitted by law.2. The invalid or non-binding part referred to in the first paragraph is replaced by a written change to this regulation, which change, given the content and purpose of this regulation, is as much as possible comparable to that of the invalid or non-binding part.

Article 10

The USZV does not provide personal or company information to third parties, other than the applicant for payroll support, or to the Minister of Finance or the Minister of VSA. Article 11To supports companies suffering loss of earnings from the Covid-19 pandemic and to help prevent layoffs, the Government of St. Maarten provides eligible employers with wage cost subsidies for their employees. Article 12Employers wishing to apply for payroll support must have an active registration with the USZV Employer Portal. If employers are not actively enrolled, they can register on the employer portal page. All amounts in the USZV employer portal are registered in NAf. If payroll is in USD, an exchange rate of USD1 = NAf 1.78 is applied. All payments by USZV are made in NAf. Article 131. The employer who applies for payroll support has employees who are registered with the USZV in accordance with the Health and Accident Insurance Regulations.2. Employers request the USZV online Employer Portal to submit an application for the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant and to confirm or change the information of the employees online.3. Via the website of the Sint Maarten Stimulus & Relief Plan: www.ssrp.sx you can go to the USZV employer portal to request or open online registrations. Article 14Employers that are on the list of excluded business sectors/categories, as referred to in the list in Appendix 1, are in principle not eligible for the payroll support program. Article 151. A legal person or natural person qualifies as an employer within the meaning of this regulation if he employs one (1) or more persons, which means that they work for this legal person or natural person and receive wages. Anyone with one or more employees who perform work is an employer.2. An employer can be a natural person, such as an individual, called a sole proprietorship, or a legal person, such as a company, a foundation, an N.V., or a B.V.3. All employers are legally obliged (in accordance with the Sickness and Accident Insurance Regulations) to register with the USZV. Article 161. Employers verify the information of employees in the USZV register via the online USZV employer portal. The employer can submit changes for the differences that have been determined by April 24, 2020, for the support for the month of April.2. For each month of the payroll support program, employers complete an application form called COVID-19Stimulus Employer / Business Application form, which can be found at the USZV Employer Portal. The deadline for submitting the application is a. For April: April 24, 2020;b. Before May: May 22, 2020;c. For June: June 19, 2020.3. Based on the declared income (the total of taxed and exempt income) according to the comparison of the monthly TOT returns for the applicable months 2019 and 2020, an employer proves that his income has decreased by more than 20% due to the Covid-19 pandemic.4. For the payroll support contribution for April, the declared income will be on the March TOT declaration2019 compared to that of March 2020 to decrease prove income. This is then repeated accordingly for the following two months. Employers must upload the applicable TOT returns when submitting their monthly application.5. If the employer was not or not fully operational in 2019, the declared income of the TOT declaration of February 2020 is compared with the declared income of the TOT declaration for the months of March, April, and May 2020. As proof of the sales declines, employers have filed their monthly (i) ZV / OV declarations, (ii) payroll tax and AVBZ tax returns, and (iii) TOT tax returns on time and also paid them to the applicable authorities: a. The declarations for the month of March will be submitted by Covid-19 at the latest on the 24 April 2020 registration dateStimulus Employer / Business Application Form submitted. Payment is due no later than May 4, 2020. The March TOT declarations are used by USZV to evaluate the payroll support for the month of April 2020.b. Declarations for April: declaration and payment by 15 May 2020 at the latest. Declarations and payment for April are used by USZV to evaluate the payroll support for the month of May 2020.c. Declarations for May: declaration and payment by June 15, 2020 for June Covid-19 stimulus payroll support. The May returns and payment are used by USZV to evaluate the payroll support for the month of June 2020.6. The employer pays monthly taxes and social security contributions and continues to pay his registered employees in accordance with the employment contract between employer and employees in February and March 2020.7. The submitted application will be handled internally by USZV. If information is missing in the application, USZV will contact the employer about this via the email address provided by the employer in the application.Article 17Employers must provide a bank account of a bank established in Sint Maarten in the application form. All payments related to the payroll support program are made by USZV in guilders (NAf) on this bank account. Article 181. The payroll support program and the Lockdown variant do not apply to employees hired after April 12020. The calculation of the qualifying registered ZV / OV wages is based on employees who were already on the payroll before 1 April 2020.2. The contribution from the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant is a maximum of 80% of the ZV / OV wages registered with the USZV, taking into account any applicable part-time factor. Article 191. To determine the contribution of the payroll support programs, the registered ZV / OV wages are used as a good reflection of the payroll at an employer. To be eligible for the payroll support program, employers must declare and pay the ZV / OV premiums and Payroll tax & AVBZ premium for their employees for the months of March, April, May and June.2. The contribution from the payroll support programs is maximum80% of the registered ZV / OV wages at USZV with a maximum of the ZV wage limit (NAf 5,651.36 per month).3. The contribution rate of the payroll support programs is determined based on the decrease in the income percentage due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Three impact categories are distinguished: medium impact, medium / high impact and high impact. The premium percentage payroll support program is 60%, 70% and80% of the registered ZV / OV wages. See the table below: Categories of Percentage Decrease in Income Categories Payroll Support Program Percentage Contribution> 20% - <= 50% Average Impact 60% of registeredZV / OV wages> 50% - <= 80% Medium HighImpact 70% or registeredZV / OV wages> 80% High impact 80% or registeredZV / OV wages4. From the moment an employer signs up for a payroll support program and the Lockdown variant, the employer is obliged to keep the employees employed throughout the period of the payroll support programs.5. Termination of contracts based on short term agreements, whereby this shortterm agreement is automatically terminated on a certain date, are excluded from the payroll support program.Article 201. USZV assesses all information supplied and advises the Minister of Finance on the decision-making regarding the request for granting support as referred to in the payroll support program or the Lockdown payroll support program. The decision taken by the Minister of Finance, including the calculation of the contribution of the payroll support programs, will be communicated to the employer by email by USZV. 2. If the USZV verification process cannot take place in a timely manner, USZV can proceed with payments based on the list of registered employees. The difference based on the untimely verified transactions is paid or deducted from the following month's payroll support contribution.3. The employer can see in the USZV employer portal which mutations have been accepted or rejected by USZV. Article 211. In addition to the payroll support program, the government of Sint Maarten has introduced an additional payroll support program, the Lockdown payroll support program. This program is for (i) those employers who are not eligible for the payroll support program and (ii) have a drop in their earnings of more than 20% in April 2020 (compared to April 2019) due to the lockdown that was enforced by the government from April 5, 2020. Employers on the exempt list of the Lockdown payroll support program (as regulated in Appendix 2) are not eligible for the Lockdown payroll support program.2. To qualify for the Lockdown payroll support program, the same terms and conditions in Articles 12 to 20, including the applicable contribution rate, apply as for the payroll support program with the following exemptions:a. Eligible Employers submit their Lockdown Payroll Support Program application form by May 22, 2020 through the USZV Employer Portal;b. Based on the declared income (the total of taxed and exempt income) according to the TOT returns of April 2020 and April 2019, an employer proves that his income has decreased by more than 20% due to the lockdown.3. Payment of the applicable Lockdown Payroll Support Program Fee will be made between May 25th and May 30th2020 by USZV.Article 221. As part of the application, employers must sign a digital statement before the payments of the payroll support program and the Lockdown payroll support program are released.2. Failure to comply with the provisions of the payroll support program or the Lockdown payroll support program may result in sanctions against the employer, including or not fully reimbursing the contribution for the payroll support program and or the Lockdown payroll support program. Non-compliance includes non-payment of monthly taxes and social contributions and / or non-payment of registered employees.3. USZV, the Inspectorate of the Tax and Customs Administration and the Audit Team Sint Maarten are authorized to verify the accuracy of the information provided by the employer. Future audits and adjustments to the contribution of the Covid-19 payroll support program based on risk analysis are possible. Article 23Employees can contact a digital helpdesk for employees. The Employee Helpdesk will become operational from 20 April 2020. Employees can ask questions or request information at the email address This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Article 24In view of the urgent importance of this, as referred to in Article 127, third paragraph, of the Constitution, these Regulations will enter into force on the first day after the date of issue of the Announcement Sheet in which they are placed, and will work back to 1. April 2020, and will expire by operation of law on December 31, 2020. Article 25This scheme is referred to as: Temporary scheme payroll support. This regulation will be placed in the Announcement Sheet with the explanation. The thirteenth of May 2020The Minister of Health, Social Development and Labor The Minister of Finance Released May 14, 2020The Minister of General AffairsOn their behalf,Head of Legal Affairs & Legislation Department

Appendix 1 List of excluded business sectors / categories

Sector Category

Administrative and

support service activities Office administrative, office support and other

business support activities

Rental and leasing activities

Services to buildings and landscape activities

Construction Civil engineering

Construction of buildings

Specialized construction activities

Education Education

Electricity, gas, fuel,

steam and air conditioning supply Production and distribution electricity, gas, fuel,

steam and air conditioning supply

Financial and insurance

activities Activities auxiliary to financial service and insurance

activities

Financial service activities, except insurance and

pension funding (banks)

Insurance, reinsurance and pension funding

Human health and social

work activities Human health activities, hospitals, medical practice

and other human health activities

Residential care activities

Social work activities without accommodation

Information and

communication Computer programming, consultancy and related

activities

Information service activities

Programming and broadcasting activities

Publishing activities

Telecommunications

Manufacturing Manufacture of beverages

Manufacture of furniture

Manufacture of textiles

Manufacture of wood products

Manufacture of cement, lime and plaster

Repair of ships and floating structures

Other service activities Activities of membership organizations (excluding

taxi association)

Funeral and related activities

Professional, scientific

and technical activities Activities of head offices or management

consultancy activities

Advertising and market research

Architectural and engineering activities; technical

testing and analysis

Legal and accounting activities

Tax and audit activities

Veterinary activities

Continuation Appendix 1 List of excluded business sectors/categories

Sector Category

Public administration and

defense; social security Public administration and defense;

compulsory social security

Real estate activities with own or leased

property or on a fee or contract basis

(excluding timeshare and condos)

Wholesale and retail

trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles Wholesale and Retail trade supermarkets,

hardware stores, household goods

Wholesale and retail trade of motor vehicles

and motorcycles

Repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles

Wholesale trade food beverages and tobacco

Transportation and

storage Water transport (freight)

Air transport (freight)

Warehousing and support activities for

transportation

Land transport (Trucking, Garbage

collection)

Postal and courier activities

Appendix 2: List of Excepted Companies for the Lockdown Payroll Support Program Sector CategoryEducation EducationElectricity, gas, fuel,steam Production and distribution electricity, gas, fuel,steamFinancial and insuranceactivities Activities auxiliary to financial service and insuranceactivitiesFinancial service activities, except insurance andpension funding (banks)Insurance, reinsurance and pension fundingHuman health andsocial work activities Human health activities, hospitals, medical practiceand other human health activitiesResidential care activitiesSocial work activities without accommodationInformation andcommunication Computer programming, consultancy and relatedactivitiesTelecommunicationsOther service activities Activities of membership organizations (excludingtaxi association)Funeral and related activitiesPublic administrationand defense; social security Public administration and defense; compulsory socialsecurityReal estate activities Real estate activities with own or leased property oron a fee or contract basis (excluding timeshare and condos)Wholesale and retailtrade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles Wholesale and Retail trade supermarketsWholesale trade food beverages and tobaccoTransportation andstorage Water transport (freight)Air transport (freight)Warehousing and support activities for transportationLand transport (Trucking, Garbage collection)Postal and courier activities Appendix 3: Conditions of the payroll support program and the Lockdown variant approved by the Council of Ministers

EXPLANATORY STATEMENT General

Due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 coronavirus and related government measures, Sint Maarten is confronted with extraordinary circumstances, which have a huge impact on social life in general and which also have far-reaching consequences for the labor market. In the interest of public health, public order measures have been taken and companies and institutions in a number of sectors have been closed. In line with this, in other sectors, companies and institutions with many contacts with the public have decided to reduce or completely discontinue the services in order to help prevent the spread of the COVID-19 corona virus. Similar measures abroad also have an impact on Sint Maarten's business community. This situation, including the associated risks to employment, cannot be considered a normal entrepreneurial risk.

In order to support companies suffering loss of earnings from the Covid-19 pandemic and to help prevent layoffs, the government of Sint Maarten has decided to provide eligible employers with wage cost subsidies for their employees. This payroll support program preserves employment and creates a buffer for the increasing economic impact. The government pays a maximum of 80% of the labor costs of eligible companies for a maximum period of 3 months. This period can be adjusted by the government of Sint Maarten. In addition, support for the month of April will commence as soon as the available financial resources have been made available. The same applies to the months of May and June 2020.

The contribution from the payroll support programs is a maximum of 80% of the registered ZV / OV wages at USZV with a maximum of the ZV wage limit (NAf 5,651.36 per month).



Scenario 1: an employee is registered with USZV with a registered ZV / OV wage of NAf 2,500 and the employer contribution percentage is 70%, the maximum contribution is NAf 1,750; Scenario 2: an employee is registered with the USZV with a salary of NAf 6,000, - only for public transport and the employer's contribution percentage is 70%, the amount of the contribution is 70% of the ZV wage limit (NAf 5,651.36 per month). NAf 3,955.95. Employers that are on the list of excluded business sectors/categories (see list in Appendix 1) are not eligible for the payroll support program. The exempt list is based on the International Standard Industrial Classification of All Economic Activities (hereinafter: ISIC), a United Nations industrial classification system. ISIC classifies entities by activity. In addition to the payroll support program, the government of Sint Maarten has introduced an additional payroll support program, the Lockdown payroll support program. This program is for (i) those employers who are not eligible for the payroll support program and (ii) have had a drop in their earnings of more than 20% in April 2020 (compared to April 2019) as a result of the lockdown that was enforced by the government from April 5, 2020. Employers on the exempt list of the Lockdown payroll support program (see Appendix 2) are not eligible for the Lockdown payroll support program



Given that only essential companies were allowed to open from mid-March, followed by a mandatory lockdown in April 2020, the exempt list for the Lockdown payroll support program is shorter than the payroll support program. This means more in April business categories are more eligible for payroll in May and June. To qualify for the Lockdown payroll support program, the same terms and conditions, including the applicable contribution rate, apply as for the payroll support program. The exempted lists are based on the ISIC, a United Nations industrial classification system. ISIC classifies entities by activity. In addition to this classification, the classification was established on the basis of the turnover data of the companies after the hurricanes. The affordability of the payroll support program and the objective of the support program to support the most vulnerable companies that cannot survive without it have also been considered. Employers sign their application with a digital statement before payments are released from the payroll support program and the Lockdown payroll support program. This ensures that the contribution received from the payroll support program and the Lockdown payroll support program is based on accurate information and that employers must continue to pay registered employees. More information about the application procedures for the COVID-19 payroll support program can be obtained from https://www.ssrp.sx/. The Social and Health Insurance Executive Agency (hereinafter: USZV) has a great deal of experience and expertise in the allocation of benefits. In addition, the USZV already has a lot of data from companies and employees. The government has chosen to tax the USZV on the implementation of the support programs because the USZV can take on the implementation very quickly. In addition, data already available to the USZV in the context of its normal task performance need not be shared with any other body; this is important because of the protection of personal data. The National Ordinance on Administrative Jurisdiction applies to decisions v implementing this regulation. A separate objection advisory committee has been established for this regulation in Article 7

This regulation must enter into force as a matter of urgency so that the implementation of these measures arising from the Sint Maarten Stimulation and Lighting Plan can be implemented as soon as possible to absorb the economic and social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic. Taking the following points into account, it becomes clear that there are serious private or public disadvantages in the event of a delay in the entry into force of the National Ordinance on the Budget 2020 and that the requirement of an urgent interest, referred to in Article 17, second paragraph, is met. , part a, of the Constitutional Court National Ordinance: that economies around the world are adversely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic and that Sint Maarten is no exception; - that the necessary measures to close the borders to control the spread of the virus have major consequences for the economy of Sint Maarten; - that the economy of Sint Maarten has not yet fully recovered from the disastrous consequences of hurricanes Irma and Maria in September 2017; - that a state of emergency was declared by national decree of April 4, 2020, no. 2020/0314, which state of emergency was extended for a period of three weeks by national decree of 18 April 2020, no. 2020/0316, and by national decree of 10 May 2020, no. 2020/0324 has been extended for a period of six weeks; - that the government of Sint Maarten has drawn up a Stimulation and Lighting Plan with initial measures to deal with the economic and social impact of the Covid-19 pandemic; - that it is important to proceed with the implementation of the measures from the Sint Maarten Stimulation and Lighting Plan as soon as possible; - based on the National Ordinance Implementing Body for Social and Health Insurance and the National Budget Ordinance2020 the measures can be implemented; The Minister of Health, Social Development and Labor, The Minister of Finance,
Sudbury, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Rockcliff Metals Corporation (CSE: RCLF) (FSE: RO0) (WKN: A2H60G) ("Rockcliff" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the filing of a National Instrument 43-101-Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101") technical report titled "Technical Report and Updated Mineral Resource Estimate of the Rail Project, Manitoba, Canada" (the "Technical Report") prepared by P&E Mining Consultants Inc. ("P&E"). The Rail Property is part of the Company's Manitoba property portfolio and is located within the prolific Flin Flon-Snow Lake Greenstone Belt. The Technical Report is available for download on the Company's SEDAR issuer profile at www.SEDAR.com and the Company's website at http://rockcliffmetals.com.

Highlights of the Differences in the Technical Report Compared to the Previous Mineral Resource Estimate Include:

Indicated Mineral Resource tonnes increased by 42% (1.17Mt vs. 0.82Mt);

Indicated contained copper increased by 27% (70.2M lbs vs. 55.1M lbs);

Inferred Mineral Resource tonnes of 0.73Mt @ 4.09% CuEq containing 50.0M lbs of copper;

Indicated contained gold increased by 72% (30.0k oz vs. 17.4k oz);

Indicated contained zinc increased by 34% (22.0M lbs vs. 16.3M lbs); and

Indicated contained silver increased by 37% (334.3k oz vs. 243.3k oz.

Alistair Ross, President and CEO commented, "The reason for targeting the Rail deposit in our overall drill strategy was to identify a third possible mine alternative in addition to the Tower and Talbot deposits. Our drilling increased the indicated tonnes by nearly 40% and added 70Mlbs of copper. Additionally, we added in the inferred category 730kt and 50M pounds of copper. This increase in tonnage, pounds of copper and resource confidence on the Rail Deposit is a truly exciting result and will be an important part of our Preliminary Economic Assessment that is currently underway. With the deposit still open along strike to the south and at depth we look forward to exploring the potential for further growth of the existing Rail deposit in 2020."

The Technical Report prepared by P&E with an effective date of March 31, 2020 is summarized below.

Rail Deposit Updated Mineral Resource Estimate at 1.5% CuEq cut-off March 27, 2020(1-10)

Classification Tonnes

(k) Cu

(%) Zn

(%) Au

(g/t) Ag

(g/t) CuEq

(%) Cu

(Mlbs) Zn

(Mlbs) Au

(koz) Ag

(koz) CuEq

(Mlbs) Indicated 1,168 2.73 0.86 0.80 8.90 3.52 70.2 22.0 30.0 334.3 90.7 Inferred 728 3.11 0.72 1.11 8.54 4.09 50.0 11.6 25.9 199.7 65.6



1) Mineral Resources which are not Mineral Reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimate of Mineral Resources may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, marketing, or other relevant issues.

2) Mineral Resources were estimated using the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM"), CIM Standards on Mineral Resources and Reserves, Definitions and Guidelines prepared by the CIM Standing Committee on Reserve Definitions and adopted by CIM Council.

(3) The Inferred Mineral Resource in this estimate has a lower level of confidence that that applied to an Indicated Mineral Resource and must not be converted to a Mineral Reserve. It is reasonably expected that the majority of the Inferred Mineral Resource could be upgraded to an Indicated Mineral Resource with continued exploration.

(4) Approximate Jan 31/20 two year trailing average US$ metal prices used were $3/lb Cu, $1.10/lb Zn, $1,350/oz Au and $16.50/oz Ag. The US$: CDN$ exchange rate used was 0.77.

(5) Respective process recoveries for Cu, Zn, Au, Ag were 95%, 80%, 80%, 80%.

(6) Respective smelter payables for Cu, Zn, Au, Ag were 96.5%, 85%, 90%, 90%.

(7)Respective USD Cu and Zn smelter treatment charges used were $80/tonne and $250/tonne with concentrate freight of CDN$65/tonne.

(8) CuEq% was calculated as follows: Cu% + (Zn % x 0.220) + (Au g/t x 0.673) + (Ag g/t x 0.008).

(9) The 1.5% CuEq cut-off is approximately equivalent to CDN$100/tonne project operating costs.

(10) Contained metal totals may differ due to rounding.





Figure 1: Rail Indicated and Inferred Resource, looking west.

To view an enhanced version of this graphic, please visit:

https://orders.newsfilecorp.com/files/3071/55935_050d4f7f8481f83e_001full.jpg

Resource Estimate Methodology

The Mineral Resource Estimate reported herein, considered drilling information available up to February 10, 2020 and was evaluated using a geostatistical block modeling approach constrained by polymetallic mineralization wireframes utilizing Geovia GEMSTM modelling software. The evaluation of the Mineral Resource Estimate involved CuEq cut-off value determination, cross-sectional polyline interpretation, constraining wireframe creation, compositing, grade capping, variography, grade Interpolation and Mineral Resource Estimate quantification.

A total of 97 drill holes (totalling 32,767 metres) from the entire database were reviewed and 74 of those drill holes (totalling 23,505 metres) were utilized to create the constraining wireframes which have an overall strike length of 960 metres, down dip projection of 515 metres and average true width of 1.6 metres. There were 316 assays captured by the constraining wireframes that were combined into 206 composites with an average core length of 1 metre. A grade capping evaluation was performed on the composites and Cu, Au and Zn were capped at 11%, 7g/t and 5%, respectively, while no capping was required for Ag. The capped composites were evaluated with variography to determine the grade interpolation search ellipsoid ranges for grade interpolation and classification. The Indicated Mineral Resource classification search ranges were 65 metres along strike, 65 metres down dip and 15 metres across dip. In order for a model block to be coded with an Indicated classification, its centroid must be able to see a minimum of 4 composites from at least 2 drill holes. Grade interpolation was undertaken with the ID2 method for Cu and Zn and ID3 for Au and Ag. The bulk density model was interpreted with ID2 from 37 bulk density composites with a single search ellipse pass. The resulting block model utilized blocks that were 2 metres in the X direction, 5 metres in the Y direction and 5 metres in the Z direction. The subsequent block model grades and tonnages were quantified for the Mineral Resource Estimate at a 1.5% CuEq cut-off value.

Neither Rockcliff's Qualified Person, Ken Lapierre, P.Geo., nor P&E's Qualified Person, Eugene Puritch, P.Eng., nor management of Rockcliff are aware of any known environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, socio-political, marketing or other relevant issues that may materially affect the estimate of the Mineral Resource.

Quality Control and Quality Assurance

Samples of half core were packaged and shipped directly from Rockcliff's core facility in Snow Lake to TSL Laboratories (TSL), in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. TSL is a Canadian assay laboratory and is accredited under ISO/IEC 17025. Each bagged core sample was dried, crushed to 70% passing 10 mesh and a 250g pulp is pulverized to 95% passing 150 mesh for assaying. A 0.5g cut is taken from each pulp for base metal analyses and leached in a multi acid (total) digestion and then analyzed for copper, lead, zinc and silver by atomic absorption. Gold concentrations are determined by fire assay using a 30g charge followed by an atomic absorption finish. Samples greater than the upper detection limit (3000 ppb) are reanalyzed using fire assay gravimetric using a 1 assay ton charge. Rockcliff inserted certified blanks and standards in the sample stream to ensure lab integrity. Rockcliff has no relationship with TSL other than TSL being a service provider to the Company.

The Mineral Resource Estimate for the Rail Deposit disclosed in this press release has been estimated by Mr. Yungang Wu, P.Geo. an associate geologist of P&E and Eugene Puritch, P.Eng., President of P&E, both independent of Rockcliff. By virtue of their education and relevant experience Messrs. Wu and Puritch are "Qualified Persons" for the purpose of National Instrument 43-101. Mr. Puritch has read and approved the technical contents of this press release as it pertains to the disclosed Mineral Resource Estimate.

Ken Lapierre P.Geo., VP Exploration of Rockcliff, a Qualified Person in accordance with Canadian regulatory requirements as set out in NI 43-101, has read and approved the scientific and technical information that forms the basis for the disclosure contained in this press release.

About Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Rockcliff is a well-funded Canadian resource development and exploration company, with a fully functional +1,000 tpd leased processing and tailings facility as well as several advance-staged, high-grade copper and zinc dominant VMS deposits in the Snow Lake area of central Manitoba. The Company is a major landholder in the Flin Flon-Snow Lake Greenstone Belt which is home to the largest Paleoproterozoic VMS district in the world, hosting mines and deposits containing copper, zinc, gold and silver. The Company's extensive portfolio of properties totals over 4,500 square kilometres and includes eight of the highest-grade, undeveloped VMS deposits in the Belt.

Visit Rockcliff's YouTube channel with a message from the President and CEO, Alistair Ross. To access the video, please visit: https://youtu.be/a8F2257F5iA





Cannot view this video? Visit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8F2257F5iA

For more information, please visit http://rockcliffmetals.com

Youtube: Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Twitter: @RockcliffMetals

LinkedIn: Rockcliff Metals Corp

Instagram: Rockcliff_Metals

For further information, please contact:

Rockcliff Metals Corporation

Alistair Ross

President & CEO

Phone: (249) 805-9020

contact@rockcliffmetals.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements: This news release includes forward-looking statements that are subject to risks and uncertainties. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that could cause the actual results of the Company to be materially different from the historical results or from any future results expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. All statements contained in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are to be considered forward-looking. Although Rockcliff believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not a guarantee of future performance and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements.

The Canadian Securities Exchange does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55935
Volkswagen Group South Africa (VWSA) is to convert its assembly plant in PE into a temporary medical facility for Covid-19 patients after signing a partnership with Germany's government.

Source: Supplied

Source: Supplied

The facility, that is in Neave (Korsten, Port Elizabeth), could accommodate up to 4,000 beds once it is fully operational. This would also include high-acuity patients who require oxygenation.The planned conversion of the 66,000mbuilding is the result of a collaboration formed between VWSA, the Nelson Mandela Bay Business Chamber, the Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality and the Eastern Cape Department of Health.The German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development will provide funding of R107m to support the conversion of the plant as well as the procurement of protective gear for staff at regional tertiary hospitals, regional primary care clinics and 49 Covid-19 test centres.The Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Internationale Zusamenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH will provide the performance framework to account for the public and private engagement and will foster the cooperation with the private sector to establish a sustainable strategic alliance in Nelson Mandela Bay.VWSA will contribute R28m to the project. Additionally, VWSA will provide project management for the conversion of the facility and management of the procurement of the critical Personal Protective Equipment (PPE).The plant will be made available to the government until March 2021, with the Department of Health and the NMBM responsible for the management and daily operations of the facility. The Business Chamber's role has been to assist in facilitating the project and garnering further support from its membership base.The facility is to be completed in phases and handed over to the government as the need for medical care in the metro develops. The preparation of the first phase is currently ongoing and will take approximately six to eight weeks to complete.VWSA has also been working on the manufacture of ventilators, respirators and masks in partnership with other local businesses and has offered ongoing support to the Business Chamber and the Municipality in their coordinated efforts to bolster medical care in Nelson Mandela Bay Metro.Thomas Schaefer, VWSA chairman and managing director, says: "VWSA has devoted its time to finding innovative ways in which we can combat the scourge of Covid-19 and prepare the metro to care for those who are infected. We are highly appreciative of the financial support from the BMZ/GIZ as it will help us to continue to offer support to protect our citizens and our country."Dr Gerd Muller, the German minister for economic cooperation and development, commented: "We will either beat Covid-19 worldwide together or not at all. That is why I support Volkswagen South Africa's plan to turn a currently unused factory into a facility for Covid-19 patients. Our contribution forms part of our worldwide Emergency Covid-19 Support Programme."
Washington, May 15 : In a strategic move to cut US dependence on China as far as technology supply chain is concerned, worlds largest contract semiconductor firm and Apple supplier Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) on Friday announced to build a $12 billion advanced chip facility in the state of Arizona that would create 1,600 direct jobs.

The decision to move chip manufacturing to the US is seen as result of massive disruption the American tech companies are facing as key parts of several products are manufactured at factories in Asia, particularity China.

Hsinchu, Taiwan-based TSMC said that its intention to build and operate an advanced semiconductor fab in the US with the mutual understanding and commitment from the federal government and the state of Arizona.

TSMC currently operates a fab in Camas, Washington and design centres at both Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. The Arizona facility would be TSMC's second manufacturing site in the US.

The facility would utilise TSMC's 5-nanometer technology for semiconductor wafer fabrication, have a 20,000 semiconductor wafer per month capacity, create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs directly, and thousands of indirect jobs in the semiconductor ecosystem.

"Construction is planned to start in 2021 with production targeted to begin in 2024," TSMC said in a statement.

The TSMC announcement follows a Wall Street Journal report this week that White House officials were in talks with TSMC and Intel to build chip foundries in the US to reduce reliance on chip factories in Asia.

"The US welcomes TSMC's intention to invest $12B in the most advanced 5-nanometer semiconductor fabrication foundry in the world. This deal bolsters U.S. national security at a time when China is trying to dominate cutting-edge tech and control critical industries," tweeted US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

TSMC currently provides chip components to several leading companies including Apple and Qualcomm.

"This US facility not only enables us to better support our customers and partners, it also gives us more opportunities to attract global talents," said TSMC.

"This project is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive US semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading US companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States and benefit from the proximity of a world-class semiconductor foundry and ecosystem," the Taiwanese company added.
PENNSBURG  The borough council will consider a resolution to allow businesses to reopen despite Gov. Tom Wolfs order closing all non-essential businesses.

According to a post on Pennsurgs website, the council will consider a resolution drawn up by Mayor Vicki Lightcap at the May 26 meeting.

Lightcap, who is running as a Republican candidate for the 131st House District seat in the Pennsylvania General Assembly, made the proposal during Mondays council meeting, which was held online, according to a press release issued with her campaign logo on it.

Pennsburg has had a total of 3 cases of COVID-19 yet our Governor has us in total lockdown with no end in sight, Lightcap said in the release.

If the tiny borough of 3,800 residents moves ahead to defy Gov. Wolfs order, it would be the first community in southeastern Pennsylvania to allow businesses to reopen since state officials ordered most businesses to close because of the coronavirus outbreak.

I have heard from many businesses in our Pennsburg community and elsewhere that because of this shut down, the devastation, and slow death from its economic impact has caused a level of despair that resembles the 1,000-mile stare of soldiers in an unwinnable battle, Lightcap said Monday, according go the text of her remarks provided by her campaign.

There is no denying that the factors surrounding this slow economic death will cause some businesses to not open their doors. In fact, I am aware that one business even after a few years of providing valuable services to our community may have to close forever and will never be replaced, Lightcap said, according to her campaign. The devastation of this loss will affect the community for years to come.

The release also quotes Lightcap as saying Im proud of my council and their decision to join me in reopening Pennsburg. I am currently at work drafting a resolution that the council can vote on to memorialize our stance, and I look forward to continuing to support our small businesses through this crisis.

That wording may have given the impression that council has already decided to support the move.

Borough Council member Diane Stevens posted a statement on the boroughs website to clear up rumors that have been floating around. Pennsburg Council did NOT permit businesses to reopen that arent allowed under the Governors orders. Council DID give permission for mayor Lightcap to come up with a resolution for us to consider at our next meeting on May 26th, Stevens wrote.

Believe me I want all businesses to reopen and people go back to work BUT the health, safety and welfare of all must be paramount. To act immediately without proper checks and balances in place is reckless, according to Stevens.

Stevens further noted that We had a Zoom meeting with various valley leaders, elected officials and county commissioners. I asked Val Arkoosh if they could take the lead and allow rural communities such as ours that fall below CDC closing thresholds to reopen.

Arkoosh, the Democratic chairwoman of the Montgomery County commissioners, had a meeting with Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine Thursday to discuss and changes that could give us help, according to Stevens.
Representatives for Encore Boston Harbor, MGM Springfield and Plainridge Park told the Massachusetts Gaming Commission Thursday that they expect the states casinos to be among the last in the country to reopen following shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

And when they do reopen, the casinos are exploring measures to mitigate an expected drop in the number of visitors  including the potential to open fewer days each week.

The commissioners, meanwhile, unanimously voted push back a potential reopening date for the casinos to at least June 1. But the vote was largely a formality given that guidance from Gov. Charlie Baker is not yet public.

Karen Wells, the commissions interim executive director, said during the meeting that she doesnt expect the casinos to open immediately after June 1. All three operators said theyll need at least 14 days notice of a reopening date so they can call employees back in and retrain them.

The three Massachusetts casinos have submitted elaborate plans reopen their casinos while ensuring safe physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus.

But how, the commissioners asked Thursday, can they get patrons to comply? How do you make sure people dont cluster together  closer than six feet required by physical distancing rules  at slot machines and table games? How do you keep people apart in a bar?

If someone needs to leave, we will make sure that they leave," said Patrick Madamba, senior vice president and legal counsel at MGM Resorts International.

Casino operators have already told the Gaming Commission that theyll cut their capacity by half, removing seats at gaming tables and turning off every other slot machine and removing its stool.

Brian Gullbrants, president of Encore Boston Harbor, said it will be up to staffers to keep people moving and to keep people from gathering in groups.

I know everybody wants to get back together," Gullbrants said.

The three casinos have been closed since March 15. Baker is expected to announce Monday a phased reopening of businesses and easing of his stay-at-home advisory.

Madamba said MGM Resorts International expects to open some of its other locations before Memorial Day weekend.

Lance George, vice president and at Plainridge Park Casino, said parent company Penn National Gaming expects to open some locations in the next 10 days.

And those reopening experiences will inform what happens in Massachusetts, Madamba said.

We are going to have a lot of data, I suspect, from our other properties before we open Springfield, he said.

One of the things MGM hopes to learn is whether to adjust its hours. Will operating 24 hours a day, seven days a week still be economical, or will there only be enough business for a four- or five-day week?

MGM recently warned state authorities that nearly 1,900 workers at its Springfield casino  nearly the entire staff  could be laid off at the end of August.

Gullbrants said parent company Wynn Resorts is exploring a four-day operating week at Encore.

George said its impossible to know how many people are going to want to visit a casino with the coronavirus still lurking. His statement gave voice to a fear that hung over the discussion.

Who knows how many people are going to show up? George said. Who knows?

Related Content:
STAMFORD  Connecticut and 23 other states suing OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma have gained permission from the judge overseeing the companys bankruptcy proceedings to investigate major financial institutions connected to the Sackler family members who own Purdue.

In what is considered a major development in the eight-month-old proceedings, Judge Robert Drain authorized the probes, which include subpoena powers, in a written ruling Tuesday. The 24 non-consenting states, which have not agreed to settle their lawsuits against Purdue, sought the approval because they believe further examination of the Sacklers finances is necessary to get a true account of their assets.

Just because Purdue Pharma has declared bankruptcy does not mean its owners deserve special protections under the law, New York Attorney General Letitia James said in a statement. We will immediately be issuing new subpoenas to multiple banks and financial institutions to determine where the Sacklers have stored their money over the years and how much has been stashed away. This case will not come to an end without these key pieces of information.

Representatives of the Sacklers were not immediately available to comment. In previous statements, the Sacklers have denied committing any fiscal wrongdoing.

A spokesman for James said Thursday that her office could not immediately confirm which banks would be subpoenaed, but said about 10 would be initially investigated.

The non-consenting states said in a court filing last month that they planned to serve formal discovery on Bank of America, Charles Schwab, Citibank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC Bank, HSBC Securities, J.P. Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, UBS Bank, UBS Financial Services and Wells Fargo.

This is an important decision that will allow us to access the Sacklers financial information directly from banks, said Connecticut Attorney General William Tong. We have been clear since day one that we will leave no stone unturned in holding the Sacklers accountable for their role in the opioid epidemic and the devastation it has caused in Connecticut.

The firms targeted by the non-consenting states were identified through New Yorks subpoenaing last year of 33 financial institutions and investment advisers. That inquiry sought to shed more light on the trajectory of billions of dollars in Purdue income.

Last September, Purdue filed for bankruptcy, and the company and the Sacklers moved to block the subpoenas. James office opposed those motions and sought to compel production of the related documentation.

Drain subsequently approved several Purdue-requested stays on the pending cases, actions that were intended to help advance settlement discussions. New York and the other non-consenting states have abided by those injunctions  in turn freezing the New York investigation before the subpoenas dispute was resolved.

Amid the subsequent emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, all parties involved are still trying to reach a settlement of the approximately 3,000 lawsuits that accuse Purdue of fueling the national opioid crisis with deceptive OxyContin marketing. The company and the Sacklers have rejected those accusations.

Purdue and the Sacklers have offered a deal that they value at more than $10 billion. In addition, the Sacklers would relinquish control of the company so that it could be turned into a public-benefit trust.

About half of the states that have sued Purdue have accepted those terms. But the non-consenting states have held out because they see the plan as not going far enough to address Purdues purported misconduct and not doing enough to tackle the opioid epidemic.

pschott@stamfordadvocate.com; twitter: @paulschott
Wet markets selling live animals including bats, dogs and snakes are continuing to operate across South-East Asia, despite the coronavirus pandemic.

Shocking pictures and videos show the animals crammed into tiny cages at markets in countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and China, where the outbreak is believed to have first emerged.

One horrific clip shows a rabbit in its death throes, while another shows live chickens, geese, monkeys and toads waiting to be slaughtered or sold.

Wet markets selling live animals including bats, dogs and snakes are continuing to operate across South-East Asia, despite the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured: A bat in a cage in Indonesia

Shocking footage shows the animals crammed into tiny cages at markets in countries including Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam and China, where the outbreak is believed to have first emerged. Pictured: A snake in a small container in Indonesia

The new footage comes despite experts' belief that COVID-19, which has now claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people around the world, originated from a bat sold at a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

The footage was filmed by investigators from animal rights organisation PETA.

In the Philippines, workers wearing flip-flops were seen walking across blood-soaked floors and cutting up pig and bird carcasses with their bare hands.

In Vietnam, the cooked heads and other body parts of dogs were piled on a counter near living animals. Blood, guts, and water covered the floors at every market.

Animals including monkeys, birds and kittens were seen at this market in Indonesia

One horrific clip filmed in Indonesia shows a rabbit in its death throes inside a cage containing two other dishevelled rabbits

Living toads were also seen crammed inside a net bag at a market in China

Live civets, which have been linked to the SARS outbreak, were also seen.

Bats, which are believed to have been the animal which passed COVID-19 on to humans, were seen hanging upside down in cages in Indonesia.

PETA and its international affiliates are using the video footage to renew their call on the World Health Organization to urge the closure of live-animal markets worldwide.

So far, the campaign has been supported by over a quarter of a million people, the organisation said.

'The next deadly pandemic is inevitable as long as markets filled with sick and stressed animals are still open,' PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said.

In the Philippines, the skinned carcasses of birds lay in piles on counters

In Thailand, various types of fish were seen swimming in small buckets

Chickens were also crammed into wire cages with no space to move around at one market in Thailand

Chickens were also on sale at a market in Vietnam

'PETA is calling on government officials to shut down these Petri dishes for pandemics.'

In response the global coronavirus pandemic, China temporarily banned the selling of all wildlife - but wet markets selling live fish and poultry have re-opened in the country.

Scientists say wet markets are 'time bombs' for pandemics because holding a range of species in one place makes it easier for viruses to transfer from one to the other.

SARS, HIV, Ebola, swine flu and MERS also all came from wild animals.

Alongside living animals, bowls, plates and baskets were filled with various body parts of animals. Pictured: A wet market in Cambodia

The footage was filmed by investigators from animal rights organisation PETA

PETA and its international affiliates are using the video footage to renew their call on the World Health Organization to urge the closure of live-animal markets worldwide

'The next deadly pandemic is inevitable as long as markets filled with sick and stressed animals are still open,' PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk said

In response the global coronavirus pandemic, China temporarily banned the selling of all wildlife - but wet markets selling live fish and poultry have re-opened in the country. Pictured: Toads on sale in Cambodia

Infectious diseases expert Sir Jeremy Farrar told MailOnline in January: 'Many, many infections in humans that we know of today actually originated in animals.'

SARS, the deadly virus which started in southern China and killed more than 700 people in the early 2000s, also came out of a wet market.

And avian flu, another zootonic disease which can infect humans, can be spread from live birds sold at markets or poultry farms.

Wet markets often sell live animals, many of which are illegal or exotic. The vast number of species allows a virus to adapt.

In Vietnam, the cooked heads and other body parts of dogs were piled on a counter near living animals

The footage comes despite experts' belief that COVID-19, which has now claimed the lives of more than 300,000 people around the world, originated from wildlife sold at a wet market in the Chinese city of Wuhan. Pictured: What appear to be the skinned carcasses of dogs in China

This pig's head was seen sitting on a counter at a wet market in China

A bowl of brains we filmed at another market in Cambodia

Scientists say wet markets are 'time bombs' for pandemics because holding a range of species in one place makes it easier for viruses to transfer from one to the other

Workers were filmed cutting up the carcasses of birds in this market in Cambodia

Mr Farrar said: 'Animals mixing allows the virus to be in lots of different hosts, which allows it to adapt to those animals.

'The virus can them come across to humans [who buy and sell at the market].'

The World Health Organisation supported the re-opening of China's wet markets, as long as wildlife trading was banned, noting that millions of people depend on the markets for food and income.

'WHO's position is that when these markets are allowed to reopen it should only be on the condition that they conform to stringent food safety and hygiene standards,' WHO director Tedros Adhanom said on April 17.

'Governments must rigorously enforce bans on the sale and trade of wildlife for food.'

A man was filmed taking a distressed chicken out of a cage in the Philippines
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Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market was valued US$ 29.57 Bn in 2017 and is estimated to reach US$60.11 Bn by 2026 at a CAGR of more than 9.27% during a forecast period.

Automated Material Handling Equipment Market by Product segment is classified into Robots, ASRS, Conveyor and Sortation Systems, Cranes, AVG. By System Type Segment classified into Unit Load, Bulk Load. By Function segment classified into Storage, Transportation, Assembly, Packaging, Distribution, and Waste Handling. By Industry segment classified into Automotive, Chemicals, Aviation, Semiconductor & Electronics, E-Commerce, Food & Beverages, Healthcare, Metals, and Heavy Machinery. Geographically split into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/10775

In terms of Product, Segment Robots is a major share in the Automated Material Handling Equipment Market. Robots are used in the manufacturing industry for a various purpose that is in assembly, machine loading, material removal, order picking, packaging, and waste handling. They help to reduce cost, improve quality, minimize waste, and save space in high-value in the manufacturing industry. Implementing robots significantly increases the efficiency and productivity of manufacturing and warehouse operating companies. Also, reduce labour cost, protect personnel or employees from injuries and deliver a high return on investment. Such advantages are increasing the demand for robots in manufacturing units and warehousing facilities.

The most use of unit load material handling systems in various industries is accredited to their cost-effectiveness and ability to handle several items concurrently which decreases the number of trips, a time required for loading and unloading, and cost of handling. Unit load material handling systems involve properly sized items ordered into a single unit that can be relocated easily. It is a quick and economical method to move a large number of items in a single run. These systems help reduce the damage and handling cost and it is more efficient.

Automated Material Handling Equipment is used for holding or buffering material over a certain period or when they are not being transported at that time storage segment plays a major role. The storage equipment consists of pallets, shelves, or racks on which materials may be stacked until they are transported. In Automated Material Handling Equipment for storage include warehouse floor space utilization, increased storage speed, efficient handling of heavy items and decreases a frequency of accidents at workplace.

These firms required to carry out their manufacturing and assembly operations efficiently by handling a varied variety of components carefully and keeping track of the same. The need for persistent availability of components and spare parts, just-in-time (JIT) delivery of materials and a decrease in the cost of unproductive labour are driving the growth of the market for the automotive industry.

A growing level of order customization and personalization is caused to increase demand for Automated Material Handling Equipment. Growing start-up companies offering robotic solutions for warehouse automation. The rising popularity of Automated Material Handling equipment among leading industries. Rising labour cost and safety concerns. High integration and switching costs. It requires skillful workforce for repair and maintenance.

The Asia Pacific holds the major share in the Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market. The availability of unskilled labor and lesser production cost are some of the prime enablers which are the major reason for the growth of the manufacturing sector in the country. The increasing awareness related to warehouse automation, increased emphasis of the leading developing economies such as China and India on robotics and automation, and growing e-commerce industry are some of the prime factors contributing to the larger size of Asia Pacific in the Automated Material Handling Equipment Market.

The report includes detailed profiles of the prominent market players that are trending in the market. Toyota Industries, Jungheinrich, KION, Daifuku, Hyster-Yale Materials Handling, Hanwha, John Bean Technologies, KUKA, BEUMER, Fives, KNAPP, Murata Machinery, SSI Schaefer, TGW, Viastore, among others.

Scope of the Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/10775

Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market By Product:

Robots

ASRS

Conveyor and Sortation Systems

Cranes

AGV

Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market By System Type:

Unit Load

Bulk Load

Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market By Function:

Storage

Transportation

Assembly

Packaging

Distribution

Waste Handling

Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market By Industry:

Automotive

Chemicals

Aviation

Semiconductor & Electronics

E-Commerce

Food & Beverages

Healthcare

Metals and Heavy Machinery

Other

Global Automated Material Handling Equipment Market By Region:

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Latin America

The Middle East and Africa

Key Player analyzed Report:

Dematic

Murata Machinery

SSI Schaefer

Vanderlande

Siemens AG

Bosch Rexroth

Swisslog Holding AG

SSI Schaefer AG

Toyota Industries Corporation

JBT Corporation

Bastian Solutions, Inc.

Daifuku

Hyster-Yale Material Handling

Jungheinrich

KION

Hanwha

John Bean Technologies

KUKA

BEUMER

Fives

KNAPP

TGW

Viastore

More Info of Impact Covid19@ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/10775
President Donald Trump on Friday said that the United States will donate ventilators to India to support the country's fight against the coronavirus pandemic.

Washington DC [USA], May 16 (ANI): President Donald Trump on Friday said that the United States will donate ventilators to India to support the countrys fight against the coronavirus pandemic. He also said that both the United States and India are cooperating on vaccine development in order to beat the invisible enemy.

I am proud to announce that the United States will donate ventilators to our friends in India. We stand with India and Narendra Modi during this pandemic. Were also cooperating on vaccine development. Together we will beat the invisible enemy! Trump wrote on his official Twitter account.

Trump had announced a team to develop and manufacture a vaccine for the novel coronavirus at Warp Speed and that the US will be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of the vaccine by the end of this year.

He said the Operation Warp Speed is evaluating 14 vaccine candidates and that USD 10 billion dollars will be put into the project, which will be run by a four-star Army general Gustave Perna and the former GlaxoSmithKline vaccine head Dr. Moncef Slaoui.

I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that well be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can, Trump said during a press conference on Friday.

On May 10, Indias Ambassador to the United States, Taranjit Singh Sandhu had told ANI that both US and India are engaged in close cooperation on exchange of information regarding Covid-19.

He had also highlighted that there are at least three possible vaccines for coronavirus on which Indian and American companies are working together.

The United States has the highest case count in the world, 1,427,867, including 86,386 fatalities.

Meanwhile, Indias COVID-19 count reached 81,970 including 51,401 active cases and 2,649 deaths. 27,919 patients have been cured/discharged so far. (ANI)

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
ANNIE ONEILL PHOTOGRAPHY

Government TechnologyIn this months installment of the Innovation of the Month series, we explore the work of Case Western Reserve University (CWRU) on their -satellite project, designed to provide real-time risk assessment of locations across the country to aid social distancing and reopening strategies amid COVID-19. MetroLabs Ben Levine spoke with Professor Fanny Ye and Professor Ken Loparo about the approach and development of their project.Can you describe the origin and objective of the -satellite project and who has been involved in it?In late February, as the coronavirus was continuing to spread globally and the first death was reported in the U.S., we realized that there was a real potential for a novel coronavirus pandemic like what occurred in the 1918 flu pandemic. A growing number of areas reporting community transmission would represent a significant turn for the worse in the battle against the virus. We sought to answer a core question as we witnessed the development: As computer scientists, how can we advance capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) and leverage the large-scale and real-time data generated from heterogeneous sources for the development of computational tools to assist with community mitigation?In early March, I initialized the discussion with Professor Ken Loparo regarding the ideas of real-time COVID-19 risk assessment and we began to lead the team for the design and development of a project called -satellite (alpha satellite), aimed at providing real-time COVID-19 risk assessment in a hierarchical manner to provide individuals and communities actionable strategies to slow the spread of viral infections. Hierarchical manner in this context means that, given a location (either provided by the user or automatically gathered from their device), -satellite will automatically provide the level of risk, or risk indices, associated with the specific location, the county that location is in and the state as a whole to enable people to select appropriate actions for protection while minimizing disruptions to daily life to the extent possible. The team members include five Ph.D. students and two masters students in my lab.There are so many challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. Which of them is your project addressing?According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), before a vaccine or drug becomes widely available, community mitigation, which is a set of actions that persons and communities can take to help slow the spread of respiratory viral infections, is the most readily available intervention to help slow transmission of the virus in communities. Among many challenges being presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, the objective of -Satellite is to provide dynamic and real-time COVID-19 risk assessment to facilitate community mitigation and slow the spread of viral infections.More specifically, social distancing is an effective way to mitigate the spread of the novel coronavirus only if it achieves compliance. In other words, it only works when the population follows the suggested guidelines and restrictions that are being suggested or required. We realized that during the period of social distancing, people were still going to need to visit certain establishments such as grocery stores, pharmacies, etc., to meet their essential needs. In considering approaches for addressing this problem, we found an AI-driven system leveraging large-scale and real-time data collected from multiple sources would provide real-time COVID-19 risk indices associated with the areas that users query at three levels: the users specific location, county and state. The information, in combination with other community, county, city, state and federal guidelines, would help individuals practice social distancing while still meeting their needs for obtaining essential items for a variety of different establishments.What kinds of data sources are you using? How are these different from other COVID visualization projects?In the first prototype of -satellite, the decision was made to use publicly available data sources including 1) disease-related data: up-to-date county-based coronavirus-related data including the numbers of confirmed cases, new cases, deaths and the fatality rate from official public health organizations such as the World Health Organization, CDC, state and county government websites, and digital media; 2) demographic data: the data obtained from the United States Census Bureau including basic population, business and geography statistics for all states and counties, and for cities and towns with more than 5,000 people; 3) mobility data: a mobility measure that estimates how busy a given area is in terms of traffic density; and 4) user-generated data from social media (e.g., Reddit) to learn public perceptions toward COVID-19. The basic idea behind using these as the initial data source is that, for example, population density would provide insight into the baseline population in the area/location you are contemplating visiting; the traffic density data would provide additional information related to human activity in the area, and the public perception data would provide an assessment of the general COVID-19 awareness of people in the area you are investigating. For instance, given similar severity of COVID-19 cases, if the population and traffic density in an area are high and public perception is low (meaning either people are unaware about COVID-19 or do not believe that COVID-19 is serious), the relative risk of this area would be higher than other areas with lower population and traffic densities and higher public perception.Different from other COVID-19 visualization projects, a majority of which are only providing static mapping, -satellite is the first attempt to provide dynamic and real-time COVID-19 risk assessment associated with any given area in a hierarchical manner. Leveraging the large-scale and real-time data generated from heterogeneous sources, the system utilizes advanced, AI-driven techniques to provide real-time COVID-19 risk estimation for any given area in the U.S.Who are you working with in the Cleveland region to put this project to use?The first prototype of -satellite was developed and deployed on April 1; we launched our system to the public for beta testing on April 20. Our plans are to work with the city of Cleveland and other cities and communities in the coming weeks and months. As the plans and strategies for reopening are ongoing, an AI-driven tool like -satellite should provide a good source of both data and information to assist individuals with decision-making as they contemplate how to return to the new normal.What challenges did you face in developing this tool?There have been many challenges we have faced during the development and deployment of -satellite, including assuring the stability and scalability of the system to support a large volume of user visits, large-scale and up-to-date data collection and preprocessing, algorithm improvement, new functionality design, and server and database deployment. The workload is more than we initially imagined, and the team has been working extremely hard.What results are you finding? Are any particularly surprising?We are getting a lot of good feedback from the media and users on the ease of use of the tool as well as the utility of the relative risk estimation. After we launched our system to the public for beta testing on April 20, it had attracted 42,546 users in the first week. This indicates the publics high demand for effective computational tools to assist with actionable strategies for protection while minimizing disruptions to daily life.A common question from users is how to interpret the results in terms of comparisons between risk indices for different locations. The important point here is the concept of relative risk; that is, the numeric risk index of a particular location is only meaningful when compared to the numeric risk index at another location, generally in the same city or county. Depending on the availability and granularity of the data, various components in the numeric risk index may be the same or very similar, so that the relative differences in the indices may not be as significant as expected. When comparing the risk indices of specific areas in different counties/states, in addition to the numeric values for those areas, users can also compare the state and county values associated with the two areas. For example, at 6:25 p.m. on May 4, given a grocery store with medium traffic in Cleveland with the risk index of 0.723, the information of its related county and state can also be considered; i.e., Cuyahoga County has a risk percentile of 100 in the state indicating the highest risk among all the counties in Ohio, while the state of Ohio has a risk percentile of 50 in the country, indicating a medium-level risk among all states in the U.S. As we include more location-specific data, the computations will provide additional comparative detail. However, it is important to recognize that with the possible increase in discriminatory detail between locations comes the concomitant risks to privacy, security and accuracy. It is important here that trustworthy data is used in the computations to avoid any issues that can arise from malicious intent.Where do you see this project going from here? What are your next steps?With the discussions and development of when and how various cities and states will approach reopening, -satellite provides unique opportunities for individuals to decide how they plan to move forward, based on their personal preferences, in returning to a more normal lifestyle. It is evident that there is a diversity of opinions on the appropriate plan for reopening, not only between state and federal leadership, but also among individuals on how they will react to and adopt reopening strategies in their community. -satellite was originally envisioned to provide individuals guidance on how to facilitate community mitigation while meeting essential needs as COVID-19 was spreading and ramping up in communities. As we now move to relax stay-at-home restrictions while still respecting social distancing requirements, -satellite will provide a unique opportunity in assisting individuals in making personal decisions with regard to how they will transition to and resume to normal activities.We just launched -satellite (V2.0) on May 4 with new features of static board for COVID-19 comparisons and trend analysis for user-customized counties and states. The new features will assist not only individuals, but also organizations in decision-making for the reopening. Its relevant to note that our team was given a prestigious award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) on May 1 in support of our COVID-19 risk assessment project. The award comes with $84,000 in funding over a one-year period. In our next steps, with this support from the NSF, we will focus on refinements to data sources and algorithms to effectively utilize all available data to improve the accuracy of real-time risk estimation. We also plan to work with city and state governments as well as health-care providers in the future applications of the -satellite concept as it relates to other important public health-related issues.
Evidently, the atmosphere of mistrust between the government in Kabul and the Taliban is complete. This cannot but further complicate the prospects of a so-called intra-Afghan dialogue. AP Photo

Since the Americans signed a peace agreement with the Taliban on February 29 to bring to an end the relentless violence that has afflicted Afghanistan for the past 18 years, there are few signs of encouragement in the big picture. Last Tuesdays ghastly attack on a maternity clinic inside a Kabul hospital, in which hours-old infants and their mothers, besides nursing staff, were killed, was only one of several painful incidents of that terrible day. In Nangrahar in eastern Afghanistan, a funeral procession for a police commander was attacked by a suicide bomber and many lives were lost. Another violent attack also reportedly took place in the Khost province of eastern Afghanistan.

The violent incidents of May 12 have led the government of President Ashraf Ghani to officially end the defensive posture by the Afghan military, which had been dictated by common sense in the wake of the February agreement. The Taliban too have issued a threat, suggesting that they are mobilised and have the resources to deal with any contingency. Improbably, they have sought to point a finger at the Ghani government for the recent attacks.

Evidently, the atmosphere of mistrust between the government in Kabul and the Taliban is complete. This cannot but further complicate the prospects of a so-called intra-Afghan dialogue in which the various political constituencies within the country, along with the government, were to negotiate a roadmap for peace with the Taliban.

The pitch had been queered by the government raising questions about the releasing of as many as 5,000 battle-hardened Taliban prisoners as a prelude to intra-Afghan talks. It is this which has led the Taliban to accuse the Ghani government of being the architect of the recent violence in the expectation of prolonging its life, which may be suddenly extinguished if the talks with the Taliban led to a feasible roadmap for normality.

Islamic State-Khorasan (or so-called ISIS-South Asia) had taken the dubious credit for attacking Kabuls most famous gurdwara in March. It also acknowledged carrying out the Nangrahar attack on the funeral procession on Tuesday.

However, neither ISIS-K nor the Taliban have claimed responsibility for the grisly hospital attack. In fact, the Taliban have denied a role in this. But it is noteworthy that the militant group has not gone so far as to condemn the attack, like other domestic political constituencies, the UN Security Council, and leading countries, including India, have done.

For long, the Taliban, and more recently ISIS-K (also known as Daesh), have been perceived as being active recipients of patronage of the Pakistani military and the notorious ISI. Overall, it is likely to be Islamabads endeavour to retain as much influence as possible in any framework for future talks by bringing the Afghan government as well as civil society to its knees through violent attacks carried out by its proxies in the face of which ordinary Afghans remain helpless and confounded.

The Taliban will truly be making a new beginning if they begin to act on the same side as the Afghan military by taking on Pakistan and its proxies on the political chessboard and the battlefield. India, instead of acting only in Americas shadow, can begin to take initial steps in the direction of that denouement.
Mothers across the UK have shared footage of themselves breastfeeding as part of a viral challenge to normalise nursing in public.

Emily Sophie, 26, from Surrey, has gone viral on Facebook after she uploaded footage of herself and friends throwing away cloths and blankets, after showing how difficult it is to try and cover up with one hand, while supporting your baby with the other.

Critics often ask why mothers can't cover up while breastfeeding in public, but Emily retorted by captioning her post: 'If my breastfeeding offends you feel free to put a blanket over your head.'

The footage is one of the latest takes on the Don't Rush Challenge, which sees social media users perform actions to the song Don't Rush by Young T and Bugsey.

Emily Sophie (pictured), who lives in Surrey, has gone viral on Facebook after uploading footage of mothers throwing away cover-ups while breastfeeding

Adele Dawn Hough (pictured), who lives in Cheshire, donned a black evening dress to show breastfeeding can be done in any outfit

Tiffani Tim Galicza (pictured), 32, from Bedfordshire, explained Emily was inspired to do the viral challenge as a way of normalising breastfeeding and giving others mothers the confidence to do it

Emily's video which has attracted over 35,000 views shows mothers Sophie Ann Kingsley-Dixon, Emily Sophie, Molly Stevens, Adele Dawn Hough, Harriet Leci, Tiffani Tim Galicza, Katie Lee, Jodie Hatfield and Karen Ann Redmond breastfeeding their babies, before throwing a blanket over the camera.

Tiffani Tim Galicza, told FEMAIL, that the video was initially Emily's idea as a way of dispelling the negative connotations associated with breastfeeding.

She said: 'Emily wanted to highlight the stigma around covering babies when breastfeeding. Breastfeeding babies is nothing new, but we have all been made to feel uncomfortable in regards to whether we should cover our children whilst breastfeeding.

'Emily saw the TikTok trend and decided that she wanted to make a breastfeeding one with none of the babies covered up.

'We all wanted to highlight to other mothers that they shouldn't have to be made to feel to cover up whilst breastfeeding unless they choose to.

'We were all strangers from up and down the UK, never met or spoken before but are all part of a breastfeeding support group on Facebook. Emily put a status up in the group asking if other breastfeeding mums would be interested.

Sophie Ann Kingsley-Dixon, 25, (pictured) filmed herself looking tired with her hair in a high bun, before getting glammed to show herself breastfeeding without covering her baby

Molly Stevens 20, who lives in Somerset, filmed herself wearing a pink robe, for the viral video which has attracted over 35,000 views

'Also, during quarantine there isn't a lot else to do at the moment. Separately we all filmed two videos - one looking tired, and attempting to cover our babies heads, the other glammed up, and no covers over the babies.

'We sent them to Molly who edited all our separate videos to make one big breastfeeding video.

'Gave us an excuse to get glammed up and have a giggle among ourselves while also raising awareness of covering the child while eating.

'We've had lots of messages from other breastfeeding mothers who have said they don't have the confidence to feed without covering up.

'I mean, it's a pain, and we don't eat whilst being covered so don't see why the babies should have to.

'As long as we're aware of people and our surroundings and are respectful of others around us, I'm not sure why there is such a taboo around breastfeeding.'

Tiffani explained each of the women in the video are participants of a breastfeeding support group on Facebook. Pictured: Karen Ann Redmond, 32,

Tiffani revealed the mothers also took part in the video as an opportunity to get dressed up during lockdown. Pictured: Harriet Leci, 27,

Many impressed viewers have praised the video for encouraging breastfeeding.

One person wrote: 'This makes me so happy, go girl! Just got to two years with my daughter and pregnant with baby two almost halfway. I hope to tandem feed. Breastfeeding is amazing and nobody should have to hide it ever'

'Love this! Too right! About time this was shown as the natural thing it is. You all look beautiful, keep going mamas,' another said.

A third added: 'I love this video you're all so lucky to be able to do this. I feel absolutely gutted that I wasn't able too, my milk dried up in three weeks so barely got the opportunity to experience the wonders of breastfeeding. Enjoy every second you're amazing.'

Revealing that she inspired her daughter to breastfeed, a mother wrote: 'Breast fed my Lucy for two years. Lovely bonding time. She's 28 now and has children of her own she also breast fed. Love seeing mums feeding. It can be done discreetly. Keep up the good work'
The long-overdue report from the watchdog into the policing of the protests that have wracked Hong Kong for nearly a year has concluded that the use of force by the police was a result of illegal action by protesters and that allegations of police brutality should not be used as a political weapon.

In the 999-page report, the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) made 52 recommendations to the police on strengthening operational guidelines. The accountability of individual officers was not within the scope of the report, it stressed.

While labelling Police action as brutality, the protesters seem to disregard their own violence, vandalism and vigilantism, the report found. It cannot be overemphasised that allegations of police brutality must not be made a weapon of political protest. That is a legal and not a political matter.

The IPCC was set up to assess police conduct in the handling of protests that began in June as the government tried to push through legislation that would have allowed people to be sent to mainland China for trial.





From peaceful marches that attracted hundreds and thousands of people, the protests evolved into a wider call for democratic reforms and some descended into violent street confrontations.

The report absolved the police of collusion in the Yuen Long incident in July when protesters were attacked by a mob of armed men. The IPCC acknowledged that the incident had attracted the most number of complaints but said no serious evidence had been offered to back up the claims.

The commissions members were chosen by Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam who described the report as weighty and said the government accepted it.

A group of five international advisers resigned in December citing doubts about its independent investigative capability. The commission relies on voluntary disclosure and has no investigatory powers of its own.

Lethal force

Police, clad in riot gear and sometimes without identification, have used a barrage of tear gas, water cannon and rubber bullets in response to the protests. The IPCC noted that the police had used lethal force in only 12 instances and fired 19 live rounds.

Protesters broke through cordons to storm the legislature last June on the day the bill was supposed to have had its second reading, and as the weeks wore on showed a willingness to adopt more violent tactics, using slingshots, and throwing bricks and petrol bombs.

In the face of these illegal and potentially lethal acts, the Police has had to enforce the law and to protect themselves and the community from harm, the IPCC said.

Some 542 complaints had been made against the police, the report said, with 96 of them for assault. Most of those were made by those who had been arrested.





Later on Friday, the first protester to plead guilty to rioting over legislature attacks was sentenced to four years in prison in what the judge described as a direct attack on the rule of law, which undoubtedly caused harm.

Sin Ka-ho, 21, admitted to pushing through police barricades and throwing umbrellas and other objects at police officers. More than 8,300 people have been arrested and 595 face charges of rioting, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years.

The protesters accuse the police of using excessive force and other abuses, and an independent investigation into allegations of police brutality has become one of their key demands along with universal suffrage.

The police have maintained their response has been proportionate to the level of violence.

Hong Kong was formerly a British colony and was handed back to China in 1997 under the so-called one country, two systems framework that allows the territory freedoms unknown on the mainland.
The reappearance of local Covid-19 infections was to be expected, rather than premature cause for alarm over a wider community outbreak, top health experts said on Thursday, as they called for a shift in Hong Kongs strategy from a containment approach to learning to live with the coronavirus.

The fact that the latest cases  involving a grandmother and her family members  had been identified as locally transmitted meant the citys monitoring system was working, they told the China Conference, organised by the South China Morning Post.

A government adviser also revealed that, in addition to Macau and mainland China, the administration was in talks with Taiwan about relaxing border control measures, as it was paramount to take the citys economic recovery into account.

While hospitals in other countries were still struggling to contain the coronavirus, the citys health facilities were ready to gradually resume full operations, Hong Kongs public hospital chief said, while tapping into innovative means to avoid cross-infections.

(From left) Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan, Executive Council member Arthur Li, director of HKUs School of Public Health Keiji Fukuda and professor of public health Yeoh Eng-kiong. The four talked about coronavirus issues still facing Hong Kong at the Posts China Conference on Wednesday. Photo: May Tse

The discussion came as the infected grandmothers husband was confirmed with Covid-19 as well, after their granddaughter also tested positive. Their contact tracing will require thousands to be tested for Covid-19 as health authorities look into the possibility of invisible community transmissions.

The grandmothers case broke a 23-day streak without a locally transmitted infection in Hong Kong, with many of those days recording no imported cases as well.

Dr Keji Fukuda, director of the School of Public Health at the University of Hong Kong, said at the conference that it would be naive to assume the city would be free of the coronavirus.

We always know there will be cases in Hong Kong that we cannot identify, and it would be arrogant to think we would be able to know the traces of every case in Hong Kong, said Fukuda, a member of the governments expert team on Covid-19 and former director of the World Health Organisations influenza programme.

Story continues

The new local cases should not come as a surprise, he said, and should be seen as proof that the citys screening system was working well.

The next step would be to probe those cases and respond accordingly, without jumping to conclusions as to whether it was necessary to reverse the recent easing of social-distancing measures, he said.

In March, the Hong Kong government put in place a ban on public gatherings of more than four people and ordered 11 types of businesses and leisure facilities closed. Those measures were relaxed last week, with most of the businesses allowed to reopen and gatherings of up to eight people permitted.

Every speaker at the conference agreed the pandemic would last for a long time.

Dr Yeoh Eng-kiong, former health minister and professor of public health from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, suggested switching focus from containing the disease to detecting it and mitigating it, now that the pandemic was easing.

You cannot close schools forever, Yeoh said.

Hong Kong has been coping well partly because it has stringent border control measures in place that have significantly reduced the number of infected people coming in, while testing arrivals and placing them under mandatory 14-day quarantine.

All non-Hong Kong residents, except those from the mainland, Macau and Taiwan, have been barred from entering the city entirely.

But sooner or later, businesspeople would come in again, Yeoh said, while those living in the city would be eager to fly out for holidays.

Hospitals that have been focused on conserving staff and protective gear amid the Covid-19 pandemic are slowly beginning to offer non-essential surgeries again. Photo: Sam Tsang

He urged the government to take note of plans being explored by other countries, such as the travel bubble eyed by Australia and New Zealand, which would allow their borders to be opened to each other only.

Ventilation in shops and the offering of hand sanitiser on their premises would be among some of the arrangements to mitigate risks, he said.

Executive Council member Arthur Li Kwok-cheung said the government had been using a lift and suppress approach to strike a good balance between public health concerns and economic activity.

Li said the government was negotiating with authorities in Macau, Taiwan and neighbouring Shenzhen to gradually return border controls to normal. But even if Hong Kong were to relax the two-week quarantine period, he said, those jurisdictions would have to reciprocate accordingly for the arrangement to work.

Hospital Authority chairman Henry Fan Hung-ling said the citys public hospitals were gradually reviving non-essential services. He said the authority had left it up to hospital clusters serving different districts to decide the pace at which those services would resume.

But he warned of uncertainty ahead, saying, I think, like the rest of the world, the Hospital Authority is entering into an era of a new norm or a new normal.

Fan also stressed the need to avoid or minimise the chance of cross-infection within hospitals.

From now on, patients would be asked to arrive soon before their appointments, unlike the past when they could turn up as they wished, he said. Public hospitals were also exploring ways to deliver medications to chronic patients, possibly by teaming with logistics companies.

We had a painful lesson this time where we had a critical stage where our personal protective gear [supply] could last only for a month, he said.

Fan pledged to focus on ensuring a sufficient supply while reviewing plans to enhance isolation services for any potential future outbreaks.

Secretary for Food and Health Sophia Chan Siu-chee said the citys efforts began to bear fruit following its implementation of a three-pronged approach focusing on border control, quarantine and isolation, and social distancing.

She said the government would continue to make timely adjustments in response to the ongoing pandemic, and had been working on increasing its capability to conduct testing. As of May 10, she said, Hong Kong had carried out 180,000 Covid-19 tests, meaning that for every 1 million people, more than 23,800 had been tested.

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And they have continued to come, especially when there are crises, Ms. Choy said.

In underserved urban and rural hospitals, Filipino workers stepped in. During the AIDS epidemic, Filipino nurses were, as they are today, on the front lines.

Theres this sense of resilience and strength in trying to come together  and theres a lot of anger, too, Ms. Choy said. There are so many contradictions and so much hypocrisy in the current moment around immigration.

This history rooted in migration also means that Filipinos are fighting the pandemic everywhere  not just in the United States.

[Read about the toll of the virus on Filipino health care workers across the globe.]

I wish people understood how frightening it is to have family members and loved ones scattered all over the world during uncertain times, Dr. Lourdes Casao, who is director of education at Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center, said in an email. Part of us wants to visit and reassure our loved ones but then we know we cannot or should not travel.

She told me a colleague had been scheduled to celebrate her mothers 100th birthday in the Philippines, but had to cancel.

She was not worried about the plans themselves, Dr. Casao said. She was just worried she will never have the opportunity to celebrate such a remarkable milestone with her mother.

For Desi Danganan, watching his girlfriend, who is a nurse, and other loved ones mobilize in the pandemic was a call to action for the small businesses he works with as executive director of Kultivate Labs, a nonprofit aimed at reviving a Filipino cultural district in San Franciscos SOMA neighborhood.
Taliban Respond to Ghani's Statement with Attack

By Ayesha Tanzeem May 14, 2020

A Taliban attack on an Afghan army compound in Gardez city of Paktia province Thursday morning killed at least five civilians and wounded dozens more, including five people from the military.

A spokesman for the army's 203 Thunder Corps, Aimal Khan Mohmand, told VOA the suicide attacker in an explosives laden Mazda truck managed to damage the walls of the compound.

Afghanistan's Tolo news has reported that based on social media pictures, the building was "destroyed."

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid claimed responsibility and said the attack was a response to Afghan President Ashraf Ghani's order to resume offensive operations against the insurgent group. The operations were suspended since the insurgent group signed a landmark deal with the United States in Doha in February to try to end the war.

The attack also comes days after multiple attacks in other parts of the country, including on a hospital in Kabul, killed more than 50 people including newborn babies.

While Taliban denied those attacks, senior Afghan officials, including first vice president Amrullah Saleh, blamed the group for those attacks.

The acting interior minister Massoud Andarabi accused a deadly Taliban faction, the Haqqani network, of having close ties with the local chapter of Islamic State which claimed some of the attacks.

The recent developments may have serious repercussions for the deal signed in Doha.

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Thousands of Shi'ite Muslims in Pakistan defied health warnings on May 15 to attend rallies mourning the anniversary of the death of the most revered figure of their faith.

Several thousand people marched through the streets of the southern city of Karachi, currently a hotspot for new coronavirus infections, police official Ahmed Gul said.

More rallies were planned in other cities, including Lahore, a metropolitan area with a population of 10 million where doctors said the infection rate was alarmingly high.

Tens of thousands of Shiite Muslims hold processions across the world every year to mourn the assassination of Islam's fourth Caliph, Ali Ibn e Abi Talib.

The government warned against holding rallies this year as the nationwide number of confirmed coronavirus cases rose above 37,000, with a projected peak still weeks away. Community leaders ignored calls from authorities and medics to abandon the planned rallies.

"We have made all the necessary arrangements like wearing face masks. Objections are illogical," said Nasir Shirazi, one of the organisers of the Karachi rally.

The government has faced criticism for allowing mosques to remain open and for failing to cancel a religious gathering in February thought to have caused at least 4,000 infections.

Pakistan began to lift most of its lockdown restrictions last week. The country's civil aviation agency has announced that domestic flights will resume from May 16, though a ban on international flights was extended until May 30.
Economy Minister Diane Dodds has said she is to present a proposed economic recovery plan for Northern Ireland to fellow executive ministers next week.

"I am working to develop the executive's roadmap to a strong competitive and regionally balanced economy," she told Friday's daily Covid-19 briefing at Stormont.

"I will bring a paper to the executive next week which will outline how we put the pathway to recovery into action."

"In terms of the road map to recovery, we've been working hard, identifying the sectors Northern Ireland can build upon to have a good long term strategic road map.

"We've been doing a lot of work with businesses to gauge where they're at, what they need, and how we go forward."

Mrs Dodds announced that the executive's 25,000 grant scheme for retail, hospitality, tourism and leisure industry businesses would be expanded to include those business who occupy rental properties.

The minister also said an already announced 40 million fund to support microbusiness in Northern Ireland would open next week to application, noting that already the NI Executive had distributed more than 250m in pandemic -related support to 2,500 businesses here.

She also revealed that the NI Executive would be making a further statement on loosening Northern Ireland's lockdown restrictions next week

"My understanding is that the First Minister and deputy First Minister will make a statement on Monday about some further measures that are to be released," she said.

She also defended her Ministerial colleague Agriculture Minister Edwin Poots, who had been criticised for a 'solo run', announcing the angling would be permitted in lands belonging to his department, arguing that since it was his decision to close the DAERA lands at the outbreak of the pandemic, the decision to reopen them was also his to take.
World leaders past and present insisted on Thursday that any eventual COVID-19 vaccines and treatments should be made available to everyone, free of charge.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan were among more than 140 signatories of a letter saying any vaccine should not be patented while the science should be shared between nations.

The World Health Assembly, the policy-setting body of the UN's World Health Organization, holds its annual general meeting next week.

The signatories called on the WHA to rally behind the cause.

"Governments and international partners must unite around a global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge," the letter said.

"The same applies for all treatments, diagnostics, and other technologies for COVID-19."

The letter was signed by Senegalese President Macky Sall and Ghanaian President Nana Akufo-Addo.

Former presidents and prime ministers among the signatories included Shaukat Aziz, Jan Peter Balkenende, Jose Manuel Barroso, Gordon Brown, Helen Clark, Felipe Gonzalez, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Aleksander Kwasniewski, Mary McAleese, Olusegun Obasanjo and Juan Manuel Santos.

The letter comes amid fury in France after pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any COVID-19 vaccine for the United States.

The French multinational's chief executive Paul Hudson said the United States would get first dibs because its government was helping to fund the vaccine research.

His comments drew outrage Thursday from officials and health experts.

The letter ahead of the WHA said it was not the time to leave the task of resolving the pandemic to market forces or let the interests of wealthy companies and governments come before the need to save lives.

African Union Chairperson Ramaphosa said: "As the countries of Africa, we are resolute that the COVID-19 vaccine must be patent-free, rapidly made and distributed, and free for all.

"Nobody should be pushed to the back of the vaccine queue because of where they live or what they earn."
Beginning Sunday, wearing face masks in public will be mandatory across Qatar, with violators at risk of jail time and up to $55,000 in fines.

Masks will be mandatory upon leaving the house for any reason except when alone while driving a vehicle, the Qatar News Agency reported Thursday. The regulations will remain in place until further notice.

The punishment for not wearing a face mask is a fine of up to 200,000 riyals ($55,000) or three years in prison.

The small Gulf country of some 2.7 million has one of the worlds highest rates of infection, but a relatively low death toll. Qatar health officials have so far registered 29,425 cases of the coronavirus and 14 deaths.

Dr. Abdullatif al-Khal, co-chair of Qatars National Pandemic Preparedness Committee, said Thursday there had been 1,000 new cases reported each day of the past week. They grew by 1,153 the next day. The spike in infections suggests the virus is at the beginning of its peak, not the end as hoped, he said.

He urged Qataris to stay at home during the remainder of Ramadan, including the Eid Al-Fitr holiday next weekend.

In addition to a stay-at-home order, the government has closed schools, restaurants and mosques and imposed restrictions on travelers from abroad.

State-owned Qatar Airways, however, has continued service throughout the pandemic to several Asian, European and North American destinations. The Gulf carrier is expected to pick up more flights later this month.
Major Gift to UW Supports Agricultural Leadership Center

A $1.5 million gift from Farm Credit Services of America (FCSAmerica) will support a Ranch Management and Agriculture Leadership Center in the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.

The center will train the next generation of ranch managers, wildland recreation professionals and agricultural leadership.

The gift will be doubled to $3 million by the state of Wyoming matching program. The matching funds for this gift are part an additional $6.5 million added in 2020 by the Wyoming Legislature to the state matching program. This investment is in addition to the more than $222 million in state match funding that has secured private gifts for UW since the inception of the program in 2001.

As a financial cooperative, one of FCSAmericas most important missions is to serve agriculture by investing in its future, says Mark Jensen, CEO and president of FCSAmerica, which lends to farmers and ranchers in four states, including Wyoming.

We all have benefited from producers and industry leaders who have worked to preserve our natural resources and advocated for policies and infrastructure that guarantee a secure food system, Jensen adds. Future generations will be prepared to keep the industry moving forward because of the kind of educational opportunities offered through the Ranch Management and Agricultural Leadership Center.

The Ranch Management and Agriculture Leadership Center will provide students with technical knowledge and real-world experiential learning opportunities in the private, public and nonprofit sectors of Western agriculture. The curriculum will be guided by ranch owners, agency professionals, agribusiness leaders, industry executives, elected officials, academics and UW alumni.

The program will offer three levels of education: a professional development and certification for current career ranch managers and agricultural leaders, and bachelors and masters degrees in ranch management and agricultural leadership. Each level incorporates workforce development, practical experiences, research-based technical knowledge, real-world problem solving and interactions with industry leaders throughout the West.

In addition, the gift will support students with scholarships during their internship semesters, as well as stipends and program support for students in the post-baccalaureate program. Scholarships for individuals in the certificate and micro-credentialing program will encourage individuals with limited means to enroll, as students in this program would not be eligible for federal financial aid.

Students will integrate animal sciences, rangeland management, agricultural economics, agricultural communication, organizational leadership and political science. These concepts will be introduced early in the program and will culminate in multidisciplinary capstone courses and targeted experiential learning opportunities. The program will require students to complete at least two internships -- for example, a working ranch and a relevant government agency, nonprofit or private organization.

We are excited at the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources about the opportunities the generous gift from Farm Credit Services of America will provide for the next generation of professionals in range and ranch management, says Barbara Rasco, dean of the college. The agricultural leadership component of this program will provide students with the leadership and soft skills that they need to be successful in careers in this field.

The center will be directed by a faculty member with agricultural expertise who uses innovative approaches to ranch management. The directors responsibilities will include curriculum and internship development and seeking funding internally and externally through grants and private contributions. He or she also will create strong partnerships with everyone involved -- UW, private landowners, public agencies, industry representatives and agribusiness.

It is exciting to see an organization like Farm Credit Services of America come together with the University of Wyoming College of Agriculture and Natural Resources for such an important project, says Doug Stark, UW Foundation Board member who was formerly with FCSAmerica. Whats really gratifying is that this gift is a foundational step in helping the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources fulfill a very ambitious and aspirational vision. This partnership will jump-start great things for both the college and the University of Wyoming.

Stark also is a 2013 Outstanding Alumnus of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources; serves on the colleges advisory board; and has co-taught leadership courses with the dean of the college.

The partnership between Farm Credit Services of America and the University of Wyoming is a defining statement regarding the importance of agriculture to the state and its university, says Ben Blalock, UW Foundation president. FCSAmerica brings remarkable leadership and prestige to Wyomings university. I particularly appreciate the vision of my friend and UW Foundation Board member, Doug Stark.

About Farm Credit Services of America

Farm Credit Services of America is proud to finance the growth of rural America, including the special needs of young and beginning producers. With $29.9 billion in assets and nearly $5.8 billion in members equity, FCSAmerica is one of the regions leading providers of credit and insurance services to farmers, ranchers, agribusiness and rural residents in Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota and Wyoming. Learn more at www.fcsamerica.com. For more information, call Judith Nygren, corporate communications specialist, at (402) 348-3346 or email Judith.nygren@fcsamerica.com.
PHOENIX, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- 4Front Ventures Corp. (CSE: FFNT) (OTCQX: FFNTF) ("4Front" or the "Company") announced the upsizing and close of a private placement of convertible debentures and the close of the sale of its non-core retail assets in Pennsylvania. The closing of these transactions marks significant progress towards the Company's stated objectives of being fully-funded and achieving cash flow positivity in the second half of 2020.

Private Placement

The Company has closed a raise of approximately $5.8 million U.S. in a private placement of convertible debt led by Navy Capital. The financing was upsized from the previously announced commitments for $4 million U.S., with the incremental capital coming mostly from existing shareholders.

The Notes have an annual coupon of 5%, paid-in-kind, and will mature on February 28, 2022. The Notes are exchangeable into subordinate voting shares ("common equivalent") at a conversion price of $0.25 U.S. Some lenders were issued a debenture which exchanges a portion of their existing equity investments into a security intended to mimic the liquidity preference found in a preferred equity.

Non-core License Sales

4Front also announced that it completed the sale of its stake in Pennsylvania retail assets to Ethos Cannabis for approximately $10.6 million U.S. in cash. As previously announced, 4Front has also entered into a binding agreement to sell its stake in non-core retail assets in Maryland. The sale of these assets is also to Ethos Cannabis and is expected to close over the next 45 days pending certain regulatory approvals.

Beacon Securities Limited acted as financial advisor to 4Front in connection with these asset sales and received a customary advisory fee.

To be added to the email distribution list, please email [email protected] with "4Front" in the subject.

About 4Front Ventures Corp. 4Front is a cannabis company designed for long-term success and built upon battle-tested operating capabilities at scale, experienced and committed leadership, and a strategic asset base. From plant genetics to the cannabis retail experience, 4Front's team applies expertise across the value chain. 4Front has invested heavily to assemble a comprehensive collection of management skills and hands-on operating expertise to capitalize on the unique growth opportunity being afforded by the increased legalization of cannabis. For more information, visit 4Front's website.

4Front Investor Contact Andrew Thut, Chief Investment Officer [email protected] 602-633-3067

Phil Carlson / Elizabeth Barker [email protected]

212-896-1233 / 212-896-1203

4Front Media Contacts Anne Donohoe / Nick Opich KCSA Strategic Communications [email protected] / [email protected] 212-896-1265 / 212-896-1206

This news release was prepared by management of 4Front Ventures, which takes full responsibility for its contents. The Canadian Securities Exchange ("CSE") has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy of this news release. Neither the CSE nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the CSE) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.

Forward Looking Statements

Statements in this news release that are forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in 4Front Ventures' periodic filings with securities regulators. When used in this news release, words such as "will, could, plan, estimate, expect, intend, may, potential, believe, should," and similar expressions, are forward-looking statements.

Forward-looking statements may include, without limitation, statements related to future developments and the business and operations of 4Front Ventures, developments with respect to legislative developments in the United States, expectations regarding the COVID-19 pandemic, future revenue or Adjusted EBITDA expectations, statements regarding when or if any contemplated or in-progress transactions will close or if/when required regulatory approvals are attained, and other statements regarding future developments of the business. The closing of the transactions described in this news release, including the divesture of Pennsylvania and Maryland assets and the sale of convertible debt, is subject to customary conditions and there can be no guarantee that such transactions will close.

Although 4Front Ventures has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results, performance or achievements to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, there can be other factors that cause results, performance or achievements not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended, including, but not limited to: dependence on obtaining regulatory approvals; investing in target companies or projects which have limited or no operating history and are engaged in activities currently considered illegal under U.S. federal laws; change in laws; limited operating history; reliance on management; requirements for additional financing; competition; hindering market growth and state adoption due to inconsistent public opinion and perception of the medical-use and adult-use marijuana industry and; regulatory or political change.

There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate or that management's expectations or estimates of future developments, circumstances or results will materialize. As a result of these risks and uncertainties, the results or events predicted in these forward-looking statements may differ materially from actual results or events.

Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this news release are made as of the date of this release. 4Front Ventures disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise such information, except as required by applicable law, and 4Front Ventures does not assume any liability for disclosure relating to any other company mentioned herein.

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The army is planning to convert the iconic 61st Cavalry, its only mounted cavalry unit, into an armoured regiment, sources said on Friday.

The 61st Cavalry, largely a ceremonial unit, was raised in 1953 by amalgamating mounted elements of cavalry regiments of the erstwhile princely states of India.

Sources said the army is planning to convert the Jaipur-based 61st Cavalry into an armoured regiment and it is likely to be equipped with tanks to make it a combat force from its current position as largely a

ceremonial unit.

They said the plan is to also make an 'equestrian excellence node' from the strength of horses.

The 61st Cavalry has taken part in Republic Day celebrations too.

At present, the ceremonial President's Bodyguard and the 61st Cavalry are the only horse-mounted cavalry units of the country.

Historically, cavalry units have played critical roles in decisive battles such as the Battle of Haifa in Israel fought in 1918.

Indian Army commemorates September 23 every year as Haifa Day to pay tribute to the three Indian Cavalry Regiments -- Mysore, Hyderabad and Jodhpur Lancers, that helped liberate the city of Haifa

following a heroic cavalry action by the 15th Imperial Service Cavalry Brigade of the then British Indian Army in the battle.

The Teen Murti memorial commemorates the role of the three regiments in that famous battle.
Several states on Friday submitted their proposals for Covid-19 lockdown 4.0, asking the Centre to allow interstate travel, easier movement in non-containment zones and sectors like tourism and hospitality to restart work to revive the economy, multiple officials said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday said suggestions from the states would be considered for formulating guidelines for the next phase of the lockdown to check the pandemic spread, which is expected to begin from May 18. He said the next set of the curbs are going to be different from the earlier lockdowns. The Centre is likely to allow more flexibility to the states in formulating the fresh lockdown guidelines.

Officials said Punjab has suggested doing away with the zoning system (red, orange and green) based on the scale of the Covid-19 cases with no activity allowed in the areas falling under the first category. It wants all activities to be allowed in non-containment areas. We have also suggested that all public transport buses should run and shops, except malls, be allowed to open, said an official on condition of anonymity. The state wants the lockdown to be extended till May end, the official added.

Also Read: Delhi wants to restart life from Monday  with social distance

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal said they have written to the Centre seeking an extension of the lockdown by another two weeks and financial help. Sonowal said providing employment to a large number of migrants workers, who have returned to the state because of the lockdown, remains a big challenge.

Uttarkhand has sought permission to allow Char Dham pilgrimage and tourist activities, which are the mainstay of the states economy. We have requested the Centre to allow some tourism activities in green zones and the opening of a few holy shrines. We also want work under the MGNREGS [National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme] to be allowed for 150 days [from 100 days annually], said Uttarakhand minister Madan Kaushik.

Kaushik echoed ministers in other Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled states and said they will follow the Centres guidelines on the next phase of curbs.

Also Read: Delhi to await Centre guidelines before taking call on liquor stores, home deliveries

Officials in Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh said the chief ministers of these states have submitted their suggestions to the Centre and will provide details only after the notification on fresh guidelines is issued.

The Kolkata Municipal Corporation on Friday announced buses in the city will run from Monday with a maximum 20 passengers on each bus and that police will ensure social distancing is maintained even as transport operators appeared sceptical. It would be a difficult task [to limit passengers to 20] but we are making plans, said Bengal Bus Syndicate honorary secretary Subrata Ghosh.

The traditional yellow-coloured cabs will also resume services in Kolkata from Monday with increased fares. Passengers will have to pay 30% extra... Not more than two passengers will be allowed and they will have to sit on the back seat. They will also need to wear masks and sanitise their hands, said Bengal Taxi Association general secretary Bimal Guha.

Gujarat has suggested the lockdown should be reviewed after two weeks. We should see how people react to the relaxations and their impact on Covid-19 cases, an official said, and added authorities have been asked to strictly monitor the impact of the next phase of the lockdown. Shops and private offices may be opened on a rotational basis. Rules for rickshaws, taxis, city buses and other transport would be decided soon. Also, multiplexes, malls, gyms, and clubs will remain closed...

Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant said he will urge the Centre to allow all activities and take measures to restart the hospitality industry.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

An official said the decision on reopening hotels and restaurants would be taken after the Centres guidelines on the next lockdown.

Jharkhand finance minister Rameshwar Oraon said liquor shops will remain closed even though the state is considering reopening more shops and public transport with some restrictions.

The state did not implement the relaxations allowed during the ongoing third phase of the lockdown because of a spurt in Covid-19 cases due to the return of the migrant workers.

Officials in Himachal Pradesh said bus services will resume from May 18 between district headquarters even as the lockdown restrictions will continue till May end. This has been done keeping in mind the difficulties faced by the people in commuting, said principal secretary (revenue) Onkar Chand Sharma.
On the backside of COVID, knowing a lot more than we know now, I don't know that it's necessary to continue with the president having complete authority to run county government, government spending and all those types of things, Morrison said There's not a need for it anymore. We've proven that with our ability to conduct now our virtual board meetings.
(Photo : Screenshot from: Reuters Connect Official Website)

The World Health Organization's (WHO) health emergency chief, Dr. Mike Ryan, recently gave a warning from Geneva on Thursday, May 14, saying that "the coronavirus may become just another endemic virus our communities and it may never go away."

He also said that it was impossible to put an exact time frame on when this pandemic would end.





Read Also: Why Tube is a 'Suicide Mission?' Few People with Masks and Not Practicing Social Distancing; Commuters Packed London Underground as Prime Minister Urged People to Work





WHO: 'The virus may never go away'

The WHO warned that mankind may have to learn how to live with the novel coronavirus just like how the world has adjusted to HIV.

Dr. Mike Ryan said in a recent Geneva press conference, according to reports from Daily Mail, "It's important to put this on the table: this virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away. HIV has not gone away, we've come to terms with the virus and we have found the therapies and we found the prevention methods and people don't feel as scared as they did before and we're offering life to people with HIV, long healthy lives to people with HIV."

He also added that he was not trying to compare both diseases, but it was to simply illustrate that no one can ever predict when or if this disease will even disappear. Ryan was trying to expand on the point when it comes to medical health experts and politicians who have been giving estimates of a year before obtaining a vaccine.

Read Also: Can Coronavirus Be Neutralised by Insect Repellent? MOD Provides Soldiers With Mosquito Spray For Additional Protection

The numbers are relatively low

Ryan also explained that the number of people who have been infected on a global scale is relatively low even as the numbers have skyrocketed to more than 4.3 million cases worldwide.

Looking at the United States, Donald Trump has been very eager for a quick resumption of economic activity and is always against the advice of his own health officials as he struggles to jumpstart the world's biggest economy before the election in November.

In the United Kingdom, a very cautious approach is being adopted and Chancellor Rishi Sunak has already pledged to continue with a furloughing scheme. Employees on the said scheme will receive at least 80% of wages up to a massive 2,500 or $3,000 until the month of October.

"There are more than 100 potential vaccines for the virus in development, but Dr. Ryan noted that even with a vaccine the virus may never be wiped out. He gave the example of measles. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus urged people to continue in the fight to stop the spread of the disease," The Daily Mail report added.

Read Also: COVID-19 UPDATE: Stem Cell Clinics Offer Unproven "Immunity Booster" for COVID-19 Without Any Proof It Works, You Have Been Warned

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Have you ever felt that sinking feeling when you face a huge unexpected expense, your wages have been cut suddenly and theres not much left in your bank account?

Now imagine that your household is actually three million strong and those people who rely on you for shelter, day care, transit and more need you to come up with $1.5 billion to break even.

Thats the situation the city of Toronto finds itself in becaue of the unprecedented COVID-19 crisis.

The Federation of Canadian Municipalities has called on the federal government for emergency operating funding of $10-15 billion over the next six months. But there has yet to be any bailout plan announced, with the countrys largest city expecting to run out of cash as early as June.

What has COVID-19 cost Toronto?

Last month, the citys senior staff reported that in the best-case scenario, there would be a $1.5-billion shortfall by the end of the year: $938 million estimated for impacts directly related to a three-month lockdown and $590 million during a six-month recovery phase as restrictions ease.

That shortfall can be grouped into two distinct categories: Lost revenues  money the city was expecting to make through means like TTC fares, which have now plummeted due to social distancing  and additional costs, like opening additional shelter space to spread out those experiencing homelessness and reduce risk of infection spread and staff overtime.

But even those might be conservative estimates. For example, city staff say the TTC was expected to lose $337.8 million between March 15 and June 30 and another $134 million during the rest of the year. But the TTC has since said the transit agency is expected to lose $520 million by Labour Day  the single biggest driver of the citys shortfall.

The $1.5-billion shortfall is more than all of the money the city planned to spend on childrens services and day care in 2020 ($635 million), the entire parks, forestry and recreation budget ($456 million) and the senior services and long-term-care budget ($271 million) combined.

Cant the city borrow to get by?

Currently, no. The city cant go into deficit to pay for operating expenses, as dictated by provincial law. The provincial government could change those rules in light of the pandemic  as B.C. has done. But even if Ontario followed suit, Mayor John Tory has said its not something hed want the city to do, because it would still have to find a way to pay back those funds with limited resources.

Enid Slack, director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance at the University of Torontos Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, said borrowing could be a short-term solution, but creates more problems in the long run.

When you borrow money, you have to pay it back  and youre going to have to pay it back in 2021, 2022, said Slack. People have had their taxes deferred, so theyre going to have to pay their regular taxes plus the amount they deferred. Businesses  some of them we know are not going to come back, so that part of the municipal tax base is going to shrink.

Is that a time to say to people, Well, were going to have to raise your taxes now and were going to have to cut services to make up for what we did in 2020?

Can the city raise taxes?

Technically, yes. But the amount required to raise enough to cover the gap even in the best-case scenario would be a burden on municipal taxpayers never experienced before.

According to the city, in order to raise $1.5 billion, taxes would have to jump by 47 per cent  or an additional $1,418 for the average homeowner in 2020.

The alternative is cutting city services. But making up the difference through savings alone would likely lead to a dramatic decrease in city programs that people rely on and risks disproportionately impacting already marginalized groups.

Does the city have savings?

Yes, but not enough. The city is required to have a balanced budget, but also puts money in the bank for a rainy day every year, depending on the circumstances. For example, if there is a real estate boom, the city could collect more revenue through the municipal land transfer tax than predicted. That might lead to a budget surplus, which can be put into reserve funds to use another year.

Those reserve funds are used for things like replacing aging city vehicles or to make up for tax revenue if its lower than expected, because of, for example, an economic downturn.

Early in the pandemic, the strategy to cover the $65 million a week that the emergency was costing the city included dipping into the citys surplus funds. But that strategy, city manager Chris Murray said earlier, will dry up by June  at which point some other intervention is needed.

In the short run theyre kind of making do, but it cant last, Slack said.

What about Ontario or Ottawa?

As of April 15, confirmed contributions from the federal and provincial governments only totalled $61.4 million, city staff reported to council this week. That was already factored in to the city staffs accounting that it will be $1.5-billion short by the end of the year.

Dont they already help Toronto?

The other governments contribute to the capital costs of major infrastructure projects like new transit lines. Slack said those infrastructure funds allow the city to spend its funds elsewhere.

However, after decades of downloading services onto the municipal tax bases, renewed contributions have been slow to materialize  like the federal promise last year to spend $1.3 billion to repair Toronto Community Housing after hundreds of units had already been shuttered.

Other essential services, like the TTC, receive little direct operating support from the other levels of government and the ones that did were earlier targeted for budget cuts by Premier Doug Ford.

In 2020, TTC fares from riders were to cover 59 per cent of the agencys operating budget, while city taxpayers funded 33 per cent. The provincial government provided funding through the gas tax, which was to offset just four per cent of the TTCs operating costs. While fares have increased and city taxes have contributed a greater amount for the past seven years, according to city staff, provincial funding has not increased.

Is $1.5 billion all the city needs?

Shirley Hoy, who was Torontos city manager from 2001 to 2008, said theres no guarantee the city will bounce back to its former state by this time next year. She pointed to depressed TTC ridership and questioned whether it would simply return to pre-COVID-19 levels.

In this particular situation, just giving short-term financial relief will not help, Hoy said.

The other governments must recognize the need to restructure service delivery over a longer period that takes public health requirements into account, she said.

It would be much more helpful if it could be a transition plan of two years.
PRINCETON, N.J., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- "Gov. Murphy's action today is necessary for the health of the people of our state. Individuals awaiting a scheduled surgery, or living with pain or chronic conditions, or in need of a procedure to diagnose an illness, have been in limbo for eight weeks. It's essential that New Jersey residents receive medically necessary care before their conditions grow worse. The COVID-19 crisis will be compounded if we have ongoing harm to people's health and well-being by delays in needed care.

"We respect the Governor's approach to a responsible reopening, including his 'data determines dates' litmus test. We agree  and the data shows that it's time for hospitals to fully reopen their doors to people awaiting care. The reality is, New Jersey hospitals never stopped caring for their communities  even while rising to the challenges of COVID-19. Our hospitals treated more than 350,000 non-COVID patients during March and April. In fact, COVID cases represented just 20 percent of hospital inpatients statewide last month. Hospitals have rebounded with the space, staffing and supplies needed to care for patients safely. They are ready to be part of New Jersey's recovery.

"Hospitals and their care teams are taking extraordinary precautions to care for all in a safe environment. They have established procedures to protect patients and staff such as reconfigured spaces for social distancing, health screenings for people entering and teams of professionals dedicated to infection control, among others.

"Our hospitals are here to care  safely and effectively. For anyone who has delayed needed medical care, please talk to your physician or other primary care provider. And if you experience a health emergency, call 911 or go to the closest emergency room. Don't wait. Your health is far too valuable."

SOURCE New Jersey Hospital Association (NJHA)

Related Links

http://www.njha.com


With corporates stepping up to help fight the spread of coronavirus, Japanese conglomerate Toshiba has donated Rs 1.95 crore towards the cause. The contributions include voluntary salary contribution by Toshiba employees as well as contribution from Toshiba Group companies namely Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd. (TIPL), Toshiba JSW Power Systems Pvt. Ltd. (TJPS), Toshiba Transmission & Distribution India Pvt. Ltd. (TTDI), Toshiba Software India Pvt. Ltd. (TSIP), Toshiba Water Solutions Pvt. Ltd. (TWS) and Toshiba Johnson Elevators (India) Pvt. Ltd. (TJEI) in India.

Toshiba group in India is contributing to disaster relief funds of state governments to support the fight against the pandemic as well as other CSR activities approved by Government of India, to help Indian society at large during this time of unprecedented crisis.

Tomohiko Okada, Managing Director, Toshiba India Pvt. Ltd., said, "Toshiba Group is responding to the global coronavirus pandemic with measures that prioritise the safety of our employees and their families, and of our customers and business partners. We continue to monitor the situation in India and to follow Indian Government guidance and instructions, while doing all we can to ensure business continuity. Pursuant to our basic commitment "Committed to People. Committed to the Future", Toshiba group companies in India have donated approximately Rs 1.95 crore during the current crisis, towards the fight against the pandemic as well as other CSR activities approved by Government of India".

The total amount of Rs 1.95 crore will be spread across various funds and causes including Akshay Patra Foundation for the mid-day meal, Indian Institute of Management - Bangalore (IIMB), Prime Minister National Relief Fund, Chief Minister's Fund of the states of Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka and Orissa. Toshiba entered India about 60 years ago and since then has identified India as a hub for its manufacturing operations and export base with an aim to 'Make-in-India' and 'Export-from-India'.

Also read: World Bank sanctions another $1 billion to India to fight coronavirus; total assistance now at $2 billion
Peanut, an app that began as a tool for finding new mom friends, has evolved into a social network now used by 1.6 million women to discuss a range of topics, from pregnancy and parenthood to marriage and menopause, and everything in between. On the heels of significant growth in online networking fueled by the COVID-19 pandemic, the company is today announcing the close of a $12 million Series A round of funding, led by EQT Ventures, a multi-stage VC firm that invests in companies across Europe and the U.S.

Index Ventures and Female Founders Fund also participated, bringing Peanut's total raise to date to $21.8 million.

The round itself closed just weeks ago -- arriving at a time when the coronavirus pandemic is impacting the startup world, often drying up venture capital for emerging companies. Some startups, as a result, have laid off employees to self-sustain, while others have sought exits or even folded.

Peanut, on the other hand, has seen rapid growth for its platform as women looked for a supportive online environment to discuss their own concerns over how COVID-19 was impacting their lives.

Many women participating in Peanut's newer "Trying to Conceive" group, for example, worried about their canceled IVF rounds and how to plan for the future. Current moms-to-be wanted to hear from others about how COVID-19 would impact their hospital delivery plans. And others stuck working at home with kids looked for advice and coping strategies.

Since the outbreak, Peanut has seen engagement across its app increase by 30% and content consumption increase by 40%. Its total community also grew from 1 million users in December 2019 to now 1.6 million, as of April.

"We're really lucky in that we're growing and that we are, for the most part, untouched by what's happening," says Peanut founder and CEO Michelle Kennedy. "And actually, if anyone needed community more, it's now," she added.

Story continues

Though the pandemic has sent the app's usage skyrocketing, it has also readjusted Peanut's priorities with regard to its roadmap.

Most notably, its friend-finding feature needs a rethink.

Peanut originally worked as a sort of "Tinder for mom friends" -- an idea that arose from Kennedy's personal experience with how difficult it was to forge female friendships after motherhood. As the former deputy CEO at dating app Badoo and an inaugural board member at Bumble, she brought her extensive experience in matchmaking apps to Peanut, which uses a similar swipe-based mechanism.

But COVID-19 has up-ended this side of Peanut's business. Today, Peanut users are meeting in Zoom chat rooms to hangout or play games, but not in person.

Kennedy says the company will try to meet these users where they are with the development of more video networking features, potentially with technology built in-house. Other plans for the new capital include improvements to the social discovery aspects of its app, the development of a web version of Peanut, and the creation of more groups beyond those focused on fertility and motherhood, which have so far been core to the Peanut experience.

Specifically, the company soon plans to launch a new community focused on women living with menopause, an experience that will reach more than a billion women by 2025. Despite the fact that all women with ovaries will go through menopause, there are relatively few online communities dedicated to it -- which Peanut sees as an untapped market.

Peanut's real strength, however, is not in the types of communities it grows on its platform, but how they're created.

There has not yet been a social network that focused on "building a platform for women, thinking about women's needs and built by a women," explains Kennedy. "So what we end up doing is using things that already exist -- trying to twist them and mold them into what we need, and never getting it exactly right," she says. "We can do better than that."

One small example of this is the recent launch of Peanut's "Mute Keywords" feature that allows women to remove certain types of discussions from their feeds and notifications. Some women used this to create a coronavirus-free news feed that focused on other aspects of motherhood. Others who were trying to conceive muted conversations around "pregnancy," which they found emotionally triggering.

With the Series A's close, Peanut says Naza Metghalchi from EQT Ventures joins the company's majority-female board, alongside Hannah Seal from existing investor Index Ventures.

"Peanuts user engagement metrics are a testament to the app's ability to act as a true emotional companion throughout women's journeys," said Naza Metghalchi, venture lead and investment advisor at EQT Ventures, in a statement. "The EQT Ventures team is excited to partner with Michelle and continue to grow Peanut into a platform that serves all women at different life milestones, exploring topics beyond fertility and motherhood which have already seen such huge traction."

The additional funding allows London-based Peanut to expand its business and hire more engineers to join its current team of just 16.

"I think having closed a round in this climate is great for the team," says Kennedy. "It's also great for the community because it means that we can grow the team, build quicker, build faster and develop the product more quickly," she adds.
Montana Department of Corrections Director Reginald Michael on Tuesday told a state legislative committee the agency's "greatest success" is seeing just two positive COVID-19 cases for those in state custody. But a lawmaker questioned that characterization, given how few inmates  just seven  have been tested.

"The numbers at this point have been our greatest success," Michael told the state Law and Justice Interim Committee during its agency oversight hearing on Tuesday. "The number before you, it represents something I will tell you other state corrections departments are not experiencing. There are a few, but not many of our states have numbers similar to the numbers we have in front of you."

Sen. Diane Sands, D-Missoula, however, called the statistic "misleading," considering just seven  less than 1%  have been tested out of 1,800 inmates locked in secure corrections facilities. The number of those tested was not included in the agency's presentation, but came forth when Rep. Casey Knudsen, R-Malta, asked for it.

Michael told the state Law and Justice Interim Committee during an agency oversight hearing on Tuesday that no positive cases have emerged from within the state's correctional facilities, and tests have been administered only to those who are experiencing symptoms, as recommended by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. The two who have tested positive, Michael said, were in custody at a pre-release center in Gallatin County.

The director did say he was concerned, however, what broader testing practices may reveal. Gov. Steve Bullock has promised testing capacity for the Department of Corrections to soon reach 772 tests per month, 15% of which will be allotted to staff, while the remaining 85% will be administered to inmates. These tests will be conducted on those not showing any symptoms, as a measure to gauge the actual infection rate within the prison system.

Three staff, including one DOC employee and two employees at DOC-contracted facilities, so far have tested positive for the novel coronavirus, as well, Michael said, although employees typically get tested through their primary care provider outside of the facilities at which they work. Seventeen DOC employees have reported getting tested, while 24 employees at DOC-contracted facilities have reported getting tested, according to Tuesday's testimony.

Michael told the committee he is concerned about what may come after speaking with Corrections Department directors in other states who have begun testing inmates beyond those showing symptoms. Another state "very near to us," Michael said, recently administered 480 tests, with more than 50% coming back positive. Another state, according to Michael, administered more than 800 tests and yielded positive results in more than 80%.

"I am hoping and praying that we don't have similar percentages to places like that," Michael told the committee. "But I would not be shocked if we do have some positive tests that come up."

In March, DOC spokesperson Carolynn Bright told the Missoulian that the agency received eight inmates that month from other states, including Idaho, as well as Alaska, California, Minnesota, Nebraska, Texas and Washington. Four inmates were transferred to Montana facilities in February, coming from California, New Mexico and Ohio.

Bright on Thursday told the Missoulian the state "near us" to which Michael referred was Colorado. No inmates have been transferred to the Montana Women's Prison from the states Michael spoke of, Bright added, but she was still unclear about the Montana State Prison, where men are held, at the Missoulian's press time.

Bright also said the DOC has received the tests to begin testing those without symptoms, which officials have referred to as "sentinel" testing, and will begin administering those tests in the coming weeks.

Sands, in light of the low test numbers in Montana and high case counts revealed by widespread testing in other states' prisons, asked Michael on Tuesday what plan is in place to prepare for such a pileup here. Michael told the committee there is no written plan in place, but said DOC officials have talked about purchasing trailers to isolate and treat COVID-19 patients separately from the prison population.

"It's good to see we have such low tests proving positive now but given that we have tested so few, that is, I think, very misleading," Sands told Michael.

"The department also looks forward to beginning sentinel testing as it will allow us to monitor a cross-section of staff and/or offenders for the virus," Bright said Thursday when asked to respond to Sands' comment. "By testing groups of individuals who reside in higher-risk, congregate settings (like correctional facilities), who do not demonstrate active symptoms (asymptomatic), we are able to detect and respond to the transmission of the COVID -19 virus. This testing can guide response efforts and better protect offenders and employees alike."

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LAS VEGAS, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Abacode, one of the fastest growing Cybersecurity Services and Compliance Readiness firms in the United States, announced today that it will open a second 24/7 Security Operations Center in Las Vegas.

Abacode is a leader in helping organizations implement next-generation virtual SOC services that include SIEM, IDS and EDR solutions. Due to their growth in this area, there was a need to continue bringing redundant capabilities for clients and partners.

"We're taking on new clients at a very good pace and have seen a lot of businesses transition from their current provider, or in-house, to our next-generation SOC so this addition was a must," said Rolando Torres  COO of Abacode. "Being SOC 2, HIPAA and PCI DSS compliant allows us to compete incredibly well with all of the large Security Operations Center providers and it's great to hear the amazing feedback we're getting in the market. It's an exciting time for us."

In addition to opening a new facility, Abacode has continued its support of Academic Innovation & Research and thus enlisted the help of Professor Juyeon Jo, Director - Cybersecurity Center at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV). Professor Jo is helping facilitate collaboration between students and faculty at Abacode's SOC and Cybersecurity Applied Research Lab (CARL). Dr. Jo commented, "Cybersecurity students and faculty at UNLV look forward to working more closely with Abacode. We feel we have an increasingly strong cybersecurity program that will make this a valuable relationship for everyone."

About Abacode:

Abacode is a Managed Cybersecurity & Compliance Services Provider.

Leveraging a unified platform, Abacode combines leading technologies and professional services to implement holistic, framework-based Cybersecurity programs for clients throughout the world. Our unique model enables organizations to make objective and reasoned security investments based on their business needs, budget, and risk tolerance.

Abacode has become one of the fastest growing Cybersecurity & Compliance services firms by empowering companies to implement a Cyber Capability Maturity Model and consolidate all cybersecurity initiatives under one roof.

Offices in the Americas and Europe. Learn more at https://abacode.com or [email protected]

Contact: Michael Ferris, [email protected]

SOURCE Abacode Cybersecurity & Compliance

Related Links

https://abacode.com


MUNICH, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Anquan Capital Pte. Ltd , a Singapore-based group of technology companies has partnered with the FinTech arm of the German WEG Bank AG , which operates under the brand name TEN31 .

Anquan Capital has launched a number of innovative technology companies including Zilliqa , Anqlave and Aqilliz . TEN31 Bank, which is currently developing into a specialist institute for blockchain-related FinTech companies, will implement joint projects with these companies in the future.

The new partners will announce specific projects over time. However, it is expected, for example, that the legal framework for crypto storage that has been in place since early 2020 will play a role. TEN31 has positioned itself accordingly at an early stage and secured permission under the grandfathering rule of the German banking code.

This collaboration will explore opportunities between Anquan Capital through Anqlave and Zilliqa. Anqlave develops custody and secure data storage solutions for enterprises, while Zilliqa is a high-throughput, high-performance blockchain for next-generation enterprises and applications.

With the new partnership, the strategy of TEN31 Bank continues to consistently focus on strategic partnerships. With this important step, the vision of the founder, Matthias von Hauff, to shape the bank into a full-service provider for FinTech customers has become a reality.

Like all TEN31 partners, Anquan attaches great importance to transparency and compliance. The partnership between the two groups now makes it possible in particular to develop services in the financial sector that require a solid regulatory framework.

Matthias von Hauff, CEO of TEN31 Bank: "With Anquan as a shareholder, we have added yet another ideal partner to our network. Not only do we benefit from their excellent technologies, but we also secure a spearhead in the Asian region in the long term."

Max Kantelia, CEO of Anquan: "I've always said that bringing blockchain into the mainstream requires a concerted, multi-sectoral effort by legacy institutions, emerging tech companies, and regulators. That's why Ten31's forward-thinking strategy and its clear role as a regulated bridge between the legacy and blockchain holds enormous appeal for me. Today, we can see blockchain creeping from the fringes of a technology sector that few understand, and into our daily lives. It is a perfect time to collaborate with TEN31 to explore how unlocking the potential of DLT technologies could accelerate digital transformation and revolutionise finance for everybody."

A further positive signal for the industry is the German Federal Government's progress in pushing ahead with regulation. Industry experts are eagerly awaiting the next draft bill on crypto custody and further legislative changes in 2020. The recently published decision of the German Bundestag underlines the increasing importance of the necessary regulatory framework.

Interested companies can contact the contact persons at TEN31 Bank at [email protected]

About WEG Bank AG/TEN 31 Bank

"Always one step ahead": With this mission, the German WEG Bank AG initially dedicated itself to the housing industry and secured a role as a leading institute for WEGs and property managers. With the founding of the product "TEN31", the institute remains true to its innovative spirit and establishes a second product line: banking services in innovative payment transactions. TEN31 focuses in particular on the everyday usability of digital currencies with the aim of providing true added value for all parties involved. TEN31 is the bridge between conventional banking and the blockchain world.

About Anquan Capital

Anquan was founded in 2015 with the goal of incubating and taking-to-market technology companies

based upon original academic research. Anquan has launched three companies to-date:

Zilliqa , the high- throughput public blockchain platform

, the high- throughput public blockchain platform Anqlave , which is building hardware-grade security products for the storage of digital assets using hardware rooted security

, which is building hardware-grade security products for the storage of digital assets using hardware rooted security Aqilliz, which is building blockchain based products to bring greater transparency and balance to the digital marketing industry

Media Contact

WEG Bank AG / TEN31

Matthias von Hauff

CEO & Founder

+49-89-809-1346-0

Anquan Capital Pte Ltd

Max Kantelia

CEO & Co-Founder

[email protected]

SOURCE WEG Bank AG
Justice Ibrahim Muhammad

As a measure to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease, the Chief Justice of Nigeria (CJN), Justice Ibrahim Muhammad has directed all Chief Judges ( at the federal and state levels) to urgently take steps to decongest prisons across the country, The Nation reports.

Justice Muhammad, in a circular issued on Friday, in his capacity as the Chairman of the National Judicial Council (NJC), directed the Chief Judges to ensure that criminal cases were speedily attended to, while they are also required to visit prisons within their jurisdictions.

The CJN, who regretted the large number of awaiting trial inmates in prisons, said: it has become imperative for your lordships to embark on immediate visit to all custodial/correctional centres within your respective states to identify and release deserving inmates, where that has not been done already.

Details shortly
Over the last weekend, protests in Mong Kok returned alongside the erosion of Hong Kongs free press as police harassed journalists. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its affiliate the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA) urge authorities to end the harassment of journalists and provide them with a safe platform to report on protests.

According to HKJA there were multiple reports on May 10 of police pepper spraying, intimidating and disrupting journalists who were attempting to cover the protests. In particular, two student journalists with Student Depth Media aged 12 and 16 were detained by police while dispersing the Mong Kok protest. The two were taken to Tsim Sha Tsui police station, given a warning and released without formal charges.

While there has been a decline in the number of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong since the Covid-19 outbreak, demonstrations resumed over the last weekend in Mong Kok on May 10 as the central district returns to normalcy.

The HKJA deeply regret the polices inaction and reluctance to investigate police violence against journalists.

IFJ said: There is no adequate form of redress for Hong Kong polices constant attacks against the media, much less the detainment of two young journalists. The IFJ condemns the incidents and urge police to ensure journalists can cover protests safely.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:44:46|Editor: huaxia

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by Sanaa Kamal

RAMALLAH, May 15 (Xinhua) -- In light of the economic and political challenges, the Fatah-ruled Palestinian Authority has limited options to respond to the Israeli decision to annex parts of the West Bank considered Palestinian land by the international law, Palestinian analysts said.

In April, Benjamin Netanyahu, leader of the right-wing Likud party, signed a power-sharing deal to form a unity government with his former opponent, Benny Gantz, leader of the centrist Blue and White party.

Under the deal, both leaders agreed to impose Israeli sovereignty on territories "that are part of the historic lands of Israel" on July 1.

The move sparked harsh criticism from the Palestinians who called the decision the end of a two-state solution.

In a bid to prevent it from happening, the Palestinian leadership has threatened to freeze all security cooperation with Israel as well as other agreements.

However, as some Palestinian experts said it will not be a smooth move.

Mass protests are out of the question, said George Jaqman, director of the Institute for Democratic Studies, a Ramallah-based Palestinian think tank.

"Annexation of the Palestinian lands is not a new policy. Israel used to steal them before by setting up their settlements here. But Israel did it without an official announcement," he said.

Jaqman thought the PA lacks tools to prevent Israel from continuing to do so in the future. "There is no concrete Palestinian plan that details how the PA can contain Israel's annexation," he added.

Therefore, big powers like Russia could help prevent that from happening if they pressure on the U.S. and Israel.

After U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and decided to move embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in 2018, Washington has lost its legitimacy in the eyes of the Palestinians.

Nevertheless, the Trump administration that orchestrated the move has lost the support from some of its own people even after the outbreak of COVID-19.

"That's why Trump is seeking to show results in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to get the votes of the American Zionists that could secure his re-election," said Alian al-Hindi, a Ramallah-based political analyst.

The expert is also certain that the PA cannot sit idly by watching how Israel goes ahead with its annexation plan, calling on Fatah to stop abiding by the Oslo Accords.

Ahed Ferwana, a Gaza-based analyst, offered another measure.

"The EU that has been mediating between Israel and the Palestinians should impose sanctions on the Israeli occupation. Only then, it will make them change their decision," he told Xinhua.

UN data show there are 31 Jewish-only settlements built in the Jordan Valley, most of which are agriculture-based, and resided by some 8,000 settlers.

Since its occupation in 1967, Israel has set up some 90 military posts in the area and forcefully evicted around 50,000 Palestinians. Enditem
The Pennsylvania legislature passed a bill to allow real estate activity to resume throughout the state, as long as it abides by federal safety guidelines. Read more

In-person home showings will continue to be banned in Philadelphia and its collar counties, as Gov. Tom Wolf plans to veto legislation Pennsylvania lawmakers passed Thursday to reopen the real estate industry statewide, according to a Wolf spokesperson.

The governor had denied business shutdown waiver requests from the real estate industry, which argues that providing shelter is essential and the inability to conduct business in person is an unnecessary roadblock.

Pennsylvania is the only state to continue to call real estate activity nonessential during the coronavirus pandemic and restrict in-person transactions for a majority of residents. Only real estate agents in counties in the yellow phase of reopening can resume certain in-person activity for new transactions. More than half of Pennsylvanias counties are now in the yellow phase, with more to follow. But the Philadelphia region is not close to moving out of the red phase.

 READ MORE: Coronavirus delays Philadelphias busy spring housing market

Real estate professionals have been relying on virtual tours of properties and workarounds to close sales, which have dropped during the pandemic.

The bill requires the state to issue a waiver to its business closure order for real estate activity that can adhere to guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. State Rep. Todd Polinchock (R., Bucks) introduced the legislation, which headed to the governors desk after the House passed it Thursday.

I cannot thank the members of the House and Senate enough for responding to this issue with urgency and recognizing it as the true crisis it is, Polinchock said in a statement following the bills passage. It is well past time we give the people of our commonwealth back the access to housing, which never should have been taken away in the first place.

 READ MORE: Coronavirus leaves home buyers and sellers in limbo  and at financial risk

The Pennsylvania Association of Realtors has been lobbying on behalf of its 35,000 members to change the industrys status, saying shelter is always essential.

Were seeing many Pennsylvanians who are facing tremendous difficulties and financial hardships due to this shutdown, Bill Festa, the associations president, said. Its outrageous that a majority of Pennsylvanians continue to be unnecessarily restricted from purchasing or selling a home.
In theory, White Lines (Netflix), a 10-part murder mystery set in Ibiza, is very much my bag. There are Balearic beaches, shimmering seas, Romanian gangsters, clubs filled with fit extras, orgies, murders and an inflatable banana full of cocaine. Speaking of which, Laurence Fox is in it, too.

The soundtrack bulges with Manchester classics and Euro-house nonsense. Most enticingly of all, the creator is Alex Pina, the Spanish maestro behind Netflixs biggest non-English hit, Money Heist, a stylish and compelling thriller about robbers who seize the Royal Mint in Madrid. If you were setting out to make a slick, sun-drenched Anglo-Spanish thriller, his would be the first name on the list. I looked at all this and thought, yes, thatll be a laugh, some summery trash to take my mind off the fact Ill never leave the house again.

So I am baffled to report that somehow, from these promising elements, and Laurence Fox, Pina and director Nick Hamm have created a lumpy, leaden first episode that contrives to be, of all things, dull. Actually, to be fair to Fox, hes not even in the opener. He was heavily trailed, mostly by himself in The Times, but you must wait until the second episode to see his turn as a raver-turned-cult-guru, and hear his Manchester-Yorkshire-West Country accent. To be even fairer to Fox, he has spent a lot of time crafting the image of someone you might get off with on holiday only to discover they went to Harrow.

In the opening scene, Zoe Walker (Laura Haddock) and her husband arrive in present-day Almeria, southern Spain, to identify the body of her brother Axel (Tom Rhys Harries), who went missing 20 years ago. Axel was a fun- and drug-loving DJ whose corpse has mummified in the desert, like King Tootenkhamun or Ramesesh. He was thought to be in India, so its suspicious that he has appeared on land owned by the Calafat family, who own lots of clubs in Ibiza and want to build a new casino. Zoe sends her husband back home to look after their child while she heads to Ibiza to investigate her brothers disappearance. There she meets Marcus (Daniel Mays), Axels best friend, now 44, who still lives on the island and supplements his DJing income by selling drugs. He has problems of his own: chiefly Romanian smugglers and an ex-wife, Anna (Angela Griffin), who runs elite sex parties. In flashback, we start to see the events that led up to Axels disappearance, as Axel, Marcus and two other friends leave the, er, oppressive authoritarianism of Nineties Manchester to pursue their dreams.

Visually, it has that sun-bleached nightmarish quality of a hangover abroad, when everything is slightly too bright, and it must have cost a packet. There are one or two good jokes, although it is far too pleased with itself about the banana boat scene. Pina is skilled at juggling different strands, building them in to each other and sucking you in with twists. The problem is mainly the acting. Zoe talks to her therapist via video call, in scenes designed to invest us in her quest, but Haddock, best known for the Guardians of the Galaxy films, is oddly flat. Mays seemingly cant decide whether to play Marcus for dissolute menace or slapstick lovability, and falls into the cracks between the two. The Nineties sections are more interesting, but they come too slowly for us to feel theres much at stake. White Lines has all the gear, but no idea.
The Delhi government on Thursday submitted a proposal to the Centre on lockdown relaxations post-May 17 and suggested the opening of markets, shopping complexes and operation of buses and metro services with strict social distancing norms. The government has suggested operation of construction activities in the national capital and that movement of labourers within Delhi be allowed, sources in the government told PTI.

Taxis with two passengers will be allowed, they said, adding that in buses, 20 passengers are likely to be allowed to travel under strict social distancing norms. "The government has suggested that opening of markets, complexes and malls should be allowed in Delhi. However, shops engaged in non-essential items in shopping complexes and malls should be allowed to operate on an odd-even basis," a source said.

In the next two-three days, the government will come out with a standard operating procedure to allow economic activities from Monday in the national capital. The nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25 to April 14, then extended to May 3 and again to May 17 to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus. Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that different economic activities will be allowed in the city from May 18 based on decisions taken by the Centre on lockdown relaxation.

Addressing an online media briefing, he said most people suggested that schools, colleges, barbershops, spa, salons, cinema halls and swimming pools should not be opened post-May 17, and there should be just limited operation of metro services. On Tuesday, Mr Kejriwal had sought suggestions from Delhiites on lockdown relaxations post-May 17 and asked them to send their views by 5 pm on Wednesday.

During a video conference chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with chief ministers of different states on Monday, Mr Kejriwal had said barring containment zones, economic activities should be allowed to resume in the national capital. Buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws should be allowed to operate in the city but with social-distancing, he said during the online briefing on Thursday.

"The country, including Delhi, has been closed for the last one and a half months due to coronavirus-induced lockdown. It was easy to close, but we have to work very hard to open up the economy. We usually do hard work. The coming times are very difficult," Mr Kejriwal said.

The chief minister said the government had received over 5 lakh suggestions from Delhiites on lockdown relaxations post-May 17 and most of them suggested strict action against those not wearing masks and violating social-distancing norms. "Different activities will be allowed in Delhi from Monday based on Centre's decisions on lockdown relaxation. But, it is sure that we have to follow social-distancing strictly," Mr Kejriwal said.

"We also got suggestions from market associations and most of them advocated the opening of markets on an odd-even basis. Some people said malls can open by allowing opening of one-third shops," he said. Some suggestions were in favour of closure of hotels, but most of them advocated the opening of restaurants through which home-delivery of food and takeaway facility can be allowed, he said.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had recently asked states to send their proposals on what they want post-May 17 when the third phase of lockdown ends, Arvind Kejriwal said. On Tuesday, Mr Kejriwal had made it clear that the lockdown cannot be lifted completely given that the city was recording a high number of coronavirus cases daily.

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown extended in Mumbai, Pune till May 31, India's COVID-19 cases cross 80,000

Also read: Coronavirus: Delhi Medical Association writes to PM Modi over non-payment of salaries for three months
WINNIPEG - When Manitoba seniors receive a special cheque from the provincial government later this month, they'll also get a letter from Premier Brian Pallister.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Manitoba premier Brian Pallister makes his way to question period at the Manitoba Legislature in Winnipeg, Wednesday, May 13, 2020. When Manitoba seniors receive a special $200 cheque from the provincial government later this month, they'll also receive a letter from Premier Brian Pallister. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods

WINNIPEG - When Manitoba seniors receive a special cheque from the provincial government later this month, they'll also get a letter from Premier Brian Pallister.

The Canadian Taxpayers Federation says the move may come across as partisan activity on the public dime, but Pallister says he's simply thanking seniors in a non-partisan way.

"I'm going to send a letter with (the cheques) to thank and congratulate our seniors, and I'll probably sign that, darn right," Pallister said in an interview with The Canadian Press.

"Six months into a newly elected government with a strong mandate, we're making a decision to try to show support, affection  quite frankly  and respect for our seniors."

Pallister announced last week that every senior, regardless of income level, would get $200 to help deal with extra costs related to the COVID-19 pandemic, such as grocery deliveries.

Some critics have said the plan, which will cost the provincial treasury an estimated $45 million for about 225,000 seniors, is flawed because it is not targeted to low-income seniors and offers nothing to those in need under 65.

Pallister, who turned 65 last year, has said he will donate his cheque to charity and urged others who don't need the money to do the same.

Todd MacKay, prairie director of the Canadian Taxpayers Federation, said attaching a letter from the premier to the cheques is fishy.

"It absolutely could be conceived as partisan, there's no question about that. That's something people will have to judge for themselves," MacKay said.

"This isn't the premier's money. This is coming from taxpayers."

MacKay said Manitoba should have an independent person, such as the auditor general, review government communications to ensure they are not partisan.

The Opposition New Democrats said Pallister's intent is obvious and they would like to insert a letter of their own.

"Everyone can see from a mile away that Mr. Pallister is playing politics with this letter," NDP Leader Wab Kinew said.

"I'd like to be able to include a letter of my own, where I could call attention to the job cuts and other actions that the premier is taking that are really harmful right now."

Special cheques from governments have happened before in other provinces.

In 2013, Nova Scotia's then-premier Darrell Dexter faced accusations of campaigning on the taxpayer dime when he wrote a note that accompanied rebate cheques to low-income seniors shortly before a provincial election.

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In 2006, the Alberta government under premier Ralph Klein at the time, issued $400 cheques to all residents as a prosperity dividend from high oil prices and a large budget surplus. They were nicknamed Ralph bucks.

Pallister said he is far from calling an election. His Progressive Conservatives won a second consecutive term last September in a vote he called a year ahead of schedule.

Manitoba's next election is slated for October 2023.

"People who have known me over the years understand I do not pander," Pallister said.

"I have never tried to buy a vote and I never will."

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2020
Some investors rely on dividends for growing their wealth, and if you're one of those dividend sleuths, you might be intrigued to know that Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. (HKG:576) is about to go ex-dividend in just 4 days. You can purchase shares before the 19th of May in order to receive the dividend, which the company will pay on the 15th of July.

The upcoming dividend for Zhejiang Expressway is HK$0.40 per share, increased from last year's total dividends per share of HK$0.35. If you buy this business for its dividend, you should have an idea of whether Zhejiang Expressway's dividend is reliable and sustainable. We need to see whether the dividend is covered by earnings and if it's growing.

See our latest analysis for Zhejiang Expressway

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. Zhejiang Expressway paid out 53% of its earnings to investors last year, a normal payout level for most businesses. That said, even highly profitable companies sometimes might not generate enough cash to pay the dividend, which is why we should always check if the dividend is covered by cash flow. The company paid out 104% of its free cash flow over the last year, which we think is outside the ideal range for most businesses. Cash flows are usually much more volatile than earnings, so this could be a temporary effect - but we'd generally want look more closely here.

While Zhejiang Expressway'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. Were this to happen repeatedly, this would be a risk to Zhejiang Expressway's ability to maintain its dividend.

Click here to see the company's payout ratio, plus analyst estimates of its future dividends.

SEHK:576 Historical Dividend Yield May 14th 2020

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

Story continues

Businesses with strong growth prospects usually make the best dividend payers, because it's easier to grow dividends when earnings per share are improving. If earnings fall far enough, the company could be forced to cut its dividend. With that in mind, we're encouraged by the steady growth at Zhejiang Expressway, with earnings per share up 5.3% on average 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.

Zhejiang Expressway also issued more than 5% of its market cap in new stock during the past year, which we feel is likely to hurt its dividend prospects in the long run. It's hard to grow dividends per share when a company keeps creating new shares.

Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. Since the start of our data, ten years ago, Zhejiang Expressway has lifted its dividend by approximately 1.4% a year on average.

To Sum It Up

Is Zhejiang Expressway worth buying for its dividend? Earnings per share have grown somewhat, although Zhejiang Expressway paid out over half its profits and the dividend was not well covered by free cash flow. It's not an attractive combination from a dividend perspective, and we're inclined to pass on this one for the time being.

So if you're still interested in Zhejiang Expressway despite it's poor dividend qualities, you should be well informed on some of the risks facing this stock. Every company has risks, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Zhejiang Expressway (of which 1 is potentially serious!) you should know about.

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 United Kingdom has urged Myanmar's military to extend its recently announced cease-fire to include the escalating conflict in northern Rakhine and Chin states where civilians are suffering a heavy toll at the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

The UK Mission to the United Nations made the appeal on Thursday after a closed meeting of the UN Security Council that it called because of growing concern about fighting in the two states between government forces and the Arakan Army, a well-armed guerrilla force representing the Buddhist Rakhine minority.

A mission statement said the pandemic is putting vulnerable people at risk of a humanitarian emergency, especially refugees, the displaced and the Rohingya Muslim minority, which faces additional restrictions.

More than 700,000 Rohingya fled to Bangladesh from Rakhine after Myanmar security forces launched a crackdown in August 2017 in response to an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. Bangladesh currently houses over 1 million Rohingya refugees.

The council did not issue a statement after the meeting, which heard a briefing by Christine Schraner Burgener, the UN special envoy for Myanmar.

But four European Union council members Estonia, Belgium, France and Germany and former council member Poland also expressed concern about the military escalation in Rakhine and Chin states and called for an immediate, comprehensive and nationwide cease-fire.

The EU members emphasized the importance of an inclusive response to the COVID-19 pandemic that protects all communities and takes into account the vulnerability of refugees and internally displaced persons.

In late April, the UN human rights investigator on Myanmar, Yanghee Lee, called for a new investigation into allegations and crimes against humanity during the recent fighting in Rakhine and Chin. She accused Myanmar's military of inflicting immense suffering on ethnic minorities in the two states.

Lee linked the current situation in Rakhine and Chin to the government's actions against the Rohingya, for which no senior officers have faced justice and token punishments were given to a handful of low-ranking security personnel.

The UK mission said the conflict in Rakhine and Chin has forced more people to flee their homes, restricted access for humanitarian workers and increased civilian casualties, including the killing of a World Health Organization employee on April 20.

The EU members strongly condemned the deadly attack on the WHO vehicle that killed the employee and backed Secretary-General Antonio Guterres' appeal for a global ceasefire.

The UK said it recognizes that Myanmar is taking steps to address the pandemic, including measures to slow the spread of the virus.

The UK supports these initial positive steps, the UK statement said. However, while conflict continues in Rakhine and Chin States, vulnerable people there are at even greater risk than elsewhere from Covid-19.

The conflict also makes it more challenging to address the long-term underlying causes of conflict in Rakhine and to create conditions conducive to the safe, voluntary, and dignified repatriation of Rohingya refugees, which remains an important and urgent priority, the UK said.

Both the UK and EU countries urged Myanmar to address the underlying causes of the conflicts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Brennan Waited 3 Weeks to Tell Republicans About Bombshell Russia Intel He Briefed to Pelosi and Schiff

After briefing Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff about bombshell intelligence on Russia in August 2016, CIA Director John Brennan waited nearly three weeks before briefing senior Republicans and the rest of the Congressional Gang of Eight, according to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

After briefing President Barack Obama and White House officials about the intelligence in the first week of August, Brennan provided a one-on-one briefing to Pelosi, the House minority leader, on Aug. 11, 2016. Brennan then briefed Schiff, the ranking member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, on Aug. 17, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Aug. 26, according to the third volume of the Senate intelligence committees Russia report.

Nearly four weeks after briefing Pelosi, Brennan informed the five members of the Congressional Gang of Eightincluding the top Republicans in the House and Senatein a series of one-on-one meetings on Sept. 6, 2016.

The sequence of the briefings is a major departure from the standard Gang of Eight procedure of group briefings which include all eight members. Brennans choice to delay informing Republicans by three weeks is likely to raise concerns that politics played a role in the dissemination of intelligence which the Senate report described as the wake up call for the Obama administrations response to the alleged Russian operation to influence the 2016 election.

Because these events unfolded in August, concurrent with the August congressional recess, the opportunity to convene a Gang of Eight session in a classified setting as a group would not have occurred until September, the report states.

The content of Brennans briefings remains classified and little is known beyond anonymously sourced accounts in The Washington Post and The New York Times. President Barack Obama reacted to the intelligence with grave concern, according to Susan Rice. The allegations matched closely with some of the contents of the Steele dossier.

In public testimony, Brennan said the briefings were consistent with the findings of the Intelligence Community Assessment released on January 5, 2017.

The substance of those briefings was entirely consistent with the main judgments contained in the January classified and unclassified assessments namely, that Russias goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton and harm her electability and potential presidency, and help President Trumps election chances, Brennan told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on May 23, 2017.

According to The Washington Post, Brennan relayed the intelligence to Obama in early August via an envelope sent to the White House. The contents of the envelopeattributed to a highly-placed source within the Kremlinclaimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had personally given instructions to interfere in the U.S. election to damage then-candidate Hillary Clinton and assist then-candidate Donald Trump. Further reporting by The New York Times unearthed issues with the credibility of the source behind that intelligence, including suspicions that the person may be a double agent. The Epoch Times has not independently verified the claims made by the Post and New York Times.

Brennans intelligence triggered a flurry of activity at the National Security Council, which held a series of small group meetings to coordinate a response. Before the meetings were expanded to include the departments of the Treasury, Defense, and State in early September, the limited list of attendees included Brennan, FBI Director James Comey, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, NSA Director Admiral Michael Rogers, Department for Homeland Security Director Jeh Johnson, Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Avril Haines, and Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Lisa Monaco.
Mr Sabastian Mawuli Hotor, the Upper East Regional Director of the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) has advised retailers in the Region to practice good storage and stocking practices.



He said such as practice known as First Expired First Out (FEFO) would be to rid the market of unwholesome products.



He explained that products near expiration dates should be arranged in front of shelves while those with later dates of expiration be arranged behind to easily notice expired products for appropriate action.



Mr Hotor gave the advice when he addressed the media at Pumpuugu, a community at Sherigu in the Bolgatanga Municipality after his outfit destroyed some unwholesome regulated products valued at an estimated cost of Gh 203, 181.64.



He urged members of the public to check for expiry dates and registration status of products before buying and insisted that regulated products be purchased from accredited and recognized sources to ensure the safety of members of the public.



Public health and safety is our prime objective, and our activities are always geared towards providing assurance of safe food, drugs, cosmetics, household chemicals, medical devices, and all other regulated products in Ghana, he emphasized.



Mr Hotor said the FDA during its routine Post Market Surveillance activities in the Region confiscated several unwholesome products such as food products and supplements, pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, herbal medicines, and household chemicals from the market over the past one year.



The Regional Director indicated that the purpose of the exercise was to rid the market of expired, counterfeit, contaminated, unregistered, and all other kinds of unwholesome regulated products on the market.



He added that the exercise was to prevent the potential re-entry of those unwholesome regulated products into the supply chain, and said the disposal consignments were seized from provisions shops, Over the Counter Chemical shops, pharmacies, warehouses, herbal clinics, cosmetic shops and open markets across all 15 districts of the Region.



Mr Hotor further called on members of the public to: Report anybody selling expired, unregistered and unwholesome products to the FDA via the following media platforms; WhatsApp 0206973065, Facebook @ Food and Drugs Authority Ghana, Twitter @gh_fda, [email protected] Food and Drugs Authority Ghana.



He said the FDA could also be contacted through the hotlines; 0299802932/0299802933 or SMS to 4015.



The Director acknowledged the collaboration of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Environmental and Sanitation Agency, the Ghana Standards Authority, Ghana Police Service, the Customs Division of the Ghana Revenue Authority, Pharmacy Council, the Economic and Organised Crime Office, Ghana Health Service, the Ghana National Fire Service and other stakeholders who complement efforts of the FDA to execute its mandate.



Mr Hotor urged the general public to continue to observe all protocols from the Ghana Health Service towards the prevention of the spread of COVID-19.

Source: GNA









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Two coronavirus cases have been identified at a primary school attended by vulnerable pupils in Derby.

Springfield Primary School has been open for vulnerable children and those of key workers over the past few weeks, despite a nationwide closure enforced by the government in a bid to slow the spread of the killer bug.

Everybody who has been in contact with the two cases will have to self-isolate to prevent a further spread of the disease.

The school will also be closed for 14 days while deep cleaning is carried out, the Mirror reported.

David Blackwell, chief executive of the Odyssey Collaborative Trust, which runs the Springfield Primary in Spondon, said: 'The diagnosis was reported to us on Thursday and so the school will close now for 14 days because all of those who were attending are now in self-isolation and there is no need for us to be open.'

'We will be deep cleaning the school and carrying out additional cleaning.

'But we are happy that the cases do not affect any other school in the trust and is confined to Springfield Primary.'

Springfield Primary School, above, will now be closed for 14 days while deep cleaning takes place

Schools were shuttered in March after Education Secretary Gavin Williamson revealed that this year's summer exam series and SATS tests had been scrapped inan unprecedented move.

'The spike of the virus is progressing at a faster pace than anticipated,' he announced at the time of the closures.

'This will be for all children except to those of key workers and children who are most vulnerable.

'The scientific advice shows that these settings are safe for this small number of children to continue attending, but asking others to stay away will go towards helping us the slow the spread of this virus.'

Vulnerable children are those who have a social worker and those with an educational health and care plan.

Boris Johnson has since announced his five-stage easing of lockdown measures, and will reopen primary schools from June 1 - a more which has sparked backlash from parents and teachers nationwide.

England is also the only UK nation to set a date for schools to start to reopen.

Speaking to DerbyshireLive earlier this week about the Government's drive to get pupils back into primary schools, Mr Blackwell said that keeping to Government guidelines and having 15 pupils in a classroom to ensure social distancing is almost impossible to achieve.

Mr Blackwell said: 'These two cases emphasise what can happen very quickly in a school environment.

He added that Government guidance suggested pupil groups should be working with the same teacher all the time in a 'bubble, but that 'This would mean that if anyone had coronavirus confirmed in the group then only those children, and associated staff, would have to self-isolate and not the whole school.'

The National Education Union (NEU), which has 450,000 members, has described the Governments plans as reckless and advised teachers to not engage with the move.

The NASUWT, the UKs second largest teachers union, has also threatened to sue school heads if teachers were expected to go into a school that is not safe.
May 14, 2020



POCATELLO  It wasnt the wind down to his career that Idaho State University Health Center physician and Director Ron Solbrig expected, but like the rest of his work, he found it satisfying.

Im going out with a bang for sure, said Solbrig, age 60, whose last day as director is June 12. And the bang is not over. It is going to be another year of bangs. But It feels like a good use of my skills. It has been intense, satisfying and fulfilling to work on the coronavirus issues and work with all the university committees.

He had hoped this last few months on the job that hes had for the last 13 years could be primarily used to make arrangements for the transition when he was gone.

I havent had the last three months to kick my heels up, get it arranged so everybody else can do the work, and I could lean back a bit for the first time in my career and not work so hard and step out the door and say good-bye, he said. It didnt work out that way. It has been more hours and more intensity than even before, but, again, it has been fulfilling and meaningful work.

After he leaves and during the time a new center physician director is being found, he said he hopes all the centers regular patients  faculty, staff, students and ISU retirees  continue to use the clinics services.

We have an outstanding staff, with part-time physicians Drs. Nancy Alston and Matt Andres and great physician assistants with Jami Price and Supe Lyon, and excellent support staff, he said.

Solbrig, who was born and raised in Idaho Falls, earned his chemistry undergraduate degree at Northwestern University and then worked at the Idaho National Laboratory as a chemist. He then attended medical school at the University of Washington and completed his residency in Casper, Wyoming.

Hes practiced as a physician in a wide variety of roles including private practice, urgent care, emergency room, and in-patient hospital care. At ISU, where hes worked for a total of 20 years, he has taught in the residency program in addition to being Health Center director. The latter job, he said, is a fine one that he recommends to his replacement.

It is a great job  good people, good variety and interesting work Solbrig said. You get to help a lot of people and be part of the university community. I have really felt with this job, and my entire career, that my life and time were meaningfully spent and I have helped a few people along the way.

He said he is looking forward to pursuing old hobbies and passions, and new ones. He is already enrolled in the ISU College of Technologys unmanned aerial systems program that begins Aug. 17, a likely sign that Solbrig will stay engaged in his retirement.
Shaggy (voiced by Will Forte) and Scooby-Doo (Frank Welker) in the movie "Scoob!" (Warner Bros.)

It pains me to report that, despite the exclamation point at the end of its title, the new animated feature Scoob! is not a musical.

Not entirely, anyway, although it does have its share of hummable highlights. The ever-durable Scooby-Doo theme song plays over a montage of familiar high jinks and freakouts, although here the cartoon detective series' flat, hand-drawn style has been duly upgraded with slick, computer-generated visuals. The soundtrack includes brief blasts of Bobby Vinton, Three Dog Night and the Backstreet Boys  little nuggets of pop-cultural memory that, in this case, help illuminate the contours of Shaggys unusually complicated inner life.

Shaggy, you see, was once a sad, lonely, Scooby-less kid, and Scoob!, in keeping with Hollywood franchise-reboot imperatives, doubles as both an update and an origin story: When we first meet Shaggy, he is trudging the sunny streets of Venice Beach, toting a couple of disgusting sandwiches but conspicuously lacking a friend to share them with. Until, that is, he runs into Scooby-Doo, the clumsy but lovable Great Dane whose insatiable appetite rivals Shaggys, as evidenced by the enormous spit-roasted log of meat hes just stolen from a Greek rotisserie.

As thefts go, Scoobys is more than forgivable. (Anyone who has ever been tempted to try something similar  to enjoy not just a few measly shavings of gyro but the whole damn crispy-charred slab  might feel less judgment than envy.) It forges an unbreakable bond between Scooby and Shaggy, who soon after join forces with Fred, Daphne and Velma and begin unmasking crooks in paranormal drag. Theres a bit of a novel twist in that: Your favorite crime-solving pooch began his career as a petty crook.

Daphne (voiced by Amanda Seyfried), Fred (Zac Efron) and Velma (Gina Rodriguez) in the movie "Scoob!" (Warner Bros.)

But novelty is in otherwise short supply in Scoob!, which devotes roughly an hour-and-a-half to the careful repetition and sometimes tortured elaboration of a tried-and-true formula. This is not entirely a bad or inappropriate thing, since the original series itself was nothing if not formulaic. You could set your watch by the beats of a single episode: the teams investigation of some suspicious activity; the frantic chases and goofy pratfalls and bouts of compulsive overeating; And I wouldve gotten away with it, too, if it werent for you meddling kids and all the rest. The utter predictability was the shows limitation, but also the source of its not-inconsiderable pleasure.

Story continues

Scoob!, directed by the Warner Bros. Animation veteran Tony Cervone, sets out to reproduce some of that pleasure for longtime Scooby-Doo-votees while upgrading it for a new generation of younger viewers. Originally scheduled for theatrical release this week, a plan that was scrapped in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, it arrives now on VOD streaming platforms to provide a few boos, a few wink-wink chuckles and maybe one or two authentic laughs.

And to some extent  owing, perhaps, to lowered expectations and a dispiriting lack of competition  it succeeds. Unlike the earlier live-action features Scooby-Doo (2002) and Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed (2004), Scoob! places its state-of-the-art visual engine in service of an old-school cartoonishness. Scooby himself, despite his spiffy digital makeover, looks pleasingly close to his Saturday-morning counterpart. He sounds a lot like him too, thanks to the expertly high-pitched line readings  or perhaps I should say rine readings  of the actor Frank Welker, a fixture of the franchise since the original series.

Will Forte doesnt fare quite as well as Shaggy, at least if pitch-perfect re-creation is, like, your standard. But the actor does a fine job of capturing the characters sweet, affable foolishness  and, as the plot thickens, his jealousy. To everyones surprise, Scooby turns out to be the linchpin in a scheme  hatched by a mustachioed supervillain named Dick Dastardly (Jason Isaacs)  that somehow pivots on ancient dogs of sometimes mythic renown, from the three-headed Cerberus to Alexander the Greats hunting dog Peritas.

Scooby-Doo (voiced by Frank Welker), Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) and Shaggy (Will Forte) in the movie "Scoob!" (Warner Bros.)

A canine lineage that impressive is bound to give any pup a slightly swollen head, which threatens to drive a serious wedge between Scooby and the comparatively insignificant Shaggy. Their drama cant help but somewhat marginalize the adventures of Fred (Zac Efron), Daphne (Amanda Seyfried) and Velma (Gina Rodriguez), and the performers are content to stay within the parameters of characters we know well: the leader, the charmer and the brains of the outfit, respectively.

That familiarity, again, isnt the problem. What undermines Scoob! is not the comfort of the old but the pressures of the new, the need to sound hip, self-referential and up-to-the-minute at all times. To that end, the characters have been forced to crack wise and make antic comic references to Harry Potter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Shallow from A Star Is Born, Chris Hemsworth, Netflix, toxic masculinity, Judge Judy and Simon Cowell  who naturally turns up in the movie, playing a smugly superior animated version of himself.

If all the banter and in-jokes dont overwhelm you, then Dick Dastardlys army of shapeshifting scorpion robots might do the trick. Or perhaps the spacecraft carrying a dunderheaded do-gooder named Blue Falcon (Mark Wahlberg) and his superior canine sidekick, Dynomutt (Ken Jeong), who may jog the memories of longtime Hanna-Barbera fans. Hijacking the narrative here for tedious stretches, theyre meant to serve as comic-book counterparts to Scooby and Shaggy, of course, but what they really serve is something altogether more depressing and commonplace. Scoob! was never going to be a great musical, but did it have to turn out to be just another superhero movie?
MIDDLETOWN, Ohio  A man is facing a murder charge after police say he shot and killed another man in an apparent fight over $10, according to reports.

Dhameer Haamid Scott, 24, of Middletown, surrendered to police on Wednesday, the Dayton Daily News reports. He has been charged with murder.

Police say the shooting occurred at about 7:44 p.m. Monday. Officers were called to a residence and found John Booker, 36, with gunshot wounds. Booker was taken to a hospital but died of his wounds. Police had been searching for Scott until he turned himself in on Wednesday.

Police tell the Daily News that Scott went to the home where Booker lived on Monday and dropped off $30 for Scotts brother. Bookers mother and the suspects father also lived in the house.

Booker arrived later and took $10 from the cash, which was sitting on a shelf, reports say. The suspects father called Scott and told him Booker had taken the money and refused to put it back when asked, police tell the Daily News.

Police say Scott, armed with a firearm, arrived with another person. Scott and Booker began arguing and then fighting, the Daily News reports, with the altercation ending with the shooting.

More crime-related content on cleveland.com:

Cleveland serial killer Anthony Sowell loses latest attempt to overturn conviction, death sentence

Feds arrest Cleveland man accused of killing infant daughter

Police arrest suspect in robbery of Circle K in Kirtland

Two hospitalized after stabbing in Cleveland, police say

Ohio Supreme Court slaps indefinite suspension on attorney convicted in $17 million oil and gas Ponzi scheme

Judge finds East Cleveland law director acted unethically in wrongful imprisonment case, disqualifies her from representing police officers

Akron police investigate burglary at attorney William T. Whitakers law office, police say
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Global Healthcare Consulting Service Market is valued US$8.75 bn in 2017 and is estimated to reach US$20.6 bn by 2026 at a CAGR of 11.3%.

Healthcare consulting service market is segmented by Type of Service, by End-user & by Region. Types of services are Strategy Consulting, Digital Consulting, IT Consulting, Operations Consulting, Financial Consulting, and HR Talent Consulting. By End, a user is divided into Government Bodies, Payers, Life Science Companies, Providers. Region wise the market is divided into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa, and Latin America.

Importance of growth in the global aging population, the rising value of value-based care, and technical advancements in the healthcare industry are factors driving the growth of the market. The problem of data confidentiality is expected to hamper the growth of the market to a certain extent during the forecast period.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/10789

Based on the type of service, Digital consulting segment accounted for the largest share of the market and it is also expected to register the second highest CAGR during the forecast period. Shift from paper-based healthcare models to digital models in developed markets and increasing healthcare spending for building intelligent hospitals are the main factors driving the growth of this segment.

On the basis of the end user, Government Bodies is the most dominating segment in the market.

Government Market consists of public sectors controlled by national, state or provincial, and local governments. Public sectors can include critical services such as national defense, homeland security, police protection, urban planning, and taxation. So, Government bodies have the resources to pay for more risk-based contracts and agreements, which is a key factor driving this market.

Region wise, healthcare consulting services market was dominated by North America, but Asia Pacific is estimated to register the highest CAGR during the forecast period due to the increasing need for remote care and telemedicine in rural areas in the region. Government institutions in China and India are expected to witness a high demand for healthcare consulting services for bolstering the healthcare infrastructure in these countries.

Key players operate to, Accenture, McKinsey & Company, Cognizant, Deloitte Consulting, KPMG, McKinsey & Company, The Boston consulting group, Huron consulting and Ernst & Young.

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/10789

Scope of Report Healthcare Consulting Service Market

Global Healthcare Consulting Service Market, by Type of Service:

Digital Consulting

It Consulting

Strategy Consulting

Operations Consulting

Financial Consulting

HR & Talent Consulting

Global Healthcare Consulting Service Market, by End-user:

Government Bodies

Players

Life Science Companies

Providers

Global Healthcare Consulting Service Market, by Region:

North America

Europe

Asia Pacific

Middle East & Africa

Latin America

Key Players Analysed in Global Healthcare Consulting Service Market

Accenture

McKinsey & Company

Cognizant

Deloitte Consulting

KPMG

McKinsey & Company

The Boston consulting group

Huron Consulting

Ernst & Young.

More Info of Impact Covid19@ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/10789
Around 400 people, who returned



to Meghalaya from other parts of the country recently, have violated the self-quarantine protocols by venturing out and putting others at risk, state Deputy Chief Minister Prestone Tynsong said on Friday.

He said these citizens, who live in the Shillong city, were cautioned by health officials.

Health authorities are using technology to monitor movements of those registered with the government and found out who have violated the quarantine protocols, Tynsong said.

The home quarantine period for those coming from the states of the Northeastern region is 14 days.

Those who have returned from outside the region will have to remain quarantined for 14 days and then they will have to be under self-observation for another 28 days, he said.

At present, Meghalaya has one active COVID-19 case. One person died, while 11 others have recovered.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The UK has repatriated more than 16,500 citizens from India on 64 special charter flights since last month, the British high commission said on Friday.

The flights were operated from 32 locations across India in the past 38 days, and almost half of the Britons repatriated globally so far on UK charter flights have been from India.

This was done through a large and complex operation that involved more than 500 members of staff in India, working around the clock to ensure flights operated smoothly and passengers could reach airports.

The nationwide lockdown required close coordination between British authorities and the Indian government and local authorities to transport passengers over large distances.

One British national stranded in a remote village in Manipur had to travel more than 2,700 km for the flight home from New Delhi, the high commission said.

Jan Thompson, the acting high commissioner to India, said:The last currently scheduled charter flight left for London Heathrow from Amritsar today [Friday] with over 300 passengers on board.

This unprecedented repatriation effort would not have been possible without the excellent support of the Indian government. Continued cooperation between our nations will be essential in the fight against this pandemic.

Since the coronavirus outbreak, the UK government has helped 1.3 million Britons around the world to return on commercial flights and organised special charter flights from 27 countries and territories.

The UK government currently has no plans for further charter flights but the situation will be kept under review, the high commission said.
Transsiberian, The Martian, Homefront.

Why not indulge in some tentative romance, or space survival or the madness of genius today as TopFilmTip brings you the best films on TV today: Friday, 15 May.

Some films may require a Sky subscription.

An exquisitely and delicately formed heart wrenching romance as a man and woman fall into a forbidden love in Brief Encounter 3:00pm BBC Two

Inexplicably English DEA agent's poor parenting precipitates meth-head feud in chump-bashing deep southern action fun Homefront 9:00pm Sony Movies

Fake family cross drug thugs and boarders in incest-enjoying, smidge-smuggling, one liner-fuelled criminal comedy We're the Millers 9:00pm ITV2

After only five minutes in France Liam Neeson cracks precipitating a stabby, bad-guy punching shoot-a-thon for justice in fridged fun Taken 9:00pm E4

Abandoned astronaut sciences himself into a poo-planting, potato farming, space pirate to aid maverick rescue mission in The Martian 9:00pm Film4

Accidental killing of a woman draws creeping chaos upon stubborn rural poacher (Sam Rockwell) in grimy tension builder A Single Shot 11:05pm Sony Movies

Read more: Film released early to streaming

Teacher doctors student politics causing his life to unravel in viciously sharp, exquisitely scripted allegorical satire Election 11:15pm BBC One

Walking fine line between genius and madness, chess prodigy challenges might of Russian empire in politically charged confluence of propaganda and prowess Pawn Sacrifice 11:20pm BBC Two

Statuesque corporate consultant Kate Mara assesses anger issued cy-brid AI in intelligent sci-fi action Morgan 11:45pm Film4

Brutalised woman executes attackers in eye-plucking, teeth-pulling, anal-blasting repugnant revenge rampage I Spit on Your Grave (2010) 00:30am Horror Channel

Train traveller slips further into murky misadventure of murder and smuggling in icy psychological thriller Transsiberian 1:30am Sony Movies

Follow TopFilmTip on Twitter for daily film recommendations.

Everything new on streaming in May:

Story continues

Netflix UK: Mays new releases

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Disney+ UK: May's new releases

Start the conversation
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 22:29:54|Editor: huaxia

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DAKAR, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Senegal on Friday reported 121 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total in the country to 2,310.

Of the 121 cases, 119 are follow-up contact cases and two community-transmission ones, Marie Khemesse Ngom Ndiaye, director-general of health at the Ministry of Health and Social Action, told a daily briefing on the pandemic.

According to her, 48 more patients have recovered, while six patients remain in intensive care across the country.

Two deaths were registered in the previous 24 hours, bringing the toll to 25 in Senegal, which reported the first confirmed case on March 2.

So far, 890 COVID-19 patients have recovered in Senegal.

Among the 2,310 confirmed cases reported so far, 2,027 have been follow-up contact cases, 86 imported ones and 197 community-transmission ones.

On Monday, President Macky Sall announced the easing of some of the COVID-19 restrictions, but said the government is preparing for the virus to circulate in the country "until August, or even September."

From Tuesday, the curfew hours, originally from 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., were shortened to between 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.

All markets and other businesses were allowed to resume their normal opening hours, except one day per week when they have to be closed for disinfection and sanitizing.

Senegal has since March 20 suspended all international flights till at least May 31. President Sall extended the state of emergency and dusk-to-dawn curfew, which was declared on March 24, to June 2.

West Africa, now with more than 22,000 cases, has been the region most affected by COVID-19 in sub-Saharan Africa, since Nigeria reported its first confirmed case on Feb. 27. Enditem
Contact:

Oak Fund Services (Guernsey) Limited

Company Administrator

Attn: Mark Woodall

Tel: +44 1481 723450

Eurocastle Releases First Quarter 2020 Interim Management Statement and

Announces Annual General Meeting on 17 June 2020



Guernsey, 15 May 2020 - Eurocastle Investment Limitedhas released its interim management statement for the quarter ended 31 March 2020.

Q1 2020 BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS

Adjusted Net Asset Value ("NAV") 1 of 12.5 million, or 6.78 per share2, down 1.54 per share vs. 8.32 per share at 31 December 2019 due to:

Valuation declines reflecting the estimated potential impact of COVID-19: 1.62 per share decrease (21%) in the valuation of the remaining three real estate fund investments.

0.08 per share decrease (13%) in the valuation of the remaining three NPL and other loan interests. Positive reserve movements of 0.16 per share.





FY 2019 Q1 CASH Movement Q1 FV Movement Q1 2020  million  per share  million  per share  million  per share  million  per share Real Estate Funds 13.9 7.52 (1.1) (0.58) (3.0) (1.62) 9.9 5.32 Italian NPLs & Other Loans 1.2 0.67 (0.0) (0.03) (0.2) (0.08) 1.0 0.56 Net Corporate Cash3 0.2 0.13 1.1 0.61 0.3 0.16 1.6 0.90 Adjusted NAV 15.4 8.32 - - (2.9) (1.54) 12.5 6.78

CASH & MARKET OUTLOOK

The Company received 1.1 million from its investments in the quarter, the majority of which related to Real Estate Fund Investment I. The Directors have elected to retain these cash proceeds in the Company until there is greater certainty regarding the full impact of COVID-19 on the Italian economy. The cash received in the quarter, along with the cash set aside for reserves, leaves the Company well-capitalised and in a strong position to weather the uncertainty that COVID-19 has created.

The Company's remaining real estate fund investments comprise the following: Interest in a public fund which is in the process of liquidating and whose assets are predominantly comprised of cash. The fund is currently trading at a c.20% discount to its last published NAV. Interests in two real estate redevelopment funds where construction is fully completed. The units are in the process of being sold but suffering delays due to the coronavirus outbreak. Both developments offer luxurious residential apartments with high specification furnishings in the historical city of Rome, Italy.



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Company will hold its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, 17 June 2020, at the Company's registered office at 2:00 pm Guernsey time (3:00 pm CET). The meeting will be held in accordance with social distancing and "stay at home" measures implemented by the States of Guernsey in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Notices and proxy statements will be posted on 27 May 2020 to shareholders of record at close of business on 26 May 2020.

NOTICE:

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of the Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For investment portfolio information, please refer to the Company's most recent Financial Report, which is available on the Company's website).

ABOUT EUROCASTLE

Eurocastle Investment Limited.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements may relate to, among other things, future commitments to sell real estate and achievement of disposal targets, availability of investment and divestment opportunities, timing or certainty of completion of acquisitions and disposals, the operating performance of our investments and financing needs. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of forward-looking terminology such as "may", "will", "should", "potential", "intend", "expect", "endeavor", "seek", "anticipate", "estimate", "overestimate", "underestimate", "believe", "could", "project", "predict", "project", "continue", "plan", "forecast" or other similar words or expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions, discuss future expectations, describe future plans and strategies, contain projections of results of operations or of financial condition or state other forward-looking information. The Company's ability to predict results or the actual effect of future plans or strategies is limited. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, its actual results and performance may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Company's actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results or stated expectations including the risks regarding Eurocastle's ability to declare dividends or achieve its targets regarding asset disposals or asset performance.







1 In light of the Realisation Plan announced on 18 November 2019, the Adjusted NAV reflects additional reserves for future costs and potential liabilities, which have not been accounted for under the IFRS NAV. The IFRS NAV as at 31 March 2020 is 30.5 million, or 16.48 per share.

2 Per share calculations for Eurocastle throughout this document are based on the outstanding voting shares of 1,851,535 for the period under review.

3 Reflects corporate cash net of liabilities and additional reserves.
A student nurse has opened up on the incredible token of generosity she received from the legendary Sir Rod Stewart, after he learned of her battle with coronavirus.

Natasha Jenkins spent 22 days on a ventilator fighting coronavirus, after contracting the deadly virus while working on the NHS front line.

The 35-year-old, a single mother of three from Barry, South Wales, was treated at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff after developing pneumonia and testing positive for COVID-19.

Now, after finally beating the virus, she has spoken out for the first time - revealing both the extent of her struggle and the manner in which Sir Rod reached out.

Natasha Jenkins spent 22 days on a ventilator fighting coronavirus, after contracting the deadly virus while working on the NHS front line

A signed picture from the legend read: 'to help you through tough times', as Sir Rod made a gift of 5,000 to Natasha and her family

'I never thought in a million years I would catch it, even when I was in the hospital and they done the test on me I said I haven't got it,' she said on Good Morning Britain.

'I was ill, I had to look at texts because I can't remember declining it was quite rapid in hospital. I could hear stuff when I was on the ventilator whether that was when they were trying to reduce my sedation is not clear, it's really vague.

'It's like paralysis I could hear nurses introducing themselves, it is comforting, if anybody's able to speak to their family members definitely do it in my experience I could hear and I would've loved to have been able to speak to my family at the time.

'The first few days are quite hazy because of the medication I was still hallucinating a bit, I could see other people across the way from me on a ventilator, it's quite confusing you don't know who's who. I had pictures of my children they put at the end of the bed for me.

The student nurse was overcome with emotion when finally reunited with her young children

Appearing on Good Morning Britain, Natasha revealed how Sir Rod Steward got in touch in order to help out with her personal situation

'Rod sent me quite a substantial bit of money to help me through the times that I'm going through.

It was then revealed the music icon sent over 5,000, in order to help her get back on her feet and regain an element of normal life. A signed picture was shown, on which Sir Rod had written: 'Hi Natasha. A small gift to help you through rough times.'

She added: 'That was amazing obviously I can't work at the moment I've had to take time off uni, I'm a single parent with three children so it's going to help a lot, there's no pressure on me now to return to work or university and I still can't believe the generosity.

'I've had a tracheotomy put in, my voice has got better the past two days but its a bit better now, I am out of breath that's because I'm speaking quite a lot.

'In regard to recovery my mobility is not the best I've had to learn how to walk again I am able to walk around the house, today I'm going to walk down the street. In comparison to what I've watched and other people I'm doing quite well.'

She is now thinking of what to do with the gift and is considering a treat for her three children - Codie, 16, Elise, 12, and Oakley, six - next year.
Mouthwash is able to kill coronavirus within 30 seconds of exposure to it in a laboratory, a new scientific study has found.

Earlier this year, a team of scientists from Cardiff University called for urgent research to be conducted into whether mouthwash could be effective in reducing the spread of coronavirus.

At the time, researchers highlighted the importance of the throat and saliva glands in the replication of Covid-19 and said they believed mouthwash had the potential to destroy the outermost layer or envelope of the virus, thus preventing it from replicating in the mouth and throat in the early stages of an infection.

Now, the same team of scientists has shared the preliminary findings of a new study that shows promising signs of mouthwashes capable of doing this.

So, what did the study show and should we be using mouthwash to ward off Covid-19? Here is everything you need to know.

Does mouthwash kill coronavirus?

The research, which was conducted at Cardiff University, found that mouthwashes containing 0.07 per cent of the ingredient cetylpyridinium chloride (CPC) showed "promising signs" of reducing Covid-19.

Scientists carried out tests at the university's laboratory by mimicking the conditions of a person's naso/oropharynx passage and using mouthwash brands including Dentyl.

Their report, titled The Virucidal Efficacy of Oral Rinse Components Against SARS-CoV-2 In Vitro, is yet to be peer reviewed but supports a separate study that was published last week which found CPC-based mouthwashes are effective in reducing Covid's viral load.

Dentyl is the only UK mouthwash brand to have taken part in the 12-week clinical trial, which was led by Professor David Thomas.

In February, the World Health Organisation (WHO) responded to claims that gargling mouthwash could protect you from infection, stating: There is no evidence that using mouthwash will protect you from infection with the new coronavirus. Some brands of mouthwash can eliminate certain microbes for a few minutes in the saliva in your mouth.

"However, this does not mean they protect you from 2019-nCoV infection."

Why do scientists claim mouthwash might be effective?

The researchers from Cardiff Universitys School of Medicine claim that mouthwash may be able to damage the coronavirus membrane and reduce infection rates.

A clinical trial will next examine how effective over-the-counter mouthwash is in reducing the levels of Covid-19 in the saliva of coronavirus patients at the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff. The results are expected to be published in early 2021.

Dr Thomas told the PA news agency: "Although this in-vitro study is very encouraging and is a positive step, more clinical research is now clearly needed.

"We need to understand if the effect of over-the-counter mouthwashes on the Covid-19 virus achieved in the laboratory can be reproduced in patients, and we look forward to completing our clinical trial in early 2021."

Dr Nick Claydon, a specialist periodontologist, said he believed the research was "very valuable".

He added: "If these positive results are reflected in Cardiff University's clinical trial, CPC-based mouthwashes such as Dentyl used in the in-vitro study could become an important addition to people's routine, together with hand washing, physical distancing and wearing masks, both now and in the future."

What can you do to protect yourself from coronavirus?

The government has issued advice on how best to protect yourself from Covid-19.

This includes staying at home as much as possible, working from home if you can, limiting contact with other people, staying 2m away from other people if you go out and washing your hands regularly.

The guidelines also advise people to wear a facial covering when in enclosed spaces such as using public transport or shopping.

NHS advice on avoiding spreading Covid-19 includes covering your mouth and nose with a tissue or your sleeve (not your hands) when you cough or sneeze, as well as washing your hands often for at least 20 seconds when you arrive home after being out.

Anyone with a high temperature or a new, continuous cough is also being asked to stay at home for seven days, and avoid going to GP surgeries, pharmacies and hospitals.
SPRINGFIELD  Opposition to Gov. J.B. Pritzkers extended stay-at-home order and his reopening plan continues to mount.

Across the state, local governments are sounding off in opposition to the governors plans that have had the state all in from a full economy for two full months in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19.

The states economy has been on partial lockdown since March 16 when Pritzker issued an executive order prohibiting dine-in restaurants amid COVID-19 concerns. That was followed by a stay-at-home order that closed other businesses he deemed nonessential through April 7.

But before that end date, the governor extended the order through the end of April, and again through the end of May. Hes since unveiled a five-phase reopening plan with different regions of the state that could have more things opened up in 28-day intervals.

Business partially opened in Madison County on Wednesday after the county board passed a resolution with its own phased-opening plan that differs from the governors plan.

The governor this week said he would consider withholding federal funds to areas that defy his orders. Madison County Board member Chris Guy said the governor was playing a game of poker.

That would be really vindictive of the governor to do that to 260,000 people in Madison County, the eighth largest county in the state of Illinois, Guy told WMAY radio in Springfield. I think its time for him to wake up and listen to the county board.

Theres no resolution to reopen in Springfield, but alderman debated the stay-at-home orders this week. Some said its time to open things back up because there is hospital capacity. Others disagreed. Alderwoman Doris Turner said she feels for those whove lost their jobs or businesses, but she said: You also have to think about the loss of human life.

And that is something that we cannot get back, Turner said.

In Peoria, the city passed a resolution urging the governor to change his plan. At-large City Council member John Kelly said theyre not at a fever pitch yet, but theyre petitioning to have a sub-region in the governors plan. He said small retailers havent been allowed to compete with big-box stores for two months.

By the time this is over, many of them I suspect will have gone out of business for what I consider to be a bureaucratic oversight or perhaps a bureaucratic overreach, Kelly said.

In Edgar County, officials are preparing their own guidelines for businesses amid the pandemic.

In McHenry County, all 25 local mayors are asking that the county be removed from the governors Northeast region of his reopening plan. That region includes Chicago and Cook County, which has a much higher percentage of COVID-19 positive cases and hospitalizations.

Other counties lumped in that region are petitioning to be removed as well. Its likely the Northeast regions reopening will be delayed under the governors plan.

Some states attorneys and sheriffs in other counties have said they wont enforce the governors orders in their jurisdictions.

There are also lawsuits across the state against the governors orders from state lawmakers, restaurants and salons.
As the COVID-19 crisis stretches on, were seeing more conflict, more protests and particularly more online rancor in the debate over how  and if  public officials should open up society or government restraints on gatherings, from bowling leagues and bars to religious services and retail stores.

The First Amendments protection for free speech covers most of what we may say, whether its impolite, insulting, biased or uplifting, even commentary or forcefully expressed opinions that most of us would find repulsive or repugnant.

But one area not protected as free speech is called a true threat, words that cause a person to fear for their safety or life. In a crisis, we may find things we say are taken in a different context by police, prosecutors and juries than at other, less stressful times.

Unfortunately for those trying to measure their own remarks, setting out a precise definition for what constitutes a true threat has flummoxed even the U.S. Supreme Court. The result is a division of opinion in federal and state courts across the country.

Toss in the new machinations of social media, which remove the element of face-to-face confrontation, but also provide a degree of anonymity  and lack of restraints  and the lines dividing protected and unprotected speech blur even more.

Speech threatening bodily harm made to a specific person standing in front of you while you have a weapon  for example, holding a knife and saying I have a knife and Im going to cut your throat  leaves little doubt that its a true threat.

But what if the person at whom those same words are directed isnt nearby when the remark is made, but sees it hours or days later on social media? What if the speaker sets the words to music, posts the statement as part of a YouTube video and later claims it was just a form of anger control therapy  even if the intended target (think you or me) took the threat seriously?

For many years, evidence that a statement could be judged as putting any reasonable person in fear was enough to support a conviction in many courts. But in 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Elonis v. United States, focused on the intent of the person making the statement, effectively saying that consideration was important  and perhaps essential  when deciding if the speaker was indeed issuing a true threat.

But the high court didnt set out any means of measuring intent, leaving things hanging. Two years later, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, in Perez v. Florida, where the court refused to reconsider the conviction of a man who threatened to blow up a liquor store, that while states must prove more than mere utterance of threatening words, some level of intent is required -(and) the Court should also decide precisely what level of intent suffices under the First Amendment, noting that did not happen in Elonis.

All of that leaves many of us subject to state laws that dont include a requirement to consider what we might mean when we say it, just how a reasonable person would feel about our words. Got enough money or time to get to the Supreme Court? Such a conviction would seem likely to be thrown out.

Not the bright line between right and wrong that we should expect to see when it comes to criminal prosecutions.

Case in point: According to Kentuckys Lexington Herald Leader, Louisville lawyer James Gregory Troutman, 53, was charged April 22 with terroristic threatening for two Facebook posts directed at Gov. Andy Beshear.

Maybe some should ask Beshear in a press conference about his thoughts on William Goebel, Troutman was reported by police to have said in a post, For those of you who dont know the history  its a good read. Goebel, shot to death in 1900, in is the only serving U.S. governor ever assassinated.

Police said Troutman also later posted, in a Facebook exchange about Beshear ordering photos to be taken of license plates of churchgoers flouting social distancing orders, With any luck the gov will be the one at whom the shooting will be directed.

Police said Troutman was threatening to commit a crime likely to result in death or serious physical injury to the Kentucky governor. But Troutmans lawyer said the man didnt say he was going to kill him.

If you were sitting on a jury considering the charges against Troutman, a 1969 Supreme Court decision in Watts v. United States might help you decide. In that Vietnam War-era case, a protester was charged with threatening President Lyndon Johnson for telling a rally that if they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is LBJ.

The court later decided that Watts had engaged in a crude form of political hyperbole rather than utter a true threat. The justices identified what later came to be known as the Watts factors: The context in which the words were spoken, the reaction of those who heard the remarks and the certainty of the remarks.

They noted that Watts made his statements during a political rally, that those who overheard his remarks laughed and his statement was conditional rather than definitive.

Still today, some lower courts use the Watts factors to determine whether speech crosses the line into the realm of true threats, Freedom Forum First Amendment Fellow David Hudson notes.

Another kind of hyperbole: Wishing that a meteor will fall from the sky and injure or kill a certain person may well be what most of us would find hateful and morally wrong, but its safely protected under the First Amendment.

On the other hand, the Supreme Court found in 2003, in Virginia v. Black  perhaps its most direct ruling about true threat  that the state of Virginia could prosecute people for cross burning intended to intimidate or instill fear in others. Dissenting voices said cross burning is always unprotected speech since it can have no effect other than intimidating others, but the courts majority did not agree. Again, the intent of the speaker, as in Elonis, rather than the meaning to those receiving the message, was held most significant.

The justices did offer this definition: True threats are those statements where the speaker means to communicate a serious expression of an intent to commit an act of unlawful violence to a particular individual or group.

Adding to the conflicted legal views over true threats was the 2019 refusal by the justices to consider an appeal by Jamal Knox, a Pittsburgh rap music artist convicted over lyrics in a song Fuck the Police, recorded in 2012 while facing weapon and drug charges. The song named arresting officers and included lyrics saying, Lets kill these cops cuz they dont do us no good / pullin out your Glock out cause I live in the hood and Ima jam this rusty knife all in his guts and chop his feet  your shift over at 3 and Im gonna fuck up where you sleep.

Critics of Knoxs conviction note that other more widely recognized artists have used similar statements in their music without prosecution and that local courts generally dont understand the role of rap music in urban culture.

Officials cited Knoxs specific identification of the officers and in 2018 the Pennsylvania Supreme Court said his lyrics were threats, not political, social or academic commentary, nor are they facially satirical or ironic.

From armed protestors confronting state police officers in the Michigan capitol building to armed revelers at a Texas bar arrested in a SWAT raid, from angry crowds outside a number of gubernatorial residences to violent words on social media, the potential for threating actions and actual violence today is higher than ever.

So how to judge whether your words, expressive conduct (such as marching with signs or weapons) or violent social media posts are protected speech?

Colleagues at the Freedom Forums education unit provide a lesson plan  for free  to help you navigate those First Amendment true threat waters: In You Cant Say That?! you will learn about restrictions to freedom of speech in public life and the court cases that determined when and why those limits apply.

Bottom line: In the U.S., the First Amendment certainly protects your right to speak. But theres no absolute protection from the effects of what you say  particularly when those words may put a specific person in fear of injury or death.

Gene Policinski is a senior fellow for the First Amendment at the Freedom Forum, and president and chief operating officer of the Freedom Forum Institute. He can be reached at gpolicinski@freedomforum.org, or follow him on Twitter at @genefac.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 6) - The start of classes may come earlier for private schools, should the government's Inter-Agency Task Force (IATF) allow it, Education Secretary Leonor Briones said on Wednesday.

Briones clarified that the start of classes on August 24, which was earlier announced, would apply to both public and private schools.

"Private schools who want to open in June may do so if allowed by the IATF and DOH (Department of Health) guidelines, and no face-to-face for June," Briones said Wednesday.

The Department of Education (DepEd) is finalizing the Learning Continuity Plan (LCP), which will detail changes in policy and practices necessary to ensure education will continue amid the COVID-19 crisis.

"We have repeatedly consulted and collaborated with our partner institutions and organizations in crafting the LCP, which includes key features on K-12 curriculum adjustments, alignment of learning materials, various modalities of delivery, and corresponding teacher and parent or guardian training for homeschooling," the DepEd said in a statement.

"Our policies will also be continuously guided by science and by the advice of our health experts," it added.

The Learning Continuity Plan will have to be presented to the Inter-Agency Task Force on Emerging Infectious Disease once finalized.

Briones announced on Tuesday that the next school year will officially open on August 24 and end on April 30, 2021.

READ: School year 2020-21 to formally begin on August 24, says DepEd chief

The department said that the decision to delay the start of classes will help make sure that learners and teachers are given enough time to prepare and be equipped to adjust to the new learning environment.

Briones clarified that the start of the academic year 2020-2021 in August does not necessarily mean elementary and high school students will physically return to schools. Classes can be conducted online, until the government allows the reopening of school buildings, which were temporarily closed to mitigate the spread of coronavirus disease.

"Opening can be face-to-face or virtual, depending on the decisions of the IATF," Briones said. "No need for face-to-face if not allowed by IATF."

CNN Philippines' correspondent AC Nicholls contributed to this report.
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Hooch tragedy: UP govt constitutes five-member SIT to probe consumption of illicit liquor

Illegal distillery raided in Patiala

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Patiala, May 15: An illegal distillery-cum-liquor bottling plant was raided by a team of excise and police officials at Ghanaur in Patiala, police said on Thursday.

It conducted the raid at an abandoned cold store near Rajpura on Wednesday, police said.

Police said illicit liquor of different brands was being manufactured there.

Take call on online sale of liquor by May 15: Delhi HC

During the raid, the team seized bottling machinery, empty bottles, 35 drums of ENA (extra neutral alcohol), holograms and labels of different brands, police said.

"The excise department had prior information about this illicit distillery and they along with police officials conducted the raid, Patiala Senior Superintendent of Police Mandeep Singh Sidhu said.

The distillery was being run with the help of a generator in the absence of electricity connection, he said.

He said one person has been arrested.
Expressing satisfaction with the



steps taken by the Centre and State governments for conducting COVID-19 tests, the Madras High Court on Friday closed a petition seeking a direction to authorities to set up mobile testing booths.

A division bench recorded the submission of senior central government panel counsel who said the plea was filed without being aware of the fact that mobile testing was not a feasible one.

The PIL was filed by advocate A Amal Antony who also wanted the court to direct the state to form a committee to help the homeless and pavement dwellers and to conduct COVID-19 tests on them and provide appropriate medical treatment, besides making RT-PCR testing free or to charge an affordable fee of Rs 500 or less.

According to petitioner, the tests that have been done by the government for COVID-19 was not sufficient to meet the requirements of the masses, on account of the density of the population of the State.

The petitioner also submitted that the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) in collaboration with the Employees' State Insurance Corporation Medical College and Hospital, Sanathnagar (Hyderabad) has developed India's first COVID-19 sample collection mobile lab-- "Mobile BSL-3 VRDL Lab", which was approved by ICMR, and the facility may be extended to the downtrodden people.

The Centre submitted that between January 25 to May 6 , 91,985 RT-PCR Kits, 38,038 RNA extraction and 22,900 VTMs were supplied to the Tamil Nadu government.

The Kits were duly approved by agencies including US-FDA besides being validated by NIV-Pune for conducting COVID-19 tests.

The State also on its part filed a detailed counter explaining the steps taken to test the COVID-19 affected people.

"A perusal of the counter and the status reports makes it clear that the Central and State Governments have been taking all necessary steps for extending COVID-19 testing facility to more and more people day by day.

Thus, the prayers sought for by the petitioner are satisfied," a bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Sathyanarayana said and closed the petition.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Arden announced that the country was ready to start gradually reopening from May 14, the mayor of a city went bungee jumping to celebrate the announcement. New Zealanders are now reportedly permitted to visit retail stores, malls, cafes and other public spaces and to celebrate the reopening the mayor of Queenstown Lakes District Jim Boult took a plunge above the Kawarau River.

According to an international media outlet, Boult was the first at the Bungy Centre since the seven-week lockdown. With the jump, he signalled the reaping of the towns tourism industry as well. The Queenstown Lakes District Council also took to Facebook to share the video of the mayor leaping into Alert Level 2.

READ: COVID-19: New Zealanders Cheer As Country Eases Lockdown Restrictions After 7 Weeks

Delighted

According to the caption, Boult said, "Im delighted to be able to mark the reopening of this facility, even if it means jumping off a bridge first thing in the morning. Its wonderful to see so many businesses in our area opening back up. Though these are tough times for all businesses across the district, were embracing Alert Level 2 and the cautious reopening that it is allowing.

Boult also promoted the domestic tourism and said that Queenstown is still countrys premier visitor destination, with a recent poll showing the city as the number one tourist destination for New Zealanders, closely followed by Wanaka at number five. He also added that the enthusiasm for local travel will bring a much-needed boost to the local economy. Boult added that thousands of locals will benefit from the return to work. Furthermore, he also looks forward to welcoming visitors to the district from across the country.

READ: New Zealand Plans Spending To Counter Virus Job Losses

While the authorities have eased some restrictions, schools in New Zealand begin only from next week. According to reports, travel between different regions of New Zealand will begin from May 18 onwards and bars are scheduled to open from May 21 onwards. Meanwhile, people have still been told to take precautions. Social gatherings such as weddings and various religious ceremonies are still limited to only 10 people.

READ: New Zealand Faces 'return Of Anxiety' As COVID-19 Restrictions Ease

READ: New Zealand Reaffirms Stance To Support Taiwan Despite China's Warnings


Gov. Ned Lamonts Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group will disband - after about one month - on May 20, when the states first phase of the new normal will begin.

But the 50-member panel may not go far away, even as most of their duties will be taken over by a Boston-based consultant whose $2 million contract will be paid with federal disaster relief funds.

Lamont said Friday that the Boston Consulting Group has experience on coronavirus and appropriate responses used by the six other states including New York and Massachusetts that have joined Connecticut in a regional consortium. Its one more way that we can better coordinate our efforts there, Lamont told reporters during his daily briefing from the State Capitol on Friday.

When it comes to track and trace, when it comes to testing strategies, when it comes to opening and closings, ways that we can coordinate on a regional basis, theyll be there working right alongside our different departments and commissioners, lending us the expertise that theyve got as we ramp up implementation, Lamont said, describing the advisory group of business representatives and health experts as winding down by the time Wednesday May 20 comes around.

Next week they put in place the very best health metrics we had, Lamont said. Were testing now against those metrics to see how were doing. Now we have to implement for the next three months, and BCG is going to get us started there.

Josh Geballe, commissioner of the state Department of Administrative Services who is also Lamonts chief operating officer, said that the public health interventions include a wide variety of things that have never been done before in state government in Connecticut or really anywhere else. He said the reopening phases require re-engineering a states economy that has resulted in hundreds of thousands of newly unemployed residents over the last two months.

I think most people can appreciate that it is an immensely complex piece of work, so having some people who can work side-by-side with us 18 hours a day, seven days a week, bringing in all the inputs that were getting from all of the stakeholders is incredibly important to our effort to be able to move at the speed that this crisis depends, and do so in as smart a way as possible, Geballe said.

Lamont said he expects a final report from the reopening committee before it disbands. Even then, at least the leaders of the group will remain in touch on an informal basis, he said, singling out Dr. Albert Ko, department chairman and professor of epidemiology at Yale Medical School. Hes paying special attention to this, as somebody whos spent his whole life on infectious diseases, Lamont said. This is his moment. Hes put in place a team.

Lamont said that the $2 million contract with the consultants will be paid primarily through federal disaster relief.

On Wednesday, state Senate Minority Leader Len Fasano, R-North Haven, said that the hiring of the consultants should have been discussed with legislative leaders.

Instead of working with lawmakers to develop Connecticut's strategy to get people back to work safely, the governor is contracting out our legislative authority with little transparency, said Fasano. Now, this consulting firm has been hired in the dark to be the state's 'control tower' on one of the most significant issues ever to face our state, and they are being paid a significant amount using either state taxpayer dollars or federal taxpayer dollars when the state's finances and core services are already under strain.

Timothy Phelan, who as president of the Connecticut Retail Merchants Association is a member of the advisory group, said Friday that he had not heard that the group would be phased-out next week, but realized that Advance CT, the former Connecticut Economic Resource Center, would act as liaison to the governor on issues of reopening.

Ive been honored to be on the advisory board and very happy that retailers are involved, he said, pointing to the groups next meeting on Monday. Maybe theres another way of hearing from us without the advisory board, because Im confident that they will take our thoughts into consideration. I hope they keep the lines of communication open.

Another advisory group member, John Olsen, the emeritus president of the state AFL-CIO, said he expected that the panel would meet until there were initial plans in place, but didnt know that Lamont planned to finish their work next week. We pretty much responded, reached out to our constituencies and returned with feedback, Olsen said Friday. The proof will be whether theyre going to get it done. The protocols are pretty extensive.

The longtime labor leader and former state Democratic chairman stressed that to succeed, the reopening process has to be supported by state residents. We have to have the confidence of the people, he said, stressing the fact that unlike many states, Connecticut did not shutdown major manufacturers or large construction projects during March, April and May.

There are still some issues like OSHA rules and workers compensation agreements that concern me, and its important that employers and employees refresh themselves constantly, in order to avoid forgetting and falling back to habits from before the virus hit, Olsen said.

Olsen pointed to the Boston Consulting Groups contract and noted that there are many similar contracts in various state departments that are a matter of routine. Consultants dont come cheap, he said. I think we have phase one and two, and phase three will take care of itself and phase four is back to normal. I applaud the governor because hes not afraid to listen to other ideas.

Laptops, credit ratings and beaches

The state Department of Public Health announced Friday that 66 fatalities were reported overnight and into the day, bringing the total dead to 3,285 in the coronavirus pandemic. A net decrease of 71 hospitalized patients made for a total of 1,033, which is equal to the total COVID-19 patients hospitalized on April 4.

In other pandemic-related developments, the Governors COVID-19 Learn From Home Task Force on Friday announced that the first batch of about 17,000 Dell laptops is ahead of schedule and will arrive next week in New Britain, Bloomfield, Bridgeport, Danbury, East Hartford, Hamden and Hartford.

The task force has also distributed a survey on distance learning and Internet connectivity to districts to gauge some of the barriers facing under-served communities. In all, nearly 60,000 laptops will be given to pupils.

Also on Friday, State Treasurer Shawn Wooden announced that Moodys Investors Service, S&P Global Ratings, Fitch Ratings, and Kroll Ratings affirmed Connecticuts credit scores and stable outlooks in the coronavirus pandemic. Moodys confirmed at A1 score; S&P at A; Fitch at A+; and, Kroll a AA-. The rating agency reports credit the states robust budget reserve of about $2.5 billion.

In these tough times, a little good news is more than welcome, Wooden said in an afternoon statement. What matters most is that maintaining our credit standing allows us to continue to access funding for strategic investments for our state at attractive interest rates, saving taxpayers money.

Lamont on Friday said that state shoreline beaches will officially open on Friday May 22 with limited capacity, but with staff monitoring visitors on their social distancing and wearing of face masks. Beach blankets must be 15 feet apart.

Earlier in the day, Lamont joined the governors of Delaware, New York and New Jersey in a multi-state agreement to open beaches on the same date. Connecticuts state parks have not been closed during the pandemic, but some have been closed to traffic after reaching attendance quotas established by Katie Dykes, commissioner of the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection.

Working together as states to make sure they can be enjoyed responsibly makes sense, Lamont said in a statement. Groups of more than five are prohibited. If social distancing fails, the DEEP will close beaches.

The DEEP plans to release an operations plan that towns and cities will be welcome to adapt for their own locations. It will publish a detailed operations procedure that will be published online at www.ct.gov/DEEP/Parks.

kdixon@ctpost.com Twitter: @KenDixonCT
U.S. envoy to Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad says a new date for intra-Afghan peace talks is under discussion and it would be best if the discussions began while a significant number of American troops were still in Afghanistan.

Speaking to reporters on a conference call on May 15, Khalilzad also said that he will travel soon to push for a de-escalation in violence and for the release of prisoners.

He added that the United States has heard positive things about the formation of an inclusive Afghan government.

Disagreements over the composition of the government and the pace of prisoner releases have delayed talks between Kabul and the Taliban to end more than 18 years of war. The talks were to begin on March 10 under a landmark deal signed in February between the United States and the militant group.

The Taliban has ramped up attacks in recent weeks despite a pledge to reduce violence, a tactic that may be employed to strengthen its negotiating position. Meanwhile, Islamic State (IS) militants also continue to conduct deadly attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians.

Khalilzad acknowledged that the U.S.-Taliban agreement does not specifically bar attacks on Afghan government forces. The Western-backed government in Kabul was not a party to the deal.

Khalilzads comments came three days after attacks on a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar Province that killed at least 56 people.

No group has claimed responsibility for the hospital attack, which killed 24 people, including two babies, and the Taliban have denied it was behind the incident. Extremist IS militants claimed credit for the other attack.

Khalilzad reiterated that the current U.S. view is that IS militants carried out the attacks, but Afghan officials say they see it differently.

Though he did not mention Khalilzad by name, Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh said some people were naive for accepting Taliban lies and blaming the "fictional" IS faction in Afghanistan for the hospital attack.

Neither the Taliban hands nor their stained consciousness can be washed of the blood of women, babies & other innocent in the latest senseless carnage, Saleh, a former intelligence chief, said on Twitter.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military to go on the offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups following the two attacks on May 12. He accused all militant groups of ignoring repeated calls to reduce violence.

Khalilzad said earlier on Twitter that IS opposes peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban and seeks to encourage sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria.

Rather than falling into the [Islamic State's] trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity, the U.S. envoy said.

It was unclear whether the U.S. position would help revive peace efforts or alter Ghanis calculation to start an offensive.

The Taliban, which has denied involvement in either attack, reacted to Ghani's statement on May 13 by saying it was "fully prepared" to repel any military offensive.

In the first attack, three gunmen stormed a maternity hospital in Kabuls mostly Shi'ite neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi before security forces killed them. At least 24 people, including babies, women, and nurses, were killed.

The area where the clinic, run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders (MSF), is located has been frequently targeted by IS militants.

"What I saw in the maternity hospital demonstrates it was a systematic shooting of the mothers," said Frederic Bonnot, MSFs head in Afghanistan, who visited the facility after the attack.

"They went through the rooms in the maternity [ward], shooting women in their beds. It was methodical, he added.

The same day, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral for a police commander in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing at least 32 people.

The core peace plan is for U.S. and foreign troops to withdraw from Afghanistan following an intra-Afghan deal in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban not to allow the country to become a haven for transnational terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda aiming to strike abroad.

The United States is continuing its drawdown of troops from Afghanistan, and the Pentagon expects to meet a timeline agreed with the Taliban, a Pentagon spokesman said on May 15.

"That is still going forward," Jonathan Hoffman said during a press briefing.

With reporting by Reuters
Maharashtras coronavirus case count went up to 29,100 with the addition of 1,576 infections on Friday, as the state government said it is in favour of extending the lockdown.

Indias worst-affected state accounts for more than 35% of the total cases in the country. The worst-hit city, Mumbai, reported 933 new cases, its second-highest single-day spike, taking the total to 17,671. The states death toll went up to 1,068, including 655 in Mumbai.

Of Fridays 49 deaths, 34 were in Mumbai, six in Pune, two each in Dhule, Kalyan-Dombivli, Akola city and one each in Panvel, Jalgaon and Aurangabad city. Twenty-two of the patients who died on Friday were above 60 years of age, while 23 were in the age group of 40 to 59 years and the remaining were below the age of 40 years. Thirty-two of them had high-risk comorbidities including diabetes, hypertension and heart ailments.

The state has seen 10,037 cases in seven days, while the deaths reported in this period were 337. Mumbai reported 5,529 cases and 193 deaths in the past seven days. With an average of more than 1,400 cases a day over the past week, the state is set to cross the 30,000 mark on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the state on Friday submitted its position to the Centre on extending the lockdown, according to officials. The state is in favour of extension with more relaxations in less affected zones, so as to ensure economic activities resume gradually.

We have already given the nod for industrial activities in green and orange zones with some conditions and are getting good response. A total of 38,287 industrial units with a workforce of 10.66 lakh workers are in operation in the state. With more relaxations for industrial and commercial activities in these two zones, we also expect more commercial activities to resume in red zones too, said a senior government official.

State health minister Rajesh Tope said that the decision about red zones will be taken by May 18, but the state government is considering easing the lockdown in non-affected areas in red-zone districts too.

There will be more commercial and industrial activities allowed in green and orange zones from Monday by keeping the districts borders sealed. Non-essential shops could be allowed in a staggered manner. We are also of the opinion that non-affected tehsils or areas in red zones should also have restrictions relaxed. Like for Pune, activities can be allowed in tehsils where there are no cases, he said.

The state government is also planning to resume registration of land deals and vehicles. Largely affected cities like Mumbai, Thane, Navi Mumbai, Pune, Nashik may also see relaxations in commercial operations. We will wait for the Central directives for lockdown implementation in red zones. The state cannot relax restrictions imposed by the Centre, although it has the right to impose stricter norms. We expect more activities to be allowed outside containment areas in red zones and that would help us ease restrictions in big cities, said another official who is privy to the development.

The number of tests in the state touched 2,50,436 on Friday. 22,1336 of them were negative. Of the 10,291 tests conducted in the past 24 hours, 1,576 tested positive at 15.31%.

Maharashtras mortality rate has dropped to 3.70%, still above the national rate of 3.23%, while the doubling of cases rate in Maharashtra is little more than 10 days.

A total of 3,29,302 people are currently under home quarantine, while 16,306 are under institutional quarantine. 14,167 teams of health workers have screened 58.97 lakh peoples. A total of 6,564 patients have fully recovered at various hospitals, after testing positive in the past nine weeks.

The state has 1,473 containment zones. In Mumbai, the municipal corporation has broken the zones into smaller ones for better monitoring.

Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray, his deputy Ajit Pawar discussed the extension of the lockdown and exit plan with Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) chief Sharad Pawar at the bungalow earmarked for the Bal Thackeray memorial in Dadar. Senior ministers and key officials from the government attended the meeting. Pawar reportedly suggested the state government to go for easing restrictions on industrial and commercial activities as it would help the government revive the state economy, which has sustained huge losses due to the lockdown.

After the meeting, chief secretary Ajoy Mehta had a video conference with the cabinet secretary of the Centre, during which the states stand on the lockdown was submitted.

Representatives of industries and businesses in commercial activities have requested the state government to allow more activities in green and orange zones. In its memorandum to Thackeray, Retailers Association of India (RAI) has demanded that micromarkets in non-containment areas should be considered. It may be prudent if the suburbs are demarcated ward-wise and stores in non-containment zones are identified and allowed to open, said Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO of RAI. He said that the malls, too, should be allowed without theatres and food malls.

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Tammy Hembrow looked to have been inspired by Kylie Jenner on Friday.

The Australian fitness mogul, 26, shared an adorable video to Instagram of son Wolf, five, and daughter Saskia, three, taking part in a viral candy challenge.

Just days prior on Monday, Kylie posted a sweet clip of two-year-old daughter Stormi patiently waiting to tuck into a bowl of lollies while she was out of the room.

Online: Australian fitness mogul Tammy Hembrow, 26, (pictured) shared a video to Instagram on Friday of son Wolf, five, and daughter Saskia, three, taking part in a candy challenge

The video saw Tammy tell her children while leaving the room: 'Guys, I'll be back in a minute. Please don't eat it (the lollies) until I'm back, okay? I'll be back soon.'

Little Wolf and Saskia were too cute as they proceeded to count out the lollies in the pack, keeping true to their mother's word of waiting until she got back.

'Okay, you can have one,' Tammy was heard saying, upon entering the living area.

Too cute: The video saw Tammy tell her children (pictured) while leaving the room: 'Guys, I'll be back in a minute. Please don't eat it (the lollies) until I'm back, okay? I'll be back soon'

So sweet: Little Wolf and Saskia were too cute as they proceeded to count out the lollies in the pack, keeping true to their mother's word of waiting until she got back

'Lol I luv my little humans (sic),' Tammy captioned the post.

Meanwhile, Kylie has been enjoying quality time with Stormi while in quarantine.

The 'self-made' billionaire, 22, posted an adorable video to Instagram on Monday, of herself teaching Stormi patience with the same social experiment involving candy.

Kylie captioned the video: 'Omg my BABYYY. I had to take part in this challenge.'

Social experiment: Just days prior on Monday, Kylie posted an adorable video to Instagram of herself teaching Stormi (pictured) about patience with the same candy challenge

Challenge accepted: The 22-year-old 'self-made' billionaire captioned the video: 'Omg my BABYYY. I had to take part in this challenge'

The American makeup mogul put a bowl of chocolate treats in front of the toddler, telling her: 'You can only have three of them. I'm gonna give you three of them.'

Stormi lunged toward the bowl, before Kylie stopped her, adding: 'But wait! You have to wait 'til mommy comes back, okay? I have to go to the bathroom.'

'You're gonna wait for mommy?' Kylie asked, as her daughter adorably and enthusiastically responded, 'Yeah!'

Sweet tooth: Kylie put a bowl of chocolate treats in front of the two-year-old, telling her: 'You have to wait 'til mommy comes back, okay? I have to go to the bathroom'

Patience, patience: Stormi sat still for a few seconds before putting up her hands like she wanted to grab a handful, but practiced restraint, singing: 'Patience, patience!'

Worth the wait: Stormi jumped up and down as her mother returned from the bathroom, giving her some candy

She sat still for a few seconds before putting up her hands like she wanted to grab a handful, but practiced restraint.

'Ooh! Chocolates,' Stormi said softly while leaning over the bowl, before sitting back up and singing, 'Patience, patience!'

Stormi jumped up and down as her mother returned from the bathroom, giving her some candy.
This Is Still Happening is a feature in which Slate will attempt to offer an update on senior-level administration corruption, what could be done to bring the officials to account, and what Democrats are doing in response (generally, nothing). The eighth installment is about a figure who, despite his virtual anonymity, is one of the administrations swampiest, David Bernhardt.

The Official: David Bernhardt, secretary of the interior

What Is Still Happening: Unless youre paying really close attention, you probably havent even heard of David Bernhardt. The former oil lobbyist who took over from scandal-plagued Ryan Zinke as head of the Department of the Interior has done much better than his predecessor at staying out of the news. Still, without riding around on a horse or insisting on flying his personal flag, hes done an impressive amount of damage just by running a standard Republican secretive pay-to-play office.

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The one way that Bernhardt has attracted negative attention for going above and beyond in corrupting the workings of government for partisan interests was his decision earlier this month to skirt federal law to allow President Donald Trump to use the heavily restricted interior of the Lincoln Memorial as a backdrop for a Fox News town hall.

Speechmaking and special events that might draw a crowd to the memorial are strictly prohibited. So to allow Trumpwho during his town hall said hes been treated worse than the assassinated 16th presidenthis perfect venue, Bernhardt had to bend the rules in the middle of a pandemic. He was more than happy to do that, issuing an order stating:

Given the extraordinary crisis that the American people have endured, and the need for the President to exercise a core governmental function to address the Nation about an ongoing public-health crisis, I am exercising my authority to facilitate the opportunity for the President to conduct this address within the Lincoln Memorial, by directing a partial security-based closure of portions of the Lincoln Memorial.

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Given that Trumps Cabinet officials seem to feel they can pretty much get away with anything while the nation is preoccupied with COVID-19, the news story was a relative blip. It once again, though, shows the extent to which the federal government has been transformed into Trumps personal and political concierge service.

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Aside from this co-opting of federal landmarks to promote the presidents reelection campaign, Bernhardts abuses of office have been colorless but effective. They include:

 Manipulating previously unexploited loopholes in federal law to renew temporary appointments over and over and over again so that they avoid constitutionally and legally mandated Senate approval. This includes the particularly controversial appointment of acting Director of Bureau of Land Management William Perry Pendley. Pendley, a former industry lobbyist, has written that the Founding Fathers intended all lands owned by the federal government to be soldarguing, for good measure, that such sales would honor the power, dignity and authority of the states as cited in the Supreme Courts decision to gut the Voting Rights Act in Shelby County v. Holder. The Washington Post reported that his record of work as an advocate for the fossil fuel and ranching industries led to him submitting a 17-page recusal list of 56 clients and one stock holding.

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 Upon entering office, Bernhardt himself was placed under an inspector general investigation for seven different complaints tied largely to his own former work as a lobbyist. (Bernhardt was cleared of wrongdoing in one of those investigations, which found that his meddling with the results of a scientific assessment by Fish and Wildlife Service scientists was unusual but didnt technically violate his ethics pledge or Federal ethics regulations.)

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 During last years federal shutdown, Bernhardt kept 800 staff on the job to process new oil and gas permits, at least 73 percent of which went to companies with whom he had personal ties. He also ignored precedent and may have violated the law to keep the national parks open in a transparent ploy to boost the presidents shutdown standing, with disastrous consequences for said national parks.

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How Long It Has Been Going On: Bernhardt has been dancing around ethical boundaries as a federal employee for the benefit of energy corporations and the GOP for the better part of two decades. In the early 2000s, Bernhardt was a top official in President George W. Bushs Interior Department. One of those jobs was as the departments top lawyer and ethics officer. During that time, Bushs Interior Department was infamous for its criminal and ethics debacles, including the Jack Abramoff pay-to-play scandal and, as described by the New York Times, allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct. Bernhardt was also personally involved in efforts to replace scientific findings in department congressional testimony with industry-funded reports and to give an unexplained cash award payment to an official who had resigned in disgrace for doctoring scientific reports and bullying scientists.

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After leaving the Bush administration, Bernhardt became a top lobbyist for the energy industry with the firm Brownstein Hyatt Farber Schreck. In 2017, he reentered government as Trumps appointment to be deputy secretary of the interior and immediately started violating ethics obligations again. Last year, the New York Times reported that newly revealed invoices showed that Bernhardt continued to work as a lobbyist for several months after he filed legal notice with the federal government formally ending his status as a lobbyist. (Bernhardt and his firm claimed that the forms that showed this were in error.) Also, during his confirmation hearings, Bernhardt apparently falsely denied having done lobbying work for a Russian energy giant that was eventually tied to Russias efforts to interfere in the 2016 election and put under U.S. sanctions. (Bernhardt and his firm claimed that the forms that showed this were in error.)

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Once in the deputy secretary job, Bernhardt shirked Freedom of Information Act requests by deleting meetings from his calendar, helped Zinke keep details of deliberations over controversial reassignments of career officials completely secret, blocked the release of scientific assessments about the dangers of certain chemicals to hundreds of endangered species after intense lobbying from chemical corporations, and rolled back protections for the threatened delta smelt, allowing agribusiness to intercept water sustaining the ecosystem of the San Francisco Bay Delta and helping earn his former lobbying clients millions of dollars. (His former lobbying firm quadrupled its business through his first few years in the administration.)

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What Would Normally Happen: As noted, this guys been running this particular Washington grift for nearly two decades. So, nothing would normally happen, except maybe a few slaps on the wrist from an inspector general or two.

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What Democrats Have Done: Eight Senate Democrats pushed for the inspector general probe that was launched last year, and a number of House Democrats pushed for an explanation of Bernhardts calendar deletions. Nobody, as far as I could find, has pushed for him to resign. Last year, Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon called on the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia to investigate potential lobbying crimes by Bernhardt, but no investigation happened. (That U.S. attorney has since been replaced by one who is quite busy reversing DOJ convictions and sentencing recommendations of top Trump allies who had already been successfully prosecuted.)

What Is Likely to Be Done: The inspector generals office may gently rebuke Bernhardt upon completion of its investigations, or it might not. The House Energy and Commerce Committee might investigate the inspector generals findings, or it might not. Whatever happens, Bernhardt is pretty safe in his job to keep doing his swamp thing. (The swamp here is figurative; the real swamps are having their water supply diverted to his old clients.)

How Removable This Stuff Is: This is baseline 21st century Republican administrative corruption, in which regulators are appointed specifically for their willingness to destroy the things theyre officially supposed to protect. Its the cost of having a two-party political system in which one party is completely and utterly in the thrall of corporate and lobbying interests and the other party is slightly less so. 3 out of 10.

For more of Slates politics coverage, listen to What Next: TBD.
Tech companies are gaming out how to bring employees back to the office, but many are expecting a new normal in which a significant portion of their workers stay home for good.

Why it matters: Some tech firms may find they are just as productive with a remote workforce. But a shift away from in-office work will have profound impacts on everything from the commercial real estate market to the vast number of support jobs that were built around serving Silicon Valley's sprawling campuses.

Driving the news:

Twitter told workers that they can work from home permanently if they want.

Others haven't gone that far, but many tech companies have acknowledged publicly or privately that they don't expect most workers to return to the office this year.

On a Zoom call with reporters on Wednesday evening, the CEOs of Box, Okta, PagerDuty and Twilio all expressed a sense that they will end up with more remote workers permanently, even after the pandemic ends.

Some companies were headed toward more remote staff even before the coronavirus crisis.

"We were already trying to reduce our dependency on the Bay Area because of competition for talent and cost of doing business here," said PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada.

Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey had announced in January, when COVID-19's impact remained a distant threat, that Twitter was moving toward a remote-first workplace.

Others found themselves having to quickly switch gears.

Box CEO Aaron Levie said that he used to like to manage by walking around the office, but has found other benefits from a remote workforce.

Remote meetings have been a decent substitute for talking in person, connecting Levie to workers in Australia, Japan and England all on the same day, with no need to travel.

Between the lines: Embracing remote work has a number of benefits for companies beyond just the costs of hiring and retaining workers.

Many tech companies have built up a massive army of contractors and vendors to support their workers, including food service, shuttle bus drivers and janitorial staff. Even a partial shift away from the office would likely add up to significant savings over time for the firms  although fewer jobs for those support workers.

For workers, meanwhile, the ability to work remotely means more than just cutting down a commute. It also means the ability to live wherever they want, rather than being tied to the Bay Area or another tech hub, like Austin, New York or Boston. Considering the high cost of real estate and other expenses in the Bay Area, that could lead to a significant exodus, though people have long predicted "peak Silicon Valley"  and long been wrong.

Yes, but: Some companies have invested significantly in their campuses and have a vested interest in maintaining an office culture.

Apple is the poster child for this. It spent a fortune on its Apple Park HQ and likes its products designed behind closed (and locked) doors.

Bloomberg recently reported Apple is making plans for some office workers to return this summer.

The big picture: Companies' stances will range from Twitter's "stay home forever if you want" to Apple's "can't wait for you to come back in." Software companies are likely to have an easier time than hardware producers relying on a largely distributed workforce.

What's next: Not all the changes we are seeing as a response to the coronavirus will be permanent. Some jobs that are being done remotely at the moment, including many roles in sales and support, will require more travel once shelter-in-place rules ease.
New Delhi: Kangana Ranauts next film, 'Thalaivi', is a biopic on former Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, late J Jayalalithaa. The film is being directed by AL Vijay and the makers of the film had earlier revealed Kanganas look as Thalaivi and Arvind Swamis look as MGR.

It has now been revealed that the film also stars 'Maine Pyar Kiya' actress Bhagyashree in a pivotal role.

Speaking on her role, Bhagyashree said, I play a key role in the film and my character brings about a turning point in 'Thalaivis life. Kangana and I have a lot of scenes together, and the entire team loved our on-screen chemistry. It was fun working with her because she is a fantastic artiste, who puts a lot into her performances. It was great to get back to the set after a very long time.

When asked about working with Kangana, she said, I had first met Kangana in 2006, when she had just started her career. Even on the set of 'Thalaivi', she is extremely respectful, and greets me as soon as she reaches the set.

Thalaivi has been produced by Vishnu Vardhan Iduri and Shaailesh R Singh and directed by Vijay, Thalaivi is scheduled to release in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.
Some day-hopefully in the near future-the COVID-19 pandemic will be behind us. Medical interventions to those infected will alleviate the pain, suffering, and deaths. A vaccine may be developed that can prevent others from becoming ill. Social distancing will no longer be necessary. We can go back to our lives, our jobs, our schools, our vacations, our celebrations.

Larry and I have been sheltering in place since March 10, leaving our house only for daily exercise and essential outings. We consider ourselves very fortunate. We still get our pension checks and our social security. Even t...
By Express News Service

KOCHI: Kollam native Shahina, who had arrived from Saudi Arabia aboard the Dammam-Kochi flight on Tuesday, delivered a healthy baby girl through C-section at the Medical College Hospital (MCH), Kalamassery on Wednesday. Shahina is one of the many thankful beneficiaries of Indias Vande Bharat Mission, which is focusing its energies on repatriating the nations most affected citizens stuck in various corners of the globe, and is drawing accolades from all quarters for excellent planning and meticulous execution of operations.

Shahina, who was in full term of her pregnancy when being evacuated, was accompanied on the flight by her two elder children, aged six and two. Her husband, Ahmed Kabir, is working in Saudi Arabia. On landing at Cochin Airport, Shahina felt unwell and was rushed in an ambulance to the MCH by health workers. Subsequently, an emergency C-section was undertaken by a team led by Dr Radha, Head of the Gynaecology Dept at MCH, and comprising Dr Anju Vishwanath and Dr Anil Kumar. Shahina and her children were also tested for Covid, and the test results were negative.

Shahina is the second woman in Kochi to deliver a baby soon after arrival, post-evacuation from Covid-affected countries. Recently, a woman from Thrissur, who was evacuated from the Maldives, delivered a baby boy soon after arrival at Kochi. Much credit to these rare occurrences of happy news in the present times can be given to foresight of the planners, including the state government, which had mandated that pregnant women be given preference during evacuation.

On landing at Cochin Airport, Shahina felt unwell and was rushed in an ambulance to the MCH by health workers. Subsequently, an emergency C-section was undertaken by a team led by Dr Radha, Head of the Gynaecology Dept at MCH
While Covid-19 scourge bites citizens harder across the county, state governors have started opening up life as the citizens knew it before the pandemic hit Nigeria Feb 27.

Churches and mosques apparently got the first mention in this direction.

And, again, total easing of the weeks-long lockdown across the nation is being championed by governors of some states in the north while their southern counterpart are contemplating another stretch of lockdown.

Borno Gov. Zulu was reported much earlier on Thursday to have lifted the ban he initially placed on religious gathering.

Zulus decision was followed by that of Gombe Gov. Inuwa Yaya.

Adamawa too was on the list.

But down south, Lagos Gov. Babajide Sanwo-Olu is proposing to the citizens a choice for an extension of the state lockdown.

Ogun has also been extending its lockdown too while Osun, Ekiti Ondo, and Oyo have kept the ban on religious gathering by using the NCDC guidelines which ban any gathering more than 20 people

Many Nigerinas have indicated their desire for further easing of the NCDC guidelines.

The Gombe State Government, on Thursday, lifted the ban placed on religious activities.
Iran's Health Ministry spokesman on Friday said the number of COVID-19 cases is expected to increase in three provinces in the coming days as the total number of cases in the country rose to nearly 117,000.

On Friday Dr. Kianoush Jahanpur announced 2,102 new cases. This is the first time in the past week that the number of new daily cases surpasses the 2,000 mark in 24 hours.

The number of officially reported deaths, however, has been going down over the past month from over 100 deaths per day to 48 on Friday which brought the total officially announced deaths from COVID-19 to 6,902.

The situation is still critical in nine cities in Khuzestan where according to the Governor of the province, Gholamreza Shariati, the number of cases has gone up by 60 percent in recent days.

Jahanpur on Wednesday also expressed concern about Khuzestan and said the province had a quarter of all new cases. The Coronavirus Taskforce Spokesman of Khuzestan on Friday said lockdown may continue for another week in some cities.

Reza Nejati also warned about ceremonies planned for Eid al-Fitr to mark the end of the month of fasting in the province and said in the cities designated as hotspots these ceremonies will be limited to congregations of less than 50 for no longer than two hours.

Health authorities are concerned about resuming religious gatherings during the month of Ramadhan and particularly the Eid al-Fitr. Shrines and mosques were closed since March and Friday prayers have been cancelled but under pressure from the religious establishment, they have had to allow limited congregations.

The National Coronavirus Combat Taskforce has still not announced a decision about the communal prayer of Eid al-Fitr to mark the end of the fasting month and the traditionally held Qods (Quds) Day march in Tehran and other major cities.

On Tuesday for the first time since the lockdown started, authorities allowed thousands of Iranians in the capital Tehran and 400 other cities across the country to gather in mosques and open-air spaces for three-night long Ramadhan ceremonies.
Visitors to the Temple of Literature keep distance while waiting to enter the famous destination in Hanoi on May 14 (Photo: VNA)

Sites such as the Temple of Literature, Ngoc Son Temple and Hoa Lo Prison are among the attractions that welcomed tourists back while deploying safety precautions.

Le Xuan Kieu, director of the Temple of Literatures Cultural and Scientific and Cultural Activity Centre, said preventive measures remain the top priority.

The centre conducts temperature checks and puts hand sanitiser in place for visitors, he said.

Visitors are required to comply with regulations related to epidemic prevention and control, such as checking their temperatures, wearing face masks and washing hands.

Hoa Lo Prison has reopened with an exhibition titled Khat vong tu do (Aspiration for Freedom), with areas including The Chains, Flying in the Midst of the Night, and the Peace Song.

Nguyen Doan Van, director of the management board of the relic, said the site has been regularly sterilised during the closure.

The management board will take care of the personal safety and hygiene for visitors including providing hand sanitiser for them, he said.

The capital citys popular walking streets will also reopen on May 15 after being closed for more than three months, announced the People's Committee of Hoan Kiem district. The streets were closed in early February as part of measures to contain the spread of the coronavirus pandemic in Vietnam, prior to an order from the Prime Minister to close all non-essential businesses nationwide from March 26.

The streets around Hoan Kiem Lake, as well as Dong Xuan Night Market, will reopen to residents and tourists from 7pm on May 15 evening through to midnight on May 17.
Many of the states moving most quickly to roll back rules designed to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus lack benchmarks that would require them to reimpose restrictions if infections spike.

That leaves governors who are anxious to jump-start their economies untethered to clear numerical standards, alarming even some of the top medical officials in their states, who warn that new outbreaks are on the horizon.

"There's just a lot more that needs to be done," said Scott Harris, Alabama's chief health officer. "We still feel like we could do a better job with getting real-time information that would help us make those decisions. But we don't have hard triggers at this point."

Alabama is hardly alone. Georgia also has not built specific triggers into its reopening plan, though Candice Broce, a spokeswoman for Brian Kemp, said the Republican governor "would do whatever is necessary based on our data and the advice of public health officials." In Tennessee, there is "no set threshold to reimpose certain restrictions, but they're certainly on the table if we deem a reimposition needed," said Gillum Ferguson, a spokesman for Gov. Bill Lee, a Republican.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has empowered local authorities to reimpose restrictions as they see fit. In Pennsylvania, there is not a "specific metric that would trigger further restrictions," said Nate Wardle, a spokesman for the state health department, but officials are "looking at the case counts being reported, the contact tracing occurring and determining whether any of these steps need to be taken."

Mark McClellan, a former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration and administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services under former president George W. Bush, said state leaders know "they may need to pause or even step back."

"But we haven't seen a whole lot of detail on those specific plans in most states," said McClellan, a member of the advisory group assisting Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican. "It's going to be important as the reopening occurs to track key data and move quickly if there are signs of an increase in the reproduction rate of the virus."

Texas, two weeks after the beginning of its phased reopening, on Thursday reported a single-day high in cases of the coronavirus and deaths from covid-19, the disease it causes. McClellan said some of the upward trends were related to outbreaks in high-risk settings, such as nursing homes.

A spokesman for Abbott did not respond to a request for comment. Several officials in some of the other states pursuing aggressive reopening plans, such as Arizona and Florida, also did not respond.

Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, said this week he may pull the state back from the second phase of reopening, expected to begin Monday, after one of the biggest jumps Thursday in new cases of covid-19 since March. "This is not encouraging," he told reporters Thursday.

The need for circuit breakers is on vivid display globally, as some of the countries initially able to contain the virus, from South Korea to Lebanon, have experienced new outbreaks, causing them to clamp down.

Seoul, which last week eased rules in anticipation of "a new daily life with covid-19," shut bars and nightclubs after the discovery of a cluster of cases. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has a PhD in quantum chemistry, has required that restrictions be reinstated in any region that records more than 50 new cases for every 100,000 residents in a week.

No such specificity appears in the White House's nonbinding guidelines for a phased reopening, which warn of "rebound" but do not establish parameters for measuring one. That has left states to decide on their own whether to build into their reopening plans rules that would compel them to snap restrictions back into place.

A few states have taken steps in that direction, but even these states often lack firm benchmarks.

Minnesota has a "Dial Back Dashboard" setting out key metrics - from a rise in covid-19 cases to the capacity for testing - informing decisions "about reestablishing restrictions to slow the spread of the virus."

In California, Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, is relying on six "indicators for modifying the stay-at-home order," one of which is the "ability to determine when to reinstitute certain measures, such as the stay-at-home orders, if necessary." The state's road map offers little about how to make that determination.

New York's framework is among the most detailed, dividing the state into 10 regions and evaluating each by seven metrics, such as holding hospitalization rates below 2 per 100,000 residents and maintaining a testing rate of 30 per 1,000 residents.

If any measure is not met, "you have a circuit breaker, you stop," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat. "You close the valve on reopening."

Illinois officials similarly split the state into four regions and laid out a five-phase plan with benchmarks that could require new lockdown measures in parts of the state. Triggers include sustained increases in the rate of people testing positive for the virus, increases in hospital admissions, reduction in hospital capacity and a significant regional outbreak.

Reimposing restrictions would be the "most difficult thing we would have to do," said Anne Caprara, chief of staff to Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a Democrat. But having a clear plan backed by science would allow residents to understand the rationale, she said, and hopefully ease some of their anger.

Even the detailed guidelines adopted by certain states failed to satisfy some epidemiologists. Isaac Weisfuse, a Cornell University epidemiologist who was a deputy health commissioner in New York City during the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 2009, said New York should expand its criteria to include earlier indicators, such as outpatient medical records for people who report "complaining of the signs and symptoms of covid-19" before they get seriously ill. He also suggested "behavioral surveillance," in which officials track whether the public complies with relaxed measures designed to allow people more access to life outside their homes while still keeping the virus in check.

Many experts share Weisfuse's concerns, saying the country still lacks the tools to predict a coming surge fast enough to fend off its escalation into an unmanageable outbreak. Many of the common metrics, such as hospitalizations and even rates of positive test results, lag far behind the actual transmission of the disease.

"We need a comprehensive battle strategy, meticulously implemented," said Tom Frieden, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Not all state health officials see specific benchmarks as necessary.

"We have very robust data - number of cases, cases in nursing homes, hospitalizations, people on ventilators - but at the end of the day, I practiced medicine for 30 years, and we treat the patient, not the chart," said Randall Williams, director of the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. "There's no one threshold. Every day, we analyze the data and take that into consideration."

Clay Marsh, West Virginia University's chief health officer and the state's coronavirus coordinator, said officials are examining the rate at which the virus spreads and the seven-day rolling average of new cases in each county. A 50 percent increase in cases would be worrisome, he said, while a 75 percent increase would require designation as a high-alert county and give rise to recommendations to the governor.

Asked whether such benchmarks should be made public, he said, "I think it'd be a smart thing to do," not just for West Virginians wondering how their state is making decisions but for other states as well.

"Eventually, we should be learning from each other," Marsh said. "This next phase - of reopening - is much more difficult and much more dangerous."
Ireland South MEP Deirdre Clune has urged companies in Kilkenny to apply for support which is available locally and says it is a vital time for companies to have an online presence as the country battles the Covid-19 crisis.

Under the Governments National Digital Strategy, the expanded Trading Online Voucher Scheme helps small businesses with up to 10 employees to trade more online, boost sales and reach new markets. There is up to 2,500 available through the Local Enterprise Offices, with co-funding of 10% from the business.

Training and further business supports are also provided and businesses that have already received a Trading Online Voucher can now apply for a second voucher, where upgrades are required. They can apply to their Local Enterprise Office for support.

Funding can be used towards adding payment facilities or booking systems to a business website or developing new apps for customers. The voucher can also be used towards subscriptions to low cost online retail platform solutions, to help companies quickly establish a retailing presence online.

I would encourage companies to apply for this support if they feel it can help them at this time. It is a very worrying time for many businesses around Ireland and there are supports available to help," said Ms Clune.



Having a good online presence can be very valuable for companies too. It is now more important than ever. If a retailer is trying to sell goods it is important that they have a good website to display their products. I would encourage businesses to apply for funding which is available from the Local Enterprise Offices. The retail sector is vital to the Irish economy and it is great to see initiatives such as this being made available to encourage companies to support companies at this time. We need to support our local businesses now more than ever and online is a great way to do that.



More detail: https://www.localenterprise. ie/response

https://www.localenterprise. ie/Portal/response/Other-LEO- Supports/LEO-Response- Supports-pdf.pdf
The multi-millionaire founder of the Rainforest Cafe chain has lost his lawsuit against the city of Minnetonka Beach to take down a public dock that extends into the lake in front of his shore-front property.

Steven Schussler and his wife Sunhi Ryan-Schussler sued the city and the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District claiming that the dock was a health hazard for swimmers off their 110 feet of shoreline.

They added that it prevented them from building a dock off the $3.4million home for their own three boats.

The district court ruled Wednesday, however, that the city had the right to use the land over Schussler.

The themed restaurant chain founder, 64, has said that he may appeal the ruling and take the case further.

Steven Schussler, the founder of the Rainforest Cafe, sued the city of Minnetonka Beach and the Lake Minnetonka Conservation District over a public dock that he says prevents him from building a dock for his own three boats in front of his lakefront property

The problem dock is seen here in the center leaning to the right in front of the couple's home. The Schusslers say it is blocking them from building a dock for their three boats

'We always knew from Day One that we might have to go to the Supreme Court,' Schussler told the Minnesota Star Tribune.

'But in the meantime we're moving on, and we just want everybody to have a fantastic summer.'

The Schusslers filed the lawsuit saying that the four boats rented out by the city at the end of the public dock were dangerous for swimmers from their property as they moved in and out.

The dock extends from the shoreline at a 45-degree angle and obstructs their use of the lake, they added.

'God forbid a child or nieces and nephews or their children should ever come over and visit us and get hurt in the water,' Schussler said.

Hennepin District Judge Thomas Fraser ruled against the couple Wednesday, adding that they knew about the 160-foot public dock, and that it would be difficult for them to dock their own boats there, before they bought the property.

'Plaintiffs knowingly bought a lot with certain limitations, especially given the number and size of the boats that plaintiffs wish to dock in front of their property,' the judge wrote.

Fraser also ruled that the proximity of the dock to swimmers is not unusual in answer to the argument that it is a safety hazard.

Schussler has admitted he did know about the dock when he and his wife moved in 2017 after buying the home for $3.4million. They had hoped, however, to 'fix' the problem by working on a solution with the city and his neighbors.

'I was buying a problem I thought I could fix,' Schussler said.

'What we've learned since moving in here is that it's a very unfair situation for the homeowner.'

Steven Schussler and his wife Sunhi Ryan-Schussler (pictured above) filed the lawsuit claiming that the dock was a health hazard for swimmers off their 110 feet of shoreline on the lake

He only filed the suit in February 2020, according to SW News Media, when the couple was unable to negotiate with the city and neighbors to shift the dock's position

The couple have lived in the home for two and a half years and said that they had wanted to be good neighbors and even hosted a city party at their home.

The Schusslers were seeking a total of $250,000 jointly from the city of Minnetonka Beach and the LMCD for various losses and infringements caused by the dock.

The dock by the Schussler's property, Dock 10, is about 160ft and includes four boat slips. It is extended from a late 19th century 'fire lane,' which allowed fire trucks access to lake water for fighting blazes.

Other municipal docks around the lake don't generally extend at a 45-degree angle but this dock is forced to because of the shape of the Schussler's property.

As well as being the founder of Rainforest Cafe, Schussler, pictured, owns T-Rex Cafe, Yak & Yeti Restaurant, Betty & Joe's, Hot Dog Hall of Fame, Galaxy Drive In, and Backfire Barbeque

'The Schusslers own a pie-shaped lot,' said Paul Reuvers, a lawyer representing Minnetonka Beach.

'That truly is the problem there, and they bought it knowing that.

'Minnetonka Beach has the legal authority to regulate the use of the fire lane for purposes of public enjoyment and access to Lake Minnetonka. This authority includes the right to grant permits for the installation of seasonal docks by private parties.'

Schussler is a self-made entrepreneur. As well as being the founder of Rainforest Cafe, he created, built and owns T-Rex Cafe, Yak & Yeti Restaurant, Betty & Joe's, Hot Dog Hall of Fame, Galaxy Drive In, and Backfire Barbeque.

A native New Yorker, he opened his first Rainforest Cafe in Bloomington, Minnesota, in October 1994 after working in the television and broadcast industry.

He serves as the CEO of his own company Schussler Creative which he started in 2000. His wife also works with the company.
Social media allows us to connect with friends and loved ones in meaningful ways even when we arent together in person, which is wonderful. It also allows us to get to know and interact with people in other places, whether thats in the United States or around the world. That, too, is great
U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday said he does not want to talk to his Chinese counterpart, and mused about ending the worlds largest trading relationship, amid rising tensions about the coronavirus pandemic.

Speaking in an interview with Fox Business Network, Mr Trump said he had a very good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, but right now, I dont want to speak to him.

There are many things we could do, Mr Trump said. We could cut off the whole relationship.

Mr Trump, who has sought to blame China for being the source of the pandemic, even as his own handling of the crisis in the U.S, has come under fire, said he was very disappointed in Beijing for its failure to stop the virus at the source.

It was either stupidity, incompetence or it was deliberate, he said.

The president reiterated he was not interested in reopening talks on the phase-one trade deal agreed with Beijing earlier this year, which had served as a ceasefire in a brewing trade war.

The Trump administration, which has been mulling ways to punish or seek compensation from Beijing for the damage caused by the pandemic, is examining Chinese companies that trade on U.S. stock exchanges but do not follow U.S. accounting rules, Trump said.

The president also complained about Chinas alleged attempts to steal U.S. research on coronavirus vaccines and treatments.

The FBI and the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency on Wednesday warned that hackers linked to the Chinese government were targeting U.S. organisations working on a virus response.

The United States condemns attempts by cyberactors and non-traditional collectors affiliated with the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) to steal U.S. intellectual property and data related to COVID-19 research, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a statement on Thursday, calling on Beijing to cease this malicious activity.

The PRCs behavior in cyberspace is an extension of its counterproductive actions throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he said, accusing China of continuing to silence scientists, journalists, and citizens, and to spread disinformation, which has exacerbated the dangers of this health crisis.

Mr Pompeo has continued to pursue a theory that the virus came from a Chinese laboratory, even without presenting any evidence, and experts saying it does not appear to be man-made.

Peter Navarro, a key economic advisor to the president, said China spawned the virus, probably in that weapons lab in Wuhan.

Beijing hid the virus for two months behind the shield of the WHO, vacuumed up all the personal protective equipment across the world and hoarded it, killing people and profiteering from it, he told broadcaster Fox News.

(dpa/NAN)
And, of course, once again, the president refused to wear a mask, though he was surrounded by people who did. At this point, it is clear that the only way to get him to put one on, in accordance with his own administrations guidelines, might be to convince him that it makes him look thinner, like he seems to believe his extra-long ties do.
Congress leader Deepender Singh Hooda on Friday alleged that wheat procurement in Haryana was the slowest in the country and farmers were not getting timely payment.

He also said that as the principal opposition party in the state, the Congress has made it clear that it will extend full cooperation to the government in the fight against COVID-19, but at the same time it will raise the issues concerning farmers, poor, other sections or any "anti-people" decisions of the ruling dispensation.

Alleging mismanagement in the wheat procurement in Haryana, he said, "In the entire country, it is the slowest procurement. Lifting is very slow and timely payments are not being made".

Hooda, who is a Rajya Sabha MP and the lone opposition parliamentarian from the state, said a bumper wheat harvest of 120 Lakh Metric Tonne (LMT) was expected this year against 94 LMT in the previous year, but the government made an estimation of arrival of only 75 LMT, out of which only 65 LMT had arrived in mandis.

"Out of the 65 LMT wheat arrivals in mandis, only 37 LMT wheat has been lifted. A payment of Rs 12,500 crore had to be made for procuring 65 LMT, but so far only Rs 1,500 crore has been paid to farmers. Nearly Rs 11,000 crore payment is due, that too when the government assured the farmers that payment will be made within 72 hours after crop arrival," he said.

Wheat procurement began in Haryana on April 20.

On the contrary, Hooda said, entire procurement has been made in neighbouring Punjab despite a bumper harvest in the state.

He said the recently announced 'Mera Pani Meri Virasat' crop diversification scheme by the Haryana government is "not a correct move as it would deprive a large number of farmers from cultivating the paddy crop".

"This is not the right time to experiment with such schemes. Farmers are already going through a lot of hardship. The government should help them in this hour of crisis," he said.

Replying to a question, Hooda said he was against some BJP-ruled states, including Uttar Pradesh, amending labour laws "under the cover of a pandemic to lure foreign investors".

On Haryana blaming Punjab for allowing a number of migrants, who have set out on foot, to cross into the state, the Congress MP said it was not the time for blame-game but to work together to provide help to the stranded workers.

He attacked the Manohar Lal Khattar dispensation, saying several cases have come to fore in Haryana where migrant workers have not been paid by the units where they worked, leaving them with no option but to head for their native states.

He also claimed that NGOs and other social organisations provided 80 per cent relief to the migrant workers and others who were stranded due to the lockdown and kept in relief shelters.

He demanded that the government should help the daily wagers, small shopkeepers, auto-rickshaw drivers, middle class, poor sections and small and medium enterprises, which have been adversely impacted by the coronavirus-triggered lockdown.

"The government will have to ensure that people have money to spend otherwise wheels of economy will not move. When people will get relief, especially middle class, poor, farmers when they get relief and consumers will start spending, only then can it help the economy," he said.

On the issue of theft of huge stock of seized liquor from two godowns in Sonipat and setting up of a probe committee by the government, Hooda wondered whether an impartial investigation can be possible.

Haryana Home Minister Anil Vij himself said that theft could not have been possible without involvement of excise and police department officials, then how can a fair inquiry be possible in this backdrop, Hooda asked.

He, however, did not make it categorical when asked if a CBI probe should be ordered and said some independent investigation should be there in which people have faith.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"First, our main competitor countries will not be having their usual intake around August-September 2020," he says. Loading "Second, Australia hopefully will look like a safe destination as far as the virus is concerned. So my estimation is that Australia will corner the market in early 2021 and will not only get large numbers of students but also much of the cream." Morrison will want to point to the return of international students as proof that Australia has weathered the COVID-19 storm. More than half the temporary migrants in Australia today - around 730,000 out of 1.3 million - are students and graduates. Each year they supply the lions share of the permanent settlers sourced onshore. Last week Morrison explained the link between international students and permanent migration while dismissing Labor's calls to reduce temporary migration.

"The vast majority of skilled migration these days actually comes from those who are already here on a temporary skilled visa. And so if you're wanting to hack into the temporary skilled migration program, you're basically saying you want to hack into the skilled permanent migration program, and those communities all around the country [who rely on it]. I think that an insensitive way of dealing with that, an unbalanced way." But it is equally clear that Morrison and his senior ministers do not want to relax the JobKeeper program to include universities, or to provide the JobSeeker payment to the international students already here. The criteria for JobKeeper have been changed three times since its introduction at the end of March to prevent the universities from qualifying, although some may eventually lose enough money to meet the tougher standards. International students and Melburnians impacted by the COVID-19 shutdown line up for food assistance. Credit:Penny Stephens The confronting image this week of international students queuing for food in Sydney reaffirms the hard line the Morrison government has drawn between local and foreign victims of the lockdown. ABC 7.30 reporter Nadia Daly, who tweeted the footage on Monday, wrote that "several restaurants in Chinatown have taken it upon themselves to offer free meals to international students". The Commonwealth has effectively left it to state and local governments, the universities and individual migrant communities to provide support to international students. A secondary safety net is being improvised to cover the holes which the Morrison government left by design or default.

Meanwhile the Commonwealth has tried to use its financial leverage to force state governments to reopen schools earlier. For instance, it offered to bring forward funding to Victorian private schools to achieve this goal, although most refused to take up the carrot, preferring to stick with the state governments health advice. Loading This inversion of roles and jurisdiction-hopping has become a stunning feature of the health and economic crisis. A form of "bailout chicken" is being played as the Commonwealth and the states test one anothers willingness to intervene in the marketplace. Before the coronavirus it would have been unthinkable that Australia would return to the pre-deregulation world where airlines were in public hands. When the troubled second carrier Virgin asked for Commonwealth help, none was forthcoming, so it went into voluntary administration last month. Now the Queensland government is eyeing a role for itself in Virgin, through the state-owned Queensland Investment Corporation, in exchange for guarantees that the airline retains its headquarters in Brisbane and continues to service regional centres in the state. Whether the plan succeeds or even goes ahead to the next stage remains to be seen. But its announcement this week may encourage other bailout-hungry businesses to shop between the Commonwealth and the states or between the states themselves.

It is a reminder, too, of the Morrison governments ambivalent position as first responder in the economic crisis. It is hard to imagine that a federal Labor government would have ceded so much intervention ground to the states. A notable part of the Rudd-Gillard governments stimulus overreach during the global financial crisis in 2008-9 was its assumption of state roles. It tried to run the pink batts program on its own. Although the school building program was rolled out on a more co-operative basis, the Commonwealth took the lead there as well. Loading A generation earlier, the Hawke-Keating government used the early 1990s recession to dismantle public ownership in the financial system. Treasurer Paul Keating used the then publicly-owned Commonwealth Bank to take over the embattled State Bank of Victoria and sold off a third of the Commonwealth Bank to fund the bailout. The Morrison governments approach not only rewrites the Commonwealth playbook in a crisis. It contrasts with its pre-crisis self, where it was willing to prop up pet industries such as coal. To be fair, conservatives have no governing memory of crisis to inform them. The last Coalition government to face a global meltdown was Malcolm Frasers in 1982-3, and it fared much worse. Morrison and his ministers received a crash course on the need for cash stimulus in March. But the shock of the record budget deficit appears to have discouraged any further strategic economic planning beyond health. Already ministers are reciting the mantra that recovery will be led by the private sector.

These contradictions collide on the university campus, where Morrison is keen to facilitate market forces while the states' premiers are drawn further into direct intervention. It is conceivable that the states will effectively determine short-term migration policy through the universities within their borders. The interests of the states are easy to compute. Lockdown will create a population contest between them. International students, along with domestic travel, will sort the cities and regions that thrive from those left behind. It is conceivable that the states will effectively determine short-term migration policy through the universities within their borders. Last weeks national cabinet agreement on the three steps to recovery was notable for its inclusion of international students in the framework. Commonwealth, state and territory governments will consider lifting restrictions on international student travel in the same breath as they look at allowing travel between Australia and New Zealand and seasonal workers from the Pacific. That third step will coincide with the easing of restrictions on public gatherings of up to 100 people, the return to office work, the reopening of nightclubs, food courts and saunas, and the resumption of interstate travel.

International students would have to go into quarantine for 14 days before commencing their studies on campus. But that may not be a psychological barrier to entry if Australia is seen as a safe haven from the pandemic. Cutting against that advantage is the message Australia is sending now through the hardship faced by international students. Loading The Labor opposition is not helping matters. Labor has placed itself on the side of the universities and international students in the JobKeeper and JobSeeker debates. Yet there is a glaring double standard in the call by home affairs spokeswoman Senator Kristina Keneally to curb temporary migration under the banner of putting "Australian workers first". Put bluntly, it would hurt the universities, and close the door on the next intake of international students, at a time when Australia may be their best option for further education. It also sends a message, whether intended or otherwise, that migrants are fair game at the next election. The irony is this might help the Liberal Party retain its vulnerable cosmopolitan seats in Sydney and Melbourne.

The last federal election was notable for the schism between the city electorates with large migrant populations and the regional electorates without them. Labor held 20 of the 25 most diverse seats where a language other than English was spoken at home, the Liberals just four and the Greens one. All but one of these 25 electorates are located in Sydney and Melbourne. The exception is 25th-ranked Moreton, in Brisbanes inner south, which is held by Labor. At the other end of the spectrum, the Coalition held 15 of the 25 least diverse electorates, Labor had eight and independents two. Those electorates are spread across the regions of every state. No seats changed hands in the top 25, while the Coalition and Labor swapped a seat each in the bottom 25. The twist for Labor is that two of the four Liberal seats in the migrant belt, Reid in Sydneys inner west and Chisholm in Melbourne's east, are marginal. The government was helped in both seats by a quirk of citizenship. A high proportion of people in each electorate were recently-arrived migrants, and therefore less likely to be on the electoral roll. Reid is ranked 4th out of 151 electorates for recently-arrived migrants; Chisholm is 9th.
Ector County confirmed six more positive cases of coronavirus Friday, making the total 109. There are three probable cases at this time. ECHD reported that 75 people have recovered. There have been 1,825 tests taken, with 1,588 negative results and 128 pending results. ECHD has contacted 1,371 people during contact tracing.

The drive-thru at the Ector County Coliseum confirmed one more case Friday, making their total 11 positive cases. Of the 127 tests done, 99 are negative and 17 are pending. In Ector County, 280 people have called the triage center for testing. Odessa public and semi-private pools will be able to open based on the facilities ability to implement requirements set by state and local officials. The citys public pools will not open, according to a city spokeswoman.
LexisNexis Gives Thumbs Up to Water Leak Detectors

A study by analytics provider LexisNexis Risk Solutions found that in-line water shutoff systems correlate with a decrease in water claims by 96 percent, confirming the value of smart home technology to insurers.

The study also found that those without water shutoff systems reported a 10 percent increase in water claims events over the same time period.

LexisNexis said the study measured changes in the number and severity of water-related home insurance claims with the Flo by Moen Smart Water Shutoff device against an uninstalled control group of homes in the same geolocation one year before and after installation.

The national study found that prior to installation, 2,306 Flo homes had an average claims severity far greater than the control group two years prior to installation of the device, signaling a possible tipping point driving organic adoption of these devices, LexisNexis said. The study also saw a corresponding 72 percent decrease in claims severity one year after installation of the device, indicating that smart water shutoff systems are working.

Intuitively, its easy to imagine that a device like this would help prevent water leaks and significantly reduce the cost of insurance claims due to water damage, but we had to see it to believe it, and thats what weve begun to do with this study, said Dan Davis, director of Internet of Things and Emerging Markets, Insurance, for LexisNexis.

Mercury Using App for Remote Inspections

Mercury Insurance says it is offering homeowners who need to file homeowners insurance claims a close-to-contactless solution through an app that uses video to capture and assess property damage.

Christopher ORourke, vice president of property claims for the Los Angeles-based carrier, said to ensure the safety of insured and staff, the carrier will use use technology that allows policyholders to take claims handlers on a virtual tour of their homes in real-time to assess the damage and create an estimate.

Should this approach be insufficient, we limit the number of people visiting the home through the use of virtual inspection technology by our network of general contractors, he said in a press release.

If a house needs repairs due to a covered homeowners insurance loss, the damage will require evaluation to determine the repair costs and professionals will have to restore the property. Mercury said it uses contractors who comply with Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Clearcover Using Snapsheet for Claims

Snapsheet, a Chicago-based virtual claims management provider, is integrating its software with the direct auto insurance platform used by Clearcover.

Snapsheets service-as-software claims management platform fully automates the claim process, allowing consumers to file electronic first notice of loss forms and sending payments directly into customers bank accounts, the company said in a press release. The software also automatically assigns tasks and dispatches work.

Were redesigning the model of running an insurance company, and advanced technology is at the core of our business, stated Kyle Nakatsuji, founder and CEO of Clearcover.

Clearcover, a managing general agent that is also based in Chicago, sells insurance direct to the consumer online and through a smartphone app.

Snapsheet said it has completed nearly $6 billion in appraisals for more than 100 clients, including many of the largest insurance carriers in North America and third-party administrators.

Tower and myMatrixx Offer Claims Webinar

Tower MSA Partners and myMatrixx will present a free webinar for workers compensation professionals on settling legacy claims at 2 p.m. (EDT) May 20.

Tower Chief Compliance Officer Dan Anders and myMatrixx Chief Clinical Officer Phil Walls will speak.

As claims age, the percentage of spend for prescription drugs increases as does the likelihood that the injured worker will become a Medicare beneficiary, Anders said in a press release. Often, high drug costs pose insurmountable barriers to settlement.

Anders and Walls will break down these barriers and recommend ways to overcome them during the hour-long webinar. Attendees will learn:

How to define and quantify legacy claims using analytics;

Methods to identify these claims cost drivers;

Effective ways to work with PBM and MSA providers to reduce pharmacy costs and close claims;

Best practices in pharmacy management to prevent legacy claims.

To register, click here.
EKF Diagnostics, the global in vitro diagnostics company, announces that it has signed a three-year distribution agreement with Tosoh Europe N.V. for the distribution of its Quo-Test HbA1c point-of-care (POC) analyzer in the Middle East and Africa. Tosoh Bioscience division is one of the largest global manufacturers of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipment for glycated hemoglobin (HbA1c) analysis predominantly in core laboratories. As a desktop analyzer designed for simple and reliable HbA1c measurement for monitoring and managing diabetes in POC settings, such as diabetes clinics and doctors surgeries, EKFs Quo-Test analyzer complements Tosohs HPLC technology.

EKFs Quo-Test fully automated desktop HbA1c analyzer provides easy and reliable HbA1c measurement for monitoring and managing diabetes in a Point-of-Care setting

Tosoh Europe has seen a growing need for point-of-care HbA1c analysis alongside its traditional laboratory market and has identified EKF Diagnostics as an important partner to work with in order to provide this to its customers. As a leading HPLC manufacturer, Tosohs analyzers are frequently used to benchmark and validate POC devices such as Quo-Test. This agreement will allow both EKF and Tosoh Europe to work in markets they have previously been unable to access and provides Tosoh Europe with the opportunity to offer new services to suit changing customer requirements.

We are delighted to partner with Tosoh Europe as they expand their need for point-of-care HbA1c analysis in a time where those suffering from diabetes are at greater risk. Tosoh is a leading HPLC brand and its analyzers are considered to be the gold standard when validating POC products such as EKFs Quo-Test. For them to choose our analyzer to complement their lab-based HPLC analyzers for HbA1c testing is a great endorsement of our technology. Julian Baines, CEO, EKF

Quo-Test is fully automated and quantifies HbA1c from a 4 L sample taken from a finger prick or venous whole blood. Unaffected by most hemoglobin variants, lab-quality results are available within four minutes and reported in IFCC and DCCT standard units. Also facilitating its use as a POC analyzer, step-by-step instructions are displayed on Quo-Tests multi-lingual display, minimizing staff training time and minimizing user-related errors.

After the initial three-year term for the Middle East and Africa, EKFs Quo-Test distribution agreement with Tosoh Europe has a rolling one-year renewal with the option to extend the agreement into EU countries as required.
Felicity Huffman put her coronavirus home quarantine on pause Thursday for a visit with a friend.

The 57-year-old Desperate Housewives star was spotted in Los Angeles' South Central neighborhood for the the meet-up.

She wore a blue cloth mask over her face following Los Angeles' Mayor Eric Garcetti's new order requiring people in the city to wear masks when they leave their homes.

Quarantine break: Felicity Huffman, 57, was out Thursday in South Central Los Angeles for a walk with her dog before meeting up with a friend from her volunteer project The Teen Project

Felicity was dressed casually for her day out with her dog in a crimson Vassar College hoodie over a white shirt and dark jeans rolled up at the hems.

Her daughter Georgia, 18, revealed she would be attending the New York college when she added 'Vassar 2024' to her Instagram bio.

The actress also had on a set of cream-colored Adidas sneakers and black sunglasses, and her frizzy blonde hair fluttered about in the breeze.

She met up with a friend from her court-ordered community service with the Teen Project, though both were careful to remain at least six feet apart to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Social distancing: Felicity was careful to stay at least six feet from her friend during the brief meeting. She dressed casually in a crimson Vassar College hoodie, dark jeans and cream Adidas sneakers

Community service: The Transamerica actress is currently completing her 250 hours of court-ordered volunteer work for the nonprofit, which serves at-risk homeless and sex-trafficked young women; shown in 2019 with husband William H. Macy

Cheater: The Desperate Housewives star admitted to paying someone to take the SATs while posing as her daughter to get a higher score; shown in September

The Transamerica actress has been working on her required hours with the nonprofit organization that serves young at-risk women experiencing homelessness or sex-trafficking.

Felicity has been working on her 250-hour sentence since she pleaded guilty last year to honest services fraud after she was indicted as part of the Varsity Blues scandal.

The college admissions crimes swept up wealthy parents who had fraudulently tried to get their children admitted to elite universities, as well as some of the college employees who had assisted them, including Fuller House's Lori Loughlin.

Felicity was accused of making a $15,000 donation to a fake charity, which actually went to a person who pretended to be her daughter Sophia Macy while taking the SAT.

The scheme was partially successful, in that the fraudulent score was a considerable improvement over her daughter's PSAT score.

Still serving: She pleaded guilty to one count of honest services fraud and received a 14-day sentence and a $30K fine. She also has one year of supervised release; shown in September

Old roles: Felicity starred in Ava DuVernay's Netflix miniseries When They See Us after her release, though her role was filmed before the scandal; shown in 2014 with daughters Sophia (L) and Georgia (R)

She was arrested at home on March 12 and charged with honest services fraud and conspiracy to commit mail fraud.

The latter charge was dropped when she formally pleaded guilty a month later.

She served 11 days of her 14-day prison sentence at the Federal Correction Institution in Dublin, California, near the San Francisco Bay Area, before being let out early.

She's now working on her community service and has a year of supervised release, in addition to a $30,000 fine.

Unlike some of the other couple engaged in the wrongdoing, Felicity's husband William H. Macy wasn't charged for the admissions crimes.

Felicity later admitted that she had also considered trying to boost her daughter Georgia's SAT scores, before opting not to interfere.

Back at work: Felicity continued her return to the screen with her new film Tammy's Always Dying, release May 1 on VOD

Parental guidance: Felicity Huffman plays a chaotic, alcoholic who comes to rely on her adult daughter after learning she has terminal cancer. It's her third film release since she left prison, though she filmed it beforehand

Felicity continued her return to the screen with her new film Tammy's Always Dying, release May 1 on VOD.

She leads the dark comedy as a mother addicted to alcohol who comes to rely on her adult daughter after she's diagnosed with terminal cancer and only given 'six to 10 months to live.'

It's the third project released since the actress went to prison, though like the others she filmed her role prior to her arrest and prison sentence.
The life of a space pirate is not for the meek. That's why when the Seacons meet opposition they can't handle individually, they combine into the powerful God Neptune. Introducing the Transformers Takara Tomy Generations Selects TT-GS10 God Neptune! This figure is as sold in Japan, with original packaging and Japanese-language instructions, featuring Seacons Halfshell (torso), Sea Phantom (right arm), Coelagon (left arm), Terrormander (right leg), and Scylla (left leg). Each figure converts from robot to beast mode and together combine into the God Neptune figure. Now available for pre-order thru 6/15 to be shipping October 24, 2020 at Hasbro Pulse.

The Takara Tomy Transformers Generations Selects God Neptune figure was imported directly from Japan in its original packaging with Japanese-language instructions, featuring authentic Takara Tomy design and deco.

 Authentic Takara Tomy Product as sold in Japan, with original packaging and Japanese-language instructions

 Includes: 5 figures, shield, 5 sword, and 8 blaster accessories. Also includes fist and feet attachments for combiner mode

 Figures include Seacons Halfshell (torso), Sea Phantom (right arm), Coelagon (left arm), Terrormander (right leg), and Scylla (left leg)

 Each figure converts from robot to beast mode and together combine into God Neptune figure

 God Neptune is the combined form of the Predacon-aligned Seacons from the Transformers Beast Wars II cartoon that aired in Japan in 1998

 Combine sword accessories to form trident weapon accessory that God Neptune figure can hold

 Includes weapon accessories that were not included in the original 1998 toy release
A driver with the Bus Rapid Transit, Collins Nnodi, has gone into hiding after crushing a businesswoman, Mrs Grace Okeleke, to death at the Agric bus stop in the Ikorodu area of Lagos State.

PUNCH Metro gathered that Grace, the wife of the Head of Public Relations, Globacom, Andrew Okeleke, attempted to cross the road after being dropped off by her driver around 7.20pm, when Nnodi, who was driving a bus with number plate EPE 59 XR, knocked her down.

It was learnt that the businesswoman died on the spot.

However, Nnodi was said to have zoomed off and abandoned the victim at the scene of the accident.

Annoyed by the development, it was gathered that an angry mob vandalised some BRT buses plying the route.

Explaining the circumstances surrounding the incident, the family said in a statement that until her death, Grace was a minister at the Redeemed Christian Church of God, adding that the businesswoman was survived by her husband and children.

The statement read in part, The death has been announced of Mrs Grace Okeleke, wife of the Head, Public Relations, Globacom, Mr Andrew Okeleke.

Mrs Okeleke died in a motor accident on the Lagos Road, Ikorodu, on Monday evening. She was hit by a Lagos BRT bus with number plate EPE 59 XR.

The deceased was crossing the road after being dropped off by her driver just after the Agric bus stop, inwards Ketu, where there was no pedestrian bridge, when she was hit by the BRT bus. She died on the spot before she could be taken to hospital.

The late Mrs Okeleke, a businesswoman, hailed from Issele-Mkpitime, Aniocha North Local Government Area of Delta State. She was until her demise a top leader of her towns women group in Lagos as well as a minister of the Redeemed Christian Church of God, Grace Hall Parish, Ikorodu.

Mrs Okeleke is survived by her husband and children. Burial arrangements will be announced later by her family.

When contacted, the Chief Security Officer, Primero Transport Services Limited, the franchise holder of the BRT buses, Cletus Okodolor, while commiserating with the family, condemned Nnodi for abandoning Grace at the scene of the accident.

Okodolor said, We sympathise with the family and we are shocked at the action of the busman. The accident involved one of our buses, with number 344. The bus was coming from Ikorodu inwards Mile 12, and she was trying to cross to the other side of the road without actually looking properly; she entered the BRT corridor to cross and there was contact.

The woman died on the spot. But the busman did not help matters, because he drove off out of fear of being hurt and refused to put us in the picture. Suddenly, we started getting calls that an angry mob was vandalising our vehicles, because one of our buses knocked someone down on the corridor and we quickly informed the Traffic Division of the Owutu Police Station and its personnel were dispatched in the area.

When we got there, we learnt that the husband had taken the corpse to the morgue. But during our investigation, we realised that the busman had parked his bus in front of our office and left the engine running, instead of parking it at the right place.

So, we started searching for the busman, but he was nowhere to be found and that was how we realised that it was the busman, who knocked down the woman.

The driver is still at large and we are working with the police to get him arrested. We have also taken the bus to the police station.
COPPELL, Texas, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Costar Technologies, Inc. (the "Company") (OTC Markets Group: CSTI) announced today its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 that have been reviewed by the independent accounting firm BKD, LLP.

Financial Results for the Quarter Ended March 31, 2020

Revenues of $17,028 , a 18.3% increase compared to the first quarter of 2019. The increase is primarily due to increases in revenue generated by the CohuHD Costar business segment.

, a 18.3% increase compared to the first quarter of 2019. The increase is primarily due to increases in revenue generated by the CohuHD Costar business segment. Operating expenses were down 16.5% to $6,617 , compared to $7,922 in the first quarter of 2019. Decrease is primarily driven by approximately $828 of one-time expenses at AVC during the first quarter of 2019 (e.g. move expenses, ERP implementation, professional fees and other restructuring fees).

, compared to in the first quarter of 2019. Decrease is primarily driven by approximately of one-time expenses at AVC during the first quarter of 2019 (e.g. move expenses, ERP implementation, professional fees and other restructuring fees). GAAP net loss of $193 , or ($0.12) per diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of $2,632 , or ($1.69) per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2019.

, or per diluted share, compared to a GAAP net loss of , or per diluted share, in the first quarter of 2019. Adjusted earnings of $156 , or $0.10 per diluted share, compared to ($2,222) , or ($1.43) per diluted share for the quarter ended March 31, 2019 . Adjusted earnings, a non-GAAP measure, is defined below.

, or per diluted share, compared to , or per diluted share for the quarter ended . Adjusted earnings, a non-GAAP measure, is defined below. Adjusted EBITDA of $500 , compared to ($2,699) for the quarter ended March 31, 2019 . Adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, is defined below.

Sarah Ryder, the Company's Chief Financial Officer, stated, "While our first quarter is historically soft, our financial performance for the first quarter of 2020 benefited from the release of previously delayed projects in the traffic and critical infrastructure markets. These projects combined with shipments of $1.2M on a large international order, drove CohuHD's sizeable contribution to first quarter revenue. The uncertainty of the current economic environment presents challenges for our business, but increased demand in the traffic, critical infrastructure and education markets helped offset some of the softness experienced in parts of our retail vertical. We made aggressive cost reduction efforts heading into the second quarter to mitigate the impact of demand decreases in certain segments. I'm very pleased with our first quarter results and our strong start to a challenging year."

Scott Switzer, the Company's Interim Chief Executive Officer, went on to say, "Our facilities have remained in full operation under the Essential Service Business Exception of the Shelter in Place orders. Our employees are our greatest asset and we take their safety very seriously. Office personnel are working from home and we have implemented measures to help ensure the safety of our production workers. While the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively impacted our business, we were able to take advantage of the Small Business Association's (SBA) Payroll Protection Program (PPP) and obtained a $3M loan in April 2020. Additionally, increased international demand, a few large retail projects and the launch of a new thermographic camera helped drive revenue growth in the first quarter of 2020. In April, we announced changes to our executive leadership team. We also launched our "One Costar" vision which focuses on consolidating business functions to drive greater cross-selling and operational efficiencies as well as creating a unified customer-centric culture throughout our organization. I am confident that with the team we have in place today, combined with the funding secured under the SBA PPP and the cost reductions we've enacted, we will be able to successfully navigate the current challenges in the marketplace and our business."

The Company's independent auditors completed their analysis of the Company's financial condition. The Independent Auditor's Review Report, including financial statements and applicable footnote disclosures, is available on our website at www.costartechnologies.com.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The Company defines adjusted earnings, a non-GAAP measure, as net income (loss) excluding stock-based compensation and amortization of acquisition-related intangible assets. The Company defines adjusted EBITDA, a non-GAAP measure, as earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation. The following tables reconcile the non-GAAP financial measures disclosed in this release to GAAP net income (loss):



Quarter

Ended

3/31/20 Quarter

Ended

3/31/19 Adjusted Earnings 156 (2,222) Less:



Stock-Based Compensation (32) (86) Intangible Amortization (317) (324) Net Loss (193) (2,632)







Quarter

Ended

3/31/20 Quarter

Ended

3/31/19 Adjusted EBITDA 500 (2,699) Less:



Interest (291) (308) Income Taxes (Benefit) 65 886 Depreciation (118) (101) Intangible Amortization (317) (324) Stock-Based Compensation (32) (86) Net Loss (193) (2,632)

These reconciliations of GAAP to non-GAAP measures should be considered together with the Company's financial statements. These non-GAAP measures are not meant as a substitute for GAAP, but are included solely for informational and comparative purposes. The Company's management believes that this information can assist investors in evaluating the Company's operational trends, financial performance, and cash generating capacity. Management believes these non-GAAP measures allow investors to evaluate the Company's financial performance using some of the same measures as management. However, the non-GAAP financial measures should not be regarded as a replacement for (or superior to) corresponding, similarly captioned, GAAP measures.

About Costar Technologies, Inc.

Costar Technologies, Inc. develops, designs, manufactures and distributes a range of security solution products including surveillance cameras, lenses, digital video recorders and high-speed domes. The Company also develops, designs and distributes industrial vision products to observe repetitive production and assembly lines, thereby increasing efficiency by detecting faults in the production process. Headquartered in Coppell, Texas, the Company's shares currently trade on the OTC Markets Group under the ticker symbol "CSTI". Costar was ranked as the 35th largest company in a&s magazine's Security 50 for 2019. Security 50 is an annual ranking by the magazine of the world's largest security manufacturers in the areas of video surveillance, access control and intruder alarms, based on sales revenue.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements, including statements regarding the Company's ability to grow revenue and earnings, that are subject to substantial risks and uncertainties that could cause actual performance or results to differ materially from those expressed in or suggested by the forward-looking statements, including but not limited to risks related to the ability to diversify business across vertical markets, secure new customer wins, and launch new products. You can often identify forward-looking statements by words such as "believe," "may," "estimate," "continue," "anticipate," "intend," "plan," "expect," "predict," "potential," or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These forward-looking statements are based on management's current expectations but they involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results and the timing of events could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements as a result of the risks and uncertainties.

You should not place undue reliance on any forward-looking statements. The Company assumes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect actual results, changes in assumptions, or changes in other factors affecting forward-looking information, except to the extent required by applicable laws.

COSTAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES



CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (AMOUNTS SHOWN IN THOUSANDS)

































March 31, 2020

December 31, 2019



(Reviewed)

(Audited) ASSETS











Current assets









Cash and cash equivalents $ 1

$ 1 Accounts receivable, less allowance for doubtful accounts of $429 and $471 in 2020 and 2019, respectively

10,674



9,056 Inventories, net of reserve for obsolescence of $1,090and $1,264 in 2020 and 2019, respectively

19,639



20,196 Prepaid expenses and other current assets

2,992



2,295

Total current assets

33,306



31,548











Non-current assets









Property and equipment, net

828



910 Deferred financing costs, net

50



59 Deferred tax asset, net

4,514



4,514 Trade names, net

2,108



2,198 Distribution agreements, net

775



801 Customer relationships, net

4,017



4,187 Covenants not to compete, net

53



60 Patents, net

162



169 Technology, net

251



268 Goodwill

6,513



6,513 Right of use assets

2,899



3,131 Other non-current assets

149



149

Total non-current assets

22,319



22,959

Total assets $ 55,625

$ 54,507















LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY





































Current liabilities









Accounts payable $ 7,683

$ 5,639 Accrued expenses and other

6,591



5,879 Line of credit

15,152



15,953 Current maturities of long-term debt, net of unamortized financing fees

783



781 Contingent purchase price

1,490



1,490 Current maturities of notes payable, unrelated party

333



583 Current maturities of lease liabilities

1,006



990

Total current liabilities

33,038



31,315













Long-Term liabilities























Long-term debt, net of current maturities and unamortized financing fees

3,396



3,592 Non-current maturities of lease liabilities

2,133



2,389

Total long-term liabilities

5,529



5,981

Total liabilities

38,567



37,296











Stockholders' Equity









Preferred stock









Common stock

3



3 Additional paid-in capital

157,518



157,478 Accumulated deficit

(135,942)



(135,749) Less common stock held in treasury, at cost

(4,521)



(4,521)

Total stockholders' equity

17,058



17,211













Total liabilities and stockholders' equity $ 55,625

$ 54,507

COSTAR TECHNOLOGIES, INC. AND SUBSIDIARIES



CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (AMOUNTS SHOWN IN THOUSANDS, EXCEPT NET INCOME PER SHARE)

































Three Months Ended March 31,



2020

2019



(Reviewed)

(Reviewed)













Net revenues $ 17,028

$ 14,389 Cost of revenues

10,378



9,677













Gross profit

6,650



4,712













Selling, general and administrative expenses

5,185



6,513











Engineering and development expense

1,432



1,409





6,617



7,922 Income (loss) from operations

33



(3,210)













Other expenses











Interest expense

(291)



(308) Total other expenses, net

(291)



(308)













Income (loss) before taxes

(258)



(3,518) Income tax provision (benefit)

(65)



(886)













Net loss $ (193)

$ (2,632)



























Net loss per share:











Basic $ (0.12)

$ (1.69)















Diluted $ (0.12)

$ (1.69)





5879



















Weighted average shares outstanding:











Basic

1,586



1,558















Diluted

1,586



1,558

SOURCE Costar Technologies, Inc.

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Coronavirus fears in Africa are on the rise, with the number of infections surging day by day. However, according to the World Health Organisation, the fear of the virus causing a massive number of deaths seems to be the larger scare.

The WHO, in a study, revealed that the virus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken adding that nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected.

Authors of the research, published in the journal BMJ Global Health, predicted that while infection rate could be contained by the swift measures that many African countries have taken, the underlying issue would be the health systems that could still quickly become overwhelmed.

Read: South Africa: President Warns People To Be Prepared To Live With COVID-19 For A Year

Read: Virus Could smolder In Africa, Cause Many Deaths, Says WHO

A few days ago, the WHO had predicted that the Coronavirus could smolder in Africa for years. More than 72,391 confirmed infections and 2,493 virus-related deaths have been reported by African countries, according to figures released on Friday by the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The total number of cases has risen by more than 42% in the past week.

While the disease seems to be moving slower than in other virus-hit nations across Europe, mainly be due to poor surveillance or less developed transport links, the study suggests that it could claim a lot more lives in comparison.

According to an estimation by the study, 4.6 million people would need to be admitted to hospital, while 140,000 would have severe COVID-19 infection and 89,000 would be critically ill. That would lead to some 150,000 deaths (between 83,000 and 190,000), the study suggested.

"The region will have fewer deaths, but occurring more in relatively younger age groups, amongst people previously considered healthy - due to undiagnosed non-communicable diseases," the report said, adding that these trends were already emerging.

Read: Cape Town Becomes Hotspot Of South Africas Coronavirus Pandemic

Read: Coronavirus Risk Alert To Be Lowered In Most Parts Of S Africa By May-end

(With Agency Inputs)
Patanjali (Image: Facebook)

Baba Ramdev's Patanjali Ayurved plans to launch an online marketplace, OrderMe to sell swadeshi products, in response to the call by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to participate in making India Atmanirbhar or self-reliant, according to an ET Now report.

In his address to the nation on May 12, PM Modi had urged citizens to buy and endorse local products.

New Delhi-based Bharuwa Solutions, Plus, Patanjalis information technology company has also developed an app for online retail for both Android and iOS platforms.

Patanjalis own ayurvedic products will sell via the OrderMe portal and also allow consumers to get in touch with nearby stores selling Indian products. The orders will be home-delivered free of cost.

Coronavirus India News LIVE

The OrderMe portal is expected to be launched on a grand scale within the next two weeks and new products will be added based on consumer response, sources told ET Now.

Patanjali will also provide free medical advice 24x7 by 1,500 doctors, and yoga tutorials through the website. To manage its countrywide distribution, sale and supply of products, Patanjali has used in-house software.
WINSTED  Thursday nights budget hearing, held on Zoom, became a debate between town officials and Gilbert School Superintendent Dr. Anthony Serio, who defended the semi-private schools recent decision to apply for the federal governments Paycheck to Paycheck Program.

Gilbert applied for and received more than $900,000 from the PPP, which Serio says will be used for payroll, ensuring the school has enough money to operate and pay its faculty and staff in the coming year.

Were a nonprofit, and we qualified for the PPP, Serio said. We decided it made sense for us to apply for that funding.

Gilberts decision to get the PPP funding angered Mayor Candy Perez, who questioned why Winsted still had to pay its annual tuition of more than $7 million for the towns 400-plus students. Because Gilbert is a nonprofit, semi-private school overseen by the Gilbert Trust, Winsted pays tuition for each student attending the school.

About 20 people joined Zoom Thursday to listen and make comments.

The Gilbert Schools proposed $7,810 million budget for 2020-21 is an increase of $198,544 over current spending.

The Winchester Public Schools $20,201,987 proposed 2020-21 budget represents a $240,301, or a 1.2 percent, increase over current spending. That budget was presented by Superintendent Melony Brady-Shanley.

The towns proposed budget for 2020-21 totals $34,228,148, an increase of $402,787 over current spending. Town Manager Robert Geiger made the presentation.

Pre-corona budget

During his presentation, Serio prefaced his comments by saying the 2020-21 school year will be very different, and that the Gilbert School budget was developed pre-corona.

Only a portion of our students will be able to come back, Serio said. Well have kids at home doing distance learning, and kids coming to class. Well practice social distancing inside and outside the classroom. There will be masks, Plexiglas dividers. ... This is what were facing with the start of school in the fall.

Distance learning will continue, he said. Were going to make sure everyone has connectivity, because there may be a period of time when well have to stay home again. This is a pre-corona budget, delivered in January, and there are likely to be many changes to the way things will be done.

Gilbert had 30 international students living on campus this year, which creates revenue for the school. Serio said many of those students may not return, which will mean less tuition money. He is hoping to have 18 to 20 students in the fall. We estimated 30 international students, but thats not going to happen, Serio said. Embassies may not be open for them to get here.

The superintendent said maintenance costs also will increase. There will be added costs for and dispenser stations, sanitizing centers in rooms, PPE (gloves and masks), Serio said.  Were going to have a circumstance on our hands where were going to be sanitizing the building throughout the day, and well need more custodial staff, once the school year begins.

Brady-Shanley said recently that the elementary schools probably will need more supplies and extra help keeping the schools sanitized and safe. Like Serio, she didnt have specific numbers related to those anticipated costs.

Who pays?

Along with the discussion of the PPP funding and Gilberts tuition bill, Perez and Selectwoman Candace Bouchard questioned capital improvements at Gilbert, and who should be responsible.

Does our contract for education (at the Gilbert School) include capital improvements? Bouchard asked, when Serio pointed to roof repairs that are needed. Usually capital improvements are borne by the owner, not the tenant.

Serio said capital improvements are part of Winsteds costs. The roof repairs make the capital costs stand out a little more this year, he said.

Perez said, A few years ago, we werent paying capital expenses. Winsted is not only taking care of town buildings ... now its taking care of your building.

Serio explained that the Gilbert Trusts responsibility includes the land around the school building, but that interior repairs and costs were part of the towns responsibility, because it houses their students.

Perez asked again what Gilbert planned to do with the PPP funding. Serio said it would be used for salaries, while the towns tuition funds would be set aside and used for supplies, tutors, and other needs as they arise.

Perez objected to the idea of setting aside the towns $7 million tuition money.

I can understand the need for (money) for COVID-19, she said. But if Winchesters schools had extra money, theyd have to return it to the town. If you have money left, you keep it. You dont give it back to the town.

Thats right, Serio responded. We will have a reserve. It will be used for education, for the blended education were going to have to follow in the coming year.

Perez argued that during the 2019-20 budget process, Gilbert raised its tuition bill. The Winchester school board was anticipating an agreed-upon tuition ... when we got a bill, ... we had to shift money around. Can you tell me why?

Serio said the tuition increased in 2019 because contract negotiations between the town and the school broke down.

According to a story in the Register Citizen, in 2019, Gilbert and Winsted had settled on a one-year extension of the contract, with $6,849,000 to be paid from the district to Gilbert. But Gilbert requested to be named the sole designated high school for Winsted students, which was unanimously rejected by the Board of Education, according to the minutes. Gilbert then billed the district $6,943,193 for the coming school year, according to the minutes for the July 22 meeting of the Winchester Board of Education. The board had budgeted $6,475,000, the cost of tuition under the terms of the most recent agreement between the two sides. To make up the $468,193 difference, the Winchester Public Schools drew funding from the Additional Town Support for Non-Educational Expenses line item in the town budget, the boards non-lapsing fund.

Selectman Jack Bourque reminded Serio that the pandemic was causing a lot of challenges for taxpayers, and that if Gilbert had a shortfall  losing international students, for example  he would have to consider significant reductions to the schools budget, including staffing.

Id be very hesitant to do that, Serio responded. Kids are going to need more teachers, not less. Its not the time to think about reductions in staffing.

Thats why I went after the PPP money, he said. With the possibility of a shortfall, that was one of the driving factors.

Brady-Shanley also is anticipating more costs in the coming year.

The closing of the K-8 St. Anthony School, for example, will bring more students to the public schools. Changes in the way students are taught, cleaning supplies and possible added transportation costs also are concerns, she said.

Hearings continue

Additional budget hearings will be held at 7 p.m. May 18 and 21.

The May 21 meeting is a Special Board of Selectmen meeting to adopt the budget and set the towns tax rate. All will be livestreamed, shown on Channel 194, and on Zoom. Public comment can be submitted in writing or by phone anytime between now and May 20; email townmanager@townofwinchester.org, LBessette@townofwinchester.org or Winstedpubliccomment@gmail.com, call 860-738-6962, or write to Town of Winsted, Attn: Board Of Selectmen 338 Main St., Winsted CT 06098. All comments will be compiled and considered by the BOS throughout this process prior to our decision on May 21.

To read the budgets online, go to townofwinchester.org.
When the Oxygen network's true-crime show "Snapped" headed to the South to explore "killer cases enmeshed with secrets, deception, and Southern charm," Blanche Taylor Moore was an obvious choice for inclusion.

"This month's slate of true crime investigations includes several unassuming women in the American South who poisoned, shot, and bludgeoned those closest to them," Oxygen proclaims on its website. "Don't be fooled by their churchgoing, socialite statuses  these women will do whatever it takes to keep their secrets and their true identities under wraps."

"Snapped: Blanche Taylor Moore" will air at 6 p.m. Sunday and later at Oxygen.com.

Here is a look back at Moore's tale, written in 2015 by then-staff writer Margaret Moffett. A few numbers and dates have been updated.

Blanche Taylor Moore (copy) (copy) Blanche Taylor Moore listens to witness testimony in the Forsyth County Courthouse Nov. 4, 1990. Moore was accused of poisoning her boyfriend 

She was the Black Widow from Central Casting:

Southern and demure, with big 80s hair and a string of pearls. A preachers daughter, a preachers wife. A grandmother, even, secretly slipping arsenic into food  like her homemade banana pudding  hoping to induce slow, painful deaths for those closest to her.

Blanche Taylor Moore.

Or around these parts, simply Blanche.

Thirty years ago this November, a Forsyth County jury found Blanche guilty of first-degree murder in the 1986 arsenic-poisoning death of Raymond Reid, her longtime boyfriend.

She was 57 when the same jury sentenced her to death on Nov. 16, 1990.

Technically, she was convicted for killing Reid and Reid alone.

But in reality, she stood trial as a serial killer, the presumed perpetrator of a string of arsenic poisonings  some fatal  that investigators, prosecutors and family members believed began in 1966.

Father. Mother-in-law. Sister-in-law. First husband.

And the Rev. Dwight Moore, her second husband, poisoned five days after their wedding in April 1989. By surviving what normally would have been a lethal dose of arsenic, Moore lived to testify, to seal his wifes fate.

The only thing these victims had in common was chronic arsenic poisoning and their romantic or personal association with Blanche Taylor Moore, said Vincent Rabil, a former Forsyth County prosecutor, now an assistant capital defender, who helped convict Blanche.

Today, Blanche remains at the N.C. Correctional Institution for Women. She is one of 148 people awaiting execution in North Carolina.

At 87, she is the states oldest death-row inmate, the second-longest serving and one of only three women.

We werent able to ask her how shes doing or what she has done to pass the time for 25 years. State prison officials require written consent from the attorneys of death row inmates before forwarding requests for interviews, said Keith Acree, a spokesman for the N.C. Department of Public Safety.

Washington-based attorney William Taylor III, who has represented Moore since 1995, was considering our request at publication time.

Many others involved in the case either cant talk or dont want to.

Dwight Moore, who remarried and moved to Virginia, died of natural causes in 2013.

Lead Forsyth County prosecutor Janet Branch, whose crying spells in the courtroom nearly prompted a mistrial, committed suicide in October.

Mitchell McEntire, one of Blanches defense attorneys who still maintains a practice in Graham, didnt return a call.

The details of her case, however, are preserved in hundreds of newspaper articles, books, even a made-for-TV movie, with former Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery cast as Blanche.

The mysterious deaths, spanning three decades.

Arsenic-laden bodies exhumed from cemeteries in Alamance County.

Intensive care nurses who said they watched Blanche spoon-feed banana pudding to Reid just days before he died.

And, of course, lots of odorless, tasteless Anti-Ant.

Poison in the pudding

If not for the Rev. Dwight Moores strong constitution and will to live, the world may never have learned the extent of Blanche Taylor Moores crimes.

Fresh from their brief honeymoon in April 1989, the minister became violently ill a half-hour after eating a fast-food chicken sandwich Blanche had given him. He went to the emergency room with severe nausea and vomiting.

Three weeks later, he was near death at a Chapel Hill hospital, hooked to a ventilator, his liver, kidneys and heart failing. He wasnt expected to live.

Doctors threw a Hail Mary: They ordered blood tests for herbicide poisoning, because he had used the chemicals before his illness.

The results revealed more arsenic than his doctors had ever seen in a living person  100 times the normal amount.

The hospital alerted police, who interviewed him as he lay on what was supposed to be his deathbed.

Moore mentioned to police that Blanches former boyfriend, Raymond Reid, died in 1986 of Guillain-Barre syndrome, an immune system disorder with symptoms similar to arsenic poisoning.

Thats when investigators started to exhume bodies.

In the summer of 1989, workers unearthed five caskets from Alamance County cemeteries. Each contained the remains of someone close to Blanche.

Autopsies revealed a new cause of death  arsenic poisoning  for two of the five: Reid, whose arsenic level was 30 times higher than normal, and James Taylor, her first husband, whose 1973 death from an apparent heart attack was the result of an arsenic level 60 times higher than normal.

Two other bodies that were exhumed  those of her father, the Rev. Parker Kiser Sr., and her mother-in-law, Isla Taylor  had high levels of arsenic, but not high enough to kill them, the medical examiner said.

The body of Joseph Mitchell, a former co-worker of Blanches who died in 1985, also was exhumed. The autopsy didnt reveal any unusual level of arsenic.

David Hedgecock, the State Bureau of Investigation agent whose investigation led to the exhumations, said the names of more than 30 people arose as possible arsenic victims.

There was a good bit of hysteria going on, Hedgecock said at the time. It seemed like anyone that had a family member dead who at some point knew Blanche thought that Blanche had something to do with the death.

On July 18, 1989, authorities arrested Blanche and held her without bail. She was charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Taylor and Reid and assault with a deadly weapon in the poisoning of Dwight Moore.

She hasnt experienced a moment of freedom since.

A trial of tears

Blanche Taylor Moore (copy) Blanche Moore is escorted from the Alamance County courthouse in Graham by a deputy and her attorney, Mitchell McEntire, after her arraignment

Prosecutors had a problem. A big one. No one saw Blanche Taylor Moore poison anyone.

There was circumstantial evidence  and plenty of it  but nothing tangible.

That deeply concerned Forsyth County prosecutors, who had jurisdiction over Reids murder because he had died at what was then N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem.

Help came in the form of a court ruling issued just days before the trial started. Judge William Freeman of Forsyth County Superior Court said prosecutors could discuss the arsenic poisonings of James Taylor, Dwight Moore and Kiser.

The decision laid the groundwork for the states case against Blanche: She secretly poured an odorless, colorless arsenic-based ant killer called Anti-Ant into food and drinks, then fed it to her victims.

Enter lead prosecutor Janet Branch  blonde, smartly dressed, 100 pounds soaking wet. This flamboyant, aggressive former labor lawyer described the victims suffering with such gruesome detail that she twice broke down in court.

Raymond Reid lay in Baptist Hospital flat on his back, bed sores on his back, completely unable to move, tears in his eyes on the days that this woman who was killing him doesnt come, Branch told the jury, tears streaming down her face.

Hes crying because his murderer isnt coming to see him! Can you imagine anything more pitiful in this whole world? And he loves her with all his heart. ... But shes running around on him, and shes sleeping with Dwight Moore, and shes going to that hospital.

The defense wanted a mistrial for her crying fits but didnt get one.

But there was more to the trial than raw emotion. Branch and Rabil unleashed a torrent of witnesses  53 in all  who, collectively, painted a picture of Blanche as a cunning, ruthless killer.

Blanche Taylor Moore (copy) Blanche Moore being escorted into the Alamance County courthouse in Graham by two deputy sheriffs for her arraignment in August 1989.

Among those testifying:

Three of Reids intensive care nurses at Baptist Hospital who said they watched Moore feed him banana pudding Oct. 1, 1986. They said Moore offered them helpings from a separate container. Reid had been getting better. But on Oct. 2, he became deathly ill again and died five days later. During the trial, Blanche steadfastly denied ever bringing banana pudding to the hospital. I did not do anything that I feel harmed Raymond, she said.

A clerk at a convenience store in Burlington who said Blanche shopped there for bug poison in April 1989, a few weeks before Dwight Moore became ill. She asked me if I had any Anti-Ant in stock, the clerk testified. I told her I didnt have it. She told me to get some. It was good stuff.

Dwight Moore, whose frail, shaky appearance on the stand helped Branch and Rabil establish a pattern of Blanches poisoning of the men in her life. Moore also testified that Blanche asked him to buy Anti-Ant for her in 1985, a few months before Blanche started poisoning Reid, prosecutors argued.

Deborah Moore, Dwight Moores daughter from his first marriage, who recounted a conversation with Blanche in 1986, where Blanche said Dwight Moore was evil and deserved whatever happened to him.

The jury found her guilty after six hours of deliberation and sentenced her to death after just four more.

I dont see how anybody could have sat in that courtroom, saw the evidence given, heard the defense and come up with anything different than we did, a juror told the News & Record after sentencing Blanche to death.

I dont care if it was us 12, the next 12 or 112 people down the road, I think the decision would have been the same.

Blanche never stood trial for the death of her first husband, Taylor, or for poisoning her second husband, Moore.

Officials in Alamance County dropped those charges soon after she was sentenced to death.

The ultimate penalty

BLANCHE TAYLOR MOORE (copy) (copy) Blanche Taylor Moore glances behind her in the courthouse to where her family sits and supports her during an appellate hearing in the Forsyth

You can find a picture of her on the prison systems website, death row roster page at www.ncdps.gov.

It is not the Blanche Taylor Moore we remember  big glasses, tailored outfits, perfectly permed hair.

Its an elderly woman with silver hair.

Like all death row cases, Blanches attorneys filed numerous appeals, all unsuccessful.

One argued that Freeman, the judge in the murder trial, shouldnt have let the jury hear allegations that she poisoned her first husband, Taylor, and attempted to poison her second husband, Moore.

Another claimed that Freeman improperly socialized with jurors, posing for pictures, sharing popcorn and birthday cake.

Taylor, her attorney, launched his most recent argument in 2010. He and attorneys for almost every other death row inmate in North Carolina asked that their sentences be converted to life in prison under the states 2009 Racial Justice Act. The law allowed death row inmates to challenge their sentences based on statistical evidence of racism.

Gov. Pat McCrory repealed that act in 2013, ending any hope for such a move.

Rabil said the aftermath of Blanches trial, including the lengthy appeals process, has helped shape his belief that capital punishment should be abolished.

Moore2 012304 RK (copy) Blanche Taylor Moore is escorted into a Forsyth County courtroom in this 1990 file photo taken shortly before she was convicted on murder charges.

In November 1990, as Rabil sought to persuade jurors to sentence Blanche to death, he said Reids murder set a new standard for cruelty in the history of this country.

Blanche, he told them, deserved the ultimate penalty.

Now an assistant capital defender in Forsyth County, Rabil is no longer convinced.

In 2015, he asked: Have the endless rounds of appeals and hearings rehashing the gory details of the case achieved justice or provided closure to the victims and survivors?

Isnt the 25 years and more than $1 million spent litigating this case just a monument to another failed government program?

moore on pub safety site.png Blanche Taylor Moore's photo and information from the state's death row roster page online.

Timeline of events

(Note: On Nov. 15, 1990, the News & Record published the following timeline of events in the Blanche Taylor Moore saga. It was compiled in 1990 by two reporters who covered the trial: current News & Record reporter Taft Wireback and Justin Catanoso, a former News & Record reporter who served as a technical consultant on the made-for-TV movie about Moore.)

 Oct. 2, 1973: James Taylor, Blanches first husband, dies of apparent heart attack at home.

 Mid-1976: Blanche Taylor begins dating Raymond Reid, a co-worker at Kroger.

 April 7, 1985: Blanche Taylor meets the Rev. Dwight Moore at Easter sunrise service.

 Oct. 16, 1985: Blanche Taylor accuses Kroger manager Robert Hutton of sexual harassment. She later files a $15 million lawsuit against Kroger, her longtime employer.

 May 30, 1986: Raymond Reid enters Wesley Long Community Hospital with severe nausea and vomiting.

 June 13, 1986: Reid transfers to N.C. Baptist Hospital in Winston-Salem; his illness is a mystery to doctors.

 Sept. 2, 1986: Reid appears to be recovering. He signs his will making Blanche Taylor the executor and one-third beneficiary of his estate.

 Oct. 1, 1986: Nurses observe Blanche Taylor feeding Reid banana pudding in the hospital.

 Oct. 7, 1986: Reid dies, apparently of heart failure.

 Nov. 4, 1986: Dwight Moore buys a $571 ruby and diamond engagement ring for Blanche Taylor.

 July 29, 1987: Blanche Taylor accepts a $275,000 settlement from Kroger in the harassment suit.

 Nov. 26, 1988: Dwight Moores planned marriage to Blanche Taylor is canceled because he must be hospitalized for nausea and vomiting.

 April 19, 1989: Dwight Moore and Blanche Taylor marry.

 April 24, 1989: Dwight Moore is hospitalized again for nausea and vomiting.

 May 13, 1989: Doctors in Chapel Hill determine that the near-dead Dwight Moore had been poisoned with arsenic.

 May 21, 1989: Investigators talk with Dwight Moore for first time. He tells them of Reids mysterious death.

 June 13, 1989: Reids body is exhumed. Autopsy reveals he died of arsenic poisoning.

 July 6, 1989: James Taylors body is exhumed. Autopsy reveals he died of arsenic poisoning.

 July 18, 1989: Police arrest Blanche Taylor Moore and charge her with two counts of murder and one count of assault.

 July 21, 1989: The body of Parker D. Kiser Sr., Moores father, is exhumed. Autopsy reveals elevated but non-lethal levels of arsenic.

 Aug. 29, 1989: Moore pleads not guilty to all charges.

 May 29, 1990: Moore receives in jail the controversial deathbed confession attributed to Garvin Thomas. Prosecutors believe Moore wrote the letter.

 Oct. 15, 1990: Jury selection begins in Moores murder trial.

 Nov. 14, 1990: Jury convicts Moore of first-degree murder in Reids death.

KEY EVENTS SINCE

 Nov. 16, 1990: Jury sentences Moore to death.

 Dec. 4, 1990: Dwight Moore files for divorce from Blanche Taylor Moore in Alamance County.

 Oct. 12, 1991: Prosecuting attorney Janet Branch is arrested on charges that she hit her estranged husband, Larry Branch, with a tire iron.

 Oct. 30, 1991: Moores attorney says she is attacked by another death-row inmate at N.C. Correctional Institution for Women who objected to Moores afternoon shower. Prison officials say theres no evidence the other prisoner touched Moore.

 February 1993: The N.C. State Bar reprimands Branch for courting a TV movie deal during the trial.

 May 3, 1993: A made-for-TV movie about Moore, Black Widow Murders: The Blanche Taylor Moore Story, airs on NBC. Former Bewitched star Elizabeth Montgomery plays Moore.

 1994: The N.C. Supreme Court and the U.S. Supreme Court each refuse to hear Moores appeals.

 March 1995: Moore gets a new attorney  William Taylor III of Washington, D.C.

 Dec. 11, 1997: A Forsyth County Superior Court judge denies Moores third request for a new trial.

 Oct. 6, 2000: The N.C. Supreme Court refuses to consider another request for a new trial.

 2010: Moore is one of more than 150 death row inmates asking that their sentences be converted to life in prison under the Racial Justice Act. N.C. Gov. Pat McCrory repealed the act in 2013.

 Oct. 10, 2015: Branch, now Janet Downing, commits suicide by stepping into traffic on Interstate 485 in Charlotte.
US IRS Sets Out Details Of COVID-19 Tax Breaks

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com Washington

15 May 2020

On May 7, 2020, the United States Internal Revenue Service issued a reminder to employers affected by COVID-19 about the tax credits made available to them under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act.

These relief measures include:

The employee retention credit

The employee retention credit is designed to encourage businesses to keep employees on their payroll. The refundable tax credit is 50 percent of up to USD10,000 in wages paid by an eligible employer whose business has been financially impacted by COVID-19.

The credit is available to all employers regardless of size, including tax-exempt organizations. There are only two exceptions: state and local governments and their instrumentalities and small businesses who take small business loans.

Qualifying employers must fall into one of two categories:

The employer's business is fully or partially suspended by government order due to COVID-19 during the calendar quarter.

The employer's gross receipts are 50 percent below those of the comparable quarter in 2019.

Once the employer's gross receipts are 80 percent of those in a comparable quarter in 2019 they no longer qualify after the end of that quarter.

Paid sick leave credit

The paid sick leave credit is designed to allow businesses to get a credit for an employee who is unable to work (including telework) because of COVID-19 quarantine or self-quarantine or because they have COVID-19 symptoms and are seeking a medical diagnosis. Those employees are entitled to paid sick leave for up to 10 days (up to 80 hours) at the employee's regular rate of pay, capped at USD511 per day and USD5,110 in total.

The employer can also receive the credit for employees who are unable to work due to caring for someone with COVID-19 or caring for a child because the child's school or place of care is closed, or the paid childcare provider is unavailable due to COVID-19. Those employees are entitled to paid sick leave for up to two weeks (up to 80 hours) at two-thirds the employee's regular rate of pay, or up to USD200 per day and USD2,000 in total.

Employees are also entitled to paid family and medical leave equal to two-thirds of the employee's regular pay, up to USD200 per day and USD10,000 in total. Up to 10 weeks of qualifying leave can be counted towards the family leave credit.

Employers can be reimbursed immediately for the credit by reducing their required deposits of payroll taxes that are withheld from employees' wages.

Eligible employers are entitled to receive a credit in the full amount of the required sick leave and family leave immediately, plus related health plan expenses and the employer's share of Medicare tax on the leave, for the period of April 1, 2020, through December 31, 2020. The refundable credit is applied against certain employment taxes on wages paid to all employees.

Eligible employers will report their total qualified wages and the related health insurance costs for each quarter on their quarterly employment tax returns or Form 941 beginning with the second quarter. If the employer's employment tax deposits are not sufficient to cover the credit, the employer may receive an advance payment from the IRS. Eligible employers can also request an advance of the Employee Retention Credit.
For the second time in less than a month, protesters gathered outside of the Capitol building in Harrisburg to express their dissatisfaction with Gov. Tom Wolfs lockdown measures.

Some came dressed in black, many came with signs. Facemasks were evident but not plentiful. Even Santa drove by. Matt Bellis, the founder of ReOpen PA, said earlier this week that he was hoping for as many as 10,000 to 15,000 people showing up.

In the end, while some said the numbers were fewer than the first one, it was a vocal and passionate crowd that made the most of their right to protest.

Around the time that was occurring, Gov. Tom Wolf was announcing that 12 new counties would move into the yellow phase of Gov. Tom Wolfs coronavirus reopening plan next Friday. Those include Adams, Beaver, Carbon, Columbia, Cumberland, Juniata, Mifflin, Perry, Susquehanna, Wyoming, Wayne, and York counties will all be able to relax their restrictions that have existed for two months under the stay-at-home order.

By next Friday, a total of 49 Pa. counties will have moved into the yellow phase. Its unclear when the next wave of counties will make that move of how soon any will move into the green phase of Wolfs plan.

NASCAR restarts its season this weekend in Darlington, South Carolina. No fans will be permitted to view the race. That prompted the question of whether the circuits first visit to Pocono Raceway, scheduled for June 25-28, will have a shot at taking place. Right now, the governor says he simply doesnt know.

Here are some of the key COVID-19 stories that published Friday on PennLive:

Coronavirus cases in Pa. top 60,000 in 10 weeks, with 4,300+ deaths

Why isnt Dauphin County in the yellow phase of Wolfs reopening plan? What the state, 2 commissioners, and the numbers say

Cumberland, Perry and York counties to move to next phase of reopening amidst coronavirus pandemic: Today in Pa

Lebanon County commissioners rebel, vote 2-1 to move to yellow ahead of states timetable

Ocean City hotels, vacation rentals open again for all as visitor quarantine ends; will restaurants reopen next?

Air National Guard to fly over 3 Pa. cities, including Harrisburg, next week

Delaware beaches: When will Dewey, Rehoboth, others reopen; can out of state travelers be stopped?

Pa. lawmaker calls for Gov. Tom Wolfs impeachment over coronavirus response

Large groups prohibited from placing flags at veterans graves at national cemeteries for Memorial Day due to COVID-19

Former pro baseball manager, player Art Howe in ICU with coronavirus

Diners threatened with license loss, fines for violating Pa. Gov. Wolfs coronavirus order

Man who carried doll in a noose to Michigan protest wants to be a lawmaker, has a criminal history

US retail sales plunged a record 16.4% in April due to coronavirus

Pa.s largest nurses union accuses hospitals of misinforming state officials about protective equipment

Bed Bath & Beyond will reopen at six stores in Pa. for curbside pickup

Graduates, what seems unfair today will be forgotten as you undertake your journey | Nancy Eshelman
Parliament granted him ability to rule by decree on virus matters back in March

Viktor Orban said he would give up the special powers 'around the end of May'

Hungary's Prime Minister Viktor Orban has said he will give up the extraordinary powers granted to deal with coronavirus by the end of the month.

Viktor Orban has been the target of strong criticism, including by the European Parliament, as no time limit was set on the state of emergency which granted him the vast powers to rule by decree on matters related to the pandemic in March.

During a visit to neighbouring Serbia on Friday, Orban said he was convinced countries which gave their leaders 'good powers' during the pandemic were more successful in combating the coronavirus than those that 'could not step out of the usual political decision-making mechanism.'

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban pictured attending a news conference with Serboan President Alexsander Vucic at the presidential building in Belgrade on Friday

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, left, poses with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic after a press conference in Belgrade, Serbia. Orban is on a one-day official visit to Serbia

Orban said the special powers, which he said he would give up 'around the end of May,' had helped Hungary's response to the pandemic.

'We successfully defended our homeland and our performance is comparable to any country's,' Orban said after a meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic.

He added: 'We did this within a democratic framework and we will return to the usual parliamentary order.'

Orban also said once he gives up his ability to rule by decree, 'we will give everyone the opportunity to apologise to Hungary for the false accusations they made against us in the past months.'

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, speaks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, left, during a meeting in Belgrade, Serbia

Members of the media wear masks while Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, centre right, speaks with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban during a meeting in Belgrade

Vucic said at the joint news conference that he would never say anything against Orban and his policies just to get praise and support 'from the left-wing liberal European circles and foreign media.'

'It never crossed my mind,' Vucic said, adding: 'I have my dignity and pride.'

Like Orban, Vucic has been criticised by EU officials for sidelining parliament and virtually ruling by decree as his government adopted some of the harshest lockdown measures in Europe.

The two allies have met at least three times during the past two months.

Hungary, with a population of nearly 10 million, has reported 3,417 coronavirus cases, with 442 deaths. Serbia, population 7 million, has had 10,438 cases and 225 deaths.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- When a student at Lakeside Academy was restrained by a staff member, dying on May 1, three chaotic days followed as other students fought and fled the property. But police say there was trouble at the youth facility in the weeks before the death as well, and state records show multiple investigations into reports of policy and license violations.

In the weeks leading up to the incident, Kalamazoo Department of Public Safety received an increase of calls for false fire alarms, runaway students and assaults, Assistant Chief David Boysen said.

There was a pattern of it being out of control, Boysen said. There had been a spike in calls from there lately."

From January 1 to May 3, KDPS received 72 calls for service at the site, Boysen said.

It has been two weeks since Cornelius Frederick, 16, was restrained by a staff member, and ultimately died.

After the death of Frederick was reported, the boys on campus began fighting and 25-28 students ran away, Lakeside Academy board chairperson Jeff Palmer said.

Two bikes and one canoe were stolen as a result of the boys escaping into surrounding neighborhoods, he said. Palmer said it is protocol for the academys staff to follow the students if they leave campus, and to call the police for backup.

Lakeside Academy is not a detention center and for that reason police and facility staff cannot physically bring anyone back to campus without a court order, Boysen said.

Within the space of three days after the students death, Boysen said, KDPS received 25 calls connected to the facility  more than in any other full month this year.

Weve known this place had issues, he said. This was the last straw.

In the week following the runaways from Lakeside Academy, three boys were said to be unaccounted for. All three have been located, Palmer said.

Police are still investigating Frederick death. The interview process of the investigation is still ongoing, Boysen said, and no arrests have been made. But, criminal charges are likely, he said.

Police are waiting for a toxicology report before a cause of death can be determined for Frederick, Boysen said.

Frederick tested positive for COVID-19, his aunt Tenia Goshay said in an interview with MLive. Goshay, who said she drove from Detroit to sit with her nephew in the hospital before he died, shared that she still has questions about what happened to Frederick.

Related: Family of Lakeside Academy student seek answers about his death

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services launched an investigation into the facility and is reviewing its license. As part of the investigative process, students were removed from campus and the facility is not allowed to admit any new students.

On Monday, Palmer said the last seven students on campus would be gone by the end of the week. As of Thursday morning, only four of those students remained at the facility, according to MDHHS public information officer Bob Wheaton.

The academy was housing and educating 124 boys as of Friday, May 1. Approximately half of those students are from Michigan. The other half, Palmer said, come from other states, as far away as California.

Records show that MDHHS has previously investigated the facility for improper restraints and inappropriate behavior management techniques, including a probe into an incident that occurred in November. Investigation into a report of a staff member pressing his elbow into a students thigh while restraining the student determined a licensing violation had occurred, according to the report from the Child Welfare Licensing division of MDHHS.

The prior month, in October, MDHHS confirmed allegations that staff members cursed at, pushed down and backhanded students.

Another MDHHS investigation indicates a staff member was suspended after reports of slapping, choking and scratching a student in January, according to the report. That same staff member had been disciplined months earlier for improper supervision of a resident, according to the report.

When asked if the academys previous incident reports would be taken into consideration during the current investigation, Wheaton said he could not comment on details of an ongoing investigation.

The results from the ongoing police investigation will be taken into account as well, Wheaton said. The Michigan Child Protection Law requires MDHHS to seek the assistance of and cooperate with law enforcement when certain conditions exist, including a child death, he said.

Investigations typically conclude within 60 days, Wheaton said.

The campus is currently being cleaned and secured in the absence of students, Palmer said.

We remain hopeful of continuing our mission to provide at-risk youth an opportunity to learn new skills and behaviors in a caring, hope-filled, and supportive environment, he said.

More on MLive:

37 students, 9 staff members test positive for coronavirus at Lakeside Academy

Dangerous syndrome in kids linked to COVID-19 under review in Michigan after 17 cases confirmed

Hundreds tested for coronavirus as Kalamazoo County continues drive-thru program
The United Arab Emirates business and tourism hub Dubai has allowed public parks to reopen and hotel guests to access private beaches, state media said, as the emirate gradually lifts restrictions imposed to combat the coronavirus.

Dubai, the most populous of the seven emirates that make up the UAE, on April 24 eased a full curfew to eight hours at night, and allowed dine-in restaurants and shopping malls to reopen at limited capacity.

Public parks are now open for groups of up to five people, state news agency WAM reported late on Tuesday. Hotel guests must practise physical distancing at beaches.

Tram and ferry services also resumed and groups of up to five can now practise recreational activities in open areas. Mosques, cinemas, public beaches and nightclubs remain closed.

Other emirates have followed Dubai in easing restrictions. In the UAE capital Abu Dhabi, some malls have resumed business, while Sharjah reopened malls and dine-in restaurants.

The UAE has so far reported 19,661 infections and 203 deaths from the virus, the second highest death toll among six Gulf states. It does not disclose numbers for individual emirates.

The UAE, like other Gulf Arab countries, had ramped up testing after recording a spread of the disease among low-wage migrant workers living in overcrowded accommodation.

On Tuesday, the UAE announced that tests would now be free for all Emirati citizens and domestic workers, in addition to the disabled, pregnant women and residents over 50 years of age.

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Peace in Yemen may be 'within close reach', UN envoy tells Security Council

14 May 2020 - UN Special Envoy for war-weary Yemen, Martin Griffiths, told the Security Council on Thursday, that he believed an end to the fighting "is within close reach", but cautioning that he had come "yet again to express hope, instead of to report success".

Despite a looming COVID-19 pandemic and a global economic downturn threatening even more adversity, he maintained that the UN has provided "a feasible roadmap" that puts the onus on "those with arms and power", to achieve it.

The UN has reported "significant progress" on negotiations, particularly regarding the ceasefire. However, he underscored that peace is part of a broader package of needs that must be agreed to, including humanitarian and economic measures.

He was "extremely encouraged" that both the Yemeni Government and opposition Houthi rebels, known formally as Ansar Allah, have positively engaged with UN proposals, calling them "important indications" of their willingness to make the needed compromises for peace.

The civil war escalated in 2013 when a Saudi-led coalition joined the internationally recognized Government effort to drive the Houthis and their supporters, out of the capital, and other areas under their control.

Smoking guns

Recent clashes in Hudaydah, Ma'rib, Al Jawf, Al-Bayda and elsewhere show that peace remains elusive, said Mr. Griffiths.

Describing the situation in Aden where the UN envoy fears "a perfect storm is brewing", he spoke about COVID-19, malaria and cholera causing deaths to rise daily  and a health system ill-equipped to diagnose and treat people  exceptionally heavy flooding has damaged infrastructure and homes; and long-deteriorating public services that are now at a breaking point.

The separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC), which was in alliance with the Government, based in Aden, has now taken control of the city, leading to the stalling of the Riyadh Agreement between the two. The STC has recently been taking steps to make local institutions answerable to them.

Thus, the top UN envoy underscored the urgency in implementing the Agreement, to ensure responsive governance and improved service delivery in Aden while also providing for the STC's inclusion in a resumed UN-led political process to end the conflict.

High hopes

Mr. Griffiths expressed confidence that upcoming negotiations would allow the parties to "swiftly resume the political process" to end the conflict and outline arrangements for a transition period before lasting peace can be established.

"The transitional period would give Yemen an opportunity to escape the misery of conflict", he said. "It would allow for the focus to shift toward reconstruction, recovery and reconciliation".

Once a political solution is found, He said a new Yemen could emerge, where essential needs would be met, families would be safe, institutions would serve citizens equitably, women would lead without repression, journalists would report freely, and differences would be resolved through partnership and dialogue.

"I insist that such a future for Yemen is eminently realisticand this Council has a vital role to play in supporting them, and more importantly the Yemeni people, along the path toward peace", the UN envoy concluded.

Protecting civilians

With a COVID-19 pandemic threatening the already fragile country, the UN's acting Deputy Emergency Relief Coordinator, Ramesh Rajasingham, presented to the Council a bleak humanitarian outlook for Yemen.

During the first quarter of the month there was a threefold increase on attacks against health facilities, with one also reported in April.

"International humanitarian law requires all parties to take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects throughout military operations", he said, noting that that in light of COVID-19, it was even "more critical to respect and protect medical facilities".

And amidst coronavirus fears, stigma surrounding asylum-seekers and people on the move is rising, with more refugees and migrants being forcibly deported or detained.

Mr. Rajasingham also noted "a disturbing increase" of harassment and incitement against the UN, which makes its work "more dangerous and sometimes forces partners to pause activities at the time when they are needed the most".

Meanwhile, humanitarians are facing "enormous challenges", including aid delivery restrictions and funding shortfalls.

Yet, the UN official said, "we're still reaching more than 10 million people every month" with food, water, healthcare and other services and offering "some of the best chances for people to protect themselves against COVID-19".

No funds to weather coronavirus

He said the World Health Organization (WHO) had been forced to scale back its operations due to lack of funding, including shuttering therapeutic feeding centres that treat the most severely malnourished children.

"Amidst a pandemic, this is shocking", said the OCHA deputy chief, adding that preventing disease and feeding sick children are the kinds of programmes should be "protected at all costs".

"We are urgently appealing to donors to release funds now to sustain principled aid operations", said Mr. Rajasingham, requesting $2 billion to cover essential activities from June through December.

Spiraling economy

"We need bold action to stabilize the economy and soften the blow of measures that may be necessary to protect public health", he told the Council, including regular foreign exchange injections and steps to increase affordable food and other goods in markets across the country.

In closing, Mr. Rajasingham spelled out: "Peace is the best chance Yemen has to contain COVID-19, and we hope the parties will work with the Special Envoy to make it a reality".

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The Maharashtra government told



the Bombay High Court on Friday that it was "impossible" to provide accommodation in Mumbai for all such persons engaged in essential services who commute to the metropolis from neighbouring Palghar district every day amid the lockdown for the coronavirus outbreak.

The state government pleader PP Kakade told the court that it was impractical to suggest that such essential service providers be given places to stay within the city.

He made the submission before a bench of Chief Justice Dipankar Datta and Justice A A Sayed.

Kakde was responding on behalf of the state to a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a Palghar resident seeking temporary accommodation in Mumbai for essential service providers who travel from Palghar.

The plea, filed earlier this week by Charan Ravindra Bhatt, claimed such commute to COVID-19 affected areas in Mumbai had resulted in several frontline workers testing positive for coronavirus.

The plea claimed frontline workers catching the virus from Mumbai and traveling back to their homes in Vasai-Virar had become one of the primary causes for the spread of coronavirus in Palghar district.

The situation is similar in areas such as Thane, Kalyan Dombivali, and Navi Mumbai too, the plea claimed.

Each day, state transport department buses make 129 trips to ferry such frontline workers between Vasai-Virar and Mumbai, the petition claimed.

"The PIL has sought that such frontline workers be provided temporary accommodation in Mumbai. Else, the state authorities be directed by HC to restrain those working in essential services to commute to Mumbai from nearby districts. However, this is an impractical demand," Kakade said.

"We (state), therefore, told the court that it would be impossible to provide temporary accommodation to so many people from nearby districts," he said.

The bench, however, said merely making such an oral statement was not adequate and directed the state to file an affidavit detailing reasons why it could not provide such accommodation, said the petitioner's lawyer Uday Warunjikar.

Kakade said the state has been directed to file its affidavit by next week.

As per the petition, as on May 1 this year, Palghar district had 136 COVID-19 cases, and 10 people have died of the infection.

Currently there are 69 cases, of which 47 are health care workers, ward boys, nurses, paramedics and hotel staff and other frontline workers, who went to affected areas in Mumbai for their jobs, the plea claimed.

Therefore, if preventive measures were not taken immediately, more residents in the district would be at risk, the plea said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Photo credit: WPA Pool - Getty Images

From ELLE

Duchess Meghan and Prince Harry have been quarantining with their 1-year-old son Archie in Los Angeles amid the coronavirus pandemic. But for Mother's Day, the family was able to see Meghan's mother Doria Ragland, who also lives in the California city, OprahMag.com and People report. A source told OprahMag.com that Meghan, Doria, and the family were mindful of proper social distancing guidelines.

Multiple sources told OprahMag.com that Doria is "incredibly close" to both Meghan and Harry. She also visited the family of three while they were living in Vancouver Island earlier this year.

Doria was also behind the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's decision to volunteer with Project Angel Food last month to help deliver meals to those at risk in the city as the state remained under a shelter-in-home order during the COVID-19 outbreak. Doria alerted them to food insecurity in the area and suggested they get involved with the organization.

The Duke and Duchess remain committed to their projects and using their platform to help otherstheir work with Project Angel Food being a testament to that drive. If they see a solution they can be involved in, if they can help facilitate, then theyll do it right then and there, a source close to the couple told ELLE.com earlier this month. "Its what drives them in their life and their charitable work."

Meghan and Harry spent last Mother's Day in England. The Duchess had just given birth to her son a week before. On their now inactive SussexRoyal Instagram, the couple shared an intimate photo of Meghan with Archie, sharing a heartfelt message to mothers everywhere.

"Paying tribute to all mothers todaypast, present, mothers-to-be, and those lost but forever remembered," the SussexRoyal Instagram post said. "We honor and celebrate each and every one of you. Today is Mothers Day in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Kenya, Japan, and several countries across Europe. This is the first Mothers Day for The Duchess of Sussex."

Story continues

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New South Wales residents have been told not to take public transport in the morning to avoid getting COVID-19.

Premier Gladys Berejiklian said anyone not already using buses and trains should stay away because there is no more room.

'We don't want any more people at this stage catching public transport in the peak,' she said.

However, the premier did not comment on whether Sydney would continue its suspension of parking fines that's been in place since the coronavirus lockdown.

Parking fines have also been suspended in Brisbane and Melbourne, but councils have flagged that inspectors will start fining again in the next fortnight.

New South Wales residents have been told not to take public transport in the morning to avoid getting COVID-19. Pictured: Commuters on May 13 in Sydney

There are fears public transport is a main way for the virus to spread. Pictured: Sydney peak hour last year before COVID-19

'If you're not already on the bus on the train in the morning do not catch public transport in the peak,' the premier said.

Ms Berejiklian said peak time lasts from the first service until 11am.

She warned that people packing into trains and buses massively increases the spread of the disease.

'I stress that strongly because we know overseas public transport unfortunately was the main reason why the disease spread,' she said.

'Don't get on the system in the peak, we're pretty much at capacity at this stage.'

'If you've been using public transport at the peak already you can carry on but we don't want any new passengers at this stage.'

NSW recorded eight new cases of COVID-19 from 12,200 tests in the 24 hours to 8pm on Thursday, taking the state's total to 3071. Seven people are in intensive care.

An employee disinfects a train in the central business district of Sydney on May 13

The state's death toll remains at 47 and the national toll 98.

Pubs and clubs with dining areas will join cafes, restaurants and places of worship in welcoming back people inside their doors as NSW enjoys its first day under an easing of COVID-19 restrictions.

Outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people are permitted from Friday and up to five people, including children, can visit households.

Religious gatherings and places of worship can welcome up to 10 people while restaurants and cafes can have up to 10 patrons as long as they maintain social distancing.

Ten guests are allowed at weddings, up to 20 at indoor funerals and up to 30 at outdoor funerals.

Pubs and clubs with dining areas will join cafes, restaurants and places of worship in welcoming back people inside their doors in NSW

Outdoor equipment including gyms and playgrounds can be used with caution, with people encouraged to wipe down the equipment, and outdoor pools are open with restrictions.

Randwick City Council will reopen all of its beaches for recreation from Friday, including Clovelly, Coogee and Maroubra, as well as some ocean pools.

'Really, the way we move forward now is up to us,' Ms Berejiklian said.

'(Social distancing) will be part of our lives until there is a vaccine or cure, we just have to accept that. But we can appreciate our time staying at home in the main has made us all appreciate what matters most.'
By Ilya Zhegulev and Sergiy Karazy

KIEV (Reuters) - Lying in rows of cots in a small hotel on the outskirts of Kiev, 51 babies born to surrogate mothers are stranded in Ukraine as the coronavirus lockdown is preventing parents from the United States, Europe and elsewhere from collecting them.

Ukraine imposed a ban on foreigners entering in March, and most parents have only seen their newborns through pictures and video calls with the clinic.

Rafa Aires from Spain managed to get in before the lockdown. He was united with his daughter Marta but cannot leave as Kiev has suspended almost all flights and he needs to finish the paperwork.

It means a stressful wait for his wife Maria, who was unable to travel with him due to work.

"Every day I make video calls with my wife for one hour or an hour and a half for her to see the baby," he said. "It is very difficult."

"Nurses and medical personnel in this hotel are wonderful. They make my life easier," he said.

The government says it can only permit parents to enter Ukraine if it receives a request from the relevant embassy.

The Hotel Venice belongs to the clinic BioTexCom, which released video footage of the babies to raise public awareness and spur the government into acting more quickly.

Reaction from the authorities was swift.

Lyudmyla Denisova, the human rights ombudsman for the Ukrainian parliament, said the video showed the country had a "massive and systemic" surrogacy industry where babies were advertised as a "high quality product".

She suggested looking into changing the law to allow only Ukrainian parents to use such services.

"We were prepared for this negative reaction," the clinic's founder Albert Tochilovsky said. "Given that parents need to be quarantined for 14 days, I want to speed up the process."

Denisova ordered checks on the clinic but said she found that BioTexCom was following all procedures correctly. Surrogacy is legal in Ukraine.

Story continues

The Hotel Venice is surrounded by a high fence with barbed wire. The building is usually where parents stay while picking up their babies. At BioTexCom, a surrogate mother receives about $15,000-$17,000.

Parents arrive from all over the world including the United States, China, Britain, Sweden and Ireland. The parents of sixteen of the babies have been able to travel to Ukraine so far.

"The children are all provided with food, a sufficient number of employees look after them, but there is no substitute for parental care," said Denis Herman, BioTexCom's lawyer.

"We try to send photos of children to the parents, we try to make conference calls, but this cannot replace communication in direct contact," he said.

(Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Janet Lawrence)
Sure, it might be warm Wednesday, but what about the rest of the week?
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.




Ford Commences Second Round of Carrier Qualifications

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS200514-06

Release Date: 5/14/2020 11:53:00 AM

From USS Gerald R. Ford Public Affairs

ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), the only carrier qualification (CQ) asset regularly available on the East Coast this year, commenced its second round of CQs for Fleet Replacement Squadron (FRS) pilots May 10, with a healthy and mission-focused crew.

Ford, operating at-sea at the same time as four other U.S. aircraft carriers, is conducting its fourth independent steaming event (ISE) since commencing an 18-month Post Delivery Test and Trials (PDT&T) phase of operations in November 2019.

While underway Ford will conduct FRS CQ with pilots from Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW) 117 and VAW-120, and Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 106.

"Our crew is tough and has adapted quickly to the acute changes we've made to our operating procedures and day-to-day life onboard," said Commanding Officer Capt. J.J Cummings. "Their resiliency, their grit allows us to get underway and accomplish the mission,"

"Getting underway knowing that our crew will be generating readiness for the fleet, along with the four other carriers at sea, is extremely rewarding," Cummings said. "We are also proud that several of these aviators who carrier qualify on our ship will be heading over the horizon soon to join deployed carriers throughout the world."

The "Wallbangers" of VAW-117 are set to mark a milestone while aboard Ford as they complete CQ requirements to transition from the E-2C Hawkeye to the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. VAW-117's transition will take the Navy past the 50 percent point, making the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye the new baseline platform for the community.

"The E-2D is our latest and greatest aircraft that has a lot of good equipment and a really good radar that's going to allow us to see our enemies at distances that we really haven't seen before," said Lt. Cmdr. Jeremiah Caldwell, a pilot assigned to VAW-117. "The training process for us is about three years just to get to the fleet, so we are here aboard Ford training fleet aviators that are making the transition from the Charlie to the Delta."

With two days of CQ complete, Ford has completed 237 catapult launches and 244 Advanced Arresting Gear landings, meeting all daily objectives.

Following Super Hornet FRS CQ, Ford will begin CQ for Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) student naval aviators and instructor pilots, continuing critical training to our aviators to execute fleet missions from and at sea.

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From properly spaced desks to visual signals, office life is expected to change beyond recognition, predicts Shyamal Majumdar.

Courtesy COVID-19, offices may never be the same again.

Some corporate leaders have even started talking about the future of skyscrapers - headquarters of many large companies.

If the chatter is to be believed, high-rises would become more expensive to build and be less efficient, reducing the economic attractiveness of building super tall towers.

Barclays CEO Jes Staley is the first to articulate the concerns of the new breed of COVID-19-fearing CEOs.

Speaking at a conference call recently, Mr Staley said there will be a 'long-term adjustment about how we think about our locations. The notion of putting 7,000 people in a building may be a thing of the past.'

Instead, investment bankers and call centre workers could end up at smaller locations, such as branches.

Before COVID-19 hit, Barclays, like almost all large banks, has been busy reducing the size of its branch network.

While that may be too much into the future, the conversation that many large Indian companies are having is getting their offices ready for a post-COVID world.

And this is not about short-term fixes like adequate availability of sanitisers and stepped-up cleaning; it is more about future office design.

Commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield has given a glimpse of the future offices.

The firm has in the past month helped 10,000 organisations in China move nearly one million people back to work.

Using learnings gathered in China, Cushman has developed a new concept, called the 'Six Feet Office'.

In a video posted on its Web site, Cushman has shown the contours of the new office, meant to call attention to how people might safely go back to work.

This behaviour is encouraged through properly spaced desks and visual signals, such as a circle embedded in the carpeting around each desk to ensure people dont get too close.

Using arrows on the floor, people are encouraged to walk clockwise in lanes around the office.

Cushman has installed beacons into its office to track employees movements via their mobile phones, potentially sending alerts when six-feet rules are breached.

And where filtered air is the only option, it could be boom time for high-end office climate control systems.

China's mass adoption of this technology to address poor air quality is thought to have assisted its office workers to return to their desks more quickly.

Tomorrow's offices will have little room for the key card or pin pad that employees use to access the office now.

Large offices may be tempted to have 'contactless pathways', whereby employees rarely need to touch the building with their hands.

Office doors will open automatically using motion sensors and facial recognition, while elevators can be called -- and even a coffee ordered -- from a smartphone.

Yet another change will be the way companies start looking at open offices, which have now become ubiquitous.

Some level of anxiety about invisible contagions will persist for a long time, which makes open offices irrelevant.

Workstation areas can no longer have the crowded cafe feel as proximity may no longer seem so tempting.

Over the past decade, the amount of space per office worker has steadily declined (some estimates suggest up to 70 per cent of all office spaces are open plan in design).

Desks lined up side by side has been the way for shrinking the office space for employees -- all in the name of promoting team play and bonhomie among workers.

It may be time for a rollback. So open office may be frowned upon.

Finally, it's a moment of reckoning for the co-working companies.

The reason is obvious: Any place or activity that brings together a sizeable number of strangers will obviously be a top candidate for disruption.

Co-working companies like WeWork have already seen a rapid decrease in demand in countries like the US, as many clients have either dialled back or terminated their co-working memberships.

This may not signal the demise of the co-working business, but the revenue model and the office design need to change drastically.

Higher safety protocol would mean more dividers and private office.

That means increased operational cost.

Shared amenities like hotdesks, where anyone can use an open work station, might become a thing of the past.

That's bad news for co-working companies as hotdesks account for many last-minute bookings at higher rates.

COVID-19 will also impact the tenant-landlord relationship.

Companies are conserving cash and there will be a scarcity of capital and/or unwillingness by companies to invest capital into physical space.

There will certainly be uneasiness about signing long-term leases, and right to terminate will become a more popular ask.

Some of the country's largest commercial space developers have already started consulting lawyers about the new relationship.

In short, as office life is expected to change beyond recognition, a huge disruption awaits commercial real estate developers, co-working spaces and other stakeholders.
By Ariel Ben Solomon

(JNS)-Growing calls for an investigation into China's handling and possible cover-up of the coronavirus outbreak have observers debating the potential implications for both Israeli and U.S. policy on China.

In Israel, there was concern over Chinese penetration of key areas of the economy even before the pandemic. China is Israel's second-largest trading partner after the United States, with $11.5 billion in annual trade, according to data gathered by Bloomberg. However, in the aftermath of the global coronavirus pandemic the United States is likely to increase its pres...
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has performed a ground-breaking ceremony to mark the reactivation of works on the 44-year-old abandoned Maternity and Childrens Block of the Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital (KATH) in Kumasi.



The project, being executed by Messrs. Contracta Construction (UK) Company Limited, is to be completed in three years.



It is expected to help ease pressure on the existing structures constructed in 1954, and comes with facilities, including an emergency reception for children and pregnant women, 10 theatres, intensive care unit, and in-vitro fertilization (IVF) unit.



The rest are breastfeeding centre, paediatric surgery unit, pharmacy, dedicated medical oxygen plant, lecture halls, cafeteria, and other specialist facilities.



President Nana Akufo-Addo indicated that upon completion, the 800-bed facility would contribute significantly to achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) on maternal and child health.



The government, he said, had stepped up efforts to provide the requisite infrastructure to create access for quality healthcare delivery, saying, the recent COVID-19 disease had exposed the inadequacy in health facilities in the country.



Our investment in the healthcare system is to serve the needs of 21st Century Ghana, the President noted and assured the Management of KATH of working assiduously to expand the facilitys land resources for future projects.



Mr. Kwaku Agyemang-Manu, Minister of Health, hinted that work on the Bekwai and Tepa Hospitals were due to be completed this year.



He was hopeful that the development would complement healthcare delivery, especially at the district level, urging the contractors to work diligently to complete those projects as scheduled.



Dr. Oheneba Danso, Chief Executive Officer of KATH, lamented the hardships pregnant women went through in their bid to seek healthcare due to the lack of adequate facilities.



Pregnant women continue to queue to have critical maternal surgeries, while two to six babies are kept together in one babys cot due to the lack of space at the Hospital, he stated.

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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It will take time, a couple of phases and a bunch of alterations for the restaurant industry in Connecticut to come back after the May 20 reopening date set by the state, but its a start. And for now, the only place you can get served by eateries is at a table outdoors. So lets do that.

Cleaning and staff protocals will be in place, with new signage, hand sanitizers and tables at least six feet apart. Also: rolled or packages utensils, single-use condiments and either disposable paper menus or a chalkboard or wipeboard of offerings, not to mention contactless payment.
After a month of tensions in Malaysias exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea, a Chinese survey vessel has left Malaysian waters, Reuters reported on Friday, quoting data from Marine Traffic.

In the middle of April, tensions flared up again in the disputed South China Sea, after Chinese research and survey vessel Haiyang Dizhi 8 started tagging an exploration ship, West Capella, which Malaysias state oil firm Petronas had hired for exploration in the area.

The long-running dispute in the South China Sea involves territorial claims by China as well as Vietnam, the Philippines, Taiwan, Brunei, and Malaysia. China has territorial claims to about 90 percent of the South China Sea, which has put it at odds with its neighbors.

The Haiyang Dizhi 8 ship has been close to the West Capella exploration vessel operated by Petronas. The same Chinese ship had been spotted off Vietnams waters before that, and was moving closer to Malaysia in mid-April, according to ship-tracking data cited by Reuters at the time.

Today, the Chinese vessel left Malaysias exclusive economic zone en route to China, flanked by at least two other Chinese ships, according to data from Marine Traffic cited by Reuters.

Earlier this week, the Malaysian oil exploration ship West Capella left the disputed area on Tuesday, security sources and the vessels operator told Reuters. Offshore drilling firm Seadrill, via its communications director Iain Cracknell, confirmed to Reuters that the West Capella vessel contracted by Petronas had left the area after completing its exploration surveys.

Tensions in the South China Sea have increased in recent weeks.

Last month, the U.S. State Department said, commenting on reports that China had sunk a Vietnamese fishing vessel in the South China Sea:

We call on the PRC to remain focused on supporting international efforts to combat the global pandemic, and to stop exploiting the distraction or vulnerability of other states to expand its unlawful claims in the South China Sea.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
New Delhi, May 15 : Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan on Friday said the Case Fatality Rate (CFR) of COVID-19 has come down in the country.

During the 15th meeting of the high level Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 held here, the minister said "The Case Fatality Rate (CFR) has come down from 3.2 per cent in the pre-lockdown period to 2.1 per cent during the last week." Reading the COVID situation globally and in the country, the minister said, "total number of COVID-19 positive cases worldwide stand at 42,48,389 with 2,94,046 deaths and the fatality rate pegged at 6.92 per cent, whereas in India, the total number of COVID-19 positive cases stand at 81,970 with 2,649 deaths and the fatality rate pegged at 3.23 per cent. So far, a total of 27,920 people have been cured.

"And if seen in the last 24 hours, 1,685 patients were found cured. This takes the total recovery rate at 34.06 per cent. It was also highlighted that the impact of lockdown was seen on the Doubling Rate which improved from 3.4 days in the pre-lockdown week to 12.9 days in the last week." The Group of Ministers (GoM) had in depth deliberation on containment strategy and management aspects of COVID-19, as well as the measures being taken by the Centre and various states. The GoM was informed by the officials that there are 30 municipal areas which constitute 79 per cent of India's case load.

GoM discussed that the focus of COVID-19 management strategy needs to be on the states with the highest number of confirmed cases and highest number of fatalities, and on treatment and case fatality management, for which timely detection of infection and contact tracing were the best way forward. They also discussed the challenges before various states/UTs arising from the returning migrant labourers and the returnees from abroad.

The minister told the GoM that a total of 8,694 facilities comprising of 919 dedicated COVID hospitals, 2,036 COVID Health Centres and 5,739 COVID Care Centres with a total of 2,77,429 beds for severe and critical cases, 29,701 ICU beds and 5,15,250 isolation beds in care centres, are available. Also, as on date, 18,855 ventilators are now available to combat COVID-19 in the country. The Centre has also provided 84.22 lakh N95 masks and 47.98 lakh Personal Protective Equipments (PPEs) to the states, UTs and Central institutions.

He said that the domestic manufacturers have the capacity to produce nearly 3 lakh PPEs and N-95 masks each, per day. Dr Balram Bhargava, Director General of ICMR informed about COBAS 6800, a fully automated, high end machine, installed at the NCDC for performing real time PCR testing COVID-19 to perform 1,200 samples in 24 hours.

The GoM attendees included Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri, External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar, MoS Home Nityananda Rai and others.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Trump Eyes China Crackdown as Coronavirus Retribution

By VOA News May 14, 2020

U.S. President Donald Trump said Thursday he is eyeing ways to crack down on China as retribution for the way it handled the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.

"There are many things we could do," Trump told Fox News. "We could cut off the whole relationship."

"Now, if you did, what would happen?," Trump asked rhetorically. "You'd save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship," although it was not clear how Trump arrived at such a figure.

The Trump administration has been considering ways it could punish Beijing for what it believes was its withholding of information about the virus late last year and into early 2020 as it spread from the initial outbreak in Wuhan, China across the globe.

The U.S. could give Americans to right to sue China for the damage COVID-19 has caused to the world-leading American economy and to human life. The U.S. already has recorded 84,000 deaths, by far the biggest national total, with 147,000 expected to die by August.

The U.S. could also impose sanctions and travel bans, while restricting U.S. businesses from making loans to Chinese companies.

"I'm very disappointed in China," Trump said.

The U.S. could force Chinese companies to follow U.S. accounting standards before their securities are listed on U.S. exchanges, which they currently are not required to do. That has led to some investor losses.

The president acknowledged that if the U.S. were to impose such an accounting requirement on Chinese companies many of them would leave for exchanges in Hong Kong or London.

As of early 2019, 156 Chinese companies worth $1.2 trillion were listed on American stock exchanges.

Earlier this week, the Trump administration ordered a retirement fund for U.S. government workers to divest $4 billion of equity stakes in Chinese companies, claiming China poses investment and national security risks.

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Thousands across Oregon stepped out of their homes Friday to find a world that in places began to resemble the one they knew before the coronavirus pandemic upended daily life and forced vast swaths of the state to shut down.

Friends clinked glasses at country bars and small-town restaurants. Families cruised commercial sidewalks from Ashland to Bend.

At Dons Barber Shop in McMinnville, Yamhill Countys largest city and less than an hour drive from Portland, customers in desperate need of haircuts began lining up hours before its doors opened for the first time in eight weeks.

"We're up to our eyeballs in here, said owner Don Mack, who couldnt spare more than a few seconds to speak on the phone.

It was the first time since March that Oregonians in much of the state were able to hit the gym or salon, have a sit-down meal or step inside their favorite boutique.

The dramatic change came as Gov. Kate Brown allowed nearly every county outside the Portland metro area to slowly reopen businesses and renew public life. So far, 31 of the states 36 counties meet Browns criteria to do so.

MORE ON OREGON PHASE 1 REOPENING:

Guidance on: retail | restaurants and bars | salons and personal services | outdoor recreation | sporting events | large gatherings, including concerts and festivals

The governor also lifted restrictions on all standalone retail statewide provided they can meet social distancing and other safety guidance her office has provided for the sector. Malls and shopping centers were allowed to open more than just their food courts, too, in counties with Phase 1 approval.

Still, much of Oregon remains in a precarious position.

On Friday, reported COVID-19 cases in the state surpassed 3,500, a number health officials say will continue to increase as restrictions ease. Residents in the Portland area remain under the governors stay-home order and are discouraged from traveling.

Meanwhile, all three metro counties are unlikely to qualify for the states Phase 1 status until at least June, even as retail businesses received the green light. State officials rejected reopening plans for Marion and Polk counties this week because of recent spikes in coronavirus infections.

Brown also issued a new executive order on Friday rescinding her original stay-home order with some loosened restrictions.

Navigating new anti-coronavirus protocols is a task for patrons and proprietors alike. Each are looking to find their footing.

Paloma Clothing in Southwest Portland's Hillsdale neighborhood held what it called a "soft opening, allowing for either curbside pickup of clothing or jewelry, or one or two customers inside the small shop at a time.

The store reduced its hours from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. and won't be open every day.

"We're not advertising yet, because I feel we're opening a little too fast,'' said Traci Burnes, a store manager. "Some people are terrified to come in. Others are like 'let me in now!''

A sign on a table set up in front of its entrance greeted customers with the message, "WEAR A MASK,'' beside a small bottle of hand sanitizer.

"When you ENTER THE STORE please choose to WEAR A MASK AND SANITIZE YOUR HANDS. Wearing a mask shows we're all in this together. Spread kindness, not the virus.''

Paloma Clothing owner Mike Roach said the store doesn't expect to do "any real opening'' until June and is relying on two doctors, also customers, to advise the store on "how much and how little to be open.''

"Its very confusing and awkward for stores right now. Everyone is experimenting. We plan to err on the side of safety and re-open very slowly,'' he said.

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Across the Willamette River, Imeldas & Louies opened its shoe store on Southeast Hawthorne at noon, unannounced, and a few customers trickled in, thrilled to be back.

Owner Pam Coven said there has been a great deal of confusion over the rules and debate about whether it was safe to reopen  for employees or customers.

Ultimately, Coven decided she and her staff would be guinea pigs, having redesigned the store to accommodate social distancing and hired back nine employees using the proceeds of a paycheck protection loan.

Im losing lots of sleep over this, she said. Whats the right thing to do?

Its a crapshoot. It cant get much safer, but is it safe enough? Who knows?

There were few other signs of life on Hawthorne, one of the citys most vibrant retail neighborhoods.

The Red Light Clothing Exchange remained boarded up. Other shops were closed and the streets almost completely empty.

Clogs 'n More announced on its window that it is closed permanently because of a city construction project. That construction, as well as homeless camps in front of some store entrances suggest it could be challenging when businesses do move forward.

It looks like people are kind of scared to open, said Susan Wallace as she stood on Hawthorne. Her husband wondered aloud whether it was OK to even be shopping.

The scene was decidedly different in other parts of the state.

Under Ashlands sunny skies, backpackers and shoppers nonchalantly strolled sidewalks, seemingly erasing two months of an economically and culturally painful shutdown.

Nothing in a half century had devastated the southern Oregon tourist town as much as the restrictions placed to lower the spread of the coronavirus.

But on the first day of Phase I, one or two people at a time entered stores and were greeted by smiling owners.

At the venerable Treehouse Books on the Plaza, owner Jane Almquist gestured to hand wipes and had wizard wands ready for children to point to their favorite books and toys.

Lou Ann David of Manzanita Home and Flowers, which has been on the Ashland Plaza for four decades, also welcomed shoppers inside.

On the Oregon Coast, Newports historic Bayfront area filled with cars as flags flew from retail shops and doors stood open.

After imploring county officials to loosen restrictions for weeks and allow them back to making a living, many business owners were eager to get on with it. For good reason.

U.S. retail sales tumbled by a record 16.4% from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus kept shoppers away, threatened the viability of stores across the country and further weighed down a sinking economy.

The Commerce Departments report Friday on retail purchases showed a sector that has collapsed so fast that sales over the past 12 months are down a crippling 21.6%. The severity of the decline is unrivaled for retail figures that date back to 1992. The monthly decline in April nearly doubled the previous record drop of 8.3%  set just one month earlier.

Yet some businesses have decided against reopening, for the time being at least. Everyday Music on West Burnside in Portland posted a sign in its window: Will remain CLOSED until further notice.

We don't know yet what our business model will look like under the new reality but stay tuned, the music store wrote on its Facebook page. We want to open as soon as possible while keeping everyone healthy. We miss our customers and hope to see you soon!!

Erik Thorsnes, bar manager for MacGregors Whiskey Bar, which has locations in Cannon Beach and Manzanita, said theyre not yet ready to reopen and frankly, were surprised the governors stay-home order was lifted so soon.

We were slowly getting back in gear with the idea that in the next couple weeks it would happen and then suddenly it was here," Thorsnes said. "The gist is we dont want to rush anything and we want to make sure we are doing everything by the book.

Maxine Bernstein, Eder Campuzano, Janet Eastman, Beth Nakamura, Mike Rogoway and Lori Tobias contributed to this report.

-- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-2218505; @tedsickinger

-- Shane Dixon Kavanaugh; skavanaugh@oregonian.com; 503-294-7632; @skavanaugh

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Recently Red & Yellow Creative School of Business held its 2020 Digital Agency Showcase online, free to attend because they believe education is the only way to drive meaningful transformation.

Dont lets be Beastly to the Germans

Kiss me Goodnight Sergeant Major

Praise the Lord and Pass the Ammunition

Stage 1: Keep calm, make jokes

Stage 2: Sh!t just got real

Stage 3: Alert, alert, to your battle stations!

You should never really stop advertising because when you do come back, consumers are going to mute your name.

Stage 4 is; a better world awaits us all

'Kitchens of the Future'

Photos taken by Nina Leen for Life.

Creative explosion

It's reassuring to see that humanity tends to go through the same patterns of communications. It certainly feels to me that we can learn a lot from how we've stopped communicating with people now.

I have selected one agency for each of the two days that stood out to me and for Day 2, King James co-founder and group creative director Alistair King was a big highlight. I split my coverage of his talk into two parts. In part one, King gives us some insight into what agencies are faced with during the Covid-19 pandemic and how it's affecting creativity.Part two covers King's comparison between Covid-19 and WWII, specifically how ad agencies dealt with the impact of the war and how it relates to current events. Let's continue:In part 1, King mentioned that they were already starting to build Covid-related themes into their brand narratives because it feels insensitive not to.So this made him wonder whether there was a period in history where humankind was so focused and absorbed on one subject because he wanted to see how creativity survived during that time. That lead him to World War 2 (WWII). It's the only period in history where everyone on Earth was facing the same danger/threat. Today we're facing a virus, but back then, they faced the enemy of war, no matter whose side you were on."I discovered some fascinating similarities to how we are dealing with Covid. Keeping in mind that film, music and advertising were all exploding in the late 30s leading up to the war. So, in many ways, these incredible parallels between our media," he said.He shared a list of the most popular songs during WWII that was all about war.He said there is an incredible, diverse set of emotions in them but every single one is framed by WWII. Anecdotally, he said he wanted to share the biggest song of WWII and it was this song written by Lale Andersen:King said this song was so huge because it was written bizarrely as a piece of propaganda for the Germans. It ended up being used as propaganda for the allies. But the lyrics were essentially as powerful and as meaningful to both opposing sets of armies and that's what it was all about. It's a fascinating song because it's really about love, separation and war.If you look at the films of WWII, you get exactly the same scenario. Every single variation of war was in these films, from action to mystery, and some were more propaganda in nature. But what he discovered by looking at film and music and eventually advertising during WWII is that we always tend to go through the same phases when we're handling a crisis.With both WWII and now with Covid, if you remember what it was like right at the beginning when we started realising that this coronavirus existed, we were quite relaxed about it. In fact, we were quite rude about it. We made fun of the fact that we were safe and it was far away. This was really consistent with WWII. It was jokey. It was quite racist in many ways against the Japanese and the Germans, but communication in advertising was all fun.Do you remember those emotions when suddenly the first few cases were reported in South Africa? King said there was a slight pull-back. People realised maybe this isn't such a joke, and it became a little bit more serious.The same happened once again during WWII when you look at the posters and how advertising agencies were trying to insert their brands into the conversation.Communication started to change because suddenly it was becoming more real and it started to become a little bit more anxiety-filled.King said communication has taken on this tone very much. "If you think about coronavirus, we took this on very, very fast. 'This is what we need to do. This is how we can beat it.' Communication is very, very educational in nature, very informative and very action-orientated."He said ironically there was also a fund drawn up in WWII. It was essentially drawn up to finance the war effort and lots of encouragement was used. "'Let's build. We need money. Rationing,' and these are very familiar themes to what we've been going through, funny enough, and war bonds, in particular, was essentially how they financed the war. They said, 'Buy war bonds.' It was more than an investment than a donation. Today, our Solidarity Fund is much more of a humanitarian appeal, but it's giving people a way to contribute to the war efforts or the battle against Covid," said King.Brands also announced, back then, that they were contributing to the war efforts. Sometimes realistically and sometimes just in spirit. He explained that the link between some brands and the war effort was really pretty tenuous but that didn't stop them. In fact, King said he found a reference from a lecturer in the US, and the lecturer referred to something called brag ads in WWII. Brag ads were identified as ads where the main intent focused more on promoting the merits of a corporation, product or service than on encouraging patriotism or support of the war efforts.King said that he knows many ad agencies have had these conversations with their clients saying, 'Surely Covid-19 is not a marketing opportunity?' He said that he knows all of the agencies have been going through the same thing but back then in WWII some of these ads were quite tenuous, to say the least.He used examples like Chesterfield who he said tried to convince people during WWII that they had more breath to blow a whistle than the motor industry was really punting its role in tanks."I thought that was really interesting because agencies back then were clearly as conflicted with how they present their clients and brands as we are now. Basically, it's also when we start to acknowledge the heroes amongst us. This is an interesting quote about the fact that brands back then were battling to promote themselves while simultaneously promoting the right ethics towards the war and the right attitude."He said Stage 3 was also where we start acknowledging the heroes amongst us. "People who are essentially putting their lives at risk. And we are in that phase right now, where we are thanking the people at the front line and not just the medical but also the people working in the shops every day. And everyone is playing a role. No doubt more and more people are going to come to the party. More and more people will be our heroes."He explained that this is a universal human reaction to any situation. But what is also interesting is that many brands simply became unavailable during the war. They were taken off the shelves or made unavailable because they weren't regarded as essential to the war efforts. "That's exactly the same narrative I find in Covid. That didn't necessarily stop advertisers from advertising. Many brands continue to advertise for this reason," he said.King said he thought this might be useful to advertisers and marketers, if you are facing a client that says, "Well I'm or my brand's pulling my advertising and we will push it again when we get back online." He said that this is an interesting perspective and that:While these first three phases happened in a matter of years, playing out relatively slow motion, our experience with Covid has been condensed like it's on steroids. Because Stage 4 already feels like it's come through its own narratives to date.King said that we need to start making people think about what's ahead of us. "I suppose in WWII you had to talk about the future because soldiers would have nothing to fight for. There's nothing like hope for a better tomorrow to help you get through all this, and I suppose it's easier to start feeling overwhelmed by our circumstances. So it is perfectly natural to start follow-up messages of hope and optimism. A lot of our advertising today is trying to do this," he said.He continued and said that we might have noticed a lot of advertising talk about Covid recalibrating us and helping us reassess what is important to us, helping us recover from the environmental damage that we've done.He added: "We are already shifting our narrative away from it uniquely stressing us and I stumbled upon this remarkable piece of work from 1943 and it really blew my mind in so many ways. Because it illustrated to me how brands can wiggle out of this very oppressive context that we have right now. It gave me a clue that in fact, it is possible to talk about how to be sensitive to our environments and our circumstances but not make it relative to Covid."According to King, this is considered the best piece of work during the war effort. It is from a brand called, Libbey-Owens-Ford. Libbey-Owens-Ford is a glass company and they created this campaign called, 'Kitchens of the Future'. King said he thought it was very interesting because for once, they didn't talk about the war. They changed the subject completely. The subject became the future, after the war, the great things we have to look forward to.This gave valuable respite from the anxiety of war. It was larger than life, spectacular and it was virtually the stuff of science-fiction. King said: "I cannot underestimate how huge this campaign was. It absolutely grabbed millions of people's imaginations. People who were so exhausted and so saturated with anxiety about the war and about messages about the war. This thing completely opened up and almost went back to the days when people didn't have to think about the war, for a brief moment."He said what really blew his mind about this campaign, was that they essentially built three kitchens in the homes of the execs, and they built it using award-winning interior designers and it was featured in all sorts of architectural and lifestyle magazines as both editorial and advertorial. So, it started off as a piece of print material.Then they got Paramount to come and shoot the film. King said Paramount then made three different films and they started to run them all over the country. This caused so much excitement and the PR was immense and that gained massive earned media. It was discussed in other magazines, it was discussed on the radio at length. It really gripped people's imaginations.They also took those kitchens on tour around the country. "It became an installation of sorts and millions and millions of people flocked to see these installations. I regard this as one of the first integrated campaigns I ever encountered, and the only thing missing was social media and digital, and even that was substituted by good old fashioned word of mouth because people came in their millions to see it," King said.When we talk about integration today, we talk about it as if it's some kind of brand new invention, and King said he thought that to be quite funny, now that he's seen this because integration and integrated communication is as old as the industry itself.This is the same idea copied by GM:King said that he thought it was really reassuring to see that in history we've got something we could learn. He said he thinks we are not going through a unique experience in that regard.He said what he is excited about is that when Covid passes there is going to be an absolute creative explosion and warned that we'll have to get to work very fast because we're going to be dealing with so much excitement, so much anticipation and we're going to work harder with the money that we're given.King said he hopes that we forgive him for not coming and showing King James' work and talking about how they made it. "I felt that I was never going to have an opportunity to talk about stuff that is so powerful and the circumstances that we are in right now."He left us with some final words:"Hang in there. Think hard. Do some cool stuff. Try to get through this well and take care of yourselves."
PLYMOUTH, MI - One of Michigans biggest car shows wont be happening in 2020 due to the coronavirus pandemic. The prestigious Concours dElegance of America had been scheduled for The Inn at St. Johns in Plymouth the weekend of July 24.

This show features some of the most rare and expensive vehicles youll ever see in one place. About 300 cars were on display at the 2019 event. You can see some of those vehicles in the photo gallery above.

After careful consideration and following the Governor of Michigans guidelines, the Board of Directors have made the decision to postpone the 2020 Concours dElegance of America to July 23-25, 2021, said Chairman of the Board, Larry Moss on Facebook. We would like to extend our deepest gratitude to our collectors, judges, partners, volunteers, spectators, and venue host for their unwavering support and commitment.

RELATED: 2020 North American International Auto Show cancelled

All tickets purchased for this years 42nd Concours dElegance will be valid for the 2021 event. Those who bought tickets who cannot attend next year can request a refund beginning on June 1, 2020 by email here.

"Postponing this years event was not an easy decision. With continued health concerns a top priority, we felt it was in the best interest of our Concours collectors, partners, volunteers, judges, and spectators to reschedule the event. We look forward with great enthusiasm to next year, when we can all come together again and celebrate our love of the automobile.

MORE RECENT MLIVE NEWS:

1929 Michigan mansion has 2-story library with Sistine Chapel-like painted mural ceiling, $4.75M

Stunning cockpit video of the Blue Angels flying over Downtown Detroits skyscrapers

Why Jerry Seinfeld says hes always wanted to go to Battle Creek in his new Netflix special
The company will welcome a Bombardier Challenger 605 by mid-April. The Head of State aircraft will undergo a periodic inspection.



AMAC was awarded further maintenance projects on three Bombardier aircraft. A privately-owned Bombardier Global 6000 arrived by the end of April in Basel. AMAC will complete an aircraft registration change for the owner and carry out a periodic inspection. On a Bombardier Global XRS, AMACs skilled technicians will carry out an annual check on the privately-owned aircraft. A privately-owned Bombardier Global 5000 will arrive in May for a 6-month-check. AMAC will also carry out Service Bulletins tasks (SBs).

High demand for annual and month checks

A privately-owned Airbus ACJ319 has recently arrived in Basel to undergo a 6-, 12- and 25-month check. A second privately-owned Airbus ACJ319 will arrive in May for a 6-month check. Another Airbus ACJ319 will enter AMACs hangar doors in May. AMACs technicians will install a Ka-Band system for a seamless connectivity on board of the privately-owned aircraft.

By end of April, a privately-owned Gulfstream G550 arrived for an annual check. On a second privately-owned Gulfstream G550, AMAC will carry out an extensive 4-, 12-, 24-, 32-, 48- and 96-month check. In conclusion, Airworthiness Directives (Ads) and Service Bulletins tasks (SBs) will be performed.
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Noida:

Nearly 15,000 migrant labourers will leave Gautam Budh Nagar in 10 Shramik special trains for their home towns in Bihar in the next four days starting Saturday, district administration officials said on Friday. The administration will also provide food packets to the passengers, they said.

These special trains, to be run from Dadri and Dankaur railway stations, will be going to 10 different districts of Bihar between May 16 and 19.

According to the officials, on May 16, four special trains will depart from Dadri and Dankaur railway stations. The first train will leave at 11am and then at 3pm from Dadri. Two trains will depart at 12pm and 4pm from Dankaur. These four trains will go to Aurangabad, Buxar, Sasaram (Rohtas) and Siwan in Bihar.

On May 17, two trains will leave for Jamui and Samastipur districts in Bihar, while another two trains will leave for Chhapra and Bihar Sharif the next day. On May 19, two trains will go to Saharsa and Gaya, the officials said.

In the district, there are 55,000 migrant labourers who want to go back to their home towns in Bihar, the officials said, adding that arrangements will be made soon to send back the remaining workers.

We have made all the required arrangements for the safe and comfortable journey of migrant workers going back to Bihar. We will be giving food packets for their journey. To ensure that no social distancing norms are broken, people with the messages received from the administration will only be allowed to catch the train or the bus which will be dropping them to the railway stations, said Suhas LY, district magistrate, GB Nagar.

The DM also said that one train will carry around 1,200 to 1,500 passengers depending on the number of bogies attached.

Thousands of migrant workers have registered themselves at the local police stations or online through the Integrated Grievance Redressal System to go back to their respective home states by filling a form with their contact and destination details.

The administration will be sending a message on the mobile phone numbers of these labourers which will act as a ticket to board the train, the officials said. The workers will have to show the message on their phones to the officers at the railway station to board the train. The same mobile phone message will work as ticket to board the bus from various points in GB Nagar to reach the railway station.

According to the officials, it is expected that the district has over 1.25 lakh migrant labourers who want to go back to their home states. The administration is making a list of workers who have applied to go back to their home states.

The district officials are also getting in touch with other states to arrange travel facilities for the migrant workers who want to go back.

Workers from other parts of Uttar Pradesh will be sent back in buses, and if the need be, then by trains too, the officials said. Till now, over 1,000 homeless migrant workers hailing from various districts of UP have been sent back.
Sex appeal is used to sell cars, beer, and clothesso why not a home? Arkansas homeowners Shayne and Jennifer McKinney are attempting to coax a buyer out of the shadows and into their dungeon.

The McKinneys live in the sleepy town of Van Buren, AR, and they're selling their family home with a sexy surprisea BDSM dungeon they built themselves.

Their fully realized "Fifty Shades" fantasy is the culmination of a project the McKinneys took on to increase the market value of their home.

The 2,837-square-foot residence recently landed on the market for $225,000. For comparison's sake, the current median list price in this west Arkansas town close to the Oklahoma border is $135,000.

In addition to their interest in often taboo topics, the couple are real estate investors and have other ambitions, too. To capitalize on their passions, the McKinneys shot a scantily clad companion video of themselves renovating the space and submitted it to television producers.

Their pitch? A sultry home renovation show with an emphasis on creating spaces to foster a healthy sex life for couples. The proposed title is "Working In the Kinks."

The McKinneys painting the dungeon red YouTube/Mckinneys

The couple show off their basement. YouTube/Mckinneys

"We've been together for 18 years," Shayne says. "It works because we make an effort."

Shayne is convinced there's an underserved real estate market for couples who want a spicy space where they can connect. Perhaps his theory has been validated by the interest in their home.

The four-bedroom ranch has been on the market for just a few days, and has already racked up thousands of views.

According to the couple, it has also generated a slew of phone calls from interested buyers. Jennifer is the listing agent and told us that she's constantly fielding calls for tours.

Secret door to dungeon realtor.com

Dungeon realtor.com

Entertainer's pole realtor.com

Exterior realtor.com

Kitchen realtor.com

Owner's suite realtor.com

Owner's suite bathroom realtor.com

The McKinneys have owned the house for the past 15 years and raised their two teenage sons there. They're now looking to head someplace warmer.

Miami is a candidateit was where the idea for their basement makeover took hold, after they visited a BDSM establishment in the Sunshine State.

"I had this dream the Scott brothers came and renovated our house," Jennifer says.

She told Shayne about her vision, and that sparked the idea to build an adult play area in their basement. The secret room comes complete with a bara critical element, since the home is in a dry county.

A hidden door gives access to the dungeon, leading down a spiral staircase. At the bottom is a full nightclub, outfitted with an entertainer's pole, along with custom-BDSM furniture Shayne made himself.

The couple says the neighborhood is quiet and an excellent place to raise a family.

Some of their neighbors know about the dungeon, and a few have been invited over. The space isn't a dirty secret, and the couple is happy to talk about it with anyone who shows interest.

Despite the fact that the surrounding community is largely conservative, Shayne says the couple has had "zero negative feedback "

He added that they're willing to keep the house on the market for a while, to fetch the best price. The only deadline he has set is to leave Arkansas before next winter.

If this house attracts a ton of gawkers, it won't be the first time a BDSM dungeon catapulted a home listing into the stratosphere.

In early 2019, a suburban Philadelphia home was listed with pictures of its own basement dungeon.

Melissa Leonard, the listing agent, made the bold choice to be upfront about the home's salacious secret, and to include photos of the adult play area with the listing.



Watch: Tour the Basement That Made This Home a Viral Sensation



The result was a viral sensation. The listing was so popular, in fact, the owner decided to take it off the market and use it as a BDSM party destination rather than selling it.

The listing not only helped unlock the hidden value in the property, it boosted Leonard's reputation in the community, too.

"It comes up at parties," Leonard says. "I'm glad I did it, and I don't regret anything."

Now the McKinneys are ready to apply the same formula and use a hint of sex appeal to sell their family home ... and perhaps realize their television dreams in the process.

The post Will Sex Sell? Couple Hope BDSM Basement Will Bring Top Dollar for Family Home appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
THE European Commission has put Ireland on a four-month deadline to solve a chemical contamination problem affecting the drinking water supply of 180,000 people.

In a warning issued on Thursday, the commission said the continued exposure of people to Trihalomethane (THM) was a health risk and a breach of the Drinking Water Directive.

It said Ireland had been in breach of the directive since 2003 and progress to address the problem was not sufficient. If the situation was not remedied within four months, the case could be referred to the European Court of Justice.

High THM levels have been linked to liver, kidneys and central nervous system diseases, bladder and colon cancer risks, as well as to effects on foetal growth, foetal viability and risks of foetal malformations, the Commissions notice stated.

Although some progress has been made, Ireland has not been complying with the rules since December 2003.

THMs form when organic matter in raw water, such as rotting vegetation or sediment from peat, reacts with chlorine, which is widely used to disinfect drinking water supplies.

They are mainly ingested by drinking, but can also be inhaled in the bath or shower, or from steam when washing clothes and dishes.

Friends of the Irish Environment (FIE) lodged a complaint about THMS with the Commission nine years ago. The group has called for customers to be informed of any exceedances in their water supply so that they can act to protect themselves.

Consumers with supplies over the World Health Organisation levels can use simple charcoal filters to ensure that THMs are removed. They will not do this, however, unless they are made aware of the danger, it said.

In its most recent annual water quality report for 2018, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) said 42 water supplies serving 309,884 people were on a list for remedial action for persistent THM issues but the majority were to be resolved by the end of this year and all by 2021.

The latest remedial action list (RAL), updated in March, showed 21 supplies serving almost 250,000 people still had problems with THM, although works had been completed at one in Co Louth, serving 70,000 people, and it just awaiting checks to confirm they were successful.

The EPA stated: Irish Water have developed action plans for all supplies with THM issues on the Remedial Action List and submit progress reports to the EPA every three months.

The action plans outline any measures or treatment process upgrades that Irish Water are putting in place to achieve compliance with the THMs standard, without compromising disinfection. Irish Water have indicated that all THM action plans will be completed in all supplies by 2021.

Supplies on the RAL for THM problems serve communities ranging in size from a few hundred people up to almost 30,000 in counties Clare, Cork, Donegal, Longford, Kerry, Kilkenny, Meath, Offaly, Sligo, Wicklow and Dun Laoghaire Rathdown.
Another macabre milestone was passed yesterday as the global coronavirus death toll surged past 300,000, while the number of cases approached 4.5 million. So far, only about 1.7 million of those infected have recovered, leaving nearly 2.5 million men, women and children suffering from the deadly pandemic.

The United States leads the world in the number of infections (1.4 million), deaths (85,000) as well as having the most new infections and deaths each day. However, it lags behind more than three dozen European, Middle Eastern, Asian and island countries in terms of per capita testing for the virus, the first step in containing the disease.

Relatives of Munevver Kaya, who died of COVID-19, wearing face masks for protection against the coronavirus, offer their prayers during a funeral at a special section of Baklaci cemetery in Istanbul, that is dedicated for COVID-19 victims. Only a handful of family members were able to attend the burial of Kaya. Wearing surgical masks, they stood apart from each other, vastly outnumbered by officials overseeing the funeral, due to the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Emrah Gurel)

At the same time, several other countries are emerging as epicenters of the disease, including Brazil, Russia, Peru, India and the United Kingdom. While these countries currently have just under 18 percent of the worlds total cases, they have about 37 percent of the worlds daily new cases. Brazil and the UK also have some of the worlds highest death counts, at 13,600 and 33,600 respectively, while fatalities in the other aforementioned countries are beginning to sharply spike.

Amid the expanding pandemic, whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright testified Thursday before the House Committee on Energy and Commerces health subcommittee that The world is confronting a great public health emergency which has the potential to eclipse the devastation wrought by the 1918 influenza which globally claimed over 50 million lives.

Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint after being abruptly removed last month from his coronavirus vaccine development post, further stated that there will be unprecedented illness and fatalities if the policies of the Trump administration continue as they are now, referring to the ongoing back-to-work drive bring pursued by the ruling elite in the US and internationally.

These comments echo testimony from Dr. Anthony Fauci, who warned on Tuesday of needless suffering and death if states continue to open up before they are able to contain the virus. The statements from both officials sharply cut across the bipartisan efforts to send workers back into factories, offices and workplaces without the necessary medical equipment to ensure their safety and lives.

Richard Bright, former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, arrives for a House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing to discuss protecting scientific integrity in response to the coronavirus outbreak, Thursday, May 14, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Shawn Thew/Pool via AP)

Bright is the ousted director of the government agency that oversees the development of vaccines for novel viruses, including the coronavirus. He served as director of the organization, the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), since 2016 and was removed from his appointment on April 21 after he leaked information showing his opposition to the hydroxychloroquine trials being promoted by the White House as a cure for the pandemic.

He was called to Congress the week after his 89-page whistleblower complaint was made public, a document that details how the Trump administration covered up the dangers of the coronavirus as early as January and opposed any coordinated effort to prevent its spread. Bright also cataloged the corruption and insider trading between the government and various drug firms, including those with ties to the Trump family.

Brights testimony is a further indictment of the Trump administrations response to the coronavirus pandemic. As he noted in his opening statement, The American health care system is being taxed to the limit, our economy is spiraling downwardleading to mass unemploymentand our population is being paralyzed by fear stemming from the lack of a coordinated response and a dearth of accurate, clear communication about the path forward.

At the same time, Bright asserted that there is no national coordinated strategy to test for and combat the virus, one that draws on the guidance of the best scientific minds. Without this, Bright made clear, Our window of opportunity is closing.  the undeniable fact is there will be a resurgence of the COVID-19 this fall, greatly compounding the challenges of seasonal influenza and putting an unprecedented strain on our health care system. Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history.

One of the main problems, Bright noted, is that the supply chain for personal protective equipment (PPE) was diminishing rapidly even in the very early stages of the pandemic. He was, however, met with indifference by officials at Health and Human Services, including Secretary Alex Azar, when he attempted to raise the alarm. Lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost, especially among health care workers, who were not provided with sufficient protection against the virus, he said.

The whistleblower also informed the subcommittee that there is significant concern for the ability of companies to produce and distribute a vaccine if and when one becomes available. Theres no one company that can produce enough for our country or for the world, he said, and there must be a strategy and plan in place now, if a potential life-saving inoculation is to be distributed in a fair and equitable manner.

It also emerged at the hearing that the federal government knew of these shortcomings thanks to a simulated pandemic situation it ran last year, known as Crimson Contagion. The exercise studied what would happen if a new, flu-like virus was brought to Chicago by tourists who had traveled to China. It estimated that 110 million Americans would be infected, 7.7 million hospitalized and 586,000 would be killed.

Bright made clear that some of the significant findings were the need for improved coordination and communication, and an alignment between the local, state and federal governments with a need for personal protective equipment and a need for funding. It should also be noted that data from the current pandemic indicates that the coronavirus is at least twice as deadly as the simulated contagion.

The Trump administration predictably lashed out at Brights testimony, with Azar claiming, Everything he called for was done. White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany repeatedly claimed that Bright wasnt paying attention, asserting that the federal government has sent out 90 million N95 respirators  [a] billion gloves and many more pieces of PPE. President Trump attempted to marginalize Bright, tweeting that he is just a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected.

Neither Azar nor McEnany, much less Trump, bothered to reconcile their claims of the administrations actions with the fact that it is now attempting to force the Centers for Disease Control to revise downward its official count of coronavirus cases and deaths. It was revealed last week that the head of the White House Coronavirus Task Force, Deborah Birx, has petitioned the CDC to exclude those who only may have died from COVID-19, which would reduce the mortality and case count by as much as 25 percent.

While criticizing the Trump administration, however, neither Bright nor the Democratic Party-controlled hearing questioned the actual response of the president and his cohort, which was to grant corporations, banks and Wall Street speculators some $8 trillion with no strings attached in March and April, a quarter of which was under the guise of the CARES Act. In doing so, the ruling class fueled a record stock market rise of 35 percent, while at the same time demanding that workers place their lives and the lives of their friends and loved ones at risk of dying from the pandemic.
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Linkedin Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 14:12 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd844ec7 1 National Indonesia,BNN,drug-network,UNODC,crystal-methamphetamine,report,trafficking,#COVID19,COVID-19 Free

As illegal drug producers in the lower Mekong region in Southeast Asia continue to consolidate their operations, Indonesia has seen a decline in the price of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, a new United Nations report has revealed.

According to a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the surging supply of synthetic drugs has resulted in them becoming cheaper, reaching the lowest prices in a decade.

The report found that the regional supply of methamphetamine has steadily increased as drug operations in the infamous Golden Triangle region of the lower Mekong have become more efficient, making it more affordable for drug users.

The Golden Triangle is the area where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet at the confluence of the Ruak and Mekong rivers. Along with the Golden Crescent in Afghanistan, the Golden Triangle has been one of the largest illicit drug-producing areas in the world.

In Indonesia, the amount of crystalline methamphetamine seized annually has increased significantly in recent years, with the record amount of 17.9 tons seized last year, exceeding the combined amount recorded over the two previous years.

It is hard to imagine that organized crime has again managed to expand the drug market, but they have, UNODC representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific Jeremy Douglas said.

While the world has shifted its attention to the COVID-19 pandemic, all indications are that production and trafficking of synthetic drugs and chemicals continue at record levels in the region.

And even with drug prices declining, the quality of illicit substances remained high, and in some countries has even risen.

Meanwhile, demand for the substance is stable in Indonesia, according to the UNODC.

In a recent drug bust in North Sumatra, police found 4 kilograms of methamphetamine smuggled in from Malaysia. The drugs were bound for Lampung and Jakarta, with peddlers promised earnings of up to Rp 25 million (US$1,745) for the delivery.

Despite significant drug busts, the typical price range for 1 gram of crystal meth in the country has nearly halved over the last four years to US$86.7 to $114.3 in 2019.

This indicates that the drug busts have had little impact on the availability of the drug in the market, the report stated.

Organized crime groups are in a position to provide better quality methamphetamine at much cheaper prices compared to a decade ago, increasing affordability and harm at the same time, UNODC illicit drugs analyst Inshik Sim said.

According to the UNODCs assessment, the methamphetamine market in East and Southeast Asia and neighboring countries is valued at around US$61.4 billion.

The drop in drug prices has put a number of countries on high alert in a region that is split between a harsh antinarcotics stance and a more lenient approach backed by historical and traditional customs.

But the COVID-19 outbreak has provided countries with an extra buffer to anticipate illegal drug flows.

In Indonesia, tighter border controls imposed to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have unwittingly resulted in a reduction of illegal drug supplies, said Insp. Gen. Arman Depari, the National Narcotics Agencys (BNN) eradication deputy head.

But that doesnt mean they have disappeared altogether; they just havent been very active. Their finished products are still ready to be sent to any country that demands it, he told the press in a virtual briefing on Thursday.

Just last month, when countries began sealing their borders, Sri Lankan authorities intercepted two trawlers carrying 400 kg of heroin and 100 kg of crystal meth, in what was the countrys biggest drug bust at sea, Al Jazeera reported.

We talked with our Sri Lankan counterparts and they said those drugs were on their way to Indonesia and were meant to be dropped in Aceh waters. [] This proves that they never stopped, Arman said.

The sea route to Indonesia, with the porousness of borders off the coast of Sumatra, is considered to be a preferred route for traffickers, he noted.

Meanwhile, drug syndicates in Myanmar, Laos and Thailand have partnered up with groups in Indonesia, China, Taiwan and other countries to ramp up production.

BNN head Comr. Gen. Heru Winarko said his agency had stepped up international cooperation to intercept drug traffickers from entering the country by sea.

BNN is the leading agency in the ASEAN Seaport Interdiction Task Force (ASIFT), where member countries share information regarding potential for drug trafficking via sea transportation.

We have established seven interdiction posts [] in vulnerable places in North Sumatra, Batam, Kalimantan, Bali, Banten and Jakarta to communicate with neighboring countries, so they dont miss out on information, BNNs Arman said.

He said that information gleaned from these networks may go a long way toward the necessary preparations for when drug production in the Mekong area increases.

International cooperation is an absolute [must]; not just for the exchange of experiences but also sharing intelligence, he said.
Donald Trump on Thursday griped about the pressure he's facing to increase the ability to test people for the coronavirus, saying that testing might be "overrated" anyway.

"We have the best testing in the world. Could be that testing is, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated," Trump said during a visit to Owens & Minor, a medical supply company in Allentown, Pennsylvania, that distributes masks and other products.

"You know, they always say, 'We want more, we want more,' because they don't want to give you credit. Then we do more, and they say, 'We want more,'" he added.

Trump did not wear a mask during his visit, and neither did his chief of staff, Mark Meadows. Everyone else did, according to the pool report from S.V. Date, HuffPost's senior White House correspondent.

Hundreds of Trump supporters lined the road along the president's route to the plant on Thursday, and thousands appeared to be at the plant itself to greet him. Many were not wearing masks.

States reopen, relax guidelines to prevent coronavirus spread31

Even though the federal government's own health experts recommend wearing masks, Trump has refused to do so.

"I don't think that I'm going to be doing it," he said after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its guidelines to encourage mask usage.

Trump has also reportedly said he would look ridiculous wearing a mask and that he worried it would send the wrong message, contradicting his predictions that the end of the pandemic is just around the corner.

Thursday's visit was one of Trump's few trips out of Washington, DC, since the coronavirus pandemic took hold of the country. In early May, he went to a mask factory in Arizona and also refused to wear a mask - despite a sign near the factory floor that read, "Please wear your mask at all times."

Vice President Mike Pence also faced significant criticism when he visited the Mayo Clinic and did not wear a mask - even though it was the policy of the facility.

Story continues

Trump has been playing down the significance of testing people to see whether they have the coronavirus, even though medical experts and scientists said it's key to overcoming the pandemic. In addition to the volume of tests, experts said it also matters which populations are getting tested and whether there is adequate contact tracing to track who has been infected.

At the same time, he has boasted that the United States has "the best testing in the world" - a claim that is not true.

But there is one place where testing is readily available: at the White House. After several staffers who have had close contact with the president and vice president tested positive for Covid-19, tests are now readily available at the White House that take just minutes to get results (although the reliability of those results has been questioned).

Staffers will also now have to wear masks most of the time, a policy that the president said he put into place himself. Trump, however, will continue not to wear one.

- This article first appeared on HuffPost
The Supreme Court paved the way on Friday for the resumption of liquor sale through state-run outlets in Tamil Nadu, staying the Madras high court (HC)s orders that directed the closure of such stores operated by the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC).

A bench headed by justice L Nageswara Rao, however, orally observed that the ultimate decision on whether liquor should be sold and how the sale should be made rests with the government.

Issue notice. In the meanwhile, there shall be ad interim stay of orders dated 6.5.2020 and 8.5.2020 passed by the High Court of Judicature at Madras, the bench, which also comprised justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and BR Gavai, said.

In a May 1 order, the central government allowed states to sell liquor in standalone shops and said social distancing should be followed in such outlets.

Subsequently, the Tamil Nadu government issued a public notice on May 4, announcing that TASMAC outlets, which were shut since the lockdown was imposed on March 25, would reopen on May 7.

But on a public interest litigation by one B Ramkumar Adityan, the high court passed an order on May 6, regulating the sale of liquor. It ordered that not more than two bottles of 750 ml each (including wine, beer etc.) of any one type will be sold to one customer at a time.

Further, it directed that a customer cannot make purchase of liquor more than twice a week. Directions were also issued to encourage online payment instead of cash payment.

The Tamil Nadu government and TASMAC, which approached the Supreme Court against the HC order, said when TASMAC outlets opened on May 7 after a 44-day shutdown, the high court directions led to overcrowding and worsened the queues.

Then, in another order on May 8, the high court directed that TASMAC can sell liquor only through online mode, after the reopening of liquor outlets on May 7 led to overcrowding and long queues outside the outlets.

This direction was reiterated by the Madurai bench of the high court on May 11 in another case.
Photo credit: Instagram @taste_republic

From Women's Health

When chickpea pasta first came on the scene, it cut the amount of carbs, added more protein, and proved that tasty, healthier pasta is possible. Now you can have an Italian meal with vegetables as the main dish, thanks to Taste Republics Cauliflower Linguini.

The brand announced that its Cauliflower Linguini, which is gluten-free, grain-free, and made with cauliflower, hit 55 Costco locations across California and Nevada in April. The 32-ounce package is split into two 16-ounce sections, so you have just the amount you need for a couple meals. For $9.89, you have a couple healthy dinners that are sure to pair with whatever sauce youre craving on a particular night.

Less than a week ago, Taste Republic said that while its limited-edition run in Costco stores is winding down, its only a matter of time until its back. If you cant find the Cauliflower Linguini, dont worry too much, because itll be back in the San Diego region of California in early July. Itll also be coming to 30 stores in California, Arizona, and Colorado. Fingers crossed that it keeps expanding!

You might even get lucky with some lingering packs available in other states, because according to Instacart, the Cauliflower Linguini is available near me and I live in New Jersey. Its worth a look the next time you run to Costco even if youre not on the West Coast.

While Taste Republic makes a variety of pastas, including gluten-free, chickpea, and red lentil varieties, the linguini is the only one you can get thats made out of cauliflower. Each 3-ounce serving contains about 2.5 servings of vegetables, so youre doing yourself a favor by choosing it for dinner. Plus, since its packaged freshly made, it only takes 2 or 3 minutes to cook on the stovetop. Quick, tasty, and healthy? Jackpot!

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Marshall McLuhan became a well-known author when he coined the phrase the medium is the message in the mid-1960s.

Trying to define the meaning of the phrase became a common topic of conversation among college journalism students at the time.

Im not sure I ever figured it out. An entry in Wikipedia explains: McLuhan used the term message to signify content and character. The content of the medium is a message that can be easily grasped and the character of the medium is another message which can be easily overlooked.

If you need further explanation, I refer you to McLuhans: Understanding Media: The Extension of Man.

McLuhan is often billed as a Canadian communications thinker.

I dont know what that means but McLuhans theory came back to me as I followed debates over the next planned stimulus package to offset the financial crisis resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

If youre reading this  whether in print or online  consider yourself fortunate.

Its not about me, its about you.

The medium is the message.

Your reading shows you are a person interested in local news, opinions and events.

Hopefully, this product and other media outlets will be available well into the future.

But its not going to be easy. Like a lot of businesses, from the auto industry to restaurants, barber shops and salons, media have been hit hard by the pandemic.

If a business isnt open, there is no need to advertise.

You probably havent heard much about the troubled media. Journalists arent inclined to report on their own problems.

But the disaster facing the media is slowly coming to light.

Nineteen U.S. Senators recently sent a letter to Senate leadership asking that the next stimulus package include funds for media outlets.

The letter starts: We write to ask that any future coronavirus stimulus package contain funding to support local journalism and media. Without this support, communities across the country risk losing one of their key sources of accurate information about what citizens need to know and do in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The newspaper industry was in trouble long before the pandemic. Internet competition and online merchandise sales have cut into the bottom line.

Newsroom employment has decreased and about 1,800 local newspapers have ceased operations since 2004, according to a report by the University of North Carolina.

The efforts for stimulus funding have quietly picked up support.

The plan is endorsed by PEN America, a non-profit based in New York City, the NewsGuild-CWA, the labor union representing journalists across the country and many in southeastern Michigan. The Society of Professional Journalists, of which I have been a dues-paying member since 1966, has not taken a position on the issue.

Some opponents question whether the media, the self-proclaimed watchdogs of government, should receive funds from the government.

That argument can be rebutted by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a non-profit created and financed by a 1967 act of Congress. Much of that funding goes to 1,400 locally owned public radio and television stations. They continue to provide top-notch journalism.

The NewsGuild suggests funding to support media workers, to prevent layoffs and reduce furloughs, while prohibiting using public funds for executive bonuses, dividends, stock buybacks or golden parachutes.

The letter sent to Senate leaders, by senators, notes: Local journalism has been providing communication answers to critical questions, including where to get locally tested, hospital capacity, road closures, essential business hours of operation and shelter-in-place orders. During this unprecedented public health crises people need to have access to their trusted local news outlets for this reliable and sometimes life-saving information.

Lets hope a majority of senators agree.

Ken Kish, a retired Macomb Daily editor and contributing columnist, may be reached at Kennethkish12@gmail.com.
And just like that, the Chippewa Valley is reopened.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court nullified Gov. Tony Evers safer at home order Wednesday with a vote of 4-3.

That leaves Wisconsin currently as the only state in which no regulations in association with COVID-19 are being enforced. As a result, many businesses across Wisconsin reopened swiftly, including some bars the same night.

Mike Jordan, president of the Chippewa Falls Chamber of Commerce, said: I think this is a good decision for our area. There are other areas of the state that have a much higher incident rate, but here we have a much lower one. Its good that our hospitable businesses are able to get back up and running and start to get back on track. That said, we are certainly advocating for businesses to use the safety standards going forward. Its not going to be a flip-the-switch kind of turnaround.

Teri Ouimette, executive director of Chippewa Falls Main Street, said while she is glad businesses are able to do business again, she said staying as safe and level-headed as possible during this time is essential to the safety of the Chippewa Valley as a whole.

Its surprising to everybody, Ouimette said. It wouldve been nice to have some guidelines in place when this happened last night, but we dont have them so we have to move forward. I think the public will be responsible and I know business owners will be while continuing to practice social distancing. Hopefully people are on board with it, take it seriously and we can move through this and get things done.

With the absence of any regulations, many businesses across Chippewa Falls are choosing to immediately reopen after being shut down for almost two months.

Bar/restaurants such as Everybuddys Bar and Grill and Wissota Chophouse chose to resume operations Thursday. Retail stores had just been given the go-ahead to reopen under Evers guidelines the day before the Supreme Court ruling, so the changes being made across the state to retail establishments only includes the limitation to five customers being allowed in any store at a time being nullified.

While many businesses are jumping at the chance to reopen, some were unprepared to resume operations.

Businesses such as the 4:30 A.M. Coffee House and Just Jen Fitness are making changes on the fly and lining up their resources to reopen in a safe and sustainable way.

Popular bar/restaurant The Fill Inn Station released a statement via their social media account Thursday afternoon indicating its excitement to reopen, but theyre unsure of their opening date due to not having any notice as to when they could start to conduct business again.

With the Supreme Court ruling, many are asking what that means for us, we are as ready as you to open, according to The Fill Inn Stations statement. However, we want to make sure we do it safely and in accordance with health department guidelines. Also, the place is still a mess from all of our projects and we dont really have any beer or much food available to sell. We promise you will be the first to know when we have our opening date set. Thanks to everyone that is as excited as we are to be together again.

While no new local guidelines or orders have been issued by local officials now that Evers policies are overturned, Angela Weideman, health officer and director of the Chippewa County Department of Public Health, said maintaining social distancing and using common sense during this transition is paramount.

This has been a time of uncertainty and I appreciate the cooperation from Chippewa County residents and community partners thus far, Weiderman said. In the wake of the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling regarding the safer-at-home order, the Chippewa County Department of Public Health is working with state and local officials, as well as other regional partners to determine the next steps. The health and safety of all community members is our highest priority, and keeping the community safe is what we are trained to do. In the interest of preventing spread of COVID-19, the health department asks that community members voluntarily follow safe social-distancing practices.

Without any policies or guidelines to look to for guidance, some businesses are also choosing to abide by the original May 26 safer-at-home end date to keep themselves and their customers safe.

The District Pub and Grill in Eau Claire and many other area restaurants are not opening yet, as the risk for infection at dine-in facilities still remains high despite a lower infection rate in western Wisconsin.

State Rep. Jesse James, R-Altoona, said getting people back to work and the economy recovering again was important to many people across the state, and while this ruling is a sudden shock to the system, ultimately it will help return the state to a sense of normalcy.

This ruling gives the people an opportunity to get back to their livelihoods, provide for their families and open the Chippewa Valley in a safe, responsible and slow manner, James said. This isnt about turning the switch on. We still have a responsibility to do this in a safe manner, while protecting the vulnerable. I am confident our citizens are up for this task.

Residents of the Chippewa Valley can expect to receive new guidelines and safety orders from local governments after discussions between local and state officials bear fruit.

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U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks during her weekly press conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, on May 14, 2020. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

Pelosi Says Blaming China for Pandemic Is Interesting Diversion

House speaker says 'therell be plenty of time' to investigate the origins of the virus

WASHINGTONHouse Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says President Donald Trumps criticism of China for the pandemic is an attempt to divert attention from domestic issues.

What the president is saying about China is interesting. Its an interesting diversion, she said at a May 14 press conference, in response to a question by The Epoch Times about whether the regime in Beijing should be held accountable for the delayed COVID-19 response.

Right now, our focus should be on meeting the needs of the American people, she said.

Therell be plenty of time for an after-action review, she noted. And its urgent and needed for scientists to trace the origins of such a pandemic scientifically, but not politically.

Pelosi also urged lawmakers to focus their energy on how we go forward [instead of] making judgments about what this administration did or didnt do.

Trump has repeatedly criticized Beijing for mishandling the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as the novel coronavirus. He described the pandemic as the worst attack the United States has ever endured.

It was either stupidity, incompetence or it was deliberate, one or the other, Trump told Maria Bartiromo on May 14 in an interview for Fox Business Network. But you know the worst of all, whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from China. And they shouldve stopped it. They could have stopped at that source.

The virus has sickened more than 1.47 million people in the United States and killed more than 89,000 as of May 17.

Public opinion in the United States has shifted drastically against the Chinese regime after the pandemic. In a recent poll, Americans reported bipartisan distrust of the Chinese regime for its handling of the outbreak.

A Harris Poll survey conducted from March 14 to April 5 showed that 77 percent of Americans blame Beijing for the spread of the virus. The belief was echoed across the political spectrum, as 67 percent of Democrats, 75 percent of independents, and 90 percent of Republicans think the Chinese regime is responsible.

The state attorneys general in Missouri and Mississippi have filed lawsuits against Beijing over its coverup of the virus, while several U.S. law firms have begun class-action lawsuits.

Beijings early coverup is well-documented. In late December, for example, Chinese authorities silenced eight doctors who took to Chinese social media to warn people about a new form of pneumonia spreading in Wuhan.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) criticized Democrats for blaming Trump instead of China.

Not one Democrat has come forward with an idea to hold China accountable, Graham told Fox News on May 3.

Theres a growing call from Republicans to make China pay for damages caused by the pandemic. House Republicans on May 7 launched a China Task Force to investigate Beijings role in the spread of the virus.

Rather than pointing at China, Pelosi urged Washington to focus on the reopening of the economy safely.

Instead of diverting attention from mistakes that may have been made here, lets just put that all aside and go forward for what we can do, working together for the good of the American people.

House Democrats on May 15 approved a $3 trillion coronavirus aid package that includes another direct payment to each American, as well as nearly $1 trillion for state and local governments. The measure was approved by a vote of 208199, over the opposition of Republicans as well as some moderate and progressive Democrats. It faces an uphill battle in the GOP-controlled Senate and White House.
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The following list includes recent reports from the Midland County Sheriffs Office and the Midland Police Department. Compiled by reporter Mitchell Kukulka.

Wednesday, May 13

11:46 p.m.  Deputies responded to a car-deer crash in Greendale Township.

8:58 p.m.  Officers responded to a larceny in the 3100 block of Jefferson Avenue.

7:45 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Geneva Township residence in reference to a 49-year-old man who reported his riding lawn mower was stolen. The estimated value of the lawn mower was $600. There are no suspects at this time and the incident is still under investigation.

5:35 p.m.  Officers responded to a report of an intoxicated driver causing an accident in the area of South Poseyville Road and St. Charles Street.

5:22 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to a Porter Township roadway location in reference to a report of a horse in the roadway. The deputy checked the area but did not find the horse. The deputy later located a horse matching the description of the horse that was near the road. The 51-year-old owner stated sometimes her horse eats grass near the roadway on the edge of her property.

4:33 p.m.  Officers responded to a retail fraud in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.

3:55 p.m.  Deputies and EMS were dispatched to McBride Quality Care Group home in Porter Township for a suicidal 42-year-old resident. The resident said she felt like hurting herself. EMS spoke with her guardian via text message and transported her to ER for treatment.

11:36 a.m.  Deputies were sent to Old Oak Estates after an 82-year-old resident reported his 80-year-old wife, who has dementia, had wandered away from his home. Upon deputies arrival, the complainant had located his wife at the community office, which she likes to walk to and took her back home. A deputy gave the complainant information about the Angel Sense locating system available through the Arc of Midland.

9:34 a.m.  A deputy responded to a single-vehicle crash in Jerome Township.

8:15 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the 100 block of Lexington Court.

7:50 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of North Saginaw Road and Orchard Drive.

Tuesday, May 12

11:18 p.m.  A deputy and a Michigan State Police (MSP) trooper were dispatched to a Homer Township area in reference to a request from the Saginaw County Sheriff's Office to look for a 31-year-old Wheeler man who was allegedly suicidal. The man's phone pinged near a Homer Township intersection with an unknown accuracy. The deputy and trooper searched the surrounding area but the male was not located. This information was turned over to Saginaw County.

10:10 p.m.  Officers responded to a larceny in the 1400 block of Washington Street.

8:55 p.m.  A deputy took a complaint from a 41-year-old Lee Township woman, who said her 35-year-old ex-boyfriend calls her names while she walks through the trailer park to her new boyfriend's trailer. The deputy explained the Personal Protection Order process to the woman. She said she will be contacting park management as well. The deputy made contact with the ex-boyfriend, who was less than cooperative. He was educated on making mature and wise decisions.

7:42 p.m.  A deputy was dispatched to an Ingersoll Township residence in reference to a 49-year-old man who found nicotine vape pens his 14-year-old daughter ordered in the mail. The complainant wanted the deputy to speak with the girl about the harmful effects of smoking as well as the legal repercussions of possessing tobacco under 18. Further punishments will be handled by the parents, while no minor in possession charges are being sought by the sheriff's office.

6:43 p.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of Eastman Avenue and Harcrest Drive.

12:39 p.m.  A deputy and a MSP trooper were dispatched to a Jasper Township residence in reference to a suspicious situation. The deputy made contact with the complainant, a 52-year-old woman, who reported two unknown men entering her property who possibly had guns. The 52-year-old is a known mental patient and there was nothing indicating anyone had entered her home. After speaking with the 52-year-old further, she was unsure if the men entered the home or if they did in fact have guns.

12:28 p.m.  Animal Control was dispatched to Lee Township for two loose dogs killing chickens.

11:21 a.m.  A 59-year-old Alger woman drove into the ditch in Warren Township. There were no injuries or damage. While speaking with the driver, it was discovered she was a diabetic and was having medical issues. EMS was called to the scene who treated her for her low blood-sugar levels. Once treated, she was able to drive out of the ditch and continue on her way.

10 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the 900 block of Joe Mann Boulevard.

7:32 a.m.  Officers responded to a vehicle crash in the area of North Saginaw Road and Sturgeon Road.
The Central government on Friday informed the Bombay high court (HC) that only contractual frontline workers from the Navi Mumbai Municipal Corporation (NMMC) who contracted Covid-19 as they were in direct contact with Covid-19 positive persons will be extended the benefits of the 50 lakh Central government insurance cover.

NMMC submitted to the court that it would respond by Saturday regarding paying contractual workers 300 per day as allowance on a par with regular employees. The submissions were made while the cour was hearing a petition filed by a workers union, consisting more than 6,000 contractual workers, which complained that the workers cleaning the roads or collecting garbage were not being provided with safety equipment by the civic body.

The single bench of justice SJ Kathawalla while hearing the petition which also sought daily allowance of 300 and insurance to nearly 6,277 contractual essential services workers, including 3,261 in solid waste management across 92 locations. The plea further stated that about 693 workers were employed in the health department across four hospitals in Navi Mumbai and were involved in cleaning duty.

Advocate Bhavesh Parmar, along with Rahul Gaikwad and Nikita Abhyankar, appearing for the union submitted that the workers discharging essential services and reporting to work regularly are not being provided with any protective gear and hence are exposed to contracting the disease. The advocates cited instances of 24 contractual workers being quarantined after testing positive for the virus.

While responding to the demands, additional solicitor general Anil Singh informed the court that only those contractual frontline workers who succumbed to the virus would be covered by the insurance scheme. NMMC, however, sought time till Saturday to decide on paying the 300 daily risk allowance being paid to all government employees involved in the battle against Covid-19.
The environmental services team at Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital has played a key role in helping patients and staff stay safe during the coronavirus pandemic.

Its much more than housekeeping. Its technical work, said Jason Fischer, director of Environmental Services and Transportation for Houston Methodist The Woodlands Hospital. Its knowing the contact times for your disinfectants. Its using the proper cleaning method in a room to reduce the possibility of the spread of bacteria from one location to another.

Fischer said the environmental services unit at the hospital at the Interstate 45 and Texas 242 is an incredible team.

They are so knowledgeable and want to learn so much more, he said.

For National Hospital Week, Houston Methodist is highlighting the unsung heroes in the environmental services department for vital work during the hospitals COVID-19 response.

Fischer oversees 91 employees in the department at The Woodlands campus. He said the departments high standards of cleaning and healthcare occur not just during a pandemic, but are something the staff members strive for in their daily routines at all times.

Cleaning is at the forefront of a pandemic like this and it really creates an environment that is cleaner for anyone who is walking through he said. Were taking what we know and applying the most stringent standards to make sure were safe and our employees are safe.

First they made sure they had the right equipment for the type of isolation needed for COVID-19 patients. They also fully disinfected public areas of the hospital and made use of pump sprayers to fully cover surfaces. Theyve used UVC lights at the hospital for years, and they implemented it for post cleaning of COVID-19 patient rooms.

Several of the department members have especially gone above and beyond during the pandemic.

When the hospital first started looking at modified protocols, Aubrey Lugar Reynolds volunteered to clean all of the occupied COVID-19 rooms after the patient had been discharged.

She said she knew her coworkers were apprehensive about cleaning rooms where COVID-19 patients were treated. But she also knew she could wear the N95 mask when others werent able to. And she did all of this in the days leading up to her own wedding on April 18.

She wanted to make sure her coworkers didnt have to go into those rooms. She really was a leader to be able to say Im going to communicate with my management on a daily basis and make sure I have the most relevant information going into these rooms. This helped make everyone comfortable and see the process. She was able to talk to and train others and make them feel comfortable going into these rooms.

She did get married on April 18 in a scaled-down ceremony with only those close to her present.

Shes really excelled in her time here, Fischer said.

He also recognized night-shift employees Corazon Ortiz and Paula Henry Crenshaw.

As some of their coworkers were out sick and being tested for COVID-19, they stepped up to make sure the hospital was cared for and that their coworkers were cared for.

They worked outside of their normal working routines and took on more to make sure that the hospital was ready for the next patient.

They take their jobs as being protectors of their coworkers, the nurses, the patients and the visitors seriously, Fischer said. They are about creating a safe, warm and welcoming environment in the hospital.

Visit https://www.houstonmethodist.org/locations/the-woodlands/ for more on the hospital.

shernandez@hcnonline.com
PrideRed Senior - BHPian



Join Date: May 2012 Location: BLR/PTR Posts: 2,792 Thanked: 7,126 Times

The "oldest" new cars on sale in India



Polo



Launched back in 2010, the car is good 11 years old. Over the years has seen plethora of engine/gearbox combinations, silly limited editions. Still sells about 1-2K copies a month.







Eeco



Launched way back in 2010, Eeco has remained same, except for engine. It came with 1.3L mill during launch as I recall, now comes with a G12 engine. Recently got BS6 makeover.







Vento



Launched in 2010, car is 10 years old in Indian market. Sales have dried up and there is no news yet on all new model.







Alto 800



Launched in 2012, model has remained same for almost 8 years now. Barring few feature updates, bumper/headlamp makeover, sheet metal and engine hasn't been changed much.







Ecosport



Launched in 2013, has got major makeover recently. Ford has kept this car relevant by updating engines/features etc. Sells in good number despite being oldest among rivals.







Octavia(3rd gen)



Launched in 2013 is on the verge of replacement. Octavia has been a key player in this segment and despite newer launches Octavia is able to hold on to its position.







Grand i10



Launched in 2013, now plays a second fiddle to Nios. Expect this to be axed soon. I don't think Hyundai discloses separate figures for i10 vs Nios, that said I see few new copies on road.







Note: I have not included few models like Dzire tour/Pajero sport etc. as I feel they are almost extinct or caters only to commercial segment.



Despite the age, many of these cars are doing alright in market(w.rto sales, performance or safety). Some of these car are still favored by BHPians/enthusiast despite newer launches. What helps manufacturers to sell a model longer? Better design? solid engineering(probably helps to meet evolving safety norms)? or just good marketing? Average shelf life of a car model in India is somewhere around 5-6 years in India. Some cars though run longer. Ladder frame UV's usually have a long shelf life, for instance previous gen Innova/Fortuner/Pajero went on to sell for 10+ years without showing signs of slowdown in sales. There are some exceptions though, which I have listed below. While 7 years may be not long, when you compare with the current competition they are quite old.Launched back in 2010, the car is good 11 years old. Over the years has seen plethora of engine/gearbox combinations, silly limited editions. Still sells about 1-2K copies a month.Launched way back in 2010, Eeco has remained same, except for engine. It came with 1.3L mill during launch as I recall, now comes with a G12 engine. Recently got BS6 makeover.Launched in 2010, car is 10 years old in Indian market. Sales have dried up and there is no news yet on all new model.Launched in 2012, model has remained same for almost 8 years now. Barring few feature updates, bumper/headlamp makeover, sheet metal and engine hasn't been changed much.Launched in 2013, has got major makeover recently. Ford has kept this car relevant by updating engines/features etc. Sells in good number despite being oldest among rivals.Launched in 2013 is on the verge of replacement. Octavia has been a key player in this segment and despite newer launches Octavia is able to hold on to its position.Launched in 2013, now plays a second fiddle to Nios. Expect this to be axed soon. I don't think Hyundai discloses separate figures for i10 vs Nios, that said I see few new copies on road.Note: I have not included few models like Dzire tour/Pajero sport etc. as I feel they are almost extinct or caters only to commercial segment.Despite the age, many of these cars are doing alright in market(w.rto sales, performance or safety). Some of these car are still favored by BHPians/enthusiast despite newer launches. What helps manufacturers to sell a model longer? Better design? solid engineering(probably helps to meet evolving safety norms)? or just good marketing? Last edited by Aditya : 15th May 2020 at 07:19 . Reason: As requested
Veterinary Exotic Animal Club Wins Purdue Outstanding Program Award

Lydia Hall, of the DVM Class of 2021, pictured holding a cockatoo, led the Veterinary Exotic Animal Club officers as president when the club planned the second MOAAR Symposium November 9-10, 2019.

Veterinary students earn respect not only by completing a famously rigorous curriculum, but also by going above and beyond in the process, pursuing particular areas of interest and helping others along the way. Such is true of members of the Purdue Veterinary Exotic Animal Club (PVEAC)  the club which this year won the Outstanding Program Award, presented by Purdue Student Activities and Organizations.

Paige Phillippi, of the DVM Class of 2022, participated in the 2019 MOAAR Symposium, and is the current PVEAC president.

The Outstanding Program Award recognizes the student organization that has implemented the most outstanding campus program during the academic year. The Veterinary Exotic Animal Club received the award for hosting annual symposia with alternating themes since 2017. The symposia began with the first biennial Medicine of Aquatics, Amphibians, and Reptiles (MOAAR) Symposium in 2017, which was followed by the Medicine of Mammalian and Avian Species (MMAS) Symposium in 2018. The club then hosted the second MOAAR Symposium last November.

Attendance for each event ranged from 90 to 120 participants, and included veterinary students from several veterinary colleges, such as Michigan State, Kansas State, and Ohio State, as well as exotic animal veterinarians and veterinary nurses. Each of the weekend-long symposia featured multiple speakers addressing a range of topics, and included special keynote presentations. The first keynote speaker in 2017 was SeaWorld Orlando veterinarian Claire Erlacher-Reid, a diplomate of the American College of Zoological Medicine. Dr. Endre Sos, of the Budapet Zoo in Hungary, gave the keynote lecture at the 2018 MMAS Symposium. Then, last November, the second MOAAR Symposium featured Dr. Cara Field, staff veterinarian for the Marine Mammal Center in Sausalito, Calif., as the keynote speaker.

Dr. Steve Thompson, Veterinary Exotic Animal Club advisor, said the club officers for the past three years, as well as many club members who assisted on the symposia planning and implementation teams, deserve the credit for the club winning the award. The 2017 officers, led by Dr. Kelsey Trumpp (PU DVM 2019), started the MOAAR symposia. The 2018 officers, led by Levi Smith, of the DVM Class of 2020, decided to alternate MMAS with MOAAR (Dr. Thompson points out that Mas is more in Spanish). We then tied-in the Colleges Office of Lifelong Learning to continue annual programming with continuity and professionalism for Purdue Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Thompson explained. Dr. Thompson also emphasized that many students even provided housing for the veterinary students who attended the symposia from out of state.

Paige Phillippi, of the DVM Class of 2022, participated in the 2019 MOAAR Symposium, and is the current PVEAC president.

The 2019 officers, led by Lydia Hall, of the DVM Class of 2021, orchestrated plans for the second MOAAR Symposium. The current officers are led by Paige Phillippi, of the DVM Class of 2022. Dr. Thompson says planning has begun for the next MMAS Symposium, but due to the current circumstances, the timing has yet to be determined and likely will involve postponing the event to sometime in the first part of 2021.

The award was presented virtually to the current club officers as well as some former officers by representatives of Student Activities and Organizations during a Zoom meeting April 24. Congratulations to all of the club officers and members involved in organizing and hosting the symposia for enabling the Purdue Veterinary Exotic Animal Club to be named the 2020 recipient of the Outstanding Program Award!

Writer(s): Kevin Doerr | pvmnews@purdue.edu
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 22:30:55

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TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Jaguar Mining Inc. ("Jaguar" or the "Company") (TSX:JAG) announces that, after careful consideration, it has decided to postpone its annual general and special meeting of shareholders (the "Meeting") to July 30, 2020. A new Notice of Meeting and Record Date will be filed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company has elected to postpone the Meeting, which was originally scheduled for June 30, 2020. As such, the Company has not yet filed its executive compensation disclosure, which will be filed and delivered to shareholders as part of Jaguar's management information circular relating to the Meeting (the "Circular"). The Company is relying on the temporary blanket relief provided by the Canadian Securities Administrators, including the exemptive relief contained in Ontario Instrument 51-504 - Temporary Exemptions from Certain Requirements to File or Send Securityholder Materials of the Ontario Securities Commission, to extend the deadline for such disclosure to coincide with the filing of the Circular.Due to ongoing concerns related to the spread of COVID-19, and in order to mitigate potential risks to the health and safety of its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, Jaguar is, for the time-being, encouraging shareholders and others not to attend the Meeting in person. Instead, shareholders should vote their shares prior to the Meeting as per the voting instructions that will be set-out in the Circular and listen to the Meeting online by way of a live audio conference call. Shareholders will be able to ask questions of management through the conference call at the end of the Meeting.Further details with respect to the conference call will be included in the Circular. Notwithstanding the foregoing, the Company will continue to monitor conditions in light of COVID-19 and the changing expectations and restrictions on the number of people who can safely congregate and reserves the ability to alter the format and conduct of this year's Meeting based on changing conditions.About Jaguar Mining Inc.Jaguar Mining Inc. is a Canadian-listed junior gold mining, development, and exploration company operating in Brazil with three gold mining complexes and a large land package with significant upside exploration potential from mineral claims covering an area of approximately 64,000 hectares. The Company's principal operating assets are located in the Iron Quadrangle, a prolific greenstone belt in the state of Minas Gerais and include the Turmalina Gold Mine Complex and Caete Mining Complex (Pilar and Roca Grande Mines, and Caete Plant). The Company also owns the Paciencia Gold Mine Complex, which has been on care and maintenance since 2012. The Roca Grande Mine has been on temporary care and maintenance since April 2019. Additional information is available on the Company's website at www.jaguarmining.com For further information please contact:Vernon BakerChief Executive OfficerJaguar Mining Inc.416-847-1854Hashim AhmedChief Financial OfficerJaguar Mining Inc.416-847-1854Forward-Looking StatementsCertain statements in this news release constitute "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements and information are provided for the purpose of providing information about management's expectations and plans relating to the future. All of the forward-looking information made in this news release is qualified by the cautionary statements below and those made in our other filings with the securities regulators in Canada. Forward-looking information contained in forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "are expected," "is forecast," "is targeted," "approximately," "plans," "anticipates," "projects," "anticipates," "continue," "estimate," "believe" or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may," "could," "would," "might," or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, may be considered to be or include forward-looking information. This news release contains forward-looking information regarding, among other things, the expectations of management with respect to the anticipated timing, format and conduct of the Meeting, the success of exploration, development and mining activities. The Company has made numerous assumptions with respect to forward-looking information contained herein, including, among other things, assumptions set forth in the AIF and the Company's most recent management's discussion and analysis, as well as other public disclosure documents that can be accessed under the issuer profile of "Jaguar Mining Inc." on SEDAR at www.sedar.com . Forward-looking information involves a number of known and unknown risks and uncertainties, including among others: the risk of Jaguar not meeting the forecast plans regarding its operations and financial performance; uncertainties with respect to the price of gold, labour disruptions, mechanical failures, increase in costs, environmental compliance and change in environmental legislation and regulation, weather delays and increased costs or production delays due to natural disasters, power disruptions, procurement and delivery of parts and supplies to the operations; uncertainties inherent to capital markets in general (including the sometimes volatile valuation of securities and an uncertain ability to raise new capital) and other risks inherent to the gold exploration, development and production industry, which, if incorrect, may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated by the Company and described herein. In addition, there are risks and hazards associated with the business of gold exploration, development, mining and production, including environmental hazards, tailings dam failures, industrial accidents and workplace safety problems, unusual or unexpected geological formations, pressures, cave-ins, flooding, chemical spills, procurement fraud and gold bullion thefts and losses (and the risk of inadequate insurance, or the inability to obtain insurance, to cover these risks). Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking information.The forward-looking information set forth herein reflects the Company%
CARTHAGE, Mo., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ --

Second quarter dividend of $.40 per share

per share Indicated dividend yield is 5.9%, one of the highest among the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats

Annual Meeting addressed four items of business; voting aligned with Board recommendations

Amended existing credit agreement to allow for additional liquidity

Leggett & Platt's Board of Directors announced a dividend of $.40 per share for the second quarter, equal to the dividend declared in the second quarter of 2019. The dividend will be paid on July 15, 2020 to shareholders of record on June 15, 2020.

A member of Standard & Poor's Dividend Aristocrats, Leggett & Platt has increased its annual dividend for 49 consecutive years, a record that only ten S&P 500 companies currently exceed. At an annual indicated dividend of $1.60 per share, the yield is 5.9%, based upon yesterday's closing stock price of $27.03 per share. Leggett & Platt possesses one of the highest dividend yields among the S&P 500 Dividend Aristocrats.

Annual Meeting Results

The annual meeting of Leggett & Platt shareholders was held this morning in Carthage, Missouri. Shareholders elected as directors the 11 nominees proposed by the Board; ratified the selection of PricewaterhouseCoopers as the Company's independent registered public accountant for 2020; approved the amendments to the Company's Flexible Stock Plan; and endorsed the compensation of the Company's named executive officers. No other proposals were voted upon.

Credit Agreement Amendment

On May 6, 2020, the Company entered into an amendment of its existing revolving credit facility to provide additional borrowing capacity under the financial covenant and further enhance Leggett's financial flexibility as it navigates the COVID-19 pandemic.

The financial covenant was amended from a calculation of total debt to trailing 12-months EBITDA to net debt to trailing 12-months EBITDA. The covenant requires net debt to remain below 4.75x the trailing 12-months EBITDA through March 31, 2021. The ratio will be reduced by 0.5x every quarter through December 31, 2021 until it reaches and will remain at 3.25x. In addition, there is a new requirement that the Company cannot retain more than $300 million in cash without planned expenditures.

FOR MORE INFORMATION: Visit Leggett's website at www.leggett.com.

COMPANY DESCRIPTION: At Leggett & Platt (NYSE: LEG), we create innovative products that enhance people's lives, generate exceptional returns for our shareholders, and provide sought-after jobs in communities around the world. L&P is a 137-year-old diversified manufacturer that designs and produces engineered products found in most homes and automobiles. The Company is comprised of 15 business units and 140 manufacturing facilities located in 18 countries.

Leggett & Platt is the leading U.S.-based manufacturer of: a) bedding components; b) automotive seat support and lumbar systems; c) specialty bedding foams and private-label finished mattresses; d) components for home furniture and work furniture; e) flooring underlayment; f) adjustable beds; and g) bedding industry machinery.

CONTACT: Investor Relations, (417) 358-8131 or [email protected]

Susan R. McCoy, Senior Vice President, Investor Relations

Wendy M. Watson, Vice President, Investor Relations

Cassie J. Branscum, Manager, Investor Relations

SOURCE Leggett & Platt

Related Links

http://www.leggett.com


By Trend

Alireza Zali, head of the government-led coronavirus taskforce of Tehran, announced that COVID-19 detection kits are to be produced domestically.

At a meeting of Tehran City Council, Zali appreciated the actions of the Tehran Municipality and the City Council against coronavirus, Trend reports citing IRNA.

"We have tried to rely on the latest experience in the world and localize it to initiate production of coronavirus detection kits," he added.

During the meeting, the members of Tehran City Council announced that the Tehran Municipality is ready to monitor the health of the citizens.

"Despite severe financial problems, the Tehran City Council and Municipality have cooperated with the Ministry of Health and the National Committee on Combating Coronavirus from the very beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak in Iran," Mohammad Javad Haghshenas, the head of the Cultural and Social Commission of Tehran City Council, said.

Referring to a special plan to combat the coronavirus in Tehran, he noted that the capital can rely on the capacity of 'Neighborhood Centers' to monitor the residents' health.

According to the latest statistics, over 98,600 people have been infected and 6,277 people have already died in Iran. Meanwhile, over 79,300 have reportedly recovered from the disease.

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COLUMBIA, S.C. -- May 15, 2020 -- Scientists at the University of South Carolina and Columbia University have developed a faster way to design and make gas-filtering membranes that could cut greenhouse gas emissions and reduce pollution.

Their new method, published today in Science Advances, mixes machine learning with synthetic chemistry to design and develop new gas-separation membranes more quickly. Recent experiments applying this approach resulted in new materials that separate gases better than any other known filtering membranes.

The discovery could revolutionize the way new materials are designed and created, Brian Benicewicz, the University of South Carolina SmartState chemistry professor, said.

"It removes the guesswork and the old trial-and-error work, which is very ineffective," Benicewicz said. "You don't have to make hundreds of different materials and test them. Now you're letting the machine learn. It can narrow your search."

Plastic films or membranes are often used to filter gases. Benicewicz explained that these membranes suffer from a tradeoff between selectivity and permeability ? a material that lets one gas through is unlikely to stop a molecule of another gas. "We're talking about some really small molecules," Benicewicz said. "The size difference is almost imperceptible. If you want a lot of permeability, you're not going to get a lot of selectivity."

Benicewicz and his collaborators at Columbia University wanted to see if big data could design a more effective membrane.

The team at Columbia University created a machine learning algorithm that analyzed the chemical structure and effectiveness of existing membranes used for separating carbon dioxide from methane. Once the algorithm could accurately predict the effectiveness of a given membrane, they turned the question around: What chemical structure would make the ideal gas separation membrane?

Sanat K. Kumar, the Bykhovsky Professor of Chemical Engineering at Columbia, compared it to Netflix's method for recommending movies. By examining what a viewer has watched and liked before, Netflix determines features that the viewer enjoys and then finds videos to recommend. His algorithm analyzed the chemical structures of existing membranes and determined which structures would be more effective.

The computer produced a list of 100 hypothetical materials that might surpass current limits. Benicewicz, who leads a synthetic chemistry research group, identified two of the proposed structures that could plausibly be made. Laura Murdock, a UofSC PhD student in chemistry, made the prescribed polymers and cast them into thin films.

When the membranes were tested, their effectiveness was close to the computer's prediction and well above presumed limits.

"Their performance was very good ? much better than what had been previously made," Murdock said. "And it was pretty easy. It has the potential for commercial use."

Separating carbon dioxide and methane has an immediate application in the natural gas industry; CO2 must be removed from natural gas to prevent corrosion in pipelines. But Murdock said the method of using big data to remove the guesswork from the process leads to another question: "What other polymer materials can we apply machine learning to and create better materials for all kinds of applications?"

Benicewicz said machine learning could help scientists design new membranes for separating greenhouse gases from coal, which can help to reduce climate change.

"This work thus points to a new way of materials design," Kumar said. "Rather than test all the materials that exist for a particular application, you look for the part of a material that best serves the need that you have. When you combine the very best materials then you have a shot at designing a better material."

###

About the Study

The study is titled: "Designing exceptional gas-separation polymer membranes using machine learning."

The authors are: J. Wesley Barnett, Connor R. Bilchak, Yiwen Wang and Sanat K. Kumar from the Columbia University Department of Chemical Engineering; Brian C. Benicewicz and Laura A. Murdock from the University of South Carolina Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Tristan Bereau from the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research.

The study was supported by the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program (grant DGE-16-44869 to C.R.B.), the Designing Materials to Revolutionize and Engineer our Future Program (grant 1629502 to C.R.B., J.W.B., and S.K.K. and grant 1629052 to B.C.B. and L.A.M.), and the Emmy Noether Program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (to T.B.). S.K.K., J.W.B., and C.R.B. acknowledge that the majority of the work was funded by NSF through DMREF grant CTS-1629502. This project was started under a previous NSF grant (DMR150730), which was continued as grant DMR-1929655.

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.
(Photo : Pixabay) New U.S. Space Force Flag Will Be Unveiled Symbolizing The Expanded Missions Of The U.S. Military Service (Photo : Screenshot from Twitter post of @SpaceForceDoD) New U.S. Space Force Flag Will Be Unveiled Symbolizing The Expanded Missions Of The U.S. Military Service

The United States Military service will have a new official flag for a new military service after 72 years. It will symbolize its expanded missions to outer space. According to Fox News' latest report, the new flag will be revealed on Friday, May 15.

The flag of the newly created Space Force will be presented by the Military leaders to US President Donald Trump during a signing ceremony for the 2020 Armed Forces Day proclamation which will take place in the Oval Office.

According to the report, a senior administration official said that a silver delta symbol surrounded by two constellations cast against the dark blue of outer space will be featured in the new flag derived from Space Force's Seal.

"The flag takes the key and central elements of the seal and places them on a black field fringed in platinum with the words 'The United States Space Force' and Roman numerals MMXIX (2019) below," said the administration official in the report.

New US Space Force flag will be unveiled symbolizing the expanded missions of the U.S. Military Service

According to the report of Fox News, the Defense Logistics Agency "Flag Room" in Philadelphia, which is also responsible for creating the personal flags of the US president, produced the Space Force Flag. The new flag came while the five-month-old Space Force is looking for eligible active-duty personnel to apply, transferring them into the new service. Space force released a new recruiting video that will guide the applicants.

When the Defense Department was directed to establish the sixth branch of the military by the .S President Trump in 2018, he said that the US must dominate space, since mere American presence in outer space is not enough.

After that, NASA was directed by the administration to deploy American astronauts to the surface of the moon by 2024 under NASA's Artemis program.

The space mission of NASA that will deploy American astronauts from the US to the surface of the moon is two weeks away. This will be the first time American astronauts will step on the moon after the retirement of the Space Shuttle fleet.

NASA astronauts have been hitching rides into space on Russian Soyuz Rockets for nearly a decade. Astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley will be the first to fly on the private company's spacecraft.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
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Linkedin Editorial Board (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 08:10 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82728c 1 Editorial Terrorism-Law,terrorism-in-Indonesia,terrorism,TNI,army Free

President Joko Jokowi Widodo must not consult the House of Representatives only but also  and more importantly  the public at large before signing a regulation on the involvement of the Indonesian Military (TNI) in the countrys fight against terrorism.



The Houses political support for the draft presidential regulation is pivotal as mandated by the 2018 Terrorism Law, but we cannot expect much from such a deliberation that will end up with the House rubber stamping the governments intention to give TNI new roles and powers in countering acts of terrorism.



The ruling coalition reigns supreme in the House and with the strange amity between political parties and the military in the country so far, the draft presidential decree looks set to go unchallenged.



However smooth the political process can be, Jokowi should not turn a deaf ear to mounting criticism from civil society groups and individuals who are concerned about the danger the draft regulation may pose to democracy and the rule of law.



While the terrorism law allows the TNI to be involved in combatting terrorism, it is clear that the National Police as the institution responsible for homeland security takes the lead and coordinates countermeasures to deal with terror threats. The draft regulation arms the military with authorities that include preemptive measures through intelligence, territorial and information gathering operations.

Read also: Plan to expand military role in fight against terrorism raises red flag, again

Rights groups and activists have particularly warned the government against granting such excessive powers to the military, given the TNIs past trajectory in human rights abuses under the guise of security operations. There is a little hope for a fair mechanism to hold soldiers accountable for possible human rights violations committed during counterterror operations as the TNI, for technical matters, is subject to the Military Court, which has helped prolong impunity.



Worse, the draft regulation loosely defines acts of terrorism the TNI can handle, which include attacks on serving and former presidents, vice presidents and their families. While the safety of those dignitaries is beyond compromise, the draft regulation fails to provide a clear framework as to when the TNIs involvement is needed. The draft regulation, as it is, may give the military a blank check to act against enemies of the government, including critics and the opposition.



The military approach runs counter to the criminal justice mechanism the police have upheld in fighting terrorism. Despite imperfections in the polices operations to counter terrorism, such as alleged abuses, a control mechanism is in place. The way the police through its counterterror squad Densus 88 prevents and enforces the law against acts of terror has been internationally acknowledged.



Not only will the wide-ranging authorities to be given to the military undermine the criminal justice system adopted in the countrys combat against terrorism, they may create overlap, preventing coordination between the police and military.



Operation Tinombala launched in Poso, Central Sulawesi, to crush a terrorist group led by Santoso in 2016 is living proof of the successful collaboration between the police and TNI. Indeed, with terror threats developing in scale and manifestation, the cooperation must continue.
Meghan Markle's long-time facialist and close friend has spoken out to praise the 'kind and generous' Duchess of Sussex and their 'inspiring' bond in a gushing interview.

London-based beauty expert Sarah Chapman has been working with Meghan, 38, for several years, having been introduced to the former Suits star just days before she announced her engagement to Prince Harry in 2017.

According to Sarah, the two have since formed an incredibly close friendship - and the facialist was actually one of the few people to see Meghan on the day before her May 2018 wedding to Prince Harry, when she prepped the mother-of-one's skin for the big day.

High praise: Meghan Markle's facialist has spoken out to praise the 'kind, generous, and inspiring' Duchess of Sussex while opening up about working with her before her wedding

Close bond: London-based beauty expert Sarah Chapman first met Meghan, 38, a few days before she announced her engagement to Prince Harry

Now, Sarah has shared more details about their relationship, telling People what an 'amazing experience' it has been to get to know Meghan in a more personal way.

'I feel really lucky to have built a great friendship with Meghan,' the British beauty expert said, before explaining that the two truly bonded in the weeks leading up to the wedding.

'It was an amazing experience and I really got to know her and the kind of person that she is: kind, generous, inspiring and always considering how she can help other people.'

Despite preparing to walk down the aisle in front of millions of people around the world, Sarah says that Meghan was incredibly relaxed and calm in the lead-up to the wedding, and she recalls laughing and joking with the Duchess during those sessions.

'I always left feeling like I could change the world  thats the person she is,' Sarah explained, describing Meghan as 'selfless' and with a 'strong desire to help people'.

Indeed, while Sarah worked some skin magic on Meghan before her wedding, ensuring that it looked 'moisturized, nourished, and bright' for her special day, she says that good skincare wasn't the only thing at play when it came to her bridal beauty.

'Inner beauty shines through with people, you can see it in their skin if someone is radiating happiness and health  theres so much more to it than just skincare products,' she noted.

Natural beauty: Since then, Sarah and Meghan have worked closely together, and the skincare expert says they have formed a close friendship

Support: While living in London, Meghan visited Sarah regularly for facials, and the skincare expert says she was always 'inspired' by her time spent with the former Suits star

In the years since their first meeting, Sarah became Meghan's go-to skincare guru, and she is understood to have undergone regular treatments with the beauty expert while she was living in London.

However, earlier this year, Meghan and Prince Harry quit royal life in the UK and moved to the US, spending several months at a home in Canada, before moving into a home in LA.

According to Sarah, the move came at exactly the right time.

'It felt like it was the time to say something, things have changed,' she said of the couple's decision to relocate.

That being said, Sarah admits that she is sad that the couple will no longer live in the UK, explaining that she believes the couple did a great deal behind the scenes that many people were not aware of.

'Its a shame that we dont have them here in the country anymore  theres so much that they do that people dont necessarily see,' she said.

Sarah's People interview is not the first time that she has spoken of her admiration for Meghan and her family.

Upset: Although Sarah believes that 'it was time' for Meghan and Harry to 'say something' about their desire to relocate to the US, she said it's 'a shame' they are no longer living in the UJ

On April 3, the beauty pro shared a series of images of Meghan's 'glowing skin moments' on Instagram, and she took the opportunity to send warm wishes to the Duchess of Sussex, as well as her husband and their son Archie.

'Through my work I am fortunate to meet some incredible, interesting and inspirational people and over the past 2  years I feel honoured to have spent much time with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex,' she wrote.

'With Meghan, what began as a client relationship quickly turned into a dear friendship and she welcomed me into their lives.

'I feel very grateful to be a small part of their journey observing the passion for everything they do and compassion for the causes and people they meet, but also to witness the moments other people dont see. Who they are at home, as parents, as partners, and friends, the kind and very down to earth people they are when no one is watching.

'Every day we learn something new and I have been taught so much by them, and I always leave our time together feeling fulfilled and inspired to help people in any small ways I can.'

She concluded the post: 'And to Meghan, Harry and little Archie: sending lots of love and positivity during this transition. I know there will be so many ways you will continue to touch peoples lives and enable positive change and we cant wait to see what you do next.

'See you soon and thank you for everything you do.'
The Western Cape Government will use the process of consultation announced by President Cyril Ramaphosa to lobby for the province to move down to level 3 as soon as possible, preferably before the end of May 2020.

With our healthcare system prepared, it is simply no longer possible to maintain level 4 restrictions anywhere in the Western Cape or South Africa, Western Cape Premier Alan Winde said.

The economic crisis caused by these restrictions has resulted in a life-threatening humanitarian disaster that will only worsen in the months ahead.

The Western Cape has experienced the increase in new COVID-19 cases in South Africa, with 7,220 confirmed cases and 129 deaths.

This growth in infections has caused many people to call for the province to be moved back to level 5, but Winde dismissed this as counter-productive.

He said the new COVID-19 cases and deaths which they are currently seeing are actually coming from the level 5 lockdown.

We have shown over the last few weeks, under level 5, that infections happen in any place where people congregate, he said.

He added that the purpose of the level 5 lockdown was to get healthcare systems and medical responses in place to deal with the pandemic.

Now we have to balance the medical readiness with the humanitarian and economic response, said Winde.

He said the Western Cape has a hotspot plan, which they have shown to Health Minister Zweli Mkhize, to address areas with COVID-19 outbreaks in the province.

The whole province is, however, not affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. Winde said there are areas where they have not had any cases for two weeks.

He said this allows the Western Cape to open the economy more, and move to alert level 3.

While the Western Cape is in favour of more relaxed regulations, the decision about the alert level is not in their hands. This is done at national government level.

Virus spread expected

Winde said they are closely monitoring infections to ensure the number of COVID-19 cases are on a trajectory which it measures its response against.

The Western Cape is currently doubling the number of confirmed coronavirus cases every eight days, and although this sounds scary, they are prepared for this scenario.

He said everything is on track and they have enough hospital beds and other medical resources to cope with the growth in infections in the province.

We said you cannot remain in lockdown for too long because then the humanitarian and economic impact become too big.

He dismissed accusations that they are putting economic considerations above the need to flatten the curve.

It is about creating a balance. The whole reason that you kill off your economy in a level 5 lockdown is to get your health response ready  which is exactly what we were doing, he said.

He said the most important thing is to not allow the virus to spread beyond their projections, which can lead to an overloaded healthcare system.

We are not going to stop the virus. Even if you did and island yourself and eradicate the virus the problem is that you remain vulnerable when everything else opens up, he said.

He said this is why the Western Cape is creating a balance between slowing the spread of the virus and allowing economic activity to continue.

This means instead of a very strict lockdown which will drag the pandemic out for over two years, it should be managed to allow a balance between limiting infections and allowing economic activity.

Western Cape Premier Alan Winde interview



Now read: All online shopping now allowed in South Africa
The hunger crisis resulting from the coronavirus will claim even more lives overseas in poor nations unless we take action.

War and climate change have already caused many countries to suffer food shortages. The coronavirus will only deepen their humanitarian crisis. The U.N. World Food Program Director David Beasley warns that, due to the Coronavirus, an additional 130 million people could be pushed to the brink of starvation by the end of 2020.

Congress, in the next relief package, must increase global food aid to help the World Food Program, Catholic Relief Services and other agencies fight hunger. Funding should be increased for the Food for Peace program, Americas main tool in fighting global hunger.

Life-saving infant nutrition for Yemen, Syria, South Sudan and other countries must be expanded. Congress should increase funds for the McGovern-Dole program, which is providing take-home rations for hungry school children in impoverished nations hit by the virus.

William Lambers,

Cincinnati

William Lambers is the author of Ending World Hunger.
Local restaurants could have many more patrons on site starting this weekend.

As part of the first phase of reopening the state amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of Charlottesville-area food and beverage establishments are choosing to open this weekend.

Gov. Ralph Northam announced this week that Phase One of reopening Virginia will in fact start Friday, easing some restrictions on restaurants, places of worship, exercise facilities, barbershops and hair salons.

Scott Roth, president of Three Notchd Brewing Company, which will open its patio for service Friday, said the brewery wants to help set the standard for what it looks like to reopen under current circumstances.

Weve been prepared for this and have been talking through all of the ways to ensure everyones safety and do it in a very responsible manner, Roth said. Weve got the staff to do it and we have the facilities to do it because we have more space than many other restaurants, specifically in downtown, do.

Restaurants, food trucks, breweries, cideries, distilleries and wineries have to meet a number of requirements established by the state, including limiting outdoor occupancy to no more than 50% of normal capacity. Parties must be at least six feet apart and people waiting on sidewalks must distance themselves.

Employees working in customer dining and service areas are required to wear face coverings over their nose and mouth, and single-use disposable menus are required and must be discarded after each customer. Self-service of food and condiments is not allowed.

Earlier this week, Northam said localities can enact additional restrictions beyond the mostly statewide reopening guidelines, but that regions should act together. Northern Virginia, the city of Richmond and Accomack County will remain in Phase Zero for an additional two weeks.

The Thomas Jefferson Health District sent general notices about opening guidelines to area chambers of commerce and business associations, according to the districts spokeswoman.

Separate notices have gone to restaurants and food establishments in the district, as well as other businesses that have eased restrictions.

During the last two weeks, the district has seen an increase in confirmed coronavirus cases, from 298 on May 1 to 364 on May 14.

Charlottesville spokesman Brian Wheeler said the city encourages the public to eat at local restaurants, in whatever manner works best for their health and safety.

We expect some will test the waters with outdoor seating areas, but on the Downtown Mall, the seating space is limited with the physical distancing requirements, he said. We will share some signage with the restaurants that are opening their patios that reinforce the safe distances. The idea is the sign would be outward facing to the pathway.

If someone has concerns, Wheeler said they can call the health district hotline at (434) 972-6261 and be forwarded to the localitys non-emergency police line.

George Hodson, CEO of Veritas Winery, said the Afton establishment is now taking hourly reservations for Friday and onward for about 25 spots with a picnic table and tent.

Its almost like a cabana at a pool, where you know that you have this place, he said. Thats where theyre going to be able to order their food, order their wine. Theyre going to be able to have touch-free transactions.

Hodson said winery staff will not venture into the reserved areas, and that there will be a dropoff table for customers to get their food and wine.

It might be overboard for a lot of them, or it might be more than they could ever want and theyre perfectly unafraid, he said. But what were doing is were trying to make sure that the person who is venturing out at the edge of their comfort level can have a wonderful time.

Hodson, who was named to Virginias COVID-19 Business Task Force and is also president of the Monticello Wine Trail and the Virginia Wineries Association, said winery operators have been consistently sharing with each other what theyre doing throughout the pandemic.

Its not the governors directives that are going to open the Virginia economy  the consumer is going to open the Virginia economy, he said. And so knowing that they can go to places and be safe and have a good time is the cornerstone of what weve been doing, and our whole entire industry is committed to making sure that all wineries are viewed as fun, enjoyable and safe places to go.

The Three Notchd Craft Kitchen and Brewery location at the IX Art Park has been operating with staff as it services its beer distribution network, as well as delivery and takeout.

We fully understand that everybodys in the same storm but were all in different boats, and were going to continue with our curbside and our delivery program, Roth said. If its not right for people to come out to the patio right now, we totally get it.

Roth said Three Notchd will have about 40 seats on the patio open for customers and have separated designated waiting areas, in an effort to control traffic flow. The brewery will ask customers to wear masks to and from the table if they have to use the restroom, and to work with their server to make sure multiple people arent in the restroom at the same time.

Three Notchd is doing daily wellness checks and screenings for all staff members, he said. Hand sanitizer will be at every table and every surface will be sanitized between uses.

But not everyone is leaping at the opportunity to reopen.

Some establishments  such as Lampo, Champion Brewing Company and Kardinal Hall  have announced that for the time being they will continue to only have takeout and/or delivery options.

Melissa Meece, owner of Firefly in Charlottesville, said that while the restaurant is building an expanded patio, she is only planning on takeout and delivery for the foreseeable future.

What Ive heard from customers is that they want to do takeout and delivery, thats their comfort zone, thats where customers want to keep supporting local, she said. Theyve been doing such an amazing job of supporting the local businesses and restaurants right now, but theyre not quite ready to go out to eat yet.

Roth said he and his staff know the current regulations and will depend on everyone to follow them.

Well be vigilant about making sure that our customers are doing the right thing because thats the other part of the equation, right? he said. We can do everything right, but we need our customers to be in this with us as well and set the right example while theyre out to eat.

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Several food service employees for Medina Valley Independent School District are under self-quarantine after a close family member of one of the workers tested positive for COVID-19, according to a Friday news release.

The employee was working at Potranco Elementary this week, helping distribute food to families. The employee has not tested positive, but a family member they had close contact with did test positive, the release said. Food service staff members who had been working alongside the employee have also been asked to to self-quarantine.
Car bomb goes off near Afghan base; Taliban claim responsibility

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 2:35 PM

A truck packed with explosives has gone off near a military base in eastern Afghanistan, killing at least five civilians in an attack claimed by the Taliban militant group.

Afghanistan's Defense Ministry said a bomber detonated the explosive-laden truck before reaching the army base in the eastern city of Gardez, the capital of Paktia province, on Thursday.

Local officials confirmed that the powerful blast killed at least five civilians and wounded 19, including five army personnel.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, in a statement, claimed that "tens of soldiers were killed and wounded" and denied reports of civilian casualties.

"After the announcement of the offensive... an attack was carried out against an important military headquarters of the Kabul administration," Mujahid said.

The explosion comes two days after at least 56 people, including women and newborn babies, were killed in attacks elsewhere in the country.

On Tuesday, three heavily-armed militants attacked a maternity hospital in the Afghan capital, Kabul, killing at least 24 people, including two newborn babies and their mothers.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, but the Taliban said they had nothing to do with it.

In a separate attack on the same day, a terrorist detonated an explosive vest at a funeral ceremony in the eastern Nangarhar province, killing at least 24 people and injuring 68 others. The Daesh terrorist group took responsibility for the bombing.

The attacks have triggered international outrage and condemnation.

The United Nations Security Council, in a statement, strongly denounced the "heinous and cowardly terrorist attacks".

"Deliberately targeting infants, children, mothers and health workers as such is especially abhorrent," the statement read.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani said he had ordered the military to switch to the offensive mode rather than the defensive stance it had adopted as the United States tries to broker peace talks with the Taliban.

The Taliban later warned that they were "fully prepared" to counter any strikes.

Official data shows Taliban bombings and other assaults have increased 70 percent since the militant group inked a peace deal with the United States in February.

Under the deal, the militants agreed to halt their attacks in return for the gradual US withdrawal from Afghanistan. The group, however, accuses Washington of failing to honor the agreement.

The United States and its allies invaded Afghanistan in October 2001 shortly after the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington. While the invasion ended the Taliban's rule in the country, it has failed to eliminate the militant group.

American forces have since remained bogged down in Afghanistan through the presidencies of George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and now, Donald Trump.

Amid the continued occupation, the Daesh terrorist group has emerged in the Asian country more recently.

About 2,400 US soldiers have been killed, along with unknown numbers of Afghan troops and Taliban militants. Over 100,000 Afghans have been killed or injured since 2009 when the UN Assistance Mission in Afghanistan began documenting casualties.

About 14,000 US troops and approximately 17,000 troops from NATO allies and partner countries remain stationed in Afghanistan.

Since the US-led invasion that ousted a Taliban regime in 2001, the US has reportedly spent more than one trillion dollars on the war in Afghanistan.

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Arlington National Cemetery, which has been closed to the public during the novel coronavirus pandemic, marked the 100th anniversary of its historic amphitheater Friday with virtual events.

On May 15, 1920, the marble colonnades of the amphitheater were dedicated. Since then, it has been the setting for the National Memorial Day Observance, previously known as Decoration Day, at which the president traditionally gives an address after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

This year, it is still unclear whether the cemetery will be open to the public on Monday, May 25.

Related: Strict Rules in Place for National Cemetery Visits on Memorial Day

The Army and the Defense Department, which have jurisdiction over Arlington, have yet to make that decision, but restrictions on large public gatherings in northern Virginia and the District of Columbia are still in effect.

In lieu of public events to mark the amphitheater's centennial, the cemetery prepared an online exhibit available on its website.

"As Arlington National Cemetery remains closed to visitors, the online exhibit will allow the public to explore these hallowed grounds," Karen Durham-Aguilera, the cemetery's executive director, said in a statement. "Virtual visitation is the centerpiece of the 100th anniversary commemoration, showcasing the resilience of the historical structure and our nation."

The online exhibit features the unveiling of the contents of a time capsule that was embedded in the cornerstone of the amphitheater when construction began in 1915.

Inside, there were coins then in use, copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, a signed photograph of President Woodrow Wilson and, curiously, an American flag with 46 stars, although there were 48 states at the time.

To the amazement of Archivist of the U.S. David Ferriero, who can be seen examining the time capsule contents in the online exhibit, there was also a string of red tape, which was then used to bind all government documents.

He called it a "wonderful example of red tape. It is literally the red tape. So this is where the saying comes from -- 'cutting through the red tape,'" Ferriero said.

-- Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com.

Read More: Medal of Honor Recipient Dead at 41 After Yearslong Lung Cancer Fight
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's $266 billion economic stimulus programme to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has been all about liquidity measures, with negligible extra budget spending, according to government officials.

The government has announced a variety of steps for small businesses, street vendors, farmers and poor migrants, but they have largely been either credit guarantee schemes or new fund creations to be shouldered by banks and financial institutions.

A series of measures announced on Friday aimed at helping farmers weather the coronavirus storm, with the biggest being a $13 billion agriculture infrastructure fund. That will be anchored by state-run National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), with no extra spending by the government.

The government will also amend the Essential Commodities Act to ease restrictions on the trade of farm products, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told a news conference.

But of everything she announced on Friday, the government will spend only Rs 1,000 crore to Rs 2,000 crore ($132 to $264 million) in addition to what has already been budgeted, a government official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters.

Total expenditure from announcements made in the last three days would not be more than Rs 92,000 crore ($12.13 billion), a second official said. The government is due to announce more measures over the weekend.

The government is limiting fiscal spending due to concerns that excess spending could trigger a sovereign rating downgrade, government officials said.

Fitch and Standard & Poor's both have India pegged at an investment grade rating that is one notch above a junk rating, while Moody's Investors Service is the only major rating agency that has India's rating two notches above junk.

Modi had said on May 12 the government would spend Rs 20 lakh crore in fiscal and monetary measures to support an economy battered by a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown, and markets jumped the following day.

But markets have been subdued since Sitharaman detailed the relatively minimal sums being spent above what is already in the budget for this fiscal year.

"We do not foresee any major immediate benefits of the measures announced today ... The impact on equity markets of today's announcements is likely to be limited," B Gopakumar, CEO and managing director of Axis Securities, said of Friday's measures.

According to Jefferies, the Reserve Bank of India has taken Rs 8 lakh crore of measures already, which is included as a part of the total package being announced.

Earlier this week, Sitharaman unveiled plans to provide new credit lines by offering bank guarantees on more than $60 billion of loans to small businesses, so-called shadow banks and power companies.

Since April, the government has spent Rs 10,000 crore to offer work to almost 23 million unemployed people in rural areas under the ongoing rural job guarantee programme, Sitharaman added.

On Thursday, the government said farm loans amounting to Rs 30,000 crore would be provided as additional emergency working capital to the farmers through NABARD.

The government has also announced free food grain for about 80 million migrant workers for the next two months, and plans to extend an existing scheme for affordable housing to rented housing for migrant workers.

Under lockdown since late March, India has reported about 82,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among its 1.3 billion population, with more than 2,600 deaths.

ALSO READ:Tranche III stimulus brings no immediate respite for farmers

ALSO READ:Nirmala Sitharaman's farm sector reforms hailed but results may take time

ALSO READ:Tranche 3 of coronavirus stimulus a medium-term plan to boost agriculture, not immediate relief
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Elchin Mehdiyev  Trend:

The tickets purchased for attending the 2020 Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix event, which was postponed due to COVID-19 pandemic, remain valid, Baku City Circuit told Trend.

Optionally, the tickets may be returned through an appeal to [email protected], Baku City Circuit said. The date of the race for this year has yet to be determined. Formula 1 has not yet a new schedule for 2020. In case of new information on the date of the race, everyone will be informed.

Currently, no construction work is being done in Baku regarding the race, but they may start after the announcement of the competition date, Baku City Circuit said.

The 2020 Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix was planned to be held on June 5-7, but it was postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.
This is exactly how it all happened. Photo: Ollie Upton/Hulu

Dont go into The Great, Hulus retelling of Catherine the Greats rise to power, for total historical accuracy. The gist of the story remains true, as you may know from a history book (or Helen Mirrens recent HBO show): The young Catherine, born to minor German nobility, was married off to Emperor Peter III of Russia, and eventually overthrew him to take the throne for herself. But The Great, which describes itself with an asterisk in its title card as *an occasionally true story, takes that basic structure and runs with it to the point of gleeful absurdity.

In the show, which debuted its full first season on Friday, Catherine (Elle Fanning) is a naive young woman who has to deal with the capricious nature of Peter (Nicholas Hoult), who is basically the 18th-century version of a trust-fund baby. Everyone knows she did eventually take the throne, but its a bit unknown  and a bit made up, from our point of view  how she did it, creator Tony McNamara told Vulture. There were certain things that were essential to telling her story, and a lot otherwise that we would make up. Its not a history lesson; its a show.

McNamara knows a thing or two about ahistorical drama, with an Oscar nomination for his work as a screenwriter on The Favourite, and he spoke with Vulture about the steps he took to develop The Greats specific tone, the details from history that made sense to use in the show, and how much of Catherines story they decided to cover in the first season.

1. Start with a play

The Great was first conceived as a play, which was staged at the Sydney Theatre Company in 2008. Most of McNamaras previous work had been in contemporary comedy, but as he was casting around for material, hed heard a bit about Catherine the Great and got interested. I knew the scurrilous rumors about her, but I didnt know that she was a kid who took over an empire herself, and kept the Enlightenment alive, and she invented the roller coaster, he said. The result was a large, two-part play, with a younger and an older actress playing Catherine: The first half was about her marriage and coup, and the second was about her rule. The first 40 minutes of the play is the first two seasons, essentially, McNamara said. I had points of her life that I wanted to hit, and they didnt have to be in the order that they happened.

2. Decide when history works (and when it doesnt)

The real Catherine  born Sophia Augusta Fredericka in 1729  married Peter III in 1745, then overthrew him just six months into his official rule as emperor in 1762 with the help of 14,000 infantry soldiers, after which he died in prison, leaving the blood technically off her hands. To up the drama in The Great, McNamara decided that there needed to be a more equal conflict between Peter and Catherine, giving her a more formidable (if kooky) antagonist whom she has to use all her wits to scheme against in order to enact her coup. I wanted to write about young men in our time, so the character Nick plays is not a good representation of who she actually married, McNamara said, but the truth of coming somewhere with a romantic ideal and realizing you married the wrong man and your life is screwed, that felt like the true bit.

Meanwhile, the little descriptions of Russian life in The Great often ended up being both the most absurd and the most true. The fun stuff was stuff from the era, like, how did a pregnancy go? And it was that you pissed on wheat and hoped that it bloomed or whatever, McNamara said. He researched a lot about Catherine and her era while writing the play, but didnt want to go back to the facts too often while developing the ahistorical story. The writers room, he explained, was good at finding weird facts, especially as answers to plot-driven questions. Someone would go and find out what actually happened at a certain point, McNamara said, and then wed go, Okay, thats great, the rest we can not worry about. It was a mix of what the story demanded and things that we wanted because they were amazing  an organic mix of truth and fiction.

3. Fill out the royal court

Most of the characters in The Great, aside from Catherine and Peter, are inventions, amalgams of the type of people you mightve found in the Russian court at the time, designed to fill out the story McNamara wanted to tell. In reality, Catherine felt she needed the church, the military, and the aristocrats to overthrow the thing, he said, so we needed people who represent all these things. On the show, Catherines surrounded by an archbishop (played by Adam Godley), a military general (Douglas Hodge), and several scheming aristocrats, as well as a lover (Sebastian de Souza) assigned to her by Peter, and a representative of the people in her maid (Phoebe Fox), who pushes her toward a coup. Here are a bunch of people who think the world cant change, and theres this young woman who comes and says the world can change, McNamara said. Then they have to ask themselves the question: Do I want to change it?

4. Find the contemporary parallels

Off of that idea, McNamara wanted to emphasize the aspects of the story that resonated with the modern day. To that end, the language is hybridized so that it feels more rhythmic and more fun, and Catherine and Peter are designed to evoke contemporary archetypes. With Peter, I was thinking of an entitled, privileged kid whos out of his depth, McNamara said. When challenged, he reverts to this male violence, but only because its all hed been brought up in. For Catherine, I always thought she was a delusional optimist. Her default position was a kind of arrogance that [she] can change the world, McNamara said.

Elle Fanning, not an actress known for her comedy chops or her British accent, won him over when meeting for the Catherine role. Like the character, she was so extraordinary as a young person. She was 20 when I met her, he said. What Elle brought to it was a faith in herself, an ability to engage with the world and at the same time still be a kid. And Hoult, whom hed worked with on The Favourite, was a no-brainer: After the first day of rehearsal, I rang my co-producer and said, I think Ive found Peter. We really get on together.

5. Trust the tone

Director Yorgos Lanthimos hired McNamara to work on The Favourite after reading his script for The Great. But it was the success of The Favourite that also gave McNamara confidence that The Great could actually work as envisioned it. I knew this style worked onscreen, he said. Even when we made The Favourite, there was still a question of whether we made a film that people who liked period movies wouldnt like, or that people who didnt like period movies wouldnt come to see. But it turns out they did like it.

6. And, yes, also address the horse thing

One of the most infamous rumors about Catherine, spread by her enemies, was that she had sex with horses. At first, McNamara wanted to avoid that part of her biography entirely, but then changed his mind after recognizing how it would work as yet another parallel with the present day: The show introduces it as a rumor, and then later it resurfaces as an object lesson in how gossip shapes perception regardless of its relationship to the truth. There was nothing more contemporary than the idea that this woman has been destroyed by a salacious headline, he said. The joke is that throughout the show shes going, Nobodys going to remember that.

Want to stream The Great? You can sign up for Hulu here, or as part of a bundle with Disney+ here. (If you subscribe to a service through our links, Vulture may earn an affiliate commission.)
"The north shore of Lake Pontchartrain and the river parishes have been flooding since Thursday evening and many residents are needing a place to securely store their belongings," said Patrick Allen, U-Haul Company of Southern Louisiana. "U-Haul is an essential service provider and we want to make sure our neighbors are cared for."

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NDCs Dela Edem is already in a campaign mood after calling on Ghanaians to reject Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addos bid to serve a second term as President.



He was emphatic that the President is 'not performing' and has been exposed by the Coronavirus pandemic.



We cant have a 76-year-old nonperforming President again, he said on NEAT FMs morning show Ghana Montie.



Dela, who was discussing the Electoral Commissions obstinacy to compile new voters register amid COVID-19, noted that The ECs choice is to help rig the election for the NPP.



Why are they so impatient to change the register that brought them to power? the NDC communication team member questioned.

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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The discussions and surveys conducted by the Azerbaijani Agency for Development of Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) among pandemic-affected entrepreneurs show that entrepreneurs working in micro and small enterprises use the capabilities of digital platforms rarelydue to the costs involved, Trend reports referring to the Agency.

Given the growing need for e-commerce during the pandemic, the agency held an online event in which entrepreneurs were informed about the development of e-commerce for SMEs and software in the field of online sales.

Ensuring the access of SMEs to knowledge and innovations is one of the activities of the agency, the statement said. A number of SMEs were supported to create platforms on online sales in the sphere of services of the agency during the pandemic.

The development of the digital economy has been determined as one of the priority spheres in the post-pandemic period and the government is expected to support this sphere and attract private investments in it, the statement said.

In the online event organized through the Zoom application and directly broadcast on the agencys Facebook page, Logix company CEO Sakit Samadov informed the entrepreneurs about the importance of e-commerce, creation of e-sales platforms with minimal expenses and the software which is offered by local companies in this sphere.
In a draft motion circulated last week, the EU had only committed to "a plan for an evaluation, to be conducted in consultation with member states at the earliest appropriate moment, on lessons learnt from the international health response to COVID-19". Mr Borrell on Friday said the EU had become more assertive in its response to a "systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance" and urged China to play "its full role" in line with its global weight and responsibilities. The former Spanish foreign affairs minister accused China of politicising the crisis by publicising its medical assistance to European countries. "The changes in the EU-China relationship have been accelerating since the outbreak of the coronavirus," he said.

In the most direct statement to date by a European leader on the rise of China, Mr Borrell said the coronavirus would reshape the political, economic and diplomatic world and that China had managed a "truly impressive" transformation that was having geopolitical consequences. "Since diplomacy is best grounded in clear principles, the watchwords for EU-China should be trust, transparency and reciprocity," he said. "We should move forward together, based on a realistic assessment of Chinas strategic intent and the EUs common interests." Loading A spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Australia would support a European Union-led resolution to be presented to the World Health Assembly on Monday. "It includes a proposal for an independent review into the international response to COVID-19," he said.

"It is an important next step. We welcome the fact that many countries have joined the discussion. It is through open consultation and dialogue that the international community will learn lessons from this pandemic and position ourselves better to respond to future outbreaks." China is able to vote against the motion under the United Nations framework which gives sovereign powers to member states and prevents other nations from forcing independent inspectors into a country. But in a sign China's resistance to an investigation may be softening as global pressure builds, its ambassador to the United Kingdom, Liu Xiaoming, told Sky News UK on Friday that China will eventually allow international investigators in to the country, "but not now". Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, the Director-General of the World Health Organisation, said in an opinion piece sent to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age that countries need to pull together collectively on the world stage.
On his primetime show on Wednesday night, the Fox News host Sean Hannity addressed a federal judge who has put a hold on a justice department attempt to drop its case against the former Trump aide Michael Flynn.

You reek of ignorance, he said. You reek of political bias.

Hannity might have been aware of the irony at play. In recent days, the US presidents favourite network has elevated the spurious Obamagate scandal over all other subjects, most obviously the deaths of more than 84,000 Americans in a pandemic which the Trump administration has failed to contain.

According to research compiled by the Internet Archive, analysed by GDELT and released on Wednesday, since last week Fox News and Fox Business have mentioned Flynn, the FBI and Obama far more often than the coronavirus.

Nor has such coverage just been pursued by opinion hosts like Hannity, Laura Ingraham and Tucker Carlson. Hosts of supposedly straight news content have happily followed suit.

Critics and other media outlets have been quick to call out the supposed scandal, which the former Obama adviser David Plouffe called a sideshow to distract from the shitshow.

But Trump and his supporters at Fox and in Congress are firing on all cylinders. They are seeking to turn Flynns plight  fired as national security adviser for lying to the vice-president, pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with a Russian ambassador who was a target of an investigation into election interference  into a scandal to ensnare Barack Obama and Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee in November.

To do this, they are portraying unmasking  a routine intelligence process by which American citizens speaking to surveilled foreign nationals are identified by official request  as part of a sinister plot meant to kill Trumps presidency in its cradle.

Never mind that if such a sinister plot was mounted, it evidently didnt work. Never mind that Trump himself has struggled to say what it is Obama is supposed to have done. The president, as usual, has willing Republican allies in Congress.

Story continues

Senior Republican senators have released the names of people who requested the unmasking of Flynn with Biden prominent among them. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rand Paul of Kentucky, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and others have now demanded Biden and other Obama aides be called to testify.

On Thursday, startlingly, Trump said Obama himself should be called.

The analyst Matthew Gertz, of Media Matters for America, said that tweet from the president was evidence of frog boiling, meaning an attempt to increase the violation of political norms in stages so the public, like a frog in a beaker of gradually heated water, might not notice that boiling point was close.

Donald Trump has suggested Barack Obama and Joe Biden should testify before Congress. Senator Lindsey Graham said it would make for great television. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Forced to respond, a Biden spokesman accused the senators of abusing their congressional powers to act as arms of the Trump campaign and said the released documents confirm that all normal procedures were followed  any suggestion otherwise is a flat-out lie.

But Trump insisted to the Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo: It was the greatest political crime in the history of our country. If I were a Democrat instead of a Republican, I think everybody would have been in jail a long time ago, and Im talking with 50-year sentences. It is a disgrace whats happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country.

Bartiromo, of course, was happy to nod along.

The Flynn case was proceeding to sentencing before the attorney general, William Barr, intervened. Judge Emmet Sullivan responded, asking a former federal judge to look at whether Flynn should face a criminal contempt charge for perjury, given that he had sought to withdraw his guilty plea, saying he had not lied to the FBI after all.

On Wednesday night Hannity attacked Judge Sullivan.

So Judge Sullivan, you and you alone from this day forward are responsible for continuing what has been a travesty of justice that destroyed four years of an American heros life, and its time for a new venue and a new judge and someone unlike you that doesnt have political bias, he raged.

Obamagate has shallow roots. Only last Thursday, the US justice department announced its intent to drop proceedings against Flynn. On Friday, a leaked conversation showed Obama saying the rule of law was under threat  and saying he would campaign hard for Biden.

Trump went into Twitter overdrive, retweeting conspiracy-tinged accounts and making his own grandiose statements. He has regularly claimed Obamagate is bigger than Watergate, the 1970s scandal which brought down Richard Nixon.

Fox News and Fox Business swiftly followed his lead.

Writing in his Reliable Sources email, the CNN analyst Brian Stelter said: That Fox News would push a dishonest disinformation campaign against Trumps political opponents is reprehensible, but not surprising. The network has been pumping poison into the national conversation for quite some time.

But that Fox is engaging in such behavior as more than 83,000 Americans lay dead from a virus that has upended American life is particularly repugnant.

In a statement on Thursday, Senator Graham pointed perhaps inadvertently to both Trump and Foxs real motivation, and the negative effects their behaviour may well have.

Both presidents, he said, referring to Trump and Obama, are welcome to come before the [judiciary] committee and share their concerns about each other.

If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.
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Linkedin Ruben V. Nepales (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network) Los Angeles, United States  Fri, May 15, 2020 20:09 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd866cae 2 Entertainment Natalie-Wood,documentary,actor,united-states,Hollywood,rumors,Natasha-Gregson-Wagner,Robert-Wagner Free

Natasha Gregson Wagner shot a documentary to finally clear up the rumors and innuendos that her stepfather, Robert Wagner, had something to do with the drowning of her mom, Natalie Wood.

In HBOs Natalie Wood: What Remains Behind, Natasha, the daughter of Natalie and Hollywood agent and producer Richard Gregson, interviews Robert about that tragic night in November 1981 aboard the family boat off Catalina Island in California. On board were Robert, Natalie, their friend and fellow actor Christopher Walken, and the yacht captain Dennis Davern.

The next day, Natalies body was discovered floating on the Pacific Ocean. No one was charged in the mysterious drowning. But in 2018, the LA County Sheriffs Department named Robert as a person of interest. Earlier, in 2011, the case was reopened when Dennis stepped forward and said that he originally lied to the police. Dennis claimed that Robert was responsible for Natalies death.

Natasha, who produced the documentary directed by Laurent Bouzereau, is close to Robert. She calls both Robert and Richard dad but sometimes, for claritys sake, she says Daddy Wagner and Daddy Gregson. Natalie, who also dated Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra and Warren Beatty, married Robert in 1957 and divorced him in 1962.

From 1969 to 1972, Natalie was married to Richard. During this marriage, Natasha was born.

Following her divorce from Richard, Natalie and Robert remarried. Their second marriage bore a child, Courtney.

Natasha, 49, is releasing a book, More Than Love: An Intimate Portrait of My Mother, Natalie Wood, to coincide with her documentarys debut on HBO.

In our video interview, she said, I am in Northern Michigan because we have a 100-year-old log cabin up here. Its very close to where my father (Robert Wagner) spent his summers as a child. When the virus broke out in March and my daughter couldnt go to school anymore, we drove here with our three dogs.

Robert is now 90 while Richard was 89 when he died in August last year.

Read also: New "West Side Story" Maria revealed

Excerpts from our interview:

Was the chance to clear up the rumors and innuendos all these decades one of your motivations to make this documentary?

Yes it was, so much because I have a daughter now who is my moms only grandchild. I dont want the burden of that to rest on my daughters shoulders. I would like to clarify all those misconceptions and also to shine a light on her (Natalies) amazing life. Its so overshadowed by the tragedy of the night she died and also for my stepdad (Robert Wagner) who turned 90 this year.

The first scene you shot was with Robert Wagner remembering that tragic night.

That was very powerful. The director Laurent and I both felt that if that scene didnt work, we werent going to make the documentary. We needed my stepdad to go to those uncomfortable places. We shot those interviews over a course of two days because we knew they would be tiring for both of us.I was very nervous to shoot that because I am so protective of him. I adore him. I didnt want him to feel under a microscope.

There was all this speculation about domestic violence because there were reports of bruises on Natalies body. Can you comment?

There was no domestic violence. I mean, I saw her in her coffin and there was no sign of domestic violence.

The documentary says that Robert never returned to Catalina Island since that incident. Have you and your family been back to Catalina Island?

No, we have never been back. I dont feel the pull to go back there.

I read that Christopher Walken, who was on the boat during that fateful night, declined to be interviewed for the documentary. Your thought on his refusal?

I reached out to Christopher Walken through his agent, Toni Howard, who is also a family friend. Christopher really considered [being interviewed] and he thought about being in the documentary but he ultimately declined. He didnt give a reason but, of course, I respect his decision. I feel that he has handled this, all these years so admirably, never speaking about it.

Did your aunt, Lana Wood, also refuse to be interviewed?

We contacted her to be interviewed but she declined. She didnt give a reason why.

Do you have a personal relationship with her?

I do not. I havent been in touch with her since I was a little girl.

How did you learn that your mom died?

Unfortunately, I heard it on the radio, which was a terribly traumatic way to find out. Then it was confirmed by my Daddy Wagner when I got back to my house that morning.

Can you talk about your growing up years amid your moms very public divorces?

I always say that I dont feel like a child of divorce because my mom and my dad Richard Gregson divorced when I was so young. She met Daddy Wagner again. By the time I was old enough, everybody was getting along. I just thought that I had two dads.

It was a poignant moment when you interviewed your dad.

He was quite ill. I had given him the choice, Do you want to just do the audio? You dont have to go on camera. He said, I would be very insulted if I werent on camera.

The night before we shot that scene, I was staying at his home in Wales. He had fallen out of his bed and broken his wrist but he didnt tell any of us that he had broken a bone. He was so worried that if he told us, we would make him go to the hospital.

So he did that entire interview with a broken wrist. Thats how important it was for him to talk about my mom, to be a part of this documentary.

What do you remember about the parties in your house, when the amazing guests were the likes of Laurence Olivier and David Niven?

I knew that my parents had really fun friends and most of them spoke with a funny accentEnglish usually or very stage accents like Ruth Gordons. But I didnt really know who they were. These people were very low-key and down-to-earth. I think that is because thats how my parents were and these friends felt relaxed at our house. My mom always included my sister Courtney and me in the festivities.

Speaking of Ruth Gordon, you had cool godparents. Ruth, who was, of course, in Harold and Maude and Rosemarys Baby, and Mart Crowley, who wrote The Boys in the Band, were your godparents.

They were very cool godparents. She (Ruth) seemed to really take her role as godmother very seriously with me.

Mart just passed away in the beginning of March. He was one of my best friends. He was my moms dearest friend and closest confidante. I was almost like his child.

Steven Spielberg is coming up with his take on West Side Story. Your mom memorably played Maria in the original. What are your thoughts on Spielberg making his version of West Side Story?

I am over the moon that Steven Spielberg is remaking it because I feel like anything to keep my moms name out in the world, to keep her relevant and to have someone as accomplished as Steven Spielberg remake that film, I am actually really looking forward to seeing it.

Thank you for this interview.

Thank you. I just want to say I have a clear vision of my mom winning the Golden Globe for From Here to Eternity. We were so excited, jumping up and down. So I feel the love for the HFPA (Hollywood Foreign Press Association).

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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 Pune Municipal Corporation



(PMC) has decided to distribute a homoeopathic medicine, recommended by the AYUSH Ministry in the fight against coronavirus, to 70,000 households in the COVID-19 hotspot areas in the city, an official said on Friday.

In January this year, the AYUSH Ministry had issued a health advisory and recommended that homoeopathic medicines could be effective in the prevention of novel coronavirus infections.

It had recommended that homoeopathic medicine Arsenicum album 30 could be taken empty stomach daily for three days as a prophylactic medicine against the COVID-19 infection, the official said.

"We have received some 14 lakh vials of the immunity booster medicine- arsenicum album 30- and we will start distributing among the 70,000 households in the hotspot areas in the city," PMC commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad said.

He added that it is a three-day course with two tablets twice a day.

Talking about Pune's COVID-19 death rate, which is more than five per cent, Gaikwad said that testing needs to be increased to curb the number of fatalities.

Since the last seven days, over 1,000 tests were being conducted on a daily basis.

"We can further increase the testings, but there are some limitations with the National Institute of Virology (NIV)," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A truck driver has been fined after he clipped a police car while two officers were out of their vehicle conducting a traffic stop in the emergency lane of a freeway in Melbourne's north.

Loading

Two detectives, who were in an unmarked police car, had pulled a car over at the Pascoe Vale Road on-ramp of the Western Ring Road just after 8am on Friday.

A police spokeswoman said while the two officers were out of their vehicle and in the emergency lane, a truck clipped the side of their car at slow speed.

Police sources have told The Age the police car had its emergency red and blue lights flashing at the time it was struck.
With 16 fresh COVID-



19 cases reported on Friday, the total number of those infected by the virus has gone up to 576 in Kerala which has been witnessing a spike in cases of late.

The state, which had last week declared that it had flattened the curve, reported only 20 active cases on May 10 but five days later, on May 15, there are 80 cases, an increase of 60 positive cases.

"Eighty people are under treatment while 493 have been cured of the infection," Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan told the media, adding that cases are increasing in the state which was a matter of concern.

Seven of the positive cases were those who had come from abroad, while four had come from neighbouring Tamil Nadu and two from Mumbai, he said.

Three were infected through contact.

Social distancing and other measures need to be strictly followed as there is a possibility of the infection spreading through contact, he told reporters here.

Cautioning those in quarantine to strictly follow the protocol, Vijayan said police personnel on motorcycles will patrol homes in various districts.

On Friday, 65 cases were registered, 53 in Thiruvananthapuram, for not following the quarantine protocol while it was 11 in Kasaragod and one in Kozhikode.

With five more COVID-19 cases being reported, Wayanad's tally has gone up to 19, followed by Malappuram (4),Alappuzha and Kozhikode two each and one each from Kollam, Palakkad and Kasaragod, Vijayan said giving the break up of the cases on Friday.

With positive cases seeing a spike in the last few days, the tally touched 576 today, of whom 80 are presently under treatment.

Over 48,000 are under observation, while 538 are in hospitals.

Of the total 576 cases, 311 people had come from abroad, including eight foreigners and 70 had come from other states.

At least 187 were infected through contact.

The Chief Minister said till now 17 flights from various countries have landed at the four international airports of the state with stranded Indians abroad and three ships have also reached the Kochi port.

Vijayan also said the matter of 82 nurses, who are stranded in Israel and their visas expired, would be taken up with the central government and efforts will be taken to bring them back.

He also said that 1,045 people reached the state on Friday morning in the first special train from Delhi.

"A total of 3,732 people have reached the state from abroad.

Till now, 33,000 guest workers have left the state in 29 trains," Vijayan said.

At least 2,85,880 people have registered for reaching the state through road and passes were issued for 1,23,872.

He allayed the confusion regarding home quarantine and said it was effective in Kerala.

"Out of the total 48,825 people under observation, 48,287 are under home quarantine.

We have effectively implemented home quarantine in Kerala and it was the major factor in containing the spread of the virus.

With more patients coming into the state, we are also considering paid quarantine," Vijayan said.

The chief minister said there will not be any easing of restrictions in the containment zones and gathering of people is not allowed anywhere in the state.

As per the latest medical bulletin, Wayanad has 19 cases, the highest in the state followed by Malappuram with 15 and Kasaragod with 13.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Noe Torres

MEXICO CITY, May 14 (Reuters) - Mexico's mining sector should re-start activities on June 1, two weeks later than previously suggested, Mexico's undersecretary for mining said on Thursday.

Mexican government earlier this week said it would classify mining, along with the auto sector and construction, as essential activities, paving the way for a May 18 restart following a prolonged shutdown during the coronavirus outbreak.

But Mexico's Mining Undersecretary Francisco Quiroga said certain safety protocols have to be carried out with the ministries of health and labour after May 18, which would take time.

"In principle, we are planning everything for a start on 1 June," Quiroga told Reuters. "Reopening activities cannot be done from one day to the next."

Quiroga was speaking after the government caused confusion by changing the wording of a publication in its official gazette on Thursday to say that the newly classified essential industries should start up on June 1 after a two week period of implementation of sanitary measures.

Mexico's mines include the world's biggest gold miner Newmont Corp's Penasquito mine. On Wednesday, Newmont said it expected to begin ramping up operations at Penasquito in Mexico on May 18, following the government's announcement.

Newmont did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Deaths from the coronavirus are rising in Mexico. Tuesday and Wednesday were the two most lethal days, with 353 and 294 additional deaths reported.

"There is barely enough time for us to prepare everything to start the resumption of operations from June 1 because it has to be done according to the protocols," added Quiroga. (Reporting by Noe Torres; Editing by Drazen Jorgic and Grant McCool)
Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard speaks during the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), on September 24, 2014 in New York City. (John Moore/Getty Images)

Former Australian PM Julia Gillard Supports CCP Virus Inquiry

Former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has voiced her support for an inquiry into the origins and handling of the CCP virus, saying it needs to be studied and understood.

Gillard said that an inquiry was a good process to have when there is a major health challenge for the world.

Gillard took care not to credit the Morrison government, saying that she was taking a broader perspective on what is a global public health issue that any rational human beings would want to be investigated no matter where the virus originated.

Gillard also said that putting aside the nationalism that can sometimes arise during crises: It is good to have a process which enables us to learn every lesson so that we can keep humanity safer for the future.

Former Prime Minister @JuliaGillard has been appointed the next chair of one of the worlds largest investors in medical research and pandemics. She is using her new role to join calls for an investigation into the coronavirus outbreak. pic.twitter.com/YppyN7JnYz  News Breakfast (@BreakfastNews) May 14, 2020

Gillards Role at Wellcome Trust

Gillard was recently appointed chair of the United Kingdoms Wellcome Trust that co-funded research that led to the creation of the Ebola vaccine. The chair appointment will begin next year.

The Wellcome Trust is one of the worlds largest investment groups in medical research and has a $50.7 billion (26. 8billion) investment portfolio.

Wellcome has been at the forefront of the global response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemiccommonly known as novel coronavirus. CEO Jeremy Farrar is one of the worlds most well-known infectious disease experts and has been working with nations to combat the pandemic.

According to the Wellcome Trust, they are working with Coalition for Epidemics Preparedness Innovations (CEPI) that has just invested $384 million in fast-tracking a potential COVID-19 vaccine.

This article was edited to include when Julia Gillards chair appointment will begin.
FMCG major Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) on Friday announced acquisition of the balance 25 per cent stake in Kenya-based Canon Chemicals Ltd for an undisclosed sum.

Through this transaction, Canon Chemicals would now be a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company. The acquisition was made through its step down firm Godrej East Africa Holdings Ltd.

The Company through its wholly-owned subsidiary, has acquired the balance 25 per cent stake in Canon Chemicals Limited, said GCPL in a regulatory filing.

The Godrej Group firm had earlier acquired 75 per cent stake in Canon Chemicals Limited, Kenya, in 2016.

As per the agreement entered into with the sellers, the company has now acquired the balance 25 per cent stake on May 15, 2020, it added.

Canon Chemicals is a Kenya-based manufacturer of consumer products.

GCPL is expanding its presence in the African markets and has done substantial acquisitions also in the past to strengthen its presence in the subcontinent.

In the last quarter, January-March, GCPL's revenue from Africa (including Strength of Nature) market was at Rs 484.03 crore.

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

View Results
The moment the COVID-19 pandemic took hold in the United States, I felt the call of duty. I hadnt practiced medicine in 13 years. But Ive kept my medical license active. I was eager to don protective gear and help however I could. With COVID-19 patients straining resources and so many health care workers falling ill, I assumed my seven years as a family physician would be met with enthusiasm by the medical community.

I was wrong. For the past month, Ive spent hours looking for opportunities to help. Id finish my day job and start sending emails to connect with networks of physicians. I looked in hard-hit New York but concentrated mostly in the San Francisco area, where I live. I quickly discovered plenty of opportunities for doctors like me overseas  but not in the United States.

That makes no sense. Our nation needs to establish a national medical volunteer organization  a National Guard, but for medical professionals  to battle this crisis and future ones.

People who leave the military can stay connected by joining the reserves. The military encourages them to do so. If a similar organization existed for retired doctors, Id enlist in a heartbeat. Im sure countless other physicians would, too.

The federal Medical Reserve Corps was established in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to serve this purpose. The corps says that more than 175,000 volunteers  including medical professionals, office workers, chaplains, and interpreters  are part of its 837 units across the country.

Although some of these volunteers are on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19 in New York, the system isnt equipped for a nationwide response. Its disorganized, and there are too many barriers for retired doctors to sign on.

Strikingly, the Medical Reserve Corps doesnt even mobilize the doctors in its ranks  it expects individual clinicians to seek volunteer opportunities. Given the many obstacles theyll face, non-practicing doctors likely wouldnt even bother to volunteer. Not all states have relaxed licensing requirements that would allow doctors from other places to help.

Malpractice insurance is also a problem. I kept malpractice insurance for a few years after retiring in 2007 from practicing medicine, but it has long since expired.

Some states  including New York, New Jersey, and Michigan  have raised the standard for death or injuries to offer doctors and hospitals greater protection against malpractice claims during the COVID-19 crisis. Federal legislation to reduce lawsuit risk has been introduced. But without malpractice insurance, the risk is too high for doctors like me to return to clinical practice.

After encountering obstacle after obstacle, I thought I might be able to help one of the telehealth companies now in high demand. These companies need doctors, but the ones I spoke with were interested in me only as a full-time employee. Im trying to help out during the pandemic, not change careers.

When I started at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston in 1996, I had the same calling as many other young, aspiring physicians  I wanted to help people. I stopped practicing when I succumbed to the frustrations of so many other doctors: too little time with patients and too much time with paperwork. So I transitioned to a career in medical technology, where I could help thousands of people at a time.

Statista, the online statistics portal, estimates that the United States is home to more than 160,000 inactive medical doctors. I dont know how many retired in their prime, like me, frustrated by the realities of practicing medicine in a system overburdened by administrative bloat. But I assume its a lot  and I know we could use that talent right now.

Before the next crisis strikes, our nation needs to develop a process for mobilizing doctors who are eager to help. We should never again have to scramble while so many highly qualified medical professionals are stuck on the sidelines.

E. Hanh Le, M..D., is senior director of medical affairs at Healthline Media in San Francisco.
Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, has spent the past few weeks positioning himself as a libertarian hero. An opponent of lockdown policies in response to coronavirus, he has cast efforts to restrict people's movements to limit transmission as an assault on civil liberties by a government grown too powerful.

With messages like "Free America Now" and calling lockdowns "fascist," you might imagine the tech executive and entrepreneur has always been an advocate for small government.

Tesla chief Elon Musk has been locked in a war of words with officials over pandemic lockdowns. Credit:Bloomberg

Piqued by the coronavirus row, he has even threatened to move his factory away from California, known for its greater use of regulation, to a more free-and-easy state like Texas or Nevada.

But Tesla's business was built on the back of government subsidies, and still relies on regulatory credits, a product of green energy regulations, for some of its income.
A 77-year-old Michigan barber who insisted on cutting hair despite an order to stay closed during the coronavirus pandemic has had his licence revoked, State Regulators said Wednesday.

Karl Manke has pledged to keep his shop open 'until Jesus comes.'

A judge declined the state's request to shut down his shop Monday without first holding a hearing but regulators took a different path by suspending his barber license and his shop license.

Manke said he needs to work and can keep his shop and customers safe. He has been hailed as a hero by some people who have driven an hour or more to get a haircut.

'The government is not my mother, never has been,' Manke said Monday. 'I've been in business longer than theyve been alive.'

On Wednesday, Attorney General Dana Nessel said: 'It is paramount that we taken action to protect the public and do our part to help save lives.'

Karl Manke, 77, waves to people gathered just before a press conference on Monday at Karl Manke's Beauty & Barber Shop in Owosso, Mich.

Karl Manke, owner of Karl Manke Barber Shop in Owosso, Mich., left, gives John Taschner of Novi a haircut on Monday

Dramatic pictures show cops arriving at 77-year-old Karl Manke's barbershop in Ossowo, Michigan last week to issue him with the citation for reopening his business

Manke can ask for an immediate hearing with an administrative law judge at the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs.

'Its pure retribution. Its abuse of power: How dare you stand up to me?' said Manke's attorney, Dave Kallman.

The shop is in Owosso, a small town 40 miles northeast of Lansing. A woman who answered the phone at his shop said Manke hadn't been served with the suspension and was still cutting hair. A clipper could be heard buzzing in the background.

Hair salons and barber shops have been closed for weeks by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. But Manke, wearing a mask, reopened on May 4, saying an extension of the governor's order had 'knocked me to my knees.'

Dramatic pictures from last Wednesday showed cops arriving at the 77-year-old's barbershop in Ossowo, where they handed him the citation in front of a crowd of customers waiting for a haircut.

'I'm not going to close up unless they handcuff and carry me out of here,' he told The Associated Press last week.

'I'm making a living. If I have to spend it all on court costs, I'll do it. I'll recover.'

Gov Gretchen Whitmer has ordered all non-essential businesses to stay closed until at least May 15. Barbershops and salons have been shuttered across Michigan since March 21.

Manke now faces a $1,000 fine and possible license sanctions for defying executive orders put in place by Gov Gretchen Whitmer. Barbershops and salons have been shuttered across Michigan since March 21

Customers are pictured waiting in line for a haircut prior to police arriving on Wednesday. Manke worked 14-hour days Monday and Tuesday to keep up with demand

Manke is seen on the phone with a customer trying to book an appointment prior to his ticketing Wednesday

Manke - who has been a barber for 60 years - decided to reopen on Monday, saying six weeks without work had left him in 'despair'.

'It collapsed me, mentally, physically and spiritually,' Manke told The Lansing State Journal.

He later told Michigan Live that he had run through his credit and was having trouble accessing unemployment payments and stimulus funding.

'I can't go that long without an income, I just can't do it,' he stated.

Some days, Manke has worked from 10am until midnight, servicing a steady stream of customers - some of whom had traveled from three hours away.

'I'm doing walk-ins, appointments, working people in between appointments...It's been nonstop,' Manke told The Lansing Journal.

'It's hard, but I love doing it. I'm so grateful I can make a living again.'

'I'm doing walk-ins, appointments, working people in between appointments...It's been nonstop,' Manke told The Lansing Journal Tuesday

Customers are seen waiting patiently for one of Manke's haircuts. He has been a barber for 60 years

On Wednesday, cops arrived at the barbershop and issued Manke with the citation, but he continued to keep cutting hair.

Despite facing a hefty fine for violating government orders, the barber says he is doing all he could to keep clientele safe.

Waiting customers were seated six feet apart and scissors, clippers, combs and razors were sanitized under a UV light.

Despite facing a hefty fine for violating government orders, Manke says he was doing all he could to keep customers safe

Manke also wore a mask and made sure to wash his hands after each cut.

'I don't need the governor [Whitmer] to be my mother,' he told Michigan Live.

'I have one. God bless her, she's gone now. I don't need another mother. I can make these adult decisions myself'.

Manke told Michigan Live he was not trying to make a political statement, and does not discount the seriousness of COVID-19.

However, he says: 'This is something that's going to be with us for a while. We have to live with it.'
Karl Stefanovic has left the Queensland treasurer searching for words after asking a simple question about the state government's bid to save Virgin Australia.

The Today program's host interviewed treasurer Cameron Dick on Friday morning over the bid to invest as much as $200 million in the troubled airline.

The moment unfolded when Stefanovic asked the treasurer about the financial state of the airline.

'What are the current operating expenses for Virgin per quarter?' the Today host asked the minister.

'Karl, that's a matter for the administrator, that's not known to me,' Mr Dick said

Adminstrators were appointed on the airline in April 2020 after it was revealed the airline was $7 billion in debt as the coronavirus pandemic shut down national and international travel.

'So you're buying an airline business, and you don't know what running expenses are?' Stefanovic asked.

The question prompted an awkward pause from the treasurer.

'No, no, I'm not buying the airline business, Karl,' Mr Dick answered.

'You are contributing to that. You don't know what running expenses are,' Stefanovic said.

Mr Dick then explained the government was relying on advice from the Queensland Investment Corporation whom he said were at the 'pointy end' of the deal.

'They will give us the advice we need to make the right decision. If it doesn't stack up, we're not going to invest,' Mr Dick said.

The Queensland government wants to step in and save the Brisbane based airline to protect 5,000 jobs and keep flights running to the state's regional tourist hotspots.

Treasurer Cameron Dick spoke on Friday morning over the bid to invest as much as $200 million in the troubled airline

Administrators Deloitte have asked for non-binding indicative bids from investors by the end of Friday.

The Queensland government's plan involves not buying the airline outright but either investing in a partial stake or providing some sort of financial guarantee or backing.

Mr Dick also explained the administration process would see the $7 billion in debt cleared leaving a 'viable' airline.

He said a second airline was important for Australia and for Queensland which relies heavily on tourism dollars.

He added that investing in the airline was 'the right thing to do to protect Queensland's interests.'

The plan has caused criticism from the federal government with Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton calling the bid 'laughable'.

In the same tweet he accused Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk of having 'almost bankrupted' the state and of leading a 'corrupt' government.

He appeared to be referring to the shock resignation of former Treasurer Jackie Trad on Sunday over corruption allegations.

Stefanovic asked the treasurer about the financial state of the airline and he was stumped

Mr Dick, who has only just step into the Treasurer role, said he wanted the airline in the best shape possible and would be striking a hard bargain with any other investors.

Delloite reportedly has interest in the airline from a number of investors with the possibility some could form a consortium to buy the airline.

Experts have said a second airline is vital to keep interstate airfares at reasonable prices.

As lockdown restrictions are eased interstate travel is expected to ramp up again in the second half of 2020.
WASHINGTON - On the day Attorney General William Barr moved to drop criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn, again winning the adulation of President Donald Trump, he was paid a special visit.

Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence and one of Trump's most combative defenders, arrived last Thursday at the Justice Department's headquarters clutching a brown leather briefcase. A Fox News camera was pre-positioned at the entrance on 10th Street NW, seemingly tipped off to record footage of the dramatic scene.

Grenell carried a list he had declassified of former Obama administration officials, including former vice president Joe Biden, who had sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references in intelligence documents that turned out to be of Flynn. During a brief meeting with Barr, Grenell turned over the list of names, setting off a chain reaction that led Republican senators to publicly release it on Wednesday in what they claim is a monumental scandal.

The practice, known as unmasking, is commonplace in government. But in the case of Flynn, Trump and his allies used the list of names to claim Obama, Biden and their appointees deliberately sought to sabotage the incoming Trump administration as part of a long-running conspiracy they have dubbed "Obamagate."

"We sort of have the smoking gun because we now have the declassified document with Joe Biden's name on it," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said Thursday.

Biden's campaign maintains that his actions were entirely appropriate and that the declassified document shows he followed normal intelligence procedures.

With Trump suffering political damage for his management of the coronavirus pandemic less than six months before the election, the president's government appointees and allies in Congress are using their powers to generate a political storm aimed at engulfing Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Obama, whom polls show is the nation's most popular political figure, making him a potent threat to Trump as a Biden surrogate.

Another objective is to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation as Trump has long sought, by casting Flynn as a martyr wronged by nefarious bureaucratic elites.

These efforts are being amplified by wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News Channel and elsewhere in conservative media, where this week Flynn coverage has rivaled and at times overshadowed news about the pandemic, even as the U.S. death toll from the novel coronavirus climbed past 85,000.

And in a remarkable turn Thursday, Trump urged Congress to call Obama to testify and even suggested those involved - including Biden and two longtime Trump antagonists, former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan - go to prison.

"I'm talking with 50-year sentences," Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Network that aired Thursday. "It's a disgrace what's happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country. . . . People should be going to jail for this stuff. "

Trump added, "This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt - the whole thing was corrupt - and we caught them."

Biden has denied any wrongdoing. The newly revealed list shows that roughly three dozen government officials, including Biden, Brennan and Comey, may have received Flynn's name in response to a request to reveal the identity of a U.S. person anonymously identified in an intelligence report.

Biden acknowledged attending a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with Obama and other officials at which the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, then Trump's designee for national security adviser, was discussed. But he said he knew nothing else about the topic when pressed Tuesday on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"This is all about diversion," Biden said, ascribing a motive to Trump. "This is a game this guy plays all the time. The country is in crisis. . . . He should stop trying to always divert attention from the real concerns of the American people."

Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said the unmasking list underscores "the breadth and depth of concern across the American government - including among career officials" about Flynn's interactions with officials from Russia and other foreign governments. Bates also accused Republicans of abusing their government powers "to act as arms of the Trump campaign."

Trump has been distracted recently from managing the pandemic by fixating on Flynn and related matters, ranting in private about the Russia investigation, complaining about Comey and others in the FBI, and making clear he wanted to talk in the run-up to the election about law enforcement targeting him, according to one adviser who spoke with the president last week.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been focused extensively on the Flynn situation and has discussed it regularly with Trump, seeing it as vindication of his long-held skepticism toward the Russia probe, according to two senior administration officials.

Paul framed the unmasking as an opportunity to counter the Democratic-led impeachment of Trump for allegedly using his office to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Biden.

"What it seems to indicate is that high-ranking members, including Joe Biden, used the power of government to go after a political rival - and if that story line sounds familiar, well, we heard that sort of story line from the other side for over a year," Paul said.

Trump has branded the saga "Obamagate," a slogan he has tweeted or retweeted 14 times in the past five days. When asked Monday what crime he was accusing Obama of having committed, Trump could not say beyond "some terrible things happened." Pressed a second time, Trump admonished a Washington Post reporter for asking.

"You know what the crime is," Trump said. "The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours."

"Obamagate" morphed in just one week from a fringe cause pushed on social media and podcasts by Trump allies - including former National Security Council staffer Sebastian Gorka and conservative legal commentators Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, among others - to a centerpiece of Trump's reelection message.

In Trump's political orbit, advisers had been quietly readying a renewed political war over the Russia probe for weeks, but the Justice Department's move last Thursday to drop charges against Flynn flipped the switch.

"It's a constitutional scandal because all of these people acting together at the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA decided they were either going to prevent [Trump] from being elected," diGenova said during an April 29 podcast. If that failed, diGenova said the Obama team was determined to "frame Trump and make him look like a Russian agent. Nothing gets bigger than that. This is a kind of perfidy and sedition that should never be tolerated."

Flynn had pleaded in 2017 to lying to the FBI, admitting multiple times in court, under oath, that he was guilty of the crime. But as the months wore on, Flynn changed his legal teams and went on the attack against the Justice Department - alleging a bevy of misconduct, including that the agents who interviewed him had set him up to lie.

Barr, acting on the recommendation of Jeff Jensen, the U.S. attorney in St. Louis, agreed to ask a judge to dismiss the charges. The department's legal rationale - essentially, that the FBI did not have good reason to interview Flynn in the first place and thus his misstatements were not relevant - was criticized by some legal observers as a contorted way of helping a Trump ally.

But the move won Barr praise from Trump and many on the right, who immediately sought to rewrite the narrative about Flynn - whom Trump said he had fired as national security chief because he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence as well as to the FBI - and hailed him instead as a hero.

At the same time, other allies of the president were laboring to resurrect a long-dormant line of attack on the case: that intelligence officials in the Obama administration sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references to Flynn in intelligence documents.

Unmasking is common. Many intelligence documents are distributed with identities concealed to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens, though certain officials can ask that the protection be removed to help them better understand what they are looking at.

Still, Trump and his allies are attempting to turn it into a scandal.

"This is something Trump is very good at," said Joyce White Vance, a former U.S. attorney in the Obama administration. "He takes things that are the normal course of business - like, for instance, people who are authorized for unmasking so they can make sense of intelligence data - and turn them into something suspicious. It becomes an us-versus-them moment."

Grenell sent an email on May 3 about unmasking requests related to Flynn to the National Security Agency, which routinely receives and approves thousands of unmasking requests each year, including during Trump's term. Gen. Paul Nakasone, the NSA director, responded the next day with a list of U.S. officials who may have received Flynn's name following a request to unmask it in an intelligence report.

There was no indication that the people who requested the unmasking knew that Flynn's name would be the one revealed. Nor, the NSA advised, was it clear that every official on the list actually saw a report with Flynn's name, or that they made the request themselves. Staffers often make unmasking requests on their bosses' behalf, said people who have been involved in the process.

The list showed that a broad range of officials obtained information about Flynn, from the CIA and the FBI to the Treasury Department and the U.S. mission to the United Nations. Biden, or possibly a staff member acting on his behalf, made his unmasking request that revealed Flynn's name on Jan. 12, 2017.

The document does not make clear why Biden or any other official had requested the unmasking in the first place, nor does it indicate that Flynn had engaged in communications that alerted intelligence officials to investigate his contacts with foreigners.

Last Thursday, when Grenell showed up at the Justice Department to deliver the list to Barr, the visit and Fox News' apparent knowledge of it took some senior officials there aback. Grenell, who had been ambassador to Germany before assuming the intelligence post on a temporary basis, has long associated with some of Trump's most vocal right-wing supporters and has earned plaudits from the president for his tweets attacking journalists.

Shortly after the visit, according to Justice Department officials, Grenell's office seemed to be intimating to reporters that it would be up to Barr or his underlings to decide whether to release the document.

That, in the view of Justice Department leadership, was not accurate, since the department did not create the document and Grenell, not Barr, had declassified it.

"The information is not ours to release," Justice Department spokesman Kerri Kupec said Tuesday on Fox News. She explained that Grenell's office "owns that document. They declassified that document. So if they choose to put that out there, they're more than welcome to do so."

Ultimately, Republican Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked for the list and then released it on Wednesday.

Trump and his allies were prepared to pounce.

"Almost all of us who are involved or follow this have the facts of this case memorized," said Rudy Giuliani, Trump's personal lawyer during the Russia investigation. "So it's natural to want to talk about the requests to unmask Flynn and really look at whether these people were engaged in a conspiracy to get Flynn out."

Conservative media in turn have been abuzz this week with anger about Flynn's treatment and criticism of U.S. District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the Flynn case and must approve the dismissal of the charges. Sullivan has appointed a retired federal judge to oppose the Justice Department's position and explore where Flynn should be held in contempt for lying to the court.

"The hatred for Donald J. Trump is as strong and intense as ever, and it is flavoring and directing and influencing what everybody in that town is saying and doing about virtually everything they're saying and doing," conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners this week.

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, whose books about the Russia probe have been touted by Trump, theorized Thursday on "Fox & Friends" that the Obama administration went after Flynn "with a vengeance" because he had been determined to "expose the Russia hoax."

Two people involved in Trump's reelection campaign said the effort was designed not only to weaken Biden, but also to tarnish Obama, who is likely to be a visible surrogate for Biden this fall. Obama had the highest approval rating, at 60 percent, of all living political figures tested in a recent Republican National Committee poll of voters in 17 battleground states. Biden and Pence tied for second at 47 percent.

Revealing the ways Trump hopes to benefit politically from the issue, Trump sent a fundraising plea to supporters on Thursday declaring, "Oh how the tables have turned." After an investigation he dubbed "the Russian Collusion Delusion," Trump wrote, the unmasking list shows "Sleepy Joe is the GUILTY one."

Also on Thursday, Trump took to Twitter to urge Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., to call Obama to testify about the matter.

"He knew EVERYTHING," Trump wrote. "Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!"

Graham responded with a statement saying the committee would begin hearings on this and related matters in June, but that he is "greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight."

"Both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other," Graham said. "If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country."

- - -

The Washington Post's Josh Dawsey, Tom Hamburger, Ellen Nakashima and Matt Viser contributed to this report.
Researchers and health experts in the UK have designed an interactive tool that acts as a calculator predicting someones risk of dying due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Created by a team of clinicians, epidemiologists, statisticians and data scientists, the digital tool tries to calculate the expected excess mortality under the COVID-19 emergency for different people under a range of scenarios.

Essentially, anyone can try out the calculator by choosing their gender and age, as well as picking from a list of underlying conditions such as diabetes, cardiovascular disease or a body mass index greater than 40.

Users can also toggle with the level of infection from levels related to suppression, mitigation and do nothing.

The calculator then spits out a percentage of that specific demographic likely to die in the UK during a year, as well as an estimated figure of excess deaths due to the pandemic (although for certain combinations it appears there isnt enough data for the model to produce an estimate).

The COVID-19 pandemic may cause excess mortality directly because of infection and indirectly (among those not infected) if health service changes impact quality care, and if they become overwhelmed or because of the wider social and economic upheaval, the Health Data Research UK tool explains.

Below are the results for men aged 86 to 90 with cardiovascular disease. The orange squares represent the deaths expected in a world without COVID-19 while the red squares are the excess deaths due to the viral disease. The green squares are the total sample size of that demographic.

The calculator shows number of deaths and the excess deaths in orange and red. Source: HDRUK

Researchers used data from more than 3.8 million health records and based their overall fatality conclusions on England having a 10 per cent infection rate and 20 per cent of people having a high-risk condition.

The tool, published in leading medical journal The Lancet, is an effort to provide a big picture understanding of the impact of the coronavirus and to help policymakers and the public tailor their responses accordingly.

Story continues

We wanted to develop this research to inform simple tools to allow interaction and exploration, by policymakers, researchers and the public, the researchers said.

One of the lead researchers behind the calculator, Ami Banerjee, explained that members of the pubic could use the data tool to learn their own coronavirus risk in the coming year.

For example, we show how a 66-year-old man with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease has 6 per cent risk of dying over the next year and there are 25,000 patients like me (ie men of the same age with the same condition) in England, he said.

The calculator estimates 164 excess COVID-19-related deaths on top of the expected 1639 deaths over a year in patients in a similar situation.

Commuters are seen waiting to board a tube train in London on May 13, as England begins to open up. Source: Getty

Dr Banerjee said tools like this one are vital in helping authorities and the public understand the risks as Britain reopens society following a strict lockdown since late March, and most importantly could help prevent avoidable deaths.

Patients, carers, researchers & policymakers need to understand and model risks. As a first step, we have released a calculator, he wrote on Twitter when sharing the work.

He said most of the projected fatalities were among those with pre-existing high-risk conditions and it was the treatment of the clinically vulnerable that needed to be prioritised.

Most of the COVID-19 deaths have occurred in this group so the right people need to be protected properly as we ease lockdown.

We modelled excess deaths by background risk of mortality, population infection rate and relative impact of the COVID-19 emergency. Of those 3, baseline risk is most readily estimated using EHR data and varies by sex, age and underlying conditions. 3/6 pic.twitter.com/lh7qIiiaJt  Ami Banerjee (@amibanerjee1) May 12, 2020

This week England tentatively began easing its coronavirus lockdown, with some people who cannot do their jobs at home urged to return to work.

Britain has been in extensive lockdown since March 23 and is the worst-hit country in Europe with more than 40,000 deaths from COVID-19 according to official data.

As of Wednesday morning, local time, people in manufacturing and certain other sectors were being asked to return to work if they could.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson who has himself recovered from a near-fatal case of COVID-19 has described the process of relaxing the lockdown as a "supremely difficult" balancing act.

The government is loosening restrictions very gradually, for fear of triggering a second peak of infections.

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.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 13

By Leman Zeynalova  Trend:

OPEC expects Azerbaijans liquids production to drop by 0.09 million barrels per day in 2020, as compared to 2019, Trend reports citing OPECs Monthly Oil Market Report (MOMR).

For 2020, due to planned maintenance at the Chirag oil field and Shah Deniz gas-condensate field and considering the agreed voluntary adjustment, production is forecast to decline by 0.09 million barrels per day to average 0.70 million barrels per day, reads the report.

OPEC estimates that Azerbaijans liquids output in March was up by 0.01 million barrels per day month-on-month to average 0.79 million barrels per day, lower by 0.03 million barrels per day year-on-year.

While crude oil production grew by 16,000 barrels per day to average 0.67 million barrels per day, natural gas liquids (NGLs) and condensates dropped by 3,000 barrels per day, to average 114,000 barrels per day, said the cartel.

Azerbaijan produced 771,400 barrels of oil per day, including 679,800 barrels of crude oil and 91,600 barrels of condensate, according to the Energy Ministry.

The country exported 640,300 barrels of crude oil, 86,000 barrels of condensate,23,600 barrels of oil products per day.

Azerbaijan joined the Declaration of Cooperation, which was adopted after the ministerial meetings of the OPEC + countries (held on April 9 and April 12, 2020) and envisioned a cut in oil output by 9.7 million barrels per day (bpd) from May through June, 7.7 million bpd from July through December, and by 5.8 million bpd from January 2021 through April 2022.

In accordance with a new OPEC+ deal, Azerbaijan shall reduce oil production by 164,000 barrels from May through June 2020 against 718,000 barrels of crude oil produced in October 2018. During this period, Azerbaijan should maintain the daily crude oil production at the level of 554,000 barrels.

Azerbaijans obligations made up 131,000 barrels from July through December 2020, and 98,000 barrels from January 2021 through April 2022.

According to the quotas, the daily crude oil production in Azerbaijan from early July through December this year shouldnt exceed 587,000 bpd, and from January 2021 through April 2022  not more than 620,000 bpd.

Since May 1, joint ventures and operating companies of Azneft production association have been carrying out a process of daily production cut at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli fields.

Follow the author on Twitter:@Lyaman_Zeyn
Update: This story has been updated with comments from the Michigan State Police and protesters on scene. See video of the incident here.

LANSING, MI -- A fight broke out on the steps of the Michigan Capitol Thursday morning during a protest aimed at Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the ongoing state of emergency and stay-at-home orders.

J. Scott Park, an MLive photographer, witnessed the fight break out after a man carrying a garbage can filled with a sign, an ax and an American flag removed the flag from the can. Attached to the bottom of the flag was an unclothed doll with brown hair that was hanging from a noose.

Organizers of the protest called the display hate speech and when one protester tried to take the doll off the flag a skirmish broke out. The man who brought the flag fled away from the fight and to the lawn of the Capitol where Michigan State Police surrounded him.

Related story: Video: Doll with noose prompts fight at Michigan Capitol protest

The man was taken into the Capitol building following the altercation. Michigan State Police reported there were no injuries and no arrests were made.

MSP public information officer Lt. Brian Oleksyk said the man who brought the flag was interviewed by police and he will be allowed to press charges if he elects to.

We took his report, we will investigate thoroughly and file our report," Oleksyk said.

In his report, the victim stated that he and the person he fought with have had issues with one another prior to Thursdays protest, but details on those incidents could not be shared by police. The man was allowed to leave the Capitol property and did so without further incident, according to Oleksyk.

There was an incident between two demonstrators, in which one demonstrator tried to take a sign out of another demonstrator's hand. There are no injuries and no arrests were made. The victim is a 60-year-old male.  Michigan State Police (@MichStatePolice) May 14, 2020

Following the fight, an unidentified woman who claimed to be the one who grabbed the flag from the man was seen speaking to other protesters.

I took his flag away, because thats not what it stands for, the woman can be heard saying in a video.

The same woman later took the stage to address the crowd and said she would not stand for those actions and would resort to violence if necessary.

Hate crimes are not tolerated in Michigan, end of story, she said. Just so you guys know, Ill fight that, physically if I have to.

Jazmine Early, 49, of Sterling Heights attended the protest and said she was aware prior to the event that some people would be attending in hopes of causing problems and drawing attention away from the meaning of the gathering.

He came with something that he thought would catch attention from the media, Early said. "They started arguing and he was asked kindly please not do that.

Yesterday, we were warned that there would be ... people coming from the other side to look like they were on our side. And the media, Im pretty sure, is going to talk only about that.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

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

Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus
The 4,000-square-foot store once teemed with browsers, some fresh off a brunch mimosa (or two), perusing her sofas and scarfing down the chocolate chip cookies Windsor made from Safeway dough. The shuttered store still costs her $19,000 a month in rent and property fees  more than triple what she paid when she moved to the gentrifying neighborhood from Adams Morgan in 2008. And she doesnt know when she will be allowed to reopen or who will want to come inside once she can.
Al-Qaeda and the Islamic state group have turned their guns on each other in the Sahel, according to experts, fracturing a period of cooperation that has held for years.

The rival jihadist outfits have squared off in other theatres before, such as in Syria. But they have often worked in tandem in the Sahel, coordinating attacks, and even swapping fighters.

The semi-desert African region has seen years of conflict with Islamic militants, who first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 before sweeping into the centre of the country, and neighbouring Burkina Faso and Niger.

Thousands of soldiers and civilians have been killed to date and hundreds of thousands have fled their homes.

But since the beginning of the year, sporadic clashes between al-Qaeda and Islamic State affiliates appear to have escalated into full-blown combat in central Mali and Burkina Faso.

Few details have emerged from this internecine jihadist struggle, with much of it taking place in volatile areas already beset by bandits and ethnic militias, and regular clashes with national armies.

Experts and local officials point to disputes over territorial expansion or access to fodder crops as some of the reasons behind the fighting.

Mahamat Saleh Annadif, the United Nations special representative in Mali, said that the jihadist civil war is "no longer a secret".

"We don't know where it's going to end, each one wants to get the upper hand over the other," he said, explaining that the groups are fighting over land.

Al-Qaeda-affiliated jihadists -- now grouped under an alliance named GSIM -- first emerged in northern Mali in 2012 and then established themselves in central Mali in 2015.

The Islamic State group's history in the region is shorter. Islamic militant Abou Walid Al-Sahraoui founded the region's franchise in 2015, and it is now active in the border regions linking Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger.

Fair-weather friends

Neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State group ever formally inked an alliance in the Sahel, according to a western diplomat in Mali's capital Bamako.

But that did not stop them from working closely together, he said, pointing to joint raids and fighters who would pass from one group to another.

The diplomat added that a person's reason for joining one or the other group is often tied to local circumstance, such as belonging to a marginalised ethnic group or not having a job.

Likewise, reasons for conflict are also often local, said Ibrahim Maiga, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Bamako.

"These conflicts should not only be understood through an ideological prism," he said.

For example, during the dry season at the beginning of the year, fighting often erupts in central Mali over a fodder crop grown in the Niger river delta, called bourgou.

A security expert in the central Malian city of Mopti, who requested anonymity, told AFP that jihadists are fighting over the bourgou-growing areas "like everyone else".

Propaganda war

Clashes between the two jihadist groups began after Islamic State fighters crossed into the Dialloube region of central Mali from Burkina Faso at the start of the year, according to a local official who declined to named.

The militants went "from village to village propagating their message," the official added.

Dialloube is traditionally the territory of Katiba Macina, a jihadist outfit which is part of al-Qaeda-affiliated GSIM alliance.

A security advisor who works in Mopti, and who declined to be named, told AFP that "over 60 jihadists were killed" in fighting in the area in mid-March.

In neighbouring Burkina Faso, Islamic State claimed that in late April its fighters had killed "over 35" GSIM militants near the Malian border.

It said it had also sent a suicide car bomber against a GSIM base in the same area.

Despite the grisly picture painted by the propaganda, Maiga, the Bamako researcher, said information coming from war-torn parts of the Sahel is often exaggerated.

The United Nations, in a recent internal report, also pointed towards a "lack of intelligence" concerning several areas of central Mali.

Uncharacteristically for the usually media-savvy jihadists, neither al-Qaeda nor the Islamic State group has yet published footage of their clashes either.
Governor David Umahi on Friday lifted the ban on religious gathering in Ebonyi State. He said religious centres can now conduct services once a week but must observe the prevention protocol against COVID-19.

The states Commissioner for Information and State Orientation, Uchenna Orji, announced the governors decision in a statement on Friday.

Mr Umahi had declared the ban last month to check the spread of the novel coronavirus in the state.

Despite the ban and other measures including the closure of the state boundaries, Ebonyi still recorded nine cases of the virus.

The lifting of the ban followed weeks of pressure by some Christians in the state who questioned why churches were closed while markets remained opened.

The statement said the waiver was in response to the passionate appeal made by the leadership of the Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN), Ebonyi State Chapter, and other Christian leaders in the state.

According to the commissioner, the conditions for the reopening of the churches include that they observe their service only on Sundays from 9 a.m to 11 a.m.

That Seventh Day Adventist and Muslim faithful are to observe their service on Saturdays and Fridays respectively from 9 a.m  11 a.m. No religious centre shall permit more than 500 people and worshipers shall observe a minimum of two meters social distancing from one another.

Wearing of face masks, washing of hands with running water and use of hand sanitisers must be strictly observed in all religious centres. No religious service is allowed to hold any other day other than the days specified herein and which must be in strict observance of all COVID-19 Laws and regulations.

Christian Association of Nigeria ( CAN) has a duty to close down any religious gathering and arrest the principal of the worship centre that violates this order.

According to the statement, the governor urged religious bodies in the state to use the opportunity to create awareness among their members on the protocols, policies, laws and regulations regarding COVID-19 and to pray for the State and Nigeria.

They are also enjoined to use the opportunity to advise their members to aggressively participate in agriculture and other lawful means of livelihood. CAN leadership and Anti- COVID-19 Committee on Religious Centres are requested to please mount strict monitoring of all religious centres in the state and ensure strict compliance and discipline among them, he said.

READ ALSO:

Meanwhile, the Ebonyi government has commenced the distribution of palliatives to residents of the state.

The speaker of the state House of Assembly, who is also the chairman, state Anti COVID-19 subcommittee on welfare and fundraising, Francis Nwifuru, flagged off the exercise in Abakaliki on Friday.

He handed over N36 million and 726 5kg bags of rice to religious bodies and widows in the state.

The first batch of palliatives was handed over to leaders of Christian Association of Nigeria (CAN) for distribution to their members and widows among others.

The breakdown of the palliatives was given as follows: CAN, 2,600 bags of 5kg rice and N13 million; CAN and Bishops 100 bags of rice and N5 million. CAN leadership in Ebonyi, 100 bags of rice and N5 million; and Ebonyi widows 5,000 bags of rice and N13million.
Sadiq Khan is threatening to reduce bus and Tube services unless TfL receives 2 billion - Peter Summers/Getty Images/ Peter Summers/Getty Images

Sadiq Khan is holding the Government to ransom by threatening to slash Tube and bus services unless Transport for London receives a financial grant today.

The Mayor of London said that without financial support, the transport body would be forced to "reduce the service we provide".

He warned that "today is the last day" to arrange a bailout and accused the central Government of "failing to give us the grant support we desperately need".

Mr Khan said: "Unless the Government today gives us confirmation of the grant that we need then the consequences could be quite severe and ramifications for all of us will be huge.

"So Im hoping the government today agrees a grant for TfL to help us with us doing our bit to helping the virus but if they dont Im very concerned about the consequences going forward.

Keith Prince, Conservative Transport spokesman on the London Assembly, warned that the mayor was putting peoples health at risk to make a political point.

Mr Prince said: Sadiq Khan's ultimatum is unhelpful and alarmist and exactly the sort of political gameplay that no Londoner wants to see from their mayor during a crisis.

Transport for London will inevitably need a bailout to continue operating during this crisis, but TfL has 1.2 billion in reserves which is enough to run the network for two months.

Sadiq Khan needs to stop playing politics with people's lives.

While former Conservative minister Stephen Hammond described Mr Khans comments as extraordinary.

He said: He is threatening the health of Londoners by saying this sort of thing.

We need to get the networks, the Tube and the London suburban network back up to full capacity."

Transport for London (TfL) is understood to be asking for a 2 billion state bailout, with Sadiq Khan warning the transport body's cash reserves were "running out". Mr Khan said TfL has beenin negotiations with the Government for around six weeks.

Story continues

He told LBC: "I'm unclear about why the Government are waiting until the 11th hour to agree a deal. It is really bad form."

Downing Street said the Government is in discussions with Mr Khan over a "funding and finance package" for TfL.

The Prime Minister's official spokesman said Cabinet was briefed on Thursday about the negotiations, which were at an "advanced stage".

The spokesman said: "It is a commercial discussion. We remain in close contact with the mayor and TfL to look at how we can support them.

"Our priority is on reaching an agreement which keeps critical services running for those passengers who must use public transport to get work, ensuring we keep London moving safely.

"That means protecting key routes, rapidly increasing the number of services available and protecting the interests of taxpayers in the long term."
Wicklow native and fundraising coordinator for Mary's Meals Ireland, Jeannie Higgins, is delighted that the charity can offer a lifeline to those at risk of food shortages. 'While the lock-down is difficult for us all, we are very lucky that we live in a country of such plenty,' said Jeannie. 'I am thrilled that we have managed to fulfil our promise of a daily meal to over one million hungry children around the world during such difficult circumstances.'

Jeannie is a native of Bray and currently lives in Roundwood.

The international school feeding charity has plans in place to reach more than one million chronically hungry children with daily meals despite schools being closed globally as part of the Covid-19 response.

A report published last week by the UN talks specifically about the need to find ways to reach children who rely on school feeding programmes for their nutrition. It warned that around 265 million people are forecast to be facing acute food insecurity by the end of this year, a doubling of the 130 million estimated to suffer severe food shortages in 2019. Of the ten nations predicted to be worst hit, Mary's Meals operates in four - Haiti, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia and South Sudan.

In light of the school closures, Mary's Meals has had to adapt quickly to ensure those who rely on their programmes can still eat.

Plans are now in place to deliver food to more than a million children in Malawi and Zambia by inviting their parents to collect rations to cook at home - plans that will see staff and community volunteers distribute food to around 4,000 villages in Malawi alone.

Similar distribution models are already proving successful in Kenya, Haiti and India as Mary's Meals staff and long-standing partners ensure vulnerable families can provide a daily meal for their children.

'Mary's Meals' long-standing experience working with some of the world's poorest communities and in challenging environments is helping to develop new plans and activities,' said Jeannie.

'The strong relationships of trust that have been built with the communities where Mary's Meals are served are crucial at this time because, as always, efforts are founded on locally-led solutions that often depend on community volunteers.'

Volunteers also play a vital role fundraising for the charity, and supporters in Wicklow have continued to be extremely generous, even in these uncertain times. 'Of course, getting the food out to communities is just one part of this mission and it wouldn't be possible without generous support from people all over the world who agree that no child should face a day without a meal,' said Jeannie.

'We are amazed at the level of support that has continued from the people of Wicklow through these difficult times and are extremely grateful for their generosity and kindness.'

Find the charity at marysmeals.ie.
Last week, you might have seen that New York Community Bancorp, Inc. (NYSE:NYCB) released its quarterly result to the market. The early response was not positive, with shares down 10.0% to US$9.00 in the past week. The result was positive overall - although revenues of US$261m were in line with what the analysts predicted, New York Community Bancorp surprised by delivering a statutory profit of US$0.20 per share, modestly greater than expected. The analysts typically update their forecasts at each earnings report, and we can judge from their estimates whether their view of the company has changed or if there are any new concerns to be aware of. 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 New York Community Bancorp

NYSE:NYCB Past and Future Earnings May 15th 2020

After the latest results, the 14 analysts covering New York Community Bancorp are now predicting revenues of US$1.15b in 2020. If met, this would reflect a meaningful 14% improvement in sales compared to the last 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are predicted to rise 6.1% to US$0.82. Before this earnings report, the analysts had been forecasting revenues of US$1.15b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.84 in 2020. So it's pretty clear that, although the analysts have updated their estimates, there's been no major change in expectations for the business following the latest results.

There were no changes to revenue or earnings estimates or the price target of US$11.53, suggesting that the company has met expectations in its recent result. 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 New York Community Bancorp analyst has a price target of US$14.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$9.50. As you can see, analysts are not all in agreement on the stock's future, but the range of estimates is still reasonably narrow, which could suggest that the outcome is not totally unpredictable.

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. For example, we noticed that New York Community Bancorp's rate of growth is expected to accelerate meaningfully, with revenues forecast to grow 14%, well above its historical decline of 0.4% a year over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in the industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 1.1% per year. Not only are New York Community Bancorp's revenues expected to improve, it seems that the analysts are also expecting it to grow faster than 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 major changes to revenue forecasts, with the business still expected to grow faster than the wider industry. The consensus price target held steady at US$11.53, 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 estimates - from multiple New York Community Bancorp analysts - going out to 2022, and you can see them free on our platform here.

Plus, you should also learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with New York Community Bancorp .

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.
Calling them Italy's "new poor", the main agricultural lobby, Coldiretti, estimates an additional one million people will now require food assistance, bringing the total to 3.7 million. (Photo: AFP/Vincenzo PINTO)

For years, the Ronda della Solidarieta (Solidarity Patrol) charity has served up free dinners twice a week for Rome's needy, passed out at twilight in the shadow of the city's ancient ruins.

But as Italy begins to feel the effects of its most punishing economic crisis since World War II, triggered by the coronavirus pandemic, the number of those in need has shot up.

On one recent evening, a large crowd pressed forward for the 130 bags of food handed out by volunteers, watched over by Red Cross workers.

An undercurrent of desperation hung in the air despite the setting sun and idyllic backdrop, and some people left disappointed, arriving too late for a bag of their own.

Among the crowd were new faces unaccustomed to asking for help. One, who gave her name as Anna, said she had travelled across town for the food.

Unable to work as a cleaner during Italy's two-month lockdown, she has skimped on meals to pay rent on her shared apartment.

"I come here from time to time now when it's hard," she said in a barely audible voice. "I'm ashamed about it, though."

Anna is just one among a new class of poor that has developed seemingly overnight in a country that, even before the epidemic struck in late February, was struggling with a sickly economy, over 9 per cent unemployment and vast inequality.

Another one million people will now require food assistance, bringing the total number to 3.7 million Italians, the main agricultural lobby Coldiretti estimated last month, calling them Italy's "new poor".

DOUBLE PUNISHMENT

The problem is global. Earlier this month, the charity Oxfam estimated that half a billion people around the world could be driven into poverty by the virus crisis.

Elsewhere in Europe, Spain plans to roll out a basic income to combat new poverty, while in Britain, nearly one million people - 10 times the average - applied during two weeks of April for the government's main form of state aid.

In the United States, tens of millions of people have lost their jobs.

But to many in Italy, economic hardship feels like a double punishment.

More than 30,000 people have died from COVID-19 - one of the highest tolls on the planet - while Italians have displayed notable solidarity during the crisis.

La Repubblica daily has estimated that 11.5 million Italians, half the official workforce, have stopped receiving income and started applying for aid.

Last month, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development forecast that 27 per cent of Italians could fall into poverty were they to forgo three months of income, in a report based on 2018 data.

"AFFECTS YOUR DIGNITY"

Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, who has spoken of the "acute suffering" of many Italians, in March set aside 400 million (US$430 million) just for food stamps.

"We don't want to leave anyone behind, left to fend for themselves," Conte said in a televised address in March.

But many have been.

Among those swelling bread lines across the country are former cooks, cleaners or shop assistants who lost their jobs after a nationwide quarantine was imposed more than two months ago.

Some never had fixed employment but got by working odd jobs, or in the informal economy. Others were professionals.

Declining savings rates mean the vast majority of Italians don't have a nest egg to fall back on.

"I'm mortified," said Maria Loprete, 65, who worked for 30 years at Milan's La Scala, latterly in the cloakroom, before the internationally renowned opera ceased activity in February.

Before the pandemic struck, Loprete volunteered with a church organisation to help the homeless.

"Now I've found myself in the same situation as these people who need help," she said.

In Milan's former industrial zone of Lambrate, Loprete seeks aid from a charity supermarket operated by Catholic social organisation Caritas.

The charity, which operates nationwide and says requests for help are up 114 per cent, issues cards with "points" to use for items like oil and sugar, tuna and tinned tomatoes, pasta or laundry soap.

With her widow's pension going towards rent, Loprete relied on her La Scala salary for food, with 60 a month going towards medicine.

While she misses the little luxuries she once allowed herself, whether bubble bath or a new T-shirt, what's hardest now to manage is her sense of pride.

"I've always said, 'Gosh, how do they feel?'" Loprete told AFP, speaking about the people she helped as a volunteer.

"And it's the same pain, now I'm feeling it. It affects your dignity as a human being."

"PEOPLE ARE DESPERATE"

Also shopping at the Caritas market on a recent afternoon was Antonio DiGregorio, 64, who was laid off a year ago as a cook but managed to make ends meet transporting seniors and the disabled to appointments.

"I don't get to the end of the month. Even at the middle of the month there's nothing," said DiGregorio, who supports a nine-year-old daughter on the monthly 400 he receives under Italy's welfare system for its poorest.

The so-called citizen's income was considered revolutionary when introduced more than a year ago by the anti-establishment Five Star Movement, although it differs little from unemployment benefit schemes in many European countries.

Currently about one million families qualify for it, receiving up to 6,000 a year, but the government is considering reforms that would expand the number of eligible people.

DiGregorio's biggest worry now is increased competition for jobs given the droves of unemployed.

But the wider social impact also concerns him.

Already, he says, he has seen people shopping in Milan grocery stores rushing for the door without paying, a phenomenon also reported in Italy's south.

Businesses "have to start up again because if we're stuck another month, we'll have civil war," DiGregorio warned.

"People are desperate."

"NO ONE'S THROWING ANYTHING AWAY"

Before the coronavirus crisis, Italy had about 1.8 million households, or about five million individuals, living in absolute poverty, unable to cover basic necessities, according to national statistics bureau Istat, based on 2018 data.

Most of the poor are in the south. Poverty also falls disproportionately on immigrants, 30 per cent of whom live in absolute poverty, Istat found.

Some nine million people are considered in "relative poverty", with incomes 50 per cent or more below the national median.

Before the lockdown, the Nonna Roma association helped 300 Roman families with food and other necessities.

The number of requests has now swelled to nearly 4,000, its president, Alberto Campailla, told AFP.

"The make-up has changed," Campailla said.

"It's not only those families in absolute poverty, but also people now who maybe were working under the table, who were self-employed, young professionals, and then so many migrants. All these people have no work."

Each weekend, the group's volunteers drop off boxes filled with staples, along with fresh fruit and vegetables and a cake, to people requesting help.

Many of those interviewed by AFP said they were still waiting for food stamps from the city which enable a family to obtain up to 100 worth of groceries a week.

Rome's mayor has said more than 60,000 have been distributed, but La Repubblica reported on Wednesday that requests numbered 161,000.

Receiving her food package, Filipino maid Marie-Therese said most people in her building of working age had lost their jobs.

Although times are hard, she said that at least her family was "safe, not sick".

Worse off, she said, were the homeless in her area who continue to rummage in vain through rubbish bins.

"Now they can't find anything," she said. "No one's throwing anything away."
LAUREL, Md. - Billions of dollars worth of fruit, vegetables and other farm products that might have gone to waste because of the coronavirus pandemic will instead be delivered to food banks and non-profit organizations that help the needy under a new Agriculture Department program.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue and White House adviser Ivanka Trump on Friday toured a Maryland food service distributor thats participating in the Farmers to Families Food Box Program.

At a brief ceremony marking the programs launch at Coastal Sunbelt Produce in Laurel, Perdue gave credit to President Donald Trump. Trump had seen news reports about farm goods going to waste and said Sonny, I want you to bring me a program that will work,Perdue said.

Perdue announced last month that his department will spend up to $3 billion in coronavirus relief money to buy and distribute agricultural goods through regional and local distributors.

When this thing happened, obviously, it was horrifying to hear about vegetables having to be plowed under because of no markets and milk having to be dumped, animals potentially having to be euthanized because we had broken the supply chain, Perdue said.

Food distributors saw sharp declines in business after restaurants and other food service establishments shut down or cut back because of the pandemic.

Suppliers, like Coastal Sunbelt Produce, is packaging the fruits and vegetables in family-sized cardboard boxes and expects to deliver 35,000 boxes a week to food banks, community and religious organizations, and other nonprofits through June 30.

Perdue, Ivanka Trump and Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who wore face coverings inside the refrigerated warehouse, watched as workers swiftly packed boxes with mushrooms, tomatoes, zucchini, bell peppers, potatoes and other produce items. The workers were bundled up against the chill and wore face shields, face masks and other protective gear.

We held them, Ivanka Trump said. These are 20 to 25 pound boxes of the finest fresh produce, often locally grown.

The presidents eldest daughter has been working with USDA, the Small Business Administration and Treasury Department to include smaller farms in coronavirus relief programs, the White House said.

After Coastal Sunbelt Produce received a USDA contract, the company was able to recall 50 furloughed employees to work on the food box program, she said.

Trump praised the program at an unrelated White House event on Friday.

Itll be helping farmers, ranchers, but itll be bringing food to some of the food lines and some of the food kitchens that youve been seeing on television, he said.

___

Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap
Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu on Friday expressed happiness over the government's decision to remove curbs on inter-state sale of agri products, saying it will greatly benefit farmers.

"Happy the government decided to remove curbs on inter-state sale of agri-produce and formulate a central law to provide adequate choices to farmers to sell their produce at attractive prices," the Vice President's Secretariat tweeted quoting Naidu.

He said these reforms were "long overdue" and will greatly benefit the farmers.

Seeking to boost the economy hit by the coronavirus lockdown, the government on Friday extended "Operation Greens" from tomato, onion and potato to all fruits and vegetables by providing an additional fund of Rs 500 crore.

This money would go into providing subsidy on transportation from surplus to deficient markets as well as on storages, including cold storages.

The scheme prevents any distress sale by farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said.

Naidu also said deregulation to sell cereals, edible oil, oilseeds, potatoes and onions and measures to strengthen agri-infra, fisheries, animal husbandry, and micro food enterprises will boost agricultural growth and benefit both producers and consumers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 00:45:32|Editor: huaxia

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BERLIN, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Operating profit (EBIT) of Germany's large companies shrank by 23.5 percent to a total of around 20.3 billion euros (21.9 billion U.S. dollars) in the first quarter (Q1) of 2020 compared to the same quarter last year, according to a study published by consulting firm Ernst & Young (EY) on Thursday.

Despite the global spread of the coronavirus since the beginning of the year, the majority of DAX-listed companies in Germany, excluding banks, still increased their year-on-year sales by 1.6 percent to 339.5 billion euros in Q1, according to the study.

The U.S. market still "proved to be a growth driver" as sales of German companies rose by three percent year-on-year, according to the study. In Europe, a decline of almost four percent was recorded while sales in Asia shrank by almost six percent year on year.

"Not least the German car manufacturers, for whom China is now the most important sales market, are benefiting from the fact that restrictions have been relaxed there and the desire to buy is apparently returning," said Hubert Barth, chairperson of the management board of EY Germany.

Germany's top companies could still rely on "considerable financial resources," EY noted. At the end of Q1, cash and cash equivalents of the companies amounted to 95.3 billion euros.

"How large the financial losses caused by the pandemic will actually be, can only be seriously estimated after the second quarter," said Mathieu Meyer, member of the EY management board. "Many companies have already announced that they expect to be in the red in the second quarter."

Provided that the spread of the coronavirus could "continue to be contained," Meyer only expected the situation to improve again in the third quarter. (1 euro = 1.08 U.S. dollars) Enditem
(JNS)While countries around the world struggle to get on top of the COVID-19 crisis, Israels achievement so far has been remarkable.

Its mortality rate from the virus has been vastly smaller, in proportion to its population, than the rate in countries such as Britain, Sweden or the United States. Thats largely because it tackled the virus with the kind of bold, strategic approach with which it defends itself against its physical foes.

This week, with new cases reduced to a few dozen, it started to lift a wide range of restrictions on public activity. Many are fearful, however, that...
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The EU's policing agency has warned that the easing of coronavirus measures may trigger a surge in illegal migration towards Europe's borders.

Europol said in its latest report that illegal migration slowed down during the coronavirus lockdown but it would likely shoot up once restrictions are lifted.

It also warned that people smugglers have developed different tactics to bring vulnerable and desperate migrants into the continent during the pandemic.

The total number who have made it to the UK since the coronavirus lockdown began hit 850 yesterday.

Another 14 migrants were intercepted in the English Channel yesterday afternoon by UK Border Force (pictured)

The migrants, who presented themselves as Syrian, Pakistani, Afghan and Kuwaiti, were brought into Dover yesterday after they were stopped in the Channel

Another 14 migrants were intercepted in the English Channel on Thursday. The group presented themselves as Syrian, Pakistani, Afghan and Kuwaiti.

Hague-based Europol said: 'A loosening of travel and movement restrictions is likely to result in an increasing movement of irregular migrants... as they have been largely unable to make movements during the lockdown.

'Prolonged economic instability and the sustained lack of opportunities in some African economies may trigger another wave of irregular migration towards the EU in the mid-term.'

Because air travel has virtually stopped over the past two months and border controls were tightened, people smugglers also shifted their ways to get illegal migrants into the continent.

'Small boats are increasingly being used to cross river borders' as well as the English Channel, Europol said.

People are also being hidden in cross-border freight vehicles and cargo trains.

Detained illegal migrants protested on the roof-top of a detention centre in Madrid in March

Organised criminals would also seek to exploit coronavirus-related restrictions on sex work, further putting vulnerable migrants at risk, Europol said.

Europol also accused Turkey of helping 'large groups of migrants' to cross the Greek border earlier this year.

Turkey decided in February to re-open its border for refugees seeking to reach Europe, sparking a huge row with the European Union.
The cost of the coronavirus pandemic could reach as much as $8.8 trillion, or almost 10% of global gross domestic product, depending on how long the outbreak continues and the strength of government responses, according to the Asian Development Bank.

A shorter containment period of three months coupled with strong policy measures could limit the impact to $4.1 trillion, or 4.5% of world output, the Manila-based lender said in a report Friday. The Asia Pacific region is expected to account for about 30% of the overall decline in global output, it said.

The analysis highlights the important role policy interventions can play to help mitigate damage to economies, ADB Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada said in a statement.

The new cost estimates are more than twice the range of $2 trillion to $4.1 trillion the development bank gave April 3. There are now more than 4 million confirmed cases of coronavirus globally with deaths exceeding 300,000.

The lender suggests boosting health systems, as well as income and employment protections, to avoid an even more difficult recovery. Sustained measures from governments could soften the economic impact of the virus by as much as 40%, ADB said.

Between 158 million to 242 million jobs could be lost globally, with 70% of those in Asia and the Pacific, according to the ADB. The region accounts for a bigger share of job losses as its manufacturing sector remains labor intensive, James Villafuerte, a senior economist at the ADB, said in an interview Friday with Bloomberg TVs Haslinda Amin and Rishaad Salamat. In China, as many as 95 million jobs could be lost, he said.While manufacturing and hospitality industries will be hit hardest, skilled workers in other sectors could also see temporary job displacement, Villafuerte said.

Wage Drop

As consumption and investment declines, wages will drop globally, particularly in the U.S. and Europe, chief economist Sawada said separately in an online briefing Friday.This is a health risk and not driven by fundamental economic problems, Sawada said. Smart health policies and containment policies are really the key, he said, citing measures implemented in South Korea and Vietnam.

Travel restrictions and lockdowns implemented to arrest the viruss spread will likely cut global trade by $1.7 trillion to $2.6 trillion, the ADB said.
London: Radhika Batra, a Delhi-based doctor engaged in manufacturing personal protection equipment (PPE) to help in the fight against the coronavirus (Covid-19) disease in India, Kenya and Nigeria, is one of the five recipients of funding by a global forum of young leaders called One Young World.

Partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and United Way, a non-profit organisation (NPO), to launch the Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund, the organisers said Friday that the fund is supported by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Actor Emma Watson, among others.

Batra founded Every Infant Matters, an NPO, which in response to the pandemic is leveraging its network of partners to provide resources to at-risk people in India and Kenya, with plans to expand operations to Nigeria, the fund organisers said.

In India, the organisation provides protective materials (such as hand sanitisers, face shields, gloves and N-95 masks) to frontline personnel, including doctors, nurses and hospital workers such as housekeeping and sanitation staff, ambulance drivers, and security guards.

Each project is allocated between 5,000 and 10,000, the allocation being dependent on what is enough to ensure they are able to carry out their services, the organisers said, adding that the fund currently stands at a cumulative of 175,000.

The other recipients of the funding are Rinesh Sharma (Fiji), Heidy Quah (Malaysia), Achaleke Christian (Cameroon) and Jolyon Layard Horsfall (UK).

Ella Robertson of One Young World said: Young leaders are part of the most connected, informed and resourceful generation in human history We now need to ensure they have the funds needed to tackle some of the largest issues created by Covid-19.

The fund organisers said that statistics based on figures collected from 1,000 young leaders globally show that 72% of the respondents have volunteered some of their time to help during this pandemic. The survey was done by the organisers of the fund.

The fund has been established to provide the immediate distribution of finance to young leaders on the frontlines of the response to Covid19, with donations distributed across countries and sectors.

Jayathma Wickramanayake, a United Nations special envoy for youth, added: The Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund is exactly the bold action that is required to champion young people who are so bravely combating the coronavirus disease on the frontlines.

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THE union representing the majority of Limericks Debenhams former workforce have said theyll ensure its city premises cannot go back to business as normal.

It comes as more than 50 of the 100 axed retail workers from the trader in Limerick held a one-hour protest this Friday lunchtime to urge Debenhams parent company in Britain to step in and pay their redundancy dues.

Organised by the Mandate trade union, it was supported by local TDs Maurice Quinlivan and Kieran ODonnell, Senator Paul Gavan, plus Cllrs John Costelloe and Sharon Benson. The Limerick Trades Council was also present.

Debenhams company put its Irish operation in liquidation in a move which has shuttered its 11 stores here, including at the landmark OConnell Street building in Limerick.

Mandate organiser Karen Wall said the union will be very inventive with further industrial action.

We will be looking at what they seek to do with these leases while we have unfinished business, she said, It was despicable what the company did. It was very opportunistic to shut down in the middle of a pandemic. Workers with up to 40 years service got an email of a morning to say they no longer have a job.

Throughout the protest, car, bus and van drivers blew their horns in support of the staff, while CostCo, based in Carew Park provided bottles of water to the demonstrators.

Ms Wall added: Even during this pandemic, people can see these workers deserve to be treated properly. It's not the first time big companies have walked away in Ireland. We are sick of it, it's about time they paid.

At present, as the company is in liquidation, workers will need to apply for their redundancy entitlement through government channels, with Mandate saying attempts to open dialogue with the joint liquidator Kieran Wallace have so far proven fruitless.

Ger Quaid, who worked at Debenhams for 13 years, said: There's the frustration of how it was communicated, the lack of engagement, the lack of consultation which they are obliged to do. There is anger at the insistence before a liquidator was even appointed that the staff were to be terminated before any assets were realised or investigations took place.

Liquidator Mr Wallace did not return a request for comment.

But Debenhams Ireland had previously told the High Court it had no option but to wind the firm up.
After reading Kunlun Energy Company Limited's (SEHK:135) most recent earnings announcement (31 December 2019), I found it useful to look back at how the company has performed in the past and compare this against the latest numbers. As a long term investor, I pay close attention to earnings trend, rather than the figures published at one point in time. I also compare against an industry benchmark to check whether Kunlun Energy's performance has been impacted by industry movements. In this article I briefly touch on my key findings.

Check out our latest analysis for Kunlun Energy

How Did 135's Recent Performance Stack Up Against Its Past?

135's trailing twelve-month earnings (from 31 December 2019) of CN5.6b has jumped 20% compared to the previous year.

Furthermore, this one-year growth rate has exceeded its 5-year annual growth average of 17%, indicating the rate at which 135 is growing has accelerated. What's enabled this growth? Well, lets take a look at if it is merely a result of an industry uplift, or if Kunlun Energy has experienced some company-specific growth.

SEHK:135 Income Statement May 15th 2020

In terms of returns from investment, Kunlun Energy has fallen short of achieving a 20% return on equity (ROE), recording 12% instead. Furthermore, its return on assets (ROA) of 4.2% is below the HK Gas Utilities industry of 4.4%, indicating Kunlun Energy's are utilized less efficiently. However, its return on capital (ROC), which also accounts for Kunlun Energys debt level, has increased over the past 3 years from 12% to 13%.

What does this mean?

While past data is useful, it doesnt tell the whole story. While Kunlun Energy has a good historical track record with positive growth and profitability, there's no certainty that this will extrapolate into the future. You should continue to research Kunlun Energy to get a better picture of the stock by looking at:

Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for 135s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for 135s outlook. Financial Health: Are 135s operations financially sustainable? Balance sheets can be hard to analyze, which is why weve done it for you. Check out our financial health checks here. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

NB: Figures in this article are calculated using data from the trailing twelve months from 31 December 2019. This may not be consistent with full year annual report figures.

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.




Korean Air Lines Co., South Korea's biggest airline, said Friday it will require all passengers on domestic routes to wear masks on board from next week.







Korean Air has joined its global peers, like United Airlines Inc. and American Airlines Inc., to adopt the rules requiring masks to stem the spread of the new coronavirus.







"It is obligatory for all passengers on domestic flights to wear masks from Monday. The company is considering applying the rules to international flights as well," a company spokeswoman said over the phone.







Early this month, the International Air Transport Association, which represents global airlines, recommended the mandatory wearing of masks or face coverings on flights to prevent the spread of COVID-19. (Yonhap)


business BIG STORY | Decoding the buzz around labour codes In this edition of Big Story, Moneycontrol's Sakshi Batra shares her insights on the recent developments related to labour codes.
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Linkedin Shafa Elmirzana (The Jakarta Post) Yogyakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 07:59 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd825804 3 Opinion Muslim,praying,praying-house,pandemic,COVID-19,coronavirus Free

Since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, fear of the virus transmission has engulfed the world and stormed into places of worship.



Religious services, which gather large groups of people, have amplified the horror. In South Korea the countrys COVID-19 outbreak began from interactions of worshippers. A synagogue in New York was one center of the coronavirus outbreak in that city.



Across the world, religious leaders have struggled to keep their members safe from contagion by guiding their congregations on how to curb transmission. They made a hard and painful decision when announcing closure of churches, synagogues and mosques.



Similarly, Saudi Arabia has temporarily suspended pilgrimages to its holy shrines for foreigners, so has the Holy See in Vatican, home to the Catholic Church.



Last month, Christians across the world celebrated Easter away from families, friends and communities. Now during Ramadan, Muslims cannot perform fasting the way they did in yesteryears, when the communal moment of breaking the fast played the role of a liminal ritual, as sociologist Emile Durkheim noted.

Read also: I miss praying at church: Christians celebrate lonely but hopeful Easter from home

The virus has prevented believers from visiting mosques, churches, temples and other houses of worship, which they regard as sources of comfort. For them the experience of the sacred is fundamental. There is such a thing as a sacred space, a space that permits one to discover the center of existence, the axis mundi (Mircea Eliade, Le Sacre et le Profane, 21 to 24).



In every religion the notion of a temple responds to certain fundamental conceptions regarding this sacred space, which is associated with a manifestation of the deity. To enter the temple or place of worship is to experience the presence of the deity, which requires silence, hence emptiness.



In interpreting the Bible story about an angry Jesus who drove out of the temple those who were selling and buying within the sacred precinct, German mystic master, Meister Eckhart, claims in his book Teacher and Preacher that Jesus simply wanted the temple to be empty.



Seeking the deepest meaning of this verse, Eckhart concludes that the temple symbolizes the human soul, which God created so much like Godself. For Eckhart, the human souls unique resemblance of God is concomitant with the unique capacity of the human soul to be the unique dwelling place of God. It is for this reason that Eckhart affirms Gods wish that the temple/soul be empty, so that there will be nothing in the temple/soul but Godself.



For Eckhart, the strong emotions that Jesus displays in this verse are directly reflective of the ardent desire of Jesus that every human soul actualizes its capacity to be truly empty, so that the divine in its nothingness could dwell in and fill this empty space.



The logic here is very straightforward. If the human soul is filled already with a myriad of things calling out to us for our undivided attention (meaning those who were buying and selling), then God will not enter it and dwell therein.



In Sufi tradition, it is told that Ibrahim bin Adham, one of the great sages, went on a pilgrimage. Despite seeking the Kaaba for 14 years through the ritual practices of nusk (sacrifice), he was unable to reach his goal. When he arrived at Mecca, much to his surprise, he found that the Kaaba had left its location and had gone to greet Rabia al Adawiya (a great woman Sufi) halfway on her journey from Basra and to welcome her.



Attar tells the story that Rabia visited Mecca. But having seen the Kaaba, she said, Do I need the Kaaba? What am I to do with the Kaaba? I am not able to bear the Kaaba (man-ra istitaat Kaaba nist). For I, indeed, have approached so near unto God that I may claim the promises, He who comes a handbreadth toward me, toward him will I go an ell, what is the Kaaba, then, to me?



Attars story of Rabia is a very significant idea, even though this and other statements of an apparently unorthodox nature have led to accusations of heresy against Rabia by the opponents of Sufism. Here Rabia eliminated the image of Kaaba from her soul, because she wanted to find the One who built it. Thus, the materialistic meaning of pilgrimage developed and turned to be just an occasion to see Allah (Rampoldi, 2015, p. 69).

Read also: Indonesia joins global prayers to ease COVID-19 pains

Rabias psychological and theological-philosophical path toward true divine love was a completely dematerialized experience going beyond religion as duty and law.



The concept of dematerialization of Islam, the experience of going beyond Kaaba and beyond the idea of hellfire and paradise to really love Allah because of Himself initiated by Rabia has influenced whole centuries of Islamic philosophy and mystical thinking.



The divine love is an achievement of spiritual dematerialized perfectness. Indeed, Rabia affirms that those who obey Allah because they fear hellfire are not true believers, since those who really love Him for Himself are not looking for any reward and act without being afraid of any punishment. Rabia revolutionarily transformed Islamic thought by her criticism of the sensual and material aspects of religion as we have already seen in her discourse on the Kaaba (Rampoldi, 12).



The elaboration and the mystical allegories above remind us that the true house of God is the heart of the human being. The Prophet Muhammad said, the throne of God is the heart of the faithful devotee.



In these times of challenge, wed better go back to the heart; as Jalaluddin Rumi put it, only from the heart can we touch the sky.



Lets follow Rabia to become the true mosque, the true church, the true temple, the true Kaaba. The outward excellence in ritual and ascetic practices always depends on deep states of inner spiritual knowledge.

***

Professor of religious studies at Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University, Yogyakarta, and the author of newly published Ketika Umat Beriman Mencipta Tuhan (When men of faith create God), Gramedia, 2020.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
15 May 2020

Type Event Proceeding



The Signpost Series - Pointing the way to a low emissions agriculture



The seventh in a series of Greenhouse Gas Webinars aimed at Irish Agri Professionals, which took place on Friday, 15th May.

Mark Plunkett, Teagasc discussed "Managing Cattle Slurry Efficiently"

View his presentation here Managing Cattle Slurry Efficiently

David Wall, Teagasc discussed "Slurry Management Options for Reducing Gaseous Emissions"

View his presentation here Slurry Management Options for Reducing Gaseous Emissions

Mark and David's presentation was followed by a Q&A session which was facilitated by Mark Gibson, Teagasc ConnectEd.

View Webinar Here
Thiruvananthapuram, May 15 : Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday said that the state had recorded 16 new cases of coronavirus, taking the total number of positive cases to 80.

"Of these, seven came from abroad, six Afrom within the country," he told media here.

This has taken the state's tally to 576. Out of these, 311 came from abroad, 8 are foreign nationals, and 70 came from elsewhere within the country.

"Cases are going up now and this is a cause of concern. So we have to be more alert and cautious. Those in quarantine should not step out of their homes and to ensure that they don't do, a special motorcycle police brigade will be formed and will be on high alert to keep track of those in quarantine," Vijayan said.

There are 48,287 people under observation at home while 538 are in various hospitals.

There are 16 hotspot areas in the state.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
A recent bi-lateral philanthropic move saw Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness and Vincentian Opposition Leader Dr. Godwin Friday partnering to help alleviate some of the immediate living resource needs of Vincentians, currently studying in Jamaica.





The outreach, we were told, was acted upon after Sujae Boswell  a Youth Advisor to the Government of Jamaica and Chancellor Hall Chairman at the UWI  interceded on the affected students behalf.





In an exclusive interview, Boswell explained, "It is understandably a difficult time for us all and it is important that we stand together in solidarity. The Vincentian Students Association (VINSAJA) has been publicly advocating on behalf of their students and so I was moved to act.





"The impacts of COVID-19 have been profound. I noted, with great worry, the situation which Vincentian students are facing here and so I made requests of my contacts from St. Vincent and the Grenadines, and we were able to secure support from Dr. Godwin Friday who jumped onboard without any hesitation. PM Holness also came onboard to support.





The care packages were distributed via the Jamaican chapter of the Vincentian Students Association on Monday to, "all who needed.





Dr. Friday, the NDP President and contender for the Prime Ministership here, was tight lipped about the donations.





To date, the only public mention of this generosity is on the VINSAJA instagram page.





Dr. Friday has, in fact, proposed a fundraiser intended to further help the overseas-based students. He did so via Facebook stream early Monday evening and with Colin Graham, host of the NDP Monday Night Live broadcast.





Dr. Friday noted budgetary constraints for most students  and that their sparse resources may stretch further.

He said, "I have a son whos at university as well youre getting down to the end of the term, you hardly have money to buy groceries.





"If we can use this platform here to help raise funds  if thats the only way to do , then naturally we should do so. I dont believe in having the students there and they become pawns or part of some political drama.





The Northern Grenadines MP was mindful that he may just step on a few toes, should the NDP roll out this proposal. He told viewers and subscribers, "the students would have to request that they want to do it and the parents  I dont want to infringe on anybodys rights or feelings or anything of that sort.




Hyderabad, May 15 : About 35 per cent of the 72,000 Indians who have registered with the Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia for repatriation reported job loss either for short term or long term due to Covid-19 pandemic The fall in oil prices coupled with the outbreak of Covid-19 and the lockdown impacted the Saudi economy, triggering fears of possible retrenchment of a large number of people. India's ambassador to Saudi Arabia Dr Ausaf Saeed told IANS in an exclusive interview that despite the challenge of some job losses, there are huge opportunities for the Indian companies to collaborate in various sectors.

The Indian community in Saudi Arabia has so far reported 31 deaths due to Covid while the number of people tested positive stands at 3,000. Excerpts from the interview.

Q: What has been the impact of the pandemic on Saudi Arabia, especially the Indian community there? Is the infection rate higher among Indians compared to others? A: Saudi Arabia has the largest number of Covid cases in GCC countries. Around 45,000 cases have been reported and 273 people passed away. Saudi authorities don't give the breakup of nationalities but our understanding is that more than 3,000 Indians have tested positive for Covid. They are undergoing treatment and many of them have recovered or in the process the recovery but unfortunately we had around 31 deaths among the Indian nationals due to Covid.

Majority of them are from Kerala that is eight, there are six from Uttar Pradesh, six from Maharashtra, four from Telangana and the remaining from other states. Saudi authorities mentioned that around 75 per cent of the cases detected pertain to expatriates. There are 11 million expatriates in Saudi Arabia and Indians are around 2.6 million. I don't think the incidence of Covid is higher among Indians than other expatriate communities. Out of 2.6 million, there are 3,000 who tested positive. So the situation is not alarming but we are monitoring it very carefully and are in touch with the community.

Q: How is the embassy handling the situation and reaching out to the community? A: The Indian community is the biggest community in Saudi Arabia. They are spread all over the kingdom and the kingdom is a big country. One of the challenges was to ensure that people living in remote parts of the kingdom are reached out. There are various community organizations in different cities. We formed linkages with all of them. I myself had a video conference with Indian community representatives from 16-17 different cities and then we formed WhatsApp groups of community members and of doctors and we created a helpline so that they get in touch with us.

We also identified 100 Saudi major employers who are employing Indians. We ascertained the conditions of the workers in the locations they are kept in. We came across some issues in some camps like food shortage and tried to address them. We provided medicines in some places through Indian community welfare organizations. We are asking people through interactions to stay calm and don't get panicky. We told them about the evacuation process, reassuring them that the government will make arrangements for their repatriation.

Q: What kind of impact the pandemic is having on the Saudi economy and what situation you foresee for the Indian community? Do you anticipate a huge job loss among Indians? A: Covid had its impact on the economies all over the world and Saudi Arabia is also not immune to it. The kingdom was very quick to respond. It suspended 'Umraa' pilgrimage and tourist visas as early as in beginning March but still the numbers increased. In March the oil price fell to around 20 dollars per barrel and of course now it is 30-33. The Saudi budget is planned as per 80 dollars per barrel. Because of oil prices and Covid there was a large impact on Saudi economy and in the first quarter of 2020 (Jan to March) there was a revenue deficit of 25 per cent.

Saudi government took a lot of austerity measures, increased VAT from 5 per cent to 15 per cent and reduced cost of living allowances for Saudi employees but at the same time it gave economic stimulus to the private sector to the tune of 33 billion riyals so that the private sector overcome the challenges. Despite all that there are certain sectors which will be affected like construction, tourism, hospitality, aviation. All this will have an impact on jobs. The kingdom may go for automation and that may result in some job loss across the board and not for Indians alone.

At the same it also provides a lot of opportunities for Indian companies especially in food, pharmaceuticals, healthcare, and information technology. We have an opportunity and at the same challenge of possible retrenchment of large number of people.

Q: Has there been a job loss among Indians? A: When we started the registration process for repatriation purpose, we asked them to give reasons why they want to go. 72,000 people registered to go back and out of this 35 per cent workers have lost their jobs either for short term or long term. Thus around 25,000 people reported some distress in their jobs. We don't know whether it is a limited impact or long term impact. Some companies like in construction would like to lay off the employees now and when construction resumes they come back.

We don't know the full impact as yet. In the initial stage many companies came to us saying they are laying off the employees and now there is retraction of requests by some companies as the economy is opening up and construction activity has resumed in some cities. The companies and employees are also rethinking, hoping that there will be stimulus and resumption of activity. There is some hope and at the same time anxiety about the future. We are reassuring that we will talk to companies wherever possible to avoid lay-offs.

Q: How are you handling the repatriation process and what are the plans going forward.

A: In the first phase we sent back about 1,000 people to India. Next week we are going to have 10 flights that will take about 1,500 to 2,000 people. We also expect that the companies which laid off the employees will facilitate their return in the days to come. The process of repatriation may go one for a month. Our priority for repatriation are the destitute workers who lost their jobs, medical cases and many families who came on visit visas. There have been a few Umraa cases who are stranded for a couple of months. There are many workers who came to Saudi on a short term visa to work on small projects for various companies.

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
Ukraine has imposed lockdown measures on many businesses since March and its economy is expected to shrink around 5% this year as a result of the pandemic.

Ukraine expects to receive the first loan tranche from a new International Monetary Fund deal within a week or two though the total size of the programme is still being finalised, a presidential official told Reuters on Thursday.

Ukraine's Parliament passed a banking bill on Wednesday, clearing the last hurdle for a new IMF deal to support Ukraine's economy struggling through the coronavirus pandemic, Reuters reports.

Yulia Kovaliv, the deputy chief of President Volodymyr Zelenskys office, said by phone that the bill's passage and other steps were "clear evidence that there is a big commitment to proceed with the reforms in Ukraine.

Read alsoEU to give Ukraine EUR 500 mln in macro-financial assistance after IMF  European commissioner

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhals government previously said it expected a $5 billion IMF deal but Kovaliv said the exact figures and a timeline for disbursing the loans would be finalized next week.

Ukraine has imposed lockdown measures on many businesses since March and its economy is expected to shrink around 5% this year as a result of the pandemic.

There is some cause for optimism. Ukraine for the first time on Thursday recorded more recoveries from the coronavirus than new cases.

But while Kyiv has gradually started easing restrictions, Kovaliv said it was premature to try to set a date for lifting the lockdown entirely, saying it depended partly on whether people complied with the lockdown rules still in place.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the Ukrainian government expects the talks with the IMF will complete before May 15.

According to Gerry Rice, Director of the IMF's Communications Department and IMF Spokesman, the focus of talks between the IMF and Ukraine has shifted toward an 18-month stand-by financing program which will help the country tackle the consequences of the pandemic in the economy and health care. It could serve as a reserve option as Ukraine authorities are yet to fulfill conditions required to receive funds in the framework of the Extended Fund Facility in the amount of US$5.5 billion, which the parties discussed in December 2019.
All your questions about face masks answered.

There's a growing consensus that covering our mouths and noses could be an important weapon in our battle against Covid-19.

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All this week, the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has been discussing face masks in advance of Ireland moving to step one of a five-stage exit from lockdown come Monday.

Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan is expected to recommend we all start wearing masks while shopping in supermarkets, using public transport and perhaps in other situations too.

Will the Irish public get on board with this?

That remains to be seen. According to a recent opinion poll, 21pc of us already use masks, but only 28pc say we'll do so if the Government advises it.

However, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has already promised there is no question of them actually being made compulsory.

Why has it taken so long for Ireland to come up with a mask policy?

According to the Taoiseach, it's because medical experts differ.

The World Health Organisation has been lukewarm about masks, claiming they're necessary only for people who actually have Covid-19 or are looking after coronavirus patients.

This is directly contradicted by the Euro- pean Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, which says masks can help healthy people too.

"It's not one of those straightforward decisions where science tells you what the right thing to do is," Mr Varadkar argued last month.

What's the case for face masks?

Put simply, supporters think they can stop the droplets caused by coughing or sneezing dead in their tracks.

Wearing a mask may not protect you, since particles flying through the air at high speed will often penetrate it.

Expand Close Three-day-old Kengo Saito wears a face visor to protect against Covid-19 coronavirus as his mother Ayumi holds him. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Three-day-old Kengo Saito wears a face visor to protect against Covid-19 coronavirus as his mother Ayumi holds him. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images)

The covering should, however, protect other people from your droplets if you're infected.

Since the symptoms of Covid-19 can take several days to appear, many scientists think it's common sense for everyone to use masks, whether they feel ill or not.

"You want the lockdown to finally end, don't you?" asked Trinity College professor of biochemistry Luke O'Neill in a recent article.

"Wear a face mask. Make a fashion statement. Wear one in your team colours. You'll be caring for others and, yes, the science says it all: face masks will hasten the end of this lockdown."

What about the arguments against?

Sceptics point out that there have been very few clinical trials involving masks and Covid-19, which means their value remains unproven. In fact, masks could even help to spread the virus if users fail to clean them properly or touch their faces afterwards.

Above all, there's a danger that masks may lull people into a false sense of security and cause them to neglect the basic precautions - washing their hands, wiping surfaces and staying two metres away from others.

Are all masks more or less the same?

No, they divide into three main categories.

Cloth masks are the most basic and can be made at home from old sheets or T-shirts.

Surgical masks contain non-woven fabric for added protection but must be used only once, making them environmentally unfriendly.

At the top end of the scale, N95 respirators are usually worn by doctors and nurses while carrying out difficult medical procedures.

The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) is strongly encouraging us all to stick with cloth masks and leave the others for healthcare professionals who need them as a matter of urgency.

If I don't want to make my own mask, how easy is it to buy them?

It's about to become a lot easier. During the early days of Covid- 19, there were reports of price-gouging in areas where masks had almost sold out.

Now the market is being flooded, with Lidl offering them at cost price (43.30 for a packet of 50) and companies such as Irish start-up Measc promising to manufacture tens of thousands at less than a euro each.

For the fashion-conscious, more stylish coverings are available from luxury brands including Prada and Gucci.

How does Ireland's mask policy compare with the rest of the world?

Essentially, we're playing catch-up. For several weeks now, masks have been almost universally worn across Asian countries with low infection rates, such as South Korea and Taiwan.

Europe is rapidly moving in that direction, with Germany, France and Spain all making them compulsory in public places. The UK has started advising people to wear masks in enclosed spaces, but not for exercising.

Over in the United States, things are a bit more confused. The country's Centres for Disease Control and Prevention recommends that Americans use masks, and they're mandatory for staffers in the White House, where two cases of Covid-19 have been confirmed.

President Donald Trump, however, is refusing to wear one, reportedly because he fears it would make him look ridiculous.

"Wearing a face mask as I greet presidents, prime ministers, dictators, kings, queens?" Trump said last month. "I just don't see it."

Could the formation of a new government make any difference to mask policy?

If anything, it might make them an even more central feature of Ireland's fight against this disease. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin, who's widely expected to become Taoi- seach within weeks, has expressed great en- thusiasm for masks, and recently discussed them with his sister-in-law in Singapore.

"She's been screaming at me metaphorically over the phone, 'Why aren't you guys wearing masks?'" he revealed this week.

Finally, will Ireland's introduction of face mask guidelines be a game-changer or is this mainly being done for optics?

Like so much else to do with this pandemic, it may be years before we know the full truth.

For now, the only certainty is that Covid-19 works like an invisible killer, and covering our faces is a powerful symbol of Ireland's determination to beat it.
The protests were sparked by a now-shelved bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China. But they widened to encompass calls for full democracy and an independent inquiry into what protesters alleged was police brutality, and they ultimately became an uprising against Beijings efforts to crush the democracy movement.
The corona virus pandemic has forced the courts to rethink on how to function and provided a compulsory training to prepare for a new working environment, Chief Justice of India S A Bobde said on Friday.

The CJI, who was speaking during an online demo of Supreme Court e-filing module, said the system is the first step in the entire process of e-courts and has brought Registry to the chambers of the advocates.

"The pandemic has forced to rethink on how to function and what is essential in judicial process. Real threat came in March and I am happy that the Supreme Court was one of the first institutions to announce that it will not be open in a usual way and function in a restricted manner.

"This period has provided a compulsory training to prepare for a new working environment. There is no looking back. We will have to change the mindset regarding the way we look at Court proceedings. We are rolling out the module with the suggestions of and for the Bar," the CJI said.

Justice Bobde said that the apex court was one of the first institutions to respond to the crisis by restricting the normal functioning and it was determined to ensure that the court does not become the Centre for propagation of the corona virus.

"We found that it was not possible to maintain the safety and protect the lives of advocates and members of Registry because every space be it filing counters, bar rooms, copy rooms or canteens were congregated by people. It was found absolutely necessary to work jointly to reduce footfalls in the apex court premises



"This transition was not easy and and it was difficult to deviate from the time honouring manner of functioning. This was the conflict between old and the new style of working," he said.

The CJI said e-filing is very significant since it is basis of a system of artificial intelligence and the system can also enable to extract information at an incredible speed of one million words per minute.

"E-filing would be available round the clock...If we had this at the time of Ayodhya hearing we could have moved at a very fast speed as thousands of pages were being filed. During lockdown, 820 matters and 552 documents filed throgh e-filing. This period has provided a compulsory training to prepare for a new working environment.There is no looking back," he said.

Justice Bobde further said that technology should be simple to use and not exclude citizens anywhere and this system of e-filing will make access to justice simple and inclusive through inexpensive system.

Speaking on the occasion, Justice D Y Chandrachud said that the pandemic has affected the daily lives of the people and calls for robust and calibrated institutional responses.

"In significant ways what we do today will define the future. Our responses must deal with the present but the footprints of the pandemic will redefine how we function tomorrow in ways which may not be readily apparent to us today. Yet our assessment must be based on facts and on consultation, collaboration and a creative view of out resources.

"In using technology our motto in the e-committee is simple: efficiency, transparency and access to every user of justicing services. We are also conscious of the fact that not every lawyer has the access of the technology. Hence our solution must factor this to ensure that we continue to be an inclusive institution and reach out to those do not have the access to technology, in particular the junior members of the bar," Justice Chandrachud said.

He said one of the initiatives is to open e-seva Kendra' in every high courts and district courts of the country to roll out the e-services.

"We must seek to provide sustainable digitalisation and transformational change in reconceptualising the interaction between the citizens, lawyers, the judiciary and the environment.

"We must enhance our TEST values, where T stands for trust, E stands for empathy, S for sustainability and T for transparency," Justice Chandrachud said.

He said that some of the key features of the e-filing module include 24/7 filing while we envisaging online communication of the defects and the scrutiny of the matters which are filed.

There's e-payment of the court fees so that one do not have to come to the courts and it also provides the facility of e-signatures. So that our courts look as modern courts for the future, incorporating technology but at the same time inclusive to all members of the bar," Justice Chandrachud said.

Supreme Court Bar Association President Dushyant Dave said e-filing is a lifeline for the apex court and especially for the Bar in the times of the ongoing pandemic.

"These are times of crisis but it is such times that we have to rise to face the crisis. For administration of justice bar and the bench have to move side by side. If the judicial work is paralysed democracy is in danger. Today, more than ever, people of India need the healing touch from the Lordships. The Constitution is the suprema lax (supreme law) but it only works if the Supreme Court and the High Courts enforce the principles of constitutionalism. Present times demand a greater vigil by the judiciary," Dave said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Emergency teams raced Friday to prevent a coronavirus "nightmare" in the world's largest refugee settlement after the first reported cases in the giant shanties housing nearly one million Rohingya.

Health officials said three of the Muslim outcasts living in the 34 camps along the Bangladesh-Myanmar border have tested positive.

Special teams fanned out across the teeming camps trying to find anyone who had been in contact with the two men and a woman.

A 35-year-old man living in Kutupalong, the largest of the Rohingya camps, was the first to test positive. The man allegedly tried to flee but was found by police after a four-hour hunt.

A 42-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man were the other positive cases. It was not immediately known if they were linked.

Community leader Abdur Rahim told AFP there were fears that the man who fled could have spread the virus.

"We are worried," he said.

The man is believed to have been infected in a hospital in a nearby town where he took a brother for treatment, Rahim said.

Investigation teams formed by aid agencies tried to quickly track the contacts the infected people had in the teeming camps.

More than 700,000 people fled across the border after a 2017 Myanmar military crackdown on the Rohingya, who are now stuck in the camps, where there is barely room to move and sewage flows uncontrolled in the narrow alleys.

There are widespread fears the pandemic could spread like wildfire in the camps.

Cox's Bazar district health chef Mahbubur Rahman said an entire block in one camp, housing around 5,000 people, was shut off, and that all people linked to the three would be taken to isolation centres.

An AFP correspondent who went into the camps Friday saw red flags set up in a zone around the infected man's hut, but hundreds of people walked by apparently unaware of the emergency.

Police used loud hailers to urge residents to follow social distancing rules, but the calls went unheeded.

Story continues

A World Health Organisation spokesperson, Catalin Bercaru, said that since February, aid agencies have been stepping up preparations to isolate and treat eventual cases.

The UN refugee agency said 12 respiratory infection treatment centres were being established and up to 1,900 intensive care beds, five quarantine centres, and 20 isolation facilities were planned.

- Thousands at risk -

Bangladesh authorities ordered a strict lockdown in early April in Cox's Bazar district, which has 3.4 million people including the refugees -- after a number of COVID-19 cases were found.

Traffic in and out of the camps was virtually halted and even the number of aid workers allowed in was slashed.

The country of 168 million people has seen a rapid rise to more than 20,000 cases and almost 300 deaths as of Friday.

Sam Brownback, the US administration's ambassador for religious freedom who has visited the refugees, said it was inevitable the virus would reach the "incredibly crowded" camps and spread "very rapidly".

Daniel Sullivan from Refugees International called it the "realisation of a nightmare scenario".

Shamim Jahan at Save the Children said there was the "very real prospect that thousands of people may die" because of the lack of medical facilities.

After the cases were detected, thousands of people roamed in the camps' main food markets, mostly without masks or any pretense at maintaining social distancing.

"Ten percent listen but the rest don't care what we say about the virus crisis. They don't understand how badly it will affect us," said a community leader, Safih Ullah.

- No internet, many rumours -

Bangladesh has been criticised for cutting the internet in the camps, which has restricted access to reliable information and fuelled the spread of false rumours.

"I have been calling on the Bangladeshi government to give internet access. It just seems to me ludicrous that they're not," Brownback told reporters in Washington.

With little prospect of being able to return to Myanmar -- where army operations persist in their home state of Rakhine -- many refugees have in desperation tried to escape the camps by sea.

Last month, about 60 starved to death in a fishing trawler stranded at sea for two months after being denied entry by Malaysia and Thailand.
These days, pretty much every company uses computers to manage at least some part of their business operations. Even old school small businesses will use digital tools to track inventory, income, payroll and more.

While all of this can reduce clutter around the office and help your team become more efficient, it also opens your company up to a new threat: hackers.

According to a report from CNBC, 43 percent of hacking attacks target small businesses. On average, a successful attack costs a business roughly $200,000, which causes 60 percent of impacted companies to go out of business within six months of the cyberattack.

Needless to say, the threat is very real, and the types of data hackers are trying to steal  outlined below  further illustrates the importance of improving your companys digital security measures.

1. Hackers want personal information

Unsurprisingly, personal information of employees and clients is one of the top targets. This includes social security numbers, birth dates and financial information. In 2017 alone, nearly 17 million Americans had personal data stolen. Social security numbers are the most valuable because they can be used for tax fraud, opening credit accounts and other major financial moves  even to buy a house.

While your company may not collect social security numbers from clients, you likely still have this data for your employees. Customer financial data and other information can also be used for fraudulent purchases and activities, and as such, should be protected by the best digital security system you can afford.

2. Hackers want your digital infrastructure

During a recent phone conversation with Cory Carson, founder and CEO of iTology, he touched on a relatively common  yet frequently overlooked  motivation for hacking attempts. Data servers and storage implements are expensive," he reminded. "Sometimes, hackers want to store their own data and applications using your infrastructure so they dont have to pay for it themselves. The larger your infrastructure, the more appealing of a target it is. Over time, this will result in additional costs for your company as the hackers strain your network.

It should come as no surprise then that tech companies tend to be the primary target for this type of cyberattack. Network slowdowns, unknown devices connecting to your network and seeming to run out of data storage faster than expected are all potential indicators that someone else is using your digital infrastructure for free hosting.

Related: Why We Need to Worry More Than Ever About Getting Hacked

3. Hackers want confidential product information

Few things are more important to a business than its IPs. Your products are how you differentiate yourself from your competitors. If a hacker is able to steal the designs for an up-and-coming product before you launch it or submit a patent, you could lose a lot of money.

John Teel of Predictable Designs notes that even with an experienced product developer, it typically takes three months to build an initial prototype, and then an additional six to nine months to finalize a works-like-looks-like prototype. After that, most companies take at least six months to get the product ready for mass manufacturing.

If a competitor got their hands on your prototype data, they could jump into the market before you, undercutting the potential sales of your own product.

4. Hackers want corporate account data

Hackers may not always be able to steal financial data, but if they can get access to an employees account, they will often use that to run scams to gain the information they want or disrupt your business operations.

Just consider the damage that could be caused if a hacker stole your CEOs login information. In addition to gaining access to all kinds of information, they could also impersonate the CEO to solicit financial information from clients or employees or sabotage business operations. Customer-service accounts are also frequently targeted for similar reasons.

Such data breaches can cause widespread confusion and will greatly reduce your trust with the general public.

5. Hackers want network control

In some situations, hackers are less concerned over the data you have on file and are more interested in gaining control of your entire network. These ransomware attacks allow hackers to essentially lock you out of your computers, making data and accounts completely inaccessible unless you pay a hefty ransom.

According to Statista, ransomware attacks are behind 15 percent of cyber insurance claims, making them the second most common form of cyberattacks. They are often initiated through phishing and spam emails, as well as malicious online ads. In an interview with Dark Reading, Emsisoft CTO Fabian Wosar noted that while ransom amounts average $30,000, the overall disruption to the businesss operations are actually much higher.

Because these attacks primarily occur as the result of someone clicking on something they shouldnt, businesses of all sizes should train their employees how to identify and avoid harmful emails and websites  especially while they are at work.

Related: For the Average Hacker, Your Small Business Is an Ideal Target

Act now to protect yourself

It typically take several months before businesses discover that they were hacked. During this time, hackers can cause untold financial damage and disruptions for your employees and clients. As previously noted, the repercussions could be severe enough to completely destroy your business.

Dont allow data vulnerabilities to continue any longer. Take steps today to upgrade your data protection. Your companys future just might depend on it.

Related:

Headspace Offers Unemployed Americans a Free Year of Mindfulness

How AI Can Help In Fighting COVID-19

Time To Soar: How You Can Own And Legally Fly A Drone In The UAE



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Ive opened many restaurants in my life. This is the hardest Ive ever been through because we have reinvented our restaurant.

Paper menus, disposable silverware, and mobile ordering are just some of the new dining measures restaurants are implementing while waiting for the green light from the government to reopen their dining rooms. While social distancing and wearing masks in public have been encouraged by health experts since the beginning of the global pandemic, restaurateurs are taking precautions a step further to ensure the safest environment for their customers and staff. Mark Jakuboski, owner and operator of Old Man Raffertys in New Brunswick and Hillsborough, New Jersey discusses how the virus has changed his nearly 40-year restaurant concept.

Regulars of Old Man Raffertys know it as the place to go during a lunchbreak with colleagues, or for a relaxing family dinner for a casual farm-to-table meal. Since Covid-19 has made dine-in service off limits for both his restaurants, Jakuboski has been challenged to provide the same enjoyable experience in other ways. Ive opened many restaurants in my life, said Jakuboski. This is the hardest Ive ever been through because we have reinvented our restaurant. Some changes include updating menus, implementing online ordering, and retraining staff, which Jakuboski admits is one of the most difficult parts of the process. Now we have a concept that was working and we have to change it totally around after Covid-19, said Jakuboksi.

To adapt to the new normal of the restaurant industry, the long-time restaurateur has gotten creative with his business model, reinventing the Gourmet Shop & Deli at both restaurants. The grocery store, which offers an assortment of prepared dishes, cold cuts, salads and desserts, expanded their inventory to include the eaterys finest wines, pasta, sauces, and household items such as toilet paper, napkins and bleach spray. People are loving it because they dont have to go online, stand on line and shop, said Jakuboski. You just come in and grab the basics of what you need. Guests can pick up orders from the grocery store or opt for home delivery with no limits on purchases at both the New Brunswick and Hillsborough locations.

A major focus has been on maintaining a safe working environment for the employees who Jakuboski admitted were weary of the changes in the beginning. Its kind of really settled in to were good with this, we can do this, we feel safe, were a family, said Jakuboski. In addition to keeping six feet from one another, the staff has been avoiding touching railings, and wearing masks as a safety precaution. Jakuboski also believes in maintaining his relationship with his vendors during the pandemic, who are also facing hardships. My number one priority right now is to take care of my purveyors, said Jakuboski. Everybody should get a relationship with someone who knows you personally and understands you and knows that youll always be there.

While Jakuboski is itching to be able to welcome diners back to his restaurants, he doesnt believe that restaurant dining will return to normal for some time. If we opened, nobodys coming. Everyones scared, said Jakuboski. In the meantime, he plans to take advantage of outdoor patio areas and continue with take-out and delivery services. Offer people a chance to get out of the house and stay away from each other, but still be out in the fresh air and have a nice meal, said Jakuboski. Its a matter of restaurateurs in the future making sure their guests feel as comfortable as they can be. For Jakobuski, this may mean adding brown paper on every table, wrapped cutlery, disposable ketchups and menus, eliminating servers at the tables and adding a mobile payment and ordering system. Its going to take a full year to get confidence back, said Jakuboski. Servers and bartenders are going to get the worst hit in the world.

Even though guests will be limited in the dining rooms upon reopening, Jakuboski hopes to bring the experience to the customer with a new virtual online dining service. The videos will provide customers with the simulated experience of dining at Old Man Raffertys with a virtual guide through the entire process. Even if you had a physical restaurant with a dining room, you always try different things, you dont give up, always hustle, said Jakuboski. Dont wait for the government to say, okay, now youre ready. We cant depend on anyone else, but we can depend on ourselves, you can get this done. More information on the virtual dining experience will be posted to Old Man Raffertys website at http://www.oldmanraffertys.com/home.

To view the full video interview, visit Bielat Santore & Companys website at http://www.123bsc.com, Facebook https://www.facebook.com/123BSC/, and Vimeo page https://vimeo.com/bielatsantore and stay tuned for the next Thursday Restaurant Rap interview.

About Bielat Santore & Company

Bielat Santore & Company is an established commercial real estate firm. The companys expertise lies chiefly within the restaurant and hospitality industry, specializing in the sale of restaurants and other food and beverage real estate businesses. Since 1978, the principals of Bielat Santore & Company, Barry Bielat and Richard Santore, have sold more restaurants and similar type properties in New Jersey than any other real estate company. Furthermore, the firm has secured in excess of $500,000,000 in financing to facilitate these transactions. Visit the companys website, http://www.123bsc.com for the latest in new listings, property searches, available land, market data, financing trends, RSS feeds, press releases and more.
15.05.2020 LISTEN

Authorities in Zimbabwe must urgently account for three missing female leaders from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change  Alliance (MDC-Alliance) and ensure their safe return, Amnesty International said today amid growing fears for their safety.

The three MDC-Alliance youth leaders, Joana Mamombe (MP for Harare West), Cecelia Chinembiri (MDC Alliance Youth Assembly Vice Chair) and Netsai Marova (Deputy Organising Secretary for Youth) were arrested at a roadblock in Warren Park guarded by police and soldiers on 13 May. Police have denied that the three are in their custody.

The disappearance of these political activists amounts to enforced disappearance, a crime under international law, said Muleya Mwananyanda, Amnesty Internationals Deputy Director for East and Southern Africa.

Zimbabwe has a history of enforced disappearances, with some activists having gone missing for years now. Many activists have been tortured in police custody, despite denials by police. The longer these activists are in custody the higher the risk of torture.

The three women were part of a demonstration organized by MDC-Alliance Youth against the states failure to provide social protection for the poor during the current COVID-19 lockdown. As the country tries to curb the spread of the pandemic, many people are not allowed to go to work, putting them at risk of poverty, hunger and starvation.

According to the state-owned newspaper, the Herald, the national police spokesman, Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi, confirmed the trios arrest, although he was still to find out where they were being held. A local non-governmental organization, Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights, has searched more than eight police stations to establish their whereabouts with no luck. Some sources say the trio are being held incommunicado, to pressure them to release information on how the demonstration was organized without police knowledge.

It is deeply alarming that the state claims that it cannot account for the three activists when they were arrested at a roadblock run by both the police and the military, said Muleya Mwananyanda.

Authorities must urgently institute a search operation and do all within their power to ensure the safe return of these activists. There must be a full and thorough investigation into their abduction, with those suspected of criminal responsibility brought to justice in fair trials before an ordinary civilian court.
Two criminal court judges have told the Harris County Sheriffs Office to not bring them inmates who have tested positive for COVID-19.

The orders state that a Harris County Jail inmate who previously tested positive for the virus was brought to a courtroom Tuesday and two judges  Herb Ritchie in the 337th District Court and Greg Glass in the 208th District Court  told law enforcement officials they were prohibited from doing it on their turf.

The incident in question happened in Judge Danilo Lacayos 182 District Court, the inmates lawyer said.

Defense attorney Brian Roberts said he was not told his client had tested positive April 27 for the novel coronavirus because of HIPAA guidelines. The inmate, who he declined to identify because of his medical history, spent the next two weeks isolated at the jail. A day after his isolation ended, the inmate was taken to court for a plea hearing, Roberts said.

The inmate was discussing the plea agreement during a teleconferencing call with Roberts when he revealed that he had recently tested positive. The inmate did not appear to be symptomatic but asked that the judge be told of the diagnosis, Roberts continued.

He wanted the judge know. I told the bailiff, Roberts said. All hell broke loose at that point.

The judge had the inmate removed from the holding area, which had about three other inmates in it, Roberts said. The court was staffed with a bailiff, court coordinator, probation liaison and a clerk.

The situation was alarming to Roberts because he had no idea that his client had tested positive or any assurances that he was negative after a two-week quarantine. His client was never retested, he said.

I think theres so little known about (the virus), Roberts said. Two weeks may be enough but certainly the jail cant promise that.

He assumes other inmates have been brought to court under similar circumstances.

I have to assume if my client tested positive for 14 days and then brought to court, this has happened with other defendants, Roberts said.

Non-essential court proceedings that cannot be done remotely have been postponed until June 1. Inmates have appeared for their cases remotely from the jail, including for plea hearings.

Last month, a grant to the Houston Health Foundation sent 2,000 nasal swabs to the jail to have quarantined inmates tested. After that, medical officials had hoped to test for asymptomatic carriers during the booking process to prevent them from being added to the negative general population.

Roberts client was jailed in January, he said.

Harris County Sheriffs Office spokesman Jason Spencer said their legal team sent an email Thursday to various legal groups, including the Harris County District Attorneys Office, explaining how symptomatic and asymptomatic detainees are handled when its time for court.

A snippet of the email, written in all-caps, said that detainees who have previously tested positive were not pulled for court until they presented little to no risk of being contagious per the CDC and medical expert guidelines.

Mark Thiessen, who started Thursday as the new president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, did not find the protocol reassuring.

Can we honestly gamble on that, he asked.

The sheriff's office has left it up to the judges to request "other special precautions when pulling detainees for your particular court" according to the email.

Thiessen would like to see all previously positive inmates to test negative before they are brought to court and for the sheriffs office to share how many inmates were brought to court after testing positive.

nicole.hensley@chron.com
Oil markets are re-balancing after a collapse in demand following the coronavirus outbreak but the pathway to "the next normal" is still very uncertain, the CEO of Abu Dhabi's National Oil Company (ADNOC) said Thursday.

"There are good signs that the market has tightened in recent weeks and the OPEC++ agreement, voluntary cuts outside of OPEC and the production shut-ins are working together to start to rebalance the market," UAE Minister of State and ADNOC Group CEO Dr Sultan Al Jaber said, alluding to a group of countries that includes OPEC members and other systemically important producers such as Russia.

"As economies begin to open up, demand will follow, but the path to the next normal will not be a straight line," he added. Al Jaber was speaking to Helima Croft, Managing Director and Global Head of Commodity Strategy at RBC Capital Markets, in a recorded interview via Linkedin on Thursday.

The coronavirus pandemic has dealt a severe blow to economic activity around the globe and sent oil prices tumbling by over 50% so far this year. While OPEC and its oil-producing allies finalized a historic agreement last month to cut production by 9.7 million barrels per day beginning May 1, some experts reckon that the reduction in supply won't be enough to offset the diminution in demand.

ADNOC is a critically important OPEC member producer. The company achieved sustainable production of 4 million barrels of oil per day in April but scaled back output in line with the recent OPEC+ agreement.

The OPEC group next meets on June 10 to discuss the state of the market and the progress of the output agreement.
NHS workers took to the streets to applaud the coffin of a 78-year-old healthcare worker who died from coronavirus after refusing to retire after five decades of service.

Qualified nurse and care co-ordinator Sophie Fagan, 78, died at Homerton Hospital in East London on April 19 after contracting coronavirus.

It was the same hospital she had been working at.

Videos were posted on Twitter on May 14 showing NHS workers lining the streets outside Homerton Hospital to say goodbye to Ms Fagan.

Sophie Fagan, 78, died at Homerton Hospital in East London on April 19 after contracting coronavirus. She spent 54 years working in healthcare

NHS workers line the street outside Homerton Hospital applauding the hearse of Ms Fagan as she is driven past

Tributes paid to 'selfless' nurse and 'gracious' healthcare assistant Tributes have also been paid to two other healthcare workers who died from coronavirus. Andy Collier, 53, was a nurse practitioner at Hollins Park Hospital in Warrington, Cheshire who died on April 15. Jun Terre, 52, died on May 14 at Stoke Mandeville Hospital after he tested positive for coronavirus. Mr Collier, who ran The First and Last pub in Wigan became seriously ill on March 31 and died with his wife Carol at his bedside. His ward manager Rob Kelly said: 'Andy was all about putting other people first - whether that was patients on the ward or his colleagues across the trust. 'The team has raised a few virtual glasses to Andy and we will miss him massively.' Healthcare assistant Jun Terre also lost his life to Covid-19. Buckinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust chief executive Neil Macdonald described Mr Terre as 'a gracious, quiet and kind gentleman with a smile that would light up a room'. Mr Macdonald also thanked the team that looked after Mr Terre, saying that those who treated him knew him personally. 'I am so sorry to have to share such sad news today,' he said. 'This tragic loss of a valued member of our team has affected us all greatly.' The trust extended its condolences to Mr Terre's wife, who is also a member of the Buckinghamshire healthcare family. Advertisement

In the clips people stand on both sides of the road and applaud the hearse as it makes its way past the hospital.

Other people throw flowers to say goodbye to her.

One video was posted by Ms Bilkis who said: 'The entire @NHSHomerton saying our farewell to our much loved & oldest serving colleague Sophie Fargan who passed away aged 78 fighting the #COVID19 fight. #RIPSOPHIEFAGAN'

Another person posted a video with the message: 'Sad my last goodbye to an NHS colleague from @NHSHomerton today. She was such a character. You heard her before you saw her. I had the privilege of knowing her from the age of 6 to 37 and worked with her for 7 years. RIP Sophie Fagan.'

A third said: '@NHSHomerton all outside our hospital to say goodbye to our deal colleague Sophie Fagan. She would have loved this send off. So sorry to lose you Sophie, thank you for all the good times. Xxx.'

Ms Fagan qualified as a nurse in the Eastern Hospital, Hackney in 1966.

She had worked as a community nurse and had been a care co-ordinator since 2000 at Homerton Hospital.

She never fully retired and could often be found meeting relatives and supporting staff when she was not due to be working.

Hospital chief executive Ms Fletcher said: 'Sophie wanted to make a difference and caring for the elderly was her passion.

'Her taste for the brightest and most colourful jumpers, her elegance and her ability to talk to everyone and anyone made her stand out in the hospital corridors.

'She was a passionate advocate for the patient and their relatives, exercising influence throughout the discharge process, including advocating for patients' ongoing care needs to the extent that she often pushed at the boundaries in these discussions on behalf of the patient.'

People stand on both sides of the road to pay their respects to Ms Fagan. Some people have their phones out to record the moment

Staff from Homerton Hospital, where Ms Fagan worked and died, stand on the pavement holding up signs as the hearse drives by

Ms Fagan's daughter-in-law Deni Fagan said she was dedicated to her son John and grandson Jack, 16.

She described Mrs Fagan as 'a fit and healthy lady who just loved life, nothing would have stopped her from working.

'She just refused to give up her job.... despite her age. It goes to show what kind of lady she was. We are really very proud of her.'

The Royal College of Nursing took to social media to express its condolences.

It posted on Twitter: 'It's with a heavy heart that we say goodbye to two members of East London's nursing family due to Covid-19.

'Our deepest condolences are with the family and friends of Michael Allieu and Sophie Fagan. Their commitment, passion, and dedication will never be forgotten.'

Ms Fagan, circled, qualified as a nurse in the Eastern Hospital, Hackney in 1966. She had worked as a community nurse and had been a care co-ordinator since 2000 at Homerton Hospital
A Lehigh Valley attorney who has admitted bilking clients out of $2.7 million over several years through a Ponzi scheme will be disbarred starting next month.

Todd H. Lahr, 60, of Lower Nazareth Township, submitted a statement of resignation, which has been sealed, according to a news release. On Thursday, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court entered an order that Lahr is disbarred effective June 13.

The move comes after Lahr, who practiced out of South Whitehall Township law office, pleaded guilty April 23 in federal court to four counts of wire fraud, two counts of securities fraud, and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud.

From 2012 through 2019, prosecutors say Lahr worked with others in a scheme targeting Lahrs clients, asking them to invest in securities for fake companies THL Holdings LLC and Ferran Global Holdings Inc.

According to his website, Lahr has practiced law for more than 30 years and his practice includes estate planning, real estate, business law and personal injury.

Instead, the money went to Lahrs home mortgage, personal debt and tuition for his child. What he didnt spend, prosecutors say, he used to cover the scheme by paying prior investors.

In addition to the federal criminal case, the SEC is pursuing a civil complaint against Lahr and another individual.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
Retail Excellence Ireland group chief executive David Fitzsimons has warned that the shopping experience when restrictions are eased is going to be pretty horrible.

Speaking on RTE radios Morning Ireland he said: It's going to be functional. We're going to actively discourage customers from browsing and touching product - it's going to be pretty horrible.
China commits to probe alleged exploitation of Indonesian sailors: Foreign Ministry

by Apriza Pinandita

May 15,2020 | Source: The Jakarta Post

Indonesia and China are working together closely to investigate alleged human rights abuses against dozens of Indonesian crewmen aboard Chinese fishing vessels.



The allegations emerged recently with the report of four Indonesian sailors registered to Chinese fishing ship Long Xing 629, who died after reportedly enduring poor working conditions aboard the ship.



A viral report by South Korea's Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) on the alleged exploitation has sparked an outcry in Indonesia, with members of the public questioning the conditions faced by Indonesian sailors while working on board.



The Foreign Ministry said Jakarta and Beijing had discussed the case and the Chinese government had expressed its commitment to embark on further investigation based on the preliminary information and investigation by Indonesian authorities.



China is open for any follow-up and findings from the investigation carried out by Indonesia, Foreign Ministry spokesman Teuku Faizasyah said in a virtual press briefing on Wednesday, adding that authorities of the two countries would coordinate.



Faizasyah said the Indonesian ambassador in Beijing had met with consular officials from the Chinese Foreign Ministry and had been informed about the commitment for an investigation, including to communicate directly with the ship operator, Dalian Ocean Fishing Co.



The South China Morning Post (SCMP) cited crewmen of the Long Xing 629 as saying that they were sometimes forced to work for up to two days without rest, had been subjected to violence and discrimination and faced hunger and dehydration.



The Chinese foreign ministry said on Monday it was investigating the matter but added that some of the allegations were inconsistent with information it had gathered, though it did not elaborate, SCMP reports.



The Indonesian crewmen who have returned to Indonesia are reportedly still waiting for thousands of dollars in unpaid wages.



Foreign Ministry director for citizen protection Judha Nugraha said Wednesday that 14 crew members who had returned were undergoing questioning by the National Polices Criminal Investigation Department.



The investigation was aimed at shedding light on conditions aboard the vessels during months at sea, and the results would be consolidated with the findings of the Chinese authorities.



Judha said the families of the deceased had received compensation from the operator of the vessels.



However, we are still trying to conclude the payment of [unpaid] wages and insurance. It involves various parties, including the [ship operator], Dalian Ocean Fishing, and manning agencies in Indonesia and China, Judha said during the briefing.



Jakarta is expediting the process so that their rights can be fulfilled according to their seafarers employment agreement.

 2016 - 2020 PT. Niskala Media Tenggara

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In Long Beach, Dr. Visal Nga pulls out his Khmer to speak to Cambodian patients about the virus he suspects is striking them harder than other Asians.

Most are refugees like him who left behind a country riven by genocide. But post-traumatic stress disorder followed many of them to Long Beach -- home to the most Cambodians outside of Cambodia. So did the familiar gnaw of poverty, and new problems -- high rates of diabetes and hypertension -- all factors linked to the worst outcomes for COVID-19 patients.

This is not to mention, Nga said, that many Cambodian Americans face heightened exposure to the virus from holding service jobs and living in large, multi-generational households.

Dr. Visal Nga treats many Cambodian patients at St. Mary's Medical Center.

"Some of my patients have six people living in one single home, because it's expensive to live in Long Beach," said Nga, who works at St. Mary's Medical Center and is part of the Cambodian Health Professionals Association of America. "If one person gets infected, the entire family gets infected."

Nga would like to see if the data matches his concerns. The problem is public health departments are not breaking out COVID-19 data by ethnicity. For now, the city's tens of thousands of Cambodians and other Southeast Asians are categorized under the broad label of "Asian," masking any differences in how the coronavirus is treating ethnic groups with highly contrasting socioeconomic and health characteristics.

What we do know about the health data from Long Beach calls for deeper investigation: Asians make up 15% of those hospitalized for COVID-19 in the city, while comprising 13% of its population. Confirmed infections among Asians in Long Beach -- 14% of the total caseload -- is also slightly higher than their population share. That's not true elsewhere in L.A. County, where so far, existing data suggests a lower infection rate for Asians.

But without specifics, it's hard assess the true impact in Long Beach. Never has the absence of this information seemed so dire than during a pandemic.



"COVID-19 is revealing the importance of having disaggregated data to really reveal who is being impacted disproportionately within our communities," said Quyen Dinh, executive director of the Southeast Asia Resource Action Center.

Dinh said that disaggregated data could be used to allocate language and culturally-competent resources to fight the coronavirus in Southeast Asian communities.

(The Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC) and Asian Americans Advancing Justice-Los Angeles (AAAJ-LA) )

"My heart just shuts down thinking about elders who may be in hospitals right now without any interpretation support," Dinh said.

In Long Beach, it is impossible to distinguish what Cambodians' share of its 153 COVID-19 cases among Asians is. But the city's health and human services director indicated Wednesday that her department could start capturing more data.

"That's something that we've been having some requests to do," Kelly Colopy said. "We're trying to determine how we can start to do that."

A 2015 march through Long Beach to commemorate the Cambodian genocide. (Susanica Tam)

Colopy said that 60 city employees are in the process of getting trained on how to do contact tracing that will involve interviewing patients.

"There is the potential at that point to ask further information, to maybe break down the Asian category into the Cambodian population and others," Colopy said.

Colopy said the city's health inequities team has so far been working more in African American and Pacific Islander communities -- both especially hard-hit by the virus -- but will likely be doing outreach among the city's Cambodian residents. Colopy's department has held a digital town hall in Spanish; she said the same could be done in Khmer.

Laura Som, left, is the executive director and founder of The Maye Center in Long Beach. (Photo courtesy of The Maye Center)

Laura Som is eager to help the city get better information. She leads the The MAYE Center for Healing and Cultivation of Self in Long Beach, which serves refugees dealing with trauma; many are older Cambodians who fled the Khmer Rouge regime decades ago. Lately, she's also been helping community members struggling with food insecurity and job losses caused by the pandemic.

"With the coronavirus, it severely affects our community because we're already vulnerable," Som said. "This is more like a compounded trauma that's just hitting us from all angles." '

She said Cambodian-specific health information could help the community get the help it needs. She can already envision compiling a list of COVID-19 patients with their addresses, ages and phone numbers that could be shared with city officials.

Seeing as many of her clients are distrustful of government, she said, they might be more apt to talk to someone like her, or other trusted community leaders.
Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan has appealed to all states and Union Territories to ban sale of tobacco products and spitting in public places in line with the orders of the Rajasthan and Jharkhand governments to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection.

In a letter to all state health ministers, Vardhan said smokeless tobacco users have a tendency to spit in public places or otherwise and therefore, increase health risks especially those of spreading contagious diseases like COVID-19, tuberculosis, swine flu, encephalitis and others.

"Use of smokeless tobacco also creates an unhygienic environment which further spreads the diseases. Large gathering at the retail outlets where smokeless tobacco products are sold, also pose the risk of spread of COVID-19," he said.

In the letter dated May 11, the Union minister underlined that tobacco use is a major threat to public health globally. He also mentioned the Indian Council of Medical Research's (ICMR) appeal to the public not to consume and spit smokeless tobacco products in public places.

Chewing tobacco products and areca nut increases production of saliva followed by a very strong urge to spit. Spitting in public places could enhance the spread of the COVID-19, Vardhan said.

"By banning spitting in public places, states and UTs can help in achieving not only Swachh Bharat but also Swasth Bharat (Clean India and Healthy India)," he said.

Vardhan also mentioned the May 1 guidelines issued by the Union Home Ministry under the National Disaster Management Act, 2005, which stipulate that "spitting in public places shall be punishable with fine as may be prescribed by the state/UT local authority and consumption of liquor, pan, gutkha, tobacco etc in public places is not allowed".

Appreciating the efforts taken by Rajasthan and Jharkhand in this direction, the Union Health Minister urged all states to take similar measures and create widespread awareness regarding the harm of spitting in public places.

The Rajasthan government had by an ordinance banned spinning in public places and sale of paan, gutka and tobacco in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. The Jharkhand too has imposed a complete ban on all types of tobacco products to prevent spitting in public places that could increase the spread of coronavirus infection.

Tobacco smoking is a known risk factor for many respiratory infections and increases the severity of related diseases. A review of studies by public health experts convened by WHO on April 29 found that smokers are more likely to develop severe diseases, compared to non-smokers, said Binoy Mathew, senior programme officer of Voluntary Health Association of India.

He said that according to the Global Adult Tobacco Survey, with 268 million or 28.6 per cent of all adults in India, the country has the second largest number of tobacco users in the world.

At least 12 lakh die from tobacco-related diseases every year, Mathew said.

Those keen to quit smoking and smokeless products can avail of free of charge telephone-based services launched by the government. The Ministry of Health has set up a National Tobacco Quit Line Services to provide counselling services to help tobacco consumers quit the habit.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Message: Sitting with the questions about why there is suffering
Education Minister Grace Grace says she played no part in the appointment of a principal at a new high school at Dutton Park and has not been called to give evidence as part of a corruption probe into the matter.

Former deputy premier Jackie Trad resigned from the frontbench last week after the Crime and Corruption Commission launched a formal investigation into her alleged interference in the appointment of the new Inner City South State Secondary College principal in her South Brisbane electorate.

Education Minister Grace Grace says she was not aware of an Education Department official's interactions with Jackie Trad. Credit:Darren England/AAP

Ms Trad denies any wrongdoing and has previously said she met with two candidates for the position at the request of the Education Department.

A senior Education Department executive was stood aside on Monday night in relation to the matter.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 16:36:40|Editor: huaxia

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BAGHDAD, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The extremist Islamic State (IS) militants on Friday shot dead six family members in an attack on their house in Salahudin province north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad, a provincial police source said.

The attack took place in the early hours of the day when IS militants broke into a house in Jillam area near the city of Samarra, some 120 km north of Baghdad, and opened fire at the family members, killing a man, three of his sons, a woman and a child, Mohammed al-Bazi told Xinhua.

The attackers also burned the house, two cars, and the family's wheat farm as well as a number of livestock before they fled the scene, al-Bazi said.

Iraqi security forces rushed to the scene and launched a search campaign looking for the attackers, he added.

The security situation in Iraq has been improving since Iraqi security forces fully defeated the IS militants across the country late in 2017.

However, IS remnants have since melted in urban areas or resorted to deserts and rugged areas, carrying out frequent guerilla attacks against security forces and civilians. Enditem
Illustration of the Five Eyes (FVEY)

By Nie Shuyi

Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister, continuously posted on social media on May 10, local time, asking the US, the Australian government, the Five Eyes (FVEY) and Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, demanding answers for what's the top-secret intelligence of the 15-page so-called "virus source" dossier.

Rudd pointed out that the fundamental purpose of this farce is to get rid of the accusations of ineffectiveness in the fight against COVID-19 of the Trump administration, and Murdoch was helping Trump to get re-elected.

In addition to Australia, the UK and Canada also do not support the relevant statement about "Top Secret Intelligence."According to a report on the website of the US Foreign Policy magazine, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that it is too early to conclude the "origin of the virus"; a spokesperson for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said that the origin and spread process of the virus "needs work with international partners including China."

The friction between the countries of the FVEY caused by the pandemic is actually just the tip of the iceberg of disputes and disagreements within the FVEY over the past years. At a time when American unilateralism is on the rise, this once-integrated global intelligence network has already cracked because of complex geopolitics and national interests.

The FVEY composed of the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand can be said to be the top "circle of friends" of the US global intelligence network. But in fact, the FVEY is not an equal alliance structure. The FVEY was born out of the technical intelligence cooperation system established by the US and the UK during World War II. After the end of World War II, the cooperation agreement was revised, and the three countries, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, joined as independent countries to form the so-called FVEY.

During the Cold War, the FVEY gradually formed a pattern with the US as the core, the UK and Canada as the second echelon, and Australia and New Zealand as the third echelon. After the 9/11 attacks, Australia was gradually promoted to the same position as Canada, forming a flat pattern with the US as the core, the UK, Canada, and Australia on an equal footing while New Zealand is relatively weak. From this perspective, the FVEY is nothing but the grasp of the intelligence network that the US uses to monitor the world. The intelligence services of the other four countries are nothing but tools of the American intelligence service.

In the meantime, the conflict of interest among the FVEY countries is also intensifying. Since Trump took office, under the "America first" or even "America No.1" thinking, the zero-sum game thinking of the US has also harmed the interests of the other four countries. Taking the construction of 5G networks as an example, the Trump administration has used "Huawei jeopardizes the security interests of Western countries" as an excuse and asked the other four countries to cut with Huawei in the past two years. But for these countries, the abandonment of Huawei may bring substantial economic losses.

Canada's Globe and Mail reported that if Huawei's products and services were banned, it would cause damage to Canada's largest telecommunications companies, including Bell and Telus, by more than $1 billion, and severely affect the deployment of 5G networks. Despite the strong opposition of the US, the British government decided in April this year to allow Huawei to participate in the construction of 5G networks in the UK and emphasized that the government will not discuss the decision again. This also shows that although the four countries still rely on the US in the field of intelligence and security, they are also reluctant to follow the US in a circumstantial areafor their own national interests.

The false intelligence incident once again made other FVEY countries realize how brazen the American politicians can ignore the interests of their allies for the sake of political self-interest. In fact, under the constant erosion of US unilateralism, the continued deepening of internal suspicions is a foreseeable general trend, whether in the FVEY or America's alliance system.

(The author is a commentator at Haiwainet.cn, People's Daily Overseas Edition.)
Kinopoisk.ru.com scored 40 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

This CoolSocial report was updated on 7 Apr 2015, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the kinopoisk homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if kinopoisk has a Facebook fan page). This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the kinopoisk homepage on Twitter + the total number of kinopoisk followers (if kinopoisk has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the kinopoisk homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the kinopoisk homepage on StumbleUpon. The total number of people who shared the kinopoisk homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button.

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PAGE TITLE  -            ,  20 DESCRIPTION  -    KEYWORDS  ,  ,   ,  ,  ,  ,  ,  2014 215,  , , ,  ,  ,   ,  OTHER KEYWORDS youtube faccebook twitter, youtube faccebook twitter google, faccebook twitter google , youtube faccebook , youtube faccebook twitter, faccebook twitter google, youtube faccebook



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DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE Russian WINDOWS-1251Russian DETECTED LANGUAGE Russian Russian SERVER nginx OPERATIVE SYSTEM

Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0) Operative System running on the server. Type of server and offered services. Character set and language of the site. The language of kinopoisk.ru.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms.

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A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. The type of Facebook page. The URL of the found Facebook page. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The total number of people who like website Facebook page. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users.

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Pakistan will resume domestic flights in a phased manner from Saturday after the government eased some of the restrictions imposed following the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the country that has claimed the lives of over 800 people.

The Pakistan government last week said that it would begin a phased lifting of the lockdown due to its effect on the economy and the workforce.

Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) announced to resume the domestic flights operations from Saturday, The Express Tribune reported.

Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Serene Air will operate flights in the morning and afternoon.

It said that 68 flights will operate from Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, 32 from Allama Iqbal International Airport in Lahore, 32 from Islamabad International Airport, eight from Quetta International Airport and four from Bacha Khan International Airport in Peshawar.

According to the Ministry of National Health Services, the nationwide tally of the coronavirus cases on Friday soared to 37,218 after 1,430 new cases were reported.

A total of 10,155 patients have so far recovered from the virus. The total number of COVID-19 deaths in the country also reached 803 with 33 new fatalities reported during the last 24 hours.

Punjab province reported 13,914 cases, Sindh 14,099, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa 5,423, Balochistan 2,310, Islamabad 866, Gilgit-Baltistan 501 and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir 105.

So far, 344,450 tests have been conducted, including 13,700 during the last 24 hours.

After easing the restrictions for the last four days, the Punjab government on Friday imposed a three-day lockdown throughout the province.

All markets across the province will remain closed except the grocery stores which will remain open from 9am to 5pm. Medical stores will operate even after 5pm.

Meanwhile, Prime Minister Imran Khan joined a call by world leaders for a "peoples' vaccine" to combat the coronavirus.

"We must work together to beat this virus," the Prime Minister's Office quoted Khan as saying.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Local council elections will proceed in October despite protests that doing so would set back womens representation and give incumbents an unfair advantage.

But there will be no voting in person at the elections, with the state government deciding that all ballots will be held via postal vote for the first time.

Local Government Minister Adem Somyurek. Credit:Eddie Jim

The decision to hold council elections on October 24 as originally scheduled comes as Labor prepares to reclaim influence at local government level after ceding that ground to the Greens in recent years.

Local government expert and campaigner for women on councils, Ruth McGowan, said holding elections this year favoured incumbent councillors, with men already holding the majority of seats.
King Philippe of Belgium wore a face mask as he dropped his youngest daughter Princess Eleonore off at school today, as the country reopened its classrooms following coronavirus lockdown.

But Princess Eleonore, 12, was not wearing a face mask or gloves as King Philippe accompanied her to the school's doors in Brussels.

The Belgian Royal Palace shared photographs and a video of the moment on Twitter, showing King Philippe chatting with Eleonore, before stopping to adhere to social distancing rules.

King Philippe wore a face mask and gloves as he took a smiling Princess Eleonore, 12, to her school doors in Brussels, following months of closures due to the coronavirus pandemic

The Belgian Royal Palace shared a video of the moment on Twitter as they thanked the teachers for 'receiving the students in a safe way'

Teachers stood at the doors ready to welcome children back after lockdown and King Philippe briefly chatted with the staff from a safe distance.

On Twitter, the Royal Palace thanked the teachers and management for allowing the steady return of students to schools across the country.

The tweet said: 'Thanks to the teachers in management for receiving the students in a safe way.

'Thank you to school administrators, teachers and educators for the preparations and adaptations aimed at allowing a partial and gradual return of students.'

Queen Mathilde was not seen dropping her daughter off, but was pictured with Eleonore on May 14 as they visited visited Kamiano, a restaurant for the homeless in Brussels.

Queen Mathilde (middle) was was pictured with Princess Eleonore (right) on May 14 as they visited visited Kamiano, a restaurant for the homeless in Brussels

Princess Eleonore (middle) handed out food packages to the homeless and vulnerable amid the coronavirus pandemic

King Philippe (centre) and Queen Mathilde with their children Princess Elisabeth (second right), Prince Gabriel (left), Prince Emmanuel (right) and Princess Eleonore (front left)

They helped to hand out food packages to the homeless and vulnerable.

King Philippe and Queen Mathilde are also parents to Princess Elisabeth, 18, Prince Gabriel, 16 and Prince Emmanuel, 14.

Elisabeth, who has been studying at UWC Atlantic College in Wales, had to return to Belgium in March before lockdown measures were put in place.

The family have been staying at their home in Laeken since the coronavirus pandemic restrictions were introduced across the nation.

Schools were granted permission to gradually reopen earlier this week, after Belgium began easing coronavirus measures on May 4.

Students wearing protective face masks practice social distancing at the courtyard of the flemish secondary school during its reopening in Brussels

Newlyweds Florian and Disha (pictured above) celebrate seal their marriage with a kiss at the Grand Place in Brussels

An easing of measures mean that parents are now able to attend weddings. New guidance says that marriages can go ahead 'in the presence of the spouses, their parents, their witnesses and the civil servant of the Registry office'

Some weddings have still being going ahead, despite the pandemic. Above, a bride is pictured wearing her face mask as a form of protection in front of the town hall

A teacher takes a child's temperature at the entrance of a flemish primary school during its reopening as a small part of Belgian children head back to their schools

But class sizes must be smaller than normal and social distancing measures have to be in place at all times.

Some schools are using chalk markings and temperature checks, amongst other measures, to make sure the small amount of children back at schools remain safe.

The country begun a three-stage lockdown exit plan earlier this month after seven weeks of confinement measures.

Phase two of the plan will begin on Monday 18 May, but moving forward each stage will be monitored based on the spread of the virus.

Belgium have recorded 54,644 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 8,959 fatalities, according to official figures.
Indonesia's tropical holiday island of Bali could reopen to tourists in less than five months as the destination successfully controls its coronavirus outbreak.

Tourism Ministry secretary Ni Wayan Giri Adnyani said on Friday that Bali could open its doors to tourists as early as October.

As of Friday, Bali had reported 343 coronavirus cases and four deaths, a much lower fatality rate compared with 16,496 cases and 1,076 deaths in the whole archipelago.

If the infection curve continues to improve, the tourism ministry will ramp up promotion for parts of the country, including Bali, between June and October.

An Australian tourist takes in the view woman looks out to sea in Kuta, Lombok, Indonesia. Tourism Ministry secretary Ni Wayan Giri Adnyani said on Friday that they want to open up tourist destinations, including Bali, in October of this year

Bali, the city of Yogyakarta and Riau islands province are high on the list for the tourism ministry to at least partially reopen by October.

Bali's economy depends largely on visitors. Its gross domestic product (GDP) contracted 1.14 per cent on-year in January-March, compared with a 2.97 per cent GDP expansion nationally.

Foreign tourist arrivals into Indonesia plunged more than 60 per cent in March, compared to the year-earlier month, with Chinese arrivals sliding more than 97 per cent.

Last year, 1.23 million Australians visited Bali - a rise of 5.24 per cent on 2018 figures.

A woman takes in the view at Nusa Penida, Indonesia. If the infection curve continues to improve, the Indonesian tourism ministry will ramp up promotion for parts of the country, including Bali, between June and October

Chief Medical Officer Brendan Murphy said travel restrictions could be lifted after three to four months on Friday, meaning that people may be able to travel come August or September.

'I think we are thinking of a planning framework of three to four months in terms of our next steps,' he said.

'We're looking at, potentially, whether we can relax some distancing with very strong compensation by even stronger public health measures.

'But I wouldn't be envisaging any material changes to border measures in that three to four-month period.'

Australian citizens and permanent residents currently cannot travel overseas for holiday purposes due to COVID-19 restrictions.

Exemptions are granted if travel is for provision of aid, essential business, medical treatment that is unavailable in Australia, compassionate or humanitarian grounds and national interest.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 06:17:11|Editor: huaxia

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ZAGREB, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A common European economic recovery plan was in the focus of Friday's video conference of European ministers responsible for internal market and industry.

The ministers discussed the Joint Roadmap for Recovery, which was presented in late April by the presidents of the European Council and the European Commission. The roadmap aims to address the need for a comprehensive recovery plan and investment that will help relaunch economies hurt by the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The upcoming months will be crucial for restoring the EU's Single Market and shaping the future of the European industry. As the health crisis recedes, it is important to avoid an uncoordinated recovery, given the strong economic interdependence of the Member States of the EU," said Croatian Economy Minister Darko Horvat who chaired the conference that was organized by the Croatian Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

The meeting was also attended by the European Commission's Executive-Vice President Margrethe Vestager and the European Commissioner for the Internal Market Thierry Breton.

According to the ministry's press release, the Joint Roadmap consists of four key areas: a full functioning and revitalized single market, an unprecedented investment effort, global action, and a functioning system of governance.

Ministers agreed that green transition and digital transformation will have a central role in the efforts to revitalize and modernize the European economy. Investments in clean and digital technologies will help in creating new jobs and new economic growth, the press release says. Enditem
PHILIPSBURG:--- Representatives of the Harbor Group of Companies made a courtesy visit to the police station on Thursday midday, May 24th, 2020. During this visit, the management of the Harbor Group of Companies made a donation of Personal Protective Equipment to members of the police force.

This is the second donation the Police force received from the Harbor Group over the last few weeks. The protective equipment will assist the police, as first responders, to continue to do our work in helping to control the spread of the virus.

The equipment provided included surgical masks, and hand sanitizers will be distributed among the departments in the justice chain.

On behalf of the police force, C.O.O. Ms. C. Pecht thanked the Harbor Group and members of the community who have assisted and supported police officers and the entire justice team during this period.

KPSM Press Release.
A Detroit man was arrested after threatening to kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attoreny General Dana Nessel in messages sent using social media, the Wayne County Prosecutors Office says.

Robert S. Tesh, 32, sent credible threats to kill the governor and attorney general to an acquaintance using a social media messenger on Thursday, April 14, the Wayne County Prosecutors Office said in a charging statement issued Friday.

Tesh, whos since been arraigned and released on bond with a GPS tracking tether, is charged with making a threat of terrorism, punishable by up to 20 years in prison.

The alleged facts in this case lay out a very disturbing scenario," Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a prepared statement. "We understand that these times can be stressful and upsetting for many people. But we will not and cannot tolerate threats like these against any public official who are carrying out their duties as efficiently as they can.

"You can disagree with their positions or their methodology, but you absolutely cannot act as this defendant allegedly acted or you will be charged criminally.

The arrest comes a day after hundreds of protesters converged at the state Capitol in opposition of Whitmer and her stay-home orders enacted to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Prior to the rally, threatening behavior during prior armed protests at the Michigan Capitol prompted Democrats to call for a gun ban in the Capitol building and drew a public scolding from Sen. Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clark Lake.

My statement on so-called protestors who used intimidation and the threat of physical harm to stir up fear and feed rancor. I condemn their behavior and tactics. They do not represent the Senate Republicans. At best, those so-called protestors are a bunch of jackasses. pic.twitter.com/641jOzXRDi  Sen. Mike Shirkey (@SenMikeShirkey) May 1, 2020

Concerns escalated this week after the Detroit Metro Times published a story highlighting several explicit threats made against Whitmer in various Facebook groups, including suggestions that the governor be hanged, shot or beaten.

A small tussle broke out at Thursdays Capitol protest when someone arrived with a brunette-haired Barbie Doll attached to a noose. Bystanders stripped the man of his effigy.

Tesh is scheduled to return to court in Wayne County for a probable cause hearing on June 3. The specific threats hes accused of making in the messages have not been released by authorities.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Related stories:

Noose prompts Capitol scuffle

Man behind Capitol scuffle has record

Judge to rule on legality of Michigan state of emergency

Thursday, May 14: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

"On (Thursday, April 14) it is alleged that communicated through a social media messenger with an acquaintance making credible threats to kill Governor Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel. Later that day, the Detroit Police Department arrested Defendant Tesh at his home located in the 2100 block of Jefferson in Detroit.
Riot police raise their pepper spray weapons inside a shopping mall as they disperse pro-democracy protesters during a rally, in Hong Kong, China, on May 10, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

Hong Kong Leader Rejects Protesters Call for Independent Police Probe

HONG KONGThe Beijing-backed leader of Hong Kong on May 15 ruled out an independent inquiry into allegations of police brutality against pro-democracy protesters, though she did accept a watchdogs recommendations on tear gas and training.

I disagree and wont do it, Carrie Lam said of the demonstrators demand for an independent probe, speaking at a news conference against a backdrop of pictures of blazing protests and a banner saying, The Truth About Hong Kong.

Months of protests since mid-2019 against Chinas control of the former British colony ebbed during the coronavirus crisis, though arrests of activists in recent days have revived frictions.

Demonstrators accuse police of excessive force, while authorities say protesters have been riotous and provocative.

Lam said an independent inquiry would weaken police powers, though the government will accept recommendations from a police watchdog, the Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC).

In its long-awaited, 999-page report, the Lam-appointed IPCC on Friday called for a review of guidelines on the use of tear gas and public order training for police.

Riot police disperse protesters during a protest at Mong Kok in Hong Kong, China on May 10, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

The report said police acted within guidelines though there was room for improvement. Accusations of police brutality must not be used as a weapon of political protest, the IPCC added.

In one of the most controversial episodes, the IPCC said it did not find evidence of police collusion with gang members during a July 21 mob attack in Yuen Long district.

The report did, however, identify deficiencies in police deployment during the incident, when a mob of white-shirted men beat protesters and others with sticks and poles.

The Yuen Long attack intensified a backlash against police who some accused of deliberately responding slowly.

Turning A Blind Eye

Opposition politicians were unimpressed.

The report has turned a blind eye to disproportional police brutality, pro-democracy lawmaker Fernando Cheung said. This report has eliminated what little credibility is left of the IPCC.

Another lawmaker Kenneth Leung, a former member of the IPCC, said many recommendations are really piecemeal, superficial, and general and were insufficient to resolve the issues.

Rights groups including Amnesty International have backed protesters complaints over the disproportionate use of force by police and the arrest of more than 8,000 people.

The IPCC report said Hong Kong risked being dragged into an era of terrorism, echoing comments by senior Hong Kong and Chinese authorities.

During the most intense clashes, police dispersed protesters with tear gas, water cannons, rubber bullets, and several live rounds in the air, in many cases warning crowds beforehand with colored signal banners.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam speaks during a news conference, in Hong Kong, China on May 15, 2020. (Jessie Pang/Reuters)

Protesters, many clad in black and wearing masks, responded by throwing petrol bombs at police and central government offices, stormed the Legislative Council, trashed metro stations, and blocked roads.

The protests started as a campaign against a now-shelved extradition bill that would have let criminal suspects be sent to mainland China for trial but evolved into broader calls for greater democracy.

Members of the IPCC, which reviews the work of the Complaints Against Police Office, an internal police department, are appointed by Lam. In December, five foreign experts quit from advisory roles because of doubts about its independence.

Police handling of protests came under fresh scrutiny on the weekend when officers pepper-sprayed journalists and made some kneel in a cordoned-off area. In a rare move, the police chief said on Tuesday his officers should have acted more professionally.

By Jessie Pang, Sarah Wu, Marius Zaharia, Twinnie Siu and Felix Tam
Ride-hailing services have become a vital transport option for people in Vietnam, but many app-based motorcycle taxi drivers risk accidents with reckless driving - PHOTO: THANH HOA Ride-hailing services are a vital transport option for people in Vietnam, and with the rise of new technologies, these app-based services have become increasingly popular. Yet, little is known about risky driving behaviors and their association with traffic crashes among app-based motorcycle taxi drivers. Researchers from RMIT University and transport scientists from three Vietnamese universities have examined risky road behaviors in the recently published study Risky behaviors associated with traffic crashes among app-based motorcycle taxi drivers in Vietnam, which surveyed over 600 drivers from Hanoi, HCMC and Danang. Dr Chris De Gruyter from the RMIT Centre for Urban Research noted that mobile phone use while driving was the most frequent risky behavior listed, with 52% of respondents engaging in this activity. Mobile phones are considered a necessary tool for app-based motorcycle taxi drivers, so this result is not surprising, he said. Drivers need to use their smartphones to receive ride requests from customers and contact them if necessary to confirm pick-up points. Some drivers also use their smartphones as a GPS device, which can impact their driving performance. Neglecting to use signals when making a turn was the second most common risky behavior among app-based motorcycle taxi drivers. Failure to use turn signals is also considered to be significantly associated with vehicle crashes, Dr De Gruyter remarked. Nearly 31% of our surveyed drivers admitted they did not signal when making a turn at least several times a year. The study found student drivers and those on lower incomes were more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as encroaching into car lanes, exceeding speed limits, running red lights, recklessly overtaking and driving under the influence of alcohol. Previous research shows that drivers with lower levels of income tend to engage in risky driving and were involved in traffic crashes when attempting to increase their income by working longer hours, Dr De Gruyter stated. We found that drivers working more than 50 hours per week were more likely to engage in most of the risky behaviors. Given that these app-based services are regulated by online ride-hailing firms, Dr De Gruyter noted that the reported incidents of risky driving behaviors among drivers was concerning. With the continual growth and expansion of these services in developing countries, targeted interventions are needed to reduce risky driving and crash rates among app-based motorcycle taxi drivers, he said. This points to an opportunity for ride-hailing firms to determine those at risk through increased exposure and to intervene to reduce risky driving. Increasing safety awareness among the identified groups through targeted training sessions organized by ride-hailing firms could help reduce the frequency of road accidents. SGT
The governments of Abu Dhabi and Dubai are discussing ways to prop up Dubai's economy by linking up assets in the two emirates, with Abu Dhabi's state fund Mubadala likely to play a key role in any deal, three sources familiar with the matter said.

Some economic sectors have come to a near standstill in Dubai during the coronavirus outbreak, and it faces its most severe downturn since a 2009 debt crisis. It lacks the oil wealth of Abu Dhabi to cushion the blow.

Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai after the 2009 crisis with a $10 billion government loan, which was subsequently rolled over, and $10 billion in bonds that Dubai issued to the central bank.

One of the sources said any support from Abu Dhabi agreed now would be "orchestrated through mergers of assets where Abu Dhabi and Dubai compete directly or where they have joint ownerships".

"The most likely deal to happen in the near term is a merger of the local stock markets," the source said, adding that bank mergers were also possible.

A second source confirmed the talks and said Mubadala, which manages around $230 billion in assets, would make "a big move into Dubai", but gave no details.

Mubadala declined comment. Abu Dhabi and Dubai did not respond to requests for comment on the talks.

The two emirates have a quiet rivalry. Dubai has developed quickly to become the Middle East's tourism, trade and business hub, while Abu Dhabi is the UAE's political capital because of its size and immense oil wealth. The consolidation of political power in Abu Dhabi began with the 2009 bailout.

The first source said talks were happening in an "elegant way," without the appearance of a direct bailout.

The UAE said on Wednesday it would review the structure and size of its government to make it "more agile and flexible".

"We may merge ministries and alter bodies. We will make changes," UAE Vice President Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum, who is also ruler of Dubai, said following three days of virtual meetings on the country's post-coronavirus strategy.

A third source said Mubadala was likely to be involved "at some stage" because the state fund was always involved whenever there was consolidation between the two emirates in the past.

Strategic Assets

Mergers took place after Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai following the 2009 crisis, during which Dubai's property market crashed, almost forcing some state-linked firms to default on billions of dollars of debt.

The UAE merged Dubai and Abu Dhabi aluminium firms to create Emirates Global Aluminium, held jointly by Mubadala and the Investment Corporation of Dubai.

"You have already seen a pattern of mergers and this will now accelerate," the first source said. "Essentially these bailouts will be engineered by having Abu Dhabi taking stakes in strategic assets owned by Dubai. It will happen over time."

London-based Capital Economics has said Dubai is the most vulnerable of the economies in the Middle East and North Africa to the economic damage caused by measures to curb the spread of the coronavirus, and it has said Dubai's economy could contract by at least 5-6% this year if the measures last into the summer.

Economic growth in Dubai was sluggish before the pandemic and hopes of benefiting from hosting the Expo world fair in October collapsed when the event was postponed to 2021.

Dubai has in recent weeks been in discussions with banks for several fundraising options including loans and privately placed bonds, sources familiar with the discussions have said.

It has also considered raising funds backed by road toll revenue, sources have said.

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KABUL, AFGHANISTANTaliban militants claimed responsibility Thursday for a truck bombing in Afghanistans southeastern province of Paktia, which left five dead, according to the Afghan Defence Ministry.

At least 20 other people were wounded, including five military personnel.

The bombing comes two days after attacks on a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar killed more than 50 people.

On Thursday, the U.S. government said it believed the extremist militia organization Islamic State conducted the horrific attacks on a maternity ward and a funeral earlier this week in Afghanistan.

ISIS has demonstrated a pattern for favouring these types of heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world, the U.S. special envoy for Afghan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, wrote on Twitter.

Unknown assailants had stormed the maternity ward of a hospital in Kabul on Tuesday and opened fire on pregnant women, mothers and newborns, killing at least 24 people.

The aid organization Doctors Without Borders has confirmed that one of its Afghan employees, a midwife, was among the casualties of the attack on the maternity ward.

The Taliban said the latest bombing in Paktia follows a government decision to resume an offensive against terrorist groups. It comes after the Taliban and the United States signed a peace deal in late February.

Earlier this week, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the countrys military to mount an offensive against the Taliban, the main militant group in the country. The Taliban described it as a declaration of war.

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Agriculture Minister Michael Creed is to appear before the Dail next week to face questions about an increase in cases of Covid-19 at meat processing plants.

The Siptu union has said around 600 workers at meat processing plants have now contracted the virus.

Independent TD Denis Naughten said Mr Creed is being called to explain how several meat processors across the country have seen a large proportion of their employees contract Covid-19.

Speaking in the Dail on Thursday, Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin has described the number of coronavirus clusters in meat processing plants as gravely serious.

He said: The situation with meat plants is gravely serious and it is not obvious that these clusters are being dealt with comprehensively.

Without calling for the shutting down of the sector, it seems very surprising that the blanket testing of a facility is followed by no interruption of work until the results are returned.

More needs to be done on this issue. Health authorities need to visit factory floors to see the reality Micheal Martin, Fianna Fail

Mr Naughten said there are clusters of infection surrounding meat plants where the levels of infection within the plants themselves is up on one third or, in some instances, half of the workforce.

And yet despite this, the Minister for Agriculture assured me in the Dail just two weeks ago that he was satisfied from the feedback from his officials in meat plants that everything was being done to minimise the spread on this infection.

Mr Naughten said staff did not self-isolate in the period between being tested and the results being returned, which seriously undermines the validity of the negative results.

He called on Health Minister Simon Harris to ensure that all such employees are now retested and given results in a timely manner.
Gerte Shavin, who along with her late husband, Seamour, hired renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright to design their longtime home on Missionary Ridge, has died.

Her son, David, sent an email that she died early Friday.

He added that he believes she was the last living original owner of a Wright home anywhere who was still in possession of the residence.

A full obituary on Mrs.

Shavin was to be sent out by Heritage Funeral Home in Chattanooga, but David added that she will be buried alongside her husband in the Workmens Circle Cemetery in Chattanooga.

I had an opportunity to interview Mrs. Shavin several times over the years, and always found her receptive to talking about the home.

The first time I talked with her was in 1987, when I worked at the Chattanooga News-Free Press. Interested in historic architecture, I had heard that a home on Missionary Ridge was designed by the noted architect Mr. Wright, who was known for his unique style that took into account architectural lines and getting the structures to fit their landscape in a complementary and aesthetically pleasing way.

So, I got up my nerve to call the Shavins after finding out they were the owners, and Mrs. Shavin graciously invited me in her New York-raised manner to come visit their residence at 334 N. Crest Road.

They said they had bought the lot in the late 1940s and were planning to use a local architect, but he moved out of town. They decided to go to the library to look for information on other local architects, but while there they also came across some of Mr. Wrights works.

On a whim, they decided to write him to at least see if he could recommend any area architects whose style was similar to his.

Although they were just admittedly a middle-class family with a limited home construction budget, to their pleasant surprise, he wrote them back with a recommendation of an architect  himself.

They ended up spending some brief time with him at his Taliesin home in Wisconsin, and Mrs. Shavin recalled the experience pleasantly in 1987.

We were apprehensive but within a minute or two he put us at ease, because here was a man who was living the kind of life he wanted to and creating things. He had no airs or pretensions and put you at ease, she said.

Although Mr. Wright was still a busy man, he eventually after some additional communication  and a little prodding -- drew the plans for a Usonian-style home of medium size and cost. He never came to the Chattanooga home during or after construction, they said, although they did work closely with one of his apprentices as the home made of Crab Orchard stone and Louisiana cypress took shape.

I had enjoyed my visit that first time with Mr. and Mrs. Shavin and hearing their knowledge and Mr. Shavins suggestion not to just write facts about the home but what I saw in an artistic sense. And to an observer, that included how part of the home uniquely runs down the east side of Missionary Ridge.

Fifteen years later, in 2002, after I started contributing some stories to chattanoogan.com, I remembered that the home was turning 50 years old. So, I called the Shavins on the phone again and went by and did another story at their invitation.

About that time, I knew a young woman from my church who was studying architecture at the University of Tennessee, and I told her I had previously interviewed the owners of the only Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home in Chattanooga. I ended up getting a tour for her and her mother a few months after that story ran, and Mrs. Shavin was again a great host as I accompanied them.

And then in 2011, after Mr. Shavin had died in 2005, I contacted Mrs. Shavin one more time just to get an update on the home, and she graciously talked with me for a few minutes. She was living with a grandchild by then in the home, and I think in later years she had seen an increase in requests for tours of her house, etc.

To my knowledge and from what she told me, she had tried to honor most of those requests when she was able.

I am not sure if a whole lot had been written in the local newspapers about the Wright house before I wrote that story in 1987. But after my two later stories in chattanoogan.com remained in Internet-land, I would occasionally get an email from someone  often from some city like Atlanta  wondering how they could go about getting a tour of the home.

I would usually pass along her public phone number and even called her once or twice after someone went so far as to ask me to help set up a tour. In recent years, knowing Mrs. Shavin was getting into her 90s, I just encouraged the one or two people who later emailed me to try writing her at the North Crest Road address.

Although all my dealings with her were just regarding the unique home in which she lived, she had a helping manner, I could tell, and I am sure that manifested itself in other areas of her life.

In his email on Friday, her son, David, tried to pass along some positive words about her as well and how the family hopes her friends celebrate her life.

Her favorite sermon in recent years was on the concluding lines from Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn  Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on Earth, and all ye need to know,  he said.



Her idea of a memorial would be for those who knew her to spend a few moments reading and reflecting upon that poem.

* * * * *

Below are links to the two previous stories written in chattanoogan.com on the Shavin family and their Frank Lloyd Wright-designed home:

https://www.chattanoogan.com/ 2002/12/17/30352/Frank-Lloyd- Wright-House-On-Ridge-Turns. aspx

https://www.chattanoogan.com/ 2011/2/11/194451/Gerte-Shavin- Still-Enjoying-Frank-Lloyd. aspx

* * * * *

Jcshearer2@comcast.net
In March and April alone, Mexico lost more than 700,000 jobs in the formal economy. The Inter-American Development Bank predicts that by year's end another 2 million people may be out of work. The National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy predicts the crisis could push as many as 10.7 million people - about 8.5 per cent of the population - into extreme poverty, defined as having a monthly income of less than $US67 ($103) in cities or $US60 in rural areas. Mexican wrestlers Avispa Dorada and Ave Rex (IWRG) are now training in isolation as the country reports a record number of infections over 24 hours. Credit:Getty Images Mexico recorded a new record one-day rise of cases on Thursday: 2409 new infections to bring its total confirmed coronavirus cases to 42,595. An additional 257 coronavirus deaths brought total fatalities to 4477. Authorities say the true number of deaths is almost certainly higher because relatively few COIVD-19 tests have been conducted.

"We are in the most difficult moment of the first wave of the epidemic," Mexico's coronavirus tsar, Hugo Lopez-Gatell, said on Thursday. He said Mexico was at the peak of its pandemic cycle and "could not relax measures", warning that the country needed to embrace a "new normality" amid threats of virus resurgence. On Thursday, government data showed more than half of hospitals in the capital were saturated with coronavirus patients. Mexico's Catholic bishops recently urged the president to redirect money from some of his pet infrastructure projects - including the construction of an $US8 billion oil refinery - to give cash payments to families, warning that in a country with no unemployment insurance, many were already going hungry. Some of the president's own policymakers have pushed for stimulus measures. Gerardo Esquivel, a leftist academic who was nominated by Lopez Obrador to the board of the central bank, has called for new spending programs that would give checks to those without work and tax breaks to small businesses.

Virtually all economists agree that governments should run a budget deficit in times of recession, Finance Minister Arturo Herrera Gutierrez wrote in a policy document late last year. Lopez Obrador has held firm. Though he campaigned on a promise to help lift the poor out poverty, he also vowed to drastically cut government spending, waste and corruption. Much of his popular appeal is derived from the austerity he practices in his own life. He has shunned the presidential palace in favour of a modest apartment in the building where he works and flies only on commercial airlines - and always in economy.

Lopez Obrador also appears to be guided by haunting memories of past economic disasters, including the government bailout of banks after the 1994 currency crash, in which taxpayers were stuck covering bad loans given to friends and family members of bank executives. "His entire political career he has spoken out against this," said Genaro Lozano, a political scientist at the Iberoamerican University in Mexico City. "One of the reasons he got to the presidency had to do with the fact that people were very angry about the use of public money for frivolities." Instead of passing economic stimulus measures, Lopez Obrador is taking what he considers a more direct approach to solving the financial crisis: pushing to reopen the economy. On Wednesday, nearly two months after he ordered a halt to all nonessential commerce, he said businesses and schools in hundreds of counties where coronavirus infections have not been reported can reopen beginning Monday, with the rest of the economy gradually restarting on June 1. He also said he had given the green light for three key industries to resume next week - construction, mining and the manufacture of cars and auto parts. "There's a light at the end of the tunnel," Lopez Obrador said.

Later in the day, Deputy Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said the auto, construction and mining industries in fact would not be allowed to reopen until June 1. News of factories reopening was welcomed by many US businesses that rely on cross-border trade and have been lobbying to lift restrictions, said Michael Camunez, president of the consulting firm Monarch Global Strategies and a former assistant secretary of the US Department of Commerce. The economies of Mexico, Canada and the United States have become ever-more integrated, yet each country has issued its own guidelines about which businesses could continue operating and which had to shut down. "That's created a lot of heartburn on both sides of the border," Camunez said. But others worry that Mexico is moving too fast, increasing the risk for another wave of contagion.

The governor of Puebla state, which is home to a large Volkswagen factory and dozens of parts manufacturers that supply it, criticised the decision by federal officials, saying it will erase hard-earned gains after weeks of social distancing. "They're going to ruin everything," said Governor Miguel Barbosa, who is a member of Lopez Obrador's Morena party. "And we are talking about this happening in the middle of the most critical moment of the pandemic." As of late April, Mexico had performed just 0.4 tests for every 1000 residents, according to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. That's the lowest rate among the organization's 37 countries . "Considering the underreporting ... returning to normal activities in two or three weeks seems impossible," political analyst Ezra Shabot wrote on Twitter. Others cited recent outbreaks in factories along the northern border where some work deemed essential has continued. Jose Carlos Moreno-Brid, an economist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico, said the pressure to lift restrictions is especially high because just 20 per cent of Mexican workers do jobs that can be performed at home.
Huaweis new P40 Lite is set to launch in South Africa during May 2020, offering flagship features and hardware at an affordable price.

The Huawei P40 Lite will be available on 18 May and will be priced at R6,499.

For this price, you receive an impressive FullView display and a modern design  powered by capable hardware. This includes the HiSilicon Kirin 810 chipset and 6GB of RAM.

Like its flagship counterparts, the P40 Lite has an impressive camera system, comprising four lenses  one of which houses a 48MP sensor.

One of the biggest changes the Huawei P40 Lite brings, however, is the integration of Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) with its EMUI 10 operating system, which is built on top of Android 10.

This means that users will have access to an ecosystem which is powered by Huaweis online services and AppGallery  Huaweis app store which supports local and international applications.

The Huawei P40 Lite will be one of the first smartphones in South Africa to come with Huawei Mobile Services (HMS) as standard, instead of Google Mobile Services.

This does not mean that you will be limited in your app choice, however, as the P40 Lite still uses the Android 10 operating system and has access to all of the tools that go along with it.

The addition of HMS also makes it easier for existing Huawei users to migrate to the P40 Lite, thanks to use of Huawei ID with native applications and functionality.

Additionally, users will be able to access services such as Gmail, YouTube, Chrome, Google Search, and Maps  and the ecosystem provides support for a number of methods to access these applications.

Huawei provided MyBroadband with a P40 Lite smartphone to try out ahead of the official launch, and our experience is detailed below.

Using Huawei Mobile Services

Using the Huawei P40 Lite with HMS is just as easy as using any previous Huawei smartphone, and the great improvements made to AppGallery and HMS made it easy to set it up and downlaod the applications and services of our choice.

When we first fired up the Huawei P40 Lite, we were presented with the familiar Android interface and setup process.

Instead of logging into our Google account, though, we were presented with a prompt to log in with our Huawei ID credentials.

This was simple and easy, and we noted that the setup process also allows you to migrate your data from your previous Android device  even it uses Google Mobile Services  thanks to Huaweis Phone Clone software.

After your account is set up and your applications and files have been migrated to the P40 Lite, you will be presented with the devices familiar Android interface.

Using the Huawei P40 Lite provides the same experience as using the companys previous-generation smartphones, and the device includes the same software features as other flagship devices on the market.

We were also installed a variety of applications on the device  including Facebook, WhatsApp, Instagram, Twitter, and Google Chrome.

AppGallery content selection

One of the biggest changes Huawei has made to its smartphone software ecosystem over the past few years is the overhaul of its AppGallery.

The Huawei app store is pre-installed on all Huawei smartphones, and it now offers a range of applications from international and local developers.

We found that we could access everything from local banking apps to platforms such as DStv Now and Showmax directly from within AppGallery on the P40 Lite.

Additionally, when you search for an app within AppGallery that is not listed on the platform, it provides recommendations on how to install this software from an official distributor, as well as popular alternatives which are available on the platform.

Using these features, we were able to quickly get all of the apps we would ever need working on the Huawei P40 Lite  many of which supported integration with the Huawei ecosystem.

Services such as Google Maps, YouTube, and Gmail were then accessible using web browsers, third-party solutions, and similar alternatives.

Our experience of the Huawei P40 Lite and its Huawei Mobile Services-based operating system was similar to previous Huawei Android devices, and the improved hardware offered by the P40 Lite made for an excellent user experience.
Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has urged Australia to adopt legislation banning international criminals from entry into the country.

Clooney is championing the introduction of the so-called Magnitsky Act, which also includes sanctions against human rights abusers.

She warned that the coronavirus pandemic is being used by governments to seize power.

"Governments have criminalised so-called fake news on the pandemic and had scores of journalists arrested while deadly untruths have spread. Meanwhile, international crimes from genocide in Iraq and Myanmar to war crimes in Syria and Yemen remain unpunished," she told an Australian parliamentary committee via video link from the US.

"At a time when authoritarian leaders are becoming more united and innovative in finding ways to abuse human rights, surely governments that are defending human rights should do the same," Clooney urged.

The United States, the United Kingdom and Canada have adopted such measures.

"I think it's time Australia joined the club," said Clooney.




Nigeria on Thursday, May 14, recorded one-hundred-and-ninety-three new cases of Coronavirus in the country.

The new figures reported on Thursday night by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC brings the total cases of COVID-19 in Nigeria to 5162.

However, Nigerians have taken to the microblogging site, Twitter, to react to the newly reported cases.

See below some of the reactions:

The numbers are reducing. Hopefully, the end is near Like this comment. Lets follow each other  Paul Bushman (@bushman_paul) May 14, 2020

God another result has dropped, please guide your children Guys Like my Tweet and Follow me, I Follow back immediately  Don Sunny  (@BossDonSunny) May 14, 2020

Glory be to God,the cases are reducing gradually,my All Might God see us through this pandemic Let grow together kindly like my comment and follow for a quick follow back.  Engr. Ayodele Oluwashola (@LSholay) May 14, 2020

Yep you are right but never the less cases are reducing drastically compare to the first week of lockdown ease.  Engr. Ayodele Oluwashola (@LSholay) May 14, 2020

God does not lose battles, and if we are united to him, we will never be overcome Stay safe If you arent following @ever_naija follow ASAP lets grow together.  AL-AMIN SALIS IBRAHIM (@ALAMIN_ASID) May 14, 2020

As coronavirus is ravaging de world now, Almighty God will uphold u and give u de grace to overcome the storm. Amen. Follow me and I will definitely follow back..  David Oresco (@Just_Oresco) May 14, 2020

If you test positive, are you immediately frog-marched to an isolation centre? And if most of these people are asymptomatic as seems to be the case, is that a good or bad thing?

Again, what proof is there about any of this besides these figures you foist on us every night?  IdleBody (@ChequerSpell) May 14, 2020

Meanwhile, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, NCDC, has revealed that people with the ages of 31 to 40 years are more likely to contract the deadly Coronavirus (COVID-19) in Nigeria.

In a report made available to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) on Thursday in Abuja, the NCDC, however, stated that more deaths have been recorded among older people of 60 years and above.

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SARASOTA, Fla., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- INVO Bioscience, Inc. (OTCQB: INVO), a medical device company focused on creating alternative treatments for patients diagnosed with infertility and developers of INVOcell, the world's only in vivo Intravaginal Culture System, today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.

Financial Results and Updates

Revenue for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 totaled $258,571 compared to $189,432 in Q1 2019, an increase of 36% from the comparable period in 2019. Revenue growth was driven by increased product sales in the U.S. related to the Company's U.S. commercialization partner, Ferring Pharmaceutical, and their ongoing marketing activities.

totaled compared to in Q1 2019, an increase of 36% from the comparable period in 2019. Revenue growth was driven by increased product sales in the U.S. related to the Company's U.S. commercialization partner, Ferring Pharmaceutical, and their ongoing marketing activities. Gross margin for the quarter ended March 31, 2020 was approximately 88% compared to approximately 94% in the quarter ended March 31, 2019 .

was approximately 88% compared to approximately 94% in the quarter ended . Incurred a net loss of $(1,444,392) during the quarter ended March 31, 2020 compared to a net loss of $(458,570) during the quarter ended March 31, 2019 , as a result of increased commercialization efforts, which included non-cash expenses totaling approximately $760,000 .

during the quarter ended compared to a net loss of during the quarter ended , as a result of increased commercialization efforts, which included non-cash expenses totaling approximately . The Company finished the quarter ended March 31, 2020 with a cash position of approximately $350,000 . On May 15, 2020 , the Company consummated a closing of its convertible note and unit purchase option offering, resulting in gross proceeds of $2.1 million .

with a cash position of approximately . On , the Company consummated a closing of its convertible note and unit purchase option offering, resulting in gross proceeds of . U.S. clinic locations trained to offer INVOcell have nearly tripled since our agreement with Ferring International Center, S.A. ("Ferring"). Ferring has established a website, www.invocell.com, which provides information for patients and health care professionals, in addition to providing a tool to search for clinic locations that offer INVOcell.

The Company's ticker symbol was changed to "INVO" to align our public market trading symbol with our corporate name and our innovative fertility solution to improve the consistency of our branding along with our overall recognition within the investment community.

Management Discussion

"Although the industry has been impacted by COVID-19 and the cadence in product ordering activity has been affected, we believe our annual goals remain achievable with a shift to the second half of the year. We also continue to advance a number of key initiatives aimed at increasing the adoption of INVOcell in the U.S. and around the world," commented Steve Shum, Chief Executive Officer of INVO Bioscience. "One critical advancement over the past few weeks was the April 2020 publishing of outcomes data by the Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology, or SART, which reflected increased usage of INVOcell (IVC) and clinical pregnancy success rates for 5-day incubation. We are pleased to see the increased adoption along with the further validation of the overall success rates using our technology. We also continue to ramp our commercialization efforts with the appointment of highly successful industry professionals covering key geographies and functions, which we believe will help to expand our international opportunities."

Recently Published 2018 Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology ("SART") Data*

The Society for Assisted Reproductive Technology ("SART") recently published the 2018 outcomes data in April 2020, which reflected increased usage of INVOcell and 5-day incubation results. This Retrospect data reflected an approximate 52% clinical pregnancy success rate for day-5 transfers, comparable to the 2017 data published last year.

Total SART Data 2017-2018 Day 5 IVC* SART IVC 5-Day TOTAL (2017 + 2018) < 35 35 - 37 38 - 40 41 - 42 > 42 Total Rate Cycles (Fresh + Frozen) 361 114 63 17 2 557

Clinical pregnancies 198 55 29 5 1 288 51.7% Live birth per transfer 156 45 23 4 1 229 41.1%

*INVO incubation period is country specific and is indicated for 3-5 days. In the US, the INVOcell Culture Device and Retention Device is not indicated for incubation periods exceeding 72 hours. FDA has not approved or cleared the product as safe and effective for use for incubation periods exceeding 72 hours (off-label). The Company has not studied the safety or efficacy of the device for incubation periods exceeding 72 hours and potential risks of off-label use is unknown. Reference US Instructions for Use (IFU) at https://www.invocell.com/hcp/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2019/04/INVOcell-Instructions-For-Use-Booklet_R9-1.pdf.

International Market Update

Africa and Eurasia: The Company previously executed distribution agreements in certain markets in Africa and Eurasia toward the end of 2019. Following execution of those agreements, the Company began the product registration and approval process in order to begin importing into those markets. While each market can vary in the time needed to complete such registrations, (from a few months to 6 months or more, depending on the market) these timelines were also impacted by COVID-19. The Company believes it is close to completing those registrations and expects to be in a position to begin delivering INVOcell to the respective partners or distributors in the second half of 2020.

and Eurasia: The Company previously executed distribution agreements in certain markets in and Eurasia toward the end of 2019. Following execution of those agreements, the Company began the product registration and approval process in order to begin importing into those markets. While each market can vary in the time needed to complete such registrations, (from a few months to 6 months or more, depending on the market) these timelines were also impacted by COVID-19. The Company believes it is close to completing those registrations and expects to be in a position to begin delivering INVOcell to the respective partners or distributors in the second half of 2020. India : INVO Biosciences' JV partnership, signed in January 2020 , is making progress toward opening the first dedicated INVO-only clinic. While there was an impact due to the pandemic, the Company believes the first clinic will come online before year end.

: INVO Biosciences' JV partnership, signed in , is making progress toward opening the first dedicated INVO-only clinic. While there was an impact due to the pandemic, the Company believes the first clinic will come online before year end. New Markets: INVO Bioscience is targeting a number of additional markets and has discussions underway in Canada , Mexico , Columbia , Spain , Macedonia , Taiwan , Malaysia , and China among others. The Company has set a goal of adding additional OUS markets (through distribution or partnerships) before year end.

Recent Key Appointments

We appointed Christopher A. Myer as The Company's Vice President Business Development  Americas in March 2020 to direct the Company's initiative to develop the INVO clinic business in the United States and Canada , develop commercialization agreements in Mexico , as well as Central and South America , and develop cost savings analysis models for third-party payors and governments to highlight the benefits of the INVOcell solution.

as The Company's Vice President Business Development  Americas in March 2020 to direct the Company's initiative to develop the INVO clinic business in and , develop commercialization agreements in , as well as Central and , and develop cost savings analysis models for third-party payors and governments to highlight the benefits of the INVOcell solution. Appointed Inger Britt Carlsson , PhD, as the Company's Vice President of Medical Affairs in January 2020 . Dr. Carlsson will be developing and overseeing INVO Bioscience's educational symposiums, generating scientific abstracts/publications on the INVOcell technology, and building relationships with key opinion leaders around the world.

, PhD, as the Company's Vice President of Medical Affairs in . Dr. Carlsson will be developing and overseeing INVO Bioscience's educational symposiums, generating scientific abstracts/publications on the INVOcell technology, and building relationships with key opinion leaders around the world. Appointed Yve Lyppens as Director Business Development Asia Pacific in March 2020. Based in Hong Kong , Mr. Lyppens will be responsible for developing the Company's sales and distribution network throughout Asia .

Financial Results

Revenue for the period ended March 31, 2020 was $258,571 compared to $189,432 for the same period a year ago. The increase was the result of product sales to Ferring as well as from recognizing $178,572 of the Ferring seven-year U.S. exclusive licensing & distribution fee.

Gross margin reported for the period ended March 31, 2020 was approximately 88% or $228,577 compared to 94% or $178,454 for March 31, 2019. The decrease in gross margin relates primarily to a heavier mix of product sales versus the amortization of the up-front license payment which has zero cost of goods.

Operating expenses totaled $1,625,096 in the first quarter of 2020 compared to $527,565 in the same period a year ago. The increase in expenses was primarily the result of an increase in wages, professional fees, legal fees, and clinical support services. A substantial portion of the increase, or approximately $680,000, relates to non-cash charges associated with stock and option expensing, a portion of which was a one-time impact. The actual cash expense increase was consistent with the Company's plan to increase its product commercialization efforts as well as its clinical activities related to the 5-day label enhancement.

The net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $(1,444,392) as compared to a net loss of $(458,570) for the same three-month period in 2019.

The Company finished the quarter ended March 31, 2020 with a cash position of approximately $350,000. On May 15, 2020, the Company consummated a closing of its convertible note and unit purchase option offering, resulting in gross proceeds of $2.1 million (of which $1,961,360 was received in cash and $143,640 resulted from cancellation of indebtedness) before fees and commissions. The Company plans to use proceeds from the transaction to fund its operating plan and believe this convertible note and unit purchase option financing moves the company closer to its objective of uplisting its stock to a senior stock exchange, which could enhance visibility of the Company in the public markets.

Virtual Investor Conference Details

INVO Bioscience is scheduled to participate in a virtual presentation and fireside chat at the May 2020 Lytham Partners Virtual Investor Conference on Wednesday, May 20, 2020 at 2:00pm ET (11:00am PT).

A webcast of the presentation will be posted under the investor relations section of INVO Bioscience's website at www.invobioscience.com or can be accessed at https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/2162/34792. A replay of the presentation will be available following the event.

Management will also be participating in virtual one-on-one meetings on May 21, 2020. To arrange a meeting, please contact Robert Blum of Lytham Partners at [email protected] or visit www.lythampartners.com/virtual.

About INVO Bioscience

We are a medical device company focused on creating simplified, lower cost treatments for patients diagnosed with infertility. Our solution, the INVO Procedure, is a disruptive new technology. The INVO Procedure is a revolutionary in vivo method of vaginal incubation that offers patients a more natural and intimate experience. Our lead product, the INVOcell, is a patented medical device used in infertility treatment and is considered an Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART). The INVOcell is the first Intravaginal Culture (IVC) system in the world used for the natural in vivo incubation of eggs and sperm during fertilization and early embryo development, as an alternative to traditional In Vitro Fertilization (IVF) and Intrauterine Insemination (IUI). Our mission is to increase access to care and expand fertility treatment across the globe with a goal to lower the cost of care and increase availability of care. For more information, please visit http://invobioscience.com/

Safe Harbor Statement

This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. The Company invokes the protections of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements regarding our expected future financial position, results of operations, cash flows, financing plans, business strategies, products and services, competitive positions, growth opportunities, plans and objectives of management for future operations, as well as statements that include words such as "anticipate," "if," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "could," "should," "will," and other similar expressions are forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from anticipated results, performance, or achievements. Factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements include those set forth in our filings at www.sec.gov. We are under no obligation to (and expressly disclaim any such obligation to) update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

INVO BIOSCIENCE, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS (unaudited)

















For the



For the





Three Months



Three Months





Ended



Ended





March 31,



March 31,





2020



2019





































Revenue















Product Revenue

$ 80,000



$ 10,860

License Revenue



178,571





178,572





































Total Revenue



258,571





189,432



















Cost of Goods Sold:



29,994





10,978



















Gross Margin



228,577





178,454





































Selling, general and administrative expenses



1,595,046





527,565

Research and developments costs



30,050





-

Total operating expenses



1,625,096





527,565



















Loss from operations



(1,396,519)





(349,111)



















Other (income) expense:















Interest expense



47,873





109,459

Total other (income) expenses



47,873





109,459



















Loss before income taxes



(1,444,392)





(458,570)



















Provisions for income taxes



-





-



















Net Loss

$ (1,444,392)



$ (458,570)



















Basic net loss per weighted average shares of common stock

$ (0.01)



$ (0.00)



















Diluted net loss per weighted average shares of common stock

$ (0.01)



$ (0.00)



















Basic weighted average number of shares of common stock



157,375,918





154,102,856



















Diluted weighted average number of shares of common stock



157,375,918





154,102,856



INVO BIOSCIENCE, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS

















March 31,



December 31,





2020



2019

ASSETS

(unaudited)









Current assets















Cash

$ 350,000



$ 1,238,585

Accounts receivable net



3,699





7,558

Inventory, net



162,283





101,387

Prepaid expense and other current assets



173,235





195,910

Total current assets



689,217





1,543,440



















Property and equipment, net



111,055





93,055



















Other Assets:















Capitalized patents, net



6,782





7,234

Lease right of use, net



96,354





101,883

Trademarks



54,474





49,867

Total other assets



157,610





158,984



















Total assets

$ 957,882



$ 1,795,479



















LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' DEFICIENCY















Current liabilities















Accounts payable and accrued liabilities, including related parties

$ 294,739



$ 371,530

Accrued compensation



487,161





393,017

Deferred revenue



714,286





714,286

Current portion of lease liability



21,704





21,365

Convertible notes, net of discount



371,695





-

Convertible notes, net of discount  related party



33,152





-

Income taxes payable



912





912

Total current liabilities



1,923,649





1,501,110



















Commitments and contingencies



-





-



















Lease liability, net of current portion



75,992





81,494

Deferred revenue



3,392,857





3,571,429

Convertible notes, net of discount



-





325,784

Convertible notes, net of discount  related party



-





28,824

Deferred tax liability



433





433



















Total liabilities



5,392,931





5,509,074



















Stockholder's deficiency















Preferred Stock, $.0001 par value; 100,000,000 shares authorized;

No shares issued and outstanding as of March 31, 2020 and December 31,

2019, respectively



-





-

Common Stock, $.0001 par value; 200,000,000 shares authorized;

157,774,336 and 156,316,112 issued and outstanding as of March 31, 2020

and December 31, 2019, respectively



15,777





15,631

Additional paid-in capital



20,882,332





20,159,540

Accumulated deficit



(25,333,158)





(23,888,766)

Total stockholder's deficiency



(4,435,049)





(3,713,595)



















Total liabilities and stockholders' deficiency

$ 957,882



$ 1,795,479



SOURCE INVO Bioscience, Inc.

Related Links

https://invobioscience.com


Minority of pastors feel very well equipped to lead during pandemic

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While most pastors feel somewhat equipped to help steer their congregants through the coronavirus pandemic, only a minority say they feel very well equipped to lead in the crisis, according to a new study.

Experts examined what it has looked like as American churches have weathered the pandemic and found that only three in 10 or 30% of pastors say they feel very well-equipped, to help their congregants through their present mental and emotional troubles, according to recent research by Barna.

The majority, 64% say they feel somewhat equipped, while a remaining 6% say they are not well-equipped at all to help their congregants with mental and emotional issues.

Barna and research partner Pepperdine Universitys Boone Center for the Family recently found that 58% of U.S. adults and 54% of practicing Christians say they have at least one relational, emotional or mental health issue that impacts their most important relationships in Restoring Relationships: How Churches Can Help People Heal & Develop Healthy Connections.

Sharon Hargrave, Boone Centers executive director, and relationship IQ program director, Kelly Haer, both licensed marriage and family therapists, recently offered some ideas on how church leaders can better equip themselves mentally and emotionally to serve their congregations.

I have always believed that the Church is a great resource for people to go to receive help with things like anxiety and depression. Though, over the last several years, theres been some separation [in how we care for people]  professionals deal with mental health care concerns and church people deal with spiritual concerns  and I think weve missed volumes of opportunity here, Hargrave told Barna President David Kinnaman in an interview.

I believe the Church is very well-suited to help with relationship and mental health care concerns, and our programming at the Boone Center for the Family is designed specifically to intertwine theology and psychology in such a way that church and mental health care workers can work together, she said.

Hargrave said the coronavirus pandemic has been causing people to question both their identity and safety and while it is not easy to do in these unpredictable times, church leaders could work on doing things that can help.

When our identity and safety is challenged, we can respond from a place of peace, or we can respond in a destructive manner. I think as Christians stepping out into the world right now, its really important that we be aware of how were responding to things, Hargrave said.

As leaders of organizations [or churches], people not only have relationship with us as individuals; they have relationship with us as organizations. When things dont go well and our identity feels triggered, we can have a blaming response or a shame response. As leaders of organizations, we need to be very aware of how we are personally responding to things, she said.

She further added: I especially see predictability as one of the most frightening things for organization leaders right now.  Six months ago, I could have told you what I thought the next six months of the Boone Center for the Family would look like. But right now, Im still trying to figure that out on a daily basis.
Assisting Army, Proud Tradition of DPRK Citizens

Korean Central News Agency of DPRK

Pyongyang, May 14 (KCNA) -- Citizens of the DPRK are assisting with all sincerity the Korean People's Army (KPA) which makes breakthrough of advance taking charge of both national defence and socialist construction.

Only when the army is strong, can the country remain powerful and happiness and future be ensured. This is the faith and will of the citizens.

The proud tradition of the Korean people for assisting army was provided in the period of anti-Japanese revolutionary war.

The spiritual world of people who hulled grains in winter nights without fire, avoiding the eyes of Japanese imperialists and their stooges, and sent them to the Korean People's Revolutionary Army is shining as the symbol of nationwide campaign for assisting army.

Such noble trait was also displayed in the period of the Fatherland Liberation War.

Workers of Kunja-ri did not stop production to turn the belt of lathe with hands and the civilians of Kangwon Province carried ammunition and food to heights amidst the gunfire.

Assisting army which has been conveyed through chronicles and centuries is regarded as the greatest patriotic work for the DPRK citizens. -0-

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By Express News Service

JEYPORE: An anganwadi worker, engaged at a quarantine home here, chose duty over personal interest bringing to fore the dedication and resolve of Covid-19 warriors across the State.

Arundhati Moharana, a widow, posted at Anta village under Jeypore ICDS Centre, was put on duty at the local quarantine centre by the block administration. She has been working tirelessly to take care of the eight inmates lodged at the centre with the help of local self-help group members.

It was another day on duty for Arundhati on Wednesday when at around 3 pm, she received a message from her sister-in-law that her house was on fire.

Instead of rushing home, she called up the fire department from the centre. She stayed at work all the time while others doused the fire.

Arundhati said her family members can manage the fire but she could not leave as she was managing the affairs at the centre single-handedly. Fire personnel rushed to her home and brought the fire under control. Arundharti finally left the centre at 4 pm after handing over the charge to a local Asha worker.

However, by that time, the worship room of her house was reduced to ashes. Arundhati stays with her two daughters and one son. It was the second time her house was on fire. Last year, a similar tragedy had struck her due to a short circuit.
Walls are ever-morphing canvases in the ghastly realm of The Wolf House (La casa lobo), a mind-blowing stop-motion animated feature concerning how allegorical storytelling is exploited for fear and psychological manipulation. Chilean co-directors Joaquin Cocina and Cristobal Leon graduate their uncanny yarns of sentient rooms and macabre beings from the short format into a full-length nightmare.

In the film, which opens on VOD and virtual cinema on May 15, viewers are asked to interpret the piece as an old production created by the Colony, an actual German community that lived in the countryside of southern Chile mostly isolated from sinful modernity  similar to the Amish of Pennsylvania or the Mennonites in Carlos Reygadas northern Mexico-set Silent Light.

A male voice, the Wolf (Rainer Krause), leader or spokesperson, asserts in accented Spanish that the filmmakers have restored the movie as a publicity move to mitigate the dark rumors surrounding the group. Outsiders may know the Colony for their immaculate honey, yet the sweet elixir, good for catching flies or acolytes, may have the same deceitful taste as the cautionary fable theyre selling.

Also Read: 'Scoob!' Film Review: Animated Scooby-Doo Reboot Starts by Making Fun of Itself

The title cards tell us that young and beautiful Maria (voiced by Amalia Kassai) has escaped the safety of the ultra-traditionalist settlement after being punished for setting a few pigs free. If theres another, darker reason for her leaving, we are not told. This is, after all, the official chronicle directly from the puppet masters.

Her safe haven becomes an empty home in the woods, where two of the hogs she saved evolve into human children, Pedro and Ana, without the ability to speak. Lines that shift between German and Spanish express how afraid she is the Wolf may blow it down and take her back. The films effective illusion of being an uncut single shot evokes a hypnotic and nonstop ride though a cerebral haunted house, hiding transitions in close-ups and in the shadowy sketches that construct her new abode.

Story continues

Maria first materializes as an animated drawing on the wall. She then dissolves back into a liquid before being reborn in three-dimensional form right in front of our eyes. Painted cardboard covered in masking tape gives her the gleam and consistency of a papier-mache sculpture. Her state, as well as the other characters, fluctuates between a tactile one with volume and a flat two-dimensionality.

Also Read: All the Hollywood Films Arriving on Demand Early Because of the Coronavirus

An in-between configuration  half paint and half solid material, with limbs or even heads emerging from the surfaces  makes the residence itself an extension of their bodies. Late in the final act, a new version of the protagonists, now plushy dolls made of fabric, is engendered for an instant, perhaps calling back to an approach the directors have used in previous narratives.

The painted backgrounds are artificially fluid, since the effect is created with still images. Theyre also in a perpetual state of flux, and the way they interact with other components heightens the sense of physical captivity and dreadful instability. Every rearrangement of the space replenishes Marias fear.

Unlike Laikas approach to stop-motion animation, in which figures have articulations and replaceable faces, models here are in an endless metamorphosis, destroyed and reconstituted from inexpensive materials. Cocina and Leon have favored these signature techniques of rough malleability and moving murals for years. Their painstaking craft results in a jaw-dropping achievement worthy of any and all animation-related awards. In both concept and execution, The Wolf House will render you awestruck.

Classic European fairy tales, from the obvious Peter and the Wolf and The Three Little Pigs to Hansel & Gretel, Snow White and Goldilocks and the Three Bears mingle in a potpourri of magical notes laden in eeriness. Its the Disneys Golden Age enchantment by way of horror master Wes Craven, done with resourceful virtuosity that sets the artistic duo on their way to become the South American equivalent of the Brothers Quay -Sharon- strikingly weird, but always scrutinizing the human psyche.

Also Read: 'Missing Link' Team Says Why Creating 'Little Avocado With a Face' Was Most Complicated Thing Laika's Done

At some point, Marias house reveals itself as a conscious entity, the Wolf himself, taunting her that she is never out of his sight. She remains trapped even when away, because the Wolfs domain (that of the Colony, of course) is not limited to any geographical area or structure; its omnipresent. The moral of her story is that the slight sense of progress and hope she feels is false.

She lets her farm-animals-turned-children, Pedro and Ana, roam free without instilling the Colonys terror-inducing teachings in them. As a result, theyve been corrupted by vice  a childs bedroom with imagery from popular shows, Mexican sitcoms and Japanese anime confirms it. The directors signal the kids jump from harmless individuals to frightening demons by giving them oversized heads.

This is a much more relatable premise than it seems. As young individuals, we are threatened with the monster under the bed or the witch who preys on young souls. In exchange for protection, parents expect good behavior. The looming horror keeps children in line; a cult applies the same principles but with exponentially more sinister motives. The evils of the world cant hurt you, they say, so long as you remain loyal to your family and dont question their rules.

A victim of indoctrination, Marias mind creates a familiar hell as a pathologically soothing version of normalcy, one less terrifying than the uncertainty of freedom. If the Wolf convinces her that whats beyond the Colony is potentially worse than whatever punishment she has earned, then his perverse mission has been accomplished.

She is a compliant inmate in an intangible prison  maybe just like the rest of us in our own distinct ways. Have we run away from the wolf and succeeded, or are we still, unconsciously, in our personal colony?

Read original story The Wolf House Film Review: Chilean Animated Film Depicts a Mind-Blowing Haunted House At TheWrap
As state officials expressed optimism that the peak of the outbreak has passed, New Jerseys death toll from the coronavirus rose to 10,138 on Thursday with 143,905 confirmed cases.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage

The state announced 201 new deaths and more than 1,297 new cases in the past 24 hours.

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As cases and deaths continue to trend downward, so do hospitalizations. As of Wednesday night, there were 3,823 patients with confirmed or suspected cases of COVID-19 at the states 71 hospitals.

That is the lowest figure since N.J. began making those numbers public on April 4 and comes on the heels of four straight weekly declines of around 1,000 patients each.

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Gov. Phil Murphy has said that these numbers will all be taken into account as he decides when to lift more of the lockdown restrictions that have been in place since mid-March. He announced Friday new guidelines for elective surgeries, which can begin again a week after Memorial Day.

On Wednesday, Murphy said beaches, boardwalks, and lakes will be open with restrictions by Memorial Day.

More than 4.5 million people worldwide have tested positive for COVID-19 as of Fridayday, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Almost 305,000 have died and another 1.5 million have recovered.

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Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Nick Devlin is a reporter on the data & investigations team. He can be reached at ndevlin@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @nickdevlin.
American war deaths have varied dramatically, depending on the war they were volunteering (or being drafted) to fight. Some fell to the enemy, many more fell to disease. Since the Revolutionary War ended, 646,596 American troops have died in battle and more than 539,000 died from other, non-combat related causes.

Over the years, a lot of veterans have described the reasons they volunteered to serve. Many admitted that they were afraid of dying in combat. No one ever asked them if they actually considered the odds of dying -- they just went to fight anyway.

In 2018, more than 18 million Americans identified themselves as veterans, the oldest being from World War II and the Korean War. Every year, that number dwindles, making it even more imperative to remember the wars fought, to remember the Americans who died and are unable to tell their stories.

Revolutionary War Deaths

According to the American Battlefield Trust, around 230,000 proto-Americans fought in the Continental Army, though never more than 48,000 at a time. The colonial militias mustered up another 145,000. With a death toll of around 6,800, the chances of dying in combat in the Revolutionary War were roughly 1.8%.

The Battle of Camden.

But that's just from combat operations. Disease was a much deadlier enemy than the British troops, killing 17,000 would-be Americans. So even if you survived the battles, you still had a 4.5% chance of dying from dysentery, malaria or smallpox.

The Department of Veterans Affairs cites a much lower number of war dead: 4,435. So your chances of dying a service-connected death were much lower, according to the VA, at 1.18%.

War of 1812 Deaths

During "Mr. Madison's War," as it was derisively called in New England, the U.S. Army had 35,000 men at its peak, with another 458,000 militiamen throughout the nascent United States, not all of whom were called up to fight. Some 15,000 Americans died as a result of the War of 1812. But only around 2,260 deaths were due to the fighting. The rest were from disease.

The 1815 Battle of New Orleans actually took place after the war's end.

So if you were fighting the war in the Army or the militia, your chances of dying from fighting were around 0.8%. Dying from disease was much more likely, an 0.34% chance. The VA shorts the American Battlefield Trust for this war too, citing only 286,000 combatants with 2,260 service-connected deaths: a calculated fatality rate more than twice as high.

Mexican-American War Deaths

The 1846 war, which expanded the United States to include Texas, California, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah and parts of Colorado, pitted just over 78,700 U.S. troops against 82,000 Mexicans. Historians and the VA agree that 1,733 U.S. troops were killed in the war, a whopping 2.2% death rate.

The Battle of Cerro Gordo.

This number would be staggering if you had no idea that diseases and other non-combat mishaps killed 11,550 more, a stunning 14.67%. Before the Civil War, diseases were more effective at killing American troops than the enemy was. The total death rate in Mexico was 16.9%, which would have been memorable if not for what came in the next war.

Civil War Deaths

A rough estimate from the American Battlefield Trust puts the number of Americans killed in the Civil War at around 650,000. The VA estimates around 2.2 million Union combatants. When combined with the Confederate combatants, the number of Americans who fought the war reaches 3.26 million.

The Battle of Spotsylvania Court House.

With these numbers, the overall likelihood of fighting and dying in combat was 6.6%, around the same likelihood of fighting and dying in the Union Army. The chances of dying in combat in the Confederate Army was around 7%. In all, including non-combat deaths like disease, the chances of dying as a soldier or sailor in the Civil War was 18.9% -- still the largest death rate in U.S. military history.

Indian Wars Deaths

Custer's Last Stand at the 1876 Battle of Little Bighorn.

Throughout the early history of the United States, the U.S. Army worked to support Manifest Destiny and westward expansion. The VA estimates some 106,000 American troops fought to "tame the West" and at least 1,000 died doing it, giving the combined wars with Native American tribes a death rate of 0.94%.

Spanish-American War Deaths

The total number of American service members who fought in the Spanish-American War hovered around 306,700, with only 385 dying in combat. Only 0.12% of those who fought in the war were killed by the Spanish.

The Battle of San Juan Hill.

Disease did a number on American troops in this war as well. More than 2,000 fell to disease and other non-combat issues.

World War I Deaths

If the Spanish-American War showcased the U.S. military operating at high efficiency, then World War I was the beginning of the end of that. With 4.73 million men in uniform, World War I saw Americans mobilize like never before. Around 2.5% of those Doughboys would not make it home, as 53,402 fell to the enemy and another 63,114 to other causes.

So a Great War-era soldier was almost as likely to perish due to trench foot or Spanish Flu as to a German bullet.

World War II Deaths

This war, which saw more than 16 million Americans don a uniform and completely reshaped American society, actually had a lower proportional combat death toll than the Civil War.

Only 1.8% of the 16,112,556 Americans who served in combat died at the hands of the enemy, a combat death likelihood roughly on par with World War I. According to the National World War II Museum, for every 1,000 Americans who served in the war, 8.6 were killed in action, three died from other causes, and 17.7 received non-fatal combat wounds.

Ernie Pyle (centre left) with a U.S. Marine patrol during the Pacific campaign in World War II. Pyle himself would die in the Pacific. (DoD Photo)

The VA estimates there are still 389,000 living World War II veterans.

Korean War Deaths

Around 2% of the 1.79 million who served in Korea would never come home. The Defense Department states that 36,574 Americans died fighting in the Korean War theater and a total of 54,246 died as a result of the war (the total has been reduced slightly over time).

A G.I. comforting a grieving infantryman in the Korean War. (U.S. Army/ Sergeant 1st Class Al Chang)

While this is the current tally, the number of Korean War-era deaths has changed slightly over the years. A 2000 CBS News report found the DoD had been slowly changing the number of combat deaths and Korean War-related deaths over the ensuing decades. At the end of the war, the tally was 54,260, which combined 33,643 combat deaths with 20,617 "other deaths."

The chances of dying skyrocketed for participants of the Korean War's famous battles. Of the 30,000 U.S. troops in the Battle of the Chosin Reservoir, for example, just under 6,000 were killed or went missing, a 19.75% loss.

As of November 2019, there are now 33,739 reported combat deaths in theater, 2,835 non-combat deaths in theater and another 17,672 non-combat deaths outside the Korean War. If the Korean War had lasted as long as the Vietnam War, the death toll would have climbed to 168,630 -- more than World War I.

The VA estimates there are 1,165,000 living Korean War veterans.

Vietnam Deaths

The number of Americans fighting in Vietnam nearly doubled, up to 3.4 million, from the number in Korea. But the number of troops killed in the war grew by only 62% -- and that was over the span of 14 years, starting from when President John F. Kennedy ramped up U.S. involvement in 1961, compared to the three years of fighting in Korea.

U.S. Marines during Operation Allen Brook in 1968. (Department of Defense)

More than 58,220 American troops died during the course of the Vietnam War, for a death rate of about 1.7%. Despite the prolonged fighting, improvements in battlefield medicine and the mobility of helicopters helped save many lives.

Gulf War Deaths

The Gulf War of 1990-1991 saw a force of 694,550 American troops in service or deployed in support of the war. Of those, only 383 were killed, for a death rate of 0.1%, according to the VA in November 2019.

USAF aircraft of the 4th Fighter Wing (F-16, F-15C and F-15E) fly over Kuwaiti oil fires, set by the retreating Iraqi army during Operation Desert Storm in 1991. (U.S. Air Force)

There are many reasons for the swift, lopsided victory and the relatively low human cost (for the winners, that is). Vast improvements in battlefield medicine, search-and-rescue operations, interoperability between branches of service and allied nations, and the Caspar Weinberger-Colin Powell doctrines of overwhelming, decisive force with the intent to win all contributed to the coalition's success in the Gulf War.

Iraq and Afghanistan Deaths

The success of American battlefield medicine and operational risk management continues through the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the most- current analysis of casualties from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, updated May 2020, 2.5 million American troops deployed in support of Operations Enduring Freedom, Iraqi Freedom and New Dawn. Of those, 5,364 died in action, and another 1,476 died in non-hostile incidents.

U.S. Army Pfc. Shawn Williams gives the thumbs-up sign to soldiers in his unit as he is evacuated after being injured by a roadside bomb in Kandahar province, Afghanistan. (U.S. Navy/Lt. j.g. Haraz Ghanbari)

This gives the latest, ongoing wars a death rate of 0.27%, according to the VA's numbers. A more liberal estimate from iCasualties.org, sets the number slightly higher, at 8,498 combined deaths, for a rate of 0.33%. The reports from iCasualties are slightly different than those from the DoD because the website uses information from news reports instead of relying solely on government reports.

While 0.33% is still relatively small, it doesn't make the number any easier.

As of 2017, an estimated 624,000 American veterans were dying every year, most from natural causes. A study from the National Institutes of Health estimates that half of the men who die every day are veterans. As we remember America's fallen troops on Memorial Day, we might also stop by and visit those who fought past wars and listen to the memories of their fallen comrades in arms -- they may not be around come Veterans Day.

-- Blake Stilwell can be reached at blake.stilwell@military.com. He can also be found on Twitter @blakestilwell or on Facebook.

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Arshad Khan By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: IndiGo promoter Rahul Bhatias InterGlobe Enterprises (IGE) on Friday said it has signed an agreement to bid for the bankrupt Virgin Australia. The carrier had announced bankruptcy on April 21 in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, after the Australian government rejected its plea for a loan of A$1.4 billion.

As regards Virgin Australia, InterGlobe Enterprises has signed an agreement to participate in the sale process and is bound by the confidentiality requirements of that agreement. We are unable to say anything further at this stage, IGE said in a statement.

IGE is the largest shareholder in IndiGo. The company and Rahul Bhatias associates hold 37.87 per cent stake in IndiGo, while his estranged partner Rakesh Gangwal and family hold about 36.64 per cent. The two promoters have been locked in a bitter tussle after Gangwal alleged issues with Related Party Transactions (RPT) and misgovernance.

Experts say if IGE acquires Virgin Australia and merges its operations with IndiGo, the latter will become a dominant player in the Asia-Australia region.However, InterGlobe Aviation Ltd, the parent firm of IndiGo, stated that it has not formulated any indicative proposal or expressed any interest in Virgin Australia.

It is further submitted that as per the aforementioned news report, InterGlobe Enterprises has confirmed its interest in Virgin Australia. InterGlobe Enterprises Private Limited is a separate legal entity and is a shareholder in the company. The company is not party to or involved in any proposal of InterGlobe Enterprises Private Limited in relation to the sale of Virgin Australia, InterGlobe Aviation said.
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The draft opinion concedes that the ABA advocates particular constituencies, causes, or agendas. Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, calls this an astounding understatement: The ABAs Washington lobbying office advocates many policies, some unconnected with the practice of law. And it has a Grassroots Action Center that mobilizes support for (mostly liberal) causes. The fact, stressed by the draft opinion, that the ABA has a separate membership section for judges is trivial: This is a cosmetic device that indicates an uneasy conscience; it does nothing to dilute judges association with the ABAs substantial political, and substantially liberal, agenda.
When a bunch of Indians fly in from the Gulf into the southern state of Kerala this Sunday, they will be whisked away to a fully kitted isolation centre that took under 5 days to be built. It is the handiwork of Dr Miniya Chatterji and Dr Anunaya Chaubey, and their team of innovators.

The times of unprecedented crises call for indigenous solutions. As India struggles to contain and treat the rising number of victims of the COVID-19 pandemic, there is a mammoth need for creating isolation and recovery facilities and temporary hospitals.

The innovative team led by Dr Chaubey and Dr Chatterji of the Anant National University (AnantU) has devised a solution. Dr Chatterji is the director and founder for the Centre of Sustainability at the Ajay Piramal-led University, and CEO and founder of Sustain Labs Paris (a sustainability incubator), while Dr Chaubey is its Provost.

The idea is really simple: take an empty facility  a residential building, a commercial complex, a marriage or conference hall, just about anything that is not a warehouse or an empty maidan and not very hygienic for such a healthcare facility, particularly for a disease that is respiratory in nature, says Dr Chatterji  and kit it out into a fully equipped isolation centre.

Dr Anunaya Chaubey.

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

In April, Health Ministry Joint Secretary Lav Agarwal announced that India needed 586 hospitals across the country as dedicated COVID-19 hospitals, and over 100,000 isolation beds. And that, too, may not be enough.

Thats when Dr Chaubey and Dr Chatterji connected the dots and came up with the idea of refurbishing buildings that are government, community or privately owned, to create temporary hospitals with ICUs.

As a little background, I am working on a project with Anant National University to convert the campus into a sustainable one through my company, Sustain Labs Paris; I set it up some years ago and live between Paris and Goa. For AnantU, we also set up the Centre for Sustainability, a think-tank that offers sustainable development solutions. Over the last eight months, my team is working on research on vacant infrastructure in India. About 7.5 percent of Indias buildings lie vacant, even as people dont have homes to live in, she says.

A quarantine centre in Mumbai.

So when the pandemic sent the world into a panic, Dr Chaubey spoke to her about using the research to build isolation centres. Thats how Dr Chatterji and her team began working on a detailed 360-degree plan and made a proposal to the Prime Ministers Office when India just had 300 cases. Going by what was happening across the world, I knew the numbers would explode. Indian cities have huge slums or congested underprivileged neighbourhoods and social distancing is impossible, Dr Chatterji says.

Dr Miniya Chatterji.

While the Thiruvananthapuram facility is about to open, the AnantU team is working with the BMC in Mumbai on another 100-bed facility in Najam Baug, a vast economically disadvantaged pocket in the central area, as well as creating some infrastructure for an isolation facility in St Xaviers College, Mumbai. Her next project is an isolation centre coming up in Kesar Baug, in Dongri, another congested Mumbai neighbourhood. Dr Chatterji works with an extensive team of medical professionals, sustainability experts, urban planners, built environment professionals and designers associated with Piramals AnantU.

Dr Chaubey says, Being a design thinking university, we are always seeking solutions for problems. Faced with the corona crisis, AnantU responded fast with answers: visors and recovery spaces: prevention and treatment. We found a sustainable prototype in cardboard beds that would allow for scaling up and for wider impact across regions. Such innovations, both tangible and intangible, define thinking and an impactful educational institution. The idea was to use our education to solve problems through design thinking.

The ingenious design

The implementation plan submitted to the PMO includes layouts for different spaces along with divisions for the following categories of patients  asymptomatic but tested positive for COVID-19, patients with mild symptoms, patients with moderate symptoms, and patients with severe symptoms.

The AnantU team has collaborated with Parliamentarians with Innovators for India, a National COVID-19 Action Group of parliamentarians, organisations and experts set up in April. We acquired a 3,500sq.ft conference hall in Thiruvananthapuram and converted it into a 20-bed temporary hospital for moderate cases, equipped with everything you need, including an oxygen set-up. It is seven minutes away from a hospital and any person who turns critical can be shifted, she says.

The central idea was to be experimental and create effective infrastructure at a fraction of the cost. Dr Chatterji worked with AnantU faculty to design laminated, corrugated, cardboard fowler beds. (as the entire team contributed). The virus stays for a much shorter time on a cardboard laminated bed than a metal bed, she says.

Dhaval Monani, the former visiting fellow at IDFC Institute and the founder and Managing Director of First Home Realty Solutions Pvt. Ltd., which builds affordable housing, discovered a manufacturer in Rajkot who began making those beds within a day. Habitat for Humanity, a pan-India NGO, is working on the ground to implement the plan along with government authorities.

Dhaval Monani.

We experimented with a lot of necessary infrastructures to try and manufacture them cheaply, says Dr Chatterji. For instance, the cupboard next to a patients bed, called the medicine box, costs Rs 1,500 in the market. We brought them at a cost of Rs 300. A normal fowler bed costs Rs 3,500 to 5,000. Our laminated cardboard bed costs Rs 1,300. This kind of economic model will allow us to scale up quickly without spending too much. Each quarantine unit will cost approximately Rs 5,200, and that includes a bed, a mattress, a medicine box and separators between different beds.

For now, these temporary hospitals and isolation centres will not have ventilators, though they have a complete oxygen set-up. If need be, we can buy one or two ventilators. We have spoken to a manufacturer to buy it at the lowest cost possible, at Rs 110,000, whereas a ventilator in the market costs Rs 200,000. The research on ventilators is shifting very quickly in case of COVID, with many doctors concluding that most patients dont require one. But we will ensure that there are medical facilities with enough ventilators close to the centres, just in case they are needed.

The implementation plan also involves the government offering incentives to private builders who volunteer their vacant properties for isolation and recovery facilities. The government is offering them credits on TDR, which is equal in value to that of the property they temporarily hand over for the centres.

While the Thiruvananthapuram and Najam Baug facilities have been set up as an ideal model, with money spent by AnantU, the BMC is paying for the St Xaviers centres infrastructure and the Kesar Baug facility. We are designing, manufacturing and implementing the plan at the lowest cost possible, while the Habitat for Humanity has its people on their ground to implement it.

Dr Chatterji, who has worked as a policy analyst to former President of France, Jacques Chirac; an investment banker and hedge fund manager at Goldman Sachs in London; and the Chief Sustainability Officer at Jindal Steel in India, besides being a speaker at Davos, sees this as her most challenging project. My work in sustainability is to find interesting solutions to problems with socio-economic fallout, she says. The pandemic requires more of us to come up with scalable solutions that are also economically viable and sustainable.

Deepali Nandwani is a journalist who keeps a close watch on the world of luxury.
Data room churns out covid-19 stats seven days a week

Data team at the Department of Public Health works to collect, record and report information on covid-19 infections.

Henderson County public health employees are working seven days a week in a "data room" to acquire, compile and report information supporting the ongoing effort to track the spread of covid-19, Public Health Director Steve Smith told the Board of Health this week.

Smith noted that there has been "intense interest from the community about our trends and interpretation," according to notes the director prepared for the meeting and shared with the Hendersonville Lightning. Nine public health staffers are working in the "data room" four or five at a time with 63 long-term care facilities and 18 laboratories on testing and reporting. The public health department administered 130 tests on Wednesday.

"There is not a shared electronic platform among organizations and labs, so these are manually entered into a spreadsheet which feeds our dashboard," said health department spokeswoman Jodi Grabowski.

Henderson County has been one of the top hot spots in the state for covid-19 cases and deaths among residents of long-term care facilities. The state Department of Health and Human Services reported on its covid-19 dashboard that Henderson County had 186 cases and 32 deaths associated with long-term care facilities. Of the total cases, 152 were residents or patients and all the deaths were residents or patients.

People have noticed discrepancies in the numbers reported by the county and the state. Differences are expected to continue, Smith said, give "the volume of data and complexity of multiple systems," including the North Carolina Electronic Disease and Surveillance System.

"The data will match up as corrections are made, but the timing of reporting will often result in the numbers being different," Grabowski said.

The county had been withholding the names of facilities based on guidance from the DHHS, medical confidentiality statutes, the federal HIPAA patient privacy law and an interpretation from the UNC School of Government.

The state reversed course on the question, creating "an exception that it now believes is appropriate for reporting this information," Smith told the board.

Nurses answering an information hotline notify patients of test results, coordinate contact tracing for positive cases and provide guidance for congregant care settings and the general public. The department is working now on training contracted contact tracers as part of a state program called the Carolina Community Tracing Initiative. The county emergency management office and rescue squad are doing "proactive assessments" and making visits to long-term care facilities to meet their needs.

Public information will become even more important as the state starts to ease stay-at-home restrictions. Individuals and businesses seeking clarity about state guidelines are already peppering the hotline nurses with "questions about what is or is not allowed."

Upcoming challenges in the covid-19 response, Smith said, include:
By now youve probably heard the quote from John James that he supports Donald Trumps agenda 2000 percent. The failed Republican candidate wanted desperately to ride Trumps coattails into the U.S. Senate but was subsequently beaten soundly by Debbie Stabenow in 2018.

Lately, however, James has changed his tune. With polling showing Donald Trump down by as much as ten points to Joe Biden in Michigan, James is now trying to portray himself as something entirely different. A Politico piece last week quoted James distancing himself from Trump:

During a video conference with black community leaders last week, James was asked whether he disagreed with Trump on anything given the presidents support of his candidacy. Plenty, plenty of issues, James responded. Everything from cutting Great Lakes funding to shithole countries to speaking ill of the dead, apparently referring to Trumps disparagement of the late Sen. John McCain. I mean, where do you want to start? And so yes, theres gonna be places that I disagree with the president and those are just a couple, he added. James, a 38-year-old Iraq War veteran, also pushed back against what he described as a Democratic talking point that he was bankrolled by the president and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, who hails from one of the states wealthiest political families. I havent gotten any money from Donald Trump. I havent gotten any money from Betsy DeVos. I havent gotten any money  thats political talking points. Very little of that is true, James said during the appearance, a video of which was obtained by POLITICO.

James claims the video was leaked to try to hurt him among Trump voters but plenty of political analysts believe that James campaign was actually the source of the video, not his opponents, as a way to distance himself from a president who is becoming less and less popular and more and more toxic with each passing day.

James told The Detroit News that hes been saying these sorts of things for years but the only example he could show was a Buzzfeed article from two years ago where he made mild remarks declaring himself his own man and not in lockstep with Donald Trump.

As far as not taking money from the DeVos family, James is flat out lying about that:

A significant chunk of their spending this cycle has gone toward efforts to unseat Sen. Gary Peters (D-Bloomfield Twp.). Michigans junior Democratic senator is facing a challenge from Republican businessman John James, who lost his bid last cycle to defeat U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Lansing). The DeVos family in December donated $800,000 to a super PAC called the Better Future Michigan Fund, which was set up to boost James campaign. The group  which can accept unlimited donations  has spent almost $1 million to attack Peters, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics. The DeVoses have been the highest contributors to the group, with donations coming from three of Amway co-founder Richard DeVos four children  Daniel, Douglas and Cheri  and their spouses. (Dick DeVos Jr. is the fourth sibling.) In December, Daniel and his wife, Pamella DeVos, each contributed $200,000 to the pro-James super PAC. Douglas and his wife, Maria DeVos, each contributed $100,000; Cheri DeVos and her husband, Steve Ehmann, each contributed $100,000. Jerry Tubergen  CEO of RDV Corp., the DeVos investment management firm  contributed another $100,000 to the super PAC in December. DeVos family members have also maxed out to James campaign, which is subject to federal contribution limits. Daniel, Douglas, Cheri, Pamella and Maria DeVos, along with Ehmann, have contributed a total of $33,600. James has outraised Peters for the past three quarters, although Peters has raised more overall in the cycle.

However, if you really want to know how closely James has tied himself to the Trump brand, consider this: Next Monday, James will cohost a fundraiser with none other than Donald Trump, Jr. Its a virtual fundraiser, of course, and for the low, low price of $100, you can join a personal Zoom conference call with the two Republicans. Listen to the pitch here:

UPDATE: James is offering to actually interact with people attending his online fundraiser. But only if they pay one thousand dollars first:

Today: Donald Trump Jr. and Matt Schlapp co-host a Zoom fundraiser for Michigan Republican Senate candidate John James. $1,000 "VIP roundtable" donation gets you a question and a coffee mug pic.twitter.com/uKqR9hAY1e  Lachlan Markay (@lachlan) May 18, 2020

Thankfully, Michiganders have an fantastic alternative. Unlike John James who seems to blow around in the political winds like wind sock, Gary Peters has established himself as someone who gets things done by working together in a bipartisan fashion. The Lugar Center named Peters the third most bipartisan Democrat and twelfth most bipartisan Senator overall in the U.S. Senate. Last year, they named him the fourth-most effective Democratic senator. Hes been working to protect Michiganders from PFAS contamination, has been a leader is ensuring that Flint would be made whole after their city was poisoned with lead, and continues to fight to make sure our state has the resources it needs during the current global pandemic. If you want to be sure Sen. Peters has the resources he needs to compete with the vast Republican funding machine enjoyed by John James, be sure to make a donation to Gary Peters today. You can do that HERE.

Listen to our recent interview with Senator Peters on The GOTMFV Show podcast HERE or here:

Here are Sen. Peters most recent TV ads:
New Delhi: A proud producer-actress, Anushka Sharma posted a picture straight from her living room as her next much-awaited web-series 'Paatal Lok' streamed on Amazon Prime last night. While the happy Anushka seemed all set to watch the gritty crime thriller, Virushka fans (Virat Kohli and Anushka Sharma) were more than happy to spot something interesting at the TV cabinet unit shelf.

ALSO READ: Paatal Lok audience review:

Well, call it 'fan-eyes' or whatever, netizens noticed Virushka's wedding caricature which was first spotted by actress Jacqueline Fernandez, who even dropped a comment on Anushka's timeline. Check it out here:

Also, we can see two miniature dolls right beside the wedding caricature. Isn't it absolutely adorable and chic?

Well, Virushka fans can't stop gushing over it and also we love the way they have been sharing pictures and videos during lockdown, inspiring fans.

By the way, producer Anushka Sharma's production house, Clean Slate Films' 'Paatal Lok', which has been trending on social media. Netizens hailed the performances where some called it phenomenal while others termed it 'terrific'.

Paatal Lok stars Neeraj Kabi, Gul Panag, Jaideep Ahlawat, Abhishek Banerjee and Swastika Mukherjee in lead roles. The crime thriller is written by Sudip Sharma, who has also created it. The cop drama has got Jaideep Ahlawat playing an inspector and he has garnered a lot of praise for portraying his act with brilliance.

The other lead actors such as Abhishek Banerjee, Neeraj Kabi amongst others have been lauded for their acting chops as well.

Sagar Haveli, Hardik Mehta and Gunjit Chopra have co-written it. Anushka Sharma too has been promoting 'Paatal Lok' on social media and even shared her picture of watching it at home.

So, are you ready to watch this intense, gritty crime drama?
ATHENS, Greece, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Diana Shipping Inc. (NYSE: DSX), (the Company), a global shipping company specializing in the ownership of dry bulk vessels, today announced that on May 7, 2020, it signed a term loan facility with Nordea Bank Abp, filial i Norge (the Lender), through eight wholly-owned subsidiaries (the Borrowers), in the amount of US$55.848 million, to refinance its existing loan with the Lender of the same balance, so as to extend the repayment of the loan by two more years until March 2022. The Borrowers will have the option to extend the repayment of the facility by two additional years until March 2024, by providing extension requests for each additional year, subject to the acceptance by the Lender at each time.



Diana Shipping Inc.s fleet currently consists of 41 dry bulk vessels (4 Newcastlemax, 13 Capesize, 5 Post-Panamax, 5 Kamsarmax and 14 Panamax). As of today, the combined carrying capacity of the Companys fleet is approximately 5.1 million dwt with a weighted average age of 9.66 years. A table describing the current Diana Shipping Inc. fleet can be found on the Companys website, www.dianashippinginc.com. Information contained on the Companys website does not constitute a part of this press release.

About the Company

Diana Shipping Inc. is a global provider of shipping transportation services through its ownership of dry bulk vessels. The Companys vessels are employed primarily on medium to long-term time charters and transport a range of dry bulk cargoes, including such commodities as iron ore, coal, grain and other materials along worldwide shipping routes.

Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts.

Story continues

The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words believe, anticipate, intends, estimate, forecast, project, plan, potential, may, should, expect, pending and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements.

The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, Company managements examination of historical operating trends, data contained in the Companys records and other data available from third parties. Although the Company believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies that are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond the Companys control, the Company cannot assure you that it will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections.

In addition to these important factors, other important factors that, in the Companys view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in the forward-looking statements include the severity, magnitude and duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, including impacts of the pandemic and of businesses and governments responses to the pandemic on our operations, personnel, and on the demand for seaborne transportation of bulk products; the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions, including fluctuations in charter rates and vessel values, changes in demand for dry bulk shipping capacity, changes in the Companys operating expenses, including bunker prices, drydocking and insurance costs, the market for the Companys vessels, availability of financing and refinancing, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, vessel breakdowns and instances of off-hires and other factors. Please see the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a more complete discussion of these and other risks and uncertainties. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statement, or to make any other forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Corporate Contact:

Ioannis Zafirakis

Director, Interim Chief Financial Officer,

Chief Strategy Officer,

Treasurer and Secretary

Telephone: + 30-210-9470-100

Email: izafirakis@dianashippinginc.com

Website: www.dianashippinginc.com



Investor and Media Relations:

Edward Nebb

Comm-Counsellors, LLC

Telephone: + 1-203-972-8350

Email: enebb@optonline.net
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  This couple from Hong Kong proved that love trumps any pandemic.

CNN International senior correspondent Ivan Watson recently tied the knot with his partner, Forbes senior editor Rana Wehbe, in an intimate ceremony at the local registry.

It was a moment they have been waiting for since getting engaged in December, not knowing then that a mysterious virus that sprung from Wuhan City, China would ruin any plans they had for a big ceremony.

The pair signed up for a civil ceremony in February, getting May 2nd as their wedding date. This came weeks before Hong Kong and the rest of the world had to grapple with COVID-19 outbreaks, which has infected over 4.4 million people to date and led to more than 300,000 deaths globally.

Watson had since been covering how various Asian states are responding to the outbreak, which at times forced him to go on self-isolation upon returning from an overseas trip. Luckily, he has not been infected.

"Amid the anxiety and fear, a silver lining emerged. In this pandemic, we had each other," Watson wrote in his essay published on CNN.

By May, the couple decided to just make the most out of the situation, settling for a party of eight who witnessed their civil wedding. An invisible group of family and friends in the United States and Lebanon  their home countries  tuned in via a live feed streamed through Instagram.

There were no fancy decor nor a large banquet to share with loved ones, but the couple did mark their wedding with matching face masks labeled "bride" and "groom." This was later switched to "Mr." and "Mrs." masks after exchanging rings and a quick kiss  all within 15 minutes.

"We decided to go ahead with it and Im really delighted we did. It was a very joyful moment, and I think that some of our friends have been grateful because it was nice to think about something aside from disease and economic troubles for a change," Watson said in an interview with CNN Philippines' Pinky Webb. "It will be a story for our kids."
The key question of turnout will depend on whether Democrats devise a successful post-pandemic strategy to replace the armies of volunteers who went door-to-door canvassing swing districts in 2018. For the foreseeable future, campaign and get-out-the-vote operations accustomed to relying on face-to-face contact will have to make radical shifts. Democrats, particularly progressive candidates, have eked out wins in recent contests by knocking on doors, taking voters to the polls for same-day registration and collecting mail-in ballots up to the last minute. All that will change.

Mr. Garcias surprisingly wide margin of victory in a race Democrats had expected to be close illustrates the challenge. Every registered voter in the district received a postage-paid, mail-in ballot, as will be the case statewide in November. Voters who returned the simple ballot skewed overwhelmingly old, white and Republican.

An analysis by the firm Political Data Inc., which tracks ballots returned, showed the younger the voter, the less likely to vote. Fewer than 20 percent of 18- to 34-year-olds cast ballots; twice as many voted who were between 50 and 65; and only among the oldest voters did turnout exceed 50 percent. Latinos were least likely to vote (21 percent), while 40 percent of whites cast ballots. To win back the seat in November, Democrats will need to motivate younger voters and Latinos, mirroring the challenge nationally for a party with a presidential candidate who has not generated enthusiasm among either constituency.

Yes, turn out Latinos. But you need to persuade us too. Especially if the G.O.P. candidate is Latino! Antonio De Loera-Brust, a Californian who worked on the policy staff of the Elizabeth Warren and Julian Castro campaigns, tweeted in response to the election result. He pointed to one of several recent analyses warning that Latinos, disproportionately hit by the health and economic consequences of Covid-19, might just stay home in November.

In recent elections, last-minute votes, by mail and in person, have skewed heavily for Democrats. Not this time. Voters who showed up at the handful of outdoor pop-up polling places voted for the Republican two to one. Some told reporters they voted in person because they did not trust the Postal Service.

Republicans have not won a statewide election in California since 2006. Democrats hold veto-proof majorities in both houses of the State Legislature. The California of Ronald Reagan, ruled by Republican governors for all but 21 years of the past century, is gone. Yet Donald Trump raised more than $30 million in California, outstripping all of his Democratic challengers during the height of the primary campaign. In 2016, even as he lost the state two to one, he won more than four million votes.
Ryanair today confirmed it has reduced its office headcount in Dublin, Stansted, Madrid and Wroclaw by over 250 through a combination of probation/fixed term contract ends, resignations and redundancies.

Ryanair says as these people will not be required to return to work on 1 June, when the Ryanair offices reopen, due to the substantial decline in traffic the Ryanair Group Airlines is facing in 2020.

The airline has operated less than 1% of their normal flight schedules during April, May and June, and this week announced that only 40% of its normal schedules would operate in July 2020. For the full year, Ryanair now expects to carry less than 100 million passengers, over 35% lower than the 155m+ target for the year ended March 2021.

Speaking this week, Ryanairs People Director, Darrell Hughes said, "This is a very painful time for Ryanair, our crews and our people supporting operations from our Dublin, Stansted, Madrid and Wroclaw offices. While we expect to re-open our offices from 1 June next, we will not require the same number of support team members in a year when we will carry less than 100m passengers, against an original budget of 155m."

He added, "Regrettably, we will now have a small number of compulsory redundancies in Dublin, Stansted, Madrid and Wroclaw to right size our support teams for a year when we will carry less than 100m passengers due to the Covid-19 crisis. These job losses were communicated to individual team members this week, and they will not be returning to work in our Dublin, Stansted, Madrid or Wroclaw offices when they reopen on 1 June next."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
The Department of Defence says it's looking at chartering a private jet to extrIcate two Irish Army officers from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) amid fears for their safety because locals are blaming foreigners for spreading Covid-19.

Britain and Canada have already evacuated their forces from the UN mission in the DRC following an escalation in tension between locals and foreigners in what is becoming an increasingly volatile country. Intense fighting has broken out between DRC government forces and insurgents which has resulted in hundreds of thousands of people fleeing their homes.

Both of the Irish officers are based in the city of Goma. One was due to come home on April 29 and the other on May 12.

Tensions in the DRC have risen to such an extent that the Defence Forces Chief of Staff, Vice Admiral Mark Mellett, proposed to extricate the two officers for their own safety.

They are not living in a secure UN compound, but in a flat, which leaves them even more vulnerable.

It had been proposed to use the Government Lear jet to get them out of the country as other nations with a military presence in the DRC had already removed their troops and normal commercial flights weren't going there.

Minister with responsibility for Defence, Paul Kehoe, supported getting the two officers out of the country, but the Department of Defence ruled out using the Government jet for the operation.

In a statement, the Department of Defence said that while the jet is capable of such a mission, its fuel range means the return journey to Goma would involve landing in seven different airports and overnighting at least twice.

It added 'the restrictions and isolation requirements in place in European and African countries as a result of Covid-19 adds to the complexity of this option.'

The Department of Defence confirmed it is now examining the option of chartering an aircraft which would be capable of making the round trip with just the one stopover to pick up the two officers in the DRC.

It said Mr Kehoe's primary concern is the safety of the two personnel and their secure repatriation.

The first cases of Covid-19 were confirmed in the DRC on March 10 and they were said to be amongst people who had flown in from other countries.

To date though there have been just over 1,200 reported cases and 50 deaths from the virus. However, the country's health system and screening is very poor compared to international standards and there are fears the figures are far higher and the virus could be spread quickly by displaced refugees.
After chiseling away at his classes for more than 10 years, Robert BB Wagstaff was set to earn his bachelors degree in accounting this year.

He took pride in his grades and worked full-time. He once tried doing both full-time, but wasnt satisfied when his grades dropped, said his mother, Audrey Wagstaff.

Enrolled at Texas A&M University San Antonio, he had one more course to go this summer. But Wagstaff died April 10 at Northeast Baptist Hospital from COVID-19, one of the first such deaths in the community.

University officials announced Friday they would award his degree posthumously. His uncle, ReShard Wagstaff, plans to accept it during a rescheduled Sept. 25 graduation ceremony.

He still tried until the end, until he just couldnt anymore, Audrey Wagstaff said of her only child through tears on Friday. To hear that my baby gets to still get his degree means so much to me. He worked so hard for it,

Required Reading: Get San Antonio education news sent directly to your inbox

Wagstaff embodied the work ethic and dedication of many A&M San Antonio students, said University President Cynthia Teniente-Matson in the announcement.

Roberts passing so close to completing his degree was a true tragedy, she said. Were honored to include him in our graduating class, and we extend our deepest sympathies and condolences to his family. He earned this, and were proud to claim him as a Texas A&M-San Antonio graduate.

Wagstaff graduated from Southwest High School and earned two associates degrees in business and accounting from St. Phillips College.

Audrey Wagstaff was a single mother since her sons birth. The two were close. He lived with her, paid her bills, stayed out of debt and saved for his future  he wanted to travel and eventually start a family of his own. .

On ExpressNews.com: Get the latest update on coronavirus and a tracking map of U.S. cases

God gave me the perfect son. I didnt need another one. He got it right the first time, she would say.

He was good to everyone around him, Audrey Wagstaff added. Even when he was sick, nurses told her he was remarkably polite.

My son was such a good person. Everybody said it, not just me. He was kind, he was giving, he was helpful, he was a sweetheart.

In mid-March, A&M San Antonio moved all classes online and Wagstaff hardly left the house but continued to work at Wells Fargo, his mother said. The last week of March he began filling sick but couldnt get a COVID-19 test from his primary doctor and a clinic he visited a couple days apart. On April 3, she found him in his room wearing one sock and too tired to put on the other. She got him to an emergency room. He died a week later.

Audrey Wagstaff has tested negative three times for the virus. Suddenly alone, she has struggled to understand her sons death. He had diabetes, but she has read about COVID patients with diabetes who recovered.

I am so glad they all got to go home but I just wish one more was added (to recovery numbers), she said. I bet everybody who lost someone to COVID is saying the same thing.

People should do everything they can to prevent getting the virus, she said, adding, Take care of yourself so your mother is not crying.

Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Krista, become a subscriber. Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva
P olice investigating a robbery in east London have released an image of a man they wish to speak to in connection with the case.

Officers were called to reports of a theft at Kingsland Shopping Centre in Dalston shortly before 9pm on April 24.

A man in his 20s subsequently reported to police that the suspect had approached him with a knife before leading him to a cash point.

The suspect then stole cash from the victim, and an oyster card from his wallet.

Enquiries into the incident are still ongoing and London's Metropolitan Police force has appealed for help in tracing the man shown in the image.

Detective Constable James Readman, said: A victim has been approached by a man wielding a knife and forced to handover cash and his wallet in a busy shopping centre.

"I believe that this would have been witnessed by lots of members of the public. If you saw what happened, or if you can identify the man pictured, please do get in touch with us.

Any witnesses in the area at the time or anyone with information on the identity of the man is asked to call 101, quoting CAD 8154/24 April or tweet @MetCC. Alternatively, independent charity Crimestoppers can be contacted anonymously on 0800 555 111.
Thanks for reading again today, and this week. This is Jenny Noyes signing off.

Our live and free coverage of the pandemic continues tomorrow. For now, here's the main stories you need to be across from today:

We'll continue our live coverage of the pandemic overnight and into Saturday in a new blog, which you can read here.

Thanks for joinging us.
New Delhi, May 15 : Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced a slew of reform measures for the agriculture sector, which have been lauded for their likely long-term impact, but sector experts are of the opinion that the farmers need immediate relief which the latest announcements would not provide.

Along with the announcement of Rs 1 lakh crore agri infrastructure fund for post-harvest infrastructure among other funds, Sitharaman also announced few major reform measures including amendment to the Essential Commodities Act allowing farmers to sell their produce 'wherever' and to 'whoever' without any restrictions on selling only to licencees in Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMCs) or mandis.

Speaking to IANS, agriculture expert Devinder Sharma said that announcements made on Friday are long-term measures and farmers instead need immediate direct income support.

"The Finance Minister doled out a number of measures that need be taken in a long term period but, farmers need immediate relief now. The pandemic is (ocurring) now, they cant wait for another one year or two years for the infrastructure to be laid out," he said.

Observing that farmers are suffering huge losses, due to wastage or perishable products, Sharma said that each farmer should have been provided Rs 10,000 and wheat cultivators should have been provided Rs 100 per quintal as bonus for wheat procurement.

He said that the support would have entailed a total expenditure of about Rs 1.5 lakh crore.

Notably, under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana, the government has provided each farmer with Rs 2,000 in April, as the advancement of first instalment payment from the Rs 6,000 per annum PM Kisan Yojana, which the Centre says would benefit 8.7 crore farmers and the total distribution with a total distribution of about Rs 16,000 crore.

Agriculture expert Vijay Sardana also told IANS that although the administrative reforms were necessary but what farmers right now needed was money in their hands.

"They (farmers) have already taken the money from moneylenders and paid for the labour and then there was the lockdown.... and they were not able to sell. It was a net loss for them," he said.

Sardana added, "When you are talking of kisan credit card, Digital India, then you should also at least give the farmer some relief, what was his fault?" He noted that the government can give a condition to farmers to open Jan Dhan accounts within two or three months where the money should have been transferred, but emphasised that the need of the hour was to provide money to the farmers.

On the reforms allowing farmers to sell their produce wherever they want, and deregulation of food stuff, Sardana said that they were due for long and would help in the long term.

Sharma, however, said that the administrative decisions were not required now and should have been deliberated upon.
When Donald Trump declared that the American military would boldly go into the final frontier with a newly created branch, Steve Carell was quick to enlist. Not in Space Force. In Space Force. The Oscar- and Emmy-nominated actor anchors the satirical comedy as Mark R. Naird, a staunch, starched Air Force general who is saddled with running the nascent endeavor from a mostly top secret Colorado base. Naird's orders? Boots on the moon by 2024! (The show's unnamed president tweeted "boobs on the moon," but the secretary of defense is pretty sure he meant "boots.")

Carell heeded the comedic call to duty after receiving a simple two-word pitch from Netflix. "They had no premise; it was just the name," says Carell. "The notion of this new military entity was funny to me It seemed like something that had never been explored before. Obviously, because it hadn't existed. Because we'd be developing our show as the actual Space Force was being created, there were no parameters, there were no rules. It was a blank sheet of paper, and that was intriguing."

To help him fill that paper with high-in-the-sky ideas, Carell drafted an old workplace buddy, The Office showrunner Greg Daniels. The pair were much more interested in blasting into uncharted territory than strolling through familiar ones. "In a way, it's sort of the antithesis of what we did on The Office, because there was a roadmap to that show," says Carell, who returned to TV last year with the Apple TV+ drama The Morning Show. "There were characters or character-like types in place [from the British version], and a structure as to the way the show is shot. But this didn't have any of those aspects. From day one when Greg and I first met to discuss it, we had to decide what the show would feel like tonally and where would the comedy lie, and how much of it would be serious or more heartfelt or more genuine, more human."

Story continues

Turns out, Daniels had long been interested in crafting a military comedy, though his dream involved an aircraft carrier. But as he explains: "This is better. There's such wonderful cultural memories from landing on the moon, and there's a feeling of 'We really had our act together back then.' Everybody around the world was so excited for Neil Armstrong and 'one giant leap for mankind.' Now there's so much more nationalism and everybody's trying to get a piece of the moon. So it feels like a very good way to talk about stuff in the world." And in the show's world, he notes, "now that it's becoming less about scientists and astronauts, and more military, what's funny is picturing the skill set of somebody who wasn't expecting to be put in charge of something this technical."

The four-star loyalist who doesn't quite trust science will need every atom of it for this muscle-flexing, militarized space race. "He's a creature of habit and a creature of discipline, and he's been in the military most of his life," says Carell of Naird. "That's what he knows, that's what he abides by  and it could be considered a weakness as well." General Naird finds assistance and resistance from sensitive astrophysicist Chan (Jimmy O. Yang), craven media consultant F. Tony (Ben Schwartz), promising pilot Angela (Tawny Newsome), ornery Air Force chief of staff Kick Grabaston (Noah Emmerich), and most considerably, Space Force's erudite head scientist Dr. Mallory (John Malkovich). ("He's the pure science geek who really hates any government or political interference into his field," says Malkovich of Mallory.) Naird's military-grade headache intensifies as he tries to manage relationships with: his probable-Russian-spy-dating daughter, Erin (Diana Silvers); his declining dad, Fred (Fred Willard); and his upbeat, by-his-side wife, Maggie (Lisa Kudrow), who is now embarking on a journey of self-discovery. ("Is she a badass or is she not?" is one hint that Kudrow drops about Maggie.) Brace also for moved-up launches, a psychological breakdown in a simulated lunar habitat, a spirited rendition of "Kokomo," Chinese-government competitive malfeasance, and a mission-critical chimpanzee.

Aaron Epstein/Netflix

We'll get back to the chimp in a bit, but did you notice the stellar cast assembled here? (And we didn't even mention Jane Lynch, Patrick Warburton, Diedrich Bader, Dan Bakkedahl, Jessica St. Clair, and Don Lake, among others.) Notes Daniels: "For the Joint Chiefs, we were like, 'They have to be of the same caliber that Steve is. The Joint Chiefs is the meeting of all of the heads of all the service branches. They're all very impressive people. So if we're going to cast comic people, they've got to to be hefty comedy people.'" The cast wasn't limited strictly to comedic killers, though. "Some people aren't necessarily known for doing a lot of comedy, like Noah Emmerich and John Malkovich, and they're hilarious," reports Carell. "John Malkovich just makes me laugh. I feel like I always have to say his full name when I say his name. John Malkovich. It's the respectful thing to do."

Malkovich  whose Mallory frustratedly matches wits with Naird  gravitated to the duo's gut-versus-science polarity. "The conflict and humor of it strikes a good balance between those two experiences of the world," he says. "The lesson is: All of us may overestimate our strengths and the validity of our points of view." Kudrow signed on to the project with the most unique point of view. "I really did not know the president said, 'Let's have a Space Force,'" she says. "I mean, I just can't keep up, so I missed that one. It was just, 'We're doing the show, why don't you do it?' And I was like, 'Yeah! Why wouldn't I? It's Greg and Steve!' Then I saw all the other people in it and went, 'Yeah, okay!' But sorry, dumbass here didn't know there was actually a Space Force. And it's so embarrassing because when I saw the last State of the Union and [Trump] mentioned Space Force, I went, 'Oh! It's a real thing!' The whole time we were shooting, it didn't come up."

Aaron Epstein/Netflix

That admission might please Carell and Daniels, who insist that they didn't set out to skewer Trump or the armed services. (Influences included Dr. Strangelove and The Right Stuff.) "Part of our goal was to make somebody in the military enjoy the show and not feel like some snotty Hollywood person was making fun of them," shares Daniels. The 10-episode season was filmed well before the coronavirus forced a Hollywood shutdown (and also before the real Space Force unveiled its camouflage uniforms, similar to the ones in the show played for laughs), and Daniels hopes that it still feels, well, hopeful in these pandemic times. "We're hearkening back to the national excitement over the moon," he says, "and trying to do that justice as a comedy."

The writers' vision was also shaped by research, which included multiple trips to Space X. "The interesting thing is that the more research we did  and we did a lot of research about it  I think it isn't crazy for the United States to want to have a Space Force," says Daniels. "If there's anything that's a shame, it's not that we're insisting on having a Space Force, it's that everybody in the world is rushing to do this in a competitive way [rather] than a cooperative way. And if we didn't have one, according to all of our research, we would still need one because of other countries doing the same thing. As we worked on the show more, it kind of broadened a bit in terms of what we were writing about." And although Space Force winks at Nancy Pelosi, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Anthony Scaramucci, the First Lady and a tweeting, Russia-friendly president, "it's surprisingly patriotic," says Carell. "There are things that are lifted from the current social and political world, but it's done with a very light touch. It doesn't really lean too hard either way. It's an equal-opportunity show."

Down to the space-bound simian, who may leave those NASA chimps in the dust when tasked with doing something that will truly test his manual dexterity and mental acuity. Says Carell with pride or curiosity: "I don't know if the term chimpstronaut has ever been coined before." In any case, when Space Force launches on May 29, prepare to enter zero gravity with zero gravity.

AARON EPSTEIN/NETFLIX

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China is seeking to monetize its Beidou ("Compass") satellite navigation (satnav) system. Beidou is the Chinese version of American GPS (Global Positioning System). Beidou finally became fully operational, providing worldwide coverage, in January 2020 when the last two of its Beidou satellites were put into 21,800 kilometer high circular orbits, joining 22 others in similar obits covering the entire planet, plus six more in 36,000 kilometer high geosynchronous (stationary) orbits. Two more satellites will go up in mid-2020 but these simply complete the planned Beidou satellite system. The three competing systems are GPS, Glonass and Galileo. The full Beidou network was open for business as a world-wide service in early 2020. The American GPS has been operational since 1978 while the Russian GLONASS achieved that status in 1995. Unfortunately, Russia had problems, mostly financial, in keeping Glonass operational. The European Galileo becomes operational worldwide in 2020. Each of these systems cost about $10 billion to create and get into service. The American GPS cost $12 billion, mainly because it has been around for so long.

China, however, is determined to do what none of the other three satnavs have done; break even and make a profit. While China has stated that as an objective they have yet to come up with a plan to reach that goal, nor have any of the other three major satnav providers. So far the main payoff for building a satnav system is national prestige and an alternative to dependence on the Americans, or any single satnav provider.

China has also invested heavily in trying to obtain favorable press coverage for Beidou and somehow establish it as a preferred satnav service. That has cost over half a billion dollars but has not created any widespread sense that Beifou is preferable to GPS. China has a long-range plan for Beidou that includes adding new features and somehow achieve market dominance by 2040. Details will be made available once they have been created. So far no luck sorting that out.

Meanwhile, Chinese state-controlled media have provided a global audience with unprecedented details of this Chinese technological effort. People got their first experience with Beidou in late 2012 when the first few satellites were made available to anyone with a Beidou receiver. China expected Beidou to become a major competitor for the existing global navigation systems, at least with civilian users. China made it clear its initial goal was to grab a major share of the satnav market from the original U.S GPS system and do it by 2030. Progress has been slow so far.

Meanwhile, it has been a struggle to get Beidou fully operational. In 2013 China had only 14 of 35 Beidou satellites in service. This was sufficient to provide GPS type service for all of China. It was expected that all 35 satellites (including spares) would be in service by 2019 and so it was, with a few weeks to spare. By early January the now completed system had been checked out and declared fully operational. The worldwide reaction was something along the lines of, so what.

In 2008 China decided to expand its original Beidou 1 regional satnav system to cover the entire planet and compete with GPS, Galileo and Glonass. China has used the experience from this earlier Beidou 1 network to build the world-wide "Beidou 2" system. Since 2000 China has launched 53 Beidou satellites, including prototypes, replacements and various test models. The last two Baidu satellites were carried aloft by a single Long March 3B rocket. China put 30 satellites into orbit in 2019, more than any other nation. During 2019 only two satellites failed to achieve orbit, for a success rate of nearly 98 percent.

The Chinese Compass network incorporates the best features of the Glonass and Galileo systems, as well as items planned for the next generation American GPS satellites. With all that, no one has found a way to make a buck off a network of navigation satellites, at least not directly. There are plenty of ideas but no one has yet turned any of those ideas into cash. Moreover, there are disputes between the Beidou, Galileo, and Glonass organizations over who should use what frequencies. Since GPS got into service first no one is contesting the frequencies GPS uses. But the three other players have some problems.

The success of the original GPS satnav system has generated all this competition. But so far these other efforts have found the work much more difficult than expected. A European consortium went forward with Galileo despite growing costs and technical problems. Initially Galileo was to be funded with private money. But the costs climbed beyond the most optimistic estimates of future income, so now Galileo is being paid for with tax dollars, as was GPS and the competing Russian and Chinese systems.

Galileo came about because the Europeans didn't like being dependent on an American system and didn't believe the Russians would be able to keep their Glonass system viable. Galileo became operational because the European nations were willing to pay for a system that anyone could use without charge. Dual signal (GPS and Galileo) receivers cost about 20 percent more than GPS only receivers. Having two separate sets of signals makes for more reliable and accurate receivers. Also, the way Galileo is being set up, it will provide improved reliability in higher latitudes and in built-up areas.

Russia's answer to GPS, Glonass, was at full strength (24 satellites) in 1996, shortly after the Cold War ended. But the end of the Cold War in 1991 meant the end of the regular financing for Glonass. Maintaining the system required launching replacement satellites every 5-7 years. By the end of 2002, only seven Glonass birds were still operational. However, the Russian economy recovered and provided funds for a series of launches in 2003 that increased the number of active satellites to twelve. That went to 18 by the end of 2007 and Russia had 24 Glonass satellites in orbit by 2011 with the system again fully operational by 2012. As a result, Glonass was the first real competitor for GPS. However, Glonass was not completely functional until 2016 because of delays in building all the ground control stations.

The money for Glonass is coming from a Russian government that does not want to be dependent on the American controlled GPS system. But the money is only there because of high oil prices. Most Glonass receivers in use are actually combined GPS/Glonass receivers. Russia will have to put billions of dollars into Glonass over the next few years to keep the system fully operational and then spend even more money to maintain the satellite network. Glonass is widely used in conjunction with GPS. In other words, many systems, including cell phones that already used GPS, added Glonass and Galileo to provide better coverage and fewer instances where the signal was unavailable.

Beidou is a more restricted system. Services available to anyone are less accurate than other systems but Beidou also has a special (more accurate and allows messaging) military mode that is only available to the Chinese and Pakistani military. China will make an effort to monetize its GPS service, which really would make it unique compared to the others but few nations are willing to pay for a military grade satnav service provided by China. It will take more than a multi-billion dollar propaganda effort to chance global suspicion of Chinese motives and reliability in such matters.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

Its been a hectic few days for Jon Searcy.

The store manager of both Platos Closet locations in Albuquerque, Searcy is working overtime to get the stores ready to open by Saturday morning  for the first time in nearly two months.

In preparation for the grand re-opening, Searcy has already installed new instructional signs and plastic barriers to help protect employees from illness.

But other safety measures, including protective equipment like masks, have proven harder to come by. Searcy said hes still shopping around for enough masks to get the stores through their first full weekend in operation before a new shipment arrives.

Theres a huge shortage right now, so its really hard for businesses to get their hands on it, Searcy said.

Like a lot of New Mexico retailers, Searcy said hes working hard to open by Saturday. That is the first day New Mexico is allowing many businesses declared as nonessential to operate since they were forced to close in March.

To open, businesses must meet state criteria designed to keep customers and employees safe.

The next couple days and the next couple weeks are going to be really interesting, Searcy said.

The new rules

Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham announced Wednesday that retailers in most parts of the state could reopen on Saturday, but only at 25% of their maximum capacity. While the rules for reopening businesses are expected to be finalized Friday, the governor said reopening businesses must provide face coverings for employees and maintain a strict regimen of cleaning and sanitizing surfaces.

She also announced New Mexicans must wear face coverings when in public unless they are eating, drinking or exercising.

A spokesman for Lujan Grishams office clarified Thursday that retailers will not be required to ban customers who are not wearing masks from entering their stores, though some stores could adopt such policies on their own.

The governor acknowledged enforcing the face covering mandate will be challenging, and said the state will rely on extreme positive peer pressure to enforce it.

I implore New Mexicans to wear the face coverings, Lujan Grisham said Wednesday. The more we do this, the better prepared we are to not go backwards.

She said it is not yet safe to allow dine-in restaurants, salons and gyms to reopen.

Your personal decisions will determine whether we move into the next phase, Lujan Grisham said.

Prepping to open

Stores that reopen in the coming days are each doing so in slightly different ways to accommodate their own specific needs and the states mandates.

Some, like The Quarters liquor store at 801 Yale SE, are opening bright and early Saturday morning.

Store owner Connie Nellos plans to open at 9 a.m. Saturday  masks mandatory for staff and customers, too.

Thats the rule of law right now, Nellos said, adding hes purchased extra cloth masks to have on hand for customers who come to the door bare-faced.

We can do this better than the big box stores.

Nellos said he had no trouble getting his staff  who mainly work for him part-time  back on the job, and anticipates the short time until his Saturday re-opening will be busy.

Were going to restock and have specials ready, Nellos said, adding: Hopefully we will get all our customers back.

Ted Leveque, president of American Home Furniture and Mattress, said each of the companys locations in Albuquerque and Santa Fe will be reopening Saturday as well, though its Farmington location will stay closed in compliance with the governors orders.

Leveque said the stores are planning to operate with limited hours for the time being.

With stores operating at 25% of capacity, Leveque said he plans to bring back around half the staff working in stores to start, though the companys warehouse will be fully staffed.

Customers without masks will be offered one at the door, and those who decline will not be allowed to enter.

To keep the large stores sanitized, Leveque said, roving crews of cleaners will be wiping down high-touch surfaces every hour, from elevator buttons to vending machines.

The safety of our customers, the safety of our employees is our priority, he said.

Slower approach

Some business owners are delaying opening past Saturday.

David Edwards, owner of New Mexico Tea Co. in Albuquerque, said hes planning to wait until Tuesday to open his store on Mountain Road NW.

Edwards current plan is to reconfigure his space to let customers enter through 12th Street Emporium, which Edwards also operates, and limit access to just a small portion of the store. Just three customers will be allowed into the approximately 400-square-foot space at a time, and customers wont be allowed to smell the tea.

Edwards acknowledged that its a change from his prior business model, but added that hes shifted focus to curbside pickup and online deliveries to stay ahead of the virus.

In business, often the best innovations come out of struggle, Edwards said.

Meanwhile, Danielle Foster, who co-owns Bookworks with partner Wyatt Wegrzyn, said Thursday the couple just isnt ready to open to in-store foot traffic yet, though it will start offering curbside pick-up on Saturdays, Tuesdays and Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Were just encouraging people to keep ordering from our online website, Foster said. Our main goal is just the safety of our customers and our employers.

Foster said while she has heard that customers miss the in-store experience of the shop at 4022 Rio Grande NW, having an established website in place for about a decade has helped the business hold on in recent weeks, even allowing for robust turn-out to online community events.

I think its just trying to be creative in these days, Foster said. The support (from customers) has been amazing.

Eateries waiting

The governors exclusion of dine-in restaurants from the lightened restrictions disappointed some in the industry, which has already been hit particularly hard by layoffs and closures.

Carol Wight, CEO of the New Mexico Restaurant Association, wrote in a prepared statement that more than 200 restaurants have already closed permanently in New Mexico, a figure that could double in the next two to four weeks if the state doesnt reopen soon.

In addition, these restaurants provided so much richness and diversity to our states food culture it would be a shame to lose them, Wight wrote.

Rob Black, president and CEO of the New Mexico Association of Commerce and Industry, said he understands the rationale behind excluding businesses that operate with more points of contact.

(But) the economic pain for those folks is really, really challenging right now, he said.

Journal staff writers Dan Boyd and Gabrielle Porter contributed to this report.
Holland America Announces Layoffs, Furloughs for All Staff

SEATTLESeattle-based cruise line Holland America said on May 14 it will lay off, furlough, or reduce the hours or pay of all of its employees based on shore because of the ongoing CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus outbreak.

The Seattle Times reports that nearly 2,000 people will be laid off.

Rescue workers transport a patient from the Zaandam of the Holland America Line cruise ship, affected with COVID-19 at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., on April 2, 2020. (Joe Skipper/Reuters)

Most of Holland Americas land-bound staff work in Seattle and Santa Clarita, California.

The company says a no-sail order from federal health officials means the company is not generating revenue. The cruise line canceled all of its voyages out of Seattle last week.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
If you often encounter the unexpected, like to be prepared for any situation, or fancy yourself a real-life MacGyverthe type of person that likes to waltz in and save the day, with your tool kit in miniature at the readythen chances are you carry a multitool. These implements have come a long way from the Swiss Army knife you dreamed of as a child. Today there are dozens, from a slew of manufacturers, some with more than 20 tools/functions. We called in a batch to see how well they work. Take a look below at some things to consider when buying your next one, then scroll down to see the results of our test.

Multitools are designed to fill in when carrying a full tool box is not practicaland they can definitely get you out of a jam. However, not all multitools are created equal, and even among the best, some of the individual tools may not work as well as youd hope. When brands try to pack greater functionality into a limited amount of space, compromises must be made. This might mean theres room for only one screwdriver, or that it isnt positioned for optimal use. When buying, prioritize which tools are most important to you and select a model where those are well designed and function appropriately.

How We Tested

During testing, we performed tasks to utilize every tool or every function of each tool. How well they did earned them a score on a scale of one to five, and then we calculated the average of all scores for a particular tool to determine how it stacks up against a mythical ideal multitool. Note that, in their descriptions, manufacturers often differentiate capabilities of a specific tool to arrive at a higher number of tools. For example, pliers may be counted three or four times if they can function as needle-nose pliers, regular pliers, wire cutters, and/or wire strippers. In our scoring, we counted these as one tool, since the functions are often performed by one regular, full-size tool.

In our test, we cut rope, twine, lamp wire, 14-gauge indoor branch circuit wire, maple saplings and branches, paper, and plasticwe also stripped the wire we cut and crimped electrical connectors. With the pliers, we gripped, squeezed, twisted, and turned various bits of hardware. We carved white pine boards and maple branches. We opened bottles, cans, and shipping packaging. We disassembled and reassembled an old British carburetor, an electrical junction box, and a standard three-prong outlet. Finally, we filed wood, metal, and even our own fingernails. No tool was left untouched.

After all that was said and done, we averaged the recorded scores, noted our impressions, and made our final judgements. Below, youll find the best multitools available from the top manufacturers, a surprising value, and maybe a cautionary tale.

Treavor Raab

Victorinox

Score: 4.5

Fresh out of the box, the SwissTool Spirit X impressed us with its fit and finish. The tools are packed into the frame very closely, like scientific instrumentation. With the exception of the pliers, all the tools deploy from the outside of the frame. You need to open it only to use the pliers, which eliminates wasted time fiddling with opening and closing it repeatedly if Victorinox had placed the 22 tools/functions on the inside. For the record, the company claims 24, but one is a coupling for a corkscrew that doesnt come included with this model, and the other is a point to connect a lanyard. Were not faulting Victorinox for this, though, because the tool is still great without counting those. While the needle-nose pliers with wire cutters, scissors, standard screw drivers (in three sizes), and the can opener were good, it was the other tools that really impressed us. This is the first multi weve tested that has a metal saw. The teeth run along the edge of the file, so we didnt expect much, but it cut through mild steel hardware surprisingly well. And the file itself did a nice job cleaning up the edges when we were done. The Phillips screwdriver shank flares out at the end, so that all four points on the head are the same size, making for very solid engagement. The wire stripper and scraper both work effectively. Although we usually resort to using wire cutters as strippers, this open-sided notch, when used as a stripper, is sharp enough to quickly spin around a wire and pull back the insulation. The Spirit Xs bottle opener is made from wider stainless steel stock which keeps it flatter on a bottle cap, helps it engage more securely, and makes it less likely that the tip cuts into the cap. The combination reamer-punch efficiently opens up holes in wood, leather, and soft metals, and is capable of drilling holes through three-quarter-inch pine board. One last thing to note, the Spirit X is plus or minus one ounce lighter than several other multi-tools with similar spec lists.

Gerber

Score: 4.1

Gerber makes several multi-tools with slide-out pliers like those found on the Diesel Multi-Plier. Unlike other multi-tools, the frame doesnt unfold in a butterfly fashion. They slide smoothly and can be deployed in one motion, by holding the frame by one side and flicking the wrist away from you. Once out, the pliers lock in position and can be opened for use. The needle-nose is narrow and lines up well for firmly grasping small items while the wire cutter is deep enough to fit a piece of rope. It cleanly cut our test wire and was easy to use stripping wire. Instead of having two separate knives, the single knife blade has serrations on the lower half. The blade is sharp enough to saw through tough rope, although the strokes are short due to the small serrated section of the blade. There are three sizes of flat screw drivers made with stout stock that resists twisting when used on tight screws. The single Phillips head driver works well on small to medium screws, although it is sometimes awkward to reach them in tight spaces. Aggressive teeth line the saw blade and they dont disappoint, cutting through kiln-dried lumber and maple branches equally fast. Multi-tools with the majority of tools to the inside of the plier handles are a little more time-consuming to use, since the handles need to be opened to access them, but the Diesel Multi-Plier has a very useful and effective tool set.

SOG

Score: 3.7

Dont let the slightly lower score fool you. The Micro Toolclip ended up being a go-to tool in the time it was on our desks. While micro is in the name, it sort of falls between keychain and full-size multi-toolswhich means it might be a bit bulky for the keychain, but its light and easy to grab for quick tasks. The blunt-nosed pliers grip well and are surprisingly sturdy for their small size. We cleanly cut both soft steel and copper wire with the wire cutter. However, it wasnt effective on fine, stranded electrical wire below 20 gauge. The knife blade was sharp and very useful for common tasks like opening packages and cutting twine. Two flat screwdrivers are provided and work well on medium or smaller screwsthey werent as effective on larger, very tight screws where we saw a little twisting of the blade. The Philips screw driver fit number six screws and larger, but sometimes had difficulty reaching them due to its location on the plier handle. The bottle opener has a deep throat which helps pop bottle caps with one motion, rather than a couple, working around the cap. A two-sided file is provided that was more useful than we expected on both wood and metal. There is a pocket clip on the tool, but it is best used on a lanyard. We found that the sliding lock keeping the pliers closed could open somewhat easily when slipping the tool into a pocket.

Victorinox

Score: 4.0

The RangerGrip 74 is a multi-tool in the Swiss Army Knife traditiona pocket knife with handy fold-out gadgets. True to its name, the tools size provides plenty of grip, aided by textured rubber inserts on the sides. The tool body houses a fold-out needle-nose pliers, complete with wire cutter, that works surprising well. For a multi-tool, the Ranger Grip 74 has a massive blade at four-inchescombined with a tool body that fills the hand, you can cut and saw through all kinds of tough materials effectively. While both can and bottle openers work well, the wire stripper on the bottle opener blade wasnt sharp enough to cut through the insulation. This wasnt an issue, because we found the wire cutter to be effective at stripping wire, which is faster anyway since the pliers are already out if you are cutting wire. There are two sizes of flat screw drivers that cover a range of screws, with the larger one being the more effective of the two. The last of the fold-out tools is an awl/reamer. The sharp awl has a hole in it and can be used for emergency repairs to sew things like leather or vinyl, while the sharpened side of the awl acts as a reamer to enlarge, or even drill holes, in wood, by twisting it back and forth. Also on the back of the tool is a corkscrew that is easy to use, in part, thanks to the large handle. Finally, like many Victorinox products, there is a toothpick and tweezers embedded in the end of the tool handle.

Gerber

Score: 4.2

Gerber set out to solve two main issues with multi-tool screwdrivers: being too short to reach into tight spaces, and the off-center nature of the driver being biased to one side of the tool. The Center-Drive was the companys answer. It has a three-inch hex bit driver, which, when folded out, aligns with the center of the tool, making spinning the tool easier and preventing the frame from banging into the side of what youre working on with every revolution. If you have to screw or drive fasteners often, youll love this feature. While there is a bit holder in the tool, the sheath has a separate pouch to hold extra bits. The other unusual feature is the slide-out pliers, with replaceable three-sided blades for the wire cutter. We did notice a little play in the pliers and sliding mechanismwe knocked it a little for thatbut the pliers, cutters, and wire stripper did work well enough. Both plain and serrated knife blades were quite sharp and capable of carving and cutting into wood and branches. The bottle opener was effective, although it did cut into the cap a little, due to its slim width. Other than the plain knife and driver, the other tools require sliding open the pliers and pulling them out from between the handles, which is awkward at times. The included sheath can slip over a belt or through a backpack strap.

Leatherman

Score: 4.2

The Wave+ is a capable tool with 18 functions. One of the best is the needle-nose pliers, which tapers to a fairly fine point to get a grip in tight spaces. It also features replaceable cutting edges on the wire cutters and has smooth, rounded edges on the handles. The cutters are effective on fine telephone wire or 12-gauge copper wire, as well as harder steel bailing wire. If cutting through wood is important to you, the saw blade is up to the task. As for maple branches and scrap 2 x 3-inch lumber, it cut cleanly through both. The cutting edge is wider than the trailing edge of the blade, so as the blade slices into something the sides dont drag on the sides of the kerf. The plain and serrated knife blades were quite sharpthere wasnt a task they couldnt handle. While the standard file was adequate, we found the diamond-coated one specifically worked very well for fine jobs, like smoothing burrs on metal edges. The Wave+ has two screwdriver tools, one large and one small. The bits on both are reversible, with standard and Phillips tips on opposite ends. The smaller bits are perfect for emergency eyeglass repair; the larger will work for many average screws. We found the scissors worked well, although a little fickly when opening or putting them awaythey need to be opened completely to store, rather than closed completely. Overall, the Wave+ is a competent multitool when it comes to all manner of cutting, grabbing, and screw driving.

Gerber

Score: 4.0

The Suspension is a fairly traditional multi-tool design with all of the tools easily accessible, except the pliers, which requires opening the tool completely to use. The pliers have a very narrow needle-nose, with a wire cutter at the bottom of the jaws, close to the pivot. The wire cutter works well, but the jaws stop just as they meet each other, forcing the wire to break rather than cut cleanly like a bypass cutter where they are sheared. This means the cut wont be quite as clean. We like the tabs on the plain and serrated knife blades that make them easier to flick open. Both blades are very sharp and cut well, but the short profile from the sharp edge to the back of the blade means the angles on the faces make for a broad wedge. This can make cutting through thick, tough material a little difficult as the sides create friction when the blade passes through the cut. This was most evident with the serrated blade cutting through plastic. When that is a problem, consider using the saw blade faces that are parallel, and teeth that remove a channel that the blade follows. Three screw driverstwo flat and one Phillipsare all made from thick stock that resists twisting when used on tight fasteners. A can opener, bottle opener, and scissors are provided as wellall of which perform better than average. Finally, we found the locking mechanism effective and very easy to use.

RoverTac

Score: 3

Rovertacs 12-in-1 initially caught our eye because users on Amazon rated it 4.5 stars, and we wanted to test some less expensive options. While it might be a little bulky and heavy, we have to admit its a decent value. We dont expect it to hold up to heavy use, but in a save your butt kind of capacity, most of the tools functioned acceptably. The long-nosed pliers work reasonably well, as did the wire stripper, and we rated the wire cutter four out of five. The can and bottle openers worked OK, as did the various screwdrivers. RoverTac claims the tool includes a saw blade, but its more like a serrated knife, which worked, just not great. The plain knife blade was sharper than it looked and easily cut through rope and twine. The RoverTac multi-tool comes with a sewn nylon sheath to attach to your belt.

SOG

Score: 4.1

The SOG Powerlock features a clean, smooth design with rounded edges and tool frame covers. It can be opened with one hand and is very comfortable to hold. The 18 tools to choose from include five for fasteners: three sizes of flat screwdrivers, one Phillips screw driver, and a quarter-inch square drive to accept sockets (not included). The quarter-inch driver can be oriented 90 degrees from the tool body for more leverage, but the frame cover has to be popped off to use it this way. The Powerlock has a true needle-nose pliers machined down to a nice point, the jaws of which meet very tightly and accurately, making it easy to grip small things. The wire cutter and stripper also work very well, earning a 4.75 overall for the pliers. Most of the other tools performed up to snuff, with the bottle opener, can opener, awl, scissors, and ruler all scoring four. The partially serrated knife blade was very sharp and cut through several materials easily. The saw blade was a surprisethe aggressive teeth made quick work of maple tree branches. We liked the simple-to-operate locking system, although fishing the tools out from under the frame cover was occasionally awkward. The Powerlock comes with a sewn nylon sheath that can clip on your belt while youre wearing it, as opposed to being strung on your belt as you put it on.

Leatherman

Score: 4.1

The Free P2 is built with tight tolerances, evident in its smooth opening and closing action. You can open it with one hand, and it makes a gratifying click as the pliers handle locks in place. A nice feature of the P2 is tool accessibilityall of the implements can be folded out or in without opening the pliers. In fact, the only reason to open the tool is to use the pliers. We rated the pliers, with their tight pivot, strong grip, and replaceable wire-cutting blades, 4.5 out of 5. The wire stripper, included on the medium screwdriver, only really worked on wire of a specific size. However, the notch for hard wire worked well up to 12 gauge. A typical gripe of ours with can openers is that a wide tool frame can interfere with the can; but on the P2, the opener is the last tool on the row, so its perfectly positioned for clearance. The scissors cut well and were easy to manipulate cutting intricate shapes, while the combination plain/serrated knife blade was extremely sharp. Three flat screwdrivers were adequate, with the largest being made of thicker material to resist twisting. The Phillips screw driver is good on a wide range of sizes, and its flat stock folds into the tool frame smoothly. And finally, magnets ensure the frame stays closed when you want it to.

Hearst Newspapers participates in various affiliate marketing programs, which means we may get paid commissions on editorially chosen products purchased through our links to retailer sites.
A shooting suspect who escaped from the Hoover City Jail was recaptured nearly 12 hours after he made his getaway.

Theodoric Rapheal Boglin Jr. was taken back into custody shortly before 10 p.m. Thursday said Hoover Police Chief Nick Derzis. He was found in a wooded area between Interstate 65, Valleydale Road and La Quinta Inn.

Boglin was arrested Wednesday night for firing shots at his girlfriend, said Lt. Keith Czeskleba. The shooting happened near the Circle K in the 2000 block of Valleydale Road. He was initially jailed about 11:30 p.m. Wednesday and booked into the Hoover City Jail.

Czeskleba said detectives were in the process of obtaining formal warrants against Boglin when he escaped. The details of his escape are currently under investigation, but it appears he was able to access a perimeter door, Czeskleba said.

After his escape, Boglin was last seen at 10:19 a.m. Thursday in the area of Valleydale Road wearing a black and white Hoover City Jail uniform. Multiple officers searched the area but to no avail. Lookout bulletins issued throughout the day said Boglin was shirtless and wearing his jail uniform pants inside out.

Another credible sighting came into police about 6:30 p.m. Derzis said. Officers returned to the area and set up a perimeter. The Jefferson County Sheriffs Office, the Shelby County Sheriffs Office and the U.S. Marshals also were on the scene.

Police had long guns drawn and were checking the trunks of vehicles passing through on Riverchase Parkway.

About 9 p.m., an Alabama Law Enforcement Agency helicopter joined in the search and, roughly 45 minutes later, spotted movement in the area between La Quinta and I-65. They got him running, Derzis said. The air crew directed officers on foot who were able to capture Boglin. Derzis said he believes Boglin had been hiding in that area all day, even though tracking dogs had been deployed.

He has been formally charged with attempted murder, second-degree escape and also a gun charge. His bonds total $241,000. He is en route to the Shelby County Jail.
A pandemic 'plan' that Donald Trump's press secretary waved at reporters on Thursday to show the president was in control of the coronavirus outbreak had been savaged by another report - that she was also holding.

Trump insisted on Thursday that he did have a playbook to battle the pandemic as a whistleblower testified on Capitol Hill that a 'dark winter' was ahead because of a lack of 'standard, centralized, coordinated plan.'

The president, before he left to visit a medical supply factory in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wave before reporters a binder containing the 2018 'Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Ver. 2.0.'

But she was also holding an after-action report from the 'Crimson Contagion' simulation exercise which took place in 2019 -- which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness plan in the other binder.

The simulated scenario tested the capacity of the U.S. federal government and 12 states to handle a severe influenza outbreak originating in China, and warned of a disorganized response, funding shortfalls, and dangerous shortages of ventilators and medical masks.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany brandished this binder containing the January 2018 'Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Ver. 2.0.' to prove Trump had a plan for an outbreak

She also carried the 2019 after-action report from the Crimson Contagion wargame, which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness

McEnany is seen wielding the Crimson Contagion after-action report. A leaked draft of the report shows that it predicted serious flaws in federal pandemic preparedness

McEnany said of the two binders: 'So what our administration did, under the leadership of President Trump, is do an entire 2018 Pandemic Preparedness Report ... Beyond that, we did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in August of last year and had an entire after-action report put together.'

While McEnany didn't offer details on what was in the 2018 Trump 'plan,' the 'Crimson Contagion' report references it on several occasions, pointing out its shortfalls.

For one, the 2018 plan, and another from 2017, 'do not outline the organization structure of the federal government when HHS is designated as the lead federal agency' to handle a pandemic.

The 'Crimson Contagion' after-action report talks of 'confusion' between various federal agencies on the role they would play dealing with this type of crisis.

It also warned that exercise participants were not clear how they would use the Defense Production Act 'to mitigate medical countermeasure and ancillary supply shortages during an influenza pandemic response.'

As well, it said 'there are insufficient funding sources designated for the federal government to use in response to a severe influenza pandemic.'

The report also stated bluntly: 'The current medical countermeasure supply chain and production capacity cannot meet the demands imposed by nations during a global influenza pandemic.'

McEnany told reporters she would further talk about what Trump's plan had been in the Friday briefing.

'We'll have a full update tomorrow for you guys at the briefing  line by line  of how prepared we were for the pandemic,' McEnany said.

McEnany also criticized the pandemic plan left by the Obama administration (above)

McEnany also showed reporters a copy of the 'Playbook for early response to high consequence emerging infectious disease threats and biological incidents,' which was the document the Obama administration left for the Trump administration.

The page was labelled 'table of contents' and had hand writing all over it.

McEnany called the document left by President Barack Obama 'insufficient' and used the occasion to also take a hit at Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee.

'The Obama-Biden plan has been referenced. It was insufficient, wasn't going to work,' she said.

Trump complained 'we were given very little' when they took over the White House.

The administration's response came as Dr. Rick Bright, the HHS whistleblower, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Trump administration's slow response to the coronavirus 'put lives at risk.'

'Without better planning 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history,' Bright warned.

'The window is closing to address this pandemic, because we still do not have a standard, centralized, coordinated plan to take our nation through this response,' he explained, when questioned about his dire warning.

Coronavirus has infected more than 1.43 million people in the United States and caused more than 85,000 deaths.

Last week, former President Barack Obama called the Trump administration's response an 'absolute chaotic disaster.

'What we're fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy - that has become a stronger impulse in American life,' Obama said on a call obtained by Yahoo News.

'And by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well,' he noted, adding 'It's part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty.'

'It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset - of 'what's in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else' - when that mindset is operationalized in our government.'

Obama added: 'That's why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.'

Dr. Rick Bright warned Congress that '2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history' if a strategy isn't deployed to get the coronavisus pandemic under control before fall

Former President Barack Obama (left) blasted President Trump's (right) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as an 'absolute chaotic disaster'

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the former president, claiming he didn't leave a plan to fight pandemics when he left the White House.

'They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this,' McConnell said.

But former Obama officials have struck back.

'We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored. And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office... that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75%,' Ronald Klain, a campaign adviser to Biden and the former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator, wrote on Twitter last week.

The Obama playbook, which was 40 pages plus appendices, contained step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what, CNN reported.

It also listed the novel coronaviruses as ones to watch that could require a major government response.

The color-coded book addressed a number of issues, including testing, funding, personal protective equipment, emergency declarations, border control measures, diplomacy, the use of the military, public communication, and even mortuary services.
#LockdownLessons: Online connectivity, the network and stakeholder engagement tool of the future

As part of its #LockdownLessons series, Bizcommunity is reaching out to its Press Office clients and South Africa's top industry players to share their experience of the current Covid-19 crisis, how their organisations are navigating these unusual times, where the challenges and opportunities lie, and their industry outlook for the near future.





Solly Moeng

Image credit: @Purschartistes

What was your initial response to the crisis/lockdown and has your experience of it been different to what you expected?



Solly Moeng: At first, I understood the reasons for the lockdown and embraced them without questioning them. It was also good that government spoke in one voice and that its briefings were both consistent and regular. They also seemed transparent. However, I gradually developed a level of scepticism when lockdown rules began to seem not to have been sufficiently thought through and, in some cases, appearing to be informed more by the likes and dislikes of certain ministers instead of the scientifically informed rationale to push back against Covid-19. The lockdown has seriously impacted on our annual event, the Africa Brand Summit, as it too, like many other big events, had to be cancelled; well, pushed to go entirely digital in our case.



Comment on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on your organisation or economy as a whole.



Moeng: At first, we postponed the 2020 Africa Brand Summit from the beginning of June to the beginning of October. Then we decided to host it as a hybrid event  with a small group of people gathering locally and others streaming in digitally from other parts of South Africa, the rest of Africa and the world. More recently, following a webinar hosted by SA Tourism and the Minister of Tourism, it became clear that restrictions on large gatherings, as well as domestic and international travel, are unlikely to be lifted before December 2020. This pushed us to ditch the hybrid plans and go for a completely digital, yet technologically enhanced event, to optimise connectivity, partner brand visibility and heighten the overall experiential quality for all participants. It is a new world; were embracing it fully. The challenge for events such as ours, in these changing times, is to monetise them. This can only be done by providing great returns for brand visibility and reach to the right audiences.



How is your organisation responding to the crisis?



Moeng: Were looking at a number of awesome, technologically enhanced digital platforms that will help us deliver an unforgettable experience for our partner brands and delegates from across the world.



Comment on the challenges and opportunities.



Moeng: The initial challenges were triggered by announcements from our sponsors that they needed to pull back a bit  fortunately not pull-out  while they monitored the evolving situation. We had to come up with ways to keep them with us by working with them to find mutually beneficial arrangements to ensure that the event continues in a changed form and that they can still justify associating with it in the new economy. 2020 will go down as a truly unique and extraordinary year in the history of mankind. As a brand, wed rather remember it by the things we quickly learned to do differently in order to survive than by the way we had to stay hidden, invisible to the world, while we waited for the dusts to settle.



How has the lockdown affected your staff? / What temporary HR policies have you put in place regarding remote working, health & safety, etc.?



Moeng: We all pulled back and worked from our respective homes. We remained in touch through various online and telephone platforms: Zoom meetings, WhatsApp, telephone, etc. We also encouraged one another to remain safe by following all precautions to avoid contracting the coronavirus.



How are you navigating physical distancing while keeping your team close-knit and aligned?



Moeng: Were physically distancing while we remain socially connected through various digital platforms. There is no need for us to come together in person until we can safely do so, as the restrictions get lifted over time.



How have you had to change the way you operate?



Moeng: By relying entirely on various digital platforms to communicate and share work related information, as well as by using virtual meeting platforms where needed.



Any trends youve seen emerge as a result of the crisis?



Moeng: Digital, digital, digital. Online connectivity is the new network and stakeholder engagement tool of the future.



Your key message to those in the sector?



Moeng: Be patient. Do not despair. Attend as many free webinars as possible on how to use digital products and run your business online, where you can. The digital space will be increasingly crowded, no doubt, but there is a lot to be discovered and many opportunities waiting to be explored by those who will have the calmness to sit back and quietly allow themselves to learn new things with open minds.



What do you predict the next six months will be like?



Moeng: They will be tough for many as they struggle to let go of the past and transition into the new economy, the new way of doing things. Some old skills will become obsolete and new technologies will come in and provide us with tools to do things differently. People must have their eyes on smart safety measures to help them avoid contracting the coronavirus while they also learn new skills. Those who sit at home and do nothing will be left behind when the new economy begins to pick-up speed.



Solly Moeng , Founder & Convenor of The Africa Brand Summit , shares his views.At first, I understood the reasons for the lockdown and embraced them without questioning them. It was also good that government spoke in one voice and that its briefings were both consistent and regular. They also seemed transparent. However, I gradually developed a level of scepticism when lockdown rules began to seem not to have been sufficiently thought through and, in some cases, appearing to be informed more by the likes and dislikes of certain ministers instead of the scientifically informed rationale to push back against Covid-19. The lockdown has seriously impacted on our annual event, the Africa Brand Summit, as it too, like many other big events, had to be cancelled; well, pushed to go entirely digital in our case.At first, we postponed the 2020 Africa Brand Summit from the beginning of June to the beginning of October. Then we decided to host it as a hybrid event  with a small group of people gathering locally and others streaming in digitally from other parts of South Africa, the rest of Africa and the world. More recently, following a webinar hosted by SA Tourism and the Minister of Tourism, it became clear that restrictions on large gatherings, as well as domestic and international travel, are unlikely to be lifted before December 2020. This pushed us to ditch the hybrid plans and go for a completely digital, yet technologically enhanced event, to optimise connectivity, partner brand visibility and heighten the overall experiential quality for all participants. It is a new world; were embracing it fully. The challenge for events such as ours, in these changing times, is to monetise them. This can only be done by providing great returns for brand visibility and reach to the right audiences.Were looking at a number of awesome, technologically enhanced digital platforms that will help us deliver an unforgettable experience for our partner brands and delegates from across the world.The initial challenges were triggered by announcements from our sponsors that they needed to pull back a bit  fortunately not pull-out  while they monitored the evolving situation. We had to come up with ways to keep them with us by working with them to find mutually beneficial arrangements to ensure that the event continues in a changed form and that they can still justify associating with it in the new economy. 2020 will go down as a truly unique and extraordinary year in the history of mankind. As a brand, wed rather remember it by the things we quickly learned to do differently in order to survive than by the way we had to stay hidden, invisible to the world, while we waited for the dusts to settle.We all pulled back and worked from our respective homes. We remained in touch through various online and telephone platforms: Zoom meetings, WhatsApp, telephone, etc. We also encouraged one another to remain safe by following all precautions to avoid contracting the coronavirus.Were physically distancing while we remain socially connected through various digital platforms. There is no need for us to come together in person until we can safely do so, as the restrictions get lifted over time.By relying entirely on various digital platforms to communicate and share work related information, as well as by using virtual meeting platforms where needed.Digital, digital, digital. Online connectivity is the new network and stakeholder engagement tool of the future.Be patient. Do not despair. Attend as many free webinars as possible on how to use digital products and run your business online, where you can. The digital space will be increasingly crowded, no doubt, but there is a lot to be discovered and many opportunities waiting to be explored by those who will have the calmness to sit back and quietly allow themselves to learn new things with open minds.They will be tough for many as they struggle to let go of the past and transition into the new economy, the new way of doing things. Some old skills will become obsolete and new technologies will come in and provide us with tools to do things differently. People must have their eyes on smart safety measures to help them avoid contracting the coronavirus while they also learn new skills. Those who sit at home and do nothing will be left behind when the new economy begins to pick-up speed.
Nepal on Friday reported nine fresh cases of COVID-19, mostly from a district adjacent to the Indo-Nepal border, taking the total number of infections to 258, the health ministry said.

Nepal, which currently is under a nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of deadly coronavirus, is among the nations that has the least number of cases of the deadly COVID-19 with no deaths.

"The number of coronavirus infected cases has reached 258 in Nepal on Friday with nine more people tested positive," Dr Samir Kumar Adhikari, who is the joint spokesman at Nepal's Ministry of Health and Population, said.

"A 37-year-old man from Makwanpur and other eight males aged between 18 and 36 from Nainpur Village of Banke district have been tested positive for COVID-19.

He said that eight people from Banke district near the Nepal-India border, who tested positive for the virus, are those who returned home from India three days ago despite the lockdown in place.

The Nepal government has intensified the vigil along the country's southern border with India due to a sudden spike in the number of coronavirus patients.

So far, 36 people have recovered from the disease.

There are 222 active COVID-19 patients currently undergoing treatment at different hospitals across the country.

"So far coronavirus tests have been conducted on 23,914 people," according to the ministry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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India now has as many as 81,970 recorded cases of the novel coronavirus and 2,649 deaths, according to the Union Health Ministry's latest update.

Of these, 51,401 are active cases while 27,919 people have recovered.

The data was updated at 8.00 am on May 15 on the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare's website.

Follow our LIVE blog for the latest updates on the COVID-19 pandemic

With 27,524 COVID-19 cases, Maharashtra has reported the highest number of infections, followed by Tamil Nadu (9,674 ), Gujarat (9,591) and Delhi (8,470).

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

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 14 announced a few measures for migrant workers, including provision of food and rental accommodation.

The Delhi government has recommended opening of markets, shopping complexes and operation of buses and metro services with strict social distancing norms, PTI reported.

The Maharashtra government might extend the lockdown in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and cities like Pune, Malegaon and Aurangabad, according to a report by The Indian Express.

S. No. Name of State / UT Total Confirmed cases* Cured/Discharged/Migrated Deaths** 1 Andaman and Nicobar Islands 33 33 0 2 Andhra Pradesh 2205 1192 48 3 Arunachal Pradesh 1 1 0 4 Assam 87 39 2 5 Bihar 994 411 7 6 Chandigarh 191 37 3 7 Chhattisgarh 60 56 0 8 Dadar Nagar Haveli 1 0 0 9 Delhi 8470 3045 115 10 Goa 14 7 0 11 Gujarat 9591 3753 586 12 Haryana 818 439 11 13 Himachal Pradesh 74 39 2 14 Jammu and Kashmir 983 485 11 15 Jharkhand 197 87 3 16 Karnataka 987 460 35 17 Kerala 560 491 4 18 Ladakh 43 22 0 19 Madhya Pradesh 4426 2171 237 20 Maharashtra 27524 6059 1019 21 Manipur 3 2 0 22 Meghalaya 13 11 1 23 Mizoram 1 1 0 24 Odisha 611 158 3 25 Puducherry 13 9 1 26 Punjab 1935 223 32 27 Rajasthan 4534 2580 125 28 Tamil Nadu 9674 2240 66 29 Telengana 1414 950 34 30 Tripura 156 29 0 31 Uttarakhand 78 50 1 32 Uttar Pradesh 3902 2072 88 33 West Bengal 2377 768 215 Total number of confirmed cases in India 81970# 27920 2649 *(Including foreign Nationals) **( more than 70% cases due to comorbidities ) #States wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation #Our figures are being reconciled with ICMR

Globally, over 44.4 lakh infections and over 3 lakh deaths have been reported due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Follow our full coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic here
Each day at 6:13 p.m., Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff discuss the latest developments in the COVID-19 situation. Today's briefing will stream above, or check back with ExpressNews.com for our followup story with any need-to-know updates.

Coronavirus update: After 11:59 tonight, residents in San Antonio and Bexar County will no longer be under a stay-at-home order.
Teachers and student bodies have criticised the Delhi Universitys decision to hold final year post-graduate and under-graduate exams in open-book mode online if the COVID-19 situation doesnt normalise soon, terming it discriminatory which would put a large section of pupils in anxiety.

The open-book examination mode would allow students to refer to books, notes and other study materials to answer the questions. Students will download question papers for their respective course from the web portal sitting at home and upload the answers within two hours.

The Delhi University Teachers Association (DUTA) termed the system of holding online exams discriminatory and unfair. It also shot off a letter to the university vice-chancellor expressing their disagreement with the move.

It is not viable for a large University like DU, with its diverse student population, and it is shocking that the institute has adopted it as the only form. We demand that the pen-paper option be given to all students, DUTA said.

It suggested that the university should consider the possibility of giving provisional degrees to students based on their Cumulative Grade Points Average (CGPA) of five semesters.

The concept of an open-book examination is very different from the kind of tests our students are used to. Springing this ugly surprise on them in such uncertain and anxious times will increase the anxiety of large sections of students, especially since the normal teaching-learning process has been disrupted due to the pandemic, the teachers body said.

The Delhi Universitys Executive Council member Rajesh Jha, along with some other members of the council, have also written to the VC over the issue.

This unilateral move to organise remote open book exams to be attempted at home by the students of Delhi University will push higher education towards privatization by devaluing its degrees and diluting their rigour.

The pedagogy of DU and its examination system are neither structured nor cultivated for open book examinations and those too to be taken at ones home, they said while also raising internet connectivity and cybersecurity issues.

The Indian National Teachers Congress (INTEC) also mooted the idea of calculating CGPA on the basis of internal exam marks and scores in the previous semester.

Open book exams are meant not only to test the conceptual understanding of the students but also their ability to apply these concepts in real-life situations. Open book online exams need a totally different patterned question paper.

Students and teachers are never trained for this process of conducting exams in our university, said INTEC convener Pankaj Garg.

According to INTEC, 45 per cent of the universitys students are from outside Delhi and a major chunk of them from the rural hinterland.

These outstation students had gone to their homes during semester break without taking along their books and notes. Also, students from northeastern India and Jammu and Kashmir do not have access to the Internet, Garg claimed.

There is no provision of open-book online exams in the ordinances. An academic Council meeting should be convened over the issue, he said.

Among the student bodies, the Left-backed All India Students Association (AISA) said online exams are not a feasible form of assessment for the wide diaspora of pupils in DU.

AISA had recently conducted a survey which showed 74 per cent students were against holding of exams online. In a time of health crisis, the DU administration must take into account the students coming from the marginal sections of the society. Students have cited various reasons such as connectivity, resources, lack of material and online classes for rejecting online exams. The voice of students must be listened to, it said.

The AISA will be holding a social media campaign #DuAgainstOnlineExams on May 15.

The Congress-affiliated National Students Union of India (NSUI) said the first and second-year students should be promoted on the basis of their performance in the previous semester while the final year students should be evaluated on their past scores and be given 10 per cent extra marks since students tend to score more in their final year.

The NSUI has also initiated an online petition raising its demands. The petition has been signed by more than 60,000 students, it said.

Former Executive Council member A K Bhagi said the open book exam doesnt seem like a viable option in DU.

When we say it is an online open-book test then it is beneficial to those who have access to experts and or tutors. One can pay money to get test solved through prior engagement of experts. It doesnt seem to me as a workable, viable option in DU and it has less credibility, he added.
SAN FRANCISCO (BCN)

A federal appeals court in San Francisco on Thursday allowed a voter-approved law requiring background checks for ammunition buyers to remain in place while the state appeals a lower court ruling against the law.

A panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by a 2-1 vote issued a stay of preliminary injunction issued April 23 by U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego.

Benitez, ruling in a lawsuit filed by gun rights advocates, said the background check requirement violated the constitutional Second Amendment right to bear arms.

The stay will be in effect during state Attorney General Xavier Becerra's appeal of the injunction, a process that could take months.

The law, enacted by California voters in 2016 as part of Proposition 63, requires background checks for ammunition buyers similar to those mandated for gun buyers.

Becerra said in a statement, "Our commonsense law requiring background checks for ammunition sales not only can save lives, it keeps our communities safe."

Gov. Gavin Newsom said, "In the interest of public safety, we are encouraged by the 9th Circuit Court's decision to stay the district court's order, and hope for a resolution that ensures Californians' safety."

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.
The number of coronavirus cases in the country crossed the 80,000-mark on Friday. According to the latest figures updated by the Ministry of Health, the Covid-19 national tally stands at 81,970. There are 51,401 active coronavirus cases in the country, 27,919 patients have been cured or discharged while 2,649 people have died from the deadly contagion.

Covid-19 cases in Maharashtra have breached the 27,000-mark while in Gujarat, the Covid-19 cases have crossed 9,500.

Heres the statewise breakup of the number of coronavirus cases, deaths, and recoveries.

Maharashtra

With 27,524 Covid-19 active cases, Maharashtra continues to lead the state tally. The state has recorded 1,019 deaths so far while 6,059 patients have recovered.

Tamil Nadu

The southern state is second in terms of number of Covid-19 cases. Tamil Nadu has 9,674 coronavirus cases. It has seen 2,240 recoveries and 66 Covid-19 deaths.

Gujarat

The tally in the state, as per the Ministry of Health, stands at 9,591. While 586 people have died due to the coronavirus disease, Gujarat has seen 3,753 recoveries so far.

Delhi

As many as 8,470 people have tested positive for coronavirus in the national capital. One hundred fifteen people have died from the infection while 3,045 have made a recovery, as per the health ministrys data.

Rajasthan

Coronavirus cases in Rajasthan touched 4,534 on Friday. The state has reported 125 fatalities, and 2,580 patients have recovered from the infection.

Madhya Pradesh

The state has reported 4,426 positive cases of coronavirus. Two hundred thirty seven people have died from Covid-19 here while 2,171 have recovered.

Uttar Pradesh

The number of Covid-19 positive cases reaches 3,902 in Uttar Pradesh. While 2,072 people have recovered from coronavirus in Uttar Pradesh, 88 have died from the infection here.

Andhra Pradesh

The state has witnessed 2,205 positive Covid-19 patients and 1,192 cases of recovery. Forty eight people have died.

West Bengal

The number of infected cases in West Bengal reached 2,377 on Friday. There have been 215 deaths and 768 recoveries in the state.

Telangana

The number of Covid-19 positive cases reaches 1,414 in state so far. Nine hundred fifty people people have made a recovery from the virus while 34 people have died from Covid-19.

Jammu and Kashmir

The union territory of Jammu and Kashmir has seen the number of Covid-19 patients rising to 983. Eleven people have died from the infection while 485 were cured.

Karnataka

The state has recorded 987 Covid-19 cases and 35 deaths. As many as 460 people have been cured and discharged.

Haryana and Punjab

The neighbouring states have 818 and 1,935 Covid-19 cases respectively. While 32 people have died in Punjab, Haryana has seen 11 deaths. Four hundred thirty nine people have recovered from Covid-19 in Haryana, 223 in Punjab.

Kerala

As per the health ministry, Kerala reported 560 coronavirus cases on Thursday. Kerala has witnessed four deaths due to Covid-19 while 491 people have successfully recovered.

In Bihar, 994 people have tested positive for Covid-19, seven people have died while 411 patients have recovered. Odisha has 611 Covid-19 positive patients, 158 have recovered while three people have died. Jharkhand has 197 Covid-19 cases, three patients have died and 87 have recovered.

Uttarakhand has 78 coronavirus patients, 50 patients have recovered from the infection, one patient has died. Himachal Pradesh has 74 cases, two patients have died and 39 have recovered. Assam has reported 87 Covid-19 cases, two people have died while 39 people have recovered.

Chhattisgarh has recorded 60 cases of coronavirus and 56 people have recovered. In Chandigarh, 191 people have contracted the Covid-19 disease and 37 have recovered, three people have died. Andaman has recorded 33 coronavirus cases, all patients have recovered.

Ladakh has 43 patients, 22 people have recovered. Goa reported 14 cases of Covid-19 disease, seven have recovered. Puducherry has reported 13 cases, nine have recovered and one person has died. Meghalaya has reported 13 cases and one death, 11 patients have recovered. One patient has died.

Manipur had three coronavirus cases, and two of them have recovered. Tripura, meanwhile, has 156 cases, 29 patients have recovered.

States and Union territories with just one positive Covid-19 case include Dadra Nagar Haveli, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram. All patients in Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram have recovered. Sikkim has not reported any Covid-19 case yet.

Note: Figures are from official data released by the Ministry of Health, and may differ from realtime numbers released by various state governments subject to confirmation from the Centre.
President Donald Trump touted a 'super duper' missile as he staged a 'very special moment' and unveiled the new flag of the Space Force Friday.

Trump, who regularly claims he inherited a hollow military, staged the ceremony for the new military service he pushed for in the Oval Office  and claimed the U.S. was ahead of Russia and China.

'It's a very special moment,' Trump said.

President Donald Trump gestures towards the U.S. Space Force flag during a presentation of the flag in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, U.S., May 15, 2020. He touted a 'super duper missile' he said the U.S. has

'We've worked very hard on this and it's so important form a defensive standpoint, from an offensive standpoint, from every standpoint there is,' he said. 'We should have started this a long time ago, but we've made up for it.'

Trump spoke a few hours after he pushed another project with a space theme: Operation Warp Speed, meant to get millions of doses of vaccines produced to protect the nation from coronavirus after U.S. deaths topped 80,000.

Trump said the military was building 'incredible military equipment,' which he only loosely described, in a likely reference to a hypersonic missile.

'We have, I call it the Super Duper Missile, and I heard the other night 17 times faster than what they have right now, when you take the fastest missile we have right now,' Trump said. 'You've heard Russia has five times and China's working on five or six times, we have one 17 times and it's just gotten the go ahead,' Trump said.

The new head of Space Force, General John W. Raymond, attended the White House ceremony, saying: 'We're proud of this flag. We're proud to have an opportunity to present it to you.'

'That's a beautiful flag, too,' Trump said after it was unfurled.

epa08424721 US President Donald J. Trump signs the 2020 Armed Forces Day Proclamation after being presented the official flag of the United States Space Force at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, on 15 May 2020

The Space Force flag features a delta, a North Star, and an orbit

Raymond described the flag, which has a delta-shaped insignia is an insignia 'which space communities have used for years and years and years.' He said the North Star signifies 'our core value, our guiding light.' And he said the orbit around the globe 'signifies space capabilities that fuel our American way of life and our American way of war.'

which drew immediate comparisons to Star Trek when it was first unveiled.

He said the North Star represented 'our guiding light if you will

Gen. Jay Raymond, Chief of Space Operations, points to the newly designed rank insignia of CMSgt Roger Towberman, the senior most enlisted in the US Space Force, while US President Donald J. Trump signs the 2020 Armed Forces Day Proclamation and presentation of the official flag of the United States Space Force

President Trump signed the Armed Forces Day proclamation on a day he also held events on a program to find a coronavirus vaccine and an even honoring people helping others through the pandemic

WHAT IS RUSSIA'S AVANGARD HYPERSONIC GLIDE VEHICLE? Russia is developing a hypersonic weapon that can breach even the world's most advanced missile defense systems. The Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle travels at 20 times the speed of sound and can hit targets anywhere in the world within half an hour. The vehicle launches atop an intercontinental ballistic missile before sailing on top of the atmosphere toward its target. It is loaded with advanced countermeasure systems that allow it to skirt around missile defense systems. The gliders are also highly unpredictable thanks to their exceptional maneuverability, making them almost impossible to track. Each weapon could be loaded with a nuclear warhead but experts say the sheer speed of the vehicles means they would do damage even without an explosive payload. Putin described his hypersonic arsenal as 'invincible' during a state-of-the-nation address in March 2018. He claimed Avangard strikes 'like a meteorite, like a fireball' and was capable of reaching targets at 20 times the speed of sound. At this speed the weapon could circle the Earth in just over half an hour. Advertisement

'Space is going to be the future, both in terms of defense and offense and so many other things and already what I'm hearing and based on reports, we're now the leader on space,' Trump said.

'It's a very historic moment,' said Secretary of Defense Mike Esper, who attended the ceremony, where Trump also signed an Armed Forces Day proclamation.

White House press secretary Keyleigh McEnany provided no additional information on the super duper missile or U.S. defense capabilities.

'I would just refer you back to the president's remarks and the Pentagon. I don't have any new information on that at this point,' she said when asked a follow-up question.

Trump also touted 'super-fast' missiles earlier this year.

Russian President Vladimir Putin says his nation already has hypersonic missiles.

Takei, a frequent critic of Trump, tweeted: 'Ahem. We are expecting some royalties from this..' after the Space Force logo was revealed

Social media users pointed out that the Space Force logo (left) looks a lot like the insignia from the Starfleet Command (right) as seen on Star Trek

President Trump on Friday unveiled the new logo for the Space Force

Trump signed a copy of the proclamation and presented one to Roger Towberman, the senior most enlisted in the US Space Force. 'Please don't put this ton eBay tonight,' Trump quipped.
The number of Oregonians applying for help because they cant afford food has exploded more than 40-fold since the pandemic began.

During normal times, about 1,300 Oregonians a month filed applications for food stamps. The states assistance program interviewed new applicants either the day they applied or the next.

When that number spiked to 13,000 applications a week, turnaround times multiplied as well.

Before mid-March, the federal food assistance programs in Oregon -- Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Temporary Aid for Needy Families -- had some of the lowest enrollment the state had ever seen.

That changed nearly overnight.

During the most intense weeks, office assistants, managers and anyone else in self-sufficiency programs at the Department for Human Services were redeployed to process applications. New applicants sometimes waited 10 to 12 days before someone could get to their case and issue them an Oregon Trail card to make purchases.

Across the state, layoffs and business closures have caused thousands of people to turn to safety net programs. The states Medicaid system has seen the largest spike in cases since the Affordable Care Act expanded who is eligible to enroll in 2014.

Federal waivers that allow Oregon food and health systems to bypass some of the usual vetting procedures for new applications have helped officials adjust more quickly to the suddenness of the increased caseload -- avoiding the problems that have plagued the unemployment insurance system.

For the food assistance programs, people already receiving benefits are automatically renewed without needing to go through a requisite interview, saving precious time for state workers to keep adding new enrollees.

The pressure to enroll new enrollees has lifted in recent weeks as new cases slowed to about 8,200 a week, and most people who have suddenly found themselves without a way to feed themselves or their family can expect to receive a food assistance card within four days.

These are unprecedented times for families and people find themselves in situations they never thought theyd find themselves in, said Daniel Haun, Oregon director of self sufficiency programs. We want people to know were a resource for them during this time.

But the next crisis could come during budget setting.

The Oregon Health Plan also relies on the general fund to supplement federal dollars. State dollars are finite and can pit health systems against each other for a share of the pot.

Right now, the Medicaid program is boosted by a $6.2 million allotment from the federal government for the pandemic. Depending on how patients qualify, the federal government covers 60% to 90% of their health care costs.

But thousands more people have signed up for public health care and thousands more are staying on when they might have been dropped. That could become a significant strain on state coffers.

March saw 43% more new enrollees to the Oregon Health Plan than the previous two months, on average, according to Medicaid data.

At the end of each year, thousands of people rush to enroll in the Oregon Health Plan during the period to sign up for private insurance plans. Even though Oregonians can sign up for Medicaid at any time, new applications normally drop in the spring and summer.

But this March, enrollments shot up out of season and exceeded the usual busy period by about 27,000 people per month.

Like the food assistance programs, the Oregon Health Plan office has also relaxed rules for staying enrolled.

Usually, 10,000 to 20,000 people are dropped a month for failure prove their income is still low enough. To make sure everyone is covered and also reduce the amount of paperwork on staff, no one is getting dropped now.

Lori Coyner, state Medicaid director, said she expects many more people to enter the rolls during the rest of the year. Coyner braced for a bigger increase, and while recent enrollment numbers are certainly out of the range of normal, she said it appears either that many people are waiting to sign up for the Oregon Health Plan until they need medical care that or people view their loss of health benefits as temporary.

The same is true across the country, generally, Coyner has found in her check-in calls with other Medicaid heads.

Were still watching and trying to assess what its going to look like in three, six, nine, 12 months, Coyner said.

Those months could tax the Medicaid system in unprecedented ways if the economy enters a deep recession.

I will say this: Medicaid enrollment is tied closely to the economy, Coyner said. When unemployment goes up, we tend to have an increase in Medicaid.

For food assistance programs, Haun already suspects what is to come. During the Great Recession, people in rural and coastal communities stayed on food benefits much longer than other parts of the state.

Even if most people who were laid off during the pandemic shutdowns are hired back, he said there is usually a lag time before they can get off of safety net benefits while they get their lives and finances back in order.

While self sufficiency offices might not need all hands on deck to process applications anymore, Haun has shelved the conversations they were having before March.

We were talking about what programs can we grow and now were back talking about how can you focus on that safety net and ensuring those basic needs, Haun said.

The supplemental food assistance program, sometimes called food stamps, is fully funded by the federal government, so it should be fine for the time being. The federal government has boosted funding, at least through June, to grant all Oregon recipients the maximum amount allowed for their household size. That works out to $646 a month for a family of four.

But the temporary family assistance program that provides needy households with cash to spend on clothing, rent and utilities relies in part on state funds and parts of the program are sometimes on the chopping block during tight times.

In years past, lawmakers have discussed cutting families off of the cash benefits after 60 months to preserve general funds, rather than the current practice of ending the payments just for parents after five years while keeping benefits for the children.

The program also offers case management, job help and other benefits that arent cash. Cuts to the job aid were proposed during a cost-saving exercise the governor asked state departments to do this month.

Haun said he hasnt seen bigger trims proposed yet.

There is not much left to slash off these programs. Food assistance programs have had their payouts slowly whittled away over decades. Under federal COVID-19 rules, food assistance benefits have been maximized to $194 per person, but once that pandemic bump is lifted, a single person might only receive $20 a month, depending on their income and other factors.

Senate Human Services Chair Sara Gelser, D-Corvallis, said that any decision the Oregon Legislature makes about what to cut and what to keep will be a painful choice between economic and health impacts.

I think its irresponsible for me or any public officials to tell people that things are going to be OK and their program is not going to be affected, Gelser said. Its just not possible.

But she wants to make sure the people who must continue to stay home because of age or underlying conditions are taken care of as much as small businesses owners are. While business groups rally to delay taxes that were slated to go into effect this year, that would mean less revenue coming in, forcing lawmakers to decide how much to spend floating social service programs that have never recovered from sharp cuts that started in 2002, she said.

She is inundated with emails and calls from constituents that need help right now. And she said the people who will be going back to work first are also the people working the lowest wage jobs and will continue to need help paying for food and medical care.

Were really going to have to be thinking of those things in terms of budget and policy as we move forward if we want Oregon to recover and we want an economy that doesnt build itself on health and social inequities based on class and race, she said.

Need help?

Sign up for the Oregon Health Plan online

Apply for food assistance programs online

-- Molly Harbarger

mharbarger@oregonian.com | 503-294-5923 | @MollyHarbarger

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The pastor of the Adams Square Baptist Church in Worcester has sued the city and the governor after being fined for holding in-person services during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Gov. Charlie Baker has issued an order banning any gatherings larger than 10 people. Despite the order, Pastor Kristopher Casey has held more than three church services that violated the governors ban and has been issued fines.

Worcester City Manager Edward Augustus Jr. said during the citys daily press briefing on Thursday that the city has been served court papers.

Federal court documents indicate Casey has filed a lawsuit against Baker, Augustus and Worcester Police Chief Steven Sargent.

Bakers order was issued in March.

The challenged Order No. 13 specifically prohibits religious gatherings of more than ten (10) people, regardless of whether the Church meets or exceeds the social distancing and hygiene guidelines pursuant to which the Commonwealth disparately and discriminatorily allows so-called essential commercial and other secular entities (e.g., liquor stores, licensed medical marijuana retailers, transportation carriers, grocery stores, hotels, professional offices, commercial retail stores that supply essential sectors) to accommodate gatherings without scrutiny or numerical limits," court documents read.

Without emergency relief, Casey and the church will suffer immediate and irreparable injury from the threat of civil and criminal prosecution for the mere act of engaging in the free exercise of religion and in assembling for worship, the lawsuit reads.

During the daily press briefing, Augustus said the citys policy is not to comment on ongoing litigation.

The Adams Square Baptist Church, founded in Worcester in 1889, has had Casey as the pastor since 2012. Casey also serves as the president of the Adams Square Baptist Church corporation.

In the federal filing, the church said it is a small congregation and normally has 75 to 125 persons at its weekly worship assembly.

Governor Bakers COVID-19 Executive Orders have been interpreted, applied, and enforced by Defendants City Manager Augustus and Chief of Police Sargent against the Pastor of the Church, such that police officers of the City of Worcester have visited the Church with a show of unwarranted intimidation, imposed a noncriminal penalty, and filed a criminal complaint against Pastor Casey for allowing religious gatherings that exceed the 10-people limit, even though the gathered individuals were separated by more than six feet in the 300-seat sanctuary and wore surgical masks and gloves while occupying the sanctuary, far exceeding the social distancing and personal hygiene recommendations for Essential Services still permitted to gather," the lawsuit reads.

On May 7, the city manager announced that a criminal complaint for a $500 fine to be assessed was filed in Worcester District Court. Before that, the church had received a $300 fine and a warning.

On April 22, Casey sent a letter to Mayor Joseph Petty, Sargent and Baker giving them this notice: "I have made the decision to resume gathering as a church for corporate. This coming Sunday, April 26th, we will hold a morning worship service in our church sanctuary located at 266 Lincoln Street in Worcester. We will also gather at the same location on Wednesday evenings for our midweek service. My congregation and I will observe the appropriate social distancing precautions, consistent with guidance from the CDC.

The following day, April 27, Augustus had Sargent deliver Casey a letter advising him of the governors order and stated he cannot have in-person services with 10 or more people inside the church.

On Friday, May 1, 2020, the Church spent approximately $1,300 for a professional cleaning service to clean the Church, including fogging and wiping all surfaces with disinfectants, the filing states. Three men worked for four to five hours in the interior of the building to make sure the building was as sanitary as possible.

The church had its first Sunday morning in-person service on April 26. Services then continued on Wednesdays and Sundays resulting in the city issuing fines.

The court filing notes that during services, all parishioners, other than families, were seated at least six feet apart and had their temperature taken before the service.

Pastor Casey is concerned that after his Church congregation meets for mid-week service on Wednesday, May 13, and for Sunday service on May 17, 2020, the Worcester Police Department will file additional applications for criminal complaints against him, court documents read. Despite the threat of criminal prosecution, his faith compels Pastor Casey and the Church members to continue to assemble as commanded by the Lord in His Word, the Holy Bible.

The lawsuit seeks the court to grant Caseys filed motion for a temporary restraining order and to declare the governors order to be unlawful and/or a violation of Caseys rights.

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The Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court on Friday granted anticipatory bail to The Wire's founding editor Siddharth Varadarajan who was booked for making remarks against Chief Minister Yogi Adityananth.

Two FIRs were registered at Kotwali Ayodhya police station against Varadarajan



One of the FIRs was registered under various sections of the Indian Penal Code, IT Act, Disaster Management Act and Epidemic Diseases Act.

Pronouncing the order reserved on May 13, Justice Chandra Dhari Singh directed the petitioner to immediately surrender his US passport and not to leave the country without permission of the trial court.

The court held that anticipatory bail can be granted even after submission of charge sheet and after the judicial magistrate has congnisance.

The high court also imposed many other riders before allowing his pleas of anticipatory bail.

Senior lawyer IB Singh had submitted that the petitioner was being targeted for ulterior reason by the state government for the factual error which was corrected immediately before lodging of FIRs.

He also argued that the maximum punishment against the offences registered against the petitioner stood up to three years and in such cases the Supreme Court has deprecated arrest. Even then Varadarajan was being harassed, Singh said.

Opposing the plea, Additional Advocate General V K Sahi argued that the act of the petitioner amounted to disturbing communal harmony.

He also strongly submitted that investigation was already complete and charge sheets were filed.

Not only this, the chief judicial magistrate, Ayodhya, has taken cognisance of the offences and issued summons against the petitioner and as such at this stage the anticipatory bail plea was not maintainable, Sahi argued.

Considering the pleas of both the sides, the bench said that a person can apprehend arrest at the hands of the magistrate for the purpose of remanding him to custody, "while committing the sessions case to the Court of Session for trial with an accusation of non-bailable offence and this would certainly make that person to be entitled for approaching the court under Section 438 CrPC for obtaining anticipatory bail.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Washington, May 15 : US President Donald Trump has said that he "could cut off the whole relationship" with China, in one of his strongest comments against Beijing in the wake of the Asian giant's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the media reported.

"There are many things we could do," Trump told Fox Business on Thursday, adding: "We could cut off the whole relationship." The Trump administration has been mulling avenues to possibly punish or seek financial compensation from China for what it sees as withholding information about the virus, which originated in the city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, last December.

On Monday, the administration cut investment ties between US federal retirement funds and Chinese equities.

Speaking exclusively to Fox Business, the President raised the impact of ending relations, saying: "Now, if you did, what would happen? You'd save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship." Trump also said "right now I don't want to speak to" his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

"They should have never let this happen," Trump said. "So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn't feel the same to me.

"The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn't feel the same to me." Although the pandemic originated in China, the US currently accounts for the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, the number of COVID-19 cases increased to 1,417,889 on Friday, with 85,906 deaths.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:42:50|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the COVID-19 pandemic is likely to undermine the ability of many African countries to feed their citizens amid disruptions on agricultural activities.

Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa said Thursday that the viral respiratory disease could hamper efforts to address the endemic hunger and malnutrition crisis in the continent.

"COVID-19 is unfolding in Africa against a backdrop of worrying levels of hunger and undernourishment, which could worsen as the virus threatens livelihoods and household economies," Moeti in a statement issued in Nairobi.

"Hunger and malnutrition heighten vulnerability to diseases, the consequences of which could be far-reaching if not properly addressed," she added.

WHO statistics indicate that one in five people in Africa is undernourished while 30 percent of children under five years in the continent have stunted growth.

The UN health agency acknowledged there is limited research on malnutrition and COVID-19 fatalities but stressed that individuals with weak immune system due to severe undernourishment are likely to be severely affected by the virus.

Nearly 73 million people are currently food insecure in Sub-Saharan Africa as desert locust invasion combined with climatic shocks devastate key staples like maize.

According to WHO, COVID-19 has escalated food shortages in Africa as containment measures like lockdowns, curfews and physical distancing hamper storage, processing and transportation of food.

It said that low-income households have borne the brunt of restricted movements amid loss of income and inability to access open-air markets where they often source for local staples.

WHO hailed a recent decision by several African countries to mitigate the disruption of food supply chains even as they intensify the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Moeti said that WHO has developed guidelines to enable African countries to promote health and nutrition of citizens through consumption of whole grains, cereals, lentils, peas and beans as they mull easing of anti-COVID-19 containment measures.

"As countries begin to relax their lockdowns, essential health services must be in place to meet challenges posed by malnutrition," said Moeti, adding that African governments should provide assistance to food-insecure households and ensure medical facilities are able to give special care to COVID-19 patients that are undernourished. Enditem
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP)  From a hospital on the edge of the Navajo Nation to the suburbs of the nations capital, front-line medical workers in coronavirus hot spots are struggling to keep up with a crushing load of patients while lockdown restrictions are lifting in many other parts of the U.S.

Governors are starting to slowly reopen some segments of their local economies, pointing to evidence that COVID-19 deaths and new hospitalizations are peaking or starting to recede in their states. But a government whistleblower warned Thursday that the U.S. faces its darkest winter in modern history unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the virus.

RETAILERS REOPEN: Which Houston-area stores have reopened and what to expect when you go

While many state and local officials see modest signs of progress in the pandemic fight, coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks in pockets of the U.S.

Among them is a suburb of Washington, D.C. The head of a hospital system in Marylands Prince Georges County, a majority black community bordering the city, said the area's intensive care units are bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, a civil rights groups lawsuit claimed the countys jail failed to stop an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak and isolated infected prisoners in cells with walls covered in feces, mucus and blood.

I would say we are the epicenter of the epicenter, said Dr. Joseph Wright, interim CEO of University of Maryland Capital Region Health.

The hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, is on the front lines of a grinding outbreak on the Navajo Nation that recently prompted a 10-day lockdown with police setting up roadblocks to discourage non-emergency shopping.

Medical workers last week staged a protest over inadequate staffing and to urge the CEO of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital to resign. The departure last week of the hospitals lung specialist has limited its ability to treat COVID-19 patients, as people with acute respiratory symptoms are transported to Albuquerque some two hours away. About 17 nurses were cut from the hospitals workforce in March, at least 32 workers have tested positive for the virus and its intensive care unit is at capacity.

My staff is physically exhausted, emotionally exhausted and they are suffering from moral injury, chief nursing officer Felicia Adams said.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Rick Bright, a vaccine expert who alleges he was ousted from a high-level scientific post after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic, told a congressional panel that the U.S. lacks a plan to produce and fairly distribute a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available.

Asked by lawmakers if Congress should be worried, Bright, who wore a protective mask while testifying, responded: Absolutely.

President Donald Trump dismissed Bright in a tweet Thursday as a disgruntled employee. The White House has launched what it calls Operation Warp Speed to produce, distribute and administer a vaccine once it becomes available.

Brights testimony follows a warning this week from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the governments top infectious disease expert, that rushing to reopen could turn back the clock and lead to more suffering and death, complicating efforts to revive the economy.

TEXAS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS: Texas reports 58 coronavirus deaths in one day, a record

The U.S. has the largest outbreak in the world by far: over 1.4 million infections and nearly 85,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.4 million and killed over 300,000. Experts say the actual numbers are likely far higher.

The pressure is on to staunch job losses in the U.S. after unemployment soared to 14.7% in April, the highest since the Great Depression. Another nearly 3 million applied for unemployment benefits last week as more companies slashed jobs.

Roughly 36 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the country in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close, the U.S. Labor Department said Thursday.

Many states are lifting lockdowns, leading to tentative resumptions of commerce, but there are frustrations among some people still living under tough restrictions. In Michigan, hundreds of people, some armed, protested Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order in heavy rain outside the state Capitol on Thursday, while about 500 people rallied outside the residence of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

But elsewhere, Richmond, Virginia, opted out of the state's gradual reopening for now citing an increase in cases and the city's large minority population, and Kansas delayed reopening bars and bowling alleys.

Even in places that have relaxed restrictions, hospitals continue to operate on an emergency footing.

Georgia provided a network of hospitals with extra nurses so exhausted employees could take some time off and recover. The Northeast Georgia Health System, which operates four hospitals, is still struggling to buy the disposable protective gowns it needs. It has assigned workers to collect and sanitize suits so they can be reused, and volunteers are sewing gowns and masks.

Thats our most critical need, said Tracy Vardeman, the health systems chief strategy officer. Were going through as many as 6,000 a day.

The systems largest hospital serves a county at the epicenter of the states poultry industry. About one-third of Hall Countys residents are Hispanic or Latino, a demographic that has accounted for up to 60% of the systems COVID-19 patients. Officials are taking virus testing to a grocery store in the heart of the Hispanic community.

I think there is increasing realization that this is a severe issue and we cannot take it lightly, said Dr. Antonio Rios, a leader of the hospital systems affiliated physicians group.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan has announced the first stage of reopening beginning Friday evening, but Prince Georges County Executive Angela Alsobrooks said Thursday that a local order would extend through June 1.

Wright, the hospital CEO in Prince Georges County, said the three emergency departments his medical system operates are steadily seeing upward of 70 new COVID-19 confirmed and suspected patients every day.

Officials say the community has been particularly affected in part because it is a gateway to the District of Columbia and many of its 909,000 residents are essential workers who continue to go to jobs every day. That largely mirrors the scenario in Queens, the epicenter of New Yorks outbreak.

We are certainly still very much in a very busy phase of this surge, Wright said.

In China, where the pandemic originated, it has now been a month since authorities announced any new deaths from the coronavirus. The National Health Commission reported four new cases in the northeastern province of Jilin, where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days.

China has maintained social distancing and bans on foreigners entering the country, but has increasingly opened up the worlds second-largest economy to allow both large factories and small businesses to resume production and dealings with customers.

But hot spots in other parts of the world continued to flare up.

Mexican health officials said Thursday they had recorded their largest one-day rise so far in confirmed coronavirus cases, 2,409, and that the country is at its most difficult moment of the pandemic. It was the first time new cases exceeded 2,000 on a single day in Mexico, though in percentage terms, the 6% increase was not the biggest.

___

Garcia Cano reported from Washington; Lee reported from Santa Fe, New Mexico. Associated Press writers Jeff Amy in Atlanta, and Christopher Rugaber and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar in Washington contributed.

___

Follow AP pandemic coverage at http://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
VANCOUVERThe union representing Vancouvers police officers joined the police chief Thursday in criticizing a budget cut passed by city council, arguing their services shouldnt be reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.

City council passed a motion Wednesday to reduce the police departments $314-million budget by one per cent, equating to about a $3.5-million budget cut.

The Vancouver Police Union estimates that could rise to $8.5 million, depending on the outcome of arbitration related to a collective bargaining agreement.

About 27 per cent of the citys revenue is spent on police services.

These are really tough discussions were having and its a result of our revenue loss, Mayor Kennedy Stewart told a news conference on Thursday. Weve had negotiations with the other unions about how we can at least slow down further layoffs or postpone them and this is just another one of those discussions.

Police officers are already expressing worries over the proposed cuts, union president Ralph Kaisers said.

Our members are concerned. My phone has exploded today with concerns and comments, he said. Nows not the time for cuts.

In a statement, police Chief Adam Palmer criticized the secretive nature of the cuts, which were debated in an in-camera meeting.

There was zero consultation with the Vancouver Police Board, VPD or any VPD unions on the motion itself and how it will affect the safety and security of Vancouver residents, Palmer said.

Palmer said city, library and park board layoffs were related to a decline in demand for services, which isnt the case for the police.

Stewart acknowledged the work Vancouvers police force does, but argued the cuts are the result of the financial fallout the city is facing.

I think all of us are aware how essential police are during times of crisis and I think people would also recognize that the city is under significant financial challenges and we have to find a way forward that best works for everybody, Stewart said.

The police department recently returned to 2009 staffing levels, while Vancouvers population has increased by 11 per cent, the police boards finance committee chairman wrote in a letter to city council before the motion was approved.

Any service reductions would have a disproportionate negative impact to such a marked degree that these impacts would outweigh the potential savings that could be achieved, Barj Dhahan wrote.

Another factor complicating budget cuts is the creation of a new police department in nearby Surrey to replace the RCMP, with Vancouver facing an impending threat to retaining its officers, Dhahan added.

Kaisers agrees the creation of a new force in Surrey is a factor for Vancouvers police officers.

Theres going to be a great opportunity in a new organization, with chances for advancement that they maybe wouldnt have had there, said Kaisers, who estimated that a few hundred of the unions members could leave for the new force.

The city says the pandemic has resulted in a $27-billion drop in business revenues, with 13,400 businesses closing down and 90,000 jobs lost in April.

Council says a revenue loss of $152 million is projected for the city and its required by law to balance its books.

Stewart reiterated his call for more funding from the provincial and federal governments.

City council will look for ways of helping businesses reopen with an added emphasis on plans that help women and seniors, because those groups have been hit harder than others by the pandemic, Stewart said.

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Prince William has offered his help to Muslims in Christchurch as they continue to recover from the massacre which killed 51 people last year.

William visited New Zealand in April 2019 after the terror attack on Al-Noor and Linwood mosque the month before, which was the deadliest in the countrys history.

The gunman, Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 29, is due to be sentenced after pleading guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of terrorism.

The Duke of Cambridge, 37, spoke to Imam Alani Lateef and Imam Gamal Fouda from the mosques, members of the community including Farid Ahmad who lost his wife Husna in the attack, and representatives from the Muslim Association of Canterbury.

He said As-Salam-u-Alaikum, meaning Peace be unto you, and asked the group about how the impact of the killings has continued to be felt.

William spoke to members of the Muslim community in New Zealand. (Kensington Palace)

Prince William met New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern at the Al-Noor Mosque in April 2019. (Getty Images)

Read more: Prince Philip called his uncle Lord Mountbatten's death a 'senseless act of terrorism' in poignant letter

Dahabo Ali said she knows some family are still in shock with some raw emotions resurfacing after Tarrant pleaded guilty.

Asked about the impact on the younger generation of Muslims, she said: The youth are making Islamic identity normal so Islamophobia is something of the past rather than something continuing to fight every single day.

People are continuing to not only feel safe but have their voices heard and being seen in New Zealand.

I think with everything that happened we are being heard and seen and things are changing.

The Duke of Cambridge visited Christchurch Hospital during the trip. (The New Zealand Government via Getty Images)

Read more: The Queen and Duchess of Cambridge release touching messages to nurses

The duke told them: Im really proud of all of you, the whole community and the New Zealand Government for how you have all dealt with such an atrocity.

You are a role model for how something so tragic can be negotiated with the utmost grace and dignity.

I only hope that its been a year now and acknowledgement memorial of attacks go on at some point that Covid-19 has delayed and I only hope that brings further healing for all of you.

Story continues

But I stand here ready to help in any way I can. If there is more than needs to be done dont hesitate to reach out.

Prince William spoke to Muslims at the mosque after the attack. (Getty Images)

Read more: Fans applaud Princess Eugenie and husband Jack for Salvation Army work: Fantastic example of leadership

The group, like Muslims around the world, is observing Ramadan, which ends this year on 23 May.

Prince William spoke to them after Iftar, the evening meal which follows the fast.

Faisal Sayed, general secretary of Linwood Islamic Centre, said the community had rallied together and created a very unique Ramadan with Imams using social media to speak to their members and food being delivered to families.
The path to a sweeter life in the village of Pleasant Prairie took a step forward Monday night.

And by sweeter, that means gummy bears and lots of the them.

The villages Plan Commission unanimously approved the final site and operational plans for Haribo, which plans to develop a 136.8-acre property in the Highlands Corporate Park. The main office and production site will be located at 12488 Goldbear Drive and the warehouse at 948 122nd Ave.

When completed, the manufacturing facility will be Haribos first in North America. Groundbreaking is expected in September, with the first phase set for completion in April of 2022.

Plan Commission Chairman Mike Serpe said the village has plenty to be proud of with the development along the I-94 corridor heading to and from Pleasant Prairie.

People coming into Wisconsin on I-94 and leaving Wisconsin on I-94, what theyre seeing today compared to what was there a number of years ago, this is just a transformation on the west side of the interstate that is something all of us can be proud of, he said.

Compared to the adult book stores that were there at one time and a military junkyard, we have now two quality businesses, one thats running and one that will be running soon, in Uline and now Haribo. I couldnt be more proud in what this village has accomplished.

Included in the first phase is a 487,400-square-foot production building with a three-story accessory storage/mechanical area and a two-story administrative and assembly area.

Also planned in the first phase is the construction of an 87,866-square-foot warehouse building that is connected by a 475-foot-long passageway that will allow raw material and products to move between the production and warehouse buildings on a series of conveyors.

At the completion of the first phase, it is expected that Haribo will have 450 full-time employees in the production facility, 44 full-time employees in the warehouse and a total of 20 part-time employees.

The facility will operate on three shifts Monday through Friday, the production facility will run 24 hours a day, and the warehouse from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. At its maximum, a total of 250 employees are expected on site at any given time.

The Village Board previously gave its conditional approval to the companys conceptual plan in May of 2018.

Excited to be here

Haribo Chief Production Officer Arndt Ruesges said in a press release issued by the village that the company is excited to move forward with the project.

Were reaching our 100th anniversary at Haribo this year, and were excited to celebrate that with continued progress on our first U.S. factory, he said. Were thrilled with reaching each milestone and are proud to partner with the village of Pleasant Prairie to make that happen.

We founded our business on the principle of quality and inspiring moments of joy through our treats, and our new factory will help us continue that tradition and produce gummies for our consumers for generations to come.

With 16 production sites in 10 countries, Haribo currently employs nearly 7,000 associates and produces 100 million gold bears worldwide every day. Founded in 1920, the third-generation family-owned business has its global headquarters in Grafschaft, Germany, and its U.S. headquarters in Rosemont, Ill.
CELLINK, focused on the development and commercialization of innovative bioprinting technologies and bioinks, announced today that the company will collaborate with AstraZeneca to provide advanced 3D-bioprinted liver organoids for drug discovery purposes in cardiovascular, renal and metabolic diseases.

In tissue engineering, the need for assembly of three-dimensional (3D) tissues is important. 3D-bioprinting has emerged as a useful technology to recapitulate the microenvironment of native tissue, allowing for precise printing of multiple cells into a pre-defined position.

CELLINK has an R&D lab in AstraZenecas BioVentureHub in Gothenburg, Sweden. The new collaboration will leverage CELLINKs innovative and patent-pending bioink, Extra Cellular Matrix and Laminin based bioinks, which enables human cells to grow and function as they would in the human body.
Jharkhand Congress president



Rameshwar Oraon on Friday said that about one lakh migrant workers of the state returned home so far while efforts were on to bring back all other stranded people.

Taking part in a video conference with AICC General Secretary K C Venugopal and other senior leaders, Oraon said the Jharkhand government was making efforts to bring back migrant workers from Bihar, West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Madhya Pradesh, Karnataka and other states.

"So far, the state government has brought home nearly one lakh pravasis and efforts were on to bring back others," a party release quoted Oraon, who is also Jharkhand finance minister, as saying.

Senior AICC leader R P N Singh said that the time table of the arrival of the scheduled trains be made available so that party workers could help the returnees.

Working president Rajesh Thakur and party spokesman Alok Kumar Dubey were among other state leaders who were present during the video conference.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An Accra Circuit Court on Friday granted a GH30,000.00 bail with two sureties each to 19 persons for breaking the Public Restrictions Order meant to prevent the spread of COVID-19.



The accused made up of nine Nigerians and ten Ghanaians pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit crime to wit failing to comply with Restrictions Imposed: Contrary to Section 23(1) of The Criminal Offences Act, 1960 (Act 29), Paragraph 1(1) (A) (Vii) of E.I 64 and breaching the Imposition of Restriction Act, 2020 (Act 1012).



The Court presided over by Madam Rosemary Dotsu also ordered the Nigerians to deposit their passports with the Court's Registry.



They will make their next appearance on June 9.



Prosecuting, Police Chief Inspector Martin Acheampong said on May 12, 2020, the Baatsonaa Divisional Police arrested the accused who were partying at a location in Cambodia near the Baatsonaa Spintex road, a suburb of Accra in violation of the restrictions imposed on social gatherings.



He said they were engaged in close contacts, socializing, feasting and making merry, in disregard for the restrictions imposed by law on public gatherings including private parties currently in force on such activities to curb the COVID-19 pandemic.



The Prosecution said the Baatsonaa Police consequently arrested 19 of them, whilst the rest escaped.



He said investigations revealed that one of the accused organized the birthday party for his girlfriend and sent invitation through social media for the others to attend.

Source: GNA









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NEW DELHI: The recent stand-off between Indian and Chinese troops along the Line of Actual Control was a result of difference in perception between the two sides regarding the LAC, the Ministry of External Affairs said on Thursday.The India-China border has largely been peaceful, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said in a press briefing.

Occasionally, however on account of difference in perception of the alignment of the LAC, situations have arisen on the ground that could have been avoided if we had a common perception of the LAC. The two sides have established mechanisms to resolve such situations as and when they arise, Srivastava said.

Both countries attached utmost importance to peace and tranquillity to all areas of the border, the MEA spokesperson asserted. Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping in their informal Summits in Wuhan (2018) and in Chennai (2019) had reaffirmed that both sides will continue to make efforts to ensure peace and tranquillity in the border areas, Srivastava said.

Face-offs have no connect to local or global activities

The face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops are neither co-related nor do they have any connection with other global or local activities, Army chief General MM Naravane said. There were two incidents where aggressive behaviour by both sides resulted in minor injuries to troops post which both sides disengaged after dialogue and interaction at local level, he said. Such incidents are managed by established mechanisms where-in local formations resolve issues mutually.
Esta lucha la ganamos todos juntos! Sigue las siguientes recomendaciones para proteger tu salud y la de tu familia. #PeruEstaEnNuestrasManos pic.twitter.com/7zi1cGHvsg
The federal government is now accepting permanent-residence applications from migrant workers in selected agri-food industries, which have proven to be essential to the countrys food-supply chain in the pandemic.

These workers often lack the high level of formal education and language proficiency required for regular economic immigration programs and end up on everlasting work permits without the chance to settle down  despite perpetual labour shortages in the sector.

Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino said the three-year Agri-Food Pilot will help employers in the meat processing, mushroom and greenhouse production, and livestock-raising industries fill their needs for full-time, year-round employees.

A total of 2,750 applications will be accepted annually throughout the pilot until May 14, 2023. A total of 16,500 people, including the workers spouses and children, are expected to become permanent residents over its three-year duration.

Its very important that we support our farmers and food processors to make sure they have the workers they need to help strengthen Canadas food security, Mendicino said in a statement.

Attracting and retaining talented workers is essential to help grow our economy and improve the living standards of all Canadians.

On Friday, the immigration department released the occupations and industries eligible under the pilot:

Meat product manufacturing: retail butchers, industrial butchers, farm supervisors and specialized livestock workers

Food processing labourers: greenhouse, nursery and floriculture production, including mushroom production; farm supervisors and specialized livestock workers; general farm workers and harvesting labourers

Animal production, excluding aquaculture: farm supervisors and specialized livestock workers; and general farm workers

More than half of the 2,750 yearly spots will go to industrial butchers (1,470), followed by food processing labourers (730), harvesting workers (300), general farm workers (200), and farm supervisors or specialized livestock workers (50).

Applicants must meet minimum language requirements and have the equivalent of a Canadian high school diploma, as well as one year of nonseasonal, full-time work experience. They also need a job offer letter from their employers.

At a time when JBS and Cargill (meat plants) are reopening without making any changes to ensure worker safety, tying migrant workers ability to stay in the country permanently to the goodwill of employers gives employers a dangerous amount of power, said Marco Luciano of Migrante Alberta, an advocacy group for migrant workers.

Workers will be forced to choose between their health, or even their lives, or a chance at stability and family unity.

Other advocates said only a very small group of migrant workers would benefit from the pilot.

This program is just smoke and mirrors. The government wants to look like its taking appropriate action during a pandemic, while in reality almost everyone is excluded, said Robyn Bunn of Radical Action with Migrants in Agriculture in Kelowna, B.C.

According to the Migrant Rights Network, 56,850 of the 98,495 work permits issued for temporary foreign workers in 2019 were for agricultural workers. The Agri-Food Pilot Program, with its 2,750 annual quota, will accept less than five per cent of the migrant agricultural workforce.

COVID-19 has shown that migrant labour is essential to the Canadian economy, said Kit Andres of Migrant Workers Alliance for Change in Niagara. Yet migrant farm workers  essential workers that keep the food system running  are being excluded from permanent residency? It makes no sense.
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VillageReach transforms health care delivery to reach everyone, so that each person has the health care needed to thrive. We develop solutions that improve equity and access to primary health care. This includes making sure products are available when and where they are needed and primary health care services are delivered to the most under-reached. Radical collaboration with governments, the private sector and other partners strengthen our ability to scale and sustain these solutions. Our work increases access to quality health care for more than 40 million people in sub-Saharan Africa. VillageReach in incorporated in Washington State and has offices in Seattle (USA), Democratic Republic of Congo, Malawi, and Mozambique.

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VillageReach is searching for a qualified and experienced individual to fill the position of Finance and Administrative Officer based in Kinshasa, DRC. The ideal candidate will be a finance professional with office management experience. Under the direction of the Country Director and with partnership from the finance director at headquarters, the Finance and Administrative Officer will be responsible for coordinating the financial and administrative operations of all programs in DRC.

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Essential Duties and Responsibilities include the following. Other duties, responsibilities, and activities may change or be assigned at any time.

Financial Management:

Ensure financial operations are timely and accurate including daily bookkeeping in Quickbooks, processing of expense reporting, assistance with budget to actual review, and support in preparing the monthly financial reporting to headquarters.

Managing and reconciling all cash accounts, including petty cash reconciliations, bank reconciliations, and advance reconciliations, in both USD and CDF.

Monitoring of monthly timesheets within Zoho People. Maintenance of financial documents and supporting files, including proper substantiation of payments made including proper approvals and coding.

Support of an internal control structure to promote accuracy and accountability of the accounting system.

Office Administration:

Recommending, implementing, and maintaining efficient office systems.

In conjunction with the Country Director, ensure that VillageReach activities adhere to all applicable laws and regulations and meet overall operational standards of VillageReach and its funders.

Resource Management:

Assisting in the procurement and management of office equipment, furniture, and other assets including managing and updating the inventory of office assets.

Any other duties as required.

Competencies:

The following competencies reflect what is expected of all VillageReach employees; including examples of how one might demonstrate each of these competencies in ones role.

Personal Motivation and Drive: Is self-directed in ones approach to work, but asks for help when needed; holds oneself accountable; undertakes self-development activities; seeks to build and master new skills; looks for and takes advantage of opportunities within the organization.

Collaboration & Effective Communication: Establishes and maintains effective relations with coworkers, partners & stakeholders and external parties; works collaboratively with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives; works actively to resolve conflicts; expresses ideas and thoughts effectively; selects and uses appropriate communication methods and maintains meaningful communication with virtual coworkers and other parties to keep them informed.

Establishes and maintains effective relations with coworkers, partners & stakeholders and external parties; works collaboratively with others to accomplish organizational and team goals and objectives; works actively to resolve conflicts; expresses ideas and thoughts effectively; selects and uses appropriate communication methods and maintains meaningful communication with virtual coworkers and other parties to keep them informed. Commitment to Diversity & Inclusion: Takes personal responsibility for and supports others across the organization in creating and sustaining a diverse work environment where individuals are welcomed, valued, respected and supported; personally committed to attaining cultural competency including self-awareness of ones own attitudes about culture and cross-cultural interactions; exhibits the willingness and ability to engage openly and respectfully around issues of race, colonialism, identity and culture; upholds equity in access to sharing of information, ideas, and opportunities throughout VillageReach.

Takes personal responsibility for and supports others across the organization in creating and sustaining a diverse work environment where individuals are welcomed, valued, respected and supported; personally committed to attaining cultural competency including self-awareness of ones own attitudes about culture and cross-cultural interactions; exhibits the willingness and ability to engage openly and respectfully around issues of race, colonialism, identity and culture; upholds equity in access to sharing of information, ideas, and opportunities throughout VillageReach. Commitment to Excellence: Produces a high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity; looks for ways to improve and promote quality; monitors work to ensure quality; has a personal commitment to the mission of VillageReach.

Produces a high output of work, both in terms of quality and quantity; looks for ways to improve and promote quality; monitors work to ensure quality; has a personal commitment to the mission of VillageReach. Solution Orientation & Innovation: Focuses on results and desired outcomes and how to best achieve them; gets the job done; sees opportunities for creative problem-solving while staying within the parameters of good practice; sees old problems in new ways and has novel approaches to solving those problems; contributes original and/or resourceful ideas to their area of responsibility; is able to consider and articulate risks and consequences of proposed innovations and factor these into decision-making.

REQUIREMENTS

To perform this job successfully, an individual must be able to perform each essential duty satisfactorily. The requirements listed below are representative of the knowledge, skill and/or ability required. Reasonable accommodation may be made to enable individuals with disabilities to perform the essential functions.

Supervisory Responsibilities:

This position has no supervisory responsibilities

Education & Experience:

Bachelor degree in Business Administration or Accounting (or similar) required.

3 years professional experience in a similar role

Other Qualifications:

Superb technology skills including intermediate level understanding of Microsoft-based programs, like Excel, Outlook, and PowerPoint.

Financial and bookkeeping acumen. Experience with Quickbooks required.

Ability to develop and carry out work plans and solve problems independently.

Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.

Ability to work independently and take initiative.

Experience working in team settings, preferably in an international capacity.

Ability to work under time constraints and meet deadlines.

Superb written and verbal communication skills, fluency in English required.

APPLICATION INFORMATION:

This is an immediate hire and therefore resumes will be reviewed on a rolling basis until May 28, 2020. To apply, please submit your resume and a cover letter to our online portal: https://www.villagereach.org/join-us/

COMMITMENT TO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION:

VillageReach is an Equal Employment Opportunity Employer committed to workforce diversity. We believe that diverse, equitably weighted perspectives foster an organizational capacity to create novel solutions that improve health in the most underserved and hard-to-reach areas. To align our values, innovations and impact, VillageReach is committed to recruiting and retaining a diverse global workforce.

Compensation:

VillageReach has an established compensation structure that is based on the relevant market and internally transparent. We hire people into the established range based on ones experience and education and considering internal equity. We do not inquire about salary history.
In a relief to over 13,000 students and 17,000 in-service teachers, the HRD Ministry has granted retrospective recognition to teacher courses conducted without approval from the National Council of Teacher (NCTE), Union Minister Ramesh Pokhriyal 'Nishank' said on Friday.

"We have brought out gazette notification to regularize retrospectively certain teacher programmes being conducted by some central and state government institutions. These programmes were being conducted without any formal recognition from NCTE," Nishank said.

"It was brought to my notice that some of the institutions had inadvertently admitted students in teacher education courses which were not recognized by NCTE. This rendered invalid the qualification acquired by these students for the purposes of employment as school teachers," it added.

The ministry clarified that amendment only allows retrospective recognition up to academic session 2017-2018, thereby only regularizing the qualifications acquired by students in the past.

"It does not propose to leave it open for institutions to run unrecognized courses in future and thereafter approach for ex-post facto regularization," an official said.

NCTE legally grants formal recognition to academic institutions for conducting any of the recognized courses meant for pre-service teacher education. It is only after qualifying any of these NCTE recognized courses that a person becomes legally eligible for appointment as a school teacher in India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Its no secret that thousands of children would go hungry if not for federally-funded free- and reduced-lunch programs, which provide breakfast and lunch five days a week to lower-income children.

That posed a serious dilemma when Michigan schools were ordered in mid-March to shutter for the rest of the school year due to the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed 4,787 Michiganders in two months.

To ensure families in need would still receive assistance with meals, the state began issuing Electronic Benefit Transfer cards to all families whose children are eligible for free- or reduced-lunch at school.

But in 273 of Michigans districts, families are getting cash-loaded EBT cards regardless of how much money they make.

"We have gotten a lot of questions," said Kelly Grygiel, marketing and communications manager at Northwest Community Schools, which is near Jackson. "There was a lot of confusion at the beginning."

Some higher-income families are getting EBT cards in the mail during the pandemic because of the way Michigan runs its school meal program. Districts or individual schools with more than 40% of students eligible for free meals can participate in the Community Eligibility Provision program.

The CEP allows qualified schools to give free breakfasts and lunches to all students. The goal is to reduce the stigma of government-provided lunch by making it the same for everybody.

Districts dont have to participate  and schools actually lose out on some funding if less than 62.5% of students are eligible, said Diane L. Golzynski, director of the Office of Health and Nutrition Services at the Michigan Department of Education.

More than one-third of Michigan school districts participate in the CEP and give free meals to all students. Click here for a full list of which districts have opted in and what percentage of students in each district are eligible for free or reduced lunch.

Should families spend the EBT card if they dont need to?

The EBT cards are loaded with a total of $193.80 per student for March and April  about $97 per month. Another $183.40 is added for the May/June period.

Many families already have EBT cards, so the extra funds are automatically uploaded on those existing cards, said Bob Wheaton, spokesman for the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

"There's a lot of families that were struggling to put food on the table to begin with. That's been exacerbated by COVID-19," Wheaton said. "We thought it was important to be able to do whatever we can to help those families get nutritional food."

While funds come through the state, Michigan is fully reimbursed by the federal government for the meals, Wheaton said.

Families of any income who receive EBT cards can set up the pin number and use the funds  the state police wont show up at anybodys door to guilt wealthy families for using the money, state officials said. But if people dont want to use them, they should cut up the card and not activate the pin, Wheaton said.

You cant give your EBT card to somebody else, Wheaton said. Still, there are ways to use the money for good.

People can buy groceries and deliver them to a food bank or buy their normal groceries with the EBT cards and donate the money they saved to a charity, Wheaton said.

All funds expire after the card goes without being used for a year, Wheaton said. Unspent funds dont disappear into oblivion  theyll count as a savings for the federal government.

This pandemic-specific EBT program in Michigan costs more than $330 million, to provide the funds to 895,000 students families. More than 500,000 of them hadnt been getting EBT funds, before this program, Wheaton said.

A second way to feed students

These new EBT funds arent the only way families can put food on the table. Schools that provided free and reduced lunches pre-pandemic are still required to do so, via the governors executive order.

While some districts like Northwest are serving fewer meals than they did at school  since families have to come pick them up  Muskegon Public Schools is actually serving meals.

MPS is providing 14 meals per week to 2,600 of its 3,600 students  although all families can sign up for it, said Superintendent Matthew Cortez.

To make it easier on families, employees are driving buses around the city, dropping off the breakfasts and lunches on doorsteps. Theyre delivering 35,000 meals per week to students  more than ever before, since theyre doing weekend meals too, Cortez said.

"If I had my way, I would do this year-round," Cortez said. "Kids can't go hungry. It bothers me that our students struggle for food in a country that is so blessed with wealth."

Its too soon to tell if the federal government will have fewer school breakfasts and lunches to reimburse in Michigan, since districts have two months to submit claims, Golzynski said. There are typically 15 million free and reduced lunches served in a month for Michigan, she said, and there are 12.5 million meal claims for March so far.

Heres a map of Michigans free lunch pickup sites, for students.

Michigan now has a trio of methods to combat hunger: The new pandemic-specific EBT funds for families, the continuation of free school meals and a tweak in the MDHHS requirements that allows low-income people to receive more food assistance funds  which doesnt depend on having kids in school.

As Michigan's unemployment rate swells to record numbers and uncertainty becomes the norm, Cortez is proud to see school districts and government bodies take drastic steps to keep kids fed.

Students cant focus on a math problem when they dont know where your next meal is coming from, Cortez said.

Were doing a lot more, Cortez said. A basic need like food  we need to make sure thats taken off the platter of worry of our parents.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Read all of MLives coverage on the coronavirus at mlive.com/coronavirus.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Related stories:

Friday, May 15: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Michigans mask mandate highlights political fault lines in coronavirus crisis

Michigan food assistance payments increased by $68M in March

Nearly 900K Michigan students to receive food stamp benefits to battle meal shortages amid coronavirus outbreak
Puhahonu (turtle rising for breath in Hawaiian), a 13-million-year-old volcano in the northwest Hawaiian Ridge, is twice the size of Mauna Loa volcano, which was assumed to be not only the largest Hawaiian volcano but also Earths largest known shield volcano, according to new research from the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

Scientists and the public have long thought Mauna Loa, a culturally-significant and active shield volcano on the Big Island of Hawaii, was the largest volcano in the world.

It has been proposed that hotspots that produce volcano chains like Hawaii undergo progressive cooling over 1-2 million years and then die, said lead author Professor Michael Garcia, a researcher in the Department of Earth Sciences at the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

However, we have learned from this study that hotspots can undergo pulses of melt production.

A small pulse created the Midway cluster of now extinct volcanoes and another, much bigger one created Puhahonu. This will rewrite the textbooks on how mantle plumes work.

In 1974, Puhahonu, then called Gardner Pinnacles, was suspected as the largest Hawaiian volcano based on very limited survey data.

Subsequent studies of the Hawaiian Islands concluded that Mauna Loa was the largest volcano, but they included the base of the volcano that is below sea level that was not considered in the 1974 study.

The new bathymetric and gravity mapping, volume calculations and chemical analyses of rocks show that Puhahonu is the largest.

We are sharing with the science community and the public that we should be calling this volcano by the name the Hawaiians have given to it, rather than the western name for the two rocky small islands that are the only above sea level remnants of this once majestic volcano, Professor Garcia said.

Our study highlights Hawaiian volcanoes, not only now but for millions of years, have been erupting some of the hottest magma on Earth, the researchers said.

The work also draws attention to an infrequently visited part of the state of Hawaii that has ecological, historical and cultural importance.

The teams paper was published in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters.

_____

Michael O. Garcia et al. 2020. Puhahonu: Earths biggest and hottest shield volcano. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 542: 116296; doi: 10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116296
The Himachal Pradesh government on Friday urged people of the state to generously contribute towards COVID-19 State Disaster Response Fund.

A government spokesperson said chief minister Jai Ram Thakur has been presented cheques towards COVID-19 response fund from various organisations and individuals.

Among major contributors is Baba Balak Nath Trust, Hamirpur, which contributed Rs 5 crore. Others include Himachal Road Transport Corporation, HP State Agriculture Marketing Board, HP Board of School Education, HP State Forest Development Corporation. HP Ex-Serviceman Corporation, Hamirpur, and HP State Co-Operative Bank, Shimla, have contributed Rs 51 lakh each and Indusland Bank Sanjauli Shimla has contributed Rs 50 lakh.

The state disaster response fund has been created for contributions, donations, voluntary endowment, grants for the purpose to fight COVID-19 pandemic. The state government has urged people of the state to contribute wholeheartedly and generously towards this fund, the spokesperson said.
The Catholic Churches of Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia, despite widespread condemnation, are planning to hold a public mass on May 16 in Sarajevo for Croatia's pro-Nazi collaborators and civilians killed by communist partisans at the end of World War II.

The commemoration, usually held every May near the southern Austrian town of Bleiburg, was canceled this year due to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bosnian and Croatian churches have stepped in and are organizing the event under the auspices of the Croatian parliament, which in 2016 reintroduced state sponsorship of the commemoration after having revoked it in 2012 amid criticism that it was rehabilitating the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime.

Sarajevo Archbishop Vinko Puljic is due to hold the mass in the cathedral of the Bosnian capital.



All three members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, along with most political parties and nongovernmental organizations, as well as the Serbian Orthodox Church, Jewish leaders, and the U.S. and Israeli embassies have condemned the event.

Eric Nelson, the U.S. ambassador to Bosnia, told RFE/RL on May 15 that commemorations should "focus on remembrance, not revisionism."

"Especially this year, when we mark the 25th anniversary of the end of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II, it is important for everyone to focus on two values of democracy -- reconciliation and interreligious dialogue," Nelson said.

The U.S. Embassy in Bosnia called "on those organizing the Bleiburg commemoration in Bosnia and Herzegovina to refrain from historical revisionism and retrograde rhetoric."

The Israeli Embassy said on Twitter that "the state of Israel stands firm and raises its voice against all attempts of revisionism."

The war-time Independent State of Croatia (NDH) controlled by the Nazi-backed Ustasha included Bosnia and parts of Serbia. The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of Serbs, Jews, and anti-Nazi Croatians.

At the end of the war, the Ustasha, accompanied by civilians and Slovenian and Serbian collaborators, fled towards Austria, but British forces there refused their surrender.

Bosnia's Jewish leaders, Jakob Finci and Boris Kozemjakin, sent a protest letter to Puljic, warning that the event "will commemorate...the butchers of our mothers, our fathers, our grandfathers, and all our innocent fellow citizens killed by the fascist NDH."

Meanwhile, the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the Bosnian government to ban the memorial mass.

Honoring the genocidal Ustasha state (NDH) is not only an insult to its victims and their families, but also to all those who opposed the crimes committed by the Ustasha, the Simon Wiesenthal Center said in a statement on May 14.

Archbishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Sarajevo, Hrizostom, recalled that "more than 10,000 Sarajevo inhabitants, Serbs, Jews, Roma, and other people opposing the Ustasha movement were killed" during the war.

"You are holding a mass for those who committed those crimes," Hrizostom said in a letter to Puljic.

But the cardinal rejected the accusations and said that praying for the victims' souls did not mean approval of their acts.

The number of people caught and executed by Communist leader Josip Broz Tito's partisans in the Bleiburg border region between Austria and Slovenia is subject to historical debate, but many independent historians put it at tens of thousands.

Anti-fascist NGOs called for a peaceful march during the mass.

With reporting by AFP and AP
The latest care home figures on COVID-19 related deaths have been released. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)

More than a quarter of all care home deaths since the start of the UKs coronavirus outbreak involved COVID-19, new data shows.

It was involved in 27.3% of all deaths of England and Waless care home residents between 2 March and 1 May, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) - a total of 12,526 fatalities.

The respiratory disease, caused by coronavirus infection, has become the leading cause of death in male care home residents, accounting for 30.3% of deaths.

COVID-19 was the second biggest cause of death for female residents, accounting for 23.5%, the figures released on Friday show, after dementia and Alzheimers disease.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

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The data also shows that since March there has been a rise in both deaths involving COVID-19 and deaths not involving the disease among care home residents.

Between 28 December 2019 and 1 May, 73,180 deaths took place in England and Wales care homes  23,136 more than in the same period last year.

With COVID-19 being involved in 12,526 fatalities, 17.1% involved the coronavirus this year.

New ONS data shows the dramatic rise in care home deaths this year. (ONS)

The ONS has also said that of those care home residents whose death involved COVID-19, dementia and Alzheimers disease was the most common main pre-existing condition found.

It was involved in 42.5% of COVID-19 deaths in residents.

The statistics follow a dispute between the prime minister and Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer over whether the government previously said the virus was unlikely to spread in care homes.

Boris Johnson denied the government ever issued the advice, though it was still online this week, and under advice for face mask wearing it says it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.

However, the PMs spokesperson said Starmer had inaccurately and selectively quoted from the Public Health England guidance, withdrawn in March.

Story continues

The text also said the guidance is intended for the current position (in February) in the UK where there is currently no transmission of COVID-19 in the community.

However, a paper dated to February 10 from the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling, which advises the Department of Health, said there was a realistic probability that there is already sustained transmission in the UK, or that it will be become established in the coming weeks.

Coronavirus: what happened today

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The Karnataka government on



Friday announced a third economic package worth about Rs 512 crore, giving relief to maize farmers and incentivising ASHA workers, at the forefront in the fight against COVID-19.

While around 10 lakh maize farmers will get Rs 5,000 each, the Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHA) workers would get an incentive of Rs 3,000 each through cooperative institutions, Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa saiud.

"About 10 lakh maize farmers are suffering as they are not getting proper price, that is why I have decided to give Rs 5,000 relief to each farmer, it is about Rs 500 crore commitment," he told reporters here.

He said there were about 40,250 ASHA workers in the state and each would get Rs 3,000 each, which will add up to about Rs 12.50 crore.

"Despite the state financial condition being not good we have already announced financial packages for those in distress. First one was Rs 1,610 crore, second was Rs 162 core, this is the third one," he added.

The Yediyurappa-led BJP government on Thursday had announced a Rs 162 crore financial relief package for vegetable and fruit growers and weavers of power looms, who are in distress because of COVID-19 induced lockdown.

Last week it announced Rs 1,610 crore relief package which included cash assistance of Rs 5,000 each to thousands of washermen, barbers, auto rickshaw and taxi drivers, whose life has been affected by the lockdown.

The package also included relief to farmers, flower growers, certain relaxation in electricity bills for MSMEs and large industries, Rs 2,000 for handloom weavers, and Rs 3,000 to building workers.

Yediyurappa on Friday also assured all possible assistance to the farming community, once the coronavirus crisis was overcome.

"Farmers are my government's priority. If farmer is happy every one is happy. As farmers are in distress, despite financial situation being not so good, we have announced this decision of Rs 5000 to maize farmers. Money will reach them soon," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(JNS)They almost had me believing.

The Saudis, that is. Last week, they almost had me believing that they are truly becoming moderate and really do accept Israels existence. Then the mask came off, and my hopes all came crashing down.

What got my hopes up, all too briefly, was the controversy over a new series on Saudi television concerning relations between Jews and Arabs in the Persian Gulf in 1948. Since Saudi Arabian society is completely controlled by its authoritarian government, it was big news that some Arabs were denouncing the TV series for depicting the Jews too sympathetic...
Alternative investment funds (AIFs) face uncertain compliance terms as the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has begun questioning whether the recent transactions are in line with the Press Note 3 (PN3) norms.

AIFs usually need only complete Form InVi within 30 days from date of issue of foreign investment, but the RBI is now seeking declaration as per PN3. The aim is likely to block investments from Chinese LPs, sources told the Business Standard.

As understood only foreign direct investment (FDI) is under ambit of PN3, but recent moves from the central banks indicate that it could be extended to domestic and foreign AIFs as well, it noted. By law, AIFs are covered under Schedule VIII of non-debt instrument rules.

An industry source has told BS that the RBI query is open-ended, and seeking government approval for such investments would delay timelines.

Moneycontrol could not independently verify the report.

Vaneesa Agrawal, the founder of Thinking Legal, told BS: Approval routes could take anywhere from three months to a year. Even if such AIFs have one investor from a bordering country, they would need to take approval before making investments in Indian firms.

If the management is non-Chinese and fund regulated, why should there not be a carve-out? an industry official asked.

The industry is concerned that Chinese LPs may withdraw from future investments, and seeking new investors could be a challenge, especially since AIFs draw capital over three-four-year periods.

Notably, Chinese tech investors have put an estimated $4 billion into Indian start-ups and consumer tech companies.

Atul Pandey, the corporate and M&A partner, Khaitan & Co, has told the paper that it is unclear if the RBI is scanning for general declaration or scrutinising beneficial ownership information to determine if the fund needs to go through the approval route.

Pratibha Jain, Partner - Nishith Desai Associates, has noted that domestic funds may opt for compounding or wind-up transactions. This is because, so far, investments by domestic AIFs are not considered foreign even if capital raised is from abroad.

There is concern around grandfathering of existing investments as well, especially in the case of multiple investors. Questions arise over whether each investment would be considered separately and what happens if one of the investments is rejected - especially since a commitment may have already been based on which new or existing investors may have come in.
MADISON  So, whats for dinner?

Lets see, even during a pandemic there are so many choices.

How about filet tips and mushrooms in a creamy green peppercorn brandy sauce, roasted parsley potatoes and lemon roasted asparagus? Or, maybe turkey chili with cheese, sour cream and limes, served over a choice of spaghetti squash, baked potato or sweet potato and cornbread, accompanied by side salad with a southwest flair?

Depending on the day of the week, these and many other dishes are on the menu in Wynter Piekarzs kitchen.

Wynter Piekarz, owner of Wynters Whisk, is whipping up tasty dishes to deliver to hungry clients along the Shoreline. Alongside her in the kitchen is her 22-year-old daughter, Devon.

On a recent afternoon, with the kitchen door open and the aroma of freshly-prepared Chilean sea bass wafting through the airy kitchen, Piekarz and her daughter busily packed meals for quick delivery.

The main courses were lined up on a counter, alongside plastic containers filled to the brim with freshly-made apple crisp.

With her white apron tied around her waist, hair pulled back and secured with a flowered headband, Wynter Piekarz, still full of energy after hours of cooking, was ready to pack them in her signature insulated bags and deliver to her hungry customers.

It was just three months ago that Wynter Piekarz launched her home delivery service.

This has been something thats been in the back of my mind for so long, she said. Ive had this fear of doing it, so its so exciting.

I can make these menus and be creative and Ive gotten fabulous reviews and I have to say that every single client weve gotten, weve kept as a regular customer and that makes me really happy, she said.

Orders can be placed at wynterswhisk.com.

Made daily, the dishes can be eaten directly out of the packaging or heated up in the microwave.

A lot of time Ill leave the fish a little underdone, Wynter Piekarz said, while standing in her industrial kitchen at the Zion Episcopal Church in North Branford. If Im making browned scallops, Ill leave them a little underdone so people can microwave.

For this local chef, she is in her element in the kitchen.

Its my serenity time, she said. I get in the kitchen and its peace and serenityits the Zen time for me.

For Devon Piekarz, it is a great way to connect with her mother.

Working together is really fun, she said. We have a lot of fun together. Were always dancing.

Wynter Piekarz, 53, has been cooking all her life.

I always, from the time I was little, loved to cook, she recalls. My dad was a great cook and so was my grandmother.

She has a degree from the New York Citys French Culinary Institute, now known as International Culinary Center, where Madisons Jacques Pepin, of international renown, was her teacher.

It was immediately before the coronavirus pandemic hit that Wynter Piekarzs plans began to solidify.

I was about to launch my culinary camps and classes when COVID hit, she says. This just exploded. I just started getting so busy, which has been amazing.

This local chef stresses that most of her cuisine is very healthful .

Lots of vegetables, whole grains, she said. I try to do fish twice a week.

I do organic wherever possible, so organic meats and fishes, where possible, she said.

She said that her dishes are created by color.

When Im planning a dish, its almost in my head done by color, she said. I like to add a splash of color to things and Ill know something needs a little yellow.

I love making salads because they can be very colorful and beautiful, she said. I love to make food look as beautiful as it tastes.

With a 10-burner stove, two ovens and an industrial dishwasher, dishes and desserts are created Monday through Friday in the kitchen at North Branfords Zion Episcopal Church, via an arrangement she has made with the church.

While the menu includes childrens choices including kids steak tips, potatoes, peas and melon; kids mini chicken subs, cheese, bacon and ranch dressing, organic yogurt, a clementine and baby carrots and classic mac and cheese, Brussels sprouts and apples with peanut butter, many children choose the main entree.

We have one French toast sticks order today, but six kids are getting the sea bass, said Devon Piekarz, just finishing up the packaging before delivering the meals.

In addition, the duo has been juicing, offering the Cholesterol Buster with ginger, apple and carrots; Green Immunity Buster with granny smith apples, parsley, kale, lemon and ginger, plus carrot and celery juice.

Devon Piekarz said that she has been cooking with her mom since she was little, but in Wynters Whisk kitchen she has taken on the role of baking desserts.

Im very factual and like everything to be evenly measured and my moms like just throw some of this in there and a little bit of that in there, she said. Im like, No, no, no. You need to write down specifically how much youre using.

Ive been making chocolate chip cookies the same way for 20 years, Devon Piekarz said, and shes been pushing me out of my comfort zone and having me make white chocolate raspberry cheesecake and lemon curd mouse.

After cooking and packaging, the meals are delivered in insulated monogrammed tote bags to be eaten the same day.

The delivery is contact free, which client Anne Tarpey-Flanders appreciates, especially in this time of COVID-19.

Its safe, she said. Especially in this time of the virus, you just want to feel really safe.

Tarpey-Flanders and her husband, Richard, have been enjoying meals from Wynters Whisk for about six weeks.

Its my night off from cooking treat, the Madison resident said.

She noted her favorite meals.

We had really delicious scallops, she said. She made an orzo with lemon and different herbs. It was just absolutely awesome.

Then we had salmon, a really delicious salmon, she adds. She did a garlic, red bliss mashed potatoes, which were amazing.

For Tarpey-Flanders, getting out in the warmer weather and enjoying fresh air and good food is definitely on her mind, Wynters Whisk food in particular.

As we slowly start to relax a little bit here and people start getting out a little bit more, wouldnt it be nice to just like have a picnic someplace with a small group, like your family, she said. You wouldnt have to make the food yourself. It would be a nice kind of coming out picnic time.

Wynter Whisk, wynterswhisk.com; email at wynterswhisk.comcast.net; Facebook Wynters Whisk.
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Update: Last week, Uber announced the new Uber Connect service and debuted it with the rollout to Kolkata, Guwahati, Jaipur, and Gurgaon. Today, the service has been extended to five more cities  New Delhi, Noida, Hyderabad, Chennai, and Chandigarh. (The article was originally published on 15 May.)

Uber has launched a package delivery service so that people can send and receive packages within city limits, while maintaining social distancing. The service named Uber Connect will help people connect with their family and friends during coronavirus lockdown.

This service will be initially available in four cities, Kolkata, Guwahati, Jaipur and Gurgaon.

Using this service, one can send and receive things like books and a birthday gift, among other items.

However, the company does not allow users to send everything. Only those items which are transportable on a two wheeler vehicle, under 5 kilograms in weight and properly sealed can be sent.

Prohibited items such as alcohol, recreational drugs, or dangerous and illegal items cannot be delivered.

Similar to on-demand trips, you will be able to continue monitoring the trips progress prior to pickup, en route, and at the drop-off. You can also share the delivery status with the recipient of the package, the company said.

How to use Uber Connect

Step 1: Download the Uber app from Google Playstore or App store and create an account.

Step 2: After users add their pickup and delivery address, Uber Connect will appear in the Uber app as a new option in the vehicle selection scroller.

Step 3: Users will have to agree to package delivery terms and conditions and confirm that their item complies with those terms.

Step 4: Request delivery.

Step 5: A notification will be sent once the driver is on his way to pick up the package.

Step 6: Use Share My Trip feature with the recipient so he can track the delivery.

Uber last month unveiled Uber Essential to provide transportation service for essential needs amid the coronavirus lockdown.

It was launched in Bengaluru, Gurgaon, Mumbai, Nashik and Hyderabad. This service was basically launched to ferry people to places like hospitals and pharmacies.
Wasaga Beachs mayor says she is concerned the province is giving inconsistent pandemic-related messages on the opening of Wasaga Beach Provincial Park.

In an open letter to Premier Doug Ford released May 13, Nina Bifolchi spoke of the growing frustration we face in our community due to mixed and inconsistent messaging from the Government of Ontario, in particular two of its agencies that operate in (Wasaga Beach): Ontario Parks and the Ontario Provincial Police.

She said the province is doing an overall great job with its handling of the pandemic, but, at the local level, information is confusing and conflicting.

People are critical of the inconsistent information, often directing their concerns and anger at the town because we are the local and more accessible level of government, she stated. I share their frustration.

According to the municipality, Ontario Parks and the OPP had agreed to a joint statement with the town regarding the pandemic and the Victoria Day weekend. However, the town claims, the OPP declined to proceed.

In her letter, Bifolchi stated Ontario Parks has also shared conflicting information about whether people can walk on the beach, initially telling town officials the beach was open, then stating it wasnt.

Ministry of Environment, Conservation and Parks spokesperson Lindsay Davidson told Simcoe.com that while the provincial park would be open as of May 15 for limited day-use activities such as hiking and biking, the beach would be closed.

As you can see, it makes it hard for the community to understand the rules when they are not clear, Bifolchi said. In addition, it is just as challenging for us in terms of messaging.

Huronia West OPP detachment commander Insp. Philip Browne said he participated in a May 4 meeting with municipal officials and Ontario Parks staff, and he forwarded the request about a joint release to the OPPs corporate communications department.

On May 6, the detachments operations manager took part in a pre-planning meeting with municipal officials, including representatives from the fire department, public works, municipal operations and event planning, as well as Ontario Parks and County of Simcoe paramedics.

This level of planning and collaboration is not unique and has been the established practice for many years for (Victoria Day weekend) and other significant events, Browne said.

Browne took part in a phone call with Ontario Parks on May 12 regarding application of the updated direction from the province, to understand the environment in which my officers would be performing their duties in support of this partnership.

However, he said, it was determined it would be premature to take part in a release as it would not be current to the status of the provincial orders, and could cause more confusion and be problematic for enforcement.

Making a joint statement would be inappropriate, unprofessional, and could cause more confusion, he said.

While he declined to speak directly to the letter from the mayor, Browne said he continues to be committed to working with the municipality and Ontario Parks on an operational level.

We continue to engage in a policy of education and enforcement as it pertains to the act, he said. We cannot do anything that supersedes the provincial direction.

The town is asking the provincial government to clarify, through a news release or other means, as well as with appropriate signage, the rules and regulations as they apply to the park.

Bifolchi also asked the premier to direct your agencies, namely the OPP and Ontario Parks, to take a more collaborative and respectful approach to dealing with the Town of Wasaga Beach and our residents.

She also asked that Ontario Parks step up its messaging so residents and visitors understand the park is the responsibility of the province and not the town.

Ian Adams is a reporter for Simcoe.com. Reach him via email: iadams@simcoe.com
 Flash

Chinese State Councilor and Foreign Minister Wang Yi held telephone conversations on Thursday with foreign ministers of Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and Estonia over the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Wang said that China, under Chinese President Xi Jinping's personal command and deployment, has put the outbreak under control through arduous efforts and has been gradually resuming economic and social life while undertaking prevention and control measures on a regular basis.

China sincerely thanks the related countries for their solidarity and support for China's fight against the epidemic, he said, adding that recently China has overcome its own difficulties, offered support and assistance to relevant countries, shared prevention and control experiences and treatments without reservation, and facilitated various countries's purchase of anti-epidemic supplies in China.

He also said the it is believed that anti-epidemic cooperation will provide new opportunities and inject new impetus into the development of bilateral relations between China and relevant countries.

Wang said that viruses know no borders and epidemics do not distinguish between races, adding that human beings belong to a community with a shared future that goes through thick and thin together.

He also said that fighting the epidemic requires international cooperation, and also gives countries an opportunity to come closer and help each other.

Recently, a number of politicians in some countries have insisted on politicizing the epidemic, labeling the virus, and smearing the World Health Organization (WHO), said Wang, adding that those moves, which are a serious violation of international moral principles and undermine international anti-epidemic efforts, should be jointly rejected by the international community.

Wang said that China and Central and Eastern European Countries (CEECs) cooperation is a new type of trans-regional cooperation mechanism, and all member countries have played an active role in promoting the cooperation.

Although the epidemic has had some impacts, all parties' willingness to cooperate has not diminished, and their steps have not been stopped, he said, adding that China is willing to maintain communication and coordination with relevant countries and push for more progress of China-CEECs cooperation after the pandemic ends.

The three foreign ministers thanked the Chinese government for providing support and assistance in their countries' fight against the epidemic, saying it fully demonstrates the friendship between relevant countries and China.

They also said their countries are ready to strengthen cooperation with China and the international community to strive for a victory over the virus at an early date.

Peter Szijjarto, Hungarian Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade, said Hungary always upholds the one-China principle, which is the political foundation of Hungary-China relations, adding that Hungary will not support Taiwan's accession to the WHO.

Bisera Turkovic, BiH's minister of foreign affairs, said her country maintains that the world's fight against the pandemic should uphold a scientific attitude, adhere to the humanitarian spirit, and support the WHO to play its due role in international anti-virus cooperation.

Adhering to the one-China principle, BiH welcomes further investment by Chinese enterprises and an ever deepening bilateral economic and trade cooperation, Turkovic said.

Urmas Reinsalu, Estonian foreign minister, said that Estonia has been committed to promoting international coordination and enhancing cooperation in a bid to beat the outbreak, adding that as the rotating president of UN Security Council, Estonia received full support and cooperation from China, to which Estonia is very grateful.

He also said that Estonia is willing to further strengthen coordination and cooperation with China within the UN Security Council so as to support the Security Council to play an active role in the global pandemic fight.
Washington, May 16 : US President Donald Trump announced that the United States will donate ventilators to India amid COVID pandemic outbreak.

Taking to twitter, Trump said, "I am proud to announce that the United States will donate ventilators to our friends in India. We stand with India and @narendramodi during this pandemic. We're also cooperating on vaccine development. Together we will beat the invisible enemy!" Earlier in the day while launching 'Operation Warp Speed' to ready a vaccine against Covid-19 by the end of the year, he said, the US was working with India on the project.

He also acknowledged the work of Indian-Americans on vaccine development projects.

There is a "tremendous Indian population in the United States, many of the people you are talking about are working on the vaccine too. Great scientists and researchers," he said.
Prabhas fans can't keep calm and we don't blame them, as we are equally excited for his upcoming project, tentatively titled Prabhas20. We have got a new update about the action-thriller, which has been temporarily halted due to the ongoing Coronavirus outbreak.

As per the recent reports, the lead actress of the movie, Pooja Hegde has agreed to give bulk dates to the makers of the Prabhas-starrer. Going by the buzz, we are sure that the movie will resume the shoot at a brisk pace, once the lockdown ends. Rumoured to be titled O Dear, Prabhas20 will mark the maiden collaboration of the south diva with the Rebel Star.

Pooja Hegde, like most celebrities of the industry, is currently enjoying family time amid the lockdown. The actress is usually seen sharing glimpses from her life including daily routine and cooking experiments.

Coming back to the movie, earlier, we had reported that the makers of the thriller were slammed on social media for not updating the fans about the film. There were also rumours that the makers will launch the poster on the occasion of Ugadi, which unfortunately didn't happen and left the fans annoyed. Prabhas20 was launched in 2018 with a formal pooja ceremony. Recently the director of the action-thriller Radha Krishna Kumar released some candid pictures from the ceremony.

Talking about the shoot post lockdown, the director said, "We had finalized Europe to shoot most of the scenes." But now it is not possible due to the lockdown." Prabhas20 will have Priyadarshini, Krishnam Raju, and Bhagyashree in pivotal roles. The movie bankrolled by UV Creations is slated to hit the theatres by the end of 2020. It is also said that the release might get postponed due to the ongoing lockdown.

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The Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for the reopening of State-owned liquor vends in Tamil Nadu by staying a Madras high court order which had ordered their closure for the time being on the ground that there was violation of guidelines, such as social distancing, meant to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

IMAGE: People buy liquor at a local wine shop in Thiruvalangadu, near Thiruvallur district of Tamil Nadu. Photograph: L Anantha Krishnan / ANI Photo.

A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, S K Kaul and B R Gavai, in the proceedings held through video conferencing, stayed the May 8 order of the high court after taking note of the appeal of state government's firm, Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC), which sells alcoholic beverages in the state.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for TASMAC, said the high court should not have imposed its own conditions for sale of liquor by entering into the State's domain of policy-making.

He said that it was the State's prerogative to decide how to conduct sale of liquor and contended that the high court cannot decide the mode of selling.

We do not have tender services, it is impossible. How can we sell online? There are many issues regarding adulteration and other such considerations. How can we trust someone to carry liquor? Rohatgi asked.

Lawyer PV Yogeswaran, appearing for the persons who had moved the high court, said sale of liquor was not a fundamental right and precautionary measures must be taken in view of the COVID-19 pandemic. He urged the bench not to intervene in the matter.

The Tamil Nadu government on May 8 had moved the top court challenging the high court order saying that the closure of such shops would lead to "grave losses" in state's revenue and complete halt in commercial activities.

The high court had ordered the closure of liquor outlets, noting that there were huge crowds and no social distancing was being maintained by tipplers. It, however, had allowed doorstep delivery of alcohol through online mode.

The state government firm, in its appeal, termed the high court order a case of "judicial overreach" and said online sale and home delivery of alcohol were not possible in the entire state.

"It is pertinent that online modes of effective liquor sales are not even available in the vast majority of the state at present and can only be implemented after following the due procedures under law," TASMAC said in the appeal.

"It is pertinent that in the state of Tamil Nadu all liquor retail is owned and operated by TASMAC, thus the net effect of the high court's order is complete and indefinite standstill of the sale of liquor in the state leading to grave losses to the state's revenue and commercial activity in the state," the plea said.

TASMAC said that there was as many as 10 PILs pending in the high court on the issue and it has "reasons to believe that the entire batch of writ petitions if not some have been filed by vested private interest, so has to make enormous commercial gains, from the unfortunate situation."

The state government firm referred to the apex court's observation in which it had asked states to consider non-direct contact or online sales and home delivery of liquor during the lockdown period to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"The high court in passing the impugned judgment has bypassed and misinterpreted the order dated May 08, passed by a three member-bench of this (Supreme) Court...in which this court (SC) declined to direct states to close down liquor stores pending the lockdown and left it to each state's discretion to consider non-direct sale including online sale/home delivery of liquor," it said.

"The Supreme Court order recognised that states have a broad margin of power to determine whether and how to effect sales of liquor in this lockdown period and therefore, the impugned judgment, is a clear case of judicial overreach and is not sustainable in light of the Supreme Court Order, the plea said.

The appeal said that the state government decided to open the liquor shops on May 5 after keeping in mind the directives issued by the ministry of home affairs on May 1 allowing the sale of liquor in the state subject to restrictions such as ensuring social distancing.

Some of the petitioners, on whose plea the HC ordered the closure of liquor vends in the state, had also moved the apex court by filing a caveat to ensure that they be also heard if the top court passes any order on the plea of TASMAC.

The high court order restraining sale of liquor over the counter was passed on a petition filed by advocate G Rajesh, besides a plaint from the actor Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM).

The high court had said there was total violation of its interim order, when it declined to stay a government order allowing resumption of sale of liquor through outlets.

After a dry spell of 43 days due to the COVID-19 lockdown since late March, liquor sales resumed at TASMAC outlets in Tamil Nadu, except in state capital Chennai, on May 7.

Heavy rush was witnessed at most places with people standing in serpentine queues even as the move to allow sale of liquor came in for flak from opposition parties and others, who raised apprehensions that it would lead to further spread of the novel coronavirus, which as of May 8 has affected over 6,000 people in the state.

Tamil Nadu had decided to open retail liquor outlets, citing relaxation of lockdown norms by the central government. Tipplers in border districts of the state were also making a beeline to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka where liquor sales resumed on May 4.
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: The government has sent 27,458 migrant workers from AP to their respective States via Sharmik trains till Thursday and in the next couple of days, another 37,394 migrant workers belonging to six States will be sent through 24 special trains.

Briefing mediapersons on the arrangements being made for sending migrant workers and receiving expatriates from different countries, COVID-19 Task Force Committee chairman MT Krishna Babu said most of the migrant workers stranded in the State belonging to Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. He said almost all the States, except West Bengal, have issued NOCs for transportation of migrant workers from AP to their States. On foreign returnees, he said about 1,028 from the gulf and other countries were coming back to the State in nine flights between May 19 and May 27.

The flights will be landing at Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada airports and the ruturnees will be sent to their respective district reception centres. They will be quarantined in government facilities (free or paid).

Some of the foreign returnees belonging to AP are landing in Chennai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad. They will be quarantined there itself. Though we have requested the Telangana government to set up a state reception centre to shift those belonging to AP to the state, we are yet to get permission, he explained.

To date, 123 people have come from the Gulf and other countries.

A group of 13 AP girl students from Dhaka has reached Chennai airport. On their request, we approached Tamil Nadu authorities and shifted them to quarantine centres in Nellore, Krishna Babu said. On the issue of 2,000 people deported from Kuwait, the officer said the Chief Minister wrote a letter to External Affairs Minister and the issue was being followed up. A total of 3.15 lakh applications were received from those who want to return to their States. Except for Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, permits were issued to all other States. Krishna Babu ruled out possibility of hike in bus charges and said the focus was on providing a safe journey when the Centre permits restoration of public transport.

Reverse migration

Most of the migrant workers stranded in the State are from Bihar, Jharkhand, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal

All States, except West Bengal, issued NOCs for transportation of migrant workers

3.15 lakh applications from those who want to return

1,028 foreign returnees land in AP between May 19 and 27

4 flights from abroad to land in AP on May 20, 21

Vijayawada: Four flights with foreign returnees have been scheduled to land at the three designated airports across the State on May 20 and May 21. While two flights, one each from Saudi Arabia and London, will land at the Vijayawada International Airport, one flight from Qatar will land at Visakhapatnam and one from Kuwait will land at

Tirupati airport.
Californias getting a first-blush look at its public finances, and the picture isnt pleasing. Gov. Gavin Newsom is cutting back on schools and services, plugging holes with reserves and praying for a federal bailout. San Francisco, once as flush as the state, is hinting at much the same.

Newsom is outlining his budget plans a week after California got the crushing news thats swung from a $22 billion surplus to a $54.3 billion hole. In San Franciscos case, its looking at a $1.7 billion shortfall after steadily boosting spending during a boom-times economy.

In Sacramento, Newsom is proposing fixes designed to handle the near-overnight damage wrought by the coronavirus pandemic. Not only is the state paying for extra health coverage and billions more in jobless benefits, but the economic hit has driven down the three main tax sources personal income, corporate and sales levies  by 22%.

No one is happy as lawmakers and interest groups line up to complain about the fiscal wreckage. But Newsom is offering a balance of options that may help the state get by if all his bets go right.

Hes tapping a $16 billion rainy-day fund and spreading it over three years, a sign that no one thinks the states economy will quickly recover. Hes dumping a handful of childhood and health programs he rolled out in January. Like past governors, hes not above raiding special reserves, something he wryly noted he would never do. Also, he made no mention of tax increases, though he alluded to ending unspecified tax loopholes and speeding up revenue collections.

The largest gamble is the governors hope for federal help, which he called a moral obligation. The wish is embodied in a $3 trillion package pushed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the San Francisco Democrat who will need Republican help to achieve her goal. That huge sum  or a lesser one  is anything but guaranteed.

With the rest of the plan, the governor will need to negotiate with a wary legislature, whose members have watched their roles diminish while Newsom grabbed the limelight during the outbreak. The scale of the budget rewrite work should give them a much larger role. One example: a proposal this week from state Senate leaders to give renters a decade to pay off overdue bills.

San Francisco is not as far along in solving its similar problems. One in eight city residents has applied for jobless aid, and the shrinking tax stream is leading to a near $2 billion hit in its two-year budget cycle.

Mayor London Breed isnt denying the consequences.

We are in for a long, hard road, she said in releasing the bleak numbers. She and the rest of City Hall need to move quickly to provide specifics and prepare the city for the worst. San Francisco, long a case study in surging wealth, can show how to deal with a sudden drop from its golden status.

For the state, the sharp downturn once again highlights the need for a less volatile tax structure. The time to make those reforms was when the state was swimming in revenue. Now the governor and legislators are stuck with the amplified effects of a downturn. It would have been even worse if not for Gov. Jerry Browns frugality during his final eight years. He should be getting thank you notes from Sacramento.

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.
We already have trillion dollar companies. How soon before we have our first trillionaire?

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

We already have trillion dollar companies. How soon before we have our first trillionaire?

According to Comparisun, a company which allows small- to medium-sized firms to compare different business products, the worlds first trillionaire will likely be Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos.

Their projection shows Bezos reaching trillionaire status by 2026. The company said their projection is based on taking the average percentage of yearly growth over the past five years and applying it to future years.

Comparisun shows Bezos net worth grew an average of 34 per cent over the last five years.

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As of Thursday morning, Bezos net worth was estimated at US$143 billion, according to Bloombergs Billionaires Index, which tracks the worth of the worlds richest people daily. Compared to last year, Bezos worth has surged by more than US$28 billion.

The projection has sparked anger on Twitter, noting how many people are financially struggling during the coronavirus pandemic as Bezos rakes in billions of dollars.

Talk of Bezos potential trillionaire status follows public protests by Amazon employees over their safety as they continue to work during the coronavirus pandemic. On May 1, workers for Amazon and other companies held a strike protesting a lack of "adequate protection in the workplace."

Amazon said it spent more than US$800 million in the first half of 2020 on safety measures including masks, hand sanitizer and additional hand-washing stations at warehouses. The company also hired 175,000 new workers to keep up with demand as millions of consumers lean on Amazon to have goods delivered while stuck at home.

Earlier this month, Tim Bray, Amazons vice president and "Distinguished Engineer" at Amazon Web Services, announced he was leaving the company over the firing of executives who spoke out against how workers were treated in their warehouses.

 USA Today
Local churches continue to offer services to their congregants via alternative service options. Some have announced plans to allow congregants back into the buildings within the next few weeks. Others are sticking with the online service route.

Here's a list of where and when they're hosting services:
LOS ANGELESSex workers in the United Kingdom are facing such dire straits in the coronavirus lockdown that about one of every three are still seeing clients in person, despite the risk of catching the potentially deadly disease, according to sex workers interviewed for a new BBC report that aired Friday.

"Sex workers are predominantly single mothers and they still have to work, they still have to earn," said Charlotte Rose, a Nottingham, England, sex worker interviewed by the BBC. "If they're not registered, they're not applicable for the government funding. If they've got children, how are they supposed to feed their families?"

The English Collective of Prostitutes, a sex worker rights advocacy group, has called for the UK government to provide support payments targeted at sex workers, to prevent them from having to make a choice between risking their health and earning an income. But the government said that it had already increased Universal Credit payments.

Universal Credit is the British benefits system in place since 2010, which includes a variety of social safety net programs  including income support, child tax credits, and housing benefit  combined into a single, twice-monthly payment.

Another sex worker interviewed by the BBC, Victoria  who said she also appears in adult films  reported that her income has dropped from the equivalent of about $2,400 per week, to $240.

But she told the network that despite offers of premium fees, she has continued to decline client proposals to meet in person.

"I've had a lot of messages and been offered a lot more money than I'd normally charge," Victoria told the BBC. "One got shirty and offered me more money and I point blank refused.

But she added that sex workers who take the risk of interacting with clients in person can charge a lot more now if they want to.

In a statement, the ECP said that there was no reason for the UK to withhold emergency economic aid from sex workers, after countries such as Thailand and Japan have offered such aid.

The group also said that there was precedent for direct payments for sex workers.

In Ipswich during a series of tragic murders in 2006, when the imperative was for women to be able to get off the street, the government provided emergency payments, the groups statement said.

Sex workers around the world, including in the United States, have found themselves excluded and left behind by government coronavirus relief programs.

In April, UNAIDS  an agency of the United Nations  called for sex workers to receive benefits during the pandemic lockdowns.

Photo By BBC iPlayer Video Screen Capture
Boris Johnson today faced a grilling from Tory MPs with the Prime Minister told to get a grip on the coronavirus crisis in care homes and to rule out tax rises to pay for the damage done by the current outbreak.

Mr Johnson delivered a short speech to the 1922 Committee of backbench Conservatives MPs this afternoon before then being probed on the Government's response to the spread of the deadly virus.

There are growing concerns among Tory MPs about the way in which the Government has tackled problems in the care sector amid claims that some frontline staff are still struggling to get tested.

Meanwhile, the state of the UK's finances is also increasingly on the mind of the PM's MPs with the Office for Budget Responsibility forecasting UK plc will shrink 35 per cent in this quarter.

Leaked Treasury documents have put the cost of coronavirus to the UK economy at approximately 300 billion this year.

Many Tory MPs want a guarantee from the premier that the Government will not hike taxes to fill the economic blackhole.

Boris Johnson, pictured in Downing Street today, faced a grilling by Tory MPs this afternoon

OBR estimates suggest the UK's Gross Domestic Product will fall by one third in the current quarter before then bouncing back

Debt will peak at over 110 per per cent of GDP in September, according to the latest OBR figures

Between 150 to 200 Tory MPs were expected to dial into today's Zoom meeting with the Prime Minister.

But Mr Johnson was expected to face a tough time with one senior MP telling Politico: 'He'll be asked about the messy beginning of the week and the failure to get the proposals properly sorted, documented and detailed.

'The organisation seems to be lacking, and we need to get a grip of that, because it doesn't look very good and it leads to people feeling you're not completely in control.'

Another MP said: 'We need to realise we've got a twin crisis.

'There is a serious health crisis, which we are tackling, but there is also an economic crisis - we are going to have a massive recession and we need to get over that and move on as quickly as possible.'

Growing Tory disquiet over the impact of lockdown on the UK economy was summed up by former Brexit minister Steve Baker when he responded to new statistics setting out the Government's financial help to the self-employed.

Some 440,000 applications were made to the Treasury's self-employment support scheme on its first day in operation at a value of 1.3 billion.

Mr Baker tweeted: '1.3bn. In the first day. This cannot long endure.'

Chancellor Rishi Sunak warned this week the nation 'will face a significant recession this year' after much of the economy was forced to shut down in a bid to slow the spread of coronavirus.

There are growing fears some taxes could be raised in the future to help right the ship.

But Cabinet ministers are wary of the political ramifications of such a move.

One said increasing taxes would be the wrong approach for the Government as they argued for the debt to be paid back over decades, like money owed from wartime.

The minister told the Times: 'It is completely the wrong approach; it would entrench the downturn. We should be looking at policies that open up the economy  we will need fiscal stimulus. Taxes need to be lower rather than higher.'

Many experts are now predicting that the recession the UK is facing is likely to be its worst since the Great Frost of 1709.

The NIESR figures are in line with the scenario from the Bank of England that GDP will slump by 25 per cent this quarter before bouncing back. The 14 per cent fall over the year would be the worst recession in 300 years, since the Great Frost swept Europe in 1709

The Government is also under growing pressure over its handling of the coronavirus outbreak in care homes.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick said yesterday the situation was 'absolutely terrible' amid reports that some staff at care homes are still unable to get tested for the virus.

Health minister Edward Argar conceded the Government still needs to 'make available' Covid-19 testing capacity so all care home residents and staff can get tested.

The PM's appearance at the 1922 Committee comes amid reports that Tory MPs are pushing for a swift physical return to Parliament so they can cheer on Mr Johnson at PMQs after he was left 'rattled' by Sir Keir Starmer on Wednesday.

One senior Tory MP told the Financial Times: 'A lively environment probably does suit Boris more than Keir.'

A Cabinet minister said the Labour leader is 'very good' at PMQs, adding: 'He is forensic and deadly. I think the PM is worried.'

Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg has said he wants a physical return of the House of Commons at the start of June.

But many MPs are opposed to the move on the grounds they believe social distancing will be impossible if all 650 members of the Commons are back in Westminster.

A 'hybrid' system is currently in use which allows up to 50 MPs to attend the chamber in person with 150 able to take part remotely.
In these overstuffed days when department stores stock mass-produced macrame wall hangers, and Marie Kondo has transcended personhood to become a verb (as in, "I Marie-Kondo-ed the f--- out of that jumpsuit"), it could be said that our relationship to things has become a tad cavalier. Thankfully Craft Victoria's latest exhibition has arrived to cure us of our consumptive malaise.

Liz Jones presents her fathers drill and drill bits, along with her map of Australia made from vintage linoleum in The Meaning of Things. Credit:Craft Victoria

Bryony Nainby: ''We deal with objects every day and what stands out is how attached people can be.'' Credit:Craft Victoria

The Meaning of Things is a digital "wunderkammer", a collection of objects from makers and appreciators presented along with the stories that give them meaning. The exhibits range from the exotic to the everyday, with all stopping-off points in between. Human beings have always made things: we keep items because we are sentimental, or they fulfil some need, provide hope or comfort. This exhibition shows how objects can make, shape and change us.

Executive director Bryony Nainby conceived of the project to commemorate Craft Victoria's 50th anniversary. "Over that time there's been thousands of people involved in the organisation, so we wanted to do something open to everybody. We deal with objects every day and what stands out is how attached people can be. We wanted to explore those emotional connections. It doesn't matter if the object is humble, it's about the story that goes with it."
When Labor Party leader Anthony Albanese this week invoked the ideal of post-World War II reconstruction  with a focus on big nation-building infrastructure projects and the Aussie fair go  pandemic politics entered a new phase. The battle for ideas has been joined. Just a few weeks ago Federal Parliament was clubby and fraternal. It is once again testy and fractious.

"A view of the Cove and Part of Sydney", drawn by convict Joseph Lycett in 1818. Credit:State Library of NSW

The moment of post-war reconstruction is certainly worth recalling. But a social ideal even more worthy of resurrection is the ideal on which the settlement at Sydney Cove was founded. There was nothing noble about the plan to establish a penal colony at the worlds end in order that transportations salutary terror  the phrase is from official documents  might deter desperate people from committing desperate acts. But it was undeniably an example of bold state activism, and thats worth recalling at a time when we need an activist state.

Even more apposite is the social model forged in the next half a century after settlement when state resources were harnessed to the energies of a fledgling colony and a distinctive kind of society began to emerge. In the span of a generation a criminal underclass was largely transformed. We are rising from the rude and unconnected state consequent and separable from the first efforts of colonisation, wrote some of the better-off emancipists and free settlers in 1812, in a letter to the Sydney Gazette.

Charles Darwin, who visited Sydney in 1836 aboard The Beagle, observed of the colony: On the whole, as a place of punishment the object is scarcely gained, but as a means of making men outwardly honest  of converting vagabonds, most useless in one hemisphere, into active citizens in another, and thus giving birth to a new and splendid country  a grand Centre of Civilisation  it has succeeded to a degree perhaps unparalleled in history.
Collin Gosselin, now 16, has made himself crystal clear; he doesnt consider Kate Gosselin a mother figure. The high school student took to Instagram on May 10 to thank the mother figure in his life, but it wasnt his mom he was talking about. Instead, he offered a heartfelt message to Colleen Conrad. Colleen has been dating Collins father, Jon Gosselin, for the last six years. Shortly after posting the sweet message, Collin set his Instagram to private, leading followers to wonder if the post didnt go over well with the often-tyrannical Kate.

Jon Gosselin has custody of two of his eight children

Jon, who is estranged from six of his eight children, currently has full custody of two of his sextuplets. Hannah Gosselin started living with Jon in the summer of 2018. Hannah, who Jon alleges was emotionally abused by Kate, has appeared regularly on Jons Instagram feed looking healthy and happy.

An insider, who spoke with E! after Hannah moved into Jons house, claims that Hannah was the only one who voiced discomfort with her living situation. Jon had been lambasted by fans for only fighting for custody of one of his children. The insider, who was not named, stated that Jon didnt have the means to pursue full custody of all of his children, so he focused on the child who had voiced an interest in living with him.

Jon later gained custody of Collin, as well. Jon has been outspoken about Kates treatment of Collin, and the lack of information he was given about his childs whereabouts for several years. In 2016, Kate admitted that she had enrolled Collin in a residential program. She claimed the then 12-year-old had special needs. Jon has refuted that claim, and eventually gained full custody of the boy. Collin is back home, living with Jon and Colleen and reportedly thriving. He does not have a relationship with his mother, according to reports.

Collin Gosselin offered his fathers girlfriend, Colleen Conrad, a shout out on Mothers Day

Collin took to Instagram on Mothers Day to pay tribute to the woman in his life who is the most like a mother to him. In the post, Collin praised Colleen for everything she has done for him. He called her his guiding light and noted that he couldnt thank her enough. He signed off by telling the psychiatric nurse how much he loves her. The captioned accompanied a picture of the two together.

Colleen, who is the mother to two adult children, has been dating Jon since October 2014. The pair currently live together, along with Hannah and Collin, in Pennsylvania. The couple had reportedly known each other for years before they began dating, and fans approve of the pairing. Many believe Jon looks happier than he has in years.

Collin has made his Instagram profile private after the post

Shortly after he posted his loving tribute to Colleen, Collin set his Instagram profile to private. Its not known why he suddenly needed privacy, but some fans theorize that Jon encouraged the 16-year-old to make all of his posts private to avoid the ire of his mother. Collin and his mother, Kate, appear to have no relationship at this time.

Jon Gosselin | Bryan Steffy/Getty Images

Several months ago, Jon replied to an Instagram user who asked if Kate had visited with Collin since his release from the residential facility she placed him in. Jon told the commenter that Kate had not come around to see Collin in the months since he was home. Kate refuted Jons statement.

In February 2020, Jon got candid about Collin and the relationship he has with the rest of his family during a podcast interview. In the interview, which appeared on the First Class Fatherhood podcast, Jon claimed that Kate had alienated Collin from his siblings. According to Jon, he has no contact with Mady and Cara Gosselin, both 19, or Alexis, Joel, Aaden, and Leah Gosselin, all of whom are 16. He also confessed that Kate has not reached out about Collin since his release from treatment.
Most of the coronavirus deaths in Warren County have happened in a nursing home or assisted living facility, not a hospital. All of the Washington County coronavirus deaths also happened at a nursing home.

But those facilities cant offer the level of care that Glens Falls Hospital can provide.

So why arent residents moved to the hospital?

At Fort Hudson, when the virus first hit the ambulatory Alzheimers unit, Dr. John Quaresima held a Zoom meeting with the families of all 42 residents of the wing.

Every family decided it was better for their loved one to die peacefully in familiar surroundings, he said.

The difficult reality for the vast majority of patients on the S wing ambulatory dementia unit is that their organic brain disease will ultimately lead (or greatly contribute) to their death. For this reason, many patients and their families had already engaged in really challenging end-of-life conversations, he said.

The vast majority had already chosen to avoid the potential of dying on a ventilator and completed Do Not Resuscitate and Do Not Intubate medical orders. Many had even completed Do Not Hospitalize orders, choosing to die at home on S wingakin to how one with cancer may choose to die at home on hospice, he said.

Eleven residents there have died in less than three weeks. Ten others have recovered. The others are still ill.

He personally promised each family that their loved ones would be given the most loving and attentive care at end-of-life if they stayed at Fort Hudson. He also explained that ventilators and medications that might be helpful were available only at the hospital.

Weighing all these options, the 11 residents (or their family members) made the decision not to hospitalize and instead to end their lives at their home, he said. All I can say on behalf of the S Wing and Fort Hudson admin and staff is that it was an honor and privilege to provide their loved ones personal, dignified and loving care until the very end.

The workers facilitated virtual vigils through Zoom so that family members could stay with their loved ones until they died.

Im proud to say that not a single Fort Hudson S wing resident has died without first either having a face-to-face encounter with a family member during a compassionate care visit (in full protective gear) or having family members present electronically, he said.

Four residents died peacefully during Zoom vigils, he added, and many staff members also came back after their shifts ended to sit with dying residents.

One resident had two long-term staff by her side and her family there via Zoom. Another resident was able to have her family members from as far away as California and The Netherlands there beside her during a 16-hour virtual vigil, he said.

Not every nursing home resident already has a fatal disease like Alzheimers and has palliative care plans set up.

At Glens Falls Center, where 18 residents have died of confirmed or suspected coronavirus, most residents have stayed at the nursing home, even though the hospital could offer treatment that might help them survive the virus.

Usually, nursing homes cant do ventilation, said Keith Sandford, director of education and clinical practice for Centers nursing homes.

That has been the treatment hospitals turn to when nothing else has worked. About 75% of ventilated patients die  but for the others, the ventilator buys enough time for their immune systems to fight off the virus.

Nursing homes also cant give residents blood plasma, Sandford said, because they are not set up to provide blood infusions.

Glens Falls Hospital recently discharged a patient who was given plasma from another person who had recovered from the virus. The treatment is one of many experimental methods that may make a difference, although no one is sure.

Nursing home residents are not guinea pigs and Centers does not give them any medications that are not FDA-approved, Sandford said.

That means no Remdesivir, another drug that may have a beneficial effect, according to preliminary results in drug trials. In any case, Remdesivir is not being made available to nursing homes in New York.

Nursing homes are also generally not set up for continuous monitoring, he said.

You probably wont find many upstate facilities that have an in-house physician, he said.

Nursing home residents, and their families, can ask for a transfer to a hospital. But only three nursing home residents and two assisted living residents in Warren County have died at a hospital. So far, 19 nursing home residents and two assisted living residents have died at their homes instead, according to statistics from Warren County Public Health Services.

Sandford tried to explain why most critically ill residents stay at their nursing home instead of going to the hospital.

In some cases, the resident has a do-not-resuscitate order.

In other cases, the resident could be stable in the morning and die a few hours later, too quickly to arrange transport to the hospital, he said.

He added that going to the hospital might be distressing for all involved. The resident might prefer to stay in familiar and comfortable surroundings, where family can visit, if only outside the window.

Besides, he said, there might be no point in going to the hospital.

What is the projected outcome for moving to the hospital? We dont have treatments, he said.

You can reach Kathleen Moore at 742-3247 or kmoore@poststar.com. Follow her on Twitter @ByKathleenMoore or at her blog on www.poststar.com.

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A four-month old baby died while sleeping with his father on a sofa, an inquest has heard.

Jack Pilkington-Birnie from Plymouth in Devon was a 'happy, interactive baby in good health and development'.

On December 12 last year his parents Anthony Pilkington and Kelly Birnie spent the day at her parents' nearby home and dressed Jack in an elf suit to see Santa for half an hour outside.

They returned to their home in Teignmouth and Jack went straight to bed in his cot at 8pm, before his parents turned in an hour later.

An ambulance was called but Jack, who was 107 days old, died in Torbay hospital (pictured) on December 13

The coroner was told that Jack woke at 3am which was common for him, but unusually did not want a feed.

Anthony changed his nappy and lay full length on a sofa watching TV with Jack lying on his back on his father's chest - and they fell asleep.

The hearing was told that Anthony woke three hours later at 6am and Jack was unresponsive and he ran into the bedroom to wake Kelly who started CPR on her only child.

An ambulance was called but Jack, who was 107 days old, died in Torbay hospital on December 13.

The inquiry heard yesterday that co-sleeping has recognised risks of sudden infant death in babies less than six months old.

Anthony said Jack was 'a happy smiley baby who was never stressed'.

A post mortem at London's St Thomas' hospital could not identify a specific cause of death in the 'well grown and well cared for baby' (file image)

Both parents do not smoke, Kelly does not drink and Anthony rarely drinks alcohol.

Detective Constable Rebecca Lockley said there were no suspicious circumstances in Jack's death.

A post mortem at London's St Thomas' hospital could not identify a specific cause of death in the 'well grown and well cared for baby'.

A pathologist said had Jack died in his cot, it would have been recorded as a cot death, but co-sleeping on a sofa or a chair has recognised risks, especially if the adult has taken drugs or is under the influence of drink.

The pathologist said an accidental overlay or an alteration in the baby's body temperature, can lead to overheating and the post mortem could not exclude that.

The cause of death was best classified as 'sudden unexpected death in an infant'.

The senior Plymouth, Torbay and south Devon coroner Ian Arrow recorded an open conclusion.

He said with the co-sleeping it was possible there may have been overheating of the child but 'we cannot be certain that this happened'.

He said Jack was 'well liked and well loved' and his death was a terrible shock to the whole family.
New Delhi, May 15 : The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Gujarat High Court order nullifying the election of Bhupendrasinh Chudasama, state's Education and Law Minister, as an MLA in 2017 on the grounds of malpractices and manipulation.

A bench comprising Justices Mohan M. Shantanagoudar and R. Subhash Reddy issued notice to the petitioner, the Congress candidate Ashwini Rathod, who lost the election merely by 327 votes. "We stay orders like this all the time, we have done it in many cases", said the bench.

Senior advocate Harish Salve, representing Chudasama, contended before the bench that there was no collusion between the minister and the Returning Officer, and that there was no link to establish "material benefit".

The other counsel appearing for the minister argued that the High Court should have called for the 429 postal ballots, which were "illegally rejected" during the counting to examine if their rejection was in accordance with the rules.

Senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing Rathod, said if the votes had not been counted, these could not have been declared as rejected. Sibal argued that the Returning Officer gives a different version on postal ballots to the observer, and the form declares the final results.

"It shows collusion and mala fide" argued Sibal before the bench. He insisted that the High Court has said that the rules mandated the postal ballots be mandatorily counted before the results are declared. The bench replied that it was inclined to stay the High Court, which Sibal opposed.

Justice Shantanagoudar told Sibal the Returning Officer has given reasons for his decision. Sibal insisted that he did not agree. The top court issued notice and stayed the order.

On Wednesday, Chudasama, 70, moved the top court challenging the Gujarat High Court decision to quash his December 2017 election on the ground of malpractices and manipulation.

In the plea, Chudasama contested the High Court decision terming it erroneous, and in an interim prayer, sought stay on the High Court order till disposal of his appeal.

Rathod argued before the High Court that 429 postal ballot papers had illegally been excluded from consideration during the vote count by the Returning Officer, and that the election records were also tampered with.

"It is proved that 429 postal ballot papers were illegally rejected/excluded from consideration by the Returning Officer at the time of counting of votes in the election in question, as against the victory margin of 327 votes", the High Court had observed.

Chudasama in his plea said: "The High Court has failed to appreciate the proper facts of the case and has reached a completely erroneous conclusion in holding the successful election of the petitioner as illegal and void." The plea said that a ballot only becomes a vote at Rule 54(7) which is when the covers in Form 13-B not already dealt with till Rule 54(6) are opened one after another and therefore, in the present case, what are rejected are only 429 postal ballots not votes.

He insisted that the High Court did not appreciate that the election petitioner has been unable to prove beyond reasonable doubt that corrupt practice has been committed by any person much less the returned candidate.

Chudasama was declared elected from 58-Dholka Constituency for the Gujarat Assembly Elections held on December 14, 2017.
Nasa has made a landmark announcement about its plan to return to the moon and onto Mars, revealing that it has begun negotiating the Artemis Accords.

The accords are a set of agreements that would require any country that plans to work with the US on returning to the lunar surface to agree to a host of principles. The accords are named in keeping with the Artemis programme, which is the plan to send the first woman and next man to the moon by 2024.

They would include a commitment to be transparent in their work, to only explore space for peaceful purposes, and to guarantee they would work together to save any astronauts that came into danger during a mission.

Nasa was explicit that the agreements would be made in keeping with the Outer Space Treaty of 1967, which currently sets the legal framework for space exploration. That requires a set of commitments from countries which are intended to ensure that space missions are as safe and transparent as possible.

But the new Artemis Accords go further than those commitments, requiring more detailed principles from the countries prepared to work with the US to head to the moon and beyond.

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While Nasa is leading the Artemis programme, international partnerships will play a key role in achieving a sustainable and robust presence on the moon while preparing to conduct a historic human mission to Mars, the agency said on its website.

With numerous countries and private sector players conducting missions and operations in cislunar space, its critical to establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space.

In full, the principles are that any mission should be conducted with peaceful purposes; should be transparent; and use technology that is interoperable and conforms to open, international standards that everyone can use. International partners also have to agree to provide emergency assistance to astronauts in trouble; publicly register any space objects; release the scientific data they gather; protect the heritage of historic space artefacts; gather resources according to international agreements; not harmfully interfere with other missions; and dispose of any debris or spacecraft responsibly.

When drafts of the accords were leaked earlier this month, they attracted ire from Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russias space agency Roscosmos. He suggested on Twitter that the US was planning to invade the moon like it had Iraq and Afghanistan, and that the accords would be a way of building a coalition of other countries that would allow for it to take over the lunar surface.

Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Show all 10 1 /10 Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Mystic Mountain, a pillar of gas and dust standing at three-light-years tall, bursting with jets of gas from fledgling stars buried within, was captured by Nasa's Hubble Space Telescope in February 2010 Nasa/ESA/STScI Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures The first ever selfie taken on an alien planet, captured by Nasa's Curiosity Rover in the early days of its mission to explore Mars in 2012 Nasa/JPL-Caltech/MSSS Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Death of a star: This image from Nasa's Chandra X-ray telescope shows the supernova of Tycho, a star in our Milky Way galaxy Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Arrokoth, the most distant object ever explored, pictured here on 1 January 2019 by a camera on Nasa's New Horizons spaceraft at a distance of 4.1 billion miles from Earth Getty Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures An image of the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy seen in infrared light by the Herschel Space Observatory in January 2012. Regions of space such as this are where new stars are born from a mixture of elements and cosmic dust Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures The first ever image of a black hole, captured by the Event Horizon telescope, as part of a global collaboration involving Nasa, and released on 10 April 2019. The image reveals the black hole at the centre of Messier 87, a massive galaxy in the nearby Virgo galaxy cluster. This black hole resides about 54 million light-years from Earth Getty Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Pluto, as pictured by Nasa's New Horizons spacecraft as it flew over the dwarf planet for the first time ever in July 2015 Nasa/APL/SwRI Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures A coronal mass ejection as seen by the Chandra Observatory in 2019. This is the first time that Chandra has detected this phenomenon from a star other than the Sun Nasa Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks running downhill on the surface Mars were believed to be evidence of contemporary flowing water. It has since been suggested that they may instead be formed by flowing sand Nasa/JPL/University of Arizona Nasa's groundbreaking decade of space exploration: In pictures Morning Aurora: Nasa astronaut Scott Kelly captured this photograph of the green lights of the aurora from the International Space Station in October 2015 Nasa/Scott Kelly

Nasa said that it would not be imposing the agreements on any country and that they would be negotiated bilaterally. Representatives also indicated that they hope for Russia to sign a version of the accords.

As well as drawing criticism from Russia, the accords appear to be something of a rebuke to the Chinese space programme, which has traditionally been less transparent than the US. Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine explicitly referenced the problems around its recent rocket launch as an example of where the accords could help.

The empty core stage of the Long March 5B, weighing nearly 20 tons, was in an uncontrolled free fall along a path that carried it over Los Angeles and other densely populated areas, Mr Bridenstine told Ars Technica.

I can think of no better example of why we need the Artemis Accords. Its vital for the US to lead and establish norms of behaviour against such irresponsible activities. Space exploration should inspire hope and wonder, not fear and danger.
On the back of soaring job losses, local governments have been rolling out their own multi-million-dollar stimulus packages to help households and small businesses, with the City of Mandurah facing up to 15 per cent unemployment.

Perths biggest council, the City of Stirling, this week green lit a $43.7 million stimulus package for household businesses and the community, with the lions share going into construction and capital works projects to help boost jobs.

As cafes get ready to gear up for Phase 2, councils are trying to pump more money into their local economies. Credit:Louie Douvis

Theres a huge remit of services that were providing that includes our commitment for a zero-rate increase; includes removal of interest, instalment and arrangement fees and charges; for more flexible payment options, particularly around rate payments; rent abatement for small businesses; one-on-one counselling if its required, Stirling deputy mayor Bianca Sandri said.

Weve also looked at our town team activation funds and event sponsorships and really target local activation because people are using their suburbs and local centres differently to what they were previously.
The coronavirus slayer! How Kerala's rock star health minister helped save it from Covid-19

by Laura Spinney

May 15,2020 | Source: The Guardian

KK Shailaja has been hailed as the reason a state of 35 million people has only lost four to the virus. Heres how the former teacher did it.



On 20 January, KK Shailaja phoned one of her medically trained deputies. She had read online about a dangerous new virus spreading in China. Will it come to us? she asked. Definitely, Madam, he replied. And so the health minister of the Indian state of Kerala began her preparations.



Four months later, Kerala has reported only 524 cases of Covid-19, four deaths and  according to Shailaja  no community transmission. The state has a population of about 35 million and a GDP per capita of only 2,200. By contrast, the UK (double the population, GDP per capita of 33,100) has reported more than 40,000 deaths, while the US (10 times the population, GDP per capita of 51,000) has reported more than 82,000 deaths; both countries have rampant community transmission.



As such, Shailaja Teacher, as the 63-year-old minister is affectionately known, has attracted some new nicknames in recent weeks  Coronavirus Slayer and Rockstar Health Minister among them. The names sit oddly with the merry, bespectacled former secondary school science teacher, but they reflect the widespread admiration she has drawn for demonstrating that effective disease containment is possible not only in a democracy, but in a poor one.



How has this been achieved? Three days after reading about the new virus in China, and before Kerala had its first case of Covid-19, Shailaja held the first meeting of her rapid response team. The next day, 24 January, the team set up a control room and instructed the medical officers in Keralas 14 districts to do the same at their level. By the time the first case arrived, on 27 January, via a plane from Wuhan, the state had already adopted the World Health Organizations protocol of test, trace, isolate and support.



As the passengers filed off the Chinese flight, they had their temperatures checked. Three who were found to be running a fever were isolated in a nearby hospital. The remaining passengers were placed in home quarantine  sent there with information pamphlets about Covid-19 that had already been printed in the local language, Malayalam. The hospitalised patients tested positive for Covid-19, but the disease had been contained. The first part was a victory, says Shailaja. But the virus continued to spread beyond China and soon it was everywhere.



In late February, encountering one of Shailajas surveillance teams at the airport, a Malayali family returning from Venice was evasive about its travel history and went home without submitting to the now-standard controls. By the time medical personnel detected a case of Covid-19 and traced it back to them, their contacts were in the hundreds. Contact tracers tracked them all down, with the help of advertisements and social media, and they were placed in quarantine. Six developed Covid-19.



Another cluster had been contained, but by now large numbers of overseas workers were heading home to Kerala from infected Gulf states, some of them carrying the virus. On 23 March, all flights into the states four international airports were stopped. Two days later, India entered a nationwide lockdown.



At the height of the virus in Kerala, 170,000 people were quarantined and placed under strict surveillance by visiting health workers, with those who lacked an inside bathroom housed in improvised isolation units at the state governments expense. That number has shrunk to 21,000. We have also been accommodating and feeding 150,000 migrant workers from neighbouring states who were trapped here by the lockdown, she says. We fed them properly  three meals a day for six weeks. Those workers are now being sent home on charter trains.



Shailaja was already a celebrity of sorts in India before Covid-19. Last year, a movie called Virus was released, inspired by her handling of an outbreak of an even deadlier viral disease, Nipah, in 2018. (She found the character who played her a little too worried-looking; in reality, she has said, she couldnt afford to show fear.) She was praised not only for her proactive response, but also for visiting the village at the centre of the outbreak.



The villagers were terrified and ready to flee, because they did not understand how the disease was spreading. I rushed there with my doctors, we organised a meeting in the panchayat [village council] office and I explained that there was no need to leave, because the virus could only spread through direct contact, she says. If you kept at least a metre from a coughing person, it couldnt travel. When we explained that, they became calm  and stayed.



Nipah prepared Shailaja for Covid-19, she says, because it taught her that a highly contagious disease for which there is no treatment or vaccine should be taken seriously. In a way, though, she had been preparing for both outbreaks all her life.



The Communist Party of India (Marxist), of which she is a member, has been prominent in Keralas governments since 1957, the year after her birth. (It was part of the Communist Party of India until 1964, when it broke away.) Born into a family of activists and freedom fighters  her grandmother campaigned against untouchability  she watched the so-called Kerala model be assembled from the ground up; when we speak, this is what she wants to talk about.



The foundations of the model are land reform  enacted via legislation that capped how much land a family could own and increased land ownership among tenant farmers  a decentralised public health system and investment in public education. Every village has a primary health centre and there are hospitals at each level of its administration, as well as 10 medical colleges.



This is true of other states, too, says MP Cariappa, a public health expert based in Pune, Maharashtra state, but nowhere else are people so invested in their primary health system. Kerala enjoys the highest life expectancy and the lowest infant mortality of any state in India; it is also the most literate state. With widespread access to education, there is a definite understanding of health being important to the wellbeing of people, says Cariappa.



Shailaja says: I heard about those struggles  the agricultural movement and the freedom fight  from my grandma. She was a very good storyteller. Although emergency measures such as the lockdown are the preserve of the national government, each Indian state sets its own health policy. If the Kerala model had not been in place, she insists, her governments response to Covid-19 would not have been possible.

 2020 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Theme(s): Others.
India Meteorological Department issues cyclone watch over Bay of Bengal

by Vinson Kurien

May 15,2020 | Source: The Hindu BusinessLine

Littoral nations along the Bay of Bengal have issued separate alerts over the formation of a low-pressure area in the basin and its prospective intensification as a cyclone, after the Regional Specialised Meteorological Centre for Tropical Cyclones over the North Indian Ocean (including the Bay and the Arabian Sea) at the India Meteorological Department (IMD) declared a cyclone watch on Wednesday.



First off was the Myanmar Department of Meteorology and Hydrology, the most proximate national forecast agency, which cited observations at 1.30 pm Myanmar Standard Time on Wednesday to confirm that a low-pressure area has formed over the South-East Bay and adjoining South Andaman Sea. It said the low may further intensify into a depression during the next two days and move initially to the North-West into the West-Central Bay. The Andaman Sea and the South Bay were cloudy by noon and a few clouds were spotted over the rest of the Bay.



Some distance to the East-South-East and beyond the Bay, the Thailand Meteorological Department said it had spotted an active low over the Andaman Sea. It predicted that the system would intensify and move towards the lower Bay (southern parts of the basin). It reported scattered thundershowers and South-Easterly winds speeding to 15-35 km/hour across the region (sufficient to call out for a low) and wave heights of 3-6.5 ft and about 6.5 ft or above in the thundershower areas.



Easterly to South-Easterly winds (15-30 km/hour) prevailed to both sides of the Thai Gulf with scattered thundershowers and wave heights of 6.5 ft in the thundershower areas. The Kotabaru to Singapore stretch featured cloudy skies and isolated thundershowers, easterly winds (10-30 km/hr) and wave heights of below 3 ft and about 6.5 ft in the thundershower areas. Indochina was partly cloudy and witnessed isolated thundershowers, South-Easterly winds (10-30 km/hour) and wave heights of 3 ft and above.



Meanwhile, Sri Lanka to the West-South-West witnessed active cloudiness in the seas off the coast extending from Galle to Hambantota via Matara. The Sri Lanka Meteorological Department warned the public about the possibility for heavy showers/thundershowers and sudden rough state of the seas, associated with sudden increase of wind speed (up to 70-80 km/hour). Navel and fishing communities have been directed to stay vigilant.



Thunder clouds had formed along the Western, South-Western, Southern and South-Eastern sea areas from the morning. The showers over the island were likely to scale up due to the low level atmospheric disturbance in its vicinity (cyclonic circulation over the Comorin region). The island nation is caught right in the midst of Westerly to South-Westerly flows headed into the Bay, getting amplified by the cyclonic circulation.



The Met Department warned the general public to take precautions to minimise damages from lightning and localised strong winds. Sri Lanka is the fourth pit-stop for the monsoon after it races in first into the Maldives (expected any time), the Bay (Andaman & Nicobar Islands) and Myanmar before reaching Kerala over mainland India.

 2020, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD.

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Former National Security Advisor Susan Rice speaks at the J Street 2018 National Conference in Washington on April 16, 2018. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)

Susan Rice Would Say Yes If Asked to Be Joe Bidens Running Mate

Former national security adviser Susan Rice said shed accept an offer to be presumptive Democratic presidential candidate Joe Bidens running mate.

Biden, 77, has said hell choose a younger woman as his 2020 partner.

Rice, 55, who served in the Obama administration, fits the bill.

Asked by a PBS reporter during a video interview Thursday whether shed accept an offer to be Bidens running mate, Rice said yes.

Should I say no? Rice said. You know, I think everybody whos been asked that question has given the same answer. So thats not a surprise.

Then-Vice President Joe Biden (L) and then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice talk as then-President Barack Obama and then-Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi brief the press after a bilateral meeting in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on April 14, 2015. (Mike Theiler/Getty Images)

Im humbled and honored to be among the extremely accomplished women who are reportedly being considered in that regard, she added.

Rice, a vociferous critic of Republican President Donald Trump, knows Biden well, having worked with him closely. Hed be a great president, she said.

From my vantage point, Im committed to doing all I can to help him win and to help him govern. So I will do as I best can in whatever capacity makes most sense, she said.

Rice said she is not campaigning for the position, or any other.

Other potential Biden running mates include Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, and Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The Boston Massacre: A Family History

By Serena Zabin

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. 296 pp. $30

---

Historians continue to assess the meaning of the American Revolution. But at first glance, what can one possibly say about the Boston Massacre that is new? The iconic event, immortalized 250 years ago in a famous engraving by Paul Revere, has been studied and written about exhaustively. The facts are well-known, even if interpretations have differed.

On a wintry night in 1770, British soldiers fired into a crowd of civilians, killing five men. While Revere's print sought to portray the Bostonians as innocent victims, future president John Adams mounted a defense of the soldiers in court that underscored their helplessness in the face of an aggressive crowd. By emphasizing the notion of a confrontation between two separate camps, both versions concealed the intimate ties that existed between soldiers and civilians.

Through exhaustive sleuthing in British military records, official correspondence and Boston archives, Serena Zabin, a history professor at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota, changes this familiar story into a familial one. The result is a lively gem of a book that expands our views of early-modern military life, pre-revolutionary Boston, and, in turn, the American Revolution.

Early modern armies were full of women. Married to privates and officers, they cooked, cleaned, nursed and laundered for soldiers while raising children. Though often derisively dismissed as "camp followers," they provided crucial support. In recognition of their importance to the functioning of the army, many received rations, pay and even transportation when regiments got deployed. The 2,000 British regulars sent to Boston in 1768 to exercise riot control in the face of opposition to new imperial taxes were accompanied by close to 400 women and 500 children.

Unwilling to live in the barracks on distant Castle Island in Boston Harbor to which resentful Bostonians had relegated them, the soldiers were forced to rent warehouses, houses, and rooms in private homes all over town. About 3,000 Britons and 16,000 townspeople ended up sharing the roughly one-square-mile peninsula that comprised pre-revolutionary Boston. Not surprisingly, civilians and soldiers intermingled and communities connected, albeit uneasily.

Of course, there were tensions. As military custom required, soldiers challenged people walking by guard posts. Politicized Bostonians considered this an assault on their liberty. Their refusals to answer challenged army authority and created friction. Moreover, there were drunken brawls, curses, "indelicate threatenings" and regular violent clashes on city streets, some involving women.

But the landlords and tenants also exchanged coal and the proverbial neighborly cups of sugar, visited and worked together, and attended the same churches. To the horror of local patriots, soldiers and female Bostonians flirted and romanced. Some wed. One in four nuptials in Boston between 1768 and 1772 involved British soldiers and local women. Zabin's in-depth research allows her to track a number of these couples. Although some Bostonians rejected these unions as a betrayal of the American cause, others publicly embraced the new "imperial" families. New Englanders also eagerly aided soldiers keen to escape from the army. Unusually large numbers of deserters absconded into the surrounding countryside, where they, too, became neighbors, friends, husbands, and fathers.

As time wore on, relations between civilians and soldiers became progressively volatile. Zabin points out that such unpredictability was not peculiar to Boston. Explosive civilian-military relations were common, given the use of soldiers for crowd control in peace time throughout the British Empire. Increasingly resentful of military occupation, Bostonians were exquisitely sensitive to any slight or innocent misstep. "Every morning," Zabin writes, "was a roll of the dice: Would this be another day of favors exchanged and drinks shared? Or would this be a day when a comment became a shove or a brawl became a riot?"

As to the actual events on the evening of March 5, 1770, we are still in the dark, despite the accounts of several hundred witnesses who said they had seen or heard something important. Their stories diverged widely, and the number of actual observers was in question. Were just a few dozen people in the immediate area or hundreds? Did restrained redcoats fire in self-defense as townspeople armed with clubs pelted them with sticks, ice and snow, or did they shoot willfully on well-behaving and unarmed folk? Did Capt. Thomas Preston order his men to fire or did he try to hold them back? Had it all been an unfortunate accident?

Although the fascinating testimonies Zabin details do not agree on how events unfolded, they do show that people encountered one another that evening as community members, rather than as faceless civilians and soldiers. It was the trials at the end of 1770, first of Preston and then of eight of his soldiers, she argues convincingly, that turned the familiar redcoats into anonymous strangers. For different reasons, lawyers on both sides erased any neighborly and familial ties and created a narrative of two separate and opposing camps of civilians and soldiers.

This "political spin," Zabin points out, also contributed to the "disappearance" of the families and "all women, both civilian and military, associated with this event." Their absence in the historical narrative extends well beyond the Boston Massacre and remains an issue for historians wanting to point out the centrality of family and gender in understanding the revolution and the War of Independence.

In the epilogue of her engaging book, Zabin observes that the Boston Massacre was a family brawl that broke down the familial relations between the mother country and her colonial children, just as the revolutionary conflict split actual families and friendships on both sides of the ocean. "We think of the American Revolution as a political event," she concludes, "but it was much more like a bad divorce."

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Kars is a historian at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County. Her book "Blood on the River: A Chronicle of Mutiny and Freedom on the Wild Coast," about the 1763-1764 Berbice slave rebellion, will be published in August.
After the World Health Organisation (WHO) initially stated there was no science to support the theory that facemasks help reduce the spread of Covid-19, the Irish Government has spent weeks deliberating.

Health organisations and medical experts are now strongly advocating for facemasks as new research emerges.

Professor Luke ONeill, immunologist at Trinity College Dublin, believes wearing home-made cotton masks can help reduce the rate of transmission by up to 90pc.

George Gao, head of the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said one of the reasons the disease spread so rapidly is because not enough people were wearing masks at the beginning.

More than 30 countries have now made it mandatory to wear face masks in public, but a shortage of supply worldwide has prevented some officials from telling people to go out and buy them.

Read More

As our own Government will now advise people to wear homemade face coverings, in a bid to help protect the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) to frontline workers, the Irish Independent put together a quick guide on how to make your own.

And for those who havent mastered the art of sewing, fear not, there are alternative options to the method outlined in the tutorial below.

Homemade masks can be made in under 10 minutes and only a few household materials are needed.

Plain cotton t-shirt fabric has proven popular and has been recommended by experts.

The more layers you have, the better, said Professor ONeill.

The graphic shows a useful method to make a mask involving a scissors, cotton fabric, elastic ribbons and sewing supplies.

But Professor ONeill also demonstrated a method that doesnt require you to sew. All you need is a cotton fabric, a stapler and two elastic bands.

Once it covers your mouth and nose, it will protect you from spreading it to other people, he said.

You need a good length of material, then you fold over your piece of cotton to create two layers. Simply put an elastic band around each end, fold over the edges and staple together.

The most important thing is to make sure you wash your hands before you put it on and again when you take it off after returning from the shop.

While it wont be mandatory for Irish people to wear masks in public, the Government is urging people to wear face coverings on public transport and in supermarkets.

Dr Eoin Feeney, consultant in infectious diseases at St Vincents Hospital in Dublin, said it is vital people wear the masks properly.

Sometimes the masks can give people a false sense of security and you see people wearing them badly, partly falling down or not covering their nose and mouth, he said.

You must avoid touching your face while wearing one and wash your hands.

Follow these six simple steps to make your own protective face mask:

What Youll Need

Scissors, cotton fabric (breathable and tightly woven), elastic cord (two lengths approximately 20cm each) and sewing supplies.

Step 1

Using the pattern (download here, print on A4 paper and trace) cut four identical pieces of fabric..

Step 2

Lay two pieces of fabric on top of each other and sew the curved side together, creating the front of the mask. Then repeat the process to create the back of the mask.





Step 3

Place one side of the mask on a table, seam side down. Lay the elastic cord in two loops as shown. Sew the ends of the loops to the edges of the mask, leaving a few millimetres protruding over the edge of the mask.

Step 4



Place the other side of the mask on top, seam side up, sandwiching the elastic loops. Sew the two sides of the mask together around the edges, leaving the area on one side of the mask unsewn.

Step 5

Turn the mask inside-out by putting your fingers through the unsewn gap and pulling the two elastic loops through the opening.

Step 6

After the mask is reversed, sew the remaining gap closed and youre done.
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Linkedin Michaela Cabrera (Reuters) Paris, France  Fri, May 15, 2020 08:09 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd826747 2 Books France,bookstore,books,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic,lockdown Free

Neighborhood bookstores in France survived the television and later the advent of online shopping. Then came the coronavirus lockdown, an eight-week-long hiatus that has weighed heavily on profit margins and threatens the survival of some stores.

France's bookstores were allowed to reopen on Monday for the first time since March 17 as the government tries to balance the need to resuscitate a crashing economy with the risk that the spread of the new coronavirus accelerates once more.

At the ICI bookstore in Paris' 2nd arrondissement, wearing a mask is compulsory and hand sanitizer is readily available at the front door and inside to allow customers to pick up and flick through whichever book catches their eye.

"People are being careful not to touch the books too much. And we tell them that if they touch the books, they can but they must use the (sanitizing) gel each time," said co-founder Anne-Laure Vial.

Bouetard's 12 employees are back on the payroll after being temporarily furloughed, and the store has applied for two loans to help cover overhead costs.

France is a paradise for bibliophiles. Large chain booksellers exist, but independent bookstores are a ubiquitous feature of Parisian neighborhoods.

Inside, the bustle of the French capital slows to a sedate tempo as patrons browse the shelves.

Read also: 9 Indonesian book translations to read on World Book Day

Shielding culture

France has jealously protected its cultural life and institutions for decades. The French notion of 'l'exception culturelle' means more than cultural exceptionalism - it points to the belief that national culture should be shielded from free-market forces.

Subsidies, quotas, income support and tax breaks help prop up French music, cinema and literature. It also has a law which prevents bookstores slashing prices in order to protect writers.

Even so, margins are tight.

"The difficulty comes if we dont get enough business to cover our costs," said Vial, who is worried about a slow rebound. "We must hold on for several months. Its not a given."

The government is aware of the perils they and others face.

"They have very weak margins, very weak profits, and so they could have trouble finding the finances to pay back loans," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire said during a visit to another bookstore last week. "We could have a string of bankrupt bookstores. That's exactly what we want to avoid."

Browsing the ICI's shelves of comics among the 60,000 titles on sale was six-year-old Marcel di Nicola.

The lockdown, his mother Florence said, had been a rare opportunity to focus on reading.

"We don't leave him alone in front of the television. So as soon as homework is done, we need to find another activity and something he can do alone," she said.
FILE PHOTO: U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks to reporters after it was announced U.S. congressional leaders and the White House agreed on nearly $500 billion more in coronavirus relief for the U.S. economy, bringing to nearly $3 trillion the amount allocated to deal with the crisis, on Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 21, 2020. REUTERS

Reuters

The Senate is expected to vote Wednesday to renew the 2001 Patriot Act, and Mitch McConnell is pushing an amendment to the law that would expand the FBI's surveillance powers.

An amendment proposed by McConnell would, for the first time ever, let the FBI collect records on Americans' web-browsing and search histories without a warrant.

Another amendment drafted by McConnell would give the attorney general more oversight of FBI investigations into political operatives, like the recent FBI investigation into the Trump campaign.

A bipartisan group of senators proposed a measure to block the FBI from accessing people's web-browsing history without a warrant, but it failed by one vote on Wednesday.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is pushing forward with an amendment that would let the FBI collect records on Americans' web-browsing and search histories without a warrant this week.

McConnell proposed the amendment as part of the renewal of the 2001 Patriot Act, The Daily Beast first reported. The Senate is voting on amendments this week.

The McConnell amendment would let Department of Justice officials  overseen by Attorney General Bill Barr  look through anyone's browsing history without the approval of a judge if they deem the browsing history relevant to an investigation. It blocks the FBI from accessing the "content" of people's web-browsing history but would let the FBI access records detailing which sites and search terms people entered.

The proposal has drawn backlash from a bipartisan group of senators, as well as from both liberal and conservative civil-liberties groups, including the American Civil Liberties Union and Americans for Prosperity.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden and Republican Sen. Steve Daines jointly proposed an amendment that would require the FBI to obtain a warrant before accessing people's web-browsing history  but their amendment failed by just one vote Wednesday, bringing warrantless searches of web-browsing history one step closer to becoming law.

Story continues

"When you talk about web browsing and searches, you're talking about some of the most sensitive, most personal, and most private details of Americans' lives. Every thought that can come into people's heads can be revealed in an internet search or a visit to a website," Wyden said in a statement to Business Insider.

McConnell's press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In a joint op-ed, ACLU counsel Neema Singh Guliani and Americans for Prosperity analyst Billy Easley decried warrantless web-browsing searches as "secret spying" and "unjust."

As it weighs the reauthorization of the Patriot Act, the Senate is also considering amendments that would give the attorney general more oversight of the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Court, which handles investigations into political candidates.

The Senate is voting on the amendments Wednesday and Thursday.

Read the original article on Business Insider
by Shafique Khokhar

People met yesterday for the Day of Prayer and Fasting. Ordinary believers joined religious leaders in invoking the Lord. For Bishop Indrias Rehmat, only through prayer, fasting and charity can humanity overcome the pandemic crisis and return to normal. God will listen to us and save us from this pandemic, said Muslim leader Maulana Mubashar.

Faisalabad (AsiaNews)  Pakistani Muslims, Christians and Sikhs met yesterday at the residence of the Bishop of Faisalabad to pray and fast against the coronavirus along with Pope Francis. The initiative is a response to an appeal from the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity, supported by the pontiff.

Organised by the diocese and a network of humanitarian organisations active in Faisalabad, the meeting saw the participation of religious leaders, priests, nuns, activists, media representatives as well as ordinary believers, including teachers, students and mothers with children.

In accordance with their own creed, participants sang hymns to the Lord; religious representatives then lit candles for peace and hope.

Addressing those present, Bishop Indrias Rehmat of Faisalabad said that only through prayer, fasting and charity can humanity overcome the pandemic crisis and return to normal. He humbly called on all religions to remain united in this moment of crisis, for only this way God may have mercy on us and rid us of this virus.

For Father Khalid Rashid Asi, director of the Diocesan Commission for Harmony and Interfaith Dialogue, when various confessions come together to pray, every obstacle can be overcome, even a deadly disease like COVID-19

Heading the message of unity, Muslim cleric Maulana Mubashar said: Today we vow together that we will keep on helping the poor with our acts of charity. For this noble purpose we all have to be united despite having different faiths, sects and languages. As God is one, [. . .] he wants us to be united and serve those in need. He will listen to us and save us from this pandemic.
The LORD bless you and keep you; the LORD make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the LORD turn his face toward you and give you peace.  Numbers 6:24-26

Blessings and benedictions are common throughout the world and come in many different forms.

We often encourage others in their goals and offer short greetings to those we meet. We wish others peace and prosperity and ask God to protect those we love. We bless people when they sneeze and hear people (even those who have no interest in God) use the phrase, God Bless You in their daily lives.

Pastors and preachers frequently end their sermons with some sort of benediction, and we traditionally conclude our letters and messages with some sort of final blessing or salutation.

Most blessings are simple sayings that communicate kindness and goodwill to those they are directed towards. In the Bible, however, we learn that Gods blessings carry far more spiritual significance than just a casual greeting or obligatory saying.

Gods blessings are filled with His favor, His promises, His power, and His presence. And we see in Scripture that God loves to bless His people. There is enormous power in the blessings of God. In fact, in the Old Testament, God provided instructions for how his priests were to bless the nation of Israel.

Today, those instructions provide an incredible template for how we should bless others and an explanation of why Gods blessings are so powerful even still.

Photo Credit: GettyImages/thanasus

What Does 'May the Lord Bless You and Keep You' Mean?

Here, we find Gods heart for His people on full display.

In the words of Aaron, who led the priests and Levites, the nature of Gods blessing to every person was revealed.

The Lord bless you and keep you. (Numbers 6:24)

Its clear from these words and the countless examples provided in the Old Testament, that God would never abandon His people nor break covenant with them, even if they walked out on Him or betrayed their end of the bargain.

As the prophet Isaiah wrote, I (the Lord) have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, You are my people. (Isaiah 51:16)

I (the Lord) will take you to be my people, and I will be your God, and you shall know that I am the Lord your God, who has brought you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. (Exodus 6:7)

This was the nature of the covenant God had made. They were His people and He was their God. He would keep them in the shadow of His wings and never let go. No matter what (Psalms 17:8).

The blessing continues:

The Lord make His face shine on you, and be gracious to you. The Lord lift up His countenance on you, and give you peace. (Numbers 6:25-26)

According to Matthew Henry, this blessing communicates the heart of God in its promise to protect His people from evil (2 Thessalonians 3:3), pardon them from their sin (Micah 7:18), and provide peace in the midst of chaos (Philippians 4:7).

As the sun shines upon the earth, so Gods face would shine on His people to enlighten, comfort, and renew them. Likewise, the Lord would lift His countenance on His people as a father looks upon his children or we are inclined to greet a friend were glad to see.

The bottom line is, God delights in His people and takes pleasure in their presence and well-being.

Photo Credit: Sparrowstock

Where is This Blessing Found in the Bible?

You may have heard the phrase, the Lord bless you and keep you at some point in your life. Its the kind of benediction youd expect to hear at the end of a sermon or by a pastor to his congregation. Well, guess what? Thats exactly how it was originally delivered.

The book of Numbers, one of the first five books of the Old Testament and fourth book in the Hebrew Torah, was written by Moses to chronicle the 38-year period of Israels wandering the desert following the covenant made with God at Mount Sinai. In the book, Moses outlined Gods commands to His people along with specific details for how Moses and the priests were to lead the children of Israel.

Following the national census and instructions for the layout of the tabernacle (or tent of worship), God commanded Aaron and the priests to pronounce a blessing over the people, which is where we get this familiar blessing (Numbers 6:22-27).

Why Was Aaron Commanded to Bless the People?

Its important to remember that the priests, led by Aaron and the rest of the Levites, were set apart to lead the people in worship and spiritual teaching. The priests were Gods chosen intercessors and a direct mouthpiece to the people. Charged with relaying Gods commands, the priests were also the ones who appeared before God to make sacrifices on behalf of the people.

For this reason, the priests were trusted by the people and looked to for guidance and instruction.

When God commanded Aaron, the high priest, to bless the nation, He wanted His people to know His heart. Even in their disobedience and unfaithfulness, God still wanted to bless His people. In receiving His instructions and law, the people would be blessed with the knowledge of God and the means to live a holy and pleasing life. The priests would be the instrument of this blessing.

Photo Credit: GettyImages

Gods Name Is Written on Our Hearts

Similar to the priests of Moses day, pastors and spiritual leaders today are called to care for Gods church. They, too, are called to bless Gods people, but it is not their blessing they are commissioned to deliver. The blessing of Numbers 6 carries the power of Gods name, not necessarily Aarons. So they shall invoke My name on the sons of Israel, and I then will bless them. (Numbers 6:27)

God had given His name to Israel and marked them as His people. There was a sense of belonging to this covenant. The children of Israel were His chosen people, and with that came the blessing of his presence and favor (Psalms 33:12).

When Jesus entered the world, he stepped in as our High Priest, blessing all of humanity with the gift of salvation, made possible through his perfect sacrifice on the cross. In doing so, Jesus formed a new covenant with humanity and fulfilled the role of the High Priest by interceding on our behalf before the Father. He took our sin upon himself so that we might be saved and have direct access to the Father.

We, too, now carry the name of Jesus Christ, which he has written on our hearts. And as the children of Israel were called to be a blessing to the nations (Genesis 22:18), today, Christs followers are also called to bless others.

We have been given an incredible responsibility and commission. As we receive, we are called to give. Blessed, we are commanded to bless. In doing so, we not only become participants in the gospel of Jesus Christ, we become active agents administering the blessings of Gods love to the world.

Again, it is not necessarily our blessing we share. Our words may offer kindness and encouragement to those we meet. Gods blessings, however, spoken in His name, offer the joy of His presence, the promise of His peace, and the power of His forgiveness and salvation. That is a blessing far too valuable to keep to ourselves. Like Aaron, our job is to proclaim and deliver it.

As the apostle Paul wrote, praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God. (2 Corinthians 1:3-4)

In all things, may the Lord bless you and keep you.

In the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, Amen!

Photo Credit: Getty Images/Arkira

Joel Ryan is an LA-based childrens author, artist, professor, and speaker who is passionate about helping young writers unleash their creativity and discover the wonders of their Creator through storytelling and art. In his blog, Perspectives off the Page, he discusses all things story and the creative process.
It was by email that Divya finally asked for help  she was scared her family would overhear if she made a phone call.

During lockdown she had been barred from contacting her partner, because her family didnt approve of him. They banned her from leaving the house alone, or speaking to anyone else. They took all electronic items from her. But finally, after persuading her family she needed a laptop for her studies, Divya managed to get in touch with Fedra.

Fedra is one of the helpline workers at Karma Nirvana, a national charity supporting victims of honour-based abuse, which has seen a 57 per cent rise in calls during lockdown. She said Divya, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was one of the victims whose problems had been exacerbated by the restrictions on movement due to coronavirus.

Divya entered into a relationship that was discovered by both her own family and her partners family, both of whom disapproved of them being together. This caused family altercations within her own family and between the two families, escalating to police involvement. However, Divya remained within the family home during lockdown, Fedra told The Independent.

She discussed fears of being caught whilst fleeing and what would happen if she was forced to return home, fearing an escalation of abuse. She discussed the detrimental effect of the abuse on her mental health, as well as not being allowed to speak to her partner.

Divya was able to flee her abusive family during the lockdown after gaining help from Karma Nirvana and the police and has now found secure accommodation where she is free and safe to contact her partner as she wishes.

Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Show all 23 1 /23 Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy holds hands with Nichollette and Ryan as she experiences contractions in a birthing tub Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy Pedroza, 27, who is pregnant, sits next to Ryan Morgan, 30, her partner and father to their unborn child, as they relax at Pedrozas parents house in Forth Worth, Texas, where they currently live, during the coronavirus outbreak Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy Pedroza attends an appointment with her licensed midwives Susan Taylor, 40, who checks her stomach, and Amanda Prouty, 39, in Taylors home office at her house Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy takes a brisk walk to try and speed up her contractions with Ryan and her midwives near Taylors home where Pedroza plans to give birth Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy receives support from Nichollette Jones, her doula Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy experiences contractions Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy is supported by Ryan and Nichollette as she experiences contractions while labouring at the home of Pedrozas licensed midwife, Susan Taylor Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy lies on a bed in front of Ryan as he helps to pump her breastmilk to try and speed up her contractions Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy experiences contractions as Susan lies on a bed Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy embraces Ryan Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy is supported by Ryan as she experiences contractions in a birthing tub Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy experiences contractions Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy in a birthing tub Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy is placed onto an ambulance stretcher to be taken to hospital by paramedics, after her unborn childs heartbeat dropped from 130 beats per minute to 30 Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy is carried on an ambulance stretcher to be taken to hospital by paramedics Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy is carried into an ambulance on a stretcher Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy holds her one-day old newborn son, Kai Rohan Morgan Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy breastfeeds her newborn son at the house of her parents, where they are currently living Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Susan Taylor positions Kai for a photograph at his newborn screening Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Amanda Prouty and Susan Taylor conduct a newborn screening for Kai at Kais maternal grandparents house Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Susan takes two-day old Kais temperature while checking if he has tongue tie, an oral condition that can potentially cause issues with feeding Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Nancy and Ryan clip the fingernails of their two-day old son Reuters Giving birth during the coronavirus outbreak Kai, who is two days old and is experiencing jaundice, is positioned in the sunlight by his mother Nancy Reuters

Karma Nirvana, which trains the police, NHS and social services on issues of forced marriage and honour-based abuse, experienced a 200 per cent surge in calls to its helpline during a six-week period from 16 March to 24 April compared to the same period leading up to it. The organisation had their busiest week of the year at the end of April, with more than 250 calls.

Honour-based abuse includes forced marriage, which sees girls taken abroad to be married off to strangers, coercive control, female genital mutilation (FGM), assault, threats to kill, attempted murder, and murder.

Natasha Rattu, Karma Nirvanas director, told The Independent the fact that honour-based abuse was spiking during Ramadan  normally a quiet time for victims coming forward  demonstrates what a desperate situation people are in.

She added: The cases we are coming across tend to be more complex in nature. Victims of honour-based abuse are making plans to flee their abusive families and partners when the restrictions start to relax, but they dont know when that will be so everything is uncertain. Victims are very desperate.

It is very similar to domestic abuse victims living with their abusers in the lockdown but honour-based abuse victims are often living with multiple perpetrators  their families. Ultimately, they now have exactly what they want, which is control over the victim. It is widely recognised that honour-based abuse and coercive control go hand in hand. If there was a legal definition for honour-based abuse it would be coercive control. The pandemic and the social restrictions create the perfect environment for perpetrators to have the ultimate control of the victim and that is why we are getting more calls to the helpline.

Recommended We have to start tackling forced marriage at the root

It is important to recognise victims of honour-based abuse have additional barriers to getting help to other victims due to shaming and stigma in the community and the fact they tend to have multiple perpetrators  mothers, fathers, sisters, partners  controlling them. The Home Office campaigns have not amplified the experiences of honour-based abuse victims enough and we need to have a focused campaign to reach victims in communities where it is more difficult to come forward.

Ms Rattu said police have contacted her to inform her they have not been able to track down some honour-based abuse victims who were known to authorities before the lockdown.

She also said there had been a substantial drop in referrals of honour-based abuse from concerned professionals and this was most pronounced with teachers due to school closures  compounding the invisibility of victims.

Ms Rattu has heard of reports of forced marriages to men living abroad happening over Skype and via normal telephone calls during the lockdown, although her organisation has not personally helped anyone in such a situation. Advancing technologies provide another avenue to exploit a forced marriage victim, she said.

There is likely to be a spike in forced marriages when the lockdown travel restrictions are eased by the government and there will be many families currently planning forced marriages for later in the year, she added.

Legislation which made it illegal to force someone into marriage in England and Wales was introduced in 2014 and anyone found guilty of doing so can be imprisoned for up to seven years.

Farhana Raval, a forced marriage survivor, was coerced into a marriage on a family holiday to Bangladesh in the summer holidays when she was just 16.

The 36-year-old accountant, who says her case is typical of forced marriages still happening, said she did not know what was going on when the marital vows took place and her family barred her from going back to the UK until she was pregnant and past the time she could have an abortion.

Ms Raval, who divorced her husband eight years after they got married, told The Independent: Being in lockdown in a situation where they are trying to force you into marriage would be really difficult. My period at home was really intense. School was my respite.

Lockdown is really hard for honour-based abuse victims. You are in this intense family setting which is difficult at the best of times but now there are additional barriers to escape and seek help and intervention. Reactions are more extreme because lockdown exacerbates emotions. Things linger. There is no opportunity to get out and let things dissipate. It is a tense toxic environment.

Also if youve got a boyfriend who your parents disapprove of, the chances of being found out in lockdown are much higher. The chances of getting caught living a dual life gets massively enhanced. You cant blend into a crowd and meet up with people that you otherwise wouldnt want your parents to know about and know they would disapprove of.

While the government has announced 76m to support domestic abuse and modern slavery victims, along with vulnerable children whose problems have been exacerbated during lockdown, it is not yet clear if any of that money going to helping victims of honour-based abuse.

Commander Ivan Balhatchet, National Police Chiefs Council lead on honour-based abuse, forced marriage and FGM, said: Since the UK government issued stay at home advice to residents in March reports of honour-based abuse have decreased. We know from our work with partners and charities that the Covid-19 restrictions significantly impact on the opportunities those vulnerable to honour-based abuse have to seek advice. The stay at home guidance provides perpetrators with a guise to further exert control.

He said police were striving to understand the increased risks and barriers to seeking help in the current climate and find ways to help victims safely access support to escape a life of abuse.

A Home Office spokesperson said: Honour-based abuse is devastating to victims and we are committed to eliminating it. The #YouAreNotAlone campaign highlights that those at risk of honour-based abuse should contact the Karma Nirvana helpline, which the Home Office continues to part-fund. This increase in calls to the hotline shows that potential victims are being reached and that they are getting the support and help they need.
A credible nuclear deterrent remains needed

U.S. Embassy & Consulates in Germany

14 May, 2020

By Richard A. Grenell

US Ambassador to Germany

Before the fall of the Iron Curtain, Germany sat on the front lines of a possible nuclear conflict. So Germany and its NATO Allies came together to strengthen the Alliance's nuclear deterrence through allied nuclear sharing  a key joint project which protected Germany's security and strengthened NATO as the world's most successful multilateral security institution.

Today, Germany sits at the center of a unified Europe, but the threats to Europe's peace are no "anachronism" as some might have us believe. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, Russia's buildup of new nuclear-capable missiles on Europe's periphery, and new capabilities from China, North Korea, and others make clear the threat is all too present.

Allies expect Germany to remain a "power for peace," as Foreign Minister Maas recently said. Rather than eroding the solidarity that undergirds NATO's nuclear deterrent, now is the time for Germany to maintain its commitments to its allies through continued investments in NATO's nuclear share.

Now is the time for Germany's political leaders, especially in the SPD, to make clear Germany stands by that commitment and stands by its allies.

Those who seek a stronger voice for Europe on security policy should support a multilateral security umbrella through NATO  and active European investments to shore up its vital deterrence measures.

As leaders said in Warsaw in 2016, "The fundamental purpose of NATO's nuclear capability is to preserve peace, prevent coercion, and deter aggression."

As the major nuclear power within NATO, far from seeking nuclear escalation, the United States has consistently reaffirmed these deterrence goals. President Trump has been clear. The Trump Administration's 2018 Nuclear Posture Review affirmed that the first roles of US nuclear forces are, "[1] Deterrence of nuclear and non-nuclear attack; [and 2] Assurance of allies and partners."

An honest assessment of the threats we face is essential for our partnership. Our allies in Poland and the Baltics know these threats are not a Cold War relic; no ally can fail to recognize that fact. As NATO leaders from across the Alliance, of every political stripe, reaffirmed when they met most recently in London in December:

"As long as nuclear weapons exist, NATO will remain a nuclear alliance The strategic forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States, are the supreme guarantee of the security of Allies NATO's nuclear deterrence posture also relies on United States' nuclear weapons forward-deployed in Europe and the capabilities and infrastructure provided by Allies concerned. National contributions of dual-capable aircraft to NATO's nuclear deterrence mission remain central to this effort."

This is no anachronistic outlook. As much as we all hope for a world free of nuclear weapons, and work toward creating those conditions, the threats we and our allies face have not diminished in recent months or years.

The purpose of NATO's nuclear share is to keep non-nuclear member states involved in the planning of NATO's deterrence policy. Germany's participation in nuclear share ensures that its voice matters. If Germany seeks to be a true power for peace, now is the time for solidarity. Will Germany bear this responsibility, or will it sit back and simply enjoy the economic benefits of security provided by its other Allies?

German political leaders speak often about the need to look at not only total military spending, but at specific capabilities needed for our collective security.

A credible nuclear deterrent, including through nuclear-capable aircraft, is a core NATO capability. One that remains needed in today's world, and one that Germany has pledged to contribute to.

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Its a well-documented fact that doctors are not that good at washing their hands. Nurses are much better. (Though both drop off when no ones watching, which is alarming).

When Hungarian doctor Ignaz Semmelweis first urged his peers to wash hands in maternity wards in the 1840s (having clocked on to the fact that moving from dissecting cadavers to delivering babies without soaping up was a touch problematic, and women were dying from infections as a result), many were disdainful. Some, as a protest, declared they would stop washing hands at all, declaring that water was responsible for germ-carrying, not them.

Wartime nurse Florence Nightingale. Credit:

But when Professor Mary-Louise McLaws joined the World Health Organisation, the Australian epidemiologist wondered why, while Semmelweis is given his due, few acknowledged the pioneering work Florence Nightingale did on hand washing. In her 1860 book Notes on Nursing, Nightingale wrote that: Every nurse ought to be careful to wash her hands very frequently during the day. If her face, too, so much the better. During the spectacularly poorly planned Crimean War in the mid-1850s Nightingale  while slow to subscribe to germ theory like many of her peers  had introduced hygiene into military hospitals where, when she arrived, wounded men lay unbandaged on unwashed floors. (She was forced to buy aprons and buckets out of her own pocket, and a huge newspaper appeal was launched to provide medical supplies).

Its worth remembering this week, on the 200 anniversary of her birth, that Nightingale helped set in train many of the practices that have enabled us to combat this COVID-19 epidemic, an observational science that is a subject of pride for many nurses: not just good hygiene and insistence on clean air, but distancing of the sick and reliance on evidence to shape medical practice.
BY VENERANDA LANGA

THERE was drama in the National Assembly yesterday, which resulted in Zengeza West MP Job Sikhala (MDC Alliance) losing his temper and angrily labelling the Speaker of the National Assembly Jacob Mudenda a dictator, adding that he was turning Parliament into a kangaroo House due to his rulings which were against opposition legislators.

Tempers flared after Justice minister Ziyambi Ziyambi and the Speaker barred main opposition MDC legislators from asking ministers questions relating to President Emmerson Mnangagwas State of the Nation Address (Sona).

They said opposition MPs could not debate Mnangagwas Sona since they boycotted the address early this month.

What triggered the melee was when Proportional Representation MP Jasmine Toffa (MDC Alliance) asked Public Service minister Sekai Nzenza why the aged, sick and other vulnerable people were asked to pay for transport in order to receive food aid.

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Instead of Nzenza responding to the question, Ziyambi interjected and said: In terms of our Constitution, there is a Cabinet appointed by the President with a collective responsibility. In terms of the same Constitution, there is a Legislature constituting of MPs and the President who appointed Cabinet. If they (MDC) do not recognise the President, then they cannot extend a question and expect an answer from a minister appointed by the President.

Mudenda then buttressed Ziyambis points and he ruled that the Justice ministers assertions would stand and Zanu PF MPs cheered.

Norton MP Temba Mliswa (Independent) then tried to stand with the MDC legislators, saying that they had already been punished enough after the Speaker ruled last month that they would lose five months allowances for snubbing Mnangagwa. Mudenda ignored Mliswas point of order.

The Speaker ordered Toffa out of the House, and when she refused, Mudenda then sent the seargeant-at-arms Nicholas Marufu to eject her out of the chamber.

MDC MPs then cordoned off Toffa and vowed that she would not go out as they challenged the Speaker and Ziyambis ruling barring them from participating during question-and-answer sessions.

Police stationed at Parliament Building were then unleashed on the MDC legislators to forcefully eject Toffa, but she was heavily cordoned off by her colleagues, who also shouted at the police telling them that they were not allowed inside Parliament and must leave. The police then left after noticing that the situation might result in ugly scenes.

Seeing that the Speaker would not budge, Sikhala became highly emotional and he started shouting at the Speaker after he tried to raise a point of order and was denied.

Having shown that you do not want to hold this institution as a democracy, you have reduced this Parliament to a kangaroo Parliament. I and my MPs tried to raise a point of order on the constitutionality of your ruling, but you have denied us. As a result, I withdraw my sympathy for you for what happened to you when you were eating ice cream (in Serbia). You are turning this institution into a dictatorial institution, Sikhala charged.

You are torturing our MPs on a daily basis. It is not allowed. Why are you abusing us? We are not kids.

In Serbia, Mudenda was accosted while dining by a ZimEye journalist, who accused him of being undemocratic and asking him why he cut allowances for MDC legislators for snubbing the President.

Mudenda warned Sikhala to respect his authority as the chair, but Sikhala dug in.

I used to have huge respect for you, but today, that honour has reduced to a quarter. You have disappointed me Mr Speaker.

Mudenda responded: I cannot accept to be challenged by an MP. I ask you to leave the House.

Sikhala then cooled down and apologised to Mudenda and later he left, leaving Mutare Central MP Innocent Gonese to challenge the Speaker demanding constitutional clarity as to the basis of his ruling to bar the opposition from asking questions.

Gonese demanded that the Speaker explains the implication as to whether this would mean that the opposition MPs were now barred from debating motions and Bills before Parliament.

Mudenda refused to respond to him and he ruled that the opposition chief whip Prosper Mutseyami and Zanu PF chief whip Pupurai Togarepi had reached an agreement over the issue,

which Mutseyami was supposed to communicate to the opposition.

The Speaker then ordered questions without notice to resume and left, leaving acting Speaker William Mutomba to preside over the House.

Mliswa then asked Mutomba to explain how the written questions would proceed as most were from members of the opposition and the ministers were not around to respond to them.

He then started shouting at the few ministers present, saying their counterparts were letting down Mnangagwa by truancy.

Mliswa then moved towards Zanu PF benches, where he pointed at ministers and MPs, labelling them G40 members who were sabotaging Mnangagwa by failing to attend Parliament.

Sensing that the situation was getting out of hand, Ziyambi then moved for the adjournment of the House, and Zanu PF MPs left, leaving their MDC counterparts singing Chamisa, Chamisa.

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Washington: A top US senator has unveiled an 18-point plan, including enhancing military ties with India, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its "lies, deception, and cover-ups" that ultimately led to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The prominent suggestions are moving manufacturing chain from China and deepening military-strategic ties India, Vietnam and Taiwan.

"The Chinese government maliciously covered up and enabled a global pandemic that has caused misery for so many Americans. This is the same regime that locks up its own citizens in labour camps, steals America's technology and jobs, and threatens the sovereignty of our allies,? said Senator Thom Tillis, presenting his detailed, 18-point plan on Thursday.

"This is a major wake-up call to the United States and the rest of the free world. My plan of action will hold the Chinese government accountable for lying about COVID-19; sanctioning the Chinese government while protecting America's economy, public health, and national security," he said.

The plan seeking to create a Pacific Deterrence Initiative and immediately approve the military's request for USD 20 billion in funding. It also calls for deepening military ties with regional allies and expand equipment sales to India, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Encourage Japan to rebuild its military and offer Japan and South Korea sales of offensive military equipment, it said.

"Move manufacturing back to the US from China and gradually eliminate our supply chain dependency on China. Stop China from stealing our technology and provide incentives to American companies to regain our technological advantage. Strengthen cybersecurity against Chinese hacks and sabotage," the plan stated.

"Prevent American taxpayer money from being used by the Chinese government to pay off their debt. Implement the US ban on (Chinese technology company) Huawei and coordinate with our allies to implement similar bans,? it added.

The plan seeks restitution from the Chinese government and imposition of sanctions for lying about the virus. It further said China should be sanctioned for their atrocious human rights record.

Senator Tillis' plan urges the Trump Administration to formally request the International Olympic Committee to withdraw the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.

"Stop China's propaganda campaign inside the United States. Treat Chinese government-run media outlets as the propaganda proxies that they are," the plan stated.

Urging the government to investigate the Chinese government's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19, the plan also seeks to investigate America's reliance on China's supply chains and threats to public safety and national security.

"Ensure the independence of the WHO through investigations and reform. Expose and counter China's predatory debt-trap diplomacy targeting developing countries. Increase intelligence sharing on potential pandemics and lead the creation of a watchdog organization to monitor foreign governments' handling of deadly viruses," Tillis said in his suggestions.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.

There has been increasing pressure on President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.

Meanwhile, Senator John Barrasso, in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighted the need to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The virus could have been contained had it not been for the Chinese Government's unscrupulous cover-up. China knew the risk months before the rest of the world; yet Chinese communist leaders destroyed key evidence, they under-reported the number of coronavirus cases, and they misled the world about its deadly, rapid spread," he said.

Asserting that the virus should have been contained in Wuhan, he said tens and tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died as a result of China's failure.

Barrasso said the US should encourage its companies to create American and western supply chains. "That way our frontline workers have what they need in the time of crisis," he said.

"Not again, not ever will we be exclusively sourced for critical drugs from China. We should diversify supply and bring home as much of our supply chain as possible," he added.

Congressman Troy Balderson introduced bicameral legislation with Congressman Doug Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham that will hold China accountable for deceptive actions taken by its leaders that led to the spread and subsequent global pandemic.

The COVID-19 Accountability Act authorises President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China if it fails to cooperate with a full investigation led by the US or its allies into the events that lead to the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The number of Ohioan lives needlessly claimed by this pandemic could have been significantly reduced had China taken appropriate measures to control the virus' spread and disclose its severity," said Balderson.

"The United States can't look the other way when China so recklessly compromised worldwide health and the global economy. China and its Communist Party leadership must be held accountable," he said.
A Washington woman who spent one month on a special life-support machine after she contracted coronavirus left her Portland hospital Wednesday.

Maria Nevarez, 48, spent nearly two months at OHSU Hospital, hospital officials said.

The Mattawa, Washington woman was the hospitals first coronavirus patient to be treated with a type of life-support machine that infused her blood with oxygen after the viral disease left her lungs unable to function normally.

The equipment, called extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), uses pumps and tubes to remove blood from a patient, injects the blood with oxygen and returns the oxygenated blood to the body.

The hospital has treated 54 coronavirus patients since March and is currently treating six patients. Three coronavirus patients have been the using the special ECMO equipment, hospital spokeswoman Franny White said.

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Dr. David Zonies, who directs OHSUs Adult Extracorporeal Life Support program, said the machine can be used to support the heart or lungs when patients are extremely sick.

For COVID, its used to support the lung. It essentially replaces the function of a lung to allow it to try and rest and recover, he said. For patients with major heart problems, he said, the machine offloads the work of the heart and allows bloods supply to the brain and vital organs.

He said the machine can also be used to help a person transition to either a long-term device or a transplant.

ECMO is the maximum critical care treatment we have, he said. Its time at a price  it buys us time to allow the patient to recover or figure out an alternate solution.

The machines have been used to treat patients all over the world, Zonies said. Like ventilators, he said, EMCO machines are outnumbered by the patients who need them. Although so far they havent had to make those decisions, Zonies said in a crisis, they might have to enforce that criteria for who recieves ECMO treatment.

Its a very precious resource, and we have to make sure we allocate it, he said.

That concern, he said, led him form a regional collaborative with about a dozen other Pacific Northwest hospitals, which allows them to come up with specific criteria to use the ECMO machines to treat patients.

He noted that those who have cancer or an untreated hemorrhage cant use the machine, because it requires the use of blood thinners.

While patients typically remain on the ECMO machines for 10 days to 14 days, Zonies said coronavirus patients have remained on them for longer because of the aggressive nature of COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus.

Hospitals in the regional ECMO collaborative can also reach patients who live outside the reach of a major hospital that has the machines, if that patient is too ill to travel.

The woman who was just discharged  she was in a small hospital in Washington, Zonies said. We flew there, started treatment and then flew her back with us.

Nevarez told hospital staff the hardest part of the illness was not being able to see her family, according to an OHSU news release.

As she was wheeled out of the hospital room where shed been for nearly two months, she smiled and waved, as people lined the halls to cheer her and celebrate her recovery.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 20:53:24|Editor: huaxia

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SHANGHAI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Shanghai's municipal legislature has approved a regulation, which will take effect on June 6, to better protect the Chinese sturgeons believed to have lived at the same time as dinosaurs.

The new regulation was voted through at a session of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress on Thursday.

Enhanced efforts will be made in fields such as artificial breeding and gene retaining of Chinese sturgeons to increase the genetic diversity of the species. Hunting or killing of Chinese sturgeons should also be banned, the regulation said.

The regulation also demanded coordinated cooperation in law enforcement, scientific research and rescue of the species between Shanghai fisheries authorities and relevant departments of other regions in the Yangtze River basin.

The Chinese sturgeon, or "Acipenser Sinensis," is a national first-class protected animal. It has existed for more than 140 million years.

In recent years, China has stepped up efforts to rescue endangered river species by targeting illegal fishing, closing polluting factories and releasing captive-bred fry into the wild. Enditem
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman held a press conference in New Delhi today on Rs 20 lakh crore economic package. This is her third press briefing in as many days.

Sitharaman has been announcing the tranches of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

PM Modi had announced the package during his address to the nation on Tuesday, vowing to make the country atmanirbhar or self-reliant. He said that this will be 10 per cent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product or GDP.

Sitharaman will be holding daily press conferences till Sunday.

Follow the highlights below:

- A facilitative legal framework will be created to enable farmers for engaging with processors, aggregators, large retailers,exporters in a fair and transparent manner: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- A central law will be formulated to provide adequate choices to the farmers to sell produce at an attractive price, barrier-free interstate trade and framework for e-trading of agricultural produce: FM Sitharaman

- Govt to implement a Rs 500 crore scheme of infrastructure development related to integrated beekeeping development centres, collection,marketing & storage centres, post-harvest and value addition facilities; this will lead to an increase in income of 2 lakh bee-keepers: FM Sitharaman

- National Medicinal Plants Board will bring 800-hectare area by developing a corridor of medicinal plants along the banks of river Ganga: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- Rs 4000 crore allocated for promotion of herbal cultivation; 10,00,000 hectare will be covered in the next 2 years: FM Sitharaman

- Government to amend Essential Commodities Act to enable better price realisation for farmers and by attracting investments this will lead to deregulation of prices for cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions, and potatoes. This will now be regulated by market forces and government intervention will only apply in emergency situation like dramatic price hike or any crisis, FM Sitharaman said.

- FM announces Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund of Rs 15,000 crore to support investment in dairy processing.

- FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces Rs 4,000 crore for promotion of herbal cultivation to bring 10 lakh hectares of land under herbal growing in next 2 years.

- National Animal Disease Control Programme for Foot and Mouth Disease and Brucellosis launched with a total outlay of Rs 13,343 crore: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- Govt to launch the Rs 20,000 crore Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana for development of marine and inland fisheries. 55 lakh people expected to get employment from this program: FM Sitharaman

- All Covid-19 related deadline extensions relating to fisheries activities, many of them involving overseas contracts, have been honoured. Very many measures which will help marine and coastal farmers have been undertaken as promised. - FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- Government introduces a Rs 10,000 crores scheme for the formalisation of Micro Food Enterprises (MFE); the scheme promotes PMs vision of Vocal for Local with global outreach: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- Government to immediately create a Rs 1 lakh crore Agri-Infrastructure Fund for farm gate infrastructure for farmers: FM Nirmala Sitharaman

- During Covid lockdown period, the demand for milk reduced by 20-25%. A new scheme to provide interest subvention at 2% per annum to dairy cooperatives for 2020-21. The scheme will unlock Rs 5,000 crore additional liquidity, benefit to 2 crore farmers: FM Sitharaman

- During lockdown period Minimum Support Price purchases of amount more than Rs 74,300 crores; PM Kisan fund transfer of Rs 18700 cr: FM Nirmala Sitharaman on additional steps for agriculture during Covid-19

- I will be announcing 11 measures today, of which 8 of them relate to strengthening infrastructure, capacities and building better logistics, while the rest 3 will pertain to governance and administrative reforms: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

- Todays announcements will focus on agriculture and allied activities: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

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Federal investigators arrested a woman who works as a paralegal specialist in the U.S. Attorney's Office for helping or giving tips to a Mexican Cartel, according to a recently published article.

Drug smuggling, sex trafficking, and other illegal businesses of Mexican Cartels have slowed down due to the global pandemic that restricts shipping. This made it hard for the cartels to transport their cocaine or drugs from Mexico to the United States.

However, this global pandemic did not hinder the Cartel del Noreste, which was formed recently and members are coming to the infamous Los Zetas Cartel, to continue their illegal businesses through the help from an insider.

According to the federal investigators, Jennifer Loya who has worked at the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Texas in San Francisco sine 2017 has been giving tips to the cartel using electronic surveillance that was made available to her due to the nature of her job.

Roland Gustamante, Jennifer Loya's brother in law is known as an associate of the cartel's leader Israel Fernandez-Vasquez. Their cartel has been alleged to have operations in San Antonio via Monterey Mexico.

Even though Fernandez-Vasquez was deported from the U.S. in 2018 back to Mexico, but smuggling drugs, cocaine, and meth were not difficult for the organized group even after that year.

The conspiracy seems well established. Jennifer Loya sent an electronic copy of the information about federal information to her sister Kimberly and its husband Roland Gustamante. They have been tracking Jennifer since then to gather evidence.

The FBI agents said that they have found out that Jennifer's car was used by the couple to take the drug and cocaine to and from Mexico. From May 2019 to January 2020, the car was observed crossing the U.S.-Mexico border for 21 times.

A drug trafficking operations in San Antoionio led to Jennifer Loya's arrest. The interrogation of the arrested group hinted that someone within their organization knew someone from the U.S. Attorney's Office . This sparked FBI's interest.

The speculations even become more evident when another person from the group said that he knew there will be agents coming to arrest him. That was the reason why the drugs were moved overnight to another place.

The FBI agents who are investigating the drug smuggling and illegal businesses of the Cartel found out also that Jennifer Loya has printed out documents related to this investigation. This added up to the speculation that Loya is the informant of the cartel.

Loya is now under the custody of the bureau and is charged with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and conspiracy to obstruct justice. Meanwhile, different news outlets tried to reach out to the lawyer of Jennifer Loya but no response was given.

Moreover, the Cartel del Noreste as a split group of the notorious Los Zetas Cartel can be remembered for their violent shooting that killed four police authorities in the northern state of Coahuila. A video at that time even became viral when they burned into a truck and their attempt to take over the municipal buildings.

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A woman arrested in Victoria has admitted to killing her newborn baby when she was a teenager and leaving the boy in a basin at a caravan park toilet block in Western Australia almost 25 years ago.

The woman cannot be named because she was just 14 when she committed the crime in Kambalda, in WA's Goldfields region, in July 1995.

Perth Children's Court. Credit:WA Today

Cold Case Homicide Squad detectives had charged her with wilful murder, but on Friday the offence was discontinued and she instead pleaded guilty to infanticide.

The case will return to Perth Children's Court on July 6 for a status conference.
Vijay Mallya on Thursday lost his application seeking leave to appeal in the UK Supreme Court, in a setback for the embattled liquor baron who last month lost his High Court appeal against an extradition order to India on charges of fraud and money laundering related to unrecovered loans to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines

London: In a major setback, embattled liquor baron Vijay Mallya on Thursday lost his application seeking leave to appeal in the UK Supreme Court, setting a 28-day clock on extradition proceedings.

It marks a big legal blow to Mallya, who last month lost his High Court appeal against an extradition order to India on charges of fraud and money laundering related to unrecovered loans to his now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines.

The 64-year-old businessman had 14 days to file his latest application to seek permission to move the higher court on the High Court judgment from 20 April, which dismissed his appeal against a Westminster Magistrates' Court extradition order certified by the UK Home Secretary.

The latest decision, referred to as a pronouncement, means that under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, the UK Home Office is now expected to formally certify the court order for Mallya to be extradited to India within 28 days.

The court having signified its intention to refuse to certify a point of law of general public importance with a view to an appeal to the Supreme Court, notes the pronouncement by Lord Justice Stephen Irwin and Justice Elisabeth Laing, the two-member bench at the Royal Courts of Justice in London presiding over the appeal.

It sets the 28-day required period, as defined by Section 36 and Section 118 of the UK Extradition Act 2003, within which the extradition must be carried out.

The UK Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said Mallyas appeal to certify a point of law was rejected on all three counts  of hearing oral submissions, grant a certificate on the questions as drafted, and grant permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. The government of India response to the appeal application had been submitted earlier this week.

Earlier on Thursday, Mallya took to Twitter to reiterate his plea for the Indian government to take the money owed to the Indian PSU banks.

"Please take my money unconditionally and close," he said.

The leave to appeal to the Supreme Court is on a point of law of general public importance, which according to experts is a very high threshold that is not often met.

As a further step, in principle, Mallya can also apply to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) to prevent his extradition on the basis that he will not receive a fair trial and that he will be detained in conditions that breach Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a signatory.

The extradition process would be held up if such an application is made to the ECHR and until it is decided.

However, the threshold for an ECHR appeal is also extremely high, with very limited chance of success in Mallyas case because he would also have to demonstrate that his arguments on those grounds before the UK courts have been previously rejected.

Therefore, the dismissal of the High Court appeal last month and the rejection for a further leave to appeal this week marks a major turning point for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED) case against the businessman, who has been on bail in the UK since his arrest on an extradition warrant in April 2017.

We have held there is a prima facie case both of misrepresentation and of conspiracy, and thus there is also a prima facie case of money laundering, Justices Irwin and Laing had ruled last month.

Mallya, declared a fugitive by India, has been based in the UK since March 2016 and remains on bail on an extradition warrant executed three years ago by Scotland Yard on 18 April, 2017.

The High Court verdict in April upheld the 2018 ruling by Chief Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot at the end of a year-long extradition trial in December 2018 that the flashy former Kingfisher Airlines boss had a case to answer in the Indian courts.

She found there was clear evidence of dispersal and misapplication of the loan funds and accepted a prima facie case of fraud and a conspiracy to launder money against Mallya, which has now also been accepted by the High Court.

The Chief Magistrate had also dismissed any bars to extradition on the grounds of the prison conditions under which the businessman would be held, as she accepted the Indian governments assurances that he would receive all necessary medical care behind bars at Barrack 12 in Arthur Road Jail in Mumbai.

India and the UK have an Extradition Treaty signed in 1992 and in force since November 1993. Two major extraditions have taken place under this Treaty so far  Samirbhai Vinubhai Patel, who was sent back to India in 2016 to face trial in connection with his involvement in the post-Godhra riots of 2002, and more recently alleged bookie Sanjeev Chawla, sent back in February this year to face match-fixing charges.
ICI said that it had arranged to fly home 67 healthcare workers in total. Photo: Getty Images Stock

The Irelands Call Initiative spent over 90,000 of donated money flying home healthcare workers but does not know how many have been recruited by the HSE to fight Covid-19.

The fundraising initiative founded by Neil Sands, a Defence Forces reservist, has now announced that it is wrapping up.

ICI said that it had arranged to fly home 67 healthcare workers in total. Last week official figures said that only 54 health staff in total had been recruited to help fight Covid-19 since the start of the pandemic in Ireland.

A spokesman for the ICI told the Irish Independent that the initiative did not know exactly how many people it had flown home were now working in the health service but some of them were.

ICI was set up in March by Mr Sands to try to cover the cost of flights for international healthcare workers who wanted to come back to work in Irish hospitals for the pandemic. The ICI was separate to the 'Be On Call for Ireland' recruitment drive which was set up by the HSE. Mr Sands also helped to transport 500,000 of PPE equipment which Conor McGregor had bought from China.

The ICI raised 85,184 from public donations on its GoFundMe page, and also received 7,320 from a private donation. In a statement on Friday night, ICI said that it had spent 91,610.50 on 154 flights for 67 healthcare workers. The remaining 893.50 will be donated to charity.

This week, 21 nurses will arrive on flights paid for by the ICI which will be the last transport it arranges. In total, it will have flown back 12 healthcare staff from Australia including an Air Corps technician.

A spokesman for the ICI said the technician was an air ambulance driver.

The ICI sponsored flights for 20 healthcare staff from New Zealand including 12 doctors, 3 nurses, 2 radiographers, 1 pharmacist, 1 healthcare assistant and 1 physician associate. It also covered flights for 23 nurses from the Philippines, 2 doctors from Malaysia, 2 doctors from Pakistan,3 doctors and 1 nurse from Canada, 1 nurse from India, 1 doctor from Nigeria, 1 doctor from the US and 1 doctor from the UK.

The ICI said that it was set up to help the countrys medical front line in the fight against Covid-19 and it had achieved this.

Figures show that around a quarter of all Irish cases are healthcare workers, meaning the work that Irelands Call has done was vital in providing reinforcements to step up and help wherever they are needed, the statement said.

ICI also revealed that it has been running since the start of March without being registered as a company. It said it had submitted documents to the Companies Registration Office this week, and would file full accounts in the coming weeks.

ICI has been fully compliant at all times in relation to its operations and has been supported and assisted by L.K. Shields Solicitors from the outset, the ICI said.

The ICI also said that it had helped to provide 43 medics with accommodation to self-isolate effectively for 14 days.

The initiative sourced housing near various hospitals across the country, which varied from hotel rooms, to commercial rental and privately-owned properties. Irelands Call also received numerous generous offers from members of the public offering up their vacant properties to healthcare workers across the country. Maynooth University also offered up 20 of its rooms for use, the ICI said.

It emerged last week that the Defence Forces had launched an investigation into Mr Sands after Conor McGregor tweeted a picture of the ICI founder wearing his Defence Forces uniform on unofficial business.

Mr Sands had been helping to arrange a PPE delivery which Mr McGregor had paid for. The Sunday Times reported that Mr Sands had been told he was only allowed to wear his uniform for official tasks.
A man accused of making credible death threats against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel has been charged on a terrorism count, the Wayne County prosecutor's office said Friday.

Robert Tesh, 32, of Detroit made the threats via a social media message to an acquaintance on April 14 and authorities concluded the message amounted to 'credible threats to kill,' prosecutor Kym Worthy said Friday in a news release.

She didn't provide any detail about the threats or how they were determined to be credible.

Robert Tesh, 32, of Detroit, who was accused of making credible death threats against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel, has been charged on a terrorism count, the Wayne County prosecutor's office said Friday

Tesh allegedly made the threats via a social media message to an acquaintance on April 14 and authorities concluded the message amounted to 'credible threats to kill,' prosecutor Kym Worthy said Friday in a news release. Whitmer is pictured addressing the state this week

Attorney General Dana Nessel also was targeted in the alleged credible threat made by Tesh

Detroit police officers arrested Tesh the same day at his home. He was arraigned April 22 on a threat of terrorism charge. If convicted, Tesh could face up to 20 years in prison.

Worthy didn't explain the delay in releasing information about the threats, arrest and arraignment. A spokeswoman tells DailyMail.com that Worthy mentioned the arrest when asked if there were any threat cases during an interview with news outlet Friday.

The threats from Tesh were not specific to Whitmers stay-at-home order issued in March in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19 in the state, the spokeswoman says.

There have been more than 50,000 confirmed cases in Michigan of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for more than 4,800 deaths.

The executive order which shut down most businesses in the state has made Whitmer the target of protests and rallies.

The order is effective at least until May 28.

The threats from Tesh were not specific to Whitmers stay-at-home order issued in March in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19 in the state, a spokeswoman says. A protester wears a Plague mask during a protest against Whitmer's extended stay-at-home orders Thursday

The governor's executive order, which shut down most businesses in the state, has made Whitmer the target of protests and rallies. Demonstrators protest in Lansing during a rally organized by Michigan United for Liberty this week

'The alleged facts in this case lay out a very disturbing scenario,' Worthy said.

Whitmer loses 'dear friend' to COVID-19 Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer has revealed she lost a 'dear friend' to coronavirus as she branded armed anti-lockdown protests 'organized political rallies' that are contributing to the spread of the deadly infection. Whitmer told CNN Friday morning that she 'lost a dear friend of mine this week' and issued a grave warning to Michigans that COVID-19 is still a 'very real threat'. 'It's still prevalent across the country and there still could be unchecked community spread if we don't continue to be vigilant,' she said. The Democrat governor also laid into the Republican-led legislature for not wanting 'to come into work yesterday' because of the anti-lockdown rally which drew hundreds of armed residents to the state capitol - and which Whitmer accused the Republicans of having encouraged. This came the same day the Michigan courts heard the first arguments from the legislature in its lawsuit against the governor over her extension to the state's emergency order. 'We're doing an amazing thing here in Michigan, the vast majority of people are doing the right thing... [but] when people come from around the state and congregate and don't do it responsibly, then go home, that's what contributes to community spread and I think it's a very real concern as we see the numbers continue - 79 of 83 counties still have COVID-19 in them and that's why we have to keep taking this seriously.' Whitmer also insisted the protests are not 'really about the lockdown' but are instead about people making an 'organized political statement'. 'I think that these are not just citizens that are unhappy about having to stay home - it's a political rally essentially,' she said. 'When the big float rolls in - that is about Donald Trump - when people are showing up with guns, when people are showing up with things like confederate flags it tells us that this isn't really about the lockdown or about a perception of a stay-at-home order. It's really an organized political statement.' Whitmer urged residents to take 'politics out of this conversation'. 'It's unfortunate because we have to take politics out of this conversation,' she said. 'This is about the public health and whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you live in the state of Michigan everything I'm doing is about trying to save your life and keep you and your family safe and help us make sure that we can shorten the amount of time that we have to deal with the economic stress because of the public heath crisis.' When asked whether Vice President Mike Pence had responded to her request this week for him to discourage protesters from coming out, she confirmed her pleas continued to go unanswered. Advertisement

'We understand that these times can be stressful and upsetting for many people. But we will not and cannot tolerate threats like these against any public officials who are carrying out their duties as efficiently as they can. You can disagree with their positions or their methodology, but you absolutely cannot act as this defendant allegedly acted or you will be charged criminally.'

Hundreds of people protested Thursday outside the state Capitol to call for a loosening of restrictions and for business owners to reopen in defiance of Whitmers order.

The protest was led by Michigan United for Liberty, a conservative activist group that sued Whitmer and organized or participated in several rallies since early April.

At one point, the anti-lockdown protesters turned on each other when one demonstrator was manhandled out of the crowds for waving a doll on a noose, amid warnings from officials that attendees may face arrest if they brandish firearms at the rally.

Things turned ugly on the steps of the Lansing capitol building on what organizers described as 'Judgement Day' when the protester was caught on camera waving an American flag with a dark-haired unclothed doll hanging from it by the neck. He was also armed with a large ax, a garbage can and a sign.

The man was confronted by several fellow protesters who slammed him saying he was sending out the 'wrong message' after he claimed the doll was Whitmer, according to WSBT22.

This came as Whitmer faced multiple threats of violence from state residents online earlier this week.

A couple of men tried to remove the doll from the man before a fight broke out and Michigan State Police were called to step in.

The man - who was not wearing a face mask - was taken into the Capitol building after the fight and his ax was confiscated by police.

Police confirmed in a tweet that troopers had responded to a fight between two people, when 'one demonstrator tried to take a sign out of another demonstrator's hand.'

There were no injuries and no arrests were made, police said, adding that the 'victim is a 60-year-old male.'

Hundreds of anti-lockdown protesters had been gathering outside the state capitol building from 9am Thursday morning for what organizers insisted would be a 'peaceful' protest.

Dubbed 'Judgement Day' by organizers Michigan United for Liberty, demonstrators marched on the statehouse in protest of Governor Whitmer's stay-at-home order.

Lawmakers were not in session and the capitol building was closed, after several armed protesters entered the building during last month's rally.

During a rally last month, armed protesters entered the Capitol building legally under Michigan law.

Tesh was released from jail on April 29 after posting a $50,000 bond. He has been placed on a GPS tether.

A probable cause conference is scheduled for June 3.

The Associated Press left a message Friday seeking comment from Tesh's attorney.
Milan: Doctors in France and northern Italy, one of the areas hardest hit by the new coronavirus, have reported spikes in cases of a rare inflammatory syndrome in young children that appears similar to one reported in the US, Britain and Spain, according to a report in The Lancet.

Children wait to wash their hands before going into their classroom at their school in Saint Jean de Luz, south-west France. Credit:AP

The condition, "Pediatric Multi-System Inflammatory Syndrome Potentially Associated with COVID-19", shares symptoms with toxic shock and Kawasaki disease including fever, rashes, swollen glands and, in severe cases, heart inflammation.

Reports of cases have raised concerns that COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, could pose a greater risk to children than had been understood. COVID-19 so far has taken its greatest toll on the elderly and those with chronic health conditions.

New York on Sunday said it was investigating up to 85 cases of children with the syndrome. So far three of those children, who also tested positive for COVID-19, have died, and two more deaths are under review, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
Senior primary and secondary students could well be returning to their schools next Monday, May 18.

Minister of Education St Clair Jimmy Prince disclosed on radio, May 10, that education officials were looking at May 18 or 25 as the date when school here would be partially reopened.





Prince said that education officials were leaning towards May 18 as the preferred date.





"We were thinking about that, we put that timeline down  but of course this is not cast in stone because we have to have these things in place to ensure the safest environment for both teachers and students, the Minister said.





He explained that health and safety were paramount in the ongoing deliberations, and he emphasized that they wanted teachers, students and parents to feel confident that the schools environment was safe.





Therefore, there was a proposed phased opening, Prince said, with fifth formers, Grade 6 and TVET students being the first to return to class.





"These examinations people, we want them to go in first; they will need engagement before doing their exams, Prince explained and cited allowing for the return of limited numbers of students will make for easier supervision.





Prince pointed to some things that his Ministry needed to address before they could think about allowing students back into the classroom.





Towards this end. Prince said his Ministry was working closely with the Ministry of Health and BRAGSA to do a comprehensive assessment of the nations schools which will determine the types of repairs and cleaning that will be required.





Funding has already been earmarked for this, Prince assured, and he highlighted that discussions are ongoing with suppliers for the purchase and installation of wash stands.





As for transportation of students, to Prince, the Ministries of Education and Transport were in dialogue.





"We wouldnt want students jamming up coming to school, Prince quipped.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 18:02:02

Press release Regulated information

IRVINE, CA, and HERSTAL, BELGIUM  15 May 2020  MDxHealth SA (Euronext Brussels: MDXH) (the "Company" or "MDxHealth"), a commercial-stage innovative molecular diagnostics company, announces today that MVM V LP and MVM GP (No.5) LP, funds managed by MVM Partners LLP (collectively "MVM"), completed their equity investment in the Company for an aggregate amount of EUR 12,738,632.94 (or approximately $13.7 Million).

As a result of the investment, the Company's share capital was increased from EUR 56,260,102.01 to EUR 68,998,734.95, through the issuance of 20,162,924 new ordinary shares of the Company at an issue price of (rounded) EUR 0.632 per share. The new shares have the same rights and benefits as, and rank pari passu in all respects with, the existing and outstanding shares of the Company at the moment of their issuance and will be entitled to distributions in respect of which the relevant record date or due date falls on or after the date of issue of the new shares. The Company shall apply to Euronext Brussels for the admission to trading of the new shares as soon as practicable, and in any event within 90 days after their issuance. As a result of the transaction, MVM has become a 22% shareholder of the Company.

About MDxHealth

MDxHealth is a multinational healthcare company that provides actionable molecular diagnostic information to personalize the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The Company's tests are based on proprietary genetic, epigenetic (methylation) and other molecular technologies and assist physicians with the diagnosis of urologic cancers, prognosis of recurrence risk, and prediction of response to a specific therapy. The Company's European headquarters are in Herstal, Belgium, with laboratory operations in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, and US headquarters and laboratory operations based in Irvine, California. For more information, visit mdxhealth.com and follow us on social media at: twitter.com/mdxhealth, facebook.com/mdxhealth and linkedin.com/company/mdxhealth.

For more information: MDxHealth info@mdxhealth.com MVM Partners LLP

www.mvm.com info@mvm.com

Important information

The MDxHealth logo, MDxHealth, ConfirmMDx and SelectMDx are trademarks or registered trademarks of MDxHealth SA. All other trademarks and service marks are the property of their respective owners.

This press release contains forward-looking statements and estimates with respect to the anticipated future performance of MDxHealth and the market in which it operates. Such statements and estimates are based on assumptions and assessments of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors, which were deemed reasonable but may not prove to be correct. Actual events are difficult to predict, may depend upon factors that are beyond the Company's control, and may turn out to be materially different. MDxHealth expressly disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements in this release to reflect any change in its expectations with regard thereto or any change in events, conditions or circumstances on which any such statement is based unless required by law or regulation.

This press release does not constitute an offer or invitation for the sale or purchase of securities or assets of MDxHealth in any jurisdiction. The securities referred to herein have not been and will not be registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended from time to time (the "U.S. Securities Act"), and the securities may not be offered or sold in the United States (as defined in Regulation S under the U.S. Securities Act) unless these securities are registered under the U.S. Securities Act, or an exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act is available. The Company and its affiliates have not registered, and do not intend to register, any portion of the securities concerned in the United States, and do not intend to conduct a public offering of securities in the United States.

Attachment
In the coronavirus era, stuck-at-home Americans are loading up on more than just bread makers. Take Peter Camardella, the 63-year-old owner of a small appliance store in Pelham, New York. He couldnt find a deep freezer for his own daughter after his shop sold out.

Customers have bought one, and they already have two or three, Camardella said. Many buyers are afraid of food shortages.

Even as personal spending in the U.S. plunged the most on record amid stay-at-home orders, people bought all kinds of appliances. Sales from March 15 to April 11 rose for about 70% of the 88 subcategories for home and kitchen goods tracked by market researcher NPD Group. Some of the gains were just staggering, including electric pasta makers (462%), soda machines (283%), handheld cleaning devices (284%), water filtration machines (152%) and air purifiers (144%). The much-written-about baking trend also showed up, with purchases of those bread makers surging more than sixfold.

Lockdown life has forced people to rethink their homes, as they have morphed into spaces where schooling, working, exercising, inventory-stockpiling and germ avoidance are new, high-stakes activities. If history is a guide, that wont change when the world returns to some semblance of normal, according to Ian Bell, a researcher with Euromonitor International.

After Brexit and the Cape Town water shortage, people didnt fall back into a psychology of abundance once the crisis passed, he said in a recent presentation. That portends a major shift toward appliances, including adding more space for refrigeration and food storage. It wont be business as usual, Bell said.

The phenomenon is global, with regional differences. In countries where people ate out a lot, like Singapore, there are now more pots and pans to clean, thus new interest in dishwashers. In places where domestic help was common, such as Brazil, the practice has ended due to social distancing, leading to a boom in cleaning devices.

People are using their appliances more than ever.

The appliance industry is poised to respond because wellness-certified designs and high-tech features, like voice activation, were already in the innovation pipeline, said Seattle-based kitchen and bath designer Paula Kennedy. Its amazing, some of the sci-fi things they come up with, said Kennedy, whos been drawn to luxury appliances for her clients from Sub-Zero, Wolf and Electrolux.

Washing machines with sanitizing cycles and Samsungs touchscreen refrigerators are primed to go mainstream quicker with the added attention on home hygiene in the coronavirus era. For consumers stockpiling food, a fridge or freezer will be able to alert them when items are about to expire or need to be reordered, Kennedy said.

There are also bathroom exhaust fans equipped with germ-killing LED lights from Wisconsin-based Broan-NuTone. Consumers can reduce the use of towels, which can spread germs, with hand dryers from U.K.-based Dyson, or full-body models from Spains Valiryo Technologies. Even motion-triggered faucets, so hard to turn on in public restrooms, may find traction in the new multi-functional, post-pandemic home.

If we listen to consumers theres a whole lot of new need being created, said Joe Derochowski, a home industry analyst NPD. This is when stress creates great innovation.

People are using their appliances more than ever.

Even big-ticket items are selling amid surging unemployment. In March, sales in the large-appliance category, which includes washers, ovens and fridges, rose almost 6% from a year ago, according to the Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers. That bucked declines in January and February.

One reason for the gains is that due to social distancing people are shunning appliance repairs  something they would normally do to save money in an economic downturn. Thats pushed more people to splurge on new dishwashers and refrigerators, according to Jill Notini, a spokeswoman for the AHAM.

A move away from repairs helped Whirlpool Corp. eke out a small gain in North American sales in the first quarter, while markets in Europe, Middle East and Africa fell a combined 12%. The demand decline in the United States is clearly not as pronounced as in China and Italy, Chief Executive Officer Marc Bitzer said on a conference call with analysts.

Deep freezers have done especially well, with sales up 45% vs. a year ago, according to AHAM data. Most models at the websites of Home Depot and Amazon.com were sold out at the time of writing this story.

The trend appears far from over. Fears over meat shortages spurred another surge in freezer storage, according to Whitney Welch, a spokeswoman for GE Appliances. The company, a unit of Qingdao-based Haier Group since 2017, continues to see higher demand.

People are using their appliances more than ever, Welch said. They are spending more time with their families under one roof cooking, cleaning and storing food.

For Camardella, the shop owner who sold about 40 deep freezers before running out, theres no relief in sight. Hes tried to place orders through a buyers cooperative only to have delivery dates pushed back. But he said that hasnt stopped his customers from pulling out their wallets.

People have been buying refrigerator-freezer combos just to get the freezer.



Tiffany Kary of Bloomberg News wrote this story.

2020 Bloomberg News

Visit Bloomberg News at www.bloomberg.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced a fifth region of the state that will be able to begin phase one of its coronavirus reopening strategy Friday morning.

The Central New York region joins the North Country, Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier, and Finger Lake regions, which are all set to reopen Friday morning as they have met all seven of the governors metrics.

New York City has been in the same position since Monday meeting only four of the metrics. The region needs to reduce its number of new COVID-19 cases, while increasing its available ICU and general hospital beds before it can begin its owned phased reopening.

Phased reopening does not mean the problem has gone away, Cuomo said. It means we have controlled the problem, because of what we did and because of our individual response.

During phase one of the reopening, which is primarily focused on businesses, certain entities will be able to restart, including small construction, and retail stores offering curbside pickup. Larger construction projects have been deemed essential throughout the governors New York on Pause mandates.

The governors office has made an online dashboard that tracks each regions standings on the seven metrics available to the public.

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

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

As regions reopen, boards of elected officials and community leaders -- dubbed control rooms -- will be responsible for monitoring the seven metrics, and deciding what steps should be taken.

Much of the responsibility falling to control rooms will be ensuring the enforcement of statewide guidelines related to the mitigation of the virus spread, and working with reopened businesses that might be unable to meet those guidelines, because of their nature, Cuomo said Thursday.

Secretary to the Governor Melissa DeRosa identified such coordination as a way to hold businesses that fail to adhere to social distancing plans accountable.

In New York City, the control room is made up of Mayor Bill de Blasio, New York Secretary of State Rossana Rosado, City Council Speaker Corey Johnson, the five borough presidents, President and CEO of Partnership for New York City Kathryn Wylde, and NYC Central Labor Council President Vincent Alvarez.

Borough President James Oddo described the groups first call on Wednesday, led by New York Director of the Budget Robert Mujica, as productive and the group as an opportunity to ensure the concerns of Staten Islanders are heard directly.

De Blasio has pointed to June as the earliest at which the city could begin its reopening process. Oddo said he hopes the five boroughs can learn from other regions, and the adjustments they make before starting its own reopening process.

None of this applies yet to us, because were not in phase one, Oddo said. When we get to New York, hopefully well be able to learn from any adjustments (other regions) had to make, and incorporate them ahead of time.

Like the governor, Oddo has advocated for a science-based approach that will ensure all regions of the state reopen safely, and dont need to shut down their economies again.

The decision to open up cant be arbitrary. There have to be objective criteria, and I think thats found in these metrics, Oddo said. Im looking forward to (the control room) as being another tool in Staten Islands tool box to address parochial needs.
The Delhi Medical Association on Thursday wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah over non-payment of salaries of doctors in North Delhi Municipal Corporation. The letter stated that NDMC doctors who have been tirelessly working in the fight against coronavirus have not been paid their salaries and arrears for three months.

"In our selfless service to the nation in fighting COVID-19 on frontlines, our doctors, without caring even for their lives, are not only taking risk for themselves but also for their families and trying their every bit so that they serve the society and are determined to fight till their last breath in the interest of the people and the country. Under such stressful situation, doctors have been put under avoidable mental stresses and distractions due to non-payment of their salaries," stated DMA in the letter.

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown 4.0! Tamil Nadu, Gujarat cases near 10,000, India's tally past 80,000-mark

The association also said that when a "poor" corporation like East Delhi Municipal Corporation can afford to pay their doctors, then why can't NDMC.

DMA urged PM Modi and Amit Shah to look into the matter urgently and intervene so that the pending salaries and arrears of the NDMC doctors are cleared.

The Prime Minister has been urging employers to ensure that employees retain their jobs and get paid amid the coronavirus lockdown. He has, on multiple occasions, also thanked the healthcare professionals for working tirelessly in the fight against corona and asked people to not misbehave with doctors and medics. In April, the PM had said, "The Epidemic Diseases (Amendment) Ordinance, 2020 manifests our commitment to protect each and every healthcare worker who is bravely battling COVID-19 on the frontline. It will ensure the safety of our professionals. There can be no compromise on their safety."

The DMA letter comes at a time when Delhi is witnessing a continued rise in the number of coronavirus cases. Delhi is one of the worst-affected states in the country and has reported 8,470 COVID-19 cases with 3,045 discharges and 115 deaths.

Also read: How effective is Tranche II of FM Sitharaman's economic package?
When you are enforcing orders that may make people uncomfortable, because it impacts their normal way of life, it can develop a little bit of friction between the police and the community, Newsham said. We are using all the trust and the relationships weve built to persuade people to obey the order. Generally across the city, I have been impressed with the way the community has responded.
 Flash

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Thursday that some national parks in the country will partially reopen at the beginning of June.

Trudeau said at his press conference that his government is working to accommodate Canadians' mental health while protecting their physical health.

He said the decision on reopening the parks will be made in line with the current severity of COVID-19 cases in the regions, while considering their proximity to Indigenous communities. "There will be different phases or different steps in the reopening of national parks across the country."

Trudeau said it is still hard to predict what the reality of the pandemic will be in the weeks ahead and how it will shape the summer season.

Canada has more than 200 national parks, historic sites, heritage canals, and national marine conservation areas which have been closed since March to prevent Canadians flocking to these locations to stem the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Last month, Parks Canada said there will be no camping or group activities at all national parks across the country until at least June 1.

Trudeau also announced that new regulations on boating are going to be imposed as of June 1. Specifically, no pleasure craft will be permitted to operate in Canada's Arctic coastal waters, or in the coastal areas of northern Quebec and Labrador, with boats used for essential fishing and hunting exempted.

As of Thursday afternoon, there were 73,331 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 5,468 deaths in Canada.

The number of cases reported daily in Canada has flattened and even begun to decline slightly, though there are variations from province to province. Reopening the country could change that, according to health experts.

The World Health Organization has also warned countries about the risks of renewed outbreaks of COVID-19 when countries are restarting economy.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

The suspect in a Tijeras shooting late last month is on his way back to New Mexico after deputies tracked him to Florida.

Kyle Englert, 19, is charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon in the April 29 incident.

Deputy Connor Otero, a spokesman for the Bernalillo County Sheriffs Office, said Englert will be extradited after U.S. Marshals arrested him in Plant City, Florida, near Tampa Bay.

Englert is accused of shooting his roommate in the leg over a dispute at the Tijeras home they shared.

You can run, but you cannot hide from BCSO and our expansive federal law enforcement partners, even on the other side of the country, Sheriff Manuel Gonzales said in a released statement. I am focused on combating gun violence across the metro area, and through the great work of BCSOs Violent Crimes/Homicide Unit and our partnership with the United States Marshals Service, we solved this violent shooting and located the suspect.

According to a criminal complaint filed in Metropolitan Court:

Deputies responded around 10:30 p.m. to the University of New Mexico Hospital after a man showed up with a gunshot wound. At first, the man said he didnt know who shot him, but later told deputies Englert  his roommate  had shot him outside their Tijeras home.

The man said it started as an argument when he told Englert he didnt like the way Englert yells at their girlfriends and acts like he is the only roommate who contributes around the house. As the fight escalated, the man told deputies Englert went inside and  in a fit of rage  he threw some rocks at the window.

I turned around and the next thing I know he comes around and just shoots me in the ass, the man told deputies.

The mans girlfriend, who was there at the time, told deputies she ran toward Englert to stop him after the initial shots and he pointed the gun at her before going back inside.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:59:11|Editor: huaxia

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TOKYO, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike on Friday released a roadmap for the easing of restrictions in the capital put in place in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak, with the criteria coming on the heels of a nationwide state of emergency being widely lifted the previous day.

The Tokyo metropolitan government's criteria for the easing of restrictions on businesses, the movement of people and people-to-people contact, will require a number of targets to be achieved for specific periods of time, Koike indicated.

Such targets, Koike told a press conference on the matter, include there being fewer than 20 new COVID-19 infections a day, with the percentage of untraceable cases remaining below 50 percent as a weekly average.

She added that the Tokyo metropolitan government was still in talks with other local municipalities as well as business lobbies and representatives regarding the formalization of the roadmap's details.

Koike also said that the easing measures for Tokyo, if the targets are achieved, would be phased in after the central government lifts the state of emergency declaration for the remaining prefectures, slated for May 31.

The central government lifted a nationwide state of emergency for 39 of Japan's 47 prefectures on Thursday, saying that the lifting of the state of emergency for the eight remaining prefectures, including Tokyo and Osaka, will be considered next week.

Koike, meanwhile, urged Tokyo residents to continue to take preventative measures against the further spread of the virus, along with those in the 39 prefectures where restrictions were eased a day earlier, requesting those in the metropolitan area to stay at home as much as possible.

"I would like to ask all please not to forget that Tokyo is still in the midst of a crisis of new coronavirus infections spreading," Koike said.

In terms of the phased lifting of restrictions, public facilities such as museums and libraries will be allowed to resume operations first, followed by other facilities where people tend not to gather in overly large groups, such as theaters, according to the metropolitan government's plans.

Thereafter, all other facilities will have restrictions lifted, bar those deemed to still present a high risk of infections being transmitted, under the current roadmap.

In the event however, that, along with the consideration of number of hospitalized patients and percentage of those testing positive for the virus, the targets after easing measures are in place are not met, the metropolitan government will issue its own emergency "Tokyo Alert" measure.

The alert, if issued, will further urge people in the capital to step up preventative measures and not let their guards down, Koike said.

The Tokyo metropolitan government confirmed nine new COVID-19 cases on Friday, with the figure dropping below 10 for the first time since March 22.

Following the capital's peak in April of more than 200 daily cases, Tokyo has seen new COVID-19 cases fall to double-digit levels.

Tokyo, the hardest hit by the virus among the country's 47 prefectures, has seen the total number of cases top 5,000 compared to the nationwide count of around 17,000. Enditem
These four elements need to blend into a coherent policy. Developing a joint EU approach to superpowers is never easy, as each member state has its own viewpoints and sensitivities. And the China case is no exception. Whats more, China is not shy about sometimes playing on these differences. But surely it is up to Europeans to maintain the necessary collective discipline. Unity is a pre-condition for influence, since not even the biggest member state acting alone can influence a superpower.

The EUs relation with China is so multi-faceted that its approach cannot be reduced to one simple prism. The EU's 2019 Strategic Outlook, endorsed by all member states, underlines that China is simultaneously a partner with whom the EU has closely aligned objectives; a negotiating partner, with whom the EU needs to find a balance of interests; an economic competitor in pursuit of technological leadership; and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.

As Chinas rise went global in recent years, the EUs relationship with it has been changing  and now the corona crisis is affecting that change. From an essentially bilateral relationship focused on economic co-operation, it has turned into a global relationship where deep co-operation co-exists with elements of sometimes open competition. Overall, the EUs stance has become more realistic and assertive. In parallel, we have also strengthened EU co-operation with other major Asian partners, notably Japan, South Korea, India and others. For its part, China has proceeded with a truly impressive transformation that is having geopolitical consequences.

The changes in the EU-China relationship have been accelerating since the outbreak of the coronavirus. There have been different phases. In the beginning, when Chinese hospitals were overwhelmed, the EU offered extensive support, without much publicity. Later on, when Europe became the centre of the pandemic, China sent large supplies of medical equipment  and it made sure the world knew about it. The key point is that we should all demonstrate mutual support and international solidarity  and the EU has always proven how strong its commitment is  while avoiding the politicisation of emergency medical assistance.

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It has become a bit of a mantra to say that the global corona crisis requires a global response. But it happens to be true. We clearly need a multilateral response across all dimensions of the crisis: limiting the spread of the virus, boosting research on treatment and vaccines, addressing the consequences in developing countries and working on the economic recovery. In all this, we count on China to play its full role, in line with its global weight and responsibilities.

For instance, we have a shared interest in helping the vulnerable in Africa and elsewhere to cope with the pandemic. The EU, together with the European Investment Bank, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development and member states, has mobilised a 20 billion ($33 billion) package to assist our partners to deal with the health emergency and the longer-term consequences. More will be needed, including sizeable debt relief and the EU can call on China to play its part. I am eager to identify ways that the EU and China could work together on this. Another obvious joint priority must be to ensure a "green recovery" strategy, using the emergency rescue packages to accelerate our energy transition and underpin our climate commitments under the Paris Agreement. To strengthen our defences against future pandemics, we also need a thorough, independent scientific inquiry into the origins of the crisis.

In the bilateral sphere, a successful conclusion of the long-running negotiations on an EU-China comprehensive agreement on investment would send an important signal of the EU's mutual commitment to a rules-based economic partnership. In the same vein, a follow-up to Chinese commitments on industrial subsidies and forced technology transfers is needed.
BAFFIN, Salomon, ENDVR.io, and many more join forces to launch The Shop Local Project

STONEY CREEK, ON, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - It is so inspiring to see the many extraordinary examples of generosity and kindness in the face of COVID-19.

In this spirit, BAFFIN, Salomon, ENDVR.io, and many more in the retail industry have come together to support independent specialty retailers through a not-for-profit initiative, The Shop Local Project.

This collaboration aims to help local retailers weather this storm by providing a free online platform to sell discounted gift cards, giving consumers a simple and direct way to support their favorite stores that may not have a well-developed online storefront.

"ENDVR has always been focused on building community - bringing together brands, stores, and frontline employees together to help drive sales on the store floor. The Shop Local Project is a great opportunity to build an even bigger community by giving consumers the chance to support their favourite local stores during these tough times, so that these businesses can continue to grow in the future," Steve Gendron, Co-CEO at ENDVR.io.

Through the Shop Local Project, retailers receive the proceeds from the sales daily, helping to keep stores afloat now so they continue to serve communities in the future. The Shop Local Project is not one person or one company  it's the collective effort of an entire industry whose common belief is that the resilience of retail during this time will require a coordinated effort to support all stakeholders.

This crisis has hit the entire retail sector very hard, but as Mark Hubner, VP of Brand & Strategy at Baffin Footwear, explains, "The Shop Local Project is a shining example of how we rally together in times of crisis. When the team at ENDVR shared this idea, Baffin didn't think twice about jumping in to help out. It's a refreshing opportunity to help your community, while maintaining safe-physical distance in a time when it can be challenging to do so."

Specialty retailers are invaluable to the communities they serve, and they need help. Currently, over 75% of core shops are still closed, and about 50% of them do not have an e-commerce site that would help them maintain sales. The Shop Local Project provides a solution with its online platform. There is no cost for retailers who participate in this initiative.

If you're a retailer, brand or consumer who wants to get involved, learn more at TheShopLocalProject.com.

About Baffin Ltd.

Since 1979, Baffin has remained a family run business, manufacturing the best-performing cold-weather footwear in Stoney Creek, Canada  with its core focus and expertise being technically advanced, high quality boots. Baffin designs, develops, tests and produces footwear and apparel for the most extreme conditions on Earth, from the North Pole to the South Pole and everything in between. Whether it's an outdoor adventure or an industrial safety application, everything we do is a function-first endeavour.

SOURCE Baffin Ltd.

Related Links

https://www.baffin.com


To the Editor:

In Pennsylvania on Thursday, with stunning ignorance, President Trump explained why our nation tragically leads the world in Covid-19 deaths: When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didnt do any testing, we would have very few cases.

And all this time I thought chemo could save me from my leukemia. Stupid me. Had I simply never taken a blood test, I could have avoided my cancer altogether.

Michael Maurer

Long Branch, N.J.

To the Editor:

Re President Turns to an Old Ploy: Blame Obama (front page, May 15):

Barack Obamas crime was being more efficient, more moral and more empathic than this president will ever be.
Zomato will cut 13 per cent, or about 520, jobs as a result of the extended lockdown and restaurants shutting shop, Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Deepinder Goyal told the firm in an email on Friday. Multiple aspects of our business have changed dramatically over the last couple of months and many of these changes are expected to be permanent.

While we continue to build a more focused Zomato, we do not foresee having enough work for all our employees. We owe all our colleagues a challenging work environment, but we wont be able to offer that to 13 per ...
For a moment, imagine you live in a country where Labour won the last General Election and is now masterminding a national response to the coronavirus pandemic.

That scenario is certainly in the minds of opponents of Boris Johnson, who have spent the past two months complaining relentlessly about the Government's handling of this unprecedented crisis.

Sir Keir Starmer sought to make hay on Covid this week, alleging at Prime Minister's Questions that, among other things, Johnson has been 'too slow to protect people in care homes'.

His performance was lauded in sections of the media, while on Facebook and Twitter, hard-Left blowhards called for the Prime Minister to be prosecuted for manslaughter. Havant Labour Party even posted doctored photos of Johnson and Michael Gove drenched in blood.

Sir Keir Starmer (pictured) sought to make hay on Covid this week, alleging at Prime Minister's Questions that, among other things, Johnson has been 'too slow to protect people in care homes'

A Labour MP, Dawn Butler, made the incendiary claim on television that the 'disgraceful' Tory leader is 'sending people out to catch the virus'.

This was part of a familiar pattern. For months, every perceived government shortcoming, from PPE shortages to testing delays to the Government slogan chosen for public information adverts, has been remorselessly attacked.

That is what happens in a vibrant democracy, you may say.

Yet what Ms Butler, Sir Keir and almost every other Left-wing critic is less keen to explain is what, if anything, Labour would have done differently.

Fortunately, we don't actually need to ask them. Because to see how Labour is handling a real coronavirus outbreak, you just need to head west on the M4 until you reach Wales.

Here, Sir Keir's party has been in government since the late 1990s. It has sole charge of the health and social care systems  and is responsible for almost every aspect of the coronavirus response, from running hospitals to securing care homes to testing, tracing and making lockdown rules.

In other words, Labour is running the show. And compared with England's Conservative administration, it is falling woefully short on almost every measurable front, at times displaying surreal levels of incompetence.

Take testing, now widely accepted as the most crucial way to identify and contain virus outbreaks and save lives.

Over the past week, the English Government carried out between 90,000 and 133,000 tests every day. In Wales, that figure ranged between 956 and 1,421.

To see how Labour is handling a real coronavirus outbreak, you just need to head west on the M4 until you reach Wales

A Labour MP, Dawn Butler, made the incendiary claim on television that the 'disgraceful' Tory leader is 'sending people out to catch the virus'

So, two months into this crisis, the Labour government has been delivering no more than 1,421 tests a day  that's not far off one hundredth of the number of tests England seems able to complete (when, by comparison, Wales has one eighteenth of the population).

Between Monday and Friday, the average number of tests per day in Wales was 1,263. And this hasn't been an unusually poor week.

In fact, the total number of people that an administration run by Mr Starmer's party has tested since the pandemic began is 54,584. That's about half the number being tested in England every day.

What lies behind this failure is a combination of negligence and stupidity.

For example, until very recently, tests carried out in North Wales were being sent on a day-long journey to Cardiff for analysis because Welsh officials refused to use an English 'mega-lab' facility in Alderley Park, Cheshire, which was about an hour away.

The numbers comparison is all the more striking when you consider the bullish promises Labour made to the people of Wales about testing when the lockdown had just begun.

On March 21, for example, the party's Health Minister, Vaughan Gething, set a target of 9,000 tests a day by the end of April  a figure that seems to have been chosen to compete with the 100,000-a-day target set by England's Health Secretary Matt Hancock.

The 9,000 target was reiterated by Labour's first minister, Mark Drakeford, on April 3. He promised the people of Wales that his government would hit 5,000 tests a day by the middle of the month.

Just over a fortnight later, though, the headline-grabbing figure was dropped. With daily tests around the 700 mark, Mr Drakeford conceded on April 20 that targets were being abandoned, blaming circumstances 'outside our own control'.

What exactly those circumstances were remains unclear.

However, giving evidence in the Senedd (Welsh Parliament) last week, the chief executive of Public Health Wales, Dr Tracey Cooper  who in theory is helping to run Drakeford's testing system  revealed she was 'not familiar' with the 9,000 target figure and had never been made aware of it.

The 9,000 target was reiterated by Labour's first minister, Mark Drakeford, on April 3. He promised the people of Wales that his government would hit 5,000 tests a day by the middle of the month

How the existence of the Welsh government's principal Covid policy goal escaped her attention is anyone's guess. Given that she earns more than 190,000 a year, we must assume she is not stupid, even if she apparently fails to follow headline news stories involving her own organisation.

This curious inconsistency suggests, at the very least, a breakdown in basic communication between the Welsh government and its senior health officials.

And it raises serious questions about their competence.

One might fairly suppose that, were a Conservative health secretary in Westminster to preside over such a humiliating failure to hit a key target, it would lead the news agenda for days. Inquiries would be ordered and resignations would follow.

In Mr Gething's shoes, Matt Hancock would be toast.

But this is Wales, effectively a one-party state where a hollowed-out media, reliant on public-sector advertising, has for years failed to hold its government to account properly, and where an entrenched ruling elite are allowed to fail almost with impunity.

As one of the 3.1 million people who live in the Principality, I know its Labour government's failures are costing lives, especially in the care-home sector that seems to so concern Sir Keir Starmer.

A health worker gestures to a person in a car at the coronavirus (COVID-19) drive-through testing centre at the Cardiff City stadium

And while Labour's Westminster leader spent Wednesday at Prime Minister's Questions hectoring the English authorities over care-home policy, criticising decisions made by Downing Street in early March, he seems unaware of the disastrous policies of his Welsh colleagues.

On care homes, the record is as follows: until April 23, Welsh government guidelines meant hospitals were routinely returning patients to homes without allowing them to be given coronavirus tests, apparently because there were too few kits to go around.

Before May 2, the Welsh government wouldn't allow any residents of care homes to be tested unless they displayed symptoms of the virus, even when other residents in their home were infected.

It took until May 6 for the authorities to allow residents of some care homes where no outbreak had yet been confirmed to be tested.

And to this day, to qualify for testing you must live in a care home for 50 people or more  which means hundreds of smaller homes are still unable to test their staff and patients.

In the first week of May, across the whole of Wales just 16 care-home staff were screened for coronavirus. England, by contrast, was able to extend testing to all care-home residents and staff on April 28.

The Welsh government's litany of failure has undoubtedly cost lives. More than 1,200 people died in Welsh care homes in April, compared with fewer than 500 in April 2019.

This is a serious worry for Plaid Cymru Senedd Member Delyth Jewell, whose constituency contains the Tregwilym Lodge care home in Newport, Gwent, where 15 of the 73 residents have perished.

'In this particular home, the outbreak seems to have happened because a resident returned from hospital carrying the virus,' she tells me. 'The care home requested a test but were unable to get one, seemingly because the patient wasn't initially showing symptoms.

'I am incredibly concerned by what is going on in our care homes. There is a huge shortage of testing capacity and I worry that policy may be being dictated by this fact.'

So bad is the continuing shortage of tests that this week the Department for Work and Pensions was forced to write to staff in Wales, telling them to drive to a testing centre in England if they start to experience symptoms.

Angela Burns, the Welsh Conservative spokeswoman on health, describes the situation thus: 'Targets missed time after time, denials that targets existed, and now  embarrassingly  some frontline public sector staff in Wales being told they should go to England for testing, shows the shambles of the administration here.'

In total, 1,641 people are known to have died from coronavirus in Wales before May 1, according to the most up-to-date figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

This is only slightly less than the per capita average for England, even though Wales has a third of the population density of England and does not contain London, where there have been a disproportionate number of deaths because of the city's status as an international hub.

The Welsh tally is likely to be a significant underestimate, too, because the ONS records only deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate, and in the absence of thorough testing many possible victims may never be formally diagnosed.

A full public inquiry may eventually establish the exact toll, assuming the Welsh government allows one to happen.

On the western side of Offa's Dyke, several other aspects of Labour's response to the pandemic have also been chaotic.

For example, at the start of lockdown, the Welsh NHS advised people who thought they might be affected by Covid to call 111. But it turned out that no 111 service exists for residents of much of North Wales, as local health boards have failed to set one up.

Downing Street's successful GoodSAM scheme, which recruited some 750,000 NHS volunteers, was not properly embraced by the Welsh government, apparently because it was run from England. As a result, far fewer volunteers were registered in Wales.

A general view at the coronavirus (COVID-19) drive-through testing centre at the Cardiff City stadium

As lockdown began, vulnerable people in Wales had great difficulty obtaining supermarket delivery slots, as the Labour government took weeks to provide retailers with their names and addresses. Many were forced to leave their homes to shop for necessities.

To compound matters, the online form needed for people to register as vulnerable would not accept applications from Wales. And those who were blind or had impaired vision, who were allowed to register in England, were barred from doing so in Wales.

There were also delays in sending out 'shielding letters' in Wales, advising 80,000 people with pre-existing conditions to isolate.

When they were eventually posted, 16,000 went to the wrong addresses. Then in early May, the blundering administration realised 21,000 more potential recipients had not yet been identified.

As a result, only 10 per cent of Welsh respondents in a survey by Asthma UK and the British Lung Foundation received a shielding letter, compared with 17 per cent across the rest of the UK.

Finally, there is the thorny topic of PPE.

While the English Government has been continually criticised over PPE provision in care homes and hospitals, the acute shortages affecting Wales appear not to concern Labour critics of Boris Johnson (or, come to that, the makers of Panorama).

This week, however, PPE was at the centre of a political scandal in Cardiff Bay after Mark Drakeford, the Labour First Minister, revealed in a letter that his administration's pandemic stockpile had from 2016 onwards failed to contain a single protective gown.

That confession directly contradicted testimony given by Health Minister Vaughan Gething, who on March 28 was asked whether the stockpile contained gowns, visors, swabs and body bags. He stated: 'All of those items were available in our pandemic stock.'

Gething and Drakeford can't both have been correct. And this isn't the only time this week that their public statements on Covid been called into question.

On Monday, the Welsh government was forced to issue a formal correction to a statement made by the First Minister at his daily press conference, when he claimed his government's lockdown rules allow people to socialise with someone from outside their household 'provided they observe social distancing'.

Mr Drakeford declared: 'We always said that two people can interact in that way. And if you did, as I did, go on my bicycle to my allotment through one of the major fields in Cardiff, then you see people doing that all the time.'

In fact, he was completely wrong. Lockdown rules in Wales do not allow such behaviour.

Yet more embarrassment for Labour ensued when photographs emerged of Mr Gething and his family eating chips at a picnic table in a park near his home  again in contravention of the rules.

The images were taken on Saturday, when his own government's lockdown guidelines specifically prohibited 'going for a walk and then having a picnic or spending a prolonged period on a park bench'.

When Mr Gething returned to work on Monday, the guidelines suddenly changed and his department stated that henceforth 'going for a walk and stopping to have something to eat, or sit in a park, for example, is intended to be permitted'.

The Welsh government has denied changing the rules to suit its Health Minister's personal circumstances, seeming to take the view that Mr Gething and Mr Drakeford are beyond criticism.

Asked to defend its record on PPE, its failure to hit testing targets and Labour's handling of the entire coronavirus crisis, a spokesman told me: 'This is a collection of old stories to which we've already provided a full response.'

Critics are not persuaded. 'Wales currently has the worst transmission rates and the worst testing regime in the UK,' is how Andrew R.T. Davies, former leader of the Welsh Conservatives, puts it.

'Labour have singularly failed to get a grip. They have changed policy on the hoof, they haven't got a proper testing system working and they are failing on almost every front.

'To see Keir Starmer trying to criticise Boris Johnson's policy on care homes when his own party is responsible for this  well, the hypocrisy is breathtaking.'

Or, as the ancient proverb has it: Physician, heal thyself.
Three Lehigh Valley mayors joined 12 other mayors in Pennsylvanias 15 largest cities to ask Congress for consideration in new federal stimulus legislation.

Wednesday, Allentown Mayor Ray OConnell, Bethlehem Mayor Robert Donchez and Easton Mayor Salvatore Panto Jr. signed a letter addressed to members of Congress. including U.S. Sens. Bob Casey, D-Pa., and Pat Toomey, R-Pa..

In the letter, the mayors requested that funding for emergency fiscal assistance for local and state governments be included in the next round of stimulus aid. The mayors claimed statewide economic catastrophe could be forthcoming if Congress does not pass $250 billion in local government fiscal assistance soon.

State and local governments have been, and will continue to be, on the forefront of combatting the COVID-19 virus, the letter read.

Many of us are facing percentage revenue shortfalls in the high teens and greater, with dire long-term budget forecasts as the country moves into recession," the letter continued. This is an untenable situation and could quickly become a national emergency.

The letter went on to say that Pennsylvanias regional economies make up more than 92% of the Keystone States economic output. And the regional economies wouldnt be able to succeed without recovery assistance, the letter said.

We ask that these funds go directly to cities like ours so that we may obtain these critical funds as soon as possible, the letter said. "And have the flexibility to ensure that we can continue to provide essential police, fire, public health, and public works services for our residents as this crisis continues.

Thursday, President Donald Trump visited the Lehigh Valley for the first time since he took office. He toured the Owens & Minor, a medical supply distribution center distribution center in Upper Macungie Township, where he announced plans to increase production of masks, gloves and other personal protective equipment to guard against future shortages in the event of another pandemic.

Tennyson Donnie Coleman may be reached at tcoleman@njadvancemedia.com.

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ATLANTA  There's more to add to that list of invasive species you just found out about and already don't like.

Georgia officials are working to completely eradicate a lizard they say poses a major threat to some of the state's native wildlife: the Argentine black and white tegus.

John Jensen, a biologist with the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Wildlife Conservation Section, said the lizard can grow up to about four feet in size and can eat "just about anything they want."

"Tegus will eat the eggs of ground-nesting birds  including quail and turkeys  and other reptiles, such as American alligators and gopher tortoises, both protected species," according to the department's website.

The lizards can also eat fruit, vegetables, pet food and small animals  including grasshoppers and gopher tortoises.

Biologists believe the lizards are in Georgia's Toombs and Tattnall counties.

The lizards are native to South America, the department says on its website, weigh about 10 pounds and live up to 20 years. They are black to gray with white, speckled bands across their bodies.

And they multiply fast. They don't have a lot of predators, and females can lay about 35 eggs in a year, the department said.

Jensen said that while the lizards often create their own burrows, they can also use other animals' and displace them.

Jensen said the department is asking the public to report any sightings of the reptile in order to aid their efforts to track and eradicate the lizards.

"If you are able to safely and humanely dispatch of the animal, we encourage that and we want that information too," Jensen said.

The lizards are legal in Georgia as pets, but Jensen urged pet owners who may not want their lizards anymore to reach out to reptile adoption organizations.

"Releasing it into the wild is the absolute worst thing to do," he said.

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From PPE equipment keeping a community centre running, and support for those with a learning disability, to the broadcasting of COVID-19 information for the deaf community; there is need in every corner of our region.

To help meet these needs, local funders TECT, Acorn Foundation, BayTrust and Tauranga City Council, have approved a further $39,276 in funding for twelve community groups in the Western Bay of Plenty. This brings the total funding approved through the Rapid Response Fund to $219,253.

The groups who received funding include Kai Aroha, Katikati Community Baptist Church, Katikati Community Centre, Street Kai, Vector Group Charitable Trust, Ngati Wakaiti/Ngati Ruahine Charitable Trust, Deaf Aotearoa, Autism NZ, People First NZ, The Boys Brigade, WBOP Neighbourhood Support, and St John Central Region.

Katikati Community Centre re-opened its doors for the first time on Thursday as the country moved to Alert Level 2.

To meet the Level 2 standards required, the Centre is following recommended hygiene measures, implementing physical distancing, a Perspex screen has been installed at the reception area, and all staff and users are provided PPE. Funding received through the Rapid Response Fund has helped cover the costs for this.

Sally Goodyear, Administration Assistant at Katikati Community Centre, says the measures will ensure their front-line staff and visitors will feel safe and protected.

Centre staff have continued to help the Katikati community while working from home, but we are looking forward to assisting our community in person over the coming weeks.

We will be providing our usual information and advice service, community van bookings and youth counselling, along with regular podiatrist, chiropractor, Ear Health and Justice of the Peace services. Budget Advice will be available via Zoom meetings, yoga classes will recommence, and from Monday 18th May, Katikids after-school care will be back up and running.

We have not been able to generate any income during lockdown, so to receive this funding through the Rapid Response Fund has been such a reliefwe know our community will benefit from being able to access information and support at our Centre safely.

People First New Zealand Nga Tangata Tuatahi, a national Disabled Persons Organisation that empowers people with learning (intellectual) disability to speak out and be heard on things that are important to them, received $5,588 in funding.

The funds are helping cover increased hours for their Regional Coordinator and Team Leader, and remote business costs such as internet, a laptop, stationery, and printing.

People First New Zealand National Funding Manager Sandy Ryan says they have been keeping in regular contact with their 25 local members, many of whom have experienced heightened anxiety during the Alert Levels.

Our Regional Coordinator has been checking in on members and their wellbeing throughout the lockdown levels. For some it is keeping them informed via text, phone calls, Zoom or emails, but for others, they need advice and support to get food and medication, pay bills, and get inspiration to keep active and engaged for physical and emotional health.

We have also been sharing and circulating information to members and the wider community translated into Easy Read format; a way of presenting information that is easier for people with learning disability to understand. The Easy Read information we are creating in collaboration with the New Zealand Government is available on the COVID-19 website and People First website.

For Deaf Aotearoa, the $1000 they received has helped them pay for the broadcasting costs to display a full-screen NZSL interpreter for government COVID-19 updates on Kordia, either online or on Freeview channel 200.

Deaf Aotearoa Chief Executive Lachlan Keating says in a time of crisis, it is their job to ensure the Deaf community has access to the same information that other New Zealanders do.

While the Governments press conferences have had an interpreter on the bottom right-hand side of the screen, many Deaf people find it hard to see what the interpreter is signing. Having the interpreter shown in full screen is what the Deaf community have asked for.

For the 70 Deaf people in our region, having access to clear New Zealand Sign Language interpretation has ensured they can stay fully informed.

We are so grateful for the funding we received, which came through quickly and allowed us to continue to secure ongoing broadcasting time.

TECT General Manager Wayne Werder says the Rapid Response Funding process has allowed funders to respond to the needs of the community collectively, with a fast turn-around.

Collaboration has been vital during this time of great upheaval. We are seeing it in so many of the community groups we have funded, and also recognise that as funders, it is helping serve our region better when it comes to COVID-19 related needs.

We are pleased we can support a wide range of community groups who are working to make information more accessible, food available for all, and keeping connections strong as we move down the Alert Levels.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr has submitted the final report in the panel's three-year Russia investigation to the intelligence community for a declassification review.

The move came hours before he was to temporarily step aside as chairman of the panel.

The report on the panel's counterintelligence findings including whether President Donald Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia marks the conclusion of its Russia probe, which it first launched in January 2017.

But the panel did not release any of the findings Friday, instead asking the intelligence community to quickly allow the release of a declassified version of the report.

Burr said Thursday that he would temporarily give up the position as chairman after federal agents examining his recent stock sales showed up at his home Wednesday with a warrant to search his cellphone. Friday was his last day in the position.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Burr exploited advance information when he unloaded as much as USD 1.7 million in stocks in February, days before the coronavirus pandemic caused markets to plummet. Burr has denied any wrongdoing.

The final submission brought an unceremonious end to the yearslong investigation that occasionally landed Burr, a North Carolina Republican, in trouble with his own party.

It had been the final investigation of Trump's 2016 campaign and Russia that was still active.

Burr worked closely with the top Democrat on the panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, on a bipartisan basis to uncover Russia's attempts to sow chaos in American elections.

The committee had particular success in pushing social media companies to publicly reveal that Russia had used their platforms for misinformation and to make subsequent reforms to prevent such interference in the future.

Committee members have remained quiet on the panel's conclusion on whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russia.

But Burr has said several times that he has seen no evidence of such collusion, a conclusion that would be in line with the House Intelligence Committee's own Russia report in 2018.

It is unclear if the panel's Democrats would endorse such a determination, even though the first four reports from the Senate committee were bipartisan.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller also investigated whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia.

Mueller's report, released in April 2019, identified substantial contacts between Trump associates and Russia but did not accuse him of a crime or allege a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and the Kremlin.

Mueller also examined about a dozen possible instances of obstruction of justice and said he could not exonerate the president on that point.

The Senate panel also sent its other four reports to the intelligence community for declassification and in some cases waited years for a response.

In the other cases, however, the panel released its general findings first.

The prior reports looked at Russia's social media interference, election security, the response of the Obama administration to the Russian meddling and the intelligence community's 2017 assessment that Russia had intervened in Trump's favour.

The committee endorsed that assessment in a bipartisan report this year. Burr will continue to serve on the committee.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not yet said who will temporarily replace Burr as chairman.

Next in seniority is Idaho Sen. James Risch, who told reporters on Thursday that he didn't know whether he would keep his current perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or move to the intelligence panel.

Following him is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who heads the Senate Small Business Committee. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Aging Committee, is third in line.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The White House would likely support another round of stimulus checks, two senior administration officials told CNBC on Thursday.

The White House did not provide further comment except to release a statement which said:

"As President Trump has said, we are going to ensure that we take care of all Americans so that we emerge from this challenge healthy, stronger, and with economic prosperity, which is why the White House is focused on pro-growth, middle class tax and regulatory relief."

The House is set to vote on a $3 trillion stimulus bill on Friday to blunt the coronavirus pandemic's devastating effects on the economy and health-care system.

New filings for unemployment claims on Thursday totaled just shy of 3 million for the most recent reporting period, a number that while still high declined for the sixth straight week, according to Labor Department figures Thursday.

The first round of stimulus checks was part of a $2 trillion package authorized by Congress. The legislation called for using past tax returns from either 2018 or 2019, whichever is most recent, to determine eligibility for a stimulus payment.

The payments were up to $1,200 for individuals or $2,400 for married couples who file jointly, plus $500 for qualifying dependents. The payments were targeted at individuals making up to $75,000 and couples who earned up to $150,000 in adjusted gross income. Above that, the checks were reduced, and they eventually phased out completely at $99,000 in income for individuals and $198,000 for married couples.

CNBC's Lori Konish contributed to this story
Applied Materials Inc. AMAT reported fiscal second-quarter 2020 non-GAAP earnings of 89 cents per share, which missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 2 cents. The figure declined 9.2% sequentially but increased 27% year over year.

Net sales of $3.96 billion missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 5.7%. However, the figure improved 11.9% from the year-ago period.

The company witnessed solid momentum in key geographies, namely Korea, Taiwan and China.

Although it saw weaker-than-expected demand due to the coronavirus outbreak, the demand for equipment and services still remained strong.

Lets delve deeper into the numbers.

Applied Materials, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Applied Materials, Inc. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Applied Materials, Inc. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | Applied Materials, Inc. Quote

Segments in Detail

The Semiconductor Systems Group generated $2.6 billion sales in the reported quarter (contributing 65% to net sales), reflecting an increase of 17.5% year over year.

Applied Global Services reported sales of $997 million (26% of net sales), which increased 3.5% from the prior-year quarter.

Sales from the Display and Adjacent Markets came in at $332 million (9% of net sales), up 4.9% from the year-ago level.

Revenues by Geography

United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Southeast Asia and China generated sales of $331 million, $181 million, $467 million, $753 million, $1.03 billion, $58 million and $1.14 billion, contributing 8%, 5%, 12%, 19%, 26%, 1% and 29% to net sales, respectively.

On a year-over-year basis, sales in all the countries declined except Korea, Taiwan and China, which witnessed growth of 70.7%, 36.5% and 14.6%, respectively.

Operating Results

Non-GAAP gross margin was 44.6%, expanding 110 basis points (bps) from the year-ago quarter.

Operating expenses were $817 million, 8.4% higher than the year-ago quarter. As a percentage of sales, research, development and engineering, as well as marketing and selling expenses decreased, while general and administrative costs increased.

Story continues

Non-GAAP operating margin of 24.7% in the reported quarter expanded 230 bps from the prior-year period.

Balance Sheet & Cash Flow

At fiscal second quarter-end, cash and cash equivalent balance was $5.7 billion compared with $3.42 billion at the end of the fiscal first quarter.

Inventories were $3.73 billion versus $3.47 billion in the prior quarter. Accounts receivables decreased to $2.63 billion from $2.68 billion in the fiscal first quarter.

The company returned $199 million and $193 million through stock repurchases and cash dividends, respectively.

Applied Materials generated cash flow of $635 million, down from $987 million in the fiscal first quarter.

Guidance

The company did not provide any guidance for the June quarter due to manufacturing and supply-chain disruptions from the COVID-19 crisis.

Bottom Line

Management believes that the demand for foundry logic is expected to remain strong in the near term, thanks to the rising need for specialty nodes in automotive, power, 5G rollout, IoT, communications and image sensor markets.

Also, ongoing inventory correction in DRAM is a tailwind in the near term. The company expects more clients to upgrade their equipment ahead of the 5G rollout in key markets, which will help it expand top-line growth.

However, the company expects weakness in specialty markets due to slump in automotive and industrial sectors.

Nevertheless, Applied Materials remains confident about its relentless focus on research and development activities to develop new products.

Zacks Rank & Key Picks

Applied Materials currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Some better-ranked stocks in the broader technology sector include Akamai Technologies, Inc. AKAM, Inuvo, Inc. INUV and Shopify Inc. SHOP, each carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Long-term earnings growth for Akamai, Inuvo, and Shopify is currently projected at 12.3%, 30% and 25.8%, respectively.

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SPRINGFIELD  Eastern Retail Properties, a commercial developer and real estate company based in Braintree, has purchased the empty Sears property at the Eastfield Mall and the former Palmer Kmart property for a total of $6.4 million.

Eastern Retail Properties bought the Sears in Springfield, which was always under separate ownership from the mall itself, for $4.4 million last month, according to papers on file at the Hampden County Registry of Deeds. It bought the Palmer property for $2 million.

The seller in both cases was a company controlled by former Sears Holdings CEO and hedge fund investor Eddie Lampert, who took control of the real estate owned by the retail giants as he put them through bankruptcy in 2019.

Lamperts company, ESL Investments of Greenwich, Connecticut, still owns the derelict Kmart on Northampton Street in Holyoke, according to city records and the Registry of Deeds. The Holyoke Kmart closed in April.

Eastern Retail Properties owns commercial real estate across New England and New York state, according to its website. The only other local property is a former Citizens Bank branch in Belchertown.

The Palmer Kmart, built in 1970, sold for $3 million last year when Lamperts company bought it out of the bankruptcy process. That parcel totals 14 acres and includes the adjoining plaza, according to Palmer records. The Kmart closed in the fall of 2019.

The Eastfield Mall Sears, which closed in 2018, sold for $1.25 million in 2019.

The Sears property includes 14 acres at the mall, including the shuttered store, parking lots and the former Sears Auto building at Boston and Fernbank roads, according to Springfield records.

Mountain Development Corp. owns the rest of the mall and plans to redevelop the property.

The Springfield City Council in February approved a zone change at the Eastfield Mall that mall representatives said provides a boost to a proposed $200 million redevelopment there.

Representatives of Mountain Development Corp. and of Eastern Retail Properties didnt return calls and emails Friday.

Eastfield Mall, which totals more than 80 acres, opened in 1967 and was Greater Springfields first enclosed mall. It featured local favorites Forbes & Wallace and Steigers along with Sears as anchors.
The father and stepmother charged earlier this week in the abuse death of a toddler boy were arrested just last month on charges of endangering the welfare of another child.

Demetric Hampton Sr., 26, is charged with murder and aggravated child abuse in the Wednesday death of his son, 2-year-old Demetric Hampton Jr. Hamptons wife, 24-year-old Terrica Harris, was booked into the Jefferson County Jail Friday on a charge of aggravated child abuse in connection with Demetric Jr.s death. Her bond is set at $60,000 and Hampton is being held without bond.

Deputies responded at 12:30 a.m. Wednesday to the 1600 block of Sixth Street N.W. in Center Point on a report of a child not breathing. When they arrived on the scene, the parents told lawmen he had been eating and then began to choke.

The boy was taken to Childrens of Alabama where doctors discovered he had multiple injuries. He was pronounced dead at 1:46 a.m.

Demetric Jr.s mother died in 2018 when she was hit by a vehicle on Interstate 59/20.

Hampton, said Sgt. Joni Money on Friday, told deputies his had been eating and had started choking. He said he removed the food from the childs airway and began life-saving efforts. Hampton said his wife, was not at home at the time, but arrived home shortly before medics made it to the scene.

Further investigation revealed the toddler had multiple injuries and burns that were not consistent with the parents stories, Money said.

Terrica Harris (Jefferson County Jail)

There were multiple other young children in the Hampton home, including Demetric Jr.s twin sister. DHR was called to the home on the morning of the boys death but no additional details were available about where those children were taken.

Court records show Hampton was arrested April 5 on charges of third-degree domestic violence, resisting arrest, endangering the welfare of a child and obstruction of justice. Harris was arrested at the same time on charges of disorderly conduct, endangering the welfare of a child, resisting arrest and obstruction of justice.

Jefferson County sheriffs deputies responded to the residence after they received an anonymous call that a couple was arguing in the driveway. The caller told deputies the man had a gun and the female was in her vehicle trying to leave.

Demetric Hampton (Jefferson County Jail)

Harris, who also goes by Terrica Hampton, became irate that deputies were there, charging documents state, and immediately began yelling and cussing. Hampton was holding their 9-month-old son, deputies wrote in their report. Harris took the baby from Hampton.

Harris continued to argue with deputies, who then asked her to hand over the baby. When she refused, documents state, Hampton punched her in the face with a closed fist. The baby boy was hit in the lip, which started to bleed.

Deputies broke up the fight between the couple. One of the deputies was knocked over in the struggle.

Hampton was then tased but continued to resist. In all, five children were released into the custody of a grandmother that night. Court records indicated the entire ordeal was captured on deputies body cameras. Both Hampton and Harris were scheduled to appear in court in June on those charges.
PHILADELPHIA, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Carisma Therapeutics Inc., a biopharmaceutical company focused on discovering and developing innovative immunotherapies, shares details from new data findings accepted for presentation at leading healthcare conferences, the American Society of Gene & Cell Therapy (ASGCT) Annual Meeting and the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting. Accepted data build on foundational, preclinical findings in Nature Biotechnology's "Human Chimeric Antigen Receptor Macrophages for Cancer Immunotherapy," first published in March 2020. Additionally, new studies led by Carisma Therapeutics' Drug Discovery team investigate the use of anti-HER2 CAR monocytes (CAR-Mono) to potentially expedite the manufacturing process, resulting in a shorter isolation-to-infusion time for immunotherapies.

"We continue to build on our preclinical work to progress CAR macrophages (CAR-M) toward a clinical solution for patients and providers," said Steven Kelly, president and chief executive officer at Carisma Therapeutics. "In doing so, we are uncovering promising insights  such as the potential to prime the broader immune system to fight the tumor  that showcase the viability of this immunotherapeutic approach as a treatment for solid tumors."

In addition to the growing body of evidence supporting the CAR-M platform, Carisma Therapeutics researchers, in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Abramson Cancer Center, are also exploring the feasibility of a CAR-Mono platform. Monocytes are a type of white blood cell that becomes a macrophage as it matures. The advantage to using human monocytes instead of macrophages is that it saves time in the lab, shortening the time between retrieval and infusion from seven days to one day. Initial data suggests that engineering human monocytes in the same way as CAR-M also confers proinflammatory properties to fight tumors, and the CAR-Mono can become macrophages, once infused. Further, CAR-Mono demonstrate antitumor activity, similar to that shown with CAR-M.

"These findings are both scientifically and clinically exciting because of the potential dual impact: a novel approach to harnessing the power of our innate immune systems as well as solving for a long-standing care delivery issue: time," shared Michael Klichinsky, PharmD, PhD, co-inventor of the CAR-M technology and scientific co-founder and vice president of discovery of Carisma Therapeutics. "This early data warrants a deeper investigation so we can fully understand the potential for a shortened manufacturing process as well as advantages in tumor penetration with CAR-Mono."

Abstracts presented at ASGCT as well as supporting presentation materials are available online in the searchable program:

CT-0508 is an Anti-HER2 Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) Macrophage that Promotes a Pro-Inflammatory Solid Tumor Microenvironment and Eliminates Cancer Cells via Phagocytosis

Human CAR Monocytes Demonstrate Anti-Tumor Activity and Differentiate Into M1-Polarized CAR Macrophages

Abstracts accepted for presentation at AACR 2020 Annual Meeting (June 22-24), available online:

About Carisma Therapeutics Inc.

Carisma Therapeutics Inc. is a biopharmaceutical company developing a differentiated and proprietary cell therapy platform focused on engineered macrophages, cells that play a crucial role in both the innate and adaptive immune response. The first applications of the platform, developed in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania, are autologous chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-macrophages for the treatment of solid tumors. Carisma Therapeutics is headquartered in Philadelphia, PA.

For more information, please visit www.carismatx.com

Media Contact:

Christina Khoury-Folkens

612-806-0757

[email protected]

SOURCE Carisma Therapeutics Inc.

Related Links

http://www.carismatx.com


The welcome was warm, as David Alaba would include an old friend in the arms. Since the last Meeting was passed already more than a year, according to the defensive player of the FC Bayern moved to the DFB-Cup itself. Who is Alaba, and colleagues, observed this late July evening in Berlin's Olympic stadium, as they embraced the trophy and umtanzten, the would have been able to come up with the idea that it was a long awaited reunion and not a mere Routine. DFB-Pokal live-Ticker

For the fifth Time in the last eight years, FC Bayern have the Cup won, there was clearly 4:2 against Bayer Leverkusen. Pure domination, especially in the first half. Basically, the game was decided already. Alaba (16.) and Serge Gnabry (24.) had coined the Munich-based Superiority into goals, and at the latest after the 3:0 lead thanks to Robert Lewandowski (59.) the title defence was seen as safe.

Leverkusen was only after the clear residue better into the game, after the goal from Sven Bender (59.) on came hope, but Lewandowski (89.) destroyed all the illusions in the final phase. Kai Havertz met by a penalty to the final score (90.+5). The Bavarians celebrated in the almost empty stadium. A strange feeling, like Thomas Muller admitted. "I just had a thoughtful Minute, without the Fans this is simply the Same," said Muller.

It would not have fit to the current Form of Bayern, to give such a projection from the Hand. Twenty-one Times you have won in this calendar year, in 22 games. An impressive series which began with the transport of Hansi Flick from the Kotrainer as head coach in the beginning. Flick took care of the first internal climate, which is also Chairman of the Board Karl-Heinz Rummenigge praised again explicitly. "He has brought back the empathy in the team, the result you see now," said Rummenigge.

Particularly empathic Flick went with Thomas Muller and Jerome Boateng, the under his predecessor, Niko Kovac less well suffered were. Both are now back to the outstanding players, with David Alaba, who has held in his career, many positions, but it is only now in the centre of defence, where Flick allows him to play continuously, his determination found seems.

"world-class" was the Austrians in the centre of defence, praised Alabas one tiger teammate Bastian Schweinsteiger. Reasons to make the assessment in dispute, offered the Vaunted against Leverkusen no, on the contrary. His goal was a replica of the Munich and his own back round, almost perfectly. The Plan was actually different. "We wanted to try something else, but I changed my mind then, thank God it went well," said Alaba, the first of the sense, after a cross-pass stand.

Updated Date: 05 July 2020, 04:19
A comment piece by US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer published in the New York Times this week reveals the rising tide of economic nationalism throughout the American political establishment.

At the end of January, as the coronavirus was starting to spread across the world, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of the chief proponents of the Trump administrations America First agenda, said while he did not want to do a victory lap over the outbreak of the disease, it would accelerate the movement of supply chains back to the US.

The comments were criticised at the time, even characterised as weird, but since then the drums of economic nationalism have been beating ever louder.

Lighthizer began his comment piece with the observation that some crises do not so much alter the course of history as accelerate changes already underway and this was the case with the pandemic.

He took aim at businesses that showed a lemming-like desire for efficiency that caused many of them to move manufacturing over the past two decades to places like China, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Businesses had criticised Trumps trade policy, he wrote, but it had been vindicated by the pandemic which had revealed the over-reliance of the US on other countries for the supply of medical equipment and the public would now demand that policymakers would remedy this strategic vulnerability by shifting production back to the United States.

This is another example of the many efforts by the administration to divert attention away from its own culpability for the devastation of the pandemic and have it focused elsewhere, the most egregious example of which is Trumps denunciations of the China virus as an attack on US worse than Pearl Harbour or 9/11.

Lighthizer, however, did not confine his comments to recent events but took aim at US trade policies under Clinton in the 1990s and those of the Bush administration in the 2000s that had magnified the disaster of job destruction through offshoring.

The decision in 2001 to establish permanent normal trading relations with China is the most regrettable example, he wrote.

This is the stock in trade of all economic nationalists who seek to promote the fiction that, but for globalisation, some kinder, gentler version of capitalism would have developed on home soil, preserving jobs and a mythical American way of life.

The reality is that had the nationalist agenda advocated by Lighthizer been followed, jobs would have been destroyed, possibly at even faster rates than took place, as US firms were unable to compete with their international rivals, while firms that survived would only have been able to do so through a massive intensification of the exploitation of the working class.

The devastation of jobs and living standards is not the result of globalisation as such but arises from the fact that this entirely progressive development, like the advances from the development of new technologies, is entirely subordinated to the dictates of the profit system.

The attack on the previous international economic order was taken even further by Missouri Republican Senator Josh Hawley in a comment also published in the New York Times on March 5.

He described the present global economic system as a relic that required reform from top to bottom We should begin with one of its leading institutions, the World Trade Organization. We should abolish it.

The aim of the WTO, he wrote, was to create a giant liberal international order. It had completely failed and its biggest failure was that it led to the decline of the US all the while enriching Communist China.

We must face facts. The only sure way to confront the single greatest threat to American security in the 21st century, Chinese imperialism, is to rebuild the US economy and to build up the American worker.

As always, the economic nationalists seek to conflate the American nation with the American worker. But the pandemic has confirmed the fundamental truth that the US, like every capitalist nation, is dividedrent by irreconcilable class divisions in which the organisation of the economy is geared to the siphoning up of wealth to its upper echelons.

Hawley laid out an international perspective based on the creation of a new concert of nations to restore Americas economic sovereignty and allow this country to practice again the capitalism that made it strong.

That is, the forging of a new coalition of the willing for a confrontation with China, building a new network of trusted friends and partners to resist Chinese economic imperialism.

The Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio, in another New York Times comment piece published on April 20, set out the shift in orientation in key sections of the US political establishment from the promotion of a free market agenda to economic nationalism.

As did many, he wrote, I believed capitalism would change China for the better; instead, China changed capitalism for the worse.

This reflects the view in sections of the foreign policy establishment in the 1990s and early 2000s that integration of China into a free market liberal international economic order would lead to the emergence of a leadership in Beijing prepared accept American global dominance.

But the increasing turn by the Chinese Communist Party leadership under Xi Jinping to its own national agenda, based on high-tech and industrial development and its expanding global reach under conditions of palpable US decline, has led to a major shift.

Whereas under the previous orientation, China was characterised as an economic partner through its supply of cheap labour to US corporations, it has now been designated a strategic competitor whose very economic development is a threat to both the economic and military dominance of the US.

The significance of the rise of economic nationalism can only be grasped when viewed in this context. The bringing back of production to the US, or at least to the North American continent, the disruption of global supply chains and the breaking up of a complex international division of labour is completely irrational and destructive from an economic standpoint.

But within this apparent madness there is an objective logic at work. It is the bringing together and concentration of the economic resources of society within the confines of the American imperialist state in preparation for war against its rivals, in which China is only the immediate target.

The publication of rabid economic nationalist comments in, and their promotion by the New York Times, one of the mouthpieces of the Democratic Party, indicates this agenda extends across the US political establishment.
She is currently in lockdown inside her $13.8million Los Angeles mansion.

And on Thursday, Lara Bingle, 32, indulged in a little self-cafe while isolating with her family.

The blonde beauty entrepreneur, who is pregnant with her third child, shared a series of videos to Instagram stories while giving herself a luxurious facial.

Barefaced beauty! Lara Bingle showed off her flawless skin as she gave herself a luxurious facial while isolating in her $13.8million Los Angeles mansion on Thursday

Lara explained she was using the Melanie Grant DIY home facial kit and called it a 'Quarantine dream'.

First, the glamorous model rubbed a cleanser on her flawless skin before washing it off.

The former socialite, who hails from Sydney's Cronulla, then applied an AHA prep peel.

She left it on for some time before peeling it off and revealing her glowing visage.

'Quarantine dream': Lara (pictured) shared a photo of the Melanie Grant DIY home facial kit to Instagram

Last month, Lara also explained that keeps her skin in tip-top condition by using a face mask from high-end skincare brand Dr. Barbara Sturm.

The mother-of-two shared a glamorous selfie to Instagram while wearing the Deep Hydrating Face Mask, which retails for $169.

When a follower asked what mask she was using, Lara mentioned the brand and said it 'soaks in' really well.

So that's her secret! Last month, Lara also explained that keeps her skin in tip-top condition by using a face mask from high-end skincare brand Dr. Barbara Sturm

Lara is in lockdown with her husband Sam Worthington and their two sons Rocket, four, and Racer, two, at their Los Angeles home.

The Hollywood couple listed their five-bedroom mansion for sale in February, and are hoping to make a tidy profit after purchasing it in 2018.

While the home has plenty of room for a growing family, the Worthingtons are keen to move before Lara welcomes her third child later this year.
Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, May 15: India is all set to face fresh challenges as several states are witnessing a massive number of migrant workers, who were stranded in several parts of the country, head back home amid coronavirus pandemic.

According to reports, Bihar, that collected as many as 4,275 samples from among the migrants who returned onboard through special trains between May 4 and May 13, recorded 320 (7.5 per cent) positive cases of COVID-19. This is above the positivity rate for the state, which is just about 2.75 per cent. Bihar has so far recorded 999 positive cases, just a whisker away from the four-digit-mark.

Coronavirus outbreak: Mumbai Police collect Rs 9 crore from lockdown violators

The chances of high rate of positive cases among migrant workers is ringing the warning bells in Bihar, that is a primary destination state for migrants. It is reportedly said that migrants returning through six inter-state borders, about 10,000 are entering each day.

Also, it can be seen that a large number of infections among migrants is one reason why Bihar has seen its caseload rise rapidly in the last few days. With less than nine days, Bihar has among the fastest doubling time of cases well below the national average of 12.65 days.

Coronavirus outbreak: Officially, all districts in Uttar Pradesh is affected by COVID-19

Meanwhile, Odisha was also one of the first states in India to have reported a surge in the number positive cases of COVID-19 in migrant workers on arrival with Ganjam district being the hotspot reporting as many 249 cases in the 10 days since May 5.

In the same time duration, Andhra Pradesh has a total of 105 positive cases imported from other states, as many as 12.20 per cent of the state's active cases. Of the 105, 67 are from Maharashtra, 26 from Gujarat, 10 from Odisha and one each from Karnataka and West Bengal.

Coronavirus pandemic may impact Vijay Mallya extradition timeline

Earlier, the state health department said that 930 migrant workers, who returned to Kurnool on a special train from Thane, Maharashtra. Of the 250, 38 were positive for coronavirus. All worked in a fish market in Mumbai.

On the other side, Karnataka has reported 96 cases from outside the state since May 5. It can be seen that this is 20.25 per cent of the state's active cases. Reports suggest that 48 are from Ahmedabad, 29 from Ajmer, 16 are from Mumbai, two from Odisha and one from Chennai.

However, for Karnataka, it is the spread of the cases with travel history from outside the state, that will be a bigger worry for containment. The 96 cases that reported in the state are now spread across 14 districts.
Thanks to Trump, we have no coherent national plan to survive the pandemic. But also thanks to the federal government  and I include Congress as well as the president  we lack the kind of sturdy economic safety net that protects unemployed workers and shut-down business owners in some of the hardest-hit European countries  nations that once looked up to the United States as a model. In the Netherlands, for example, the government is granting employers up to 90 percent of their payroll costs so they can keep paying their workers rather than resort to furloughs or layoffs. That kind of continuity ought to speed recovery when reopening becomes safe.
Des O'Sullivan reports on an auction world that not so long ago was beyond our imaginings

THE onward march of the virtual world in this new era of online auctions, pent-up demand and postponed sales cannot be overstated.

Some of the rapid adjustments made in this time of pandemic are temporary, others will prove to be far more permanent.

Just a few short months ago at the beginning of the year the idea of conducting a sale with no option to view physically would have been beyond the imaginings of many.

Now they are not only commonplace, but working. At a time when traditional viewing is out of the question auctioneers are finding new and imaginative ways to sell.

Take Christies, currently running a sale called The Collector online until June 1. This 264-lot auction, with estimates from 200 to 35,000, is focused on bringing craft and design us in lockdown.

To promote the auction of English and European furniture, silver, ceramics, gold boxes and works of art from the 17th to the 19th century, Christies has created a series of virtual viewing rooms filled with the lots on offer.

These virtual vignettes are designed to inspire the inner interior decorator unleashed by all this enforced time at home.

Head of sale Paul Gallois commented: During this unprecedented period in our lives, whilst a great many are spending more time than ever at home, interiors have become a major focus of comfort, familiarity and aesthetic expression.

Skibbereen-based Morgan ODriscoll, who has always been innovative and turns over more art than any other auctioneer in the country in terms of numbers of lots, has for some time now been offering a virtual viewing on his website.

Just by pointing the phone at a catalogue lot a registered buyer can see how a particular work of art would look on a wall in their own home.

At his regular online sale this week many lots sold for above estimate including a rare west Cork landscape by Sir William Orpen titled A Storm, Kealkil (1901) which made 15,000 at hammer.

Orpen is better known for his portraits, figurative works and interiors.

'A Storm, Kealkil' (1901) by Sir William Orpen (1878-1931) made 15,000 at hammer at Morgan O'Driscoll's online Irish art sale on Monday.

Four works by the artist Cecil Maguire (1930-2020), who sadly died last week, sold for prices from 2,000 TO 7,500. Another work by Cecil Maguire, Salt Lake, Clifden sold for a hammer price of 2,000 at Bonhams online sale of modern British and Irish art on Tuesday.

Castlecomer-based Fonsie Mealy who took the plunge with an online-only sale last week is planning another sale for the end of June. The collector sale last week realised 120,000 on the hammer with 85% of lots sold.

Whytes is inviting entries for an Irish and International art sale in Dublin on July 6 and Important Irish Art on September 28. From next Monday Whytes will be available for valuations by appointment only at Molesworth Street.

Adams has re-scheduled a number of postponed sales to July and September with an Important Irish Art sale now due to take place on September 9. A

dams Mid Century Modern auction on July 28 will be held as a live sale with telephone, commission and internet bidding but no bidding in the room. It is what the future looks like now.

Prior to pandemic, many salerooms offered online options alongside traditional patterns.

This suited buyers chasing just one or two particular lots who were enabled to view their object of desire in the showroom, then bid online.

Even as it drew some criticism from auctioneers who bemoaned the lack of atmosphere this system was noted to work well and boost turnover.

In their worst nightmares, auctioneers never imagined the death of the saleroom. We all fervently hope it will not come to that.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 14

By Sadraddin Agjayev  Trend:

The Azerbaijani Ministry of Transport, Communications and High Technologies and Cisco company discussed the joint activity and determined the future plans during a video conference, a source in the ministry told Trend.

During the speech at the event, Azerbaijani Minister of Transport, Communications and High Technologies Ramin Guluzade stressed that the use of high technologies is a priority during the coronavirus pandemic, which has a big impact on the global economic processes and trade.

The minister thanked the Cisco management for close cooperation and support in creating the appropriate infrastructure to conduct high-level video conferences in the country.

Guluzade also stressed that Cisco regional director for Azerbaijan Vladimir Orlov was awarded with an honorary diploma for the rendered support on April 21, 2020.

"It is important to further expand the cooperation on the introduction of high technologies in the country, the minister said. We are currently working with your company on eight digital priority projects. The implementation of these projects plays an important role in the development of innovative technologies in Azerbaijan."

While speaking about the implementation of the Connected Government project for video conferences, which is an important tool during the COVID-19 pandemic, the minister emphasized that a number of significant meetings were organized by using Cisco network technologies and the Azcloud platform.

Guluzade stressed that AzInTelecom, which is subordinate to the ministry, has launched a video conferencing service known as VCaaS for private companies and state agencies based on the Cisco Meeting Server solution.

The minister made a proposal to consider the possibility of extending the service license term for its successful functioning in the future.

As for the Smart City project, the pilot project concept entitled Coordinated Central Bus Stop was successfully completed, the minister said. It was submitted to the country's leadership in December 2019. It is important to fully determine the priorities of digitalization in Azerbaijan and expand the application of innovative technologies in the development of the country's economy.

In this regard, the ministry sent an information request to a number of international companies to collect the information on consultations on the Smart City project, which will start soon, Guluzade added. Moreover, we are discussing the Single Country Panel concept with Cisco and Quantela for the integration of all smart systems of the country. We propose to consider the possibility of financing Cisco consulting services that will be rendered as part of the Smart City project.

The minister stressed that the Ministrys ICT Applying and Training Center has been certified under the Cisco Networking Academy program.

This training center also built a Cisco training laboratory with equipment given free of charge by the Cisco office in Azerbaijan, Guluzade said. The Connected Schools project is also being implemented.

In turn, Orlov said that during this difficult period, the local team was able to render timely and successful support for some Azerbaijani state agencies by implementing Cisco solutions to ensure sustainable activity.

"The company is pleased to act as a key partner of Azerbaijan in the field of innovations and digitalization," Orlov said.

Cisco Vice President Guy Diedrich, Vice President for Russia and the CIS at Cisco Jonathan Sparrow, Head of Cisco Digitalization Program for Azerbaijan Ramil Eyyubov also participated in the video conference.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: agdzhaev
[May 15, 2020] Explore Xtra Life Anywhere, with Zhiyun SMOOTH-X

SHENZHEN, China, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Zhiyun, the world's most popular gimbal brand for cameras and smartphones, is pleased to announce the launch of the SMOOTH-X smartphone gimbal. SMOOTH-X is a stylish palm-sized foldable gimbal that weighs only 246g and easily fits into a bag  or even a pocket. With the new dedicated ZY Cami app, SMOOTH-X provides new ways to capture and create stories. Unfold the world with foldable SMOOTH-X  it is a whole new spin on the gimbal. Power in Simplicity SMOOTH-X is a new foldable smartphone gimbal which reaffirms Zhiyun's dedication to leading innovation in gimbal design. By rotating the vertical arm, users can turn their gimbal into a palm-sized stylish gadget that is small enough to toss into a backpack or even a pocket. Thanks to the unique design, the axis never blocks the view even in ultra-wide angle shooting. SMOOTH-X lets users explore the wider world from a broader perspective with a built-in aluminum telescopic rod. It can extend the reach up to 260mm. Now users can include more friends, get more views, and have extra fun. Simplicity is king, and SMOOTH-X provides the smoothest operating experience because it is unimaginably simple to se. Users can shoot, film, and control zooming with the handy operation panel. The multifunctional M button allows users to capture moments in versatile modes, and switch between landscape and portrait in a breeze.



SMOOTH-X is very beginner-friendly, allowing direct control of phone cameras with Bluetooth connection. Four-hour runtime and direct charging with a power bank keep users powered up for creation. Intelligent Shooting

Newly added intelligent gesture control feature makes SMOOTH-X a perfect companion for solo travel or group shots. Just make a V gesture or wave to the camera to start taking a photo/video without any timer settings. Wherever people go, SMOOTH-X follows. Simply frame the desired object of the video shoot, and then let SMOOTH-X do the rest. Slow motion, immersive timelapse and panorama are offered in the function palette. Awesome & Easy Edit ZHIYUN's ZY Cami is a dedicated app especially for the SMOOTH-X. ZY Cami provides a system that is smart, friendly, and easy but also offers advanced professional functions. Now there is no more need for tedious, tiring editing  SMART filmmaking mode offers a palette of preset story templates integrated with customized music, camera motions and special effects. Create a film in minutes. To give users even more control, professional editing software is now available in ZY Cami. Everything a user could possibly need is here: cutting, clipping, adding music, stickers, subtitles, transitions, beauty mode and more. Pricing and availability Zhiyun SMOOTH-X will be available for purchase by the end of May at ZHIYUN Official Store at US$59.99. Read more information at SMOOTH-X features and SMOOTH-X video About ZHIYUN Zhiyun Tech is a pioneer and a world leader in gimbals and stabilizers for both professional filmmakers and personal video creators. Zhiyun's innovative solutions and dedication to delivering products that go beyond customers' expectations strengthen the belief that everyone can be an excellent filmmaker with the right gimbal to equip with their shooting device. Learn more about Zhiyun Tech at www.zhiyun-tech.com or check us out on Facebook: @ZhiyunGlobal or follow us on Instagram: @Zhiyun_Tech View original content to download multimedia:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/explore-xtra-life-anywhere-with-zhiyun-smooth-x-301059187.html SOURCE Zhiyun

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A 'fantasy knight' apologised today after armed police swooped on his stroll around a Cardiff beauty spot - and said: 'I was simply enjoying a walk in my armour.'

History-lover Lennon Thomas, 20, was wearing medieval fancy dress and carrying a 3ft long sword when he was stopped by three gun-toting officers at Hendre Lake, in St Mellons on Wednesday.

Shocked families looked on as he was accosted by the officers who seemed to see the funny side upon realising he posed no threat to the public.

But Lennon appeared remorseful today as he reflected on this incident, saying: 'Sorry - it looks like I might have scared a few people around the lake.'

Armed police swooped on a 'suspicious swordsman' they feared would launch an attack - only to find it was a man dressed as a knight out on his daily exercise

History-lover Lennon Thomas, pictured, was stopped in his tracks at Hendre Lake, in St Mellons, Cardiff

The 'medieval knight' was confronted at gunpoint and ordered to put down the blade on Wednesday

Police were left bemused when they discovered that the man was out for a walk in his fancy dress knight costume at Hendre Lake, in St Mellons, Cardiff

The student had pulled on one of his selection of outfits for fantasy role-play games known as Larping - or Live Action Role Play.

The Dungeons and Dragons fan was trying out the new knight's outfit when he was met by three officers from the firearms unit as he strolled around the lake in St Mellons, Cardiff.

The Dungeons and Dragons fan, above, insisted 'I am no idiot for simply enjoying myself and practicing for my hobby'

His ungallant halt was caught on camera by a passer-by - as police saw the funny side of his sword-carrying stroll. Lennon was described as being more of a Sir Laughalot than Sir Lancelot.

But Lennon said: 'I will admit that I had a lapse in judgement on the sword part, perhaps bringing that wasn't a good idea, however the rest of my outfit was simply me practicing for a hobby of mine.

'I was simply enjoying a walk in my armour and using the time to practice for my hobby, I was trying to get use to wearing the armour as it is slightly physically demanding after a while of wearing it.

'I'm simply enjoying my hobby. Life is a lot more fun when you don't care how weird you are.

'I am no idiot for simply enjoying myself and practicing for my hobby - perhaps it was a little stupid of me to bring the sword as from a distance it does look realistic.'

Lennon, who lives less than a mile from the lake, admitted that passers-by were alarmed by his outfit - and even more when he was arrested.

He said: 'I joked to some passers-by who saw the incident that 'if i were in America I would have been shot on sight'.

'I got a good laugh out of it all in the end.'

The 999 callers feared the swordsman would launch an attack with the 3ft weapon

The student, 20, pictured, told passers-by 'if I were in America I would have been shot on sight'

A spokesperson for South Wales Police told MailOnline: 'At 3.10pm on Wednesday 13th May, South Wales Police received a report from a member of the public that a man was seen at Hendre Lakes in Cardiff with a sword.

Lennon, pictured, lives less than a mile from the lake where he was confronted by armed police

'Officers were deployed to the scene where they located a young man who was in fancy dress carrying a toy sword. No criminal offences were committed and the man was given suitable advice.'

Medical technician Mike James, 31, who was out with his wife and son, said: 'The whole thing was really surreal - he looked like something out of Assassin's Creed.

'We saw this guy walking around in this knight's outfit and carrying a sword.

'I thought: 'That's a bit weird.' But I thought he must be an actor or something so I didn't think much more of it.

'About five minutes later the armed police turned up, they said they'd had reports of a suspicious-looking person and we knew straight away who they were talking about.

'I told them it looked like he was doing laps of the lake and that he should be coming around shortly.'

Medical technician Mike James, 31, who was out with his wife and son, said: 'The whole thing was really surreal - he looked like something out of Assassin's Creed'

He continued: 'The police ordered him to put the sword down and then they confronted him. They had a chat with him for a couple of minutes and apparently the guy told them he was trying out a new outfit and he was walking around the lake to get used to the weight.

'The armed police were good as gold and even had a picture with him afterwards before letting him go on his way.

'I don't know what the sword was made from but it looked real enough!

'The outfit did look heavy - I'm not sure it was proper chainmail but it made a real tinny noise as he was walking past.'
Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham said Thursday his committee is opening a wide-ranging inquiry into the Russia investigation, but rejected President Donald Trump's call to bring in former President Barack Obama to testify.

I am greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight,'' said Graham, a South Carolina Republican and staunch Trump ally.

No president is above the law. However, the presidency has executive privilege claims against other branches of government.'' Graham noted the surprising nature of his announcement, saying: To say we are living in unusual times is an understatement."



The U.S. has a sitting president accusing the former president "of being part of a treasonous conspiracy to undermine his presidency,'' Graham said.

"We have the former president suggesting the current president is destroying the rule of law by dismissing a case against Trump's first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. All of this is occurring during a major pandemic."



The Judiciary Committee will first delve into the Justice Department's decision to dismiss its prosecution of Flynn, as well as actions by the Obama administration to view Flynn's name in intelligence reports during the Russia probe, Graham said.

We must determine if these requests were legitimate,'' Graham said, referring to requests by top Obama administration officials to unmask" Flynn's name. The requests are common, including during the Trump administration, which has made thousands of unmasking requests.

Graham also said the committee will look into potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, during a probe of former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

The FBI identified Page during the early days of its investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and secretly targeted his electronic communications.

A federal watchdog later concluded that the FBI made significant errors and omissions in applications it made to a U.S. foreign intelligence court for the authorization to eavesdrop on Page.

Those mistakes prompted internal changes within the FBI and spurred a congressional debate over whether the bureau's surveillance tools should be reined in.

"My goal is to find out why and how the system got so off the rails,'' Graham said.

The Judiciary Committee also will look at whether Robert Mueller should have been appointed as special counsel in the Russia probe.

The decision to appoint Muller was made in 2017 by then-Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein after Trump fired FBI Director James Comey.

"Was there legitimate reason to conclude the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians? Graham asked.

Graham's announcement comes as Trump and his GOP allies begin a broad election-year attack on the foundation of the Russia investigation, including declassifying intelligence information to try to place senior Obama administration officials under scrutiny for routine actions.

The effort has been aided by the Justice Department decision to dismiss the Flynn prosecution, essentially rewriting the narrative of the case in a way that former federal law enforcement officials say downplays the legitimate national security concerns they believe Flynn's actions raised.

Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States during the presidential transition period.

Trump and his Republican allies are pushing to reframe the Russia investigation as a deep state plot to sabotage his administration, setting the stage for a fresh onslaught of attacks on past and present Democratic officials and law enforcement leaders.

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer railed against Republicans' renewed focus on Flynn and the Russia investigation.

We're in the middle of a public health and economic crisis, and Senate Republicans are diving head-first into the muck, pursuing diversionary, partisan conspiracy theories to prop up President Trump when President Trump should be focusing on solving this crisis,'' Schumer said.

Hearings by the Judiciary Committee will start in early June, Graham said.

Trump tweeted Thursday that Graham should call Obama to testify. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it,'' Trump tweeted.

No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!'' Both Trump and Obama are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other,'' Graham said.

If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PTI chief photo correspondent Atul Yadav's photograph of Rampukar Pandit is the defining image of the coronavirus-induced migrant crisis in India

"His name was Rampukar  but he didn't tell me that. I only found out a few days later in a newspaper report. At the time, I couldn't even ask him his name," recalls Press Trust of India's chief photo correspondent Atul Yadav, "He was unable to say very much beyond 'udhar (there)'  which is where he was trying to go."

On Monday, Yadav was driving through Delhi's Nizamuddin area, when he spotted Rampukar Pandit (as identified by Hindi daily Hindustan) barely able to hold his phone to his ear. "It was at around 5.15 pm when I saw him sitting by the side of the road a little before the Yamuna bridge. I stopped my car and pulled over near him," he tells Firstpost, adding, "I then rolled down my window and photographed the man before getting out to go and check on him."

Moved by the heart-wrenching visual he had just captured on his Nikon D4s camera, Yadav went over to enquire after the distraught man's situation. "His son had passed away and he was unable to go to him. When I asked him where it was he had to go, he repeatedly pointed in the general direction of the Yamuna bridge, saying 'udhar'," explains Yadav, who recollects Rampukar later indicating that he had to go somewhere in Uttar Pradesh.

"While I was talking to him, some policemen came over and asked what was happening," says Yadav, "I explained and offered to take him across the state border, but was told not to let him into my car. The cops told me to be on my way and that they would make sure he got home." It would later transpire that udhar was in fact, Bariarpur in Bihar's Begusarai. As per the Hindustan report, Rampukar used to work in Delhi's Nawada and upon hearing of his son's death, tried to make his way home. Unfortunately, he had been stopped at the UP Gate for three days before being allowed to make the journey home.

As per a report by Jignasa Sinha of The Indian Express, Rampukar boarded a train home on Thursday, but he missed the funeral of his son.

He was finally taken back home on a bicycle on 19 May after he was discharged from a block hospital at Begusarai's Khodawandpur, according to a PTI report.

"My test (for coronavirus) came out negative and I was told I could go home but only if someone from my family could accompany me. So, I called my wife. Since no means of conveyance was available, she left home on foot for the Khodawandpur block hospital," he told the agency.

Rampukar's wife Bimal Devi had walked about three or four kilometres towards the hospital on Monday when their nephew, on his way to buy ration on a bicycle, saw her and instead of going to a shop offered her a ride to the hospital.

"My nephew, who is about 15 years old, called up another relative who also reached the hospital riding a bicycle. After being discharged in the evening, my wife sat on the back of the nephew's bicycle and I on the back of my cousin's bicycle, and it took us about 1.5 hours to reach home," he said.

Photographing tragedy

When it comes to the documenting human suffering and hopelessness, such photographs as Nick Ut's The Terror of War, Richard Drew's The Falling Man, Raghu Rai's Burial of an Unknown Child and Arko Datta's photograph of Qutubuddin Ansari come instantly to mind. It's for good reason, after all, that these haunting images have come to define the tragedies with which they are associated: Vietnam War, 11 September terror attacks, Bhopal gas tragedy and the Godhra riots respectively.

Yadav's image from four days ago is no different. "There's no plan for this sort of photography," explains the PTI photojournalist when asked if concepts like composition, framing and lighting come to mind while trying to capture tragedy. "I just pulled over, shot a quick burst of images and then got out of the car," he adds, "I couldn't bring myself to even lift the camera while talking to him, never mind taking any more pictures of him."

The photo of Rampukar is far from Yadav's only visual documentation of the migrant crisis thus far.

"I took a picture of this heavily pregnant woman walking with her family along the side of the road," he says about the image above, "She had stopped to rest because she was clearly exhausted, but so too was her young son, who was crying for her to carry him." But hers isn't an isolated case, he points out. "One night, I was driving down the highway and came across a group of people  some of whom were barefoot  making their way home in a line on the side of the road in the dark."

When it comes to poignant images, here's one that needs no elaboration:

'Never seen anything like this'

Over the course of his career, Yadav has been on assignment all over the world and is no stranger to covering tragedies and disasters. "I covered the 2004 tsunami in the Andaman and Nicobar islands, the 2005 earthquake in Jammu and Kashmir and the floods in the region a little under a decade later," he says, "But I've never seen anything like this [ongoing coronavirus crisis] before; it's a very different sort of challenge."

The disasters of the past were different for two key reasons, he states. "First, in all the tragedies in years gone by, while there was a great deal of suffering, people knew it would come to an end after a while and it did. Second, whether during an earthquake or a flood, people were always chipping in to help out in whatever way they could." That no one has any idea about when the coronavirus pandemic will end and when life can begin returning to normal is a major divergence from the past.

"This leads to the buildup of a lot of fear because no one knows what to do or what will happen the next day," he reasons, adding, "And while it's painful to see people suffering, you are simply not allowed to help on a number of occasions." Referring to the need for social distancing and avoiding contact, he says, "Even if you want to give someone a packet of biscuits, you have to place them on the ground and step back so that s/he can come and pick it up. It's heartbreaking."

You'll be hard-pressed to find a more appropriate word to describe the ongoing crisis encapsulated in the photo of Rampukar.

With inputs from PTI
There are now four recorded infections on the island which hosts thousands of migrants in overcrowded camps.

Two asylum seekers who have recently arrived on Greeces island of Lesbos, home to the countrys largest migrant camp, have tested positive for coronavirus, migration ministry sources said on Friday.

The cases, which double the islands COVID-19 infection tally to four, were among 70 arrivals there so far during May.

Since March 1, all migrants who reach Lesbos have been quarantined away from the islands camps, including the overcrowded Moria facility, which hosts more than 17,500 asylum seekers by the latest official count on May 13 and has been frequently criticised by aid groups for poor living conditions.

There have been no documented coronavirus cases inside the camp, however.





Greece has so far largely kept its COVID-19 outbreak contained, with 2,770 cases and 156 deaths reported by Thursday evening. Authorities since May 4 have been gradually easing the lockdown they imposed in mid-March.

Lesbos lies just off the Turkish coast, and hundreds of thousands of migrants and refugees have used the island as a staging post in recent years in their attempt to get to mainland Europe.

In March 2016 an EU-brokered accord with Turkey all but halted the migrant flow, but meant the numbers of people stuck on Greeces outlying islands built up while their claims for asylum were processed.
The government announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package on Thursday with focus on migrant workers, urban poor, street vendors and small farmers as part of its self-reliant India campaign. Meanwhile, Covid-19 tests in India crossed two million even as the doubling rate of the infection slowed to 13.9 days.

Ration for migrants, farm relief in 2nd tranche of govt stimulus

Free food grains and pulses for migrants, more jobs for tribals and those in rural areas, and credit to small enterprises, street vendors and small farmers  these were some of the highlights of the second phase of the governments Rs 20 lakh crore Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (Self-reliant India Scheme) announced on Thursday. Read more

India tops 2 million Covid-19 tests

The number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) tests carried out in India crossed 2 million on Thursday, doubling in 12 days. Our target was to cross 2 million tests by the end of May, but we have done it two weeks ahead of our goal. Read more

President hits brakes on plan to buy new limousine, trims banquets to save money

President Ram Nath Kovind will not ride the brand new Rs 10 crore limousine that was to be procured for his use at the next Republic Day parade. And the text time Rashtrapati Bhavan hosts a state banquet, the usually lavish spread will pruned to avoid any semblance of opulence. Read more

Covid-19: What you need to know today

India will overtake China in terms of the number of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) cases sometime Friday. China was at 82,929 cases on Thursday afternoon and India 78,810, according to worldometers.info. HTs dashboard shows that India ended the day with 81,859 cases. Read more

Indian Covid-19 vaccine development to be backed by PM-CARES

The government has allocated R 100 crores from the PM-CARES (Prime Ministers Citizen Assistance and Relief in Emergency Situations) Fund to support the initiative to develop a vaccine against coronavirus disease (Covid-19). Read more

Regular train tickets scrapped till June 30; spl trains to run

Bookings made for regular trains before and during the lockdown for journeys till June 30 stand cancelled and affected passengers will receive full refund, Indian Railways said on Thursday. However, bookings for 15 pairs of special premium trains and those carrying migrant workers to their destinations during the lockdown will continue. Read more

15 migrants on way home killed in 24 hrs

Fifteen migrant workers on their way back to their homes were killed in three accidents, one each in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Bihar in the past 24 hours, police officials said. Read more

Plea in SC against labour law dilution

A petition was filed in the Supreme Court on Thursday to challenge the decisions of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh to freeze major labour laws, a move the state governments deemed necessary to revive the economy amid the challenges presented by the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. Read more

Graphic: Mukesh Sharma; Data Source: Worldometer, Johns Hopkins University Covid-19 tracker

MP, UP and Guj end state monopoly on agri markets

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-ruled Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh have ended decades-old monopolies of state-run agricultural produce market committees (APMCs), often blamed for exploitative trading, by permitting privatisation of seller-buyer platforms for farmers, in what analysts say is a far-reaching reform. Read more

Covid-19: 32k to return in Phase 2 of Vande Bharat

The second phase of Indias massive programme to repatriate citizens stranded abroad because of the Covid-19 pandemic will bring home about 32,000 people, more than double the figure for the first phase, people familiar with developments said on Thursday. Read more

Health ministry issues pool testing rules

Migrant workers and international passengers in institutional quarantine, people under isolation in hotels, and random samples of those living in green zone districts will be pool tested for prevalence of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19), according to new Union health ministry guidelines released on Thursday. Read more

Global Covid-19 deaths top 300k amid mental health warning

A mental illness crisis is looming as millions of people worldwide are surrounded by death and disease and forced into isolation, poverty and anxiety by the Covid-19 pandemic, United Nations health experts said on Thursday. Read more

Covid-19 may spread via speech: Study

Microdroplets generated by speech can remain suspended in the air in an enclosed space for more than 10 minutes, a study published on Wednesday showed, underscoring their likely role in spreading Covid-19. Read more
Indeed the deal was so swift, PS can reveal Fordham is yet to sign a contract recognising his new gig, which is due to kick off in two weeks. Friends say father-of-three Fordham's "head was spinning" after 72 hours of negotiations. Insiders have also revealed that Fordham and Malone are mates from private school Saint Ignatius' College Riverview. The pair are heralding a generational change at 2GB and repositioning its format, with plans to create radio that "is not just for old people". But they are bracing themselves for how Jones' legion of listeners will react, and are said to be expecting ratings losses. And while Fordham, a seasoned journalist who has ventured into television, will inherit Jones' timeslot, he won't be getting his pay packet, with his new deal said to be worth much less than the $4 million a year package Jones was on.

"If they put Ray into breakfast it would stuff up two of the top shows, it just didn't make sense. It's smarter to keep Ray where he is. Putting Ben into breakfast was far more effective economically, and it's not just about ratings. The revenue from Ben's show is strong, the advertisers like the show ... he's not as polarising as Alan has been of late," the insider revealed to PS. Loading Fordham intends to take his team of four producers with him, which leaves a question mark over the six staff who work on Jones' show, some having done so for several decades. Also up for grabs is Jones' office, which was described to PS this week as "lavishly appointed" and is understood to house a vast treasure trove of hard copy files filled with correspondence between Jones - who does not use a computer - and many powerful names. This is where the all-powerful radio presenter would spend many hours running his empire. Jones' radio offices have been the subject of much mirth over the years, like the time at 2UE when Jones' then manager, the late Harry M. Miller, accused station management of treating his client with less respect than his stablemate, John Laws. An incensed Miller grabbed a tape measure to prove Laws had been given a larger office than Jones. It turned out Jones' quarters were the same size as Laws'; he just had more furniture, making it look smaller.

New project for Stefanovic Johnny Carson, David Letterman, Jimmy Kimmel and ... Karl Stefanovic? "Complete rubbish," according to Stefanovic when PS asked him about reported plans to launch himself into Hollywood. "My hands are kinda full at the moment anyway," the resurrected Today host explained, referring to the birth of his fourth child, a little girl Harper, delivered by his second wife Jasmine two weeks ago.

And while Today has received a pummelling in the ratings, six months since the show launched with Stefanovic and Allison Langdon at the helm he says he remains committed to the long-term success of the show. Karl Stefanovic in October. Credit:Wolter Peeters However Stefanovic's multimillion-dollar contract with Nine is due to expire in December, making the next six months critical in terms of how those negotiations pan out. In the interim PS can reveal Stefanovic is re-creating himself as something of a showbiz producer, establishing a production company called Eight in which he has partnered with his recently appointed new manager Mark Morrissey - who also looks after Chris and Liam Hemsworth - and Richard Weinberg, husband of Westfield heiress and billionaire Monica Saunders. "We believe there is a gap in the market for smaller productions, we have a lot of ideas we want to pitch to Nine ... and yes I have a few Hollywood heavy hitters among my friends, and it would be a bonus if something was picked up there too, but our main focus is local," Stefanovic said.

So what can we expect? Stefanovic has been doing a series of variety shows on Instagram, each running for just a few minutes and featuring gags (and canned laughter) from the likes of Richard Wilkins and radio personalities Ryan Fitzgerald and Tim Blackwell. He firmly believes the concept could be developed further, despite a lukewarm reception. Stefanovic also copped considerable flak for his appearance last week on youth-focused web show Live At Club Dunni, though Stefanovic said it was "all about reaching out to a different audience ... there is a big audience watching that stuff that are not watching mainstream TV, you'd be mad not to try and tap into that". Lock moves on While global fashion juggernaut IMG licks its wounds with the cancellation of this year's Australian Fashion Week - the man who started it all, Simon Lock, is not wasting any tears.

Australian Fashion Week founder Simon Lock has gone virtual. This week he launched the first large-scale digital showcase of Australian wholesale collections via a partnership with the Australian Fashion Council. US fashion bible Women's Wear Daily reported Lock's five-year-old business-to-business virtual showroom platform Ordre was presenting 20 Australian designers to its global database of 8000 fashion buyers. With designers each paying around $1000 to have their wares on the platform, it begs the question of what the future of the real-life Fashion Week is, considering designers such as Camilla Franks and Pip Edwards (of PE Nation) have spent $100,000 or more staging their shows. And could it spell the end of the runway front row?

Maggi Eckardt, 'the girl you want to see' Maggi Eckardt was discovered in Sydney and went on to work in London and Paris. Credit:Thomas Kublin When the glamorous young Maggi Eckardt finally stepped off the gangway following her long voyage to England from Australia, the budding model, dressed in her finest DIY creations, caught the eye of an unlikely admirer: a seagull, which proceeded to defecate all over her. For years Eckardt would rejoice in retelling the tale of her arrival in 1958, playing down the start of what would actually become one of the most astonishing fashion careers achieved by any Australian. Once in London she modelled gowns at Norman Hartnell's salon, recalling how nervous she was when the likes of Princess Alexandra came in to view the creations, clumsily curtseying much to the amusement of the regal visitor.

After six months having gowns pinned on her that would ultimately be worn by Queen Elizabeth II and Audrey Hepburn, Eckardt plucked up all the courage she had and marched into the offices of British Vogue, declaring, "I'm the girl you want to see". "I was in the right place at the right time. After a few shoots and covers it snowballed," she would later recall. Last week Eckardt died, aged 82, following a short illness. Still working as an interior designer, Eckardt had continued to live a vibrant life, creating a glamorous home in Redfern and working with a select group of clients. Norman Hartnell visiting David Jones in 1958 with models Maureen Duval (centre), Maggi Eckardt (right) and Diane Masters (left) on 20 October 1958. Credit:Harry Freeman But it was Eckardt's time as a top international model that she will be remembered for most, along with her own television variety show, and a high-profile marriage to a young, brash advertising executive named John Singleton.

Eckardt, Singleton's second wife, once recalled how he sent her 12 dozen roses - not for any particular occasion, simply as a spontaneous gesture straight from the heart. Maggie Eckardt with John Singleton after a rugby league game between Souths and Newtown in 1980 at Newtown Leagues Club. Credit:Sydney Morning Herald "Who does that? Whoever else does that? Do you?" she demanded during an interview in 2002, annoyed at being asked too many questions about her former husband's drinking, his fights, his attention to other women. "He is the most invigorating, wonderful person to be with, passionate, honest and generous with his thoughts. And he is lovable. I have to say that of my memories of everything we did and enjoyed together, it was the most fabulous time of my life." Friends would later say Eckardt and Singleton could be lots of fun but a blazing row was never far away. They had an unerring instinct for pushing each other's buttons.
Burma Kachin Rebels Blame Law for Stopping COVID-19 Cooperation

A meeting between government representatives and Kachin leaders on May 13. / The Kachin Net / Facebook

Yangon  The Kachin Independence Army (KIA) says the Unlawful Association Act creates a barrier to cooperation between the government and ethnic armed groups in fighting coronavirus.

Article 17(1) of the colonial-era Unlawful Association Act has been used to prosecute people accused of being affiliated with or providing support to armed groups fighting government troops. The KIA is a non-signatory to the governments Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement but is still in negotiation over a bilateral ceasefire.

There are many difficulties [with helping fight coronavirus]. For example, we are concerned about Article 17(1). In principle, we can cooperate but, in reality, there will be many challenges, said KIA spokesman Colonel Naw Bu.

Kachin State social affairs minister U Ne Win, state health chief Dr. Aye Thein and the heads of other government departments held talks with chairman of the KIAs coronavirus prevention committee chairman Sumlut Gun and Lieutenant General Gun Maw on Wednesday.

Kachin religious leaders, including Kachin Baptist Convention president Reverend Hkalam Samson, attended the meeting, but the Northern Command of Myanmars military, which oversees Kachin State, did not send a delegation.

The two-hour meeting could not reach any agreement on practical cooperation, said Col Naw Bu.

We have to consider all the restrictions, including Article 17(1), which is a concern for Kachin residents and organizations. Cooperation with them is unrealistic. If they are to cooperate, they have to relax those restrictions, said Col Naw Bu.

The KIAs central committee said on Thursday that it would prioritize fighting COVID-19 over armed clashes with Myanmars military, and that it would cooperate with the government in tackling the pandemic.

At Wednesdays meeting, the Kachin State government, in cooperation with the National Reconciliation and Peace Center (NRPC), provided 5.7 million kyats (US$4,000) to feed those under quarantine in areas controlled by the KIA. The Kachin State Health Department also shared knowledge about COVID-19 and pamphlets and masks were distributed.

U Zaw Zaw, director of the Kachin State government, said he could not confirm if the government would provide tests for COVID-19 in KIA-controlled areas.

We can cooperate with the KIA only under the guideline of the NRPC and the coordinating committee led by Dr. Tin Myo Win [of the NRPC]. We have no coordinating committee at the state level, said U Zaw Zaw.

Myanmar Presidents Office in late April formed a committee with armed groups to contain COVID-19 in rebel-held territory.

Around 100,000 civilians live under the KIA and around 150 people are reportedly in its quarantine centers. Since April, the armed group has been building a hospital for COVID-19 patients.

Because government labs are not conducting testing for the KIA, the group has bought test kits for screening and negotiated China over possible lab tests.

A test swab from a coronavirus suspect in Laiza, where the KIA has its headquarters, was taken on April 13 and sent to a Chinese lab. He tested negative.

In an interview with The Irrawaddy in April, Col Naw Bu said the KIA needed medical equipment to treat potential COVID-19 patients, but the government had not provided anything.

The coordinating committee led by Dr. Tin Myo Win held talks with the Karen National Union and New Mon State Party through video conferencing to discuss potential cooperation.

The Taang National Liberation Army and Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army, which are both engaged in conflict with the government in northern Myanmar, said they were only informed by e-mail about the committee and it has not given practical help or discussed guidelines on cooperation.

The Office of the Commander-in-Chief of Defence Services recently declared a coronavirus ceasefire across Myanmar until August 31.

The ceasefire does not apply where terrorist organizations are based, the statement said.

The government declared the Arakan Army to be a terrorist group in late March. The group is engaged in fighting in Rakhine and Chin states.

Translated from Burmese by Thet Ko Ko

You may also like these stories:

What Does COVID-19 Mean for Myanmars Peace Process?
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Baitys church and Return America are among the plaintiffs in a lawsuit filed Thursday against Cooper that asks a federal court in Greenville to throw out the governors restrictions on indoor religious services in North Carolina during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Churches have a constitutional right to be open, Baity said. We are being discriminated against because they are treating others differently than how they are treating the church.

Cooper, a regular churchgoer, said he hadnt read the lawsuit. Cooper said his orders have been drawn carefully to recognize First Amendment protections and will ultimately end.

Bishop Sir Walter Mack Jr., the senior pastor at Union Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, said that his church will not join the lawsuit against Cooper.

As clergy, there comes a time when we have to adhere to governing authorities, Mack said. Medical professionals and the CDC are advising us to limit large gatherings for a certain period of time.
The board that oversees all aspects of transportation in San Francisco  from Muni buses to e-scooters to parking  is set to lose nearly half of its seven members next week.

So far, the Board of Supervisors has declined to reappoint one member and has postponed hearings to confirm another nominee. With a third director set to retire on Wednesday, the board will be down to four members, just enough to have a quorum to vote.

If one of us is absent, then everything screeches to a halt, said Director Cheryl Brinkman. She and others were chagrined to see the board all but gutted, at a moment when the transportation agency is grappling with COVID-19  and hemorrhaging money.

With the coronavirus pandemic and economic shutdown, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency will have to make quick, pivotal decisions on how to enforce social distancing, when to reopen Muni Metro light rail, what rules to impose regarding face coverings and whether to expand its Slow Streets program of closing roadways to car traffic. If a person has to miss a meeting because of work or illness, the board would be hobbled.

The crisis became apparent Tuesday, when the supervisors voted against reappointing board Director Cristina Rubke, a disability rights advocate who has served since 2012. Six supervisors opposed her confirmation, citing her support of a budget that included a 30-cent Clipper card fare hike in the middle of the pandemic. Some supervisors were also rankled when Rubke and two other directors voted against naming the future Chinatown Central Subway Station after the late power broker Rose Pak.

Yet during the meeting, Supervisor Hillary Ronen alluded to a more fundamental power struggle between the supervisors and Mayor London Breed, who fills every vacant seat on the MTA board. The supervisors passed two resolutions over the past year  one to name the Chinatown station after Rose Pak, and another protesting the fare hike. Although the MTA ultimately approved the Rose Pak christening , Ronen said the directors ignored both resolutions.

By ousting Rubke, Ronen hoped to send a message to the MTA board that when we speak ... overwhelmingly at this Board of Supervisors, we do not want to be ignored by that board, which is appointed, by the way, exclusively by the mayor.

Lea Suzuki / The Chronicle 2018

Brinkman was stung by the vote, and called Rubke a casualty of war. Rubke was not immediately available for comment Thursday.

This week, the supervisors also canceled a meeting of their three-member Rules Committee on Monday. It would have been the first hearing on Breeds new MTA board nominee, Jane Natoli. When Director Art Torres steps down on Wednesday to join the University of California Board of Regents, the MTA board will be reduced to four members.

It certainly surprised me when Cristina wasnt confirmed, so I wanted to take this opportunity to share my qualifications, Natoli told The Chronicle, noting that shes spent the past several days on the phone or in Zoom meetings with various supervisors, listening to their concerns.

A few raised objections to the fare increases, while others felt they didnt have enough input when Breed and transportation chief Jeffrey Tumlin rolled out the plans for Slow Streets.

I havent made a decision on Jane Natoli, but I will watch closely to see what her plans and her vision are, Supervisor Matt Haney said. He was one of the six votes who blocked Rubkes confirmation, along with Ronen, Aaron Peskin, Dean Preston, Sandra Lee Fewer and Shamann Walton.

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.

Shortly after the meeting, the pro-housing group SF YIMBY began circulating a petition in support of Natoli. She is a bicycle activist who favors dense housing near transit, a form of urban design that has proved controversial in San Francisco. If confirmed, she would be the first transgender woman to serve on the transportation board.

None of these traits seemed to convince Peskin, who did not take a position on whether or not to confirm Natoli. However, he said she illustrates a disturbing trend of the mayor rewarding her political allies with high-level appointments.

Breed endorsed Natoli for a seat on the San Francisco Democratic County Central Committee, a race she lost this year. But that doesnt signify a trend, said the mayors spokesman Jeff Cretan.

The mayor nominated Jane because shes a committed transit advocate who is deeply involved in the community, Cretan said.

Natoli, meanwhile, said shes eager to take the seat and help the transit agency move forward.

Editors note: This story was amended to reflect the correct Muni Clipper card fare increase, which is 30 cents.

Rachel Swan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: rswan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rachelswan
As pharmaceutical companies rush to find a coronavirus vaccine, one pertinent question emerges -- who would receive the first doses? Many world leaders believe that the vaccines should not be patented and that it should be made available for everyone free of charge. Leaders from around 140 countries wrote to the World Health Assembly (WHA), the policy-making body of the World Health Organisation. "Governments and international partners must unite around a global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge," the letter to WHA stated.

It also said that the same applies for treatments, diagnostics and other technologies. President of South Africa and Chair of the African Union Cyril Ramaphosa, Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan, President of the Republic of Senegal Macky Sall and President of the Republic of Ghana Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo are some of the signatories, stated UNAIDS.

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Delhi govt sends proposal to Centre on lockdown 4.0; India's COVID-19 cases-81,970

Sanofi Pasteur that kicked off a storm by saying the US had "the right to the largest pre-order because it invested in taking the risk" has now said that there will be no advance for any particular country.

However, a decision to this end might take a while as experts and researchers still believe that a corona vaccine could be at least a year away. Marco Cavaleri, head of European Medicines Agency said that the beginning of 2021 was an optimistic estimate for the development of a corona vaccine. He added that the EMA is looking at around 115 therapeutics or treatments. WHO chief scientist Soumya Swaminathan said that it could take around five years to get COVID-19 under control. "Let's say we have a vaccine and we're able to cover the world's entire population, which may take, I don't know, three years, four years. So I would say in a four- to five-year timeframe we could be looking at controlling this," she said at an online panel discussion.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine update: Moderna, Novavax lead race; Chinese firm builds largest vaccine plant

Pharma companies are, nevertheless, working towards achieving this. Here's the latest on the development of a coronavirus vaccine:

INDIA

The Indian government has allocated Rs 100 crore from the PM-CARES fund to support the initiative of producing a COVID vaccine. According to the Department of Biotechnology, there are as many as 25 vaccine development initiatives across the industry, academic institutions and startups that are currently underway. The fund will be utilised under Principal Scientific Advisor K Vijay Raghavan's supervision.

Bill Gates interacted with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday and discussed India's efforts to combat coronavirus and how India could be a key contributor in the efforts towards finding a coronavirus vaccine.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine update: More companies join the race as experts remain cautious

GLOBAL

University of Oxford's corona vaccine has crossed an important hurdle -- a recent animal trial showed that ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 vaccine was effective in preventing lung damages without any signs of immune-enhanced diseases. Independent experts see this as good news even as human clinical trials are underway.

In yet another trial in Missouri, the FDA asked the lab to test more candidates than originally expected. Twenty of the 40 people who received the COVID vaccine candidate developed some irritation on the injection side or an achy feeling. These irritants are also experienced while taking a flu shot. However, the effectiveness of the vaccine candidate is yet to be figured out.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine: Here's what's brewing in India and globally

US-based Novavax has said that they are just weeks away from entering the clinical trial phase. Chief Business officer, John Trizzino, in an interview to WUSA said, "We understand how this vaccine technology works. We understand the body's response to this. And so it provides us confidence that the vaccine development program that we have underway here at Novavax will have a similar result." Novavax recently secured a funding of $388 million from Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI).

A Canadian company based in Quebec, Medicago, said that their COVID-19 vaccine candidate produced a positive antibody response in just 10 days. In a statement, Medicago said, "Once results from a second 'boost' dose are available, Medicago will submit a clinical trial application to Health Canada and an investigational new drug submission with the FDA in the United States to allow for the initiation of human clinical trials this summer." The company said it could produce as many as 120 million doses of the drug every year.

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine: List of 5 COVID-19 treatment frontrunners
Sofia Vergara has been giving her 18.9 million Instagram followers something to look forward to while in quarantine with her Throwback Thursday posts.

And this week fans got an eyeful when she shared a topless photo of herself laying on the beach in Miami that's more than two decades old.

'#tbt Miami in the 90s,' she captioned the scintillating snap along with the hashtag, '#stayhomemiami,' which is a reminder for people to remain sequestered in their homes amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In the old photo, the Modern Family actress, 47, flashed a seductive look as she sprawled out on the sand, dressed only in green bikini bottoms.

She has her right arm forward and her left arm across her body in the sand, giving viewers more than a hint of her ample cleavage

Giving the sense of a casual day at the beach, the Columbian-born star has her legs lifted and crossed as she stared directly into the camera.

Sizzling: The Modern Family star, 47, has been showing off her age-defying figure -- then and now -- on Instagram and with her #tbt posts; she is pictured in 2018

Age-defying: Sofia Vergara heaped praise from her fans when she shared a #tbt snap of her in a black bikini from the 1990s on May 14

The response to Vergara's new #tbt photo has been overwhelmingly positive, with many people adding fire emojis, indicting hot, to their comments.

'Absolutely stunning photo,' wrote one follower.

Another commented: 'You've posted this picture several times... and we still haven't seen it enough.'

One person shared: 'Wow! That sand is so lucky!'

While another follower summed it all up with: 'Beautiful then and even more so now! Wow!!'

#tbt: The Modern Family star posted a photo on April 30 showing herself snuggled up next to her son Manolo, now 27, when he was a young boy in the 90's

#tbt: In another Throwback Thursday Vergara revealed her 20-year-old self in the 1980's dressed in a yellow one-piece swimsuit

Vergara got a similar response from last week's #tbt when she posted a sizzling picture of herself modeling a skimpy black bikini in Miami in the 1990s.

The actress, who recently finished a long run on ABC's hit comedy series Modern Family, posted a #tbt photo on April 30 showing herself snuggled up next to her son Manolo, now 27, when he was a young boy in the 90's.

In another Throwback Thursday she revealed her 20-year-old self in the 1980s dressed in a yellow one-piece swimsuit.

Vergara has been quarantining with her husband and actor Joe Manganiello, 43, at their Beverly Hills mansion that she bought for $10.6 million back in 2014.

The couple were married in November 2015 in Palm Beach, Florida.

Family matters: Vergara has been quarantining with her husband Joe Manganiello at their home in Beverly Hills; the couple are pictured with her son Manolo Gonzalez Vergara
Police patrol on motorcycles during a stricter community quarantine to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus in Manila, April 24, 2020.

The Metro Manila police chief and 18 other officers were charged Friday for allegedly violating the Philippines quarantine measures against COVID-19 by throwing a birthday bash for him last week, officials said.

Prosecuting Maj. Gen. Debold Sinas, who heads police forces in the greater Manila region, would be a test case in the Philippines implementation of quarantine rules, Presidential spokesman Harry Roque said. Manila and nearby communities that make up the metropolitan region have been at the heart of a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown on Luzon island  home to 60 million people.

No one is above the law under the administration of President Rodrigo Roa Duterte, presidential spokesman Harry Roque told BenarNews.

We are enforcing the rules  rich or poor  and I think Sinas is the test case for this because he is a high-ranking, middle enforcer and were taking steps to hold him liable for non-compliance to quarantine rules, he said.

Sinas was charged for violating an ordinance on wearing face masks as well as for violating quarantine protocols. Alfegar Triambulo, inspector general of the Philippine National Polices Internal Affairs Service, said seven of those charged were police generals who were identified as having joined the party for Sinas on May 8, when he turned 55.

However, it was not clear what the penalties are that Sinas and the 18 others potentially face. But it would likely mean stripping him of his office, a suspension or the filing of additional administrative case against him, government officials said.

On Friday, the state-run Philippine News Agency reported that Sinas would remain in his post pending results of an investigation into the birthday party, which was held at a police camp in the Philippine capital region.

Sinas has defended his alleged actions, which have been widely criticized on social media, and denied that the gathering was a party. He said that police who attended the party had followed social distancing guidelines, but photos of the party subsequently circulated on the internet. In one picture, he was shown on a table surrounded by his men in what appeared to be a drinking session.

Nevertheless, I apologize for what transpired during my birthday that caused anxiety to the public, the Metro Manila police chief said.

Photographs of Sinas party were widely shared on social media, sparking angry comments and calls for his resignation from Filipino citizens who have been restricted to their homes during the past two months due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

On Thursday, the New York based Human Rights Watch said Sinas should be disciplined for his flagrant violation of the countrys strict quarantine and lockdown regulations.

His superiors should not allow Sinas to play this double standard game, where he celebrates his birthday with friends all around like theres no pandemic, but the ordinary people of Manila face tight restrictions enforced by his officers, whose disproportionate strictness has resulted in rights abuses, Phil Robertson, HRWs deputy director for Asia, said in a statement.

As of Friday afternoon, the health department reported 16 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total to 806. It also reported 215 new cases, with the total now standing at 12,091.

Globally, more than 4.4 million people have been infected by COVID-19 and more than 302,000 have died as of Friday, according to data compiled by disease experts at U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

Jeoffrey Maitem contributed to this report from Cotabato City, Philippines.
Just as I was relaxing in bed at around 17:00 hours (5 pm) British Summer Time, actually 4 pm in Ghana, on Thursday, 14 May 2020, I received a video on my WhatsApp platform or page. When I checked it, I could see an unknown Ghanaian, surely residing in the United Kingdom, showing a Sun Newspaper in a selfie video explaining how former President John Dramani Mahama has been exposed as the alleged elected Ghana government official one in the Airbus scandal.

After watching the video, I decided to confirm the veracity of its content by dashing to a corner shop about a hundred and fifty metres away from my home to get a copy of the newspaper. When I got there, luckily, I found two copies left. Because they sell for 30 pence a copy, I bought both.

I checked page 21 of the newspaper for the story. Yes, the story was there. There is a particular statement in the story which is so convincing to point to former President John Mahama as the alleged, elected government official one in the UK investigations into the Airbus scandal for which Airbus agreed to a settlement of 3 billion to the UK, French and American governments to avoid any costly court prosecution and conviction.

The statement goes quote, unquote, He then worked as a travel consultant and said in one interview his best friends brother was vice-president of the country. The he in the statement refers to Mr Middlemiss as indicated in the preceding paragraphs. However, Mr Middlemiss is one of the four UK citizens and a Ghanaian born UK-based citizen summoned by the Special Prosecutor, Mr Martin Amidu (Hon), to help him investigate the Airbus scandal that has tarnished the image of Ghana in the international arena as well as causing a financial loss to the state.

Now that an international newspaper, widely read by many people, especially the youngsters, because of the interest they show in specific message-columns that always appear in certain pages of the newspaper, it is no longer a secret that former President Mahama was involved in the Airbus scandal.

With the foreign newspaper involved, former President Mahama will soon be in trouble. He will have to tell Ghanaians what he knows about the bribery contrary to the views being expressed by the NDC little-minds of whom Kevin Ekow Baidoo Taylor, Sammy Gyamfi and Johnson Asiedu Nketiah figure out conspicuously.

Rockson Adofo, the son of Kumawu/Asiampa soil, who loves to arm himself to the teeth with credible documental evidence, has two copies of the Sun newspaper with him as he writes. This goes to confirm that if he tells you he has abundant credible evidence on the Kumawu chieftaincy dispute contrary to the claims by the so-called powerful traditional overlord and the judges who are probably so-induced to twist justice in favour of the otherwise guilty party, he indeed has them.

Now, former President Mahama, may end up not contesting election 2020 as promised by Mr Kwame Baffoe, alias Abronye DC. If it is coming, it is doing  ereba a na eye  a joke we used to crack.

There is a time and seasons for everything. A time for a President to steal, and a time for him to be exposed. A time for judges to accept bribes in secret to twist justice, and a time for judges to be exposed and shamed in the broad daylight. A time to plan evil against others, and a time for evil to catch you.

Asa, thank you for forwarding to me the video that has engendered this publication and my running to a corner shop to purchase copies of the Sun Newspaper for future reference.

Rockson Adofo

Thursday, 14 May 2020
Workers put up signs at Shinsegae's duty free shop in Incheon International Airport prior to its opening in this 2018 file photo. / Yonhap



By Kim Jae-heun



The second half outlook for Shinsegae, one of the country's largest retailers, doesn't look good despite expectations that the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic here will gradually diminish



Shinsegae generated an operating profit of 3.28 billion won in the first quarter of 2020, down 97 percent from a year ago on revenue that fell 21.1 percent to 1.19 trillion won.



Sales from its department store business fell 11.7 percent to 331.1 billion won, as many of its outlets were forced to close temporarily after shoppers visiting them tested positive for COVID-19.



While its online shopping mall, luxury goods and home appliances sectors mounted a "strong defense," the poor performance in groceries, fashion and children's goods disappointed the market and investors.



Shinsegae's duty free sector was struck the hardest with a 30 percent decline in sales in the first quarter producing a loss of 32.4 billion won  revenue from airports and downtown shops nosedived 40 percent and 21 percent, respectively.



Yuanta Securities Korea said a recovery in the duty free business was essential to overcome the earning shock in the first three months of the year. Analyst Lee Jin-hyeob said the worst of the COVID-19 outbreak in South Korea has passed and Shinsegae's department store business could possibly get on a normal track soon.



"We still need to keep an eye on a recent infection cluster that occurred in Itaewon, but for now, Shinsegae's department stores are making their way up. The chances of a recovery in the duty free sector remain low for the time being, but if the government allows the retailor to sell its duty free products via other distribution channels, and rental fees for duty free shops operating at airports are lowered, it may find some breathing space," he said.



Samsung Securities said it will take longer for Shinsegae to see a rebound.



An earlier forecast predicted the COVID-19 pandemic would abate soon, allowing Shinsegae's duty free business to recover from May and peak in July. However, as the outbreak is continuing, the brokerage said the retailer's future is murky, although Samsung's Park Eun-kyung said the government's support policy for local duty free business operators will keep Shinsegae afloat.



"The Incheon International Airport Corporation will cut its rent for the duty free shops by 40 billion won over the next six months. The government will also allow duty free products to be sold domestically, which can solve stockpiling issues," Park said.



Both Lee and Park said that if China introduces reflationary measures and lifts its travel ban on Korea, these could have a positive impact for Shinsegae's stock price.


Nightlife looks completely different these days.

Bar patrons have taken things into their own hands -- shaking up cocktails at home, ordering booze from an app, turning up Bluetooth speakers to listen to a virtual DJ on Instagram live, maybe even while Zooming with friends.

But can that ever fully replace elbowing up to a crowded bar, chatting up a bartender and everything else that comes with a night out?

PHOTO: A crowded bar. (STOCK PHOTO/Getty Images)

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, with new social distancing requirements and ever-changing, state-by-state safety restrictions, many owners of bars and clubs are waiting with bated breath.

What's your state's coronavirus reopening plan?

The coveted counter space and tables at Dante -- a famously packed, award-winning cocktail bar and restaurant in New York City -- quickly shifted to slinging specialty drinks via curbside pickup and delivery until restrictions are eased. But the staffers are taking service amid the pandemic "one day at a time" until they construct a plan to fully reopen.

PHOTO: The bar at Caffe Dante in New York City in an undated photo before the coronavirus pandemic. (Dante/Steve Freihon)

"To be honest, none of us have any idea as to when things will really start to change," Linden Pride, owner of the Greenwich Village staple, told ABC News. "This whole process has pushed us to create a full takeout and delivery menu, as well as cocktails to-go, which has taken us out of our comfort zone to create new, alternative experiences for our guests."

Pride said he wants to continue the new experiences "once this is all over." He and his wife, Natalie, got the idea from a pop-up cocktail event in New Orleans, where people "drink in a plastic cup and walk down the street." They found thousands of stickers left over that read, "'One for the road,' or 'a roadie' as we call it in Australia," Pride added.

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.

Story continues

He hailed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo for quickly recognizing current liquor-licensing regulations that needed to be amended.

"As soon as the changes were brought into effect, which allowed cocktails to be purchased both for pick-up and delivery, with food, we saw this as an opportunity to try and keep the business operational, which would allow us to retain staff whilst continuing to provide a service to the community," Pride told ABC News.

Pride said, "it's so hard to know" definitively what service operations at Dante might look like in the future, but that he and his staff are keeping a close eye on operations in other states, including Georgia and Colorado.

"When we're allowed to open, we will adhere to CDC, WHO and state guidelines," Pride said, adding that he's already stocked up on thermometers to check people's temperatures at the door and that he's looking into creating disposable menus and setting up sanitizing stations, in addition to enforcing social distancing.

"One cool initiative" he's seen at bars and restaurants in parts of Europe, "is the extension of outdoor dining -- with some street closures." Pride said he sees a "real opportunity in New York" for designated outdoor dining and drinking areas to enable places on low-traffic streets to set up "socially distanced tables" and serve people responsibly.

Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday that the possibility of restaurants and bars opening in the city's streets is "being very thoroughly discussed" and "something we might be able to reach."

"I've been talking to restaurant owners ... they're making a great case that this could be a difference-maker," de Blasio said. "You have the right social distancing and protections, the right capacity ... and the right atmosphere. We have to be smart about it." This could only come after New York City meets the city's indicators for 10 to 14 days and meets the state's indicators, which de Blasio said could be possible in the first half of June.

Pride said that with "any kind of reopening, it doesn't mean that customers are going to flock to [bars] and fill up those seats." Dante will look for other inventive options to recreate what Pride calls the "ritual and experience" of going out, like "creating a Friday night takeaway kit" complete with cocktails and a playlist to give customers the full experience at home.

Pride has also been in contact with close friends in the industry, including the operator of New York's PDT, and said bars and lounges that rely solely on beverages and bottle service will face "a huge challenge because they don't have full-service kitchens."

A standard liquor license requires nightclubs and bars to serve food in order to run a full-service beer, wine and liquor operation, according to the New York State Liquor Authority.

Eddie Dean, owner of the Brooklyn club Schimanski, has been through many ups and downs after 30 years in the nightlife business, but he's worried now about bars and clubs.

PHOTO: A restaurant posts a closed sign in the early evening in Brooklyn after a decree that all bars and restaurants shutdown by 8 pm, in New York City, on March 16, 2020, as much of the nation takes extra precautions due to the coronavirus outbreak. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

"These businesses are built on volume. A very large percentage of small bars and restaurants pretty much go week to week hoping to make payroll," he told ABC News. "I imagine a high percentage of New York City-based hospitality businesses will not reopen -- or open but not be able to sustain. It's going to be ugly."

Schimanski "acted fast to close down" -- perishable items cleaned out, sound equipment covered, employees furloughed. Dean now is having "preliminary conversations" with the landlord to "get through this mess as best as possible."

PHOTO: Inside Brooklyn, New York nightclub, Schimanski, in an undated photo before the coronavirus pandemic. (Schimanski)

"So far," he added, "I have not heard anything positive for clubs. Any notion of opening at 25 or 50% capacity or even 75% isn't realistic. We will do what it takes to ensure the safety of our staff and all our guests."

Even amid the current difficulties, Dean said there have been silver linings, like staying in touch with his team and "thinking of new ideas and concepts." And being able to rest a bit "has been welcome."

"Anyone who knows me knows I love a good challenge. This is certainly a big challenge. I can't wait to get back and do great things," he added.

Slate, a multi-floor lounge and nightclub with multiple bars and hundreds of hands-on games like pool and ping pong, has catered to Manhattan's lively late-night crowds for over 20 years. But it could struggle welcoming back customers at a 6-foot distance.

Owner Aristotle "Telly" Hatzigeorgiou told ABC News, "We're adjusting as best we can."

The owner's plan for a return to operations will eventually include "strict sanitation guidelines that will be followed between each use, and we'll make sure all tables, chairs and games are spread apart enough that people can safely socially distance themselves."

PHOTO: A gust plays pool at Slate in New York City in an undated photo, before the coronavirus pandemic. (Slate)

He added: "Temperatures will be taken at the door. Hand sanitation stations will be placed all over the venue, and markers will be placed both inside and on the sidewalk outside for any line that may form to ensure guests stay 6 feet apart while we check IDs, take temperatures and check coats."

Hatzigeorgiou plans to take full advantage of the sprawling 17,000-square foot, two-floor space. "Once restaurants are given the OK to open in NYC," he said, "we can start to open some parts of Slate."

For bars with live music, like Howl at the Moon in San Antonio, COVID-19 could silence the big, bustling crowds that scribble down song requests and pass the papers up through the bar to the stage.

Denise Ramirez, a musician who plays piano at the hopping venue on the San Antonio Riverwalk, told ABC News that after three years there she has a different perspective for what a new normal could mean.

"Howl is typically a packed house, especially on weekends when we get a lot of bachelorette parties and birthday parties booking up tables," she said.

The music-centric bar has 14 different locations in the U.S. and has to keep track of "all the different regulations being put in place by different state and local governments," Ramirez explained. "I can only assume that's only made it more difficult for them as a company to figure out what they're going to do."

"Their plan is to wait until bars can open at a full capacity or near-full capacity, because in their words, 'Howl has to be Howl,' which makes sense to me," the pianist said. "I've been part of a now-closed Howl establishment in New York City and have seen what happens if it tries to remain open for only five people on a Tuesday. And I think it's the right move."

Ramirez and the other entertainers, bartenders, servers and door attendants were furloughed, and she thinks they will "wait quite a bit before reopening," even with the state of Texas currently reopening restaurants at 25% capacity. "The return to nightlife is going to be a mixed bag. I would expect lots of excitement from everyone having cabin fever, but I'd also expect quite a few rules in place."

"I don't think anyone wants to be singing on stage with masks on," Ramirez said about a discussion with her fellow musician friends. "We turn to nightlife to escape from our problems, so having a reminder of the pandemic onstage in front of us would kind of defeat that purpose."

What to know about 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

How bar owners envision the future of nightlife after coronavirus originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Friday, May 15th, 2020 (1:13 pm) - Score 2,587

The Plymouth City Council (PCC) has announced that BT have been awarded the contract to install a new gigabit-capable fibre broadband network across Plymouth, South Hams and West Devon, which will use 2.2m of public funding to help connect 131 public sector sites (e.g. hospitals, schools, libraries and council buildings).

As part of this announcement BT has revealed that theyve committed significant inward investment to the regions communications network worth over 22 million over the next few years, although its unclear whether or not theyre including Openreachs existing commercial FTTP and FTTC broadband roll-out plans into that figure.

Otherwise building work on the new full fibre network is expected to commence during the autumn 2020 period and will continue into 2021. The management and oversight of this installation will be carried out by Delt Shared Services on behalf of the partnership.

Tudor Evans OBE, Plymouth City Council Leader, said: The lockdown illustrates exactly why we need to make sure our technology and our networks are up to the job  not just now but in the future. Weve all had a wakeup call for how important our broadband network is  just on a personal basis let alone on a business continuity side  so I am chuffed to bits that this is going ahead. The possibilities are limitless.

Samantha Toombs, BTs Director of Public Sector (South West), said: As a major employer in the area, were really pleased to be working with partners in Plymouth and South West Devon on this new ultrafast broadband network. Using the latest broadband and our 5G mobile network will help critical public services run more efficiently and offer new, innovative solutions. It will also benefit council staff and healthcare providers, helping them improve the services being provided to residents and patients here. That means improving the economy and the lives of people living in and visiting this area.

One curiosity in all this is that PPC made a similar announcement one year ago (here), although at the time they claimed to have secured 3m of funding from the UK governments Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) project and intended to connect 227 public sector sites. We assume this is that same contract, albeit significantly scaled-back (we are currently seeking some clarification on this).

At present the city of Plymouth (where most of this work will take place) still gets the bulk of their gigabit-capable connectivity from Virgin Medias hybrid fibre coax based cable network (covers most of the city). Sadly only a tiny bit of FTTP from Openreach exists today.
Premier Brian Pallister is urging Manitoba Hydro and its unions to avoid 700 layoffs by agreeing to an Employment Insurance work-share plan, even though it's neither practical nor feasible, a confidential memo shows.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Premier Brian Pallister is urging Manitoba Hydro and its unions to avoid 700 layoffs by agreeing to an Employment Insurance work-share plan, even though it's neither practical nor feasible, a confidential memo shows.

The internal Manitoba Hydro memo says that Service Canada, which administers the job-sharing program, requires that all employees and unions agree to it before submitting an application. The Crown utility has 5,475 full-time employees and multiple unions.

"Manitoba Hydro does not expect all employees to voluntarily agree to reduce their hours of work and pay," the memo says. Moreover, if Service Canada approved Manitoba Hydro's application, the level of weekly reporting that the federal department requires would be "very resource intensive." Administering the program is "administratively complex and burdensome," and could end up costing Hydro more money.

Yet, at a Thursday morning teleconference, the premier was rooting for Hydro and its employees to work out a job-sharing agreement. He has promoted the idea since he began ordering wage-cost reductions in the public sector in response to the pandemic.

"We have never demanded layoffs," Pallister said. Work-share arrangements are happening in other public sector workplaces and Crown corporations and he urged the unions and the utility to "get back to the table and avoid layoffs."

"It's what we prefer and what I've urged Hydro to do and what I would urge unions to do," Pallister said. "I would encourage them to avail themselves of the opportunity."

On Thursday morning, Manitoba Hydro president and CEO Jay Grewal sent a message to employees saying the 700 temporary layoffs she announced on Monday "have never been our desired outcome." She said they remain open to exploring all options to meet the $11-million workforce expense reduction imposed by the government as part of its pandemic response. Grewal said her preferred option would be an eight per cent temporary pay cut for everyone at Hydro, including herself, and that it would require unions to agree to it.

One of Hydro's major unions says it has asked Hydro for details about the proposals and where layoffs would occur but have been told that information is "cabinet privilege," said Mike Espenell, business manager for Local 2034 of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, which represents 2,283 Hydro workers.

Manitoba Hydro president and CEO Jay Grewal says she would rather see all employees agree to an eight per cent wage cut to avoid layoffs. (Colin Corneau / Brandon Sun files)

"We don't know if we're negotiating with the government or Hydro right now. Everybody's hands are tied here. It's very difficult," said Espenell, adding he thinks the premier is muzzling Hydro's executive, which has openly balked at layoffs after it already cut 14 per cent of its staff  872 positions  in recent years.

"We believe the corporation has been told they can't share anything with us. I think we've got a good relationship with the corporation, but at this point, we're not really dealing with the corporation," he said.

Opposition Leader Wab Kinew has written to Grewal asking for a meeting to find out what effect the $11 million in cuts directed by Pallister will have on employees, Hydro rates and the future of the publicly owned utility.

"The premier has so far refused to allow the house to resume sitting more regularly for the foreseeable future and will not call budgetary committees to examine governments directives and cuts to Hydro," Kinew's letter said.

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"I would like to make the case that these job cuts are not necessary," he said in an interview. "I think it's all Pallister, in terms of where this is coming from."

Liberal Leader Dougald Lamont expressed similar concern.

"Neither Hydro nor the PCs have provided a shred of evidence to explain why any of these cuts are necessary or justified. The only reason Hydro is providing is that they have been ordered to do so by Brian Pallister, which the premier has publicly denied. These cuts are not necessary and they are happening because Pallister is ordering them, while denying it. That is a bad line to cross," Lamont said.

Manitoba Hydro declined to comment Thursday, issuing a statement instead.

"Manitoba Hydro continues to discuss several approaches to meet the savings targets with our bargaining units to minimize the impact on our employees and the service we provide our customers," the statement said. "We had been working with bargaining units to explore options which would allow for some flexibility in meeting this objective. Unfortunately, we could not find common ground on a means to achieve that, but we are continuing our conversations."

carol.sanders@freepress.mb.ca
PITTSBURGH, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- "I found conventional tools did not firmly anchor round objects," said an inventor from Waller, Texas. This inspired me to develop a better clamp that could secure various round surfaces."

He developed the V-CLAMP that would eliminate the tool rolling off a round project work piece. Instead, this invention would ensure a position grip without slipping. Additionally, it would provide users with enhanced safety by reducing the risk of finger and hand injuries.

The original design was submitted to the Houston sales office of InventHelp. It is currently available for licensing or sale to manufacturers or marketers. For more information, write Dept. 18-HUN-854, InventHelp, 217 Ninth Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15222, or call (412) 288-1300 ext. 1368. Learn more about InventHelp's Invention Submission Services at http://www.InventHelp.com.

SOURCE InventHelp

Related Links

http://www.inventhelp.com


Former Vice President Joe Biden says, if elected president in November, he would not pardon Donald Trump or order the halt to any federal probes of the current commander in chief.

Mr Trump was not completely cleared by former Special Counsel Robert S Mueller III on questions of obstructing justice by trying to interfere with the Justice Department's Russia election meddling investigation. And it appears Mr Trump was repeatedly referred to as "Individual 1" for having knowledge of or possibly committing crimes in documents crafted by federal prosecutors in the case of Michael Cohen, the president's personal lawyer who was sentenced to prison on federal charges.

Should any possible charges come from those, or other, matters, Mr Biden said late Thursday he would not issue a pardon for Mr Trump.

"It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct a prosecution or decide to drop a case. It's a dereliction of duty," Mr Biden told MSNBC.

"It's hands off, completely," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said, referring to any federal probes of MR Trump. "The attorney general is not the president's lawyer. It's the people's lawyer. We never saw anything like the prostitution of that office like we see it today."

That means Mr Biden would not follow an example set by Gerald Ford. The 38th president pardoned former President Richard Nixon in 1974 after the 37th president became the lone American chief executive to ever step down.

But one big difference: Mr Ford had been Mr Nixon's hand-picked VP. Another: Both were Republicans.

Mr Trump was impeached by the House -- and later cleared by the GOP-run Senate -- on charges he abused his power in dealings with Ukraine and obstructed a congressional probe. But neither constitute crimes.

Some legal experts have suggested any possible post-presidency legal trouble for Mr Trump would emanate from the federal prosecutors in the power Southern District of New York.

The president's businesses remain based in New York state, though he has moved his permanent residence to Florida.

Mr Trump has been fairly prolific with the presidency's pardon powers. Most recently, he has not ruled out one for Michael Flynn, the retired Army three-star general and his first national security adviser. The president fired Mr Flynn, saying he lied to the FBI and Vice President Mike Pence about his communications with a senior Russian official.

But the president has defended Mr Flynn in the three years since that firing, and expressed vindication when the Justice Department dropped all charges. The Obama administration started the probe of Mr Flynn that led to his firing and the federal charges, and Mr Trump has made the matter a central theme of his "Obamagate" conspiracy theory that Barack Obama and Mr Biden were at the center of a plot to take down his 2016 White House bid then hobble his presidency.

Mr Biden has denied knowing anything about a criminal probe into Mr Flynn. Mr Obama appeared to respond with a Thursday tweet that simply said: "Vote."
A Russian airline boss accused of a 2.3 million fraud should not be extradited because jails in her homeland are unsafe, a court heard today.

Alevtina Kalashnikova, 46, stole 212,325,636 Russian rubles by fiddling statements while working at VIM Airlines in between 2014 and 2017, prosecutors claim.

The deputy general director allegedly worked alongside CEO Alexander Kochnev to use the now defunct air carrier as a pyramid scheme moving foreign currency into their own accounts.

Alevtina Kalashnikova, 46, the former deputy general director of now defunct VIM Airlines is accused of 2.3 million fraud but should not be extradited because jails in her homeland are unsafe, a court heard today

Blonde Kalashnikova appeared in the public gallery at Westminster Magistrates Court today wearing beige heels and carrying a brown Miu Miu handbag

Blonde Kalashnikova appeared in the public gallery at Westminster Magistrates Court today wearing beige heels and carrying a brown Miu Miu handbag.

She spoke only to confirm her details and ask for a Russian interpreter during the full extradition hearing fixed for 16 November.

Hugo Keith QC, for Kalashnikova, said: 'Mrs Kalashinkova is wanted to stand trial in Russia. She was deputy general director of an airline called VIM based in Moscow.'

In September 2017, VIM Airlines CEO Alexander Kochnev and Chief Accountant Yekaterina Panteleyeva were arrested after an embezzlement case against the employers of the company. Pictured: the pair appear at a hearing at Moscow's Meshchansky District Court in December 2019

Alexander Kochnev was detained on suspicion of fraud, is escorted by police officers ahead of the hearing

Mr Keith said the defence would rely on evidence from academic Dr Samuel Greene, director of the Russia Institute at Kings College London (KCL), in their fight against extradition to Moscow.

He said: Mrs Kalashnikova was charged four days after a criminal case was instigated in 2017.

What is VIM Airlines? VIM Airlines was established by Viktor Ivanovich Merkulov in Moscow in 2000 and suspended all scheduled operations on 15 October 2017. In September 2017, CEO Alexander Kochnev and Chief Accountant Yekaterina Panteleyeva were arrested after an embezzlement case against the employers of the company. In November 2017, the airline's license was revoked by Russian authorities as it was unable to resume flights. Advertisement

She was bailed on relatively light terms and the order that the defence case be ordered by today, well we are almost entirely ready.

We rely on evidence from Dr Greene, an expert in political science and a (different) expert in prisons.

You will know of the historical difficulty the Russian federation finds itself in in providing effective and satisfactory assurances to this court with prison monitoring.

Its quite possible that by September the Russians are unable to provide any credible assurance at all.

We ask for the extradition hearing to be fixed now for November and I have spoken with Mr Caldwell (for the Russian federation) about this.

District Judge Vanessa Baraitser released Kalashnikova on bail.

She will return for a full three-day extradition hearing which will decide her fate on November 16.
A hairstylist in Denver was stunned after being left a $2,500 (2,049) tip by a new customer hoping to help the barber shop during the coronavirus crisis.

Ilisia Novotny was given the tip after carrying out a $27 (22) haircut at the end of her shift at at Floyd's 99 Barbershop.

The man also gave her colleagues an additional $3,300 (2,924) as he left the salon.

The shop had been closed since March 13 due to Colorado's Covid-19 lockdown restrictions but was allowed to reopen on Saturday as the state began to ease the strict measures.

Ms Novotny was finishing a long first day back on Saturday afternoon when a man, who wished to stay anonymous, dropped in for a quick haircut.

She told ABC News that she had 15 minutes left of her shift, but added: "I know how many people are desperate for a haircut right now so I didn't mind."

Ilisia Novotny was finishing a long first day back at Floyd's 99 Barbershop on Saturday / Floyd's Barber Shop

As she began cutting his hair, Ms Novotny said that her new customer asked how they were getting by after being closed for weeks.

"I finished up and he goes, 'Just so you know, the tip is not a mistake,'" the single mum told the broadcaster.

Ms Novotny said that her new customer asked how they were getting by after being closed for weeks / Floyd's Barber Shop

"I didn't know what he was talking about until I went over to find the receipt."

But the customer had left the huge sum, in addition to the cost of the haircut, she said.

"I was just in complete shock. This came at a crucial time for me," Ms Novotny said, adding that it was "truly a blessing" and she has "so much appreciation".

On his way out, the customer also gave the barber shop's receptionist $500 (409), the general manager $1,000 (819) to the general manager and $100 (82) for each of the shop's 18 other employees.

He also gave the barber shop's receptionist $500, the general manager $1,000 to the general manager and $100 for each of the shop's staff / Floyd's Barber Shop

Ms Novotny said: "I can't even tell you how much this means to us all," before adding that she plans to use the tip to pay rent and help her hearing-impaired son get the treatment he needs.
Russia has lashed out at news reports which said that the country is underreporting (by as much as 60 per cent) the number of fatalities due to coronavirus disease Covid-19.

Articles in New York Times and Financial Times reported that Russias coronavirus death toll could be much higher than government officials are saying. The articles said that they were based on a spike in total mortality rates reported by officials in Moscow, who said the capital registered about 1,800 deaths more in April 2020 than the monthly average.

Russias Foreign Ministry accused the two US-based publications of spreading disinformation.

Russian officials have so far reported 642 deaths in April.

Authorities say they are only counting deaths that are caused directly by the coronavirus and that since the pandemic came later to Russia, it was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe.

Russia as of Thursday had 2,52,245 confirmed coronavirus infections and 2,305 deaths. That put it behind only the United States in the number of infections, but 18th in the world in total deaths and 58th in deaths per million inhabitants.

How Russia counts

Some countries count everyone who died while infected in their total number of fatalities, others include cases where the virus is suspected to have played a role and some only count deaths directly caused by complications from the virus.

Russia is on the conservative end of the scale, attributing fatalities to the coronavirus only when a death can be directly linked, most often through pneumonia.

If someone dies of a heart attack but has been diagnosed with Covid-19, the official cause of death will be heart attack, said Sergei Timonin, a demographer from Moscows Higher School of Economics.

Russia has one of the highest coronavirus testing rates in the world, with some six million carried out so far.

The New York Times, meanwhile, said that its report was accurate because it was based on data released by an official state agency.

But following the foreign ministry statement, some Russian lawmakers demanded that reporters from the newspapers be stripped of their accreditation, effectively banning them from working in the country.
Syracuse, N.Y.  One of the many inconveniences that the coronavirus pandemic has imposed on the general public has been the inability to get a professional haircut.

Hairstylists were shut down by New York State on March 20 to help improve social distancing and, while certain restrictions in Central New York will be loosened on Friday morning, the restrictions on hair professionals will not be one of them.

Hairstylists are one of many groups of workers that have been particularly frustrated because their profession has not been included specifically in any of the guidance released by New York State. The state has indicated that workers will be able to return to work in four phases. It has given general guidance about those phases but has not placed every profession, leaving many questions for hair stylists.

When asked if hair professionals were part of Phase 2 of the re-opening, which could begin in as little as two weeks, N.Y. Gov Andrew Cuomo admittedly dodged the question.

I dont know where a hairstylist falls, so Im going to gracefully and artfully look to dodge your question on hairstylists until I can go back and get informed, and then I will have someone give you the answer, Cuomo said.

Cuomo said that the group of Central New York leaders that has been put together to communicate with the state could be part of that decision.

Phase 2 includes the return of professional services.

So, does that include hairstylists?

I havent heard that question," Cuomo said. I dont know that Im qualified to opine on (if hairstylists are in Phase 2) unless youre saying I need a haircut really badly and then well talk about it. Well get the information. Well also have daily calls with the regional control council. ... A lot of this is going to be locally managed, so well be working with them. One of the beauties of this state, its little, we have 10 different regions, each one is a little different. Each one of these situations has to be tailored to that community and that region. Thats why the county executives and the mayor will be so important in making it work.

While hair professionals do work very closely with customers, they have frequently noted that they also work with a small number of clients and their jobs would be very unlikely to cause a wide-scale community spread as long as safety precautions were taken. That mix of challenges and advantages has made guessing when they could return to work particularly difficult.

Many have also struggled to receive unemployment benefits, a process that has been more complicated for stylists because many are small business owners or independent contractors. Both Jordan Michel, who owns Jordys Barber Shop in Marcellus, and Rachel Renzi, who owns Rose Quartz Salon in Westvale, said that getting approved for unemployment was difficult. Both were eventually approved.

State officials, who are trying to provide guidance on the fly, have been challenged by trying to provide so much information and so much guidance to so many people across so many industries. Many businesses that are returning to work in Phase 1 of the restart, which begins on Friday morning, were still receiving key guidelines and recommendations on Thursday morning.

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said that the countys regional control group would announce a phone number on Friday so that local businesses could contact local representatives with their questions in an effort to get them answered.

Said McMahon: Well have a number tomorrow that we will forward where businesses can call and ask questions and we can get them answers. Well be unveiling that tomorrow.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Malls cant reopen in Phase 1, but curbside pickup allowed for interior stores

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Chris Carlson anytime: E-mail | Twitter | 315-412-1639
Two weeks after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer extended a state of emergency to the dismay of Republican legislative leaders, the two sides are gearing up to resolve the disagreement in court.

And theres plenty of legal talk happening behind the scenes.

No less than six amicus briefs -- written arguments by non-parties to a lawsuit -- have been filed in the case of Michigan House of Representatives and Michigan Senate v. Gretchen Whitmer.

Those outside forces hope to present Court of Claims Judge Cynthia Diane Stephens with information that could tip the scales. Stephens is expected to decide whether Whitmer has authority to extend the state of emergency because of the coronavirus pandemic or whether shes unfairly trampling on others economic prosperity and overstepped her bounds.

The judge will preside over a virtual courtroom Friday, May 15 using videoconferencing.

Whitmers stay-at-home order -- currently set to continue through May 28 -- has been at the heart of four Capitol protests in the last month from people concerned about their livelihoods.

Among the groups filing amicus briefs are the Michigan Nurses Association in support of Whitmer and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in backing the Legislature.

Michigan Nurses Association

The association represents more than 13,000 nurses and health care workers and, in its brief, the group argued that rescinding Whitmers orders prematurely could put health care workers more at risk than necessary.

It is no exaggeration to say that for nurses on the front lines of Michigans war against novel coronavirus, the outcome of this case could be a matter of life or death. The courts decision will determine whether the MNAs members can continue with some assurance that the most stringent measures available to slow and curb the spread of disease remain in place, according to the brief.

The nurses group goes on to say that health care workers and nurses are at increased risk of contracting COVID-19 by the nature of their jobs and, because of personal protection equipment shortages, nurses are often the last in line to get the gear.

They worry that hospitals could be overwhelmed by patients if COVID-19 surges again.

Shutting down the Governors emergency measures now could well trigger a resurgence of the virus in Michigan, or at the very least delay flattening of the curve, as Dr. (Anthony) Fauci and many other experts have warned, according to the brief.

The nurses group claims the governor absolutely has the right to protect the public health during an emergency under the Emergency Powers of Governor Act of 1945.

Mackinac Center for Public Policy

The well-known center describes itself as a nonpartisan research and educational institute advancing policies fostering free markets, limited government, personal responsibility, and respect for private property.

Leaders with the center say that Whitmer, when she chose to extend the state of emergency April 30 after the Legislature declined to do so, opened the door to a problematic scenario.

The COVID-19 pandemic easily could last for years to come. The Governors sweeping assertion that she can rule by emergency powers, potentially for years and without any regard for the Legislature, exceeds the scope of her statutory authority and violates the safeguard of the Michigan Constitutions Separation of Powers clause, according to the Mackinac Center brief.

It referenced Wednesdays ruling by the Wisconsin Supreme Court that overturned a stay-at-home order there.

The Court cited the example of a forest fire, where there is no time for debate and contrasted that with a pandemic, which lasts for months, and concluded that the Governor cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely, the Mackinac Center brief stated.

Mackinac Center leaders say there is no longer a need for emergency powers because the COVID-19 curve already has flattened and data proves it.

They also contend the states Emergency Management Act only allows a 28-day period for gubernatorial emergency powers without an extension by the Legislature. The 28-day period was adopted in 2002.

The Battleground

The legal crux of the lawsuit hinges on a judicial interpretation of the 1945 Emergency Powers of Governor Act, allowing governors to call for a state of emergency for as long as necessary. The 1976 Emergency Management Act limits it to 28 days, but doesnt invalidate the prior law.

House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, says the governors interpretation of the 1945 law is wrong and unconstitutional.

The Legislatures lawsuit seeks an expedited ruling from Judge Stephens.

In recent weeks, Whitmer already has altered the stay-a-home order to allow some sectors of the economy to reengage. Among them was the restart of manufacturing on May 11.

Others who filed amicus briefs for Fridays hearing are House Democratic Leader Christine Greig, the House Democratic Caucus, the Michigan Senate Democratic Caucus and attorney Mark P. Bucchi, a Troy business attorney.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Related stories:

Retail probably included in next wave of reopenings in Michigan, Gov. Whitmer says

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hopes to allow small gatherings in Michigan after May 28

Soggy protesters demand Michigan Gov. Whitmer end the coronavirus lockdown

Fight erupts at Michigan Capitol over doll with noose around neck
Vernon, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) -True Leaf Brands Inc. (CSE: MJ) (OTCQX: TRLFF) (FSE: TLA) ("True Leaf" or the "Company") announced today that, as part of its ongoing restructuring process, FTI Consulting Canada Inc. ("FTI"), in its capacity as Proposal Trustee of the Company and its subsidiaries, is soliciting offers for the assets of True Leaf Brands Inc.

This is a required step in True Leaf's previously announced Interim Financing Facility. The potential sale of assets is part of the Company's restructuring actions under the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Act (Canada) along with efforts to refinance debt and raise funds.

FTI is soliciting offers for the following assets:

True Leaf Cannabis Inc.

A 40-acre parcel of land in Lumby, British Columbia;

Within the parcel, there is a 18,000 square foot purpose-built cannabis production facility; and

A federal cannabis license from Health Canada.

The deadline for potential purchasers to bid on the assets outlined above is Monday, June 15, 2020.

True Leaf Pet Inc.

A pet supplement business with distribution and sales in 3,500 stores across North America and Europe.

The deadline for potential purchasers to bid on this asset is Friday, June 19, 2020.

For further information on the bidding process, please contact:

FTI Consulting Canada Inc.

c/o Craig Munro

604-757-6108 Direct

Craig.Munro@FTIconsulting.com

About True Leaf

True Leaf Brands Inc. is a wellness company for both people and their pets.

True Leaf Cannabis Inc., a division of True Leaf Brands Inc., is a Licensed Producer and owns True Leaf Campus, an 18,000 square foot facility located on a 40-acre site zoned for the cultivation, processing, and sale of cannabis, as well as general industrial use, in Lumby, British Columbia.

True Leaf Pet Inc., also a division of True Leaf Brands Inc., is a global pet care company offering plant-focused wellness products that improve the quality of life for companion animals. The company is guided by its mission to "Return the Love" which was inspired by the unconditional love that pets give us every day.

www.trueleaf.com

Investor Contact:

Allen Fujimoto

Interim CEO and Chief Restructuring Officer

allen@trueleaf.com

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Forward-Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements, and management may make additional forward-looking statements in response to your questions. Such written and oral disclosures are made pursuant to the Safe Harbor provision of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and True Leaf hereby claims such safe harbour protection for all forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements in this news release include, but are not limited to, statements regarding the Company's conclusion of a successful restructuring process. The statements are dependent on a number of assumptions and risk factors, which include, but are not limited to, (i) the outcome of the review process of all strategic alternatives available to the Company, (ii) the ability of the Company to submit a proposal acceptable to its creditors; (iii) the ability of the Company to continue its activities; (iv) the ability of the Company to secure additional funds, (v) general business and economic uncertainties, (vi) third party events and adverse market conditions and (vii) those risks set out in the Company's public documents filed on SEDAR. 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 effects on True Leaf. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this press release. Except as required by applicable securities legislation, the Company assumes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent information, events, or circumstances.

The Canadian Securities Exchange (operated by CNSX Markets Inc.) has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved of the contents of this press release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55927
The Queen's latest move is quite shocking because it goes against her own protocols. Queen Elizabeth is unlikely to break her own rules for no important reason, though.

According to Express UK, Queen Elizabeth chose to ignore her own royal mantra of neither complaining nor explaining. However, it was for an absolutely valid reason.

She made a heartfelt phone call with a Fellow of the Royal College of Nursing, Professor Kathleen McCourt. Not only that, she had that call shared to the public.

While it seems nothing for people who do not know the implications, this can be considered more admirable because Queen Elizabeth is usually tight-lipped. However, this time, she released the audio for a very private phone call with the McCourt, who is also the President of Commonwealth Nurses and Midwives Federation.

The call was made with the intention to pay tribute to the tireless efforts of the nurses in the country to keep the rest of the citizens safe from the coronavirus. Analysts claimed that this is certainly a first for the Royal family.

The said phone call took place on International Nurses' Day as members of the Royal Family strived to make nurses worldwide feel valued and appreciated for their valiant efforts. The virus is deadly, and yet nurses daily go to work on their protective suits to make sure those infected are receiving necessary care, putting themselves at risk of infection.

In the audio posted on the official Twitter account of the Kensington Palace, the Queen can be heard emphasizing the important roles played by the nurses during this crisis.

After exchanging pleasantries, the Queen said that the nurses certainly deserve to have an international nurses' Day to celebrate and be recognized in because "obviously they have had a very important part to play recently."

Other royal members, including Kate Middleton and Prince William are hard at work to make the frontliners feel appreciated and cared for as well, as they care for their covid-19 patients.

The "never complain, never explain" motto of the Palace is one of its oldest traditions. For years, the family never strayed from this, especially not the Queen.

The Queen has never ever participated in an official interview. She can make and deliver speeches, but she does not answer questions.

Imagine, she is the longest-reigning monarchy, but she only took part in her first televised exchange with a journalist in 2018. Still, on this breakthrough event, the journalist was not even allowed to ask her any questions.

Meanwhile, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle are the royals who have abandoned this principle not just once, but several times over, when they were still in their senior royal positions.

It can be remembered that staying quiet is not Markle's strongest suit. Asked how she deals with the pressures of royal life, she said she tried to have a "stiff upper lip" but she could not do it.

Before they stepped down their roles, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry shocked the world with a documentary where they highlighted just how hard it is to live in intense scrutiny. Meghan Markle "explained" and "complained" how not okay she was, since the birth of Baby Archie and being constantly attacked in all sides with controversies and gossips.

Markle said that perennially staying quiet can be quite "internally damaging."

READ MORE: Meghan Markle Secret: THIS Proves Duchess Orchestrated Megxit EARLY ON, Used Prince Harry for Fame?
President Donald Trump's name is seen on a stimulus check issued by the IRS to help combat the adverse economic effects of the COVID-19 outbreak, in San Antonio, Texas, on April 23, 2020. (Eric Gay/AP Photo)

Everything We Know About a Second Round of CCP Virus Stimulus Checks

With well over 30 million Americans out of work due to pandemic shutdowns, lawmakers are proposing a second round of stimulus payments to provide some relief, and they could be worth more than the first wave of deposits and checks sent out in April.

The Treasury Department has said that most eligible people have received their payments, while payments to certain recipients of Supplemental Security Income started to receive deposits on Thursday. Some checks for payments still in the mail or are being mailed.

Even though the House of Representatives is slated to vote on the so-called HEROES Act on Friday, the stimulus checks are not likely to reach Americans bank accounts in the near future. Both the White House and the Senate have said the HEROES Act contains some useful provisions but also includes a wish list of sorts from Democrats and will never pass or will be vetoed by President Donald Trump.

What Nancy Pelosi is proposing will never pass the Senate, Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said Tuesday, referring to the Democratic House Speaker from California. Republicans know what we are focused on. Were focused on helping American families.

Whats in the Bill

The legislation would provide another $1,200 to individuals and $2,400 for couples who file jointly on their taxes and who make less than a certain amount. Differing from the CARES Act, the new measure would provide $1,200not $500to dependents, up to three. It means that up to $6,000 can be provided for an eligible household, and, also unlike the CARES Act, the new bill also includes adult dependents who are not children under the age of 17.

The legislation also will extend unemployment insurance payments of $600 per week until January 2021, instead of July 2020. It will also provide unemployment benefits to other workers including part-time workers and independent contractors.

A $200 billion Heroes Fund will be established for front-line workers.

Whats more, it will extend the temporary suspension of student loan payments until next year.

What Else

The HEROES Act will not require recipients of payments to have a Social Security number to be eligible, and they will only need a taxpayer identification number (TIN). Those without a Social Security number could not receive the payments under the CARES Act.

Homeowners and low-income renters will also be protected from evictions and foreclosures and associated housing costs, respectively, under the bill.

President Donald Trumps name will not appear in the checks that are sent out under the HEROES Act. In the first round of payments, Trumps name appeared in the bottom-left portion of Treasury Checks that were mailed. Last month, some Democrats criticized the White House for including the text, although Trump told reporters at the time that it wasnt his idea.

And also unlike the CARES Act, the new round of deposits will be protected from creditors and debt collectors.
The Armenian authorities will strictly enforce their social distancing and hygiene rules for citizens after lifting virtually all restrictions on business activity in the country, senior government officials insisted on Friday.

They made the assurances after the Ministry of Health reported a record-high number of new coronavirus cases registered in Armenia in the past day.

The total number of cases rose by 184 to 4,044, with at least three more people dying from the virus and bringing the countrys official death toll to 52.

The figure does not include the deaths of 22 other individuals infected with COVID-19. The ministry claims that they died as a result of other, pre-existing conditions.

The daily number of new COVID-19 infections has been rising steadily since the government began easing in mid-April restrictions on peoples movements and economic activity imposed in late March. It decided on Thursday to lift the last remaining restrictions, including a ban on public transport and the closure of shopping malls and indoor cafes and restaurants, while extending a state of emergency by another month.

Critics say that the virus is continuing to spread rapidly because the authorities ended the lockdown too soon and never enforced it properly in the first place.

Justice Minister Rustam Badasian denied this while acknowledging shortcomings in their handling of the coronavirus crisis. The quality of oversight measures must definitely improve, he told RFE/RLs Armenian service.

Public transport services in Yerevan and other major urban communities will resume on Monday. The latest government rules require commuters to wear face masks and gloves and disinfect their hands with sanitizers to be placed inside all buses, minibuses and even taxis. They also limit the number of people who will be allowed to ride them.

Bus and taxi drivers must not only wear masks and gloves but also change them once in every three hours. They will also have to have their temperature measured twice a day. Drivers having a fever will not be allowed to work.

Also, starting from May 25 all people will be obliged to possess masks when walking in the streets, parks or other public spaces.

They currently must wear them when entering shops, banks and other offices. The latter are not allowed to let in any unprotected customers.

This requirement is widely flouted by business owners, their employees and customers, a fact which is fuelling skepticism about the effective enforcement of the new rules set by the government.

Badasian insisted that the authorities will take strict measures to ensure widespread compliance with them. All sanctions envisaged by us -- namely, administrative and even criminal liability -- will be enforced, he said.

But I am also calling on citizens to voluntarily abide by all restrictions because at stake is the health and safety of everyone and the older generations in particular, added the minister.

The rules are strict and monitoring of the compliance with them will also be strict, said Deputy Economy Minister Varos Simonian.
MUSKEGON, MI - The Rake Beer Project, a Muskegon brewery specializing in unique sour beers and limited-run specialty brews, is launching a new drink named for Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Big Gretch, a cucumber and lime flavored hard seltzer, takes its name from a meme of the Michigan governor, who has recently drawn national attention for her response to the coronavirus pandemic and often tense interactions with President Donald Trump.

The social media meme comes out of Detroit. Alongside an image of Whitmer in photoshopped Buffs, or Cartier buffalo horn sunglasses, the meme praises her tough approach to halting the spread of COVID-19, and later her response to protests against that approach. Detroit rapper Gmac Cash then turned the phrase into a song.

Now the Muskegon brewery has taken that same image and slapped it on a label. Whitmer is drawn sneering, wearing Buffs and a thick chain with the Michigan mitten - emblazoned with the numbers 231 (Muskegons area code) - around her neck.

The brews are available for order through the companys website.

Aannnnddd this weeks sales are now live at rakebeerproject.com ! Also, here is a sneak peak at the Big Gretch label... Posted by Rake Beer Project on Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Although Whitmer has become popular in wider Democratic circles, garnering praise on Saturday Night Live for her often bitter relationship with Trump, she has also become a symbol for some of governmental overreach in the time of coronavirus. Angry protesters have gathered outside of the state capitol and the governors residence in Lansing in response to Whitmers stay-at-home orders.

She is also the target of a lawsuit by state Republican lawmakers, who claim her most recent extension of the states stay-at-home order is a violation of her executive authority. Whitmers office has challenged the lawsuit, calling it a power grab."

As of Thursday, May 14, there were nearly 48,400 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Michigan, and 4,714 people have died.

Read more on MLive:

Letter from the Editor: Our new podcast shows you the stories, and the journalists, behind the MLive stories

Fight erupts at Michigan Capitol over doll with noose around neck

Rake Beer Project in Muskegon brings them in with 1-night specialty brews
Health officials say that the notion that the first U.S. resident to test positive for coronavirus was Patient Zero is 'clearly false', after antibody tests from two Washington residents suggested the virus hit America as early as last year.

Two residents of Snohomish County, which is north of Seattle and was an early hotspot, tested positive for antibodies after falling ill with COVID-19 symptoms in December, reported The Seattle Times.

Those illnesses predated the first confirmed U.S. case, a 50-year-old man who tested positive in Snohomish County on January 20, by nearly a month.

'Maybe it was that individual that was the first introduction in January, (but) it certainly wasn't the only one,' said Dr. Chris Spitters, health officer for the Snohomish Health District. 'And it's reasonable to assume, given reports like the ones that we've had and others around the country, that introduction may have occurred prior to January, as we initially suspected.'

Two residents of Snohomish County, Washington, reported experiencing symptoms such as fever and coughing in December. Pictured: Medics transport a patient into an ambulance at the Life Care Center of Kirkland in Washington, March 12

Recent blood tests revealed they both have antibodies for coronavirus despite the first US case not being confirmed until January 20. Pictured: Su Wilson (left) holds up her phone with other family members on video chat as she visits her mother Chun Liu, a resident at Life Care Center, who had tested positive for coronavirus in March, May 12

The people with antibodies and their doctors were shocked when blood test results came back positive.

However, public health officials say the two residents are not being counted in their official tally of cases because they can't be sure when the two were actually infected.

'They are being considered 'probable,'' Heather Thomas, a Snohomish Health District spokeswoman, told The Seattle Times.

'However, they are not captured in our case counts from January 20 forward.'

One of the two residents, named only as Jean, told the newspaper that she started coughing and having a fever just two days after Christmas.

The 64-year-old retired nurse finally improved after she was given a solution to inhale via a nebulizer.

After the pandemic hit, Jean wondered if her bug had actually been COVID-19. She was surprised when a sample of her blood was found to contain antibodies.

'When I got sick, I didn't even know what COVID-19 was,' Jean, who asked to be only identified by her middle name, told The Seattle Times.

'I understand that it's not 100 percent and that there's no guarantee that antibodies bring immunity. But it gives me some peace of mind that if I get it again, I can survive.'

Thomas, the spokeswoman, said 30 people in the district have tested positive for antibodies so far.

The positive serology tests can't determine whether the two residents had COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, in December.

That would be weeks before the disease was officially detected in the US.

Officials say they may have been exposed after the first recorded case. For example, one of the people had lunch with a hospital nurse in Kirkland, Washington, the site of a large outbreak in a nursing home.

However, both patients' symptoms match the definition laid out by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for positive cases.

On January 20, a man in Snohomish County became the first person to test positive for COVID-19 in the US, the so-called 'Patient Zero'.

He had been traveling in Wuhan, China, where the outbreak originated, and returned to the Seattle area on January 15.

Days later, the man began showing symptoms such a fever, coughing and shortness of breath.

'My own guess is that there wasn't one introduction or Patient Zero who brought the virus to the United States,' Dr Art Reingold, a public health epidemiologist at the University of California at Berkeley, told the newspaper.

'There were likely earlier and multiple introductions of the virus.'

This is not the first time that health officials have had to grapple with the fact the virus may have been circulating earlier in the US.

Until recently, it was believed that a resident of the LifeCare Center of Kirkland, who died on February 26, was the first COVID-19 death in America.

However, in April, it was revealed through autopsies that the first death actually occurred in Santa Clara, California, on February 6.

In total Washington has more than 18,400 infections and 985 deaths from coronavirus. There are more than 1.4 million cases of coronavirus in the U.S. and more than 88,000 deaths.

True coronavirus death toll in the US is more than 100,000 claims Harvard professor who says around 20,000 fatalities from the disease have gone unreported

The true death toll from the coronavirus in the US may already be in the six figures, new analysis shows.

As of Friday, more than 88,000 deaths have been attributed to COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

But a Harvard University statistician and The New York Times say that between 100,000 and 110,000 Americans have perished due to the pandemic.

While the undercount can't show who died from the coronavirus directly, or indirectly, it may provide a number on how truly widespread the pathogen is.

A Harvard professor calculated that the actual virus death toll in the US is between 100,000 and 110,000

He found that, by April 25, 70,000 more Americans died than what is considered standard. At the time, the coronavirus death toll was 52,422, which means fatalities were undercounted by at least 20,000 (pictured)

To calculate the estimates, The Times teamed up with Dr Rafael Irizarry, chair of the Department of Data Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of applied statistics at Harvard University.

Pictured, Dr Rafael Irizarry, chair of the Department of Data Science at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a professor of applied statistics at Harvard University

Connecticut, North Carolina and Pennsylvania were not included in the estimates due to incomplete data.

They compared death rates during Spring 2020 with the rates of previous springs.

Because many who die do not get an autopsy, let a lone a coronavirus deaths, they looked at 'excess deaths'.

Excess deaths are defined as over and above the number of people who would have died anyway - the typical mortality rate of a population.

Results showed that by April 25, 70,000 more Americans died than what is considered normal for those weeks.

At the time, the official figure for coronavirus deaths sat at 52,422, which means fatalities were undercounted by nearly 20,000.

The Times reports that Irizarry believes nearly 70 percent came from five states with some of the highest number of casess: Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey and New York.

This means that if that 20,000 number was added to the current total, the death toll surges pass 100,000.

The Times estimates that underreporting occurred after April 25 but not with such inflated numbers.

'There's probably less underreporting as time goes on,' Dr Robert N Anderson, the chief of mortality statistics at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, told the newspaper.

The calculations made by Dr Irizarry and The Times seem to match up with other studies looking at excess deaths.

Between March 11 and May 2, there were more than 24,000 'excess deaths' compared to years prior, a CDC report revealed on Monday.

That means, in a typical year, there are about 8,000 deaths during the same period and the current deaths are more than triple what it would be in an expected year.
Air India has opened bookings on select repatriation flights to be operated from India to the USA, the UK, Australia, Frankfurt, Paris and Singapore under the second phase of the Vande Bharat Mission. Only citizens of these countries will be eligible to fly on the outbound flights. However, in some of these flights, persons holding a valid visa of a certain duration of that country are also permitted.

"Reservations for travel from India to select destinations in the USA, UK, Australia & to Frankfurt, Paris & Singapore will commence from 1700 hrs on 14th May 20 on http://HYPERLINK "http://airindia.in"airindia.in," the national carrier earlier said on Twitter.

The Narendra Modi government started the Vande Bharat Mission on May 7 to bring stranded Indians home on a payment basis amid the coronavirus lockdown. It also permitted foreign nationals and valid visa holders to book seats on these outbound flights.

Under phase one of the mission, Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express are scheduled to operate 64 flights to bring 14,800 Indians home from 12 countries between May 7 and May 14.

On Wednesday, Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said 30,000 Indians will return from 31 countries on 149 flights between May 16 and May 22, the duration for the second phase of the Vande Bharat Mission.

"Phase II of Vande Bharat from 16-22 May will also include flights from Armenia, Australia, Belarus, Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Nepal, Nigeria, Russia, Tajikistan, Thailand and Ukraine," he tweeted.

India has been under lockdown since March 25 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, which has infected 78,003 people and killed 2,549 in the country.

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The latest quarterly report by the Department of Defense Inspector General on Operation Inherent Resolve, the US military operation to defeat the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (IS), reveals how the coronavirus pandemic may have given IS a breather, if a temporary one, to pick up its operations.

The terrorist group remains a "low-level insurgency," unable to hold territory, according to the report. But there are some worrying signs.

While US-Iraq security cooperation is likely to deepen, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the US on-the-ground partner against IS in Syria, is under pressure and increasingly constrained by its conflict with Turkey, as well as the coronavirus.

Credit where it's due

As we wrote back in January, the US campaign against IS does not always get the credit it deserves.

A so-called narrative of a US retrenchment from the Middle East sometimes skates over an overwhelming success, and it shouldnt.

In 2014, the so-called IS caliphate had overrun large chunks of Iraq and Syria, including Mosul in Iraq and Raqqa in Syria, ruling with unspeakable terror in the name of Islamic law.

The Obama administration assembled an international and regional coalition, spearheaded a relentless military campaign using air power and Special Operations Forces, partnered effectively with the SDF in Syria and bucked up Iraqi security forces, which had initially suffered some withering defeats.

The campaign had bipartisan support in Congress, featured textbook diplomatic and military coordination, and experienced a smooth transition from the Obama to the Trump administration, which finished the job on its watch.

The territorial defeat of IS in March 2019 and the US killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 were huge wins for the US-led coalition.

As a result of this success, the Pentagon report this month, which covers the period January-March 2020, now classifies IS as a "low-level insurgency," unable to hold territory.

Iraq: IS remains centerpiece of strategic dialogue

The Pentagon report implies some potential good news for resumed US-Iraq security cooperation against IS.

US counter-IS operations in Iraq were hindered in the first quarter of the year by the virus that causes COVID-19, the Iraqi government stalemate and US-Iran tensions playing out in Iraq.

Since the report, these seems to be some promising developments on all three fronts.

With regard to the coronavirus, the Pentagon, which had cut back on joint operations because of COVID-19, anticipates inviting coalition forces back to Iraq soon, as Jared Szuba reports. The United States maintains about 5,000 forces in Iraq.

The Iraqi government stalemate is now over, and complications with Iran also have subsided.

Iraq has a new government led by Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, who previously served as head of Iraqs National Intelligence Service, which was known for its professionalism and effectiveness in the battle against IS.

Iran backs Kadhimi and it seems, at least for now, that Iraq may be getting a reprieve from US-Iran hostilities playing out on its territory.

The new Iraqi government has cracked down on some of the Iran-backed militias that have attacked Iraqi protesters, as Ali Mamouri reports.

IS isnt finished, by any means. It is seeking a comeback in Iraq under the cover of the pandemic, Szuba writes, and has pressed attacks on Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdistan Region (peshmerga) security forces,

IS likely started crop fires in Makhmour, an agrarian town in the "disputed territories" between the Kurdistan Region and federally administered areas in northern Iraq, as we report here.

These regions, which are ethnically and religiously diverse, have been particularly vulnerable to IS penetration and terrorism.

They are also a fault line for tensions between Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan Region of Iraq, and Baghdad, which also include unresolved questions over budget allocation and oil revenue sharing. The peshmerga are seeking joint patrols and increased cooperation with Iraqi security forces in these disputed areas,

Syria: Turkish occupation, COVID-19 impact SDF operations

The Syria-Iraq border has also become a staging area for IS attacks in both countries, though more so in Syria, as Shelly Kittleson reports.

The Pentagon study indicated that US cooperation with the SDF, especially in preventing IS control of oil infrastructure, continued despite the pandemic and fallout from Turkeys invasion of Syria and occupation of northeastern Syria in October 2019, which targeted Kurdish administered areas.

The backbone of the SDF is the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG) that Turkey considers a terrorist group.

The Pentagon study reported no further impact to defeat-ISIS operations this quarter due to the Turkish incursion, but said that ongoing tension between the Turkish military and the SDF continued to divert SDF attention and resources away from the fight against ISIS.

There are no signs as yet that seemingly irreconcilable differences among the United States, Turkey and the SDF in Syria are getting better since March. Amberin Zaman writes that Turkey has sought to undercut a US-backed intra-Kurdish dialogue, while throttling water supplies as a means to pressure mostly Kurdish territories in northeast Syria. Fehim Tastekin reports on population transfers by Turkish forces and allied armed groups. Elizabeth Hagedorn has the story here on how rioting by IS prisoners in SDF-controlled prisons, the second such incident since March, further underscores the fragility of the security situation.

First things first means security

In Iraq, as we wrote here last week, the battle against IS remains central to US-Iraq security cooperation, and could even be the foundation for a regional strategy and alliance to combat extremism.

In Syria, the United States does not have a government partner and varying degrees of tensions with many of the key regional parties  Russia, Turkey and Iran. US forces work within a complex conflict environment where the risk of miscalculation and escalation involving US, Russian, Syrian, Turkish, Iranian and various other armed and terrorist groups remains high, as the Pentagon report points out.

Given those complexities, the focus on IS remains central to US regional strategy. There is a lot to build on, especially with the new Iraqi government in the strategic dialogue next month.

The Syrian picture is more cloudy, as the irreconcilable differences among the US-allied SDF and NATO ally Turkey remain, well, irreconcilable.

The Pentagon report notes that the "existential threat" to the SDF "is no longer ISIS but Turkey."

If there is to be some diplomacy shake up in Syria, it will likely come at the presidential level among Donald Trump, Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Vladimir Putin.

Absent that, expect more of the same, and a likely degradation of the security situation, not just in northeast Syria, but in the northwest, where Syrian forces could at any time resume operations in Idlib, drawing in Turkish forces.

Among a few truths in international relations is that you cannot expect sustainable economic development and reconstruction in an unstable or conflictual environment. The first order of business is always security, and in wars, ending them. Then and only then can the rebuilding begin. There is no post-conflict stability without the "post."
Navarro on Thursday was more critical of Bright: I see him not just as a disgruntled employee but as a deserter in the war on the China virus, Navarro said. Thats a harsh thing to say, but heres what I mean: He was asked to move to NIH to be the field general for a billion-dollar testing effort to protect and defend the American people, and he refused that assignment so he could cling to his old job. He deserted his post and hes not a guy Id ever want to share a foxhole with.
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Facing the prospect of a second wave of coronavirus cases, China announced plans Monday to rapidly test all 11 million residents of Wuhan, the original epicenter of the pandemic, in just 10 days, according to internal government documents. Confusion ensued over the next couple days: Was a 10-day plan feasible, and if so, when would it start? An employee on a hotline set up by Wuhans mayor clarified to the New York Times that the plan was a directive to the citys individual districts: Some would start earlier than others, but each would test its residents within 10 days. But now that mass testing has begun, questions remain about how the swift implementation and unprecedented scale are possible and whether such aggressive measures are necessary.

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The campaignwhat a government notice is calling 10 days of battlebegan after Wuhan reported a small cluster outbreak of six cases over the weekend, after going more than a month without new infections. All six came from the same residential compound, and five were asymptomatic. (The housing manager of the complex has since been removed.) Wuhan has been held up in China as an example of the countrys success in responding to the pandemic, but the cases immediately sparked fears of asymptomatic transmission in Wuhan, whose 76-day lockdown ended April 8.

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At least seven neighborhoods said they would begin testing Wednesday, and residents have already started waiting in hourlong lines for tests, Reuters reported. The tests are free, and residents say they seem voluntary. Theyre being advertised through flyers, loudspeaker announcements, and social media. And while authorities have said they intend to test all 11 million Wuhan residents, theyre prioritizing individuals from 12 high-risk categories, including students, medical and supermarket workers, and travelers. The government has also said it will target residential compounds with older people and densely populated neighborhoods, according to the Times.

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Its still unclear how China plans to procure and process all the testing kits. Third-party companies are scrambling to meet demand, and testing labs have started shipping equipment from other cities, but last month Wuhans deputy mayor, Li Qiang, said that Wuhan could test about 46,000 individuals per day. Health News, the official newspaper of the Chinese medical system, said on Tuesday that Wuhan currently has a testing capacity of only 100,000 people per day, Reuters reported.

Theres also been confusion over how residents will be tested. Third-party companies and some hospital employees are performing the tests, but one neighborhood official told Caixin magazine that he wasnt sure if he should send his residents to the hospital or ask doctors to establish a testing center in the neighborhood, the Times reported. And while some notices refer to all residents, others exempt children under 6.

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But the aggressive testing plan clearly has advantagesnamely, its a way for Wuhan authorities to try to avoid another strict lockdown and to mitigate fear.

Still, the program, which will cost the city an estimated 1 billion yuan (about U.S.$141 million), isnt universally favored. Wuhan residents have expressed concerns about infection in long testing lines, and some wonder whether such drastic, time-consuming, and expensive measures are necessary when infection rates are so low. Even Dr. Wu Zunyou, the chief epidemiologist of Chinas Center for Disease Control and Prevention, said on state television Tuesday that testing should be tailored to key areas and key groups, according to the Times. In communities without infections, there is no need to screen everyone, Wu said.

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At this point its hard to tell whether testing at this scale in Wuhan is necessaryand to what extent it might be helpful in stemming a second wave of COVID-19. But it does put into starker relief the shortages in the U.S., where testing continues to fall short of what scientists recommend. While China is debating the merits of mass testing in cities with a handful of new cases, the U.S. is seeing tens of thousands of confirmed cases each day, while President Donald Trump calls testing overrated, despite being the recipient of a daily test himself.
A prison officer working at a detention center just outside of Seoul has tested positive for the new coronavirus on Friday, prompting the judiciary to temporarily close courts here as a precautionary measure.



A prison officer working at a detention center just outside of Seoul has tested positive for the new coronavirus on Friday, prompting the judiciary to temporarily close courts here as a precautionary measure.



A 28-year-old resident of Anyang, south of Seoul, who works at Seoul Detention Center, was found to have been infected through chain transmissions traced to a nightclub in the central Seoul neighborhood of Itaewon.



The prison officer attended a wedding with a friend, who had visited a karaoke facility in the northern Seoul ward of Dobong. Infections have been reported at the karaoke facility where an acquaintance of an Itaewon clubber had visited.



Officials at the detention center immediately disinfected the venue and quarantined 23 other employees and 254 inmates, the justice ministry said in a press release.






Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 05:08:27|Editor: huaxia

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Staff members prepare for the opening of the shop after two months of COVID-19 pandemic lockdown in Bucharest, Romania, May 14, 2020. May 14 is the last day of Romania's two-month-long state of emergency and the country begins on May 15 a state of alert, a level lower than the state of emergency. Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said that the end of the state of emergency does not mean the end of the epidemic and he would not hesitate to declare a state of emergency again if the epidemic situation gets worse. (Photo by Cristian Cristel/Xinhua)

BUCHAREST, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Romanian President Klaus Iohannis said on Thursday that the end of the state of emergency does not mean the end of the epidemic and he would not hesitate to declare a state of emergency again if the epidemic situation gets worse.

Thursday is the last day of Romania's two-month-long state of emergency and the country will begin on Friday a state of alert, a level lower than the current one.

"Tomorrow we are entering a new stage, because the cessation of the state of emergency does not equate, unfortunately, to the end of the epidemic. From a medical point of view we have some positive signals, but we must all be aware that the danger posed by this virus is far from over," said the president in a televised press statement at the Cotroceni Presidential Palace.

"If the situation gets worse and the data will show a galloping number of infections, which will lead to the overcrowding of hospitals, then I will declare a state of emergency again without hesitation," stressed the president.

He underlined that measures must be taken to restore life as close to normal as possible, but ensuring "maximum safety" is a prerequisite.

The Romanian president reviewed the epidemic situation in the country, pointing out that at the end of the state of emergency, the country's total infections stand at 16,247, of which 9,053 have recovered.

According to him, there are now 225 patients hospitalized in intensive care units and at no time during the state of emergency have the intensive care facilities been overwhelmed.

"The number of victims would have been much, much higher," if the authorities had failed to take stringent measures in time, he emphasized.

The head of state thanked the Romanian people for strictly complying with various restrictions imposed by the authorities to contain the virus during the state of emergency.

"Thank you for all the sacrifices you have made... we can say with all certainty: together we have saved lives," he said, calling on the people to be strong and united and to continue the fight against the ruthless virus in the coming months.

Under the new state of alert, residents will be allowed to travel locally, but mask-wearing is mandatory in enclosed public spaces and on public transport. Meanwhile, parks will be reopened from Friday, while shops with access directly to the street, barbers, beauty salons, dentists and museums will resume their activities.
India must gear up to face the possibility of community spread of the COVID-19, a prominent health expert said on Friday, cautioning that there could be more widespread transmission of the novel coronavirus due to easing of the lockdown.

IMAGE: Medical worker screens the body temperature of migrants as they arrive from Rohtak by a Shramik Special Train during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown in Patna . Photograph: ANI Photo

On some experts suggesting that there is already community transmission (stage 3) of the virus in the country, President of Public Health Foundation of India, Professor K Srinath Reddy maintained that it is a matter of definition.



Because, if one looks at the spread to people without history of travel or history of contact, certainly there are several such cases, he said.

"But most of them are concentrated around the original points of entry of the foreign travellers or the travel routes of their contacts. So, these people who are describing it as stage 2 still are saying this is traceable local transmission, it is not unpredictable community transmission, he said.



Therefore, we are avoiding the term community transmission. It is a matter of definitions and language; we need not debate that really, Reddy, who formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, said.



But he said it should be recognised that community transmission has occurred in virtually every country which experienced this pandemic in a major form and India should also be prepared for it and act as though it is happening and take all precautionary containment measures.



There is not only risk and but actually threat of community transmission, said Reddy, who presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard.



According to him, nations in South East Asia, including Malaysia, and India in particular, have kept the COVID-19 death rates per million of the population low compared to countries where the pandemic broke out around the same time.



He said the low death rate in India could be the benefit of multiple factors such as younger age group, more rural population, temperature and climatic conditions as well as the benefits the containment measures which preceded lockdown, and then got much more consolidated with the lockdown.



"It's quite possible that all of these factors have been helpful and we have seen that benefit, Reddy said.



But we need to continue to consolidate that. There are some risk factors, when the lockdown opens there will be much greater mobility of people, there could be more widespread transmission of the virus, so we have to maintain as much as possible physical distancing, continue practices like wearing masks and hand-washing as precautionary measures, he said.



Things are going to be difficult in overcrowded areas, especially slum areas.



We will have to try and provide as much facilities as possible, particularly for elderly people and to people with co-morbidities, whether they can be provided temporary shelters elsewhere with good social cares.



Fortunately, he said, most of the infections are restricted to large cities and areas radiating around them.

Referring to return of migrant workers, he said care must be taken to see that they themselves will not be victims of the epidemic, and at the same they don't infect others.

"But most important thing is to protect the rural areas (from COVID-19) because two-thirds of India is in rural areas, and the transmission of the virus is low there because mobility is low, Reddy said.



Several precautionary measures have to be taken in order to contain the virus because the risk of transmission will certainly increase with the lifting of the lockdown.



"We must recognise that this virus is going to stay on for some time and we have to make sure that at least for the next one year, we try and keep the virus as slowly moving as possible by physical distancing and other protective measures like masks and handwashing."



Evolutionary biology of the virus says that when the movement is greatly restricted and its chances of transmission are greatly reduced, the virus actually can turn into a milder virus, said Reddy, who is also an Adjunct Professor of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University and Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney.



So, we will have to do everything to reduce the transmission, speed and number, at the same time try and moving it towards milder form to our own defensive measures. So, while there are threats, there are also opportunities for us to protect ourselves and even control not only the spread of the virus but also the virulence of the virus, he added.
Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr has submitted the final report in the panel's three-year Russia investigation just hours after the FBI raided his home and before stepping back from his powerful post.

Burr turned in the final product, the result of a lengthy committee probe, to the intelligence community for a declassification review. The move came hours before he was to temporarily step aside as chairman of the panel.

Burr's Washington residence was raided Wednesday night as part of a Justice Department probe into whether he profited from insider trading  and his phone was seized by FBI agents.

The report on the panels counterintelligence findings - including whether President Donald Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia - marks the conclusion of its Russia probe, which it first launched in January 2017. But the panel did not release any of the findings Friday, instead asking the intelligence community to quickly allow the release of a declassified version of the report.

Senator Richard Burr stepped down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee after the FBI seized his phone to further investigate insider trading allegations. Before he did, he submitted his panel's final report on the Russian investigation for a declassification review

In the last installment, Volume 4, the bipartisan committee found that U.S. intelligence was under 'no politically motivated pressure' when they produced an assessment on Russia's 2016 election interference campaign, the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in a report released Tuesday.

'All analysts expressed that they were free to debate, object to content, and assess confidence levels, as is normal and proper for the analytic process' when compiling the report in the final days of the Obama administration, the report found.

Burr said Thursday that he would temporarily give up the position as chairman after federal agents examining his recent stock sales showed up at his home Wednesday with a warrant to search his cellphone. Friday was his last day in the position.

The high-profile move comes amid new focus on the Russia probe as President Trump goes after perceived enemies in the run-up to the election. On Twitter Trump has been lashing out at what he calls 'Obamagate' and demanding jail sentences for federal prosecutors.

President Donald Trump fired FBI Director James Comey in 2017, and blasted the Russia probe as a 'witch hunt' as recently as during Saturday's White House coronavirus briefing

A long section in the fourth report on Vladimir Putin directing Russian active measures is completely redacted

Russia's President Vladimir Putin and U.S. President Donald Trump shake hands during a bilateral meeting at the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 28, 2019

'This morning, I informed Majority Leader [Mitch] McConnell that I have made the decision to step aside as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee until this investigation is resolved,' Burr said in a statement, indicating the move is not permanent.

'The work the Intelligence Committee and its members do is too important to risk hindering in any way,' he continued. 'I believe this step is necessary to allow the Committee to continue its essential work free of external distractions.'

McConnell also suggested that the move is 'temporary' but its speed underlines the scale of shock around a sitting senator being raided by the FBI. It was not immediately clear who would helm the panel for Republicans.

'Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the investigation,' McConnell said Thursday afternoon.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Burr exploited advance information when he unloaded as much as $1.7 million in stocks in February, days before the coronavirus pandemic caused markets to plummet. Burr has denied any wrongdoing.

The the final report follows a three-year investigation by the Senate Intelligence panel. The fourth installment is shown here

One section describes the 'debate' over including the Steele dossier in the report. Burr submitted the final report for declassification review

The panel's vice chair is Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, a Democrat

The final submission brought an unceremonious end to the yearslong investigation that occasionally landed Burr, a North Carolina Republican, in trouble with his own party. It had been the final investigation of Trumps 2016 campaign and Russia that was still active.

The panel looked at Russia's 'active measures' campaign, explored Facebook ads and Twitter engagements it found were manipulated by a Moscow troll farm, and even examined how the U.S. Intelligence Community made its assessments of what happened in 2016.

Burr worked closely with the top Democrat on the panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, on a bipartisan basis to uncover Russias attempts to sow chaos in American elections. The committee had particular success in pushing social media companies to publicly reveal that Russia had used their platforms for misinformation and to make subsequent reforms to prevent such interference in the future.

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., listens to testimony before the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. (Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via AP, Pool)

Committee members have remained quiet on the panels conclusion on whether Trumps campaign coordinated with Russia. But Burr has said several times that he has seen no evidence of such collusion, a conclusion that would be in line with the House Intelligence Committees own Russia report in 2018. It is unclear if the panels Democrats would endorse such a determination, even though the first four reports from the Senate committee were bipartisan.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller also investigated whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia. Muellers report, released in April 2019, identified substantial contacts between Trump associates and Russia but did not accuse him of a crime or allege a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and the Kremlin. Mueller also examined about a dozen possible instances of obstruction of justice and said he could not exonerate the president on that point.

The Senate panel also sent its other four reports to the intelligence community for declassification and in some cases waited years for a response. In the other cases, however, the panel released its general findings first.

The prior reports looked at Russia's social media interference, election security, the response of the Obama administration to the Russian meddling and the intelligence communitys 2017 assessment that Russia had intervened in Trumps favor. The committee endorsed that assessment in a bipartisan report this year.

Burr will continue to serve on the committee.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not yet said who will temporarily replace Burr as chairman. Next in seniority is Idaho Sen. James Risch, who told reporters on Thursday that he didnt know whether he would keep his current perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or move to the intelligence panel.

Following him is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who heads the Senate Small Business Committee. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Aging Committee, is third in line.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.
The latest:

As businesses reopened Friday in more of the U.S., an overwhelming majority of states still fall short of the COVID-19 testing levels that public health experts say are necessary to safely ease lockdowns and avoid another deadly wave of outbreaks, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Rapid, widespread testing is considered essential to tracking and containing the coronavirus. But 41 of the nation's 50 states fail to test widely enough to drive their infections below a key benchmark, according to an AP analysis of metrics developed by Harvards Global Health Institute.

Among the states falling short are Texas and Georgia, which recently moved aggressively to reopen stores, malls, barbershops and other businesses.

As health authorities expand testing to more people, the number of positive results should shrink compared with the total number of people tested. The World Health Organization and other health researchers have said a percentage above 10% indicates inadequate testing. South Korea, a country praised for its rapid response, quickly pushed its positive cases to below 3%.



Only nine states met a recommended daily testing rate, according to the AP analysis. Most of those states are large and rural, such as Montana, Alaska, North Dakota and Wyoming. Meanwhile, states with some of the biggest testing shortfalls, including New York and New Jersey, have signaled they will keep stay-at-home orders in place or only partially ease restrictions.

President Trump unveils leaders of new vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed

President Donald Trump said Friday that hes hopeful to have a coronavirus vaccine on the market by the end of the year or shortly thereafter.



Moncep Slaoui, a former pharmaceutical executive who Trump has tapped to serve as the administrations virus czar, said that early trial data suggests that a few hundred million doses of vaccine will be delivered by late 2020.

"I have very recently seen early data from a clinical trial with a coronavirus vaccine and this data made me feel even more confident that we'll be able to deliver a few hundred million doses of vaccine by the end of 2020 and we will do the best we can," Slaoui said.

Trump, speaking at a Rose Garden event, reiterated that he wants to see states move forward with reopening their economies.

We are back, vaccine or no vaccine, Trump said.

Slaoui, who has been a venture capitalist since leaving the pharmaceutical giant in 2017, will act as the chief adviser to the vaccine effort. Four-star Army General Gustave Perna will serve as the chief operating officer overseeing logistics, White House officials said. Trump said this week he would "rapidly" mobilize the military to distribute a vaccine when it is ready.

Video above: President Trump unveils leaders of new vaccine effort, Operation Warp Speed

Both men supplement the vaccine development efforts already underway by the federal government, including at the National Institutes of Health.

A leader at that agency, Dr. Anthony Fauci, also attended Friday's event in the Rose Garden. A top White House adviser during the coronavirus pandemic, Fauci has recently come under fire by some of Trump's allies for his caution on reopening the country, which he said would have grave consequences if not done carefully.

Air Canada laying off at least 20,000

Canadas largest airline plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees because of the pandemic.

Air Canada says the layoffs will impact more than half of the companys 38,000 employees. The airline says COVID-19 has forced it to reduce its schedule by 95% and it doesn't expect normal traffic to return anytime soon.

The carrier says its workforce will be reduced by 50% to 60%. The move is effective June 7.

Air Canada announced in March it would lay off nearly half of its workforce under a cost reduction scheme. It proceeded to rehire some 16,500 laid-off flight attendants, mechanics and customer service agents in April under after the Canadian government announced a wage subsidy plan, but has not committed to maintain the program past June 6.

Focus shifting to reducing infection risks, doctor says

The U.S. appears to be changing its strategy from trying to completely eliminate coronavirus to reducing infection risks as the nation reopens, a health expert says.

With nearly all states easing social distancing, the nation has now shifted to harm reduction  which focuses on ways to reduce the risk if it cannot be removed entirely, said Dr. Leana Wen, an ER physician and the former health commissioner for Baltimore.

"We had a strategy before. That strategy was we would reduce the number of infections and at the same time build up our capabilities to do testing, tracing, isolation," she said Thursday night during the CNN global town hall on coronavirus.

"We know that that's what's going to be effective, but we are reopening before those capabilities are in place. So in essence, we're saying it's too hard. We're not going to be able to get there. And so we're switching to a new phase. "

The new strategy includes ways to slow the spread of the virus such as social distancing, avoiding unnecessary gatherings, changing ventilation systems and increasing time outdoors, she said.

Number of reported cases is going down in some states

As states remove more stay-at-home restrictions, it will take weeks to learn the health effects.

But so far, the number of new coronavirus cases reported each day is generally going down in about two dozen states, according to an analysis of data from Johns Hopkins University on Thursday.

And with the reopenings and eased social distancing restrictions, testing remains a major concern, with health experts warning the U.S. is still lagging behind.

While not every person who tests positive will need treatment, testing ensures most of the cases are identified and traced, said Dr. Richard Besser, the former acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Every case that's out there could be the spark that starts another outbreak in your community that gets out of control," he said.

With the right measures, countries can suppress transmission and avoid bouncing back-and-forth between lockdown and lifting restrictions, said Maria Van Kerkhove, the technical lead for the COVID-19 response at the World Health Organization.

South Korea and Singapore have been successful in containing the virus because they have rapidly identified it, started contact tracing and combated opportunities for it to resurge, she added.

Experts have said coronavirus is likely to keep spreading for at least another 18 months to two years  until about 70% of the population has been infected.



W2lmcmFtZSBzcmM9Imh0dHBzOi8vZDJjbXZicTdzeHgzM2ouY2xvdWRmcm9udC5uZXQvZW1haWwvcHJvZF9jb3JvbmF2aXJ1c19pZnJhbWVfYXJ0aWNsZS5odG1sIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjQxNCIgc3R5bGU9IndpZHRoOjEwMCU7Ym9yZGVyOm5vbmU7b3ZlcmZsb3c6aGlkZGVuIiBzY3JvbGxpbmc9Im5vIiBmcmFtZWJvcmRlcj0iMCIgYWxsb3dUcmFuc3BhcmVuY3k9InRydWUiXVsvaWZyYW1lXQ==

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Update 10:00 a.m.: A male suspect has been arrested in connection to the double homicide, according to the Mobile County Sheriffs Office.

Original story:

A double homicide is being investigated Friday in the small fishing village of Coden, close to Bayou La Batre in Mobile County.

The investigation is being lead by the Bayou La Batre Police Department with K-9 assistance from the Mobile County Sheriffs Office, according to both law enforcement departments.

The homicides took place on Rock Road in Coden at a little before 2:30 a.m. Friday morning.

The investigation is continuing.

This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Midland County recorded two new coronavirus cases Friday, according to the afternoon state report, bringing the area's total to 69 cases and eight deaths.

Michigan saw a daily increase of 497 new cases on Friday, and recorded 38 new deaths.

Bay County on Friday added two new cases and two deaths, bringing its total to 228 cases and 14 deaths. Isabella County added no new cases or deaths, and Saginaw County added 11 cases and two deaths; their totals are 62 cases and seven deaths and 877 cases and 95 deaths, respectively. Gladwin County remains at 17 cases and one death.

On Thursday, the Midland County Health Department reported an additional 32 probable cases, which includes individuals who have symptoms of COVID-19 but have not been tested, meet the COVID-19 case definition and have had close contact with a lab-confirmed positive COVID-19 case. These are often household members of positive cases.

The health department is reporting 49 recovered cases, which include individuals who have a lab-confirmed positive COVID-19 result and have completed their isolation and are symptom-free. This differs from the state definition of individuals who are 30 days from symptom onset.

MidMichigan Health  which covers a 23-county region and has medical centers at seven sites, including Midland  was listed as having 17 COVID-19 patients on the state page, defined by the state as confirmed positive patients, including those in ICU and patients who are currently pending and under investigation. The health system reported 7 COVID-19 patients in ICU and 43% bed occupancy, the percentage of staffed inpatient beds occupied by any patient regardless of COVID-19 status. This data, according to the website, reflects the status in health systems and hospitals 48 hours prior to the time that it was posted to the state page, which was May 14.

The state is reporting no COVID-19 positive residents at four of Midland Countys long-term care facilities, Brittany Manor, Medilodge of Midland, Midland Kings Daughters Home and Stratford Pines as of May 14. Gladwin Nursing & Rehab Community and Gladwin Pines Nursing Homes also are reporting no COVID-19 positive residents.

Overall, Michigan is at 50,079 cases and 4,825 deaths.

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 e-mail 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.
Delhi University's decision to conduct online open-book examinations and internal assessments were met with severe flak from the teachers and students alike. The DU Teachers' Association (DUTA) said that all statutory processes have been "thrown to the winds" and statutory bodies "trampled upon". They suggested that the varsity should keep a pen and paper option for those who do not have access to good internet and thus extend the time of the semester. The students, on the other hand, are concerned that the university has conducted enough lectures to conduct an end semester examination. The students took twitter by storm after the Students' Federation of India (SFI) called for a Twitter protest with #DUAgainstOnlineExams. The hashtag soon became one of the top trends for the day on the microblogging site.





The DUTA said that the fact that the university is giving out "piecemeal" instructions instead of a complete comprehensive proposal with suitable modifications to the Academic Calendar has added to the uncertainties faced by teachers and students. "We demand that the university first expands the committee to include elected representatives and then places the entire proposal before the statutory bodies before issuing such instructions that create confusion and spread panic rather than providing clarity," said DUTA President Dr Rajib Ray. The DUTA wrote to the Vice-Chancellor Dr Yogesh Tyagi and urged him to stake appropriate steps. "Most teachers and students strongly believe that online examinations are totally discriminatory to all those who do not have access to fast internet or computers. A large number of surveys have shown that access to connectivity, laptops and gadgets to facilitate printing and scanning is extremely poor in India. Students are worried that technical glitches in assessing question papers on time and in depositing scripts etc. may prevent them from focusing on the exam. The ability of the DU website to handle such a heavy load is also a point of concern as many students have reported difficulties even in submitting the examination form," he added.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) also said that the varsity administration should have involved all stakeholders in the decision-making process. "ABVP is of the strong belief that no decision on examinations in DU should be taken without wider consultation with stakeholders. We have done a massive survey and will suggest alternate mode of exams to the university very soon, said Sidharth Yadav State Secretary, ABVP Delhi.

The SFI said that many students do not have books with them as they had gone back home for vacations when the lockdown started. "A pre-requisite for an open-book exam are the books, notes and other study materials which many students do not have with them. Some very early survey results indicate that over 70 per cent of students in St Stephens, Shri Ram College of Commerce, Lady Shri Ram, Hindu, Miranda House, Ramjas or Hansraj are outstation students. Most of these students had returned home during their mid-semester break and some had left Delhi for their home state after the COVID-19 crisis caused an extension of the holidays. Most of them did not carry their study materials and some had left their laptops and other gadgets too at their respective residences," said Sumit Kataria, President, SFI Delhi. "Online study resources are not a fair replacement for ones own study materials and books because the digital divide is still a reality in India and accessing these materials is a luxury for many. The decision also completely dismisses the DUTAs official position on online lectures not being a substitution for classroom lessons rather it is only a substandard compensatory mechanism," he added.





The guidelines issued for the setting of question papers and conducting Internal Assessment reflect a bureaucratic approach said Dr Dutta, "In view of the fact that teaching through e-resources has been uneven and has failed to reach large sections of students, and the fact that many students were taken by surprise by the lockdown and found themselves without notes, materials and even their books, the sensible approach would be to provide ample choice in the exam (more than what departments would think of in normal times) so that students are not subjected to unnecessary stress."



The SFI, in a letter to the VC, also mentioned that along with pen and paper and online exams, the students should be given the option to avail an option of receiving a grade for this semester by carrying over the CPGA accumulated in the previous semesters. "This is particularly crucial for terminal students who would need provisional degrees. The formula for them can be the CPGA of the previous 5 semesters in case of UG, and previous 3 semesters in case of PG," said the statement. "The same formula can be offered to non-terminal year students as well. However, the option of taking a pen and paper exam in the future, i.e., in the upcoming even semester must be available to students who avail this option," it added.
L iverpools schools will not reopen on June 1 despite Boris Johnson aiming for children to start returning then at the earliest, parents have been told.

City leaders told parents in a letter on Friday that they simply cannot allow pupils to return until later in the summer due to safety fears.

It breaks with Number 10 which has insisted that primary pupils in reception, year 1 and year 6 should return from June 1 at the earliest, sparking a furious row with unions.

Earlier this week Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson warned he has the power to stop the Government timetable and will use it if it is necessary, pointing to September as a more likely date.

Steve Reddy, the councils director for young peoples services, wrote to parents: There is no doubt in my mind that we simply cannot reopen schools in line with the suggested timetable outlined by the government.

Mayor of Liverpool Joe Anderson said he would use his powers to block schools from reopening / PA

"The layout of every school is different and they all have different challenges to overcome in terms of maintaining social distancing and hygiene.

Together with heads, we are committed to keeping parents up to date, and each school will be communicating with them when they are in a position to know more.

Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson arrives in Downing Street, London / PA

"All I can say at this stage is that we do not envisage primary age pupils being able to return until mid-June at the very least.

Liverpool is the first major local authority to break with the Government's schools plan, but Knowsley council, Merseyside, has also refused to meet a deadline.

The intervention comes as a stand-off between ministers and teaching unions boils over, with the NASUWT warning it could sue the Government if it presses ahead.

A coalition of nine teachers' unions has warned it is not yet safe to open schools and called on Downing Street to publish its scientific basis.

Union chiefs met with Downing Streets scientific advisers on Friday to hear the evidence that teachers and pupils would not be at risk if schools reopen next month.

Mr Williamson said following the meeting that it was "vital" schools return in June.

The Oasis Trust plans to reopen all of its 35 schools from June 1 / PA

But Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said it left many questions unanswered.

It came as one of England's largest academy trusts has become one of the first school groups to say that it will press ahead and reopen from 1 June.

Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis trust which has 35 primary schools, says opposition to reopening is "rather middle class and fails to recognise the harm to disadvantaged children from missing schools.

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The devolved leaders in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have already distanced themselves from the schools plan, which forms part of Mr Johnsons roadmap out of lockdown.

New Department for Education guidance earlier this week urged school leaders to teach children in small groups and halve class sizes to 15 to ensure social distancing.
Queen Elizabeth already had several scandals on her plate when the coronavirus pandemic hit in March. Her Majesty witnessed three senior royals step away from their duties, one of whom got mixed up in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal. With the royals forced into isolation due to the pandemic, the Queen canceled Trooping the Colour for the first time since the 1950s and postponed The Royal Ascot. Although Queen Elizabeth has been unable to appear in public amid the lockdown, she has been keeping busy with one of her favorite activities.

Kate Middleton and Queen Elizabeth | Phil Noble  WPA Pool/Getty Images

Queen Elizabeth carries on

Every year, Queen Elizabeth travels to Windsor Castle to spend the Easter holiday with her family. This year, the pandemic forced her to go to Windsor a week early and she is expected to remain away from Buckingham Palace until it is safe for her to return to London.

It will not come as a surprise to royal watchers that Her Majesty wants to get back to her royal duties as quickly as possible. According to W Magazine, a source recently said that Queen Elizabeth has been fulfilling her duties as head of state and cannot wait for things to get back to normal.

Its a delicate line but I think we will see her doing private audiences again and more of the work we are used to seeing her do in public at some point in the future, the insider dished.

RELATED: Queen Elizabeth Has Stepped Back From Royal Duties Will Prince Charles Be Named Prince Regent?

Although Queen Elizabeth is doing what she can, there is only so much work she can do remotely. Other members of the royal family have been fulfilling some of their duties via video calls, a tactic Her Majesty might employ more often if the crisis is not controlled soon.

In the meantime, the lockdown has allowed Queen Elizabeth time for her favorite activity, a hobby that does not go against social distancing guidelines.

This is Her Majestys favorite activity

Queen Elizabeth has been riding horses ever since she was a young girl and has been in the saddle a lot during the lockdown. Despite being 94 years old, Her Majesty has been going on horseback rides on the grounds of Windsor Castle every day, even when the weather does not cooperate.

This is hardly the first time the Queen has been spotted riding horses at Windsor Castle. When Kate Middleton was in labor in 2018, she rode her favorite horse, Carltonlima Emma, all day long.

Apart from riding horses, the lockdown has allowed Queen Elizabeth to spend more time with her husband, Prince Philip, who retired from his royal post a few years ago. A source claims that the two have been eating dinner together every night.

This justifies Queen Elizabeth's title as the longest reigning horse girl alive. https://t.co/OuF41p8Czv  W Magazine (@wmag) May 13, 2020

This is a rarity for Queen Elizabeth, who normally fulfills hundreds of royal engagements in a given year. There is no telling when Her Majesty will return to Buckingham Palace, but it definitely sounds like the two are making the most of their time together.

This is easily the longest time the Queen has been away from her royal duties. Unless things change in the near future, Her Majesty might be out of commission for several more months.

Queen Elizabeth praises nurses in a new audio clip

While we wait to see what the Queen does next, the reigning monarch recently took part in a video honoring healthcare workers for International Nurses Day. The clip included audio from a phone call between Queen Elizabeth and the head of the Commonwealth Nurses and Midwives Federation, Professor Kathleen McCourt.

Buckingham Palace released the audio clip on social media. It starts with McCourt greeting Her Majesty, who responded by saying, Good afternoon, this is rather an important day.

Oh, it is, its quite special the International Nurses Day being recognized by the general public, McCourt replied, prompting Queen Elizabeth to answer, Yes, because theyve obviously had a very important part to play recently

RELATED: Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philips 1954 Christmas Card Contains One of the Rarest Autographs in the World

The clip then shows other members of the royal family taking part in video conferences with leaders and healthcare professionals. This includes Prince Charles, Camilla Parker Bowles, Princess Anne, Prince William, and Kate Middleton talking with doctors and nurses from the United Kingdom, Cyprus, Tanzania, Bahamas, Sierra Leone, India, Malawi, and Australia.

The video also featured images of Queen Elizabeth talking with Boris Johnson via an old rotary phone in her office at Windsor Castle.
BRIDGEPORT  A truck driver instructor with a history of drunk driving was ordered held in lieu of $500,000 bond Friday for allegedly killing two people and injuring another in a February crash on River Road in Shelton.

Rakiem Reid, 30, of Derby, was brought back from North Carolina where police said he fled following the fatal crash. He was charged with two counts of second-degree manslaughter with a motor vehicle, second-degree assault with a motor vehicle, operating under the influence of alcohol, reckless driving and interfering with an officer.

The crash, which occurred Feb. 9 on River Road, claimed the lives of Lily Pirulli, 20, and Adrian Miles, 31. Meghan Nealy, 26, was critically injured.

Reid was treated for his injuries and released, according to police at the time.

During the investigation Reid claimed that Meghan Nealy was driving the vehicle when the crash occurred, Shelton Police Detective Richard Bango said. Members of the detective and traffic division conducted an intensive investigation which included obtaining search warrants, video surveillance, interviews, statements, and forensic evidence which led to an arrest warrant for Reid for being the operator of the vehicle when the crash occurred.

Police could not initially find Reid after receiving a warrant, but he was arrested in North Carolina April 21, Bango said. He was brought back to Connecticut by Shelton detectives Thursday, Bango said.

Based on the extradition status, his criminal history of alcohol-related offenses and these charges involving alcohol-related motor vehicle deaths, I am setting the bond at $500,000, Superior Court Judge Joan Alexander said during Reids arraignment hearing as members of the victims families sat in the courtroom. They later declined comment.

Reid, who said he could not make the bond, pleaded with the judge not to send him to the Bridgeport Correctional Center.

Corrections is going to put you where they decide to put you, the judge responded. She then continued the case to June 19.

This was a serious incident involving the loss of two lives and extensive injuries to a third person, Milford States Attorney Margaret Kelley told the judge, asking that a high bond be set for Reid. He then went to North Carolina, she added.

Reid was represented during the arraignment by Public Defender Anne Marie Kindley but he told the judge he was hiring his own lawyer. Kindley urged the judge to set a much lower bond.

The bail commissioner told the judge that Reid, the father of three children, had been living with with his mother while working as a tractor-trailer driving instructor. In 2013, he received probation after being convicted of operating while under suspension and drug charges. He was convicted twice of violating that probation and was later sentenced to 90 days in prison. The bail commissioner said Reid had three previous convictions for operating under the influence.

The February crash killed Pirulli, who graduated from Masuk High School, and Miles, who attended Ansonia High School. They, police say, were passengers along with Nealy in a BMW driven by Reid that collided with a Toyota RAV4 around 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 9, just yards away from the entrance to Southbank Park.

Shortly after the crash, Hannah Perry, a friend of Pirullis, described her as a beautiful spirit who touched the hearts of everyone she met in the days after the crash, and noted that she will be forever missed.

Pirulli was the daughter of longtime Bridgeport Police Officer Mario Pirulli.

Bridgeport City Councilwoman Denese Taylor-Moye, who knew Miles since he was a youngster, described him as a wonderful young man who loved his family, his girlfriend and his 4-year-old daughter.
The Netflix original Dark, a German science-fiction thriller created by Baran bo Odar and Jantje Friese, has slowly gained momentum with its global popularity. Initially, it was compared to Duffer Brothers' Stranger Things, but the show carved a niche with its mind boggling twists. It also boasts of a great ensemble cast consisting of Louis Hoffman, Lisa Vacari, Andreas Pietschmann, Mark Waschke among others.

By the time, season 2 was released, Dark had gained popularity in India as well. The show will reportedly be returning for its 3rd and final season in June 2020.

However, till the 3rd season drops, here are some under underrated but critically acclaimed foreign-language shows on Netflix, that we recommend for people who love content beyond the barriers of language.

Elite

This Spanish show created by Carlos Montero and Dario Madrona is a teen high-school drama and thriller rolled into one. It tells the story of three working-class students who enroll into an exclusive private (elite, if you may) school in Spain which leads to often-seen clash between the uber-wealthy and the poor. And then a student gets murdered. Elite is a show that has managed to not get ruined after its 3rd season and if you had to stop watching Riverdale as it got more and more ridiculous, here is a better alternative for you.

Fauda

This show created by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff have been inspired by their own experiences on the Israeli defence forces. Fauda tells the story of a retired agent who gets pulled back into the field when he learns that the Palestinian fighter he had killed is still alive and is planning to strike. This political thriller is much more than its premise and shows the human sides of the Israel-Palestine conflict. The show is bilingual and uses Arabic and Hebrew.

Kingdom

This list wouldn't have been complete without a South Korean show. Kingdom, directed by Kim Seong-hun is Netflix's first original Korean series. The series is a political period horror-thriller show, which tells the story of a crown-prince whose kingdom faces an unexpected problem when the King is suddenly declared dead, and a mysterious plague spreads. The series is adapted from the webcomic series The Kingdom of the Gods, which was authored by the screenwriter of Kim Eun-hee.

The Valhalla Murders

This Icelandic thriller created by Thordur Palsson tells the story about an Oslo detective with skeletons in the closet. He returns to his native country to help find a serial killer with clues in photographs. The Valhalla Murders or Brot (literally Violation) is perfect for people who love the murder mystery and true crime genres.

The Naked Director

This Japanese historical dramedy directed by Masaharu Take tells the true story of the notorious pornographer Toru Muranishi who scandalised the regulations-loving 1980s Japan. Considered a revolutionary by many, Muranishi, the self-proclaimed emperor of porn, was resilient against the laws prohibiting pornography. The show traces his journey from a salesman to becoming the most famous Japanese patron of porn.

Grand Hotel

This Spanish show created by Ramon Campos and Gema R Neira is the story of a young man who infiltrates a posh hotel as a bell boy to investigate the mysterious disappearance of his sister, a maid in the same hotel. The show deals with a shady family that will go to any extent to keep their property. Grand Hotel has been remade in the US starring Eva Longoria and is set in present day Miami.

Jinn

The first-ever Arabic Netflix show created by Mir-Jean Bou Chaaya, Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani is an amalgamation of teenage drama with the supernatural. It revolves around a group of teenagers, with Mira in the center who accidentally causes two Jinns, one good and one evil to enter into the earth's realm, wreaking havoc into her high school life. Even though the first season has been widely loved, whether the show will be renewed for another run is still to be seen.

Follow @News18Movies for more
Helios Towers is acquiring 65 wireless telecommunications sites in South Africa from Eagle Towers SA.

The deal was struck via Helios South African HTSA, and will see the unit collaborate with Eagle Towers on future business. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2020 and is subject to customary closing conditions.

A significant majority of the tenancies of these sites are with Africas largest mobile network operators. The deal will help Helios to broaden its geographic footprint, adding further towers to the portfolio acquired and built-out in South Africa since HTSA was established in 2019.

The acquisition enables HTSA to increase its network reach and offering to customers in the Western Cape Region of South Africa.

Kash Pandya, CEO of Helios Towers said: We look forward to continue delivering on our strategy of providing MNOs with high quality, reliable and cost-effective open-access tower infrastructure in South Africa.
Residents are invited to nominate their own or their neighbors houses by sharing the address and a photo of their handiwork. Representatives from the three groups that organized the contest  Ramadan Suhoor Festival, Halal Metropolis and the Michigan Muslim Community Council  and a nominating committee will narrow down the submissions to the top 10 houses from each district. The judges then will visit and evaluate the homes in person. They will pick the most creative and interesting light displays from each district and award them a certificate.
The Deputy Communications Director of the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mame Yaa Aboagye says the NPP has done enough in three years to prove their good works and commitment to improving the living conditions of Ghanaians.



The opposition NDC accused the EC and the NIA of devising means to deny some Ghanaians the chance to vote in the December polls.



The plans, according to the NDC National Chairman, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, are to rig the elections in favour of the incumbent government.



Mr Ampofo, who was addressing a press conference in Accra at the party's headquarters on Thursday, May 14, 2020, said many Ghanaians were not able to register for the Ghana card and many of them also do not have a passport, hence the plot to rig the elections.



Mame Yaa has refuted the NDC claims, saying the opposition party has spotted the red light that they have already lost the elections and is therefore resorting to fear and panic to incite Ghanaians against the government.



She further stated that the ruling NPP will win the 2020 elections because it has outperformed the eight years administration of the opposition party.



Mame Yaa was optimistic about the achievements of President Akufo-Addo.



...we do not need the EC to rig the elections in our favour. NPP is poised to win 2020 election based on merit and sound track record.



We all know that the current voters register is bloated and not fit for purpose, so why is NDC pretending not to be aware of itwe are not hiding anything and I believe the good work of President Akufo-Addo and NPP will speak volume come 2020; so there is no need to connive with the EC and NIA to rig election on our behalfWe have worked and our work will speak for us.



...NDC can decide to boycott but for as, we are always ready at any day and any time for God and country, she added.

Source: Josephine Acheampomaa/[email protected]









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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NEWSALERT-US-BIDEN US President Joe Biden says he believes Putin doesn't want full-blown war with Ukraine and would pay 'dear price' for it. (AP)US President Joe Biden says he believes Putin doesn't want full-blown war with Ukraine and would pay 'dear price' for it. (AP)
File photo: the city view of Taipei. [Photo/VCG]

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday expressed firm opposition to political maneuvers of its Taiwan region as the latter hypes up intention to participate in the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA), saying the scheme of "seeking independence under the pretext of pandemic response" is doomed to fail.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks when asked to comment on media reports that Taiwan authorities are lobbying for its participation in the 73rd WHA session, saying its absence will lead to a "gap" in the global fight against the coronavirus. A few countries including the United States have requested the WHO to invite Taiwan as an observer and are pushing for discussions about the proposal.

"Taiwan's participation in the assembly must be in accordance with the one-China principle," Zhao told a routine press briefing, adding the political basis for the region to do so has ceased to exist as its authorities have stuck to separatism since taking office in 2016.

Zhao said the Chinese central government attaches great importance to the health and well-being of Taiwan compatriots, quoting notifications of COVID-19 information to the region, and the attendance to WHO technical activities by their health experts since last year.

"Taiwan has unimpeded access to information about COVID-19, so there is no such thing as a 'gap' in the global fight against the coronavirus," said the spokesperson.

He said the rejections by the WHA over the years to Taiwan-related proposals by a few countries fully demonstrate that the one-China principle represents the popular will of the international community, which "brooks no challenge."

The purpose of a few countries insisting on discussing Taiwan-related proposals is to politicize health issues and serve their own political interests at the cost of compromising global response to the pandemic, Zhao said.

"This will only result in severely disrupting the assembly's agenda and undermining the joint international response to COVID-19, and will meet resolute opposition by the majority of the international community," Zhao added.
Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Maharashtra: Overall Covid-19 positive cases more than double in 2 weeks

Maharashtra has reported 17,026, or over 60%, of the total coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positive cases in the state between May 1 and 14, the state health and family welfare department data showed. The trend is likely to lead to the imposition of lockdown 4.0, as the state government is in its favour after the ongoing restrictions lapse on Sunday. Read more

World Bank lauds PM Modis Atmanirbhar Mission in fight against Covid-19

Prime Minister Narendra Modis Atmanirbhar Mission came for praise by the World Bank as it approved a $1 billion social protection package for India amid the coronavirus pandemic that has affected people and its economy. Read more

Activists, locals oppose Kinnaurs Kashang Hydro Power Project

Activists and locals in Kinnaur have asked the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) to not extend environment clearance to the integrated Kashang Hydro Project. Read more

Low-intensity earthquake hits Pitampura in Delhi, fourth in more than a month

A 2.2-magnitude earthquake hit Pitampura in North-West Delhi, news agency PTI reported quoting officials from National Centre for Seismology. This comes nearly a week after an earthquake of 3.4 magnitude struck near Sonia Vihar in North-East Delhi. Read more

Taiwan rejects Chinas main condition for WHO participation

Taiwans health minister rejected on Friday Chinas main condition for the island to be able to take part in the World Health Organization (WHO) - that it accepts it is part of China - ahead of a key meeting of the body during a pandemic. Read more

Kuldeeps refresher course, by the Ganga

As a chinaman bowler, Kuldeep Yadav belongs to a rare breed of spinners. His shock value was evident as he grabbed four quick wickets on Test debut to help India seal the 2017 home series against Australia. Read more

Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar share favourite 90s movies, Andaz Apna Apna and Govinda films are clear winners

As all films and shoots stand cancelled amid lockdown, Bollywood celebs are now reminiscing about the films they worked in or loved watching in the 90s. Read more

Kareena Kapoor reveals the secret behind her flawless skin

When it comes to flawless skin in the Bollywood industry, Kareena Kapoor Khan with her peaches and cream complexion is the first to come to mind. Read more

Derpy cat falls into an empty cardboard box while playing detective. Watch

We all probably know the feeling of doing something risky. There is always that one moment when we know it can all go south. It is usually how one reacts in that particular moment which defines the outcome of the entire circumstance. Read more

Watch: India to overtake China in covid cases today and why we still lag in testing
JINAN, China, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- On May 8, the Information Office of The Shandong Provincial People's Government held a press conference to explain and provide further clarity on the Implementation of Opinions for Continuously Improving the Business Environment. Guan Zhaoquan, deputy director of the Shandong Provincial Development and Reform Commission, said a good business environment is one of the most effective means for promoting local economic development. The business environment involves the entire life cycle of a business from registration, operation, growth through to eventual closure, and has a direct impact on its ability to thrive. To this end, Shandong has put forward 18 measures to streamline and upgrade the business environment.

I. Comprehensively facilitate all services for business

1. Make it convenient to start up and wind down a business

Make it possible to complete the entire process for starting up a business at a 'one-stop shop' with applicants able to provide all necessary information on a single form and finish the entire process online

2. Speed up the approval of construction projects

When applying for approval of a construction project, a business only need to fill in one form at each approval stage

- Synchronize each stage of the design process

- Handle all stages of the review process in parallel

- Complete the approval process in one go

- Mutual acceptance of results

3. Streamline the process for connection to the power grid

4. Simplify the process for water and gas installation and metering

5. Reduce the number of classification types for real estate and streamline the registration process

Real estate registration, transactions and taxes can all be handled at a 'one-stop shop'

6. Improve the quality of tax services

7. Facilitate cross-border trade

Implement the process whereby all minerals are first cleared through customers then tested

Import businesses that have real difficulty in paying taxes due to the coronavirus epidemic may apply for an extension of payment (up to 3 months)

By June 20, 2020 , fully implement the pilot program for the operation and management of closed accounts related to export order financing for foreign trade businesses

8. Streamline the safety management of highways

II. Solve the pain points facing companies

1. Strengthen support for lending to companies

For companies allowed to renew a loan without first repaying the principal, banks shall conduct an investigation and review within a month prior to the maturity of the loan according to the applications submitted by the companies

Reduce the approval time for credit applications

- No more than 4 steps on average in the loan application process for qualified small and micro businesses

- No more than the need for 10 supporting documents as part of the application process

- No more than 11 working days to process

2. Protect the legitimate rights and interests of small and medium-sized investors

Reduce the time for the mediation of investor disputes

Establish a legal service advisory group to protect the rights and interests of small and medium-sized investors

3. Streamline labor market services

4. Regulate bidding and government procurement

Suppliers participate in the entire government procurement process electronically

No bid bond for suppliers with good credit

III. Provide convenient and efficient government services

1. Streamline government services

2. Strengthen the protection of intellectual property

Reduce the average processing time of general administrative penalty cases to 20 working days

Administrative adjudication cases need to be completed within 60 days

Process all intellectual property cases online

3. Enhance the efficiency of regulatory services

IV. Create a transparent and stable policy environment

1. Enhance policy stability and predictability

2. Strictly prohibit a "one size fits all" approach to enforcement of regulations

Never take a blanket approach to any or all industries in a given sector by requiring all businesses within the sector to summarily suspend production or operations either by way of a direct order or by disguising the order through requests that amount to a demand to suspend production or operations

3. Enhance government integrity

SOURCE Information Office of the People's Government of Shandong Province
Halifax, Nova Scotia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) -Ucore Rare Metals Inc. (TSXV: UCU) (OTCQX: UURAF) ("Ucore" or the "Company") advises that an aggregate of 2,650,000 options were granted to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company, subject to the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange. The options are exercisable at a price of C$0.165 per share and expire five years from May 15, 2020, the date of grant. One third of the options will vest after four months, with one third vesting every four months thereafter until fully vested. If all of the options are exercised, the Company will receive cash proceeds of C$437,250.

About Ucore Rare Metals Inc.

Ucore is focused on rare and critical metals resources, extraction and beneficiation technologies with potential for production, growth, and scalability. The Company has a 100% ownership stake in the Bokan-Dotson Ridge Rare Earth Project. Ucore's vision and plan is to become a leading advanced technology company that provides mineral separation products and services to the mining and mineral extraction industry. This vision includes the development of the Alaska Strategic Metals Complex in Southeast Alaska and the development of the Company's rare earth minerals property located at Bokan Mountain in Alaska. Ucore wholly owns Innovation Metals Corp., a company that developed its proprietary RapidSX technology for the separation and purification of critical metals including rare earth elements, lithium, nickel and cobalt.

For further information, please contact: Mr. Jim McKenzie, CEO of Ucore Rare Metals Inc. at: +1 (902) 482-5214 or visit www.ucore.com.

Cautionary Notes

This press release includes certain statements that may be deemed "forward-looking statements". All statements in this release (other than statements of historical facts) that address future business development and/or acquisition activities (including any related required financings), timelines, litigation outcomes, events or developments that the Company expects, are forward looking statements. Although the Company believes the expectations expressed in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, such statements are not guarantees of future performance or results and actual results or developments may differ materially from those in forward-looking statements. In regard to Ucore's M3 Plan of Action and the disclosure in the "About Ucore" section above, the Company has assumed that it will be able to procure or retain additional partners and/or suppliers, in addition to Innovation Metals Corp., as suppliers for Ucore's expected future Alaska Strategic Metals Complex. Ucore has also assumed that sufficient external funding will be found to prepare a new NI 43-101 technical report that demonstrates that the Bokan Project is feasible and economically viable for the production of both REE and co-product mineral materials and metals and the then prevailing market prices based upon assumed customer off-take agreements. Ucore has also assumed that sufficient external funding will be found to develop the specific engineering plans for the Alaska SMC and its construction. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in forward-looking statements include, without limitation: IMC failing to protect its intellectual property rights in RapidSX; RapidSX failing to demonstrate commercial viability in large commercial scale applications; Ucore not being able to procure additional key partners or suppliers for the Alaska SMC; Ucore not being able to raise sufficient funds to fund the specific design and construction of the Alaska SMC; adverse capital market conditions; unexpected due diligence findings; unexpected or adverse outcomes in the currently outstanding litigation matters between Ucore and IBC Advanced Technologies, Inc.; the emergence of alternative superior metallurgy and metal separation technologies; the inability of Ucore and/or IMC to retain its key staff members; unexpected transaction costs or other deal completion setbacks; a change in the legislation in Alaska and/or in the support expressed by AIDEA regarding the development of Bokan and/or the Alaska SMC; the availability and procurement of any required interim and/or long-term financing that may be required; and general economic, market or business conditions.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined by the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/56005
He's the only person who can say he's starred in every single episode of Big Brother Australia - at least until the new season airs.

The show's longterm narrator Mike Goldman has been dumped from the 2020 reboot, but he's set his sights on Hollywood.

The 47-year-old revealed to TV Blackbox on Friday that he has signed on to appear in an exciting new Netflix series with a major Hollywood star.

Moving on: Big Brother narrator Mike Goldman (pictured) has been dumped from the 2020 reboot, but he's set his sights on Hollywood with a role in a new Netflix drama

The publication reported that Mike will be appearing in Clickbait, a new eight-part series alongside Entourage's Adrian Greiner.

The series 'explores the ways in which dangerous and uncontrolled impulses are fuelled by social media and the fractures between virtual and real-life personas'.

Mike provided the narration for every episode Big Brother Australia before it's cancellation in 2014.

That's exciting! Mike will be appearing in Clickbait, a new eight-part series alongside Entourage's Adrian Greiner (pictured)

Speaking on Hit105s Stav, Abby and Matt in November, the voiceover artist said it was unlikely he would appear in the new series.

Abby Coleman was astonished, saying: 'They couldn't bring the show back without your voice, your voice is so iconic!'

Mike said: 'I don't want to brag but I have been on every single episode of Big Brother ever made. They might change that.'

Time for a change? Mike (pictured with Jackie O in 2008) suggested maybe the show will go in a new direction for the narration, suggesting a female or trans voice, after he didn't hear from Channel Seven about being involved in the reboot

She also asked if he knew where the new season would be filmed after the Dreamworld Mansion on the Gold Coast site was demolished in May 2019.

'Hold the phone, nobody's rang me about the show. I don't even work on it any more and I'm talking about it, this is really sad,' he jokingly said.

Abby defiantly replied: 'You are the voice of Big Brother, you're in charge we know it.'

New housemates: New host Sonia Kruger (pictured) revealed this year's housemates range in age from 19 to 61 with AFL player Daniel Gorringe, electrician Mat Garrick, 'Mummy blogger' Zoe George and aerobics icon Marissa Rancan set to star

Mike suggested that the radio trio campaign for his return to the franchise, before suggesting that maybe 'it's time for a girl voice or a trans voice'.

New host Sonia Kruger recently revealed this year's housemates range in age from 19 to 61 - with the average being in their 30s.

Several housemates have been confirmed including AFL player Daniel Gorringe, electrician Mat Garrick, 'Mummy blogger' Zoe George, aerobics icon Marissa Rancan, with more housemates yet to be announced.

The Big Brother reboot will premiere on Channel Seven in June.
I do take the nepotism policy very seriously, Myles said. In fact, I put that together when we adopted it because I feel so strongly about it.

He said that the high school can provide a degree of separation between Ms. Jensen and her mother, and that Chaley understands she may be reassigned to the middle school if a position that she is qualified for should become available.

Chaley has a bachelors of science in biology and currently worked as the Nebraska wildlife education coordinator for the Bird Conservancy of the Rockies. Shes continuing her education through the University of Nebraskas education transition program.

The board voted unanimously to make the exception.

The board also voted to approve a one year agreement with the districts administrative team, which was an item that had been tabled during the March meeting.

It will be a 2.5 percent package increase, said Marianne Carlson. The only change from the prior two year agreement is that there is an additional step added across the salary schedule otherwise everything else within the agreement is the same.
May the Lord free us from any disturbance of those who put faith, the life of faith under casuistry prescriptions, prescriptions that make no sense. I refer to these prescriptions which make no sense, not to the Commandments. That free us from this spirit of rigidity that takes away your freedom."

Vatican City (AsiaNews)  Marking today's World Family Day, Pope Francis introduced the Mass celebrated this morning at Casa Santa Marta inviting people to pray for families, so that the Spirit of the Lord, the spirit of love and respect may grow in families, of freedom ".

In his homily, Pope Francis remarked that, in the first reading (Acts 15: 22-31), the early days of the Church when there were some where some who had received baptism, believed and were happy while there were others who felt that pagan converts first had to be initiated as Jews before becoming Christians, called judaizers. Pope Francis reflected on the rigid attitude of those early Christian preachers. Rigidity is not from the Spirit of God, it puts into question the gratuitousness of redemption and the resurrection of Christ, said the Pope.

Pope Francis noted that the judaizers were people who had theological, pastoral and moral arguments for their rigidity. They wanted a religion of prescriptions and took away the freedom of the Holy Spirit and the joy of the Gospel. Jesus, said the Pope, also had to confront the teachers of the law for their rigidity. The doctors of the law manipulated the consciences of the people making them rigid.

Pope Francis noted that rigidity stops us from enjoying the freedom that comes from justification. We can only enjoy the grace of freedom when we are not rigid. Justification is gratuitous. The death of Jesus is gratuitous, you do not pay for it. It is free! said the Pope.

Concluding his homily, the Pope prayed that the Lord might help us to discern the fruits of evangelical gratuitousness from the fruits of rigidity. May the Lord free us from the spirit of rigidity that robs us of freedom.
The 32-year-old Dubai returnee who was presumed to be the 34th COVID-19 related death in Lagos on Monday did not die from COVID-19, the commissioner of health has announced.

Akin Abayomi gave the update on his Twitter handle on Thursday. He said the gold standard test conducted on the deceased patient turned out negative.

Mr Abayomi, who tweeted the initial death of the patient on Tuesday, said he was one of the Nigerians evacuated from Dubai by the Federal government.

Another COVID-19 infection related death involving 32-year-old male has been recorded. The deceased recently returned from Dubai with severe underlying health condition, following evacuation of Nigerians in foreign countries by@DigiCommsNG, he wrote on his handle.

On Wednesday, the commissioner said the death was a presumed COVID-19 death, and apologised for the error.

The death of a recent Dubai returnee previously announced on my social media handles earlier was a presumed COVID-19 related death.

I regret any misinterpretation this post might have caused. The result of COVID-19 test conducted will be published once it is ready. Thanks for your understanding, he tweeted.

He said the result of the patient came on Thursday and turned out negative.

Mr Abayomi said it was presumed to be COVID-19 death to ensure safe clinical management of the patient and thereafter the corpse.

I hereby inform the general public that the Nigerian who recently returned from Dubai as part of a group of returnees who were placed in a COVID-19 isolation program in lekki, developed complications and was transferred to one of our facilities where he died.

Because of the sudden nature of his demise and without any prior knowledge of his multiple preexisting conditions, it was presumed to be a COVID-19 related death pending confirmation by COVID-19 Gold standard test.

This presumptive attribution is a precaution to ensure the safe clinical management of the patient and subsequent handling of the corpse.

The definitive COVID-19 gold standard test has turned out to be negative for the COVID-19 infection and his death is no longer considered to have been attributable to COVID-19, the commissioner wrote.

This brings the total deaths from COVID-19 in Lagos State to 33.

As of Thursday, Lagos has 2,057 confirmed cases of coronavirus, 1465 active, 541 discharged and 33 deaths.
Department of Correction reported to a state legislator that as of Thursday it had tested 639 inmates for COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic. Almost 83 percent tested positive for the virus, it said.

As you know, due to severe shortage of test kits, DOC was only able to test symptomatic inmates - not a random sample or universal one of inmates either system-wide or at an individual facility, David McCluskey, DOC legislative liaison, wrote Thursday in an email to Sen. Gary Winfield, D-New Haven, co-chair of the Judiciary Committee.

The number of tested inmates reported to Winfield represents about 6 percent of the systems total inmate population, which has declined significantly since March 1, the date DOC Commissioner Rollin Cook has identified as the onset of COVID-19. There were 12,411 people behind bars on March 1. On May 13, the last day for which data was available, there were 10,563.

The figures do not include the mass testing currently being conducted at Osborn Correctional Institution. Officials say they plan on testing all inmates and front line corrections staff by the end of June.

The testing of all staff, as well as offenders, is essential for the public health and safety of us all, Cook said in a memo sent to all staff on May 12. I know that I can count on all of you to do your part - whether it is getting tested or helping others to get tested  to continue to help this Agency contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Large-scale testing is likely to reveal a widespread outbreak. Authorities at correctional facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania found that many more inmates were infected than previously thought after they tested their prison populations en masse.

The asymptomatic population is critical to getting a hold on this, Winfield said, describing the virus presence in correctional facilities as an emergency, though he has not heard it described in that way during the governors daily news briefings.

Were not hearing, Listen we need more resources. Listen, this is imperative,' Winfield said. We need to know you understand the imperative nature of doing this.

Inmates not disclosing illness

The department could be under-testing symptomatic inmates because the inmates themselves are hiding that theyre sick.

The DOC began transferring COVID-positive inmates to Northern Correctional Institution on April 7. Chad Petitpas, a 40-year-old man in custody at the Brooklyn Correctional Institution, said many of the men in his housing unit are ill but refuse to tell medical staff. Theyre afraid theyll be quarantined, unable to talk to their families or receive mail. Theyre wary of being transferred from the medium-security Brooklyn Correctional to Northern, the states most secure and isolating prison.

Youre basically gonna be put in an isolation cell with nothing, Petitpas said over a phone call from the prison. No TV, no radio, no mail.

Many correction staff continue to not wear masks, Petitpas complained, despite directives from Cook that DOC employees must wear protective face-masks while on duty whenever social distancing is not possible.

Petitpas lives in a dormitory-style housing unit. He shares a living space with about 114 other men. Each dorm is split into 19 cubes  a room with no roof or front wall  with three bunks in each cube.

When youre on your bunk, youre probably about three feet away from the people in the bunk above or below you, and the bunks adjacent to you, he said in a sworn statement filed in the ACLU of Connecticuts federal lawsuit. No one at the prison has told us to socially distance or keep six to eight feet away from each other. I have seen those recommendations on TV, but I know that those safety guidelines are not for us. That is because socially distancing is impossible here.

Petitpas said he doesnt feel sick, but he estimates about a third of the men hes housed with do. One guy fainted in the shower last weekend. Others are coughing and popping Advil, trying to get rid of headaches theyve had for a week, he said. One man is so sick hes purple.

That inmate is coughing a lot, but he refuses to don a mask. He knows hes sicker than hes ever been in his life, and he doesnt [care] about the people around him, Petitpas said.

Even if he wanted to, prison isnt a place to tell on your peers, Petitpas said. Nobody wants to be a rat.

Around the time Petitpas was speaking on the phone about conditions inside the prison, a correctional employee began walking around the dorm, waking people up to tell them, inaccurately, Chad says youre sick. Are you sick?

An officers identification of a potential informant by name  has to discourage the vulnerable populations from wanting to come forward and report someone they are concerned about, Petitpas said.

In a statement, a DOC spokesperson denied that there were a large number of infected inmates in a particular housing unit.

The allegations made about Brooklyn Correctional Center turned out to be inaccurate, said Karen Martucci, the DOCs director of external affairs. After receiving public concern that there were sick offenders in a particular housing unit, wellness checks were conducted with each Individual offender by the health services unit which did not identify any COVID-19 symptoms amongst the population.

As he talked into the phone, Petitpas said he could see several men laying in their beds, their blankets pulled up to their eyes. Theres a reason people are sitting in their bunks at 12 in the afternoon, Petitpas said. Theyre sick as dogs.
RAMBAUD, St. Martin:--- The Anguillian educator, writer, and social activist Ijahnya Christian passed away on April 27, 2020, in St. Kitts, where she was laid to rest at Springfield Cemetery on May 5, 2020. She was 63.

Ijahnya is survived by her mother, Amy Rey, and children, Psyche Young, Terek, Joanne Liburd, Wolde Christian, and Judah Christian. She also leaves to mourn her passing her siblings, other family, friends, and colleagues in St. Kitts-Nevis, Anguilla, throughout the Caribbean, and in Ethiopia, according to her cousin, Imani Nia.

Ijahnya, nee Carol Patricia Rey, was born on January 31, 1957, in St. Kitts. Her early childhood was spent in St. Kitts, Nevis, and Anguilla. She graduated from Basseterre High School in 1976 and became a Rastafarian in 1980changing her name that year to Ijahnya (her surname Christian by way of marriage).

Ijahnya Christian obtained her bachelors degree in social work at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, in 1984. She returned to Anguilla and worked as a high school teacher and guidance counselor.

Within a short time of arriving on the island, Ijahnya began mentoring Lottis Hodge on writing Hodges traffic life story. Ijahnya edited the narrative, which was published as Ning Troubles in 1988. In the mid-1980s, Ijahnya began compiling the material for The Dictionary of Anguillian Language (1993). This was the first ethnographic project of its kind for the island, wrote Don E. Walicek in Dictionary of Caribbean and AfroLatin American Biography (2016).

Ijahnya collaborated on other publications for persons within the community, and worked passionately on the positive development of Rastafarianism in Anguilla and the region, said Anguilla Premier Victor Banks in an April 29 statement in Times Caribbean.

Ijahnya earned her masters degree in education at the University of Southampton in 1991. By the mid-1990s, she had established the Triple Crown Culture Yard as a venue for social and cultural expressions and development, said Banks.

In 1994, Triple Crown Culture Yard collaborated with House of Nehesi Publishers (HNP) from the neighboring island of St. Martin to realize on both islands a literary reading and workshop by visiting Caribbean author and thinker George Lamming.

In 2017, Ijahnya would contact HNP about publishing the Dictionary of Anguillian LanguageSecond Edition. The initial publication has been out of print for perhaps 20 years, but I continue to get queries from individuals and institutions, said the indomitable culture bearer. At the time of her passing, communication on the book project was ongoing with HNP.

According to The Anguillian, Ijahnyas column, Heartically Yours, which discussed cultural and political matters of the island, appeared in the newspaper between 1998 and 2009.

Following Ijahnya Christians social activism in the 1990s, and To further her aim of increasing both popular and scholarly attention on Anguillian identity and history, she served as Director of the Department of Youth and Culture from 2004 to 2006. (Wikipedia).

Ijahnya Christian, the RasTafari advocate, and pan-Africanist, founded the Athlyi Rogers Study Centre, a pan-African cultural space, in 2010. In his book Rastafari: A Very Short Introduction (2012), Ennis B. Edmonds wrote that Ijahnya became one of the principal organizers of global RasTafari gatheringscertainly in context as a founding member of the Caribbean Rastafari Organization.

In Wikipedias reference to Island Songs: A Global Repertoire (2011), edited by Godfrey Baldacchino, Christian was a representative for the Caribbean Pan-African Network, speaking on the preservation of language, Caribbean music, and heritage.

The titles of affection and respect, Sistren and Empress, were widely used for Ijahnya. And her embrace of social, cultural, political, and human rights activism was wide. Ijahnya truly embodied the meaning of sisterhood, said the Anguillian politician Pam Webster at the burial ceremony.

She was a strong supporter of women in leadership and women on the frontline of real transformation to improve the lives of our people here, in Anguilla, in the region, and in the world, said Webster.

A definitive high point in the work and faith of Ijahnya Christian was her move to Shashemene, Ethiopia in 2010, to further her work in repatriating the African diaspora to the mother country, from where she continued her writing and social activism. (Wikipedia)

In Erin C. MacLeods book, Visions of Zion: Ethiopians and Rastafari in the search for the promised land (2014), Ijahnya links Repatriation to the principal and laws governing the right of return of the United Nations.

Imani Nia posted on Facebook a few minutes of video of the May 5 burial ceremony for Ijahnya Christian. A COVID-19 distancing protocol was observed. The banner of ites gold and green was seen; elders from the mansions were in appearance; family, friends, and idren of the faithful spoke; Nyabingi drumming sounded; gentle voices followed the recorded song By the Rivers of Babylon. Rites of homegoing for an empress who had labored dutifully in the vineyards of her people.

Good journey into Zion, Ijahnya.
RALEIGH, N.C., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (OTCQB: MGTI) yesterday filed its Form 10-Q quarterly report with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the period ended March 31, 2020. The complete filing can be accessed via the Company's website or at www.sec.gov.

Results for the first quarter reflect operations of the Company-owned and managed facility in Lafayette, GA. This site consists of 1,500 new generation Bitcoin miners (nearly all S17 Pro Antminers from Bitmain Technologies), collectively rated at approximately 80 Ph/s in computing power. As previously stated, all third-party hosting arrangements and investor-owned miner agreements were terminated by year-end 2019.

Revenue for the three months ended March 31, 2020 totaled $677,000, reflecting nearly a full quarter of mining at the site. Operating expenses for the quarter totaled $1.6 million, including $605,000 in cost of revenues and $1.0 million in general and administrative expenses. Non-operating expenses totaled $366,000, resulting in a net loss for the quarter of $1.3 million. Included in the net loss figure are non-cash charges totaling just under $1.0 million.

Cash flow provided by operations was $183,000 for the quarter and included the recovery of $431,000 in previously paid energy taxes in Sweden. The Company used $381,000 in investing activities, $343,000 of which was used to complete the final operating phase of its mining facility in Georgia.

In April, MGT secured a $108,000 loan in connection with the Paycheck Protection Program offered by the U.S Small Business Administration. During the quarter and through May 14, 2020, the Company issued 49.2 million shares of common stock upon the conversion of $500,000 in debt principal, reducing the outstanding debt principal to $429,000. Shares outstanding are 462,931,961 as of May 14, 2020. On this same date, the Company's cash balance was $65,000.

During April and May, the Company preliminarily resolved its derivative actions pending in state and federal courts. Consideration for the settlements include adoption of certain corporate governance reforms and payments to the Company totaling $290,000, of which approximately $180,000 will be paid to the plaintiffs and to the plaintiffs' counsel. As previously reported, MGT also reached a settlement in December 2019 resolving a federal securities class action lawsuit.

Lastly, on May 11, 2020, the third "halving," as proscribed in the Bitcoin protocol, occurred. This halving revised the mining network reward payout to 6.25 Bitcoin per block discovered, from the previous reward payout of 12.5 Bitcoin per block. Since network difficulty is based upon blocks, not coins, halving reduces the number of new Bitcoin being generated by the network in each period. Consequently, if the overall network hash rate does not fall, each miner will see its number of discovered Bitcoin reduced per Ph/s employed, as compared to pre-halving.

While the effect is to limit the supply of new coins, halving has no impact on the quantity of total Bitcoin already outstanding. Moreover, the daily new supply from mining represents an extremely small percentage of the 18.4 million BTC outstanding and a very small fraction of daily BTC trading activity. As a result, the price of Bitcoin could rise or fall based on overall investor and consumer demand. Should the price of Bitcoin remain unchanged after the latest halving, and the overall network hash rate stays stable, the Company's revenue would be reduced by 50%, with a much larger negative impact to profit.

About MGT Capital Investments, Inc.

MGT Capital Investments, Inc. (OTCQB: MGTI) is a U.S.- based Bitcoin miner with operations at an owned facility in Georgia. The Company owns 1,500 new generation Bitmain miners generating approximately 80 Ph/s of hashing power.

For more information on the Company, please visit: https://mgtci.com

Forwardlooking Statements

This press release contains forwardlooking statements. The words or phrases "would be," "will allow," "intends to," "will likely result," "are expected to," "will continue," "is anticipated," "estimate," "project," or similar expressions are intended to identify "forwardlooking statements." All information set forth in this news release, except historical and factual information, represents forwardlooking statements. This includes all statements about the Company's plans, beliefs, estimates and expectations. These statements are based on current estimates and projections, which involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include issues related to: rapidly changing technology and evolving standards in the crypto mining industry; the ability to obtain sufficient funding to continue operations, maintain adequate cash flow and execute its business strategy; volatility in the Bitcoin market; and other factors set forth in the Company's most recently filed annual report and registration statement. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forwardlooking statements, which reflect management's analysis only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to publicly revise these forwardlooking statements to reflect events or circumstances that arise after the date hereof. Readers should carefully review the risks and uncertainties described in other documents that the Company files from time to time with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. MGT Capital Investments, Inc. provides no assurance regarding the actual outcome of the events contemplated by any forward-looking statements included in this release.

Investor and Media Contact:

Robert Lowrey

Chief Financial Officer

[email protected]

919-378-1788

SOURCE MGT Capital Investments, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.mgtci.com


Real estate investment trusts will be able to call on strong balance sheets as they seek to claw back the huge hit to their market value inflicted by the pandemic.

In the three months to Friday, the value of the ASX 300 AREIT (Australian real estate investment trust) index tumbled 33.4 per cent. Retail landlords were hit the hardest, with Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield securities plunging 60 per cent, Scentre slumping 46.4 per cent, Stockland diving 45.5 per cent, Vicinity plummeting 44.8 per cent and Charter Hall Group sinking 41 per cent.

Render of Charter Hall's planned 555 Collins Street tower, which will rise 35 levels above Melbourne's main business strip.

Despite the sell-off, diversified property manager and developer Charter Hall used its March quarter update to reaffirm its guidance for a 40 per cent year-on-year lift in full-year earnings, backed by a balance sheet with zero net gearing and about $420 million of available liquidity.

The group, led by chief executive David Harrison, also boasted $5 billion of investment capacity, of which about 40 per cent is in cash. Since the end of December, Charter Hall has raised $1.6 billion of fresh equity and there are expectations of continued inflows over the remainder of the June quarter.
In an interview, Archbishop Joseph Spiteri said the Lebanese have welcomed the Popes scholarship help for Lebanese students. He also spoke about the difficult times in the country.

By Robin Gomes

The Lebanese people have welcomed the gesture of solidarity and nearness of Pope Francis with great joy and the sense of gratitude, Archbishop Joseph Spiteri said on Friday. Speaking to Sister Bernadette Reis on the phone, he said, nobody doubted that Pope Francis is always close to Lebanon, like all his predecessors.

Popes scholarships for young students

The Holy See Press Office on Thursday announced that the Holy Father has donated USD 200,000 to support 400 scholarships for young people in Lebanon, a nation in severe crisis.

The Press Office explained that the Popes gesture of solidarity, channelled through the Apostolic Nunciature, intended to involve all in the country in the search for the common good, overcoming every division and partisan interest.

Listen to Archbishop Joseph Spiteri

Lebanons crisis, it said, is causing suffering and poverty, which risks robbing the hope especially of younger generations who are going through a difficult present and are staring at an uncertain future.

Lebanon's high standard of education

Archbishop Spiteri explained that the education of young people in Lebanon is fundamental and the country has always had a fantastic educational system that inspired the whole Middle Eastern region.

Unfortunately, Archbishop Spiteri noted, because of the political and social crises the educational establishment has been suffering a lot. Hence it is of utmost importance to maintain the high standards of Lebanese education because it is fundamental for the future of this country and the young people.

The Apostolic Nuncio said that statistics and his personal experience with young people show that most of them want to study and advance in life, hence we have to help them realize their dreams.

Lebanese coexistence and fraternity

One of the worlds most religiously diverse countries, Lebanons some 6.8 million population is estimated to be 60 percent Muslim, 34 percent Christian and Druze, Judaism and others making up the rest.

In announcing the Popes donation, the Holy See Press Office said that in his fatherly concern, the Pope has been following the situation in Lebanon, which has always been an example of the coexistence and fraternity that the Document on Human Fraternity wished to offer to the whole world.

Archbishop Spiteri said that education has a lot to do with people of various religious backgrounds to live together in Lebanon.

As a very good example to this living together, he spoke about the May 14 event in the country. It was in response to the invitation of the Higher Committee of Human Fraternity that called on believers of all religions across the world to unite spiritually on May 14 for a day of prayer, fasting, and works of charity, to implore God to help humanity overcome the coronavirus pandemic.

Made up of Jewish, Christian and Muslim religious leaders, the Higher Committee is committed to reconciliation and peace in the world.

Archbishop Spiteri said that, at the event, many movements, both Muslim and Christian, got together to organize prayers, fasting and, certainly, also acts of solidarity and charity.

However, most of it was done online because of the Covid-19 restrictions.

The Maltese archbishop expressed admiration for the sense of solidarity, creativity and resilience of the people of Lebanon.

Solidarity and lockdown

After easing some restrictions, the government on Wednesday re-imposed a four-day nationwide lockdown on Wednesday, following a spike in reported coronavirus cases.

Speaking about the Covid-19 situation, Archbishop Spiteri said its not too bad from the medical point of view but very bad from the economic point of view. Factories, restaurants and the crucial tourism sector have been particularly hit by the lockdown. With the loss of jobs, many families have lost the possibility of earning a living.

In this situation, the Vatican diplomat said, the only thing that can help them is solidarity.

Caritas, parishes, nuns and priests as well as many Muslim and Christian welfare societies have been working hard to help all people in need.

World Bank statistics show that 50 per cent of the population has gone down and slipped down under the poverty line. This, the archbishop said, is really terrible.

Sowing seeds of hope

Easing the lockdown and re-launching the economy, will take time in these difficult times, the Apostolic Nuncio pointed out.

As a Church, he said, they want to keep sowing the seeds of hope for young people and families not to give up.

There is hope as long as there is this natural creativity and resilience of the Lebanese people, he said, adding, hope never dies.

Archbishop Spiteri said the government that is trying to bring in reforms for better governance, transparency and more rigour in administration but that is not enough. They also need the help of the international community.

We will continue to sow hope, and Im sure the Lord will listen to our prayers, he added.
A Vietnamese sailor employed by a Dutch shipping company has remained stuck off the Panama coast due to the Covid-19 outbreak.

"I have not been on land over the past two months since crew members were instructed to hold out at sea to avoid being infected with the coronavirus," Minh Tri wrote in an email sent Tuesday from a refrigerated cargo ship of Seatrade, an international transportation and shipping company registered in the Netherlands.

Tri, a deck officer, said his ship is anchored off the coast near Panama in Central America, waiting for further instructions from the headquarters.

The 26-year-old said the last time he visited land was at the end of February this year while docked in Bremen, northwest Germany. The ship did not dock at Spain, Australia or North America despite passing through these regions later on.

Since the coronavirus claimed over 298,000 lives globally, many cargo and cruise ships have been stranded at sea, including Tri's vessel.

Tri confirmed the crew was guaranteed enough food, enjoying facilities like libraries, swimming pools, gyms and electronics. However, most still lack medicine and other necessities. Without regular internet, Tri occasionally relies on a Wi-Fi transmitter to update and stay in contact with his family.

After graduating from a maritime university in the Netherlands, Tri worked on an ocean liner for more than three years. He commenced his post on the Seatrade ship in October 2019, embarking from Dunkirk Port in France.

As planned, Tri's contract expired in February 2020. Since he wanted to return to his hometown in Vung Tau coastal town in southern Vietnam, he planned to leave the vessel and stay on shore. But Tri's sailor visa is no longer valid, meaning he can't go onshore until renewing his travel documents.

International Maritime Organization (IMO) has recommended the governments of countries that have sailors working on ships to assist in repatriation. Sailors should be exempt from travel restrictions when they provide sufficient documentation, and be guaranteed health insurance from airlines on their journey home.

Meanwhile, European Commission (EC) urged European Union (EU) to create favorable conditions for its citizens and third-country nationals working on ships abroad when holding long-term visas, so they can be repatriated free of travel restrictions. EC statistics in early April 2020 showed nearly 600,000 multinational sailors working on EU ships.

Tri will be paid by the company to fly home. However, he does not know when and where there will be a commercial flight to Vietnam.

Since mid-April, countries around the world had stopped commercial flights to block the spread of Covid-19 while Vietnam has cooperated with a number of countries to organize special flights to return citizens.

Thousands of Vietnamese have been brought back from Canada, Japan, the UAE, the U.S, as well as Europe and other Southeast Asian neighbors.

"I strongly hope Vietnamese authorities will provide consular support, so that I and other sailors can return home soon," Tri said.
The Diocese of Madison says it will release a plan for its churches to reopen early next week after the extended stay-at-home order in Wisconsin was cut short by the state Supreme Court on Wednesday.

While that statewide order has ended, Dane County and Madison have issued their own local stay-at-home order, which requires residents to continue to social distance and sanitize. However, it differs from the old 'Safer at Home' order by classifying religious entities as essential, allowing them to reopen.

The Bishop of Madison, Rev. Donald Hying, said in a statement Thursday afternoon that he appreciated the exception for the diocese in Dane County, but also adds that he hopes for such an extension to also be made in the diocese's ten other counties and perhaps even across the state of Wisconsin.

Rev. Hying says he is now in discussion with his diocese's Office of Worship and other diocesan leaders to create a plan that would recognize "both societal health concerns and the spiritual needs of the faithful."

"I take this opportunity to commend our civil leaders, public health professionals, and our health care workers for their hard work and courage during the pandemic. My prayers remain for those who are suffering and for a swift end to the pandemic," the bishop said.

Hying expects the plan to be finalized sometime next week and implemented "as soon as reasonable possible."

As for the holding of public mass, Bishop Hying says churches are working to create a safe plan across the diocese.

"We really want to walk through the plan with all of our priests so that what were doing is prudent, unified and truly helpful," said Hying.

The Diocese of Madison is comprised of 11 counties in south-central Wisconsin, which poses a challenge for how different worship could look in diocese's 134 churches.

"Weve been essentially in this situation for nine to 10 weeks now so coming out of it, we want to do it in a systematic way thats really going to be beneficial to our people," added Hying.

Bishop Hying also says the church has taken a financial hit over the past few weeks.

"When you think of all the money that's thrown loose into the collection, we've lost that," said Hying.

The Diocese of Madison has examined what the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has put out for it's resumption of public mass.

The local Dane County public health order asks religious entities to keep services virtual as much as possible.

If in-person religious services are held, there are 25 percent capacity requirements. To view the other requirements, click
Since the COVID-19 infection flare-up in December 2019, the malady has spread to right around 100 nations around the world with the World Health Organization proclaiming it a general wellbeing crisis. The worldwide effects of the coronavirus sickness 2019 (COVID-19) are now beginning to be felt, and will essentially influence the Healthcare Industry in 2020.

Over the decades, there has been a notable increase in the prevalence of chronic diseases such as cancer all over the world. This is strengthening the focus of pharmaceutical manufacturers all over the world to develop more effective medicine and treatment methods for the same.

Increasing demand for biotechnological and biopharmaceuticals products using various cell culture lines is gaining importance. This increasing demand for cell culture will boost the growth of the cell culture media market over the coming years.

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Company Profiles

Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc.

Merck KGaA

GE Healthcare

Lonza

Corning Incorporated

Irvine Scientific

STEMCELL Technologies Inc.

PAN Biotech

MP Biomedicals, LLC

PromoCell GmbH

Becton, Dickinson and Company

Hi-Media Laboratories

As such, the global cell culture media market was valued at US$ 2.4 Bn in 2018, and is expected to witness a healthy CAGR of 7% over the forecast period (20192029).

Key Takeaways of Cell Culture Media Market Study

Serum-free media contributed maximum share to the cell culture media market in 2018 , due to high product availability and increasing adoption of the same.

, due to high product availability and increasing adoption of the same. Cancer research accounted for a prominent share in the global cell culture media market in 2018 , attributable to the rising prevalence of cancer and increased cancer research funding.

, attributable to the rising prevalence of cancer and increased cancer research funding. The biopharmaceutical companies segment is the most lucrative segment, due to increased usage of cell culture media in biopharmaceutical production.

Increase in the number of pharmaceutical manufacturers has contributed to the dominance of North America in the global cell culture media market.

Attributed to growing awareness regarding various diseases such as cancer and its rising prevalence, East Asia is expected to offer notable growth opportunities for the cell culture media market through 2029.

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Cell culture media not only helps in drug development but also collects extensive data that is valuable for future research. Rising demand for serum-free culture media will offer significant growth opportunities for the cell culture media market in the coming years, says a PMR analyst.

Trends in Cell Culture Media Technologies

There are many research and pipeline products that have the ability to treat chronic diseases. This is attributed to the current state of technology and more funding by government toward research & development activities. Also, rising awareness about cell culture-based vaccines and increasing demand for biopharmaceutical products will boost the growth of the cell culture media market.

Increasing collaborations between contract manufacturing organizations and key players will surge market growth further. Serum-free cell culture media, among other cell culture media, has the potential to grow at a relatively faster rate over the forecast period.

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More Valuable Insights on Cell culture media Market

Persistence Market Research offers a unique perspective and actionable insights on the cell culture media market in its latest study, presenting historical demand assessment of 20142018 and projections for 20192029, on the basis of product (serum containing media, serum-free media, protein-free media, and chemically defined media), application (cancer research, biopharmaceuticals, regenerative medicine & tissue engineering, stem cell technologies, and others), and end user (biopharmaceutical companies, clinical research organizations, and academic research centers), across six regions.
Six migrant workers were killed and 95 others injured in separate road accidents in Uttar Pradesh when they were returning home during the ongoing lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak, police said on Friday.

The accidents have taken place in Barabanki, Jalaun, Bahraich and Mahoba districts since Thursday evening, they said.

In Barabanki, a group of seven labourers returning from Surat to Bahraich were waiting for conveyance near Badel on the Lucknow-Ayodhya National Highway on Friday morning when a speeding truck hit them, killing three on the spot and injuring the rest.

Those killed have been identified as Shishupal (32), his brother Jeetendra (30) and uncle Mohan Nishad (40), the police said, adding that the four injured have been admitted to a hospital.

The group members were working in a handloom company in Surat in Gujarat and had left for their homes after the factory was shut due to the ongoing lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. They reached Barabanki in a truck and were waiting for another vehicle to take them home, the police said.

In a separate accident, two people were killed and 40 injured when a truck carrying them from Mumbai to their homes in Uttar Pradesh fell in a ditch after being hit by another truck in Jalaun district.

According to Jalaun Superintendent of Police Satish Kumar, the truck with 46 migrant labourers, hailing from different districts of Uttar Pradesh, had started its journey from Mumbai four days ago and met with the accident on Thursday night.

The injured have been admitted to Orai Medical College, the police officer said. The deceased have been identified as Sundari, belonging to Chitrakoot district, and Sher Bahadur Gautam of Bhadohi district.

Another truck, also ferrying migrant labourers from Mumbai, overturned after the driver lost control of the vehicle after hitting an electric pole on the Lucknow-Bahraich highway in Bahraich district, police said.

The accident occurred under Chakkarpur Police Station and left 32 people injured, Additional SP Ajay Pratap Singh said.

All the injured were rushed to Sadar Hospital where Ghulam Jilani (28), belonging to Bahraich, succumbed to injuries. All the injured are said to be natives of Bahraich, the SP added.

In Mahoba district's Panewadi township, a truck carrying migrants from Gujarat to Chhattisgarh overturned injuring 20 people.

The truck carrying about 70 to 80 migrant workers from Gujarat was on its way to Chhattisgarh when it overturned on Jhansi-Mirzapur National Highway, injuring 20 of them, Circle Officer (City) Jatashankar Rao said.

The accident took place in the wee hours on Friday morning , he said adding that all the injured were however out of danger.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Conroe Mayor Toby Powell has filed a class action lawsuit against several Montgomery County officials hoping to get some property tax relief for residents facing economic hardships amid the amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The suit names Montgomery County Chief Appraiser Tony Belinoski and Tax Assessor Collector Tammy McRae and was filed just hours before the deadline to protest property taxes. It asks the court to order the chief appraiser to either apply an across-the-board reduction to the value of all properties or re-assess each property individually.

In the lawsuit filed Friday, Powell states the appraisal district has that discretion to do these things but has refused to exercise it. Alternatively, Powell, who filed the suit in his personal capacity, asks the court to order the appraisal district to extend the deadline to file individual protests until June 30.

Property values for tax purposes are normally set as of January 1 of the tax year, and the values Montgomery County taxpayers received in the mail around April 15 were based on what their property was worth on January 1, Powell said in a press release. They do not reflect what has happened to our economy in the five months since that date.

McRae and Belinoski had not been served and had not seen the lawsuit Friday, so both declined to comment.

In March, Montgomery County health officials confirmed the countys first case of the new coronavirus. That announcement was followed by several local and state orders that ordered all non-essential businesses closed and residents to stay at home for more than a month.

What we are asking for in this lawsuit is for the appraisal district to re-appraise all of the property in the county based on what has happened to our economy since that time, Powell stated. Unfortunately, many of the properties in the county show a large increase in value because demand for new homes and real estate was high toward the end of 2019. But that has dried up because thousands of our fellow citizens have lost their jobs or their businesses have been shut down.

Powell said he made the decision to file the suit following dozens of phone calls from business owners and residents, many from the April Sound community, begging for help because they are unable to pay their property taxes.

This has weighed heavily on my heart as I fully understand their plight, he said, noting Belinoski has the authority to grant relief to taxpayers. I do not see any other way to help our citizens except through a lawsuit. I was elected to serve and protect our citizens and thats what I fully intend to do.

Rigby Owen III, the attorney representing the mayor in the suit, said the tax code normally requires properties to be valued as of January 1 of the tax year. Typically, appraisal districts across Texas mail out notices of those values to property owners by mid-April and the taxpayers then have 30 days in which to file a protest.

However, Owen said filing protest online is not usually effective and the COVID-19 crisis has limited in person protests since the appraisal district offices was closed.

We are asking that the deadline to file a protest be extended at least until June 30 to give the taxpayers more time to file individual protests, Owen said. It is our understanding that most government offices will be able to open back up to the public on June 1. It seems only fair that taxpayers be given an adequate amount of time to file their protests in person. The taxpayer has a right to a hearing before the Appraisal Review Board. But that has not been possible so far because the Appraisal District Office has been closed to the public because of the COVID-19 crisis.

Powell said while the city has some say in the taxing process, the county goes far beyond what the city can do to relieve their burden. For a property owner in Conroe the city portion of their property tax bill is less than 20 percent of the total bill. The city has no control over how much in taxes is collected by the school districts, the county government or other special districts that are funded by property taxes.

I feel very strongly about this issue, Powell said. The people of this city and county are hurting and many of them simply will not be able to pay their taxes when they come due unless we do something about it now. Ultimately, if they cannot pay, they may lose their property because of a situation beyond their control.

cdominguez@hcnonline.com
As county officials and advocates echoed her fears about rising abuse, she teamed up with the Kendall County states attorney to try, in a series of Facebook videos, to raise awareness about domestic violence. Though the state stay-at-home order has kept people home and many businesses closed, she wants residents to know that courts remain open and are issuing orders of protection, that hotlines and aid organizations are still operating, and that those being abused can create plans to leave.
Nirmala Sitharaman

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced setting up of a Rs 1 lakh crore agri infrastructure fund for farm-gate infrastructure.

This fund will be used for setting up cold chains and post-harvest management infrastructure, she said while announcing the third tranche of Covid-19 relief package.

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Nirmala Sitharaman She also announced a Rs 10,000 crore scheme for formalisation of micro food enterprises (MFE).

The scheme will be launched to help 2 lakh MFEs by adopting cluster-based approach such as mango in Uttar Pradesh, kesar in Jammu & Kashmir, bamboo shoots in North-East, chilli in Andhra Pradesh, tapioca in Tamil Nadu.

This fund would help in reaching untapped export markets in view of improved health consciousness.
- Miriam Moraa found in her mother's phone an M-Pesa message from a man she was allegedly dating

- The 24-year-old instantly confronted her parent, Pauline Kwamboka, with kicks and punches, accusing her of snatching her man

- Neighbours said Miriam complained bitterly that for the last two weeks, she had not been receiving money from the man believed to be a Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) employee

- The 52-year-old woman was rushed to hospital after sustaining serious injuries

There was drama in Majengo, Mombasa county after a 57-year-old woman engaged in a vicious fight with her daughter over a lover.

Pauline Kwamboka was rushed to hospital while bleeding and with other injuries while her 24-year-old daughter, Miriam Moraa, went into hiding after the brawl with her mother.

READ ALSO: Murkomen to Speaker Lusaka: "How did Pontious Pilate feel when Jesus rose from death?"

Majengo residents arrived in droves to witness the drama that ensued at their neighbourhood. Photo: Yvonne Mutunga/TUKO.co.ke.

Source: Original

READ ALSO: Raila akutana na kikosi chake huku Jubilee ikikumbwa na masaibu

According to neighbors who witnessed the bizarre event, drama started when a bitter exchange ensued between Moraa and her mother after the young lady found an M-Pesa message in Kwamboka's phone from an employee of Kenya Ports Authority (KPA) the 24-year-old was dating.

Seething with rage and anger, the energetic girl took on her mother with fast and furious punches and kicks that left the hopeless old woman gasping for breath on the streets of the dusty estate.

"She complained bitterly that about two weeks have elapsed without her receiving money from the sponsor and was surprised to discover her mother was the one benefitting," said one of the neighbour.

Neighbours witnessing the drama that unfolded at Majengo estate where daughter and mother fought over a sponsor. Photo: Yvonne Mutunga/ TUKO.co.ke.

Source: Original

Eyewitnesses intimated to TUKO.co.ke that the furious daughter used a belt, cooking stick and other blunt objectives to attack her mother.

By the time she was rescued from the brutal hands of her daughter, the 52-year-old woman had already sustained serious injuries on the head, face and at the back and was bleeding profusely.

She was rushed to a nearby hospital for medical attention.

The daughter fled home leaving her underage boy child behind

Neighbours said they were waiting for the medical report to foward the matter to police officers.

Story by Yvonne Mutunga - TUKO.co.ke correspondent

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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Source: TUKO.co.ke
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Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 19:39 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8660f8 1 Politics PAN,National-Mandate-Party,amien-rais,2019-presidential-election,Jokowi,Zulkifli-Hasan Free

National Mandate Party (PAN) patron Amien Rais, known as an outspoken critic of President Joko Jokowi Widodo, is preparing to form a new political party following an internal rift within PAN.

PAN cofounder and former party executive board member Agung Mozin told The Jakarta Post on Friday that Amien's new party would accommodate groups that were critical of the government. Amien, a PAN icon, lost his influence in the party after his leadership candidates lost to current party chairman Zulkifli Hasan.

We call on government critics, no matter who the government is, not limited to the Jokowi-Ma'ruf Amin administration, all elements of society that have the same concerns as us, to join the new party," Agung said of the plans for the new political party.

Jokowis coalition now controls more than 75 percent of seats at the House of Representatives, leaving only PAN, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) and the Democratic party outside the ruling group. PAN has 44 seats at the House, representing 7.6 percent of overall lawmakers.

Read also: At least 10 injured in violent dispute during second day of PAN congress

Amien, who founded the party on the back of the anti-establishment reform movement in 1998, is now no longer part of the organizational structure at PAN, which sided with hardline Islamic groups during several elections.

Agung explained that Amien and the group members had discussed with several government critics about the formation of the new party, to include elements from Islamic groups to academics.

The discussions were not on behalf of institutions. They are individuals," he said without further elaboration. University professors, regional figures have texted me to join, but I cant mention their names.

PANs internal rift widened recently upon the announcement that Amiens son Hanafi Rais had submitted his resignation from the party. He will also give up his position as a lawmaker and chairman of the PAN faction at the House.

Agung said it remained unclear whether Hanafi would join the new party.

Read also: PANs internal rifts linger after violence, resignation

In his resignation letter, a copy of which was obtained by the Post, Hanafi said he had resigned because of the lack of improvement in the party as it tended to support the government when it was supposed to be in opposition.

The party previously supported Gerindra Party chairman Prabowo Subianto in the 2019 presidential elections, but he now serves as Jokowis defense minister and Gerindra has joined the ruling coalition.

PAN chairman Zulkifli, who has signaled interest in joining the government coalition, regards the party as a critical partner of the government, as opposed to an opposition party, following his reappointment for five years starting February this year.

PAN cofounder Putra Jaya Husein, who stepped down from the party organization in 2018, said that Hanafis resignation had encouraged many members to establish the new political party. Hanafi's resignation might encourage other members to follow suit given Zulkifli's reelection, he added.

"Hanafis resignation has spurred us to establish a new party. He did not resign because he wanted to join us. It was only his attitude that inspired us to do so, said Putra, who quit PAN because of frictions with Zulkifli.

Read also: PKS ready to stand alone as opposition

Preparations for the new party were almost 70 percent complete, he added.

In PANs leadership contest in February, Amien made Hanafi a candidate for the role of party secretary-general if Mulfachri Harahap, Zulkiflis rival, was elected party chairman.

However, a dispute between Zulkifli and Mulfachri eventually culminated in an incident in which at least 10 party members were injured during the congress. In a video of the incident, several congress participants are seen throwing chairs at each other after the congress leader had adjourned the meeting.

PAN deputy chairman Viva Yoga Mauladi expressed doubts about Amien's plan to establish a new party, saying Amien was attached to PAN.

I personally doubt that Pak Amien will establish a new party, considering his love for PAN, said Yoga. Amien and PAN are inseparable.

However, Putra said that Amien and his loyalists had lost faith in PAN, pointing out that it would have been unthinkable for Amien to create a new party if it had not been triggered by internal problems within the party.

"We feel sad doing this because we have to leave the home that we built from scratch, but weve lost hope, he added.

Indonesia Political Review executive director Ujang Komarudin said Amien should attract Muhammadiyah grassroot supporters if he wanted the party to grow and compete with PAN and other parties.

"The opportunity to take Muhammadiyah's mass following is quite big. Because as we know, Amien was leader of Muhammadiyah, the second-largest Islamic organization in Indonesia,"

He added there was once a splinter party of PAN in 2006, the National Sun Party (PMB), but it was unable to grow and compete with PAN as both were identical.

"New parties find it difficult to compete with older parties. It's because they don't have a mass following, even if they have a huge advertising budget," Ujang said.
From a hospital on the edge of the Navajo Nation to the suburbs of the nation's capital, front-line medical workers in coronavirus hot spots are struggling to keep up with a crushing load of patients while lockdown restrictions are lifting in many other parts of the US.

Governors are starting to slowly reopen some segments of their local economies, pointing to evidence that COVID-19 deaths and new hospitalizations are peaking or starting to recede in their states. But a government whistleblower warned Thursday that the US faces its darkest winter in modern history unless leaders act decisively to prevent a rebound of the virus.

While many state and local officials see modest signs of progress in the pandemic fight, coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks in pockets of the US.

Among them is a suburb of Washington, D.C. The head of a hospital system in Maryland's Prince George's County, a majority black community bordering the city, said the area's intensive care units are bursting at the seams. Meanwhile, a civil rights group's lawsuit claimed the county's jail failed to stop an uncontrolled coronavirus outbreak and isolated infected prisoners in cells with walls covered in feces, mucus and blood.

I would say we are the epicenter of the epicenter, said Dr. Joseph Wright, interim CEO of University of Maryland Capital Region Health.

The hospital in Gallup, New Mexico, is on the front lines of a grinding outbreak on the Navajo Nation that recently prompted a 10-day lockdown with police setting up roadblocks to discourage non-emergency shopping.

Medical workers last week staged a protest over inadequate staffing and to urge the CEO of Rehoboth McKinley Christian Hospital to resign. The departure last week of the hospital's lung specialist has limited its ability to treat COVID-19 patients, as people with acute respiratory symptoms are transported to Albuquerque some two hours away.

About 17 nurses were cut from the hospital's workforce in March, at least 32 workers have tested positive for the virus and its intensive care unit is at capacity.

My staff is physically exhausted, emotionally exhausted and they are suffering from moral injury, chief nursing officer Felicia Adams said.

Meanwhile, in Washington, Rick Bright, a vaccine expert who alleges he was ousted from a high-level scientific post after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic, told a congressional panel that the U.S. lacks a plan to produce and fairly distribute a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available.

Asked by lawmakers if Congress should be worried, Bright, who wore a protective mask while testifying, responded: Absolutely. President Donald Trump dismissed Bright in a tweet Thursday as a disgruntled employee. The White House has launched what it calls Operation Warp Speed to produce, distribute and administer a vaccine once it becomes available.

Bright's testimony follows a warning this week from Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government's top infectious disease expert, that rushing to reopen could turn back the clock and lead to more suffering and death, complicating efforts to revive the economy.

The US has the largest outbreak in the world by far: over 1.4 million infections and nearly 85,000 deaths, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.4 million and killed over 300,000. Experts say the actual numbers are likely far higher.

The pressure is on to staunch job losses in the US after unemployment soared to 14.7 per cent in April, the highest since the Great Depression. Another nearly 3 million applied for unemployment benefits last week as more companies slashed jobs.

Roughly 36 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the country in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close, the US Labor Department said Thursday.

Many states are lifting lockdowns, leading to tentative resumptions of commerce, but there are frustrations among some people still living under tough restrictions.

In Michigan, hundreds of people, some armed, protested Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order in heavy rain outside the state Capitol on Thursday, while about 500 people rallied outside the residence of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz.

But elsewhere, Richmond, Virginia, opted out of the state's gradual reopening for now citing an increase in cases and the city's large minority population, and Kansas delayed reopening bars and bowling alleys.

Even in places that have relaxed restrictions, hospitals continue to operate on an emergency footing.

Georgia provided a network of hospitals with extra nurses so exhausted employees could take some time off and recover. The Northeast Georgia Health System, which operates four hospitals, is still struggling to buy the disposable protective gowns it needs. It has assigned workers to collect and sanitize suits so they can be reused, and volunteers are sewing gowns and masks.

That's our most critical need, said Tracy Vardeman, the health system's chief strategy officer. We're going through as many as 6,000 a day. The system's largest hospital serves a county at the epicenter of the state's poultry industry.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The best leaders are always looking for ways to improve business process efficiencies and streamline infrastructure. Many organizations begin their digital transformation by moving to SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) applications. Cloud-based applications can help your workers be more productive, and they open up new ways of collaborating and communicating. More than 11,000 SaaS available applications provide more opportunities than ever to propel your business forward.

But, with people connecting directly to the Internet, bypassing old defenses, and storing information in the cloud, old approaches to security no longer apply. The cloud is akin to the wild west for a Chief Information Security Officer (CISO): an unfettered environment with limited visibility and control that can leave your workforce, critical data, and intellectual property (IP) exposed and vulnerable.

Most traditional security products are largely reactive and focus on keeping the bad guys outdespite the inconvenience and expense it places on your organization and your staff. In contrast, Forcepoint believes in a human-centric approach that represents the modern cybersecurity path forward. Its an approach that delivers visibility into and context around anomalous behavior on a network while dynamically automating security response based on the level of risk. In taking a one-to-one versus one-to-many approach to security, organizations can identify breaches before they happen and move left-of-breach with frictionless security that keeps employees productive.

Making it safe to work from home: shifting perspectives in security

Many organizations are enablingor, through government mandate, requiringemployees to work from home or other remote locations. As a result, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) support continues to gain popularity as employees connect to their company network via cloud applications and the device of their choice. While this flexibility enables your remote workforce to remain productive while working from any location, it also opens up more avenues for data leakage and potential breaches.

The typical company uses 600 to 1,000 SaaS apps. But, on average, only 59% of organizations have a formalized BYOD policywhich makes security gaps inevitable. Almost all organizations have to deal with the problem of shadow IT: employees using cloud-based apps that havent been vetted by their IT department. Unmanaged endpoints leave people and data vulnerable; security teams lack visibility into how data is being accessed and used; and organizations cant effectively enforce data protection policies.

SaaS apps, remote work, and cloud dependence are parts of the new reality; Organizations must ensure they dont sacrifice business resilience as a result of any advantages gained.

By embracing certain shifts in perspective relevant to todays new way of working, you will ensure your security strategy is built for the modern workforceand that your people and data are at the forefront of your growth.

Scaling your security strategy to protect people and data wherever work happens can be challenging. Forcepoint is here to help. Visit us to learn more about protecting your remote work environment.
A Grab logo is pictured at the Money 20/20 Asia Fintech Trade Show in Singapore

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Softbank-backed Grab is preparing for a potentially "long winter", co-founder Tan Hooi Ling said on Thursday, as the ride-hailing firm's revenue takes a hit from the coronavirus outbreak.

The Southeast Asian company has seen an uptick in food and parcel deliveries, but its core ride-hailing business has dropped, she said.

Overall revenue was "lower than it used to be pre-COVID", she said. "During this time, we are preparing for the worst case scenario, which is potentially a very long winter."

The company is taking measures to be more capital efficient and conserve cash, she said.

Last month, Grab CEO Anthony Tan said the pandemic was the single biggest crisis to affect the eight-year-old company, with volumes in its ride-hailing business down by double-digit percentages in some countries.

(Reporting by Aradhana Aravindan and John Geddie; editing by Clarence Fernandez and Jason Neely)
President Moon Jae-in speaks on the phone with Chinese President Xi Jinping at his residence at Cheong Wa Dae, May 13. Yonhap



Human security, managing US-China antagonism to be key focus in Moon's diplomacy



By Do Je-hae



One of the huge differences in President Moon Jae-in's recent speech from previous occasions was the rare mention of diplomacy.



Rather than bilateral relations, Moon highlighted the concept of "human security," as one of the keywords in his address.



"Building upon successful epidemic prevention efforts, we will lead international cooperation in the post-COVID-19 era while placing human security at the center," Moon said in the special speech to mark his third year in office, May 10.



The remarks were seen to underline the need for Korea to adapt to the new concept of security in dealing with all factors threatening safety such as disasters, diseases and environmental issues, not just conventional military threats.



Experts who spoke to The Korea Times following the anniversary speech said some noticeable changes are expected in Korea's diplomacy in the wake of the pandemic.



"During the remainder of his term, human security will be the core topic as there is not much that can be done in the area of traditional security cooperation," Hwang Jae-ho, a professor at the School of International Studies of Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, told The Korea Times, May 11. "Even in relation to North Korea, he mentioned human security as an item for inter-Korean cooperation."



Moon left out ongoing difficulties in relations with major powers such as the U.S., Japan and China in the speech, leading to questions about whether this was due to an alleged lack of progress in his first three years in office.



"The main diplomatic focus right now is centered on sharing the Korean model for quarantine around the world and human security," Hwang said. "Regarding criticisms about the lack of progress in issues with the U.S., China and Japan, it is not that our diplomacy was not effective. Rather, there was not much Korea could do to change things because their respective positions are so obstinate."



The rocky Korea-U.S. negotiations over the Special Measures Agreement (SMA) to determine Korea's share of the cost for maintaining U.S. troops here have raised concerns about a weakening in the alliance during Moon's term.



On top of this, Moon's diplomatic team has also been criticized by the opposition and conservative members of the Korean public for its handling of Korea-Japan relations, particularly with the decision last August to terminate a bilateral military intelligence pact, the General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA), and then reversing the decision a few months later.



"President Moon's diplomacy for the first three years in office was rather underwhelming," said Lee Seong-hyon, director at the Center for Chinese Studies at the Sejong Institute. "South Korea's relationship with the U.S. and Japan in this period have all deteriorated."



New thinking on diplomacy



Some experts note the reduced focus in bilateral relations is natural, given that the world is preoccupied with fighting a transnational problem at the moment. Against this backdrop, leaders and policymakers need to go beyond 20th-century geopolitical ideas, according to analysts.



"As we're experiencing with the pandemic, the traditional approach to foreign policy needs to be rethought," John Delury, a professor at the Graduate School of International Studies at Yonsei University, said in a phone interview with The Korea Times. "In South Korea, in particular, there is a traditionalist attitude of going country by country, like should the focus be U.S., China or Japan? But what we are seeing with the COVID-19 is how you cannot think in bilateral terms and country by country. First of all, the threats are transnational. But also solutions are transnational."



"I think that President Moon and the government are doing a very good job of finding ways to create some solutions and models of cooperation even in the midst of this pandemic. So that should be absolute top priority for the next two years to get beyond the kind of 20th-century geopolitical ideas about country by country and instead think in new kind of ways."





President Moon Jae-in, center, prepares to participate in a special teleconference of G20 leaders at his office at Cheong Wa Dae, March 26. Courtesy of Cheong Wa Dae
Equity benchmark BSE Sensex ended marginally lower after a choppy session on Friday as investors weighed the fiscal impact of the government's economic stimulus.

According to market experts, participants fear that the Rs 20 lakh crore package may not result in direct and immediate boost to demand, raising doubts over the country's economic revival in the near term.

After slumping over 350 points during the day, the 30-share index pared most losses to settle 25.16 points or 0.08 per cent lower at 31,097.73.

Similarly, NSE Nifty slipped 5.90 points, or 0.06 per cent, to close at 9,136.85.

M&M was the top laggard in the Sensex pack, cracking 4.70 per cent, followed by Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma and ICICI Bank.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, Tata Steel, NTPC, HUL and Reliance spurted up to 2.68 per cent.

During the week, the Sensex declined 544.97 points or 1.72 per cent, while broader Nifty fell 114.65 points or 1.23 per cent.

Besides uncertainty over the effectiveness of the fiscal stimulus package, the spike in COVID-19 cases in the country is weighing on investor sentiment, experts noted.

"Markets settled almost unchanged after hovering in a range, taking a pause after the recent dip. It opened marginally higher but the gains fizzled out in no time and it inched further lower.

"The FM has been announcing the stimulus details for the last two days and hopefully, all the details will be out by Sunday...It seems like markets are awaiting further details before making any reaction," said Ajit Mishra, VP - Research, Religare Broking Ltd.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package comprising free foodgrains for migrant workers, Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit to farmers and working capital for street vendors in a bid to help those hit hard by the nationwide lockdown.

Announcing the third tranche of the stimulus package post market hours on Friday, she said the measures will focus on giving relief to agriculture and allied industries.

Sectorally, BSE realty, bankex, auto, finance, IT, healthcare and capital goods indices fell up to 1.42 per cent, while telecom, metal, energy, power, oil and gas, basic materials and FMCG rose up to 1.81 per cent.

Broader midcap and smallcap indices fell up to 0.31 per cent.

World equities ticked higher as investors focused on graded resumption of economic activities.

Bourses in Tokyo and Seoul closed with gains, while Shanghai and Hong Kong settled in the red. Stock exchanges in Europe were trading on a positive note in early deals.

International oil benchmark Brent crude futures climbed 2.18 per cent to USD 31.81 per barrel.

On the currency front, the rupee provisionally settled 2 paise lower at 75.58 against the US dollar.

The number of COVID-19 cases in India climbed to 81,970, while the death toll rose to 2,649, according to the health ministry.

Globally, the number of cases linked to the disease has crossed 44.43 lakh and the death toll has topped 3.02 lakh.

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




BULAWAYO residents will now receive running water only once a week after council announced that it will decommission Lower Ncema Dam today, as the city grapples with one of its worst water crises in recent history.





The decommissioning of the dam will leave the city relying on three supply dams out of its six dams.Upper Ncema and Umzingwane dams were decommissioned last year and the latest development leaves Bulawayo with Insiza, Inyakuni and Mtshabezi dams for water supply.





The loss of the citys three supply dams will see the local authority only managing to release about 94 megalitres (ML) per day against the citys daily demand which averages 155ML per day.

In February last year, Bulawayo City Council introduced a 48-hour weekly water shedding programme that was increased to 72 hours then 108 hours to the current 120-hour regime.





According to council, the decommissioning of Upper Ncema will see residents enduring a 144-hour weekly water shedding programme which translates to six days.





The stringent measures are meant to conserve the fast dwindling water levels in the citys dams that have dropped to 30 percent.





The water situation spells disaster for Bulawayo residents who are expected to maintain high levels of hygiene amidst the Covid-19 pandemic.





Constantly washing hands reduces chances of infection.





Some residents in high lying suburbs such as Magwegwe have gone for more than a month without receiving any tap water and the situation is getting desperate by the day.





In a statement, Bulawayo Town Clerk Mr Christopher Dube said Lower Ncema is six percent full and will be decommissioned today.





When Lower Ncema is decommissioned by Friday the 15th of May 2020, only 60  65 ML/day of raw water will be available for the city from three supply dams and Nyamandlovu aquifer, said Mr Dube.





In order to prevent the system from collapsing due to the supply-demand deficit, a more stringent water supply regime of 144 hours will be introduced.





He did not immediately announce when the new water shedding schedule will be effected or how it will be rolled out.





Mr Dube said council is grappling with one of the worst water crises in Bulawayos history.





BCC wishes to apologise to its valued consumers for the inconvenience already caused and likely to be caused as it grapples with one of the most parched seasons in its history, said Mr Dube.





Mr Dube said since February last year, Bulawayo has been struggling to provide uninterrupted water supplies to the city due to depleting water levels in the citys supply dams.





Since the decommissioning of Upper Ncema and Umzingwane dams, the City has been unable to meet its daily demand which averages 155ML/day. The maximum available raw water supply is currently at 94ML/day, said Mr Dube.





As a result of the gap between demand and supply of 59ML/day, the city has been on water shedding since February 2019, which has been progressively implemented from the 48-hour, 72-hour, 108-hour to the current 120-hour regime. The daily water consumption for the period ending 30 April 2020 has been averaging 110ML/day which is above the available raw water supply of 94ML/day.





Government is cognisant of Bulawayos water crisis. It recently released $10,6 million to Zimbabwe National Water Authority (Zinwa) to rehabilitate 15 boreholes in Nyamandlovu aquifer to improve supplies to the city.





The renovations are already underway and once completed the boreholes will increase raw water pumping from an average of 3ML a day to between 7ML and 10ML.





Local Government and Public Works Minister July Moyo recently said Government would be releasing more funds to address Bulawayos water challenge.




The World Health Organization said Friday it was studying a possible link between COVID-19 and a rare inflammatory illness that has sickened and killed children in Europe and the United States.

In recent weeks, several countries have reported cases of children affected by an inflammatory disease with symptoms similar to those of a rare condition, Kawasaki's disease.

"Initial reports hypothesise that this syndrome may be related to COVID-19," WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing.

"It is critical to urgently and carefully characterise this clinical syndrome, to understand causality and to describe treatment interventions," he said.

He said the WHO had developed a preliminary case definition for the disease, which it has dubbed "Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children", and was calling on clinicians worldwide to "be on the alert and better understand this syndrome."

His comments came after a doctor in France said Friday that a nine-year-old boy there who had tested positive for COVID-19 had died from the syndrome, marking the first such death in the country.

Similar child fatalities are being investigated in New York and London.

A London children's hospital said on Wednesday that a 14-year-old boy with no underlying health conditions had died from the disease and had tested positive for the new coronavirus.

In New York, Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Tuesday that three children in the state had died and more than 100 cases were being investigated.

There have been 125 reported cases in France between March 1 and May 12, according to the country's public health agency. The patients' ages ranged from one to 14.

- 'Very rare' -

WHO expert Maria Van Kerkhove told Friday's briefing that the link to COVID-19 had yet to be clearly established, since some of the children with the syndrome had not tested positive for the virus.

"We need to understand if this syndrome is related to COVID-19 or not," she said.

"We need all countries to be on alert for this."

WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan meanwhile said that even if the syndrome is related to COVID-19, it may not be caused by the novel coronavirus itself.

"What we don't know yet is whether those rare things that happen are associated directly to the virus... or are we seeing also the result of the immune response to the virus," he said.

He also stressed that the syndrome impacting children appeared to be "very rare", and had only become apparent because of swelling number of COVID-19 cases.

"It doesn't mean that the disease is changing in kids," he said.

"What it means is that when you get a very large number of children with the disease, you will see a very rare occurrence happen."

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Taoiseach Leo Varadkar says he is "increasingly confident" that Ireland can enter Phase One of the roadmap to reopening the economy on Monday, but warned it will be "months and not weeks" before people can travel around Europe again.

Mr Varadkar said that it must not be taken for granted that Ireland can move through the five phases of the document, which was launched three weeks ago, and that we may see setbacks along the way.

The Taoiseach said the Covid-19 virus is "

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"As we are seeing around the world, this is not a straight path. Sometimes progress is halted and there are setbacks. We have seen examples of this in Germany, South Korea and, again, most recently in Wuhan.

"The crucial thing is to keep doing the right things, to stick to the strategy and maintain our focus and to expect and look for new clusters and flare-ups.

This virus is a fire in retreat. We must quench its every spark and stamp out every ember.

Mr Varadkar added that the Government is committed to protecting the rights of citizens to move freely around the EU, but that these rights have been impacted by the Covid-19 outbreak:

"While these rights may be restricted for a time, due to the pandemic and public health emergency, it is our policy to resume normal travel for business, leisure, study and visits to friends and relatives as soon as it is safe to do so but not before.

"This is something the European Commission is currently working on. However, it is going to be months not weeks before this is possible."

Mr Varadkar said that Ireland must become comfortable with the "new normal" of handwashing, respiratory etiquette and staying home when sick. He said that no amount of face coverings or perspex screens is a substitute for those.

Fianna Fail leader, Micheal Martin, raised concerns over the Government's 115m a month leasing of private hospitals.

He said that the knock-on effect has been to hamper diagnoses in non-Covid patients. Mr Martin argued that in the event of a second wave of infections, the private hospitals could be recontracted.

"It is now a full part of a system-wide problem of the collapse in diagnostic and treatment activity for non-Covid cases.

There is a significant underutilisation of vital hospital capacity that is no longer justified.

"Overall the situation is a mess. I have been pointing this out for six weeks. The failure to get a proper consultants' contract negotiated has gone on too long. The deal with the operators was one of mutual convenience  the State needed surge capacity and the operators have their expenditure sorted in the initial phase probably where their revenue was not coming in.

"We now need a comprehensive strategy  there is none at the moment  to get that hospital capacity back as comprehensively as possible. It has been a very expensive deal."
New MotorCities At Home Virtual Zoom Programs Debuts with a Look at Cool Hood Ornaments +VIDEO























DETROIT May 14, 2020; Since we're all still staying at home to prevent the spread of COVID-19, MotorCities is presenting a new series of virtual programs featuring members of our Speakers Bureau discussing interesting automotive history topics. Each program is FREE and presented as a live Zoom conference.

The series kicks off this Friday at noon with "Mascots of Motion" with automotive journalist and photo artist Steve Purdy. His presentation features classic and collector car hood ornaments. The slide show accompanying the talk is a colorful exploration of about 50 of these images, from a Rolls-Royce "Spirit of Ecstasy" Oldsmobile plaque; to a Stutz "Ra."

Purdy is a Williamston, Michigan-based multimedia automotive journalist. He is a charter member of the Automotive Press Association in Detroit, a member of the Society of Automotive Historians and a trustee of the National Automotive History Collection of the Detroit Public Library.

To register for this Friday's event, click https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcvd-CvqzIiG9S8lfyg53CBb3svIqyjp-bB.
New Delhi, May 15 : Chinese smartphone manufacturer Realme on Friday announced to launch its much-anticipated TV and smartwatch in India on May 25.

According to the company, it will host an online event which will be streamed via Realme's YouTube channel as well as its social media platforms.

"The wait is finally over, the party is about to get started with Realme! As we are ready to introduce new members of our family - the Realme TV and the Realme Watch along with other accessories," the company said in a statement.

The Realme TVs would compete against Xiaomi TV which already has several successful TV models in the country along with OnePlus TV.

Realme has also announced to host an event in China on May 25 where it plans to unveil eight new products .

The company has not mentioned what exactly it is going to unveil but the poster shared by the Chinese phone maker on Weibo includes a smartphone, a power bank and a true wireless earbud.

The phone in the poster has a quad-rear camera setup in a vertical orientation while the power bank has a regular USB port as well as what seems to be a USB Type-C port, along with some LED lights.

The company may also launch new earbuds. These earbuds are expected to be the Realme Buds Air Neo which was certified by the Taiwanese National Communication Commission (NCC) back in January this year.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
To reduce transmission of the coronavirus through in-person voting, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has made everyone in New York eligible for an absentee ballot in the upcoming June 23 primary, and mandated that applications for those ballots be sent to all registered voters with contested elections in their districts.

This will likely create an unprecedented influx of absentee votes and strain an election system that has long relied almost entirely on in-person voting and only has weeks to prepare for the sudden change. Abruptly introducing a new voting method may have unknown impacts on the voters and candidates alike as they wade into unchartered waters in the middle of a pandemic. To help make sense of what to expect as June draws nearer, City & State reached out to four experts on voting, elections and politics to provide some insight: Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, Bruce Gyory, Democratic political consultant and senior advisor at Manatt Phelps and Phillips LLP, Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program and Dr. Christina Greer, an associate professor of political science at Fordham University.

Responses have been edited for length and clarity.

How prepared is New York to switch to a largely mail-in voting format?

Susan Lerner: A successful vote-by-mail program is dependent on the accuracy of the voter file. We do not believe that the 58 Boards of Election (BOEs) have maintained up-to-date voter rolls. For example, in 2016, thousands of active Democratic voters in Brooklyn were improperly moved to inactive status. If New York were to hastily institute a vote by mail system, hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers might never receive a ballot. States with vote by mail have spent years building up the infrastructure to sustain it, from updating their voter rolls, to setting up secure dropoff locations, to creating protocols to compile and count every ballot. However, we are prepared to handle an expanded absentee ballot program, like the one authorized by the governor and its a good stop gap measure on the way to eventual vote by mail.

Bruce Gyory: In fairness to the Boards of Elections, no one can expect them to be prepared now for this onslaught of expanded absentee voting. This will be a challenge to them to work out the kinks in the June 23 primaries, so that they are ready for the general election in November. We cant be sure that the Coronavirus crisis will be fully past us by November. So absentee voting may be a staple for the general election as well as this primary. This will test the Board of Elections ability to handle high volume on the run which will in turn call for nimble creativity.

I have one suggestion from the cheap seats. There will be lots of computer savvy unemployed college students looking for work this summer and perhaps the fall. So the Boards of Elections might want to consider finding a way to hire them for short term work for both the preparation and counting challenges. This will be pure logistics. Unemployed veterans could be another source of tech savvy labor for the Boards of Elections and lets remember that the veterans have experience in logistics.

Myrna Perez: New York, like all other states, has a way to go. But they do have time and should work really hard to put ourselves in the best position to succeed. We are a state that really utilizes our polling places, which is a good thing in general. Its good that people know their neighborhoods and know their precincts and they know where to go. But the shift to expanded mail voting is going to require us to move differently, and move further, than other states that already have really high mail-voting practices. I believe that with the right kind of commitment and the right kind of political will and the right kind of resources, a lot can be done.

Christina Greer: Was it New York that was complaining that they didnt have enough eveloples? I dont understand how you say you dont have enough envelopes. Its our democracy, youre the Board of Elections. Get the envelopes! One would think they started preplanning when all this COVID stuff started happening in March. So the envelopes question alone makes me nervous about the effectiveness and the preparedness of a June election.

Given all the circumstances now, how might the change affect overall voter turnout?

Susan Lerner: Its not about turnout, its about making voting more accessible for New Yorkers. Expanded absentee, as well as early voting and on Election Day, will allow voters to cast their ballots safely, securely and on their own schedules.

Bruce Gyory: We simply do not have an empirical template from which to project turnout for a presidential primary that is not contested but will have the mail-in option. If Wisconsin and Ohio primaries are any guide, the write-in option could lead to higher rates of primary voting than we imagine. In a hotly contested presidential primary, we could project a statewide turnout of 2.1 million to 2.3 million or more. In a ho-hum primary where the nomination has been won by the time the race comes to NYS, like in 2004 for John Kerry, the statewide turnout could be under 750,000. This year no one knows. But the mail-in option, plus the relatively large number of hotly contested legislative primary races for Congress and the state Assembly, leave me with a hunch that statewide (turn out) could approach or cross 1 million. The prudent analysis would be for a middling turnout in the 800,000-900,000 range. But, to repeat, no one knows with any certainty.

Myrna Perez: It is too early to tell because there are too many different factors at play. On one hand, we have a pandemic that is causing extreme disruption to peoples lives. On the other hand, people really care about their right to vote and are really concerned that the pandemic will impede their right to vote. For members of the public, that will inspire and activate them to turn out.

Christina Greer: We have to account for the fact that any time we introduce something new into the voting sphere, we risk losing voters just because of confusion and misinformation. We know traditionally, turnout is pretty low in June. I am hoping that since so many people are at home, that they will actually fill out the ballot.

Who, if anyone, stands to benefit from expanded absentee voting during a primary?

Susan Lerner: Everyone! That said, we also need to maintain in-person voting options for people with disabilities, those who need language assistance, and for everyone else who might just want or need to vote in person. We can do safe in-person voting by doubling early voting days from 9 to 18 as a way to disperse crowds and comply with CDC guidelines for early voting and Election Day locations.

Bruce Gyory: Democratic primaries historically are not kind to the pure progressive candidates. Low-turnout primaries maximize the consistent voting patterns of that progressive base which is roughly a third of the statewide vote. That trend goes back a long way, but has been most pronounced from 2016 onwards. The incline facing the pure progressive candidates will increase because they usually benefit (from) an army of young volunteers who can knock on doors all day and most of the night. This year door-knocking will be out, in the throes of this pandemic. So the challenge with mail voting will be which candidates can use direct mail, phone banking and social networking to bank large numbers of absentee (votes) cast by mail. Only one of those techniques (social networking) favors the progressives. In reality, those with labor endorsements will have a big leg up in terms of reaching out to voters for banking those mail in absentee votes.

Once the turnout (has) been set, the hallmark of the winning campaigns is likely to be creative efficiency in terms of making the voter contacts that produce a critical mass of absentee votes. I would bet a lot of people are asking Rep. Greg Meeks, the Queens county leader, what techniques he used to help engineer Melinda Katz win the recount for Queens DA, due to a landslide among absentee ballots.

Myrna Perez: This is not an ordinary primary  this is a primary during an international pandemic with shelter-at-home instructions. And as such, voters stand to benefit from expanded access to expanded access to absentee voting because that will allow people to make the choice of how to best keep themselves and their families safe without sacrificing their fundamental right to vote.

Christina Greer: I would always say incumbents, just because they have a built-in base that they can remind. Challengers dont yet have a base, so theyre kind of reminding everyone to vote. But they dont necessarily have targeted individuals that they can contact to have them turnout the ballot.

Is there reason for concern about potential disenfranchisement or voter fraud?

Susan Lerner: No, definitely not. Voters need to know that if theyre mailing in their ballot, it will count. New York has one of the highest absentee ballot rejection rates in the country at 13.6% compared to the national average of 1.4%. Thats because political opponents will often object to stray marks and signatures as a way to invalidate ballots. Lawmakers need to resume remote session to pass legislation that would end this gamesmanship.

Bruce Gyrory: I see no reason to fear that absentee ballots will lead to voter fraud. Disenfranchisement will come only if distinct blocs of voters choose not to vote absentee while also not voting in person due to legitimate fears, while other blocs more fully vote by mail. Lets hope not. The vote-by-mail states, mostly out in the Western states, have not had a problem with voter fraud. Lets hope that is New Yorks experience

Myrna Perez: We should always be concerned about barriers in front of the ballot box. And in this instance, we have the additional barrier of the disruption caused by the coronavirus and the confusion caused by the changes that have resulted because of the coronavirus. My hope is that there will be sufficient voter outreach and education to overcome those challenges.

Christina Greer: Always disenfranchisement, just because, I believe, postage will be paid for, but some people really rely on poll workers for assistance with the ballot. And that service is not provided. As far as voter fraud, sure, I guess theres someone stealing a ballot is always a possibility. We dont really have an issue with voter fraud, rampant voter fraud. We have a real issue with voter disengagement. Id be more concerned about that over voter fraud.
A FATHER-of-three who refused to pay for a meal and drinks in a Dublin pub has been jailed for what was a "mean-spirited offence".

John Boland (42) believed a friend he was dining with would be picking up the 91 bill when he made off without payment.

Judge Flann Brennan sentenced him to a month in prison.

Boland, of Minane Bridge, Co Cork, pleaded guilty.

Dublin District Court heard the incident happened at the Porterhouse on Parliament Street on September 20, 2018.

Garda Sergeant Niall Murphy said Boland and a co-accused went to the pub and consumed food and drink to the value of 91.10 and then refused to pay.

Boland had 24 previous theft convictions.

The accused had gone for a meal and drinks with a friend and had understood the friend would take care of the bill, his solicitor Lorraine Stephens said.

He accepted that he had a responsibility to pay and pleaded guilty.

Boland accepted it was a "mean-spirited offence" and apologised to the owners of the bar.

He was in custody when he attended court.
Nokia logo is seen at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona

(Reuters) - Finnish telecom equipment maker Nokia said on Thursday it would buy back 150 million euros ($162 million) of its March 2021 notes as it restructures its finances.

Nokia, which axed its dividend after a profit warning in October to preserve cash, is battling with China's Huawei [HWT.UL] and Sweden's Ericsson in the race to build next-generation 5G networks.

"We are pleased to have pre-financed our 2021 and 2022 maturities in-line with our prudent capital structure management," Chief Financial Officer Kristian Pullola said in a statement.

He said Nokia was positioning the business well to continue to fund research and development needed in the industry.

Nokia said it accepted 66% of notes tendered and 350 million euros of its March 2021 notes would remain outstanding after settlement of the offer.

Barclays Bank, Citigroup Global Markets, Goldman Sachs International and Nordea Bank acted as joint dealer managers for the tender offer.

Last week Nokia issued two new euro-denominated fixed-rate notes, raising 1 billion euros in total.

(Reporting by Tarmo Virki; Editing by Edmund Blair)
As a student known to have psychiatric issues and a criminal record murdered 17 students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine's Day 2018, Sgt. Brian Miller hid behind his car instead of helping teenagers and faculty.Miller was fired along with three other deputies due to abut he now has been reinstated with full back pay, The Miami Herald reported . Miller was paid $138,410.25 in 2017, and was fired in June 2019, more than a year after the shooting.Miller was reinstated thanks to the Broward Sheriff Office's Deputies Association, the union that represents the officers. After he was fired, Miller challenged his termination and the union backed him up. The union announced Wednesday that an arbitration hearing foundA sheriff's offices internal investigation determined Miller, along with deputies Edward Eason, Scot Peterson, and Joshua Stambaugh all failed in their duties to protect citizens and were all terminated. Capt. Jan Jordan, who took the lead during the Parkland, Florida shooting in 2018 and urged officers not to enter the school, was allowed to resign.The Marjory Stoneman Douglas Public Safety Commission said in its investigative report of the shootings that Miller was the first supervisor on the scene, but hid behind his police car without radioing in for 10 minutes as shots were fired inside the school.As the Herald reported, EasonStambaugh, the Herald reported,As The Daily Wire's Ryan Saavedra previously reported , Peterson, the fourth deputy fired and the one assigned as Marjory Stoneman's school resource officer, was arrested and charged with seven counts of child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury. The case is still ongoing. If convicted, Peterson could face a maximum sentence of 96.5 years in state prison.As for Scott Israel, who was the Broward County sheriff at the time of the shooting, he was suspended from duty shortly after Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) was inaugurated. Israel said he was wrongfully terminated and is running to be elected sheriff again.DeSantis, according to the Herald, appointed Gregory Tony to replace Israel. Tony suspended Jeff Bell, the leader of the Broward police union that reinstated Miller. Bell was suspended with pay, accused of corruption, conduct unbecoming, and various policy violations including truthfulness.
Prince Philip hoped the reaction to the murder of his uncle Lord Mountbatten would lead the IRA to turn away from violence, a letter set to be auctioned has revealed.

Also set to be auctioned is a letter from former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the wake of the Brighton Bombing. She told a journalist that "evil must not prevail" after the bombing which killed five people and seriously injured 31 others.

In his letter the Duke of Edinburgh wrote that he hoped the reaction to the death of Lord Mountbatten would lead the IRA to renounce violence.

"Let us hope that the great wave of revulsion against this senseless act of terrorism may yet help to bring a change of heart in those who believe that violence and brutality are the only solutions to their problems," he wrote.

Lord Mountbatten was holidaying at his Castle in Sligo on August 27 1979 when he was murdered by the IRA.

A bomb exploded on a Shadow V boat he was fishing on, while he was pulled alive from the water by nearby fishermen, he died from his injuries before being brought to shore.

Also killed was his 14-year-old grandson Nicholas Knatchbull and Fermanagh schoolboy Paul Maxwell, who was working as a boat boy while on holiday with his parents.

The letter came to light as part of the collection of the late actor Lionel Jeffries who wrote to a number of senior royals following the murder of Lord Mountbatten to express his sympathy.

He received replies on behalf of the Queen, Queen Mother and Princess Margaret, which are also being auctioned.

Jeffries was best known for performing in films including Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Railway Children and Murder Ahoy!

He passed away in 2010 and the letter is being auctioned by a relative.

The murder of Lord Mountbatten was a watershed moment for the royal family, he had mentored Prince Philip in his youth and was Prince Charles' favourite uncle.

It is believed Prince William named his son Louis after Lord Louis Mountbatten. Louis is also Prince George's third name.

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Also going under the hammer is the letter from Mrs Thatcher to journalist Montague 'Monty' Modlyn.

Mr Modlyn wrote to the Prime Minister to express his sympathy after the Brighton Bombing on October 12 1984.

Among those killed were Conservative MP Sir Anthony Berry, while cabinet member Norman Tebbit's wife Margaret was left permanently disabled.

Mrs Thatcher sent Mr Modlyn a hand-written reply on 10 Downing Street letterhead paper.

"It was very good of you both to be at Brighton for the closing speech. The enormity of what happened is just coming home to us. But evil must not prevail," the Prime Minister wrote.

The letter comes from a private collector who obtained it after Mr Modlyn's death in 1994.

All of the letters will be auctioned by Dominic Winter, of Cirencester, Gloucestershire on May 28 and are expected to fetch a combined 650.
We dont need more fishing licences  we need help to fight COVID-19, say Senegal's female fish processors

by Awa Traore

May 15,2020 | Source: Greenpeace

During this health crisis, what we need is support to clean up and disinfect our processing sites, not more new fishing licences. This is what Jaba Diop, the coordinator of the National Coalition of Female Fish Processors of Senegal against Fishmeal, has to say.



For a long time, a large number of vessels have been granted fishing licences to fish in our waters. Their activities continue to put pressure on our fish processing work. The fish we used to see abundantly in the past, have disappeared.



Theres been outrage in recent weeks over news that the Senegalese government will start a process which could lead to the issuing of 54 new licences to destructive, industrial fishing vessels from China and Turkey. Some of these vessels have been implicated in illegal unreported and unregulated fishing practices that were previously denounced by Greenpeace.



Instead of thinking of supporting us and ensuring we are food secure during this health crisis, the government is considering granting new fishing licences to foreign vessels that collect everything in their path. It is for this reason that I am afraid, says Fatou Samba, the president of female fish processors from the Khelcom processing site in Bargny, near Dakar.



Fatou, alongside thousands of other women in West Africa, process fish caught by local fishermen to provide a sustainable and affordable source of food and livelihoods throughout the region. In Senegal, fish makes up around 70% of the populations animal protein intake. Like most places in the world, fish stocks are declining in West African waters as a result of overfishing. Unfair competition with large-scale fishing and fishmeal companies is making the situation even worse, threatening food security and jobs of people in the region.



This year, the World Food Programme estimates over 40 million people in West Africa will struggle to feed themselves in the next 6 months. Thats an additional 20 million people due to the socioeconomic impact of the coronavirus.



Fatou Samba and members of the artisanal fishery sector have been working hard to preserve the oceans that are vital for their families and populations. However, with the government measures to curb the pandemic, their fish processing activities are highly impacted. They can no longer gather on sites as before. In the locality of Bargny, fishermen are now only working three days a week compared to seven days before the crisis. Their canoes can no longer move to other areas, meaning they can only access limited coastline with little fish.



Meanwhile industrial fishing vessels are continuing their activities without restrictions.



The stock of small pelagic (open sea) fish is already threatened. It has reached a worrying overexploitation status that was confirmed by most fish stock assessment and evaluation conducted by the FAO and the Oceanographic Center of Dakar-Thiaroye.



The time has come for the Senegalese government to scale-up its support for the local fishing communities which contribute to robust food systems that nourish people, and protect our oceans.

 Greenpeace International 2020

Theme(s): Communities and Organisations.
As of 5:30 p.m. on Friday, Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker had yet to turn himself in to Miramar Police in Florida. The 22-year-old had a warrant issued for his arrest on Thursday with charges including four counts of armed robbery and four counts of aggravated assault.

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Seahawks cornerback Quinton Dunbar also had a warrant issued for his arrest with the charge including four counts of armed robbery, though it appears the Seattle player is claiming innocence. Five witnesses signed written affidavits that, per Dunbars lawyer and via the Miami Herald, would exonerate him of any involvement in the alleged robbery.

Miramar police were still insisting that Dunbar turn himself in, which he hadnt yet as of 5:30 on Friday night.

According to the arrest warrant, Baker and Dunbar are being sought for their role in allegedly robbed guests at a party in Miramar on Wednesday night, leaving with more than $12,000 in cash and several expensive watches, including an $18,000 Rolex and a $25,000 Hublot watch. According to the arrest warrant, Baker, Dunbar and a third person fled the scene in expensive cars, including a Lamborgini, Mercedes-Benz and BMW.

According to the warrant, Baker and Dunbar were seen at a party two days earlier where they lost $70,000.

The warrant states that Dunbar was seen helping Baker collect the money and valuables, though there were conflicting accounts of whether or not Dunbar was actually brandishing a weapon.

Baker, per the warrant, was brandishing a semi-automatic weapon and at one point directed an unnamed third person, wearing a red mask, to shoot a person who had entered the room.

There has been no public communication from Baker, his lawyer or representation since the Thursday night announcement of his warrant, and his agent didnt respond to a request for comment.

Miramar public information officer Tania Rues told NJ Advance Media earlier on Friday that they had been in touch with Bakers attorney, though they had made no progress yet and were in the process of negotiations.

The moment he turns himself in or an arrest is made," she said, well put it out there.

If convicted of his charges, Baker could be facing a minimum prison sentence of 10-15 years, as detailed in this NJ Advance Media story from earlier on Friday.

The sooner you turn yourself in the better, Florida-based attorney Kendall Coffey told NJ Advance Media. It could raise questions because the entire world knows theres an arrest warrant.

The Giants issued a statement on Thursday night saying the organization is "aware of the situation. We have been in contact with DeAndre. We have no further comment at this time.

Baker was a first-round pick last year and was expected to be a starter for the Giants this season.

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Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust. Zack Rosenblatt may be reached at zrosenblatt@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
Victor Lee, CEO of CIMB Bank Singapore. (PHOTO: CIMB)

SINGAPORE  Small-and-medium enterprises (SMEs) are currently underserved by financial institutions and can become a key engine of growth for CIMB Bank in Singapore, said its chief executive Victor Lee.

To tap the potential of the segment, the Singapore branch of the Malaysian financial services provider is stepping up various initiatives to help SMEs.

In Singapore, with the emergence of all these P2P players, that is proof enough that there is a segment (of SMEs) out there that is not being served (by banks), said the 49-year-old Singaporean in a recent interview with Yahoo Finance Singapore.

Lee was referring to the strong growth of peer-to-peer (P2P) lending services. Online services providing P2P lending help individuals and companies by matching their lending and borrowing requirements without the need for financial institutions. According to the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, P2P lending in Asia rose from US$108 billion in 2014 to US$330 billion in 2018.

Many SMEs prefer to use P2P lending to finance their growth due to ease of access and what they perceive to be lower lending costs. But Lee said that P2P lending could still entail higher costs compared with bank financing.

Helping SMEs through pandemic

The SME segment is key to growing CIMBs corporate banking business. Corporate banking makes up two-thirds of its business in Singapore, with the remainder split between consumer and commercial banking, and the segment is poised for accelerated growth especially in the digital space, Lee said.

Im bullish about CIMB in Singapore. Our last 10 years set in place the business lines that formed the foundation of our existence. Our next 10 years will be focused on acceleration, he added.

In the meantime, the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the need to help SMEs and other companies tide through the crisis, with these businesses needing at least six months of short-term financing assistance, according to Lee. Towards this end, CIMB has put in place measures to help businesses.

Story continues

For instance, the bank has expanded its e-Supply Chain Financing programme with a limit of up to S$100 million to help suppliers via the platform of its e-procurement service provider partner.

The bank has also introduced the CIMB C-19, a temporary bridging loan scheme, the CIMB BizAssist, which provides working capital loans, and the CIMB Biz Relief Scheme to allow the deferment of payments for secured and non-secured loans until end-December.

On the emergence of digital banking, Lee said that CIMB did consider whether to apply for such a licence after the Monetary Authority of Singapore announced that it would start taking in applications in August last year.

We didnt see the need to because we are already a bank. Today, we already acquire our customers digitally. In essence, we are already a digital bank, Lee said.

While the competition will intensify with the introduction of digital banks, Lee stressed that CIMB executives spend half their time discussing and implementing strategies in the space. We are not afraid of the competition. In fact I think we are ahead of the curve.

Discovering his calling

A banking veteran with more than 20 years of experience in the retail and commercial banking sectors, Lee has worked in markets including Singapore, Malaysia and Taiwan.

His career reached another milestone in January when he was appointed the CEO of CIMBs Singapore branch, succeeding Mak Lye Mun, who retired after being at the helm for 10 years. Lee is also the CEO of CIMB Groups commercial banking, and spends two days a week at the parent companys headquarters in Kuala Lumpur.

Lees parents had wished for him to become a doctor but he did not find the profession to be his calling. He pursued a degree in engineering at the Nanyang Technological University but dropped out of his honours year programme. As fate would have it, he did not become an engineer as well.

At a job fair, he secured two job offers and joined DBS Bank in 1994 as he admitted that it promised S$50 more in monthly salary compared to the other offer on the table. It was to become a springboard for his illustrious banking career. In 2008, Lee was voted one of the Top 40 Asia Pacific Banking Leaders under 40 to look out for by The Asian Banker.

On his choice of profession, Lee said, I thought then that it was a dignified and prestigious job, alongside lawyers, accountants and doctors, which our parents continue to hold in high regard.

Banks were giving good training for newcomers to become bankers when Lee started his career. This gave him greater confidence later on that banking was the right choice for him.

I couldnt have been so clear about my future and ambitions. Hence, I took the traineeship program at DBS.

Fast forward to 2020, when CIMB marks the 11th anniversary of its business in Singapore. The bank now employs around 1,300 people and has two branches locally.

At the core of his goal to transform CIMB to become one of the top banks in Singapore are his staff, with whom he enjoys interacting with.

People are at the top of my agenda. When we have the right team with the right mind-set, the team becomes invincible.

Related stories:

More groups submit Singapore digital banking licence bids

Singapore bank OCBC's profit slides as it builds loan-loss defences

Singapore banks set to post first profit decline since 2016
Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
While Second Amendment backers failed to get Macomb County declared a sanctuary region two months aqo, those who oppose gun violence got officials to back an anti-gun violence resolution.

After a motion to remove the item from the agenda failed in a 6-6 vote, the board, without discussion and by a 12-0 vote Wednesday approved a resolution that supports June 5 as sixth National Gun Violence Awareness Day. Commissioner Elizabeth Lucido was absent.

We encourage all citizens to support their local communities efforts to prevent the tragic events of gun violence and to honor and value human lives, the resolution reads.

On March 11 in front of a packed boardroom in the County Administration Building in Mount Clemens, the board voted 7-5 to table a proposed resolution introduced by Commissioner Phil Kraft, a Chesterfield Township Republican who acknowledged it was a mostly symbolic statement to show the county supports gun rights. It would show residents, We stand by the Second Amendment,' Kraft said.

That draft said the board will not appropriate any funds for the enforcement of any unconstitutional firearms laws, or laws that do not allow for due process and that are not in line with the Bill of Rights.

On Thursday, the meeting was held via Zoom video and the anti-gun violence resolution passed without much fanfare.

Two people spoke over Zoom in favor of the resolution during the public comments item on the agenda.

Pam Leidlein of Macomb Township said her adult daughter, Michelle Packard, was killed by a stray bullet in 2012 while in a Lansing park waiting with her fiance for a fireworks show to start.

I think of her every day, Leidlein, clad in an orange shirt and button photo of her late daughter, told the board. I ask that you think of her June 5th by wearing orange.

She rattled off several shootings nationwide in the past week. Leidlein noted the board approved a similar motion in 2019

Carmi Finn of Warren, also dressed in orange, told the board the issue is strictly non-partisan.

I dont think theres anyone whos in favor of gun-violence deaths. I dont think anyone can possibly object to honoring those victims and those who survived, Finn said. Its simply a day to reflect and be aware of the extent of this problem in our county, in our state and in our community.

The resolution says 1,187 people on average die by guns per year in Michigan, a per capita rate of 11.8 deaths per 100,000 residents, the 30th highest rate in the country.

The resolution says the day of recognition started following the shooting death of Hadiya Pendleton, a teenager who walked in the presidential inaugural parade a few weeks before she was killed.

We renew our commitment to reduce gun violence and pledge to do all we can to keep firearms out of the wrong hands, and encourage responsible gun ownership to keep our children safe, the resolution says.
May 14 (Reuters) - EQM Midstream Partners LP said on Thursday it still sees a "narrow path" to complete its long-delayed $5.4 billion Mountain Valley natural gas pipeline from West Virginia to Virginia by late 2020.

Analysts, however, said Mountain Valley and other pipelines would probably be delayed by a decision by a federal judge in Montana that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers did not comply with the Endangered Species Act.

EQM said in its first quarter earnings that Mountain Valley "is working through the projects remaining legal and regulatory challenges to achieve the targeted late 2020 full in-service date."

When EQM started construction in February 2018, it estimated Mountain Valley would cost about $3.5 billion and be completed by the end of 2018.

But successful legal challenges by environmental and other groups to federal permits resulted in lengthy delays and higher costs for Mountain Valley and other gas pipes under construction like Dominion Energy Inc's $8 billion Atlantic Coast from West Virginia to North Carolina.

Then, on April 15, Chief U.S. District Judge Brian Morris ruled that the Army Corps violated federal law by issuing Nationwide Permits to cross bodies of water without adequately consulting other agencies on risks to endangered species and habitat.

Although that ruling was in a case involving TC Energy Corp's long-delayed Keystone XL crude pipeline from Canada to the U.S. Midwest, the judge applied the decision to the Army Corps's handling of the Nationwide Permit program.

This week, the judge refused to limit his decision to just the Keystone case. The U.S. Justice Department then asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to stay the lower court's ruling.

Analysts at Height Capital Markets in Washington said they were "skeptical" the Ninth Circuit will stay the Montana Judge's order and noted the court may not decide the case until 2021.

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That would push the in-service date for Mountain Valley to at least mid 2021 and could also prevent Dominion's Atlantic Coast from entering service in early 2022 as planned, Height Capital Markets said.

Analysts at Jefferies said "there is a silver lining for Mountain Valley as a delay in the Nationwide Permit process reduces Atlantic Coast's likelihood due to potentially significant cost increases ... A 2023 expansion of Mountain Valley is more likely if Atlantic Coast is abandoned."

Officials at Dominion said the company still expects "to resume construction this summer and be in-service in early 2022."

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino; Editing by David Gregorio)
Japan has begun treating severely ill COVID-19 patients with Gilead Sciences Inc's coronavirus drug remdesivir, days after granting emergency approval to the medication the company is supplying as part of its pledged donation. Japan's approval a week ago of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19 followed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency authorization of the antiviral drug on May 1.

At that time, Foster City, California-based Gilead reiterated plans to donate 1.5 million doses of remdesivir - enough to treat at least 140,000 patients - "to help address the urgent medical needs posed by this pandemic around the world." The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday said Gilead had committed to supply U.S. hospitals with about 607,000 vials of remdesivir, about 40% of the total 1.5 million-vial donation. After doctors had questioned the transparency of the allocation process, the federal agency said state health departments would distribute the intravenous drug.

Gilead has not responded to requests for information about further global allocation plans. Company spokeswoman Seiko Noma confirmed in an email late Wednesday that an undisclosed portion of remdesivir vials have been donated to the Japanese government. "There are far more patients that may benefit from remdesivir than there are doses to go around." Dr. Michael Ison, professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a Journal of the American Medical Association editorial on Thursday.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America on Thursday asked to meet with Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, "to address ongoing questions regarding access to remdesivir and to inform planning for use of the drug." The medical group said uncertainty over those issues was interfering with patient care. Japan Ministry official Yasuyuki Sahara said in an e-mail on Thursday that the U.S. firm's treatment has been distributed to hospitals in Japan since May 11 and is being used for patients in intensive care or on ventilators.

Sahara said the amount of remdesivir delivered by the drugmaker was not public information, and global supplies were "quite limited". Japan has had about 16,000 infections and 687 deaths from the coronavirus outbreak, much lower than many industrialised nations. The number of serious cases requiring ventilation was 259, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.

The United States has nearly 1.4 million coronavirus infections and almost 84,000 deaths. With no other approved treatments for COVID-19, interest in remdesivir is growing around the world. Gilead on Tuesday said it had signed non-exclusive licensing pacts with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan to expand the supply of remdesivir in more than 120 mostly low-income countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and other parts of the world.

Gilead said the drug has improved outcomes for people suffering from the respiratory disease and has provided data suggesting it works better when given in the early stages of infection. Preliminary results from a trial led by the U.S. Institutes of Health showed remdesivir cut hospital stays by 31% compared with a placebo treatment, although it did not significantly improve survival. Remdesivir, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is designed to stop some viruses making copies of themselves inside infected cells.

Also read: Indian firms Cipla, Jubilant, Hetero, Mylan to supply potential coronavirus drug Remdesivir in 127 countries

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown 4.0? Last day for states to submit ideas to Centre; India's cases-78,003
An F-22 Raptor crashed Friday morning during a routine training flight near Eglin Air Force Base, Florida.

The F-22, assigned to the 325 Fighter Wing, crashed at approximately 9:15 a.m. Eastern time, Jasmine Porterfield, a spokesperson for the base, told Military.com.

The pilot was able to eject safely and is being evaluated by the 96th Medical Group at the base, she said. The crash occurred roughly 12 miles northeast of Eglin on the test and training range; no injuries have been reported.

Related: Secret Drone Crash, B-1 Engine Malfunction Among Major 2019 Air Force Mishaps

An investigation into the mishap is ongoing, Porterfield said.

The F-22 was on a routine training mission unrelated to the "America Strong" flyover occurring across Florida's Bay and Gulf counties Friday morning, an Air Combat Command spokeswoman added.

An F-22, F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and T-38 Talon trainers were seen flying in a salute to essential first responders and personnel across the area. The remainder of the flyover was called off after the crash, according to Tyndall Air Force Base.

"Due to unforeseen circumstances, the demonstration team will not be flying over Mexico Beach or Gulf County. We apologize for the inconvenience," Tyndall said in a Facebook post shortly after the crash.

The 325th Fighter Wing is assigned to Tyndall.

Following Hurricane Michael in 2018, the Air Force moved its F-22 fleet from Tyndall, dividing the aircraft between Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia; Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska; and Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii.

Eglin, located roughly 60 miles from Tyndall in the Florida panhandle, also took some of Tyndall's F-22s and T-38 trainers.

The Raptor schoolhouse for pilots, as well as maintenance operations, were relocated to Eglin.

The unit cost for an F-22 was around $150 million in 2009, but some estimates put the per-plane cost at closer to $250 million in current-day dollars.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Read more: SOCOM Wants Army's Futuristic Troop-Carrying Helicopter
Mumbai, May 15 : Bollywood actress Jacqueline Fernandez says she cannot wait to see her parents once the lockdown is lifted.

The Sri Lankan beauty took to Instagram, where she shared a photograph of her parents.

"Miss you both so much... can't wait to see you when this is all over," she captioned the image, which has currently garnered 650K likes.

Filmmaker-choreographer Farah Khan Kunder commented: "Aww... pls give them my love... till v meet again in the Maldives." Jacqueline recently featured in Salman Khan's latest song "Tere bina", which has been sung and directed by the superstar himself.

Salman revealed that the song was shot at his Panvel farmhouse in the presence of just three people -- him, Jacqueline and the DOP.

The actress was also recently seen in "Mrs. Serial Killer", which released on Netflix.

-- Syndicated from IANS
Abhay Thipsay. (Photo by Manoj Patil/Hindustan Times via Getty Images)

Congress leader and retired Bombay High Court judge, Abhay Thipsay, while appearing for fugitive businessman Nirav Modi in a United Kingdom court on Wednesday via a video conference, asserted that the charges levelled by the Central Bureau of Investigation against Nirav Modi would not stand scrutiny in India.

Unless someone is deceived there can be no cheating under Indian law. Deception is an essential ingredient of an offence of cheating. If no one was deceived in issuing Letters of Undertaking (LoUs), there is no question of a corporate body being deceived, he argued.

The authority given to officials of the bank to issue LoUs cannot be said to be property and they cannot be said to be entrusted with property and, therefore, there cannot be a criminal breach of trust, Thipsay was quoted as saying.

Thipsay joined the Congress party in 2018 in the presence of former Congress president Rahul Gandhi.

Did you know what just happened?



Justice Abhay Thipsay, close confidant of Rahul Gandhi and Congress party senior member, appeared in London Court as NIRAV MODI WITNESS.



Justice Thipsay appeared on behalf of Nirav Modi to say 'he did no wrong'.https://t.co/2sJKT951AL pic.twitter.com/lkczNnDU6d  Rakesh (@rakiindia) May 14, 2020

As a judge, he convicted 9 out of the 17 accused in the Best Bakery case of Vadodara, Gujarat. He also raised many a hackle when he claimed that Hindus carried out the 2008 Malegaon blasts.

His party leader, Rahul, has often lashed out at Nirav Modi and even accused the Narendra Modi government of being hand-in-glove with the fraudster.

Nirav Modi is facing charges of criminal conspiracy, cheating and dishonesty.

BJP says Congress trying to save Nirav Modi

The BJP on Thursday accused the Congress of trying 'its best to save' fugitive businessman Nirav Modi who faces extradition proceedings in a UK court. The ruling party cited the statement of a former high court judge, who is also a Congress member, in the arrested diamond merchant's defence to attack the opposition party.

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Addressing the media through a video conference, senior BJP leader and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said Abhay Thipsay, a former judge of Mumbai and Allahabad high courts, deposed as a defence witness in the case and claimed that the charges of cheating and criminal conspiracy against Modi will not stand up under Indian law.

Ex Judge Abhay Thipsay, who appeared as expert witness in Nirav Modi case, had joined Congress Party after retirement in presence of Rahul Gandhi & Ashok Gehlot. Supreme Court had transferred him from Mumbai to Allahabad just 10 months before retirement on administrative grounds. pic.twitter.com/83tWa0mcu8  Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) May 14, 2020

Prasad noted that Thipsay had joined the Congress in 2018 and had met top party leaders like Rahul Gandhi, Ashok Gehlot and Ashok Chavan.

The 'judge sahab' is not acting in his individual capacity but is working at the behest of the Congress, he claimed, adding that Thipsay is hardly a big name otherwise in legal circles.

'There is overpowering suspicious circumstances existing from which we can infer that the Congress is trying its best to save and bail out Nirav Modi,' Prasad said, claiming that the development has 'unmasked' the opposition party which has always tried to 'protect' Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksy, also a fugitive.

Indian probe agencies will mount an effective reply to Thipsay's statement, he said.

Though Modi had fled India during the BJP-led NDA government's rule, most of his alleged crimes pertained to the period of the Congress-led UPA rule, Prasad said and asserted that the Narendra Modi government has confiscated his assets, autioned them and has been working to bring him to justice in India.

An extradition request from the Indian government was certified by the UK Home Office in February last year before his arrest by Scotland Yard on March 19, 2019. The jeweller remains behind bars at Wandsworth Prison in south-west London since then, failing to get bail despite repeated attempts.

According to the case against him, a number of PNB staff members conspired with Nirav Modi to ensure Letters of Understanding (LoUs) were issued to companies linked to him without ensuring that they were subject to the required credit checks, without recording the issuance of the LoUs and without charging the required commission upon the transactions. This resulted in a fraud amounting to nearly $2 billion.

With inputs from PTI
The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study that says nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected.

Authors of the research, published Friday in the journal BMJ Global Health, predicted a lower infection rate than in other parts of the world like Europe and the US, with fewer severe cases and deaths.

But while they said many African nations had been swift to adopt containment measures, they warned that health systems could still quickly become overwhelmed.

"Our model points to the scale of the problem for health systems if containment measures fail," said the authors.

The study comes amid stark warnings that COVID-19 threatens a health emergency in developing nations where fragile health systems are already struggling with an array of other chronic diseases.

An elderly man, a resident of the sprawling township of Alexandra in Johannesburg, is tested for COVID-19 /  AFP/File

Experts at the World Health Organization's Africa office modelled likely rates of exposure to the virus and infection in the 47 countries under its regional remit, which excludes Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia.

Some 231 million people, or 22 percent (with a range of 16 to 26 percent) of the one billion people in the region were expected to be infected in the 12 month period -- most of them showing few or no symptoms.

But an estimated 4.6 million people would need to be admitted to hospital, while 140,000 would have severe COVID-19 infection and 89,000 would be critically ill.

That would lead to some 150,000 deaths (between 83,000 and 190,000) the study suggested.

The modelling estimates what would happen for each country over the period of a year from the beginning of widespread and sustained community transmission.

- Smaller countries threatened -

Researchers warned that surging hospital admissions for COVID-19 would divert already limited resources to tackle major health issues in the region, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition, worsening the impact of coronavirus.

The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study /  AFP/File

"The region will have fewer deaths, but occurring more in relatively younger age groups, amongst people previously considered healthy - due to undiagnosed non-communicable diseases," the report said, adding that these trends were already emerging.

The researchers said they expect the virus would likely circulate within the region for longer than other countries, possibly for several years.

Transmission was estimated to be greatest in small nations, with Mauritius found to have the highest risk of exposure. Of the region's large countries, South Africa, Cameroon and Algeria were also in the top ten for exposure risk.

The authors calculated this risk by looking at each country's "gathering factor" (including family size and population density), people's likely ease of movement, sanitation and hygiene practices.

Members of the medical staff at the Mohammmed V military hospital, wear a protective masks and caps as they wait for patients, in the Moroccan capital Rabat /  AFP/File

They also included weather. It is not known if warmer temperatures slow down the spread of COVID-19, though some research has suggested it has that effect on other coronaviruses.

Researchers factored in each country's measures to control the spread of the virus, including physical distancing.

They also looked at health risk factors -- proportion of the population over 65, HIV prevalence (as a proxy for chronic communicable conditions) and diabetes (as a proxy for non-communicable chronic illness).

The report assumed that some 88 percent of people would not know they had the virus, with either mild symptoms or none at all, while four percent would suffer severe or life-threatening illness.

They called for countries to rapidly boost healthcare capacity, particularly in primary hospitals.

This month the United Nations said the number of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa could double if the provision of healthcare to HIV sufferers is disrupted during the coronavirus crisis.
New Labour leader Keir Starmer says he wants to win back trust of voters in Wrexham

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 15th, 2020

The new leader of the Labour Party says he wants to win back the trust of voters in Wrexham.

Sir Keir Starmer said he was keen to listen to why people in the area chose to switch to the Conservatives after he topped last months leadership poll.

It follows his partys crushing defeat in Decembers general election, which saw Wrexham and Clwyd South turn blue for the first time ever.

Yesterday the former director of public prosecutions reached out to members of the public from both constituencies through a virtual meeting, Call Keir, where they had the chance to question him directly.

The topics covered ranged from local issues, such as a lack of public transport, to problems over Labours stance on Brexit and the allegations of anti-semitism which rocked the party in the build up to the election.

Speaking to the Local Democracy Reporting Service after the session, Sir Keir admitted the loss of several former safe seats in North Wales had been difficult to take.

He said: There was a palpable sense of shock on that night in December and I know for the Labour Party, we never want to go through a night like that again.

I think there were a number of reasons that came up. People raised with me things like the leadership, the Brexit position and what they saw as the overload of the manifesto.

But in the end, underpinning that was a basic question of trust. I dont think people in Wrexham or across North Wales think that things are fine and dont want things to change.

I think they do want them to change  I think they just lost faith in the Labour Party as the party to bring about change in that general election.

The point of these Call Keir exercises is to let people tell me in their own words why it was they didnt vote Labour.

During last nights meeting, which was hosted on Zoom, Sir Keir faced a number of tough questions.

They included one from a Wrexham man who had voted Labour all his life, but switched to the Tories in December as he felt local party politicians had not listened to him when he was fighting for support for his sons mental health.

The former shadow Brexit secretary said it was the partys job to ensure it represented the interests of voters again.

Sir Keir said: My strong sense is that if I am truly to restore trust in the Labour Party, I have to be prepared to listen to what people have to say to me rather than go to them a few weeks before that election pretending weve got the answers to issues.

The other thing about Wrexham and parts of North Wales is weve got to be honest about the fact this has been a gradual process across a number of years.

That wasnt just a bad night in December, it was actually something more fundamental.

I think a number of people did lend their vote to the Conservatives and I think thats also what the Prime Minister thinks.

Its not their job to come back to the Labour Party  weve got to win that vote back and thats what were determined to do.

Brexit was one of the most prevalent issues raised in the approach to the election, with many people saying they either disagreed with or did not understand Labours stance on leaving the EU.

As someone heavily involved in shaping that position, Sir Keir acknowledged it had caused problems in areas like Wrexham, where 59 per cent of people voted to leave.

He said: I accept there was criticism of our Brexit policy on the doorstep and I dont think it would be fair of me to say otherwise.

I know from talking to people in Wrexham how it was coming up there.

As far as Brexit is concerned, whether you voted Leave or Remain, that divide is now over because we have left.

Therefore, its very important for us all in the Labour Party to recognise we have left and that Leave/Remain as a divide or argument is over and weve got to all face the future together.

By Liam Randall  BBC Local Democracy Reporter (more here on the LDR scheme)
From the Heart Bible Studies is a wise and insightful Bible Study that serves as a practical and effective tool for increasing knowledge of scripture and your Christian Faith. From the Heart Bible Studies is the creation of the published author, Sally JoAnne Hughes.

Sally writes: I began writing Bible Studies because of my dislike of certain church literature being taught to children. I started out writing for 5th graders but in 2012 began writing for adults and teaching these classes to close friends. My knowledge of scripture is widespread, but also it has taken many years to acquire this knowledge. I also believe that Bible studies are important for Christians. We need to know what the Bible says. We need to know the basics of our faith. When someone quotes John 3:16, we should know what they are talking about. The Holy Spirit moved me to put some of my classes together, with the intent of spreading the Word of God to my neighboring Churches. This book is the result of my journey in trying to spread the word. My prayer is that you enjoy and learn from these studies.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Sally JoAnne Hughes new book is a comprehensive Bible Study that encourages and assists readers in developing a more detailed knowledge of the Bible.

Sally's book takes an interactive approach to Biblical studies by providing a detailed and highly original analysis of different books and chapters of the Bible. Also, she presents readers with a succession of worksheets, handouts, maps, and other important information designed to be helpful in understanding the scriptures and content for each class.

View a synopsis of From the Heart on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase From the Heart at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about From the Heart, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Home buyers are set to have more bargaining power as the coronavirus crisis forces sellers to slash prices to get a sale, amid fears property values will plunge.

In April, 13.1 per cent of Sydney sellers were listing their home at a discounted price, almost double the 6.7 per cent proportion of a year earlier, new data from real estate sales site Domain showed.

In Melbourne, 10.7 per cent of vendors were trying to get a sale at a reduced price, almost triple the 3.7 per cent level of April 2019.

Home buyers are set to have more bargaining power as the coronavirus crisis forces sellers to slash prices to get a sale

The proportion of sellers offering a better deal is significantly higher during the COVID-19 pandemic than a year earlier, when house prices in Australia's biggest cities had yet to bottom out from a two-year downturn.

How more sellers are reducing their prices Sydney: 13.1 per cent from 6.7 per cent Melbourne: 10.7 per cent from 3.7 per cent Brisbane: 7.3 per cent from 4.7 per cent Adelaide: 8.3 per cent from 3.5 per cent Perth: 6.8 per cent from 5.7 per cent Hobart: 2.2 per cent from 2.3 per cent Canberra: 8.1 per cent from 5.9 per cent Darwin: 3.5 per cent from 4.2 per cent Source: Domain data for April 2020 comparing the proportion of discounted property listings with a year earlier Advertisement

Discounting was also more common in other capital cities, in Brisbane jumping to 7.3 per cent last month, from 4.7 per cent in April 2019, while in Adelaide it more than doubled to 8.3 per cent from 3.5 per cent.

Dr Nicola Powell, a senior research analyst with Domain, said fears of rising unemployment had motivated more sellers to offer discounts.

'Price expectations clearly changed rapidly during this time, with vendors adjusting prices to seek a timely sale in fear of what may be ahead,' she said.

'The economic uncertainty and looming job security fears forced many sellers to drop their asking prices.

'As social distancing rules escalated and an economic shutdown became a reality, the impact was immediate on certain market indicators with vendors adjusting prices being one.'

The shutdown of pubs, clubs and gyms, and bans on public auctions in March were other contributing factors.

In April, 13.1 per cent of Sydney sellers were listing their home at a discounted price, almost double the 6.7 per cent proportion a year earlier, new data from real estate sales site Domain showed. Pictured is a house on the market at Dundas in Sydney's north-west

'The rising portion of discounted homes aligned to the shutdown of non-essential services, the temporary ban on on-site auction gatherings and open inspections and this trend was consistent across all Australian capital cities,' Dr Powell said.

The Commonwealth Bank, Australia's biggest home lender, fears median house prices will plunge by 32 per cent by 2023 in a worst-case scenario.

Should this situation materialise, the value of a typical Sydney house would fall from $1.026million in April to a bit less than $700,000, going by CoreLogic data for April.

National Australia Bank is more worried about apartment than house prices, as fewer foreigners sought to buy property.

It is forecasting a 12.8 per cent plunge in Sydney's median unit price by 2021, which would see values fall from $777,940 to $678,364.

In Melbourne, 10.7 per cent of vendors were trying to get a sale at a reduced price, almost triple the 3.7 per cent level of April 2019. Pictured is a house looking for buyer at Doncaster in the city's south-east

NAB predicted Melbourne's mid-point unit price would drop by 14 per cent, which would see values fall from $588,204 to $505,855.

How COVID-19 has affected house prices Melbourne: DOWN 0.4 per cent to $818,806 Sydney: UP 0.3 per cent to $1,026,418 Brisbane: UP 0.3 per cent to $558,372 Adelaide: UP 0.4 per cent to $476,249 Perth: UP 0.3 per cent to $465,521 Hobart: DOWN 0.2 per cent to $512,688 Darwin: UP 1.1 per cent to $473,984 Canberra: UP 0.1 per cent to $702,861 Source: CoreLogic Home Value Index for April based on median house price changes Advertisement

Australia's national jobless rate soared from 5.2 per cent in March, before the coronavirus shutdowns of non-essential businesses, to 6.2 per cent in April - the highest since September 2015 as a record 600,000 lost their jobs.

The number unemployed officially climbed by 104,500 to 823,300.

Last month, 489,800 people left the labour force, which meant 594,300 either lost their job or gave up looking for one, the Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed.

Underemployment soared by 4.9 percentage points to a record 13.7 per cent.

The Reserve Bank of Australia and Treasury are both expecting unemployment to reach 10 per cent by the end of June, putting it in the double digits for the first time since April 1994.

NAB is forecasting an 11.7 per cent jobless rate by mid-year, a level unseen since the 1930s Great Depression as remaining coronavirus trade restrictions deter businesses from hiring new staff.
State Congress chief Ripun Bora



on Friday alleged large-scale corruption in the implementation of the PM-Kisan scheme in Assam and urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to order a CBI inquiry into it.

Bora claimed serious anomalies have been found in the selection of beneficiaries of the scheme.

"I have written to the prime minister demanding a CBI probe as in most cases genuine farmers have not been selected but government employees, businessman and economically sound people were selected as beneficiaries," he said.

Under the scheme, 31 lakh farmers in Assam were targeted to benefit with a cash grant of Rs 6,000 given in three instalments of Rs 2,000 each by way of bank transfer.

The panchayat representatives who were entrusted to prepare the list of beneficiaries have included their own names and that of their kith and kin, Bora alleged.

Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal and Agriculture Minister Atul Bora have earlier admitted that anomalies have taken place and some officials have been suspended.

In Nalbari district, an FIR was filed against the district agriculture officer.

The Congress also demanded that the state government submits a 'White Paper' on the losses incurred by various sectors such as agriculture, fisheries, poultry, dairy and horticulture during the lockdown and ensure that the affected people are adequately compensated.

"Coronavirus is not going to end soon and we will have to co-exist with it. It is the responsibility of the state government to revive the economy and provide relief to the people severely affected by the lockdown," Bora said.

He also welcomed the prime minister's appeal to the people to be self-reliant by producing, consuming and using local goods.

"The prime minister should take the initiative to restart the two closed paper mills at Nagaon and Cachar, which was also an election promise by him. We can produce paper locally and at the same time save thousands and thousands of employees and their families," he said.

Bora further urged the state government to bring back all residents, particularly migrant workers, students, patients and pilgrims, who are stranded in other states as early as possible.

The Congress has approached the state government for permission to enable 400 workers from West Bengal who are currently in Assam return, he said.

A few people from Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh are also stranded in Assam and efforts are being made to send them back, Bora added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Longtime harness racing industry participant Thomas Arthur 'Tom' Donald passed away on May 12, 2020 at the age of 79.

For many years, Tom and his wife Freda owned race horses that campaigned primarily at Kawartha Downs. His last two race horses were Houchiegouchiemama and Independent Guy.

Tom worked with, and thought fondly of many of the horsemen around Kawartha, most notably Pete LaRush, Dan Quinn, John Thomson and Tom Riley. He could make friends with anyone and talk for hours. His brother Bill Donald was involved with harness racing for decades and worked alongside Murray Waples for a number of years.

His granddaughter Kimberly has continued working with Standardbreds as an advocate for second careers, and has worked with numerous adoption programs over the past several years, including Go And Play Stable, and now currently operates New Start Standardbred Adoption Program.

Predeceased by his parents, Bill and Alice Donald, and his daughter Patricia Ann Donald. Survived by his wife Freda Donald, his daughter Kathy Hale and his granddaughter Kimberly. Brother of John (Nancy) Donald, Bill (Elaine) Donald, and Jane (Mike) Lea. Brother-In-Law of Muriel Godden (predeceased by John Greaves), Virginia (Wayne) MacAlpine, Lois (Glenn) Bennett, and Sheila (Clare) Robins. He will also be missed by many nieces and nephews.

As per Tom's wishes, no service will take place. As an expression of sympathy, Tom would have chosen to have donations sent to the Bridge Hospice, Warkworth, Ont., in honour of his good friend Chesty Herrington.

Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Tom Donald.
Shareholders agreed to the Board of Directors recommendations for all proposed resolutions

Election of Jacques Theurillat as new Chairman of the Board of Directors

Etienne Jornod appointed Honorary Chairman by the Board of Directors

Confirmation of all members of the Board of Directors standing for re-election and election of Gilbert Achermann as new memberDividend of CHF 2.00 approved



Regulatory News:

At the 92nd Annual General Meeting of Vifor Pharma Ltd., shareholders approved all proposed resolutions put forward by the Board of Directors.

In view of the current situation and based on Art. 6a of Ordinance 2, issued by the Swiss Federal Council, regarding measures against containment of the coronavirus (COVID-19), shareholders were not permitted to attend the event in person. Shareholders exercised their rights exclusively through the independent proxy and 69% of the share capital was represented.

Shareholder approvals

Shareholders approved the 2019 Vifor Pharma Annual Report, the Vifor Pharma Ltd. 2019 Annual Financial Statements, and the Vifor Pharma Group 2019 Consolidated Financial Statements as well as an extension of the Authorized Capital until 14 May 2022 by approving the respective amendment to the Articles of Association. The maximum possible 2020 remuneration for the Board of Directors and Executive Committee was also approved, as well as the 2019 Remuneration Report in a consultative vote. Shareholders discharged the members of the Board of Directors and the Corporate Executive Committee for the financial year 2019. A dividend of CHF 2.00, as proposed by the Board of Directors, was approved and will be paid to shareholders on 20 May 2020.

Board of Directors re-elections

The Annual General Meeting re-elected all members proposed and elected Gilbert Achermann as new member of the Board of Directors. Shareholders also elected Jacques Theurillat as new Chairman of the Board of Directors, succeeding Etienne Jornod who decided not stand for re-election after 25 years. The Board of Directors sincerely thanks him for many years of distinguished service and recognized his long-standing and successful leadership by appointing him as Honorary Chairman.

The Board of Directors is now composed of the following members: Jacques Theurillat (Chairman), Gilbert Achermann, Prof. Dr. hon. Michel Burnier, Dr. Romeo Cerutti, Dr. Sue Mahony, Kim Stratton and Dr. Gianni Zampieri.

Remuneration Committee confirmed

The following members of the Board of Directors were re-elected to the Remuneration Committee for a term of one year: Prof. Dr. hon. Michel Burnier, Dr. Romeo Cerutti, and Dr. Sue Mahony.

Vifor Pharma Group is a global specialty pharmaceuticals company. It aims to become the global leader in iron deficiency, nephrology and cardio-renal therapies. The company is the partner of choice for pharmaceuticals and innovative patient-focused solutions. Vifor Pharma Group strives to help patients around the world with severe and chronic diseases lead better, healthier lives. The company develops, manufactures and markets pharmaceutical products for precision patient care. Vifor Pharma Group holds a leading position in all its core business activities and consists of the following companies: Vifor Pharma; Vifor Fresenius Medical Care Renal Pharma (a joint company with Fresenius Medical Care); and OM Pharma. Vifor Pharma Group is headquartered in Switzerland, and listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange (SIX Swiss Exchange, VIFN, ISIN: CH0364749348). For more information, please visit www.viforpharma.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005044/en/
Immigration attorney Deron Smallcomb emailed several U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials on Wednesday, imploring them to brief him on the medical condition of his client, who was hospitalized. His first question was simple: "Is my client alive?"

"I demand to speak with my client, today," Smallcomb continued. "That is, assuming he is still alive."

Smallcomb soon learned what he had suspected for days. In a brief call later that day, his client, 41-year-old Noe Perez, said he had contracted the coronavirus.

That would make Perez, an immigrant from El Salvador, one of at least 986 immigrants who have tested positive for COVID-19 while in ICE custody, according to the agency's latest tally. He is also among at least 149 ICE detainees who have contracted the disease while detained at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, a prison in the San Diego area that is home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the U.S. immigration detention system.

At least 11 ICE employees assigned to the facility and 24 staffers with the for-profit prison company that runs it have also tested positive for the virus, according to the immigration agency and CoreCivic, the private corrections firm. Additionally, at least 68 U.S. Marshals Service detainees awaiting criminal trial or sentencing at the facility have tested positive, according to a Justice Department official.

The facility housed the first and only known immigrant to have died of coronavirus complications while in ICE custody.

Immigration Detention Death

The Otay Mesa Detention Center, operated by the private prison company, CoreCivic, is home to the largest coronavirus outbreak in the sprawling U.S. immigration detention system. Elliot Spagat/AP

Perez's family in California, a mix of U.S. citizens and green card holders, fears for his life. Before he contracted the virus, he was suffering from pulmonary embolism, thrombosis, ulcers and a hernia. He also has to take daily blood thinners for the rest of his life.

Story continues

"I'm very worried about my son. My son is in danger," his mother, Laura, told CBS News in Spanish. "We are all human beings. They are not animals. But they treat them like animals. They don't care about these boys."

Laura, the rest of the family and Smallcomb feel like they have been stonewalled by ICE as Perez's health has deteriorated. They said the agency did not inform them of Perez's hospitalization until they spent days demanding answers. In one of his numerous emails to ICE officials in the San Diego area, Smallcomb said he and the family only found out about Perez's hospitalization through an anonymous source.

Asked about the family's concerns, an ICE spokesperson said the agency could not comment on Perez's medical condition, citing state and federal privacy laws. The spokesperson said requests to call hospitalized detainees have to be reviewed and approved by an ICE official.

Though relieved that he was able to speak to Perez on Wednesday, Smallcomb said there's no sign ICE will release his client. On Tuesday, the parole request he submitted on behalf of Perez was denied. In its decision notice, which was reviewed by CBS News, ICE said Perez's "discretionary release" would not "conform to this agency's priority."

An ICE spokesperson did not elaborate on why the agency denied the parole request. Notices typically state whether the agency believes a detainee could be a flight risk or a threat to public safety if released.

Smallcomb believes ICE is not releasing his medically vulnerable client because of a conviction for assault with a semi-automatic firearm in 1998. But he said his client has already paid his debt to society by serving a 22-year prison sentence. Perez was convicted as a teenager, according to California court records.

ICE confirmed it arrested Perez in January after he finished his prison sentence and is seeking to deport him to El Salvador, which he fled with his family in 1986 because of the civil war there.

Like Perez's family, Smallcomb fears for his client's life, saying he should be working to prevent Perez's deportation  not his death.

"A 41-year-old male with serious underlying conditions and daily medications to stay alive, that's the first guy you test, that's the first guy you quarantine, that's the first guy you release," Smallcomb told CBS News.

During his phone call with Perez on Wednesday, Smallcomb said he learned his client has been transferred to two San Diego-area hospitals since last Friday, after days of complaining of pain in his chest and lower back, excessive sweating and trouble breathing. Perez had been tested for coronavirus earlier last week and received the positive result the day he was hospitalized, Smallcomb said.

Since then, Perez has been diagnosed with pneumonia and two "black clouds" on his lungs, Smallcomb said, recounting the conversation with his client. Perez has begun an antibiotic regimen and remains in serious pain, his lawyer added.

Laura has been distraught since her son's health deteriorated. Not being able to talk to him on Mother's Day was particularly difficult. She faults ICE for his current condition, saying he felt ill for days before being taken to a hospital. "If they had acted on time, my son would not be in the hospital."

"What is ICE doing? Letting people die?" she asked.

Laura has found some solace in talking to another immigrant family in California who recently faced a similar situation.

"My heart still hurts"

Rosa is still hurting from her brother's death. "My heart still hurts. I can't sleep at night because I'm desperate," she told CBS News. "I want to turn back time."

She called Laura after the advocacy group Pueblos Sin Fronteras told her about Perez's situation. "She's also devastated," Rosa said, referring to Laura.

img-1091.jpg

Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia in an undated photo.

Rosa, a Los Angeles resident who is also from El Salvador, lost her brother last week. Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia died of coronavirus complications at a San Diego-area hospital after being transferred there in late April from the Otay Mesa detention center, where he had been held by ICE since January.

Like Perez, Escobar Mejia fled El Salvador as a child during the 1980s. They both had run-ins with the law that made them targets for deportation. Escobar Mejia also had preexisting medical conditions and U.S. citizen family members clamoring for his release.

Rosa said she does not want other immigrants detained at the Otay Mesa facility to meet her brother's fate.

"My heart still aches. I don't want that to happen to other families. Please free them," she said, in a plea to the U.S. government.

According to an ICE spokeswoman, ICE has released more than 900 detainees it determined were at increased risk of severe illness if infected with the coronavirus because of their age or medical conditions. The agency has also been required to free more than 190 detainees under court orders stemming from lawsuits filed by advocates across the country.

Because of an order by a federal judge in San Diego, ICE has released 70 of the roughly 130 Otay Mesa detainees it identified as medically vulnerable, according to court filings. Last week, the same judge denied a separate request to order the release of at-risk U.S. Marshals detainees.

Bardis Vakili, an attorney with the San Diego branch of the American Civil Liberties Union working on both cases, said some immigrant detainees in the vulnerable categories are still waiting for medical clearance to be released. But he said the agency has indicated it does not intend to release about 35 medically at-risk detainees because of their criminal records.

Vakili said ICE needs to continue reducing the number of immigrants detained at the Otay Mesa facility, which stopped taking new detainees in April. ICE said it continues to hold roughly 544 detainees at the San Diego-area detention center.

"The main concern here is that these are buildings where everyone is in a congregate environment. They share bathrooms, showers, sleeping cells," Vakili told CBS News. "They are packed tightly together."

A spokesperson for CoreCivic said the company is working with ICE and the U.S. Marshals Service to implement measures to protect detainees and personnel at Otay Mesa. Meals are no longer served in communal settings, movement has been curtailed, masks have been provided to staff and detainees, medically at-risk individuals have been identified and those who have tested positive are being quarantined together, the spokesperson added.

Staff at the facility have also been instructed to follow certain personal hygiene, social distancing and cleaning protocols. Personnel undergo temperature checks and are asked about potential symptoms of infection before entering the facility, the CoreCivic spokesperson said.

As coronavirus cases among detained immigrants have continued to grow consistently, advocates have urged ICE to further downsize its nationwide detainee population, which stood at nearly 28,000 last week, saying the agency is still detaining immigrants with medical conditions and others who don't pose a threat to the public.

In a letter Thursday, the House Oversight Committee accused ICE of not taking the crisis "seriously," urging the agency to release all asylum-seekers and "non-violent people" in its custody.

In a court filing last week, the agency said it had identified more than 4,400 detainees considered to be at increased risk of severe illness or death if contracting the coronavirus under guidelines set by a federal judge in California. The agency also continues to detain more than 4,800 asylum-seekers who have demonstrated credible fear of being persecuted or tortured in their home countries.

Elsy, who requested that her last name not be published so she could speak freely, is one of many asylum-seekers held by ICE at Otay Mesa. She said she fled El Salvador last year after been threatened and marginalized because of her identity as a lesbian woman. She was required to wait in Mexico under the Migrant Protection Protocols program. She was only allowed into the U.S. after proving to an asylum officer that she had been persecuted while waiting in Mexico.

After the group representing her, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, helped Elsy find a sponsor in the U.S., ICE granted her parole, but it conditioned her release on her paying a $15,000 bond. Because advocates have been unable to raise the funds, Elsy has been detained at Otay Mesa for roughly eight months. She said she has grown increasingly frustrated during the pandemic, feeling powerless to protect herself from the coronavirus inside a facility plagued by the contagion.

"I came fleeing to prevent something from happening to me in my home country," Elsy told CBS News. "Now, I'm here in the U.S. in a detention center, but it's still very difficult because I don't know if I will come out of here alive or dead."

Gary Cohn calls for drawdown of "extraordinary measures" to provide unemployment aid

Fed Chair Jerome Powell says economy will recover, but it could take a year or more

Pelosi says "time is of the essence" to reach deal on next round of coronavirus relief
WATERLOO  Humans are social creatures  we live in communities, we gather to celebrate, mourn and share. In prehistoric times, having others around could mean the difference between life and death, as humans shared limited food and worked together to fend off dangers.

But today the world is in the grip of an altogether different foe, as countries around the globe impose strict lockdowns to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Yet that effort to protect physical health could have an unexpected impact on our mental health.

A team of international researchers, including a psychology professor at the University of Waterloo, is conducting a study in 18 countries to try and get a sense of how people are coping emotionally with the stresses of the pandemic and the lockdown.

We know that just being in the physical presence of others has a soothing effect on our physiology, said Allison Kelly, acting executive director of the University of Waterloos Centre for Mental Health Research and Treatment, and the lead Canadian researcher on the international team.

The so-called coffee-shop effect has shown that people feel calmer, more focused and more connected, even if theyre just sitting in a coffee shop where there are other people.

Now thats been removed for all of us, at a time when theres so much emotional stress that were all carrying, given that the world and our lives have been flipped upside down, she said.

The study looks at how people are feeling, what things in their home environment or online are making it easier to cope, and also the role compassion plays. It defines compassion as the ability to recognize suffering  in oneself or in others  and the desire to do something to try to ease that suffering.

People benefit if they receive kindness from others, but research also shows that theres a benefit for the people doing the reaching out, Kelly said.

The study will ask people from Slovakia to Australia, Peru to Japan, how theyre coping, Kelly said. It also explores how compassion  for oneself and for others  might help people get through the ongoing challenge of being cut off from others during a time of prolonged stress. Questions have been translated into multiple languages, so that researchers can gauge how people from different countries and cultures are coping with the pandemic

Participants fill out a 30-minute online survey now, in three months and six months from now. Anyone interested in taking part can find the survey here.

Researchers hope to have people complete the first round of questions by late May before physical distancing restrictions loosen. Later surveys will help map any change in peoples emotional resilience.

Kelly hopes the study will help guide responses to future outbreaks, or to subsequent waves of this pandemic, to take into account peoples mental health needs. That could mean drafting guidelines that better address the needs of people who live alone, by allowing regular contact with one or two others, or a bigger focus on mental health supports.

Study results are expected to be published in academic journals sometime in 2021.
On February 2, more than a month before the World Health Organization deemed the spread of COVID-19 a pandemic, it declared that the virus had led to a massive infodemic. WHO observed an overabundance of informationsome accurate and some notthat makes it hard for people to find trustworthy sources and reliable guidance when they need it. A few months later, the infodemic has only intensified. Conspiracy theories are sloshing around the internet, alleging, among other wild claims, that China deliberately engineered the virus in a lab, that the US military implanted the virus in China, that Bill Gates wants to use vaccination to microchip the worlds population, and that the virus is spreading via 5G technology. Often, right-wing media outlets have boosted the signal; last week, for example, One America News Network, an outlet beloved of Trump, implicated Gates, George Soros, and the Clintons in a globalist conspiracy to establish sweeping population control. Sometimes, the White House has been the booster. We all remember bleachgate.

Early this month, a viral YouTube video brought some of these strands together. The videoa clip from a documentary called Plandemicstarred Dr. Judy Mikovits, a discredited scientist who claims, among other things, that wearing a face mask can actively make you sick, and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, suppressed her work on the harms of vaccines. (There is zero evidence for any of this.) The video was promoted aggressively by anti-vaccination activists and by adherents of QAnon, a convoluted deep-state conspiracy theory; the Epoch Times, a right-wing media outlet with ties to Falun Gong, also boosted Mikovitss message. This week, Davey Alba, of the New York Times, reported that mentions of Mikovits on social media and TV have spiked to as high as 14,000 a day. Facebook and YouTube eventually removed the video, but not before it reached millions of users. Erin Gallagher, a social-media researcher who charted the videos spread, concluded that both platforms were instrumental in spreading viral medical misinformation. According to Anna Merlan, of VICE, Zach Vorhies, a former YouTube and Google staffer who now has ties to QAnon and anti-vaxxers, helped orchestrate the videos virality.

ICYMI: The last days of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newsroom

The Mikovits video reached at least eight million people, and it may only be a small taste of conspiracies to come. Kevin Roose, who covers technology for the Times, writes that he was watching the clip from Plandemic when a terrifying thought struck him: What if we get a COVID-19 vaccine and half the country refuses to take it? Roose sees a number of reasons why a future COVID vaccine could play into the hands of propagandistsitll likely have been fast-tracked, adding rocket fuel to existing vaccine-safety fears; itll likely be mandatory, at least for certain groups, boosting anger about perceived government overreach; and anti-vaxx boogeymen, including Gates and the WHO, may end up being closely involved in its development. The anti-vax movement, Roose writes, is highly organized and media savvy. By contrast, the messaging of authoritative official health sources can be clunky and poorly suited to online discourse. As Renee DiResta, a researcher with the Stanford Internet Observatory, wrote in a recent column for The Atlantic, All too often, the people responsible for protecting the public do not appear to understand how information moves in the internet era.

The pandemic is particularly fertile ground for conspiracists. There is not, as yet, an authoritative, established scientific consensus about the virus and its spread, leaving wide informational gaps for nonsense to fill. And the fact that the coronavirus is, as I wrote in March, an everything story, affecting every single aspect of our lives, lends itself conveniently to a conspiracists habit of thinking in terms of sweeping theories with unifying explanatory power. Yesterday, The Atlantic launched Shadowland, a series of pieces, on themes broader than the coronavirus, examining Americas vulnerability to paranoid thinking. In an introductory note, Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantics editor in chief, writes that the conspiracy theorists are winning. That, he believes, poses an existential threat.

Deep, insightful coverage of our poisoned information ecosystem is welcome. Still, conspiracy theories are highly fraught terrain for the reality-based press. By debunking theories, we risk reinforcing their appeal, and furthering their spread. Throw a fact check at a subversion myth, and it will transform into proof for believers, Whitney Phillips wrote for this magazines recent disinformation-themed issue. After all, trying to disprove the existence of a Satanic plot is exactly what a Satanist would do. Journalists must decide, on a case-by-case basis and in real time, which theories are widespreadand harmfulenough to demand rectification, and the best way to go about doing that. It isnt an easy task. Its especially hard when lives are on the line.

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Below, more on the coronavirus:



Other notable stories:

For CJR, Howard Polskin, a watcher of right-wing media trends, explores how the Washington Examiner became a traffic monster. Hugo Gurdon, the sites editorial director, has embraced a model of the newsroom as an editorial factory, Polskin reports. Leaving aside its robust opinion section, the rest of the Examiner website is peppered with lots of short, easy-to-digest, fast-to-produce news stories.

Vanity Fairs Joe Pompeo reports that staffers at BuzzFeed increasingly feel animosity toward the Times; one BuzzFeed editor said it feels like the Times is trying to murder us. BuzzFeed feels like the Times has a knack for rereporting certain stories and then publishing similar features of their own with minimal or no credit, Pompeo writes. The Times has also poached several BuzzFeed stars, including its former editor, Ben Smith.

For the LA Times, Stephen Battaglio profiles Soledad OBrien, the former CNN anchor who likes to excoriate other journalists on Twitter. OBrien believes her tweets are a service in an era when news is often interpreted through a partisan prism, Battaglio writes. For OBrien, journalistic cowardice is a crime and should be pointed out.

In 2018, authorities in Iran arrested Hassan Fathi, a newspaper columnist, after he gave an interview to the BBC. Last week, he began an 18-month term in Tehrans notorious Evin Prison. The Committee to Protect Journalists is calling for Fathis release, noting that the spread of COVID-19 makes his imprisonment a potential death sentence.

And on Tuesday, at 11am Eastern, Covering Climate Now, the climate-journalism initiative led by CJR and The Nation, will host a webinar focused on climate coverage amid the pandemic. If youd like to take part, you can register at this link. (The webinar is for journalists only. Following the webinar, CCN will post a recording on its website.)

ICYMI: Why did Matt Drudge turn on Donald Trump?

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Jon Allsop is a freelance journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Review of Books, Foreign Policy, and The Nation, among other outlets. He writes CJRs newsletter The Media Today. Find him on Twitter @Jon_Allsop.
Britains insurers have not won many friends during the Covid-19 pandemic.

The reluctance of Hiscox to pay out on business interruption claims by small enterprises, in spite of language covering pandemics in the contract, required City regulator the Financial Conduct Authority to adjudicate.

Consumers who have booked, cancelled or postponed holidays have been left in never-never land.

Impact: Lloyd's of London expects to fork out billions in payouts as a result of the pandemic

Only Admiral had the decency to recognise that cars sitting on driveways due to lockdown are unlikely to be involved in fender benders and offered a refund.

Yet there is no escaping that insurance is an enormously important part of Britains financial sector.

The UK has the fourth largest insurance industry in the world behind the US, Japan and China, the largest in Europe and remarkably is the biggest exporter of insurance services on earth with exports of 14.9billion  a big chunk of the nations surplus in services.

At the core of the eco-system is Lloyds of London which has seen a myriad of crises since it emerged from the coffee shops of 17th century Britain.

Indeed, it has recently found itself at the centre of an ethical storm over sexism and raucous behaviour. It is now being tested by Covid-19.

Lloyds history of taking on risk which cannot always be bought off the shelf means it has been inundated with claims for events cancellations which will account for 31 per cent of the up to 3.5billion of losses.

There may be far more to come if syndicates end up having to pay out to great swathes of businesses ruined by coronavirus lockdowns. The claims could eventually exceed record pay outs from 9/11 in the USA.

Overall Lloyds expects the industry across the world to absorb losses of more than 160bn. The consequences will be twofold. Syndicates that have underwritten the losses will require big injections of new capital.

And ultimately consumers of insurance services, whether businesses or retail customers, will pay the price with surging premiums.

This happens after almost every natural disaster whether it be floods in Yorkshire or forest fires in Australia or California.

Former Bank of England governor Mark Carney has already pointed out the extreme vulnerability insurance faces from climate change.

The public might be more forgiving if insurers were not so infernally obstructive about claims in these most extreme of circumstances. Nevertheless, the country cannot afford to turn such a valuable international earner into a pariah and drive the market offshore.

Amazing grace

The dark shadow of the implosion in Neil Woodfords investment empire has lifted remarkably quickly from investment platform Hargreaves Lansdown.

Hargreaves continues to defy expectations despite betraying the good faith of some 300,000 investors who directly or indirectly suffered big losses as a result of flawed research and recommendations.

Over the last four months HL added 4billion of new business and 94,000 new customers, in spite of ferocious conditions on equity markets.

Overall, the value of assets held has fallen from 105.2billion to 96.7billion as equity markets have taken punishment.

The combination of locked down clients playing the markets and volatility trades pushed revenues to record levels of 190.2million.

Ridiculously high profit margins  that can only be dreamed of across most of the financial sector  means that HL continues to back momentum and will continue to pay dividends.

But its reputation has not been fully repaired. HL still faces the result of a full scale FCA inquiry and the possibility of a class action suit from distressed clients.

The investment platform is seeking to clean up its act by replacing its totally discredited Wealth 50 list  which featured Woodford until the last  with a revamped Wealth Shortlist run by an independent panel.

Cuts in management fees and proper compensation would also be welcome.

Debt hangover

The only positive way of looking at the near 300billion of borrowing run up by the Government, largely as a result of Covid-19, is to think how bad the position we would all be in had the Chancellor Rishi Sunak not acted decisively to shore up the incomes of ordinary people, businesses and services such as the NHS.

Borrowing of 15 per cent plus of GDP and debt close to 100 per cent of output is scary.

More worrying is the permanent damage done to enterprise, culture, supply chains and the next generation to enter the workforce.

That could be as painful as the devilish disease itself.
Volkswagen production line staff wear masks as they work at the Wolfsburg plant in Germany. (Swen Pfortner/Getty Images)

Just a couple of weeks after Volkswagen (VOW3.DE) reopened Europes biggest car plant in Wolfsburg after the coronavirus shutdown, the German car giant has idled two production lines due to a lack of customer demand.

Volkswagens move, first reported by AFP, underlines the main challenge for the auto industry this year: supply chains may be up and running and factories adapted to new hygiene rules, but demand is in the ditch as people shy away from expensive purchases like new cars.

The orders are simply not there, Ferdinand Dudenhoffer, auto industry expert at the University of St Gallen told journalists in Berlin this week. The global economy is falling into a deep hole. Consumers lack the money and the courage to buy new cars.

Ratings agency Moodys this week again cut its sales forecast for the global automotive market  predicting a 20% drop in 2020, from a previous prediction of 14%.

Dudenhoffer, former co-founder and director of the Center for Automotive Research at the University of Duisburg-Essen, said that while the economic situation may be stabilising a little bit in Europe, who in Italy, in Spain, or in France is going to buy a car?

Spain and Italy have been the worst hit by coronavirus among European Union countries, both in terms of cases and deaths.

Germany, by comparison, has seen fewer deaths from the virus, but the nearly two-month lockdown has taken a massive toll on Europes largest economy, and tens of thousands of workers at Volkswagen, BMW (BMW.DE), and Daimler (DAI.DE) are still on short-time hours.

READ MORE: Coronavirus drives German GDP down by 2.2% in the first quarter

Fear of infection

With people wary of using public transport, and some governments recommending they avoid it over contagion fears, there have been suggestions that this could signal a return to commuting by car.

An online survey of 1,000 people by Autotrader found that 56% of UK driving licence holders who dont own a car were now considering buying one, and half of them said they were less likely to use public transport.

Story continues

READ MORE: The UK coronavirus lockdown has made people more likely to buy a car

However, Dudenhoffer does not believe that carmakers can expect a significant sales bump from people avoiding trains and busses. In fact, we are already at what could be described as peak car.

We have 570 cars per 1,000 inhabitants in Germany, in America it is 850, in France it is 500 or 600 and this rate of cars-per-1,000 inhabitants has risen constantly in the past years, Dudenhoffer said. He notes that with this already very high rate of car ownerships, it wont be that everyone suddenly goes out and buys a car.

Already e-bike sales are booming, and cities like Berlin are widening bike lanes to give cyclists safer distance when passing each other. Dudenhoffer also expects Germanys trains and public transport to get a bit more creative and come up with innovations that allow people to take public transport and stay relatively safe.

German auto chiefs ask for aid

With an estimated 100,000 jobs currently at risk in Germanys economically important car industry, the countrys car bosses have been putting pressure on the federal government in Berlin to come to their aid.

Discussions are ongoing about programmes like a cash-for-clunkers and buyer incentives to stimulate sales, and a decision is expected in June.

One sticking point is that the government is being requested to shell out huge amounts of taxpayers money to support the car companies, who continue to pay dividends to their shareholders.

"The forecasts for 2020 are dismal," said BMW CEO Oliver Zipse at the companys 100th AGM this week, but went on to say that it plans to distribute some 1.6bn (1.4bn, $1.7bn) in dividends to shareholders.

The dividend is clearly a way of sharing the companys success with you, our shareholders, Zipse said in his statement. It is distributed retroactively for the prior financial year.

Despite the dire outlook for the sector, Dudenhoffer believes that all German car brands will survive the crisis as they are relative strong compared with other carmakers. He points to Volkswagens healthy capitalisation and high liquidity, plus the fact that its biggest market, China, is slowly gathering speed again.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  The Philippine National Police respects the decision of police units to arrest several netizens who criticized President Rodrigo Duterte on social media, spokesperson Brigadier General Bernard Banac said Friday.

At least four people from all over the country have been accosted by police for online posts offering a bounty for anyone who can kill Duterte, as well as a post questioning the President's former aide now Senator Christopher "Bong" Go's pervasive presence in Malacanang.

"The police conduct themselves based on evidence gathered. We presume there was regularity in their act. Every time they would perform their duty, they would have to explain themselves before the court also," Banac told CNN Philippines' The Source.

"If found that they have violated rules, then they would have to face consequences of their act. As always, the police conduct themselves in a normal fashion," he added.

A teacher in Zambales, a habal-habal driver in Boracay, and a 26-year-old woman in Cebu have been nabbed for their social media posts, with police charging them with cybercrime and sedition complaints.

On Wednesday, authorities also arrested salesman Reynaldo Orcullo in Nasipit, Agusan del Norte for his post against Go and Duterte. He said Go would always make a "scripted request" to the President regarding national issues, while he described the Duterte as stupid and crazy.

Asked what the man's violations were since he did not ask for Duterte's head like other posts, Banac said: "There could have been other statements that became the reason for the police to take this person into custody."

"Im sure the police acted on a good reason why they took this person into custody. This person would have to face charges," the PNP official added.

Human rights lawyer Chel Diokno questioned the PNP's moves, saying crimes like libel prohibit warrantless arrests, especially with freedom of speech provided by the Constitution.

Duterte himself has thrown damaging rants and expletives against certain individuals during his televised public speeches.

Caraga regional police chief BGen Joselito Esquivel Jr. earlier said in a statement that people should "think thrice" before posting online and check if their posts violate any laws.
Dublin, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "COVID-19 Economic Impact Report: US HVAC Equipment" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



The US HVAC equipment industry is facing a number of challenges as it deals with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. How has the macroeconomic environment changed and what does it mean for the HVAC equipment industry going forward?



This report looks at how the expected impact of the pandemic on the current macroeconomic environment in the US compares to other major events since 2000, including the bursting of technology bubble and 9/11 terrorist attack, and the 2007-2009 Great Recession. It also provides a historical view of industry sales since 2000, a look at how the industry is being currently impacted, and estimates for industry sales through 2024.



Products covered include:

Air conditioning equipment, including unitary air conditioners, room air conditioners, packaged terminal air conditioners, chillers, and absorption chillers

Heating equipment, including warm air furnaces, boilers, and room and zone heating equipment

Heat pumps

Whole building dehumidifiers and humidifiers

Products excluded form the scope of the report include:

Portable HVAC equipment, including air conditioners, heaters, dehumidifiers, and humidifiers

Ventilation equipment, including ductwork, radiators, and distribution pipes

Parts and attachments



Key Topics Covered:



Introduction Macroeconomic Overview Number of Covid-19 Cases in the US HVAC Equipment: Historical Perspective Covid-19 Pandemic vs Recent Recessions HVAC Equipment Market: Covid-19 Impact Additional Information

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/xfis9r

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.
US Concludes Islamic State Khorasan Behind Kabul Maternity Ward Attack

Sputnik News

23:49 GMT 14.05.2020(updated 00:31 GMT 15.05.2020)

US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad announced Thursday evening that an American assessment on recent violence in Afghanistan has attributed two attacks to the Islamic State Khorasan - including a deadly attack on a Kabul maternity ward.

"The USG has assessed [Daesh] conducted the horrific attacks on a maternity ward and a funeral earlier this week in Afghanistan," the ambassador said via Twitter on May 14, referencing the Tuesday massacre committed by gunmen who killed at least two newborns and 12 mothers and nurses at a Kabul hospital.

"[Daesh] has demonstrated a pattern for favoring these types of heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world."

"[Daesh] also opposes a peace agreement between the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan and the Taliban, and seeks to encourage sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria," he said, arguing that Daesh is attempting to delay peace in the region.

Despite Washington linking the Afghan-based Daesh franchise to the event, the group has not claimed responsibility in the attack - which is an uncommon occurrence because the militant group has been known to even lay claim to violent acts carried out by other individuals or organizations.

Prior to the US ambassador's announcement, the Afghan government blamed the Taliban for the May 12 massacre. However, the Taliban has denied involvement in the attack.

Human Rights Watch has dubbed the maternity ward murder-spree as an "unspeakable act" and "apparent war crime," while the United Nations has called for the perpetrators to "face justice."

 Sputnik

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland reported no new imported cases of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) Thursday, and the total number of imported cases was 1,692, the National Health Commission said Friday.

One new suspected case imported from abroad was reported in Shanghai, bringing the number of current suspected cases to four, all from abroad, the commission said.

Of the total imported cases, 1,646 had been discharged from hospitals after recovery, and 46 remained hospitalized with three in severe conditions, the commission said.

No deaths had been reported from the imported cases.
SAO PAULO, Brazil, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Companhia de Saneamento Basico do Estado de Sao Paulo  Sabesp ("Company" or "Sabesp") in compliance with the provisions of Article 157, Paragraph 4 of Law 6,404/76 and the provisions of CVM Instruction 358/02, informs to its shareholders and the market in general that, in continuity to the Notice to the Market published on April 1, 2020 that addresses the schedule of events for the Company's Third Ordinary Tariff Revision disclosed by means of Resolution 974/2020, the Regulatory Agency for Sanitation and Energy of the State of Sao Paulo (ARSESP), published Public Consultation Notices n 05/2020 and n 06/2020, which provide for:

a) Opening of Public Consultation n 05/2020, related to the definition of the methodology to be used in the calculation of the maximum tariff and the tariff structure for the Third Ordinary Tariff Revision of Sabesp; and

b) Opening of Public Consultation n 06/2020, related to the definition of the Weighted Average Cost of Capital (WACC) for the Third Ordinary Tariff Revision of Sabesp.

According to the Public Consultation Notices n 05/2020 and n 06/2020, those interested in participating may send contributions between May 15 and July 3, 2020.

The documents and other information related to the Public Consultation are available on the websites of ARSESP and Sabesp, in the Investor Relations area.

The Company will keep the market informed about any developments on the matter that is the subject of this Material Fact.

IR Contacts:

Mario Arruda Sampaio  (55 11) 3388-8664 ([email protected])

Angela Beatriz Airoldi  (55 11) 3388-8793 ([email protected])

SOURCE Sabesp

Related Links

http://www.sabesp.com.br


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Global Conductive inks market is anticipated to witness significant growth over the forecast period. Research initiatives to develop cost-effective raw materials, such as copper, nickel, and grapheme, which have properties similar to that of silver, are projected to further aid in the market growth in the near future. The research initiatives undertaken by both government and industry participants and are expected to increase multiple potential applications, which in turn are projected to complement the global conductive inks market growth.

Conductive inks have excellent electron mobility, high conductivity & low resistivity, as well as high thermal & chemical stability. These inherent properties contribute to increased efficiency of conductive ink applications such as PCB boards, RFID tags printing, and circuit repairing. Furthermore, the particle size of conductive inks can be adjusted to suit the requirements of the application. Increasing need for customization coupled with favorable properties of conductive inks suitable for electronic application needs is expected to aid in the overall market growth.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/conductive-inks-market/request-for-sample

New product types, which suit rigid as well as flexible substrates and can achieve low electrical resistivity, have been developed. These developments are expected to benefit the conductive inks market globally. Inks requiring low curing temperature and having anti-shrinking properties were also launched in the past.

The electronics market is highly competitive in nature, and, therefore, key market players are constantly attempting to miniaturize their product offerings. Miniaturization involves the manufacturing of optical, mechanical, and electronics products to achieve product differentiation. Conductive inks are used to produce electrical contacts, short network connection, and improved layout design, which aids in miniaturization. These require single-sided assembly and resistance is created at the same time. The need for miniaturization is anticipated to grow over the forecast period due to the rising competition in regional markets such as in the Asia Pacific & Europe regions.

They are used for manufacturing printed circuit boards, which are widely employed in automotive components. They are used to coat assemblies and components to shield them from radio interference. Car seat heaters and window defoggers use them for circuit tracing. Various companies are trying to develop interactive displays for achieving product differentiation. For instance, Henkel is involved in the manufacturing of fully printed ink products such as silver inks, dielectric inks, transparent, and bendable resistive inks, which are primarily used for electronic assembly purposes.

Complete Summary with TOC Available @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/conductive-inks-market

Silver inks are widely being used in electronic application owing to their excellent conductibility and printability. However, manufacturers have come up with alternative solutions that exhibit properties similar to that of silver due to the scarce availability of raw materials and high costs of silver inks. Copper has been identified as a good alternative for silver due to its low cost and high electrical conductivity. Therefore, due to these properties, manufacturers can reduce the production cost of conductive inks.

Companies such as Henkel have introduced conductive inks containing minimal silver formulations. The conductive ink produced by Henkel LOCTITE ECI 1001 E&C, finds use in the automotive sensor application, as customers demand a low-cost alternative of conductive silver inks. The product, which delivers the same performance as traditional conductive silver inks, is inexpensive and contains lesser silver content.

Avail discount on this report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/conductive-inks-market/request-for-discount-pricing

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15/05/2020 - OECD countries unanimously decided today to invite Costa Rica to become a member of the Organisation. Costa Rican President Carlos Alvarado Quesada and OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria will sign an Accession Agreement in the coming days.





Costa Ricas accession, extending the OECDs membership to 38 countries, will take effect after the country has taken the appropriate steps at the national level to accede to the OECD Convention, and deposited its instrument of accession with the French government, the depository of the Convention.





We are delighted to welcome Costa Rica into the OECD family at a time when multilateralism is more important than ever. The best way to address todays global challenges is by having emerging, developing and advanced economies working side by side on solutions, said OECD Secretary-General Angel Gurria.





As part of its accession process, Costa Rica successfully completed in-depth technical reviews by 22 OECD Committees and has carried out important reforms that have allowed the country to align its legislation, policies and practices to OECD standards in areas such as competition, statistics, anti-bribery, corporate governance of state-owned enterprises, financial markets, tax transparency and industrial chemicals management.





OECD membership has been a personal objective of the President and his government. We have been encouraged to see real cross-party commitment to the process and impressed by the engagement and reactivity of the Legislative Assembly, which enacted over a dozen laws including a comprehensive reform of competition policy and enforcement and fundamental reform of the national statistics system, as a direct result of OECD recommendations, Mr Gurria added.





The OECDs governing Council of member countries invited Costa Rica to open accession talks in April 2015. Costa Rica will become the Organisations fourth member country from the Latin America and Caribbean region, joining Mexico, Chile and Colombia.





For further information journalists are invited to contact the OECD's Media division (+ 33 1 4524 9700).

OECD and Costa Rica: www.oecd.org/latin-america/countries/costarica/

OECD press releases on Costa Rica: www.oecd.org/countries/costarica/

OECD accession procedures: www.oecd.org/about/document/enlargement.htm

Note to Editors:

The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is an international organisation that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people worldwide. It provides a forum in which governments can work together to share experiences and seek solutions to the economic, social and governance challenges they face.





The OECDs 37 members are: Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States.





Working with over 100 countries, the OECD is a global policy forum that promotes policies to improve the economic and social well-being of people around the world.

Related Documents
Ms Eunice Araba Turkson, a Special Educator in the United States, has called on school authorities and educators in Ghana to desist from discriminating against children with disability.



Here in the United States, by law, every child has the right to Free Appropriate Public Education (FAPE) and so we do not turn any child away from school, we also make a conscious plan for the children with disabilities to mingle with the mainstream children, she said.



Ms Turkson made the call when the Special Mothers Project, an advocacy and awareness creation programme on cerebral palsy, held an online discussion on a story of a teenage mother who has been convinced by her pastor to kill her disabled child.



Inclusion is a big deal here in the United States. Even if a child with special educational needs cannot study with the regular class, we develop a Unique Curriculum for them. Our typical daily schedule is - Response to Intervention - where some students also receive extra help on reading and maths, she said.



We also teach the children what is called Social Emotional Learning (SEL) to enable them to value and appreciate children who are different from themselves.



Ms Turkson, also the Chief Executive Officer of Afri-Educational Plus, a non-governmental education-oriented organisation, is partnering with the Special Mothers Project to educate parents and teachers on the possibilities of implementing Ghanas Inclusive Education Policy.



She said there was the need to involve parents of children with disability in the schools plans and programmes towards their children.



Here in the United States, the parents are very powerful people and the first advocates when it comes to educating a child with special needs. Professional licenses could be revoked if a parent reported a suspected case of discrimination against a child and allegations are found to be true, she said.



Unless under special circumstances, there is no way we can meet as team or a school on a child without the presence of the parents or guardian.



Ms Turkson said in the United States the Federal Government gave a good attention to children with special needs, many of whom had grown to be valuable members of the society and holding top positions.



She admonishes her fellow educators in Ghana to show compassion, sympathy and love to all children as those were the most important values one needed in life.





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.

Featured Video
Russia's media regulator, Roskomnadzor, has asked Google to block an article about the controversy over official data on coronavirus deaths in the country on the website of MBKh Media independent online publication.

MBKh Media said late on May 14 that its article was based on a report by the Financial Times, which estimated that the real number of people who have died in Russia from COVID-19 could be 70 percent higher than reported by the country's health officials.

MBKh Media said it had received a message from Google a day earlier, saying that the request to block the article was based on the decision of the Prosecutor-Generals Office that claimed the article contained calls for riots, extremist activities, [and] participation in mass public events held in violation of the established order."

According to MBKh Media, which is hosted on the Google Cloud Platform, Google asked it to remove the article from its website or make it inaccessible in Russia.

The Roskomnadzor request was not listed on the Google transparency report web page as of May 15.

MBKh Media also said the article in question indicated that its content was based on the Financial Times report.

As of May 15, Russian authorities said the country had 10,598 new infections, bringing the official number of confirmed cases to 262,843, the second-highest total in the world, lagging only behind the United States. The death toll stands at 2,418, up 113 over the previous day.

Experts have questioned whether testing procedures were flawed, or whether local and regional officials were misclassifying cases. In some places, such as St. Petersburg, for example, the number of pneumonia cases went sharply above seasonal norms.

The Moscow City Health Department issued a statement on May 13 saying that more than 60 percent of coronavirus patients' deaths in the city had been caused by "alternative causes," and therefore such deaths had not been included to COVID-19 death toll.

In a May 13 interview with Current Time, the World Health Organizations representative in Russia downplayed doubts about the countrys coronavirus statistics.

Melita Vujnovic also told the television channel in the interview that the epidemic is "in the stabilization phase and is moving into the decline phase. Current Time is a Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA.
(All amounts expressed in US dollars, unless otherwise stated)



VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Fortuna Silver Mines Inc. (FSM) (FVI.TO) today reported a net loss of $4.5 million, an adjusted net loss of $2.2 million, and adjusted EBITDA of $15.9 million for the first quarter of 2020.



Jorge A. Ganoza, President and CEO, commented, Our results in the quarter were marked by lower production at the San Jose Mine, negative metal price adjustments at the end of March, and an unusually high income tax provision related to the devaluation of the Mexican peso. These factors compounded to reflect an adjusted net loss of $2.2 million. However, free cash flow from ongoing operations remained strong at $14.2 million. Mr. Ganoza continued, In the month of May, we look forward to a gradual resumption of operations at San Jose and the re-commencement of construction at Lindero. Mr. Ganoza added, We have developed plans for, and are prepared to operate in the new COVID-19 business environment. Measures include aggressive opex and capex reductions of $23 million for 2020. Mr. Ganoza concluded, The recently announced financing will provide the Company with the necessary financial flexibility to bring our Lindero gold mine into production at a time of unprecedented uncertainty.

First quarter of 2020 highlights

Sales of $47.5 million, compared to $59.0 million in Q1 2019

Net loss of $4.5 million, compared to net income of $2.2 million in Q1 2019

Adjusted net loss 1 of $2.2 million, compared to adjusted net income of $8.4 million in Q1 2019

Adjusted EBITDA 1 of $15.9 million, compared to $23.8 million in Q1 2019

Free cash flow from ongoing operations 1 of $14.2 million, compared to $2.2 million in Q1 2019

Silver and gold production of 1,819,312 ounces and 10,101 ounces, respectively

AISC/oz Ag Eq1 for the San Jose Mine and the Caylloma Mine was $10.72 and $16.73, respectively

Notes:

Refer to non-GAAP financial measures and Forward-Looking Statements at the end of this news release Silver equivalent production for Q1 2020 is calculated using a silver to gold ratio of 97.6:1. Silver equivalent is calculated at realized metal prices of $1,571/oz Au and, $16.09/oz Ag for Q1 2020. Silver equivalent production for Q1 2020 is calculated using a silver to lead ratio of 1:20.7 pounds, and silver to zinc ratio of 1:17.9 pounds. Silver equivalent is calculated using realized metal prices of $17.59/oz Ag, $0.85/lb Pb, and $0.98/lb Zn for Q1 2020.

Story continues

COVID-19 update and response plan

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Company has developed plans to adjust its operations to the new sanitary protocols that allow business continuity under local regulations. Descriptions of the plans for each of the Companys mines are provided in the March 31, 2020 MD&A. As part of these response plans, the Company has implemented opex and capex reductions for 2020 at Corporate and its operating mines for a total of approximately $23 million. These reductions include $2.5 million in corporate executive compensation, $12.2 million of capex, and $7.3 million of opex and expenses. The Company will continue to monitor the evolving business environment to assess the effectiveness of its COVID-19 plans and budget reductions.

First Quarter 2020 Consolidated Results

Consolidated Metrics Q1 2020 Q1 2019 (Expressed in $ millions except per share information) Sales $ 47.5 $ 59.0 Mine operating income 7.5 21.5 Operating income 1.8 10.9 Net income (loss) (4.5 ) 2.2 Earnings (loss) per share - basic (0.03 ) 0.01 Adjusted net income (loss)1 (2.2 ) 8.4 Adjusted EBITDA1 15.9 23.8 Net cash provided by operating activities 13.2 3.9 Free cash flow from ongoing operations1 14.2 2.2 Capex Sustaining 3.5 4.7 Non-sustaining 0.1 0.8 Lindero 21.4 30.9 Brownfields 1.6 1.2 Mar 31, 2020 Dec 31, 2019 Cash and cash equivalents $ 88.5 $ 83.4 Notes: 1. Refer to Non-GAAP financial measures.

Sales for the three months ended March 31, 2020 were $47.5 million, a $11.5 million decrease from the $59.0 million reported in the first quarter of 2019. The decrease was due primarily to lower silver and gold sales volume at the San Jose Mine, lower lead and zinc prices compared to the same period in 2019, and negative metal price adjustments at the end of March 2020.

Operating income for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $1.8 million, a $9.1 million decrease from the $10.9 million reported in the first quarter of 2019. The decrease in operating income was due mainly to lower sales and was partially offset by a $2.4 million decrease in foreign exchange losses and a $2.7 million decrease in share-based payments. The lower share-based payments were due primarily to a decline in the Companys share price on its cash-settled restricted share units.

Foreign exchange loss in the quarter was $1.3 million, which includes a $3.2 million loss related to the Lindero Project in Argentina and partially offset by a $2.0 million foreign exchange gain on the devaluation of the Mexican Peso. The Company also recognized $1.1 million of Argentine pesos denominated investment gains from cross border trades. Excluding the foreign exchange loss in Argentina and the investment gains, on an adjusted basis, income before income taxes was $4.9 million compared to $14.8 million in the first quarter of 2019.

Net loss for the quarter was $4.5 million compared to $2.2 million in net income reported in the first quarter of 2019, and adjusted net loss was $2.2 million compared to $8.4 million adjusted net income in the first quarter of 2019. The adjusted net loss was driven by a $2.5 million impact on our income tax provision related to the devaluation of the Mexican peso and a $1.25 million dividend withholding tax.

Adjusted EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $15.9 million compared to $23.8 million for the same period of 2019, as a result of the same factors that impacted operating income.

Free cash flow from ongoing operations for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $14.2 million compared to $2.2 million reported in same period in 2019. The increase was due primarily due to positive changes in working capital of $9.5 million compared to negative changes of $8.4 million in the first quarter of 2019.

Capital resources and liquidity

As at March 31, 2020, the Company had $88.5 million of cash and cash equivalents compared to $83.4 million as at December 31, 2019. As at the end of Q1 the Companys $150 million bank credit facility had been fully drawn.

On May 11, 2020, the Company announced that it had entered into an agreement with a syndicate of Underwriters, who have agreed to purchase on a bought deal basis an aggregate of 20,000,000 common shares of the Company at a price of $3.00 per share, for aggregate gross proceeds of $60 million (the Offering). The Company has also granted the Underwriters an over-allotment option to purchase up to an additional 3,000,000 common shares, representing 15% of the number of shares sold under this Offering.

Lindero gold Project, Argentina

Construction at the Lindero open pit heap leach gold mine located in Salta Province, Argentina is approximately 94% complete as at March 31, 2020.

The following table summarizes Lindero Project spending on construction and preproduction related costs for the three months ended March 31, 2020:

Lindero Construction capital expenditures and total spending

Three months Cumulative to ended (Expressed in $ millions) December 31, 2019 March 31, 2020 Total Construction capital expenditures $ 268.2 $ 21.4 $ 289.6 Contractor advances and deposits on equipment, net of transfers 10.5 (3.5 ) 7.0 Total Construction Spending 278.7 17.9 296.6 Preproduction costs 8.0 9.1 17.1 Sustaining spare parts, supplies and materials inventory 6.2 2.2 8.4 Other costs 1 4.5 0.8 5.3 Total Lindero Project Costs $ 297.4 $ 30.0 $ 327.4

Note:

1. Consists of Argentina financial transaction taxes, equipment deposits and other costs

2. Includes $17.9 million of construction trade payables that were unpaid as of the end of the first quarter 2020

The Company reiterates a construction capex forecast of between $314 to $320 million.

As of March 31, 2020, the Company estimates the remaining funds required to complete the Project, inclusive of pre-production expenditures, working capital and value added tax payments to be in the range of $75 to $80 million up to the commencement of commercial production in the first quarter of 2021.

Refer to the following links to access Linderos construction video updates and construction photo gallery:

https://fortunasilver.com/mines-and-projects/development/lindero-project-argentina/construction-videos/

https://fortunasilver.com/mines-and-projects/development/lindero-project-argentina/construction-gallery/lindero-deposit/

First Quarter 2020 Consolidated Results

San Jose Mine, Mexico

Three months ended March 31, 2020 2019 Mine Production Tonnes milled 246,826 256,642 Average tonnes milled per day 2,837 2,984 Silver Grade (g/t) 216 267 Recovery (%) 92 91 Production (oz) 1,570,201 1,999,495 Metal sold (oz) 1,593,554 1,856,288 Realized price ($/oz) 16.09 15.63 Gold Grade (g/t) 1.33 1.71 Recovery (%) 91 90 Production (oz) 9,630 12,741 Metal sold (oz) 9,777 11,712 Realized price ($/oz) 1,571 1,316 Unit Costs Production cash cost ($/t) 71.1 68.7 Production cash cost ($/oz Ag Eq)1,2 7.5 6.4 Unit net smelter return ($/t) 154.3 174.3 AISC ($/oz Ag Eq)1,2 10.7 8.7 Notes: 1 Production cash cost silver equivalent and all-in sustaining cash cost silver equivalent (AISC) are calculated using realized metal prices for each period respectively. Silver equivalent production for Q1 2020 is calculated using a silver to gold ratio of 97.6:1 (Q1 2019: 84.2:1) 2 Production cash cost, production cash cost silver equivalent, and all-in sustaining cash cost silver equivalent are Non-GAAP Financial Measures. Refer to Non-GAAP Financial Measures in the associated MD&A for a description and calculation of these measures

Quarterly Results

The San Jose Mine produced 1,570,201 ounces of silver and 9,630 ounces of gold in the first quarter of 2020, which were 21% and 24% lower than the comparable quarter in 2019. Lower silver and gold production were attributed to lower head grades and a decrease in tonnes of ore processed. The lower head grades were due to a planned modification to the mining sequence to allow preparation work to be conducted for pillar recovery. This restricted access to high-grade materials and resulted in mining more variable peripheral stopes. The decrease in ore processed was due to a stoppage in mining and processing operations caused by illegal road blockades in the vicinity of the mine, including access to the mine. The decrease in metal production is expected to be recovered throughout the remainder of the year, once government-imposed restrictions on the Mexican mining industry are lifted and production at the mine recommences.

Cash cost per tonne of processed ore increased 4% to $71.12 per tonne compared to $68.66 per tonne for the comparable quarter in 2019. The increased cash cost was due to higher transportation costs and partially offset by lower community support costs.

On March 31, 2020, the Government of Mexico announced extraordinary measures in response to the spread of COVID-19, which includes the suspension of all non-essential activities, including mining, until April 30, 2020. As a result, the Company initiated the orderly temporary suspension of mining and processing activities at the San Jose Mine. A reduced task force remains on site to safeguard critical infrastructure and maintain environmental monitoring through the suspension period. On April 21, 2020, the Mexican Government further extended the suspension of all non-essential activities, including mining from April 30, 2020 to May 30, 2020; however, the Mexican authorities have announced that these restrictions may be lifted on May 18, 2020 in municipalities where COVID-19 numbers are low or there are no reported cases of infection.

Caylloma Mine, Peru

Three months ended March 31, 2020 2019 Mine Production Tonnes milled 132,741 130,150 Average tonnes milled per day 1,491 1,496 Silver Grade (g/t) 70 66 Recovery (%) 84 84 Production (oz) 249,111 233,836 Metal sold (oz) 212,478 237,868 Realized price ($/oz) 17.59 15.56 Lead Grade (%) 2.96 2.74 Recovery (%) 89 91 Production (000's lbs) 7,723 7,172 Metal sold (000's lbs) 6,616 7,231 Realized price ($/lb) 0.85 0.92 Zinc Grade (%) 4.58 4.37 Recovery (%) 88 90 Production (000's lbs) 11,821 11,295 Metal sold (000's lbs) 10,512 11,269 Realized price ($/lb) 0.98 1.23 Unit Costs Production cash cost ($/t) 80.8 79.5 Production cash cost ($/oz Ag Eq)1,2 13.7 9.3 Unit net smelter return ($/t) 115.0 148.5 AISC ($/oz Ag Eq)1,2 16.7 12.9 Notes: 1 Production cash cost silver equivalent and all-in sustaining cash cost silver equivalent (AISC) are calculated using realized metal prices for each period respectively. Silver equivalent production for Q1 2020 is calculated using a silver to lead ratio of 1:20.7 pounds (Q1 2019: 1:16.9), and silver to zinc ratio of 1:17.9 pounds (Q1 2019: 1:12.7 2 Production cash cost, production cash cost silver equivalent, and all-in sustaining cash cost silver equivalent are Non-GAAP Financial Measures. Refer to Non-GAAP Financial Measures in the associated MD&A for a description and calculation of these measures

Quarterly Results

The Caylloma Mine produced 7.7 million pounds of lead and 11.8 million pounds of zinc for the first quarter of 2020, which were 8% and 5% higher than the comparable quarter in 2019. The higher production was due primarily to an 8% and 5% higher lead and zinc head grade and a 2% increase in processed ore. Silver production totaled 249,111 ounces or 7% higher than the comparable quarter in 2019 which was attributed to a 6% increase in head grade and, to a lesser extent, a 2% increase in processed ore.

Cash cost per tonne of processed ore was $80.83, which was 2% higher than the $79.45 cash cost per tonne for the comparable quarter in 2018. The higher cash cost was due primarily to higher mining costs related to breakup and support.

On March 15, 2020, the Government of Peru introduced a series of measures to contain the rapid spread of COVID-19. The Company, in compliance with the regulatory framework issued by the Ministerio de Energia y Minas (MEM) and the Ministerio del Interior (MI), proceeded to demobilize non-critical personnel and continued to operate, using essential personnel at Caylloma, by drawing ore from its coarse ore stockpiles . In the first quarter of 2020, 86 percent of the treated ore was sourced from the Animas vein grading 70 g/t Ag, 2.95% Pb and 4.57% Zn and 14 percent was sourced from coarse ore stockpiles grading 71 g/t Ag, 2.91% Pb and 4.65% Zn. On May 2, 2020, mining resumed with a reduced workforce in accordance with the regulatory framework issued by MEM.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

The following tables represent the calculation of certain Non-GAAP Financial Measures as referenced in this news release.

Reconciliation to Adjusted Net Income (loss) for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019

(Expressed in $ millions, except per share information) Q1 2020 Adjust. Q1 2020 Adjusted Q1 2019 Adjust. Q1 2019 Adjusted Sales $ 47.5 $ - $ 47.5 $ 59.0 $ - $ 59.0 Cost of sales 40.1 0.2 40.3 37.5 (0.0 ) 37.5 Mine operating income 7.5 (0.2 ) 7.3 21.5 0.0 21.5 General and administration 3.6 0.0 3.6 6.5 0.1 6.6 Exploration and evaluation 0.4 - 0.4 0.2 - 0.2 Share of loss from associates 0.0 (0.0 ) - 0.1 (0.1 ) - Foreign exchange loss 1.3 (3.2 ) (1.9 ) 3.7 (2.9 ) 0.8 Other expenses, net 0.3 (0.3 ) 0.0 0.1 0.0 0.1 Operating Income 1.8 3.3 5.1 10.9 2.9 13.8 Investment income 1.1 (1.1 ) - - - - Interest income and finance costs, net (0.4 ) 0.1 (0.3 ) 0.1 0.1 0.2 Gain (loss) on derivatives - - - (1.6 ) 2.3 0.8 Income before income taxes 2.6 2.3 4.9 9.5 5.3 14.8 Income tax expense 7.1 (0.0 ) 7.1 7.3 (0.9 ) 6.4 Net income (loss) and adjusted net income (loss) $ (4.5 ) $ 2.3 $ (2.2 ) $ 2.2 $ 6.2 $ 8.4 Earnings (loss) per share - basic $ (0.03 ) $ 0.02 $ (0.01 ) $ 0.01 $ 0.04 $ 0.05

Note: Certain figures may not add due to rounding and certain comparative figures have been reclassified to conform to the current year presentation

Reconciliation to Adjusted EBITDA for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019

(Expressed in $ millions) Q1 2020 Q1 2019 Net income (loss) for the period $ (4.5 ) $ 2.2 Adjustments: Inventory adjustment (0.1 ) - Foreign exchange loss, Lindero project 3.3 2.9 Net finance items 0.3 (0.2 ) Depreciation, depletion, and amortization 11.6 9.1 Income taxes 7.1 7.3 Share of loss from associates - 0.1 Investment income (1.1 ) - Other non-cash items (0.6 ) 2.4 Adjusted EBITDA $ 15.9 $ 23.8

Reconciliation to Free cash flow from ongoing operations for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019

(Expressed in $ millions) Q1 2020 Q1 2019 Net cash provided by operating activities $ 13.2 3.9 Less: Change in long-term receivables (0.2 ) - Less: Additions to mineral properties, plant and equipment (4.9 ) (7.0 ) Less: Contractor advances for plant and equipment - (0.2 ) Add: Advances applied to plant and equipment - 0.1 Less: Current income tax expense (5.9 ) (8.6 ) Add: Income taxes paid 12.0 14.0 Free cash flow from ongoing operations1 $ 14.2 $ 2.2 Note: 1. From ongoing operations including San Jose and Caylloma and excludes Greenfields exploration

The financial statements and MD&A are available on SEDAR and on the Company's website:

https://www.fortunasilver.com/investors/financials/2020/ .

Conference call to review first quarter 2020 financial and operational results

A conference call to discuss the financial and operational results for the first quarter of 2020 will be held on Friday, May 15, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. Pacific time | 12:00 p.m. Eastern time. Hosting the call will be Jorge A. Ganoza, President and CEO, and Luis D. Ganoza, Chief Financial Officer.

Shareholders, analysts, media and interested investors are invited to listen to the live conference call by logging onto the webcast at: https://www.webcaster4.com/Webcast/Page/1696/34468 or over the phone by dialing in just prior to the starting time.

Date: Friday, May 15, 2020

Time: 9:00 a.m. Pacific time | 12:00 p.m. Eastern time

Dial in number (Toll Free): +1.844.369.8770

Dial in number (International): +1.862.298.0840

Replay number (Toll Free): +1.877.481.4010

Replay number (International): +1.919.882.2331

Replay Passcode: 34468

Playback of the conference call will be available until May 29, 2020. Playback of the webcast will be available until May 15, 2021. In addition, a transcript of the call will be archived on the companys website: https://www.fortunasilver.com/investors/financials/2020/ .

About Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.

Fortuna is a growth oriented, precious metal producer with its primary assets being the Caylloma silver mine in southern Peru, the San Jose silver-gold mine in Mexico and the Lindero gold Project, currently under construction, in Argentina. The Company is selectively pursuing acquisition opportunities throughout the Americas and in select other areas. For more information, please visit its website at www.fortunasilver.com.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD

Jorge A. Ganoza

President, CEO, and Director

Fortuna Silver Mines Inc.

Trading symbols: NYSE: FSM | TSX: FVI

Investor Relations:

Carlos Baca

T (Peru): +51.1.616.6060, ext. 0

E: info@fortunasilver.com

Forward looking Statements

This news release contains forward looking statements which constitute "forward looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and "forward looking statements" within the meaning of the "safe harbor" provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (collectively, "Forward looking Statements"). All statements included herein, other than statements of historical fact, are Forward looking Statements and are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those reflected in the Forward looking Statements. The Forward looking Statements in this news release include, without limitation, statements about the Company's plans for its mines and mineral properties; the construction of the mine at the Lindero Project and the related costs of construction, timing of commissioning, and timing of commencement of commercial production; the Company's business strategy, plans and outlook; the merit of the Company's mines and mineral properties; the future financial or operating performance of the Company; 2020 production and cost guidance; and proposed expenditures. Often, but not always, these Forward looking Statements can be identified by the use of words such as "estimated", expected, anticipated, "potential", "open", "future", "assumed", "projected", "used", "detailed", "has been", "gain", "planned", "reflecting", "will", "containing", "remaining", "to be", or statements that events, "could" or "should" occur or be achieved and similar expressions, including negative variations.

Forward looking Statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the Forward looking Statements. Such uncertainties and factors include, among others, changes in general economic conditions and financial markets; changes in prices for silver and other metals; fluctuation in foreign exchange rates; any extension of the currency controls in Argentina; technological and operational hazards in Fortuna's mining and mine development activities; delays in the construction at the Lindero Project, delays in the commissioning or commencement of commercial production at the Lindero Project; risks inherent in mineral exploration; uncertainties inherent in the estimation of mineral reserves, mineral resources, and metal recoveries; governmental and other approvals; political unrest or instability in countries where Fortuna is active; labor relations issues; as well as those factors discussed under "Risk Factors" in the Company's Annual Information Form. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in Forward looking Statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results to differ from those anticipated, estimated or intended.

Forward looking Statements contained herein are based on the assumptions, beliefs, expectations and opinions of management, including but not limited to expectations regarding the Company's plans for its mines and mineral properties; mine production costs; expected trends in mineral prices and currency exchange rates; the accuracy of the Company's current mineral resource and reserve estimates; that the Company's activities will be in accordance with the Company's public statements and stated goals; that there will be no material adverse change affecting the Company or its properties; that all required approvals will be obtained; that there will be no significant disruptions affecting operations and such other assumptions as set out herein. Forward looking Statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any obligation to update any Forward looking Statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by law. There can be no assurance that Forward looking Statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, investors should not place undue reliance on Forward looking Statements.

This news release also refers to non-GAAP financial measures, such as cash cost per tonne of processed ore; cash cost per payable ounce of silver; total production cost per tonne; all-in sustaining cash cost; all-in cash cost silver equivalent; adjusted net (loss) income; operating cash flow per share before changes in working capital, income taxes, and interest income; free cashflow from ongoing operations; and adjusted EBITDA. These measures do not have a standardized meaning or method of calculation, even though the descriptions of such measures may be similar. These performance measures have no meaning under International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and therefore, amounts presented may not be comparable to similar data presented by other mining companies.




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Eager beer lovers flocked to the pubs and delighted landlords flung upon their doors as coronavirus restrictions were finally lifted in the Northern Territory on Friday.

The territory hasn't recorded a single new case of deadly COVID-19 since April 6, nearly six weeks ago.

Territorians were keen to celebrate their successful battle against the virus, and flocked to pubs, restaurants, cafes and gyms.

From midday on Friday, most businesses in the Northern Territory were allowed to reopen, but punters still have to buy food if they want to drink in a pub or restaurant.

But unlike other states, there are no restrictions of how many people can be allowed into a venue, with officials simply imposing a two-hour limit.

In Victoria and South Australia, people still aren't allowed to have a beer in a pub or restaurant.

Tourism manager Kate Dinning (pictured) is seen enjoying her first beer after lockdown ended in the Northern Territory on Friday (pictured in Darwin)

Friends are seen enjoying the first day back in the pub in the Northern Territory at the Darwin Hotel (pictured) on Friday after restrictions were eased

A publican drinks a beer after coronavirus restrictions were eased, in Darwin on May 15 (pictured) after weeks of forced closures

A group of mates are seen enjoying their first beers in weeks at the Darwin Hotel on Friday (pictured) after the state smashed the coronavirus infection curve

With restrictions eased for the first time since March 23, excited Sky News reporter Matt Cunningham took his first sip live on air at Darwin's Beachfront Hotel.

'It's been a long time coming and it tastes pretty good,' he told the camera.

'That might be the first of many this afternoon.'

He was followed by the NT's Chief Minister Michael Gunner, who poured his first beer at midday and said: 'I think I've earned one and I think I lot of Territorians out there have earned a beer as well.'

There was similar excitement in much of the country on Friday, with restrictions eased in most states after Australia flattened its coronavirus infection curve.

The same couldn't be said for those living in Victoria, who have still been given no indication as to when its businesses can reopen.

Two friends are seen enjoying a large glass of white wine as they went to the Chow restaurant in Darwin on Friday (pictured)

Mates are seen waiting for their meals - which you have to purchase in order to get a drink - as they enjoyed the first day back in the pub at the Darwin Hotel on Friday (pictured)

A group of women are seen enjoying drinks as they wait for their food at the Darwin Hotel on Friday (pictured) as restrictions were lifted

It is being left up to each state to decide when the federal government's three-step coronavirus restriction lifting plan will be put into place.

In New South Wales, restaurants, bars and cafes were allowed to open on Friday with a ten-person limit and social distancing.

Punters also need to buy a meal to get alcohol.

The decision is a huge boost for regional towns where the pub is the only place locals can eat out.

But bigger pubs in Sydney and other cities may feel that opening up for ten customers is not worth the trouble financially.

Women are seen in their droves getting their nails done for the first time since March 23 at Cre8tive Nails in Darwin (pictured) on Friday

A couple are seen dressed up and enjoying beers and prosecco outside the Darwin Hotel on Friday (pictured) after restrictions were lifted

A group of mates enjoy food and some beers - including a Corona - at Monsoons Bar in Darwin on Friday (pictured) for the first time in weeks

Hospitality giant Merivale confirmed it would stick to operating on a takeaway-only policy until restrictions were eased further.

In Queensland, thirsty customers will be able to go to pubs, clubs and RSLs for a drink as long as they also buy a meal from Saturday.

In Brisbane, venues can only have ten customers at one time, but in other regions 20 people are allowed.

A truck carrying 3,000 litres of free beer, donated by XXXX, is already on its way to outback Queensland.

While other states have started to relax the rules, cafes and restaurants in Victoria will continue to be restricted to takeaway.

Darwin Hotel venue manager Penny Phillips (pictured in white) talks to police in Darwin on Friday (pictured) after restrictions were eased

A woman is seen getting her nails done at Cre8tive Nails in Darwin on Friday (pictured) after salons were given the green light to reopen

A man enjoys a beer at the Cavenaugh Hotel in Darwin (pictured) on Friday after pubs, restaurants and cafes were opened across the Northern Territory

This is expected to be the case until at least the start of June.

In South Australia, pubs are staying closed for the time-being, with cafes and restaurants open - but not serving alcohol, even if you buy a meal.

Customers, a maximum of ten, must sit outdoors.

In the ACT from midnight on Friday, pubs, clubs, bars, restaurants and cafes can all serve alcohol as long as customers buy a meal.

Only ten customers are allowed at any one time, and social distancing must be enforced.

People sit at Six Tanks Brewery on Mitchell St on Friday in Darwin (pictured) after punters excitedly rushed back to pubs

A group of ten incredibly eager Irish mates (pictured) paid $1,000 to have The Corner House Hotel in Bondi to themselves on Friday, after COVID-19 restrictions were eased in New South Wales

The first three slots at the Corner House in Bondi (pictured) for Friday, Saturday and Sunday were gone in just seven minutes, while a further eight slots - including some weekday sessions - went within hours

In Tasmania, pubs and restaurants will be able to serve alcohol with meals from Monday, with a maximum of ten customers allowed and table service only.

Restrictions are also easing in Western Australia from Monday, with pubs, clubs and even Perth's casino serving drinks with meals.

A maximum of 20 customers will be allowed at one time.

More than 4,000 people have put their names down on the waitlist at one Bondi pub, so desperate are Australians to get a taste of pre-COVID-19 normality.

Like many of its counterparts across Australia, The Corner House Hotel had to put its staff on jobkeeper and ask for a rent reduction, with its business ended by the strict lockdown.

Ben Siderowitz (pictured), who owns Bondi's Corner House, said that the pub had 4,000 on a waiting list for a slot at the pub

These three women were excited to share a pizza and a glass of wine at Bondi Beach on Friday (pictured) after restrictions were eased

A long lunch was in order for some office workers in Sydney's CBD, who enjoyed a drink and some Asian food at Dumpling Bar restaurant (pictured) on Friday

But after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a slight lifting of restrictions at cafes, restaurants and pubs from 12am Friday, the hotel's owner Ben Siderowitz had an idea to get people back in the door.

At the cost of $100-a-head, 10 friends could book out the entire pub to themselves and in return get a $1,000 bar tab, a private bartender and unlimited woodfired pizza.

The first three slots for Friday, Saturday and Sunday were gone in just seven minutes, while a further eight slots - including some weekday sessions - went within hours.

A group of ten incredibly eager Irish friends snapped up the first of the extra slots and began sipping on schooners on Friday at midday.

Mr Siderowitz said he could not believe the enormous reaction to his idea, which has since been copied by pubs and restaurants across the city - with the response much the same.

While some pubs have taken the first opportunity to let patrons back inside, others such as The Livingstone in Petersham (pictured) have kept their doors and windows firmly shut - at least for the time being

The Crown Hotel in Surry Hills (pictured) was among those not to embrace the lifting of restrictions, with locks still on its doors on Friday

'I haven't slept in four days. I had to put up an out of office email so the notifications would stop, because they were coming day and night,' The Corner House boss told Daily Mail Australia.

'I didn't even think I was doing anything revolutionary, but everyone is just so thirsty and desperate to get out of the house.

'We started with just Friday and Saturday nights, and a Sunday session and thought: "Lets see if we can get three booked out". Well, they went within seven minutes.

'Now we've got seven days booked out, with double slots on four of those days and a further 4,000 people who have put their names down on the wait list if restrictions are eased further.'

Bel and Brio in Barangaroo, Sydney, is booked out for the next week, with more than 160 keen customers desperate to get a sitting.

So eager were those in the Northern Territory to get back to the pub, queues formed outside some venues on Friday morning (pictured)

The restaurant's event manager Mylene Selosse said the slight relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions is a major boost for the business, who had transitioned to a takeaway service.

'Weve been receiving a lot of bookings which is great, we're actually fully booked out until next week,'

'We didnt shut our doors for the past month, we developed an online service, so for us right now it doesnt make much difference to our kitchen and staff's (workload) - it is just a plus for us to have ten people in here.'

'At this stage there's 160 people booked, so that's 160 people we otherwise wouldn't have served.

'We need to take it slowly, but right now we are seeing restrictions changing every two weeks or so. So hopefully in two weeks we can have 20 people in here to serve!'

Long-time Bronte locals Jack (pictured, left) and Geoff (right) were happy to be able to once again sit at their regular cafe, which they said they would easily visit twice a day pre-COVID-19 pandemic

Ljubo Milicevic, manager of north Bondi cafe Porch and Parlour (pictured), said only being able to have 10 people sit down for a meal meant it was not worth them reverting from the takeaway operation they have mastered over the past few months

While some businesses have embraced 'Freedom Friday', others were slow to get on board and will wait until next week to return to internal dining.

Ljubo Milicevic, manger of north Bondi cafe Porch and Parlour, said only being able to have 10 people sit down for a meal is not worth it for their bottom line.

'As far as us being a smaller cafe, our capacity isn't great so it doesn't really benefit us to only having 10 people at any one time, in or outside the venue,' Mr Milicevic said.

'We're lucky, we can operate as a takeaway venture, whereas for wine bars and restaurants it's all about the experience of sitting in.

'All our friends at business up the road are fully booked out tonight, which is good for them and good for us, because we've got somewhere to go.

'It's nice that things seem to be getting back to more of a normality, I think life for everyone is going to be more peaceful now - with less fear in the air.'

While they could have sat down inside elsewhere, dozens queued to get a coffee at the popular Iggy's Bread cafe in Bronte on Friday morning

Leading Sydney chef Bret Cameron, who runs Three Blue Ducks in Bronte, said they had also decided to wait until next week before allowing patrons to dine-in.

He admitted that despite diversifying his business to offer takeaway or cook at home meals, the past few months had been incredible difficult - especially as the 'goal posts continue to move'.

'For us, we're already doing takeaways, so putting seats outside isn't adding any kind of pressure, but we're not doing table service,' Mr Cameron said.

'From next week we'll be opening for groups of 10, but we just weren't ready today. I want to do it right and the goal posts are always moving, so we'll take out time over the weekend and bring back internal dining from Monday.

'It's been tough, it's been really tough. We've got our same core group of staff as we have had for the past few months and we'll begin to bring some back who have been on jobkeeper.'
Phuket airport ordered to remain closed  again

PHUKET: The Civil Aviation Authority of Thailand (CAAT) this afternoon (May 15) issued an order for Phuket International Airport to remain closed, waylaying its re-opening that was scheduled for midnight tonight.



By The Phuket News

Friday 15 May 2020, 03:16PM

Staff at Phuket International Airport mark out social distance separators earlier today (May 15). Photo: AoT Phuket

The CAAT only yesterday issued a notice allowing Phuket airport to re-open to limited domestic flights at 00:01am (May 16).

However, CAAT Director Dr Chula Sukmanop said in the order issued today, Although Phuket is able to effectively control and stop the spread of the COVID-19, the situation is still considered a risk that needs to be monitored continuously to ensure that measures stop the spread of the disease to other areas and prevent the disease from spreading again in the Phuket area.

The order issued today gave no set date for when Phuket airport might next be considered for re-opening. Instead, the order marked that it was to remain in effect until further notice.

Phuket airport has been closed since April 10*, with a ban on all flights except government and/or military aircraft; emergency landings; technical landing aircraft without passengers leaving the plane; aircraft providing humanitarian or medical aid; cargo aircraft; and any aircraft granted permission to repatriate foreigners to their home countries.

Meanwhile, the ban on all international passenger flights from entering Thailand also remains in effect until May 31.

* Correction: Phuket airport closed to domestic flights on April 10, not April 3 as originally reported. The ban on all inbound international passenger flights came into effect on April 3. Our apologies for any confusion caused.
Around the world, there is an acute shortage and high demand for Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for the frontline workers due to the COVID-19 pandemic. And with the COVID-19 situation showing no signs of improving the demand and supply is going to remain the same for the better part of 2020 at least.

BCCL

For long the world had depended on China to manufacture everything but, the COVID-19 outbreak that originated in Wuhan first paralyzed the country, and by the time PPEs were in high demand they could not manufacture enough.



This, along with the fact that in recent times Chinese made PPEs have been called out for being substandard and failing quality tests, made the world look elsewhere.

AFP

And it has given India an opportunity, at a time when the country's apparel manufacturing sector was facing a crisis due to the lockdown.



Within a span of two months, India has gone from zero to having the capacity of producing nearly 2.5 lakh PPE kits and 2 lakh N-95 masks per day which is sufficient to meet the country's requirement in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak.

BCCL

A PPE kit consists of a mask, eye shield, shoe cover, gown, and gloves, which doctors and healthcare workers wear while attending COVID-19 patients.

"It is very comforting to us that our in-house PPE kit production is increasing fast. On May 2, the country recorded maximum production of protective gears of about 2.06 lakh manufactured in a single day, a senior Health Ministry official told ANI.

BCCL

Earlier, there was no domestic manufacturing of PPE kit in the country and almost all of them were imported. Within a short span of time, India has been able to increase the daily production of PPE kits to about 1.5 lakh, he said.



The government has identified at least 110 domestic manufacturers of PPE kits in the country. However, only 52 companies are manufacturing PPE kits right now. Companies like Alok Industries, JCT Phagwara, Gokaldas Exports, Aditya Birla, etc., are some of the domestic PPE kits manufacturers.

Recently the Apparel Export Promotion Council (AEPC) along with South India Textile Research Association (SITRA) and Indian Technical Textiles Association (ITTA) held an online conference to make India a hub for sourcing PPE kits over the next few years.

BCCL

"We find that there will be a domestic demand of Rs 10,000 crore for the next one year and internationally there will be a $60 billion business in 2025 whereas India has done only $260 million so far last year, a study says," said AEPC chairman Dr A Sakthivel.



Dr KS Sundararaman, chairman, ITTA, said: "There is a very strong anti-China sourcing sentiment going on right now and this is an opportunity for us to capture. We have a vibrant Indian market and we have a great global market. Please reach out to doctors who are near you and understand these medical professionals who will wear these PPE kits."

BCCL

Dr Prakash Vasudevan, Director, SITRA, said: "We have two classifications - single-use and reusable. Both are widely accepted in today's scenario because disposal or single-use is becoming very complicated. The only way to dispose of all this medical waste is incineration and considering our situation safe disposal is a big problem. So, reusables are also slowly coming in."

Prasenjeet Shambharkar, Solutions Consultant, Lectra India, said: "WHO has predicted that globally 89 million masks, 30 million gowns, 1.6 million goggles, 76 million gloves and 2.9 million litres of hand sanitiser are required per month during the pandemic. There are different types of PPE kits which are required, basically one is for the doctors and one is for the investigation team."


IMD said that Cyclone Amphan is likely to bring heavy rain in some parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 15 and 16 May, in parts of coastal Odisha on Tuesday, and in a few places in West Bengal on Wednesday

India Meteorological Department (IMD) has warned of heavy rainfall across Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Odisha and West Bengal due to Cyclone Amphan that is likely to form in the southern Bay of Bengal by the evening of 16 May.

The Met department issued an alert on the Cyclone Amphan on Thursday to the National Disaster Response Force and the chief secretaries of eight states and Union Territories.

The IMD said that heavy rain is expected in some parts of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands on 15 and 16 May, in parts of coastal Odisha on Tuesday, and in a few places in West Bengal on Wednesday.

As per a report in OrissaPost, Odisha Chief Secretary Asit Tripathy conducted a high-level meeting to review preparations for Cyclone Amphan. P

ost the meeting, Special Relief Commissioner (SRC) PK Jena told media that while it is uncertain whether the storm will hit Odisha before moving towards West Bengal and Bangladesh, they have put collectors of 12 districts starting from Gajapati to Balasore on high alert as a precautionary measure.

According to a report in Down To Earth, a round-the-clock control room has been opened at the office of the Odisha State Disaster Management Authority (OSDMA) in state capital Bhubaneswar to monitor developments.

The Met department report cautioned fishermen to not venture into the south and central Bay of Bengal from 15 May and advised those who are out at sea to return to coasts.

The name Amphan was suggested by Thailand and is the last name from the original list of 64 cyclone names proposed in 2004 for storms over the north Indian Ocean.
Ukraine in TCG insists on mutual release of detainees in "all for all" format defined in Paris in Dec 2019  President's Office

The renewed delegation of Ukraine to the Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) at a meeting on Thursday in a video conference format noted the importance of fulfilling the agreements of the Normandy Four leaders reached during the summit in Paris on December 9, 2019.

"Particular emphasis was placed on the need to comply with security requirements, in particular the observance of a sustainable ceasefire regime. In this regard, the Ukrainian party initiated an extraordinary meeting of the specialized group, as security issues are among the key ones," the presidential press service reported.

As part of the security group's work, Ukraine supported the OSCE SMM and once again insisted on unconditional and unimpeded access of observers to the whole territory of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders, in particular to the temporarily occupied territories.

"Ukraine, despite the quarantine measures, for its part fully supports the implementation of the mandate of the OSCE SMM and the ICRC, fully facilitates this, as well as ensures the unconditional implementation of their mandate. The OSCE SMM, inter alia, noted a significant progress in implementing the updated demining plan, including the humanitarian one," the message reads.
A teacher of a sixth-grade class, teaches an online class from an empty classroom in Borame Elementary School in Seoul, Friday. South Korea has introduced online classes for elementary, middle and high schools to ensure the safety of teachers and students during the coronavirus pandemic. /Yonhap



By Bahk Eun-ji



The education and health authorities will forge ahead with their plan to reopen schools for high school seniors next week, despite a recent spike in COVID-19 infections involving teachers and students, officials said Friday.



High school seniors are expected to return to school May 20, while those in other grades will return to school gradually over the following weeks.



"The Ministry of Education (MOE) is expected to proceed with its plan to reopen schools for high school seniors next week. The health authorities have been conducting strict disinfection of school facilities in preparation for their return," said Vice Health Minister Kim Gang-lip in a regular briefing at the Government Complex in Sejong.



For other students, the MOE said a further delay is "under consideration" and depends on developments over the weekend.



"For high school seniors, we are not considering an additional delay for the reopening of schools, scheduled May 20, because they have to take the university entrance exam this winter," said Vice Education Minister Park Baeg-beom in a separate briefing Thursday.



According to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC), 27 new cases of COVID-19 were detected Thursday, with 22 of them being local infections, bringing the nation's total number to 11,018. Of the new cases, 17 were connected to people who went to bars and clubs in Itaewon between April 24 and May 6, according to the KCDC.



As of noon Friday, a total of 153 people have tested positive in connection with the Itaewon outbreak, including 90 club goers and 63 of their family members and coworkers, indicating that secondary and tertiary infections from the nightclub cases have already emerged. In addition, a teenage student and his mother in Incheon were confirmed to have contracted the virus after the student's teacher at a private institute spent time in Itaewon clubs and later tested positive.



The recent surge in infections pushed the education ministry to postpone school opening several times.



The latest decision to delay was made earlier this week following the outbreak in Itaewon. Initially the ministry planned a phased reopening nationwide starting Wednesday, in line with its relaxed social distancing measures that went into effect May 6.



Many parents have raised concerns over whether schools are ready to be opened and how effectively disease control measures will be carried out in classrooms.



As of Friday, more than 200,000 people have signed a petition filed on the presidential office website, calling for another delay. The government has to respond to petitions that gain more than 200,000 signatures within a month.


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 In the beginning, we had only the human body and its inherent ability to fight disease. Then  at some point after we emerged from the primeval swamp, developed an opposable thumb, and picked our first therapeutic herb  we had medicine. And now we have a world in which diseases are found and fought in laboratories a thousand miles from any suffering human frame. On the spectrum between primordial murk and Petri dish, vaccines occupy all points on the scale. They lie at the very forefront of medical science  they are our most sophisticated hope for a solution to the pandemic of COVID-19  and yet they rely fundamentally on the most basic resource of the human body: its ability to recover from, and thereafter resist, disease. Amid all the extraordinary battles raging against the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 around the world at this moment, none is more important than that being fought by scientists. Its a battle on two fronts: to find treatments to cure or mitigate the disease affecting millions of people; and to develop a vaccine that will potentially protect billions. Currently, there are more than 100 possible vaccines in development globally, many under the aegis of the World Health Organisation and CEPI (the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, an international body founded in 2016 to finance vaccine development against emerging infectious diseases). Australias place in this maelstrom is both small, yet potentially significant, which is a familiar position for Australian science to occupy. Despite our small population, Australian scientists consistently "punch above their weight", says Anna-Maria Arabia, the CEO of the Australian Academy of Science, "both in terms of the quality of our research and publication rates per capita". This expertise is particularly notable in the fields of immunology and vaccine development. Two of our most famous Australians, Peter Doherty and Ian Frazer, are both still working in vaccine technology. "It very well could be Australians who beat this thing," says Frazer, a Brisbane-based immunologist who co-created the HPV vaccine, which since 2006 has protected some 300 million women against cervical cancer. "We have very talented people. We have the immunologists, the virologists, the protein chemists and cell biologists." "Weve got really good science here," agrees Doherty, who won the 1996 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on human T-cell immunity. "Bang for buck, compared with the US, where I worked for a long time, we do extremely well. Weve got some really good people. In fact, I dont think Ive really appreciated how good they are until now."

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In January, Australian scientists (at the Doherty Institute in Melbourne, named after the great man himself) were the first outside China to sequence the COVID-19 genome, grow the virus, and share it internationally. Renowned Australian scientist, HPV vaccine co-creator Ian Frazer. Credit:Paul Harris Multiple labs and hospitals around the country are investigating drugs like remdesivir (an Ebola antiviral), tocilizumab (an immunosuppressive used mainly for rheumatoid arthritis), the HIV drug Kaletra and malaria treatment hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. At the same time, REMAP-CAP, an ongoing Australian-based multifactorial trial at more than 100 sites around the world that usually looks into treatments for severe pneumonia, has pivoted to testing drugs on COVID-19 patients, with the ability to alter their medication on the basis of ongoing analysis. "Weve got a lot of drugs that were trying to repurpose," explains Frazer. "And maybe some of them will work  but at the moment it would be fair to say the trials are  empiric. In other words, were guessing." Weve got a lot of drugs that were trying to repurpose. And maybe some of them will work  but at the moment it would be fair to say the trials are  empiric. In other words, were guessing. Immunologist Ian Frazer. "Drugs are good," says Doherty. "But unlike a vaccine, no drug can give you immunity. Even convalescent serums [antibodies extracted from recovered patients blood and given therapeutically] and monoclonal antibodies [lab-grown versions of antibodies] are only temporary. You have to keep taking them, just like a drug, because their protection gradually disappears." Even vaccines are not without problems. In the past, work on vaccines for other coronaviruses (such as MERS and SARS) has raised questions regarding the strength and longevity of vaccine-produced immunity; and about the negative impacts of a vaccine on the immune system. There has even been debate about whether a vaccine is possible for COVID-19, given no human coronavirus vaccine has ever been produced.

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Australian scientist and Nobel Prize winner Peter Doherty. Credit:Simon Schluter "Theres one for chickens!" says Doherty, betraying his veterinary origins. "My wife and I both worked on it about 50 years ago!" He laughs. "But no, seriously, you hear this thing about no vaccines for coronavirus, but in fact they were making a lot of progress with both MERS and SARS vaccines. The reason they didnt go anywhere was basically because SARS burnt out, and although MERS still grumbles away, it only infects about 200 people a year. Theres just no big impetus with that level of infection." He laughs. "Im a very simplistic thinker. But the fact is, all the drug treatments are stopgaps. What we want for COVID-19 is a vaccine. And I think well get one, and that it will work fine." Fittingly, the oldest records of inoculation come from the source of the worlds newest pandemic  China. The first disease ever contained by vaccination was smallpox. Devastating, incurable, with a 20 to 60 per cent death toll and survivors often left blind and horribly scarred, smallpox was  unfashionable as it is to point out  a far more dangerous pathogen than coronavirus. But by the 1500s (and possibly far earlier), Chinese doctors had realised that if sufferers could only survive the first onslaught of smallpox, they never caught it again. After the first attack, something in survivors own bodies permanently protected them. Working backwards from this conclusion, doctors took the scabs from healing smallpox pustules and ground them into powder. Then they blew the powder up healthy patients noses. There was also a second technique, which may have originated in India, in which pus from smallpox sores was scratched into incisions in the skin of healthy people with a needle. (Nobody said medicine was pretty.) In both cases, those treated contracted a milder form  in theory at least  of the disease, from which they could more easily recover. These strategies, particularly the needle technique, known as variolation, worked in a surprising number of cases: by the 18th century, only one or two patients in every hundred were dying from deliberately induced smallpox. These odds  though horrifying to the modern mind  were so much better than risking the unmediated disease that variolation spread from China throughout the Arab world. Eventually, in the 1700s, it reached England, the US and Australia. Variolation was practised on princesses and kings, but perhaps its most important application was to the arm of a Gloucestershire schoolboy. Edward Jenner, now recognised as the father of immunology, was variolated during his childhood, and thus  rather against 18th-century odds  did not contract smallpox. Instead, he grew up to develop the worlds first vaccine.

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Jenner realised that using the pus from lesions of cowpox, a much less serious illness that nonetheless provided effective immunity against smallpox, was a far safer treatment than traditional variolation. By the time of his death in 1823, hundreds of thousands of people had undergone "vaccination" (the word comes from the Latin vaccinus meaning "from a cow"), and a direct line can be drawn from his work to the final eradication of smallpox from the earth in 1980: the greatest triumph of vaccination, and the single most successful medical intervention, in terms of lives saved, in human history. Illustration by Tim Beor. Credit: Weve come a long way since Jenner built a "Temple to Vaccinia" in his English backyard, but to experts in pandemic diseases, it must often seem as if weve made no progress at all. Professor Trevor Drew, the director of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness (CDP) at the CSIRO in Melbourne, has spent years dealing with the fact that, pre-COVID-19, the man on the street simply couldnt believe that a global pandemic would ever, really and truly, happen. "To most of the world it has come as a terrible shock," he says, managing to sound only slightly rueful. "But we in infectious diseases have known for years that it was a question not of if, but when. We didnt know what it would be, or where it would come from, but we knew it was coming." Nonetheless, it was only in January this year that the CDP signed a contract with CEPI to run animal trials on potential COVID-19 vaccines. This was before virtually anything was known about the virus, including its lethality  and the CDP is one of only a handful of labs in the world designated as BSL-4 (biosafety level 4), authorised to deal with the most dangerous pathogens on earth  the likes of Ebola, Marburg and hantaviruses. "Its been an extremely big challenge," admits Drew, with a scientists feel for understatement. "Weve had to be extremely agile, and its a huge tribute to my team that weve been able to get organised so fast." COVID-19 social distancing measures have created many headaches in staffing labs and organising teams  Drew is talking from his spare bedroom, no doubt a typical site of breakthroughs in all fields of human endeavour these days  but nobody on his team has flinched. "Im so proud of them. They all just got on with it." The CDP is a world leader in the use of animal testing in vaccine development. Its scientists were first in the world to confirm, for instance, that ferrets were susceptible to COVID-19, thanks to the fact that they have a similar lung cell receptor, ACE 2, to that of humans. Its this receptor that the now-famous "spike protein" of COVID-19 plugs into to infect cells. So ferrets, like us, can catch coronavirus (though, unlike us, their worst symptom is a mild cough).

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The CSIRO is now running animal trials using ferrets for two vaccines  one from American biotech company Inovio Pharmaceuticals, and one from Oxford University. Both were sent there because they looked particularly promising. "Our job is to assess the data and send it back to CEPI and WHO," explains Drew. "Then theyll decide if theyre worth taking to the next stage." Animal trials are always crucial in establishing whether candidate vaccines are safe and efficacious. But in the case of COVID-19, Drew and his team may help to solve two other problems. One is temporary immunity, which means more than one vaccine dose may be necessary (a big deal if youre potentially dealing with billions of people); the other is that some COVID-19 deaths appear to be caused not by the virus but by the bodys response to it: a wild immune overstimulation known as a cytokine storm. "For both those problems, our trials are looking at different routes of administering the vaccine  orally, intramuscularly  to see if that might affect those outcomes," explains Drew. "Vaccine route might prompt a different level of immunity. It might also be important in avoiding immune mediated disease." Scientists are always collaborative, but these levels of co-operation  this global response  are really unprecedented. But then, these are unprecedented times. Our competition is against the virus, not against each other. Professor Trevor Drew, director of the Australian Centre for Disease Preparedness. Things so far look promising: the ferrets have had no adverse effects to either vaccine, and theyll have been exposed to the virus before this article goes to press. And so, by the time you read this story, as many as 6000 people in the UK may have been given the vaccine in a safety trial. Should it happen, this human trial will be able to proceed, in part, thanks to the animal testing carried out by the CSIRO. "Its a real global effort," concludes Drew. "Scientists are always collaborative, but these levels of cooperation  this global response  are really unprecedented." He pauses. "But then, these are unprecedented times. Our competition is against the virus, not against each other."

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A person has been taken to a hospital after an officer-involved shooting in south Houston, police said.

Dozens of officers are on the scene, which is covered with crime scene tape. It is near the residential intersection of Scott and Noah. No officers are injured.
Priti Patel has sparked anger by refusing to cut or axe the huge fees paid by foreign healthcare workers to help fund the NHS  just three weeks after promising to review the controversial charges.

The home secretary raised expectations when she hinted at concessions for migrants working in the NHS themselves, as she praised their extraordinary contribution during the Covid-19 crisis.

But The Independent has now learnt there will be no changes to what ministers consider the important principle that everyone coming to work in the UK contributes extra for the NHS.

It means the immigration health surcharge is still due to soar from 400 a year to 624 from this October  to be and extended to all EU citizens from next January, when Brexit is completed.

Because it is also paid by spouses and children, the total cost can reach a crippling 8,000 for a family of four on a five-year work permit.

The Home Office is now saying there was no review, beyond waiving the surcharge where visas had been extended for one year  despite Ms Patel describing it as such on national television.

The British Medical Association (BMA) said the decision beggars belief, given the publics huge outpouring of support for our frontline staff in recent weeks, while Labour called it unconscionable.

The Royal College of Nursing (RCN) said it had written to the home secretary after her announcement, but had received no reply, and insisted: This charge must be stopped.

Health groups had long protested the surcharge as unfair because migrants paying tax and national insurance are effectively paying twice, even before the acclaim for all health staff prompted by the pandemic.

Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Show all 30 1 /30 Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus 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 Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff inside Camberwell bus depot in London, during a minute's silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus NHS staff at the Mater hospital in Belfast, during a minute's silence to pay tribute to the NHS staff and key workers who have died during the coronavirus outbreak. PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Shoppers observe a minute's silence in Tescos in Shoreham Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Firefighters outside Godstone fire station PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Salford Royal Hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Salford Royal Hospital PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Hospital workers take part in a protest calling on the British government to provide PPE across Britain for all workers in care, the NHS and other vital public services after a nationwide minute's silence at University College Hospital in London AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A school children's poster hanging outside Glenfield Hospital during a minute's silence Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A man holds a placard that reads "People's health before profit" outside St Thomas hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff members applaud outside the Royal Derby Hospital, following a minute's silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus 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 Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus University College Hospital, London Hospital workers hold placards with the names of their colleagues who have died from coronavirus as they take part in a protest calling on the British government to provide PPE AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff at Waterloo Station in London, stand to observe a minute's silence, to pay tribute to NHS and key workers who have died with coronavirus AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Medical staff at the Louisa Jordan hospital stand during a UK wide minutes silence to commemorate the key workers who have died with coronavirus in Glasgow Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus London An NHS worker observes a minute's silence at Chelsea and Westminster Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London AFP via Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Belfast, Northern Ireland NHS staff observe a minutes silence at Mater Infirmorum Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Plymouth NHS workers hold a minute's silence outside the main entrance of Derriford Hospital Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus NHS Frimley Park Hospital staff at the A&E department observe a minute's silence Getty Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Mater Infirmorum Hospital People applaud after a minutes silence in honour of key workers Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Waterloo Station, London AP Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Wreaths laid outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A group of trade unionists and supporters standing outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus 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 Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Staff stand outside the Royal Derby Hospital, during a minutes silence PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus London Police officers observe a minutes silence at Guy's Hospital Reuters Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus A woman standing outside Sheffield town hall PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Royal Derby Hospital PA Silence for key workers who lost lives to coronavirus Leicester, NHS workers during a minute's silence outside Glenfield Hospital Getty

It cannot be deferred, or paid annually, but is demanded in advance for the entire duration of an applicants visa or residency permit. Meanwhile, nurses and junior doctors in training have starting salaries of only between 18,000 and 23,000.

Around one in every seven NHS workers is foreign-born  a dependence that has attracted growing attention as they have been on the front line of the fight against coronavirus.

On 25 April, at the Downing Street press conference, Ms Patel appeared to bow to pressure, when she was asked if she would scrap fees for overseas NHS staff, given they too are fighting this pandemic.

She replied that it was under review, saying: We are looking at everything, including visas and surcharge. We are speaking about the healthcare professionals, the medics, the doctors and nurses and allied healthcare professionals who have come to the UK.

But the Home Office has told The Independent that no review took place beyond the arrangements for a one-year extension for health staff whose visas will expire before 1 October this year. This is completely free of charge and includes an exemption from the immigration health surcharge, a spokesperson said.

A RCN spokesperson said: Nursing staff already contribute through taxes and national insurance. To ask them to pay twice is simply wrong. We await a response and commitment to act on this.

Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA council chair, said: In the last two months, weve seen a huge outpouring of support for our frontline staff, including those talented colleagues who have come to work here from overseas.

Im sure they would be dismayed to find that the government is continuing to penalise them with this absurd fee during the crisis.

Justin Madders, Labours shadow health minister, said: Ministers frequently tell us how proud they are of the incredible effort being made by NHS staff, yet when they have the opportunity to do something tangible to demonstrate their appreciation they pull the rug up.

The NHS would fall over without overseas staff and in the current climate it is simply unconscionable for this government to be slapping extra charges on them.
ST. LOUIS  Three Catholic elementary schools will close at the end of the school year  Most Holy Trinity in north St. Louis, Christ Light of the Nations in Spanish Lake and St. Joseph in Manchester  primarily because of financial losses from the coronavirus pandemic, the Archdiocese of St. Louis said Friday.

Most Holy Trinity opened in 1860 and held the record for longest operating Catholic school in the city.

The three schools already were financially strapped, and they have been hurt by a lack of donations with the suspension of public Mass since March, archdiocese spokesman Peter Frangie said.

Students at Most Holy Trinity, in the Hyde Park neighborhood, predominantly are African American and non-Catholic. Families at Most Holy Trinity pay an average of $600 in annual tuition, after financial aid support. The school followed the rigorous NativityMiguel model for underprivileged students that includes a longer school day and financial and academic support through high school.

All the students have been offered enrollment and financial support to attend St. Louis Catholic Academy, which uses the same model, Frangie said. The school is about 3 miles away, in the Penrose neighborhood.

At St. Joseph school in Manchester, the departing eighth graders were honored with a parade Friday in the parking lot.

The Archdiocese gave up on a true gem, read the schools post on its Facebook page.

Catholic school enrollment has declined about 20% nationally and in St. Louis in the last decade, according to the National Catholic Educational Association. With the closure of the three schools, the number of elementary schools in the archdiocese will drop below 100.

St. James the Greater, in the Dogtown neighborhood of St. Louis, closed in 2019. Five other area Catholic schools closed in 2017: St. Louis the King and Our Lady of Sorrows, in St. Louis, St. Angela Merici in Florissant, John F. Kennedy High School in Manchester, and St. Peter in St. Charles.

Parents said they were disappointed the schools were not given a chance to seek donations to stay open. Evie Moore has daughters entering sixth and eighth grades at Most Holy Trinity who she said are devastated.

I didnt think I could afford to send my babies to private school. Most Holy Trinity was a light, Moore said. Theyre about to displace these students. In the middle of a pandemic, we have to figure out where to send our children to school. If you stay in this neighborhood, youre not going to have many options.

Its our oasis, and its being taken away.

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A 45-year-old migrant worker from



Rajasthan, who walked 30km from his residence to catch a Shramik Special train, collapsed and died near the Vasai Road railway station, an official said on Friday.

The incident took place on Thursday evening and the deceased was identified as Harish Chander Shankarlal, a resident of Bhayander in adjoining Thane district, he said.

He had walked nearly 30km from his local residence to catch a Shramik Special train at the Vasai Road station in the district to travel to his hometown in Rajasthan, the official said.

Shankarlal, a carpenter by profession, was working at a construction site and was without a job due to the lockdown, he said.

He and some of his distant relatives had applied for nod to travel to their hometowns in Shramik Special trains, being operated by the Railways to ferry migrant workers stranded due to the COVID-19 lockdown, the official said.

On Wednesday, they got information that a special train will be leaving for Rajasthan on Thursday evening, he said.

Shankarlal ran and walked on Thursday afternoon on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad Highway in sweltering heat to reach the station as he was left with no money to hire an autorickshaw or any other private vehicle, he said.

The migrant labourer felt uneasy and collapsed near the station out of exhaustion, the official said, adding he also vomitted.

The Manikpur police took him to a nearby hospital, where he was declared dead before admission, he said.

His train was scheduled to leave at 6.30 pm.

An accidental death case has been registered at the Manikpur police station and a probe was underway, the official added.

His body has been sent for a post-mortem to the government hospital, another official said.

migrant workers staying in Bhayander said authorities had not made any arrangements to ferry them to the railway station.

When contracted, Vasai tehsildar Kiran Survase said they had arranged for travel to the station only for migrant workers living in Vasai.

Bhayander did not come in their jurisdiction, he said.

Survase said on Thursday two trains left from Vasai Road, one for Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh) and another for Sikar (Rajasthan) with a total of 3,045 passengers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
London, May 15 : London could be "coronavirus free" by June, as new modelling has suggested that the UK capital was recording only 24 new cases a day, according to an analysis by Cambridge University and Public Health England published on Friday.

The 'R' reproduction rate has fallen to 0.4 in London, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days, the Metro newspaper quoted the analysis as saying.

London was initially the hub of the pandemic in the UK and was considered to be weeks ahead of the rest of the country.

When the lockdown was imposed on March 23 it was being hit by around 200,000 new cases per day, but the new modelling suggested that it could be free of fresh diagnoses by next month.

But social distancing concerns were raised after pictures emerged this week of packed London Underground trains with many passengers not wearing masks.

Despite the analysis, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine warned that London's true infection rate was likely to be "a little bit higher", the Metro newspaper reported.

Speaking to the BBC Radio 4, he said: "There is some variation around this and there is some uncertainty in this, but what we have observed in London is that case numbers and death numbers have come down faster than in other parts of the country - albeit from a considerably higher level.

"So I think it... well, I would say it is a little bit higher than that, but it is probably lower than the rest of the country." As of Friday, the number of COVID-19 cases in the UK has increased to 234,441, with 33,693 deaths, the current highest in Europe.
- When the video first went viral, people thought it was a real occurrence

- It later emerged the comedian used his unrivaled creativity to pass awareness about coronavirus mass testing in a comical way

- The clip was shared online widely with many people admitting indeed he is good at acting

Kenyan comedian Bahali Yake Mwenyewe has left Kenyans rolling on the floor with laughter after sharing a short comic skit about COVID-19 mass testing.

In a video that has fast gone viral, the comedian and his crew enact how health officers bump into a random Kenyan in the streets and request to carry out the coronavirus test on him.

READ ALSO: Rwandese husband goes viral for building wife laptop stand to relieve her shoulder pain

READ ALSO: Meet Lee Su Jin, the hot 51-year-old lady who looks half her age

At first, he refuses to go for the test but agrees when the medical professions mention police and hurriedly follows them at a health facility.

All is manageable until the group reaches the health center where the COVID-19 test is supposed to be carried out.

We all know the procedure involves taking body temperature and a swab from the inside of the subject's nose.

The 'medics's start with taking his temperature using a thermal gun which sends shivers down his spine as he thought it was a pistol and the doctor wanted to 'shoot' him.

READ ALSO: Drama as woman finds out her fiance is already engaged to another lady

The 'struggle' took a whole five minutes with Bahali Yake throwing all manner of tantrums in a move that left netizens in stitches.

It got even worse when it got to the point when the doctor wanted to do the nose swab because the comedian kept sneezing and complaining, giving the health workers quite an uphill task.

Bahali Yake's theatrics all through his engagement with the medic cracked many Kenyans online and others from different parts of the world.

The video was shared many times online and attracted the attention of people who admitted indeed it was quite funny but a depiction of most Kenyans during this COVID-19 era and everything that comes with it, including the tests.

READ ALSO: Kisanga mama mkwe kuitisha mzinga mkahawani

Bahali Yake and his team shot the video as a way of passing awareness to Kenyans about embracing coronavirus mass testing.

The video comes in two versions, the Somali version and Swahili.

The comedian is a known name in the industry having played roles in some of Kenya's biggest productions.

Vioja Mahakamani, Daktari, Jungu Kuu and Ngumbaru School are just but a few local shows he has featured in.

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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FAIRFIELD, N.J., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In an effort to alleviate mental health issues among New Jersey police officers, EMTs, paramedics and firefighters during the COVID-19 pandemic, MD1 Program and Roseland Psychotherapy Associates are pleased to offer one no-cost counseling session to New Jersey first responders, their spouses and children during the month of May.

Dr. Mark Merlin, CEO and founder of MD1 program, was speaking with his wife, Beth Levy-Merlin, a licensed psychotherapist and partner in Roseland Psychotherapy Associates, about his concerns for first responders' mental health. Levy-Merlin realized that if they joined forces they could alleviate many of the serious mental health issues Dr. Merlin is observing among police, fire and EMS personnel.

"MD1 EMS physicians are out in the field every day, responding to COVID-19 calls and supporting other first responders," Dr. Mark Merlin said. "We're witnessing their stress first hand, so we decided to offer help to those who need it."

This initiative offers every New Jersey first responder, their spouses and children a free counseling session with a licensed psychotherapist during the month of May 2020. All sessions will be conducted via phone or through a HIPAA-compliant video platform.

"Every first responder's life has been disrupted for months and many are living separately from their families," Levy-Merlin said. "Each of our practice's 15 therapists is donating their time to help these dedicated first responders, their spouses and kids and support them through this difficult time."

For New Jersey First Responders and their Families

To set up a no-cost counseling session, please call 973-226-1505 ext 0 or email [email protected] and mention MD1.

About MD1 Program

MD1 brings the emergency room to patients who are trapped on scene and cannot get to a hospital right away. Our highly trained EMS doctors work as a team with emergency response personnel and can perform life-saving surgical procedures, ultrasounds and diagnostic testing in the field. MD1 is a nonprofit organization that is not associated with any hospital system, does not charge anyone for its services and relies on private donations to fund its operations. More information is available at www.MD1Program.org .

About Roseland Psychotherapy Associates

Roseland Psychotherapy Associates provides individual, couples and family counseling to children, adolescents and adults. We work with a wide range of emotional and behavioral issues providing services that span from therapy for depression and grief counseling, to parenting support, couples counseling and beyond. In a comfortable and supportive atmosphere, we offer a highly personalized approach tailored to each of our clients' individual needs to help attain personal growth. More information is available at www.roselandtherapy.com.

Contact:

Kristen Ryan

MD1 Program

[email protected]

844-631-3627 ext 4



www.MD1Program.org

SOURCE MD1

Related Links

https://www.MD1Program.org


Authorities have reported the first coronavirus case in the crowded camps for Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh, where more than 1 million refugees are sheltered.

The person from the Rohingya community and a local person who lives in the Cox's Bazar district who also tested positive have been isolated, Mahbub Alam Talukder, the country's refugee commissioner, said Thursday.

Teams have been activated for treatment of the patients as well as tracing people they may have encountered and quarantining and testing of those contacts, Louise Donovan, a spokeswoman for the U.N. refugee agency, told The Associated Press.

Aid workers have been warning of the potential for a serious outbreak if the virus reached the camps.

With about 40,000 people per square kilometer (103,600 per square mile) living in plastic shacks side by side, which is more than 40 times the average density of Bangladesh, the refugees would be dangerously exposed to the virus.

Each shack is barely 10 square meters (107 square feet) and many are overcrowded with up to 12 people.

Most of the Rohingya have fled Myanmar since August 2017, when Myanmar's military launched counterinsurgency operations in response to rebel attacks. Security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and burning thousands of homes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
EL PASO, Texas, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Mount Franklin Foods, LLC, a leading manufacturer of high-quality confections, nut products, mints and culinary plant-based proteins, is making a one-time $20,000 donation to the Richardson-Olmos-Trejo COVID-19 Emergency Fund. The company, which is headquartered in El Paso, Texas, is making the donation in support of the individuals and families who live in the Colonias area of New Mexico.

"It is critically important to us at Mount Franklin Foods to support our local communities. In these unprecedented times, our family of employees and future employees needs our support more than ever before," states Eloy S. Vallina L., Chairman of the Board for Mount Franklin Foods. "We are honored to join forces with The Richardson Center for Global Engagement and the Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico to support their efforts in providing emergency financial assistance."

The Richardson-Olmos-Trejo COVID-19 Emergency Fund will support families and individuals who live in the Colonias, located in the southern area of Dona County. The fund has been kickstarted by a contribution of $10,000 from The Richardson Center for Global Engagement and will be administered by the Community Foundation of Southern New Mexico.

Approved applicants will receive a one-time check ($150 for individuals or households without children and $300 for individuals or households with one or more children). Families may use this cash assistance for groceries, medical bills, rent, utility payments, car repairs or for whatever emergency expenses they may have due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Cash assistance allows for families without the means to travel to big box stores to spend money in their local communities and to support their locally-owned small businesses.

For more information or to apply for assistance, visit https://caasnm.org. To donate to the fund, visit bit.ly/SCDACemergencyfund.

About Mount Franklin Foods

Mount Franklin Foods, LLC is a leading North American manufacturer of high-quality confections, nut products, mints, culinary plant-based proteins, bake mixes, powdered beverages and ingredients headquartered in El Paso, Texas. The company proudly serves major retailers, wholesalers, co-manufacturing customers and foodservice distributors through its Sunrise Confections, Azar Nut, Hospitality Mints and Element Food Solutions divisions. For more information please visit www.MountFranklinfoods.com.

SOURCE Mount Franklin Foods, LLC
Moscow: One of the four suspects charged with the murder of nearly 300 people on board a flight shot down over Ukraine has been arrested by separatist rebels, it was reported on Thursday.

The BBC Russian Service quoted unnamed sources saying that Leonid Kharchenko had been arrested by separatists in eastern Ukraine in March on suspicion of possessing illegal weapons and conducting an illegal raid.

MH17 shooting suspect Leonid Kharchenko. Credit:JIT

Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 was en route from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur when it was shot down on July 17, 2014, over rebel-controlled eastern Ukraine, killing all 298 on board, including 38 Australian citizens and residents. Russia has stubbornly denied any role in propping up the rebels.

A Dutch-led joint investigative team found that the Russian military had deployed the Buk launcher in eastern Ukraine that shot down the plane, a claim the Kremlin has denied.
HAIKOU CITY, China, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- China Pharma Holdings, Inc. (NYSE American: CPHI) ("China Pharma," the "Company" or "We"), an NYSE American-listed corporation with a fully-integrated specialty pharmaceuticals subsidiary based in China, today announced financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.

First Quarter Highlights

Revenue decreased 39.8% to $1.8 million in first quarter 2020 from $2.9 million in the same period of 2019;

in first quarter 2020 from in the same period of 2019; Gross margin was 11.0% in first quarter 2020, compared to 22.4% in the same period of 2019;

Loss from operations was $0.6 million in first quarter 2020 compared to $0.3 million in the same period of 2019, a deterioration of $0.3 million ;

in first quarter 2020 compared to in the same period of 2019, a deterioration of ; Net loss was $0.7 million in first quarter 2020 compared to $0.4 million in the same period of 2019. Loss per common share was $0.02 per basic and diluted share in first quarter 2020, compared to $0.01 per basic and diluted share in first quarter 2019.

Ms. Zhilin Li, China Pharma's Chairman and CEO, commented, "The current outbreak of COVID-19 has had a material and adverse effect on the Company's business operations. We had experienced disruptions and restrictions on our ability to travel and to distribute our products, as well as temporary closures of our facilities or the facilities of the suppliers or customers. In addition, COVID-19 has resulted in a widespread health crisis that adversely affected the economies and financial markets of China and many other countries." Ms. Li continued, "along with the lasting efforts to place emphasis on the marketing and sales of our current exiting pharmaceutical products, we continue to explore in the field of comprehensive healthcare. Comprehensive healthcare focuses on people's daily life, aging and disease and pays attention to all kinds of risk factors and misunderstandings affecting health. We launched wash-free sanitizer and mask production lines recently to address the market needs caused by COVID-19. We aim to leverage our expertise in the PRC for the development, manufacture and commercialization of pharmaceutical and comprehensive healthcare products for the benefit of human health."

First Quarter Results

Revenue decreased by 39.8% to $1.8 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020, as compared to $2.9 million for the three months ended March 31, 2019. This decrease was mainly due to the negative impact of the outbreak of COVID-19. Since the Chinese New Year holiday in early February, almost all Chinese companies, including us, have delayed the resumption of work. Our work resumption rate has gradually returned to 90% by the end of March 2020.

For the three months ended March 31, 2020, our cost of revenue was $1.6 million, or 89% of total revenue, while cost of revenue was $2.3 million, or 78% of total revenue, for the same period in 2019.

Gross profit for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $0.2 million, as compared to $0.7 million during the same period in 2019. Our gross profit margin in the three months ended March 31, 2020 was 11.0% as compared to 22.4% during the same period in 2019. The decrease in our gross profit margin was mainly due to the decrease in revenue and the increased ratio of fixed cost to revenue.

Our selling expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019 were $0.3 million and $0.5 million, respectively. Selling expenses accounted for 18.5% of the total revenue in the three months ended March 31, 2020, as compared to 16.3% during the same period in 2019. As a result of the adjustment of many policies of healthcare reform, we had reduced the number of personnel and expenses to efficiently support our sales and the collection of accounts receivable.

Our general and administrative expenses were both $0.4 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. It accounted for 22.0% and 14.6% of our total revenue in the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.

Our research and development expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2020 were $0.05 million, as compared to $0.07 million in the same period in 2019. Research and development expenses accounted for 2.8% and 2.4% of our total revenue in the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively. These expenditures were mainly for the consistency evaluations of our existing products.

Our bad debt expenses for the three months ended March 31, 2020 were $30,246, as compared to $13,312 for the same period in 2019. The increase in our bad debt expenses in this period was partially due to the slow-down collection of bad debt because of the nationwide delayed work resumption caused by COVID-19.

Net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $0.7 million, or $0.02 each basic and diluted share, as compared to a net loss of $0.4 million, or $0.01 each basic and diluted share, for the same period a year ago. The increase in net loss was mainly a result of decreased revenue, whereas the expenditures did not decrease in proportion to revenue due to fixed costs.

Financial Condition

As of March 31, 2020 the Company had cash and cash equivalents of $0.1 million compared to $1.1 million as of December 31, 2019. As of March 31, 2020, our net accounts receivable was $0.9 million, compared to $0.6 million as of December 31, 2019. Cash flow used in operating activities was both $0.2 million for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and 2019, respectively.

In April 2020, the Company obtained a line of credit from Postal Savings Bank of China for an aggregate amount of RMB 10,000,000 (approximately $1.4 million), of which RMB 5,000,000 (approximately $0.7 million) have been advanced. The loan bears interest at a rate of 4.25% per annum. Advances on the line of credit are due two years from the date of the advance. A third party company has guaranteed the loan as being the second priority creditor in the collateral in certain land use rights and buildings next to the creditor of the Company's construction loan facility. In addition, the Company's Chief Executive Officer and Chair of the Board personally guaranteed the new line of credit. The Company has an additional RMB 5,000,000 (approximately $0.7 million) available under the line, subject to a risk review and approval by the third party guarantee company.

The Company will hold a conference call at 8:30 am E.T. on May 15, 2020 to discuss the results of the first quarter 2020. Listeners may access the call by dialing 1-866-519-4004 or 65-671-350-90 for international callers, Conference ID # 1872457. A replay of the call will be accessible through May 23, 2020 by dialing 1-855-452-5696 or 61-281-990-299 for international callers, Conference ID # 1872457.

About China Pharma Holdings, Inc.

China Pharma Holdings, Inc. is a specialty pharmaceutical company that develops, manufactures and markets a diversified portfolio of products, focusing on conditions with high incidence and high mortality rates in China, including cardiovascular, CNS, infectious, and digestive diseases. The Company's cost-effective business model is driven by market demand and supported by new GMP-certified product lines covering the major dosage forms. In addition, the Company has a broad and expanding nationwide distribution network across all major cities and provinces in China. The Company's wholly-owned subsidiary, Hainan Helpson Medical & Biotechnology Co., Ltd., is located in Haikou City, Hainan Province. For more information about China Pharma Holdings, Inc., please visit www.chinapharmaholdings.com. The Company routinely posts important information on its website.

Safe Harbor Statement

Certain statements in this press release constitute forward-looking statements for purposes of the safe harbor provisions under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Any statements set forth above that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Such risks and uncertainties may include, but are not limited to: the achievability of financial guidance; success of new product development; unanticipated changes in product demand; increased competition; downturns in the Chinese economy; uncompetitive levels of research and development; and other information detailed from time to time in the Company's filings and future filings with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. The forward-looking statements made herein speak only as of the date of this press release and the Company undertakes no duty to update any forward-looking statement to conform the statement to actual results or changes in the Company's expectations, except as required by applicable law or regulation.

- FINANCIAL TABLES FOLLOW 

CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED BALANCE SHEETS (Unaudited)













March 31,

December 31,



2020

2019 ASSETS







Current Assets:







Cash and cash equivalents

$ 145,932

$ 1,074,979 Restricted cash

331,038

109,908 Banker's acceptances

48,096

45,756 Trade accounts receivable, less allowance for doubtful







accounts of $17,334,819 and $17,575,100, respectively

855,084

635,371 Other receivables, less allowance for doubtful







accounts of $22,320 and $22,729, respectively

52,648

46,643 Advances to suppliers

1,050,083

404 Inventory

3,625,000

3,588,824 Prepaid expenses

253,321

77,120 Total Current Assets

6,361,202

5,579,005









Property and equipment, net

15,768,241

16,313,827 Operating lease right of use asset

112,447

136,779 Intangible assets, net

193,774

205,611 TOTAL ASSETS

$ 22,435,664

$ 22,235,222









LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY







Current Liabilities:







Trade accounts payable

$ 847,760

$ 1,366,330 Accrued expenses

245,743

189,880 Other payables

3,642,539

3,560,332 Advances from customers

1,940,728

505,398 Other payables - related parties

2,097,447

2,071,986 Operating lease liability, current portion

90,974

91,306 Current portion of construction loan facility

1,975,978

2,150,168 Bankers' acceptance notes payable

331,038

109,908 Total Current Liabilities

11,172,207

10,045,308 Non-current Liabilities:







Construction loan facility

2,117,119

2,150,168 Operating lease liability, net of current portion

24,803

48,701 Deferred tax liability

741,863

753,444 Total Liabilities

14,055,992

12,997,621 Risks and Uncertainties (Note 13)







Stockholders' Equity:







Preferred stock, $0.001 par value; 5,000,000 shares authorized;







no shares issued or outstanding

-

- Common stock, $0.001 par value; 95,000,000 shares authorized;







43,579,557 shares and 43,579,557 shares outstanding, respectively

43,580

43,580 Additional paid-in capital

23,590,204

23,590,204 Accumulated deficit

(26,633,299)

(25,972,402) Accumulated other comprehensive income

11,379,187

11,576,219 Total Stockholders' Equity

8,379,672

9,237,601 TOTAL LIABILITIES AND STOCKHOLDERS' EQUITY

$ 22,435,664

$ 22,235,222

CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONDENSED CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF OPERATIONS AND COMPREHENSIVE INCOME (LOSS) (Unaudited)













For the Three Months



Ended March 31,



2020

2019 Revenue

$ 1,763,955

$ 2,929,273 Cost of revenue

1,569,516

2,272,743









Gross profit

194,439

656,530









Operating expenses:







Selling expenses

326,095

478,691 General and administrative expenses

388,559

428,817 Research and development expenses

48,819

69,918 Bad debt expense

30,246

13,312 Total operating expenses

793,719

990,738









Loss from operations

(599,280)

(334,208)









Other income (expense):







Interest income

386

3,257 Interest expense

(62,003)

(86,780) Net other expense

(61,617)

(83,523)









Loss before income taxes

(660,897)

(417,731) Income tax expense

-

- Net loss

$ (660,897)

$ (417,731) Other comprehensive income - foreign currency







translation adjustment

(197,032)

835,865 Comprehensive income (loss)

$ (857,929)

$ 418,134 Loss per share:







Basic and diluted

$ (0.02)

$ (0.01) Weighted average shares outstanding

43,579,557

43,579,557

CHINA PHARMA HOLDINGS, INC. CONSOLIDATED STATEMENTS OF CASH FLOWS (Unaudited)



For the Three Months



Ended March 31,



2020

2019 Cash Flows from Operating Activities:







Net loss

$ (660,897)

$ (417,731) Depreciation and amortization

655,921

795,483 Bad debt expense

30,246

13,312 Changes in assets and liabilities:







Trade accounts and other receivables

(341,165)

(145,935) Advances to suppliers

(1,065,639)

(107,839) Inventory

(24,688)

389,589 Trade accounts payable

(505,131)

6,079 Accrued taxes payable

52,503

(51,879) Other payables and accrued expenses

103,541

(386,336) Change in bankers' acceptance notes payable

226,206

(326,983) Advances from customers

1,465,030

(12,285) Prepaid expenses

(180,082)

8,065 Net Cash Provided by Operating Activities

(244,155)

(236,460)









Cash Flows from Investing Activities:







Purchases of property and equipment

(347,795)

(73,866) Net Cash Used in Investing Activities

(347,795)

(73,866)









Cash Flows from Financing Activities:







Payments of construction term loan

(143,286)

(148,227) Advances from related party

36,293

- Payments of related party payables

-

(119,561) Net Cash Used in Financing Activities

(106,993)

(267,788)









Effect of Exchange Rate Changes on Cash

(8,974)

55,484 Net (Decrease) Increase in Cash, Cash Equivalents and Restricted Cash

(707,917)

(522,630) Cash, Cash Equivalents and Restricted Cash at Beginning of Period

1,184,887

2,460,527 Cash, Cash Equivalents and Restricted Cash at End of Period

$ 476,970

$ 1,937,897









Cash and Cash Equivalents

145,932

961,277 Restricted cash

331,038

976,620 Cash, Cash Equivalents and Restricted Cash at End of Period

$ 476,970

$ 1,937,897









Supplemental Cash Flow Information:







Cash paid for income taxes

$ -

$ - Cash paid for interest

$ 57,044

$ 80,693









Supplemental Noncash Investing and Financing Activities:







Accounts receivable collected with banker's acceptances

$ 71,127

$ 175,793 Inventory purchased with banker's acceptances

68,037

145,614 Right-of-use assets obtained in exchange for operating lease obligations

-

236,055

SOURCE China Pharma Holdings, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.chinapharmaholdings.com


The police force that failed to charge Ahmaud Arbery's killers has a 'track record of corruption', with the department facing 17 lawsuits in the past decade and its drug force being dismantled last year after 'extensive misconduct' by its officers.

Glynn County Police Department has been plagued by scandal going right to the top of the chain of command for years, with a local attorney describing so many cases of alleged misconduct that each would fill 'a separate Netflix episode'.

The allegations of corruption run deep, with a damning report in 2019 unearthing what it described as an 'ongoing culture of cover-up' at the department.

The force has come under scrutiny this last week over its handling of the killing of unarmed jogger Arbery, 25, who was shot dead by Gregory McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, in Brunswick, Georgia on February 23.

Ahmaud Arbery pictured. The police force that failed to charge Arbery's killers has a 'track record of corruption', with the department facing 17 lawsuits in the past decade and its drug force being dismantled last year after 'extensive misconduct' by its officers

The father and son duo were charged with murder last week - more than two months after the slaying - when the Georgia Bureau of Investigation stepped in to take over the case following a series of blunders by local law enforcement.

Gregory McMichael was also a former Glynn County police officer.

It has now emerged that the local police department has been at the center of several scandals involving corrupt officers, abuse of power and a track record of protecting its own going back years.

Just three months before Arbery's death, in November 2019, a grand jury report painted a damning picture of the department.

The report described 'an ongoing culture of cover-up, failure to supervise, abuse of power and lack of accountability within the administration of the Glynn County Police Department.'

A 2019 investigation into the drug force also exposed extensive misconduct, including one incident where an officer had sex with a confidential informant.

In another incident, evidence was allegedly suppressed in a fatal car chase involving narcotics officers.

This led to the disbanding of the drug force last year.

The alleged scandal even goes right to the top of the chain with Glynn County Police Chief John Powell - the man who was brought on board to clean up the department -being placed on administrative leave amid allegations of a cover-up.

Glynn County Police Department has been plagued with multiple scandals with 17 lawsuits against the force in the last decade

The alleged scandal even goes right to the top of the chain with Glynn County Police Chief John Powell - the man who was brought on board to clean up the department who has been indicted for perjury and witness tampering

One of the most shocking lawsuits against the force accuses the police of failing to act when one of its own officers, Police Lieutenant Robert Sasser (left) showed 'erratic, violent' behavior toward his estranged wife and threatened her life on more than one occasion. Sasser went on to murder her and her friend and then killed himself. This came after Sasser went unpunished after the death of a woman Catherine Small (right) back in 2010 after he and his partner shot her eight times during a car chase

Powell was indicted in March, just days after Arbery's death, for perjury and witness tampering for allegedly covering up misconduct in the narcotics task force.

The police chief has been charged with four counts of violating his oath of office, two counts of influencing a witness and one count of attempting to commit perjury.

Brian Scott, the Vidalia Police Chief and Powells former chief of staff, as well as former Glynn County officers David Haney and David Hassler have also been charged over the scandal.

Claims of misconduct are not isolated instances, with at least 17 lawsuits filed against the police department over the last decade.

'There is not just one prior case,' Page Pate, a criminal defense attorney in Glynn County, told NPR.

TIMELINE OF BOTCHED HANDLING OF AHMAUD ARBERY'S CASE February 23: Ahmaud Arbery is shot dead in the street in Brunswick, Georgia. Gregory and Travis McMichael had gone out in their car with guns to chase him because they mistook him for a burglar. When they caught up to him, Travis got out of the car. Jackie Johnson recused herself because McMichael used to work in her office Gregory says they told Arbery that they wanted to talk to him and that he attacked Travis. A struggle ensued and Travis fired his gun twice, killing Ahmaud, 25. Late February - First prosecutor recuses herself Jackie Johnson, the Brunswick District Attorney, stepped down from the case because Gregory used to work in her office as an investigator. Mid-April - Second prosecutor says he won't press charges, then recuses himself George Barnhill said Ahmaud initiated the fight George Barnhill was given the case. He at first said he did not think it merited charges because the McMichaels were acting lawfully by trying to carry out a citizen's arrest, which is legal in Georgia. He also said that the video 'shows' Arbery reaching for Travis' gun. Barnhill recused himself because his son, also called George Barnhill, works in the office where McMichael used to The first shot is fired however when the pair are out of frame. When the camera panned back to them, they were struggling again to the side of the vehicle. Barnhill said Travis was standing his ground by firing three shots which hit Arbery. He later had to recuse himself after it emerged that his son works in the Brunswick District Attorney's Office, where Gregory served. May 5 - Third prosecutor passes it on to grand jury Tom Durden is the third prosecutor to have the case come across his desk. He said that his office would approach it without prior prejudice. Joyette Holmes This week, he announced that he would not make a decision on whether or not to charge, and that he wants to convene a grand jury to take it on. May 7 - Georgia Bureau of Investigation files charges The GBI announced that it was bringing charges of murder and aggravated assault against the Gregory and Travis on May 7. May 11 - Department of Justice says it is weighing hate crime charges against the McMichaels Georgia's Attorney General Chris Carr orders the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to conduct a federal probe into why it took 74 days for the men to be arrested. The case is also given to Joyette Holmes, a black prosecutor. Advertisement

'There are many prior cases. And each one is a separate Netflix episode.'

One of the most shocking lawsuits accuses the police of failing to act when one of its own officers, Police Lieutenant Robert Sasser, showed 'erratic, violent' behavior toward his estranged wife and threatened her life on more than one occasion.

Sasser went on to murder his wife Katie Kettles Sasser and her friend before he killed himself.

The lawsuit states that the killer's ex-wife had reported him to police on multiple occasions.

On one occasion in May 2018, police were called to his ex-wife's home after Sasser tried to break in and threatened to kill her, the lawsuit states.

When police were at the scene, they witnessed Sasser lunge again at the victim and were forced to drag him away, while he threatened her saying 'You know what is going to happen!', the suit says.

The lawsuit also says Sasser used the police database to look up information about his ex-wife and people she knew and that he tracked her movements.

'The public trust has been violated and respect for the county police has diminished with the slow creep of incremental and deliberate corruption,' the lawsuit claims.

'The fact is that the Glynn County Police Department is in crisis, it has been for years and people are dying as a result.'

This shocking case came after the same officer went unpunished after the death of a woman back in 2010.

Sasser and his partner shot Caroline Small eight times in the head and face after a car chase and then boasted to a witness how they had seen her head explode, Fox News reported.

A local resident told Fox News the police department is well-known in the area for looking after its own.

'They don't have a great reputation and it's just the good ol' boys mentality,' she said.

'They look out for themselves and everyone around here knows it.'

In 2018, the police department also lost its state certification because it failed to meet basic policing standards.

The tragic death of black jogger Arbery at the hands of two white men is also not the first time questions have been aimed at the department over its representation of minorities.

The International Association of Police Chiefs found that just 12 percent of the police force is African American, when African Americans make up 26 percent of the county's population.

Following the extent of allegations being levied against the force, the Georgia General Assembly is now considering whether to letting voters get rid of the police department for good.

Georgia lawmakers will revisit a Senate Bill when they return to the Capitol next month.

The Bill calls for a vote in November to decide if the Glynn County Police Department should be disbanded and resources merged under the county sheriffs office.

DailyMail.com has reached out to the police department for comment.

Glynn County PD has found its actions increasingly under the spotlight over the last week after the footage emerged online of the former police officer Gregory McMichael and his son Travis McMichael gunning down Arbery, sparking outrage over why law enforcement had not prosecuted the two men.

It came to light last week that Gregory McMichael had also worked as a chief investigator in the District Attorney's office without proper certification or arrest powers.

Personnel records obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press showed McMichael worked for Brunswick Circuit DA Jackie Johnson's office from November 1995 through May 2019.

He consistently received good performance reviews.

But in 2014, the Peace Officer Standards and Training Council notified the district attorney's office that in five years since 2005, Gregory McMichael had either failed to do enough training hours or failed to take mandatory firearms or use-of-deadly force classes, documents show.

The result was that he had technically lacked arrest powers since January 1 2006.

Documents in the file show he was then stripped of his law enforcement certification and power to arrest people again in 2019, just months before his retirement.

This time it was for failure to complete mandatory training in 2018, records show, and meant he served out his final few months with the district attorney's office as a non-sworn liaison to law enforcement agencies in one of the counties in the judicial circuit.

Gregory (left) and Travis McMichael (right) have both been charged with murder and aggravated assault over the February 23 shooting of Ahmaud Arbery

An officer with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is seen leading 34-year-old Travis McMichael out of the home in handcuff

Exclusive photos show the moment Gregory McMichael (pictured) and his son Travis McMichael were arrested at their home in Brunswick, Georgia, on Thursday

The Georgia prosecutors who first handled the fatal shooting of the Arbery, before charges were filed more than two months later, were placed under investigation Tuesday for their conduct in the case.

The McMichaels were not charged with murder until last week, after the release of a video of the February 23 shooting.

The shocking cellphone footage showed the two men chasing and gunning down the victim in the street.

In the video, Arbery is seen running at a jogging pace on the left side of a road.

A truck is parked in the road ahead of him. Gregory is inside the pickup's bed, while Travis is standing beside the open driver's side door.

Arbery crosses the road to pass the pickup on the passenger side, then crosses back in front of the truck.

A gunshot sounds, and the video shows Arbery grappling with Travis in the street over what appears to be a shotgun or rifle.

A second shot can be heard, and Arbery can be seen punching Travis. A third shot is fired at point-blank range. Arbery staggers a few feet and falls face down.

The McMichaels' defense has been that they were making a citizen's arrest after suspecting Ahmaud of breaking into and robbing homes in their neighborhood.

They said Travis then exercised his stand your ground right by shooting Ahmaud, claiming the unarmed 25-year-old reached for his gun.

The autopsy showed Arbery was hit by three shotgun blasts.

All three shots can be heard on the video, which clearly shows the final shot hitting Arbery at point-blank range before he staggers and falls face down.

The McMichaels have been jailed since last Thursday. Neither had lawyers at their first court appearances.

With courts largely closed because of the coronavirus, a grand jury cannot be called to hear the case until mid-June.

Shocking cellphone video captured the moment the McMichaels confronted Arbery in the street. In the footage Travis is seen engaging in a physical fight with Arbery before shooting him with a shotgun

Arbery can be seen stumbling to the ground as the clip comes to a close

Ahmaud Arbery 'may have been looking for drink of water' when he visited construction site near where he was killed

A young black man filmed by a security camera walking through a home under construction in December and in February may have stopped at the site for a drink of water, according to an attorney for the homeowner thrust into the investigation of the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.

The attorney's remarks come a new footage showed that the property had 'frequent visitors' during both the day and night on the day that Arbery was killed.

On Friday, an attorney for the owner of the house under construction released three security camera videos taken Dec. 17, more than two months before the shooting. They show a black man in a T-shirt and shorts at the site. In the final clip, he walks a few steps toward the road, then starts running at a jogger's pace.

'It now appears that this young man may have been coming onto the property for water,' J. Elizabeth Graddy, the attorney for homeowner Larry English, said in a statement. 'There is a water source at the dock behind the house as well as a source near the front of the structure. Although these water sources do not appear within any of the cameras frames, the young man moves to and from their locations.'

J. Elizabeth Graddy, the attorney for homeowner Larry English, released videos that showed a black man walk onto the site. The lawyer said the footage is believed to show the person in the footage headed toget water

A man in similar clothes appears briefly in another security video taken at the home construction site Feb. 11, less than two weeks before the shooting. Graddy said that person appears to be the same man shown in the Dec. 17 videos.

It is not known if Arbery is the person shown in any of the videos taken prior to Feb. 23, when the shooting occurred.

The lawyer's statements come after the lawyer for Arbery's family, S. Lee Merritt, released new video that showed 'frequent visitors' on the site where Arbery visited.

'New video shows there were frequent visitors on the construction site where Ahmaud was seen leaving on the day he was killed both day & night,' the lawyer said in a post that showed two people making their way onto the property.

'Ahmaud Arbery seems to be the only one who was presumed to be a criminal and ultimately the only one murdered based on that presumption.'

In another clip, two young boys can be seen making their way onto the property as well.

'More alleged trespassers entering the construction site where Ahmaud Arbery was last seen before his murder. These children were not implicated in any crimes due to their presence at this location. No white person ever was,' Merritt said in a follow up post.

The lawyer's statements come after the lawyer for Arbery's family, S Lee Merritt, released new video that showed 'frequent visitors' on the site where Arbery visited

Arbery was killed Feb. 23 in a pursuit by a white father and son who armed themselves after the 25-year-old black man ran past their yard just outside the port city of Brunswick. Right before the chase, Arbery was recorded inside an open-framed home being built on the same street.

Gregory McMichael, 64, and Travis McMichael, 34, have been jailed on murder charges since May 7. The elder McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was responsible for recent break-ins in the neighborhood. He also said Arbery attacked his son before he was shot.

Arbery's mother has said she believes her son was merely out jogging.

Defense lawyers for Gregory McMichael said Friday that they have examined evidence that 'tells a very different story' about Arbery and the two men charged with killing him. Attorney Laura Hogue told reporters: 'There is more than one video of the incident.'

In one undated clip, two young boys can be seen making their way onto the property

She did not give any specifics. A roughly 40-second cellphone video of the shooting was leaked online last week, a day before the McMichaels were charged the felony murder and aggravated assault. The video fueled a national outcry not just over the killing but also that more than two months passed before arrests were made.

Attorney Franklin Hogue, hired to defend Gregory McMichael along with his law partner wife, said more details would be revealed at a preliminary court hearing that he plans to request soon.

'The truth will reveal this is not just another act of violent racism,' Franklin Hogue told a news conference outside the couple's Macon office. 'Greg McMichael did not commit murder. Greg McMichael is not a party to the crime of murder.'

Attorneys for Arbery's parents have said security camera video from the same home construction site Feb. 23 shows Arbery on the property right before the shooting. They also say the footage shows Arbery committing no crimes.

'There were frequently people on the construction site both day and night,' attorneys for Arbery's parents said in a statement Friday. 'Ahmaud Arbery seems to be the only one who was presumed to be a criminal and ultimately the only one murdered based on that assumption.'

Travis McMichael, 34, called 911 to report a possible trespasser on English's property the night of Feb. 11, less than two weeks before Arbery was shot. He described a 'black male, red shirt and white shorts.'

'When I turned around and saw him and backed up, he reached into his pocket and ran into the house,' Travis McMichael told the 911 operator. 'So I dont know if hes armed or not. But he looked like, he was acting like he was.'
A man accused of raping three vulnerable women he picked up near popular Melbourne nightspots has been refused bail.

Karl Bacash is accused of raping three "vulnerable and highly intoxicated" women he picked up in his SUV from inner-city Melbourne in 2017 and 2018.

The 56-year-old Bulleen man is charged with four counts of rape, six sexual assaults and two counts of drugging alleged victims with an "intoxicating substance".

Bacash denies the charges.

His bail bid was rejected because of concerns around his "predatory" behaviour and the risk posed to the community, magistrate John Bentley said on Friday.
Former executive director of Hayastan All-Armenian Fund, political scientist Ara Vardanyan posted the following on his Facebook page:

Taking into consideration the rapid interior political developments and the authorities overt desire to do anything to relieve themselves of the majority of the judges of the Constitutional Court very quickly, we will be witnessing very interesting developments in the days to come.

First of all, there is no need to expect any rough evaluation from any EU institution because the government has already avoided this by ratifying the well-known Convention and by removing the word genocide from the vocabulary of EU institutions. I have no doubt that the EU institutions wont hinder the Armenian authorities efforts to solve the issue of the Constitutional Court in the National Assembly.

However, on this background, what will be very interesting will be the relations between Russia and Armenia. I believe we will hear new political statements and witness new political actions from Russia over the next few days. Things are heating up.
According to a new report, mouthwash has the potential to protect against COVID-19 infection because it can kill the coronavirus before it can infect human cells. The report states that coronaviruses belong to the class of enveloped viruses, this means that coronaviruses are covered by a fatty layer that is vulnerable to certain types of chemicals.

Mouthwash protection

A group of international researchers says that mouthwash could help destroy the outermost layer or the envelope of the virus, thus preventing its replication in the mouth and throat. The scientists stated that there is an urgent need to test the full effectiveness of mouthwash in lab trials, but there is no assurance that it would be successful.

The World Health Organization or WHO said that there is still no evidence that using mouthwash will help protect you from coronavirus infection. The authors of the study do not say that current mouthwash that can be bought in stores can prevent COVID-19, but they did imply that further research into the chemicals found in mouthwash could help.

The study authors, led by Cardiff University, wrote in Function and stated that oral rinses are an under-researched area of major clinical need. The team is backed by lipid specialists, virologists, and healthcare experts from Cardiff University's School of Medicine. They are also backed by Universities of Nottingham. Ottawa, Colorado, Barcelona, and Cambridge's Babraham Institute.

Also Read: Study Shows Coronavirus Would Plummet If 80% of Americans Wore Mask

Professor O'Donnell, co-director of Cardiff University's Systems Immunity Research Institute and lead author of the study said that using mouthwash has so far not been considered by public health bodies in the United Kingdom. There were test-tube experiments done, as well as limited clinical studies and it shows that some mouthwashes have enough virucidla ingredients to effectively target lipids in similar enveloped viruses.

According to Professor O'Donnell, what they do not know yet is whether existing mouthwashes are active against the lipid membrane of COVID-19. Their review of the literature suggests that research is needed as a matter of urgency to know its potential for use against COVID-19. The effectiveness of mouthwash is still under major clinical need and they hope that research projects will be quickly mobilized to further evaluate the case.

What are the ingredients of mouthwashes?

The ingredients of dental mouthwashes are chlorhexidine, cetylpyridinium chloride, hydrogen peroxide, and povidone-iodine, and all have the potential to prevent infection and several deserve clinical evaluation. The chemicals disrupt the outer lipid membrane of the COVID-19. The lipid envelope helps several viruses bind to human cells while avoiding the host immune system.

Glycoproteins, or spike proteins, on the surface of the envelope, identifies and binds to receptor sites on the cell membrane of the host. and it allows infection. Mouthwash chemicals could modify the ability of the spike glycoproteins to interact with receptors on cells.

The researchers added that there had been no discussion about the potential role of damaging the fatty membrane as a possible way to inactivate the virus. It shows that the lipid envelope does not change when viruses mutate, which means that mouthwash could still work against any coronavirus.

The World Health Organization debunked the suggestion that mouthwash can help prevent infection brought by COVID-19. The WHO said that some brands of mouthwash can eliminate certain microbes for a few minutes in the saliva in your mouth. But it does not mean that it can protect you from coronavirus infection.

Related Article: Buying, Shopping Using Money May Give You Coronavirus

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Second Vice Minister of Economy and Finance An Il-whan speaks during an emergency meeting with senior officials at the Seoul Government Complex, Friday. He said the government will make every effort to fight any economic crisis that materializes in the second quarter. / Courtesy of Finance Ministry
HISD trustees voted Thursday to begin the months-long process of seeking a state designation that could result in students returning to classes in mid-August, starting with the 2021-22 school year.

In a 7-2 vote, trustees agreed to start planning for obtaining a District of Innovation status, which allows education leaders to get exemptions from certain state laws.

HISD Interim Superintendent Grenita Lathan has recommended consideration of three exemptions that would the allow the district to start school earlier in the year, more easily hire non-certified educators for vocational teaching positions and award credit to students even if they do not spend 90 percent of their time in the classroom.

Lathan has argued an earlier start to the school year would balance out the two semesters and give teachers more time with students before standardized tests.

Under HISDs traditional calendar, students return to class in late August, spend about 80 days in school during the first semester and return from winter break for 96 days in the second semester. Nearly all neighboring districts start school in mid-August, giving them several more days of instruction than HISD students before state standardized exams.

Lathans proposal has drawn criticism from the districts largest teachers union, whose leaders argue that the exemptions are not necessary and could later be expanded in ways that harm teachers and children. In particular, some union leaders argued teacher certification requirements should not be eased.

Multiple trustees acknowledged those concerns Thursday, including those who voted in favor of starting the District of Innovation process.

Theres a potential it could bleed over into other areas, and that could hurt what were trying to do, said HISD Trustee Holly Maria Flynn Vilaseca, who supported the move.

Trustee Kathy Blueford-Daniels, who also voted for the measure and acknowledged receiving many messages opposing a District of Innovation status, said HISD leaders must absolutely build trust on both sides of the debate.

With Thursdays vote, trustees now must outline the exemptions they want to request and appoint a committee to draft a plan. The committee likely will include administrators, teachers, support staff and community members.

Board members could vote on the final plan as early as October, though some trustees suggested slowing that timeline given the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Trustees Elizabeth Santos and Anne Sung voted against starting the process. Santos said she worried about unintended consequences of the plan, including the teacher certification exemptions.

Our students deserve better than to have something shoved down their throat during a pandemic, Santos said.

As of press time, the board had not yet voted on whether to renew HISDs contracts with in-district charter schools, including two groups scrutinized for their business dealings.

The governing boards of the two charter networks, Energized For Excellence and Energized For STEM, have paid $14.5 million in rent and $10.1 million in management fees over the past six years to a company owned by their top employer, Lois Bullock.

HISD officials said the transactions were legal and met requirements of the districts contracts with the two groups, though some trustees have argued they represent a conflict-of-interest.

jacob.carpenter@chron.com
Vodacom recently launched its 5G mobile network in South Africa, offering local customers fixed broadband packages and smartphone contracts.

The mobile operator rolled out its 5G network to 20 sites across the country, and stated it has plans to expand the 5G networks reach in 2021.

Having a live network is a lot better for the engineers to develop key learnings on it, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub told MyBroadband.

He said Vodacoms plan for 5G in 2020 is to learn from its current deployment and understand the process required to roll out the technology to a wider area.

This makes Rain and Vodacom the only two major mobile operators with consumer-facing 5G networks in South Africa.

Telkom and MTN have previously said they plan to roll out 5G networks in South Africa, however, and MyBroadband spoke to these networks about how their plans are progressing.

MTN

MTN said its network continues to be modernised in preparation for the launch of 5G in South Africa.

The company previously stated it plans to launch its commercial 5G network this year, but added that the timing of its launch would depend on the ICASA spectrum auction process.

MTN has continued to pioneer the use of 5G technology within the country and continues to upgrade its network, MTN said.

We have proactively been modernising our radio network to be 5G ready specifically the transmission and core networks that are an integral part of a 5G network. Our core network has been upgraded to be 3GPP Release 15 compliant as part of 5G.

MTN added that it has been looking at ways to dynamically use its current spectrum to deliver both 4G and 5G connectivity.

Our core network was upgraded in 2019 to be 3GPP Release 15 compliant as part of 5G trials weve been running, MTN said.

Since then weve been looking at the opportunity to dynamically use spectrum for 4G and 5G in the same mobile band.

We are looking forward to the launch of 5G technology on our network in the coming weeks, MTN said.

Telkom

Telkom told MyBroadband that the launch of a 5G network in South Africa was still on its roadmap.

Telkom has been planning 5G introduction for a while and exploring commercial use cases beyond just high speed-broadband, the network said.

We invested in our next generation Packet-enabled Optical Transport Networks (POTN) and we see the rollout of GPON based fibre networks as part of a well-rounded, high-speed broadband ecosystem.

The company said that more spectrum is needed to launch a 5G network in the most optimal manner, though.

It added that the current distribution of spectrum creates problems with competition which ICASA should resolve.

It is our view that sufficient spectrum is needed to deploy an optimal 5G network, Telkom said.

For example, 100MHz of spectrum in the 3.5GHz [band] is needed per licensee.

The 3.5GHz band has only 200MHz in total (only 116 MHz available), which creates serious competition obstacles that ICASA must resolve, the company said.

Now read: Rain and Vodacom 5G vs MTN and Telkom LTE
India is now offering white rice for around $390-$400 per tonne compared with more than $450 for other countries, exporters said.

Mumbai: Malaysia has contracted to import a record 100,000 tonnes of rice from India for shipment this month and next, four industry officials told Reuters, in a further sign of improving trade relations between the countries after a diplomatic spat.

The first such purchase this year is already nearly twice the average annual volume of rice Malaysia has imported from India in the last five years, as rival suppliers such as Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia placed temporary curbs on exports to save the grain for themselves during the coronavirus crisis.

Malaysias purchases would help trim rice stockpiles in India, the worlds biggest exporter of the commodity.

After a long time, Malaysia is making substantial purchases from India, BV Krishna Rao, president of Indias Rice Exporters Association, told Reuters.

The Southeast Asian countrys imports from India could rise to 200,000 tonnes this year after the latest deals, Rao and officials from three other firms said.

Malaysias Ministry of Agriculture and Food Industry did not respond to a request for comment.

Malaysia bought around 53,000 tonnes per year on average from India in the past five years, according to data from the Indian commerce ministry. Total sales to Malaysia was a record 86,292 tonnes last year.

Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak

India is now offering white rice for around $390-$400 per tonne compared with more than $450 for other countries, exporters said.

That is making buying lucrative from India, said Nitin Gupta, vice president of trading company Olam Indias rice business.

Restriction imposed on exports by Myanmar, Vietnam and Cambodia could have prompted Malaysias state-linked rice importer Bernas to source supplies from India, said Himanshu Agarwal, executive director at Satyam Balajee, Indias biggest rice exporter.

Vietnam, the third-largest rice supplier, fully resumed exports this month, after halting sales from late March and limiting supply in April to make sure it has sufficient food during the pandemic.

The rice deals come against the backdrop of a massive jump in recent imports by Malaysia of other commodities such as sugar from India, the biggest buyer of Malaysian palm oil.

India early this year restricted imports of Malaysian palm oil as a retaliation for then Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamads repeated criticism of New Delhis domestic policies affecting the countrys Muslim minority.

Mahathir resigned in February as his coalition collapsed, and since then the countries have worked to rebuild their ties.

Both economics and diplomacy have played out here, an Indian official with knowledge of Malaysia-India ties said on the condition of anonymity, referring to the recent uptick in deals.

And when this palm oil thing came in, things sort of fell in place for India, the official said, referring to how Indias tightening of palm import restrictions led to Malaysia signing other deals with the South Asian country.

Malaysia is the worlds second-biggest producer and exporter of the vegetable oil after Indonesia, and Indias restrictions had badly affected its sales.
A mystery man's night at the museum has landed him in hot water with NSW Police.

In the early hours of last Sunday morning, the man broke into the Australian Museum in Sydney's CBD and was captured on CCTV cameras wandering around the exhibits, police say.

The man was captured on CCTV camera taking a selfie with his head inside a dinosaur skull. Credit:NSW Police

He was filmed taking a selfie with his head inside a dinosaur skull. He put on a cowboy hat, which he found on a coat stand, and walked through the museum's darkened corridors.

For 40 minutes the man "toured" the facility, taking photographs, rifling through drawers, and looking through storage spaces.
Chotubhai Makan, a Gandhian enthusiast and the last surviving person in South Africa to have witnessed Mahatma Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930, has died at the age of 96.

Makan, who died on Thursday, was also a well-known Gujarati leader in South Africa and spent his entire life in the service of the community in various capacities, including serving as chairman of the Hindu Seva Samaj of the old Transvaal province and on a number of religious, cultural and educational bodies of the community.

He also played an instrumental role in attempts to revive the Tolstoy Farm, once a thriving commune near Johannesburg, started by Gandhi during his stay in the city.

He was the last surviving person in South Africa to have witnessed Mahatma Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930, protesting against the steep tax imposed by the British on salt.

Makan frequently recalled at public celebrations of Gandhi's life in South Africa how he was just six years old when he accompanied his mother as thousands lined the streets of India to watch Gandhi and his associates undertake the march in protest against British colonial rule in the country.

"That incident and an explanation by his mother about Gandhi's role in India's independence set Makan on a lifelong path of becoming a Gandhian enthusiast, said a long-time friend and neighbour, Jivan Ramjee.

"At public gatherings, Makan would always bring along some of his archives of articles and photographs amassed over decades about Gandhian activities in South Africa, which were keenly browsed by the younger generation," Ramjee added.

Makan also related a story about how he had been tasked with the responsibility of returning to India the original ladder used by Gandhi to reach his bed in a loft at one of the places where he stayed in Johannesburg. It was found during the 1960's by the new owners of a house.

The ladder had been kept at the old Gandhi Hall in central Johannesburg that was built by the Samaj at the turn of the last century before it was expropriated by the apartheid-era white minority government five decades ago when the thriving Indian community around the area were forcibly resettled in the township of Lenasia, some 30 km away.

Makan was cremated in Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon in a ceremony attended only by some of his many relatives, as the current lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic allows a maximum of 50 people to attend a funeral.

He leaves his wife Hema, four children, and numerous grand- and great grandchildren.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Wash. allows 1-on-1 Bible studies during COVID-19 pandemic after lawsuit

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Attorneys for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee told a federal judge last week that the state can't enforce a ban on one-on-one Bible studies as it faces legal action over a stay-at-home order that prohibits faith-based gatherings of any size.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Joshua Freed, who has held one-on-one Bible classes while respecting social distancing standards, is now in the clear to hold Bible studies at his home.

An attorney for Inslee told Freed and a federal court last Friday that the government had agreed to allow him to resume in-person Bible studies on a one-on-one basis.

Freed, a former mayor of Bothell, has held weekly Bible studies at his home for over two years. He said that moving the studies online is not a substitute for in-person meetings.

I stared down the Governor and he blinked, Freed wrote in a tweet. After more than two weeks of stalling and 146 pages of legalese, Inslee was forced to concede (under pointed questioning by a federal judge) that he cannot enforce his own order banning religious gathering regardless of size.

Freed is represented by the religious freedom legal nonprofit First Liberty Institute and an attorney with the Bothell-based North Creek Law Firm.

Mark Lamb, the founder of North Creek Law, said in a statement that religious community and one-on-one Bible study is essential to many people of faith.

We are grateful that, in this challenging time for our country, Gov. Inslee was willing to concede that the ban does not apply to Joshua Freeds home Bible study, Lamb said.

On March 23, Inslee issued Proclamation 20-25, an amended version of an earlier proclamation aimed at having people stay home to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Among other things, the proclamation barred all people in Washington state from leaving their homes or participating in social, spiritual and recreational gatherings of any kind regardless of the number of participants.

Additionally, the proclamation barred all non-essential businesses in Washington state from conducting business, within the limitations provided herein.

All people in Washington state shall immediately cease participating in all public and private gatherings and multi-person activities for social, spiritual and recreational purposes, regardless of the number of people involved, except as specifically identified herein, continued the proclamation.

Such activity includes, but is not limited to, community, civic, public, leisure, faith-based, or sporting events; parades; concerts; festivals; conventions; fundraisers; and similar activities. This prohibition also applies to planned wedding and funeral events.

The order included an exemption for any activities, including faith-based ones, solely including those people who are part of a single household or residential living unit.

According to First Liberty Institute, the state government did not respond to two requests by the legal group for an exemption for one-on-one Bible studies.

In response, Freed sought a temporary restraining order from the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington that could allow him to hold the in-person studies.

First Liberty Executive General Counsel Hiram Sasser said in a statement that he considered the ban an outrageous overreach that stifles religious liberty and violates the First Amendment.

The Constitution forbids the government from singling out religious Americans for restrictions that are not imposed on other entities, stated Sasser.



According to The Seattle Times, Freed has dropped his request for a court order but his larger lawsuit against Inslee's order banning religious gatherings will continue.
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The Plastic Packaging market size is anticipated to reach USD 416.2 billion by 2026. In 2017, the bottles segment dominated the global market, in terms of revenue. Asia-Pacific is expected to be the leading contributor to the global market revenue during the forecast period. A significant increase in disposable income, changing lifestyles, and improving living standards have increased the demand for food products, consumer electronics, and retail products among others, which supports the market growth.

Initiatives by market players to offer innovative products in the market, communicate brand values, and create brand differentiation also drive the market growth. Other driving factors include growing middle class population, and increasing penetration of e-commerce platforms. The significant growth in e-commerce and rising consumer demand for consumer goods has resulted in growth in packaging segments such as protective packaging, flexible pouches and innovative bottles. Increasing demand from developing nations, and technological advancements are factors expected to provide numerous growth opportunities to the market players during the forecast period.

Request for a sample of this research report @ https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/plastic-packaging-market/request-for-sample

Large brands are focusing on personalized and customized plastic packaging to create an impact on consumers and enhance brand awareness. Packaging enables companies to differentiate brands and offer personalization. Packaging can provide links to information about the product, both enhancing the product and providing details about its provenance. Plastic packaging enables enhancing of brand power for global brands and offers an effective method to compete with private label and emerging local players. Growth in digitalization offers consumers access to vast and detailed information. Communicating brand values effectively and enabling product differentiation is a major factor driving the growth of the plastic packaging industry.

Asia-Pacific generated the highest revenue in the plastic packaging market in 2018, and is expected to lead the global market throughout the forecast period. The increasing population in the region coupled with growing disposable income has increased the sale of food and beverages, apparel, and consumer goods, driving the market growth. Consumers in the region are increasingly opting for packaging that is easy to use and convenient to transport. Smaller, lighter and easily disposable packaging is being used to make consumption-on-the-go easier. The growing healthcare, retail, and pharmaceutical industries in countries such as China, Japan, and India support the market growth.

Browse for full research summary: https://www.polarismarketresearch.com/industry-analysis/plastic-packaging-market

The well-known companies profiled in the report include Mondi Group, Berry Plastics Corporation, Sonoco Products Company, Amcor Limited, DS Smith plc, Bemis Company, Inc., NatureWorks LLC, Consolidated Container Company, Reynolds Group Holdings Limited, and Alpla Werke Alwin Lehner GmbH & Co. KG. These companies launch new products and collaborate with other players in the global plastic packaging industry to innovate and launch new products to meet the increasing needs and requirements of consumers.

Plastic Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Type Rigid Plastic Packaging Flexible Plastic Packaging

Plastic Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Product Bags Cans Bottles Pouches Others

Plastic Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by End-User Food and Beverage Healthcare Pharmaceutical Retail Personal and Home Care Others

Plastic Packaging Market Size and Forecast, 2018-2026 by Region North America U.S. Canada Europe Germany UK France Italy Spain Belgium Russia Netherlands Rest of Europe Asia-Pacific China India Japan Korea Singapore Malaysia Indonesia Thailand Philippines Rest of Asia-Pacific Latin America Brazil Mexico Argentina Rest of LATAM Middle East & Africa UAE Saudi Arabia South Africa Rest of MEA



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A probe is under way into why a hospital failed to report well over 200 positive cases of the coronavirus diagnosed since mid-March until yesterday - causing a big jump in newly diagnosed figures just days before Monday's easing of lockdown.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said he was only informed yesterday of the large batch of cases from the hospital, which he did not name.

It comes as two more healthcare workers have died, bringing their death toll to seven.

Covid-19 is a notifiable disease and it is essential for accurate surveillance and detection of any worrying patterns in the spread of the virus that cases are reported as quickly as possible.

The delayed reporting from the hospital led to a total of 426 new cases being reported yesterday - much higher than in recent days.

Yesterday's cases were also driven by large outbreak of infection in a meat plant in the south of the country.

Dr Holohan said he will write to all hospitals to remind them of the necessity to promptly report cases of the virus to allow for proper surveillance.

"There is an obligation to make those notifications," he said. He did not believe deaths at the hospital from the virus were not reported and said the local occupational service would have been responsible for tracing contacts of confirmed cases.

There are now 23,827 reported cases of the infection so far. Another 10 people died from the virus, pushing the total to 1,506.

Dr Holohan said the National Public Health Emergency Team has made recommendations to the Government on the start of phase one of easing the lockdown and this will include the use of face coverings in certain circumstances.

Prof Philip Nolan of Maynooth University, chairman of the team advising on the patterns of the virus, said: "All indicators of the spread of Covid-19 are decreasing, including the average number of cases per day, number of people in hospital and ICU, admissions to ICU and number of reported deaths per day.

"This is reinforced by our estimate reproduction number which is currently stable between 0.4 and 0.6.

"We will be monitoring this figure and the overall number of infections in the population very closely over the coming weeks."

The average number of daily deaths over the past three weeks had fallen from 33 to 21, to around 13 this week.

There are now 58 patients in intensive care compared with 140 at its height, added.

Earlier yesterday HSE chief Paul Reid said it is promising a three-day turnaround for coronavirus tests and tracing from next week in all but a small number of complex cases.

It has the capacity to carry out 15,000 tests a day. People who get a negative result will be told in less than or equal to two days, he said.

For those who test positive it will take three days to begin tracing their contacts who might have been exposed to the virus.

Mr Reid said only 3pc of cases are positive so out of 12,000 cases 450 people would have the virus.

Most of those are straightforward when tracing their contacts but there are complex cases such as people without English, nursing home residents or patients in intensive care which take longer to track down.

The system is currently hampered by blockages including reliance on manual process and the problem of some computers not talking each other.

Asked about plans to reopen creches and the collapse of the in-house childminding scheme for healthcare workers, Dr Holohan indicated that the team may consider if this should happen earlier than the planned six weeks timeline in the roadmap to exit lockdown.

He said he was very sensitive to the challenge for parents and how it was having an impact on going out to work.

"We will continue to assess the whole question ," he added, saying it would depend on the path of the infection.

He said the roadmap is "a living document" and not rigid.

Asked about reliance of childminders in the home, which is in breach of advice, he said he would not criticise people and overall there was a high level of compliance but he was aware that following advice was putting a strain on people.

Asked about correspondence from HSE chief Paul Reid showing tensions over the announcement by the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) about the need to carry out 100,000 tests a week, and the failure to give the HSE notice, he said there can be "communications challenges".

The plan for 100,000 tests was discussed by the expert group at their meeting weeks ago and communicated to the HSE around the same time, he said.

Dr Colm Henry, HSE chief clinical adviser, said it would be "implausible" to think there are no tensions within Nphet or between Nphet, given the "real time, tough" decisions to be made about a new virus.
The Diputacion provincial authority is to spend 233 million euros before the end of this year on its own-style Marshall Plan for economic recovery and employment in province.

The four parts of the plan Cash injections for local councils - 70 million euros. Concept: Town halls will receive money to carry out works; of the 18.8 million euros as yet unpaid under the Concertation Plan, 17 million will be given to places considered in most urgent need. Municipalities with over 5,000 inhabitants will be exempt from paying their annual fees to the provincial consortiums, which will provide a saving of six million euros. Infrastructure works and hotel subsidies -65 million euros. Concept: To reactivate the construction sector, infrastructure projects will be carried out, roads will be repaired, projects such as the Senda Litoral coastal path will continue and rural development work will be facilitated. For the tourism sector, as well as the 10.8 million euros already planned for promotion, there will be 2.5 million to subsidise hotel stays. Help for families and vulnerable people - 20.6 million euros. Concept: To assist the most vulnerable families, individuals and groups, the Malaga Plan will include 20.6 million euros for social policies, including 17.7 million to reinforce social services, homes and domestic assistance. There will be another 1.2 million euros to support the cultural industry and creatives in Malaga. Companies and the self-employed - 19.5 million euros. Concept: To try to kickstart employment, 19.5 million euros will be allocated to help businesses and the self-employed with liquidity. Most of this will aim to boost employment, training and on promoting local products.

The money will be used to support the most vulnerable, assist companies and the self-employed with liquidity, help local councils and assist workers.

This is the Diputacion's most ambitious programme so far, and a "historic" commitment to tackling the effects of the pandemic, said its president Francisco Salado during the presentation, which was also attended by the first and second vice-presidents, Juan Carlos Maldonado and Margarita del Cid.

The money is coming from three sources: 60 million euros will be from the Diputacion's surplus, the provincial tax office and the fire, waste and water consortia. Salado said he is confident the national government will authorise councils to use their surpluses, although he is concerned at the lack of response from Madrid to this request so far.

The second source of funds is a 28-million-euro modification to the budget, to be debated next week. The plan is to change projects which have not been carried out or are no longer considered a priority. The third consists of 145.4 million euros which is already available this year for employment, social assistance and the productive sectors.

Salado also stressed that the Diputacion, which principally provides pooled support services to villages and smaller towns in Malaga province, would work with the tourism sector. It would reject any attempts by the government to discriminate against the Costa del Sol in terms of assistance or measures to alleviate the crisis.
TV actor Rashami Desai has opened up about facing challenges while trying to lose her weight. Asked about the biggest challenge she faces as an actor, she claimed it was maintaining her physique.

Rashami told Times of India in an interview, The most challenging part about being an actress, is maintaining my body all the time. I have a tendency of gaining weight very easily, so that is the biggest challenge I face. And for an actor, it is important to look good and fit on screen.

Also read: Karan Johars kids Roohi, Yash perform to Ladki Aankh Maarey, fan says they have better moves than Tiger Shroff. Watch

In another interview recently, Rashami also opened up about being brought up by a single mother and revealed that she loved dancing but her mother Rasila Desai could not afford the fee of Rs 350 for her dance class.

Rashami participated in Bigg Boss 13 last year and was one of the finalists on Salman Khans reality show, which ended earlier this year. She ended her relationship with ex-boyfriend Arhaan Khan while on the show. It was after shows host Salman Khan revealed that Arhaan had a child from his previous marriage and had kept Rashami in the dark in this regard.

Currently, Rashami is seen on popular supernatural show Naagin 4. About taking up the hit serial, she had told Hindustan Times earlier, This is very different from what I have done - the characters that I have played. Shooting for a supernatural serial is also very different.

She had also shot for the show before lockdown was announced late March and all shootings were halted. She had then said, We started at 7 and packed up around 8/8:30 because of the coronavirus threat. Thank God people are taking it all very seriously now.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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TSX: GPR

VANCOUVER, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Great Panther Mining Limited (TSX:GPR; NYSE-A:GPL) ("Great Panther" or "the Company") is saddened to report a fatality has occurred at its Guanajuato Mine Complex (GMC) in Mexico. The accident occurred today at approximately 9.30am CDT in the Rayas underground mine at GMC.

The deceased, age 29, was a contract electrician at GMC. The accident involved a single motor vehicle travelling down a decline during care and maintenance activities. Another Great Panther contractor in the same vehicle was injured in the accident and has been transported to a local hospital, where he is in stable condition.

Great Panther personnel immediately followed mine rescue protocols, and authorities arrived at the mine to review the site of the accident. The area has been barricaded from entry and will only be re-opened once a full internal investigation is completed.

Great Panther extends its sincere condolences and is supporting the family in this time of need. The Company places the safety and well-being of its personnel and communities as its highest priority and is working with authorities to conduct a full investigation into the cause of the accident.

"We are extremely saddened by this tragic accident and extend our deepest condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of the deceased", stated Great Panther President and CEO Rob Henderson. "Safety is a core value at Great Panther and we will thoroughly investigate this accident and take remedial action."

ABOUT GREAT PANTHER

Great Panther Mining Limited is a Vancouver-based intermediate gold and silver mining and exploration company. Great Panther's operations include the Tucano Gold Mine in Brazil, and the Topia Mine and Guanajuato Mine Complex, comprising the San Ignacio and Guanajuato mines, in Mexico. It also owns the Coricancha Mine in Peru which is currently on care and maintenance. Great Panther trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange trading under the symbol GPR, and on the NYSE American under the symbol GPL.

SOURCE Great Panther Mining Limited

Related Links

www.greatpanther.com


The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia has made the following announcement about the citizens of Armenia located at the Upper Lars border checkpoint:

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs informs that there are currently about 35 citizens of Armenia who have come from Russia to the Upper Lars border checkpoint and want to return to Armenia with their own cars.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia emphasized that, during the lockdown declared by the Georgian authorities as a result of the spread of the novel coronavirus, the Russian-Georgian border remains closed for foreign citizens.

Taking this into consideration, the Consulate General of Armenia in Rostov has offered a solution, that is, the organizing of the return of the citizens of Armenia through the upcoming Sochi-Yerevan and Krasnodar-Yerevan flights and cover the airfares of women and children and help maintain the cars of the citizens of Armenia in specially allocated parking lots. The citizens of Armenia at the border checkpoint have refused the only solution that is offered for now and demand the organizing of their return to Armenia in their personal cars.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Armenia emphasizes that the citizens of Armenia can return from Russia to Armenia in their personal cars only after the Georgian government annuls the decision restricting the entry of foreign citizens.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:19:44|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Ties between China and Africa remain close despite the coronavirus pandemic and would become even closer once the crisis is contained, a Kenyan scholar has said.

Gerrishon Ikiara, a senior economics lecturer at the University of Nairobi, told Xinhua in a recent interview that the COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted trade and economic activities between the two sides, as China is an important source of key raw materials and consumer goods for many African countries.

"With the globally imposed restrictions on passenger and cargo transportation, both exports and imports between China and Africa have been heavily disrupted," said Ikiara.

Data from China's General Administration of Customs showed that between January and April, trade value between China and Africa in terms of U.S. dollars declined by 16.8 percent year-on-year, with China's exports to Africa down by 9.3 percent and its imports from Africa plunging 24.4 percent.

Ikiara said Kenya's trade with China has grown rapidly in recent years with imports from the Asian nation currently accounting for 23 percent of Kenya's total goods shipped in, up from 13 percent in 2013.

The expert added that Chinese companies have become main contractors on major projects in Africa ranging from railway systems to geothermal and mining activities, with China supplying the required equipment, skilled personnel and relevant technologies.

"It is expected that when the pandemic is effectively controlled worldwide, the trajectory of rapid trade in a wide range of products and services including tourism and consultation will be resumed," said Ikiara. "Chinese individuals like Jack Ma have been active in donating equipment and materials to assist African countries to manage the pandemic."

The virus, he said, has had a great impact on African countries, many of which have weak health systems.

Ikiara noted that existing close ties between China and Africa would strengthen after the pandemic through platforms like the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation.

"The friendship has already been experienced in the ongoing assistance to African countries by China in form of medicines, key equipment like ventilators, and personnel. Even in the earlier Ebola outbreak which hit Africa, especially West Africa, Chinese assistance in personnel, medical equipment and medicines was outstanding and Africa has continued to show great appreciation," he said.

"The warm and friendly relationship between Africa and China in the last few decades will most likely be stronger in the post-COVID-19 era. Many people in Africa regard the continued and strengthened relationship between Africa and China as critical and will need to be nurtured in the years and decades to come," he said.

Ikiara said the numbers of COVID-19 infections and deaths are still low in Africa compared to those in Asia and Europe, but figures may rise in the coming months depending on Africa's response.

"This could pose a major challenge to the continent in view of the continental stock of essential medical facilities (and) related health infrastructure in general," he said.

Africa's confirmed COVID-19 cases stood at 72,336 as of Thursday morning, with the continent recording 2,475 deaths and 25,268 recoveries, according to the Africa Center for Disease Control and Prevention. Enditem
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Friday gave theme parks the green light to submit their plans for reopening to the state.

DeSantis said the parks should submit the date they believe they can safely resume operations.
An Indiana state representative has been accused of posting a racist photo on Facebook  for the second time.

Jim Lucas, a Republican, who has served as a lawmaker in Indiana since 2012, posted a meme to his Facebook page, that showed black children in diapers dancing, with the post captioned: We gon get free money!

The meme was posted to Facebook hours before the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, revealed a new coronavirus aid package worth $3trn, including hazard pay for essential workers.

Democrat Jeannine Lee Lake, who is running against Greg Pence  older brother of vice-president and former Indiana governor Mike Pence  in the Indiana 6th Congressional District, said Mr Lucass post does not reflect the beliefs of the state.

Ms Lake, who is black, said: It makes me want to cry. And thats the truth. Im just amazed. Hes a leader in our state. This is not Indiana. Its not the best of Indiana, certainly. And its sickening.

Recommended Nearly 900 workers at US meat plant test positive for coronavirus

The post was also criticised by Jake Oakman, Indianas Republican spokesperson, who distanced the party from the comments.

Anyone who has followed Jim Lucas for any amount of time knows he speaks only for himself. His views are entirely his alone, he said.

Indiana house leader Todd Huston released a statement that echoed Mr Oakmans criticism: The post is unacceptable and I dont condone it.

Mr Lucas said he found the picture from a meme generator online, and felt that the language used reflected how people talk, according to the Associated Press.

The Republican added to the Indianapolis Star that he does not believe there is anything wrong with the image used.

I dont see anything wrong with it. People who want to find racism are going to find racism in anything, he said.

Mr Lucas was also accused of racism last year, when he posted a picture of gallows with two nooses, under a story about a black man pleading guilty to rape.

At the time, the lawmaker said that he wanted capital punishment to be used for the man, Marquise Dozier, and added that he had previously used the picture when referring to white criminals.

He told Fox59 in Indiana: If thats how they view it, there is nothing I can do about it. That was not my intent.

Additional reporting by Associated Press.
Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson for the Ministry of National Defense (MND) of the People's Republic of China (PRC), answers reporters' questions at a regular press conference on March 26, 2020. (Photo: mod.gov.cn)

BEIJING, May 15 -- China firmly opposes arms sales to Taiwan by any country and urges France to annul its projects of selling weapons to Taiwan immediately, Senior Colonel Ren Guoqiang, spokesperson of China's Ministry of National Defense said on Friday.

Ren made the remarks when asked by reporters for comments on media reports on French government's plan for selling weapons to Taiwan.

He stressed that there is only one China in the world, and Taiwan is an integral part of China. China firmly objects to any country selling weapons to and conducting military interactions with Taiwan, Ren said.

In case of further damages to the relations between China and France and their militaries, Ren urged the French side to withdraw its plan promptly.

"Chinese military has firm will, full confidence and adequate capability to thwart foreign forces' interferences of all manifestations and 'Taiwan independence' attempts, safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity, and protect regional peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait," Ren stated.
A southern Oregon gym teacher was arrested Thursday on suspicion of having an inappropriate sexual relationship with a student, police say.

South Medford High School physical education teacher Noah Berman is accused of second- and third-degree sex abuse, luring a minor and tampering with a witness, according to Medford police.

Police said they got an anonymous report through the SafeOregon program late last month that indicated Berman was in an inappropriate sexual relationship with a girl who attends his school.

The Medford School District also received the tip. Berman, 30, was put on administrative leave two days later.

A detective determined the relationship had been going on since November and ultimately became sexual. Detectives learned much of their communication came through Snapchat, a social media app.

Detectives served a search warrant Thursday at Bermans home and seized possible evidence. He was arrested and booked into the Jackson County jail but was no longer listed as being in custody Friday.

Hes accused of tampering with a witness because he told the girl not to disclose their relationship to investigators, according to police.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Amid COVID-19 lockdown, Union Minister and BJP leader Dharmendra Pradhan on Friday lashed out at the Congress and said that it should be sensitive towards issues being faced by migrant labourers. Congress-ruled states are not taking back migrant labourers even as they are returning from other states. I do not wish to name them. But Congress should be sensitive towards migrant labourers. They should instruct their state governments to shoulder their responsibility, to receive and send people in a proper way.

Congress should not indulge in petty politics at this juncture, the minister told ANI. Pradhan was responding to Congress remarks that the migrant population has been left to the mercy of God. Responding to Congress claims that under the Centres scheme migrant labourers did not get anything, he said, The two-month free ration packages, is it not going to migrant labourers? The Finance Minister yesterday said that those who will be going back to states will be getting MNREGS jobs. Is that not meant for migrants? Reverse migration has started in some parts of the country. The poorest of the poor are at the epicentre of decisions by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Minister also responded to former Union Finance Minister and Congress leader Chidambarams tweets in which he referred to comments made by MSME Minister Nitin Gadkari and Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

Also Read: Coronavirus update: Positive cases in India nears 82,000 mark, toll hits 2,649, total 3,967 cases recorded in last 24 hours

Congress should be sensitive towards the migrant labourers&instruct Congress-ruled states to shoulder their responsibility. Congress shouldn't indulge in petty politics at this juncture. The poorest of the poor is at the epicentre of decisions by PM: Union Minister D Pradhan pic.twitter.com/MevQyzgHJ4  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

Minister Gadkari says that governments and PSUs owe Rs 5 lakh crore as unpaid dues to MSMEs. Minister Sitharaman says she will offer a collateral-free loan of Rs 3 lakh crore to MSMEs (numbering 45 lakhs). So, who is the lender and who is the borrower?! Chidambaram had tweeted on Friday. Will the two ministers settle their accounts first and let MSMEs save themselves without governments help? he added sarcastically. Reacting to the tweets, Pradhan said, Everyone knows in what condition he had left the countrys economy while his party ruled the country.

For all the latest National News, download NewsX App
Demonstrations in Montenegro continued on Thursday, a day after police arrested protesters demanding the release of priests jailed for leading a religious procession during lockdown measures.

Police detained dozens following clashes at rallies on Wednesday, as anger flared over the detainment of eight Serbian Orthodox Church priests.

Twenty-six officers were injured during the unrest in the towns of Niksic and Pljevlja, police said.

One of the injured policemen has been hospitalized, in a statement that said around 60 people were detained in several towns.

Prime Minister Dusko Markovic in a televised address on Thursday condemned the clashes.

"There is no reasonable explanation or justification for such behavior," Markovic said.

The protests followed the arrest of the Serbian Orthodox Church priests who had led a procession Tuesday that a few thousand people attended without wearing face masks or respecting distancing rules.

On Thursday evening, the protesters in Niksic stood on the pavement without blocking traffic .

They did not appear to wear face masks and stood close to each other despite the rules against the new coronavirus.

In neighboring Serbia, a few hundred also gathered in Belgrade, holding Serbian flags, demanded the release of the eight priests.

The incidents have added to tensions between the government and the Serbian Orthodox Church in Montenegro, which earlier this year organized months-long protests against a religious law that critics say would strip the church of its property.

Montenegrin authorities have denied this would happen.

Large gatherings are still banned in Montenegro as part of efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

The detained priests are facing charges of violating health regulations during the virus outbreak by organizing the procession.
China's economic activities continued to normalize as the latest data on industrial output, retail sales and investment showed across-the-board improvements, but the recovery still faces uncertainties and challenges from the global spread of the novel coronavirus.



The industrial sector was among the quickest to rebound from the impact of the virus, with the value-added industrial output returning to growth last month, the first expansion since the virus outbreak as factory activities recovered amid easing containment measures.

The value-added industrial output went up 3.9 percent year on year in April, rebounding from the 1.1-percent drop in March and 13.5-percent slump seen in the first two months of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Friday.

Adding to the recovery signs, the index measuring services production fell 4.5 percent last month, narrowing from 9.1 percent in March, while retail sales of consumer goods went down 7.5 percent, recovering from a drop of 15.8 percent a month earlier.

Fixed-asset investment declined 10.3 percent in the first four months, with the fall narrowing by 5.8 percentage points compared with the decrease in the first three months.

With consolidated epidemic control efforts and the restoration of economic activities, major indices have sustained the improving momentum since March, the NBS said in a statement.

"But it is still challenging for the economy to wipe out the severe shocks incurred by the epidemic," said NBS spokesperson Liu Aihua at a news briefing in responding to a query about when the Chinese economy could return to growth.

China's economy shrank by 6.8 percent year on year in the first quarter (Q1) as the virus outbreak dealt a huge blow to economic activity. While the epidemic has been basically brought under control at home, the global spread of the virus and collapsing external demand will complicate the future recovery of the world's second-largest economy.

Despite the uncertainties, Liu stressed confidence in the economy as the fundamentals and the trend of upward momentum in the long term have not changed, citing the country's economic scale, strong resilience, emerging new drivers and flexible macro policies as among the major factors underpinning growth.

As the virus has continued to spread overseas, China will timely adjust its response policies to push the full normalization of its economy, Liu said.

Facing the economic shocks from the epidemic, China has increased policy support for the monetary and fiscal fronts to restart the economy and help businesses, especially small ones, to tide over difficulties.

Commenting on the data, Wen Bin, chief analyst at China Minsheng Bank, said the bottleneck in China's economic recovery has shifted from business and production resumption along the industry chain to yet-to-fully-recover demand.

Stronger macro policies should follow to spur the rebound in demand, including implementing further cuts to reserve requirement ratios and increasing the scale of local government bonds, Wen said.

In a research note ahead of the National People's Congress annual session scheduled to open on May 22, China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC), an investment bank, said it expects more flexible targets for economic growth and stronger counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy.

The CICC predicts that the deficit ratio will rise by 3 to 4 percentage points and stabilizing employment will likely be the top priority of government work in 2020.

Friday's data also showed China's job market remained generally stable in April, with the surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas standing at 6 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than that in March.




PHILIPSBURG:--- The French and Dutch Governments are currently having some issues with the border controls and who are allowed to cross the French and Dutch border announced Prime Minister Silveria Jacobs on Friday. Jacobs said that the French Prefet Sylvie Feucher (State Government) seems to be fearful because the Dutch side has more active cases on their sides while the French only has one active case.

Jacobs said that the Dutch side did extensive community testing and they have been open and transparent with the results. She said that two meetings were held this week and there was no fruitful outcome on the reopening of the borders. Jacobs highly differs from the concerns of the Prefet while the local government fully agrees with her government on who is allowed to cross the border. She said the police and her person have been issuing waivers constantly but persons on the Dutch side that have to cross over to the French side are not getting the same courtesy. Jacobs said that besides this hiccup all other cooperation with the French is moving smoothly. The discussions on the border will continue next week.

Chief Police Carl John said on Friday that the Dutch Law Enforcement is busy preparing to remove themselves from the borders and to allow free movement of people. John said that KPSM is currently working on plans on how to keep businesses safe as they deescalate on the lockdown. Chief John also called on everyone to remain focus and to maintain the guidelines as COVID-19 is not over.

Serology Testing.

SMN News asked the Prime Minister if the extra test kits she said was coming to St. Maarten two weeks ago arrived. Jacobs said the test kits are not rapid tests but they are serology tests that will soon be on St. Maarten. The Prime Minister said that the tests are already on Curacao and soon it will arrive on St. Maarten.

Dutch Proposal still be discussed

Jacobs said that the Dutch Government did not consider the proposal St. Maarten sent to the Kingdom Council of Ministers but made a proposal to the Government of St. Maarten which is more like a take it or leave it offer. Jacobs did not give divulge the contents of the proposal but said that she will after discussing the matter with the Council of Ministers and Parliament.

With regards to the unions that objected to the cost-cutting measures, Jacobs said that what the government proposed to the two active unions was much better than what the Kingdom Council of Ministers proposed. Jacobs said that the unions said they sent a proposal but the government has not yet received it, she said when it arrives government will peruse it. Besides the Prime Minister said that the proposal government made is what the government could afford she said that should government pay the vacation pay for civil servants certainly there will come a point when they would not be able to pay salaries. She said that the government has to assist workers that lost income and her government is doing everything possible to spread the pain for survival from the effects on COVID-19.

Preparations begin for 2020 Hurricane Season

Head of the Fire Department Clyde Richardson said while St. Maarten is dealing with the COVID-19 lockdown and its effects the Fire Department is busy making preparations for the 2020 Hurricane Season. Richardson said that based on projections this year hurricane season shows it will be an active season.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 22:33:41|Editor: huaxia

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A worker of the China Xuan Paper Co., Ltd. examines the quality of Xuan paper in Jingxian County, east China's Anhui Province, May 11, 2020. Xuan paper is a type of handmade paper known for its smooth surface and its ability to absorb water and moisten ink. It is originally produced in ancient China and used for both Chinese calligraphy and paintings. The traditional process of making Xuan paper, which involves over 100 steps, has been a UNESCO world intangible cultural heritage since 2009 and is still kept alive in Jingxian County to this day. (Xinhua/Han Xiaoyu)
Faith vs safety in burials: COVID-19 remains in dead bodies for 9 days says Centre

Dont prosecute employers who are unable to pay wage during lockdown: SC

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: The Supreme Court has ordered administrations not to prosecute employers.

The court said that administrations across India should not prosecute employers who are unable to pay the wages during the lockdown.

The Bench headed by Justice Nageswar Rao while staying the MHA circular said no coercive action should be taken until the Centre files its response next week.

The orders were made on a batch of petitions filed by industrial units saying that they have no means to pay since there is no production.

Lockdown 4.0 will be different from the other ones, says PM Modi

The court also sought the response from the Centre on this issue. Since the nation-wide lockdown was announced, several industrial units have remained shut. With no production, these units told the court that they have no means to pay.

The government is lifting restrictions in a graded manner owing to the COVID-19 situation. In its previous advisory, the government had allowed industrial units to open in the green zones. In many states, the industrial units are opening in a graded manner with staggered work force, owing to social distancing norms.
Lawyers for a Monaghan haulier, suspected of being "the ringleader" of an organised crime group who trafficked the 39 migrants found dead in a lorry container in Essex last year, have argued that many of the offences alleged against him occurred outside of UK territory.

However, counsel for the Minister for Justice today told the High Court extradition hearing that the legal submission of "extraterritoriality" was a complete red herring and the court should not engage in a fanciful debate as to whether other States had jurisdiction to try these offences.

British authorities are seeking the surrender of Ronan Hughes, 40, from Leitrim, Silverstream, Tyholland, Co Monaghan, to face 39 counts of manslaughter and one count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration.

The bodies of eight women and 31 men were found in an industrial park in Grays, Essex on October 23, 2019. The migrants had arrived in England last October on a ferry from Zeebrugge in Belgium and the youngest of the victims were two boys aged 15.

Mr Hughes, who owns a haulage firm, was arrested on the evening of April 20 at his home in Co Monaghan following the endorsement of a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) issued by the police in Essex and is fighting his proposed extradition to the UK through the Irish High Court.

Mr Hughes and his younger brother Christopher, 34, have been wanted in connection with the deaths since the beginning of the investigation, with Essex Police making an extraordinary live appeal last November for the siblings to hand themselves in.

Their trucking firm is based in Tyholland, about 7km from the Armagh border.

The haulier was joined by video-link from Cloverhill Prison today for the hearing. He is the second man from Northern Ireland to be arrested here on a European Arrest Warrant (EAW) as part of the Essex police investigation.

Counsel for the Minister for Justice, Ronan Kennedy SC, told Mr Justice Paul Burns that the manslaughter charges carry a maximum sentence of life imprisonment and the count of conspiracy to assist unlawful immigration has a maximum sentence of 14 years.

Opposing an application for his clients surrender to the UK today, Remy Farrell SC said that there is a distinct lack of clarity in the warrant as to whether the issuing State is asserting that the offences were extraterritorial or if they occurred in their territory.

It is a matter for this court to decide if the offences are extraterritorial, he added.

Mr Farrell said something can be both territorial and extraterritorial at the same time and there can be competing assertions of jurisdiction. The warrant seemed to be asserting that a certain extraterritorial position existed, he maintained.

The lawyer submitted that much of what was being alleged against his client had occurred outside the UK.

In reply, Mr Kennedy said that whilst section 44 of the European Arrest Warrant Act 2003 had given rise to difficulty in previous cases, most notably in the case of Ian Bailey, no difficulties arose in this instant.

The barrister said Mr Farrells legal submissions were "fundamentally misconceived" as they were built on the entirely incorrect premise that the UK was seeking to assert extraterritorial jurisdiction, where it was abundantly clear from the EAW that the offences had occurred within the UK. Mr Kennedy said this was in respect of both the manslaughter and conspiracy offences.

Mr Kennedy said Mr Farrells argument did not get off the starting blocks and he asked the court not to go down the rabbit hole of whether the offences were committed on the high seas or land but instead focus on what was actually stated in the EAW, applying the principles of mutual trust and confidence.

In respect of the manslaughter charges, Mr Kennedy said the UK maintained that these people died after the trailer entered its territory and it was nonsensical to suggest that it had occurred in a place other than the issuing State.

The fact multiple places are referred to in the warrant does not mean the offence is extraterritorial and the fact the acts occurred in other jurisdictions does not make the offence extraterritorial, he argued.

Referring to the conspiracy charge, the lawyer submitted that Mr Hughes, the alleged "ringleader of the conspiracy, had been present in the UK at the time and he personally conducted an act in furtherance of the conspiracy. He said the conspiracy was an unlawful act underpinning the offence of manslaughter.

Counsel said the extraterritorial submission was a complete red herring and the court should not concern itself with it. Furthermore, the court should not engage itself in a fanciful debate as to whether or not other States might have jurisdiction to try these offences, he concluded.

Mr Justice Burns remanded Mr Hughes in custody until June 12, when a judgment is expected to be delivered.

The warrant alleges that Mr Hughes had unlawfully killed 39 Vietnamese nationals who were found dead in the back of trailer in UK between October 22 and 24, 2019. It is alleged the migrants had been brought into the UK illegally by Mr Hughes and his co-conspirators.

It is also alleged that Mr Hughes had also conspired with others to facilitate the illegal entry of people including the 39 deceased persons into the UK between May 1, 2018 and October 24, 2019.

It is alleged that Mr Hughes "organised, paid for the travel and controlled the drivers who collected the migrants."

Evidence was given at the respondent's bail hearing that 200,000 had been frozen in 33 bank accounts linked to Mr Hughes and his family and that the accused had last year bought a 2019 BMW X5, valued at 108,000, which has since been seized by the Criminal Assets Bureau (CAB).

Counsel for the Minister for Justice previously submitted that Mr Hughes operated an international haulage business with extensive contacts abroad, used a Northern Ireland driving licence, has a detailed knowledge of ports, has a history of smuggling as well as access to extensive funds.
A rare signed photograph of Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight has sold at auction in the United States.

Signed memorabilia from the late Australian actor is 'incredibly rare' and highly sought after, collectors say.

The signed photo sold for US $10,236 in Boston on Thursday, which converts to more than AU $15,500.

Collector's item: A rare signed photo of Heath Ledger as the Joker in The Dark Knight has sold at auction for more than $15,500

The signature reads: 'To Daniel, Big smile! Heath.'

'Photos signed by Ledger as the Joker are incredibly rare and highly sought-after by cinephiles and comic book enthusiasts alike,' auction vice president Bobby Livingston said.

Heath died of a prescription drug overdose in 2008 at the age of 28.

Tragedy: Heath died of a prescription drug overdose in 2008 at the age of 28. Pictured on February 15, 2006 in Berlin, Germany

The Dark Knight was in post-production at the time of Heath's death, so few signed photographs of him in the Joker costume exist.

Heath received several posthumous nominations and awards for his performance.

He won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor, a Golden Globe in the same category, and the Best Actor International Award at the 2008 AACTAs.

Memorabilia: The Dark Knight was in post-production at the time of Heath's death, so few signed photographs of him in the Joker costume exist

He had also earned plaudits for his role as Ennis Del Mar in the 2005 film Brokeback Mountain, which won Best Film at the Golden Globes the following year.

Heath died from a cardiac arrest brought on by a drug overdose.

He is survived by his daughter Matilda, now 14, from his relationship with actress Michelle Williams.
13 of the Hottest Movie Sex Scenes in Cinema History

These NSFW Movie Sex Scenes Might as Well Live on Pornhub

Hearing the word sex can cause your ears to perk up and your nipples to get hard.

When it comes to watching actors have intercourse in movies, stumbling upon a scene in which two smoking hot, almost unfairly attractive people start going at it is like finding that coveted golden ticket in an unsuspecting chocolate bar  its even better when you have no idea it's ... coming. Even if its inclusion really has no place within the films plot, including sex is a surefire way to get your movie talked about, for better or worse. And as for what that sexual acts on-screen are supposed to entail, the rules are that there are no rules.

RELATED: Top 10 Female Sex Fantasies

Since everyones entitled to their own opinion, AskMen rounded up 13 movie sex scenes  in no particular order  we've deemed the hottest, from porking in public and drug-induced female fantasies to BDSM and someones very first time.

Risky Business (1983)

Directed by: Paul Brickman

Featured: Tom Cruise, Rebecca De Mornay

Sex act performed: Public sex, girl-on-top

The Chicago L isnt exactly the Ritz, but that didnt stop Joel and Lana from doing the nasty on a mostly-empty public transit car.

American Psycho (2000)

Directed by: Mary Harron

Featured: Christian Bale, Cara Seymour, Krista Sutton

Sex act performed: Threesome, doggy style, missionary, oral sex

Patrick Bateman cant help but show off his egotistical side while sleeping with two prostitutes he picks up off the street, truly paying the women no mind as he flexes while staring at himself in the mirror mid-penetration.

Team America: World Police (2004)

Directed by: Trey Parker

Featured: Trey Parker, Kristen Miller

Sex act performed: Missionary, girl-on-top, reverse cowgirl, doggy style, 69, rimming, oral sex

This sex scene actually had more graphic footage of puppets doing it before being cut down to hit the films current R rating.

Wild Things (1998)

Directed by: John McNaughton

Featured: Neve Campbell, Denise Richards

Sex act performed: Passionate French kissing

Despite there being no in-your-face sex acts performed, this wet-n-wild scene still goes down in history for being iconic in its own right. As for how the two ladies prepared for the big moment? We drank, Campbell told WWHL host Andy Cohen back in 2018.

Gone Girl (2014)

Directed by: David Fincher

Featured: Rosamund Pike, Neil Patrick Harris

Sex act performed: Oral sex, missionary, girl-on-top

A true climax in all senses of the word, Pikes twisted Amy Dunne (spoiler alert!) takes out Harris Desi Collings with a swift cut to the throat right as he puts his O-face on display. There could be worse ways to go, right?

Wet Hot American Summer (2001)

Directed by: David Wain

Featured: Bradley Cooper, Michael Ian Black

Sex act performed: Doggy style

Who wouldve thought that Academy Award nominee Bradley Coopers first role would have him bottoming for Michael Ian Black in a damp tool shed at summer camp? Odds are he certainly didnt.

Crank (2006)

Directed by: Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor

Featured: Jason Statham, Amy Smart

Sex act performed: Public sex, missionary, doggy style

When youre told the only way to keep your heart pumping is through non-stop excitement, whats a man to do? Have aggressive sex with your girlfriend in the middle of a crowded Los Angeles neighborhood, of course!

Black Swan (2010)



Directed by: Darren Aronofsky

Featured: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis

Sex act performed: Kissing, cunnilingus

Even with it actually being a substance-induced sex fantasy in the mind of Portmans character, this scene is just one of many that helped the actress earn an Oscar win at the 83rd Academy Awards.

Don Jon (2013)



Directed by: Joseph Gordon-Levitt

Featured: Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Scarlett Johansson

Sex act performed: Dry humping

Johansson might not want to do anything unless it means something, but her anything-but-sexual whisperings of night classes and meeting the fam in Gordon-Levitts ear while he dry humps her is still enough to make him blow his load right outside her apartment door.

Fifty Shades Series (2015-2018)



Directed by: Sam Taylor-Johnson, James Foley

Featured: Jamie Dornan, Dakota Johnson

Sex act performed: Spanking, whips, chains, bondage, various BDSM acts

What the Fifty Shades trilogy lacks in plot and character development, it makes up for in its in-your-face exploration of the BDSM-world. Nipple clamps, anal beads, straps, shibari ropes  you name it, they probably used it in one of the three films.

American Pie (1999)



Directed by: Paul and Chris Weitz

Featured: Thomas Ian Nicholas, Tara Reid

Sex act performed: Cunnilingus

To convince girlfriend Vicky (Reid) that hes not just using her as a way to lose his virginity before heading off to college, Kevin (Nicholas) uses a page from the sex bible hidden in his schools library to show her just how much he really cares. Too bad Vicky doesnt have a lock on her bedroom door, though.

Shame (2011)

Directed by: Steve McQueen

Featured: Michael Fassbender

Sex act performed: Public sex, oral sex, glory hole

After taking a beating on a city street, Fassbenders sex-crazed character continues his night out, ultimately landing deep inside a gay bar in the area. As the camera pans around, showing various men in various types of intercourse, a backwards hat-wearing man brings Fassbender in for a kiss, swiftly dropping to his knees in one of the films many explicit scenes that earned it a NC-17 rating.

Swimfan (2002)

Directed by: John Polson

Featured: Jesse Bradford, Erika Christensen

Sex act performed: Public sex, sex in water

Incessant flirtation by Madison (Christensen) leaves Ben (Bradford) with his guard way down, eventually giving into a spicy romp in the schools swimming pool. Unfortunately, Ben has a girlfriend, and Madison also happens to be a straight-up obsessive, murdering psychopath. Hope it was worth it, Ben!

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More than 4,000 people have put their names down on the waitlist at one Bondi pub, so desperate are Australians to get a taste of pre-COVID-19 normality.

Like many of its counterparts across Australia, The Corner House Hotel had to put its staff on JobKeeper and ask for a rent reduction, with its business ended by the strict lockdown.

But after NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian announced a slight lifting of restrictions at cafes, restaurants and pubs from 12am Friday, the hotel's owner Ben Siderowitz had an idea to get people back in the door.

At the cost of $100-a-head, 10 friends could book out the entire pub to themselves and in return get a $1,000 bar tab, a private bartender and unlimited woodfire pizza.

The first three slots for Friday, Saturday and Sunday were gone in just seven minutes, while a further eight slots - including some weekday sessions - went within hours.

A group of 10 incredibly eager Irish friends snapped up the first of the extra slots and began sipping on schooners on Friday at midday.

A group of 10 incredibly eager Irish mates paid $1000 to have The Corner House Hotel in Bondi to themselves on Friday, after COVID-19 restrictions were eased in New South Wales

The first three slots for Friday, Saturday and Sunday were gone in just seven minutes, while a further eight slots - including some weekday sessions - went within hours

The hotel's owner Ben Siderowitz (pictured) said that the pub had 4,000 on a waitlist for a slot at the pub

These three women were excited to share a pizza and a glass of wine at Bondi Beach on Friday

Mr Siderowitz said he could not believe the enormous reaction to his idea, which has since been copied by pubs and restaurants across the city - with the response much the same.

'I haven't slept in four days. I had to put up an out of office email so the notifications would stop, because they were coming day and night,' The Corner House boss told Daily Mail Australia.

'I didn't even think I was doing anything revolutionary, but everyone is just so thirsty and desperate to get out of the house.

'We started with just Friday and Saturday nights, and a Sunday session and thought: "Lets see if we can get three booked out". Well, they went within seven minutes.

'Now we've got seven days booked out, with double slots on four of those days and a further 4,000 people who have put their names down on the wait list if restrictions are eased further.'

In the Northern Territory, pubs and bars do not need to adhere to the same 10 person restrictions in place elsewhere.

With restrictions eased for the first time since March 23, excited Sky News reporter Matt Cunningham took his first sip live on air at Darwin's Beachfront Hotel.

'It's been a long time coming and it tastes pretty good,' he told the camera.

'That might be the first of many this afternoon.'

He was followed by the NT's Chief Minister Michael Gunner, who poured his first beer at midday and said: 'I think I've earned one and I think I lot of Territorians out there have earned a beer as well'.

Sky News reporter Matt Cunningham took his first sip live on air at Darwin's Beachfront Hotel as the clock struck midday, with restrictions on pubs and clubs in the Northern Territory eased

A long lunch was in order for some office workers in Sydney's CBD, who enjoyed a drink and some Asian food at Dumpling Bar Restaurant

While some pubs have taken the first opportunity to let patrons back inside, others such as The Livingstone in Petersham have kept their doors and windows firmly shut - at least for the time being

The Crown Hotel in Surry Hills was among those not to embrace the lifting of restrictions, with locks still on its doors on Friday

While many pubs have chosen to stay closed, either taking the opportunity for some much needed refurbishments or seeing the idea of having just 10 people at their bar as just too few to open their doors, many eager restaurants and cafes are cashing in.

Bel and Brio in Barangaroo, Sydney, is booked out for the next week, with more than 160 keen customers desperate to get a sitting.

The restaurant's event manager Mylene Selosse said the slight relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions is a major boost for the business, who had transitioned to a takeaway service.

'Weve been receiving a lot of bookings which is great, we're actually fully booked out until next week,'

'We didnt shut our doors for the past month, we developed an online service, so for us right now it doesnt make much difference to our kitchen and staff's (workload) - it is just a plus for us to have ten people in here.'

'At this stage there's 160 people booked, so that's 160 people we otherwise wouldn't have served.

One Darwin resident was happy to see pubs reopened, hurrying into his local to down a beer at midday

So eager were those in the Northern Territory to get back to the pub, queues formed outside some venues

Despite not having a limit on the amount of patrons inside a venue, social distancing is still in vogue in the NT

'We need to take it slowly, but right now we are seeing restrictions changing every two weeks or so. So hopefully in two weeks we can have 20 people in here to serve!'

While some businesses have embraced 'Freedom Friday', others were slow to get on board and will wait until next week to return to internal dining.

Ljubo Milicevic, manger of north Bondi cafe Porch and Parlour, said only being able to have 10 people sit down for a meal is not worth it for their bottom line.

'As far as us being a smaller cafe, our capacity isn't great so it doesn't really benefit us to only having 10 people at any one time, in or outside the venue,' Mr Milicevic said.

'We're lucky, we can operate as a takeaway venture, whereas for wine bars and restaurants it's all about the experience of sitting in.

'All our friends at business up the road are fully booked out tonight, which is good for them and good for us, because we've got somewhere to go.

'It's nice that things seem to be getting back to more of a normality, I think life for everyone is going to be more peaceful now - with less fear in the air.'

Long-time Bronte locals Jack (left) and Geoff (right) were happy to be able to once again sit at their regular cafe, which they said they would easily visit twice a day pre-COVID-19 pandemic

Ljubo Milicevic, manager of north Bondi cafe Porch and Parlour (pictured), said only being able to have 10 people sit down for a meal meant it was not worth them reverting from the takeaway operation they have mastered over the past few months

While they could have sat down inside elsewhere, dozens queued to get a coffee at the popular Iggy's Bread cafe in Bronte on Friday morning

Leading Sydney chef Bret Cameron, who runs Three Blue Ducks in Bronte, said they had also decided to wait until next week before allowing patrons to dine-in.

He admitted that despite diversifying his business to offer takeaway or cook at home meals, the past few months had been incredible difficult - especially as the 'goal posts continue to move'.

'For us, we're already doing takeaways, so putting seats outside isn't adding any kind of pressure, but we're not doing table service,' Mr Cameron said.

'From next week we'll be opening for groups of 10, but we just weren't ready today. I want to do it right and the goal posts are always moving, so we'll take out time over the weekend and bring back internal dining from Monday.

'It's been tough, it's been really tough. We've got our same core group of staff as we have had for the past few months and we'll begin to bring some back who have been on jobkeeper.'
WASHTENAW COUNTY, MI -- Michigan business owners had to adapt fast when they were ordered to shutter their shops nearly eight weeks ago, and many of the sudden changes they implemented may have to translate to long-term strategies.

Many Washtenaw County businesses took entirely to the internet to sell their products or services. Others implemented curbside pick-up, delivery services, no-contact checkouts, one-way shopping lanes and reduced store capacities.

But as the national conversation shifts to a reopened economy, business owners and public health experts could be forced to continue adjusting to a new reality: the social distance norms of a pandemic-era economy.

Ypsilanti salon owner Aisha Gatlin is preparing for the day Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-home order and mandated business closures lift. She and her stylists are eager to return to the Beautiful Luxe Hair Company, but Gatlins goal is to avoid putting anyone in danger.

We will take one client at a time when we open, making sure nobody is serviced without a mask  and making sure were keeping everything sanitized and wiped down on a regular basis, Gatlin said, adding her clients are already asking about a waitlist for services.

Gatlin also runs Washtenaw Countys only African American-owned cosmetology training facility inside Briarwood Mall. It launched in October 2019 and currently has about 20 students, who had to put their classes on hold.

Our main source of income comes from the students tuition. Im not making them pay any type of monthly tuition fees until we open back up, so theyre not stressed out. Thats also how I pay my instructors, Gatlin said. They do have online options we can use, but were still very limited because the students have to have a lot of hands-on experience."

Gatlin feels confident she can run her businesses safely because her facilities are big enough to spread out students and clients, and her employees are ready to don masks and gloves while endlessly sanitizing equipment and surfaces.

Its not a bad idea to wear a mask in hair salons and nail salons because of the chemicals we inhale on a regular basis," she said. "I dont think its going to be a big change, as far as women not coming in to have a service. I think it will change the awareness of your surroundings. I think itll just be a lot of peoples eyes open, paying attention to every detail. I dont think it will stop the flow of our clients. Everybody will just definitely be more aware.

Slow and steady

Public health experts warn there is little chance of going back to normal. Its most important to take things gradually, health and economy experts said. A slow phase-in of economic activity could help the pandemic manageable and allow for various levels of economic activity.

The new goal of health officials and government leaders is to prevent a second peak in cases. They want to keep the infection risk low to avoid extreme social distancing and shelter-in-place orders, which economists say is better in the long term.

In other words, keeping things shut down for an extra week or two would be less costly than trying to reimpose a shutdown a month from now, if all of a sudden we get a big spike in cases and deaths and hospitalizations, University of Michigan economist Donald Grimes said.

State officials are using two benchmarks to determine the phases of reopening: a consistent decline in daily cases over two weeks and a positivity rate, or the rate at which tests are coming back positive, below 12%.

Joe Eisenberg, the epidemiology department chair at the University of Michigan, said those benchmarks must work in conjunction with continued public health protocols like social distancing and consistent hand hygiene. Just because there is a decline or a low positivity rate somewhere doesnt mean it will be business as usual.

It just has to be slow and incremental because we dont really know exactly what is low enough risk and what is too high risk, Eisenberg said. The overall goal is to make sure that the transmission stays low and doesnt increase again. Theres a delay of two plus weeks before you see the effect of a change in social distancing so thats why you need to go slow, because you need to see whether or not what youve done in relaxing it has hasnt created too much transmission.

A robust health infrastructure

A more open economy also depends on the infrastructure in place to track and manage COVID-19. Health providers and the Washtenaw County Health Department need to have proper testing and contact tracing in place, county Health Officer Jimena Loveluck said. Contact tracers monitor COVID-19 positive patients and track down who they may have exposed. A more targeted approach to outbreak management allows more freedom for the rest of a community to travel and work.

The more we can test, contract trace, isolate the people we know either are sick or exposed, the more we can relax the social distancing, because its much more efficient to do target isolation based on testing than it is to have everybody social distance, Eisenberg said.

Loveluck said new infections in the county are primarily in congregate living settings, household contacts and front-line workers. But as people return to work, exposure possibilities grow. The state recommends local health department have 30 contact tracers per 100,000 residents. Right now, Washtenaw County has 9 tracers per 100,000 people. The department has pulled from volunteer lists and other health department functions in the short term.

Were hoping that between the states plan and our local efforts, well be able to ramp up the contact tracing, because thats going to be a need on an ongoing basis, she said.

Michigan hires new coronavirus contact tracers after canceling deals with companies tied to Democrats

What businesses should do

Businesses may be itching to open their doors once the stay-home order is lifted, but health officials recommend keeping an incremental pace and adjusting operations to facilitate social distancing.

Carlos Franklin, owner of Ypsilantis Black Stone Bookstore, began adapting before the state-ordered closures of non-essential services. Hes operated the businesses out of a brick-and-mortar shop at 214 W Michigan Ave. in downtown Ypsilanti since 2013, but just before the closures, he built a website for online ordering and began encouraging other small businesses to do the same.

Check your inventory, do a reevaluation of what you sell. A lot of times when you run the business, you dont have time to run the business. You dont get a chance to know what youre doing. Youre just kind of surviving, Franklin said.

The shop has launched a fundraiser seeking $20,000 for long-term help with bills and rent.

Its not wrong to ask for help to get me through today and tomorrow as well. When the winter comes, or the second wave, or my landlord doesnt make it through, I wont have to ask any more, Franklin said.

Black Stone Bookstore will eventually offer curbside pickup and delivery to Ypsilanti residents, even after state restrictions on in-person shopping are lifted. He anticipates many customers will still be wary of physical closeness.

You dont want to offend your customers, Franklin said. As we move forward, I really dont know. It seems like the curbside is whats going to be the thing to do for a minute, just to get people comfortable to come to your store  I think the structure is going to change because youre going to have a lot of people who are scared to move forward.

Michigan restaurants to Gov. Whitmer: We want to reopen May 29

Before reopening, the Health Department recommends businesses first conduct a risk assessment, asking questions like how much exposure risk is there for workers? Does the business participate in activities that promote transmission?

Businesses should also plan for social distancing in the workplace, screening employees for illness, requiring use of personal protection equipment like face masks and gloves, frequent cleaning and appropriate sick time policies, the health department advises.

Those measures will look different depending on the business. Office settings could continue telework or setting up shift schedules so buildings are never at full capacity. Retailers could utilize curbside pickup or lower capacities and put markings on the floor to indicate six feet distances in line.

Loveluck said it may be helpful for businesses to conduct a run through before reopening to the public.

Its thinking through all of those facets of bringing people back to a workplace and ensuring that if thats happening, you have all of the practices and processes in place, Loveluck said.

The whole world has changed

The future of Washtenaw Countys economy remains unclear. Grimes, the UM economist, said while Washtenaw County historically fairs better in a recession than the rest of the state and nation, it depends on major employers like UM, Eastern Michigan University, St. Joseph Mercy Health System and Michigan Medicine.

Hospitals began to reintroduce non-emergency procedures this month. EMU announced it will have in-person classes in the fall and UM will make its decision by June. The decision to bring students back to campus in the fall, restarting research at the universities and phasing in more elective procedures at the hospitals could have a significant effect.

Eastern Michigan University planning to resume in-person operations for fall 2020 semester

(Universities) capacity of these universities to operate successfully in in the fall is going to be really, really critically important to our economy, Grimes said. And the healthcare system as well -- I mean, they need to be able to bring back patients outside of the COVID crisis.

The public sentiment seems to be behind a slow and thorough reopening for health reasons, said Andy LaBarre, vice president and director of government relations for the Ann Arbor/Ypsilanti Regional Chamber. Increased use of online services for anything that can be done remotely will likely continue.

I dont think were ever going back to what was. The whole world has changed. Itll be a slow return in a direction of what was, with some things never coming back, and other things probably being changed from this point forward to allow for more remote access, LaBarre said. I think a lot of people will have a mindset of Ill do those things in person that I have to and those things I can do remotely, Ill do that remotely.

County governments, businesses and residents could be impacted in the long-term by changes with UM and its student base, and a potential drop in property values, LaBarre said.

Terris Ahrens, executive director of the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce, said local businesses are looking for ways to adjust. Downtown shops in Chelsea could move to curbside sales. The chamber is trying to help its 300-plus member businesses run online specials.

I know people are social by nature, Ahrens said. Peoples own personal preference of what is going on right now is very divided. The key factor for us is were creating avenues for these businesses to be able to sell virtually. All of these things can be adapted at that point.

Epidemiologists say maintaining perspective will help. There may be a new norm of social distancing, just like there were new norms in air travel after 9/11, Eisenberg said.

There has been increased economic activity this week as many manufacturers reestablished operations, and two weeks from now may see even more public activity.

People shouldnt think that were just going to go right back to business as usual," Eisenberg said. "I think that often in the press, it feels like the dialogue is When are we going to open up? and in reality, weve never closed. In reality, its a continuum, not just a dichotomous were not open or were open. Its about how fast we open and how much we open in each increment.
HONG KONG, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The Legislative Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) on Thursday passed the appropriation bill of the 2020-21 Budget that contains various relief measures to help businesses and residents weather through economic hardship.

Those measures, worth over 120 billion Hong Kong dollars (around 15.5 billion U.S. dollars) in total, include 10,000 Hong Kong dollars of cash handout for each permanent resident, reduction of income tax and salaries tax, and reduction of rental and fees for tenants of government properties.

Financial Secretary of the HKSAR government Paul Chan welcomed the approval and said the government will carry out the measures as soon as possible.

Chan expects Hong Kong residents can receive the cash handout in August.

The Hong Kong economy is facing tremendous challenges after the impacts of COVID-19 epidemic and social unrest, with the GDP down by 8.9 percent year-on-year in the first quarter of this year, the sharpest quarterly decline since 1974.

The relief measures aim to stabilize growth and confidence and prevent a downward spiral in the economy, Chan said, stressing that the government will properly use fiscal reserves to go through the difficult time along with Hong Kong residents.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., removes her mask before the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing, Tuesday, May 12, 2020 on Capitol Hill in Washington. Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, is to testify before the committee.

Toni L. Sandys/The Washington Post via AP, Pool

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, who is reportedly worth over $500 million, sold off stock just as she was being briefed on the looming threat of COVID-19 and before the stock market tanked due to the coronavirus.

The senator "has forwarded documents and information" to federal investigators, a spokesperson told The Daily Beast, "establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law."

The news comes after federal agents seized the phone of Sen. Richard Burr, who has also faced allegations of insider trading.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The wealthiest member of Congress handed over documents Thursday to federal law enforcement authorities investigating allegations that she and other lawmakers engaged in insider trading, The Daily Beast reported.

Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a Republican from Georgia, drew scrutiny following reports that she and her husband  the chairman of The New York Stock Exchange  sold off millions of dollars worth of shares and invested in a telecommunications software company after she was briefed on the threat of COVID-19, as Business Insider noted last month.

In a statement, a spokesperson for Loeffler said the senator is now cooperating with federal law enforcement, a day after agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized the phone of Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican who has also faced accusations of insider trading, which he denies.

Loeffler, reportedly worth over $500 million, "has forwarded documents and information" to the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Senate Ethics Committee, the spokesperson told The Daily Beast, "establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law."

"The documents and information demonstrated her and her husband's lack of involvement in their managed accounts, as well the details of those accounts. Senator Loeffler has welcomed and responded to any questions from day one," the spokesperson said.

Story continues

After the allegations were initially made, the senator's office released a statement saying: "Sen. Loeffler does not make investment decisions for her portfolio. Investment decisions are made by multiple third-party advisors without her or her husband's knowledge or involvement. As confirmed in the periodic transaction report to Senate Ethics, Senator Loeffler was informed of these purchases and sales on February 16, 2020  three weeks after they were made."

In an April 8 op-ed published by The Wall Street Journal, Loeffler insisted that she has "never used any confidential information I received while performing my Senate duties as means of making a private profit."

Appointed to her position by Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, filling a seat left vacant by a retirement, Loeffler is up for election this fall, if she can beat back a primary challenger from her right.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: cdavis@insider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider
New Home For Buffy: Buffy Learns How To Be Responsible: an exquisite narrative about Buffy, a cow dog who goes to Vermont and lives a life filled with animals, moments, and knowledge about the farm and its beauty. New Home For Buffy: Buffy Learns How To Be Responsible is the creation of published author Richard H Nelson, a commissioned officer during the Vietnam War; a radio designer, installer, and tester; and complex communication systems development manager.

Nelson shares, The true story in this book was written by Kathy Creaser, an experienced elementary school teacher for more than twenty years. She mentored young students in the Northeast Kingdom of the state of Vermont. She tells the story of Buffy, who moved from an apartment in the city to the farm of Kathys parents in Northern Vermont. There, Buffy grew from a frisky, curious, adventurous, and at times destructive puppy to learn how to become a responsible working farm animal. The events described in this book are based upon actual farm happenings observed by Kathy. For example, how Buffy learned from the cows to drink water from the cows mechanized water bowls. This is a story of Buffys growth into a responsible cow dog.

Illustrations in this book are all reproduced from original art by Herbert Nelson (born 1942, died 2006). Herbert was born on a dairy farm in New Hampshire, where he absorbed the images of farm life, including the various moods of the changing seasons and farm animals. He was educated at Tufts University, earning a Bachelor of Science degree, and did further study in commercial art at the Boston Museum School, graduating in 1965. He preferred oil painting the landscapes of New England, but also experimented in modern art. He designed and painted many sets for theatrical plays. His art was exhibited at the watercolor Art Festival, Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, and the museum school Boit show. This book depicts scenes like those he experienced living on the farm.

Compiling and editing of this book was accomplished by Herberts brother, Richard Nelson, who also shared many experiences with his brother as they grew up on dairy farms in New England and the state of Washington. Richard dedicates this book to the hardworking farm families of the United States that provide food for our tables every day.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Richard H Nelsons new book contains evoking illustrations of scenes that will inspire readers with wonder and appreciation for their modest yet impactful farm life.

This book is the culmination of various experiences and memories that perfectly paint a narrative of what life on the farm is compared to the hustle and bustle of the city.

View the synopsis of New Home For Buffy: Buffy Learns How To Be Responsible on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase New Home For Buffy: Buffy Learns How To Be Responsible at traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about New Home For Buffy: Buffy Learns How To Be Responsible, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
BREA, Calif., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Beckman Coulter today announced it was awarded an expanded partnership with BARDA as part of their rapidly expanding COVID-19 medical countermeasure portfolio. The partnership was awarded to Beckman Coulter, in collaboration with Dascena, Inc., for additional advanced research and development toward optimization of a machine-learning based sepsis diagnostic and prediction algorithm to include assessing its use with coronavirus (COVID-19) patients.

The sepsis diagnostic and prediction algorithm builds on Beckman Coulter's existing Early Sepsis Indicator, which received FDA 510(k) clearance in April 2019, combining the monocyte distribution width (MDW) novel laboratory test parameter values with Dascena's electronic health record data based machine-learning algorithm to help accurately predict and detect those with sepsis.

"Until recently, the majority of sepsis cases have been thought to be caused by bacterial pathogens," said Shamiram R. Feinglass, M.D., MPH, chief medical officer, Beckman Coulter. "COVID-19 is changing that, and causing a paradigm shift in how we think about sepsis. The aim of the study is to determine whether MDW, as part of the sepsis prediction algorithm, will be able to aid in the detection of sepsis regardless of whether it is bacterial or viral-induced."

"The global impact that COVID-19 has had on the health system is undeniable. It has changed the way the industry thinks about so many things, and sepsis is no exception," said Peter Soltani, Ph.D., senior vice president and general manager of the hematology business unit at Beckman Coulter. "Beckman Coulter is deeply committed to the fight against COVID-19 and has been working diligently to quickly bring quality SARS-CoV-2 serology assays to the market. We are thrilled to expand our partnership with BARDA, so we can extend that commitment to our sepsis research and begin clinical trials that include COVID-19 patients."

"We are excited to deepen our partnership with Beckman Coulter to help respond to the global pandemic that has exacerbated the challenge of sepsis, a condition that already kills an American every two minutes," said Jana Hoffman, Ph.D., vice president of science at Dascena.

This COVID-19 specific study is part of BARDA's Rapidly Deployable Capabilities program to identify and pilot near-term innovative solutions for COVID-19, leveraging the development of Beckman Coulter's digital sepsis prediction algorithm under BARDA's Division of Research Innovation and Venture's (DRIVe's) Solving Sepsis Program.

For more information on Beckman Coulter's Early Sepsis Indicator, visit www.BeckmanCoulter.com/sepsis. For more information on BARDA's rapidly-expanding COVID-19 medical countermeasure portfolio, visit BARDA's COVID-19 Portfolio.

About Beckman Coulter

Beckman Coulter is committed to advancing healthcare for every person by applying the power of science, technology and the passion and creativity of our teams to enhance the diagnostic laboratory's role in improving healthcare outcomes. Our diagnostic systems are used in complex biomedical testing, and are found in hospitals, reference laboratories and physician office settings around the globe. Beckman Coulter offers a unique combination of people, processes and solutions designed to elevate the performance of clinical laboratories and healthcare networks. We do this by accelerating care with a menu that matters, bringing the benefit of automation to all, delivering greater insights through clinical informatics and unlocking hidden value through performance partnership. An operating company of Danaher Corporation (NYSE: DHR) since 2011, Beckman Coulter is headquartered in Brea, Calif., and has more than 11,000 global associates working diligently to make the world a healthier place.

About Dascena

Dascena, Inc. is developing machine learning diagnostic algorithms to enable early disease intervention and improve care outcomes for patients. For more information, visit Dascena.com.

 2020 Beckman Coulter. All rights reserved. Beckman Coulter, the stylized logo, and the Beckman Coulter product and service marks mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Beckman Coulter, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

SOURCE Beckman Coulter Diagnostics

Related Links

https://www.BeckmanCoulter.com


Seven children in New Jersey are confirmed to have a rare, mysterious pediatric inflammatory syndrome that may be linked to the coronavirus, the states top health official said Friday.

The state had been investigating 17 possible cases of the illness, which has infected children in at least 15 states and shares similarities with Kawasaki disease.

On Thursday, the federal Centers for Disease Control released its definition of what constitutes a case of the syndrome.

The state found seven of the children fit the case definition." state Health Commissioner Judith Persichilli said at the states daily coronavirus briefing in Trenton. The other 10 did not.

Six of those confirmed also tested positive for the coronavirus, Persichilli said.

The commissioner did not provide more details on the children, such as their ages or where they live.

She said Thursday the 17 that were investigated ranged from ages 2 to 18 and came from nine different counties: Bergen, Essex, Gloucester, Hudson, Middlesex, Monmouth, Passaic, Union, and Warren.

Persichilli said the state is working closely with the federal Centers for Disease Control and neighboring states to explore a possible link" to COVID-19.

She has urged parents to immediately report if their child shows symptoms of the syndrome.

This is a rare condition, but it can be treated, she said Thursday. Early recognition is important."

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

She said symptoms include: irritability, abdominal pain without another explanation or episodes of diarrhea or vomiting, having a rash, conjunctivitis, enlarged lymph nodes, red and cracked lips, a red tongue, or swollen hands and feet.

Please call your health care provider if you child has any of these symptoms so your baby can be evaluated and treated, Persichilli said.

At least 164 children in 15 states have been identified as possible cases of the syndrome. Three have died so far.

New Jersey, a densely populated state of 9 million residents, has reported at least 10,138 total deaths attributed to the coronavirus, with at least 143,905 total cases, since the outbreak started March 4. Officials on Thursday reported 201 new deaths and 1,297 new positive tests.

Only New York has more deaths and cases among American states.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com.
May 4, 2020

The decision to postpone Expo 2020 Dubai by one year was confirmed. Its new date is from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022. The name Expo 2020 Dubai is to be retained following the change of dates.

1. Regarding the postponement of Expo 2020 Dubai

In consideration of the COVID-19 crisis, Expo 2020 Dubai will be postponed by one year, and is now scheduled to run from 1 October 2021 to 31 March 2022, instead of the original dates of 20 October 2020 to 10 April 2021.

Voting by the Member States of the Bureau International des Expositions (BIE) commenced on 24 April in response to a proposal by the government of the United Arab Emirates to change the dates. The decision to postpone the event was confirmed with an announcement by the BIE today that over two-thirds of Member States have now voted in favor of the resolution, surpassing the required threshold. The name Expo 2020 Dubai is to be retained following the change of dates.

The Expo 2020 Dubai Japan Pavilion is moving forward with preparations while making the necessary arrangements to accommodate the new schedule.

Visit the link below to view the official press release from the BIE.

Division in Charge

International Exhibitions Promotion Office, Commerce and Service Industry Policy Group
MONTEVIDEO, Uruguay, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ACI Airport SudAmerica, S.A. (the " Company ") announced today the results of its previously announced offer (the " Exchange Offer ") to repurchase and exchange any and all of its outstanding 6.875% Senior Secured Guaranteed Notes due 2032 in the original aggregate principal amount of U.S.$200,000,000 (the " Existing Notes ") for newly issued 6.875% Cash/7.875% PIK Senior Secured Guaranteed Notes due 2032 (the " New Notes ") and solicitation (the " Consent Solicitation ") of consents (the " Consents ") to certain proposed amendments to the indenture governing the Existing Notes and certain waivers. As of 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on May 14, 2020 (the " Early Participation Deadline "), US$ $184,297,000 aggregate original principal amount of Existing Notes, representing approximately 92.15% of the total original principal amount of the Existing Notes, had been validly tendered for exchange and not validly withdrawn, as confirmed by the Information Agent for the Exchange Offer.

All Existing Notes tendered at or prior to the Early Participation Deadline have been accepted by the Company and are eligible to receive the "Exchange Consideration" and the "Early Participation Premium" set forth in the Exchange Offer Memorandum, dated April 24, 2020 (as supplemented by Supplement No. 1 dated May 8, 2020, the " Exchange Offer Memorandum ").

Eligible Holders tendering Existing Notes for repurchase and exchange for New Notes had the opportunity to validly withdraw and revoke their related Consents at any time prior to 5:00 p.m. (New York City time) on May 14, 2020 (the " Withdrawal Deadline "). The Withdrawal Deadline has passed and holders may no longer withdraw Existing Notes tendered in the Exchange Offer or revoke their Consents delivered in the Consent Solicitation. Based on the participation received to date, the Company has also obtained the requisite Consents to, among others, effect certain proposed amendments to the indenture governing the Existing Notes to provide for the issuance of the New Notes as additional notes under such indenture and to eliminate substantially all of the restrictive covenants and events of default and related provisions with respect to the Existing Notes, and give effect to certain waivers as described in the Exchange Offer Memorandum.

The Exchange Offer and Consent Solicitation will expire at 11:59 p.m. (New York City time) on May 21, 2020 (the " Expiration Deadline "), unless extended by the Company in its sole discretion. Eligible Holders who validly tender Existing Notes after the Early Participation Deadline but at or prior to the Expiration Deadline, and whose Existing Notes are accepted for exchange, will receive the "Exchange Consideration" set forth in the Exchange Offer Memorandum. The Company currently expects the settlement date to be May 26, 2020 (the " Settlement Date ").

The obligation of the Company to accept tendered Existing Notes and delivered Consents pursuant to the Exchange Offer and the Solicitation, respectively, is subject to certain conditions, which include the tender by, and the receipt of the Consents from, Eligible Holders representing at least 80% of the aggregate principal amount of the Existing Notes outstanding. Subject to applicable law, the Company reserves the right to waive any and all conditions to the Exchange Offer.

The Exchange Offer and Consent Solicitation are being made only pursuant to the Exchange Offer Memorandum and only to such persons and in such jurisdictions as is permitted under applicable law.

The Exchange Offer and Consent Solicitation are being made only pursuant to the Exchange Offer Memorandum and only to such persons and in such jurisdictions as is permitted under applicable law. The Exchange Offer is made, and the New Notes will be offered and issued, only (a) in the United States to holders of Existing Notes who are "qualified institutional buyers" (as defined in Rule 144A under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the " Securities Act ")) in reliance upon the exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act, and (b) outside the United States to holders of Existing Notes who are persons other than "U.S. persons" (as defined in Rule 902 under the Securities Act) in reliance upon Regulation S under the Securities Act and who are non-U.S. qualified offerees. Holders who have returned a duly completed eligibility letter certifying that they are within one of the categories described in the immediately preceding sentence are authorized to receive and review the Exchange Offer Memorandum and to participate in the Exchange Offer and the Solicitation (such Holders, " Eligible Holders ").

Documents relating to the Exchange Offer will only be distributed to Eligible Holders who properly complete and return a letter of eligibility confirming that they are within the category of Eligible Holders for this Exchange Offer. Holders who desire to obtain and complete an eligibility letter should either visit the website for this purpose at www.dfking.com/aciairport, or call D.F. King & Co., Inc., the Information Agent and Exchange Agent for the Exchange Offer at (888) 541-9895 (toll-free) or (212) 269-5550 (all other calls) or email [email protected].

This press release does not constitute an offer to exchange the Existing Notes. There shall not be any offer to exchange Existing Notes, exchange of Existing Notes or issuance of the New Notes in any jurisdiction in which such offer to exchange, exchange or issuance would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. The New Notes will not be registered under the Securities Act or the securities laws of any state and may not be offered or sold in the United States absent registration or an exemption from the registration requirements of the Securities Act and applicable state securities laws.

None of the Company, the dealer manager, the trustee or any affiliate of any of them makes any recommendation as to whether Eligible Holders should tender or refrain from tendering all or any portion of the principal amount of such Eligible Holder's Existing Notes for New Notes in the Exchange Offer or consent to any of the proposed amendments to the indenture governing the Existing Notes in the Consent Solicitation. Eligible Holders will need to make their own decision as to whether to tender Existing Notes in the Exchange Offer and participate in the Consent Solicitation.

This press release is being issued pursuant to and in accordance with Rule 135e under the Securities Act.

For further information please contact:

Gimena Albanesi

Investor Relations

+5411-4852-6411

[email protected]

ABOUT ACI AIRPORT SUDAMERICA, S.A.

The Company is the sole stockholder of Cerealsur S.A. ("Cerealsur"). Cerealsur is a holding company and through its wholly-owned subsidiary, Puerta del Sur S.A. ("PdS"), operates the Aeropuerto Internacional de Carrasco ("Carrasco International Airport"). PdS is also indirectly owned by Corporacion America Airports S.A., the largest private sector airport concession operator in the world based on the number of airports under management. Since 2003, PdS has had the responsibility of administrating, operating, managing and maintaining the Carrasco International Airport. PdS has executed a comprehensive management agreement with the Uruguayan government by virtue of which PdS received the concession to operate the Carrasco International Airport. The Carrasco International Airport, located near Montevideo, is Uruguay's largest airport in terms of passenger traffic and serves as the country's primary gateway for international travel. The Company is committed to provide passengers the best travel experience, with the highest standard of quality and strategic actions that contribute to sustainable development and social responsibility. One of the most important milestones in the history of PdS, was the inauguration of the New Passenger Terminal in December 2009. The work has become a symbol of pride for all Uruguayans, positioning itself as the country's main gateway. Since its opening it has been decorated with various international prizes, which highlight its architectural merits, esthetics, operative functionality and services.

SOURCE ACI Airport SudAmerica, S.A.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) has carried out an unannounced inspection at Northern Ireland aerospace company Thompson Aero Seating.

It's understood staff at the Chinese-owned aeroplane seat manufacturer in Portadown complained about health and safety on the site after three workers went off sick with Covid-19.

One worker claimed that staff in one division were less than two metres apart while carrying out their work.

The HSE has begun visiting workplaces after receiving complaints about almost 500 employers during the coronavirus lockdown. A spokesman for the HSE said: "We can confirm that an unannounced inspection was carried out at Thompson Aero Seating today (Thursday). We are unable to provide any further information at this time."

It's understood that with around three members of the team off sick with Covid-19, colleagues had requested furlough leave as members of their family were vulnerable.

But they claimed that they had only been offered sick pay - which is paid at a lower rate than the government's furlough scheme. However, the furlough scheme only applies where companies have no work for employees to do as a result of the pandemic.

DUP Upper Bann MP Carla Lockhart said she had been contacted by concerned staff at the company, which has remained open through lockdown.

She said: "Thompson Aero need to listen to their employees and make sure they are safe in the workplace.

"I've already contacted the Health and Safety Executive to urgently review Thompson Aero and take action if needed."

A spokeswoman for Thompson Aero said: "Three employees of Thompson Aero Seating have recently tested positive for Covid-19 and are currently self-isolating.

"Our thoughts are with them as we wish them a full and speedy recovery.

"Thompson Aero Seating is following all government guidelines as well as those from the Health and Safety Executive.

"We continue to communicate closely with employees and are implementing all measures to protect our people including the provision of personal protection equipment (PPE) and additional deep cleaning at our sites.

"The health and wellbeing of our people is our priority at all times."

However, the company would not comment on the outcome of the inspection.

Ulster Unionist Party MLA Doug Beattie said he had also been contacted by constituents who were concerned at conditions in the factory.

He said the company had continued to operate during the lockdown, unlike others, who had opted to close.

However, all manufacturers have been permitted to stay open throughout lockdown, provided they maintain social distancing.

Mr Beattie said: "They have said they'd had to stay open because the companies they supply - like Airbus and Boeing - would just go elsewhere if Thompson didn't keep supplying them.

"But that doesn't stop the fact that if staff are concerned about social distancing and protection, the company is going to have to take measures."

Trade union Unite also has a representative in the company but said it would not be commenting.

The company paid off around 350 contract workers back in March.
Photo: Contributed

Thank you to everyone who has been reaching out. Ive also been doing a fair amount of outreach within our community to answer questions and get feedback, and I appreciate all the individuals and organizations Ive met virtually.

On May 7, I hosted a live Teleforum Town Hall with thousands of participants via phone and online. The focus of the town hall was on non-medical COVID-19 related issues, and I also had our local MLAs participate to answer provincial-related questions as many topics I am asked about often have elements of federal and provincial jurisdiction. This helped give participants a more comprehensive answer to their questions.

Once the Teleforum was completed, participants had a chance to leave a message with comment or question, and I spent the next few days following up on all of them. It was great to connect with so many people, and here are some of the calls that came in.

Doug asked about seniors. I mentioned the government reduced the minimum withdrawals for RRIFs by 25% and funds to the United Way to assist seniors. Both myself and our MLAs discussed dispensing fee decisions where restrictions were put on prescriptions to ensure supply. This led to higher dispensing fees, but supply doesnt appear to be an issue any longer, so we should see this rectified. (On May 12 the government announced, for those eligible, a one-time $300 OAS and $200 GIS boost.)

John and James were concerned about our food supply and what will be done to support small and local food producers. I mentioned the Official Oppositions recommendation for a Summer Agricultural Student Program, similar to the Summer Jobs Program. I also discussed the importance of supporting local, changing program requirements, and ensuring health supplies are available. Our MLAs mentioned farmers markets, and the need for small-scale food processors.

Funds coming to support the homeless was asked about by Linda, and I let her know that the federal government announced an expansion to the Reaching Home Initiative. I wrote the minister of families and social development asking that our community be included in the disbursement of these funds. It was recently announced that $1.67 million will be forthcoming to our community.

Paul inquired if people were still allowed to walk across the Roxham Road border crossing from the United States and if they are being screened for COVID-19. I advised that the government finally closed this as part of the border closures, though it may be temporary, as border restrictions are being reassessed every 30 days.

Carolyn and Bobby had questions about hospitality and other businesses not being applicable for many of the programs offered and how difficult it was. I mentioned how I had questioned ministers about their exact concerns, and we have not seen amendments to the programs that would be helpful for them yet.

We talked about engaging with young people with Lindsay. Craig spoke passionately about the economy and internal trade, and I gave a lengthy response which I can make in a separate column. Patrick commented on firearm law changes and our democracy.

Other questions, which were primarily provincial jurisdiction, included Shelley asking about responsibility for seniors homes, Dell about gas prices, and Lynn asking how we are handling travellers coming from out of province.

One of the most touching calls of the evening was from a young student who was concerned about going back to school since there is still no cure for COVID-19, and he is afraid for his family. Our MLAs reiterated that attending school in person will not be mandatory.

On Mothers Day, I made the multi-flight trek to Ottawa to fulfill my duties there. It was surreal to see so few people, but good to see so many safety precautions  very different than when I flew home in March.

Thank you to all who participated. Please feel free to reach out.
Jonathan Satchell has been the CEO of Learning Technologies Group plc (LON:LTG) since 2013. This report will, first, examine the CEO compensation levels in comparison to CEO compensation at companies of similar size. After that, we will consider the growth in the business. Third, we'll reflect on the total return to shareholders over three years, as a second measure of business performance. The aim of all this is to consider the appropriateness of CEO pay levels.

View our latest analysis for Learning Technologies Group

How Does Jonathan Satchell's Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?

Our data indicates that Learning Technologies Group plc is worth UK837m, and total annual CEO compensation was reported as UK525k for the year to December 2019. That's a fairly small increase of 7.6% on year before. While this analysis focuses on total compensation, it's worth noting the salary is lower, valued at UK300k. When we examined a selection of companies with market caps ranging from UK328m to UK1.3b, we found the median CEO total compensation was UK1.0m.

Now let's take a look at the pay mix on an industry and company level to gain a better understanding of where Learning Technologies Group stands. Speaking on an industry level, we can see that nearly 71% of total compensation represents salary, while the remainder of 29% is other remuneration. Our data reveals that Learning Technologies Group allocates salary in line with the wider market.

At first glance this seems like a real positive for shareholders, since Jonathan Satchell is paid less than the average total compensation paid by similar sized companies. Though positive, it's important we delve into the performance of the actual business. The graphic below shows how CEO compensation at Learning Technologies Group has changed from year to year.

AIM:LTG CEO Compensation May 15th 2020

Is Learning Technologies Group plc Growing?

Over the last three years Learning Technologies Group plc has seen earnings per share (EPS) move in a positive direction by an average of 97% per year (using a line of best fit). In the last year, its revenue is up 39%.

Story continues

This demonstrates that the company has been improving recently. A good result. The combination of strong revenue growth with medium-term earnings per share improvement certainly points to the kind of growth I like to see. Shareholders might be interested in this free visualization of analyst forecasts.

Has Learning Technologies Group plc Been A Good Investment?

I think that the total shareholder return of 158%, over three years, would leave most Learning Technologies Group plc shareholders smiling. This strong performance might mean some shareholders don't mind if the CEO were to be paid more than is normal for a company of its size.

In Summary...

It appears that Learning Technologies Group plc remunerates its CEO below most similar sized companies.

Many would consider this to indicate that the pay is modest since the business is growing. The strong history of shareholder returns might even have some thinking that Jonathan Satchell deserves a raise! It is relatively rare to see a modestly paid CEO when performance is so impressive. It would be even more positive if company insiders are buying shares. Looking into other areas, we've picked out 3 warning signs for Learning Technologies Group that investors should think about before committing capital to this stock.

Arguably, business quality is much more important than CEO compensation levels. So check out this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity 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.
For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

Berkeley restaurants may soon be able to offer open-air dining if a bill is approved.

Legislation introduced Thursday by Mayor Jesse Arreguin and Vice Mayor Sophie Hahn would allow restaurants and other small businesses that have been financially affected by the coronavirus pandemic to use outdoor spaces to service customers.

This innovative approach strikes the right balance in supporting businesses and workers while maintaining social distancing measures to curb the spread of the virus, Mayor Arreguin said in a statement. This proposal will enable us to reopen an important part of our economy while minimizing the risk of new infections.

City council members will vote to pass or reject the proposal by June 2 and if passed, the City Manager's Office would need to identify locations where tables and chairs could safely be placed. Consultation with Berkeleys Public Health Officer and businesses would be needed too.

The current proposal is asking that any permits and fees be waived for businesses and restaurants that comply with Berkeley health guidelines.

ALSO: Two SF restaurateurs have more questions than answers over new state guidelines

On Tuesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom offered a 12-page guideline on how restaurants should proceed as counties move further into phase two of his four-phase plan. Among the items listed was that restaurants should prioritizing outdoor seating as long as they comply with local regulations.

Some Bay Area cities have already begun to review this as restaurants have been asked to limit dining room capacities.

In San Jose, leaders proposed a plan called Al Fresco, and in San Mateo Mayor Joe Goethal announced a similar proposal that could section off certain streets for business use, the Daily Journal reported.

In San Francisco, the Golden Gate Restaurant Association is advocating that the city permits the use of sidewalks, parking lots, alleyways and commercial corridors, among others.

For its proposal, Berkeley took some inspiration from Lithuania that permitted a handful of plazas, squares and streets for business use in Vilnius, the countrys capital, late last month.

Susana Guerrero is an SFGATE digital reporter. Email: Susana.Guerrero@sfgate.com | Twitter: @SusyGuerrero3

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:

Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here.
The latest development in the persecution of Michael Flynn was Judge Sullivan's unusual order reacting to the DOJ motion to dismiss. As the DOJ establishes, a decision to drop a prosecution is a prerogative of the Executive Branch, so a judge's role is limited. He should establish that the dismissal is requested not to harass the defendant and then sign off.

Instead, Sullivan opened the door to amicus briefs in opposition to dismissal and then appointed an outside party to argue the point and to argue, as well, that Flynn should be held in contempt of court for perjury because he said he was guilty when he was actually innocent. (Or perhaps Sullivan intends to charge him for claiming innocence  it is a bit murky.)

It is unlikely that this effort to extend things will go on too long. The DOJ and Flynn can request a writ of mandamus from an appellate court holding Sullivan to his duty, and there is square precedent that mandamus is proper in a matter such as this one.

But suppose the case does go on, with extensive briefs and a consideration of a perjury charge against Flynn. It is unlikely to develop as Sullivan seems to think it will.

The DOJ motion to dismiss was carefully crafted.

First, it said that, even assuming that Flynn did mislead the FBI about his conversation with Russian ambassador Kislyak, it was not "material," which is a required element of the offense. Because no valid investigation existed, there was nothing to which his statement could be obstructive, especially because the FBI already knew exactly what was said.

Second, even if materiality were conceded, the government would have great trouble proving either that Flynn made inaccurate statements or that he did so deliberately. The proof would consist of the FBI FD-302 documenting the interview and the testimony of the interviewing agents. In this case, the FBI lost the original 302 and would have to rely on later versions that had been edited by people not even present at Flynn's interview, and the interviewing agents did not think he had lied. The government has never produced either the recording of the call or a transcript, so in fact we know neither what was actually said nor what the FBI says was said.

Back in the old Watergate days, this DOJ motion would be called the "modified limited hangout"  'fessing up to a few bad facts while obscuring more damning information.

Whether A.G. Barr's motive is to protect the FBI and DOJ from institutional damage or to save things up for Durham's investigation is an open question. But if the case persists, here are some issues that will be aired:

Flynn will argue that he was coerced into a guilty plea by financial pressures and threats to charge him and family members with additional serious crimes. The criminal law is not sympathetic to the defense of duress in the absence of threats of physical harm, but the whole panoply of bad acts by the prosecutors and other parts of the government would be revealed. Flynn's lawyer, Sidney Powell, would also renew her argument that the case should be dismissed because of the government's bad conduct, something that Sullivan has avoided ruling on.

If Sullivan were to hold Flynn in contempt for pleading guilty and for testifying in court that the plea was voluntary, an inescapable corollary is that the prosecutors are guilty of suborning perjury

Powell has contended that the prosecution was not revealing all the exculpatory material that it was required to reveal, in violation of both its constitutional duties and Judge Sullivan's specific orders. The judge has denied these requests, especially in an angry opinion in December 2019 . The recent revelations by DOJ contradict many of the factual representations made by the prosecutors that Sullivan used to justify this decision. In short, he now looks like a bit of a fool, and further proceedings will only intensify this.

Powell has also raised serious issues about the quality of representation provided Flynn by the law firm Covington & Burling . While C&B has turned over thousands of pages of documents, it keeps finding more, and it has not turned over any material from the files of Eric Holder or Michael Chertoff, senior partners and former cabinet officers (under Obama and Bush, respectively), who were involved in Flynn's case. Given Holder's depiction of himself as " Obama's wingman " and the numerous problematic decisions by the firm as described by Powell, serious questions arise about which side the firm was really on. Airing this might not benefit C&B, or the Big Law department of the D.C. swamp generally.

One theory of the Flynn affair is that that Deep State intelligence officers and Obama officials have a grudge against Flynn from his tenure as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, before he was fired by Obama, reinforced by fear that he would be in a position to expose their vendetta against Trump. The pending prosecution has kept him quiet, but Sullivan has made clear his strong bias against Flynn, so the latter has no more reason to be careful not to irk the judge. If the case turns into a free-for-all, then Powell may tell her client to take off the gloves.

So, better late than never, Judge Sullivan should ask himself if he really wants to open up this circus. As St. Teresa said, more tears are shed over answered prayers than unanswered ones.

James V DeLong is a retired lawyer, government official, and think-tank analyst.
They recently celebrated their one-year anniversary apart due to the coronavirus lockdown.

And Romeo Beckham continued to pine after girlfriend Mia, who also goes by Mimi Moocher, as he shared a throwback snap of the pair together via Instagram on Friday

The teen, 17, and his other half looked smitten as they posed for the picture, with Romeo leaning his head towards Mia as she pulled a funny face.

Cute: Romeo Beckham pined for girlfriend Mia Regan as he shared a throwback snap via Instagram on Friday, while the teen couple spend quarantine apart

Romeo wore his chocolate-brown locks pulled back off his face, and Mia matched him as she swept her golden tresses into a messy bun.

She accessorised with a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses, which Romeo modelled in a second picture as he posed on his own.

Opting for a more comfortable hairdo, Romeo styled his hair in a tousled manner as he looked at Mia while she took the snap of him.

Looking back: Opting for a more comfortable hairdo, Romeo styled his hair in a tousled manner as he looked at Mia while she took the snap of him

Meanwhile, Romeo's brother Brooklyn took to Instagram to reveal how he and girlfriend Nicola Peltz have been keeping entertained in lockdown together.

The aspiring photographer showed off his and Nicola's ice cream making skills, as they prepared a colourful dessert and covered it in caramel and sprinkles.

Clearly a delectable sweet treat, Brooklyn happily consumed the ice cream though it made his tongue go blue due to the dessert's colouring.

In the States: Meanwhile, Romeo's brother Brooklyn took to Instagram to reveal how he and girlfriend Nicola Peltz have been keeping entertained in lockdown together

Dessert: The aspiring photographer showed off his and Nicola's ice cream making skills, as they prepared a colourful dessert and covered it in caramel and sprinkles

Preparation: Brooklyn shared a video of Nicola making the very sweet ice cream cone

Enjoying it: Clearly a delectable sweet treat, Brooklyn happily consumed the ice cream though it made his tongue go blue due to the dessert's colouring

Romeo's post comes after he revealed on Sunday that it was his one-year anniversary with Mia.

He was unable to spend the special day with his beloved due to lockdown restrictions but instead shared a sweet Instagram post for Mia.

The photos showed the loved-up couple snuggling up together in the adorable post, and he wrote: 'Happy 1 year mooch love u so much @mimimoocher.'

Meanwhile Mimi posted her own tribute to her boyfriend, posting a number of photos with the caption: 'Special times more to come.'

Young love: Romeo's post comes after he pined for her as they spent quarantine apart

Mimi and Romeo first sparked romance rumours when the model joined him at a private family dinner in celebration of his mother Victoria Beckham's fashion show.

Romeo previously paid tribute to his girlfriend while documenting their Valentine's Day trip to Paris in February.

The teen posted a series of images on Instagram, including one of their visit to the iconic Louvre Museum.

In another image, Romeo flashed the peace sign as he and Mia posed for a playful mirror selfie together.

Missed: This comes after Romeo revealed Sunday was his one-year anniversary with Mia
Holly Willoughby bowed out from her role as team captain on Celebrity Juice on Thursday night after 12 years on the series.

The TV star, 39, marked the occasion by accepting a final challenge from host Keith Lemon - to recreate the 'bendy' moves she displayed in an earlier episode when she and fellow ex-team captain Fearne Cotton had to eat carrots whilst contorting their bodies.

Holly obliged, proving she was still pretty flexible - and revealing she had two odd shoes on in the process.

Bowing out! Holly Willoughby bowed out from her role as team captain on Celebrity Juice on Thursday night after 12 years on the series

The episode featured John Barrowman, Mel B and Joey Essex as well - all filmed from their homes amid the current UK lockdown.

Keith marked Holly's departure by looking back at her best bits.

She admitted it was 'really weird' to be leaving the show after over a decade.

'It was obviously a massive decision to make and a scary decision! Obviously 12 years is a really long time of doing something,' she said, informing her yet-to-be-named successor to 'enjoy every moment because there is no show like it'.

Once more with feeling! The TV star, 39, marked the occasion by accepting a final challenge from host Keith Lemon - to recreate the 'bendy' moves she displayed in an earlier episode when she and fellow ex-team captain Fearne Cotton had to eat carrots whilst contorting their bodies

Watching on: Holly obliged, proving she was still pretty flexible - and revealing she had two odd shoes on in the process

Team captain: The episode featured Mel B too, and was filmed from their homes amid the current UK lockdown

Fans were left disappointed to see Holly go. One took to Twitter to post: 'Gutted Holly is leaving Celebrity Juice. She has provided plenty of laughs!'

Another echoed this, typing: 'Ahh im gonna miss @hollywills in celebrity juice!'

A third wrote: '@hollywills I will definitely miss you on #celebrityjuice'

Holly revealed she was stepping down from the show earlier this month to spend more time with her family.

Guest: John Barrowman also made an appearance

Home-bound: As did Joey Essex who filmed from his house

But she also admitted that she fully intends to return to the show as a guest.

She told Keith she would be back for 'special occasions' as they reflected on her time on the comedy panel show.

Speaking to each other via video-link from their homes, Keith said: 'We've had some fun times over the past 12 years, haven't we?'

Keith said: 'We've had some fun times over the past 12 years, haven't we?'

While Holly reminisced: 'We really have, we've laughed a lot.'

Keith added that he was going to miss Holly, and she gushed: 'I know, I'm going to miss you too... lots!'

Hoping she would return, Keith asked: 'Will you come back on special appearances on my birthday or something like that?'

Sweet: Keith added that he was going to miss Holly, and she gushed: 'I know, I'm going to miss you too... lots!'

To which Holly promised: 'Absolutely, like try and keep me away, I will be back.

'Obviously I wont be team captain anymore because that will go to someone very very lucky but I will be back on the panel, I'll come and play stupid games with you.'

Throwing in a cheeky joke for fun, Keith went on: 'And sometimes when we're really drunk can I get off with you like we used to do after the show?'

Request: Hoping she would return, Keith asked: 'Will you come back on special appearances on my birthday or something like that?'

But Holly was unfazed by the remark, as she said firmly: 'No, still a no.'

It comes after Keith admitted that he nearly quit Celebrity Juice after he was left 'gutted' over Holly's shock exit.

Keith and Holly started presenting the show alongside Fearne, who left in 2018, in 2008 - meaning Keith is the last man standing from the original lineup.

The comedian revealed how Holly delivered the new via phone and he thought she was pregnant.

For sure: Holly promised: 'Absolutely, like try and keep me away, I will be back... I will be back on the panel, I'll come and play stupid games with you'

Joking around: Throwing in a cheeky joke for fun, Keith went on: 'And sometimes when we're really drunk can I get off with you like we used to do after the show?' to which Holly refused

Keith added that Holly told him it was 'like breaking up with a boyfriend' and she has left the show to spend more time with her family. She has children Harry, ten, Belle, nine, and Chester, five, with husband Daniel Baldwin.

He told The Sun: 'I was really sad and realised I was going to miss her. I'm gutted, she was like my TV sister. She's welcome back any time. I'll properly miss her.'

He added: 'It's weird not being able to say goodbye to her in person at the moment. I'll miss Holly's hugs.'

Keith said that he didn't want to lower the mood of the episode by revealing Holly's departure so has instead organised for next week's episode to be a compilation of clips looking back over her time as a presenter.
C3.ai Releases COVID-19 Data Lake V2

C3.ai, a leading enterprise AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation, today announced the addition of 11 new integrated COVID-19 data sets to the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake, making it one of the largest pre-integrated and free sources of COVID-19 data in the world. C3 (News - Alert).ai COVID-19 Data Lake offers researchers access to normalized, unified data to accelerate efforts in the fight against COVID-19.

Researchers are in a race to predict the virus' trajectory, forecast demand for ICU bed capacity, analyze the efficacy of COVID-19 guidelines, support COVID-19 diagnosis, and speed the development of medical treatments. The challenge is that most data are dispersed in a variety of different locations and in unusable formats. Absent rich, integrated data sets, it is impossible to develop meaningful and accurate artificial intelligence models.

The C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake - developed by C3.ai in three weeks and accessible at https://c3.ai/covid - is a unified source of comprehensive, integrated COVID-19 data that C3.ai has made publicly available, at no cost, to global research and scientific communities. The data lake is unique and structurally different from other COVID-19 data collections in that it provides analysis-ready data that researchers can use immediately to enhance new or ongoing COVID projects.

Early Adopters Fast Track COVID-19 Projects

Researchers and data scientists from top universities, leading hospitals, and government agencies are among the early adopters using the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake to support a variety of efforts, including:

Supply chain analysis at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT (News - Alert)) Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics: Researchers at MIT, in collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other agencies, are focused on the analysis of critical supply chain issues to understand the distribution and availability of COVID-19 testing equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE) - and the pandemic's impact on freight flows throughout the country.



"Having access to an integrated set of diverse COVID-19 data sources with a common data model can help accelerate analysis of critical supply chain issues in our work with FEMA and other agencies," said Tim Russell, Research Engineer at the MIT Humanitarian Supply Chain Lab, MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. "The C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake provides a valuable resource in unifying and simplifying access to the necessary data without having to waste time on finding, cleaning, and preparing the data for analysis."

COVID-19 search engine affiliated with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab): A team of materials scientists at Berkeley Lab have launched a COVID-19 publications search engine that synthesizes hundreds of scientific papers every day for information extraction using text mining algorithms and natural language processing. Berkeley Lab scientists used the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake to incorporate Milken Institute data on therapeutics.

Media portrayal of COVID-19 in the U.S. at Arizona State University (ASU): Researchers at Arizona State want to understand the social psychology behind people's responses to the pandemic based on media portrayal of COVID-19. Specifically, they will be evaluating the impact of news and social media posts on the population's compliance with local mandates over time.

Pandemic strategies and response scenarios at a government agency: Data scientists are developing pandemic strategies, response scenarios, and risk assessments by building predictive models that will validate other publicly available models.

"With the addition of these 11 important data sets, we are proud to continue enhancing the scope and exponentially increasing the value of the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake as a no-cost resource for the global research community," said Thomas M. Siebel, CEO of C3.ai. "We are excited by the enthusiastic response among researchers and we are confident that their creativity, innovation, and imaginative use of this resource will yield significant results toward mitigating this and future pandemics."

C3.ai also is encouraging researchers to recommend data sources they would like to see added to the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake for future research. For example, a physician from a leading hospital has requested C3.ai add all U.S. vaccination data to the data lake to study the impact of previous vaccinations on the rate of hospitalizations and infections. Additionally, researchers affiliated with a leading university have requested C3.ai populate de-identified patient data into the data lake to improve an app that informs users with pre-existing conditions of COVID-related morbidity risks.

C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake data sources currently include:







By unifying the data sources, the C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake helps researchers generate insights faster and more easily than is possible with other data collections. The C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake is easily accessible to researchers via any utility that supports access through a RESTful API using common tools such as Python, R, Ex Machina, and Microsoft (News - Alert) Power BI. C3.ai intends to release future data sets bi-weekly.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is co-sponsor of the open data initiative and is providing cloud infrastructure services in support of this initiative.

This news follows the COVID-19 Data Lake announcement on April 22, 2020 and the March 26, 2020 launch of C3.ai Digital Transformation Institute (C3.ai DTI (News - Alert)), a research consortium dedicated to accelerating the application of artificial intelligence to speed the pace of digital transformation in business, government, and society.

For additional information about C3.ai COVID-19 Data Lake please visit: https://c3.ai/covid

To learn more about the C3.ai DTI program, award opportunities, and the first call for research proposals, focusing on AI techniques to mitigate COVID-19 and future pandemics, please visit C3DTI.ai.

About C3.ai

C3.ai is a leading AI software provider for accelerating digital transformation. C3.ai delivers the C3 AI Suite for developing, deploying, and operating large-scale AI, predictive analytics, and IoT applications in addition to an increasingly broad portfolio of turn-key AI applications. The core of the C3.ai offering is a revolutionary, model-driven AI architecture that dramatically enhances data science and application development. Learn more at: www.c3.ai.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005176/en/
China on Friday issued a statement calling on all UN member states to "actively fulfill their financial obligations to the United Nations," stressing that Washington owes the organization more than $2 billion.

"As of May 14, the total unpaid assessments under the UN regular budget and peacekeeping budget amount to 1.63 billion and 2.14 billion US dollars respectively," the Chinese statement said, citing a report from UN Secretary-General's office and a meeting held on Thursday.

Including arrears that stretch back several years, "the United States is the largest debtor, owing 1.165 billion and 1.332 billion US dollars respectively," China added.

The US is the biggest contributor to the UN budget, paying 22 percent of its annual running costs, a bill which adds up to around $3 billion, and 25 percent of its peacekeeping operations, which amount to some $6 billion a year.

Officially, Washington is meant to pay 27.89 percent of the peacekeeping budget, but a decision made by Congress and implemented by President Donald Trump in 2017 cut that payment to 25 percent, meaning Washington runs up an annual shortfall of $200 million.

The United States also has a fiscal year that runs from October to October, which can make it look like an even bigger debtor at certain times of the year.

There was no immediate response from the US mission to China's statement.

The payment of contributions by member countries for peacekeeping operations has a direct impact on the reimbursements the UN pays to countries that contribute troops to the 15 or so missions around the world.

In a report on May 11, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that "there may be significant delays towards the middle of the year, unless the cash position across missions improves significantly."

On Thursday, around 50 of the 193 member states, including China, paid their contributions in full, which Beijing -- the second largest contributor, far behind the United States -- noted in its statement.

China pays around 12 percent of the UN's running costs and around 15 percent of the peacekeeping budget.
Liquidity infusion of Rs 90,000 crore in ailing discoms through PFC and REC by government is a temporary arrangement and might put further pressure on state governments which are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said.

As part of the Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been spelling out various measures for different sectors to help them amid the cornavirus pandemic.

According to the relief package, the sanction of loans to discoms is linked to reforms in state power sector such as promotion of digital payments from consumers, liquidation of outstanding dues from state governments and plan to reduce operational and financial losses by discoms.

Currently, the outstanding dues of discoms towards power generating and transmission companies is to the extent of Rs 94,000 crore, which is expected to come down through the relief package.

"From discoms' perspective, this liquidity relief scheme through loans would increase their overall interest cost, with impact of 9 paise per unit sold at all India level," ICRA Ratings Group Head Sabyasachi Majumdar said.

"However, the extent of impact would be higher for discoms in states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, which account for more than 80 per cent of the overdues to power generating companies," Sabyasachi added.

He further said that the ability of the discoms to pass on this interest cost through tariffs remains uncertain, given that this may not come under the normative working capital interest allowed by the regulators while determining retail tariffs.

"This may result in increase in dependence on state government support. As a result, the book loss levels for the discoms are likely to increase by Rs 27,000 crore in FY2021 from FY2020 becuase of the impact of the lockdown," he added.

It may be noted that in 2015, the government had come up with the Ujjawal Discom Assurance Yojnawith an intent to find a permanent solution to the financial mess that the power distribution is in, wherein state governments, which own the discoms, could take over 75 percent of their debt as of September 30, 2015, and pay back lenders by selling bonds.

However, the scheme did not really help the discoms as it only resulted in increasing the total debt burden of the states while the discoms continued to default on payments.

According to Care Ratings, the Rs 90,000 crore credit infusion is a step in the right direction, but it will be necessary to see to what extent the discoms are able to avail the scheme given the 'tied' nature of this support and requirements of state government guarantee.

"With this measure, the power sector problem is being shifted to the state government and therefore the achievement on reform intent will be a challenge as has been proven time and again," its Senior Director Amod Khanorkar said.

Also, with COVID-19 cases rising drastically despite the lockdown to more than 82,700 and death toll crossing the 2,600 mark, the state governments are diverting their funds and mobilising them towards fighting the pandemic, which leaves lesser scope for them to take on additional financial burden, another analyst stated.

A senior official from Maharashtra state utility Mahadiscom noted that the intent of the initiative is good, but it depends on the financial ability of the discoms to meet the criteria as well as to what extent the state government would be able to take the guarantee needs to ascertained and worked out.

"In the current scenario, despite introducing various initiatives for digital payments, tariff collections have not been achieved to the extend we expected.

"Mahadiscom has already taken various initiatives to reduce our AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial)losses. Also, due to the lockdown, our revenues from the subsiding industrial and commercial consumers have gone down significantly," the official said.

Currently, India's average AT&C losses are estimated at around 21.4 per cent, which the government intends to reduce to less than 12 per cent.

While Arunachal Pradesh has the highest AT&C loss of over 58 per cent, for Jammu and Kashmir it is more than 53 per cent and for Uttar Pradesh it is over 38 per cent.

Echoing similar views , Crisil Infrastructure Advisory Senior Director Energy Vivek Sharma noted that the larger issue of discoms' financial sustainability and turnaround remains a matter of concern.

"This is a short-term measure. Also, appropriate structuring for bond issuance against guarantee will be critical to raise funds in the current tight liquidity scenario," he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"I don't think you are the one person who gets to make a decision. We can listen to your advice but there are people on the other side saying there's not going to be a surge and we can safely open the economy."

The speaker was Sen. Rand Paul, in the hearing with the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions on Tuesday. Sen. Paul, a medical doctor, was addressing Dr. Anthony Fauci of the president's coronavirus task force. Dr. Fauci did not appreciate the challenge.

"I'm a scientist, a physician and a public health official," Fauci said. The millions of Americans struggling to get their lives back might quibble with the order, and a key part of the description is missing.

Anthony Fauci earned a medical degree from Cornell University in 1966. He does not list advanced degrees in molecular biology so, strictly speaking, Anthony Fauci is not a virologist.

In 1984, a full 36 years ago, Fauci hired on with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

There Fauci made a name for himself with the claim that AIDS would ravage the heterosexual community. That turned out to be wrong; for background, see The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS by Michael Fumento and Inventing the AIDS Virus by Peter Duesberg, who is a molecular biologist.

On Fauci's watch, NIAID became a major funder of research for what is now known as HIV/AIDS. Dr. Fauci could often be found testifying before Congress, which is where the money comes from. Lately, his ability to get things wrong has been on full display.

In January of 2020, Dr. Fauci said it was unclear whether the coronavirus could spread person to person and cited a very low risk to the United States. Fauci said people need not wear masks and then contended they should. No more shaking hands, but according to Fauci, it's okay to have sex with strangers you meet online.

In press conferences, Fauci avoided the most important fact about COVID-19  the true mortality rate. Instead, Fauci showed fondness for various "models" of how the virus might spread. In early April, Fauci said the coronavirus might become "seasonal" with a resurgence later in the year. On Tuesday, the good doctor held to that line.

"If some areas  cities states or what have you  jump over those barriers, checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently," Fauci testified, "my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks."

So maybe the kids would not be returning to school in fall, and their embattled parents not returning to work. That brought on the pushback from Rand Paul, who cited varying mortality figures and rejected a singular approach for the entire country.

In his response, Dr. Fauci said it was not his business to address economic concerns. That comes something as a surprise to the millions now unemployed due to the lockdown approach Fauci advances.

Prophecy and fear-mongering are not science, so Dr. Fauci's claim to be first and foremost a scientist needs some qualification. Fauci, 79, is indeed a public health official, but also a politician of sorts.

Dr. Anthony Fauci has held forth at NIAID for 36 years, making decisions that affect millions of people, without once having to face the vote of the people. If the people thought he should have been shown the door years ago, it would be hard to blame them.

Lloyd Billingsley is a policy fellow at the Independent Institute.
Overview

A research group of Assistant Prof. Yuu Hirose of the Department of Applied Chemistry and Life Science at Toyohashi University of Technology, Niigata University, the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), and the National Institute of Polar Research, has revealed the community structure of microorganisms living around freshwater lakes in the Langhovde and Skarvsnes ice-free areas of Antarctica. An analysis of samples collected from lake shores, puddles, etc. using a next-generation sequencer has verified that cyanobacteria and tardigrades are widely distributed and specific eukaryotic algae are dominant in certain sites. This knowledge will contribute to clarification of adaptation mechanisms of microorganisms to severe physical stresses in Antarctica, e.g. low temperatures, ultraviolet irradiation and freeze-thaw cycles.

Details

Most of Antarctica is covered with thick snow and ice, however; there are ice-free areas where land is exposed. The ice-free areas occupy only about 0.2% of the area in Antarctica, but a variety of microorganisms have been observed, and the areas are also called "Antarctic oases". Two ice-free areas called Langhovde and Skarvsnes exist near Showa Station, Antarctica, and there are 50 or more large and small lakes in these areas (Fig. 1). Water does not freeze at the bottom of these lakes throughout the year and a unique ecosystem called "moss pillar," that mainly includes moss and fungi, is distributed. Assistant Prof. Yuu Hirose and others of the Department of Applied Chemistry and Life Science at Toyohashi University of Technology focused on shores of freshwater lakes and also puddles and streams from snow meltwater. These environments are completely frozen during the winter season and accordingly are under more extreme stress (e.g. freezing and thawing and temperature changes), than that at the bottom of lakes.

In recent years, a technique for analyzing microbial community structure in environments using a next-generation sequencer has been developed. This method has a higher sensitivity and better quantitative properties than those of conventional techniques such as microscope observation. Assistant Prof. Hirose used this method to analyze microbial community structures at a total of 13 sites in the vicinity of Antarctic freshwater lakes (Fig. 2). The results revealed that filamentous cyanobacteria were widely distributed, and also that the proportion of unicellular cyanobacteria and cyanobacteria with cell differentiation capacity (called heterocysts*1), was small. The most widely distributed eukaryote was tardigrades with resistance to dryness and low temperatures. It was verified that specific eukaryotic algae such as cryptophyceae and green algae were dominant in some sites. There were also sites including nematodes feeding on algae. It is interesting that the fungi most dominant in moss pillars were not majority in these areas. The above results revealed that a variety of organisms lived even under severe environments e.g. the shallower parts of lakes, and puddles and streams.

*1Heterocyst: Cells dedicated to nitrogen fixation in filamentous cyanobacteria and formed mostly under nitrogen-deficient conditions.

Future Outlook

Clarification of the molecular mechanism how microorganisms living in these areas adapt to severe stresses is expected in the future. It is important to clarify the relationship between environmental factors, such as temperature and light conditions, and community structures of microorganisms. The monitoring and maintenance of the Antarctic ecosystem based on these information are also important.

###

Reference

Investigating Algal Communities in Lacustrine and Hydro-Terrestrial Environments of East Antarctica using Deep Amplicon Sequencing. Hirose, Y., Shiozaki, T., Otani, M., Kudoh, S., Imura S., Eki, T., Harada, N.

Microorganisms 2020, 8(4), 497, doi.org/10.3390/microorganisms8040497

This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP15H05712, "Plankton in polar regions -toward an understanding of their characteristics (representative: Naomi Harada)." The collection of samples was conducted as ordinary research observations of the 60th Japanese Antarctic Research Expedition.
A group of central Illinois Republican representatives criticized Gov. J.B. Pritzkers Restore Illinois plan, saying the governor has failed to collaborate with House Republicans on his response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

During a news video conference on Thursday, representatives C.D. Davidsmeyer, Avery Bourne, Mike Murphy and Tim Butler said the state should take a more localized approach to easing lockdown restrictions and give local leaders more input. Bourne said she was told by a Democratic colleague that the House is unlikely to limit the governors authority.

Thats disappointing, she said. This isnt a partisan call. There have been downstate Democrats, there have been local officials from across the state who have called for local input.

Bourne said the four large state regions outlined by the Restore Illinois plan hurt smaller areas by being grouped with larger cities. The state already has 11 widely accepted smaller emergency service regions, she said.

During his Thursday news briefing, Pritzker defended drawing the regions the way that they are, saying residents of one community may travel to other areas within its region on a regular basis. The states medical teams told his team the 11 EMS regions were grouped in zones that work well together, which isnt the key element of the reopening regions, Pritzker said.

Butler criticized comments Pritzker made Tuesday, when he said would consider withholding federal funding to communities that wont follow his plan.

Resistance to Pritzkers plan is a result of communities trying to save the livelihoods of their residents, Butler said, adding that Pritzker isnt addressing the economic hardships of staying closed.

I dont think the governor should be threatening anyone on federal tax dollars  thats just ridiculous, Butler said.

Saying supporting Illinois workers and families is his top priority, Pritzker announced the launch of a new website, Get Hired Illinois, to connect unemployed workers with employees looking to hire. He defended his ability to use federal funding and business licenses as a way to enforce the executive order.

I would suggest that towns and elected leaders do your job  lead  be the person that is supposed to be protecting your community, Pritzker said. Dont fall prey to the rhetoric thats out there.

Davidsmeyer said Pritzker hasnt responded to requests to share with Republicans all of the data the state has on the pandemic. He said he wants to know how much of the governors decision-making is based on epidemiologists recommendations and how much hired consultants are influencing policy.

Davidsmeyer said he is prepared to file a Freedom of Information Act request if he doesnt receive the information soon.

The issue that we are having as a co-equal branch of government is we do not have access to that data, Davidsmeyer said. We have been requesting any information that the governor is using to make his decisions.

Pritzker said Thursday that he is in regular contact with Republican leadership and has been responsive to their inquiries.

The representatives on Thursdays video conference also criticized how the state has handled unemployment, saying they are receiving calls from constituents who are struggling to get unemployment checks.
Bliss Dental is Reopening

For patients who have gone to see Andy Gaertner, D.M.D, in the past, they will have seen the infection control processes that the office has always had in place. After being allowed to re-open during the current pandemic, they have put some new protocols in place. The goal is to ensure that patients and staff are as safe and comfortable as possible while going through their dental exams and treatments.

The new protocols that Dr. Gaertner has put into place were done following the recommendations of the American Dental Association (ADA), the U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). Dr. Gaertner and his staff follow these recommendations closely to ensure that they are up to date on any new rulings and guidelines that are recommended for public health.

In addition to their normal infection control procedures, some of the new protocols that have been put into place include all patients answering screening questions while making their appointment over the phone and then answering the same questions again before they are allowed to enter the office.

Staff members will also greet patients in the waiting room, where they will check the individuals temperature. Only 2 patients are allowed at the same time in the waiting room. There will also be hand sanitizer available in the office, which patients will be asked to use. The staff will be wearing personal protective equipment, and it is recommended that patients wear masks as they enter and leave the office building. Air purifiers have been installed to reduce the chances of patients and staff coming in contact with airborne pollutants, including the COVID-19 virus.

The number of patients allowed in the office at one time will be reduced to ensure that social distancing guidelines are enforced and to reduce contact with various surfaces throughout the space. If patients have any questions about the new protocols that have been put into place, Dr. Gaertner and his team are more than happy to answer them.

Dr. Gaertner and the Bliss Dental Team know that putting off dental care can lead to a wide variety of issues. To ensure that patients are getting proper care and taking care of their teeth, they have re-opened their office and added new protocols to increase safety and reduce the risks of being infected with the coronavirus, by maintaining optimal oral health.

Dr. Gaertner and his team are committed to providing the highest quality dental care to all of their patients. They have comprehensive solutions for any patient need that might arise, and they provide solutions to improve patient health and make their smile as dazzling as possible.

The new infection control protocols that have been put into place enhance those that Dr. Gaertner and his staff have always practiced. Times have changed, and new viruses threaten the safety of everyones health. However, by following the guidelines, maintaining the proper distance between individuals, and wearing protective equipment, its possible to reduce the chances of spreading COVID-19, while at the same time getting all dental needs taken care of.

Dr. Gaertner is accepting appointments for both new and established patients. They are looking forward to seeing people again, and they are sure that the new processes they have put in place will keep everyone safe and comfortable. To ensure an individual is taking proper care of their teeth, they should contact the office today.

If you're in the Kendall area of Miami, call 305-274-6500 or visit our website at https://blissdentalmiami.com to schedule an appointment with Dr. Gaertner, D.M.D.
TICKERS: KCC

Source: Peter Epstein for Streetwise Reports (5/15/20)

Peter Epstein of Epstein Research explains why he is watching this explorer.



Given the widespread COVID-19 induced downturn, I struggled with the outlook for copper. I feared that like stock markets in March, the copper price might collapse. That didn't happen. Either due to producer discipline or governments halting operations, a fair amount of world supply has been curtailed indefinitely.

It may turn out that COVID-19 has as big an impact on supply as it does on demand. Copper is trading at US$2.35/lb, ~14% below its average price in 2019. So, not the end of the world.

I came to terms with Dr. Copper by learning that massive, multi-year, global stimulus packages are in the works. In total, probably US$10 or US$20 trillion over the next few years. Much of it will go to copper-intensive infrastructure projects. Furthermore, growing end market demand from the electrification of transportation remains in place.

But enough about copper, today's gold price is a BIGGER story, currently at US$1,740/oz, 25% above its average price in 2019. New discoveries that contain meaningful gold values will be handsomely rewarded.

In particular, discoveries in globally significant jurisdictions, made by world-class teams, on projects with tremendous blue-sky potential could generate substantial share price gains. With this in mind, I circle back to a small copper & gold story that has all the ingredients for an exciting discovery.

Could Kincora Copper Ltd. (KCC:TSX.V) be the comeback resource junior of the year? After a disappointing drill program in Mongolia, management switched gears, jumping on a compelling opportunity in Australia, just before new discoveries were made all around them. The company is currently drilling its Trundle project in New South Wales (NSW).

It's worth noting that Trundle is the only brownfield project in the area controlled by a listed junior. Kincora's enterprise value {market cap (C$12 million) + debt (zero)  cash (C$3 million) = C$9 million/US$6.4 million.

Trundle is in an exploration hotspotthe Macquarie Arc (MA) of the Lachlan Fold Belt (LFB). The MA hosts major porphyry deposits, including Newcrest Mining's company-maker, underpinning it becoming Australia's largest gold miner, Cadia {913k ounces gold (2019) at AISC of US$ 132/oz net of credits}; Evolution Mining's flagship Cowal project {251.5k ounces gold (2019) at AISC of ~US$ 675/oz}; China Molybdenum's (CMOC) copper-gold Northparkes {~240k Au Eq ounces/year}; and Alkane Resources' Boda {discovery hole: 502 m at 0.48 g/t Au + 0.2% Cu}.

Kincora controls a district-scale 1,732 sq km land position in a few key belts within the MA. Management's first press release on its Australian activities was on November 21st. Since then, gold is up ~24% to over AUD$ 2,700/oz.a record price. There's also been significant drill program successes by peer LFB juniors {most notably, Alkane Resources, but also Sky Metals and Magmatic Resources}.

Alkane reported a blockbuster intercept at its Boda project; 96.8m @ 4 g/t Au + 1.52% Cu (~5.4 g/t Au Eq) from 768-meter depth. It also has a 3035k ounce/year producing gold mine and a market cap of ~C$400million. Alkane has the financial ability to aggressively drill out the Boda deposit. A follow-up second phase drill program leading to a maiden resource would be great news for Alkane and neighboring peers including Kincora Copper.

Sky Metals, with a market cap of ~$110 million, has two tin-tungsten-silver projects and two gold projects in the LFB. Its gold discovery really got the share price moving. Sky has some good intercepts, but nothing like Alkane's.

Magmatic Resources has a market cap of ~$50 million. It has land holdings in the LFB totaling 1,054 sq km vs. 1,732 sq km controlled by Kincora, and is a "nearlogy" exploration play to Alkane's Boda, as Kincora is to CMOC's Northparkes. Due in part to Alkane's success, Magmatic had one of the largest percentage gains of any gold junior on the planet. From 2c to 46c over six months, and recently back to 31c.

Sky Metals and Magmatic Resources, with an average market cap of ~$75 million, are reasonable comps to Kincora's $12 million pre-discovery valuation. All three are pre-maiden resource or confirmation of an economic discovery hole. Other exploration success stories in Australia, such as Greatland Gold, Legend Mining and Chalice Gold, also demonstrate the power of new discoveries. There's plenty of run room if management hits pay dirt. A drilling update is expected within a week or so.

There are fewer than two dozen gold/copper (or copper/gold) juniors that have flagship projects in NSW. All but three are Australian-listed. Kincora Copper (TSX-V: KCC) is a good way for North American investors to gain exposure to the LFB.

Kincora has ~$3 million in cash, strong drill targets, (derived from robust prior exploration efforts, plus new studies) and a tremendous management/technical team plus advisors. In addition to the tireless efforts since 2012 of Kincora's CEO Sam Spring {full bio here}, three additional world-class team members are actively involved, Independent Director & Chairman of the Technical Committee John Holliday, Senior VP Exploration Peter Leaman and Chairman Cameron McRae.

John Holliday has >30 years' experience in exploration, mostly with BHP and Newcrest Mining, including as chief geoscientist and general manager. He has been working with Kincora since 2015. John has a successful track record in global gold-copper exploration, discovery and evaluation. He was a principal discoverer of the Tier-1 Cadia gold-copper porphyry and Marsden copper-gold porphyry in the LFB, and a geological advisor on the acquisition of many significant projects. {full bio here}

Peter Leaman has >40 years' experience in exploration, mostly with BHP and PanAust Ltd., where he was regional exploration manager for SE Asia. He's a hands on, target-orientated leader responsible for project generation and managing exploration programs, resulting in notable discoveries including the Tier 1 Reko Diq porphyry Cu/Au deposit, Crater Mountain epithermal Au/Ag and the Mt. Bini (Kodu) porphyry Cu/Au deposits in Papua New Guinea, among others. {full bio here}

Cameron McRae is a very seasoned mining executive. He had a 28-year career with Rio Tinto and in Mongolia was president of Oyu Tolgoi and Rio Tinto's country director. McRae led the construction and start-up of the US$6 billin Oyu Tolgoi copper mine and was responsible for safety, strategy, operations and growth initiatives. He has led successful greenfield and brownfield projects, has deep commercial/M&A experience and has sat on numerous exploration and technical committees. {full bio here}

Truly a tremendous team with direct experience, in the right place, at the right time, especially for a company with such a modest enterprise value. As of April 22nd, phase 1 drilling at Trundle has commenced. This phase includes a six hole/~3,800-meter (~630 meters/hole) program, testing three large mineralized zones at greater depths.

The company expects this program to be "high impact, value-add drilling," as Trundle has "excellent potential for new high-grade porphyry & skarn copper-gold discoveries."

Regarding the drill program, John Holliday and Peter Leaman commented,

"Modern systematic exploration at Trundle has utilized industry leading IP surveys, including HPX's proprietary Typhoon system, and magnetic modeling which has been insufficiently followed up by drilling. Existing significant drill intersections support vectoring to very compelling targets at existing mineralized systems within a brownfield environment to Northparkes, Australia's second largest porphyry mine where five deposits are defined."

Trundle is 30 km west of CMOC's Northparkes copper-gold project, Australia's second largest porphyry mine (behind Newcrest's Cadia, also in the Macquarie Arc). CMOC acquired an 80% interest in Northparkes in 2013 for US$820 million and has since expanded production and extended the mine life.

Historically an important agricultural hub, substantially increased mining activity in the region has led to favorable infrastructure improvements (power, roads, rail, etc.. This will likely continue as iron ore giant Fortescue Metals ($34 billion market cap) has secured property, including parcels adjacent to Kincora's southern border of Trundle. Newmont, Gold Fields and Freeport-McMoRan are also exploring in the LFB.

The Trundle project hosts extensive evidence of porphyry and skarn-style copper-gold mineralization across 12.5 km strike length and shares some geological features with Northparkes and Cadia. Results of surface geological mapping, geochemistry, magnetic, gravity and IP coverage, coupled with structural and basement rock interpretations, have been promising.

Past drilling totaled 2,208 holes for 61,146 meters. Only limited modern exploration and very little deep drilling into basement rocks has been done. Importantly, over 92% of historical drilling has been to <50 meters in depth. Just 11 holes have been >300m (~0.5% of total holes drilled). Where the first hole is being drilled, the average drill hole depth is only 28 meters.

Shallow intercepts not followed up on include: [60m @ 0.54g/t Au from 1m], [56m @ 0.88g/t Au + 0.35% Cu from 34m, incl. 2m @ 20g/t Au + 7% Cu & 81g/t Ag from 64m depth], [39m @ 0.55 g/t Au + 0.14% Cu from surface], [35m @ 0.55 g/t Au + 0.25% Cu from 12m], [51m @ 0.58 g/t Au + 0.14% Cu from 33m], [58m @ 0.44 g/t Au + 0.17% Cu from 22m, including 4m @ 1.19g/t Au + 0.41% Cu from 28m]. Note: at spot Au prices, the avgerage grade of 0.6 g/t = nearly $50/tonne, which is good for these shallow depths. Additional high-grade hits, like the 2m @ 20g/t Au (with 7% Cu) would gain a lot of attention in the currently hot gold market.

Deeper core drilling has commenced at the Trundle Park zone on the southern end of the property. Management sees real potential for higher-grade porphyry and skarn copper-gold discoveries. Prior activities intersected, "high-grade localized zones, within a large lower-grade magnetite skarn, similar in style to the Big Cadia skarn, and peripheral to the Cadia porphyry copper-gold deposits."

Kincora is drilling three fences to test known mineralized porphyry targets analogous to the five identified deposits at Northparkes. Existing intercepts support vectoring to compelling drill targets at the existing systems. No drilling has taken place at the project since 2015, while the Mordialloc target hasn't seen drilling since 2008.

No drilling has yet tested below the zones, where geophysics and re-logging of historical data has indicated proximity to a porphyry source. Despite a lot of smoke, the potential source has yet to be found.

CEO Spring sums things up,

"With previous drill results, existing untested geophysical surveying and being in a brownfield environment, there's a strong argument that we have comparable, if not a bit more, smoke at Trundle than Alkane had before its breakthrough drill results at Boda. Boda is the best greenfield discovery in the belt in over 20 years and, before the pull back in the market because of COVID-19, was the catalyst for approximately A$400 million being added to Alkane's market cap in this rising gold price environment".

While there are no guarantees when it comes to high-impact exploration of Tier 1 assets, Kincora Copper (TSX-V: KCC) has the foundation for success and a cheap valuation, providing investors an interesting risk-adjusted return opportunity.

Peter Epstein is the founder of Epstein Research. His background is in company and financial analysis. He holds an MBA degree in financial analysis from New York University's Stern School of Business.

[NLINSERT]

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The content of this article is for information only. Readers fully understand and agree that nothing contained herein, written by Peter Epstein of Epstein Research [ER], (together, [ER]) about Kincora Copper, including but not limited to, commentary, opinions, views, assumptions, reported facts, calculations, etc. is not to be considered implicit or explicit investment advice. Nothing contained herein is a recommendation or solicitation to buy or sell any security. [ER] is not responsible under any circumstances for investment actions taken by the reader. [ER] has never been, and is not currently, a registered or licensed financial advisor or broker/dealer, investment advisor, stockbroker, trader, money manager, compliance or legal officer, and does not perform market making activities. [ER] is not directly employed by any company, group, organization, party or person. The shares of Kincora Copper are highly speculative, not suitable for all investors. Readers understand and agree that investments in small cap stocks can result in a 100% loss of invested funds. It is assumed and agreed upon by readers that they will consult with their own licensed or registered financial advisors before making any investment decisions.

At the time this article was posted, Kincora Copper was an advertiser on [ER] and Peter Epstein owned shares in the Company.

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S Lalitha By

Express News Service

BENGALURU: A total of 109 passengers, including three children, from San Francisco landed at Kempegowda International Airport in Bengaluru at 9.22 am on Friday after a 21-hour journey including a stopover in New Delhi.

A flurry of activity and some tension was witnessed as soon as passenger checks got underway inside the arrival zone of the airport as one flyer showed COVID-19 symptoms when temperature readings were taken for all.

This led to an immediate segregation of the individual and he was despatched in an ambulance to the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Chest Diseases hospital for further tests.

"The individual had high fever and so action had to be taken immediately," said an airport source. More drama ensued when the luggage of two passengers could not be traced.

Passengers who spoke to The New Indian Express said they were extremely tired after the journey but also relieved to be back in India.

Air India and the Modi government came in for particular praise from passengers for the repatriation flights. The stringent precautions and tests at the airports in Delhi and Bangalore too were lauded by them.

Dr KP Basavaraj, one of the passengers, said, "After checks with infrared thermometers, passengers were also being subjected to pulse oxymetry tests and were made to give a self-declaration form about their health status."

S Archana, a second year theology student of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministry, said, "I have been trying to get back since March. My vacation has started. It was tough there with no job or money on hand. I will return to the US in August."

Buses to ferry them were waiting since 9 am and the final bus departed only around 1.30 pm. The flyers were taken to hotels on MG Road and Hosur Road by 8 BMTC buses.

With this, the first phase of repatriation flights by Air India has wound up. Six flights have been flown to Bengaluru.
Being trialled in the Isle of Wight, the NHS coronavirus app is seen as a key plank of the government's effort to ease the UK out of lockdown.

The app, developed by NHSX, the health service's technology arm, uses bluetooth to log when other people come into close contact with the user for a sustained period of time.

If someone develops coronavirus symptoms, they log it on the app, which then alerts those who have been in close proximity with the infected person that they may be at risk.

The app forms part of the government's "test, track and trace" programme, which aims to keep the virus at bay as the strict lockdown measures are slowly lifted.

An army of 18,000 contract tracers are also being recruited, who will track down everyone that an infected person may have had contact with by speaking to their friends, family and colleagues.

These people may be advised to self isolate or to order coronavirus test kits to use at home.

The contract tracers will work alongside the app, which will be able to pick up contacts that are more difficult to pinpoint, such as people the infected person may have met on public transport or in the streets.

Matt Hancock, the health secretary, promised earlier this week that the contact tracing app will be widely available by "mid-May" but concerns have been raised over whether the government will meet this self-imposed target.

On Friday, Northern Ireland secretary Brandon Lewis also admitted that only 1,500 contact tracers have been hired so far out of the promised 18,000.

The Independent understands ministers are also considering whether to roll out the app regionally, depending on the lessons learned from the first phase on the Isle of Wight.

Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Show all 18 1 /18 Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jackie Wilson, a healthcare assistant, wearing PPE before going into rooms Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, speaks to a carer at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Carers working at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A care worker wearing PPE opens a drink carton Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, sits with a carer Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A care staff member wearing PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member at Newfield Nursing Home looks after a resident SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer wearing PPE uses a speaker Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer helps Jack Dodsley, 79, from his chair Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer wearing PPE helps Jack Dodsley, 79 Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer brings food to a resident at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member puts on PPE at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jackie Wilson, a healthcare assistant, puts on PPE before she enters a room SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A bench at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS

A Whitehall source said: "If one of the lessons from the Isle of Wight is we can only do this nationally and regionally doesn't work then we will look at that.

"If there's a sense we could do it better regionally then we will. It is part of what we are looking at."

The app has been downloaded by more than 72,300 of the Isle of Wight's 140,000 residents, taking it well over the 60 per cent take up rate needed for the app to be effective. In the wider population, this would equate to around 80 per cent of all smartphone users.

On the Isle of Wight, NHS and council staff were emailed to inform them the app was available to download, before the wider public were also informed by letter and through local media campaigns.

Early technical issues being ironed out include problems with Huawei handsets and older phones, Dr Geraint Lewis, who is leading the development of the app, admitted earlier this week.

The app has triggered privacy row due to its centralised design, which means the matching between infected person and contact will take place on a central database. Insiders believe this will allow the NHS greater insight into the spread, such as if there are spikes of cases in certain areas.

Critics favour the decentralised model developed by Google and Apple, where the exchange happens on the phone, rather than on a central database.

A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said its aim "remains to roll out the app more widely later this month".

Asked about the Isle of Wight pilot, the spokesperson said: "The app launched at the start of May, with the aim of completing the pilot in around 3 weeks.

"This is the initial phase of a national rollout that will allow us to learn about and improve the service as it is rolled out across the UK.

"Like any high quality app, we will continually evolve and improve it over the coming weeks."
LAGOS, NIGERIA / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / For most countries across the globe, Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) are the backbones of the economy. They not only contribute to the world economically but also are the major contributors to social developments as more than half of the world's population works in such companies. For instance, more than 90% of the Dutch companies are SMEs and together they contribute to more than 60% value of the Dutch Economy. However, SMEs have no dearth of challenges to tackle so as to establish them.

From limited access to bank loans to inefficient payment procedures to limited business opportunities, countless problems have been haunting SMEs for ages. Unfortunately, these grave problems force more than 30% of SMEs to shut down in the first three years of operation. It has also been reported that more than 40% of the small businesses reported cash flow issues in past years. Today, technology holds the answer to all our troubles and the same is true for SMEs. Cowrium brings a revolution for the SME finance industry by addressing numerous challenges with its multidimensional Blockchain & Smart Contract innovation!

What is the Cowrium Platform?

The goal of Cowrium blockchain project is to help Small and Medium Enterprise to easily adopt comprehensive blockchain solutions to better reach thousands of customers. Basically, Cowrium is a Global Decentralized blockchain Network with Smart Contract as an inherent feature along with Interoperability, and Masternodes with AI Support for Crypto Stability that aims to bridge the Gap between Crypto & Fiat. The Cowrium platform has a multi-pillar foundation consisting of:

A Decentralized Exchange (CowDE X),

A DAP that allow you to send crypto and receive in fiat (ErrandBoy)

multidimensional Smart Contract, and

An Artificial Intelligence Crypto Stability Solution (Cowrie Stability Al).

What Problems does Cowrium Platform Solve?

Our multicurrency payment system deals with the problems SMEs face with the current payment gateway systems. The problems solved include the highly publicized High Credit/Debit card processing Fee charged from the retailers and the fraudulent chargebacks by buyers. The platform acts as a bridge between cryptocurrencies and fiat by solving the problem of major adoption of cryptos as an alternative to fiat. The Cowrium ecosystem deals with volatility in prices due to manipulations, high transaction fees due to increasing mining difficulty, and delayed transactions due to excess block confirmation time.

Story continues

Understanding the Cowrium Solution

The Cowrium platform employs a dynamic fusion to fill up the quantum gap between the old and the new ledger of the Finance and Technological World by enabling consumers to make payments and merchants to accept payments in a cryptocurrency of their choice. The ecosystem's use of "COWRIE STABILITY AI" is to make Cowrie Stabilize and protect it from any market volatility. The money transfer app "ERRANDBOY 1.0" enables users to send money in any cryptocurrency which is then converted to Fiat currency and sent to the recipient's location, anywhere across the world.

At Cowrium, we have identified the problems of current financial infrastructure and built a strong, self-sustaining network to provide usability to SMEs for hurdle-less finance in the future. Therefore, Cowrium project is not just a blockchain but a new generation evolution of the economic system.

Media Contact Information:

Name: Emmanuel Haastrup

Company Name: Cowrium Int Ltd

Website: https://www.cowrium.net/

Email: chief@cowrium.net

SOURCE: Cowrium Int Ltd





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/590001/How-Cowrium-is-An-Ultimate-Financial-Tool-For-SMEs




Chandrajit Banerjee By

Covid-19 has altered the entire economic paradigm like no other event. The global economic fallout is worsening by the day and countries across the world are grappling with the economic challenges. The ensuing battle against Covid-19 is expected to be a long-drawn one and its attendant economic costs will be humongous. At a time when the economy was showing incipient signs of recovery, the outbreak of the pandemic has come as a bolt from the blue. While the lockdown was necessary to save precious lives, it has had serious economic consequences. By the time the third phase of the lockdown ends, we would have lost almost two months of output.

The incoming high-frequency data that is trickling in has started to show the stress on the macros. The Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) slumped to a record low of 27.4 in April from 51.8 in March, driven by sharp falls in new orders, output and employment indices. Manifesting the collapse in service sector activities, PMI services index, too, plummeted to 5.4 in April, an unprecedented low since the start of the survey. Industrial output also mirrored the stress as it contracted by a large clip, 16.7%, in March. Merchandise exports contracted by a record 34.6% that month as the virus wiped out global appetite for trade coupled with disrupted supply lines. These are ominous signs for the economy and only the beginning of what we believe would be a protracted period of slowdown.

Unsurprisingly, the growth forecasts for the current fiscal have been scaled down sharply, with most expecting de-growth, even in their best-case scenarios. Among the biggest casualties of the lockdown have been the daily-wage workers, who account for almost a third of the countrys total workers. With factories shutting shops, these workers have been rendered jobless. The International Labour Organization has forewarned that 400 million Indians, including migrant workers and daily-wage earners, are at risk of being pushed deeper into poverty due to widespread joblessness. Another disturbing factor pertains to the lack of a social security net for the tens of millions of workers in the unorganised sector, which makes them vulnerable to the vagaries of a grinding halt in economic activities.

Taking cognisance of the very dire economic circumstances that we find ourselves in due to Covid-19, the announcement of the Rs 20 lakh crore special Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan package, which is roughly equivalent to 10% of GDP, by the prime minister was the need of the hour. Apart from providing the financial wherewithal to navigate out of the crisis, the thrust of the package is also on ensuring that India becomes self-reliant.

Rightfully, the focus of the first tranche of the package announced on May 13 was on the key sectors of MSME, employee provident fund, power distribution companies and taxation, among other major areas that are the most impacted. The six measures announced to alleviate the stress of the MSME sector, especially the provision of collateral-free automatic loans with 100% government credit guarantee and change in definition of MSMEs, are expected to be a major shot-in-the-arm for the beleaguered sector. Both these measures were something that the CII has been very strongly advocating with the government for long.

The large allocation made for the guarantee will assure banks that the government will repay them in case the loans are not repaid by the borrower. As banks increase their credit, the economy could turn around and the actual default rate could come down. The guarantee will be a contingent liability for the government, not requiring any immediate spending.

It is heartening to note that the bouquet of announcements laid special emphasis on rejuvenating the infrastructure and construction sector for bringing growth back to the economy. Specifically, the Rs 90,000 crore liquidity infusion into the power distribution companies (Discoms) is expected to help revive this critical sector, which has been accumulating huge losses, as the tariffs are not set on a commercial basis. It is hoped that the forthcoming packages to be announced in the coming days will supplement the well-calibrated and prudent measures announced in the first tranche.

These measures and the ones that will follow are expected to provide support for growth in the short-term. However, in line with the necessity for implementing bold reforms that the prime minister spoke about, a medium-term plan for recovery, implementable over a period of time, too is the need of the hour. Funding public infrastructure has been a proven route of stimulus that not only generates demand for many industries but also creates jobs, especially for a large section of informal workforce. In this regard, a public works programme on the lines of the already announced National Infrastructure Pipeline should be initiated with the involvement of state governments so that implementation bottlenecks can be overcome. The suggested areas could include roads, railways, ports and industrial parks.

Finally, the pandemic should serve as a reminder that it is critical to build on our health infrastructure. At present, our healthcare spending at 1.29% of GDP remains abysmally low as compared to our peers in the BRICS and OECD countries. The government needs to urgently prioritise healthcare spending to brace itself for facing any eventuality of the present kind in the future.

Chandrajit Banerjee

Director General, Confederation of Indian Industry

(Email: cb@cii.in)
A sweeping audit by the office of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra found nearly 1,200 untested rape kits at the Oakland Police Department, accounting for about 9% of the nearly 14,000 untested kits held by law enforcement agencies across California.

Auditors found that all but 41 of Oaklands 1,197 untested kits stem from cases before 2016, and police spokesman Paul Chambers said in an email Thursday that a majority of the kits were linked to reports before 2006.

The department was responsible for the vast majority of the 1,349 untested kits in Alameda County, and only the San Diego Police Department, which counted 1,627 untested kits, had more among all of Californias police and sheriffs departments.

Chambers said Oaklands own internal review found that 957 of the 1,197 cases had legitimate, articulated and documented reasons as to why the kit was not tested.

However, the total number of untested kits came as a shock Thursday to Alameda County District Attorney Nancy OMalley, who spearheaded a major effort in 2014 to tally, collect and test all backlogged rape kits from all 19 law enforcement agencies in the county, including Oakland.

When asked why Oakland police have so many untested kits, OMalley responded: Thats a good question.

I know their statement says that these were old cases, so maybe they were very old, she said, before adding that local police departments were supposed to mine their property rooms for the county audit years ago.

Peter DaSilva / Special to The Chronicle 2016

The attorney generals report was published April 20, when it was presented to the Legislature and mostly slipped under the radar during the coronavirus outbreak. The audit was produced as a result of AB3118, a 2018 law that required a one-time review of all untested rape kits held by California law enforcement agencies, medical centers and crime labs, as well as other facilities.

Until this point, researchers said, the existence of an untested rape kit backlog in California was generally unquestioned, but the exact scope was unknown. The lack of data posed challenges for policymakers who must decide how best to address the backlog, the report states.

Elsewhere in the Bay Area, auditors found 841 untested kits at the Richmond Police Department, 255 at the Fairfield Police Department and 323 reported at the San Mateo County Sheriffs Office. Several cities reported zero untested kits, including San Francisco and Berkeley.

San Francisco Police Sgt. Michael Andraychak said the department cleared all previously submitted and untested rape kits in 2016, and said the lab is currently processing kits in 15 to 20 days, which is well under the 120-day requirement set forth in the City Charter.

Statewide, the audit found 35% of kits went untested because the victim declined prosecution, while 29% of kits werent processed because the allegations couldnt be substantiated or officials found the case was not prosecutable.

Chambers said about 80% of the nearly 1,200 untested kits in Oakland were linked to cases that were unfounded, already adjudicated in court or involved a victim that didnt want the kit tested or declined to cooperate with the case. But that leaves 240 rape kits, including 169 that require further review.

Of the 169 cases, Chambers said, 78 are from 1988 to 1999, and 91 are from 2000 to 2006. While California enacted a law in 2017 that eliminates the statute of limitations for most sexual assaults, the law did not apply retroactively.

Regardless, Chambers said, the department is taking the task seriously and will determine whether any untested kits that remain should still be tested.

Chambers said that since 2006, the departments special-victims section has reviewed all sexual violence cases and the crime lab has appropriately tested all sexual assault kit evidence well within the 120-day statutory limit set by the state.

Chambers said the departments number of untested kits might be higher than most other agencies because Oakland has not purged its kits for decades, while other agencies might have destroyed kits after the statute of limitations passed.

OMalley said she will work closely with Oakland to test the remaining kits. Previous efforts to clear backlogs have unmasked serial offenders, some of whom continued to assault women for years after they were first reported.

It was OMalleys 2014 review of untested rape kits that implicated Keith Kenard Asberry Jr. as the person who in 2008 kidnapped and assaulted a 19-year-old woman and 15-year-old girl in Berkeley. The rape kit was shelved for years for reasons that remain unclear, but Asberry is now charged with multiple sexual assaults as well as a 2015 murder.

I am a big proponent of testing all kits, so we know what the lay of the land is, OMalley said. I think the more we know about whos doing the sexual assaulting the better.

Advocates for sexual assault survivors have pushed for all kits to be tested, with few exceptions. Ilse Knecht, director of policy and advocacy for the survivor nonprofit Joyful Heart Foundation, has bristled when police contend cases are unfounded, and therefore not subject to testing.

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.

Peter DaSilva / Special to The Chronicle 2016

What happens too frequently is cases are often deemed unfounded without investigation or thorough investigation, she said. When you go back and look at those cases and test some of those kits, you find that mistakes have been made.

Knecht said shes also skeptical about victims reportedly declining to help prosecutors, adding that many are urged to give up on cases by investigators.

Theyre often questioned in a way that feels like interrogation: Are you sure you want to go through with this? Dont you just want to go home and sleep?

California is one of a number states that in recent years made counting and testing rape-kit backlogs a priority. North Carolina, Kentucky, Missouri, Washington and other states have also conducted statewide audits, and advocates estimate there are hundreds of thousands of untested kits across the country.

On Monday, Becerra announced a $2 million grant program to help California law enforcement agencies clear their backlogs. Oakland police officials said they will apply for the grant.

Justice delayed is justice denied, Becerra said in a statement. That should never haunt a survivor of sexual violence.

As of Jan. 1, 2018, all local authorities in California were required to report evidence from sexual assault kits to the California Department of Justice, which operates a databank known as SAFE-T.

Last fall, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law that requires police to submit rape kits for testing within 20 days and crime labs to test the evidence within 120 days.

Megan Cassidy is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: megan.cassidy@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @meganrcassidy
(Bloomberg) -- The outlook for global oil markets has improved somewhat, with demand a little stronger than expected and supply reined in by a brutal price crash, the International Energy Agency said.

World oil production is on track for a historic decline this month to the lowest level in nine years, the IEA said in a monthly report. OPEC and its partners are slashing output, while others like the U.S. are forced to scale back drilling.

It is on the supply side where market forces have demonstrated their power and shown that the pain of lower prices affects all producers, said the Paris-based agency, which advises major economies. We are seeing massive cuts in output from countries outside the OPEC+ agreement and faster than expected.

Its a stark shift in tone from last month, dubbed Black April by the agencys chief, when the IEA warned that cutbacks by OPEC+ probably werent enough to prevent the worlds storage tanks being overwhelmed by the middle of the year.

Demand Shock

The oil market is still in a very difficult position. International crude prices have collapsed by more than 50% since the start of the year as the coronavirus lockdowns ground flights, empty roads and shutter businesses. Yet the current price of about $30 a barrel in London is $10 above Aprils lows.

The picture is still very bleak for the industry, IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol said on Twitter. The heaviest demand destruction may be behind us, but huge uncertainties remain.

The IEA boosted its estimates for global oil demand in the second quarter by 3.2 million barrels a day, to 79.3 million. Yet consumption remains on track for a loss of almost 20 million barrels a day in the quarter, or roughly 20%, from the same period in 2019 due to the pandemic.

For 2020 as a whole, the demand forecast was pushed up by 700,000 barrels a day, but it still remains on track for an annual plunge of 8.6 million a day, or about 9%.

Oil major BP Plc gave an upbeat take on the demand picture on Thursday, saying it has seen consumption surge back this week as supplies have dropped. Were seeing a major oil-price correction, Chief Financial Officer Brian Gilvary said during a Financial Times panel discussion.

Supply Decline

Global oil supplies are poised to plummet by 12 million barrels a day, or about 12%, this month compared with April as an alliance of exporters led by Saudi Arabia and Russia implement deep production cuts. This week the kingdom and other Middle East producers pledged to deepen those curbs even further in June.

Their efforts are being amplified by less deliberate action among producers outside the OPEC+ coalition, such as the U.S. and Canada. They have already seen output sink 3 million barrels a day since the start of the year, the IEA said. They could lose another 1 million a day in June, it predicted.

Americas shale-oil drillers, who are more sensitive to price swings than other producers, have borne the brunt of the losses. By the end of 2020, U.S. production could be down 2.8 million barrels a day, three times the projected drop in Saudi Arabias output.

Activity levels in the shale patch have dropped to record lows and nearly all operators have shut in uneconomic production, the IEA said.

Some high-cost wells may also be difficult to bring back online once the pandemic has passed. BP, which operates in the U.S. Permian, Eagle Ford and Haynesville basins, said Thursday that old wells in the so-called Lower 48 will take longer to come back.

Despite a more upbeat tone on the state of global markets, the IEA acknowledged the uncertain outlook. Its unclear whether governments can resume economic activity without causing renewed outbreaks of the pandemic, and how far the OPEC+ alliance will implement promised supply curbs.

2020 Bloomberg L.P.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off GOP complaints about the size of of the coronavirus package leaders are bringing to a vote Friday, saying it is smaller than the 2017 Trump tax cuts.

She spoke hours before the House was to vote on the $3 trillion measure  which provides $1 trillion in relief to state and local governments hard hit by the coronavirus, while providing for another round of $1,200 payments to taxypayers.

'This will make a remarkable difference for them to defray the cost of the coronavirus but also to offset the revenue loss they have from the coronavirus,' Pelosi told MSNBC Thursday night. 'This amount of money is not as much as Republicans put forth for their tax scam bill,' she said in reference to the 2017 tax cuts.

She blasted the tax cut for steering most benefits to the wealthy.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the $3 trillion coronavirus bill moving toward a House vote cost less than the GOP 'tax scam'  a reference to the 2017 tax cuts

'So when you think of it as being so big, it's not as big as their tax scam and in addition to that, the money to open the economy for [coronavirus] testing ... and the money in the pocket, and the money in the pockets includes keeping people in their jobs with the employment retention tax credit ... It does keep millions of people in their jobs should the employers take advantage of it. So we're very excited. It's momentous,' Pelosi said.

The Congressional Budget Office estimated in early 2018 the tax cuts would cost a total of $1.9 trillion, including increased debt borrowing. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimated that the tax cut and a spending bill, with a combined cost o $2.2 trillion, would cost $5.5 trillion if the tax cuts are extended.

Many of the rate cuts start expiring in 2025.

The White House has said President Trump would veto the bill, saying it was filled with 'long-standing partisan and ideological wish lists.'

Trump's advisors would recommend he veto the bill, according to an official administration position statement.

The bill 'is more concerned with delivering on longstanding partisan and ideological wishlists than with enhancing the ability of our Nation to deal with the public health and economic challenges we face. As a result, the Administration cannot support H.R. 6800 as currently drafted.

'I don't believe we can spend ourselves into prosperity,' said White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow Friday

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, speaks during a press conference at the US Capitol on May 15, 2020 in Washington, DC. Republicans are planning to vote against the Democratic leadership-backed bill

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speaks on the phone before heading to the House floor, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, USA, 15 May 2020

Healthcare workers wheel the body of deceased person from the Wyckoff Heights Medical Center during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, U.S., April 2, 2020. Congress has passed multiple coronavirus packages amid the outbreak

Visitors to the Department of Labor are turned away at the door by personnel due to closures over coronavirus concerns, Wednesday, March 18, 2020, in New York. Applications for jobless benefits are surging in some states as coronavirus concerns shake the U.S. economy

President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the Rose Garden of the White House, Friday, May 15, 2020, in Washington. Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator,A listens at right. The White House said advisors would recommend he veto the House bill

Pelosi talked up the bill's aid to states, which got left out of previous coronavirus legislation, which focused on direct payments and aid to small businesses, in an effort to keep small companies from slashing their payroll.

It also includes $175 billion in rent, mortgage and utility assistance  but not initiatives pushed from the party's left to pay worker salaries during the crisis.

At the White House, Trump economic advisor Larry Kudlow said another $3 trillion package 'seems off target to me.'

He called for waiting to see the impact of earlier measures.

'Let's see how it goes,' he said, adding: 'I don't believe we can spend ourselves into prosperity.'

Democratic leaders were pressing ahead despite grumbling from party moderates leery of the measures massive price tag and liberals who wanted bolder steps, like money to cover workers salaries.

The bill was sure to go nowhere in the GOP-led Senate, let alone reach President Donald Trum's desk, where a promised veto awaited. Pelosi, D-Calif., has said the legislation is Democrats opening offer in what is expected to blossom into negotiations with the White House and congressional leaders of both parties.

In a scene thats become uncomfortably familiar since the virus took hold, the sparsely populated House chamber was dotted with members and aides wearing protective masks, though some Republicans were not.

There were few clusters of chatting lawmakers and Pelosi edged away from anyone who stepped near her. Each vote was expected to last an hour or more, with members voting in alphabetical order in groups of around 70 to reduce crowding.

Nearly $1 trillion in relief for state and local governments

Second round of payments of $1,200 per person, up to $6,000 per household

About $200 billion for hazard pay for essential workers

$75 billion for coronavirus testing and contact tracing

An extension of the $600 per week federal unemployment insurance benefit through January (the provision approved in March is set to expire after July)

$175 billion in rent, mortgage and utility assistance

Subsidies and a special Affordable Care Act enrollment period to people who lose their employer-sponsored health coverage

More money for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, including a 15 percent increase in the maximum benefit

More small business payroll assistance including $10 billion in emergency disaster assistance grants and a strengthened employee retention tax credit

Funding to expand voting by mail for the November elections

A ban on deporting illegal immigrants in 'essential' jobs and suspension of penalties for their employers on immigration-related violations

The bill would flush almost $1 trillion to state and local governments and provide more money for virus testing and to pay front-line emergency workers. It would renew $1,200 cash payments for individuals and extend the added $600 weekly unemployment benefits being paid during the pandemic.

Democrats rejected GOP arguments that the measure was simply an effort by Democrats to display their priorities to voters.

'I don't give a damn about sending a message,' said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass. 'I want to send help to those in desperate need.'

Pelosi has loaded the 1,815-page measure with a slew of Democratic priorities, including funding to cover rent payments and utility bills, 'hazard pay' for essential workers. It also has grants to thousands of municipal governments grappling with sagging revenues and provisions helping voters cast ballots by mail and increasing food aid to low-income people.

Few Republicans were expected to vote for the bill, despite popular provisions that also included help for the Postal Service and local schools and $175 billion to help homeowners and renters stay in their homes.

'This bill is nothing more than the Democratic policy agenda masquerading as a response to the coronavirus crisis,' said Rep. Tom Cole, R-Okla. He said the bill is 'going nowhere, and is going nowhere fast.'

Democratic leaders were working to limit their own defections and avert what would be a politically damaging defeat. In a conference call with Democrats late Thursday, Pelosi cautioned her colleagues against voting no.

'If you vote against this and all this funding for your state, then you have to go home and defend it. And if you can defend that no vote, then youre a better politician than me,' Pelosi told them, according to a Democratic aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private discussion. Her remarks were first reported by Politico.

The legislation comes as the country continues to struggle with the health and economic crisis caused by the highly contagious virus, which has claimed more than 85,000 lives in the U.S. and caused at least 36 million people to lose their jobs. Just Thursday, the government reported that almost 3 million people filed jobless claims last week.

The response has been an unprecedented wave of deficit-financed federal aid aimed at propping up businesses, supporting household balance sheets, and pay for a massive health system response. On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Board Chairman Jerome Powell urged lawmakers to act further, warning that the economic shock is 'significantly worse' than any downturn since the Great Depression.

The governments budget was supposed to be $4.6 trillion even before the pandemic hit. Four previous emergency bills have already added almost $3 trillion to that, but hasnt arrested the economys drop. Thats made GOP deficit hawks uneasy about the prospect of more aid. And polls show Republican voters think the government is generally doing enough.

Republicans are now calling for a 'pause' before considering more aid, reflecting disunity between conservatives who feel enough has been done and more pragmatic lawmakers who favor steps like rescuing the Postal Service from looming insolvency, while delivering cash to revenue-starved state and local governments.

Underscoring the stakes, its also becoming clear that the next coronavirus response bill will probably be the last.

'I think the bill we pass in June will likely be the last major bill,' said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. 'There may be some effort to pass a bill in September or October but it will get increasingly difficult.'

The House Democrats bill ignores Trumps demand for a cut in the Social Security payroll tax, It also does not replenish the Payroll Protection Program thats been a favorite of Republicans and their business allies.

The measure is likely to pass Friday along party lines, though Rep. Kendra Horn, D-Okla., announced her opposition on Thursday, while New York Republican Peter King says he will support it.

The earlier bills, debated as the magnitude of the crisis was becoming clear, featured sweeping votes and debates notable for their bipartisanship and sense of common purpose. Now, disagreements about reopening the economy, which appear to cleave along party lines, have crept into the debate.
Tourists in a vintage car pass by the U.S. Embassy in Havana

By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States is considering returning Cuba to its list of state sponsors of terrorism, a senior Trump administration official told Reuters on Thursday, a move that would mark another major blow to increasingly tense relations between Washington and Havana.

There is a convincing case that Cuba should be placed back on the U.S. blacklist, in part because of its continued backing for socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and the refuge it gives to leaders of Colombias ELN rebel group, the official said.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the official did not rule out that a decision on Cubas re-listing could come by the end of the year.

In what was possibly a preliminary step, the Trump administration said on Wednesday it had put the Communist-ruled island back on a separate list of countries that do not cooperate fully with its efforts to counter terrorism.

Havana, which has long denied any link to terrorism, dismissed Wednesday's State Department announcement as "spurious."

Returning Cuba to the blacklist would be a further rollback of the detente that former President Barack Obama orchestrated between the old Cold War foes. His decision to formally remove Cuba from the terrorism list in 2015 was an important step toward restoring diplomatic ties that year.

Trumps toughened stance on Cuba, as well as Venezuela, has gone down well in the large Cuban-American community in south Florida, an important voting bloc in a key political swing state as he seeks re-election in November.

Designation by Washington as a state sponsor of terrorism, which carries the potential for sanctions and trade restrictions, would put Cuba in the company of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Sudan.

CUBA'S ROLE IN VENEZUELA

Any decision to put Cuba back on the list would take into account Havana's support for Maduro, whose 2018 re-election was considered a sham by most Western countries. The U.S. government indicted him and much of his inner circle in March on charges of "narco-terrorism" conspiracy, corruption and drug trafficking.

Story continues

The United States and dozens of other nations recognized opposition leader Juan Guaido as interim president last year. But Maduro, who calls Guaido a U.S. puppet, remains in power, backed by Venezuela's military as well as Russia, China, Cuba and Iran.

Some U.S. officials have said privately that this has been a growing source of frustration for Trump.

The senior official said the U.S. government was also considering designating several of Venezuela's security services as terrorist organizations, in part for alleged links to drug trafficking. Those include the national intelligence service, the military counterintelligence agency and elite police unit, in addition to paramilitary groups loyal to Maduro.

The deliberations on whether to re-list Cuba are focused heavily on legal questions required to justify naming a country a sponsor of terrorism, the official said.

Also figuring into the discussions is Cuba's refusal of Colombia's request to extradite ELN leaders after the group claimed responsibility for an attack at a Bogota police academy in January 2019 that killed 22, the official said.

The leaders of the National Liberation Army (ELN), the largest active guerrilla group in Colombia, traveled to Havana as part of peace negotiations that collapsed last year after the car bomb attack.

Cuba has received broad plaudits in the past for hosting the successful peace talks between the Colombian government and the former FARC rebel army.

Another issue expected to weigh on Washington's decision is Cuba's harboring of several U.S. fugitives, some of whom have lived on the island for decades.

A re-listing of Cuba would have heavy symbolic meaning for Havana, which had chafed for decades under the U.S. designation.

It is unclear, however, how much practical impact there would be.

The designation carries a prohibition on U.S. economic aid, a ban on U.S. arms exports, controls on dual-use items with military and civilian applications, and a requirement that the United States oppose loans to Cuba by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

But many of those restrictions are already in place - or have even been tightened by Trump - and a decades-old U.S. economic embargo remains and can only be lifted by Congress.

(Reporting By Matt Spetalnick, additional reporting by Sarah Marsh in Havana; Editing by Alistair Bell and Marguerita Choy)
Lauren DunnYou never know who might pop in on a Zoom session.



In the latest episode of Spotifys The Drop In, Lauv crashes a group video chat with some of his biggest fans.



The five unsuspecting friends -- spread across the U.S., Norway and Portugal -- had plans to meet up in Portugal to see Lauv in concert this year. But since they couldnt do that, Lauv brought the concert to them.



He performed a stripped-down version of a new song hes been working on, Love Like That, and also chatted with them about how theyre staying sane while in quarantine.



Needless to say, it was a Zoom call they'll likely never forget.



New episodes of The Drop In air on Spotifys social channels every week.

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(Photo : REUTERS/Afolabi Sotunde) A medical health worker marks a sample testing kit during a community testing exercise, as authorities race to contain the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Abuja, Nigeria April 16, 2020.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) warned on Thursday, May 14, about a COVID-19 diagnostic test that could be giving inaccurate results.

The test kit is developed by Abbott Lab and promises to deliver results within 5 to 13 minutes. President Donald Trump recently called the test kit a game-changer in a White House event three days after the FDA issued an emergency use authorization to fast-track its approval.

Abbott has since shipped 1.8 million test kits, particularly at several Chicago-area testing sites. However, recent studies have shown that Abbott Labs' ID NOW point-of-care test, which is currently being used in hospitals nationwide, produces numerous false-negative results.

According to a report from the Chicago Sun Times, researchers from New York University's Langone Health found that Abbot's rapid testing kit gave false-negative results to over 48% of samples compared to those tested using dry nasal swabs. In another test, it failed to give positive results on a third of those cases confirmed by nasopharyngeal swabs in viral transport medium.

Abbott defense: The study is inconsistent

Although the study has not yet been peer-reviewed, Abbott was quick to defend themselves. The pharmaceutical company claimed on Wednesday, May 13, that the study results are inconsistent with other studies and its sample size was very small.

While Abbott admits that no test is perfect, they argue that test results depend on various factors "including patient selection, specimen type, collection, handling, storage, and transport. More importantly, conformity to how the kit was designed affects the result, in which Abbott disputes that ID NOW is intended to be used near the patient with a direct swab test method."

On Thursday, May 14, the FDA said patients who received negative results using the Abbott test may need to be retested with a more sensitive test.

Dr. Tim Stenzel, director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, said in a statement that they are still assessing the reports regarding erroneous results while in constant contact with Abbott regarding this issue. He also confirmed that they are continuously studying the available data and are working with Abbott "to create additional mechanisms for studying the test."

Nevertheless, Stenzel said the test can still be used as it can identify positive cases in minutes, "although negative results may need to be confirmed with a high-sensitivity authorized molecular test." The agency said they have received at least 15 adverse reports concerning Abbott's test.

The FDA also said that it will be sharing information in "the spirit of transparency" while Abbott will send letters alerting users that negative test results that are inconsistent with the patient's clinical symptoms would require a confirmation from another test.

Following this FDA announcement, shares of Abbott fell 1.8% to $92.16 in New York on Wednesday. They started up 6.1% early this year.

A local doctor's scrutiny

Meanwhile, a local physician aired his doubt over Abbott's kit. Dr. Rahul Khare offers coronavirus testing in his Lincoln Park clinic, but he prefers to use polymerase chain reaction tests, which he sends to another lab for processing that brings the results after three days.

Khare, who is the founder of Innovative Express Care, told The Chicago SunTimes that he is "very particular about the tests" he uses and he has not even considered using Abbot's kit.

He scrutinized Abbott's technology of using a DNA amplifier. He said the problem lies when an insufficient amount of the specimen is used because the test becomes invalid. "And on top of that, I know that that's just not as best of technology as PCR," Khare added.

Abbott's ID NOW was one of the first rapid testing kits available in the market. Mass testing is a significant indicator of whether the government can ease the coronavirus lockdown.

Read also: WHO: Coronavirus 'May Never Go Away' and We Will Have to Learn to Live with It

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
A KEEN Limerick sketch artist has drawn up a way to help a charity which has found its fundraising stymied by Covid-19.

Paul Fitzhenry, who is originally from Janesboro, was meant to take part in the Great Limerick Run to raise much needed funds for Spinal Injuries Ireland.

But with the worldwide pandemic putting paid to the massive event until October, Paul wanted to find another way to raise money for charity on the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Paul, who previously worked at Griffins Funeral Home, has a spinal cord injury from Guillain-Barre Syndrome, and put himself through the mill to complete a 10km circuit near his home in Ennis.

He has already raised more than 700 for Spinal Injuries Ireland, which is the only support and service agency in Ireland for people who have sustained a spinal cord injury and their families.

Based in Dublin, the charity believes Covid-19 has cost it 500,000 in lost fundraisers this year.

Paul said: "A group of us were planning to take part in the Regeneron Great Limerick Run. We obviously realised that it's going to be October. The week before the race, I got a burst of inspiration and said to my wife and see if Spinal Injuries Ireland would row in behind my running now.

I have a 4km circuit, and the furthest point away is the 2km mark. So I'd turn and do a lap around the park, and do that twice-and-a-half to cover the 10km, if you like, he added.

Paul said he would have been delighted to raise just 200  so is over the moon for Spinal Injuries Ireland to gain at least 700 from his exploits.

A sketch artist, he also raises money for the Irish Wheelchair Association.

Id do a reasonable amount of fundraising for a couple of different places. I hate knocking on the same doors every week. I did a calendar for Spinal Injuries Ireland last year, of sketches I had done around Limerick. I did one in Ennis for the Irish Wheelchair Association of sketches of Clare, he told the Limerick Leader.

He says hew will be taking part in the Great Limerick Run if  or when  it eventually happens this October.

For now, you can donate to Spinal Injuries Ireland by calling 01-6532180.

Alternatively, head over to Pauls page on www.idonate.ie

When there, search Paul Fitzhenry.
The Registrar-Generals Department on Thursday directed that companies who are due to hold their Annual General Meetings (AGM) can do so electronically due to the COVID-19.



A statement issued in Accra by Mrs Jemima Mamaa Oware, the Registrar-General, and copied to the Ghana News Agency said in view of the COVID-19 pandemic and the resultant restrictions on public gathering the Registrar of Companies, as per the Companies Act 2019 (Act 922) had directed that companies may hold their AGM electronically.



Giving out guidelines and the procedure of conduct of the AGM, the statement said: The Registrar-General should be notified before such a virtual meeting is held, the notification can be submitted to the Head Office in Accra or any of our Regional Offices in Kumasi, Sekondi-Takoradi or Tamale.



The statement said companies may send their notifications to the Registrar-General by email to [email protected] for Accra, [email protected] for Kumasi, [email protected] for Tamale and infostdrgd.gov.gh for Sekondi-Takoradi.



It said in the notifications companies should also spell out the electronic system to be used would be fair to all members.



Notice of the meeting should be sent to every member electronically in accordance with the provisions of each companys constitution. The virtual AGM can be held using such modalities that would be fair to all shareholders.

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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A solicitor whose gun dealer husband has been charged with her murder died of a shotgun wound to the chest, an inquest heard today.

Silke Hartshorne-Jones, 41, was shot twice at her family's 600,000 farmhouse where she lived with her husband Peter Hartshorne-Jones in Barham, Suffolk.

Today's hearing in Ipswich was told that she sustained two gunshot wounds.

Silke Hartshorne-Jones, 41, was shot twice at her family's 600,000 farmhouse where she lived with her husband Peter Hartshorne-Jones in Barham, Suffolk

A police officer lifts a cordon allowing another vehicle to enter the property in Barham (May 4)

Hartshorne-Jones, 51, who is a registered gun dealer, allegedly called police to report that he had shot her at their 17th century home.

Police and paramedics found her critically injured and battled to revive her at Grade II-listed Chestnut Farm in Barham, near Ipswich.

She was declared dead soon after arriving at Ipswich Hospital.

Hartshorne-Jones has since been charged with her murder and is remanded in custody ahead of a trial set for October 26 at Ipswich Crown Court.

Detective Chief Inspector Caroline Miller, of Suffolk Police, gave evidence to the inquest from a report prepared by senior investigating officer Detective Chief Inspector Karl Nightingale.

She said police were called to the farmhouse in Barham at around 4.45am on May 3.

'Mr Hartshorne-Jones was arrested initially for attempted murder whilst officers and paramedics sought to save Mrs Hartshorne-Jones's life,' DCI Miller said.

'Mrs Hartshorne-Jones was conveyed to Ipswich Hospital where she subsequently died. Mr Hartshorne-Jones was then arrested for murder.'

Police were called to the farmhouse in Barham at around 4.45am on May 3

Hartshorne-Jones, 51, has been charged with her murder in Barham and is remanded in custody ahead of a trial set for October 26 at Ipswich Crown Court

A post-mortem examination recorded Mrs Hartshorne-Jones's medical cause of death as a gunshot wound to the chest, DCI Miller said, adding: 'Mrs Hartshorne-Jones had two gunshot wounds.

'Family liaison officers are actively engaged with the family of Mrs Hartshorne-Jones.'

The hearing was told that Mrs Hartshorne-Jones was born in Heidelberg in south-western Germany and her family name before she married was Lutschewitz.

Nigel Parsley, Suffolk's senior coroner, said: 'In relation to the tragic case of Silke Hartshorne-Jones I will open an inquest into her death and that inquest will be suspended pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings.'

Mrs Hartshorne-Jones worked for technology company K2 Partnering Solutions.

Her Linked In profile described her job as being in charge of the company's 'legal and compliance function' across Europe.
Philip Michael Farley, loving husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, brother, uncle, and son passed away on Monday, May 11, 2020. He was 76 years old.



Farley was born to parents William L Farley and Evelyn Barbara Merkle in Cheverly, Maryland, on March 28, 1944. He graduated from Gonzaga High School in 1962 and lived in various places across the country, including California, New Jersey, and Florida, before returning home to Maryland once again, where he resided for the past 20 years. Farley was an active member and lector at St. Louis Church in Clarksville, Md., and resided nearby in Laurel, Md.



Phil Farley was married to Myrna Farley, his wife of 16 years, who survives him. He is also survived by his children and their families: James and Juli Farley, Mark Farley and Kristina Whipple, Bill and Michelle Farley, Kristin and Ted Mounts, Sarah and Vinnie Miceli, his stepchildren, Angelica Taganahan, John Noel Taganahan, and George Emil Taganahan, his grandchildren, John Farley, Ashley McDonald, JT Farley, Alice Palatnick, Noah Phillips, Kate Farley, Hannah Farley, Morgan Mounts, Trevor Mounts, Madison Mounts, Hayden Miceli, and Liam Miceli, his great-grandchildren, Austin McDonald, Caleb McDonald, Brady McDonald, and Dylan McDonald, and his brothers and their spouses, Ronald and Cristina Farley, Dennis and Cherie Farley, Timothy Farley, Terry and Les Farley, and Kevin and Carol Farley, as well as countless cousins and other relatives.



Phil Farley loved family above all else. As the oldest of 6 boys and the father of 5 children, Farley relished any opportunity to attend or plan a gathering that would inspire people to come together under one roof. Those gatherings often revolved around one of his other loves- his deep appreciation of music. He enjoyed all musical genres and you might say that his vast and diverse LP collection stood as the soundtrack of his colorful life. His children would tell you that it is difficult to listen to any song, at all, without finding some connection to their father.



There are many others that might not even realize that they were connected to Farley, but they knew the man, likely named Farkel, who often dominated the leaderboards of online trivia games. His impressive ability to recall detailed information was astounding. He was a bit of a wizard when it came to any kind of trivia, at all. Before the creation of the internet, Philip Michael Farley was likely one of the most reliable fact finding resources available to those fortunate enough to know him.



Another of Philip Farley's loves was a good family meal. It was never really about the food, but about the gathering. To Farley, there truly was no separation between hearth and family. They were synonymous and, if he had a "happy place," it was probably seated at a large table, surrounded by family, eating together, telling stories, and enjoying each other's company.



This leads, finally, to one of Farley's greatest loves. Philip Michael Farley loved laughter. He loved to laugh as much as to inspire others to join him. He, himself, had a distinctive laugh that sounded like it came from throughout his whole body, and he was always ready at any moment with a "dad joke" or some other comment to help add fuel to keep the laughter going. Whether his family and friends were laughing heartily along or it was some combination of laughing and groaning over his latest quip, the exchange filled him with a deep joy that was evident in the mischievous sparkle in his eye.



A graveside service will be held for immediate family on Friday, May 15, 2020. Due to State guidelines concerning the size of gatherings due to the global coronavirus health crisis, this service must remain very small. Because it is not possible to gather together all of his loved ones to celebrate his life at this time, a memorial service will be scheduled at some future date, depending upon changes in regulations and state guidelines. There are so many stories that could be included here about Farley and the way that he has touched the lives of so many, but in honor of his love for family gatherings, we believe that he would rather those stories be shared amongst his loved ones when they are able to safely come together in his name.



In lieu of flowers, his family requests that you please consider making a charitable contribution to one of the following resources:



ALZHEIMER'S ASSOCIATION: To contribute to the cause of fighting Alzheimer's, please visit https://www.alz.org . Find the "DONATE" button in the upper right corner of the home page and follow the instructions from that point.



THE UMMC BALTIMORE SHOCK TRAUMA CENTER (For hospital technology to assist families to stay in touch when they can't be bedside): There are two ways to contribute to the UMMC Baltimore Shock Trauma Center. You can send a check payable to the UMMS Foundation to:



University of Maryland Medical Center, P.O. Box 64573, Baltimore, MD 21298



His family requests that you write in the "memo line" of your donation by check the following: "Shock Trauma - area of greatest need."



If you prefer to donate to the UMMC Shock Trauma Center on line, please visit https://www.ummsfoundation.org. Find the yellow "DONATE" button in the upper right part of the home page. After selecting the amount that you wish to contribute, click "Direct my gift to" and select from the drop down bar "R Adams Cowley Shock Trauma Center," followed by "* Area of greatest need." Finally, note that this is a memorial gift and complete the rest of the form.



Family from across the country, despite shelter-in-place orders in most states, were able to visit with Farley in his final days using internet connections and video calling apps, all provided by the UMMC staff. The family has directed the foundation to utilize all memorial gift contributions sent on-line to support the purchase of new tablets and necessary resources so that other families can experience the ability to be with their loved ones, even when they cannot be there in person.
The story of how San Antonio weathered the COVID-19 storm is not over, not even close, but already we have witnessed several key moments.

There was the bold leadership of Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who issued stay-home orders in March. It was a painful decision, made early in this crisis, that saved lives and prevented the hospital network from being overwhelmed.

There was the stunning photo of thousands of vehicles lined up for food in April at Traders Village, on the citys Southwest Side, a jarring portrait of the devastating economic hit in Americas poorest big city, and one of this nations most economically segregated. That photo, those continuing distribution lines and the heartbreaking reality that before this pandemic about 60,000 people in San Antonio relied on the Food Bank are clarion calls for bold transformation.

And now we have City Councils rejection, by a 6-5 vote, of a 60-day grace period for tenants who are short on rent.

If there ever were a time for such a grace period, this would be it. More than 106,000 Bexar County residents have filed for unemployment through no fault of their own, and they deserve to have social supports in place to weather this storm.

To be clear, the economy would have faltered in this pandemic without stay-home orders and the closures of business. Its the pandemic that has dealt a body blow to the tourism, retail and food service sectors  not the response to save lives. But those orders to limit gatherings and stay home, right as they were, added to the economic pressure. Supporting the 60-day grace period to make rent  known as a right to cure  is an acknowledgment that many San Antonians have done exactly what officials have asked of them at tremendous cost.

The proposal, backed by Texas Organizing Project and Texas Housers, was put forward by District 1 Councilman Roberto Trevino. It would have given tenants 60 days to come up with back rent, and landlords would have to give two months notice for a possible eviction.

The idea was to extend protections when moratoriums on evictions expire. As Kevin LeMelle and Maureen Galindo, members of TOP, recently argued in an opinion piece, The 60-day grace period will give time for folks who havent received their stimulus check, or whose unemployment benefits were delayed, or whose income from newly opened worksites will become available soon.

But landlords pushed back, warning of financial hardship and tenants skirting rent. Concerns were raised about a potential lawsuit.

We are absolutely sympathetic to the financial strain landlords are feeling at this time, and we recognize many landlords are working with struggling tenants. At some point, grace period or not, tenants have to pay the rent. But we also see many flaws with the argument against a 60-day grace period.

First, as District 9 City Councilman John Courage noted during the public discussion on this issue, Austin and Dallas enacted such laws without lawsuits. Second, there is no greater financial hardship than losing ones home, especially in a pandemic. Third, the city recently boosted its risk-mitigation fund to about $25 million to help with rent and other essentials. This is, in many ways, a taxpayer subsidy to help landlords. Fourth, a 60-day grace period to make rent is not a right to squat indefinitely. Its a gift of time.

Perhaps an extension of moratoriums on evictions, coupled with the citys risk mitigation fund, will do the trick, making this a symbolic vote.

Still, we cant help but think of the message the council just sent to its most vulnerable residents. Its not far-fetched to think many of the people waiting in line for food are also scrambling to make rent. Apparently, a grace period to catch up on rent was just too much for council to extend in this crisis.
Empower Clinics to power online education platform for patients, retail locations, national tele-medicine platform and their expanding network of franchisees with EuroLife's Cannvas.me

VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15th, 2020 / EMPOWER CLINICS INC. (CBDT.CN) (EPWCF) (Frankfurt 8EC) ("Empower" or the "Company"), a vertically integrated life sciences company, is pleased to announce that further to the letter of intent announced on February 25, 2020 it has signed a definitive agreement with EuroLife Brands ("EuroLife"), a vertically integrated enterprise focused on the pan-European hemp, cannabinoid, and health and wellness sector. The agreement grants Empower an exclusive license to EuroLife's "Cannvas.me" cloud based online educational platform in certain international jurisdictions. Empower will use the web-based education technology platform to deliver brand, product, and industry knowledge to employees and over 165,000 patients across Empower's six corporate clinics in Arizona, Oregon, its first franchise in Oklahoma and nationwide tele-health platform.

Under the terms of the agreement, Empower has been granted an exclusive license of the Cannvas.me platform in the United States and Mexico with an option to expand to other jurisdictions. The agreement includes a three-year term with a three-year renewable option. A licensing fee will be paid over the life of the agreement, consisting of a mixture of cash and stock totalling $460,000 CAD and includes comprehensive service level agreements from EuroLife and ongoing support from EuroLife team roles including VP of Technology, Senior Developer, Quality Assurance, Creative Designer, Program Management, Account Management and regular support from EuroLife's CEO.

"We needed a robust platform to reach our growing network of owned and franchised locations across the United States and EuroLife's Cannvas.me education platform exceeds all of our requirements," said Steven McAuley, chairman and chief executive officer of Empower. "We now have the ability to reach our employees and the patients they serve through a safe, secure and informative online education portal. I believe the ability to deliver consistent product education quickly and efficiently is a competitive advantage that we will leverage as we continue to grow our patient count and number of locations."

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"I am very pleased to announce the agreement with Empower to license our Cannvas.me education portal to reach both employees and medical and retail consumers on an incredibly efficient basis," said Shawn Moniz, Chief Executive Officer, EuroLife Brands Inc. "I look forward to working with Steven and his incredible team at Empower as they expand their footprint across the United States."

Cannvas.me is a consumer education portal launched in 2018 for medical and recreational cannabis consumers. Through many discussions with industry stakeholders the management team discovered there was significant demand for a cloud-based education portal for licensed producers, retail dispensaries and other large to mid-sized companies in the cannabis sector.

ABOUT EMPOWER

Empower is a vertically integrated health & wellness brand with a network of corporate and franchised health & wellness clinics in the U.S. The Company is building its first hemp-derived CBD extraction facility and produces its proprietary line of cannabidiol (CBD) based products. The Company is a leading multi-state operator of a network of physician-staffed wellness clinics, focused on helping patients improve and protect their health, through innovative physician recommended treatment options. The Company has commenced activity on how to connect its significant data, to the potential of the efficacy of alternative treatment options related to hemp-derived cannabidiol (CBD) therapies, psilocybin and other psychedelic plant-based treatment options. The Company now offers COVID-19 testing options in the United States and physician-based consultations, to address COVID-19 concerns.

About EuroLife Brands Inc.

EuroLife Brands is a leading global markets cannabis brand empowering the medical, recreational and CPG cannabis industry worldwide through a data-driven CBD marketplace supported by exclusive and unbiased physician-backed cannabis education and detailed consumer analytics.



ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS:

Steven McAuley

Chief Executive Officer

CONTACTS:

Investors: Steven McAuley

CEO

s.mcauley@empowerclinics.com

604-789-2146

Investors: Dustin Klein

SVP, Business Development

dustin@svmmjcc.com

720-352-1398

For French inquiries: Remy Scalabrini, Maricom Inc., E: rs@maricom.ca, T: (888) 585-MARI



DISCLAIMER FOR FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

This news release contains certain "forward-looking statements" or "forward-looking information" (collectively "forward looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities laws.All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release.Forward-looking statements can frequently be identified by words such as "plans", "continues", "expects", "projects", "intends", "believes", "anticipates", "estimates", "may", "will", "potential", "proposed" and other similar words, or information that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" occur. Forward-looking statements in this news release include statements regarding: the Company's expected timing of filing of its Annual Filings, the Company's intention to create psilocybin and psychedelics divisions, that market research on advancements in psilocybin and psychedelics in North America and globally will create greater shareholder value, the Company's intention to open a hemp-based CBD extraction facility, the expected benefits to the Company and its shareholders as a result of the proposed acquisitions and partnerships; the effectiveness of the extraction technology; the expected benefits for Empower's patient base and customers; the benefits of CBD based products; the effect of the approval of the Farm Bill; the growth of the Company's patient list and that the Company will be positioned to be a market-leading service provider for complex patient requirements in 2019 and beyond; the ability of the Company to complete or execute phases One, Two, Three or Four of COVID-19 test programs, and Psychedelic substances remain illegal in most countries, so please reference your local laws in relation to medical or recreational use. Such statements are only projections, are based on assumptions known to management at this time, and are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, including; that the Company may not open a hemp-based CBD extraction facility; that legislative changes may have an adverse effect on the Company's business and product development; that the Company may not be able to obtain adequate financing to pursue its business plan; general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; failure to obtain any necessary approvals in connection with the proposed acquisitions and partnerships; and other factors beyond the Company's control. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements in this release, which are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. The Company is under no obligation, and expressly disclaims any intention or obligation, to update or revise any forward-looking statements in this release, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as expressly required by applicable laws.

SOURCE: Empower Clinics Inc.





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/589992/Empower-Clinics-and-EuroLife-Brands-Close-Definitive-Agreement-and-Sign-Multi-Year-Multi-National-Licence-Agreement




Syracuse, N.Y.  New York has already handed out $3 million in grants to businesses planning to manufacture health care supplies and equipment in the state.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has been saying for weeks that he wants to see more critical medical supplies produced in New York and the U.S. as a whole. It will help prevent the scramble for protective equipment New York and other states faced earlier in the coronavirus pandemic.

We should never again be in the position where we dont have medical equipment, Cuomo said today during a press conference at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. It was terrible, what we went through. Its a matter of national security. And I want to make sure that we in New York are actually leading the way.

Grants so far have gone to:

LMD Power of Light Corp. in Monroe County for production of 125 noninvasive ventilators a month

New Lab of New York City for devices to automate manual respirators

Bodi Energy of Tompkins County, which will manufacture 420,000 N95 masks per week

Strong Manufacturing of Erie County, which will make 6.75 million masks per week

Clear-Vu Medical of Suffolk County, which will produce 115,000 face shields a week

Garment District for Gowns of New York City, which is making over 30,000 gowns per week

Made in Midtown Inc. of New York city, which will manufacture up to 3,600 masks per week

Cuomo said the state is looking for more companies to produce medical gear. Businesses interested can visit the Empire State Development website for more information.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Malls cant reopen in Phase 1, but curbside pickup allowed for interior stores

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598
Blue chip stocks rallied to drive the ASX200 1.4 per cent higher on Friday, its strongest day in a week where the bourse struggled to maintain gains.

The index hit the 5404.8 mark at the 4:15pm market close, up 76 points or 1.4 per cent, putting it ahead just 0.3 per cent for the week.

The materials index led throughout the session, up 3.25 per cent for the session as BHP and Fortescue Metals posted gains of more than three per cent each, to $31.67 and $12.55.

Part of the story is that the iron ore price continues to be strong and a lot of the miners are doing well off that, head of Australian equities at T Rowe Price, Randal Jenneke, said.

"It's been a pocket of strength in what is an otherwise tough domestic and global environment."

Looking ahead, Mr Jenneke said a key driver for local markets will be whether the rollback of government-imposed COVID-19 lockdowns is a success.

The banks also showed improvements, as financials jumped 1.5 per cent and the big banks returned to the green.

Analysts were cautious about the longer-term outlook, however, with the UBS equities team suggesting the future of dividends was dependent on the shape of the post-pandemic economic recovery.

All sectors aside from information technology spent the afternoon in the green. Tech stocks were dragged down as small business accounting operator Xero continued to be hit after revealing numbers yesterday, where it posted profit but signalled coronavirus slowdowns. It lost 5.6 per cent for the session to $75.32.

RBC Capital Markets head of equities Karen Jorritsma said the sector was seeing a slight cool down, tapering off its nearly 30% rally over the past month as investors recognised that many of these names were more COVID immune over some of the old school economy names.
Funny I don't remember black people complaining in the 50s about the National Guard being sent to Little Rock to force the Democrat governor to protect black students trying to enter Little Rock Central. Nor Guard troops being sent to both Alabama and Mississippi to do the same in the 60s, once again to enforce the law that Democrats wouldn't. Good ole George Wallace even stood in the school house door to block a young lady of color from registering.

My National Guard unit was called up in May of 71 when a few black hooligans were rioting after Wilson Pickett failed to show up for a concert. They weren't burning down Lookout or Signal Mountain, they were burning down their own neighborhoods. Every black person I talked to when I was out on patrol told us they appreciated our protecting them from their own neighbors.

I never saw a black person complain about the Guard being called up for tornadoes and hurricanes in Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida and the Atlantic coast. Guardsmen (and women) are your own neighbors, they are out to protect all communities of any color or creed. Funny I live in lily white Ooltewah and no organization has offered to come out here and test us for the virus. The only complainers are the usual professional race baiters and victims.

"For what a weak barrier is truth when it stands in the way of an hypothesis."

Douglas Jones

Ooltewah
Frankenmuth Insurance welcomes The Norton Agency's Jason Griffith to its Agency Council. Jason brings more than 20 years of insurance experience and is a great addition to the Agency Council, said John Benson, Chairman of the Board and CEO for FI. His contributions will be vital as we work together to explore strategic issues that ultimately benefit all our agency partners.

Frankenmuth Insurance, a regional insurance carrier based in Frankenmuth, Mich., is pleased to announce the addition of Jason Griffith of The Norton Agency to its Agency Council. Frankenmuth Insurance (FI) formed its Agency Council in 2009 and selects agents from each region where FI does business to ensure the needs and concerns of all its agency partners are represented.

Griffith has been in the insurance business since 1997 after opening Sidney O. Smith, an independent agency that focused on property and casualty insurance. Today, Griffith is the president of commercial lines at The Norton Agency, located in Gainesville, Georgia, and has been with the agency since 2009. Griffith and his partners manage a total of 15 office locations across northern Georgia and upstate South Carolina with 130 employees. The agency has been in operation for more than 90 years and specializes in commercial lines, personal lines, and health/benefits.

Jason brings more than 20 years of insurance experience and is a great addition to the Agency Council, said John Benson, Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer for FI. His contributions will be vital as we work together to explore strategic issues that ultimately benefit all our agency partners.

Members of the Frankenmuth Insurance Agency Council meet twice annually to discuss strategic issues of mutual interest, providing valuable insight that helps strengthen the companys partnerships with all agencies. Other members of Frankenmuth Insurances Agency Council include:



Brian Bartosh, Top O Michigan Insurance Agency (MI)

Gary Burton, Robertson Ryan & Associates Inc. (WI)

Gretchen Hopp Doyle, Baker-Hopp & Associates (MI)

Victor Jowers, Upchurch & Jowers Agency (SC)

Mike Kuhl, Kuhl Insurance Agency (IL)

Jeff Lind, Clark Insurance (ME)

Scott McVicker, Savage McVicker Insurance (OH)

Brent Neal, Frank E. Neal & Co. (TN)

Todd Piersol, Brown & Brown of Detroit (MI)

Bill St. Charles, Michigan Community Insurance Agency (MI)

Todd VanDyk, Olivier - VanDyk Insurance Agency (MI)

Vickie Wolcott, M.J. Schuetz Insurance Services (IN)

Benson said, We are grateful to all our council members for their time and efforts and look forward to working with Jason in the years to come.

# # #

Frankenmuth Insurance has been providing peace of mind for families and businesses for 150 years. Because insurance is both complicated and critical to peoples lives, Frankenmuth works exclusively with 645 independent agencies to provide business, home, auto and life insurance policies. With more than 750 employees, the company is headquartered in Frankenmuth, Michigan, and offers insurance products in 15 states. Frankenmuth Insurance is financially sound, with $1.7 billion in assets. The company has an A.M. Best rating of A (Excellent) and is a Wards 50 Top Performer. For more information visit http://www.fmins.com.
There were no air kisses. No celebrity sightings. No champagne flutes in the V.I.P. lounge  in fact, no V.I.P. lounge at all.

But Frieze New York, the citys first test of whether a virtual art gathering forced by the pandemic could survive online, wound down on Friday with surprisingly strong results, suggesting that the schmooze-centric art market may never be the same.

Reported sales from the fair were solid, compared with those of last year, when the event took place under a large white tent on Randalls Island  at least for mega galleries, defying conventional wisdom that online prices cant match those in person. Dealers said that George Condos Distanced Figures 3, for example, sold for $2 million at Hauser & Wirth; El Anatsuis Metas III, for $1.5 million at Acquavella; and Alice Neels Veronica, for $550,000 at David Zwirner.

We were very surprised by how successful we were, said Marc Payot, a co-president of Hauser & Wirth. We have to focus on other creative ways of connecting with our audiences and this pushes the online part of our business forward.
AUSTIN  Texas reported its highest number of deaths in one day since the coronavirus pandemic began.

New official state data released on Thursday showed Texas is now reporting 1,216 deaths  an increase of 58 from yesterdays tally.

Previously, Texas had reported as many as 50 deaths once before, on April 30.

The state also reported its highest one day jump in positive test. Texas has had 43,851 positive cases reported  a jump of 1,448 cases. That states previous high was on April 10 when it reported 1,441 positive cases.

IN-DEPTH: Houston a bright spot amid spiking Texas COVID-19 numbers

Testing also surged on Thursday. The state reported 35,853 tests, the second highest number of results reported in a single day.

The spike in deaths comes as Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has been trying to re-open the states economy. Last week he allowed hair salons and barbershops to reopen and was planning to allow gyms to open next week. Before that he allowed restaurants, malls, retail stores and movie theaters to reopen at 25 percent of their maximum occupancy.

On Monday, Abbott was scheduled to announce whether the state had made enough progress to allow restaurants, retail stores, theaters, and malls to increase occupancy to 50 percent.

When Abbott announced the partial reopening of businesses two weeks ago, he warned that because the state was increasing its testing capacity, logically there would be an increase in the number of positive cases. During a television interview in early May, Abbott said the number of positive cases is not the key number to watch.

What really matters are these two metrics  what is our hospitalization rate and what is the death rate," Abbott said on KVUE in Austin.

The states hospitalizations have been on the decline this week. The state reported 1,648 hospitalizations  the second straight day that number has dropped and well down from last weeks record high of 1,888.

Abbott has said the state still has plenty of available hospital beds and ventilators. As of Thursday, Texas was reporting more than 17,500 hospital beds available and more than 6,200 ventilators.

The states death rate for COVID-19 patients remains at 2.8 percent, the same percentage it was on May 1. And Abbott has repeatedly pointed to the states death rate far below what other states have reported. While Texas has lost 1,216 people, neighboring Louisiana with a fraction of the overall population has reported 2,351 deaths. Florida has had 1,875 deaths and New York has had 22,170 deaths.
The Education Ministry said Thursday that it is not considering any further postponement of the opening of schools. The opening of schools had already been delayed for a week due to a resurgence of coronavirus traced to clubs in Seoul's party district of Itaewon.

High school seniors will go back to school on May 20 and the rest in the following weeks as scheduled.
Another 539 people who tested positive for COVID-19 have died in the UK, bringing the total to 30,615.

The figure released by the Department of Health is for coronavirus-related fatalities in all settings, including hospitals, care homes and the community, as of 5pm on Wednesday.

The previous total number, released yesterday, showed the UK had passed 30,000 deaths after a rise of 649 - the first European country to do so.

Experts have urged caution over international comparisons as nations record COVID-19 deaths differently.

In England, there have been 383 new deaths in hospitals, taking the total to 22,432.

In Scotland, there have been 59 further fatalities, with the total now 1,762.

In Wales, 18 more people have died after testing positive for coronavirus, taking the total number to 1,062.

And in Northern Ireland, a four further coronavirus deaths have been reported, bringing the total number of fatalities to 422.

The number of daily COVID-19 tests being carried out in the UK has fallen below 100,000 for the fifth day in a row.

The latest figures show there were 86,583 tests in the 24 hours to 9am on Thursday, up from 69,463 the day before.

The last time the government passed 100,000 a day was on 2 May. The target was set by Health Secretary Matt Hancock for the end of April and was reached but with some criticism.

The government claimed it met the target on 30 April but it included more than 40,000 home testing kits that had been sent out and not returned, including several which people were told to bin.

Dr Jenny Harries, the government's deputy chief medical officer, told Thursday's Downing Street news briefing that there had been a "technical hitch" in a laboratory.

Boris Johnson is planning to ramp up testing to 200,000 tests a day by the end of May.

:: Listen to the Daily podcast on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Spreaker

The Department of Health's fatality figures only include people who have tested positive for COVID-19.

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An alternative measure is from the Office for National Statistics (ONS), which is based on all mentions of COVID-19 on a death certificate, including suspected COVID-19.

The ONS has said 29,710 deaths involving COVID-19 were registered in England and Wales up to 2 May.

Together with the latest equivalent numbers for Scotland (2,795 deaths registered up to 3 May) and Northern Ireland (393 deaths registered up to 29 April), it means a total of 32,898 deaths involving COVID-19 have now been registered across the UK.
By PTI

KOLKATA: At least 185 nurses hailing from Manipur and working in private hospitals in Kolkata have left for their home state after resigning from their jobs following the recent spike in the number of coronavirus cases here, sources said on Friday.

This will add to the prevailing shortage of nurses in the facilities here amid the ongoing the COVID-19 pandemic, said a senior official of a private hospital from which nine nurses have quit.

Apart from feeling unsafe staying in the city after the number of coronavirus cases and deaths due to the disease started rising, the nurses from the Northeastern state, which has only one active case now, chose to quit their jobs because of pressure from their parents to return home, sources in various private hospitals in the city said.

"Our parents are concerned and we are also quite stressed when the cases are rising everyday here. Our state is a green state and we feel going back home. Our state government is helping us. Family and parents are our priority," one of the nurses who resigned said when contacted over the phone.

No confirmation can be made from the government about its "help".

The number of active cases in West Bengal rose to 1,407 on Friday.

A total of 153 people have died directly due to COVID-19 in the state so far and 72 others succumbed because of other comorbidity conditions where the presence of coronavirus was incidental.

"If we remain alive, we will get another job," the nurse told PTI on condition of anonymity.

Nurses from Manipur have started leaving since Monday in buses and small vehicles, sources said adding that after they reach their home state, they will be sent for home or institutional quarantine.

Apart from the 185 who have left, 132 others are scheduled to return to Imphal taking a transit route through Assam and Nagaland, according to a well-placed source.

"We apprehend there will be a significant crisis, as more and more nurses are leaving the city for home. Since occupancy is low across all hospitals, we will be able to manage now. But once planned surgeries restart full-fledged, we will feel the pinch," AMRI Hospitals Group CEO Rupak Barua said.

There has always been a shortage of nurses in West Bengal due to lack of sufficient nursing colleges and this has led to a huge demand-supply gap, said Barua who is also the chairman of the Healthcare Sub-committee, CII Eastern Region.

"We have been dependent more on nurses from other states, particularly from Manipur, Tripura and other Northeastern states, along with Kerala," he said.

Some of the facilities of Kolkata that are facing the crisis include Charnock Hospital where 27 nurses resigned, followed by 25 in Peerless Hospital, 16 in Fortis Healthcare, 11 each in IRIS Multispeciality Hospital and Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, and 10 each in Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals and Sri Aurobindo Seva Kendra, sources said.

There are several other hospitals in and around Kolkata where Manipuri nurses have quit their jobs and left for their homes.

Meanwhile, the supervisor of a health centre, which was supposed to be made a COVID-19 testing centre in Jalpaiguri district, died after allegedly consuming pesticide, police said on Friday.

It is claimed by those close to the deceased that he was facing opposition from a section of the health centre employees after the district authorities asked him to set up a COVID-19 testing centre.

Superintendent of Police Avisek Modi said a suicide note was found from the room of the deceased Debashis Chakraborty who was the supervisor of Ghughudanga Health Centre and a probe has been launched to ascertain the circumstances behind his death.

Chakraborty had allegedly consumed pesticide on Thursday and then jumped into a well on the courtyard of his residence.

He was taken to a nearby hospital where he died, the SP said.

The Indian Medical Association, Jalpaiguri unit, demanded a probe into the death of Chakraborty.

Asked about the claims that he was under stress due to opposition by a section of the staff over setting up of the Covid-19 testing centre, IMA (North Bengal) Coordinator Dr Susanto Roy said, "Covid testing centre is for diagnosis of the disease and not for spreading the virus.

This must be clear to everyone.
Frontline Ltd. FRO is scheduled to release first-quarter 2020 results on May 20.

The company has a mixed earnings record, having delivered a positive surprise in two of the last four quarters while missing estimates in the remaining one. The average miss is 6.3%.

Frontline Ltd. Price and EPS Surprise

Frontline Ltd. Price and EPS Surprise

Frontline Ltd. price-eps-surprise | Frontline Ltd. Quote

Moreover, the Zacks Consensus Estimate for first-quarter earnings has been revised 8.9% downward over the past 60 days.

Against this backdrop, lets delve into the factors that might have impacted the companys March-quarter performance.

Frontlines performance in the to-be-reported quarter is expected to have been affected by the coronavirus-induced supply-chain disruptions. Notably, the COVID-19 pandemic has spelt doom for the shipping industry, which is responsible for transporting the majority of goods involved in world trade and is rightfully considered the life line of the global economy.

Moreover, the adoption of new rules imposed by the International Maritime Organisation effective Jan 1, 2020 might have weighed on the companys performance due to some short-term disturbance in the shipping network. The regulations are aimed at curbing pollution caused by ships across the globe. Further, these headwinds are likely to have restricted the supply of new tanker fleet for companies in the same space as was the case with another shipping company, namely Euronav NV EURN, which reported first-quarter results earlier this month.

However, the increase in tanker freight rates following Saudi Arabias decision to charter multiple super-tankers for shipping crude oil to customers globally is likely to have boosted Frontlines first-quarter performance. The plunge in oil prices (by 66.5%) during the January-March period is a bonus and is expected to have bolstered this oil tanker operators bottom line in the to-be-reported quarter.

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What the Zacks Model Unveils



Our proven model does not conclusively predict an earnings beat for Frontline this time around. The combination of a positive Earnings ESP and a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold) increases the odds of a positive surprise. But that is not the case here. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.



Earnings ESP: Frontline has an Earnings ESP of 0.00% as the Most Accurate Estimate is in line with the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 92 centsper share. You can uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before theyre reported with our Earnings ESP Filter.



Zacks Rank: Frontline carries a Zacks Rank #2, currently.



Highlights of Q4 Earnings



In the last reported quarter, the company came up with a negative earnings surprise of 25%. However, the bottom line skyrocketed in excess of 100% year over year.Additionally, revenues improved 3.3% to $224.2 million.



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Investors may consider Baidu BIDU and CBL Properties CBL as these stocks have the right combination of elements to beat on earnings this reporting cycle.



Baidu has an Earnings ESP of +4.45% and is Zacks#3 Ranked. The company will report first-quarter earnings on May 18.



CBL Properties has an Earnings ESP of +8.11% and a Zacks Rank #3. The company will report first-quarter earnings on May 18.



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The Ranking Member on Parliament's Health Committee, Kwabena Mintah Akandoh, says every Member of Parliament should have been tested for covid-19 by now.

Akandoh said this in disagreement with the recall of Members of Parliament in the wake of the surge in COVID-19 case in Ghana.

Speaking to Citi News, the Juaboso MP said the MPs needed a lot of measures to be put in place because we are also potential carriers of the virus.

He also said Parliament needed to be mindful of social distancing guidelines because of the number of MPs.

If you say we should not gather more than 25 and 275 of us gather in the same chamber without ensuring social distancing, the government's posture will not be seen as we are serious unless there are pragmatic measures put in place to ensure social distancing.

Mr. Akandoh also suggested that either they call us to come and deal with specific issues and then we go back.

We travel more than anybody in this country. It should not be as though we are superhuman beings. I think if indeed we are going to be called to do a specific business, I do not have a problem. But sitting as though there is nothing at stake, I vehemently oppose that idea.

Parliament adjourned sittings on May 1, 2020, after a series of emergency meetings necessitated by the pandemic.

---citinewsroom
*This Article was put together with the aim of educating the public on the new Payments Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987). Due to its length, this Article shall be published in three parts.

PART 3: GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES, FOREIGN PARTICIPATION AND LICENSING REQUIREMENTS

GRIEVANCE PROCEDURES UNDER THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICE ACT 2019

As indicated earlier, the Bank of Ghana has the power to reject an application for authorisation or a license. When this happens, the unsuccessful applicant is not barred from future application, he may continue to apply in so far as the defects which caused the rejection have been cured. The Act does not place any time limit on when the defect should be cured, thereby giving the applicant as much time as he needs to set his affairs in order.

The Act also balances the powers of the Bank of Ghana, by subjecting the said powers to the principle of audi alteram partem, which means both sides must be heard. Under the Payment Systems and Services Act, where a license or authorisation is to be suspended or revoked, it cannot be done in an arbitrary manner without giving the holder of the license or authorisation notice of the intended action nor an opportunity to be heard. [1] The notice however, is time-bound and as such the holder of the license or authorisation is required to act swiftly.

Aside from the above, there are no other direct grievance procedures under the Act, neither does the Payment Systems and Services Act expressly or impliedly forbids aggrieved persons from making an appeal to the High Court. This is unlike the provisions of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 2016 (Act 930) [2] which limits actions in connection with but not limited to, appointment of official administrators, liquidation, suspension in the payment of dividends to shareholders and issuance of licenses to operate as a bank or specialised deposit-taking institution, to arbitration alone.

However, under the Bank of Ghana Act 2002 (Act 612), the Bank of Ghana is a corporate entity that that can sue and be sued in its name. Section 1 of the Bank of Ghana Act 2002 (Act 612 reads),

The Bank of Ghana in existence immediately before the commencement of this Act shall, subject to this Act, continue to be in existence as a body corporate with perpetual succession and a common seal and may sue and be sued in its corporate name

It stands to reason then, that an aggrieved person may seek redress in court against the Bank of Ghana as there are no known fetters or limitations on the right to seek court redress.

PENALTIES UNDER THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES ACT 2019

The Act makes it an offence for a non-banking entity to carry on business as a payment service provider without first acquiring a license under Section 9. The sanction for unauthorised business under the Act is a fine [3] or imprisonment or both. Any individual charged with said offence is liable on summary conviction to a fine of a minimum of 2000 penalty units [4] and a maximum of 4,000 penalty units [5] , or a term of imprisonment of not less than 4 years and not more than 7 years; or to both the fine and imprisonment. The body corporate shall on conviction immediately cease business and shall be liable to pay a fine of not less than 4,500 penalty units [6] and not more than 7,000 penalty units. [7]

Additionally, any entity under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 2016, which carries on business as a payment service provider without authorisation shall pay a fine of 5,000 penalty units [8] and shall immediately cease all operation of payment services.

These penalties are not limited to Payment Service Providers and as such all corporate bodies and individuals found illegally operating as electronic money issuers would be duly sanctioned. Any corporate body under the Banks and Special Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 2016, found operating as an electronic money issuer without the necessary authorisation commits and offence [9] and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than 4,000 penalty units [10] and not more than 7,000 penalty units. [11] On conviction, said entity must immediately cease the issuance of electronic money.

If a non-bank entity is convicted of operating as an electronic issuer without a license [12] , in the case of the individual involved, he is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than 1,500 penalty units [13] and not more than 3,000 penalty units [14] or to imprisonment of not less than 4 years and not more than 7 years or to both. The corporate body itself is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than 2,500 penalty units [15] and not more than 5,000 penalty units. [16]

In the event that the terms of the authorisation or license are contravened, the individual involved commits an offence and is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than 1,500 penalty units [17] and not more than 3,000 penalty units [18] or to imprisonment of not less than 4 years and not more than 7 years or to both. The company involved is liable on summary conviction to a fine of not less than 2,500 penalty units [19] and not more than 5,000 penalty units. [20]

The penalties above, though, seem a bit inadequate in serving as a deterrent. Any corporate body or individual with the funds or ability to secure the minimum capital requirements, would not be severely affected by such a fine. The fines would look miniscule as compared to the funds required as a minimum capital requirement.

Furthermore, for offences that have wide reaching consequences for the Ghanaian populace, the prison terms ought to be harsher to properly deter persons from committing such offences. The maximum limit of 7 years is not sufficiently severe to deter persons involved. The prison sentences ought to be a minimum of 10 years, as seen with possession of narcotics, because like possession crimes, these offences have consequences that are far reaching.

FOREIGN PARTICIPATION UNDER THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES ACT 2019

Under the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, all foreign companies that wish to be service providers or electronic money issuers must have 30% equity holding from a Ghanaian. This is more than what is provided for under the Ghana Investment Promotion Centre (GIPC) Act 2013 (Act 865). Under the GIPC Act, foreign enterprises that seek to partner with Ghanaians to form a joint venture must have not less than 10% equity participation by a Ghanaian.

This increase in the minimum Ghanaian participation could very well be to protect the countrys interests, since payment service providers and electronic money issuers form part of the Fintech industry in Ghana, which is still growing; thus, more Ghanaian participation is to be encouraged. Another point of view is that perhaps, with such a requirement, it would be easier to protect the interest of Ghanaian citizens. The higher the requirement for a foreign company, the easier it would be to assess whether or not said business is fraudulent or otherwise. Additionally, since the capital requirements in itself is high in order to manage risk, placing 90% of the burden on the company might hinder foreign participation rather than encourage it.

Currently, the license fee for payment service providers is Gh20,000,000.00; 30% of that would be Gh6,000,000, which is considerably high. However as indicated the capital requirements are set such that in the event that the company is liquidated or the license is revoked, the customers would be safely cushioned against the fall.

Presently, there is no set period for which Ghanaian participation must be attained, foreign companies must therefore have at least 30% equity participation at the beginning of the application for the license or authorisation. To give such companies a period of say, five to ten years to attain such participation or capital would be for Bank of Ghana to ignore security and risk management principles. The good news though, is that, neither the Payment Systems and Services Act, nor the Companies Act, limit the minimum Ghanaian participation to one Ghanaian per company. It is possible to have as many Ghanaians as needed to be shareholders in order to reach the 30% equity participation. Foreign companies may therefore partner with as many Ghanaians to reach this 30% equity participation requirement,

LICENSING REQUIREMENTS RELEASED BY THE BANK OF GHANA PURSUANT TO THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES ACT

Under the Section 101 of the Act, the Bank of Ghana may by notice release rules and guidelines for the effective implementation of the Act.

To operationalize the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, BoG has since released a notice stating the minimum capital requirements, minimum governance requirements and minimum system requirements for the various categories of payment service providers under the Act. [21]

Minimum Systems Requirements

PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (ENHANCED LICENCE) PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (MEDIUM LICENCE) PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (STANDARD LICENCE) ISO 27001 Yes No No PCI/DSS Yes No No EV SSL Yes Yes No Authentication Multi-Factor (Minimum 2) 2 Factor 2 Factor Back-up Policy Yes Yes Yes Evidence of Back-up setup Yes Yes Yes

Minimum Governance Requirements

PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (ENHANCED LICENCE) PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (MEDIUM LICENCE) PAYMENT SERVICE PROVIDERS (STANDARD LICENCE) Dedicated Physical Office Space Yes Yes No Verified Board of Directors Yes Yes Yes (Advisory Board) Clear Balanced and Adequate Organisational Structure Yes Yes No Data Protection Policy Yes Yes Yes External Audit Tier 2 to Tier 1 Audit Firm Tier 3 to Tier 1 Audit Firm Tier 4 to Tier 1 Audit Firm Procedures Manual Yes Yes Yes Risk Management Framework Yes Yes Yes Compliance Framework Yes Yes Yes Registered Ghana Business Yes Yes Yes Data Protection Certificate Yes Yes Yes (after a year of operation)

C. Minimum Capital Requirements

LICENCE TYPE PERMISSIBLE ACTIVITIES CAPITAL (GHS MIL) PROCESSING/ LICENCE RENEWAL FEES (GHS 000) TENOR Payment Service Providers & Electronic Money Issuers Sections 22(1) and (24) (1) Issuance of electronic money, Recruitment and management of agents, Creation and management of wallet. Wallet based domestic money transfers including transfers to and from bank accounts, Cash in and cash out transactions, investment, savings, Credit products only in partnership with banks, Insurance and pension products only with authorised insurance and pension companies 20 25/100/10 5 Years Payment Service Providers (Scheme) Section 8(1) Routing of payment transactions, authorisation and settlement request from merchants, acquiring and issuing banks. 8 20/90/8 5 Years Payment Service Providers (Enhanced licence) Section 8(1) Aggregation of merchant services, processing services, Provision of hardware and software, printing and personalisation of EMV Cards, Provision of inward International remittances services, merchant acquiring, POS deployment and Payment aggregation 2 12/40/7 5 Years Payment Service Providers (Medium licence) Section 8(1) Payment Gateway and Portals/Payment aggregation which is connected to Enhanced PSP. Training and support of merchants. Printing of non-cash payment instrument, development of market platforms, payment application/ solution for Credit, Savings and Investment products in partnership with Banks. 0.8 8/15/5 5 Years Payment Service Providers (Standard licence) Section 8(1) Payment application solution/ development, Merchant development platform, Payment solution No capital required. To leverage on Enhanced licence 0.5/1/0.2 5 Years

Pursuant to the requirements above, the Bank of Ghana has since licensed its first Dedicate Electronic Money Issuer, Zeepay Limited, a local Fintech Company [22] to provide the following services;

Cash In; Cash out; P2P (peer to peer) Transfers Bill Payments; Airtime Top-up; and International Money Transfer (IMT).

The Bank of Ghana has also established a Fintech Innovation Office to license and oversee inter alia, dedicated electronic money issuers, payment service providers and other emerging forms of payment delivered by non-bank entities as part of its bid to digitise the economy. The Fintech Innovation Office according to the press release [23] by the Bank of Ghana, would also formulate policies for the development of Fintech in Ghana and ensure greater interoperability.

CONCLUSION

Ghanas agenda for a cashless society is a laudable agenda, especially more so as technology continues to permeate our day to day activities. Fintech is here to stay, it is only right that the country be not left behind.

To make room for the growth of Fintech as an industry and for subsequent regulation, the powers of the Bank of Ghana are sufficiently wide under the Act. After all, as seen in the recent NAM1-Menzgold saga, the Diamond Capital Scandal and the collapse of over 10 banks in the country as a result of non-compliance or fraud, the Government has a personal interest on behalf of its citizens to ensure hard earned monies are not lost at a whims pleasure.

Dr. Settor Amediku aptly put it this way, while speaking at the 23rd National Banking Conference organized by the Chartered Institute of Bankers,

Consumer protection issues have gained prominence in the digital financial service on account of complexity of digital ecosystem. For this reason, regulatory guidance is required for effective consumer protection

The Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 is a commendable start to the regulation of Fintech of Ghana. It is hoped that this law evolves as the nature of Fintech evolves in society and does not become an archaic piece on display in the face of growth.

[1] [1] Section 12(2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[2] Section 141, Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 2016

[3] A fine is charged in penalty units.

See Section 27 (1) and the 2nd Schedule of the Interpretation Act 2009, Act 792, One penalty unit us equal to Gh12.00

[4] Gh24,000

[5] Gh48,000

[6] Gh54,000

[7] Gh84,000

[8] Gh60,000

[9] Section 22 (6) & (7), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[10] Supra (fn 105)

[11] Supra (fn 107)

[12] Section 25, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[13] Gh18,000

[14] Gh36,000

[15] Gh30,000

[16] Supra (fn 108)

[17] Supra (fn 114)

[18] Supra (fn 115)

[19] Supra (fn 116)

[20] Supra (fn 108)

[21] https://www.bog.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Revised-Notice-Licensing-of-Payment-System-Providers-CURRENT.pdf

Last visited on 2/04/2020

[22] https://www.bog.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/Press-Release-Bank-of-Ghana-licenses-First-Fintech.pdf

Last accessed on 4th May 2020

[23] https://www.bog.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Press-Release-Bank-of-Ghana-Establishes-FinTech-Innovation-Office-2.pdf

Last accessed on 8th May 2020
Person-to-Person has been helping those in need for more than 50 years.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached Connecticut in March, the need has grown at a fast and furious pace, forcing Person-to-Person to react quickly, including establishing the home delivery service, Door-to-Door, according to CEO Nancy Coughlin.

At Person-to-Person, we really successfully and quickly transitioned our programs to incorporate all the protocols with social distancing, contactless distribution and curbside pickup, Coughlin said. We had to give up some of the attributes of the food delivery program that we liked for safety reasons, but we were able to do that super-fast.

Person-to-Person has seen a steady increase in traffic, which was up 40 percent a few weeks ago and has pushed even higher recently, Coughlin said.

Were looking ahead as far as where this is going to go, Coughlin said. We know that were at the beginning of the economic fallout from the pandemic, so were trying to do some modeling and predictions about how big of an increase in the number of people were going to see coming through.

The ability to meet the food needs has been a struggle, as demand has skyrocketed and the national and local food supply chains fluctuate.

There has been an increase in people looking to donate, volunteer, or help in some way  a positive during a difficult time  but keeping the shelves stocked with food is a challenge to say the least.

Were still waiting for food to come to New England and to Connecticut, so there are still disruptions to the national food supply chain, Coughlin said. And we have not yet seen the fallout from the meat-packing plant challenges, so were keeping an eye on that because we really dont know how that will play out.

The Connecticut Food Bank has informed local organizations that it isnt expecting large shipments of food from government programs until June or July, Coughlin said, adding that Person-to-Person has looked to additional providers for help.

The concern among food pantries is the question of what is the most efficient way to get food to people, Coughlin said. Were purchasing a lot of our food through our wholesalers and we are getting a fair amount of food through the Connecticut Food Bank, but the availability is inconsistent. So were scrambling to find additional wholesalers to work with.

People looking to donate to Person-To-Person can do so in several ways.

The organization is accepting food donations at its three locations: 76 S. Main St. in Norwalk; 1864 Post Road in Darien; and 454 Fairfield Ave. in Stamford.

Monetary donations can be made through a virtual food drive on the organizations website.

The online drive has been very successful so far and has helped fill the gap left by the postponement of the Stamp Out Hunger campaign, annually run by the National Association of Letter Carriers.

Stamp out Hunger was scheduled for last weekend, but was postponed for safety reasons. A new date has not been announced, but NALC has said it is fully committed to rescheduling the food drive later in 2020.

Thats a huge hit to us and to all the food pantries because thats a tremendous source of food, Coughlin said. With the virtual online food drive, rather than putting food out by their mailboxes, people can make a donation through our website, which we can then use to purchase food.

Person-to-Person will also hold a physical food drive from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday at its Darien location.

Weve seen a lot of people who want to help in some way, Coughlin said. Theres a collective need for people to feel productive right now, especially with people out of work and home. The need is so clear and obvious and people want to feel like theyre part of the solution.

That extra help has been greatly needed, as Person-to-Person has seen a 300 percent increase in the financial assistance its given for rent and security deposits.

Last month, we gave out $75,000 worth of rent assistance and that is increasing steadily along with food demand, Coughlin said. So were grateful that people are feeling generous because theres a real tremendous need out there.

The crisis has strengthened the coordination between nonprofit organizations and the municipalities they serve.

A part of the silver lining is that all of the agencies have really come together to coordinate services and work together, Coughlin said. Im looking forward to that continuing long after this pandemic is done. Well have a deeper level of coordination.

The non-profits have always coordinated well, but the cities havent always been an equal partner at the table, Coughlin said. This pandemic is severe enough that its required a holistic solution, so the cities and the non-profits have been working really closely together and thats all positive.

Coughlin is also hopeful that specific initiatives can help boost the local agricultural markets.

Gov. Ned Lamont recently appointed Bryan Hurburt, commissioner of the state Department of Agricultural, to be a food szar, and Coughlin said he has been very responsive while meeting and talking with groups throughout the state.

If hes able to marshal the resources to make large, statewide scaled food purchases, that will hopefully bring food to the people who need it quickly, Coughlin said. Im also optimistic that this will be an opportunity to support our local farms. That would be a nice side effect of the whole crisis if we can shore up our local agricultural economies.

The opening of many farmers markets at this time of year also adds another option for food, and could be a boost to the local agricultural community.

Theres every reason to believe that people will support farmers markets more this year than they ever have before, Coughlin said. Its the open-air concept, which you can do with the social distancing framework.

She added that theres the possibility of expanding programs for lower-income families to use farmers markets.

There is talk about allowing people to use their SNAP food stamp benefits at farmers markets and double the value, so it makes the fruits and vegetables more affordable. It would be really great if we can expand those programs and give more people access to fresh fruits and vegetables, which are locally grown. Thats a win-win situation.

david.stewart@hearstmediact.com; @dstewartsports
The Bombay High Court on Friday



directed the Centre and Maharashtra government to give details of special trains running across the country ferrying migrants and others stranded in the coronavirus-induced lockdown and till when these services would be operated.

Justice A R Borkar of the Nagpur bench of HC also directed the Union and state governments to clarify their stands on who will bear the ticket fare of persons traveling in these special trains.

The court was hearing a petition taken up suo motu (on its own) on the plight of migrants, daily wage labourers and other stranded persons traveling back to their native states on foot.

Advocate Deven Chauhan, who was appointed by the court to assist it, on Friday told the court that the special trains run by the railways was only till May 17.

The court then directed the railways to file an affidavit submitting details of special trains run from various parts of the country.

"The affidavit shall also state up to what date the special trains will ferry migrants and other stranded persons back to their native states," Justice Borkar said.

The court was then informed that, on May 8, while hearing another petition, the principal bench of Bombay High Court had in its order noted the Union and state governments were to share the ticket fare.

The government pleader told the court the state government has released Rs 57 crore towards this expenditure.

The court then directed the Union and Maharashtra governments to state this in its affidavit and posted the matter for further hearing on May 19.

The court also directed the government and all district collectors, civic and district council authorities and police commissioners across the state to say if they have complied with HC's May 12 order by which special teams were to be formed to inspect and monitor highways as well as arrange travel for migrant workers and others till the state borders.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
President Donald Trump gives thumbs up as he walks on the South Lawn after returning to the White House on Marine One. AP Photo

When the tortoise agreed to ferry a stranded scorpion on its back across a river, he didnt know what he had bargained for. Midway, the scorpion stung the tortoise, deep, through its hard shell.

Why have you done this? asked the tortoise. Now we shall both drown.

Its in my nature, said the scorpion.

Given its own self-esteem, the United States should have been ferrying the world through the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, it is itself so overwhelmed that it has no time for leadership. Fair enough, let the US protect its people. But Donald Trumps Washington isnt only making a mess, its aggravating the worlds problems. The tortoise didnt live to digest the lesson: a cooperative order is simply not possible with Mr Trump.

If US capitalism in the post-Cold War world were scripted like a Webster melodrama, the audience should be ready for some frenetic tattooing by the scorpion. As the world focuses on fighting coronavirus, US claws are out, groping the Venezuelan coastline, using Colombian territory as its own. Eight mercenaries are dead, as two pedigreed Americans are in Venezuelan custody, presumably singing like canaries. Wordsmiths have already named the expedition Bay of Kids, so infantile has this latest US adventure been to unseat Nicolas Maduro. Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau claimed responsibility. President Trump has closed his gloves like a pugilist on the defensive: I knew nothing about it.

Of course he knew as much as he did about Blackwater founder Erik Princes idea of privatising the Afghan war. Dont laugh! Princes 100-page dossier spelt out how Afghanistan should be privately governed. The proposal was considered by freaks in the administration. Under the plan, Afghanistan would be ruled, as India once was, under a viceroy. The plan was shot down. But Prince proved his resourcefulness again in Venezuela. Londons Guardian said Prince secretly met one of Maduros closest allies, vice-president Delcy Rodriguez, who also handles security. About eight months ago, Prince suggested an invasion of Venezuela by a private army of 5,000. This was after the US recognised Juan Guaido as the Opec nations legitimate President. Which side of the street was Prince playing? The tricks didnt work. Donald Trump has to go into an election with a military failure in his backyard. Will his cohorts allow him to?

The world has been persuaded to put its head down on corona. But this doesnt stop Mr Trumps military adventures: holding US-Sri Lanka joint training drills in March-April at Sri Lankas Trincomalee military base despite a travel ban due to the pandemic.

This bonhomie was at a time when corona-stricken aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt was advised to dock in Guam. Over 4,500 crew were moved ashore. The Sri Lankan Navys and Armys spike in corona cases can be traced to their companionship with US military personnel.

How can one raise fingers at the island nations obsequiousness when the great nation to its north circumvents its own rules to ship hydroxychloroquine to the US as Mr Trump threatened retaliation if he werent helped in his hour of need.

That isnt all. The man who is building a wall to keep Mexicans out sends a stark message to his southern neighbour: American economic interests supersede Mexican health interests. In other words, let workers operate factories vital not for Mexico but to the US, pandemic or no pandemic.

Germans coped with that mentality in March: the Trump administration tried to lure a German firm, CureVac, to the US. This isnt where the US audacity ends. A vaccine, jointly developed, would be available first to Americans. Angela Merkels government politely showed US negotiators the door.

In the German episode, the US comes across as almost elegant compared to the highway robbery on the tarmac of a Chinese airport where PPE kits were being loaded for European destinations. US highwaymen paid three times the amount and diverted the equipment to America. The French officials called it the war of masks.

Meanwhile across the sea, Mr Trumps Sancho Panza (or is it the other way around?), Israels Benjamin Netanyahu, is stepping up airstrikes against Syria, trying drone drone assassinations of Hezbollah field commanders, and trying to pulverise the axis of resistance, with Iran as the prime target. The idea is to provoke just sufficient retaliation to enable Mr Netanyahu to survive corruption charges, also to give Mr Trump a chance to beat war drums, always a useful strategy in election season, particularly when the ratings are not promising.

The Bay of Kids and his Gulf gyrations pale before the high wire act he seems to be developing (or bluffing) vis-a-vis China. Financial Times Martin Wolf is one of the many commentators who have chastised Mr Trumps irresponsible diatribe without any credible evidence.

The supremacist, neo-Nazi rally at Charlottesville, Virginia, some years ago, attended openly by KKK and sundry white nationalists, led to waves and ripples that never really subsided. There are very fine people on both sides was Mr Trumps immortal observation, balancing Klansmen and the counter-protesters.

From that persona, Mr Trump never really distanced himself. The result is rampaging anti-Semitism. Israels respected newspaper Haaretz has expressed concern. Several US protests against measures taken by states to control coronavirus have featured swastikas and worse.

Jewish Centre for Public Affairs CEO David Bernstein is convinced as more people become economically disaffected, the more they will look for scapegoats. Since the economic downslide is on an epic scale, so will the corresponding racism grow in America and elsewhere. Should Mr Trump win a second term, we shall all surely go down like that tortoise, gasping.
The Chief of Army Staff, Lt. Gen. Tukur Buratai, was conspicuously absent at the National Security Council meeting President Muhammadu Buhari held with the service chiefs at the State House, Abuja, on Thursday. The reason for his absence was not made known. Buratai, was, however, represented at the meeting by the Army Chief of Policy and Plans, Lieutenant General Lamidi Adeosun. The chief of army staff is not known to be meeting such meeting when Abba Kyari was in control of the presidency.

Buratai had, however, relocated to Borno State to strengthen the war against Boko Haram terrorists in the northeast.

The Chief of Army Staff is among the service chiefs that Nigerians have been mounting pressures on President Muhammadu Buhari to sack for failure to guarantee the security of the country.

Moreover, the Army boss was known to be more loyal to the late Chief of Staff to the President, Abba Kyari, than to the National Security Adviser (NSA), Babagana Monguno. The NSA had in a letter to the President protested that the service chiefs were reporting to late Abba Kyari rather than his office. Kyari was also said to have usurped multiple powers in the presidency, including supervising diplomatic meetings and visits to the presidency.

The death of Abba Kyari may have brought Buratai to the reality of his faith. Is he preparing for retirement or deliberately avoiding Monguno whose authority appears to have been restored on the appointment of Prof. Ibrahim Gambari as chief of Staff to the president?

However, the National Security Council meeting on Thursday was attended by the Vice President, Professor Yemi Osinbajo; the Minister of Defence, Retired Major General Bashir Magashi; Minister of Justice and Attorney General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama, etc.

The Chief of Defence Staff, General Abayomi Olonisakin, led the service chiefs to the meeting at the State House, Abuja.

The service chiefs present at the meeting include the Chief of Air Staff, Air Marshal Sadique Abubakar; the Chief of Naval Staff, Ibok Ekwe Ibas; and the Chief of Policy and Plans, Lieutenant General Lamidi Adeosun, who perhaps represented Buratai. Others security heads included the Inspector General of Police, Mohammed Adamu; and Director General of the Department of State Services (DSS), Yusuf Bichi.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will allow the resumption of more economic activities soon, with special focus on providing relief to small industries hard-hit by the Covid-19 pandemic, sources aware of the development told News18 on Friday.

A likely announcement on short-term, middle-term and long-term lockdown exit plans is expected. The chief minister is also believed to have said that we need to "learn to live with coronavirus" and that states should be allowed to implement lockdown strategies and plan its exit depending on their own "ground realities."

The development comes after the state government announced the categorisation of the states red zones on Tuesday in a bid to revive the economy. Addressing a press conference at the state secretariat Nabanna, Banerjee announced that the Covid-19 red zones across the state would be divided into three categories  A, B and C  and said measured relaxations would be introduced in non-containment areas.

She said plans are afoot to restart some establishments (between 12pm to 6pm) like mobile stores, jewellery shops, food joints (except restaurants) electrical and paint shops. The CM said only takeaways would be allowed in food shops, while all gathering would remain banned at tea stalls. State-run units of Khadi Bazar, Biswa Bangla Haat, PHE, PWD, Fisheries, Horticulture and Irrigation have also been asked to resume operations.

The CM also criticised the Centres decision on the extension of lockdown and said that there was a lack of planning in its implementation which adversely affected migrant workers and poor people.

Tensions have continued to simmer between West Bengal and Centre over the coronavirus crisis.

On Wednesday, CM had also slammed the Centre over the special economic package and dubbed dit a hoax, claiming that it was a big zero and of no use to the states. The TMC supremo had also said the Centre was "misleading people" during the COVID-19 crisis.
A man and woman have been charged with perverting the course of justice by giving false information to gardai investigating a Dublin gun murder.

Lacey O'Connor (28) and Mark Casserly (45) are both alleged to have given false acc-ounts of the movements of a suspect in the killing of Wayne Whelan (42), who was found shot dead in a burning car in the west of the city last year.

Evidence

Judge Gerard Jones granted them bail at Dublin District Court and adjourned the cases for books of evidence to be prepared.

Mr Whelan's body was found in a car that had been set alight at Mount Andrew Court, Lucan, last November 18. He had been shot several times.

Ms O'Connor and Mr Casserly, of Rowlagh Park, Clondalkin, are both charged with giving gardai accounts of the movements of Anthony Casserly that they knew to be false.

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The charges state that this was with intent to pervert the course of justice in the context of a criminal investigation into the murder of Mr Whelan; Anthony Casserly being a suspect.

Ms O'Connor is facing one count of this offence, last November 19, while Mr Casserly is charged with two counts, on November 5 and 12, all at Rowlagh Park.

Yesterday, Garda Sergeant John Conway said he arrested Ms O'Connor at Ronanstown Garda Station at 9am. She was charged at 9.28am and made no reply after caution.

Sgt Conway had no objection to bail subject to conditions. The DPP had directed trial on indictment, he said.

Detective Garda Marcus Roantree then gave evidence of Mr Casserly's arrest, charge and caution, saying he also made no reply to the charges.

There was also no objection to bail in his case.

Judge Jones granted bail in the accused's own bonds of 100 each, with no cash lodgements required.

Under conditions, the acc-used must surrender any travel documents and sign on at Ronanstown Garda Station.

Defence solicitor Simon Fleming said Mr Casserly had no passport, but he undertook not to apply for any travel document or leave the jurisdiction.

Mr Casserly must also provide gardai with a mobile phone number.

The judge adjourned the case to July 23 and also granted free legal aid.

Neither accused was required to speak during the hearing.

Mr Whelan's body was found in a burning Toyota last Nov- ember 18. DNA identified him.

A post-mortem determined he died from gunshot wounds.

Two other men have already been charged over Mr Whelan's death.

Anthony Casserly (23) and Christopher Moran (50), both of Rowlagh Park, Clondalkin, appeared at Blanchardstown District Court last December charged with murder.
While doctors and nurses in Ontario have fallen ill with COVID-19, the vast majority of health-care staff affected are personal support workers in nursing and retirement homes listed only as other in newly released provincial data.

This glaring omission  not recording the specific jobs of personal support workers most at risk in the pandemic  is something Ontario said Friday it is moving to rectify because that knowledge will help fight the pandemic. A spokesperson for Public Health Ontario said there is great interest in collecting this information.

Meanwhile, the overall number of infections in Ontario health-care workers continues to rise, both in sheer numbers and as a proportion of known infections. As of Friday, 3,722 or about one in six of the known 21,922 COVID-19 infections were health-care workers. It was one in seven two weeks ago.

It is not known how much those numbers are affected by decisions on who to test, and health-care workers in nursing homes have been a recent priority. As of Friday, infected health-care workers were 16.98 per cent of total known infections in Ontario. From Thursday to Friday, the province reported 115 more health-care worker infections. In total there were 428 new known infected people, including the 115 health-care workers.

The Toronto Star has found that public health units in Ontario have been slow to collect and disseminate information that would help the public understand which jobs were at the highest risk in the pandemic.

Thats why people like Sharleen Stewart, whose SEIU health-care union represents many front-line staff, is asking the province to call a public inquiry into how Ontario has dealt with the pandemic.

Its a gong show, said Stewart, president of a union with 60,000 members, half of them working in long-term-care homes. Thats why we need a public inquiry by an outside source. Stewart said that the province has resisted calls for an inquiry. The province has said there will be a review  but on what terms and when is not decided.

Two months ago, Toronto Public Health, following questions from the Star, released the first information on infected health-care workers, revealing that 13 health-care workers had tested positive. At the time, Toronto Public Health would only say that health-care worker included doctors, nurses and long-term-care workers. The form used by contact tracers did not break down the term into specific job categories.

Had they, the province might have had a better handle on the nursing home outbreaks that were then developing. Personal support workers (PSWs) perform functions that put them in constant contact in homes with elderly residents. Workers interviewed by the Star say they did not always receive the correct protective masks (or any masks at all), or other equipment.

PSWs assist residents with bathing, in the bathroom, during meals, or sitting and provide comfort to a resident, holding their hand. All of these tasks put them in close contact with residents. The biggest outbreaks in Ontario have been in long-term-care.

This week, the Star asked the health ministry what type of job the now 3,722 (as of Thursday) infected health-care workers held.

A spokesperson for Minister Christine Elliott passed the request to Public Health Ontario. It turns out that despite all of the contact tracing during the outbreak, it is only recently that public health units are recording specific job information in a provincial database called iPHIS (integrated Public Health Information System). Personal support worker is not a category on the form that leads to the iPHIS database.

Here is the breakdown in iPHIS of the 3,722 infected health-care workers: doctor (82); nurse (753); laboratory worker (41); first responder (69); and other healthcare worker/unknown type (2,887).

Public Health Ontario has no way to break down the other category, though it hopes to in the future. Thats because only some public health units in the province record the jobs of people infected. As to what other is made up of, it includes personal support workers, home-care workers, cleaners in nursing homes and retirement homes, clerks in those institutions and also jobs such as respiratory therapists.

As with many data-related issues in Ontarios fight against the pandemic, there is no one-stop-shopping answer to understand the limited data that is being released.

Separately, the province has stated that more than half  1,909  of the 3,722 infected health-care workers have jobs in either nursing or retirement homes. Also, the province has said that 336 infected health-care workers had jobs in hospitals.

For SEIUs Stewart, this is proof of what she has being saying all along, as far back as mid-March when she and other union leaders spoke to health ministry officials.

Will the province begin tracking the specific job categories?

Janet Wong, spokesperson for Public Health Ontario, said yes.

There is great interest in this. There are discussions happening to add more categories like personal support worker and others under the broader health-care worker field. We just dont have a date on when they may be implemented. I understand that (Public Health Ontario) has been talking with the Ministry of Health as well as health units about this, said Wong.

SEIUs Stewart said it is upsetting that at the same time as people are celebrating PSWs as front-line heroes they are still the lowest-paid part of the health system. And, she adds, the province has no way of knowing how many are sick. Why is the government so afraid of being totally transparent over this? We absolutely need to get prepared for the next wave and not repeat the mistakes we have made.

The role of a PSW is a heavy job, Stewart said. They are working with older residents, mobility is an issue, they are often helping someone who might have dementia and is not completely understanding what the worker is trying to do.

Whether it is a personal care worker or a doctor, we have to know who is sick. Why hide the numbers?

Kevin Donovan is the Stars chief investigative reporter based in Toronto. He can be reached at 416-312-3503 or via email: kdonovan@thestar.ca
MACKINAC ISLAND, MI  Sheplers Mackinac Island Ferry will restart service on May 29 to kick off its 75th season.

The ferry transportation is an essential service for Mackinac Island, which is only accessible by boat or plane. Essential services can be open during the Michigan stay-home order thats aimed at slowing the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. The order is currently set to expire on May 28.

Two weeks from right now, were finally setting sail on our 75th season, Sheplers said in a Facebook post on Friday morning, May 15. Now more than ever, we look forward to having you as our guest. Thanks to each and every one of you for your patience. Stay well, friends, and we really will see you soon.

Two weeks from RIGHT NOW, were finally setting sail on our 75th season. Now more than ever, we look forward to having... Posted by Shepler's Mackinac Island Ferry on Friday, May 15, 2020

The first rides of 2020 will depart from Mackinaw City and St. Ignace at 7:30 a.m. on Friday, May 29, the company website says.

Sheplers said it will release more information next week about ticketing, new policies and exciting changes. The safety and security of customers is the top priority as the company prepares to reopen. Sheplers will make necessary adjustments to maintenance and housekeeping in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

RELATED: See Sheplers Mackinac Island Ferrys new $4M jet-driven boat under construction

In response to comments on Facebook, the company said guests are welcome to wear masks while on board.

RELATED: 8 pointers for Michiganders on when and how to wear a mask

Its unclear what businesses or services will be open on the island come May 29.

READ MORE:

Friday, May 15: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Police identify suspect who fled from officers across Mackinac Bridge with child

Whitmer signs 3 more orders, including new ones impacting tax appeals and telehealth access

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer hopes to allow small gatherings in Michigan after May 28

Another Michigan barbershop reopens, defying governors order
Health secretary Matt Hancock has admitted that there is much more to do to drive coronavirus out of care homes, as he confirmed that a third of all those in England have suffered outbreaks.

Mr Hancock insisted that numbers of deaths were falling and that all residents and staff in English care homes would receive a Covid-19 test by early June, but added: We have passed through the peak, but there is clearly a long way to go.

The health secretary also signalled that the pandemic may trigger long-demanded reforms to integrate the health and care systems, saying that coronavirus has proved the importance of closer working between the sectors, whose co-operation he said had so previously been impeded by bureaucracy.

He was speaking at the daily Downing Street coronavirus briefing shortly after the governments scientific advisory group for emergencies (Sage) revealed that the downward trend in the crucial R measure - denoting how many people are infected by the average virus patient - had been reversed.

Sage put R at 0.7 to 1 across the UK, up from 0.4 to 0.9 the previous week and ending a sequence of declines in the level, which must remain below one in order to avoid a return to exponential growth in cases.

Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Show all 18 1 /18 Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jackie Wilson, a healthcare assistant, wearing PPE before going into rooms Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, speaks to a carer at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Carers working at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A care worker wearing PPE opens a drink carton Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, sits with a carer Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A care staff member wearing PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member at Newfield Nursing Home looks after a resident SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer wearing PPE uses a speaker Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer helps Jack Dodsley, 79, from his chair Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer wearing PPE helps Jack Dodsley, 79 Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A carer brings food to a resident at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jack Dodsley, 79, with a carer in PPE Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A staff member puts on PPE at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside Jackie Wilson, a healthcare assistant, puts on PPE before she enters a room SWNS Care home hit by coronavirus: A rare glimpse of life inside A bench at Newfield Nursing Home Tom Maddick/SWNS

Whitehall sources stressed that the figure reflected the situation two or three weeks ago, and should not be taken as indicating a rise in cases in the wake of Wednesdays partial lifting of lockdown measures in England.

And Mr Hancock insisted that the uptick in the measure was not likely to be a problem as it was still not above one.

We are constantly keeping the R under review, said the health secretary. We dont think that it is above one. So that meets that test.

It is an incredibly important figure for policymakers but it is one data point to look at alongside the level of new cases.

Despite official figures showing 22,000 excess deaths in care homes in April - of which just over 8,000 are officially recorded as coronavirus-related - Mr Hancock insisted that the government had tried to throw a protective ring around care homes throughout the outbreak.

We sent out our first advice in February and as the virus grew we strengthened it throughout, he said. Weve made sure that care homes have the resources they need. This week weve made a further 600 million available to care homes in England on top of 3.2 billion we made available in March and April.

He said care homes were now getting the most intense support and scrutiny they have ever received, with named clinical leads for each premises and daily reviews by local authorities of the situation on the ground.

The latest official data from Public Health England shows a total of more than 5,500 homes - or 35 per cent - in England have now been affected, with 400 more suffering their first infection in past seven days.

But Mr Hancock said: Sixty-four per cent of care homes have no Covid cases. The number reporting their first case has fallen from a daily peak of 219 to 59. Since the peak, the number of Covid-19 deaths of people in care homes has halved.

But he added: While this is progress, there is so much more to do. And this crisis has also demonstrated the imperative for reform and shown the importance of long-standing calls for closer working between health and social care. Its acted as a catalyst for integration and shown the benefits of it on the ground.

The health secretary also vowed to fight to ensure that NHS nurses are rewarded for their efforts during the outbreak, which has claimed the lives of more than 100 healthcare workers.

Challenged by a nurse who asked whether pay would be frozen as part of the governments plan to pay down the debt incurred because of the pandemic, Mr Hancock said that nursing is a highly skilled profession which deserves decent pay.

We put up nurses pay last month and in fact last year we had the biggest rise in pay, especially for nurses when they were starting their career, the lowest paid nurses got a pay rise, very significant, of over 15%, he said.

There has been a significant pay rise for nurses and I think one of the things that the crisis has shown is just how much the nation values our staff across the health and care system, including nurses.

And when it comes to how we reward people for their efforts in this crisis what I can tell you is that as the Health Secretary I will be making sure that we fight to have that fair reward.

Welcoming the support being offered to councils with responsibilities for care homes, the chair of the Local Government Associations Community Wellbeing Board, Ian Hudspeth, said: Social care is the frontline in the battle against this dreadful disease. Councils will be reviewing their existing plans to continue supporting them and ensure those who rely on and work in social care are able to stay safe and well.

But he added: Other aspects of care homes which councils do not have direct control over, such as the long-term future of the care home market, need to be met by government.

In particular, we know that some of these new measures will need ongoing funding and resources beyond what has already been made available to councils and providers. It is good news that government has committed to working with councils on future funding support, this needs to be made available as soon as possible to help meet increasing demand and costs.
NRPLUS MEMBER ARTICLE T he Republican political power of the state of Texas has deployed itself in the cause of protecting from legal sanction a hairdresser who repeatedly and willfully violated the law, in this case a Dallas County order that had required businesses such as hers to suspend operations as part of the social-distancing regime.

Salon owner Shelly Luther refused to comply and was given a seven-day sentence for her violations. Senator Ted Cruz called the sentence nuts. Governor Greg Abbott called the sentence excessive, and Attorney General Ken Paxton, denouncing the move as outrageous, demanded Luthers immediate release  an extraordinary thing for a states chief law-enforcement officer to do in the case of an offender who is guilty, prima facie, on the charge, in this case contempt of court. Talk radio and cable news made the case a cause celebre.

In Owosso, Mich., members of the self-style Michigan Home Guard militia staged an armed protest on behalf of a local barber reopening in defiance of the law. In Texas, bars and tattoo parlors witnessed similar scenes, with the familiar props: the Gadsden and Gonzales flags, red MAGA hats, black guns. Polite coastal progressives, among them the headline writers of the Washington Post, are scandalized and repulsed. That isnt a question of public safety (the District of Columbias murder rate is four times that of Texas) but a matter of aesthetics, in much the same way that the corporate response of well-scrubbed progressives to the Tea Party protests was Eww, gross.

But the Tea Party gang was a law-abiding bunch. Rhetorical flourishes from constitutional street scholars notwithstanding, the armed protests in Texas and Michigan and elsewhere are being organized on behalf of people who are breaking the law  not ordinary protest but civil disobedience.

Civil disobedience is a necessary item in the libertarian toolkit, but a dangerous one. The problem, as I wrote in the matter of Cliven Bundy, is the fact that every Timothy McVeigh thinks himself a Paul Revere. The theory of the American militia movement is that organized but decentralized groups of armed citizens are desirable in cases in which local social order breaks down and, in extremis, as a check on tyranny. Progressives scoff at that notion on tactical grounds  they simultaneously denounce the scary black guns as weapons of war and insist that those guns are insignificant as weapons of war  but the question isnt whod come out on top in a pitched battle between the Michigan Home Guards and the Green Berets. The question instead is that of the citizens relationship to the state. Progressives see the state as a magisterial and tutelary power over and above the citizenry  as individuals, businesses, churches, etc.  while the American order is founded on the assumption that the state is the instrument of the people. A conflict between a British king and an army led by a Virginia farmer implanted very deeply into our political culture the belief that the right to keep and bear arms is the difference between a citizen and a subject.

Story continues

And for that reason, the American tradition of civil disobedience is not remarkable for its nonviolence. For every Henry David Thoreau or Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. we have a Patrick Henry, standing up in the general assembly and calling for the murder of the king, or a John Brown organizing a massacre in Kansas. The American self-conception is right there on the Virginia state seal, among other places: Virtue treading on Tyranny, Brutus over the bloody corpse of Julius Caesar. You may think of that as delusional, and you may be correct, but if it is a delusion, it is a delusion that is central to the American political character.

But we are greedy, and we are childish. We want to enjoy the pleasures and benefits of civil disobedience without paying the accompanying price for them. King George would have been doing his duty to hang George Washington et al. We hanged John Brown. Henry David Thoreau spent time in jail for his antiwar activism, as did the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. in the cause of civil rights. Thoreau did his time happily. Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, he wrote, the true place for a just man is also a prison.

That is part of the deal, too. If we were to take leave of our senses and take seriously the proposition that Dallas Countys coronavirus order is tyranny in the sense the Founding Fathers had in mind, then surely seven days imprisonment would be only a modest price to pay for opposing that tyranny. By way of comparison: Sister Megan Rice, 84 years old at the time of her sentencing, served two years in a federal penitentiary for her lawbreaking anti-nuclear protests, and she might easily have spent the rest of her life there had not her conviction been overturned.

Set aside the usual snobbery from our progressive friends, who take it as an article of faith that right-ish protest is categorically unacceptable. (Remember not only the tea parties, and the dishonest accounts of them, but the so-called Brooks Brothers Riot and other incidents of that kind.) Consider instead the perversity of having a states chief law-enforcement officer extend himself so far in the cause of programmatic law-breaking: If that is not the politicization of the attorney generals office, then what is? And such politicization should be resisted, reversed where possible, and punished where necessary. The protests against coronavirus orders may resonate culturally on the right, but the attorney generals job is not to be the Rights cultural champion in Texas, any more than it is to be the Lefts cultural champion in New York. Shelly Luthers part is to break the law. The part of law enforcement is to enforce the law.

There is a time for willful lawbreaking. But if you are going to open up that can, youd better be prepared to eat it all.

More from National Review
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

International investment firm Cathay Capital Private Equity announced the final close of its second Sino-European Mid Cap Fund at $850 million.

Midcap II has surpassed its predecessor, which closed in 2014 at $525m, and will look to invest in 16 to 20 companies.

"This significant increase in assets under management in the current environment reflects the renewed confidence of Cathay's existing investors, as well as the many new partners attracted by Cathay's reputation and track record, with a notable addition of international financial institutions," said Herve Descazeaux, Managing Partner of Cathay Capital.

"Midcap II is particularly timely given the current environment, as Cathay's considerable global resources and Midcap II's strong capital base can help our portfolio companies to identify and seize upcoming opportunities," Herve added.

Founded in 2007, with offices in the U.S., Europe, and China, Cathay Capital has completed over 140 buyouts, growth, and venture capital investments. Midcap II represents Cathay Capital's largest fund to date. With the new fund, Cathay Capital will have $3.8+ billion in assets under management.

Cathay Capital Midcap II was backed by a diverse group of existing and new global investors comprising sovereign wealth funds, institutional investors, corporates, and family offices.

Midcap II will invest in 16 to 20 companies in the consumer products and services, busines......................

To view our full article Click here
WASHINGTON  As many as 2.4 million Texans didnt get stimulus checks the federal government cut earlier this year because they are either immigrants or live with them, one way immigrants  even U.S. citizens  have been left out as Congress has poured trillions into coronavirus relief efforts.

The stimulus checks did not go to mixed-status families, meaning as many as 940,000 Texans who otherwise would have been eligible for the checks  many of them citizens  didn't get a check because they are either married to a person who came to the U.S. without legal authorization, or have parents who did, according to estimates by the Migration Policy Institute.

President Trump and Senate Republicans left out millions of American citizens from receiving stimulus checks simply because they are married to an immigrant  this discrimination is a grave injustice, said U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a San Antonio Democrat who chairs the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Every hard-working, tax-paying Texan deserves economic relief during the coronavirus crisis.

Democrats in Congress want to start sending them checks soon, part of a $3 trillion coronavirus relief package the House is set to vote on as soon as Friday  a proposal that the Texas Republican Party on Thursday called outrageous, saying Democrats are jumping at every opportunity to push through a ludicrous list of far-left ideas.

EVERYONES PANICKED: Trumps immigration order could have long-term effects for Texas

On Thursday, President Donald Trump threatened to veto the bill, in part because it would send payments to illegal aliens and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell blasted it in a speech on the Senate floor.

Another round of checks for illegal immigrants. Can you believe it? McConnell said. We forgot to have the Treasury Department send money to people here illegally. My goodness, what an oversight. Thank goodness Democrats are on the case.

The checks are just one of the ways immigrants have been cut out of the federal response to the coronavirus, which has totaled some $2.5 trillion so far. Many immigrants cant access unemployment benefits or Medicaid, even as 1.6 million Texans have lost their jobs and employer-provided health care during the pandemic, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation.

This has become more than a political issue as I see it. We are now getting into the area of human rights, U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat, said. People should not be punished because they dont happen to have citizenship at a time when we have a pandemic that is impacting all of us  Its just unthinkable we would deny children something because the father happened to be someone who is not a citizen.

The $3 trillion relief package House Democrats rolled out this week would broaden eligibility for the stimulus checks to include anyone who pays taxes, including those with an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, which is used by many unauthorized immigrants to pay federal taxes. The Democrats plan would send $1,200 checks to everyone eligible, including children, up to $6,000 per household.

The checks had previously been limited to those who filed taxes with Social Security Numbers, meaning many U.S. citizens living with immigrants filing with taxpayer IDs were left out.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund has sued the federal government over the issue, arguing the current setup discriminates against mixed-status couples.

Any nation that values family should recognize the obligation to treat all married couples equally, Thomas A. Saenz, MALDEF president and general counsel, said in a statement. In the United States, a nation of and by immigrants, this unconstitutional exclusion is especially inexplicable.

IN-DEPTH: As coronavirus takes their jobs, benefits, Houston immigrants feel like they suddenly dont exist

Texas has the second-most people excluded from the stimulus relief, according to the Migration Policy Institute, which estimates 2.4 million Texans didnt get the checks because of immigration status. That includes some 940,000 spouses and children who are U.S. citizens or green card holders who otherwise would have qualified.

You have a bunch of U.S. citizens in my district and other districts who are getting nothing, Castro said. It makes no sense at all. Theres no reason they shouldnt immediately give relief to every American citizen.

Its less clear how many have been unable to access other benefits Congress has boosted during the outbreak, such as unemployment, which got a $600 bump under the stimulus package, or who cant get Medicaid because of their immigration status.

The Migration Policy Institute estimates there are some 1.6 million immigrants living in Texas without legal authorization, including 416,000 in Harris County and 77,000 in Bexar County, who wouldnt be able to access unemployment.

The institute, meanwhile, has estimated that under an unemployment rate of 17.5 percent  which the U.S. is rapidly approaching  1.6 million noncitizens living in Texas would be left uninsured, the second-most in the nation, behind only California.

RELATED: COVID-19 Tracker: Interactive maps track coronavirus cases in San Antonio, Texas counties and the U.S.

In Houston, immigrants are responsible for more than 26 percent of the areas GDP, according to a study by New American Economy, and they have accounted for a third of the regions population growth over the last decade.

While 23 percent of the areas population are now foreign-born residents, they represent 30 percent of its working-age population and 31 percent of its employed labor force. More than 50 percent of construction workers in the area are foreign-born, and 32 percent of manufacturing workers are immigrants.

About 30 percent of San Antonios business owners are immigrants, even though they make up only 13.5 percent of the citys population. About a fourth of the foreign-born population works in construction. Immigrants contribute billions of dollars a year to the San Antonio economy and are disproportionately filling science, technology and engineering jobs.

ben.wermund@chron.com
The Trump administration recently announced plans to extend the COVID-19 restrictions at the U.S.-Mexico border indefinitely. According to several people familiar with the matter, the decision came after the president's advisers pushed to leave the policies in place for months.

On March 21, a U.S. federal health agency revealed a month-long restriction where all non-essential travel into the United States from neighbouring countries such as Mexico and Canada are suspended. The new guidelines led to the closing of all legal points of entry for tourists. Immigrants who entered the United States through illegal ports were sent back to their home countries.

Under the new border rules, over 20,000 immigrants at the southern border were turned away, with officials citing threat to the public health as the reason. Border officials reducing the number of detainees in holding cells and immigration jail contributes to preventing an outbreak in the facilities.

According to a USCIS report, border patrol agents conducted over 59 interviews between March 21 and May 13, Fifty-four applicants were rejected while three are still waiting for their results. The data did not release the demographic information or the nationality of the individuals who were screened. Only two migrants were given permission to remain in the country to seek asylum since the enactment of the new restrictions. The Trump administration said other applicants will be considered on a case-to-case basis.

On April 20, Stephen Miller, the architect of the president's immigration agenda, decided to extend the border restrictions for another month.

On Wednesday, newly surfaced reports claim the extended restrictions-which is set to end on May 21-may see another extension. The reports said several government agencies are reviewing a new order that will allow them to impose the COVID-19 border policies indefinitely. Should the administration issue the extension, the restrictions would stay in effect until U.S. health officials decide the virus no longer poses a threat.

The Department of Homeland Security officials claim extending the restrictions is essential in preventing the virus from spreading and affecting detention centers along the border. It is, however, unclear whether the administration will formally issue the new order.

A copy of the draft obtained by the New York Times said the duration of the COVID-19 order will continue until medical experts determine the danger of spreading the disease into the United States will no longer be a danger to the health of the public.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they will conduct monthly reviews of the threats posed by the coronavirus to American residents. They did not disclose further details about the criteria used to extend the border rule.

The Trump administration has previously imposed restrictive immigration policies, including suspending flights of refugees, naturalization ceremonies, and the issuance of green cards to individuals residing outside the country. Despite the limitations, the president has permitted seasonal workers to apply and receive temporary visas. He also acknowledged the immigrants employed as farmworks and meatpackers to be essential during the coronavirus crisis.

Catch the latest news from the US here:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 03:03:58|Editor: huaxia

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RAMALLAH, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Palestine on Thursday said its leadership will convene to decide the response to the new Israeli government's plan to annex parts of the West Bank.

Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Ishtaye told reporters in the West Bank city of Ramallah that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will chair a meeting for the leadership of the Palestinian Authority and the Palestine Liberation Organization on Saturday "to take the necessary decision and implement it in the face of this Israeli declaration."

He noted that such a move by Israel would destroy the possibility of establishing an independent, contiguous and sovereign Palestinian state.

"This matter will not be accepted by any Palestinian. The leadership is before a decisive and historic decision if Israel announces annexation," he concluded.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his political rival Benny Gantz signed a deal in April for a unity government that could accelerate the prime minister's plans to annex parts of the West Bank in the coming months.

The annexation is, in fact, part of U.S. President Donald Trump's peace plan for the Middle East, better known as the Deal of Century.

The plan is strongly objected by the Palestinians and the Arab world as well as international organizations such as the UN, which denounced the plan as a violation of international law. Enditem
The Board of Health declined to support the mayor's emergency order for Crane Stationery to cease nonessential production.

North Adams Health Board Refuses Vote on Crane Enforcement Order



Mayor Thomas Bernard explains the enforcement order to the Board of Health on Thursday over the Zoom digital platform. NORTH ADAMS, Mass.  The Board of Health on Thursday refused to authorize the mayor's emergency order and enforcement against Crane Stationery by failing to vote on the matter.

Board members Kevin Lamb, acting as chairman, and October Cellana spent 90 minutes debating the board's authority over what they saw as determining essential versus nonessential work before Lamb motioned for a vote  and Cellana declined to second.

"My biggest concern is that ... I don't have the information or the knowledge to make such a decision and I don't want to utilize whatever power I have inappropriately," Cellana said before the motion was made.

"The motion doesn't carry," said Lamb. "That ends the discussion of the emergency order."

Mayor Thomas Bernard repeatedly told the board during the meeting that the enforcement order was drafted by the city's legal counsel and that the city had the authority to impose fines or issue cease-and-desist orders. He showed the board the email from attorney Gregg Cote of KP Law stating the law it was based on and the need for Board of Health ratification.

"I believe that this is an issue of health and safety for the community," he said, adding, "there's a direct link between essential work and health and safety, which is to say if Crane is working on a essential business, and only essential business, they will be in the facility less time, which reduces the amount of employee contact and reduces the risk.

"I have heard from employees, and I have heard from Crane's customers, and the message from both of those groups is clear that the work that Crane is doing, and the work that Crane is advocating to do, much of it is nonessential."

Afterward, the mayor was "deeply disappointed" in the board's lack of action to ratify a both his emergency order on May 3 and the enforcement order May 10 that he said would protect Crane's employees during the novel coronavirus pandemic

"While I have grave concerns about the manner in which in which the item before the board was resolved  essentially giving the company a pass by refusing to take action on a matter where the city's authority to act was clearly presented and acknowledged by the board  I continue have the utmost respect for our volunteer boards and commissions and their role in city government," he said.

The Health Department would continue to work with Crane to ensure employees' safety, as was done earlier in response to a worker's concerns, Bernard said, adding he was appreciative of the company's efforts in that regard, and that he still wanted to clarify Crane's communications on its future in North Adams.

The city and the printing company have been at odds for two weeks after Crane notified its employees it would reopen for business at its two buildings in the Hardman Industrial Park on Curran Highway because it received a federal Payroll Protection Program loan of $2 million. There was further confusion in that Crane's written communications to employees and the city indicated it would cease operations after September but officials were also saying a small workforce would continue.

Bernard had ordered Crane on May 3 to comply with several criteria for reopening, including how it would assure the city that nonessential work as determined by the state Department of Labor Standards was not being done. Gov. Charlie Baker had ordered nonessential businesses shuttered in March to help contain the spread of the highly contagious COVID-19.

Crane submitted a plan for keeping its workforce safe during the pandemic  including frequent breaks, cleaning of stations, and staggered schedules  and allowed an inspection but balked at complying with the order to inform the city how it would determine only nonessential work was being done. Company officials claim the mayor is overstepping his authority by singling Crane out and trying to violate their customers' privacy. The mayor said it was incumbent on the company to come up with a way to meet the criteria and protect its customers.

The company reopened in defiance of the mayor's order last Friday.

"We have worked in good faith with the mayor and local health officials, including demonstrating the extensive safety precautions we have put in place and which the Mayor publicly applauded," said Thomas O'Connor, CEO of Mohawk Fine Papers, in a statement last Friday. "Our employees, customers, and partners want Crane's operations to continue and the mayor is intent on stopping that from happening."

The company was told it would be fined $1,000 a day for failing to comply, which was when the mayor asked the Board of Health to ratify the enforcement order.

The main issue for the board was how the "nonessential work" figured into its authority. The two board members  Chairman John Meaney Jr. removed himself entirely from discussion because of a conflict  turned to the findings of a representative of the state Department of Labor Standards that found Crane could be qualified in some cases as essential because it was providing paper to essential services in the medical, legal and energy fields.

The letter from DLS encouraged but did not require Crane to stop all nonessential work. "However, like the big box stores that are allowed to sell both essential and nonessential products, the DLS does not issue cease and desist orders to close businesses if they provide both essential and nonessential products or services," the letter stated.

"I get the mayor's perspective on this, that there's a larger issue at play," said Health Inspector Michael Moore. "But that's strictly from the Health Department's view that's not a Health Department thing."

Cellana agreed. "If the state felt that way I don't understand where the city's coming from," she said, and asking how this fit with stores that are selling nonessential goods.

Bernard didn't think big box retailers were comparable to producing nonessential items in a factory. "It we're talking about printing Christmas cards or things like that, it is not essential at this time," he said.

Building Inspector William Meranti had the opposite take: The city has a legal opinion in hand saying it is justified in asking Crane to prove it's only doing essential work.

"We've already determined that we have the right to ask for more stringent requirements than the state orders. We've done so, and they refuse to comply," he said. "They could explain to us what they're doing and go about their business. They have not done that though."

The mayor said the Board of Health is the agency for enforcing the components of his order because it's consistent with the governor's order.

"I appreciate the line you're trying to walk and I appreciate the line that the health inspector is trying to walk but I really do truly see the essential/nonessential issue as a health and safety issue," he said.

"I've let Crane know that I'm going to recommend the assessment of fines for the period of this week where they have not been in compliance. I am extremely reluctant to go to the level of closing down the company, but within the terms of the order, within the terms of the law, we have the right to do that."

Lamb asked if Cellana would be more comfortable if there was a public hearing or waiting until the mayor could give them some of the concerns of employees that he had received.

"We are hearing just one side here, it's true. But the failure to act in in good faith to provide the information as required by the order, I feel as though that this board should be looking at upholding it," Lamb said.

Cellana, however, countered that the governor may begin lifting restrictions as soon as Monday, making the order moot. The mayor said he didn't think the message should be they won't hold the company to account for the past week because things might change next week.

"The opinion is that the order was correct. And now we either say that we have the right to do that or we don't, and the authority of the city is meaningless," Bernard said, concerned that a precedent would be set for other businesses.

In other business, Meaney returned and the board heard the health inspector's report, which included the closing of the BMX park; the ordered closure of Jeepers Creepers on Eagle Street as a nonessential business because it was doing curbside pickup; and the successful conversations with Walmart on reducing its density far beyond the state's recommendations.
Relations are not calming down around the mega-dam that Ethiopia is building on the Nile, as negotiations with Sudan and Egypt, countries downstream of the river, have been suspended.

An Ethiopian government meeting on May 11 rekindled the tension. During the meeting, the head of government Abiy Ahmed and several ministers, as well as the army chief of staff, studied a progress report on the Renaissance dam presented by the minister of water, irrigation and energy, Seleshi Bekele.

In his report, the Minister stated that Ethiopia was ready to start the first phase of filling the dam next July, despite the absence of an agreement with the two neighboring countries.

The following day, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok wrote to Abiy Ahmed to express his opposition to this unilateral decision. He also invited his counterpart to resume the talks in Washington, which Ethiopia left last February.

Egypt, for its part, has already made known its refusal in a letter to the UN Security Council in early May.

For the two countries downstream of the Nile, it is inconceivable to start filling the reservoir without first signing a comprehensive agreement with Ethiopia. Sudan and Egypt want a long-term agreement on the sharing of data from the dam, its safety, and its social and environmental impacts in their respective countries.
Lawsuit seeks to delay enforcing Noem's new abortion pill ban

Planned Parenthood and ACLU of South Dakota are suing Noem and the Department of Health in enforcing a new abortion pill ban.
Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen (L) listens to a masked soldier amid the coronavirus pandemic during her visit to a military base in Tainan, southern Taiwan, on April 9, 2020. (Sam Yeh/AFP via Getty Images)

Australian Taiwanese Community Call for Support for WHO Membership with Taiwan Can Help Skywriting

The message Taiwan Can Help will appear in the skies above Canberra at 11 a.m. on Saturday, May 16, and again at 11 a.m. above Sydneys CBD on Sunday, May 17, as Australias Taiwanese community call for support for Taiwans World Health Organisation (WHO) membership.

The Taiwan Can Help skywriting message is the result of a successful three-day crowdfunding campaign by a group of Taiwanese-Australian doctors and professionals.

The initiative has raised $10,000 to deliver to Australians a strong message that Taiwan will be a valuable contributor to the countrys ongoing battle against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

Taiwan has earned international accolades for its success in containing the spread of the CCP virus, and thus widespread support for its participation in the WHO.

Aside from Taiwans diplomatic allies and the United States, officials from Canada, Australia, Germany, Japan, and Lithuania have also recently spoken in favour of Taiwans membership bid.

The Asian island nation in close proximity to mainland China has managed to stem the spread of the virus without resorting to lockdown measures adopted by most countries, thus successfully keeping businesses and schools open as usual.

As of May 13, Taiwan had 440 confirmed infections and only seven deaths in connection with the virus.

Backed by its advanced public healthcare system, Taiwan has also donated millions of masks and collaborated with a number of countries in a global effort to contain the pandemic.

Despite the international recognition of Taiwans successes, the island remains excluded from official participation and membership of the WHO.

The 73rd World Health Assembly (WHA) assembly, the decision-making body of the WHO, will convene a meeting virtually on May 18, although Taiwans participation remains uncertain.

The co-organiser of the Taiwan Can Helpcampaign, Dr. Lin Chan-Feng believes it is in Australias best interests that Taiwan joins the WHO, especially as the country is moving toward a COVID safe society while reopening the economy.

As Australia begins to gradually relax some social distancing measures, learning from Taiwans experiences may be useful for Australia, he said in a statement on May 14.

Therefore we invite our fellow Australians to support Taiwans bid to join the WHO. 

While Taiwan is not a WHO member state, its health ministers took part in the WHA as observers from 2009 to 2016.

However, since 2017, the year after Taiwan elected President Tsai Ing-wen of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)which Beijing condemnedTaiwan has been barred by Beijing from taking part in the assembly and its meetings.
Westpac has admitted it failed to adequately monitor 12 customers who allegedly made suspicious transactions fitting the pattern of payments for child exploitation, as it also admitted to millions of anti-money laundering breaches.

In its defence to a bombshell anti-money laundering lawsuit, the bank also admitted to 23 million breaches of anti-money laundering laws, due to failures in its transaction reporting and record-keeping.

The defence, filed with the Federal Court on Friday, also challenged some of the allegations made by financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC, which launched the explosive legal proceedings against the bank last November.

The bank denied that it did not have a compliant anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing program and denied it had failed to carry out regular assessments of its correspondent banks.
When she came back, she and Kanye came to live with me in my apartment in Evanston, said Blakeley, now 69. My apartment in Evanston was a nice two-bedroom apartment, but not for two adults and a child and all the crap that we had combined together. Thats how the house (purchase) actually came about. We had not actually planned to live together so soon after meeting, but it wasnt a problem at all.
Louisville officials have now asked the U.S. Justice Department and the FBI to review the police department's internal investigation of the killing of a black woman by officers raiding her home two months ago.

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer and Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad announced their request for additional federal help on Thursday. They said the results would be forwarded along with the findings of the police integrity unit to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear also called for an outside review into the killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot eight times on March 13 by police who broke through her apartment door while serving a no-knock search warrant for a suspect in a drug investigation. Her boyfriend allegedly fired first, hitting an officer.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has called for an outside review into the killing of Breonna Taylor, who was shot eight times on March 13 by police

Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer (left) and Louisville Metro Police Chief Steve Conrad announced their request for additional federal help on Thursday. They said the results would be forwarded to Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron

The death of the 26-year-old emergency medical technician sparked a national uproar and calls for federal intervention.

'My priority is always that the truth comes out,' the mayor said. 'We can be transparent with the people of our city. And we can and we must also talk about the relationship between our police and our communities of color: past, present and future.'

The police review is going to the state's attorney general since the county's prosecutor, Thomas Wine, recused himself from the case, a statement by the mayor's office said.

Wine also asked state officials to appoint a special prosecutor for the case on Wednesday to avoid a conflict of interest since he is prosecuting Taylor's boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, for the shooting of the officer.

A lawyer for Walker said he fired in self-defense because the officers did not announce themselves, a point disputed by Louisville police.

The death of the 26-year-old emergency medical technician sparked a national uproar and calls for federal intervention

Taylor was gunned down by police who broke through her apartment door while serving a no-knock search warrant for a suspect in a drug investigation. Her boyfriend allegedly fired first, hitting an officer

'One reason the news of this case hits people so hard is because it reopens old wounds - the history of racism and the mistreatment of people of color in our community,' said Fischer.

Kendall Boyd, the director of the Louisville Metro Human Relations Commission, said city officials have put together an initiative, the Synergy Project, to have constructive dialogues about the 'strained' and 'broken' historical relationship between police and communities of color.

'Everybody gets to say their truth,' Boyd said.

Mayor Fischer said in a statement Tuesday: 'Police work can involve incredibly difficult situations. Additionally, residents have rights. These two concepts will and must be weighed by our justice system as the case proceeds.'

A lawyer for Walker (pictured) said he fired in self-defense because the officers did not announce themselves, a point disputed by Louisville policethe

The three officers in the case - Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly and Officers Brett Hankinson and Myles Cosgrove - have not been charged in the shooting and have been placed on administrative leave. From left to right Sgt. Jonathan Mattingly, Det. Brett Hankison, Det. Myles Cosgrove

Senator Kamala Harris blasted the lack of an independent investigation into the officers' conduct as an injustice.

'When you look at Breonna Taylor. A woman who was 26, an EMT, and this one woman had a dream of becoming a nurse. And shes sitting in her apartment when shes killed by police who were at the wrong place serving a warrant. There should be an investigation. Thats not justice,' Harris said Wednesday on NBC News.

An online petition called #StandWithBre seeking to arrest and charge the police officers involved in the shooting, terminate them, and pursue charges has gained over 171,000 signatures.

Cops busted into Taylor's home even though the actual drug suspect listen in the search warrant was Jamarcus Glover who was arrested earlier that same day

Taylors heartbroken family filed a wrongful death lawsuit in April in Jefferson Circuit Court.

Taylor 'had posed no threat to the officers and did nothing to deserve to die at their hands', the lawsuit says.

'More than 25 bullets hit objects in the homes living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, hallway, both bedrooms in Taylor and Walker's apartment and into the adjacent home, where a five-year-old child and pregnant mother lived,' the lawsuit states.

The case emerged in the national spotlight when Taylor's family hired prominent civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump, who also represents the family of Ahmaud Arbery, the black jogger who was shot dead in Georgia in February.

On Wednesday Crump called Taylor's death an execution.

'You can't walk while black. With Ahmaud, you can't jog while black. Driving while black. But Breonna Taylor was sleeping while black in the sanctity of her own home,' Crump said during a news conference.
International students who are forced to enrol in online courses this fall due to COVID-19 will still be eligible for postgraduate work permits, the federal government has announced.

The news is being welcomed by Canadas education sector and experts, who say the move can help the country retain international students in uncertain times as borders are closed and commercial flights are reduced as a result of the pandemic.

This is terrific news for students and for our province. It ensures students outside Canada who want to pursue the quality programs at Ontarios colleges will get that opportunity this fall, said Linda Franklin, president and CEO of Colleges Ontario, which represents the provinces 24 public colleges.

Were grateful the federal and provincial governments are supporting us during these challenging times.

International education is a significant source of revenues for Canada, with international students contributing $21.6 billion in tuition and spending to the countrys GDP and supporting nearly 170,000 jobs in 2018.

As of Dec. 31, 2019, there were 498,735 post-secondary international students in Canada, which is a popular destination because it allows international students to work part-time during the school year and grants them work permits when they graduate as a pathway for permanent residence.

Under normal circumstances, international students from government-designated schools are issued postgraduate work permits that are good for one to three years, depending on the length of their studies. However, distance learning and time spent studying outside Canada dont count.

Due to COVID, all post-secondary schools from coast to coast have moved their programs online and Ottawa had no choice but changed its criteria in order to retain international student enrolment and save its lucrative international education sector.

The confusion and uncertainty hanging over their studies already led many current and prospective international students to put their plan on hold and delay admissions for the May/June and summer term.

International students who wish to eventually apply for Canadian immigration will want to capitalize on the opportunity to complete a portion of their studies in their countries of origin, while still being able to access the same benefits (the work permits) had they been required to physically study in Canada, said immigration policy analyst Kareem El-Assal.

The cost to study in Canada will decline for them, since they will not have to incur additional living expenses at the outset of their Canadian education.

The Immigration Department announcement will be a boon for the slowing Canadan economy ravaged by the pandemic, said El-Assal, director of policy and digital strategy at CanadaVisa, an immigration website run by a Montreal-based law firm.

The tuition that international students will pay will help to support jobs at colleges and universities across Canada, he said. International students will support economic activity in a number of ways once they arrive to Canada, through their spending, labour, and the taxes they will pay as workers.

The Immigration Department said international students may begin their classes while outside Canada and can complete up to 50 per cent of their program via distance learning if they cannot travel to Canada sooner.

Students in this situation wont have time deducted from the length of a future post-graduation work permit for studies completed outside of Canada up to Dec. 31, it said.
Bloomberg  1 

-- 20211.161,0082.612CPI7201920 1,10092884.477.7 20211,453718Gain in U.S. Median Wage at End o
While some businesses are hoping to open their doors next week, others agreed to extend their work-from-home policies in Massachusetts.

Fifty-four companies in Massachusetts agreed to keep their employees home after two months of working from home, Gov. Charlie Baker said on Friday. Those businesses include Google, MassMutual, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Wayfair and Raytheon, among others.

Now as we look to the weeks and months ahead, were urging businesses to continue to promote remote work and work from home as much as possible, Baker told reporters during his daily briefing at the Massachusetts State House.

The states executive branch also extended its work-from-home policies for the foreseeable future, Baker said.

Heres the full list of companies that announced plans to extend remote work policies:

AECOM

Akamai Technologies

Alkermes

Alnylam

Amgen

Analog Devices

Autodesk

Bank of America

Biogen

bluebird bio

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts

Boston Scientific

Brooks Automation

Care.com

Cigna

Comcast

Dassault Systemes

Dell Technologies

Deloitte

Eaton Vance

EY

Facebook

Foundation Medicine

Google

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care

Ipsen

Iron Mountain

John Hancock

The Kraft Group

Liberty Mutual

MassMutual

Millipore Sigma

MFS Investment Management

MITRE

Monster.com

National Grid

Novartis

Oasis Systems

Peoples United Bank

PTC

Putnam Investments

Rapid7

Raytheon Technologies

RSM

Sage Therapeutics

Sanofi

Sarepta Therapeutics

Siemens

State Street

Takeda

Tango Therapeutics

Tufts Health Plan

Verizon

Wayfair

The announcement comes days before the states reopening advisory board is due to deliver a report outlining a four-phase reopening plan. The plan is expected to go public on Monday, the same day the executive order closing non-essential businesses was expected to lift.

Baker said that the state will briefly extend the non-essential businesses order into Monday to keep restrictions in place while people get a first look of the reopening report.

Google, which has an office in Cambridge, said it would likely keep employees home until the end of the year. MassMutual plans to allow its employees to return to the office in September at the earliest.

Blue Cross Blue Shield, which has 3,800 employees in the state, said 98% are working from home. The company is planning on reopening its buildings but plans to extend its remote work policy for the foreseeable future. Wayfair did not specify a return date for its Boston office either, but said in a statement it would keep them home during the coming months.

Raytheon, a Waltham-based aerospace technology company, said some workers would need to be onsite to support its defense program needs, but that those who can work remotely will continue to do so.

Over the past three weeks, the states reopening advisory board met with dozens of groups who pitched their ideas for a gradual reopening, often in back-to-back 30-minute presentations.

The Baker administration has not yet revealed which industries will be allowed to open in the first phase, but they are expected to include businesses that need people working in-person and that can implement guidelines on hygiene practices and social distancing. The advisory boards four-phase reopening plan is also expected to weigh in on the stay-at-home advisory, which was also set to expire next week.

Related Content:
The United States is on track to meet its commitment to the Taliban to withdraw several thousand troops from Afghanistan by summer, even as violence flares, the peace process is stalled, and Kabul struggles in political deadlock.

US officials say they will reduce to 8,600 troops by July 15 and abandon five bases.

And by next spring all foreign forces are suppose to withdraw, ending America's longest war.

Yet the outlook for peace is cloudy at best.

In the absence of Afghan peace talks, the Trump administration may face the prospect of fully withdrawing even as the Taliban remains at war with the government.

That has concerned some lawmakers, including Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee.

She says the United States needs to keep a military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan to prevent extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State's Afghan affiliate from forming havens from which to attack the US.

Withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan won't end the war it will just let the terrorists win," she told The Associated Press.

Some question whether the US-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, which the Trump administration billed as a decisive step to achieve a negotiated peace, was instead mainly a withdrawal agreement.

President Donald Trump had campaigned on bringing troops home from foreign wars.

And though the Afghan government publicly supported the deal, it did not participate directly in the negotiations and has not, in Washington's view, capitalized on the chance for peace talks.

President Trump promised to bring our troops home from overseas and is following through on that promise, the White House said when the Doha deal was signed.

The deal stipulated that the Taliban would start intra-Afghan peace negotiations on March 10, but that has not happened.

The Taliban and the Afghan government also have squabbled over a promised release of each other's prisoners.

A lot of this boils down to: Was the US-Taliban agreement any kind of serious negotiation at all, or was it just totally a fig leaf to cover abject withdrawal? I suspect the latter, said Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs and a former adviser to US commanders in Kabul.

It gave away almost all the leverage we had in exchange for virtually nothing, he added.

It looks very much like a situation in which the Taliban have concluded that the Americans are out, and they're going to play out the string and see what happens when we're gone."



The United States has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks and overthrew the Taliban, which was running the country and harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

According to US government auditors, Washington has committed USD 86 billion to support Afghan security forces and is still spending about USD 4 billion a year.

The Trump administration has expressed frustration with the lack of movement toward peace talks, but it has not threatened publicly to pull back from its commitment to fully withdraw.

It did conduct an airstrike against the Taliban in defense of Afghan ground forces in early March just hours after Trump had what he called a good conversation by phone with a senior Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Although the drawdown is required by the Doha agreement, US defense officials had said for many months that they wanted to reduce to 8,600 the approximate number of troops that were supporting Afghan forces and conducting counterterrorism operations when Trump took office.

American officials constructed the Doha agreement mainly as a way of ending US involvement in the war, rather than as an assured path to peace.

The withdrawal is subject to Taliban assurances, but it does not require a peace settlement.

The deal also is seen by the US as a way to enlist the Taliban in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The American military considers the group's Afghan affiliate as a greater threat than the Taliban.

The US agreed to withdraw not just military forces but also all intelligence agency personnel, private security contractors, trainers and advisers.

NATO allied forces also are to withdraw.

The Doha deal was seen at the time as Afghanistan's best chance at peace in decades of war, but the government has since been consumed with political turmoil.

Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah have both declared themselves winners of last year's presidential polls, and each declared himself president.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said that getting out of Afghanistan would advance his aim of devoting more forces to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, which he sees as the No 1 long-term threat to the United States.

Esper has been skeptical of the Taliban's commitment to peace, and on May 5 he said neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government is abiding by the agreement.

Esper said the Taliban should return to the reduced levels of violence that existed in the week before the February 29 Doha signing.

At the time, Ghani put his government forces in a defensive stance, but on Tuesday he ordered a return to the offensive, expressing anger for two attacks, including one that killed 24 people, including infants, at a hospital.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Linkedin Arya Dipa (The Jakarta Post) Bandung  Fri, May 15, 2020 08:08 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8260c0 1 National COVID-19,coronavirus,PSBB,virus-corona,virus-korona-indonesia,large-scale-social-restrictions,pembatasan-sosial-berskala-besar,Padjadjaran-University Free

An epidemiologist has claimed that the government's plan to ease large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) could extend the outbreak until 2024.

Panji Fortuna Hadisoemarto of Padjadjaran University said he had made three different statistical models to estimate the length of the outbreak using data on COVID-19 cases in West Java.

The models suggested that tightening PSBB by 20 percent would end the outbreak in less than one month and that loosening the restrictions could extend the outbreak until 2024.

Panji said a 20 percent increase in public activities from the current PSBB levels would cause the health crisis to last until at least 2021.

By the end of the outbreak, about 22 million people will have been infected by the disease, said Panji on Wednesday.

He said the governments plan to allow citizens under 45 years old to work outside their homes would make the situation worse and that at least 3.5 million people between the ages of 14 and 45 would contract the virus by the end of 2024.

The government has been considering a plan to ease PSBB and allow people to work to prevent more people from being laid off.

Panji suggested the government to take into account the COVID-19 occupational risk score to decide who should be allowed to resume their usual activities based on their risk of catching or spreading the disease.

For example, professions with lower probabilities of being infected, such as economists, could be among the first ones allowed to work outside again.

However, I dont believe Indonesia has such a risk score yet, Panji said, urging the government to make one soon. (vny)
ANN ARBOR, MI  GoFundMe pages for two Ann Arbor resale bookstores aim to create sustainability for the stores during the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Sales have slowed for Dawn Treader Book Shop and West Side Book Shop, and both are asking the community to help keep their stores open.

Only two people are filling orders at Dawn Treader Book Shop, 514 E. Liberty St., including store manager Africa Schaumann, due to cost-cutting measures in place until the store can reopen. The stores GoFundMe page has raised more than $21,800 as of Friday, May 15.

The store is more of a browsing store, which has made sales difficult during the temporary closure due to COVID-19, Schaumann said. It has several aisles of used books ranging from history to cooking to childrens books.

Were a place where you can come and you dont necessarily have to buy anything, Schaumann said. Youre expected to come in and have the experience of the store. Its about walking down the aisles, stepping over a pile of books and searching for an hour finding all these things you didnt know you wanted. And possibly getting lost  I still get lost sometimes.

Dawn Treader Book Shop started in 1976, moving to several locations in Ann Arbor. Many people have been sharing their stories and connections to the store over the decades on the GoFundMe page.

It has this community presence and impact on broad-style and on a very individual level, Schaumann said. With the GoFundMe, as I have been seeing, Im hoping people recognize the space that the Dawn Treader occupies in Ann Arbor. Its important.

To inquire about books in the store, Schaumann suggests emailing dawntreaderbooks@gmail.com. Most of the stores business during the closure has come from email lists.

West Side Book Shop, 113 W. Liberty St., is a resale shop for rare and antiquarian books. The bookstore created a GoFundMe page due to sales dropping 90 percent because of the temporary closure related to coronavirus.

Only 10 percent of West Side Book Shops sales come from its website, owner John Platt said.

Its been a major economic hit -- and even socially, Platt said. Bookstores are social places and you want to have people come in. Im certainly missing that.

The Antiquarian Book Fair, which was scheduled for May 10, is normally hosted by West Side Book Shop, but it was canceled this year.

Platt has kept his employees paid during the temporary closure, he said, and he still must pay rent. The GoFundMe page has allowed them to raise over $16,900 as of Friday, May 15.

When West Side Book Shop opened in 1975, Platt and his business partner filled it with vintage photography and books of German origin to reflect the German community that resided in Ann Arbors west side, he said.

The store had just one room at the time, but today has thousands of antiquarian books lining every crack and crevice of the store., Platt said, adding there are even more books in storage.

I really enjoy what I do, Platt said. Im in the shop about two to three hours a day just to bring books in and clean the store.

The Powering Positivity campaign by MLive Media Group highlights how Michiganders are supporting one another during the coronavirus pandemic. It is sponsored by The MediLodge Group.
A LIMERICK priest said they are supporting the family of a woman killed in a fire tragedy through "prayer and love".

Fr Michael O'Shea said he knew the late Ann Collins, of Ballyorgan and formerly of Kilfinane. Mrs Collins, aged in her 60s, was pronounced dead at her home on Wednesday afternoon.

"The parish is in terrible shock. We are all supporting the family by prayer and by our love but it is a terrible shock to the whole community of Ballyorgan and Glenroe," said Fr O'Shea, who sadly was called to the Collins home.

"I was there for a while. We blessed her and prayed with the family, God love them. We are there for them in prayer and we're supporting them in our thoughts and prayers," said Fr O'Shea.

Two units of the Limerick Fire and Rescue from Kilmallock attended the scene for a number of hours as did paramedics from the National Ambulance service. Gardai from the Bruff district also attended.

"We can just be there for one other. It's a tragedy. We have no words really to describe it only that it is shocking and so sad. They are in our prayers and we will do whatever we can do for them," said Fr O'Shea.

It is understood that Mrs Collins' husband Michael had gone out to get some messages at the time. When he returned he raised the alarm.

"I knew them both. They came to Kilfinane church. They are very quiet people with a deep faith," said Fr O'Shea.

Ms Collins' passing is deeply regretted by her loving husband Michael, sons, daughters, grandchildren, relatives and friends. The funeral is private due to the current restrictions.

May she rest in peace.
VANCOUVER, British Columbia, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- PRIMO NUTRACEUTICALS INC. (CSE: PRMO) (OTC: BUGVF) (FSE: 8BV) (DEU: 8BV) (MUN: 8BV) (STU: 8BV) ("Primo" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has received the ability to import Hand Sanitizer for the duration of the COVID-19 emergency response from the Health Products and Food Branch of Health Canada.



This license specifically authorizes the license-holder to manufacture, package, label and/or import antiseptic Skin Cleansers/Hand Sanitizers as described in the Product Monograph provided by Primo Nutraceuticals Inc., to Health Canada. The following site is considered to-be-in compliance with GMP requirements outlined in PART 3 of the Natural Health Products Regulations. Activities include: Importing to Canada and Manufacturing, Packaging and Labeling from the U.S.A.

Site License Number: COV0950 was issued by the Natural and Non-prescription Health Products Directorate of Health Canada to Primo Nutraceuticals Inc. (CSE:PRMO) on April 21st, 2020.

Further to the press release dated March 24, 2020, where Primo signed a production order with Celebrity Driven Brand Beauty Kitchen to provide 1,000 units of free non-hydroalcoholic hand sanitizer. The hand sanitizer will be produced by beauty kitchen, located at 1512 Industrial Rd. Boulder City, Nevada. The production Facility currently has the capacity to produce $450,000USD of product per month. The relationship with Beauty Kitchen has allowed Primo to private label most of Beauty Kitchens product line. This allows Primo to produce product without the construction of its own facility.

The initial run of 1,000 units was financed internally. Future production orders will be financed as procurement orders from the health industry are received. The company will entertain options for equity financing once orders start to come in. The sample of 1,000 units will be handed out to hospital and health care industry professionals.

The management team and Board of Directors at Primo have decided that after handing out all 1,000 units, the hand sanitizer will be made available for purchase directly from the Companys online shop at: www.primoceuticals.com/shop Users of the site may also notice that the Company has recently added to the shop a ready to purchase Primo branded, breathable, washable and re-usable neck gaiter/face mask that can be used in assisting to combat the virus.

Andy Jagpal, President Comments:

This is an absolute win for the company. We have joined companies like Purell who have been permitted to provide these essential products to combat the spread of the Corona virus. Our goal is to be able to bid on procurement contracts from government hospitals and nursing home facilities as soon as our 1,000 sample hand sanitizer arrive.

I would also like to add, if youre a private corporation, healthcare center, pharmacy or any type of business that requires hand sanitizer to fight against the virus, we ask that you send your requests to Primo at: orders@primoshop.ca so that we can fulfill those orders without delay.

About Primo Nutraceuticals

Primo Nutraceuticals Inc. ("Primo" or the "Company") is dedicated to funding the rapid growth in production, processing, retail and branding of cannabis and non-cannabis related products in Canada and the United States. Primo has invested in several brands and is pursuing partnerships with retailers and distribution companies in Canada and the United States. Primo's management is in the process of building a corporate road map to further vertically integrate the Company, specifically by way of Primo branded retail outlets - offering "Thrive," "Primo," and a selection of curated partner brands. The Company possesses proprietary formulas for cannabis edibles, topical, and tinctures. Primo is focused on building a strong presence in the hemp industry with the objective of extracting and selling cannabinoids (CBD) products in both Canada and the United States.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

PRIMO NUTRACEUTICALS INC.

Andy Jagpal

President and Director

For further information, please contact Zoltan, IR Representative at: 604-722-0305, or; info@primoceuticals.com

To learn more about what this news means to the shareholders visit:

Shop: www.primoceuticals.com

www.twitter.com/prmonutra

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FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: This news release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of Canadian securities laws. Forward-looking statements are based on the expectations and opinions of the Company's management on the date the statements are made. The assumptions used in the preparation of such statements, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Company 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.No regulatory authority has approved or disapproved the information contained in this news release.
Judge Sullivans decision to have a former federal judge argue against the DOJs motion to dismiss the Michael Flynn prosecution is bizarre enough. In addition, though, Sullivan asked the same judge to consider whether Flynn should face a perjury charge based statements he made to the court in connection with his guilty plea.

I assume Sullivan recognizes that the DOJs motion to dismiss the charge of false statements to the FBI makes it very difficult, if not impossible, for Sullivan to sentence Flynn on that charge. The judge is looking for an alternative way of nailing Flynn  one that doesnt require Justice Department participation or approval.

Is a perjury charge the answer? I doubt it, but as someone who never practiced criminal law, I dont know.

Weve all seen movies or television shows in which a judge holds someone in contempt for acting up in court. No prosecution is involved. The judge acts on his own.

But thats Hollywood. What about reality?

Jonathan Turley directs us to 18 U.S.C.  401, which states:

A court of the United States shall have power to punish by fine or imprisonment, or both, at its discretion, such contempt of its authority, and none other, as

(1)Misbehavior of any person in its presence or so near thereto as to obstruct the administration of justice;

(2)Misbehavior of any of its officers in their official transactions;

(3)Disobedience or resistance to its lawful writ, process, order, rule, decree, or command.

To me, this rule pertains to the kinds of cases in which we see judges hold folks in contempt in movies and on television  acting up, i.e. openly displaying contempt. Perjury is its own substantive crime and doesnt seem like misbehavior for purposes of this statute.

If it isnt, the none other language of the statute should preclude a finding of contempt in Flynns case.

But maybe Im wrong. If so  if perjury can be contempt  is it only the government that can prosecute the contempt/perjury charge (if it chooses to) or can the prosecution be farmed out?

Turley cites Criminal Procedure Rule 42(a)(2). It states that contempt cases are to be prosecuted by the government unless the interest of justice requires the appointment of another attorney. . .If the government declines the request, the court must appoint another attorney to prosecute the contempt.

I imagine the argument for appointing another attorney in this case would be that theres a solid basis for believing Flynn committed perjury and that the interest of justice requires that an outside attorney prosecute this affront to the judicial system, or at least consider prosecuting, if the government wont do it.

Is there a solid basis for believing Flynn committed perjury in connection with the guilty plea he now repudiates? I wouldnt think it could be perjury simply to try to take back a guilty plea. That happens pretty often, I believe.

However, it may well be the case (I think it is) that during the colloquy accompanying the plea taking, Flynn admitted that he lied to FBI agents. If Flynn has since given sworn testimony that he didnt lie to the agents, Sullivan can view Flynns admission to the contrary as perjury. If Flynns attorney has taken the position in court filings on Flynns behalf that he didnt lie, this might also be a basis for a charge that he committed perjury in his colloquy with the judge.

So maybe Sullivan has hit on a way of nailing Flynn  or at least a better way than denying the DOJs motion to dismiss and sentencing Flynn for making a false statement to the FBI.

Turley believes, however, that Sullivan would be on thin ice with a perjury gambit. He says that in going after Flynn for perjury,

Judge Sullivan would. . .effectively create a new case of his own making. At some point, the court risks the appearance of assuming both prosecutorial and judicial functions. A perjury charge leaves the appearance of a court imposing its own notion of justice through a dubious judicially-mandated criminal charge.

(Emphasis added)

One hopes that an appeals court would frown on an attempt by Sullivan to do indirectly what he cannot do directly, given the law applicable to the DOJs dismissal motion. One hopes that Sullivan, after he has made Flynn sweat and thumbed his nose at William Barr, would not make such an attempt.
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: At a time when India is facing tensions at the borders with both China and Pakistan, the Indian Air Force will gain a greater strength in July, when its fleet begins to include Rafale fighter jets in Ambala. Top government sources have told the media that, "There has been a delay of a few weeks due to the coronavirus, but now Rafale aircraft will start arriving in July. These will help us in increasing the country's fire power in air combat capabilities."

These fighter jets are one of the air-to-air Meteor missiles and have the capability to shoot down enemy aircraft at a distance of more than 150 km. Let us tell you that both China and Pakistan cannot launch missiles at such a distance. Rafael with his ability can easily hit any of his fighter planes in the air. The first batch of planes coming to India will consist of three trainers and a fighter aircraft. At the same time, more aircraft will continue to be produced at the Dassault Aviation facility in Bordeaux, France.

All the four planes of the first batch will arrive at Ambala Airforce Base. The commanding officer of Rafael Squadron will bring them to blow. Let us tell you that in 2016, on the initiative of PM Narendra Modi, India signed the agreement for 36 Rafale aircraft. The Prime Minister wanted to maintain the Indian Air Force's leadership in the sky of South Asia.

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According to recent research, mouthwash is capable of providing some extent of protection against COVID-19. They claim that the chemicals in the mouthwash can kill the virus before it can infect cells in the body.

Experts say that coronaviruses belong to the class of 'enveloped viruses, which means that they are covered in a protective layer which is defenseless against some chemicals. The researchers say that mouthwash can destroy the outer membrane of the virus, preventing its further spread in the mouth and throat.

Although the World Health Organization already said that there is no evidence that mouthwash will protect you from the new coronavirus, scientists say that there is an urgent need to test the effectiveness of mouthwash in clinical trials.

The authors of the study from Cardiff University say that oral rinses are an 'under-researched' area of great clinical need, but do not claim that current commercially-available mouthwash prevents COVID-19.

They add that additional research looking into mouthwash chemicals would be beneficial to gather more information on their study published in the journal Function.

The team is assisted by medical experts, virologists, and lipid specialists from Cardiff University's School of Medicine, together with Cambridge's Babraham Institute and the Universities of Colorado, Ottawa, Nottingham, and Barcelona.

Professor O'Donnell, the lead author and co-director of Cardiff University's Systems Immunity Research Institute, says that gargling mouthwash has not yet been considered by public health officials in the United States Kingdom.

He adds that in some lab test-tube experiments, some mouthwashes proved to have virucidal components that target lipids akin to enveloped viruses. However, what they don't know is whether commercially-produced mouthwashes of today provide combative properties against SARS-CoV-2's lipid membrane.

Also Read: Household Products That Will Help You Combat Coronavirus

Mouthwash Won't Protect You from Coronavirus

According to the researchers, common ingredients of mouthwashes such as hydrogen peroxide, povidone-iodine, chlorhexidine, and cetylpyridinium chloride, all have the potential to prevent infection and several 'deserve' clinical analysis and evaluation.

The researchers believe that these chemicals can disrupt the outer lipid membrane of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19.

So far, the researchers said there had been 'no discussion' about the potential role of damaging the fatty membrane as a possible way to disable the virus.

The WHO has already cleared out the idea that mouthwash can prevent the infection of the new coronavirus. According to the organization, some mouthwash brands can eliminate specific pathogens in the mouth's saliva for a few minutes. However, this does not mean they protect you from 2019-nCoV infection, they added.

Listerine, one of the biggest and most notorious mouthwash brands, says that none of its products have been tested against any coronavirus strains. The company wrote on their website that their mouthwash is not intended to be used, nor would it be helpful as a hand sanitizer or surface disinfectant.

Some mouthwashes contain ingredients similar to the coronavirus-killing hand cleaner, alcohol. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention argues that a hand sanitizer contains at least 60 percent alcohol concentration for adequate protection, while Listerine's products only hold 20 percent of alcohol.

Furthermore, the WHO also cautions that drinking pure alcohol, bleach, or methanol is extremely dangerous and potentially fatal. They add that these substances do not cure nor prevent COVID-19.

Read Also: FACT Check: Does Bathing in Bleach Treat COVID-19 as Cristina Cuomo Suggests?
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 04:11:21|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA, May 14 (Xinhua) -- World Trade Organization (WTO) Director-General Roberto Azevedo said Thursday that he will step down at the end of August this year, before the end of his term.

"This August, I will complete 7 years as WTO Director-General. And I have decided that I will step down from my current position on 31 August 2020, cutting short my second term in office by exactly one year," he said in an announcement published Thursday.

"This is a decision that I do not take lightly. Between the lockdown and my recent knee surgery, I have had more time than usual for reflection. And I reached this decision only after long discussions with my family," he said, denying any health-related reasons or political opportunities behind this decision.

Saying that it is a personal decision and a family decision, the WTO chief added that he is convinced that this decision serves the best interests of the organization.

"As members start to shape the WTO's agenda for the new post-COVID realities, they should do so with a new Director-General," Azevedo said.

He stressed that the multilateral trading system has been at the center of his career since he was first posted in WTO in 1997, and pointed out the many challenges facing the work of the Organization, including its reform.

"We know that the WTO cannot stand frozen while the world around it changes profoundly. Ensuring that the WTO continues to be able to respond to members' needs and priorities is an imperative, not an option," the WTO head said.

"The 'new normal' that emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic will have to be reflected in our work here," he added.

According to the procedures for the WTO chief selection process adopted by members in 2002, in the event of a vacancy, "the Chair of the General Council shall initiate, as soon as possible, a process for appointment of a new Director-General."

Azevedo said that he will continue to be in close contact with the relevant parties and urged the WTO members to make efforts to fasten the process of selecting the next Director-General.

"This Organization must start 2021 with a focus on the real challenges: ensuring that the multilateral trading system responds to new economic realities, above all the post-COVID recovery. It cannot afford to be distracted by a protracted search for a new DG," he said.

Azevedo is the sixth Director-General of the WTO. He became Director-General on Sept. 1 of 2013, serving a four-year term and then reelected for a second term. Enditem
Burma Wild Elephant Poached in Myanmar's Largest National Park

The body of a poached wild elephant found beside a river in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park in Kani Township, Sagaing Region on May 13. / U Tun Tun Win / Facebook

Local authorities found a wild elephant poached and disemboweled with its tusks cut off in Alaungdaw Kathapa National Park in Sagaing Region, Myanmars largest and oldest wildlife sanctuary.

The park covers over 160,500 hectares of intact tropical forests and wildlife habitats. It is a proposed UNESCO World Heritage Site for both its natural and cultural value, as it is the only national park in Myanmar with a Buddhist religious heritage site within the park. Its also one of Myanmars most popular ecotourism sites.

U Tun Tun Win, a lawmaker from Kani Township, which is part of the sanctuary, said a villager found the body of the elephant in the jungle on Wednesday and called him.

The lawmaker said he then called the Forest Department in the town and made the trip to the jungle along with other authorities to look into the death of the elephant.

When we arrived there, we found that it was a wild elephant from the national park, he said, adding that the elephant was shot four times, including in the head, and had been dead for nearly two weeks.

The authorities from the Forest Department estimated that the elephant was 20 years old, 3.4 m long and 3 m tall.

Authorities found the elephant beside a river and said that a poacher likely shot and killed the elephant as it came to drink water.

They cut the tusks and took them away. They even cut the toenails from all four legs. They disemboweled the elephant too, U Tun Tun Win said.

Authorities from Alaungdaw Kathapa have opened a case over the poaching and are actively searching for the hunter, according to Police Major Ko Ko Aung in Kani Town. Authorities opened the case under Section 41 (a) of the 2018 Conservation of Biodiversity and Protected Areas Law and the violator faces up to three years in prison.

Regarding the investigation, Police Maj. U Ko Ko Aung said, Our police were investigating villages in the areas near where the elephant was killed.

This is the first time an elephant has been poached in the area in two decades, according to U Tun Tun Win. He said it is the first time he has seen a poached elephant.

Cases of wild elephant poaching occur most often in Ayeyarwady Region, where the regional Forest Department reported that poachers killed a total of 115 elephants over the four years from 2014 to 2017.

In 2018, poachers killed eight elephants in Ayeyarwady Region, a 50 percent decline from 16 in 2017, primarily thanks to collaborative efforts between local authorities, police, civilians and civil society organizations engaged in the conservation of elephants.

In the past, elephants were mainly poached for their tusks but over the past few years they have increasingly been poached for their hides, which are believed to have medicinal properties. Demand for elephant hides has increased and, as with the tusks, the hides are mostly smuggled to China.

Myanmars elephant population is now estimated to be between 1,600 and 2,000, a drastic decline from the estimated population of 10,000 in the 1940s, according to the Forest Department. Poaching is the primary driver of this continuing decline.

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Indian security forces have launched fresh operations to neutralize the next wave of Top 10 most wanted terrorist currently active in Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir. According to top sources in the security establishment, these terrorists are linked to Pakistan-based terror outfits Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) and Hizbul Mujahideen (HM). The immediate aim of security forces is to disrupt all the active terrorist networks and launch retaliatory strikes to neutralize them.

These top 10 terrorists were trained in terror camps operated with the help of Pakistan's intelligence unit ISI. They were well-armed before infiltrating into Indian territory to recruit Kashmiri youth and carry out terror strikes.



"Pakistan is recruiting gullible youngsters from Kashmir and are training them for carrying out jihad against India," said a top anti-terror unit chief.





The security forces move to identify top terrorists came after Riyaz Naikoo, one of Kashmir's most wanted terrorists and the commander of terror group Hizbul Mujahideen, was killed during an encounter in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama during an anti-terrorist operation conducted by the Army and Jammu and Kashmir Police in the Beighpura area.



Naikoo, 32, had a bounty of Rs 12 lakh on his head and was a key target for India once he took charge of the Hizbul Mujahideen in Kashmir.



The security forces are offering rewards for information leading to the apprehension of the next line of 10 most wanted active terrorists after a list was prepared as early as this week. This is a part of a counter terror strategy adopted after two senior army officers -- a colonel and a major- were among five security personnel killed in action during an encounter in Handwara in Kashmir's Kupwara district. Colonel Ashutosh Sharma along with Major Anuj Sood, Naik Rajesh Kumar, Lance Naik Dinesh, and police Sub-Inspector Sageer Ahmad Pathan was killed in the encounter.



According to security forces, Hizbul Mujahideen newly appointed head Saifullah Mir alias Ghazi Haider alias Doctor Sahab is on the top of the wanted list. He had joined Hizbul Mujahideen in October, 2014 and hails from Malangpora in Pulwama. He was radicalised by Naikoo and given the name Ghazi Haider.



The second in the list is Mohammad Ashraf Khan alias Ashraf Maulvi alias Mansoor-ul-Islam. He joined Hizbul Mujahideen on September 9, 2016 and has since been active in the valley. Third in the list is Junaid Sehrai and he also belong to Hizbul Mujahideen. Then comes Mohammad Abbas Sheikh infamous as Turabi Maulvi and is active since March 3, 2015. He is also member of terror outfit Hizbul Mujahideen.



Fifth in the list is Zahid Zargar and he part of JeM. He has been active since late 2014 and has gone underground for last few months. The sixth in the list is Shakur, who is member of LeT and is active since 2015.



Seventh in the list is Faisal and he is infamous as Faisal Bhai. He is member of JeM and is active since 2015.



At eight is Hizbul member Sheraz al Lone. He is infamous as Maulvi Shaab and he joined the terror outfit on September 30, 2016. Saleem Paray of JeM figures at ninth place and Owais Mallick of LeT comes last on the wanted list.



These terrorists belong to top category and are active in north and south Kashmir.



Some of the wanted terrorists names came up before the security forces following a spate of rivalry between terror recruits of The Resistance Front' (TRF), a newly-created terror organisation in Kashmir, and the Hizbul Mujahideen.



The security establishment have decided to increase bounty of these terrorists' manifold as part of counter-terrorism strategy in a bid to neutralize them as soon as possible.



"Hunt for these terrorists are on. The quality of intelligence about terrorists in several districts has improved and we are determined to act against terror before it raises its head in the region," said the anti-terror unit chief.
ST. JOHNS, N.L.Newfoundland and Labradors education minister is confirming that schools in the province will remain closed until September.

Brian Warr says in-school instruction has been cancelled for the school year and the province is considering various scenarios for the fall, depending on the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic at the time.

Warr says parents and students in the provinces English and French school districts are encouraged to continue their studies with teachers through online tools.

The department says out of 4,000 students identified as needing laptops or tablets in the English School District, 2,500 have received devices, and more will be provided.

Newfoundland and Labradors decision follows Nova Scotias announcement last week that at-home learning will end on June 5 without students returning to class.

The New Brunswick government has purchased 1,000 tablets, 500 laptops and 300 mobile Wi-Fi hubs to ensure the student body is fully connected in case online leaning continues in September.
Outstanding academic and research work earns three doctoral students Sarachek awards

Friday, May 15, 2020

MANHATTAN  Three Kansas State University doctoral candidates have received Sarachek awards for their academic and research achievements.

Konner Winkley, doctoral candidate in biology, Topeka, was awarded the $17,000 Alvin and RosaLee Sarachek Predoctoral Honors Fellowship in Molecular Biology. Awarded the $1,000 Sarachek Scientific Travel Awards were Anil Pant, doctoral candidate in biology, Nepal, and Paula Silva Villella, doctoral candidate in genetics, Uruguay.



Alvin and RosaLee Sarachek, Wichita, established the fellowship and travel awards to recognize resident graduate students enrolled in a doctoral program at Kansas State University who have demonstrated exceptional research and scholastic accomplishments. An interdisciplinary faculty selection committee determines the fellowship and award recipients. The awards program is offered through the university's Graduate School.



Winkley's research works toward a quantitative and comprehensive understanding of organ formation. He uses an invertebrate organism that is a close relative of the vertebrates to understand how the cells that make up an organ become the right kind of cell by expressing the right set of genes. He also studies how those cells then build an organ of the correct shape. Winkley has identified a new mechanism to control organ shape that is based on asymmetries in the way that cells divide. Michael Veeman, associate professor in biology, is Winkley's major professor.



Upon earning his doctorate, Winkley will begin a postdoctoral research position at the Center for Pediatric Genomic Medicine at the Children's Mercy Research Institute in Kansas City. He will use quantitative genomic analyses to understand rare pediatric diseases. The Sarachek Fellowship will support Winkley's transition from graduate school to his postdoctoral research position.



One goal of Pant's research is to study the changes in levels of different metabolites of a host cell after vaccinia virus infection and determine if the virus depends on specific nutrients for efficient replication. A second goal of his research is to identify the host factors and viral proteins that are important for the alteration of host cell metabolism upon vaccinia virus infection. Pant's research contributes to the identification of virus-host interactions that could be targeted to develop effective anti-poxviral therapies. Pant will use his travel award to attend the XXII International Poxvirus, Asfarvirus, and Iridovirus Conference in Philadelphia. The conference was originally scheduled in June but is being rescheduled. Zhilong Yang, assistant professor of biology, is Pant's major professor.



Silva's research is focused on wheat breeding for disease resistance. Specifically, she is interested in identifying genomic regions responsible for resistance to barley yellow dwarf virus, wheat curl mite and wheat blast fungus. Through extensive genome sequencing and phenotyping of cultivated wheat and their undomesticated wild ancestors, she aims to identify novel genes and genetic regions that can be used to reduce the vulnerability of wheat to these diseases and pests. Silva will use her award to attend the Borlaug Global Rust Initiative Technical Workshop in Norwich, United Kingdom, where she will receive the 2020 Jeanie Borlaug Laube Women in Triticum Early Career Award. The meeting was originally scheduled for June but is being rescheduled. Jesse Poland, associate professor in plant pathology, is Silva's major professor.



Alvin Sarachek received his doctorate in genetics from Kansas State University in 1957. He and his wife, RosaLee Sarachek, created the fellowship and travel awards because he valued the university's tradition of offering a broad array of quality programs in the life sciences, many with outstanding national reputations. The Saracheks wanted to contribute to the tradition of excellence by recognizing students who have demonstrated exceptional research accomplishments involving molecular approaches to biological problems.



More information on the Sarachek awards is available on the Graduate School website.






The first four of 36 Rafale jets are expected to land in India by last week of July as the coronavirus pandemic delayed their scheduled delivery by around 11 weeks, official sources said on Friday.

The first batch of the Rafale jets was scheduled to arrive in India by the first week of May.

India had signed an inter-governmental agreement with France in September 2016 for procurement of 36 Rafale fighter jets at a cost of around ?58,000 crore.

The aircraft is capable of carrying a range of potent weapons. European missile maker MBDA's Meteor beyond visual range air-to-air missile and Scalp cruise missile will be the mainstay of the weapons package of the Rafale jets.

Meteor is the next generation of BVR air-to-air missile designed to revolutionise air-to-air combat. The weapon has been developed by MBDA to combat common threats facing the United Kindom, Germany, Italy, France, Spain and Sweden.

Besides the missile systems, the Rafale jets will come with various India-specific modifications, including Israeli helmet-mounted displays, radar warning receivers, low-band jammers, 10-hour flight data recording, infra-red search and tracking systems among others.

The IAF has already completed preparations, including readying required infrastructure and training of pilots, to welcome the fighter aircraft.

The first squadron of the aircraft will be stationed at Ambala air force station, considered one of the most strategically located bases of the IAF. The Indo-Pak border is around 220 km from there.

The second squadron of Rafale will be stationed at Hasimara base in West Bengal.

The IAF spent around Rs 400 crore to develop required infrastructure like shelters, hangers and maintenance facilities at the two bases.

Out of 36 Rafale jets, 30 will be fighter jets and six will be trainers.

The trainer jets will be twin-seater and they will have almost all the features of the fighter jets.




Bishop David Oyedepo

Bishop David Oyedepo of the Living Faith Church, also known as Winners Chapel has asked Nigerians to reject bill to make COVID-19 vaccines compulsory in Nigeria.

The Nation had reported that the bill was co-sponsored by the Speaker, Femi Gbajabiamila, Reps Pascal Obi and Tanko Sununu.

Speaking at the Church communion live broadcast, Oyedepo said gang-up agents of the devil were trying to bring a flood of evil upon humanity.

He further stated that something evil was being schemed by some individuals and that people perpetrating it dont know why.

He said, You must take a vaccine! Why will you force me to take a vaccine? For what?

You dont take vaccines, you dont go outside the country! How? Where is it coming from?

Evil scheming of evil men, gang up of agents of the devil, trying to bring a flood of evil upon humanity. And now from the vaccine: autism; from the vaccine: higher mortality rate of deaths.

The cleric, however, maintained that anything that troubled Gods agenda will be troubled, adding that his outcry over the closure of churches was for the kingdom of God.

Its over!! Whatever troubles Gods agenda will be troubled. The most valuable asset to God is the human life.

If you see me screaming and crying: its for the Kingdom, absolutely so. You mean you keep Gods people, block their access to spiritual food for 4 weeks, 5 weeks, 6 weeks, 7 weeks and you are going to the market, buying and eating with 10 fingers. You kept students from school.

This is an imported virus, how has it become our own? Why must we now have it?

There is something going on here! Something evil is being schemed by some individuals and those who are perpetrating it dont even know, he further stated.
We are concerned because he is scheduled to travel in late August, and it is anyones guess what travel restrictions will be in place at that time. He will most likely be quarantined for a period of time and if we accompany him to the U.S. we may be as well. We are still working through the maze of documentation necessary for all of this to happen.
GLENSIDE, Pa., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Pennsylvania's only licensed and accredited acupuncture program, offered by the Won Institute of Graduate Studies of Glenside, Pennsylvania, will be the subject of a forthcoming segment of "Behind The Scenes with Host Laurence Fishburne".

The feature segment will premiere on national and regional Public Television affiliates starting on May 27th, with commercial segments airing on the FOX Business Network between May 28th and May 31st.

The feature segment, which highlights students and faculty working together in one of the nation's most respected acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine graduate programs, will provide viewers with a sense of acupuncture's role in complementing traditional western biomedical approaches to patient care, specifically highlighting pain management and recovery.

The Won Institute of Graduate Studies offers Pennsylvania's first and only fully licensed and accredited acupuncture program leading to the Master's in Acupuncture degree. The Institute also offers a wholly online Doctor of Acupuncture degree to licensed acupuncturists who hold a Master's in Acupuncture.

Founded in 2001, the Won Institute of Graduate Studies is a professional graduate school founded by members of the Korean Won Buddhist order. It is the only regionally accredited graduate school in Pennsylvania for Won Buddhist Studies, acupuncture, and Chinese herbal medicine.

"Behind The Scenes with Host Laurence Fishburne" is an award-winning program that highlights newsworthy stories and innovative concepts through groundbreaking short-form and long-form documentary presentation. The program, which is anchored by a veteran production team with decades of industry experience, communicates critical stories to a wide and diverse audience.

"Behind The Scenes" segments are hosted by Laurence Fishburne, one of Hollywood's most talented actors. Fishburne has received numerous awards, including several Emmys and NAACP awards. For information about the Won Institute of Graduate Studies contact (267) 259-6344.

Copyright  2020 Won Institute of Graduate Studies. All Rights Reserved.

SOURCE The Won Institute of Graduate Studies

Related Links

www.woninstitute.edu


TORONTO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Americas Gold and Silver Corporation ("Americas" or the "Company") (TSX: USA; NYSE American: USAS), a growing North American precious metals producer, today reported consolidated financial and operational results for the first quarter of 2020.

This earnings release should be read in conjunction with the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis, Financial Statements and Notes to Financial Statements for the corresponding period, which have been posted on the Americas Gold and Silver Corporation SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com, on its EDGAR profile at www.sec.gov, and are also available on the Company's website at www.americas-gold.com. All figures are in U.S. dollars unless otherwise noted.

Operational and First Quarter Financial Highlights

Relief Canyon continues to ramp-up following first gold pour in February and the Company is focused on achieving commercial production by late Q2-2020 or early Q3-2020.

Subsequent to Q1-2020, the Company closed a bought deal public offering for gross proceeds of approximately C$28.75 million which provides the Company with available capital to address working capital needs including bringing Relief Canyon into commercial production, particularly in the COVID-19 environment.

which provides the Company with available capital to address working capital needs including bringing Relief Canyon into commercial production, particularly in the COVID-19 environment. As a result of Relief Canyon being in pre-commercial production, the Cosala Operations producing for less than a month during the quarter, and the exclusion of operating metrics from the Galena Complex during the Galena recapitalization plan ("Recapitalization Plan"), Q1-2020 revenue was $7.3 million resulting in a net loss of $4.1 million or ($0.03) per share.

resulting in a net loss of or per share. Cosala production for the first 26 days of Q1-2020 yielded 420 gold equivalent ounces 1 or 0.3 million silver equivalent ounces 2 at cost of sales of $7.19 /oz equivalent silver, by-product cash cost 3 of negative ( $11.32 /oz) silver, and all-in sustaining cost 3 of negative ( $0.83 /oz) silver.

or 0.3 million silver equivalent ounces at cost of sales of /oz equivalent silver, by-product cash cost of negative ( /oz) silver, and all-in sustaining cost of negative ( /oz) silver. The Galena Recapitalization Plan is proceeding better than expected with the Company seeing both increased production and encouraging exploration results.

Outlook for 2021 continues to be 90,000 to 110,000 gold equivalent ounces at expected all-in sustaining costs 4 of $900 to $1,100 per gold equivalent ounce.

of to per gold equivalent ounce. At March 31, 2020 , the Company had a cash balance of approximately $16.4 million .

, the Company had a cash balance of approximately . The Company has chosen not to host a conference call to discuss the Q1-2020 results given the limited production and the extensive operations update released on May 4, 2020 . The Company will resume the quarterly conference calls following its Q2-2020 results.

"The Company is in a great position to benefit from the strong gold price environment moving forward as we addressed common start-up challenges at Relief Canyon and it continues to ramp-up," said Americas President & CEO Darren Blasutti. "All operating aspects at Relief Canyon are trending positively, the Cosala Operations should be able to resume production early in the second half of 2020 as we have had several encouraging developments in Mexico and the Galena Recapitalization Plan is proceeding better than expected. The recently completed financing provides the Company with sufficient working capital to bring Relief Canyon to commercial production."

Relief Canyon

The Company issued a press release on May 4, 2020 providing details of the Relief Canyon ramp-up. The Company continues to target commercial production by late Q2-2020 or early Q3-2020 and will be providing more regular updates regarding the operation between now and then.

Since the start of pre-production, approximately 5.2 million tonnes of material have been mined, including 4.2 million tonnes of waste and 1.0 million tonnes of ore. Waste movement is ahead of budget and the operation currently has an ore stockpile of approximately 0.2 million tonnes ahead of the crusher waiting to be placed on the leach pad.

Approximately 0.8 million tonnes of ore have been stacked on the leach pad. Solution flow rates from the pad have continued to increase since the update on May 4, 2020 as the surface area available for leach irrigation has increased.

Cosala Operations

The Cosala Operations operated for the first 26 days of the quarter as the operation was negatively impacted by the previously announced illegal blockade since the end of January 2020. As a result, operating results year-over-year were negatively impacted and not generally comparable.

Cosala Operations Production and Cost Detail

Q1 2020 Q1 2019 Total ore processed (tonnes milled) 43,253 152,605 Silver grade (grams per tonne) 48 57 Zinc grade (percent) 4.26 4.16 Lead grade (percent) 1.70 1.82 Silver Recovery (%) 58.7 61.7 Zinc Recovery (%) 79.3 80.5 Lead Recovery (%) 74.3 75.6 Silver produced (ounces) 39,117 173,169 Zinc produced (pounds) 3,221,744 11,263,623 Lead produced (pounds) 1,203,720 4,626,233 Gold equivalent produced (ounces) 420 2,085 Silver sold (ounces) 34,693 172,995 Zinc sold (pounds) 3,083,663 10,864,404 Lead sold (pounds) 988,828 4,682,695 Cost of sales ($ per equivalent silver ounce) $7.19 $4.34 Silver cash cost ($ per silver ounce) $(11.32) $(30.48) All-in sustaining cost ($ per silver ounce) $(0.83) $(25.85)

On March 31, 2020, the Government of Mexico issued a national COVID-19 related decree for the temporary suspension of all non-essential businesses in the country, including all mining operations. This week the Government of Mexico issued a number of statements that are expected to allow for the re-opening of mining operations starting in June 2020. The Company believes this will provide a pathway for the Cosala Operations to resume production early in the second half of 2020, including a legal and legitimate labour representative for its workers, allowing for a resolution to the current illegal blockade. The Company's priority continues to be the safety of its workers and the community of Cosala that have been negatively impacted  first by the illegal blockade and now by COVID-19.

Galena Complex

In addition to providing an update regarding the ramp-up of Relief Canyon, the Company also provided an extensive update regarding the Galena Recapitalization Plan in the May 4, 2020 update, including information regarding the rehabilitation development , equipment purchases, and early drill results from the 39,000-meter drill program.

The Company has suspended disclosure of certain operating metrics such as cash costs, and all-in sustaining costs for the Galena Complex until the Recapitalization Plan is substantially completed; the Galena Complex results are not included in the Consolidated Results.

Galena Production

Q1 2020 Q1 2019 Total ore processed (tonnes milled) 31,910 29,424 Silver grade (grams per tonne) 235 242 Lead grade (percent) 6.60 5.98 Silver Recovery (%) 95.6 96.2 Lead Recovery (%) 92.1 92.5 Silver produced (ounces) 230,275 220,655 Lead produced (pounds) 4,280,527 3,585,196 Gold equivalent produced (ounces) 2,409 2,663 Silver sold (ounces) 237,159 207,168 Lead sold (pounds) 4,378,663 3,282,576

Consolidated Financial and Consolidated Production5 Results

Consolidated operating results from Q1-2020 are generally not comparable to Q1-2019 due to the illegal blockade temporarily halting mining and processing at the Cosala Operations, and the exclusion of operating results from the Galena Complex as a result of the Recapitalization Plan. Consolidated operating results include only 26 days of production from the Cosala Operations.

Gross revenue decreased by $10.5 million during Q1-2020 compared to Q1-2019 primarily due to the illegal blockade. This decrease was offset by a $0.9 million increase in silver and lead revenue at the Galena Complex from increased production in the early stages of the Recapitalization Plan.

Consolidated cost of sales was $7.19/oz equivalent silver representing an increase year-over-year, while by-product cash cost was negative ($11.32/oz) silver, and all-in sustaining cost was negative ($0.83/oz) silver, representing increases year-over-year, respectively.

Further information concerning the consolidated and individual mine operations is included in the Company's first quarter Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements for the three months ended March 31, 2020 and Management's Discussion and Analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

About Americas Gold and Silver Corporation

Americas Gold and Silver Corporation is a high-growth precious metals mining company with multiple assets in North America. The Company's newest asset, Relief Canyon in Nevada, USA, has poured first gold and is expected to ramp up to full production over the course of 2020. The Company also owns and operates the Cosala Operations in Sinaloa, Mexico and manages the 60%-owned Galena Complex in Idaho, USA. The Company also holds an option on the San Felipe development project in Sonora, Mexico. For further information, please see SEDAR or www.americas-gold.com.

Qualified Persons

Darren Dell, P.Eng., Chief Operating Officer and Niel de Bruin, Director of Geology, who are each employees of the Company and a "qualified person" under National Instrument 43-101, have approved the applicable contents of this news release.

For more information:

Stefan Axell Darren Blasutti VP, Corporate Development & Communications President and CEO Americas Gold and Silver Corporation Americas Gold and Silver Corporation 416-874-1708 4168489503

Cautionary Statement on Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. Forward-looking information includes, but is not limited to, Americas Gold and Silver's expectations, intentions, plans, assumptions and beliefs with respect to, among other things, estimated production rates and results for gold, silver and other precious metals, as well as the related costs, expenses and capital expenditures, the Company's construction, production, development plans and performance expectations at the Relief Canyon Mine, , its ability to finance, develop and operate Relief Canyon, including the anticipated timing of commercial production at Relief Canyon, the resolution and removal of the illegal blockade at the Company's Cosala Operations and the resumption of mining and processing operations, the resolution, easing or removal of the temporary restrictions on all non-essential businesses in Mexico resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the Company's Cosala Operations, and the expected use of the net proceeds from the Company's bought deal equity financing. Often, but not always, forward-looking information can be identified by forward-looking words such as "anticipate", "believe", "expect", "goal", "plan", "intend", "potential', "estimate", "may", "assume" and "will" or similar words suggesting future outcomes, or other expectations, beliefs, plans, objectives, assumptions, intentions, or statements about future events or performance. Forward-looking information is based on the opinions and estimates of Americas Gold and Silver as of the date such information is provided and is subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors that may cause the actual results, level of activity, performance, or achievements of Americas Gold and Silver to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking information. With respect to the business of Americas Gold and Silver, these risks and uncertainties include risks relating to widespread epidemics or pandemic outbreak including the COVID-19 pandemic; the impact of COVID-19 on our workforce, suppliers and other essential resources and what effect those impacts, if they occur, would have on our business, including our ability to access goods and supplies, the ability to transport our products and impacts on employee productivity, the risks in connection with the operations, cash flow and results of the Company relating to the unknown duration and impact of the COVID-19 pandemic; interpretations or reinterpretations of geologic information; unfavorable exploration results; inability to obtain permits required for future exploration, development or production; general economic conditions and conditions affecting the industries in which the Company operates; the uncertainty of regulatory requirements and approvals; fluctuating mineral and commodity prices; the ability to obtain necessary future financing on acceptable terms or at all; the ability to develop, complete construction, bring to production and operate the Relief Canyon Project; and risks associated with the mining industry such as economic factors (including future commodity prices, currency fluctuations and energy prices), ground conditions and other factors limiting mine access, failure of plant, equipment, processes and transportation services to operate as anticipated, environmental risks, government regulation, actual results of current exploration and production activities, possible variations in ore grade or recovery rates, permitting timelines, capital and construction expenditures, reclamation activities, labor relations or disruptions, social and political developments and other risks of the mining industry. The potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on our business and operations are unknown at this time, including the Company's ability to manage challenges and restrictions arising from COVID-19 in the communities in which the Company operates and our ability to continue to safely operate and to safely return our business to normal operations. The impact of COVID-19 on the Company is dependent on a number of factors outside of its control and knowledge, including the effectiveness of the measures taken by public health and governmental authorities to combat the spread of the disease, global economic uncertainties and outlook due to the disease, and the evolving restrictions relating to mining activities and to travel in certain jurisdictions in which it operate. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated, or intended. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such information. Additional information regarding the factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from this forwardlooking information is available in Americas filings with the Canadian Securities Administrators on SEDAR and with the SEC. Americas does not undertake any obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking information whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors which affect this information, except as required by law. Americas does not give any assurance (1) that Americas will achieve its expectations, or (2) concerning the result or timing thereof. All subsequent written and oral forwardlooking information concerning Americas are expressly qualified in their entirety by the cautionary statements above.

1 Gold equivalent production throughout this press release was calculated based on the average gold spot metal prices and average silver realized metal prices during each respective period.

2 Silver equivalent production throughout this press release was calculated based on all metals production at average gold spot prices, and average silver, zinc, and lead realized prices during each respective period.

3 Cash cost per ounce and all-in sustaining cost per ounce are non-IFRS performance measures with no standardized definition. For further information and detailed reconciliations, please refer to the Company's 2019 year-end and quarterly MD&A.

4 Net of by-product zinc and lead credits assuming $1.05/lbs zinc and $0.90/lbs lead

5 Throughout this press release, Q1-2020 consolidated production results exclude Q1-2020 from the Galena Complex due to the Recapitalization Plan.

SOURCE Americas Gold and Silver Corporation

Related Links

http://www.americas-gold.com


The employees of the farmworkers union in Woodburn got a jolt during their weekly meeting in early April, conducted as usual over Zoom.

An organizer shared the grim news that Hector, a farm laborer known for his talkative presence on their Radio Poder station, was hospitalized, seriously ill with COVID-19. He drove a van for other workers.

His son was sick too.

Everybody was just shocked, said Reyna Lopez, PCUN executive director. This is a man who seemed so strong ... It was really hard to hear that someone who has been so close to our movement has been so affected.

By the time of that April 1 meeting, nearly every community organization in Woodburn was aware that the virus was spreading at a rapid pace among the areas most vulnerable residents. They were mostly Latinos, often undocumented and not speaking English, working in nurseries, food processing plants and grocery stores.

Days passed before the Marion County Health Department approached the groups to ask their help to slow the rapidly escalating number of infected individuals.

By then, Marion County was evolving as the place in Oregon with the worst concentration of COVID-19 victims and remains so today. Public officials say they still cant explain why matters took such a harsh turn for one of Oregons most populous counties.

But an investigation by Salem Reporter found that state and Marion County health officials were slow to get timely, accurate information about COVID-19 to agricultural workers and non-English speaking residents in the north county.

Constrained by limited testing capacity, limited staffing and sometimes days-long delays in getting results back, health officials reacted as new cases were reported, but did little to proactively ensure some of the countys most vulnerable residents were armed with information to protect themselves and their families.

That left community groups to forge their own hastily-made plans to address a growing epidemic.

The delays in addressing the unfolding health crisis likely contributed to county residents becoming infected at a rate more than double that of the state.

As of Wednesday, 22 of every 10,000 Marion County residents are known to have the virus - nearly double the toll in Multnomah County, which has tested a far higher share of residents.

And Marion Countys infection rate is nearly three times the state average of eight in every 10,000 residents.

CORONAVIRUS IN OREGON: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

Colm Willis, chair of the Marion County Board of Commissioners, noted that only the sickest have been tested and that the countys residents have higher rates of chronic illnesses than other Oregonians. He said that the virus-related hospitalizations among county residents has declined.

Relative to other parts of the country, even Marion County has a relatively manageable infection rate, he said in an interview last week.

But case numbers are still climbing rapidly. Marion County now has 746 residents known to have COVID-19, with 153 of those added to the county roster in the past week. The county recorded the single largest one-day tally in the state with 43 cases posted last Saturday.

In the ZIP codes including Woodburn and Gervais, the infection rate is even worse. A fourth of county residents confirmed to have the virus live in the Woodburn ZIP code, an area with about 8% of the countys population.

Community leaders said in interviews in recent days that theyre still fighting to get needed testing and aid to those most impacted. They also are battling stigma blaming those Latinos who are sick for not following health guidelines.

Levi Herrera Lopez, executive director of Mano a Mano, said hes seen people suggest on social media that Latinos in Woodburn should be locked up to contain the virus.

People are taking this to mean its the Latino communitys fault that numbers are high, he said.

The truth of what happened in Marion County emerged from dozens of interviews with state and county health workers, public health researchers, Marion County doctors and Latino and Russian community leaders, as well as a review of public state and county data.

Read the rest of the story at Salem Reporter, one of more than a dozen news organizations throughout the state sharing their coverage of the novel coronavirus outbreak to help inform Oregonians about this evolving heath issue.
(Newser)  Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will ask the Michigan Legislature to provide at least $94.4 million to Detroit's public schools to settle a lawsuit that describes the city's schools as "slum-like" and incapable of delivering access to literacy. The settlement agreement was signed Thursday, the AP reports, and comes weeks after a federal appeals court issued a groundbreaking decision recognizing a constitutional right to education and literacy. Under the settlement, Whitmer must propose legislation to fund literacy-related programs and other initiatives for the Detroit Public Schools Community District. The state must also provide $280,000 to be shared by seven students named as plaintiffs in the lawsuit, to be used for a high-quality literacy program or other ways to further their education. The state also agreed to provide about $2.7 million to the district to fund literacy projects.

story continues below

Whitmer will ask Michigan's Department of Education to advise school districts statewide on their strategies to improve literacy, with special attention to reducing class, racial, and ethnic disparities. "Students in Detroit faced obstacles to their education that inhibited their ability to readobstacles they never should have faced," Whitmer said in a statement. In 2017, only 7% of Detroit public school eighth graders performed at or above the proficient level in reading, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The percentage of Detroit students who performed at or above the NAEP proficient level in 2019 was 6%. State Board of Education member Tiffany Tilley said it was a historic settlement. "This is going to affect education in every ZIP code across America," said Tilley, a graduate of Detroits Henry Ford High School.

(Read more literacy stories.)
Washington  A Republican senator with access to some of the nations top secrets became further entangled in a deepening FBI investigation as agents examining a well-timed sale of stocks during the coronavirus outbreak showed up at his home with a warrant to search his cellphone.

Hours later, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina stepped aside Thursday as chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, calling it the best thing to do." Burr has denied wrongdoing.

This is a distraction to the hard work of the committee and the members, and I think that the security of the country is too important to have a distraction, Burr said. He said he would serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in 2023. He is not running for reelection.

The search warrant marked a dramatic escalation in the Justice Departments investigation into whether Burr exploited advance information when he unloaded as much as $1.7 million in stocks in the days before the coronavirus caused markets to plummet. Such warrants require investigators to establish to a judge that probable cause exists to believe a crime has occurred.

The warrant was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, including a senior department official. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.

Burr faces no public accusations by the government that he exploited inside information received during briefings. But the search warrant immediately affected the standing inside Congress of the influential Republican, who has earned bipartisan support for leading a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign  work that sometimes rankled President Donald Trump and his supporters.

News of the warrant also underscored the public scrutiny surrounding the stock market activities of multiple senators and their families around the same time.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she was asked some basic questions" by law enforcement about sales her husband made and had voluntarily answered questions.

Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a new lawmaker from Georgia, and her husband dumped substantial portions of their portfolio and purchased new stocks around the time Congress was receiving briefings on the seriousness of the pandemic. Loeffler has said she had no involvement in the trades and said they were managed by third-party advisers.

A spokesperson said Loeffler has forwarded documents to the Justice Department, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law.

In Burr's case, the search warrant was served on a lawyer for him, and FBI agents went to the senator's home in the Washington area to retrieve the cellphone, the Justice Department official said. The decision to obtain the warrant was approved at the highest levels of the department, the official said.

Alice Fisher, a lawyer for Burr, noted that Burr called for an ethics inquiry into the stock sales once they were disclosed. She said the senator has been actively cooperating with the governments inquiry, as he said he would."

From the outset, Senator Burr has been focused on an appropriate and thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate, Fisher said in a statement.

Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House before traveling to Pennsylvania on Thursday, said he was unaware that Burr was leaving his intelligence post.

I know nothing about it  never discussed it with anybody, Trump said. Thats too bad.

Senate records show Burr and his wife sold between roughly $600,000 and $1.7 million in more than 30 transactions in late January and mid-February, just before the market began to dive and government health officials began to sound alarms about the virus. Several of the stocks were in companies that own hotels.

Burr has acknowledged selling the stocks because of the coronavirus but said he relied solely on public news reports, specifically CNBCs daily health and science reporting out of Asia, to make the financial decisions.

Senators did receive a closed-door briefing on the virus on Jan. 24, which was public knowledge. A separate briefing was held Feb. 12 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Burr is a member. Its unclear if he attended either session.

He was first elected to the Senate in 2004 and chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee as it conducted its own investigation into Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election. The committee last month issued a report supporting the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered on Trumps behalf.

As chairman, Burr has access to the most sensitive classified information that is provided to Congress. Along with Republican and Democratic leadership and the top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, Burr is part of the group of eight lawmakers in Congress who receive the highest level classified briefings.

His decision to leave the chairman position surprised fellow committee members.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he respected Burrs decision, adding that he's entitled to a presumption of innocence just like anybody else.

"The best I can tell, he is trying to do the right thing by the Senate, and I appreciate it, Cornyn said.

Its unclear who will take Burrs place. The next several Republican members in seniority are already chairmen of other committees, though they could choose to switch.

Next in seniority is Idaho Sen. James Risch, who told reporters on Thursday that he didnt know whether he would keep his current perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or move to the intelligence panel.

Following him is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who heads the Senate Small Business Committee. He said that he wasnt aware that Burr was stepping aside and that the decision on who takes over was up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Aging Committee, is third in line.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the search warrant.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  The Manila Electric Company on Friday addressed the "bill shock" experienced by its customers following online complaints from residents over the high electricity bill they received this month.

Meralco said electricity bills sent to consumers were fairly calculated, with meter reading activities remaining accurate and transparent.

It said the electricity bill received in May may be significantly steeper compared to those from the past months. The electric service provider said the March and April bills were estimated based on the average daily consumption from December 2019, January 2020, and February 2020  when customers typically consumed less electricity as the weather was significantly cooler.

Meralco spokesperson Joe Zaldarriaga pointed out that the fact that everyone is home due to the enhanced community quarantine enforced in parts of the country may have led to increased consumption. He added that the scorching heat has also led to higher use of cooling devices, such as fans and airconditioners.

He said the bill received in May is based on the result of the actual kilowatt per hour consumption from the current meter reading, with adjustments already reflected, coming from the estimated consumption done during the enhanced community quarantine period.

"The May bill is a result of the actual kWh Consumption from the current meter reading, with adjustments already reflected from the previous estimated consumption. This total, which is already based on the true and actual readings, is what customers actually see in the May bill. That is why you may notice a rise in the total amount due," he said in a press release.

Meralco reiterated that it allows its customers affected by the COVID-19 crisis to settle bills via four monthly payments.

"Hindi naman kami walang puso na we will disconnect at a time na alam naman natin na kailangan ng customers namin ang service ng kuryente," Zaldarriaga told CNN Philippines' Newsroom Ngayon.

[Translation: We are not heartless that we would disconnect at a time when we know our customers need electricity.]

He also asked for patience from the public as they face issues with online payment services due to some "constraints," with enhanced community quarantine still in place.

Energy consumer group Power for People Coalition has called for a probe on Meralco's billing practice during the ECQ.

As more complaints continue to crop up online, Meralco is set to file charges against a netizen who claimed a friend received an electricity bill amounting to 1.773 million for a single household. The post on social media of a certain Joven Salarda racked up almost 20,000 shares before it was taken down.

Meralco said, upon investigation, the bill posted online was for an account owned by SM Development Corporation  a corporate account that has 1,364 services assigned to it.

The company said it will file parallel complaints with NBIs Cybercrime Division and PNPs Anti-Cybercrime Unit for violation of the cybercrime law.

Zaldarriaga added that Meralco will also track down other perpetrators of fake news that target the company.

"I guess it's about time that Meralco really exerts its legal right to go after these people who propagate malicious insinuations against Meralco," said the spokesperson.
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Linkedin Budi Sutrisno (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:57 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd86307a 1 National COVID-19,e-commerce,viral,Mitra-Keluarga-Hospital,Tokopedia,Bukalapak,Shopee,letter,PCR-test,rapid-testing Free

Hospital letters declaring the holder COVID-19-free is being offered on a number of e-commerce platforms for people hoping to travel amid the mudik (exodus) ban.

The document includes the letterhead and stamp of hospital operator Mitra Keluarga, complete with a blurred signature of a general practitioner and a watermark of a blocked website address.

Screenshots making the rounds on social media showed the letter was being sold for between Rp 70,000 (US$4.70) and Rp 39 million per copy.

Three e-commerce giants, namely Tokopedia, Bukalapak and Shopee, confirmed that the letter had been available on their platform but reiterated that each copy had been taken down.

The offering went viral amid news of a packed Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, where passengers lined up to get their required travel documents checked by airport authorities, including negative COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, rapid test results or health documents from a hospital or clinic, to proceed to their flights.

The product sparked online discussions and jokes.

Yeay! We can buy it. Only with Rp 70,000, we can mudik [exodus]. Like we said previously, eventually they make money from #covidfreeletter #immunitypassport and so on, Twitter user @DokterPodcast tweeted on Thursday.

Yeyyy bisa beli loh.... cuman 70 rebu doank bisa mudik.... nah kan nah kan apa kita kmaren bilang, ujung2 nya di duitin #suratbebascovid #immunitypasport dll dll dll. @blogdokter pic.twitter.com/kpzq1g1Z2n  Podcast Dokter Pribadi (@DokterPodcast) May 14, 2020

Mudik without the hassle of rapid and swab tests. Cheap! Cheap! Lets order, @syafrinhd said in a retweet, adding #everythingcanmakemoney.

Mitra Keluarga denied having issued the letters.

We will take legal action against any parties found using the Mitra Keluarga brand, including our letterhead, without our permission, the hospital operator said in a statement on Thursday.

Tokopedia external communications senior lead Ekhel Chandra Wijaya said no letters had been purchased on the platform before it took down both the product and the merchant.

Although Tokopedia uses UGC [user-generated content], where each seller can upload their products independently, we never support such irresponsible practices, Chandra said in a statement received by The Jakarta Post on Friday.

He urged e-commerce users to report products that violate Tokopedias terms and conditions or applicable Indonesian laws through available features on the digital platform.

We also continue to take proactive actions to keep the activities on Tokopedia on track with prevailing regulations, he added.

Bukalapak and Shopee both said they had blocked the merchants offering the letter, emphasizing that they were taking strict measures against any products found violating the law.

We have a team tasked with monitoring the type of products offered to ensure that all sellers meet the rules and to act decisively against any violations, including counterfeit goods, Bukalapak corporate communications head Intan Wibisono told the Post.

We will not tolerate actions that exploit a pandemic and endanger public safety, Shopee Indonesia public relations lead Aditya Maulana Noverdi said separately.

A Facebook user in Bali was previously caught trying to sell a fake health letter required for mudik.

The medical certificate included the letterhead of the West Denpasar Health Agencys technical management unit (UPTD) and was offered at Rp 250,000 per copy.

The Jembrana Police arrested three suspects around the Gilimanuk Port on Wednesday evening.
Kumar, the worker stranded in New Delhi, said his patience was running low. We are trapped inside and suffocating, said the father of three. He said he had run out of excuses to give his 4-year-old daughter, who cries for milk the family cannot buy. He knows migrants have died trying to reach home, but one day soon, he said, he may have to take his chances.
A Lot of Sacrifices

Protections for Lowest-Paid

(TNS)  Gov. Gavin Newsom proposed cutting state worker pay by 10 percent Thursday, dramatically changing the economic outlook for a workforce that just a few months ago was looking forward to raises from a humming economy.The pay cuts, scheduled to begin with the July pay period, would save $2.8 billion in the coming fiscal year, according to Newsoms $203 billion budget proposal. His administration estimates the state faces a deficit of $54 billion over two fiscal years due to economic impacts of the coronavirus.None of us in state government will be immune from tightening our belts and helping to support the cause and helping those most in need, Newsom said.He said the pay reduction applies to him and his staff. The cut applies to all state workers, including those in health care and public safety, Finance Director Keely Bosler said.Pay raises many state workers were scheduled to receive in July also seem to be off the table, since the proposal calls for reducing pay by 10 percent as of June.The pay cut comes as the states unemployment rate continues to notch upward. At least 4.6 million people in California have filed unemployment claims since March 12, Newsom said. His administration estimates the unemployment rate could reach 24 percent or higher.The administration will bargain with all of the states unions over the pay cuts, but if agreements cant be reached, the administration will pursue the reductions through the budget process, according to a budget proposal.That likely would mean furloughs. A 10 percent pay cut translates roughly to two furlough days per month. The Legislature ultimately has authority over state workers pay.Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon, D-Lakewood, said that while everything needs to be on the table, hes concerned a 10 percent hit to state workers pay will exacerbate the suffering already caused by COVID-19.I want to make sure that we are not only respecting state workers, but collective bargaining, Rendon said. I am concerned about the 10 percent cut. You are looking at workers who are already suffering, so I am going to make sure we go through those details.Yvonne Walker, the president of SEIU Local 1000, the states largest union, said in a Wednesday night video that she would work to avoid furloughs.We can figure out the equivalent of what that 10 percent represents and try to negotiate something that, yeah there might be a little pain involved, but it wont be those two furlough days and how we think about it, Walker said in the video.Walker declined to elaborate Thursday, saying she didnt want to divulge the unions bargaining strategy.Abraham Pinedo, 40, a materials and store supervisor at Deuel Vocational Institution in Tracy, said the pay cut could affect his 10th-grade daughters college plans and the familys plan to buy a home in Lodi.Theres going to be a lot of sacrifices financially to deal with this, Pinedo said.He said the pay cuts follow a difficult time in which many state workers have been showing up for risky jobs. He said his wife, also a state worker, has a health care job at the prison.After being praised for being critical workers, for being essential workers, now we cant even get a full paycheck, he said.Newsoms proposal draws on the states rainy day fund and a collection of special reserves, along with cuts, to address the $54 billion deficit. He said 26 percent of the states solution comes from cuts, including the pay reduction.If the federal government sends states more aid, the reductions would be less, Newsom said. State workers pay is one of the items that would be restored with federal funding, according to the budget proposal.He said state departments have been instructed to reduce their operating budgets by 5 percent.We can do without as many cars, without as many cell phones, without as much in our travel budgets, (and without) conventions, he said.The budget proposal says workers who make less than $15 per hour will still get a planned raise to bring their pay to that amount.The proposal also says the state will pay the $260-per-month health insurance stipends included in contracts with SEIU Local 1000 and with the state attorneys union.Those commitments will cost the state $604 million per year, according to the budget proposal.The proposal to reduce pay marks a dramatic shift from just a few months ago, when more than 108,000 state workers were looking forward to raises this summer and other unions were starting to negotiate for new raises against the backdrop of a budget surplus.Union leaders said Newsoms approach is preferable to that taken by former Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who insisted on furloughs and showed little interest in negotiations.Its not the imposition of the furlough days but a conversation, said Bianca Petzold, president of the California Association of Professional Scientists.Nonetheless, Petzold said, This is definitely something thats going to hurt. Its not something thats taken lightly.Kari Everett, 57, an information technology specialist at CalPERS, worked through the furloughs of the Great Recession. She had to take three unpaid days off per month at the height of the cost-cutting.It was hard, Everett said. I didnt have to get a second job. I just had to cut my expenses and watch everything.She said she and her husband, who is also a state worker, had to stop eating out, going to movies and traveling. She said she knew other state workers who had to start going to food banks.I am thankful I have a job, and thankful I do get retirement, she said.
ELKO  The Elko Boys & Girls Club is announced it will reopen Monday with new sanitizing equipment, cleaning procedures and social distancing guidelines.

The club will be open from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Monday through Friday, serving 60 children under Phase 1 policies and procedures.

Priority will be given to first responders children and current members that have all guardians in the household working full-time. Additional groups, increased participants, and Wells reopening will be added in Phase 2 when mandated guidelines are loosened.

Several strategies have been adopted to maximize social distancing and safety, such as screenings, group isolation strategies, increased hygiene practices, increased cleaning and disinfectant procedures, and upgraded technology systems, said Rusty Bahr, club CEO.

Pre-screenings before children and staff are admitted into the Club will be conducted daily. Screenings include temperature checks and a COVID-19 symptom analysis.

Children or staff with temperatures of 100 degrees or above, or showing any symptoms, will not be allowed into the building. Temperature checks will also be conducted on every participant after lunch each day.

Screenings are very important to open safely, Bahr said.

Opening safely is our major priority and we believe that we have secured the necessary equipment and have implemented extreme safety protocol necessary for a safe reopening, he explained.

The club will also operate social distancing in every aspect of the club. Rooms and equipment have been redesigned for children to be an arms-length away from each other.

Groups have been separated into isolated areas around the Club and will only have 10 individuals.

At this time, parents will not be allowed into the building.

Bahr said hygiene is a major key to controlling the spread of infections at the club. The facility will be sanitized and cleaned all day, and at night. Staff counselors are required to wear a mask and gloves will be provided.

Children are required to wash their hands and face five times a day under supervision, and as they leave and return to their area. They will also receive hand sanitizer every hour.

Groups of children will be designated restrooms to use one at a time and given a disposable toilet seat cover as needed. Children must wash their hands before and after using the restroom. All restrooms in the building will be sanitized several times during the day.

The club purchased two pieces of equipment to enhance its safety measures. The first is automatic public address system software. It will ensure safety protocols are followed throughout the day with pre-programmed announcements to children about hygiene, screenings and cleaning.

The second is a SaniCart to sanitize the air, walls, ceilings equipment, flooring and every nook and cranny of an entire room in 3-10 minutes. Disinfectant is released into the environment as a fine, dry fog composed of droplets between 6-10 microns that has been scientifically approved to be 100 percent safe to humans.

The fog will get into areas that a conventional disinfecting system cannot, to ensure 100 percent effective and efficient sanitization approach, Bahr said.

This SaniCart system will allow us to completely sanitize every area of the club every day as well as sanitize high traffic areas and equipment several times a day, he explained. This state-of-the-art sanitizing machine was an expensive expenditure, but it will arm the club with the tools needed to combat this virus.

The club closed in March as part of the states emergency directives to slow the spread of the coronavirus, along with schools statewide.

Several of the other Boys & Girls Clubs in Nevada have recently opened or are reopening soon to meet the needs of their communities, said Bahr, who also serves on the Elko County Unified COVID-19 Recovery Team.

With Elko County entering the Phase 1 stage of reopening the economy, Bahr said the clubs reopening will assist parents who are returning to work.

The Boys & Girls Clubs of Elko was mandated to close during this COVID-19 pandemic, Bahr said. However, the club reopening is critical to allowing parents to go back to work and open back-up our economy. Not only are our services necessary for reopening our economy but our current members have been reaching out and are ready to get back here.

Elko County Public Health Officer Dr. Bryce Putnam has given the club full support to reopen, Bahr stated.

Although we are doing everything humanly possible to open safely, we understand that individuals in our community have been infected with COVID-19 and the threat of others obtaining this virus is real, Bahr said.

In the unfortunate event that the virus infiltrates our organization, we would act immediately to quarantine to stop the spread.

The Elko Boys & Girls Club is the first to reopen in the county, with Wells club to follow in the near future.

The club in Spring Creek will stay closed over the summer, but is projected to open in August for the 2020-2021 school year.

In Elko, the Boys & Girls Club will take other measures for safety and cleanliness above and beyond what has been implemented for reopening the facility, Bahr said.

We look forward to once again serving the children of our community, Bahr stated.

For more information and a detailed plan, visit www.bgcelko.org or call 775-738-2759 with questions or concerns.
Simon Bridges

National Party Leader

simonbridges.co.nz

New Zealanders have made a lot of sacrifices over the past couple of months and this has led to our countrys health response to COVID-19 being an effective one.

Weve succeeded in flattening the curve but now our attention must turn to avoiding flattening the economy. We need to safeguard our children and grandchildrens future and leave a country where they can build a life and a career.

Forecasts have painted a stark picture of the economic downturn we can expect and it is not a pretty picture. Westpac expects Government debt to rise to 50 per cent of GDP over the next four years. This would equate to nearly $100 billion in additional Government debt that will need to be repaid. ASB estimate an even sharper rise to 60 per cent of GDP, close to $120 billion more to pay off.

These figures work out at more than $50,000 in additional Government debt per household.

If were to lessen the economic impact the best thing we can do right now is save jobs. This means supporting small businesses to keep growing in a Post-COVID world. National has proposed a GST refund to businesses that have lost more than 50 per cent of revenue for two months as a way of helping this. This cash injection would help businesses that were potentially going to close stay open and keep their employees on the payroll. With 1000 people joining the dole queue a day under lockdown we need to be acting now to keep New Zealanders in employment.
Bali, the resort island popular with backpackers, was always seen as a fertile ground for the coronavirus as millions of foreign tourists flock to its beaches. But it is today being touted as a model by Indonesian authorities in tackling the pandemic.

The success in curbing the virus has come with the help of about 1,500 traditional village committees with considerable sway over the majority Hindu residents, according to Governor Wayan Koster. The island with a population of 4.2 million has reported just four virus-related deaths and 337 confirmed cases for a fatality rate of 1.2%, far below the national average of 6.4%.

A lot of people were previously very worried that Bali would be badly hit by Covid-19 as its the largest tourist destination in Indonesia, Koster said in a phone interview. But so far, the facts show a totally different picture.

Balis relative success in containing the virus may give it a head-start in luring visitors back when international travel resumes and revive its tourism-dependent economy. Its also in sharp contrast to the widely-criticized efforts at the national level, which have led to deaths swelling to more than 1,000 and officials now warning the disease may infect almost 100,000 before starting to ease.

While no deadline has been set for reopening the island to tourists, Koster says a strategy is ready but it will be rolled out after Bali completely recovers from the pandemic. The island along with Manado, and Batam are among places where the government is planning to ease restrictions, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Pandjaitan said Thursday.

Officials tapped the influential village committees and Hindu beliefs to ensure residents stayed at home and no outside visitors were permitted to avoid wider infections after a British tourist with Covid-19 was the first in Bali to succumb to the virus in early March. People were also asked to perform certain Hindu rituals for protection, which mandated them to obey local leaders, according to Governor Koster.

Religious Rituals

Few other places in Indonesia, an archipelago of of 18,000 islands, have a village structure similar to Bali where leaders hold as much sway over a population of its size. Then theres also a lack of testing, with President Joko Widodo calling for scaling up the nations diagnostic capacity, saying the daily testing of 4,000-5,000 specimens was far below our target.

The province didnt impose more punishing social distancing rules such as ban on mass gatherings and curbs on public transport unveiled by the central government and followed in places such as Jakarta and West Java. But it locked down three villages, following local community infections from returning migrant workers. Authorities are prepared to handle the return of thousands of migrant workers, including from cruise ships, in the coming weeks, Koster said.

The villages have a very strong influence on the community. Whatever the elders in the villages said, people will abide, said Ngurah Wijaya, adviser to the Bali Tourism Board. This has enabled the government to impose its policies down to the community level effectively.

Balis triumph on the virus front is not limited to suppressing new cases or limiting loss of lives. The recovery rate from Covid-19 in the island is more than 66%, compared with national average of 22%. Three labs in the island can now test almost 500 specimens a day, as opposed to sending samples to cities outside the province initially. That allows authorities to speed up contact tracing and isolation, Koster said.

But the revival of its tourism industry to the pre-pandemic period is far from assured. A decision on protocols to be followed in re-opening the business will be decided in consultation with elected local leaders and community and religious heads, Koster said. The island is home to hotels operated by industry leaders such as Marriott International Inc., Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.

Bali, famous for its beaches, scenic terraced rice paddy fields and temples, saw foreign tourist arrivals slump 22% to 1.04 million in the first quarter from a year ago, according to official data. The island received a record 6.2 million foreign tourists last year.

Balinese also realized that tourism is the source of their living, so we need to take care of ourselves in order to gain the trusts and confidence from the visitors, Wijaya said. Thats probably a key differentiation that Bali has compared with the other regions.

(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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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / EGF THERAMED HEALTH CORP. (CSE:TMED / OTCQB:EVAHF / FRANKFURT:AUHP) (the "Company") today announces the appointment of George Anstey, a cannabis industry specialist, to the Company's Board of Directors. Jeff Lipton has stepped down from the board to allow space for this appointment.

Mr. Anstey has well-rounded and lengthy experience in the cannabis industry, which continues to grow rapidly throughout North America, operating in extraction, production, and supply. Among his roles were working with commercial license holders such as Broken Coast Cannabis, which was acquired by Aphria in 2018 for C$230 million. He now consults on compliance matters for early-stage cannabis companies, helping these businesses to navigate license application requirements set by Health Canada. These skills have been easily transferred to the psychedelics market, where he serves as CEO of Pharmadelic Labs, a psilocybin biosynthesis research company in which the Company holds a 30% stake. George's appointment gives the Company an experienced voice as it expands operations.

The opportunities afforded by the role excited Mr. Anstey, who commented: "I spent an inordinate time in this field and, based on the existing lab assets that TMED has in Las Vegas, I feel that I can assist the Company to optimize the utility of this asset to build further value for our shareholders."

The Company is pleased to welcome Mr Anstey's experience. David Bentil, CEO of TMED, stated: "George brings great experience leading companies in both the cannabis and psychedelic markets. His skills are very desirable and with his input we are confident the Company will grow from strength to strength. We would like to thank Jeff Lipton for his services to the Company."

ABOUT PHARMADELIC LABS CORP.

Pharmadelic Labs Corp. is a Nevada biotech company using state-of-the-art technology to create biosynthesis pathways for psilocybin. By editing the genome sequences of industrial brewing yeasts, the company is creating commercially viable compounds derived from psilocybin. The main advantages of this method are threefold: it is significantly quicker than growing and then extracting from mushrooms (days rather than weeks); very safe, through the use of GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) products ready for use in industry; it ensures a controlled and uniform level of psilocybin throughout the finished product; and is much cheaper to produce on a mass scale than greenhouse growing.

Story continues

Pharmadelic Labs aims to develop a portfolio of intellectual property around biosynthesis pathways using yeast and psilocybin. The company will be working with a wide range of partners across multiple industries, starting with pharmaceutical companies creating products for the nascent psychedelics market.

ABOUT EGF THERAMED HEALTH CORP.

(CSE:TMED / OTC:EVAHF / FRANKFURT:AUHP)

EGF Theramed is a consumer technology company engaged in the provision of biomedical online services for monitoring and treating common health problems. The Company, through its subsidiaries, has assets and technologies used in the extraction and purification of botanical extracts and the creation of extract formulations, as well as medical monitoring device technology. The Company is working to collaborate with other companies for medical technology, equipment protocols and laboratory SOPs.

Through the Company's recent acquisition of a 30% equity interest in Pharmadelic Labs Corp. it has begun to research psilocybin and psychedelic extraction and processing for its Las Vegas extraction lab.

FOR MORE INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

EGF THERAMED HEALTH CORP.

Doug McFaul

Email: dmcfaul@emprisecapital.com

Telephone: (778) 331 8505

Website http://www.theramedhealthcorp.com

CSE Micro-site: http://thecse.com/en/listings/technology/Theramed-Health-Corporation

US OTC Markets (OTCQB): http://www.otcmarkets.com/stock/EVAHF/news

Frankfurt Borse: https://www.boerse-frankfurt.de/equity/egf-theramed-health-corp

PHARMADELIC LABS CORP.

George Anstey, CEO

Email: info@pharmadeliclabs.com

Website: https://pharmadeliclabs.com/

CAUTIONARY LANGUAGE

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including with respect to the expansion of its IP claims in Canada, the United States and other jurisdictions, information surrounding the psilocybin market, as well as the business plans of Pharmadelic Labs Corp. and the Company. The Company provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct, and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited those identified and reported in the Company's public filings under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

SOURCE: EGF Theramed Health Corp.





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/589986/EGF-Theramed-Appoints-George-Anstey-to-Board-of-Directors




The American Battlefield Trust, a nonprofit that preserves Americas battlegrounds, will acquire two tracts of land adjacent to Gettysburg National Park.

The nonprofits partner, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission was awarded $573,000 on Friday to acquire the land.

The announcement was made by U.S. Secretary of the Interior David L. Bernhardt on Friday at Gettysburg National Park.

Battlefields such as Gettysburg are sacred sites where Americans gave the last full measure of devotion, Bernhardt said in a press release. These grants enable us to partner with communities and organizations to preserve these places and connect visitors with their historical importance.

Cynthia Hernandez, a spokesperson for the National Park Service said in an e-mail that the American Battlefield Protection Program funding will enable the nonprofit to acquire the East Cemetery Hill tract and the Vermont tract portions of the Gettysburg battlefield, which were previously held by a private property owner.

The nonprofit plans to restore the East Cemetery Hill tract to its 1863 appearance, and the land will be protected in perpetuity with a conservation easement held by the Land Conservancy of Adams County, Hernanadez said.

The American Battlefield Trust provided the following background as to what happened at East Cemetery Hill:

"On the slopes of East Cemetery Hill, abutting the Baltimore Pike and sitting just below the crest of the Union artillery position on Stevens Knoll, this half-acre tract figured prominently in the second day of the Battle of Gettysburg  its a key missing piece of East Cemetery Hill. The land above it to the east (McKnights Hill or Stevens Knoll) was among the first tracts preserved at Gettysburg. Tens of thousands of Union troops marched right in front of, paused on, or passed over, the tract on July 1 and 2, 1863. On July 1, as the Union met disaster north and west of Gettysburg, Northern troops fell back to and fortified Cemetery Hill.

Union General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered Captain Greenleaf Stevens 5th Maine Battery to occupy McKnights Hill. Stevens shouted, Fifth Battery, forward, as he led the battery to James McKnights house, turned left down McKnights lane, and moved around McKnights stone walls to get into position atop the hill.

July 2 saw roughly one-third of the Union army marching past this tract. Later that day Union Eleventh Corps soldiers marched directly across the tract en route to defensive positions on the nearby Culps Hill."

The non-profit is still raising money to acquire the East Cemetery Tract as only a portion of the money needed comes from the federal grant, according to a spokesperson for the nonprofit. The nonprofit is holding an online fundraiser on its website to preserve East Cemetery Hill as well as two other pieces of property in Tennessee and Virginia.

And with the other acquisition, the nonprofit hopes to prevent development that would obscure views of Big Round Top.

The Vermont Tract abuts the Gettysburg National Military Park on two sides and its acquisition by the Trust would prevent development that might obscure views of Big Round Top, Hernandez said. A permanent preservation easement will ensure that the historic integrity of the property remains intact and no ground disturbing activities occur.

Last year, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission also received grant money to preserve the Gettysburg battlefield. An ABPP grant of more than $400,000 was awarded to preserve 7.6 acres of the Gettysburg battlefield at the United Lutheran Seminary.

Federal oil and gas revenues from the Outer Continental Shelf provide the largest share of deposits into the Land Water Conservation Fund, which is the largest source of funding for American Battlefield Protection Program grants.

READ MORE:

The Gettysburg grant was part of a number of grants across the country that were announced today totaling $3 million. Other grant recipients include:

Connecticut

$96,679 to the Fairfield Historical Society for the preservation of the Battle of Pequot Swamp, 1637.

$50,150 to the Ridgefield Historical Society for education and stewardship of the Battle of Ridgefield, 1777.

Florida

$206,890 to Florida State University for research of a site associated with the Apalachee Revolt of 1647.

$60,672 to the University of Florida Board of Trustees for research of battlefields associated with the 1614 Spanish Campaign against the Calusas.

Georgia

$116,247 to the Georgia Southern University Research & Service Foundation for research on two 1864 American Civil War skirmishes in Jenkins and Burke Counties.

Illinois

$93,220 to the Board of Trustees of Southern Illinois University for research on Fort Henry, which was attacked by the Union Army in 1862.

Maryland

$67,100 to the Society for the Preservation of Maryland Antiquities for research on the battle of St. George Island, 1776.

$78,000 to the Society for the Preservation of Maryland Antiquities for development of the South Mountain Battlefield, 1862.

New Jersey

$104,410 to the Palisades Parks Conservancy planning on the Revolutionary War Fort Lee Historic Park.

Ohio

$99,286 to Ball State University for research on the battle of Pechuwe, 1780.

Tennessee

$137,775 to the City of Parkers Crossroads to protect a 0.55-acre tract of Parkers Cross Roads Battlefield in Henderson County, 1862.

$259,446 to the City of Chattanooga to protect a 9.09-acre portion of the Wauhatchie Battlefield in Hamilton County, 1863.

Virginia

$1,053,650 to the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation to fund the acquisition of a 76.11-acre portion of Bristoe Station Battlefield in Prince William County, 1862-1863.

$32,274 to the Palisades Parks Conservancy for the development of the Port Republic Battlefields, 1862.

$39,427 to the Clarke County Historic Preservation Commission for research of the Battle of Berryville, 1862.

$86,740 to the Friends of Cedar Mountain Battlefield for research on Racoon Ford, Mortons Ford, and Sommerville Ford Battlefields, 1863-1864.

Vermont

$66,873 to the Lake Champlain Maritime Museum at Basin Harbor, Inc. for research of the Arnolds Bay Battlefield, 1776.

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US Warship Sails Through Taiwan Strait Before Separatist President's Inauguration

Sputnik News

20:50 GMT 14.05.2020

The US Navy has announced one of its destroyers transited the Taiwan Strait, separating autonomous Taiwan from mainland China - the sixth such transit this year. This one, however, comes amid media reports of Chinese plans to seize islands controlled by Taipei, and a week before Taiwanese President Tsai Ing Wen is sworn in for a second term.

Sixth Transit This Year

Early on Thursday, the US Pacific Fleet announced via its Facebook page that a US warship had sailed through the 180-mile-wide waterway separating Taiwan from the Chinese mainland. The autonomously governed island is preparing to inaugurate its anti-reunification president for a second term; meanwhile, the US is making moves to win Taipei's admission to the World Health Organization (WHO) at Beijing's expense.

"The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer USS McCampbell (DDG-85) conducted a Taiwan Strait transit May 13 (local time), in accordance with international law," Lt. Anthony Junco, a US 7th Fleet spokesperson, told USNI News. "The ship's transit through the Taiwan Strait demonstrates the U.S. commitment to a free and open Indo-Pacific. The US Navy will continue to fly, sail and operate anywhere international law allows."

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian told Reuters that Beijing "paid close attention" to the transit, adding, "We hope the US side can appropriately handle the relevant issue, and play a constructive role in regional peace and stability, not the opposite."

The last US transit of the strait was three weeks ago, when the destroyer USS Barry sailed through the waterway. As Sputnik reported, the warship then returned to the South China Sea, where it again challenged China's territorial claims by sailing near the Paracel Islands, prompting People's Liberation Army (PLA) Navy forces to converge and expel the Barry.

Washington calls such maneuvers "Freedom of Navigation Operations" (FONOPs), sailing through waters claimed by China as if they were international waters. Last month's confrontation was far from the first; in October 2018, the Chinese destroyer Luyang sailed to within 45 yards of the US destroyer USS Decatur as the latter ship engaged in a FONOP near the Spratly Islands, also in the South China Sea.

Tsai's Upcoming Inauguration

However, the May 13 transit comes amid a slew of Taiwan-related news.

Tsai, whose inauguration is scheduled for May 20, is a fierce opponent of reunification with the People's Republic of China. Taiwan is the last surviving territory of the Republic of China, the government that ruled all of China between 1912 and 1949, when the communist Red Army conquered the mainland and declared the PRC's foundation. Both governments claim to be the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese people, but while nearly every country has since switched its recognition from Taipei to Beijing over the last 71 years, Washington has continued to funnel military aid to Taipei as well as be its advocate on the international stage.

While the Nationalist Party has called for closer relations with Beijing and strongly maintains its status as the rightful Chinese ruler, Tsai's Democratic Progressive Party has a strong independence streak, and observers have feared since her 2016 election to the presidency that a declaration of independence could follow. Beijing has promised that if Taipei seeks independence, there will be war.

US Pushes for Taiwan in WHO

In its latest ploy, the US Congress' US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has pushed the WHO to admit Taiwan as a member. The group's report given to the WHO on Tuesday claims Taipei's omission from the body caused unnecessary deaths from COVID-19, but the island of 23 million has recorded just 440 cases and seven deaths from the virus.

Moreover, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has said he cannot invite Taiwan to be an observer without the approval of all member states.

Beijing has blasted the suggestion as "nonsense," with China Daily noting that Beijing had notified Taipei of the new virus on January 3 - just days after the crisis began - and that a Taiwanese delegation arrived in Wuhan on January 13 to "evaluate the situation first hand."

The US move comes amid a barrage of claims by the Trump administration that the WHO has been delinquent in its duties, accusing the agency of complacency with ostensible Chinese mismanagement of the outbreak and causing it to spread to the rest of the world. US President Donald Trump has threatened to end Washington's funding of the WHO, calling the agency "China-centric."

Rumors of a Chinese Invasion

The transit also comes two days after Japanese media reports sparked worries that China was preparing to hold large amphibious drills near Hainan Island in order to prepare for an invasion of the Taipei-controlled Pratas Islands, which Beijing calls the Dongsha Islands. According to the Beijing publication Global Times, the rumors began with the Kyodo News Agency on Tuesday.

The following day, Taiwan's coast guard announced its Pratas Island Garrison would train in live-fire exercises next month.

Shanghai-based military commentator Ni Lexiong told the South China Morning Post that both Taipei and Beijing are "bluffing. It's a fake crisis  these islets alone are not worth a military campaign and all the consequences of that. The only target valuable enough for the PLA is Taiwan."

 Sputnik

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Bodies have been found in the hunt for two missing teenage girls who disappeared while out tubing on a lake in Utah.

Priscilla Bienkowski, 18, from Utah Lake, and Sophia Hernandez, 17, from Eagle Mountain, were on Utah Lake when it is believed they suddenly got caught up in an intense storm.

One body was found near a jetty by a fisherman yesterday afternoon and the second was discovered three hours later by a sheriff's office pilot, Utah County Sheriff Mike Smith said.

Priscilla Bienkowski, 18, was out on Utah Lake near Salt Lake City with a friend when it is believed they were caught in an intense storm

Priscilla Bienkowski, left, had only been friends with Sophia Hernandez, right, for a few months

The bodies are believed to be those of the girls and Sheriff Smith expressed his 'sincere condolences to the families of these two beautiful girls', NBC News reports.

The friends had bought two inflatable pool toys to use on the lake more than a week ago.

The toys were later found three miles apart.

This map released by Utah County Sheriff's Office shows the vast area of the lake being searched by officials

Search and rescue teams were pictured getting ready to head out onto the lake on Saturday

The Utah County Sheriff's Office launched a search for the pair which involved more than 10 vessels, multiple aircraft and lasted for 1,000 hours. Pictured: Part of the search

A fisherman found one of the girls' cellphones and personal belongings on the beach along with the car in which the pair travelled.

Storms on Lake Utah are notorious for appearing suddenly and without much warning.

Just a mild wind on shore can cause deadly conditions on the 24 mile-long lake.

Utah State Parks Boating Coordinator Ty Hunter said the lake 'can turn from just flat glass to just extreme conditions ... in just a moment's notice'.

The Utah County Sheriff's Office launched a search for the pair which involved more than 10 vessels, multiple aircraft and lasted for 1,000 hours.
Doctors Without Borders, a humanitarian organization, has sent doctors and nurses for the first time to the U.S. to help the Navajo Nation, according to a recently published article.

Who Are the Doctors Without Borders?

The Doctors Without Borders is known for sending a team of medical professionals around the world most especially in places where there is a need for medical attention. They provide medical assistance to people affected by conflict, epidemics, disaster, or those who do not have access to healthcare.

The group was founded in 1971 by group journalists and doctors in Paris in 1971. Their actions are guided by medical ethics of impartiality, independence, and neutrality as sworn doctors who dedicate their time for humanitarian purposes. At present, the organization has more than 67,000 members worldwide.

Doctors Without Borders sent to the U.S. for the Very First Time

The organization is known for sending its doctors and nurses in different areas. Recently, they were stationed in the known international conflict zones like Afghanistan, Iran, Venezuela, and other more than 60 countries.

This time, the organization has deployed a team of doctors for the very first time to the U.S. to help the Navajo Nation. Just like any other tribes in the world, they do not have much access to the healthcare access offered by the federal government amid the global pandemic.

Under the CARES Act signed by Pres. Donald Trump on March 27, the federal government has allocated $8 billion relief funding to the tribes.

Where are the Members of the Tribe Situated?

Geographically, the Navajo Nation is part of American territory that occupies portions of northeastern Arizona, southeastern Utah, and northwestern New Mexico in the United States. Their land is approximately more than 17 million acres.

At present, the place is the home to more than 170,000 people. Unfortunately, the tribe has more COVID-19 cases per capita in the U.S. It is estimated that for every 100,000 people there are 1,786 COVID-19 cases.

Members of the tribe are highly vulnerable to the virus because of their pre-medical conditions. Common comorbidities of the tribe are diabetes and hypertension. Despite the present problem in the tribe, they have shortages of medical personnel.

Number of COVID-19 Cases in the Tribe

At present, the largest tribe in the U.S. has recorded more than 3,100 cases of COVID-19 with a death toll of more than 100, according to a recently published article.

The tribe is more worried about their elders who are highly susceptible to the virus. The elders are in-charge of preserving the tribe's language and culture. In most cases, those who have severe conditions are airlifted to the hospitals outside the reservation.

How Doctors Without Borders Help Them?

To somehow gave aid to this problem, the organization sent a medical team that will help them combat COVID-19. According to a report they are comprised of two physicians, three nurses, a water station specialist, two logisticians, and one health promoter.

Jean Stowell, the head of the organization, said: "There are many situations in which we do not intervene in the United States, but this has a particular risk profile."

Moreover, one out of three persons in the area does not have access to running water and the community depends on their food outside since much do not grow in the place.

Read related articles:
In America, that land of extremes and entrenched positions, abortion is a battle ground. Freely available in some states, frowned on in others, it continues to provoke bitter arguments, vicious accusations, even exchanges of gunfire. Caught in the middle of all this are the young women afflicted with an unwanted pregnancy, who are often treated as pariahs when they dare to look for help.

It's an emotional subject, no question, but Eliza Hittman approaches it with a cool but sympathetic eye in this moving and perceptive drama that was very well received at Sundance and in Berlin.

When we first meet 17-year-old Autumn Callahan (Sidney Flanigan), she's bravely singing about male oppression at a high school concert. As she performs, a boy in the audience heckles her - her song is self-fulfilling.

Autumn is upset about the incident and while her mother is sympathetic, her dad seems indifferent, if not positively hostile. Though no specifics are given, something is amiss in this father/daughter relationship: at one point, the dad fondles the family dog in a vaguely creepy way that suggests this is not the first being he's inappropriately touched. Autumn keeps her distance from him and is clearly biding her time until she's old enough to flee.

Meanwhile, she spends most of her free time working the checkouts at the local supermarket alongside her best friend Skylar (Talia Ryder). And what a friend she proves to be because when Autumn discovers that she's pregnant, it's Skylar who pulls out all the stops to help. No details are given regarding the father: he is not consulted and Autumn seems pretty convinced he wouldn't give a damn anyway. She's very sure she's not ready to be a mother, but she gets little help when she visits a nearby crisis pregnancy centre.

"Are you abortion minded?" asks the passive-aggressive female attendant who sees Autumn, before showing her a dreadful shock tactics anti-abortion video full of terror and misinformation. In Pennsylvania, Autumn later discovers, a 17-year-old cannot have an abortion without her parents' consent. Heartbreakingly, she tries homemade methods, taking pills, punching herself in the belly, and as you watch, you become ever surer that this pregnancy does not hail from a happy place.

Into the breach steps the more level-headed Skylar, who pulls together enough money to get them both on a bus to New York. Off they journey through the old rust belt, past hard-pressed communities that voted for Trump and may now be regretting it, bearing down on a city where anything, good or awful, is possible.

When they finally reach the Manhattan clinic, Catholic maniacs guard its entrance and inside, Autumn discovers that the grim process will take two days. With little money and nowhere to stay, the girls ride around on the subway and wander the streets all night, trying to dodge the creeps. The process having begun, Autumn is now in pain and seems in any case broken, deflated - we hardly ever see her smile. But by her side constantly is Skylar, saying little, but unerringly steadfast, not needing to be told what torments her friend is going through.

The film's title comes from a terse but brilliantly effective sequence in which Autumn answers a questionnaire. Patiently, calmly, a counsellor at the clinic asks her has her sexual partner refused to wear a condom, threatened her, hit her, forced her to have sex - "never, rarely, sometimes, often". And as she answers in teary nods, we begin to realise that the teenager has endured one and perhaps a series of violent, abusive relationships.

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Little wonder she has no wish to bring the proceeds into the world, but Autumn will be put through the wringer by a society that refuses to consider the impact of an unwanted pregnancy on a teenage girl, and by people who persist in believing that someone would take this decision lightly and breeze merrily through the awful medical process it entails.

There's something very clean and simple and affecting about the way Hittman dramatises all this: there's practically no music, no gimmicks, little dialogue, just two friends making their way through an emotional and actual labyrinth. New York City might have been cleaned up in recent decades, but is still pretty salty after dark, and Hittman makes it clear that, in America at any rate, the only thing that separates you from squalor is money.

The performances of the two leads are unfussy, excellent - particularly during a mournful scene in a seedy karaoke bar where Autumn sings broken-heartedly into the void, while Skylar endures the company of a tone-deaf admirer who may be able to help them. Autumn never thanks her friend, but perhaps feels that little word would not be adequate to the task. She has endured so much, while the man who placed her in this invidious position endures precisely nothing.

(Amazon Prime, Sky Store)

Streaming movies: Your guide to all the weeks latest releases online

Corpus Christi

(YouTube, Google Player)

4 stars

Poland, like Ireland, has not quite lost its fascination with clerics. This thoughtful, edgy drama from Jan Komasa explores the priests pastoral role through the eyes of an imposter, namely Daniel (Bartosz Bielenia), a young Warsaw delinquent who escapes from detention and ends up in a country town where he pretends to be the new curate. While the parish priest dries out in a clinic, Daniel becomes more involved with the community, and even displays a flare for comforting folk traumatised by a recent road tragedy. Komasas film is well judged, and nicely ambivalent about the comforts and contradictions of Catholicism.

The Wretched

(Google Player, You Tube, Amazon Prime)

3 stars

The long shadow of Stephen King hangs heavy over this cheerfully nasty little horror that is derivative, no question, but also amiably unpretentious. Teenager Ben (John-Paul Howard) is busy falling in and out of love when he becomes concerned about the creepy household next door, whose matriarch (Zarah Mahler) appears to be acting strangely. That might be because shes possessed by the spirit of an ancient witch who makes flowers droop, but has the opposite effect on men and enjoys nothing more than feasting on small children. Daft stuff, but Brett and Drew Pierces film rattles along with great intent, and has a sense of humour.
Ms Dawson is not alone. She is one of 70,700 West Australians who lost their job in the past two months, according to newly released Australian Bureau of Statistics employment figures. Across the nation, Australia suffered its single largest monthly fall in the number of people holding a job, with a record 594,000 drop in the number of workers through April. WAs new jobless rate of 6 per cent compares to similar spikes across the other states and territories: 6 per cent in New South Wales and Victoria, 6.8 per cent in Queensland, 7.2 per cent in South Australia, 6.2 per cent in Tasmania, 6 per cent in the NT and 4.2 per cent in the ACT.

The national rate spiked a full percentage point to 6.2 per cent. Long queues outside Centrelink offices have become a sign of the nation's soaring unemployment, with thousands waiting for financial assistance lining the footpaths of major cities. WAtoday visited the office in Victoria Park on a sunny Thursday morning and spoke to residents and small business owners about how the economic downturn caused by the coronavirus pandemic had impacted them. Like Ms Dawson and Mr Bowden most were struggling. Ali is struggling to find a qualified job that pays the bills Ali Akhbri, a mechanical engineer from Iran on a skilled independent visa, arrived in WA from his home city of Kerman three months ago, hoping to get a job in the mining industry.

He escaped the coronavirus outbreak in Iran only to find himself in the middle of a lockdown in Perth, with few jobs advertised for newly arrived Australian residents. "Before coming here I worked in the mines in Kerman, that's why I chose to come to Perth," he said. "Unfortunately I couldn't find a job." While Mr Akhbri's engineering qualifications are recognised in Australia, he said employers were prioritising hiring Australian workers with mining experience in the country. Ali Akhbri is mechanical engineer from Kerman, the mining epicentre of Iran. Credit:Marta Pascual Juanola The young engineer works a few hours a week in a supermarket but most of this current income goes towards covering rent in a shared house in Carlisle and supporting his family in Iran.

"I spoke with some recruiters about that and they told me the market is so low, that's why they reply you are not qualified for the job," he said. "Maybe after the outbreak, everything will change and the market will get better and I'll have better opportunities." Kevin went from a successful businessman to having no source of income overnight Kevin McSherry went from being a successful businessman to lining up outside his local Centrelink office overnight, after coronavirus restrictions meant his catering service could no longer operate. "It has been from up there down to the bottom because we can't do catering at all because of the restrictions," he said. "Most of our customer rates start from around about 60 to 200."

With no money coming in, Mr McSherry said he had to stand down most of his employees and rely on the federal government's JobKeeper wage subsidy to keep the head above water. "Can't do much about it," he said. "It just stopped completely." Kevin McSherry, 67, has been living on the federal government's JobKeeper subsidy after coronavirus restrictions forced his catering business shut. Credit:Marta Pascual Juanola Mr McSherry said he was hoping to reopen as part of phase 3 of the McGowan government's four-phase plan to lift coronavirus restrictions, which will see restaurants reopen with an increased number of patrons and relaxed regional travel restrictions. "We've still got a bit to go," he said. "Hopefully, when everything comes back everyone wants to have a party."

Emily found herself out of work, with no idea when she would be rostered next Like most of her friends, full-time commerce student Emily So found herself out of her part-time retail job overnight with no indication of when the store would reopen next. Her employer managed to secure JobKeeper wage subsidies for the staff, but Ms So said for nearly three weeks she simply didn't know if she would go back to work at all. The 22-year-old said she was lucky to be living at her parent's home in East Perth. "Most of my friends who do part-time work that aren't in the big companies or interns at the moment they all had to shut their store so they were all out of jobs for a while," she said.
A COVID-19 patient was



discharged from the Silchar Medical College and Hospital in Assam after he was declared cured, Health Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma said on Friday.

The state has so far reported 86 cases and of them, 42 are active. While one person has migrated out of the state, two persons died.

"Happy to share that one more #COVID19 patient, after testing negative successively, has been discharged from SMCH today taking the total recovered patients to 41," the minister tweeted.

The Gauhati Medical College and Hospital, which stopped admitting patients after a post-graduate medical student tested positive last week, will reopen on Saturday.

Sarma said he visited the hospital and discussed with the authorities about its reopening.

Total 2,200 samples were collected from doctors, nurses, staff and people in the surrounding areas and all of them have tested negative, except two, he said.

"In view of this, we're resuming operations", Sarma said.

Kamrup (Metro) district administration announced that restrictions around the hospital have also been relaxed.

The district administration, however, declared a branch of the Allahabad Bank in Guwahati's Machkhowa area a containment zone as some of the 15 persons, who tested positive on Wednesday, had visited it.

Two trains -- one from New Delhi and another from Chennai -- brought back more than 800 people to Assam on Friday.

The passengers deboarded at Bongaigaon, Kokrajhar, Guwahati, Lumding, Maraini, Dibrugarh and Badarpur and after preliminary screening were taken to quarantine centres by the authorities of the respective districts.

The Assam government has made institutional quarantine mandatory for all train passengers, except pregnant women, people above the age of 75, children below the age of 10, disabled persons and those who have come to attend funerals and rituals associated with it.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Parents are on edge as schools are set to reopen because a number of teachers were among the party crowds who visited the new infection hotspot of Itaewon recently.

According to the Ministry of Education, 880 teachers went to nightclubs and bars in Itaewon over the long weekend, 366 of them foreigners who typically work as language instructors in schools and crammers.

One 50-year-old parent whose son attends a large crammer in Gangnam said, "The crammer closed down temporarily three times already, so my son has not been able to prepare properly for the university entrance exam and I can't tell him not to go there. I don't know what to do."

Itaewon is near the old U.S. military base in Yongsan and its hip restaurants and bars have been a magnet for a young cosmopolitan crowd.
A judge on Thursday reinstated charges against a former Amtrak engineer who was driving a speeding train that derailed in Philadelphia in 2015, killing eight people.

In his ruling, the judge, Victor P. Stabile of Pennsylvania Superior Court, found that a judge who had dismissed the charges last year improperly considered evidence that should be litigated at trial. Judge Stabile sent the case back to a trial court to be heard before a jury.

The ruling marked the latest twist in the state of Pennsylvanias efforts to prosecute the former engineer, Brandon Bostian, on more than 200 charges, including one count of causing catastrophe and eight counts of involuntary manslaughter.

Mr. Bostian, 37, was driving a Washington-to-New York train on May 12, 2015, when he accelerated to a speed of 106 miles per hour as the train entered a curved section of track with a 50 m.p.h. speed limit. The train careened off the track and into Philadelphias Port Richmond neighborhood. More than 200 people were injured, in addition to the eight killed.
The US has seen unfortunate reports of COVID-19 related "rhetoric and harassment" against the Muslim community in India, a top American diplomat has said, asserting that it has been exacerbated by fake and misinformation shared on social media.

Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, however, also said that the US was encouraged by the statements from senior Indian officials calling for unity amidst the unprecedented spread of the pandemic.

Brownback was briefing reporters on Thursday on the impact of COVID-19 on religious minorities throughout the world.

"In India, we've seen reports of unfortunate COVID-related rhetoric and harassment, particularly against the Muslim community. This has been exacerbated by fake reports, misinformation being shared via social media. There have also been instances of Muslims being attacked for allegedly spreading the coronavirus," Brownback said during a conference call.

"Now, I've been encouraged and we've been encouraged by statements from senior Indian officials really urging a unity, and noting the prime minister stated even that COVID-19 does not see religion, language, or borders, which is certainly true," said the US official on international religious freedom.

India has rejected as "propaganda" some social media posts alleging harassment of Muslims in the country for spreading the coronavirus.

"Much of what you see is propaganda by interested parties. Stray tweets can not be used to characterise our bilateral ties with these countries," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said last month.

His statement had come in the wake of angry reactions on Twitter by leading citizens and rights activists from various Arab countries alleging that Muslims were being blamed for spreading COVID-19 in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also criticised any form of discrimination, saying the COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone equally.

"COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or border before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood," he said in a post on LinkedIn last month.

Modi's remarks came in the backdrop of a section of right wing organisations frequently raking up the issue of Tablighi Jamaat members being responsible for a large number of COVID-19 infections in India.

About 30 per cent of the total infections in India has been attributed to the fallout of a Tablighi Jamaat meet held in New Delhi in March.

Turning to the plight of the religious minorities in other parts of the world, Brownback said it was a "tough situation" for them in Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka.

"It's a tough situation for a lot of religious minorities in various places around the world," he said, adding that the problems tend to fall into about five categories.

One is just a straight government repression that some governments are using this to further repress the religious minorities. Second is just discrimination in the health care sector, wherein governments deny health care to some of the religious minorities in various places, he said.

A third is in the kind of hoaxes and scapegoating category, where some of the religious minorities are scapegoated, targeted. There is fake being put out that they are the reason for the spread of the COVID-19 virus in their country.

Fourth is online inflammatory speech, where actors are putting out disinformation campaigns that are targeting particularly religious minority groups. And then, a final category is this growth of misuse of technology to further repress, discriminate, or surveil that is outside of really the scope of the crisis, he said.

In Pakistan, he referred to the Christian sanitation workers.

"They are the ones that get the jobs of sweepers and sanitation workers. And now, as the sanitation work includes collecting contaminated waste from hospital quarantine wards across the country, these workers must not be neglected as the government works to increase distribution of personal protective equipment for front line workers. You can't single out and isolate this religious minority that's the Christian workers that are the sanitation workers," he said.

"In China, we're seeing a couple of particular faces of this taking place in the religious persecution category in Tibet, towards the Tibetans," Brownback said.

Even during the strictest parts of the lockdown, China was conducting a campaign to send a million police to 10 million homes in Tibet to further restrict the Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism, even during the pandemic.

"We're seeing in Uighur Muslims, they're facing increase of vulnerabilities as they're being forced to work despite coronavirus risk, and they're being further exposed," he said.

Brownback said that in Sri Lanka, families of several Muslims who have died from COVID-19 were forced to have them cremated as per the government policy, which is not based on the WHO guidelines and is against their religious beliefs.

The government's response to the COVID-19 crisis has also sparked anti-Muslim sentiment in some quarters, he said.

The State Department would soon put out its report on international religious freedom, he said.

The report will start the time clock on the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's ultimate determinations on Countries of Particular Concern or watch list countries. A recent recommendation by US Commission on International Religious Freedom would be noted and has been noted as well, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Supreme Court Friday sought responses from the Centre and governments of Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra on a plea seeking directions to provide safe and secure means of transportation to migrants travelling from Mumbai to their native places amid COVID-19 pandemic.

The apex court asked these states to apprise it about the steps being taken by the concerned authorities to assist these migrants.

A bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao was told by the petitioner's counsel that there were no means for these people to go back to their native places in Uttar Pradesh from Mumbai and they were unable to access the mechanism laid down to apply for availing transport facility.

The petitioner's counsel told the bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and B R Gavai, that government must engage people at lower level and they cannot have just one nodal officer for a district.

"Issue notice returnable in two weeks," the bench said in its order.

The bench, which was hearing the matter through video-conferencing, told Solicitor General Tushar Mehta that there should be officers at the lower level to look into the grievances of migrants.

Mehta told the bench that nodal officers have been appointed at the state level and he would coordinate with the states on the issue.

The plea, filed by advocate Sagheer Ahmed Khan, has sought directions to ensure that migrant workers in Mumbai, particularly those hailing from Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh, are safely transported home so that their continuous suffering in their attempts to reach their destination comes to an end.

"The petitioner is moving this court as the migrant workers in Mumbai who have no source of livelihood due to the lockdown are constrained to leave Mumbai and are forced to travel to their hometowns in inhuman conditions," the plea has said, adding that the petitioner has offered to pay up to Rs 25 lakh towards cost of travel of migrants belonging to districts Sant Kabir Nagar in Uttar Pradesh.

It has claimed that repeated attempts made by the petitioner to contact the nodal officer appointed by Uttar Pradesh to ensure safe return of migrants from Maharashtra have failed as telephone lines are continuously busy and e-mails have not been answered.

It has also sought a direction to ensure that enough number of trains and buses be dedicated for evacuation of migrant workers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Boston Dynamics' dog-like robot, Spot, is being used in a park in Singapore to help encourage social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

The robot can operate itself, but that's not how it's being used in Singapore, Boston Dynamics founder Marc Raibert said Friday on CNBC's "Squawk Box."

"The robot isn't really enforcing in Singapore. It's just giving people information and encouraging them," he said. "There's a human nearby who can do whatever enforcement they decide is appropriate."

About 120 of the four-legged robots are being used in the world, with a variety of purposes, Raibert said. He said they will soon will be available for purchase on the company's website. Currently, each sale is negotiated individually.

Spot is being used in other ways during the public health crisis beyond just patrolling a park in Singapore, Raibert said. At Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, the robot is helping to screen patients for Covid-19.

"Originally, we were just talking to them without there having to be a health worker there. Now we're making vital measurements like respiration rate, body temperature," he said. "We're working on oxygenation and heart rate, all that can be done without contact, even with a robot."

Raibert said Boston Dynamics, which Google-parent Alphabet sold to SoftBank in 2017, also is thinking about ways to use Spot to disinfect certain places because of the need for increased sanitation due to Covid-19.

"Everybody wants their train station and other facilities to be disinfected so that when you go in, you know you're safe," he said. "And in those kinds of situations, the robots can autonomously do all the operations because there aren't people there to interact with."

"We've had a flood of input [from] people who have ideas for how they could keep their workers from having to have contact even with other people or with situations," he added. "I think it's going to be a very interesting time where some of these new applications play out."
FairTrade tuna fishery in Indonesia achieves certificate for sustainability

A small-scale Indonesian fishery operating on small one or two-man boats using hooks and lines has successfully demonstrated its sustainability to the globally recognised standard set by the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC).



The North Buru and Maluku Fair Trade Fishing Association tuna fishery is the first handline yellowfin tuna fishery in the world and the second in Indonesia to be certified to the MSC Fisheries Standard.



The fishery in Buru, Maluku Province has been in a Fishery Improvement Project since April 2013. It was certified under the FairTrade USA Capture Fisheries Standard in October 2014. The Buru handline tuna fishery consists of 123 fishers who are organized in 9 FairTrade associations.





The Minister of Marine Affairs and Fisheries Republic of Indonesia, Edhy Prabowo said: Were extremely proud of seeing the first Indonesian handline yellowfin tuna fishery meet the highest standard for sustainability.



Indonesia commits to support its small-scale fishers and sustainable tuna fisheries, and this MSC certification sets an example for other small-scale fisheries in Indonesia and around the world.



Asia Pacific Director at the Marine Stewardship Council, Patrick Caleo said: We congratulate Indonesia Handline Yellowfin tuna fishery and their partners for becoming MSC certified. They are demonstrating true leadership in sustainable fishing. To maintain their certification, the fishery will need to work with other fishing organisations and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission to agree to important management measures to safeguard yellowfin tuna stocks.



Blane Olson from Anova Food LLC said: The journey towards MSC certification has been a true collaboration between all parties of the client group as well as Yayasan Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia and MMAF both provincially and nationally. Together we were able to implement fisheries improvement project activities such as data collection, vessel registration and co-management committees, in order to meet both the Fair Trade and MSC standard.



The customary fisheries management system created through the FairTrade associations helped to meet the MSC Standard requirements and shows how FairTrade can be an effective way for small-scale fisheries to achieve MSC certification.



Yayasan Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI), an independent foundation focused on achieving responsible and sustainable fisheries activities, has supported the fishery and provided support to local community development, environment projects, safety-at-sea training and fisheries management capacity building.



The assessment of the fishery to the MSC Standard was conducted by independent conformity assessment body, SCS Global Services and supported by the North Buru and Maluku Fair Trade Fishing Associations, Anova Food LLC, Coral Triangle Processors LCC, PT Harta Samudra and MDPI. An MSC assessment covers three core principles: fishery stock health, impact on marine environment and management of the fishery.



Yellowfin tuna have a dark metallic blue back, yellow fins and finlets and a yellow to silver belly and can live up to seven years. Tuna are a nomadic species found throughout the worlds oceans and are some of the fastest swimmers in the ocean.



MSC recognizes and rewards sustainable fishing practices and is helping create a more sustainable seafood market. Currently, 15% of global marine catch is MSC certified.

 Eco-Business 20092020

Theme(s): Post Harvest Technology and Trade.
Colby, a 4-year-old black-and-white American Staffordshire Terrier-mix, is looking for someone to love him (case 0297).

Johnny, a 1-year-old male Pointer-mix, is adorable and loves keeping people amused (case 0224).

Mamma Gail, a 3-year-old black female Lab-mix, needs a gentle hand to guide her (case 0092).

Houston, a 1-year-old white-spotted Bernard/Lab-mix, is love at first site (case 0095).

Roscoe, a 1-year-old black male Boxer/Lab-mix, is looking for someone to mend his broken heart (case 0098).

Stella, an 11-month-old cream/white female Lab-mix, needs someone to give her the world (case 0107).

Liza, a 16-month-old white/black female Collie-mix, will sit with you every day to watch the sunset (0113).

Freckles, a 3-year-old red/white female Beagle, needs a new cuddling partner (case 0115).

Mack, a 3-year-old tri-color male Beagle, needs a warm place to rest his head (case 0016).

Barkley, a 4-month-old brown/white female Boxer/Lab-mix, will make you her whole world (case 0119).

Coco, a 1-year-old white female Boxer-mix, has all the makings of your new best friend (case 0126).

Rachel, a 4-year-old tan/white female Lab-mix, needs the warm touch of her new family (case 0133).

Raven, a 5-month-old female Shepherd-mix, needs the gentle touch of a human (case 0143).

Gracie, a 5-month-old Shepherd-mix, (case 0144).

Buddy, an 18-month-old black male Lab-mix, will never leave you lonely (case 0163).

Alexis, a 5-year-old black female Lab-mix, has the best listening ear (case 0164).

Marley, a 1-year-old white male Pyranees-mix, knows he is the package deal (case 0183).

Luna, a 2-year-old black Lab-mix, will have you falling in to her soulful eyes (case 0184).

Poof, a 3-month-old black female Lab/Retriever-mix, will be your whole world (case 0186).

Wanda, a 3-month-old black female Lab/Retriever-mix, will make sure every day feels like magic (case 0187).

Cosmo, a 3-month-old black male Lab/Retriever-mix, will have you feeling out of this world (case 0188).

Roxie, a 1-year-old tan/white female Lab-mix, knows just how to make you laugh (case 0194).

Ursula, a 1-year-old black female German Spitz-mix, will have you wanting to stay home all day (0195).

Flounder, a 2-month-old black/white male Shepherd-mix, will go on any adventure with you (case 0196).

Sebastian, a 2-month-old black male Jack Russell-mix, will be your new partner in crime (case 0197).

Ariel, a 2-month-old brown female Shepherd-mix, will swim the ocean with you (case 0198).
Mark Barnett, the one-time protege of fallen fund manager Neil Woodford, has been fired from Invesco Perpetual.

In a dramatic fall from grace for the once lauded manager, Invesco said it had made the decision to end Barnett's 24-year stint at the firm after listening to client feedback.

The move comes weeks after the 49-year-old was removed from his role managing a second investment trust, the 420million Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust, which he had run since 1999.

Fall from grace: Invesco said it had made the decision to end Mark Barnett's (pictured) 24-year stint at the firm after listening to client feedback

In December, the board of the Edinburgh Investment Trust decided to get rid of Barnett in favour of a new manager from Majedie Asset Management.

Invesco's chief investment officer Stephanie Butcher, who was appointed at the beginning of this year, said when she was appointed in January 'I made it clear I would not shy from introducing change where I saw it necessary'.

Even after being fired from the two investment trusts, Barnett was still running a series of open-ended funds for Henley-based Invesco.

If an investor had put 1,000 in his Invesco UK Strategic Income fund a year ago, they would now have 657.

The same amount in Invesco Income (UK) would now be worth 646, and Invesco High Income (UK) would have generated 653.

All three funds have significantly under-performed their relative benchmark over both one year and five.

Jason Hollands, of wealth manager Tilney, said: 'In truth, the writing on the wall for the manager has been there to see for some time, with Barnett moved from head of UK equities to co-head last year and the firm being dropped as manager of the Edinburgh Investment Trust in December.'

Ben Yearsley, director of Shore Financial Planning, noted that Barnett is a traditional 'value' fund manager.

He invests in stocks which he believes are being neglected by the wider market, in the belief that they are fundamentally solid and will still deliver dividends and eventually pick up.

This style has been out of favour for several years as investors have ploughed money into funds which focus on 'growth' stocks instead  those which may not yet turn a profit, but are scaling up rapidly.

Yearsley said: 'Value and UK domestic stocks have not been the place to have been invested for the last four years so arguably he was fighting a losing battle.'

The wider shake-up will see the Invesco UK Strategic Income Fund rolled into the Invesco Income Fund, and a clearer differentiation being drawn between the Invesco Income Fund and the High Income fund.

James Goldstone and Ciaran Mallon will take over the management of the funds. Barnett said: 'I am extremely proud of my career at Invesco.'
Actor Nawazuddin Siddiqui is all set for the digital release of his film Ghoomketu and the teaser of the film released on Friday. Besides featuring Nawazuddin as a writer and Anurag as a cop, the film also has Amitabh Bachchan, Sonakshi Sinha and Ranveer Singh in interesting cameos.

The Ghoomketu teaser opens with Nawazuddin introducing himself as a scriptwriter who arrives in Mumbai to fulfil his dreams of working in films. A glimpse of him enjoying a conversation with a bhelpuriwala to explain the spirit of Mumbai is interesting.

However, he ends up at a police station to write a report for his stolen scripts. Meanwhile, Anurag Kashyaps police inspector has been tasked with finding Ghoomketu. The director, who plays a laidback and corrupt cop, is left surprised when the missing person himself appears in front of him. It seems Anurag will put a brake on Ghoomketus escapades.

Watch Ghoomketu teaser here

Directed by Pushpendra Nath Misra and produced by Phantom Films and Sony Pictures Networks (SPN), Ghoomketu will release on ZEE5 on May 22. It also stars Ila Arun as Ghoomketus aunt along with Raghubir Yadav, Swanand Kirkire and Ragini Khanna. Actors Chitrangada Singh, Lauren Gottlieb and filmmaker Nikkhil Advani will also be seen in a brief appearance in the film.

Also read: Happy Birthday Madhuri Dixit: Actor said husband Sriram Nene hadnt watched her films, recognised only Amitabh Bachchan at wedding

Talking about the film, Nawazuddin said, Ghoomketu is a quirky, never-seen-before character and I thoroughly enjoyed playing him. Anurag, who is generally behind the camera, will be seen sharing screen space with us and it was a great experience to work with him as an actor. Ghoomketu has a phenomenal storyline which will definitely entertain the audience.

Anurag added, Every film is a labour of love and I saw the conviction in the director of Ghoomketu and hence decided to do something which is my least favourite thing to do, which is act. The film is funny and heartwarming.

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Egypts small and medium-sized enterprise sector involves 1.7 million businesses, which account for 44.6 percent of the establishments involved in the formal sector, according to Minister of Planning and Economic Development Hala El-Saeed, nothing the sector had been affected by the coronavirus crisis.

The sector also employs 5.8 million people, or 43.1 percent of total workers in the formal private sector.

El-Saeed said on Thursday that Egypt is working to encourage all programmes and initiatives that support SMEs development efforts, through expanding the establishment of industrial complexes that include a heavy labour force, such as Damietta City for furniture and Al Robaki City for leather.

In this regard, the government has set up 4,500 serviced industrial units, including 750 units in the cities of 10 Ramadan City and Margham, and in the Red Sea governorate.

She highlighted the Rowad 2030 (rowad meaning pioneers in Arabic) projects that the planning ministry has launched with the aim of supporting young peoples capabilities and progressing their skills in order to turn their ideas into real projects.

Rowad 2030 established nine business incubators in the artificial intelligence (AI) and tourism sectors, in addition to an Egyptian-African business incubator. It also incubated 19 projects in the Mashreq Tourism Incubator and established entrepreneurship monitor Rowad Meter, which is an updated national database that provides data about all entrepreneurs and business incubators in Egypt, said El-Saeed, who was participating in a virtual panel organised by the International Council for Small Business, under the heading Entrepreneurship, SMEs, and Micro-Projects Future in the Post-COVID-19 Phase.

Amid the COVID-19 crisis, the government is working to support the micro, small and medium-sized enterprise (MSME) sector through a number of procedures, including releasing a new MSMEs law that the parliament recently approved, the minister said.

The law deals with the informal sector and how to engage it with the formal one, according to El-Saeed.

The law also encompasses easing finance provision for MSMEs and extends several direct and indirect incentives to the sector, in addition to stimulating innovation.

For his part, Hussain Al Mahmoudi, CEO of Sharjah Research, Technology and Innovation Park in the UAE, said during the panel that Egypt has a pioneering role in entrepreneurship and is supporting it through taking actions that have paved the way for innovation culture in the Arab world.

Sanaa Abo Zeid, a manager at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), a member of the World Bank Group, said during the roundtable that unemployment is the significant challenge that the Middle East and North Africa is facing, which is expected to soar amid the coronavirus crisis, especially among young people.

She said that unemployment costs the region more than $40 billion a year, according to IFC studies, adding that the only way to counter the crisis is to enhance the private sector and SMEs, which are a key contributor to GDP and which help in creating new jobs.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:38:50|Editor: huaxia

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HARARE, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Zimbabwe government will audit all donations it has received in the fight against COVID-19 to ensure transparency and accountability.

The Office of the Auditor-General will carry out the systems audit after the country has received an overwhelming response in donations from local companies and various countries around the world, including China.

"We have been asked to carry out a systems audit," Auditor-General Mildred Chiri was quoted as saying by the Herald newspaper on Friday. "It is meant to ensure that there are enough controls in the handling of donations."

"If any weaknesses are detected, they will be highlighted and corrective action taken," she said.

The audits will be carried out simultaneously as donations pour in, Chiri said.

"We will be making an audit to ensure that there is effective and efficient utilization of the donations in line with corporate governance," she said.

Zimbabwe has so far reported 38 confirmed cases of COVID-19, with 13 recoveries and four deaths. Enditem
By Leigh Thomas

PARIS (Reuters) - France will tax big digital businesses this year whether there is progress or not towards an international deal on a levy, its finance minister said on Thursday, adding such a tax had never been more legitimate or more necessary.

Nearly 140 countries from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are negotiating the first major rewriting of tax rules in more than a generation, to take better account of the rise of big tech companies such as Amazon, Facebook, Apple and Google that often book profit in low-tax countries.

Paris offered in January to suspend its digital tax on tech companies' income in France until the end of the year while any international deal was negotiated.

However, the fallout from the coronavirus outbreak has left finance ministries most focused on saving their economies, potentially jeopardising the end of the year deadline.

"Never has a digital tax been more legitimate and more necessary," Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire told journalists on a conference call, adding such companies were doing better than most during the coronavirus crisis.

"In any case, France will apply as it has always indicated a tax on digital giants in 2020 either in an international form if there is a deal or in a national form if there is no deal."

In the Czech Republic by contrast, Finance Minister Alena Schillerova said she may delay the introduction of a digital tax until next year, to take advantage of any international rule, and lower the rate to 5% from a currently proposed 7%.

France's national tax has been a source of contention with Washington, which considers that it unfairly targets U.S. digital companies.

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Europe has long pushed to make hugely profitable large tech companies doing business over the internet pay tax where they sell their services, rather than in tax havens deliberately chosen under what is called "aggressive tax optimisation".

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EU politicians, seeking funds to prevent climate change and diminish wealth differences across the 27-nation bloc, want to see a company like Google, with an annual global revenue of more than $160 billion, pay more tax in the European countries where it makes money, preferably at a uniform rate.

Frustrated with the lack of global progress because of opposition from the United States where the tech giants are based, some countries like France introduced their own digital tax last year. Italy, Britain and Spain have also either already introduced their own digital taxes or plan to do so.

Such moves triggered threats of retaliation via trade tariffs from Washington.

The urgency for a solution is increased by the COVID-19 pandemic, which triggered lockdowns around the globe and a shift to working from home. This is likely to boost the revenues of internet giants but also makes EU governments even more in need of cash to restart their economies from their deepest ever recession expected this year.

Past attempts to create an EU-wide digital tax have failed in the face of opposition from Ireland, where many big U.S. tech companies book profits, and some Nordic countries.

(Reporting by Leigh Thomas; Additional reporting by Jan Strupczewski, Editing by Alison Williams and Alexandra Hudson)
ISLAMABAD: The student wing of Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khans party Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (PTI) had colluded with ISI and pushed several fake tweets and video messages to further fuel unrest during the communal riots in northeast Delhi recently.

According to the Indian intelligence agencies, the Insaaf Students Federation (ISF), the student wing of Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khans party PTI, allegedly played a key role in spreading fake news and projecting the Delhi riots as anti-Muslim genocide.

Based on the investigation done by the Delhi Police SIT, it has come to light that the ISF created hundreds of fake accounts under Hindu names to spread panic and rumours during Delhi riots and in its aftermath.

The ISF sought to create an impression that there was fresh trouble in the south-east and West Delhi in the month of March. The idea behind the orchestrated exercise was to show that the Delhi Police unfairly targeted Muslims during the communal violence that killed 53 people and left about 500 injured and to spread the violence to other parts of the country.

Delhi Police reportedly mentioned in its report on communal riots that in connivance with Pakistani spy agency ISI, the ISF used social media to malign India at the global level and project Delhi riots as ''anti-Muslim''.

It was the ISF that first used the hashtags #RSSkillingMuslims and the #GenocideOfMuslims to create widespread confusion and chaos in India, especially Delhi. The ISF even asked its members to tweet and retweet anti-Indi messages on Delhi riots using those hashtags to create panic and distress.

Delhi Police report, accessed by Zee News, stated that ISI and ISF created over 3,000 fake Twitter accounts for spreading fake news of violence in West Delhi, which were later deleted. The ISF also created several anti-India hashtags as part of extended cyber propaganda against India, according to the investigation done by Delhi Police.

It was also found that several images from Syria and Bangladesh of victims of police atrocities were projected as pictures from ground zero in the Delhi riots by the ISF along with the ISI. The Special Investigation Team (SIT) constituted by Delhi Polic found evidence suggesting that Pakistan is spending millions to systematically amplify falsehoods about India on the internet.

Pakistan wants to create communal unrest in India, pass it off as an anti-Muslim pogrom and then make an international issue out of it.

According to cyber expert Tarun Wig, terrorist Hafiz Saeed-led Jamaat-ud-Dawa had also waged cyberwar against India and has created a dedicated cyber army to post anti-India messages, images, and videos to whip up the communal sentiment and spread fear and chaos in India.

It may be noted that an official dossier compiled by Indian security agencies also stated that Islamabad used about 200 Twitter handles to provoke Indian Muslims and spark discontent against the police during and after the communal riots in Delhi.

The dossier cites detailed investigations conducted by Indian agencies to add that these handles were created at the behest of Pakistan's ISI with the purpose of creating major communal disturbance in India.
In a statement on the stimulus measures announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Fitch said the 100 percent guarantee for MSME loans and farm support schemes were the two main highlights from the announcements.

New Delhi: Fitch Ratings on Thursday said the safe reopening of economy will be key to recovery of non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs).

In a statement on the stimulus measures announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, Fitch said the 100 percent guarantee for MSME loans and farm support schemes were the two main highlights from the announcements.

Both are fairly significant in size and will help to support the more vulnerable borrower segments for the NBFIs. The NBFC/MFI debt guarantee schemes target the right issues but are not large enough to address the sector's funding strains, it added.

The government on Wednesday announced about Rs 6 lakh crore package comprising Rs 3 lakh crore of collateral-free loans for small businesses and a Rs 30,000 crore lifeline to non-bank and housing finance companies.

On Thursday, it announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package comprising free foodgrains for migrant workers, Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit to farmers and working capital for street vendors in a bid to help those hit hard by the nationwide lockdown.

Ultimately, however these measures can only serve to prop up the segments that are under distress. The safe reopening of the economy more than anything else will be the key to recovery for the NBFIs, Fitch said.

A nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of COVID-19 disease is in place since 25 March. The lockdown date has been extended twice and will now scheduled to end on 17 May.
Savers ploughed cash into their Hargreaves Lansdown accounts in the first four months of the year as they hoped to bag a bargain on the stock market.

The investment platform said it received business worth 4billion between January and April, as existing customers topped up their accounts and 94,000 new clients began using its services.

This was significantly higher than the 2.9billion of new business Hargreaves bagged over the same period last year.

One of Hargreaves Lansdown's founders, Peter Hargreaves (pictured), pulled around 100m of his own savings out of the platform

The firm said it had been helped by the market slump in March 'as existing clients added money to their accounts and new clients joined to take advantage of the opportunity to invest at lower prices'.

One of the founders, Peter Hargreaves, pulled around 100million of his own savings out of the platform.

It came after he sold 550million worth of Hargreaves Lansdown shares in February. Co-founder Stephen Lansdown sold 160million of his shares in April.

Hargreaves saw record dealing volumes over the first four months of 2020, as investors tried to shift their money to the stocks and funds where they saw the most opportunity.

This bumped the platform's year-to-date revenues up to 448.1million - 13 per cent higher than this time last year.

Shares fell 1.4 per cent yesterday. The stock has risen almost 40 per cent since its recent lows in March but remains down around 20 per cent from the start of the year.

Chief executive Chris Hill said: 'In these challenging times, it is critical we can support people in managing their investments and savings according to their desired outcomes.

Retail investors have a vital role to play in the recovery and I would like to thank all of our clients for their continued support.'

Although the market movement helped boost Hargreaves' revenues, it was less helpful for most savers on the firm's platform.

The value of the savings which Hargreaves looks after for its 1.4m customers slid by 12.4billion in the four months to April, to 96.7billion, as their investments tumbled due to coronavirus fears.

At its lowest point, on March 23, the FTSE All Share index of Britain's listed companies was down 34 per cent since the rout began on February 23.

It has since recovered around 16 per cent, but growing caution among investors around the ending of the lockdown and fears of a second wave in coronavirus infections are weighing on markets once again.

The FTSE All Share was down 2.8 per cent yesterday, as was the FTSE 100.

Neil Wilson, chief market analyst at Markets.com, said: 'As we near the end of earnings season, the recent gains look like over exuberance.'
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo shared a sweet picture of himself and his youngest daughter Michaela Kennedy Cuomo napping as they flew back from a press briefing.

'After 75 days, this is what sleep looks like,' the governor joked as he posted the picture Friday morning of the pair traveling back to the office in Albany the night before.

Taking advantage of a brief bit of downtime, the governor, 62, is seen in the adorable picture fast asleep with his head on his daughter's while she rests on his shoulder.

Michaela, 22, was sat six feet away from her father at his Thursday press briefing in Syracuse when he revealed she had been clamoring to attend a college graduation party during lockdown.

The Brown University student is graduating this year.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, 62, shared this sweet picture of his daughter Michaela, 22, asleep on his shoulder Thursday evening as they flew home from a briefing

The governor joked that it was 'what sleep looks like' after 75 days of the shutdown

'She said, 'You know a lot of people are having parties, and they're having graduation-lite events. Should I go?'

'You can't tell them anything at 22,' said the governor.

'I couldn't tell them anything at 21, 20, 19. But I said, 'Here's the facts. This is what we know, and is it worth the risk to do it?'''

Gov. Cuomo did not say whether she attended the party or not but added 'Michaela's made all the right decisions'.

He used the story to encourage the continuation of social distancing as New York begins to lift its shutdown restrictions in certain regions of the state from Friday.

'You know who's going to protect you? You are. You know who's going to protect Michaela, 22-years-old? Michaela being informed,' said Cuomo.

'Every parent, every child, it's your job to understand and protect yourself, and I just urge caution.'

The governor added that he had not seen his own mother Matilda since the start of the pandemic.

'I have not seen my mother sine this started, except on video devices,' Cuomo said.

'I could have. That's up to me, you know. This is your relationship, it's your interaction, it's your family, it's your friend.

'There's no law or regulation that tells you how to interact with your personal relationships. That's up to you. I hope you do it smartly, but that's up to you.'

Michaela Cuomo, 22, sat beside her father as he delivered his press briefing in Syracuse on Thursday. He revealed that she has questioned him about attending graduation parties

'Michaela's made all the right decisions' Gov. Cuomo said of his daughter, pictured left

This was not the first time that Cuomo had used his family members, or Michaela, as an example in trying to encourage social distancing.

The 22-year-old accompanied the governor during a press conference in March where he tried to warn Spring Break revelers that they should stay at home.

He told reporters on March 19 that he was proud of her for deciding to skip her Spring Break vacation with her friends.

'Luckily she made the right decision and I'm proud of her for that,' he said.

'No prompting from me besides the question: risk, reward.'

A week before that, Cuomo had revealed one of his daughters had been placed in precautionary quarantine after being in contact with somebody who was exposed to coronavirus.

'That's everything to me. That's why I get up in the morning. How can I protect my daughter?' he said.

Gov. Cuomo previously shared this picture to Twitter of himself and his three daughters Michaela, Cara and Mariah enjoying Sunday dinner during coronavirus quarantine

Speaking Thursday, Gov. Cuomo revealed he has not seen his mother Matilda (pictured with him here center left) since the start of the pandemic. Also pictured are his three daughters

Governor Cuomo has three daughters with his ex-wife Kerry Kennedy  Michaela and 25-year-old twins Cara and Mariah.

His daughters have been in quarantine with him since the outbreak began, he previously told Jimmy Fallon.

'I have my three girls with me Cara, Mariah and Michaela. They were forced to come home,' he said.

'You know, they're in their early 20s, so hanging out with dad is not super cool right now. But that was the silver lining to the quarantine, they had to come home.

'So they're with me, and that's great. Otherwise, they're in their early 20s, the last thing they want to do is hang out with dad, and they're out there living their lives,' he quipped.

'In a crazy way, this gave me time with them that I would have never had so that's been great.'

There are now 345,813 confirmed cases of coronavirus in New York state and there had been 22,304 deaths.

Cuomo announced that he was extending the New York coronavirus stay-at-home order until June 13 but regions that meet reopening requirements can start to reopen before then.

The extension of the PAUSE plan simply allows Cuomo to keep regions that do not meet requirements closed until June 13.

It does not mean that they won't open before then.

Gov. Cuomo shared this map to show the how many of the seven different criteria regions in New York are meeting in order to reopen as some areas begin limited reopening from Friday

It simply extends his original NY Pause order that expires on Friday May 15.

Five out of ten regions have met the requirements to reopen and they will start with construction, manufacturing and curbside retail on Friday.

They are the North Country, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier and Central New York are all ready to reopen.

New York City has not yet enough of the requirements. It still needs to grow its hospital bed and ICU bed capacity and reduce the number of people being hospitalized with the virus every day.

The first phase is to allow people who work in manufacturing, construction, wholesale trade and retail back to work but only if they practice social distancing.

The governor also announced Friday that state beaches in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware will reopen the Friday before Memorial Day but with limitations in place.

Local agencies can decide not to open them, but if they choose to they must meet Cuomo's guidelines.

The reopening of beaches was coordinated with neighboring states to avoid people traveling to the first beaches that were opened and gathering dangerously, he explained.

'Our relationship and responsibility to our other states, neighboring states is important  It's not in New York's interests to have New Yorkers go to a New Jersey beach which is going to be crowded,' or in other neighboring states, Cuomo said.

Rules implemented will include a 50 percent capacity and that social distancing will be enforced.

While the beaches will reopen, concession stands will not be open to avoid people lining up for food and drinks, Cuomo said.

Cuomo on Friday warned that while restrictions may start to soften, people should not become complacent and think there is no longer a risk.

'The amount of personal responsibility here to keep one's self safe, I cannot stress highly enough. Do not play with this virus.

'I can be asymptomatic and not know that I have it but I can put my hand down on this table, you can come touch this table three hours from now and pick up the virus.

'I can walk into a store, put my hand on a stainless steel counter, you can come in the store the next day, put your hand on that counter and pick up the virus.

'I don't care how diligent the store owner is or how many masks you were.

'Everyone is vulnerable to this virus. Government can't keep you safe.

'Only you can keep yourself safe. That's the story of life and where we are today,' he said.

It is unclear how local agencies will respond to the beach order.
Heaving a sigh of relief, the industry in mixed land-use areas started operations on Friday.

A majority of industrialists are currently working to lubricate the machinery and sanitise the establishments as the units have remained shut for at least two months but the operations are expected to gain momentum from Monday

The micro and small industry is relieved that now it will not have to bear the fixed expenses, including salaries of workers and electricity bills, with their units closed.

Around 50,000 units are situated in mixed land use and non-designated areas of the city, which mostly include cycle parts and hosiery units. As per information, the micro/tiny industries in these areas constitute about 50% of the industrial set-up in the district, and employ about 5-6 lakh workers.

President of the Janta Nagar Small Scale Manufacturers Association (JNSSMA) Jaswinder Thukral said, The industry in mixed land-use areas has slowly started coming back on track and production will pick up pace in 3-4 days. Hailing the decision of the state government, Thukral said this will also stop the movement of labour out of the city.

The labourers are leaving the city due to lack of work, but now at least the industrial labourers will not move out as the industries in both designated and mixed land-use areas have commenced operations, said Thukral.

President of the Knitwear and Textile Club Vinod Thapar said, The hosiery industry has suffered a loss of around Rs 1,000 crore due to the lockdown and the state government has permitted the industry to open at the right time, as now they will be able to manufacture the products for winter.

President of the Federation of Industrial and Commercial Organisations (FICO) Gurmeet Singh Kular and president of the Chamber of Industrial and Commercial Undertakings (CICU) Upkar Ahuja said it was also a relief for the large industry, which would not have been able to operate for long in the absence of micro and small units in mixed land use areas. They said many of the units in mixed land-use areas do the labour job for large industries. This way, the industry would also be able to retain its labour, which was moving out in large numbers, they added.
The Malayalam film industry is finally all set to have the first-ever direct OTT release its history, very soon. Sufiyum Sujathayum, the upcoming Jayasurya-Aditi Rao Hydari starrer is all set to emerge as the first Malayalam film to have a direct OTT release. Recently, the team members announced that Sufiyum Sujathayum will release on Amazon Prime directly, through his official social media pages.

The cast and crew members also revealed the first-look poster of the project, which is directed by newcomer Naranikulam Shanavas. The interesting first look poster, that features lead actors Jayasurya and Aditi Rao Hydari hint that Sufiyum Sujathayum is a poetic love story. The Amazon Prime release date of the project is expected to be revealed very soon.

If the reports are to be believed, Sufiyum Sujathayum is a unique love story, that revolves around a couple named Rajeev and Sujatha, who flies to Dubai to attend the last rites of Sujatha's ex-lover, a Sufi priest. Aditi Rao Hydari essays the central character Sujatha in the movie, which features Jayasurya in the role of her husband Rajeev.

The movie marks the second outing for Aditi Rao Hydari in the Malayalam film industry. The actress had made her Malayalam debut in 2006 with the Mammootty starrer Prajapathi. However, she did not receive many offers from the industry after Prajapathi ended up as a critical and commercial failure, and thus shifted her focus back to Bollywood.

Sufiyum Sujathayum is bankrolled by the popular actor-producer Vijay Babu, under his home banner Friday Film House. Recently, the producer had revealed his decision behind going for an OTT release, saying that survival is important now. Vijay Babu is also confident that so many makers will follow them by deciding to release their films on OTT platforms.

Also Read:

THROWBACK: When Prithviraj Sukumaran Predicted That Malayalam Films Might Go The OTT Way!
Business leaders and economists are urging the Andrews government and some of Victorias most-powerful unions to defer pay increases promised to public sector workers at a time when the states finances are collapsing and the coronavirus pandemic is destroying jobs.

The states latest financial results confirm Victorias budget was in serious trouble before the economic shutdown, with a $1.1 billion trading loss recorded at the end of the December quarter improving to a $773 million deficit by March 31.

Despite this, Victorias public sector unions are continuing to negotiate and secure wage deals which, in real terms, lock the state into annual pay increases well above the governments two per cent wages cap.

The Andrews government needs to have a "serious conversation" about freezing public-sector wages Credit:Eddie Jim

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry chief executive James Pearson said all state and federal politicians and public servants should set an example by forgoing personal pay rises while thousands of businesses struggled to keep their doors open.
Total number of Covid-19 positive cases in Haryana stands at 854

Mizoram extends lockdown till May 31 to check spread of coronavirus

6 new positive cases of Covid-19 have been reported in Jharkhand today

Five more Covid-19 deaths in Tamil Nadu, toll now 71

Maharashtra's Covid-19 case count goes up to 29,100

Welcome measures announced by FM, reform initiatives will boost farmers' income: PM Modi

WHO probing possible Covid-19 link to rare disease in children

141 new Covid-19 positive cases and 5 deaths have been reported in Pune today

Total number of containment zones in Delhi now stands at 77

No relaxation in containment zones but economic activities should be resumed in other parts: Arvind Kejriwal

Advisory issued for managing health care workers working in Covid and Non-Covid areas of the hospitals

In third tranche of measures to support Covid-19 battered Indian economy, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced 11 measures today focusing on agriculture, fisheries, dairy, animal husbandry, some aspects of food processing and allied activities.

Indias tally of Covid-19 cases is nearing 82,000 including 2,649 deaths, according to the Union health ministry figures released on Friday. However, the number of Covid-19 tests carried out in the country crossed 2 million on Thursday, doubling in 12 days.

Click here for complete coverage of coronavirus

Here are the updates on coronavirus pandemic from across the world:
After a seven-week lockdown, around two million people doing vital jobs are back at work  but getting there is not the same as it was.

The government in Colombia has allowed some businesses to reopen after a seven-week lockdown.

Around two million people doing vital jobs are back at work  but getting there is not the same as it was.

Al Jazeeras Alessandro Rampietti reports from Bogota.
On Friday afternoon, the New York City Council held a hearing about Mayor Bill de Blasios decision to put New York City Health + Hospitals, the public hospital system, in charge of the citys contact tracing program.

Just a week ago, de Blasio chose the hospital system over the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene to lead the program, which struck many as odd. Several city and state lawmakers wrote a letter to de Blasio immediately after he announced the decision, questioning why he put the public hospital system in charge, instead of the health department, which has a 150-year history of contact tracing.

Deans from the public health schools at Columbia University and New York University also asked Gov. Andrew Cuomo this week to overrule de Blasios decision and put the health department in charge of the citys contact tracing program. The mayors decision became even more scandalous on Thursday, when The New York Times reported that Dr. Mitchell Katz, the president and CEO of New York City Health + Hospitals, told de Blasio on March 10 that he didnt believe banning large-scale events would prevent the spread of COVID-19.

A day before the Times report, the New York Post reported that Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot refused to provide New York City Police Department officers with face masks in late March. The story lacked important context, however, that gave a false impression of what Barbot was actually responding to, which was the NYPDs demand for masks that were designated for city hospitals. The strange timing of this storys emergence two months after it occurred alludes to the yearslong rift between City Hall and the health department. Some have even suggested that the story regarding Barbot is part of a Trumpian move on de Blasios part to oust the commissioner  whose resignation is already being requested by several politicians enraged by the Posts article.

The stories about Katz and Barbot have put the two public health heads at odds, making the question of who will ultimately end up leading the citys contact tracing program all the more confusing.

The March 10 Katz email

In an email from Katz to de Blasio on March 10, which was obtained by the Times, Katz said that he felt closures would mislead residents about the severity of the virus. Canceling large gatherings gives people the wrong impression of this illness, he wrote. Many of the events are being canceled anyway, and fewer people are going out. However, it is very different when the government starts telling people to do this.

Katz also said that Italy is having a terrible problem that I do not believe we will have, and suggested that canceling events would foster fear among the city residents.

He also argued that most people who become infected with COVID-19 would be likely to make a full recovery, suggesting that this will help build immunity to the virus. We have to accept that unless a vaccine is rapidly developed, large numbers of people will get infected, Katz wrote. The good thing is greater than 99 percent will recover without harm. Once people recover they will have immunity. The immunity will protect the herd.

Herd immunity happens when a large proportion of the population develops an immunity to an infectious disease. Immunity can occur if an individual becomes infected with a virus and recovers from it, or if they are given a vaccine for the virus. When enough people are immune, the virus spreads through a population much slower or is stopped completely, protecting the people who are unable to be vaccinated. Its estimated that 50% to 70% of the population would need to become immune to the coronavirus to reach herd immunity.But neither the city or state are anywhere close to reaching that level of immunity.

Right now, unless youre New York City, chances are that 5% or less of the population is immune, so to get to herd immunity, youd have to take the number of cases and deaths weve already experienced and multiply that by about 15, Dr. Robert Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, told NBC News. If we were to let that happen over a short period of time, it would obviously be catastrophic for the health system.

In fairness to Katz, the health department had not begun advising City Hall to make more widespread closures until after March 9, and de Blasio failed to listen to its recommendations until March 16, when he forced city schools, gyms, bars, restaurants and nonessential stores to close.

During Fridays council hearing, Katz defended his email, expressing that most of the citys public health officials had limited information about the virus. We were all wrong, he said. We should have done something way earlier. But that wasnt anyone's fault. All of us were operating on the information we had.

Katz also said that city officials were still under the belief at that point that the virus was only spread by symptomatic individuals. Humility is a key feature we should take from this pandemic, he said.

In late January, it was becoming apparent that the city would likely have a few cases of COVID-19 crop up since it is an international hub, and the health department was preparing for the inevitable. Unfortunately, the city and states confidence in its ability to combat the new virus, based on its past successes containing infectious diseases, such as measles, Legionnaires disease, SARS and Ebola, may have given them a false sense of security.

And in February, Barbot and de Blasio attempted to quash the growing anti-Asian sentiments, which stemmed from the diseases Chinese origins, by encouraging people to partake in Lunar New Year celebrations and dine in the citys Chinese neighborhoods.

Even after the state detected its first COVID-19 case on March 1, Cuomo and de Blasio remained positive that the state could take on the virus. Excuse our arrogance as New Yorkers  I speak for the mayor also on this one  we think we have the best health care system on the planet right here in New York, Cuomo said during a press conference on March 2. So, when youre saying, what happened in other countries versus what happened here, we dont even think its going to be as bad as it was in other countries.

However, epidemiologists have said that it was unlikely that anything could have prevented such a widespread outbreak in the city due to its high density. And numerous screwups on the part of the federal government, which did not provide accurate information about the virus and sent faulty COVID-19 tests to the state, contributed to the states high number of coronavirus cases. Though, it has been estimated that the citys death toll might have been reduced by as much as 80% had it implemented widescale social distancing measures just four days earlier.

I dont give two rats asses about your cops

In late March, NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan asked Barbot if she could supply his department with 500,000 face masks but she said she could only provide 50,000, the Post reported.

According to sources, the call became contentious. I dont give two rats asses about your cops, Barbot told Monahan. I need them for others.

After the Posts story was published on Wednesday, de Blasio expressed disappointment in Barbot and suggested she owed the NYPD an apology. If what was reported was accurate, the commissioner needs to apologize to the men and women of the NYPD, the mayor said during a press conference on Thursday.

The Sergeants Benevolent Association, one of the citys largest police unions, also referred to Barbot as a bitch on Twitter, saying that she had blood on her hands.

However, what the Posts story failed to mention is that the conversation occurred after the NYPD had shown up at a New Jersey warehouse and attempted to seize 500,000 N95 masks being reserved for hospitals. According to Monahan, the city Emergency Management Department said the NYPD could pick up 250,000 masks, but when officers arrived they were told only 50,000 were available, which spurred the heated conversation between Monahan and Barbot. And days after the altercation, the NYPD was provided with 500,000 masks.

Barbot has certainly had a significant number of missteps throughout the citys COVID-19 crisis, just as Katz has, but shes received more scorn from de Blasio than the public hospitals chief. The mayors differing treatment of the two health leaders points once again to his disdain for the health department. It does raise the question about whether this is the right time to allow old rivalries to affect how the city combats the coronavirus.

It seems to be getting worse when were in the middle of a public health crisis, Denis Nash, a professor at the CUNY Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy who used to work in the health department, told the Times of the mayors disdain for the department. I worry that a rift like that could cost many lives in New York.
Occupant administrations of the self-proclaimed "republics" in Donbas created conditions that pose a real threat to lives and health of Ukrainian citizens, as combat against coronavirus continues

Ukraine has turned to the ODIHR, asking to follow the human rights protection situation in the temporarily occupied territories in Donbas and Crimea. In conditions of the raging Covid-19 pandemic, these violations are an increasingly common thing in these areas.

This is mentioned in the statement by Yevhen Tsymbaliuk, the permanent reperesentative of Ukraine in the international organizations based in Vienna. The official made this statement during the 1267th session of OSCE Permanent Council, UNN news agency wrote.

Thus, Ukraine urged OSCE to follow how much Russia lives up to the ODIHR's recommendations.

Tsymbaliuk also said the situation worsened, given the outbreak of Covid-19 pandemic.

The statement says that occupant administrations of the self-proclaimed "republics" in Donbas created conditions that pose a real threat to lives and health of Ukrainian citizens, as combat against coronavirus continues.


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CHICAGO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Comer Capital Group is honored to have the opportunity to participate in the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago (FRBC) webinar series dedicated to bringing awareness to capital access opportunities for minority entrepreneurs and small businesses during this time of crisis. Managing Partner of Comer Capital Group, Brandon L. Comer, will be speaking on the first panel alongside White House Policy Advisor and SBA Regional Administrator, Ashley Bell and Deputy Treasurer, CIO and CFO of Illinois State Treasury, Rodrigo Garcia, to discuss the topic, "A Focus on the Payroll Protection Program and Beyond." The Webinar will take place Friday, May 15, 2020 at 1:00pm CST and is moderated by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago's Vice President of Finance, Yolanda Daniel.

During this pandemic, Comer Capital Group has proudly assisted many small businesses in obtaining the capital necessary to remain functional by utilizing various financial tools including the SBA's Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. Comer Capital Group has also provided guidance and technical assistance to over 750 businesses, non-profits, and faith-based institutions through various webinars and private sessions. "Access to capital has always been a challenge for most minority-owned small businesses. Therefore, it is critical that we remove barriers by ensuring they have the information and platforms requisite to avail themselves to the funds they desperately need to survive this crisis," says Comer. Comer Capital Group is looking forward to continuing to assist small businesses through these unprecedented times.

For additional information, please email us at [email protected] or contact Brandon L. Comer at 769-257-5039 ext. 701.

Join the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago webinar (Conference call only):415-527-5035, 909854860#

CCG is an independent financial advisory firm that delivers holistic and innovative financial solutions to our clients and the communities we serve. The firm has advised on over $2.5 billion in debt transactions and lead financial turnarounds for many distressed institutions.

As a boutique firm, we understand that no client is the same and thus provide customized services that produce superior results and ensure our clients meet their long-term financial and operational goals.

Our professionals bring a level of expertise and commitment that goes far beyond the call of duty. The CCG guiding principles  integrity, dedication, and transparency  are present in every engagement.

This press release was issued through 24-7PressRelease.com. For further information, visit http://www.24-7pressrelease.com.

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MIAMIPolice in South Florida are trying to find New York Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker and Seattle Seahawks cornerback Quinton Dunbar after multiple witnesses accused them of an armed robbery at a party, authorities said Thursday.

Miramar police issued arrest warrants for both men Thursday on four counts each of armed robbery with a firearm. Baker faces an additional four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm. The residential community is located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Baker, 22, and Dunbar, 27, were attending a cookout at a Miramar home Wednesday night when a fight broke out, and Baker pulled out a handgun, the warrant said. Baker, Dunbar and two other men began robbing other people at the party of thousands of dollars in cash, watches and other valuables, witnesses told investigators.

Police said the four men then fled the home in three vehicles: a Mercedes Benz, a Lamborghini and a BMW. Witnesses said the vehicles were parked in a way that would make it easy to leave quickly, leading detectives to believe the robbery was planned. No injuries were reported.

Baker and Dunbar are both from Miami.

Baker was one of three first-round draft picks the Giants had last season. He was the 30th pick overall out of Georgia. He played in all 16 games, starting 15. He had 61 tackles and no interceptions. He was the last of the three New York picks in that first round.

We are aware of the situation. We have been in contact with DeAndre, the Giants said in a statement. We have no further comment at this time.

Dunbar signed with the Washington Redskins as an undrafted free agent out of Florida in 2015 and was traded to the Seahawks in March. He started 11 games last season, making 37 tackles and four interceptions.

We are aware of the situation involving Quinton Dunbar and still gathering information, the Seahawks said in a statement. We will defer all further comment to league investigators and local authorities.

Dunbar spent Thursday morning on a video conference with the Seattle media for the first time since being traded from Washington to the Seahawks in March.

You just want to feel wanted at the end of the day. ... I just hope to repay them with the way I carry myself as a person, Dunbar said on the video conference.
GARY  Mayor Jerome Prince is giving restaurants, houses of worship and retail shops the green light to reopen later this month  with restrictions  but keeping bars and nightclubs shut down until further notice amid the coronavirus outbreak.

The conservative reopening plan comes as the city of Gary continues to see double-digit daily increases in positive cases. The case count for Gary residents stood at 519 this week, with 16 fatalities.

Prince first limited access to public buildings in the city on March 13 at the onset of the crisis, and later further restricted public gatherings by asking many city employees to work from home and ordering churches and businesses to close in hopes of reducing the virus spread.

During Princes daily virtual news conference on Friday, he said he will allow Gary restaurants, bars with food services, retail and personal care businesses such as barber shops, nail and hair salons, to reopen at 25% occupancy on May 24.

Due to Gary's close proximity to Chicago, a prominent hot spot for cases in the U.S., the city's restrictions are more stringent than Gov. Eric Holcomb's phased reopening plan for the rest of Indiana.
Police have been accused of disproportionate use of force with protesters calling for an independent inquiry.

Hong Kongs police watchdog will release a much-anticipated report on Friday afternoon into the forces handling of months of sometimes violent anti-government protests in the Chinese-ruled city.

The Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) studied officers behaviour in the months after June 2019, during a time of some of the biggest and most violent demonstrations to roil the city in decades.

The report is expected to be released at 2pm (06:00 GMT).

Rights groups including Amnesty International have accused police of a disproportionate use of force and other abuses in handling the pro-democracy demonstrations.

Police have repeatedly said they were reactive and exercised restraint in the face of high levels of violence.

The protests started as a campaign against a now-shelved extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial but soon evolved into broader calls for greater democracy and an independent inquiry into police action, separate from the IPCCs.





In some of the most intense clashes, protesters, many clad in black and wearing masks, threw petrol bombs at police and central government offices, stormed the Legislative Council, vandalised metro stations and blocked roads.

Police responded with tear gas, water cannon, rubber-coated bullets and several live rounds fired in the air, in many cases warning the crowds beforehand with a series of coloured signal banners.

Anthony Neoh, head of the police watchdog, has said the report did not investigate allegations of misconduct against individual officers.

Credibility questioned

The credibility of the investigation was dealt a blow in December when a panel of five foreign experts quit from advisory roles to the watchdog because of doubts about its independent investigative capability.

Among the police operations under review were events on July 1 when protesters stormed the Legislative Council and an incident in the New Territories district of Yuen Long on July 21 when protesters and bystanders were attacked in the station by a group of men wearing white T-shirts.

The IPCC is tasked with reviewing the work of the Complaints Against Police Office, an internal police department.

More than 8,300 people have been arrested since the protests began and more than 1,600 charged mainly with rioting, possession of an offensive weapon and unlawful assembly, the Hong Kong Police Force said in a series of tweets on Friday headed Telling Right from Wrong.

Riot police disperse anti-government protesters during a protest at Mong Kok in Hong Kong on Sunday [Tyrone Siu/Reuters]

An independent inquiry into police handling of the unrest is one of the protesters five demands, but Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam has insisted that the IPCC is capable of conducting an independent investigation rejecting calls for a separate body.

The outbreak of the novel coronavirus and strict rules to curb its spread brought a lull in anti-government protests this year but there have been signs in recent days that the movement is gearing up again, with police saying on Monday they had arrested more than 200 people in disturbances over the weekend.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

In 1Q2020 Uzbekistans economy saw high growth rates, while in April economic activity declined, Trend reports citing the Central Bank of Uzbekistan.

In the period from January through April 2020, the volume of cash turnover made up 105.5 trillion soum ($10.3 billion) - a 41 percent increase compared to the same period last year, the message said.

Cash inflow to cash offices of banks increased by 39 percent to 52.1 trillion soum ($5.1 billion).

In April, the decline in economic activity due to quarantine affected cash inflow - the volume of receipts decreased by 41 percent compared to March (to 7.9 trillion soum - $776.3 million compared to 13.4 trillion soum - $1.3 billion).

The decline was affected by: restrictions on movement of citizens and transportation of passengers (local, air and rail); suspension of enterprises, in particular, retail trade (except food stores and pharmacies), clothing markets and enterprises providing paid services, as well as extension of payment terms of taxes, utilities, loan interest and other payments.

In 1Q2020, cash receipts exceeded demand, as a result of which 209 billion soum ($20.5 million) were returned from circulation. In April, an additional issue of cash for 1.5 billion soum ($147,406) was required.

Since early May, cash receipts began to recover. In particular, if during the first 10 days of April receipts made up 2.4 trillion soum ($235.8 million), then during 10 days of May receipts increased soum to 3.1 trillion soum ($304.6 million).

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
[May 15, 2020] Leading BioSciences Receives IND Clearance for Phase 2 COVID-19 Study

CARLSBAD, Calif., May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Leading BioSciences, Inc. (LBS), a drug development company focused on improving human health through therapeutic protection of the intestinal mucosal barrier, today announced the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has cleared the Companys Investigational New Drug (IND) application for a phase 2 study of its lead investigational drug, LB1148 for the treatment of pulmonary dysfunction associated with COVID-19 pneumonia. The study will include 120 hospitalized adult patients with respiratory dysfunction due to COVID-19.

The primary objective of this study is to determine whether oral/enteral administration of liquid LB1148 will impact disease progression in hospitalized patients with moderate-to-severe COVID-19 infection. The primary endpoint is the proportion of subjects alive and free of respiratory failure at Day 28. Respiratory failure is defined as a requirement for high-flow oxygen, non-invasive or invasive mechanical ventilation, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO). Currently the company is collaborating with multiple hospitals throughout the United States, including some that had been participating in the Companys other clinical trials with the investigational drug LB1148. These hospitals therefore have experience with LB1148 and can administer the drug under the new IND to patients who test positive for SARS-Cov-2 and develop pulmonary dysfunction. Further, the study protocol has been approved by a central Investigational Review Board (IRB) to proceed with patient enrollment. As large numbers of patients continue to become severely ill across the globe, this IND represents an important step forward in development of new treatments for patients with COVID-19. Today, critically ill COVID-19 patients have few options but to be placed on a ventilator with palliative care. Statistics have demonstrated this is woefully inadequate for the many patients who will die without alternatives. Practitioners need more therapeutic options to improve patient outcomes and reduce the number of days patients require supportive care, commented Tom Hallam, Ph.D., CEO of Leading Biosciences. This IND clearance now gives us the means to test LB1148 in patients with COVID-19-related respiratory complications and hopefully to improve patient outcomes. LB1148 is a novel oral/enteral liquid formulation of the well-characterized protease inhibitor traexamic acid (TXA) designed to preserve the integrity of the GI tract and improve organ function in patients. As a broad-spectrum protease inhibitor, LB1148 is being tested to improve COVID-19 outcomes by protecting organs from damage by proteases leaking from compromised mucosal barrier that can lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS). Currently under development to treat organ dysfunction and reverse lethal complications of organ dysfunction associated with septic shock and major surgery, it is designed to inhibit digestive enzyme activity and preserve gut integrity during intestinal distress (e.g., shock, infections, and surgeries). In previous clinical studies, LB1148 has demonstrated safety and improved GI function following major surgery. TXA formulations have been administered to more than 40,000 patients worldwide and have demonstrated an acceptable safety profile.



Rationale for Investigating LB1148 in COVID-19 Pneumonia A normal intestine has a sealed mucosal epithelial barrier that contains luminal contents. When the oxygen supply to the intestine is disrupted by respiratory disfunction or shock, the mucosal epithelial barrier becomes compromised and the contents in the lumen can penetrate across the barrier. These contents, especially the digestive proteases, can destroy tissues and damage capillaries resulting in microhemorrhage formation. Once proteases are in the circulation the resulting downstream consequences can lead to acute respiratory dysfunction. As COVID-19 patients frequently experience respiratory dysfunction concurrent with GI symptoms, it is likely that many of the most severe outcomes of this disease are caused or exacerbated by a loss of intestinal barrier integrity. Further, the high density and distribution of the ACE2 and TMPRSS2 receptors on the enterocytes of the gut mucosal barrier facilitates widespread GI infection of the virus. LB1148 may prevent the disruption of the mucosal layer and minimize luminal contents from entering the wall of the intestine and systemic circulation during COVID-19 mucosal barrier disruption.

The company has published a White Paper, which is available at https://leadingbiosciences.com/lb1148-for-the-treatment-of-covid-19/, further explaining the Companys rationale why it believes that LB1148 may be of potential use in treating COVID-19-associated organ failure. About LB1148 LB1148 is a patent-protected formulation of a broad-spectrum serine protease inhibitor designed to neutralize the activity of potent digestive proteases that can cause a range of serious complications and organ dysfunction if they escape the GI tract through a compromised mucosal barrier. By inhibiting the activity of digestive proteases, LB1148 has the potential to prevent damage to GI tissues, speed the return of GI function and shorten patients post-surgery stay in the ICU and hospital. This could substantially reduce the burden on the healthcare system, based upon the average cost of both ICU and hospital stays following cardiovascular surgery. LB1148 has not been approved for use in this or any indication, nor has it been deemed by FDA as safe for use in this or any patient population. About Leading BioSciences Leading BioSciences is developing novel therapeutics designed to improve human health through therapeutic protection of the Gastrobiome. The Companys initial focus is combatting the interruption of GI function (ileus) following major surgery to reduce recovery times and shorten patients length of stay in the hospital. Additionally, the company believes that its investigational therapies have the potential to prevent the formation of post-operative adhesions (reducing hospital re-admissions and additional surgeries), as well as to address the myriad of health conditions and complications associated with chronic disruption of the intestinal mucosal barrier. Learn more at: www.leadingbiosciences.com Contact: JQA Partners, Inc.

Jules Abraham

917-885-7378

[email protected]

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Nairobi, Kenya (PANA) - Over 400 civil society organizations on Friday came together to demand urgent action to fight the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic
Robert Azevedo has said he will resign as the head of the World Trade Organization (WTO), DW reported.

The WTO Director-General said on Thursday that he will step down from his position effective August 31 after seven years at the helm of the global trade body.

Azevedo, a 62-year-old Brazilian career diplomat, stepped down more than a year before his second term as WTO head was due to end.

His departure comes at a difficult time for the WTO, which is charged with setting international rules for trade between member states.
(Bloomberg) -- One of Chinas best-performing stocks so far in 2020 is a little-known server maker that last year abruptly joined the same U.S. blacklist that threatens Huawei Technologies Co.s survival. Investors are betting that Beijings rapidly emerging plan to invest trillions in technology will outweigh the Trump administrations curbs.

Dawning Information Industry Co. has soared 60% since the start of the year, making it the third-best performer year to date on the benchmark CSI 300 index of Shanghai and Shenzhen stocks. Its now trading at about 56 times its projected 2020 earnings, above its average over the past three years -- yet some analysts think its uptrend is set to continue.

Dawnings among the Chinese companies at the center of efforts by Washington to stall the rapid rise of Chinas IT industry. The U.S. Commerce Department blacklisted the Beijing-based company a year ago, requiring its American suppliers to get a license from the U.S. government in order to sell their products. Also on the entity list was the companys advanced computing processor subsidiary, which operates American chip giant Advanced Mirco Devices Inc.s joint-venture in China.

China and the U.S. are most likely heading toward greater friction in technology, said Wang Chen, a Shanghai-based partner with XuFunds Investment Management Co. Companies that possess core technologies and good business models will benefit. Dawnings tech strength was demonstrated by its recent China Telecom procurement deal win, he added.

Beijings plan to invest heavily in the countrys IT infrastructure to reboot its virus-stricken economy could propel Dawnings business. The supercomputers, servers and storage equipment it makes are essential to Chinas ambitious new infrastructure initiative that has technologies such as large-scale data centers and next-generation telecom networks at its heart.

The business potential from the companys partnership deals with Loongson and Cambricon is not fully realized, Wang Jianhui, an analyst at Dongxing Securities said referring to two up-and-coming state-backed chip developers. The stock price should have more room to grow.

Story continues

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Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Canadian Silver Hunter Inc. (TSXV: AGH.H) ("Canadian Silver Hunter" or the "Company") has moved the location of the upcoming Annual General Meeting, scheduled for May 25, 2020 @ 10:00 am, due to current unforeseen circumstances. The meeting will now be held at the offices Capital Transfer Agency, 390 Bay Street Suite 920, Toronto, Ontario M5H 2Y2.

Canadian Silver Hunter Inc. is a Canadian mineral exploration company focused on silver-cobalt exploration on their flagship South Lorrain Project. For further details about the Company's projects and plans please visit the Canadian Silver Hunter Inc. website at www.canadiansilverhunter.ca

CAUTIONARY STATEMENT: Neither the TSX Venture Exchange, the NEX nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. We seek safe Harbor.

For more information please contact:

Jeffrey Hunter

President & CEO

(416) 707-4230

jhunter@cshi.ca

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55990
Lockdown measures put in place across Latin America to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have repressed civil liberties and violated human rights, a rights group said on Friday.

Amnesty International said it has verified nearly 60 incidents in the region over the past seven weeks that show governments using arbitrary, punitive and repressive tactics to enforce quarantine orders.

The footage we have verified from across the Americas since late March provides worrying indications that governments are reverting to the kinds of repression we documented in 2019 and earlier, but this time to enforce pandemic-related public health measures, said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Starting in March, many countries in Latin America declared states of emergency, imposed curfews and implemented lockdown measures in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19. While restrictions have varied, some countries resorted to coercion to enforce the restrictions, including the use of detention.

In Venezuela, even before the pandemic, the United Nations called the country the site of one of the worlds 10 worst humanitarian crises in 2019, noting that 9.3 million of the 30 million population consume insufficient quantities of food. Some five million people have fled as a result.

Though numbers of reported deaths and cases from the virus appear modest, Venezuelans are suffering from the economic shutdown and delays in the state food distribution programme known as CLAP. During April, some 150 protests erupted across the country to demand food, and 464 called for access to basic services including electricity, water and gas.

Amnesty says there have been indications of excessive and unnecessary use of force to disperse the protests, consistent with a widespread policy of repression used to silence dissent since at least 2017. Venezuelan officials have described the protests as riots.

In Argentina, Amnesty International verified a video in which the police beat a homeless person for apparently being in the street during the lockdown.

Amnesty also points to the Dominican Republic, which has detained 27,000 people between April 8 and May 7, according to police reports cited by the rights group, for allegedly non-compliance with the evening curfew.

El Salvador has similarly detained thousands of people for alleged home quarantine violations in government containment centres that lack proper hygiene and safety requirements.

A man holding up a sign reading If I dont eat, I die faster in front of the central market as he protests against the measures taken by the government during the outbreak of the coronavirus disease, in Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic [Ricardo Rojas/Reuters]

Amnesty said it has verified videos from Puerto Rico, Mexico and the Dominican Republic in which police appeared to stop or detain individuals who were on their way to get food or supplies.

In Honduras, Amnesty cited a local nongovernmental organisation, ACI Participa, which documented 106 peaceful demonstrations of people demanding food, medicine and water from local and national authorities in April. According to the organisation, security forces repressed many of the protests  including through the use of tear gas and firearms against peaceful protesters.

Most governments have said the lockdown measures are needed to stem the spread of the disease, particularly in countries where health systems are not equipped to handle a widespread outbreak.

Amnesty warned that such measures are not only serious violations of human rights, but will also ultimately be ineffective in containing the spread of the disease.

While COVID-19 affects us all, it does not affect us all in the same way. Many of those who face repression in the Americas are marginalised people who need access to food, healthcare and other necessities, not criminalisation and ill-treatment. Governments are mistaken if they think repressive measures will protect people from the disease, said Guevara-Rosas.
[May 15, 2020] AgJunction Announces New Interim CFO

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- AgJunction Inc. (TSX: AJX) ("AgJunction" or the "Company"), today announced that it has reappointed Peter Newton as Interim Chief Financial Officer of the Company, replacing Deborah Mack who has left the Company.

Mr. Newton served as Interim Chief Financial Officer of the Company from May 11, 2019 to November 15, 2019 and will serve in this role as the Company continues its previously announced search for a permanent CFO in the Greater Scottsdale Area. The Company thanks Ms. Mack for her contributions and wishes her the best in the future. About AgJunction AgJunction Inc. is a global leader of advanced guidance and autosteering solutions for precision agriculture applications. Its technologies are critical components in over 30 of the worlds leading precision agriculture manufacturers and solution providers and it holds over 200 patents and patents pending. AgJunction markets its solutions under leading brand names including Novariant, Wheelman, Whirl and Handsfreefarm. AgJunction is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona, and is listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) under the symbol AJX. For more information, please go to AgJunction.com . Forward-Looking Statements This press release contains forward-looking information and forward-looking statements (collectively, "forward-looking information") within the meaning of applicable securities laws and is based on the expectations, estimates and projections of management of AgJunction as of the date of this news release, unless otherwise stated. The use of any of the words "expect", "anticipate", "continue", "estimate", "objective", "ongoing", "may", "will", "project", "should", "believe", "plans", "intends" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking information. Such frward-looking information is provided for the purpose of providing information about management's current expectations and plans relating to its current and future operations. These statements are only predictions and actual events or results may differ materially. Although the Companys management believes that the expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot guarantee future results, performance or achievement since such expectations are inherently subject to significant business, economic, competitive and political uncertainties and contingencies as well as unanticipated force majeure events. Many factors could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statements made by the Company. In particular, forward-looking statements in this press release include, but are not limited to statements with respect to: the Companys strategy, plans, objective sales, financial position and focus. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on such forward-looking information contained in this press release.



In respect of the forward-looking information, AgJunction has provided such information in reliance on certain assumptions that it believes are reasonable at this time, including, but not limited to, the sufficiency of budgeted capital expenditures in carrying out planned activities; that AgJunction's future results of operations will be consistent with management expectations in relation thereto; product and market expansion; availability of key supplies, components, services, networks and developments; the impact of competition; conditions in general economic, agricultural autosteering and financial markets; uncertainty around the duration and scope of the COVID-19 pandemic and the impact of the pandemic and actions taken in response on global and regional economies and economic activity; demand for the Company's products; and the continuity of existing business relationships. Since forward-looking information addresses future events and conditions, such information by its very nature involves inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results could differ materially from those currently anticipated due to a number of factors and risks. These include, but are not limited to the risks associated with the industries in which AgJunction operates; competition; inability to successfully introduce new technology and new products in a timely manner; legal claims for the infringement of intellectual property and other claims; negative conditions in general economic, agricultural and financial markets; and reduced demand for the Company's products. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing list of factors is not exhaustive.

Additional information on other factors that could affect the Company's operations or financial results, are included in reports of AgJunction on file with applicable securities regulatory authorities, including but not limited to, AgJunction's Annual Information Form which may be accessed on its SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. The forward-looking information contained in this press release is made as of the date hereof and AgJunction undertakes no obligation to update publicly or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, unless so required by applicable securities laws. Contact: Media

[email protected] Investor Relations

Gateway Investor Relations

Cody Slach, Managing Director

1-949-574-3860

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Russias regional businessman charged with organizing murder

 sledcom.ru

12:26 15/05/2020

MOSCOW, May 15 (RAPSI)  Murder organization charges have been brought against businessman and ex-Krasnoyarsk Region lawmaker Anatoly Bykov, according to a statement published on Friday on the Investigative Committees website.

Upon a court order, the businessman has been put in detention.

According to the Russian Investigative Committee, in the first half of 1994, Alexander Naumov, the 23-year old member of a criminal group headed by Bykov, had a conflict with the gang leader because of unjust, according to him, dividing of the joint criminal income. Later, Bykovs car was exploded. The businessman suspected Naumov and his friend Kirill Voytenko of the blast organization and decided to kill them. He ordered his acquaintance Vladimir Tatarenkov to organize the murder; the latter in turn involved his gang members in the crime. On July 24, 1994, Naumov and Voytenko were shot dead, investigators claimed.

One of the killers Sergey Bakurov was sentenced to life. Another one is on a wanted list. Tatarenkov was sentenced to 13 years in prison, the Investigative Committees statement read.

Investigators claim that many witnesses confirmed that Bykov had business relations with Naumov and a conflict after which the latter was afraid of his life and began wearing body armour.

Three witnesses said that Bykov was a mastermind of the murder. They added that failed to give testimony 26 years ago as they hoped that Bykov would provide assistance to them, according to the Investigative Committee.
Shimla, May 15 : Close to 1,000 representatives of environmental action groups, locals and academics have asked the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change not to grant extension of clearance to the state-run Kashang hydropower project in geologically fragile Kinnaur in Himachal Pradesh.

Citing April 30 natural calamity, they said a large portion of a steep mountain in Kinnaur district slipped down to Pangi village, destroying apple orchards and killing a Nepali migrant worker.

This area in the high Himalayas, falling in the Satluj Valley, which is known for its geological and ecological vulnerability, is the site of Stage I of the 243 MW Integrated Kashang Hydropower Project, which is already operational.

The entire project is being funded by the Asian Development Bank.

Stages II, III and IV are to be constructed in the same area and have faced massive opposition from the locals, mainly tribals, on the ground that these will spell doom for their lives, livelihoods and biodiversity, says the letter.

The project is on the Kashang and Kerang streams, the tributaries of the Sutlej river in Morang tehsil, some 350 km from the state capital.

The Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change had granted an environment clearance to the four stages of the project in April 2010 with the condition of 10-year validity.

Only stage I of the project has been completed and now project executor Himachal Pradesh Hydropower Corp Ltd is seeking an extension of the validity of the environment clearance from the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC).

On the hazards and risks of large-scale construction in a fragile terrain, the letter says underground blasting and tunnelling for hydropower projects disturb the local geology and soil erosion triggering slope failures and exacerbating landslides in an area already hazard and disaster prone.

Citing non-compliance of safety and environmental laws by the company in Stage I, it says the project is falling in the Lippa Asrang Wildlife Sanctuary that is home to the Himalayan brown bear and the snow leopard, besides rich in floral biodiversity.

Also it is a threat to local tribal livelihoods and land-based economy.

More than 1,000 families in eight villages of this area will be impacted as their livelihoods are completely dependent on commercial horticulture and farming of peas, potatoes, rajma, etc.

They depend on forest produce like chilgoza pines and akala jeera' which will also be impacted with the project commissioning, says the letter.

The prominent signatories include Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan; Goldman Environment Award winner Prafulla Samantara; Himanshu Thakkar of the South Asia Network on Dams rivers and People; Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksh; and Roma Malik of All India Forum of Forest Working People.

From the state, the letter was signed by S.S. Negi of the Lippa Paryavaran Sangharsh Samiti; N.S. Negi of the Him Lok Jagriti Manch; Kulbhushan Upmanyu of the Himalay Bachao Samiti; Prem Katoch of the Save Lahaul-Spiti; and Tenzin Takpa of the Spiti Civil Society, among others.
By Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - World Trade Organization head Roberto Azevedo will step down a year earlier than planned in August, he said on Thursday, in a surprise move as the trade body struggles to rein in global tensions and coordinate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 62-year-old Brazilian has been director-general since 2013 and is serving a second term that was due to conclude at the end of August 2021

By Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop

GENEVA/BRUSSELS (Reuters) - World Trade Organization head Roberto Azevedo will step down a year earlier than planned in August, he said on Thursday, in a surprise move as the trade body struggles to rein in global tensions and coordinate responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The 62-year-old Brazilian has been director-general since 2013 and is serving a second term that was due to conclude at the end of August 2021.

Azevedo said that he had taken a "personal decision" after talking with his family and that his move was not due to health reasons or because of specific political ambitions.

According to the text of an address to the WTO's members, Azevedo said he thought it was also in the best interests of the organisation.

"As members start to shape the WTO's agenda for the new post-COVID realities, they should do so with a new director-general," he told a virtual meeting of national members on Thursday afternoon.

His departure comes at a testing period for the 25-year-old body, which has seen its role in settling disputes undermined after its Appellate Body was paralysed in December by Washington's decision to block the appointment of judges.

Asked about Azevedo's departure, U.S. President Donald Trump said he was "OK with it", telling reporters the WTO was "horrible".

"We've been treated very badly," he said. "They treat China as a developing nation. Therefore China gets a lot of the benefits that the U.S. doesn't get."

"NEW NORMAL" AFTER COVID-19

Since the COVID-19 crisis hit, Azevedo has called for governments to refrain from imposing export restrictions on food and medical supplies.

The WTO club of 164 members, which is designed to set global trading rules, has also not produced any major international accord since abandoning its "Doha Round" of negotiations in 2015.

Its members are negotiating an agreement to cut subsidies for fishing to allow a revival of depleted fish stocks, while a smaller group are discussing a possible deal on e-commerce. However, key differences remain and they are far from the consensus required to agree both deals.

Some members, notably the United States, Japan and the European Union, are pushing for more fundamental reforms. They say global trading rules need to reflect new realities - notably a far stronger China - and address problems such as state-led subsidies and forced technology transfers.

Such issues might have been addressed at the WTO's biennial meeting due to have taken place in Kazakhstan in June. That has now been pushed back to mid- or late-2021. Azevedo said his departure would allow a successor to be in place before then.

Azevedo said the WTO could not stand still while the world around it changed, nor ignore the "new normal" that emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said Azevedo would be difficult to replace and that Washington looked forward to participating in the process of selecting a successor.

EU trade commissioner Phil Hogan said it was a good time to find a new chief but this needed to be done this year not next as the WTO was encountering major challenges and louder voices demanding reform.

Simon Evenett, professor of international trade and economic development at Switzerland's University of St. Gallen, said the next director-general would need to put the WTO back together again.

"The next leader of the WTO must command respect in the corridors of power of the major players. This is not the time to promote another ambassador. Someone with very senior government experience or global status is needed," Evenett said.

Azevedo was a career diplomat, while his predecessors have mostly had political backgrounds.

(Reporting by Emma Farge and Philip Blenkinsop; additional reporting by Jeff Mason in Washington; Editing by Peter Graff, Hugh Lawson and Lisa Shumaker)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Mireille Knoll, 85, centre, with her son Daniel and grand daughter Jessica. - Daniel Knoll/ Daniel Knoll

French prosecutors have called for two men accused of murdering a Holocaust survivor in her eastern Paris council flat to be tried for killing her on anti-Semitic grounds.

Mireille Knoll, 85, was stabbed 11 times in March 2018 and burned in a frenzied onslaught, which shocked the nation and outraged political leaders.

President Emmanuel Macron, who attended her funeral at the time amid widespread public mourning, said: She was killed simply because she was Jewish.

Her neighbour, Yacine Mihoub, 30 is now in custody along with another suspect, 24-year old Alex Carrimbacus with mental health issues.

On Thursday night, Paris prosecutors called for the pair to be tried for murder of a vulnerable person due to the victims real or supposed affiliation to a religion.

It is now up to the investigating magistrates conducting the investigation to decide whether to retain the motive of anti-Semitism.

Prosecutors pointed out that Yacine Mihoub had scrawled graffiti in praise of the Paris terror attacks in his cell and had conducted internet searches on the liberation of Palestine, Salafist Islam and the Muslim brotherhood.

Carrimbacus is thought to have asked whether the victim was rich.

This evidence legitimately raises the question over Yacine Mihoub and Alex Carrimbacuss state of mind and the deep reason for the murder, the prosecution was cited as arguing in Le Parisien.

Emmanuel Macron consoled the two sons of the French holocaust victim who brutally killed in her Paris flat - E-Press / Splash News/Splash News

The Knoll familys lawyer Gilles-William Goldnadel, said: It is a satisfaction to see the prosecution recognise that Mrs Knoll was both an old lady and a Jewish woman and that she was killed for both reasons.

Alex Carrimbacus told investigators that his friend had said Jews are loaded.

His lawyer, Karim Laouafi, said he was surprised that both suspects were on the same level.

The prosecutions hypothesis is that they both struck the victim but one cannot reason using mere hypotheses in such a serious case. My client acknowledges responsibility on certain points but firmly contests the crime, he said.

Story continues

Yacine Mihoubs lawyers, Fabrice de Korodi and Charles Consigny, that the charge of anti-Semitism was based solely on the changing and implausible declarations of the second suspect.

His clients only fault was to have let Alex Carrimbacus into Mireille Knolls flat, he asserted.

Jewish groups have accused French prosecutors in recent years of glossing over anti-Semitism as a motive, notably over the murder of Sarah Halimi, 65, thrown out of the window of her flat in Paris in 2017 by Kobili Traore, who lived in the same building.

At first not considered a hate crime, the charge was eventually amended to murder with anti-Semitism as an aggravating factor.

However, a court late last year rule her attacker was not criminally responsible for his actions.
Firefighters and paramedics across Texas have been tapped to help with coronavirus testing in nursing homes, as state and local officials work through how to meet Gov. Greg Abbotts directive to test more than 200,000 residents and staff.

Fire departments statewide are being asked to help with facility inspections and on-site testing, as part of a multi-agency effort, according to a Texas Department of State Health Services email shared with Hearst Newspapers, offering detail on the states plan.

Abbott announced Monday that state agencies would begin outlining how to conduct testing in all nursing homes following White House recommendations. But he did not offer details then on how the state planned to carry out the massive undertaking.

It took two months for the state to test just over 535,000 residents, though a national scarcity of testing materials slowed the effort. Now firefighters are mobilizing to administer what could be 230,000 tests in just two weeks.

The federal government is sending as many as 750,000 test kits to the state, said Darrell Pile, CEO of the Southeast Texas Regional Advisory Council, which was encouraging its partner EMS agencies to identify staff to help the testing teams.

It is daunting, Pile said. However, were very mature, seasoned emergency providers who have thought about these situations.  Were all ready and willing to evolve and go beyond our normal duties to help.

Letters to the facilities issued Wednesday said they would be contacted very soon by a testing team that could include first responders or the Texas National Guard. Abbott on Friday issued a statement thanking the firefighters for their help.

Local officials continued to work out over the course of the week exactly how this testing might work, pushing for clarification from the state about its broad demands.

NEW DIRECTIVE: Gov. Abbott orders COVID-19 tests for all Texas nursing home residents

Firefighters are proud to be on the frontlines on the pandemic response, Texas State Association of Fire Fighters President John Riddle wrote in a statement. But he questioned whether all had access to needed tests and training, and he urged the state to clarify response protocols.

No matter what, well be there when the call comes in, Riddle wrote. We just want to ensure we can deliver excellent service as safely as possible.

Even with visitor restrictions and employee screenings in place, an alarming number of nursing home residents have died. As of Friday, 490 such residentss deaths were related to COVID-19. More than a quarter of licensed nursing homes had at least one case.

RISING DEATH TOLL: Texas nursing home deaths see largest five-day spike

The ability of nursing homes to test  an effort that can help prevent asymptomatic employees from spreading the illness  so far has seemed to be a mixed bag, said Amanda Fredriksen, associate state director for advocacy and outreach at AARP Texas.

Weve been talking to counties and cities, and theres a fair bit of variability about how accessible tests are and also their procedures for getting those tests processed, Fredriksen said.

Fredriksen said it will be important that test results are returned fairly quickly, as well as that tests are repeated.

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission said in a statement that nursing facility residents are among the most at-risk for infection, and the expansion of testing to all residents and staff will provide a full picture of the scope and extent of infection at facilities statewide.

In Harris County, where a team has already been testing in long-term care facilities, fire departments and paramedics agreed to help with facility assessments. The dozens of departments would contribute as they felt comfortable in evaluating nursing homes policies and preparedness, said Mike Mulligan, executive board president of the Harris County Firefighters Association.

Firefighters already plan for handling fires in such facilities, Mulligan said, so he considered this pre-planning with a medical twist.

This is an evolving situation, he said. Everybody thats working on this is really just trying to be sure that were protecting all of the citizens that were responsible for to the best of our ability.

In Montgomery County, hospital district paramedics have been testing in a handful of nursing homes that wanted it and  as part of an existing statewide initiative  testing in high-risk regional facilities, said James Campbell, the districts EMS chief.

Firefighters in the county were already in touch about how they could support the paramedics doing this work.

We want to be able to help anytime that were called upon by the state, Campbell said. Were trained. Were ready.

WHICH NURSING HOMES HAVE CASES? Texas wont tell you

In counties without a paid fire department, the state military, as well as state emergency medical teams, will have to fill the gap. Brazoria County Judge Matt Sebesta said he expects the Texas National Guard to do most of its nursing home testing.

Still, the county may be in better shape than others because of recent testing  the state will not require testing for those that can show they have already done so in the last 30 days.

Houston firefighters Thursday awaited instructions from the city on updated testing protocols, said Marty Lancton, president of the Houston Professional Fire Fighters Association.

In the end, nothings changed with Houston firefighters and paramedics  were always ready to help the residents and staff of nursing homes, he said. If were asked to do more for them, well gladly be there to help.

Details were shaking out, too, in other counties: Plans are evolving, wrote Ashley Tompkins, spokesperson for the Galveston County Health District. Fort Bend County Judge K.P. George said in a statement that the county was working 24/7 on establishing this Strike Team to meet this goal.

With 161 nursing homes in the eight-county Houston region, the clock was ticking.

emily.foxhall@chron.com
A 24-year-old man died on May 12 in a fall at a downtown Sioux Fall, South Dakota, construction site, police said.

Police were called around 10:45 a.m. about a man injured at the construction site of the First Premier Bank building. The Argus Leader reports the site is the planned national headquarters building of First Premier Bank.

The man died at the scene. Police spokesman Sam Clemens said police will not release the name of the victim because there does not appear to be a crime committed.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration is investigating the death with help from police.

Construction of the five-story building started in March 2019 and was planned to finish by November 2020, with the bank opening in 2021. Construction company Henry Carlson Co. is working as general contractor for the project and did not comment when contacted by the Argus Leader.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Law Enforcement Training Development Construction South Dakota
An international study of essential supply lines has found that Australia relies on China for critical medical technology more than any other 'Five Eyes' nation.

The report, Breaking the China Chain, published by the hawkish London-based think tank Henry Jackson Society, examined the imports of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing countries: Australia, United States, United Kingdom, New Zealand and Canada.

The findings prompted 23 Conservative MPs to write to the Trade Secretary Liz Truss, demanding that the UK's post-Brexit trade policy be recast to ensure strategic independence from China.

Much of the medical equipment dispatched around the world - including to Australia - to fight COVID-19 outbreaks has been made in China.
Decades of sexual abuse of young scouts perpetrated by senior figures has been exposed in a damning review by an independent safeguarding consultant into the running of Scouting Ireland.

The review lays bare a litany of abuse which was allowed to continue because very senior people knew of, and protected, alleged perpetrators.

Yesterday Scouting Ireland apologised to victims and survivors of the abuse and said it was fully implementing recommendations made by the consultant.

The chair of Scouting Ireland, Adrian Tennant, made the apology as the report by Ian Elliott was published.

Mr Tennant said Mr Elliott's learning review into historical sexual abuse, which was commissioned by Scouting Ireland, uncovered "shocking stories of sexual abuse in Scouting over many decades".

"To date 356 victims and survivors have come forward to Scouting Ireland, to the gardai, to the PSNI and to Tusla and Gateway to share their stories. We know of 275 known or suspected perpetrators," he added.

"Young people in Scouting were abused, sexually and physically, and sometimes violently.

Protected

"Some alleged perpetrators were serial abusers with multiple victims. The alleged perpetrators were at all levels within their organisations up to the most senior levels.

"There is evidence that very senior people knew of, and protected, alleged perpetrators within these organisations.

"This 'cronyism' led to cover-up or looking the other way.

"Abuse did happen, it was not responded to in a way that protected the young person or sought to hold the offender to account.

"Most shockingly of all, Mr Elliott states that based on emerging evidence, senior volunteers, who were thought to be sex offenders, did share information with each other about their abuse and took steps to facilitate that abuse for each other," he added.

Scouting Ireland is the largest youth organisation in the country, with nearly 50,000 members.

In his apology, Mr Tennant said Scouting Ireland "unreservedly apologises to the victims and survivors of abuse in Scouting who were failed".

"We are sorry that adults in Scouting harmed you. We are sorry that you were not protected. We are sorry that you were not listened to or were unable to tell your story at that time.

"We are sorry for the hurt caused to you and the legacy of that hurt which many of you still live with today.

"We know we cannot take away that hurt, but we do want you to know that you have been heard.

"We want you to know that you are believed. We want you to know we will support you.

"We are determined that there is no place in Scouting for anyone who, by design or by omission, harms a child, as you were.

"Cronyism, looking away and covering up are not victimless crimes. They are enabling actions.

"We pledge to adopt and deliver the learnings and recommendations of this report.

"It is a light pointing into a very dark corner but it is also a beacon for the standards, culture and structures we must have, and which must be resourced to ensure that Scouting is a safe place for young people.

"You, by your bravery in speaking out, have helped to uncover the truth.

"Your legacy now is to have helped to make Scouting Ireland a safer place for young people; to have reminded us of why we exist - to support and cherish our young people through their Scouting experience," he added.

Mr Elliott highlighted that many difficulties occurred in the history of Scouting, particularly through the 1980s and 1990s.

Destroyed

He highlighted how suspected or known sex offenders gained positions of power in the organisation, and how they exercised control and engaged in cronyism that would allow the abuse to continue.

"There was cover-up and there was a failure to report," he said.

"The full extent of this cannot be determined exactly as records have been lost and destroyed.

"There appears to have been an almost complete absence of any concern for the young people that were abused.

"Where attempts were made to support them, this is poorly recorded.

"A characteristic of the poor governance that existed in Scouting was the existence of a culture driven by self-interest, with little attention paid to the young people involved.

"Small cliques emerged and played too great a part in how the Scouting bodies operated.

"Individuals who had a sexual interest in young people, rose to positions of power and influence on occasions and controlled any fledgling accountability processes, preventing known offenders from being removed from Scouting.

"Cronyism thrived and remained a significant problem in Scouting up to and including the reviewer's involvement with Scouting Ireland.

"Poor governance structures contributed greatly to the failure of Scouting to consistently and comprehensively address abuse.

"Individuals who behaved badly were not held to account through robust and timely disciplinary processes.

"The introduction of an accountability framework was resisted.

"Ironically, the popularity of Scouting increased during the time when sexual abuse appears to have been most prevalent.

"Individuals who were suspected or known to be sex offenders gained positions of power and became largely impregnable.

"The learning review cites the existence of this negative culture driven by self-interest, along with poor governance structures as being the main cause of the continuation of sexual abuse in Scouting."

Damaging

Scouting Ireland chief executive Anne Griffin said she wanted to assure all its members and the wider public that it is a very different organisation today.

"Bad culture, as described in Mr Elliott's learning review, thrives in poor structure and poor governance," she said.

"Over the past three years we have implemented new governance and safeguarding structures which I believe, help us to stamp out any lingering elements of this damaging behaviour.

"I am determined to ensure that we continue this work so that we become an organisation that is the standard bearer for best in class safeguarding and governance."

Mr Elliott added that Scouting is a wonderful activity for the vast majority of young people that participate in it. "For some, this has not been the case and that is a tragedy," he said.

"It is so important that the hard lessons of past mistakes are studied and applied to present practice.

"Not every institution has the courage and commitment to do this, and it is very much to the credit of Scouting Ireland that they have shown their willingness to face their history and address it."
On National Arbor Day, an annual celebration of nature that encourages people to plant trees, Northwestern Engineering first-year students Lauren Ashby, Matthew Schilling, and Bill Yen won the 2020 Product Development Management Associations White Space Challenge for designing a natural air purifier  named Arbor  that uses moss.

We made a joke that it was a sign, Yen said.

The White Space Challenge is a cross-university competition presented by the Chicago chapter of the Product Development Management Association (PDMA), in conjunction with the Northwestern University Segal Professional Bridge group, to promote white space research by challenging students to tackle real-world problems where there are currently unmet needs or where the existing solutions fall short.

Unlike other development competitions, teams research the problem and work to develop a solution to fit their stakeholder needs by conducting evidence-based research to support their work. The competition has been in existence for five years, and focuses on design research, with the final rubric a presentation of that research in support of the students' work.

The pandemic shifted this edition of the competition, open to undergraduate and graduate students from any Midwest university in any discipline. Though 10 teams from schools such as Northwestern, Purdue University, and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign were selected to advance to the second round of the competition, only six said they could continue due to the pandemic.

In the past, students were invited to a conference to present their final projects, including prototypes. This year, their presentations were held April 24 via Zoom. Teams showed off their sketches, 3D mockups, and renderings, and also answered questions from a judging panel of product development professionals.

The component, which resembles a small tree, pulls in air and sends it back out after filtering it through a sprig of moss. It is designed not to clog because moss cleans itself as it captures particles from the air. Thats something normal air purifiers dont do.

As first-year students, we knew that we were up against a lot of seniors and graduate students, and we thought the likelihood we were going to win was very slim, Ashby said. When they announced we won, I was really happy. I started screaming and jumping up and down.

The students will split a $2,500 prize, and they earned the opportunity to present at the national competition tentatively scheduled to be held in September as part of PDMAs annual national conference. They are also considering pursuing a patent for their idea.

Ashby, Schilling, and Yen began working on the project during winter quarter, inspired by living in their dormitories. They studied the air quality in dorms and also a nursing home in nearby Niles, Illinois. They performed two surveys on air quality, asked how people feel about plants, and even discussed those topics with two different companies: Moss Mats LLC and Green City Solutions.

Professor Janice Mejia, who taught the trio in Design Thinking and Communication-1, alerted them to the contest and helped them hone their idea.

It was a pleasure to have Bill, Matt, and Lauren in my DTC-1 class, Mejia said. Throughout the course they asked insightful questions about their design projects, were receptive to feedback, and ensured the users needs were addressed in their final prototypes.

In the end, their idea and use of CAD stood out.

In high school, I used to think I couldnt win (contests) until I was a senior, and that the actual work wouldnt start until college, Schilling said. Ive realized this is real life now. It doesnt matter how old you are, you can do whatever you want.
Today show host Allison Langdon has been branded 'tone deaf and ignorant' after she told a fast food worker to consider getting a job in a different industry.

The presenter made the comment to Laurence Sadler, who works for a national fas food chain, on Friday morning after he detailed health and safety concerns he had for the industry.

The remark was met with an awkward laugh and silence, before Langdon quickly moved onto the next segment of the breakfast TV program.

However the blunder wasn't missed by angry viewers who blasted Langdon for her comment on social media and said she should be 'ashamed' of herself.

Scroll down for video

Today host Allison Langdon told a fast food worker to consider getting a job in a different industry after he raised concerns about workers' safety during COVID-19

'Talk about out of touch with the real world. Apologise and don't be so pompous,' one person tweeted.

Another said: 'Clearly you've never had to struggle through a sh***y hospitality job just to make ends meet. Clearly you've never had to apply for a job. If everyone "gets another job" good luck finding a coffee. Tone deaf and completely ignorant.'

'Did you think that your comment was helpful? Productive,' another asked.

'Channel Nine and The Today Show should issue an apology to all hospitality workers in Australia who were just told that their suffering is their own fault.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Channel Nine for comment.

Mr Sadler, who is a Hospo Voice union representative, told Daily Mail Australia if every hospitality worker left their job the TV host wouldn't have anywhere to buy a takeaway coffee.

He said: 'There's no jobs. That's just a fact. And also the kind of logic doesn't really weigh up because I'd just told her how bad hospitality was for workers and she's saying if it's so bad, then leave.

'Obviously, the logic there is that everyone would leave because it's bad for everyone then there would be no industry anymore and Allison would no longer be able to get takeaway coffees.

Social media users have said the breakfast television host should be 'ashamed' for her comment

'I've been looking for jobs for ages, but you apply for 500 hospitality jobs and you get two responses, so it's not a very fruitful or rewarding exercise.

'And it's the lowest paid.'

He said he had been bracing for a difficult interview but he was still thrown by the comment at the end.

'I wasn't thrilled, it took me back a bit. It was already quite a hostile interview... it was a bit of a run the mill union bashing piece and I wasn't expecting much more but it was still a bit of a rubbish comment,' he said.

Laurence Sadler, (pictured) who works for a national fast-food chain and is also a Hospo Voice union representative was asked why he didn't just 'get a job in a different industry' after raising concerns about issues in the hospitality sector

'I've been looking for jobs for ages, but you apply for 500 hospo jobs and you get two responses, so it's not a very fruitful not mentally rewarding exercise and it's the lowest paid,' Mr Sadler said (pictured top left)

Figures released on Thursday revealed 600,000 Australians have lost work since the pandemic began, but the figure is thought to be much higher at 1.3million.

Mr Sadler told the Today Show the hospitality sector is already plagued with issues without the added concern of staff contracting coronavirus.

Poll Is Ally Langdon out of touch? Yes No Is Ally Langdon out of touch? Yes 1780 votes

No 317 votes Now share your opinion





'Hospitality is a really raw deal for workers. It often exploits the most vulnerable member of our society that is young and migrant workers... It's a really quite a dodgy industry for workers and we need to be vigilant against bosses who are willing to rort the rules to get a profit,' he said.

'Well maybe you should get a job in another industry then,' Langdon said.

'Maybe,' Mr Sadler laughed uncomfortably.

'Yep,' Langdon said after an awkward on-air silence.

The United Workers Union which oversees 'Hospo Voice' believes a decision to ease lockdown restrictions will put workers' safety at risk because of a lack of regulated health and hygiene measures.

Langdon made the comment during Friday's airing of the breakfast television show
The UK's biggest COVID-19 vaccine project, currently being tested by the University of Oxford, has shown some promising results in a small study with monkeys.

Researchers involved with the ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 trials said the vaccine had shown signs of priming the rhesus macaque monkeys' immune systems to fend off the deadly virus and showed no indications of adverse effects.

According to the study, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, a single vaccination dose was also effective in preventing damage to the lungs organs that can be severely affected by the virus.

"A single vaccination with ChAdOx1 nCoV-19 induced a humoral and cellular immune response in rhesus macaques," the authors said.

"We observed a significantly reduced viral load in bronchoalveolar lavage fluid and respiratory tract tissue of vaccinated animals challenged with SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) compared with control animals, and no pneumonia was observed in vaccinated rhesus macaques," they said.

The researchers found that after being exposed to high levels of the novel coronavirus, none of the six monkeys that were given the vaccine developed viral pneumonia. Also, there was no sign that the vaccine had made the animals more vulnerable.

The development has been welcomed as encouraging signs for a vaccine currently undergoing human trials but experts warn that it remains to be seen if it is as effective in humans.

"These results support the ongoing clinical trial of the vaccine in humans, the results of which are eagerly awaited," said Dr Penny Ward, visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at King's College London.

Sarah Gilbert, professor of vaccinology at the University of Oxford's Jenner Institute who is leading the research, has previously said she has a "high degree of confidence" in the vaccine.

"Of course, we have to test it and get data from humans. We have to demonstrate it actually works and stops people getting infected with coronavirus before using the vaccine in the wider population," she said.

British drugs giant AstraZeneca has struck up a "landmark partnership" with the Oxford University team and said that 100 million doses could be made by the end of the year if the trials prove successful.

"We're now starting to wait for an advocacy signal to see whether people who've been vaccinated don't get the disease, so that's the next step," said John Bell, professor of medicine at the University of Oxford.

However, the team is faced with the risk that there may not be enough active disease in the community for the participants to catch it naturally, calculations around which remain ongoing as the human trials progress in regions of the UK.

If the trial is successful in the UK, the Oxford team will approach scientists in the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI) and will approach the government of Kenya for permission to evaluate in Kenya.

"We also want to make sure that the rest of the world will be ready to make this vaccine at scale so that it gets to populations in developing countries, for example, where the need is very great," Bell said.

Meanwhile, it is hoped that results from the first human trials could be available by next month after healthcare workers on the frontlines of the pandemic were among those in the first batch of the trials in the UK.

The UK is the third worst-hit country in the world with 234,441 coronavirus cases. The US tops the chart with 1,417,889 cases, followed by Russia at 252,245.

The deadly virus has so far claimed 33,693 lives in the UK.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
With a May 18 restart date for auto manufacturing plants approaching there are reports that several workers have been sent home at the Fiat Chrysler Sterling Heights Assembly Plant (SHAP) north of Detroit with suspected cases of COVID-19. On Wednesday, FCA management confirmed one case.

Workers are reporting on Facebook that one of the SHAP team leaders called into work to prepare for the reopening of the plant self-reported she had a cough Monday, was sent home, then got called back in Tuesday after management asked her if the cough could be allergies. The worker then received her positive test result Wednesday after having already returned to work and potentially infected others.

The reports of cases of COVID-19 at SHAP have heightened workers' opposition to the premature return to work being engineered by the auto companies with the support of the United Auto Workers and the blessings of Michigan Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer. The governor gave the green light to reopen factories, despite Michigan being an epicenter of coronavirus infection.

Workers at FCA Sterling Heights Assembly Plant

There have been over 3,300 new reported cases of COVID-19 in Michigan over the past week and more than 460 deaths, bringing to 4,700 the statewide death toll, the majority in the Detroit area, the center of auto production.

If Fiat Chrysler, Ford and GM are successful in forcing more than 50,000 workers back into factories in the Detroit area, these plants will be a huge vector for the transmission of the deadly disease to workers families and residents throughout the metropolitan area. It is noteworthy that the week after Trump ordered the reopening of meatpacking plants, the number of cases in counties with these plants jumped by 40 percent.

The reopening of the auto industry has the support of virtually the entire Democratic Party apparatus. Typical were the remarks of first-term Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA operative, who in a television interview Thursday praised the restart of auto production, calling it an example of how to reopen safely.

This rosy picture was contested by a young worker at SHAP, who told the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter, They are putting people at risk. Who is to say everyone who came into the factory since those people returned to work hasnt contracted it and gone home and given it to their families?

We could all go into work and if we dont have proper testing, we wouldnt know we have it. Its like they dont care.

People are worried about being rushed back to work and catching COVID.

Reports that the UAW is requiring its international staff to be tested for COVID-19 before returning to work at the unions Solidarity House headquarters in Detroit or joint training centers has evoked an angry response from autoworkers. Many have expressed outrage that UAW officials will be getting tested, but not workers returning to the plants.

One worker posted on Facebook, If leadership and management are the only ones required to be tested before coming back to work, where does that leave us? Are we guinea pigs?

Why are they required to be tested before they go back, but we can only be tested if we show signs? Its too late then.

In response to the reported new COVID-19 case at SHAP, Mark Stewart, chief operating officer of FCA North America, issued a letter stating that plans for the restart of production Monday were going forward at full speed.

This is a great opportunity (my emphasis) for me to remind you to study in detail the Return to Work information that has been sent to you," the letter read. "Our protocols are designed to provide safety measures at multiple points and on multiple levels. In the case of our colleague at Sterling Heights, her co-workers at the plant were protected by the face masks and eyeglasses we provide each day, protected by the measures created to enforce social distancing and protected by the deep cleaning and sanitization of workstations.

At least three workers employed at SHAP have died from COVID-19, as well as two workers from the nearby Sterling Heights Stamping plant. Altogether, 22 FCA workers have died during the pandemic. The death toll would have been even higher if matters had been left in the hands of the auto bosses and the UAW. But workers at SHAP and other FCA facilities in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Windsor, Canada carried out wildcat strikes and other job actions, forcing the closure of the North American auto industry in mid-March.

A Detroit area autoworker told the Macomb Daily, I'm personally not ready to return to work and feel they are rushing to get us back into the plant to make a profit at the expense of those working there. While they have stated that they are actively engaged in making the plant safer with COVID-19 guidelines, it is almost impossible to (be) social distanced and work the line at a major auto plant. Especially one pumping out on average about 625 trucks per 10-hour shift.

On the role of the UAW, the worker added, We're supposed to be united so why is the UAW always dividing us just because FCA says jump.

Management and the UAW were counting on economic pressure to force many workers back into the plants, the SHAP worker told the WSWS. Part of the economic strain is being used to drive people to come into work. Thats the first thing they are going to use, Do you want a job, do you want to make money?

This pressure was being compounded by delays in federal and state assistance to the unemployed, he said. People are online talking about it. Some people havent even received stimulus checks. There are stimulus checks going to dead people.

I have started being more conscious about what is going on around me, not just around me personally, but in the world.

Ultimately, that is the only way we are going to stop the negative impasse in the world. I think everyone should have a fair shot in life. I feel with capitalism it is all about exploitation, how much can we get out of you before you are used up.

A tier two worker at Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit also spoke to the Autoworker Newsletter. The first shift at the plant, A Crew, is scheduled to come in Monday, with second and third shifts scheduled to return over the following two weeks.

We have an issue going on now. People are coming into the plant and the masks are laid out on the table. They are not in plastic. People are touching one or two or three before they pick the one they want. Thats contamination. It should be inside of something.

At the beginning of May, [UAW President] Rory Gamble made a statement that it was too soon to go back. It wasnt a week later that he said that it was not up to him, that contractually they can start when they want to. Thats real nonsense. It pissed everybody off even more.

Its ultimately our health and safety. We are very aware that at some point we have to go back to work, but it is definitely too soon. They are not making it safe for any of us. The fact is if its not safe, we are not coming back. Its serious. To say we are scared for our safety is an understatement.

The Socialist Equality Party and the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter have called for the formation of rank-and-file safety committees independent of the UAW to lead the fight against the premature return to work. Workers must insist that non-essential production be halted until the pandemic is contained through universal testing and contact tracing, while workers receive full income and medical coverage.

At the same time, these rank-and-file safety committees must oversee safety conditions in the plant, working in conjunction with scientists and medical experts committed to defend workers, not the profits of the corporations. If these committees observe unsafe conditions, they will inform all workers and have the power to halt production, so workers can safely leave the plant.

In March, following job actions at the FCA Windsor Assembly and Warren Truck Assembly plants, workers at SHAP stopped production after cases of COVID-19 were reported in the plant, sparking further walkouts.

Commenting on the wildcat strike, the SHAP worker said, I felt that was a very important moment. It showed us we can make things happen. It was a very important moment for any worker. Workers felt we were being mistreated, not getting their just dues.

"I have seen blood, sweat and tears working in this environment. I am sure all those [who] have had that type of experience may have felt they wanted to walk away from it. But need drove them to be in this high stress situation. The walkout was symbolic of how a lot of people felt.

The Jefferson worker added, No one is ready to go back. Everyone says they are too much in a hurry. We were the ones who stopped them working because we refused to go with the flow. The virus was running rampant and people were catching it. People are still catching the disease and dying. Why should we allow them to do that?

We should keep the same energy now. We should not just be rushing back into the plant. We need to develop a collective understanding that we are not going to just come back to unsafe working conditions.
The American state has restricted black peoples mobility at least since the time of slavery. These regulations included convict leasing, Black Codes, loitering laws, redlining, racial zoning, redistricting (legal and illegal), the prison-industrial complex and increased surveillance. This history has given us entire cities built to shepherd black labor and presence.

One might even consider the black experience as a kind of never-ending quarantine  and indeed Jim Crow laws that grew partly out of concerns that black people spread contagion, like tuberculosis and malaria, affirmed as much. The eugenics movement, popular in the early 20th century, led many doctors and scientists to attribute the precarious state of black health to physiological, biological and moral inferiority, instead of structural causes like poverty and racism.

Nearly a century ago, my grandparents fled the Jim Crow South, joining the millions of black families that moved north and west as part of the Great Migration. No matter how many thousands of miles they crossed, they met the same thing: not freedom, but constraint. Even in some of Americas most progressive cities like San Francisco, where my family ended up, black people were relegated to parts of town with limited housing, overcrowded schools and low-paying jobs. The police were everywhere.
Economics is sometimes described as the painful elaboration of the obvious. Due to the involvement of human beings, and our stochastic nature, it is not an exact science.

Lionel Robbins 1932 work An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science provided a definition still in use today: Economics is the science which studies human behaviour as a relationship between given ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.

Economists seem to invite ridicule, and jokes abound; Economists were invented to make astrologers look good, What happens when you put 10 economists in a room? You get 11 opinions, and How has the French Revolution affected world economic growth? Its too early to say.

There are three different models for rebooting the global economy:

full reboot approach now being pursued by New Zealand  the government waits until new COVID-19 cases are at zero and then restarts social and economic activity

hybrid approach similar to Swedens  the restarting of social and economic activity but continued strict isolation for vulnerable populations

graduated approach being implemented in China  governments lift restrictions in a deliberate, phased, and incremental manner based on the progression of the disease, the readiness of the public health system, and the preparedness of the public.

In Beyond the Curve: How to Restart in the Wake of COVID-19 Management Consultants the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) provide guidelines for governments. The current situation is novel, Governments around the world have weathered economic shocks before  most recently the financial crisis and recession of the late 2000s. But the fallout from the COVID-19 pandemic is different. There is no modern analog for the shutdown of economic activity in most of the world.

According to BCG, governments must ensure they are able to adjust their strategy as conditions change, by adopting scenario planning. It is not possible to accurately predict how the pandemic will resolve.

In the technical jargon of economists, this is known as a big mess.

The World Bank working paper The Potential Impact of COVID-19 on GDP and Trade A Preliminary Assessment analyzes multiple scenarios to predict possible economic impact. It concludes Our illustrative scenarios indicate that the potential loss of income in affected countries could be significant, with global GDP declining by up to 3.9 per cent, and developing countries hit the hardest (4 per cent on average, but some over 6.5 per cent). Our analysis is likely to underestimate the potential economic costs of the epidemic. We do not fully capture several important channels, such as the uncertainty-driven contraction in demand and FDI, and other real effects of a financial shock. A few disclaimers there, not surprisingly.

The complexity of the predictive model is apparent in the Envision Model below, and illustrates why economics is not an exact science.

Recently, over 300 lawmakers from around the world urged the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to cancel the debt of the poorest countries in response to the coronavirus pandemic, and to boost funding to avert a global economic meltdown.

Perhaps this actually makes sense. We could follow the universal advice of baffled IT guys everywhere  try rebooting. Pretend it didnt happen. Nobody knows how to fix this, and a do-over would be great. An engineer, an accountant and an economist go into a bar 
Mass redundancies and attacks on staff pay and conditions are being planned by universities across the UK as the COVID-19 pandemic tips already struggling institutions into financial collapse.

Universities could see a funding shortfall of 2.5 billion, with around 60,000 jobs on the line, according to research conducted by policy consultant London Economics for the University and College Union (UCU). Thirty thousand of these jobs will likely be axed in the university sector, with a further 30,000 jobs wiped out in local communities.

Much of the lost income is due to plummeting international student enrolments. According to the UCU report, an estimated 47 percent drop in international student numbers will cost the university sector 1.5 billion in the next academic year.

Another 612 million in losses will come from a 16 percent drop in domestic enrolment, as students defer their studies. A further 350 million will be lost due to an estimated 47 percent fall in European Union student recruitment.

Almost three-quarters of universities will be left in a critical financial position where income only just covers expenditure, the report states, with all higher education institutions affected in some way.

International students make up nearly a fifth of the UK student population and contribute 7 billion in fees to universities each year. At some universities, up to a quarter or even a third of students are from overseas. In the 2017-18 academic year, 458,490 non-UK students were studying in Britain, 325,665 of these from outside the EU.

Students from overseas can pay up to nine times more in fees than domestic or EU students, whose tuition costs are capped at an already sky-high 9,250 a year. Non-UK/EU students can pay up to 26,000 a year for their university education (plus living costs), or up to 56,800 for some medical degrees.

Some universities expect an 80-100 percent drop in the number of international students enrolling this year, according to a blog post from the Higher Education Policy Institute (HEPI). For some institutions, the potential loss of income is expected to be more than 100 million.

The impact of the coronavirus pandemic on the university sector, which contributes more than 95 billion to the UK economy each year and employs nearly a million workers, will likely lead to a 6 billion hit to the British economy.

The fall in domestic and international student enrolments is having a devastating effect on UK universities due to their overwhelming dependence on tuition fee income, as central government funding into higher education has been cut to the bone.

Between 2011-12 and 2019-20, central government spending on higher education teaching in England fell by 74 percent, according to government figures.

In the same period, the ratio of government funding to tuition fee income was reversed. In 2011-12, direct government funding to universities in England made up 72 percent of total income, with tuition fees contributing the remaining 28 percent. By comparison, 27.6 percent of university income came from the government funding council in 2019-20, with 72.4 percent coming from student tuition fees.

Government investment in university teaching has nearly halved in less than a decade. Total government funding in England fell by 3 billion in the eight years between 2011-12 and 2019-20, dropping from 6.7 billion a year to a mere 3.7 billion.

Now, in response to the coronavirus, universities are determined to accelerate long-planned attacks on their workforce. Higher education centres across the country are bringing forward mass lay-offs, pay freezes and course reductions.

At the end of March and the start of April, the University of Sussex, the University of Bristol and the University of Newcastle laid off hundreds of temporary staff and cancelled contracts, citing the impact of coronavirus.

In May, the University of Roehampton became the first UK university to announce job losses affecting permanent staff, as part of a supposedly voluntary severance scheme. The university, which has already lost 4 million, is predicting a reduction in income of up to 31 million and will lay off 70 members of staff on permanent contracts.

Other universities have announced job cuts and pay reductions:

 The President and Vice-President of Manchester University have laid out plans to reduce pay costs by freezing recruitment, deferring pay awards due to promotions and offering unpaid voluntary leave or retirement. Job losses may also be required, an email to staff stated.

 The University of Portsmouth has announced plans to cut 11 members of staff in their English Literature department.

 The University of Nottingham has announced a voluntary redundancy scheme and proposed a freeze on pay increments, promotions and recruitment.

 Oxford University has announced a 12-month hiring freeze and the redeployment of some existing staff across other roles.

 Edinburgh University has proposed a pay freeze for current workers and a block on any new recruitment. Many staff members will be furloughed under the governments Job Retention Scheme.

 Durham University has announced it will slash face-to-face teaching by 25 percent from September and outsource some online teaching to a private provider.

In response to these historic financial losses and proposed attacks on university workers, the UCU pathetically pleaded with the Johnson government to stand behind universities and to [underwrite] funding lost from the fall in student numbers.

These dismal appeals have fallen on deaf ears, with the Johnson government refusing to allocate a single penny in additional funding. Instead, a misnamed support package will bring forward 2.6 billion worth of tuition fees (paid by the government as a loan to students) which universities would have received anyway and 100 million in advances on research grants to universities.

Labour and Conservative governments have worked for decades to transform higher education into a lucrative market for private financial interests. Tuition fees were introduced and then tripled by Labour in 1998 and 2004. The Tories drove up tuition fees to 9,250 a year, scrapped maintenance grants for poorer students, and abolished the cap on student numbers to make universities more reliant on fee income.

Staff pay has dropped by 17 percent since 2009, with over half (54 percent) of academic staff on insecure contracts. Short-term and zero- or variable-hour contracts proliferate.

In 2017, the Higher Education and Research Act established the Office for Students (OfS), whose mandate was to act as a market regulator and competition authority, enforcing market pressures on the higher education system. This resulted in the incentivisation of universities to engage in wasteful and corrosive competition for student numbers and private sources of income.

The subordination of higher education to the capitalist market has created a disaster, with Alistair Jarvis, chief executive of Universities UK recently warning that without massive government support, There is a very significant chance of some institutions going bust.

Students and staff have systematically opposed the gutting of public education. In 2018, lecturers at 65 universities struck in defence of pensions, while a 14-day walkout in February and March this yearto defend pensions, pay and conditionswas the largest strike in UK higher education history.

While the strike movement was effectively ended by the coronavirus lockdown, politically the UCU had already made clear its intention to sabotage any genuine fight. On March 5, UCU General Secretary Jo Grady stated that We have made it crystal clear to employers that we are not inflexible we have extended an olive branch to employers by offering to compromise on some of the demands which we started our industrial action with.

University staff and students must reject all demands for sacrifice by the Johnson government, university management and the UCU. The defence of pay, jobs and conditions, including workplace safety, demands the formation of rank-and-file committees to oppose the marketisation of education and fight for socialist policies including free education for all.
MINNEAPOLIS - A Pakistani doctor and former Mayo Clinic researcher has been indicted on one count of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization after authorities say he told paid FBI informants that he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group and wanted to carry out lone wolf attacks in the U.S.

The indictment against Muhammad Masood, 28, was announced Friday by U.S. Attorney Erica MacDonald. Masood was initially charged by criminal complaint and has been in custody since his March 19 arrest at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

Prosecutors say Masood was in the U.S. on a work visa. They allege in court documents that from January to March, Masood made several statements to paid informants  whom he believed were members of the Islamic State group  pledging his allegiance to the group and its leader. He also expressed a desire to travel to Syria to fight for IS and carry out lone wolf attacks in the U.S., they said.

Masood messaged an informant there is so much I wanted to do here .. .lon wulf stuff you know ... but I realized I should be on the ground helping brothers sisters kids, according to an FBI affidavit.

Prosecutors say Masood planned to leave for Amman, Jordan, and go on to Syria at the end of March, but on March 16 he had to change his travel plans because Jordan closed its borders due to the coronavirus pandemic. Masood and one of the informants then developed a plan for him to fly from Minneapolis to Los Angeles to meet with that informant, whom Masood believed would help him travel in a cargo ship into Islamic State territory.

Masoods attorney didnt immediately return messages left Friday.

Court documents do not name the clinic where Masood worked. The Mayo Clinic has confirmed that Masood formerly worked at the medical centre, but said he was not employed there when he was arrested. According to an affidavit supporting the criminal complaint, Masood said in February that he was going to notify his employer that his last day of work would be March 17.

The affidavit said the FBI began investigating in January, after learning that someone, later determined to be Masood, had posted messages on an encrypted social media platform indicating an intent to support IS.

On Jan. 24, Masood contacted one of the informants on the encrypted platform and said he was a medical doctor with a Pakistani passport and wanted to travel to Syria, Iraq or northern Iran near Afghanistan to fight on the front line as well as help the wounded brothers, the affidavit said.

Roughly three dozen Minnesotans  mostly men from the states large Somali community  have left since 2007 to join al-Shabab in Somalia or militant groups in Syria, including the Islamic State group. Several others have been convicted on terrorism-related charges for plotting to join or provide support to those groups.

___

Follow Amy Forliti on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/amyforliti
Washington

A federal appeals court in Virginia on Thursday revived a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by profiting from his Washington hotel, a decision that will most likely lead the Justice Department to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep the plaintiffs from gathering evidence in the case.

"We recognize that the president is no ordinary petitioner, and we accord him great deference as the head of the executive branch," the majority opinion from the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. "But Congress and the Supreme Court have severely limited our ability to grant the extraordinary relief the president seeks."

The 15-member appeals court in Richmond met in December to consider whether a three-judge appellate panel had wrongly dismissed the lawsuit over the Trump International Hotel brought by the District of Columbia and the state of Maryland.

The Justice Department asked the full appeals court to either uphold the panel's ruling or allow the department to appeal the lower court judge's procedural rulings against the president, an emergency form of relief that is rarely allowed when a case is in midstream.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The attorneys general for the District of Columbia and Maryland are arguing that Trump's interest in the hotel violates the Constitution's bans on accepting benefits or "emoluments" from state or foreign governments. Government officials from Maine to Saudi Arabia have patronized the 263-room luxury property.

The local jurisdictions claim they have standing to sue because the Trump hotel competes with hotels and convention centers in their areas.

The Justice Department contends that the president cannot be sued for violating the emoluments bans without the express authorization of Congress.
Charlize Theron delighted fans with her portrayal of the formidable Furiosa in Mad Max: Fury Road.

But the Oscar-winning actress won't be reprising the role in a planned spin-off from director George Miller.

The filmmaker told the New York Times that an upcoming stand-alone Furiosa movie will be centered on a younger version of the character and while he toyed with using de-aging technology on Theron, he's decided that going down that path wouldn't really work.

Not coming back: Charlize Theron will not be reprising her role as the formidable Furiosa in a planned Mad Max: Fury Road spin-off

'For the longest time, I thought we could just use CG de-aging on Charlize, but I dont think were nearly there yet,' Miller said.

'Despite the valiant attempts on The Irishman, I think theres still an uncanny valley. Everyone is on the verge of solving it, particular Japanese video-game designers, but theres still a pretty wide valley, I believe.'

Instead, Miller tells the NY Times he's begun the process of casting an actress in her 20s in the role after getting the greenlight on the project from Warner Bros.

Prequel: Director George Miller, pictured with Theron on the set of the 2015 movie, told the NY Times he'd considered using de-aging technology on the actress but decided it wouldn't work

Back story: Instead, the filmmaker is searching for an actress in her 20s to play a younger version of the character in the prequel centered on how Furiosa became a hardened warrior

The Furiosa film is based on a backstory for the character that Miller and Fury Road scribe Nick Lathouris developed for the 2015 action adventure that paired Theron with Tom Hardy as protagonist Max.

The new movie will explore how Furiosa became a hardened warrior.

Meanwhile, Theron and Hardy recently acknowledged to the NY Times that they had feuded on the set of Mad Max: Fury Road.

'In retrospect, I didnt have enough empathy to really, truly understand what [Hardy] must have felt like to step into Mel Gibsons shoes,' the South African star said.

For his part, British actor Hardy shared: 'I think in hindsight, I was in over my head in many ways.'

'The pressure on both of us was overwhelming at times. What she needed was a better, perhaps more experienced, partner in me,' he explained. 'Thats something that cant be faked. Id like to think that now that Im older and uglier, I could rise to that occasion.'

Hindsight: Theron and Hardy recently acknowledged to the NY Times that they had feuded while making Fury Road 'In retrospect, I didnt have enough empathy to really, truly understand what [Hardy] must have felt like to step into Mel Gibsons shoes,' Theron said
A 'fiercely independent' 102-year-old woman who once worked with Winston Churchill was given just two hours to live after contracting Covid-19 - but was sitting up in bed with a bowl of Weetabix days later.

Catherine Grace had a secretive government role on London's South Bank but has never divulged the nature of her work with the war-time prime minister, she says, due to the Official Secrets Act.

She was taken to Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, with the deadly disease two weeks ago and, last Monday, doctors told her distraught family to 'expect the worst'.

However, her cousin, Marie Nebard, 63, couldn't believe it when a hospital worker rang her two days later and said Mrs Grace had made a 'miracle recovery'.

Catherine Grace, 102, who once worked with Winston Churchill in a secretive government role, was thought to have only hours to live after contracting Covid-19. But days later, she made a miraculous recovery at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield, West Yorkshire. She is pictured above today, and in the 1940s

Mrs Grace - lovingly known as Auntie Kitt - never divulged the nature of her war-time work, she says, as she signed the Official Secrets Act. Her cousin Marie Nebard said: 'Auntie Kitt met Winston Churchill through her work a number of times during the war and said he was a very nice man, although she didn't like the smell of his cigars'

The OAP - lovingly known as Auntie Kitt - was wheeled out of hospital on May 5 to a rapturous round of applause from front-line workers.

Kitt has now returned to Oak Park care home in Wakefield, where staff threw a 'welcome back' party. Her family will be able to visit from a distance in the coming days.

Marie, a mother-of-four, said: 'At one point, we were told Auntie Kitt wouldn't make it through the night and then she might not live for another two hours.

'The thought of her dying like this was unimaginable but then I got a call saying she had made a miracle recovery and I couldn't believe what I was hearing.'

She added: 'Me and the family are all so happy Auntie Kitt is well again. She is the most amazingly resilient woman and the backbone of us all.'

Kitt, who is originally from Essex, was made a widow in the 1950s when her WWII RAF veteran husband Alec died from cancer. She never remarried or had children.

Marie said her cousin 'dedicated her life' to working in a highly secretive government role, which she has never fully divulged the details of to anyone, even her family.

Kitt, who is originally from Essex, was made a widow in the 1950s when her WWII RAF veteran husband Alec died from cancer. She never remarried or had children

Marie said: 'We know Auntie Kitt worked for the government on London's South Bank but whenever we ask more, she says she can't say because she has signed the Official Secrets Act.

'She met Winston Churchill through her work a number of times during the war and said he was a very nice man, although she didn't like the smell of his cigars.'

After her retirement, Kitt continued to be 'fiercely independent' and highly active, taking dance classes three times a week right up until she was 99 years old.

Unfortunately, a broken hip stopped her from dancing but Kitt still visits her local market once a week with Marie.

The centenarian was struck down with coronavirus two weeks ago and rushed to a specialist ward at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield.

Marie said: 'The doctors said she was giving in and was unlikely to survive the night.

The centenarian was struck down with coronavirus two weeks ago and rushed to a specialist ward at Pinderfields Hospital. Restricted from visiting the hospital in person, Marie said goodbye to her cousin over video call and says, despite the situation, Kitt still had a 'big smile'. Marie has since paid tribute to the 'incredible' NHS staff who saved her cousin's life

'For her to go that way seemed so cruel. None of us could be there by her side and due to the lockdown, she wouldn't even get a proper funeral.'

Restricted from visiting the hospital in person, Marie said goodbye to her cousin over video call and says, despite the situation, Kitt still had a 'big smile'.

When the phone rang the following morning, Marie was sure it would be a nurse delivering the sad news of Kitt's death.

She said: 'I was expecting to hear that Auntie Kitt has died, but I was instead told Kitt had made a miracle recovery. I was in absolute shock.

'She was dying on Monday and then by Wednesday she was sat up in bed having a cup of coffee and a bowl of Weetabix - she's amazing.'

Marie has paid tribute to the 'incredible' NHS staff who saved her cousin's life, saying she and her family 'can't thank them enough' for what they have done.

Martin Barkley, chief executive at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust, said: 'I was delighted to hear of the great progress Mrs Grace has made in her recovery.

'Everyone at The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust would like to wish Kitty and her family all the best for the future.'
Coronavirus Crisis is an Opportunity to Deepen Relations With the EU-Salome Zourabichvili - GeorgianJournal
The state Legislature on Thursday approved $100 million in emergency rent relief for residential tenants at risk of homelessness because of the coronavirus economic fallout.

The bill, S2332, would create a state-run program targeting low- and middle-income New Jerseyans who are in imminent danger of homelessness due to a loss in income. It heads to Gov. Phil Murphy now.

The state Assembly passed the bill in a virtual session 66-0, with 14 abstentions. The Senate voted 39-0 remotely.

Economists predict unemployment could hit 25%, rivaling levels during the Great Depression. In New Jersey alone, nearly 1.1 million workers have applied for unemployment benefits in eight weeks as businesses were shut down to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Murphy has asked for compassion from mortgage lenders and landlords for homeowners and renters faced with the sudden loss of income. Hes also ordered a moratorium on evictions during the state of emergency.

But rents will come due, and many New Jerseyans wont be able to pay, Senate President Stephen Sweeney, who sponsored the bill, has said.

Under the bill, rental assistance would be run through homelessness prevention agencies in each county that would pay landlords directly on behalf of renters who are at risk of losing their housing.

In order the qualify, tenants must be at least 30 days past due on their rent, unable to make the payment without help, and have been harmed financially by the pandemic, according to the bill.

The emergency rental assistance would be funded through unspent Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery aid from Hurricane Sandy, if possible, or out of state coffers, the bills says.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Samantha Marcus may be reached at smarcus@njadvancemedia.com.


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St. Marys College in Dundalk, like every other school in the country, has witnessed the devastating impact of the Coronavarius on their school community.

Since mid-March the hustle and bustle of school life has been necessarily suspended and has been replaced by the clicking of computer keyboards and the new reality of online Teams and Zoom classes.

However the Marist Colleges T4 teachers; Mr. Murphy, Mr. Grugan and Mr. Morgan have been busy using their technology skills for the greater good over the past number of weekends. While practicing strict social distancing protocols and working different shifts in one of the Technology labs, the three teachers have produced nearly 200 PPE masks for use in the local community.

Department head, Mr. Daniel Murphy, was the brain-child behind the operation. Having witnessed some designs and drawings which were shared on a Technology Forum for teachers, he contacted the College Principal, Mr. Alan Craven to seek support for his initiative.

Sourcing some hard to find flexible sheeting from Cruach Steel in Dublin, the three department colleagues set about designing a prototype guard on the colleges Laser Pro cutter. The teachers alternated the weekend days that they would visit the school to cut the shield headpieces and flexi-guard sheets. The face shields were then assembled and tightened using elastic bands at the back of each headpiece.

Mr. Murphy explained; Having seen a design on an online teachers forum, I spoke with my department colleagues and we felt it was a project we could complete safely and give something back to the local care homes.

The face shields were bagged and packaged for delivery to two local care homes in Dundalk over the weekend. Principal Mr. Craven explained; We are blessed to have such good facilities in the College and it was a wonderful initiative by the teachers concerned. None of us in Dundalk have been immune to the effects of this horrible virus and it is nice as a college which prides itself on its community spirit, to offer something small yet tangible back to the local community.

The College are grateful to Mr. Michael Murray, Manager of AIB Dundalk for their kind support and sponsorship of some of the materials involved in the production of the guards.

For this reason, they are Dundalk Superstars!
There is concern amongst chief executives of County Council's right across the country at the funding shortfall which will affect the finances of those bodies for the remainder of 2020 and into next year as a consequence of COVID-19.

While measures announced by the Minister for Finance, Pascal Donohoe may allievate some of that concern if and when passed by a new incoming government, that concern for now remains valid.

Speaking prior to the business support measures announced by the Minister for Finance, Louth County Council Chief Executive Joan Martin voiced those concerns.

'There is no doubt that the chief executives group is very concerned about the potential shortfalls in income that councils are going to face this year, particularly from commercial rates.

'There will be an enormous concern from the Chief executives about the impact of that'.

In Louth, commerical rates generate approximately 35 million per annum of a total annual budget in excess of 100 million, or 35% of their annual budget.

'Rates is about 35 million of our income and we've no way of cutting back on expenditure to make up for that so councils are facing potentially very, very large losses.

'Essentially we will be looking at government to see if they are going to compensate councils for this loss', the Chief Executive outlined prior to Minister Donohoe's announcements which included measures in relation to ra tes beyond the three-month holiday which was announced at the outset of the COVID-19 crisis.

'Individual businesses who are affected by the shutdown could apply to the council for a pause on payments. It's not a holiday but they wouldn't have to pay for three months'.

Rates are not the only revenue stream which is adversely affected by COVID-19, as on street parking revenues in Dundalk and Drogheda have tumbled since the closure of retail and hospitality businesses in the town centres.

'There's not much parking on the street at the moment so our parking has gone down the massively to zero, and we are possibly looking at several months of no pay parking revenue which at 2 million a year, is a very important part of our income'.

Meanwhile the Chief Executive points out that the return from property tax has remained static in the last decade.

'We were never back to where we were before the last recession. We were still struggling in a post recession era, if you like, without getting another financial body blow to try and deal with at a time when you're trying to keep services going'.

The lockdown has come after a year in which Dundalk town centre was renovated and was nearing completion with the final elements of the works reaching a conclusion when the lockdown was imposed.

'All I can hope is that the work that was done in Clanbrassil/Church Street will be of benefit with the new wider pavements. The whole area is very people friendly with public friendly surroundings and there is great work being done by the BIDS company now around the painting in Bridge Street which will give us a bit of an edge, as we try to revive the town centre, retail and trade in the weeks and months ahead'.

Looking beyond the current COVID-19 crisis, the Chief Executive reminds that the challenges of Brexit haven't disappeared.

'I suppose what has happened is that COVID has dominated everything for the last number of weeks and while you're still trying to keep an eye on lots of other issues, it can be more difficult to give time to them because there's so much to be done on the whole pandemic issue.

'So I've no doubt that Brexit will come back. It hasn't gone away, it will come back as a key concern for the Irish government, for the Irish economy, and certainly for the border economy. In the months ahead I've no doubt at all'.

However as the unwinding of lockdown commences next week, Joan Martin states, 'bit by bit, we've been trying to get back to looking after regular matters' such as the county development plan which is being drafted at present and finalisation of the annual report, 'but there's no doubt that COVID has dominated things and will probably for at least a number of a number of weeks more'.
Let me present to you: Some Swedish news from last year about a song released in 2014 where Jason Derulo and his crew collaborates with a woman and then skips the important part of credit that woman for her work



Swedish artist and songwriter Molly Sanden talks about the incident in a book from 2019 about womens conditions in the music industry called Ni maste flytta pa er (~You have to get out of the way) by Annah Bjork. Molly first met Derulo when he walked into a studio where Molly recorded some songs. Derulo was impressed by her and told Sanden that they should write together sometime. The next time they meet is in the studio property The Jim Henson Company Lot in Hollywood with both their crews and some additional songwriters. This meeting results in the song Stupid Love (that also includes some vocals from Molly) and was released as the fifth single from Derulos album Tattoos (2013)

rights

But the problem for Molly is that she doesnt get a cent from this. When she starts look into things she realizes that she is not credited for her work. She makes some calls and gets a hold of the manager that was present when the song was written. He tells her:refering to Derulo.She decides that she will not accept this. A few weeks later she is back at the Henson Company, but this time it is without Derulo and in a meeting room with the manager, the other songwriters with their lawyers and three representatives from the record company. All but Molly are men. She tells them that she wants credit for her work, someone from her own team suggest that she should be happy with the compensation she can get for her vocals in the song. It is obvious that they are trying to deceive her. But she did not come to that meeting without any evidence. She takes her cell phone, puts it on the table  and presses play on the audiofile she recorded from the studio session. Today Molly Sanden is credited as a songwriter of Stupid LoveIn an interview with Swedish newschannel SVT Molly says:Source: My own paraphrasing of the book Ni maste flytta pa er SVT and ALIS
Citywide

Photo: The Golden Girls Live

The Bay Area's shelter-in-place order has brought countless events usually held as in-person gatherings online. We're aiming to support local businesses in San Francisco and Oakland by highlighting five of these events each day.

Got a suggestion for an online event based in SF or Oakland? Email our events reporter, Teresa Hammerl.

Here's your SF event calendar for Saturday, May 16 and Sunday, May 17. Livestream a "Golden Girls" drag show, catch a concert with Bay Area music legends or take a watercolor workshop  all from the comfort of your couch.

Online watercolor workshop with Lucia Gonnella

Image: Hayes Valley Art Works/Facebook

In this painting class hosted by Hayes Valley Art Works, North Beach-based artist Lucia Gonnella will guide artists of all levels through the basics of watercolor painting. You'll need to have materials on hand, including paints, brushes and watercolors, to participate; see the full list here.

When: Saturday, May 16, 11 a.m.

How to join: Via Zoom (instructions can be found in the Facebook event)

Price: Free

A Trestle Ran Through It: Early Days in Glen Park

Photo: Courtesy of the Western Neighborhoods Project

Join the Glen Park Neighborhoods History Project for a walk back in time with historian Evelyn Rose, as she discusses the life of the neighborhood in different areas. From the lives of the Ohlone, San Francisco's indigenous people, to the electric railroad and Glen Park's link to the El Camino Real, she'll lead up to the early 1900s, when homesteads, women's clubs, and earthquakes began setting the foundation for todays Glen Park.

When: Saturday, May 16, 12:30 p.m.

How to join: Please RSVP to GlenParkHistory@gmail.com to receive your meeting access link.

Price: Free; become a member for $15 (individual) or $20 (household)

Surrealistic Summer Solstice Jam

Image: Golden Gate Park 150 years

With in-person celebrations of Golden Gate Park's 150th anniversary canceled, viewers can tune in for a livestream of last year's "Surrealistic Summer Solstice Jam" in the park. Celebrating the music of 1969, the two-hour concert features founding members of iconic Bay Area bands like Sly & The Family Stone, Santana, and the Jerry Garcia Band, joined by musicians from a newer generation of San Francisco bands.

Story continues

When: Saturday, May 16, 5 p.m.

How to join: Via Golden Gate Park's 150th-anniversary website

Price: Free

The Golden Girls: Live

Image: The Golden Girls Live

At SoMa LGBTQ+ club Oasis, live drag performances of episodes of "The Golden Girls" have become a holiday tradition. Now, Heklina (Dorothy), Matthew Martin (Blanche), DArcy Drollinger (Rose), and Holotta Tymes (Sophia) are bringing back the fun with a special live-streamed reading of an episode they've never done before.

Fans can help support Oasis by purchasing a "shoutout video," in which one of the Golden Girls offers a personalized greeting to you or a friend, sent via a private link.

When: Saturday, May 16, 7 p.m.

How to join: Via RushTix

Price: $10 admission; $30 for admission and shoutout video

Draw & Chill

Image: Cartoon Art Museum/Facebook

With the help of the Cartoon Art Museum, connect on Google Meet and doodle with artists from around the globe. Expect fun art games to warm up and cool down with, an "engaging artsy-fartsy convo," and a chance to chat with other artists about your passion projects.

When: Sunday, May 17, 5 p.m.

How to join: Via Google Meet

Price: Free
This weeks news that at least 39 Obama officials had unmasked Lt. Gen. Michael Flynns private conversations during the last month of their administration seemed a little shocking. Today, major media outlets are telling readers and viewers that the practice is routine.

A CNN headline told readers, Trump pushes 'Obamagate' conspiracy based on routine intel activity.

Obamas Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, now a CNN contributor, told his viewers that it is routine to unmask Americans who are communicating with foreigners under surveillance.

Yahoo News told its readers unmaskings are routine.

New York Times reporter Charlie Savage tweeted the practice is so "routine" that under President Trump, the National Security Agency handled 10,000 unmasking requests last year and 17,000 requests in 2018  an average of 37 per day over the two years.

The frequency of such unmaskings  which violate the privacy of Americans in the name of national security  may be common knowledge in Washington. But that was not the impression given in 2017 when news first broke that Flynns identity had been unmasked in conversations he had with the Russian ambassador, and then illegally leaked to David Ignatius of the Washington Post. The message then was that Flynns behavior was so grave that extraordinary steps had to be taken.

Is media concern about unmaskings a conditional thing, depending on whose behavior is at issue -- whether that of a potential traitor serving a President considered an interloper or civil servants presumed to be diligently defending the realm against subversion?

In an interview with Andrea Mitchell on April 4, 2017, one of the top people in the need-to-know loop, Obama National Security Adviser Susan Rice, suggested that the practice was rare and subject to rigorous scrutiny. There were occasions when I would receive a report in which a U.S. person was referred to, name not provided," Rice said. If she felt it was essential to identify that person, she would have her intelligence analysts take that question back, they would put it through a process, and the intelligence community would make a determination about whether the identity of that U.S. person could be provided to me."

Also in April 2017:

USA Today underscored the message that unmaskings were rare when it reported: Names of citizens and permanent residents  'U.S. persons' in intelligence parlance  are typically excluded from intelligence reports to protect their privacy, but there are exceptions.

NBC News implied that only a limited number of officials had such authority, reporting that an unmasking request is a routine thing" -- for national security advisers, that is.

that an unmasking request is a routine thing" -- for national security advisers, that is. ABC News expanded that number when it reported there are 20 high-ranking officials within the U.S. government who have to power to approve requests to reveal those identities if they deem that information is necessary to understanding the value of the intelligence.

All of which makes it surprising to learn, as the Wall Street Journal reported, that the 39 officials who unmasked Flynn included four U.S. ambassadors, six Treasury officials, and people connected to the Energy and Justice departments and NATO, among others.

The contrast between what the public was led to believe about unmaskings (that they were rare and subject to rigorous review) and how they are now viewed when deployed wholesale against Trumpworld (not such a big whoop) recalls recent revelations about widespread problems in FBI court applications to spy on American citizens. Many in the media, stout defenders of privacy in other contexts, seemed to view what happened to Trump campaign adviser Carter Page as not much to get upset about.

Puzzling, perhaps, but easier to fathom if you understand the situational principles of today's fourth estate.
The May 15 Express Entry draw has the lowest CRS requirement for Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates since January 2019.

Express Entry: CRS drops again in 2nd draw in 24 hours The May 15 Express Entry draw has the lowest CRS requirement for Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates since January 2019.

Express Entry: CRS drops again in 2nd draw in 24 hours The May 15 Express Entry draw has the lowest CRS requirement for Canadian Experience Class (CEC) candidates since January 2019.

Canadas Express Entry draws are seeing a downward trend in score requirements for Canadian Experience Class (CEC)-specific draws, as the May 15 draw had the lowest points cut off for this cohort since January 2019.

The new Express Entry round issued 3,371 invitations to CEC candidates with Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) scores of 447 or higher.

The cut-off score of 447 is a decrease of five points from the previous CEC draw on May 1, which had a minimum score of 452 and was previously the lowest CRS requirement of 2020.

The May 15 draw was the second invitation round in 24 hours to issue Invitations to Apply (ITAs) for Canadian permanent residence.

Another 529 ITAs were issued to Express Entry candidates nominated through the Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) yesterday, May 14. The minimum CRS score for these candidates was 718.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

Canadas Express Entry system manages the profiles of candidates for three of Canadas main economic-class immigration programs  the Federal Skilled Worker Class, Federal Skilled Trades Class and Canadian Experience Class.

Candidates are ranked based on a score awarded under Express Entrys Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS) that considers factors such as age, education, skilled work experience and language ability in English or French.

A set number of the highest-ranked candidates receive an invitation to apply for Canadian permanent residence, or ITA, through regular draws from the pool and Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) typically aims to process applications for permanent residence within six months.

Todays draw continued a trend that has seen the cut-off CRS score decrease in each of the last four CEC draws. This trend may be explained in part by the relatively regular interval and frequency between draws that IRCC has maintained during the last two months.

The time between draws is an important factor that can have an effect on the CRS cut-off score. Shorter intervals between draws mean fewer candidates have time to enter a profile in the Express Entry pool.

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) employed its tie-break rule in this draw and the date and time used was Dec. 23, 2019 at 10:01:06 UTC. This means that all CEC candidates with a CRS score above 447 as well as those candidates with scores of 447 who submitted their profile before this date and time, received an ITA in this invitation round.

Todays draw brings the total ITAs issued in 2020 to 38,200.

Despite the fact that Canadas immigration policies and procedures have undergone major changes since March 18 due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), the Express Entry system has remained operational and candidates can still submit a profile.

IRCC has held ten Canadian Experience Class and Provincial Nominee draws over the past 9 weeks, inviting nearly 19,500 Express Entry candidates to apply for permanent residence.

Both categories of applicants are more likely to already be in Canada than those arriving through other Express entry-linked programs, which means they will not be impacted by the current travel restrictions.

In addition, provinces continue to hold draws as well through the Provincial Nominee Program.

Provincial nomination can make candidates extremely competitive in the Express Entry pool. Those who receive a provincial nomination through one of the provincial Express Entry streams are awarded 600 additional points.

The following are hypothetical examples of candidates who would have obtained ITAs in todays draw:

Roshan is 37, holds a bachelors degree and has been working as a systems analyst in Canada for just over one year. Before coming to Canada, Roshan worked in IT for an additional four years. Roshan is in Canada on a work permit while his wife, Lea, is studying in Canada. Both Roshan and Lea have advanced English language proficiency. Lea completed a bachelors degree before coming to Canada to continue her studies. They entered the Express Entry pool with Roshan as the principal applicant. His CRS score of 451 would have been high enough to obtain an ITA during the May 15 Express Entry draw.

Sarah is 35 and obtained her Masters degree in Canada. Since graduating in April 2019, she has been working in Canada as an accountant. She has an intermediate English language proficiency and before coming to Canada had three years of skilled work experience. Sarahs CRS score of 450 would have been high enough to obtain an ITA in the May 5 Express Entry draw.

Find out if you are eligible for any Canadian immigration programs

 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved
Vietnam reported one new imported case of novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Friday afternoon, raising the tally of infections to 313, according to the National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control.

The 28-year-old Vietnamese man was brought home from the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this month.

He arrived on a Vietnam Airlines flight from Dubai that landed at Can Tho International Airport in the namesake Mekong Delta city on May 3.

He was quarantined at a student dormitory in neighboring Bac Lieu Province upon arrival.

He tested positive for the novel coronavirus twice on May 13 and 15 by separate tests conducted by the Bac Lieu Province Center for Disease Control and the Pasteur Institute in Ho Chi Minh City, respectively.

He is now quarantined and monitored at Bac Lieu Province General Hospital.

Earlier, on May 7, 17 other passengers of the same flight were confirmed infected with COVID-19.

The Ministry of Health sent a task force to Bac Lieu Province to help local doctors take care of the patients, the Vietnam News Agency reported.

As of May 15, Vietnam has reported a total of 173 imported cases that were quarantined upon arrival.

The country reported 24 new coronavirus infections on Friday morning, all of which were imported cases involving Vietnamese citizens returning from Russia.

Of the 24 infections, 23 are currently in stable condition while one has started developing pneumonia, the verified Facebook page of the Vietnamese government said in a post.

More than 12,200 people are in quarantine at centralized quarantine camps, medical facilities, or at home.

Vietnam has gone 29 days without community transmission.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Friday urged the government, ministries and state agencies to come up with a new, long-term strategy that is both effective in terms of public health and sustainable for the economy.
Irish technology firm Tracworx has developed a wifi Wi-Fi patient-tracking system to help hospitals in their bid to tackle Covid-19.

The Tracworx patient-tracking system uses existing wifi networks in hospitals, allowing healthcare facilities to automate their data collection and generate reports using real-time data. The Limerick company has been quick repurpose its technology to meet the immediate challenges mounted by the Covid-19 pandemic.

We typically sell wifi-based patient tracking systems for the purposes of optimising efficiency, said Chris Kelly, CEO, Tracworx.

Given the challenge presented by Covid-19, we are offering a repurposed version of our product to help with social distancing and tracing back where contacts have been indoors, he said.

Before Covid-19, we were focused on using patient data to improve efficiencies and to streamline processes. This product is now being offered to hospitals and organisations alike to help safely operate in these challenging times.

While the Tracworx technology is available as a mobile phone app, some patients prefer not to download smartphone apps. Tracworx offers the hospitals and patients the ability to choose.

Of course, hospitals have also used several other tech modes in the past to address this problem, but with different challenges. For example, tech such as Bluetooth or RFID (radio frequency identification), which use electromagnetic fields to track the location of devices such as tags. Most other tracking systems have required investment in new infrastructure within the hospital, such as the installation of masts.

The disruption that this causes in hospitals can be an even bigger deterrent than the cost.

Covid-19 has presented an unprecedented challenge for hospitals, said Chris Kelly: Contact tracing in the hospital environment has become a top priority to protect frontline staff and patients.

Our core product is a wifi-based tracking technology which gives the hospitals complete transparency over where their patients have been, which can directly support this contact-tracing effort.

Tracworx was established in 2016 by college students Chris Kelly (CEO), Fionn Barron (COO) and Eoin OBrien (CTO). The company has extended its operations into the UK and has plans in the near future to expand further into the European market.

The innovative wifi-based patient tracking device developed by Tracworx, the Limerick-based technology company.

All Tracworxs suppliers are Irish-based: Wazp in Tralee provide device enclosures; SteriPack, Mullingar (also device enclosures); RTR, Limerick (electronics); and Penn, Waterford (furniture  charging cabinets).

The advent of Covid-19 has impacted upon this ambitious startup, but it has not dampened the optimism of its founders.

With all startups, there they are always hurdles, said sad Chris Kelly. You dont plan for a pandemic, but we feel that if we can adapt to this challenge, then theres nothing that we cant overcome.

These are very challenging times, but I am very pleased that our great team has adapted and modified our products to meet the immediate demands. I am confident that we will come up with solutions for every challenge we face in the future.

InterTradeIreland Seedcorn prize winner

Tracworx also gained a big boost last year when it won the top prize in InterTradeIrelands Seedcorn Investor Readiness Competition.

InterTradeIreland is currently seeking applicants for this years competition.

Tracworx is urging other startups to take advantage of what the Seedcorn competition has to offer. Tracworx used its Seedcorn funding to develop its new patient tracking system.

Seedcorn has allowed us to take our business to the next level, said Chris Kelly.

From the refinement of our investment documentation and pitching skills, to the exposure  both publicly. and in the start-up and investment communities, it has been transformational to our business, and I would urge other firms to get involved.

With the support of Seedcorn, weve also been able to expand on our current product to offer a mobile based version of this application to allow healthcare providers to match the location history of a confirmed COVID-19 carrier with other users. This directly helps with the challenge of remembering where an individual has been for the last two weeks.

Seedcorn participants, who are in with a chance to win a share of a 280,000 cash prize fund, can secure expert feedback on their business plans and pitches, improve their investor readiness, and gain exposure to investors.

Companies benefiting from Seedcorn have come from many sectors, including advanced manufacturing, technology, sport, finance, medical devices, and diagnostics.

Since the competitions inception in 2003, more than 3,100 companies have been through the programme. and finalists have raised in excess of 256m.

Shane OHanlon, Funding for Growth manager, InterTradeIreland, said: Now, more than ever, in the uncertain times we find ourselves, start-up and early stage business need help and support to secure investment.

The funding environment is especially challenging for every business right now, and new companies are at a critical and vulnerable stage of development.

Entrepreneurs have shown their ingenuity and resilience over the decades, and we are confident that with the right support, despite the current crisis, they will rise to the many obstacles they face.

Seedcorns team of experts can give entrepreneurs priceless insight and feedback to set them on the right track.

A series of online Seedcorn workshops will be held in the coming weeks to provide those considering applying with advice on preparation of video clips, presentation slide decks and business plans.

The initial applications deadline is 1pm on Friday, May 29. See: www.InterTradeIreland.com for more information.
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The Supreme Court on Friday asked how can anyone stop incidents like the Aurangabad train mishap, in which 16 migrant workers were killed, if the labourers sleep on railway tracks. The apex court also observed that how can anyone stop migrants who want to keep walking. The migrant labourers started walking towards their hometowns amid the coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown.

The SC observation came a week after the Aurangabad accident in which the migrant workers who were sleeping on the tracks were mowed down by a freight train. The migrant labourers were killed when the train ran over them between Jalna and Aurangabad in the Nanded Division of South Central Railway in Karmad police station area of the Aurangabad district.

The apex court asked the Solicitor General, the lawyer of the Central government if the migrants on the streets can be stopped in any way. In its reply, it said that the state governments are arranging for transport but people are leaving on foot in anger, and not waiting. It further said, "What can be done in such a situation? Governments can only request for them not to walk on foot. Even force cannot be used on them."

The Ministry of Railways had ordered a comprehensive probe into the Aurangabad accident. Taking to micro-blogging site Twitter, the Ministry of Railways had tweeted, "Ram Kripal, Commissioner of Railway Safety, South Central circle will hold an independent inquiry in the labourers' runover incident in Parbhani-Manmad section of Nanded Railway division of South Central Railway."

As per Railways officials, the migrant labourers, hailing from Madhya Pradesh, were sleeping on the railway track when the accident took place. In a statement released by the Railways, the persons run over are natives of Umarya and Shahdol of Madhya Pradesh and worked at SRG Company in Jalna, Maharashtra.

Maharashtra Chief Minister's Office (CMO) on May 8 announced an ex gratia of Rs 5 lakh each to the families of those who were killed. "Rupees five lakhs each has been announced as ex gratia to families of the deceased in the Karmad (Aurangabad) train accident," said Maharashtra CMO.

BJP leader Ram Kadam also expressed condolences on the tragedy, saying "The Aurangabad accident is tragic. The Maharashtra government has not made any arrangements for food for migrant labourers and hence people are forced to walk for miles."

What is being probed is the role of patrolmen who are tasked with keeping trespassers away from tracks and also alert the nearest station about any incident, reported news agency PTI.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) has already issued notice to the Maharashtra state government. Taking suo motu cognizance of media reports, the Commission has directed State Chief Secretary and District Magistrate of Aurangabad to submit a detailed report within four weeks.

"Officers have been directed to submit a detailed report, within four weeks into the incident. It should also include details of the steps taken by the state and the district authorities to provide food, shelter, and other basic amenities to the poor people, especially the migrant labourers, who are facing extreme difficulties from every angle," NHRC had said in a statement.

Meanwhile, the state govt has been directed to submit a detailed report, within 4 weeks into the incident. The notice issued by NHRC also demands detail report of the steps taken by the State and the district authorities to provide food, shelter and other basic amenities to the poor people, especially the migrant labourers, who are facing extreme difficulties from every angle.

NHRC noted that prima facie, the mishap can be termed as a train accident as normally it is not expected that people will be sleeping on the railway tracks. However, the crucial aspect is that the poor labourers, who were already facing many hardships amid countrywide lockdown, were forced to walk on foot for a very long distance due to non-availability of any mode of transport, lost their lives due to apparent negligence by the district administration, the statement read.
Tata Motors on Friday said it is planning to raise Rs 1,000 crore through issuance of securities.

The company is desirous of offering rated, listed, secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating Rs 1,000 crore, Tata Motors said in a regulatory filing.

In this regard, the auto major will hold a meeting of its duly constituted committee of the board on May 20, 2020, it added.

The above issuance is pursuant to the board's approval on March 27, Tata Motors said.

Last week, Tata Motors had decided to withdraw an NCD issue to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore, due to tight market conditions.

On May 5, the company said a board-constituted committee had approved raising up to Rs 1,000 crore through issuance of NCDs on a private placement basis.

Then on May 7, it said in a regulatory filing :"We hereby inform that the company has decided to withdraw the issue for private placement of unsecured NCDs in view of the higher cost expectations from the market participants due to the tight money market conditions."



The company continues to have sufficient liquidity and would consider issuance of NCDs at an appropriate time and under normalised market conditions with necessary approvals, it had noted.

The company had planned to issue the NCDs in three tranches of Rs 500 crore, Rs 300 crore and Rs 200 crore with redemptions due on September 30, 2022, November 28, 2022 and December 29, 2022 ,respectively.

Tata Motors shares were trading 0.66 per cent up at Rs 83.25 apiece on the BSE.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
* Czech, Slovak economies fall sharpest in Q1 as virus hits

* Hungary shows first quarterly contraction since 2016

* Romania, Bulgaria eke out a smidgen of growth

* Poland seen holding up best as CEE contracts in 2020

By Jason Hovet

PRAGUE, May 15 (Reuters) - Central and east European economies fell as much as 5% on a quarterly basis to start 2020 though some managed a last gasp of growth as the coronavirus forced lockdowns in March and put the region on course to a deep contraction this year.

The virus outbreak will undo several years of solid growth in a region with economies highly tuned to the car industry and exports and which has outpaced richer western Europe.

With the novel coronavirus striking in March, first-quarter figures showed the outbreak's initial impact but were uneven.

The Czech and Slovak economies sank 3.6% and 5.4% quarter-on-quarter, respectively, hit harder than regional neighbours due to a slowdown in growth seen even before the crisis.

The Czech Republic's drop was the largest on record going back to 1996 and was almost as bad as in the euro zone, showing its dependence on trade there. Slovakia, a euro zone member, was among the hardest hit in the currency bloc.

In Hungary, the economy contracted on a quarterly basis for the first time since 2016, shrinking 0.4%. Poland, the region's biggest economy, fell 0.5% quarter-on-quarter.

Romania and Bulgaria expanded 0.3% on a quarterly basis.

"The batch of Q1 GDP data for Central and Eastern Europe shows that the regions economies were in freefall at the end of March after lockdown measures were imposed," Capital Economics economist Liam Peach said in a note.

Analysts see probable double-digit declines in the second quarter.

The European Commission has forecast the region contracting by 4.3%-7.2% overall in 2020 before a similar rebound. Much will depend on Germany, Europe's largest economy and a key trade partner which shrank 2.2% in the first quarter.

Story continues

But the threat of lockdowns will remain if a second wave of COVID-19 infections comes. Most countries are only now reopening after the first wave and not all car plants are back running.

Jakub Seidler, ING's chief economist in Prague, estimated Czech measures and factory shutdowns caused a 30% economic dive in the second half of March alone.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Friday he hoped manufacturing would return to its pre-crisis tempo from June.

But with unemployment ticking up around the region, consumers may be loath to spend money, meaning that state support to avoid a wave of mass layoffs could be crucial.

Poland, the only regional economy to avoid recession in the 2009 financial crisis, has announced direct and indirect aid worth over 300 billion zlotys ($71.24 billion) to mitigate the blow to its businesses from lockdowns.

Andrzej Kaminski, an economist at Bank Millennium, said this support and the fact tourism has a lower share in the economy could help Poland weather this crisis better than others.

** For an interactive graphic on GDP developments in Central Europe: https://reut.rs/3exsJHO?eikon=true

($1 = 4.2114 zlotys) (Reporting by Jason Hovet in Prague, Alan Charlish in Warsaw, Krisztina Than in Budapest, and Radu Marinas in Bucharest Editing by Mark Heinrich)
ANKARA, Turkey - A court in Istanbul on Friday accepted an indictment against four pilots, an airline company official and two flight attendants accused of helping former Nissan chairman Carlos Ghosn escape from Japan to Lebanon via Turkey, and set a trial date for July 3.

Prosecutors are seeking up to eight years in prison each for the four pilots and the airline official, on charges of illegally smuggling a migrant, according to the indictment, cited by the state-run Anadolu Agency. The two flight attendants face a one-year prison term each if convicted of not reporting a crime.

Ghosn, who was arrested over financial misconduct allegations in Tokyo in 2018, skipped bail while awaiting trial in Japan late last year. He flew to Istanbul and was then transferred onto another plane bound for Beirut, where he arrived Dec. 30.

The Turkish airline company MNG Jet said in January that two of its planes were used illegally in Ghosns escape, first flying him from Osaka, Japan, to Istanbul, and then on to Beirut. The company said its employee had admitted to falsifying flight records so that Ghosns name did not appear on them.

The indictment states that Ghosn is believed to have been smuggled inside a foam-covered music box large enough to carry a person 1.70 metre- (5.58 feet-) tall, the private DHA news agency reported. It notes a 216,000 euro and 66,000 dollar increase in the airline officials bank accounts between Oct. 16 and Dec. 26, 2019.

The four pilots and the two flight attendants have denied involvement in the plans to smuggle Ghosn. They also denied knowing that the former Nissan chief was aboard the flights, DHA reported.

The company employee and four pilots remain in custody while the flight attendants were released after questioning.
Lawmakers urge Pentagon to protect Christians in military from anti-religion activists

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Twenty members of Congress have signed onto a letter urging Secretary of Defense Mark Esper to protect Christian military service members who are under threat from a secular legal organization that's calling on the military to punish them for sharing their Christian faith.

Led by Reps. Doug Collins, R-Ga., and Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., they and 18 other Republican House members have signed a joint letter asking the Pentagon to protect the religious liberty of service members from the demands of an anti-religion group.

We know that many in our Armed Forces are leaning on their faiths in this unprecedented hour, the letter to Esper reads.

It is our hope that the Department of Defense and the several branches of our military will recognize the needs of our troops, follow federal law in protecting their religious liberties, and ensure that the ongoing pandemic is not exploited by nefarious organizations bent on removing faith from the U.S. military.

Specifically, the letter calls on Esper to protect the career of Col. Moon H. Kim, the command chaplain of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea. Kim faced backlash after he shared John Pipers book, Coronavirus and Christ, with fellow chaplains in an email.

The lawmakers are also calling for the protection of Air Force Lt. Col. David McGraw, who for eight weeks led worship services from the balcony of his military housing unit in Germany.

Both Kim's and McGraw's actions are being condemned by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, an organization that represents service members as it pushes for a strict separation of church and state within the military.

In both cases, the organization is representing service members who took offense to McGraw's and Kims actions. MRFF has called for McGraw and Kim to be subject to a general court-martial for their actions of sharing their faith.

In recent weeks, you and Army commands across the globe have received multiple, unfounded complaints from an organization that has a reputation for preying on military chaplains, the letter from the representatives says. These complaints show that this organization and its leaders refuse to see the difference between evangelizing and proselytization and wish to ruin the careers of the hardworking men and women who serve as military chaplains.

In addressing Kims situation, the letter states that the chaplain has made a selfless effort to help his colleagues during this global health crisis but is now being subject to a review that could harm his career and reputation.

Given the content of his email and Federal law protecting religious speech, it is clear that Col. Kim should not and cannot be disciplined for his email, the congress members warned Esper.

Kim sent an email to 35 other chaplains on April 29 informing them that Pipers book has helped him refocus his sacred calling during the pandemic. He shared a PDF file of the book in hopes it would help the other chaplains in their walks as well.

MRFF and the chaplains it represents took offense to a chapter of Piper's book that touched on whether the coronavirus was Gods judgment on sin.

In addressing McGraw's situation, the lawmakers decried the fact that the MRFF was successful in pressuring leaders at U.S. Army Garrison Stuttgart to force McGraw to apologize and move his Sunday balcony services to a different location.

The command at USAG Stuttgart unlawfully halted Lt. Col. McGraws services to appease an anti-faith organization, the lawmakers argued. Lt. Col. McGraw should be allowed to continue his Sunday morning preaching and hymn-singing immediately.

The lawmakers also came to the defense of Army chaplains at Fort Drum in New York who were the subjects of an MRFF complaint about videos they posted to commands official Facebook page encouraging prayer during the coronavirus pandemic.

After the MRFF complaint, their videos were quickly removed from the official Facebook page of the 10th Mountain Division Sustainment Brigade.

Given the limitations on gatherings due to the coronavirus, military chaplains are turning to digital opportunities to fulfill their obligations to their fellow servicemen and women, the lawmakers wrote in the letter.

Additionally, shortly following a demand letter from MRFF on April 23, 2020, the command at U.S. Army Garrison Redstone Arsenal [in Alabama] removed a similar video from Maj. Christian Goza on its Facebook pages Chaplains Corner.

The lawmakers assert that MRFF's demands regarding the Facebook videos are "baseless"

[E]ach commands decision to remove the videos, which all included protected religious expression, is contradictory to the Armys April 24 guidance on social media use, the letter continued.

While it has not been reported that Cpt. Smith, Maj. Ingram, or Maj. Goza are being subject to any sort of review, it is critical that the Army ensure its commands across the country are not only adhering to the Armys own guidance, but to Federal law.

The lawmakers disclosed that the Army Chaplain Corps released guidance on April 24 related to the use of social media to publicize religious or spiritual content.

According to the letter, the Army Chaplain Corps April 24 guidance related to the use of social media detailed that the CHC has broad latitude to use diverse means of social media to broadcast religious services, messages, and educational materials.

The guidance also explained that the Army is generally prohibited from content-based restrictions on religious speech absent a compelling government interest and only by use of the least restrictive means.

Army policy does not prohibit evangelizing or proselytizing  so long as they are communicated in a manner avoiding [the]appearance of official Army/DoD endorsement or promotion of the particular religious viewpoint or group, the Army guidance explained, according to the lawmakers.

MRFF argues that the actions of the service members do appear to be an Army endorsement or promotion of a particular religious viewpoint, namely evangelical Christianity.

The lawmakers letter drew the response of MRFF advisory board member and retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson.

In a statement, Lawrence argued that the lawmakers are ignoring the service members responsibility to the secular law before whatever allegiance they might feel to fundamentalist Christian or other biblical, religious, or spiritual law.

The lawmakers warned in their letter to Esper that the Department of Defense and the Army have been far too quick to restrict the religious freedom of chaplains and the servicemembers they serve as a result of this groups attacks.

They stated that the department is obligated under federal law to highlight regulations that permit the faith-based actions taken by military chaplains in recent weeks.

Far too often, commanders react in a knee-jerk fashion to loud complaints from vocal anti-religion activists only to have their decisions immediately overturned upon scrutiny, but often only after congressional intervention pressing the Services to adhere to their own regulations (let alone the Constitution), the lawmakers conclude. This must end.

The First Liberty Institute, a legal nonprofit that specializes in religious freedom cases, and the Restore Military Religious Freedom Coalition sent a joint letter to Esper on Thursday in support of the service members targeted by MRFF. First Liberty has argued that the First Amendment protects the service members' actions.



"We urge you to issue clear [Department of Defense] guidance, consistent with Congress directive, that strongly protects religious freedom within DOD," the joint letter to Esper reads. "Such guidance will slow the spread of misinformation, flawed legal arguments, and religious discrimination."
Two midstate diners that have joined the revolt against Gov. Tom Wolfs coronavirus closure orders have been warned that they will face state penalties if they keep violating that edict.

The Round the Clock diners in York Countys Manchester and Springettsbury townships opened for dine-in service on Mothers Day.

Under the closure order, eateries are only allowed to have take-out service.

After receiving verbal warnings from police, the state has warned the diners that they could face suspension of their retail food licenses and fines of up to $10,000 per day if they dont heed the governors mandate, the York Daily Record reports.

Christos Sacarellos, the brother of the restaurants owner, told PennLive on Monday that the decision to reopen with social distancing and protective masks required was made to get back to some normalcy.

The response has been overwhelmingly awesome, he said.

Wolfs directive is being tested more and more by business owners who claim it is putting their financial livelihoods at risk.

A similar warning issued to East Pennsboro Township barber Brad Shepler prompted a rally by GOP legislators and other supporters outside his shop on Thursday.

ReOpen PA and other groups have scheduled a rally at the state Capitol in Harrisburg for noon Friday calling for lifting of Wolfs ban. An organizer said hes hoping for a crowd of 10,000 to 15,000.
Farmers and agricultural workers unions All India Kisan Sabha (AIKS) and All India Agricultural Workers' Union (AIAWU) have termed the second tranche of COVID-19 stimulus as an "eyewash", which does not address the concerns of the migrant labourers, farmers and other vulnerable sections of the society.

"AIKS and AIAWU had demanded income support of Rs 7,500 per month for all non-tax paying poor people. Nothing in that direction has been done except for some announcements of loans for street vendors and certain other sections of society. We had demanded Rs 18,000 a year under PM-KISAN for all farmers, including tenant farmers. Other than the routine Rs 2,000 instalment to a reduced number, nothing has come. Farmers have been demanding loan waiver and interest-free loans for the kharif season for all farmers, including tenant farmers. The Finance Minister merely announced that 3 crore marginal farmers availed agricultural loans worth over Rs 4 lakh crore," the leaders of the organisations said.

Also read: Farmer loan disbursals in FY21 running woefully short of target

A joint statement issued by AIKS and AIAWU said while the government claimed 14.5 crore farmers would benefit from the PM-KISAN when the scheme was announced, only 3 crore farmers have got agricultural loans and that is not as part of any special drive carried out under the lockdown circumstances. "The infusion of more funds through NABARD is a welcome decision but has to be seen in the context of loans going to agribusinesses and large farmers. Experience shows banks are notoriously hesitant to give fresh loans to farmers," the leaders said.

Also read:UP allows industry to hire and fire! Suspends all labour laws, except three

The associations said the government should ensure assured remunerative prices for agriculture produce as per the Swaminathan Commission recommendation of C2+50% (fifty per cent more than the weighted average cost of production). They also called for compensation to farmers for crop losses due to the sudden lockdown. "Demand for free seeds and subsidised inputs, including fertilisers and diesel, has also not been acceded to," they said.

Also read: UP labour law reforms: The big climbdown
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew to Israel in the middle of a pandemic this week for a meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. We dont know exactly what the two talked about, but the topic of annexation certainly came up. The prime ministers pledge to assert Israeli sovereignty over at least some of the occupied territorywhich could happen as early as July 1has the potential to radically upend Middle East politics, deal a death blow to already faltering hopes for a two-state solution, and give prospective future president Joe Biden his first foreign policy crisis before he even takes office. But theres a huge amount of uncertainty over how it could play outand if it will even happen at all.

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What is annexation?

The West Bank has been under Israeli control since the 1967 Six-Day War, and the area is now home to over 400,000 Israeli settlers. The official position of most of the international community, including the governments of the U.S. and Israel, has long been that this territory will eventually become an independent Palestinian state, with its final borders decided through negotiation.

However, theres growing political support in Israel for unilaterally asserting Israeli sovereignty over at least part of the West Bank, or Judea and Samaria, as the Israeli government refers to it. Advocates for annexation were bolstered earlier this year when the Trump administrations long-awaited peace plan advocated ceding 30 percent of the West Bank to Israel.

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Theres precedent for this type of unilateral recognition. In 1981, Prime Minister Menachem Begin made the decision to unilaterally apply Israeli law, jurisdiction, and administration to the Golan Heights, an area captured from Syria during the 1967 war. U.S. President Donald Trump recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan in 2019, though most other governments still consider it occupied Syrian territory.

Its not clear exactly where Netanyahu would declare Israeli sovereignty. It could be in all 128 existing settlements or some smaller number of settlements closer to Israeli territory, or in the Jordan River valley. The latter runs along the West Banks eastern border with Jordan, and is considered a strategic priority for Israel.

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What would this change?

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Since most of the areas under discussion are already under effective Israeli control, the long-term political ramificationsfor Israel, the Palestinians, and the international communityare more significant than the changes that would actually occur on the ground.

Annexation would be another big nail in the coffin of the peace process. Ever since the Oslo Accords in the early 1990s, Israeli governmentsincluding Netanyahus, most of the timehave operated under at least the pretense of supporting a two-state solution. Annexation, particularly the more expansive scenarios that would carve Palestinian territory up into noncontiguous bubbles, would be the end of the already very rickety Oslo framework. On the Palestinian side, too, support for a two-state solution is fading, and advocacy for one state shared by Jews and Palestinians is growing. Nearly all Western governments still support a two-state solution, but that position is going to become harder to maintain if neither side of the conflict is committed to it.

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Annexation would also mean that Palestinians living in these areas would now be subject to Israeli law. While the areas are de facto controlled by Israel, Palestinians currently living there are technically subject to Jordanian law. They would potentially also be eligible for citizenship. These newfound citizenship rights are part of the reason why even some right-wing pro-Israel supporters are nervous about the idea of annexation.

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The international response would likely be harsh as well. Key Arab governments, including Jordan and the Gulf countries, have been a little more muted in their criticism of Israel lately, due to both fatigue with the Palestinian issue and shared interests over Iran, but they would have to respond to what would be seen as a major provocation. A number of European countries are also discussing the possibility of punitive economic measures if Israel goes ahead with annexation. All this potential fallout begs the question:

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Why now?

On Sunday, Israels new unity government will be sworn in, ending more than 500 days of political deadlock. Netanyahu will remain prime minister after he pulled off yet another dumbfounding political escape act. In order to shore up right-wing support, Netanyahu made annexation a big part of his campaign push and will be under pressure to deliver. And while it can sometimes be hard to tell exactly what a politician as Machiavellian as Netanyahu actually believes, theres reason to think he would view a massive extension of Israeli sovereignty as an important part of his legacy.

Under the coalition agreement, Netanyahus rival, Benny Gantz, will serve as vice prime minister until 2021, when he will take over as prime minister. The agreement also states that Netanyahu could bring forward a bill on applying sovereignty to the West Bank as early as July 1.

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Gantz campaigned against unilateral annexation and has been accused by former allies of giving his tacit endorsement to Netanyahus dangerous plans. His current allies counter that Netanyahu has enough support in the Knesset to pass annexation, even without him, and that by cooperating with Netanyahu, Gantz will be able to block or influence the annexation plan from within.

But the biggest factor motivating Netanyahu right now is Washington. Trump, who has greenlighted nearly every decision made by Netanyahu so far, might only be in office for another eight months. Trump has taken dramatic steps to boost Netanyahus electoral chances in the past, and the Israeli prime minister might even view annexation as returning the favor: Annexation has strong support among Christian evangelicals and right-wing Jews in the U.S.

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How will Palestinians respond?

Tensions are already rising on the West Bank ahead of the possible declaration. Earlier this week, an Israeli soldier was killed after being struck in the head with a rock near the town of Jeninthe first Israeli military casualty this year. Then a Palestinian man was shot and wounded after attempting a stabbing attack at a checkpoint north of Jerusalem. An annexation declaration could lead to more violence.

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Palestinian leaders across the political spectrum are opposed to annexation and would definitely condemn it, but would they go further than that? Theres some speculation that annexation could cause the Palestinian Authority to halt security cooperation with Israel, which would hamper Israels ability to fight terrorism, or cause a public backlash so severe it would lead to the collapse of the authority. On the other hand, Palestinian leaders may want to wait before doing anything like canceling security cooperation, to see what happens after the U.S. election.

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How will Trump respond?

Trumps response is not as predictable as it might seem. Trump officials have suggested in the past that they dont have a problem with annexation. Ambassador David Friedman has suggested that Israel has the right to claim territory on the West Bank under certain circumstances. Pompeo has said its ultimately Israels decision to make.

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But lately, Washington has seemed a little more cautious. Pompeo was vague on annexation after his meeting in Israel this week, saying only that Netanyahu and Gantz will have to find the way forward together and that all actions should be taken in line with the vision for peace laid out in Trumps plan. A State Department spokesman told reporters that discussions about annexation should take place as part of direct talks between Israel and the Palestinians on the Trump peace plan.

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This was interpreted by some experts as a sign that Pompeo had told Netanyahu to slow things down.

The administration has said it wants Israel to hold off on annexation until a joint U.S.-Israeli mapping team finishes its work finalizing the preliminary map in the Trump plan, and its not clear how long that will take. The Trump plan, orchestrated by his son-in-law Jared Kushner, still envisions a Palestinian state, albeit a diminished one, under significant Israeli security control. The White House may not be willing to give up the dream of the ultimate deal quite yet.

All this suggests theres a strong possibility annexation may be put off for a while after July 1. But the proposal may become even more controversial in the run-up to the election, particularly if Biden is leading in the polls.

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Still, Trump administration foreign policy positions are only as solid as the last tweet. If Netanyahu can get through to Trump and make clear that this is what he wants, is Trump really going to oppose the Israeli government on such a fraught issue in an election year?

How will Biden respond?

Biden is a longtime supporter of Israel and a self-declared buddy of Netanyahu, but hes made his position on this issue very clear. He warned Israel to stop its threats of annexation in his recent speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. This position is nearly universal among leading Democrats, including traditional Israel hawks and pro-Israel pressure groups. But the question is: If Netanyahu does go ahead with annexation in the next few months, what is Biden going to do about it?

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Democratic voters, and some elected officials, have gotten more comfortable criticizing Israeli policies in recent years. But an old-school pol like Biden might still be reluctant to make his opposition to an Israeli policy into a campaign issue. He also may not want to appear to pressure foreign governments before he takes office, something his opponent showed no such qualms about in 2016.

But if Biden wins, and annexation is already a fait accompli when he takes office, he will have some decisions to make. If Trump recognizes annexation, it would be through an executive order, and Biden could just reverse it if he wanted. But he may hesitate to undo a policy once the goal posts are moved. He has already said he would not reverse Trumps decision to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, though he opposed the decision at the time.

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In a recent article for Foreign Policy, former Obama officials Robert Malley and Philip Gordon recommended that Biden make clear now that he would do more than just reverse the decision. They say he should establish right now that his administration would not shield Israel from international criticism or censure. They also say he should look into ways to deduct money spent on annexed territories from U.S. security assistance to Israel.

The degree to which Biden engages on relations between Israel and Palestine at all will probably be determined by the facts on the ground in the Middle East in 2021. If the West Bank is in flames when he takes office, he will probably be forced to prioritize the issue. If not, whether annexation has happened or not, its likely to be pushed to the back burner. If a Biden presidency does come to pass, it will be marked less by a new U.S. approach to the conflict than by the U.S. giving up on it entirely.
File photo

According to a report by Vanguard, fear has gripped Akwa Ibom state residents as the COVID-19 taskforce set up in Obot Akara local government area has intercepts another trailer conveying about thirty-two ((32) youths from the northern part of the country into the state.

It was gathered that the truck which was intercepted on Wednesday along the boundary between Obot Akara local government area of Akwa Ibom state and Ikwuano in Abia state bringing the number of trailers so far intercepted in the state with persons to two since the inter-state lockdown order.

It could be recalled that a trailer that had transported cows and goats from the northern part of Nigeria to the state was intercepted in Eket local government area penultimate week with 13 northern youths attempting to sneak into the state.

The residents fear, however, followed the alleged transportation of Almajiris suspected to be COVID-19 positive from some states in the north to the southern states.

They are also worried about the invasion of some states in the region by suspected terrorist groups from the north.

A resident who simply identified himself as Mr. Umoh simply said, Government must not treat this transportation of young persons from the north to this part of the country with kids glove. If you know what is happening today in Delta state, Enugu, Benue.

Sometimes they dont even use the roads, they may decide to use the bush tracks. I think the best thing government can do is to beef up security in the communities. And the communities must be involved in this, or else it will not work

Also, a public servant from Obot Akara LGA who spoke on the ground of anonymity lamented, We have to ask questions why these persons from the north will leave their states to come down to this part of the country?. I strongly believe that there is a well-calculated plot to attack this region.

I am angry with government and security agencies because they are not doing enough. If they are, why have they not asked questions about how these invaders beat all checkpoints to get down here. We must not forget that before COVID-19 outbreak some people had raised alarm over plan to attack this part of the country by sponsored terrorists

The state police command confirmed the interception of the trailer with 32 northerners on Wednesday, even as it dismissed speculations that the occupants were Almajiris.

The Police Public Relations Officer, Mr. Fredrick Nnudam said, They are not Almajiris but Hausa/Fulani men who live at Itam Nassarawa cattle market, Uyo. They were intercepted in a truck on Wednesday, May 13, 2020, at about 11: 45am at Obot Akara and Abia state boundary.

On further interrogation, they noted that they were leaving the state since livestock trading was temporarily suspended in the state and cost of living difficult for them.

Consequently, the Commissioner of Police Akwa Ibom State, Mr. Imohimi Edgal has ordered that they will only be allowed to leave the state after the ban on inter-state travels is lifted

The state government had on Monday, May 11, 2020, banned the transportation of new consignment of livestock into the state until the inter-state lockdown order was lifted with effect same date.

The state government decision came two days after governor Udom Emmanuels interaction with the residents on state-owned Radio and Television stations where he responded to questions on what his government was doing to check the influx of northern youths being conveyed through trucks into the Niger Delta region amid the COVID-19 lockdown order.

Reacting to the Eket speculation, governor Emmanuel had explained that security agencies escorted the trailer and the 13 occupants outside the state after off-loading the goats and cows in Eket.

Also to allay the peoples fears and reassured them of their safety, the governor had further explained that the borders had been secured with 3G cameras.
The first special train



from New Delhi carrying nearly 1,000 passengers arrived in Kerala and seven of them were shifted to COVID-19 care centres and hospitals as they showed some symptoms of the disease during screening, officials said on Friday.

Barring the seven passengers -- six of whom alighted in Kozhikode and one here -- others were allowed to proceed by taxis and buses arranged by district officials and they have to remain under quarantine in their homes for 14 days.

The all-air conditioned Rajadhani Delhi-Thiruvananthapuram superfast train arrived here at 5.10 AM on Friday after two stoppages in the state at Kozhikode and Ernakulam South, where over 560 passengers deboarded, officials said.

At least 350 people reached here and underwent medical check-up conducted by a team of doctors and health officials and the railway staff who wore personal protection equipment.

"One person was shifted to the hospital after he showed some symptoms," a senior district official told PTI.

The rest of the passengers were sent to their homes.

Earlier, the train reached Kozhikode, the first station in Kerala, on Thursday night where 261 people deboarded.

"Out of the 261, five persons were shifted to the COVID care centre and one person to the Kozhikode Medical College," Kozhikode district medical officer said.

Later it reached Ernakulam South where many passengers who had booked their tickets to Thiruvananthapuram got down after taking necessary permission as they found it convenient to travel to their home districts from there. In all, around 300 people alighted at Ernakulam, railway sources said.

Health department workers disinfected the railway stations and the taxis used by the passengers.

Railway officials said the train will be disinfected and commence its return journey on Friday evening.

The superfast train was among the special passenger trains operated from New Delhi railway station to 15 destinations in the country including Thiruvananthapuram.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON -- The Navy is spending roughly $1.1 million to send about 500 recruits each week to the Great Wolf Lodge Water Park near Chicago for two weeks of quarantine before they are shipped to basic training, service officials said.

Recruit Training Command Great Lakes in Illinois, the Navy's sole boot camp, had previously delayed accepting new recruits for a week in March after one recruit tested positive March 29 and was treated at a nearby medical center.

New recruits have been under a restriction of movement for two weeks at the closed indoor water park resort in Gurnee, Ill., Cmdr. Dave Hecht, a spokesman for the Chief of Naval Personnel, wrote in an email.

"By moving the [restriction of movement] to an off-site facility, they are able to provide rooms with a small number of recruits, which will reduce the likelihood of spreading of the illness between recruits, protect the recruits and staff already at [recruit training command], and increase the space available at [recruit training command] for physical distancing procedures," he said.

The facility was picked because it is about 10 miles from Great Lakes and can easily accept the flow of recruits each week, according to Hecht.

Nearly 3,900 recruits are now with Recruit Training Command Great Lakes, including those staying at the lodge, according to a Navy official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Prior to arrival, the recruits should have completed a voluntary 14-day restriction of movement at their homes and are screened at their Military Entrance Processing Station.

The Marine Corps is also quarantining recruits at The Citadel in Charleston, S.C., for two weeks before they travel to basic training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island. The first group of recruits arrived at the college campus May 4. The Marines requested use of the college because the Parris Island staging operation for new recruits uses tents that will become impractical once hurricane season starts in June, according to a Citadel statement.

The one-month contract with the water park expires Tuesday and the Navy "will continue to evaluate requirements for additional contracts" as required, Hecht said. The lodge is closed until June 15, according to its website.

During their 14-day stay at the waterpark, the recruits will have course work and training during the day run by the recruit division commanders, according to Hecht. Recruits also have designated times for light physical activity, such as stretching, in their rooms.

They can bring two books and one hand-held gaming device to use during their quarantine, Hecht said, and none of the "resort-type" amenities are available for use.

The quarantine and health measures needed to protect personnel and recruits has increased their time at boot camp by a week to nine weeks, according to Hecht.

Once the 14 days have passed, recruits will be transported to Great Lakes to start their training but they will be required to wear masks and adhere to physical distancing protocols during the trip, according to Hecht.

Read more: SOCOM Wants Army's Futuristic Troop-Carrying Helicopter
YEREVAN, MAY 15, ARMENPRESS. I Am Not Alone documentary about the 2018 revolution in Armenia has received its 10th award, this time at the RiverRun International Film Festival, the movies Facebook page said, posting the statement of the jury. The movie won Best Documentary Feature at the festival.

The jurys top prize goes to I AM NOT ALONE, directed by Garin Hovannisian. This gripping film reminded us of the power of the best documentary filmmaking: to open our eyes to a story we didnt know, and present it with artistry and skill, the statement of the jury says.

The film traces Nikol Pashinyan, a journalist and political prisoner turned political activist, as he marches against the Armenian prime minister Serzh Sargsyan.

What starts as one man walking across the country unfolds before our eyes to become a mass movement. Watching the film is more than a passive observation of a political movement; Hovannisian fully immerses the audience in the story, from beautifully sweeping drone shots to ordinary citizens cellphone footage, the statement said.

The jury found this film an enlightening and inspiring watch, taking a complex subject and presenting it in an entertaining, tightly edited narrative that shows multiple sides of a complex and urgent story. In the midst of an election year, I Am Not Alone is a potent reminder of the power of the people, the jury said.

The premiere of the movie was held on September 7, 2019, on the sidelines of the Toronto International Film Festival.
Members of the Australian Workers Union at a rally in Sydney Australia, Sept. 8 2001 (Lisa Maree Williams/Getty Images)

Australias Oldest Workers Union Leads a Call to Stand Up to Chinese Regime

One of Australias oldest and largest workers unions has launched a national campaign to support the Morrison government in its trade dispute with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Starting on May 14, the We Wont Be Bullied By China campaign by the Australian Workers Union (AWU) has called on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to stand up to Chinas bullying, protect Australian sovereignty and jobs, and work with nations that support free and fair trade.

According to the AWU, the latest CCP trade tariffs are due to our legal challenge of Chinas dumping of steel and aluminum products at below-market prices in Australia and the Morrison governments pursuit of the COVID-19 inquiry.

The AWU has called the tariffs a trade violation that aims to destroy Australias industries and make us more reliant on foreign supply.

Initiating the campaign with a letter (pdf) to Morrison, AWUs National Secretary Dan Walton said: It is critical that the Australian Government holds its nerve against such pressure and enforces its international and domestic rights.

Asserting that Chinas tit-for-tat trade sanctioning is at best a breach of the established laws and the norms of the World Trade Organisation and at worst amounts to an unconscionable form of trade coercion and bullying.

Walton said, These are not the actions of sophisticated nation-states that accept global rules of trade or law.

Continuing Walton said Submitting to the preferred trade arrangement of the Chinese Communist Partyone where

high performance in Australian agriculture is punished and cheating in metals manufacturing is rewardedwould be a total inversion of how trade works in a free, fair multilateral system.

The AWU National Secretary also wrote on Twitter that the AWU would expect the prime minister to stand up to the CCPs threats and trade cheating.

Australian workers expect their government to act in the national interest AWU members in steel, aluminium & agriculture expect the PM to stand up to Chinese Govs threats & trade cheating We will always stand up to bullies no matter how big they are https://t.co/VEynlsCd7i  Daniel Walton (@DanWaltonAWU) May 14, 2020

AWU Stance Splitting Labor

The AWU has traditionally been the support base of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), so its declaration of support for the prime minister, and the Coalition has placed the union at odds with the ALP.

Speaking to the Australian on May 14, Labor opposition leader Anthony Albanese dismissed the comments as nothing new.

That letter could have been written by any AWU secretary since 1891, he said.

However, former ALP leader Bill Shorten supported the move, writing on Twitter that the AWU was right to stand up for Australias sovereignty and that every nation should play by the rules.

Boss of my old union @danwaltonAWU is right to stand up for Aussie jobs & sovereignty. All countries should play by the rules. No exceptions just because theyre big.https://t.co/Ylia2GA4dX pic.twitter.com/tnQMzQeyXC  Bill Shorten (@billshortenmp) May 14, 2020

ALP Senator for Victoria Kimberly Kitching also supported the move by the AWU. Commenting in a post on Twitter she said the AWU had shone a light on the truth of our trading relationship with China. She also noted that billionaires urging blind compliance with China were a disgrace.

The Australian Workers Unions impressive leader @DanWaltonAWU shines light of truth on our important trade relationship with China:

Fair trade good

Dumped state-sponsored steel costs Aussie jobs

Billionaires urging blind compliance with a foreign govt a disgrace#auspol pic.twitter.com/4nJfl3FbTn  Kimberley Kitching  #StayHomeSaveLives (@kimbakit) May 14, 2020

Morrison thanked the AWU for its support on May 14 noting that Australians will always stand our ground when it comes to the things that we believe in and the values that we uphold.

Australia is one of the great trading nations of the world and we pursue trade in all countries wherever there is an opportunity, said the Morrison.

But what we will never do is trade away our values, he added.
The Myanmar military has handed over 22 insurgents to the Indian government on Friday afternoon, making it the first time that the neighbouring government has acted on Indias request to hand over leaders of the northeast insurgent groups.

The insurgents, wanted in Manipur and Assam, are being brought back by a special plane. The plane will first make a stopover in Manipur capital Imphal, before heading to Assams Guwahati. The insurgents would be handed over to the local police in the two states, the official said.

Among those deported by Myanmar are some senior and long-wanted Indian insurgent leaders such as NDFB (S) self-styled home secretary Rajen Daimary, Capt Sanatomba Ningthoujam of UNLF and Lt Pashuram Laishram of PREPAK (Pro).

Twevle of the 22 are linked to four insurgent groups in Manipur: UNLF, PREPAK (Pro), KYKL and PLA. The remaining 10 are linked to Assam groups such as NDFB (S) and KLO.

The return of the insurgents is being seen as a result of increasing intelligence and defence cooperation between the two countries from both sides over the last few years.

In 2019, the Myanmar army had carried out continuous operations through February and March on the basis of intelligence provided by Indian security agencies. The 22 insurgents were caught by the Myanmar army in Sagaing Region in these operations.
What just happened? The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) has officially confirmed it would build a new chip factory in the US. The $12 billion plant is being constructed in Arizona, with work set to begin next year and the first chips expected to arrive in 2024.

This week brought reports that TSMC was planning to build a factory in the US. Today, the company confirmed it. The manufacturer said the plant would utilize its 5nm technology, have a 20,000 semiconductor wafer per month capacity, and create over 1,600 high-tech professional jobs.

The news has been welcomed by the US government, which has long been requesting TSMC move some of its semiconductor operations from Asia to the US to avoid security issues. In addition to producing chips for the likes of Apple, Qualcomm, and Nvidia, it also makes them for the US military, including those used in F-35 fighter jets.

Last year, Chinese President Xi Jinping said Beijing would not rule out using force to unite China and Taiwan. With the possibility of China taking control of the island, the US doesnt want its chips within reach of its military and tech rival. As such, the US government wants the firm to make the components in America.

TSMC had said making chips in the US was not the answer to its security worries, but the company later softened its stance, saying in January that it never ruled building or acquiring another fab in America it already operates a smaller factory in Washington.

The U.S. welcomes TSMCs intention to invest $12B in the most advanced 5-nanometer semiconductor fabrication foundry in the world. This deal bolsters U.S. national security at a time when China is trying to dominate cutting-edge tech and control critical industries.  Secretary Pompeo (@SecPompeo) May 15, 2020

The company said it "welcomes continued strong partnership" with the US government and state of Arizona, and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo tweeted his approval.

TSMC has already started producing 5nm chips at its Taiwan plant. Its expected that the A14 SoC in this years iPhone 12 will be based on the technology, as will the rumored A14X chip in a future iPad Pro model, and AMD's Zen 4 chipsthough all these will have arrived long before the factory is operational. Weve also heard that Nvidia is planning a mystery 5nm product, likely based on it post-Ampere Hopper architecture.
Kolkata, May 15 : The staff at Kolkata's INOX Swabhumi have been protesting on social media, after the management allegedly denied them payment and terminated their contacts.

The workers, many of whom get paid Rs 1000 per month or less, also took to staging peaceful protest outside the theatre with placards that read: "We are INOX employees. We have no salary. What will we eat?" The employees also alleged that they cannot share their complaints on the official page of INOX Leisure Limited as their profiles have been blocked.

Videos of the theatre's staff, standing with placards in hands, are doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, where they talk about their helpless condition and urge for help.

Srikanta Ghatak, whose Facebook profile describes him as an Operation Associate at INOX Swabhumi Kolkata, shared in a post written in Bangla, "I humbly request you all to help us. A private company like INOX is not treating us as human beings. They have made their staff work so hard but are now denying salaries. They have a turnover of crores but they don't feel it necessary to pay their staff the minimal salary during this lockdown. Please stand by us and spread the word." Ghatak shared a photo of an aged employee standing with a placard in his hand which reads, "No salary, no food, 89 INOX Swabhumi staff".

He captioned: "Nemai uncle has been serving INOX Swabhumi for the last 12 years. His salary was only Rs 10,000, which the company didn't pay. How much will you save by denying this meager? You are forcing them to commit suicide. INOX, please hear us out and stop terminating our contracts. A lot of us do not have smartphones and hence cannot access or raise their voice on social media. Is this what they get in return for their loyalty?" A video shared on a Facebook page, titled 'Protests against companies for termination n no salary', shows four men in uniforms standing in a row. They express in Hindi: "Namaskar. We are employees of INOX Swabhumi. We are operation associates. We are protesting against the company. We have not being given our salaries amid this coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. The company is also rusticating us. Please share this video and help our words reach the honourable Prime Minister and Chief Minister." Babai Mondal, whose Facebook profile reads "Engineering Supervisor at INOX Leisure Ltd", shared a photo on the abovementioned page. In the photo, Mondal stands with a placard, with this slogan in Bangla: "I am a worker at INOX. I have no salary. What will I eat?" Another employee, Dinesh Singh shared a photo on Facebook where he can be seen standing with his two kids, placard in hand. He wrote: "Served INOX for the last 10 years as an operation associate (O.A.) but in this time of corona (COVID-19), the company has left us. Even our third party contract has been discontinued by Inox. Now what will we do? We have no getting salary this month."
The House of Representatives on Friday will vote on a $3 trillion coronavirus stimulus package that would provide funds to local and state government, hazard pay for health care workers and another round of direct cash payments to tens of millions of Americans.

In a tweet Thursday night, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California announced lawmakers would vote Friday on the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act to pay tribute to our frontline workers, make the investments needed to reopen our economy and put money in the pockets of Americas hard-working families.

Tomorrow, the House will vote on the #HeroesAct to pay tribute to our frontline workers, make the investments needed to reopen our economy and put money in the pockets of Americas hard-working families.  Nancy Pelosi (@SpeakerPelosi) May 15, 2020

If passed by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump  whose administration is taking more of a wait-and-see approach after already approving trillions of dollars in economic relief  the HEROES Act will provide $1,200 to most Americans, $2,400 to couples filing jointly and up to $1,200 for dependents including children and students in college.

Nearly 130 million Americans have already received payments totaling more than $200 billion in direct payments from the $2.2 trillion Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

As of Thursday, nearly 1.5 million Americans have contracted COVID-19 and more than 86,000 have died. The outbreak  and efforts to slow its spread including stay-at-home orders, travel restrictions and social distancing measures  have shuttered schools and businesses and crippled the U.S. economy, prompting unprecedented financial relief efforts by Congress and the Trump administration.

The HEROES Act provides almost $1 trillion for state, local, territorial and tribal governments that Pelosi said desperately need funds to pay the health care workers, police, fire, transportation, EMS, teachers and other vital workers who keep us safe and are in danger of losing their jobs.

Pelosi tweeted a link that includes a spreadsheet with a breakdown of estimated allocations to states, towns, cities and counties.

People across our nation are hurting, and Congress must take extraordinary, immediate action to provide them with relief, Rep. Richard E. Neal said earlier this week. Families are feeling the pain of a terrible one-two punch  a national public health emergency coupled with a historic economic downturn. The gravity of our new reality demands substantial solutions, and thats what Ways and Means Democrats offer in this latest response package.

Coming at a time when unemployment has reached Great Depression levels, the HEROES Act would extend the CARES Acts unemployment boost of $600-per-week through the end of January 2021.

The HEROES Act also offers greater support to essential workers, including $200 billion to support child care and adult day care for families in need during the crisis. The bill also provides an additional 15% in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits for eligible families.

The massive spending plan has no chance of passing in the Republican-controlled Senate, according to Senate Majority Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The president recently told reporters that were in no rush when it comes to a fourth stimulus package. He has previously said he wants to include funding for infrastructure, and his administration has been pushing for a payroll tax cut.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, in an interview with Fox News Sunday" host Chris Wallace, noted the federal government had already pumped over $3 trillion into the economy" through the CARES Act and other efforts.

What the president and I are now saying is: weve spent a lot of money, a lot of this money is not even into the economy yet. Lets take the next few weeks, Mnuchin said. Im having conversations with both the Democrats and Republicans to understand these issues. The president and I are having conversations with outside people, with business. We just want to make sure that before we jump back in and spend another few trillion of taxpayers money, that we do it carefully.

Last week, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and California Sen. Kamala Harris introduced the Monthly Economic Crisis Support Act, which called for monthly checks to millions of Americans.

In that package, individuals with incomes up to $100,000 would receive $2,000 a month. Those who file as head of household are eligible up to $150,000. Married couples who make up to $200,000 would receive a combined $4,000 monthly. Americans would receive the payments throughout the duration of the crisis and for three months after the pandemic ends.

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PRAGUE -- On March 14, Andrei Konchakov arrived at Vaclav Havel International Airport on a flight from Moscow. The 34-year-old Russian had lived in the Czech capital for years, and was recently appointed director of two state-run Russian institutions in Prague, giving him diplomatic status.

That much is known. Czech media, however, have reported more explosive charges.

In early April, the investigative weekly Respekt quoted a Czech security official as saying the individual  not named at the time -- had a suitcase containing the toxic poison ricin. Furthermore, Respekt reported that it had uncovered a Kremlin poisoning plot targeting up to three Prague municipal officials who had recently backed or approved actions that angered Moscow.

Police authorized round-the-clock protection for the trio: The mayor of Prague, Zdenek Hrib, and the mayors of two Prague districts, Ondrej Kolar and Pavel Novotny.

Hrib had approved the renaming of the square in front of the Russian Embassy in Prague after slain Russian politician Boris Nemtsov, a vocal foe of President Vladimir Putin. Kolar had approved the removal in his district of a statue of Ivan Konev, a Soviet marshal who led forces that fought in Czechoslovakia in World War II. Novotny had a monument built in his district to the Vlasov Army, Soviet Army defectors who fought alongside the Nazis before turning against them in the final days of the war.

Western security analysts said that if true, it was one of Russia's most brazen actions in a NATO and European Union country since Putin came to power 20 years ago.

Russia, accused of carrying out numerous attacks on perceived enemies abroad -- most recently the nerve-agent poisoning of former Russian intelligence officer Sergei Skripal and his daughter -- has dismissed the reports and asserted that Moscow is the target of an ongoing smear campaign.

Two months since he arrived in Prague with what he says was a case containing "disinfectant and candies," Konchakov apparently remains at the Russian Embassy, and Czech officials have not moved to expel him. Russia has requested police protection for him, claiming he has faced unspecified threats.

Czech officials have said police are investigating the information contained in the initial Respekt article and subsequent reports after the counterintelligence agency, BIS, filed a formal request. Foreign Minister Tomas Petricek has said any action against Russian diplomats would only be taken based on the findings of that police probe.

However, as the probe continues, analysts say it may face hurdles due to a number of potential factors, including difficulties stemming from diplomatic immunity, differences of opinion among Czech officials, sensitivities about Russian ties -- even as they are severely strained -- and what at least publicly amounts to little clear evidence.

Czech President Milos Zeman, one of the EU's most Kremlin-friendly leaders, has seemed to cast doubt on the reports, at one point calling ricin a "laxative" rather than a poison.

Meanwhile, some security analysts say its possible that rather than an actual plot in which ricin was carried through the airport, it could have been a Kremlin ruse to intimidate the Czechs.

"This has the elements of a psychological campaign against the Czech Republic to show Russia's disapproval of Prague's recent actions," says Ben West, a senior security analyst at the intelligence firm Stratfor.

Diplomatic Immunity

Konchakov is listed as head of the Prague branch of Rossotrudnichestvo, a state-run agency tasked with overseeing the well-being of Russians living abroad, and as director of the Russian Center for Science and Culture, another Russian state-financed institution based in the Czech capital, in the leafy neighborhood near the embassy. Czech media have reported that Konchakov acquired diplomatic status in 2019.

Russia has some 140 diplomatic staff at its embassy in Prague, making it by far the largest diplomatic mission in the Czech Republic. The Czech counterintelligence agency has long warned that the embassy in Prague was a nerve center for Russian espionage, not only in the Czech Republic but elsewhere in Europe.

"A long-term security problem remains the oversized Russian diplomatic mission in the Czech Republic, which raises the threat of Czech citizens coming into contact with the intelligence service of a foreign power," the BIS said in its latest annual report, issued in November 2019.

Diplomats largely enjoy immunity from local law, as enshrined in the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. Among other privileges, they can work largely unhindered by law and carry a diplomatic pouch that cannot be searched or seized.

That includes checked luggage, meaning that Konchakov could have slipped the ricin past Czech customs officials.

"The Kremlin used a similar technique in the 2006 assassination of Aleksandr Litvinenko and the 2018 attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal," says William Courtney, a senior fellow at the RAND Corporation think tank and a former U.S. diplomat with years of service linked to Russia and the former Soviet bloc. "In both cases, an official from Moscow sneaked an exotic poison into the country where the targets were located and after carrying out the plot, both were publicly exposed."

As long as Konchakov has diplomatic status, the Czech authorities cannot arrest him, Courtney says, but they could take the step of declaring him persona non grata and expelling him.

Stratfor's West says that Konchakov's diplomatic status could be a barrier to the police investigation as well. "Diplomatic immunity likely makes the investigation more technically complicated since police cannot simply search embassy property or personnel without creating a larger diplomatic incident," he says.

Police And Politics?

Zeman, who has criticized EU sanctions imposed on Russia over its actions in Ukraine and called in the past for referendums on Czech membership in both NATO and the EU, made clear he was not taking the allegations very seriously, saying Czech intelligence had not outed any Russian agent.

The president, who holds less power than the prime minister, also told Czech public radio on May 5 that ricin was not a poison but a "laxative." And he has wondered aloud whether the three Prague officials hadn't requested police protection to create a bit of self-promotional buzz.

"When a politician is average he tries to gain attention in other ways, such as a sexual scandal, stealing money, or even this way," said Zeman, 75, who has been president since 2013.

Hrib, who is from the anti-establishment Pirate party and is part of a new wave of younger politicians, fired back. "The Czech president should stand behind his citizens, and not defend the interest of foreign powers," he said.

The firebrand Novotny, an outspoken former investigative journalist, called Zeman a "senile old man."

Meanwhile, a top aide to Zeman told local media that he knew Konchakov and described him as a "good guy."

The aide, Zdenek Zbytek, a Czechoslovak military officer in the communist era, is described by Czech media as a gray eminence who has Zeman's ear and high-level contacts in the Kremlin. He has rented offices in the building where the Russian cultural center is located.

Against the backdrop of diplomatic hurdles and political differences, the need for clear and concrete information about what happened may be paramount, analysts suggest.



"Czech intelligence probably has enough evidence indicating which Russian diplomats are engaged in espionage" but will need strong evidence now amid the current ricin allegations to take action, says a Czech security analyst who spoke on condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the matter.

The analyst points to Czech party politics as another possible hurdle to the probe and potential action by the authorities. He says that the government of Prime Minister Andrej Babis may be wary of upsetting Zeman and risking potentially losing the support of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSCM), which it relies upon for political power.

A Russian Ruse?

Christo Grozev, a journalist with the British-based open-source investigative group Bellingcat, says he has "not found enough evidence to conclude that the ricin story is factually correct."

He says the information about a Russian carrying ricin may have come from an intelligence source whom "the Czech authorities did not trust completely -- as if they had, they would have acted more aggressively -- they could have interrogated him on arrival, asked him to voluntarily show the contents of the bag, etc.," Grozev told RFE/RL in an e-mail.

Some security experts say it was possible that Russia was behind the ricin allegation from the start, seeking to frighten the Czech authorities.

West says that there is no doubt of Russia's and the Soviet Union's record of alleged assassinations abroad, including using ricin in the 1978 umbrella-pricking poisoning of the Bulgarian dissident writer Georgi Markov in London, but questioned whether the Kremlin would turn to the toxin now.

"While ricin is lethal if administered directly, and has a history of use in previous Soviet-linked assassinations...there are many more effective ways to kill someone," West says.

The alleged involvement of ricin "suggests that this was intimidation theater" orchestrated by the Kremlin to send a message to the Czech authorities.
Leena Hornlein Receives Spitaleri-Tobin Award as Outstanding UW Graduate

Leena Hornlein

Leena Hornlein, from Gilbert, Ariz., is the recipient of the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri and Tobin Memorial Award, which recognizes the University of Wyomings most outstanding graduates from the 2019-2020 undergraduate class.

The award is based on academic excellence and achievement; service to the university; participation and leadership in the community and campus activities; and citizenship qualities. Hornlein graduated after the fall 2019 semester with a degree in political science and a double minor in international studies and statistics. She is an honors student, graduating with 3.9 grade-point average.

She is among three UW students to receive the top UW graduating award. The others are Christie Wildcat, from Riverton, and Laramies Tessa Wittman.

Chris Rothfuss, a UW Honors College visiting professor, says Hornlein is an amazing young woman with an adventurous spirit and an incredible intellect, and demonstrated excellence in her educational pursuits.

Rothfuss, also a Wyoming legislator, served as Hornleins adviser on her honors thesis, for which she researched and analyzed the impacts of presidential war powers on U.S. foreign policy and conflict around the world.

I have come to know Leena as a truly exceptional student who exemplifies the spirit of this award, Rothfuss says. I look forward to hearing stories of her next adventure and following her along what I expect will be an exciting and dynamic career.

Hornlein immersed herself on campus during her productive UW career.

She took part in various UW study-abroad programs and participated in a trip to Israel, the West Bank and Jordan as a part of the Olive Tree Initiative, which provided her with essential skills in international conflict resolution. She was elected vice president of the Young Democrats at UW, a position she has used to provide students across campus with vital information about elections; was an active member of the UW Political Science Club; served as a member and leader of UWs Honors College; and earned fellowships and internships outside of her academic career.

Hornlein is a superb and very civically minded student who wants to make the world a better place through political engagement, says Stephanie Anderson, chair of UWs School of Politics, Public Affairs and International Studies.

She wants to demonstrate that democracy can work for them, Anderson says. Although Ms. Hornlein is ambitious, her ambition is not for self-aggrandizement, but for finding a way to improve life for Americans everywhere.

Hornlein had never been to Wyoming when she selected UW to further her education.

Having never set foot in Wyoming before my freshman year, I had no idea of the unimaginable experiences, opportunities and lasting relationships that I would gain through the University of Wyoming, she says. During my freshman year, a phenomenal professor encouraged me to apply for study-abroad scholarships, and this changed the course of my entire future.

Hornlein says she is grateful for the UW courses that challenged her.

UW offered specialized courses in conflict studies with exceptional professors who truly strived to challenge students and push their thinking out of the box. These classes facilitated an intellectual spark that turned into a burning passion to create positive change, she says. I am grateful to represent the University of Wyoming through my study abroad, internships and professional experiences all over the world. UW enabled me to expand upon my interests developed in the classroom to experience them in real life. I value and appreciate my UW mentors and the ongoing advice they share as I move forward in my studies and career.
The crew of coronavirus-hit cruise ship Greg Mortimer -- among them dozens ill with COVID-19 -- will be allowed to disembark in Uruguay to quarantine in hotels, the government said Monday.

The Australian-owned ship was expected to dock in Montevideo at around 3:00 pm (1800 GMT), the foreign ministry said.

"We finally decided that Uruguay was going to do what it should," Foreign Minister Ernesto Talvi told Uruguayan TV at the weekend.

"These people can't remain on the high seas indefinitely on a ship where the virus is apparently circulating, spreading and re-spreading, because they are not being cured," the minister said.

The crew has remained on board long after the ship's passengers -- including dozens of Australians -- were allowed to disembark in Montevideo and flown home in a protracted mid-April operation.

Two seriously ill crew were hospitalized. One, a Filipino, later died of COVID-19. A Polish shipmate recovered and was later flown home.

Talvi said the 83 remaining crew will be allowed off on Tuesday, including 37 who have tested positive for the coronavirus. They will be bused to a specially-equipped hotel to undergo quarantine. The remainder who have tested negative will be taken to a separate hotel.

They "will have all the sanitary guarantees to comfortably quarantine, isolated in their rooms and given daily medical check-ups," Talvi said. The hotels will be under guard so that "no-one will be allowed to enter or leave."

Positive cases who eventually test negative and remain without symptoms for 72 hours can be discharged "either to return to the ship or take a flight home."

A cleaning company will, meanwhile, be responsible for disinfecting the vessel and a Uruguayan doctor will remain on board with essential crew to keep the ship running.

The cruise ship had been on an expedition to Antarctica, South Georgia and Elephant Island when the tour was called off on March 20 due to the nearest South American countries -- Argentina and Chile -- closing their borders and imposing lockdowns.

The ship eventually anchored off Montevideo on March 27 as it was the only port remaining open. However, it was not allowed to dock until April 10.
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Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano state has intensified the fight against COVID-19 pandemic in the state with the training of all health workers on infectious disease prevention, control and management.

247ureports.com reports that thee training which is being organized in collaboration with the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) started with 350 health workers in its first batch.

During his visit at the training ground on Friday, Ganduje promised his commitment to ensure capacity building of health workers across the state.

Ganduje charged health workers to give attention to patients with other ailments, pointing out that even though the fight against COVID-19 os ongoing, patients of other diseases should be given adequate attention so as to stop unnecessary deaths in the state.

According to him, this is another session where capacity building is being planned and executed to ensure that we have enough capacity to tackle any infectious disease that may invade our country (God forbid), not only Corona Virus.

I urge the participants to go back to their respective areas and train other health workers in their domain.

We are doing this so that there will be enough understanding on how to tackle COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.

As part of your training, you should know how to manage patients suffering from Corona Virus. You should also know that not all patients who visit the hospitals are suffering from Corona Virus.

We need to treat patients with other ailments or diseases. We need to give them attention even as we battle with COVID-19.

Ganduje who urged the participants to be good ambassadors of the state, expressed gratitude to the management and staff of NCDC for collaborating with Kano state government to make the programme a reality.

Also speaking, the state Commissioner of Health, Dr. Aminu Ibrahim Tsanyawa thanked Ganduje for uncommon interest he is showing in the health sector.

He described the programme as a very important one, adding that, the facilitators are from NCDC. Our trainers are from different areas of healthcare system.

I appreciate Governor Ganduje for the concern he has for our health care workers. We also thank him fo ensuring the capacity building of our healthcare workers. We also thank him for providing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for our healthcare workers.

He stated that Kano state government is seriously working round the clock to ensure that the fight against COVID-19 in Kano is won.

In her brief remarks, the Chief Facilitator of the programme, Prof. Bola Olayinka, said the training will continue in batches till the end of the month.

She added that their mission was to train all health workers in the state so as to put in place, transmissional-based prevauyions, as well as administrative control.

Prof. Olayinka said that at the end of the day, the trainers will not only be provided with certificates, but with training materials to train other health workers.

She also cautioned people on personal hygiene and waste management as the best measures to avoid and prevent infectious diseases.
An Afghan man cut off his wife's nose with a kitchen knife after she asked for a divorce, officials said on Friday, amid a surge in domestic violence triggered by the coronavirus lockdown.

The mother of a seven-year-old boy was trying to leave her abusive husband, who had prevented her from moving out of their house in the southwestern province of Paktika, said Khoshboo Maidanwal, head of the provincial women's affairs department.

The attack on the 24-year-old victim happened earlier this month and police arrested the husband this week. The woman was sent to her father's home after treatment.

An Afghan man cut off his 24-year-old wife's nose with a kitchen knife after she asked for a divorce, officials said on Friday (file image)

'Her husband hit her and chopped off her nose with a sharp kitchen knife,' she said. 'She wanted a divorce because he abused her and beat her frequently.'

Maidanwal said her office has registered 13 violent cases of domestic abuse in the past two months.

'The lockdown due to the coronavirus has made domestic situation even worse for women,' she said, adding that one reason behind the increase could be that more women are reporting abuse.

Rights groups estimate that more than half Afghan women face domestic abuse at some point in their lives.

Afghanistan has recorded a total of 6,053 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 153 fatalities.

There has been a surge in domestic violence in the country triggered by the coronavirus lockdown. Pictured, men walk past a painted wall giving social distancing advice in Kabul

Last month the Afghan government extended lockdown measures until May 24 and on Friday it recorded its highest death toll, reaching 17 in the previous 24 hours.

A February 29 deal between the United States and the Taliban called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal and for the government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when peace talks were to start.

Intra-Afghan peace talks have yet to take place. Many women fear losing freedoms hard-earned since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the austere Islamist militants in 2001.

During their 1996-2001 rule, the Taliban banned women from education and work and only let them leave their homes in the company of a male relative.
Paris has always been a magnet for artists and many of those drawn to it were Australian women painters. This thoroughly engaging survey, containing cameo portraits of 28 women artists who lived in Paris for varying times, concentrates on the first half of the 20th century. They went for their art, for sexual and political freedom, but, often enough, to break with bourgeois expectations of womens roles. Most of them despised the term woman artist but they were far from a uniform coterie: Agnes Goodsir, who was artistically conservative and kept apart from the expatriate community contrasts with Moya Dyring, who kept open house to fellow Oz artists. They form a wonderfully contrasting, often idiosyncratic group portrait of dedicated, adventurous women.

The Kennedy Curse

James Patterson & Cynthia Fagen

Century $32.99

Credit:

To be born a Kennedy in the first half of the 20th century was to be born into wealth and power. But it was also a health hazard: JFK and Bobby shot, Joe jnr blown up in a bomber over England, Chappaquiddick, plane crashes, the list goes on  a family out of Greek tragedy. Crime writer James Patterson and Cynthia Fagen, in this mainstream survey of the family curse, take the story back to its shanty Irish origins, the emergence of Joe snr (money largely from banking and shady links with the likes of mafia boss Sam the Cigar) and the making of what Jackie Kennedy called the most exciting family in the world. Theres nothing much new here and the present tense narrative has, at best, melodramatic urgency, but its a powerful story that the public cant get enough of and draws you in every time.
After Tropical Cyclone Vongfong made landfall in the Philippines early on May 14 and began tracking through the country, imagery from NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP satellite showed the storm was weakening.

On May 14, 2020, Typhoon Vongfong became the first typhoon of the 2020 West Pacific season. It came ashore as a typhoon and by May 15, it had weakened to a tropical storm.

On May 14, NOAA-20 satellite imagery showed features that one would expect from a tropical system, including overshooting tops and tropospheric gravity waves. On May 14 at 1:34 p.m. EDT (1734 UTC), "NASA-NOAA's Suomi NPP infrared satellite imagery showed the eye has now closed and convection has diminished within the eastern semicircle of the system, evident in the warming cloud tops," said William Straka III of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who created night-time and infrared images. "The diminished convection could also be seen in imagery as compared to yesterday, where convection completely surrounded the circulation."

The nighttime image also showed a lightning streak on one of the southern feeder bands around Vongfong's center. The imagery also showed that the circulation was not surrounded by convection (thunderstorms). The surface rain product showed potentially some clear air (no rain) intruding into the circulation. "The 88.0 GHz ATMS imagery from the Suomi-NPP satellite, while at lower resolution, did not show a circulation surrounded by convection. Rather, it showed just cold temperatures in the northeastern part of the storm where the convection was located," Straka said.

On May 15 at 5 a.m. EDT (0900 UTC), Tropical storm Vongfong (Philippines designation Ambo) was located near latitude 14.1 degrees north and longitude 121.9 degrees east, about 60 nautical miles east-southeast of Manila, Philippines. Vongfong was moving to the northwest and had maximum sustained winds 60 knots (69 mph/111 kph).

Because of the impacts to the Philippines, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) are also tracking Typhoon Vongfong, which is called Ambo by PAGASA, to assess the impacts on the various islands in the path of the storm.

On May 15, PAGASA still had many warnings in effect, especially for the northern region of the Philippines as Vongfong moves through that area. Tropical cyclone wind signal number 2 is in effect for Luzon: that includes Ilocos Norte, Ilocos Sur, Apayao, Abra, Kalinga, La Union, Ifugao, Mountain Province, Benguet, Nueva Vizcaya, Quirino, Tarlac, Nueva Ecija, Aurora, Pampanga, Bulacan, Rizal, Metro Manila, Laguna, the eastern portion of Pangasinan, the western portion of Isabela, Cavite, Quezon including Pollilo Islands, Camarines Norte, western portion of Camarines Sur , Marinduque, and Batangas. Tropical cyclone wind signal number 1 is in effect for Luzon: Cagayan including Babuyan Islands, Batanes, the rest of Pangasinan, Zambales, Bataan, Oriental Mindoro, Burias Island, the rest of Camarines Sur, the rest of Isabela, and the northern portion of Albay.

Vongfong will continue to move northwest across the island of Luzon and is forecast to turn northeast and become extra-tropical.

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Sundays episode comes as preparations are underway for this years Porter County Fair, which is scheduled for July 23-Aug. 1 in Valparaiso. Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb set a goal of allowing nearly all activities to resume on July 4 as part of a plan to ease restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus. The fair tends to draw about 150,000 people over 10 days.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 00:26:57|Editor: huaxia

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DAR ES SALAAM, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The World Food Program (WFP) on Thursday announced the launch of humanitarian flights to Tanzania to provide logistics support for the global COVID-19 response.

The WFP said in a statement that the first passenger flight ferrying humanitarian and health workers into Tanzania will arrive in the commercial capital Dar es Salaam from the Ethiopian capital Addis Ababa on Friday.

"This is the first flight of its kind since commercial air services were suspended in Tanzania in an attempt to curb the spread of the coronavirus," said the statement.

In Tanzania, said the statement, flights for humanitarian and health workers are expected to take place every week, adding that upon arrival in Tanzania, passengers will follow Tanzanian authorities' regulations for quarantine.

"WFP has a key role to support the government and the whole humanitarian community in ensuring supplies and staff are able to reach where they are needed," said Michael Dunford, WFP Representative in Tanzania.

"Our experience in running logistics operations has allowed WFP to adapt our programs to provide common logistics services to support the global humanitarian and health response," added Dunford. Enditem
Lyndon Johnsons first meeting with President Franklin Roosevelt didnt go well. It was June 1938. Johnson had joined the House of Representatives 14 months earlier and he needed Roosevelt to approve a federal loan for the Pedernales Electric Cooperative, a nascent outfit that aimed to provide electricity to the impoverished rural farms and ranches in Johnsons district in the Texas Hill Country.[i]

But when Johnson met Roosevelt, the president was distracted and the meeting ended before the young Congressman was able to ask about the loan. Johnson then turned to a friend, Tommy Corcoran, who was one of Roosevelts top advisers, and asked for another meeting. Corcoran agreed to do so and offered some advice: show him what Austin will look likeDont argue with him, Lyndon, show him. At his next meeting with Roosevelt, Johnson strode in with poster-size photos that showed the progress being made on the construction of the Buchanan Dam on the Colorado River, as well as images of long-distance transmission lines and an electrified rural home at night.

Roosevelt agreed on the spot. He instructed the Rural Electrification Administration to make a $1.3 million loan to the Pedernales Electric Cooperative. Today, it is the largest electric cooperative in the United States and the Texas Hill Country is one of the fastest-growing regions in the country.

Johnson didnt argue for electrification, he showed Roosevelt what it meant. And that is the strength of Scott Tinkers new feature-length documentary, SwitchOn. Among the most maddening aspects of the ongoing debate about energy policy, renewables, and climate change is that they lack a human connection. SwitchOn succeeds because it shows how electricity and clean cooking fuels nourish humans.

Before going further, I must disclose that I have known Tinker for years and consider him a friend. Thus, I wont pretend to be an unbiased reviewer. A few months ago, I saw an early cut of the film and gave my thoughts on how to make it better. Thus, Im not a neutral reviewer. That said, Ive seen a lot of bad films about energy, including most recently, Michael Moores Planet of the Humans. Ive also endured a myriad of terrible presentations about energy. SwitchOn goes beyond numbers and charts. It allows viewers to see what life is like in remote regions of the world that have little or no access to modern energy.

SwitchOn is a production of the Switch Energy Alliance, a non-profit that is dedicated to inspiring an energy-educated future that is objective, nonpartisan, and sensible. Tinker is the chairman of the alliance. Hes also the head of the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of Texas in Austin. The film is Tinkers second documentary. The first, Switch, came out in 2012. It looked at the energy transition in developed countries.

SwitchOn, which was directed by Harry Lynch, starts in a remote region of northern Colombia in a village of the Arhuaco tribe, subsistence farmers who are living in much the same way they have for the last four or five centuries. Only about half of the tribes members will live to adulthood. In a voiceover, Tinker explains that the Arhuacos still get all their energy from burning wood. And you might think they are a fairly isolated case. But in fact, there are one billion people in rural Latin America, Africa, and Asia, who live like the Arhaucos do, with no electricity or modern energy of any kind. There are another one billion people, most of them urban, with limited energy thats often unaffordable or dangerous. Thats the setup for the next 75 minutes of the film.

From Colombia, Tinker and his film crew bounce all over the world, to Ethiopia, Vietnam, Nepal, and Kenya. They visit dams, coal mines, and urban electric grids. Given the ongoing pandemic and lockdown, and the near-impossibility of jumping on a jetliner to go pretty much anywhere these days, the travel seems almost dizzying. Tinker estimates he and his team traveled more than 100,000 miles.

The film is well-edited and beautifully shot. The most emotionally effective segment of the film comes during the first 15 minutes or so, when Tinker visits Nepal. He stops in a home that uses biomass for cooking. In the background, you can hear some of the children in the home coughing due to the effect of indoor air pollution. The concentration of airborne particulates in the home was 15 to 20 times higher than what was found outside. In 2012, according to the World Health Organization about 1.7 million premature deaths were attributed to indoor air pollution, with much of the problem being caused by the use of biomass and poor-quality stoves.

Tinker then visits the Siddhi Memorial Hospital in Bhaktapur, to see first-hand how biomass-related pollution is impacting the health of children. He sits in on a doctor visit. A local mother has brought in her daughter, who appears to be less than two years old. The doctor explains The child is having fever and difficulty breathing, and complaining of cough. This was the childs second visit. The mother explained the child had not improved since the first visit. And now, the doctor explained, the girl is complaining of fast breathing.

Throughout the doctors examination, the child is coughing and crying. The doctor tells Tinker that more than 60 percent of the children they see are at the hospital because of upper respiratory infections. During the exam, the camera turns to Tinker, whose eyes well with tears while watching the struggling child. I teared up, too. The girl is then taken to another part of the hospital where a pair of nurses attempt to administer oxygen as the child continues crying and coughing. Sadly, Tinker says in his voiceover, children die frequently here of pneumonia.

Untold thousands of children die in places like Nepal and India because they live in houses that dont have electric or butane stoves. They are dying at the same time that Americas biggest environmental groups and highest-profile climate activists routinely insist that the only way we should be fueling our society is with wind and solar energy. Those groups and activists stage protests and divestment campaigns at the same time that women and children are dying of respiratory illnesses because they lack butane and a proper stove.

The film concludes with a return to Colombia where Tinker and his team install a 3.5-kilowatt solar system with 24 kilowatt-hours of battery storage in the Arhuacos village. The system cost about $75,000 and was enough to run a refrigerator, a few lights, and a few ceiling fans. The completion of the project provides a neat, and rather triumphant ending to the film.

A few days ago, I talked to Tinker about SwitchOn and what he hopes to accomplish with it. He replied, saying he wanted to show that energy really does change lives. Half the worlds population is disadvantaged because they dont have access to modern energy. This is the real inequality. SwitchOn succeeds because it doesnt argue about inequality or about how transformative modern energy can be, it shows it.

[i] Johnson joined the US House on April 10, 1937. Wikipedia.org, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyndon_B._Johnson

Robert Bryces sixth book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations, was published in March by PublicAffairs. His documentary, Juice: How Electricity Explains the World, will be available on iTunes on June 2.
Amaravati, May 16 : The Andhra Pradesh State Road Transport Corporation (APSRTC) has laid off 6,270 contract employees citing financial crisis due to Covid-19 lockdown, APSRTC Employees' Union claimed on Friday.

It said that the management through oral orders had asked the contract workers not to report for duties.

The depot managers were directed to utilise the services of only outsourcing staff. There are 52,000 regular employees in the corporation.

The employees' union has appealed to Transport Minister Perni Nani to reconsider the orders to lay off the contract employees. The union leaders pointed out that the central government has issued clear instructions that there should be no lay-offs in government or private organizations during the lockdown.

They recalled that the state government too had assured in the past that the contract workers will not be removed from service.

As many as 6,270 contract workers are rendering their services in APSRTC head office in Vijayawada, offices of the regional managers, bus depots, workshops and hospitals. Majority of them are sweepers, attenders and grade-4 employees.

"We were demanding that the 7,800 regular vacancies be filled to ease the workload on existing staff. The management took this drastic decision to axe the contract workers," said employees' union general secretary P Damodara Rao.

The employees' union said the contract workers were not even paid salaries for the month of April.
Death is a part of life, but much of modern society has shunned this fact to its great detriment, according to several forthcoming books on religion and spirituality this year. Three authors, with backgrounds in medicine, theology, and philosophy, argue for why facingand even embracingones mortality can improve daily life and heighten a sense of spirituality.

Books offering a different outlook on death are not new. In 2018, the New York Times reported on a growing death positivity movement, which aims to promote the acceptance of human mortality. And the Covid-19 pandemic is sharpening societys focus on death, according to Michael Maudlin, senior v-p and executive editor at HarperOne. With the coronavirus, our mortality is now impossible to ignore, he says. Even before the pandemic, it was becoming clear to more and more families that we die poorly. Yes, people live longer, but we still put off preparing, which means all end-of-life experiences are done in crisis mode.

Part of living well means preparing for the end, writes Lydia S. Dugdale, associate professor of medicine and director of the Center for Clinical Medical Ethics at Columbia University, in The Lost Art of Dying: Reviving Forgotten Wisdom (HarperOne, July). The book, which PW called illuminating and thought-provoking in its starred review, examines what the author perceives as the current death-denying culture in America and digs into societys reliance on medical treatments that the author argues prolong suffering and strip dying individuals of their dignity. Inspiration for the book came from a text written during the Black Plague that revolutionized the way medieval Europeans handled death.

Dugdale thinks we could use a similar revolution today, says Maudlin, who hopes readers of The Lost Art of Dying start to consider death in a different light. The end does not have to be a time of panic and fear; previous generations can help us rediscover how to prepare, and we will live better and happier lives as a result, he says.

From Oxford University Press, The Solace: Finding Value in Death through Gratitude for Life (Nov.) by Joshua Glasgow, a philosophy professor at Sonoma State University in California, encourages readers to find a deeper appreciation for life that extends even to its natural culmination. By doing so, Glasgow writes, death can become comforting and even positive.

Lucy Randall, an editor at OUP, says The Solace represents modern societys increased openness, transparency, and willingness to talk about challenging topics. Readers, she says, can learn that death doesnt stand alone, outside of life, but rather is part of it, adding, We couldnt have life, with all the wonderful things that it contains, without death providing the frame.

Finally, in The End of the Christian Life: How Embracing Our Mortality Frees Us to Truly Live (Brazos, Sept.), researcher and minister J. Todd Billings shares his experiences living with incurable cancer and draws on his knowledge of Scripture. As strange as it seems, coming to terms with our limits as dying creatures is a life-giving path, he writes, arguing that considering ones mortality during daily life is a part of following the crucified and resurrected Lord.

Bob Hosack, executive editor at Brazos, says The End of the Christian Life demonstrates how embracing mortality can be a key aspect of Christian discipleship. And, similar to HarperOnes Maudlin, Hosack notes that the books release takes on a special significance amid the Covid-19 crisis.

With daily news reporting of our dystopian days, we are regularly reminded of our human mortality, Hosack says. Its a sobering reminder, as both testaments remind us, that we dont know the length of our days.
The impact of the pandemic on jobs in Ireland is one the largest in the European Union, far outstripping the impact in richer northern European countries, according to a new study.

The research from the European Commission comes as the Government edges towards a staged relaxation of tough lockdown rules which have worked to contain the spread of coronavirus but which have hit the economy hard, with a million workers now depending on the State for income.

"The sectors that are marked as non-essential and even explicitly closed because of the high contagion risk they involve account for less than 10pc of overall EU employment, but here the variation is much more significant: whereas in Spain, Greece or Ireland it accounts for more than 13pc, in Romania, Poland, Belgium or even Germany it is around or below 8pc," the report said.

The figure for Ireland is 12.67pc of the workforce, the fifth highest level in the EU.

Although the percentage of workers here affected by the lockdowns is relatively high, they tend to work in less productive areas of the economy such as tourism, so the overall economic impact is not quite as large.

The workers most affected tend to have lower-paid jobs and less security. There are a higher proportion of women in their ranks.

Estimates from the Government show unemployment will remain high even when the pandemic has eased, at 10pc of the workforce, wiping out recent gains made in jobs and wages.

Industries such as tourism are likely to miss the entire summer season as holiday travel has plummeted.

"Overall, it is expected that Covid-19 will bring about marked structural adjustment and protracted disruption in industries and occupations, even more so than a typical economic recession such as the financial crisis of 2008, when it took about eight years for EU unemployment rates to bounce back to pre-crisis levels," the report said.

It said conservative estimates pointed to 45 million jobs in the EU, almost a quarter of the total, faced with very high risk of disruption and another 22pc of the workforce, mostly medium- to lower-skilled service provision, exposed to significant risk.
European Union foreign ministers will weigh later Friday what action the bloc could take should Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu push ahead with plans to annex the West Bank in coming months.

The ministers had planned to welcome the formation of a new government and offer EU cooperation, but Netanyahu and his rival-turned-partner, Benny Gantz, have postponed the swearing-in of their controversial new cabinet as the Israeli leader tries to quell infighting within his Likud party.

The ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday, is now planned for Sunday to give Netanyahu more time to hand out coveted Cabinet appointments to members of his party.

Their coalition agreement allows him to present an annexation proposal as soon as July 1, and the EU ministers want to thrash out a common position should the move go ahead.

The 27-nation bloc has routinely condemned Israeli settlement expansion and warned against the annexation plans, but the member countries appear too divided to seriously weigh any actions, such as sanctions, particularly during informal talks via video-conference.

This is a very divisive issue inside the council of ministers, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said Monday.

Everything in foreign policy requires unanimity, especially sanctions. So we are, for the time being, far away from discussing about sanctioning.

Borrell said the talks are nevertheless important, to understand all 27 countries' stances on the respect of international law, and how can we judge this announced annexation in order to clarify the position of the European Union.

In February, he affirmed the bloc's commitment to a two-state solution in the Middle East, based along the 1967 lines, with the possibility of mutually agreed land-swaps, made up of the state of Israel and an independent, democratic, contiguous, sovereign and viable state of Palestine. Jordan has been lobbying the EU to take practical steps to make sure annexation doesn't happen.

In a statement, Foreign Minister Ayman Al-Safadi stressed the need for the international community and the European Union in particular to take practical steps that reflect the rejection of any Israeli decision to annex.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Washington, May 16 : The US has announced new export controls aimed at limiting Chinese technology giant Huawei's access to semiconductor technology.

The new rule bars semiconductor-makers that use US technology and software in chip design from shipping to Huawei without US government permission, the BBC reported.

It is the latest US action to target Huawei, which US officials view as a national security threat.

China threatened to retaliate against US tech firms.

The tightened controls come a year after the US moved to cut off Huawei, the world's second largest smart phone maker, from access to US-made semiconductor chips, which form the backbone of most computer and phone systems.

In response, the company and others in China accelerated efforts to manufacture such chips domestically.

US Commerce Department Secretary Wilbur Ross said that those efforts were "still dependent on US technologies", and accused Huawei of taking steps "to undermine" earlier export controls.

"This is not how a responsible corporate citizen behaves," Ross said. "We must amend our rules exploited by Huawei... and prevent US technologies from enabling malign activities contrary to US national security and foreign policy interests." The new US rule, to be published on Friday, applies to foreign-made items, using US technology. It exempts equipment or software made or shipped within the next 120 days - a move meant to limit economic harm.

In a background briefing for reporters, the US said officials would consider licence applications to do business with Huawei on a "case by case" basis.

"This is a licensing requirement. It does not necessarily mean that things are denied," a senior State Department official said. "We tend to approach Huawei with some concern but this is a measure that gives the US government visibility into what is moving." Also on Friday, the US extended waivers that allow US companies, many of them rural internet providers, to use some kinds of Huawei technology for another 90 days.

Donald Trump, who is campaigning for re-election in November, has stepped up his attacks on China in recent weeks, blaming it for the spread of COVID-19.

This week, he moved to restrict US government pension funds from investing in Chinese companies. He said on Wednesday he could "cut off the whole relationship".

The US has said Huawei's technology could be used for spying by the Chinese government.

It has pressured allies, including the UK and Germany, to bar Huawei from their networks and sued the company for technology theft and doing business with Iran, in violation of US sanctions.

Huawei has contested the US government's claims and said American efforts are likely to backfire, hurting the ability of US tech firms to do business.

China on Friday threatened to place US companies on an "unreliable entity list", according to a report in the country's Global Times.

As well as putting pressure on its microchip business, the US trade blacklist has made life very difficult for Huawei's smartphone business.

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Huawei's handset shipments outside of China had dropped by 35 per cent, threatening its position as the world's second-biggest handset maker.

Its latest phones can no longer embed Google Mobile Services, which include important features such as maps and the Google Play app store.

Huawei has tried to work its way around this by providing its own Huawei Mobile Services. But its App Gallery is missing a majority of the most-popular apps found on Android in the UK and US.

Luckily, Huawei may have found a loophole.

It has been re-releasing some of its previous smartphones with ever-so-slightly updated hardware, complete with the Google Mobile Services.

Its latest is the P30 Pro New Edition. It looks almost just like the original P30 Pro, which was released before the US trade blacklist. But the New Edition has more memory and storage - and now comes in silver. And because it's technically a P30 Pro, rather than a P40 Pro, it also comes with the full suite of Google services.

Huawei says it will be released in the UK on 3 June. How long it can use that work-around remains to be seen.
A nonprofit run by President Donald Trump's nominee to lead a federal media agency is under investigation by the Washington, D.C., attorney general for potential self-dealing.

Michael Pack, who was picked by Trump to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, heads a nonprofit called Public Media Lab.

Bob Menendez, the Democratic ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which is reviewing Pack's nomination, said in a statement that the organization is being investigated by D.C.'s attorney general. The Senate committee is chaired by Republican Sen. James Risch.

"The OAG is investigating whether Mr. Pack's use of his nonprofit's funds was unlawful and whether he improperly used those funds to benefit himself," Menendez said in a statement. "The OAG is also requesting documents from the Committee in furtherance of its investigation." The D.C. office informed the committee on Thursday of an investigation into Public Media Lab, Menendez noted.

The media organization Pack was picked to lead was once known as the Broadcasting Board of Governors. The group's board controls U.S. government-funded media companies such as the Voice of America and Radio Europe.

A spokesman for the D.C. Attorney General's office confirmed that there is an investigation into Public Media Lab and declined to comment further.

CNBC first reported on Public Media Lab's business dealings, which included over $1.6 million that has been funneled from the nonprofit into Pack's production company, Manifold Productions, records show. Pack is a conservative filmmaker with ties to former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon.

Pack directed two documentaries that were executive produced by Bannon, including "Rickover: The Birth of Nuclear Power," which aired on PBS.

The development comes as Trump has been publicly pressuring the committee reviewing Pack to vote and pass his nomination.

Risch was planning to hold a business meeting on Thursday that was going to include a vote on Pack but it was suddenly canceled.
By Lynn Parramore, Senior Research Analyst at the Institute for New Economic Thinking, and Jeffrey L Spear, an Associate Professor of English at New York University where he teaches Victorian Studies, Victorian Literature, and Visual Culture. Originally published at the Institute for New Economic Thinking website

There is no wealth but life.

 John Ruskin, Unto This Last (1860)

A chilling experiment is underway in America, with plenty of unwilling human guinea pigs.

Many parts of the country are reopening for business against the warnings of medical experts, flying in the face of grim predictions of sharply rising body counts. Two-thirds of Americans fear that the restart is happening too quickly, and the President himself acknowledges that by easing restrictions, therell be more death. Yet he presses on, even as his own White House suffers a viral outbreak.

News screens flash with tallies of death and tallies of wealth: New Yorks Governor Andrew Cuomo has declared that lives must be saved whatever it costs, insisting that for Americans the choice between public health and the economy is no contest. But he did not ask celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who some weeks ago expressed his view that reopening schools could give the country its mojo back, and perhaps only cost us 2-3% in terms of total mortality. (2% sounds conveniently small compared to its equivalent in human lives, 6,560,000. Oz later apologized after public outrage).

Meanwhile Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas, offered his own assessment of the trade-off between capitalism and the lives of Americas senior citizens, explaining, there are more important things than living.

Since the days of Adam Smith, free market capitalists have held that human beings are rational actors who pursue economic gain for self-interested motives. But here is Patrick, a free marketer if there ever was one, talking about a gift-sacrifice economy model in which people  some people, at least  lay down their lives to keep the economic engines revved.

Patricks words reveal an unspoken truth about capitalism. For the system to work smoothly, there have always been requirements of human sacrifice  a certain portion of the population was expected to act not as self-serving homo economicus, but self-sacrificing homo communis, focused upon what benefits the collective at their own expense. If these people cant social distance at the workplace, they are expected to show up anyway. If there isnt enough safety equipment, they are declared essential workers who must put their lives and that of their families at risk for the greater good.

But for whom and for what is this sacrifice intended? How much dying will be figured into state budgets and gross domestic product (GDP)? When ranked by GDP, the U.S. is the wealthiest economy in the world, but is a countrys wealth something totally separate from, or even contrary to, the health and life the majority of its citizens?

Wealth v. illth

To help us navigate these questions, it is useful turn to someone who offered potent challenges to the economic calculus of his day: John Ruskin, the 19th-century art critic-turned-political economist. He was one of the most outspoken critics of capitalism and prevailing economic ideas of the Victorian era, and his work presciently points to shortcomings that have followed us into the present day.

Ruskin questions the premises on which free market capitalism is based, returning to first principles: what is wealth? What do we value? How should we understand the relationship between people, the economy, and the state?

In his view, economies are, above all, social systems whose true end is to benefit the people, and not, as the Texan politician would have it, the other way around. Anticipating the behavioral economics of our own day, Ruskin rejected the idea advocated by such economists as John Stuart Mill that there could be a deductive science of economics based on the assumption that the human being is a covetous machine that when applied to actual situations could take the social affections, the non-rational aspects of human behavior, into account. Ruskin recognized that such a system implicitly removed the marketplace from the constraints of religion and morality that are supposed to apply to all human behavior. He compared it to an assumption that humans are essentially a skeleton with flesh, blood and consciousness as add-ons founding an ossifiant theory of progress on this negation of a soul.

Ruskin defined wealth quite differently from many of his contemporaries, and ours. For him, wealth is anything that supports life and health, from the supplies in your storeroom to the song in your heart: There is no wealth but life. Life, including all its powers of love, of joy, and of admiration. That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings; that man is richest who, having perfected the functions of his own life to the utmost, has also the widest helpful influence, both personal, and by means of his possessions, over the lives of others. (Unto this Last).

By that definition, America is looking increasingly impoverished. And it is not a virus which is stealing our wealth away.

Playing on the root of the word wealth from the Old English word weal, signifying health, Ruskin proposed that while wealth was anything life-supporting that could be used and enjoyed, it had a dark counterpart that he called illth from the Old Norse word for bad  the things that make people ill, their lives stunted and despairing, their environment polluted. Wealth cannot be produced without illth, but great fortunes have been made by extracting the means of wealth without paying the cost of illth. To take a Ruskinian example, a factory that pollutes the water it uses, fouls the air and pays its workers below what a healthy life requires will be more profitable than a business that cleans up after itself and pays a living wage, but its illth becomes a form of national debt expressed in damage to the health of others and the environment. Think of something like a toxic Superfund site.

Economists have a term for Ruskins concept of illth, referring to it as negative externalities, even though they are not external to the capitalist economic system, but intrinsic to it. The most daunting problems of the current age, environmental disaster and inequality, are fueled by illth.

The Covid-19 crisis has merely amplified trends of rising illth, of despair, sickness, and alienation, which have been on the rise for decades as globalization, money-driven politics, decimated workers rights, and privatization have tipped the economic balance far in favor of the very few. If we are to judge a countrys health not by GDP, which rises in the face of a massive oil spill, but according to the criteria of the World Happiness Report (WHR), which measures things like social trust and faith in institutions, America is in bad shape when it comes to the ratio of wealth to illth. Scandinavian countries top the WHR, while the U.S. ranks a dismal 19th.

According to the Columbia University study of the 2020 WHR report, the key factors that account for the relative happiness of Scandinavian countries  what makes them wealthy in Ruskins terms  are precisely those that have been under pressure or cut back in the U.S. since the rise of neoliberalism: emancipation from market dependency in terms of pensions, income maintenance for the ill or disabled, and unemployment benefits together with labor market regulation such as a high minimum wage. Of course, no one likes to pay taxes, but Scandinavian citizens satisfaction with public and common goods such as health care, education, and public transportation that progressive taxation helps to fund, meets with approval at all income levels.

Pandemics are exacerbated by illth. We can see it in communities of color where the coronavirus strikes down those whose resources and access to health care have been limited by discriminatory policies and high contact employment. We can see it in factory farms where broken supply chains have caused farmers to euthanize livestock and plow under crops while people across the country go hungry. Airlines got immediate stimulus aid in the U.S., but there has been no subsidy for the restaurant supply chain that could be diverted for distribution by food banks and favorably located restaurants thus sustaining at least some of our much-vaunted small businesses. No one has to fly, but everyone must eat.

We sense illth accumulating in the comments of Las Vegas mayor Carolyn Goodman, who, in her eagerness to get the casinos back in business, told an astonished Anderson Cooper on CNN that she would offer up the citys workers as a control group in a reopening experiment. If they werent able to social distance, Goodman was unconcerned: In my opinion, you have to go ahead, she said. Every day you get up, its a gamble.

Ruskin saw the capitalists of his day as gamblers heedless of the costs they foisted onto ordinary people: But they neither know who keeps the bank of the gambling-house, nor what other games may be played with the same cards, nor what other losses and gains, far away among the dark streets, are essentially, though invisibly, dependent upon theirs in lighted rooms. (Unto This Last).

In other words, not only do capitalists gamble with other peoples lives; they are oblivious to the fact that there are other ways to arrange society, to deal the cards differently, more fairly.

Witness the post-Covid reality imagined by Governor Cuomo. Instead of focusing on what changes could better support the health and lives of ordinary people, he has called in Google CEO Eric Schmidt to head a commission to reimagine New York state with more technology permanently inserted into every dimension of civic life. A better deal for Silicon Valley, to be sure. But what is in the cards for everyone else? When educational platforms and health protocols are mapped by gigantic and unaccountable corporations, who gets lost? Surely the answer is those who can least afford it.

President Trump says that it is time to move on from the coronavirus and get on with economy. Ruskin would have recognized the deity worshipped by countrys leader, which he called the Goddess of getting on. Only Ruskin recognized that she tended to favor not of everybodys getting on  but only of somebodys getting on,  what he called a vital, or rather deathful, distinction. For capitalists, getting on post-Covid means executives working remotely while the rank and file return to the factory floor without adequate face masks, and large corporations, not public input, determines the blueprints for our lives.

The issue of worker safety does matter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, but not because he fears that some will get sick or die, but for a potential epidemic of litigation. In the next pandemic relief legislation, McConnell is looking to solve the problem of worker safety by shielding corporations from lawsuits rather than supporting Centers for Disease Control (CDC) mandated regulations that would both promote safety and sort out what is and is not actionable.

The Visible Hand

Instead of Adam Smiths Invisible Hand, Ruskin advocated a Visible Hand of reasoned management, a government which could allocate resources effectively and create stores of what citizens most needed in a crisis. In our day this need not be a literal storehouse but surge capacity. The Obama administration, for example, contracted with Halyard Health to design a machine that could turn out 1.5 million N95 masks per day. They were ready to build the machine in 2018 when the Trump administration cancelled the program.

In Ruskins view, the Visible Hand was the guardian of the lives of the citizens, especially the poor, whose health and lives were their essential property. Ruskin actually defined an economy as the wise management of labor, applying labor, carefully preserving what it produces, and wisely distributing those products. A countrys wealth is in the peoples strength and health, not their illness and death.

Ruskins concepts of wealth and illth help us understand the centrality of ethics and responsibility to economic activity, and how economies are not an assemblage of atomistic human units but whole systems of people interacting, where the activities of some impact the lives of all. His work indicates the need for a whole systems approach to a crisis in which what happens on the beaches of Georgia impacts a nursing home in North Carolina, and visitors to New York City or New Orleans can carry the infection home. The decisions of one business in a complex international supply chain can impact the fate of millions.

In unregulated capitalism, Ruskin sussed out what Sigmund Freud might have recognized as the death drive. Decisions about the economy, he held, must be informed by the essential biologic basis of life itself: The real science of political economy, which has yet to be distinguished from the bastard science, as medicine from witchcraft, and astronomy from astrology, is that which teaches nations to desire and labour for the things that lead to life; and which teaches them to scorn and destroy the things that lead to destruction (Unto This Last).

The Covid crisis has exposed contradictions in market and America First ideology. Without federal aid to state and local governments, essential personnel are being laid off even as we declare them heroes. Employer based insurance is failing, but few American politicians are willing to fully embrace single payer insurance. Meat plant workers are declared essential, but still subject to deportation, as if famed Revolutionary patriot Nathan Hale had said, I only regret that you have but one life to give for my country.

Ultimately, the most dangerous pestilence that threatens the country is not a packet of RNA called Covid-19 but an economic and political system that does not value true wealth, and promotes the life of the few while condemning the many to literal sickness unto death.
The direct fiscal hit after the announcement of three stimulus packages announced so far amounts to only 0.6 per cent or Rs 1.29 lakh crore of India's total Gross Domestic Product, an SBI Ecowrap report said. Of total Rs 3.16 lakh crore worth announcements made yesterday, the Centre's cash outlay will be around Rs 14,500-14,750 crore, rest is in the forms of loans and liquidity, leaving fiscal deficit hit of 0.07 per cent of the GDP.

Lower revenues and higher expenditure in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic will leave an overall fiscal deficit dent of Rs 16 lakh crore (8 per cent of revised estimates of GDP) in FY21, it added.

The government on Thursday announced measures to ensure food security for migrants, extended affordable housing scheme for urban poor and special credit facility for street vendors. With this, the total package announced so far stands at Rs 16.45 lakh crore, implying residual package of Rs 3.54 lakh crore is left of the total Rs 20 lakh crore package announced, provided the earlier measures announced by the RBI are also included.

The report said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's second tranche of announcements will give support to the needy by giving access to food and credit. "The recent crisis has shown how important it is for a huge country like India to have an infrastructure, which promotes interoperability between the States and Centre. The mission mode implementation of One Nation One Ration Card is a step in the right direction. So is making available the portability of welfare benefits for migrant workers and those having no ration card," it said.

Also read: How effective is Tranche II of FM Sitharaman's economic package?

SBI said changes in labour laws that were being mulled over in Parliament, if implemented properly, could bring positive changes in the status of the labourers.

All states/UTs are expected to implement the One Nation One Ration Card scheme by March 2021. "The technological architecture has to be put in place quickly in more than 5.27 lakhs Fair Price Shops (FPSs) (2018 data) operational across the country," the report said.

Through the banking channel, the government also announced financial support for the Shishu Loan Holders under MUDRA Scheme, street vendors and farmers. "Easy access to credit for street vendors is urgently required as they have seen the maximum impact of lockdown. Top ten states account for around 35 lakh street vendors with Uttar Pradesh taking the lead with 7.8 lakh vendors followed by West Bengal at 5.5 lakh vendors," it said.

The report said the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme and Affordable Rental Housing scheme will also give a push to housing, thus increasing demand for construction of raw materials.

Furthermore, plans worth Rs 6,000 crore that'll be approved under the Compensatory Afforestation Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA) will support job opportunities. NABARD will also extend additional refinance support of Rs 30,000 crore for crop loan requirement of Rural Co-op Banks & RRBs. On 17 April, the RBI had also given a line of credit support to NABARD of Rs 25,000 crore. "We expect RBI might give another Rs 30,000 crore liquidity support to NABARD to ease the stress and cost of borrowing," the report said.

Also read: Sops for migrant labourers and farmers are fine, but are they enough?
The parties to Minsk contact group held an online meeting on May 14. Ukraine's represrentatives offered to return occupied Donbas to this country's tax sphere and verify the Ukrainian property based in the occupied territories. The press department of the President's Office reported this on Friday.

Besides, Ukraine has once again insisted on full and non-restricted access of OSCE monitoring mission all over its territory within the internationally recognized borders, including the temporarily occupied areas.

The sides also discussed the issue of new "all for all" exchange and the necessity of openign new checkpoints on the division line.

Ukraine's representatives once again claimed they were ready to prepare in the 24/7 mode.

Earlier, we reported that Leonid Kuchma, the second President of Ukraine, would be leading this country's delegation for negotiations in the Minsk trilateral contact group. Oleksiy Reznikov, the Vice Prime Minister and Minister for Reintegration of the temporarily occupied areas, will become Kuchma's deputy. Oleksandr Merezhko, the Head of Parliamentary Committee for Foreign Affairs and Interparliamentary Cooperation will also serve as deputy head of the delegation.
The saga of the appointment of the new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine seems to be coming to an end. He still has to be approved, but there will most likely not be any problems with it. So it is time to get acquainted

Open source

U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Keith Dayton to the Senate for the position of the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine. Earlier, the White House press service had already announced that it was Keith Dayton who should become the U.S. Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to our country.

This concluded the almost a year-long saga of the appointment of the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, which began with the dismissal of Marie Yovanovitch.

It remains for the Senate to decide, but it seems that very soon President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky will welcome the new Ambassador of the United States.

Who is Keith Dayton?

Keith Dayton Open source

Keith Dayton was born on March 7, 1949.

He received a Bachelor of Arts degree at the College of William and Mary, and a Master's degree in History at Cambridge University, as well as a Master's degree in International Relations at the University of Southern California.

Military experience

Dayton is a retired Lieutenant General. He has 40 years of military service behind him, and he retired in 2010.

At different times, Dayton served as U.S. Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, Director of Policy and Strategic Planning of the Staff, Director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency and Defense Attache at the U.S. Embassy in Russia.

Dayton is the henchman of Trump?

ABC News

Interestingly, it seems that he is not.

At least Dayton has nothing to do with him. And he was recommended for the position of the Adviser to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine by the former U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis, whom Trump had fired recently.

Dayton was not even a member of the party, neither Republican nor Democratic.

What do people say about Dayton?

John Herbst Open source

The former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Herbst said to the Voice of America that Daytons appointment is good news for both the United States and Ukraine.

"Dayton will be a strong Ambassador. He is a three-star General and he worked in Europe and understands the U.S. interest in supporting Ukraine in countering the Kremlin aggression. In addition, he has the support of President Trump and the Secretary of State. So he will be a wonderful ambassador," he said.

Former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Stephen Pifer believes that General Dayton is a very good choice.

General Dayton has been the Pentagons Senior Defense Adviser in Ukraine for the past few years, so he understands the situation in Ukraine. I spoke with people from the Embassy in Kyiv and they say that he understands Ukraine well. And it is not just about the conflict with Russia. It is about the broader issues of the country. So Dayton is a very good choice. "

Dayton was also the Director of the Iraq Study Group for Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Recently he served as a Director at George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies.

Since 2018, Dayton has been a strategic adviser to the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine.

He speaks Russian and German.
LOS ANGELESThe deadline to register for the first-ever Virtual VIBE Programset for June 3-5, 2020is this Friday.

Due to the ongoing pandemic that is preventing large gatherings of any kind, AVN Media Network is producing a virtual version of its long-running VIBE Program to give pleasure products manufacturers and adult production companies from all over the world the chance to have one-on-one meetings with buyers, distributors and e-tailers from the comfort of their homes.

The event is free for qualified industry members, however RSVP is required.

Click here if you are a buyer and here if you are a manufacturer or production company to reserve your place.

We have received overwhelming interest in the summer edition of our popular VIBE Program, said AVN Media Network CEO Tony Rios. If you havent RSVPed already, we encourage you to reserve your spot at Virtual VIBE today.

Also known as Very Important Buying Executive, the VIBE Program originally was a DVD sales program in 2009 before expanding to include pleasure products in 2015. It annually brings together numerous international buyers who do not attend any other shows.

Even though the event has been an invitation-only program designed to place the best adult manufacturers and producers in meetings with the top adult retail buyers coinciding with the AVN Show in Las Vegas, Virtual VIBE is open to all qualified manufacturers, producers and buyers.
Cinnamon Chaser opened Presents of Mind on Southeast Hawthorne Boulevard in 1989. Over the years, her boutique and gift shop grew into a staple of the vibrant Portland neighborhood. Chaser decided to semi-retire a decade ago, handing over the day-to-day operations of her popular shop to her daughter.

But the coronavirus outbreak changed everything.

After Oregon Gov. Kate Brown announced March 23 that certain businesses -- including boutiques -- would have to close, Chaser had no choice but to come out of retirement to try to keep her shop afloat. She laid off her entire staff and shifted her business online. But she has drawn only a fraction of her usual sales over the last two months, and her bills have started to pile up.

Brown announced this week that all stand-alone retail businesses in Oregon may reopen, beginning Friday. Chaser hopes to be ready to open her doors within the next week but she remains concerned business wont be the same as the city continues to grapple with the coronavirus crisis.

Im not confident, Chaser said. I keep going for my employees because I know they want a job to come back to. But the retail business in Portland is really, really difficult. The last few years, its already gotten harder and harder to survive, so this has been a big hardship.

FINANCIAL STRUGGLES

The U.S. Commerce Department announced Friday that retail sales nationwide plummeted by a record 16.4% from March to April, nearly doubling the previous record drop of 8.3% set the prior month.

Oregon retailers remain concerned that they will be unable to recover from the slide, even as stores reopen throughout the state.

Businesses that were allowed to remain open over the last two months had widely varying experiences, with some enjoying steady sales and others reporting painful drop-offs. But retailers that were forced to shut have experienced massive financial hardships.

Paula Bixel is the proprietor at Gem Set Love, a jewelry store in Northwest Portland that was forced to close under terms of the governors March stay-home order. Bixel stayed afloat and kept her employees on staff through online sales and by not taking a salary herself. She was finally able to secure a Paycheck Protection Program federal loan, which is helping with payroll, but has been unable to access other financial relief.

While she agreed that swift steps had to be taken to stop the spread of COVID-19, Bixel said that the federal and state governments didnt do enough to protect small businesses before forcing them to shut their doors.

I think its difficult to make unilateral decisions for other peoples lives without creating a safety net first, Bixel said. I feel like they definitely put the cart before the horse. I 100% agree that we need to be wearing masks and gloves and taking this very seriously, but I also 100% believe if we destroy our small businesses, we destroy our community.

A LACK OF COMMUNICATION

Browns decision to allow retailers statewide to reopen Friday was welcome news for many shop owners, who have seen sharp declines in revenue and struggled to access financial support while their storefronts have been closed.

But retailers said they were left in the dark about when they would be allowed to reopen, leaving some in a position where they werent ready to open their doors Friday.

Browns office announced last week that some retail stores that had been forced to close under her order  including furniture stores, boutiques, jewelry stores and art galleries  would be allowed to reopen beginning May 15. But that news was overshadowed by her Phase 1 plan to reopen the state county-by-county. It wasnt until Thursday that Brown clarified that all retail stores statewide could reopen this Friday.

Bixel didnt know she could reopen until receiving a call from The Oregonian/OregonLive on Thursday. She said she still needed to talk with her staff about their comfort level returning to the store and may wait until June to reopen.

Chaser didnt learn Presents of Mind can reopen until Wednesday and said she still needed time to take inventory off her website and secure supplies, including hand sanitizer, to meet state guidelines before reopening.

Pamela Pelett, the owner of City Liquidators in Southeast Portland, spent all week reaching out to government agencies to determine whether she could reopen Friday.

An information and referral specialist at the Portland Office of Community & Civic Life responded to her inquiry Tuesday by incorrectly stating that she would not be allowed to reopen until Multnomah County was approved to enter Phase 1 of Browns reopening plan, according to an email provided to The Oregonian/OregonLive. She said an employee at the states Occupational Safety and Health division (Oregon OSHA) told her the same thing.

I reached out to the city of Portland and got an email that said under their understanding, retail stores cannot open, Pelett said. I was just back to tears out of frustration. I couldnt get a real answer. They wished me luck, but I dont need luck. I need my store to operate, so I can pay my bills and have income for my people.

CHALLENGES REOPENING

Pelett and other furniture store owners expressed frustration over Browns decision to mandate that they stop operations in March. The governor allowed other big stores that sell furniture  including Office Depot, Home Depot and Costco  to stay open.

Pelett remained open with increased safety measures when furniture stores were mandated to close because her warehouse has a large section where it sells other goods, including toilet paper, masks, hand sanitizer and diapers. But she ultimately stopped operations and laid off her staff on May 1 after she was cited and fined by Oregon OSHA, which said she was classified as a furniture store on her business license.

If they were really worried about people sitting on furniture, why didnt they make Costco shut down their furniture department or Fred Meyer shut down their patio department? Pelett asked.

Pelett eagerly reopened Friday when the states prohibition on operating furniture stores ended, but she still faces challenges in restarting her business. She doesnt know how quickly customers will return and is unsure whether her staff will be willing to come back. She said at least two of her employees dont want to return now that they are receiving unemployment benefits.

Many employees are making more through unemployment insurance than they would at their regular jobs thanks to the extra $600 per week that the federal government is providing to employees that have been laid off. But employees who decline to return to work could lose unemployment benefits, creating a difficult dynamic between employers and workers.

I think other employers are going to find the same thing Ive found, that people dont want to come back to work, Pelett said. First, you have to make sure youre going to have enough business and revenue to bring those people back. But as business revs up, well have to hire new people. If there are employees that refuse in writing to come back to work, theyll lose their benefits.

But whether stores will get the foot traffic needed to hire back all their employees remains uncertain.

James Thurber, owner of Banner Furniture Outlet in Hillsboro, said his family-owned showroom relies on in-person sales and that revenue plummeted by 80% after he was forced to close in March.

Banner Furniture Outlet reopened Friday and Thurber said he was optimistic the companys loyal customer base would quickly return. But he also said that it wont be easy to make up the losses of the last two months, especially as the experience of shopping changes in the coronavirus era. Banner Furniture Outlet hired back all of its employees ahead of Fridays reopening, but will have to decide later this summer based on sales whether it can afford to keep on its full staff.

It was tough to swallow, losing those two months, Thurber said. Luckily, were healthy and were established and we have customers waiting for us to reopen, but its going to be a tough go for probably six months to a year to get back to where we were. Its not going to happen overnight.

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
"Most readers appear to have already arrived at a view similar to mine, although quite a few were pessimistic about how Australia will respond." Some readers saw a re-evaluation of our strategic relationships as a silver lining to the pandemic. For others, while acknowledging change was necessary, the challenges ahead seem insurmountable. That pessimism ranged from despair about the trajectory the US is on and growing concerns over what damage China could inflict on Australia, to doubts Australia has what it takes to go it alone. Kennari wrote: "Great piece. My American relatives are just baffling. Whenever we talk about politics they start telling me how universal health care is just socialism and that Americans are free. They just seem to accept that their government has no obligation to them at all. How is this freedom? Watching the US now is so incredibly sad."

Anwa58: "Yes, thanks Shaun. Seeing the United States mentioned in black and white as a 'failed state' is sobering but unfortunately not surprising. It conjures up images of Nero fiddling while Rome burns. As America declines and China's influence is in the ascent the future is likely to be tough on a number of fronts for Australia which will challenge our Nation's fortitude and capabilities." TopMac: "Excellent article Shaun - it is well past time that Australia moved from obedient adolescent to a self assured Adult member of the Global family. Sadly, I am not sure that we have the leaders to take such bold steps as they are embedded in failed democratic and economic philosophies that serve a different master than the populace." Yola: "Without allies, we are nothing. Who could we rely on if it came to a fight? New Zealand?" Others readers chose to pick up where Carney left off, stepping forward with their thoughts on how Australia could forge ahead.

Most believe we need to diversify our alliances and trading links. Several suggested we follow Switzerland's lead and adopt a foreign policy of neutrality. Loading The Rookie: "Trump's America breathes life into the CANZUK proposal: a loose political and military alliance of the senior members of the Commonwealth: C (Canada) A (Australia) NZ, and the UK. Cousins we can trust, cousins who think like us, cousins who govern themselves like us, cousins who fought with us and cousins with whom we're very close in very many ways." Balance: "Bring on the 'Coalition of the Competent'. Australia should strengthen its relationship with countries like Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, etc. as well as diversifying our sources of trade and investment, including immigration." Pallas: "I can't see why we can't aim to be more like Switzerland and as unaligned as best we can manage. Morrison rushing to grandstand on the world stage and please the US at such a time re: an independent enquiry in China when the world is still in the midst of a pandemic and without the support of other allies was asking for problems and now threatens our barley industry."

Lefty: "Much greater alliance with Europe!" Loading Carney says, while grateful, he thought this contribution from the DukeofWoyWoy- NSW Central Coast "probably went just a touch overboard": Never in the field of human journalism has one journo written what the majority of Australian (sic) think and feel concerning both the United States and China and Shaun Carney has become the first without fear or favour. Nevertheless other readers agreed with DukeofWoyWoy, his comment earning the respect of at least 22 other readers. "While the media focus is on Trump, the fact that his presidency is a joint project with the American public tends to get lost in a lot of the coverage," Carney said.
Graduation ceremonies for Pearland ISDs three high schools will be held June 2, 3 and 4 at its stadium, district spokesperson Kim Hocott said.

The original plan by the district was to use NRG Stadium in late July to host the ceremonies, but when the Texas Education Agency set forth new guidelines on May 6, it presented the school district with a different option.

When the TEA said you can do an outdoor graduation but it must be under these certain stipulations and requirements, our administration, campus and district started working diligently to figure that out, Hocott said.

The home side of (the district stadium) The Rig is under construction with the new press box going in. For safety reasons, we cant allow people to sit there, she said.

Current plan: 4 guests per grads household

Hocott said Friday that a total of five people per household  the graduate and four other people  will be allowed to attend the ceremonies.

The graduation ceremony for Turner High School is planned for June 2, Dawson High School for June 3 and Pearland High School for June 4. Each ceremony is scheduled to start at 7:30 p.m.

Hocott said having the graduation events in Pearland in June made a great deal of sense.

We had NRG reserved for late July, but there was no guarantee from NRG that we would be able to host it by July. They were still in limbo, Hocott said.

We had also heard from some of our parents of military students, whose children would already have gone off to boot camp. Also, we always desired to do an in-person graduation, whatever that looked like.

Were trying to make it very special for the families. Were looking at having the graduate and two people from that same household sit on the field together as a family.

Hocott said there is a possibility that more families members may be allowed, but that isnt a certainty. A live-stream option will be offered, and that, too, is still in the planning stages.

The visitor stands will serve as the podium area from which the valedictorian and salutatorian will each give speeches.

Hocott said having the graduation dates in early June allows the district some leeway.

The TEA guidance said all districts could have outdoor graduations beginning June 1, she said. We wanted to get on the calendar as soon as we could so parents and students could have that event and then move on to the next chapter, if you will.

Weve been told a lot of these students will be leaving for boot camp as early as mid-June. If it rains, we are looking at alternate dates, but those alternate dates have not been decided.

Photos to be taken of each grad and family

Hocott believes that once the plan comes to fruition, it will be a memorable event.

Our graduation is going to be really unique, she said. I dont know of a lot of families who get to sit on the field with their graduate. We hope it creates a very special moment for them.

We hire a graduation photographer every year, and were asking that photographer to get a photo of every graduate as well as a picture with their family.

Hocott said that officials with NRG Stadium are rolling over the 2020 deposit to host 2021 PISD graduations.

Most of the key elements have been planned now for this year, Hocott said. What remains is, one, looking at alternate dates if it rains, and two, seeing if we can add more guests for the graduates.

tdunnam@hcnonline.com
Despite pressure, DeSantis did not issue a stay-at-home order as the virus was spreading nationwide in March, instead ordering people arriving from the New York area to self-quarantine for 14 days after arriving in Florida. Among the reasons DeSantis gave for not asking people to stay in their homes in March was that he did not want to punish rural areas because the virus was taking hold in metropolitan areas.
The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to apprise it about steps taken for quarantining doctors and medical staff engaged in fight against coronavirus in accommodations near the hospitals itself.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and B R Gavai, which took up the matter through video conferencing asked Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, appearing for the Centre, to take instructions and apprise it by next week.

During the hearing, senior advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for doctor-petitioner Arushi Jain, said that resident doctors in government hospitals, after completing 7/14 days on duty, are supposed to be quarantined.

He said these doctors are quarantined in places where they have to share rooms, bathrooms but it should be done in places, where social distancing can be maintained.

Rohatgi said this type of arrangements would defeat the purpose of quarantining and corona warriors will fall down.

He said the government should requisition such hotels and guest houses where proper facilities are available and social distancing could be maintained.

He said he was not seeking any adversarial order but is only asking for suitable accommodation with necessary facilities near the hospital for the doctors and medical staffs, who are in forefront of dealing with Covid-19 pandemic.

He added that there must be some standard operating procedures as doctors are also facing problems in travelling from their residences to the hospitals, facing trouble in housing societies and the government should help them, or these frontline warriors will fall down.

Mehta said that Centre has issued directions to all state governments to requisition hotels and guest houses for the doctors and medical staffs, which include budget hotels and five-star hotels.

He said that necessary steps are already being taken but if there are any aberrations in any particular instance, it can be brought to the notice of the government and it would be resolved.

Mehta said that government is taking every steps to protect the warriors and directions have been issued and it is now a criminal non-bailable offence to attack doctors or asking them to leave the house or housing society.

The bench asked Mehta, to consider the suggestions given by the petitioner for providing doctors accommodations nearby the hospital for quarantining.

Mehta said that some advisories are under considerations of the government and this would be one of them.

Rohatgi intervened and said that what the Solicitor General is saying is too few too little as directive is fine but it should be told as how many hotels or accommodations are there.

He said there should be a helpline for doctors and medical staffs to complain about any problem they are facing/



Mehta said that Rohatgi's client does not have knowledge of pan India and these kinds of debates are demoralising as for government protection of corona warriors is first priority.

The bench asked Mehta as to why can't the government consider requisitioning other places with better facilities near the hospital itself?



Mehta replied that it was a fair suggestion and would be considered. He said that as far as helpline is considered there already exists one.

The bench, then told Mehta that it would take up the matter next week and by then he should take instructions on quarantine facilities for doctors and medical staffs nearby the hospitals.

On April 8, the top court had observed that the doctors and medical staff are the "first line of defence of the country" in the battle against COVID-19 pandemic, and directed the Centre to ensure that appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) are made available to them for treating coronavirus patients.

While passing a slew of interim directions to ensure safety of doctors and healthcare professionals, the apex court had expressed concern over the recent incidents of attack on them and directed the Centre, all states and Union Territories to provide necessary police security to the medical staff in hospitals and places where patients, who are either quarantined, suspected or diagnosed with COVID-19, are housed.

The top court had directed that "states shall also take necessary action against those persons who obstruct and commit any offence in respect to performance of duties by doctors, medical staff and other government officials deputed to contain COVID-19".

The court had passed the order on three petitions including that of Arushi Jain seeking protective kits, other requisite equipment and safety measure for doctors and healthcare workers amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The apex court had directed that police security be extended to doctors and other medical staff, who visit places to conduct screening of people to find out symptoms of the disease.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Barber Suleiman Hassan is photographed outside Queen Stylista Mane Artistry in Ardmore, Pa. Friday, May 15, 2020. Barbers have been especially hard hit because of the shutdown. So, Hassan has accepted a job driving for Amazon until things open up. Read more

Barber Suleiman Hassan loves cutting hair, but with shops and salons in the Philadelphia area closed right now, thats not happening.

Hes in a tough situation  his wife had just relocated Queen Stylista Mane Artistry to Ardmore, and the couple recently bought a new house in Drexel Hill. So, instead of waiting for the coronavirus pandemic to end, the 40-year-old professional barber is making deliveries for Amazon. More than anything, though, he would like to get back to his passion.

A lot of barbers, cosmetologists, and nail techs are in a similarly tough position. Theyre not allowed to open for business as usual, and because many are independent contractors, they might not know that they qualify for an emergency loan from the Paycheck Protection Program from the Small Business Administration or certain other assistance.

Last weekend, about 100 of them participated in a Zoom video conference call with Pennsylvania Health Secretary Rachel Levine and elected officials to discuss ways to operate their businesses safely. Theyve devised Back to Work Safely standards to help guard against the spread of the coronavirus, including taking temperatures, spreading work stations at least six feet apart, and banning walk-ins, among other measures.

On Thursday, the House approved the Republican-proposed Bill 2459 that could provide a waiver for barbers and hairstylists, clearing the way for their reopening.

In the meantime, though, its a waiting game for barbers such as Hassan, who had just started working at Main Attraction Unisex Salon in West Philly before Gov. Tom Wolf ordered all nonessential businesses to close in March in an effort to stem the spread of the coronavirus.

 READ MORE: Drive-through diplomas, time slots for the stage: Schools revamp graduations amid pandemic

Thats why Im suggesting that those of us who can should help these valued hair care professionals. If you want to see them on the other side of this stay-at-home order, we need to help them through this time of uncertainty.

Barbershops and beauty salons are sanctuaries. They are where we go to get groomed, but also to connect with folks and catch up on the latest news. Besides liquor stores and small grocers, they are the only viable businesses in some neighborhoods.

So, send money to your barber of hairstylist via an app such as CashApp, or write a check and drop it in the mail. Make it a gift, if thats feasible. Or, request that it be for future services.

It wont solve your nail technicians woes. But it may help to keep the bills paid. I did it with my own stylist. Shes been doing my hair for years, and the thought of her not working right now, through no fault of her own, troubled me.

Im still getting a salary and would be more than willing to join that rallying cry," said State Rep. Morgan Cephas (D., Phila.), who has been meeting regularly with members industry representatives. These are some of our last African American small businesses that are still operating independently and are extremely successful. We want to make sure that this COVID-19 just doesnt put them out of business, which is why its been important for us to try to strategize in different ways to make sure that they get resources now but then also get the resources that they need to stay afloat post COVID-19.

Kenny Duncan, co-owner of Main Attraction, has been leading the Back to Work Safely effort. He told me that while he appreciates the concept, the situation is bigger.

Im torn about it, because if people are paying for services now that they are going to end up receiving later," he said, you wind up with the same financial troubles.

Hes right, of course. But its hard to sit back and watch such talented people who keep us looking good suffer. Barber shops and hair salons need to be supported.
By Ayya Lmahamad

US President Donald Trump has sent a letter of congratulation to President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of the Republic Day, Azertag reported on May 14.

On behalf of the American people, I send my sincere greetings and congratulations to you and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Republic Day on May 28, the U.S. President said in his letter.

He expressed support for Azerbaijans sovereignty and independence, as well as the importance of Azerbaijans contribution to the development of cooperation between the two countries.

The United States strongly supports Azerbaijan's sovereignty and independence. The United States and Azerbaijan have cooperated for nearly 30 years to strengthen international security, diversify European energy routes and sources, and build a brighter future for the people of our two great nations. I appreciate Azerbaijan's important contributions in these areas and encourage all steps that promote democratic governance and protect the rights and freedoms we have pledged to uphold. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States stands with the people of Azerbaijan, Donald Trump added.

He stressed that as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the US will remain engaged in supporting negotiations to find a lasting and peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Politics Reuters

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday rejected former President Donald Trump's request to block the release of White House records sought by the Democratic-led congressional panel investigating last year's deadly attack on the Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Trump's request to the justices came after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on Dec. 9 ruled https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-appeals-court-rejects-trumps-bid-withhold-records-panel-probing-jan-6-attack-2021-12-09 that the businessman-turned-politician had no basis to challenge President Joe Biden's decision to allow the records to be handed over to the House of Representatives select committee. Trump and his allies have waged an ongoing legal battle with the committee seeking to block access to documents and witnesses.
More than $150 billion has been wiped off the combined market value of Australia's four biggest banks since the sharemarket's high in February, as investors grapple with the bleak yet highly uncertain outlook created by coronavirus.

Now the lenders have released their own estimates of the financial hit that awaits them as many households and businesses struggle to repay their loans. Some of the country's top analysts believe it is only the beginning of the pain for these financial giants.

The major banks' profits have been hit hard by COVID-19, as lenders brace for bad debts. Credit:Paul Rovere

In a dramatic round of bank results over recent weeks, Commonwealth Bank, Westpac, National Australia Bank and ANZ Bank pencilled in almost $5 billion in provisions for bad and doubtful debts caused by the pandemic.

The bad debt charges drove a 45 per cent decline in the big four's combined half-year profit to $6.8 billion, says UBS, as lenders prepared for a recession. Westpac and ANZ Bank also suspended their dividends.
Jordan's king warned Israel of a massive conflict if it proceeds with plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank, as European Union foreign ministers met Friday to discuss what action the bloc might take in response to such a move.

Israel has vowed to annex Jewish settlements and the Jordan Valley, which could spell the end of the long-stalled peace process by making it virtually impossible to establish a viable Palestinian state.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has moved a step closer by reaching an agreement to form a government after more than a year of political deadlock.

President Donald Trump's Middle East plan, which overwhelmingly favors Israel and was rejected by the Palestinians, gave a green light to annexation, but most of the rest of the international community is strongly opposed.

Leaders who advocate a one-state solution do not understand what that would mean, Jordan's King Abdullah II said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel published Friday.

What would happen if the Palestinian National Authority collapsed? There would be more chaos and extremism in the region. If Israel really annexed the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, he said.

Jordan is a close Western ally and one of only two Arab states to have signed a peace treaty with Israel. Abdullah declined to say whether annexation would threaten that agreement.

I don't want to make threats and create an atmosphere of loggerheads, but we are considering all options. We agree with many countries in Europe and the international community that the law of strength should not apply in the Middle East.

EU foreign ministers had planned to welcome the formation of a new Israeli government and offer the bloc's cooperation, but Netanyahu and his rival-turned-partner, Benny Gantz, have postponed the swearing-in of their controversial new Cabinet as the Israeli leader tries to quell infighting within his Likud party.

The ceremony, originally scheduled for Thursday, is now planned for Sunday to give Netanyahu more time to hand out coveted Cabinet appointments to members of his party.

Their coalition agreement allows him to present an annexation proposal as soon as July 1, and the EU ministers are struggling to thrash out a common position should the move go ahead.

The 27-nation bloc has routinely condemned Israeli settlement expansion and warned against annexation, but member countries appear too divided to take any major action, such as imposing sanctions.

They are also limited to holding informal talks via video-conference because of the coronavirus pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Trend





Implementation of the concept on improving customs clearance will lead to significant improvements in the customs system itself, First Deputy Chairman of the State Customs Committee (SCC) of Azerbaijan Ismayil Huseynov said, Trend reports.

Huseynov made the remark during an online meeting on the implementation of the concept on improving customs clearance.

The implementation of the concept will create conditions for the complete elimination of contact between citizens and officials, help increase the number of electronic services, allow more flexible and efficient implementation of customs operations, and increase the overall level of service, he said.

The customs authorities are preparing innovative projects based on best practices in order to successfully implement reforms carried out under the leadership of the head of state, Huseynov added.

Huseynov noted that progressive reforms in the customs system initiated by President Ilham Aliyev in recent years have created the conditions for the growth of export potential, transit opportunities of Azerbaijan, further improvement of the business environment, creation of a transparent customs environment, as well as simplification and acceleration of customs procedures.

According to the new concept, it is planned to create a unified system of accounting and balance for foreign trade, as well as strengthen regulation of customs tariffs and avoid subjective factors in customs valuation. The new concept also envisages a full automation of the decision-making mechanism on processing customs declarations, solving issues related to customs value, in electronic form without visiting the customs authority and the use of other innovations in order to ensure the entrepreneurs are satisfied, said Huseynov.

Huseynov also noted the necessity for implementation of the new concept as soon as possible, taking into account the proposals and opinions voiced during the discussions on the basis of instructions and recommendations of Chairman of the SCC Safar Mehdiyev.

Deputy Chairmen of the SCC Asgar Abdullayev, Igbal Babayev, Javad Gasimov and heads of committees structures, also participated at the meeting held on behalf of Safar Mehdiyev.

The provisions on improving the system of customs representation that reflected in the new document, minimizing the amount of documents required for customs clearance, increasing the range and quality of electronic services were also discussed at the meeting.
In context: Stripped-down retro console remakes have been all the rage over the past couple of years. As products like the NES Classic, Sega Genesis Mini, SNES Classic, and the PlayStation Classic have hit the market, it's become clear that there's a demand for nostalgic gaming experiences.

Konami evidently hoped to capitalize on that demand when it unveiled the TurboGrafx-16 Mini back in June of 2019. A month later, the compact retro console received a full list of included games and a March 19, 2020, release date.

Unfortunately, due to unforeseen complications caused by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, Konami was forced to delay the TurboGrafx-16 indefinitely. The company's China-based manufacturing and shipping facilities were impacted by the outbreak, leading to an "unavoidable suspension" of their operations.

However, as the world has begun to stabilize (slowly) in the wake of this economically-devastating virus (which is still a threat, to be clear), it seems Konami is finally ready to start shipping the consoles out. The units will start to arrive on customer doorsteps on May 22, according to Konami's PC Engine (the Japanese name for the TurboGrafx-16) Twitter account.

Exciting news! Those who had purchased the TurboGrafx-16 mini via https://t.co/gJtmIQWwDS can start expecting theirs to arrive starting from May 22! We're still keeping a close eye on the situation for the Core Grafx mini, so hang in there Europe! (E) #Turbografx  PC mini@ (@PCEngine_Mini) May 15, 2020

For now, Konami is only confirming a North American launch, but the company is "keeping a close eye on the situation" in Europe, so expect more news on a broader launch shortly.

If you haven't purchased one of the units yet and you're interested in playing some classic TurboGrafx-16 games, such as Bomberman 93, Space Harrier, Neutopia, or Dungeon Explorer, you can pre-order one of the consoles now on Amazon for $99.
Since then, the Biden campaign has not taken additional public steps to locate the paperwork. Campaign officials are reluctant to open the Delaware papers to the public, arguing that the documents would help Republican opposition researchers find information to weaponize against him.

A number of former Senate staffers have told me that personnel files are generally not preserved in personal archives, for reasons of privacy. Yet, the archive could include other contemporaneous memos, notes or documents that could show whether Mr. Bidens staff discussed Ms. Reade.

Amid this contretemps about paperwork, its important to remember that Ms. Reade says that her complaint detailed only her claims of sexual harassment  not the assault. So even if this complaint exists and is discovered, it wont provide an answer to the central question of this whole controversy.

How is Congress working right now?

Sally Sheely asks:

With the Congress returning to Washington, I wonder how many of the congresspeople observed social distancing for their return, or did most of them travel by private plane? Are they being tested before entering the Capitol building?

I handed this one over to our ace congressional reporter Emily Cochrane, whos been risking her health to report from Capitol Hill. She says:

How they handle social distancing and precautions depends on the lawmaker.

Most are wearing masks  Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky and the only senator to test positive for the coronavirus, is the notable exception  and are trying to distance themselves from one another, their staff members and reporters. A majority of Capitol Hill staff members are working remotely, with just a handful of the usual hundreds coming in every day.

Several lawmakers are still flying home (although many of the direct flights theyve come to rely on have been canceled, which makes for a more challenging commute), while others have opted to drive between Washington and their homes.

Some have not gone home at all: Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, told me she had not been home in just over two months because Alaska has such a strict 14-day quarantine requirement; it would prevent her from returning to Washington and being able to vote.

There is currently no virus testing on Capitol Hill for lawmakers (or staff members or reporters, for that matter.) Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, rejected President Trumps offer of tests for Capitol Hill, arguing that lawmakers should not take precedence over essential workers and families.
New Delhi, May 15 : The Congress has asked the government to spell out a roadmap for exiting the lockdown two days ahead of the expiry of lockdown-3 and following Prime Minister Modi seeking the states' suggestions for lifting the restrictions.

"Where is the national exit plan," asked Manish Tewari, Congress spokesperson on Friday.

"India announced a lockdown when the case count was 181 and now when you are lifting the lockdown, the number of cases has crossed 80,000. India is the first country apart from the US to be doing so," said Tewari.

He said when the government can announce putting into effect the miscellaneous clause in the Disaster Management Act, then it can also come out with the exit plan.

"The Prime Minister is playing a unique game as he announced lockdown; and now when things are out of hands, then the onus is put on the states to suffer the wrath of people. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman too has put the onus of migrants on the states," said Tewari.

The Congress said since states have to face people, no government can allow anarchy. "Therefore, states should be given more flexibility." The party has been questioning the exit strategy and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had asked the party chief ministers to press the Centre for a roadmap.

Former party president Rahul Gandhi has emphasized that states should be consulted on zone categorization. He has asserted that the opening of the economy should be left to the states as they know better about the supply chain.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address on Tuesday said that coronavirus is a reality. He hinted that lockdown 4.0 would be "totally different." The PM has also said in a video conference with Chief Ministers that as the country moves ahead, the economic activities that have been restarted would gain steam. He also asked state governments to ensure that rural India remains free from the Covid-19 crisis.

The Chief Ministers who couldn't make themselves heard during the video conference on Monday were told to send their suggestions by May 15.

Though Maharashtra, Punjab, West Bengal and Telangana insisted on extending the current lockdown, some other states such as Delhi wanted greater freedom to open the economy, except in the containment zones.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Some influential citizens of the Gulf country lashed out at the Modi government for giving a free run to far-right Hindu extremists, who have engaged in violence against Muslims, entertaining genocidal fantasies.





by Ali Sukhanver writing from Islamabad





All employees are paid to work, no one comes for free. You make your bread and butter from this land which you scorn and your ridicule will not go unnoticed, said Princess Hend Al Qassimi a few days back on Twitter addressing the Indians working in the UAE. She is a member of the UAE royal family. The United Arab Emirates, also known as the Emirates, is a Muslim country in Western Asia, bordering Oman to the east and Saudi Arabia to the south and west. It shares maritime borders with Iran to the north and Qatar to the west. According to an estimate, over 3,420,000 Indian migrants are living in the UAE. Abu Dhabi, Ajman, Dubai, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain are the states which constitute UAE.













It is not only in the UAE but in the whole Arab world, in the last few years, a shift is being noticed in the attitude of the local people with the Indians working there. Things are getting harder and harder for the Indian expatriates in Arab countries. There are two reasons behind; irresponsible attitude of the Indian netizens on social media against the Arabs and atrocities against the Muslims in India. The social media users in the Arab world are now giving clear warnings to the Indians that their entry to the Arab countries would be completely banned and they would be fined and made to leave if they did not change their behaviour.





According to the media reports, some influential citizens of the Gulf country lashed out at the Modi government for giving a free run to far-right Hindu extremists, who have engaged in violence against Muslims, entertaining genocidal fantasies. Comments on social media, made by Indian nationals working for the Arab states UAE are creating a hazardous political storm and this situation would certainly lead to more difficulties for the Indian expatriates. In spite of the fact that the Arab countries are very much rigid in their religious beliefs, they never express any type of extremism or narrow-mindedness when they deal with the foreigners doing labour in their countries. No doubt it is the mild and soft rather kind attitude of the local Arabs that every year millions of workers from India come to those countries for earning bread and butter.





Unfortunately these Indians have started behaving nonsensically in the last few years. Oman is one of the Arab states most badly affected by hostile behaviour of the Indian netizens though it is a state very much caring about the rights of religious minorities. It welcomes everyone belonging to any religious community. In Muscat, Sohar and Salalah, one can find a large number of people from Jain, Buddhist, Zoroastrian, Sikh, Jew, Hindu and Christian communities. There are two grand Hindu temples in Muscat and a few Gurdwaras too. The government of Oman never puts restrictions on any type of religious activity of any community. According to a report Oman is hosting 448,000 Indian migrant workers of which 25% are unskilled workers, 30% semi-skilled and 35% are skilled ones. Recently, in reaction to the misbehavior of the Indian expatriates, the government of Oman has decided to replace expatriate workers as quickly as possible with Omanis. No doubt, the workers from India are the largest expatriate community in Oman. Now as a result of this decision, millions of Indian workers will have to go back to their country and they will prove a sudden burden on Indian economy.





Oman would not have taken this decision if Indian netizens had not reacted with hostility in response to a tweet of Her Highness Dr. Mona Fahad Mahmoud Al Said. In a tweet she had criticized the Indian government on its shameful treatment with the minorities particularly with the Muslims. Her Highness Dr. Mona Fahad Mahmoud Al Said is a very learned and a scholarly lady working as the Assistant Vice Chancellor of Sultan Qaboos University Oman. The whole nation is obliged to her matchless educational services to Omani youth. It is said that her only aim of life is to usher Oman into the modern age with the help of the latest education techniques and by introducing to the youth, the most sublime traits of character. She is considered the most popularly respected member of the Royal family. In response to her tweet, the Indian social media activists started a very organized type of deformation movement against her on social media. They used abusive and offensive language against her and at some places her character assassination was also observed. Just to make situation more confusing someone from the Modi social media cell started a propaganda that the Twitter account which the Princess uses was hacked by some hostile intelligence agency and the tweet which condemned Indian atrocities did not belong to her. In other words these social media activists simply tried to spread the impression that this all was done by Pakistan.





It is also a point of view that the government of Oman might not have decided so if Mr. Modi had not changed the status of the Kashmir valley through revocation of Article 370 and 35-A. Moreover a move against the Indian Muslims defaming them as a cause of spreading Covid-19 has also compelled the Oman authorities to take that decision. Mr. Modi and his supporters are trying to normalize the situation with the help of common friends but still the Damocles sword is impending there.




TEHRAN, Iran, May 15

Trend:

Iran continues intensive negotiations with Iraqi officials to reopen Mehran border, and Iranian ambassador in Iraq is also following the issue, said director general of Mehran Custom Office in Iran's Ilam province.

"There has been a pause in commercial activities at the border crossing due to the coronavirus spread, and necessary health measures have been taken to reactivate the trade via Mehran border," said Rouhllah Gholami, Trend reports citing IRNA.

"The efforts continue to reopen the border crossing, given its importance, and Ilam's governor also pursues the issue," he said. "During last meeting of Iranian and Iraqi officials, a preliminary agreement was reached on the export of food and agricultural products two days a week, but this needs to be approved by Iraqi government."

Ilam province's officials have agreed to limit large gatherings and pilgrimage travels via border due to coronavirus spread, but they seek to continue trading goods, the report said.

Mehran city border in southwest of Ilam province is major transportation route for commercial trucks exporting goods from Iran to Iraq.
On Tuesday, May 19, at 11:00, the press center of the Interfax-Ukraine News Agency will host an online conference by the Ukrainian Association of Reproductive Medicine on the subject: "The Recent Developments in Reproductive Medicine of Ukraine: What is Up?". During the quarantine period due to restrictions on the entry of foreigners into Ukraine and the termination of air traffic, many genetic parents will not be able to meet their children born in this period in Ukraine. Participating will be President of the Ukrainian Association of Reproductive Medicine, laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine, Professor Oleksandr Yuzko; Vice-President of the Ukrainian Association of Reproductive Medicine, laureate of the State Prize of Ukraine Valeriy Zukin; gynecologist-reproductologist of the highest category, head physician of the Rodynne Dzherelo IVMed medical center (Kyiv) Halyna Strelko; lawyer, specialist in the field of reproductive law Olena Babych (8/5a Reitarska Street). You may submit your questions during the broadcast that will be available on the Interfax-Ukraine channel at: https://youtu.be/7KDlseRclRc.
File photo

A 5-year-old boy has last Saturday evening shot his 12-year-old brother to death with a loaded gun he mistook for a toy gun, 11Alive reports.

The loaded gun was found in the woods and the boy fired a single shot to his brothers chest at around 7.40pm in the 600 block of Hammock Street.

First responders performed CPR and the boy was taken to Wellstar Spalding Regional Hospital where he later died.

The dead boy and his siblings, ages five and seven, were in the woods in Atlanta, Georgia, when the youngest of the three found the gun, according to a police statement.

Special investigators spoke to the five-year-old and determined he thought it was a toy when he fired it, striking his brother.

In their statement Sunday, Griffin police said the shooting was likely a tragic accident and officers would now investigate who dumped the loaded weapon in the woods.

The police also said that officers had searched an area near where the gun was found two hours earlier on Saturday after a group of suspects fled a traffic stop nearby

The suspects fled on foot behind some houses and police lost track of them.

A bag of suspected MDMA drugs, commonly known as Ecstasy or Molly, was discovered, but no gun was found at the time.

We will diligently pursue and charge any other parties responsible for the actions leading up to the apparent abandonment of this weapon allowing for access by these innocent children, officials said.

The gun was sent to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation Crime Lab for touch DNA analysis, authorities added.

We will leave no stone unturned as we search for the individuals responsible for the abandonment of this weapon, Griffin Police Chief Mike Yates stated.

A neighbor Tom Whitehead who owns an auto body shop in front of the familys home, told CNN affiliate WGCL.

The children were out here peacefully playing in the backyard on the trampoline,

The little one found a gun.  Turns around, thinks hes playing, says bang bang. It was loaded and killed him. Think about that mother. The next day, Mothers Day, and one boy is dead by the hand of his younger brother.

A report by 11Alive has it that the victim was visiting with relatives from Sharpsburg when the incident occurred as the children were playing on a trampoline, reported.
Today would have been the last day of the 2020 United Methodist General Conference, at which the denomination expected to vote on a possible split over gay marriage and other issues.

That conference has been postponed for more than a year, along with any vote on plans to formally divide factions in the denomination.

But has the coronavirus derailed a split?

I dont think it has, said the Rev. Dave Barnhart, pastor of St. Junia United Methodist Church and an activist for LGBTQ rights. I dont think the politics of the church are going to change.

Coronavirus has definitely changed the tone of discourse, said the Rev. Paul Lawler, pastor of Christ United Methodist Church in Shelby County and president of the North Alabama chapter of the Wesleyan Covenant Association, a traditionalist group that opposes gay marriage.

Its been a season of calm, Lawler said. Its aided in enhancing constructive dialogue.

That doesnt mean a split wont happen eventually.

I definitely think it will happen, said the Rev. Vaughn Stafford, pastor of ClearBranch Church in Trussville, which hosted a Jan. 25 meeting for conservative leaders planning for a denominational split. It allows everyone a little more time, and hopefully a little more grace in the situation.

Being still has helped ratchet down the anxiety, Lawler said.

Its kind of a nice little pause, said the Rev. Joseph DeWitte, pastor of Pinson United Methodist Church, who considers himself a centrist. It was getting heated. The emotions are there. It was constant. It was daily.

But the underlying disagreements remain.

The General Conference has been postponed until Aug. 31-Sept. 10, 2021, more than a year delay, so no split will happen before then.

But Lawler still thinks it will happen.

From what he can tell, centrists, progressives and traditionalists are all holding firm to their stances that will likely lead to a split, barring even more unforeseen events.

Is it possible something could come up? Lawler said. Thats always a possibility. At this stage, we continue to hear broad support (for a split).

Both sides see some pain in the delay, he said.

For traditionalists, part of the pain is witnessing our discipline, our constitution, not being upheld, Lawler said. For progressives who perceive injustices, their perception of the challenge in this season is for there not to be LGBTQ inclusion. It does have its elements of pain for both sides.

A plan called the Protocol of Reconciliation & Grace Through Separation, released Jan. 3, was expected to be voted on at the General Conference that was scheduled for May 5-15 in Minneapolis, but was postponed.

Activists on both sides see the potential for a split that would allow conservatives opposed to same-sex unions to walk away, keep their church buildings and start a new denomination. Progressives would keep the denominational structure, and then be able to update policy to allow same-sex unions and ordination of openly gay clergy.

For traditionalists in the United Methodist Church, we love all people, Lawler said. That by all means includes our LGBTQ members. We want to extend the grace of God to all people. But as we read the Bible, we cant redefine marriage.

Lawler said the improved tone means both sides want to avoid lawsuits and acrimony.

Dialing down anxiety has been a subtle gift of this moment of history, Lawler said. Anytime people can sit at a table and talk, youre going to have better outcomes. When we see each others humanity, see the value in one another, youre going to have outcomes that are more fruitful.

Both sides agree the pandemic has put church political fights in context.

From my perspective, the pandemic going on is a sign of bigger things going on we should be worried about, Barnhart said. Its the wrong fight we need to be fighting. I have optimism that sometimes crises will make us rethink our priorities.

Yet, he doesnt see anyones stance changing.

Once things resume, the problems still there, Barnhart said. If anything, were more entrenched.

Some may go ahead and leave the denomination without waiting on a vote to split, DeWitte said.

We already had churches that were finding ways to leave the denomination, DeWitte said. Its not just conservative churches that are going to leave.

All United Methodist churches in Alabama have cancelled indoors, in-person worship services at least through June 1 to avoid the risk of spreading COVID-19. Most are doing online services.

The coronavirus crisis helped shift focus back to basics, DeWitte said.

Were all focused on trying to do ministry, DeWitte said. Churches are having to think about a future thats not the kind of ministry theyve been doing for centuries. I think its a good thing.

Arguing about gay marriage was a distraction, he said.

It was taking energy away from our purpose, he said. Thats the great thing about a crisis. They always show you how weak your fake idols were. People are hurting, hungry, cant go to work and pay their bills. When we focus on the best things, thats what happens. We show up when needed, and leave the place better than we found it.

So, the United Methodist Church is still intact. For now.

The Methodist church has a history of big-picture thinking, which is part of what gives me hope, Barnhart said. I hope were able to pivot and examine sources of massive inequality and injustice on the planet.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 15:49:50|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Friday issued a circular requiring coordinated efforts to support the development of Taiwan-funded enterprises and advance Taiwan-funded projects amid the coronavirus epidemic.

Jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office and eight other agencies, the circular lists 11 measures.

The measures are as follows:

-- Continue to help and support Taiwan-funded enterprises in resuming work and production.

-- Coordinate efforts to advance major Taiwan-funded projects.

-- Actively support Taiwan-funded enterprises in increasing investments and expanding production capacity.

-- Facilitate Taiwan-funded enterprises to participate in the construction of new-type and traditional infrastructure.

-- Support Taiwan-funded enterprises in maintaining stability in foreign trade.

-- Guide Taiwan-funded enterprises to explore the domestic market.

-- Fully implement tax break policies.

-- Step up financial support for Taiwan-funded enterprises in epidemic control and business and manufacturing resumption.

-- Fully support and meet the reasonable land use needs of Taiwan-funded projects.

-- Support the development of small- and medium-sized Taiwan-funded enterprises.

-- Actively serve Taiwan-funded enterprises. Enditem
WASHINGTON  More than eight weeks and almost $2.8 trillion federal dollars into an urgent response to the coronavirus pandemic, congressional Republicans and the Trump administration have made it clear that they are in no rush to engage with Democrats on another round of costly relief measures.

But their resistance  born of spending fatigue and policy divisions  is proving increasingly unsustainable, given tens of millions of anxious Americans out of work, businesses and schools shuttered and an election looming.

Even as the House moved forward on Friday with a Democratic recovery measure that Republicans abhor, President Trump and party leaders offered new assurances that they would draft their own legislation at some point, reflecting their growing unease at being portrayed as hostile to providing additional federal help.

Phase 4 is going to happen, Mr. Trump told reporters at the White House, using the shorthand for the next round of coronavirus aid, just minutes after saying it could happen. Its going to happen in a much better way for the American people. Only last week, he said he was in no rush to take up such a bill.
We are pleased to recognize Dr. Gustavo Villegas as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson

NeoTract, a wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated (NYSE:TFX) focused on addressing unmet needs in the field of urology, today announced that Gustavo Villegas M.D., DHR Health Urology Institute in Edinburg, TX, has been designated as a UroLift Center of Excellence. The designation recognizes that Dr. Villegas has achieved a high level of training and experience with the UroLift System and demonstrated a commitment to exemplary care for men suffering from symptoms associated with Benign Prostatic Hyperplasia (BPH), also known as enlarged prostate.

Recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines, the FDA-cleared Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to BPH. The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue.

The UroLift Center of Excellence program is designed to highlight urologists who are committed to educating their patients on BPH and the UroLift System as a treatment option and consistently seek to deliver excellent patient outcomes and experiences.

We are pleased to recognize Dr. Gustavo Villegas as a UroLift Center of Excellence for his commitment to providing consistent care to BPH patients using the UroLift System treatment, said Dave Amerson, president of the Teleflex Interventional Urology business unit. This achievement has helped many patients experience durable, long- term relief from the burdensome symptoms of BPH while preserving sexual function*1,2.

Over 40 million men in the United States are affected by BPH, a condition that occurs when the prostate gland that surrounds the male urethra becomes enlarged with advancing age and begins to obstruct the urinary system. Symptoms of BPH often include interrupted sleep and urinary problems and can cause loss of productivity, depression and decreased quality of life.

Medication is often the first-line therapy for enlarged prostate, but relief can be inadequate and temporary. Side effects of medication treatment can include sexual dysfunction, dizziness and headaches, prompting many patients to quit using the drugs. For these patients, the classic alternative is surgery that cuts, heats or removes prostate tissue to open the blocked urethra. While current surgical options can be very effective in relieving symptoms, they can also leave patients with permanent side effects such as urinary incontinence, erectile dysfunction, and retrograde ejaculation.

About the UroLift System

The FDA-cleared UroLift System is a proven, minimally invasive technology for treating lower urinary tract symptoms due to benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH). The UroLift permanent implants, delivered during a minimally invasive transurethral outpatient procedure, relieve prostate obstruction and open the urethra directly without cutting, heating, or removing prostate tissue. Clinical data from a pivotal 206-patient randomized controlled study showed that patients with enlarged prostate receiving UroLift implants reported rapid and durable symptomatic and urinary flow rate improvement without compromising sexual function*1,2. Patients also experienced a significant improvement in quality of life. Over 100,000 men have been treated with the UroLift System in the U.S. Most common adverse events reported include hematuria, dysuria, micturition urgency, pelvic pain, and urge incontinence. Most symptoms were mild to moderate in severity and resolved within two to four weeks after the procedure. The Prostatic Urethral Lift procedure using the UroLift System is recommended for the treatment of BPH in both the American Urological Association and European Association of Urology clinical guidelines. The UroLift System is available in the U.S., Europe, Australia, Canada, Mexico and South Korea. Learn more at http://www.UroLift.com.

About NeoTract | Teleflex Interventional Urology

A wholly owned subsidiary of Teleflex Incorporated, the Interventional Urology Business Unit is dedicated to developing innovative, minimally invasive and clinically effective devices that address unmet needs in the field of urology. Our initial focus is on improving the standard of care for patients with BPH using the UroLift System, a minimally invasive permanent implant system that treats symptoms while preserving normal sexual function*1,2. Learn more at http://www.NeoTract.com.

About Teleflex Incorporated

Teleflex is a global provider of medical technologies designed to improve the health and quality of peoples lives. We apply purpose driven innovation  a relentless pursuit of identifying unmet clinical needs  to benefit patients and healthcare providers. Our portfolio is diverse, with solutions in the fields of vascular and interventional access, surgical, anesthesia, cardiac care, urology, emergency medicine and respiratory care. Teleflex employees worldwide are united in the understanding that what we do every day makes a difference. For more information, please visit http://www.teleflex.com.

Teleflex is the home of Arrow, Deknatel, Hudson RCI, LMA, Pilling, Rusch, UroLift and Weck  trusted brands united by a common sense of purpose

# # #

For Teleflex Incorporated: Jake Elguicze, 610.948.2836

Treasurer and Vice President, Investor Relations

Media:

Nicole Osmer, 650.454.0504

nicole@healthandcommerce.com

*No instances of new, sustained erectile or ejaculatory dysfunction 1. Roehrborn, J Urology 2013 LIFT Study

2.McVary, J Sex Med 2016

MAC00968-01 Rev A
The director of the Yellowhammer Fund, a non-profit that provides financial assistance for abortions in Alabama, said she was considering shutting down the organization amid financial worry before Alabama passed a law banning near all abortions in the state in May 2019 .

One year later, after an influx of more than $2 million in donations from across the country in the immediate aftermath of the ban and the support of 1,200 monthly financially sustaining members, the fund now owns and operates the West Alabama Womens Center, one of three of remaining abortion clinics in the state.

Amanda Reyes, who founded the organization in 2017, said in many ways Alabama legislators attempt to ban abortion in Alabama helped them to pay for more procedures.

Their stunts meant that we could fund abortions for a long time in Alabama to come and improve abortion access, Reyes said. And I think this just shows that the stuff that they tried took hold and backfired for us in an amazing way.

Gov. Kay Ivey signed the bill into law in May 2019, banning all abortion in Alabama except for those performed if the mother is in medical danger. The ACLU of Alabama and Planned Parenthood Southeast sued the state of Alabama shortly after the ban was signed. It was halted from going into effect in Nov. 2019 by United States District Court Judge Myron Thompson until the ban played out in litigation in a higher court.

The initial money raised by Yellowhammer Fund would be enough to pay for nearly two-thirds of the average number of abortions in Alabama, which totaled about 6,000 in 2018. At the end of 2019 donations to the fund totaled $3.35 million, $250,000 of which funded 1,100 abortions in Alabama.

Reyes founded the West Alabama Clinic Defenders, a volunteer clinic escort organization, in 2015 while she was a student at the University of Alabama. She donned the trademark rainbow vests indicative of the reproductive rights movement and guided patients past graphic signs made by anti-abortion rights protestors to ensure they made it safely in and out of the clinic.

Now, she runs the same clinic.

[Reproductive] healthcare [resources] are really necessary for people and because where we live in Alabama, a lot of those healthcare services are not available to people, Reyes said. And so they go without; and when people go without [those resources], they can have worse health care outcomes down the road.

Reyes said this is the first time, to her knowledge, an abortion fund has purchased a healthcare clinic that provides abortions. Reyes said this is due in part because of the forced scrappy nature of being in the reproductive justice movement.

The people who do reproductive justice work have always been the people who have not been inside the mainstream of these movements because They don't have the right training, They didn't go to the right schools, They didn't go to the right programs, They didn't grow up in the right places. And because of that, they also know what it means to live a real and complicated life and to see how all of these issues that we talked about when we talk about reproductive justice fit together and how they intersect with things like abortion access.

Reyes said the transition from the previous owner of the Tuscaloosa clinic has gone smoothly and the staff has been supportive of the change. She said she plans to broaden the clinics mission to serve as a reproductive justice center for the community, including providing gynecological care, hormone therapy for transgender patients, and midwifery and doula care, among other things. Under Reyes direction the clinic now offers three months of free birth control and two emergency contraceptive pills for every patient that walks through the doors.

Its a really great opportunity for all of us to be able to take care of our community, Reyes said. We have been given the opportunity to really invest in our communities.
As rays of sunshine broke through rain clouds over Sydney, Bronte cafe owner Hannah More was keen to be upbeat about the outlook following the easing of coronavirus restrictions.

After two months of lockdown, a sense of bustle had returned to the well-known beachside strip in the eastern suburbs as 10 customers at a time sat at cafe tables.

Bogey Hole Cafe owner Hannah More is more optimistic following the easing of restrictions. Credit:Janie Barret

It was the same in other parts of Sydney such as the inner west, where the Balmain Hotel allowed 10 patrons in at a time on Friday afternoon, including NSW Treasurer Dominic Perrottet.

Yet like many business owners across the city, Ms More is under no illusion that challenges remain.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

Trend:

Azerbaijan copes with the negative impact of coronavirus very well, Manager of the French SUEZ Group for Azerbaijan Alain Carbonel said in an interview with the French BFM Business radio.

"We are mainly engaged in research and the implementation of innovative projects in Azerbaijan, Carbonel said. Azerbaijan, like other countries, has been also affected by the coronavirus pandemic. But the number of infected people and fatal cases from coronavirus in Azerbaijan is very small compared to other countries thanks to the high level of management in this country, as well as comprehensive preventive measures."

Carbonel stressed that the epidemic had a negative impact on the construction sector, agriculture, the chemical industry, oil and gas sector.

However, the country copes with this negative impact of coronavirus very well, the manager said.

Carbonel also highlighted the recent business meeting with the participation of Azerbaijani Minister of Economy Mikayil Jabbarov in a webinar format organized by the Azerbaijan Export and Investment Promotion Foundation (AZPROMO), the French Entrepreneurs Organization (MEDEF) and the Azerbaijan-France Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

During this meeting, Jabbarov spoke about the planned measures to combat the crisis and stressed that none of investment projects in the country will be canceled, the manager said.

Carbonel added that the Azerbaijani government has prepared an assistance plan that covers such sectors as tourism, construction, agriculture, transport, as well as the companies implementing infrastructure projects.

"Huge financial assistance is rendered to these companies to prevent staff cuts," the manager said.

Carbonel stressed that the Azerbaijani government will need time to ensure diversification of the economy.

"Presently, two sectors are most developed in the Azerbaijani non-oil sector, namely, agriculture and tourism, the manager said. Obviously, there is stagnation in tourism sector and this is natural as all countries have closed their borders. We hope that this stagnation will end soon.
The Church of the Holy Trinity is surrounded by camping tents, each one big enough for two or three of Torontos homeless residents.

Amanda Stroud moved into the encampment four weeks ago after struggling to find space in the citys overwhelmed shelter system.

Theres nowhere else for me to stay, she said, standing outside a small canvas tent Friday morning. The shelters are full, I dont have any housing opportunities. This is home.

Since the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the city has seen a dramatic increase in homeless encampments across the city as inhabitants find themselves without shelter space and apprehensive of facilities that have become vectors for the deadly virus.

Early in March, the city imposed a moratorium on clearing homeless encampments, given the challenges of ensuring physical distancing in shelters. But the city has since resumed the removals of the encampments as they implement new, temporary housing measures for the homeless.

On Friday, standoffs unfolded between Torontos homeless and city officials at several downtown encampments as police officers and city workers cleared tents.

The city said it was clearing tents that were abandoned after moving people into housing last week, but Jason Phillips, who lives in a tent underneath the Gardiner Expressway, told the Canadian Press he received an eviction notice despite refusing an offer for a shelter placement.

He said he feels safer outside than in a shelter during the pandemic. Stroud agrees.

At least, here, you can pick up your tent and move somewhere else if you dont like the spot, Stroud said. Ive stayed in a shelter where someone stole the shoes off my feet while I was sleeping. Its not much better.

Some of the encampments, like the one outside the Sanctuary Charity on Charles Street, have outhouses and are staffed with harm-reduction workers.

The encampments often congregate in the citys ravines and underpasses  beside the Gardiner Expressway and along the Don Valley Parkway  though street nurse and housing advocate Cathy Crowe says recent areas include stretches of University Avenue and in Parkdale.

People in these encampments have less access to basic hygiene, washrooms and food services, Crowe said. They have some outreach coming to them from charitable organizations, but not as much they should.

Mary-Anne Bedard, general manager of Torontos Shelter, Support and Housing Administration, said that the city will always offer indoor spaces for inhabitants before removing their tent encampments.

When we make an offer to someone for an inside space, we work with them to ensure theyre in a position to accept that. But if they decline that offer, we will continue to clear the site, she said.

Toronto Fire Services Chief Matthew Pegg said Friday that city staff withdrew from the encampment sites after they were approached by protesters.

Since the pandemic began, the city says it has moved 97 inhabitants of tent encampments to indoor spaces.

By moving inside, youre moving to a location thats being cleaned to high standards, you have access to three meals a day, you have access to running water and sanitation, and you have access to space that has met physical distancing requirements, Bedard said. Encampments have none of those things. Our staff are trying to help people understand that.

But Crowe says the shelters pose risks to their inhabitants as well.

Two people have died and more than 329 have tested positive for COVID-19 in the shelter system since the pandemic began, according to the city. The city has also reported outbreaks in nine facilities where roughly 70-80 individuals are hosted on a nightly basis.

In March, the city added nine new shelters for homeless people with over 350 spaces to help improve social distancing. The shelters are spread out across the city, in recreation centres and motels that the city has adopted.

Despite the citys efforts, advocates of health-care providers say widespread outbreaks in Torontos shelter system are inevitable due to limited space and overcrowding.

Crowe says that some of the difficulties concerning the shelters were further exacerbated by the closure of Torontos central intake centre for homeless shelter services in March.

The centre, which connects the homeless with shelter beds, shut down its in-person services due to COVID-19 concerns, leaving individuals to contact the centre via phone or by relying on shelter staff and outreach workers to help them find locations with available space.

Many of the individuals Crowe works with have had trouble getting through to central intake by phone, she said.

Mayor John Tory said that city staff are helping people in the encampments move into two midtown buildings with 125 fully furnished units. The units come with laundry, Wi-Fi, cable television and on-site support staff to help residents.

Bedard says that 87 individuals in tent encampments have received interim housing. She says the city anticipates it can provide space for another 60-80 people in the coming weeks.

According to the citys most recent report, more than 500 Torontonians inhabit tent encampments across the city.

Bedard notes that the figure has likely changed amidst the pandemic, as other institutions, like prisons, have discharged people into homelessness in order to meet their own physical distancing and site security measures.

Unfortunately, the homeless sector is not necessarily in a position to respond to that right now, Bedard said.

With files from Donovan Vincent, Jennifer Pagliaro and The Canadian Press

Jacob Lorinc is a breaking news reporter, working out of the Star's radio room in Toronto. Follow him on Twitter: @jacoblorinc
China may have logged hundreds of thousands more cases of coronavirus than it is publicly admitting to, new data leaked from a university suggests.

Officially, the country has reported just 84,029 cases of the virus but there has been widespread skepticism over this figure amid a lack of transparency from Beijing.

But now, a database leaked from the National University of Defence Technology in the city of Changsha suggests the country could have 640,000 cases.

China may have suffered 640,00 cases of coronavirus - far higher than the country's official death toll, leaked data suggests

The information comes from a database leaked to Foreign Policy and 100 Reporters, which carried out a brief analysis of the information it contains.

They say the dataset contains 640,000 individual entries taken from at least 230 cities spread across the country.

Each entry contains latitude, longitude, and 'confirmed' number of cases at the location on a specific date, which range from early February to late April.

The locations include hospitals but also apartment compounds, hotels, supermarkets, railway stations, restaurants, schools and even a branch of KFC.

Assuming that each entry contains at least one case, that would mean at least 640,000 cases of the virus which have been recorded.

The number could also be far higher. A single data entry outlined by those with access to the database contains two cases of the virus, reported at a church in the city of Harbin on March 17.

The number could also be lower. Reporters say it is not clear how the data was gathered - although the university website says it used a range of public resources.

A dataset from the National University of Defence Technology (pictured) has 640,000 entries charting coronavirus cases across the country, potentially suggesting 640,000 cases

It is also not clear why data was taken from specific locations on particular dates.

Inconsistencies in data gathering methods means it is possible that single cases could have been counted several times, skewing the figures.

The data set also does not make it clear what was classified as a 'confirmed' case of the virus, which had led to discrepancies in reporting in other countries.

Since no names or identifying details were included with the data, both Foreign Policy and 100Reporters said it has been impossible to verify any of the cases.

MailOnline has not seen the dataset, which has not been released publicly.

Despite its shortcomings, the existence of such a large database will add to existing suspicions that China is not being honest about its virus toll.

China, like most other countries, has struggled to provide accurate data on a disease that has spread across the world rapidly, especially since scientists believe up to 80 per cent of those who catch it may have no or mild symptoms.

But allegations against Beijing go further, namely that it has deliberately covered up figures in an attempt to convince world leaders it out-performed them in terms of its response - or to buy time to stockpile PPE and medicines before the virus spread.

The US Centers for Disease Control refused to comment to Foreign Policy and 100reporters, while the WHO said it was unaware such a database existed.

China has officially reported just 84,029 cases of the virus - though widespread doubt has been cast on this figure (file image)

Since the first cases of the virus were recorded around a wet market in the city of Wuhan in December last year, coronavirus has swept across the globe.

As of Friday, 4.4million cases of the virus had been confirmed worldwide and more than 300,000 people had died from the disease it causes, official figures showed.

However, both figures are believed to widely under-estimate the true scale of the virus because of widespread problems with testing.

The virus has forced most major nations to enact unprecedented and sweeping lockdown measures which have largely confined people to their homes for the last several months.

Countries, including China, are only just starting to emerge from those lockdowns, amid fears of a second - more serious - spike in infections and deaths.

Some hope has been offered by the development of reliable antibody tests that can detect whether a person has ever had the virus, potentially offering the first comprehensive look at how many cases there were in the world.

A vaccine being developed at Oxford University has also shown promising results in rhesus monkeys by stopping the virus penetrating deep into their lungs, where it can be fatal.
Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden's campaign is betting that as many as 17 states could be up for grabs in November's election, with President Donald Trump's coronavirus response making places like Arizona more competitive.

'There will be battleground states that have never been battleground states before,' said Biden's campaign manager, Jen O'Malley Dillon, in a strategy briefing for reporters on Friday.

O'Malley Dillon included Arizona, Texas and Georgia among states that have been inhospitable for Democrats but that could power the former vice president to success in his Nov. 3 showdown with Trump.

Separately it emerged that Mike Bloomberg, Biden's former 2020 rival, is preparing to unleash $250 million of his fortune on aiding the presumptive Democratic nominee to beat Trump.

The Republican incumbent enjoys advantages of his own in the race, including fundraising and digital campaigning.

The old map: This was the result of the 2016 election campaign - with Trump also gaining a single electoral college vote from Maine, which splits its votes

The Biden map: This is the 2020 map the Biden campaign says it believes is the battleground for the election - with three new states in play, and competitive Senate races in deep red territory. Additionally, one of Nebraska's congressional districts is seen as being in play and the state has split electoral college votes

THE STATES 'IN PLAY' Democrats' presidential targets: Florida Iowa Maine (split its four electoral college votes in 2016 3-1 to Clinton) Michigan Nebraska (one of its five electoral college votes) North Carolina Ohio Pennsylvania Wisconsin Democrats' Senate targets: Arizona Kansas Kentucky Montana South Carolina Republicans' presidential targets: Maine (split its four electoral college votes in 2016 3-1 to Clinton) New Hampshire Virginia Republicans' Senate targets: Alabama Advertisement

Trump's team has been working for months on plans to make a push for states seen as Democrats' home turf, such as Minnesota.

Biden has been restricted to campaigning from his Delaware home, where he is isolating due to the coronavirus.

Some of his efforts to reach out to voters, including online events in states critical to deciding the election, have been beset with technical difficulties.

'Americans know that President Trump has been leading the nation in fighting the coronavirus, and they also know that Joe Biden has been nothing but a political crank, lobbing counterproductive criticisms from his basement bunker,' Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh said.

Trump trailed Biden 38% to 46% among registered voters in the latest Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday.

O'Malley Dillon's strategy includes protecting states that Democrats won in 2016 and winning swing states that went to Trump, including Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Florida.

Trump managed to overcome a polling deficit in 2016, beating Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by relatively small margins in key states to win the Electoral College while losing the popular vote.

The Biden campaign sees suburban, college-educated and women voters growing more supportive of Democrats and more disenchanted with Trump's coronavirus response.

The Biden campaign also concedes that some voters, including white voters without college degrees, black men and Latino men, have grown less supportive of Democrats in the last decade but think Biden's working-class message can win them back.

Murtaugh said Trump would work to increase his support among black and Latino voters.

Biden's policy positions, Murtaugh added, would cause the Democrat to lose support in key states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

O'Malley Dillon however said the campaign will hire by June at least 600 field staffers dedicated to an 'expanded map' of battleground states.

She expects the new workers to be 'on the ground' and reaching out to voters face to face as social distancing guidelines during the coronavirus pandemic change before Election Day in November.

But she made no commitment for when that will be, and she reaffirmed that the campaign has no established timeline for when Biden will return to regular campaigning.

Bigger battleground: Trump and Biden both believe they can expand the map for the 2020 election

BILLIONAIRE BLOOMBERG'S BIDEN-BACKING BLITZ Former rival: Bloomberg is getting ready to unleash a vast spend to help Biden, who he lost out to in the Democratic primaries Billionaire and former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is considering a major spending blitz to back Bidens White House bid, CNBC reported on Friday. The former New York mayor plans on spending more than $250 million to help Biden, but it is not clear whether the money will go to pro-Biden Super PACS, Biden's joint fundraising effort with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) or another independent group, the network reported, citing people familiar with the conversations. Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee to take on Trump in November. Biden and Trump each raised roughly $60 million in April, but Trump and the Republicans hold a sizable money advantage. $250 million from Bloomberg, whose net worth is $57.3 billion, would wipe out the Republicans' cash lead. The Biden campaign declined to comment when asked by Reuters about the spending. Bloomberg did not immediately respond to Reuters questions on the potential spending. Any major financial support from Bloomberg for Biden does not include what he could also put toward assisting congressional Democrats and the DNC, CNBC reported. Bloomberg dropped out of the Democratic nominating contests for president in March and quickly endorsed Biden. Advertisement

'We will never make any choices that put our staff or voters in harm's way,' O'Malley Dillon said. 'Our expectation is we have people on the ground in this campaign doing the traditional work of organizing, but we will do that when safety allows, and we will not do that a day sooner.'

O'Malley Dillon said that the timing of when such campaigning would be safe 'might mean different things in different places' and that, in the meantime, Biden will continue online events and outreach.

Asked whether Biden had been tested for the coronavirus, O'Malley Dillon said, 'there's no testing thats happened now. There's no plan for that.'

The organizing hires will be the most visible sign of the buildup since Biden hired O'Malley Dillon as campaign manager in March.

Her hiring came as Biden took command of the primary and as the pandemic brought the campaign and much of American daily life to a halt.

The hiring of new staffers is the latest push from Bidens campaign to counter criticisms from some Democrats and progressive allies that the campaign isnt ramping up quickly enough.

Besides the personnel moves, Biden aides pointed to an increase in fundraising as evidence of expansion.

The campaign said Friday that it had $103 million cash on hand at the end of April when combined with the Democratic National Committee. The April fundraising total was almost $61 million between the two entities.

Trump and the Republican National Committee said this week that they had more than $250 million on hand, continuing their financial juggernaut as Trump has raised money throughout his term without any serious primary opposition.

On the bright side for Biden, the GOP operation barely outraised Biden in April, as Democrats say they will have enough money to run a winning campaign against Trump, even if they never match him dollar for dollar.

OMalley Dillon, Biden senior strategist Mike Donilon and deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said Friday that Trump's handling of the coronavirus, the turbulence of his presidency before the pandemic and voters' familiarity with Biden give the former vice president a wide path to the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the White House.

'One of the things that I think has been underestimated about the vice president from the beginning is how strong an image he has with the American people,' Donilon said, alluding to Biden's comeback to become the presumptive nominee despite an uneven campaign and months of attacks from Trump.

Donilon pointed to recent polls suggesting Trump has a narrower advantage over Biden among older voters than Trump did in 2016 and said the disadvantage Republicans had with suburban women in the 2018 midterms has widened. O'Malley Dillon said demographic changes in states such as Arizona offer an opportunity for Biden.

But she said the pandemic could change the methods of voting. 'We know were going to prioritize education and mobilization,' O'Malley Dillon said, 'but the enthusiasm is there.'
SOFIA -- Some two thousand supporters of an ultranationalist and pro-Russian party protested in Sofia against the Bulgarian government and its response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The Vazrazhdane party organized the protest in front of the National Assembly in the capital on May 14 despite a ban on large gatherings to stem the spread of the virus.

Organizers had called on people to "get their country back" and demanded the resignation of the "criminal government.

It was the first public protest since Prime Minister Boris Borisovs GERB-led government imposed a state of emergency on March 13 to halt the spread of the virus.

The state of emergency ended on May 13 but was replaced by a "health emergency situation with similar restrictions.

The Interior Ministry said eight people were detained for various reasons and the large gathering amounted to a "gross violation of anti-epidemic measures.

Some of those at the protest claimed the coronavirus was part of a global conspiracy that includes Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft whose foundation is supporting the development of a COVID-19 vaccine.



Other protesters carried slogans against the compulsory vaccination of children, a topic that has also provoked various conspiracy theories around the world.

As at other Vazrazhdane events, some participants waved Russian flags or wore T-shirts featuring Russian President Vladimir Putin. The protesters also spoke out against the European Union.

In the last parliamentary elections in 2017, the Vazrazhdane party received 1.1 percent of the vote and remained outside the National Assembly.

Recent opinion polls suggest Borisovs center-right government has gained popularity for its response to the coronavirus crisis, which has infected 2,100 people and caused 99 deaths in the country.
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Ukrainian nuclear units' operating capacity falls to historic low while electricity prices go up  Gerus

13:40, 15.05.20 959

At the same time, the working load at coal-fired power plants have increased.
The Taiwanese vice president accuses Beijing. Taipei asks to take part as an observer state. For the Chinese, Taiwan is not a sovereign state. Among the 15 diplomatic allies of the island, only the Vatican has not expressed support for its participation. 66% of the inhabitants of the "rebel province" consider themselves Taiwanese.

Taipei (AsiaNews / Agencies) - Due to pressure from China, Taiwan has little chance of attending the World Health Organization (WHO) Assembly on May 18 and 19, Taiwanese vice president Chen Chien-jen revealed yesterday.

Taipei is asking to participate in the WHO decision-making body meeting as an observer state. Beijing opposes this, arguing that the island is not a sovereign state, but a "rebel" province, to be forcibly reunited if needed. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) maintains China that must submit Taiwanese applications to the WHO, provided that Taipei recognizes the "principle of one China".

Taiwan is one of the countries that has faced the pandemic crisis most successfully. International support for hits participation in the WHO Assembly has grown in recent days. The United States, Australia, New Zealand and Japan have expressed themselves openly in this regard.

As did 14 of the 15 states that have formal diplomatic ties with Taipei. The Vatican, which participates as an observer in the WHO's work, is the only diplomatic ally of the island that has not made such a request to Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the Organization.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing worsened in 2016, when the current Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen won her first term. Tsai is the leader of the People's Democratic Party, in favor of the island's formal independence from the Chinese motherland.

According to a survey published on May 12 by the Pew Research Center, a US demoscopic institute, 66% of Taiwanese inhabitants consider themselves Taiwanese, 28% both Taiwanese and Chinese, only 4% recognize themselves Chinese.
Advertisement

May 14, 2020

Press Statement

The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) says the school feeding claims by the

Federal Government, even when schools are shut due to Covid-19 pandemic,

is a huge scam and a scheme by corrupt All Progressives Congress (APC)

leaders and some officials in the Buhari Presidency to siphon a targeted

N13.5 billion public funds to finance their wasteful lifestyle.

The party describes the use of innocent school children as cover to

steal and funnel not less than N679 million daily to private purses as

sacrilegious, wicked and completely unpardonable.

While it is clear that the APC-led administrations school feeding

programme had always been a scam, the claims to feed school children

even when schools are closed is a collosal racketeering taken too far.

This goes to further expose that stealing and corruption are deeply

engrained in the DNA of the APC and its administration.

While the PDP has nothing against any transparent effort to provide

succor to Nigerians, particularly our children, at this critical time,

our party rejects the on-going fraud in which school children, who are

in their respective homes, bearing the brunt of the failures of the APC

administration, are being used as metaphors to divert public funds to a

few corrupt individuals in the Buhari Presidency.

Nigerians are witnesses to how the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs,

Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Umar Farouq, had

always stammered, makes conflicting pronouncements and points to Mr.

Presidents speech as a cover each time Nigerians demand for details of

her humongous spending.

The minister had failed to provide details of how she intends to reach

the 9.7 million school children, who are now in their homes in different

locations since the closure of schools, even as officials continue to

muddle up required documentations in a bid to cover their tracks.

Nigerians are invited to note how the minister contradicted herself in

claiming that the food would be shared door-to door and in the same

breath, averred that vouchers would be allocated at specific collection

times to avoid overcrowding.

Such contradiction only betrays an unwholesome tendency, as Nigerians

wonder how there would be overcrowding on door-to-door distribution of

food to children who are claimed to have been individually designated in

various locations.

Our party notes that critical stakeholders in the education sector,

including the Nigerian Union of Teachers (NUT) and Concerned Parents and

Educators (CPE) had also raised queries over this fraudulent scheme,

which is already going the way of the N500 billion Social Investment

Programme of the Buhari administration which the First Lady, Aisha

Buhari, had earlier exposed as a huge scam.

The PDP is worried that with the constant reference to President

Buharis speech, it is clear that unscrupulous officials are cashing in

on the situation to fleece the nation.

If these officials indeed mean well for the school children, they should

hand over the funds to the ministry of education in the respective

states for appropriate dispensation to properly identified and

documented vulnerable children.

Our party therefore urges President Buhari to take urgent steps to end

the corruption that has pervaded his administration, particularly the

use of innocent Nigerians as cover to steal public funds.

Signed:

Kola Ologbondiyan

National Publicity Secretary
In an exclusive interview, a high official of Azerbaijan pointed at mafia-type relations between the unrecognized authorities of Nagorno-Karabakh and the government in Armenia as an obstacle for solving the long-lasting conflict. Hikmat Hajiev, head of the foreign affairs department of Azerbaijans presidential administration, was asked on Wednesday (13 May) to comment on recent developments in Nagorno-Karabakh, following presidential and parliamentary elections held in the breakaway region despite international criticism and the coronavirus pandemic. Euractiv reports in its article Azeri official points at mafia as obstacle to solving Nagorno-Karabakh conflict that Hajiev regretted the lack of constructive actions by Yerevan to move forward the negotiations. Armenia is backtracking on the negotiations process, he said, adding that with its war-mongering rhetoric it undermines the work of the co-chair countries of the OSCE Minsk Group.

Nagorno-Karabakh is a region within Azerbaijan that was seized by Armenian-backed separatists who declared independence during a 1988-1994 conflict that killed at least 30,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands.

Russia, the United States, and France are the co-chairs of the Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), which acts as a mediator in resolving the crisis. The group has been struggling for years to mediate a solution to the situation.

Hajiev said the only way was to resolve the conflict step-by-step, starting with the liberation of the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the withdrawal of Armenias troops and the return all displaced people.

He said the recent so-called elections once again demonstrated that the illegal regime established in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan is nothing but a criminal entity, a part of the mafia-sort fights among the political leadership in Armenia.

Asked to elaborate, he said the purpose of the recent election was to strengthen Arayik Harutyunyan, the president-elect of the unrecognised territory of Nagorno-Karabakh, who according to him was installed by the former Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan.

Hajiev also said it was a well-established tradition to exploit silver mines in Nagorno-Karabakh and illegally export the metal, while the money received was used to finance what he said were obscure activities of the political leadership of Armenia.

The EU is not a player in the solution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Hajiev said his country was looking forward to work with the new leadership of the EU institutions, and was attaching particular importance to the Commission priorities for the Eastern Partnership policy post-2020 proposed last March.

In particular, he stressed that for the Eastern Partnership, appreciating that territorial integrity of the partner countries was seen as an essential element and a shared value.

He also highlighted the fight against organized crime and terrorism as important areas of cooperation with the EU.

COVID-19 mitigation

Asked about the impact of COVID-19 on his country, Hajiev said the Azerbaijani government had demonstrated strategic vision and strategic risk analysis. Most of the actions Azerbaijan took were preventive, rather than post-factum, he said, and the measures, including quarantine, were effective.

The epidemiological situation is largely under control, with only 26 deaths, mainly people with chronic diseases, and a total of 2,700 people infected, of whom a large majority of over 1,700 are cured by now.

The country has 24 testing laboratories and some 7,000 tests are conducted on a daily basis, he said, adding that measures had been taken for raising the preparedness of the health system, by increasing the number of hospital beds, by training doctors and medical personnel.

Regarding the socio-economic difficulties resulting from COVID-19, Hajiev said the government had mobilised an economic package of almost 3 billion Manat (1.62 billion) to alleviate the situation of the public and private sector.

Asked about the work of the World Health Organisation (WHO) in the context of the COVID-19 crisis, Hajiev said his country had invited WHO experts in Azerbaijan and they had made a very positive report about the countrys health system preparedness.

In a letter to President Ilham Aliyev, WHO chief Tedros Ghebreyesus called the measures taken by Azerbaijan exemplary, he said.

NAM summit

In cooperation with the international community, The Azerbaijani perspective has been that the global pandemic is not a time for self-isolation, but for global solidarity, Hajiev said. In his words, in the two organisations currently chaired by Azerbaijan  the Turkic Council and the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM)  keeping the ways of communication open has been key. Hajiev called NAM, a forum of 120 developing states, the second-largest international institution after the United Nations. Azerbaijan, as chairman of the NAM for the 2019-2022 period, held the first-ever virtual summit on 4 May, under the leadership of its President Aliyev, the event being joined by more than 40 heads of state and government in Europe, Asia, Africa and Latin America. Azerbaijan made a contribution of $5 million to the WHOs COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund and in addition, during the NAM online summit, President Aliyev committed another 5 million to the WHO, earmarked for the countries of Latin America, Africa and Asia, Hajiev said. Asked about the criticism of WHO expressed in some quarters, Hajiev said now was not the time to criticize. Its time to take global action and global responsibility. We dont have any other competent organization except WHO, he said, adding that Azerbaijan appreciates the role of the EU in promoting global solidarity and cooperation, including the EU support for the NAM.
Friday, May 15th, 2020 (7:36 am) - Score 9,984

Reports claim that BT could be looking to sell a significant stake in Openreach to investors as part of a strategy to help fund their 12bn roll-out of 1Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP technology, which has set an ambition (here) to cover 20 million UK premises by the mid  to late-2020s.

The trouble with BT Groups new plan is simply, how to fund it? The operator may be big but their entire market value is only around 10bn and then we have to consider 50bn in pension liabilities, 18bn in net debt and the 1.3bn needed over the next 5 years as part of their restructuring exercise.

Some of the funding will surely come from the companys difficult decision to suspend the dividend until 2022, but that will only bring in c.2.5bn. Meanwhile we can probably expect the operator to secure a good chunk of the Governments proposed 5bn programme to help extend gigabit-capable broadband to every home by the end of 2025 (focused on the final 20% of hardest to reach premises), but that still isnt enough.

According to the FT (paywall), the telecoms giant is reportedly considering the possibility of selling a stake in their Openreach division to investors. Quite how this would work is unclear since Openreach is a heavily regulated business that is also legally-separate with its own independent board, although theyre still bankrolled by BT.

The network could probably also be considered a strategic national asset by the government, which means that any direct investment may attract scrutiny from the both the competition (CMA) and telecoms regulators (Ofcom). Such a deal might also have a wider political dynamic that is hard to predict and theres the on-going uncertainty around an EU trade deal to consider.

The report suggests that offers of a potential sale of a stake in Openreach value it at 20bn, which is roughly double BTs current market value and would certainly solve their funding problems. At the same time fibre optic networks remain a generally attractive proposition for big investment firms and the chance to grab a big chunk of the UKs largest telecoms network is one that several firms will at least want to explore.

The original report points to three sources as claiming that BT have, over the past three weeks, held talks with both Australian bank Macquarie (they most recently spent big to gobble KCOM in East Yorkshire) and an unnamed sovereign wealth fund, which given the COVID-19 lockdown would probably have only been very limited.

However an article on Reuters, which claims to have spoken with a source close to Macquarie, reports that the investment giant has NOT expressed an interest in Openreach and hadnt held talks with BT. Alternatively this could be an early attempt by people within BT to drum up some interest in the idea within the market. The UK market for full fibre broadband is certainly anything but boring but take this one with a pinch of salt, for now.
One member of Russia-led forces was killed and another five were wounded, according to intelligence data.

Russia's hybrid military forces on May 14 mounted 11 attacks on Ukrainian positions in Donbas, eastern Ukraine.

"The Russian Federation's armed formations violated the ceasefire 11 times in the past day," the press center of Ukraine's Joint Forces Operation said in a Facebook update as of 07:00 Kyiv time on May 15, 2020.

Russia-led forces employed proscribed 120mm and 82mm mortars, grenade launchers of various types, heavy machine guns, and rifles.

Under attack came Ukrainian positions near the towns of Avdiyivka and Krasnohorivka, and the villages of Pisky, Verkhniotoretske, Novomykhailivka, Vodiane, Orikhove, Khutir Vilny, and Zaitseve.

Read alsoMFA comments on Germany-Russia talks on Donbas without Ukraine's participation

Joint Forces returned fire to each enemy shelling. According to intelligence data, one member of Russia-led forces was killed and another five were wounded.

The enemy did not attack Ukrainian positions from 00:00 to 07:00 Kyiv time on May 15.

No casualties were reported among Ukrainian troops on Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 22:15:47|Editor: huaxia

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LUSAKA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A consortium of society organizations on Friday called on telecommunications operators and other digital players to enhance cybersecurity for internet users.

The Working Group on Cyber Laws and Digital Security in Zambia said the call was in view of increased online transactions due to the outbreak of the COVID-19.

The organizations said some measures such as allowing workers to operate from homes, enabled workers to spend extended time remotely logging into secure computer network systems.

"The working group notes that during these times of distress for individuals and entities, the breach of personal and institutional data is at its weakest point," Vusumuzi Sifile, executive director of the Panos Institute Southern Africa, one of the organizations said.

This made cybersecurity a top priority for everyone using online tools to seek, receive, share, store, manage or process data, he added.

He called on relevant government agencies to focus more on minimizing the chances of cyber breaches and protecting citizens against cybercrime. Enditem
A missile is launched during the PLA air force's "Blue Shield-17S" drill competition on October 28, 2017. Photo: 81.cn

China on Thursday kicked off a two-and-a-half month series of military exercises on the northern coast. The drills are more likely to be a regular period of internal training aimed at boosting the combat ability of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) and putting its advanced air defense weapons to the test, rather than targeting the island of Taiwan as some reports by Taiwan media have suggested, analysts said.

From Thursday to July 31, live-fire shooting will be conducted in the northeastern sea areas off Tangshan, North China's Hebei Province, read a navigation restriction notice the Maritime Safety Administration released on its website on Monday.

According to the coordinates and descriptions provided in the notice, the restricted zone is a fan-shaped area with a radius of 25 kilometers, about 525 square kilometers in total, covering some coastal land areas but mostly sea areas.

All unrelated vessels and personnel should stop all activity in this area during this period and evacuate to safe zones in advance to avoid accidents, the notice said.

The Chinese military has not announced any details of the drills, and speculation soon arose over the exercises, which have an extended duration.

Taiwan media outlet EBC News on Wednesday related the drills to Taiwan regional leader Tsai Ing-wen's scheduled inauguration speech on May 20, which is only one week away.

Some reports claimed the drills could feature landing exercises with the aim of enhancing the ability of the PLA to reunify the island by force.

China Central Television (CCTV) military program Weihutang reported on Tuesday that the exercises are being held in the Bohai Bay, the maritime gateway to the nation's capital Beijing, and a strategically important location to protect Beijing, Tianjin and Hebei.

The PLA has previously held multiple "Blue Shield" series air defense exercises in this region, during which it tested the technical and tactical capabilities of some new types of air defense missiles, Weihutang reported.

The Bohai Bay is also one of China's naval weapon test zones, and a training base for aircraft carrier-based fighter jets is located nearby, Weihutang noted.

Judging from the location, time and area, the drills are likely regular and internal exercises of the PLA, Xu Guangyu, a senior adviser to the China Arms Control and Disarmament Association, told the Global Times on Thursday.

If the PLA wanted to send a warning to Taiwan secessionists, the drills would not be held in an inland sea area like the Bohai Bay, but would be conducted in the Huanghai Sea, East China Sea or South China Sea, which are nearer to Taiwan, Xu said, noting that the drill zone is not that large and the extended period may indicate tests of new weapons.

Tests of large weapons like the JL-3 submarine-launched ballistic missile are also unlikely, because the location is too near to land, analysts said.

Taiwan secessionists knew they were doing wrong and had a guilty conscience, so they actively related the drills to themselves, a military expert who asked not to be identified told the Global Times on Thursday.

They should always fear the PLA because it has the capability and determination to solve the Taiwan question by force at any time as necessary, regardless of whether it is holding these specific drills to warn them, the expert said.
CALGARY - Alberta's energy regulator has cited clean-up concerns in blocking the sale of sour gas wells, pipelines and other facilities from an energy giant to a much smaller company.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Alfred Sorensen, president of Pieridae Energy Canada attends a news conference in Halifax, on Wednesday, Oct. 24, 2012. Alberta's energy regulator has blocked the sale of sour gas wells, pipelines and other facilities from an energy giant to a much smaller company over clean-up concerns. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

CALGARY - Alberta's energy regulator has cited clean-up concerns in blocking the sale of sour gas wells, pipelines and other facilities from an energy giant to a much smaller company.

In a decision released Thursday, the regulator said Calgary-based Pieridae Energy's attempted purchase of the southern Alberta assets from Shell Canada goes against the intent of environmental laws.

The issue was seen as a test case of the regulator's determination to avoid clean-up costs for energy facilities falling to the taxpayer.

In its written decision, the Alberta Energy Regulator said it wasn't happy with how the deal would have split the liability for cleaning up the sites, especially at a pair of gas processing plants. The terms of the sale would have had Shell responsible for existing contamination and Pieridae on the hook for future problems.

"The scope and extent of the contamination at the site is not well known and is not well described in the applications," the decision said. "To date, the contamination at the sites has not been fully understood."

Without knowing that, the regulator said, it would be impossible to know which company would have been responsible for what.

The decision also said the company that made the mess should clean it up.

"Shell is the polluter," said the decision. "The ... applications appear to request that the AER, by way of approval, override or at least significantly dilute Shells obligations.

"The AER is of the view that it cannot, by way of approval, carve up and redistribute fundamental regulatory obligations in a manner that is contrary to or inconsistent with (the law)."

The two companies agreed to the deal last summer. It involves 284 wells, 66 facilities and 82 pipelines in the southern Alberta foothills.

It came shortly after the regulator had promised a closer eye on such licence transfers to ensure purchasers are able to cover reclamation costs. At the time, Pieridae's market value was less than the price of the Shell assets and its stock value was less than a dollar.

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The number of energy facilities left unreclaimed by struggling producers has boomed in recent years. As of May 14, Alberta alone had more than 10,000 unreclaimed wells, pipelines, facilities and sites.

In April, the federal government pledged $1.7 billion for such so-called orphan wells in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, although they are supposed to be reclaimed by an industry-funded group.

The energy regulator said the two companies were free to restructure their deal and try again to get the licence transfers approved.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.

 By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow him on Twitter at @row1960.

Companies in this story: (TSXV:PEA)
BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro on Wednesday said he is considering releasing a video that sources say shows him explaining that he needs a friendly police chief in Rio de Janeiro to shield his family from investigations.

The details of the video surfaced on Tuesday and marked the latest political storm for Bolsonaro, a right-wing populist who has been widely criticized abroad for his handling of the coronavirus crisis.

Domestically, he is dealing with a more typical political crisis set off by the resignation last month of his former justice minister, Sergio Moro, who accused Bolsonaro of improper meddling in law enforcement.

The video is a recording of a cabinet meeting on April 22 in which, according to a source familiar with its contents, Bolsonaro said he wanted to change the federal police chief in Rio because his family was being persecuted there.

"If it's up to me, I'll release it," Bolsonaro told reporters on Wednesday.

Bolsonaro said he never uttered the words "federal police" and "investigation" in the taped meeting, but that he did talk about the need for better security for his sons in Rio.

One of his sons faces a criminal investigation in Rio by state police for suspicious financial transactions.

The video was shown on Tuesday to prosecutors and witnesses as part of an investigation into Moro's accusation of attempted meddling by Bolsonaro's police work. The former minister, who rose to fame for jailing former President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva on corruption grounds, said it confirmed his allegations of wrongdoing.

Brazil's prosecutor general will decide whether to charge Bolsonaro with obstruction of justice or abuse of power. If the Supreme Court and two-thirds of the lower house of Congress see merit to any charges, he would be suspended from office and would stand trial before the top court.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu; Editing by Paul Simao)
Sonora, CA  Governor Gavin Newsoms revised budget proposal reduces education spending by $9-billion compared to his preliminary budget in January.

By comparison, it is a $5-billion drop from the current fiscal year that ends on June 30. In January, the Governor was calling for K-12/community college education to receive $84-billion, and the revised proposal is $76-billion.

A week ago state leaders were bracing for an $18-billion cut based on projected incoming tax revenues. However, the governor is now calling for the use of some funding received in the federal stimulus package in March to help bridge that deficit gap.

Challenges are on the horizon for California educators who will be asked to implement new social distancing practices with less revenue.

Tuolumne County Superintendent of Schools Cathy Parker says local districts will still be required to submit their budgets by June 30, but she expects additional revisions to follow based upon income tax returns due in mid-July.

Parker has released a statement addressing the challenges, while also remaining upbeat. You can read it below:

We continue to prepare for the return to school in August with many unknowns, expected additional costs, and fewer resources. Tuolumne County Districts are working collaboratively to develop Return to School plans that place the health and safety of staff and students as the top priority while working within these constraints.

We have a strong educational community in Tuolumne County. The County School Board and the District School Boards are informed; our CBOs are well-versed in fiscal solutions; district leaders are focused on implementing innovative and creative solutions, and teachers and staff are committed to providing the best education in all circumstances. Families and students love their schools and that is what makes us great. These relationships will carry us through these tough times.

As a county, we have weathered difficult situations in the past and we will continue to do so in this circumstance. As we end the school year, lets celebrate the achievements of all our students, especially our seniors who are graduating, our 8th-grade students who are entering high school, and the teachers and staff who helped them get to this point.
Chasing a ball down the stairs

This is a time like never before, and previous approaches and methodologies dont really apply. As we have gone into the COVID-19 pandemic, the one clear learning has been that the journey so far is like chasing a ball down the stairs  every step you take the ball has already moved another step away. Whats also becoming very apparent is that coming out of this phase of the pandemic, the way we work, interact, and operate will fundamentally change. And digital transformation will need to step up and deal with some really unprecedented challenges and conquer some new and large opportunities. The collective intelligence of digital professionals across the globe will play a key role in the evolution to this new normal.

A framework for Digital in the COVID-19 age.

Its important to start the discussion by contextualizing the current in terms of the longer term, and an adaptive framework is helpful in this regard. As I speak with executives and work across digital teams across the world, I see three phases to this journey: (1) Responding and getting setup for change (2) Sustaining business continuity through the pandemic and (3) Growing in new areas in the post COVID-19 world.

1: Responding to it.

Its critical to note that as we start this journey, leadership is about building a solid foundation of employee and community safety, engaging a broader ecosystem of providers, partners and customers, and building a high-speed culture of proactive change management.

Addressing Employee Safety: The area that we have all moved the fastest in, as a digital community, is the safety of our colleagues and employees. Most of this phase is behind us now, as we have seen company-wide responses that have quickly moved from no international travel, to no travel, from social distancing and deep sanitization of offices, through work from home (WFH), and now to various shelter at home policies across our global communities. For those colleagues that werent WFH-enabled, its been a frantic journey getting there working across multiple time zones, political jurisdictions, public infrastructure and physical supply chains. And even for colleagues that were already WFH-enabled  and most digital and technology professionals around the globe that arent working with physical goods are  the gap between WFH-enablement and WFH-productivity is still being closed.

Driving Ecosystem Engagement: The other body of work that is critical to getting setup is proactively bringing the ecosystem along on the journey. With value chains that are as intricately linked as they have come to be, its necessary to approach this change not as an entity but as a collection of entities across the value chain  and take ownership for leading and driving the change across. Leading digital professionals are spending significant time communicating, explaining, and tuning a variety of plans that address significant bumps in that journey  from addressing WFH issues like accidental shoulder surfing in home environments, to prioritizing IT equipment on back orders to the most emergent needs, to working through various regulatory and risk requirements across industries. Its worth underscoring that in todays economy getting there by yourself is the same as not arriving at all.

Proactive Change Management: The speed at which pandemic has unfolded and the breadth its exhibiting across geographies has required scenario modeling and action orientation at a pace we havent had to deal with before. Across the spectrum  from health epidemiology to industrial automation, from cash management to supply chains, the need to go from reactive to proactive has been universal, and the need to drive change in the way works gets done has become critical. Some for the best digital work in this phase, from bluetooth-enabled contract tracing in Singapore, to chatbot-enabled remote health triaging in Seattle, have shown us that digital transformation has really pushed the boundaries of time to develop, social acceptance, and network adoption curves. Proactive change management has been key to this.

2: Sustaining through it:

Its probably unthinkable that we are likely to return to the era of large downtown brand named skyscrapers with entire management teams in one location  as we move increasingly to world of corporations with distributed teams working at safe social distances, many new and evolved ways of working will be here to stay.

Ways of working: The key here is a shift in the mindset away from a temporary short term fix that we might typically apply to an event like a hurricane or flooding which is more geo-fenced and time-bound. The reality is that our new ways of working will stay with us for the duration of the pandemic  which is not expected to be short. And once we come out of it, its unlikely that we will give the same proportion of our time we previously did to lower value tasks, as an example, traveling long distances to every meeting. We must fundamentally rearchitect our ways of working for the long run, and digital teams across the world are embracing and moving quickly, creatively and definitively to this new reality. Internet video conferencing is already seeing widespread adoption from schools to offices, and new capabilities like online brainstorming toolkits and collaboration portals are changing the way we now work. For the digitally-minded this is a journey set to only accelerate.

Employee engagement and contingency planning: One area easy to miss in the early days of this change is mental health and employee engagement. The novelty of working from home environments will soon run out. As children stay back from schools for some and elderly parents / relatives require increased care giving for others, and as the lines between work and family hours increasingly blur, stress levels are bound to build up. In addition, many will miss the social collaboration in the workplace and the sense of purpose in physically co-located and visible teams. We must plan for this by thinking through the full picture as we look at productivity and performance, and provide the toolkits and support for creativity and out of box thinking. Social collaboration online is becoming an important aspect of this  we have seen some great and creative examples from virtual grab-a-drink sessions to online yoga meets for teams that work together. The leaders in the space are also modeling for key employees potentially needing to be absent for periods of time, either individually, or by geographies that see larger spikes in public health issues, and thoughtfully designating stand-ins if needed, and purposefully distributing work across the globe.

Security: In an increasingly automated and data-driven world, information security has always been a concern, but now requires more thinking in the world of changes afoot. Virtualized teams, remote distributed access, increased dependence on public infrastructure, and higher data leverage, all increase the threat surface. Solutions and frameworks are available for each of these areas and careful thought and detailed planning is needed to pull it together. Its also worth highlighting that the frontier of information security management has always been user behavior, and so enhanced training in this era of WFH becomes a critical imperative for most businesses. As we move deeper into new distributed ways of working, key investments and dedicated leadership in the area of information security will become critical to success, and digital leaders worldwide need to attend to this.

3: Growing out of it:

Disruption creates new opportunities for growth and digital professionals across the world should to look to, and plan early for, that growth as we rebound out of this crisis. We are already seeing strong drivers for acceleration in digitization  bear in mind many companies struggled to launch WFH consistently and in many ways saw this as a honest test of internal digitization, so coming out of this crisis the recognition of the need for improvement will be high on the minds of corporate boards.

Move to the cloud: One of the key learning points through this crisis is that cloud-enabled services have responded, scaled and performed well. On the other hand, many corporations have gotten stuck with access and performance issues associated with on-premise applications sitting behind firewalls now being accessed by distributed teams virtually. This picture is compounded when you include the insatiable need for data and information not stored in scalable, and cloud-enabled lakes. Finally, as more and more executives across mainstream corporations necessarily experience the availability, resilience and performance of cloud-based capabilities like Microsoft Teams across board rooms and top-to-top meetings, traditional inhibitors are bound to diffuse away. Its safe, as a result, to expect a large scale movement to the cloud as we rebound back. And demand will converge around three areas  designing the new cloud infrastructure, migrating and re-platforming applications, and managing and maintaining the cloud stack  digital professionals will do well to start planning ahead.

Analytics & AI: Its already pretty clear that the role of Analytics and AI in the enterprise has changed forever  and as a result analytics professionals in corporations have never been in as much demand. Corporate executives working through fast-changing economic and business environments but sitting in distributed environments in virtual teams are in need of more information, insights and predictions than ever before. And from revenue optimization with commercial analytics modeling, through business continuity across changing and distributed supply chains, to enterprise performance risk across a fast evolving economic, credit and demand landscape, the need for analytics and AI has clearly peaked. As we plan for the rebound, this is a trend that I see only accelerating.

Digital customer experience: As corporations across the globe react to the changing market and social landscape, the way business gets done and delivered is fundamentally changing. We are already seeing new business models evolve, channels of distribution and delivery completely change, and entire value propositions rotate to the new needs of the market. And through much of that the physical handshake with a customer changes its unlikely for instance we will ever see the same footprint in retail branches of banks, or travel in the same numbers to large trade shows and industrial conferences, or interact with brands that way we used to at the neighborhood store. In that new world, digital customer experience will need to reinvent these old ways of engaging with customers and transacting business. And this redesign will require reimagining entire customer journeys, building new digital capability, intelligently automating much of lower value tasks, and improving the customer experience digitally. This will become an urgent call for action for digital transformation teams.

Staying a step ahead.

In summary, as with other professionals, Covid-19 has left digital teams in a challenging and difficult situation worldwide. Our structured response collectively must to be reframe our thinking across the three phases of our journey through this. Much of the work is now done in the first phase of responding and there are some great lessons we can cross-apply. As we collectively move into the second phase of sustaining we need to proactively work out new ways of collaborating, performing and delivering continuity. And finally even as we are firefighting through this day to day, its critical we see the trend lines that will no doubt accelerate as we rebound out of it. For digital professionals across the globe, it will be important, more now than ever, to stay one step ahead.

Authored by:- Mr. Sanjay Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer, Genpact

(The views expressed in this article are by Mr. Sanjay Srivastava, Chief Digital Officer, Genpact, Technuter.com doesnt own any responsibility for it.)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 14:48:06|Editor: huaxia

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CANBERRA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in Australia surpassed 7,000 on Friday.

As of Friday afternoon there had been 7,017 confirmed cases, up from 6,989 on Thursday afternoon.

It has taken about 37 days for the number of cases to grow from 6,000 to 7,000 (April 8 to May 15); an average daily increase of about 27 cases.

By comparison it took only about seven days for the figure to grow from 5,000 to 6000 (April 2 to April 8); an average daily increase of about 142.

Brendan Murphy, Australia's chief medical officer, told reporters in Canberra that as of Friday afternoon there were 50 COVID-related patients in Australian hospitals and 12 were on ventilators.

The National Cabinet, which is comprised of Prime Minister Scott Morrison and state and territory leaders, agreed to resume elective surgeries after they were suspended in March to ease pressure on the health system.

"Our hospital capacity is around 50-60 percent," Murphy said on Friday.

"Everybody is now heading towards full elective surgery, which is a really important thing."

"A really important thing is that Australians do not neglect their general health issues. If you need to go and see your specialist, you need to go and see your General Practitioner, please do so," he added.

Murphy also said Friday that it was still not clear what the link was between coronavirus and a rare inflammatory syndrome diagnosed in a small number of children overseas, after calling for urgent research into the illness earlier this week.

"I was able to brief National Cabinet on the fact that this is extremely rare and probably unlikely to be seen in Australia, given our very, very low number of infections in children," Murphy said.

"It's still not clear what the association with the virus is, for this condition, but it is extremely rare." Enditem
The City of Conroe took another step in the development of a new hotel and convention center at Grand Central Park, awarding the $86 million construction contract to California-based DPR Construction.

The Conroe Local Government Corporation, formed last June and made up of the same members of the Conroe City Council, awarded the design-build contract Thursday.

The action comes after the council awarded a $4.3 million professional services contract with Dallas-based Garfield Public/Private LLC for the development of the new facility.

This is going to be a tremendous asset for the city of Conroe, said Mayor Toby Powell.

In January 2019, officials with Garfield Public/Private LLC presented the information during a special joint meeting of the city and council and the Conroe Industrial Development Corp.

In July 2017, the CIDC entered into a pre-development agreement with Garfield Public/Private for the planning, design and construction of a hotel and convention center.

Johnson Development is developing the former Camp Strake property near Loop 336 and Interstate 45 into a 2,000-acre master planned community.

According to information from Garfield Public/Private LLC, the project is a full-service upscale hotel and convention center that would include 250 guestrooms and suites, 31,000 square feet of ballroom and meeting space and other traditional services like a restaurant, bar, lounge, club lounge, business center, fitness center and swimming pool.

Officials with Garfield and the city have not released the hotel brand but said the brand will manage the site and a third party wont be needed to operate the hotel.

Revenue bonds would fund about $56 million of the project with the city funding about $29 million of the entire project.

The project is expected to be complete by 2022.

cdominguez@hcnonline.com
A health worker from an aid organization walks wearing a hazmat suit at the Kutupalong Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (AP)

Dhaka: The novel coronavirus has been detected in one of the southern Bangladesh camps that are home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, officials said on Thursday, as humanitarian groups warned the infection could devastate the crowded settlement.

An ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person have tested positive for COVID-19, a senior Bangladeshi official and a U.N. spokeswoman said. It was the first confirmed case in camps more densely populated than most crowded cities on Earth.

Today they have been taken to an isolation centre after they tested positive, Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told Reuters by phone.

The other patient was from the host population, a term usually referring to local residents outside the camps, the U.N. spokeswoman said.

Coronavirus infections have been gathering pace in recent days in Bangladesh, which has reported 18,863 cases of COVID-19 and 283 deaths.

Aid workers have warned of a potential humanitarian disaster if there is a significant outbreak in the refugee camps outside Coxs Bazar.

Dr Shamim Jahan, Save the Childrens health director in Bangladesh, said in a statement the virus already had overwhelmed the country.

There are only an estimated 2,000 ventilators in all of Bangladesh, serving a population of 160 million people. In the Rohingya refugee camps  home to nearly a million people  there are no intensive care beds at this moment, he said.

Now that the virus has entered the worlds largest refugee settlement in Coxs Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19. This pandemic could set Bangladesh back by decades.

US ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, told Washington reporters by phone: Ive been to the refugee camp. It is (so) incredibly crowded that the COVID virus will spread through there very rapidly, unfortunately. They have to have access to adequate healthcare.

Health facilities lack staff and space, while people in the camps do not have enough soap and water or space to protect themselves, said Manish Agrawal, Bangladesh Country Director at the International Rescue Committee.

Here, people are living 40,000 to 70,000 people per square kilometer. Thats at least 1.6 times the population density on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the disease spread four times as fast than in Wuhan at the peak of the outbreak, he said.

Without efforts to increase healthcare access, improve sanitation, isolate suspected cases and decongest the camp the disease will devastate the refugee and local population here, where there is a much lower standard of living and a higher rate of existing illness that make refugees more susceptible to the virus, he said.

More than 730,000 Rohingya arrived from Myanmar in late 2017 after fleeing a military crackdown. Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the violence. The army denies genocide, saying it was fighting a legitimate battle against Rohingya militants who attacked first.
WASHINGTON - A burgeoning insider trading investigation scrutinizing members of the U.S. Senate led the chairman of its Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, to step down abruptly Thursday after FBI agents seized his cellphone seeking evidence related to stock sales he made before the coronavirus pandemic crashed global markets.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement that Burr, a North Carolina Republican, informed him Thursday morning of his decision to step aside as committee chairman "during the pendency of the investigation." The two agreed, McConnell added, "that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee" and was to take effect Friday.

Also Thursday, aides to Sens. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., and Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., acknowledged that the senators had been in contact with federal law enforcement. Feinstein had been questioned by FBI agents about stock sales, which she has said were done by her husband and without her knowledge, a spokesperson said. Loeffler's office acknowledged she had turned over documents related to stock sales she says she did not actively participate in.

FBI agents, acting with approval from the "highest levels" of the Justice Department, served a search warrant for Burr's cellphone to his lawyer, and then went to Burr's Washington-area home to take possession of the device, according to people familiar with the matter, who, like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Investigators also obtained a search warrant to examine data in the senator's cloud storage for his iPhone, people familiar with the case said. The Burr search warrants were first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

Burr's decision to surrender his role as chairman acknowledges the awkward, ethically fraught dynamic that would have existed if he had continued to lead a committee with oversight responsibilities for an agency conducting a criminal investigation of his conduct, and comes as he has fallen out of favor with President Donald Trump and his allies over his handling of the committee's sweeping, years-long investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Trump took aim at Burr a year ago, when the intelligence committee issued a subpoena to compel testimony from the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. The move proved deeply frustrating for the president's defenders as they sought to dismiss the bipartisan investigation as a politically motivated hit job. Burr also drew the disapproval of many Trump supporters over his cooperative, collegial relationship with Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat. Trump has retweeted others' criticism of Burr as recently as Monday.

Burr's departure as Intelligence Committee chairman also has implications for the delicate balance of power between the government's executive and legislative branches, suggesting that an investigation alone may be enough to remove a senior lawmaker from a key post. In the case of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., he did not step down from a ranking committee position until he after he was indicted on corruption charges in 2015 - a case that eventually fell apart.

A person familiar with the investigation of Burr and other senators said investigators are examining the timing of his trades and any communications concerning stock sales that he may have had with his brother and others. This person cautioned, however, that there are significant legal hurdles to bringing charges in such cases, particularly the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause which covers many of the activities of members of Congress.

"It's a very difficult case, that's going to have significant challenges," this person said, noting that the inquiries are complicated by the timing of certain trades, and who actually ordered them. "The most compelling case is against Burr, and the others appear to be very weak cases," the person said.

Melanie Sloan, senior adviser to American Oversight, a government watchdog group, said the known pieces of the case "suggest that Burr was involved in insider trading. That said, the speech or debate clause makes it extremely unlikely that the Department of Justice will ever be able to bring a case against the senator."

Sloan added that the debate surrounding Attorney General William Barr's handling of politically sensitive cases in recent months will only fuel doubts about the Justice Department's motives in Burr's case.

"The lack of public confidence in the Department of Justice leaves everybody wondering why they are doing what they are doing and if there is some other motive," she said.

Burr has denied wrongdoing and asked for the Senate Ethics Committee to review his financial dealings. Speaking briefly to reporters Thursday, he said he has been cooperating with federal investigators "from the beginning," and urged everyone "to let this investigation play out."

He said he stepped aside as chairman because the insider trading investigation "is a distraction to the hard work of the committee, and the members and I think that the security of the country is too important to have a distraction."

Tom Mentzer, a spokesman for Feinstein, said Thursday that she was "asked some basic questions by law enforcement about her husband's stock transactions." The spokesman said Feinstein "was happy to voluntarily answer those questions to set the record straight and provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband's transactions. There have been no follow up actions on this issue." She was questioned in April, aides said.

Disclosure records show Feinstein and her husband sold between $1.5 million to $6 million worth of stock between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18.

On Thursday, a spokeswoman for Loeffler said she has provided documents and information to the Justice Department, Securities and Exchange Commission, and Senate Ethics Committee "establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law. The documents and information demonstrated her and her husband's lack of involvement in their managed accounts, as well the details of those accounts."



Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., also has faced public scrutiny over his stock moves before the pandemic. His office did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The shake-up will force McConnell to reconfigure the Intelligence Committee's Republican side. Aides to the majority leader declined to comment Thursday afternoon when asked whom he might install as chairman. Burr is expected to remain on the committee even though he will not be chairman.

If McConnell chooses to go by seniority, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, would be next in line to chair the committee, but he already leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After Risch is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a national security hawk who had been widely expected to take over the committee once Burr retires. But Rubio currently leads the Senate Small Business Committee, a once-sleepy panel now suddenly relevant with a small-business lending program at the center of a $2 trillion coronavirus pandemic rescue package passed by Congress last month.

Both Risch and Rubio declined to comment at the Capitol, as did their offices.

Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., defended Burr and said he believed the lawmaker's explanation that his trades were based on media reports he saw at that time on the business news channel CNBC.

"I don't believe he did anything criminally wrong, maybe used poor judgment, I guess, but I know Richard and he's the one guy I can tell you who actually does watch CNBC Hong Kong," said Graham. "The bottom line is, let's just see how this turns out. I've got nothing but good things to say about Richard Burr."

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, "in keeping with our standard practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of our investigations."

The Justice Department has been investigating stock trades Burr made since March. The inquiry followed a review of public disclosures, first reported by the Center for Responsive Politics and ProPublica, that showed Burr and his wife sold 33 stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million - including many in sectors hard-hit by the pandemic, such as the hotel, restaurant and shipping industries. Burr reportedly received daily coronavirus briefings in the weeks leading up to the February sell-off. His brother-in-law also sold off significant shares in February, ProPublica reported last week.

In early February, Burr co-wrote a Fox News op-ed in which he reassured Americans "the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus." On Feb. 13, he sold his stocks.

From late February through mid-March, the stock market posted steep declines as the coronavirus reached the United States and states began implementing stay-at-home orders that hampered or shut down large segments of the American economy.

Members of Congress were barred in 2012 from using information not available to the wider public. Burr was one of just three senators who voted against the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act, which extended insider-trading regulations to U.S. senators and representatives. At the time, he called the legislation "ludicrous."

No one has been charged under the Stock Act, and legal experts say it would be difficult to do so given court rulings in a prior investigation involving health-care stocks.

- - -

The Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Senator Kelly Loeffler has turned over personal documents to federal law enforcement and financial authorities regarding the sales of millions of dollars of stock she and her husband off-loaded in the wake of a classified coronavirus briefing in January.

Loeffler and her husband, New York Stock Exchange CEO Jeff Sprecher, sold stocks valued up to $3.1 million in the weeks after the briefing, which had been invested in companies whose values later dipped significantly as markets plunged.

The couple also purchased between $450,000 and $1 million worth of shares in a popular teleconferencing company whose stock has soared since businesses have moved to working-from-home models nationwide amid lockdown orders.

Having long refuted any claims of foul play, a spokesperson for Loeffler said Thursday night the Republican has forwarded documents and information to the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission, and the Senate Ethics Committee establishing that she and her husband acted entirely appropriately and observed both the letter and the spirit of the law.

The documents and information demonstrated her and her husbands lack of involvement in their managed accounts, as well the details of those accounts, the spokesperson continued. Senator Loeffler has welcomed and responded to any questions from day one.

Senator Kelly Loeffler has turned over personal stock documents to federal law enforcement and financial authorities regarding the sales of millions of dollars of stock she and her husband off-loaded in the wake of a classified coronavirus briefing in January

Loefflers office failed to specify whether the Georgian Senator had corresponded directly with law enforcement officials.

No search warrant has been served on Sen. Loeffler. She has followed both the letter and spirit of the law and will continue to do so, the spokesperson added.

The development comes as part of the FBIs probe into insider trading allegations against a number of members of Congress who offloaded stocks in the weeks leading up to the coronavirus outbreak across the US, which saw markets plummet.

On Wednesday night, federal authorities raided Republican Senator Richard Burrs Washington residence and seized his cell phone, allegedly to examine communications he shared with his broker.

Across 33 different transactions on February 13, the Intelligence Committee chair sold off between $628,000 and $1.72 million of his holdings, according to ProPublica who first reported on the senators sell off in March.

Just 24 hours earlier, his committee had received a briefing on the virus. Much of the stock had been invested in businesses that were subsequently hit hard by the plunging market in the weeks that followed.

Before his sell-off, Burr had assured the public that the federal government was well-prepared to handle the virus.

Loefflers office failed to specify whether the Georgian Senator had corresponded directly with law enforcement officials. Pictured with her cellphone on Thursday, the Georgian Senator avoided the same fate as her colleague Bill Burr

On Wednesday night, federal authorities raided Republican Senator Richard Burrs Washington residence and seized his cell phone, allegedly to examine communications he shared with his broker

In a February 7 op-ed that he co-authored with another senator, he said 'the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus.'

That month however, according to a recording obtained by NPR, Burr had given a VIP group at an exclusive social club a much more dire preview of the economic impact of the the coronavirus, warning it could curtail business travel, cause schools to be closed and result in the military mobilizing to compensate for overwhelmed hospitals.

The Republican senator, who does not plan to run for reelection in 2022, has previously denied using any information he gained as a senator to benefit him financially in the stock market.

Burr resigned from his position atop the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday morning, just hours after the raid.

'This morning, I informed Majority Leader McConnell that I have made the decision to step aside as Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee until this investigation is resolved,' Burr said in a statement, indicating the move is not permanent.

'The work the Intelligence Committee and its members do is too important to risk hindering in any way,' he continued. 'I believe this step is necessary to allow the Committee to continue its essential work free of external distractions.'

Senator Richard Burr stepped aside as chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Thursday after the FBI raided him home and seized his cell phone in coordination with the DOJ investigation

McConnell also suggested that the move is 'temporary' but its speed underlines the scale of shock around a sitting senator being raided by the FBI.

'Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the investigation,' McConnell said Thursday afternoon.

'We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow,' the top Senate Republican continued.

Trump said before departing for a day-trip to Pennsylvania Thursday afternoon that he did not know about the raid ahead of time.

'No I never have. I didn't know,' he told reporters before boarding Marine One.

Burr chaired the committee that issued a report showing Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The North Carolina senator, who also is a member of the health committee, sold a large percentage of his stock portfolio in February shortly before the market slumped and just after he began receiving daily briefings on the coronavirus.

Questions emerged this week, however, over whether Republican Senator Kelly Loeffler will face the same fate for her investment actions at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.

On MSNBC, Trump enemy Joe Scarborough asked whether Loeffler had not been targeted by the Department of Justice because Trump likes her - while he sees Burr as an enemy for his committee concluding Russia interfered in the 2016 election, and refusing to pursue perceived enemies in Trump's alleged 'Obamagate' scandal.

And in a fresh development in the scandal, Democrat Dianne Feinstein revealed that she handed over financial documents to the FBI in April related to her husband's stock transactions.

Burr chaired the committee that issued a report showing Russian interference in the 2016 election, but Trump told reporters at the White House Thursday that he 'didn't know' about the raid on Burr's Washington residence ahead of it being carried out

Feinstein, a Democrat, asserted that she has 'no input' in her husband's finances and said after handing over documents and speaking with the FBI 'there have been no follow up actions on this issue'

Senator Dianne Feinstein (left) revealed Thursday that she spoke to the FBI and handed over documents regarding her husband Richard Blum's (center) stock transactions as it investigates potential insider trading in Congress

Feinstein, who is the ranking member of the Judiciary Committee and a member of the Intelligence committee, spoke to the FBI last month as her husband Richard Blum's transactions have come under fire, and one of her spokespeople claimed 'there have been no follow up actions on this issue.'

'Senator Feinstein was asked some basic questions by law enforcement about her husband's stock transactions,' a spokesperson for the California senator said in a statement Thursday.

'She was happy to voluntarily answer those questions to set the record straight and provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband's transactions,' the statement continued.

Feinstein has asserted in April that she has 'no input' in her husband's finances.

Senate records revealed that Blum sold shares of Allogene Therapeutics, a California biotechnology company, on Jan. 31 and at least $1 million in Allogene stock on Feb. 18.

Also ensnared in the scandal is Burr's brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth (above), who sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of stock on the same day Burr sold his

Also ensnared in the scandal is Burr's brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, who sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of stock on the same day Burr sold his.

Fauth avoided between $37,000 and $118,000 in losses by selling off when he did, considering how steeply the companies' shares fell in weeks after, according to an analysis by Luke Brindle-Khym, a partner and general counsel of Manhattan-based investigative firm QRI.

Brindle-Khym obtained Fauth's financial disclosure from the Office of Government Ethics and shared it with ProPublica. Government forms only require that the value of stock trades be disclosed in ranges. After the February sales, the total value of Fauth's individual stock holdings appears to be between $680,000 and $2 million.

A review of Fauth's financial disclosure forms since 2017 show that he is not a frequent stock trader, but that he also had a major day of sales in August 2019.

On Feb. 13, Fauth or his spouse sold between $15,001 and $50,000 of Altria, the tobacco company; between $50,001 and $100,000 of snack food maker Mondelez International; and between $1,001 and $15,000 of home furnishings retailer Williams-Sonoma.

He also sold stakes in several oil companies, which have been hit particularly hard, including between $15,001 and $50,000 of Chevron; between $1,001 and $15,000 of BP and between $15,001 and $50,000 of Royal Dutch Shell.

Burr has denied coordinating his stock market trading with his brother-in-law.

Congress prohibited lawmakers from acting on privileged intelligence they obtain in their public office positions, such as during briefings with high-level federal officials, in 2012.

Known as the STOCK act, lawmakers must disclose their stock market activity , but are however allowed to own stock, even in industries they may be responsible for overseeing.

The law passed the Senate in 2012 in a vote of 96-3. Among the three opposing senators was Richard Burr.
An Indianapolis police detective who was caught on video making a remark about a man fatally shot by another officer needing a "closed casket" has been suspended, authorities said.

The detective, whose name has not been released, was recorded saying: "I think it's going to be a closed casket, homie," referring to Dreasjon Reed, who was fatally shot following a high-speed chase in the city on May 6 in an encounter that Reed streamed on Facebook Live.

Image: Sean Reed (via Facebook)

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police chief Randal Taylor has described the comment as "unacceptable."

The detective received a suspension of numerous days and has been reassigned to another unit, Officer Genae Cook, a spokeswoman for the department told NBC News on Friday.

Cook said that the identities of the officer involved in the shooting and the detective who made the inappropriate comment would not be released due to safety concerns. Both officers are African American, as was Reed.

The officer's remark was recorded on a Facebook Live stream that Reed began during the police chase. The video has been removed from Facebook but was uploaded to other social media and online platforms.

A police spokesman previously told NBC News a weapon that does not belong to the officer was recovered at the scene of the shooting.

Detectives are investigating at least 26 threats made against officers following the fatal shootings of Reed and another man, McHale Rose, 19, who was killed by officers at an apartment complex hours later, Cook said. Police have said both Reed and Rose exchanged gunfire with officers.
25 W. 39th Street New York, NY A well-managed flexible workplace delivered by an expert provider is going to be a vital solution for a whole host of businesses moving forward. Were grateful for Thor Equities partnership and are excited to add this jewel of a space to our NYC portfolio, said Jamie Hodari, CEO of Industrious.

Thor Equities Group, a global leader in urban real estate development, leasing and management, today announced their partnership with Industrious, the largest premium workplace provider in the U.S., to operate three full floors of shared office space at the historic 25 W. 39th Street in Midtown Manhattan. Industrious will serve as the operating partner for Thors shared workspace platform, Congregate, and will manage over 36,000 square feet across three fully built out floors.

Industrious has built a remarkable business model and we are pleased to bring them on as an operating partner for our flexible workspace platform at 25 W. 39th Street, said Chairman of Thor Equities, Joe Sitt. Our range of amenities, beautiful spaces, and prime location provide the ideal setting for Industrious to expand their portfolio and we look forward to creating an inspiring workplace environment together.

Were thrilled to partner with Thor Equities to deliver our industry-leading workplaces at such an historic location right in the heart of midtown, said Jamie Hodari, Co-Founder and CEO of Industrious. A well-managed flexible workplace delivered by an expert provider is going to be a vital solution for a whole host of NY businesses moving forward. Were grateful for Thor Equities partnership and are excited to add this jewel of a space to our New York portfolio. And incidentally, the space is really beautiful. Thor did a wonderful job with the buildout.

Congregate currently features three bespoke concepts: HQ, Workplace, and Conferences and Events which Industrious will assume all operating responsibilities for beginning immediately. Equipped to accommodate teams of all sizes, Congregates stunning workspaces and elegant meeting rooms provide the perfect setting for Industrious to thrive in a vibrant location.

Originally the Engineering Societies Building, 25 West 39th Street was built in 1907 with a $1.5 million gift from Andrew Carnegie. The property featured a 1,000-seat auditorium and one of the largest engineering libraries in the world, with members including Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. The Engineering Societies relocated in 1961, and the building was converted to office space. Additional tenants at 25 West 39th Street include The Wing, The Squash Center, Converge Direct, Spark Labs, Movado, PVE, Delta Galil, and Thor Equities.

Industrious provides productive and engaging workplaces for companies of all sizes and stages. Around the country, past and present Industrious members include: Cisco, Lyft, Spotify, Heineken, Chipotle, Pinterest, and Salesforce.

About Thor Equities:

About Thor Equities Group: Thor Equities is a leader in the development, leasing and management of office, industrial, residential, hotel and mixed-use assets in premier urban locations worldwide. The company operates in major cities around the globe and has a property portfolio totaling $20 billion with a development pipeline in excess of 50 million square feet. Thor has a strong presence on three continents and in addition to its US holdings, the company has assets in European gateway cities including London, Paris, Madrid, and Milan, and is the largest developer in Mexico through its Latin American division with a development pipeline of over 18 million square feet. Thor maximizes returns for institutional investors by recognizing a propertys potential, reducing operating expenses, increasing tenant satisfaction, leveraging market trends to maintain a long-term competitive edge. For more information, visit http://www.thorequities.com.

About Industrious:

Industrious is the largest premium workplace provider in the U.S. with nearly 100 locations in more than 50 U.S. cities. Its Workplace Experience platform, which pairs thoughtfully-designed spaces with hospitality-driven services and amenities, has reshaped the concept of coworking into a scalable solution for companies of all sizes and stages. Since its founding in 2013, Industrious has helped thousands of companies scale their businesses while maintaining the highest NPS scores in the industry. For more information, visit http://www.industriousoffice.com, or follow @IndustriousHQ on Twitter.
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) listens to testimony before the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor and Pensions hearing, Tuesday in Washington. (Toni L. Sandys/Associated Press )

Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky, once a practicing ophthalmologist, is at it again.

In a Senate hearing Tuesday, he faced down Anthony Fauci, immunologist and leader in President Trumps coronavirus task force, on topics far from his specialty. In measured, professorial speech  a far cry from Trumps subliterate yawps  Paul, who has boasted that he likes spreading misinformation, was disseminating the kind of lies that get people killed.

He took on Fauci with bothsides-ism, pretending theres a world of public-health experts who disagree with Faucis warning against recklessly reopening the economy.

This just isnt true. No public-health conflict exists.

That hasnt, of course, stopped Trump from siding with Paul, or is it vice versa? On Wednesday evening, Trump condemned as not acceptable Faucis recommendation that schools pay attention to epidemiological data if theyre determined to open in the fall.

Not acceptable? Whats acceptable to a know-nothing like Trump is not generally considered a useful metric for evaluating scientific recommendations.

In 2014, Dr. Paul performed a similar stunt with Ebola. In those days, he cautioned against the government underestimating the dangers of an outbreak in the U.S.. Talking to far-right pundit Laura Ingraham, Paul intoned, "This could get beyond our control" and blamed the Obama administration for political correctness in showing concern for the people of West Africa.

To Paul, carefully monitoring people in the U.S. who'd been exposed while sending American health workers and military to help the afflicted in Africa meant that Obamas government was not making sound, rational, scientific decisions.

Fauci, then as now the countrys ranking infectious disease expert, studied the biology of Ebola. He and his White House bosses made the sound, rational, scientific decision that an emphatic effort to contain the virus where it originated would help make an outbreak in the U.S. extremely unlikely. Sure enough, there was no American outbreak  and now an Ebola vaccine exists.

Story continues

Fauci was right. Paul was wrong. If saving lives is the goal, baseline concern for the human species works better than partisanship and xenophobia.

On Tuesday, from his bookish home office, Fauci  self-isolating after being exposed to the virus at the White House  told Congress that imprudent reopening during the COVID-19 pandemic could cause needless suffering and death.

Paul, in the Senate chambers for the hearing, was ostentatiously unmasked. He tested positive for COVID-19 in March and now claims  absent conclusive evidence  that hes immune to it. (Flashback: While Paul was waiting for coronavirus test results, he not only didnt self-isolate, he persisted in going to the Senate gym, swimming in its pool and dining daily with colleagues.

As Fauci delivered his warning to the Senate, Paul grew tetchy. Republicans like Paul increasingly respond to public health concerns as nothing but partisan cruelties, devised to crush the economy and the chances of reelection for Trump and his crowd.

The fatality rate for coronavirus among people under 45 isn't that bad, Paul said. The pandemic, he claimed preposterously, had hardly touched regions of the U.S. outside New England.

He went on: As much as I respect you, Dr. Fauci, I dont think youre the end-all. I dont think youre the one person that gets to make a decision.

Like right-wing types around the world, Paul praised Swedens approach to the pandemic, which he misrepresented as both laissez-faire and entirely effective.

Sweden has, indeed, as Paul said, kept schools open for students under 16. But it has also implemented social-distancing measures and banned group gatherings larger than 50 people. As for how effective the countrys approach has been: The death rate per million citizens there is higher in Sweden than the rate in the U.S. Karin Ulrika Olofsdotter, Swedens ambassador to the U.S., further says the country has failed the elderly.)

There are people on the other side saying theres not going to be [a reopening] surge, Paul concluded in his reproof to Fauci. Of course, he didnt name anyone from that side. No doubt there are some "very fine people there.

Paul is one of those figures in public life who is wrong, wrong and wrong again  and somehow is never called to account. He does have a perennial cheerleader, though.

After Pauls put-down of Fauci on Tuesday, Ingraham, Pauls buddy from the Ebola-misinformation days, tweeted, Rand Paul saves the day! Calls out the experts and says you are not the end all to make all decisions. GAME, SET, MATCH.

It wasnt clear what match she thought Paul had won. But if Paul's track record is any guide, it isn't one for truth, or the American people.

@page88
Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, daughter of actor Rishi Kapoor, who died last month after a battle with cancer, has shared a new family picture on Instagram. Since her dads death, Riddhima has posted several pictures of her family on social media.

On Thursday, Riddhima shared a picture and captioned it, We are family. The picture shows Riddhima with her brother Ranbir Kapoor, daughter Samara, mother Neetu, and Rishi.

Previously, Riddhima had shared a childhood picture of herself in Rishis arms, and another from Neetus birthday party She had also shared a monochrome picture of Rishi with his mother, and one of herself with Ranbir and Neetu. Got your back ma. Your pillars, shed captioned the last one.

Also read: Rishi Kapoor prayer meet: Ranbir Kapoor and Riddhima Kapoor Sahni pay tribute, Alia Bhatt and Karisma Kapoor attend

Riddhima arrived in Mumbai from New Delhi on May 2 by road to be with her mother and Ranbir. She did not get permission to fly down due to the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown, and could not be in Mumbai on time to attend her fathers last rites. She later accompanied Neetu, Ranbir and his girlfriend Alia Bhatt for the immersion of Rishis ashes at Banganga. She was also present at his prayer meet, and posted a picture with the caption, Your legacy will live on forever ... We love you.

Riddhima had earlier shared a heartbreaking messages and pictures on Instagram while travelling from Mumbai to Delhi. She wrote with one of his pictures,  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.

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On Wednesday night in the heart of downtown Platteville, Wisconsin, just hours after the Wisconsin Supreme Court threw out the state's stay-at-home order, Nick's on 2nd was packed wall to wall, standing room only.

It was sometime after 10 p.m. when "Long Cool Woman in a Black Dress" by The Hollies came over the loud speaker and a bartender took out his camera. In a Twitter broadcast, he surveyed the room of maskless patrons crammed together, partying like it was 2019. A few were pounding on the bar to the beat. Some were clapping their hands in the air and some were fist-pumping, a scene so joyous they could have been celebrating the end of the worst pandemic in a century.

Instead, as Wisconsin Democratic Gov. Tony Evers knew, they were just celebrating the apparent end of his power over them - at least for now.

"We're the Wild West," Evers told MSNBC's Ali Velshi on Wednesday night, reacting to the state Supreme Court's ruling and the scenes of people partying in bars all across Wisconsin. "There are no restrictions at all across the state of Wisconsin. . . . So at this point in time . . . there is nothing compelling people to do anything other than having chaos here."

Chaos it was.

Right after the Supreme Court's conservative majority issued a 4-3 ruling, invalidating the extension of the stay-at-home order issued by Evers' appointed state health chief, the Tavern League of Wisconsin instructed its members to feel free to "OPEN IMMEDIATELY!"

With Evers' statewide orders kaput, local health authorities scrambled to issue city - or countywide - stay-at-home orders, creating a hodgepodge of rules and regulations all across the state that are bound to cause confusion, not to mention some traffic across county lines. It's a situation unlike any in the United States as the pandemic rages on. But most of all, Evers feared that the court's order would cause the one thing he was trying to prevent: more death.

Wisconsin has seen more than 10,900 covid-19 cases and 421 deaths.

"When you have no requirements anymore, that's a problem," he said. "We're just leaving it open. We're going to have more cases. We're going to have more deaths. And it's a sad occasion for the state. I can't tell you how disappointed I am."

The state's high court sided Wednesday with Republican legislators who sued the Evers administration in April, finding that the Democratic governor "cannot rely on emergency powers indefinitely" as the pandemic drags on for months. In a concurring opinion, Justice Rebecca Bradley cited Korematsu v. United States, in which the Supreme Court allowed the internment of Japanese Americans as a way to "remind the state that urging courts to approve the exercise of extraordinary power during times of emergency may lead to extraordinary abuses of its citizens."

One conservative justice joined the other two liberals in dissenting.

Republican lawmakers wanted the state legislature to have a say in the drastic public health measures that Evers' administration, as in other states, have demanded that residents follow. The Supreme Court agreed, believing an unelected state health chief shouldn't have such sweeping power over millions of people.

But in Wisconsin's hyperpartisan political environment, it's unclear how well the Democratic administration will work with the Republican-majority legislature to compromise on public health, a concern Evers shared on Wednesday night. He said as far as he could tell the Republicans didn't have a plan.

"We have no authority right now," he said on MSNBC. "It's been taken away."

In the hodgepodge of county and city orders, Racine and the state's largest city, Milwaukee, each issued their own stay-at-home orders that still prohibit bars and restaurants from reopening, save for takeout. Dane County, where Madison is located, and Brown County, home to Green Bay and several meatpacking plants, also issued their own stay-at-home orders.

"Different counties are saying, 'Bring it on.' Other counties are saying, 'No, we don't want this to happen,'" Evers said. "So suddenly it's a 72-county affair, which is going to be very confusing to people in the state.

The bar scene was crowded in counties without any health orders to replace Evers'.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

At the Iron Hog Saloon in the town of Port Washington, drinks flowed but masks and social distancing were lacking, WISN reported. The owner, Chad Arndt, said he had put more cleaning protocols in place and that if people felt uncomfortable, they didn't have to come and he would respect that. "I hope they respect my feelings [that] I would like to come out and I would like to start getting the economy going again," he said.

To one customer, Gary Bertram, it's a simple decision. "If people want to quarantine, quarantine. If you don't want to quarantine, don't quarantine. Go out and do what you normally do," he told WISN.

It isn't that simple of course. Public health authorities have repeatedly warned that those who choose to ignore social distancing and go about their lives may end up spreading the disease - to people who aren't drinking at bars but just visiting a grocery store.

Other bars that reopened tried to take more precautions. At Jake's Supper Club in Menomonie, Wisconsin, the high tables were spaced farther apart, staff was required to wear face masks and hand sanitizer stations were set up, owner Peter Gruetzmacher told WQOW.

The biggest challenge, he said, will be keeping the regulars at the required distance, two bar stools away, when "they all kind of consider themselves family."

The Tavern League of Wisconsin still encouraged bars to follow the Wisconsin Economic Development Council's reopening guidelines, which include making employees wear masks, strengthening sanitation policies and keeping groups of customers six feet away from each other. The organization's executive director, Peter Madland, told FOX 11 he welcomed the ruling because it helped struggling bars.

"They're seeing their livelihoods melt away . . . and they were helpless to do anything about it," Madland said.

Nick's on 2nd couldn't immediately be reached for comment early Thursday morning about its policies.
Partygoers have pelted bottles at police, forcing them to retreat on foot, before smashing up their abandoned patrol car with rocks.

Police were called to Murray Bridge, 75km southeast of Adelaide, just before 2am on Friday after reports of noisy music and a large gathering at a house on Myall Avenue.

Officers arrived to find about 20 seemingly intoxicated people at the property who soon became aggressive towards the patrol.

Police were called to an out-of-control party on Myall Avenue (pictured) in Murray Bridge early on Friday morning but were forced to retreat after revellers began pelting bottles at them

The out-of-control party soon escalated with police forced to call for backup before using capsicum spray to keep the group at bay.

The officers were then forced to retreat after the group started throwing numerous bottles at them.

They abandoned the patrol car in the street, which was then set upon by the group with bottles and rocks.

The police car was eventually retrieved, but it was extensively damaged with the front windscreen shattered by a large rock, a rear window smashed and side panels were damaged.

The officers were not injured and no arrests have yet been made.

Police have urged anyone with information about the incident to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Tehran, May 15 : Iran has reopened its trade borders with Afghanistan and Pakistan amid the COVID-19 pandemic, a top official said here.

"Iran's border crossings linking to Afghanistan, including Mahiroud and Dogharoun, have reopened for trade," under strict observance of health protocols, spokesman of the Islamic Republic of Iran Customs Administration said on Thursday.

Besides, considering the health protocols, Iran has maintained its exports to Afghanistan at Milak border post in the Sistan and Baluchestan province.

Mohammad Mehdi Javanmard-Qassab, head of Iran-Afghanistan Chamber of Commerce, said that the issuance of visa for Afghan traders and truck drivers to Iran, which had been suspended after the novel coronavirus outbreak, was now back to normal.

The spokesman said that Mirjaveh border crossing in Sistan and Baluchestan province located on Iran-Pakistan frontier has reopened after an over two-month hiatus.

Since May 11, the crossing has been open for trade on Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Vietnamese citizens repatriated from Russia to northern Vietnam, May 13, 2020. Photo courtesy of Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Vietnams Covid-19 tally jumped to 312 Friday morning after 24 citizens repatriated from Russia were confirmed positive.

Friday morning marked 29 days straight that Vietnam has gone without any cases caused by community transmission.

Russia is the third worst infected country, after the U.S. and Spain, with more than 252,000 Covid-19 cases and 2,305 deaths. But Vietnam health authorities have confirmed there is no likelihood of community transmission from the latest patients.

The 24, one woman and 23 men, aged between 24 and 47, had returned to Vietnam on Vietnam Airlines flight VN0062 from Russia to the northern province of Quang Ninh on Wednesday under a government program to repatriate Vietnamese residents living and working abroad.

They had been quarantined on arrival at centralized facilities in the provinces of Quang Ninh, Thai Binh and Hai Duong. Twenty-three of the latest patients are now treated at the Thai Binh General Hospital and the other at Hospital No.2 in Quang Ninh Province.

The latest update has brought the number of active patients in Vietnam to 52, while 260 other patients have recovered, including eight confirmed Thursday.

Vietnam now has more than 12,000 people placed in quarantine, 353 at hospitals, more than 8,000 in centralized facilities and the rest at home. These are people coming from abroad or those whove had close contact with Covid-19 patients.

With many special repatriation flights planned, the country will continue its focus on those arriving from abroad. Everyone entering the country will be placed in quarantine for a minimum of 14 days, the period said to be the incubation time for the Covid-19 virus.

As of Friday, no Covid-19 death has been reported in the country. The health sector is searching for a matching donor to provide a lung transplant for the most critical Covid-19 case in the country, a 43-year-old British man whose lungs are just 10 percent functional.

The pandemic has affected 213 countries and territories, killing more than 303,000 people.
Consumers will never overpay for an automobile warranty again.

The pre-owned market maintains its overall impact on the automotive industry. Edmunds reported 40.2 million used vehicles were purchased in 2019 versus 17 million new in the United States. The depreciation factor on a three year old car could be over 50%, making the used car market the strongest segment. At the three year/36,000 mile mark many manufacturer warranties end and many used car dealers do not provide warranties, which could be the most important consideration when buying a pre-owned vehicle. The typical example of an unexpected repair that could cost thousands of dollars is the transmission. The average transmission lasts about 7 years, so the warranty that could cost a little extra each month, pays for itself with claiming one major repair.

WarranTchimp.com invites consumers to get online and calculate their own extended coverage plan with its selected provider. The website features a chimp that helps the consumer log on, plug in their vehicles vin number and a couple of items of information and the recommended plan comes up for consideration. Consumers can choose what coverage they want, how long they want it for and what they want as a deductible. Then the consumer can make interest free payments over half the term of the warranty. The point of the program is to share the ease of getting a warranty with us and that the coverage is solid while the cost is far less, stated Fontana. We simply provide a portal site to what we believe to be the best the consumer can buy and make a much smaller fee than what is customary for that service. The consumer is buying directly from the provider. The WarranTchimp price guarantee promises consumers that if they can find the same coverage for the same model, mileage and options for less, the portal site will refund the difference plus a $100 bonus. Its easy because we only put on a reasonable fee as the portal to the provider. That will hopefully make the consumers spread the word that they can have some control on the preparedness and ability to keep their car in good working order for hundreds of thousands of miles. Consumers will never overpay for an automobile warranty again, said Bello. WarranTchimp has a plan for most cars with mileage as high as 175,000 getting approved for a program.

Bello, whose thirty five years in the industry was exclusively focused on the dealer and the individual sales representatives method of selling, recently started a consumer site called ShopSmartAutos.com, where over 6 million vehicles are pulled together into one site. Consumers spend 85% of their time during their purchasing journey online doing their research. Today, dealers are moving into selling online and finding finance solutions online. ShopSmartAutos.com will be able to assist the consumer from shopping, to financing and WarranT chimp will promote the warranty that the consumer can purchase directly. The used car warranty site promises that plugging in your own warranty plan is as simple as booking an airline or hotel and extremely cost effective, because the consumer is buying directly from the provider without the cost of middlemen. The group also has dealer programs that can be sold to consumers at far less than usual and customary while providing a solid fee for the dealer. The ease of the automated back-end of the programs will keep the process simple for consumers and dealers to offer their consumers a more customized and cost effective solution.
Had Rudy Fernandez lingered just five minutes longer at his Washington, D.C., residence on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he quite probably would have witnessed American Airlines flight 77 slam into the Pentagon as he drove along I-395 on his way to work as a staffer at the Republican National Committee headquarters.

Its peculiar how the timing of certain activities in your daily life can sometimes play out, Fernandez, now senior vice president for public affairs and communications at the University of Miami, recalled of that tragic day.

He would learn of the plane crash at the Pentagon only after arriving at work, huddling with his co-workers to talk about the catastrophe that had already occurred at the north tower of New Yorks World Trade Center.

But while Fernandez missed seeing, by only a matter of minutes, one of the most horrific acts of violence ever carried out on the nation, he would eventually become a witness and a key participant in the federal governments response, taking a position as special assistant to the president in the George W. Bush administration.

Now, as COVID-19 continues to challenge the U.S., Fernandez, who is also chief of staff to University of Miami President Julio Frenk, finds himself once again in the throes of a crisis, as he helps University leadership plan and carry out its response to the novel coronavirus.

Before the coronavirus, if you asked me what was the historically consequential moment of my lifetime, it certainly would have been the terror attacks and the events surrounding Sept. 11. It was a shocking day for everyone, said Fernandez, who sees similarities and differences between the two crises. Obviously, both have changed our world in the sense that travel will never be the same and that our economy took a devastating hit, he said. But a few days after the attacks, most Americans were back at work, he added.

This is different. The impact of this pandemic has been immeasurable, he continued. Weve lost more than 80,000 Americans to COVID-19. Thats 80,000 families directly impacted by the virus. As traumatic as Sept. 11 was, the human toll of this is much larger. And the negative effects on the economy, with most parts of the nation shut down, are substantial.

Fernandez weighs in on some of the other aspects of the ongoing pandemic and how it is affecting the University.

How has the experience you gained in Washington working in a presidential administration helped you in this crisis?

One of the things Ive learned is the importance of prioritizing. After the September 11 terrorist attacks, I saw President Bush and his team prioritize national security. President Bush was laser focused on protecting Americans from future terrorist attacks, and he reorganized the federal government to ensure that every available resource was effectively deployed to the mission. Tough decisions had to be made, and he made them. At the University during the past several months, as weve navigated through this pandemic, President Frenk has also faced tough decisions, and he has been cognizant of our missioneducating the next generation of leaders and professionals, treating patients on the clinical side, and conducting research to advance knowledge.

The founders of this University in the charter talked about an institution that would last in perpetuity. And in order for us to be around in perpetuity, we have to successfully navigate periods of crisis. It happened in the first few years of the Universitys existence, when a hurricane struck. It happened during Hurricane Andrew. Its happened during various financial crises. So, what I learned during my time in Washington was the importance of prioritizing resources to ensure the long-term viability of our mission. And President Frenk and the rest of the members of the leadership team are being mindful of doing just that.

President Frenk has sent out a series of video messages amid the pandemic, serving as a calming and reassuring voice. Why is it important that University leadership be the face of important messaging to its students, faculty, and staff at a time like this?

When the Board of Trustees recruited Dr. Frenk in 2015, no one envisioned that we would be facing a pandemic. But we are blessed to have him leading the University during this crisis. He is a very thoughtful leader, and in the leadership meetings weve had over the past couple of months, he is the calmest person in the room. And thats what you want from leadershipsomeone who understands the importance of temperament and sound decision-making during a crisis. His area of expertise is in global health. He understands the issues were facing better than anyone. But its not just his global health expertise that has been so helpful to the University. Its his leadership style. He bases all decisions on principles and principles drive decision-making.

Speaking from your role as senior vice president for public affairs and communications, why is effective communication critical at a time like this?

During times of crisis, people are hungry for information, and they want it to be factual and disseminated on a timely basis. There are really four principles that are guiding the work of our university communications strategy during this crisis. The first is that everything we do must protect our credibility, and we must maintain our credibility not only throughout this pandemic but also beyond. We must be seen as a source of truth, because in this day and age, in which facts are being challenged and people are questioning what they read in the news, communicating to our constituentsour students, our faculty, our staff, our donorsis more important than ever. So, the information we put out must be credible.

Secondly, the messaging has to be clear and consistent; we have to speak with one voice. Thirdly, we have to communicate often and through multiple channels. Decades ago, people used to sit by the radio and listen to FDRs famous fireside chats as he spoke on everything from the banking crisis and the recession to the New Deal and World War II. Today, people are refreshing their social media pages, reading newspapers online, and watching television to get the latest updates on this pandemic. So, we have to use multiple media platforms that are at our disposal to disseminate our message. And the fourth principle is two-way communication. While were putting out messages, were also receiving messages from our audience. And obviously, social media allows us to do that effectively.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act will send about $14 billion to colleges and universities. How is the University of Miami benefitting from this stimulus package?

The University of Miami Health System has received a couple rounds of funding from the CARES Act, and that has certainly been helpful. But it is well short of the losses were experiencing at the health system. So, were going to have to mitigate our expenses as best as we can. Now that elective surgeries have resumed, were ramping up as quickly as possible to provide the care our patients need and to make sure our health care system can survive from the financial impacts of this pandemic. In higher education, its the same. Weve received some funds from the CARES Act, but it is a small fraction of the potential revenue losses we face over the next several months. And thats why it is vitally important that we get through this crisis as quickly as possible so that the economy can begin to recover.

Colleges and universities were among the first institutions to be affected by COVID-19. They sent most students home and transitioned to remote learning platforms. How will the University of Miami emerge from this pandemic, and what will be different about the institution?

Im optimistic that we will get through this and that our students will get to experience on-campus learning in the near future. As we look to the fall semester, University leadership has thoroughly thought about and planned for social distancing that will be implemented in our classrooms, living spaces, and dining areas. Were wrestling with the same issues all universities and communities across the country are. Long-term, higher education in general will need to be more efficient in its utilization of resources to make sure we deliver a great product to our students in a way thats sensible and that understands the cost and the investment families and students are making.

Our recent graduates are entering a job market that is reeling. But are there certain industries that will thrive amid this crisis, creating opportunities for college graduates?

One of the reasons I love working on a university campus is seeing all the exuberance of young college studentstheir ingenuity and creativity and the tremendous hope and promise they bring to all of us. Yes, theyre entering a tough and challenging job market. But as we get through this pandemic and the economy recovers, new businesses will be created to serve people in the post-COVID world. Well see an even bigger dependence on digital platforms. Many people, Im sure, probably had not heard of Zoom before this crisis. But now were all meeting, brainstorming, and strategizing via Zoom. There are even virtual happy hours. Theres tremendous creativity coming out of this crisis. So, Im optimistic that the economy will recover, that there will be new industries created as a result of the challenges were facing today, and that, more importantly, our graduates will adjust and fill many of the leadership roles in those new industries. At 22, they have every reason to be optimistic.

How has the Universitys familiarity in preparing for hurricanes helped the institution in its response to COVID-19?

Its been a tremendous help because were used to dealing with emergencies. We are used to coming together quickly as a leadership team and making tough decisions in very precise and short windows of time. We do it every time a hurricane threatens South Florida. There is the pre-storm planning and preparation and then dealing with the post-storm effects and recovery. Its helpful to think of COVID-19 in those terms as well. We are in the middle of this crisis, but were thinking about what recovery will look likehow our campus will be when we reopen and kids are back, and how we will continue to deliver world-class education. All those lessons weve learned in successfully responding to storms apply here.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday filed a chargesheet against six people, including three slain terrorists of banned Hizbul Mujahideen, in connection with the killing of Jammu and Kashmir state BJP secretary Anil Parihar and his brother in 2018.

According to a spokesperson of the NIA, the chargesheet named Nisar Ahmed Sheikh, Nishad Ahmed Butt and Azad Hussain Bagwan, alleged to be over ground workers of the terror group, and charged them with various provisions of Indian Penal Code and Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act.

The chargesheet was filed in a special court here.

The NIA also named Osama-bin-Javid, Haroon Abbas Wani and Zahid Hussain in the chargesheet as accused who carried out the terror strike on November 1, 2018 in Kishtawar. However, all three were killed in encounters with security forces from September 2019 to January 2020.

Parihar and his brother were gunned down outside his house in 2018.

During investigation, the NIA alleged that Sheikh, Butt and Bagwan, all residents of Kishtwar and arrested in November last year, had helped the three terrorists in carrying out the attack on the brothers.

The NIA said that the probe unearthed a larger conspiracy of these terrorists and the OGWs of the terror outfit to revive terrorism in the region of Chenab valley -- Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban in Jammu region.

These terrorists not only carried out the murder of Parihar brothers but they carried out three other terrorist acts in Kishtwar in 2019.

The NIA said that Hizbul Mujahideen commander Jahangir Saroori had devised ways and means to raise funds to sustain the activities of banned terror group for which they looted weapons from police to enhance their armed strength.

The agency said further investigation continues against Saroori who is absconding.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
California Gov. Gavin Newsom discusses his revised 2020-2021 state budget during a news conference in Sacramento, Calif., Thursday, May 14, 2020. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom presented a revised $203 billion budget proposal to state lawmakers Thursday, reflecting an economy and tax revenues hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic. (AP Photo/Rich Pedroncelli, Pool) (ASSOCIATED PRESS)

Nearly a third of Californias 58 counties have certified to the state that they have contained the spread of COVID-19, which allows them to reopen restaurants to dine-in service, as well as shopping malls and other businesses, Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday.

The 19 counties that have attested to meeting state standards for containment are mostly in rural areas of Northern California with small populations. They represent about 4.5% of the states population and do not include urban centers such as Los Angeles and San Francisco that remain largely on lockdown.

As of today, the attestations are up and those counties -- 19 now -- are moving deeper into the second phase of reopening large sectors of their economy, Newsom said during a news conference where he announced a revised state budget in response to the pandemic.

The state is continuing talks with other counties that are trying to meet state standards for testing, hospital availability and numbers of cases.

We are doing what we can to move forward as we committed in that space, Newsom said.

The state is starting to cautiously lift restrictions put in place to stem the spread of the coronavirus .

The result has been a pandemic patchwork. Some businesses have been allowed to open while others remain shuttered. A few areas are requiring masks to be worn any time residents leave their homes. More than a dozen counties are moving toward something resembling normality, while others are firmly standing by stay-at-home orders and other coronavirus restrictions.

Before businesses can reopen, a county must complete a risk assessment and develop protection plans that include training employees in how to limit the spread of the virus, providing screenings of workers and establishing disinfection protocols and physical distancing guidelines.

Some urban counties harder hit by the coronavirus said reopenings will be slower than in rural counties.
The state's public schools boss says teachers will begin testing students to identify where they have fallen behind in their learning when they return full-time, and will cut parts of the kindy to year 10 syllabuses to ensure they can focus on literacy and numeracy.

The NSW government will announce details of the next phase of the return-to-school plan next week, and is hoping to have all students back full-time by the end of this month, Education Minister Sarah Mitchell said on Friday.

At that point, remote learning will stop and "students will be attending as per normal practice", Ms Mitchell told a parliamentary inquiry into the government's COVID-19 response. "Attendance will be marked."

Balloons greeted year 3 students who went back to school at Emu Plains Public school on Monday. Credit:Louise Kennerley

Amid concern some students might have gone backwards during their time doing lessons at home, NSW Education Department secretary Mark Scott said teachers would use different kinds of diagnosis and assessment tools available.
The latest:

CDC publishes 'decision trees' to aid pandemic reopening decisions

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published six "decision trees" Thursday aimed at helping businesses, communities, schools, camps, daycares and mass transit decide whether it's safe to reopen.

The one-page decision trees are shorter than a much-anticipated, lengthy and detailed document that has been delayed at least once.

The six documents posted on the CDC's website Thursday provide step-by-step guidance advising employers, for instance, to encourage social distancing, hand washing and intensified cleaning.

They do not provide any detailed advice on when it would be safe for schools or business to open -- only questions to ask before making any decisions.

"The purpose of this tool is to assist employers in making (re)opening decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, especially to protect vulnerable workers. It is important to check with state and local health officials and other partners to determine the most appropriate actions while adjusting to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the local community," the workplace decision tree reads.



CDC warns doctors about childhood illness linked to COVID-19

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a health advisory to thousands of doctors across the country Thursday, advising them to be on the lookout for a troubling new syndrome that may be associated with COVID-19 infection.

The syndrome, called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), has been seen in children across Europe and in at least 18 states, plus Washington, DC.

At first, the cases were believed to be Kawasaki disease, a rare, inflammatory condition that usually involves the major arteries and the heart. But there were too many cases for it to be Kawasaki, and the doctors agreed it was a different inflammatory syndrome. Many, but not all, of the children tested positive either for current COVID-19 infection, or a past infection.

Whistleblower tells lawmakers U.S. lacks vaccine plan

Whistleblower Rick Bright warned on Thursday that the U.S. lacks a plan to produce and fairly distribute a coronavirus vaccine when it becomes available. The nation could face the darkest winter in modern history unless leaders act decisively, he told a congressional panel.

Bright alleges he was ousted from a high-level scientific post after warning the Trump administration to prepare for the pandemic.

Bright said, We dont have (a vaccine plan) yet, and it is a significant concern. Asked if lawmakers should be worried, he responded, absolutely.

Bright, a vaccine expert who led a biodefense agency in the Department of Health and Human Services, said the country needs a plan to establish a supply chain for producing tens of millions of doses of a vaccine, and then allocating and distributing them fairly. He said experience so far with an antiviral drug that has been found to benefit COVID-19 patients has not given him much confidence about distribution. Hospital pharmacies have reported problems getting limited supplies.

The White House has begun what it calls Operation Warp Speed to quickly produce, distribute and administer a vaccine once it becomes available.

36 million have sought US unemployment aid since virus hit



Nearly 3 million laid-off workers applied for U.S. unemployment benefits last week as the viral outbreak led more companies to slash jobs even though most states have begun to let some businesses reopen under certain restrictions.

Roughly 36 million people have now filed for jobless aid in the two months since the coronavirus first forced millions of businesses to close their doors and shrink their workforces, the Labor Department said Thursday.

Still, the number of first-time applications has now declined for six straight weeks, suggesting that a dwindling number of companies are reducing their payrolls.

By historical standards, though, the latest tally shows that the number of weekly jobless claims remains enormous, reflecting an economy that is sinking into a severe downturn. Last weeks pace of new applications for aid is still four times the record high that prevailed before the coronavirus struck hard in March.





Wisconsin's highest court rules against the governor

In Wisconsin, the state Supreme Court overturned the stay-at-home order issued by the governor, ruling it "unlawful" and "unenforceable."

In a win for the state's Republican-led legislature, the court ruled that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' administration overstepped its authority when it extended the order to May 26. Lawmakers argued that the order would cost residents their jobs and hurt many companies.

The ruling leaves the state in chaos, the governor said. "Now we have no plan and no protections for the people of Wisconsin," he added.

Experts and lawmakers squabble over leadership

Months into the pandemic, testing remains a crucial point of contention between experts and officials

A panel of top health experts Wednesday sparred with lawmakers on the House Select Committee on the Coronavirus Crisis over testing, tracing and targeted containment of the virus.

"Testing was the fundamental failure that forced our country to shut down," testified Dr. Ashish Jha, the director of the Harvard Global Health Institute. "Testing tells us who has the disease and who doesn't. And testing is the cornerstone of controlling every single disease outbreak. It was inadequate testing that precipitated the national shutdown."

Jha slammed the government response, warning that the nation's testing capabilities are not there yet.

"I believe we need federal leadership," he said. "The institute that I run has calculated that the U.S. needs more than 900,000 tests every day to safely open up again. We're doing about a third of that."

Republican lawmakers pushed back.

"I'm sorry, but we shut the economy down to flatten the curve, to not max out our ICU bed capacity and our ventilator capacity, period. It wasn't an absence of testing that caused us to shut down the economy. We shut down the economy to save lives, American lives, because of the ICU and ventilator issue," said Rep. Mark Green, a Republican from Tennessee.

Other health experts on the panel, including former FDA commissioner Dr. Scott Gottlieb, agreed that testing is one of the keys to safely reopening society.

Cases of mysterious illness in kids extend to 17 states

As the death toll grows nationwide, officials are grappling with the effects of the virus on children. Hospitals and clinics in at least 17 states have reported cases of a mystifying condition that seems to be affecting children after coronavirus infections. Cases in at least 150 children are under investigation, most of them in New York.



The condition appears to be a post-viral syndrome in children, said Dr. Jeffrey Burns, a critical care specialist at Boston Children's Hospital. "This multisystem inflammatory syndrome is not directly caused by the virus," he added. "The leading hypothesis is that it is due to the immune response of the patient."

Symptoms include persistent fever, inflammation and poor function in organs such as the kidneys or heart. Children may also show evidence of blood vessel inflammation, such as red eyes, a bright red tongue and cracked lips, said Dr. Moshe Arditi, a pediatric infectious diseases expert at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles.

Not all of the affected children have tested positive for the coronavirus.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has provided new guidance for a mysterious syndrome being identified in connection to COVID-19.

The CDC is advising health care providers to report suspected cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome to "local, state, and territorial health departments to enhance knowledge of risk factors, pathogenesis, clinical course, and treatment of this syndrome."

Study provides new details on air droplets

Researchers are still learning new things about the coronavirus. A new study reveals regular talking releases small respiratory droplets that linger in the air for at least eight minutes, potentially explaining why coronavirus spreads faster in confined spaces.

The study published Wednesday used laser light to examine the small fluid droplets emitted through human speech.

"These observations confirm that there is a substantial probability that normal speaking causes airborne virus transmission in confined environments," the study says.

It's from researchers at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, along with the University of Pennsylvania. Large droplets shrank as they partially evaporated and hung in the air.

The researchers concluded that in real situations, such particles could be inhaled by others and cause new coronavirus infections.

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The Associated Press contributed to this report.
According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Aerospace Cold Forgings Market is accounted for $3.20 million in 2017 and is expected to reach $6.29 million by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 7.8% during the forecast period. Growing technological advancements in aerospace industry, Increasing aircraft production and stringent regulations associated with the aerospace industry are some of the factors driving the market growth. However, lack of skilled labor and availability of composite materials possessing no-corrosive properties are restraining the market growth.

Cold forging is a manufacturing process used to warp materials into high-strength parts. Aerospace parts require better manufacturing accuracy and this is precisely what cold forging process offers. These parts require minimal to no finishing and offer high dimensional accuracy.

Based on platform, Fixed Wing segment has witnessed the significant market growth due to the development of military and commercial aviation industry along with growing demand for cost efficient aircraft. By, geography, North America holds the largest market share during the forecast period due to ushering aerospace industry leading to a grow in the production of aircrafts. Moreover, increasing expenses on defense are driving the market growth in this region.

Request For Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/11299

Some of the key players profiled in the Aerospace Cold Forgings Market include Arconic, Eramet Group , Scot Forge, Bharat Forge, Precision Castparts Corp, Vsmpo-Avisma and Shaanxi Hongyuan Aviation Forging Co Ltd .

Platforms Covered:

 Rotary Wing

 Fixed Wing

Product Types Covered:

 Captive Forging

 Catalog Forging

 Custom Forging

Applications Covered:

 Nacelle

 Airframe

 Landing Gear

Request For Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/11299

Regions Covered:

 North America

o US

o Canada

o Mexico

 Europe

o Germany

o UK

o Italy

o France

o Spain

o Rest of Europe

 Asia Pacific

o Japan

o China

o India

o Australia

o New Zealand

o South Korea

o Rest of Asia Pacific

 South America

o Argentina

o Brazil

o Chile

o Rest of South America

 Middle East & Africa

o Saudi Arabia

o UAE

o Qatar

o South Africa

o Rest of Middle East & Africa

What our report offers:

 Market share assessments for the regional and country level segments

 Strategic recommendations for the new entrants

 Market forecasts for a minimum of 9 years of all the mentioned segments, sub segments and the regional markets

 Market Trends (Drivers, Constraints, Opportunities, Threats, Challenges, Investment Opportunities, and recommendations)

 Strategic analysis: Drivers and Constraints, Product/Technology Analysis, Porters five forces analysis, SWOT analysis etc.

 Strategic recommendations in key business segments based on the market estimations

 Competitive landscaping mapping the key common trends

 Company profiling with detailed strategies, financials, and recent developments

 Supply chain trends mapping the latest technological advancements

Free Customization Offerings:

All the customers of this report will be entitled to receive one of the following free customization options:

 Company Profiling

o Comprehensive profiling of additional market players (up to 3)

o SWOT Analysis of key players (up to 3)

 Regional Segmentation

o Market estimations, Forecasts and CAGR of any prominent country as per the clients interest (Note: Depends of feasibility check)

 Competitive Benchmarking

Benchmarking of key players based on product portfolio, geographical presence, and strategic alliances

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Having a female leader is one signal that people of diverse backgrounds  and thus, hopefully, diverse perspectives on how to combat crises  are able to win seats at that table. In Germany, for instance, Merkels government considered a variety of different information sources in developing its coronavirus policy, including epidemiological models; data from medical providers; and evidence from South Koreas successful program of testing and isolation. As a result, the country has achieved a coronavirus death rate that is dramatically lower than those of other Western European countries.
The coronavirus pandemic has changed the way many people around the world live, with social distancing becoming the new norm in many places. The death toll has surpassed 600,000 worldwide, and many are wondering how the world will ever get back to normal, with some experts saying that it will take the development of a vaccine to get us there.

As of July 21, two potential coronavirus vaccines had shown promising results in early trials  one developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca and the other by the Chinese company CanSino Biologics  though more research is needed before either vaccine is deemed safe to be widely administered, NBC News reported. At a House subcommittee meeting that same day, executives from AstraZeneca, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Moderna and Pfizer said that they believe a vaccine or vaccines may be available as early as the beginning of 2021, USA Today reported.

But once a vaccine is developed and approved for use, how much will it cost? Unfortunately, theres no simple answer, as a number of factors are at play, but the goal remains recovery from the coronavirus.

Last updated: July 22, 2020

The US Allows Drugmakers To Set Their Own Prices

Unlike many other developed countries, the United States allows pharmaceutical companies to set their own prices for prescription drugs, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The US Charges More for Certain Drugs Than Other Countries

Because pharmaceutical companies call the shots in terms of pricing in the U.S., it often has higher drug prices than other countries. A 2017 study that compared the cost of cancer drugs in Australia, China, India, Israel, South Africa, the United Kingdom and the United States found that the U.S. had the highest drug prices.

Many Other Countries Provide Vaccines for Free or Set Limits on Prices

Australia, Canada and the United Kingdom  which all have universal healthcare  provide routine vaccinations at no cost. In Germany, insurance companies cover the cost of vaccinations recommended by the Vaccination Commission, Business Insider reported. And Singapore strictly regulates vaccine prices.

Story continues

The Cost of a Coronavirus Vaccine Could Be High Because of Its Level of Benefit to Society

The pharmaceutical company Celgene defended its recent price hike of two of its key cancer drugs by stating that pricing decisions reflect the benefits that our innovative therapies provide to patients, the healthcare system and society, in a statement given to FiercePharma.

Los Angeles Times business columnist David Lazarus explains why this type of pricing model is so dangerous: When youre pricing a drug relative to its benefits rather than its actual production cost, you can charge as much as you like. This is why a vial of insulin that sold for $20 a quarter-century ago now sells for about $300.

Many at Risk: The 50 Most Dangerous Jobs for Contracting COVID-19

Many Factors Go Into Determining the Cost of a Drug

Its not just the relative benefit that determines how much a vaccine will cost. Other factors that are taken into consideration include the manufacturing process, the availability of ingredients, the number of doses needed and how it needs to be stored and transported, Business Insider reported.

Boosters Can Add To a Vaccine's Cost

If the coronavirus vaccine uses an adjuvant, or booster, that can make the initial price higher. An adjuvant enhances immune response, however, so it would lower the number of doses required.

Vaccines Cost More When They Are New

The vaccine will likely cost more right when it comes out than it will in a few years. For example, tetanus shots  which were developed in the 1920s  cost less than $35, while the newer HPV vaccine Gardasil costs around $230 per dose, Business Insider reported.

The Cost Will Also Depend On the Supply

When there is a limited supply or a limited number of suppliers, price gouging can occur. In 2004, 100 million doses of flu shots that were manufactured at a factory in England were deemed unsafe by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. This left only one supplier for the U.S.s flu shots for the year, which allowed the company to inflate prices. Some hospitals reported being charged $100 for a dose that would normally cost $12 to $20, Business Insider reported.

Big Changes: The 20 Industries That Will Never Be the Same After the Coronavirus

Congressional Democrats Have Asked President Trump To Step In To Prevent Price Gouging

In a February 2020 letter to President Donald Trump, 46 Congressional Democrats asked for the government to actively prevent potential price gouging for a coronavirus vaccine.

We write to ask you to ensure that any vaccine or treatment developed with U.S. taxpayer dollars be accessible, available and affordable, the letter stated. That goal cannot be met if pharmaceutical corporations are given authority to set prices and determine distribution, putting profit-making interests ahead of public health priorities.

And now its not only Democrats who are asking to ensure fair pricing for a vaccine. In June, two bipartisan bills aimed at preventing price gouging for taxpayer-funded treatments and vaccines for the coronavirus were introduced: the Make Medications Affordable by Preventing Pandemic Price Gouging Act of 2020, sponsored by Rep. Jan Schakowsky, and the Taxpayer Research and Coronavirus Knowledge Act, sponsored by Rep. Lloyd Doggett.

But This Assumes the Drug Will Be Developed With Public Funding

If a drug is developed entirely in the private sector, the government might not be able to have a say in its pricing, MarketWatch reported.

The Coronavirus Vaccine Could Cost Over $300 Million

One of the companies thats working on a vaccine, EpiVax, which makes vaccines for smallpox, tuberculosis and influenza, told Business Insider in early May that it is three months away from clinical trials of its coronavirus vaccine candidate, EPV-CoV19. EpiVax CEO Annie De Groot told that site that it could cost at least $300 million to get EPV-CoV19 to the finish line.

According to EpiVaxs website, EPV-CoV19 is ready for production and deployment, and Phase I trials for the vaccine are set to begin shortly.

Other Estimates Say the Total Cost of Development Could Be $1 Billion

EpiVax is just one of nearly 200 groups trying to develop a vaccine, however. And their price estimate for how much it will cost to develop a vaccine is actually on the lower end.

A 2018 study published in The Lancet found that it can cost $1 billion to fund the research and development of a new vaccine. Because of the high cost, many vaccine manufacturers accept funding from the government, which means the government could have a say in the pricing, MarketWatch reported.

The US Has Already Invested Billions in a Vaccine

The U.S. government has invested nearly $6 billion in companies pursuing a coronavirus vaccine, The New York Times reported. That includes a pledge of $1.6 billion to the vaccine maker Novavax to be used to produce 100 million doses of its new coronavirus vaccine by the beginning of 2021 if it is shown to be effective in clinical trials, and an additional $1.95 billion contract with Pfizer to obtain the first 100 million doses of their vaccine if it proves to be safe and effective in clinical trials. The government has also given $1.2 billion to the British drugmaker AstraZeneca for the development of its vaccine and more than $500 million to Moderna Therapeutics.

Under the Pfizer agreement, Americans would receive the vaccine for free.

Pharmaceutical Companies Have Said That They Are Not Looking To Make a Profit Off the Vaccine

Despite the high cost of developing a coronavirus vaccine, EpiVax and other pharmaceutical companies have said that they are not seeking profits.

We are not looking to make a profit on this pandemic, but to simply cover costs, De Groot told Business Insider.

Similarly, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson told the site that they would be offering fair pricing for a potential vaccine: Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel told Business Insider that there is no world, I think, where we would contemplate to price this higher than other respiratory-virus vaccines, and a representative for Johnson & Johnson stated, we are on the record as saying it will be on a not-for-profit basis  essentially at cost.

Struggles: 16 Real People Affected By the Coronavirus Give Their Best Financial Advice

Currently, Most Adult Vaccines Cost Less Than $200 per Dose

In general, vaccines are not exorbitantly expensive. According to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the private sector cost for common adult vaccines ranges from $26 per dose on the low end to $228 per dose on the high end, though most vaccines cost less than $200 per dose.

However, Respiratory-Virus Vaccines Can Cost Over $800 per Patient

The leading pneumonia vaccine, Prevnar 13, costs $202 per dose, and the typical pediatric patient gets four doses, bringing the cost per patient to $808. If the coronavirus vaccine is priced similarly to other respiratory-virus vaccines  as the Moderna CEO said it would be  and it requires the same number of doses, that could mean the coronavirus vaccine would cost around $800 per patient.

Medicare Recipients Will Be Able To Receive the Vaccine for Free

Although its unknown what the out-of-pocket costs will be for Americans who pay for the vaccine with no insurance or with a co-pay, Medicare recipients will be able to receive the vaccine at no cost. The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security act pledges to cover the full cost of the shot for these individuals.

Health Insurance Companies Will Likely Cover the Cost of the Coronavirus Vaccine for Americans

Healthcare industry attorney Maria D. Garcia told Business Insider that insurers will likely cover the costs of the coronavirus vaccine.

[U.S. health insurance providers] will feel the pressure from public opinion and the government to make the vaccine widely available and affordable, she told the site. It would be a PR nightmare to not cover the vaccine.

If It Is Covered By Insurance, Premiums Will Likely Go Up

Even if you dont have to pay anything out of pocket for a coronavirus vaccine, its likely youll pay for it in the end as premiums are likely to rise if the vaccine is fully covered by insurance, Business Insider reported.

More From GOBankingRates

This article originally appeared on GOBankingRates.com: Heres How Much Itll Cost To Get a Coronavirus Vaccine  Like the One Pfizer Is Producing for $1.95B
Kathryn Dennis has an unlikely defender in her corner: longtime rival Ashley Jacobs.

The nurse and former Southern Charm star  who famously dated Thomas Ravenel, Dennis' ex and the father of her two children  went after Cameran Eubanks, Naomie Olindo and Chelsea Meissner on social media Thursday, after the three reality stars slammed Dennis following their exits from the Bravo reality series.

Eubanks, Olindo and Meissner had all blamed Dennis for claims that Eubanks' husband, Jason Wimberly, had been having a two-year affair behind her back with a local makeup artist named Rebecca Wash.

The rumors about the alleged relationship, which Eubanks and Wash have both denied, were reported earlier this week on AllAboutTheTea.com. But a source told PEOPLE Dennis first brought the claims up months ago, while filming season 7 of Southern Charm (Reps for Bravo and Dennis did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment).

Bravo Ashley Jacobs and Kathryn Dennis

The three women have all said that being exposed to defamatory claims on camera is part of the reason why they are walking away from Southern Charm  though the way Jacobs sees it, the three long enabled that conduct, especially when Jacobs was on season 5 of the show.

Rodolfo Martinez/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images; Rodin Eckenroth/Getty Images; Rodolfo Martinez/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images Cameran Eubanks; Naomie Olindo; Chelsea Meissner

"The whole cast was aware of this behavior the WHOLE time," Jacobs wrote on her Instagram Stories, before noting how Eubanks, Olindo and Meissner never stood up for her when she was villainized for going after Dennis. "The only reason you defended her while cameras were filming (not off camera, keep in mind) was because you lacked the integrity to be honest and real in front of the cameras for fear of unpopular opinion."

"You created your 'Kween'  this reality TV fictional character by condoning that behavior," Jacobs added of Dennis. "And now you're all upset about it?"

Story continues

RELATED: Ashley Jacobs Apologizes to Kathryn Dennis in Public Letter: 'I Crossed a Line'

Jacobs, 35, had a tense relationship with Eubanks, Olindo and Meissner on the Bravo series  who all stood by Dennis' side when Jacobs attacked the mom of three by referring to her as an egg donor," adding that her kids werent planned on, insulting her parenting style and suggesting Dennis was on drugs.

And while Jacobs has since apologized for her remarks, she continued on in her message to say she's happy she remained authentic, unlike Eubanks, Olindo and Meissner.

"I undoubtedly was 100% wrong in my approach to calling her out the way that I did, but never once did I pretend to be something that I was not," Jacobs said. "You were ALL enablers. I wish I would have used he word COWARDS instead. Seems a bit more fitting."

She added: "The only reason Southern Charm season 5 was the highest rated season in the show's history is because it was the only time someone had the courage to speak the truth ."

Ashley Jacobs/Instagram

Ashley Jacobs/Instagram

RELATED: Naomie Olindo and Chelsea Meissner Leaving Southern Charm After Cameran Eubanks' Exit

Eubanks, 36, Olindo, 27, and Meissner, 34, did not immediately respond to PEOPLE's request for comment about Jacobs' claims.

The three were all vocal on social media on Thursday, sharing Wash's statement denying the alleged affair with Eubanks' husband.

"It is so sad that this kind, beautiful and innocent girl had to be drug into the mud," said Eubanks on Instagram Stories. "I signed up for this by being on TV. She didn't. Rebecca Wash is the victim here."

Wimberly did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment. He and Eubanks have been married since 2014 and share daughter 2-year-old daughter Palmer Corinne.

Regarding Eubanks' response, Meissner later shared a message Olindo first wrote on her Instagram Stories. "To all those asking why Cameran, Chelsea and I (and anyone with a life they want to protect) quit the show, it's s--- like this," Olindo said. "Shame on you Kathryn Dennis for this and MANY other things."

Olindo included a monkey emoji at the end of her message.

RELATED: Southern Charm's Landon Clements Says '1 Bad Apple Can Ruin the Whole Bunch' After 3 Stars Exit

Naomie Olindo/Instagram

RELATED: Kathryn Dennis Apologizes for Using Racially Insensitive Emoji: 'I Know and Will Do Better'

The emoji was likely a nod to the headlines Dennis made earlier this week when she sent the animal animation during a heated debate with black radio show host Tamika Gadsden.

Dennis, 28, apologized for using the racially insensitive emoji after Gadsden posted screengrabs of their back and forth on social media. Dennis has since been let go from her job as brand ambassador for Gwynn's of Mount Pleasant, a luxury lifestyle store in South Carolina.

"I want to acknowledge that using a monkey emoji in my text was offensive, and from the bottom of my heart I sincerely apologize to anyone and everyone I hurt. Although the context was not my intention, there are no 'ifs ands or buts' that excuse me," Dennis tweeted.

"I did not give it thought, and it was and is wrong. I know I am not that person. I know and will do better," she added.
The title: Regular Heroes. The pitch: showcase people doing essential jobs in the coronavirus pandemic.

Charlotte Trapman-OBrien was in. A zookeeper at the Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, she jumped at the opportunity to shine a light on zoos during the health crisis in the new Amazon series. Without visitors, such facilities, closed to the public for the duration of lockdown, are struggling to stay afloat and take care of their animals.

But when the cameras showed up, Trapman-OBrien got more than she expected. Actor and comedian Kevin Hart appeared via video chat to present her with a truck of meat, toys and supplies for the animals at the zoo. He also informed her that the show would be covering the expense of her long commute and car insurance and would even provide funds to help her parents.

Regular Heroes," which premiered May 8, showcases essential workers but also comes to their aid. Trapman-OBrien and the Turtle Back Zoo are featured alongside two other regular heroes in the second episode, which will be released Friday, May 15 on Amazon Prime Video.

In the episode, the zookeeper can be seen caring for a cheetah named Alvin and Acuri, a hyacinth macaw.

I had no idea I was going to be on the phone with Kevin Hart, Trapman-OBrien, 29, tells NJ Advance Media. It was a huge surprise.

It was also a huge relief, she says. The part-time zookeeper (her first name is pronounced the French way, Char-lot) regularly makes the trek to West Orange from her home in Howell, which can take up to two hours out of her day, depending on how clogged the roads are.

Since the pandemic, traffic has evaporated. But so have her other part-time jobs, like catering and pet-sitting. Trapman-OBrien makes about $280 per week at the zoo after taxes. Half of that pays for tolls, gas and car insurance. To support her passion for zookeeping, she also works part-time in the costuming department at Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, where she used to work with animals. While she feels fortunate not to have been laid off or furloughed from the zoo during the pandemic, she had to start burning up some of her savings just to keep going.

A lot of zookeepers make sacrifices for the field," she says.

Trapman-OBrien, who started working at Turtle Back in September, is aware that zookeepers are not exactly what most picture when they think of essential workers.

Trapman-O'Brien, a zookeeper at Turtle Back Zoo in West Orange, in the Amazon series "Regular Heroes," which showcases essential workers in the pandemic.Amazon Studios

Its not the first thing on most peoples minds, she says, even though the Netflix series Tiger King became inextricably linked with people binge-watching at home during the early days of coronavirus lockdown.

The lack of paying visitors during the pandemic doesnt mean the zoo can stop caring for animals that live there.

We are lucky to be a county-run zoo so we are probably a little bit better off than some of your smaller, nonprofit zoos," interim zoo director Erin Mowatt tells NJ Advance Media.

Zookeepers like Trapman-OBrien not only feed animals but also clean them and give them medicine while wearing masks and gloves and practicing social distancing.

Last month, a tiger at the Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID-19 after exposure to an asymptomatic staffer. At Turtle Back, staff often use tongs for feedings and have been conducting shorter training sessions with animals. But not having to cater to human visitors has allowed more time for animal enrichment, Mowatt says.

The zoos appearance on the show turned out to be something way bigger than we thought it was, she says. We were super shocked and very appreciative of it.

Charlotte Trapman-O'Brien with Acuri, a hyacinth macaw.Amazon Studios

Still, just feeding the carnivores at Turtle Back costs more than $2,000 per week. Normally, seasonal staff would assume duties this time of year, but because of the current situation, the Essex County zoo is furloughing those employees and sticking with its core staff, who are working more hours for the same pay.

On the show, Trapman-OBrien says the zoo is her reason for getting up in the morning.

The animals have really been whats been carrying me through all the stressful times and all the uncertainty," she says. I really depend on them more than I would depend on an unemployment check.

Trapman-OBrien grew up in Topanga, California and attended Moorpark College in Moorpark, California, where she studied exotic animal training and management. Before coming to Six Flags and Turtle Back, she worked at The Lion Habitat Ranch in Henderson, Nevada.

The cheetahs are definitely the biggest thing for me," she says of her job at the Essex County zoo.

Trapman-OBrien lives with her boyfriend, T.J., an essential worker at the U.S. Postal Service in Englishtown. Shes part of the zoos Animal Ambassador program, through which staff bring animals to the public through presentations at places like schools.

Essential in the time of Corona: Feeling very grateful to still be going to work. Things have changed all over and the... Posted by Charlotte Trapman-O'Brien on Sunday, April 19, 2020

I love animals, but the part that really makes me feel more fulfilled is sharing that love and getting to teach people about animals," she says.

In the series, Hart delivers the welcome news that the show wanted to help Trapman-OBriens parents, who are both cancer survivors, cover their own expenses. Living in Philadelphia, they are not working during the pandemic. Her father, a cinematographer, had been waiting on an unemployment check.

The zookeeper shares the episode of Regular Heroes with a high school chemistry teacher in Washington, D.C. who turned his kitchen into a lab and classroom for remote learning and a New York deli owner making food for first responders and children in need.

Alicia Keys appeared in the first episode of the eight-part series. Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers, who grew up in Wyckoff, is slated to surprise a reverend, EMT and truck driver in the third episode, set to be released May 22.

People can submit essential workers for possible inclusion in Regular Heroes by going to regular-heroes.com.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Tell us your coronavirus story. Amy Kuperinsky may be reached at akuperinsky@njadvancemedia.com or send a tip here.
BASEL, Switzerland, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- BaseLaunch, the Basel Area-based incubator and accelerator that helps scientists and entrepreneurs launch exceptional biotech companies, today announces that Roche has become a founding partner in the next phase of its company building activities. With this commitment, Roche renews its partnership with BaseLaunch. In addition, BaseLaunch announces it has increased the funding available per venture to USD 0.5 million to support early stage innovation.

During 2018 and 2019, BaseLaunch supported nine early therapeutic ventures which have raised a total of more than USD 100 million in equity capital from US and European venture funds, thereby contributing to the life sciences ecosystem of the Basel Area. Recently, BaseLaunch has added another four ventures to its portfolio, and has been instrumental in contributing to the development of six more ventures in the Basel Area.

BaseLaunch is operated by Basel Area Business & Innovation, the investment and innovation promotion agency of the Basel Area. During its first phase (2017-2019), BaseLaunch was supported by Roche, Novartis Venture Fund, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer and Roivant Sciences. Now the second phase is gearing up with new commitments. Roche (SWX: RO) is the first partner to be announced; additional partners will be made public over the coming months.

Building on the success of the first phase, BaseLaunch's second phase, whilst similar to the first in many respects, will:

Increase the funding per venture to a maximum of USD 0.5 million (versus USD 0.25 million previously)

(versus million previously) Have a new, and increased pool of partners

Establish BaseLaunch as an "evergreen" permanent initiative

Accept applications year-round, rather than once per year

Neil Goldsmith, Director of Strategy at BaseLaunch, commented: "We are delighted by Roche's continued commitment to BaseLaunch and to the wider early stage life sciences ecosystem in the Basel Area. The support of our highly experienced partners will allow BaseLaunch to build on the success of recent years as we look to a sustainable future supporting the development of cutting-edge therapeutic ventures."

James Sabry, Global Head of Roche Pharma Partnering, added: "We are very pleased to continue our commitment to BaseLaunch. Basel has always been home to great ideas and innovation and today it is a leading life sciences hub within Switzerland and globally. This investment builds on our commitment to driving scientific advances that will help patients live better lives."

In addition to financing support, BaseLaunch helps build out companies and teams from inception to a point where they can raise financing and enter strategic collaborations. Harnessing the Basel Area's unique position as a global life sciences hub, as well as its rising popularity among investors, BaseLaunch is looking to attract the next generation of breakthrough companies and is now open for applications (first application deadline 22nd June). Interested groups can find information at www.BaseLaunch.ch/apply/.

Dr. Christof Klopper, CEO of Basel Area Business & Innovation, added: "The expertise of Basel Area Business & Innovation in supporting entrepreneurs, connecting innovators and help building companies enables BaseLaunch to be extremely focused on the unmet needs of life sciences startups while at the same time contributing to the excellent Swiss innovation landscape."

About BaseLaunch

BaseLaunch is the Basel Area-based incubator and accelerator that helps scientists and entrepreneurs launch exceptional biotech companies. BaseLaunch serves as a growth platform for early stage ventures developing cutting-edge therapeutics. BaseLaunch helps build companies from inception through to Series A funding, providing financing and supporting all aspects of business development. Operationally run and financed by Basel Area Business & Innovation, the investment and innovation promotion agency of the Basel Area, BaseLaunch partners with leading global pharma companies and venture funds, which also aliment the pool out of which BaseLaunch funds ventures. Regional and domain partners include the cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt and Jura as well as KPMG, Vossius & Partner and Infors HT. Since 2018, BaseLaunch supported ventures have raised in total over USD 100 million. Harnessing Basel Area's unique position as a global life sciences hub, as well as its rising popularity among investors, BaseLaunch is looking to attract the next generation of breakthrough companies. Interested groups can find more information at www.BaseLaunch.ch

About Basel Area Business & Innovation

Basel Area Business & Innovation is the investment and innovation promotion agency dedicated to helping companies, institutions and startups find business success in the Basel Area. The organization targets and attracts companies to settle, supports founders of innovative ventures, and drives high growth initiatives in order to establish the region as the Swiss business and innovation hub of the future. The non-profit agency focuses on growing the area's cutting-edge industries life sciences, healthcare and production technologies and manages the Switzerland Innovation Park Basel Area which houses the organization's accelerator programs. The agency serves the cantons of Basel-Landschaft, Basel-Stadt and Jura. www.baselarea.swiss

For further information please contact:



BaseLaunch



Martin Jordan

Phone. +41-61-295-50-25, +41-76-345-66-08

Email: [email protected]



Optimum Strategic Communications



Supriya Mathur, Charlotte Hepburne-Scott

Phone: +44-203-922-0891

[email protected]

SOURCE BaseLaunch
Campus News

UBs front line physicians face challenging work conditions posed by COVID-19

Karin Provost, associate professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine in the Department of Medicine, wears her PPE  personal protective equipment.

By BARBARA BRANNING

The attitude was, this is what I do.  David Janicke, clinical associate professor of emergency medicine Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences

Brian Monaco recalls vividly the day he saw his first known COVID-19 patient. It was March 15, he says. Im sure because that was the last time I came in contact with my parents. When the patients test came back positive, Monaco, assistant professor of emergency medicine in the Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences at UB who works in the emergency departments at Buffalo General Medical Center, Gates Vascular Institute and Erie County Medical Center, knew that his life was going to be vastly different for the foreseeable future. The novel coronavirus has caused massive upheaval in everyones lives. Aside from patients and their families, those whose lives have been most altered are those on the front lines  the health care workers whose jobs require them to face the virus head on.

The value of a medical school

More than 500 faculty physicians and more than 700 medical residents from the Jacobs School provide care to patients in UBs affiliated teaching hospitals throughout Western New York, according to Michael E. Cain, vice president for health sciences and dean of the Jacobs School. Many of these doctors and residents, particularly those in the emergency departments and intensive care units, are treating COVID-19 patients. They work anywhere from 20 to 80 hours a week, enduring working conditions none have ever before experienced. Most UB faculty physicians are also balancing the role of professor, providing instruction and oversight to medical students and residents. Their expertise and around-the-clock patient care, in such large numbers, is one of the benefits of having a medical school in a community, Cain says. I know I speak for our entire community in expressing deep gratitude to our dedicated health care workers, and our UB faculty physicians and medical residents who are providing care to our communitys most vulnerable members during this pandemic, he says. The global pandemic has posed a wide variety of challenges  both expected and unexpected  for health care workers on the front lines. Following the experiences of colleagues downstate and in Europe via social media prepared the doctors for some, but not all, eventualities. To begin with, there was a concern that we were not going to have enough personal protective equipment, says David Janicke, clinical associate professor of emergency medicine in the Jacobs School and medical director of the Emergency Department at Buffalo General/Gates Vascular Institute. But the hospital had really geared up, so we didnt experience that. We knew that workers were going to get ill and wouldnt be able to work, so we were worried about losing staff who would have to be quarantined and therefore not being able to optimally take care of our patients, adds Janicke, who is affiliated with UBMD Emergency Medicine.

This is what I do

Brian Monaco (blue cap), assistant professor of emergency medicine, remembers that he saw his first COVID-19 patient on March 15 because that was the last time I came in contact with my parents.

But UBs faculty physicians and medical residents have pressed on. The attitude was, this is what I do. Our chairman, Dr. Robert McCormack, really had our backs, too, both at the site and at the seven other UBMD Emergency Medicine emergency departments in Western New York, Janicke says. McCormack is a clinical professor at the Jacobs School and chief of service of emergency medicine for the Kaleida Health system. Some doctors were concerned about what an outbreak here would mean for family and friends. This virus is hurting people in ways I had never seen before, and it is hurting people I did not expect to see it in, Monaco says, noting he has sent patients from their 20s to their 90s to the ICU. Several doctors point out that triage has changed drastically due to COVID-19, and the guidelines are continually changing. There is so much that we do not know about the SARS-CoV-2 virus  which makes caring for these patients very challenging, says Karin Provost, associate professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Department of Medicine, at the Jacobs School. She is also co-director of the Intensive Care Unit at the VA Western New York Healthcare System and a physician with UBMD Internal Medicine. This has been a time of rapid, daily growth in our knowledge, as our colleagues who have had earlier contact continue to report their experiences, she says. There is a firehose of information that is coming forward. One example of the rapidity of change involved dealing with severely low oxygen levels in COVID-19 patients, Provost says. When the pandemic first hit in Italy and the United States, doctors quickly intubated many patients at the first sign of worsening blood oxygen levels. But within weeks, it became clear that intubating so rapidly was not having the same positive impact in patients with COVID-19 as it did in more traditional presentations of respiratory failures. Therefore, doctors are now using other methods to maintain a patients oxygen levels before resorting to intubation, she says. This is in response to information coming out of both New York City and Italy in real time.

Karin Provost (right) takes a selfie with colleagues.

Conditions change quickly

Patients conditions also change quickly. With this disease, you see someone come in and theyre sick, but not that sick, says Janicke. And then suddenly they were dying. It was really surprising. These were not just people who were in their 90s or who had comorbidities. Some were patients with few health issues; otherwise healthy people in their 40s and 50s. Provost says she initially was apprehensive about being able to anticipate a patients sudden decline in a way that would allow her and her staff to safely put on all the needed PPE and intervene in time. Every patient has their own clinical trajectory, she says. They still rapidly and abruptly decompensate after variable periods of stability, and it remains an every- patient, everyday fear that one inadvertent movement will lead to accidental contamination that results in potential infection of myself, my staff or my family. Another Jacobs School professor who has been on the front lines is David Holmes, clinical associate professor of family medicine and director of global health education, and a physician with UBMD Family Medicine. Holmes normally spends spring break on mission trips. This year, he volunteered to care for COVID-19 patients at Woodhull Hospital in downtown Brooklyn, the epicenter of the crisis. At the peak of the crisis in New York City, the number of deaths at the hospital jumped from 15 patients each month to 40 patients each day. The doctors say that one of the hardest parts about treating COVID-19 is the no-visitor policy. Patients are so isolated not having visitors. It is hard to know they were dying without family. We dont feel good about that, Janicke says. The stress caused by the coronavirus has been unlike anything doctors have seen before. In the ER we are used to that sort of dramatic up and down, he says. This was different. The staff knew that any one of the patients coming through the door could have the virus. Maintaining the morale and health of the staff is a considerable challenge, adds Manoj J. Mammen, associate professor in the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine and a physician with UBMD Internal Medicine. Understanding what the best way to treat a patient with COVID-19 is another significant challenge, given the rapidly changing evidence.

Unprecedented stress levels
ATLANTA and BEIJING, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Georgia Representative Colton Moore released this statement to President Xi and Minister Zhong Shan of the Peoples Republic of China seeking an additional $20 billion in Georgia exports by 2022. You can read Rep. Moore's full public statement at: https://ColtonMoore.com/china

Governor Brian P. Kemp, who has worked closely with Rep. Colton Moore throughout Northwest Georgia, has pushed Georgia to be the first state in the Union to open for business.

In the wake of Coronavirus and cranking the Georgia economy, Rep. Moore looks to balance the trade budget between Georgia and China to help stimulate more local business. In 2019, Georgia exported $2.3 billion of goods and services to China while importing more than $19.8 billion during the same period.

As a result, Georgias trade deficit totals more than $16 billion in Chinas favor.

Every closed day of business in Georgia, due to Coronavirus, an estimated $500 million was done in damage to Georgias $560 billion economy. This letter moves Georgia forward on the path to recovery with their largest trading partner.

According to the American Conservative Union, Rep. Colton Moore is among Georgias top economically conservative legislators and released this letter at a time when Georgia is a top state in the country to do business in.

Moore qualified to be Georgias next State Senator of District 53 and will face 18-year incumbent Jeff Mullis of Chickamauga on June 9, 2020.

A copy of Rep. Colton Moores full letter is below.





May 15, 2020

Minister Zhong Shan

The Ministry of Commerce, People's Republic of China

No.2 Dong Chang'an Avenue

Beijing, China 100731

Governor Brian P. Kemp

The Office of the Governor State of Georgia

203 State Capitol

Atlanta, Georgia, United States 30334

Dear Minister Shan,

I hope this letter finds you well during these complex times. I know we both seek recovery and progress for our people, especially as Georgia is one of the largest U.S. trading partners with China.

As Georgia moves forward as the first state in the United States to reopen for business, I would like to address ways we can expand our trade relationship with The People's Republic of China.

In 2019, Georgia exported $2.3 billion of goods and services to China and imported $19.8 billion during the same period. We are a trusted partner of China and hope to build on this $22 billion relationship.

In this letter, I am requesting that your Ministry expand Georgia exports to China to $7 billion by 2022. While this is not a balance of our trade partnership, this would further strengthen our trade commitments.

Georgia is home to world leaders of industry including UPS, Coca-Cola, Delta Airlines, The University of Georgia, Shaw Floors, and WellStar Health. We are up to this challenge and await your demands for more Georgia-made medical devices, aviation, agriculture, and transportation products.

With a continued commitment to God and our partners, may our people and economies prevail.

Sincerely,

Representative Colton Moore



Read More: Rep. Moore and county officials in Northwest Georgia urge churches to shut down in-person services amid coronavirus outbreak

https://www.timesfreepress.com/news/local/story/2020/mar/20/officials-northwest-georgia-urge-churches-shut-down-services/518714/

Read More: Rep. Colton Moore asks Elon Musk to move Tesla to Georgia

https://www.facebook.com/realColtonMoore/posts/2305213193109006

Read More: 6 Georgia State Representatives Co-Sponsor Constitutional Carry

https://www.georgiagunowners.org/2019/01/31/sixstatereps/



Read More: Ringgold Mayor Endorses Colton Moore Over Jeff Mullis For State Senate

https://www.chattanoogan.com/2020/4/4/407000/Ringgold-Mayor-Endorses-Colton-Moore.aspx

Read More: 'Against all odds Colton Moore running against Jeff Mullis for Georgia Senate seat

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No one can become an authority to pre-decide what can and cannot be published in the Press, a Delhi court has said while refusing to restrain a Hindi channel from showing alleged defamatory contents against a private hospital in Delhi in connection to the death of a man.

District Judge (Commercial Court) Man Mohan Sharma, however, directed the channel and two of its reporters to prominently publish the version of the hospital and the facts made available to them by its representatives/officials.

The court was hearing a suit seeking to injunct or restrain the channel from defaming the hospital by showing news content which was allegedly false and a one-sided version of the story.

On May 5, two of the television network's reporters reported that a 60-year-old patient had died as the private hospital allegedly denied to admit him despite his condition being serious.

The court directed the news channel to publish the version of the hospital within two days of the communication of the order to them and it should be done on a continuing basis as long as the news is reported by them on any print, electronic, social or any other media.

It said in its order that with the scope of freedom, there is expectation of responsibility from the Press in the same measure.

"Rights and responsibility are two sides of the same coin. In the arena of responsible journalism, it is the duty of the Press to present a balanced version by taking stock of the facts from both the sides, rather than propagating one sided judgmental version of an aspect. It is the duty of the Press to inform and by no stretch of imagination it can include within its scope and ambit of the right to misinform its audience/readers, it added.

The court further said that it is also incumbent upon the news channel and the reporters not to press into service their own judgment based on unverified and one-sided facts and their duty was to conform themselves to the true ethics of responsible journalism.

The freedom of Press can be defined as licence to publish freely subject to consequences of law'. The legal jurisprudence has developed and crystallised that there can be no-pre-censorship as to the publication by the Press. No one can become an authority to pre-decide what can be published and what cannot be published.

"However, any such publication is subject to consequences in accordance with law, that is action for libel, slander or defamation for any false or incorrect reporting, it said.

It added that considering the arena in which the freedom of Press has developed and the fact that there can be no pre-censorship, the restraint order cannot be passed against the news channel by retraining them from publishing the news pertaining to the incident of May 5.

However, in order to meet the ends of justice, it is incumbent upon the defendants to verify the facts from the side of the hospital and to take the version of the facts of the hospital and publish it in its true spirit prominently and leave the matter to the discretion/ judgement of the viewers/audience...

"Therefore, ex-parte ad-interim injunction is passed thereby directing the defendants to prominently publish the version of the hospital and the facts made available to them by its representatives/officials, the court said.

The hospital submitted before the court that on May 5, a private car came at the gate of the hospital in the morning and as per the government guidelines, there was a requirement of screening the visitors for COVID-19 or coronavirus symptoms through thermal screening.

However, the car took a U-Turn after waiting for a minute, which has been recorded on the CCTV camera installed at the hospital, it claimed.

It further said that on the same day a reporter of the news channel posted an allegedly false tweet against the hospital alleging that the patient in the car died within an hour due to negligence on the part of the hospital.

Thereafter, the reporter allegedly launched a tirade against the hospital which is continuing unabated wherein alleged false information has been pressed into service and there was one-way reporting without confirming/verifying the true facts from the hospital, it claimed.

The hospital further claimed that these acts of omissions of the news channel and the reporters are in total defiance of the ethics by which ethical journalism is governed, and the reporting should not be judgmental or in ignorance of the veracity and credibility of the facts.

The hospital alleged that its very existence was at stake due to the tirade launched by the news channel through its reporters by using social networking platforms.

It has sought directions of the court for recovery of damages of Rs 10 lakh from the news channel, its two reporters and editor in chief, for alleged defamation, mental torture, pain and agony.

The suit also sought directions to the news channel to immediately stop circulating and publishing the alleged defamatory contents and remove it from social media and electronic media.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
LONDON, May 15 (Reuters) - Prime Minister Boris Johnson told his Irish counterpart Leo Varadkar on Friday that he believed it was possible to reach an agreement with the European Union over Britain's future relationship, Johnson's office said.

Britain and the European Union both demanded that the other side give ground in talks on a new post-Brexit trade deal or risk severe damage, in tetchy exchanges after the latest bout of bargaining ended with scant progress on Friday.

"The two leaders also spoke about the latest round of UK-EU negotiations. The Prime Minister said the UK will continue to work hard to reach an agreement and continues to believe that this is possible," a spokeswoman for Johnson's office said. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; editing by Stephen Addison)
Markets, malls, public transport, including the Delhi Metro, and all offices should be allowed to open with reduced footfall and staggered operations, Delhis chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has said in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, even as states sent in their recommendations to the Union government on how the country should emerge from the current phase of the lockdown.

The Centre is expected to announce over the weekend the contours of the fourth phase of the lockdown, which was first put in place on March 25 to slow the spread of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. It may give states more say in what rules on restrictions should be in place beginning next week.

We want restrictions in containment zones to stay as they are, but most economic activities should now be allowed elsewhere. Social distancing and wearing masks should be made mandatory. We believe the relaxations will lead to a rise in Covid-19 infections, but we have prepared for it by making adequate arrangements for hospitals, ventilators, oxygen requirements, ambulances, ICUs, etc, said Kejriwal.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

We have followed centres rules entirely and will work with the Union government in the fight ahead, the CM said in his closing remarks in Thursdays letter, which accompanied a detailed set of recommendations.

Among the key relaxations is the suggestion to allow public transport. Metro services should be allowed to resume but must allow only people working in government offices during morning and evening office hours, while essential services workers or those with movement passes from district authorities can only travel between 10.30am and 5.30pm, the letter suggested, proposing that the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation make arrangements to leave a seat vacant in between.

Auto-rickshaws, buses, cabs (including aggregators such as Ola and Uber), can operate but with reduced capacities. For auto- and cycle-rickshaws, only one passenger will be allowed. Taxis and cabs can seat two in addition to the driver. Buses should carry not more than 20 people, the recommendations said.

Also Read: Concerns over infant mortality as Covid hits immunisation drives

Movement of people should be prohibited (unless for essential service) between 9pm and 5am, the Delhi government suggested, and added that parks and playgrounds should be allowed to open with no contact sport being permitted.

At present, people are allowed to go out only between 7am and 7pm, unless they are going to a grocery store or a chemist  which are included in essential activities.

For offices, the CM suggested that those who can work from home should continue doing so but offices can reopen with 50% staff. All employees must wear masks, and mandatorily download the Aarogya Setu mobile application. The Delhi government has so far not issued any advisory on the app, which has been criticised for possibly being a risk to peoples privacy.

Also Read: Govt officials propose more power to states in fight against Covid-19

All markets and market complexes shall remain open on odd-even basis, that is, shops would open on alternate days depending on their shop number However, shops selling essential goods, books and stationery shops and fans shops are permitted to open on all days, the letter added.

According to an official who asked not to be named, the complete relaxation for shops selling fans will also cover those selling air-conditioners and air coolers, since the city  as the rest of the country  is now heading into peak summer months.

For malls, the number of shops allowed to open on any day must not exceed 33%, the proposal said, putting the onus on mall managements to enforce the protocol.

School, salons, spas, barber shops, cinema halls, hotels and dine-in services at restaurants and cafes should continue to be prohibited, it said.

On some of the recommendations, such as reviving Delhis public transport in a way that ensures social distancing during commute, the government has already started drafting standard operating procedures (SOP), said Delhis revenue and transport minister Kailash Gahlot.

The letter was sent to the Prime Minister after Kejriwal met Lieutenant Governor Anil Baijal for a thorough discussion on Thursday evening. Baijal had directed the government to start preparing SOPs starting with three areas  transport, reopening of markets and malls, and construction and industrial activities, said a senior official privy to the developments of the meeting.

During what was his fourth address to the nation since the Covid-19 crisis began, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Tuesday night that the new phase of the lockdown  lockdown 4.0  would assume new contours and be based on new rules. States are giving us their inputs and advice. Based on that, all details about lockdown will be provided before May 18. He said that he had complete faith that while abiding by rules, the country would both battle the disease and move forward.

The need to reopen has become increasingly acute as economic indicators reflect a complete erosion of earnings. Several market associations have begun discussions to strategise how they will reopen and ensure social distancing, a practice of keeping at least a 2 metre distance between individuals.

Once the market opens, we have decided to keep only two entry points for customers, where there will be hand sanitisers and temperature screening. We will also put up boards saying only those who want to buy should enter the market zone. Social distancing will be of utmost importance. Those accompanying them can wait outside. It is crucial for markets to open now. People have suffered massive losses, said Ashok Randhawa, president of the Sarojini Nagar mini-market traders association.

Also Read: Need to wait on resuming air travel: Niti Aayog member

The Lajpat Nagar traders association too has held meetings and decided to enforce new rules for what is one of the largest and most crowded markets in the capital. We will put up an SOP at the shops. No one will be allowed without being checked by thermal scanner. Also in shops that measure less than 100 sq m, we will not allow more than two customers at one time, said Ashwani Marwah, general secretary of the association.

Health experts said reopening markets is important and necessary but the responsibility to ensure that Covid-19 does not spread falls on shoppers as well as shopkeepers.

Jugal Kishore, head of the department of community medicine at the Safdarjung Hospital, said all shoppers must wear masks before going to the market. People have to behave responsibly. If one has a sore throat, fever or any type of symptoms, they must avoid going to the market. People must change their lifestyle. They must visit the markets only if it is absolutely necessary. Contrary to what many believe, markets are low-risk areas like an OPD in a hospital.

A senior police official, asking not to be named, said the Delhi Police is also likely to book fewer people over social distancing violations from May 18 in case the government decides on scaling down restrictions. This is because enforcing social distancing is likely to take up a disproportionate amount of resources, this person added.
The remains of a male long fin pilot whale and a female harbour porpoise have been found on the same beach in Donegal.

Both animals stranded on a beach at Killahoey, Dunfanaghy.

The whale was a juvenile measuring 2.94. A fully grown long fin pilot whale would be between 5.7m to 6.7m in length.

The porpoise was 1.8m long, indicating that she was fully grown.

Causes of death in both cases are unknown.

The Donegal branch of the Irish Whale and Dolphin group thanked Sarah Sayers for reporting the find.

On a more positive note, a group of around 10 bottlenose dolphins were spotted off the coast of Donegal, in the St Johns Point area. It is estimated that there were around six adults and a number of calves and juveniles. The dolphins were observed from the shore.

People are asked to report sightings and strandings to the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group at www.iwdg.ie
Recently, Eugenio Ravelo Mendoza visited a local clinic. When he went into the exam room, a nurse spoke to him. But his eyes were glued to a tablet, not on her. She was frustrated until she realized he was using video remote interpreting (VRI), a service that uses video-conferencing tech to enable a sign language interpreter to aid conversation. Ravelo Mendoza is deaf.

I had to show her what I was using, Ravelo Mendoza, 43, a deaf interpreter and an Apple employee in Washington, D.C., told TODAY via a sign language interpreter. Im happy to have (VRI) because it is safer for the interpreter too. It is faster.

While masks help slow the spread of coronavirus, they make communication difficult for people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Eugenio Ravelo Mendoza feels like he needs to

Doctors offices often expect to treat patients who are deaf or hard of hearing so they sometimes offer VRI or interpreters that make communicating easier. But mask wearing requirements  needed to slow the spread of COVID-19  make it harder for deaf and hard of hearing people to communicate.

Its worse at the stores, he explained. I have to mentally prepare myself when I go into the store knowing the staff is nervous and anxious about COVID-19. I try to be understanding  It is frustrating.

Reema Bogin agrees. The attorney at a federal government agency has neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2), a disorder which causes benign tumors to grow on her auditory nerves. A surgery to remove a nerve tumor left her completely deaf in her left ear when she was 19. Over the last decade, the hearing in her right ear has been declining. Today, she relies on a hearing aid in her right ear and lip reading. Still, it is difficult understand people  especially if they are wearing a mask.

Masks, particularly N95 masks, muffle a speaker's voice, making communication even more difficult. Complicating matters even further is the CDC recommendation that people remain at least 6 feet away from each other, the 37-year-old who lives in Arlington, Virginia, told TODAY via email. The further away one is from the speaker, the harder it is to hear and understand them.

Story continues

Reema Bogin is

Bogin, who wrote an essay about her experiences during the pandemic in Arlington Magazine, has been working from home since mid-March. But she often has in-person doctors appointments for an infusion that helps manage her condition. In the past, her husband, Alex, attended appointments to assist. At the first appointment after social distancing started, staff tried to prevent Alex from joining her.

I am generally an assertive person so I speak up for myself regarding my communication needs, she said. I explained that I would need him nearby to enunciate or repeat words or to fingerspell for me on account of my hearing loss so they let him remain with me.

Related:

Still going to the grocery store or eventually taking the Washington, D.C. metro worries her.

Another major fear is not being able to understand when someone is talking to me on the metro, especially in an emergency situation, Bogin said. Even before mask-wearing was prevalent, I was unable to hear announcements on the metro but could at least ask someone next to me what was said over the loudspeaker."

Bogin and Mendoza agree that people can make simple efforts to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Masks with clear windows or clear face shields make it easier for lip reading, though not everyone can read lips. Not all masks are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to wear in medical settings, but clear masks are available for the public to use. A college student in Kentucky started making clear masks, which she gives out free of charge, to those who want to communicate with everyone.

The first and easiest thing people can do? Be kind.

Patience is number one, Bogin said. I always have a pen and paper on hand and my cell phone nearby if I need someone to write something down or have something transcribed.

People could learn a few phrases in American Sign Language or fingerspelling, which would go a long way to help people who are deaf or hard of hearing. Though some people dont know ASL, like Bogin, who is learning.

"Communication among the deaf is not monolithic, she added. Communication capabilities and preferences are idiosyncratic as there is such a wide-ranging spectrum of levels and types of deafness.

Michael Kiener, a professor of rehabilitation counseling at Maryville University in St. Louis, Missouri, said that advances in assistive technology, such as Otter Closed Captioning and speech to text or signing apps on smartphones, help a lot of people communicate. However, for it to be seamless, such technologies or interpreters need to be adopted more broadly.

Decision makers need to think about the reality issues in this new environment," he told TODAY.

While various online chat programs, such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams, might allow an interpreter or closed captioning for the meetings, each platform handles it differently and not all are as successful.

As a society were not being proactive and thinking about how we communicate, Kiener said.

Theres certainly one thing that doesnt help yet people often use: Shouting.

Hearing people try to talk louder, Mendoza said. It is a bit of a struggle.

Bogin understands that mask wearing and social distancing remains essential to slowing the spread of the coronavirus and it will present challenges for a while. She encourages everyone be empathetic.

Being deaf is exhausting, Bogin said. The pandemic has only exacerbated this challenge even more. So, please do not get frustrated with us when we do not understand something you say. We are working very hard to keep up and all we ask for is a little bit of patience, understanding and communication improvisation.

CORRECTION (May 15, 2020, 1:15 p.m. EST): The story has been updated to clarify Reema Bogin's level of hearing loss.
One world and one demand with more than 140 world leaders made it clear that any COVID-19 vaccine made, should be available free of charge.

Tensions are brewing between biotech firms and governments with a boycott of drug summits by the US.

In the open letter to these biotech firms, it was stressed that the vaccines and therapies will not be patented by the drug companies developing them. This came ahead of the World Health Assembly, a policy-setting body of the UN's World Health Organization.

It stressed that all scientific breakthroughs must be shared across borders, not be kept under wraps for the benefit of the world community.

Signatories of this in unprecedented move is South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, Pakistan's prime minister, Imran Khan, and the former UK prime minister Gordon Brown.

The contents of the letter stressed that poorer countries will not be deprived of the coronavirus cure.

"Governments and international partners must unite around a global guarantee which ensures that, when a safe and effective vaccine is developed, it is produced rapidly at scale and made available for all people, in all countries, free of charge." These statements where written in response to the problems of vaccine development.

It came about as a French pharmaceutical company made a stir and angered several nations, by saying the USA will get it first. The global death is getting past 302,493, according to the Johns Hopkins University tracker.

Also read: Coronavirus Weak Spot Discovered: Researchers Find Out That Virus is 'Low Shielding'

According to Paul Hudson of Bloomberg, the British chief executive officer of Sanofi, said that the funds that the US put into research is main reason. He added,"The US government has the right to the largest pre-order because it's invested in taking the risk."

As a response, the European commission and health experts stressed that the Paris-based Sanofi has received funding in millions of euros, in research credits from the French nation recently and a few years ago.

Soon after the French government called Hudson's statements as unacceptable, and the German press called Sanofi a "soulless and disloyal multinational" that will blackmail to get lucrative returns.

In the global COVID-19 summit, several countries including Britain, China, Canada, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and numerous African countries attended. This virtual summit raised more than $8bn as fund to research a vaccine. But the US did not go and wants to develop its own vaccine instead.

In a report that was published on Thursday, Brown said that a second or third wave of Covid-19 might be coming from poorer countries with bad health care systems. One way to end the pandemic is to eliminate the virus in all continents.

More than 100 vaccines are under testing, but only seven are the only options according to WHO. Last Wednesday, Michael Ryan, emergencies chief, commented that the coronavirus is here to stay, it might become just a simple flu.

Officials of WHO, director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said,"Vigilance was needed to keep the virus at bay, as well as cooperation between people and politicians." There is a second wave of reinfection in Wuhan and South Korea.

The WHO's director for Europe, Hans Kluge, said vigilance was needed to keep the virus at bay, as well as cooperation between people and politicians. He noted that new virus clusters had emerged in places where Covid-19 had apparently vanished such as Wuhan in China, and South Korea.

Related article: Second Wave After Lockdown Will Hit Hard, US Will Run Out of Resources

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The City of Sydney has given the go-ahead for a new museum dedicated to the history of Chinese people in Australia to be built in a former library in Haymarket.

It says the Museum of Chinese in Australia (MOCA) will be a cultural centre and museum space dedicated to the discovery, preservation and promotion of the history of Chinese people.

Lord mayor Clover Moore and Dr John Yu at the old Haymarket library. Credit:Edwina Pickles

Lord mayor Clover Moore said relocating the Citys Haymarket library branch to a larger space in Darling Square last October presented an opportunity to repurpose the three-storey site at 744 George Street and ensure ongoing community benefit.

She said the museum would feature a gallery and exhibition space, programming activities, community spaces for events, an artist in residence program, a cafe and shop.
The leaders of the Armenian nationalist party Dashnaktsutyun supported Hitler, approved the Holocaust and racism. This is evidenced by a document discovered by historians in the archives of the US Congress, presented on May 4, 1945, by Rep. Frank E. Hook at the Congress meeting. The reason for Hook's speech was an article published in the Washington Times-Herald by John R. Flynn, a former member of the America First isolationist group, who considered Dashnaktsutyun to be "patriots" of Armenia and justified their actions.

Hook released information on terrorist attacks carried out by the Dashnags on the territory of the Russian Empire, on how members of the ARF killed people in the United States. One of their victims became Archbishop Tourian who refused to read the sermon until the Dashnags removed their flag from the scene.

Vestnik Kavkaza publishes a translation of a part of the printed appendix to Frank Hooks speech, in which he talks about the attitude of the Dashnags to Nazism, the Holocaust, and racism.

Dashnags as Pro-Nazis

Following the murder [of Archbishop Leon Tourian], the Dashnag press showed marked Nazi leanings. Here are sample excerpts from the September 17, 1936, issue:

The former Germany, defeated in the Great War, lacking popular unity, conducted an uncertain, confused, day-by-day policy which got her nowhere. And came Adolf Hitler, after Herculean struggles. He spoke to the racial heart string of the Ger man, opened the fountain of his national genius, struck down the spirit of defeatism.

Now, there is a Germany, strong, united, aggressive, proud, and self-reliant. She has torn and given to the winds the principal restrictions of the Versailles Treaty, and is now a national power, equal to, if not higher, than the great at the green tables of Europe and the world. Internally organized, externally impressive, the German people have come to occupy the place which was theirs before the War.

At no period since the World War had Berlin conducted so realistic, well-organized, and planned policy as now, since Hitler's assumption of power. At no time the German thought had been so explicit, clear, and rich as now. And whatever outsiders may think concerning Hitlerism and fascism, as a system of government, it is proved that they have revitalized and regenerated the two states, Germany and Italy.

Dashnags and antisemites

Flynn's patriots have published some notorious anti-Jewish lines. A series of three lengthy front-page articles written by a Dashnag just returned from Germany, were published in the August 19, 20, 21, 1936, issues of Hairenik, extolling the Nazi regime, the myth of Aryan culture, and whitewashing Nazi persecution:

Jews of all people being the most fanatical nationalists and race worshippers, wherever they go they are compelled to create an atmosphere and the rites and customs of inter nationalism and world citizenship in order to preserve their race exalation pure. As the British use battleships to occupy lands and to protect their fatherland, in this same way the Jew uses internationalism or communism as a weapon.

Sometimes it is difficult to eradicate these poisonous elements when they have already struck deep root like a chronic disease. And when it becomes necessary for a people to eradicate them in an uncommon method, these attempts and methods are regarded revolutionary. During a surgical operation the flow of blood is a natural thing. Under such conditions dictatorship seems to have the role of a savior (translated from Armenian).

Hairenik Weekly is the English language organ of the Dashnag, edited in Boston by James Mandalian. The Weekly voiced the political sentiments of the mother publication but exercised greater restraint. The August 9, 1935, issue started off with a reference to the Jewish controlled film industry, then ascribed Armenian massacres to the Turkish Jews of Salonika because of the Jewish love of gain. The May 10, 1935, issue quoted the vice mayor of Bucharest as saying: The Armenians [meaning Dashnags only] have helped us Rumanians not to become slaves of the Jewish elements. An article in the September 25, 1936, issue of the Weekly denounced Zionist aims, and adopting a strong Arab nationalist view concluded with:

And the type of Jew who is imported to Palestine is not anything to be proud about. Their loose morals, and other vices which were unknown to the Arabs prior to the Balfour Declaration, on top of all communistic activities, were the cause of most of the Arab criticism.

Dashnags as anti-Christian

Flynn's patriots also have a record of antiChristian utterance. The archbishop's heinous murder had its roots in Dashnag disrespect for church and clergy. It was common practice for ARF chiefs to burst into a church, fling open the doors and using the altar and chancel as platform hold political meetings. In at least two instances Armenians who tried to protect the Church of Smyrna from being desecrated were shot on the spot by Flynn's patriots. Dashnag leaders have always tried to seize political control of the church and reduce it to an instrument of Dashnag ideology.

They carried their cancerous feud even to America, but thanks to the devotion of a flock loyal to a historic church founded in 301 A. D., the ARF plan has failed.

Hairenik Weekly evidently tried to poison the American-born Dashnag generation with a dose of anti-Christian hate and published two astonishing letters (March 29, 1935), headlined Better off without Christianity. Excerpts follow:

1. By accepting Christianity as our national religion we lost more than we gained as a people. There is nothing we as a people should thank Christianity for and plenty we should regret on account of it.

2. The Armenian cause suffered by the adoption of Christianity. The new venture was not particularly beneficial nor reassuring. We lost much of our virility as a militant race. Before Christianity Armenia was a powerful state capable of more than holding her own. We possessed national unity, solidarity, and virility.

Dashnags as race worshippers

Just as the myth of an Aryan super race was conceived by the Nazis to rekindle hope among the defeatist and frustrated German masses, Flynn's friends added race worship to the cult of flag worship. A few months before the murder, Hairenik (September 27, 1933) published an article on racial religionism explaining the need for racial convulsions in order to achieve racial awakening:

The racial-religious believes in his racial blood as a deity. Race above everything and before everything. Race comes first. Everything for the race. * * * we hear the racial religious orders have their own general creed, their leadership, and political emblem. They are also going to have their own uniforms, their own hymn, their rites, their holidays (translation).

The organizer of the Racial Religious Orders was military hack named Gen. K. Nejdeh.

Today Germany and Italy are strong, he croaked, "because as a nation they love and breathe in the terms of race" (Weekly, April 10, 1936). Adapting the slogan Youth, heart, and iron, Nejdeh generally modeled Dashnag youth upon the Hitler youth pattern. At first called racial patriots, later they become known as Tzeghagronscomposed of two words: tzegh (race) and gron (religion): race worshippers.

From this point on the dope of decadent race worship, dead-hero worship and defunct-flag worship was injected into young Tzeghagron minds. Whipped into strict discipline, urged never to marry non-Armenians lest it pollute the purity of the Armenian race, Dashnag leaders pursued the nationalist credo that Armenianism and Armenian race-nationalism be retained at all costs. Otherwise, they cried out in alarm, its youth would disintegrate into the melting pot and be lost to Armenia. It urged political activity as a means of keeping the new generation anchored to its race. Listen to the drivel drilled into American-born Tzeghagrons (Hairenik Weekly, January 11, 1935) by Mandalian, Darbinian, Nejdeh & Co.:

I am preaching to you the Tzeghagron creed, worship of the race. To me the highest act of individualism and of freedom is to follow the voice of my race. I am a Tzeghagron. That means: I know my race. I believe in my race. I worship my race. I know that my race is great; that my race has given more to humanity than it has received from it. I am a believer in my race and, behold, I worship another deity, the blood of my race, in whose unspotted purity lies the future of our people. The deification of the will of the racethat is what the Tzeghagron is fighting for.

Dashnags and Nazi Germany

The question arises: were Flynn's friends subsidized by the Nazis or, as in the case of countless American Fascists, did Dashnags themselves bear all carrying charges? This issue of Propaganda Battlefront presents only the documented evidence and will draw no conclusions. But it is significant that in its editorial of November 1, 1936, Hairenik observed:

Who can guarantee that Germany and Italy with their Polish and Hungarian and other allies, or independent of them, would not try to infiltrate beyond Transcaucasia as the Germans did in 1918. Therefore, instead of binding our fate to the undefeatable' army of the Soviet Union, isn't it wiser for the Armenian to think also of the day when that army is crushed, deserts our motherland, and leaves defenseless our people of the homeland (translated from Armenian).

Equally significant is an item in News Week of November 12, 1941, entitled Armenian Puppet State:

As the Near East crisis develops, look for evidence of Nazi fifth-column activity by Armenians in Turkey and Syria. The Nazis have picked out the Armenian Revolutionary Federation or Dashnag' party to do the fifth column work. This intensely nationalist organization has recently moved its head quarters from Switzerland to Paris in Berlin. * * * The Nazis have promised the Dashnags an autonomous state similar to Croatia in return for their cooperation.

Pages of Hairenik Weekly contained references to intercourse with Nazi Germany. The November 29, 1935, issue recorded that Frau H. Winkler was shipping to Tzeghagrons 200 copies of her book entitled In the World of the Dragons. Formation of a Tzeghagron chapter in Berlin received repeated mention. The May 3, 1935, issue carried a letter from Hellmut Lange, a Nazi at Chemnitz, Germany, answering the query of a Tzeghagron on the Reich's attitude toward ARF aims:

We Germans stand for the principles of self-determination not only for Our German countrymen living under foreign oppression but also in favor of any other nation suffering in the same way. National socialism is the mainstay of the national idea and the determined opponent of thraldom. We Germans cannot but recognize your claims as thoroughly legitimate. * * * Your aim is and must be Armenian rebirth to Armenian liberty in the Armenian spirit. We Germans want to have our countrymen free from foreign yoke. You as an Armenian patriot want to have Armenia free again. Can we both have a finer aim than this?

Dashnags as communists

With the turning of the Nazi tide and the triumph of Soviet Armies, Dashnag policy in the past 6 months has completely reversed itself. The Dashnags have now seemingly turned Communist. The Mandalian-Darbinian enterprises regularly reprint from Lraper, Armenian organ they once denounced as Communist, from Sovetakan Hayastan, Official organ of Soviet Armenia, and the Weekly (Mar. 29, 1944) published a panegyric on Soviet Armenia and the Patriotic War issued by the Soviet Embassy in Washington. Dashnags have already made subtle overtures to leftist Armenian elements. On May 19, 1944, a Weekly editorial (translated from the Hairenik) ignored its defamation of the Soviet regime and adulation of Nazi theory, and begged anti-ARF factions to forget the past and effect a merger, explaining:

The attitude of the Federation toward the Soviet Government in relation to the practical Armenian national policy is no different from theirs. Like them the Federation too looks to the Soviet Government and is willing to make all possible sacrifices for the realization of that national aim. The Federation, too, like them, admits that Soviet Armenia is the rightful political trustee of the Armenian cause.

Dashnags as political chameleons

Flynn's pals began as Socialists and Socialist-Revolutionists, turned into Nazi sympathizers and are now seeking favor with Soviet interests, while also courting Brother Flynn's brand of America First politicians. The fact is that a corrupt, self-seeking Dashnag leadership has always followed an opportunistic policy, becoming all things to all menwhatever was most lucrative for the moment.

But it's bad business now to write pro Nazi columns, and it's bad business to peddle anti-Jew hate. Hence Simon Vratzian, member of the Dashnag central committee in Boston, shed crocodile tears (Weekly, September 22, 1943) in an article entitled The Jewish Tragedy. In hypocritical contrast to previous ARF sentiments, Vratzian bemoaned the terrible fate of Jewry and called Jews the allies of civilization. Reversing its former anti-Zionist and pro-Arab nationalist views, the Weekly (March 22, 1944) devoted an editorial to the jubilee birthday of Rabbi Stephen Wise, chief exponent of Zionism, referred to him as one of Jewrys noblest sons and wished him the attainment of Zionist aims. But although the Dashnags have professed internationalist views on world collaboration, they are currently serving as informants for the ultra isolationist, nationalistic McCormick-Patterson interests.

Dashnag leaders have tried to be everything to anybodywhether Communist, Nazi, Social-Democrat, Socialist, isolationist, or native Fascist. In order to survive they must be nourished by outside sources for they are shunned by those who know the truth about them.

But John T. Flynn insists on calling them patriots. Dashnags have hoodwinked many with their wily chameleon politics, perverted patriotism, hypocritical professions of faith, employment of defrocked priests, glib flattery and bribery of the gullible and naive. But the prize catch in the ARF suckers' net has been John T. Flynn who, in the absence of any evidence against the author of Under Cover, has swallowed as truth the sewer-spawned lies of a disreputable Armenian terrorist-fascist gang completely unrepresentative of Americans of Armenian origin and ostracized by them.
Lucknow, May 15 : "Khana to mil jayega, sahib ek purani chappal de do," said Tiloki Kumar (32) as he showed the boils and cuts on his feet.

Tiloki is one of the thousands who have been walking down to their homes from Gujarat and other states.

Tiloki, a resident of Pipraich in Gorakhpur, said that he worked in a garment unit in Surat and had decided to walk down after he could not get on to the train.

"I got myself registered for the Shramik train and waited for a week. No one called up and finally we decided to walk back home. It is better to die at home than in an unknown place," he said.

He said his slippers had given way even before he entered the borders of Uttar Pradesh.

"I have been walking barefoot and my boils are also bleeding. I still have to walk more than 300 kilometers," he said.

Thakur, another migrant in the group said that while people were offering them food and water along the way, footwear was now posing a major problem.

"The sole of my shoe has come off so I have tied a piece of cloth over it. We can go without food for a day or two but walking is impossible in this condition," he said.

Both, Triloki and Thakur refuse money --"Where will we buy slippers?" they ask.

Seeing the plight of these migrants - and many of them are walking barefoot - a shoe shop owner in Utaratia on the outskirts of Lucknow, had decided to sell chappals at cost price of Rs 60 per pair.

A group of senior citizens who refuse to divulge their names saying we do not want publicity on this issue, have also bought slippers from a local shop and are giving them to migrant workers on the Lucknow-Barabanki road.

Navin Tiwari, a well-known businessman and social activist, has been distributing food and water to migrants on the Lucknow-Faizabad highway. He has now bought slippers in bulk and will be distributing them from Friday.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Corey La Barrie's family is "overwhelmed" by the love and support they've received following the death of the YouTube star.

It's been just days since Corey passed away at the age of 25. His mother and brother both confirmed on social media that Corey was the victim of a drunk-driving accident, which took place on, Sunday, May 10, his 25th birthday.

"This isn't something i thought i would ever have to sit here and type out for a very long time or what i wanna do right now but everyone deserves to know, my brother Corey passed away last night in a car accident with his drunk friend driving," Jarrad La Barrie shared. "This is the hardest thing I've ever had to do I don't how I'm suppose to do this without you i miss you so much already this isn't fair thank you for always being the best big brother i could ask for i love you so f--king much life's never gonna be the same without you R.I.P."

Celebrity Deaths: 2020's Fallen Stars

On Monday, one day after the accident took place, the Los Angeles Police Department shared in a press release that Ink Masters star Daniel Silva was allegedly driving a McLaren at a high speed when he lost control of the vehicle and "ran off the road and collided with a stop sign and a tree." According to officials, Silva "attempted" to flee the scene, but was stopped by eyewitnesses.

Silva was later arrested and charged with murder.

Corey La Barrie instagram

Corey's family has since announced memorial plans, sharing details on his official GoFundMe page.

"Our family is overwhelmed by the incredible outpouring of love and support for Corey these past 2 days," the family said in a statement. "We are in the process of making arrangements and will be using these proceeds for a private family memorial, as well a public memorial in Los Angeles at the historical Hollywood Forever Cemetery; where Corey's supporters will have a place to attend, commemorate and celebrate his life."

"Proceeds will also go to a public memorial in Adelaide, Australia at his grand-dad's (whom Corey missed so much) and grandmother's place of rest. All supporters of Corey will be able to attend," the statement continued. "Your donations have made all of this possible and for that, we truly thank you from the bottom of our hearts."

The fundraiser has raised $187,469, surpassing the original $150,000 goal.
The coronavirus pandemic has challenged health care as much as any industry in America. Across the country, hospitals have confronted the dual burden of preparing for the possibility of being overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients while struggling to maintain financial viability in the face of catastrophic revenue loss as other patients stay away, fearful of exposure to the virus. Meanwhile, physicians, nurses, and other front-line health-care workers have desperately sought to learn and apply the latest information about the virus, only to find themselves picking their way through an unruly mess of strong opinions and weak data.

Yet somehow, out of this maelstrom, several surprisingly consistent themes have emerged, as I learned this week at a large medical-innovation conference convened virtually this week in Boston:

Deferred care  the health services non-COVID patients should be receiving but arent  is an increasingly serious problem.

During March and April, many of our patients with heart disease, with lung disease, with cancer, with diabetes, were simply afraid to come to the hospital, so they didnt get the care they needed, said Dr. Elizabeth Nabel, the president of Bostons Brigham Health, and they are now returning to the hospital much sicker than if they came previously. She also noted that the cardiac-catheterization lab  incidentally a key revenue-generator for the hospital  was less than half occupied when normally it wouldve been full.

Were very concerned about the cases that were not seeing, the decreased number of cardiac and stroke patients showing up in our emergency room added Dr. Peter Slavin, the president of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH). The fear associated with this virus is very real and is going to take some time to be overcome.

The use of telehealth has surged.

Explosive is how John Fernandez, the head of ambulatory services at the Mass General Brigham (MGB) system, described the growth, and growth prospects, for telehealth and virtual care: I figure if my 86-year-old father can learn Zoom in a week, theres going to be a lot of explosion in this technology. The numbers would seem to bear out his point. At MGH, the use of telemedicine climbed from a baseline of less than 1 percent of outpatient visits to over 85 percent, Slavin said. According to MGBs chief clinical officer, Dr. Gregg Meyer, the amount of care delivered virtually within the MGB system increased from 2 percent to nearly 60 percent. The actual number of virtual visits increased from 1,0002,000 per month to 240,000250,000 per month, said Dr. Alistair Erskine, the chief digital-health officer at Brigham Health  an extraordinary 200-fold change.

Story continues

Its prohibitively difficult to gather and aggregate relevant clinical data in a timely fashion.

Dr. Paul Biddinger, who leads emergency preparedness at MGH, highlighted the need to gather patient presentation data  the emergency-department visits, the clinic visits, the hospitalizations, the ICU visits that tell us whether or not the pace [of reopening] is too fast. . . . Right now, we dont gather all that data from all those different sources in an aggregate way and link it to the decisions that are being made.

Marcus Osborne, the vice president of Walmart Health, lamented that, We [Americans] dont really have a public-health infrastructure.

Public health has been underrepresented in the tech space, said Dr. Jim Weinstein, the senior vice president for Microsoft Healthcare. Technology is fantastic, but if we cant talk to each other, we cant communicate the appropriate data.

Biddinger explained to me later that we lack the ability to flag patients associated with disasters [including outbreaks but also no-notice mass-casualty events] in all systems, and to define the basic data fields that are always captured . . . when the flag is set. Weinstein agreed, and was especially concerned about the learning opportunities that would be missed because of our basic inability to share data more effectively. He noted that in his previous role at Dartmouth, where he led the large DartmouthHitchcock health system, he was able to cut the mortality rate for sepsis from 55 percent to 10 percent in about three months by enabling better data sharing and communication. He offered a similar prescription for the management of the coronavirus pandemic, arguing that theres a need to share data elements we agree on . . . tools that let these data flow. This seems similar in intent to the COVID-19 Evidence Accelerator, championed by tech-savvy regulators such as Dr. Amy Abernethy, the principle deputy commissioner of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

Big Tech projects restraint.

In contrast to the grandiose arrogance typically associated with tech giants and the irrepressible ideology of digital transformation, the representatives from large tech companies speaking at this conference exhibited deliberate, conspicuous restraint. Physicians from Microsoft and Google constantly emphasized the primacy of patient privacy, and the urgency of ensuring that tech doesnt exacerbate social inequities.

Dr. Karen DeSalvo, appointed in October 2019 as Googles chief health officer after serving as a health and technology leader in the Obama administration, emphasized transparency and the need for privacy-preserving approaches. To the extent that she even mentioned AI, in a session focused on the topic, it wasnt in the context of how its going to solve all human problems; it was to stress the importance of being intentional in our development of AI so that we eliminate disparities and dont aggravate them.

I want to be sure that we dont leave people behind, Microsofts Weinstein said. We have to be very thoughtful about how we move technology forward in the next generation, and the generation after that, to narrow the gap of disparities, which we still havent done.

Patient-centered medicine at last?

An inescapable takeaway from the conference was the sense that as a result of the COVID-19 crisis, some long-contemplated changes in America health care may have at last arrived. Chief among these is a vision of care authentically built around the life needs of a person, rather than the operational needs of the medical system. As Nabel explained, she and her colleagues recognized that the crisis represented an opportunity to think bold and think differently, and implement those changes [that] maybe weve wanted to do all along but didnt have the courage to.

In particular, Nabel emphasized the increased use of digital tools and the re-imagination of the ambulatory-patient experience, changes that would likely lead to less space for ambulatory care in the hospital. Digital care will expand and be a foundation to all the care that we deliver, Nabel said. The transition to consumer-focused health care will accelerate, which will mean more choices are available, care will be less hospital-centric, more outpatient/ambulatory, in the home in many ways. We dont even know what routine care is going to look like in the future.

Similarly, Walmarts Osborne highlighted the increased opportunities to provide care and support for patients outside of the traditional medical clinic, whether through at-home kits or the provision of testing and care in more convenient settings. As communities and individuals and families grasp for healthcare needs, he said, theyre not finding public-health infrastructure that exists at any kind of significant scale, and instead often rely on other organizations to fill the gap. Weve done a disservice to consumers by not allowing diagnostic and lab pieces to be up front and more accessible, and COVID has just exposed that.

A Better Normal?

Talk is cheap. But the emergent vision of health-cares future is compelling. Its encouraging to think about a health system thats more patient-centric  more ready, willing, and able to meet patients where they live, in part by leveraging the convenience and scale of competitive private-sector offerings from both large, established corporations such as Walmart and nascent startups. Its also a welcome change to feel that tech may be finally be deployed in the service of patients, rather than championed as an end in itself (if only the benighted masses would adopt it). Lets hope as well that serious tech companies continue to approach health care with the humility and collaborative intent demonstrated this week, and that they forge partnerships with the health-care community that authentically prioritize patient privacy while enabling a permissioned and transparent approach to data-sharing. The rapid learning that would then be possible  chronically stifled by the impediments in place today  is essential not only during an outbreak, but also if we hope to iteratively improve the care our patients routinely receive.

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New Delhi, May 15 : In a major success in the Visakhapatnam espionage case, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday said it had arrested a key conspirator Mohammed Haroon Haji Abdul Rehman Lakdawala on charge of leaking sensitive information of the Indian Navy to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

The NIA has been given his transit remand by a Mumbai court. Lakdawala will be presented in a Special NIA court in Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh.

An NIA spokesperson said that Lakdawala, a resident of Mumbai, was held from the metropolis on Friday for criminal conspiracy, and under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Official Secrets Act.

The official said that digital devices and incriminating documents were seized from his residence as well.

The official said that Lakdawala had visited Karachi on many occasions to meet his handlers under the guise of "conducting cross-border trade".

"During these visits, he came in contact with two Pakistani spies, namely Akbar aka Ali and Rizwan, who directed him to deposit money into the bank accounts of Navy personnel at regular intervals," he said, adding that the same was done through different means.

The Visakhapatnam espionage case relates to an international racket involving individuals based in Pakistan and at different locations in India. On December 30 last year, the NIA has taken over the espionage case, ten days after seven Indian Navy personnel and an alleged hawala operator were arrested on charge of leaking sensitive information to the Pakistan intelligence agency.

The police had said that all the arrested officials were in touch with Pakistani women who had befriended them on Facebook. It is alleged that officials were paid through a hawala operator for providing information. The chats between these sailors, who were being used by Pakistanis, were sexually explicit.

The NIA claimed that Pakistan-based spies recruited agents in India for collecting sensitive and classified information regarding locations or movements of Indian naval ships and submarines, and other defence establishments.

According to NIA officials, the women, who honeytrapped the Navy personnel posing as their friends on Facebook, were set up by the Pakistani intelligence operatives. The sailors were later blackmailed and forced to part with sensitive information.

The official said that a probe revealed that a few Navy personnel came in contact with Pakistani nationals through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp etc, and were involved in sharing classified information in lieu of monetary gains.

"The money was deposited into the bank accounts of these Navy personnel through Indian associates having business interests in Pakistan," he said.

The NIA has so far arrested 14 people including 11 Navy personnel and one Pakistan- born Indian national Shaista Qaiser.
It aggregated information on the mobility of Kyivstar mobile operator phone users, as well as data on the use of bank cards, and information coming from Apple.

Former Minister of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine Dmytro Dubilet has announced the creation of an information panel (dashboard), allowing the government to monitor people's compliance with the self-isolation regime across the country's regions.

"We added a new cool dashboard. Now we can see how Ukrainians adhere to self-isolation in different regions and observe daily dynamics," he wrote on Facebook.

Read alsoIsrael enables emergency spy powers to track potential coronavirus carriers using mobile-phone data

According to Dubilet, the dashboard contains aggregated data on the mobility of Kyivstar mobile operator phone users, as well as on the use of bank cards, and information coming from Apple.

Dubilet said first dashboard graphs had shown that almost 60% of the residents of cities of Kyiv region remained at home on Easter holidays; while residents of Kherson region were the most disciplined over the weekends (61% of them stayed home every Sunday during quarantine).
Goodheart Val Aloysius (My Father My Father)

15.05.2020 LISTEN

As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, and the search for a vaccine continues, many people are gullible and are easily swayed by peddlers of cures or solutions.There is so much fear and uncertainty in the communities. People are hoping for some miracle or magical remedy. However, charlatans are having a field day in places such as Nigeria. They are marketing all sorts of concoction and treatment even as scientists are still trying to understand the nature of the virus. Quacks are mining people's desperation and vulnerability. Snake oil salesmanship is pervasive. Incidentally at the forefront of health care, fraudulent schemes are pastors and churches, and other marketers of spiritual solutions.

Recently, a pentecostal pastor, Apostle Suleman, claimed that he could heal COVID19 patients. He appealed to the government to allow him into the isolation centers so that he could exercise his faith healing powers. Apostle Suleman has been challenged to demonstrate his faith healing abilities. He has been asked to heal a COVID19 patient and get five thousand dollars. However, this pastor has yet to accept the challenge to heal a patient under agreed medical and scientific conditions.

Meanwhile another Pentecostal pastor has come out with a spiritual solution to the pandemic. This pastor goes by a Facebook name, Goodheart Val Aloysius, also known as My Father My Father. Aloysius is marketing an anti COVID19 oil which he claims would provide people with spiritual immunity against the virus. Aloysius, who is also the owner of the Father's House International Church in Calabar, Cross River State, is a witch-hunting pastor. On his Facebook, Pastor Aloysius declares: "THE SOLUTION IS HERE!!!" Then he goes further to say: "Get this COVID-19 PREVENTION OIL and gain spiritual immunity to the deadly pandemic with a seed of faith of 100 USD (100$)". A hundred US dollars is about forty thousand naira.

Faith healing claims are forms of medical quackery. They undermine evidence-based efforts and guidelines for the management of the coronavirus and other health problems. In the case of the coronavirus pandemic, faith healing propositions confuse and misinform the people, and get them to conduct themselves as if there are cures and solutions when none exists. As in the case of My Father My Father these faith remedies are not free. They cost money. In fact these spiritual goods are devices that these charlatans use to extort money from desperate individuals. NCDC should take all necessary measures to check the proliferation of faith healing schemes and help bring these snake oil salesmen to book.
Royal Mail has parachuted a veteran of industrial disputes into the top job after the abrupt departure of its chief executive.

Keith Williams took over as the postal service's executive chairman after chief executive Rico Back was unceremoniously ousted  and immediately called for 'an accelerated pace of change across the business'.

The 64-year-old, who was made chairman 14 months ago, is the former boss of British Airways credited with defusing a longrunning dispute between the airline and cabin crews in 2011.

Royal Mail's executive chairman Keith Williams, pictured with Georgia May Jagger while running BA, has called for 'an accelerated pace of change across the business'

And even while looking for a replacement for Back, he must repair relations with Royal Mail's heavily-unionised workers.

They have accused the former boss of trying to ram through a 1.8billion modernisation plan without their agreement.

Back's proposals sought to shift the company's focus away from letters and towards parcels, to take on rivals such as Amazon.

But concerns prompted members of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to vote for strikes in March, although the union has held off from taking industrial action during the coronavirus crisis.

Back was also criticised by union chiefs after this newspaper revealed he was running the company from his 2.3million penthouse in Switzerland during the virus lockdown.

Royal Mail's shares have plunged by more than 65 per cent since Back took charge as industrial relations with the CWU have worsened

And he separately came under fire for failing to take a pay cut himself after slashing Royal Mail's dividend to save money  a move that hit the pockets of thousands of postal workers who own shares in the former state monopoly.

While it is understood Williams has no appetite to run Royal Mail for the long-term, his first act as executive chairman was to cancel executive bonuses for the year and hand 200 each to 125,000 posties and other frontline staff for continuing to work during the virus crisis.

Veteran of disputes Keith Williams took over as Royal Mails chairman in March 2019. The 64-year-old is seen as a calm operator with a knack for resolving tricky situations. He rose to prominence in 2005 as BAs finance chief. He was later instrumental in putting together the megamerger of BA and Iberia into what is now International Consolidated Airlines Group. When Willie Walsh moved up to become the boss of IAG, Williams replaced him at the airline and swiftly resolved a long-running pay dispute with cabin crew unions.

He will remain on his current pay of 300,000 per year while Back's was 640,000.

One union official said Williams was 'someone we think we can work with'.

Back's exit came after nearly two years of lacklustre results and a collapse in Royal Mail's share price after he took over from Dame Moya Greene in 2018.

He immediately faced controversy after it emerged he had received a 6million payout for changes to his contract. That prompted a historic shareholder revolt at the company's annual general meeting.

Further revelations that he planned to remain living in Switzerland  where he and his family have been based for more than a decade  and commute to the UK also led to him being dubbed the 'flying postman'.

At the same time, Royal Mail's shares have plunged by more than 65 per cent since Back took charge as industrial relations with the CWU have worsened.

He inherited an agreement with the union from Greene which saw the parties agree to gradual pay rises for posties in exchange for steps toward modernisation. But union chiefs accused Back of reneging on the deal.

The row culminated in a court showdown in December that saw Royal Mail successfully block the CWU's attempt to call strikes.

Royal Mail has warned that its UK business is likely to be lossmaking this year and yesterday it warned that a rise in parcel deliveries during the pandemic had not been enough to cancel out lost revenue from a simultaneous drop in letter volumes.

Credit Suisse analyst Arthur Truslove said Royal Mail's turnaround plans were now 'likely back to square one'.

'This raises serious doubts over the company's ability to revive its fortunes,' he added.
Liberia has dropped criminal charges against Charles E. Sirleaf, the son of former Liberian President Ellen Johnson-Sirleaf, and three former officials with the Central Bank of Liberia.

The former bank officials indicted in the case were finance director Dorbor M. Hagba, director of operations Richard H. Walker, and Deputy Director of Internal Audit Joseph Dennis.

All three were charged in connection with the alleged unlawful printing of local currency worth millions of dollars that reportedly disappeared in 2018.

Former bank Governor Milton Weeks is still charges of economic sabotage, criminal conspiracy, criminal solicitation, criminal facilitation and money laundering. He was expected to appear in court this Friday to answer to the charges.

Liberian Solicitor General Sayma Syrenius Cephus says the move is in line with Liberia's Criminal Procedure Law that give prosecuting attorney the right to file for a motion to dismiss a criminal indictment against any defendant.

As Executive Governor, Milton Weeks was Chairman of the board, he was part of decision making and rest of the people [Sirleaf and the three acquitted] only acted based in instructions given them, he said via telephone.

Prior to dropping the charges, Judge Yamie Quiqui Gbeisay granted a motion for separate trials for the defendants

The missing millions scandal

In 2018, parallel investigations were launched by both Liberia and the United States following media reports in September 2018 that a container full of newly printed Liberian banknotes, worth more than US$100million, had gone missing.

After months of investigation, business intelligence firm Kroll Associates Inc. released their findings, dismissing the suggestion that the banknotes simply went missing.

The report found that the Liberian government had approved the printing of new banknotes totalling US$5billion, but that the central bank printed surplus.

Board members to be arrested

Meanwhile, Councillor Cephus says his government will arrest and indict the Board members of the bank who authorised the printing of the money.

Board members who authorised the printing of the L$10.5 billion, would be indicted as of Monday of next week, he said. Initially, charges were dropped against the company that printed the money, Crane Currency of Sweden.

The affair is one of Liberia's biggest corruption case since independence in 1847.

Charles Sirleaf and the three have yet to respond to the move by the government to acquit them.
Comal County

Comal County has hired their second epidemiologist to help them in their local efforts to combat the spread of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

Anikumar Anil Mangla began this week with the Office of Public Health, according to a statement released Thursday by Comal County. He joins Connie Alaniz, also an epidemiologist, who started in April.
WILTON  Superintendent of Schools Kevin Smith addressed the school community in a video message on Friday, May 15, where he said the reopening of schools in the fall may be unusual and abnormal.

He began his five-minute message by telling Wilton High School seniors and their families how truly sorry I am for the disruption to this year. Im grateful to all of those working in a number of different and creative ways to help you mark the significance of this occasion as you close out your high school career.
The private bus owners associations have started drawing up elaborate plans on how to restrict the total number of passengers on board to 20 at a time, as they are apprehending practical constraints in maintaining social distance norms on buses, which are likely to resume operations in Kolkata from next week amid the easing of lockdown restriction norms that were imposed to contain the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak.

Earlier, the ruling Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal allowed state-run buses top operate on 13 routes, which have been running between 7 am and 7 pm daily, after the nationwide lockdown 2:0 ended on May 3. But these public buses are mostly overcrowded and flouting social distancing norms, causing concern for private bus owners associations.

The state government directed us during a recent meeting that each bus should carry only 20 passengers at a time. Were looking at how to implement the challenging task, said Subrata Ghosh, honorary secretary of Bengal Bus Syndicate, one of the major bus owners associations in Kolkata.

Coronavirus outbreak: Full coverage

The syndicate has decided to keep personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks and sanitisers handy for passengers. Though the syndicate is willing to distribute hand sanitisers for free on buses, passengers will have to pay for a mask.

Usually, the doors at private buses are open, allowing passengers to hop in and out. But, now the doors will be closed in a bid to maintain social distancing norms. No passenger can board a bus without a conductors permission. Also, a bus wont stop at all the designated halts, if 20 passengers are on board. If any passenger forcibly tries to board a bus, the nearest traffic sergeants attention will be drawn for the indiscretion, said Ghosh.

The state government is likely to give its nod to hike the private buses fare, as they would incur losses for restricting the number of passengers to only 20 at a time. The syndicate has proposed a three-fold hike in fare to state transport minister Suvendu Adhikari. The proposal is under the TMC governments consideration.

Kolkata Traffic Police will carry out regular checks on private buses to ensure that social distancing norms are maintained. Well take actions, if we receive any complaints, said R Kumar, deputy commissioner, Kolkata Traffic Police.

The traditional yellow private taxis will also become operational in the city from Monday, albeit with a 30% hike in fare structure.

Passengers will have to pay 30% extra over and above the fare shown on the metre. Only two passengers will be allowed to travel in each taxi and they will only be seated on the back seat. The passengers need to compulsorily wear masks and sanitise their hands, said Bimal Guha, general secretary, Bengal Taxi Association.

Restricted public conveyance is being allowed in Kolkata from next week, despite the fact that the city figures prominently in the red zone and is reporting the maximum number of Covid-19 cases from the state daily.

Out of the 2,377 Covid-19 positive cases reported in Bengal till May 14, Kolkata accounted for around 50% of them.

While 94 Covid-19 related deaths have been reported from the city  the highest in the state.

Earlier, the Mamata Banerjee-led state government had been criticised by the visiting central inter-ministerial teams for non-compliance with lockdown restrictions.

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The Embassy of Vietnam in Japan is closely following the investigation into the murder of a Vietnamese technical intern and will carry out the necessary citizen protection measures to ensure his legitimate rights and interests.

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang

Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang made the statement on May 14 at a regular press conference.

According to the Embassy in Japan, on May 12 the Toyama Chuo Police Station announced the arrest of a Vietnamese person from Hai Phong city who was working at the Takeda Shoji Company in Toyama prefecture on suspicion of being involved in the killing of a citizen from Ha Tinh province, she said.

Local police are now investigating and collecting evidence, she added.

According to Hang, on April 23 the Ha Tinh provincial Department of Foreign Affairs sought help in searching for a missing citizen in Japan. The ministry directed the embassy to contact local police to verify the information and seek the persons whereabouts.

The Toyama Chuo Police Station said on May 7 that the body of the Vietnamese citizen had been found in an area near his dormitory.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has directed the Consular Department to coordinate with domestic and foreign agencies in settling the workers interests in accordance with regulations and to provide guidance and support to the victims family.

The embassy is working closely with relevant parties and Vietnamese associations in Japan to complete funeral procedures and bring the victims ashes home./.VNA
The Health Minister is facing a potential legal challenge as pressure builds for a public inquiry into the handling of coronavirus in care homes.

Belfast solicitor Kevin Winters has written to Robin Swann to request that such a probe be proposed in the Assembly.

It comes amid increasing alarm over the official response to protecting some of the most vulnerable members of society from the deadly virus and the news that 40 residents at a Belfast care home have been diagnosed with Covid-19 two weeks after being free of the virus.

Concerns have been raised over the supply of personal protective equipment (PPE), a lack of testing, reduction in inspections and residents returning to homes after leaving hospital.

Mr Winters, who is representing a number of families with relatives living in care homes, said the letter to Mr Swann was the first step in efforts to secure a public inquiry.

He added the families were willing to launch legal action if Mr Swann failed to set up a probe and stressed that the minister must not delay.

"Given the vicious pace at which this virus spreads, this request cannot come quickly enough," Mr Winters said.

"These residents are the most vulnerable of all in society, yet instead of being prioritised for oversight they are downgraded because they are elderly.

"An inquiry would afford an opportunity for failures to be exposed, accountability to be secured and reforms to be proposed."

The request for a public inquiry comes after it was claimed that residents and staff at a Bangor care home have been put at risk of catching Covid-19 due to misuse of PPE.

The Croft Community, a residential and supported living facility, has been handed a failure to comply notice by health watchdog the Regulation and Quality Improvement Authority (RQIA).

However, a statement from the care home added further weight to claims that private care providers have not received sufficient official support.

A spokeswoman said: "We are disappointed that the RQIA have issued a failure to comply notice.

"There has been much confusion and ambiguity around the use of PPE in supported living environments.

"As an organisation, we will continue to work with our staff and provide specific guidance, training and supervision to ensure they are compliant with the correct use of PPE and its disposal. We are thankful that to date we have had no service users or staff displaying any symptoms of Covid-19."

The RQIA carried out an unannounced inspection of the home on May 5 after receiving a tip-off about alleged breaches in health and safety standards.

The watchdog found that four out of five workers were using their PPE incorrectly, including staff removing face masks and pulling them down from their faces.

Face masks were also not being changed, "which raised concern in relation to infection prevention and control and cross-contamination", the RQIA said.

The failure to use PPE correctly was uncovered after management at the home had given assurances that they were following guidance issued by Public Health England.

The inspection of the Croft Community facility is one of nine that have occurred since the RQIA suspended its routine inspection programme in March in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

The direction from the Department of Health to halt routine inspections is at the centre of a High Court row, with leave granted last week for a judicial review into whether the decision was lawful.

Speaking at the Stormont health committee yesterday, RQIA interim chief executive Dermot Parsons defended the move, which he said was taken to reduce the spread of the virus in care homes.
As the United States continues its grand reopening experiment, easing coronavirus restrictions that have crippled the nations economy, other countries are also looking to return to the way life was before the arrival of the pandemic.

Of course, the virus has not yet run its course, and while many governments are hoping that the worst is over, lifting restrictions too soon poses risks. With global economic losses expected to top $5.8 trillion, however, its no secret why world leaders are eager for their citizens to get back to work.

Heres a sampling of how different nations are attempting to reboot.

Brazil

Due to the implementation of expanded and more restrictive car rotation, the number of passengers on public transport in Sao Paulo has increased considerably. (Fabio Vieira/FotoRua/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

Thanks to a feud with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro over whether to promote the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the fast-growing number of COVID-19 cases there, Brazils top health official, Nelson Teich, resigned Friday. Bolsonaro, who, like President Trump, is a booster of the antimalarial drug that has shown poor results treating COVID-19 in clinical trials, had fired Teichs predecessor less than a month ago amid a debate over whether Brazil should institute social distancing practices.

While Bolsonaro, like Trump, is urging citizens to return to normal life, Brazil is now recording more than 800 deaths per day, the New York Times reported. Only the United States has a higher daily number. Overall, more than 200,000 people have tested positive for COVID-19 in Brazil, and more than 14,000 have died from it.

Slovenia

Pedestrians in Ljubljana, Slovenia. (Borut Zivulovic/Reuters)

On Thursday, Prime Minister Janez Jansa declared that Slovenia has tamed the epidemic and has the best epidemiologic picture in Europe. In the last 14 days, Slovenia reported just 35 new cases of COVID-19. Overall, 1,460 people have tested positive for the virus and just 103 have died from it.

On Monday, some schools will reopen. International travel, as well as public transit, will resume. But the government will also continue to follow a routine of testing, contact tracing and isolation in order to make sure the virus doesnt mount a resurgence.

Story continues

Sweden

Stockholm's central train station. (Henrik Montgomery/TT News Agency via Reuters)

Unlike its European neighbors, Sweden never issued mandatory shelter-in-place orders for its citizens to try to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Social distancing was voluntary for its 10.2 million residents, and businesses and elementary and middle schools have largely remained open as the pandemic worked its way north from Italy and Spain.

While the government did ban public gatherings of more than 50 people, restricted bar service and forced high schools and universities to switch to online learning, the goal was to achieve herd immunity from the virus, which would necessitate at least 60 percent of the population catching it.

The thinking was that if a large percentage of the population could develop antibodies for COVID-19 while the most vulnerable citizens were kept in quarantine, the country would be better off as the search for a vaccine drags on. In reality, however, nearly half of Swedens 3,646 reported COVID-19 deaths have been of senior citizens living in assisted care. Sweden has also recorded more than three times the number of deaths reported in Norway, Denmark and Finland combined and has a higher death rate from the disease per capita than the United States.

Russia

Mourners wear face masks at a cemetery on the outskirts of Saint Petersburg, Russia. (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)

With at least 262,843 reported cases of COVID-19 as of Friday, Russia has leapfrogged nations like Spain, Italy and the U.K. to claim second place behind the U.S. for the most known infections from the virus. Yet Vladimir Putins government stands accused of drastically underreporting the number of deaths caused by the virus.

As of Friday, Moscow had tallied just 2,418 deaths. Russian health officials attribute the low death rate there to preparations put in place before the pandemic arrived. On Monday, Putin delivered a televised address to his country announcing the lifting of some restrictions. Large gatherings remained forbidden, and residents of Moscow must wear a mask and gloves when in public.

Germany

A worker in Berlin prepares for a restaurant reopening. (Fabrizio Bensch/Reuters)

Restaurants and bars are set to reopen in Germany this weekend, and students will begin returning to classrooms. But the lockdown measures put in place to curb the spread of the coronavirus have already taken a severe economic toll. Official figures released Friday show that Germanys economy  the largest in Europe  shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2020, meaning it is now officially in a recession that is forecast to continue in the second quarter.

This week, new coronavirus cases and deaths continued to rise, with 927 new cases and 123 deaths reported on Wednesday. Despite warning that lockdown measures could be brought back if the infection rate rises, Chancellor Angela Merkel seems to have concluded that a modest increase in coronavirus statistics is an acceptable tradeoff to resuming economic activity.

China

Residents of Wuhan, China, wait in line to be tested for COVID-19. (AFP via Getty Images)

President Trump and officials on the coronavirus task force have stated that they dont trust the Chinese governments official tally of COVID-19 infections and deaths, which both appear to be extraordinarily low. To date, China has said more than 84,000 of its citizens have tested positive for the disease and 4,633 have been killed by it, a fraction of the more than 1.4 million cases and more than 86,000 deaths reported in the U.S.

While China has recently lifted many restrictions put in place in January to slow the spread of the coronavirus, the economic impact of the measures continues to be felt. In the first quarter of 2020, the countrys economy shrank for the first time since 1976.

Cover thumbnail photo: Daniel Cymbalista/Fotoarena/Sipa USA via AP

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Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

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On April 19, 2019, the Yundum Barracks, a military encampment 40 minutes drive from the Gambian capital Banjul, was the scene of unusual activity. The remains of seven soldiers summarily executed and buried in the camp on November 11, 1994, were exhumed by the Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations Commission (TRRC). In total, the Commissions investigations had revealed that at least eleven soldiers were executed on that day at different times and places.

As an excavator truck dug, family members sobbed. In their midst was Abdul Aziz Barrow. He is the son of Lieutenant Basiru Barrow, one of the soldiers executed. He was barely a year old when his father was murdered. Now he was 26. When I first arrived at the scene of excavation, for some reason, I felt empty on the inside. Empty in the sense that I saw the remains of seven people and one among them could have been the dad I never knew, he said. The dad I yearned for the companionship when I was but a toddler.

The victims frustrating wait for answers

In November 1994, Lieutenant Barrow and his colleagues were accused of planning to topple Yahya Jammeh, who had taken power through a military coup barely four months earlier. Jammehs onetime close friend and then Minister of Defence Edward Singhatey confirmed to the Truth Commission that the order to kill them came from Jammeh. It was Sanna Sabally, the juntas vice-president at the time, who led the mission that would eventually cost the lives of eleven soldiers for their alleged plot. According to testimonies before the TRRC, the soldiers were lined up with their hands tied behind them and shot point blank.

It took the exhumation team of the TRRC almost a week to find some of the remains at the Yundum Barracks. Seven ropes reportedly used to tie the victims were found in the mass grave where the seven remains were found, corroborating the testimonies heard by the Commission. I couldnt cry and I remained calm for the simple reason that I didnt even know how I should have felt, said Aziz Barrow.

It has been over a year since the TRRC made its first successful exhumation. No other remains were uncovered and the identity of those that were found are yet to be established. For the family members, it is a source of frustration. I feel frustrated not just because of having to wait too long but for the simple fact that the TRRC never reached out to update us on the latest developments regarding the remains of our loved ones, said Aziz Barrow.

He is not the only one complaining about the slow pace. We have waited for over 20 years and now, after exhumations, we had to wait for over a year again. That is a difficult thing, said Mamudou Sillah, a younger brother of Cadet Amadou Sillah, one of the soldiers believed to be among the exhumed remains. When you bury the remains, you can put the past behind you, but without that, how can you? Sillah asked.

Abdul Aziz Barrow was barely a year old when his father was executed in 1994, on the orders of Yahya Jammeh, according to several testimonies.  Mustapha K. Darboe

Lack of communication

The identification process for the remains is underway, assured the Commission. But the remains, in custody of the coroners office at Gambias main hospital in Banjul, are yet to be subjected to DNA test and the Commission relies entirely on outside expertise for DNA testing.

It is unclear how the current pandemic will affect the search and identification work in this regard but I would call on the TRRC to discuss their plans with the families of those forcibly disappeared and to have them at the centre of this process, said Nana-Jo Ndow, the Executive Director of African Network against Extrajudicial Killings and Enforced Disappearances (ANEKED), an NGO. It is crucial to increase the line of communication with families affected to set expectations and ensure they are not left in the dark as they await forensic results, she said.

Nana-Jo Ndow is herself a victim. Her father Saul Ndow disappeared in Gambia in April 2013 when she was 27. Saul Ndow, a father of five, was a critic of Jammeh. He disappeared alongside a Gambian lawmaker for Jammehs Alliance for Patriotic Reorientation and Construction Party, Mahawa Cham. A former hitman under Jammehs regime, Nuha Badgie, has confessed before the TRRC to participating in Ndows murder.

Earlier this year, Nana-Jo Ndow directed a documentary film, I Cannot Bury My Father, featuring Ghanaian families whose relatives were allegedly killed in Gambia in 2005. The 54 West African migrants who were reportedly travelling to Europe were captured and executed, on the orders of former president Yahya Jammeh, according to the testimonies of two of Jammehs hitmen, Omar Jallow and Malick Jatta, who participated in the executions.

In 2019, another member of Jammehs hit squad, Amadou Badgie, admitted participating into the disappearance of two Americans, Ebou Jobe and Mamut Ceesay, in 2013. According to the TRRC, the United States has offered assistance in the investigations. The government has since visited the suspected burial sites of the missing individuals and efforts are underway to continue work on these sites, the TRRC said in an interim report published on April 29.

A hundred disappeared and 5 suspected burial sites

Thanks to testimonies of dozens of witnesses appearing before the TRRC, some of the unmarked graves where the disappeared may be found are being located. The Commission has estimated that it may help find at least one hundred individuals. It has so far identified six suspected burial sites in Kanilai, Jammehs home village, Yundum Barracks, Siffoe, Jambur, Baboon Island and Barra. Now on its second and possibly final year of operation, the TRRC will therefore focus on searching for these burial sites and recovering the remains in order to positively identify who they are and returning them to their families, said the interim report.

It would be Gambias first attempt to conduct mass exhumations. In 2017, two separate exhumations were carried out by the Gambia police leading to identification of the remains of four individuals killed in 2014 and 2016. In 2018 Justice Rapid Response, an intergovernmental mechanism, with financial support from Canada, helped identify victims and determine causes of death. Three of those exhumed were soldiers who lost their lives in an attempt to topple Jammeh on December 30, 2014. The fourth one was Solo Sandeng, an opposition leader who died in state custody on April 15, 2016, a day after he was picked up at a protest. (In January 2019, Gambias Justice Ministry handed over to the families the remains of the three soldiers; however, the remains of Sandeng are in the custody of the courts as seven of his alleged killers are standing trial for his murder.)

Recommended reading Gambia unearths its past

Lack of expertise and equipment

The TRRC has to entirely rely on eye witness testimonies to identify the mass graves. For instance, the Commission was told that more people may be buried at the Yundum Barracks. However, there is no consensus on where these mass graves may be. One of the areas identified to be a burial site has a building sitting on top of it, said the Commission in its interim report.

There is also a capacity challenge. The TRRC has only one forensic archaeologist. Other members of its team have ancillary trainings. The exhumations could take a lot of time to be completed, the Commissions executive secretary Dr Baba Galleh Jallow told Justice Info.

We are still constrained both in terms of expertise and equipment, added Essa Jallow, the Commissions director of communication. In order to ensure an efficient exhumation process in a more professional and timely manner, the TRRC would need the services of more experts such as a forensic anthropologist, and a ballistics expert because some of the victims in most of the cases we will be dealing with are believed to have died from gunshot wounds. We also need to have a ground-penetrating radar to save time and resources in the search process.

More wait for the victims

Justice Minister Abubacarr Tambadou said his ministry is looking for funding to ensure the Commission brings remains of the disappeared back to their families. In Nana-Jo Ndows view, it will be necessary to coordinate with international forensic specialists, as done in 2018, to ensure that the remains exhumed are promptly identified and returned to families and avoid delays.

Even then, Essa Jallow already warned that the TRRC would not be able to fulfil a task that is part of its mandate. We will not be able to test for the presence of human remains in all the sites identified by the commission within the two year mandate, he said.

Meanwhile Aziz Barrow and hundreds of other relatives of the disappeared will have to wait. The idea of him [Lieutenant Basiru Barrow] finally laying to rest is all we yearn for and the sooner it is done, the better, Aziz Barrow said. It will also bring a sense of finality to all the misery and emotional turmoil we have been going through as a family since 1994.
Diversified developer Mirvac is bolstering its Melbourne office and build-to-rent pipeline, submitting fresh plans for two large towers on a key city-grid corner site.

The $8 billion ASX-listed property trust will add another substantial 472 unit build-to-rent apartment block to its development portfolio if state planners approve changes to a master plan on the corner of Spencer and Flinders streets, a site it purchased on Christmas Eve last year for $200 million.

Mirvac is bolstering its Melbourne office and build-to-rent pipeline. Credit:

Rising 33 levels on the former Melbourne Convention Centre site, the build-to-rent tower will be the third similar project Mirvac, led by managing director Susan Lloyd-Hurwitz, is actively pushing ahead in Melbourne.

Mirvac's pivot to build-to-rent - a housing model in which the building is held under one owner and leased long-term to tenants - was pioneered by its LIV Indigo project at Sydney Olympic Park, Australia's first large scale build-to-rent development, which has 315 rental dwellings due to be completed in mid-2020.
In a post COVID-19 future, health and economy should go together: WHO regional director

SINGAPORE, May 14 (Xinhua) -- As the world moves forward from COVID-19, societies should look to create a new normal where health and the economy go hand in hand, said a World Health Organization (WHO)'s regional director in a virtual media briefing Thursday.

The joint media briefing, hosted by the World Economic Forum in partnership with the WHO, explored the impact of COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic on Asia.

Takeshi Kasai, WHO's regional director for the Western Pacific, noted that the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed the world, and did so at "lightning speed."

It also presents an unprecedented opportunity to fix the flaws and fractures in the health systems and in society, and to find new ways of thinking, living and working.

"In moving forward, we should create a new normal, in which we don't have to choose between health and livelihoods," he said.

While the government is central in steering countries into the future, the private sector is critical as well, said Kasai.

It needs flexible and innovative ways to reopen and conduct businesses while taking steps to reduce the spread of the virus at the workplace, and to find new ways to deliver goods and services, he said.

Agreeing, fellow panellist and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Secretariat executive director Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria, who is based in Singapore, said moving forward, governments need more support for the healthcare system and social protection.

It is even more important that countries should not "retreat into protectionist measures", but collectively work together to support each other so they can emerge stronger from the crisis, she added.

This can take the form of open markets, stable trade and investment environment so that trade and investment continues to flow, especially to facilitate the flow of medical goods and keep essentials affordable, she said.

Kasai warned that the pandemic is far from over and countries should prepare themselves for a situation of large-scale community transmission by engaging communities and strengthening healthcare capacities, he said.

What has worked well in the region has been through pro-active detecting and isolating cases, tracing and quarantining their contacts and stringent safe distancing measures to manage COVID-19, he said.

Going ahead, societies should continue to be vigilant and not rush to lift public health movement restrictions, but to ease measures in phases (based on scientific evidence and data in the local context) to prevent new wave of infections.

"As long as the virus is circulating in this interconnected world, and until we have a safe and effective vaccine available, everyone remains at risk," he said.

The other two speakers of media briefing were Tan Hooi Ling, co-founder of Grab, the Southeast Asia's ride-hailing giant; and Warren Fernandez, editor-in-chief of he Straits Times and chairman of Asia News Network.
Osborne Village was already in a stubborn slump before pandemic measures extinguished what street life remained and businesses that brought people to the strip were forced to close in April.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Osborne Village was already in a stubborn slump before pandemic measures extinguished what street life remained and businesses that brought people to the strip were forced to close in April.

Popular Osborne Village tapas eatery to close permanently Click to Expand PHIL HOSSACK / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Segovia restaurant announced on its Instagram account Wednesday it is going out of business. Posted: 10:31 PM May. 13, 2020 ANOTHER Winnipeg restaurant  this time a high-profile Osborne Village eatery  is closing permanently. It had been closed during the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown. Segovia, known for its Spanish-influenced small plates, announced on its Instagram account Wednesday it is going out of business. Read Full Story

Now, with the loss of popular dinner spot Segovia Tapas Bar and Restaurant on Stradbrook Avenue, remaining business owners are holding on to hope the neighbourhood will bounce back from the economic shutdown.

"The attraction of Osborne Village is its made up of individual owners, small businesses and we dont have a plethora of franchise restaurants," said Brian Timmerman, executive director of the Osborne Village Business Improvement Zone.

"With the pandemic, weve been keeping our ears to the ground to make sure that if something is happening, like with Segovia, we take that into consideration," he said. "So when, hopefully, the pandemic works itself through, were prepared to service the owners that are coming back to the stores."

On Wednesday, the owners of Segovia announced the restaurant would not reopen its doors when public health orders are eventually lifted.

Another permanent business closure in the neighbourhood stings, Baked Expectations owner Beth Grubert said. Segovia had been a family-favourite dining spot in addition to being a great commercial neighbour, she said.

"Any closure, especially one like that is hard to take and certainly sad and these times are so trying that its very difficult to see that kind of thing," Grubert said.

She said shes seen businesses come and go, and is optimistic one or more clever entrepreneurs could be successful in the Village when the economy is favourable. Shes also counting on people to support the urban village concept when more businesses reopen.

"The Village has been cyclical for all 37 years that I've been here and we go through ups and downs, and theres no question that even before the pandemic we were in a bit of a down," Grubert said. "Times like this are very trying and difficult, but because Ive seen so many comebacks I have faith.

"People are going to show their creative sides," she said. "Theyre going to have to figure out what to do to keep it going."

JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Remaining Osborne Village business owners are holding on to hope the neighbourhood will bounce back from the economic shutdown.

Osborne Village seemed to be rounding the corner on its chronic vacancy issues right before the pandemic struck, Timmerman said. Local spin studio Saikel had recently joined the neighbourhood and Mary Browns Chicken is set to open near Tokyo Smoke on Stradbrook Avenue.

The owners of Toad in the Hole pub received occupancy permits and operating licenses for their new location right before public health orders halted beer from flowing. And down the road, renovations are complete on the new Pho Hoang and Rollesque location, owner Tom Hoang said.

He planned to open the dining room for service in April but the pandemic has temporarily paused those plans. However, the Osborne location will open for take out and delivery on May 22, he said.

Real estate broker and property manager Graeme Rowswell confirmed a dental office will also open where Into the Music used to be as soon as possible.

The demolition this spring of the former Osborne Village Motor Inn, which sat empty for years, has also buoyed BIZ members, Timmerman said. The property is being developed into a mixed-use residential complex with 207 rental apartments and ground floor commercial units.

"We are undergoing some sort of transition period in Osborne village," Timmerman said.

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JOHN WOODS / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Renovations are complete on the new Pho Hoang and Rollesque location, owner Tom Hoang said.

A few big holes in the Osborne streetscape remain, including the expansive space that formerly housed the Toad at 112 Osborne St., which Premier Property Solutions president Nik Fast is hoping to fill.

"Since the pandemic, the phone calls and inquiries have slowed down, and I think everyone is nervous," Fast said. "Were willing to work with anyone who comes along with a good idea and a plan and is reasonable in their expectations."

Fast said hes close to reaching an agreement with a tenant who plans to bring a pub concept back into a portion of the building.

"We need to get through this pandemic, whatever that means, and if thats open for business like before, thatd be amazing," he said. "But if we can at least get open for business and we have people moving into the vacant spaces  I think landlords and tenants are going to have to work together to make it happen so it works for both parties."

danielle.dasilva@freepress.mb.ca
Syrian refugees living in Lebanon are being forced from their homes and the coronavirus pandemic continues to grip the country reports Sowt Al-Asima.

The Access Center for Human Rights released a report Tuesday on the most prominent violations facing Syrians in Lebanon over the course of the coronavirus pandemic.

The group recorded four cases of forced evictions against Syrian refugees by landlords in a number of regions in Lebanon, amid deteriorating living conditions due to the coronavirus lockdown and scarcity of work.

The forced evictions of Syrian refugees may expose them to the risks of family separation and other serious violations, noting that people who have been expelled have temporarily taken refuge with some friends or relatives, which may also expose them to risks due to some municipalities preventing Syrian refugees from receiving visitors in their areas of residence, according to the report.

In one case mentioned in the report, municipal workers in the town of Tallouseh in the Marjayoun district refused to allow a Syrian refugee to enter the town even though he had been living there for the past eight years. His landlord did now allow him to collect his belongings until he paid his past two months rent.

In another case, municipal police in the Saida district town of Alman evicted a family of Syrian refugees after a resident stopped one family member while he was out buying necessities. The resident justified stopping him on the pretext of the curfew, despite the man having left his house during the allowed time slot.

According to the report, the Access Center documented these violations between Apr. 15 and May 7, 2020. The center also recorded 100 cases of arbitrary arrests of Syrian refugees by various political and social parties over the course of 2019.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
State legislators from Cumberland County are overtly encouraging businesses to re-open in defiance of Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolfs COVID-19 mitigation orders, days after a push for the county commissioners to sign on to such campaign failed.

State Sen. Mike Regan held an event Thursday morning at Sheps Barber Shop in East Pennsboro Township, where owner Brad Shepler has opened in violation of the pandemic emergency order.

Shepler recently shared on social media a letter he received from the state threatening the revocation of his barbers license and a citation that can carry a fine of up to $10,000.

Id like to ask all of you out there, especially small business owners who would like to get back to work and get our lives back to normal, stand up with me, Shepler said. Lets make those that sacrificed so much to preserve our freedoms, lets make them proud again.

I plan to stand on the stoop of every business in York and Cumberland county that receives one of these obnoxious and threatening letters, Regan said, calling for President Donald Trump to investigate and remedy this egregious overreach of authority by Wolf, whose actions he described as the behavior of a bully.

State Sen. Doug Mastriano likewise told the crowd on Thursday that its time to rise up and stand together.

Weve got to hang together here and stand shoulder-to-shoulder, Mastriano said.

Weve got your backs. Were fighting with you. Im not saying theres no risk, but theres risk with business every day, state Rep. Dawn Keefer said. But weve got to all assume some of this risk, and its worth it, I believe, for our freedoms.

The state lawmakers reassurance that they will defend business owners who violate the pandemic lockdown comes days after a dispute with the Cumberland County commissioners over the wisdom of such a move.

The countys state legislative delegation signed a letter to Wolf on Saturday notifying him of the countys intent to move itself to the next phase of his re-opening plan effective Friday. The legislators sought the endorsement of the commissioners, who declined, saying they werent going to promote businesses taking such legally risky actions.

The legislators subsequently modified their letter to read as a request that Wolf move Cumberland County to the yellow phase as of May 15. The commissioners also wrote their own letter to the governor to urge him to move forward with the countys re-opening, but without a specific date attached.

The county also issued an open letter to residents clarifying that it was not moving toward a unilateral re-opening, in the manner that some other counties have announced.

In addition to Regan, Mastriano, and Keefer, state Sen. Judy Ward and Reps. Barb Gleim, Greg Rothman and Torren Ecker signed the letters to Wolf and spoke at Thursdays rally.

Even if the desire to move to Wolfs yellow phase was met, it would fall far short of helping Sheplers cause. Hair salons and other activities require physical touching, and thus cannot adhere to social distancing guidelines, are still not permitted under the Wolfs yellow phase. Most retail, however, is allowed to resume with certain precautions.

Much of the clamor over Wolfs piecemeal re-opening procedure has come from economic distress, with 1.8 million Pennsylvanians having made an initial unemployment claim since mid-March. Backlogs with the states unemployment system, and spotty access to federal small business loans, have exacerbated the issue.

On Thursday, Regan said that Shepler had not applied for the financial aid he was eligible for, describing the programs as government handouts.

Brad didnt want to take a government handout and based on what he was hearing from others, he had no confidence the broken unemployment compensation system would actually come through for him and his family, Regan said, adding that Shepler was facing considerable legal consequences all for wanting to feed his family, all for not wanting to take a government handout.

Asked if he had concerns that Shepler does not wear a mask to cut hair, Regan said one of the things I think hes saying is that hes an American and this is America and people can decide if they want to come in and get a haircut or not.

Up until a couple weeks ago we were standing in lines, in long lines, at Walmart next to people not wearing masks, Regan said.

I know what level risk Im willing to take and if theyre not comfortable with that, Im fine with that, Shepler said. I only cut hair for people who voluntarily come to my shop.

Multiple legislators pointed out that the majority of known cases and deaths in Cumberland County are in nursing homes  289 cases out of 477 total in the county, as of Wednesday night, as well as 36 of 37 deaths.

State officials, including Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine, have cautioned that this should not be taken as a sign of reduced risk, given that COVID-19 does not spontaneously occur in nursing homes and must logically be brought in as a result of spread in the community outside the facility.

COVID-19 has continued to spread to new nursing homes and personal care facilities in Cumberland County. Eight locations now have cases, according to state data; as recently as May 8, that number was five.

Cumberland County legislators blamed Wolf for not being able to come up with universal testing for congregate care facilities sooner; the state announced this week that it had secured enough tests to do so. They also assailed Levines background as a pediatrician, and accused Wolf of propagating flawed models about the virus spread.

We have flattened the curve, and the governor knows that, Gleim said.

The goal of this was to flatten the curve and allow our health care providers to catch up and prepare for what might come, but weve done that, weve met that, and now we keep moving the goalposts, Keefer said.

Cumberland County has recorded 134 new cases of COVID-19 in the past two weeks, according to state data, or about 53 new cases per 100,000 residents. Wolf and Levine have said a target of less than 50 cases per 100,000 people in the preceding 14 days is a key component of deciding when to move counties into the yellow zone, though it is not the only factor.

Out of those 134 new cases, 19 have been among nursing or personal care home employees, 72 among residents of such homes, and 43 among the rest of the population.

Cumberland County hospitals have 80 ventilators, according to state data, of which seven are being used for COVID-19 patients and 21 are in use for patients with other ailments.

Photos: President Trump makes stop in Allentown Thursday
A mechanic works at automotive supplier ZF Friedrichshafen factory floor. (Felix Kastle/picture alliance via Getty Images)

Germanys GDP contracted by 2.2% in the first quarter of 2020 from the previous quarter, as the coronavirus pandemic dented Europes largest economy. On the year, the economy contracted by 2.3%.

This was the largest quarterly decline since the first quarter of 2009, during the height of the global financial and economic crisis, and the second largest drop since German reunification in 1990, according to the Federal Statistics Bureau on Friday. The bureau also revised down its fourth-quarter GDP reading to -0.1%, meaning the economy is already in recession.

Things will get worse before they get better, said ING chief economist Carsten Brzeski in a note. If todays data are the result of two weeks of lockdown, three more weeks of lockdown and a very gradual lifting of some measures do not bode well for the second quarter.

The Munich-based Ifo economic institute forecasted a drop of 12.2% in the second quarter, revised down from their previous estimate of a 9.8% drop.

Data coming out of Europes largest economy has been gloomy for the past several months, unsurprisingly since the spread of coronavirus first in China, Germanys most important trading partner, and then across Europe shattered supply chains. Nationwide lockdowns from mid-March effectively killed consumer demand.

The government predicts that exports will be down by 11% year-on-year in 2020, and economic growth this year will shrink to minus 6.3%, which will constitute the worst recession for the country since the Second World War.

New industrial orders in Germany in March plunged by over 15.6% from February for the biggest slump since 1991.

READ MORE: Coronavirus: Factory orders for Europes biggest economy tank 15%

Under pressure from state leaders keen to boost their economies, chancellor Angela Merkel last week handed them the responsibility for making their own strategies to ease the lockdowns, for the promise that they will re-impose tight, localised lockdowns if there are fresh spikes in the infection rate.

Germany will re-open its borders with Austria, France, Switzerland, and Luxembourg from Friday, and the rest of its borders by the middle of June.

According to Johns Hopkins University data, Germany has so far confirmed 174,000 cases of coronavirus, and 7,884 deaths from COVID-19.
tech2 News Staff

GoQii has launched new Vital 3.0 fitness band in India. With its sensors that detect body temperature, GoQii claims that the fitness band could help in early COVID-19 detection and tracing.

The GoQii Vital 3.0 track vitals like body temperature, heart rate, blood pressure and sleep, in addition to step and calorie count.

GOQii has also partnered with German health tech startup Thryve to conduct a clinical study in India to detect COVID-19 infections earlier than testing.

The fitness band comes with an in-built temperature display and thermal sensor. "The continuous monitoring feature and the on-demand feature is for users who would like to check it at their convenience. The temperature range is 77F to 113 F with an accuracy of +/- 0.3 F ", GoQii announced.

"Governments, Hospitals, Schools, BPOs, Insurance, Banking, Ride-sharing, Food delivery, E-Commerce & Logistics companies around the world are in talks with us to use the GOQii Vital 3.0. Combined usage of the detection algorithm and the GOQii Vital 3.0 Smart Band can help significantly in isolating potential COVID-19 patients and preventing further spread. We are confident that the clinical study will show positive results in predicting COVID-19 infection,, said Vishal Gondal, Founder and CEO of GoQii.

As for other specifications and features, the Vital 3.0 features a coloured display, it's waterproof, it shows notifications for messages, calls, WhatsApp, Facebook, others, its has built-in USB charger, and can apparently offer up to 7-day battery life.

GOQii Vital 3.0 will be available in India in phases and on an immediate basis for the frontline workers, government and private enterprises. The company also plans to eventually launch the band in the US, UK, Australia, Japan, UAE, Singapore, and other countries.

Priced at Rs 3,999, the GoQii Vital 3.0 will be available for order from the GOQii App and will be soon available on online platforms like Amazon and Flipkart.
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Global Urgent Care Apps Market was valued US $ 398.4 Mn in 2017 and is expected to reach US $ 4832 Mn by 2026, at a CAGR of 36.61% during a forecast period.



The report is majorly segmented into types, Clinical Areas, and region. Further, Urgent Care Apps Market based on type includes Pre-hospital Emergency Care & amp; Triaging Apps, In-hospital Communication & amp; Collaboration Apps, Post-hospital Apps, Medication Management Apps, Rehabilitation Apps, and Care Provider Communication & amp; Collaboration Apps. Further, Clinical Area includes Trauma, Stroke, Cardiac Conditions, and Other Clinical Areas.



The report segments the Urgent Care Apps market into various sub-segments, hence it covers the market comprehensively. The market numbers are further split across different regions the report had segmented the geographies into five continents i.e. North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, and Middle East & Africa. Detailed analysis by region with the competitive landscape & benchmarking of the key players make the report comprehensive and enable the informed decision making.

Request For Report Sample@ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/10819

Based on the type, the post-hospital apps category held the large share in the global urgent care apps industry. Rising awareness of mobile apps to manage medications among patients is a major reason for the post-hospital category being the large share of the market. Since an increasing number of road accidents, the trauma category i.e. to physical injuries of sudden onset is estimated to be large in a market. The stroke segment is expected to grow at the high growth rate in the next few years because the increasing number of stroke patientas i.e sudden death of brain cells due to lack of oxygen, caused by blockage of blood flow and rising number of players providing stroke specific apps used in Emergency Medical Services and rehabilitation facilities.

The growth of urgent care apps market is affected by a number of factors, such as the increasing the selling product of the company in a particular area. Some benefits of urgent care apps are growing penetration of 3G and 4G networks, rising concentration on patient-centric healthcare delivery by using smartphones. The major factors that are expected to restrain the growth of urgent care apps market during the forecast period. Such as the wide usage of consumer instant messaging apps, poor internet connectivity in several countries, and the high volume of miscategorized apps on Android and Apple stores. The increasing focus on patient-centric healthcare delivery and the implementation of patient data safety regulations are the major drivers of the urgent care apps market.



Taking into an account of the geographical landscape, the North American region was large during the historical period and it is predicted to remain as the large region throughout the forecast period as well. The increasing focus on patient-centric healthcare delivery and the implementation of patient data safety regulations are the major drivers of the urgent care apps industry in North America.

Get Complete TOC with Tables and Figures@ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/10819

Some of the major players in the urgent care apps market are Pulsara, Allm Inc., Johnson & amp; Johnson Services Inc., Vocera Communications, PatientSafe Solutions, TigerConnect, and others.

Scope of Global Urgent Care Apps Market:

Global Urgent Care Apps Market, by Type

Pre-hospital Emergency Care & amp; Triaging Apps

In-hospital Communication & amp; Collaboration Apps

Post-hospital Apps

Medication Management Apps

Rehabilitation Apps

Care Provider Communication & amp; Collaboration Apps

Global Urgent Care Apps Market by Clinical Area:

Trauma

Stroke

Cardiac Conditions

Other Clinical Areas

Global Urgent Care Apps Market, by Region

North America

Europe

Middle East & amp; Africa

Asia Pacific

Latin America

Key players operated in Global Urgent Care Apps Market:

Pulsara

Allm Inc.

Johnson & amp; Johnson Services Inc.

Vocera Communications

PatientSafe Solutions

TigerConnect

Others.

<<< Get COVID-19 Report Analysis >>> https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/10819
Ukraine hopes that its strategic focus on EU and NATO membership will be reflected in the final document of the forthcoming Eastern Partnership summit.

Vice Prime Minister for European and Euro-Atlantic Integration of Ukraine Vadym Prystaiko said during the teleconference "Ukraine in the Eastern Partnership: Ambitions after 2020", an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Ukraine's strategic course remains unchanged  full-fledged membership, integration into the EU and NATO is a key basis of our foreign policy, and it has not changed. Although we have a discussion in society, but it is a sign of healthy society and healthy discussion in expert circles. But as a Vice Prime Minister, I can say that I do not feel that this course can be jeopardized. We are moving forward at full speed," the official stressed.

He underscored that Ukraine was in favor of a positive agenda of the Eastern Partnership, within which each country will be able to achieve the level of cooperation with the European Union it aspires to and deserves.

"We are convinced that the EU's policy towards the Eastern Partnership must be progressive, forward-looking, and imply a positive approach. So we can see new strategic goals for partners in the East. What we see in Ukraine is the gradual acquisition of access to all "four freedoms of the European Union [free movement of people, goods, services and capital]," Prystaiko said.

The Vice Prime Minister noted that the Ukrainian side regretted the fact that the EU's approach to this issue is not ambitious and strategic enough. He expressed hope that the parties would be able to elaborate a new agenda with the possibility of deeper integration of partner countries into the European Union by the next summit.

"I am convinced that together we will be able to adopt an ambitious joint declaration that will suit all parties. We also expect that the European Union will review its approaches towards cooperation with Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova. We came up with the idea of an enhanced dialogue with the EU We are ready to move forward with this. We believe that it is important for Ukraine, Georgia, and Moldova that this European instrument has separate and adequate funding and is intended exclusively for the EU's neighborhood. In this context, the development of a special financial instrument for the three associated countries is more than welcome," Prystaiko said.

ol
<! Fani-Kayode and Buhari >

Critic, Femi Fani-Kayode has called on the Federal Government to urgently halt massive killings by Fulani herdsmen as they kill more people in one week than Coronavirus.

He said it was time the President Muhammadu Buhari-led Federal Government stopped this madness of Fulani herdsmen.

According to Fani-Kayode, Fulani herdsmen kill more people in one week than Coronavirus that has been in Nigeria for two months.

He said the Federal Government has a duty and obligation to fight these barbaric mass murderers and terrorists slaughtering innocent people.

Fani-Kayode said the Federal Government must deploy the same energy being expended in fighting Coronavirus to waging war against killer Fulani herdsmen.

Fulani herdsmen kill more people in one week in Nigeria than COVID-19 has done in 2 months.

The FG has a duty and obligation to fight these barbaric and primitive mass murderers and terrorists who slaughter innocent & defenceless women and children as hard as they are fighting COVID-19, he said.
Scott Olson/Getty Images

An Indianapolis detective caught on video joking about the death of a 21-year-old fatally shot by police after a high-speed chase has been suspended by the department, a police spokesperson confirmed to The Daily Beast.

The detective, whose name has not been released, arrived at the scene of the May 6 shooting of Dreasjon Sean Reedwhich was apparently broadcast on Facebook Liveand can be heard saying on video: Looks like its going to be a closed casket, homie.

We are aware of inappropriate comments made by an IMPD detective on the livestream, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor said at a May 7 press conference. Let me be clear: These comments are unacceptable and unbecoming of our police department.

Please Come Get Me: Fatal Indianapolis Police Shooting May Have Aired on Facebook

An IMPD spokesperson confirmed that disciplinary action was taken against the detective on Thursday, stating that he was suspended for numerous days and has been reassigned to another unit. The spokesperson declined to provide further details due to the ongoing investigation and for safety purposes.

The department said the incident began around 6 p.m. when two officers began pursuing a man whom they observed to be driving recklessly. After the driver exited the car, an officer chased him on foot before gunfire was exchanged at around 6:14 p.m., police said in a press release, without revealing who fired first. In an unconfirmed Facebook video of the incident, at least 13 or 14 gunshots can be heard.

The officer who fired the fatal shot has been placed on administrative leave pending further investigation. Police have not identified the officer, but said he and the driver are black men.

Its not right. Were going to fight for him. I swear to god it is just not right, Jamie Reed, the drivers father, said at a Wednesday press conference. We need to fight for this. We dont need to let this fade. We need to all fight.

Story continues

In the Facebook video, Reed is filming himself in the middle of a high-speech chase with police when he appears to pull over and stop his car. Authorities say the driver disregarded the officers verbal commands to stop and ran out of the car, prompting an officer to chase him on foot.

Im on 62nd and Michigan, Reed says in the video, just before exiting the car. I just parked... Im gone.

Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department Assistant Chief Chris Bailey said during a news conference that the officer first used his taser, but its unclear if it worked. The taser cannot be seen on the purported video from the scene.

It is believed at this time that shots were fired by both the officer and the suspect, Bailey said.

A Kentucky EMT Worker Was Killed During a No-Knock Police Raid. The Target Was Already in Custody.

In the video, Reed appears to start screaming before collapsing on the ground. About eight seconds later, 11 or 12 gunshots can be heard in rapid succession. The livestream does not show Reed talking about a gun or firing a weapon.

By the end of the gunfire, more than 4,000 people had tuned in to watch the livestream. Bailey said Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services arrived shortly after and pronounced the driver dead at the scene. The officer was uninjured.

Taylor stated that a loaded gun was recovered at the scene that appeared to have been fired twice. He said it belonged to the driver. An attorney for Reeds family, Fatima Johnson, acknowledged Wednesday that while the 21-year-old may have had a firearm, it was obtained legally.

You have a right to ask questions about what happened last week. You have a right to demand answers for what happened last week. The way we do that is in the courtroom, Johnson said Wednesday.

More than 100 people from the community gathered at the scene of the shooting to express their outrage earlier this month. Protesters continued demonstrating the following day, with dozens marching through the streets of Indianapolis before congregating outside of police headquarters.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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France will no longer be exempted from Britain's 14-day quarantine strategy for arrivals - but business travellers could be spared from going into isolation.

The UK Government had initially said on Sunday it would force anyone flying into Britain to remain in isolation for 14 days in a bid to stop new coronavirus infections.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson then spoke to French President Emmanuel Macron to agree a mutual exemption from the measures for tourists from both countries.

However, the UK has now ended proposals for a blanket exemption for France  and is instead looking to spare a limited number of people from the restrictions.

Passengers arrive from international flights at London Heathrow Airport on May 10

One Whitehall source told the Daily Telegraph: 'The French don't want a blanket exemption, only freight and business travel.

'You have to remember there are multinational firms in Europe that are testing every single one of their workers for coronavirus two times a week.'

Plans to announce the now proposals have been postponed from today until next week as officials on both sides of the Channel try to confirm the details.

Earlier this week British tourists were told they would be able to enjoy holidays in France this summer after they were exempted from the quarantine rules.

Traffic is seen on the M25 motorway as a plane flies overhead near London Heathrow on May 11

But the European Union then warned the UK that it faced huge lawsuits in the European Court of Justice if only France was granted an exemption.

The UK has said all international travellers  apart from those in the common travel area including Ireland and the Channel Islands  will have to self-isolate for 14 days.

Those arriving in the country will be told to supply their contact and accommodation details  and also be strongly urged to use the new NHS contact tracing app.

The authorities will conduct spot checks, with punishments of up to 1,000 fines and deportation for those breaching the new rules.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron in Paris last August

UK airlines have threatened to ground their fleets over the quarantine scheme amid fears it would effectively kill off any hopes of a resumption of global travel.

The Airport Operators Association, representing Britain's airports, said it would have a 'devastating impact' on the industry.

Pilots' union Balpa has questioned the 'scientific basis' for the quarantine rules and warned the industry would in a 'death spiral' without government support.

But the Government said it was supporting airlines through the furlough scheme - which is now in place until the end of October - and flexibility with tax bills.

A woman wearing a protective face mask rides her bicycle on the banks of the river Seine

A Qatar Airways Boeing 777 passenger jet comes in to land at London Heathrow on May 10

Meanwhile France will impose quarantine on travellers arriving from Spain in a reciprocal measure after Madrid decided to restrict arrivals from Europe.

From today, Spain will impose a 14-day quarantine period on all travellers to avoid importing new virus cases.

France currently has restrictions on its borders with Schengen, EU countries and the UK - and has proscribed travel to and from non-European countries.

But the French government is hoping to gradually reopen France's borders ahead of the summer, with June 15 a possible date for deciding on an initial relaxation.
Brandon Lewis today defended Downing Street over its failure to disclose that the UK's top civil servant Sir Mark Sedwill had coronavirus at the same time as Boris Johnson amid a growing secrecy row.

The Prime Minister tested positive for the disease on March 27, and Sir Mark is thought to have found out he also had the virus at the start of April.

But Number 10 only confirmed yesterday that Sir Mark had had the virus - approximately six weeks after the fact.

It means Mr Johnson, Sir Mark, Health Secretary Matt Hancock and the PM's top aide Dominic Cummings were all battling coronavirus at a similar time raising questions over who was running the country.

Downing Street is facing growing questions over why Sir Mark's illness was not disclosed earlier.

But Mr Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, today insisted 'business was as usual' within Whitehall at the start of April despite the heart of government being rocked by the disease.

Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, today insisted 'business was as usual' within the Government at the start of April despite key players catching coronavirus

Sir Mark Sedwill, pictured with Boris Johnson inside Number 10 on July 24 last year, had coronavirus at the same time as the PM

The revelation means that (from left) Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Sir Mark and Mr Johnson were all battling coronavirus at a similar time

Mr Lewis also claimed it did not matter that Cabinet ministers had not been told about Sir Mark because he was 'playing a full part and working continuously from home'.

Told that as a Cabinet minister he should have been made aware of the situation, Mr Lewis said: 'My focus would be on the ability of somebody to do their job. Mark Sedwill is the Cabinet Secretary and he continued to do his job.

'I have worked with Mark at the Home Office and in his role as Cabinet Secretary and I have to say my experience of working with Mark has always been an excellent one.

'He is somebody who has always been in my experience pretty much on top of his game no matter what the situation.'

Mr Lewis was told during an interview with the BBC this morning that it was 'odd' such important information was held back from Cabinet ministers.

But he replied: 'No, I don't agree with that in the sense that my focus as somebody who is in the Cabinet is is the Cabinet Secretary working, are we able to access and talk to and work with the Cabinet Secretary and his team?

'And at all times that was the case. I have never had an experience where I could not deal with or was unable to access the Cabinet Secretary should I needed to do so.

'I have to say my experience was that business was as usual and things were carrying on and that is what I would expect from the Cabinet Secretary.'

One Tory MP told MailOnline that Sir Mark's illness 'should have been disclosed publicly' at the time and added: 'The Government views this coronavirus outbreak as a war and the first casualty of war is the truth.'

Though not particularly well known, Sir Mark's role as Cabinet Secretary makes him the second most powerful figure in government, executing the Prime Minister's will on a daily basis.

Number 10 was grilled almost daily about the health status of key government players before and after Mr Johnson tested positive amid concerns about the whether the Government was continuing to function effectively.

The Prime Minister's Official Spokesman said yesterday he had only become aware 'recently' of Sir Mark having had coronavirus after he was told by a journalist.

Told that Number 10 had previously always insisted Sir Mark was fine, the spokesman said: 'Your recollection is entirely right.

'You were asking me about the Cabinet Secretary and I said throughout that he was working as normal which he was.

'He continued to carry out his duties in full so I was only aware very recently when it was pointed out to me by a journalist.

Number 10 yesterday said Sir Mark, pictured alongside Mr Johnson and Rishi Sunak on April 28, had 'continued to carry out his duties in full' while working from home during his illness

'The Cabinet Secretary was carrying out his duties in full and I was seeing him everyday chairing the meetings via Zoom.'

Asked directly if Sir Mark had coronavirus at the same time as the PM, the spokesman said: 'He worked from home as usual throughout.

'You will remember at the time most people were working from home so there is nothing unusual about that.'

The spokesman said he was unaware exactly when Sir Mark had developed coronavirus symptoms.

The fact that a handful of people at the top of the government caught coronavirus has previously prompted intense scrutiny of its handling of the outbreak.

Prime Minister Johnson and Mr Hancock were criticised at the time when they were pictured at close quarters in the Commons  well within the advised 6ft limit.

Senior officials including Sir Mark and Chief Medical Officer Chris Witty were also photographed close to the PM in Downing Street for conference meetings with a digital cabinet.

Ministers have always dismissed accusations that positive tests at the heart of government showed they had taken the wrong approach, insisting that it simply demonstrated the indiscriminate nature of the disease.

The PM's top aide Dominic Cummings also developed symptoms of coronavirus, with his wife saying that he was so ill that she believed he should have gone to hospital

Boris Johnson pictured within six-foot of Health Secretary Matt Hancock before a press conference at No10 Downing Street on March 12. Both tested positive for the virus while chief medical officer Chris Whitty, pictured at the top of the stairs, had symptoms

It was revealed on March 27 that Mr Johnson had tested positive for coronavirus with Mr Hancock announcing later on the same day that he too had tested positive.

Mr Johnson was then admitted to hospital on April 5 and moved to an intensive care unit on April 7 before being released on April 12.

He spent a number of weeks recovering at Chequers before returning to work on April 27.

Mr Johnson said of his illness that there were '48 hours when things could have gone either way'.

Mr Hancock spent a week in self-isolation after his positive test. He said it had felt 'like having glass in my throat' and that he had lost half a stone in just seven days.

Meanwhile, Mr Cummings' wife revealed last month that her husband was so ill with coronavirus that she believed he should have gone to hospital.

Journalist Mary Wakefield revealed that Mr Cummings, 48, spent 10 days bedridden with the disease after coming home to nurse her through a milder case.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., the worlds largest producer of silicon chips used in computers and other electronic devices, announced on Friday that it would build a factory in Arizona.

The company, a major supplier to Apple, said on Friday that it welcomes continued strong partnership with the U.S. federal government and the state of Arizona. The factory is projected to open in 2024 and employ about 1,600 workers.

The U.S. welcomes TSMCs intention to invest $12B in the most advanced 5-nanometer semiconductor fabrication foundry in the world, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo wrote on Twitter. This deal bolsters U.S. national security at a time when China is trying to dominate cutting-edge tech and control critical industries.

However, the new TSMC factory could aid the companys push to prevent the implementation of economic sanctions against Chinese tech giant Huawei, which the U.S. deems a national security threat. TSMC is a major supplier of Huawei, and would experience a heavy financial toll if the U.S. adopts a proposed ban on the sale of semiconductor technology to Huawei.

While the factory will have an output of 20,000 chip wafers per month, a relatively small amount for TSMC, the decision to open the factory comes at the same time that the U.S. is raising concerns over dependence on supply chains based in China and other Asian nations. During the coronavirus pandemic, lawmakers have criticized U.S. reliance on Chinese manufacturers for medical supplies.

We shouldnt have supply chains, President Trump told Fox Business on Thursday. We should have them all in the U.S.

More from National Review
Multnomah County officials say they need more money, more contact tracers, more personal protection equipment and more time before they can hope to join 31 other Oregon counties that the governor approved to begin a gradual reopening on Friday.

Multnomah County is a major economic engine for the state, but it also has the largest number of coronavirus cases (922) and deaths (53) in the state, the greatest population density, the most reliance on public transit and the largest population of vulnerable communities. For now, it stands alongside Marion, Polk, Washington and Clackamas counties, which face various hurdles and cannot meet the state guidelines to reopen.

In a press conference on Thursday, County Chair Deborah Kafoury said there was no definitive timeline when the county will meet the governors reopening thresholds or file its application to reopen, and she did not want to set unrealistic expectations. It will be a matter of weeks, at least, she said. And while there is some hope that Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas Counties will reopen together, thats not assured either.

Kafoury said the counties are remaining in close contact about their plans, and are cognizant of the vast number of people in the region who live in one county, work in another and recreate in a third.

MORE ON OREGON PHASE 1 REOPENING:

Guidance on: retail | restaurants and bars | salons and personal services | outdoor recreation | sporting events | large gatherings, including concerts and festivals

We are still different counties and may be meeting these metrics at different times, Kafoury said. I cant say well open together on the same day.

The county has set up a new dashboard on its website where residents can track its progress on meeting both the governors criteria as well as some unique equity metrics the county has established.

Those criteria include reducing the impact of the pandemic on communities of color, and making sure its contact tracing team is reflective of the countys residents and has the ability to work in various languages. Officials said they were committed to meeting those parameters, and safeguarding vulnerable communities, before reopening.

The dashboard will be updated each Wednesday.

Multnomah County is home to 20% of the state population, has 27% of coronavirus cases and 40% of deaths in the state, Kafoury said.But so far, it has received only $28 million, or less than 2% of the $1.7 billion that the federal government allocated to Oregon under the CARES Act.

That is nowhere near enough, Kafoury said, adding that the lack of federal dollars could set back the countys timeline to apply for reopening. Let me say that again: It is not enough.

Kafoury said the county would need $75 million in the fiscal year beginning July 1 to hire contact tracers, maintain isolation motels for people experiencing illness, and continue running socially distanced homeless shelters. She is hoping the state and federal government will move quickly to provide it.

Im not going to be particular about where the money comes from, she said, but its essential to have the money we need if were going to reopen.

The governors office has received requests from local jurisdictions around the state to distribute more of the federal money. U.S. Rep. Greg Walden has also written Brown, reminding her that was Congress intent when it passed the act, and that further guidance from Treasury has made clear the money should be spent on local needs.

However, the governor has held the money back so far. While acknowledging the need, Browns office says it is working to ensure it understands the allowed uses of the money, that it avoids using it on expenses that can be covered elsewhere, and is addressing the short-, medium- and long-term needs of all Oregonians.

In the meantime, her office is providing personal protection equipment to counties and supplementing county contact tracers.

Multnomah County has 35 contact tracers in place, and needs 122 to meet the state guideline of 15 tracers for every 100,000 residents. Rachael Banks, the countys public health director, said that the team is currently capable of tracing 75% of presumptive cases contacts within three days, but that falls well short of the state standard of being able to trace 95% of new cases in 24 hours.

The county is gearing up to meet those numbers, she said, but also needs to assure that the team includes culturally specific members with appropriate linguistic skills to match various communities in the county.

Likewise, the county continues to experience shortages of personal protective equipment, said Chris Voss, director of the countys office of emergency management.

Voss said the county is close to meeting the required supply for hospitals and first responders. But he said it is also receiving requests when other critical organizations, from TriMet to home health care providers, have less than a weeks supply on hand. The county received 33 such requests for PPE in the last two days, and more than 300 in the last two weeks.

Were happy to help out with these supplies, but want it known that our resources are limited, Voss said. We want to acknowledge that these organizations are also critical, and the normal supply chain is still not able to provide everyone with what they need.

Kafoury said the reopening of retailers and childcare providers would provide the countys first test: How the number of COVID-19 cases will grow with more people on public transit, entering facilities and on the street, as well as how effective the county responds to an increase of cases.

I know everyone is anxious to learn when were going to reopen, she said. My own children ask me every day when were going to reopen. The truth is that Multnomah County is not ready to reopen.

-- Ted Sickinger; tsickinger@oregonian.com; 503-2218505; @tedsickinger

Coronavirus in Oregon: Latest news | Live map tracker |Text alerts | Newsletter

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The COVID-19 pandemic is revealing some truly disturbing facts about life in long-term care  not just for the residents, but for the understaffed, poorly paid front-line workers who care for them. Lessons learned from COVID-19 should be much broader than funding, standards of care and infection control; its time for us to think about those who are and will suffer much longer-term consequences of this pandemic, both physically and psychologically.

Based on current data from three Canadian health regions, its a sad fact that in 18 months when we have a vaccine, the majority of long-term-care residents would have died naturally without COVID as they are in fragile health.

The real tragedy is not so much the number of deaths, but rather the quality of their deaths and its impact on families and staff. Separated from their loved ones and unable to be comforted at the end, their final moments are spent alone, often confused by their isolation.

These are terrible situations for family members who feel enormous grief and guilt. However, its equally distressing for the staff who care for residents, and who, because of understaffing and restrictions, cannot support families through a good death. In some ways, their suffering is greater  family members must endure the tragic loss of one person; long-term-care workers are in some cases reliving this horrible experience multiple times a day. This compounded loss and grief can be unbearable knowing that residents deserved a better death.

Moral distress is an emotional state that occurs when someone feels that an action they are tasked with doing is ethically opposite to what they feel is the right thing to do. In the case of long-term-care workers  nurses, physicians, personal support workers or care aides and others  leaving someone to die alone and confused is completely antithetical to their beliefs and training.

In a long-term-care setting, the psychosocial and spiritual sides of health care are often more important that medication or other treatments. Nurses and personal support workers, for example, work intimately with residents, and often form deep and caring relationships with them.

Residents often rely on them for emotional support, sometimes more than they expect from their own families. And for some residents, nurses and personal supports workers are the only family they have, and with family visiting restrictions due to COVID-19, this is even more prevalent. Thats why its so distressing for them to see so many residents dying alone or in distress during COVID-19.

In our research, it is clear that nurses and personal support workers need more training and support to help them care for dying residents and this is even more critical during COVID-19. But it is just as important that they learn how to navigate their way through the moral distress as a result of the many difficult resident deaths theyve experienced.

How can we help the helpers? Funding is definitely one answer. Long-term-care workers are the lowest paid according to their discipline, which explains why we have a shortage of geriatricians and long-term-care nurses and personal support workers in Canada.

Restructuring of LTC homes has been on the agenda for the government for over a decade now with plans to remove any four-bed rooms to a more infection-control friendly environment. But other issues always seem to take priority, and long-term-care improvements end up at the bottom of the list.

These are important action items. But we need to look beyond numbers and infection control standards. Its time for us to understand and respect the psychological and physical toll that our front-line workers experience on the job, and recognize that we need a strategy to help them help our most vulnerable population.

By 2030, seniors will number over 9.5 million and make up 23 per cent of Canadians. A recent Conference Board of Canada study estimated that Canada must nearly double the number of long-term-care beds by 2035. Given these numbers, its clear that we will need appropriately trained and supported staff for our elderly. But who will want to work in an underfunded, unrespected system?

Lets take this moment of crisis during Nurses Week to get at the root of the problem. Its time to help our helpers, and give them the support and respect they deserve.
President Donald Trump is smearing Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Trump wants businesses and schools to reopen sooner than Fauci thinks is safe. So the president has fabricated a story about Fauci giving bad advice. Trumps goal is to make the public think that Trump, not Fauci, knows best what to do about the novel coronavirus. But his fabrication shows the opposite: While Fauci tells the truth, Trump tells lies.

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Trump is irked because he keeps being asked about Faucis acknowledgments of inconvenient facts. Last week, in an ABC News interview, Trump was questioned about Faucis concession that the federal government failed to provide sufficient testing early in the pandemic. He was also pressed about Faucis observation that returning to pre-virus behavior would entail more deaths. On Wednesday, Trump was asked to comment on Faucis congressional testimony about the risks of reopening schools and businesses.

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Fauci has bent over backward to avoid criticizing Trump. But now Trump is sniping at Fauci by name. Last month, the president retweeted a message that ended with the hashtag #FireFauci. In a Fox Business interview recorded on Wednesday, Trump said of Fauci, I totally disagree with him on schools. Later that day, Trump groused that Fauci wants to play all sides of the equation. He said Faucis testimony on the risks of reopening too quickly was not an acceptable answer.

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Trumps problem, politically, is that Fauci is far more trusted than the president is. In a CBS News poll taken from Monday to Wednesday, 62 percent of Americans said they trusted Fauci to give accurate information on the virus and what to do about it. Only 38 percent trusted Trump. So Trump is trying to undermine confidence in Fauci by peddling a false story in which Fauci gave bad advice and Trump rejected it.

On May 3, in a Fox News town hall, Trump said that on Jan. 31, he had restricted travel from China to the United States. He claimed that he had made this wise decision against all advice. Even Tony Fauci was saying, Its [the virus] going to pass, not going to be a big deal,  Trump asserted. Two days later, Trump told ABC that he had made the China decision against many people, including Anthony Fauci  the doctors, and many other people. They said, Dont ban China, its going to blow over. And they said this at the end of February. In the Fox Business interview, Trump elaborated on this tale. I was criticized by everybody, including Dr. Fauci, said Trump. When I closed the border to China, he disagreed with that.

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Its true that Fauci and other medical advisers initially opposed the travel restrictions. But they endorsed the restrictions before Trump did. The president reluctantly agreed to the move only after Fauci and others prodded him to do so.

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At a press briefing on Feb. 7, Alex Azar, the secretary of health and human services, explained what happened. The travel restrictions, he said, were the uniform recommendation of the career public health officials here at HHS. Azar specifically named Fauci and Dr. Robert Redfield, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This was their considered recommendation, which I and the president adopted, said Azar.

Azars statement matches reports in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. A Times account, which quotes Redfield, says that on Jan. 30, Redfield, Fauci, and Azar endorsed the proposed restrictions. Azar then pitched the idea to Trump, but the president was skeptical, fearing economic repercussions. The Journals report concurs that Trump was reluctant to sign off on the proposal, concerned about the signal it would send to markets and his relationship with President Xi Jinping, aides said. But Trump eventually agreed to it on the advice of Mr. Azar.

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Trump is also lying when he claims that Fauci said the virus was going to blow over. Video recordings show what Fauci actually said. On Jan. 27, he warned that things are going to get worse before they get better. On Jan. 30, he said the outbreak could turn into a global pandemic. On. Feb. 4, he predicted, Almost certainly, well have more infections in the United States. On Feb. 16, he cautioned against Trumps theory that the virus would disappear with the warm weather. On Feb. 25, he concluded that based on the spread in other countries, Its inevitable that this will come to the United States.

But Fauci, unlike Trump, never whitewashed his own history. In a podcast interview that aired Feb. 20, he volunteered that he had reversed his prior opposition to travel restrictions. For years, before this outbreak, I had been saying travel restrictions really dont help when youre in a pandemic, he recalled. But since this outbreak was concentrated so intensely in a single country, blocking travel seems to have worked. That success, he reflected, humbled me.

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The success, he warned, would only be temporary. He noted that the virus was spreading around the world and that the United States, having bought time, had to prepare. But Trump didnt listen. On Feb. 26, he assured the public that there was no need to test more people or produce more masks because our borders are very controlled.

The truth is just the opposite of what Trump says. Fauci endorsed the travel restrictions on China before Trump did, because Fauci was open to new facts. Trump dragged his feet, and he used the restrictions as an excuse to relax, ignoring Faucis warnings that America had to prepare for the crisis ahead. Now Trump is doing what he does best. Having failed to prepare for the future, hes lying about the past.

For more of Slates coverage of COVID-19, listen to What Next: TBD.
Do you know the richest countries in the world in 2020? Well, this is a very tricky question given the many parameters used to measure how wealthy a country is. Wealth can be measured in various ways and does not only focus on how much money a country has. Other parameters such as welfare, health or happiness should be considered.

Image: instagram.com, @jsideneimelo

Source: UGC

The wealthiest countries in the world have very complex and diverse economies. Most of these countries export goods and services from various industries, including biotechnology, aerospace, pharmaceuticals, and so on. But, there are still some nations on the list which rely almost exclusively on one product such as oil to fuel their economies.

List of the richest countries in the world

So, which is the richest country in the world? You can easily know the wealthiest country in the world if you look at the Human Development Index (HDI) and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. GDP per capita takes into consideration the standard of living while HDI factors the level of economic and social development into the analysis. Check out this list of the wealthiest countries in the world.

1. Norway HDI: 0.95, GDP per capita: $78,333

In terms of HDI, Norway is the wealthiest place on earth. It is famous as a country with the highest living standards, attributed to its rich economy. The economy is fueled by oil and gas exports. Norway has also received significant sums of wealth from petroleum exports since the 1970s. It also has huge reserves of seafood, hydro-power, minerals, lumber, natural gas, and freshwater.

2. Switzerland HDI: 0.946, GDP per capita: $86,674

Image: instagram.com, @jsideneimelo

Source: UGC

Switzerland has maintained its position on the list of rich countries for many years. The strength of the Swiss economy is largely due to its international outreach. It boasts of the highest export rates. The largest share of exported goods is chemical and pharmaceutical products, machinery and electronics, and watches. Highly specialized and flexible small and medium-sized companies characterize the technologically advanced industrial sector.

3. Ireland HDI: 0.942, GDP per capita: $80,265

During the 1990s, Ireland was one of the poor countries in Europe. An upsurge in foreign investment and increased consumer spending have worked wonders on the nation's economy. As a small open economy, Ireland's financial fortunes are entirely dependent on international trade and influenced by global markets. It is the 29th largest export economy in the world. The top exports include machinery and equipment, chemicals, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals.

READ ALSO: 15 most beautiful countries in the world 2020

4. Germany HDI: 0.939, GDP per capita: $47,992

It is the largest economy in Europe and globally. It boasts of high standards of living. Exports play a key role in its economy as they account for more than 40 percent of its GDP. It is home to some of the top automobile manufacturers in the world. Other exports include minerals, chemical products, and mechanical equipment.

5. Hong Kong HDI: 0.939, GDP per capita: $42,806

The Port of Hong Kong is the fifth busiest container port in the world in terms of volume. It exports more than twice the value of its GDP. China is the primary destination for more than half of its total export value. Integrated circuits account for the largest percentage of the total exports. Other major exports include gold, office machine parts, telephones, computers, broadcasting equipment, and diamonds. Finance is also a major component of the Hong Kong economy.

6. Australia HDI: 0.938,GDP per capita: $52,952

Australia has a highly developed, mixed economy. Its economy is dominated by the services sector, specifically financial and insurance services. Mining plays a critical role in the country's export activity. Gold, aluminium, iron ore, nickel, silver, diamonds, opal, oil, natural gas are found in huge amounts there. The country's economy also relies heavily on tourism and the export of raw materials.

READ ALSO: Who is the poorest person in the world?

7. Iceland HDI: 0.938, GDP per capita: $66,602

Iceland also appears on the list of the richest countries in the world. For decades the country's economy relied heavily on fisheries. In the last decade, the economy has been diversifying into manufacturing and service industries, particularly within the fields of tourism, software production, and biotechnology.

8. Sweden HDI: 0.937, GDP per capita: $51,892

Sweden boasts of high quality of life, which is made possible by open-market policies that have promoted free trade, effective regulation in the banking sector, and a generous social welfare program. The biggest contributors to its economy include iron and steel, precision equipment, wood pulp and paper products, motor vehicles, and processed food.

9. Singapore HDI: 0.935, GDP per capita: $64,829

Singapore is the richest country in Asia. Even though it has a land area of less than 300 square miles and almost no natural resources, it is one of the world's most competitive economies. It is strategically located at the southern tip of Malaysia and is home to the world's second-busiest shipping port. Exports account for a huge proportion of its GDP.

10. Netherlands HDI: 0.933,GDP per capita: $53,873

Image: instagram.com, @jsideneimelo

Source: UGC

The Netherlands boasts of the highest standards of living in the world. Exports play an important role in its economy as they account for more than 80 percent of the total economic output. Since the discovery of natural gas resources in 1959, the energy sector has grown to become a major source of national revenue. Other exports include phones, computers, agricultural products, and mechanical equipment.

READ ALSO: 10 most beautiful cities in Africa 2020

11. Denmark HDI: 0.930, GDP per capita: $61,733

Denmark can be described as a diverse, trade-based economy. The country's economy relies heavily on exports, which account for more than 50 percent of the total economic output. Its major exports include computers, medicine, and furniture. The country also exports billions of dollars worth of pigs, cheese, and electric generating sets.

12. Finland HDI: 0.925, GDP per capita: $50,774

Finland's population is very small, but its economy ranks among the largest in the world. The country relies heavily on international trade, with exports accounting for more than one-third of its GDP. Its major exports include manufactured electronics, paper goods, medical products, metals, and refined petroleum.

13. Canada HDI: 0.922, GDP per capita: $47,931

Canada is a major economic power in the world. Its economic system can be likened to that of the United States. Most of the workers are employed in the service sector. The vast oil reserves and natural resources in Canada play a significant role in its economy. Some of the largest exports in the country include sawn wood, petroleum, and gold.

14. New Zealand HDI: 0.921, GDP per capita: 42,084

Over the last few decades, the government of New Zealand has transformed the country from an agrarian economy to a more industrialized economy. Tourism is one of the biggest contributors to the country's economy, and it has been lauded as one of the most beautiful countries in the world. Other important contributors to the country's economy include forestry, fishing, manufacturing and mining.

READ ALSO: 12 richest people in Tanzania in 2020

15. United States HDI: 0.920, GDP per capita: $67,427

The US has the most technologically powerful economy in the world. Its economy is highly developed and mixed. Unlike other countries which are listed among the richest in the world, the United States does not rely heavily on exports. The total export value of goods and services is one of the lowest. The main industries include steel, aerospace, telecommunication, petroleum, and motor vehicles.

There you have it. An all-inclusive list of the richest countries in the world. You will not panic if somebody asks you to tell him/her the GDP of the richest country in the world. Well, there are some countries such as China which you expected to top the list. However, they have been left out since there are so many poor people that are living within their borders, and this reduces the GDP per capita.

READ ALSO: Top 20 richest football clubs in the world 2020

Source: TUKO.co.ke
Instagrams efforts to curb health misinformation have done little to stem the flow of conspiracy theories and misinformation about vaccines. The app continues to be a hotbed of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, which often spread without the promised fact-checks and are further fueled by Instagrams search and recommendation algorithms.



The problem has only escalated during COVID-19 as the coronavirus pandemic has given rise to a new surge of viral disinformation and conspiracy theories, many of which are widely promoted by the anti-vaccination movement. At the same time, many of Facebook's moderators have been unable to work and review reports of potentially rule-breaking content.

Instagrams rabbit hole problem

Like Facebook, Instagram doesnt ban anti-vaccine content, though the company claims it has attempted to make it less visible to users. The company blocks some hashtags and says it tries to make anti-vaccine content harder to find in public areas of the app, like Explore. Yet accounts promoting conspiracy theories and inaccurate information about vaccines dominate the apps search results.

When you search the word vaccine on Instagram, the app recommends dozens of anti-vaccine accounts in its top results. Accounts with names such as Vaccines_revealed, Vaccinesuncovered, vaccines_kill_ vaccinesaregenocide_ and say_no_to_bill_gates_vaccine are front and center. While some of these accounts are popular, with nearly 100,000 followers, others have only a few hundred. Yet Instagrams algorithm consistently recommends these accounts  and not one verified health organization  as the most relevant accounts for the search term vaccine.

Accounts promoting conspiracy theories and inaccurate information about vaccines dominate search results.

Some of these accounts are meant to sow fear  many are aimed at parents  and post clearly spurious claims like vaccines are causing autism rates to skyrocket. Many have pivoted to posting conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and the coronavirus pandemic.

Story continues

Instagrams recommendation algorithm also pushes users toward accounts spreading conspiracy theories, including those about vaccines and COVID-19.

I made a new Instagram account, searched vaccine, and then followed a few of the top results mentioned above. Within seconds, the app began suggesting I follow more anti-vaccine pages and other accounts peddling conspiracy theories, including QAnon. This isnt a new phenomenon, either. Vice noted last year that Instagrams follow suggestions could easily lead users down an anti-vax rabbit hole. The company said at the time it would look into it, but it doesnt appear much has changed.

Not only do the suggestions still appear, these recommendations are now pushing users toward other fringe conspiracy theories. I only had to follow four anti-vaccine accounts before Instagram began recommending popular QAnon pages, one of which prominently linked to the Plandemic documentary Facebook and others have struggled to successfully banish from their platform. A couple days later, the app sent push notifications recommending I follow two more QAnon pages.

An Instagram spokesperson reiterated that the company aims to make misinformation about vaccines harder to find in public areas of the app.

Searching for specific hashtags can also lead users into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Searching for #vaccine prompts you to first visit the CDCs website and contains relatively sanitized results, but Instagrams hashtag search recommends other related search terms that are less filtered, including #vaccineinjuryadvocate and #vaccineskillandinjure. (Using the cedilla character instead of a c is a common tactic used by anti-vaccine advocates in order to evade detection, as Coda reported last year.)

"related" hashtags Instagram suggests when you search for #vaccineinjuryadvocate

And when you look at search results for these recommended hashtags, like #vaccineinjuryadvocate, Instagram further suggests more hashtags associated with various other conspiracy theories, including coronavirus conspiracy theories: #plandemic, #governmentconspiracy, #populationcontrol, and #scamdemic. (Instagram has since blocked search results for #plandemic, which had more than 26,000 posts, according to the app.)

Instagram suggests hashtags associated with conspiracy theories when you search for "5G."

Instagram's algorithm recommending hashtags associated with conspiracy theories isnt just limited to vaccines either. Search #5G and the app surfaces related hashtags like #fuckbillgates #billgatesisevil #chemtrails and #coronahoax. Other seemingly innocuous suggestions, like #5Gtowers, also lead to conspiracy theories like #projectbluebeam #markofthebeast #epsteindidntkillhimself.

Misinformation on Instagram

None of these are new issues for Instagram, but the photo-sharing apps misinformation problem has often avoided the same scrutiny thats been applied to Facebook. When company officials testified in front of Congress, they downplayed Instagrams role in spreading Russian disinformation. The Senate Intelligence Committees subsequent report found that Instagram was the most effective tool used by the IRA.

The problem, according to those who study it, is that misinformation on Instagram often takes the form of memes and other images that are harder for the companys systems to detect and can be more difficult for the companys human reviewers to parse. And while Instagram is building out new systems to address this, images can be a much more effective conduit for bad actors, says Paul Barrett, the deputy director of NYU's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

Disinformation, which would include anti-vaxxer material, is increasingly a visual game. This is not something that's done exclusively or even primarily anymore via big blasts of text, Barrett said. Visual material makes it easy to digest, and something that's not going to seem threatening or overbearing. And I think as a result that makes Instagram appealing.

Yet Instagram has been much slower to deal with its misinformation problem than Facebook. The photo-sharing app didnt implement any fact-checking efforts until last May  nearly three years after Facebook began debunking posts with outside fact-checkers. And the app has only recently moved to make debunked posts less visible in users feeds.

Instagram labels posts that have been debunked by fact checkers.

And though Instagram, like Facebook, has prioritized coronavirus misinformation it considers harmful, the company doesnt apparently consider anti-vaccine content, which researchers have linked to measles outbreaks and other instances of actual harm, to be as urgent a problem as some coronavirus conspiracies.

We're prioritizing reviewing certain types of content, like child safety, suicide and self injury, terrorism and harmful misinformation related to COVID, to make sure that we're handling the most dangerous issues, Mark Zuckerberg said during a call with reporters to discuss the companys content moderation efforts this week.

When asked whether the company was prioritizing anti-vaccine content given its links to coronavirus misinformation, Facebooks VP of integrity, Guy Rosen, said, Health-related harm is something thats very much top of mind and very much something that we want to prioritize.

An Instagram spokesperson told Engadget the company doesnt bar anti-vaccination content, but noted it has removed some posts with misinformation in response to a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa and a polio resurgence in Pakistan. Officials in both countries have blamed misinformation for rising anti-vaccination sentiment.

In most cases, though, the company doesnt act to remove such content entirely, attempting to make it less visible or adding false information labels when the content has been debunked by fact-checkers.

But fact-checking might not be enough, according to Barrett. Facebook is so outmatched by the scale of the problem, it's almost a little naive to assume that fact-checking is  even if it's done vigorously  that you're going to be able to catch a substantial majority of false information that's being posted on a continuous basis, Barrett says. When you're talking about billions of posts a day, even if you have Facebook's 60 fact-checking organizations around the world, a lot of stuff is going to slip by them.
The region that includes Lake County hadnt been on track for moving on to the next phase because too high a percent of people being tested for the novel coronavirus had positive results, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. That percentage fell below 20% Thursday but the numbers need to hold for 14 days.
The National Investigation Agency (NIA) arrested 49-year-old Mohammed Haroon Haji Abdul Rehman Lakdawala, a Mumbai resident believed to be one of the key conspirators in Visakhapatnam espionage case, on Friday.

Lakdawala is the fourteenth arrest made in the operation code-named Dolphin Nose where the espionage racket was busted by the Special Intelligence Branch of the Andhra Pradesh police along with the Naval Intelligence and the Intelligence Bureau. The case was later transferred to NIA. Lakdawalas arrest is important considering the number of times he has travelled to Karachi under the guise of conducting cross-border trade, where he used to meet Pakistani spied possible code named as Akbar alias Ali and Rizwan, said an NIA media release

An officer, requesting anonymity, said, Lakdawalas role is important considering that he was directly involved in depositing the money into the bank accounts of the Navy personnel at regular intervals through different methods.

The espionage racket started in 2018. The first arrests were made on December 20 when the agencies arrested seven Indian Navy personnel from Visakhapatnam, Mumbai and Karwar bases, along with one hawala operator. Later in February, three more navy personnel were arrested in the case along with one Pakistani-born Indian national Shaista Qaiser.

Pakistans Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) agencies had honey-trapped sailors through Facebook, WhatsApp and online dating sites, and were allegedly paid through Indian conduits for getting crucial information regarding positioning of Indian Navy ships and submarines at its critical bases, said sources in the intelligence agencies.

The sailors fell for women on the dating sites, which were profiles created by ISI, and the women later would introduce them to a businessman who elicited information the sailors, said NIA officials. When the sailor would refrain from revealing information, the women would then blackmail them by threatening to reveal their online chats. This way they extracted information about positions and movements of our vessels, added NIA officials.

During searches at the house of Lakdawala, several digital devices and incriminating documents were seized by NIA, he said, adding further investigation in the case was underway.
Tata Motors on Friday said it is planning to raise Rs 1,000 crore through issuance of securities

New Delhi: Tata Motors on Friday said it is planning to raise Rs 1,000 crore through issuance of securities.

The company is desirous of offering rated, listed, secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures (NCDs) aggregating Rs 1,000 crore, Tata Motors said in a regulatory filing.

In this regard, the auto major will hold a meeting of its duly constituted committee of the board on 20 May, 2020, it added.

The above issuance is pursuant to the board's approval on 27 March, Tata Motors said.

Last week, Tata Motors had decided to withdraw an NCD issue to raise up to Rs 1,000 crore, due to tight market conditions.

Click here to follow LIVE news and updates on stock markets

On 5 May, the company said a board-constituted committee had approved raising up to Rs 1,000 crore through issuance of NCDs on a private placement basis.

Then on 7 May, it said in a regulatory filing: "We hereby inform that the company has decided to withdraw the issue for a private placement of unsecured NCDs in view of the higher cost expectations from the market participants due to the tight money market conditions."

The company continues to have sufficient liquidity and would consider issuance of NCDs at an appropriate time and under normalised market conditions with necessary approvals, it had noted.

The company had planned to issue the NCDs in three tranches of Rs 500 crore, Rs 300 crore and Rs 200 crore with redemptions due on 30 September, 2022, 28 November, 2022 and 29 December, 2022, respectively.

Tata Motors shares were trading 0.66 percent up at Rs 83.25 apiece on the BSE.
A subway car in New York City, New York.

Daniel Brown/Business Insider

New York City's subway system is now closed between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m. for daily cleaning.

The subways have long provided refuge to homeless New Yorkers, who now say they don't have anywhere safe to stay overnight.

The homeless have been sent to shelters, the conditions of which are susceptible to a coronavirus outbreak.

The daily subway closures are "extraordinarily counterproductive and harmful," said Giselle Routhier, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

For the first time in its 115-year history, the New York City subways have been shuttered from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. each morning, allowing workers to disinfect some 6,418 subway cars.

"The reason we're taking this extraordinary, unprecedented action is to protect the safety and public health of our customers and our employees," Patrick J. Foye, chair of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said at a press conference earlier in May.

Typically, more than 2,000 homeless New Yorkers sleep in a subway car on a given night. The shutdown endangers their safety, according to homeless people and advocates, and the government is not doing enough to help them.

'I want what many people take for granted'

"Ultimately, I want what many people take for granted," Denis Dugan, a homeless New Yorker, wrote in the New York Daily News on Tuesday. "A safe, private space, somewhere I can protect myself from coronavirus."

Dugan has been sleeping on subway cars for two years. It's better than the shelters, he said, where his belongings could be stolen and he doesn't feel safe.

"You would think, in a pandemic, one would see some empathy and compassion," Dugan continued, slamming Gov. Andrew Cuomo's declaration that the people sleeping on subways are "disgusting" and "disrespectful to the essential workers."

Story continues

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks with a city worker onboard a subway car, New York City, New York.

Kevin P. Coughlin/Office of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo via AP Photo

Like Dugan, anti-homelessness advocates have railed against the shutdown.

"It's actually extraordinarily counterproductive and harmful," Giselle Routhier, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless, told The Guardian.

"What's happening is that large groups of police officers are gathering at the end of the [subway] line, telling people to move, forcing people often to the streets, offering them access to congregate shelters which many are rightfully refusing to enter because of the safety issues and not actually offering real solutions to help people access a safer space," Routhier said.

Without subway cars, homeless people are sent to shelters, where there's a high risk of getting the virus

Since the subway shutdowns began, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) has expelled homeless New Yorkers from the transit lines and offered to take them to shelters. On the first night of the DHS effort, some 139 people were taken from the subways to a shelter, said Mayor Bill de Blasio.

"That's an extraordinary number for one night and very encouraging," de Blasio said.

Some homeless people have been taken to the 30th Street Men's Shelter, one of the busiest in the city.

"I can't think of a worse place than 30th Street," Josh Dean, director of Human NYC, told The City. "How dangerous is it to take these people off the subway and put them in this one place?"

By May 5, more than 800 homeless people tested positive for COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus  and 85% were in shelters, according to The City. At least 65 homeless people have died.

A handful of homeless people have been put in hotels

"Right now, thousands of hotel rooms are empty because of the shutdown," Dugan wrote.

"Why not use them to shelter homeless people like me? It would be life-changing and help me move forward," he said. "But instead of being offered a hotel room, I am offered to return to the shelter. I truly fear the shelters."

According to a DHS spokesperson, about 250 homeless people, especially elderly people and those with compromised immune systems, have been given empty hotel rooms, The City reported.

Known as "isolation hotels," advocates like Routhier say the city needs to make them widely available.

"It is flat out dangerous and disingenuous of the mayor to transport unhoused people to congregate shelters where COVID-19 is actively spreading," she told The City.

"People's lives are at stake and he refuses to provide available empty hotel rooms to people experiencing homelessness."

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InterGlobe Enterprises' interest in Virgin Australia does not have anything to do with IndiGo. It is all about Rahul Bhatia, the airline's co-founder.

This is the first time Bhatia has given a clue to his global ambitions. Surely, IndiGo has charted out an elaborate plan to expand overseas, including in Europe. But, that has been pushed back because of the COVID-19 disruption.

Just like a canny entrepreneur, the Delhi-based businessman has also spotted the opportunity in the present crisis. Globally, airlines have been collapsing. It is not just Virgin Australia. Others who have filed for bankruptcy include Flybe, Air Mauritius and South African Airways.

In fact, in the list of suitors for Virgin Australia, Bhatia is perhaps the only aviation entrepreneur.

But, what has made Bhatia eye Virgin Australia, which was the second-biggest carrier in the country after Qantas Airways?

The market

As an aviation market, Australia makes for a sweet proposition.

Indians make up for 2 percent of Australia's population. In 2020, 5 lakh Indians are expected to visit Australia, also an education hub that has been favoured by students. The traffic is expected to double by 2025, among the highest for any country.

Bhatia could well leverage this traffic. Virgin Australia had a Sydney-Singapore flight, and that can be fed by IndiGo's operations to Singapore.

The domestic traffic is robust, with the Melbourne-Sydney route ranked as the fifth-busiest in the world, Mumbai-New Delhi being the third busiest.

The local Australian aviation market is also one of duopoly. There is Qantas, and, then, there is Virgin Australia. That will be something that Bhatia will like as, till now, he is used to the stiff competition, often cut-throat, in India. While IndiGo does have near 50 percent share of the local market, it does compete intensely with peers like SpiceJet and GoAir.

The Australian market is different. Peter Harbison, the chairman of aviation advisory firm CAPA, calls Australia 'something of an oasis in aviation.'

The airline

Virgin Australia began as Virgin Blue, when it started operations in 2000. Rebranding happened in 2011, when it got its present name.

Along with a new name, the airline also upped its offering, including new menu options.

If successful, will Bhatia bring back the low-cost legacy of Virgin Australia? After all, in IndiGo, he has mastered the art of keeping a tight control over costs. It may probably be the right medicine for Virgin, which has otherwise been suffering losses and has debts of over $4 billion.

But, then, there is a Goliath in Qantas. Many entrepreneurs, including Tony Fernandes of AirAsia and airlines like Singapore Airlines, have tried breaking into the market. They all failed.

Qantas though has been making healthy profits. The biggest airline in the country, reported profits of about $900 million in 2019.

And it is a tough competitor. Even as Virgin Australia asked for a lifeline from the Australian government, Qantas said it has enough to survive by its own till 2021.

Similar to IndiGo, which also has a big cash reserve as a cushion?

The price

Reports say that the final price for Virgin Australia could be about $2 billion.

There is little information on InterGlobe's finances. IndiGo may have about Rs 9,500 crore in cash, but Bhatia wouldn't want to make the airline party in the deal, given the crunch in the Indian market. Flights have been suspended since March.

Apart from IndiGo, in which it has about 38 percent stake, InterGlobe also has a hospitality business (in partnership with Accor).

Bhatia is among the richest entrepreneurs in the country, with the Forbes Rich List putting his wealth at $3.4 billion. The entrepreneur may well bring in additional investors to partner in his bid for Virgin Australia.

An acquisition is a foreign territory for the veteran entrepreneur. IndiGo, unlike some of its peers, has grown organically.

Now it is probably the best time for Bhatia to change tack.
University trains graduates online to assist employment

By:Zheng Qian | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-05-15 17:24

As job seeking becomes more competitive this year due to the economic depression brought by the novel coronavirus outbreak, Shanghai Normal University launched a lecture series on Tik Tok on May 13 to guide female students, who are probably under more pressure than male ones in finding a job due to the potential gender discrimination.

The three lectures are all given by career planning experts and enterprise leaders and will last till May 27. The first one has attracted 4,000 views on the platform.

(an expert teaches online on the first lecture)

Pang Tingting, a senior student from Shanghai Normal University, said that the lecture was quite interesting and interactive, which helped her find out her goal in career selection.

Besides the guidance especially for female graduates, the Career Development and Employment Guidance Center of the university has also launched an online career ability improvement program with FESCO Adecco,a joint-venture HR services company. The program trains graduates in how to find a satisfying job by solving normal problems in online applications, resume writing, interviews and personalcommunication.

All courses of the training program are delivered by senior human resources management experts from FESCO Adecco. Each session ends with Q&A to provide students with professional and refined employment guidance.
LONDON  On May 1, a visibly relieved Matt Hancock announced that the British government had exceeded its target of 100,000 coronavirus tests a day. As health secretary, Mr. Hancock had set the goal after enduring intense criticism for the countrys lagging coronavirus testing program.

He called the milestone an incredible achievement.

But leaked documents and interviews with doctors, lab directors and other experts show that the push to hit the April 30 deadline  and arguably salvage Mr. Hancocks career  placed a huge strain on public laboratories and exposed other problems that are now slowing efforts to further expand coronavirus testing.

Days before the deadline, some hospitals in England were given 48 hours to rapidly expand testing to thousands of health care workers and patients, even though they were not exhibiting any symptoms of the virus, the documents show.

At the same time, public labs across the country raced through limited supplies of the chemical reagents needed to carry out a flood of tests after the government promised to replenish their supplies. Two weeks later, some labs still havent received the stocks they need, forcing some to reduce the number of new tests they can process, several lab managers said.
Press Release

May 15, 2020 Investigate existence of gov't funded 'troll armies' - De Lima Opposition Senator Leila M. de Lima has sought for an immediate Senate investigation following international reports that public funds are being used to pay online "troll armies" to manipulate public discourse in the country. Last May 12, De Lima filed Senate Resolution (SR) No. 401 directing the appropriate Senate Committees to verify the veracity of several studies abroad explaining how the Duterte government has organized and operated troll farms to "parrot political propaganda" using fake or misleading information. "[There is a need] to conduct an inquiry into the reports of public funds being spent to pay and maintain online trolls to distort and manipulate online information in various social media platforms in order to influence public opinion and political outcomes," she said. "It is against the interests of our country to fund online trolls who manipulate online discussions on national issues for political ends. These funds are better spent on education, alleviating poverty and improving our healthcare system," she added. In its 2020 World Press Freedom Index published early this year, the Belgium-based press freedom watchdog Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said that the Duterte administration have been using "call center hubs" that are "disseminating fake or maliciously edited content and fake memes", used for targeted harassment campaigns. De Lima noted in SR 401 that the RSF report is only one of the many studies from think tank groups that have unearthed the existence of covert online trolls that are funded by millions of pesos that are most likely sourced from public coffers. One of these earlier studies include the 2017 report from the University of Oxford which claims that the Duterte administration has used a total of $200,000 to hire trolls to spread propaganda and to target Duterte's political opponents. SR 401 also referred to a report from Freedom House, a USA-based human rights group, that the government has been paying individual trolls at least PhP500 a day to operate fake social media accounts supporting Mr. Duterte or attacking his detractors. These troll armies, SR 401 claims, are being led by bloggers and social media personalities that have been appointed in various government posts for their rabid support of Mr. Duterte. De Lima notes that some of them are still "admins" of blogs and social media pages that are known to propagate fake news. "With the seemingly consistent findings of various studies of state-backed 'troll armies' in the Philippines, it is imperative for Congress to verify the integrity of these reports and probe if any appropriated government funds are used to maintain and pay online trolls by various bloggers and social media personalities with their capacity as appointed officials in various government agencies or by the President himself under various discretionary budgets under his office," De Lima said. "Manipulation of public opinion through misinformation diminishes the level and quality of our national conversation and is ultimately detrimental to our democracy," she added. As the staunchest critic of the Duterte administration, especially of extrajudicial killings in the so-called 'War on Drugs', De Lima is a prominent victim of fake news concocted and propagated by troll farms in the Philippines. Mr. Duterte himself led the effort to spread false vitriolic narratives in his public addresses. Numerous fake or totally untrue reports about her or her family's involvement in the illegal drug trade have been published online, and ostensibly support the trumped-up charges that has led to her arbitrary detention since February 2017. Fortunately, with the help of local and foreign fact-checking organizations, De Lima was able to debunk most of the fake news about her, solidifying her case as a victim of political persecution under the Duterte regime.
LENOX  The Boston Symphony Orchestra on Friday called off its upcoming summer performances at Tanglewood  the first time a season there has been canceled in 75 years.

Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the BSO had already scrapped The Boston Pops spring season at Boston Symphony Hall, tour plans and Fourth of July fireworks concert at the Charles River Esplanade.

The BSO has not skipped a season at Tanglewood since World War II when no performances were staged from 1942 to 1945.

All of us at the Boston Symphony Orchestra deeply wish we could have found a way to present performances at Tanglewood this summer," BSO President and CEO Mark Volpe said in a statement. We explored every possible scenario to try to save all or part of our concert schedule, but with the health of the greater Tanglewood community as our highest priority, performances with audiences are not possible.

The Tanglewood season was to have begun June 19 and continued through Aug. 27.

In addition to classical performances led by conductors Andris Nelsons and Keith Lockhart, the Koussevitzky Music Shed was to have welcomed popular artists including John Legend, Ringo Starr, Trey Anastasio, Arlo Guthrie, Judy Collins, Patti Labelle, The Mavericks and James Taylor.

Instead, the BSO will offer a variety of audio and video streamed programming at tanglewood.org beginning July 1.

My colleagues at the Boston Symphony Orchestra have dedicated all their focus and energies to creating an innovative online offering for the thousands of music lovers who support Tanglewood," Nelsons said. Though nothing can substitute for the community around the live concert experience, these online offerings will be a beautiful bridge of inspiration that will help get us through this difficult period and back to live performances at Tanglewood in 2021.

The Tanglewood grounds will be open to the public  with social distancing and safety and health protocols recommended by the CDC in place  Saturdays and Sundays,10 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Wednesdays, 9 a.m. to noon, July 5 through Aug. 23. Visits to the grounds will require advance registration at tanglewood.org beginning June 15.

A number of other popular Berkshires attractions have opted to scrap their summer plans.

The Berkshire Film Festival, Jacobs Pillow in Becket, Williamstown Theatre Festival and Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, have all abandoned plans for live performances this summer. The Berkshire Theatre Group and outlying Chester Theater Company are opting to delay the start of their respective seasons.

There is no doubt that we are all disheartened over the loss of being together for live music performances this summer, as well as the loss of so many other cultural offerings throughout the Berkshire region," Nelsons said.

Related content:
May 15 is celebrated as International Day of Families or International Family Day every year. This day was recognised by the UN General Assembly in 1993 to highlight the importance attached to family units by the international community. The UN regards this occasion as important because "this day provides an opportunity to promote awareness of issues relating to families and to increase knowledge of the social, economic and demographic processes affecting families."

The UN releases a specific theme surrounding this day every year. This year's theme has been decided keeping in mind the COVID-19 crisis and how families are facing a huge change during the crisis, be it work from home, helping children or sharing responsibilities. This year's theme is "Families in Development: Copehagen& Beijing+ 25". Highlighting the reason behind this theme, the UN statement reads, "This year's 25th anniversary of Copenhagen Declaration and Beijing Platform for Action comes at a time of one of the most challenging global health and social crises."

In order to make this day special for all those family members, who are away from you, here are some wishes, messages and status that you can share:

Having a place to go- is a home. Having someone to love-is a family. Having both- is a blessing.

Happy International Family Day to you and your loved ones! Wishing you a lot of love and happiness. Hold on to each other, because you will always have your family, even when the world is falling apart.

Family is more than blood.

I can't imagine life without my family. All of you are everything for me.

There is no such thing as a perfect family. Everyone has problems; misunderstanding is a very common thing. But you will always have each other. Always try to be nice and kind to your family members. Happy International Day of Families.

Also read: Mother's Day 2020: Wishes, Whatsapp status, images, quotes, messages for your mom

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown 4.0! Delhi reports 472 new cases in 1 day; India's COVID-19 tally-81,970
Reuters

President Donald Trump on Wednesday extended for another year an executive order signed in May 2019 declaring a national emergency and barring US companies from using telecommunications equipment made by firms posing a national security risk.

The order invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, which gives the president the authority to regulate commerce in response to a national emergency that threatens the United States. US lawmakers said Trumps 2019 order was aimed squarely at Chinese companies like Huawei Technologies Co and ZTE Corp.

The US Commerce Department is also expected to extend again a license, set to expire on Friday, allowing US companies to keep doing business with Huawei, a person briefed on the matter said.

The department has issued a series of extensions of the temporary license and previously extended it until 1 April. Huawei, the second-largest maker of smartphones, is also a major telecoms equipment company that provides 5G network technology.

In March, the Commerce Department sought public comments on whether it should issue future extensions and asked what was the impact on your company or organization if the temporary general license is not extended? The Commerce Department also asked about the costs associated with ending the licenses.

Wireless trade association CTIA urged the department to approve a long-term license extension, writing that now is not the time to hamper global operators ability to maintain the health of the networks.

The group argues that ongoing, limited engagement with Huawei to protect the security of equipment and devices in the market benefits American consumers by reducing the risk that they will be subject to device compromise.

It also asked Commerce to reinstate and modify its prior authorization for standards development work to allow for exchanges with Huawei in furtherance of global telecommunications standards.

The Commerce Department and Huawei declined to comment.

Since adding Huawei to an economic blacklist in May 2019, citing national security concerns, the department has allowed it to purchase some US-made goods in a move aimed at minimizing disruption for its customers, many of which operate wireless networks in rural America.

In November, the Federal Communications Commission designated Huawei and ZTE as national security risks, effectively barring their rural customers in the United States from tapping an $8.5 billion government fund to purchase equipment.

Steven Barry, who heads the Competitive Carriers Association, told a congressional hearing in March that rural carriers were essentially attempting to rebuild the airplane in mid-flight by having to remove and replace network equipment.
ASEAN defence senior officials held a video conference on Friday to share experiences of ASEAN defence forces in preventing the COVID-19 pandemic and discuss future co-operation direction for disease response.

Vietnamese defence officials attend the video conference on Friday morning.  VNA/VNS Photo Duong Giang

The leaders said that the ASEAN Defence Senior Officials Meeting (ADSOM) was a valuable opportunity for the bloc to share good practices which the defence establishments of ASEAN member states have contributed to their respective governments effort in preventing and dealing with the pandemic. Through such exchange, ASEAN will be able to address future diseases more effectively.

Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Defence Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh said the COVID-19 pandemic had affected the whole world and ASEAN member states are not an exception. As ASEAN Chair 2020 and also a country affected by COVID-19, Vietnam shares sympathy with ASEAN countries in terms of difficulties and losses during this period.

He appreciated ASEAN member states efforts in fighting the pandemic and believed ASEAN countries would soon push back the pandemic.

At the ASEAN Defence Retreat in February, the defence leaders agreed that in spite of the pandemic, the member states still commit to ASEAN defence co-operation within the planned framework.

In fact the ASEAN defence co-operation has become increasingly practical, especially in implementing joint statement of ASEAN defence ministers in COVID-19 prevention and control, Vinh said.

The Vietnamese National Defence Ministry highlighted that when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out, the ministry has proactively participated in the joint efforts of the Vietnamese Government in addressing the disease through various means such as using military barracks and units as the quarantine locations for people returning from overseas; participating in disinfection and detoxification in areas identified as outbreaks; research and production of test kits.

The ministry has also managed and supervised borders, border areas and co-operated with countries like Laos, Cambodia, China, Russia, Myanmar, Cuba to promote experience sharing and supporting each other in the fight against COVID-19.

Deputy Minister Nguyen Chi Vinh thanked ASEAN countries military forces for joint efforts with Vietnam to respond to the pandemic.

At the meeting, ASEAN defence leaders said that COVID-19 was not only a medical crisis but also a total crisis for humanity, potentially leading to geopolitical changes in the world as well as changes in international relations, especially among powers.

They agreed that it was necessary and timely for ASEAN to prepare scenarios and plans to cope with the COVID-19 pandemic as well as unpredictable developments of the disease in the future.

Regarding diseases as a type of non-traditional security threats, they said other threats such as cyber security, water, food security continue to have complicated developments, posing risks on the lives, health and livelihoods of billions of people around the world.

Despite the threat from COVID-19, hotspots around the world continue to cause concern, which in turn makes the risk of conflict more prominent.

The East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea) situation continues to have new and complicated developments. If the involved parties do not remain calm, exercise restraint and strengthen co-operation in order to resolve the disagreement, the tension could escalate and change the status quo, posing counter-productive threats to regional peace and stability, they said. VNS

ASEAN countries prove effective cooperation in curbing COVID-19: Deputy Defence Minister ASEAN entered 2020 with a lot of difficulties due to the COVID-19 pandemic but the initial success in curbing the spread of the disease in the region has proved effective intra-regional cooperation,
New Delhi, May 15 : In the third tranche of Rs 20 lakh-crore package announced by the Prime Minister, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday came up with an 11-point plan for farmers' welfare, fisheries and food processing.

The third tranche of measures being announced today focuses on agriculture and allied activities, including fisheries, said the Finance Minister.

The government announced Rs 1 lakh crore for aggregators and startups in agriculture sector, including warehouse and cold chains. The benefit will also go to farmers' cooperatives.

The government also announced Rs 10,000 crore for cluster-based manufacturing for nutritional products in which 2 lakh MFI will benefit, for example, Kashmir can have 'Kesar' and Bihar can have 'Makhana' clusters.

"India is the largest milk producer, largest jute and pulses producer, second largest in sugarcane, cotton, groundnut, fruits, vegetables and fisheries and third in cereals. Indian farmer has really endured and made sure that he would give us the highest yield, said Sitharaman.

The Finance Minister said it goes to the credit of the Indian farmer who has always stood up to various challenges and has made India reach certain global benchmarks.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
President Moon Jae-in holds phone talks with King Philippe of Belgium in this photo provided by Cheong Wa Dae, May 15. Yonhap



South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Friday held phone talks with King Philippe of Belgium and discussed ways to cooperate in overcoming the coronavirus pandemic, Seoul's presidential office said.

In the phone conversation, King Philippe thanked South Korea for sending face masks to Belgium and said Seoul's response is a successful example of handling the novel coronavirus outbreak, according to Cheong Wa Dae.

South Korea earlier this month decided to provide face masks to Korean War veterans in 22 countries, and about 20,000 masks were sent to Belgium, one of the nations that took part in the 1950-53 war.

Moon thanked King Philippe for Belgium's help in the evacuation of South Koreans in Mali who had been stranded in the African nation due to the coronavirus lockdown. Eleven South Korean businessmen all returned home safely last month after they were allowed to board Belgium's military plane departing from Mali.

Moon also told King Philippe that the two countries should support economic exchanges of businessmen to minimize the fallout of the pandemic.

(Yonhap)
For over 60 years, the Irish Independent has honoured our inspiring sporting heroes with the Sportstar of the Week awards.

This year our nation has faced a challenge far beyond our sporting fields.

New heroes have inspired us with their courage, dedication and commitment in the fight against Covid-19.

We want to honour the heroism of our frontline workers, with our Frontline Star of the Week award in association with our partner, The Croke Park Hotel.

Help us by nominating your frontline star. Do you know a doctor, or nurse, or someone else excelling in our health service? A caring neighbour, shop worker or someone in a community project going above and beyond?

To nominate someone, email your submission (100 words max) along with a photo, telling us about your nominee to frontlinestar@independent.ie

Each weekly Frontline Star will receive a complimentary dinner, bed & breakfast stay at The Croke Park Hotel.
Boeing secures cruise missile contracts with Saudi Arabia

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 10:33 AM

American aircraft-manufacturing giant Boeing has secured two military contracts to provide hundreds of cruise missiles to Saudi Arabia, a US ally that has been leading a brutal war on impoverished Yemen.

The US Department of Defense announced in a statement on Wednesday that Boeing had won two contracts worth over 2.6 billion dollars combined for the delivery of more than 1,000 air-to-surface and anti-ship missiles to Saudi Arabia.

The first contract is for the modernization of SLAM-ER cruise missiles as well as the delivery of 650 new missiles "in support of the government of Saudi Arabia," the Pentagon said.

The second one was said to be a 650-million-dollar contract for the delivery of 467 new Harpoon Block II anti-ship missiles to the Arab kingdom, Brazil, Qatar, and Thailand.

The Pentagon said the delivery would be completed by 2028.

In a separate statement, Boeing announced that the new contracts would ensure the continuation of the Harpoon program through 2026 and restart the SLAM-ER production line.

The US administration has time and again touted Saudi Arabia as an important regional partner.

The Saudi war on Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of people and caused near-famine conditions in the impoverished country, is under international criticism.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the devastating war on Yemen in March 2015 to subdue a popular uprising against the former regime in the country, which had been allied to Riyadh.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have purchased billions of dollars' worth of weapons from the United States, France, and the United Kingdom in their war on Yemen.

The UN says over 24 million Yemenis are in dire need of humanitarian aid, including 10 million suffering from extreme levels of hunger.

The Saudi-led aggression against and an accompanying blockade of Yemen continue despite the coronavirus pandemic and the impoverished country's urgent need for medical supplies.

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China's ambassador to Britain has denied the country covered up coronavirus and insisted that it is open to the World Health Organisation.

Liu Xiaoming last night claimed that the Communist government has no problem with a probe of its wet markets and laboratories to see if Covid-19 originated in Wuhan.

As he denied that the country had covered up the outbreak, he also said that right now isn't the right time to investigate China.

Interviewer Mark Austin asked the ambassador if his country had hidden the outbreak form the international community, with Xiaoming insisting that even fierce critic Donald Trump had spoken of co-operation between their nations during the pandemic.

Insisting that no cover-up had taken place, he was then asked on Sky News why China wasn't allowing an investigation.

The ambassador replied: 'I think this investigation should not be politically motivated. First of all, the top priority for the international community is to fight, is to focus on fighting this virus.

'Secondly, we're open, we're transparent, we have nothing to fear. We welcome an international, independent review - but it has to be organised by WHO.'

Austin asked for confirmation that China was inviting the WHO to investigate now, to which Xiaoming said 'at the appropriate time - but not now'.

The ambassador insisted he was fine with the investigation proceeding, but not at the moment

Throughout the interview, he insisted his country had come forward with information about the virus as soon as it had been possible.

Saying that China was the true victim in the pandemic, he denied that Beijing played a role in silencing scientists and skewing data.

And he said it wasn't fair for politicians and pundits to say that the disease had originated in his country because it's a question for scientists.

The denials come after the US President claimed he'd seen evidence that the coronavirus originated in a Wuhan lab.

Four days ago a bombshell report claimed President Xi Jinping personally asked World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom to 'delay a global warning' about the threat of COVID-19 during a conversation back in January.
Our increase in rankings was a result of our Remote Guard Service offerings and continued campus wide security projects.

The SDM 100 is a yearly report ranking the top 100 U.S. companies that earn their revenues from the sale, installation, service and monitoring of electronic security systems.

A+ placed in multiple category rankings including #8 in the Nation for Commercial Security Projects revenue, #33 for total security related revenue and #59 for recurring managed revenues.

This is a tremendous honor to be ranked again among the largest 100 Security integrators in the U.S. and as a result of our teams hard work. stated David Antar, President for A+ Technology and Security Solutions. Our increase in rankings was a result of our Remote Guard Service offerings and continued campus wide security projects.

A+ is currently focused on assisting businesses and schools for their safe return following the COVID-19 shutdown. With our Temperature Scanning technology and Remote Guarding Services as well as the installation of hands-free access and security technologies we expect our business to continue to thrive in 2020 without major setbacks Antar further stated.

The SDM 100 has been published since 1991. Its primary objective is to measure consumer dollars gained by security companies, in order to present an account of the size of the market captured by the 100 largest providers. SDM 100 companies are ranked by their recurring monthly revenue. RMR is the revenue associated with the contractual agreement between a security company and its subscriber  derived from customer billing for services such as monitoring, contracted service/system maintenance, security-as-a-service and managed/cloud solutions, and leasing of security systems  and is typically the basis for valuation of a security company. RMR is the language of security company executives and is meaningful in comparative analysis among industry peers.

About A+ Technology & Security Solutions, Inc:

A+ Technology & Security Solutions, Inc. is a systems integrator specializing in the convergence of physical security, A/V, and IT infrastructure solutions, headquartered in Bay Shore, NY. Since 1989, A+ Technology & Security Solutions has been providing integrated solutions to schools, law enforcement, local, state and federal governmental agencies, healthcare and commercial organizations. Working closely with local, regional and national clients, including the New York Police Department, Suffolk County Police Department, Department of Homeland Security, City of Bridgeport, CT, City University of New York (CUNY), numerous fire departments, and over 100 public and private schools in the greater New York area. A+ Technology & Security Solutions is widely recognized as a trusted expert in school and public safety and security, providing efficient and innovative solutions with a proven and vetted track record of success.

About SDM

SDM is the #1 security channel media with 100% BPA Audited buy/install circulation. SDM provides management and technical professionals with a comprehensive overview of the security marketplace. Through its monthly print magazine, Buyers Guide and three titled supplements - smartHOME, Monitoring TODAY, and Solutions by Sector - as well as e-newsletters, the new sdmmag.com website, virtual trade shows and live events, SDM is consistently ranked best read and most credible magazine by ISC West attendees. SDM Magazine was first published in 1971.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:38:27|Editor: huaxia

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MALE, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Thirty-eight new cases of COVID-19 were confirmed in Maldives on Friday, raising the total case count above 1,000, while officials say that the peak of virus infections will arrive in two weeks.

Twenty-nine Maldivians, eight Bangladeshis, and a Nepali citizen tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday according to the Health Protection Authority (HPA), raising the country's total case count to 1,020. So far, four people have died and 45 have recovered from the virus in the country.

Officials have projected the final case count of the country to rise over 77,000, and infections to reach their peak on May 31 with over 1,500 new cases on the day. Officials have been frank about the precarious situation of the country, saying that capacity for testing, especially in regional islands, need to be rapidly developed.

The first COVID-19 cases in Maldives were reported from two foreign workers at the Kuredu Resort and Spa on March 7. The situation took a turn for the worse on April 15, when clusters of community transmission were discovered in the congested capital of Male.

According to data from the Ministry of Health, over 668 out of 1,020 confirmed infections are of foreign citizens, mostly Bangladeshis, followed by Indians and Nepalis. Experts said that cramped housing conditions have made migrant workers particularly vulnerable to the virus.

Members of the Maldives National Defence Force (MNDF), who have been on the frontline against the pandemic, have also been vulnerable with 40 officers testing positive, according to Major General Abdulla Shamaal.

A lockdown first imposed on the city of Male on April 15 has expanded to include the Greater Male Region and is now set to continue until at least May 28.

During the pandemic, the Maldivian parliament conducted a parliamentary sitting online via a video conferencing platform on March 30.

Local council elections which were originally scheduled for April 4 were postponed to April 14 and later to January 2021 by a bill passed in Parliament and ratified by President Ibrahim Solih on May 11, due to health risks posed by the pandemic.

On the economic front, Maldives stands to be one of the countries worst affected by the pandemic in the South Asia region, with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) projecting that the country's GDP may contract by 8.1 percent in 2020 largely due to disruptions to tourism.

The IMF Executive Board on April 22 approved a 28.9 million U.S. dollar disbursement to Maldives under the Rapid Credit Facility in order to help the country cover balance of payments issues and fiscal pressures stemming from the pandemic. Enditem
Bexar County Sheriff's Office

A 23-year-old man was arrested on sexual assault charges after he impregnated a teenage girl last year, according to an arrest affidavit said.

In July 2019, a 14-year-old girl told police that three months prior she met Jose Luis Gloria through a social media site and then met him in person at an elementary school close to her residence.
With his trip Thursday to a warehouse outside Allentown, President Donald Trump chose to visit a firm positioned to profit from a pandemic. It is one of the few remaining U.S. makers of surgical gowns and other personal protective equipment, or PPE, the now-familiar acronym.

PPE makers like Owens & Minor Inc., the president suggested, could be a model for reviving U.S. manufacturing.

Through tariffs and government contracts, Trump says, he wants to revive manufacturing and warehousing across the nation. Only about a tenth of U.S. workers now labor in factories, a modern low.

The Justice Department this month said it would not use antitrust laws to stop Owens & Minor from joining McKesson Corp., Cardinal Health Inc.. and other large U.S. PPE suppliers in coordinating efforts to ship more PPE to hospitals and nursing homes.

Moreover, Owens & Minor, founded in 1882 in Richmond, Va., where it remains based, was among the U.S. companies that won Trump administration contracts earlier this spring to replenish the federal Health and Human Services Strategic National Stockpile.

But if Owens & Minor is a model for the future, its also an example of the challenges ahead.

For one thing, a majority of its workforce toils outside of the U.S. in plants in such places as Mexico, Honduras, and Thailand.

And it needs a federal boost. Squeezed by global competition and cost-cutting in the U.S. health-care industry, the $9 billion (yearly sales) company has lost money in each of the last two years; its share price has fallen to half its 2018 level and a quarter of what it was worth in 2016.

In a May 6 conference call with investors, Owens & Minors chief executive, Ed Pesicka, warned that even with the government contracts, the PPE industry is still facing a loss of demand for other products, and sales for this year would likely drop from 2019 levels.

Pesicka and his aides said that paradoxically, Owens & Minor had also lost a lot of sales recently because of the massive reduction in elective surgeries following anti-virus shutdowns.

In his remarks in the Upper Macungie Township warehouse of Owens & Minor  a speech that took only brief shots at frequent targets such as reporters and Democratic rival Joe Biden  Trump said he wants to bring factories back to the U.S., with government contracts, government loans, government limits on what U.S. buyers can purchase abroad in key industries, and other policies.

 ASK US: Do you have a question about the coronavirus and how it affects your health, work, and life? Ask our reporters.

Along with the import taxes (tariffs) Trump has imposed on goods from China and other countries, these protectionist policies, while helping U.S. factory owners, also tend to impose costs, borne by taxpayers and by consumers and businesses in the form of higher prices.

In the case of the PPE industry, Trump is betting that pain is worth it to keep U.S. users closer to supplies of vital goods that have run short in the coronavirus crisis.

Long a distributor of goods made by others, Owens & Minor began acquiring medical gear makers in the early 2000s, as U.S. companies left the business or moved operations overseas. In 2012 it bought Movianto Groups European operations, and in 2018 it bought the former Kimberly-Clark PPE and medical gear manufacturing operations. Kimberly-Clarks plants were in North Carolina and Central America.

The deals more than tripled Owens & Minor employment, to 15,400, including 9,000 outside the U.S., compared with 4,800 mostly U.S. warehouse workers a decade earlier. Owens & Minor is mainly nonunion in the U.S., while most of its foreign workforce is unionized.

Six week ago, Pesicka, who took command of the firm last year, had visited the White House to tell the presidents coronavirus task force how much he appreciated all the support the president has given his industry. (Pesicka, a former Pittsburgh-based official of Thermo Fisher Scientific Corp. and adviser to venture capitalists, has in the past donated to Democrats including U.S. Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware and former U.S. Sens. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John Kerry of Massachusetts.)

In his recent call to investors, Pesicka said its factories in Mexico and Honduras, as well in the U.S., gave the firm a geographic edge, meaning it could deliver critical PPE more quickly to the U.S. buyers than rivals who use mainly Asian suppliers. Pesicka characterized his Central American and U.S. facilities as based in the Americas.

If you can manufacture the product in the Americas, he said, if you can quickly get it there, and you have control of that supply chain from manufacturing to supply to distribution to the customer, [that] makes a big difference on ability to serve our customer during peak demands.

At the White House meeting, Pesicka had told Trump how his company had ramped up American production, where we are now manufacturing an additional 40 to 50 million masks per month to get into the U.S. health-care system.

Even so, he said then, the company was struggling with the rapid increase in demand for masks, noting that one New York hospital, which he didnt name, had gone from using up to 20,000 masks a week to more than 200,000.

So you multiply that times the entire U.S., plus foreign demand, the need is much greater even than the increased production, Pesicka concluded.

In his remarks Thursday, Trump told the assembled Owens & Minor warehouse employees that the increased purchases will make the U.S. more ready for any future epidemics. But as he has in the past, he predicted the current crisis would ease by fall.

Owens & Minor seems somewhat more cautious.

The COVID-19 pandemic has created unprecedented demand for PPE products, and we have been running our production of these critical products 24/7 in an effort to meet the demand, Andy Long, the firms chief financial officer, told investors in the May 6 call. We believe the demand for PPE products will continue at higher-than-normal levels for the rest of the year.
US Defence Department Awards Boeing $2.6 Billion in Cruise Missile Contracts

Sputnik News

03:28 GMT 14.05.2020

WASHINGTON (Sputnik) - US aerospace giant Boeing won two cruise missile contracts worth over $2.6 billion combined to support foreign military sales to Saudi Arabia and six other countries, the Defence Department said in a press release.

"The Boeing Company of St. Louis, Missouri is awarded a $1,971,754,089... contract to provide non-recurring engineering associated with the Stand-off Land Attack Missile  Expanded Response (SLAM ER) obsolescence redesign effort as well as the production and delivery of 650 SLAM ER missiles in support of the government of Saudi Arabia", the release said on Wednesday.

Boeing also won $656 million to provide 467 Harpoon anti-ship missiles to Japan, India, South Korea, Qatar, Brazil, and The Netherlands, the release added.

In December 2019, the Boeing Company received a $265 million modification contract to upgrade the US Ground-based Midcourse Defence (GMD) interceptor system.

The AGM-84H/K SLAM-ER (Standoff Land Attack Missile-Expanded Response) is an advanced standoff precision-guided, air-launched cruise missile. The Harpoon is an all-weather, over-the-horizon, anti-ship missile.

 Sputnik

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LONDON, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Optimism returns to the Federation of St Kitts and Nevis, after a strict but effective handling of the outbreak on the twin islands. On Wednesday, Prime Minister Timothy Harris addressed the nation on the occasion of the dissolution of Parliament, as expected after the 5-year mandate tenure by Team Unity. He highlighted several socio-economic initiatives made possible thanks to the Citizenship by Investment (CBI) Programme.

Foreign investors have been contributing to the government fund under the CBI Programme, rewarded with the country's citizenship in return. While it does not require minimum residence from applicants, the Programme replaces this with multi-tiered security checks. The country ramped up its due diligence processes and will soon include biometric data. In 2018, PM Harris introduced the Sustainable Growth Fund as the fastest route to citizenship from St Kitts and Nevis and a way to support key social and economic areas to benefit residents.

"We are proud of our spectacular performance in tourism development, the build out of our ICT sector, advancement in education and healthcare especially the provision for the first time of a Cancer Treatment Unit at the J. N. F. Hospital and our mental health day care facility," said PM Harris. "We undertook the most significant public sector investment in our country's history. The construction of the second cruise pier, the [EC]$69 million resurfacing of the island main road, also the reconstruction of the Old Road Bay," PM Harris added. "We also introduced the Poverty Alleviation Programme and pay a monthly stipend of [EC]$500 to over 4,000 households earning less than [EC]$3,000 per month," said the Prime Minister.

Another success made possible with CBI funding was supporting the cruise sector. The day before addressing the nation on dissolving the Parliament, PM Harris said during a radio show: "Under Team Unity, we experienced remarkable geometric growth in our tourism [] where twice in a row we hit the one millionth [passenger] mark in terms of cruise arrivals." Foreign Minister Mark Brantley previously estimated that CBI makes up for around a fifth of the country's GDP.

On Friday, the PM expressed optimism for the country, saying that "it's onward and upward to a bright future." Detailing his vision for St Kitts and Nevis' path to continue the growth momentum, Prime Minister Harris said he wants to empower more young people, develop the agricultural sector, support growth in farming and fisheries, bring more cutting-edge ICT to the island, resume tourism growth and keep up the fiscal policies that catapulted St Kitts and Nevis to the "best in the region."

Despite being the smallest nation in the Western Hemisphere, St Kitts and Nevis citizens benefit from widespread visa-free access, a stable economic and political climate, sound rule of law and a secure, investor-friendly environment. Successful CBI applicants can also pass down their citizenship to future generations.

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With the stock collapsing following the reverse split, Aurora Cannabis (ACB) needed a strong quarter to change the trend. The Canadian cannabis company is in the middle of a transformational plan that doesnt always work out as planned.

The company delivered in spades. Not only did Aurora report crucial progress in cutting out of costs, but also the company smashed revenue estimates during the coronavirus outbreak. The stock has bounced strong off the lows and is likely headed higher now.

According to TipRanks, the consensus on Wall Street is that Aurora Cannabis stock is a hold for investors. On one hand, TipRanks might as well have said buy  because analysts, on average, think the stock, currently at $10.44, could zoom ahead to $12.78, delivering about 20% profits to new investors. On the other hand, Aurora stock could present investors with better entry points than at $10.44 per share.

Dazzling Quarter

While the company only guided to a modest sequential revenue increase from the prior quarter, Aurora Cannabis grew total revenues by over C$11.8 million to C$78.4 million. The company saw impressive growth in Canadian recreational cannabis sales due to the introduction of the value brand while international medical cannabis rebounded with Germany sales back online.

A big key here is that gross margins remained a healthy 54%. The value brand wasnt destructive to margins setting Aurora on a path to reaching EBITDA profits for the first time in years.

Aurora cut SG&A expenses that swelled to C$99 million in FQ2 by C$24 million to C$75 million. More importantly, the company is on a SG&A run-rate of C$55 million currently and expects to reach the C$45 million goal by quarter end. The number is far more impressive considering R&D expenses were pushed into the C$45 million target while costs were over C$5 million in the last quarter.

The end result was a big C$34 million cut to the adjusted EBITDA loss. Another C$30 million cut in operating expenses in FQ4 gets the Canadian cannabis company close to EBITDA breakeven.

Story continues

Cash Burn

Some analysts had estimated that Aurora Cannabis burned up to C$200 million in cash during the March quarter, but the number only hit C$154 million. Similar to the cut in operating expense, the company expects to make a huge leap forward in the June quarter cash burn that is a game changer for building shareholder wealth.

The company ended the quarter with C$230 million in cash and is likely to reduce cash burn below C$50 million in the current quarter. First, the operating losses are likely reduced by at least C$30 million from the cash burn levels. Second, the capital spending is forecast to dip C$50 million from the prior quarter to below C$25 million in the current quarter.

While it took a long time, Aurora Cannabis finally has its fiscal house in order. The company should reach EBITDA positive in the September quarter with decent revenue growth in Canada from additional retail stores in Ontario and further expansion of Cannabis 2.0 products. Not to mention, the larger companies are likely beneficiaries of weaker players struggling in the current economic climate.

Takeaway

The key investor takeaway is that the valuation equation for Aurora Cannabis is far more interesting here as the market pushed the stock to post split lows of $5.30. Even at the $11 level following a big rally, the stock only has a market cap of $1.15 billion.

Investors should feel much more confident in the stock here with reasonable expectations for FY21 revenues topping $300 million and the company having limited funding going. The stock is likely to make a continued rally here, but investors should wait for a pullback first to buy here after the big rally.

To find good ideas for cannabis stocks trading at attractive valuations, visit TipRanks Best Stocks to Buy, a newly launched tool that unites all of TipRanks equity insights.
Each day throughout the holy month of Ramadanwhich began April 23 and will conclude on May 23the global Muslim community, nearly a third of the worlds population, fasts together.

That means no food or water from dawn until sunset. And, in the evenings, fasts are broken ceremoniously with family and friends. Fasting together, then eating and praying together are essential elements of the yearly Ramadan tradition, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, many traditions are on hold this year.

Abdulrahman Bin Damnan is the president of the Muslim Students of the University of Miami (MSUM) organization. While dealing with all the obstacles of a global pandemic, he has also been fasting every day.

While some people might think of fasting as an unbearable task, Ramadan is nevertheless a month of elevating spirituality and enjoying sociability, he said.

Bin Damnan is originally from Yemen. Along with other Yemeni students at the University, he cannot see his family often, which makes the social aspect of Ramadan more challenging. In addition, the United States is currently restricting travel from Yemen, where his family still lives.

We dont want to risk it and go back and then maybe somehow we cannot come back here. We want to finish our degrees, said Al Mahdi Bokhait, Bin Damnans friend and fellow Yemeni student.

Neither Bin Damnan nor Bokhait have seen their families in more than four years.

I would be remiss if I said I did not miss celebrating Ramadan with my family in Yemen, Bin Damnan remarked.

In 2018, Bin Damnan, Bokhait, and other MSUM students began hosting iftar (the evening meal that breaks the fast) on campus every day around sunset during the holy month. The iftar would take place outside the La Gorce House, behind the Watsco Center. It quickly became a MSUM tradition and attracted Muslim and non-Muslim students alike. According to Bokhait, the gatherings were a great substitute for not having family aroundsomething he was looking forward to this year.

You want to see other Muslims and feel like youre with the community, Bokhait said, but this year everything just stopped, and everyones at home.

Luckily, Bokhait has roommates, two Yemeni and one Kuwaiti. We cook every day and during this Ramadan we also pray together, Bokhait said.

Bin Damnan said it is no exaggeration to call Islam a social religion. While he has encouraged other MSUM students to reach out to local mosques during Ramadan, they must to do so virtually and in adherence with social distancing guidelines.

Imam Abdul Hamid Samra is the Muslim chaplain at the University of Miami as well as the director of the Islamic Center of Greater Miami. He has stayed in contact with some MSUM students, and he has even been conducting virtual programs, prayers, and classes through the Islamic Center. While he especially misses greeting and talking to people during Friday prayers, he believes there is good reason for keeping the mosque closed.

When we pray, we stand next to each other and this means if one is sick then everyone can get sick, Samra said, But [closing the mosque] wasnt easy.

Samra has been encouraging others to stay home, pray with their families, and pray privately.

That is exactly what he has been doing. And, without families nearby, Bokhait and Bin Damnan have also had to focus on different ways of connecting with God and others.

While I cannot see my family physically, I still remain connected spiritually during this unifying experience, Bin Damnan said.

Bokhait has also been staying in touch with his family. He is currently collecting monetary donations through social media to send to his hometown of Aden, Yemen, which was recently hit by severe flooding. Acts of charity are traditionally another important part of Ramadan, and Bokhait hopes that whatever amount he garners can help the needy in Aden.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues, it is likely that the celebrations at the end of Ramadan, which conclude May 23 and are called Eid Al Fitr, will be much more subdued than previous years.

Well continue to pray and encourage others to spread positivity, Bin Damnan said. Hopefully our prayers will be answered in a timely manner.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:18:48|Editor: huaxia

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Workers work at a touchscreen producing workshop of Jiangsu Huake Chuangzhi Technology Co., Ltd. at Suqian Laser Industrial Park in Suqian City, east China's Jiangsu Province, May 13, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Bo)

With consolidated epidemic control efforts and the restoration of economic activities, major indices have sustained the improving momentum since March. But it is still challenging for the economy to wipe out the severe shocks incurred by the epidemic.

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China's economic activities continued to normalize as the latest data on industrial output, retail sales and investment showed across-the-board improvements, but the recovery still faces uncertainties and challenges from the global spread of the novel coronavirus.

The industrial sector was among the quickest to rebound from the impact of the virus, with the value-added industrial output returning to growth last month, the first expansion since the virus outbreak as factory activities recovered amid easing containment measures.

The value-added industrial output went up 3.9 percent year on year in April, rebounding from the 1.1-percent drop in March and 13.5-percent slump seen in the first two months of the year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) Friday.

Adding to the recovery signs, the index measuring services production fell 4.5 percent last month, narrowing from 9.1 percent in March, while retail sales of consumer goods went down 7.5 percent, recovering from a drop of 15.8 percent a month earlier.

Fixed-asset investment declined 10.3 percent in the first four months, with the fall narrowing by 5.8 percentage points compared with the decrease in the first three months.

With consolidated epidemic control efforts and the restoration of economic activities, major indices have sustained the improving momentum since March, the NBS said in a statement.

"But it is still challenging for the economy to wipe out the severe shocks incurred by the epidemic," said NBS spokesperson Liu Aihua at a news briefing in responding to a query about when the Chinese economy could return to growth.

China's economy shrank by 6.8 percent year on year in the first quarter (Q1) as the virus outbreak dealt a huge blow to economic activity. While the epidemic has been basically brought under control at home, the global spread of the virus and collapsing external demand will complicate the future recovery of the world's second-largest economy.

Despite the uncertainties, Liu stressed confidence in the economy as the fundamentals and the trend of upward momentum in the long term have not changed, citing the country's economic scale, strong resilience, emerging new drivers and flexible macro policies as among the major factors underpinning growth.

As the virus has continued to spread overseas, China will timely adjust its response policies to push the full normalization of its economy, Liu said.

A customer buys products at a time-honored food store in east China's Shanghai Municipality, April 26, 2020. (Xinhua/Wang Xiang)

Facing the economic shocks from the epidemic, China has increased policy support for the monetary and fiscal fronts to restart the economy and help businesses, especially small ones, to tide over difficulties.

Commenting on the data, Wen Bin, chief analyst at China Minsheng Bank, said the bottleneck in China's economic recovery has shifted from business and production resumption along the industry chain to yet-to-fully-recover demand.

Stronger macro policies should follow to spur the rebound in demand, including implementing further cuts to reserve requirement ratios and increasing the scale of local government bonds, Wen said.

In a research note ahead of the National People's Congress annual session scheduled to open on May 22, China International Capital Corporation Limited (CICC), an investment bank, said it expects more flexible targets for economic growth and stronger counter-cyclical macroeconomic policy.

The CICC predicts that the deficit ratio will rise by 3 to 4 percentage points and stabilizing employment will likely be the top priority of government work in 2020.

Friday's data also showed China's job market remained generally stable in April, with the surveyed unemployment rate in urban areas standing at 6 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than that in March. 
NEW DELHI (Reuters) - India is expected to produce a record 107.18 million tonnes of wheat this year, the farm ministry said in its third forecast for the crop year to June 2020, marginally higher than a previous estimate of 106.21 million tonnes.

Rice output in the world's biggest exporter and No. 2 producer is estimated at 117.94 against 117.47 million tonnes forecast in February.

The farm ministry forecast this year's total grains output at a record 295.67 million tonnes, up 1.27% from the previous estimate 291.95 million tonnes.

The government cut rapeseed output estimates to 8.70 million tonnes from 9.11 million tonnes estimated in February.

Production of chickpea, a popular variety of pulses, is likely to be 10.90, down from 11.22 million tonnes estimated earlier.

(Reporting by Mayank Bhardwaj, editing by Louise Heavens)
By Express News Service

VIJAYAWADA: Reiterating that farmers welfare is the top priority of his government, Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy released the first installment under the YSR Rythu Bharosa - PM Kisan scheme on Friday during a video conference with farmers.

A total of 40 lakh farmers stand to benefit from the scheme and a total of Rs 2,800 crore was credited to their accounts at a time. Each farmer was credited Rs 5,500 out of Rs 7,500 as the first installment. Rs 2000 was already credited to their accounts as an advance amount in the month of April to help them deal with the COVID-19 crisis.

Under the scheme, each farmer stands to get Rs 13,500 per year and in five years, a total of 67,500 will be paid to them, not as a loan, but as investment help, so they can procure the needed farm inputs for the crops they cultivate. Last year, we extended income support to 46,69,000 spending Rs 6,534 crore under the scheme, the Chief Minister explained.

The second installment of Rs 4000 each will be extended to the farmers in October to help them invest in rabi crop, followed by Rs 2000 each as 3rd installment on Sankranthi. 62 percent of the population is dependent on agriculture. 80 percent of the farmers have less than 1-hectare landholding while 50 percent have less than half a hectare (1.25 acres). Hence it is imperative to lend a helping hand to them. How much ever we may give to the food growers, it is not enough, he said.

To ensure no eligible farmer is left out, the names of the beneficiaries were displayed at village secretariats since April 24, he said. If anyone has missed, they can apply. I will give another one month for them to apply, he announced. He added unlike other states, tenant farmers, those cultivating inam lands, assigned lands, ROF are also being extended benefits of the scheme.

Bankers were asked not to adjust the amount to pending dues of the farmers and if the farmers face any problems in accessing their amount in the banks or if their amount was adjusted to old dues, they can lodge a complaint with officials through the toll-free number 1902 and officials in the CMO will address the issue. My letter to the farmers will be given to them by the village volunteers who will collect the acknowledgments, he said.

Emphasizing that only with farmers and farmhands welfare is development of the state possible, Jagan said on May 30 his government will complete one year and he is dedicating the success to the farmers. To mark the occasion, we will launch 10,641 Rythu Bharosa Kendras (RBK), which will be a game-changer in the rural economy, he said

Further elaborating on RBKs, he said the centres which will herald changes in the social ecosystem will have an agriculture assistant, digital kiosks to disseminate information, provide quality seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides. RBKs will help the farmers to decide what crops to be cultivated, when and to what extent, based on the market intelligence reports about the price. Further soil tests will be performed. They will also facilitate in getting crop loans through the e-Crop facility and also help in getting crop insurance, he explained.

Pointing out that his government has set up a market stabilization fund of Rs 3000 crore, he said Rs 1,500 crore were already sent to assist the farmers in the time of crisis recently. Elaborating on how his government was helping the farmers by providing MSPs for the crops for which MSPs were not announced by the Centre, he said they have also decided to help the farmers benefit by 9-hour free power supply during the daytime.

Already 82 percent of feeders in the state are ready and the remaining will be ready by the rabi crop next year. We have spent a total of Rs 1,700 crore on power infrastructure to make it possible, he said

Agriculture Advisory Boards to be set up at state, district and mandal levels will be of great use and to ensure farmers sell their produce, vegetables, poultry products, aqua products, YSR Janata Bazaars will be set up by next year, he added. It will help in ensuring 30 percent consumption of the farm produce domestically, which in turn stands to benefit the farmers, he said.

Agriculture is our priority and by Gods blessing, we had good rains, and the food grain production was 172 lakh tonnes compared to 150 lakh tonnes last year. I pray for more rains this year also, so we can have a bumper harvest, he concluded.
The US has seen unfortunate reports of COVID-19 related "rhetoric and harassment" against the Muslim community in India, a top American diplomat has said, asserting that it has been exacerbated by fake news and misinformation shared on social media.

Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback, however, also said that the US was encouraged by the statements from senior Indian officials calling for unity amidst the unprecedented spread of the pandemic.

Brownback was briefing reporters on Thursday on the impact of COVID-19 on religious minorities throughout the world.

"In India, we've seen reports of unfortunate COVID-related rhetoric and harassment, particularly against the Muslim community. This has been exacerbated by fake news reports, misinformation being shared via social media. There have also been instances of Muslims being attacked for allegedly spreading the coronavirus," Brownback said during a conference call.

"Now, I've been encouraged and we've been encouraged by statements from senior Indian officials really urging a unity, and noting the prime minister stated even that COVID-19 does not see religion, language, or borders, which is certainly true," said the US official on international religious freedom.

India has rejected as "propaganda" some social media posts alleging harassment of Muslims in the country for spreading the coronavirus.

"Much of what you see is propaganda by interested parties. Stray tweets can not be used to characterise our bilateral ties with these countries," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said last month.

His statement had come in the wake of angry reactions on Twitter by leading citizens and rights activists from various Arab countries alleging that Muslims were being blamed for spreading COVID-19 in India.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also criticised any form of discrimination, saying the COVID-19 pandemic affects everyone equally.

"COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or border before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood," he said in a post on LinkedIn last month.

Modi's remarks came in the backdrop of a section of right wing organisations frequently raking up the issue of Tablighi Jamaat members being responsible for a large number of COVID-19 infections in India.

About 30 per cent of the total infections in India has been attributed to the fallout of a Tablighi Jamaat meet held in New Delhi in March.

Turning to the plight of the religious minorities in other parts of the world, Brownback said it was a "tough situation" for them in Pakistan, China and Sri Lanka.

"It's a tough situation for a lot of religious minorities in various places around the world," he said, adding that the problems tend to fall into about five categories.

One is just a straight government repression that some governments are using this to further repress the religious minorities. Second is just discrimination in the health care sector, wherein governments deny health care to some of the religious minorities in various places, he said.

A third is in the kind of hoaxes and scapegoating category, where some of the religious minorities are scapegoated, targeted. There is fake news being put out that they are the reason for the spread of the COVID-19 virus in their country.

Fourth is online inflammatory speech, where actors are putting out disinformation campaigns that are targeting particularly religious minority groups. And then, a final category is this growth of misuse of technology to further repress, discriminate, or surveil that is outside of really the scope of the crisis, he said.

In Pakistan, he referred to the Christian sanitation workers.

"They are the ones that get the jobs of sweepers and sanitation workers. And now, as the sanitation work includes collecting contaminated waste from hospital quarantine wards across the country, these workers must not be neglected as the government works to increase distribution of personal protective equipment for front line workers. You can't single out and isolate this religious minority that's the Christian workers that are the sanitation workers," he said.

"In China, we're seeing a couple of particular faces of this taking place in the religious persecution category in Tibet, towards the Tibetans," Brownback said.

Even during the strictest parts of the lockdown, China was conducting a campaign to send a million police to 10 million homes in Tibet to further restrict the Tibetans and Tibetan Buddhism, even during the pandemic.

"We're seeing in Uighur Muslims, they're facing increase of vulnerabilities as they're being forced to work despite coronavirus risk, and they're being further exposed," he said.

Brownback said that in Sri Lanka, families of several Muslims who have died from COVID-19 were forced to have them cremated as per the government policy, which is not based on the WHO guidelines and is against their religious beliefs.

The government's response to the COVID-19 crisis has also sparked anti-Muslim sentiment in some quarters, he said.

The State Department would soon put out its report on international religious freedom, he said.

The report will start the time clock on the Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's ultimate determinations on Countries of Particular Concern or watch list countries. A recent recommendation by US Commission on International Religious Freedom would be noted and has been noted as well, he added.
YEREVAN, 15 MAY, ARMENPRESS. The Central Bank of Armenia informs Armenpress that today, 15 May, USD exchange rate down by 1.01 drams to 487.89 drams. EUR exchange rate down by 0.99 drams to 527.41 drams. Russian Ruble exchange rate up by 0.02 drams to 6.65 drams. GBP exchange rate down by 2.07 drams to 595.37 drams.

The Central Bank has set the following prices for precious metals.

Gold price up by 308.44 drams to 27161.92 drams. Silver price down by 0.98 drams to 243.6 drams. Platinum price down by 181.80 drams to 11890.01 drams.
Katie Brennan, the former campaign volunteer whose explosive rape allegations led to legislative hearings and promised reforms, has settled her lawsuit against the state and Gov. Phil Murphys campaign for $1 million, both sides announced Friday.

The state and Murphy for Governor, Inc. will pay a total of $1 million  with $600,000 going to a charity of Brennans choice and $400,000 to her attorneys. Neither side admitted any wrongdoing.

Brennan said she is directing the $600,000 portion of the settlement to the Waterfront Project, a non-profit group in Hudson County that will use the donation to help low-income survivors of sexual assault.

The 17-page settlement also says Brennan and Al Alvarez, the former Murphy campaign adviser she accused of raping her, will participate in a restorative justice" program. It will include an anti-sexual harassment class for Alvarez and a meeting between Brennan and Alvarez with a facilitator within six months.

I hope that this can create a model program for other New Jersey survivors, Brennan said. Living in silence did not serve me or any other survivors in this state. Speaking out gave me great strength."

Murphy made a brief statement about the settlement at his daily coronavirus press briefing in Trenton.

I think its a fair and reasonable settlement. Weve worked collaboratively and constructively with Katie and her team to institute meaningful reforms to support survivors in the workplace, the governor said. We look forward to continuing our work on these issues to make New Jersey a leading state for survivor-centric policies as we have been doing now for a long time.

Brennan, a volunteer on the Murphy campaign, said she was raped by Alvarez in her apartment in 2017 after the pair left a gathering with other campaign members. The accusation, made public in 2018, and allegations of an ensuing cover-up led to legislative hearings and a scathing legislative report detailing the ways Brennans case was mishandled.

Her case also prompted larger conversations in Trenton about non-disclosure agreements in campaigns, how sexual assault cases are handled in state government and an underlying culture of sexual harassment and misogyny in New Jersey politics.

Alvarez denied any wrongdoing, was never arrested and two county prosecutors who reviewed the case declined to prosecute.

The former head of Latino and Muslim outreach for the governors campaign, Alvarez later served as deputy director of personnel for the Murphy transition, then chief of staff to the New Jersey Schools Development Authority. Alvarez was forced to leave his job after Brennan went public with her allegations.

Brennan, now chief of staff to the New Jersey Housing and Mortgage Finance Agency, filed suit against Alvarez and the state last year alleging the Murphy campaign and the state failed to properly investigate her case.

Under the $1 million settlement, the state will pay $800,000 and the Murphy for Governor campaigns insurance company will pay $200,000, state officials said. Alvarez will pay nothing.

Attorney Katy McClure and the rest of Brennans legal team at Smith Eibeler will get $400,000 and the remaining $600,000 will go into a fund that will be donated to the Hudson County charity.

The state also agreed to pay the mediator fees for the case, estimated to be around $20,000.

As part of the settlement, the state agreed to change its policy to allow alleged victims of sexual assault or harassment to have a support person accompany them to interviews with state Equal Employment Opportunity office investigators. That is one of more than 25 changes in state law and policies Brennan had called for after she said the system failed her after she made her complaint.

The state also agreed in the settlement to help Brennan present her list of proposed reforms to the state Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner Council.

The Waterfront Project, the non-profit group that will get the $600,000 portion of the settlement, said it will use the donation as seed money for a project to help low-income sexual assault survivors get legal help and other assistance.

The Waterfront Project will empower sexual assault survivors to get justice previously denied to many, which is only now possible because Katie made the brave decision to come forward," said Isabel Chou, the groups board president.

Brennan said she is ending the long legal process surrounding her case hopeful that she helped spur reforms and thankful for the help she had from attorneys, advisers and sexual assault survivor groups.

From legislation and the release from NDAs, to greater awareness of harassment and assault, weve made great progress," Brennan said. Each reform sets us on a path toward justice. Each reform makes it worth the pain."

NJ Advance Media staff writer Brent Johnson contributed to this report.

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Kelly Heyboer may be reached at kheyboer@njadvancemedia.com.

Ted Sherman may be reached at tsherman@njadvancemedia.com.

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Ukraine is concerned about the situation in the occupied Donbas and Crimea related to the spread of coronavirus and calls on Russia to grant access to international organizations to those territories to assist the population.

Permanent Representative of Ukraine to the International Organizations in Vienna Yevhenii Tsymbaliuk said this during an online meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council on Thursday, May 14, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"We remain seriously concerned about the situation in the occupied areas of Donbas and Crimea related to the spread of coronavirus," Ambassador Tsymbaliuk stated addressing the national delegations of the participating States.

He recalled that at the recent meeting of the OSCE Forum for Security Co-operation, the Ukrainian delegation emphasized that Russia continued to conceal data on the spread of coronavirus in the temporarily occupied territories, neglecting the life and health of the local population and illegally detained Ukrainian citizens.

The Russian occupation authorities restrict access of international organisations and humanitarian missions, in particular SMM and ICRC, to those territories. Thus, they deprive population of critical aid and prevent the Ukrainian government and the world community from verifying information provided by human rights organizations on the lack of overall health care and low coverage of the population with coronavirus diagnostics in the temporary occupied territories of Crimea and Donbas," Tsymbaliuk said.

He stressed that Ukraine called on the Russian side to lift all restrictions on the access of international bodies to those territories.

ish
Social distancing hasnt been easy for anyone. We all have our ups and downs during this tricky time, and celebrities are no different, except that they have more people paying attention to what theyre doing. While many have used their platforms to remind people about the importance of staying home, some havent been taking it as seriously. And some, like Kylie Jenner, dont seem to be taking it seriously, and the internet does not approve.

Kylie Jenner | Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic/Getty Images

Kylie Jenner originally urged her followers to stay home

i hope everyone is feeling well! its so important right now to self quarantine to ensure we arent endangering ourselves or anyone who cant handle this virus  Kylie Jenner (@KylieJenner) March 18, 2020

In March, when states began putting stay-at-home orders in place, the U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams discussed on Good Morning America the importance of convincing people to stay home, as reported by Business Insider. He urged people to encourage one another to take the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic seriously, even calling on the countrys social media influencers like Jenner to convince their followers to stay home.

What I really think we need to do is get our influencers, Adams said on GMA. We need to get Kylie Jenner, we need to get our social-media influencers out there in helping folks understand that, look, this is serious. This is absolutely serious. People are dying.

Jenner did just that. She tweeted a message to her followers urging them to stay home to protect themselves and others from contracting the virus. And it seemed, at first, that she was following her own advice. Jenner continued to post new photos on Instagram, but many of them appeared to have been taken before the stay-at-home orders or appeared to be in her own home.

Kylie Jenner has been seen out and about

While Jenner appeared to start out following Californias stay-at-home order, she has since been spotted out of her house and visiting friends. The Daily Mail reported in April  about a month after Jenner urged her followers to stay safe at home  that she was spotted heading to a friends house. Showing off a natural face and sweatpants, it did seem like Jenner hadnt been out in a while, but fans immediately criticized the hypocritical nature of the outing.

Before that, sources had reported that Jenner had indeed been staying home, not even seeing her sisters. She had apparently only been at home with her daughter, Stormi, and ex-boyfriend, Travis Scott. While we can understand the stir-crazy nature of being cooped up for so long, its understandable for people to see her leaving the house as hypocritical.

Now, Kylie Jenner has gotten her hair and nails done  while social distancing?

Recently, Jenner has been posting more selfies and photos and fans immediately noticed that she has gotten her hair dyed and also has new hair extensions. On top of that, she posted a photo after she got her nails done  a photo that was taken inside her Lamborghini. Fans are left to wonder how Jenner has managed all of these new looks while maintaining social distancing, and doubt shes doing them herself.

Many people took to Twitter to air their frustrations at the fact that celebrities like Kylie Jenner dont seem to be taking social distancing seriously. One user pointed out that many celebrities have been going everywhere and having people in and out. But then tag their posts quarantine. Another user posted screenshots from Jenners Instagram story, in which you can clearly see other people in the background, making it seem that shes not at home alone with her daughter. Were all getting a little stir-crazy and cant wait for things to get back to normal, and fans are hoping Kylie Jenner is doing her part.
Albert Berard was part of the first wave of U.S. soldiers who approached Frances Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944.

The signalman's landing craft had sailed into hell. All around Berard, men were cut down in a haze of bullets and blood. One explosion resulted in something landing on his back. It was a severed arm. He was 19.

Nearly 76 years later, Berard lay in his bed in a Massachusetts nursing home dying from complications of COVID-19. He passed away without family at his side on April 27. He was 95.

These men risked going to war and dying in a foreign place all alone, and now theyre dying away from home without anyone, says his son, Wayne-Daniel Berard, 68. We know this generation is old and dying. But they deserve to have people around them. Thats the heartbreaking thing.

With the coronavirus disproportionately claiming the elderly, especially nursing home residents, some worry it could accelerate the passing of World War II veterans, those 16 million American servicemen and -women heralded for their heroic exploits and selfless sacrifice in a conflict that killed 407,317. Today, only around 300,000 WWII vets remain.

In this file photo from 2013, a bugler plays Taps during the burial service at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia, for Army Air Force 2nd Lt. Valorie L. Pollard and Army Air Force Sgt. Dominick J. Licari, who went missing during World War II. Such traditional military funeral ceremonies are largely on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic. Veterans affairs officials say that as soon as it is safe, the playing of taps and rifle salutes will be done for those veterans who have passed away during this time of social distancing.

No organization is keeping track of the virus fatality rate of this specific cohort. But a USA TODAY search of 170,000 obituaries published so far in 2020 has found almost 700 mentioned COVID-19 as a contributing cause of death, and of those, a little more than 1 in 25 were identified as World War II vets.

What the virus is taking away, veterans-group officials and historians say, is a priceless chapter of the American story, one marked by the defeat of a Nazi Germany regime that claimed 11 million Jewish and non-Jewish victims during its attempt to take over Europe.

That history never leaves us. On May 8, the world marked the 75th anniversary of V-E Day, or Victory in Europe, the day Nazi Germany surrendered. Looming are Memorial Day, which honors the death of all U.S. military personnel, and the June 6 anniversary of D-Day, when Allied forces successfully attacked German troops in France in a victory that ultimately turned the tide in the war.

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The tragedy of COVID-19 speeding up our loss of these great people is that when they go, we lose a part of history, says Keith Huxen, senior director of research and history at the National World War II Museum in New Orleans.

What they went through in their lives is unimaginable to us today," he says. "Living through the Great Depression for one, and then going to war. The value of having them around is that they are inspirational. They are the true children of democracy.

Huxen says anyone looking for inspiration in these difficult times should stream a video interview of a WWII veteran through the museums website, where 500 of some 10,000 oral history conversations are available.

A man walks a dog near a Victory in Europe Day tribute displayed on one of the screens in London's Piccadilly Circus on May 8, 2020 on the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe.

Young people, says Huxen, can get insights into how this generation "overcame tremendous odds," whether learning to fly a fighter plane almost overnight or simply finding the courage to storm a beach with only a hand gun.

But what you really take away from these guys is they always say they fought for the same thing, their buddies," he says. "It was personal to them. And in some ways, we can relate to that now. We make sacrifices so that others around us dont get sick.

There are big differences between the two epochal challenges. During WWII, a wartime economy drove unemployment down to 1.2% in 1944, in contrast to todays economic shutdown and 15% jobless rate.

And where that war saw Americans bond against a common military foe, today divergent state- and even county-level approaches to lifting stay-at-home orders speak to a yawning divide about the best way to reopen the nation.

Paul Grassey, 97, flew bombers during World War II. He is staying as safe as he can be during these coronavirus times, given that the virus is especially deadly to the elderly. He says his big hope is that the division found across much of the U.S. these days can turn into a unified battle against the pandemic, much as the nation joined forces to defeat Nazi Germany and other Axis powers during WWII.

WWII veteran Paul Grassey, 97, of Savannah, Georgia, says the nation should and can find that sense of common purpose again.

We fought a war and won it in three and a half years after a great national effort, and thats the only thing we can do today with this virus, come together to beat it, says Grassey, a B-24 bomber pilot who received Frances Legion of Honor medal for helping liberate that country from the Nazis.

But, Grassey laments, were working with half the country. We need to get everyone behind this movement; we cant have one guy saying one thing and another guy saying its all wrong.

In echoes of WWII, Grassey adds that we need to get our factories all working to make things we need to fight this, and we need a Marshall Plan for the world, a reference to the American blueprint for rebuilding a decimated Europe.

Most of his brothers-in-arms are gone, and hes being careful in these coronavirus times, washing his hands often and not venturing out much. He's soldiering on, upset only by the current state of the national mood.

Im an American, Grassey says. All I want to see is us get together again.

Paul Grassey, bottom row and second from left, is pictured with his fellow airmen during World War II. Grassey flew bombers over occupied Europe, and believes the unified nature of American sentiment 80 years ago was critical to defeating Nazi Germany and other Axis powers. He says the same sense of shared resolve will be needed to beat back the coronavirus pandemic.

COVID-19 taking gallant, humble lives

It remains unclear if the U.S. will find that unified spirit so evident 80 years ago, says Douglas Brinkley, professor of history at Houstons Rice University and author of the WWII chronicle The Boys of Pointe du Hoc: Ronald Reagan, D-Day, and the U.S. Army 2nd Ranger Battalion.

In World War II, we were all in it together, but in fighting COVID-19 it almost seems were in a neo-Civil War due to our deeply polarized society, he says.

Brinkley says one enduring memory of his many interviews with WWII vets during his time as director of the Eisenhower Center for American Studies at the University of New Orleans was how proud they all seemed to be of the unity the country showed, how the U.S. appeared as this shining city on the hill.

A look through some of the obituaries of WWII veterans felled by complications from coronavirus reveals glimpses into quietly impressive lives.

Friends and family members display signs out their cars as they drive past World War II veteran Lt. William York's home in a parade to celebrate Lt. York's 100th birthday in Yukon, Oklahoma, on Tuesday, April 14, 2020. WWII veterans are in their 90s now, and some of them are passing away due to complications from COVID-19.

There's Harold L. Hayes, who died April 2 at age 96 in Ft. Wright, Kentucky. The war put college on hold and Hayes joined the Navy, where he was an original member of the Underwater Demolition Team, a precursor to the Navy Seals. He forged a career at General Electric, was a lifelong athlete, became active in local politics and was a devoted father and grandfather.

And Dominick J. DStefan, who died April 13 at age 92 in Florham Park, New Jersey. During the war, he was a radar technician on the USS Worcester, which seeded his lifelong passion for electronics. DStefan went on to work at Bell Labs, where he met his wife, Shirley, and worked on the Telstar Project, the first successful transmission of a radio wave to a target in space and back.

Some obits put a spotlight on the women who helped the war effort, which included millions who headed from farms to factories to build the armaments of war.

As virus forces 75th anniversary of V-E Day tributes online,World War II vets' stories 'transcend time'

Mary Ann Yazzie died May 2 at age 96 in Farmington, New Mexico. During the war, Yazzie, a member of the Navajo Nation, moved to Utah and worked in a factory making nuts and bolts and other parts for the war effort. Her varied off-reservation jobs included teacher, police officer and horse trainer. Describing her as very healthy and only on blood pressure medication, Yazzies relatives said she had expected to live many more years. Coronavirus dashed those hopes.

In almost every case, the obituaries note that a private family memorial would be held at a later date. For many family members, what also is missing are the various military honors that often accompany the burial of a veteran.

A lot of people arent receiving what they should, which includes guns firing, bugles playing and a flag being passed along to loved ones, says Doc Schmitz, national commander-in-chief of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the Kansas City, Missouri-based organization with 1.6 million members.

Bill Kelly fought in a world war and lived through the Great Depression. Now the 95-year-old has survived the coronavirus.

Were keeping lists and letting families know that down the road, our local VFW teams will do these honors, he says. We will give something these great men and women should have had.

Schmitz says what saddens him most about coronavirus hastening the demise of WWII veterans is that hearing about those days from those who lived through them has a much more profound impact than simply reading about that time in books.

I watch old war movies and laugh, because it was far worse from what those guys tell me, he says. My only advice is, if you know or knew a veteran, share those stories you heard with someone else. Like they say in the movie 'The Last Samurai,' don't tell me how a man died, tell me how he lived."

Coronavirus helps a vet 'get back' to the love of his life

Wayne-Daniel Berard, a professor of English at Nichols College in Dudley, Massachusetts, remembers his father as a man who could build or fix anything.

Wed joke, if dad were God, hed have built the world in five days and even a little bit better, he says of his father, who spent his life as a metal worker in Taunton, Massachusetts, near the Rhode Island border. He rewired the family house and later replaced all its plumbing. When he wasn't building things, he was teaching others how to do so.

Wayne-Daniel Berard stands next to his father, Albert Berard, a World War II veteran who was among those who stormed the beaches of Normandy, France, on D-Day in 1944. Albert Berard died at age 95 on April 27 due to complications from COVID-19.

For many years, Albert Berard wouldnt tell his two sons, Wayne-Daniel and Donald, much about his time at war. He had quit high school to enlist, feeling obliged as an American citizen of proud French heritage to help liberate France. But what he endured were horrors.

Finally, stories emerged, like the one about that day on Omaha Beach, an assault for which he would get the French Legion of Honor. When Steven Spielbergs Saving Private Ryan came out in 1998, with its terrifying and by many accounts accurate depiction of the D-Day landing, matriarch Genevieve Berard refused to go.

So we went with Dad, and when that opening scene starts with them approaching Omaha Beach, he said, Look, that landing craft there, thats what I was in,  says Wayne-Daniel Berard. Afterward, he said what he went through was far worse, which says something.

Read this: 108-year-old woman who lived through Spanish flu survives coronavirus

Shortly before Albert Berard died, his sons were told that his nursing home had some patients with COVID-19, but their dad was safe. But then he did contract the virus, and was placed with five others in a dining room that doubled as an isolation ward.

I couldnt get close, I couldnt talk to him, Wayne-Daniel Berard says softly. So I went with a sign, which said, We love you, we havent forgotten you. But he couldnt see it.

Albert Berard was a devoted Catholic. When he passed, Wayne-Daniel Berard was adamant about getting last rites administered since he knew that would mean a lot to his father.

After calling around, he found a priest in St. Louis who was willing to conduct the rite by phone with the help of a nursing home worker who provided the olive oil necessary for the benediction. It was the best he could do, but the image still haunts.

A young Albert Berard is pictured here shortly after joining the U.S. Navy. Berard, who died recently at age 95 due to complications from COVID-19, was among those who charged into heavy gunfire at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, on D-Day in 1944.

Men like my father, these veterans, theyre 96, 97, 98, of course we know theyre going to go soon, but they deserve better than this, he says.

The only positive thing, he adds, is that his father was ready to go after his wife passed a few years back.

He adored her, says Wayne-Daniel Berard. Dad would say, When I was in the war, all I wanted to do was get back to your mother. Now were in another war, and I just want to get back to her again. 

Data reporters Kevin Crowe and Dak Le of the USA TODAY Network contributed to this report. Follow USA TODAY national correspondent Marco della Cava: @marcodellacava

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus deaths claim WWII vets, steals a part of US history
Cancun police arrest five after they post stolen vehicle for sale online

Cancun, Q.R.  Five men were arrested after they tried to sell a vehicle they had stolen from a private home in Cancun.

The arrests happened in SM 236 after the group of five men were caught trying to sell a Mercedes SUV they had stolen. Police were alerted to the attempted selling of the vehicle after the owner saw his car advertised for sale online.

The SUV was stolen from a private home in SM 255 only hours before. The owner of the vehicle recognized his car and made a report to 911, who passed the information to police. Responding to the report, Cancun police went to the listed place for sale where they found the group of five traveling in the vehicle on a residential street.

No one from the group was able to prove legal ownership of the SUV.

Taken into custody were 21-year-old Josue Nicanor P.Z. from Cancun, 49-year-old Felix C.V. from Mexico City, Jaime P.P., 43 from Campeche, Jaime Ezequiel P.Z., 19 and a 17-year-old D.U.P.Z.

The five detainees were placed at the disposal of the Public Ministry for an investigation.
By PTI

LONDON: India has had the largest chunk of repatriations of Britons stranded overseas in the coronavirus lockdown, with nearly half of those brought home on 64 special flights coming from Indian cities.

The UK government said that more than 16,500 travellers have now returned to the UK over the past 38 days as part of a "huge logistical operation" to return stranded British nationals from 32 locations across the length and breadth of India.

"The last currently scheduled charter flight left for London Heathrow from Amritsar today with over 300 passengers on board," Jan Thompson, Acting High Commissioner to India, said on Friday.

"This unprecedented repatriation effort would not have been possible without the excellent support of the Indian government.

Continued cooperation between our nations will be essential in the fight against this pandemic," she said.

The British High Commission in New Delhi described the repatriation process as a large and complex operation, with over 500 members of staff in India working around the clock to ensure flights operated smoothly and passengers could reach airports.

The strict lockdown in place across India meant it was vital to work hand-in-hand with the government of India and local authorities to transport passengers over large distances, the mission said.

FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES HERE

"One British national stranded in a remote village in Manipur had to travel more than 2,700 km for their flight home from New Delhi," it added.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus, the UK government has helped 1.3 million Britons from around the world return on commercial flights and organised special charter flights from 27 different countries and territories.

The British High Commission said that while there were no further planned UK government charter flights from India, the situation will be kept under review.

The flights were organised mainly for British nationals and where possible, seats were also allocated to vulnerable non-British UK residents with Indefinite Leave to Remain (ILR) and to other foreign nationals needing to get to the UK.
In addition to the 12,408 face mask donations, Humanity Heroes will be donating 5,000 hygiene backpacks to Skid Row Housing Trust, Covenant House, Volunteers of Americas Veteran Homeless and the City of Los Angeles converted homeless temporary shelters.

"The Department of Recreation and Parks is grateful for the generous donations of face masks and hygiene kits. These items are such a huge need at our Skid Row parks in Downtown Los Angeles. All of our park members at San Julian and Gladys Park had big smiles on their faces when they received the items. Thank you for thinking of those who have the most need. You are our heroes!" said Belinda Jackson, Superintendent, City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

The nonprofit continues to assist the homeless.

Humanity Heroes is the official " Hygiene Pack Sponsor " at the Covenant House virtual concert, "A Night of Covenant House Stars" on May 18th. The one-night only concert is a star-studded benefit with Meryl Streep, Dolly Parton and more. Covenant House is auctioning Humanity Heroes hygiene backpacks from May 11-18th to help fundraising for youth facing homelessness during COVID-19 crisis. The hygiene backpacks include everyday essentials such as razors, toothbrushes, toothpaste, deodorant, soap, washcloths, bath towels, and hand sanitizer.

"We're simply doing our part to make sure no community is overlooked during this unprecedented time. This pandemic does not discriminate between wealthy and poor, white-collar or blue-collar workers. Everyone is at risk, and everyone deserves to feel safe and protected," said Humanity Heroes founder Michael "BigMike" Straumietis.

Under Mayor Garcetti's #LAPROTECTS Humanity Heroes donation efforts have garnered interest to receive donations. To help and donate to Humanity Heroes campaign efforts visit joinhumanityheroes.org or email [email protected] .

ABOUT HUMANITY HEROES

Humanity Heroes is a non-profit located in West Hollywood and founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Michael "BigMike" Straumietis. The unique "direct action" campaigns help ease the suffering of the nearly 60,000 homeless living on the streets of Los Angeles. The first Heroes Deserve Masks campaign began in April 2020 and has donated more than 30,000 face masks to LA front line workers, hospitals, and homeless shelters.

SOURCE Humanity Heroes

Related Links

http://www.joinhumanityheroes.org


Photograph: Kamil Krzaczynski/AFP via Getty Images

A conservative majority on the Wisconsin supreme court struck down a stay-at-home order from the states Democratic governor on Wednesday, further illustrating the remarkable amount of power Republicans have in the state and the way they have been able to curb the authority of their Democratic rivals.

The Wisconsin decision is the most significant legal victory for conservatives, egged on by Donald Trump, who are beginning to challenge stay-at-home orders across the country through protests and legal actions. Republican lawmakers in Michigan, where the legislature is extremely gerrymandered, are also challenging the legal authority of a similar order issued by the states Democratic governor there. Other suits from businesses challenging stay-at-home orders in other states have been largely unsuccessful, so far.

Related: Wisconsin supreme court strikes down governor's stay-at-home order

The decision was the latest in a nasty partisan battle in Wisconsin between Republicans and Democrats that has shaped the last decade. The state is narrowly divided politically and seen as a crucial state to win for both campaigns in the November presidential election.

The case also shows the extreme significance of state supreme court races, long overlooked, in shaping state policy. Justice Daniel Kelly, a conservative on the court, lost his seat to Jill Karofsky, a liberal challenger, last month. Kelly, who is set to leave the court this summer, cast the deciding vote in the Wednesday ruling.

In Wisconsin, conservatives hold a 5-2 majority on the state supreme court, and all but one of the conservative justices voted to strike down the order on Wednesday, saying Tony Evers, the Democratic governor, didnt follow proper procedure when he issued the order. Some businesses immediately opened after the ruling and some bars were flooded with patrons.

Dairyland Brew Pub opens following the Wisconsin supreme courts decision to strike down Tony Evers safer-at-home order amid the coronavirus pandemic. Photograph: William Glasheen/AP

Republican legislators have convinced four justices to throw our state into chaos, Evers said in a statement.

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In a remarkable passage in a concurring opinion, Justice Rebecca Bradley drew comparisons between the case and Korematsu v United States, the 1946 US supreme court decision allowing the internment of Japanese-Americans during the second world war. She cited the case to remind the state that urging courts to approve the exercise of extraordinary power during times of emergency may lead to extraordinary abuses of its citizens.

Since 2012, Republicans have held significant majorities in both chambers of the state legislature, in large part because they drew boundaries for districts at the beginning of the decade that gave them a severe political advantage. They have maintained that advantage even though the state is extremely competitive politically  Trump narrowly won the state in 2016, but Evers and other Democrats swept statewide races in 2018.

Republicans have been trying to strip Evers of power even before he took office. During a 2018 lame duck session, Republicans quickly passed laws that stripped Evers and the states incoming attorney general of some of their power. The move was ultimately upheld by the state supreme court in a 4-3 vote along partisan lines.

The state supreme court also voted along partisan lines last month to override a last-minute order from Evers to cancel in-person voting for the states 7 April election. The decision was widely seen as a partisan effort to boost Kelly, who was on the ballot, but he wound up losing handily to Karofsky.

The state supreme court is also expected in the near future to take up a closely watched case deciding whether Wisconsin election officials need to remove more than 200,000 people from the voter rolls ahead of the November election  a decision that could have huge political consequences in the state.

Justice Rebecca Dallet, a liberal on the court, wrote in a dissenting opinion on Wednesday that the supreme court had done the legislatures bidding in striking down the measure.

This decision will undoubtedly go down as one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this courts history, she wrote. And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price.

A majority of this court falls hook, line and sinker for the legislatures tactic to rewrite a duly enacted statute through litigation rather than legislation.
3,000 Calif. churches vow to reopen on Pentecost Sunday, regardless of gov. orders

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Increasing numbers of California churches are planning to restart public services on May 31, Pentecost Sunday, regardless of what the governor of the state says.

Church United, a network of approximately 3,000 churches representing 2.5 million members in the Golden State, has announced its intentions to reopen before the state sets in motion the third phase of its reopening plan, which permits modified reopening of houses of worship.

Around the nation, a robust debate has emerged as to how much state entities can restrict certain freedoms, particularly religious worship by deeming it "nonessential" in order to prevent further spread of a disease and stem a public health crisis.

Our fear is simply this, Governor Gavin Newsom said, as was reported by The Center Square Saturday, "Congregations of people from far and wide coming together in a closed space at a large scale remains a point of concern and anxiety for us. We are working on guidelines for physical distancing and working with faith leaders talking about unique conditions in their own facilities. Nothing is etched in stone.

Matt Brown, who pastors Sandals Church in Riverside, blasted the governors decision to deem churches nonessential.

"He didn't ask us. He overstepped and he's overreached," Brown said. "And he needs to step back and he needs to declare that the church is an essential part of what we do as Americans, as what we do as Californians.

Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills explained in a phone interview Tuesday with The Christian Post that it is the pastor's burden to minister to the people, particularly those in his congregation, and to continue to proclaim the Gospel.

"When we look around at this crisis, the issue of not exactly meeting the criteria of what is defined as a church  meaning our getting together, our fellowship with one another  the mandate given to us from Scripture to pray for one another even to the point where we are to lay hands on the sick and pray for them.

"The Christian ought to be the wisest, ought to be the best, the most resourceful citizen in any community. So by no means do we desire to resist the authorities that be according to Romans 13," which speaks about how followers of Jesus are to conduct themselves in relation to the governing authorities.

He added: "In fact, we have been extremely compliant for over two months, our state, when petitioned, when we asked our governor's office: 'Where are you placing the value of the church? The fact that we provide mental and spiritual health and stability at such a critical time, where do you place us in priority?'"

Thus far, the governor's office has said that the church may be in the third or fourth phases of reopening, which could begin anywhere from a few weeks to months from now. His words have left some wondering if it will ever be politically correct for churches to resume services.

Hibbs believes that many pastors are fasting and praying, doing their best to figure out how to proceed in unfamiliar territory and amid competing narratives about what is occurring, and discerning God's heart in the midst of uncertain times. As he prayed, he felt a strong impression from the Lord that he should restart services on May 31, realizing later that the date happened to be Pentecost Sunday.

When he made the video explaining his thinking, he had only mentioned that May 31 date to a few people.

"I cannot think of a more biblically-sanctioned day of the entire year ... to restart church than Pentecost Sunday," the day on which the church was born.

"I understand there is still the trauma and the drama of the COVID-19 event. The drama is that we've had one expert saying masks don't work, another expert saying masks do work. One expert saying social distancing destroys us because it eliminates herd immunity and another one saying the opposite."

"So what do we do? If we're going to be condemned for starting church and we're going to be condemned for not starting church, I cannot look to the opinions of men even if they are well-intended once God has spoken. So we move ahead safely, wisely, but we move ahead."

Christians will be misunderstood and despised and in the last days, Scripture speaks of incredibly challenging days that includes persecution, Hibbs said.

"Having said that, I do not believe that a pastor or a church being stupid or ignorant and thus persecuted is a badge of honor. That's ridiculous. We need to understand that Scripture teaches us that the church is the ground of all truth. So today, I believe that the church is suffering and this pandemic has exposed it. It is anemic to so many doctrines, where we do not see the value of the Gospel as worthy to uphold even in a difficult season as this.

"This pandemic has made us consider: Who will be the ultimate authority? Does Christ and the Word of God answer to the government? Or ultimately, does the government answer to the Lawgiver Himself?"

Similar sentiments are reverberating throughout the country.

In a video posted Friday on the YouTube channel of HIS Church in Amarillo Texas with satellite parishes in Kentucky, Pastor Brian Gibson said that now is the time in the United States for "lions to stand up and roar."

"America needs to stand up and roar for the constitution, needs some lions to stand up and roar for religious freedom, needs some lions to stand up and roar for people of worship of every type in this great nation," he said as he encouraged churches to "peacably gather" on May 17.

Amid uncertainty about the scope and severity of the coronavirus, many pastors were willing to comply with stay-at-home orders but it has gotten to be too much especially as some governors have suggested no religious assembly for a year, Gibson noted.

"People in churches, mosques, and synagogues have been told that, regardless of any social distancing or protective practices they implement, they can not gather, with threats of retribution from local governments if they don't keep their doors closed," Gibson said in a statement. "The right to exercise our religious freedoms is the definition of Essential and must not be trampled on, and every Sunday that we arent in church we lose more freedom."

As churches fear a wave a lawsuits against them as some "cherry pick certain guidelines," hundreds of pastors, rabbis, priests, and other religious leaders wrote a letter to Congress to include immunity for religious organizations from negligence suits resulting from their serving the public or reopening in accordance with local orders.

The legal organization First Liberty said in a written testimony addressed to the Senate Committee on the Judiciary that although "lawsuits should eventually prove meritless, the cost of defending against them would have devastating consequences."

In late April, the Department of Justice ordered federal prosecutors to be watchful for state and local orders that overly restrict and exploit religious freedom amid crises.
The Perspective

Atlanta, Georgia

May 15, 2020



As Israel celebrates the 72nd anniversary of its independence, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict continues to simmer as neither side seems to have learned anything from their seven decades-old conflict, and dramatic changes on the ground are readily dismissed. Charges and counter-charges against one another continue unabated as if everything was frozen in time. Israelis and Palestinians remain intensely distrustful of one another and blame the other for the lingering impasse. They now face a fateful crossroad and must reassess their positions. Israel must accept that the Palestinians are not a perpetual mortal enemy and that an agreement can be reached which guarantees its national security. The Palestinians must abandon some of their old and tired demands, which have proven to be fatal to all previous peace negotiations.

The Israeli right-wing political parties, led by Likud with Netanyahu at the helm, have been indoctrinating the Israelis through fear-mongering with considerable success. They maintain that a Palestinian state in the West Bank will inevitably fall under Hamas and pose an existential threat to Israel. This argument which has seeped into the Israelis consciousness, especially since the second Intifada in 2000, is completely meritless as any peace agreement between the two sides must be based on stringent security arrangements that leave no room for errors and no recourse for the Palestinians.

To invoke Israels experience with Hamas as a justification for its refusal to allow for the establishment of a Palestinian state in the West Bank is contrived and disingenuous at best. Israel, which was led at the time by the most ardent right-wing prime minister, Shamir, brought about the rise of Hamas in 1987 by supporting its early leaders both financially and politically, who were ideologically opposed to the PLO. Avner Cohen, a former Israeli religious affairs official who worked in Gaza at the time, stated in 2009 that Hamas, to my great regret, is Israels creation. Israels strategy was to divide and conquer by splitting the Palestinians into two camps to counter-balance and weaken then-Chairman Yasser Arafats hand and prevent the Palestinians from uniting into a single body politic.

Prime Minister Sharons decision to withdraw Israeli forces almost overnight from Gaza in 2005 without any security arrangements with the PA to ensure long-term security was fatal. As a general, he knew full well that Hamas had the greater military capability and was far more deeply entrenched in the Strip than the PAs security forces. Sharons objectives were to deepen the PA-Hamas rift and to rid Israel of the responsibility to provide jobs, healthcare, and economic development to a densely Palestinian populated area that has no strategic importance to Israel.

What made matters worse was Israels refusal to accept the results of the Palestinian parliamentary elections in 2006, which gave Hamas a clear victory over the PLO. Israel then imprisoned 33 of Hamass newly elected parliamentarians, accusing them of belonging to a terrorist organization. Finally, Israel did nothing to stop the fighting between Hamas and the PA which ended up, unsurprisingly, with the defeat of the PA, which sealed Gazas fate under Hamas in 2007.

The breakout of the second Intifada in 2000 was a turning point for the Israelis as well as the Palestinians. The 117 terrorist attacks that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Israelis were convincing enough for many Israelis that the Palestinians are a mortal enemy, especially following the 1993 Oslo Accords, which was supposed to evolve into a permanent peace based on a two-state solution. However, Israel ignored the fact that the Palestinians in the West Bank also learned a bitter lesson. They did not forget that the second Intifada invited massive Israeli retaliation that destroyed much of their newly-built infrastructure, housing, and public institutions post-1993.

To suggest however that Israel is the sole culprit behind the lasting Israeli-Palestinian conflict is wrong and disregards the Palestinians continuing violent hostilities against Israel, as well as their repeated missed opportunities to reach a peace agreement.

The Palestinians rejected the 1947 UN partition plan, turned down Israels offer to exchange most of the territories captured in the 1967 war for peace, refused to join in the 1977 Israeli-Egyptian peace talks, scuttled the nearly-completed peace agreement at Camp David in 2000 over the right of return, and in 2009 failed to seize the opportunity to make peace over disagreements on the extent of the land swap. What made matter worse is the Palestinians, especially Hamas, refusal to recognize Israel and its continuing threats against its very existence while purchasing and manufacturing weapons, especially rockets, to give tangible meaning to their threats.

None of this, however, suggests that if and when a Palestinian state is established in the West Bank it will become, as many Israelis say, another Hamastan. The precipitous Israeli withdrawal from Gaza without any security arrangements and Israels subsequent treatment of Hamas have galvanized the rise of Hamas as a force and a significant player.

Thus, only a fool would advocate that Israel should withdraw from the West Bank without the most comprehensive security arrangements that address Israels real or perceived security requirements. Whether the Palestinians like it or not, if they want a state of their own, they must realize that their demands from decades ago are no longer applicable or doable and need to concede on a number of key sensitive issues:

The Palestinians must accept that the right of return of the Palestinian refugees be based on the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative that called for a just solution to the Palestinian refugee problem which from my firsthand knowledge was understood by its framers to mean compensation and/or resettlement. They must also accept that much of Israels presence in the West Bank is permanent, as Israel will not under any circumstances relinquish all the settlements, especially the three blocks along the 1967 borders (although this can be resolved through land swaps, as was agreed upon in previous peace talks). Finally, the Palestinians have to agree that Israel will, at minimum, jointly administer East Jerusalem because of the Jews irrevocable historic and religious affinity to the holy city, and because of the inter-dispersement of Jews and Arabs in East Jerusalem and its surrounding neighborhoods.

Israel, on the other hand, must agree to the establishment of a Palestinian state, and to that end, it should not annex any more Palestinian land. Approximately 80,000 Israeli settlers residing in a score of small settlements scattered throughout the West Bank must be relocated to allow for a contiguous landmass for the Palestinian state. Israel must also agree to negotiate with Hamas based on mutual recognition to reach a peace agreement jointly with or independently from the PA.

Hamas leadership knows that Israel is a formidable military power, and no matter how many rockets they accumulate they will be defeated soundly should they ever pose a real danger to Israel. Israel, however, also knows that Hamas in Gaza is there to stay, with frequent violent flare-ups and the terrible cost that Israel must bear to maintain security. Former Mossad chief Efraim Halevy stated that Hamas can be crushed[but] the price of crushing Hamas is a price that Israel would prefer not to pay. Their choice is clear: maintain the status quo with the Israeli blockade in place from which the Palestinians in Gaza suffer the most, or reach a peace agreement that will free Israel from the heavy burden and Hamas continuing threats that unsettle many Israelis.

The complete lack of trust between the PA, Hamas, and Israel, and the existence of radicals in all three camps who still want to have it all, makes it imperative to establish a mutually agreed upon security apparatus that addresses Israels security in the West Bank in particular. This is indeed a prerequisite to any peace agreement, which the PA must agree to if they want an independent state of their own.

This includes extensive joint patrolling of the Jordan Valley to prevent infiltration of weapons and radicals from Jordan who opposes any agreement with Israel regardless of its nature, sharing intelligence to avert terrorist attacks, and establishing joint economic development projects. These and other joint programs will over time foster trust which is conspicuously lacking, as well as instill vested interests by both sides to maintain a collaborative and mutually gainful relationship.

Regardless of the violence and regional instability that may ensue, the new Israeli government is planning to embark on further annexation of Palestinian land by the beginning of Julywhile Trump is still in office and Israel can count on his support. For Trump, such a move by Israel, which is a central part of Trumps deal of the century, will further enhance his political standing in the eyes of the evangelicals, whose support he must have if he stands any chance of winning the next election.

The Palestinians, on the other hand, have no real backers. Much of the international community, including their traditional supporters, the Arab states, and the EU, are preoccupied with domestic and regional issues of major concerns. They are paying little or no attention to the Palestinian problem, and with the absence of a major power that can exert real pressure, Israel will not change its plans as long as the US continues to lend its full support.

If Israel proceeds with its plans of annexation and the Palestinians continue to hold onto their dead-end position, the result is all but certain. Continuing and escalating violent conflict will rob the Palestinians of a state of their own for the foreseeable future, which will exact a heavy toll on Israel while making it a pariah state that lives by the gun.

Time is of the essence; both sides must carefully reevaluate their positions before it is too late.




It is regarded as the third-largest airline in the region, and so one can imagine the effect on employees as carriers scramble to reschedule flights, ground planes, and furlough staff without pay. Avianca currently has 21,000 employees in Latin America, and more than half of these are in Colombia.

Since last year, analysts from the Centre for Aviation in Sydney have shown in a report that Avianca was struggling with its operations with their negative ratings, change in board control, and abrupt shift in management.

Avianca's bankruptcy to protect and preserve operations

CEO Anko Van Der Werff said in a company statement that Avianca was currently facing the biggest crisis in their century-long history.

"We believe that a reorganization under chapter eleven is the best path forward," he continued, remarking that this was done in due part to protect the essential air travel and air transport services throughout Latin America.

Filing for bankruptcy would allow the company to reorganize financially with the supervision of the American judicial system. In the meantime, they will continue to operate and maintain commitments with clients.

The Colombian airlines announced in a statement that it was gravely affected by the flight bans and the lockdowns all across the world. According to the company, 88% of the countries where Avianca operates are under total or partial measures that restrict or limit travel.

Filing for bankruptcy was a move called by the officials in Avianca to protect and preserve operations and jobs, ensure connectivity, and restructure the company's accounting obligations.

They also planned to cut costs by shutting down its business in countries like Peru to focus on core markets.

Beginning mid-March, Avianca's passenger flights have been grounded, as opposed to the period before the COVID-19 pandemic, where the airlines conducted around 700 flights daily. This significantly reduced their revenue by 80% and pressured their cash reserves.

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Other airlines struggle to make it through the pandemic

Avianca is not the only major airlines that has suffered financial losses during the pandemic. In a report by Reuters, these companies are said to currently be undergoing negotiations with the government for rescue packages. Among these are Aeromexico in Mexico, LATAM Airlines Group in Chile, and Gol Linhas Aereas Inteligentes in Brazil.

Regional airline industry group ALTA warned of the impending "bankruptcy crisis" that would come following the pandemic. Mauricio Franca from L.E.K Consulting said, "The starting point is worse for Latin American airlines."

Legal director at ALTA Gonzalo Yelpo offered his insight on government assistance, "In Latin America we have not seen as much help as in other regions."

In countries with left-leaning federal governments like Argentina and Mexico, authorities forwarded the suggestion to the public that they will not bail out big company airlines.

At the beginning of 2020, Avianca was worth $470 million. Now, during the pandemic, it plummeted to a steep $17 million. After a week with their fleet grounded, Avianca only had a little over $304 million in cash left for expenses like payroll and debt payment.
Democratic presidential nominee former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during a primary debate in Houston, Texas on Sept. 12, 2019. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Biden Says People Who Believe Tara Reade Shouldnt Vote for Him

Former Vice President Joe Biden claims to not remember Tara Reade, the former staffer who leveled a sexual assault allegation against the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

Do you remember Tara Reade who worked there for about a year in 1992-1993? Biden was asked Thursday night during an appearance on MSNBCs The Last Word.

Well, to be honest with you, I dont, Biden responded.

While women who accuse men of sexual harassment or abuse should be taken seriously, such claims should be thoroughly vetted, he added.

And in every case, what matters is the truth. The truth is what matters. And the truth of the case is nothing like this ever, ever happened, Biden, 77, said, noting that Reade changed her story over time.

Tara Reade poses for a photo during an interview in Nevada City, Calif. on April 4, 2019. (Donald Thompson/AP Photo)

Reade, who worked for Biden when he was a U.S. Senator, initially accused Biden of sexual harassment. She elevated her complaint to sexual assault this year.

Pointing to one of a number of articles in which the author says she believes Reade but will vote for Biden anyway, anchor Lawrence ODonnell asked Biden what he would say to women who believe his accuser.

Well, I think they should vote their heart and if they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldnt vote for me. I wouldnt vote for me if I believed Tara Reade, according to Biden, who has not held a press conference or any public events for over a month.

The fact is that look at Tara Reades story. It changes considerably. And I dont want to question her motive, I dont want to question anything other than to say the truth matters. This is being vetted, its been vetted. They went and interviewed scores of my employees over my whole career. This is just totally, thoroughly, completely out of character. And the idea that in a public place, in a hallway I would assault a woman? I promise you. It never happened.

A man wearing a face mask walks past signs for Joe Bidens 2020 presidential campaign amid the CCP virus outbreak in Alexandria, Virginia on May 11, 2020. (Olivier Douliery/AFP via Getty Images)

Reade, who has not responded to requests for comment, told the Associated Press that she was initially reluctant to go public with the assault allegations because she was being threatened after accusing Biden of harassment in 2019.

Already I was being threatened and kind of smeared, and I just I wasnt ready, she said. So I talked about the sexual harassment and what I was comfortable talking about, but I wasnt ready to talk about sexual assault.

Reade filed a police report in Washington in April saying she was the victim of a sexual assault. Shes told news outlets that Biden accosted her at the U.S. Capitol.

Biden last month asked the Senate to release any records dealing with Reade, but the upper congressional chamber refused. Biden has declined a call for a narrow search of Reades name in his records at the University of Delaware.
Levin, who said he was not politically active and considered himself an independent, said he did not think Evers was acting politically. He has to protect the state, he said. As for himself, he will not be going out to dine or for drinks until the pandemic eases further. He said he would try to support those businesses in other ways.
Nehrus motive of softening the path for China to stand among neutral countries was not favourably viewed by some of the leaders participated in the conference. Prime minister of Ceylon Sir John Kotelawala and Carlos.P.Romulo of Philippines were main vocal opponents in Chinas standing as a neutral country by virtue of Communist doctrine.





by Punsara Amarasinghe and Eshan Jayawardane





To historians of Southeast Asia, the Bandung conference of 1955 presents itself as one of the most striking international initiatives undertaken by newly-independent Indonesia. For historians of Indonesia, it marks the emphasis on foreign as against domestic policy that was associated with Sukarno's growing dominance. To biographers of Sukarno it appears to be both a strategic device in domestic politics and a far-sighted perception of a shift in international relations. Internationally it was both to demonstrate the influence of India and to show its limits. Even more it was to mark some kind of success for the People's Republic of China and for Chou En-lai in developing the foreign policy line associated already with Geneva and the five principles of co-existence.









However, the melodramatic act performed by Ceylons third prime minister Sir John Lionel Kotelawala had simply upset the apple cart of the conference and Nehrus motive of introducing Chou Enlai to the decolonized states. There have been a number of narratives written from various perspectives describing the role Sir John Kotelwalas role in Bandung today and many of them have depicted him as a colonial infant who acted under British interests to sabotage the motives of Bandung conference which grounded on building Afro Asian socio-economic cooperation to resist any kind of neo-colonialism by any nation. The idea of Bandung conference was technically conceived in the conference held in Colombo under the leadership of prime minister Sir John Kotelawala in 1954 and the Colombo conference itself was a brighter idea arose from Sir John without any particular reason. Yet, the Colombo conference was rather a platform for the leaders of newly independent states to discuss their common problems and the idea of calling a larger summit for Afro Asian countries was propounded by Indonesian leader Sukarno. He himself proposed the clam city called Bandung in Indonesia as the host city of the conference and Indias prime minister Pandith Jawaharlal Nehru played the cardinal role as the protagonist who anticipated to bring his notion of nonaligned principle into the forum of Bandung.





On the other hand, the timing of Bandung was less revealing. Indeed, the conference took place during a period of growing international tension and complexity. The Cold War was in the process of establishing itself as an abiding phenomenon, reaching deep into newly liberated states and non- self-governing territories alike. In the backdrop of such complex political unrest which had started to soar it wings globally, the discontent among the leaders who participated in Bandung was a salient factor and the opening of Bandung diverged its participants into strong ideological convictions. It was rather obvious that Nehru was dwelling in his idealism driven by his profound sense of resentment towards colonialism as inherently evil and his mission in Bandung stood for achieving two main goals. First was to undermine American cold war interests in Asia as it was represented by the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization (SEATO), which he perceived as a real threat for the neutrality of decolonized countries in Asia. Secondly, he wanted to utilize the Bandung forum to engage the Peoples Republic of China as a fellow Asian country regardless of its Communist ideology.





However, Nehrus motive of softening the path for China to stand among neutral countries was not favourably viewed by some of the leaders participated in the conference. Prime minister of Ceylon Sir John Kotelawala and Carlos.P.Romulo of Philippines were main vocal opponents in Chinas standing as a neutral country by virtue of Communist doctrine. From two of them, the voice raised by Sir John Kotelawala was widely trumpeted by Western media as a vehement criticism of the Communism and this compliment was later used by Sir Johns political opponents to describe him as a hardcore follower of the West. But, the reality stemming from Bandung records indicate that Ceylon prime minister Sir John Kotelwalas speech echoed more neutrality than Philippines Carlos.P.Romulo , who entirely took pro-U.S stances in the conference. Notwithstanding his fame, as an anti-communist fascinated by Western values, Sir John raised the importance of Asian Values in his speech at Bandung. Highlighting his Buddhist faith Sir John stressed that the Third Worlds strength lay in its weakness. It was precisely because they were all poor and underdeveloped that Third World states could offer formally [their] services as mediators.





Sir John Kotelwalas major blow of Bandung was that his proposal to describe Communism as another form of imperialism equal to Western colonialism. Bringing the examples of Soviet satellite states from Eastern Europe and Central Asia, Sir John pointed out the similarity between Western imperialism and Soviet expansion arguing that later should be declared as another form of imperialism.





with Nehru

As a matter of fact, this was an unexpected moment for Nehru who was yeaning to introduce his friend Zhou Enlai to the Afro Asian leaders at Bandung. Nehru with his usual paternal sense of statesmanship approached Sir John at the end of the second-day session and asked Sir John Why did you do it? Why did not you show me your speech before you gave it? this remarked sounded like paternal advice of senior statesman in an Asian power to a less scholarly, stubborn prime minister of a lesser-known island. But to the biggest surprise of Nehru, the answer came from Sir John was shocking and coarse as he answered Why should I? Do you show me yours before you give them?





The world witnessed by Bandung leaders and the objectives they determined to achieve in 1955 have been altered today with rapid changing dynamics since the fall of the Soviet Union. Also, the camaraderie Nehru reverently admired between his country India and China was marred by the Indo China war which was fought eight years after Bandung conference showing the strength of realpolitik than the Nehruvian idealism. Even today the scepticism existing between China and Indian over the geopolitical issues in South Asia is an intriguing one. In evaluating the role of Sir John Kotelawala of Ceylon, one should always remember that it was his pragmatism and inherent personality factor which boosted his role in a conference dominated by a political giant like Nehru. More importantly, Sir Johns audacity to question a world-leading political ideology and defend his position as premier of a sovereign state before a powerful neighbour like India was an early warning to not take small neighbours for granted.





Punsara Amarasingheis a visiting fellow at Center for Global Legal Studies at University of Wisconsin Madison and reading for PhD in International Law at Institute of Law, Politics and Development at ScuolaSuperioreSant Anna in Pisa, Italy. He holds LL.M in International Law from South Asian University, New Delhi and previously held one year fellowship at Higher School of Economics in Moscow. Punsara can be reached at punsaraprint10@gmail.com





Eshan Jayawardane is an independent researcher currently lives in Napiers, New Zealand and holds M.A in International Relations from Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi , India.




Little Britain star Matt Lucas has teamed up with staff and pupils at an east Belfast school to recreate his lockdown hit single, Thank You Baked Potato.

Proceeds from Lucas comedy charity single go to FeedNHS, an initiative set up to raise 1million to buy 6,000 meals per day into London hospitals for critical care staff as they deal with the coronavirus crisis.

Lucas performed the original version of the song on comedy quiz show Shooting Stars two decades ago, and he shared his updated version on Twitter in March.

The new version includes updated lyrics: Wash your hands, stay indoors, thank you baked potato. Only go to grocery stores, thank you baked potato.

 THANK YOU BAKED POTATO   THANK YOU BAKED POTATO  Ashfield Boys High School would like to show their appreciation to the NHS and all key workers throughout the Covid-19 pandemic with this video featuring staff and their families with a little help from some members of the school band and a VERY special guest soloist... MATT LUCAS! The music department was delighted to learn that Matt Lucas agreed to send a special video to feature with the school band. Matt has been busy raising money through his charity Feed the NHS. If you would like more information on this charity or would like to donate visit his website at: https://www.feednhs.com Finally, a special thanks to past pupil Mike Whan for arranging and editing the music and video. Remember... Wash your hands stay indoors Please share!#teamashfield Posted by Ashfield Boys' High School on Tuesday, May 12, 2020

To show their appreciation for the NHS and all key workers, musicians from Ashfield Boys High School have released a virtual performance of the track with a special guest solo by Lucas himself.

Lauren Hill, head of music at the school, was the brains behind the video. She said the idea came about after the school spring concert had to be cancelled because of the virus outbreak.

Lockdown happened about a week before our spring concert was due to happen so obviously we were all very disappointed that that didnt happen because theres a lot of work and time that goes into that from myself and the pupils, she told the BBC's Good Morning Ulster.

So I decided that I wanted to do something to keep the music going. You know, at this stage, everyone turns to music to try and make themselves feel better and what better way to try and get my band together.

I had planned maybe to do something from our spring concert programme and then I saw the Matt Lucas video which is obviously one of those songs that sticks in your head, so I decided to do an arrangement of that.

Miss Hill then roped in Mike Whan, a past pupil of Ashfield and who works as a musician and producer, to help with the co-ordination.

I thought he could do the arrangement and all the editing and tricky stuff and I could just sit back and relax, she laughed.

The music teacher was "shocked" that it only took one email to get Lucas on board.

I thought I may as well chance my arm and see if I could get in contact and in a day or two we got a reply from his booking agent who said he was happy to do it," she said.

"All we had to do then was send the video and the track to him and again, in a day or two, the video was back to us.

You dont ask, you dont get."

A total of 32 staff, pupils and family members took part in the video.

It is tricky at this time because maybe pupils dont have their instruments with them in lockdown, there were a few instruments that were broken so even to get that small number of boys involved was great and they were really happy to do it," Miss Hill added.

Miss Hill said the project had been a welcome distraction during the worldwide pandemic saying many parents had thanked her for allowing their children to be involved and providing a lasting memory.

This completely took our minds off everything. The pupils had something to do. They had to go and teach themselves music without any help from teachers, so that was great.

Then I sent out the email to staff to see if they would want to get involved and many of them are homeschooling as well as trying to teach online and its very difficult so I was amazed at the response I got.
New Delhi, May 15 : Smart wearables and preventive healthcare brand GOQii on Friday launched 'Vital 3.0' a smartband with sensors to detect body temperature, which may be an early symptom of coronavirus.

The band is priced at Rs 3,999 and available on online platforms like Amazon as well as Flipkart.

"Governments, hospitals, schools, BPOs, insurance, banking, ride-sharing, food delivery, e-commerce and logistics companies around the world are in talks with us to use the GOQii Vital 3.0," Vishal Gondal, Founder & CEO, GOQii, said in a statement.

GOQii has partnered with German health tech startup Thryve to conduct a clinical study in India to detect COVID-19 infections earlier than testing.

"Combined usage of the detection algorithm and the GOQii Vital 3.0 Smart Band can help significantly in isolating potential COVID-19 patients and preventing further spread. We are confident that the clinical study will show positive results in predicting COVID-19 infection," Gondal aaded.

GOQii Vital 3.0 wearable has an inbuilt temperature display and thermal sensor that has two ways of temperature monitoring.

The continuous monitoring feature and the on-demand feature is for users who would like to check it at their convenience.

Apart from temperature, the smartband will track heart rate, blood oressure, sleep, all day activity and steps.

According to the company, all data collected by GOQii is subjected to Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and relevant data privacy guidelines.
OP Samudrasetu- INS Jalashwa Returns to Maldives for Phase 2

India - Press Information Bureau

Ministry of Defence

Posted On: 14 MAY 2020 6:15PM by PIB Delhi

Indian Naval Ship Jalashwa has returned to Male, Maldives to begin Phase 2 of Operation SamudraSetu - repatriation of Indian Nationals from foreign shores by sea. The ship will enter Male port in the early hours of 15 May 20 and begin embarkation of Indian citizens who have already registered with the Indian Embassy in Maldives. On her second trip, INS Jalashwa is planned to embark 700 Indian citizens and will depart for Kochi by the night of 15 May.

Earlier, after successfully bringing home 698 Indian nationals to Kochi on 10 May 20, INS Jalashwa proceeded for preparatory activities towards Phase II of the evacuation operation which included disinfection and sanitisation of the entire ship with special attention to the areas occupied by the previous set of repatriated citizens.

The ship is anchored off Male and will undertake embarkation of the second set of Indian nationals on 15 May 20, wherein approximately 700 Indian nationals, including 100 women and children would be repatriated. The Indian nationals who have been manifested for evacuation will be screened medically, allotted IDs and their baggage sanitised before boarding the ship.

***

VM/ MS

(Release ID: 1623836)

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To Garrett M. Graffs list of reasons that there will be no V-shaped recovery, in his May 10 Outlook essay, The storm we cant see, I can add one more. In most years, millions of retired Americans must take required minimum distributions from their individual retirement accounts or 401(k)s. This year, because of the novel coronavirus and resulting stock market gyrations, Congress has lifted that requirement. Because we dont have to and because we dont want to liquidate assets while the market is down (or may be down at the moment of the withdrawal), many of us arent taking our required monthly distributions. But that also means that weve reduced our discretionary spending. Regardless of any second wave, this probably wont change until next year.
Indore, May 16 : Madhya Pradesh reported 169 corona positive cases on Friday taking the tally to 4,593 while Indore remained on top with 61 new cases. The death toll in Indore reached 98 with two deaths reported overnight on Friday.

Bhopal 26, Ujjain 10, Jabalpur 11, Burhanpur 27 were the other hotspots for new cases on Friday.

The state government is focused on Indore which has reported 2,299 positive cases so far and figures among the top ten districts in the country. Now more than 12 officials have been asked by the Prime Minister's office to monitor the city and the district.

As the transit point for the migrant labourers travelling from the western states of Maharashtra, Gujarat, the region remains vulnerable for the spread of the virus.

Principal secretary industries, Sanjay Shukla and additional chief secretary in charge of health and family welfare department Mohd Suleiman have been asked to closely watch the developments in the region and arrange for all that is needed to bring the situation under control.

Adverse publicity over the plight of migrant labourers has alarmed the centre. Thousands of poor families of unskilled labourers who have been rendered jobless are the key concern of all departments.

The food and civil supplies department is charting out plans to provide food to these families. BJP national president J P Nadda has led many party workers to spread out in the rural areas and the Union agriculture minister, Narendra Singh Tomar, is backing up the effort.

The state government is simultaneously making efforts to restart industries to get the labour force to start earning.

The state government has started - 200 units in Indore and 387 in the rural areas and plans are afoot to restart the entire Pithampur industrial area to engage about 50,000 workers. The government will allow 1000 buses to transport these workers while the banks will restart operations.

The state government is planning a special package for farmers in the region and has set up procurement centres to help them.

Indore member of Lok Sabha Shankarlal Lalwani has arranged for Rs 10 lakh from his local area development funds to purchase PPE kits and medicines.
Mumbai, May 15 : Producers Guild of India has hit back at sections of the exhibition sector who seem to be upset with an OTT platform's move to release films directly before their theatrical release.

In a statement issued on Friday, the guild wrote that we are in unprecedented times, facing one of the "greatest public health and economic emergencies of our lifetimes".

"This is a time for the entire film industry to come together with empathy and support for the difficult predicament that each of our constituents finds themselves in - from producers, distributors, exhibitors, daily wage earners and technicians, to the thousands of people whose lives and livelihoods are in some way dependent on our industry.

"Hence at a time like this, it is disappointing to see abrasive and unconstructive messaging from some of our colleagues in the exhibition sector. Statements that call for 'retributive measures' against producers who decide to take their movies direct to OTT platforms - especially at a time when cinemas are unfortunately closed for the foreseeable future - do not lend themselves to a constructive or collaborative dialogue on the way forward for the industry." The Producers Guild statement comes in the wake of yesterday's statement by INOX, denouncing the release of feature films directly on the OTT platform Amazon Prime Video, bypassing theatrical release.

The Guild's statement suggested the production sector (just like the exhibition sector) is suffering "hundreds of crores of losses on a daily basis - - Elaborate and expensive sets erected for under-production films have had to be taken down due to no date in sight for shoots to resume, with the sunk cost of the set and studio rentals to be borne completely by producers - as insurers refuse to cover the cost".

The statement further read: "Shoot schedules have had to be abruptly cancelled due to the lockdown, with huge cancellation charges being borne completely by the producer - again with no support from insurers. Interest costs are mounting on amounts raised to fund films, with producers having to bear this additional burden with no date in sight for cinemas to re-open; in fact with the knowledge that cinemas may be one of the last sectors of the service sector likely to be given permission to re-open.

"Re-opening of cinemas is bound to be staggered across the country, with each State government rightly making its own decision on the appropriate time to re-open cinemas in their State, depending on the intensity of the outbreak there. Producers of Hindi movies will have to wait for cinemas across the entire country to re-open, as the economics of the business require an All India release. For cinemas to be open across the entire country, it is clear we are sometime away." The statement added that "even when cinemas reopen across India, there is "no guarantee that the overseas theatrical market (which is a key component of the economics of Hindi films) will have resumed. Even if it has in some countries, it might not have in others, hence leading to additional loss of revenue for a producer. When cinemas reopen, we should be prepared for lower occupancies. One, because of the social distancing norms that will be both mandated and necessary for public safety. Secondly, because of the inevitable concern that cinema public spaces - goers will have about venturing back into." The guild also pointed out that there will be a huge backlog of releases, and the smaller and medium scale films especially will suffer from suboptimal showcasing in addition to above.

"All the concerns given this combination of factors, it is only natural that producers who have already invested heavily in their films with theatrical revenue assumptions that are no longer feasible, will seek out all avenues available to recover their investment and to stay in business. At a time like this, it is important that each stakeholder understands and empathises with the predicament of the other, rather than adopting an adversarial stance which is counterproductive for the entire value chain." The Producers Guild also emphasised that they are unequivocally and passionately supportive of the theatrical release of films, and a theatrical release will always be the preference for movies that were conceptualised as cinematic experiences.

"But these are unprecedented times for all the reasons mentioned above, and it is imperative to see things in that context. For producers to continue to keep 'producing' the movies that light up our cinema screens, they need to continue to be in business in the first place. The production fraternity would like to work collaboratively with the exhibition sector to ensure that once cinemas do reopen across the country, we do all we can to bring audiences back in large numbers to experience our movies in the way they were always meant to be enjoyed - at the theatres." This comes a day after the multiplex chain INOX issued a statement, the gist part of which is: "The decision of production house to deviate from the globally prevalent content windowing practice is alarming and disconcerting. Cinemas and content creators have always been into mutually beneficial partnerships, where one's action provided fillip to another's revenues." On Thursday, it was confirmed that "Gulabo Sitabo" will get a digital release. Now, amid the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown as multiplexes remain shut, the streaming platform Amazon Prime Video has announced six more highly-anticipated Indian films, including "Shakuntala Devi" starring Vidya Balan, for digital premieres over the next months.

Five other major films in Tamil, Telugu and Kannada languages have also been lined up straight for release on Amazon Prime as of now.

--IANS nn/vnc/

>
Niamey, Niger (PANA)  Medical charity, Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), has opened a treatment centre for COVID-19 patients in Niamey with 50 beds as its contribution to the fight against the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic in the country, a communique issued on Thursday
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 18:01:02

ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands (15 May 2020)  IMCD N.V. (IMCD or Company), a leading distributor of speciality chemicals and food ingredients, today announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire the pharmaceutical business in China of Develing International Trade (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. (Develing) upon fulfilment of transaction-related conditions.

Develing International with head office in Shanghai, is a Dutch sales and distribution company (B2B) of high-quality ingredients for the food, pharmaceutical, chemical, and feed industry in China and Vietnam.

The acquired business with annual sales of approximately  10 mln will be integrated into IMCD Chinas business unit Pharma and will be synergistic with IMCDs existing product range.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: It is not just bad news the COVID-19 has thrown up. Some people have set examples of Hindu-Muslim brotherhood too.

Dev Kumar (55) did not think twice before giving shelter to 13 stranded toymakers from Bihars Khagaria and Saharsa districts under his roof. They have been living in his house in Lower Assams Dhubri district since the first week of March.

These artisans visit the house of Kumar, who is a potter, every year to sell toys in the fairs. They stay with him and return home after about two-three months.

I give them shelter every year. They make toys with bamboo, plastic and earthen items. I manufacture the earthen items in my pottery and sell those to them. They sell the finished products in some fairs in Dhubri district, Kumar told this newspaper.

The men were at their wits end after they were stranded in the lockdown. They had purchased food for themselves as long as they had money. Now, Kumar and his Hindu neighbours are feeding them.

I have two extra rooms where they stay. This being the Ramzan month, somebody brings fruits and somebody else brings something else for them. Every evening, my family offers puja and they offer their Ramzan namaaz, Kumar said.

The potter said these artisans were victims of circumstances and they desperately needed some help. He appealed to the government to facilitate the mens return to Bihar.

Kumar lives in a joint family with his wife, three daughters, one son and three brothers. The family, originally hailing from Bihar, has been settled in Dhubri for decades.

The migrant toymakers are viewing Kumar as their saviour.

He is our saviour. Help coming in from him and his neighbours has kept us alive. We will never forget them, Sajid, who hails from Khagaria, said.

Fellow artisan Mohammad Hira from Saharsa said, I will remain thankful to him (Kumar) for the rest of my life. I am the lone breadwinner in my five-member family and I am stranded here. My wife and children in Bihar are facing a lot of problems.

Two days ago, when a Hindu died in Assams Sivasagar, some Muslims had taken the lead in cremating the body. Advocate Masud Akhtar Zaman of Dhubri said the two incidents underscored goodness still prevails in the society.

This is what Hinduism and Islam have taught us. Unfortunately, such positive stories often go unreported, he said.
The request for Biden to see the information came Jan. 12, 2017, an active day for him. It was eight days before leaving office, and Biden was preparing for his last foreign trip as vice president, heading to Ukraine and Switzerland. It was a day when Obama would surprisingly bestow the Medal of Freedom on him and also a day when Biden would confirm that he and Obama had been briefed the week before on what would become the infamous dossier on President-elect Trump.
Japan's government has proposed paying as much as 200,000 yen ($1,870) to students at risk of being unable to afford tuition because of financial losses from the coronavirus pandemic.

Students whose income from part-time work has fallen by half or more will be eligible for a 100,000 yen payment. Those from households earning too little to pay local income tax can receive another 100,000 yen.

The relief will be available to students enrolled at universities, graduate schools, junior colleges and Japanese language schools. This includes foreign students, many of whom count on earnings from now-vanishing jobs to pay their way.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's government, which informed ruling-party and opposition lawmakers of the plan Thursday, expects to provide these payments to around 400,000 students. The measure will be funded with 50 billion yen from the extra fiscal 2020 budget passed last month to finance the coronavirus stimulus package.

Government officials and lawmakers are also considering some form of tuition assistance as part of a planned second supplementary budget.

Aid for students is one of five key elements in this spending plan. Other priorities are capital assistance for companies, help with business lease payments, expanded subsidies for employers that avoid job cuts by taking such steps as putting workers on temporary leave, and higher tax revenue grants to local governments.
BRASILIA, BRAZIL - May 07: Jair Bolsonaro President of Brazil talks to the press. Andressa Anholete

It's a "pretty negative" picture in Brazil, one analyst has told CNBC, with politicians dismissing the current health crisis and economic reforms looking increasingly unlikely. The largest economy in South America has become a hotspot for Covid-19. It is currently sixth in the world in terms of countries with the highest confirmed infections, and its death toll is just under 14,000; according to Johns Hopkins University. However, with the World Health Organization saying the Americas are the new epicenter of the virus, Brazil could face even direr circumstances. "It is a very worrying situation," Raphael Boechat Barros, a psychiatrist at the University of Brasilia, told CNBC via email. "We don't feel safe, we are worried, the media keep talking about Covid-19, the economy is partially shut, and we see homelessness rising," Barros said. Brazil's response to the pandemic has confused many. With a population of more than 209 million people, the federal government  led by President Jair Bolsonaro  has clashed with the country's 26 states.

BRASILIA, BRAZIL - May 07: Jair Bolsonaro President of Brazil walks back to the Palacio do Planalto. Andressa Anholete

Bolsonaro, often dubbed the "Trump of the Tropics," has not implemented nationwide lockdown measures to contain the virus. Rather, he has allowed state governors to decide for themselves what should be done. This has led to an uncoordinated approach across the country and political attacks between the president and governors. "It is a polarized (political) environment," Robert Wood, principal economist at the Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC Wednesday. The measures taken by the governors "have been condemned by Bolsonaro," he said, adding that the president has "dismissed the impact (of the pandemic) from the beginning."

Bolsonaro, 65, has said if he were to catch the virus, because of his "background as an athlete," he would only get a "little cold." More recently, when asked about the growing number of deaths, he answered "so what?" He added moments later he was sorry about the deaths, but questioned "what do you want me to do about it?" Bolsonaro fired the country's health minister, Luiz Mandetta, last month for supporting social-distancing measures at a time when the president was encouraging people to go to work. The federal government was not immediately available for comment when contacted by CNBC.

Re-election in 2022?

"His game is to shore up his core supporters," Wood told CNBC, mentioning the financial support given to poorer citizens and the greenlight that churches received to keep their doors open. Brazil is due to have municipal elections after the summer and a new presidential vote in 2022. According to Wood, Bolsonaro knows that his chances of re-election will be linked to how the economy performs going forward. Brazil's GDP (gross domestic product) could drop 4% in 2020, according to Fitch Ratings. Other economic forecasts point to a contraction of 5%.

Passengers wearing protective masks at Estacao da Luz, central region of the city of Sao Paulo, Brazil, on May 11, 2020. NurPhoto
In early 1828, a trapper named James Ohio Pattie and seven other armed men entered Mexican California without passports or permission. On orders of Alta California Gov. Jose Echeandia, they were imprisoned in San Diego on suspicion of being spies for Spain.

At this point, according to Pattie, one of the greatest feats in the history of California was about to unfold, featuring him in a starring role.

The 22-year-old Pattie, his father and other men had started their Western odyssey in June 1825, crossing the Missouri River. In a memoir he published in 1831, The Personal Narrative of James O. Pattie, he described extraordinary adventures on a journey that took him through present-day Nebraska and Kansas on the way to Santa Fe, and then through what is now southern Arizona to San Diego.

Many of the stories Pattie relates in his book sound too amazing to be true  and thats because they are. As Richard Batman writes in James Patties West: The Dream and the Reality, Pattie was a supreme storyteller who mingled true stories with exaggerations, distortions and outright lies. His account of his adventures in the West is a classic case of wish fulfillment.

The real Pattie was a retiring young man who made virtually no impression on anyone who met him; the Pattie presented in the Personal Narrative is a heroic man of action. It was out of this conflict between the man he was and the man he wished to be that the Personal Narrative came, Batman writes.

Its in this context that the outlandish story Pattie told about what he did in California must be understood.

As related in the previous Portals, Patties story went like this:

Pattie was still in jail in late 1828 when a smallpox epidemic broke out in Northern California. As it spread south, Echeandia became alarmed. Learning that Pattie had some dried smallpox vaccine, Echeandia demanded that he vaccinate people in the area.

Pattie refused unless he and his companions were freed. Echeandia finally agreed, and in February 1829, Pattie began an epic vaccination campaign.

Over the next few months he traveled north, stopping at every mission, presidio and pueblo along the coast and vaccinating everyone he found. When he had finished at the Russian settlement at Fort Ross, he had vaccinated more than 22,000 people.

Its one of the most astonishing single-handed public health crusades of all time. Unfortunately, it never happened.

Trivia time The previous trivia question: In "Dark Passage," after Lauren Bacall smuggles Humphrey Bogart in the back of her car over the (empty) Golden Gate Bridge, the toll taker tells her, "A killer's loose." What does she reply? Answer: "So they say." This week's trivia question: What happened in a closet in apartment #6, 1827 Golden Gate Ave.? Dig deep into Chronicle Vault Like what you're reading? Subscribe to the Chronicle Vault newsletter and get classic archive stories in your inbox twice a week. Read hundreds of historical stories, see thousands of archive photos and sort through 153 years of classic Chronicle front pages at SFChronicle.com/vault. Editor's note Every corner in San Francisco has an astonishing story to tell. Gary Kamiya's Portals of the Past tells those lost stories, using a specific location to illuminate San Francisco's extraordinary history - from the days when giant mammoths wandered through what is now North Beach to the Gold Rush delirium, the dot-com madness and beyond. His column appears every other Saturday. See More Collapse

There are several reasons why Patties story doesnt hold up. There was indeed an epidemic in the California missions in 1827-28, but it was probably measles, not smallpox. In 1971, UCSF researcher Rosemary Valle reviewed mission death records and found a number of mentions of measles, but none of smallpox.

A leading authority, Robert H. Jackson, states that the first smallpox epidemic in Alta California did not occur until 1837-38. Its thought to have originated at Fort Ross, and it decimated the North Bay Indians.

But even if the epidemic of 1827-28 was smallpox, Patties story doesnt make sense. He claimed to have vaccinated 18,962 people at 14 missions, but there were only 12,851 people living at those missions at the time.

Equally absurd is the speed with which Pattie claimed to work. For example, Pattie says he vaccinated 1,500 people in three days at Fort Ross, or 500 a day. To do this, working for an implausible 16 hours a day, he would have to have vaccinated more than one person every two minutes.

More from the Archive The Vault Home of the San Francisco Chronicle's archive and more than 150 years of journalism covering the Bay Area and beyond.

Pattie also gets basic facts wrong. The 1827-28 epidemic broke out not in the north, as he claimed, but in the south, meaning that by the time he said he was vaccinating people in San Diego, the disease would have long passed.

And Pattie makes it appear that Echeandia desperately came to him because he was the only person in California who understood vaccination, which is patently false: Spanish and Mexican authorities had known about smallpox vaccination since soon after Edward Jenner invented it in 1797. A Russian ship had brought smallpox vaccine to Monterey in 1821, and a surgeon aboard had carried out precautionary vaccinations of 40 people.

Then there is the problem of the vaccine. Pattie claims he initially used dried vaccine that his father had carried with him. While dried vaccine could be effective, the notion that it would still be viable after years of being carried around in a pocket or pouch, exposed to the Southwestern heat, is dubious at best. And Pattie never says where he obtained more vaccine or how he transported it.

Could Pattie have carried out a small-scale vaccination program and lied about its scope? Thats also highly unlikely. Why would Echeandia have chosen him to do it? As Batman notes, there were many people in California who were far more qualified to perform vaccinations than Pattie.

Batman concludes that Patties vaccination tale is one of the least likely stories in the Personal Narrative  which, considering how many tall tales that book contains, makes it a veritable howler.

Batman writes that Pattie made up the whole epic tale to aggrandize himself. Behind all the heroics, there is again the story of a man who made little impact.

Yet in a certain sense, Pattie succeeded: His Personal Narrative is a classic of Western literature. Almost 200 years after he vanished from view in 1833, possibly the victim of a cholera epidemic in Kentucky, the little man with the big stories lives on.

Gary Kamiya is the author of the best-selling book Cool Gray City of Love: 49 Views of San Francisco, awarded the Northern California Book Award in creative nonfiction. All the material in Portals of the Past is original for The San Francisco Chronicle. To read earlier Portals of the Past, go to sfchronicle.com/portals. For more features from 150 years of The Chronicles archives, go to sfchronicle.com/vault. Email: metro@sfchronicle.com
Israels biological defense research lab has discovered what they say is a breakthrough in finding an antidote to the coronavirus by isolating and developing an antibody that attacks the virus, defense officials said Tuesday.

The Israel Institute for Biological Research, which normally deals with responses to chemical and biological threats against Israel, presented its findings to Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, who hailed the work as a major breakthrough.

Researchers said the development phase has been completed and that they are filing for a patent for the antibody and lo...
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Drew Angerer / Getty

Hackers who broke into the networks of a celebrity law firm have doubled their ransom demand to $42 million and threatened to reveal dirty laundry on Donald Trump in a week if they are not paid in full.

On Thursday, the hackers of Grubman, Shire, Meiselas & Sacks posted a new message, saying The ransom is now $42,000,000 The next person well be publishing is Donald Trump. Theres an election going on, and we found a ton of dirty laundry.

They added, Mr. Trump, if you want to stay president, poke a sharp stick at the guys, otherwise you may forget this ambition forever. And to you voters, we can let you know that after such a publication, you certainly dont want to see him as president The deadline is one week.

Grubman, we will destroy your company down to the ground if we dont see the money.

It is not clear why the hackers connected Trump to the firm as he has never been a client, Page Six says.

Page Six reports that the firms founder, Allen Grubman, is refusing to negotiate, with a source saying: His view is, if he paid, the hackers might release the documents anyway. Plus, the FBI has stated this hack is considered an act of international terrorism, and we dont negotiate with terrorists.

Grubman is the father of the publicist Lizzie Grubman, who was famously jailed in 2001 after backing her SUV into a line of people waiting to gain entry to a Hamptons nightclub, injuring more than a dozen.

He has stars including Lady Gaga, Madonna, Mariah Carey, U2, Bruce Springsteen, Priyanka Chopra, and Bette Midler on his books.

The hackers earlier this week posted screengrabs of a Madonna contract in an attempt to prove their threats were credible.

The same group, known as REvil, successfully extorted $2 million from currency swap firm Travelex, it has been reported.

The firm said in a statement to Page Six, Our elections, our government, and our personal information are under escalating attacks by foreign cybercriminals. Law firms are not immune from this malicious activity.

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Despite our substantial investment in state-of-the-art technology security, foreign cyberterrorists have hacked into our network and are demanding $42 million as ransom. We are working directly with federal law enforcement and continue to work around the clock with the worlds leading experts to address this situation.

The leaking of our clients documents is a despicable and illegal attack by these foreign cyberterrorists who make their living attempting to extort high-profile U.S. companies, government entities, entertainers, politicians, and others.

Industry sites such as Teiss said the hackers, calling themselves REvil, claimed on dark-web forums to have accessed 756GB of information on many clients, past and present, including Nicki Minaj, Christina Aguilera, Idina Menzel, and Run DMC.

The data stolen by the hackers allegedly includes contracts, nondisclosure agreements, phone numbers, email addresses, and private correspondence.

The REvil group posted an excerpt from a contract for Madonnas 2019-20 Madame X tour with Live Nation as proof that it was inside the law firms systems.

The hackers are seeking a ransom, using the threat of releasing the stolen data and not restoring locked backups as leverage to extort payment.

REvil is thought to be the same group of hackers that successfully extorted Travelex, the U.K.-based currency-exchange company, out of a $2.3 million bitcoin ransom, as The Wall Street Journal reported. REvil boasted to the Bleeping Computer blog that it used Sodinokibi ransomware to successfully lock Travelexs entire network.

It initially demanded $6 million (4.6m) to return the encrypted files but, according to the Journal, finally settled for $2.3 million paid in bitcoin. The attack forced Travelex to shut down operations at 1,500 outlets around the world.

Bleeping Computer says that the hackers have also provided snippets from a legal agreement in 2013 signed by Aguilera and an artist featured in one of her music projects. The blog has also published file lists showing the names of dozens of celebrities whose information may now be compromised.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:56:38|Editor: huaxia

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HARBIN, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Northeast China's Heilongjiang province will impose a 77-day fishing ban on the northern part of the Songhua River in the province from Saturday, according to the provincial ecology and environment department.

During the fishing ban, which is the longest one for the Heilongjiang section of the Songhua River, all kinds of fishing methods besides using fishing tackle will be prohibited. Illegal fishing activities such as bombing, poisoning and cross-region fishing will be strictly punished.

The Songhua River, the largest tributary of Heilongjiang River, boasts abundant fish species. In recent years, Heilongjiang has moved most of the heavily polluting factories along the river out of the region to improve water quality and ecology. Enditem.
Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and head of NATO Jens Stoltenberg discussed via telephone the novel coronavirus and steps to take in the post-pandemic period, according to a statement by Ankara's presidential Directorate of Communications.



Erdogan and Stoltenberg also discussed the latest developments in Syria and Libya, Anadolu Agency reported.



In a separate press release, Stoltenberg praised Turkey for helping NATO allies and partners with medical equipment over the past months to help combat the virus.



"At this challenging time, it remains more important than ever to demonstrate allied solidarity," Stoltenberg told Erdogan, according to the statement.
Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - The World Health Organization (WHO) has expressed concern at the potential impact of COVID-19 (coronavirus) on food security, which is likely to exacerbate the already considerable burden of malnutrition in Africa
A confidential document by Spains Civil Guard warns about the high probability of growing social unrest over the coming months, which could result in isolated protests and street disturbances.

The document was drafted to reorganize security measures during the coronavirus deescalation process, which is expected to last until late June if there are no new spikes in transmission.

Spain has been under a state of alarm since mid-March, when the government began using emergency powers to keep citizens in confinement in a bid to curb the spread of the coronavirus, which has hit this country particularly hard.

But there has been growing opposition to continued two-week extensions to the state of alarm, which Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of the Socialist Party (PSOE) now wants to extend to June 29.

The Civil Guard report is one of several documents that law enforcement agencies have drafted at the request of the Interior Ministry, in order to come up with a unified action plan for the coming months.

Politically motivated acts

The Civil Guards internal document warns about the risk of acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure or buildings with ties to political parties.

It also talks about politically-motivated or separatist acts aimed at disturbing the peace.

EL PAIS has seen the 22-page document, which was originally reported on by the daily El Periodico, and which lists the potential scenarios that the law enforcement agency is preparing for.

Dated this month and signed by the Civil Guards top operations commander, Lieutenant General Fernando Santafe, the document lists the potential instigators of future disturbances as people who have been affected by an ERTE [a temporary layoff scheme] or fired and production or services sectors that might consider themselves harmed by the ongoing restrictions and limitations.

The document warns about the risk of acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure or buildings with ties to political parties

The report further cautions that these incidents could take place in geographical areas that view themselves as being marginalized due to the asymmetrical application of deescalation measures, as well as in economically depressed areas. The authors of the report note that the current economic crisis will impact the most disadvantaged citizens, who could see their basic needs unmet.

The document says there could also be protests and street disturbances as a result of violations of rules of conduct and self-protection measures, or if local fiestas are banned, or if the executive does not allow mobility on weekends or during vacation time.

In this crisis scenario, the Civil Guard has also warned about the possibility of rising crime rates, which have plummeted during the lockdown. As confinement measures are gradually eased, the increased mobility can help criminals go about undetected. This could lead to more burglaries, especially in second homes, as well as in commercial establishments and livestock and farming facilities. The law enforcement agency also talks about a rise in crimes against vulnerable groups such as children and the elderly. As for terrorism, no specific threat is known about for now, although Jihadist terrorists ability to act in Europe remains high. On May 8, a jihadist suspect was arrested in Barcelona for ignoring shelter-in-place rules and going out to seek potential attack targets.

Cyber-surveillance

Civil Guard experts recommend maintaining their observation of activity on social media and other online forums to detect potential calls to organize episodes of unrest or defending the violation of rules.

This kind of cyber-surveillance triggered a political storm in April after Civil Guard General Jose Manuel Santiago said at a news conference that his agency was searching the internet for hoaxes, to prevent the social stress created by these hoaxes, and to minimize the [online] environment that opposes the governments handling of the crisis.

The report notes that the Spanish population has accepted the lockdown, which started out as one of the strictest in Europe. It is likely that this will remain the general rule throughout the entire process towards the new normality, reads the document. But the deescalation could take several months, and there could be steps back if there are new spikes in the disease during the winter.

English version by Susana Urra.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Steppe Gold Limited (TSX: STGO) ("Steppe Gold" or "the Company") is extremely pleased to announce its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.

The Company announces that the Company's interim consolidated financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2020 have been filed on SEDAR.

The full version of the Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis can be viewed on the Company's website at www.steppegold.com or under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Amounts are expressed in United States dollars unless otherwise noted.

HIGHLIGHTS

Financial Results for the Three Months Ended, March 31, 2020

On January 20, 2020, the Company's Adsorption-Desorption Recovery (ADR) Plant was fully commissioned by the Professional Inspection Agency of Mongolia and declared ready for use.

On January 30, 2020, the Company received funding from the Mongolian National Investment Fund PIF SPV. The fund has subscribed for a 12% twoyear secured convertible debenture of the Company in the principal amount of $3 million.

Cash was $1.8 million at March 31, 2020, compared to $0.67 million at December 31, 2019. The increase was primarily due to cash received from financing, offset by cash utilised in operating activities.

Subsequent to quarter end the Company commenced its first gold sales and sold a total of 5,233 oz of gold and 1,372 oz of silver in two separate deliveries to the Central Bank of Mongolia. This generated net cash flow before stream obligations of $8.5 million.

On April 9, 2020, privately held debentures with a total value of $2,500,000 were converted into 4,807,692 common shares of the Company.

Loss from operations for the quarter was $3.9 million ($0.09 per share) compared to a loss of $0.5 million ($0.01 per share) for the quarter ended March 31, 2019.

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Steppe Gold Limited

Steppe Gold is Mongolia's premier precious metals company.

For Further information, please contact:

Matthew Wood, Executive Chairman

Bataa Tumur-Ochir, CEO and President

Shangri-La office, Suite 1201, Olympic street

19A, Sukhbaatar District 1,

Ulaanbaatar 14241, Mongolia

Tel: +976 7732 1914

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

The above contains forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include: changes in world commodity markets, equity markets, costs and supply of materials relevant to the mining industry, change in government and changes to regulations affecting the mining industry. Forward-looking statements in this release include, among other things, statements regarding the trading of the Common Shares and business, economic, and political conditions in Mongolia. Although we believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, results may vary, and we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55922
The World Bank on Friday announced a US$1-billion Accelerating Indias Covid-19 Social Protection Response Programme, aimed at integrating Indias 400-plus fragmented social-security programmes for migrant workers hit by the outbreak, part of an initiative that seeks to rebalance access to safety nets between rural and urban India.

The programme will especially focus on making social benefits such as subsidised food under the National Food Security Act, cash transfers and pensions portable so that beneficiaries can access them from anywhere in the country, not just from their home districts, the bank said.

Portability simply refers to a digitised, universal and always-on platform, which ensures benefits move along with the migrants.

Also Read: States look to ease curbs, restart interstate travel in lockdown 4.0

Very clearly, everybody recognises the shock (from the pandemic). The choice is being said to be between lives and livelihoods. This is not a choice the government of India is making, Junaid Ahmad, country director of the bank said.

Ahmad also said this is a watershed moment in social security of the country because the government has, for the first time, opened up an important window in the form of the state disaster response fund, which is now linked to social safety.

The Union government, in the wake of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) pandemic, allowed states to use the fund freely without usual approvals to provide social protection.

A national lockdown that took effect from March 25 shuttered shops, factories and construction sites, pushing millions of migrant workers out of jobs.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced free food assistance to 80 million migrant workers worth Rs 3500 core, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Rs 20 lakh crore (Rs 20 trillion) economic package to pull the economy out of a slump.

The first phase of the World Bank operation will be implemented countrywide through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY). It will immediately help scale up cash transfers and food benefits, using a core set of pre-existing national platforms and programmes such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT), the bank said.

Jobless migrant workers, hit by the lockdown, have fallen through the cracks because static social safety nets did not reach them in the absence of portability.

If the World Bank wants to streamline our social safety nets, first off, they are getting into very complicated things. The issue sometimes is not so much about how to reach the people as it is about how to get two wings of the government talking, said economist Abhijit Sen, former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission.

The arguments are on two things, Sen said: One, dont overcentralise things. Where the World Bank can intervene and should, is portability. Two, if I had to give out a billion dollars, then, I would give very little of that to the federal government and most of it to the states; in fact, more to the municipalities.

Over 90% of Indias workforce is employed in the informal sector, without access to basic savings or pensions, or paid leave from work.

There are large transfers to the rural poor. Look at the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana. The idea is to make social benefits such as food and cash transfers just as easily accessible for urban informal workers and migrants, said World Bank lead of the project, Shrayana Bhattacharya.

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New Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) has said that the Centre does not discriminate between the states and that the recently launched repatriation exercise - Vande Bharat Mission - is meant for all Indians stranded due to coronavirus lockdown.

Replying to West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjees allegation of discrimination, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastav tweeted late on Thursday, "MEA does not discriminate between states. Government of India`s Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal. Over 3700 of them have registered for repatriation from different parts of the world."

MEA does not discriminate between states. GOIs Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal. Over 3700 of them have registered for repatriation from different parts of the world. (1/2)@MoCA_GoI @HomeSecretaryWB https://t.co/CEzU0rCAnM  Anurag Srivastava (@MEAIndia) May 14, 2020

The MEA spokesperson`s tweet was in response to questions raised by Partha Chatterjee over India`s largest repatriation exercise, alleging discrimination by Centre against the people of West Bengal.

"Is the MEA asking us to believe that there are enough people to come from Georgia to Gujarat but none want to come to Kolkata? Also, there are enough people to come back to Bihar from Kyrgyzstan but not enough to bring back to Bengal. Stop this injustice!" Chatterjee had said in a tweet.

The MEA spokesperson tagged the tweet by Chatterjee further said, "Will gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if the state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. Will also help in return of West Bengal residents through land borders with neighbours. We hope to receive an early response on the matter."

The West Bengal Education Minister later replied to the MEA spokesperson`s tweet and said, "Bengal will welcome its people from any part of the world with open arms and since Honourable Prime Minister (Modi) is talking about `vocal for local`, why can`t we have our poor migrant brothers & sisters reach their homes in these special flights instead of walking barefoot for thousands of km?"

West Bengal government and Centre have been at loggerheads over several issues pertaining to the governance and other policy matters. India began from May 7 the phased repatriation of its citizens stranded abroad, due to various lockdown restrictions, under the Vande Bharat Mission.

It may also be recalled that a war of words had erupted between the centre and the state government after Home Minister Amit Shah alleged Mamata Banerjee regime was not cooperating over migrant workers issue. In his letter to Mamata, the Union Home Minister stated that the West Bengal government is not allowing trains carrying migrant workers to reach the state, which may further create hardship for the labourers.

In his letter, Shah said not allowing trains to reach West Bengal is "injustice" to the migrant workers from the state. Referring to the 'Shramik Special' trains being run by the central government to facilitate the transportation of migrant workers from different parts of the country to various destinations, Shah said that the Centre has facilitated more than two lakh migrants workers to reach home.

The Home Minister said migrant workers from West Bengal are also eager to reach home and the central government is also facilitating the train services.

"But we are not getting expected support from the West Bengal. The state government of West Bengal is not allowing the trains reaching to West Bengal. This is injustice with West Bengal migrant labourers. This will create further hardship for them," Shah wrote in his letter to the Trinamool Congress chief.

Prior to that, the Centre and the Bengal government clashed over an IMCT (inter-ministerial central team), which recently visited the state to review its handling of the COVID-19 crisis.
New Delhi: Bihar School Examination Board is expected to release the Bihar Board Class 10 board examination soon. The results would be made available by BSEB on its official website biharboardonline.bihar.gov.in. Students who have appeared for the Bihar Board Class 10 matric examination will also be able to check their Bihar 10th Result 2020 via SMS.

As per reports, Bihar Board has completed the evaluation of Class 10 board exam answer sheets and may declare anytime in the month of May. However, the final date for the result announcement has not been announced by the BSEB so far.

BSEB chairman Anand Kishore had earlier said that 10-15 days will be required to complete the post-evaluation process. Kishore, however, added that if the declaration of 10th result 2020 gets delayed due to coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown then the BSEB Matric Result 2020 will be announced in the first week of June.

Bihar Board BSED 10 result 2020 live updates:

Interested students can check their results by visiting on these websites: biharboardonline.bihar.gov.in, onlinebseb.in, bsebresult.online, bsebonline.org, biharboard.online.

Earlier, the verification process of Class 12 toppers was conducted through WhatsApp video call, the result of which was announced on 24 March. A total of 80.44 percent of the students passed the intermediate examination this year, with Neha Kumari achieving the first rank of 476.

After the Bihar Board evaluation process, the verification process of the toppers will begin. The verification process of toppers is done so that there is no mistake in the results of Bihar Board 10th.

Students of both class 10th and 12th will get their marksheet in August or latest by September. The chairman of Bihar Board had stated that the marksheet is printed in Delhi and the process will start as soon as the lockdown is lifted.

Around 15 lakh students appeared for the Bihar class 10 matric examination for the academic year 2019-20. The examination was conducted by the Bihar Board from February 17 to February 24. Last year, the Bihar Board Result pass percentage was 80.73 per cent.
As one of the oldest states in the country, New Jersey has its fair share of historic and significant properties. Dotted across the state in every county, the properties have long, storied histories in each of the communities theyre set in.

But theyre in danger of being demolished, sold, or simply deteriorating into the ground, if not properly maintained and preserved, along with being given a newfound purpose.

To help stop the properties possible demise, Preservation New Jersey, a nonprofit based in West Trenton that supports historic preservation, publishes an annual list to highlight which properties are most desperately in need of saving: the 10 Most Endangered Historic Places in NJ.

The group celebrated its 25th anniversary in March, and sees its advocacy work as an important part of preserving the states history, one local property at a time.

We dont have the capacity to fight for all the structures in New Jersey, former director Courtenay Mercer previously told NJ Advance Media. They need someone locally-minded and so generally, when we select the sites, we try to make sure there is somebody interested in saving it and our public relations effort helps galvanize efforts to help in the grassroots effort.

A post office built in 1938. A stone house, possibly the oldest structure in New Jersey. And a rare, surviving roundhouse. These are some of the properties on this years list, which was released Thursday, and they are in need of restoration, according to Preservation New Jersey.

The group also included a thematic listing of New Jerseys 1970s Heritage on the list, which includes buildings of which there are many but not yet recognized as historic, according to a release.

Here is the 2020 list of the Ten Most Endangered Historic Places in NJ:

The Cranford Roundhouse in Cranford, Union County.Beth Bjorklund

1. Cranford Roundhouse, Cranford, Union County

Constructed between 1913 and 1915, the roundhouse is one of only three known surviving roundhouses in the state, according to PNJ. A roundhouse is now rare, but it was previously common as a building associated with the railroad. Its currently used by the townships Department of Public Works for maintenance and storage. Last October, Cranfords planning board recommended removing the roundhouse from the list of historic resources. Without those protections, it can be sold for private development, leading to demolition, according to PNJ.

The Elks Hall in New Brunswick, Middlesex County.Stephanie Crozier

2. Elks Hall, New Brunswick, Middlesex County

Home to Elks Lodge #324, the Hall is located on Livingston Avenue, adjacent to the newly revitalized Cultural Arts District in downtown. Dedicated in 1926, the Hall is an example of classical revival architecture designed by local Highland Park architect Alexander Merchant, according to PNJ. It also includes a historic sculpture created by Laura Gardin Fraser, a prominent early 20th century female sculptor. The Elks Lodge #324 has recently signaled plans to demolish it before the end of the year to make way for a new building, PNJ said.

The Fort Lee Post Office in Fort Lee, Bergen County.Michael Puma

3. Fort Lee Post Office, Fort Lee, Bergen County

Constructed as part of the New Deal program in 1938, the post office is designed in the colonial revival style, honoring the architecture of the nations founding, according to PNJ. It also contains four large-scale murals by Henry Schnakenberg depicting the citys history. The U.S. Postal Service has agreed to relocate to a new facility and the city plans to demolish the building, replacing it with a passive park, according to PNJ.

The Futuro Houses in Greenwich, Cumberland County and Willingboro, Burlington County.Janice Armstrong

4. Futuro Houses, Greenwich, Cumberland County and Willingboro, Burlington County

Created in 1968 as a portable ski chalet by Matti Suuronen, a pioneer in using reinforced plastic for construction, the structures are made of fiberglass reinforced plastic. They were made to be light and easy to transport to remote locations, easily construct once on site, and efficiently heat and cool. Less than 100 of these Futuro Houses were built, and theyre located all over the world, including the two in New Jersey, according to PNJ.

Lauriston Estate in Rumson, Monmouth County.Provided by Preservation New Jersey

5. Lauriston Estate, Rumson, Monmouth County

As an 1870 Colonial Revival mansion designed by New York and Red Bank architect Leon Cubberly, the estate is the only residential building in Rumson listed on the National Historic Register of Historic Places, according to PNJ. The estate is grand, including a marble foyer and a spacious entrance hall that leads to a unique dual bowed staircase. Its currently at the center of an affordable housing settlement agreement that would allow replacement of the mansion with 16 luxury townhouses, according to PNJ.

PNJ said they believe the estate can be adaptively reused as part of the proposed development, but also that the situation is reflective of a larger issue. Preservation New Jersey fully supports the creation of affordable housing, and believes that Rumson should provide its fair share, it said in the release. Lack of a functioning office of affordable housing and rules; however, has led to haphazard implementation that is not based in sound planning.

The Old Stone House in the Village of South Orange Township, Essex County.Duane Schrempp

6. Old Stone House, Village of South Orange Township, Essex County

Located behind the townships police station, the house is the oldest structure in the township and possibly the state, according to PNJ. Historians estimate that Dutch settlers built the farmhouse between 1666 and 1680 when they arrived in Newark. Originally one and a half stories with a native, rubble stone foundation, the building was renovated in 1877 and 1896, and transformed into a Queen Anne, shingle-style mansion. The township has owned it since 1953, and it was vacated in 1983, according to PNJ, suffering significant water damage and deterioration. The township has unsuccessfully tried to sell the property, unable to spend the money needed to restore it, according to PNJ.

The Records Storage Building in Hoboken, Hudson County.Claire Lukacs

7. Records Storage Building, Hoboken, Hudson County

Sitting on the edge of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railroad rail yard in the city, the building is a 1904 three-story, red brick structure. Its architecture calls back to the English Victorian Gothic Revival style, but it has deteriorated to the point of the states Department of Community of Affairs calling for its demolition due to safety concerns, according to PNJ. The NJ Transit Board of Directors will determine the buildings future after the ongoing federal National Historic Preservation Act review process is complete.

The Roosevelt Public School in Roosevelt, Monmouth County.Provided by Preservation New Jersey

8. Roosevelt Public School, Roosevelt, Monmouth County

Designed by renowned architects Louis I. Kahn and Alfred Kastner, the school was originally built in the community then-known as Jersey Homesteads in 1933, and now known as Roosevelt. Painter Ben Shan completed a large mural in the schools lobby, depicting themes of Jewish immigration, the garment industry and labor movement, and the establishment of Jersey Homesteads as a model planned community for workers, according to PNJ. Its likely the school will close soon, due to insufficient funding for the district, according to PNJ. If closed, the federal government then owns the building, according to its deed.

Sutfin House in Manalapan, Monmouth County.John Rusto

9. Sutfin House, Manalapan, Monmouth County

The Derick Sutfin House in the countys Battlefield State Park is the parks oldest structure and witnessed some of the Revolutions most dramatic scenes, according to PNJ. Jacob Sutfin constructed it after purchasing the property in 1718. During the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778, the farmhouse was caught in the crossfire of the biggest field artillery duel of the American Revolution, according to PNJ. When Sutfin died in 1796, two of his neighbors inventoried the contents of the property, which is now in such a severely deteriorated condition that there have been discussions of abandoning it, PNJ says.

Eleanore Petersons Alford Residence in Saddle River in 1971.Provided by Preservation New Jersey

10. New Jerseys 1970s Heritage, Statewide

The 1970s reaches its 50-year benchmark this year, meaning sites from the era will soon be eligible for listing in the State and National Registers of Historic Places. Highlights from the era include works from internationally renowned architect Michael Graves, the father of gentle architecture Malcolm Wells, and pioneering female architect Eleanore Petersen.

Beyond architecture, the 1970s was a tumultuous time in New Jersey -- from Earth Day, to legalized gambling, to Bruce Springsteen, to the Mount Laurel decision. Out of this era also came cultural changes that we still feel in our society today. Now is the time to begin formally identifying, documenting, and planning for the future of significant places of the 1970s, the group said in a release.

Michael Graves Schulman Residence in Princeton NJ.Provided by Preservation New Jersey

A look at Endangered Places in past years:

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Brianna Kudisch may be reached at bkudisch@njadvancemedia.com.
Lucknow, May 15 : The Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh has made a provision under which the MLA Local Area Development (MLALAD) funds can be used to build cow shelters.

Principal Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, Manoj Kumar Singh, said that earlier MLALAD funds were not permitted in repair or construction of cow shelters but now Legislators can earmark funds for this.

A government order (GO) issued on May 13 by the Principal Secretary, Rural Development and Panchayati Raj, addressed to Legislators, says that construction of the shelter homes for stray cattle, except by private individuals, can be carried out under MLALAD.

Besides, expansion, storage, capacity augmentation and construction of shades and boundary walls of existing cow shelters, sanctuaries and conservation centres, 'kanha upvan/gaushalas' can also be carried out with local area development fund of the Legislators.

It may be recalled that in August last year, the state government approved the Rs 30 a day scheme for farmers for upkeep of the stray cattle. The scheme was cleared by the state cabinet and a sum of Rs 110 crore was allocated in the first phase. Money was credited directly in the bank accounts of those who tended to the stray animals and payments were made every third month.

The decision to include cow protection in the MLALAD comes more than a year after the state government introduced a 'gau kalyan' (cow welfare) cess, envisaging levy of additional 0.5 per cent on excise items to fund construction and maintenance of cow shelters. The cess was also levied on toll tax and profits made by public sector enterprises and construction agencies, including the UP-State Construction and Infrastructure Development Corporation Limited, UP State Bridge Corporation Ltd and UPSIDC.

The mandi cess was raised by one per cent to support cow protection and estimated revenue of Rs 165 crore was to be utilized for the care of the destitute cattle heads.

In the 2019-20 state budget, the government had allocated Rs 247.60 crore for the maintenance and construction of cow shelters in rural areas and Rs 200 crore for upkeep of 'kanha gaushala' and destitute cattle shelters in urban areas.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: The Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh (MP) border witnessed violent scenes as thousands of migrant workers returning from the western state to their native states pelted stones on cops and trucks on Thursday evening, alleging delay in arrangement of buses by the authorities in MP to ferry them ahead.

With the migrants pelting stones despite repeated warning, the on duty MP cops resorted to cane charge the agitated migrants near the state border in Barwani district.

However, no one was reportedly injured in the stone pelting by migrants and cane charge by the cops.

According to official sources, alleging delay in the arrangement of buses to take them ahead, the migrants first blocked the Mumbai-Agra Highway in Sendhwa Rural police station area in Barwani district and then pelted stones on some trucks and on duty cops.

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On May 3, similar violent scenes were witnessed on the Maharashtra-MP border, when the irate mob of migrant workers had pelted stones on cops and officials, resulting in slight injuries to some cops.

Importantly, thousands of migrants (mostly UP natives) are daily returning from Maharashtra to their native states via the Maha-MP border in Barwani district.

On directives from Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the authorities in Barwani have made arrangements of buses to ferry the migrant workers from the border to Dewas district, from where they are being shifted to other buses for onward journey.

"It takes some time for the bus drivers to refuel their vehicles before ferrying the migrants for the onward journey but owing to long walk from Maharashtra to MP, extreme heat conditions and desperation to return home, often the migrants are getting irked," Barwani district Collector Amit Tomar said.

The process of ferrying migrants (returning from Maharashtra) in buses from Barwani district till Dewas district of MP has started from May 12 and thousands of migrants have been ferried to Dewas by 214 buses over last two days.

Even after the violent scenes on the Maharashtra-MP border on Thursday, 160 buses ferried around 15,000 migrants to Dewas.

As per Sub-Divisional Officer Police (SDOP-Sendhwa) TS Baghel, the situation became out of control on Thursday evening as against the Maharashtra government's information that 7,000-8000 migrants reaching the border, around 15,000 migrants actually arrived resulting in a delay of arrangement of buses.

A large deployment of police has been made by MP government in Barwanis Sendhwa area to prevent law and order problems.

As per reports, the local BJP MP Gajendra Singh Patel during recent video conferencing had requested the minister in charge Tulsi Silawat to work for sending all migrants (returning from Maharashtra) by trains and not road route.

The BJP MP had told the minister that not only are law and order problems pervasive at the border in Barwani district but there is a danger of spread of deadly COVID-19 due to the large influx of migrants from Sendhwa border into MP.

Importantly, most of the COVID-19 positive cases reported till now in MP have been concentrated in Sendhwa only, owing to which the area is more vulnerable to spread of the deadly infection in comparison to other areas.
President Trump is naming Brooke Rollins, a conservative lawyer and long-serving White House official, as acting domestic policy adviser, according to two senior administration officials.

As the acting director of the Domestic Policy Council, which oversees the presidents domestic agenda, Ms. Rollins will lead one of the least visible but most crucial bodies during Mr. Trumps time in office. Ms. Rollins, who will succeed Joe Grogan, is stepping in as the president seeks to push several states to relax restrictions put in place to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Ms. Rollins has worked with Jared Kushner, Mr. Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser, in the White House Office of American Innovation. Before joining the administration, she led the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a think tank based in Austin that was partly focused on criminal justice, a subject that Mr. Kushner, along with the president, has heralded as a signature initiative.

White House officials declined to comment. Mr. Grogan, who was appointed when Mick Mulvaney was the acting White House chief of staff, said two weeks ago that he planned to step down in May.
A doctor working on the NHS frontline amid the coronavirus pandemic has spoken of his joy after he was able to treat the heart surgeon who saved his life 20 years ago.

Dr Shakil Rahman, the lead respiratory consultant at Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust, was able to help Venkatachalam Chandrasekaran, known as Mr Chandra, 'in his hour of need' after he was rushed to hospital with Covid-19 and pneumonia.

Mr Chandra, a cardiac surgeon at St George's hospital in Tooting, London, was admitted to Epsom Hospital where he was met by his former patient.

The surgeon had performed a minimally invasive bypass procedure on Dr Rahman when he was admitted to hospital with a sudden and near-fatal blockage in one of his heart arteries in 1999.

Dr Shakil Rahman (top left), the lead respiratory consultant at Epsom and St Helier NHS Trust, was able to help Venkatachalam Chandrasekaran (bottom left), known as Mr Chandra, after he was rushed to Epsom Hospital with Covid-19

Dr Rahman, who stayed in touched with the former surgeon who saved his life, was put in charge of Mr Chandra's treatment during his ten days in hospital.

Speaking of the moment he finally saw Mr Chandra leaving the hospital after receiving successful treatment for the virus, Dr Rahman said he was 'really joyful'.

He told The Evening Standard: 'It was a great feeling to see Mr Chandra leaving Epsom hospital after recovering following admission with Covid-19 pneumonia.

'He was admitted by me, quite profoundly ill. An extremely kind doctor, a very well-known man, a heart surgeon with incredibly gifted hands.

'It was really joyful for me and the whole respiratory team to be able to treat him in his hour of need, getting him well and seeing him leaving hospital with his family encouraged by all the clapping and laughter.'

Dr Rahman, who led Mr Chandra's treatment in hospital, described his joy at being able to successfully treat his former surgeon during his 'hour of need'

The touching scene comes as Britain's daily Covid-19 death toll dropped again today, as officials announced 428 more victims - the lowest jump on a Thursday since the end of March.

Official figures released by the Department of Health showed that 33,614 coronavirus patients have now died across all settings in the UK, including hospitals and care homes, since the crisis began.

Health chiefs also revealed a further 3,446 Britons have tested positive for the virus.

Earlier today, millions of Britons across the country paid tribute to the thousands of NHS staff and healthcare workers putting their lives at risk to help fight the pandemic during the Clap for Carers event at 8pm.
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The World Health Organization is holding a briefing Friday on the coronavirus pandemic, which has infected more than 4.4 million people worldwide and killed at least 302,493, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

Costa Rica officials will join the press conference to outline a new worldwide access initiative for Covid-19 health technologies.

On Wednesday, WHO officials warned global leaders that easing coronavirus restrictions and reopening the economy too quickly could lead to a "vicious cycle" of economic and health disasters.

"This is what we all fear, is a vicious cycle of public health disaster followed by economic disaster followed by public health disaster followed by economic disaster," Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, said at a press conference.

Ryan added that the coronavirus outbreak is still raging and will be officially categorized as a pandemic for some time.

"There's a long, long way to go before there are going to be any bells unrung in this response. I think we need to be clear about that," he said.

Many countries are working to find "a new normal" as they try to control the resurgence of Covid-19 cases while reopening the economy.

Read CNBC's live updates to see the latest news on the COVID-19 outbreak.
Big news this week about the giant, burning, boiling, spinning thermonuclear reactor which lies 93 million miles away from Earth but is our primary source of life-giving heat and light.

And one might be forgiven for hoping  after weeks of lockdown, far too many deaths, a largely hobbled workforce and an economy spiralling deep into recession  that it might be good news.

Forecasts of a lovely, long, blueskied barbecue summer to perk up our enforced staycations, perhaps?

Or, at the very least, a spot of predictable, settled weather to keep our battered spirits afloat. Sadly, not.

The activity on the Sun's surface has fallen dramatically, and its magnetic field has become weaker prompting a period of 'solar minimum'

Because it turns out that even the Sun has gone into a lockdown 'recession'. Or, more accurately, a deep period of 'solar minimum'.

Which means that the activity on the Sun's surface has fallen dramatically, and its magnetic field has become weaker, letting into the environment more of the sort of cosmic rays that cause dramatic lightning storms and interfere with astronauts and space hardware.

They can also can lead to the explosion of 'sprites'  clusters of orange and red lights that shoot out of the top of thunderstorms like 60-mile-high palm trees in the sky.

While the Met Office and members of the Royal Astronomical Society are urging us not to panic and reminding us that this is just nature, nothing to worry about and the sort of thing that happens every 11 years or so as the Sun passes through its activity cycle, some doom-and-gloomers are much less optimistic.

Perhape they're haunted by the extreme 'solar minimum' thought to have contributed to the so-called Little Ice Age in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the temperatures fell so low the River Thames froze over, crops failed, lightning storms lit up the skies, and  in 1816  the weather was so crazy that it snowed in July.

As we all know, the Sun  which is 4.5 billion years old and more than a million times bigger than the Earth  is not only a source of cheer when it finally pops out from behind the clouds, it also keeps us all alive.

Which means that the teeniest change in its activity levels can have extraordinary consequences  triggering lightning storms, the appearance or disappearance of the Northern Lights and those amazing sprites.

An extreme 'solar minimum' is thought to have contributed to the so-called Little Ice Age in Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, when the temperatures fell so low the River Thames froze over

But the Sun's activity is changing constantly as it passes through its regular cycle, from solar maximum (hottest and most active) to solar minimum (quieter and cooler).

Since the 17th century, scientists have been measuring the depth of a solar minimum by counting the 'sunspots'  areas of magnetic activity on the solar surface which show up as relatively dark spots  and solar flares, large explosions that hurl charged particles into space.

The general rule is the fewer the sunspots, the more severe the minimum and the higher the chances of lightning storms, sprites and disruption on Earth.

So far this year, the Sun has been 'blank'  with no sunspots  76 per cent of the time. A figure surpassed just once since the Fifties, last year, when it was 77 per cent blank.

So could we be heading for a grand solar minimum, a sustained period  decades, even centuries  of particularly weak solar cycles? Are we now  on top of everything else  facing another mini ice age?

While it might all sound terribly dramatic and end-of-the-world-ish, history does tell a salutary lesson.

Two hundred years ago, we were deep in the midst of the Dalton Minimum, which occurred between 1790 and 1830 and was marked by periods of brutal cold.

Scientists point out that multiple factors outside low solar activity caused this drop, but the worlds food production was still devastated and there was widespread famine.

The misery was then exacerbated by (unrelated) powerful volcanic eruptions.

On April 10, 1815, the secondlargest volcanic eruption in 2,000 years happened at Mount Tambora in Indonesia, killing more than 71,000 people and plunging the temperature still lower, as giant ash clouds blocked the solar rays.

The following year became known as the 'year without a summer' or 'eighteen hundred and froze to death', after snow fell in July and thousands died in the famine, food riots and starvation which spread across Europe.

A typhus epidemic made things worse. Before all that came the Maunder Minimum (named after astronomer WalterMaunder), a grand solar minimum which started in 1645, took in the ice fairs on the River Thames during the reign of Charles II and dragged on for 70 years.

During this time scientists observed only 50 sunspots  compared to the 40,000 to 50,000 that we would expect during an equivalent period of 'normal' activity. So it's a relief to hear from Mathew Owens, professor of space physics at Reading University, that history is not about to repeat itself.

While he admits today's solar minimum is 'fairly deep', he insists we don't need to worry about finding ourselves in a mini ice age any time soon. 'We get a solar minimum every 11 years, so it's a fairly regular occurrence,' he says.

He also insists it needs putting in context, because any fall in temperature would be minuscule.

'After all, the last solar minimum, which we had in 2009/10, was the deepest for 100 years, and we didn't die then!'

Meanwhile, Met Office scientist Jeff Knight insists that, while a solar minimum does have an effect  contributing to very slightly colder winters (the last minimum between 2008 and 2010 coincided with some colder than usual winters in the UK)  it is very small.

'A solar minimum is likely to affect the global mean temperature, making it cooler, but by barely a 20th of a degree,' he says.

Which also means this is no get-out-of-jail-free card for global warming. 'Just because we're in a minimum, it doesn't mean global warming is going to be arrested or reversed  it has a far more subtle effect than that,' he insists.

Of course, our prime concern is that the Sun continues to shine. But happily, given we have so much on our plates at the moment, we can park that worry for another five billion years.
Zika virus is capable of replicating and spreading infectious particles within the outermost cells lining the vaginal tract, say researchers. (File Photo: Xinhua/Lucas Melo/AGENCIA ESTADO/IANS) Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi: Health workers wearing Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) suits collect swab samples from people at a COVID-19 testing center in New Delhi during the extended nationwide lockdown imposed to mitigate the spread of coronavirus; on Apr 23, 2 Image Source: IANS News

Kohima/Guwahati/Agartala, May 15 : With the ICMR clearing a laboratory in Nagaland, all the seven northeastern states now have facilities to test Covid-19 samples, officials said on Friday.

Apart from Nagaland, six other northeastern states, excluding Sikkim, have their own or Central government-run labs for testing corinavirus.

"After setting up the laboratory at Naga Hospital Authority Kohima (NHAK), all relevant protocols were completed on May 12 and documents for validation were sent to the ICMR (Indian Council of Medical Research) and approval was received on Thursday," Nagaland Principal Secretary (Health and Family Welfare) Menukhol John told IANS over phone.

He said the testing of samples for COVID-19 would start as soon as the reagents are received from the ICMR. Samples from Nagaland until now are being sent to Assam and Manipur for testing. "After starting the testing of samples in the new laboratory, we do not need to send the samples to the neighbouring states unless there is a critical situation," John said.

Nagaland Health Secretary Kesonyu Yhome said another COVID-19 testing laboratory is likely to be set up at the Christian Institute of Health Sciences in Dimapur for which civil works are in progress.

The Kohima bench of the Gauhati High Court, following a writ petition, had earlier asked the Nagaland government to set up the COVID-19 sample testing laboratory in a specified time.

According to health officials, Assam currently has seven COVID-19 testing laboratories followed by two in Manipur, once each in Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Tripura.

Arunachal Pradesh Health Minister Alo Libang on April 30 launched the state's first laboratory at a hospital in Naharlagun for conducting tests of samples. Before Arunachal Pradesh, the ICMR had approved a testing laboratory in Zoram Medical College in Mizoram capital Aizawl.

Tripura and other northeastern states have been demanding more COVID-19 testing laboratories. According to health officials, Union Health and Family Welfare Minister Harsh Vardhan on May 9 during a discussion (through video conferencing) with the ministers and officials of all the northeastern staets discussed the issue.

Tripura's Additional Chief Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Sanjay Kumar Rakesh told IANS : "Besides an additional COVID-19 testing laboratory, we had sought additional ventilators and testing kits. The (Union) minister was very positive towards our needs and problems." Sujit Chakraborty can be contacted at sujit.c@ians.in)--IANS
The Baha'i faith teaches the oneness of all religions and the unity of all people. But in Iran, being Baha'i put Fardin Sanai's life in danger.

Following the 1979 Islamic revolution, thousands of Baha'is were imprisoned and tortured, many had their homes taken away, their businesses closed and hundreds were killed. Fardin's cousin was killed. His brother and father were imprisoned and tortured.

The Baha'is are still prohibited from practicing their religion in Iran and can be jailed for doing so. They are not allowed to go to college or hold government positions and are prohibited from owning certain businesses.

In 1982, at age 18 and alone, he fled Iran as a religious refugee.

Speaking little English, Sanai made his way to his older brother and sister living in Poughkeepsie. He enrolled at Dutchess County Community College, though he knew little English. He took the only job he could get: day laborer. He earned a bachelor's degree from Marist College then moved to Albany in 1991 to work at Albany Law School.

There he met Michele Susko, born in Miami and raised Catholic in Latham who is now a fundraising consultant for nonprofits. Sanai is vice president for university advancement and executive director of the University at Albany Foundation.

They married in 2003 and after the birth in Albany of daughter Roya, Michele decided to accept the Baha'i faith in 2007.

Roya is 13 and being raised Baha'i. She will attend Emma Willard School in Troy this fall.

Established by Baha'u'llah in 1863, the Baha'i faith was founded in Persia (modern day Iran) and is estimated to have about 6 million adherents in the world today. The Sanai family spoke with the Times Union recently.

Q: Michele, how difficult was it for you to embrace a new religion?

A: Susko: I agreed with the principles of the Baha'i faith right away when introduced to it by Fardin  oneness of humanity, equality of men and women, universal education and the idea that people must investigate truth for themselves. But accepting a new religion is difficult. It was many years before I finally decided to take that step. I am so thankful I did.

The Baha'i faith has enriched my life immeasurably and it has been an incredible gift in helping to raise our daughter.

Q: How do local Baha'is gather as a community to celebrate?

A: Fardin Sanai: The local community numbers about 50 registered Baha'is. A few are from Iran, China, Afghanistan, Korea, India, Ghana and Niger, but most are American.

Baha'is gather every 19 days for "feast," a spiritual gathering which includes prayers, readings and music. These days, feasts are on Zoom. Gatherings provide an opportunity for consultation on administrative issues. Since there are no clergy, Baha'is elect a nine-member spiritual assembly to oversee these matters.

Also, Baha'is observe nine holy days a year. The gatherings mostly take place at one another's homes, although for a larger gathering, we rent a hall. We have a wonderful community of individuals from incredibly varied backgrounds. It is common to hear prayers said in a variety of languages at a Baha'i event. Baha'is are also pleased to welcome members of other religious traditions.

Q:Is the Bahai community growing here, or maybe a new group of worshippers are gathering somewhere, like on college campuses?

A:Sanai: The number of Baha'is in the Capital Region tends to fluctuate with local demographic trends. The community has seen a steady number of new enrollments, but an equal or greater number of its members are moving to more populous areas for jobs. The largest concentrations of Baha'is in the United States are in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta and Chicago. There are usually a few Baha'i college students who come through and add to our community life while they are here. We have had a Baha'i student group in the past in UAlbany but we are not aware of one currently.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Q: Roya, was it a little difficult to fit in growing up? Did you feel left out since many celebrations are Christian-oriented? Most American students had probably not heard of Baha'is.

A: Roya: It wasn't that hard, especially compared to what my family in Iran goes through. In elementary school, my mom used to come in to school every Ayyam-i-Ha, a Baha'i holiday, and read a book to my class, then we would do a craft. That was really nice because I got to share a part of my story with the world. It always makes me smile when my friends talk about those days because my religion means a lot to me.

When I was younger I did have a hard time at Christmas because that holiday seemed to take over the world. My classmates would talk about their Christmas traditions. Over the years I realized that I have my own traditions with my family, and they are even more special.

Sometimes I'll mention I am Baha'i and someone will say, "Oh, I had a friend who was a Baha'i," and that makes my day. I remember one time I was in third or fourth grade and I was at the library at school and there was a book about religions. I picked it up and I became so happy when I saw that the Baha'i faith was included.

Q:Are Baha'is pacifists or do they sometimes enlist in the military?

A: Sanai: Baha'is are not pacifists since we uphold the use of force in the service of justice and upholding the law. So from a Baha'i perspective, societies have the option to use force defensively just as individuals have the right to defend themselves. However, the Baha'i writings clearly forbid killing. There is, therefore, no restriction against Baha'is serving in the military as long as they can do so in a non-combatant role.

Q: Also, Baha'is have been touted for their progressiveness. What are some of those progressive ideas?

A: Susko: Throughout history, God has sent to humanity a series of divine educators  known as Manifestations of God  whose teachings have provided the basis for the advancement of civilization. These have included Abraham, Krishna, Zoroaster, Moses, Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad. Baha'u'llah, the latest of these messengers, explained that the religions of the world come from the same source and are in essence successive chapters of one religion from God.

Baha'is believe the crucial need facing humanity is to find a unifying vision of the future of society and of the nature and purpose of life. Such a vision unfolds in the writings of Baha'u'llah. His teachings of unity and spiritual renewal are the basis of the Baha'is' faith. He encouraged people to let go of superstition, dogma and dependence on clergy, and to view fellow humans as beautiful creations of God, worthy of respect.
A three-member medical team,



sent by the Centre to probe the source of coronavirus infection among the BSF personnel posted here, visited the GB Pant Hospital on Friday.

The team headed by GK Medhi arrived here on Thursday and visited several COVID-19 care centres.

We have visited various places, including the GB Pant Hospital, and found that the actions taken by the state government to check the spread of the virus are satisfactory," Medhi told reporters.

State law minister Ratan Lal Nath said members of the team spoke to government officials and doctors and started the investigation to find the source of infection among the BSF personnel.

The team would also visit Dhalai district, he said.

So far, 152 BSF personnel from three battalions based in Ambassa in Dhalai district have tested positive for COVID- 19.

Following this, the state asked the Centre to investigate the sources of the infection.

Nath said two persons from Tripura who are stranded in Maharastra were found to be positive for COVID-19.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The swearing-in ceremony of Israels new government was delayed yesterday, May 14, and pushed to Sunday as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struggled to distribute some ministerial portfolios. The unity deal between Netanyahus Likud and Blue and White divides 34 ministries and leadership of Knesset committees equally between the two parties. Each party is responsible for offering ministerial positions to the smaller coalition partners in its respective political camp.

Contrary to Netanyahu, Blue and White leader Benny Gantz had finished the allocation of ministerial portfolios to his party members and partners on time. It included the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs, allocated to Blue and White Knesset member Omer Yankelevich.

Yankelevich is not a new face in Israels civil society, but her nomination as minister generated many reactions, as she will be the first female ultra-Orthodox minister in Israels political history. Yankelevich will be taking over this position from another religious woman: Tzipi Hotovely of the Likud. Hotovely defines her-self as "religious right-winger," but is certainly not part of the ultra-Orthodox community.

The new minister-to-be was born to secular parents who adopted an ultra-Orthodox lifestyle and beliefs when she was very young. She studied in ultra-Orthodox institutions, including teaching studies in the United Kingdom, but then continued to a master's degree in law at Bar Ilan university. Her studies in Bar Ilan also marked the beginning of her social activism. In 2015 she founded the "Just Begun" foundation, which sponsors social initiatives to help integrate peripheral populations, especially from the ultra-Orthodox community. Contrary to some other ultra-Orthodox politicians, she also has experience with dialogue groups among sectors in Israeli society and has met with Jewish Reform and Conservative leaders. In 2019, she joined the Israel Resilience party, which later became part of Blue and White. She was elected to the Knesset with the Blue and White first in April 2019, then in September 2019 and again in March 2020.

At the moment, only six women have received ministerial positions in the new government. The most senior is the Likuds Miri Regev, who will head the Transportation Ministry for the first year and a half until Netanyahu hands over premiership to Gantz. Then she will switch over to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

While the diaspora portfolio is not considered a major ministry, it will certainly offer Yankelevich visibility both inside Israel and abroad. It will also put her in a position to confront sensitive issues in the relations between the ultra-Orthodox community, the government, Israeli society and Jewish diaspora, such as Pluralistic Judaism prayer by the Western Wall or conversions to Judaism.
Deadly attacks on civilians prompt Afghan forces to resume offensives on militants

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:27, May 14, 2020

KABUL, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The deadly attacks, which targeted a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral in Afghanistan's eastern province of Nangarhar on Tuesday and killed at least three dozen civilians, have promoted the Afghan forces to change their position from defensive to offensive, Presidential Palace spokesman Sediq Seddiqi said Wednesday.

Following the U.S.-Taliban peace deal, which was inked on Feb. 29 in Doha, the Afghan government forces had adopted a defensive position to facilitate prisoners' swap and pave the way for intra-Afghan dialogues.

Seddiqi, terming the Taliban as a terrorist group, said the terrorist attacks on Tuesday and in the past by Taliban or the Islamic State (IS) group are a testament that the militant groups are enemy of the people of Afghanistan.

Zabihullah Mujahid who claims to speak for the Taliban outfit, in contact with media said that the Taliban fighters had no relations with the attack on the hospital in Kabul and the one on the funeral in Nangarhar.

In response, Seddiqi told local media that "Taliban cannot acquit itself simply by issuing a statement that the group is not involved in the attacks."

At least 14 women and children including infants were among those killed in the first attack that targeted a maternity hospital in Kabul on Tuesday, while 15 others including medical staff were wounded.

An hour later, a suicide bomber blew himself up among mourners in a funeral in Kuz Kunar district of the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing 24 civilians on the spot and injuring 68 others.

The deadly attacks on civilians, which the hardliner IS group has reportedly claimed responsibility, have drawn wide condemnation.

Hours after the bloody attacks, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani in a televised address ordered his security forces to "end active defense position" and resume offensives on militant groups including the Taliban.

However, in sharp reaction, the Taliban outfit flayed the order as an attempt by Ghani to remain in power under the shadow of war.

"Declaration of offensive operations against the Islamic Emirate (name of ousted Taliban regime) clearly shows that Ashraf Ghani is seeking to extend his rule under the shadow of war," Mujahid said on twitter.

Mujahid also blamed the Afghan government for delaying prisoners' swap to postpone the intra-Afghan talks.

The Taliban spokesman said the armed group is fully prepared to respond to any movement of the Afghan forces.

Rejecting the Taliban claims, Seddiqi in talks with media on Wednesday termed the Taliban as a warmonger militant group.

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Cities are responsible for more than 70% of the global total greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Ability to monitor GHG emissions from cities is an important capability to develop in order to support climate mitigation activities in response to the Paris Agreement. The science community has examined the data collected from different platforms, such as ground-based, aircraft and satellites, to establish a science-based monitoring capability. A study by an international team, published in Scientific Reports, examined the data collected by commercial airliners and showed the potential of the aircraft data to contribute to the global GHG emission monitoring.

The CONTRAIL (Comprehensive Observation Network for TRace gases by AIrLiners) program is Japan's unique aircraft observation project. Since 2005, the CONTRAIL team has achieved high-precision atmospheric CO2 measurements using instruments onboard Japan Airlines' (JAL) commercial airliners. "Following the aircraft measurements conducted between Tokyo and Australia that I initiated in 1993, and had maintained during my entire career, the CONTRAIL program continuously expanded its global network and has provided numerous data to understand the carbon budget of this planet," stated Hidekazu Matsueda, co-author of the study and researcher at the Meteorological Research Institute, Japan.

Recently, the team analyzed thousands of vertical ascending and descending measurements over airports and characterized CO2 variations over 34 major cities worldwide for the first time. Airports are often located in the proximity of large cities to ensure convenient access. The CONTRAIL aircraft fly up and down over Narita International Airport many times nearly on a daily basis (7,692 times in total during 2005-2016) and are able to obtain atmospheric chemical signature of the Greater Tokyo Area (~several tens km away). With similar geographical locations of major airport relative to large urban centers, the research team examined the data collected around global airports in order to retrieve urban CO2 emission signatures from the data. "We analyzed millions of observational data collected at and around the Tokyo Narita Airport and found clear CO2 enhancements when the wind comes from the Greater Tokyo Area," Taku Umezawa, leading author of the study and researcher at the National Insititute for Enviromental Studies, Japan, said. "That was also the case globally for other airports, such as Moscow, Paris, Beijing, Osaka, Shanghai, Mexico City, Sydney, and others."

The team also examined the magnitude of CO2 variability in the lowermost atmosphere over these airports. "Short-term changes in the CO2 concentration in the lower atmosphere are associated with various factors such as the upwind pattern of CO2 emissions and uptakes, flight path and its geographical position relative to the locations of emissions and uptakes, and meteorological conditions during each landing and takeoff," said Kaz Higuchi, co-author of the study and adjunct professor of Environmental Studies, York University, Canada. "Despite these complex conditions under which the measurements are made, it was very interesting that we found a relationship between the magnitude of CO2 variability and CO2 emissions from a nearby city." The results show that the commercial airliner-based CO2 dataset can consistently provide urban emission estimates when combined with atmospheric modeling framework.

"But still there are missing pieces to examine the physical link to city emissions to establish urban monitoring," said Tomohiro Oda, scientist of the Universities Space Research Association, Maryland, USA, who collaborated with the team as a PI of a NASA-funded emission modeling project. "Cities are considered to be responsible for more than 70% of the global manmade greenhouse gas emissions. Accurate estimation of CO2 emissions from urban areas is thus important for effective emission reduction strategies." This study suggests that commercial airliner measurements can collect useful urban CO2 data that are complementary to the data collected from other observational platforms, such as ground stations and satellites, in order to monitor CO2 emissions from cities. The advantage of commercial airliners is the great global spatial coverage of the measurements even in regions where we only have sparse greenhouse gas measurement networks, especially places where securing ground-site measurements is challenging, such as in developing countries. "A further implementation of similar CO2 instruments into other domestic and international flights will significantly extend our global monitoring capability of cities," said Toshinobu Machida, project leader of the CONTRAIL program and head of the Office for Atmospheric and Oceanic Monitoring at the National Institute for Environmental Studies.

###
Hong Kong police use pepper-spray as a fight breaks out between pro-democracy protesters who were carrying a mock coffin and another man early morning in the Wanchai district in Hong Kong on October 1, 2019, as intense protests were expected on the 70th anniversary of communist China's founding. Nicolas Asfouri | AFP | Getty Images

Accusations of police brutality must not be used as "a weapon of political protest", Hong Kong's police watchdog said in a report on Friday, adding that the Chinese-ruled city appeared to be getting dragged into an "era of terrorism". The Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC) said its report did not tackle the individual accountability of officers, but recommended a review of guidelines for the use of tear gas and training for officers in public order policing. The IPCC studied officers' behavior in the months after June 2019, a period in which the Asian financial hub was roiled by some of the biggest and most violent demonstrations in decades. "It cannot be over-emphasised that allegations of police brutality must not be made a weapon of political protest," the report said. "That is a legal and not a political matter."

In comments on one of the most controversial events during the protests last year, the IPCC said it did not find evidence of police collusion with gang members during a mob attack on July 21 in Yuen Long district. The report, however, did identify deficiencies in police deployment and other actions during the incident, in which an armed mob of white-shirted men beat up black-shirted anti-government protesters and ordinary people. The Yuen Long attack fueled more protests and intensified a backlash against police who some accused of a delayed response to the mob violence. Rights groups including Amnesty International have accused police of a disproportionate use of force and other abuses in handling the pro-democracy demonstrations. Police have repeatedly said they were reactive and exercised restraint in the face of high levels of violence. The protests started as a campaign against a now-shelved extradition bill that would have allowed criminal suspects to be sent to mainland China for trial but evolved into broader calls for greater democracy and an independent enquiry into police action, separate from the IPCC's.
Commentary: Will we have the guts to do things differently?
The Aurangabad police has



announced that teams of local youth will be formed to ensure proper enforcement of the COVID-19 lockdown in containment zones of the city.

With COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district crossing the 800-mark, strict enforcement of lockdown becomes crucial in around 70 containment zones of the city.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, police commissioner Chiranjeev Prasad said teams of five to 10 youth volunteers each will be formed to help people in containment zones.

While small areas will have five volunteers, teams of 10 will help in larger settlements, he said.

"These teams will supply essentials and ration to the needy, apart from monitoring people's movements in these areas," Prasad said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NORTH CHICAGO (dpa-AFX) - The U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned that an early data suggested that Abbott' rapid coronavirus diagnostic test for Covid-19 may deliver inaccurate results. The Abbott ID NOW point-of-care test may return false negative results, the FDA said. The FDA alert comes a day after New York University researchers reportedly alleged that the Abbott ID NOW test missed a third of samples collected with nasal swabs that tested positive with a test from rival Cepheid. The FDA said that it is still evaluating the information about inaccurate results and is in direct communications with Abbott about the important issue. Meanwhile, Abbott said the NYU study results are not consistent with other studies. 'While we understand no test is perfect, test outcomes depend on a number of factors including patient selection, specimen type, collection, handling, storage, transport and conformity to the way the test was designed to be run. ID NOW is intended to be used near the patient with a direct swab test method,' Abbott said in a statement. Abbott said it has been working in collaboration with FDA throughout the Emergency Use Authorization process. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
In an effort to celebrate the 'class of 2020' from kindergarten to graduate school, SpaceX and NASA are inviting students from around the world to submit their photo to fly on America's first human spaceflight in nearly a decade.

All the students who have graduated or are scheduled to graduate in 2020, can upload their photo to the mosaic of Earth, which will be printed and flown aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft in its upcoming mission to the International Space Station with NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on board. The deadline for all submissions is Wednesday, May 20. https://www.spacex.com/classof2020

READ | FM Sitharaman to reveal 3rd tranche of PM Modi's Aatmanirbhar Bharat package at 4 PM today

SpaceX and NASA are inviting students from around the world to submit their photo, which will fly with astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley on Crew Dragon for Demo-2.https://t.co/OUlh1tZpqy pic.twitter.com/gIMv1Bsqah  Michael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) May 14, 2020

Soon after the announcement the elated students uploaded their pictures and expressed their excitement about the same.

Super cool, just put my photo in. Thanks for sharing!  Konstantin Chterev (@konschterev) May 14, 2020

Just submitted mine, I'm so excited!  Lune (@LuneFour) May 14, 2020

READ | Sharad Pawar writes to PM Modi, wants urgent relief measures for crisis-hit sugar industry

About Dragon spacecraft

Dragon is a free-flying spacecraft designed to deliver both cargo and people to orbiting destinations. It is the only spacecraft currently flying that is capable of returning significant amounts of cargo to Earth. Currently, Dragon carries cargo to space, but it was designed from the beginning to carry humans. The first demonstration flight under NASA's Commercial Crew Program launched on March 2, 2019 at 2:49 a.m. ET. The Dragon spacecraft successfully docked with the space station ahead of schedule at 6:02 a.m. ET on March 3, 2019, becoming the first American spacecraft in history to autonomously dock with the International Space Station.

READ | HM Amit Shah lauds financial relief measures, says 'in line with Modi govt's mantra'

READ | China's Long March 5B rocket crash lands in Atlantic Ocean- biggest space debris since '91
Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday said that over 150 million Pakistanis have been affected due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown as he urged the provinces to allow public transport to resume operations, reiterating that the country could not afford an indefinite shutdown.

Addressing media with his core team to highlight the steps taken to tackle the coronavirus pandemic in the country, Khan said Pakistan cannot impose lockdown like the US, Europe and China.

He said that already the lockdown has badly impacted the economic situation in the country, especially the vulnerable segments, including 25 million people who lived on daily or weekly wages.

Around 150 million people have suffered economically due to the coronavirus and lockdown, he said. Pakistan's total population is around 220 million.

Khan also made plea for resumption of public transport as its suspension is hitting hard the poor people.

He said virus will remain with us for some time until a vaccine was developed against it. But we can tackle it by following the mandated guidelines, he said.

He said the country is faring better than the earlier predicted coronavirus figures.

The number of cases will continue to rise, but fortunately, our current numbers stand below the number of projected cases [by this time] which was 52,000, he said, as the number of coronavirus cases in Pakistan on Friday soared to 38,292 while the death toll rose to 821.

The numbers are expected to rise and we are prepared for that. The government is working towards enhancing its health facilities and increasing capacity, he said.

We are still far better than other countries and are taking measures to tackle any difficult scenario, he said.

A total of 10,155 patients have so far recovered from the virus.

Khan also said that due to the focus on the coronavirus, other diseases were being neglected and immunization of children decreased by 50 per cent and two anti-polio campaigns were missed.

Those can't be ignored while we address the coronavirus pandemic," he said.

He warned that the lockdown could be reimposed in areas where the number of infections rose rapidly.

Reiterating that the government was dealing with the crisis on the basis of consensus, the prime minister appealed to the provinces to reopen public transport.

He insisted that it was the common man that was suffering due to public transport being suspended.

He reiterated that the lockdown has been eased to facilitate low-income groups and allow for economic activities.

The Pakistan government last week said that it would begin a phased lifting of the lockdown due to its effect on the economy and the workforce.

Aviation Minister Ghulam Sarwar Khan said that domestic flights would resume from May 16. He said initially 20 per cent air operation will be started and only 50 per cent seats will be offered to follow the social distancing policy.

Earlier, The Express Tribune reported that Pakistan Civil Aviation Authority (PCAA) announced to resume domestic flights operations from Saturday (tomorrow). Pakistan International Airlines (PIA) and Serene Air will operate in the morning and afternoon.

It said that 68 flights will operate from Jinnah International Airport, Karachi, 32 from Allama Iqbal International Airport, Lahore, 32 from Islamabad International Airport, Islamabad, eight from Quetta International Airport, Quetta and four from Bacha Khan International Airport, Peshawar.

Special Assistance on Health Zafar Mirza said that production of remdesivir drug would start in Pakistan in a few weeks which would help to treat the disease.

He said that medicine would also be exported to 127 countries.

Mirza said that the Ministry of Health was making the wearing of mask mandatory for everyone going to the markets and other public places.

Planning Minister Asad Umar said that over 100,000 health workers were being trained about how to properly use the protective kits.

He said the government purchases 1,000 ventilators and some of them were already in Pakistan. He asked the people to adopt safety measures against the virus.

Meanwhile, Punjab government announced to lift restrictions on big shopping malls and auto industry from Monday.

Provincial Minister for Industries Mian Aslam Iqbal said Malls would open for four days a week while auto industry would remain open for the entire week.

Meanwhile, the Punjab government announced that it would impose a three-day weekly lockdown throughout in the province for the next three days. It had eased the lockdown for the last four days.

Prime Minister Khan had earlier joined a call by the world leaders for a "peoples' vaccine" to combat the coronavirus. The Prime Minister's Office quoted Khan as saying: "We must work together to beat this virus.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
On Wednesday, CBC News published a story about what bystanders could do to help stop attacks against Asian Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic. It included several ways someone could take action, depending on the situation.

The first option on the list was to call the police.

That suggestion, along with its place at the top of the list drew a swift and significant reaction on Twitter, with a post from Vicky Mochama, a Toronto-based freelance writer, editor and podcast host, going viral.

She said calling police is not an option that many people in racialized communities would pick.

Many others expressed the same sentiment: For people in many minority communities, police are perceived as unhelpful in addressing racist attacks, untrustworthy, or worse, an added threat.

The original story has since been modified to better reflect that experience, with an editor's note addressing the changes.

For Mochama, the fact her tweet quickly got thousands of retweets didn't come as a surprise.

"I think it's maybe based on my work, but the idea of the police as a solution for racism  I think people found it accurately fairly laughable," she said.

Mochama said there is value to an article that helps people intervene in racist incidents, but she was horrified to see the prominent piece of advice  calling police.

"That is not an action that is really doable or works as a suggestion for black people, I think puts them in more danger," she said.

Cicely Blain agrees. She's a diversity and inclusion consultant and activist in Vancouver. She said if she were witnessing a racist incident, she would not think to call police.

"Knowing the experiences that I and my community and people who look like me have had with police, it's not something that I feel safe doing," said Blain.

She said if you don't feel comfortable directly confronting the attacker, you can turn your attention to the victim and try to find ways to directly support them, like asking if they're OK, or helping them get away from the situation.

Story continues

Alex Lamic CBC News

She said if things seem to be really getting out of control, and actions like alerting a bus driver or other non-police figure aren't possible, police could be seen as a last resort. But even in that situation, Blain suggests trying to get the victim's consent first.

"I can't speak on behalf of everybody, but I feel like the black community, specifically, has always been targeted by the police and law enforcement and structural racism," she said.

"Even if it's not happening in this city, still  like literally daily  we're receiving stories from around the world and around Canada of black folks being hurt or even killed by the very people who are supposed to protect us," said Blain.

'Many people of colour simply do not feel safe calling the police'

While black communities in North America may be particularly suspicious of police, it's certainly a sentiment found in degrees in other minority communities.

Jeska Slater is the Indigenous social innovation coordinator for Skookum Lab, an organization that, among other things, works on the issue of systemic racism.

"Many people of colour simply do not feel safe calling the police. This might be due to previous interactions, or things that they've heard," said Slater.

She said she's white-passing, with a Cree mother and English father, but she's experienced discrimination as soon as the police have learned of her heritage. And she can list several incidents in which Indigenous friends have been the victims of racism, including physical attacks, and found the interaction with police quite negative.

CBC/Martin Diotte

She said experiences range from feeling as though the issue was not being taken seriously, to police behaviour adding to the trauma of an incident.

"I think the issue about attacks and how RCMP address these attacks is part of a much bigger issue that has a very problematic history in Canada," said Slater.

A number of anti-Chinese attacks have taken place in Vancouver. Adam Palmer, the Vancouver police chief was asked on Thursday about the mistrust victims of hate crimes have in police, and the reluctance to report.

"People being apprehensive to come to the police, some people are coming here from other parts of the world and in many parts of the world the police probably aren't trustworthy. They're militarized  it's probably more dangerous to call the police than not," said Palmer.

"We understand those nuances," he said, adding that VPD policy is not to look at the immigration status of anyone who is the victim, witness or who's reporting crime.

Palmer said the VPD has been doing significant outreach in the Chinese community, since the increase of racist incidents.

Trying to fix the mistrust

Baltej Singh Dhillon has a unique perspective on the issue of racism and police. Dhillon retired last year from the RCMP after a long career, in which he served as the first Mountie to wear a turban, overcoming challenging obstacles to get his police career started and rising to the rank of inspector.

Dhillon experienced racism from the communities he policed and the officers working alongside him.

He said even he wasn't surprised to see the backlash to the advice of calling police.

"I think when it comes to trust and building trust with our community  and having reciprocal trust from the community, including law enforcement  is always a work in progress," said Dhillon. "We're not there yet. I know that that sentiment of mistrust does exist."

Rafferty Baker/CBC

He said Canada may be doing better than other jurisdictions when it comes to how police address racism, but the country has a long history of racist experiences.

Dhillon recently submitted a recommendation to Ravi Kahlon, MLA for Delta North and the B.C. government's lead on anti-racism and human rights, who has been touring the province to get feedback on how to address racism.

Dhillon has asked that all potential hate crimes be flagged, fully investigated and forwarded to Crown counsel for them to decide if charges should be laid.

He said if his recommendation is adopted as the standard, it could help give victims of racist attacks confidence in the justice system and work to repair the mistrust minority communities have in the police that are supposed to serve them.

According to Slater, change can't come fast enough  it's long overdue.

"You have a whole community that are afraid to call you. That's something that needs to be addressed," she said of police.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Tamilla Mammadova - Trend:

Head of Georgian National Tourism Administration Mariam Kvrivishvili held a video conference with the Israel Tourism Ministry Director-General Amir Halevi, Trend reports citing Georgian media.

During the meeting, the parties discussed the creation of a safe corridor between the countries and future cooperation.

Ambassador of Georgia to Israel Lasha Zhvania also took part in the video conference.

It was noted that Israel is an important tourist destination for Georgia.

The cooperation between Georgia and Israel in the field of tourism is very important. Our private sector has been active in the Israeli tourism market. We are grateful for the positive assessment Georgia has earned as a safe tourist destination. As can be seen from the work process, Israel is expected to be one of the first countries from where we will start accepting travelers from July, said Kvrivishvili.

According to Zhvania, Israel plans to restore tourist routes with eight countries, and Georgia will be one of the first.

Meanwhile, in accordance with the Georgian government's anti-crisis plan to reopen tourism, the opening of air traffic is scheduled for July 1.

The air traffic will be restored gradually. However, before that, the aviation authorities and airports will have to carry out certain work. More specifically, it is necessary and mandatory to introduce safety standards, both at border checkpoints and at the airports.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
Republican veteran Mike Garcia held onto his lead in California's special election for the 25th Congressional District, and will become the first Republican to flip a seat held by a Democrat in the state since 1998, winning former Representative Katie Hill's seat. Garcia stopped short of a full-fledged victory speech on a call with supporters late Tuesday night, as results showed him ahead of Democratic State Assemblywoman Christy Smith by double-digits.

But by Wednesday morning, Garcia was declaring victory.

"After seeing more results last night, it is clear that our message of lower taxes and ensuring we don't take liberal Sacramento dysfunction to Washington prevailed," he said in a statement. "For too long, the people of our district have not had representation, and it's time their voice is heard in Washington."

On Wednesday afternoon, Smith officially conceded, and in a Facebook statement said while "it is critical" all the remaining votes should be counted, "the current tally shows Mike Garcia is the likely victor."

Garcia's victory was a welcome sign for House Republicans, coming in a district Hillary Clinton had won by 7 points in 2016, and in a race for a seat that had been held by a Democrat. Hill, who flipped the seat by 8 points from Republican to Democratic in the 2018 midterm elections, resigned in December 2019 after admitting to an affair with a campaign staffer.

A Navy fighter pilot who is the son of a Mexican immigrant, Garcia was viewed as an appealing candidate, a good "outsider" fit for Republicans in the district. As the pandemic swept across the country after he advanced through the March primaries, which Smith led, Garcia's campaign quickly adapted to the times, holding tele-thon town halls.

In the final weeks of the campaign, national Democratic figures such as Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and Senator Kamala Harris were lavishing their support for Smith through endorsements and social media pushes. While Smith has said she supports the Democratic presidential nominee, neither she nor Vice President Joe Biden officially endorsed each other.

Story continues

President Trump and national Republicans advocated for Garcia, particularly in the last weekend before Election Day, and they complained about the opening of a new in-person voting center in Lancaster, which they claimed could give Democrats an unfair edge.

"Dems are trying to steal the Mike Garcia Congressional Race in California. Republicans, get out and VOTE for your terrific candidate, ASAP!" Trump Tweeted on Monday.

Paul Mitchell, vice president of the non-partisan Political Data Inc., said the new voting center was not likely to make any notable impact. "This is a tempest in a teapot in the middle of a desert during a pandemic," he told CBS News before Election Day.

The Trump Victory campaign also played an important role, holding nearly 80 training events for volunteers in support of Garcia. The Republican National Committee and California Republican Party spent nearly $1 million on the special election and combined to contact over 1.4 million voters while sending over 300,000 text messages to voters in the district leading up to Election Day.

The financial support for Garcia, who consistently tied with or slightly lagged behind Smith's fundraising, proved useful in the end. The House Republican campaign arm spent $1 million on an ad buy in April, the Congressional Leadership Fund spent $600,000 on ads and anti-Smith mailers, and the Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of California spent nearly $1 million to support Garcia through field staff and targeted mailers.

While the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee also spent $1 million in an ad buy for Smith, the Democrat-backed House Majority PAC (HMP) didn't spend anything past the primaries.

Democrats expect the registration advantage and turnout from the presidential race to help them take the seat back in November, when Garcia and Smith will face each other again in a rematch. One indicator of this came on Monday, when HMP announced that they have reserved $3.25 million in ads for the Los Angeles market in the fall.

Smith's concession statement looked ahead to the next race and a "vigorous debate" on issues in the coming months, including health care access and job creation, among others.

Republicans also held their seat in Wisconsin's 7th District special election, formerly held by Congressman Sean Duffy, where GOP state senator Tom Tiffany beat Democrat Tricia Zunker by 14 points.

Tiffany was another Republican special election candidate backed by Trump, and said he had a quick phone call with the president after his victory. In a call with CBS News, he emphasized he wants to help Congress with reopening the country.

"We know who is most affected by this: it's the elderly, it's people with underlying conditions, health conditions, and we need to make sure that we protect those people. We need to make sure that our frontline health care providers are protected," Tiffany said. "But otherwise, for a lot of people, they can go back to doing many of the things that they used to. And the sooner we get there, the better."

The election in the rural district was expected to favor the Republican, but was also a chance for local election clerks to bounce back after April's chaotic presidential primaries.

"It's one of the most unusual campaigns I've been through," Tiffany said in his election night remarks.

Musadiq Bidar contributed reporting.

Top health official testifies federal government's COVID-19 response cost American lives

Obama administration officials who requested "unmasking" of Michael Flynn revealed

Telecommuting skyrockets during coronavirus pandemic, changing company structure
Overseas Travel Expected to Return to Normal by 2023, Expert Says

International travel is expected to return to pre-pandemic levels by 2023 with domestic travel leading the recovery, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) said on May 14.

However, quarantine measures on arrivalsuch as the two-week quarantine requirementwould further damage confidence in air travel, the airline industrys peak body has also warned.

IATAs Director-general Alexandre de Juniac told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) on Thursday that the 2023 recovery date prediction shows the importance and the severity of this crisis on air transport.

With slow recovery to air #travel expected, quarantine measures on arrival would further damage confidence. A risk-based layered approach of globally harmonized biosecurity measures is critical for the restart. #aviation Read more  https://t.co/oxQTLp0emA pic.twitter.com/YRWSzUIT75  IATA (@IATA) May 13, 2020

De Juniac said that reopening domestic markets would be the first step, followed by near-by international markets, such as Asia-Pacific, or Europe, or North America.

He added that by the end of 2020, air traffic should be between 50 to 55 percent of 2019 levels.

Despite efforts by governments to curb the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, through quarantine measures, the IATA said that many travellers would not travel if 14-day quarantine measures were in place.

Currently, countries that have enforced the mandatory 14-day quarantine period for international arrivals include Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Spain, and the UK. Many countries worldwide have adopted full lockdowns, shutting down airports, and full border closures.

In a recent survey that we did in 11 markets, 84 percent of travellers said that quarantine measures was one of their top concerns, and 69 percent essentially said that they would not return to travel under such conditions, de Juniac said.

We need a solution for safe travel that addresses two challenges.

It must give passengers confidence to travel safely and without undue hassle, and it must give governments confidence that they are protected from importing the virus.

To protect aviations ability to be a catalyst for the economic recovery, we must not make that prognosis worse by making travel impracticable with quarantine measures, he said.

The IATA has proposed a layering of temporary non-quarantine measures such as temperature checks, health declarations, and rigorous contact tracing until a vaccine, immunity passports, or instant COVID-19 testing is available.

De Juniac added that the airline industry faced a loss of $496 billion in revenue this year.

For instance, in Australia, travel restrictions have caused major airlines, such as Qantas, to stand down around 20,000 staff as 90 percent of flights were cancelled. Meanwhile, Virgin Australia airlines entered voluntary administration.

There is a risk that some airlines would go to bankruptcy, he said.

We are relying on the support packages and the rescue plans that have been put together by governments and that have been announced by governments, with, I have to say, very supportive and open attitudes to help us. But without this plan, half of the airlines could be bankrupt in June, and 80 percent could be bankrupt in July.
France Announces COVID-19 Tax Support For Wine Industry

by Ulrika Lomas, Tax-News.com, Brussels

15 May 2020

On May 11, 2020, the French Government presented a COVID-19-related economic support package targeted at the nation's wine industry, which includes relief from social contributions.

Following a videoconference between Government ministers, three specific measures were announced to support the wine sector, including social security contribution exemptions for small and very-small businesses.

The other non-tax features of the package include a EUR140m (USD152m) fund (partly funded by the European Union), and a request for a compensation fund to be establised at EU level.

In addition to COVID-19, France's wine industry has been negatively affected by US tariffs on imports of French wine imposed as part of the ongoing trade dispute between the EU and US over aircraft subsidies.
Controversial Ghanaian clergyman and founder of International Godsway Church, Daniel Obinim has reportedly been apprehended by the police.

According to reports, the controversial pastor has been on the wanted list for a while but he managed to evade arrest.

However, the police finally arrested him in his church on Thursday after they received a tip that he was holding a counselling session.

Obinim was said to have requested for a change of cloth before leaving for the police station.

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It was gathered that when he came out few minutes later, he claimed he couldnt walk.

Read Also: IGP Orders Investigation Of E-Money, Withdraws Police Escort

In a bid to effect his arrest, the police took the clergyman to a private hospital in East Legon, and placed policemen by his side to keep a watchful eye on him.
By PTI

NEW DELHI: Contracting for the second straight month, India's exports shrank by a record 60.28 per cent in April to USD 10.36 billion, mainly on account of the coronavirus lockdown, official data showed on Friday.

Imports too plunged by 58.65 per cent to USD 17.12 billion in April, leaving a trade deficit of USD 6.76 billion as against USD 15.33 billion in April 2019, according to the data by the commerce and industry ministry.

This is the lowest trade deficit since May 2016, when it had stood at USD 6.27 billion.

The country's exports had declined by 34.57 per cent in March 2020.

"The decline in exports has been mainly due to the ongoing global slowdown, which got aggravated due to the current COVID-19 crisis. The latter resulted in large scale disruptions in supply chains and demand resulting in the cancellation of orders," the ministry said in a statement.

Barring iron ore and pharmaceuticals, all the remaining 28 key sectors registered negative growth in the month under review.

Gems and jewelry shipments declined 98.74 per cent, followed by leather (- 93.28 per cent), petroleum products (- 66.22 per cent), engineering goods (- 64.76 per cent), and chemicals (- 42 per cent) .

Oil imports in April were USD 4.66 billion, which was 59.03 per cent lower as compared to the same month last year.

All 30 key imports sectors like gold, silver, transport equipment, coal, fertiliser, machinery and machine tools posted negative growth during the month.

Non-oil imports fell 58.5 per cent to USD 12.46 billion in April.

Gold imports stood at USD 2.83 million, as against USD 4 billion in April 2019.

The nationwide lockdown to contain the spread of the coronavirus outbreak began on March 25, shutting industrial units and restricting the movement of goods.

Commenting on the numbers, Federation of Indian Export Organisations (FIEO) said it is the "highest-ever" decline in monthly exports, and demanded an incentive package from the government.

FIEO President Sharad Kumar Saraf said the lockdowns around the world have not only pushed business sentiment to the lowest levels but also impacted supply chains and economic growth.

"We may expect a revival in exports from the third quarter of the fiscal, depending on the condition evolving in the international market."

"With major global players including the US, UK, Canada, Japan, Germany, France, Austria, Spain, and Bangladesh having provided bailout or financial packages to their industry to sail through these difficult times, it is also expected that the same would help in bringing good news for the overall international trade," Saraf said.

He said with the cancellation of 70-80 per cent of orders, job losses and rising NPAs among exporting units, the government should immediately implement the economic measures announced at the ground level for quick revival.

Meanwhile, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced measures to promote agri exports.

Mohit Singla, chairman of Trade Promotion Council of India (TPCI), said the announcement would help India achieve its target of USD 100 billion agri exports.

"The proposed amendment in essential commodity act is a welcome step in deregulating the agri sector which will save the farmers from artificial price management activities by different forces," Singla said.

Since 2011-12, India's exports have been hovering around the USD 300 billion mark.

During 2017-18, the overseas shipments grew by about 10 per cent to USD 303 billion and further to USD 330.08 billion in 2018-19 and USD 314.31 billion in 2019-20.

The drop in exports is in sync with the projections of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), which has stated that world trade is expected to fall between 13 per cent and 32 per cent in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Never have so many people desperately wanted to get painting so badly at the same time. Because there's nothing like staring at your own four walls for months to make you realise they really need a lick of paint. And, of course, paint is hard to come by.

On May 18, if everything goes according to plan, the DIY shops will reopen for business and the country's paint will be flow once again. In the meantime, all over Ireland, walls, furniture and anything else that stood still for long enough has been painted in whatever we happened to have had in the shed. The result has given us the lockdown paint job, the decorating version of the lockdown haircut. The public hungers for paint with an appetite formerly reserved only for toilet paper. Those paint shops that remained open for online business have been flooded beyond capacity.

Then, hearing that Colourtrend had reopened for online orders, I click the "Chat with Bronwyn" button on their website. "Yes, we deliver nationwide. Our delivery lead time is currently 3-5 working days," she types.

Colourtrend has paint!

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The paint it has ranges in price from 75 to 82.50 for a five-litre tin, and delivery is free. Paint at last! I experience the kind of head-rush normally associated with success upon arriving at the off-licence at 9.59pm.

Choosing colour is always tricky, especially online. The Colourtrend website offers a diverting pop quiz where they recommend colours on the basis of the photographs you prefer.

"I think that people are going to be a lot braver after lockdown," says Denise O'Connor (below) of Optimise Home, interior designer and architect. "You're less worried about what other people might think when nobody else is allowed in the door."

But realising that choosing paint creates anxiety, she has created a Colour Guide in eBook format that's available on her website for download. O'Connor's approach to design isn't flashy, but it's realistic, informed and carefully researched.

"The first thing that you want to ask yourself is - how do you want to feel in the space," she says. "Paint is the one thing that's going to have the biggest impact on the atmosphere of a room."

Brighter colours can make a kitchen feel fresh and inviting, but would be too stimulating to use on the bedroom walls. Softer colours, she suggests, create the feeling of calm tranquillity, "or you could even consider a dark, moody tone to create a cocoon-like effect."

Expand Close Antoinette chalk paint in Oxford Navy and Napoleonic Blue Lifestyle Portrait by Annie Sloan / Facebook

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Whatsapp Antoinette chalk paint in Oxford Navy and Napoleonic Blue Lifestyle Portrait by Annie Sloan

Having created her own paint collection for Dulux - a gentle palette laid out in threes and designed to be compatible with Irish light - O'Connor is particularly informed about undertones.

They're the almost-invisible colour that paint companies add to neutrals. Magnolia, for example, has a peachy undertone and the early 2000s were marked by neutrals with a great deal of underlying grey.

But O'Connor's greatest bugbear is yellow, especially the buttery-yellow neutrals that people use on their walls in the mistaken belief that they will brighten up the room. "The amount of yellow I see in people's homes - inside and out!" she exclaims. "People feel that it is a bright cheerful colour, but it really doesn't work on walls."

The roots of this problem lie in our unreasonable expectations of paint. It can't make a room bigger and it can't make a room brighter.

"The paint isn't going to do that for you," O'Connor explains. "Instead, what you should try to do is make the room feel cosy," says O'Connor. "Go for earthier undertones. And avoid yellow like the plague."

You can download O'Connor's Colour Guide from the Resources section of optimise-home.com. Stockists for her Signature Collection for Dulux include mcdonnellpaints.ie and stillorgandecor.ie, which is currently offering free local delivery within three to five working days (69.95 for a five-litre tin of diamond matt emulsion).

See also colourtrend.ie.
2 cops deputed for CM Bommai's security held for trying to 'extort' money from drug peddlers

With 45 fresh cases, Karnataka's COVID-19 tally breaches 1,000-mark

India

oi-Deepika S

Bengaluru, May 15: With 45 fresh cases reported on Friday morning, the total number of Coronavirus cases breached 1,000-mark in the state.

Total number of positive cases in the state stood at 1,032. With 35 deaths and 476 discharges, there were 520 active coronavirus cases, the department said in its mid-day situation update.

"Forty-five new positive cases have been reported from last evening to this noon....Till date 1032 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed. This includes 35 deaths and 476 discharges," said the state government.

Coronavirus crisis: State govt is bearing transport expense of migrant workers, says Jharkhand CM

The fresh 45 cases include 16 from Dakshina Kannada, 13 from Bengaluru Urban, five from Udapi, three each from Bidar and Hassan, two from Chitradurga, and one each from Kolar, Shivamogga and Bagalkote districts.

Twenty of them are with travel history to Dubai, four to Mumbai and three returned from Chennai. One patient has a history of severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) and another was from containment zone in Bidar.

Rest are all primary and secondary contacts of patients already tested positive, the bulletin said.
Delaware beaches will reopen at 5 p.m. on Fri., May 22, Gov. John Carney announced this week.

Strict social distancing guidelines will be in place and only Delawareans will be welcome. Out-of-state visitors still must quarantine for 14 days after arriving. A short-term rental ban continues to be in effect, as well.

Additionally, masks will be required on the boardwalk and encouraged on the beach in all shorefront towns.

In other news, community pools and ice cream parlors and trucks will kick off the list of summer activities and businesses to reopen today, May 15, at 5 p.m.

Summer at the beach and the pool is a huge part of life for so many Delawareans. As we ease our way into a new normal, were trying to find ways for Delawareans to enjoy the outdoors and the company of their families, Carney said in a news release.

I want to be very clear to our friends who want to travel here from outside the state. While we hope one day soon to be able to welcome you to our beaches, that time has not yet come. We need to reopen Delaware in a controlled way that doesnt put anyone at risk.

If you try to visit one of Delawares shorefront towns from out-of-state, be warned that state police will be watching. According to the news release:

To enforce the out-of-state quarantine as Delaware beaches reopen, Delaware State Police will station troopers at routes typically used by out-of-state travelers. Travelers will be stopped, asked a series of questions, and given information about the 14-day quarantine requirement under Governor Carneys State of Emergency declaration. Violations of the emergency declaration, or any of its modifications, constitute a criminal offense.

More beach news:

Jersey Shore beaches will close again if coronavirus spikes return: N.J. governor

Ocean City hotels, vacation rentals open again for all as visitor quarantine ends; will restaurants reopen next?
WASHINGTON  Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act, signed in late March, included $30 billion for education institutions turned upside down by the pandemic shutdowns, about $14 billion for higher education, $13.5 billion to elementary and secondary schools, and the rest for state governments.

Ms. DeVos has used $180 million of those dollars to encourage states to create microgrants that parents of elementary and secondary school students can use to pay for educational services, including private school tuition. She has directed school districts to share millions of dollars designated for low-income students with wealthy private schools.

And she has nearly depleted the 2.5 percent of higher education funding, about $350 million, set aside for struggling colleges to bolster small colleges  many of them private, religious or on the margins of higher education  regardless of need. The Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, a private college in Wisconsin that has a website debunking claims that it is a cult, was allocated about $495,000. All of the colleges could apply for the funds or reject them, and Wright officials said the school did not claim the funds.
A 23-year-old man died Wednesday after the truck he was driving crashed into a guardrail, then slid down an embankment in rural Lincoln County, authorities said.

The Freightliner utility truck landed upside down in a stream that runs along U.S. 20 east of Toledo, according to Oregon State Police.

Troopers said the driver, Patrick Goddard, of Eugene, died at the scene of the crash. An adult passenger in the truck survived and was transported by paramedics to the hospital in Corvallis.

-- The Oregonian/OregonLive
Capella Space Signs SAR Imagery Contract with the Department of Defense

Capella Space

Capella Space will provide on-demand, high-resolution SAR data and analytics for the U.S. Navy

SAN FRANCISCO, May 13, 2020  Capella Space today announced it has signed a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) for the purpose of providing airborne synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data to the U.S. Navy. Facilitated through the Defense Innovation Unit's Commercial Solutions Opening, Capella will also provide the DoD with in-house analytics services to interpret the data. This marks the latest in a series of contracts Capella Space has signed with federal agencies, including the U.S. Air Force and the National Reconnaissance Office.

Capella will provide the DoD with SAR data collected by an airborne collection campaign using Capella's synthetic radar flown on board a specially equipped and outfitted airplane. This aerial campaign will give the DoD early access to Capella's SAR imagery and user console ahead of its first operational satellite launch planned later in the year.

SAR systems image in all weather, day or night, and capture amplitude and phase history data enabling the extraction of highly valuable information such as material properties, moisture content, elevation, and precise changes and movements, which are not available with optical imagery. When fully deployed, Capella's satellite constellation will collect sub-0.5 meter SAR imagery, which can identify types of aircraft or vehicles on the ground and provide 24/7 monitoring and change detection in any weather and lighting conditions.

"Defense & intelligence agencies utilize Capella's SAR data for a variety of purposes, including disaster recovery, infrastructure monitoring and indications and warnings of potential threats," said Payam Banazadeh, CEO and founder of Capella Space. "The continuous work we receive from these Agencies is a testament to the future they see where Capella services play an important role in our national security. We're pleased to receive this contract from the Department of Defense. We have a highly motivated, innovative team, and we're committed to providing reliable, persistent Earth observation data for the DoD and other federal agencies we work with."

The U.S. Department of Defense is among a growing list of interested users of Capella's high-resolution SAR imagery. This award will further deepen the partnership between the U.S. Department of Defense and Capella. By establishing a trusted partnership with the U.S. Navy, Capella is well-positioned to take on evermore advanced projects while ensuring a high level of security standards are met.

About Capella Space:

Capella Space is an information services company that provides on-demand sub-0.5m high-resolution synthetic aperture radar (SAR) Earth observation imagery. Through a constellation of small satellites, Capella is providing easy access to frequent, timely and flexible information affecting dozens of industries worldwide. Capella's high-resolution SAR satellites are matched with unparalleled infrastructure to deliver reliable global insights that sharpen our understanding of the changing world  improving decisions about commerce, conservation and security on Earth. Learn more at capellaspace.com.

Media Contact:

Alex Nelson

capellaspace@inkhouse.com

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Sumi Sukanaya Dutta By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI/ LUCKNOW/ MUMBAI/ JAIPUR: When Sarika (name changed), 27, a woman in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut felt sharp labour pains suddenly late last month, her husband took her to a nursing home where she had been consulting a gynaecologist during her pregnancy.

The nursing home was shut and her doctor, over phone, advised her to arrange for a midwife facilitated homebirth rather than going to the district hospital.

"I heeded the doctor's advice since the chances of contracting COVID-19 virus seemed higher in a government centre teeming with people," Sarika's husband Pawan Kumar (name changed), who teaches in a primary school, told this correspondent over phone.

Sarika delivered a baby girl on April 29, helped by a woman, a retired auxiliary nurse midwife.

"I never wanted it this way but I am thankful that there was no complication and myself and my child are fine," she said.

Sarika, may have been lucky. Many would not be -- but for many months to come we won't even know of those who might have suffered in unimaginable ways -- as they are either forced or choose to deliver at home without expert and experienced medical supervision.

ALSO READ | Nearly 80 percent of India's COVID-19 cases are from 30 municipal areas

Thousands of them will die too, due to complications during the childbirth.

A look at the Health Management Information System, maintained by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, suggests that in March this year -- when a nationwide lockdown was enforced in order to contain the COVID-19 spread -- institutional deliveries dropped by 43 per cent over March last year.

The number of childbirths registered in hospitals -- public and private -- across India stood at 1717500 in March last year while this year the number dropped to 971782.

The differences are equally stark in the case of Caesarian Sections, which may be absolutely essential and life-saving in 5-15 per cent of all childbirths. They dropped by over 46 per cent in March, as compared to March last year.

The data for April, when the country was under a very strict lockdown, is not available yet but the figures from March have set the tone for even more worrying figures that the coming weeks will throw.

The figures suggest the monthly institutional deliveries in March this year may have been the lowest in many many years.

States confirm the worrying dip in the numbers.

ALSO READ | Coronavirus cases doubling time further slows down to 14 days

In Lucknow, authorities say that though the maternity hospitals were functioning throughout the lockdown period, the number of expectant mothers coming for a follow-up or even deliveries fell by around 20 per cent both in public and private hospitals.

In Rajasthan, data suggests that every month in about 2200 primary and community health centres and 1100 private hospitals, nearly 1.5 lakh births were registered last year but this figure has fallen by almost half during the lockdown period.

"The figures are very alarming and while some of this could be explained by issues in reporting, the COVID-19 lockdown has a major role to play," said Dr Subhasri B of CommonHealth. "This massive disruption in maternal health services could push back India's efforts in ensuring safe deliveries by about 15 years."

Sulakshna Nandi of Jan Swasthya Abhiyan said that the drop is a direct result of women struggling to get access to health facilities due to lack of transport, panic among people and doctors and thousands in need being denied services by hospitals.

"There are numerous instances when women have delivered outside hospitals because hospitals have denied them admission," she said. "Many essential healthcare services have been hit during the COVID-19 outbreak and pregnant women are among the worst hit."

It was for this reason that last month, the Delhi-based Sama group filed a PIL in Delhi High Court seeking directions to the government to pass appropriate orders to ensure that no pregnant woman is denied or discriminated against, in accessing essential health services and to take action against hospitals that refuse access and/or admission to pregnant women seeking essential health services.

The court directed the government too, but on the ground little has changed.

Given that the COVID-19 threat is very real, was there a way out?

"The government should have planned it better as there cannot be a compromise on essential healthcare services such as pregnant women needing medical care," said Dr Subhashri.

"As it is, the public health system in the country has a limited capacity in several states even during normal times and now in the times of a pandemic, we are seeing it overwhelmed," she added.

Dr Nafis Faizi, who teaches community medicine at the Aligarh Muslim University, had similar concerns.

"When it comes to normal deliveries and C-sections, we depend on private sectors for a majority of our needs but today with most of them either shut or denying services to patients, it's mostly medical college hospitals which are now overburdened," he said.

What he says is reflected from many government-run tertiary care centres.

In Mumbai's JJ Hospital, for example, 600 women gave birth this April as compared to April last year when this number was 350.

"There are non-registered pregnant women who could not avail any other options also turning up," said Dr Ashok Anand from the hospital.
you drive With more than one hundred days of delay due to the Corona pandemic has brought the world of formula 1 on Saturday without spectators in Spielberg in qualifying for the Austrian Grand Prix this Sunday (15.10 in the F. A. Z.-liveticker Formel 1, RTL and Sky) behind.

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The Pole Position secured, quite surprisingly, Valtteri Bottas with a lead of just 12 thousandths of a second  the equivalent of 82 centimeters on his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. The two travel in the Black through the season, the silver arrows have a new look  as a sign of solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement.

"I feel, great, these emotions have all I need," said Bottas: "Thank you to the Team, we have done a great Job. We are in a League of its own. In fact. Red-Bull-Pilot Max verse has to fall as the third a backlog of around half a second. "We show every year that we are the best Team. We are pushing the boundaries further and further, said Hamilton, who will be this year for the seventh Time world champion and with a record-breaking champion Michael Schumacher.

Others can only dream about. Charles Leclerc? Place seven. Sebastian Vettel? Eleventh. A Disaster in Red. "This is certainly not our claim, but at the Moment is no longer there," said Vettel. Of the thirty-three year old will leave the Team at the end of the season after the Scuderia had made no new contract offer.

prior to the qualification of the responsible of Ferrari design acknowledged error in the race car with the type designation SF1000. At the race in Hungary in two weeks to go, therefore a revised Version at the Start. Until then, much more than optimism remains: "Maybe the race comes to us," said Vettel: "In the Longrun we should be a little bit stronger." Rain is not predicted.

On Saturday were not only both Mercedes and Red Bull  Alex Albon, the Fifth  faster, even, Lando Norris in the McLaren (4.) and Sergio Perez in the Racing Point (6.) pushed in front of Leclerc. Like the new Ferrari-reality looks, showed a radio message from the Monegasques in the second section of the qualification, as he made sure if his time was not sufficient for the final of the Ten best. She did  at least for him.

Updated Date: 04 July 2020, 11:19
News

Microsoft Buying Metaswitch Networks to Bolster 5G Wireless Operations

Microsoft on Thursday announced an agreement to buy Metaswitch Networks for an undisclosed price.

The buy represents Microsoft's second purchase this year of a company involved with supporting 5G communication service providers and equipment providers with software-defined solutions. In March, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Affirmed Networks, which similarly provides support to telcos with software alternatives to legacy hardware switching approaches. The Affirmed Networks buy closed on April 23, Microsoft indicated.

Metaswitch Networks is a London-based software development company that was "established in 1981 by former IBM software engineers," according to an April 26 profile by The Sunday Times. Its software solutions support more than 1,000 telcos with profits recorded at 24.6 million in 2019. The company has 839 employees, according to the Times.

Metaswitch Networks describes itself as "the first company to deploy the same software in both the central office/local exchange and the data center" for communications services providers. Its solutions are cloud based using microservices in containers, which lets communications service providers "adopt a DevOps approach" for faster innovation, the company claims.

Solutions built by Metaswitch Networks include voice-over-IP softswitches and gateways, IMS core deployments, session border control solutions, converged voice and data messaging solutions, cloud contact centers and robocall blocking, among others.

With the acquisition, Metaswitch Networks plans to continue to support its existing customers.

"We will continue to meet customers where they are, working together as communication service providers evolve their own operations," stated Martin Lund, Metaswitch Networks' CEO, in an announcement. "And we'll be ideally placed to aid those operators keen to transition to cloud native deployments, to 5G networks and to the era of compelling applications that are served from the core and edge of new network architectures."

Microsoft intends to leverage Metaswitch Networks' solutions globally in conjunction with its Microsoft Azure solutions. It'll use Metaswitch's technologies to "run virtualized communication functions, applications and networks."

The acquisition will add to Microsoft's support of communications service providers and equipment makers, including telcos in the emerging 5G wireless market.

"Our intention over time is to create modern alternatives to network infrastructure, enabling operators to deliver existing and value-added services -- with greater cost efficiency and lower capital investment than they've faced in the past," stated Yousef Khalidi, corporate vice president of Azure Networking, in Microsoft's announcement.

Specific areas of focus will include "radio access networks (RAN), next-generation core, virtualized services, orchestration and operations support system/business support system (OSS/BSS) modernization," he explained. The software solutions support for 5G wireless also will help "enable IoT [Internet of Things] at scale."
Feelings of isolation contribute to poor mental health and refugees are particularly vulnerable. A Venezuelan refugee sits alone on a bench at a shelter in Brazil, March 28, 2019.  UNHCR/Vincent Tremeau

The consequences of coronavirus are taking a huge toll on the mental health of refugees, displaced and stateless people, UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, is warning today.

COVID-19 is not just a physical health crisis but it is now also triggering a mental health crisis. While many refugees and internally displaced people are remarkably resilient and are able to move forward despite having experienced violence or persecution first-hand, their capacities to cope are now being stretched to the limit, said UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi.

We are now receiving reports of increasing mental health issues and needs among those displaced. Fear of infection, confinement and isolation measures, stigma, discrimination, loss of livelihoods and uncertainty about the future are all contributing factors.

Given the widespread socio-economic damage inflicted by the pandemic, UNHCR is particularly worried that for many refugees, the loss of daily wages and livelihoods is resulting in psychosocial hardship. Extremely concerning is that some are now reporting self-harm owing to these pressures.

For refugees who had also sought psychosocial support through community interaction, social gatherings or the observance of religious rituals, physical distancing measures and mobility restrictions also affect their ability to cope with emotional distress.

While the consequences of the pandemic are inducing or aggravating pre-existing mental health conditions, measures to curb the spread of the virus are also impacting the availability of assistance. Providing mental health support and care becomes more difficult during lock-down and restricted travel, staffing levels may be reduced, refugees are often unable to travel to reach care and many face-to-face group-based activities have been cancelled.

The overwhelming majority, 84 per cent, of the worlds refugees are hosted in developing regions and their access to quality mental health care was already very limited even before the pandemic. Now at this devastating juncture, with coronavirus causing great physical and mental affliction, the need to invest in continued health services, including mental health, and ensuring their accessibility to all is as evident and critical as ever, said Grandi.

To try and ensure the continuity of mental health and psychosocial support services for refugees and displaced people, UNHCR is stepping up efforts and adapting modalities wherever possible.

Some mental health services are now being provided remotely, including through multi-lingual telephone hotlines or over the internet through online sessions. For those with severe and complex mental health conditions, care is being ensured through remote or direct support delivered in safe ways, including through home visits. Provisions are also made to ensure that people who need medication can continue treatment during lockdown.

UNHCR is also working where possible to scale up the mental health support capacity of its pre-existing community-based protection networks and training primary healthcare workers, camp management personnel, community outreach volunteers and telephone hotline staff in Psychological First Aid.

In some locations, community volunteers already mobilized in COVID-19 prevention and response efforts are also conducting outreach to refugees and internally displaced people on mental health awareness and on coping with distress.

Echoing the UN-wide call for action, UNHCR continues to appeal for urgent support to ensure the availability and continuation of mental health and psychosocial services for refugees and those displaced. These services must be considered essential services and form part of national responses to COVID-19.

For more information on this topic, please contact:
The Tema General Hospital has today received a donation of 520 PPEs from Standard Chartered Bank to support frontline staff at the hospital as efforts to treat new cases of COVID-19 in Ghana step up.



The PPEs which included N95 masks and surgical gloves come on the backdrop of increased cases of COVID-19 in the Tema Municipality and will be key as the hospital continues playing an integral role as an isolation and treatment center.



Mansa Nettey, Chief Executive, Standard Chartered Bank, Ghana Limited, while presenting the items said, Following the recent spike in COVID-19 cases in Ghana, it is now more than ever important to ensure that all hospital staff are adequately resourced through the provision of PPEs. We are fully behind our health workers as they fight this pandemic from the frontline.



Tema General is the fourth hospital to receive PPEs donation from Standard Chartered as part of the GHS 1 million committed by the Bank to support emergency relief and aid those affected by the COVID-19 pandemic in Ghana.



At Standard Chartered Bank Ghana Limited, we live up to our brand promise Here for Good, particularly in these times of adversity and hope the PPEs will continue keeping you safe as you fight against COVID-19, she added.



Receiving the PPEs, Dr. Richard Anthony, Medical Director of Tema General Hospital thanked Standard Chartered Banks CEO and her team for the generous donation and for its commitment to supporting frontline health workers during this time.



This donation has come at the opportune time for the hospital because as we continue receiving new COVID-19 cases, PPEs at our disposal are utilized much faster and as such, the hospital requires constant replenishing, he added.



To date, Standard Chartered Bank has donated over 3000 PPEs to four (4) hospitals. In previous weeks, the Bank presented Greater Accra Regional Hospital, the Ga East Hospital and LEKMA Hospital with their donations of PPEs.



The Bank also donated a portable Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) equipment to the Nogouchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research to assist in conducting widespread testing and detection of COVID-19 in Ghana.







Source: 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.

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If you have driven down the April Sound Boulevard in the last week, you will have seen the rows of signs honoring our young people who are 2020 graduates. J.D. Harris got the idea of the signs when he saw that a school in Florida or California had put up a sign for each graduate. He posted the idea on Facebook, and Christine Fayard offered to join in the sponsorship. Together they received permission from the POA, Kathy Howard, April Sound resident and owner of Action Wear Plus, offered to print the signs for a generous price, and folks began sending in their pictures and school names. Contributions were accepted (and still would be welcome) and there are 37 signs along the Boulevard congratulating our graduates! This is a great example of how one persons idea can produce wonderful results. If youd like to contribute, you could send your donation to Christine Fayard at 159 April Wind East. Congratulations to all involved in this worthy project!

Another of our residents, Vickie Mitchell, sent me some very good news articles concerning her son, John Gallemore, who lists his home of record as April Sound. A graduate of Conroe High School and Texas A&M in 1998, John has made a very distinguished career with the United States Air Force. Last summer he was promoted to Colonel and given command of the 57th Adversary Tactics Group with six fighter squadrons at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada. Prior to taking command at Nellis, Colonel Gallemore was the Deputy Executive Officer to four-star General Joseph Votel, the Commanding General of U.S. Special Operations Command, CenCom at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida. In 2010 and 2011, Colonel Gallemore was Thunderbird #3 flying with the USAF Thunderbirds and flew in the 2010 Houston Air Show.
Three people were arrested in Needles this week after authorities found five children riding in a makeshift crate in the back of their pickup truck. (San Bernardino County Sheriff's Department)

Three Sacramento residents were arrested in Needles this week after authorities found five children riding in a makeshift crate in the back of their pickup truck.

San Bernardino County sheriff's deputies stopped the vehicle near Bailey Avenue and J Street about 2 p.m. Tuesday after receiving a call from someone who reported seeing children inside a small crate in the bed of a truck along the 40 Freeway.

Authorities say they found five children  ages 1 to 13  inside a wooden box that was attached to the truck bed.

The kids were not wearing any kinds of safety restraints and had no ventilation, water or air conditioning, even as the outside temperature hovered around 100 degrees, according to the Sheriff's Department.

A search of the truck also turned up narcotics, drug paraphernalia and a shotgun, authorities said.

Deputies arrested the vehicle's three adult occupants: Kenneth Standridge, 40; Zona Brasier, 39; and Aushajuan Hardy, 41.

Standridge and Brasier each face five counts of child endangerment and are scheduled to be arraigned Friday, court records show. Standridge also is accused of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

Hardy, who authorities say was on post-release community supervision, was found to be wanted on a no-bail felony warrant out of Sacramento and remains in custody, according to authorities.

The children were put in the care of San Bernardino County Children and Family Services. Authorities did not elaborate on their relationship with the suspects.
CMUs robot has recently been named Iris, in part to honor Siri Maley, a former masters student in mechanical engineering who was a leader and an early champion of the robots development (Iris is Siri spelled backwards). Also, the robots main sensors are two video cameras and, in cameras, an iris is a diaphragm that controls the amount of light that enters the lens. Finally, Duvall noted, an iris is a flower known for withstanding extreme environments, just as the robot will on the moon.

Duvall said usually about 40 students  primarily undergraduates  were involved each semester, though the ranks swelled to more than 70 this semester.

"The fact that its going into space has been a strong pull for student involvement," she explained.

As a student project, the robot went through many design changes, in part because each succeeding group was eager to put their own twist on it, Duvall said. But building a light robot also required some difficult design choices.

One major change was the number of wheels. Iris began as a two-wheeled robot supported in the rear by a tail that dragged along the surface. The idea was that the lightweight tail replaced heavier wheels. But the tail caused so much drag that the team decided to add two wheels, foregoing the weight advantage in favor of saving energy, Duvall said.

Nick Acuna, a sophomore mechanical engineering major, joined the project as a first-year student, though he doubted he could contribute much that was useful. Assigned to the wheel design group, he discovered a way to make carbon composite wheels that "worked really, really well." It enabled the wheels, which resemble bottle caps, to be both lighter and stiffer. By the end of last summer, he had been elevated to mechanical lead.

"This project is pretty important to me,"Acuna said, explaining that he enjoys going "all in," focusing his drive on a single thing. In high school, wrestling was his focus. Now, with Iris, "Ive slowly gotten to that same mindset." Working on CMUs first space program is nothing short of inspiring, but also humbling, he added.

"It lets you dream about what you can accomplish in the future, if youre already doing this as a student," he explained. "I know a lot of great people have come through this project. We have the privilege of being the team in the semester when we bring it all to fruition.

"All these giants have touched it and were the ones who get to see it through to the end."
Political Reporter

Caitlin Byrd is a political reporter at The Post and Courier and author of the Palmetto Politics newsletter. Before moving to Charleston in 2016, her byline appeared in the Asheville Citizen-Times. To date, Byrd has won 17 awards for her work.
An employee at a second McDonald's restaurant in Melbourne's north has tested positive to COVID-19, forcing the outlet to shut immediately and sending its 223 employees into self-isolation.

After the coronavirus cluster at Fawkner McDonald's grew by two to 10 cases on Friday, a McDonald's spokeswoman confirmed an employee at Craigieburn McDonald's had tested positive.

The Craigieburn McDonald's is being deep cleaned. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Contact tracers interviewed the employee, who last worked on Tuesday. All employees from the restaurant have been advised to get tested for coronavirus and self-isolate at home for 14 days.

The employee at the outlet on Craigieburn Road West is an "extended family member" of a worker at Fawkner McDonald's. The McDonald's spokeswoman said they were unable to clarify the exact relation. The employee had not worked at the Fawkner restaurant.
Americas worship of civil liberties was on display as anti-lockdown protests swept from Lansing, Mich., to San Diego, and from Madison, Wis., to Bostons Beacon Hill. From London to Seine-Saint Denis, from Munich to Berlins Kreuzberg district, a similar defiance of state intrusion is now arising in parts of Europe. As in the United States, the question is still open: Will these protests channel the growing lockdown fatigue into a cogent, constructive case for reopening, or will they descend into paranoia?

A recent hotspot of anti-lockdown fuss has been Germany, where both media and the government have raised the alarm about the far rights sway in driving people to break the quarantine and social-distancing rules. This past weekend saw radical groups co-opt protests in Dortmund and Munich, where a reporter was attacked and police had to disperse 25 vandals, respectively. A reporting crew from the center-left late-night satirical heute-show was similarly assaulted in Berlin the previous weekend, claiming the popular Moroccan-German comedian Abdelkarim as a victim. Germanys crippling memory of extremism (so-called Vergangenheitsbewaltigung) has a way of penalizing political deviance on the right to this day, and these acts of violence surely didnt help give the protests a good name in the public eye, either.

Resistance to lockdowns has gotten a bad name in France, too, after a young local from Villeneuve-la-Garenne was thrown off his motorbike and sent to the hospital with a broken leg by a police-car door flung open. The incident sparked a wave of riots across the northern Paris suburbs reminiscent of the three-week-long emeutes in 2005 that saw 8,000 cars set ablaze by restless youths protesting police abuse. The quarantine has brought long-simmering tensions in these largely low-income, immigrant, and poorly housed suburbs to a boiling point, with locals decrying heavy-handed policing, spending cuts in public services, and the unequal impact of school closures that leave low-income kids lacking Internet access with little means to keep up with schoolwork.

Story continues

It is certainly true that the protests in Europe have attracted marginal actors and alt-right conspiracists, as have those in the States. But labeling all lockdown dissenters as somehow neo-Nazi or racailles misses the forest for the trees.

In Germany, a closer look at the protests and public opinion reveals that quarantine fatigue is gradually taking root among the general population. Nearby the 25 hecklers dispersed in Munich, another 3,000 demonstrators were similarly flouting social-distancing rules, although for their non-violence police refrained from interfering on the grounds of proportionality. Peaceful protests have also been held in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, among other German cities. As Chancellor Merkel warns landers not to reopen too quickly, the countrys per capita death rate remains one of Europes lowest, in view of which the public gradually begins to question the health benefits of keeping the economy in lockdown. When stay-at-home orders were issued federally in mid-March, 92 percent of Germans supported the orders, but only two-thirds do so now, according to an official poll by the Federal Institute for Risk Assessment. Claims that the government is inflating the risks posed by COVID and accompanying calls to reopen businesses are being spearheaded by the right-wing Alternative fur Deutschland (AfD). But theyre by no means limited to it. The lockdown battles have pitted the Groe Koalition of Merkels center-right CDU-CSU and the social-democrat SPD against a big-tent coalition of skeptics, including some centrists. Thomas Kemmerich of the liberal FDP, whom the AfDs support briefly propelled to state premier of Thuringia earlier this year, was seen at another anti-lockdown protest in Gura last weekend. He was swiftly rebuked by his party for it, but his presence shows that cracks are starting to appear, and societal support for the lockdown is waning. At several of these protests, mottos against Big Pharma were chanted, suggesting that even some of the far left may have been drawn to them.

Calls to prevent further economic pain through a swift reopening are being echoed in similar terms across the continent. Some of the lockdowns earliest victims include cross-border workers from neighboring Poland and the Czech Republic, left stranded on both sides of the German border when all travel was banned. Groups of Polish workers have been seen protesting these measures by waving EU flags near the Zgorzeleg-Golitz border. As many as 20,000 Poles work in bordering Saxony, more than half of whom live in Poland and thus cross the border daily. Protests of this sort have spanned many other parts of the continent, including Belgium, Ukraine, the Netherlands, Georgia, and even Russia.

These protests arent just menaced by adventitious presence from the far right. Distrust of heavy-handed governmental power, even when warranted by a most deadly virus, rarely fails to attract conspiracists, and thriving beyond the unsavory fringes of society largely depends on keeping them at bay. In London, around 50 people gathered near Westminster Bridge on Saturday, blending much the same civil libertarianism that has erupted in the U.S. (common law is sacred law read one of their banners) with the wildest conspiracies around vaccines and 5G. The crowd derided COVID-19 as a scamdemic and a mere front for the worlds powerful to plot for control of their lives, blaming governments for bubbling up the death toll for a disease that they claim is less deadly than the flu. When not altogether negated, the health risk is oftentimes unfoundedly associated with 5G deployment, a conspiracy that lies at the root of several discrete instances of 5G tower-busting, proving that the fears stoked are real and run deep. Even the bats didnt know the hoax would last this long, read another banner at the London gathering.

When COVID-19 and the accompanying health vs. economy tradeoffs are instead reckoned with, these protests are guaranteed a better image. A case in point is Austria, where the Initiative for Evidence-based Corona Information (ICI) has drawn several hundred to demand Chancellor Kurzs resignation outside the Vienna State Opera several times in the past two weeks in defiance of bans, even warning of further mobilization. ICI seeks to give a voice to a wide cross-section of Austrian society whose lives have been impacted by the lockdowns, even offering pro-bono legal support to those claiming abuse by the police for breaking the quarantine.

But more than on civic mobilization, ICIs claim to legitimacy ultimately hinges on its leveraging of science. The group was started by physician and epidemiologist Dr. Christian Fiala and claims to put facts over panic by publicizing a rolling stream of academic papers running counter to what they term as the prevailing corona-alarmist orthodoxies. One such piece of research was carried out by Germanys CDC-equivalent, the Robert Koch Institute, and argues that the compulsory wearing of face masks may turn counterproductive when, upon several uses, the warmth and moisture of a mask ends up attracting viruses and bacteria instead of repelling them. ICI has launched a campaign on this basis calling on Austrians to label their masks mund-tot (mouth-dead or silenced), equating Chancellor Kurzs response to the virus to some form of censure.

ICIs reliance on science, however, may ultimately backfire. These appeals to heed the experts, when made in the early phases of the virus, were quickly voided by COVIDs unforeseen ravages. ICIs uncompromising posture on civil liberties, echoed in protests across the continent, may also lead to a dead end when set against its urgent calls to lift the lockdowns. The two imperatives will be hard to square if and when new data-intensive technology of the contact-tracing sort arises as the best hope to ease the quarantines. It isnt clear that peoples yearning for civil liberties will take precedent over lockdown fatigue in that scenario. This is not to mention Dr. Fialas dubious credentials, having made a name for himself advocating HIV denialism and running a popular abortion clinic in Vienna. He surely would rather not have conspiracy theorizing turned on his support of lifting quarantines.

Europes entire debate around the path to normality, in fact, looks increasingly like hit-or-miss, no less than in America. Absent conclusive evidence advising one pace of reopening or another, it has taken the shape of dueling wagers by hazily drawn constituencies struggling to substantiate with facts and numbers their instinctive weighing of economics relative to public health. Europes reopeners are no less angsty than in America, but their need for a fact-based, sound case may be greater. Natural rights and civil liberties are less instinctively understood and defended in Europe, so without it, they risk attracting even more of the unsavory characters seen parading in the downtown streets of Austin and Philadelphia.

For this, dont blame those who in good faith seek to chart a workable path out of costly lockdowns, for the experts are guessing their way out of this crisis, too.

More from National Review
A South Korean medical diagnostics maker has ramped up production and is aiming to sell millions of virus test kits to the U.S., where cash-strapped states are scrambling for federal funds to buy them.

Osang Healthcare Co., the first South Korean test-kit maker to receive authorization from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration in April, is ready to ship kits that can test 100 million people in the U.S., Chief Executive Officer Lee Donghyun said in an interview.

President Donald Trump has earmarked $25 billion to expand testing in the virus rescue packages allocated to the states. Osang said distributors in 25 states, including Florida, California and Michigan, have expressed interest in the kits and are waiting for the funds to buy them.

Florida's Department of Health said it's not aware of any deal with Osang and the other states either declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment.

Slow and inadequate testing has dogged the U.S. from the start of the pandemic and is one reason the virus has spread so quickly through the country, which now has the most infections and deaths globally. While nations like South Korea have relied on rapid, large-scale testing to curb their outbreaks, access to testing in the U.S. is a fraction of what it should be, according to experts. That could hamper reopening of the battered economy, with testing seen as a key way to get people back to work safely.

With some infected people displaying no outward symptoms of the virus, rapid testing among vulnerable groups has emerged as the best way of identifying virus carriers and stopping them from spreading the pathogen to others. Globally, access to testing has been uneven and especially difficult for countries without the capacity to mass-manufacture their own kits. While nations like Singapore and India are trying to procure sufficient kits, others like South Korea and China make more than enough for their own use.

Korea has enough local capacity for its testing needs, so Osang exports all of its supply, Lee said.

This worldwide competition for testing kits is expected to intensify as countries look to reopen following lockdowns that have wiped $6 trillion from the global economy.

Osang is among a group of South Korean manufacturers that started making tests to identify the new coronavirus within weeks of the disease's emergence earlier this year. The company has supplied countries from Brazil to Russia and has already sold 760,000 tests to U.S. customers, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, said Lee, 59, who founded the company in 1996.

"The Moroccan ambassador in Korea came to us twice and bought 900,000 kits and shipped them via private plane," he said. "We only ship out the kits after the payment has been made because the entire world is facing uncertainties caused by the pandemic."

Osang, which employs about 300 staff in a suburb near Seoul, has exported a total of 10 million tests globally since the outbreak, and its stock has quadrupled in value this year, along with other Korean test kit makers like Seegene Inc. South Korea's strategy, which involves zeroing in on a group exposed to the virus and testing widely, has been cited as a potential model by the White House after the country was able to curb its first outbreak without the need for oppressive lockdown measures.

Each of Osang's kits can run a hundred virus tests and costs $700 to $2,000, although some countries offer to pay more to procure supplies more quickly. The company can make 15 million tests per week, and has set a goal of selling 200 million tests this year, said Lee.

Even as overseas sales move briskly, the company said, it's constantly refining the kits.

"It took us about a week to design the kit, but we've been working nonstop for it to remain reliable," said Kim Joohyung, head of Osang's molecular diagnostics department. "Mutation can easily occur and if that happens we'll have to revamp our kit, so we're keeping a close eye on the genetic sequence of the virus."
I think what you will see is much more of a focus by the American people on, you know, how will you protect me and my hometown, Reed said. Now, I think with the pressure on budgets, itll be more difficult, probably, to build as fast or as much as they wanted to do.
The city on Friday recorded more than 900 Covid-19 cases for the second day in a row, with Mumbais total tally now reaching 17,671. Mumbais Covid-19 death toll has reached 655, while 4,568 patients have been treated and discharged from quarantine facilities.

Of the 933 new cases reported on Friday, 231 were confirmed by private labs, where patients were tested on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Thursday, the city had recorded 998 cases  the highest number of new cases ever reported.

As per data by the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC), around 31% (5,545) of the total cases in the city were reported in the past one week, with an average of 765 new cases reported each day.

In the densely-populated Dharavi, 84 cases of Covid-19 were reported on Friday, taking the total count in Indias largest slums to 1,145. With four deaths reported on Friday, Dharavis Covid-19 death tally stands at 53. As per data from the G-North ward (Dharavi, Dadar, Mahim), there were 11 new cases in Dadar and 14 in Mahim on Friday. The ward has the highest number (1,471) of Covid-19 cases among all the 24 administrative wards in the city.

On Friday, nine staffers of BMCs disaster management control room were also tested positive for Covid-19, taking the total number of operators in the control room ailing from the virus to 14. After five more staffers were tested positive, they were shifted to hotels for quarantine, a senior civic official said.

Meanwhile, several Covid-19 patients were shifted to Covid Care Centres (CCC) that are set up across the city. Chief minister Uddhav Thackeray on Friday inspected a CCC-2 centre (meant to quarantine mild symptomatic or asymptomatic patients) at the NESCO exhibition centre in Goregaon. NESCO Centre will house 1,240 beds, some of which will have oxygen facilities as well. BMC is preparing separate arrangements for women and men, with running hot water systems and fans for each bed.

With a spike in the number of cases in the city and amid concerns of timely transfer of patients to quarantine centres and hospitals, BMC converted 70 Brihanmumbai Electric Supply and Transport (BEST) buses and 15 Maharashtra State Road Transport Corporation (MSRTC) buses into mini-ambulances to ferry suspected and asymptomatic patients or those with mild symptoms from their homes to CCCs. Citizens can call on BMCs disaster helpline 1916 to access the ambulance services, virtual doctor advice and beds availability information.

Meanwhile, the civic body conducted a joint meeting with the suburban divisions of the western and central railways through video conferencing on Friday for completing pre-monsoon works such as desilting railway culverts, providing dewatering pumps, measures for mitigating flooding at railway yards. BMC also asked railways to expedite permissions on areas under the latters jurisdiction for works related to Hancock, Nahur, Vidyavihar and Vikhroli rail overbridges (RoB). Railways has to install dewatering pumps by May 25.

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Method of insolvencies give debtors more power over their bankruptcies

Driven by an almost 40 per cent surge in Individual Voluntary Arrangements

A surge in Individual Voluntary Arrangements (IVAs) has led to an eight per cent increase in personal insolvency cases, official figures have shown today.

Statistics released today by The Insolvency Service, an agency of the Department for Business, show there were 10,397 individual insolvencies in April across England and Wales.

This was in part due to a 39 per cent spike in IVAs to 8,093. The arrangements are a formal alternative for individuals wishing to avoid bankruptcy.

The Insolvency Service explained that the increase in cases may be because of how promptly and frequently IVAs are registered by insolvency practitioners, service providers who are licensed by the agency.

Statistics released today by The Insolvency Service, an agency of the Department for Business, show there were 10,397 individual insolvencies in April across England and Wales

The report also found there had been a 46 per cent fall in bankruptcies to 808 - this included 784 debtor bankruptcies and 24 creditor bankruptcies, where the creditor applies for its borrower to goes into bankruptcy.

Debtor bankruptcies saw a 34 per cent fall, and creditor bankruptcies dropped by 92 per cent.

Ther was also a 37 percent decrease in debt relief orders (DROs) to 1,496, compared with April 2019.

The Insolvency Service said the volume of new company and individual insolvencies increased for most insolvency types in April 2020, when compared with pre-lockdown March figures.

However, the number of company and individual insolvencies dropped in the days immediately after the UK lockdown went into force on March 23.

A report by the Government suggested this was likely a result of a 'combination of factors' including:

HM Courts & Tribunals Service reducing the operational running of the courts and tribunals;

HMRC reducing their enforcement activity;

The Insolvency Service, insolvency practitioners and Companies House having to adjust to new working arrangements;

Delays in documents being provided to Companies House by insolvency practitioners.

The Insolvency Service said it does not record where particular insolvencies relate to the coronavirus pandemic, and it was therefore not possible to state its direct effect on insolvency volumes.

Christina Fitzgerald, vice president at insolvency trade body R3, said the first monthly insolvency figures do not yet provide a clear picture of how the pandemic is affecting insolvencies.

She told Credit Strategy: 'There was a significant month-on-month increase in individual insolvencies, largely driven by a doubling of numbers of IVAs.'

The Insolvency Service, part of the Department of Business, explained that the increase in cases may be because of how promptly and frequently IVAs are registered by insolvency practitioners, service providers who are licensed by the agency

The Government has recently relaxed insolvency rules to give bosses more breathing space when their businesses are hit by coronavirus.

In April, Business Secretary Alok Sharma announced that struggling companies would be able to access supplies and raw materials while restructuring their finances.

There would also be a temporary suspension of wrongful trading rules, applied retrospectively from March 1, meaning that company directors would not be personally liable for their decisions during the pandemic.

He said: 'It is crucial when the crisis passes, as it will, we are ready to bounce back.

'These measures will give those firms extra time and space to weather the storm and be ready when the crisis ends whilst ensuring creditors get the best return possible in the circumstances.

'However, to be clear, all of the other checks and balances that help to ensure directors fulfil their duties properly will remain in force.'
Property investors should not be frightened by the projections of a sharp decline in house prices, says an expert.

Doomsday headlines about a sharp price decline are making rounds in several news sites, highlighting Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) 's recent projection of a 32% drop in values.

A quick google search of CBA's latest projections will show that many news sites have highlighted the 32% drop in prices. Michael Yardney, director of Metropole Property Strategists, said it is crucial to understand that this was CBA's "worst-case scenario".

"This scenario, which is not their base case or most likely scenario, assumes a two-year recession, and that's not what the RBA or the International Monetary Fund believes will happen," Yardney told Your Investment Property.

According to CBA, the most likely to happen is for prices to fall by 11%.

"CBA suggests a shorter downturn is more likely. In fact, if CBA really believed that house price falls of 30% are likely, they would not be lending borrowers 80% or even 90% loan-to-value ratios, wouldn't they?" Yardney said.

Also read: Thinking Long-Term Is Key

In a TV interview with ABC's The Business, CBA CEO Matt Comyn said the 32% price fall assumes unemployment will hit 9% before hitting 6.5% by 2022.

"We need to be prudent and consider a realistic downturn but also plan for a worst-case scenario, and that would see a sustained increase of unemployment," he said.

In an earlier think piece in Property Update, Yardney said investors need to be able to take a long-term perspective when considering price projections.

"To be a successful property investor, you need to step back and take a big picture view and refuse to be scared by the next bogeyman jumping out from behind the bushes," he said.

Yardney believes that the long-term fundamentals of the property market remain very sound, and investors need to act on opportunities that could arise.

"As always, while some people worry about the bad news and sit on the sidelines, strategic investors will set themselves for their future financial freedom by purchasing well-located real estate, recognising they only get a few chances in their lifetime to invest at the beginning of a new property cycle," he said.
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the Electoral Commission and National Identification Authority of conspiring to suppress votes in the strongholds of the party just to rig the 2020 general elections.

Addressing a news conference Thursday afternoon, National Chairman of the party Samuel Ofosu Ampofo alleged that the decision of the Electoral Commission to push for the Ghana Card, birth certificate and Passport as the primary documents required to register during the voters registration exercise is part of a grand scheme to rig the 2020 elections in favour of the governing NPP.

According to Mr Ampofo, the decision by the NIA to increase the number of registration centres in the Ashanti region but keep few in the strongholds of the NDC is part of the voter suppression agenda.

The President seeing defeat staring glaringly at him, he is in conjunction with the Jean Mensa led EC and the Ken Attafuah led NIA desperately scheming to rig the 2020 elections and hold on to power at all cost.

Not even the unusual circumstances we find ourselves in which requires that we pull together for our collective survival as a nation are enough to deter the actors of this plot from their ungodly act.

Mr Ampofo also wondered why the EC would like to ignore the voter ID which he said is the most credible document of identity in the county and rather go for birth certificates which are easily obtainable.

Read full statement below:

PRESS CONFERENCE ADDRESSED BY THE NATIONAL CHAIRMAN OF THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONGRESS, COMRADE SAMUEL OFOSU AMPOFO, ON THE ELECTORAL COMMISSIONS CLANDESTINE PLOY TO RIG THE 2020 GENERAL ELECTIONS IN CONCERT WITH THE NATIONAL IDENTIFICATION AUTHORITY.

Thursday, 14th May, 2020.

Introduction

Good afternoon distinguished friends from the media. It is my singular honour to welcome you all, on behalf of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), to this press conference.

Todays engagement may seem rather unusual to some of you, obviously because our nation is united in a collective fight against the deadly and devastating global Coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), which has ravaged nations, including Ghana, killed and hospitalized thousands, and debilitated most economies across the globe.

Indeed, the National Democratic Congress, led by our Flag-bearer, His Excellency John Dramani Mahama, has deployed every human and material resource at our disposal in support of governments fight against this virus in Ghana. Led by our flag-bearer, and highly respected COVID-19 Technical team, the NDC has distributed close to a thousand PPEs to various hospitals and health facilities across the country, food and other consumables to thousands of deprived households and offered very useful technical and professional advice to government as we wage a collective war against a common enemy.

Distinguished friends from the media, while we all continue to rally round the Ghana flag to support government in this difficult time, it does appear that the Jean Mensah-led EC, ably supported by the Ken Attafuah-led NIA are only interested in rigging the 2020 general elections for President Akufo-Addo and the ruling New Patriotic Party through voter suppression in NDC strongholds.

We have invited you here this afternoon to explain to you in detail, our concerns over the management of the processes for the December 2020 elections and what is clearly a conspiracy between the EC, NIA and President Akufo1Addo to rig the 2020 general elections. It is the kind of conspiracy that has plunged many a country into chaos and instability. We of the NDC do not wish this for our dear country, hence our constant warnings.

The NIAs Exclusion of Voters ID Card from Requirements of Registration

Ladies and gentlemen of the press, the National Identification Authority was set up with the mandate to issue national ID cards and manage the National Identification System (NIS) as per the National Identification Authority Act, 2006 (Act 707). Subsequently, The National Identity Register Act, 2008 (Act 750) was passed to govern the functions and operations of the NIA.

Upon extensive consultations with all stakeholders including Political Parties, the following registration requirements were provided under section 8 of Act 750 to establish ones eligibility to be registered by the Authority for a national ID card:

* Voter identity card,

* Drivers license,

* Passport or

* a baptismal certificate

Upon assumption of office in the year 2017, President Akufo-Addo immediately set in motion his rigging agenda by causing this law, (Act 750) to be amended by the passage of The National Identity Register (Amendment Act), 2017 (Act 950). This new law (950) excluded the Voters ID card and the Drivers License from the list of registration requirements without any legal or legitimate basis.

The exclusion of the Voters ID card from the requirements of registration for the national ID card by the Akufo-Addo government, was part of a well calculated scheme to disenfranchise a good number of Ghanaians from acquiring the national ID card (Ghana card), which was to be used subsequently, as one of the registration requirements in the new voters register plan they had long hatched.

Friends from the media, the exclusion of the voters ID card from the registration requirements for the Ghana card was completely untenable as it contradicts every known best practice in Identity Management. All across the world, Experts in the field of Identity Management agree that an identity document for a national database must be possessed by a significant number of the population, prevent duplication, and has enough information for easy verification of identity.

Per this international standard, the Ghanaian Voters Identity Card ranks exceptionally high amongst all the identity cards that have been provided under Act 950. In spite of this fact, President Akufo-Addo Addo and the ruling NPP have persistently bastardized the Voters ID card, excluded same and rather promoted a total reliance on Birth Certificate and Passport (which requires the birth certificate to obtain), as the main registration requirements for the Ghana card, despite the relatively low integrity and credibility of these identity documents.

This point is buttressed by the Paper Citizen documentary of Joy FM which exposed how Birth Certificates are cheaply and illegally procured by both citizens and foreigners with the aid of some corrupt officials at the National Headquarters and Regional Offices of the Birth and Death Registry.

Our position on this matter all along has been that, the NIAs total reliance on the Birth Certificate and Passport as the main registration requirements for the Ghana card is problematic and will lead to a situation where about 76% of Ghanaians will have no ID documents to establish their eligibility. These persons would have to go through a cumbersome process of obtaining a sworn oath before they can be registered for the Ghana card; a process we have maintained will slow down the registration process and disenfranchise a lot of Ghanaians.

Consequences of NIAs over-reliance on the Sworn Oath Option

Ladies and gentlemen of the media, you would recall that right from the outset of the Ghana card registration exercise, we cautioned the NIA that their choice of breeder documents (Birth Certificate and Passport), coupled with their own methods for the instant issuance of cards will lead to a snail's pace registration process.

However, the Attafuah-led NIA rejected this good counsel and decided to take a gamble, in the hope that the sworn oath option, which per best practices, is supposed to be employed to register a very small percentage (usually 5%) of the population who do not have any form of identification, could cure the problem we had foreseen.

As we predicted, the Ghana card registration process by the NIA has been very slow such that till date, the process which commenced with a pilot late 2017 and was supposed to be completed in one year, has been able to register only 11,062,055 out of about 19 Million Ghanaians (15 years and above) who are eligible to be registered. Even more bizarre is the fact that, out of this 11 million Ghanaians who have been registered, only 7,074,048 have been issued with cards (per NIAs own website https:nia.gov.gh) as at 2nd May, 2020).

In spite of several assurances made in Parliament and in the media by the President, The Head of NIA and Electoral Commission that the Ghana Card is not going to be used for the 2020 elections, the Government and the Commission are currently pushing a legislation in Parliament to make the Ghana Card and Ghanaian Passport the main breeder documents for registration as a voter, thus excluding the use of the Commissions' own existing voters ID card.

The objective is to disenfranchise a significant number of persons in NDC strongholds in furtherance of the Jean Mensah-led ECs grand scheme to rig the 2020 general elections for the New Patriotic Party.

According to the NIAs own data, out of an estimated population of 17.3 million being 18 years and above, only 6.5 million have been issued with the Ghana Card. The implication is that, almost 11 million (constituting 62%) of eligible voters will have to go through the sworn oath option to be able to register for a Voters ID, if the ECs illogical and wasteful decision to compile a needless new Voters Register for the 2020 general elections materializes.

Ladies and Gentlemen, even more disturbing is the breakdown of percentage per region of those who have to go through sworn oath to register as voters as depicted by the table below;

Ladies and Gentlemen, it is worth pointing out the following notable regions:

1. The Upper West Region, out of the estimated registrable population of 472,391 only 24,427 representing 5.17% have been issued with the NIA cards. This means 94.83% must go through the Sworn Oath option.

2. Out of 708,584 estimated registrable population for the Upper East Region, 45,076 representing 6.36% have been issued with the NIA cards. Hence, 93.64% must go through the Sworn Oath option.

3. Coming down to the Ahafo Region through to the Central Region, the situation is no different. In Ahafo for instance, out of 349,474 registrable population, only 27,166 representing 7.77% have been issued with the NIA cards leaving as many as 92.23% that must go through the Sworn Oath option.

Considering the time limitation imposed on the nation by Covid-19, this is not only impracticable but simply defies common sense and will surely disenfranchise a lot of eligible voters if the EC is allowed to proceed on this dangerous path.

Ladies and gentlemen, in sharp contrast to the suppression of Ghana card registration in mostly regions which are known to NDC strongholds, the Ken Attafuah-led NIA massively mobilized unprecedented number of registration equipment for the exercise in the stronghold of the ruling NPP, the Ashanti Region.

Prior to the Ghana card registration in the Ashanti Region, an average of 2,000 registration equipment per region were deployed. However, when it got the turn of the Ashanti region, the NIA miraculously increased the number of equipment for the exercise to 5,692. Also, the NIA provided additional 810 card printers to improve throughput and delivery and added 3,192 workstations to the pool during the Ashanti region registration exercise.

This is the same reason why President Akufo-Addo encouraged the NIA to continue the Ghana card registration process in the Eastern Region, another stronghold of the NPP, even as he was restricting movement and gatherings, including church and mosque prayer services in the wake of Ghana recording positive cases of the coronavirus.

Conclusion

Distinguished friends from the media, it does appear that the President who at age 74 is in the twilight of his long stint in politics, is not concerned about the future of Ghana, its peace, stability and the survival of democracy. Prior to becoming President, Akufo-Addo had presented himself as the paragon of excellence where democracy and rule of law are concerned. However, since becoming President, all his actions have unfortunately proven that was all talk, not substance.

Having failed to deliver on his promises to the people of this country, and seeing defeat staring glaringly at him, he in conjunction with the Jean Mensah-led EC and the Ken Attafuah-led NIA are desperately scheming to rig the 2020 general elections and hold on to power at all cost. Not even the unusual circumstances we find ourselves in, which require that we pull together for our collective survival as a nation, are enough to deter the actors of this plot from their ungodly act. While our country craves for vital investments and resources to overcome the COVID-19 scourge, President Akufo-Addo, aided by his ever pliable collaborators is bent on wasting huge sums of the taxpayers money to invite trouble for this country.

Ladies and gentlemen, election rigging is not a one day event. It takes place over time through the systematic manipulation of processes leading to Election Day. We have long raised red flags and alerted civil society, religious leaders, traditional rulers, the media and all peace-loving Ghanaians of the sinister rigging agenda of the Jean Mensah-led EC and the dangers it portends for our beloved country.

Indeed, many are those who have responded to the situation by even publicly questioning the rationale for a new voters register when the nation has an existing voters register which has delivered two (2) credible general elections and three credible (3) District Level Elections with legitimate outcomes.

It is to reassure the electorate of free and fair elections devoid of manipulation that the EC created IPAC whose inputs have over the years helped to guarantee a level playing field for all the political parties. Unfortunately, the Jean Mensah-led EC decided from the word go not to accord IPAC the same level of cooperation and respect as had been the case since 1994.

The conspiracy to use the Ghana card, Ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why at each and every turn, Jean Mensah seems impervious of the implications of her conduct and decisions. Her only mission and motivation, it appears, is to please President Akufo Addo and ensure his re-election for a second term.

The rigging of the procurement processes that led to the selection of Thales, a company of questionable background as the suppliers of BVRs for the EC; the decision to exclude the existing Voters ID card and rather include the Ghana card whose issuance has been fraught with serious anomalies, as a registration requirement for the illogical and needless new voters register the EC is seeking to foist on the nation, are all part of the grand rigging conspiracy of President Akufo-Addo, the Jean Mensah-led EC and the Ken Attafuah-led NIA.

But the NDC shall employ every legitimate means to stop this evil conspiracy to rig the 2020 elections and subvert the democracy of this country.

Aluta Continua victoria acerta.

Long live the NDC!

Long Live Ghana!
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L.A.'s essential workers face a higher risk of coronavirus infection on the job. Many of them are coming home to overcrowded housing conditions, putting their family members at risk, too.

Southern California's unaffordable housing costs have forced workers such as McDonald's employee Laura Pozos to cram into tight quarters. She lives in a three-bedroom house in Commerce with 10 other family members.

"Rents are really expensive, and we don't have enough money for all of us to pay for separate homes," Pozos said.

AT RISK ON THE JOB -- AND BRINGING THAT RISK BACK TO A CROWDED HOME

As a food service worker, Pozos is among those officially designated by the state of California as an "essential" worker. In late March, she worked in close proximity with a co-worker who was later hospitalized with COVID-19.

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Pozos said the Monterey Park location where she works did not provide workers with masks, adequate hand sanitizer or the ability to maintain six feet of distance from other employees.

Pozos walked off the job with her co-workers to demand more protective gear. She said she worried about getting sick at work and spreading the illness at home.

"I was scared of infecting my whole family and putting all the people here at risk, including my daughters and grandchildren," Pozos said.

McDonald's representative Mike Vizza emailed us a statement saying that after the company found out about the hospitalized worker in Monterey Park, employees were asked to stay home with pay.

"As soon as we were notified of this confirmed case on April 8, we conducted a thorough sanitization procedure per CDC guidelines and notified local health authorities," Vizza said.

Pozos still doesn't feel safe returning to work. She's currently seeking paid family leave. She said other family members are still working in essential jobs, and they've developed a routine for re-entering the house after work.

"When we're coming home, we tell the girls, 'Shut yourselves in your room until we can come in and bathe.' And then we can see them," she said.

CROWDED HOUSING LEADS TO A PUBLIC HEALTH 'MULTIPLIER EFFECT'

According to U.S. Census data, L.A. has the most severely overcrowded housing of any large metro area in the country. Residents are squeezing into small homes, sometimes using living rooms, kitchens and other spaces as makeshift bedrooms.

Overcrowded housing is not a new problem in L.A. But now it could make controlling the spread of infection more difficult.

A recent analysis from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC) finds that California's essential workers are more likely than nonessential workers to live in crowded housing. The problem is especially pronounced for lower-income workers who often have no choice but to work in close proximity with others.

"There is this kind of multiplier effect of people who are out in the community, and then bringing back risk to additional people in their crowded living conditions," said PPIC research fellow Paulette Cha.

PPIC researchers found that 21% of essential workers in L.A. County live in overcrowded housing. Orange County has a similarly high rate at 20%.

Cramped living conditions are even more common for certain types of essential workers. For instance, 29% of California food prep workers deal with overcrowding at home.

Overcrowding also affects some ethnicities more than others, with 18.4% of Latino households statewide living in overcrowded conditions compared with just 2.4% of white households.

A recent UC San Francisco study found that among a sample of San Francisco Mission District residents and workers who tested positive for COVID-19, 95% were Latino. Many reported that they were unable to work from home.

"This particular public health crisis of COVID-19 is something that is spread through close contact," Cha said. Given that California's housing is often so crowded, she said "the housing crisis is now becoming part of this larger public health crisis."

QUARANTINE IN CLOSE QUARTERS

Workers now face tough choices when they get sick. For some, quarantining at home in isolation from other family members is physically impossible.

One Domino's worker in L.A. said his family even paid for a hotel room so he could quarantine in isolation for 12 days after testing positive.

The state of California has launched a program that provides hotel rooms to frontline health care workers, in order to minimize their risk of infecting family members at home. But no such program exists for other essential workers.

"More and more health care workers are taking advantage of this service and we are constantly evaluating the needs on the frontlines," said a spokesperson for California's Department of General Services.
Spain will not be able to open up to tourists until coronavirus is under control, says the countrys foreign minister, suggesting the chances British holidaymakers could return to the costas this year were slim.

Arancha Gonzalez Laya said European countries will have to come up with innovative ways for people to be able to board planes and buses in order for international travel to resume in some way in 2020.

This year will be tough because we will not be able to welcome the tourists as we have in previous years because of health and safety, not only of tourists but also of Spaniards, she said during an exclusive interview with The Independent.

As soon as we have coronavirus under control we will be able to gradually open our country.

After imposing one of the strictest lockdowns in the world in March, Spain has begun a phased easing of restrictions with regions lifting measures at different times  depending on infection levels and the number of hospital beds available. Travel between different parts of Spain is still banned.

Spains left-wing government on Friday extended its ban on all but essential travel to 15 June. At the same time it has ordered that anyone entering Spain must be subject to a 14-day quarantine to halt the spread of coronavirus.

Only Spanish nationals, foreigners with residency permits, transport workers, diplomats and airline staff are exempt from the travel ban by air, sea and land.

Everyone who arrives from abroad must stay in isolation for 14 days at a specified address. They can only go out to buy food, seek medical help or for emergencies.

Ms Gonzalez said, however, she was attracted to the proposal by the European Commission to open up travel between green zones across the continent where infection levels were lower.

The Balearic Islands and the Canaries, two of the most popular tourist destinations in Spain, have seen lower infection rates than parts of the mainland and have already eased strict lockdown rules.

This has already been seen on the continent, with Germany starting to lift border restrictions with Austria and France.

Baltic states Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania also reopened their shared borders on Friday, allowing citizens to move freely for business and pleasure in the EUs first travel bubble.

In principle I find it appealing to imagine that there could be a gradual opening between the parts of Europe which have been less affected by Covid-19, but what is more important is that we should invest in common protocols so that every person who travels to another country can do that in conditions of health and safety, said Ms Gonzalez.

We should simplify travel and also the business of travel. Lets not forget there are millions of jobs in tourism.

Spain is the second most popular tourist destination in the world after France and just over 18 million Britons spent their holidays there last year.

Tourism accounts for 12.3 per cent of Spains GDP, and 12.7 per cent of jobs, according to the countrys National Statistics Institute.

 Coronavirus: Spain allows adults out to exercise for first time in seven weeks

This has all but stopped after the country suffered one of the worst outbreaks in the world, with more 27,000 fatalities.

But the death rate has fallen over the past month, with 138 losing their lives on Friday compared with 217 on Thursday.

In order to start rebuilding, Spain  along with France and Italy  has pushed for the European Union to come to the rescue of southern states, which have suffered badly from the coronavirus outbreak. The idea being pushed is one of a modern day version of the Marshall Fund, which came into action to help the battered economies of European countries after the Second World War.

Ms Gonzalez called for the approval a fund of up to 1.5 trillion at a meeting of the European Council next month to help with the rapid reconstruction of the eurozone economies.

We are saying that this fund should be implemented very fast to avoid what happened in the last crisis [when the response] was very protracted, she said.

Ms Gonzalez, 50, who previously worked as an adviser to the EC trade commission, said that the European Union was the love of her life.

I am a firm believer in the EU and at moments like this one, when the world is going through a big crisis, the response has to be for us to give a better political impulse, understanding the means by which we can better protect our citizens, she said.
OET, the worlds only international English language test specifically for healthcare professionals, has signed an agreement with global leader in technology-enabled assessment and testing solutions, Prometric.

The immediate focus of the relationship will be on aiming to launch a computer-based version of OET in the coming months that candidates can take safely and securely in the comfort of their own home through remote proctoring. This will allow OET to resume test delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic and to continue to empower global healthcare by supporting the ongoing registration of overseas-trained healthcare professionals.

As the name suggests, remote proctoring is managed remotely, under strict test conditions, by proctors who understand the high-stakes nature of the test.

OET will be working concurrently on the availability of computer-based testing through dedicated test venues, as well as on resuming the paper-based test as soon as possible through our existing network of test venues.

OET Chief Operating Officer Richard Brown said the signing of the agreement with Prometric was the culmination of a very competitive and thorough tender process that focussed on finding a highly secure solution that would meet the organisations commitment to delivering an excellent experience for our customers.

Sujata Stead, CEO of OET, commented: We are very excited about working with Prometric, one of the largest and most experienced testing organisations in the world. Over time, this relationship will allow us to expand our reach globally and to increase testing capacity and frequency.

Prometric is pleased to be selected by OET as its remote assessment partner, said Roy Simrell, CEO of Prometric. We will leverage the considerable investment in our proven live proctoring solution to provide secure global access to the OET testing program. The ability to utilize the same reliable and easy-to-use testing system, whether in-person or online, will have value to both organizations well into the future.

While computer-based testing and remote proctoring will bring changes to the delivery mode, the test format and tasks, and level of English assessed will remain the same.

The Reading, Listening and Writing sub-tests of OET will be available via computer-based delivery and the Speaking sub-test will be carried out with a human interlocutor via video conferencing software. The live human involvement and role-play nature of the OET Speaking sub-test, which is one of the key benefits of the test, will not be compromised.

OET is working closely with organisations who recognise the test towards the ongoing acceptance of results issued via this delivery mode.

About OET

OET has been designed to assess candidates ability to communicate effectively in the healthcare workplace and to ensure they can deliver high quality and safe care in English-speaking healthcare environments.

The test has been developed specifically for 12 different healthcare professions and test tasks replicate real communication scenarios from the workplace. Healthcare regulators, governments and education institutions throughout the world rely on OET, including in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Singapore and Dubai.

OET is available at more than 150 venues in 44 countries. For more information visit http://www.occupationalenglishtest.org.

About Prometric

Prometric, a global leader in test development, test delivery, and candidate services, enables test sponsors worldwide to advance their credentialing programs through test development and delivery solutions that set the standard in quality and service excellence. Prometric offers a comprehensive and reliable approach to advising, developing, managing and delivering programs in an integrated, technology-enabled environment across the worlds most secure testing network, including 14,000 locations in more than 180 countries or through the conveniences of online assessment services. For more information, visit www.prometric.com or follow us on Twitter at @PrometricGlobal and www.linkedin.com/company/prometric/.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005201/en/
New funding to boost government-funded Adult and Community Education will give more than 11,000 New Zealanders opportunities to learn.

This includes a modern approach to rebuilding night classes, which were slashed in the middle of our last economic crisis in 2010, says Education Minister Chris Hipkins.

Budget 2020 included a $16 million boost to Adult and Community Education to help providers meet the increased needs for training and upskilling.

It will expand courses to better support people displaced from work and facing barriers to entering the labour market, and people experiencing social isolation.

"It's the governments strong view that people of all ages deserve opportunities to learn throughout their lives.

With this funding boost, New Zealanders will have access to more courses throughout the country, including night classes.

This could include courses that build digital knowledge  which is increasingly essential in the modern world, foundational courses that give people opportunities in areas with skills shortages, and courses for people who can feel isolated.

ACE is accessible, inclusive and tends to be relatively inexpensive, which reduces barriers to participation and provides pathways to employment and further education and training.

Based on current levels of funding and the number of learners currently accessing government-funded ACE, we expect this initiative to benefit up to 11,300 New Zealanders.

The funding will also support the ongoing operation of ACE Aotearoa who play an important leadership and co-ordination role across the sector and will help ensure the effective implementation of this initiative throughout New Zealand, says Chris.
San Francisco, May 15 : Microsoft has joined forces with healthcare company UnitedHealth Group to launch an innovative return-to-workplace protocol supported by the "ProtectWell" smartphone app that screens for COVID-19 symptoms and clears employees for daily work, the two organisations said on Friday.

ProtectWell helps employees determine they are safe to go to work, co-workers know their colleagues have been screened, and employers feel confident that their workplace is ready to do business.

It incorporates US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidelines and the latest clinical research to limit the spread of COVID-19 by screening employees for symptoms and establishing guidelines to support the health and safety of the workforce and workplace.

ProtectWell combines UnitedHealth Group's clinical and data analytics capabilities with Microsoft's technology leadership to help in the next phases of COVID-19 recovery efforts.

The ProtectWell app is powered by Microsoft Azure, AI and analytics solutions, and also takes advantage of the Microsoft Healthcare Bot service, which is being used around the world for AI-assisted COVID-19 symptom triaging.

"As businesses begin to reopen, employers will need to monitor and manage their workforce for COVID-19 symptoms to help ensure those at risk of spreading the virus stay home until cleared by medical providers," Microsoft Executive Vice President, Worldwide Commercial Business, Judson Althoff, said in a statement.

"Microsoft is pleased to join with UnitedHealth Group to launch ProtectWell, which helps organisations manage the complexity of this undertaking." The app includes an AI-powered health care bot that asks users a series of questions to screen for COVID-19 symptoms or exposure.

If risk of infection is indicated, employers can direct their employees to a streamlined COVID-19 testing process that enables closed-loop ordering and reporting of test results directly back to employers.

Health care information is managed by UnitedHealth Group and employers in accordance with occupational health laws.

In addition, ProtectWell includes guidelines and resources to support a safe work environment, including physical distancing, personal hygiene, sanitation and more. Employers can also choose additional custom content specific to their workforce for a personalised experience.

"As we plan for a safe and careful return to the workplace, employers need clear guidelines to ensure a safe environment and a robust process for employees to screen themselves for COVID-19 symptoms," said Ken Ehlert, chief scientific officer, UnitedHealth Group.

"We are pleased to collaborate with Microsoft to launch ProtectWell - a simple and effective tool to ensure employers and employees have the information and resources they need to keep themselves, their colleagues and the public safe and healthy." UnitedHealth Group has implemented ProtectWell with its own frontline health care workers, is in process of implementing the tool across its business to enable safe return of team members to the workplace, and is making the platform available to all employers in the United States at no charge.

Microsoft said it intends to deploy ProtectWell for its US-based employees.
Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas stunned fans with their steamy appearance in the new music video from the Puerto Rican rapper Residente.

And fellow A-lister Zoe Saldana was not to be outdone in the steamy stakes as she joined her husband Marco Perego in engaging in a passionate smooch for the video.

In a clip shared with her 7.2million Instagram followers, the actress and the Italian artist, both 41, who share two-year-old son Zen and five-year-old twin sons Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, could not resist one another.

Oh my! A-lister Zoe Saldana was not to be outdone in the steamy stakes as she joined her husband Marco Perego in engaging in a passionate smooch for the video

Zoe looked stunning in the clip as she donned a pretty red dress while allowing her lengthy brunette locks to fall in tumbling lengths down her back.

Clad in a tan T-shirt with braces and grey trousers, Marco was every inch the trendy artist in his stylish look while his hair was worn in a bun.

Adding a caption on the video, Zoe penned: 'Thank you @residente. By asking us to be a part of this you reminded us to hold this space in love, now more than ever. From (dominican) Queens, NY to Milano, Italy.'

They joined the celebrity-filled video - in which a number of stars share a passionate videos of themselves kissing. called, Antes Que El Mundo Se Acabe, which translates to Before the World End, featured 'More than 100 kisses around the world'.

Oh my! In a clip shared with her 7.2million Instagram followers, the actress and the Italian artist, both 41, who share two-year-old son Zen and five-year-old twin sons Cy Aridio and Bowie Ezio, could not resist one another

Lovebirds: Ben Affleck, 47, and Ana de Armas, 32, made their most public declaration of love to date when they kissed in the star-studded new Residente music video, released Thursday

The seven-minute video also included Ricky Martin and his husband Jwan Yosef, Bad Bunny and Gabriela Berlingeri and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel and his wife, Spanish actress Maria Valverde.

The featured kissers, both famous and not, all sent in their videos from wherever they were located at the moment.

Back in 2013, Zoe and Marco tied the knot in a secret ceremony after just a few months of dating - after which she admitted she knew from the offset that they would end up together.

Lady in red! Zoe looked stunning in the clip as she donned a pretty red dress while allowing her lengthy brunette locks to fall in tumbling lengths down her back

In 2014, she told Marie Claire: 'I don't do the ABCs. I do what my heart says, what my heart feels. So from the moment I met my husband, we were together. We knew.'

They began dating in January 2013, shortly after her split from Bradley Cooper. Months later, they were married. When asked about what she's learned from relationships, Zoe was adamant, that one must not settle.

In her impassioned message, she said: 'If you're not happy with a person, leave. And wait until you find that one person who makes you feel good about yourself every single day and is not expecting you to change, but to grow.

Trendy: Clad in a tan T-shirt with braces and grey trousers, Marco was every inch the trendy artist in his stylish look while his hair was worn in a bun
By Peter Nurse

Investing.com - The U.S. dollar has given back some of its overnight gains in early European trade Friday, but remains in favor as risk aversion still dominates, amid rising Sino-U.S. tensions.

At 2:45 AM ET (0645 GMT), the U.S. Dollar Index, which tracks the greenback against a basket of six other currencies, stood at 100.365, down 0.1%, having earlier Friday reached a three-week high.

EUR/USD fell 0.03% to 1.0800 ahead of a revised German GDP reading at 4 AM, while USD/JPY dropped 0.1% to 107.17.

U.S. President Donald Trump ratcheted up these tensions in an interview with Fox Business Network on Thursday, stating he was disappointed with China's failure to contain the coronavirus, that this had cast a pall over the trade deal between the two countries. He suggested he could even cut off ties.

It cannot be ruled out that he would pull out of the phase-one trade deal and start putting tariffs back on China, said analysts at Danske Bank, in a note to investors.

He would risk hurting the economy even further as well as jeopardize important farmer votes in key swing states if China pulls the plug on agricultural purchases. On the other hand, he could gain politically from taking a tough stance on China.

The yuan, which is highly sensitive to relations between the world's two biggest economies, was on the back foot and touched a one-week low of 7.1026 in onshore trade.

At 02:45 AM ET, USD/CNY traded at 7.1003, up 0.1%, as the market struggled to take a clear lead from data that showed Chinese industrial production rebounding in April but retail sales still down 7.5% on the year.

The deteriorating relationship between these two important countries is the latest potential spanner in the works of global growth, given worries about a second wave of infections and the slow reopening of economies badly hit by the social distancing measures introduced to combat the virus.

With this in mind, it may be worth keeping an eye on the Swiss franc and its relationship with the euro, with the single currency hitting an almost five-year low against the franc of 1.0510 - near the level that many deem to be the unofficial line the Swiss National Bank defends. The euro has been bumping against support at the 1.05 level for the last month.

Story continues

At 02:45 AM ET, EUR/CHF traded at 1.0516, up 0.04%.

Recent events in Europe have led to increased tensions along many of the same stress points that have troubled the region over the last decade, and this has put renewed appreciation pressure on the traditional safe haven currency on the continent, said Michael Cahill, an economist at Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS), reported by Bloomberg.

Elsewhere, the British pound remained under pressure at $1.2196, down 0.25%, after touching a five-week low of $1.2161 overnight as the British government reiterated its refusal to extend the Brexit transition deadline beyond December. The third round of talks on the post-Brexit trading relationship with the EU winds up today.

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The backlog of surgeries that were cancelled due to the pandemic will take two years to clear.

The University of Birmingham estimates the Irish backlog to be 16,000, which includes cancer operations.

Researchers estimate less than 180 surgeries will be cleared every week when the suspension is fully lifted.

Dr Martin Daly, a former president of the Irish Medical Organisation, says health officials must urgently address the issue.

"I think the focus now must move from us learning to live with the coronavirus to trying to live a normal life and trying to get back to looking after people's health conditions other than the coronavirus.

"There is no doubt there is increasing concern among the medical profession about the backlog of cases both in clinics and in deferred surgery."

Dr Daly said the imperative now must be to try and use the space in the private hospitals and any other extra capacity there is to start doing surgeries that have been pushed for the last month.

"It is absolutely vital that people who have other health conditions are looked after as well."
Anti-government demonstrators clash with security forces in Baghdad on Jan. 25, 2020, as protests against corruption and unemployment spread across the country. (Hadi Mizban / Associated Press)

After months of being run by a caretaker government, Iraqs Parliament has finally approved a new prime minister, the former intelligence chief Mustafa Kadhimi. To succeed, Kadhimi will need to make progress on two policy fronts: finding a way, with Washington, to sustain the U.S. military partnership, and developing a plan for economic reform and renewal.

Iraqs problems are even more daunting now than they have been in recent years. After the U.S killing in January of Qassam Suleimani, the Iranian military mastermind, as well as an Iraqi militia leader, Iraqs parliament approved a nonbinding resolution that American forces should leave the country. After rocket attacks on March 11 killed two Americans and a British soldier, the U.S. retaliated against the suspected perpetrator, an Iran-backed militia.

American forces are taking precautions and consolidating positions in fewer, better-protected bases, but the situation remains highly fraught. It is not clear if the government, as opposed to the parliament, will now support the American military presence.

There is little doubt that Iraqis and Americans are better off working together, especially now.

For Iraqis, the American presence is an important counterweight to Iran and Islamic State. Americans are also helpful with Iraqi internal politics, especially with sectarian divisions in the security forces, often defusing tensions and mistrust between them. That was true during the surge of 2007-08. With Islamic State stepping up attacks during the COVID-19 lockdown, this concern is again acute.

For the United States, there are also important reasons to sustain a close partnership. That became crystal clear in 2014, when President Obama, after having celebrated the withdrawal of all U.S. troops from Iraq in 2011, had to send them back to contend with Islamic State. Otherwise, even larger refugee flows into Europe and beyond would have resulted, and major centers of oil production near the Persian Gulf could have been threatened.

Story continues

Islamic State and other terrorist groups remain a threat today, even if they no longer hold territory in Iraq. They are deploying new tactics of small-scale, hit and run operations that take advantage of the gaps in security that have resulted from redeployments of Iraqi soldiers and police to ensure compliance with coronavirus lockdown restrictions. Today, the role of U.S. forces is mostly to support Iraqi soldiers and police with training and technical assistance rather than combat-related operations.

Sustaining American support in Iraq will require greater clarity between Baghdad and Washington on rules of engagement. Iraq needs to do much more to help protect American bases and other interests in the country. The United States needs to limit any unilateral use of military force against those who may have fired upon its forces. Any retaliatory actions, however justifiable, should be undertaken only after consultation and agreement between the two governments.

The new Iraqi government also needs a strategy for weakening and eliminating the Iran-backed and other private militias. They helped with the defeat of Islamic State, but are also destabilizing forces. Militia fighters or small units capable of combat could be recruited into the armed security services. Others should be offered compensation and job opportunities. The ability to make progress on this front will be an important indicator of whether the new Iraqi prime minister can stabilize the country in a way most of his predecessors could not.

On the economic front, frustrations with corruption and lack of opportunity had already produced mass demonstrations in 2019 unlike any seen in recent decades. That was before COVID-19 and the associated drop in oil prices.

It will take time to recover from the current crisis, not to mention decades of corruption and misrule by Iraqi elites. But Kadhimi can buy time, and support, by persuading the Parliament to pass petroleum revenue-sharing laws that allocate funds consistently and equitably across the entire country, with revenues distributed on the basis of provincial population.

High unemployment is also a major problem, a key cause of many demonstrations throughout Iraq. If done fairly, privatization of state-owned entities could help. A legacy of state dominance of the economy continues to stymie economic growth and job creation.

Protesters have also demanded early parliamentary elections, which the government should schedule within a year. Before the vote, it needs to replace the electoral commission and its sectarian quota system with an electoral commission largely composed of independent judges.

Many of these changes could benefit from American technical assistance and aid. But none will require significant new resources. After years of conflict and acrimony, the two countries still need each other. It may yet be possible to turn the corner and enter a more productive relationship. Lets hope Baghdad and Washington can seize the moment.

Sara Allawi is the head of the youth movement of the Iraqi National Party. Michael OHanlon is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.




TUCSON, AZTwo men from Tucson are accused of trying to meet up with children for sex, according to the Arizona Department of Public Safety.

On the morning of April 27, 2020, detectives said they got in touch with a man who was attempting to arrange a meeting with an underage victim. Detectives identified Juan C. Lopez, 33, of Tucson, as the suspect and arrested him the same day. Lopez faces charges of luring a minor for sexual exploitation and attempted sexual conduct with a minor.



Pictured: Juan C. Lopez (Courtesy: Arizona Department of Public Safety)

Later that same evening, AZDPS officials said another detective contacted a different suspect, who also attempted to arrange a meeting with a minor for sexual purposes. The suspect, 18-year-old Luis A. Duarte, also of Tucson, was arrested the following night. Duarte faces charges of aggravated luring a minor for sexual exploitation and attempted sexual conduct with a minor.



Pictured: Luis A. Duarte (Courtesy: Arizona Department of Public Safety)

Protecting children from internet predators is a top priority for law enforcement everywhere, especially for our detectives assigned to the ICAC Task Force(link is external), said Lt. Colonel Deston Coleman Jr., Assistant Director of the Criminal Investigations Division at AZDPS. Taking these predators off the street will go a long way toward making Arizona safer. We stand ready to assist communities across the state in protecting vulnerable children against these criminals.



Don't miss local and statewide news about coronavirus developments and precautions. Sign up for Patch alerts and daily newsletters. Also, for updated coverage on national news surrounding coronavirus, sign up for the Patch Across America daily newsletter.



This article originally appeared on the Tucson Patch
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Linkedin News Desk (Agence France-Presse) Sydney, Australia  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:30 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8610c9 2 World Australia,coronavirus,COVID-19,COVID-19-lockdown,reopening,virus-corona,novel-coronavirus,SARS-CoV-2,pandemic,health Free

Restaurants, cafes and bars in Australia's most populous state reopened on Friday after a two-month coronavirus lockdown, boosting the federal government's bid to get people back in work and the economy back on track.

The easing of some quarantine measures in New South Wales (NSW) state came just a day after the national statistics office reported unprecedented record high job losses and Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that worse was still to come.

"While there isn't too much to be celebrating with the difficult circumstances we face, and particularly yesterday's unemployment numbers, it is welcome sign that we are on the way back," Morrison said on Friday.

In Sydney, locals braved a cold, wet morning to catch up with friends and family over a coffee as cafes, restaurants and bars opened under the proviso they limit patrons to 10 at any one time.

"It is such a treat," said Jess Best, who met up with a friend in a cafe in the city's eastern suburbs. "To be able to sit down with other people around and chat to my friend. I can have a normal morning, not hiding away in my home."

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian cautioned people to remain vigilant and maintain social distancing.

"Easing restrictions has failed in so many places around the world and I don't want that to happen in NSW, I want people to have personal responsibility for the way we respond," she said.

NSW and Victoria, the country's second most populous state, reported a total of 29 new cases on Friday, a bump up from the recent daily average of fewer than 20.

Australia has recorded just over 7,000 COVID-19 cases, including 98 deaths, significantly below the levels reported in North America and Europe. Officials said on Friday that only 50 people remained in hospital.

Officials have credited lockdown measures adopted in March, including closing the country's borders and ordering people to stay home unless on essential business, with constraining the virus' spread.

State and territory leaders across the country are now rolling out a three-stage plan, following different timetables, to remove lockdown measures.

Morrison wants the bulk of restrictions gone by July to revive a national economy that had experienced more than two decades of uninterrupted growth before the pandemic. Most economists are now forecasting a recession.

In NSW, schools are slowly reopening, private households will be able to have five guests, public gatherings were expanded to 10 people from two and public swimming pools reopened with a maximum of 10 people allowed in the water.

"It's amazing to be able to swim again," said Jenny Finikiotis as she emerged from at the Bronte Swimming Club's ocean pool. "The water is so warm, it's crystal clear and the best it has been all summer, probably because there has been no one here swimming in it."

Beers on tap

In the Northern Territory, where case numbers have been low and there have been no deaths, pubs opened with no restrictions on patron numbers.

"I think I've earned one and I think I lot of territorians out there have earned a beer as well," Chief Minister Michael Gunner said, pouring a beer at the Cavenagh Hotel in Darwin as the clock struck midday.

Victoria, which reported 21 new cases, is currently retaining most of its lockdown measures.

Morrison is hoping the resumption of some businesses will help get the economy on a firmer footing, a goal that has been partly overshadowed by a diplomatic spat with China, Australia's largest trading partner, over Australia's push for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

China earlier this week suspended the export licenses of several of Australia's largest beef processors and proposed tariffs of 80% onAustralian barley shipments, in what many viewed as retaliatory actions.

"When it comes to our relationship with China, it is built on mutual benefit," Morrison said on Friday.
High-profile human rights lawyer Amal Clooney has urged Australia to go after companies complicit in human rights abuses including against Uighur Muslims in China.

The Lebanese-British barrister on Friday morning appeared before a parliamentary inquiry into whether Australia should adopt Magnitsky-style laws against human rights offenders.

Amal Clooney is calling for Australia to adopt the sanctions regime. Credit:AP

The Morrison government has initiated an inquiry into enacting legislation modelled on the US laws, which would give it the power to seize the assets of human rights offenders and ban them from entering the country.

The sanctions regime - which has also been adopted in Canada and Britain - allow for the imposition of visa and property-related sanctions on foreign individuals including government officials who are responsible for human rights abuses and serious corruption.
The European Union's Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier said on Friday that the third round of talks with Britain on a new partnership was "disappointing."

"We're not going to bargain away our values for the benefit of the British economy," Barnier told a news conference.

He added the bloc would not seal a new trade deal with London without level playing field guarantees of fair competition or without a comprehensive agreement on fisheries. (Reuters)

Source: www.businessworld.ie
King, who is facing a tough primary challenge in June, said during a candidate forum Monday that he and McCarthy (R-Calif.) had reached an agreement that the party leader would advocate for King to regain his seniority and committee seats, which he lost after making remarks widely seen as sympathetic to white nationalists.
Documents that U.S. health officials have released as part of some long-delayed specific guidance that schools, businesses, and other organizations can use as states reopen from CCP virus shutdowns are photographed on May 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Jon Elswick)

CDC Releases Guidance for Reopening America

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has released its reopening America guidance documents to help schools, workplaces, and other spaces safely reopen after widespread shutdowns across the country to slow the spread of the CCP virus.

The CDC guidance documents include decision tools designed for schools, workplaces, camps, childcare centers, mass transit systems, and bars and restaurants. Six decision trees present yes-or-no scenarios to help the businesses and organizations determine whether they are ready to reopen.

These six decision trees are to assist leaders of these entities in thinking through health considerations and making operational decisions during the COVID-19 pandemic, a CDC spokesman said in a statement, Reuters reported. The outlet also reported that the CDC said it may issue more guidance as needed.

The CDC guidance documents encourage businesses and organizations to ask that employees wear masks to work in most cases.

Earlier, the health agency had recommended that people wear face coverings while in enclosed public spaces as a precaution to reduce the spread of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, also known as the novel coronavirus.

A cafe staff serves a customer from behind a plastic shield at SaddleCreek Coffee during the phased reopening from the CCP virus restrictions in Cave Creek, Arizona, on May 11, 2020. (Nicole Neri/Reuters)

The latest CDC guidance documents also encourage businesses and organizations to coordinate with state and local health officials in making decisions about how to safely reopen.

For example, in deciding whether a restaurant or bar should open, the CDC decision trees asks if reopening will be consistent with state and local orders, and whether the business is ready to protect employees at higher risk for severe illness. If the answer is no, restaurants and bars are advised not to open.

The reopening guidance was earlier leaked to the media when it was still in draft form, CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield said last week.

At the time, the guidance had not been vetted through an interagency review process, Redfield said, adding that the process is an iterative effort to ensure effective, clear guidance is presented to the American people.

I had not seen a version of the guidance incorporating interagency and task force input and therefore was not yet comfortable releasing a final work product, he also said at the time.

Richs Barber Shop in Waukesha, Wis. on May 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Morry Gash)

The CDCs latest guidance relates to another earlier set of guidelines that the Trump administration released on April 17. The three-phase guidelines broadly outline how Americans can begin making decisions towards easing social distancing restrictions.

Trump said at the time that the final decision as to how reopening would be implemented is up to governors, because every U.S. state is different.

Governors will be empowered to tailor an approach that needs the diverse circumstances of their own states, he said.

If they need to remain closed, we will allow them to do that and if they believe it is time to reopen, we will provide them the freedom and guidance to accomplish that task and very quickly, depending on what they want to do.

We are also encouraging states to work together to harmonize their regional efforts, the president added.

Read More Trump Announces 3-Phase Guidelines for Governors to Reopen States

Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
In heart-wrenching news, nearly 50 babies born to surrogate mothers in Ukraine are waiting in the cribs to meet their parents who live in different countries and couldn't be present during their birth due to the COVID-19 lockdown.

According to reports, 46 surrogate babies belonging to parents from the United Kingdom, Spain, China, Mexico, the United States, and Italy among other countries are waiting at the Venice Hotel in Ukraine's capital city of Kyiv. Surrogacy is illegal in the above-mentioned countries, so citizens usually look to Ukraine for the services where it is legal.

The parents were unable to make it to Ukraine on time due to the sudden travel ban imposed due to the COVID-19 pandemic, resulting in the closure of international borders. A video of babies was shared via the surrogacy clinic website which later came into limelight after a Ukrainian parliamentarian, Liudmila Denisova, took note of it.

Read: Surrogate Baby Born Amid Lockdown Flown To Bengaluru From Surat Via Air Ambulance

In the video, the administrator of the Venice Hotel shared a message with the parents stating that their babies are currently being cared for by their staff round the clock. The administrator ads in the video that it is a challenging task but they are managing the babies very well and their staff also arrange video calls for the parents to see their children.

The administrator added that the clinic informs the parents how much their babies eat, sleep, and what their weight is. The hotel also has a pediatrician who examines the babies every day and takes care of their health.

Read: Two Cheetah Cubs Born Through Surrogacy For First Time In Ohio Zoo

What's ahead for the babies

Denis Herman, the clinics lead lawyer, said in the video that due to lockdown and closure of borders, parents are yet to meet their babies and assured them that the clinic is in talks with the Ukrainian foreign ministry to get approval for them to enter the country as soon as possible.

However, he also pointed out it requires a collaborative effort from the parents' native countries, and the process can only be completed after getting a note from their respective diplomatic authority. He also informed that Sweden and the United Kingdom authorities are already in talks with the Ukrainian government over the issue.

Read: Gujarat: Girl Born Via Surrogacy Flown In Air Ambulance To Parents

Read: Smriti Irani Details Changes In Surrogacy Bill: Allows Willing Women, Widows For Surrogacy

(Image Credit: BioTexCom/YouTube)
Local Police in Malaga have opened an investigation into several cases of poisoned dogs in the Malaga neighbourhood of Cerrado de Calderon during the past month.

The Nature Protection unit (Grupona) is leading the probe after one dog died on 18 April and several required treatment after having apparently ingesting rat poison.

The owner of the golden retriever that died, Ida, told SUR: "We went out for a walk in the morning. I had her on a lead and didn't notice anything strange happening but everything changed a few hours later when she threw up three or four times so I took her to the vet. She was already dead by the time the vet arrived."

The owners of the dogs affected believe that the poisonings probably occurred in the upper part of Cerrado de Calderon, closest to the antennas - a common spot for taking dogs out for a walk.

The investigation has so far been unable to establish who is behind this nor whether the act was intentional or as a result of negligence. For the time being, residents are being warned to be vigilant when walking their dogs and to ensure they don't eat anything off the floor.
The total number of COVID-19 infections breached the 1,000 mark in Karnataka, as the state saw the biggest single-day spike of 69 new cases, including of a dead person, the state health department said on Friday.

A 52-year-old man from Chitaguppa town of Bidar, with a history of Severe Acute Respiratory Infection and travel to Hyderabad, had died on May 12 at a designated hospital in the district.

He tested positive for COVID-19 today, the department said in its bulletin.

"As of May 15 evening, cumulatively 1,056 COVID-19 positive cases have been confirmed in the state, which includes 36 deaths and 480 discharges," it said.

Out of the 539 active cases, 528 patients are in isolation at designated hospitals and are stable, while 11 are in Intensive Care Units.

The 69 new cases include 16 from Dakshina Kannada, 13 each from Bengaluru urban and Mandya, seven each from Hassan and Bidar, five from Udapi, three from Kalaburagi, two from Chitradurga and one each from Kolar, Shivamogga and Bagalkote.

While 20 cases are with a travel history to Dubai, 19 with travel history to Mumbai, three each with travel history to Chennai and from containment zone in Bidar, and one each are with history of SARI, ILI, containment zone in Kalaburagi and travel history to Hyderabad; rest are all primary and secondary contacts of patients already tested positive.

Twenty people who arrived in Mangaluru by a special repatriation flight from Dubai three days ago are among those who tested positive for COVID-19 on Friday, officials in the coastal city said.

Fifteen of them were from Dakshina Kannada (DK) district and five from neighboring Udupi district, which remained COVID-19 free for over a month, they said, adding all had been admitted to designated hospitals.

The returnees were taken to hotels and other facilities for mandatory 14-day institutional quarantine after they landed at the Mangaluru International Airport (MIA) on Tuesday night and their swab samples were subsequently sent for test.

Meanwhile, health department officials said all the 90 COVID-19 positive patients from Mysuru District Hospital have been discharged without a single mortality.

With this the district has no active cases.

"happy to announce that all 90 patients of Mysore have recovered.

it's a big to the state which fills inspiration and courage to tackle COVID-19.

let's congratulate all health warriors for their selfless sacrifice and dedication," the department tweeted.

From across the state, the most number of infections have been reported in Bengaluru urban with 202 cases, followed by Belagavi with 114.

A total of 1,33,724 samples were tested so far, out of which 5,351 were tested on Friday alone.

So far 1,32,074 samples have reported negative, out of which 5,308 reported negative on Friday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Prisoners say they are declining coronavirus testing out of fear they will be moved to restrictive units and lose privileges like phone calls and placing orders for commissary items, according to a new court filing.

Statements from about 45 inmates were included in a temporary restraining order filed this week as part of a class action lawsuit against Gov. Kate Brown and top corrections officials.

The lawsuit was filed in federal court last month by the Oregon Justice Resource Center, a group that advocates for prisoner rights and criminal justice reform.

In the latest filing, the plaintiffs asked the court to require the state to reduce its prison population to allow social distancing and to appoint an expert to oversee the process. They want the state to implement health and safety measures to protect inmates from the virus.

The filing sheds light on prison conditions in Oregon as the pandemic continues and illustrates the difficulty of observing social distance guidelines in prisons.

Michaela Taylor, who is housed at Coffee Creek Correctional Institution, said prisoners who violate social distance rules while watching television together are told to return to their bunks where youre three and a half feet away from the person in the bed above or below and the people on either side of you who you can reach out and touch.

The filing also explains inmates fear of testing.

Chris Mitchell, an inmate at Shutter Creek Correctional Institution, said the North Bend prison is located near his family. Hes afraid of testing positive and being transferred to a treatment center for coronavirus patients at Coffee Creek, 200 miles away in Wilsonville. The Coffee Creek infirmary is outfitted with rooms that limit air circulation.

Not knowing what will happen to me if I test positive makes me not want to take the test, he said. If I get sent to Coffee Creek, I dont know if I can come back and I dont want to take that chance.

Another Shutter Creek inmate, Steven Richardson, said he was sick for three weeks but declined testing. He said he, too, doesnt want to be transferred from Shutter Creek and lose access to his personal items and the phone.

Skyler Floro, an inmate at Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland, said inmates with symptoms are afraid to seek treatment because they do not want to be moved to an isolated unit for treatment.

No one who has been in solitary confinement wants to go back there, he said.

In an interview with The Oregonian/OregonLive last week, one of the physicians coordinating the prison systems response to the virus acknowledged inmates resistance to testing and said the state was exploring the possibility of involuntary testing. In response to questions from news organization on Thursday, an agency spokeswoman wrote in an email that there are no plans to force testing on inmates.

Vanessa A. Vanderzee, a communications coordinator for the Department of Corrections, said in an email that Oregons prisons were not built with a pandemic of this magnitude in mind.

Restrictive housing, she wrote, is the best option" for inmates who have tested positive or are awaiting test results. She acknowledged the disruption to inmates routines and said prison officials are trying to ensure prisoners who are in quarantine or medically isolated still have access to showers, phones, and other comforts.

So far, 113 inmates in Oregon have tested positive for coronavirus.

Of those, 80 are at the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem, the states only maximum-security prison, which houses nearly 2,000 men. Twenty-five are housed at Shutter Creek. Santiam Correctional Institution in Salem has seven cases and one case has been reported at Two River Correctional Institution in Umatilla.

The Department of Corrections says 2,181 prisoners are in quarantine conditions and 94 are in medical isolation.

About 3 percent of inmates statewide have been tested  395 out of a population of 14,318.

-- Noelle Crombie; ncrombie@oregonian.com; 503-276-7184; @noellecrombie

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Indonesian soldiers move a rescued hostage to a helicopter as they participate in an anti-terror drill in Banda Aceh, Aceh province, May 11, 2019.

Updated at 7:23 p.m. ET on 2020-05-15

The Indonesian militarys expanded role in combatting terrorism could lead to human rights abuses and undermine the criminal justice system, rights advocates said Friday, responding to a draft presidential decree on the matter submitted to parliament this week.

The draft was sent to parliament exactly two years after grisly suicide bombings in Surabaya led lawmakers to strengthen the country's anti-terrorism law, formalizing a role for the military in duties that had been reserved for the police for two decades. At the time, Minister of Law and Human Rights Yasonna Laoly said technical details of the militarys role in combating terrorism would be regulated by presidential decree.

Seen by BenarNews, the draft decree stipulates that tasks of the Indonesian Armed Forces (TNI) include terrorism prevention in the form of intelligence gathering and territorial operations, along with offensive measures to thwart attacks.

Giving the military wide-ranging counter-terror duties could erode law enforcement and bring about repressive actions with little accountability, according to the head of a local human rights group.

It could lead to an overlap of authority and present a problem in upholding human rights, Al Araf, the director Imparsial, told BenarNews. The military is not part of the criminal justice system, he said.

An analyst at the Institute for Security and Strategic Studies (ISESS), Khairul Fahmi, said the decree was needed to clarify the militarys involvement in counter-terrorism.

It should clearly define the powers of the TNI [in fighting terrorism] and when it can or cannot be involved, he told BenarNews.

The National Counter-Terrorism Agency (BNPT) should be the umbrella organization that supervises and coordinates efforts to fight terrorism, he said.

But this decree seems to open more expanded and more powerful [military roles] in fighting terrorism and this is something the public did not expect, he said. We should not let this decree undermine the BNPT.

Yasonna Laoly, the law and human rights minister, submitted the draft decree to members of parliament for consultation.

Officials did not set a time frame for when lawmakers would finish their process. Government officials and a military spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment.

Public input

Terrorist acts that warrant the militarys involvement include attacks on serving and former presidents, as well as vice presidents and their families, the draft decree says.

Mohammad Choirul Anam, a member of the National Commission on Human Rights (Komnas HAM), urged officials to review the draft decree to avoid an overlap in authority.

If a specific regulation is needed, maybe it should only focus on offensive measures. Other matters that are not in the domain of the TNI should not be included, Choirul told BenarNews.

He said the militarys involvement should be commensurate to the gravity of the terrorist threat, adding it should be temporary and serve as an auxiliary to law enforcement.

Improving police capacity to deal with terrorist acts should be the priority, he said. Previously, the authority to combat terrorists rested with Densus 88, an elite National Police unit.

When a terrorist network has morphed into an insurgent group, the role of the TNI is needed because of the limited capability of the national police. But, I dont think the TNIs role is urgent in handling ordinary acts of terrorism, Khairul Fahmi of ISESS countered.

Arsul Sani, a member of the House of Representatives (DPR) commission on legal and security affairs, said lawmakers were listening to the public and would raise these issues during meetings with administration officials to discuss the decree.

The decree is a political decision by the president, but in this case it needs to be consulted with the DPR. The point is the DPR accepts inputs from all parties, Arsul said.

A blank check?

The document builds on 2018 amendments to the country's anti-terrorism law that formalized the military's role in fighting terrorism but drew a round of protests.

Critics at the time expressed fears that an increased domestic role for the military could restore its longtime prominent and at times repressive role in civilian life. Withdrawing the military from internal security was a key achievement of reforms that followed the 1998 fall of Suharto, the dictator who had ruled the country for 32 years.

The year after Indonesia strengthened its anti-terror law, its military launched an elite unit focused on fighting violent extremism, a move that attracted more criticism from activists, who warned the move could lead to human rights abuses.

The Special Operations Command (Koopsus) consists of 500 personnel drawn from the army, navy and air force, military (TNI) chief Air Marshal Hadi Tjahjanto said during a July 2019 ceremony launching the unit.

When there are threats from inside and outside the country, the TNI commander can immediately order [Koopsus] to move quickly and with a very high success rate, Hadi told reporters at the time. The involvement of the TNI in fighting terrorism is mandated in the law, especially if an action threatens the sovereignty, territorial integrity or safety of the Indonesian nation.

In an editorial on Friday, the Jakarta Post newspaper urged Jokowi to consult the public before signing the regulation, saying that a parliament dominated by his supporters was expected to rubber-stamp the decree.

However smooth the political process can be, Jokowi should not turn a deaf ear to mounting criticism from civil society groups and individuals who are concerned about the danger the draft regulation may pose to democracy and the rule of law, the English-language daily said.

The draft regulation, as it is, may give the military a blank check to act against enemies of the government, including critics and the opposition, it said.

Indonesia, the worlds largest Muslim-majority nation, has been hit by a string of terrorist attacks since the early 2000s. The worst of these, the 2002 Bali bombings, killed 202 people, mostly foreigners.

More recently, a January 2016 attack in Jakarta killed eight people, including four militants, in the first terrorist act claimed in a Southeast Asian country by the extremist group known as Islamic State.

In May 2018, two families in Surabaya blew themselves up during attacks at three churches and a police station, killing 24 people, including children as young as 9 who joined their parents in the attacks. Local authorities also blamed the Surabaya bombings on a pro-IS Indonesian group.
Laxman Pai, Opalesque Asia:

Colorado-headquartered private equity investor Rubicon Technology Partners closed a new fund, Rubicon Technology Partners III, at over $1.25 billion, exceeding the fund target of $250 million set by the company.

The Fund was oversubscribed with strong support from both existing and new investors, said the firm focused on enterprise software investments.

"The Fund's diverse, institutional investor base includes North American and European public and private pension funds, charitable and healthcare foundations, and educational endowments, among others," it said in a press release.

"The Rubicon team is honored to partner with a world-class set of investors that are aligned with our culture and strategy. We are very pleased to have received such strong support from our existing investors and welcome our new limited partners," said the Rubicon partners.

"Rubicon helps software businesses accelerate growth with a proven set of approaches focused on increasing market share, executing M&A strategies, and implementing operational best practices that support increased scale and efficiency," it added.

Since its inception in 2012, Rubicon has completed 30 total transactions, including 12 platform investments and 18 add-on acquisitions. Rubicon typically makes control equity investments of $50-200 million into businesses with $15-75 million of annual recurring revenue, a leadership position in their markets and opportunities to accelerate......................

To view our full article Click here
Report reveals UK attempt to turn Syria Alawites against Assad

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 10:08 AM

A new report sheds light on Britain's role in the formation of a so-called protest campaign online against the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the name of the Arab country's Alawite community, a key source of support for Damascus in its years-long fight against foreign-sponsored terrorists.

The Middle East Eye (MEE) news portal reported on Wednesday that although Sarkha  or "The Cry"  claimed to be a grassroots campaign by the Alawites, it was actually created on behalf of London.

The community  from which Assad's family hails  has played a key role in the Damascus government's successful fight to liberate Syria from the foreign-backed militant groups wreaking havoc on the country since 2011.

Citing official documents, the MEE found that Sarkha was devised by an American company, Pechter Polls of Princeton, New Jersey, working under contract to the British government.

The contract, the report said, was initially managed by a unit at the UK's Ministry of Defense called Military Strategic Effects and later by a British government fund called the Conflict, Stability and Security Fund (CSSF).

It added that British strategic communications officials used the term "AWBP" the Alawite web-based platform for Sarkha, one of five main propaganda programs that the UK was operating in Syria.

According to a review of the programs in July 2016, Sarkha  whose budget from the CSSF during that financial year stood at $746,000  was said to be aimed at creating "a safe, secure, social media platform for the Alawite people to discuss and exchange idea about their needs, lives and future roles in a post-revolutionary Syria."

Launched in 2014, Sarkha raised concerns about what it called high casualty rates among Alawites serving in the Syrian army. It was later re-branded as a campaign called Same Pain.

One activist who was involved in the campaign said, "I do not think we were completely successful. When the campaign ended, the contact person for Alawites left for Europe."

"This campaign had no actual impact or presence," said a journalist in the city of Tartus.

Back in February, the MEE disclosed that the British government covertly established a network of citizen journalists across Syria during the early years of the war in an attempt to shape perceptions of the conflict.

Frequently, those recruited were unaware that they were being directed from London, the report said, adding that a number of them were killed during the crisis.

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The Delhi governments submission to the central government on the fourth phase of the lockdown starting May 18 wants restrictions to apply only to so-called containment zones and not entire districts which are labelled red zones by the union health ministry and will also contain protocols for the staggered opening of markets and malls, more construction and industrial activities, and the resumption of public transport including the metro , according to senior officials in the chief ministers office.

The submission was finalised during a meeting of chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and Lietenant Governor Anil Baijal.

In the proposal to the Centre, which was being prepared late into the evening of Thursday, the Delhi government will suggest that alternate shops in markets be opened every day and that one-third of the stores in malls be allowed to operate. It will also suggest doing away with the curfew between 7pm and 7am when the movement of people is curtailed. And it will recommend a heavy fine on those not wearing masks in public.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

The L-G, in Thursdays meeting, directed the government to draft standard operating procedures (SoP) for the reopening of markets and malls in a staggered fashion, resuming public transport, and reviving construction activities, said a senior government official. The SoPs are likely to be released by Sunday.

At the core of the suggestions, sought by Prime Minister Narendra Modi from chief ministers during their fifth meeting since late March on the Covid-19 pandemic and ways to fight it, will be the focus on containment zones. Currently, the health ministry defines districts as red, orange and green zones and there are significant restrictions on the red ones, the most affected areas in terms of number of cases, or the most at risk. That effectively classifies all of Delhi as a red zone, which means most activities will not be allowed in the caital. Kejriwal, on Monday, during the meeting with Modi, asked that only the containment zones, not all the 11 revenue districts of the city, be classified red zones.

Also Read: Covid-19: What you need to know today

Delhi government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity said that a final order on the next phase of the lockdown will be issued only after the Central government comes up with its guidelines for all states and union territories. Delhi chief secretary Vijay Dev said: Implementation of restrictions and relaxations will have to strictly adhere to the guidelines issued by the central government.

Delhi has at least 75 containment zones where even stand-alone shops and industries cant operate, people cant move around even in private vehicles, and electricians and plumbers are not allowed. These activities are allowed in the rest of the city -- even though it is a red zone.

Also Read: Indian vaccine development to be backed by PM-CARES

The number of coronavirus disease cases in Delhi rose to 8,470 on Thursday, with the addition of 472 cases. The capital has thus far seen 3,045 recoveries and 115 deaths. In a meeting of the Delhi disaster management authority chaired by the L-G in the evening, officials stated that Delhis doubling rate was more than 12 days now, recovery rate 32.88%, and the fatality rate, 1.13%.

Earlier in the day, Kejriwal, in a digital media address, said his government received over five lakh responses in a span of over 24 hours after he asked for suggestions on what relaxations should be given in the fourth phase of the lockdown.

In only 24 hours, we received more than 5 lakh responses, including around 4,75,000 messages on WhatsApp, 10,700 e-mails, and 49,000 calls. Maximum people have suggested that educational institutions should remain closed until the end of the summer break. Most have also recommended that hotels, barber shops or salons, cinema halls, swimming pools, and other such places which involve a number of people being in close proximity must also not open for now. However, restaurants, they said, must open for take-aways, although they should not have any dine-in arrangements, Kejriwal said in the media address.

The CM said every suggestion that he reviewed stated that senior citizens and people with other serious ailments, such as heart problems, asthma, diabetes, and cancer should stay indoors, as should children below the age of 10 and pregnant women.

Everyone has suggested that proper social distancing must be ensured, and strict fines must be imposed on those not wearing masks. People have suggested the opening of parks. No activities in the containment zones will be allowed, the chief minister said.

The proposal includes the resumption of transport services, including auto-rickshaws and taxis, with only one passenger allowed in autos and two passengers in taxis .

Delhi government wants bus services and Metro to resume because not every person owns a private vehicle to get to their offices, which were opened during lockdown 3.0. But, it will also be with strict social distancing norms in place and not more than 25 people will be allowed per bus. Limited metro services can start, said an official in the CMs office who asked not to be named.

Jugal Kishore, head of community medicines department in Delhis Safdarjung Hospital said, The purpose of the lockdown was clearly to flatten the curve. To think that the infections will stop with an indefinite lockdown is wrong. So, a phased relaxation of the lockdown is necessary now.

What we need now is more cooperation from people when it comes to adhering to social distancing and isolation norms. People should follow rules. Looking at the intensity of infections, it can be said that things are under control at this juncture. But, it is also important to mention, the government should prioritise strengthening the health infrastructure and focus on quality of health care, when it attempts to revive economy, Kishore added.
Online food sellers have long been known as a channel to buy local, unnamed products, but now they are growing as an effective source for branded food firms.

As more people buy food online, online sellers are expanding.  Photo cafef.vn

Nguyen Lam Vien, chairman and CEO of Vinamit Joint Stock Company, said the firm, which trades dried fruits, has developed a network of 200 online sellers during the pandemic.

Thanks to online sellers, the firms sales are somewhat less terrible during the difficult time, Vien told nld.vn.

Vien said revenue dropped at most of the distribution channels, such as stores and supermarkets, however, online sales have been improving.

In April, these online collaborators brought the company more than VND800 million (US$34,000). Vinamit has given the online collaborators bonuses alongside other traditional agents.

Similar to Vinamit, the Viet Nam Animal Industry Joint Stock Company (Vissan), famous for their sausages, has cooperated with electronic wallet Momo and delivery service Now for trading the products.

It is also cooperating with firms that offer shopping via a hotline and most recently they worked with the e-commerce trading exchange Sendo.vn to promote sales.

Phan Van Dung, the firms vice director said: "We also have a plan to collaborate with Lazada to boost sales and expand our online sales agency network.

Dung said: In a more competitive context, the company also encourages our agents to diversify selling methods.

Owning a big food store in Ha Noi, Nguyen Thu Quyen also runs a food website, a Facebook page and a Zalo stall for her store. Together with other staff at the store, Quyen hires an employee to take the orders from the online channels.

Quyen said: Quick responses on Facebook and Zalo are also key to gain the loyalty of online clients who can choose many stores at the same time. The quicker answer will win.

As Quyens online sales are so good, she was asked to be the distributor of other big food brands such as CP and Vissan.

Pham Thanh Kien, director of the HCM Citys Department of Industry and Trade said the trend of online shopping, social networks and e-commerce has grown in the last two years.

Kien pointed out the rise was because online sales are managed more easily than other kinds.

Tran Hoang Ngan, director of the HCM City Development Research Institute said that online businesses, specifically those through e-commerce sites and social networks have been developing fast in recent years, especially amid COVID-19.

Ngan said the market has formed a team of traders who directly participate in the market without the legal guidance and management of the authorities, adding the government should organise skills training courses for them to form a healthier business environment.  VNS

Coronavirus: Food delivery driver paying back doctors who saved him Having survived cancer, one delivery rider in China is helping keep medical staff fed during the pandemic.
Veteran actor Rishi Kapoor left for his heavenly abode on April 30, after a two-year battle with leukemia. Following his demise, the Kapoors organized a prayer meet on the 13th day (terahvi) at Rishi's Pali Hill residence in Mumbai.

When Ranbir Kapoor and his actress-girlfriend Alia Bhatt arrived at the venue, they saw a few Bollywood photographer standing outside to click pictures of him and others who attended the prayer meet. Ranbir stopped the car right besides them, and rolling down the window asked, "Tum log aise ghum sakte ho kya?"

To this, one of the photographers told him that he was sent by his boss to check if there's anything he can cover. Hearing this, the Sanju actor said, "Dhyan rakhna." Alia, who was sitting besides him in the car, also urged the paparazzi to wear masks amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A video of this incident is going viral on the internet, and the netizens are quite impressed with Ranbir-Alia's kind gesture. Check out the video here.

Besides Ranbir-Alia, the prayer meet was attended by Neetu Kapoor, daughter Riddhima Kapoor Sahni, Karisma Kapoor, Shweta Bachchan Nanda and her daughter Navya Naveli Nanda and Randhir Kapoor. Later, Riddhima shared a picture from the prayer meet on her Instagram page, in which she and Ranbir are seen praying with folded hands.

Coming back to Alia, the actress has been constantly extending her support to the members of the Kapoor family during this difficult time. Earlier, she along with filmmaker Ayan Mukerji, also attended Rishi Kapoor's ash immersion ritual at Banganga.

Before this, Alia mourned Rishi Kapoor's demise with a heartfelt note that read, "What can I say. About this beautiful man... who brought soo much love and goodness into my life. Today, everyone speaks of the legend that is Rishi Kapoor... and though I've known him like that all my life... for the past two years I've known him as a friend, a fellow Chinese food lover, a total cinema lover, a fighter, a leader, a beautiful storyteller, an extremely passionate tweeter and a father! In these past two years the love I have received from him is like a warm hug that I will always cherish!"

She further added, "I thank the universe for giving me this opportunity to know him... today probably most of us can say he is like family - because that's how he made you feel! Love you, Rishi Uncle! Will miss you forever! Thank you for being you!"

Rishi Kapoor's Prayer Meet: Alia Bhatt Trolled For Not Wearing Mask In The Correct Way

Ranbir Kapoor SHAMED Mercilessly For NOT STAYING With Neetu Kapoor After Rishi Kapoor's Demise
A Hong Kong judge has dismissed allegations of racial discrimination in the citys quarantine arrangements for returnees from around the world and concluded a complainant from Pakistan was lawfully detained at a government-run facility during the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Justice Anderson Chow Ka-ming on Wednesday explained why he dismissed an application for a writ of habeas corpus sought by Hong Kong resident Syed Agha Raza Shah, who was sent to the Chun Yeung Estate quarantine centre in Fo Tan for 14 days beginning April 29.

The High Court last Friday heard the accountant claim he was discriminated against because of his national origin or race when he was deniedthe option to quarantine at home, while returnees from countries with a higher number of infections were allowed to isolate either at home or a hotel.

His lawyers argued his right to liberty, as guaranteed by Article 6 of the Hong Kong Bill of Rights, was infringed upon as a result of the measure the government has imposed on all arrivals from outside China since March 19.

While the judge recognised a persons liberty is significantly restricted during compulsory quarantine, he considered the measure proportionate and this case to be a lawful exercise of the Department of Healths powers under the Compulsory Quarantine of Persons Arriving at Hong Kong from Foreign Places Regulation.

A government counsel said the restriction was imposed on any person arriving from Pakistan, or who had stayed in the country in the past 14 days before returning to Hong Kong.

That was accepted by Chow, who found this meant a Chinese or a person of any nationality or race arriving from Pakistan was also required to be quarantined at the centre for 14 days.

The applicants complaint of discrimination on the ground of national origin or race is based on the incorrect premise that he is required to undergo quarantine at the centre because of his national origin or race, Chow wrote. As a matter of fact, in the past few months, persons of over 30 nationalities from other places  have been subject to the same requirement.

Story continues

These places included Hubei province in mainland China, two districts of South Korea, three provinces in Italy and those on board the Diamond Princess cruise that was docked in Japan.

Chow found the measure proportionate because it served and was rationally connected to a legitimate aim of safeguarding public health, which he considered to be a matter of paramount importance.

The court recognises that subjecting a person to quarantine at a designated quarantine centre involves a significant restriction of that persons liberty, but considers that the gravity of the restriction is somewhat ameliorated by the fact that it is for a short period of time only and takes place in a quarantine centre setting, Chow wrote. I am not persuaded that the pursuit of the societal interest results in an unacceptably harsh burden on the applicant.

Nine returnees from Pakistan have tested positive for coronavirus since April 29.

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This article Judge finds no racism in forcing Hong Kong resident returning from Pakistan into government quarantine first appeared on South China Morning Post

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HOUGHTON LAKE, MI  A Michigan State Police trooper recently ran and walked more than 50 miles in a day.

Trooper Cabria Shirley, of the MSPs Houghton Lake Post, began her run at 8 a.m. on Wednesday, May 13, circling the track at Lake City High School. By 6:15 a.m. Thursday, Shirley had run and walked the track 212 times for a total of 53 miles.

The number 53 is symbolic, representing the number of MSP troopers who have died in the line of duty since 1921. Shirleys run coincides with National Police Week, with Friday, May 15, being Peace Officers Memorial Day.

With each mile she marked, Shirley placed a Blue Lives Matter flag, each bearing the name of a fallen state trooper. Shirley had purchased the flags and had her fallen comrades names added to them herself.

Many of Shirleys MSP colleagues showed up to show their support, with some running along with her.

Trooper Cabria Shirley

Upon finishing her 53rd mile, Shirley was asked why she undertook the grueling endeavor.

It was a simple decision, she said. The fallen members made the ultimate sacrifice. Completing those 53 miles was a small token of my gratitude. I know if given the opportunity, they would have done the same for me.

First Lt. Travis House, the Houghton Lake Posts commander, lauded Shirley.

Trooper Shirley has inspired us all, House said. Her efforts on the track have honored our fallen members and their families in a special way. Her commitment to this undertaking demonstrated courage, and a willingness to sacrifice for others: traits which make her an outstanding trooper and a valuable member of our team at Houghton Lake.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:05:19|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese health official on Friday called for implementing COVID-19 epidemic containment measures in detail to forestall the resurgence of infections.

Song Shuli, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC), made the remarks at a press conference in Beijing.

Noting that the number of COVID-19 patients receiving treatment had dropped to 91 on the Chinese mainland by Thursday, Song underscored that the number of domestic infections had risen for three consecutive days, and arduous work remains to prevent an epidemic resurgence.

Song also called for targeted measures to tighten epidemic prevention and control measures at major regions and venues, and further efforts to find and plug the loopholes in epidemic containment.

The NHC said it received the report of four domestically transmitted COVID-19 cases in northeast China's Jilin Province Thursday, and no deaths related to the disease were reported. Enditem
There are indications that the minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige is working to fly the flag of the All Progressives Cong...

There are indications that the minister of Labour and Employment, Dr Chris Ngige is working to fly the flag of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the November 2021 governorship election in Anambra State.





A top member of the party in the State who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the minister, who was also a governor in the State, has been working on the party hierarchy in Abuja to ensure he is handed the partys ticket for the election.





The source said, He (Ngige) knows he will face a very tough challenge convincing members of the party in the State to field him in the election, so he is liaising with the leaders of the party in Abuja.





He is a very intelligent politician, but the problem is that he has already fallen out of favour with some members of the party in the State.





Many people are not happy with him because he has not empowered members of the party in the State. He has also been the only one taking up every opening in appointment and always taking the partys ticket in every election, so people are not happy with him, he claimed.





The source, however, said that Ngige may have succeeded in wooing the leadership of the party, but was now waiting for the backing of President Muhammadu Buhari.





He needs the backing of the President for APC to win a State like Anambra, and we heard that is the only thing left before he will start making his interest in the contest open, he added.





Meanwhile, attempt to confirm from the minister about his interest in the governorship election in the State was unsuccessful as calls to his mobile phone was unattended to.





Dr. Ngige, who was elected governor of Anambra State in 2003, was removed in 2006 by an Appeal Court judgement secured by Mr. Peter Obi.





Ngige has variously been senator and minister, and has made several failed attempts to return as the governor of the State.
A new package of deer hunting regulations designed to simplify rules and remove barriers to participation was introduced to the Michigan Natural Resources Commission Thursday, Michigan Department of Natural Resources announced in a press release.

The regulations, proposed for the 2020 deer hunting season, are scheduled for an NRC vote in June.

The Michigan DNR deer program experts say the regulations, if approved, will provide additional opportunities and cost savings for hunters and offer flexibility in how hunters pursue deer.

These recommendations are aimed at making it easier for hunters of all ages and experience levels to enjoy a Michigan outdoor tradition, while at the same time facing the present and future challenges of managing the states deer population, said Chad Stewart, the DNRs deer, elk and moose program leader. We hope that hunters across the state will take the opportunity to review the regulations and share their opinions, because their feedback is critical in shaping the future of deer hunting.

Proposed regulation changes include:

Statewide

Change Liberty and Independence hunt qualifications to include deaf people.

Allow mentored youths (age 9 and younger), junior license holders (age 10-16) and apprentice license holders to be exempt from antler point restrictions in all seasons, in all deer management units (DMUs) and under all licenses.

Require a 60% support threshold from a survey to prompt the DNR to recommend antler point restrictions (APRs) to the NRC, as decided by the 2019 APR workgroup. This replaces the 66% support threshold recommended by previous APR workgroups. Additionally, failed APR initiatives would face a 10-year moratorium before another initiative would be considered.

Change the statewide limit for antlerless license purchase to 10 per hunter. This limit offers maximum opportunity for those who wish to manage abundant deer on their property.

Require hunter orange to be visible on occupied ground blinds.

Standardize baiting practices (eliminate the requirement to use single-bite baits in select counties) during the Liberty and Independence hunts for hunters with disabilities.

Upper Peninsula

Allow Upper Peninsula archers to resume pursuing antlerless deer in all DMUs with their deer/deer combination license.

Remove remnant APRs on the deer license in parts of DMU 122.

Lower Peninsula

In addition to the archery season, allow antlerless deer to be taken on the deer/deer combination license during the firearm and muzzleloader seasons in all Lower Peninsula DMUs.

Open early and late antlerless seasons in all Lower Peninsula mainland DMUs.

Allow antlerless deer to be taken on a deer/deer combination license during both the early and late antlerless seasons in the Lower Peninsula.

Change antlerless quotas in select DMUs.

Shorten muzzleloader season in the southern Lower Peninsula to 10 days and extend the late antlerless season to provide consistency between all regions of the state.

Allow legal firearms to be used during the muzzleloader season in the southern Lower Peninsula.

Scale carcass movement restrictions to areas most affected by chronic wasting disease. This eases some of the movement restrictions in parts of the state with a lower risk of harvesting a CWD-positive animal while still applying those restrictions to areas with the highest risk.

Resume four-point restriction on combination license in select DMUs in the Lower Peninsula.

Continue the expanded archery season through Jan. 31 for one more year in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

Read the full NRC proposal memo or the justifications behind the 2020 proposed regulation changes at Michigan.gov/Deer .
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced a mix of financial, legislative and reform measures aimed largely at increasing the pricing power of farmers  or share of profits in farm incomes  by proposing to dismantle historical domestic trade barriers, bring new laws for freer food and commodities markets, and better infrastructure.

Sitharamans third tranche of measures, aggregating Rs 1.63 lakh crore and part of a larger Rs 20-lakh crore stimulus, did not contain any direct cash transfer programme for farmers, or money in hand, but is a mix of new allocations and top-up to existing agriculturally critical schemes, some them announced in Budget 2020-21 in February.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

It is also an attempt to push through critical legislative reforms that can free up Indias agricultural markets and improve farm incomes. Farming, the largest source of livelihoods, supports nearly half of all Indians and it has been hobbled by myriad archaic regulations.

According to estimates by economists and securities research firms, the measures announced thus far add up to around Rs 18.3 lakh crore (including around Rs 5.7 lakh crore of monetary measures taken in March by the central bank, and the Rs 1.7 lakh crore welfare package announced in late March ).

Finance ministry officials said there will be two more tranches -- one to be announced on Saturday and the other on Sunday.

DK Srivastava, chief policy advisor at consultancy firm EY India, said, One salient feature of this tranche is that the direct fiscal cost (or cash spending) accounts for nearly 30% of the estimated benefit, which is much higher than that in earlier two tranches.

His reference is to the fact that the fiscal cost of the previous tranches is estimated by economists at a fraction of the overall number  a Credit Suisse report put the fiscal cost of the Rs 1.7 lakh crore welfare package, the Rs 5.7 lakh crore monetary measures, and the first tranche of Rs 5.94 lakh crore announced on Wednesday at around Rs 55,000 crore.

On Friday, the finance minister announced Rs 1 lakh crore to fund new farm-gate infrastructure, or simply agricultural produce markets, harvest management facilities, and a law to permit farmers to freely sell their produce to any trader of their choice, potentially ending persistent trade barriers in food trade that have been characterised by so-called agricultural market produce committees (APMCs).

Sitharaman said a mechanism would be fixed to assure profitable prices for farmers, which means at least a baseline profitable price signal available at the time of sowing. This is referred to as price discovery, whereby farmers will be able to estimate crop prices before taking sowing decisions so that they are able to grow commodities for which there will be demand.

A central law will be formulated to provide adequate choices to farmers to sell produce at attractive price, barrier-free inter-state trade and a framework for e-trading of agriculture produce.

She also outlined proposed changes to an existing commodity rationing law, The Essential Commodities Act (ESA), to ease farm trade. The government will amend the Essential Commodities Act to enable better price realisation for farmers by attracting investments and making agriculture sector competitive, she said.

The indication is that the government will use the law more sparingly, a proposal for which had been made by an interministerial panel to reform the sector in January.

The ESA allows the government to decide how much stock wholesale traders or even retailers can store, legally called stock limits. Cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato will be deregulated, she said. Stock limits will be imposed under very exceptional circumstances, such as national calamities or during price gouging.

The finance minister, responding to a question, rejected the Oppositions charges that much of her announcements were re-allocated spending and had included taxpayer refunds. We have included schemes announced in the Budget. But amounts are being disbursed now. When was the Budget? In February. When we are giving expedited tax refunds, it is taxpayers money. I am specifically saying that, Sitharaman said.

These reforms in agricultural marketing, or the mandi system that controls buying and selling of farm produce, have been a long time in the making. Various government panels and economists have often argued for changing the existing structures of agricultural trade.

APMC regulations require farmers to only sell to licensed middlemen in notified markets, usually in the same area where a farmer resides, rather than in an open market.

They often act as cartels, evidence suggests. In December 2019, when prices peaked during the last major spike, a probe by the countrys statutory anti-monopoly body, the Competition Commission of India (CCI), revealed that one firm accounted for nearly a fifth of the total onion trading for that month at Lasalgoan APMC, Asias largest onion market in Maharashtras Nashik.

Ushered in during the 1960s, APMC regulations require farmers to only sell to licensed middlemen in notified markets, usually in the same area as the farmer, rather than directly to buyers elsewhere. These rules were meant to protect farmers from being forced into distress selling.

Under the APMC system, farmers have to go through smaller crop aggregators to access bulk buyers. Over time, this has spawned layers of intermediaries spanning the farm-to-fork supply chain. This results in a large price spread, or the fragmentation of profit shares due to the presence of several middlemen. Farmers often get the lowest shares.

EYs Srivastava added that the focus on agriculture and allied sectors in this third tranche of the stimulus package may be justified due to its large share in employment. These reforms are both welfare-improving and efficiency-augmenting.

Terms of trade has moved away from agriculture. That is what the government appears to have realised and trying to correct, said economist YK Alagh.

His reference is to the total prices paid by farmers in running their households versus total prices received by selling their produce.

Agriculture in India suffers negative total revenues, or negative terms of trade implying that assets going out of the sector are more than those flowing in. Farming, therefore, has steadily become an unprofitable occupation, according to a landmark 2018 study by the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), a grouping of 36 countries, and the New Delhi-based think-tank ICRIER.

The government will bring in a facilitative legal framework to enable farmers for engaging with processors, aggregators, large retailers, exporters, etc, in a fair and transparent manner, the minister said. This will ensure assured returns and risk mitigation for farmers.

A central law to enable farmers to sell to a buyer of their choice including online channels and marketplaces is expected to go a long way in maximizing farmer realisations while minimizing intermediary transaction costs. Farmers would be able to avail of price discovery and sell their products on both government platforms like e-NAM and private online grocery platforms, said Arindam Guha, an economist with Deloitte India.

To improve animal husbandry incomes, which gives higher net returns compared to crops, Sitharaman said: We want to ensure 100% vaccination of nearly 530 million animals, a livestock size which is among the largest in the world. Despite Covid-19 lockdown, 15 million cows and buffaloes have been tagged and vaccinated. To control foot and mouth diseases, which cripples milk output of afflicted animals, the FM announced Rs 13,343 crore.

The government will set up an Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund worth Rs 15,000 crore to support private investment in dairy processing, value addition and cattle feed infrastructure.

The government will implement a scheme for infrastructure development related to beekeeping, according to the finance minister, aiming to increase incomes of 200,000 beekeepers.

The government has extended the Operation Greens for Tomatoes, Onion and Potatoes (TOP) to all fruits and vegetables. Under this, 50% subsidy would be given on transportation from surplus to deficient markets and 50% subsidy on storage. The finance minister also allotted Rs 4,000 crore for herbal plantations.

These initiatives may prove good in the long run but they do not solve the problem of farmers whose harvests perished because of the lockdown. It is clear that the government is in no mood to compensate these losses directly, said economist Sudhir Panwar, a former member of the erstwhile UP State Planning Commission.

All told, the government on Friday announced funding worth Rs 1.63 lakh crore. This includes Rs 10,000 crore for micro food enterprises, Rs 20,000 crore for fisheries, Rs 500 crore for beekeeping and another Rs 500 crore for Operation TOPs, the vegetables mission.

So far, the government has unveiled measures worth over Rs 9.1 lakh crore in the earlier two tranches since Prime Minister Narendra Modis address to the nation on May 12.
As the Bay Area inches toward reopening the economy, a single number that defines the state of the coronavirus outbreak is gaining new status: the R0.

Thats the reproduction value, pronounced R-naught. Its an epidemiological number that, in simplest terms, represents how many people an infected individual will transmit the virus to. An R0 of 2 means that every infected person will infect two others, and those two people will each infect two more, and so on.

An R0 of 1 means every person will infect one other, and a disease outbreak will neither grow nor decline. To slow down spread, the R0 needs to drop below 1. California as a whole is hovering just below 1, but the number varies from county to county. Santa Clara County  an early hot spot in the Bay Area  has an R0 of about 1 at the moment; San Francisco is just under.

Calculating the R0 is complicated science, based on often muddy data and imperfect disease models. But its also a convenient way of describing the state of an epidemic, and Bay Area health officers are closely following the number as a marker of whether its safe to start emerging from shelter-in-place.

Weve been holding pretty steady with an R0 of 1, sometimes it goes a little lower, Dr. Sara Cody, the Santa Clara County health officer, told the Board of Supervisors at a meeting this week. Efforts to contain the outbreak, including aggressive testing and investigation of new cases, should be able to knock that number down, she added.

That should give us some headroom, some money in the bank, to loosen our very strict social distancing measures we have in place, Cody said. Even a small increase in the R0, like 1.1 or 1.2, you can see that (case) counts will begin to grow. Its really important that we keep our R0 below 1.

The R0 of a virus  or bacterium or any other infectious agent  is calculated based on several factors, including innate features of the pathogen such as whether it spreads by an exchange of respiratory drops or some other mechanism, and how long individuals are infectious.

Other factors depend on human behavior and the environment in which the virus is transmitting  whether people tend to take a crowded subway, for example, or drive to work. So the R0 often varies from country to country, and even city to city.

When the coronavirus was first identified, its inherent R0 was thought to be about 2 to 3, which is fairly high. It means an outbreak can quickly double or triple in size. Thats higher than seasonal influenza, which is typically just over 1.

But that number can be pushed down by altering human behaviors. Thats the point of social distancing. The more people are kept apart, the less the virus can reproduce, until eventually the R0 drops below 1. At that point, an outbreak can be contained and the virus can potentially be wiped out entirely, although thats unlikely to happen with the coronavirus, infectious disease experts said. Its just too good at transmission to vanish without a vaccine.

Anything less than 1, were doing OK, said Dr. Lee Riley, an infectious disease expert at UC Berkeley. But the speed of the reduction is certainly related to how far below 1 the reproductive number is. The lower the number, the faster the epidemic will finish.

A team of amateur scientists, led by founders of Instagram, developed a model for calculating the R0 for all U.S. states that shows the value dropping below 1 in most places after shelter-at-home orders were put in place, or after residents were at least advised to stay home as much as possible. Their R0 results are online at rt.live.

Six weeks ago, according to their calculations, only 14 states had R0 values under 1. As of Thursday, only two states  Wyoming and Minnesota  were over 1.

Santiago Mejia / The Chronicle

But infectious disease experts warn that these numbers are nuanced, and the models that produce them are imprecise. Most of the states under 1 are just barely there, which means their success in keeping the reproduction value down is still precarious.

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.

We crank these disease models out all the time. The R0 is just one estimate that emerges as an indication of how different mitigations might be working, said Shannon Bennett, chief of science at the California Academy of Sciences.

A week ago. Dr. Grant Colfax, director of the San Francisco Department of Public Health, said during a virtual town hall with UCSF that the citys R0 was about 0.9 or 0.95  too close to 1 for anyone to feel comfortable easing up social distancing restrictions.

Dr. George Rutherford, a UCSF infectious disease expert who has been advising the citys public health response, said models have put the number at 0.8 or 0.85 more recently. Thats great news as far as keeping the outbreak contained, and suggests the city may be able to ease some restrictions, he said.

But those should be small steps, he added, so public health officials can carefully watch R0  and other markers of the local outbreak  to make sure the virus isnt spreading widely again.

As we release from shelter in place, we want to be really careful about what the R0 is, Rutherford said. We want it to be less than 1. Its the best measure of whats going on.

But theres also a lot of uncertainty to the number, he said. Like most public health experts, and most Bay Area residents, hes watching several markers to help him understand how the outbreak is progressing. I still look at the case counts every day, he said.

Erin Allday is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: eallday@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ErinAllday
Today we are going to look at Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Company S.A. (ATH:EYDAP) to see whether it might be an attractive investment prospect. To be precise, we'll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), as that will inform our view of the quality of the business.

Firstly, we'll go over how we calculate ROCE. Second, we'll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies. Then we'll determine how its current liabilities are affecting its ROCE.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. Generally speaking a higher ROCE is better. Overall, it is a valuable metric that has its flaws. Author Edwin Whiting says to be careful when comparing the ROCE of different businesses, since 'No two businesses are exactly alike.

So, How Do We Calculate ROCE?

The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT)  (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

Or for Athens Water Supply and Sewerage:

0.038 = 56m  (1.6b - 98m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2019.)

So, Athens Water Supply and Sewerage has an ROCE of 3.8%.

Check out our latest analysis for Athens Water Supply and Sewerage

Does Athens Water Supply and Sewerage Have A Good ROCE?

One way to assess ROCE is to compare similar companies. In this analysis, Athens Water Supply and Sewerage's ROCE appears meaningfully below the 5.8% average reported by the Water Utilities industry. This performance could be negative if sustained, as it suggests the business may underperform its industry. Independently of how Athens Water Supply and Sewerage compares to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms is low; especially compared to the ~1.9% available in government bonds. There are potentially more appealing investments elsewhere.

The image below shows how Athens Water Supply and Sewerage's ROCE compares to its industry, and you can click it to see more detail on its past growth.

Story continues

ATSE:EYDAP Past Revenue and Net Income May 15th 2020

When considering this metric, keep in mind that it is backwards looking, and not necessarily predictive. ROCE can be deceptive for cyclical businesses, as returns can look incredible in boom times, and terribly low in downturns. This is because ROCE only looks at one year, instead of considering returns across a whole cycle. How cyclical is Athens Water Supply and Sewerage? You can see for yourself by looking at this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Do Athens Water Supply and Sewerage's Current Liabilities Skew Its ROCE?

Liabilities, such as supplier bills and bank overdrafts, are referred to as current liabilities if they need to be paid within 12 months. The ROCE equation subtracts current liabilities from capital employed, so a company with a lot of current liabilities appears to have less capital employed, and a higher ROCE than otherwise. To counteract this, we check if a company has high current liabilities, relative to its total assets.

Athens Water Supply and Sewerage has current liabilities of 98m and total assets of 1.6b. Therefore its current liabilities are equivalent to approximately 6.3% of its total assets. Athens Water Supply and Sewerage has very few current liabilities, which have a minimal effect on its already low ROCE.

The Bottom Line On Athens Water Supply and Sewerage's ROCE

Still, investors could probably find more attractive prospects with better performance out there. Of course, you might also be able to find a better stock than Athens Water Supply and Sewerage. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have grown earnings strongly.

If you are like me, then you will not want to miss this 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.
UNIFIL, its strategic partner the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), and fellow UN peacekeepers today paid their last respects to a Ghanaian soldier who recently succumbed to illness while serving for peace in south Lebanon.

A 28-year veteran of the Ghana Armed Forces, Warrant Officer (WO) Ackah Patrick had passed away aged 51 on 28 April after a short illness. He arrived in UNIFIL in July 2019 for a one-year tour of duty.

This is WO Patricks third deployment to UNIFIL, having served in south Lebanon also in 2003 and 2009. During his long military career, he also served in three other UN peace operations: in Congo, Cote DIvoire, and a regional operation in West Africa.

During todays memorial service held the main Ghanaian base in Al-Qawzah, south-western Lebanon, UNIFIL Head of Mission and Force Commander Major General Stefano Del Col led tributes to the deceased peacekeeper.

We would like to express heartfelt gratitude to his family and his country, for giving us the privilege to serve with Warrant Officer Ackah Patrick, and for their valuable contribution to our joint efforts, said the UNIFIL head in his eulogy. We shall always keep in mind our fallen comrades in arms, for they represent an example of unwavering commitment to UNIFIL and to this country.

Major General Del Col awarded WO Patrick with the UN Medal posthumously for his dedicated service for peace and stability in south Lebanon. LAF representative Brigadier General Youssef Chalhoub also awarded him a Lebanese medal.

WO Patrick is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.

Todays memorial service was held with limited attendees in order to minimize the risk of COVID-19 Coronavirus spread.

Since its establishment in 1978, UNIFIL has lost more than 300 peacekeepers serving for peace in south Lebanon. Of them, 34 were from Ghana including WO Patrick.
This piece was originally published on Just Security, an online forum for analysis of U.S. national security law and policy.

Thanks to the Supreme Courts new experiment in simulcasting, its possible youve already listened to Tuesdays oral arguments in the two cases involving subpoenas to President Donald Trumps accounting firm, Mazars USA, and his banks, Deutsche Bank and Capital One. If so, you may well already have your own take about the arguments, and about how the court should, or likely will, decide the cases. Even so, I thought it might be worth flagging a couple of aspects of the congressional subpoena case(s)Trump v. Mazars and Trump v. Deutsche Bankthat havent yet received the attention they warrant.

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The Significance of Presidential Oversight: Distinguishing Among the House Committees and the Primary Functions of Their Subpoenas

The first is a distinction Justice Elena Kagan drew, late in the argument, among the three different House committees seeking Trumps financial records. (The committees subpoenas are described in detail on pages 17-36 of the House brief.) The Financial Services Committee doesnt seem to be looking into the president, said Justice Kagan, but at a much broader topic, namely (as the House brief describes it), the use of banks in the United States to carry out international money-laundering as well as unsafe lending practices, in order to assist the committees oversight of regulatory agencies activities in these areas. The committee has offered some reasons why its seeking information about Trump and his enterprises for such purposes (see pages 17-25 of the House brief), but at least some of the justices were clearly concerned that the scope of the Financial Services Committees Trump-related subpoenas was ill-tailored to that objective, and potentially pretextual. Hence Kagans question about whether there might be some heightened need for Congress to say why it is that theyre focusing on presidential records for that purpose.

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By contrast, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (HPSCI) and the House Oversight Committee issued their subpoenas in order to find out important information about the President himselfinformation potentially relevant to their ability to assess his performance of his offices constitutional functions. In an amicus brief I filed with several other scholars, we emphasize that one especially important function of these investigations by HPSCI and the Oversight Committee is to determine whether the president has continuing conflicts of interest arising from his undisclosed personal financial dealings (e.g. with foreign nations) that could impair his conduct in office.

Trump himself, and the solicitor general, suggest that the committees focus on Trump himself makes those investigations more constitutionally dubious. We explain in our brief, however, why theyre wrong to suggest that such an oversight function, and an informing objective, is constitutionally suspect, and why Congresss investigative authority isnt limited to inquiries primarily designed to produce legislation. Indeed, as the brief explains, congressional oversight of the governmentincluding of the president and other executive officersis an inherent and vitally important legislative function that Congress has assiduously performed [f]rom the earliest times in its history. And in this case, those functions are a far stronger justification for the HPSCI and oversight subpoenas at issue than, e.g., the need of the financial services committee to collect all the Trump-related information from Deutsche Bank that its seeking in order to determine whether current law and banking practices adequately guard against foreign money laundering and high-risk loans.

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The Burdens on the President

Throughout both oral arguments, the justices asked repeatedly about how courts should assess the burdens of the subpoenas on the president.

As we discuss at pages 27-30 of our brief, a well-established line of the courts cases, most of them unanimous, such as the Nixon tapes case and Clinton v. Jones, teach that the president must at a minimum make a showing of a burden on his time and energy that impairs his ability to perform the duties of his office in order to invoke the judiciarys aid in limiting judicial process.

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In neither of these cases has Trump made any showing at all of an actual burden on his ability to perform his jobsuch as that the subpoenas will significantly divert his time and attention, or that they would reveal privileged information that would chill the presidents communications with his advisers. (Moreover, even if the president were able to show that a particular subpoena would significantly burden his time and attention, the court held in Clinton v. Jones that that alone wouldnt make it unconstitutional: [P]etitioner errs by presuming that interactions between the Judicial Branch and the Executive, even quite burdensome interactions, necessarily rise to the level of constitutionally forbidden impairment of the Executives ability to perform its constitutionally mandated functions . The fact that a federal courts exercise of its traditional Article III jurisdiction may significantly burden the time and attention of the Chief Executive is not sufficient to establish a violation of the Constitution.)

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Trump and the SG, however, argue that Trump shouldnt have to make such a showingthat, for example, the Committees in Trump v. Mazars shouldnt be able to obtain the records in question unless and until they show that the information they seek is (in the words of the solicitor general) demonstrably critical to a specifically asserted legislative (i.e., legislation-focused) purpose. (They make a similar argument with respect to the burden that should be placed on the New York grand jury in the Vance case.)

Such a shifting of the burden of justification would be inconsistent with the courts precedents. So whats the reason Trump and the solicitor general offer for such a fundamental shift in doctrine?

Well, for one thing, in the congressional subpoena cases Trump invokes the specter of abusive subpoenas made for pretextual reasons. Justice Sonia Sotomayor, for example, asked about some hypotheticals Trump raised that are troubling: [asking for records of] the Presidents transcripts simply to pass on educational reform legislation or subpoenas of his personal medical records simply to enact general healthcare reforms. Justice Brett Kavanaugh likewise asked why, on the Houses theory, a committee couldnt seek a presidents health records for the ostensible purposes of informing consideration of health-care reform legislation. As we explain at page 32 of our brief, however, the existing standards for assessing the validity of congressional subpoenas already adequately address such hypotheticals:

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The Presidents private health records would plainly not be pertinent to an inquiry into general healthcare reform because there would be no basis for singling out the President, of all people, for the demand. Likewise, it is hard to imagine the possible relevance of the Presidents high school grades to any legitimate congressional objective. Here, by contrast, there is an obvious connection between the Presidents undisclosed financial recordsrecords that he alone, unlike all other recent Presidents, has refused to publicly discloseand the possibility that he has conflicts of interest that could impair his official conduct and interfere with his constitutional duties.

The more noteworthy theme of Deputy Solicitor General Jeffrey Walls argument on Tuesday, however, was a new justification for flipping the burden to the congressional committeesnamely, the risk of undermining. Several times, Wall referred to the the dangers of harassing and distracting and undermining the President. As for harassing and distracting, again, Trump hasnt shown that these subpoenas will have any such effect, let alone one that would significantly impair his ability to perform his constitutional duties. Indeed, theres far less risk of those things here than in Clinton v. Jones.

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But that still leaves undermininga notion that appeared rarely if at all in the briefing. What did Wall mean by that?

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He didnt say. Presumably, however, he meant that if the subpoenas do uncover wrongdoing, or conflicts of interest, that could undermine at least this president in the sense that the public will come to question his ability to perform the duties of his office.

If thats what Wall meant, however, then theres nothing constitutionally problematic about such undermining. To the contrary, thats one of the most important benefits of congressional oversight: to offer the people and Congress the information they need to take steps to address any legitimate concerns about the individual wielding such vast power in office. Heres how we put the point in our amicus brief:

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Congressional oversight of Executive officers, and the related function of informing itself and the public of what it has uncovered,  provides the public with information about whether government officials are faithfully performing their duties on behalf of the Nationindispensable information for the People to be able to choose their agents wisely (and decide whether to retain them in office). In Woodrow Wilsons words, [u]nless Congress have and use every means of acquainting itself with the acts and the disposition of the administrative agents of the government, the country would remain in embarrassing, crippling ignorance of the very affairs which it is most important that it should understand and direct. Second, congressional oversight of executive officers conduct is a central component of the checks and balances by which the ambition of each branch can counteract ambition in the other and thereby keep  each other in their proper places. The Federalist No. 51 (Madison). If such oversight reveals executive abuses, for example, Congress can respond with new legislation or changes in allocations of appropriations. In other instances, Congress may rebuke, condemn, or reprimand executive officials, including the president, for wrongdoing or maladministration. In extreme cases, an inquiry may reveal evidence of impeachable conductsomething that the House ordinarily cannot assess at the outset.

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Do revelations of wrongdoing, or conflicts of interest, or bad judgment, undermine the president and other executive officials in the eyes of the people? Of course they do. And indeed, thats often an objective of the investigation for at least some legislators, as it has been in virtually every high-profile congressional investigation in our history, from the St. Clair expedition to the Committee on the War in Lincolns time, to the Teapot Dome scandal, to Watergate, to Whitewater, to Iran/Contra, to Benghazi, and on and on.

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On at least two occasions in the Mazars arguments, Wall stressed that the potential harm is not only that the subpoenas might undermine Trump, but that they could harm and undermine the presidency of the United Statesnot just this president, the institution of the presidency going forward. Its deeply unfortunate, of course, when the presidency or any other of our institutions is tarnished by disclosures of the wrongdoing or malfeasance or negligence of those who hold office in them. But the fact that such things are brought into the light, thereby undermining the officeholder, is one of the most important functions of congressional oversight. As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in the Vance argument, the Nixon tapes had a devastating impact on the president: He resigned from officethe ultimate undermining. But that was a feature, not a bug, of the Ervin Committees justly celebrated investigation.

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Orange, Calif. - A team of anthropologists, physicians, tribal leaders and local government authorities developed and implemented a multi-phase COVID-19 prevention and containment plan among the Tsimane, an indigenous group of forager-horticulturists in the Bolivian Amazon. The collaborative effort is led by Hillard Kaplan, Ph.D., professor of health economics and anthropology and a member of the Economic Science Institute at Chapman University.

The study, published in The Lancet, proposes that indigenous populations worldwide share characteristics that make them especially vulnerable to COVID-19, including higher rates of extreme poverty, poor healthcare access and infrastructure, and widespread respiratory infections. As of May 7, Bolivia had 2,081 confirmed COVID-19 cases and 102 deaths, largely confined to the Santa Cruz and La Paz provinces. As of now, there are no confirmed cases in the towns closest to the Tsimane communities.

The Tsimane Health and Life History Project has been working with Tsimane communities since 2002, studying health and ageing while providing primary health care and biomedical surveillance. Kaplan, co-director of the project, and his team paused research activity in mid-March to redirect their efforts towards reducing the effects of COVID-19 on the tribal populations with whom they work with.

"The disease is spreading rapidly in Bolivia as is the case in many places throughout the developing world but has not yet reached the tribal territories where we work," said Kaplan, the principal investigator of this study. "It is clear from the painful lessons we have learned in this country and in Europe, advance planning is the key to mitigating the devastating effects of the disease."

"After a teenage Yanomami boy died of COVID-19, there was, understandably, a lot of panic about the potential plight of indigenous populations around the world in light of this new, unpredictable threat," said Michael Gurven, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at UC Santa Barbara and co-director of the Tsimane Project with Kaplan. "Since our team had already been working with the Tsimane to try and work out a reasonable plan, we thought it would be a great opportunity to move the conversation toward a concrete blueprint that could, hopefully, be adapted to work in similar areas."

The researchers believe that their approach with the Tsimane can be adapted more generally to tribal and aboriginal populations throughout the world to prevent widespread mortality, and will continue to adjust their plans according to the local circumstances and future COVID-19 discoveries.

Dr. Kaplan and his team developed their COVID-19 strategy based on two guidelines. The first is that preventative measures before mass infection can greatly reduce the burden of morbidity and mortality. The second is that any effective plan must be collaborative among all stakeholders and should involve the indigenous populations in the decision process.

These tribal communities have unique sources of resilience that can be used to prevent the potentially serious effects of COVID-19. The most pertinent is the group's cultural tradition of collective decision- making, where lively two-way discussions are held during village meetings to allow community members to speak up and contribute to a collective decision. The consensus among the Tsimane is that collective isolation is the most viable strategy for minimizing COVID-19 exposure until vaccines or treatments become available. Researchers utilized these community meetings to communicate best practices in collective isolation with the villages.

The research team has a two-phase plan. Phase I -- focused on education, outreach and preparation -- occurred while the novel coronavirus was spreading quickly in Bolivia but before there were confirmed cases in the Beni region where the Tsimane live.

The research team traveled to around 60 villages to hold community meetings. The researchers sent native speakers of the Tsimane language to these meetings to inform the population about the risks of COVID-19 and promote a collective decision-making process on how best to respond to the epidemic. These meetings lead to unanimous agreement by the Tsimanes to collectively isolate the tribal territory and its constituent communities to prevent interaction with the outside world.

The researchers also worked to translate and adapt U.S. Centers for Disease Control informational posters into the Tsimane language for dissemination.

"While some Tsimane people had heard about the existence of coronavirus, most were unaware of its imminent threat, how it is transmitted, who is most vulnerable or whether there was a cure for the disease," said Kaplan.

The research team is currently in Phase II: containment, patient management and quarantine strategies. This is being accomplished through ongoing radio communications about the current rates and areas of infection, coordination of rapid testing and contact-tracing and the provisioning of personal protective equipment for local health care workers. Phase II began in mid-April when COVID- 19 was diagnosed and confirmed in the Beni region.

"Our plan is adapted to a low-tech environment of inadequate hospital facilities and to lower population density where isolation is possible for whole communities and for families and individuals within communities," said Gregory Thomas, MD, a medical director of the Long Beach MemorialCare Heart and Vascular Institute and collaborator of the study.

"The plan places greater emphasis on testing with contact-tracing and whole-family approaches to isolation. For the management and treatment of COVID-19 cases, it emphasizes patient monitoring, especially blood oxygen, and portable oxygen support for those who need it," added David Michalik, MD, pediatric infectious disease specialist at MemorialCare Miller Women's and Children's Hospital Long Beach.

###

In addition to Kaplan, the paper's senior co-authors include Michael Gurven of UC Santa Barbara; Benjamin Trumble of Arizona State University; Jonathan Stieglitz of the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse, France; Gregory Thomas and David Michalik of MemorialCare.

About Chapman University

Founded in 1861, Chapman University is a nationally-ranked private university located in Southern California. Chapman is categorized by the Carnegie Classification as an R2 "high research activity" institution and offers personalized education to more than 9,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The campus has produced a Rhodes Scholar, been named a top producer of Fulbright Scholars and hosts a chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation's oldest and most prestigious honor society. Based in the City of Orange, Chapman also includes the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine. In 2019, the university opened its 11th college, Fowler School of Engineering, in its newest facility, Keck Center for Science and Engineering. Learn more about Chapman University: http://www.chapman.edu.
ANN ARBOR, MI - A $500,000 grant from the Pfizer Foundation to the Food Bank Council of Michigan will help provide emergency food to Ann Arbors Food Gatherers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Food Gatherers is one of the beneficiaries of the grant announced Thursday, May 14. The Ann Arbor food bank is getting $18,072 to assist with its emergency food efforts.

This public health crisis has created an unprecedented need for emergency food, said Dr. Phil Knight, Food Bank Council of Michigan executive director, said in a news release. The Pfizer Foundations generous grant means those who are facing food insecurity will have one less thing to worry about during these tremendously difficult times.

The Food Bank Council represents Michigans seven regional food banks. The network provides food to all the states 83 counties. Last year, it distributed 205 million pounds of food, with more than 80 million pounds consisting of fresh produce.

Food Gatherers is so grateful for the Pfizer Foundations support during this critical time, said Helen Starman, chief development officer. We are seeing a large increase in need for food assistance in our community. Our partner agencies have reported a 30% to 300% increase in pantry visitors, many of whom have never needed to ask for help before. This grant will help Food Gatherers meet this increased need.

For more information on the Food Bank Council of Michigans response to COVID-19, visit its website.

For those who need food, Food Gatherers has a network of food pantries and meal programs ready to help, including the Community Kitchen in Ann Arbor.

The agency encourages residents to visit www.foodgatherers.org/needfood to access an up-to-date list of food distribution and meal program sites or call 734-761-2796.

In this unprecedented situation, the agency says financial donations provide Food Gatherers the most flexibility to best respond to emerging needs. To make a donation, visit www.foodgatherers.org/donate or call 734-761-2796.

To find out how to donate food to Food Gatherers, visit www.foodgatherers.org/givefood.

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A body-positive photographer has inspired dozens of women to show off their 'quarantine bodies' after posing in her underwear to hit back at the 'tone-deaf' weight-gain stigma that has emerged amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Anastasia Garcia, 32, from Brooklyn, New York, was fed up with body-shaming memes about putting on the 'quarantine 15' when she stripped down to her black Calvin Klein bra and bikini briefs to snap a mirror selfie in early April.

'If these memes triggered me after all the work Ive done to promote self-acceptance, I wondered how it was affecting women around me,' she told Glamour. 'I was so disappointed that despite all the body-positive progress weve made, fat people were still the butt of the joke.'

Hitting back: Photographer Anastasia Garcia, 32, from Brooklyn, New York, was fed up with seeing body-shaming memes about putting on the 'quarantine 15' when she posted this selfie

Viral: Garcia urged others to post their own selfies using the hashtag #myquarantinebody. Plus-size model Hunter McGrady said she stands with Garcia when she shared her photo

Garcia posted the image on Instagram to combat the fatphobia she was seeing online, insisting that there is no shame in having your body change as you navigate the uncertainty of the global crisis.

'This is #myquarantinebody Its definitely not as strong as it was a month ago  when I was in the gym every week  AND THAT'S OK! This body is my home. Its keeping me safe and healthy during times of crisis. And now more than ever I am so thankful that I am healthy... when so many are losing their lives,' she wrote.

'Ive been really disappointed seeing blatant body shaming and weight gain stigma around being quarantined. It feels tone-deaf, short-sighted and incredibly privileged. We are all quite literally in survival mode. So its ok if youre not feeling your fittest, or if youre eating differently (as many of us are due to grocery store availability).

Powerful message: Maddie Touma reminded others that 'it's OK to gain weight during quarantine' when she posted her photo

Spreading the word: Model Abbey Ries said 'body shame and societal pressures about gaining or losing weight have no business in this crisis'

Right attitude: Instagram user Jennifaire said she is 'trying to be kind' to herself and 'embrace' all the great food she is able to make in quarantine

'Life right now is not business as usual and no amount of body stigma and fat shame is going to change that,' she added.

Garcia ended her post by encouraging others to post their own selfies and stories using the hashtag #myquarantinebody.

'We may not be able to change our current environment but we can empower each other toward self-love in these difficult times,' she wrote.

More than 40 women have shared snapshots so far, including plus-size model and body-positivity advocate Hunter McGrady.

Powerful words: 'I am not a before. I am not an after. I am a during,' journalist Liz Black captioned her photo

Full of love: Model Michaela McGrady reminded her followers that they are 'wonderful' just the way they are

The 27-year-old Sports Illustrated Swimsuit star posted a photo of herself posing in a black lace bra and underwear while noting that she has also seen 'lots of negative "self-talk" during this time.'

'I ask that you be kind to your body, Nurture your body, Love on your body fiercely, respect it, and even better, be PROUD of it,' she wrote.

'Its getting you through this time! I stand with @anastasiagphoto to stop the body shame and love yourself, even during times of crisis. Heres #MyQuarantineBody.'

Models Michaela McGrady and Abbey Ries were also among the women who shared body-positive pics of themselves in support of Garcia.

Amazing: More than 40 women have shared photos using the hashtag #myquarantinebody

United: In celebration of the movement, Garcia posted photo collages of the women who joined her in challenging 'fatphobic rhetoric'

Movement: Garcia said seeing the women's photos have made her 'feel more connected to people' during the global crisis

In celebration of the movement, Garcia posted photo collages of the women who joined her in challenging 'fatphobic rhetoric' and 'the flurry of weight gain memes circulating the internet.'

'Over 40 women have posted images of themselves so far. They have shared their stories, their bodies, and in doing so challenged each of their communities to continue loving their bodies despite current circumstances,' she wrote.

'Seeing these beauties bare their souls with such honesty and vulnerability has made me feel more connected to people than I have in over a month. Thank you.

'As we press forward I hope that we can all remember that magic can be created from chaos and no amount of fat shame is going to save us.

'We are navigating unprecedented times. And while I cant be behind the lens creating images to inspire... I can still stand with you and support you on your journey toward self-love.'
An industry park in Ba Ria-Vung Tau province. Industrial park infrastructure development companies have not been affected much by the COVID-19 outbreak (Photo: cafef.vn)

Sonadezi Corporation, whose main businesses include industrial park infrastructure development and leasing, reported net revenues of 1.078 trillion VND (46.5 million USD) and net profit after tax of nearly 271 billion VND (11.7 million USD) in the first quarter of the year, a year-on-year increase of 11 percent and 51 percent.

Industrial park leasing accounted for the largest proportion of revenues  of over 27 percent -- with 293 billion VND (12.6 million USD), a year-on-year increase of 66 percent.

Long Hau Corporation, which owns Long Hau Industrial Park in Long An, also reported an increase in both revenues and profits in the first quarter.

Net revenue was 206.4 billion VND (8.9 million USD), up 19.7 percent year-on-year, and gross profit was more than 93.6 billion VND (4.02 million USD), up 20.6 percent.

Revenues from infrastructure rent grew by 21 percent to nearly 159 billion VND, or 77 percent of total revenues, while those from leasing factories and accommodation increased by over 22 percent to nearly 28 billion VND.

Profit after tax was 63.1 billion VND (2.7 million USD), an increase of more than 15 percent year-on-year.

According to real estate consultancy Jones Lang LaSalle, though the pandemic could cause a delay in decisions following lease negotiations, the fundamentals of the market remain strong and would recover after the epidemic subsides.

It said companies looking to diversify their manufacturing portfolio outside China are attracted to Vietnam thanks to its proximity to the former.

"Industrial park developers remain confident that demand for land will continue to grow and therefore land prices are expected to increase in line with the long-term potential of Vietnams industrial segment," Stephen Wyatt, country head of JLL Vietnam, said.

Vietnam's industrial land prices rose by 12 percent year-on-year in Q1 as the shift out of China by manufacturing facilities continued.

They rose by 6.5 percent in the north to 99 USD per square metre and by 12.2 percent in the south to 101 USD.

Ready-built factories costing 3.5-5 USD per square meter per month are favoured by businesses as indicated by the high occupancy rates, according to the report.
Joe Biden ran as the most centrist candidate in the Democratic primary. Ultimately, despite the egghead objections of out-of-touch left-liberal bloggers, this strategy worked, and he recovered from a strong early push by Bernie Sanders to (presumptively) win the nomination.

Four years ago, Hillary Clinton likewise ran a successful nominating campaign as the centrist alternative to Sanders. When Clinton won, she took the same positions shed held during the primary into the general election. She proposed incremental improvements to Obamacare rather than single-payer health care, and emphasized her reliability and commitment to social tolerance more than her plans for legislation. She agreed to some platform concessions in order to secure Sanders July endorsement, but only after fraught negotiations. She chose Tim Kaine, who is pictured in the dictionary next to the entry for inoffensive conventional Democrat, as her running mate. (Its a specialized dictionary.)

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Biden is doing things differently. He secured Sanders endorsement in April in exchange for a promise to form unity task forces that would work on his platform. Those teams were announced this week, and regardless of how much they end up contributing to the text of bills that might be signed in an actual Biden administration, as symbolism alone they mark a huge departure from the last establishment nominees approach. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the most famous advocate of a Green New Deal, is the co-chair of the climate committee along with John Kerry, whom she will presumably have to teach to schedule Zoom meetings. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, one of the co-chairs of the Congressional Progressive Caucus and a leading advocate of Medicare for All, will be working on health care. Sara Nelson, who is the president of a flight attendants union and a prominent figure in the next-generation labor-activist community, is on the economic committee.

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The candidate has also started using more progressive talking points in his own rhetoric. He gave an angry populist interview to Politico in which he used the word hell five times (and asses once!) while complaining about banks and tax cuts, then told New York magazine that he believes our moment calls for an FDR-style presidency. According to an American Prospect piece, Biden has also made the FDR comparison repeatedly on his campaign podcast. Hes even said he supports rent and mortgage forgiveness for individuals whove lost income due to the coronavirus: Not paid later. Forgiveness. Radical stuff!

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Joe Biden has been part of the Democratic establishment even longer than Hillary Clinton has been, his record is more conservative than hers was, and he was even more emphatic than she was during their respective primaries about limiting public spending and uniting rather than dividing; while other candidates tried to slip a little Bernie-ism into their platforms here and there, Biden was firm that he would not do any of that angry anti-billionaire stuff. So whats the deal? Since when do you win the more leftward partys primary and then move to the left?

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There are a few things at work here, according to me, a politics expert who thought Biden was toast in early February.

 Biden is less of an us vs. them guy than Clinton. Hillary Clinton was portrayed, over decades as a public figure, as a feminazi she-demon who had people murdered. Her husband, who against all odds has remained her top political ally, was the subject of a lengthy right-wing takedown campaign that culminated in his impeachment. Just when she thought shed lined herself up to win the Democratic Party nomination in 2008, the party instead coalesced around a hotshot new senator from Illinois. Perhaps understandably, she reacted to all of this by placing a high premium on lasting personal connections and loyalty, keeping the counsel of advisers like Philippe Reines, Huma Abedin, and Sidney Blumenthal whod worked for and with her for decades. Reines and Blumenthal are no-rules attack dogs; Abedin is not, but has demonstrated in other contexts that she will honor a commitment far, far longer than is justified. (She was married to Anthony Weiner. Thats the reference. As of July 2019 they were reportedly in the process of finalizing a divorce.) Clinton did not have the instinct to reach out genially to the campaign shed defeated; in fact, some of her staffers scheduled a videoconference to celebrate when Sanders announced he was dropping out this year. (It was canceled after BuzzFeed reported on it.)

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Biden by contrast is a politician who ran in the 2008 primary as a social moderate with a statesmans gravitas, lost, and responded by becoming the goofy, LGBT-friendly sidekick to the first black president. Relatedly:

 Biden has fewer fixed beliefs than Clinton does. Clinton practiced politics with the stage-managed, by-the-numbers style of someone who did not necessarily love running for office, but thats not to say that she didnt care about government. Rather than electoral strategy and fundraising, her own early career in politics involved legal work for childrens advocacy groups and indigent defendants, and she led the team that developed a comprehensive plan to reform the health insurance system in the United States during Bill Clintons first term. As her infamous paid-speech transcripts demonstrated, she had a sense of how the public and private sectors would interact in an ideal society that, however it may have ended up hurting her in the Rust Belt, was internally coherent.

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Biden, as demonstrated by his recent embrace of a bankruptcy reform proposal that would essentially reverse the bankruptcy reform bill he pushed through the Senate only 15 years ago, does not necessarily have the same kind of model in his head as Hillary does about what the world should look like. After graduating from law school he spent about five minutes as a public defender before running for office at age 27. He just wants to be where the people are!

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 Only Nixon can go to China. Clinton operated as if under the constant imperative to prove that she was not a shrill nanny-state liberal elitist. Seemingly half the speakers at the 2016 Democratic convention were military guys brought in to assure the country that she was a true-blue American tough cookie whod be just as happy to accidentally rocket-attack a Middle Eastern wedding as a man would be. This strategy was justified as a matter of politics, if not on the merits: 2016 voters on the whole perceived Clinton to be more liberal than Donald Trump was conservative, and a plurality of male voters said Trump understood their concerns more than Clinton did. Biden, meanwhile, has absolute confidence in his appeal to culturally conservative, older, and male Americans. That confidence isnt always justifiedit didnt help him finish any higher than fifth place in Iowa or New Hampshire, for examplebut its how he sees himself. Scranton Joe, in his mind, doesnt need to prove his bona fides to the retirement-age white swing voters of Waukesha County.

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All of this, though, only explains why Biden thinks he can go left, not why he thinks he should. After all, he drew plenty of distinctions between himself and Sanders during the primary. But:

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 At the same time that he secured the nomination, the economy fell into a toilet. See above: Biden has always changed with the times. Look out the window: Its the same thing youve been looking at for the past two months while possibly losing some or all of your income. The Republican White House is signaling that it will support a second round of stimulus checks, aka free money for all but the most well-to-do Americans. Why should a Democrat whos confident that he wont be perceived as a socialist let himself get outflanked on social welfare spending by a Republican? The coronavirus, in Bidens own words, has exposed many of the biggest cracks in the social safety net, including those that affect the kinds of white-collar, higher-income voters who are typically skittish about tax- or borrow-and-spend policies.

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Joe Biden is old. He is older than Hillary Clinton or her husband. When Biden was born, FDR was the actual president. He grew up in a middle-class Democratic family while the party still held most of FDRs Solid South coalitiona coalition that Biden has on occasion gotten himself in trouble for being a little too fond of. In the words of his chief economist, he has the traits of a retail politician. Having solidified his hold over his party, he is offering something to the younger and more economically insecure voters who were skeptical of him during the primary under the cover of associating himself, during a historic crisis, with the president who won WWII and pulled the country out of the Great Depression. Its a win-win, except for the superrich, but theyll get plenty of chances to talk Biden out of all this communist stuff if he actually gets elected. This is still America, after all.
A high school junior who learned how to code by watching YouTube videos online has created one of the most extensive coronavirus-tracking websites that now brings in 30 million visitors a day.

Avi Schiffman, 17, from Mercer Island, Washington, launched nCoV2019.live in January - months before the coronavirus outbreak was even declared a pandemic.

The user-friendly website provides visitors with accurate updates on coronavirus cases in countries around the world, including the number of infections, deaths and recovered cases.

The data, which is pulled from various government websites and health authorities including the WHO and CDC, automatically updates every 10 minutes, and is presented on an easy-to-read dashboard.

Seventeen-year-old Avi Schiffman now runs one of the most-visited coronavirus-tracking websites after first launching it in January

The data is pulled from various government websites and health authorities including the WHO and CDC and is accurately presented on an easy-to-read dashboard

It includes timely updates on coronavirus cases in various countries around the world, including the number of infections, deaths and recovered cases

The teenager, a student at Mercer Island High School, just outside Seattle, got the idea to create the website while tracking information on the virus in December - when it first emerged in Wuhan, China.

'I thought it would be cool if there was a website that could pull in all the information from all kinds of (sources),' Schiffman said in interview with Today.

'I mainly wanted to create something that would show the data as accurately as possible because there has been a lot of misinformation.'

The website has since become one of the most-visited coronavirus-tracking sites, raking in 30 million visitors a day, and has had a total of 700 million viewers since its inception.

That kind of traffic means the website would be an ideal advertising platform - and a potentially lucrative opportunity for Schiffman - but the teen said he has turned down offers, including the chance to make $8million.

'I'm only 17, I don't need $8 million...I don't want to be a profiteer,' he told Business Insider.

It recently rolled out a new feature, a survival rate calculator, which estimates an individual's likelihood of dying from the disease based on their age, sex, and pre-existing conditions

Last year, the teen shared a photo on Instagram competing in the 'Tech to Protect' challenge

Schiffman further explained that ads could potentially affect the website's user interface and an advertising deal would mean he would not be able to run the site on his own terms.

The teen said he hopes his new creation will put pressure on the WHO to develop a similar tool in the event of another pandemic in the future.

'The responsibility shouldn't be on some random kid, but it's obvious that people want to know the statistics,' he told BI.

While most people have extra time on their hands now that they are cooped at home due to coronavirus lockdowns, Schiffman said his life has only become busier as he has taken on the responsibility of maintaining his website around the clock.

He said he has invested at least a few hundreds hours in running the site and at one point even skipped two weeks of school to work on it.

On his LinkedIn account, Schiffman describes himself as 'a high school junior with years of experience in web development' and design

He also recently rolled out a new feature, a survival rate calculator, which estimates an individual's likelihood of dying from the disease based on their age, sex, and pre-existing conditions.

According to the calculator, a female between the age of 20-39, with no underlying health conditions has a '0.33 per cent chance of dying' from Covid-19.

'You should be fine. You have an estimated 0.33% chance of dying from covid-19', the results state, along with a disclaimer: 'Please note this is just an estimation, and not an absolute assessment of the effects covid-19 might have on you.'

Schiffman was able to build the website after teaching himself how to code by watching YouTube videos.

On his LinkedIn profile, he describes himself as 'a high school junior with years of experience in web development' and design.

'I also have extensive knowledge of popular 3D modeling software such as Autodesk Maya, as well as video editing skills in [Adobe] After Effects and Premier,' he writes.

He adds that he is currently looking for internship opportunities and potential business partners.
Cambodian King Norodom Sihamoni poses during a photo session in his workshop at the Institut de France in Paris, May 24, 2019.

A member of Cambodias opposition party marked the 67th birthday of King Norodom Sihamoni on Thursday by urging him to stop ignoring the countrys political stalemate, prompting the ruling party to dismiss the widely held view that it exerts pressure on him to harden its grip on power.

Prum Lyda, an activist with the banned opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) who lives in Thailand to avoid politically motivated harassment, did not mince words while calling out Sihamonis inaction, despite the threat of stiff penalties under Cambodias lese-majeste law used to punish those who insult the monarch.

She said that Sihamoni should exercise his powers enshrined in the constitution, and follow in the footsteps of his late father King Norodom Sihanouk to resolve Cambodias political crisis and end the suffering of the people under Prime Minister Hun Sens leadership.

With the late king, we felt confident [as a nation], she told RFAs Khmer Service, noting that when the country was embroiled in conflict, Sihanouk had invited all parties to sit down and talk to find a solution and shake hands.

But King Sihamoni is a study in contrast. He has ignored [the political crisis]. It seems he does not pay much attention to the people and he is under pressure from the government.

Sihanouk, who secured Cambodias independence from French colonial rule in 1953, died at the age of 89 in October 2012 after suffering a heart attack at a hospital in Beijing, prompting an outpouring of grief for the former ruler, who was beloved by his Cambodian subjects.

Sihamoni, on the other hand, has largely been abroad or operated in a rubber stamp capacity when controversial bills pushed through by the countrys one-party legislature are ready to be signed into law, often to the dismay of democracy and human rights watchdogs.

Last month, while the king was in Beijing for an annual medical checkup, the head of the Senate enacted a law authorizing a state of emergency to contain the spread of the coronavirus that a United Nations expert had said could be used to unnecessarily increase already heavy restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly.

Merely four months after a November 2017 Supreme Court ruling dissolved the CNRP for its alleged role in a plot to topple the government, Cambodias National Assembly unanimously passed the countrys lese-majeste law, which forbids insulting the king and punishes those deemed guilty of such an offense with up to five years in prison and up to U.S. $2,500 in fines.

The move prompted rights groups to warn that the law could be used to silence critics of the government and came amid a larger crackdown on the political opposition, NGOs, and the independent media that paved the way for Hun Sens ruling Cambodian Peoples Party (CPP) to win all 125 seats in parliament in the countrys July 2018 general election.

Political prisoners letter

Another CNRP activist named Kong Mas, who is serving an 18-month jail sentence for posts he made on Facebook in early 2019 criticizing government policies, also urged Sihamoni on his birthday to help bring an end to Cambodias political impassealbeit in a more diplomatic manner.

His wife, Kol Sat, said Kong Mas sent a letter to the king asking him to mediate between the two parties, as well as to issue a decree releasing the countrys political prisoners.

His intention is simply to request that the king resolve the political crisis and to wish him well on his birthday, she said.

In March, a Cambodian appeals court upheld the Oct. 18, 2019 sentencing of Kong Mas for insulting the government and incitement to commit a crime based on a Facebook post, which contained comments critical of Hun Sens government and predictedcorrectlythat Cambodia would be the target of European Union trade sanctions.

Responding to calls for Sihamoni to intervene on Thursday, CPP spokesman Sok Ey San said Cambodia has no political crisis and that the government cant interfere in the rule of the king.

What evidence does the opposition party have to show that the CPP is pressuring the king? he asked.

Sok Ey San said such false allegations are the reason members of the opposition have faced arrest and jail.

They are insulting the constitution and the kings reputation, he said.

In September, a court in Cambodia charged acting president of the CNRP Sam Rainsy with insulting the king, a day after he gave an interview in which he called Sihamoni a puppet of Hun Sen, while last month, Sok Chenda, a former member of the CNRPs Prey Veng Provincial Council was charged with inciting the public against the king, days after his arrest him over a debt to a microfinance institution.

Growing discontent

Speaking to RFA on Thursday, social and political analyst Meas Nee said the CPP is losing by refusing to return to the negotiating table.

He said that within the context of the coronavirus outbreak and its economic impact, any attempt to prevent a national reconciliation will benefit the opposition while the public grows increasingly frustrated with the ruling partys inability to improve living standards.

Avoiding dealing with social crisis leads to revoltthere should be a national reconciliation and then the people will continue to support the government, he said.

Meas Nees comments come a week after Hun Sen held a 50-minute meeting with former CNRP President Kem Sokha, now on trial for treason, after he sent condolences over the death of Hun Sens mother-in-law and attended her funeral in the capital Phnom Penh.

The meeting led to much speculation about whether the two leaders might resolve their differences stemming from Kem Sokhas September 2017 arrest, but the CPP quickly set out to quash the rumors, calling the sit-down a matter of formality that does not herald a political reconciliation.

Analyst Seng Sary, however, told RFA on Thursday he expects there will be a sudden turn in Cambodias political landscape.

Cambodian politics are in constant flux, he said, noting that the countrys 2023 elections loom on the horizon.

Reported by RFAs Khmer Service. Translated by Samean Yun. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.
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Melissa Etheridge's choice of David Crosby to be the biological father of her son could have been a contributing factor in the 21-year-old's shocking death, a top addiction specialist claims.

'Research tells us that 4060% of the risk for developing addiction is driven by genetics,' Emily Feinstein, the chief operating officer of the Manhattan-based Center on Addiction told DailyMail.com

Beckett Cypheridge, 21, was found dead in a stylish apartment in downtown Denver on Wednesday afternoon. In a tweet, Etheridge put his death down to his opioid addiction, although the city's medical officer said 'the cause and manner of death is pending investigation.'

Crosby, who found fame first with The Byrds and then with Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, had a long history of drug abuse and spent nine months in a Texas prison in the 1980s for heroin and cocaine possession. He was later arrested for drunk driving after a hit and run accident.

Rocker David Crosby's biological son Beckett Cypher died on Wednesday after an addiction to opioids. Melissa Etheridge and then-partner Julie Cypher chose Crosby to be their son's biological father when they set out on having a family in the 1990s

Crosby's donated sperm was used both for Beckett and his older sister Bailey, now 23 and Cypher was the biological mother of both. Bailey and Beckett are pictured with their mother Melissa when she was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles in September 2011

In 1994 he had to have a liver transplant due to contracting hepatitis C, which is often brought on brought on by sharing needles.

Etheridge and then-partner Julie Cypher chose Crosby to be the biological father when they set out on having a family in the 1990s. His donated sperm was used both for Beckett and his older sister Bailey, now 23.

Cypher was the biological mother of both.

'Research tells us that 4060% of the risk for developing addiction is driven by genetics,' Emily Feinstein, the chief operating officer of the Manhattan-based Center on Addiction told DailyMail.com

Melissa had considered asking good friend Brad Pitt to be the father but felt that he wanted children of his own so badly that he could never accept that the children were hers and Julie's. At the time, Pitt was dating Gwyneth Paltrow.

When Etheridge and Cypher visited Crosby and his wife Jan in Hawaii during a vacation the subject of children came up and the question of who they should choose as a father.

Jan said: 'What about David?'

For a year the couple thought about the idea, even worrying whether Crosby's drug past might be a problem.

Eventually they decided there was no danger that his sperm could be affected by his past drug use.

But it could have influenced Beckett's drug addiction, said Feinstein from the Center on Addiction.

'When an individual with a substance use disorder has a history of addiction in their family, it is likely that genetics were a contributing factor,' she told DailyMail.com.

Crosby, now 78, was the best choice, Etheridge and Cypher told Rolling Stone in 2000.

'For one, he's musical, which means a lot to me and I admire his work,' Etheridge said. 'And he has his own life, has his own family.

'It's not a parental thing for David,' she added. 'David and Jan totally understood that we are the parents.'

Crosby, now 78, was the best choice, Etheridge and Cypher told Rolling Stone in 2000. The entire family, including Crosby and his wife Jan, appeared on the cover

For a year Etheridge and Cypher thought about the idea of having Crosby as a donor, even worrying whether his drug past might be a problem. Eventually they decided there was no danger that his sperm could be affected by his past drug use

Etheridge, 56, announced her son's death on Twitter on Wednesday evening. 'Today I joined the hundreds of thousands of families who have lost loved ones to opioid addiction,' she tweeted.

'My son Beckett, who was just 21, struggled to overcome his addiction and finally succumbed to it today. He will be missed by those who loved him, his family and friends.

'My heart is broken,' Etheridge added. 'I am grateful for those who have reached out with condolences and I feel their love and sincere grief.

'We struggle with what else we could have done to save him, and in the end we know he is out of the pain now.'

Later his sister Bailey shared photos of herself with Beckett on Instagram. 'I don't know what to say,' she wrote. 'Today we lost my brother.

'Too heartbroken and overwhelmed to be eloquent but appreciate all those who have reached out.

'I love you Beckett. Fly high and watch over us.'

Etheridge, 58, said in a statement that Beckett had succumbed to opioid addiction and that her heart is broken

Melissa Etheridge's oldest daughter Bailey Cypheridge paid tribute to her brother Beckett (above together) after his tragic death at 21 following a battle with opioid addiction

Beckett had always lived in the shadow of his older sister.

While she studied at elite Thacher School and Ivy League Columbia University, he went to an academy for struggling children and the Colorado Mountain College in Aspen.

She went on to become an analyst at Goldman Sachs. He worked at the Westin Snowmass Resort, near Aspen, Colorado. The resort is currently closed and it is not known if he had a job to go back to.

Bailey and Beckett both used the surname Cypheridge, a mash-up of their two mothers' names. It wasn't until Beckett was 15 months old that Etheridge went public with the identity of their biological father.

'We just got so tired of this secret,' Etheridge said at the time. 'It wears you out.

'And keeping this big secret goes against how we are choosing to live our lives: very openly.'

Etheridge and Cypher split in 2000, but Julie bought a house right next door to make co-parenting easier. Melissa went on to have twins with Tammy Lynn Michaels, who she married in 2005 and divorced in 2010. She then married current partner Linda Wallem in 2014.

Etheridge later admitted smoking marijuana with both Bailey and Beckett. She had tried weed occasionally but then found it helpful for her breast cancer that was diagnosed in 2004.

'It was a wake-up call for me,' she said. 'When I used it as medicine, it became so clear to me that it has been maligned and misunderstood, and I really wanted to help people who are suffering. I mean, going through chemotherapy is suffering and cannabis helps so many parts of just that. That's just the beginning of what it does medicinally.

It was Crosby who suggested using marijuana to her.

'You know, Melissa, you have to do medicinal marijuana,' he told her. 'You have to [try] cannabis. That's the way to do it. It's too hard otherwise.'

Crosby has a history of drug abuse and spent nine months in a Texas prison for heroin and cocaine possession in the 1980s

David denied that he played 'no part' in Beckett's upbringing after a rude comment from one Twitter user

Feinstein said she doubted if that would have contributed to Beckett's addiction problem.

'Addiction is frequently caused by a combination of social, environmental and genetic factors. While it's not advisable for a parent to engage in substance use, like smoking pot, with his or her child, this alone, is unlikely to cause addiction.

'Although a parent can't control their child's genetics, parents do have an immense amount of influence over their children.

Crosby himself spoke out about Beckett's death in terse Twitter responses to fan.

'I respectfully point out, David was their donor,' someone identified as Tea wrote. 'They did not have a son 'with' him. He was Melissa and Julie's child. They raised him. Like most donors, he played no other part.'

Crosby replied: 'Not true'.

When another Twitter user told him 'I will be 40 next month. As long as I can remember anything at all you have been one of my favorite voices. While I know that you were a surrogate, I also know that you just lost a son. I'm sorry, I know you've had a rough year,' David responded: 'Maybe it's a test'.

And later when a woman asked if he thought anyone from CS&N would reach out to him, he replied: 'I doubt itbut you never know.' The band  which consisted of Crosby, Stephen Stills and Graham Nash along with Neil Young who joined them intermittently  broke up several times often acrimoniously. In 2017 when asked about a potential reunion, Nash said he was up for it 'even though I'm not talking to David and neither is Neil.'
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SOURCE CustomInsured LLC
Small business owners in Central New York may be allowed to reopen their doors to employees and customers starting Friday, but there are some important considerations they should make before deciding whether now is the right time.

Syracuse.com talked to Joan Powers, director of the Small Business Development Center at Onondaga Community College, for a Q&A on best practices for developing a reopening plan after shutdowns to prevent the spread of coronavirus. New York state has started to unveil the process for businesses that wish to reopen, but Powers discussed the things  aside from the states OK  business owners should think about before opening.

Physical space

The first thing business owners need to do to ensure they are complying with New York state guidelines for reopening is evaluate their physical space: Will you be able to enforce social distancing, and how?

Powers recommends coming up with a plan for how you will adapt your space so that employees and customers are able to maintain six feet apart as much as possible. That could include moving work stations or seating for customers further apart or designating all new areas for certain procedures or services.

Powers also reminded business owners to consider who might be able to continue working remotely to free up more space.

Finally, cleaning and sanitation needs to be considered: when and how that will take place, and who is responsible.

Powers reminded business owners that this new way of operating is going to come at a cost.

That could be detrimental to your business, Powers said, if youre only able to have a certain number of customers at a time, youre going to have to adjust your expenses so you can still make a profit.

Financing

Powers said every business owner should sit down and put together cash flow projections and create a new monthly budget before reopening.

The point is to analyze your necessary expenses (things like rent, utilities, employees, inventory and supplies) to have a very clear understanding of how much revenue you will need to bring in to break even.

To start out, thats the first thing we look for with our clients," Powers said, referencing not only counseling she does with clients during the pandemic, but in general, with anyone looking to start a small business.

The goal of any business is to make a profit, but that might take some time, and business owners should be prepared for that, Powers said.

When do you expect to be able to make a profit? How long are you comfortable with not making a profit?

Powers said these questions can help you pivot your business model. You may consider changing the goods or services you offer, or even how you offer them. Essential businesses like restaurants and grocery stores have blazed a path for this, but each business owner can think about what they might want to do differently to serve their customers needs. Powers said many of her clients have pivoted to eCommerce, for example.

If while youre budgeting you determine that you need financial assistance, Powers said the first call should be to your lender or financial institution.

Talk with them about whats available, she said. Lenders have information about federal relief programs like the Paycheck Protection Program and the Economic Injury Disaster Loan, but they also have other ideas about ways to control costs and can help with cashflow by increasing available credit.

Employees

Its simple but its really important, Powers and others have stressed: In order to open, business owners must have a plan for how they are going to keep their employees safe and healthy.

It can be as simple as having the right equipment: masks and other personal protective gear. But it also gets more complicated quickly: Do employees need training on this new gear or new protocols? Do you have enough gear to last a few weeks? Do you need to change employees hours to accommodate social distancing?

Consider how much time you need to acquire equipment and educate employees about the new way of operating, Powers said, before you rush to open your doors.

Marketing

Last but not at all least, communicating with customers is key, Powers said.

After you address and plan for these other concerns, its important to share the information with customers so they know your business is available to them, and its safe to come in.

Communicate changes to the public, Powers said. That makes customers feel comfortable."

Marketing might include information about your business hours, how to contact you, and what customers should expect if they are coming into your store or shop. It could include things like having the right signage and safety guidelines prominently displayed at your business.

Marketing can also be used to reach new customers. Especially if you are making changes that could mean you are targeting a new customer base, Powers said it is important to think about how youre going to reach those people, whether its through your business website, social media or advertising.

Having an online presence is more critical than ever for businesses to be able to reopen successfully, Powers said.

Powers organization, the Small Business Development Center, offers free, confidential counseling, available remotely. Small business owners can sign up for an appointment online.

Small business owners: Have a question or a story to share? We want to hear from you. Contact Back in Business reporter Julie McMahon: Email | Twitter | 315-412-1992. Join the conversation in our Facebook group, CNY Back in Business. Sign up for the Back In Business newsletter to get small business advice delivered to your email inbox.

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Rumble

Flossey is living a wonderful life on a beautiful farm in Millbrook, Ontario. It's what is knows an "ethical farm" where cows have space to roam and graze instead of being kept indoors for most of their lives. Flossey's farm has vast expanses of lush, green grass, rolling hills, ponds full of fresh water, and forested areas for shade. This is life as it should be for these gentle creatures. Dave is a farm hand who often helps out with some of the chores and animal care. He decided to take a break on this warm, summer day and he took a seat on the hill overlooking the pasture.
Hundreds of protestors rallied against stay-at-home orders in Michigan's capital on Thursday and a legal tug-of-war over coronavirus restrictions was taking place in neighboring Wisconsin as lockdown debates turn bitterly partisan in the United States. About 200 demonstrators, according to the Michigan state police, including some armed with guns, milled around outside the closed state capitol building in a steady rain in defiance of Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer's lockdown orders. "Defend Our Constitution. Patriots Stand Up!" read posters carried by the protestors, some of whom also displayed their support for Republican President Donald Trump. There were a few counter-protestors including a man with a sign saying "Whitmer Keeping our Most Vulnerable Safe" and a woman with "I Stand With Whitmer" written on her arm. Michigan, home to the US auto industry, is expected to play a key role in the November presidential election and has become a hot spot for right-wing opposition to stay-at-home directives. Partisan divisions have also been playing out in Wisconsin, another election battleground, where Republican lawmakers launched a legal challenge to an extension of lockdown orders by Democratic Governor Tony Evers. They got a boost on Wednesday when the conservative-dominated Wisconsin Supreme Court overturned the governor's extension of the lockdown to May 26, a ruling welcomed by Trump. "The Great State of Wisconsin... was just given another win," Trump tweeted. "Its Democrat Governor was forced by the courts to let the State Open. The people want to get on with their lives." Despite the court ruling, a number of city and county officials across the agricultural state said they would continue to comply with the governor's stay-at-home orders or take their own measures. While Wisconsin is not one of the hardest hit US states, it has recorded more than 10,900 virus cases and over 400 deaths. With more than 48,000 COVID-19 cases and 4,714 deaths, Michigan has the fourth-most fatalities in the United States. - 'Political moment' - Whitmer, who has emerged as a potential running-mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, imposed tough lockdown orders in a bid to stem the outbreak. She has relaxed some restrictions on non-essential businesses and recreation but her "Stay Home, Stay Safe" directive has been extended until May 28. The 48-year-old former prosecutor affectionately known as "Big Gretch" has condemned the presence of guns at the demonstrations and said the gatherings "make it likelier" she will have to further extend the lockdown. During an April 30 protest in Lansing, armed demonstrators entered the capitol lobby and were blocked by police from entering the legislative chamber. Thursday's protest, which was smaller than previous gatherings, was peaceful although there was a brief scuffle when a woman grabbed a doll which a man was dangling from a noose. Whitmer, speaking to MLive on Thursday, said she recognized "this is a hard time, there's a lot of anxiety, there's a lot of fear. "And yet, right now, it's more important than ever that we are vigilant," she said. "If people let their guard down we could see COVID-19 start to climb again." The governor said this should not be a "political moment" and she condemned displays of Confederate flags and "Nazi symbolism" at the protests. On Wednesday, Whitmer said that while "Michigan certainly is in play in the 2020 election," she is "going to make decisions based on facts not based on political rhetoric or tweets for that matter." Her tweet reference was to Trump, who has repeatedly inserted himself into the Michigan debate. - 72 pc approval - Trump is eager to reboot the devastated US economy ahead of November but has delivered mixed messages when it comes to reopening the country. While urging state governors to adhere to federal guidelines on reopening safely, he has also said they should relax restrictions. A day after the first protest in Michigan a month ago Trump tweeted "LIBERATE MICHIGAN!" Following the second large protest there two weeks ago he said Whitmer should "make a deal" with the protestors, calling them "very good people." Trump defeated Hillary Clinton by a slim 10,000 votes in Michigan in 2016 and by just 23,000 votes in Wisconsin, and winning the states is seen as crucial to his re-election hopes. While Michigan has become a focal point for anti-lockdown protests, Whitmer enjoys widespread approval of her handling of the coronavirus outbreak in the state. In a Washington Post-Ipsos poll, 72 percent of Michigan residents said they approved of her actions while 25 percent disapproved. Only 43 percent of the Americans surveyed approved Trump's handling of the pandemic, which has left more than 84,000 people dead in the United States. Armed demonstrators protest stay-at-home orders in Lansing, Michigan on May 14, 2020 A Hitler moustache drawn on a picture of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on a sign held by a protestor at an anti-lockdown demonstration in Lansing, Michigan Demonstrators at an anti-lockdown protest in Lansing, Michigan A sign calling for the recall of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer at an anti-lockdown protest in Lansing, Michigan Christina Wolford joins demonstrators protesting against the coronavirus lockdown in Lansing, Michigan Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is considered a potential running-mate for presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden in the November election
We are a day or two late with this, but it is still worth your attention. Barack Obama said on a phone call that the Department of Justices dropping of charges against General Flynn was unprecedented and, somehow, a threat to the rule of law. News organizations naturally repeated Obamas assertions uncritically. But Flynns lawyer, Sidney Powell, casts a more critical eye in her Open Memorandum to Barack Obama. She begins:

Regarding the decision of the Department of Justice to dismiss charges against General Flynn, in your recent call with your alumni, you expressed great concern: there is no precedent that anybody can find for someone who has been charged with perjury just getting off scot-free. Thats the kind of stuff where you begin to get worried that basic  not just institutional norms  but our basic understanding of rule of law is at risk.

Here is some helpif truth and precedent represent your true concern. Your statement is entirely false. However, it does explain the damage to the Rule of Law throughout your administration.

First, General Flynn was not charged with perjurywhich requires a material false statement made under oath with intent to deceive.1 A perjury prosecution would have been appropriate and the Rule of Law applied if the Justice Department prosecuted your former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for his multiple lies under oath in an investigation of a leak only he knew he caused.

McCabe lied under oath in fully recorded and transcribed interviews with the Inspector General for the DOJ. He was informed of the purpose of the interview, and he had had the benefit of counsel. He knew he was the leaker. McCabe even lied about lying. He lied to his own agentswhich sent them on a wild-goose-chasethereby making his lies material and an obstruction of justice. Yet, remarkably, Attorney General Barr declined to prosecute McCabe for these offenses.

Applying the Rule of Law, after declining McCabes perjury prosecution, required the Justice Department to dismiss the prosecution of General Flynn who was not warned, not under oath, had no counsel, and whose statements were not only not recorded, but were created as false by FBI agents who falsified the 302.
Army chief Gen MM Naravane on Friday said there were reasons to believe that Nepal objected to India's newly-inaugurated road linking Lipulekh Pass with Dharchula in Uttarakhand at the behest of "someone else", in an apparent reference to a possible role by China on the matter.

In an interaction at a defence think-tank, Gen Naravane said there was no dispute whatsoever between India and Nepal in the area and road laid was very much within the Indian side.

"The Nepalese ambassador mentioned that the area east of the Kali river belongs to them. There is no dispute in that. The road that we built is on the west of the river," the army chief said.

"There has never been any problem in the past. There is reason to believe that they might have raised the issue at the behest of someone else and that is very much a possibility," he said.

The 80-km-long strategically crucial road at a height of 17,000 km along the border with China in Uttarakhand was thrown open by defence minister Rajnath Singh last week.

Nepal on Saturday raised objection to inauguration of the road, saying the "unilateral act" was against the understanding reached between the two countries on resolving the border issues.

Talking about evolving security scenario in India's neighbourhood, Gen Naravane said the country will have to remain "alive" to a scenario of of a "two-front" war along the Northern and Western borders but

noted that he did not foresee possibility of every confrontation leading to such a situation.

On the army's big-ticket proposal to induct youngsters for a three year tenure under the Tour of Duty concept, the army chief said the idea germinated following feedback from school and college students that they want to experience military life without opting a permanent career in the Army.

Gen Naravane said the ToD will help the army in cutting down revenue expenses on account of payment of pensions and other benefits.

In replying to a question, he said the Army has received an order from the government to cut expenditure by 20 per cent from the current fiscal due to the COVID-19 crisis, adding the force is implementing it without compromising on its combat readiness.

Expenditure is being cut through a variety of measures including restricting large movements of troops, he said in the video-conference organised by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

On two separate incidents of face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops, he said there was no link between the two, adding "We are dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. I have not seen any concerted design into the face-offs."

"We (troops from both sides) are meeting at 10 different places and it is business as usual," he added.

On May 5, around 250 Indian and Chinese army personnel clashed with iron rods, sticks, and even resorted to stone-pelting in Pangong Tso area in Eastern Ladakh. Four days later, there was a similar face-off near Naku La Pass in North Sikkim.

On Thursday, the external affairs ministry said India remained committed to maintaining peace and tranquility along the border with China and noted that such incidents could have been avoided if there was a

common perception about the frontier.

Asked about the possibility of India facing a two-front war along the borders with China and Pakistan, Gen Naravane said it is a possibility and that the country will have to remain prepared to deal with such a scenario.

"It is a possibility. It is not that it is going to happen every time. We have to be alive to all contingencies which can happen, various scenarios that can unfold. We have to remain alive to the possibility.

"But to assume that in all cases both fronts would be 100 active, I think that would be an incorrect assumption to make. In dealing with two front scenario, there will always be a priority front and a secondary front. That is how we look at dealing with this two front threat," he said.

He said the priority front would be addressed in a different manner while the secondary front will be kept as dormant as possible just to conserve resources to focus on the priority front.

"We should not look at a two-front scenario just as a military responsibility. A country does not go to war with its armed forces alone. It has other pillars like diplomatic corp and other organs of government which will come into play to make sure that we are not forced into a corner where we will have to deal with two adversaries at the same time and in full strength," he added.

"I think that's where the whole-of-the-nation approach will come into play," said the army chief.
Hemant Kumar Rout By

Express News Service

BHUBANESWAR: When Cupids arrow strikes, geographical boundaries can be breached; reasoning and fear of life can wait. This youth from Odishas Balasore district proved that by entering neighboring East Medinipur district in hotspot West Bengal to marry the girl he was dating for the past few months.

His romantic adventure, however, was short-lived as he tested positive three weeks after his marriage. Luckily though, his wife and sister-in-law have tested negative but a sense of fear has gripped the villagers who attended his wedding feast.

All this happened when the Government had banned large gatherings in social events. Now a puzzled administration has traced at least 160 contacts and sent their swab samples for tests. Since he had mingled with many despite lockdown restrictions, thrown parties among friends and even participated in paddy harvesting along with others, further contact tracing is on.

The 27-year-old, a native of Palasia village under Bhogarai block works in Bengaluru and had returned home a few days before nationwide lockdown was imposed as his marriage was fixed for April 17. He had met his wife on a social media site and love bloomed.

Against Government instruction that no public function can be attended by more than 10 persons, he took around 30 baratis in 16 bikes to his in-lawss house in Ramnagar block in WB where his marriage was solemnised. He returned with his newly-wed wife and sister-in-law. And, the infection. He had arranged his wedding cleverly as local PRI members and health workers had no clue.

Youth goes to WB to marry, returns with infection

It came to the fore only after neighbours informed the local Asha worker. He had avoided the main road to escape notice of security personnel and took the narrow lane through paddy fields to reach his in-laws village, nine km away, said Sunil Kar, panchayat aamiti member of Sunadharabasan.

On May, when swab samples of the youth, his wife and sisterin- law were collected, he tested positive. After the word spread, his friends and villagers, who had attended the wedding and feast volunteered for test.

We are worried about his father who is a heart patient. The parents test reports along with other villagers are expected on Friday. We hope for the best, said Kar. Balasore Sub Collector Nilu Mohapatra said the area has been declared as a containment zone.

Contact tracing is on. The youth is asymptomatic and has been admitted to the Covid hospital, he added.

The district administration has enforced a week-long shutdown till May 19 in six villages under the panchayat to intensify containment measures. Entry and exit have been completely banned.
Chandigarh, May 15 : The inter-state movement of those engaged in providing essential services, including medical professionals, resumed on Friday between Haryana and Delhi after a fortnight's hiatus, officials said.

Also the state, the first in the country, restarted bus service initially in 10 districts.

However, people offering essential services need to procure an e-pass that is issued in just half an hour.

"The Haryana-Delhi border is opened for to and fro movement of people. It is round-the-clock manned by security personnel," a government official told IANS here.

He said the movement of trucks carrying essential and non-essential goods between Haryana and Delhi, except to and fro between containment zones, would be allowed.

The movement of people who manned essential services would be allowed on production of e-passes.

An e-pass will be valid for the entire duration of the lockdown and can be used for multiple visits, he said.

However, they would be quarantined if they test positive for COVID-19 or have been found to be in contact with a COVID-19 patient.

The Delhi-Gurugram border was sealed by the Haryana police on May 1 and even doctors were not exempted.

Taking the lead in the country, Haryana on Friday restarted its roadways bus service.

Online booking and wearing masks are mandatory to board the bus, Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar informed in a tweet.

Initially, the buses plied from 10 depots of Ambala, Bhiwani, Hisar, Kaithal, Karnal, Narnaul, Panchkula, Rewari, Rohtak and Sirsa on select point-to-point routes.

"One bus was operated between Sirsa and Panchkula towns with 10 passengers on board," a Haryana Roadways employee told IANS over phone.

Passenger Naresh Yadav said this was a big relief for the stranded people.

"It is a praiseworthy decision of the government to restart bus services, a big relief for the common man and those stranded at various locations," Yadav said.

The Delhi government has welcomed the opening of the inter-state border, saying, "This is the time to work together as a nation and fully support our corona warriors." In a major relief to those stranded in the national capital owing to the imposition of the nationwide lockdown, the Haryana government has now decided to run special buses from May 18.

For this online ticket booking is a must.

Also the buses will take the passengers from the state to the railway station in New Delhi.

Haryana Transport Minister Moolchand Sharma said the government has decided to ply state transport buses between the state and New Delhi for the convenience of people.

Online booking can be done through the portal hartrans.gov.in and the passengers with confirmed booking will be allowed to enter the bus stand.

Sharma said the buses would operate from the railway station in New Delhi to the scheduled bus stand of Haryana Roadways and no passenger will be allowed to board or get off from the bus en route.

Buses passing through coronavirus-affected districts will take the bypass or flyover route.

He said taking special care of social distancing norms only 30 passengers will be accommodated in a bus.

Thermal screening of passengers will be done before entering the bus stands and it will be necessary for every passenger to wear a mask and follow social distancing norms.

The minister said if bus operations on any route would not be possible due to any reason, it will be cancelled and information will be given two hours before its departure.

Accordingly, the fare will be refunded if the bus is cancelled.
It may be a symptom of morbid curiosity but the coronavirus lockdown has generated a new interest in novels such as Albert Camus's The Plague, and movies such as Steven Soderbergh's Contagion. Both are speculative fictions that draw on our knowledge of the causes and behaviour of an epidemic. It's commonplace to talk about all the things we don't know in this field, but we are vastly better informed than those Europeans who saw the Black Death of 1347-1351 as God's punishment for their sins.

Approximately a third of Europe's population had perished when the illness finally subsided. One might presume the survivors would have raced to church in a suitably pentitent mood. But instead of becoming more "humble, virtuous and Catholic," in the words of eyewitness historian, Matteo Villani, "they gave themselves up to a more shameful and disordered life than they had lived before." The sins of gluttony, lechery and pride were on full display, as if daring God to do it all over again.

What this suggests, apart from rueful reflections on human nature, is that the survivors' belief in the Church and its doctrines had taken a beating during the plague years. Not only had the priests failed to warn of the coming catastrophe, they perished in proportionately greater numbers than laymen. Along with a minority who had behaved in a cowardly or avaricious fashion, this was enough to cast doubt on the authority of the Holy Fathers.

The Triumph of Death, attributed to Francesco Traini Credit:Universal/Getty

The response was a concerted effort on behalf of the wealthy to restore the power and glory of the Church, which they saw as the only safeguard against the violent impulses of the lower classes. Milan Cathedral was perhaps the most spectacular project of this kind. (It was started in 1386, although not completed until 1965!). All over Europe the Church's ambitious building schemes had been thrown into disarray by the plague, which had killed off many of the skilled masons who carved the decorations on the great Gothic cathedrals.
Betsy DeVos has found a way to get some of her top education privatization initiatives over the finish line via the CARES Act (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File).

Associated Press

US Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is capitalizing on an opportunity to use the existing coronavirus relief legislation to advance her longstanding yet mostly stalled policy goals.

DeVos, a longtime advocate for school choice who has never attended nor worked for a public school, is using leeway in the CARES Act to funnel millions away from public schools toward private institutions and homeschooling, according to a New York Times report.

She has already allocated more than half-a-billion dollars to support private K-12 schools and colleges.

Some recipients of the funding include a Wisconsin private college alleged to be a cult, a "canine studies" university and private K-12 schools getting a bigger cut of "equitable services" money at the expense of the lowest income public school districts.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Betsy DeVos is finally able to enact major parts of her education privatization agenda thanks to the $2 trillion coronavirus relief package Congress passed in late March.

The education secretary has faced resistance from lawmakers on diverting funds from public schools to private institutions throughout her three years in the Trump administration, but the CARES Act has been a catalyst for DeVos' priorities over the past few weeks, according to a New York Times report.

Thirty billion dollars are allocated for education relief in the legislation, with public school districts facing severe budget shortfalls nationwide.

Yet DeVos has already allocated than $500 million of those funds to bolster private schools, charter schools and private institutions of higher learning, according to The Times.

"Microgrants" for alternatives to public schools account for $180 million, while $350 million of the higher education funding is set aside for private and religious colleges notwithstanding any degree of need.

One of those recipients, the Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, has an entire website dedicated to combatting allegations that it's a cult  www.wrightinstitutecult.com.

Story continues

The Wisconsin-based university received around $495,000, according to the Times.

Another eyebrow raising recipient is the Bergin University of Canine Studies in California whose founder is credited with creating the "service dog"  with $472,850.

The broadest pattern from DeVos that's raising criticism is a guidance directing public schools to spend a bigger share of their funding on students attending private schools.

The hardest hit would be the lowest income districts  Title I schools  who would have to direct more money to students who live within the district bounds but attend private schools, with the funding going toward things like tutoring and transportation.

"School districts can  and should  ignore this guidance, which flouts what Congress intended to do with the CARES Act: support students who need it the most," the president of the American Federation of Teachers and the executive director of AASA, the School Superintendents Association, told The Times.

Indiana has already announced it will not comply with the guidance.

Trish Stevens, the mother of a special needs daughter in Arizona, offered a blunt assessment to the Times.

"It's like the Wild West of education right now, and we're all just trying to figure it out."

Read the original article on Business Insider
NEW YORK  U.S. employers have cooled to the idea of testing workers for possible immunity to the coronavirus as they prepare to reopen factories and other workplaces.

Blood tests that check for antibodies to the coronavirus have been touted by governments and some disease experts as a way to identify people who are less likely to fall ill or infect others. Italian automaker Ferrari NV has made antibody testing central to its Back on Track project to restarting factories.

But many U.S. companies are not planning to use them, relying on face masks, temperature checks, social distancing, and diagnostic tests for those with symptoms, employers and health care experts told Reuters.

Mercer, which advises companies on health care benefits, has surveyed more than 700 U.S. employers in industries from high tech to retail to energy, and found 8% of companies said they would include antibody tests in plans to screen employees.

Interest in antibody tests from employers has fallen in recent weeks as reports have suggested that it is too early to conclude that antibodies to the new coronavirus translate into immunity. The American Medical Association cautioned on Thursday that these tests do not determine an individuals immunity.

Many employers ... are realizing that antibody testing isnt going to be a silver bullet and really isnt going to bring them any value, said David Zeig, a lead consultant on clinical services at Mercer.

Other employers worry about their liability if they administer and interpret such tests, or are concerned about test costs and availability. Some were spooked by a flood of tests that hit the market before being reviewed by regulators for accuracy, which has contributed to confusion over results.

A new antibody test from Roche Holding AG that has shown itself to be highly accurate could potentially help answer questions about antibodies and immunity and change corporate demand, but it has not done so yet, consultants and companies said.

Governments, however, are interested in antibody tests, particularly if they are accurate. Britain on Thursday said it is in talks with Roche over buying tests that it could use to create a certificate of immunity once there is a better understanding of the science.

Collective Health, a health care technology company that has built back-to-work strategies for large companies, is advising employers to use diagnostic tests, not antibody tests.

There has been a proliferation of low-quality antibody tests and the antibody tests themselves dont necessarily answer any questions about immunity, said Rajaie Batniji, Collective Healths chief health officer.

When General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV reopen production next week, they intend to offer diagnostic tests to workers, not antibody tests. Officials at the Detroit carmakers said it was because it was not clear what the antibody tests show.

Shawn Kitchell, chief executive of Florida-based plastics manufacturer Madico Inc., is not planning to use antibody tests for his 250 employees. He questions their costs, accuracy, and the fact that the timing of tests can lead to different results, requiring multiple tries.

How frequently would we need to test to make it safer for our co-workers? Kitchell said.

Employers are also wary of an unregulated U.S. market for antibody tests. Since March, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has allowed more than 200 tests into the market without regulatory review to make them available quickly, opening the door to questionable vendors and inaccurate tests, Reuters found.

Last week, the agency set a deadline for all vendors to prove to the FDA that their tests work or remove them from the market. It has also authorized two highly-accurate tests from Roche and Abbott Laboratories, which are able to supply millions of tests per week.

One of the biggest U.S. testing providers, LabCorp, on Thursday said it was rolling out a program to make diagnostic tests and antibody tests available at workplaces.

LabCorps chief medical officer, Brian Caveney, said interest in antibody testing is coming from companies in coronavirus hotspots, such as New York, while other areas with fewer COVID-19 cases see diagnostic testing as more important.

As the new FDA process shows which tests work and which dont, that will help advance research on how many people recovering from COVID-19 develop antibodies and at what level, and show if they are truly immune to infection, said Howard Koh, a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

Until we go through those steps, I dont see how we can translate this for the typical person who wants to go back to work, Koh said.

Additional reporting by Krystal Hu in New York and Ben Klayman in Detroit.
Pataal Lok

Cast: Neeraj Kabi, Jaideep Ahlawat, Abhishek Banerjee

Creator: Sudip Sharma

Crime thriller genre has really caught up with the showrunners on the Indian OTT platforms, and Amazon Prime Videos latest show Pataal Lok has just made it a better choice. Established in the bylanes of Delhi and explored in the ravines of Bundelkhand, Pataal Lok dissects the world of heinous crimes with surgical precision. You dont know whether to hate these criminals or give them the benefit of doubt as they casually go about their victims.

While shows like Sacred Games and Mirzapur relied on sudden chills, Paatal Lok is more about going inside the criminals mind without attributing superhuman qualities to them. Though Sacred Games was also from a cops perspective, Paatal Loks Hathiram Chaudhary (Jaideep Ahlawat) is different in a way that he doesnt have resources like Sartaj, and unlike Sartaj, he is not at all clued in about the larger conspiracy he has unknowingly been a part of. To be honest, the only driving force Chaudhary has is his curiosity, which the makers cheekily equates with a cats.

There is a top news anchor Sanjeev Mehra (Neeraj Kabi) hobnobbing with the corrupt and shady with a weird conviction of being righteous. Kabi, in his usual nuanced ways, makes you confused about his real character. The self-obsessed newsman is in for a shock when he discovers that he is the target of some assassins.

While seizing the opportunity for more TRPs, he slowly starts getting a hang of the situation, and what he finds out, simply robs him of sleep.

Creator Sudip Sharmas show is unlike other Indian shows that make us happy with expected twists and usual progression. Paatal Lok goes beyond the obvious, and thats where it shines.

Directed by Avinash Arun (Killa) and Prosit Roy (Pari), Paatal Loks strength lies in its detailing. Jamna Paar area in Delhi, where it begins, has many layers of crimes and corruption. Theres a huge disparity between the Lutyens zone and trance Yamuna, and the show brings out many aspects of it through Ahlawats typical Delhi cop, down but not dusted.

Paatal Lok comes to its own with the backstories of its criminals. Abhishek Bannerjees Hathaura Tyagi (as hammer is his weapon of choice) could find a reflection in thousands of misguided youth who never knew any better. Though Bannerjee has played negative characters in shows such as Mirzapur and Typewriter, but his terrifying intensity and odd beliefs make this one to watch out for. Its definitely a ground breaking role for him.

The writers have consciously kept Delhi mostly as a city of migrants from smaller towns in the Hindi belt. When harsh surroundings get better of them, they turn to crime for survival, and all this seems neutral and natural. For example, the two kids who meet on a train and remain there for each other through thick and thin, is a case study in itself. The casual attitude with which they see through sexual and mental abuses breaks heart.

Then theres a Dalit boy from Punjab who would see Delhis underworld as an escape from his lived reality. What worse could happen!

It keeps getting darker and more vocal with an almost failed cop struggling to quench his thirst for more. It may also remind you of Navdeep Singhs terrific Manorama Six Feet Under, where it kept getting bigger and more local. The show doesnt look outside to seek answers, but tracks the footprints of its characters through an inward journey.

Even not so prominent characters like Swastika Mukherjees Dolly and Gul Panags Renu leave significant impact on the story. They keep adding new dimensions to Hathiram Chaudharys evolution. In fact, Panags excellent understanding of human behaviour comes to the fore when she confronts her brother for using her. No extra drama, but painfully penetrating.

Coming back to Jaideep Ahlawat, this is the role of a lifetime for him. His expressions dont drop for a second even if he is chasing a goon with a duffle bag on his shoulders. He is the binding force to assemble all the clues and cues at one place. He takes the center stage only after the fifth episode, but once he does it, he absolutely nails it. Its difficult to think anybody else in the character after Ahlawat. Top notch.

Paatal Lok is a reminder of the futility of our existence and that makes me sad, but as the coronavirus is teaching us, we might have to live within the bubble as it seems safe, at least for the time being. Binge Paatal Lok, it will help you survive.

Rating: 4/5

Read all the Latest News, Breaking News and Coronavirus News here
Majority Leader of Parliament, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu wants those kicking against the compilation of a new voter register by the Electoral Commission (EC) not to turn a blind eye to an existing fact that the current register is bloated, and is thus ill-suited for the 2020 general elections.



Speaking on Okay FMs 'Ade Akye Abia' Morning Show, the Parliamentary Affairs Minister recalled how two former Chairpersons of the Electoral Commission (EC), Dr Kwadwo Afari Gyan and Madam Charlotte Osei beseeched Ghanaians to assist purge the register of unwanted names.



When Charlotte Osei was there as the Chairperson, she said the same thing that Ghanaians should help to purge the list of undesirables, those who have lost their lives but still have their names captured in the register. So, we are all aware that the voters register is bloated, he recollected.



Even if we are not going to compile a new register, we may have to conduct a limited registration and if that is done and these new numbers are added to the existing voters register, it will then mean that there will be more than 18 million names in the register," he mentioned.



To him, it will be a clear anomaly for any country to have more than 60 percent of its population captured as registered voters.



"We have a population of about 30 million and our voter register may have 18 million people, what does it mean? It means that we have 60 percent of the population as eligible to vote . . .a clear case of an over-bloated register and that cannot be," the Majority Leader stated.







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.

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Anunt de selectare a participantilor si participantelor la cel de-al doilea curs de instruire din cadrul Programului educational pentru dezvoltarea competentelor lucratorilor de tineret
Daniel Weisberger lies in a Miami hospitals intensive care unit. He is recovering from severe injuries after being hit by a truck.

The 17-year-old wont be leaving to go home when hes better. State officers from the Department of Juvenile Justice are inside his room. And police have a warrant for his arrest.

The Florida Keys teen ran in front of a pickup truck on the Overseas Highway. Investigators say he was trying to kill himself after going into hiding. Cops set up a dragnet to search for him after his younger brother and his father were stabbed in their townhouse.

Weisberger is accused of the rampage.

Daniel Weisberger, 17, is the suspect in a fatal stabbing that happened Thursday, May 7, 2020.

Now, Weisberger, while at Jackson Memorial Hospital, waits to learn whether hell be charged as a juvenile or as an adult. The Monroe County state attorney is deciding.

Well ... review any reports and statements and then make a determination, Keys State Attorney Dennis Ward said.

Officers with the Department of Juvenile Justice are with Weisberger inside his hospital room, said Adam Linhardt, Monroe sheriffs office spokesman. A judge signed warrants on murder and aggravated battery charges earlier this week, Linhardt said.

Based on interviews with his uncle and his grandmother, Weisberger gradually spiraled out of control during his teen years. They say his mother was abusive and that the relationship with his father became tense.

It all came to a head in the early hours of May 7, when investigators say Weisberger stabbed his 14-year-old brother, Pascal, to death and slashed his father in the neck, sending him to the hospital with grave injuries. The violence happened at their Plantation Key townhouse.

A police officer and his K9 search a dumpster outside of the Executive Bay Club townhomes in Islamorada, where a 17-year-0old boy stabbed his younger brother tp death and severely wounded his father Thursday, May 7, 2020.

THE SCENE

Detectives say Weisberger stabbed Pascal around 4 a.m. , and that his father, Ariel Poholek, 43, was attacked after he came into the room to find out what the commotion was about.

Zachary James, Poholeks brother, said the scene unfolded differently.

James said Poholek, who is in stable condition at Jackson South Medical Center in Kendall, told him over the weekend that he never heard Daniel attack Pascal. He woke up in his own bed to Daniel stabbing him. In the middle of the violence, Poholek asked Daniel where Pascal was, James said.

Story continues

He said, Pascals already gone,  James said.

After being stabbed, Weisberger held his father hostage for about two hours, sometimes choking him until he passed out, James of Philadelphia, said in a phone interview from South Florida. Poholek then noticed his older son had left, so he ran to a neighbors home, and that person called 911.

Members of the Miami-Dade County Police special response team gather outside of the Executive Bay Club townhouses in Islamorada Thursday, May 7, 2020, where police say a 17-year-old boy fatally stabbed his brother and severely wounded his father.

THE SEARC H

Monroe County sheriffs deputies arrived at 6 a.m., and could not find Daniel Weisberger. Thats when the daylong manhunt began.

Officers with other agencies, including Miami-Dade County, Homestead and U.S. Customs and Border Protection, aided in the search for the 17-year-old. Tactical teams used sniffing dogs to comb the area and check out potential hiding spots, including dumpsters.

Helicopters scanned the landscape below and near shore from Islamorada to Key Largo.

Weisberger eluded it all.

But the teen didnt travel far. He was hiding in the woods in between the site of the stabbing, the Executive Bay Club at mile marker 87.2, and Founders Park, right next to the complex.

Around 7 p.m., more than 12 hours into the search, he darted out into U.S. 1 and was struck by the pickup truck. Medics airlifted him to Ryder.

Ariel Poholek and his sons, Pascal and Daniel, are shown in this undated photo.

THE F A MIL Y

Family and friends say the tragedy was the culmination of tension between the teen and his father.

Ariel Poholek is a single dad who raised his boys since getting custody of them in 2008. Friends and family say Poholek is a devoted father who gladly made sacrifices for his children, but he couldnt get through to Daniel as he progressed through his teen years.

Daniel was angry a lot of the time and getting into trouble with the law. While his studies used to be a priority, he dropped out of high school about a year ago. Loved ones say his troubles were born out of early childhood trauma.

James said that his brother and their mother told him that Poholeks ex-wife, Joceline Nguema, was mentally and physically abusive to the boys.

James and the teens grandmother, Carole Poholek, said Nguema had a hair-trigger temper, but she was more subtle with her abuse of the boys, until she wasnt. Nguema could not be reached, and her attorney did not respond to messages.

It was like water washing against a rock, this daily thing over and over and over, Carole said.

GRANDMOTHERS PERSPECTIVE

Carole Poholek, of Tampa, said she noticed Nguemas temper pretty soon after the couple returned from Africa, where Ariel Poholek was a Peace Corps volunteer and Nguema a language specialist.

Carole Poholek said Nguema would get angry quickly and her son often had to calm her down. She theorizes that he became so used to her behavior he didnt notice there was anything unusual going on.

Theres a red blinking light, but you think its just a red blinking light. You dont think, Run,  she said.

The couple divorced in Martin County in 2006, and she had custody of the children at first. Through constant legal battles, Ariel Poholek got custody of the children in 2008. He eventually moved from Martin County, where he was a biologist with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, to the Keys, where he started working for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations Fisheries Management Service.

In October 2013, Poholek took the boys to the Golden Glades train station, where they were supposed to depart with their mother for a visitation trip, James said.

Daniel, who was 10 at the time, decided right before he was to board the train that he did not want to go with Nguema, Carole said. Nguema became enraged, according to the grandmother.

Carole Poholek said Daniel got away from Nguema by wiggling out of his shirt.

After that incident, Carole said Nguema agreed not to see the children for a year. That turned into three years for Daniel Weisberger, who did not see his mother again until 2017, she said.

An incident a year later spelled the last time Pascal, who was on the autism spectrum and easily triggered, agreed to spend time alone with Nguema, Carole Poholek said. He went with her on a trip to Alabama to stay with a friend of hers. When he came back, he was so stressed out he began trying to cut himself and tried to burn himself with a clothing iron, his uncle and grandmother said.

Its not clear if the state Department of Children and Families got involved with the family. The agency has not responded to a query.

Pascal Weisberger

ONCE HAPPY

Ariel Poholeks mother and brother and those who know the family in the Keys said the father and two boys led a happy life together. They became well-known in the community and made many friends. Poholek was a Boy Scout master of his sons troop, and the boys were involved in volunteer work, school activities, including running, and environmental causes.

Pascal spent so much time volunteering at a Key Largo animal shelter that the lobby there was named in his honor last week following news of his death.

On Wednesday, Pascals school, Treasure Village Montessori, organized an event in his honor called the Pascal Weisberger Day of Service. Students and others in the area, including scouting groups, drew inspirational messages in chalk and performed community services, including shoreline trash cleanups, throughout the Upper Keys.

It is expected to be an annual event.

Treasure Village Principal Kelly Mangel called Pascal a student who cared deeply about his community and served out of love and pride rather than obligation.

James said the event was the perfect way to honor his nephew.

We are deeply touched by the beautiful ways the community is honoring him by joining together to do such extraordinary good for the place he loved and was so proud to call home.

DARK DAYS FOR DANIEL

His older brothers mood grew darker as he got older, his family says, which resulted in stays in and out of the juvenile justice system. His father was often the one who had to call the police on him.

In January, Daniel brought home a gun. James thinks it was Pascal who first noticed the firearm. Regardless, when it was discovered, he threatened his familys life. Again, the father called the police, and Daniel spent 21 days in a juvenile justice facility in Key West.

In the months before, Daniel and Nguema began speaking on the phone again, and when he was released from detention on the weapons charge, she drove down from her home in Port St. Lucie and picked him up. Carole Poholek said that for the first few weeks, the two got along, but it wasnt long before Daniel began to get into trouble.

By March, he wanted to leave. Carole Poholek said her son had no choice but to let Daniel come home or the state would charge him with abandoning his child.

The arrangement appeared to be working at first, according to the family.

Their relationship was restored during that time period to their normal bond, Carole said. He was in very good spirits when he got home.

But, he was under house arrest, and Daniel still relied heavily on state mental health services to help him with his problems. When the novel coronavirus pandemic hit and the subsequent lockdowns were issued, the family could not access the services.

As can be predicted, things did deteriorate, Carole Poholek said.

She said the tragedy rests not only with Pascals death and her sons serious physical wounds at the hands of his oldest son. The family also mourns for Daniel, who could face years in prison if convicted.

There is so much to say, 18 years of story to tell, so much heartache, so much grief, loss no words can describe, she said. Pascal dead, Daniels life over, and their dad, Ari, in the hospital with this excruciating knowledge, that in the end, he could not save his children and lost what was most precious.
Matt Damon says lockdown in Ireland feels like a fairytale, that the country's taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, is a badass and that he worries about returning to the United States citing inadequate testing for coronavirus as the reason.

The actor has been staying with his family in Dalkey, a seaside village of south Dublin, since March after filming in Ireland for 'The Last Duel', directed by Ridley Scott, was shut down.

Local radio station Spin 1038 scooped Irish media by nabbing an interview that must have brought smiles to Ireland's tourism agency.

It feels like a fairytale. When I first came in, people were saying, 'Well, Bono lives over there, Enya lives over there', said Damon. It's been incredible. This is one of the most beautiful places we've ever been. Obviously what's going on in the world is horrible, but I've got my whole family; I'm with my kids and we have teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks.

We've got what nobody else has, which is live human beings teaching our kids, so we feel guilty. We've got this set-up in this incredible place. It's absolutely gorgeous. Even in the 2km lockdown, we've got trees, and woods and ocean. I can't think of any place you'd rather be in a 2km radius of.

Damon called Varadkar a badass for returning to medical work during the pandemic. He said he was a little worried about returning to the US. We don't have adequate testing, so there's going to be another surge it looks like back home.

Guardian
New Delhi, May 15 : Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced that the Centre will set up a Rs 1 lakh crore agri infrastructure fund for farm-gate infrastructure for farmers.

Addressing the media here, she said that financing facility of Rs 1 lakh crore will be provided for funding in agriculture infrastructure projects at the farm-gate and aggregation points such as primary agricultural cooperative societies, farmer producer organisations and agriculture entrepreneurs, among others.

This will provide impetus for development for farm-gate/aggregation point affordable and financially viable post harvest management infrastructure, she said.

Observing the lack of adequate cold chain and post harvest management infrastructure in the vicinity of farm gate causes gaps in value chains, Sitharaman said that the fund will be created immediately.

The announcement is part of the third tranche of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
A 10-month-old girl was killed and her parents, both migrant labourers from Andhra Pradesh, were injured when the motorbike on which they were travelling met with an accident in Telanganas Yadadri Bhongir district late on Thursday night, the police said.

The incident happened at Borrollagudem village of Choutuppal block on Hyderabad-Vijayawada national highway (NH-65).

According to Chouttuppal inspector of police P Venkateshwarlu, Kadali Peddi Raju and his wife Lakshmi, from Metlavarithota village of Ramavaram block in Andhra Pradeshs West Godavari district, had migrated to Hyderabad a few months ago to work as daily wage labourers.

Because of the nationwide lockdown on account of Covid-19 pandemic, the couple had not been getting any work in Hyderabad. On Thursday night, Raju left for his native village with his wife and infant daughter on a bike.

As they reached Borrollagudem near Choutuppal, about 45 km from Hyderabad at around midnight, Raju lost control over the bike and collided with a road divider. While the girl child died on the spot, Raju and Lakshmi were seriously injured, the inspector said.

The locals who noticed the accident immediately shifted the couple and the child to the government hospital at Choutuppal. We have registered a case and are investigating, Venkateshwarlu said.

Meanwhile, migrant labourers travelling from Telangana leaving for other states continue to face troubles at the inter-state borders.

On Friday morning, more than 60 vehicles carrying over 2,000 migrant labourers were stopped at the inter-state check post near Ashwaraopet of Telanganas Bhadradri Kothagudem district on the borders of Andhra Pradesh, as the police authorities from the neighbouring state did not allow them to enter their state.

These migrant labourers from West Bengal left Hyderabad on Thursday evening after taking travel permission from the Telangana government authorities. As they reached the Andhra borders at Ashwaraopet at around 3 am, they were stopped by the AP police.

However, after prolonged discussions with the Telangana authorities, the AP police allowed them to travel, only after they underwent medical tests at the check post.

The police also imposed a condition that the migrant labourers from West Bengal should continue their travel till they crossed the Andhra borders without stopping anywhere in the state.
An interdisciplinary team of Kansas State University researchers developed a computer simulation that revealed beef supply chain vulnerabilities that need safeguarding -- a realistic concern during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Caterina Scoglio, professor, and Qihui Yang, doctoral student, both in electrical and computer engineering, recently published "Developing an agent-based model to simulate the beef cattle production and transportation in southwest Kansas" in Physica A, an Elsevier journal publication.

The paper describes a model of the beef production system and the transportation industry, which are interdependent critical infrastructures -- similar to the electrical grid and computer technology. According to the model, disruptions in the cattle industry -- especially in the beef packing plants -- will affect the transportation industry and together cause great economic harm. The disruptions modeled in the simulation share similarities with how the packing plants have been affected during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"When we first started working on this project, there was a lot of emphasis on studying critical infrastructures; especially ones that are interdependent, meaning that they need to work together with other critical infrastructures," Scoglio said. "The idea is if there is a failure in one of the systems, it can propagate to the other system, increasing the catastrophic effects."

The study included a variety of viewpoints to create a realistic and integrated model of both systems. Co-authors on the paper include Don Gruenbacher, associate professor and department head of electrical and computer engineering; Jessica Heier Stamm, associate professor of industrial and manufacturing systems engineering; Gary Brase, professor of psychological sciences; Scott DeLoach, professor and department head of computer science; and David Amrine, research director of the Beef Cattle Institute.

The researchers used the model to evaluate which supply chain components were more robust and which were not. They determined that packing plants are the most vulnerable. Scoglio said that recent events in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic raise important issues about how to safeguard the system.

"An important message is that after understanding the critical role of these packers, we need to decide how we could protect both them and the people who work there," Scoglio said. "While the plants are a critical infrastructure and need to be protected, taking care of the health of the workers is very important. How can we design a production process that can be flexible and adaptable in an epidemic?"

According to the paper, the beef cattle industry contributes approximately $8.9 billion to the Kansas economy and employs more than 42,000 people in the state. Since trucks are needed to move cattle, any disruption in either cattle production or transportation almost certainly would harm the regional economy, Scoglio said.

"Packers need to be considered as a critical point of a much longer supply chain, which needs specific attention to make sure it will not fail and can continue working," Scoglio said. "Beef packers are a critical infrastructure in the United States."

The project was supported by the National Science Foundation and focused on southwest Kansas, but the researchers acknowledge that cattle come from outside the region and interruptions may have larger national effects.
Bac Giang Police are completing documents to fine a man for reporting false information when calling 113  Vietnams police hotline.

Nguyen Van Nhan is admitting his faults to the police.  Photo doisongvietnam.vn

Nguyen Van Nhan, 39, of Viet Yen District in the northern province of Bac Giang is the accused.

At 9pm on April 21, Nhan called 113, claimed to be a man name Chung who lived in Mai Ha District and told them a friend of his had prepared a gun and three grenades and was planning to attack a family on April 30.

Provincial criminal police investigated the case and when they tracked down Nhan, he said he hadn't made the call but a drunken man had.

Police soon discovered that at the beginning of April, Nhan had also posed as Chung and called 113 to say one of his neighbours had returned home from Hanoi and he suspected they had contracted COVID-19.

At the police station, Nhan confessed that his wife had left him and he had called 113 to try and have some fun at the police's expense. He said he also wanted to check if the police would answer the hotline.

While prank calls to 113 carry a maximum fine of VND500,000-1,000,000 (US$22-44), if the caller is deemed to have been committing harassment, they could face a fine of up VND10-20 million ($444-890).

So it seems Nhan's little jokes are going to cost him a lot more than he bargained for. VNS

State agencies work to protect children online The Information Security Department under the Ministry of Information and Communications and Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs Department of Child Affairs have signed a co-operation plan regarding child protection online.
Aid for struggling strip clubs, payday lenders

Yes, the massive federal emergency loan program was designed to prop up local businesses hurt by the pandemic, but this is ridiculous: A judge in Michigan has ruled that the federal government cannot deny the forgivable, low-interest loans to traditionally disfavored businesses, including payday loan companies, political lobbying firms, restricted private clubs and even strip clubs.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Leitman ruled the federal Small Business Administration may not exclude businesses from receiving loans under the Paycheck Protection Program based on the nature of their business  regardless of whether its exclusionary like a private club, predatory like payday loans, or in the business of selling prurient sexual products.

Simply put, Congress did not pick winners and losers in the PPP, Leitman wrote. He admitted it would ordinarily be absurd to conclude that Congress meant to provide financial assistance to, among others, certain sexually oriented businesses and private clubs that discriminate.

News flash, your honor: It is absurd.

Hoosier justice

The law-and-order, tough-on-crime attorney general of Indiana is getting a hard lesson on social distancing at parties  even when catching the coronavirus isnt the primary concern. Well before the pandemic, Republican Attorney General Curtis Hill attended a party where several women said he drunkenly groped them. One of them was a state representative. The allegations were serious enough that the state Supreme Court unanimously ordered his law license suspended for 30 days, citing a disciplinary commissions finding of clear and convincing evidence that [Hill] committed the criminal act of battery.

Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb and other state GOP leaders have called on him to resign. Hill denies wrongdoing, but the testimony by Democratic state Rep. Candelaria Reardon and three female legislative staffers apparently was too consistent and convincing for investigators to ignore. They all alleged that he touched their backs or buttocks while making unwelcomed sexual comments. Other observers corroborated their testimony.

The suspension requires him not to undertake any legal matters  which is kind of what the attorney generals job is all about  for up to 30 days. His lawyers argued that anything improper he might have done was not a result of his status as an attorney and therefore shouldnt be punishable by professional sanction. That said, if the states chief law enforcer cant even keep his own behavior within the confines of the law, he has no business applying the law to others behavior.

A KKK hood to protest pandemic restrictions?

A man in the San Diego area decided to stage a protest against requirements that he wear a mask while shopping in his local grocery store. So he donned a Ku Klux Klan hood for his shopping trip earlier this month. Police investigated but determined this week they couldnt cite him for any violation of the law because, basically, he was exercising his First Amendment rights.

The man, whose image appeared in photos taken by shoppers, was not identified. The sheriffs office tracked him down for questioning. The department said the man expressed frustration with the coronavirus and having people tell him what he can and cannot do but that the hood was not meant to be any kind of racial statement.

It was a mask and it was stupid, he said, according to a sheriffs department news release.

Stupid, absolutely. But this could hardly have been a kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. The hood in the photos was tightly peaked and well-constructed, fitting exactly to the mans head. Who keeps a white hood around the house for spur of the moment protests?

Hot tip?

Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has been the face of a growing scandal over lawmakers personal stock trades with the advent of the pandemic. The fact that the FBI this week seized his cellphone, prompting him to step down as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, is an encouraging sign that the Justice Department is taking the issue seriously.

Members of Congress started getting more information than regular Americans about the pandemic as early as late January during briefings by government health experts, some behind closed doors. Multiple members later sold off stocks that were likely to drop in value while buying ones likely to increase, such as remote-meeting technology.

Burr transactions were among the most suspicious, including the dumping of hotel stocks that have since plummeted in value. He claims the trades were based solely on publicly available information.

Congress long ago should have required members to put their portfolios in blind trusts while serving. Burr likely is wishing right now that hed done that.

Masks for inmates

Its good for a multibillionaires image to donate millions of dollars to schools or childrens hospitals. Giving that money to help prison inmates doesnt make as nice a press release  but with the coronavirus ravaging U.S. prison populations, its a crucial kind of gift. So kudos to Twitter chief executive and St. Louis native Jack Dorsey for pledging millions of dollars to help supply U.S. prisons with masks and other equipment.

As Politico reported, Dorsey has pledged $10 million to prisons, where inmates are especially vulnerable to the coronavirus because of their confined quarters. The Reform Alliance criminal justice advocacy group is channeling the donation, saying the money will be used to buy 10 million masks and other protective equipment for inmates, prison employees and health care workers.

The group has been seeking changes to the criminal justice system since last year. Dorsey said in a statement that the pandemic adds to the injustices already inherent in the system.
At present, two airlines are flying back Indian citizens from 12 countries under the phase 1 of the Vande Bharat mission.

New Delhi: National carrier Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express will expand their scope of operations under the 'Vande Bharat' air repatriation operations and are likely to operate flights to 32 countries from May 16.

In the phase-II, both the airlines will start operating flights to 32 countries to repatriate more Indian citizens.

Besides, the national carrier will operate special domestic ferry flights for only those passengers who have been repatriated under the "Vande Bharat" mission.

Accordingly, the airline will run these special ferry flights during the second phase of the repatriation mission.

Under special circumstances, many passengers brought to large hub airports would require further transport to reach their home states. Consequently, the airline will operate these special flights for only those passengers.

On Wednesday, the airline had brought back 2,669 passengers from abroad on 13 flights.

Since May 7, both the airlines have operated nearly 60 international flights to repatriate over 10,000 Indian citizens from 12 countries under the phase one of the scheme.

In the first phase, flights were operated to 12 countries spanning across the world, with geographical spread of the US in the west to the Philippines in the east.

Last week, India commenced one of the world's largest air repatriation operations, when the two airlines started the first phase of the mission.

Under the phase-I, these two airlines had to operate 64 flights in 7 days to bring back 14,800 stranded Indians from 12 countries.

Overall, more than 190,000 Indian nationals, who would have to pay a one-way ferry service charge, are expected to be brought back in the airlift operation which has been divided into phases.

In comparison, three decades ago, Air India led a group of airlines which included Indian Airlines and Aeroflot as well as IAF to rescue an estimated 111,711 Indians from the Gulf, after Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990. The 59-day operation involved 488 flights and was conducted before the first Gulf war.

The airline to date has carried out massive flight operations to China, Japan and Europe to bring back stranded Indians, mostly students and pilgrims. Additionally, the airline has been instrumental in repatriating foreigners to Israel, UK and Germany. Moreover, Air India and its subsidiary Alliance Air has reached every corner of the country to supply essential medical equipment.

(Rohit Vaid can be contacted at rohit.v@ians.in)


Highlights Realme is launching the Realme TV and Realme Watch this month.

Realme TV has been certified previously on BIS website.

Realme Watch has also been shown off briefly previously.

Realme has announced it is holding an event on May 25 in India to unveil its long-awaited products, Realme TV and Realme Watch. The Realme TV and Realme Watch were confirmed to launch months ago by company CEO Madhav Sheth but that could not happen ever since the lockdown started in India. The Realme TV and Realme Watch will be categorised under company's UNI Smart AIoT ecosystem, which was detailed at the launch of Realme 6 series in March.

In a media invite, Realme has detailed the event will take place at 12:30 pm on Monday, May 25. This will be an online event, much like the previous one for company's Narzo series launch. A recorded message will be live-streamed on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter simultaneously for users to catch up with the real-time updates from the event.

Sheth has also shared a fresh video teaser on Twitter that shows the outline of the top of the Realme Watch.

Let's #LeapToNext on 25th May!

With products that are Smart, Powerful & Trendy, we are on the path of becoming India's Most Popular Tech-Lifestyle brand.

See you guys! pic.twitter.com/stXIk9VkfB  Madhav @Office in action (@MadhavSheth1) May 15, 2020

The Realme TV has cropped up earlier on various certification websites and has been leaked numerously. According to the Bluetooth SIG website, the Realme TV will have a 32-inch and a 43-inch TV model. But its listing on the BIS website suggested there will also be a 55-inch mode for Realme TV. Its remote control was also certified on the Bluetooth SIG website. Later, Realme TV was claimed to have been spotted on the Android TV certification website, hinting that the upcoming TV will run Google's Android ecosystem.

A recent leak also claimed to reveal what looks like the photo of Realme TV's retail packages stored in a warehouse. The retail packages show the Realme TV will at least have a 43-inch model. Moreover, the native support for Netflix has also been purported in the leak. Since Realme is offering the Netflix app out of the box, it is likely the Realme TV will come with HDR10 and Dolby Vision support, as well.

Coming to the Realme Watch, it has been leaked in renders after company CEO Madhav Sheth was spotted sporting it in one of his Q&A videos. The Realme Watch is likely to come in a squarish design with straps similar to those on the Apple Watch. There will be a focus on Indic languages (including Hindi) on the smartwatch, as revealed by the screenshots of the interface. The Realme Watch is also said to run a custom OS and not Wear OS.
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ROTTERDAM, The Netherlands (15 May 2020) - IMCD N.V. ("IMCD" or "Company"), a leading distributor of speciality chemicals and food ingredients, today announces that it has signed an agreement to acquire the pharmaceutical business in China of Develing International Trade (Shanghai) Co. Ltd. ("Develing") upon fulfilment of transaction-related conditions.

Develing International with head office in Shanghai, is a Dutch sales and distribution company (B2B) of high-quality ingredients for the food, pharmaceutical, chemical, and feed industry in China and Vietnam.

The acquired business with annual sales of approximately  10 mln will be integrated into IMCD China's business unit Pharma and will be synergistic with IMCD's existing product range.
Moisture in the air is triggering the degradation of the 20th century masterpiece The Scream by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, scientists say.

An international team used the worlds biggest X-ray to analyse paint micro-flakes from The Scream, which is kept in the Munch Museum in Oslo, Norway.

Cadmium sulphide, used as a pigment in the original paint, becomes oxidised and fades under high humidity conditions, they found.

It was thought light was to blame for colours of the painting gradually fading, which is why it has been mostly kept in near darkness  but humidity is its major threat.

The findings could help better preserve the masterpiece, suspected to be from 1910, which is rarely exhibited due to its degradation.

One of the painted versions of The Scream, thought to be painted in 1910, and the subject of the study

Low humidity conditions will be key to allowing the painting to be exhibited at the Munch Museum, which is due to reopen this year after a major upgrade.

The synchrotron micro-analyses allowed us to pinpoint the main reason that made the painting decline, which is moisture, said co-author of the study Letizia Monico from the Italian National Research Council in Rome.

We also found that the impact of light in the paint is minor. I am very pleased that our study could contribute to preserve this famous masterpiece.

One of the most famous paintings of the modern era, The Scream is interpreted as the ultimate representation of anxiety and mental anguish.

From left to right, Dr Francesca Rosi, Dr Costanza Miliani and Dr Laura Cartechini (CNR, Italy) in front of The Scream (1910?) while performing infrared measurements

Munch, who suffered anxiety much of his life, was inspired one evening by 'the enormous, infinite scream of nature' and a sunlight that turned the clouds 'a blood red'.

As he painted, Munch experimented to find the exact colours to represent his personal experience, using bold synthetic pigments to make 'screaming colours'.

There are several unique versions of The Scream by Munch  two paintings, two pastels, several lithographic prints and a few drawings and sketches.

The two most well-known versions are the paintings, suspected to have been created in 1893 and 1910  the latter of which was the subject of the researchers study.

For this 1910 version, which was stolen from the Munch Museum in 2004 but recovered in 2006, he used tempera, a water-based pigment mixed with a chemical binder.

Since the recovery of the painting after the theft, the masterpiece has rarely been shown to the public and is preserved in a protected storage area in the Munch Museum, under controlled low lighting, temperatures of about 64F and relative humidity of around 50 per cent.

This version shows signs of degradation in different areas where the cadmium-sulfide-based pigments have been used.

Cadmium sulfide is an inorganic compound and was adopted as a pigment for the yellow paint cadmium yellow.

Series of artificially aged oil paint mock-ups prepared using different types of cadmium sulfide-based pigments

In particular, cadmium yellow brushstrokes in the sunset sky at the top and the neck of the central figure have turned to an off-white colour, while in the lake, a thickly applied opaque cadmium yellow paint is flaking.

ESRF: THE WORLDS BIGGEST X-RAY The European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) is the most intense source of synchrotron-generated light, producing X-rays 100 billion times brighter than X-rays used in hospitals. These X-rays are produced by the high energy electrons that race around a circular tunnel measuring half a mile in circumference. ESRF functions like a super-microscope that films the position and motion of atoms in condensed and living matter. This reveals the structure of matter and new insights for scientists in the fields of chemistry, material physics, archaeology, nanotechnologies and more. Source: esrf.eu Advertisement

To learn more, the team studied cadmium-sulfide-based areas of the painting and tiny paint flake micro-samples, using spectroscopy, as well as multiple X-ray techniques at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France to reveal chemical insights.

The same techniques were used on artificially aged mock-ups of the painting, prepared using a historical cadmium yellow pigment powder and a cadmium yellow oil paint tube that belonged to Munch.

Our goal was to compare the data from all these different pigments, in order to extrapolate the causes that can lead to deterioration, said Monico.

The original yellow cadmium sulfide turns into the white cadmium sulfate in the presence of chloride-compounds in high-moisture conditions  a relative humidity of 95 per cent.

This will happen even if there is no light, the team concluded, suggesting that photodegradation plays a less small role in The Screams fading colours.

To be able to display The Scream on a permanent basis at the museum, its exposure to excessively high moisture levels should be limited, theyve suggested, to a maximum relative humidity of 45 per cent.

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (pictured). Many of Munch's works depict life and death scenes, love and terror, and the feeling of loneliness

Light, meanwhile, can be kept at at standard values for lightfast paint  paint that does not discolour when exposed to light  meaning future visitors to the museum may not have to view The Scream in almost darkness.

The results of this study provide new knowledge, which may lead to practical adjustments to the Museum's conservation strategy, said Irina C. A. Sandu, conservation scientist at the Munch Museum.

The museum, which is due to reopen this spring after a change of location, will now look into how this study may affect the way paintings are kept.

Cadmium-sulfide-based yellows are also present in the work of Munchs contemporaries, including Henri Matisse, Vincent van Gogh and James Ensor, meaning the study could have implications for other seminal paintings.

This kind of work shows that art and science are intrinsically linked and that science can help preserve pieces of art so that the world can continue admiring them for years to come, said co-author Costanza Miliani, heritage scientist at the Italian National Research Council.

The study has been published in Science Advances.
Washington, DC was plunged into the world of fantasy this week as President Donald Trump, already caught in roughly 18,000 lies by fact checkers, went on an angry tirade against former president Barack Obama, whom he now accuses of Obamagate  the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR.

While unable to name a specific crime, Trump appears to be mobilizing the Department of Justice and pliable Attorney General Bill Barr to launch a series of investigations into an alleged conspiracy by the Obama White House to sabotage his incoming administration by manufacturing a Russian conspiracy to aid Trump.

Trump is notoriously sensitive about the legitimacy of his 2016 election, which all seventeen intelligence agencies, the Department of Justice itself, and several Congressional committees unanimously agree was tainted with Russian interference aimed at helping the Trump campaign.

That sensitivity also led to a previous failed investigation into alleged widespread voter fraud, which was apparently intended to corroborate his claim that 3 to 5 million illegal votes were cast for Hillary Clinton; Trump lost the popular vote by 2.9 million votes.

As far back as 2011, Trump, whos promoted numerous conspiracy theories, launched an equally failed investigation into the legitimacy of Barack Obamas presidency, claiming that the former president was born in Kenya and therefore ineligible for the office.

Rather than dignifying Obamagate with a response, concerned citizens are encouraged to watch Obama decimate Trumps birtherism at the 2011 White House Correspondents dinner and then enjoy this scene from a vastly superior fantasy while replacing lions and tigers and bears, oh my! with A liar, his tirades, and Barr, oh my!

Image by twm1340
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the head of the citys public hospital system tasked with overseeing the citys contact tracing initiative Friday amid emails showing Health + Hospitals CEO Dr. Mitchell Katz said he saw no proof widespread closures would stop the spread of the coronavirus in early March.

Katz told the mayors aides in an email March 10 that there was no proof that closures will help stop the spread, according to emails obtained by The New York Times.

At the time, Katz argued that keeping the city open was the best approach.

Canceling large gatherings gives people the wrong impression of this illness, Katz said. Many of the events are being canceled anyway, and fewer people are going out. However, it is very different when the government starts telling people to do this.

He also said Italy is having a terrible problem that I do not believe we will have, and ended the message by arguing that shutting down events could cause fear among those with mental health issues, The Times reported.

The mayor did not order the closure of schools and bars and restaurants until nearly a week after Katzs email. The states stay at home order went into effect March 22.

De Blasio defended Katz Friday, arguing that no one had the facts about the virus early on.

First of all, every one of the health care experts that I've talked to, whether they work for the City of New York or whether they're federal, like [Dr. Anthony S. Fauci], everyone has admitted throughout this crisis that they did not have all the facts because no one has all the facts on coronavirus. Every one of them has changed their estimation of what we should do over time, de Blasio said on WNYCs the Brian Lehrer Show.

I literally do not know a single health care expert who's been you know, perfectly aware of everything that was going to happen ahead of the curve throughout all this, he continued. So I've listened to a variety of health care leaders in this administration and beyond. Always trying to figure out what is the right composite of information to make decisions. But none of them has had a perfect corner on the market of wisdom.

The revelation of the emails come as de Blasio recently handed the citys contact tracing effort to Katz and H+H to lead over the citys Health Department, which has historically led contact tracing efforts for Ebola, the measles and other diseases.

The change in leadership on the citys contact tracing initiative comes at time when Health Department Commissioner Dr. Dr. Oxiris Barbot has come under fire for reportedly saying she didnt give two rats asses about your cops, when asked by NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan for more protective face masks for cops.

The mayor said Friday he has not spoken to Barbot in two days. He has refused to take any action or call for her resignation before speaking to her and Monahan first about the heated exchange.

On Thursday, city Comptroller Scott Stringer launched an investigation into the citys preparedness and response to the coronavirus pandemic.

As part of that investigation, Stringer said he would request all documents received, created, or issued by city government officials and agencies related to the pandemic before the March 22 statewide stay-at-home order.

The mayor also praised Katz and H+Hs response to the pandemic Friday.

The question to my mind about Mitch Katz is what has he done in the middle of this crisis? What he's done is taken the biggest public hospital system in America and prepared it for battle and saw it through. Health + Hospitals, our 11 public hospitals bore the brunt of this crisis, starting with Elmhurst Hospital. And under Mitchs leadership, they held the line, de Blasio said.

This is a massive human challenge, dealing with a crisis that literally these hospitals have never seen before. A huge managerial and leadership challenge. A huge logistical operational challenge. And his hospitals held and he played a leading role in our efforts to keep hospitals holding throughout the entire city, which they did. So that was what he was charged with doing and he did it, I think brilliantly as did his team, he continued.

FOLLOW SYDNEY KASHIWAGI ON TWITTER.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK ***
More than a dozen current and former women legislators pose on the steps of the Colorado Capitol to promote the locally produced 2016 documentary Strong Sisters, the story of women elected officials in the state, which has the first parliamentary body in the world to seat women lawmakers.
Migrants pelt stones on MP border demanding food and transport

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: Hundreds of migrant workers pelted stones near Sendhwa on the Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra border demanding food and transportation.

Thousands of migrants, on the way to northern states from Maharashtra amid the coronavirus crisis, are pouring in at Sendhwa in Madhya Pradesh's Barwani district.

Eye witnesses said that groups of migrants created ruckus, alleging that government made no arrangement of food and transportation for them.

Walking to their deaths: The terrible plight of our migrant workers on the road

In the afternoon, some of them pelted stones, but nobody was injured in the incident, witnesses said.

Shailesh Tripathi, who reached Barwani from Pune, said migrants, which included pregnant women, senior citizens and children, were facing a lot of hardship in the absence of food, water and transportation facilities.

A large number of migrants were waiting for food and transport on MP-Maharashtra border for hours, and people from Satna, Rewa, Anuppur and other districts of MP were also among them, he said.

Barwani collector Amit Tomar said the migrants were sent to transit points in different districts in 135 buses from the border.

Stone-pelting took place as some migrants felt after the buses left that there would not be any more vehicles for those left behind, but officials reassured them and calmed them down, he said.

Meanwhile, the state government said that about 15,000 migrant labourers were taken from Sendhwa border (Bijasen Ghat border) to other places in the past three days while there has been a huge influx from Maharashtra.

"The maximum pressure of migrants is being faced at Bijasan Ghat on the border of Sendhwa (MP-Maharashtra). 5,000 to 6,000 migrant workers are reaching there every day," a government statement said.

Rs 10,000-cr job work offered under MNREGS to migrant workers: FM

Migrant workers were being transported by buses for free to Dewas transit point after providing them food and conducting medical tests, it said.

From Dewas, they are sent to Sagar, Chhatarpur, Guna and Shivpuri by buses.

Subsequently, migrant workers of other districts of the state are transported to their home districts and those from Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar are ferried to the border of UP, the state government said.

Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan appealed migrants not to panic.

"Do not panic in this hour of crisis, the Government of Madhya Pradesh will ensure that every migrant worker reaches home. Arrangements for food, temporary stay, medical check-up and buses have been made. This arrangement will continue until all the migrant workers reach their destinations," Chouhan said.

Additional Chief Secretary ICP Keshari informed that over 2.26 lakh migrant workers were brought back to MP by road from other states while 86,000 migrants were brought by the special trains.
Nigeria may have fallen into Chinas dept trap through a purported signing of loan documents in Chinese language. Such error could commit the country into complicated loan terms that may not have been negotiated during the consultation period.

A member of the House of Representatives, Ben Ibakpa, had on Channels Television morning programme, Sunrise Daily, on Thursday alleged that Nigerian officials signed loan documents with China written in the Chinese language.

Ibakpa, representing Ethiope Federal Constituency in the National Assembly, however, said the National Assembly is not being consulted when the federal government takes loans from China.

The lawmaker decried that most Nigerian officials do not thoroughly check the loan documents before signing; Some of these documents come in the Chinese language, he added.

Ibakpa had declared: The National Assembly is kept in the dark in all these loans. The National Assembly is not part of it. Even the Bureau for Public Procurement is not aware of these loans.

These loans are collected via the China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC). They bring a bill; the Federal Executive approves the bill. The House of Representatives member advocated that the Buhari administration came on board with anti-corruption mantra; and, therefore, should be more prudent with the loans, observing that award of contracts stimulates corruption.

The lawmaker challenged members of the National Assembly to correct whatever was not done right in the past on public finance in Nigeria.

Ibakpa also stated that lawmakers know little about all expenditures in the 2020 budget. He protested the allocation of N2 trillion to debt servicing, yet the federal government is still acquiring more loans and accumulating huge debts.

We are taking about over N2 trillion appropriated for debt servicing. We appropriate and we dont know how this money is being spent. That is, we need to look into what has been happening since 2002.
Attorneys hired by the father and son accused of killing 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery have said that their clients are good people who are being vilified.

Gregory and Travis McMichael were charged on 23 Feburary with aggravated assault and felony in the case of the murder of Mr Arbery, an unarmed black man who was jogging when he was attacked a shot dead.

The case drew national scrutiny and outrage after a video of the shooting surfaced online and it came to light that no arrests had been made in conjunction with the incident for weeks, despite the footage having been seen by prosecutors.

When the Georgia Bureau of Investigation was called in to take over the two men were arrested less than 48 hours later.

Travis McMichaels attorneys Bob Rubin and Jason Sheffield urged that while the shooting itself was captured on video, the events leading up to the confrontation are unknown.

Right now we are starting at the end, Mr Sheffield said. We know the ending. What we dont know is the beginning.

Mr Rubin added: We implore all of you ... dont rush to judgment.

More than two months passed before the McMichaels were arrested and the fact that it didnt happen until after the video of the shooting sparked national outcry.

At a news conference, before the arrests were announced on Thursday, Republican governor Brian Kemp said he was confident state investigators would find the truth.

Earlier this week, I watched the video depicting Mr Arberys last moments alive, Mr Kemp told reporters in Atlanta.

I can tell you its absolutely horrific, and Georgians deserve answers.

Laura and Frank Hogue, a husband and wife criminal defence team, are said to be representing Gregory McMichael and have echoed the same sentiments as his sons lawyers.

So often the public accepts a narrative driven by an incomplete set of facts, one that vilifies a good person, based on a rush to judgment, which has happened in this case, Ms Hogue said in a statement on Thursday.

Gregory McMichael told police he suspected Mr Arbery was a burglar and said he attacked his son before he was shot in a struggle over the gun.

While the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a tragedy, causing deep grief to his family  a tragedy that at first appears to many to fit into a terrible pattern in American life  this case does not fit that pattern, Mr Hogue said in a statement.

Mr Arberys mother has said she would like prosecutors to seek the death penalty.

He was out for his daily jog and he was hunted down like an animal and killed, she said. Im hoping that all involved, theyre indicted and they go to jail.

Additional reporting by The Associated Press.
Kroger says it will give "thank you" pay to frontline workers through mid-June  just days after saying it would end extra "hero" hazard pay to workers that have kept the grocer humming through the new coronavirus outbreak.

The one-time Thank You Pay, which will be $400 for qualified full-time associates and $200 for qualified part-time associates, will be paid out in two installments on May 30 and June 18, Kroger said.

The previous plan to stop bonus pay on Saturday had drawn the ire of Kroger's union the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), which said the pandemic crisis was far from over and its workers are still risking their lives and health coming to work.

Frontline grocery workers: Kroger CEO urges feds, states to label workers 'emergency personnel'

Grocery worker hiring: Kroger to add 20,000 more workers to meet coronavirus demand

The Cincinnati-based company did not address the dispute with its union in the Friday announcement. The grocer estimates the new bonus will be $130 million to workers.

Dale Ann Wight, Kroger cashier, stands at her registrar at Kroger on Tuesday, April 7, 2020, in Newport, Ky. "I'm just here to do my job, I don't think I'm anything special but it's scary it's still scary," Dale Ann Wight said. ***for heroes project, please don't use unless this has published***

Our associates have been instrumental in feeding America while also helping to flatten the curve during the initial phases of the pandemic. To recognize and thank our associates for their incredible work during this historic time, we offered special pay in March, April and May, CEO Rodney McMullen said in a statement.

Though a one-time lump sum, "Thank you" pay looks richer than Kroger's previous $2-per-hour "hero" pay.

Union officials said they were happy to see Kroger provide additional pay as the pandemic grinds on, but stuck to their previous position that it should last throughout the crisis.

"We appreciate the additional compensation for our members... COVID-19 is not going away soon," said UFCW Local 75 president Kevin Garvey. "Our members still have to work in the same conditions and deal with the same pressures. They are worth every penny of the $2 premium and the (latest) bonus."

Story continues

Garvey concluded with a pledge the union "will continue to pressure Kroger to pay additional compensation."

Besides Kroger stores, the grocer operates several regional supermarket chains in 35 states, including Fred Meyer, Harris Teeter, Ralphs, Mariano's, Fry's, Smith's, King Soopers, QFC and others. The company has nearly 2,800 stores and employs 540,000 workers.

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Kroger backs down, will give frontline workers more 'Thank you' pay
The Sultanate of Oman has established a progressive mobile sector that comprises substantial coverage of both 3G and 4G LTE networks, reports Research & Markets.

To prepare for the advent of 5G, trials have been conducted, networks upgraded, and spectrum allocated. The major operators Omantel and Ooredoo have been granted the right to use 100MHz of 5G spectrum by the countrys regulator, with Omantel launching an initial 5G network in late 2019.

While the two major players have a similar market share, there are a number of smaller competitors following the introduction of MVNOs over the past decade. The competitive landscape will be strengthened further by Vodafones entry to the market in 2020.

The regulator signed a strategic MoU with Vodafone Group, along with a local consortium of investors, to form a third mobile network operator in Oman, which will use Vodafones branding. In early 2020 the consortium agreed to lease mobile towers from Oman Tower Company.

While Oman's fixed broadband infrastructure penetration is considered low, it is being improved upon with the building of fibre-based networks as part of Oman's National Broadband Strategy. By 2040 it is hoped that all homes and businesses will be connected to the national broadband infrastructure.

Oman is well positioned to be a technology hub in the Middle East as it is well located between Asia, Africa and Europe and has access to several submarine cable systems.
Haryana Deputy Chief Minister Dushyant Chautala on Friday said he favours an extension of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown but with more leniency and states to be given liberty to decide what activities should be allowed for a gradual return to normalcy.

When asked if he was in favour of extending the lockdown in Haryana, Chautala said the measure has to remain in place while citing the recent spike in number of COVID-19 cases in the state.

Yes, there should be lockdown, but there should be leniency on day-to-day life (activities), he told reporters at his residence in the evening.

He also said shutting down schools and colleges for an indefinite period will also cause harm to the education infrastructure.

With some offices in the state reopening with 50 per cent staff strength or even less, Chautala said the sooner offices are brought back to normal functioning, the better it will be as common people are facing lot of inconvenience.

However, the Deputy Chief Minister, who holds 11 portfolios including Excise, Industry and Commerce, made it clear that strict measures will have to continue in containment and red zones.

But in orange and green zones, states should have their own liberty on what to allow according to what regulation so that life comes back to normalcy, he said.

He said that many experts have now come to the conclusion that that we all will have to live with the pandemic, at least for some time in the near future.

Replying to a question, he said that the Haryana government has shared its feedback with the Centre on Friday regarding easing of lockdown guidelines.

He said economic and other activities were gradually restarting in the state with 29.75 lakh workers having joined in units which commenced operations.

The Deputy CM was also asked to comment on the arrest of former Haryana MLA Satvinder Rana on Thursday for his alleged role in theft of liquor from a sealed godown in Samalkha in Panipat district.

Rana had unsuccessfully contested the 2019 assembly polls as a JJP candidate.

Chautala said that the godown, in which Rana had partnership, was sealed by the Excise department in 2016, after a herbal liquor product was found there for which it did not have permit for such a label.

Rana himself had got the theft report registered in March this year, however, his name figured after the arrest of one person, Chautala said, adding that the former had not been named in the FIR.

Hitting out at opponents, Chautala said, The way one person (Rana) and an outfit (JJP) is being tarnished...he (Rana) is not an accused. Let me clarify, he is not named in the FIR. He was taken for investigation and has been sent on two days police remand. Any person is innocent until proven guilty, this is what our Constitution says.

Let us see what the court says when he is produced before it at the end of his remand, he said when asked if the party will take any action against Rana.

Without naming Congress leader B S Hooda and his (Dushyant's) uncle and INLD leader Abhay Singh Chautala, who have raked up the liquor scam issue in the state, the JJP leader said, How many FIRs are registered against present and former Leaders of Opposition?



In the entire episode (Rana's arrest and liquor scam issue in the state), when my outfit or my name comes, everyone (opponents) jumps in and they try to corner, he said.

On farmers' issue, he said the state is hoping that wheat procurement will be over within 3-4 days going by the present trend.

With arrivals slowing down, procurement centres have been halved from 1,800 earlier.

As much as 63.86 lakh metric tonne wheat has been procured, out of which 44.17 lakh MT reached the godowns, whose crop value is Rs 7,342.50 crore. Out of this, payment of Rs 5,249.60 crore has been cleared while another Rs 2,200 crore would be cleared on Saturday, he said.

On being questioned about migrant workers, Chautala said that despite best arrangements made by the state for them in relief shelters and with many having no problem of food and jobs, many yearn to go back to their homes because of the present pandemic situation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi: Bollywood actress Madhuri Dixit Nene has an ocean of fan following across the globe. On May 15, she celebrates her 53rd birthday. The actress made her debut in movies with 1984 film 'Abodh'. But it was with 1988 release 'Tezaab' that Madhuri tasted success. She became a top B-Town actress and featured in superhit blockbusters such as Ram Lakhan, Parinda, Ilaaka, Tridev, Thanedaar and Khalnayak amongst many others.

Madhuri also gained fandom with movies like Kishen Kanhaiya, Prem Pratigyaa, Saajan and Raja. The actress has bagged six Filmfare Awards so far and during the 90s and early 2000 was the highest-paid actress. In 2008, Madhuri was awarded the Padma Shri honour Padma Shri, the fourth highest civilian honour of the country for her contribution in the field of cinema and art.

Films like Dil, Beta, Hum Aapke Hain Koun..! and Dil To Pagal Hai made her a sensational star of the Indian cinema. Anjaam, Pukar, Mrityudand and Lajja showed off her acting brilliance. She portrayed Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay's character Chandramukhi in Sanjay Leela Bhansali's epic blockbuster 'Devdas'.

Madhuri Dixit married Shriram Madhav Nene, a cardiovascular surgeon from Los Angeles on October 17, 1999. The couple is blessed with two sons Arin and Ryan. She took a brief break from acting to focus on her personal life but made a comeback in 2007 with 'Aaja Nachle'.

Known for her exemplary dancing skills, her fans throng theatres to watch her perform.

She went on to star in critically acclaimed movies like 'Dedh Ishqiya', 'Gulaab Gang' amongst others.

She even made her Marathi debut with 'Bucket List' in 2018. Madhuri Dixit Nene has lent her voice and support to several social causes as well.

Madhuri's presence on the small-screens as a reality show judge on several dance shows has been a new feather in her cap. She was last seen in 2019 release 'Kalank'.

Here's wishing her a very happy birthday!
Allies of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, up to and including President Trump, have pointed to a handwritten February 2017 note by Bill Priestap, then the FBI's counterterrorism director, to argue that FBI agents set out to trick Flynn into lying about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump's inauguration. Attorney General William Barr said FBI agents intended to "lay a perjury trap." Acting U.S. Attorney Timothy Shea, Barr's long time adviser, cited Priestap's memo when petitioning U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan to drop Flynn's case, despite a guilty plea Flynn affirmed before seeking to withdraw.

Justice Department officials involved in the Flynn case interviewed Priestap last week, two days before Shea signed the extraordinary motion to dismiss the case, The New York Times reports. Priestap said their interpretation of his memo  and the one pushed by Flynn's lawyers and Fox News personalities  was wrong. "He said that FBI officials were trying to do the right thing in questioning Mr. Flynn and that he knew of no effort to set him up," the Times reports.

Priestap's memo reflected his own thoughts on the FBI'S internal debate about inteviewing Flynn. "What's our goal? Truth/admission or to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired?" Priestap wrote, adding: "Protect our institution by not playing games." His notes also show the FBI "softened its interview strategy" with Flynn, giving him hints to refresh his memory of his conversations, the Times reports. Nevertheless, Flynn "lied repeatedly, and prosecutors have said that agents gave him 'multiple opportunities to correct his false statements by revisiting key questions.'"

Justice Department officials "did not tell Judge Sullivan about Mr. Priestap's interview," though an official said they will submit a report on the interview soon, the Times reports. That may not sit well with Sullivan, who has already expressed skepticism over the DOJ's motion to dismiss the case. Barr's push to drop the case has also drawn strong rebukes from hundreds of former Justice Department officials, and another former top official cited in Shea's motion, Mary McCord, wrote in a New York Times op-ed it's "disingenuous for the department to twist my words" to support Barr's "contorted argument." Read more about Priestap's memo at The New York Times.

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By Michael Martina and Seth Herald DETROIT/LANSING, Mich. (Reuters) - Hundreds gathered to protest Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order on Thursday in Lansing, the third but smallest major demonstration at the state's Capitol since businesses were shuttered in March due to the coronavirus. Whitmer recently extended Michigan's stay-at-home order - one of the strictest in the United States - until at least May 28 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes, COVID-19

By Michael Martina and Seth Herald

DETROIT/LANSING, Mich. (Reuters) - Hundreds gathered to protest Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer's stay-at-home order on Thursday in Lansing, the third but smallest major demonstration at the state's Capitol since businesses were shuttered in March due to the coronavirus.

Whitmer recently extended Michigan's stay-at-home order - one of the strictest in the United States - until at least May 28 to prevent the spread of the coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes, COVID-19.

The protest was organized by Michigan United for Liberty, which says it is a nonprofit with nearly 8,000 members that views the order as unconstitutional.

About 150 protesters gathered in light rain around 9 a.m. near the steps of the Capitol building, but the crowd grew to several hundred by mid-morning, some carrying signs in support of President Donald Trump. A handful had firearms, including long guns.

"Open your business now. Open the restaurants. Open the bars. Open the movie theaters," one protester, who did not announce his name, told the crowd. "Michigan, wake up America."

Michigan State Police quickly responded to a small scuffle, but said there were no injuries and the site was secure. Speakers had packed up the audio system before 11 a.m., as rain intensified.

The Capitol building was closed because the legislature had been adjourned.

Debate over how and when to ease restrictions on commerce and social life have grown increasingly politicized in the United States, with Trump and his supporters agitating to loosen social-distancing measures more swiftly than medical experts deem prudent.

Democratic governors of states hardest hit by the outbreak have taken a more cautious stance, abiding by public health officials - and guidelines from the White House itself - warning that vastly expanded coronavirus testing and other safeguards be put in place first.

Hundreds of protesters, some armed, gathered at the same site in Lansing on April 30 to protest against Whitmer's request to the state legislature to extend emergency powers to combat COVID-19.

That rally saw large groups of protesters enter the Capitol building and demand to be let onto the House floor, which is prohibited. Some protesters with guns  which are allowed in the statehouse  went to the Senate gallery.

The Republican-led state legislature has declined to outlaw weapons inside the Capitol building, something Democratic governor Whitmer lamented in an interview on CNN on Wednesday.

"No one should have to go to work and feel intimidated," she said. "Making the Capitol a gun-free zone is important in making people feel they can do their job safely."

Authorities had told protesters to expect a heavy police presence at Thursday's protest, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel warned in advance that she was prepared to prosecute potential violations, including brandishing of weapons and trespassing into the legislative chambers.

"I vehemently support the First Amendment right to protest government actions at the Capitol or elsewhere around the state; however any such activity must be done in a manner that is safe and lawful," she wrote in a tweet on Wednesday.

Michigan had the fourth highest death toll from COVID-19 in the United States as of Thursday, at 4,714 dead among its 48,391 confirmed cases.

(Reporting by Michael Martina in Detroit and Seth Herald in Lansing; Editing by Rosalba O'Brien)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
Ramadan television series The Choice, currently being shown on Egyptian TV, accurately depicts what is at stake in the ongoing war on terrorism in Egypt

The Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliate in Sinai known as the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis have not spared a chance to remind the Egyptian people of the inhuman nature of their members. This was manifested one more time during the first week of the Holy Month of Ramadan, after the attack on a check point in North Sinai killing 10 soldiers before Iftar.

The terrorist attack once again reminded the nation of the brutal character of these terrorists who claim to be fighting for freedom and democracy. Following the attack, the Egyptian police and army led a massive retaliation campaign against the hideouts of the terrorists, killing 146 in the days that followed and destroying 22 hideouts.

Despite the massive victories over the Muslim Brotherhood and the destruction of its organisational infrastructure across the country over the past seven years, there are still those who follow the hallucinations of this cult. This takes place through their following the teachings of founder Hassan Al-Banna or the godfather of modern terrorism Sayed Qotb or the radical clerics who promote bloodbaths. While the vast majority of the Egyptian population has made it their choice to uphold the tenets of this great nation, there are still those who are willing to sell those tenets cheaply to hostile regimes and even fight on their side against their own countrymen.

A Ramadan TV drama has come as a pleasant surprise to Egyptian and Arabic-speaking viewers in the Middle East. Ikhtiyar (The Choice) is the first TV series that accurately depicts the ferocious war on terrorism that has been going on in Egypt since 2011. The marvelous production standards of the show help to present at a near realistic level the kind of military operations that have hardly been seen before in any Egyptian TV drama and equal to the best global cinematic standards.

The Choice stars talented actor Amir Karara, who delivers the performance of a lifetime along with an assortment of some of Egypts most talented veteran and young actors. Many box-office stars and veteran actors were happy to appear as guest stars or even in cameo roles in the series in order to contribute to the resounding success it has been enjoying. But the amazing performances and overall production would not have been possible without the flawless work of the young and talented Egyptian director Peter Mimi, who has presented artistic work befitting a world-class director.

The TV series commemorates the life of Egyptian army officer colonel Ahmed Al-Mansi, who commanded the 103rd unit of the Thunderbolt Forces in North Sinai. He died heroically in July 2017 in a suicide bombing that targeted his unit, having attained legendary status during his years in service through hundreds of successful raids and special operations against terrorists and paving the way to the destruction of the bulk of the Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis and other terrorists allied to the Islamic State (IS) group in Sinai.

The series also depicts the life of disgraced former army officer Hisham Ashmawi, played by Ahmed Al-Awadi, who joined Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis before forming his own terrorist group. Ashmawi was captured in Libya and extradited to Egypt and was later executed for high treason in March this year.

The Choice depicts the patriotic choices made by millions of Egyptian soldiers whether in the army or the police to serve their countrys security in the face of traitors such as Ashmawi who walked the path of treachery by committing atrocities against their own country and countrymen in the name of jihad.

Its episodes are seamless and utilise both real and cinematic footage. It presents some harsh realities and exposes the existence of a fifth column within society that has been working in the service of the Muslim Brotherhood or other Islamist factions.

The choice that the Egyptian people made in the 30 June 2013 Revolution to oust treacherous former president Mohamed Morsi is depicted in the TV series, with this being a clear message from the people that Egypt will never be turned into a theologically governed country under any circumstances such as has been the case of Iran. The secular nature of the Egyptian republic, which the Islamists are trying to bury with the help of a few foolish politicians, clergymen, media anchors and others, remains the cornerstone of keeping Egypt away from the clutches of the Islamists in the future.

It is time to recognise the fact that thousands of Egyptian soldiers and citizens have paid with their lives in order to uphold that patriotic choice, and this stands as testimony to the strength of the countrys foundations. However, there should be no mistake in declaring a victory over terrorism and Islamism too soon, as the war continues, and the recent attack on the North Sinai outpost serves as a reminder that the war on terrorism is not over despite the victories that have been attained.

While the TV series serves as a commemoration of the lives and deaths of the nations heroes, a real commemoration would be to honour their memories by not falling into the traps and mistakes of the past by dancing to the Islamists tunes, something that is still the case among a tiny minority of the younger generation.

Furthermore, the exposure of the Islamists and their fifth column must also take place in the West, where the Islamists are still seeking protection They still maintain diplomatic relations with countries where Muslim Brotherhood members form part of the government.

The Choice is a sound reminder that Political Islam or Islamism must be rooted out from every corner of Egypt and eventually from every corner of the globe as well. It is an existential threat to human civilisation like the current coronavirus pandemic.

The writer is a political analyst and author of Egypts Arab Spring and the Winding Road to Democracy

*A version of this article appears in print in the 14 May, 2020 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly

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Burglars stole 30,000 worth of handbags and a Range Rover from the British home of Guccio Gucci  the great-grandson of the fashion brands founder.

Two men broke into the 61-year-olds 3.2million family house in Notting Hill, west London, on February 22, by sticking their hands through the letterbox to open the front door, neighbours said.

They swiped the spare keys to Mr Guccis Range Rover Evoque and carried the designer handbags out in a large basket, a witness said.

Burglars stole 30,000 worth of handbags and a Range Rover from the British home of Guccio Gucci  the great-grandson of the fashion brands founder

Three weeks after the raid, thieves returned to take the car, and Maximillion McKenzie-Watkins, 22, was arrested the same day after he ran a red light in the stolen vehicle and narrowly missed a moped driver.

Maximillion McKenzie-Watkins, 22, was arrested the same day after he ran a red light in the stolen vehicle and narrowly missed a moped driver. He was jailed for four years at Isleworth Crown Court last week after pleading guilty to handling the stolen Range Rover, stealing 6,500 worth of computers from Ashbourne Sixth Form College in January, dangerous driving and drugs offences at an earlier hearing

He was jailed for four years at Isleworth Crown Court last week after pleading guilty to handling the stolen Range Rover, stealing 6,500 worth of computers from Ashbourne Sixth Form College in January, dangerous driving and drugs offences at an earlier hearing.

A neighbour of Mr Gucci said she phoned police when she saw two young men sticking their hands through the letterbox on February 22.

She added: They both had tracksuits on. I rang the police and saw them come out with a big basket full of stuff theyd stolen.

The police were just too late and they were gone by the time they arrived.

A friend of Mr Gucci said: It is incredible the amount they were able to steal  his wife is a designer for Gucci and she does have a huge amount of handbags.

A man at Mr Guccis home said the burglary was awful and did not wish to comment further.

A Gucci model is pictured above. Mr Guccis great-grandfather, also named Guccio, founded the House of Gucci in Florence in 1921

Fashion heir Mr Gucci, named after his great-grandfather who founded the world famous design label, has been caught up in the infamous rifts that have plagued the Italian fashion dynasty.

He worked for the family label for 12 years until 1989 when he went to work for his fathers Giorgio G handbag line before setting up his own brand ToBeG in 2008.

In 2012 an Italian judge ruled against him and his brother Alessandro for illegitimately using the names Gucci and Guccio Gucci when marketing ToBeG products, finding there was an unfair association between the brand and the Gucci trademark.

Mr Guccis great-grandfather, also named Guccio, founded the House of Gucci in Florence in 1921 after he was inspired by the elegant luggage of guests he met while working as a lift boy at Londons Savoy hotel.

It is now one of the worlds most recognisable high-end brands, with the company raking in revenues in excess of 10billion.
Russias largest oil producer, Rosneft, confirmed on Friday that it had discontinued all operations in Venezuela, including in joint ventures, trading, and oilfield services, as the top Russian firm looks to avoid further U.S. sanctions because of its business with Venezuela.

At the end of March, Rosneft said it would be selling all its assets in Venezuela and was said to have canceled oil cargoes from the South American country after the United States hit Rosneft subsidiaries with sanctions due to their continued business with Venezuela.

Rosneft announced the sale of its Venezuelan assets to a company 100-percent owned by the Russian government.

Earlier this year, the United States slapped sanctions on Rosnefts Swiss-based trading arm as part of its attempts to cut off all revenue streams to Nicolas Maduros government in Caracas. The U.S. has signaled that it is ready to tighten even more the noose around the Venezuelan government.

Commenting on Rosnefts Q1 performance, chief executive officer Igor Sechin said on Friday:

In second quarter of 2020, the Company closed a previously announced transaction to transfer to a company that is 100 % owned by the Government of the Russian Federation all assets in Venezuela, including participation shares in projects of Petromonagas, Petroperija, Boqueron, Petromiranda and Petrovictoria, as well as oilfield service companies and trading operations.

Rosnefts operations in Venezuela have been completely discontinued, Sechin said.

Meanwhile, Russias top oil producer reported a net loss of US$2 billion for the first quarter of 2020, due to the low oil prices and the depreciation of the Russian ruble. The Q1 loss compares to a net profit of US$1.9 billion for the first quarter of 2019.

Liquids production fell by 2.2 percent year on year to 4.64 million bpd in Q1 2020, due to continued compliance with OPEC+ Agreement constraints, Rosneft said.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Samir Ali - Trend:

There is no shortage of medical masks and disinfectants in Azerbaijan, Spokesman for the Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers Ibrahim Mammadov said at a briefing of the Operational Headquarters under Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers, Trend reports on May 15.

The information that pharmacies cannot sell medical masks due to the low demand is false, Mammadov added.

"The daily potential of the production of medical masks by the country's enterprises is 500,000, the spokesman said. However, due to the lack of great need, the enterprises do not work at full capacity."

The spokesman said that the prices of medical masks may be discussed at the next stage.

"The cost of the imported masks is higher than the price of domestically produced masks in local pharmacies, Mammadov added. The Azerbaijani government compensates for part of these funds so that the masks in pharmacies not to be sold at the price higher than 30 qepik [17 cents]."
Great Plains Health has received an allocation of the antiviral drug remdesivir for treatment of patients with COVID-19, according to a press release.

On May 1, the FDA issued emergency use approval for remdesivir to treat COVID-19 patients. The manufacturer, Gilead Sciences agreed to donate their current stock to be distributed through state health departments.

Remdesivir is an antiviral.

Earlier this week, Gov. Pete Ricketts announced that the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services received an initial supply of 400 vials of remdesivir to distribute as necessary, with the intent that the medication be limited to COVID-19 patients most severely impacted and ventilated.

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Today, Great Plains Health received 18 vials, which is enough to treat three patients.

We are extremely appreciative to receive the remdesivir, said Barb Petersen, chief quality officer. We want to be able to provide the COVID-19 patients we are caring for every opportunity to overcome this disease. We appreciate the support that we have received from the state officials and every partner that helped us receive these vials.
W hite Lines has premiered on Netflix, introducing viewers to an intoxicating story of hedonism, danger and corruption set in the UK and Ibiza.

A co-production between the UK and Spain, the show stars Laura Haddock as Zoe Walker, who travels to the White Isle to investigate the fictional murder of her brother Axel, who disappeared 20 years prior.

Written by Money Heist showrunner Alex Pina, the drama utilises the beautiful sunshine and clear water of the Balearics.

While we wont be travelling to these places any time soon, heres a breakdown of White Lines filming locations, which you can save for travel research further down the track...

The Balearic Islands

Netflix

As the series is set in Ibiza, many scenes utilise the beautiful sunshine of the Balearic Islands.

The series showcases the lush tropical settings, as Zoe investigates the seedy underbelly of the party-oriented lifestyle in the popular vacation destination.

The larger island of Mallorca is used a number of times in the series. The exterior of the key nightclub in the series is on the seafront road of Palma in Mallorca.

Meanwhile, Marcus' (Daniel Mays) house is a house in Cala Dor, a small town on the east coast of Mallorca.

Netflix

The place where Zoes brother Axels body is found is the arid Tabernas Desert, near Almeria in Southern Spain.

The Tabernas Desert has historically been a top filming location for spaghetti Westerns and other films recreating the cowboy genre.

The only true desert in Europe, film crews have utilised its landscapes since the 1950s, and its cinematic history is a significant draw for tourism in the area.

Netflix

Madrid

Meanwhile, the interior of the nightclub is actually filmed in Madrid.

Bolton

A portion of the action of White Lines takes place in Manchester, where Zoe is based, and filming took place in the town of Bolton, Greater Manchester.

Eustace Street is where Axel and the boys are seen chatting ahead of their court appearance in season two, while Zoes dad Clints house is a residence on Woodgate Street.

Netflix

Manchester

A number of phone calls with Zoes mother Jenny were taped in Catalan Square, making use of Manchesters canals.

Meanwhile, the illegal warehouse rave where Axel DJs was shot at Mayfield Depot in Baring Street, Manchester.

White Lines is available to stream on Netflix now
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Milestone Results Presented as Late-Breaking Clinical Science at SCAI 2020

DUBLIN, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Medtronic plc (NYSE:MDT) today announced results from two late-breaking clinical trials presented virtually at the 2020 Society for Cardiovascular Angiography and Interventions (SCAI) Scientific Sessions. Ten-year outcomes from the Melody Transcatheter Pulmonary Valve (TPV) Therapy demonstrated strong long-term hemodynamic and safety outcomes, while the first-ever results from the investigational Harmony TPV pivotal trial met safety and efficacy endpoints for hemodynamic function at six months.

Congenital heart disease (CHD) is the most common type of birth defect in the United States, affecting an estimated 40,000 infants each year1. Approximately 22% of CHD patients have structural malformations that disrupt the connection between the heart and the lungs2, called the right ventricular outflow tract (RVOT). Typically, a subset of these patients will require open-heart surgery early in life to correct these malformations and some will receive a prosthetic conduit that increases blood flow from the heart to the lungs. Once the conduit is no longer functional, in regions where commercially approved, Melody TPV can be implanted to restore pulmonary valve function and delay additional surgical intervention. As part of the Medtronic congenital heart disease program, the safety and effectiveness of the Harmony TPV is currently being evaluated for patients with RVOT malformations who require a correction to their structural malformation early in life and need a minimally invasive option to restore pulmonary valve function, and are without a conduit.

Melody TPV 10-Year Data Highlights:

The study demonstrated sustained long-term function of Melody TPV when compared to the historical control of surgical conduit

The Melody TPV demonstrated consistent hemodynamics through 10 years as measured by stable RVOT gradients

Strong valve efficacy with 97% none/trace/mild pulmonary regurgitation at 10 years

Annualized incidence of TPV-related endocarditis was 2% per patient-year, over the course of long-term follow-up

Freedom from major stent fracture 84% at 10 years, steady after five years

Freedom from any reintervention (surgical or catheter) was 61% at 10 years

"Having long-term data is an important milestone especially for this pediatric patient population who are growing and changing so rapidly during a ten-year period," said Thomas K. Jones, M.D., director of cardiac catheterization at Seattle Children's in Seattle, Wash. "While the study reinforces the longevity, durability, and efficacy of the Melody TPV, it will also serve as a study model for future evaluations of novel pediatric congenital heart disease technologies."

The Melody TPV 10-year outcomes trial studied 150 implanted patients ranging from age 7-53, with a median age of 19, and the primary indication for intervention was pulmonary regurgitation (PR). The study assessed Melody long-term functionality, or TPV dysfunction, which is defined as reoperation, catheter reintervention, or hemodynamic dysfunction (i.e. moderate or greater PR and/or mean RVOT gradient >40 mm Hg). The study's safety outcomes included serious device-related adverse events, stent fracture, catheter reintervention, surgical conduit replacement, and mortality rate.

The first transcatheter valve implanted in a human anywhere in the world and the first to be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Melody is the longest studied TPV with the largest body of evidence. This landmark 10-year study provides insight into the long-term durability, safety, and effectiveness of the Melody TPV.

First-Ever Data from the Harmony TPV Pivotal Trial

The study met its primary safety and effectiveness endpoints of freedom from procedure or device-related mortality and met its hemodynamic function target at six months

100% of patients experienced freedom from procedure-or device related mortality at 30 days

Acceptable hemodynamic function at six months was achieved in 89% of the pivotal trial participants. For the pre-specified primary endpoint analysis, 91% of patients from both the EFS and pivotal trial achieved acceptable hemodynamic function, surpassing the performance target of 75%

84% of patients were free from device failure at six months

At six months, 94% of patients had no, or mild pulmonary regurgitation and 97% had no or mild paravalvular leak

Building onto the initial Early Feasibility Study (EFS), the pivotal study was designed to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of a minimally invasive alternative to open-heart surgery. Harmony TPV was designed to treat patients with RVOT anomalies who develop severe PR typically when a pervious repair fails.

"These pivotal data support the rationale for a potential new therapy designed specifically for the right ventricular outflow tract," said John P. Cheatham, M.D., lead principal investigator and professor emeritus, Department of Pediatrics, Cardiology at Nationwide Children's Hospital in Columbus, Ohio. "If future study data continues to be strong, we're hopeful that Harmony may potentially impact this critical, hard-to-treat segment of patients, who have limited treatment choices with current transcatheter technologies."

This trial is a prospective, non-randomized study evaluating procedural success, safety, and performance of the Harmony TPV device. The study was active across 12 sites in the U.S., Canada and Japan among 50 patients with a mean age of 29 +/- 11. The rigorous patient selection process included those with severe PR after RVOT malformation repair, and an indication for surgical placement of a RV-pulmonary artery conduit or bioprosthetic pulmonary valve. Due to the highly variable anatomy of the patient population, the study required careful screening to assess device fit.

"As demonstrated by these late-breaking studies, we're consistently building our body of new, short-, and long-term research around innovative, minimally-invasive TPV solutions for CHD patients," said Sandra Lesenfants, vice president and general manager of the Structural Heart division, which is part of the Cardiac and Vascular Group at Medtronic. "These Harmony data demonstrate our commitment to generating new therapies and growing our congenital heart disease program to support a lifetime of care that this patient population needs."

Worldwide, the Harmony TPV is limited to investigational use and not approved for sale or distribution.

In collaboration with leading clinicians, researchers and scientists worldwide, Medtronic offers the broadest range of innovative medical technology for the interventional and surgical treatment of cardiovascular disease and cardiac arrhythmias. The company strives to offer products and services that deliver clinical and economic value to healthcare consumers and providers around the world.

About Medtronic

Medtronic plc ( www.medtronic.com (http://www.medtronic.com/)), headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, is among the world's largest medical technology, services and solutions companies - alleviating pain, restoring health and extending life for millions of people around the world. Medtronic employs more than 90,000 people worldwide, serving physicians, hospitals and patients in more than 150 countries. The company is focused on collaborating with stakeholders around the world to take healthcare Further, Together.

Any forward-looking statements are subject to risks and uncertainties such as those described in Medtronic's periodic reports on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Actual results may differ materially from anticipated results.

-end-







1 Hoffman JL, Kaplan S. The incidence of congenital heart disease. J Am Coll Cardiol. 2002;39(12):1890-1900.

2 McElhinney DB, Hennesen JT. The Melody valve and Ensemble delivery system for transcatheter pulmonary valve replacement.Ann NY Acad Sci. 2013; 1291: 77-85.

Allison Kyriagis

Public Relations

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Ryan Weispfenning

Investor Relations

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What began as a series of public service announcement videos has turned into an Emmy nomination for former Midlander Andrew Johnson.

Johnson, an employee of NBC 7 San Diego, is in the running to receive an award from the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Pacific Southwest Chapter.

Johnson attended University of California San Diego from 2015 to 2018, double majoring in communications and media. During his last semester, he was accepted into an internship with NBC 7 San Diego as a digital media producer. He was then brought on full-time as a social media manager at the beginning of this year.

It was an interesting journey. I got to wear a lot of hats, Johnson said.

Although Johnson didnt originally envision himself having a career in the news media, he found he enjoyed helping produce incredible stories that had a human interest element to them. One video series focused on creating public service announcements about common questions regarding California highways, titled Ask a CHP (California Highway Patrol) Officer.

Johnson applied for five categories of the 46th Annual Pacific Southwest Emmy Awards, including the Informational/Instructional Program or Special section with the Ask a CHP series. Johnson stated that while the series was a team effort to compile, with Ashley Matthews reporting, Angelo Papazis taking pictures and Assistant Director of Integrated Media Becky Stickney assisting in pre-production, it was Johnsons name that ended up on the nomination submission; his job was to edit the videos from beginning to end.

The night of May 2, Johnson donned a formal suit and watched a live stream of nominee announcements. He patiently waited as the announcers made their way through the dozens of categories. NBC 7 San Diego was nominated 34 times as a station. It just so happened that the first category that he submitted to, Informational/Instructional Program or Special, was the first and only category where he was revealed to be one of six nominees.

I didnt believe it myself. I had to watch it a couple times, he said. I really couldnt believe it. Just from hearing and chatting with everyone, getting a nomination your first time is rare.

After months of waiting, Johnson shared the news with his friends and family.

This nomination shows to me that I can succeed wherever I am, Johnson said.

The awards ceremony is scheduled to take place on June 6 in Las Vegas, Nevada and it will be live-streamed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although Johnson wont be able to give an acceptance speech, he is still prepared to acknowledge his team at NBC 7 San Diego and his mom who has supported him along the way.

She helped me prepare for my job interviews. All the steps of the way, shes been there, Johnson said.

For a full list of the 2020 National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Pacific Southwest Chapters categories and nominees, visit https://nataspsw.org/2020-emmy-nomination-list-natas-pacific-southwest-chapter/.
The National Laboratory of Health has carried out analysis which shows the majority of the Sars-CoV-2-infections in Luxembourg had links to Italy or Austria.

The LNS has sequenced almost 220 viruses. This method can identify how the virus spread through Luxembourg and trace the regions where it originated.

The majority of cases in the Grand Duchy were linked to Italy and Austria; however, it also circulated heavily through the population.

Tamir Abdelrahman, head of microbiology at LNS, said almost all the analysed cases led back to Italy and Austria, with the 10 first cases in Luxembourg showing links to abroad.

However, at a later date it became evident from analysis of new cases that the virus was rapidly being spread throughout Luxembourg's population.

Video in Luxembourgish and French.
Members of staff join the Clap for Carers at Sandringham Care Home in Portadown

First Minister Arlene Foster, Jonathan Buckley MLA and members of staff join the Clap for Carers at Sandringham Care Home in Portadown

First Minister Arlene Foster applauded health workers outside a Co Armagh care home during last night's Clap for Carers.

Alongside Upper Bann MLA Jonathan Buckley, the DUP leader showed her solidarity with carers at Sandringham Care Home in Portadown, where it was confirmed earlier this week that 19 residents and staff had tested positive for Covid-19.

Unison members at Altnagelvin Hospital held a short event, accompanied by a piper, to recognise and acknowledge the public support they have received over the last several weeks.

A two-minute silence was also held for staff and patients who have succumbed to the coronavirus.

Commenting on the support shown by the public, Unison Foyle health joint branch secretary and health service worker Alan Philson said: "We want to thank the public for their support. We are staying here working for you, all we ask is that you follow Government guidelines and stay at home for us."

Meanwhile, at Belfast City Hospital health workers cheered and applauded as they held a sign that read 'NHStay safe'.

In Britain new parents Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds led the Clap for Carers and key workers.

The Prime Minister and his fiancee were seen together for the first time since the birth of their son Wilfred at the end of April.

Both have shared their gratitude to NHS staff after Mr Johnson spent three nights in intensive care with Covid-19.

Their son has been given the middle name Nicholas in tribute to two of the doctors who saved his life.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer tweeted: "Another emotional moment as the country comes together to clap for our key workers, our carers and all those keeping our country going through this crisis."
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (File image: Reuters)

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 pm on May 15 to provide the third set of details on the COVID-19 relief package under the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan.

This will be the Finance Minister's third press conference about the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package, which was announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 12.

The first set of measures were announced on May 13, which focused on benefits for micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs). Three tax measures and support for the Employee's Provident Fund (EPF) scheme were also a part of the first set of measures.

On May 14, the new schemes focused on migrant workers, street vendors, and small traders.
The Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) has warned Nigerians against self-medication especially during this period of Covid-19 pandemic.

The NCDC in a tweet said that medicines given by authorized medical personnel to patients with diseases including COVID-19, are dependent on individual conditions.

Read the tweet reads;
A Coconino County judge denied the opportunity for bail at a Thursday hearing for an airman who allegedly kidnapped and killed Sasha Krause, citing phone location data and texts from the suspects phone.

Lauren Jones, lead investigator with the Coconino County Sheriffs Office, testified before a judge about the case being built against Mark Daniel Gooch, an airman from Luke Air Force Base near Glendale. Jones explained that investigators have found cell phone records, interviewed people close to the suspect and victim, and interviewed the suspect about the case.

While Jones said investigators could not prove Krause and Gooch had previously known each other, the investigator cited Goochs past association with the Mennonite community and texts that prosecutors said showed his "animosity" for people of the religion.

A grand jury has charged Gooch with first-degree murder, kidnapping and theft. Additionally, his brother, Samuel Gooch, was charged with impeding an investigation after allegedly flying to Arizona to retrieve the possible murder weapon. Mark Gooch was arraigned earlier this week in the Coconino County Superior Court.

Krause was a Sunday school teacher who moved to the Lamp & Light community near the Farmington Mennonite Church in Farmington, New Mexico, about one year before the alleged killing took place. She was originally from Texas.

Gooch has family members who are Mennonite, but was never officially a part of the religion himself, Jones said. In one text exchange with another brother Jacob Gooch, who works as a state trooper in Virginia, the trooper told the airman he pulled over someone who was a Mennonite.

Mark Gooch texted back: [expletive] yes, I hope you treated them like [expletive], prosecutor Ammon Barker said.

Barker believed the text displayed Gooch's animosity toward people who were Mennonite, and the case being built against Gooch pointed to him executing Krause after making the over 400-mile trip to the Lamp & Light community on Jan. 18.

Matthew Springer, Goochs defense attorney, argued the state lacked the evidence to hold Gooch without the opportunity for bail.

As of Thursday, the Arizona Department of Public Safety crime lab was waiting for test results from male DNA found on Krauses neck and under her nails. Investigators are also waiting to see if Goochs gun matches the bullet used in the case.

At the time of the hearing, investigators said the bullet could match one of 53 possible firearms that include Goochs .22 caliber Marlin long rifle.

Bound with duct tape

Jones said her part in the investigation began when a woman searching for firewood reported finding an unidentified body face down in the woods off of Forest Road 545 and Forest Road 244 near the area of Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument.

An autopsy would later show the body belonged to Krause, and that she had been hit and shot in the back of the head before she was found in the dirt and pine needles, Jones said. Krauses hands were bound with duct tape when she was found.

While Jones was on the stand, Barker asked Jones what shes learned about Krauses history in the Mennonite community.

Jones said people in the Mennonite community use little to no technology  although Krause was not the only member of the community who owned a cell phone. She also said Mennonites are peaceful as a part of their religion, and some go as far as not believing in acting in self-defense.

Investigators found that people from the Lamp & Light community described Krause as a kind and good member of their community.

Krause was last seen wearing a Mennonite head covering, a white jacket and a grey-pinstripe dress. Her head covering was missing when her body was found in Coconino County.

Cell phone records

After the San Juan County Sheriffs Office investigators could not find any likely suspects in their community, Jones said she and Coconino County investigators looked into Krauses cell phone records.

Phone records obtained by investigators through search warrants led them to a cell phone near Krause's phone around the time she went missing. Warrants helped investigators trace the phone to Mark Gooch.

The records showed Gooch made the long drive to the Lamp & Light community in the time before Krause was reported missing on Jan. 18. Jones explained that cell phone tower data cannot be used like GPS and can only show a general area where a phone is located, within 25 meters or about 82 feet.

Krauses flip phone data showed her phone was within range of cell phone towers along the same route as Gooch's until it was lost on Highway 160. Gooch's phone could be traced along the same route at a similar time frame. From Flagstaff, a driver could reach Highway 160 by taking Highway 89 and turning east through Tuba City.

Cell data showed investigators that Gooch stayed within the general area where Krause's body was found for three hours before driving back to Luke Air Force Base using Interstate 17 on the morning of Jan. 19.

Surveillance footage in the community shows a car matching Goochs Volkswagen Jetta in the area of the Lamp & Light community on the day she was taken. Base records show Gooch left and returned within a time frame consistent with the sheriff's investigation.

Gooch later said in an interview with investigators that he had gone to New Mexico during the time Krause was first reported missing and no one else had used his car during that time.

Every defendant in first-degree murder cases is eligible for the death penalty or life in prison until 60 days after their arraignment. Given the high crimes levied against Gooch, Judge Cathleen Brown-Nichols denied the airmans bail, relying on the cell phone data, the airmans testimony and that he asked a friend to hold his gun for him.

If the state indicates they will not seek the death penalty, then the defendant would become bail eligible," Nichols said.

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The Union Food Ministry on Friday said enough foodgrains stock has been positioned in 2,122 warehouses across the country for free distribution to 8 crore migrants.

As part of the Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package, the government on Thursday announced free 5 kg rice or wheat per person and 1 kg chana per family to 8 crore migrants who neither do not have a ration card. About Rs 3,500 crore will be spent for this intervention by the central government.

"As and when the state governments/UTs requisition foodgrains under the scheme, FCI will deliver the required quantities immediately for further distribution to the beneficiaries," the ministry said in a statement.

State-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) has made all arrangements to deliver foodgrains under this programme and has positioned sufficient stocks in every state and union territory, it said.

For meeting the requirements in any part of the country, stocks have been positioned in 2,122 warehouses spread across the length and breadth of the country, including islands of Andaman and Lakshadweep, the ministry said.

Foodgrain stocks in consuming states/UTs are being regularly replenished through movement of stocks from producing areas by rail, road and sea routes, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kinder Morgan

Houston pipeline operator Kinder Morgan has temporarily shut down three production units at the company's Elba Island LNG export terminal after a piece of equipment caught fire.

Kinder Morgan confirmed that a fire erupted earlier this week on a mixed refrigerant compressor for a production unit known as Train 2 at the Savannah, Georgia facility. Crews were able to put out the fire using firefighting equipment on site, the company reported.
I was writing recently to my dear colleague, R. David Lankes, Assistant Dean at the University of South Carolina School of Information, when a line from The Godfather III came to mind: Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in.

I retired as director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library last August, but as the pandemic continues I find myself increasingly drawn back to the library world. And, like the e-book issues of last year, I seem to force the topic into every phone call and Zoom conversation with friends.

No question, this is a difficult time. I cant escape feeling profound grief over the mounting number of lives lost and families impacted. I worry for those working on the front lines. I bristle at the social and racial disparity we see exposed in the news. And, like everyone else, I am anxious about how much longer we will have to shelter at home, and the lasting impact this crisis will have on the economy, and the future of art, culture, and, of course, libraries.

Through all of it, David Lankes has been a lifeline for me. With an optimism rooted in realism, he has become my library hero.

I have known David for over thirty years. In the fall of 1986 I was an adjunct faculty member at the Syracuse University iSchool. I was teaching an ambitious class on library management, and that year and for years to come I shared an office with a group of graduate students who would go on to become thought leaders in the professionDavid, John Bertot, Joe Janes, and Howard Rosenbaum.

It was a heady time at the iSchool. The Internet was new to libraries, and my students challenged my knowledge every week in our discussion sessions. I always credit SU for being early to Pine Mail and distance learning, and for jumpstarting my Internet experience. And in 1986, I had much to learn. John, Joe, David, Howard and their SU professors, including Mike Eisenberg, Liz Liddy and Chuck McClure, were visionary in recognizing the Internets importance to the future of libraries.

But I don't think anyone couldve envisioned the particular future now facing libraries.

Recently, David sponsored a series of online support sessions for librarians through the University of South Carolina, and I organized a session on advocacy after the pandemic with my former CCPL colleague Hallie Rich and consultant Galen Schuerlein, from Ohio-based Roetzel Consulting. Given the state of affairs our conversation easily could have devolved into a woe is us session. But David kept us laser focused on what is neededand what is right. He encouraged us to lean on our library values and to explore how those values can yield opportunities to help our communities in new ways in these unprecedented times.

As librarians begin to face this murky, still-evolving new normal, we need positive visions like Davids. So Im delighted that David has agreed to take part in what promises to be a lively online discussion to open BookExpos virtual conference, at 10:00 a.m. on May 26. Organized by Publishers Weekly, Ill be leading a conversation about how the Covid-19 crisis is impacting public libraries with David; King County executive director Lisa Rosenblum; San Antonio Public Library director and PLA president Ramiro Salazar; and Euclid Public Library director Kacie Armstrong. More details will come soon. The event is free to all, and I hope youll mark your calendars and join us online.

In response to my talking and writing about libraries, I get to hear a variety of opinions about the future of libraries in the wake of this pandemic. Some of my friends in Ohio tell me that Americans have short memories and that they expect library users will be back in their buildings as soon as possible. In fact, some Americans are at the library right nowsitting in the library parking lot using the librarys WiFi to connect to schools, social services, and even their friends. Others, including me, question whether those of us Zooming, and streaming, and downloading e-books in the comfort of our homes will rush back to mingle among strangers at the library any time soon.

But one impact of the crisis is clear: the Internet has become even more central to our lives. And even I find myself these days thinking more about content first, than things like privacy or security. I want my e-books and streaming media, my Zoom pilates and happy hours. I connect with friends via Instagram and Facebook. I FaceTime with my new grandson. And, constantly reminded by the CDC and Governor Andrew Cuomo that I am old, I shop more online, steering clear of stores even during so-called senior hours. It pains me to admit that Ive been using Amazon nearly every week to get groceries, as well as new books and toys for my grandson.

 As the stay-at-home orders begin to expire, no one really knows what the future holds. But all the energy in the library world cannot be about translating library programs to the web, building digital collections, and ensuring adequate book sterilization to kill the virus. 

The technology is powerful. And no question, there are already some great minds out there working on harnessing technology to create the next big thing for libraries. In my state of retirement, I recognize that I will not be the mother of invention. But after two months of lockdown, I know this much: I do not want to live in an all-digital world.

Dont get me wrongI am delighted to see library e-books and digital audio get an overdue bump in circulation. But I still want to be around real people. And I still want physical books. Print books create lifelong memories. I love the brilliant covers of picture books, and the dog-eared pages of beloved titles read over and over. Theres nothing like the touch and smell of a newly minted book, especially the savored, signed copy scored when a favorite author comes to speak at the library. I was especially privileged as the Executive Director of Cuyahoga County Public Library to spend more than a minute with and to get signed copies from some of my favorite writers Jerry Pinkney, Nikki Giovanni, Amor Towles, and many, many others.

As the lockdown drags on, I can't help but think of how this love and appreciation for books and authors is nurtured by the public library experience. It begins with the borrowing of, say, Mr. Gumpys Outing by John Burningham by your pre-reader. Then youre borrowing two copies of M.E. Kerrs Me, Me, Me, Me, Me to read with your tweenage daughter. And then, one day, youre standing in line thinking about what youre going to say to Judy Blume, or Billy Collins, or Colson Whitehead.

Now, I realize that when you are sitting in the back of the room at an author event you may as well be watching it on a screen. But in my decades of hosting live author events at the library, Ive seen close up how important these moments of connection can be to a reader. The talks themselves are often amazing. The live, uncensored questions range from good, to groan-worthy. But the moments before the book signing are perfectstanding in line, starstruck, shoulder-to-shoulder with other readers, is a treasured, intimate experience. And I have seen this in people of all ageschildren, with Dav Pilkey and R.L. Stine, teens with Rainbow Rowell and Kate DeCamillo. It is moments like these that I fear may be lost as we begin to rethink libraries and library programming amid this pandemic.

As the stay-at-home orders begin to expire, no one really knows what the future holds. There is and will surely be a lot more guidance to come for libraries on the details of reopening safely. But all the energy in the library world cannot be about translating library programs to the web, building digital collections, and ensuring adequate book sterilization to kill the virus. And as we contemplate reopening our libraries and as we begin the important conversation about what lies ahead for libraries in the age of Covid-19, I hope that we'll try to carry forward the best of what our libraries have come to offer.

It's not like libraries are strangers to change. Every once in a while, a patron will express nostalgia for the quiet, demure libraries of years past. But many, many more patrons today appreciate how libraries successfully transformed in the digital age. Library users today enjoy the lively activity all around them in the library, the laughter of children, the vibrant programming and making that has become so popular, and the companionable co-working at computers.

In the wake of Covid-19, another critical transformation now looms for public libraries. And the American public is counting on us. They are putting their faith and trust in librarians to steer the public library through this fraught new era. They need us to get this right. Lets not let them down.

PW columnist Sari Feldman is the former executive director of the Cuyahoga County Public Library in Cleveland, Ohio, and a former president of both the Public Library Association (20092010) and the American Library Association (20152016).
Mondays Australian Story profiles two TV favourites: John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver aka Rampaging Roy Slaven and HG Nelson.

The episode includes interviews with Julia Zemiro (who introduces), Charlie Pickering, Wendy Harmer, Glenn Lazarus and Paul Sironen.

When John Doyle and Greig Pickhaver met on the set of a childrens television series 35 years ago, it was the beginning of one of Australias most enduring comedy partnerships. Rampaging Roy Slaven and HG Nelson began by presenting short segments on radio station Triple J but soon had their own weekly show, This Sporting Life, which ran for 22 years.

Early in their career, Roy and HG branched into television, first at the ABC and then most famously at Channel Seven, where their inimitable coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympics brought them global attention.

Over the years Roy and HG have worked in various mediums at various networks but early this year they returned to ABC radio where it all began. Within weeks Covid-19 laid waste to the sporting landscape but this was just grist to the mill for an act that has never been about sporting results and fixtures.

Doyle and Pickhaver have always been reluctant to examine the chemistry that fuels their partnership, preferring to let their alter-egos do the talking for them. But in an intimate and revealing Australian Story, they drop the masks, revealing how they were shaped by their childhoods, how their act works and why they rarely socialise with one another.

Producer: Greg Hassall

8pm Monday on ABC.
Turkeys daily COVID-19 death toll rises by 55 with 1,635 new confirmed cases

Turkeys daily COVID-19 death toll rose by 55, bringing the total to 4,007, Health Minister Fahrettin Koca said on Thursday.

Relaying the countrys latest statistics on coronavirus, Koca said 2,315 new cases were identified in the latest batch of tests, which brought the total number of confirmed cases to 144,749.

Turkey carried out 34,821 tests in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number to 1,508,824.

The number of people recovered from COVID-19 rose to 104,030 with 2,315 patients recovering in the past 24 hours. 963 patients remained in intensive care units.





Sources: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/turkeys-daily-covid-19-death-toll-rises-by-55-with-1635-new-confirmed-cases/news

https://covid19.saglik.gov.tr/

Queues at Turkish malls incredible, coronavirus board member says, urging people to stay home

We have seen so far that the virus has infected way less than it could have when people stayed home. There should be no reason to flock to the malls unless there is a valid reason. The queues are incredible. If we totally need to buy something from the mall, we should only go to that store and immediately leave the mall afterward.  Coronavirus Science Board member, professor Ahmet Demircan

Read more here: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/queues-at-turkish-malls-incredible-coronavirus-board-member-says-urging-people-to-stay-home/news

Normalisation arrangements in the hospitality Industry

A written statement released this morning by chairman of Fethiye Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Osman Cral, sheds a little more light on the normalisation plan for the regions hospitality industry over the coming weeks.

At this stage, its important to stress its a draft and could be subject to change, particularly if COVID-19 infection rates increase. However, in essence, the statement indicates the following:

* Before being given permission to open, hospitality venues will be obliged to apply for a certificate from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism to prove high-level health and hygiene conditions. These will need to be met by airlines, airports and other means of transportation as well as businesses offering food and drink. .

* Tourism business can obtain certificates only after an audit, which will be be carried out by an institution or organization approved by the Ministry, and in cooperation with an approved national or international hygiene and cleaning material supplier.

* Businesses must follow a strict regime approved by the Ministry to ensure continuity and to limit the risk of any further spread of COVID-19. The process includes directions on capacity and social distancing in public areas.

* Businesses must be in a position to distribute PPE such as masks and gloves to all their guests. In turn, guests will be asked for information about any chronic health conditions or if they are aware they are carrying COVID-19.

* Beach and pool towels will also be offered to guests in closed bags or by staff.

* Units such as play rooms and childrens clubs will remain closed.

* Dining tables in cafes and restaurants must be a minimum of 1.5 metres apart with a minimum of 60 centimeters between each chair.

* Serving staff will take care to adhere to social distancing rules and avoid contact during service.

* Standing spaces will be marked out in lifts which will need to contain written instructions advising guests on how to adhere to social distancing rules

* Contactless payment will be received from the customer as much as possible.

* Implementation of the measures is mandatory and inspections will be made by the relevant administration.

Detailed information about the certification program can be found at www.tga.gov.tr.

Source: https://gercekfethiye.com/cirali-konaklama-sektorundeki-duzenlemelere-aciklik-getirdi/27452/

Face masks made mandatory in 10 more cities

Turkey has made it mandatory for people to wear protective face masks in 10 provinces as the country has rolled out the first phase of the normalization program.

The residents of Adyaman, Afyonkarahisar, Aydn, Balkesir, Bartn, Denizli, Duzce, Kastamonu, Mugla and Usak are now required to wear face masks when they go out.

The decision regarding mandatory face masks were recommended by the provincial hygiene boards in the respective provinces.

Read more here: https://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/wearing-face-masks-made-mandatory-in-10-cities-154755

All about masks

Today seemed like a good time to give you an update on where you can get yours and a reminder of how to safely dispose of them. Click on the link below to read our article.

All about masks

Turkey plans to resume communal prayer at mosques June 12

The head of Turkeys top religious body Diyanet announced Friday that plans are in place to reopen mosques for communal prayers on June 12, following a three-month hiatus announced due to the coronavirus outbreak.

While prioritizing our health, I hope we will be able to return to our mosques as soon as possible, Diyanet head Ali Erbas said on a TV program.

However, he added that it did not appear to be possible for now to allow for Eid prayers, a special congregational prayer on the morning of the Eid al-Fitr, urging citizens to limit their visits to relatives over the holiday.

Read more here: https://www.dailysabah.com/turkey/turkey-plans-to-resume-communal-prayer-at-mosques-june-12/news

Global statistics

There are now 4,569,106 confirmed cases of COVID-19 globally, of which 1,724,911 have recovered. The number of fatalities stands at 304,798.

Source: Worldometer.

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Todays featured image: Boating on Koycegiz Lake by Lyn Ward
The City of Laredo and Webb County have confirmed 18 new cases of the novel coronavirus today in their daily update. The added cases bring the city's total number of positives to 469.

The mark is the single-highest confirmation of cases in a single day since May 2, when 17 cases were reported. From May 3 to 14, no more than 10 positive cases were reported in single day.

Sixteen people are currently hospitalized in Laredo hospitals with COVID-19. Further information was not available due to the city's policy of not releasing identifying information on coronavirus patients.

Dr. Hector Gonzalez attributed the higher number of positives reported today due to the higher number of citizens being tested in Laredo.

Further complicating matters is the difference in return rate of certain tests. Dr. Gonzalez stated that some of the positives included in today's count are past 14 days of symptoms.

This issue is not due to a supply of tests, but rather a question of testing capacities. Only a certain number of tests can be run at a time, Dr. Gonzalez said.

He also issued a response on the tests conducted by the Texas State Guard. Of the almost 400 tests that have been conducted by the state guard, results for only 111 tests have returned, according to Dr. Gonzalez.

New CDC guidelines are currently being issued to Laredo hospitals and healthcare workers on how they should handle care of patients infected with COVID-19.

Along with the new guidelines, city health authority Dr. Victor Trevino issued an update on the evolution of the virus, including a respiratory illness that is affecting children and could be related to coronavirus called Multisystem Inflamatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C).

No Laredo children are currently suspected of having the syndrome. According to the health department, 25 children ranging from 1 month to 18 years of age are COVID-19 positive in Laredo and are being checked regularly of developing symptoms related to the disease.

Fire Chief Steve Landin said the number of coronavirus infections seem to be stabilizing in Laredo. According to Landin, when COVID-19 first reached the Gateway City, EMS would regularly respond to 4 or more coronavirus-related calls in a single day. Recently, they have had to only respond to one to zero of these calls daily.

However, he made sure to stress though the situation appears to have stabilized, that the battle is not over.

"Just because the situation stabilizes, that doesn't mean we won't have spikes," Landin said. "It doesn't mean it's time to back away."

Landin recently announced his retirement, which will become effective at 5 p.m. Friday. He came to the decision after consulting with Laredo's medical professionals, and deciding that the situation has stabilized and the city would be in good hands without him.

According to the chief, he had originally planned to retire on April 2nd, which marked his 30-year anniversary of working with the Laredo Fire Department. However, with the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic, his plans had to change.

"I was not going to run and leave my city during a crisis." Landin said.

Assistant Fire Chief Ramiro Elizondo will serve as the interim Fire Chief and Emergency Management Coordinator. He was recommended for the role by Landin.

In his statement, Landin also made a recommendation to city officials separate the roles he served due to the size of the city. According to Landin, this is a recommendation he has made multiple times in the past.

As of noon Friday, a total of 4,014 persons have been tested for the novel coronavirus. 2,796 of those tests have returned negative, with 749 persons still awaiting on results.

269 people have passed their mandatory quarantine and are considered recovered by the city. They have been cleared by city health officials to return to the public. The number of COVID-related deaths remains at 17.
A renewed delegation of Ukraine took part in a meeting of the Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas via video conferencing, the presidents press service has reported.

"The Trilateral Contact Group (TCG) held a regular meeting via video conferencing. Ukraine was represented at the meeting by a renewed delegation formed by a decree of President Volodymyr Zelensky," the report says.

The first thing Ukraine emphasized in the format of the Trilateral Contact Group, which includes Ukraine, Russia and the OSCE, is the importance of fulfilling the agreements reached by the "Normandy Four" leaders during the summit in Paris. Particular emphasis was placed on the need to comply with security requirements, in particular the observance of a sustainable ceasefire regime.

In this regard, the Ukrainian party initiated an extraordinary meeting of the specialized group, as security issues are among the key ones.

As part of the security group's work, Ukraine supported the OSCE SMM and once again insisted on unconditional and unimpeded access of observers to the whole territory of Ukraine within internationally recognized borders, in particular to the temporarily occupied territories.

Ukraine, despite the quarantine measures, for its part fully supports the implementation of the mandate of the OSCE SMM and the ICRC, fully facilitates this, as well as ensures the unconditional implementation of their mandate.

The OSCE SMM, inter alia, noted a significant progress in implementing the updated demining plan, including the humanitarian one.

The humanitarian group continued to work on the formation of lists for the next stage of mutual release of detainees and lists of missing persons. The Ukrainian party insisted on the mutual release of detainees in the "all for all" format defined in the framework of the Normandy meeting on December 9, 2019. In addition, Ukraine insisted on providing access for the ICRC to detainees in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine. Ukraine called for compliance with the European Convention for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1987) and the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (1984).

The parties emphasized once again the need to open new checkpoints on the line of demarcation, taking into account primarily humanitarian criteria, and noted that the checkpoint in Zolote was equipped and ready to start operating at any time.

During the work of the political group, the Ukrainian party stressed that elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas may be held in accordance with the Constitution and legislation of Ukraine, and on the basis of the OSCE Copenhagen criteria, in particular the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights and protection of minority rights, only after Ukraine gains border control.

The Ukrainian party once again ruled out the possibility of enshrining the special status of ORDLO in the Constitution of Ukraine.

The representatives of Ukraine in the economic group continued to discuss the resumption of taxation and payments system in some districts of Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Ukraine within the Ukrainian legal framework.

In the context of discussing the TCGs work schedule, Ukraine once again stressed its willingness to work in a 24/7 format.

The Ukrainian party also noted the constructive nature of the work of the economic group, in which Ukraine and Russia were represented at the level of deputy economy ministers.

ish
The United States has blamed Islamic State extremists for two deadly attacks this week, but Afghan officials say they see it differently, saying the Taliban is responsible.

The special U.S. representative to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Twitter that the United States believes that the Islamic States Afghan affiliate carried out the "horrific attacks on a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar Province.

No group has claimed responsibility for the hospital attack, which killed 24 people, including two babies, and the Taliban has denied it was behind the incident.

Though he did not mention Khalilzad by name, Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh said some people were naive for accepting Taliban lies and blaming the "fictional" Islamic State faction in Afghanistan for the attack.

Neither the Taliban hands nor their stained consciousness can be washed of the blood of women, babies & other innocent in the latest senseless carnage, Saleh, a former intelligence chief, said on Twitter.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military to go on the offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups following the two attacks on May 12 that killed at least 56 people. He accused all militant groups of ignoring repeated calls to reduce violence.

Khalilzad said the Islamic State opposes peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban and seeks to encourage sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria.

Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity, Khalilzad said.

It was unclear whether the U.S. position would help revive peace efforts or alter Ghanis calculation to start an offensive.

The Taliban, which has denied involvement in either attack, reacted to Ghani's statement on May 13 by saying it was "fully prepared" to repel any military offensive.

In the first attack, three gunmen stormed a maternity hospital in Kabuls mostly Shi'ite neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi before security forces killed them. At least 24 people, including babies, women, and nurses, were killed.

Separately, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral for a police commander in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing at least 32 people. The Islamic State claimed credit for the attack.

No group claimed credit for the attack on the maternity hospital, but the Shiite neighborhood where it is located has been frequently targeted by Islamic State militants.

The Taliban signed a landmark deal with the United States in February meant to pave the way for direct talks between the militant group and the Western-backed government in Kabul after more than 18 years of war.

But the Taliban has ramped up attacks in recent weeks despite a pledge to reduce violence, a tactic that may be employed to strengthen its negotiating position and appease some commanders.

Meanwhile, Islamic State militants also continue to conduct deadly attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians.

The core peace plan is for U.S. and foreign troops to withdraw from Afghanistan following an intra-Afghan deal in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban not to allow the country to become a haven for transnational terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda aiming to strike abroad.
A defence attorney hired by one of two white men in Georgia accused of pursuing and killing a black man is cautioning against a "rush to judgment" in a case that has drawn international attention and an outcry over its handling.

Gregory and Travis McMichael, a father and son, are charged with aggravated assault and felony murder in the February 23 death of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery.

The case drew national attention and outrage after a video of Mr Arbery's final moments surfaced online last week.

The Georgia Bureau of Investigation (GBI) was called in to take over the seemingly stalled investigation and the McMichaels were arrested less than 48 hours later.

Laura and Frank Hogue, a husband and wife criminal defence team based in Macon, Georgia, said they have been hired to represent 64-year-old Gregory McMichael.

"So often the public accepts a narrative driven by an incomplete set of facts, one that vilifies a good person, based on a rush to judgment, which has happened in this case," Ms Hogue said in a statement released yesterday.

The Hogues said more of the truth will be revealed at a preliminary hearing that they plan to schedule soon.

Travis McMichael (34) has hired attorney Bob Rubin from Decatur, an Atlanta suburb.

The more than two months that passed before the McMichaels were arrested and the fact that it didn't happen until after the video of the shooting became public caused many to draw parallels to other shootings of black men by white men in recent years.

"While the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a tragedy, causing deep grief to his family - a tragedy that at first appears to many to fit into a terrible pattern in American life - this case does not fit that pattern. The full story, to be revealed in time, will tell the truth about this case," Frank Hogue said.

According to an incident report by Glynn County police, Gregory McMichael said he and his son armed themselves and chased Mr Arbery in a pickup truck after seeing him run down their street.

Gregory McMichael told police he suspected Mr Arbery was a burglar, and said he attacked Travis McMichael before he was shot in a struggle over the gun.

Separately, lawyers for Mr Arbery's family said the family is interested in talking to an anonymous person who they say left a poignant note at the site of Mr Arbery's death.

"They feel great sympathy for the person who wrote that note and would like to speak with them to determine what they knew or what they saw," the attorneys wrote.

"If that person would like to confidentially come forward and communicate with the family, they can contact the legal team or reach out directly to Mr Arbery's family."

Mr Arbery's mother said she has confidence in the investigation now that the GBI has taken it over from local police and the Cobb County district attorney has been called in as an independent prosecutor to handle it.

She said she would like prosecutors to seek the death penalty.
NEW YORK, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Conversion Capital, an early-stage venture capital firm, announced that former Blend CTO and Co-founder Eugene Marinelli has joined the firm as its newest partner. Marinelli will provide counsel and invest in the next generation of software, cloud and data startups that are tackling the biggest challenges in the post-COVID-19 era, with a focus on building software infrastructure for highly regulated industries such as government, healthcare and financial services.

Conversion Capital is also launching Conversion Labs, which will bring together entrepreneurs and engineers to develop and scale software solutions for the most pressing challenges reshaping society during and after the pandemic. Former Sun Microsystems CEO and Co-founder Scott McNealy is a key advisor on the initiative.

"Conversion Capital has been instrumental to Blend's success and has a track record of being the first to fund and build some of the most exciting startups in the past decade, from Improbable to Booster Fuels," Marinelli said. "COVID-19 has accelerated technology adoption by a decade in the past two months, catalyzing a transition to a new economy. Conversion Capital is uniquely positioned to lead us into this new era with investments in startups that will shape the post-COVID-19 recovery across finance, healthcare and government."

Along with McNealy, Marinelli will lead Conversion Labs to help entrepreneurs and engineers found and build companies to transition the world to a post-pandemic economy. Conversion Labs is not an incubator; instead it will bring together a team of engineers, designers, and growth experts who will partner with public and private counterparts and a network of industry advisors to build solutions that have long-term positive impacts.

"Eugene's experience at Palantir and Blend makes him uniquely positioned to help find and support other early-stage software startups that are reinventing legacy industries and help them achieve breakout scale," said Conversion Capital Managing Partner Christian Lawless. "Eugene is incredible at scaling engineering teams and will be a vital force multiplier for our new initiative to tackle some of society's biggest challenges."



Backed by powerful business leaders including CAA Founder Michael Ovitz, Blackrock Chief Investment Officer Rick Rieder and former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers Glenn Hubbard, Conversion Capital focuses on software, data, and cloud companies in regulated industries like financial services, government and healthcare. Conversion Capital has been an early investor in many high-profile unicorn companies including Blend, Improbable, Figure, and Dataminr, as well as emerging startups like Booster Fuels, Qualia, AiLens, Ramp and Wisetack.

"Seismic change across the global economy is inevitable  the mainframe, hardware and legacy costs to traditional companies could be crippling without innovation to newer more effective technologies with lower, more variable costs," said Scott McNealy, Founder and CEO of Sun Microsystems. "Conversion Capital is one of only a handful of funds positioned at the forefront of this transition."

About Conversion Capital

Founded in 2012, Conversion Capital is a leading early-stage venture capital fund focused on software, data, and cloud infrastructure companies. As the seed investor to numerous unicorns, the firm specializes in guiding entrepreneurs through early growth channels, with a focus on the digital transformation of legacy industries like financial services, government, and healthcare. Conversion Capital has raised two early-stage funds, making more than 40 early-stage investments since 2012, and is currently raising a third fund. Learn more at conversioncapital.com.

SOURCE Conversion Capital
The civilian survived. Ukrainian troops provided her with medical assistance; she's at the hospital

A civilian woman was injured upon stepping on a landmine in Donbas combat area, as she was trying to cross the disengagement line, bypassing the checkpoint. Yuriy Butusov, the reporter wrote this on Facebook.

"A wounded woman, citizen of Ukraine approached the positions of Ukrainian troops in the area of Novotroitske (Donetsk region, - 112 International). She wanted to walk the path near the closest checkpoint, but she stepped on a landmine while crossing the frontline", reads the post.

The journalist assumed that the triggered device was a Russian-made anti-personnel mine that the Russian mercenaries plant along the disengagement line.

'The woman's identity and the circumstances of her appearance on our positions are established (...) It was not clear why she came there, so she was blindfolded. Ukrainian warriors provided medical assistamce; they did not detain her, and took her to a hospital", Butusov concluded.

The planting of anti-personnel mines during military actions is banned by an international convention.
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Pharmaceuticals company Cipla is expected to report earnings on May 15. The company may report a decline on all parameters, year-on-year, due to the high base effect.

The company had benefitted from the launch of generic drug Senipar in the US in Q4FY19.

According to brokerage houses, profit and revenue are expected to fall in the range of 1-4 percent compared to the same quarter last year as US business may decline, though India business could show double-digit growth YoY.

"We expect domestic formulations business to grow 12 percent YoY (down 5 percent QoQ). We expect the US to decline $7 million to $126 million in the quarter, given erosion in key products. We expect South Africa to decline 3 percent YoY, and expect global access to decline 27 percent YoY, European Union to grow at 7 percent and Rest of World to grow at 5 percent," said Kotak Institutional Equities which sees profit declining 4 percent and revenue 3 percent YoY.

At operating level, there could be a big fall on a year-on-year basis, but the sequential decline may be much less compared to YoY.

Kotak expects EBITDA to fall 26 percent YoY (down 6 percent QoQ) and margin to contract 515 basis points YoY (down 67 bps QoQ), with R&D likely at 7.5 percent of sales.

According to Narnolia Financial Services, EBITDA could decline 18 percent YoY and margin may contract 360 basis points YoY.

Find All Earnings Related News Here

"The medium term triggers looks quite attractive with the approval of Albuterol in place and its expected launch in FY21 and gAdvair filings by early 2020 and launch by FY22," Narnolia said.
Marine species are projected to decline in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans yet increase in Arctic waters  this, according to climate change scenarios created by researchers using state-of-the-art modelling.



A team of researchers led out of Dalhousie combined results from multiple models that projected the amount of marine animal life  including everything from tiny zooplankton to whales  under four different climate change scenarios.



Those scenarios, envisioning what Canadian ecosystems may look like over the coming century, were based on four different levels of greenhouse gas emissions often used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. This unique approach provides a more complete understanding of climate-driven changes in Canadas oceans compared to any single model.



The researchers, whose findings were published in the journal FACETS in March, found substantial differences in the direction and magnitude of the predicted changes under four emissions levels.



Our results suggest that there will be strong regional differences in the consequences of climate change for Canadian ocean ecosystems and the communities that depend upon them, says lead author Andrea Bryndum-Buchholz, a PhD candidate in the Department of Biology (pictured). This is a first step towards identifying and understanding what these differences may be.



Marine life on the move under climate change



The study suggests that the declines in biomass  or animal life  could decrease by up to 40 per cent in the Atlantic region by the year 2100 under a business-as-usual scenario. But that decline is just 10 per cent in the same region with the introduction of robust measures to combat emissions.

On the Pacific coast, the biomass decline is about 20 per cent if little is done to control emissions.



The research provides critical insight into how marine ecosystems will be affected by the changing environment.



Our study is the first model ensemble approach to evaluate climate change impacts on marine life across Canadas oceans, and it is part of an international effort covering the global ocean, says co-author Villy Christensen, a professor at the University of British Columbia.



We have to mitigate climate change if there is to be seafood for future generations.



Commercial fisheries could suffer



Without such mitigation measures, the projected changes will likely have significant consequences for commercial fisheries, as well as marine management and conservation in Canada.



It could mean that as waters warm and ocean acidification worsens, various species could shift their habitats. That has already been seen in Maine, where lobsters have been migrating north possibly due to increasing water temperatures.



Its becoming a little too hot already, so theyre moving further north and some people are expecting they could move further and further, leading to reduced lobster catches in some regions in Atlantic Canada, says Bryndum-Buchholz.



The paper, Differing marine animal biomass shifts under 21st century climate change between Canadas three oceans, is an important case study for climate change impacts and serves as a call to managers to consider those impacts in ocean governance.



It is critical to understand when and where changes in the marine environment will occur, especially to future-proof current conservation and management actions, says co-author and Dalhousie Associate Professor Derek Tittensor.



At a time of increasing public and political awareness about climate change in Canada, our projections underpin and inform long-term planning and policy development for marine ecosystems.


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New Delhi: The death toll due to Covid -19 rose to 2,649 and the number of cases climbed to 81,970 on Friday, registering an increase of 100 deaths and 3,967 cases in the last 24 hours.

CoronavirusThe number of active cases stood at 51,401 while 27,919 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

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"Thus, around 34.06 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

Of the 100 deaths reported since Thursday morning, 44 were in Maharashtra, 20 in Gujarat, 9 in Delhi, 8 in West Bengal, five each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, four in Rajasthan, two each in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and one in Andhra Pradesh.

Of the 2,649 fatalities, Maharashtra tops tally with 1,019 deaths, Gujarat comes second with 586 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 237, West Bengal at 215, Rajasthan at 125, Delhi at 115, Uttar Pradesh at 88,Tamil Nadu at 66 and Andhra Pradesh at 48.

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Coronavirus

The death toll reached 35 in Karnataka, 34 Telangana and 32 in Punjab.

Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir have reported 11 fatalities each due to the disease while Bihar has registered seven and Kerala has reported four deaths.

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Jharkhand, Chandigarh and Odisha have recorded three Covid -19 fatalities each.

The data updated this morning showed the highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 27,524, followed by Tamil Nadu at 9,674, Gujarat at 9,591, Delhi at 8,470 Rajasthan at 4,534, Madhya Pradesh at 4,426 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,902.

Coronavirus

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The number of Covid -19 cases has gone up to 2,377 in West Bengal, 2,205 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,935 in Punjab.

It has risen to 1,414 in Telangana, 994 in Bihar, 987 in Karnataka, 983 in Jammu and Kashmir and 818 in Haryana.

A total of 197 people have been infected with the virus in Jharkhand and 191 in Chandigarh.

Goa reported 14 Covid -19 cases while Meghalaya and Puducherry registered 13 cases each.
Wall Street expects a year-over-year decline in earnings on higher revenues when New York Mortgage Trust (NYMT) reports results for the quarter ended March 2020. While this widely-known consensus outlook is important in gauging the company's earnings picture, a powerful factor that could impact its near-term stock price is how the actual results compare to these estimates.

The stock might move higher if these key numbers top expectations in the upcoming earnings report, which is expected to be released on May 21. On the other hand, if they miss, the stock may move lower.

While the sustainability of the immediate price change and future earnings expectations will mostly depend on management's discussion of business conditions on the earnings call, it's worth handicapping the probability of a positive EPS surprise.

Zacks Consensus Estimate

This real estate investment trust is expected to post quarterly loss of $0.98 per share in its upcoming report, which represents a year-over-year change of -566.7%.

Revenues are expected to be $46.50 million, up 77.5% from the year-ago quarter.

Estimate Revisions Trend

The consensus EPS estimate for the quarter has remained unchanged over the last 30 days. This is essentially a reflection of how the covering analysts have collectively reassessed their initial estimates over this period.

Investors should keep in mind that an aggregate change may not always reflect the direction of estimate revisions by each of the covering analysts.

Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

Earnings Whisper

Estimate revisions ahead of a company's earnings release offer clues to the business conditions for the period whose results are coming out. Our proprietary surprise prediction model -- the Zacks Earnings ESP (Expected Surprise Prediction) -- has this insight at its core.

The Zacks Earnings ESP compares the Most Accurate Estimate to the Zacks Consensus Estimate for the quarter; the Most Accurate Estimate is a more recent version of the Zacks Consensus EPS estimate. The idea here is that analysts revising their estimates right before an earnings release have the latest information, which could potentially be more accurate than what they and others contributing to the consensus had predicted earlier.

Story continues

Thus, a positive or negative Earnings ESP reading theoretically indicates the likely deviation of the actual earnings from the consensus estimate. However, the model's predictive power is significant for positive ESP readings only.

A positive Earnings ESP is a strong predictor of an earnings beat, particularly when combined with a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy), 2 (Buy) or 3 (Hold). Our research shows that stocks with this combination produce a positive surprise nearly 70% of the time, and a solid Zacks Rank actually increases the predictive power of Earnings ESP.

Please note that a negative Earnings ESP reading is not indicative of an earnings miss. Our research shows that it is difficult to predict an earnings beat with any degree of confidence for stocks with negative Earnings ESP readings and/or Zacks Rank of 4 (Sell) or 5 (Strong Sell).

How Have the Numbers Shaped Up for New York Mortgage Trust?

For New York Mortgage Trust, the Most Accurate Estimate is lower than the Zacks Consensus Estimate, suggesting that analysts have recently become bearish on the company's earnings prospects. This has resulted in an Earnings ESP of -117.35%.

On the other hand, the stock currently carries a Zacks Rank of #3.

So, this combination makes it difficult to conclusively predict that New York Mortgage Trust will beat the consensus EPS estimate.

Does Earnings Surprise History Hold Any Clue?

Analysts often consider to what extent a company has been able to match consensus estimates in the past while calculating their estimates for its future earnings. So, it's worth taking a look at the surprise history for gauging its influence on the upcoming number.

For the last reported quarter, it was expected that New York Mortgage Trust would post earnings of $0.19 per share when it actually produced earnings of $0.20, delivering a surprise of +5.26%.

Over the last four quarters, the company has beaten consensus EPS estimates two times.

Bottom Line

An earnings beat or miss may not be the sole basis for a stock moving higher or lower. Many stocks end up losing ground despite an earnings beat due to other factors that disappoint investors. Similarly, unforeseen catalysts help a number of stocks gain despite an earnings miss.

That said, betting on stocks that are expected to beat earnings expectations does increase the odds of success. This is why it's worth checking a company's Earnings ESP and Zacks Rank ahead of its quarterly release. Make sure to utilize our Earnings ESP Filter to uncover the best stocks to buy or sell before they've reported.

New York Mortgage Trust doesn't appear a compelling earnings-beat candidate. However, investors should pay attention to other factors too for betting on this stock or staying away from it ahead of its earnings release.



Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report



New York Mortgage Trust, Inc. (NYMT) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.



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New Delhi, May 15 : For 60-year-old Fatima (name changed) who is a kidney patient, her nightmare of contracting the highly contagious novel coronavirus disease turned came true recently.

A resident of Safdarjung enclave she told IANS, "two to three visits to the hospital for a four hour long sessions per dialysis were already quite painful and frustrating, the pandemic situation had instilled a sense of fear in me that I might contract the virus, and that really happened." Not only did she suffer but the disease was also passed on to four of her family members. The coronavirus outbreak has virtually halted the entire world including India and the lockdown announced in the nation to control the rising number of patients has thrown unique challenges for the health systems, particularly Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients who are under haemodialysis.

The Indian Council for Medical Research (ICMR) has also clarified that Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) patients on dialysis are vulnerable to the deadly virus because of their existing co-morbidities and repeated unavoidable exposure to hospital environment and immunosuppressed state. This is where home-based dialysis therapy like Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) is coming to people's rescue.

Speaking to IANS, Dr A.K. Bhalla, Co-Chairperson, Department of Nephrology of Sir Ganga Ram Hospital said, "Under the current pandemic situation, patients suffering from Chronic Kidney Disease are more vulnerable to COVID-19 due to low immunity. Haemodialysis patients have to travel to hospitals at least 2-3 times a week to get their dialysis, exposing themselves to various infections in a healthcare setting.

"As a solution to the current situation, Peritoneal Dialysis (PD) offers dialysis which can be done at home by the patient. There are multiple benefits of PD as a therapy but most notably, modern PD enables patients to maintain their lifestyle and independence while offering potentially better clinical outcomes at a substantially minimal cost." According to Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Program (PMNDP), India has over two million dialysis patients who routinely drive to a dialysis centres especially for haemodialysis, two-three times a week as missing any session could be life-threatening for the patients. This poses a huge challenge in the current nationwide lockdown situation in response to COVID-19 pandemic.

While the Indian government has made significant advancement by introducing Peritoneal dialysis under Pradhan Mantri National Dialysis Programme (PMNDP) in 2019; there is a dire need of implementing PD in all the states to meet the growing needs of Chronic Kidney Disease patients during COVID-19 who are particularly vulnerable to infection and may exhibit greater variations in clinical symptoms and infectivity.

Dr Sunil Prakash, Senior Director and HOD, Nephrology Department, BLK Super Speciality Hospital, said, "COVID-19 has posed a tremendous challenge in front of the entire nation, especially to the kidney patients. These patients are required to travel to hospitals and clinics for haemodialysis, risking their lives while travelling to the hospitals amidst the deadly virus.

"In many cases, the patients act as a carrier of infections to other people including their near ones and doctors as well. Hence, for the protection of all, patients can opt for Peritoneal Dialysis (PD), which can be done at the convenience and safety of their homes and doesn't require frequent visit to hospitals. By following simple steps, hand hygiene, PD can be a safe and ideal solution in the current situation and otherwise."

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
Bengaluru, May 15 : A 52-year-old man succumbed to novel coronavirus in Karnataka even as the highest single-day rise of 69 new positive cases was reported, raising the state's tally to 1,056, an official said on Friday.

The deceased male was resident of Chitaguppa town in Bidar had died on Tuesday but his test report on his positive status came on Friday. The deceased had a travel history to Hyderabad and also suffered from Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI).

Chitaguppa is 709 km north of Bengaluru.

The new cases were reported from 5 pm on Thursday to 5 pm on Friday," the health official said.

Out of the 1,056 cases, 539 are still active, 480 patients have been discharged, and 36 others have died.

In the past 24 hours, Covid cases spiked in Dakshina Kannda, Bengaluru Urban, Mandya, Hassan, and Udupi.

Of the new cases, Dakshina Kannada reported 15 cases, followed by Bengaluru Urban and Mandya 13 each, Hassan and Bidar 7 each, Udupi five, Kalaburagi 3, Chitradurga two and Kolar, Bagalkote, Uttara Kannada and Shivamogga one each.

Kolar, Chitradurga, Hassan, Mandya and Shivamogga cases had a travel history to Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Except one case with SARI, all others from Dakshina Kannada and Hassan had travel history to Dubai.

All Bengaluru cases were contacts of earlier cases, with 11 of them getting infection from a single patient.

One case each from Bidar and Kalaburagi emerged from the containment zones.

Another 24-year-old patient from Kalaburagi is also suffering from Influenza Like Illness (ILI).

Among the new cases, 19 were contacts of the earlier cases.

Of the new cases, 48 were men and 21 women, including 10 patients above 50 years while 56 were under 40, indicating a rising infection rate among youngsters.

Meanwhile, 'green zones' went down by one in Karnataka to seven in the past 24 hours.

Kodagu, Bengaluru Rural, Raichur, Koppal, Chikkamagaluru, Ramanagara and Chamarajanagar are the green zones with zero active cases.

Of the 1,056 cases, 12 per cent patients were senior citizens, 65 per cent men and 35 per cent women with a discharge rate of 45 per cent.
BANGOR, MAINE, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Husson University announced today that Janell A. Reece, Nicole Ann Tapparo and Paige Alexis Timko are this years valedictorians. All three completed their degrees with a perfect 4.0 grade point average (GPA).

Our three valedictorians and one salutatorian are shining examples of academic excellence, said Husson University President Robert A. Clark, Ph.D. Their hard work and dedication to their studies over the course of their academic careers sets a standard that every Husson University student aspires to. These students remarkable accomplishments in their various disciplines along with their contributions to activities outside of the classroom exemplify the character and humility our university seeks to instill in every graduate.

Reece is from Corinth, Maine. She is graduating with a Bachelor of Science in communications technology with a concentration in audio engineering.

Topsfield, Massachusetts resident Nicole Ann Tapparo is graduating with two degrees. She completed both a Bachelor of Science in criminal justice and a Bachelor of Science in psychology with a Mental Health Rehabilitation Technician/Community (MHRT/C) Certification.

Paige Alexis Timko completed one degree and three certificates. At graduation, she will have completed a Bachelor of Science in legal studies with a pre-law concentration, a general paralegal certificate, a paralegal certificate in advanced civil practice and a paralegal certificate in advanced criminal practice. Timko is from Veazie, Maine.

This years salutatorian is Canaan, Maine resident Julian Oakes. Oakes will be graduating from Husson University with a grade point average of 3.989. Similar to Timko, Oakes completed a Bachelor of Science in legal studies with a pre-law concentration, a general paralegal certificate, a paralegal certificate in advanced civil practice and a paralegal certificate in advanced criminal practice.

All four of these individuals will be recognized for their academic accomplishments along with the rest of the Class of 2020 at Husson Universitys 121st Annual Commencement Exercises, on Sunday, October 18, 2020 at 1 p.m. The formal commencement exercises have been delayed due to the coronavirus epidemic.

In an effort to assist the many members of the Class of 2020 and their families who expressed an interest in celebrating students academic achievements at the conclusion of the semester, Husson University has prepared a video presentation produced by the New England School of Communications. On Friday, May 15, 2020, a live stream of a pre-recorded video will be available on Husson Universitys website. An email directing students to this presentation will be sent to them prior to the event.

This video will include:

Remarks from the President

Remarks from Husson Universitys Board of Trustees Chair

Recognition of the valedictorians and salutatorian

The full list of all graduates, their honorary titles and hometowns accompanied by appropriate commencement music.

The video presentation will be a fitting way to conclude the semester as students complete their education and begin entering the workforce. Having all of this years graduates watching the same video presentation provides a sense of community and connection during this time of social distancing. The entire Class of 2020 should be congratulated on their ability to finish their degrees under these unprecedented circumstances. Their ability to persevere and overcome adversity in this situation will help prepare them for any future challenges they may encounter going forward, said Lynne Coy-Ogan, EdD, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at Husson University.

With 864 individuals earning a record 1068 undergraduate and graduate degrees, this will be Husson Universitys largest graduating class in its 122-year history.

About Husson University:

For more than 120 years, Husson University has prepared future leaders to handle the challenges of tomorrow through innovative undergraduate and graduate degrees. With a commitment to delivering affordable classroom, online and experiential learning opportunities, Husson University has come to represent superior value in higher education. Our Bangor campus and off-campus satellite education center in Northern Maine both provide advanced knowledge in business; health and education; pharmacy studies; science and humanities; as well as communication. In addition, Husson University has a robust adult learning program. According to a recent analysis of tuition and fees by U.S. News & World Report, Husson University is one of the most affordable private colleges in New England. For more information about educational opportunities that can lead to personal and professional success, visit Husson.edu.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 14:24:22|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 14 (Xinhua) -- U.S. Special Representative for Afghan Reconciliation Zalmay Khalilzad said on Thursdays that the Islamic State (IS) had conducted two deadly attacks in Afghanistan earlier this week, which killed more than 50 civilians.

"The USG has assessed ISIS-K conducted the horrific attacks on a maternity ward and a funeral earlier this week in Afghanistan," Khalilzad said on his twitter, adding that the terrorist group opposes a peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban.

An attack on a maternal hospital in the capital Kabul killed 24 civilians and injured 16 others on Tuesday, while a suicide bomb explosion targeting a funeral in eastern Nangarhar province killed 32 people and wounded 103 others.

The Taliban said they were not behind the twin attacks. However, after the attacks, Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani ordered national security forces to "end active defense position" and resume offensives on militant groups including the Taliban.

Violence still lingered in the war-torn country after a peace deal was signed between the United States and the Taliban in Qatar late February, which paved the way for a phased U.S. force withdrawal.

The agreement faces challenges as the intra-Afghan dialogue that had been scheduled to begin on March 10 could not start due to differences over the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Enditem
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

An anti-abortion advocate, a former television meteorologist and an ex-New Mexico State University professor who served briefly in the Trump administration make up a diverse field of Republican candidates seeking to replace Democrat Tom Udall in the U.S. Senate.

Although Elisa Martinez, Mark Ronchetti and Gavin Clarkson come from diverse backgrounds, they share similar views on a variety of issues leading up to the June 2 primary.

The winner will face Democratic Rep. Ben Ray Lujan and Libertarian Bob Walsh in the November general election.

Martinez, 47, is an outspoken anti-abortion activist who grew up in Gallup and worked with her fathers small business. She has worked with the state Legislature on abortion and womens issues, including drafting legislation and lobbying on bills involving abortion issues.

Ronchetti, 46, was the chief meteorologist for KRQE-TV, where he worked for 13 years after seven years at KOAT-TV, putting him in front of the camera for two decades. He said the experience has helped him connect with New Mexicans and understand their challenges and the opportunities they seek. That, he said, will serve him well in the Senate. He has lived in New Mexico for 20 years and grew up in Shelburne, Vermont.

Clarkson, 51, served six months in the Department of Interior as deputy assistant secretary for policy and economic development for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. He has been a professor at the University of Michigan, University of Houston, University of Montana and New Mexico State University. He has also served as a tribal consultant and been involved in the real estate industry.

He ran unsuccessfully for the 2nd Congressional District seat and the New Mexico Secretary of State post in 2018.

Clarkson said he wants to champion those whose voices are not heard in the halls of Congress  especially those economically disempowered due to federal regulations and corporate welfare schemes.

Martinez, executive director of New Mexico Alliance for Life, said her reasons for running for Udalls seat are that New Mexico is first in everything bad and last in everything good.

For too long, our elected representatives have neglected to uphold our traditional New Mexican values, she said.

Ronchetti said that too often the petty political fights in Washington take center stage and its the people here at home that get left behind. I want to make sure that my two girls can grow up in New Mexico where chasing the American dream is possible.

All three candidates voiced support for President Donald Trumps efforts to build a wall on the border with Mexico and called for stronger security measures.

They also said they want to protect the environment, but slammed the Green New Deal initiative in Congress as something that would be harmful to New Mexicos economy.

Clarkson refers to the Green New Deal and New Mexicos Energy Transition Act as big government schemes. Ronchetti said the Green New Deal is not a serious piece of legislation and said its purpose has nothing to do with the environment. Martinez said it would cost millions of jobs and drive up energy costs.

The three oppose bans on fracking proposed in Congress by Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren  both former Democratic presidential candidates. Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden also indicated during a debate with Sanders he would support such a ban.

Giving that up is not only a bad financial and environmental decision its a terrible national security decision, Ronchetti said in a response to a question from the Journal, saying it would increase dependence on foreign oil.

I fully oppose fracking bans. Oil and gas  and hydraulic fracturing  contribute mightily to New Mexicos economy, Clarkson said.

Martinez said a ban on fracking would cost the state 140,000 jobs and $8 million in state and local revenue.

Regarding abortion, all three oppose late-term abortions and are against federally funded abortion.

As the leader of New Mexico Alliance for Life, Martinez led the effort last year in New Mexico to defeat House Bill 51 in the Legislature. The measure, which was defeated, would have repealed the states 1969 anti-abortion law, which makes it a crime to end a womans pregnancy except in certain circumstances such as rape. That law is moot at this time because of the Supreme Courts 1973 decision in Roe vs. Wade.

Ronchetti said he supports the Hyde Amendment, which is the law of the land. The amendment bars the use of federal funds to pay for most abortions.

The three candidates said they support the 2nd Amendment and oppose federal bans on the sale of military style semi-automatic rifles.

Clarkson, Martinez and Ronchetti take strong stands against illegal immigration, but have differing views on who should be allowed to immigrate legally.

Martinez said legal immigration should continue under a merit-based system.

Clarkson said: We must end birthright citizenship, visa lottery, and chain migration. He does support a path of citizenship for military veterans brought to the country illegally as children.

Ronchetti said decriminalizing border crossings and the promise of free health care put families at risk when they seek to immigrate illegally. He believes they should apply legally in the country where they live and then come once approved.

Martinez edged out Ronchetti at the state Republican pre-primary convention, but both qualified for the ballot by collecting more than 20% of the vote. Clarkson had to submit more signatures to get on the ballot.

Ronchetti is the top fundraiser in the race since announcing his candidacy. According to Federal Election Commission reports, he raised $650,000 in the first quarter of 2020, outpacing Clarkson, who raised almost $318,000, and Martinez, who raised about $170,000.
Telemedicine in Healthcare

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Purpose of Telemedicine Guidelines

Definition of Telemedicine & Tele-health in the Notification

Consultations outside the jurisdiction of India

It does not cover hardware or software, infrastructure building & maintenance, data management systems; standards and inter-operability

Use of digital technology to conduct surgical or invasive procedures remotely.

To practice telemedicine

RMPs should be familiar with the guidelines as well as with the process and limitations of telemedicine practice

All RMPs to take a mandatory online course within 3 years of notification of the guidelines - this is to be developed by MCI

All qualifying RMPs will need to undergo and qualify such a course before they are given license to practice

Training of doctors on how to practice safe telemedicine by making them familiar with the Guidelines that have been notified.

Creating minimum standards required for hardware and software to be used for telemedicine practice

Putting a robust ethical and legal document that will substantiate the already laid down guidelines

Getting health insurance companies to reimburse telemedicine consultation.

said Ms Bagmisikha from TMT Law firm. She is an Advocate who works in Healthtech IT space for regulatory requirements and an Executive Member of Telemedicine Society of India.The India rural and remote population will be the ones to benefit the maximum in the long run and our health indices will improve as a result. This will be the true impact in the years to come if telemedicine is used innovatively and as an enabler. The technology framework is already in place with over 500 million smartphone users and 4G being available in most locations. The financial element will be serviced by the online payment gateways that have recently been made more easily available. The only missing piece is the e-pharmacies draft bill that has been long pending.In India, so far there was no legislation or framework on the practice of telemedicine although some doctors and companies were using it as a form of practice. There were many grey areas like how to issue a prescription or how to charge a patient.The existing provisions under the Indian Medical Council Act, 1956, the Indian Medical Council (Professional Conduct, Etiquette and Ethics Regulation 2002), Drugs &Cosmetics Act, 1940 and Rules 1945, Clinical Establishment (Registration and Regulation) Act, 2010, Information Technology Act, 2000 and the Information Technology (Reasonable Security Practices and Procedures and Sensitive Personal Data or Information) Rules 2011 do not mention the practice of telemedicine and only indirectly applied to any practice that was happening. The gaps in the legislation and the uncertainty of rules posed a risk for both the doctors and their patients.Currently, there are some countries that have put legislative and regulatory requirements for telemedicine practice while in others there only guidelines available to practice telemedicine. All these guidelines were reviewed before the current Indian ones were released.Telemedicine will continue to grow and be adopted by more healthcare practitioners and patients in a wide variety of forms, and these practice guidelines will be a key enabler in fostering its growth.The purpose of these guidelines is to give practical advice to doctors so that all services and models of care used by doctors and health workers are encouraged to consider the use of telemedicine as a part of normal practice. These guidelines will assist the medical practitioner in pursuing a sound course of action to provide effective and safe medical care founded on current information, available resources, and patient needs to ensure patient and provider safety.These telemedicine guidelines will help realize the full potential of these advancements in technology for health care delivery. They provide norms and protocols relating to a physician-patient relationship; issues of liability and negligence; evaluation, management and treatment; informed consent; continuity of care; referrals for emergency services; medical records; privacy and security of the patient records and exchange of information; prescribing; and reimbursement; health education and counselling.These guidelines provide information on various aspects of telemedicine including information on technology platforms and tools available to medical practitioners and how to integrate these technologies to provide health care delivery. It also spells out how technology and transmission of voice, data, images and information should be used in conjunction with other clinical standards, protocols, policies and procedures for the provision of care. Where clinically appropriate, telemedicine is a safe, effective and valuable modality to support patient care.Like any other technology, the technology used for telemedicine services can be abused. It has some risks, drawbacks and limitations, which can be mitigated through appropriate training, enforcement of standards, protocols and guidelines. These guidelines should be used in conjunction with the other national clinical standards, protocols, policies and procedures.The guidelines have used the WHO definition to define telemedicine as follows-The gazette allows a Registered Medical Practitioner [RMP] enrolled in the State Register or the National Register under the IMC Act 1956 to practice telemedicine but it does not allow -In all cases of emergency, the patient must be advised for in-person interaction with an RMP at the earliest. However, if this is not possible emergency consult for immediate assistance or first aid etc., maybe offeredIn the next few months what would be required is the following -With these guidelines in place, the pharma companies have suddenly started working with partners and advising doctors to use certain apps. There is a need for pharma companies to use restraint when promoting such apps that they develop or endorse. One of the dangers for doctors is that the pharmaceuticals can track their prescriptions through these apps.Many of the existing big players also are abusing privacy laws and sometimes spamming their customers with messages. They send repeated reminders to use services that the customers are not interested in or sending them information that is not relevant to their health condition.Source: Medindia
By Matt Spetalnick

WASHINGTON, May 14 (Reuters) - Exclusive

The United States is considering measures it could take in response to Iran's shipment of fuel to crisis-stricken Venezuela, a senior official in President Donald Trump's administration told Reuters on Thursday.

The United States has a "high degree of certainty" that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro's government is paying Iran tons of gold for the fuel, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"It is not only unwelcome by the United States but it's unwelcome by the region, and we're looking at measures that can be taken," the official said.

The oil sectors of Iran and Venezuela - members of OPEC that both are deeply at odds with the United States - are under tough U.S. sanctions. The official declined to specify the measures being weighed but said options would be presented to Trump, a fierce critic of the governments of both Iran and Venezuela.

At least one tanker carrying fuel loaded at an Iranian port has set sail for Venezuela, according to vessel tracking data from Refinitiv Eikon on Wednesday, which could help ease an acute scarcity of gasoline in the South American country.

The Iran-flagged medium tanker Clavel earlier on Wednesday passed the Suez Canal after loading fuel at the end of March at Iran's Bandar Abbas port, according to the data.

Venezuela is in desperate need of gasoline and other refined fuel products to keep the country functioning amid an economic collapse that has occurred under the socialist Maduro. It produces crude oil but its infrastructure has been crippled during the economic crisis.

Neither Venezuela's oil ministry nor state oil company Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) responded to requests for comment.

The shipment marks the latest sign of cooperation between the Iran and Venezuela. Starting last month, several flights from Tehran have brought materials to Venezuela to help it restart the catalytic cracking unit at its 310,000 barrel-per-day Cardon refinery, drawing U.S. condemnation.

Venezuela's 1.3 million-bpd refining network has all but collapsed due to under-investment and lack of maintenance.

Last year, the United States imposed sanctions on PDVSA as part of Trump administration efforts to oust Maduro, whose 2018 re-election was considered a sham by most Western countries.

Four other vessels of the same size as the Clavel, all flagged by Iran and loaded with fuel at or near Bandar Abbas, are about to cross the Atlantic Ocean after passing Suez. They have not yet set their final destinations, data showed.

One of them, the Fortune, appears on a list of tankers scheduled to enter Venezuelan port, according to a person with knowledge of the matter. Opposition politicians also said they had received information that all five tankers were heading to Venezuela.

All five are bringing gasoline, according to Samir Madani, co-founder of TankerTrackers.com, a service that tracks oil shipments and storage. Madani said the vessels loaded at Berths 1 and 2 at the Shahid Rajaee port at Bandar Abbas, according to the service's satellite imagery.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month called on countries to deny overflight rights to Mahan Air, an Iranian airline under U.S. sanctions, which he said delivered cargoes of "unknown support" to the Venezuelan government
FAIRFIELD  While most Fairfield University students have been home for months because of the coronavirus pandemic, some have remained behind and are working to make a difference even after the semester has ended.

Four students, Lilliana Delmonico, Caroline Smith, Evan Fair and Andrew Jobson have been coordinating to use the universitys 3D printing lab to produce face shields for medical workers and first responders. The clips come complete with the Fairfield University logo.

Smith, a junior nursing major from New Jersey, said she came up with the idea after seeing a family friend doing something similar. She said to Delmonico, a senior engineering major, to see how they could get the operation running.

It was definitely an experience, Smith said. It was a lot of knowing who to ask. We had to figure out who to ask about getting access to the 3D printers... and then who was on campus to (operate them).

Smith said Delmonico told her that Fair and Jobson had decided to remain on campus and, when they were asked, were enthusiastic about joining the project. She said she and Delmonico focus on making contacts and finding places to donate to while Fair and Jobson produce the clips needed to hold face shields in place and package them with the plastic shield for delivery.

We try to find people who would be interested, Smith said. At first, it was hard to find requests. But, I reached out to the nursing school... and they knew people who (needed shields) and said there were a lot of shortages of (personal protective equipment. So, we got in contact with those people.

According to Delmonico, she goes to campus two or three times a week to drop off donations to the recipients or to deliver supplies to Fair and Jobson. She said she was the one who contacted Richard Heist, Dean of Fairfield Universitys School of Engineering, to get permission to start the project.

Heist said he was originally hesitant, but acquiesced when the students gave him more details on the plan. He said he checks in on Fair and Jobson to make sure they are safe but that the project is student run.

Pretty soon, it became clear that this was actually a big operation, Heist said. Every day, day in and day out , they are there printing. They have been donating them to hospitals and nursing homes and to service agencies of different sorts.

To scale with the demands of the projects, Heist said the School of Engineering bought four new 3D printers. He said the project is just another example of the service to humanity ethos embedded in the engineering profession.

It gets inculcated into these students, and they dont even know it, Heist said. What impresses me is that they called me and said, We should start this. I was a little reluctant but they pushed back... and its been a resounding success. They are helping people. And engineering is all about people.

Delmonico said she has had fun carrying out the project with her peers, adding that it has been a lot of work. As a senior leaving the school, she said the work has given her some of the closure she lost by not being able to have a normal final semester.

The senior said she, Jobson and Fair have worked together to work on prototypes and address their product based on feedback they get from the people using it. She said it has been cool to see the engineering design process in progress.

Right now, Im not really sure what I want to do going forward in my career, Delmonico said. But I really like dong this kind of work. I love being able to have a direct impact on peoples lives.

Fair, a sophomore junior engineering major from Pretoria, South Africa said he decided to stay on campus instead of going to home and be put under military quarantine for two weeks as well as having to do classes around 1:00 in the morning.

Fair said he reached out to Delmonico to see if there were any projects going on to keep himself busy. He said the project has been fun and has allowed him to work in engineering, a field he is passionate about.

The engineering major said he and Jobson have doubled production since they started six weeks ago, going from producing 80 units in a week to 160.

We went through the standard engineering process and kept what we need, eliminated what we dont, Fair said. We developed and made better designs. I think its great life experience.

As an example of the design and review process, Fair said they had received feedback that the masks were irritating users skin behind their ears. He said the group designed a plastic strap to keep the pressure off of the area. He said addressing new challenges keeps the project exciting.

Its honestly one of the best work experiences Ive had, he said, adding that the project has reinforced his desire to work in biomedical engineering. 

Jobson, a engineering Wilbraham, Mass., said he remained on campus because the company he was going to be employed at had a hiring freeze, preventing him from getting an apartment. He said doing the project has lifted his spirits and given him something to do.

I could have gone through millions of video games, Jobson said. I saw that this project was a great opportunity to learn about manufacturing and supply chains.

Jabson said he and Fair have the 3D printers running essentially 24 hours a day. He said he thinks there should be a class modeled after the project taught at every engineering school.

Designing a product, producing it and then having quality control and packaging... for every single engineer, they really have to know that entire process like the back of their hand, he said. Going through this has been an incredible experience for me.

He said all the things he has learned in class clicked in his mind when he applied it to the project. He said working with his peers to problem solve has been really fun.

Smith said the four have enjoyed the support they have recieved from the Fairfield community. She said they hope to inspire others to start their own initiatives in their communities.

I think its so important and amazing that, not just Fairfield, but other colleges, companies and plaes have started making their own PPE, Smith said. The community that weve built around that is incredible.

For any questions on the project, contact Dean Richard Heist at rheist@fairfield.edu or at 203-254-4000 ext. 4147.
Vincentian students studying in Cuba are expected to remain in the Spanish- speaking country at least until this semester is complete, and Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves is of the firm belief that they should "stay and bear the pain and suffering,





Speaking on last Tuesdays edition of the Shake-Up programme aired on WE FM, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves said that he believed the Vincentian students studying in Cuba should sit out their adversities to the end of the semester, since breaking off could have implications for their scholarships.





The PM said that he had spoken with this countrys Ambassador to Cuba, Ellsworth John, who confirmed that the Vincentian students had decided to remain in the country until the semester is finished.





According to the Prime Minister, the Cubans have reopened the universities, and they are still 50 to 60 days to the end of the semester.





"And I think the challenge there, if they dont complete this period, they cant be sure that they will have paid scholarships next year, because if they leave too early, if they leave before the completion of the academic year, they would not have completed all the requisites and, therefore, will have to repeat the year, said Gonsalves, on the implication for students who might want to return home before the completion of the academic year.

"So, may as well they stay and bear the pain and suffering, he added.





The Prime Minister admitted that it is a "difficult situation, but the Vincentian students are "in it with their Cuban brothers and sisters, and the Chief Personnel Officer and other officials are compiling what is needed to give support to the students.





The majority of Vincentians studying in Cuba are said to be pursuing studies in medicine and nursing.
Egypt has repatriated around 12,000 stranded Egyptians from different countries since late April, an aviation ministry source told Al-Ahram on Friday.



Seventy flights arranged by EgyptAir and Air Cairo airlines brought Egyptian nationals back to their country amid the coronavirus pandemic, the source said, adding that flights will not stop "until the last Egyptian stranded abroad is repatriated."



The flights landed at Cairo and Marsa Alam airports, with citizens medically examined in arrival halls as soon as the planes landed before being sent to quarantine facilities, according to the source.



Egypt sent flights to the US, Canada, France, Germany, England, Spain, Ukraine, Russia, Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Iraq, Sudan, Ethiopia, Nigeria, South Africa, Kenya, Chad, Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, Maldives, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and India.

The source said precautionary measures at Egyptian airports included leaving safe distance between people in queues and waiting areas as well as putting social distancing floor signs.

Prime Minister Mostafa Madbouly said on Wednesday that the number of returnees is expected to reach over 16,000 Egyptians.

According to Madbouly, the number of Egyptian nationals stuck overseas amid lockdowns caused by the global pandemic is very large when compared to nationals of other countries.

He asserted that authorities are working to prepare accommodation venues and medical measures to follow up on the conditions of returnees, who are put into mandatory 14-day quarantine.

The cabinet had said earlier that the government would cover the cost of those staying at university hostels, while those willing to spend their quarantine period at designated hotels in the Red Sea resort of Marsa Alam will have to pay for their stay.

Egypt is hoping to bring back all stranded Egyptians before the Islamic Eid Al-Fitr holiday, which begins on 23 May and follows the holy month of Ramadan.

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What is the holdup on filling out and returning the 2020 Census? Experts say it only takes about six minutes to complete. It doesnt cost anything. They even throw in the stamped envelope. Or, if that is too much trouble, you can participate online for the first time  making this years censushistoric.

There is a last ditch effort underway to try and get Alabamians to fill out their forms. The Chairman of the Alabama Counts Committee reported that there is an unprecedented lack of participation and it is all because of places like Wilcox County.

What is he implying?

I assume everybody received their Census letter? I did. I also got the second one, and both postcard reminders. I have seen reminders online, the front page of the local paper, and on the midday news. It is only ten questionsall about demographics. They want to know how many people are allowed to live in your house, and their race, age, and sex.

The answered are kept private, and you cant answer wrong. There is no pressure. They just need the count of warm bodies because the total determines the amount of federal money that goes to repair county roads and bridges as well as to healthcare, community services, and free lunch programs at schools.

If that doesnt sway you, it is also used to calculate how much government assistance areas can receive and eligibility for grants. It sets poverty rates, and brace yourself, if we dont hurry up and send these forms back in Wilcox County could lose not just one, but two congressional seats.

We are pretty much guaranteed to lose one. In order not to lose a seat, census participation would need to match the 2010 performance, which was 72 percent. As of now, less than 32 percent of residents have responded, leaving voters to decide which representative Wilcox wants to see gone.

That may be the incentive keeping some silent. If they cant vote out poor leadership, maybe they can eliminate a seat or two entirely. In the end it may amount to fewer people making bad decisions. Voters hear what representatives say, but then they also see the history of what has been done here.

It could also become necessary for the advocates who have so diligently made it their mission to go around filling out absentee ballots for certain voters all of these years to go back and make the rounds filling out census forms for those same people. It is the downside of not encouraging citizens to take care of their own civic responsibilities.

I realize that may sound strange if you are not of the Black Belt. It may come across that I am being critical, or you may think I am exaggerating, or making one of my failed attempts at humor, but I assure you I am not. I am just stating the result of an unfortunate truth.

And I already know what most of my neighbors are thinking. They want to know where in the hell all this county road improvement is happening. We get into competitions on Facebook from time to time trying to see who can post a picture of the biggest pothole. Camden has several potential finalists including Bridgeport Road  which is permanently closed. It looks like a little Grand Canyon.

The deadline for the 2020 Census was April 30. Maybe it is time to consider mailing it.

Amanda Walker is a contributor with AL.com The Selma Times Journal, Thomasville Times, West Alabama Watchman, and Alabama Gazette. Contact her at Walkerworld77@msn.com or at https://www.facebook.com/AmandaWalker.Columnist.
A volunteer is injected with either an experimental Covid-19 vaccine or a comparison shot as part of the Oxford University trial - Oxford University

The Oxford University vaccine trial is heading into hospitals amid fears that Covid-19 is not prevalent enough in wider society, a leading scientist has revealed.

John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said more than 1,000 people had been vaccinated in the first phase of the project and that, so far, things were going well and the drug looked safe.

However, as researchers wait for an "efficacy signal" that will establish whether those who have been given the vaccine can ward off the virus, Prof Bell admitted there was a risk that there may not be enough "active disease" to infect people, prompting the team to employ different tactics.

"The disease is on the wane and there is a risk that we won't be enough active disease to catch people," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

"We're doing some clever things. We have good data now on how much disease is around. But the population that is still at pretty high risk are healthcare workers.

"So they will be moving, or will have already moved into the healthcare worker population, because there the disease prevalence is about four per cent. So they should be able to get a signal from those individuals, we hope."

Human trials of the vaccine developed by Oxford University began last month, with scientists expressing hope that they could have a million doses ready by September if efficacy tests go well.

The university has struck a deal with AstraZeneca, the UK's largest drugmaker, to ensure its vaccine can be manufactured at scale.

However, they have admitted that if the peak of disease transmission arrived before the vaccine was ready for trials, the studies would be challenging.

Conducting trials when the peak has subsided means that so many people will have developed a natural immunity that the amount of transmission will have dropped and those still not immune will take longer to be exposed to the virus.

Story continues

Asked about the ethics of infecting volunteers with Covid-19, Prof Bell admitted that, while such an approach had been discussed, it was not ideal.

He said that "in reality" researchers did not want to know if the vaccine worked in healthy 21-year-old males as they were very unlikely to die from the virus.

"You want to know if it works in a 78-year-old, unhealthy, frail, vulnerable person," he added. "So it's fraught with all kinds of problems.

"Look, we're not that far away from an answer if we just keep our heads down. I think thats the safest bet."
A woman has been arrested after allegedly exchanging cash for cryptocurrency and running an online money laundering syndicate that transacted $5million worth of Bitcoin.

A 52-year-old woman was arrested at Burwood shopping centre in Sydney's inner west on Thursday around 1pm.

Police seized $60,000 in cash, 3.8 Bitcoin worth $55,000 and a mobile phone from the woman's handbag and vehicle.

After the arrest, officers searched a unit in Hurstville where they found mobile phones, computers and electronic storage devices - along with a further $18,200 worth of Bitcoin.

A 52-year-old woman has been arrested after she allegedly operated an online money laundering syndicate that transacted $5million worth of Bitcoin

During the arrest on Thursday, police seized $60,000 in cash, 3.8 Bitcoin worth $55,000 and mobile phones

It's alleged the woman has been operating the syndicate since 2017.

The 52-year-old was taken to Burwood Police Station and charged with three counts of knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime and breaching digital currency exchange service requirements.

Cybercrime Squad Commander, Detective Superintendent Matt Craft said police had been investigating the alleged syndicate since November, 2018.

'This is the first arrest executed by Cybercrime Squad detectives relating to non-compliant digital currency providers in New South Wales - and is believed to be the first of its kind across Australia,' Det Supt Craft said.

'While cash is still 'king', digital currencies are fast becoming the preferred choice for organised criminal networks involved in money laundering, funding terrorism, and cybercrimes.

'It is concerning that when this kind of online exchange goes unregulated, it can allow criminals to move currency and launder funds seemingly undetected.

'Let this arrest be a warning to digital currency exchange providers - if you fail to comply with your obligations, your actions will not go unnoticed.'

The woman was granted bail and will appear in court on July 20.
A U.S. Navy officer has become the first service member to receive a waiver to a Defense Department policy that bars most transgender troops from serving as anything other than their birth gender.

A Navy spokeswoman said Friday that Acting Secretary of the Navy James McPherson approved Wednesday a "specific request for exemption related to military service by transgender persons and persons with gender dysphoria."

"This service member requested a waiver to serve in their preferred gender, to include obtaining a gender marker change in the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System and being allowed to adhere to standards associated with their preferred gender, such as uniforms and grooming," Navy spokeswoman Lt. j.g. Brittany Stephens said.

Related: Generals Caught Flat-Footed by Trumps Tweets on Transgender Ban

News of the exception to a year-old prohibition on gender transitions while in uniform was first reported by CNN.

According to court documents, the officer has served for more than nine years in the surface warfare community and faced an involuntary discharge from the Navy as a result of a DoD policy implemented last year prohibiting personnel diagnosed with gender dysphoria from serving.

In July 2017, President Donald Trump announced via Twitter that the U.S. government would no longer allow "transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. military."

The announcement upended a 2016 decision by President Barack Obama and then-Defense Secretary Ash Carter to allow transgender personnel to serve openly in their preferred gender.

As a result of Trump's announcement, then-SecDef Jim Mattis developed and published a policy in 2018 that barred transgender service members who had not yet transitioned and those diagnosed with gender dysphoria -- a mental health condition categorized by extreme distress and psychological symptoms over the mismatch between one's gender at birth and one's gender identity -- from serving.

It also barred prospective recruits with gender dysphoria from joining the military, but it allowed transgender service members already serving in the military to remain.

The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the policy in 2019, and it has been in effect just over a year.

The officer who received the waiver was not grandfathered under the policy because, according to documents, she only came to "terms with her transgender identity" as a transgender woman after the ban went into effect. The officer, known in court documents as Lieutenant Doe, was diagnosed with gender dysphoria in June 2019 and promptly informed the Navy that she was a transgender woman.

She filed a complaint in March 2020 against the Defense Department to prevent her discharge.

Advocates for the LGBTQ community, as well as the officer's attorneys, said Friday they are "ecstatic for the sailor and the breach of the waiver logjam" they say has built since the policy was enacted.

But, they added, other qualified transgender personnel should not be barred from serving.

"While we are relieved for our client, requiring transgender service members to jump through this discriminatory hoop makes no sense and only underscores the irrationality of the ban. Being transgender has nothing to do with a person's fitness to serve, and transgender individuals should be held to the same standards as other service members," said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

"Dedicated military service members shouldn't have to bring a lawsuit to be able to continue doing their job," said Jennifer Levi, GLAD Transgender Rights Project Director.

A spokesman for the LGBTQ advocacy group Modern Military Association of America expressed concern Friday that the waiver may be a ploy to undermine current lawsuits challenging the ban.

The group, along with Lambda Legal, is representing six transgender active-duty service members and three seeking to enlist in a challenge against the policy's constitutionality. The case, Karnoski v. Trump, has been in the courts since 2017.

"We will be watching closely to see if others are approved and how the Trump-Pence administration may attempt to weaponize the decision by falsely claiming the ban isn't a ban. MMAA is committed to ensuring the unconscionable Trump-Pence transgender military ban is overturned and any qualified transgender patriot is free to serve openly and authentically," said MMAA legal and policy director Peter Perkowski.

The Defense Department has maintained that the policy is not a ban on transgender persons but a restriction against allowing persons diagnosed with gender dysphoria to serve.

DoD officials last year said that transgender service members with gender dysphoria have 10 times the behavioral health visits than those who don't have the condition and have higher rates of suicidal ideation.

Last February, James Stewart, then acting undersecretary of defense for personnel and readiness, said gender dysphoria is a medical condition incompatible with military service and that allowing those diagnosed with it to serve "would degrade military effectiveness."

Shortly before the policy went into effect, the Navy released guidance saying it would allow transgender sailors who were not grandfathered under the previous allowance to live as their preferred gender while not on duty.

At the time the policy went into effect, roughly 1,000 service members who had transitioned or been diagnosed with gender dysphoria were serving in the U.S. military.

Roughly 9,000 identified themselves as transgender in a survey of active-duty personnel.

-- Patricia Kime can be reached at Patricia.Kime@Monster.com. Follow her on Twitter @patriciakime.

Read More: Transgender Troops: Proposed Policy Is Discrimanatory, Would Hurt Readiness
Dr Rimma Kamalova, head of the rheumatology department at Juvatova Republican Clinical Hospital, said that her hospital's management neglected her warnings regarding an unknown pneumonia outbreak last March.

On the day that the hospital had more than 50 people admitted for planned procedures was also the day that employees discovered a dead patient was positive for the coronavirus as can be seen on records.

Not the sole victim

Along with Dr Kamalova, the rest of the 1,200 staff members and patients were trapped inside as the hospital was ordered quarantined. A few days later, she continued to work despite developing a fever, having only her intravenous line to rely on.

Dr Kamalova also shared in a telephone interview they had no choice but to continue working and treating patients, all the while giving themselves drips and taking short rests in between, before repeating the cycle over again as reported by the New York Times.

On Monday, the sudden rise of coronavirus patients in Russia placed it as the third-highest rate of cases in the world, overtaking that of Italy and Britain. The news came along just before President Vladimir Putin could issue an update regarding the country's situation with the COVID-19.

While the nation celebrates the efforts of medical workers that are hailed as heroes, the increasing number of coronavirus infections result in a similar increase of diseases and deaths within the medical community.

Also Read: Coronavirus Conspiracy Video 'Plandemic' Says Virus is Man-Made, Injected Thru Vaccination

According to a website dedicated to memorializing the deaths of health care workers have listed more than 180 casualties in the community.

The increased risk is further aggravated by the lack of personal protective equipment available to medical workers. The shortcoming reveals Russia's apparent lack of preparation were problems that began a month ago have still been resolved.

A staggering number of cases

One of Moscow's top hospitals has reported more than 75% of the department's personnel has been infected with the virus. St. Petersburg revealed 1,465 front liners had become hosts to the virus which counted for more than a sixth of the total cases in the city.

On Wednesday, Mikhail Mursahko, Russia's health minister, shared that 400 hospitals around the country have reported a coronavirus outbreak.

According to Mercury News, the number of new infections rose by 11,656 in the past 24 hours alone, bringing the total number to 221,344. The only other places in the world which surpass this number are Spain and the United States.

The focal point of the casualties is in Moscow, which contains more than half of that country's total cases and deaths. The Russian capital reported on Monday a surge of 6,169 new cases overnight, raising the total tally to 115,909.

The reports come along with the country's coronavirus response centre detailing an additional 94 deaths, for a total death toll of 2,009. While the number is high, Kremlin critics said it is at a lower rate compared to many countries.

Related Article: Canada to Work With China in COVID-19 Vaccine Development

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Although the coronavirus crisis has posed varied challenges for different communities, Manipur certainly offers significant takeaways that could be useful in the achievement of long term development goals.

Days after Manipur was declared coronavirus-free, Dr Moirangthem Phalguni Singh looked back on the weeks preceding the announcement. An assistant professor of Chemistry at Oriental College, Imphal, Singh is part of an institutional team that produced over 150 units of hand sanitiser in their departmental lab. Overlooking his own contribution to relief efforts, he declared the impeccable intra-state coordination as one of the major factors which catalysed the prevention of transmission of the deadly virus, he rejoiced over the phone.

As a teacher of Chemistry, I was anxious about not being able to do anything to control the pandemic at an individual level. But soon, our staff was given an opportunity by the Directorate Of University & Higher Education to prepare alcohol-based hand sanitiser according to the guidelines recommended by World Health Organisation (WHO). As soon as the first case of COVID-19 was reported from the state of Manipur, officials such as Dr Singh sprang into action, taking stock of the availability of hand sanitisers, known to be an effective way to keep the novel coronavirus at bay. While the state reported only two cases, an indefinite curfew and lockdown was imposed. As a result, logistical hiccups began to impact the supply chains while people scrambled to local stores to keep up with the crunch.

A relatively small team comprising six staff members, Singh's department was able to send batches of sanitiser to several local clubs and village councils for further distribution. We wanted to continue production, but started facing financial difficulties as absolute alcohol [a necessary chemical component] is expensive. Therefore, the production had to be halted after a while.

In another part of Imphal, three research scholars from Manipur University  Atom Rajiv Singh, Kshetrimayum Sangeeta Devi and Sanasam Sachika Devi  approached the head of the chemistry department with a locally-made sample of hand sanitiser. As the three began producing small batches for university administration, the news of this group travelled to the office of chief minister N Biren Singh via Facebook. Soon after, he implored the students to begin mass-production and provided financial assistance for the procurement of additional raw materials. Roughly a month later, what began as a student-led initiative has become a simple yet compelling welfare model focused on recognising and subsequently aiding the most vulnerable communities in the state.

We have a target of making at least 50 litres of herbal sanitiser per day, and have so far been able to dispatch approximately 22,000 units to those working on the frontlines, reveals Atom Rajiv. Now a manufacturing workforce comprising eighteen members, the group has successfully dispatched 22,000 bottles of hand sanitiser to multiple educational and banking institutions, hospitals, media organisations and local corporations across the state. Like their contemporaries, the supervisors at Manipur University have also identified Manipur's collective ability to engage in rehabilitation as an effective tool to counter the social and economic bottlenecks, observed in societies all over. Community engagement and togetherness play an important in overcoming any pandemic. We need to make sure that no one is battling this crisis alone. Therefore, the distribution of essential items to needy families has to be done more often, added Professor N Rajen Singh, who is overseeing the project along with Professor Okram Mukherjee.

Following suit, the students and faculty at Imphal's DM Community College also distributed over a 100 units of hand-rub sanitiser among police personnel, domestic airport staff as well as journalists stationed in different parts of the city. M Birjit Singh, a radiographer at the institute, insisted that following lockdown protocol and ensuring the safety of essential workers is one way to fight the disease which has claimed over 1,700 lives in India.

Apart from educational institutes, local NGOs have also responded with schemes aimed to aid students stranded outside Manipur. Ya All, a well-known queer and youth-led network in Imphal, has helped over 2,097 families in 11 districts. Its 130 volunteers have been able to transfer money to about 219 cash-strapped Manipuri students. Additionally, as many as 400 transgender individuals, migrant workers and daily wagers have received ration, sanitary pads and hygiene kits and contraceptives, financed from the NGOs crowdfunding campaigns, said Sadam Hanjabam, founder of the organisation.

"Even though in the last week of March the government introduced a website to help stranded citizens, the actual work commenced only around mid-April. In fact, the website became unresponsive days after its launch. So when we opened our helpline, we received calls from Manipuri students, spread across 10 states," he revealed. Moreover, the increasing cases of racial discrimination against northeasterners, have pushed networks such as Ya All into overdrive. "There is uncertainty and fear of running out of essential products, and then there is the trauma of living in a space that threatens your physical and mental well-being. The latter has not been taken seriously by the authorities yet."

While the state government has gradually begun to lift restrictions on movement, it is yet to bring back the 50,000 Manipuris staying or working in other states, labourers included. However, according to Hanjabam, the estimate might be low, if one were to account for those with limited access to state helplines. "While people from nearby cities like Guwahati and Dimapur are being ferried by bus, it is still uncertain when those in distant places would be brought back. What we do know is that for a state with a population of about 27 lakhs, this crisis has been a revelation."

It is the 36th day of community service for the volunteers at Ya All, while Atom Rajiv along with 17 other students have crossed a month of producing hand sanitiser. Although the coronavirus crisis has posed varied challenges for different communities, Manipur certainly offers significant takeaways useful in the achievement of long term development goals.
The coronavirus pandemic has created a unique opportunity for Officeworks which is now considering transforming its business model as a result.

Businesses such as hairdressers and butchers are flocking to the popular store to get signs created to inform customers of social distancing restrictions.

Signage has created such a boom in businesses that Officeworks is now considering revamping its business model.

The chain could transform their print and scan business and dedicate the operation to creating industrial signage for businesses.

Officeworks could transform their print and scan business and dedicate the operation to creating industrial signage for businesses (stock)

Officeworks' chief finance officer Michael Howard told news.com.au that while photocopying needs have declined over the years people are utilising the printing section for different needs.

'It's like most things; retail today is not the same as it was yesterday but there is absolutely still a role for the stores that we've got as well as online,' Mr Howard said.

He said it has prompted the business to consider changing their printing offer.

'Are we doing everything that we could be to participate in that market? There's definitely a role for us to play in terms of our online print and copy proposition,' Mr Howard said.

Mr Howard also said the shift to working from home has prompted Australians to redesign their home offices.

Items such as headsets, desks, office chairs, webcams and art supplies have been flying off the shelves.

Signage, school supplies and digit tally counters all became sought after items in Officeworks stores across Australia (stock)

A study of 1,000 people by Officworks showed a quarter of people didn't have a desk and 67 per cent didn't have a suitable desk chair.

'As we look forward, with a potential shift to more professionals working from home in the future, we encourage everyone to remember to look at the ergonomic set-up of their workspace at home,' Mr Howard said.

Social distancing measures - such as a maximum capacity in stores - has meant items such as digit tally counters began to sell out.

Mr Howard said this shows how government mandates trickle down into society.
Bengaluru, May 15 : Air India's fifth evacuation flight to Karnataka landed here from San Francisco in the US via New Delhi with 109 passengers, an official said on Friday.

"Air India Airbus A320-251N from San Francisco arrived here at 9.20 a.m., with 109 passengers via New Delhi," an official of the state-run national carrier told IANS here.

The aircraft left the US west coast city on Thursday morning and landed in New Delhi's international airport early on Friday, where many returnees deboarded before it took off for Bengaluru.

The foreign returnees to the southern state were stranded for overseas for over 50 days due to the suspension of international air services by the government since March 23 and extended lockdown since March 25 to contain the coronavirus spread across the country.

The passengers were received by the state health department and the airline officials in the arrival terminal.

The returnees were given new masks to wear and sanitizer to wash their hands and told to maintain social distancing till they exit the airport.

"As per the standard operating procedure and protocols to be observed by all foreign returnees, the passengers were screened and tested to ensure they were asymptomatic and free from the Covid-19 virus," a state official told IANS.

After completing the formalities, the passengers will be ferried in state-run chartered buses in batches for the mandatory 14-day quarantine in star hotels booked for them in the city.

Passengers who did not have an Indian mobile connection were given a new sim card by the local operators. It was activated to download the mandatory quarantine app, the Aroygya Sethu app and Apthamitra app before leaving the airport.

As part of the government's evacuation programme 'Vande Bharat Mission', Air India operated five flights to the southern state, including four to Bengaluru and one to Mangaluru on the west coast off the Arabian Sea.

Of the 800 returnees to the state till date, 623 landed in Bengaluru in four flights since Monday and 177 in Mangaluru port city, about 360km away, on Tuesday.

The first evacuation flight to the state was from London on May 11, with 326 returnees, including three infants.

The second flight was an Air-India Express on May 12 to Bengaluru from Singapore, with 42 passengers.

The third repatriation flight landed at Mangaluru from Dubai on May 12, with 177 passengers.

The fourth flight landed in this tech city from Singapore on May 13, with 146 returnees.

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. said Thursday night it will spend $12 billion to build a new chip factory in Arizona. The company passed over its existing site in Camas, just across the Columbia River from Portland, despite Washington states efforts to lure the new factory there.

TSMC is a contract manufacturer making chips for other Apple and many other electronics companies. It operates primarily in Taiwan but has run the WaferTech factory in Camas since 1998.

The 260-acre Camas site was designed to accommodate several chip factories, but after a series of logistical problems TSMC abandoned plans for a large U.S. campus there. The decision to expand in Arizona instead of Camas could orphan that site, which makes chips using 200-millimeter wafers, a nearly obsolete standard.

TSMC declined to comment on whether it considered expanding in Camas instead of building in Arizona. But the company said it doesnt intend to walk away from the WaferTech factory, known in the chip industry as a fab.

TSMC is committed to operating the WaferTech fab, spokeswoman Nina Kao wrote in an email Friday. We have never closed down a single fab in our history, as we are able to convert mature technology production lines to specialty technology such as sensors or power management semiconductors.

The Trump administration has courted TSMC and Intel, Oregons largest corporate employer, seeking to bolster domestic chip production and blunt Chinas aggressive expansion into the semiconductor industry.

TSMC said Thursday it will build its Arizona factory with unspecified support from the state and federal governments. Arizona is an electoral battleground and the Taiwanese companys decision to build there could give President Donald Trump an economic win to tout to voters.

TSMCs plan to build and operate a $12 billion semiconductor facility in Arizona is yet another indication that President Trumps policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing and made the United States the most attractive place in the world to invest, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross said in a written statement.

Washington is reliably Democratic, offering little electoral opportunity to the president. The states Department of Commerce confirmed Friday that it had sought TSMCs new plant.

We had multiple conversations with officials from TSMC about the potential for this expansion in Washington state during their decision making process, department spokeswoman Penny Thomas wrote in an email. Were grateful to see the continued success of the WaferTech facility in Camas and dont have any concern presently about its continued presence and operations.

TSMC said it plans to start construction in Arizona next year and begin making chips in 2024, with expansion continuing until 2029.

Earlier this week, Intel confirmed that it has been in talks to build its own contract manufacturing facility with support from the U.S. government. Intel has historically made chips only for itself; a decision to build a factory dedicated to making chips for others would represent a major strategic shift.

Intel is already in the process of expanding domestic chip production with new and expanded factories in Arizona and Oregon.

This article updated Friday with comment from TSMC and the state of Washington.

-- Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | twitter: @rogoway | 503-294-7699

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For the first time in the world, drones are being used as a fully integrated part of emergency dispatch

GOTHENBURG, Sweden, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Everdrone, a global leader in autonomous drone technology, today announced it is now deploying a drone system that delivers Automated External Defibrillators (AEDs) to the scene of cardiac arrests. In doing so, bystanders will now have the ability to initiate life-saving measures while awaiting professional medical care.

Out-of-hospital cardiac arrests affect some 275,000 individuals in Europe each year and carry a low survival rate of about 10%. Research suggests when CPR and early defibrillation is initiated within the first few minutes the survival rate could potentially increase to as much as 70%.

Now available to more than 80,000 residents in the Gothenburg area of Sweden, the service is part of a clinical study in collaboration with Sweden's national emergency call centre, SOS Alarm, and the Centre for Resuscitation Science at Karolinska Institutet (KI).

"By combining our state-of-the-art drone platform and know-how in the regulatory space, we are finally able to launch this life-saving application," says Mats Sallstrom, CEO of Everdrone. "The collaboration with SOS Alarm and KI has been absolutely crucial for the realization of the concept in terms of being able to perform a swift alarm response, and to manage the medical and ethical issues involved."

Critical Care in Minutes

The initial study will launch in June and run through the end of September 2020. Three drone systems will be placed in designated locations, ready to respond to emergency 112-calls immediately for emergencies occurring within a radius of 6 km.

"In the event of a cardiac arrest, the drone is dispatched at the same time as the ambulance and will certainly be the first to arrive on the scene. Our operators are ready to instruct bystanders on how to initiate the life-saving device," says Mattias Regnell, Head of Innovation and Research at SOS Alarm.

When the drone arrives at the designated location, the AED is lowered to the ground while the drone remains hovering at 30 metres altitude. This procedure eliminates several risks associated with landing a drone close to people.

"The method of lowering the defibrillator from the drone with the help of a winch is something we have been developing and testing for a long time," says Sallstrom. "We have performed countless test deliveries in recent months, and the results show that the method works very well."

Safety and Regulations

Everdrone is one of just a few companies in the world to be granted permission for urban drone operations thanks to the company's safety portfolio and a long-standing dialogue with authorities.

"Safety is at the core of everything we do at Everdrone. Even though the drones we use are extremely safe in themselves, we still need to foresee every conceivable fault scenario and put solutions in place to handle them. The system must contain a great many functions that overlap and complement each other, to ensure that no single point of failure can lead to an accident," says Sallstrom.

Everdrone's flight system features industry-leading obstacle avoidance functionality built on Intel RealSense technology, intelligent route planning to significantly reduce flight time over people, and a certified onboard parachute system to mitigate risk to people on the ground in the case of a bird strike or critical propulsion failure.

The research perspective

The outcome of the emergency operations will continuously be evaluated within a research study conducted by KI.

"We see enormous potential for this type of fully-integrated drone system. This study is unique, the first of its kind in the world, and we look forward to objectively evaluating the project together with Everdrone and SOS Alarm," says Andreas Claesson, Associate Professor at KI.

The results of the study will be presented by KI later this year, with the hope of expanding operations to other parts of Sweden and Europe by 2021.

The project has received funding from the Eurostars-2 Joint Programme with co-funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme.

PRESS MATERIAL

Still images

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/agozoxvw3pb78li/AABdnkqgKlZmW4PixLMo5qcBa?dl=0

Edited video (ready for publishing)

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ABOUT EVERDRONE

Everdrone AB develops technology for autonomous drones. The company's test and development facilities are located at Save Airport near Gothenburg. The company focuses on civil applications for commercial drones, primarily for use within the healthcare and emergency response sector. Everdrone also actively works with regulatory issues associated with drones specializing in urban operations.

To date, the company has performed more than 13,000 autonomous flights in laboratory and outdoor settings, as well as more than 1.4 million simulated flights. For more information, visit www.everdrone.com.

Contact:

Mats Sallstrom

CEO, Everdrone AB

+46-702-28-10-95

mats@everdrone.com

www.everdrone.com

Mattias Regnell

Head of Innovation and Research

SOS Alarm Sverige AB

+46-730-83-87-42

mattias.regnell@sosalarm.se

www.sosalarm.se

Andreas Claesson

Associate Professor / RN, Paramedic

Centre for Resuscitation Science, KI

Chairman of the Swedish Resuscitation Council

+46-70-494-05-46

andreas.claesson@ki.se

www.hjartstoppscentrum.se

This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com

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Authorities say at least ten have died and 14 others remain injured following the collapse of a wall at a construction site in the southern Vietnamese province of Dong Nai on Thursday afternoon.

Construction workers at Giang Dien Industrial Park in Trang Bom District, Dong Nai Province found themselves scrambling for safety after a wall at the site collapsed at around 2:15 pm Thursday.

All of the victims in the incident had been building a factory for AV Healthcare, a South Korean company that manufactures diapers and baby bottles.

The construction site covers an area of over 21,100 square meters.

A wall collapses at the construction site in Trang Bom District, Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: K.H. / Tuoi Tre

Rescuers brought in ten excavators to help with recovering the victims.

The provincial Department of Health confirmed at 5:00 pm the same day that at least ten people had lost their lives to the accident.

Two of the victims were pronounced dead at the construction site while eight others passed away from their injuries at a nearby hospital.

Fourteen people rescued from the site are currently being treated for their injuries at the infirmary.

Police officers arrive at the construction site where a wall collapsed in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

Police officers have yet to determine the cause of the accident, though severe penalties are expected should they detect any violations in regard to the design, construction, supervision, or quality of the project.

Colonel Nguyen Van Kim, director of the Dong Nai Department of Police, confirmed on Friday morning that three people have been arrested for being allegedly responsible for the accident.

Police officers arrive at the construction site where a wall collapsed in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

The three include Ha Huy Hai, director of Ha Hai Nga Company, which is in charge of the construction, along with his two employees.

Initial investigation has revealed signs of violations of construction regulations, while some workers have not signed a labor contract with the firm, according to Col. Kim.

The police department is coordinating with the provincial Department of Construction to further probe the case.

Excavators are used to help rescue the victims who are buried under debris after a wall collapsed at a construction site in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

Injured victims of a construction site accident are brought to the hospital for emergency treatment in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

Excavators are used to help rescue the victims who are buried under debris after a wall collapsed at a construction site in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

Excavators are used to help rescue the victims who are buried under debris after a wall collapsed at a construction site in Dong Nai Province, Vietnam, May 14, 2020. Photo: Son Dinh / Tuoi Tre

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Realme's first smartwatch and smart TV are arriving on May 25 with other accessories

A couple of days ago Realme announced that it will unveil eight new products on May 25 in China, with one of them being a gamer-centric smartphone dubbed Realme X50 Pro Player (Edition). Today, Realme's Indian branch announced that it will unveil the company's first smartwatch and smart TV on May 25, called Realme Watch and Realme TV, respectively.

The launch event will start at 12:30PM local time (7AM UTC) and will be streamed on Realme's official Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube channels.

Realme hasn't divulged any specifications of the Realme TV and Realme Watch yet, but the company did release a teaser video yesterday confirming the black color option for the smartwatch and an image posted on the official Indian site reveals it has a button on the right side with a yellow accent.

That said, a leak from last month revealed the Realme Watch will have at least four color options - Black, White, Yellow, and Blue.

The smartwatch will sport a square-shaped LCD measuring 1.4" diagonally and have a resolution of 320x320 pixel resolution. It will run a custom OS and pack a 160 mAh battery capable of offering seven-day endurance with 24-hour heart rate monitoring. You can head over here for more details.

The Realme TV, on the other hand, is expected to arrive in two sizes - 43" and 55" - and is rumored to run Android TV with Netflix support.

Realme in a press note sent to the media said that it will launch "other accessories" on May 25, which could be a new power bank, Buds Wireless Pro and Buds Air Neo TWS earphones.

Realme is also expected to unveil the Realme X3 and X3 SuperZoom smartphones on May 25. We should hear more about all these products as we inch closer to the May 25 event.
A Queensland nursing home has been placed into lockdown after a nurse tested positive for coronavirus.

The worker is understood to have had mild respiratory symptoms while carrying out her duties at the state-run North Rockhampton Nursing Centre, in central Queensland, from May 3.

As many as 180 staff work at the 115 bed facility, which is run for patients with special care needs and dementia.

The worker is understood to have had mild respiratory symptoms while carrying out her duties at the state-run North Rockhampton Nursing Centre, in central Queensland, from May 3

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young told media the incident was very concerning

Chief Health Officer Jeannette Young told media the incident was very concerning.

'We need to see whether there are any other cases that have occurred in Rockhampton as a result of this particular individual,' she said.

'Rockhampton has not had an active case for a number of weeks so this is brand-new.

'It's very, very concerning.'

The nurse had previously travelled to Brisbane and is believed to have picked up the virus during her visit.

'We are still confirming that but we believe she probably picked it up in Brisbane,' Dr Young said.

'She had a trip down to Brisbane during a period she would have picked up the infection the one we know she started to have symptoms.

'That is not confirmed yet but that is where we believe she picked it up.'

Health Minister Steven Miles pointed out it had been seven weeks since the last confirmed case of coronavirus at Rockhampton.

'It is an important lesson for everyone across the state, we don't know where the next case will happen,' he said.

The nurse had previously travelled to Brisbane and is believed to have picked up the virus during her visit (stock image)

'This just serves to underline that even after cities have long periods of time without active cases, things can turn very, very quickly.'

It brings the total number of people yet to recover from the virus in Queensland to 17.

Despite the latest case, Queensland remains on track to fully reopen all schools after next week.

'It does appear that everything is set to go for the 25th of May, when all schools will return,' Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk said.

She says Education Minister Grace Grace will provide a formal statement about that later in the day.

Queensland's oldest and youngest students returned to classrooms on Monday with all remaining grades to go back from May 25, all going to plan.

Queensland's oldest and youngest students returned to classrooms on Monday with all remaining grades to go back from May 25, all going to plan

It comes as authorities begin rolling back the social distancing measures that were imposed to control the spread of the virus.

From Saturday, public parks, playgrounds and barbecues will reopen as the state emerges from isolation.

Beauty salons will also be able to open to 10 clients at a time for some services.

Waxing, laser treatments, nail painting, eyelash extensions, facials and cosmetic injections are allowed, but clients will have to wait a little longer for spray tans and sauna treatments.

Road trips are also back on the agenda from Saturday with residents allowed to travel up to 150km from home, increasing to 500km for those in the outback.

From Saturday, up to 10 people will be able to gather outside at weddings, pools and for exercise.
UN mission denounces acts that put civilians in harms way and prevent people from accessing life-saving services.

Seventeen attacks have been recorded since January against health facilities in Tripoli and its suburbs, the scene of deadly fighting for over a year, the United Nations Support Mission in Libya has said.

There have been 17 attacks/shelling on health facilities in Libya since the start of this year, the mission said on Twitter on Friday, a day after the Tripoli Central Hospital was hit.

The oil-rich North African nation has been engulfed in chaos since 2011 when longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi was toppled in a NATO-backed uprising.

It is now split between two rival administrations: the UN-recognised Government of National Accord (GNA) led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, and the House of Representatives allied to renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA).

Haftars LNA has been trying to capture Tripoli from the GNA since April 2019, resulting in a stalemated conflict that has killed more than 1,000 people.

The GNA blamed the attacks on health facilities on forces loyal to Haftar, but a spokesman for the military commander denied the accusation.

GNA health ministry spokesman Amin al-Hashemi said the indiscriminate bombing of certain sectors of Tripoli partially damaged the HCT [central hospital], in particular, the buildings for communicable diseases and dermatology.

The UN mission decried all actions that put civilians in harms way and prevent people from accessing life-saving services.

Strikes against civilians and civilian infrastructure have been frequent since the start of Haftars Tripoli offensive, but have intensified in recent weeks after his forces lost ground to the GNA.

This month, at least 19 people  17 civilians and two police officers  have been killed and more than 66 civilians wounded as rockets rained down on Tripolis only working airport and several residential neighbourhoods.

In addition to the violence, most areas of the capital went without power for more than 36 hours from Wednesday due to a heatwave.

Tripoli suffers from a lack of electricity, particularly when demand peaks in the summer.
Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic

Sir Richard Branson's space company, Virgin Galactic, recently posted a job listing for two pilots to join its commercial spaceflight team.

Pilots flying for the company will initially be flying test missions for Virgin's aircraft but will eventually transition to space operations.

The job is based at Spaceport America in New Mexico with lots of opportunities to travel in the upper altitudes.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Ever wanted to be an astronaut but didn't know how to break into the highly competitive industry? Well, Sir Richard Branson's commercial spaceflight company, Virgin Galactic, just put out a job posting for two pilots to fly its space-bound aircraft and it's the next best thing to being a NASA astronaut.

The ambitious endeavor aims to eventually open up space for tourist travel, with seats on the Virgin-branded spaceship costing around $250,000. But while the passengers in the back will be paying through the nose for the opportunity, pilots with the "right stuff" will be getting paid to chart a new course.

While spaceflight missions are still potentially years away, the current day-to-day involves flying and assisting in the crafting of test missions for Virgin Galactic's two aircraft, SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo. The opportunity to take to space is, however, on the table as the job posting elaborates that the candidates will eventually be part of "commercial spaceflight operations," bringing passengers to the edge of space for a one-of-a-kind experience.

Taking the job would require relocation to Virgin's home base at Spaceport America near Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, right in the middle of nowhere in the vast American Southwest, with additional opportunities to travel for missions in Mojave, California.

Take a look at the requirements of what it takes to be a Virgin Galactic pilot.

Story continues

Be must be a US citizen or a protected US person.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic

The requirement to be a US citizen or other US person as defined by 22 CFR 120.15 is due to space technology regulations implemented by the US government. Lawful permanent residents as other protected US persons under 8 U.S.C. 1324b(a)(3) can also apply for the position.

Have an FAA Commercial Pilot's License and Class 1 medical.

Virgin Galactic's Spaceport America in New Mexico.

Virgin Galactic

Any pilot for higher must possess a Commercial Pilot's License that requires a minimum of 250 hours of flying. Class 1 medicals are also standard for any pilot flying for an airline and involve going through the most thorough examination performed by aviation medical examiners.

Have a degree in a related technical field.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

REUTERS/Luke MacGregor

Virgin Galactic doesn't specify what kind of degrees will suffice but fields related to aviation typically include engineering disciplines. Some commercial airlines also require either an associate or bachelor's degree for their pilots.

Be a graduate of a Society of Experimental Test Pilots-recognized test pilot course.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

GENE BLEVINS/reuters

Virgin Galactic pilots are constantly performing test flights with their unique aircraft that the candidates would be involved in flying. A recent flight test saw WhiteKnightTwo, named VMS Eve, drop SpaceShipTwo, named VSS Unity, from 50,000 feet above New Mexico to simulate a re-entry procedure.

The spacecraft glided from the altitude all the way down to Spaceport America, reaching speeds of Mach .70.

Have 2.5 years of test pilot experience following completion of a Society of Experimental Test Pilots-recognized program.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic

The requirement ensures that candidates for the position are comfortable and competent to perform test flight operations. Each test flight has its own risks as these are new, experimental aircraft and spaceflight is new territory for most pilots.

Have at least 3,000 flying hours.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

Virgin Galactic

The 3,000-hour mark is a typical requirement for pilots applying to most major airlines. Depending on the pilot, it can sometimes take years to fly that many hours, which is why it's a good indicator of experience.

Have operational experience in an aviation project or business.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic requires its pilots to be a part of various additional aspects of the business, not just flying the aircraft. Having prior experience being a part of a project or business helps achieve that goal.

Be able to clearly communicate aviation knowledge and safety information.

Virgin Galactic pilots.

Virgin Galactic

Spaceflight is a new venture and most, if not all Virgin Galactic customers will be first-time astronauts. As the ultimate authority on the aircraft, pilots will be tasked with customer relations and that includes answering questions, addressing concerns, exuding confidence, and easing fears.

Have experience in a role where you had the responsibility of authorizing and implementing policies and procedures.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

Virgin Galactic

Virgin Galactic pilots will be involved in creating new procedures and best practices for the aircraft during the test phase. Unlike a traditional pilot job, the pilots won't simply be told how to fly the plane but will need to learn how to fly it in the unique circumstances the spacecraft will be flying in.

Be a team player.

Virgin Galactic passengers.

Steven Counts for Virgin Galactic

Flying a spaceship isn't a one-man job, it requires hundreds of behind-the-scenes workers ensuring that everything goes smoothly. Crew resource management is also essential to every flight, not just those heading to space.

Meet the personal requirements.

The expected view from a Virgin Galactic flight.

Virgin Galactic

The Virgin Group and its subsidiaries have always been known to operate with a unique culture and in order to maintain that, Virgin Galactic outlines a few personal requirements that its pilots need to meet. They include the following:

Be motivated, enterprising and enthusiastic

Check your ego at the door

Be a self-starter and possess a sense of humility

Work well under pressure

Thrive under challenging circumstances

Communicate clearly

Be confident and persuasive

Maintain the highest level of integrity and confidentiality

This pilot gig is about to get more excited as Virgin Galactic has made some advancements recently to bring its mission closer to reality.

Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo.

Frederic J. Brown/AFP

Virgin Galactic recently announced a partnership with NASA to develop supersonic-capable vehicles to provide high-speed transportation. Ever since the famed Concorde disappeared from the skies, the desire to re-imagine supersonic transport aircraft has spurred development from multiple companies.

The duo will now work together to develop new technology aimed for civil use that could dramatically bring down travel times in commercial transportation.

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Mumbai, May 15 : Indian-American rapper-songwriter Raja Kumari has collaborated with EDM band Krewella and the DJ duo NERVO for the first time for the empowering anthem "Goddess".

"It's always been part of my DNA to work with other talented women and continue to create more spaces for us to shine. When Krewella and NERVO came to me with a song they produced called 'Goddess', there was no hesitation to hop on it. I hope everyone, male, female, non-binary, will continue to embrace their inner goddess," Raja said.

The track has been released on Thrive Music.

Sisters Olivia and Miriam Nervo, who make up NERVO, hope the track empowers people.

"We have been bumping shoulders at festivals with the Krewella babes for the past 6 years so it was so great to finally get in the studio together. The girls truly are incredible artists as well as such beautiful souls. We hope this track empowers other women to follow their intuition and run their lives like a Goddess," they said.

Talking about the song, Krewella said: "We wrote "Goddess" with Karra Madden, Nervo, and Raja Kumari, about the sense of empowerment that comes with recognising and honouring the goddess that exists within, and all around us. Whether in a state of silently going inward or manifesting her dreams in the material world, the presence of the goddess gives heartbeat to all aspects of life." "We produced the song out with our friends Cody Tarpley and Reid Stefan, and tapped into our Pakistani roots to honour the vision of Krewella blending east and west, with a bhangra-inspired beat and organic, tribal percussion," Krewella added.
WASHINGTON  President Donald Trump recently encouraged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to reconsider running for the U.S. Senate in Kansas but Pompeo rebuffed the request, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

Trump spoke to Pompeo about making a bid for the seat during a one-on-one meeting at the White House about two weeks ago, both people said, suggesting that Pompeo could definitely keep the seat for Republicans if he ran.

Trumps request underscores the growing nervousness among Republicans that they could lose control of the Senate in this falls election and that a once-safe Kansas seat could now be in play.

The president has received regular updates from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other political advisers about the worsening political landscape in the Senate, according to Trump advisers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The president is regularly presented polling data about competitive Senate races.

"It's a challenging environment. It has been consistently throughout this cycle. Just look at the numbers. That's the only conclusion intelligently to read from it," McConnell said to reporters this week.

Republicans are defending 23 of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this fall. They hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate.

Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department declined to comment.

As the calendar closes in on Kansas' June 1 primary-filing deadline, a person close to Pompeo said, the secretary is no longer considering running for the seat after weighing it for months last year. Officials say Pompeo, who served as a congressman from the Wichita area for six years before joining the Trump administration in 2017, wants to remain secretary of state out of a concern that he has unfinished business to complete.

The primary focus of his tenure has been dismantling the Iran nuclear deal struck during the Obama administration and a campaign of economic and military pressure against Tehran. Though he has claimed the administration's policies have made the Middle East "more peaceful," Iran's nuclear program has only grown more sophisticated following the U.S. withdrawal from the deal and violence against U.S. and coalition forces by Iranian-backed groups has increased.

McConnell has repeatedly tried to convince Pompeo to run for the seat, seeing him as the ideal candidate, according to people close to the majority leader. Trump was initially skeptical of the bid, seeing Pompeo as one of his most valuable and trustworthy member of his Cabinet. Some people close to McConnell were frustrated when Pompeo decided against the bid in January.

There are broader concerns among Republican strategists that the pandemic and Trump's response to the outbreak could make for a perilous political environment this fall for the GOP.

Trump's renewed interest in the Senate race probably reflects growing concern that a seat that is normally safely Republican could turn Democratic, said Kansas political observers. The seat is up for grabs following the decision by incumbent Sen. Pat Roberts, a Republican, to not seek reelection.

The party is worried that a Republican hard-liner who is pursuing the seat, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, may turn off moderate and independent voters, allowing for a rare Democratic victory. Kobach, who in 2018 lost the governor's race to Democrat Laura Kelly, is known for his anti-immigrant views and Trumpian braggadocio.

"If Kobach wins the nomination, Democrats are saying that they have a chance," said Russell Arben Fox, a political science professor at Friends University in Wichita. "Some Republicans are thinking this and they've been in touch with the president, and they've been telling him to encourage Pompeo to return home and run. He would easily beat the Democratic nominee whereas that's not a sure thing with Kobach."

Republican anxieties about losing the seat were reflected in two letters sent last month by the Kansas GOP chair Mike Kuckelman, who urged two Republican candidates to drop out of the primary in a widely interpreted effort to consolidate support behind a moderate alternative to Kobach.

"He's concerned that Kobach is so toxic that if he gets the nomination he won't actually win," said Fox, noting that party leaders believe that Rep. Roger Marshall, a more moderate Republican who represents western Kansas, has a better shot at clinching the seat.

Pompeo regularly visited Kansas in 2019 and was consulting with Ward Baker, a prominent GOP strategist close to McConnell. He had fueled speculation by creating personal social media accounts that regularly featured him with his family dog, cheering on sporting events and even drinking beer in his kitchen.
The World Bank on Friday approved USD 1 billion ''Accelerating Indias COVID-19 Social Protection Response Program'' to support the country''s efforts for providing social assistance to the poor and vulnerable households, severely impacted by the pandemic

New Delhi: The World Bank on Friday approved a $1 billion loan to support India's efforts for providing social assistance to the poor and vulnerable households, severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The "Accelerating India's COVID-19 Social Protection Response Program" will support the government's efforts towards a more consolidated delivery platform  accessible to both rural and urban populations across state boundaries.

This takes the total commitment from the World Bank towards emergency COVID-19 response in India to $2 billion.

A $1 billion support was announced last month towards immediate support to India's health sector.

The multilateral lending agency is also in discussions with the government to provide assistance to the country's micro, small and medium enterprises, said World Bank Country Director in India Junaid Ahmad in a webinar with media.

Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world has required governments to introduce social distancing and lockdowns in unprecedented ways, he said.

These measures, intended to slowdown the spread of the virus have, however, impacted economies and jobs  especially in the informal sector. India with the world's largest lockdown has not been an exception to this trend.

Click here to follow LIVE news and updates on stock markets

Of the $1 billion commitment, $550 million will be financed by a credit from the International Development Association (IDA)  the World Bank's concessionary lending arm and $200 million will be a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), with a final maturity of 18.5 years including a grace period of five years.

The remaining $250 million will be made available after 30 June, 2020.

The program will be implemented by the Union Ministry of Finance.

In a release, the World Bank said the new support will be funded in two phases  an immediate allocation of $750 million for the fiscal year 2020 (fiscal year starting 1 July, 2020) and a $250 million second tranche that will be made available for the fiscal year 2021.

Ahmad further said the COVID-19 pandemic has also put the spotlight on some of the gaps in the existing social protection systems.

This platform draws on the country's existing architecture of safety nets  the PDS, the digital and banking infrastructure, and Aadhaar  while positioning the overall social protection system for the needs of a 21st century India.

"What COVID-19 had done is that it has actually gotten the government to create linkages between the system and begin to move the social protection system of India, what I think will be the 21st-century system.

"It is in this context we have put in $1 billion following $1 billion in health and in anticipation of a third programme which will be around the small and small enterprises...," he said.

Ahmad futher said the World Bank was in the process of discussing a MSMEs programme with the government.

He said liquidity has come into the market through the monetary and fiscal policies and "the challenge now is to take that liquidity and bring it into the hands of the MSMEs... We will be coming in to support that. Where exactly and how much is something that we are in discussion with the government".

Replying to a query on the Rs 20-lakh-crore package announced by the government, Ahmad said it is a "very important statment by the government".

"In terms of emerging economies, India is the largest in terms of fiscal and monetary response... Absolutely important that the government made a statement in terms of direction and the fact that it is a big programme," he added.

On the latest $1 billion support, the World Bank said the first phase of the operation will be implemented countrywide through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY).

It will immediately help scale-up cash transfers and food benefits, using a core set of pre-existing national platforms and programs such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT); provide robust social protection for essential workers involved in COVID-19 relief efforts; and benefit vulnerable groups, particularly migrants and informal workers.

In the second phase, the program will deepen the social protection package, whereby additional cash and in-kind benefits based on local needs will be extended through state governments and portable social protection delivery systems, it added.

World Bank further said social protection is a critical investment since half of India's population earns less than $3 a day and are precariously close to the poverty line.

Over 90 percent of India's workforce is employed in the informal sector, without access to significant savings or workplace-based social protection benefits such as paid sick leave or social insurance.

As per the release, over 9 million migrants, who cross state borders to work each year, are also at greater risk as social assistance programs in India largely provide benefits to residents within states, without adequate portability of benefits across state boundaries.

Importantly, in urbanising India cities and towns will need targeted support as India's largest social protection programs are focused on rural populations.
Sixty-eight per cent of Ghana's COVID-19 cases are recorded through contact tracing, Mr Kojo Oppong Nkrumah, the Information Minister, revealed in Accra.



He said of the 5,530 cases count recorded; 3,787 (representing 68 per cent) were through enhanced contact tracing surveillance, while 1,628 (32 per cent) were through general surveillance (those who reported to health facilities).



Mr Oppong Nkrumah made the revelation during the meet the press series organised by the Ministry of Information, to give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.



The Minister said countries in Europe and the Americas, were reporting the general surveillance numbers; "that is people who had fallen sick and have come to the hospitals".



He reiterated that those countries were not doing enhanced tracing and testing like what Ghana was doing.



"That is why for example if you take today's numbers 5,530; if we were doing what everybody was doing, we will only be reporting 1,628, because that is a general surveillance numbers, that is those who have contacted the system to be tested," he said.



He said Ghana had about 3,787 people through enhanced contact tracing; that is people who had been exposed to the virus, and the surveillance team had gone to search for them.



"We have been deliberately spiking our curve, it is a different strategy, because we want to find it early and deal with it. In so doing the majority of the 3,787 from what they tell us are not sick, they don't have symptoms, but they have been exposed to the virus," Mr Oppong Nkrumah stated.



"So, if you are going to work a quick mathematics out of that 3,787 out of 5,530 at the back of the envelope, that is about 68 per cent. So Ghana's numbers 5,530 about 68 per cent of them are people that we went out to search for in the enhanced contact tracing," he said.



He said trying to compare Ghana's method of tracing the disease with other countries was like comparing oranges to apples.



Adding that Ghana's formula for tracing the COVID-19 virus was very different.

"If you didn't do enhanced contact tracing surveillance, they would have been in the community spreading (the disease).



So, that by the time today, you are reporting 1,628, which is what you would have been, if we were doing general surveillance. You have about 5,000 or extra of about 4,000 in the community that you don't know of, spreading it."



He explained that by the time they would have found 4,000 (infected persons), 16,000 would also be out there spreading the disease.



"That is the wisdom in Ghana's change in strategy to go for the enhanced contact and tracing. That we go out early, find these persons and give them the kind of support," he said.

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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DIDCOT, UK / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Altus Strategies Plc (TSXV:ALTS)(AIM:ALS), the Africa focused project and royalty generator, announces that the Company's Annual General Meeting ("AGM") will be held at 3.00 p.m. BST on Tuesday 16 June 2020 at the Company's registered office at The Orchard Centre, 14 Station Road, Didcot, Oxfordshire, OX11 7LL, United Kingdom.

The Notice of AGM, Annual Report & Accounts and Form of Proxy have been posted to all registered shareholders on 14 May 2020. These documents are also available on the Company's website at www.altus-strategies.com and under its profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

The Record Date for the Notice of Meeting, the Beneficial Ownership Determination Date and the Record Date for Voting (if applicable) is 05 May 2020.

The resolutions that will be proposed at the meeting are as follows.

1. Ordinary Business: Approval of Annual Report and Accounts

That the Company's annual accounts (financial statements) for the financial year ended 31 December 2019, together with the report of the directors of the Company ("the Directors") and the auditors' report on those accounts be received and adopted.

2. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

David Netherway

3. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

Steven Poulton

4. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

Matthew Grainger

5. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

Robert Milroy

6. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

Michael Winn

7. Ordinary Business: Election of Directors

Karim Nasr

8. Ordinary Business: Appointment of Auditors

That PKF Littlejohn LLP be reappointed as the Company's auditors.

9. Ordinary Business: Remuneration

That the Directors be authorised to determine the auditors' remuneration.

10. Ordinary Business: Confirmation of share options scheme

That the share options scheme first approved at the Company's 2019 AGM be re-confirmed, ratified and approved.

11. Ordinary Business: Allotment of securities

That the Directors be generally and unconditionally authorised, in accordance with section 551 of the Companies Act 2006 (the "2006 Act"), to exercise all the powers of the Company to allot Relevant Securities up to an aggregate nominal amount of 3,504,580.

12. Ordinary Business: Disapplication of pre-emption rights

That, subject to the passing of resolution 11, the Directors be and are hereby empowered, pursuant to section 570 of the 2006 Act, to allot equity securities (as defined by section 560 of the 2006 Act) for cash up to an aggregate nominal amount of 1,752,290.

As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and in compliance with the UK's mandatory measures to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 (the "Emergency Laws") the board of directors of the Company (the "Board") has altered the usual format of to the Meeting. The Emergency Laws prohibit individuals engaging in non-essential travel and public gatherings of more than two people, save where the gathering is essential for work purposes. Whilst the Company remains legally obliged to hold the Meeting, the Emergency Measures, if still in place at the time of the Meeting, will significantly restrict the Company's ability to follow the Company's usual annual general meeting format. To ensure Shareholders can comply with the Emergency Measures, if still in place, the Board recommends that Shareholders should not attend the Meeting in person. It is intended that the Meeting will be held with only the minimum number of Shareholders present as required to form a quorum under the Company's Articles of Association and who are essential for the business of the Meeting to be conducted. These attendees will be officers or employees of the Company. The results of the votes of the proposed resolutions will be announced in the normal way as soon as practicable after the conclusion of the Meeting.

Having regard to their own safety and that of others, Shareholders are respectfully asked to comply with the Emergency Measures and not to make plans to attend the Meeting. To ensure the safety or the limited number of people whose attendance is essential, the Board will not allow other Shareholders to have physical access to the Meeting on the day.

For further information you are invited to visit the Company's website www.altus-strategies.com or contact:

Altus Strategies Plc Steven Poulton, Chief Executive Tel: +44 (0) 1235 511 767 E: info@altus-strategies.com SP Angel (Nominated Adviser) Richard Morrison / Soltan Tagiev Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0470 SP Angel (Broker) Abigail Wayne / Richard Parlons Tel: +44 (0) 20 3470 0471 Blytheweigh (Financial PR) Tim Blythe / Camilla Horsfall Tel: +44 (0) 20 7138 3204

About Altus Strategies Plc

Altus is a London (AIM: ALS) and Toronto (TSX-V: ALTS) listed project and royalty generator in the mining sector with a focus on Africa. Our team creates value by making mineral discoveries across multiple licences. We enter joint ventures with respected groups and our partners earn interest in these discoveries by advancing them toward production. Project milestone payments we receive are reinvested to extend our portfolio, accelerating our growth. The portfolio model reduces risk as our interests are diversified by commodity and by country. The royalties generated from our portfolio of projects are designed to yield sustainable long-term income. We engage constructively with all our stakeholders, working diligently to minimise our environmental impact and to promote positive economic and social outcomes in the communities where we operate.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Certain information included in this Announcement, including information relating to future financial or operating performance and other statements that express the expectations of the Directors or estimates of future performance constitute "forward-looking statements". These statements address future events and conditions and, as such, involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the statements. Such factors include without limitation the completion of planned expenditures, the ability to complete exploration programmes on schedule and the success of exploration programmes. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the forward-looking information, which speak only as of the date of this Announcement and the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

Where the Company expresses or implies an expectation or belief as to future events or results, such expectation or belief is based on assumptions made in good faith and believed to have a reasonable basis. The forward-looking statements contained in this Announcement are made as at the date hereof and the Company assumes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking information or any forward-looking statements contained in any other announcements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required under applicable law or regulations.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Market Abuse Regulation Disclosure

Certain information contained in this announcement would have been deemed inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of Regulation (EU) No 596/2014 ("MAR") until the release of this announcement.

SOURCE: Altus Strategies PLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589951/Notice-of-Annual-General-Meeting
Host of The Platform political programme on Peace FM, Nana Yaw Kesseh has described as 'shameful', a statement issued by the Ghana Tourism Authority granting the hospitality industry permission to reopen for business.



The GTA on Wednesday issued directives, asking drinking bars to begin operation contrary to an earlier directive by the president that such businesses should remain closed.



The directives from the GTA were later reversed by the Tourism Ministry with a counter directive ordering drinking bars to remain closed.



Nana Yaw Kesseh, popularly known as the 'Cardinal' speaking on his show wondered why the GTA will issue such a statement contrary to the President's directive.



"Very shamefulthe President says drinking pubs are closed; even churches are closedas a government appointee, this is not the time to explore no one can tell me this letter is a mistake. Its about time people are held accountable for their actionsMinister, we want you to take action because it is one too many," he urged.



He further indicated that the second letter written by the Ministry of Tourism is an afterthought.





Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/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.

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The total number of COVID-19



cases in Karnataka breached 1,000 mark, with 45 people testing positive, the state health department said on Friday.

Total number of positive cases in the state stood at 1,032.

With 35 deaths and 476 discharges, there were 520 active coronavirus cases, the department said in its mid-day situation update.

The new cases include- 16 from Dakshina Kannada, 13 from Bengaluru Urban, five from Udapi, three each from Bidar and Hassan, two from Chitradurga, and one each from Kolar, Shivamogga and Bagalkote districts.

Twenty of them are with travel history to Dubai, four to Mumbai and three returned from Chennai. One patient has a history of severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) and another was from containment zone in Bidar.

Rest are all primary and secondary contacts of patients already tested positive, the bulletin said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Less than 10 percent of the population has been exposed to the coronavirus in the Paris region and the east of France, two key areas affected by Covid-19, according to a new study. President Emmanuel Macron has said the easing of lockdown is "on the right track", but researchers are warning of a second wave.

At the end of April, France's Institut Pasteur in Paris published its first estimation concerning the infection levels of the French population. It said around 5.7 percent would have been infected by the virus, or around 3.7 million people by 11 May, when lockdown measures were lifted.

The institute has revised its initial figure downwards to around 4.4 percent, or 2.8 million people, according to a new study published in the journal Science.

Researchers estimate that 9.9 percent of residents in the Ile-de-France region (including Paris) would have been contaminated by 11 May, and 9.1 percent in the Grand Est region, the two areas where the death toll has been the highest.

The low level of infections recorded is due to the effect of lockdown, which brought the transmission rate down from an average of 2.9 per person at the beginning of confinement to 0.67 at the end.

Simon Cauchemez, one of the authors of the study, says that as lockdown measures are gradually being lifted, it will not be surprising to see a resurgence of the virus.

They have already recommended that confinement measures should be extended until sufficient control measures are in place.

Second wave probable

"Based on all the figures we have, the epidemic will probably start up again, in the absence of control methods," he said.

The group of researchers involved in the study said that the level of group immunity is not high enough to avoid a second wave without vaccinations.

"Around 65 percent of the population would need to be immunised," they wrote, to ensure that the epidemic was under control.

Cauchemez said blood test results would provide them with extra data to fine tune their estimations.

Story continues

The death toll from Covid-19 in France has now reached over 27,000, with several new clusters forming in areas previously thought to be out of danger.

Although the numbers of people dying per day has dropped significantly, as with the number of patients in intensive care, health experts warn that the country must not let down its guard.

Is science at odds with politics?

President Emmanuel Macron says the country is "on the right track" when it comes to easing the strict lockdown measures, but that it is too early to celebrate a victory.

During a video meeting this week with key ministers, police chiefs and regional health directors, he noted that things were going smoothly since the first day of easing on 11 May.

"The philosophy we have adopted since the beginning of the crisis with the Prime Minister Edouard Philippe has been to constantly correct our actions if necessary," he said.

"We will continue to do this in the coming days and weeks, when it comes to these extremely different logistical challenges."
Bengaluru, May 15 : Karnataka is amending the law to enable its farmers to sell their crop for the best price even outside the APMCs, said Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa on Friday.

"The Karnataka Agricultural Produce Marketing Committees (APMCs) Act is being amended to empower millions of our farmers to sell their produce for the best price in the APMC yard or outside it," Yediyurappa told reporters here.

The state cabinet on Thursday decided to amend the APMC Act through an ordinance to lift restrictions on the sale of farm produce and allow farmers to sell their crop in the APMC yard or in private markets where they get the best price.

"The purpose of amending the law is to double the farmers' income as envisaged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The new law will enable our farmers to sell their produce to whoever gives him the best price at the APMC yard or outside it in a free market," asserted Yediyurappa.

Lakhs of farmers and growers of foodgrains, vegetables, fruits and flowers across the southern state suffered huge losses over the last 50 days, as they could not harvest or sell their produce due to the lockdown enforced suddenly on March 25 and extended twice till May 17 to contain the spread of coronavirus.

"The amended Act will benefit farmers in improving their income and reduce losses due to market fluctuations. Our intention is to protect farmers from volatile market trends. It will help farmers in doubling their income by 2022, as he wished by the Prime Minister," Yediyurappa reiterated.

The amendment will not dilute the powers or work of the APMCs, as all marketing activities will be monitored by the state APMC director.

Clarifying that his government was not removing the APMCs or the Act governing their activities, the chief minister said only two sections of the law were being amended to enable farmers sell their produce in markets where they get the maximum remuneration.

"The new law will stop exploitation of farmers by market forces, middlemen and commission agents and prevent them from selling their produce in distress when prices fall. They can sell their produce to those who pay them the highest price," pointed out Yediyurappa.

In this context, the chief minister announced that Rs 5,000 would be paid to each corn farmer to compensate for losses they suffered due to the lockdown and distress sales owing to excess production and supply.

"The state government has earmarked Rs 500 crore for compensating all corn farmers, including 50 per cent of them who sold their crop in distress to avoid it from perishing in the hot summer season," added Yediyurappa.
New Delhi: The telecom industry on Wednesday reiterated the demand for a refund of Rs 35,000 crore GST credit and pending payment of around Rs 20,000 crore dues owed by public sector firms to various operators, saying that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has assured to clear outstanding amounts of MSMEs in 45 days under the new stimulus measures.

"The Finance Minister's announcement is in line with the government's aim to provide the necessary impetus to economic growth and build a 'self-reliant' India. We welcome the announcement of all pending payments within 45 days from PSEs to the MSME sector.

"The telecom industry has unutilized GST input tax credit over Rs 35,000 crore for which the sector has repeatedly demanded a refund," COAI Director General Rajan S Mathews said in a statement.

A task force constituted under the finance ministry last month acknowledged stress in the telecom sector and said the Supreme Court judgement mandating companies to pay around Rs 1.35 lakh crore has placed some operators in a "precarious position" due to the short period of time in which they have to meet their liabilities.

The Cellular Operators Industry Association, which represents companies like Reliance Jio, Bharti Airtel, Vodafone Idea, etc, reiterated the demand for clearing pending payment by the state-run telecom firms, mainly BSNL.

"Moreover, the total outstanding from PSUs is approximately Rs 20,000 crore since long. We hope the Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, in the course of next few announcements would give similar relief to the sector that has immensely contributed to keeping the country connected during the last 25 years and has kept 1 billion people connected during the current lockdown situation," Mathews said.

The task force said the telecom sector is already reeling under the financial stress of Rs 7.7 lakh crore and the AGR liability is further going to add to uncertainty for some of the companies.

Telecom companies are jointly required to shelve out Rs 1.35 lakh crore as adjusted gross revenue dues to comply with an apex court order of 24 October, 2019.

Sitharaman on Tuesday announced the first set of relief for businesses as part of the relief package focussed on micro, small and medium businesses and will continue to issue guidelines for other sectors gradually.

Taiwan-based electronic chipset provider for telecom products Mediatek's Indian arm said that the government's 'Make in India' initiatives and the emphasis on self-reliance is commendable and the relief packages will help India's economy to overcome the negative effects of the lockdown.

"Technology-driven systems are one of the five key pillars of growth and will bolster the tech sector in its efforts to scale-up and support the economy. MediaTek is hopeful that these initiatives will further India's growth towards becoming a digital economy," Mediatek India managing director Anku Jain said.
IKLA/AINAZI BORDER CROSSING POINT, Estonia/Latvia (Reuters) - Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia opened their common borders at the stroke of midnight, creating the first travel bubble within the European Union in a bid to jump-start economies broken down by the coronavirus pandemic.

A dozen Estonian border guards removed all signs directing vehicles to stop at the border and huddled together at the roadside for cake and coffee.

We have the little celebration because the border is now open again, officer Martin Maestule told Reuters on Friday just after midnight as the first cars sped through on the regions reopened main road.

Citizens and residents of the three generally sparsely populated Baltic nations are now free to travel within the region, though anyone entering from outside must self-isolate for 14 days.

The Baltic Travel Bubble is an opportunity for businesses to reopen, and a glimmer of hope for the people that life is getting back to normal, Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said in a statement.

The Baltics opened up as the EU executive seeks to coax the 27 member states to reopen internal borders and restart wider travel, albeit with safety measures such as requiring people to wear face masks on planes.

New coronavirus infections in the three Baltic republics have slowed to a trickle with none reporting more than a dozen new cases on Thursday. Authorities have loosened lockdowns since late April.

The region has recorded fewer than 150 deaths from the disease - far below larger euro zone countries such as Italy, Spain, France or Germany.

The Baltic states are close partners, have a similar epidemiological situation and their economies are well integrated, so the free movement of people as well as goods is very important for the region, said Arnoldas Pranckevicius, the European Commission representative in Lithuania.

Opening the borders is up to the member states, and the European Commission expects them to talk to each other, to coordinate their actions and to not discriminate against nationals of other EU members.

Some 120 vehicles crossed the border between Latvia and Lithuania in first five hours of Friday, officials said.

We are driving to pick up our puppy - we will meet the new member of our family for a first time, Latvian Ervins Butkevics said as he crossed into Lithuania. Its a date!

Lithuanian and Estonian foreign ministers drove to Riga on Friday to sign a three-way memorandum on running the travel zone together.

No hands were shaken, the ministers sat almost 2 meters apart and signed three separate copies of the document, which foresees jointly opening the zone to countries where the virus has been dealt with.

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - the three poorest members of the euro zone - expect their economies to shrink by 7-8% this year, in line with the rest of the currency union. Lithuania has warned of a double digit drop if economies are not reopened by the summer.

Estonia has given an emergency loan of 100 million euros ($108 million) to Baltic Sea shipping firm Tallink, badly hit by the lockdowns, while Lithuania is setting up a state-run facility to support key companies if they do not survive the crisis.

The Baltic countries were quick to close their borders and impose lockdowns.

There is no reason to fear that opening the border will cause the spread of the virus, Estonian Interior Minister Mart Helme said.

Travel restrictions were eased between Finland and Estonia, as well as between Poland and Lithuania, this week but only for those on the move for business or education.

But neither Poland nor Finland is rushing join the full travel union with their Baltic neighbours, despite an invitation to do so.

Poland and Finland have also reported relatively low numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths.

We should look at not only the physically nearest countries, but also at distant countries with clearly low epidemiological situation - direct flights from them could be free of the quarantine, Estonian Foreign minister Urmas Reinsalu said.
The Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico announced recently it has approved a $185-million, temporary liquidity facility to aid the 78 municipalities of Puerto Rico compensate the "expected receipt of property tax revenue" because of the COVID-19 crisis.

The said facility, according to an online business news site, would be made by what's called in Spanish as CRIM or the "Commonwealth of Puerto Rico to the Municipal Revenue Collection Center, which pays remittances every month to the municipalities according to the property tax collection revenues.

Essentially, the said credit line would be available until July 31, 2020, and according to the tax collections, repayment is expected to be completed by end-November this year.

Tax Filing Extended

CRIM has also allowed the extension of tax filing due date, specifically the filing of personal property tax returns for the taxpayers to have cash flow relief due to the COVID-19 crisis according to a report.

In addition, the facility's liquidity will make it probable for CRIM to advance the regular monthly remittances to the municipalities from May to July this year, feasible.

Essentially, with the said facility, the Oversight Board, as well as the Puerto Rican government guarantee that the municipalities can continue to offer their essential services to the Puerto Ricans despite the emergency COVID-19 has brought.

The Board, according to its Executive Director, Natalie Jaresko, understands that since March this year, tax collections have dropped considerably as an outcome of gauges taken during the public health crisis.

Jaresko added they all know how vital municipalities are in Puerto Rico and the Board stays committed to helping find financially responsible ways to surpass the struggles municipalities are currently facing at present according to a report.

Moreover, the Oversight Board provided the draft of the agreement for liquidity facility, the legislative text and authorization to the Fiscal Agency and Financial Advisory Authority, and Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vazquez.

Meanwhile, the resolution that authorizes the use of the funds of the Commonwealth, according to Jaresko, needs the Puerto Rico Legislature's Approval and thus the Oversight Board is hoping that the facility will obtain its approval the soonest possible time to make it to the May 15 payroll.

Incidentally, a report from CBS News on May 12 said, Puerto Rico, is gradually rolling out plans to restart the economy two months after strict stay-at-home and lockdown orders.

Earlier-Announced COVID-19 Package

During the latter part of March, Puerto Rico announced a financial package amounting to $787 million to help improve the economic effect of COVID-19 in this US territory.

This said amount according to reports was bigger than any declared amount so far, by the US states. Relatively, Gov. Vazquez said, procedures would include a 90-day moratorium for commercial and personal loans, as well as other mortgages that would not impact people's credit standing.

Also, the governor announced ample bonuses that would include the ones amounting to between $2,000 and $4,000 for police, nurses, as well as the other emergency and health care workers.

Lastly, as part of this package earlier announced by Vazquez, she said that the territory's over 134,000 employees of the public sector would still be paid during the pandemic and that the government would be offering a $1,500 contribution for the small- and medium-sized companies with 50 employees or below that who are not qualified for the federal help.

$500 financial aid would also be given as support for the almost 170,000 workers who are self-employed in Puerto Rico.

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The city of Midland Health Department is currently conducting its investigation on four new confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Midland County, bringing the overall case count to 120.

The 117th confirmed case is a female in her 20s who was tested by Midland Health. She is currently self-isolating at home. The source of exposure is contact to known case.
On Sunday, March 15, the founders of the Ohio State student software company Helm were together working late into the night.

Earlier that evening, Jordan Davis 11, director of SMART Columbus, sent a tweet proposing a virtual hackathon to help fight the numerous challenges COVID-19 was presenting Columbus. The tweet caught the eye of Helm team members who dove head-first into a big idea.

We thought this is a way we can really help our community, said Kai McKinney, an industrial design major and Helm co-founder.

A lot of what we want to do with Helm is empower people to understand their own potential, the way they work and collaborate. Cant Stop Columbus was the perfect effort for that.

The Helm team includes juniors McKinney, Tommy Hillyer, a mathematics major, Austin Drabik-Weingard, a finance major, Brad Browning, a history major, and physics alumnus Will Matz 19. Within hours of Davis tweet, Helm members had created a proposal for Cant Stop Columbus that offered its web-based project sharing platform for the ideas that would be developed, creating a Slack channel for group communication and other structural elements..

It wasnt exactly a fire drill, though. In fact, Helms members are comfortable developing solutions quickly as regular participants in hackathons like HackOHI/O, and make-a-thons, such as MakeOHI/O. They also won 2019 Ohio State competitions such as the Fisher College of Business BOSS competition (Best of Student Startups) and the Business Builders Idea Pitch Competition.

Weve been really involved in Ohio States hackathons, but there was so much energy it felt like it could be bigger than that, Drabik-Weingard said. We outlined our proposal and messaged Jordan. It just took off from there. There hasnt been a lot of sleeping since it started.

The next day, about 150 volunteers had joined the Slack channel Helm created. Within 72 hours, it was up to 500 volunteers. Cant Stop Columbus now has more than 1,474 volunteers dedicating their time to 45 active projects.

MORE ON CAN'T STOP COLUMBUS

A unifying moment, a lasting movement

A movement to equip front-liners with PPE

Those projects are delivering personal protective equipment to front-line workers, feeding those experiencing food insecurity, supporting small businesses and even addressing mental and emotional health issues. These are just a small part of the many projects that are dedicated to solving problems created by COVID-19.

Helm members continue to work on various Cant Stop Columbus projects. McKinney has recently been working with Ohio States Julia Armstrong, program director of HackOHI/O, for a Cant Stop U.S. toolkit that helps other cities model their own programs after Columbus. Dayton has created one while cities like Austin, Boston and Cincinnati have expressed interest.

Its been humbling to be part of this, McKinney said. A lot of people from our community have dedicated their entire skillset and time to doing something that might not benefit them, but its helping other people and thats remarkable.

If you would like to volunteer for Cant Stop Columbus, you can sign up at its website. The teams website also offers many resources for those in need due to the challenges brought by COVID-19.

Published: April 30, 2020
When the facts dont tell the whole story, we need more of them.

One truth is that the city has engaged in a robust police reform program driven by Mayor Joe Hogsett, the city-county council President Vop Osili, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department (IMPD) leadership and community organizations.

From community conversations helping citizens speak their truth, implicit bias trainings, reviewing and updating use of force policies, the creation of an IMPD Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the appointment of a majority person of color merit board, placing body cameras in the city-county budget, increased racial diversity in the merit ranks, some historically diverse IMPD recruit classes, a searchable database for police complaints and posting of general orders  you could be forgiven for not knowing all of the changes that have happened within IMPD.

In fact, the long sought after use of force board with full citizen participation was just announced this week.

But theres still work to do.

The body cameras are late in implementation and current state law does not allow for the transparency the community wants  we wont be able to see the videos in a timely fashion.

There is a world of difference between monitoring an investigation and a multi-agency investigation. (Hint: It is fundamentally different for the FBI or state police to announce they found a gun on a deceased victim at the scene of an IMPD involved fatal shooting versus IMPD saying it.)

What hasnt yet occurred includes the review of the Citizens Police Complaint Board process and bringing back the Indianapolis Commission on African American Males. It should not take another tragedy for these long sought after actions to occur.

Despite these reforms, police action shootings did not go away, although available data suggests they declined by 95% over six years.

In 2014, there were 42 incidents when an IMPD officer discharged their weapon. Since 2014 there have been 124 incidents with twice as many Black victims (81) as white victims (40). The vast majority of the 124 incidents since 2014 did not result in death.

But between 2018 and 2019 there were five incidents  five in two years.

Some might argue that a 95% decrease in police shootings in six years is impressive  but thats not all of the data.

Each incident is exponentially more than a data point  too often there is a story of a devastated Black family.

Community activists and leaders should note the progress, but when a police officer takes a life our community is understandably concerned  even outraged that we dont get the benefit of the doubt.

There is also the trauma of nearly constant tragic death in our community.

Losing Black young lives, whether it is 8-year-old Rodgerick Payne Jr and 16-year-old Nya Cope to community violence is traumatic. Im fundamentally concerned about Black people dying  I want us talking about community reforms like we talk about police reforms, especially when we lose young people.

But there is also a sense that when young Black males like Dreasjon Reed and McHale Rose lose their lives and police are involved, past injustices compel us to not trust the presented why.

Collectively, we havent forgotten Michael Taylor and Aaron Baileys death and the reforms that did and didnt happen looms large now.

Plus, we already work so hard trying to tell our Black males what to do in police interactions.

Tragically, both Reed and Rose made decisions that we tell our young Black men not to make  because too often Black men cant tell their side of the story when an officer fears for his life.

We are aware of the unforgiving rules Black males face that white males do not.

This too is a trauma. I witnessed some of the last moments of both young men and I wanted both of them out of those situations.

I wont judge them for the social media posts or even their penultimate moments. No one deserves to be judged in their worst moments.

Running from the police by itself may be a crime, but the rules cant be Black males face the possibility of death with white males enjoying impunity.

But as the brother of a police officer, I know officers want to go home too.

At some point, a set of facts will emerge and matter. As a community, we need to wait for all of the facts.

Wait for the investigation, support the family as they ask questions. Wait for the facts.

What I am hearing 

Protests are the language of the unheard, but the egos and tactical mistakes have made it difficult for the community to be heard in the protests.

Local grassroots leaders have fought each other and by multiple accounts dont seem to have a plan.

There is also concern that individuals from outside of the community have hi-jacked gatherings potentially putting women and possibly children at risk.

Protests can be an effective tool. My hope is that egos can be set aside for the good of the community. I also hope we continue finding ways to protect ourselves from COVID-19 even as we seek the facts.

Marshawn Wolley is a lecturer, commentator, business owner and civic entrepreneur. Contact him at marshawnwolley@gmail.com.
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Congressional Medal of Honor Society regretfully announces that Ronald J. Shurer II, Medal of Honor recipient, passed away Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Washington, DC, at the age of 41.

Shurer was a Staff Sergeant and Special Force Medic on April 6, 2008, assigned to Combined Joint Special Operations Task Force  Afghanistan, Operational Detachment Alpha 3336 (ODA-3336), 3d Special Forces Group (Airborne), Special Operations Task Force 33, when his unit came under heavy attack on the slopes of the Shok Valley, Nuristan Province, Afghanistan. In the battle that followed, Shurer repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire, including snipers and grenades, to retrieve and treat wounded comrades. He then devised a method using nylon netting for lowering the wounded down the steep sides of the valley to a medical evacuation point. At times using his own body to shield casualties from debris and enemy fire, Shurer oversaw the loading of the medical helicopters. He then rejoined the fight and continued to lead the remainder of his unit.

For his valor that day, Shurer was originally presented with the Silver Star. However, upon later review, the Army upgraded that award to the Medal of Honor in a ceremony at the White House on October 1, 2018.

Shurer was born in Fairbanks, Alaska, on December 7, 1978. He graduated from high school in Washington and received his Bachelor's degree from Washington State University. Motivated to join the U.S. Army following the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, he was assigned to a medical support command before volunteering for the Special Forces. In his assignment with the 3d Special Forces, Shurer deployed twice to Afghanistan between 2006 and 2008. Following his Army service, Shurer joined the U.S. Secret Service.

He is survived by his wife, two sons, and numerous other family. Burial arrangements are pending at this time.

There are 69 recipients alive today.

About the Congressional Medal of Honor Society

The Congressional Medal of Honor Society was chartered by Congress in 1958 and consists exclusively of the living recipients of our nation's highest award for bravery in combat, the Medal of Honor. Those who wear this light blue ribbon and Medal around their neck are "recipients" of this prestigious award; they are not "winners." Although it is common to refer to the Medal as the Congressional Medal of Honor, it is simply named the Medal of Honor, although, as stated, the Congress did establish the Society as the Congressional Medal of Honor Society.

Contact: John Falkenbury

704-904-0108

[email protected]

SOURCE Congressional Medal of Honor Society
Realty firm Mahindra Lifespace Developers on Friday said it has appointed Arvind Subramanian as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company with effect from July 1.

The board approved the decision in its meeting on Thursday.

He will succeed Sangeeta Prasad who resigned on February 7 this year. She had worked with the Mahindra group for over 11 years.

Arvind joined the company as Chief Executive Officer of Mahindra Happinest, the affordable housing business, in September 2018.

Arun Nanda, Chairman, Mahindra Lifespaces Developers said, the company is poised for strong growth in a rapidly consolidating market. At Happinest, Subramanian has demonstrated his ability to imagine and engineer a new future for the sector, for the company and for our customers.

Subramanian has over 23 years of experience, starting his professional career with the Tata Administrative Service, the central management cadre of the Tata Group.

He spent close to 15 years with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he was a Partner and Managing Director.

Prior to joining the Mahindra Group, Subramanian was Regional CEO at a leading real estate developer. He holds an MBA degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a BTech degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras.

Established in 1994, Mahindra Lifespace Developers is the real estate and infrastructure development business of the USD 20.7 billion Mahindra Group.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Educational institutions across the country need to look for economic independence and not depend solely on government funds, said Nitin Gadkari, Union Minister for Road Transport & highways and micro, small and medium enterprises.



#LiveNow Interaction with members of FICCI Higher Education Committee https://t.co/gg2YoGd57V

 Nitin Gadkari (@nitin_gadkari) May 15, 2020

Speaking at a webinar organised with the FICCI Higher Education Committee, Gadkari said institutes must look at ways like foreign investments, joint ventures with foreign institutes as well as closer partnerships with industry bodies.

The minister cited the recent Coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis to state that institutes must look at ways to partner with industry and the government to make their operations more sustainable.

"We cannot create world-class educational institutions with sole dependence on government funds. Institutes must be self reliant and must look for ways to make the process of education more viable. The way a new industry/company looks for viability of business while starting up, the same should apply for educational institutes as well," he added.

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

In Budget 2020, the government increased the allocation for the education sector by 5 percent to Rs 99,311.52 crore in FY21.

Of this, the department of higher education has been allocated Rs 39,466.52 crore while the school education and literacy department was given Rs 59,845 crore.

Work on projects with government, industry

Gadkari said that institutes could work on special projects with companies and the government, without compromising on quality education.

For instance, he explained that his ministry would be open to such projects with engineering institutes.

Citing road accidents in India that cause 1,50,000 deaths every year, he said that engineering institutes like the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) could work with the government bodies to do road audits.

"I will be able to offer these roles to about 5,000 engineering schools. Students from these institutes can do audits to study the traffic density and accident blackspots where they could be paid stipends. Through this, the government will benefit and students also get practical work experience," he added.

Similarly, Gadkari said that the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) could be able to help local engineering students to get practical training by taking them for projects by paying a stipend.

As far as foreign tie-ups are concerned, the minister said that educational institutes in India must aspire for world-class infrastructure/technology through having joint venture partnerships with global institutes. Permissible foreign investment could also be taken, he added.

"Rather than letting bright students from India go to other parts of the world to study, institutes must upgrade to world-class standards. This will not only encourage students to stay back in India for higher education but also attract international students," he added.

At a time when COVID-19 pandemic has affected India, Gadkari said that institutes must work towards ensuring that their sustainability of operations is not threatened.

"Both state governments as well as banks are constrained as far as funding is concerned. Hence, institutes need to work out ways to stay in operations but looking at innovative collaborations," said Gadkari.
Residents inspect damage to their homes caused by Typhoon Vongfong in San Policarpo, Philippines, May 15, 2020.

Updated at 2:54 p.m. ET on 2020-05-15

Typhoon Vongfong ravaged areas in the Philippines eastern seaboard on Friday, dumping heavy rain, toppling trees and blowing roofs from buildings as it churned its way toward the countrys heavily populated island of Luzon, officials said.

The countrys state weather bureau said that as of late Friday afternoon, the typhoon had made landfall over six areas in the central Philippines and the edge of Luzon island. By Friday night, Vongfong had been downgraded to a severe tropical storm.

Tens of thousands of people displaced by the storm packed into evacuation sites where officials struggled to implement strict social distancing measures because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mark Timbal, spokesman of the Civil Defense Office in Manila, said disaster risk managers had to give particular attention to strict quarantine measures during the evacuation.

Our evacuees left their houses wearing masks, our personnel in charge of evacuation were wearing PPEs and also observing social distancing measures, he said, referring to personal protective equipment.

As the storm continued on a northward track, it was likely to bring rain over the extreme northern regions of Ilocos and the Cordilleras Saturday.

Luzon is home to about 60 million people who are in various stages of lockdown imposed by the government to combat the coronavirus spread. Disaster relief officials have expressed concern over housing evacuees in cramped evacuation sites where social distancing rules would likely not be followed.

Market goers fill a rain-soaked street at the Blumentritt Markey in Manila, May 15, 2020. [Jojo Rinoza/BenarNews]

In the eastern Bicol region, where the storm made a landfall Thursday night, more than 61,000 families sought refuge in 2,332 evacuation shelters, according to regional police spokeswoman Maj. Malu Calubaquib.

In the Samar region, Vongfong left a trail of destruction, leaving two people injured and forcing 13,000 people to evacuate. At least one villager died during the storm, the Associated Press quoted the governor of Eastern Samar province as saying.

Several structures have been damaged, mostly houses made of light materials, and fishing boats. As to the exact numbers, we are still assessing to determine the extent of damage caused by the typhoon, said Col. Ma. Bella Rentuaya, a regional police spokeswoman.

Presidential spokesman Harry Roque urged people to be vigilant and coordinate with the government wary of a spike in COVID-19 numbers.

As of Friday afternoon, the health department reported 16 new COVID-19 deaths, bringing the total to 806. It also reported 215 new cases, with the total now standing at 12,091.

Globally, more than 4.4 million people have been infected by COVID-19 and more than 302,000 have died as of Friday, according to data compiled by disease experts at U.S.-based Johns Hopkins University.

We ask the public, especially those who will be hit by Typhoon Ambo, to remain vigilant and to cooperate with authorities as they implement their disaster preparedness and response to ensure everyone's safety, Roque said in a statement, using the local name for Vongfong. All concerned agencies are alert and on a standby.

Alberto Muyot, head of Save the Children in the Philippines, said children and new mothers remained the most vulnerable at the evacuation sites.

We urge the authorities in the provinces of Bicol and Eastern Samar to prioritize children and their families in already vulnerable communities, who are likely to suffer most from the devastation caused by Typhoon Vongfong, he said.

Fernando Hicap, head of a fishermens group called Pamalakaya, said the typhoon had displaced many fishermen and farmers along the coasts of Samar, Southern Luzon and Bicol region to the east.

He appealed to authorities to include personal protective equipment to evacuees because evacuation centers could petri dishes for the virus.

The Philippines sits on a typhoon belt and endures up to 20 storms a year, some of them devastating and deadly.

In November 2013, more than 6,000 people were killed or missing when Super Typhoon Haiyan slammed into the central Philippines.

Nonoy Espina contributed to this report from Bacolod City, central Philippines.
WASHINGTON -- Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) is devastated by the loss of two colleagues who died last night in a car crash in Belarus that critically injured a third, who were on their way home from a video shoot related to the coronavirus pandemic.

Vladimir Mikhailovski, age 33, was a director and Maksim Gavrilenko, age 26, was the sound engineer for a film crew working for RFE/RLs Current Time network in Belarus. Lyubov Zemtsova, age 28 and currently in intensive care in a hospital in Minsk, is a well-known Belarusian documentary filmmaker who led the crew.

This is the worst possible news, said RFE/RL President Jamie Fly. These young filmmakers were brilliant, talented and inspiring people, and part of a new initiative we launched to bring the best stories from Belarus to audiences that know little or nothing about the countrys people. They imbued their work with a spirit of freshness and hope that we all felt. The loss of Vladimir and Maksim is devastating, and we mourn them with their families. Yesterday was Lyubovs birthday. All of us at RFE/RL are hoping and praying that she will be able to recover.

Kenan Aliyev, features editor for Current Time who commissioned the team, said, These people -- this project -- were full of promise. They were brave, they were intelligent and creative, and so committed to this unique project for Belarus. We are absolutely devastated.

The filmmakers were returning to Minsk, Belaruss capital city, from a video shoot in the southeastern city of Homel, where they were gathering material for a program about the volunteers who are assisting medical workers responding to the coronavirus pandemic. Lyubovs mother told Current Time that the team was at the hospital, from 5:00 a.m., all dayThey carried out an important mission and filmed it all.

Belarus has downplayed the pandemic, even staging a parade as recently as May 9 that drew thousands of people to central Minsk to mark the anniversary of the end of World War II.

The shoot at the Homel hospital was planned for an episode for a new series, Unknown Belarus, produced by the Current Time network to focus on human rights and human stories, Aliyev said. The series was launched in February, and previous episodes reported on workers at the main market in Minsk, the state-run allocation program that dispatches university graduates to work around the country, and domestic violence.

Mikhailovski and Zemtsova had collaborated on previous projects. Zemtsova is a graduate of Warsaws Waida School Doc Pro, whose films have been screened at the Astra Film Festival, ArtDocFest, and Watch Docs Belarus.

Current Time is a 24/7 Russian-language digital and TV network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. In addition to reporting uncensored news, it is the largest provider of independent, Russian-language films to its audiences. In the 12-month period ending in September 2019, Current Time videos were viewed more than 740 million times across digital platforms.

About RFE/RL

RFE/RL relies on its networks of local reporters to provide accurate news and information to more than 37 million people in 27 languages and 23 countries where media freedom is restricted, or where a professional press has not fully developed. Its videos were viewed over 3.6 billion times on Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram/IGTV in FY2019. RFE/RL is an editorially independent media company funded by a grant from the U.S. Congress through the U.S. Agency for Global Media.

----

FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:

Joanna Levison in Prague (levisonj@rferl.org, +420.221.122.080)

Martins Zvaners in Washington (zvanersm@rferl.org, +1.202.457.6948)
Sarah MacDiarmid, 23, was last seen walking through the car park of Kananook train station in south-east Melbourne in July 1990. An inquest ruled her death as a result of foul play

The parents of a young woman who vanished 30 years have refused to give up hope of finding out what happened to her - as a fresh new lead emerged into her disappearance from a suburban train station.

Sarah MacDiarmid, 23, was last seen walking through the car park of Kananook train station near her home in Frankston, south-east Melbourne on the evening of July 11, 1990.

The Scottish-Australian woman's blood was found near her car after her parents reported her missing the next day - with forensic detectives believing she was murdered.

Police also found drag marks leading into nearby bushes.

A 1996 inquest ruled her death a result of foul play and that she was killed by an unknown person or people about 10.20pm that evening.

Her parents Peter and Sheila MacDiarmid are hoping the 30th anniversary of her disappearance can provide fresh leads and give some sense of closure following an ordeal which 'turned their lives upside down'.

A former Frankston resident who scoured the area on his bicycle in search of clues in 2004 told Daily Mail Australia he had found what appeared to be two shallow graves in a bush reserve off McClelland Drive in the suburb's east.

Scroll down for video

Her parents Peter and Sheila MacDiarmid have refused to give up hope of solving the three-decades old cold case

The 23-year-old's car was found in the Kananook train station car park (pictured right at the time of her disappearance) after her parents reported her missing - with her blood found nearby and drag marks leading into the bushes

The resident, who did not wish to be named, claimed the grass had been cut short above the two small sections of bushland.

He had been inspired to investigate the disappearance after a TV series called Sensing Murder aired that year and suggested the unproven theory her body had been discarded on a rubbish dump on McClelland Drive.

'I phoned Frankston Police and said I've found what could be two shallow graves but they refused to investigate because they wanted me to dig it up first,' he claimed.

'I didnt want to do that because it might incriminate myself.'

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Victoria Police for comment.

Peter MacDiarmid said while multiple theories about his daughter's fate had been offered in the three decades since 1990, he and his wife would never turn down information which could solve the case.

Pictured: Ms MacDiarmid. A former Frankston resident has claimed to have found a fresh lead in the search for clues into her disappearance

'I don't think police are much the wiser about the case at the moment - but the more publicity and the more help we can get the better,' he said.

He added the pain of her disappearance had never gone away and continued to drive the family to find answers.

'Some days you're on an even keel, but on others you'll think about it or be hearing something on TV about a family who have lost a loved one and it really hits you that your whole life has been turned upside down,' he said.

Police say they are continuing to investigate Ms MacDiarmid's disappearance and are pursuing active lines of inquiry.

A $1million reward is also still available for those who can assist the investigation.

'When new information comes through, it stirs up the emotions,' her father said. 'Who knows what will turn up - but you have to look at it.'

Four-time killer Bandali Debs, who murdered two police officers in 1998, was named in 2014 as a suspect in the disappearance of Ms MacDiarmid

Serial killer Paul Denyer and cop killer Bandali Debs have both emerged as suspects in the case but no-one has been charged over her disappearance.

Debs was convicted of murdering Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rod Miller in Melbourne in 1998.
Romantic poets may be better known for their sensitive souls than sporting prowess.

But a new book says this is wrong and Wordsworth, Keats and Coleridge were tough, outdoorsy types.

Its author, Simon Bainbridge, professor of romantic studies at Lancaster University, said: The poets were pioneer mountaineers who went to the strain and effort of climbing mountains for the reward it brings them.

The starting point is Samuel Taylor Coleridge, author of Kublai Khan and the Rime of the Ancient Mariner.

Wordsworth (above) scaled Helvellyn, also in the Lake District, at the age of 70 and Keats was one of the first up Ben Nevis in Scotland

He makes the first recorded use of the term mountaineer. But it goes beyond that, they were creating a new activity. They were very keen to prove their hardiness, and the male poets are very keen to prove their masculinity.

The conquest of Scafell Pike by Coleridge, pictured, in 1802 is acknowledged to be Britains first recorded rock climb.

Wordsworth scaled Helvellyn, also in the Lake District, at the age of 70 and Keats was one of the first up Ben Nevis in Scotland.

Mountaineering and British Romanticism is published by the Oxford University Press.
The parents of a Guatemalan woman who was fatally shot in the head in the City of Rio Bravo about two years ago have filed a lawsuit.

Gilberto Gomez Vicente and Lidia Gonzalez Vasquez are filing on behalf of their daughter, Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, against the United States, U.S. Border Patrol Agent Romualdo Barrera and about 20 other agents only identified as Does.

Barrera is believed to be the agent who shot Gomez Gonzalez in the head next to a home in Rio Bravo, according to court documents.

The Associated Press reported that The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas filed the lawsuit one year after filing a $100 million federal claim on the familys behalf.

This civil rights action seeks damages against the United States for common law battery, negligence, gross negligence, and reckless conduct pursuant to the Federal Tort Claims Act, and against the agent who killed Claudia pursuant to the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the United States Constitution and, in the alternative, for common law battery, states the affidavit.

Court Records described Gomez Gonzalez as a defenseless and unarmed twenty-year old woman who posed no threat whatsoever to the agent, or anyone else. Her killing was unjustified and unlawful, and an affront to the basic standards we expect government agents to abide by in a free country.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released a statement regarding the lawsuit.

As a matter of policy, CBP does not comment on pending litigation. However, lack of comment should not be construed as agreement or stipulation with any of the allegations, a CBP official said.

The incident unfolded shortly after noon on May 23, 2018. Gomez Gonzalez was traveling along Centeno Lane with a few other people who had allegedly entered the country illegally.

An agent came in contact with Gomez Gonzalez and the other immigrants in the corner of a private, residential, fenced-in lot with overgrown weeds and brush.

On information and belief, that agent was Defendant Barrera, and if it was not Defendant Barrera, it was one of Defendants Does 1-20, states the affidavit.

Two people ran to the river, which was about 1/3 of a mile away. Two other immigrants ran toward an abandoned mobile located about two lots away. Gomez Gonzalez and another immigrant stayed in the vacant lot.

The Agent drew his weapon. When Claudia took a step, the Agent aimed at her, pulled the trigger, and shot her in the head. Claudia fell to the ground, face down. Agent Barrera then chased the two men who hid in the mobile home. Soon, other Border Patrol agents arrived at the scene, states the affidavit.

A local resident heard the gunshot and began recording with her cellphone.

At this point, another Border Patrol agent stood over Claudias body. He attempted to turn her over, revealing blood across one side of her face. As Claudia lay dying, she opened her mouth and gasped for air. It took her at least several minutes to die, the lawsuit alleges.

Court documents state that she did not pose a threat and described her as a petite woman of small build. She was unarmed. The group she was with did not create any threat of danger to the agent or anyone else, according to court documents.

CBP then issued a news release saying that some immigrants within the group had used blunt objects to attack the agent, and that Gomez Gonzalez was one of the assailants, states the affidavit.

CBP later retracted that statement and issued a new statement  which did not include any reference to blunt objects, and which also did not include any allegations that Claudia had assaulted the Agent. Upon information and belief, the reason why CBP retracted the statement and issued the new statement was because it had determined that the Agents claims that he was assaulted were not credible, according to court documents.
Maharashtra has reported 17,026, or over 60%, of the total coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positive cases in the state between May 1 and 14, the state health and family welfare department data showed.

The trend is likely to lead to the imposition of lockdown 4.0, as the state government is in its favour after the ongoing restrictions lapse on Sunday.

However, it waiting for the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) guidelines.

The Covid-19 positive cases in the state, which has topped the country, have increased from 10,498 on April 30 to 27,524 on May 14, or a 61.85% spike.

While the number of Covid-19 related death rose from 459 to 1,019 during the same period, the data showed.

On Thursday, Maharashtra recorded the highest single-day spike in Covid-19 positive cases at 1,602 new cases, as compared to 10,201 reported in all of April.

Mumbai, the epicentre of Covid-19 positive cases in the country, has recorded 57.81% (9,677 cases) of the total cases in the state between May 1 and 14.

The Covid-19 related deaths in the city have gone up from 290 to 621 during this corresponding period.

However, state government officials have ruled out community transmission and allayed apprehensions about an exponential rise in new infections.

The number of Covid-19 positive cases are rising, but they cannot be called exponential growth. If the number of fresh cases doubles on a daily basis, then it can be called exponential growth. Besides, it hasnt reached the community transmission stage as that happens only when exponential growth occurs, said Dr Tatyarao Lahane, director, Directorate of Medical Education and Research (DMER).

On Friday, the state government is likely to send a report to the Centre, urging an extension of the lockdown restrictions till May 31.

On Thursday, chief minister Uddhav Thackeray held a meeting with his cabinet ministers to discuss the Covid-19 situation in the state and the measures that need to be implemented to contain the spread of the viral outbreak. A consensus was arrived at that the lockdown 4:0 needs to be clamped from May 18, especially in red zones such as the Mumbai and Pune Metropolitan Regions, Malegaon and Solapur, according to a state minister, who was present at the meeting.

The CM has spoken to all the district and divisional collectors. The government expects the Centre to relax some restrictions even in red zones, said an official.

The Centre is expected to ease the restrictions for industrial and commercial activities, but the state government has the power to enforce stricter norms in urban areas that have emerged as hotspots, the official added.

The state health department authorities have conducted 2,40,145 tests at various public and private facilities. Of them, 2,12,621 people tested negative.

At present, Maharashtra has 1,512 active containment zones. A total of 14,253 survey teams, comprising doctors and paramedical staff, have screened over 59.04 lakh people.

The states mortality rate has come down to 3.76% (975 deaths) on Wednesday, from 7.41% (148 cases) on April 13. However, it continues to be higher than the national mortality rate of 3.27% (2,549 deaths) till Wednesday, data showed.
NASA has unveiled a series of principles to govern the behavior of countries participating in the 2024 moon mission.

Called Artemis Accords, the space agency will require partners to sign the doctrine that focuses on creating a 'safe and prosperous future' between nations in a new era for space exploration.

The agreement includes 10 basic norms such as work transparency, properly disposing debris and providing assistance to astronauts in danger during a mission.

NASA also notes that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is still in effect, but the new Artemis Accords builds on the legal framework to help bolster a peaceful relationship on the moon and beyond.

Parts of the proposal leaked earlier this month and some nations perceived it as the US attempting to regulate exploration to the moon - Russia compared the 'invasion' to that of Americans infiltrating Afghanistan or Iraq.

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NASA has unveiled a series of principles to govern the behavior of countries participating in the 2024 moon mission. The American space agency announced the agreem

'While NASA is leading the Artemis program, international partnerships will play a key role in achieving a sustainable and robust presence on the moon while preparing to conduct a historic human mission to Mars,' NASA shared in the announcement.

'With numerous countries and private sector players conducting missions and operations in cislunar space, it's critical to establish a common set of principles to govern the civil exploration and use of outer space.'

The Outer Space Treaty of 1967 includes 17 principles that were created to ensure fairness and peaceful relationships at a time when humans were first exploring the final frontier.

It 'bans the stationing of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in outer space, prohibits military activities on celestial bodies, and details legally binding rules governing the peaceful exploration and use of space.'

Called Artemis Accords, the space agency will require partners to sign the doctrine that focuses on creating a 'safe and prosperous future' between nations in a new era for space exploration as NASA gears up to travel to the moon (artist impression)

Approximately 105 countries are included in the treaty and 26 others have signed it but have yet to complete ratification.

NASA said that the new Artemis Accords will not replace the treaty, but will expand it with more detailed principles for nations set to play a role in the 2024 mission to the moon.

ARTEMIS ACCORDS Peaceful purposes

Transparency

Interoperability

Emergency assistance

Registration of space objects

Release of scientific data

Protecting heritage

Space resources

Deconfliction of activities

Orbital debris and spacecraft disposal Advertisement

The Artemis Accords are named after the Artemis mission that will see the first woman and next man land on the Moon by the end of the decade.

Artemis, the successor to the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s, aims to develop settlements, a lunar gateway and even a radio telescope.

The new agreement will require all nations involved to be transparent, assist astronauts in trouble, register space objects and release scientific data.

Countries must also agree to protect heritage sites and space artifacts, gather resources according to international agreements, avoid harmful interference with other missions and dispose of any debris or spacecraft responsibly.

The idea of preserving lunar heritage has been part of a number of Sci-Fi novels, including Artemis by Andy Weir, which includes an Apollo 11 visitors center with a viewing window where people can see the Eagle lander descent stage.

NASA wanted to ensure that the historic sites from the early days of spaceflight - including Apollo landing locations and the Russian Luna 2 spacecraft that was the first human-made object on the Moon - are protected from destruction.

NASA said: 'Protecting historic sites and artifacts will be just as important in space as it is here on Earth.

'Therefore, under Artemis Accords agreements, NASA and partner nations will commit to the protection of sites and artifacts with historic value.'

Artemis, the successor to the Apollo moon missions of the 1960s and 1970s, aims to develop settlements, a lunar gateway and even a radio telescope.

Mike Gold, a NASA associate administrator who has led development of the Artemis Accords, said: 'We don't want to only carry astronauts to the Moon, we want to carry our values forward.'

'We want to use the excitement around Artemis to incentivize partners to adopt these principles that we believe will lead to a more peaceful, transparent, safe and secure future in spacenot only for NASA and the international partners we're working with, but the entire world.'

Parts of the Artemis Accords leaked earlier this month, but because many of the details were missing, some nations perceived it as the US attempting to regulate exploration to the moon.

Dimitru Rogozin, head of Russia's space corporation, reacted on Twitter by comparing the 'invasion' to that of Americans infiltrating Afghanistan or Iraq.

Gold and NASA's deputy administrator, Jim Morhard, acknowledged Rogozin's concerns and explained the framework would be conducted as a negotiation with other nations rather than instituted laws.

The agreement includes 10 basic norms such as work transparency, properly disposing debris and providing assistance to astronauts in danger during a mission

NASA also notes that the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 is still in effect, but the new Artemis Accords builds on the legal framework to help bolster a peaceful relationship on the moon and beyond

Morhard said, 'We certainly hope that Russia will be part of this. It's not like we don't want them.'

China is on the list of nations invited to sign the Artemis Accords, but NASA officials said the country and all others that join must also adhere to human rights on Earth.

Although China will be invited to join the Artemis Accords, NASA officials said it or any other country would have to respect the safety of people on Earth.

'The empty core stage of the Long March 5B, weighing nearly 20 tons, was in an uncontrolled free fall along a path that carried it over Los Angeles and other densely populated areas,' NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told Ars Technica.

'I can think of no better example of why we need the Artemis Accords. It's vital for the US to lead and establish norms of behavior against such irresponsible activities. Space exploration should inspire hope and wonder, not fear and danger.'

The Trump administration and other spacefaring countries see the Moon as a key strategic asset in outer space with mining for minerals part of its appeal.

The Moon also has value for long-term scientific research that could enable future missions to Mars - activities that fall under a regime of international space law.

That international agreement, already in place and negotiated in 1967 before the dawn of commercial space operators, is widely viewed as outdated.

The Artemis Accords would establish 'safety zones' around future moon bases to prevent damage or interference from rival countries or companies operating nearby.

The pact also aims to provide a framework under international law for companies to own the resources they mine, the sources said.
MADISON COUNTY  Its graduation season and local high schools are making efforts to celebrate the class of 2020, within COVID-19 guidelines.

Edwardsville High School and Father McGivney Catholic High School both continue to look for alternatives to traditional commencements, which would infringe on Illinois safety guidelines such social distancing and gatherings of large groups.
Scientists have raised doubts over the scale of the potential benefit from a coronavirus antibody test touted by the government as a game-changer, while calling for more transparency.

The test, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical firm Roche, was approved last week by workers at Public Health Englands (PHE) Porton Down facility - the first such test to be given the green light by the government agency.

However, scientists still have doubts about how effective it may be and have urged greater transparency to allow for the scientific community to check that it does carry a 100-per-cent success rate in excluding false positives, as PHE has claimed.

Without seeing the study methods and the data its impossible to verify these claims of accuracy, said Professor Carl Heneghan, director of the Centre for Evidence-Based Medicine at the University of Oxford.

Meanwhile Professor Richard Tedder, visiting professor in Medical Virology at Imperial College London, said the development of the test by Roche was neither surprising nor remarkable and that several other manufacturers already had platforms capable of detecting the antibodies.

Just how sensitive and just how specific it is remains to be seen when this platform is used routinely, he said. I find it surprising that PHE appear to have given this preferential treatment and publicity over and above the existing platforms by other companies.

A second antibody test developed by Abbott has also been approved by PHE.

Nonetheless, Professor Sir John Bell, regius professor of medicine at Oxford University, said the development of the antibody test was a step in the right direction, telling Radio 4s Today programme: In the evolution of these antibody tests to get one that works really well is a major step forward.

Speaking at Thursday's Downing Street press conference, deputy chief medical officer for England Jonathan Van-Tam said he believed the antibody test would be rapidly rolled out in the days and weeks to come as soon as it is practical to do so and would prove "incredibly important as the days, weeks and months go by".

He added: "I anticipate that the focus will be on the National Health Service and carers in the first instance".

Scientists still need to discover whether antibodies offer immunity and for how long they persist, said Prof Van-Tam. But the good news is we do now have antibody tests that we absolutely can rely on, he said.

The health minister, Edward Argar, said the government intended to roll out the new test to frontline workers first.

Speaking on BBC Breakfast, Mr Argar said: Were in discussion at the moment with Roche on this. Its only just gone through the Public Health England assessment as being reliable, as doing the job, and therefore we are having those discussions.

But we are keen to get as many as quickly as we can and get them out, primarily to the frontline first, the NHS, social care and then more widely. Because this really will be  as the prime minister said  this has the potential to be a game-changer.
During the Obama presidency, the Department of Education famously sent to colleges and universities a "Dear Colleague" letter that essentially mandated that people accused of sexual wrongdoing (ranging from alleged harassment to actual rape) should be denied any semblance of due process. This mandate mainly affected men and disproportionately affected black men.

Education secretary Betsy DeVos issued revised guidelines that righted this wrong. Colleges and universities must now provide civil rights protections to the accused. The era of the kangaroo court is over.

Or is it?

On Thursday, the ACLU proudly announced that it's suing Betsy DeVos to reverse her new guidelines and revert to the "Dear Colleague" standard:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos' revised federal guidelines on how sexual assault allegations should be handled on college and K-12 campuses are the target of a federal lawsuit filed Thursday claiming that the changes would "inflict significant harm" on victims and "dramatically undermine" their civil rights. The suit, filed on behalf of four advocacy groups for people who have been sexually assaulted, including Know Your IX and Girls for Gender Equity, is the first that seeks to block the Education Department's new provisions before they go into effect on Aug. 14. The rules championed by DeVos effectively bolster the rights of due process for those accused of sexual assault and harassment, allowing for live hearings and cross-examinations. It's what agency officials say was lacking during the Obama administration to protect all students under Title IX, a 1972 law that prohibits gender discrimination, including sexual assault, at schools. "This new federal effort to weaken Title IX makes it more difficult for victims of sexual harassment or sexual assault to continue their educations and needlessly comes amid a global pandemic," according to the suit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland by the American Civil Liberties Union and the New York-based law firm Stroock & Stroock & Lavan LLP.

Were not letting Betsy DeVos roll back critical civil rights protections for survivors of sexual harassment and assault.



 Schools should be free from sex-based discrimination, including sexual harassment and assault. https://t.co/xnLcJzPyJ3  ACLU (@ACLU) May 14, 2020

Robby Soave was disappointed in the ACLU:

It breaks my heart to report that the ACLU, ostensibly an organization that defends civil liberties, is suing to prevent Betsy DeVos from strengthening civil liberties protections on college campuses. https://t.co/RBYUEXZXc6  Robby Soave (@robbysoave) May 14, 2020

Soave's disappointment reflects the way in which people have bought into the claim that the ACLU is actually about civil rights. It's not. Socialists started it in 1920, and it's always been true to those roots. These are the Founders:

In case after case, the ACLU has fought for the First Amendment, not because it believes in free speech, but because it wanted to ensure that American socialists got the chance to speak. The Constitution for them was a tool, not a principle.

The ACLU's continued commitment to abandoning the Constitution or using it as a cover to achieve socialist ends can also be seen in its approach to Jack Phillips. Phillips is the Colorado baker whom the left is systematically attacking for his religiously based refusal to put his artistry on cakes celebrating same-sex "marriages" or transgenderism. Religious freedom, of course, is a core constitutional right.

Some might think Phillips's case sounds like a job for the ACLU, but they'd be wrong. The ACLU isn't defending Phillips. Instead, it represented the same-sex couple that originally sued Phillips for refusing to decorate their cake.

So, no, it's not surprising that the ACLU should be opposed to civil liberties on American campuses. Its goal is now, as it always has been, to advance socialist policies.
Shoppers at a mall.

Malls across the United States are feeling the pressure to open as a number of states and municipalities have announced measures encouraging businesses to restart operations.

Simon Property Group, the largest operators of shopping malls and outlets in the US, has reopened 77 out of its 209 properties, more than a third of its portfolio, in 38 states after national closures in late March due to the novel coronavirus pandemic. Simon plans to open approximately half of its U.S. portfolio within the next week, CEO David Simon said during the companys first quarter conference call yesterday.

Macerich, another large owner of malls, has also re-opened 13 of its 52 US properties in Texas, Colorado, Missouri, Iowa, Indiana and Arizona. During a conference call today, the companys CEO Thomas OHern said he expects almost all of our centers and most of our tenants to be open by mid-June.

There are serious financial motivations behind these re-openings, even with ongoing health and safety concerns about how quickly Covid-19 can spread among crowds and enclosed spaces. A new report from CBRE, the US commercial real estate services and investment firm, said rent payments in the retail sector for the month of April were as low as 10% for some malls. Shopping centers anchored by grocery stores fared better, but still only produced 55% to 80% of their normal rent payments. These payments also came in late, sometimes near the end of the month. In states that have partially reopened for business, CBRE said that May payments in the months first six days were better than expected.

Even with e-commerce options, retailers have also seen sales decline 8.7% for the month of March, the largest recorded drop according to data collected by the US Census Bureau. The estimate for total monthly sales for the retail trade and food services industry fell to $483 billion, the same as 2017, effectively erasing three years of growth.

Story continues

Some retailers prioritized the retention of sales and management staff over making rental payments. That was extremely important to them because when it came time to re-open, they do not want to go out and hire and train, so they did everything they could to maintain those employees, said Doug Healey, Macerichs senior executive vice president of strategic leasing during todays conference call with investors.

The executives of Simon and Macerich said the main challenges to re-opening properties include haphazard differences in rules between different municipalities and states; limitations on customer capacity, including in restaurants and food courts, due to social distancing guidelines; as well as large inventories due to reduced operations.

Re-openings will be very promotional, said Healey. We are getting calls almost daily by retailers who want additional space. They may want to put a second store in one of our centers to sell inventory or they may want to put a store in a center theyre not in just to move inventory but thats going to be a big part of the reopening plan.

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Since before he can remember, 18-year-old Siddiks* life has been shaped by violence, hardship and displacement. He was just a baby when fighting in Sudans Darfur region forced his family from their home, and only seven when he lost his mother to the conflict.

As a youngster he applied himself to his studies in the hope of attending university and being able to provide for his three siblings and blind father. But when armed groups came to his school to forcefully recruit boys to fight, he ran home, leaving his education behind for good.

Desperate to find a way to put food on the familys table, he left Darfur at the age of 16. He had just a few bank notes in his pocket and a single goal: to quickly find work and send money back home.

I wanted to travel to be able to provide for them, so that they can get an education unlike me, Siddik said of his younger siblings. I want them to have a better life than I had.

His journey led him to Libya, where tragedy again caught up with him. Soon after arriving in the country, Siddik was taken into detention, and in July last year he was in Tajoura Detention Centre when it was hit by a series of air strikes targeting the hangar where he was living with more than 150 other men. Many of the friends he had made were killed or injured. Altogether, the attack left more than 50 dead.

After months of trying unsuccessfully to make ends meet in Tripoli and still determined to make a better life for himself and his family, Siddik saved up enough money to risk the perilous sea crossing to Europe.

More than 46,000 refugees and asylum-seekers are currently registered in Libya, where many face life-threatening insecurity, instability, dire economic conditions and the threat of exploitation and abuse by criminal gangs and armed groups.

Along with a sharp escalation in fighting in the past month, the country has also recorded its first confirmed cases of COVID-19. This has led to tighter restrictions on movement, making it almost impossible for refugees and asylum-seekers to find work, while the cost of food and rent have gone up.

This combination of factors is thought to be driving more to risk their lives on the Mediterranean. In the first four months of this year, the Libyan Coast Guard has picked up 3,078 refugees and migrants at sea, compared with 1,126 in the same period last year.

One night a few weeks ago, Siddik found himself shivering in darkness as the flimsy rubber boat he had squeezed into with more than 70 others was tossed about in heavy seas. For days they clung on for their lives, dehydrated, hungry and afraid.

After five days at sea a ship came to their aid, but their elation soon turned to despair when they realized it was a Libyan Coast Guard vessel that would return them to Tripoli along with more than 150 refugees and migrants already on board who had been picked up from three other dinghies that same morning.

Libya is a dead-end for refugees and asylum-seekers ... in this country, there is no future for us.

When they finally docked in Tripoli, they were not authorized to disembark immediately and had to wait on the ship for several hours. Staff from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and its medical partner, the International Rescue Committee, distributed water and provided emergency medical aid to the most urgent cases. But as night fell, everyone remained on the ship.

Over the next few hours, Siddik once again found himself caught up in violence. At the port there was terrible shelling at night. We tried to escape but we couldnt, he explained.

Finally, they were taken to a nearby facility to await transfer the next morning to a detention centre. But Siddik was determined at all costs to avoid returning to detention. During a brief moment when they were left unguarded, he and others used their last-remaining energy to make a run for it.

Now living with several others in a single room in the old city of Tripoli, Siddik is pessimistic about what the future holds.

Libya is a dead-end for refugees and asylum-seekers. I left my country seeking protection as well as to give an education to my siblings and help my father, but in this country, there is no future for us, he said, dejected, as he waited to receive cash assistance at UNHCRs Sarraj registration facility in Tripoli to help cover rent and food costs.

Many refugees and asylum-seekers had clung to the hope that they might be prioritized for resettlement on evacuation flights out of Libya. However, with only enough resettlement places for a tiny minority of refugees both in Libya and around the world, even this faint hope has been extinguished as countries close their borders to combat the coronavirus.

We cannot go back to our countries, but we cant stay here either, said Siddik. In normal circumstances I would look for work and enrol in school, but currently, even our Libyan neighbours are more and more desperate about the worsening situation in their country.

UNHCRs Chief of Mission in Libya, Jean-Paul Cavalieri, acknowledged that the worsening situation in Libya is forcing many to make drastic choices.

The combination of COVID-19 and the associated ongoing movement restrictions, together with the worsening conflict, with no humanitarian pause, will place many more into situations of deepening poverty and with little support to survive, Cavalieri said.

Amidst deteriorating security conditions, as well as restrictions on movement due to COVID-19, UNHCR has provided emergency assistance to some 3,500 refugees and internally displaced Libyans during the last two weeks.

The assistance package helped some 1,600 urban refugees, more than 700 refugees being held in detention and close to 1,500 displaced Libyans in different sites across Libya, and included one months worth of food and hygiene kits.

We are doing what we can. UNHCR is carrying out more emergency distributions over the Ramadan period. However, desperation will likely drive more refugees to risk their lives, embarking on irregular and dangerous journeys by sea.

*Name changed for protection reasons.
By Jessica Resnick-Ault

NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. crude prices jumped 7% on Friday to their highest since March, on strengthening fuel demand as countries around the world eased travel restrictions they had imposed to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

U.S. crude <CLc1> gained 19.7% in the week and Brent crude <LCOc1> rose 5.2% after a week of bullish news. Both contracts gained for the third consecutive week.

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil settled up $1.87, or 6.8% at $29.43 a barrel, just off the session peak of $29.92, its highest since mid-March. WTI soared 9% in the previous session.

Brent crude <LCOc1> settled up $1.37, or 4.4% a barrel at $32.50. Brent rose nearly 7% on Thursday.

The second-month contract for U.S. crude traded at a discount to the first month for the first time since late February, implying market tightness, said Bob Yawger, director of energy futures at Mizuho in New York. <CLc1-CLc2>

"It is no accident the spread switched after EIA crude oil storage, and storage at the NYMEX delivery site at Cushing, both posted up their first storage draws in weeks in Wednesdays storage report," he said.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and other major producers have cut supplies to reduce a glut, and now there also are signs of improving demand. Data showed China's daily crude oil use rebounded in April as refineries ramped up operations.

Still, the market remained cautious with the coronavirus pandemic far from over and new clusters of infection emerging in some countries where lockdowns have eased.

"Oil prices have been up significantly since yesterday thanks to a better assessment of the situation by the International Energy Agency (IEA)," Commerzbank said in a note.

The IEA expects global crude inventories to fall by about 5.5 million barrels per day (bpd) in the second half.

It also expects oil demand this year to fall by 8.6 million bpd, smaller by 690,000 bpd than the decline it forecast last month. It expects non-OPEC supply to fall by 3.2 million bpd.

Story continues

Barclays raised its forecasts for Brent and WTI by $5-$6 a barrel for 2020 and by $16 a barrel for 2021. It now sees Brent prices averaging $37 a barrel and WTI at $33 this year. For 2021, the bank expects Brent to average $53 a barrel while WTI averages $50.

"The sheer size and speed of the disruption and associated inventory overhang will take time to get fully absorbed, in our view," Barclays analyst Amarpreet Singh said in a note.

On Wednesday, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said the country's crude inventories fell unexpectedly. This reduced the risk that prices will plummet ahead of the front-month contract expiring next week.

"With the drawdown, it shouldn't be as perilous as it was last time," said John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital Management in New York. Ahead of last month's contract expiration, fear of storage shortages pushed the contract into negative territory for the first time on record.

Still, market participants remain skittish about the upcoming expiration date, Kilduff said.

Graphic: Weekly changes in petroleum stocks in the U.S., https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/editorcharts/bdwvkrmkxpm/eikon.png

Record production cuts of nearly 10 million bpd by OPEC and associated producers - collectively known as OPEC+ - have kicked in for May and June, with Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the UAE pledging to cut beyond their commitments.

Oman said on Friday that it is considering cutting output further in June as well.

(Additional reporting by Ahmad Ghaddar in London and Aaron Sheldrick in Tokyo; Editing by David Gregorio, Louise Heavens and Steve Orlofssky)
Massachusetts residents Memorial Day plans are up in the air as other Northeast states move to reopen their beaches for the holiday weekend amid a global pandemic.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tweeted Friday that New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Connecticut agreed to reopen beaches for Memorial Day weekend. The beaches will be required to operate at 50% capacity, and visitors will have to wear masks when they cannot stay six feet apart.

If local governments do not enforce these rules for municipal-owned beaches, they will be required to close, Cuomo said.

When asked about Bay State beaches, Gov. Charlie Baker was mum on the subject.

Lets talk about Memorial weekend next weekend, Baker said. He declined to respond when asked if plans for the beaches would be included in the reopening report thats expected to publish on Monday.

Like Massachusetts, those Northeast states are among the hardest hit by the coronavirus pandemic. New York and New Jersey have particularly stood out as hotspots with higher numbers of COVID-19 cases and deaths, but their surges started sooner and appear to have declined before the Bay States.

Massachusetts recorded another 1,239 positive cases and 110 deaths related to the coronavirus as of Friday. In total, the state has recorded 83,421 COVID-19 cases and 5,592 deaths in a state as of Friday, according to the state Department of Public Health.

New York, which has nearly three times the population, has recorded 345,813 coronavirus cases and more than 22,000 deaths. The state had 2,762 new positive cases on Thursday, a fraction of the number of new cases New York state was seeing daily in April.

Officials on the Cape & Islands are working with local boards of health and others to take steps to reopen beaches, said Sean OBrien, emergency preparedness coordinator for the Barnstable County Department of Health and Environment.

The trustees of Crane Beach in Ipswich, which closed in March, announced plans to reopen Tuesday at half capacity. The trustees said they plan to adopt a ticket system for beachgoers starting in June.

The Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance urged Baker to follow in the same direction as other Northeast states.

"The unofficial start of summer is Memorial Day and Massachusetts residents, business owners, and their workers need the economic and mental relief open beaches provide, Paul Craney, spokesman for Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, said in a statement.

Protesters returned to Beacon Street this week, calling on Baker to reopen the state.

I get the fact that sort of slow and steady is not exactly anybodys idea of bold, he said, but I also happen to believe that the changing nature of what we know about this virus ... I dont want to be in a position where we make decisions based on what we think is real, to turn out 30 days later to be wrong, and part of the way you deal with that is to be cautious and be careful.

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Desperate to return to their home states, a group of 150 migrant workers hurled stones at the police in Dahej industrial area of Gujarat's Bharuch district on Friday morning, a senior official said.

The police lobbed two teargas shells to clear the mob that had gathered in the area to demand a return passage to their home states amid the COVID-19 lockdown, Bharuch district superintendent of police Rajendrasinh Chudasama said.

Migrant workers, stranded in the district because of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, had staged several protests in the last two days in support of their demand that they be sent to their hometowns by Shramik Special trains, he said.

"Even on Thursday, many of them took to the streets. But they went back after I personally appealed to them to be patient as their online registration was done and they only had to wait for confirmation from the authorities," Chudasama said.

However, 150 of them once again came out on Friday, voicing the same demand and pelted stones on police vehicles, he said, adding two teargas shells had to be lobbed to disperse the crowd.

Meanwhile, around 400 labourers from Bihar held a peaceful rally in Botad town of Botad district on Friday, demanding immediate arrangements for them to travel back to their ancestral homes.

Before things could get out of hand, the police stopped the protesters at a market and convinced them to wait for confirmation of travel arrangements from the authorities, an official said.

Botad district collector Vishal Gupta claimed that migrants are stuck because approvals for sending them back are pending from the Bihar government since May 10.

"The district administration has made all arrangements to send the migrants back. We have done their medical check-ups and arranged for buses to ferry them to the railway station.

"There is a delay because the Bihar government has not given approvals for trains," he said.
The doctors who sit on the White House's coronavirus taskforce are being kept off television, with some experts not doing TV interviews for nearly a month, as President Donald Trump tries to shift his messaging from public health to 'reopening' the economy.

CNN reported on that trend after finding that the two most prominent members - Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx - hadn't been on the airwaves in over a week.

The other three prominent doctors haven't been interviewed by anchors since April.

CNN's Oliver Darcy found that Birx was the last doctor to appear in a television interview.

She participated in a CNN town hall on May 7.

Fauci also made his last appearance on the network. He was interviewed by CNN's Chris Cuomo on May 4.

Dr. Stephen Hahn, the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, last appeared on Fox News on April 28. He was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo.

The top doctors on President Trump's (pictured) coronavirus taskforce are spending less time on TV, with the two most prominent members - Dr. Anthony Fauci and Dr. Deborah Birx - not hitting the airwaves in more than a week, other members nearly a month

Dr. Anthony Fauci's last television interview was with CNN's Chris Cuomo on May 4, more than a week ago, while Dr. Deborah Birx's (right) last appearance on television was for a CNN town hall more than a week ago, alongside Anderson Cooper and Sanjay Gupta

Dr. Robert Redfield's (left) last television interview was nearly a month ago. He appeared on the 'Today Show' on April 17 with Susannah Guthrie. Dr. Stephen Hahn (center), the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, last appeared on Fox Business Network on April 28; Dr. Jerome Adams, the U.S. Surgeon General, last appeared on April 17. He did a segment on 'Fox & Friends'

And both the Surgeon General, Dr. Jerome Adams, and Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, haven't done an interview since April 17.

This isn't to say that the doctors haven't gotten some screentime.

Fauci, Hahn and Redfield - who spent several days working from home after coming into contact with a White House staffer who tested positive for COVID-19 - all testified before the Senate on Tuesday.

New press secretary Kayleigh McEnany has taken over some of President Trump's messaging. She held a briefing with reporters on Tuesday and is expected to hold one with journalists Friday afternoon as well

Adm. Brett Giroir, who's the point person on COVID-19 testing, also beamed into the Senate hearing from his office and testified.

Birx sat alongside Trump in his meeting with the governors from North Dakota and Colorado on Wednesday, which was an opportunity for reporters to ask questions.

But the White House has made a concerted effort to change the messaging from health to the economy.

The president is now holding fewer daily press briefings after members of his inner circle, including his campaign manager Brad Parscale, informed him the rollicking back-and-forths were hurting him with swing voters.

His only briefing this week was on Monday.

He's allowed new press secretary Kayleigh McEnany to become the face of the administration too, as she held a briefing Tuesday and is scheduled to brief reporters later Friday afternoon.
The country is estimated to achieve an all-time high foodgrain production of 295.67 million tonne in 2019-20 crop year, the fourth consecutive year of record production, buoyed by good rains, the Agriculture Ministry's latest data released on Friday said

New Delhi: The country is estimated to achieve an all-time high foodgrain production of 295.67 million tonne in 2019-20 crop year, the fourth consecutive year of record production, buoyed by good rains, the Agriculture Ministry's latest data released on Friday said.

According to the data, the estimated output of foodgrain this year is up 3.67 percent over the year-ago period and has even crossed its target of 291.10 million tonne, which it had set before the beginning of the 2019-20 sowing season.

Total foodgrains production includes crops grown during both kharif (summer) and rabi (winter) seasons. At present, harvesting of rabi crops is in the final stages amid the COVID-19 crisis.

This is the fourth consecutive year-on-year higher output of foodgrain since 2016-17 crop year (July-June). The previous record was 285.21 million tonne during the 2018-19 crop year.

"The cumulative rainfall in the country during the monsoon season (June to September, 2019) had been 10 percent higher than the Long Period Average (LPA).

Accordingly, the production of most of the crops for the agricultural year 2019-20 has been estimated higher than their normal production," the ministry said releasing the third estimate of production.

Among all crops, the output of wheat -- the main rabi crop -- is estimated at an all-time high level of 107.18 million tonnes in 2019-20, up from 103.60 million tonne previous year. Harvesting of wheat crop is in the final stage of completion.

Similarly, the output of rice -- the main kharif crop -- is estimated to be a record 117.94 million tonne this year, higher from 116.48 million tonne last year.

At the same time, the production of coarse cereals is estimated to be a record 47.54 million tonne as against 43.06 million tonne in the said period.

Production of maize is pegged at a record 28.98 million tonnes this year, up from 27.72 million tonne in the 2018-19 crop year, but barley output is estimated to lower at 1.59 million tonne as against 1.63 million tonne in the said period.

In case of pulses, total production is estimated to increase to 23.01 million tonne this year from 22.08 million tonne last year. Of which, tur production is pegged at 3.75 million tonnes and chana at 10.90 million tonne for this year.

Foodgrains basket comprises wheat, rice, coarse cereals and pulses.

As far as oilseeds were concerned, total production is estimated to increase marginally to 33.50 million tonne in the 2019-20 crop year from 31.52 million tonne last year.

Among cash crops, the country would see an all-time high production of cotton at 36.04 million bales (of 170 kg each) in the current year, much higher than 28.04 million bales last year. The previous record was 35.90 million bales in 2013-14 crop year.

Meanwhile, sugarcane production is estimated to decline to 358.13 million tonne this year from 405.4 million tonne last year due to fall in production mainly in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The output of jute is estimated flat at 9.43 million bales (of 180 kg) this year as against 9.49 million bales in 2018-19 crop year, while mesta output is estimated to increase to 4.89 million bales from 3.23 million tonnes in the said period.

Although the third estimate might just be revised after harvest of rabi crops, the final output figures may not be less than what is estimated right now.

The Agricultural Ministry releases four advance estimates of production followed by a final estimate. In fact, the fourth advance estimates are considered as good as the final estimates.
Expected policy to center on boosting consumption, strengthening demand

China is likely to come up with a fiscal stimulus package during the upcoming annual meeting of the country's top legislature, including raising fiscal deficit and expanding government debt, to contain the economic impact of COVID-19 epidemic and accelerate recovery, according to officials and experts.

The government will moderately raise the fiscal deficit ratio, issue special Treasury bonds to counter the COVID-19 impact, increase local government special bonds and continually implement tax and fee cuts, to proactively offset the economic downturn, Finance Minister Liu Kun said on Thursday.

An increase in the fiscal deficit will release positive signals and stabilize market confidence, and help ease the government financing difficulties as the budgeted income for this year is projected to be lower than last year, Liu said in a statement on the ministry website.

The issuance of special Treasury and more local government special bonds will expand government-led investment, promote consumption and strengthen domestic demand, he said.

Liu stressed that the fiscal policy will be more proactive, to maintain economic fundamentals focusing on "six priorities": safeguarding employment, people's livelihoods, the development of market entities, food and energy security, the stable operation of industrial and supply chains, and the smooth functioning of society.

These economic targets were listed for the first time at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on April 17, chaired by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

To implement the fiscal measures, the minister said tax relief measures would be added especially for small and medium-sized enterprises hit by the virus, including maintaining lower value-added tax rates and corporate pension rates. Also in the cards is an increase in the unemployment relief.

According to political advisers, the central government will disclose the size and usages of COVID-19 special Treasury bonds and the full-year quota for local government special bondsthe two major instruments to increase government spending, during the upcoming annual meeting of the third plenary session of the 13th National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.

Liu Shangxi, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and head of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences under the Ministry of Finance, said: "Expanding public consumption is one of the major goals of fiscal policy to offset the COVID-19 shocks." In face of the unprecedented challenges, fiscal stimulus should be used to control risks, different from the traditional role of expanding demand through increasing investment.

Some economists expressed concern that higher bond issuances, especially the local government special bonds to fund infrastructure projects, and weaker revenue due to further tax cuts and fee exemptions, may weaken local government fiscal positions and further increase their debt burden and contingent liabilities.

"To date, direct fiscal measures from the Chinese central government have been moderate and deployed with higher reliance on monetary easing," said Michael Taylor, managing director of the Asia-Pacific region at global credit ratings agency Moody's.

China's direct fiscal support differs from that of the major developed economies which includes, besides spending on healthcare and tax relief, large spending on job retention schemes and unemployment insurance, as well as direct cash payments, according to Moody's.

"Rather than housing and traditional infrastructure projects adopted in response to the global financial crisis, the target of public investment in infrastructure will be for projects such as telecommunication networks, healthcare services and facilities that promote sustainability and productivity," said Taylor.

"The funding mechanism has also shifted from government-backed bank lending to bond financing, especially for local government special bonds, which are more transparent," he said.
Health official: 'We want to ramp up access to testing'
NAIROBI (Reuters) - Burundi is expelling the national head of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and three members of his team as it prepares for a presidential election that is being held next week despite concern about health risks during the coronavirus pandemic.

The government confirmed on Thursday that a May 12 letter from the foreign ministry was sent to WHO country head Walter Kazadi Mulombo and three others of the U.N. body's health experts, ordering them out by Friday.

Bernard Ntahiraja, the foreign affairs assistant minister, said the officials had been declared "persona non grata" but did not give reasons.

The vote for a successor to President Pierre Nkurunziza, whose government has repeatedly been accused of rights abuses and has previously expelled other representatives of international bodies, is scheduled for May 20.

The WHO's Regional Director for Africa Matshidiso Moeti called Mulombo an "extremely competent manager".

"We remain very willing to...support their (Burundi's) response to COVID-19." he said at a news conference in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa.

Burundi has so far reported relatively few cases of the COVID-19 disease: 27 infections and one death. But testing remains very low: the nation of 11 million people has carried out only 527 tests, according to the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

The head of that body, John Nkengasong, called the expulsions "unfortunate" and criticised the decision to hold an election during a health crisis.

"We have to collectively deny the virus any space to transmit," said Nkengasong, whose organisation is a branch of the African Union bloc.

"Cases have increased in countries that went ahead and held elections," he added at a news conference in Ethiopia.

Large crowds have been gathering during the election campaign in Burundi, which has no lockdown measures in place at all, unlike many other African nations.

Story continues

Some Burundians say privately they believe COVID-19 infections are higher than officially stated but they say they fear to say so publicly because they could be targeted and punished.

Leonce Ngendakumana, a presidential candidate for the opposition FRODEBU party, called the expulsion regrettable. "The country alone won't be able to contain the pandemic," he told Reuters.

Nkurunziza, an ex-rebel leader, has been in power since the end of a civil war in 2005 that killed 300,000 people. His ruling CNDD-FDD party is fielding Evariste Ndayishimiye, a retired army general who heads the military affairs office of the presidency and is strong favourite to win.

His foremost opponent is opposition party CNL's candidate Agathon Rwasa, a deputy chairman of the National Assembly and another former rebel leader.

The other three WHO officials ordered to leave are field epidemiologist Jean Pierre Mulunda Nkata, health sector coordinator Ruhana Mirindi Bisimwa, and Daniel Tarzy.

In 2018, Burundi expelled U.N. investigators looking into allegations of rights abuses. The United Nations has previously accused security personnel and a ruling party militia of orchestrating gang rapes, torture and killings.

(Reporting by Nairobi Newsroom; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne and Frances Kerry)
Despite the coronavirus lockdown the free print edition of SUR in English is out as usual for readers to pick up every Friday.

Spain's state of alarm decree includes newspapers among those essential products that people are permitted to go out for.

While some distribution points are closed during the lockdown, SUR in English is still being distributed to news kiosks, paper shops, supermarkets, petrol stations and other usual outlets that are authorised to open across the province of Malaga.

Distribution queriesEmail surinenglish.su@diariosur.es

Alternatively, you can download the paper (and any past edition) in PDF format from our website (click here).

Consult the updated list below to find the news outlet closest to you. The list includes newsagent's, supermarkets and petrol stations, among other open shops and services. Please note that this list does not include private residential developments that do still regularly receive SUR in English. Some other outlets that also still receive the newspaper may also have been omitted from the list. Similarly we apologise if any of the points listed are closed without our knowledge.

Back to business

If your business is one of our usual distribution points and is preparing to reopen after the coronavirus lockdown, please let us know so we can resume delivery.
No one is meant to see so much death that quickly, said Yaakov Shereshevsky, an I.C.U. nurse at N.Y.U. Langone Health, where the coronavirus outbreak has taken a heavy toll. For a while, he said, eight floors  34 beds on each floor  were devoted to Covid-19 patients, and they were at capacity. At one point, we had 20- and 30-year-olds dying, he said. It was a horrible, brutal, helpless feeling. It felt like there was no light. Now its getting better.

Mr. Shereshevsky, 34, who is an Orthodox Jew, has also started to give last rites to Jewish patients, since rabbis are not allowed in hospital rooms. He lives in Georgetown, Brooklyn, with his wife Leah, 33, an occupational therapist, and their four children; Elisheva, 9, Rivka, 7, Esther, 4, and Yitzi, 3. In his spare time he volunteers as an E.M.S. and E.M.T. worker.

UP AND OUT My alarm is set for 6 a.m., but I wake up a few moments before, which is great because I dont wake my wife. I get dressed and go downstairs to pray for 15 minutes. As an Orthodox Jew, I pray three times day. I gather my bag with medical items and laptop, and Im out the door.
The number of Covid-19 cases inches towards the 4,000-mark in Uttar Pradesh after 147 new cases surfaced on Thursday, Hindustan Timess Hindi language publication Hindustan reported. The number of Covid-19 positive cases in the state has now reached 3,902.

Out of these new cases, 49 were reported in Ghaziabad, Meerut and Moradabad, Hindustan said.

While 2072 people have been cured of the disease, 1,742 are still in hospitals across the state. Two fresh deaths were reported from Meerut and Pratapgarh, raising the toll to 88 in the state.

Of the total fatalities, Agra has reported the maximum number of deaths in the state at 24. It is followed by 15 from Meerut, nine from Moradabad, six from Kanpur Nagar and four each from Firozabad and Mathura.

Three deaths each have been reported from Aligarh and Gautam Buddh Nagar, two each from Ghaziabad and Jhansi and one each from Pratapgarh, Sant Kabir Nagar, Hapur, Lalitpur, Allahabad, Etah, Mainpuri, Bijnore, Kanpur Dehat, Amroha, Bareilly, Basti, Bulandshahr, Lucknow, Varanasi and Shravasti.

Earlier, Principal Secretary (Health) Amit Mohan Prasad told reporters that the testing capacity in Uttar Pradesh has been increased. As many as 5,833 Covid-19 tests were conducted across the state on Wednesday, which is a record, he said.

We are emphasising on surveillance and over three crore people have been surveyed by 73,131 teams in UP. Those having symptoms (of Covid-19) have been given required treatment, Prasad said.

He also asked the village and mohalla surveillance committees to keep an eye on the migrant labourers coming to the states from other parts of the country. He has also asked people to use face mask outside their home and follow social distancing norms.

The state authorities have asked people to show sympathy to those affected by the coronavirus disease.
US President Donald Trump has ruled out renegotiating the trade deal with China and expressed disappointment over Beijing's handling of the coronavirus outbreak, which has spread across the world killing nearly 3,00,000 people, including over 80,000 in America.

The US and China in the beginning of the year signed Phase-1 of a trade deal, ending a bitter two-year tariff war that had rattled the global economy.

"The Chinese said somewhere that they would like to renegotiate the (trade) deal. We are not going to renegotiate," Trump told Fox Business on Thursday.

"Look, I'm not happy about anything having to do with that particular subject (China) right now. Everything I said turned out to be right. You look at other countries they charge us tariffs to do business and we are not allowed to charge them," he said.

Responding to a question, Trump said the Chinese have always stolen Intellectual Property (IP) from the US. "They were never called (out). Now they are being called out," he said.

"We can stop them, they are going to try doing it. I mean you could also stop doing business with them, that is one thing. Look, we have lost a fortune dealing with China. We have rebuilt China," he said.

"They have done a great job but the people sitting in this seat (The Oval Office) have allowed them to rip us off like you've never seen before and that includes President (Barack) Obama and (Joe) Biden 'sleepy Joe'. He allowed them to rip this country off. We spent hundreds of billions, we gave them hundreds of billions of dollars year-in and year-out," Trump said.

The president said he does not want to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping right now. "I have a very good relationship, but I just -- right now I don't want to speak to him," he said.

There are many things that the United States can do, he asserted.

"There are many things we could do. We could do things, we could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did what would happen? You would save USD 500 billion, if you cut off the whole relationship. Look, at what point does -- and I said this for years I said it with other countries also you know -- China is not the only country ripping us off at the NATO where we defend Europe for nothing by the way essentially nothing I was able to get them to pay hundreds of billions of dollars more," he said.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.

There has been increasing pressure on the President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.

Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have claimed that the deadly virus originated from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The United States has repeatedly asked China to allow the international community to go into the laboratory in Wuhan for investigation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A Chinese-born former employee of the Cleveland Clinic was arrested on fraud charges related to $3.6 million in federal grants, the FBI said on Thursday, the latest move in a US crackdown on alleged attempts by China to steal American scientific advances.

The FBI and other federal enforcement agencies searched the Shaker Heights, Ohio, home of Dr. Qing Wang, and arrested him on charges of false claims and wire fraud on Wednesday.

Prosecutors said Wang accepted grants from the National Institutes of Health without disclosing that he was serving at same time as dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. That was a violation of the terms of the grants, they said.

They said Wang is a Chinese-born US citizen specializing in genetics and cardiovascular disease who has been affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic since 1997.

"Dr. Wang deliberately failed to disclose his Chinese grants and foreign positions and even engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud to avoid criminal culpability," said Eric Smith, head of the FBI's Cleveland office.

US investigators say China and its citizens and operatives have long made extensive and aggressive efforts to steal unclassified American technology, ranging from military materiel to medical research, but US agencies only launched a broad effort to stop alleged Chinese espionage in the United States in 2018.

The FBI alleged Wang was a participant in the Thousand Talents program, a scheme which US officials say the Chinese government created to engage with individuals who had access to foreign technology or valuable data.

Investigators said that through Wang's participation in the program, China provided $3 million in research support to enhance facilities and operations at the institutions he was affiliated with in China.

Wang said he is innocent, according to a defense attorney.

"Dr. Wang is a citizen of the United States," the attorney, Brandon Henderson, said in an email. "As we all know, being presumed innocent is a legal right enjoyed by our citizens."

The Cleveland Clinic said that it had fired Wang after learning of his failure to disclose his ties to China.

"Cleveland Clinic has cooperated fully with the NIH and with federal law enforcement as they conducted their own investigations into these same subjects and will continue to do so," it said in a statement.

In one of several recent cases involving alleged Chinese efforts to steal U.S. technology, a Harvard biology professor in January was accused of lying to the Pentagon and NIH about his involvement in the program.
Students are encouraged to wear their caps and gowns and decorate their cars for the parade. Social distancing will be required and students cannot ride with other classmates, district officials said.
L.A. City Council President Nury Martinez has asked Councilman Jose Huizar, shown, to stop attending council meetings until there is "legal clarity" on the federal corruption investigation at City Hall. (Katie Falkenberg / Los Angeles Times)

Days after federal prosecutors described a Los Angeles City Council member as the ringleader of a criminal enterprise, a chorus of public officials called on Councilman Jose Huizar to resign.

"Whatever ends up happening to Jose Huizar on the legal front, it is blatantly obvious he has compromised his ability to represent his district and should step down immediately," Councilman Joe Buscaino said Friday.

Huizar, who has been representing an Eastside district since 2005, has not been arrested or publicly charged with a crime. But federal prosecutors have made clear that he is the unnamed L.A. City Council member embroiled in their ongoing corruption probe of City Hall, providing biographical information in their court filings that matches Huizar.

Buscaino was joined in his calls Friday by City Controller Ron Galperin and Councilmen Paul Krekorian, David Ryu and Bob Blumenfield. Said Blumenfield: "My blood boils as I learn more details about this horrific tale of corruption."

As of Friday afternoon, Council President Nury Martinez had stopped short of asking Huizar to resign but instead asked the councilman to stop attending council meetings and casting votes until there is "legal clarity" on the federal probe, according to her chief of staff, Ackley Padilla. Mayor Eric Garcetti later said he supported Martinez's request.

Huizar responded Friday with a statement that he would "respect the council president's wishes that I limit my participation in council while working to meet the needs of my district" but did not explain how he would do so, saying through a spokeswoman that the details were still being worked out.

Huizar said he didn't want to be a "distraction" to the council's work but intends to continue carrying out his duties to "protect the safety and economic well-being of the residents of Los Angeles" during the COVID-19 crisis.

The push for Huizar to skip meetings or step down entirely comes after a drumbeat of new revelations in the federal probe. Real estate consultant George Chiang agreed this week to plead guilty to participating in a criminal scheme in which Chinese real estate developers allegedly bribed a council member in exchange for help on a hotel-and-residential project. The plea deal described the unnamed council member as the leader of a broader "criminal enterprise."

Story continues

In March, real estate appraiser Justin Jangwoo Kim admitted to helping arrange a $500,000 bribe intended for a council member to smooth the way for another development project. In both cases, key details in the federal filings point to Huizar, whose attorneys have repeatedly declined to comment.

Huizar had long been known to be under federal investigation  FBI agents raided his home and offices in 2018  but the filings revealed new details about the allegations involved in the case.

The councilman was stripped of many committee assignments shortly after the raids, including the powerful panel that vets real estate developments, but has continued to attend council meetings, draft proposals and cast votes.

Until recently, council members had remained largely silent about the ongoing investigation. Some federal probes involving city officials  including an investigation involving donors to Martinez  have not resulted in charges in the past, making some reluctant to jump to conclusions based merely on the existence of an investigation.

But the specific allegations now laid out by federal prosecutors, along with public disgust at the claims, appear to have shifted the calculus for some council members. Blumenfield said the latest filings were the catalyst for him, adding that it was a "big problem" for the public to be left questioning the integrity of council decisions as the city faces a crisis.

Krekorian said in a statement that although he recognized that no criminal charges had been filed against Huizar, it was clear that he was the councilman referenced in the federal filings, and therefore, Angelenos "can no longer have confidence that council member Huizar is representing their interests fairly and honestly, and with his full attention."

Some residents balked at the push for Huizar to pull back from the council.

Monica Alcaraz, a community activist who lives in Highland Park, said Martinez should not have demanded that Huizar stop participating in council meetings, since he has not been charged or given the opportunity to tell his side of the story.

Residents in Huizar's Eastside district need him to continue casting votes on such issues as homelessness, evictions and protections for vulnerable renters, Alcaraz said.

"To not have somebody representing our needs is not acceptable," she added.

But Gerren Kelsaw, a founder of the downtown advocacy group DTLA Strong, said that considering the allegations of brazen misconduct in the court documents, Huizar should not only stop going to council meetings but should resign.

Although Huizar should have the opportunity to fight the allegations, its clear that he cannot function for the downtown neighborhood in the way we need him to, said Kelsaw, who said he was speaking for himself and not his organization. "Are we going to have a dearth of leadership right now because he wants to hang onto the job?"

Huizar is scheduled to step down at the end of the year due to term limits. Former State Sen. Kevin de Leon has already won the election to replace him but is not set to be sworn in until December.

The City Charter, which serves as the governing document for Los Angeles City Hall, allows a council member to be suspended if they are pending criminal trial for "violation of official duties."

The council can also publicly rebuke one of its members. Under the charter, the council can pass a resolution of "censure" with respect to any council member "whose actions constitute a gross failure to meet such high standards, even if the action does not constitute a ground for removal from office under the charter."

Asked whether Huizar should step down or take a leave of absence in light of the recent Department of Justice filings, City Atty. Mike Feuer, who is running for Los Angeles mayor, said Friday that if any council member is indicted, "the right thing to do would be to step down.

The city attorney's office was raided by FBI agents last summer as part of a separate investigation involving the Department of Water and Power. No one has been publicly charged in that investigation.

A failure to attend council meetings could become a legal issue. Under the charter, an elected office can become vacant when the incumbent "has ceased to discharge the duties of the office for 90 consecutive days, except when prevented by illness, injury or other reasonable cause."

Council rules also state that members shall attend regular and special meetings unless they are sick or have been granted a leave of absence.
Around 1.15 lakh food packets have been distributed among stranded labourers during the last 48 days of the ongoing coronavirus-induced lockdown in Almora district through 'Roti Bank', a community kitchen programme.

The food packets have been distributed by 'Roti Bank' among stranded labourers from Bihar and Nepal in the district, Almora District Magistrate Nitin Singh Bhadauria said.

It is also distributing food packets among fatigued migrants coming from different parts of the country and providing milk to their children, he said.

Nodal officer for 'Roti Bank' Ajit Tiwari said the programme is being run with the help of donations from different sections of people.

'Roti Bank' volunteers who represent different sections of society work relentlessly for 16 hours every day to feed the hungry, Tiwari said.

The programme was launched jointly by the Red Cross Society, Vyapar Mandal and Chemists & Druggists Association.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Typhoon Vongfong made landfall in Samar, the Philippines, on May 14, with winds gusting up to 185 km/h near its center, the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration said.

Vongfong, known locally as Typhoon Ambo, first hit San Policarpio in Eastern Samar, local reports said. Violent winds and intense rain were forecast.

Footage posted to Facebook by Marc Almazan Bugtas shows powerful winds whipping up debris.

ABS-CBN reported that authorities in Eastern Samar were scrambling to shelter affected residents, after converting evacuation centers to coronavirus quarantine facilities.

Governor Ben Evardone told ABS-CBN that 4,000 people had been quarantined at former evacuation centers. He said evacuees and possible carriers of the coronavirus could not be placed in the same shelters.

None of the 4,000 had so far tested positive for the virus, he said. Credit: Marc Almazan Bugtas via Storyful
By Trend





Turkey's daily COVID-19 death toll rose by 55 with 1,635 new confirmed cases as 2,315 more people recovered, Health Minister Fahrettinm Koca said, Trend reports citing Daily Sabah.

According to Koca, Turkey carried out 34,821 tests in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number to 1,508,824.

Relaying the countrys latest statistics on coronavirus, Koca said 2,315 new cases were identified in the latest batch of tests, which brought the total number of confirmed cases to 144,749.

According to the minister, the number of people recovered from COVID-19 rose to 104,030 with 2,315 patients recovering in the past 24 hours.

Meanwhile, 55 more deaths were confirmed from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, bringing the death toll to 4,007, and 963 patients remained in intensive care units.

Turkey has not imposed a stringent nationwide lockdown since reporting its first positive case on March 11, resorting instead to weekend curfews in 31 provinces and cities. It also limited travel between those cities.

Yet, last week, it announced a number of new steps toward normalization, including the reopening of some businesses and lifting travel restrictions between some cities. Barbershops, hairdressers and shopping malls will be allowed to reopen on Monday but with specific measures to protect against the coronavirus.

Over 4 million cases have been reported in 187 countries since the virus emerged in China last December, with the hardest-hit areas being the U.S. and Europe.

A significant proportion of COVID-19 patients, over 1.38 million, have recovered, but the disease has claimed nearly 280,000 lives, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University in the U.S.
Germany refuses to exempt Russian Nord Stream 2 from EU Gas Directive rules

13:20, 15.05.20 4216

For Nord Stream 2 AG, this may mean the pipeline can only be half loaded.
Witnesses reported that Cooper was acting strangely before the attack, and had approached a neighbor outside and asked them to go check on the boy, according to police. Cooper later returned to his home and threatened to kill the child before striking his upper body with the screwdriver, investigators said.
A driver was rescued Thursday night after a car veered off the road and landed in a lumberyard near Sheridan.

The fire districts of Sheridan, Southwest Polk and West Valley said in a news release Friday that the person appeared to have been driving on Oregon 18B near Rock Creek Road, when the car veered off the highway, became airborne, rolled over stacked lumber and landed on the other side of the pile.

Fire crews extricated the driver from the car, and paramedics transported the driver to a hospital. The fire districts did not provide any updates about the persons condition, or anything about the persons identity.

They also did not say what caused the crash, but said they wanted to remind the public about the importance of seatbelts and attentive driving.

Jayati Ramakrishnan; 503-221-4320; jramakrishnan@oregonian.com; @JRamakrishnanOR

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When you consider that someone who usually makes $600 per week is receiving $900 from unemployment insurance, it's not surprising that they might not want to go back to work. After all, the additional benefits amount to an extra $10,000 between April and July 31, when the $600 per week is set to expire.
ROSEMOUNT, MN  District 196 high schools will offer seniors and their families an in-person graduation experience featuring some of the key moments that define graduation, done in a very different and appropriately distanced way due to the pandemic.

The three-part optional experience will begin with individual diploma cover presentation and photo opportunities at each school in the days leading up to and after graduation.

On graduation day at each school, there will be a parade of graduates in separate vehicles held a few hours before graduation. Shortly after the parades, at the scheduled graduation times, commencement ceremony videos will premiere online recognizing members of the Class of 2020 at Apple Valley, Eagan, Eastview and Rosemount high schools, and the School of Environmental Studies.

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A committee of district and high school administrators has been meeting since March, working in cooperation with local police departments, developing options to safely and appropriately recognize the more than 2,100 students who will graduate from district high schools in early June.

Earlier this month, the state released guidance prohibiting graduations in gymnasiums and stadiums, and provided parameters for holding events outside the home such as a parking lot ceremony or graduate parade. When Gov. Tim Walz announced that the Stay Home order would expire May 18, the committee finalized its plan and schools are finalizing site-specific details that will be shared with seniors and their families soon.

"This plan honors our incredible graduates as we strive to provide a safe experience for them and their families," said Superintendent Mary Kreger in a statement.

"The most important thing is to share our appreciation and pride for the Class of 2020. Our entire community celebrates their success. We are incredibly proud of their strength and resilience, and we know they will continue to make the world a better place."

Story continues

Kreger stressed that public health and safety will be top priorities during the diploma presentation opportunities and graduate parades. The diploma presentations will be highly controlled, with scheduled time slots, one-way movement and minimal interaction with others, according to a news release.

The schools will offer a similar opportunity later this year for anyone who cannot or chooses not to participate now.

The Apple Valley, Eagan and Rosemount police departments will be present to ensure the parades are orderly and only involve invited participants who remain inside their vehicles. The only people allowed outside of vehicles will be teachers and school staff appropriately distanced along the route to cheer the graduates as they ride by in vehicles with family members only.

The commencement ceremony videos will premiere on the District 196 YouTube channel and other sites on the following dates and times:

Thursday, June 4, 7 p.m.  School of Environmental Studies

Friday, June 5, 7 p.m.  Rosemount High School

Saturday, June 6  Eagan High School (2:20 p.m.), Apple Valley High School (6 p.m.) and Eastview High School (7p.m. ).

The committee considered postponing graduations until later this summer, but did not like the ongoing uncertainty of that option. The new "stay safe Minnesota" guidance limits gatherings to no more than 10 people.

This article originally appeared on the Apple Valley-Rosemount Patch
Vietnam has urged parties to not take any action to further complicate the situation in the East Sea, said Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang.

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang

Hang made the statement at the ministrys regular press conference on Thursday while answering reporters queries about the information that Chinese navy surveillance aircraft KJ-500 and KQ-200 appeared on Da Chu Thap (Fiery Cross Reef) in Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.

In response, she reiterated that Viet Nam has sufficient historical evidence and legal basis to assert its sovereignty over Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa archipelagos in accordance with international law.

All activities of the parties in these two archipelagos without the permission of Viet Nam are null and void, she said.

ASEAN Chairmanship

Viet Nam is focusing on performing well in its 2020 ASEAN Chairmanship, said Hang while answering queries that Viet Nam wants an extra year as ASEAN Chair to make up for the COVID-19 disruption.

Despite difficulties caused by the complex developments of the pandemic, Viet Nam has carried forward its role as ASEAN Chair in promoting the cohesion and proactive response, maintaining cooperation and effectively implementing priorities in the year, she said.

There have not yet been recommendations to extend Viet Nams ASEAN Chairmanship, she said.

Mekong cooperation

Viet Nam hopes and stands ready to work with countries along the Mekong River to manage and use its water resources effectively and sustainably, Hang said in response to queries over Laos implementation of its six Mekong River dam project, Dattang Sanakham, this year.

The cooperation would ensure the harmony of interests of the countries, while avoiding adverse impacts on the daily life of residents in the area, she stressed.

A lowland country, Viet Nam is very concerned about transboundary and cumulative impacts of hydropower projects on the mainstream of the Mekong River, the spokeswoman said.

We have repeatedly stated that countries have legitimate interests in using the Mekong Rivers water resources for development, and also have a shared responsibility for the sustainable use of them, Hang said.

The development of hydropower projects must ensure no negative impacts, including transboundary impacts on the environment and socio-economic life of riparian countries, especially those downstream, in line with international practices and regulations of the Mekong River Commission, she said.

Cyberattack condemn

Hang affirmed there is no basis to believe that a group of hackers related to Viet Nam attacked some foreign websites to gain information.

Viet Nam strictly prohibits all cyberattacks in any form targeting organisations and individuals, she said.

Acts of attacking and threatening cyber security must be severely condemned and punished in accordance with legal provisions, she stressed.

The spokesperson noted that the Vietnamese National Assembly passed the Cyber Security Law in 2018 and the country is currently finalising legal documents on law enforcement and preventing cyberattacks.

Viet Nam is ready to cooperate with the international community in combating and preventing cyberattacks in any form, she said.

Citizen protection

The Embassy of Viet Nam in Japan is closely following the investigation into the murder of a Vietnamese technical intern and will carry out the necessary citizen protection measures to ensure his legitimate rights and interests, Hang said.

According to the Embassy in Japan, on May 12 the Toyama Chuo Police Station announced the arrest of a Vietnamese person from northern Hai Phong City who was working at the Takeda Shoji Company in Toyama prefecture on suspicion of being involved in the killing of a citizen from central Ha Tinh province, she said.

Local police are now investigating and collecting evidence, she added.

According to Hang, on April 23 the Ha Tinh provincial Department of Foreign Affairs sought help in searching for a missing person in Japan. The ministry directed the embassy to contact local police to verify the information and seek their whereabouts.

The Toyama Chuo Police Station said on May 7 that the body of the Vietnamese man had been found in an area near his dormitory.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has directed the Consular Department to coordinate with domestic and foreign agencies in settling the workers interests in accordance with regulations and to provide guidance and support to the victims family.

The embassy is working closely with relevant parties and Vietnamese associations in Japan to complete funeral procedures and bring the victims ashes home.  VNS
New York, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Global Smart Ovens Market By Type By End User By Distribution Channel By Region, Industry Analysis and Forecast, 2020 - 2026" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05893262/?utm_source=GNW

Smart ovens are attached to a smartphone or a companion app.



The companion app helps customers to remotely monitor and operate smart ovens. It can also be used to set up automatic functions. Voice commands and smart home apps related to smart ovens have been launched in recent years. Amazon Echo or Google Home helps users to monitor the voice of connected smart ovens. These ovens have all the features of conventional ovens, as well as extra settings and configurations.



The smart oven has experienced strong customer response primarily due to its high degree of accessibility and technological properties. It can be conveniently linked via NFC, Wi-Fi or Bluetooth technologies to a range of other smart kitchen appliances, including smart chimneys, refrigerators, and so on. The smart oven can be connected to a number of other kitchen appliances and other room devices, such as media players, room lights, sensors and so on.



With the sudden break of Covid-19 in late months of year 2019, the markets worldwide are unfortunately experiencing its grip. The suppliers and consumers of the products & Services are affected in a big way across the sectors resulting in declining revenues in last quarters of year 2019. The declining trend in market sizes is expected to not only sustain but will also amplify itself in year 2020 hugely disturbing the economies worldwide.



Based on Type, the market is segmented into Counter-top and Built-in. Based on End User, the market is segmented into Residential and Commercial. Based on Distribution Channel, the market is segmented into Offline and Online. Based on Regions, the market is segmented into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific, and Latin America, Middle East & Africa.



The major strategies followed by the market participants are Product Launches and Acquisition. Based on the Analysis presented in the Cardinal matrix, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. is the major forerunners in the Smart Ovens Market. Companies such as Panasonic Corporation, Whirlpool Corporation, LG Corporation, June Life, Inc., Hitachi, Ltd., Tovala, Sharp Corporation, Robert Bosch GmbH, and Techtronic Industries Co., Ltd. are some of the key innovators in Smart Ovens Market.



The market research report covers the analysis of key stake holders of the market. Key companies profiled in the report include LG Corporation (LG Electronics), Whirlpool Corporation, Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Samsung Group), Panasonic Corporation, Sharp Corporation, Hitachi, Ltd., Robert Bosch GmbH, Techtronic Industries Co., Ltd., Tovala, June Life, Inc.



Recent strategies deployed in Smart Ovens Market



Partnerships, Collaborations, and Agreements:



Jan-2020: Panasonic collaborated with Drop, a leading smart kitchen platform. The collaboration was focused on launching microwave ovens utilizing Drops guided cooking recipe format.



Oct-2018: LG came into partnership with SideChef, a home cooking platform offering meal planning, grocery delivery, and smart kitchen connectivity. Following the partnership, the former company aimed to integrate SideChefs into its 2018 line of smart ovens and ranges. Once the user selects a recipe on SideChef, LG appliances automatically start to perform pre-cook tasks such as heating the oven to the right temperature and trigger cooking timers.



Oct-2018: June signed partnership agreement with Whole Foods Market. The partnership enabled the company to integrate its smart cooking technology with the grocers products. Junes smart oven software update combines culinary utility with convenience. The appliances user interface includes a Whole Foods Market icon that allows users to tap a button to cook preprogrammed food and recipes.



Aug-2018: Samsung partnered with Magnet Kitchen for the launch of the new Smart Kitchen. The new product line includes Smart Fridge Freezer, Smart Oven, Smart Dishwasher, and Smart Hob and Hood.



Acquisition and Mergers:



Dec-2018: Hitachi announced an agreement to acquire ABBs power grids division. The acquisition would broaden the companys portfolio of equipment for electricity networks.



Product Launches and Product Expansions:



Dec-2019: LG Electronics (LG) launched LG InstaView ThinQ Range with Air Fry. The complete cooking solution combines air frying and the companys InstaView technology with smart recipes in a seamless package that inspires users for creating nutritious meals in the comfort of their own homes.



Sep-2019: Panasonic launched the latest convection, grill, and combination cooking microwave, complete with Genius Sensor and One-Push Reheating technology.



Jul-2019: Panasonic introduced the NN-GN68KS Microwave Oven with Inverter Technology + FlashXpress Broiler, the compact countertop appliance. Together, Panasonics Inverter technology and the dual infrared Flash Xpress Broiler can conveniently prepare a variety of frozen and fresh foods, plus cook, reheat and broil, both at the same time.



Jan-2019: Whirlpool and its sub-brands WLabs and KitchenAid released four new products with Google Assistant integration. The products launched are KitchenAid Smart Display, KitchenAid Connected Range, WLabs Smart Countertop Oven, and the Whirlpool Smart All-in-One Washer & Dryer.



Nov-2018: Tovala unveiled the second version of its eponymous oven. The oven features a complete redesign and a new version of its meals packaging. The updated Tovala oven steams, bakes, toasts, and broils food. The oven relies on Wi-Fi to pull information about the prepackaged Tovala meals but the users can still operate the oven and its buttons without a connection.



Aug-2018: June introduced the second-generation Intelligent Ovencountertop oven. The oven uses a built-in camera, an internal processor, Wi-Fi connectivity, and software for identifying the foods placed inside. The oven will then access specific cook programs based on what it sees and set the cook time and temperature based on how people want their food to be cooked.



Apr-2018: Whirlpool unveiled W Collection. The collection features all smart appliances such as built-in ovens, microwaves, cooktops, and hoods.



Scope of the Study



Market Segmentation:



By Type



 Counter-top and



 Built-in



By End User



 Residential and



 Commercial



By Distribution Channel



 Offline



 Online



By Geography



 North America



o US



o Canada



o Mexico



o Rest of North America



 Europe



o Germany



o UK



o France



o Russia



o Spain



o Italy



o Rest of Europe



 Asia Pacific



o China



o Japan



o India



o South Korea



o Singapore



o Malaysia



o Rest of Asia Pacific



 LAMEA



o Brazil



o Argentina



o UAE



o Saudi Arabia



o South Africa



o Nigeria



o Rest of LAMEA



Companies Profiled



 LG Corporation (LG Electronics)



 Whirlpool Corporation



 Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. (Samsung Group)



 Panasonic Corporation



 Sharp Corporation



 Hitachi, Ltd.



 Robert Bosch GmbH



 Techtronic Industries Co., Ltd.



 Tovala



 June Life, Inc.



Unique Offerings



 Exhaustive coverage



 Highest number of market tables and figures



 Subscription based model available



 Guaranteed best price



 Assured post sales research support with 10% customization free

Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05893262/?utm_source=GNW



About Reportlinker

ReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.



__________________________
A senior Air India employee has been transferred and given higher responsibilities by being asked to join his duty in Delhi, despite having an ongoing sexual harassment inquiry against him. The airline decided to shift the official as the current head of the department is set to retire soon.

The promotion and transfer order (HT has a copy of it) is dated May 13 and states the officer to be transferred as general manager (GM) of Air Indias medical services in the airline headquarters in New Delhi. An airline source said, The said officer heads a region currently and has been asked to join the medical department in Delhi to head it, pan India.

The said officer was posted in Mumbai when the harassment complaint was filed, after which he was transferred to Hyderabad by the then chairman and managing director- Ashwani Lohani.

The airline spokesperson said, These are internal issues on which we would not like to make any comment. Transfer of senior officers is routine administrative exercise as per administrative and operational requirements to ensure optimum utilization of human resources in sync with laid down rules and norms.

Senior Delhi based officials said that the airline decided as their medical services department needs an officer as its current head is set to retire soon.

A senior airline official said that the medical services department is playing a key role to serve the country, in the current situation when Air India is operating repatriation flights for the government.

Capt. Mohan Ranganathan, former instructor pilot and aviation expert said,  No employee undergoing a sexual harassment case can be promoted in any manner. The airline seems to be blatantly violating norms. Even if the concerned officer is the senior-most and is hence eligible for a promotion, he cannot be given higher responsibilities until the sexual harassment case is going on.
Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC), which manufactures processors and other chips for Apple, AMD and many other firms, has confirmed that it will build a $12 billion chip fab plant in Arizona. The company will utilize its latest 5-nanometer manufacturing technology, with the capacity to build 20,000 silicon wafers per month. As expected, construction will be subsidized by the US government and the plant will create 1,600 high-paying jobs.

The US government has been reportedly been in talks with TSMC for months, according to an earlier report from the WSJ. A sticking point had been the high cost of building the plant. TSMC chairman Mark Liu told the NY Times last year that since its more expensive to operate in America than Taiwan, the company would require major subsidies. Theres no report yet on how much money the US government will pour into the plant.

In the United States, TSMC currently operates a fab in Camas, Washington and design centers in both Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. The Arizona facility would be TSMCs second manufacturing site in the United States.

TSMC is a massive contract manufacturer for numerous fabless chip makers. It builds AMDs CPUs, Apples A13 processor for the latest iPhones and iPads, the Qualcomm processors used in Android devices and the chips used in both NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. Even companies with their own fab plants like Intel and Texas Instruments outsource some production to TSMC.

The company is well ahead of other manufacturers including Intel, having commenced risk production for 5-nanometer manufacturing technology. It will reportedly use that process to build Apples next-gen A14 chip, which should increase performance but also increase costs, according to Wccftech. Intel, meanwhile, has only just moved on to 10-nanometer manufacturing and still isnt building its high-performance 10th-generation chips using the tech. (The only company currently matching TSMCs tech is Samsung, which focuses more on memory production.)

The White House has has also reportedly been trying to convince Intel to build its upcoming chip fab plants stateside. According to the WSJ and NYT reports, the US Defense, Commerce and other departments are concerned about outsourcing chip supplies to other countries, especially China. Experts believe the US needs to invest a lot more in the sector, much as Taiwan, China, Israel and other nations have done.

TSMC addressed that issue in its press release, implying that the government needs to step up. US adoption of forward-looking investment policies to enable a globally competitive environment for a leading edge semiconductor technology operation in the US will be crucial to the success of this project, the company wrote. It will also give us the confidence this and other future investments by TSMC and its supply chain companies will be successful. Construction will commence in 2021, with production targeted to start in 2024.
VALLETTA, Malta, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The latest Ecosystem Report of OKB, the global utility token adopted by OKEx (www.okex.com), for April 2020 was released by the OKB team on May 13. During April, OKB expanded 4 new ecosystem partners, involving gaming, decentralized exchange, public chain service and hardware wallet, while the new function "Convert Small Balances to OKB" was launched on OKEx as well.

The report also mentioned the latest progress of OKChain. Only two months after the launch of its testnet, OKChain achieved 100% open-source in April and pioneered the concept of a business alliance. As of today, the first batch of ecological partners has been assembled, including public chain, wallet, explorer, mining pool, and others.

OKB launched several community campaigns, including a 2-year anniversary to offer a 2 million USD-equivalent OKB in total for sale at a 20% discount.

OKChain activated the vitality of OKB

OKChain is the commercial public chain developed by OKEx which went open-source on April 16. The cross-chain technology allows OKChain for seamless integration with various mainstream public chains, such as Cosmos, BTC, and ETH, etc. Adopting the concept of "OpenDEX" concept", OKChain provides a high degree of autonomy to participating nodes, enabling node runners to develop DEX and dApp or decide which cryptocurrencies and trading pairs to list in a permissionless way. Besides, OKChain also became the first to allow all DEXs to operate on a peer-to-peer blockchain network.

OKB continues to expand its ecosystem

In April, OKEx launched the "Convert Small Balances to OKB", which allows users to swap their small amount of assets (less than 0.001 BTC) into their OKB accounts.

Apart from that, OKB reached cooperation with 4 new ecosystem partners on-board, including BetProtocol, well-known underlying protocol provider for blockchain games, WhaleEx, one of the world's largest decentralized trading platforms, Dappbirds, to support public chain development, wallet services, Dapp chain reissue, Defi, Dex, et and Ellipal, a new generation crypto hardware wallet.

About OKEx

The world's largest and most diverse cryptocurrency marketplace, OKEx is where global crypto traders, miners, and institutional investors come to manage crypto assets, enhance investment opportunities, and hedge risks. We provide spot and derivatives trading, including futures, perpetual swap, and options, of major cryptocurrencies, offering investors great flexibility in formulating their strategies to maximize gains and mitigate risks.

SOURCE OKEx

Related Links

http://www.okex.com


WASHINGTON - The United States is on track to meet its commitment to the Taliban to withdraw several thousand troops from Afghanistan by summer, even as violence flares, the peace process is stalled, and Kabul struggles in political deadlock.

U.S. officials say they will reduce to 8,600 troops by July 15 and abandon five bases. And by next spring all foreign forces are suppose to withdraw, ending Americas longest war. Yet the outlook for peace is cloudy at best. In the absence of Afghan peace talks, the Trump administration may face the prospect of fully withdrawing even as the Taliban remains at war with the government.

That has concerned some lawmakers, including Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee. She says the United States needs to keep a military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan to prevent extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic States Afghan affiliate from forming havens from which to attack the U.S.

Withdrawing U.S. troops from Afghanistan wont end the war  it will just let the terrorists win, she told The Associated Press.

Some question whether the U.S.-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, on Feb. 29, which the Trump administration billed as a decisive step to achieve a negotiated peace, was instead mainly a withdrawal agreement. President Donald Trump had campaigned on bringing troops home from foreign wars. And though the Afghan government publicly supported the deal, it did not participate directly in the negotiations and has not, in Washingtons view, capitalized on the chance for peace talks.

President Trump promised to bring our troops home from overseas and is following through on that promise, the White House said when the Doha deal was signed.

The deal stipulated that the Taliban would start intra-Afghan peace negotiations on March 10, but that has not happened. The Taliban and the Afghan government also have squabbled over a promised release of each others prisoners.

A lot of this boils down to: Was the U.S.-Taliban agreement any kind of serious negotiation at all, or was it just totally a fig leaf to cover abject withdrawal? I suspect the latter, said Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs and a former adviser to U.S. commanders in Kabul.

It gave away almost all the leverage we had in exchange for virtually nothing, he added. It looks very much like a situation in which the Taliban have concluded that the Americans are out, and theyre going to play out the string and see what happens when were gone.

The United States has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country soon after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and overthrew the Taliban, which was running the country and harbouring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden. According to U.S. government auditors, Washington has committed $86 billion to support Afghan security forces and is still spending about $4 billion a year.

The Trump administration has expressed frustration with the lack of movement toward peace talks, but it has not threatened publicly to pull back from its commitment to fully withdraw. It did conduct an airstrike against the Taliban in defence of Afghan ground forces in early March just hours after Trump had what he called a good conversation by phone with a senior Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Although the drawdown is required by the Doha agreement, U.S. defence officials had said for many months that they wanted to reduce to 8,600  the approximate number of troops that were supporting Afghan forces and conducting counterterrorism operations when Trump took office.

American officials constructed the Doha agreement mainly as a way of ending U.S. involvement in the war, rather than as an assured path to peace. The withdrawal is subject to Taliban assurances, but it does not require a peace settlement.

The deal also is seen by the U.S. as a way to enlist the Taliban in the fight against the Islamic State group. The American military considers the groups Afghan affiliate as a greater threat than the Taliban.

The U.S. agreed to withdraw not just military forces but also all intelligence agency personnel, private security contractors, trainers and advisers. NATO allied forces also are to withdraw.

The Doha deal was seen at the time as Afghanistans best chance at peace in decades of war, but the government has since been consumed with political turmoil. Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah have both declared themselves winners of last years presidential polls, and each declared himself president.

Defence Secretary Mark Esper has said that getting out of Afghanistan would advance his aim of devoting more forces to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, which he sees as the No. 1 long-term threat to the United States.

Esper has been skeptical of the Talibans commitment to peace, and on May 5 he said neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government is abiding by the agreement.

Esper said the Taliban should return to the reduced levels of violence that existed in the week before the Feb. 29 Doha signing. At the time, Ghani put his government forces in a defensive stance, but on Tuesday he ordered a return to the offensive, expressing anger for two attacks, including one that killed 24 people, including infants, at a hospital. The Taliban denied responsibility and the U.S. has blamed the Islamic State affiliate in Afghanistan for the attack. The Taliban on Thursday said it had carried out a suicide bombing as retaliation for having been falsely accused by Ghani.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Thomas Campbell, indicated the U.S. stance has not changed.

Consistent with the agreement, the U.S. military will continue to conduct defensive strikes against the Taliban when they attack our (Afghan) partners., he said Wednesday. As the secretary of defence stated recently, this is going to be a windy, bumpy road, but a political agreement is the best way to end the war.
The two political opponents Maame Afia Akoto and Chief Biney Hamilton who tied the knot on Wednesday, February 12, 2020 sparked a lot of controversies in the Ghanaian community as well as among members of the two major political parties in the country.



Maame Afia Akoto, the staunch NPP member has responded to views expressed by critics against her marriage to the Deputy National Organizer of the opposition NDC, Chief Biney Hamilton.



According to her, she respects her husband's decision to join National Democratic Congress (NDC) hence she cant force him to join the New Patriotic Party (NPP).



Commenting on the marriage which has surprised many Ghanaians, Maame Afia Akoto indicated that, she sees nothing wrong with her marriage with Chief Biney Hamilton.



There is something that Ghanaians do not understand and I dont blame them. Ghanaians hardly accept change, she added.



Considering their political differences, she emphatically stated that, I respect where my husband is and he respects where I am. I cant force him to join NPP, because I am not the one who made him join NDC.



But I can only stay true and loyal to my party, she exclusively told Kwaku Dawuro in an interview on Pae Mu Ka on Accra based Kingdom FM.

Source: kingdomfm









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
With 61 new cases in the last 24



hours, the COVID-19 count in Madhya Pradesh's Indore district rose to 2,299, while two more patients succumbed to the infection, a health official said on Friday.

Indore, one of the districts worst-affected by coronavirus in the country, recorded 61 fresh cases and two deaths since Thursday, chief medical and health officer (CMHO) Praveen Jadia said.

Two men, one aged 75 and the other 55 - who were being treated at different hospitals in the district - succumbed to the infection on Thursday, he said.

Both patients suffered from high blood pressure and other chronic ailments, the official added.

The latest deaths had taken the toll in the region to 98, Jadia said.

As of Friday morning, the mortality rate among COVID- 19 patients in the district stood at 4.26 per cent.

At least 1,103 patients in the district had recovered from the infection so far, another official said.

The first four cases of COVID-19 were reported in Indore on March 24, following which a curfew was imposed in the city the next day.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Germanys energy regulator has declined to grant an exemption of rules governing the EU's internal gas market to the operators of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline to carry gas from Russia to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

The Federal Network Agency, Bundesnetzagentur, said on May 15 that the section of the pipeline that runs through German territory is not exempt from the EU gas directive under which production, transport, and distribution of energy should be independently organized.

The agency said a waiver could only have been granted to the Nord Stream 2 consortium if the pipeline had been completed by May 23 last year.

The consortium, which is led by Russias state-run Gazprom but also includes Western partners, said it disagreed with the decision, reiterating that while not physically complete the project had been economically functional. A spokesman said legal action was being considered.

The dispute wont affect the construction of the 1,230-kilometer pipeline, which is already long behind schedule, but is related to its operation once it is running.

The $11 billion project has a capacity to export 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas a year. It is more than 90 percent complete with about 160 kilometers of pipeline remaining to be laid along the Baltic Sea floor near Denmark.

The U.S. Congress passed a bill in December 2019 that allowed Washington to impose sanctions on any vessel that helps Russia complete the pipeline, forcing Western-owned ships to stop work.

The United States opposes Nord Stream 2, saying it would strengthen Russias hold on Western Europes energy market and allow the Kremlin to avoid exports through Ukraine, depriving Kyiv of much-needed transit revenue.

Russia claims Washington is seeking to block the project with the goal of exporting more U.S. liquefied natural gas to Europe.

With reporting by Reuters
By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson (Reuters) - Delta Air Lines moved to retire its Boeing Co 777 fleet and reduce its pilot ranks on Thursday as it joins other airlines wrestling with the need to shrink their operations to match reduced air travel due to the coronavirus crisis. After announcing that it would no longer fly its 18 wide-body 777s, Delta told its 14,500 pilots that it expects to have 7,000 more than it needs in the fall, according to a memo to flight operations employees first reported by Reuters

By Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson

(Reuters) - Delta Air Lines moved to retire its Boeing Co 777 fleet and reduce its pilot ranks on Thursday as it joins other airlines wrestling with the need to shrink their operations to match reduced air travel due to the coronavirus crisis.

After announcing that it would no longer fly its 18 wide-body 777s, Delta told its 14,500 pilots that it expects to have 7,000 more than it needs in the fall, according to a memo to flight operations employees first reported by Reuters.

"I recognize that is an alarming number so it's important to know that our intent is to align staffing for what we need over the long term," John Laughter, S.V.P. of flight operations, said in the May 14 memo seen by Reuters.

U.S. airlines are collectively burning more than $10 billion in cash per month and averaging fewer than two dozen passengers per domestic flight in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic as they brace for two or three years until air travel will return to pre-crisis levels.

American Airlines Group Inc has also announced a large fleet retirement, and United Airlines Holdings Inc has told its pilots to brace for changes.

All three are receiving billions of dollars in government payroll aid that bans any job cuts before October.

Taking into account the exit of pilots who will reach mandatory retirement age over the next year, Delta would still have between 2,500 and 3,500 more pilots than needed to fly its schedule in the third quarter of 2021, Laughter said.

U.S. pilots must retire by age 65, a requirement that until a few months ago was fueling a rush by airlines to recruit new aviators to feed what the U.S. industry expected would be continued growth in domestic air travel.

But the spread of the novel coronavirus has brought airports around the globe to a virtual standstill, turning airlines' growth plans upside down.

Delta said it also plans to retire its older and higher- maintenance MD-90 planes by the end of the year, resulting in second-quarter non-cash impairment charges of $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion, before tax.

Shares in Delta were down 2.7% at $18.89 in late-morning trading after earlier hitting a 7-year low.

When international demand returns, Delta plans to use Airbus SE's more fuel-efficient and cost-effective A330 and A350-900 wide-body planes for long-haul flying, it said.

Few companies in the aviation industry are immune from the shake-down.

Airbus has told senior staff the company must be "resized" and is ready to cut jet production again to tackle any second wave of the coronavirus crisis, people briefed on the matter told Reuters.

Despite the grim news, President Donald Trump on Wednesday sounded an optimistic note, saying the airline industry is in good shape," although he provided no evidence.

(Reporting by Tracy Rucinski and David Shepardson; Editing by Dan Grebler; Additional reporting by Ankit Ajmera; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Dan Grebler)

This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed.
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A manslaughter investigation has been launched into the death of a wheelchair-bound woman with cerebral palsy who was left to die in 'disgusting and degrading circumstances'.

Ann-Marie Smith suffered from cerebral palsy and died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on April 6 after being admitted with severe ulcerated and infected tissue, and other serious illnesses.

The 54-year-old had been living alone in Adelaide since 2009 when her parents died, and since 2013 has relied on a carer for six hours a day everyday.

Ann-Marie Smith suffered from cerebral palsy and died in the Royal Adelaide Hospital on April 6

The day before she died, Ms Smith's carer called her an ambulance as she began to suffer from severe pressure sores which required the removal of rotting flesh.

Ms Smith died the following day of profound septic shock, multiple organ failure from severe pressure sores, cerebral palsy and was also found to be suffering from malnutrition.

Doctors then lodged a complaint to Health and Community Services Complaints Commissioner about the lack of care Ms Smith was subject to.

South Australia Police and Major Crime Investigators have now launched an investigation into Ms Smith's death, labelling it as manslaughter.

'Unable to care for herself, she was living her days and sleeping at night in the same woven cane chair in a lounge room for over a year with extremely poor personal hygiene,' Detective Superintendent Des Bray said.

'That chair had also become her toilet and there was no fridge in the house and investigators were unable to locate any nutritional food in the house.'

Ann-Marie Smith's home in Bradman Court, Kensington Park where she was found dead in 'disgusting and degrading circumstances'

Last week, officers seized records from the company that was in charge of looking after Ms Smith.

On Friday, they interviewed her carer and seized several items for the investigation, ABC reported.

'Ann lived alone and had a full-time carer and was unable to walk or take care of herself,' Superintendent Bray said.

'Despite living in a nice house, Ann died in disgusting and degrading circumstances.

'This is a tragic case.'

The investigation will closely examine the carer's role as well as 'anybody who had a role or meant to have a role in providing care for Ms Smith.

Superintendent Bray urged anyone with information concerning Ms Smith's care to contact police.
As one of Australia's leading television personalities, she's met a slew of A-list stars.

And speaking to News.com.au on Friday, Lisa Wilkinson revealed her most 'tragic' interview to date.

The 60-year-old was 'least impressed' by Italian actress and star of the Golden Age of Hollywood, Sophia Loren, 85, during her time as co-host of Channel Nine's Today.

'She decided I wasn't good enough to be interviewing her': Lisa Wilkinson, 60, (pictured) revealed her most 'tragic' interview to date, with an actress from the Golden Age of Hollywood, when speaking to News.com.au on Friday. Pictured on The Project

'Talk about a person not wanting to be in the room. I should have taken the hint when she turned up an hour and a half late!' Lisa told the publication.

'I thought, naively, that I'd be able to warm her up because I was so excited about interviewing this icon of the movie industry, but she didn't want to be there and tragically I did, so I think the results were quite sad.'

Lisa went on to suggest that Sophia, real name Sofia Villani Scicolone, 'decided very early on' that she 'was not good enough to be interviewing her'.

Not interested: 'Talk about a person not wanting to be in the room. I should have taken the hint when she turned up an hour and a half late!' Lisa said of Italian actress Sophia Loren, 85, who is pictured in October

Sophia is one of the last surviving stars from the Golden Age of Hollywood, and is known for films including Two Women, Marriage Italian Style, and Houseboat.

Meanwhile, Lisa sat alongside Karl Stefanovic on Today for 10 years, before leaving Nine in October 2017 over a reported gender pay gap dispute.

The former magazine editor was believed to have quit because Karl, as her male co-host, was reportedly earning $2million a year with a potential bonus that could take his salary to $3million if ratings were a hit, The Australian wrote in 2017.

According to The Daily Telegraph, Lisa was said to be on a $1.1million a year contract, with Nine only willing to increase the amount to $1.8million.

Iconic actress: Sophia, who is known for films including Two Women and Houseboat, was interviewed by Lisa during her time as co-host of Channel Nine's Today. Pictured in June, 1950

Decade-long run: Meanwhile, Lisa sat alongside Karl Stefanovic (pictured) on Today for 10 years, before leaving Nine in October 2017 over a reported gender pay gap dispute

The amount was not enough for her to stay with the network, prompting her departure.

Since joining The Sunday Project in 2018, Lisa has landed sit-down interviews with the likes of Kim Kardashian, Kylie Minogue and Bradley Cooper.

In an interview with The Herald Sun in December 2018, Lisa applauded the 'integrity' and high 'calibre' of her colleagues at Ten, referencing Carrie Bickmore, Fifi Box, Amanda Keller, Julia Morris and Gorgi Coghlan.

'One of the absolute bonuses that I really hadn't anticipated in moving to Ten, is the calibre of my colleagues,' she said.
After the corona effect, the government has to invest more in the service sector where a huge number of people will access the security service of the government.





by Swadesh Roy





It is tough to predict, like other countries of the world, what will be the situation of the economy of Bangladesh after the corona math, for it is still uncertain to know how long corona pandemic will continue in the world. Besides, some scientists forecast, the second wave of corona will hit the world, and with such considerations, another thing is obvious, the world will have to continue with corona for a long time. In the meantime, some South-East Asian countries have already started their regular works maintaining many limitations and taking more new measures.













What may come in the fate of Bangladesh, a new start have to be initialized from the coming mid-June. The present situation of corona in Bangladesh is at its peak, and the Corona statisticians are predicting the downslide of it will start from the third week of May. So, normal life has to be started from mid-June having with many corona patients death toll, limitations, and more new measures.





When Bangladesh will start its limited normal work in the industrial and limited-service sectors, both the sectors will be heavily wounded. In Bangladesh, one of the main industries, garments, is already being an affected sector, which has lost lots of its goods orders from the buyers. Not only this, when it will start the operation, operating smoothly will be hampered sometimes by many new corona patients. At the same time, West will start with new measures and their market will be partially ready for purchasing autumn and Christmas clothes. Eventually, Bangladesh will get these two orders of the garments, basically, the winter with Christmas order is always big for Bangladesh garments industries. We hope that Bangladesh will fully able to take the winter with Christmas and New Years order. So, if Bangladesh becomes capable to supply the winter with Christmas and New Years garments, the loss of the garments sector by the hit of the corona will stand at 30% so far. The shoe and other leather goods sectors scenario will be the same. On the other hand, medicine sector is more likely to add some more for another year, because our medicine like paracetamol and some antiviral will get adequate market in many African countries. Dr. Atiur Rahman, the former governor of Bangladesh Central Bank, has forecasted in his comment that the industrial sector will lose 30%. Therefore, it sufficiently informs that, like the garments sector, all other industries will make a loss of utmost 30%. It may conclude clearly, the industrial sector will add 30% less than the previous years GDP.





After the corona effect, the government has to invest more in the service sector where a huge number of people will access the security service of the government. Moreover, the Government has to provide more security service for a huge number of the lower middle class at least for six months to one year. Along with this, Bangladesh has a permanent burden of Rohingya refugees. After this corona effect, the West and particularly, UNHCR are more unlikely to continue with their supports for the Rohingya refugees, for corona will ruin many poor and disorganized countries economy like Pakistan, Afghanistan, and many African countries, which could engender a huge number of refugees in Australia, Canada, and European countries. With this consequence, the duties and fund of UNHR will be disbursed in more new areas, and then, there will be a possibility to cut the aid for Rohingya refugees. The shape of the service sectors in the GDP will be 50% less than the previous year.





Having these grey areas, the main light in the economy of Bangladesh is the agriculture sector. The government of Bangladesh is successful to continue the agriculture sector even in this COVID-19 affected time. So, it is clear that the agriculture sector is not a wounded sector by corona. In Bangladesh, agriculture adds 15% in the GDP which is 2.53% of the GDP. This year government has given more emphasis on the agriculture sector. Besides, two or three crops like Boro rice, Potato, and Corn which have been harvested from February to May resulted bumper production. On the other hand, the government has emphasized on some other agriculture products in the village areas like cattle and fishes for overcoming this corona crisis. The expectation says it will add at least .50% in the total GDP.





Corona pandemic has already changed the world economic structure and thinking. So, the whole world will invest more in the health and education sector. Not only the government but also many private entrepreneurs will invest in the health and education sector. Simultaneously, world monetary organizations will allocate more funds for the health and education sector. Bangladesh will also get it and already have got some commitments from Asian Development Bank (ADB) and others. Thats why, more foreign loan will be added in the Bangladeshi economy that will add more value in the GDP.





Another main source of income in the Bangladeshi economy is foreign remittance which is gotten through the overseas labors. Corona pandemic will squeeze the job market all over the world. But in this bad situation of the job market, most of the overseas labors of Bangladesh will continue their jobs like the recession time of 2009, for most of the labor of Bangladesh are utility labor, which are necessary for any circumstances. Therefore, Bangladesh will not lose the remittance from overseas labor.





In conclusion, now it is clear that in the next fiscal year Bangladesh will get 3% of the GDP from the agriculture sector and industrial sector will lose only 30%. Service sector will lose 50% but overseas remittance will continue its flow like previous year. Besides, Bangladesh will be successful to maintain their strong internal market after pulling out the lockdown. Because, it is the market of 170 million people. Moreover, Bangladesh government has given incentives BDT 800 Billion in various sectors in the meantime. It will increase BDT 1000 Billion and more.





Besides, Bangladesh government has eased the bank loans for the small industries and vendors, which is a big stimulation for the economy. Given this context, we can conclude that having 3% from agriculture sector, Bangladesh will get another 2.50% to 3% from all other industrial business, infrastructure investment and others. Thats why, the economy of Bangladesh will not ruin after or having this corona pandemic. Rather, it will continue in a stable position with 5.50% or 6% GDP.





Swadesh Roy, Senior Journalist, Dhaka, Bangladesh. He is a highest state award winning journalist and can be reached at swadeshroy@gmail.com
Whether or not we should have been more prepared for its unprecedented events in hindsight, it is clear that the global health crisis has blindsided the global economy in the last 100 days. As we strode confidently into 2020, global stock markets where on highs  of course, around that same time, the World Health Organization became aware of a string of pneumonia-like illnesses in Wuhan. The rest, entrepreneurs are fully, painfully, up to date on. The global economy is in paralysis, necessitating huge interventions by government and leading to significant job losses.

Even the mighty Google is reportedly looking at ways to find efficiencies, cutting marketing budgets as well as initiating hiring freezes. Startups are also increasingly sharply in focus, with many that were previously flying high now in a fight for survival.

Related: Why Progressive Leaders Focus On Playing the Long-Game

According to Crunchbase, 280 startups laid off 21,609 employees from March 11 to April 21. Eventbrite, the global ticketing and experience platform has announced a $100 million annualized expense reduction plan, reducing its global workforce by 45 percent together with other cost-saving measures. Coming only a short time after Amazon's potential investment in online delivery business Deliveroo being provisionally approved by the UK competition watchdog, reports emerged that Deliveroo is set to cut hundreds of employees, struggling with lower demand during the lockdown.

Another eye-catching story was StockX laying off 12 percent of its workforce. This should serves as a warning on how fast things can change; StockX was valued at $1 billion as of July 2019, and as recently as an March 27, the CEO of the "stock market for things" mentioned it had benefited from the events over the last few months. However, in a statement to Business Insider, StockX said it was now shifting from a "growth-focused mentality to one rooted in operational efficiency." Clearly it is a time for all businesses to face into our new reality  things are changing quickly.

What is operational efficiency?

Lets be honest, the concept of operational efficiency probably didnt come up too often in your management team meetings pre-crisis. Operational efficiency measures the efficiency of profit earned as a function of operating costs; the greater the operational efficiency, the more profitable a company is, generating greater income or returns for the same, or lower costs. One example is lean manufacturing. Adapted from the Toyota Production System, it also refers to the concept of "continuous improvement," a process that seeks to reduce and eventually eliminate inefficiency and waste.

Related: 5 Tips for Recognizing a Meaningful Business Opportunity When You See One

One of its key frameworks, 5S, is named after five activities derived from the Japanese words seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu and shitsuke  to sort, straighten (or set in order), shine, standardize and sustain. Interestingly some later adaptions of the model also call for a sixth S for safety  but hopefully thats a given right now.

When adapted, these principles can prove to be a useful starting point for startups to consider. Operational efficiency does not just need to be focused on reducing headcount  there are many practical areas to address declining revenues and profits and positives to derive as well.

1. Review your core business functions

In 5S, the first step of "sort" typically refers to the need to remove all unneeded items, only retaining what is needed for efficient production. This reduces distraction and the time required to look for something, increasing the amount of available, useful space. Take this time to review your business activities end-to-end. Do you have areas that are not (yet) core to your business survival? Can they be paused for now?

2. Realign resources to your core business

Connected to the above, this is also an opportunity to realign and focus your team on the areas of greatest return for your business.

3. Are you returning to the same scale of business?

Consider your own "space" when things return to normal. Most of us reading this have been working with a distributed team for some time now, so do you still need all of your office space? Perhaps this new way of working can enable you to reduce your costs.

4. Review your workflows

"Set in order" in 5S refers to making workflow smoother through establishing specific locations, quantities and order of parts needed for efficient operation. Look at your internal process for completing different types of task with an efficiency focus. How they might be improved?

5. Partner review

Do you have multiple companies offering similar services to you or point solutions in different parts of your business? Single or integrated solution might enable you to reduce cost. Equally, consider if you still need enterprise scale solutions you selected for growth.

6. Identify hidden areas of waste

It may be a while since youve audited your business supply and procurement. Now is the time to look to reduce waste in your business (e.g. SaaS services you are subscribed too that you can do without or can reduce to the free for now).

7. Finish off those projects

In 5S, shine or shining represents inspecting your workplace and tools on a regular basis in order to improve efficiency, safety and prevent errors and defects. Consider if this is a time to finally get onto refining things that youve never finished as you intended, such as long overdue software enhancements or addressing that backlog of technical debt. This will also improve the robustness of your core product.

8. Standardize processes and KPIs

Seiketsu refers to implementing visual displays and controls to standardize processes to making them part of daily routine. Do you agree, manage and monitor your key principles of working currently? Are your team clear on their responsibilities? Use this time to establish stronger KPIs and targets for creating efficiencies in your company.

9. Bring the team into the process

Shitsuke also translates to "do without being told," and focuses on maintaining operational efficiency through continued training and total employee involvement. As a startup, you might already be working in an agile, self-organized manner, but take this as an opportunity to bring your team into the review process, explaining why this is important for survival.

10. Training and skills improvement

As you reorganize, seek input from your team to identify improvements  ideally incentivize them for offering suggestions. Ask them how they would suggest you reduce costs and innovate without impacting customer experience.

Tempering your growth ambitions and implementing an authentic-feeling culture of continuous improvement is not going to happen overnight, but hopefully some of the ideas covered here will spark ideas to help you becoming a leaner business as we all recover from this period. Gaining improvements in productivity, customer value, team morale and employee engagement, as well appropriate cost reduction will ultimately improve your business agility and operating model and lead to greater profitability. Be transparent and seek input  you just might find some game-changing improvements.

Related: 5 Steps to Help Your Business Emerge Stronger From the Health Crisis

Related:

5 Ways Entrepreneurs Can Rebound After a Crisis

Free Webinar | June 16: Find Customers and Grow Sales For Your Disruptive Brand

10 Ways Startups Can Pivot From Growth to Operational Efficiency During a Crisis



Copyright 2020 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 10:34:14|Editor: huaxia

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WELLINGTON, May 15 (Xinhua) -- New Zealand reported one more case of COVID-19 on Friday after three consecutive days of zero cases in the country, said a statement of the Ministry of Health.

This means New Zealand's combined total of confirmed and probable cases is now 1,498, of which 1,148 are confirmed, it said.

Friday's case was linked to the Marist cluster in Auckland and was identified through recent follow-up testing of the school community. The person first had symptoms nearly two months ago and had a previous negative test. The result is considered a "weak positive" and the person, who has been in isolation through the lockdown period, is not considered infectious at present, according to the ministry.

"We have previously identified instances of 'weak positive' cases, which can occur sometime after an individual's illness," the statement said.

New Zealand currently has 1,421 people reported as having recovered from COVID-19, an increase of 10 on Thursday. This is 95 percent of all confirmed and probable cases, it said, adding there are now just 56 "active" cases across the country.

There were two people receiving hospital care for COVID-19 and neither are in ICU. The death toll remained at 21 in the country.

Director-General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said Friday's confirmed case reinforces the "long tail" of the COVID-19 outbreak in New Zealand.

"While we do not consider this case to be infectious, it does demonstrate once again that we must stay vigilant. COVID-19 will continue to linger, so we need to keep consistently doing the things which will help keep all New Zealanders safe and allow us to continue to relax restrictions," Bloomfield said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 12:45:31|Editor: huaxia

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Photo taken on May 15, 2020 in the surveillance center of Humen Bridge shows the monitor screen showing traffic flow on the bridge in south China's Guangdong Province, May 15, 2020. (Xinhua/Hu Nayun)

GUANGZHOU, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Traffic resumed Friday morning on a sea bridge in south China's Guangdong Province after it was temporarily closed last week due to abnormal shaking.

On May 5, two-way traffic restrictions were placed on Humen Bridge linking provincial capital Guangzhou and the city of Dongguan as a safety measure after it began to shake amid severe winds.

Experts were sent to the site to conduct thorough examinations, tests and safety evaluations. They also discussed ways to stop the shaking.

After evaluations, the experts found that the bridge's structure and function were in good condition, and that the shaking did not cause abnormalities in the bridge.

Under specific wind conditions, vortex resonance caused the bridge to shake, according to the experts. Authorities have taken a variety of technical measures to stop the shaking, and the measures are working well.

The Humen Bridge spans about 16 km. It is a suspended bridge. Enditem
Peter Duffy, the CEO of takeaway delivery company Just Eat, is to leave the firm to become the next head of the Moneysupermarket Group.

The former banker will join the FTSE 250 business in September, following chief executive Mark Lewis's announcement in February that he was standing down.

Duffy oversaw Just Eat's 6billion takeover by Dutch firm Takeaway.com, beating South African company Naspers after a months-long fight between the two.

Peter Duffy previously spent many years at Barclays, before moving to Audi UK as a marketing director for four years, and then spending seven years as EasyJet's Chief Commercial Officer

The UK government's competition body, the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA), also put the deal on hold over concerns it would lead to a 'substantial lessening of competition.'

It approved the merger on April 23 though after saying there was 'not a material likelihood' that Takeaway.com would have entered the food delivery market were the deal not to go ahead.

Duffy previously spent many years at Barclays where he rose to become a marketing services director before moving to Audi UK as a marketing director for four years, and then spending seven years as EasyJet's Chief Commercial Officer.

In the year he joined the budget airline, it flew 54.5 million passengers, had a turnover of 3.45billion and profits of 225million. When he left, annual passenger numbers reached 88.5 million and revenues were 5.9billion.

Just Eat merged with Takeaway.com this year in a 6.2billion deal following CMA approval

He eventually joined Just Eat as the Chief Customer Officer in June 2018 before seizing the top position six months later.

The University of Warwick graduate will occupy a position formerly held by Peter Plumb, whom himself used to be the head of Just Eat.

Mr Duffy said: 'I'm thrilled to be joining Moneysupermarket Group, a company I have always admired. We are here to save customers money, and with people facing so much uncertainty at the moment, this has never been more important.

'I'm really looking forward to working with the team on their exciting plans to bring more savings to more people.'

Robin Freestone, chairman of Moneysupermarket, said: 'After an extensive search, we're pleased to appoint Peter Duffy as our new CEO.

'He has the track record we're looking for: Experience of digital businesses and a dynamic leadership style that's been honed in fast-moving trading environments, including nearly seven years at EasyJet.

'We thank Mark for his leadership over the past three-and-a-half years and wish him well. Mark and the team have set a clear strategy for the group and helped households save over 6billion.'

MoneySupermarket Group's shares were only 0.1 per cent down during the mid-afternoon at 314.8p
First look: NASA's James Webb space telescope fully stowed

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been successfully folded and stowed into the same configuration it will have when loaded onto an Ariane 5 rocket for launch next year.

Webb is NASA's largest and most complex space science telescope ever built. Too big for any rocket available in its fully expanded form, the entire observatory was designed to fold in on itself to achieve a much smaller configuration. Once in space, the observatory will unfold and stretch itself out in a carefully practiced series of steps before beginning to make groundbreaking observations of the cosmos.

"The James Webb Space Telescope achieved another significant milestone with the entire observatory in its launch configuration for the first time, in preparation for environmental testing," said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "I am very proud of the entire Northrop Grumman and NASA integration and test team. This accomplishment demonstrates the outstanding dedication and diligence of the team in such trying times due to COVID-19."

The testing team's charter is to make sure every piece of hardware and every piece of software that comprise Webb will work not only individually, but as a full observatory. Now that Webb is completely assembled, technicians and engineers have seized the unique opportunity to command the entire spacecraft and carry out the various stages of movement and deployment it will perform when in space. By folding and stowing the spacecraft into the same configuration when it launches from French Guiana, the engineering team can confidently move forward with final environmental testing (acoustics and vibration). After completing the series of tests, Webb will be deployed one last time on Earth for testing prior to preparing for launch.

"While operating under augmented personal safety measures because of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the project continues to make good progress and achieve significant milestones in preparation for upcoming environmental testing," said Gregory L. Robinson, the Webb program director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Team member safety continues to be our highest priority as the project takes precautions to protect Webb's hardware and continue with integration and testing. NASA will continually assess the project's schedule and adjust decisions as the situation evolves."

###

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

For more information about Webb, visit http://www. nasa. gov/ webb .

By Thaddeus Cesari NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

This story has been published on: 2020-05-14. To contact the author, please use the contact details within the article.
A closely watched coronavirus vaccine being developed by scientists at Oxford University appears protective in a small study of six monkeys, promising findings that led to the start of human trials late last month, US and British researchers reported on Thursday.

The preliminary findings, which have not undergone rigorous review by other scientists, appeared on the preprint server bioRxiv on Thursday.

British drugmaker AstraZeneca last month announced it had teamed up with researchers at the Oxford Vaccine Group and the Jenner Institute, which are developing the vaccine.

According to the report, some of the monkeys given a single shot of the vaccine developed antibodies against the virus within 14 days, and all developed protective antibodies within 28 days, before being exposed to high doses of the virus.

After exposure, the vaccine appeared to prevent damage to the lungs and kept the virus from making copies of itself there, but the virus was still actively replicating in the nose.

Stephen Evans, a professor of pharmacoepidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said the monkey data were very definitely good news.

It is one of the hurdles to be passed by the Oxford vaccine and it has cleared it well, he said in an emailed comment.

Although success in monkeys is seen as a key step, many vaccines that protect monkeys in the lab ultimately fail to protect humans.

Evans said one key finding was particularly reassuring  that there was no evidence of immune-enhanced disease, in which instead of protecting against a virus, a vaccine actually makes the disease worse.

This was a definite theoretical concern for a vaccine against SARS-CoV-2 and finding no evidence for it in this study is very encouraging, he said.

Last month, British researchers started dosing human volunteers with the vaccine in a small safety trial, making it one of only a handful to have reached that milestone. As of May 13, 1,000 people have received the vaccine, the researchers said.

Other vaccines in human trials include those by Moderna Inc , Pfizer Inc and BioNTech SE <22UAy.F> and China`s CanSino Biologics Inc<6185.HK>.

Globally, there are more than 100 experimental vaccines under development to fight the new coronavirus that has so far infected 4.39 million people and killed 296,847.

A vaccine that protects people from the coronavirus couldend the pandemic, but finding one that works and manufacturingenough doses is a huge challenge.

Normally, it can take up to 10 years to develop a working vaccine, but the urgency of the pandemic has resulted in accelerated timelines, and some officials estimate a working vaccine could be available for emergency use as early as this fall.
LANSING, MI - Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said Thursday the threat of a second wave of the coronavirus outbreak this fall could dwarf what the country has seen so far, making it essential to get better processes in place to limit cases of COVID-19.

During a roundtable of governors hosted by Democratic Presidential candidate Joe Biden on Thursday, May 14, Whitmer said more widespread testing supplies are needed from the federal government

Theres a real threat of what could be a second wave that would dwarf the experience weve had so far, Whitmer said.

In a recent shipment of swabs for tests from the federal government, Whitmer explained that Michigan received one specific type of swab, rather than a variety of swabs intended to perform different types of COVID-19 tests.

While Whitmer said she is grateful for the supplies the federal government provides, not having the right types of tests will drastically hinder Michigans ability to reach its goal of at least 30,000 tests administered each day by mid-June.

Were not doing it right, Whitmer said more broadly of the countrys test supplying and procedures.

Biden agreed with Whitmer on the need for more organized testing efforts headed by the federal government.

Weve been way, way off the mark in getting that material to you all," he said.

In response to Whitmers appearance on the roundtable, Michigan GOP Chair Laura Cox said the governor is failing Michiganders in her COVID-19 response while making a variety of media appearances.

Her overbearing stay-at-home orders are putting Michiganders at risk by destroying the livelihoods of millions in our state, Cox said Thursday. ...Instead of working with President Trump to protect Michiganders Whitmer has gone on national television, over and over, attacking the president for her own personal failures and auditioning to be Joe Bidens vice president.

Related: Gretchen Whitmer is a national figure now. What you need to know about The woman in Michigan'

Whitmer also addressed how COVID-19 has disparately impacted African Americans during the roundtable that also featured New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont.

Statewide, 32% of all confirmed coronavirus cases in Michigan involve black patients. Black residents make up about 13.6% of the states population. More than 40% of Michigan residents who have died of COVID-19 were African-American.

Whitmer said Michigan was one of the first states to release COVID-19 data on race. The state has created a task force responsible for providing recommendations on how to address racial disparities in health care during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis.

The virus is simply holding up a mirror to our country to the disparate outcomes for people of color in America generally and reminding us of these deep inequities, she said.

The governors also addressed massive budget cuts that are looming as a result of COVID-19 and stay-home orders that have left millions of the nations workers unemployed.

Whitmer said Michigan is anticipating a $3 billion budget shortfall in the current fiscal year, while the shortfall will be bigger than that in the next fiscal year.

The largest parts of the budget revolve around public health, safety and education, which are all critical during a global pandemic, Whitmer said.

Weve got to protect public health, weve got to protect public safety and the education of our kids has already been so compromised, she said. We think the usual learning loss of the summer is tough.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Related stories:

Thursday, May 14: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Soggy protesters demand Michigan Gov. Whitmer end the coronavirus lockdown

Heat map from New York Times shows Michiganders are leaving home more often, despite orders to stay inside

Whitmer says protests make it likelier Michiganders will have to stay home longer
The Winnipeg Foundation handed out $5 million to community organizations in 1997, when Rick Frost became the registered charity's chief executive officer. In 2019, the organization gave out $57.5 million.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The Winnipeg Foundation handed out $5 million to community organizations in 1997, when Rick Frost became the registered charity's chief executive officer. In 2019, the organization gave out $57.5 million.

After 23 years on the job, Frost announced Thursday he is retiring from the country's first community foundation, effective April 26, 2021.

"That's the 100th anniversary of the foundation," Frost said about why he chose that date. "Someone else can take it over for the next 100 years."

In a statement, Randy Moffat, former chairman of Moffat Communications who gave a $100 million gift to the foundation almost two decades ago, said: "We deeply appreciate Rick's unmatched contribution to the strengthening of our community."

Foundation chairwoman Doneta Brotchie said: "Rick's leadership and reputation for collaboration has grown the Winnipeg Foundation to the premiere organization it is. It takes a very special leader to bring this kind of success to an organization and, for more than two decades, Rick and his team have built the foundation to what it is today."

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Frost had served as chief administrative officer of the Regional Municipality of Peel (1979-89) and the City of Winnipeg's chief commissioner (1989-97) when he was hired to lead the foundation established by banker William Forbes Alloway in 1921.

During Frost's time on the job there have been numerous highlights: among them the $100-million gift from the Moffat family; a $6-million grant to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights; and the Nourishing Potential and Literacy for Life granting programs.

Frost said he also is proud of the grants which helped create Saint-Boniface Belvedere walkway along the Red River and the help given for the Centennial Neighbourhood project.

"There have been so many different projects, it is hard to say what are the most meaningful," he said Thursday. "Every donor who starts a fund, it isn't the size of it, it is the passion of the people who want to help their community  that's what I find important."

The foundation's board has launched a national search for a successor.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

May. 15, 2020 | PADUCAH

By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 15, 2020 | 11:49 AM | PADUCAH

The Paducah Area Chamber of Commerce and Paducah Convention and Visitors Bureau are hosting a How to Prepare for the Opening of Restaurants webinar.



Stacy Roof, President & CEO of the Kentucky Restaurant Association, will be the presenter to review the new guidelines and answer questions. Governor Andy Beshear released the states guidelines for restaurants, which are scheduled to open on May 22 with 33% capacity inside and unlimited seating outdoors with social distancing.



Business owners and members of the public are welcome to listen to the webinar, which will be held at 10 a.m. Tuesday, May 19.



To join, go to Zoom and enter Meeting ID: 966 3546 1813 or join audio only by calling 1-646-558-8656 and use the same Meeting ID.



"We commend local restaurateurs and all industry partners who have creatively adapted during this challenging time," said Mary Hammond, Executive Director of the Paducah Convention & Visitors Bureau. "The Paducah CVB is proud to join forces with the Paducah Chamber and Kentucky Restaurant Association to facilitate a unified approach to restaurant reopening practices and restoring consumer confidence with a commitment to health and safety moving into recovery."



We cant wait for our local restaurants to be open and once again provide their outstanding cuisine and service, said Sandra Wilson, President of the Paducah Chamber. This is a great step in getting our local economy energized and more of our businesses open.



For more information, go to paducahchamber.org, call the Chamber at 270-443-1746 or e-mail info@paducahchamber.org.
Predicting challenging times for higher education in the post-Covid world, union minister Nitin Gadkari gave suggestions to stakeholders on ensuring economic viability of universities so that the education "empires" dont shut like some micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), or become non-performing assets (NPAs). He proposed two measures: establishing linkages with the government and industries that can pay stipends to trainee students, and secondly bring foreign investment, like getting more foreign students and entering joint ventures with foreign universities.

The minister, who holds several portfolios including of MSMEs, was speaking in a webinar organised to discuss 'Impact of higher education in post-Covid economy'. The live interaction with the higher education committee of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) was attended virtually by All India Council for Technical Education (AICTE) chairman Anil Sahasrabudhe, OP Jindal Global university vice-chancellor C Raj Kumar, founder of tech start-up upGrad Ronnie Screwvala and secretary general of the Association of Indian Universities (AIU) Pankaj Mittal among others.

Gadkari emphasised that international standards in education cannot be acquired on government funding. Like industries, higher education also has to work on economic viability, he said.

Foreign investment with universities and linkages with industry

The minister spoke on several issues ranging from increased salaries of teachers due to revised pay commission and said he was not sure of fee-paying capacity of the students. In his scheme of things, a student can be a trainee who can be employed as a substitute for a worker in any industry project. This can save the government or industry money and end up paying stipend to the student and get money for the university.

There can be a model, where a university can enter ventures with the government and industry that can use manpower for projects. It can provide skilled and practical training. If industry has to give Rs 40,000 to someone for some expertise, it can instead have a student trainee on the job for Rs 10,000. This will give him experience. Many such schemes can be designed, he said.

Every contractor can see what percentage of trainee engineers can be utilised, and can work 6-8 hours, get practical training and stipend. The contractor will make savings and some money will go to the university. There is going to be big anxiety and our educational institutions economic viability can be in danger as paying capacity might not be there.

The second way forward, according to Gadkari, is foreign investment. There should be foreign students in Indian campuses that pay in dollar. Indian universities must establish joint ventures with international players in education. If there is no investment there is no development, equipment, he observed.

Indian universities, he said, can work with cooperation, coordination and communication.

The minister gave examples of how IITs and other institutes with funds worth crores can work on joint projects that can make education economically viable and earn the students some stipend.

Giving the example of IIT Madras that entered entered a joint venture with an Australian consultant on a project of the government, he said it helped the government save Rs 200 crore with the expertise of the institutes manpower. He is mulling over extending a proposal to AICTE to rope in technical institutes in auditing traffic density and identifying black spots (accident-prone areas) for funds. The minister said that given the extent and coverage of his ministry, he can give work to 5,000 engineering colleges.

The move, he said, is important as like MSMEs universities can also face problems and we might see auctions.

'In India, education fokat ka (free)'

The minister said that in India everybody wants education for free and it is considered a democratic right. "If we depend on government expenditure, the higher education in India cannot acquire international standards. We have to look into the economic viability of higher education, he said.

The need to do so is imperative in his opinion because we dont think education is business but also think that education is not charitable. We have to enhance the economic viability without any compromise in quality of education. Increase your earning  saving money is earning money, or the empires (universities) will become NPAs. Paying capacity is reducing. And this will lead to closures of campuses, he warned.

The minister said that when the the industry is established, its economic viability is looked into and a profit-loss balance sheet is made. But this kind of approach in education will be criticised here. The West has understood this approach, but here it will be difficult to convince people on these lines, he said.
To strengthen efforts against the spread of COVID-19 in Nigeria, Hygiene brand, Dettol on Thursday, April 30, 2020, donated over 12,000 units of its Antiseptic liquid and Antibacterial soap to the Lagos State Safety Commission. This comes as part of concerted private and public sector efforts nationwide to ensure that citizens continue to adhere to safe health practices and in light of the global pandemic.

This donation forms part of Dettols contribution to the state governments active measures of providing palliatives, which includes the distribution of its hygiene products such as Dettol Antiseptic Liquid and antiseptic soaps, to vulnerable residents across the state.

According to the Commission, the products were needed as In the course of going around Lagos State to educate and enforce the compulsory lockdown, the major problem we faced in different communities was hunger and hygiene. We have been distributing food and hygiene products and we appreciate Dettols contribution to our cause. It will go a long way in helping a lot of vulnerable people.

Speaking on the donations, the General Manager, RB Nigeria, Dayanand Sriram, says RB is glad to extend its support in the fight against COVID-19 to the Lagos state government with the donation of our hygiene products. Dettol protects from up to 100 illness causing germs, and we will not relent in our advocacy of good hygiene practices and support for the country during and after this pandemic,

The hygiene products were received by Mr. Taiwo Fesomu, Director Admin & HR, on behalf of the Lagos State Safety Commission at Alausa Secretariat, Lagos.

Dettol has made other donations and contributions to the States and Federal governments/ organizations since Nigeria recorded cases of the virus. They have collaborated with the NCDC to educate the public on COVID-19 prevention, and also donated its hygiene products to the Ogun State government as part of its stimulus package to cater for vulnerable citizens impacted by the lockdown due to Covid-19 outbreak.
(Bloomberg)  The hazard pay is disappearing. The hazard is not.

Some essential employees across the U.S. have received bonuses or pay bumps to compensate for the risk that comes with clocking in at supermarkets, hospitals and other crowded workplaces during a pandemic.

Now companies are walking back those wage increases, even as the threat of Covid-19 lingers.

This weekend, Kroger Co. is rescinding the $2 raise it gave to store and warehouse workers. Target Corp. and Amazon.com Inc. will follow later this month, with other firms charting similar moves.

The planned cutbacks have rankled unions, employees and customers who are accusing companies of putting profits ahead of worker well-being. They also raise questions about how to value the essential workers who are keeping society functioning. Many continue to put their health and safety on the line in exchange for relatively low wages.

How do you go from a hero to zero when theres still a pandemic out there? said Steve Vairma, secretary-treasurer of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 455 in Denver, whose members include Kroger distribution center workers. What has changed? Our folks are still risking their safety and health by showing up for work.

Whats changed, some experts say, is the gradual lifting of shelter-in-place orders that has people returning to workplaces. The pay premiums were meant to compensate those who had no choice but to come in, said Adrienne Altman, managing director at HR-consulting firm Willis Towers Watson Plc.

When everyones back, theres no reason for that offset, Altman said.

But the virus, which has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed over 80,000, remains, and workplaces are still potential hotspots.

Employers, for their part, say theyve made efforts to increase worker safety. Kroger, which will end its so-called hero bonus on May 16, said it will continue to offer employees testing, emergency leave and face masks. In April, it also gave full-time workers a $300 bonus and part-timers half that.

Story continues

We are committed to the continued support of our associates safety and mental well-being and will continue discussions with unions, said Kristal Howard, a Kroger spokesperson. She added that without the premium employees make on average $15 an hour.

Amazon, which has been criticized for its treatment of warehouse employees, recently extended its $2 wage bump through May. The company said it has stepped up cleaning and other precautionary measures, including leave of absence options for high-risk individuals and those impacted by school closures.

Target, which plans to roll back its raise at the end of this month, said it will continue to provide resources for workers and their families. The company offers two weeks of paid leave for employees who test positive for the virus or need to quarantine, and double that for those deemed vulnerable.

Workers on the front lines of the pandemic are some of the lowest-paid in America. Retail cashiers earn a median hourly wage of $11.37, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, while the typical agricultural worker makes $12.52 and slaughterhouse employees bring home about $14 an hour.

Many in these risky jobs have seen no wage increases at all. But even with a hazard premium, workers in low-wage retail jobs can earn less than they would on unemployment, which the federal government is supplementing by $600 a week through July.

Knowing that its controversial to roll back pay bumps, many companies opted for one-time bonuses instead. Walmart Inc. in April gave its workers bonuses and said Tuesday that it will grant another round of payments next month. CVS Health Corp. doled out as much as $500 and extended paid sick leave to part-time employees.

Neither approach properly compensates employees for the risks, said Columbia University economics professor Suresh Naidu, who calculated that front line workers should get at least an extra $10 an hour.

If this was a normal labor market, you imagine that wages would respond on their own, Naidu said. Instead, companies dont need to increase compensation to keep scared employees coming to work because, the bottom has fallen out of the market. If youre an essential worker, theres no other job than the job you currently have. And employees who quit arent eligible for unemployment benefits.

Theyre basically forced labor, he said.

Lawmakers across the country have proposed an array of initiatives for government-subsidized hazard pay for essential workers.

A $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill proposed by House Democrats on May 12 includes a $200 billion Heroes Fund that aims to boost pay for essential workers by $13 an hour.

Republican Senator Mitt Romney floated Patriot Pay, a temporary $12-per-hour raise for low- and middle-income essential workers, and a bipartisan group of senators have called for a 25% raise for federal employees who cant properly distance from others while working. The senators argued that the Trump administration has legal authority to issue the hazard pay.

So far, none of the efforts have been successful, in part as deficit concerns have cooled interest among Republican lawmakers for additional stimulus.

State legislators have run into similar issues. Officials from California to Vermont have pushed for higher pay for essential workers in both the public and private sector, but have run into budget constraints. After Vermonts state senate approved a $60 million bill to fund hazard pay, the states Republican Governor Phil Scott said he supports the intent, but needs to see how it will be funded.

Without government action, most pay premiums for essential workers will likely expire this summer, if not earlier. That will send legions of workers back to their old wages even as the safety requirements like face masks and distancing remain.

The retailers have made pretty clear that these are temporary in nature, said Edward Jones retail analyst Brian Yarbrough. I dont think workers have a lot of leverage.

One complicating factor for large retailers and others is what to do with pay if the virus begins spreading in some areas but not others.

Hazard pay policies are already inconsistent, even within workplaces. At the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Iowa City, all employees wear masks and face shields but only those working directly on the Covid-19 ward are getting extra pay.

Coming into work and wearing a mask all day longeven if youre not going into the hot zonestheres a cost to that, said Patrick Kearns, a registered nurse and president of the local chapter of the American Federation of Government Employees union, which is pushing the VA to expand hazard pay. Theres a psychological toll that takes on people.

With assistance from Josh Eidelson.
Flexible spending plans for health care and dependent care are usually some of the best employee benefits around. But in the time of coronavirus the plans have become a big liability for workers who set aside thousands of dollars to pay for medical and childcare they cant access.

The plans allow employees to set aside up to $2,750 to cover out-of-pocket health care expenses and up to $5,000 to cover child and elder care expenses. Employees dont pay federal income, Social Security or Medicare taxes on the money, potentially saving thousands of dollars depending on their tax bracket.

Employers benefit, too, because they dont have to pay the 7.7 percent employer portion of Social Security and Medicare payroll taxes on portion of salaries set aside in flexible spending accounts.

But the tax-advantaged accounts include a use-it-or-lose-it feature, meaning that employees who dont use the money earmarked for medical bills or daycare expenses within the year forfeit the funds. So how do you spend the money for after-school care if your childrens school is closed and so is the after-school program?

And what if you cant use up all the health care money you set aside because elective surgeries, non-emergency dental procedures and other types of care were halted this spring and youre reluctant to re-schedule? The problem is especially vexing for employees whose plan year ends not in December like most, but this spring or summer.

OFFICE SPACE: How to keep workers safe as they return

Flexible spending plans are offered by more than eight out of 10 large employers, according to Mercer. Twenty percent of employees participated in health care plans in 2017, contributing an average $1,300. Five percent participated in dependent care programs, allocating an average $3,400, according to Mercer.

Employees participating in their companys dependent care program and dont need the money for childcare any longer should consider asking their employers to stop their dependent care contributions, recommended one employment lawyer.

Life event

Most employee benefit plans allow employees to change their dependent care contributions  including putting a stop to paycheck withdrawals  if employees circumstances change, such as when schools close or employees shift to working from home, said employment lawyer Jesse Gelsomini who represents management clients at Haynes and Boone in Houston.

Under most plans that will be a permissible change-in-status event, he said.

Employees have 30 days to request a change, but most employers are flexible about when the clock started, said Gelsomini, as working from home, which started as a temporary measure, has become more of a long-term solution.

The Internal Revenue Service also issued guidance that allows companies to amend their plans to allow employees to change their dependent care and health care contributions going forward, including dropping employee contributions all together. The change is designed to provide flexibility as employees struggle to cope with the coronavirus, according to the IRS notice.

HOUSTON HOW TO: How to pick health insurance if you lose your job

But it is only good if your employer chooses to amend its flexible spending plans. And you still must spend the money already put aside in your account.

Hopefully schools will reopen in the fall and you can use the dependent care money youve already set aside for after-school care. Or day care, if you head back to the office later this year.

To spend money already set aside for health care spending, participants can use the funds on typical out-of-pocket expenses such as prescriptions, dental work and eyeglasses. But the IRS rules also allow spending on things that might at first glance not sound too health related. That includes transportation cost, including parking and mileage on the drive to the doctor.

The rules have also been amended recently by the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act to allow participants to use health care flexible spending funds to pay for over-the-counter medicine such as cold and cough remedies and feminine hygiene products. Keep your receipts and submit them for reimbursement.

Dont wait. Spend

If youre still working and you havent used all the health care money you elected to set aside at the beginning of the year on out-of-pocket expenses, consider spending it quickly. The entire pot of money is available to use for eligible health care expenses on the first day of the plan year and most plans dont require departing employees to repay the funds that were not yet collected.

But availability of those committed-but-not-collected funds comes to an abrupt halt if employees leave mid-year, whether they quit or get laid off. And getting the money out youve already contributed can turn out to be difficult.

TEXAS INC.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox

Ask your employer to see if you qualify for a COBRA plan for your flexible spending account. And then consider spending the money as fast as you can to avoid administrative fees and continuing to pay contributions but on an after-tax basis.

Its time for new eyeglasses for everyone in the family.

lm.sixel@chron.com

twitter.com/lmsixel
On Monday, Ben Lucas, a reporter who lives in Hong Kong, tweeted a photo of his local gym, which reopened on May 8.

In the photos, the elliptical machines at the Pure Fitness location in Quarry Bay were separated by clear dividers that resembled cubicles.

Ben Lucas tweet

According to a representative for Pure Fitness, the dividers help to stop the spread of the virus when 1.5-meter distance, in line with Hong Kong government's suggestion, cannot be easily maintained.

And United States gym-goers can expect to see some similar adjustments at their own gyms as states enter initial reopening phases. In Georgia, Iowa, Tennessee and Oklahoma, for example, gyms have reopened with physical distancing measures in place. More states could follow suit as early as this month as stay-at-home orders lift.

(On Monday, protesters in Florida did pushups and other exercises in front of the Pinellas County Courthouse to urge public officials to open gyms. The White House Guidelines for Opening Up America state that gyms in states that are in the first phase of reopening "can open if they adhere to strict physical distancing and sanitation protocols.")

But anyone who attends a public gym should recognize that it's "not a zero-risk situation," Jay Varkey, associate professor of medicine at the Emory University School of Medicine and hospital epidemiologist at Emory University Hospital, tells CNBC Make It.

"That doesn't mean that you can't go, I get it," he says. "But it also comes with recognizing what [safety] steps we need to be taken."

For instance, experts say the dividers Lucas photographed in Hong Kong alone would not provide enough protection  machines should also be spaced out at least six feet apart with fewer people using them at a time to reduce the risk of transmission.

Most gyms and fitness centers have those treadmills packed in pretty tight," Kevin Heffernan, professor of human performance at Syracuse University tells CNBC Make It. "They're not ideally designed for social distancing."

Indeed, gyms must be thoughtful in terms of spacing and capacity because "you generate a lot of sweat, and people are breathing really hard," says Varkey.

To that end, wearing a mask during a workout might become standard procedure, even though it can be uncomfortable. (There are cloth bandannas or "buffs" that are face coverings made for working out  they are typically worn by runners to protect their face from sun and wind.)

But wearing a mask while exercising can also come with its own problems: "The concern that I would have is that the mask itself would get damp and then stop working," Varkey says.

Even with physical barriers and a mask, you should aim to be a minimum of six to seven feet from others, Varkey says.

At Lucas's gym, the cardio machines were the only area that seemed drastically changed, he tells CNBC Make It. However he noticed more members of the cleaning staff attending to the gym equipment than before the coronavirus crisis.

On that front, gyms should provide cleaning materials that protect against viruses like Covid-19, Varkey says, and make it "make it clear" to patrons that the sprays and wipes are EPA-approved disinfectants for SARS-CoV-2.

Plus, "all of these disinfectants have often either a one-to-two-minute kill time," Varkey says. That means, you have to spray, wait a couple minutes, and then wipe equipment before you can safely use it.

And remember: Hand hygiene is extremely important, especially when you're touching lots of surfaces at the gym.

"Any gym that values the safety of their members should make hand sanitizers and hand washing sinks readily available," Varkey says.

If you're someone who prefers the camaraderie of group exercise classes, you may need to find an alternative solution. In Hong Kong, for example, classes are limited to eight people only, in accordance to social-distancing guidelines, Lucas says.

"Folks can (and should) look to sign up for some one-on-one virtual personal training," Heffernan suggests. "You'd be helping someone else that may be struggling financially right now, and it will bring a fun social element to your workout as well."

And there could be other measures.

Lucas says that at his Pure Fitness location in Hong Kong, "we now have to fill out a short form with contact details, recent travel history and state if we have had any contact with people who have tested positive for coronavirus. And members have to have their temperature taken upon entry to the gym, as is standard for most shops, bars and restaurants in Hong Kong, he says.

Check out: The best credit cards of 2020 could earn you over $1,000 in 5 years

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Uh, Obamagate, its been going on for a long time, the president responded, slowly at first, as if he was silently trying to sort out which version of reality he would trot out this time. Its been going on from before I even got elected and its a disgrace that it happened, and if you look at whats gone on and if you look at now, all this information thats being released  and from what I understand, thats only the beginning  some terrible things happened, and it should never be allowed to happen in our country again.
(CNN) - A newly identified condition called multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C) is a bit of a confused picture right now, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, the World Health Organization (WHO) technical lead on Covid-19, said Friday.

We know so far, very little about this inflammatory syndrome, she said.

Van Kerkhove said WHO has put out a case definition, describing what symptoms may look like.

We need to have clinicians use this case definition to determine how many children fit that definition, and then we need specific data collected from each of those patients, she said at a news briefing.

We need to understand if the syndrome is associated with Covid-19 or not. As I mentioned before, some of the children have not tested positive for Covid-19, while others have, Van Kerkhove added. So right now it's a bit of a confused picture, although more information is coming.

Its not clear if the syndrome is whats called a post-viral syndrome, or a direct result of infection, said Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of WHOs Health Emergencies Program.

What we don't know yet is whether those rare things that happen are associated directly with the virus  and the virus directly attacking the cells and those organs  or is what we are seeing also the result of the immune response to the virus?" he said.

Ryan likened this to what happens with the Ebola virus and bleeding: It's not the virus that causes the bleeding. it's very often the immune response to the presence of the virus that depletes the capacity of the blood to clot. So when a person bleeds, the bleeding continues," Ryan said.

Ryan also said as the number of global coronavirus cases grows, you start to potentially notice much more rarer syndromes.

This story was first published on CNN.com, "WHO says inflammatory disease in children "a bit of a confused picture""
MEA does not discriminate between states,

New Delhi: After a minister in the West Bengal Government triggered a huge row by accusing the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of discriminating against West Bengal and not organising any repatriation flights of Indian nationals from abroad to the State in the Vande Bharat Mission, MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava tweeted late on Thursday night that the MEA does not discriminate between states and that the Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal.

The MEA said it would gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if the West Bengal state government would confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. The MEA also said it would also help in return of WB residents through land borders with neighbours, adding that it hoped to receive an early response on the matter.

The controversy was triggered after West Bengal Higher and School Education Minister Partha Chatterjee tweeted angrily, Is the MEA asking us to believe that there are enough people to come from Georgia to Gujarat but none want to come to Kolkata ? Also, there are enough people to come back to Bihar from Kyrgyzstan but not enough to bring back to Bengal?? Stop this injustice !!! Mr. Chatterjee is also the Secretary General of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the State.

MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava then tweeted late on Thursday night, MEA does not discriminate between states. GOIs Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal. Over 3700 of them have registered for repatriation from different parts of the world. Will gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. Will also help in return of WB residents through land borders with neighbors. We hope to receive an early response on the matter.

An estimated 32,000 Indian nationals from a total of 31 countries including an additional 18 countries will be repatriated back to India from May 16 to 22 via 149 flights in the second phase of the Vande Bharat Mission compared to the ongoing first phase in which Indians are being repatriated from 12 nations from May 7 to 15.

So far, 12,000 Indians have been repatriated in the ongoing first phase. The MEA had said earlier on Thursday that the Vande Bharat Mission is the largest and most complex exercise ever undertaken by the government for the repatriation of our nationals stranded overseas.

The additional 18 countries covered under the second phase include Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Japan, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Krgyzstan, Belarus, Georgia, Tajikistan and Armenia. Sources said that about 32,000 Indian nationals are expected to be repatriated in the second phase.
Shah Rukh, along with wife Gauri Khan, had also offered their four-storey personal office space for treating coronavirus patients

Superstar Shah Rukh Khan on Thursday asked people to support healthcare workers amid the coronavirus pandemic by contributing towards Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other essentials.

(Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak)

Shah Rukh said many people have been asking how can they partner up and take the cause of supporting healthcare workers forward, but usually Meer Foundation, his NGO, doesn't function on donations.

However, "these are dire circumstances that would require all of us to unite and chip in if we can", he added.

In a video released on the official handle of the NGO, Shah Rukh said it is important right now for everyone to support the medical staff who are risking their lives to save people.

"We are all facing a crisis against a force we can't see- the coronavirus. To fight the virus, our country's doctors, scientists, medical professionals and everyone involved in the healthcare sector are like our soldiers..."

"The medical personnel require PPE, which include gloves, masks, overalls or any equipment that one may need to protect ones physical self from the virus whole treating the patients," he said.

In a separate tweet, Shah Rukh appealed to the people should to donate to Meer Foundation to help protect "our healthcare soldiers."

"Lets support the brave health officials and medical teams that are leading the fight against the coronavirus by contributing towards supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE). A little help can go a long way. @MeerFoundation," he added.

Check out the post

Lets support the brave health officials and medical teams that are leading the fight against the coronavirus by contributing towards supplies and personal protective equipment (PPE). A little help can go a long way. @MeerFoundationhttps://t.co/zfUWD5GnrD https://t.co/qMG39nau8B  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) May 14, 2020

Earlier, the 54-year actor had announced that Meer Foundation will work with the Maharashtra and West Bengal governments for the supply of 50,000 Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) for the healthcare professionals.

Shah Rukh, along with wife Gauri Khan, had also offered their four-storey personal office space for treating COVID-19 patients.

(With inputs from Press Trust of India)
The Allahabad High Court has held that azaan, or the Islamic call to ritual prayer, can be recited by a muezzin from minarets of the mosques by human voice only without using any amplifying device or loudspeakers.

The court added that such recitation by human voice cannot be hindered under the pretext of violation of the guidelines issued by the state government to contain the spread of coronavirus.

It also said that one cant use a loudspeaker for azaan without prior permission of district administration in accordance with the law.

We are of the opinion that azaan may be an essential and integral part of Islam but its recitation through loudspeakers or other sound amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion warranting protection of the fundamental right enshrined under Article 25, which is even otherwise subject to public order, morality or health and to other provisions in part III of the Constitution, the bench ruled.

Also Watch | COVID-19 l Muslims to observe Ramzan at home: Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi

It cannot be said that a citizen should be coerced to hear anything which he does not like or which he does not require since it amounts to taking away the fundamental right of other persons, the bench added.

However, the court shot down the state governments contention that its recitation by human voice was violative of any provision of law.

The government had not been able to explain as to how the recitation of azaan merely through human voice can be violative of any provision of law or any guidelines issued in view of Covid-19 pandemic, it said.

The Bench, however, kept it open for petitioner to approach the district administration for permission to use loudspeaker for azaan. It added that one cant use loudspeakers for azaan or for any other purpose without prior permission of district administration.

The bench of Justices Shashi Kant Gupta and Ajit Kumar thus disposed of a PIL filed by BSP MP from Ghazipur, Afzal Ansari, seeking lifting of ban on azaan from mosques in Ghazipur.

The petitioners plea was that there is no specific order in the central or state government guidelines to prohibit the recitation of azaan from the mosques. Therefore, the arbitrary decision taken by the district administration of Ghazipur to ban the prayer is illegal.

The state governments contention, the petitioner argued, was that religious activity of any religious group through loudspeaker has been restricted in the entire Uttar Pradesh in view of the guidelines of lockdown.

Further, according to the state government , the Ghazipur district has been declared as hotspot area. Since azaan is a call for prayer on loudspeaker, hence it has been restricted in Ghazipur.

The state government, in its affidavit, has also submitted a list of instances which have been filed disclosing how people assembled in mosques in Ghazipur following a call through azaan and administration had a tough time to control the situation.

Azaan is recited by a muezzin, a man who calls Muslims to prayer from the minaret of a mosque at prescribed times of the day.




Editor's note: Why did the strongest manufacturing cities in China report negative growth in local public budget revenues during the COVID-19 pandemic? How will the traditional development mode of export industries be? What is the future for manufacturing and global supply chains? As the Cloud River Urban Research Institute releases the 2019 ranking on manufacturing radiation of Chinese cities, Professor Zhou Muzhi gives his perspective on the outlook.



Shenzhen, Suzhou and Dongguan top the 2019 manufacturing radiation ranking

As part of the China Integrated City Index, the Cloud River Urban Research Institute has released the 2019 ranking on manufacturing radiation based on a research of 297 cities above prefecture-level across China. The top 10 are Shenzhen, Suzhou, Dongguan, Shanghai, Foshan, Ningbo, Guangzhou, Chengdu, Wuxi, and Xiamen. Four cities in the Pearl River Delta and the Yangtze River Delta are among the top 10. Other than Chengdu, nine of the 10 cities are big container ports, and the 10 cities' combined export in goods accounted for 47.7% of the country's total.

The next 10 cities in the top 20 are Huizhou, Hangzhou, Beijing, Zhongshan, Qingdao, Tianjin, Zhuhai, Quanzhou, Jiaxing, and Nanjing. Following them, Zhengzhou, Jinhua, Yantai, Nantong, Xi'an, Changzhou, Dalian, Shaoxing, Fuzhou, and Taizhou round out the top 30.

The top 30 cities' export in goods accounted for as much as 74% of the national total. That is to say, the top 10% in the ranking produced nearly three-fourth of the country's export in goods. Except for Chengdu, Beijing, Zhengzhou, and Xi'an, other cities in the top 30 are all coastal or river ports, underlining the importance of container ports for export industries.

The growth of export industries is closely linked with container transportation. We found high correlations between manufacturing radiation and container port convenience, with a correlation coefficient of 0.7. In 2018, China's container port throughput accounted for 28.5% of the world's total. Among the world's top 10 container ports, China had six.

China's three major megalopolises -- the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, the Yangtze River Delta region, and the Pearl River Delta region -- accounted for 6%, 36.3%, and 24.5% of the national total export in goods, respectively, combining to share 66.9% of the country's total. The three, especially the latter two, are the driving force of China's export industries.

Export industries amid COVID-19 pandemic

The year 2019 witnessed escalations of China-U.S. trade frictions and a shaky global supply chain. Under the trade tensions, China's total volume of export in goods still grew by 5%, according to the General Administration of Customs. Cities higher in the manufacturing radiation ranking clearly played a part in the country's continued growth.

Since the beginning of 2020, the novel coronavirus has hit the whole world, posing a new challenge to the global supply chains. Some export businesses were shutdown, overseas demand shrank, and some supply chains are broken.

In the first quarter, all the top 10 cities in the manufacturing radiation ranking reported negative growth in local public budget revenue. Six cities, including Shenzhen, Dongguan, Shanghai, Foshan, Chengdu, and Xiamen, had double-digit losses. This indicated that, as the world's largest exporter of industrial goods, China is facing a huge challenge.

Global industrial chains greatly boost China's export industries

China's export industries have benefited from the global expansion of manufacturing supply chains. I predicted 20 years ago that the global expansion of supply chains would help form global supply chain-based industrial clusters, and then megalopolises, in China's Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region. The prediction has been confirmed over the past two decades, as huge global industrial chain-based industrial agglomeration formed in the regions, and the three megalopolises have gradually taken shape and driven China's social and economic development.

In the past, information about transactions between enterprises in the manufacturing supply chains contained a high amount of tacit knowledge that could not be disclosed. Companies valued long-term cooperative relations and the support of capital, so as to ensure the confidentiality of tacit knowledge and smooth communication. The relationship among the enterprises in supply chains was pyramidal. Therefore, manufacturing supply chains were confined to a country or a region. For example, Toyota's supply chains were basically in areas with a radius of 50 kilometers.

It is through the standardized and digital trend based on information technology that the proportion of tacit knowledge and the time and cost of information exchange between enterprises were greatly reduced. At the same time, modular production, in which design rules were disclosed, allowed global companies to compete in supply chains fairly. Therefore, supply chains were able to break through the constraint of tacit knowledge and extend to the world. The relationship among enterprises in supply chains also changed from a compact pyramid to a flat network, providing a prerequisite for developing countries to engage in global supply chains.

The global expansion of supply chains coincided with China's reform and opening up, making China a major beneficiary of the trend. Its three main drivers were information technology revolution, transportation revolution, and the sense of security brought along by the stable world order after the Cold War. Global supply chains broke the deadlock of high labor distribution rate of industrial countries in the west, and changed the mechanism of global wealth creation and distribution.

Of course, developing countries led by China contributed to a sharp drop in the prices of industrial products through their participation. Such global supply chains, which minimize tacit knowledge, are classic examples of the transaction economy.

The Chinese economy has largely benefited from global supply chains to achieve its rapid development. Therefore, in the book "The Chinese Economy: Mechanism of Its Rapid Growth" published in 2007, I used the entire first chapter to explain the relationship between China's economic development and global supply chains.

China's 40 years of reform and opening up can be roughly divided into two stages by its entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). The first stage featured efforts in concept changing and economic system reform on the one hand, and those to enter the Western market on the other hand. China's entry into the WTO in 2001 enabled the country to enter the international free trade system, and the door to international markets opened to China. At the same time, initial results were also achieved in the concept changing and the economic system reform during this period. Therefore, China's reform and opening up and the world's free trade system generated enormous energy together. China became the "world's factory" swiftly, and leapt into the top as the world's largest exporter in 2009. In contrast to previous economic struggles, China entered a stage of substantial development after joining the WTO. The robust export industries boosted the rapid growth of a large number of Chinese cities.

From 2000 to 2019, the export volume of Germany and the U.S. increased 1.7 times and 1.1 times, respectively, while that of France, the U.K., and Japan only increased by 0.7 times, 0.6 times, and 0.5 times, respectively. During the same period, the total export volume worldwide increased by 1.9 times, demonstrating that the export growth rates of leading industrial countries were all below the global average. In comparison, China's total export volume was only US$249.2 billion in 2000, but surged to US$2.5 trillion in 2019, 10 times that of 2000. China's exports accounted for only 3.9% of the world's total in 2000, but the percentage reached 13.2% in 2009, ranking first in the world.

The vitality unleashed by reform and opening up and the entry into the WTO have brought huge dividends to China's international trade.

Limits of traditional development mode of export industries

China's export industries experienced a growth rate and an expansion scale never reached by other countries. While accomplishing extraordinary achievements, China has a structural trade imbalance with the U.S. and other countries. The rapid development of China's export industries has inevitably resulted in the hollowing-out of industries in Western countries. The woes of the industrial hollowing-out in the U.S. helped Donald Trump to win the election in a sense.

China's sudden rise in presence has set off alarms among many countries. Intellectual property, for instance, is one of the thorny issues in the China-U.S. trade frictions. For another example, to avoid over-dependence of its supply chain on China, Japan began to roll out its China plus one policy, which encouraged its companies to build supply chain in countries and regions outside China.

China's rising costs of labor, land, the environment, and taxation should not be ignored. The labor costs are a case in point. From the change of the average wage for on-the-job employees in the 10 cities topping the list of manufacturing radiation in 2019, we can see that the average wage in Shanghai increased 9.3 times from 2000 to 2008; 8.5 times, eight times, and 7.5 times in Chengdu, Suzhou, and Wuxi, respectively; and 6.6 times, 6.3 times, 5.7 times, 5.6 times, and 5.1 times in Ningbo, Foshan, Guangzhou, Xiamen, and Dongguan, respectively. Because of a higher base, Shenzhen's wage rise was the smallest among the 10 cities, with an increase of 4.8 times. It can be seen that China's labor costs have risen at a fast pace.

In the global supply chains, China's advantages in labor costs are disappearing fast.

The traditional development mode of export industries has reached its limit, so China's manufacturing industry needs to evolve to a higher level.

Manufacturing is evolving into interaction economy

A recent buzz is around the U.S. policy of bringing its manufacturing back. I think, even without Trump's strong push, the return of manufacturing to Western countries will occur naturally to some extent.

With rising manufacturing costs in China, some manufacturing sectors sensitive to profit margins are bound to flee China. China should pay more attention to the new trend of advanced manufacturing returning to developed countries.

As the times change, consumers who used to pursue low prices begin to value emotion, personality, and interactivity with manufacturers. The broader background that makes this possible is that the modularization of industrial production has entered a new phase.

The precondition of new industrialization of developing countries is essentially built on the fact that modularized manufacturing enables unskilled workers to take on industrial activities such as assembling, which is the foundation for the globalization of manufacturing chains. However, modularization in conjunction with personalized design nowadays can lead to diversified and personalized small-scale production. Based on modularization, manufacturers and consumers can produce more stylish and personalized products through interaction.

We can imagine that future manufacturing will realize the global supply of high-tech core modules, sensors, and other core components like semiconductor chips. In fact, In Western countries, especially in Japan and the U.S., enterprises have been sharpening their advantages in the development of core modules and components. On the other hand, on the basis of core modules and components, users interact with manufacturers to produce personalized end products, and the latter's dynamic line of supply chains will be short and visible.

Therefore, the current return of manufacturing to developed countries is largely actually returning to the market, which means getting close to consumers. Manufacturing of terminal products will become more personalized and localized. Even if there was no Donald Trump or the COVID-19 outbreak, the return would still take place, which is a demonstration of manufacturing's evolution from trading economy to interactional economy.

Therefore, China's manufacturing should recognize this point in time, take hold of manufacturing's shift to interaction economy, strive to evolve and upgrade, strengthen communication and interaction with the market, and reposition its specializations in the global supply chain. What is gratifying is that many Chinese cities already have strong manufacturing infrastructures, and possess enormous markets. We believe they will blaze a new trail in the interaction economy of manufacturing, and create a bright future.

Zhou Muzhi is the president of the Cloud River Urban Research Institute and a professor of economics at Tokyo Keizai University.

(The article is translated by China.org.cn)

Opinion articles reflect the views of their authors, not necessarily those of China.org.cn.

If you would like to contribute, please contact us at opinion@china.org.cn.
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Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15 2020

Five Papuan activists imprisoned for treason are not eligible for early release as part of the governments prisoner assimilation program that aims to reduce COVID-19 transmission, a legal team has revealed.

The government deems the assimilation program necessary to unburden overcrowded prisons during the health crisis.

However, the activists legal team claimed prison officials said those who committed crimes against state security were not eligible for early release and that granting them an early release would violate Government Regulation No. 99/2012 on correctional procedures.

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  Metro Manila police chief Major General Debold Sinas and 18 subordinates were charged Friday for staging a birthday blowout on May 8 despite strict quarantine rules, the Philippine National Police said.

The PNP's Internal Affairs Service filed criminal charges before the Taguig City Prosecutor's Office against Sinas and his colleagues, who surprised him with a "mananita" feast on May 8 to honor the National Capital Region Police Office chief on his special day.

Ranking NCRPO officials have also been tagged in the complaint, including Deputy Regional Director for Administration Nicolas Bathan, Deputy Regional Director for Operations Florendo Quibuyen, Chief Regional Staff Florencio Ortilla, Regional Internal Affairs Service NCR director Gerry Galvan, PNP Human Rights Affairs Office chief Ildelbrandy Usana, Regional Investigation and Detective Management Division chief Eliseo Tanding, and Regional Intelligence Division chief Remus Medina.

They are charged for not following quarantine rules under Republic Act 11332 or the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act.

In a report, PNP Inspector General Alfegar Triambulo said Sinas and the attendees also violated Taguig City Ordinance No. 12, s. 2020 which requires the wearing of face masks and strict physical distancing.

The early morning serenade said to be a tradition in the command qualified as a mass gathering, the PNP-IAS said, which is banned as Metro Manila remains under lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Investigation confirmed that the gathering took place outside Sinas' quarters in Camp Bagong Diwa in Bicutan.

As police officials, Sinas and the other officers' actions also constituted administrative charges of less grave neglect of duty for their "refusal or neglect to observe ECQ protocols prohibiting mass gatherings," and less grave misconduct, the IAS said.

Presidential Spokesperson Harry Roque, Jr. said Thursday that the PNP had sought Malacanang's clearance to file charges against the NCRPO chief.

Sinas is a third-level officer and is considered a Presidential appointee. The PNP has been tasked to man checkpoints and do regular rounds to apprehend people outside their homes without quarantine passes, as well as those said to be violating physical distancing protocols.

Sinas has apologized for the incident but claimed he found "nothing wrong" with the gathering, saying proper social distancing and health measures were followed by the guests. Photos that went viral on social media showed a group of police officers in casual attire huddled around tables, giving roses to the PNP official, and having him blow candles on birthday cakes for the occasion.

Sinas denied that the gathering was a "party," saying it was a traditional surprise which would be "ungentlemanly" for him to reject.

PNP Spokesperson Bernard Banac said the PNP is "sensitive to the public opinion" and criticisms against the gathering, which pushed the police force to press charges.

If found guilty, these violations may merit a possible suspension and even dismissal from service. However, PNP Chief General Archie Gamboa may choose not to relieve Sinas from duty as it would be difficult to implement a change in command in the middle of the coronavirus crisis, Banac added.

Gamboa said Thursday that NCRPO officers will be made accountable for their actions. He added that the PNP will refuse to issue additional statements to give way to court proceedings.

Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson, a retired police general, earlier said that while Sinas must get the "punishment he deserves" for breaking quarantine rules, the public should also take into account "his long law-enforcement service to the country."

He discouraged netizens from reposting old photos of the embattled police officer on social media meant to "sow more hatred" following the NVRPO chief's mistake.

There are 214 confirmed COVID-19 cases within the PNP, with 66 recoveries and four deaths as of Friday evening.
Bill Hutchinson / The Chronicle

A man barricaded himself inside a bathroom at a San Francisco Travelodge room for several hours Thursday afternoon before negotiators coaxed him out, officials said.

The man was not armed, although he at first told officials he had a weapon, said Nancy Crowley, spokesperson for the San Francisco Sheriffs Office.
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AHORA | El titular de la PCM, @VicAZeballos, arriba a la ciudad de #Pucallpa para supervisar la entrega de equipos e insumos destinados a centros de salud de primer nivel de atencion y sostener una reunion de trabajo con el Comando COVID de la region.#PeruEstaEnNuestrasManos pic.twitter.com/twQ4jYyWxJ
In a significant achievement by Punjab in its anti-corona fight, more than 500 COVID-19 patients were discharged from different hospitals in the state on Friday following their recovery, said officials.

Most of the cured and discharged patients were pilgrims who had returned from Takht Hazur Sahib at Nanded in Maharashtra last month, a health official said.

According to data, a total 508 patients were discharged from hospitals with maximum in Gurdaspur (107), followed by Tarn Taran (81), Jalandhar (79), Amritsar (65) and Sangrur (51).

As per the data provided by state authorities, patients were also discharged from several other districts including Bathinda, Fatehgarh Sahib, Ludhiana, Mohali, SBS Nagar, Muktsar and Moga.

A Punjab health official said the patients have been discharged following the Centre's revised discharge guidelines, which says people infected with coronavirus, with very mild or mild and pre-symptomatic cases can be discharged after 10 days of symptom onset and with no fever for three days.

As per the Centre\s new guidelines, no test for COVID-19 is required before discharge in such cases.

The state had witnessed a spike in the number of cases after 1,225, out of around 4,200 Nanded pilgrims tested positive for coronavirus.

Meanwhile, thirteen more persons contracted infection in the state, as per the state's health bulletin on Friday.

Six fresh coronavirus cases were reported in Faridkot, three in Fazilka and one each in Ludhiana, Bathinda, Rupnagar and Fatehgarh Sahib, as per the bulletin.

According to the medical bulletin, 18 Railway Protection Force personnel in Ludhiana tested positive for the infection on Friday. As they belonged to Delhi, this figure was not added in Punjab COVID-19 tally, as per the bulletin.

Similarly, the cases of 16 RPF personnel, belonging to Delhi, who had earlier tested positive in Ludhiana, have also been removed from the state's COVID tally.

With the removal of 16 RPF cases and addition of 13 new cases on Friday, the total COVID-19 in the state now stood at 1,932.

Amritsar continued to top the COVID-19 tally in the state with 297 coronavirus cases, followed by 205 in Jalandhar, 158 in Tarn Taran, 136 in Ludhiana, 122 in Gurdaspur, 103 in SBS Nagar, 102 in Mohali, 100 in Patiala, 92 in Hoshiarpur, 88 in Sangrur, 65 in Muktsar, 59 each in Moga and Rupnagar, 56 in Fatehgarh Sahib, 52 in Faridkot, 44 in Ferozepur, 41 in Fazilka, 41 in Bathinda, 32 in Mansa, 29 in Pathankot, 27 in Kapurthala and 21 in Barnala, as per bulletin.

Of the total cases, 32 patients have died, as per the bulletin.

One patient is critical and is on ventilator support, the bulletin said.

A total of 49,301 samples have been taken so far in the state of which, 44,319 samples tested negative while reports of 3,050 samples are awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department suspended a detective whose remarks about the body of a man fatally shot by another officer sparked criticism, the police chief says.

The detective was captured on video after the shooting of Dreasjon 'Sean' Reed saying: 'I think its going to be a closed casket, homie,' an apparent reference to a closed-casket funeral.

Chief Randal Taylor, who has called the comments 'unacceptable,' said Wednesday that the man received a suspension of numerous days and has been reassigned to another unit, The Indianapolis Star reported. Taylor did not provide any additional information on the disciplinary action.

Dreasjon Reed also known as Sean Reed was fatally shot by Indianapolis Metropolitan Police on May 6, 2020 following a police pursuit on the city's northwest side. The incident was recorded on Facebook Live by Reed

Dreasjon 'Sean' Reed, 21, was shot dead while running from police as he streamed a video of the chase on Facebook Live on Wednesday afternoon

Events surrounding the shooting of Reed, a 21-year-old black man, were livestreamed on Facebook, apparently by Reed's cellphone.

Indianapolis police said in a statement that they cannot release the detective's name for safety reasons, but that the officer is African-American. The officer who fatally shot Reed is also African-American, The Indianapolis Star has reported.

The shooting on May 6 prompted multiple protests. Hours later, Indianapolis police officers fatally shot another black man, 19-year-old McHale Rose. In between those two shootings, an officer fatally struck a pregnant woman with his car. The woman was white.

Pictured: Ashlynn Lisby, 23, a single mother of three with a fourth baby on the way, was struck and killed by an Indianapolis police officer just hours after Reed's death

McHale Rose, 19, was shot and killed in the early morning hours on Thursday after police alleged he shot at officers while in the middle of a burglary

In this photo from Thursday last week, Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor, center, listens to family of Dreasjon Reed during a protest on Michigan Road in Indianapolis

Police have said both Reed and Rose were armed and exchanged gunfire with officers.

Reed was fatally shot by an officer during a foot chase that followed a police vehicle pursuit. Police have said the pursuit began after officers, including Taylor, observed someone driving recklessly on Interstate 65,.

Local activist groups have demanded transparency and accountability as the shootings are investigated.

Earlier this week, Indianapolis chief of police denounced the detective's comment.

'Let me be clear, these comments are unacceptable and unbecoming of our police department,' Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Chief Randal Taylor told reporters during a news conference Thursday.

'We'll be pursing immediate disciplinary action against that officer,' Taylor added, going to great lengths to assure the investigations into all of the deaths will be thorough and transparent.

'I hope you understand that I'm one that is willing to acknowledge that if we made mistakes here, we will address them,' he said.

'But let the investigation run its course before we jump to conclusions - either on our side or on the community's side.'

Meanwhile, on Friday, Marion County Prosecutor Ryan Mears requested that an independent prosecutor take over the Reed case, citing Taylor's personal involvement in the high-speed chase, reported WISH-TV.

Chief Taylor and Deputy Chief Kendale Adams began pursuing Reed in their unmarked vehicles along Interstate 65 after noticing him speeding and driving recklessly.

Taylor and Adams quit the chase once marked patrol cars responded to the scene.

'He will undoubtedly be a material witness in this case,' Mears said of the chief.

Indianapolis Mayor Joe Hogsett this afternoon tweeted out a statement, asking the the United States Attorney's Office and the FBI to 'actively monitor' the investigation into the officer-involved shooting.

'While I continue to have confidence in Chief Randal Taylor and IMPD's ability to carry out fair and thorough investigations, it is clear to me that more must be done to provide community confidence in the outcome of those processes,' Hogsett stated.

'Through this monitoring, in conjunction with an ongoing investigation by the Marion County Prosecutor's Office, we reaffirm our commitment to a transparent criminal and civil review of these incidents and the conduct of those officers involved.

'Importantly, it is my hope that our city may also reaffirm its dedication to channeling the sadness and anger felt by so many into displays of peaceful protest.'

On Thursday, protesters crowded the streets of Indianapolis decrying the shootings of Reed and McHale Rose, 19, and the death of a pregnant woman, 23-year-old Ashlynn Lisby, who was struck by a police vehicle. Lisby's baby could not be saved.

Protesters listen during a rally outside of the City County Building in Indianapolis on Thursday

People march on Michigan Road before the vigil for Sean Reed in Indianapolis on Thursday

Community members gather for a vigil and protest over Reed's fatal shooting on Thursday

Lisby, who was white, was walking along an expressway ramp when an officer driving to work struck her with his vehicle.

According to her Facebook posts, Lisby was a single mother of three who worked for FedEx. She is survived by her young son and two daughters.

Protesters converged on the first shooting scene Wednesday night, and dozens more gathered Thursday at the City County Building in downtown Indianapolis.

Many wore face masks aimed at reducing the spread of the coronavirus and at times shouted, 'No justice, no peace.'

Several carried Black Lives Matter flags and signs.

Protests began after video of the events leading up to Reed's shooting appeared on Facebook.

Reggie Jones marches on Thursday while protesting the fatal shooting of Reed by Indianapolis police on Wednesday following a pursuit

People bow their heads for a moment of silence during the vigil for Reed in Indianapolis on Thursday

Reed's father, Jamie Reed, said he had seen the video and was 'crushed' by its contents.

'It just shows me that were not really being protected and served. We're being hunted,' he told reporters at Thursday's protest.

'My son was a great son. I love him to death. He was just a typical young adult like anybody else. He didn't deserve to die like that.'

In an interview with TMZ, Jamie Reed insisted that his son did not fire a gun at the police, claiming that the video showed Sean running with his T-shirt in one hand and his cellphone in the other.

The father also pointed out that police tasered his son first before using deadly force, arguing that if Sean was armed and pointing a gun at them, they would have shot him without deploying the Taser.

'I want justice,' the elder Reed demanded. 'I don't want my son to be no statistic.'

Relatives said Reed had recently left the United States Air Force.

Military records show he served less than a year in 2017. Details of separations cannot be released under privacy rules.

Protesters crowded the streets of Indianapolis on Thursday to voice concerns about police treatment after officers shot and killed two men, including Reed, and fatally struck a pregnant pedestrian in three separate incidents just hours apart

Deja Morse sits on the roof of a car during a community vigil and protest in Indianapolis on Thursday

As a car does a burnout, a man yells to police from the top of a car during the vigil and protest

Reed was fatally shot by Indianapolis police on Wednesday following a pursuit. The incident was livestreamed on Facebook

A protester holds a sign outside of the City County Building in Indianapolis on Thursday

The Greater Indianapolis branch of black activist group, the NAACP, said in a statement Thursday that it was monitoring information about the shootings.

'All of us are trying to make a new normal in an un-normal time. Incidents like these do not help restore normalcy to our community,' said Chrystal Ratcliffe, the president of the branch.

On Saturday, police fired pepper balls to disperse a crowd as they arrested a man during a protest against the department's actions.

About 50 people had converged near the site where, The Indianapolis Star reported.

Video from the scene shows an angry crowd gathered, yelling at officers as they are making an arrest.

One policeman can be seen firing a paintball-like rifle.

The officer was using a specialized air rifle that fires pepper balls, or non-lethal rounds that contain PAVA and CS irritant powder.

Several dozen protesters gathered at the intersection of 62nd Street and Michigan Road in Indianapolis on Saturday. A police officer fatally shot a 21-year-old African American man who livestreamed a high-speed chase just moments before

At the protest, one officer was seen firing a paintball-like rifle that contained pepper balls, or non-lethal rounds of pepper irritant used to disperse protests

As the officer aimed his pepper ball gun, other officers (right) were arresting a 41-year-old man for obstruction of traffic and disorderly conduct

A group of protesters is seen above getting on their knees and lifting their arms in the air on Saturday

Video from the scene shows several protesters angrily shout at officers as tempers flared090

Pepper balls are used by law enforcement and military for crowd dispersal and riot control.

'Look y'all,' Jalen Sanders, an Indianapolis resident who was at the protest, said in a livestream video on Facebook.

'They out here shooting us.'

Reed's killing has strained relations between the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department and black residents, spurring a series of demonstrations.

As police were arresting a man during Saturday's protest, officers fired pepper balls 'to deter a crowd as they closed in on officers creating an unsafe environment for officers and protesters,' police spokesman Michael Hewitt said in a statement.

Hewitt said officers arrested a 41-year-old man on suspicion of obstruction of traffic and disorderly conduct.

'No officers or protesters were injured during this arrest. IMPD supports our citizens rights to peaceful and lawful protest,' Hewitt added.
A closed sign hangs at the entrance of a restaurant during lockdown in London. (Getty)

The COVID-19 pandemic has been a disaster for businesses, with many struggling to stay afloat during the lockdown. And for the 5.9 million small businesses in the UK, it is now more stressful than ever  with a lot of companies having to find new ways of working with a limited cash flow, or shutting down completely.

It is, to say the least, a very difficult time for small businesses. TheCityUKs Recapitalisation Group suggests that the UKs small businesses could rack up a debt bill of up to 105bn ($128bn) by March 2021. They say that this level of unsustainable debt could stifle future employment, research and development, investment and general economic recovery.

For many small businesses, cash flow is pivotal to survival each month, meaning that the outbreak of this pandemic can have devastating effects on a company, says Ian Wright, founder of Small Business Prices. However, there are many ways small business owners can manage their finances to get them through this uncertain period.

Create a three-month plan

With aspects such as working from home and a reduced customer demand, it is worth making a three-month financial plan around how you can cut costs during this time to help the survival of your business, Wright says.

READ MORE: How to look after your staffs mental health during the coronavirus pandemic

As a business owner, it is likely that you have regular expenses each month, which may vary to different degrees depending on your product or service. During this time it is important to now consider ways to reduce these costs, for example getting in touch with your landlord to find out if there is a way you can spread or cut the costs of office space whilst it is not being used or eradicating smaller costs such as snacks and coffee supplies usually delivered to the office.

It is worth considering the furlough scheme that the government is providing to help you fund your employees whilst protecting your business at the same time, Wright adds.

Story continues

Check your financial options

Its important to keep up to date with all government announcements, initiatives and schemes that are being launched to help companies with financial aid during this period. You can find out what support you may be eligible for on the Gov.uk website.

With news on the pandemic evolving each day, government announcements are being released regularly, meaning it is crucial as a small business owner to be keeping on top of all the options that are becoming available to you, Wright says.

Be flexible

As a small business owner, its essential to be able to adapt to any changes in the working environment so you can keep going when things are tough. This might mean letting people work from home and making sure you have the technology to do so, or altering the products you offer. Gyms may be shut, for example, but some may be able to offer online classes or lessons for customers.

READ MORE: Four things to remember to prepare your business for a post-pandemic world

The next few months may see you need to implement new technologies to support a new way of business. This will be a well worth investment if it boosts your business and creates new value during this time, Wright says.

Additionally, if possible, make sure your product or service is online for everybody to access, as well as promoting your company on social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook. The internet allows you to keep in touch with your customers and get feedback from them to accommodate your business accordingly.

Chat to others

Its easy to feel like you are struggling alone as a small business owner when things are difficult. Loneliness can be a particular problem when social distancing is the new norm too. When times are hard, though, its important to stay in touch with other people who may be in the same boat  either for advice or reassurance.

Communication has never been more important, Wright says. This communication is needed across many sections of your business, from keeping your employees updated on any new changes you are making as a company to seeking advice from financial advisors on how to get your business through the rest of the year.

In addition, businesses can see pick up in their profit simply through word of mouth, meaning that the more people you know, the better, he adds. It is critical to keep getting your business heard about, being proactive in your communication will see you with more opportunities and more supporters, which will be able to help during this time.
Nina Dobrev was feeling nostalgic this Thursday while hunkering down in Los Angeles amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The 31-year-old Vampire Diaries bombshell posted a smoldering throwback snap from her vacation to South Africa in February.

In the sizzling picture the TV star modeled a black and white bikini by Onia that was perfectly coordinated to the penguins clambering around in front of her.

Having a ball: Nina Dobrev was feeling nostalgic this week as she posted a smoldering throwback snap from her vacation to South Africa this February

'No, I did not plan my bathing suit to match the penguins, thats a preposterous accusation ..........' she began her caption.

Nina eventually copped to her plan: '[ Yes, I absolutely did, this was not a coincidence ] #RollingWithMyHomies #Twinning #TBT'.

She appeared to be at Cape Town's Boulders Beach, which famously has played host to a penguin colony for nearly four decades.

This particular species is called the Cape penguin, as well as the Jacka** penguin or African penguin, and can only be found on the coastline of southwestern Africa.

Remember when: This Thursday evening she also posted a video of herself gamboling around Boulders Beach in a bid to 'make friends with' the penguins

A place in the sun: She could be seen delightedly frolicking among the rocks as the penguins went about their business nearby

Knockout: In one sensational shot the TV star also struck a pinup pose while stretched out on the sand in her clinging one-piece by Onia

Nina holidayed to Cape Town this February, managing to get through her South African excursion just before the coronavirus lockdowns began.

This Thursday evening she also posted a video of herself gamboling around Boulders Beach in a bid to 'make friends with' the penguins.

She could be seen delightedly frolicking among the rocks as the penguins went about their business nearby.

In one sensational shot the TV star also struck a pinup pose while stretched out on the sand in her clinging one-piece.

Location, location, location: She appeared to be at Cape Town's Boulders Beach, which famously has played host to a penguin colony for nearly four decades

Details: This particular species is called the Cape penguin, as well as the Jacka** penguin or African penguin, and can only be found on the coastline of southwestern Africa

She previously rang in New Year 2019 in South Africa, vacationing with a group of pals that included showbiz hot couple Julianne Hough and Brooks Laich.

Now Nina is riding out the pandemic at home in Los Angeles with her beloved dog Maverick who occasionally guest-stars on her Instagram page.

There is also conjecture that she has gone into self-isolation with pro snowboarder Shaun White whom she is rumored to be involved with.

The duo went on a bike ride in Malibu in March and have been linked ever since, during which time he has been seen multiple times emerging from her house.
The Democratic Party is an unprecedented amalgam of The Truman Showesque political fantasia; Manchurian candidacies; blood-splattered abattoir; epic, Homeric irony; People's Temple hysteria; terrorism-creators; and apologists and Leninist avaricious blood thirst for tyrannical coups.

In the Democrat bizarro world, all allegedly sexually assaulted women are created equal  but some are created more equal than others  just as the animals in Eric Blair (George Orwell)'s 1945 novella Animal Farm live under an illusory guise that all animals are created equal.

I wonder if Tara Reade, who was hired by thenU.S. senator Joe Biden in 1992, as a staff assistant, thought #MeToo would lend a collective sympathetic ear to her recent public claims that Biden sexually assaulted her shortly after her hiring.

The old #MeToo: Accuse a GOP-associated man of rape (U.S. Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh), and she's a martyred heroine akin to Joan of Arc (Christine Blasey Ford).

The new #MeToo:

Democratic National Committee: We believe Joe Biden.

DMIC (Democrat Media Industrial Complex): Me too.

Hollywood (the head of the DMIC snake): Me too.

Democrat women: Me too.

Democrat men: Me too.

Epic, Homeric irony: Tens of millions of Democrats nationwide intend to vote for a man who allegedly actually grabbed a woman by the...well, you know. (I'm not defending the statement and language of the 2016 Access Hollywood October surprise, but all Democrats know that President Trump never actually claimed to have grabbed any woman by her genitals.)

"Right to Be Believed"

The late, great, venerable U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia used to say that when his parents' generation were against something, they'd declare: there should be a law against that. And if they wanted something, they'd declare: there should be a law for that.

To my knowledge, Scalia never publicly used the word "Democrat," but we know to whom he was referring when he talked about activist lawyers and judges. For decades, Scalia forewarned of those who sold the fool's gold of a "living, breathing Constitution" that means whatever they, and other Democrats, want it to mean  rather than what it actually means, as was intended by the Framers. His dire warnings were prescient. Our Constitution is a contract. The freedoms laid out in the Bill of Rights are irrevocable, guaranteed rights. The Constitution says what it says, and it doesn't say what it doesn't say that Democrats think it means. Its irrevocability immunizes it from the fart-in-the-wind whims of public opinion, also known as the tyranny of the majority. In the adult world, contracts are not living, breathing documents.

If a contract means whatever I want it to mean, then anything and everything is a "right." One of those "rights" is that women who allege sexual assault or abuse or harassment of some sort have the "right to be believed."

Though this "right" has existed in some form or another for decades, its modern iteration was begotten by the Clinton campaign in January 2016. At the time, Hillary Clinton introduced her law-and-order scam by claiming that every survivor of sexual assault has the "right to be heard," as well as the "right to be believed." A month later, Clinton amended her made-up "right," announcing that women were entitled to a "right to be heard."

This fictional "right" came in handy for Clinton after the Access Hollywood tape.

Following our win in 2016, the "right to be heard" and "right to be believed" dissipated  until 2018, when it made a roaring comeback, with a bloodthirsty vengeance.

I vividly recall the shock and horror of the Kavanaugh hearings. I was a teenager during Justice Clarence Thomas's confirmation hearings, in which his integrity was impugned and he was accused of sexually harassing a former colleague. The allegations levied against Thomas were tame compared to what Kavanaugh was accused of  raping a teenage girl when he, himself, was a teenager. Do I believe that Thomas sexually harassed Anita Hill? No. Do I believe that sexual harassment and assault have likely happened more than we know? Yes.

What Kavanaugh was accused of, however, is the unequivocal worst crime a man can commit against a woman and is comparable only to sexual abuse of children. During the hearings, I explicitly detailed how Democrats and the DMIC employed the tactics of one of their demigods, Saul Alinsky. His "rules for radicals" were on full display for those who knew how to recognize them.

I say all the time that not enough Republicans understand the Democrats' tactics; to defeat an opponent, you must know him better than he knows himself. In the case of Kavanaugh, the Democrats took their "right to be believed" to unprecedented heights of unconstitutionality.

Do I know for certain that Biden did what he was accused of? No, and neither do you; there are only two human beings on Earth who truly know. While there is slightly more of a paper trail supporting Reade's claims than there was for Ford's, there is no evidence thus far publicly presented beyond he said, she said. We constitutional nationalists believe that Biden should be afforded the same presumption of innocence that Democrats never afforded Kavanaugh.

Meanwhile, stretch limousine liberal Bread Line Bernard Sanders has called for a thorough investigation by the media of Reade's allegations  hiring the arsonist to investigate the arson.

Fact is, Democrats didn't give a damn about Kavanaugh's accuser; they cared only about scaring him into withdrawing. Thank God he didn't, and thank God Trump didn't demand his withdrawal.

Today, it's Kavanaugh. Tomorrow, maybe it's your son, husband, or brother. Who are the actual victims in this #MeToo farce? Legitimately assaulted women and wrongly accused men.

That the Democrats and DMIC so unhesitatingly sided with Kavanaugh's accuser not only immolated a uniquely American legal tenet of the accuser's preponderance-of-evidence burden, but also set back by decades the equality many good women spent years working for.

Democrats cannot be permitted to be judge, jury, and executioner on the basis that absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence; women with bona fide sexual assault claims will be hated by one half of the country, depending on her political leanings. If I were a woman in America, I'd trade #MeToo for #ThanksForNothing; add women's equality to the list of genuine political progress irreparably damaged by Democrats. Wham, bam, thanks for nothing, Ma'am.

Rich Logis is host of The Rich Logis Show, at TheRichLogisShow.com, and author of the upcoming book 10 Warning Signs Your Child Is Becoming a Democrat: How to Make America Grown-up Again. He can be found on Twitter at @RichLogis.
Many Australian households are about to get a rude shock when they open their next energy bill. (Image: Getty)

Australians have managed to keep coronavirus numbers low after following government advice to stay home, but this could come at a significant cost.

With both children and adults spending all their time at home, some households are estimating their electricity usage could be as much as 50 per cent more than usual.

The average annual electricity charge in NSW is $1,627, according to Canstar. This means in 2020  the year of the coronavirus  many households could need to fork out a whopping $2,400.

Victoria and Queensland residents pay a little bit less on average, while South Australians shell out more for their power.

And the situation will only deteriorate as the nation heads into the winter months and heating comes on.

UNSW Built Environment professor Mat Santamouris told Yahoo Finance that the way Australian houses and flats are designed leads to an over-reliance on electricity.

"The buildings are not well protected  they do not have insulation," he said.

"As a result, you will have much higher energy consumption for heating and cooling."

The problem is exacerbated in lower income suburbs where people have even less capability to pay hefty electricity bills or install better insulation.

According to Santamouris, studies have found winter daytime indoor temperatures in some Sydney houses can be as low as 7 degrees.

"We were surprised that people don't meet their basic comfort needs," he said.

"It was very common that the indoor temperature during the day was 11 or 12 degrees Indoor temperatures during a heatwave can be close to 40 degrees for more than 4 or 5 days."

Public Interest Advocacy Centre head of energy policy Craig Memery said many Australians would do it tough this winter.

"Millions of people have just lost work and incomes. At the same time, people are having to spend their time at home, pushing up energy costs when they are least able to pay.

"Without better support, this winter many families face a choice between heating their homes and having enough money for food and rent."

Story continues

Not only does the lack of thermal protection on residential buildings burn a hole in Australian wallets, it results in adverse health outcomes too.

"Because of the very high temperature or lack of ventilation, mortality and morbidity increase. This is very well-documented it happens everywhere in the world," said Santamouris.

So the irony for Australians staying home to avoid the coronavirus is that their health could be deteriorating by other means.

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A dolphin which 'fell in love' with a Dutch cargo ship and refused to leave its side has been found dead after apparently colliding with another boat's propeller.

The animal, named Zafar, first made headlines in 2018 when it started rubbing up against boats and bathers in the French town of Landevennec while visibly excited.

Zafar then formed a close bond with the Les Tres Hombres ship at the beginning of this month and was seen following it into Amsterdam's harbour in the Netherlands.

However, several days after he was led back to sea, Zafar was found dead with his tail missing and serious bruising to his side.

Zafar the dolphin, which 'fell in love' with Dutch cargo ship Les Tres Hombres and refused to leave its side has been found dead after apparently colliding with another boat's propeller

Lonneke IJsseldijk, a biologist at Utrecht University who carried out an autopsy on the dolphin, told media outlet Dutch News, 'All the signs are that the dolphin died on impact.

'It suffered a big blow and probably lost its tail in the propeller of the ship that hit it.'

The Netherlands-based SOS Dolphin foundation which had helped rescue Zafar from Amsterdam harbour and return it to the North Sea said: 'Zafar's love of ships became his downfall.'

Zafar first started following the Les Tres Hombres, a sail-powered cargo ship, when it was returning to port in the Dutch harbour town of IJmuiden.

Zafar was found dead with his tail missing and serious bruising to his side

Rescuers had earlier coaxed him out of Amsterdam harbour after he initially refused to leave

Lonneke IJsseldijk, a biologist at Utrecht University who carried out an autopsy on the dolphin, told media outlet Dutch News , 'All the signs are that the dolphin died on impact

Zafar became obsessed with Les Tres Hombres, a sail-powered cargo ship

The dolphin refused to leave the boat's side when it then sailed to Amsterdam and despite repeated attempts to get him to follow another ship out of the harbour, Zafar kept returning.

A spokesperson for the SOS dolphin foundation, Annemarie van den Berg, said at the time 'this is an exceptional situation, to put it mildly' before the local authorities eventually managed to get the dolphin to leave.

And in 2018, Zafar sparked a swimming ban in Landevennec, Brittany, after he repeatedly rubbed up against boats and bathers.

'I issued the decree to ensure safety... Several bathers were really afraid - he even lifted up a woman bather with his snout,' Landevennec mayor, Roger Lars, told the local newspaper Ouest France at the time.

Zafar first started following the Les Tres Hombres when it was returning to port in the Dutch harbour town of IJmuiden

The dolphin refused to leave the boat's side when it then sailed to Amsterdam and despite repeated attempts to get him to follow another ship out of the harbour, Zafar kept returning

Sami Hassani, a specialist in marine mammals at the Oceanopolis sea park, said the dolphin could accidentally cause 'serious injuries' with its tail fin.

But the ban ran into legal problems.

Lawyer Erwan Le Cornec told AFP he planned to file a petition to overturn the restrictions on the grounds of administrative over-reach.

'How many accidents involving a dolphin and a human have occurred in the region of Finistere since the two species have lived side-by-side? None,' he said.

'With this decree the mayor is trying to make out that the dolphin is almost like a ferocious beast, something that is completely unpredictable, able to drown people.'

The mayor, he said, 'will overturn the rightly positive approach that people have towards dolphins into a fear of these intelligent animals.'
Photo: wikimedia commons Quinton Dunbar

Police in South Florida are trying to find New York Giants cornerback DeAndre Baker and Seattle Seahawks cornerback Quinton Dunbar after multiple witnesses accused them of an armed robbery at a party, authorities said Thursday.

Miramar police issued arrest warrants for both men Thursday on four counts each of armed robbery with a firearm. Baker faces an additional four counts of aggravated assault with a firearm. The residential community is located between Fort Lauderdale and Miami.

Baker, 22, and Dunbar, 27, were attending a cookout at a Miramar home Wednesday night when a fight broke out, and Baker pulled out a handgun, the warrant said. Baker, Dunbar and two other men began robbing other people at the party of thousands of dollars in cash, watches and other valuables, witnesses told investigators.

Police said the four men then fled the home in three vehicles: a Mercedes Benz, a Lamborghini and a BMW. Witnesses said the vehicles were parked in a way that would make it easy to leave quickly, leading detectives to believe the robbery was planned in advance. No injuries were reported.

Baker and Dunbar are both from Miami.

Baker was one of three first-round draft picks the Giants had last season. He was the 30th pick overall out of Georgia. He played in all 16 games, starting 15. He had 55 tackles and no interceptions. He was the last of the three New York picks in that first round.

We are aware of the situation. We have been in contact with DeAndre, the Giants said in a statement. We have no further comment at this time.

Dunbar took part in a video conference call with Seattle reporters Thursday before the news broke.

We are aware of the situation involving Quinton Dunbar and still gathering information, the Seahawks said in a statement. We will defer all further comment to league investigators and local authorities.

Dunbar signed with the Washington Redskins as an undrafted free agent in 2015 and was traded to the Seahawks this past March. He started 11 games last season, recording 37 tackles and four interceptions.
Redfield did himself no favors with Trumps inner circle when he told The Washington Post on April 21 that a second wave of covid-19 disease this winter could be more challenging than the first because it will coincide with flu season. Redfield was forced to appear at a White House briefing that day to soften his remarks, after Trump surprised the agency by publicly demanding a new statement.
Namibias President Hage Geingob has banned government officials from buying new cars till 2025. Geingob, who announced the ban via ...

Namibias President Hage Geingob has banned government officials from buying new cars till 2025.





Geingob, who announced the ban via his Twitter handle on Thursday, said the decision was inspired by the difficult period of COVID-19.





He also directed a cap on monthly fuel consumption by public office holders.





Government will not order a new vehicle fleet for the Executive and Public Office Bearers for the period 2020-2025, he wrote.

Savings of 200 million Namibia dollars (about $10.8 million) will be directed to urgent priority areas.





Government will not order a new vehicle fleet for the Executive and Public Office Bearers for the period 2020-2025. Savings of 200 million N$ will be directed to urgent priority areas. Below is the statement issued by The Presidency to that effect: pic.twitter.com/6FLnAdf7xd May 14, 2020

A statement he shared added that by constantly directing government offices, ministries and agencies to do more with less, major savings across the government system have been achieved over the past five years since Geingob.





Government spending has been reduced by 9%, annual travel and subsistence allowances have been cut by 62%, it added.





A country of 2.5 million people, Namibias gross domestic product $14.52 billion as of 2018.





The country has so far recorded 16 cases of the coronavirus.
Thirty more people tested positive for Covid-19 in Jammu and Kashmir on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the Union territory to 1,013, officials said.

Of the fresh infections, 21 were reported from Kashmir divisionSrinagar, Bandipora, Baramulla, Kupwara and Pulwama districtswhere the tally has risen to 903. Nine cases are from Ramban, Udhampur, Kathua, Rajouri and Jammu district.

Also, 28 more patients have recovered and were discharged from various hospitals in Kashmir, officials said.

Out of the total positive cases456 in Kashmir and 57 in Jammu division have recovered so far. At present, Kashmir has 438 active cases and 51 are in Jammu.

Till date, 10,5941 people in contact with suspected cases have been put under surveillance27,760 in home quarantine, 142 in hospital quarantine and 13,254 under home surveillance. Besides, 64,285 people have completed their 28-day surveillance period.

Since the detection of first Covid-19 case in March, 11 people have succumbed to the disease in J&K. With 153 positive cases, Srinagar district tops the count followed by Anantnag at 145 and Kupwara at 135 cases.

A spokesperson of Sher-i-Kashmir Institute of Medical Sciences said they received 1,724 samples till Friday evening. As many as 1,210 were tested. Eight were found positive while 514 are being tested. Among the positive cases, six are from Baramulla, one each from Pulwama and Bandipora.

Former J&K nodal officer Dr Shafkat Khan said they should wait for the curve to flatten. The increase in number of cases to more than 1,000 is not alarming yet but we should not be complacent. A surge can be expected anytime in case proper SOPs are not followed.

UT ACQUIRES 30K VTM KITS TO RAMP UP TESTING

As 50,000 stranded people returned home to the Valley, the Jammu and Kashmir administration has acquired 30,000 viral transport media (VTM) kits to ramp up the testing for coronavirus to ensure that the infection does not spread. An Indian Air Force (IAF) plane brought in the 30,000 VTM kits to Kashmir on Friday, officials said. They said the kits have been imported in bulk to ramp up the testing of people from Kashmir who are stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

We had 13 travellers, who returned to Kashmir recently, testing positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. Foreseeing this possibility, additional kits were procured to ensure that we test more and more people so that the infection does not spread, the officials said.

There could be a surge in cases. However, poeple entering J&K are being screened and quarantined, a senior officer said.
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Linkedin Moch. Fiqih Prawira Adjie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:27 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84f6c0 1 National BPJS-Kesehatan,JKN-premium-increase,Jokowi Free

The Indonesian Hemodialysis Patient Community (KPCDI) will once again file a judicial review to the Supreme Court against the governments decision to increase the premiums of the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Kesehatan) after the former annulled a similar policy earlier this year.

"The KPCDI is currently discussing [the plan] with a team of lawyers and preparing the lawsuit dossier, KPCDI chairman Tony Samosir said in a statement published on the groups website on Wednesday.

Additionally, Tony said the decision to increase premiums amid the current COVID-19 outbreak in the country was unfortunate.

Through Presidential Regulation (Perpres) No. 64/2020 signed on May 5, President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo's administration once again increased the monthly premiums for the national health insurance program.

The regulation raises the premium for first-class services to Rp 150,000 (US$10.11) per month per person from Rp 80,000, while the second-class premium was increased to Rp 100,000 from Rp 51,000. The premium for third-class services  the most affordable one  was increased to Rp 42,000 from Rp 25,500.

The government will fully subsidize the increase for third-class services this year and participants will only be required to pay the initial premium of Rp 25,500. Starting from January 2021, however, the subsidy will be reduced by Rp 7,000, so third-class service participants will need to pay Rp 35,000.

The new Perpres is a revision to the previous regulation on the same matter, which also stipulated the rise of BPJS premiums but with a higher increase for first-class and second-class services.

Read also: COVID-19 exposes flaws in Indonesias health insurance program

The previous policy, stipulated in Perpres No. 75/2019, was revoked by the Supreme Court after the KPCDI filed a judicial review against it.

"Even though there has been a change in the increase, it is still considered burdensome for the public, especially amid the current uncertain economic conditions," Tony said, adding that the KPCDI saw the increase as the government's way to "outsmart" the court's decision.

Tony went on to say that the government should not increase the premium for the third-class services as participants of the most affordable class made up the majority of the health insurance's 35.14 million individual participants, with 21.64 million people as of May.

BPJS Watch advocacy coordinator Timboel Siregar also decried the increase of the third-class premium amid the COVID-19 pandemic, adding that it would be ineffective as around 14.83 million BPJS Kesehatan participants in all classes still had premiums in arrears.

He further said that the government should instead review the third-class service participants data so that the poor people who were unable to afford monthly premiums could be allocated to the BPJS Kesehatans Recipients of Contribution Assistance (PBI), where their premiums would be fully subsidized by the government.

Just perform a data cleansing and then some participants can be transferred to the PBI. So, the poor can be truly covered and [the third-class service] subsidies are right on target, he told The Jakarta Post on Friday.

While some members of the public rejected the premiums increase, the government said that the policy aims to improve the national healthcare system and help the insurance agency improve its services and standards amid mounting debts.

BPJS Kesehatan president director Fachmi Idris also said that the new premiums would help the company repay liabilities that were already in default to hospitals and balance its financial position this year.
The Tonk district police filed chargesheet in the Pachewar gang rape case on Thursday, within 10 days of registration of the first investigation report (FIR), officials said.

Tonk Superintendent of Police (SP) Adarsh Siddhu said that the FIR in the case was registered on May 6 and all the four accused were detained on the same day. On May 11, the statements of the victim were recorded in the court and the chargesheet was presented in the court on Thursday.

The charges against the accused were found to be true under sections 363 (kidnapping), 366 (inducing girl for illicit inter course), 376DA (gang rape) of India Penal Code and Section 5 (kidnapping) and Section 6 (gang rape of child) under POCSO Act, said Siddhu.

The SP added that the case has been taken in the case officer scheme to ensure maximum punishment.

A minor in Tonk district was allegedly gang raped by four persons on May 5 when she had went to relieve herself in open, the police said.

According to complaint given by the family members of the 16-year-old, she was kidnapped by four people around 8 pm who have been named in the FIR. They allegedly took her to isolated place in Islampur and took turns to rape her. The men later dropped her near a pond in Bacheda village in an unconscious condition.

The girl gradually regained consciousness and managed to reach her home. She shared the ordeal with her parents after which they went to the police station to register an FIR.

The accused were identified as Nesar Khan (22), Salman alias Khobra (20) and Zakir alias Raju Rada (22). The fourth accused is a minor.
In efforts to support those in need amidst the COVID-19 health crisis, local Dunkin franchisee network Bluemont Group, LLC Friday announced it is donating $4,218 to benefit the Chattanooga Area Food Bank.The donation stems from a week-long donation program beginning last week on Pay It Forward Day, where guests at participating Chattanooga Dunkin locations were given the opportunity to donate $1 to support food insecure families throughout the Chattanooga region. In total, 11 Dunkin restaurants in Chattanooga participated in collecting the donations.It was incredible to see such an outpouring of generosity from our guests to support those in need over the past week, said Dave Baumgartner, president of Dunkin Franchisee Network Bluemont Group, LLC.Now more than ever, its crucial for our communities to come together to lend a helping hand, and we are proud that Dunkin was able to participate. Together, we can continue to make a difference for those affected during this ongoing situation.Throughout the state of Tennessee, including participating Dunkin restaurants in Chattanooga, Knoxville and Nashville, Bluemont Group will be donating a combined $25,869 to benefit local Tennessee-based food banks following the week-long Pay It Forward program.As part of Dunkins ongoing efforts to help ensure the safety of guests and crew in light of the COVID-19 health crisis, all restaurants are limiting service to drive-thru, carry out and delivery through delivery partners, where available. Dine-in service has been suspended to prevent the congregation of guests. On-the-Go ordering is available through the Dunkin app for pickup in-store or at the drive-thru to limit contact.
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KINGS BAY, Ga. (May 9, 2020) The Ohio-class guided-missile submarine USS Florida (SSGN 728) returns to its homeport, Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Georgia. The ship was forward deployed for more than 800 days, providing the U.S. Navy with one of the most versatile and clandestine platforms in the fleet. Guided-missile submarines are capable of carrying up to 154 Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles and host up to 66 Special Operation Forces. Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay is homeport to all East Coast Ohio-class submarines. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Ashley Berumen)

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US President Donald Trump expressed doubts over his recent trade agreement with Beijing because of the Covid-19 pandemic and suggested that America would save US$500 billion if Washington "cut off" the bilateral relationship.

Speaking about a wide range of grievances with China in a pre-recorded Fox Business Network interview, Trump said: "I have a very good relationship [with China's President Xi Jinping], but I just, right now I don't want to speak to him."

"They should have never let [the pandemic] happen. So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn't feel the same to me," Trump said. "I'm very disappointed in China."

"The ink was barely dry and the plague came over, and it doesn't feel the same to me," he said referring to the phase-one trade deal he signed with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He in January, under which China is committed to buying an additional US$200 billion worth of US goods over two years.

Trump, however, said "they will buy US$250 billion", without accounting for the extra US$50 billion.

Doubts about China's ability to meet the deal's purchasing commitments have escalated for reasons on both sides, most directly or indirectly related to the pandemic.

Exports of pork to China, for example, will be difficult to increase because US production has dropped following Covid-19 outbreaks at processing plants run by companies including Smithfield Foods and Triumph Foods.

"Given supply conditions in the United States, even for example with China short on pork right now because of African swine flu, American meat packers are not really in a position because of the virus to be a part of the export boom to meet China's needs," Daniel Rosen, founder of New York-based research consultancy Rhodium Group, said in an online discussion organised by the National Committee on US China Relations on Wednesday.

At the same time, Beijing is limited in the degree to which it can enact stimulus measures, Rosen said.

Story continues

"China is sort of at the fairly thin end of leading economies in terms of its stimulus," he explained. "The evidence suggests they won't be able to stimulate nearly as much this time as they did last time around", when Beijing took strong fiscal measures to stabilise its economy amid the financial crisis of 2009.

Asked about Republican Senator Tom Cotton's suggestion last month that US visas should be denied to Chinese students applying to study in fields including quantum computing and artificial intelligence in the interest of national security, Trump said: "There are many things we could do ... We could cut off the whole relationship."

"You'd save US$500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship," Trump said, referring to the approximate value of annual US imports from China.

Turning to the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, Trump appeared to discount a suggestion by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, which has since been largely debunked by US intelligence, that the contagion might have been created deliberately in a Chinese laboratory.

Weighing in on the matter on April 30, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence issued a statement saying that it "concurs with the wide scientific consensus that the Covid-19 virus was not man-made or genetically modified".

However, the president has not backed off allegations that China is to blame for not controlling the spread of the disease.

"I don't know if they made a decision, but it got out of control," Trump said. "I think more likely it got out of control ... We have a lot of information, and it's not good. Whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from China, and they should have stopped it."

Commenting on US supply chains, Trump lashed out at "globalists", who have allowed too much manufacturing capacity to gravitate to other countries.

"These stupid supply chains that are all over the world, we have a supply chain where they're made in all different parts of the world and one little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up," Trump said.

"I said we shouldn't have supply chains. We should have them all in the United States. We have the companies to do it and if we don't, we can do that," he said.

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.
Keith had spent over four months in the Hillsboro, Oregon, county jail  charged with robbing a deli with a fake gun  when his delusions returned this February. In a phone call to his father, he rambled about drinking bleach, being exposed to nuclear waste, and fearing going blind. Keith, who is being identified by his first name to protect his privacy, had a history of schizophrenia.

Keiths lawyer told the circuit court that his client no longer seemed well-functioning enough to stand trial. On March 13, sheriff deputies drove him 50 miles to the Oregon State Hospital in Salem for an evaluation, where a psychologist found him to be seriously mentally ill  enough to be hospitalized. But the next day, the hospitals superintendent issued a memo halting almost all new admissions in an attempt to slow the spread of coronavirus.

In mid-April, the judge agreed that Keith was incompetent to stand trial and ordered his admission to the state hospital, where he would be medicated, monitored by a psychiatrist and taught how courts work  a process called competency restoration. He should have been moved within a week, according to a federal court ruling. But because of coronavirus, Keith, like many other mentally ill detainees around the country, was stuck in the county jail.

Its not like it doesnt matter if we treat him today or tomorrow, said his attorney, Casey Kovacic. Failing to treat psychosis leads to a worse long-term prognosis. There is brain damage that is being caused.

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system. Sign up for their newsletter, or follow The Marshall Project on Facebook or Twitter.

Across the country, even before the COVID-19 crisis, criminal defendants in need of competency restoration have often waited weeks or months in county jails for a hospital bed to open up. But the pandemic has stalled many cases even further, trapping some individuals in jails as hospitals try to wall themselves off from new infections.

Now more than ever, the COVID-19 crisis has left mentally ill individuals and the attorneys fighting for them with few good options. Being stuck in a jail has never been more dangerous, since the virus can spread rapidly within crowded quarters. But entering a large, communal living institution like a psychiatric hospital carries its own heightened risk of infection. And even if a defendant is admitted to the hospital, how much treatment can be provided as facilities lock down?

In New Jersey, widespread outbreaks at psychiatric hospitals have slowed admissions significantly. In Washington, even psychological evaluations are delayed. In Colorado, the waitlist to get into a hospital doubled in a month. And in Washington, D.C., public defenders asked courts to release all misdemeanor detainees who need restoration, rather than expose them to the virus at the city jail or the forensic hospital.

Theyve stopped admissions and theyve also stopped evaluating people, said Philip Fornaci, staff attorney with the National Disability Rights Network. That leaves a bunch of people who are not competent to stand trial sitting in jail. You want to get people moved out. The question then is, who could be safely moved out in the midst of this situation? Is there some place they can go?

Many say the best option would be a community treatment program, which could help secure a place to live while providing therapy and other classes. Even before this pandemic we have been trying to get folks to live in the most integrated community setting possible, said Emily Cooper, legal director for Disability Rights Oregon. A year ago it was because it didnt make fiscal sense, now its because it doesnt make public health sense.

But many of those programs are underfunded or relatively new, advocates for the mentally ill say. Often reserved for those facing low-level offenses, many leave out those charged with more serious crimes or dealing with more acute mental illness. And now, those social service providers are also having to figure out how to provide treatment and care from a safe distance.

We need to be building the infrastructure to restore people in the community, said Anita Khandelwal, director of public defense for King County, Washington, where estimated wait times for admissions to state hospitals for competency restoration have increased by three months. Even if there isnt a community care option, being in jail is the wrong place. We know being in that environment exacerbates mental illness.

The Oregon State Hospital increased admissions in mid-April. But the month-long stoppage created a backlog, leaving many clients in jail long past the weeklong deadline. On Tuesday, a federal judge set aside those time limits, as long as the hospital worked to speed up its admissions process.

Rebeka Gipson-King, a spokesperson for the hospital, said the initial admissions policy gave the hospital time to set up quarantine areas, closed units for high-risk patients, and other preventative measures. Now they are admitting new patients in cohorts, which quarantine for two weeks before transferring to a different unit. Nobody wants people to be waiting in jail longer than necessary, Gipson-King said. Were doing everything we can to make [admissions] as efficient a process as possible, and were doing everything we can to protect our current patients.

As of May 1, there were still no Oregon State Hospital patients with COVID-19, though three staff members had tested positive.

Psychiatric hospitals are wary of new admissions for good reason  many have become coronavirus hotspots. In New Jersey, 194 patients and over 450 staff at psychiatric hospitals have tested positive, and 12 patients have died. Over 140 patients and staff in Michigan have the virus; there have been at least 30 deaths at psychiatric centers in New York. An April survey by NBC News found at least 1,450 cases in state mental health facilities across 23 states and Washington, D.C.

The setup of many psychiatric hospitals  large-scale communal living designed around shared spaces  make them particularly susceptible. Some patients might not be capable of following social distancing and other health guidelines on their own. And though theyre called hospitals, rarely do they have the staff or resources on-site to deal with serious medical emergencies.

People have this vision of a hospital, and inpatient facilities are not like that. Its congregate living, its shared rooms, said Kathy Flaherty, executive director of the Connecticut Legal Rights Project, which provides legal services to low-income people with mental health conditions. The whole point of being in a psychiatric unit is to engage with other people, and not to isolate.

Attorneys for people confined in psychiatric hospitals say most therapy  the reason their clients were hospitalized in the first place  has been reduced in many facilities. (Monitoring the treatment being provided has also been harder, as facilities limit outside visitors or inspectors). Group sessions and other therapeutic activities are canceled or curtailed. And some already understaffed facilities are now operating with far fewer employees.

Flahertys group filed a lawsuit in late April, calling for releases from in-patient facilities and a stop to new admissions, given the high risk of contagion. The same day, Connecticut reported the states first psychiatric patient to die from COVID-19. The state has not yet responded to the suit; a spokesperson for the state Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services said they could not comment on pending litigation.

Attorneys in Washington, where one psychiatric patient has died, have made a similar request to reduce the hospital population. In response, the state Department of Health and Human Services said it was speeding up releases for civilly committed patients and looking for more community treatment options.

Even as people fight in court to get out of state hospitals, others are fighting to get in  or at least to be released from jail in the meantime. Their lawyers say that every day spent in jail with treatment delayed can cause lasting harm.

Katie Stanford, an attorney with the Metropolitan Public Defender in Portland, has multiple clients who have spent weeks in this limbo. One has developed a paranoid delusion that police and corrections officers are conspiring for him to be raped and tortured. Another believes staff are tampering with his medication and purposefully infecting him with coronavirus. One young man, who suffers from schizophrenia, asked the judge over and over again at a recent court hearing: When am I going to the hospital?

Theyre decompensating, theyre deteriorating, theyre not taking their medications, Stanford said. She has asked the court to release many of her clients, but has only been successful in a few cases. The Multnomah County Jail did not respond to a request for comment.

Some defense attorneys have tried a broader approach. In Washington, D.C., the Public Defender Service filed a lawsuit in early April on behalf of people facing misdemeanor charges whose mental competency was in question, given that most of their trials were indefinitely on hold. The plaintiffs were held in the D.C. jail and psychiatric hospital St. Elizabeths, where 13 patients have died and 79 have tested positive. The facilities are highly occupied, often unsanitary institutions where the social-distancing necessary to mitigate an outbreak of COVID-19 is next to impossible, attorneys wrote. Of the 57 cases in question, all but 11 have since been released.

The Hillsboro jail where Keith was held hasnt yet had any confirmed COVID cases among detainees, though one deputy in the sheriffs office tested positive in early April. Those with serious mental illness are often housed in a designated special needs unit, which includes a creative outlet with a chalkboard, calming therapeutic colors painted on the walls, and even live plants that inmates help care for, according to a recent video produced by the department.

In an email, a spokesperson for the sheriffs department said they currently had four detainees waiting to be hospitalized. The Sheriffs Office, as a whole, agrees that jail is not the best option for adults suffering from a mental health crisis and we are committed to doing everything we can to provide care, Lieutenant Caprice Massey wrote. The housing unit for people with mental illness is staffed with specially trained mental health counselors, she said.

Keith was finally transferred to the hospital on May 12, roughly a month after he was found incompetent.

But for another of Kovacics clients, the threat of COVID and the prospect of indefinite detention was enough to secure her one of the few open spots in a community program. She was being held on felony charges in the county jail and faced a long wait to enter the state hospital. Due to her criminal history, she would normally not be eligible for community restoration. But on April 30, a circuit judge ordered her to enter the program, which will help her find housing and provide treatment and legal education classes.

This might not be the ideal candidate, but times have changed, Kovacic said. I think you need to take some risk right now.

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Here's what you need to know about preparing for home quarantine for yourself or a family member

On Friday, India's confirmed coronavirus cases swelled to nearly 82,000 with 3,995 testing positive just in the past 24 hours. With the country's case count doubling over the past 12 days and some reports estimating that India would reach 100,000 cases by 18 May, it seems that more and more people are likely to be put under home quarantine.

This is a subject I am more than a little familiar with having spent 14 days in home quarantine after returning from Spain in March. Coming from a country that was in the literally going into lockdown before my eyes  a member of the Spanish royal family had just been diagnosed with the coronavirus  I was more than a little nervous while going through immigration at Mumbai airport.

My temperature was taken at the airport (all clear) and having come from a coronavirus-afflicted country, I was advised to go into self-quarantine at home for 14 days. I provided my details to the authorities and immediately did so.

But much has changed since mid-March, when India had seen less than a hundred cases and the Prime Minister Narendra Modi government was still more than a week away from declaring the first lockdown. Here's what you need to know about preparing for home quarantine for yourself or a family member:

Do you qualify for home quarantine?

As per the latest guidelines issued by the health ministry on Monday, only those who have been clinically diagnosed as being pre-symptomatic or with a very mild case of COVID-19 by a treating medical officer qualify for home quarantine  and that if they have the required facilities at home. Those categorised as 'severe cases' of coronavirus will be admitted to a dedicated COVID-19 facility.

Instructions for individual in quarantine

An individual in home quarantine should stay in a well-ventilated room, preferably with an attached bathroom, as per the health ministry guidelines. If another family member needs to stay in the room, a distance of one metre should be maintained all at times.

An individual in home quarantine should also restrict their movement within the home, stay away from the elderly, pregnant women, children and those with co-morbidities, as per the health ministry guidelines. Such an individual should wear gloves and a face mask at all times.

He or she should not share household items such as utensils, drinking glasses, towels, bedding. Hands should be thoroughly washed with soap and sanitisers for at least 20 seconds. Masks used by caregivers and close contacts should be disinfected and disposed of. If symptoms appear, the nearest health centre should be immediately informed, as per the health ministry.

While access to a separate room with an attached bath is out of reach for many people in India, those in quarantine can still take the aforementioned precautions. While isolating yourself and keeping away from your family is an essential component of the quarantine, it can prove to be a psychological burden, especially after a few days when the pressure starts to build.

Listening to music, reading a book or watching something on TV can ease the burden. Many have taken to having Zoom parties or connecting with friends or family through video-calling.

For families of those in quarantine

One individual should be tasked with caring for the person in home quarantine. There should be no direct contact with the skin and the soiled linen of those in quarantine should not be shaken. The person tasked with caring for the quarantined individual should also wear gloves and a mask and surfaces the individual comes into contact with should be disinfected regularly.

Getting supplies

Depending on whether you're located in a green, red or orange zone, you can order supplies from e-commerce sites such as Amazon and Flipkart. Being a red zone in Mumbai, I've had success ordering essential items such as fruits and packaged goods, from Amazon and BigBasket. While you can stock up on items for a week in advance, it is important not to hoard.

Friends in other parts of the Mumbai have used delivery services like Swiggy and Zomato to order essential items. E-commerce sites keep updating the areas they're servicing every few days. Be sure to keep checking for latest updates. For medicine, your local chemist is open and likely to provide home delivery. Your neighbourhood kirana stores are also open for business and may be willing to deliver. Consider patronising them at this difficult time.
JC Penney could file for bankruptcy as early as Friday morning, sources familiar with the matter have claimed.

The insiders told CNBC that the company's advisors are currently working on a bankruptcy filing.

However, they noted that final negotiations between the department store chain and its lenders could pour into the weekend, delaying the filing.

JC Penney, which has 846 stores in the US, aims to reorganize and emerge from bankruptcy protection. It plans to permanently shutter between 180 to 200 stores, a figure that could fluctuate depending on negotiations with creditors, the sources said

If the company shuts down those stores, it will become the latest major US retailer to succumb to fallout from the coronavirus outbreak.

JC Penney (file image) could file for bankruptcy within the next 24 hours, sources have claimed. Sources familiar with the matter said the company's advisors are currently working on a bankruptcy filing that could come early Friday morning

As of February, JC Penney employed about 90,000 full-time and part-time workers.

A bankruptcy filing would cap a long decline for the 118-year-old department store chain, which struggled with a nearly $4billion debt load and competition from e-commerce firms even before the pandemic's onset.

The Plano, Texas-based company is in discussions with creditors for a so-called debtor-in-possession loan to bolster its finances while it navigates bankruptcy proceedings, sources told Reuters last week.

The loan could total between $400million and $500million, some of the sources said. JC Penney declined to comment when approached by Reuters.

Retailers are bearing a significant brunt of the economic fallout from the pandemic as sales all but evaporate.

Just last week, luxury department store chain Neiman Marcus and clothing retailer J. Crew filed for bankruptcy protection.

In April, the US economy lost 20.5 million jobs, the steepest plunge since the Great Depression, according to the Labor Department.

JC Penney skipped a $17million debt payment last week and only has five days to make good on it before defaulting. A 30-day grace period on a $12million payment the company skipped April 15 ends Friday.

A bankruptcy filing would cap a long decline for the 118-year-old department store chain, which struggled with a nearly $4billion debt load and competition from e-commerce firms even before the pandemic's onset. The remains of a JC Penney store is seen in North Carolina

Under one plan being discussed, JC Penney would emerge from bankruptcy as two separate companies, the sources said.

One would own some of the company's real estate and serve as a landlord to the other entity operating the retailer's business, they said.

Creditors, many of them Wall Street hedge funds, would control the businesses in exchange for forgiving debt, they said.

JC Penney Chief Executive Jill Soltau told customers last week that stores have started to gradually reopen with precautions

JC Penney's online sales have not been enough to compensate for the significant losses it has incurred while keeping stores closed across the US in response to lockdowns aimed at curbing the spread of the coronavirus.

While the company has enough cash to survive in the coming months, it faces a $105million debt payment due in June and about $300million of annual interest expenses. More than $2billion of debt comes due in 2023.

JC Penney Chief Executive Jill Soltau told customers last week that stores have started to gradually reopen with precautions such as Plexiglass shields at registers and limited crowds.

The e-commerce revolution that took hold in the 21st century eroded JC Penney's business much as it did other traditional retailers. The company now also faces fierce competition from discount chains including Marshalls and TJ Maxx chains.

However, JC Penney had recently made some strides in its turnaround attempt, meeting or exceeding guidance on financial objectives for 2019 and improving sales at some stores.

But the coronavirus pandemic has sent the company into a tailspin.

Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection last Thursday in a Houston federal court. The closed Neiman Marcus headquarters in Dallas, Texas, is pictured on April 27

Operations at J.Crew will continue throughout a restructuring and clothing will still be available to purchase online. The coronavirus outbreak forced the company to temporarily close its nearly 500 stores across the US

Last Thursday, Neiman Marcus filed for bankruptcy protection in a Houston federal court.

It reached an agreement with creditors for $675million of debtor-in-possession financing to aid operations while it attempts to reorganize.

CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck said they will continue to operate via digital platforms and via relationships with brand partners as well as at select physical locations as states reopen after lockdowns.

Neiman Marcus also said it would cede control to creditors under the agreement that will eliminate $4billion of debt. Its debt currently totals about $5billion.

Meanwhile, retailer J.Crew filed for bankruptcy protection on May 4 with a plan to avoid liquidation and reorganize its debts thanks to an agreement with its creditors.

The agreement to eliminate its roughly $1.65billion of debt will come in exchange for ceding ownership to creditors.

Operations at J.Crew will continue throughout a restructuring and clothing will still be available to purchase online.

In addition to cancelling debt, J. Crew plans to close stores, though the final number it plans to shutter has not yet been determined, a person familiar with the matter said.

The coronavirus outbreak forced the company to temporarily close its nearly 500 J. Crew and Madewell stores across the US.
NEW YORK, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- A state court judge rejected the attempt by the Diocese of Rockville Centre to dismiss all cases brought against them under New York State's Child Victims Act (CVA) on the grounds that the extension of time to file suit under the act was unconstitutional. The CVA, enacted in 2019, created a special "look back" period which allowed the filing of sexual abuse lawsuits that were previously barred by the statute of limitations.

State Supreme Court Judge Steven Jaeger rejected the diocese plea to dismiss 44 lawsuits filed against them. Judge Jaeger found that "Based on this legislative history, the court finds the Child Victims Act is a reasonable response to remedy the injustice of past child sexual abuse." The court further held that "Accordingly, it does not violate defendant diocese's right to due process under the New York State Constitution."

"Thankfully, the court's decision recognized the constitutionality of the CVA and acknowledged to the victims of childhood sexual abuse, and their families, that they will be able to seek justice," said David Oddo, a senior partner at Oddo & Babat, a law firm that represents many victims of childhood sexual abuse under the CVA.

Last year, the Rockville Centre Diocese asked the court to dismiss all of the lawsuits filed against them in a motion filed in Nassau County. They claimed that the extension of the statute of limitations violated their due process rights. However, Judge Jaeger found that New York courts have previously upheld suspensions of time limitations as a remedy in extraordinary cases.

Over 1,700 CVA lawsuits have been filed in New York State since the "look back" window was opened last August. The one-year window was originally set to expire in August, but Gov. Andrew Cuomo used an Executive Order to extend the deadline to January, due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Oddo & Babat represents a significant number of childhood abuse victims under New York's Child Victims Act throughout New York State. If you, or someone you know, has any questions about pursuing a claim under the Child Victims Act, please contact Oddo & Babat by calling (212)642-0950, or [email protected].

SOURCE Oddo & Babat, PC
OTTAWA  Some Manitobans are staring economic hardship in the face as they wait weeks for a federal pandemic payment or employment insurance benefits.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  Some Manitobans are staring economic hardship in the face as they wait weeks for a federal pandemic payment or employment insurance benefits.

"It just gets very frustrating, very fast," said Denten Dandeneau, a rail-car technician who was laid off by CN Rail almost a month ago.

RUTH BONNEVILLE / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Denten Dandeneau said hes called Service Canada at least every second day, and often waits hours to speak with someone who doesnt have an answer, or his call gets dropped.

Hes among dozens of Manitobans who have contacted their MP and the Free Press about delays in getting federal benefits.

Dandeneau applied for Employment Insurance shortly after his April 20 layoff, but the Canada Revenue Agency told him he would get the Canadian Emergency Response Benefit instead.

At $2,000 per month, CERB is less than Dandeneaus EI payout. His collective agreement requires CN to top up EI payments and restore his earnings to 80 per cent, which doesnt apply to CERB recipients.

I have a house; I have a truck. If Im making half of what I should be, I cant make those payments. It gets scary, near the end of three or four months.  Denten Dandeneau

"I have a house; I have a truck. If Im making half of what I should be, I cant make those payments," said Dandeneau. "It gets scary, near the end of three or four months."

Dandeneau said hes called Service Canada at least every second day, and often waits hours to speak with someone who doesnt have an answer, or his call gets dropped. He suspects the system is overloaded, and is annoyed three weeks have passed and he still hasn't learned whether he can collect EI.

Dandeneaus MP, New Democrat Daniel Blaikie, said many people in his Elmwood-Transcona riding need answers.

"We keep hearing from Canadians who are trying to fill out their paperwork in good faith, are asked to contact EI to clarify a detail or two and then have to spend hours, days, or even weeks on hold trying to get through," he said.

He said Service Canadas online callback service doesn't allow staff to modify forms, so applicants have to wait for hours in a phone queue.

"It is an infuriating experience in an already stressful time, and it simply should not be happening," Blaikie said.

"It is an infuriating experience in an already stressful time, and it simply should not be happening."  MP Daniel Blaikie

The problem, which preceded the pandemic, involves Employment and Social Development Canada, the department responsible for Service Canada, and the Canada Revenue Agency.

Portage la Prairie resident Carolyn Staples lost her job at a seniors meal drop-in on Feb. 2, and needed to answer a CRA question before getting employment insurance.

She mailed a medical certificate from her doctor to the CRAs Edmonton office on March 12; the office said to wait until the end of the month for it to arrive. By that point, the Prairies were in lockdown.

Staples has left voice mail messages that haven't been returned. "Its like banging your head against a brick wall; theres no getting through," she said.

It took weeks to arrange a second note from the doctor. With Canada Post reporting huge amounts of mail, she pondered paying $12 for a registered letter, but wasnt sure if anyone in Edmonton would be around to sign for it.

After 15 weeks without income, her husbands earnings are running out.

"Its like banging your head against a brick wall; theres no getting through."  Carolyn Staples

"How am I supposed to pay my bills when theres no money?" she asked.

Service Canada has repeatedly referred her to the CRA, whose staff members are bogged down with CERB claims.

Portage-Lisgar Tory MP Candice Bergen said other constituents have also reported long waits and documents getting lost in the mail.

"(MPs) are at the front lines of dealing with and helping constituents who not only are wanting to get support, but also are wanting to get programs unrelated to COVID-19," Bergen said Tuesday during a pared-down sitting of Parliament.

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.

Families Minister Ahmed Hussen responded that Service Canada is coping with a heavy workload just as it closed its centres and moved staff to phone lines.

"We have had unprecedented volumes, but we have redeployed thousands of staff to front-line services by phone and by other means," he said.

Nearly 3,000 workers have been redeployed to help deliver EI and CERB.

Staples says shes sensitive to the vast amount of claims; 7.8 million Canadians have filed for the CERB in just five weeks.

"Like everyone else right now, things are difficult. It sucks for everybody," she said.

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
Migrant labourers from Bihar wait to board a special train for their home state from Chennai Central Railway Station on Thursday, May 14, 2020. (PTI)

Salem/Chennai: Tamil Nadu leapfrogged Gujarat and Delhi into second place in terms of the number of coronavirus positive cases on Friday, with 9,674 CASES, even as public health authorities confirmed two more deaths, taking the toll to 66.

The states case load has been increasing by at least 440 every day for the last 11 days with an average growth rate of 9 per cent per day. The burgeoning has largely been due to the rapid spread of the virus in Chennai, which accounts for 5,625 cases followed far behind by Thiruvalluvar with 510.

While the number of patients found positive for Covid-19 on Thursday was marginally lower at 447, Chennai alone accounted for 363 of the latest cases.

Tamil Nadu health minister, C. Vijayabaskar took satisfaction in the fact that the per-day incidence of new positive cases had for the first time in last ten days dropped below the 500-mark.

The health minister told reporters that the state has been aggressive in its testing: by Thursday evening, the number of samples tested across Tamil Nadu till date had crossed the three lakh mark, the highest in the country so far.

Affirming that Tamil Nadu was "proceeding on the right path" in managing and containing the virus, he said the government has deputed a 400-member strong team of paramedics to test all those returning to Tamil Nadu from other states and abroad on special trains/flights.

He said the arrival of 1,076 persons from Mumbai in various districts of Tamil Nadu has led to some increase in positive cases today. For instance, Sivaganga district had not had a single case in the last 23 days, but counted one today, while Tirunelveli reported 13 fresh Covid-19 cases.

At the Salem Mohan Kumaramanglam Government hospital, of the 35 Covid-19 patients being treated, 33 persons have been cured and discharged till date. Only three others including two from Salem district and one from Dharmapuri district continue to be under treatment there.

As far as Tamil Nadu was concerned, Dr Vijayabaskar said, "We are proceeding on the right path." Senior WHO official Dr Sowmya Swaminathan who participated in the video conference with chief minister Edappadi K Palaniswami and ICMR officials on Thursday, has lauded Tamil Nadu's approach in mitigating the Covid-19 crisis, going on as per WHO/ICMR norms, the health minister said.

Dr Swaminathan expressed support for Tamil Nadu's testing programme, the effective line of treatment given to Covid-19 patients in the state and its lowest mortality rate of 0.67 per cent.
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Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust plc

LEI: 549300UIWJ7E60WUQZ16

HEADLINE: Management Arrangements

The Board of Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust plc (the "Company") notes the announcement by Invesco this morning that Mark Barnett is leaving Invesco with immediate effect.

As announced on 6 April 2020 the Board has served protective notice on Invesco, the Company's investment manager, and has commenced a search for a new investment manager with the credentials and capacity to deliver capital growth and real growth in dividends over the medium to longer term from UK equities. In the meantime, Martin Walker, the Company's deputy fund manager, will oversee the Company's portfolio until the transition completes.

This announcement contains information that is inside information for the purposes of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014. The person responsible for arranging for the release of this announcement on behalf of the Company is Paul Griggs of Invesco Asset Management Limited.

For and on behalf of

Invesco Asset Management Limited

Company Secretary

15 May 2020
Cleveland: A Chinese-born former employee of the Cleveland Clinic was arrested on fraud charges related to $3.6 million ($5.56 million) in federal grants, the FBI said on Thursday, the latest move in a US crackdown on alleged attempts by China to steal American scientific advances.

The FBI seal.

The FBI and other federal enforcement agencies searched the Shaker Heights, Ohio, home of Dr. Qing Wang, and arrested him on charges of false claims and wire fraud on Wednesday.

Prosecutors said Wang accepted grants from the National Institutes of Health without disclosing that he was serving at same time as dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology. That was a violation of the terms of the grants, they said.

They said Wang is a Chinese-born US citizen specialising in genetics and cardiovascular disease who has been affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic since 1997.
Coca-Cola European Partners plc (CCEP or the Company)

15 May 2020



Dear Shareholder of Coca-Cola European Partners plc:

We are asking for your support in voting "FOR" all resolutions, as recommended by the Board of Directors, at our upcoming 2020 Annual General Meeting on 27 May 2020.

Certain proxy advisory services reports contain conflicting advice on Resolution 21 (Waiver of mandatory offer provisions set out in Rule 9 of the Takeover Code) and Resolutions 9 and 16 (regarding the re-election of Irial Finan and Mario Rotllant Sola respectively). Consequently, we believe it is important to provide additional context regarding these resolutions beyond that in our Notice of Meeting.

Resolution 21 (Waiver of mandatory offer provisions set out in Rule 9 of the Takeover Code)

The report from Glass, Lewis & Co. (Glass Lewis) recommends a vote "FOR" Resolution 21. The report from Institutional Shareholder Services (ISS) recommends a vote "AGAINST" Resolution 21. Both Glass Lewis and ISS have recommended voting "FOR" Resolutions 23 and 24 (Authorities to purchase own shares).

A share repurchase will not occur unless Resolution 21 is approved. Therefore, a vote "AGAINST" Resolution 21 will have the same effect as a vote "AGAINST" Resolutions 23 and 24.

The report from Glass Lewis states:

 "We believe the terms of this proposal are reasonable. The Takeover Code was instituted as a shareholder safeguard in the event that a major shareholder sought a larger stake in the Company, possibly to the detriment of other shareholders.

 In this case, we note that following a repurchase of shares or exercising of options, the concert party may increase their ownership stake in the Company but may not gain control of it without triggering a full takeover bid. Further, we note that the waiver will not apply to an acquisition of ordinary shares.

 We do not believe that this proposal is connected with any sort of takeover attempt by this party, and thus, we do not believe this proposal should warrant shareholder concern at this time. We will, however, monitor the concert party's beneficial ownership in the event that a takeover attempt becomes more likely."

On the other hand, ISS recommends voting "AGAINST" Resolution 21 based on the application of its standard policy as a result of undefined "concerns over creeping control". This fails to take into account the purpose of Resolution 21 and Olive Partners, S.A.'s (Olive) stated intentions.

Rule 9 of the Takeover Code applies when any entity holds 30% or more of the voting rights of a company. When a company purchases its own voting shares, any resulting increase in the percentage of shares carrying voting rights will be an acquisition for the purpose of Rule 9. CCEP currently has one shareholder, Olive, which owns approximately 36% of our outstanding shares and so any share repurchase would automatically trigger Rule 9 of the Takeover Code and result in an obligation on Olive to make a general offer to shareholders for all the remaining equity share capital of CCEP. Therefore, the intention of Resolution 21 is to enable CCEP to make share repurchases without triggering any obligation on Olive to make a general offer for the Company.

In the Notice of Meeting, Olive has confirmed that it has no intention of changing its approach with respect to CCEP as a result of any increase in its shareholding due to any share repurchase. It has no intention to seek any change in the composition of the Board or to the general nature or any other aspect of the Company's business. Given Olive's stated position, we believe that any concerns over "creeping control" are therefore unfounded.

As noted above, a share repurchase will not occur unless Resolution 21 is approved.

The CCEP Board and management firmly believe these resolutions are in the best interests of shareholders as they provide the ability to repurchase shares, enabling CCEP to continue to deliver long-term shareholder value. Accordingly, the Board and management of CCEP recommend voting "FOR" Resolutions 21, 23 and 24, consistent with the recommendation of Glass Lewis.

Resolutions 9 and 16 (re-election of Irial Finan and Mario Rotllant Sola, respectively)

The report issued by Glass Lewis recommends voting "FOR" Resolution 9 (the re-election of Irial Finan) and Resolution 16 (the re-election of Mario Rotllant Sola). The report states:

 "We note that Olive Partners, S.A. ("Olive") and European Refreshments beneficially hold approximately 36.58% and 19.01%, respectively, of the Company's issued share capital.

 We generally believe that persons or entities with a significant portion of the Company's voting power should be entitled to representation in proportion to its ownership interest on the Company's board and committees. As such, we shall refrain from recommending against directors on a strict notion of overall board or committee independence with the exception of

the Company's audit committee.

 Pursuant to the relationship agreement dated May 28, 2016, for as long Olive's beneficial ownership is at least 15%, the remuneration committee will be required to include at least one director nominated by them. In addition, for as long as European Refreshments' beneficial ownership is at least 10%, the remuneration committee will be required to include at least one director nominated by them. Further, the terms of the relationship agreement provides that all directors will be elected annually, other than the initial independent NEDs and the initial chair, who have longer initial terms.

 Having reviewed the nominees, we do not believe there are substantial issues for shareholder concern."

The report generated by ISS notes that its policy requires remuneration committees to be comprised solely of independent directors. It therefore recommends a vote "AGAINST" the re-election of the two non-independent members of CCEP's Remuneration Committee.

The CCEP Board and the Remuneration Committee Chairman, Christine Cross, are of the opinion that the re-election of Mr. Finan and Mr. Rotllant Sola is appropriate because:

 the Remuneration Committee comprises a majority of Independent Non-executive Directors (INEDs), notwithstanding the presence of Mr. Finan and Mr. Rotllant Sola;

 the terms of reference of the Remuneration Committee stipulate that it must be composed of a majority of INEDs, including for quorum requirements; and

 Mr Finan and Mr. Rotllant Sola are not executive directors, but appointed representatives of the Company's largest shareholders - it is natural that these shareholders would want a say on the remuneration of senior executives.

The CCEP Board and management firmly believe these resolutions are in the best interests of shareholders and recommend voting "FOR" Resolutions 9 and 16, consistent with the recommendation of Glass Lewis.

We would be glad to discuss the CCEP recommendations in relation to Resolutions 21, 9 and 16 further with you, should you wish. If you have any questions, or need assistance in submitting your proxy to vote your shares, please contact us at shareholders@ccep.com.

Thank you for your support.





This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

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With movie theatres closed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, content creators now bet on the OTT platforms.

Amazon is set to premier as many as seven Indian movies on its platform in the next three months. These movies include Gulabo Sitabo featuring actors such as Amitabh Bachhan and Ayushmann Khurana. Another Shakuntala Devi features Vidya Balan. The move to release the films on OTT platforms, however, has drawn criticism from the movie theatre chains.

Amazon on Friday said it will release the new movies on Prime Video over the next three months and will be available in 200 countries and territories worldwide. Apart from Gulabo Sitabo and Shankuntala Devi, Amazon will release legal drama Ponmagal Vandhal starring Jyotika (Chandramukhi) in addition to Keerthy Suresh (Mahanathie) starrer Penguin (Tamil and Telugu), Sufiyum Sujatayum (Malayalam), Law (Kannada) and French Biryani (Kannada).

At Prime Video we believe in listening to what our consumers want and working backwards from there. This belief is the genesis of our latest offering, said Vijay Subramaniam, Director and Head, Content, Amazon Prime Video, India. Over the last 2 years, Prime Video has become the destination of choice for our customers to watch new releases, across the languages, within weeks of their theatrical release. Now were taking this one step further, with seven of Indias most-anticipated films premiering exclusively on Prime Video, bringing the cinematic experience to their doorstep.

The pushback

As said earlier movie theatre chains such as Inox have expressed displeasure over the decision. According to a TechCrunch report, the movies were scheduled for the theatrical release. In the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government has shut down movie theatres, forcing several releases to be deferred.

Inox urged the content creators not to skip the theatrical run.

INOX would like to express extreme displeasure and disappointment on an announcement made by a production house today, to release their movie directly on an OTT platform by skipping the theatrical window run. The decision of the production house to deviate from the globally prevalent content windowing practice is alarming and disconcerting, it said in a release.

STATEMENT BY INOX ON A PRODUCTION HOUSES ANNOUNCEMENT TO RELEASE THEIR MOVIE ON AN OTT PLATFORM BY SKIPPING THE THEATRICAL RUN pic.twitter.com/NfqoYV2QRx  INOX Leisure Ltd. (@INOXMovies) May 14, 2020

PVR also stressed the need for theatrical release.

As PVR we believe that the theatrical release is the best way for audiences to experience the labor and creative genius of our filmmakers. This has been so for decades and not just in India but globally. The ongoing COVID-19 crisis has caused an unfortunate shutdown of cinemas. We are confident, once we get to the other side of this crisis, there would be enough and more pent up demand from cine-goers who have been cooped up at homes for the last many weeks. We are likely to see demand by force on a sustained basis, once we reopen. Needless to say, we are disappointed with some of our Producers deciding to go straight to the streaming platform/s. We were hoping that the Producers would accede to our request to hold back their films release till cinemas reopen. That said, this is not the first time films are being premiered on a streaming platform/s. Cinema exhibition has regularly faced competition from new emerging distribution platforms over the last many years, and it has continued to enjoy cine-goers patronage and affinity. I would also like to use this opportunity to express our appreciation for all the producers who have publicly voiced their support for the theatrical platform and have decided to reschedule their releases to accommodate the reopening of cinemas, Kamal Gianchandani, CEO, PVR Pictures said in a release.

Content creators dilemma

With theatrical releases stalled, content creators are looking at ways to reach masses and more importantly monetise the existing content. While the OTT rights are additional revenue for them, the Covid-19 pandemic has forced them to re-consider.

Ronnie Lahiri, co-producer of Gulabo Sitabo, in an interview to Huffington Post India hinted that they didnt make lot of money from the OTT rights.

Were facing a once-in-a-lifetime phenomena, not seen since World War 2. These are the times when things change. Initially, people have apprehensions but one has to adapt. Thats how human civilisations have prospered. The minute we stop adapting, were done. Instead of waiting for the situation to get better, you tackle it with other alternatives, he is quoted as saying.
Syracuse, N.Y.  Hours before Central New York will resume some non-essential business activity, several questions about how that will work remain unanswered. Among them is whom to call with questions.

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon said regional officials overseeing the restart will announce a hotline number Friday for CNY businesses to call if they have questions about how to operate during the Phase One restart.

Central New York leaders got confirmation just today that the economic restart can begin at 12:01 a.m. Friday, following a two-month lockdown spurred by the novel coronavirus. Many of the details are still being worked out.

All businesses that reopen are required to have a written safety plan and to sign lengthy online documents affirming that they will follow the states recommendations for protecting customers and employees from the spread of coronavirus.

As of Thursday afternoon, there was no central number to call with questions or concerns. McMahon said that will be rectified soon.

Its happening quickly, McMahon said. Were all dealing with something weve never dealt with before.

McMahon and Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh, both members of a nine-person regional control room that will oversee local progress during the Phase One restart, said they did not know yet how many CNY businesses had submitted the documents and were ready to open. They also said they were unsure whether the information filed by each business would be public.

I would think so, McMahon said, adding that it would have to be discussed.

County employees will be available to inspect businesses to ensure they are eligible to operate and comply with the procedures to which they agreed. The inspections will likely be driven by complaints initially. McMahon said violators would typically receive a warning, but inspectors might have authority to issue fines in serious cases, he said.

Thats another unresolved question. County lawyers are still reviewing how fines could be implemented, McMahon said. No amounts have been determined. McMahon said he would confer with state health officials before trying to institute fines.

We want to be consistent with the rest of the state, he said. Ill probably try that. My executive orders have to get approved by state DOH related to Covid. Well probably put forward a fine.

But McMahon said public officials are relying heavily on the good judgment of private businesses to operate safely. Business owners, employees and customers should remain vigilant to prevent a resurgence of the coronavirus, he said.

You cant answer every single specific question based on one set of rules, he said. Functionally, its impossible. So, we just need to use our best judgment and common sense.

There are still questions about whether certain healthcare providers are free to resume routine in-person care, McMahon said. Some providers, such as eye or foot doctors, may be able to provide non-urgent care soon, he said.

It sounded to me like theyre OK to go, but we have to iron these things out, he said.

Routine dental care is a special concern because of the risk of infection from saliva, McMahon said. County officials are still working with the state health department on plans for dental checkups, with no date yet in sight, he said.

McMahon said he and other members of the regional control room will work quickly to make information available as the restart gets under way. But he acknowledged that there are complexities that will take time to work through.

Restarting business under the new normal is more complicated than shutting it down, he said.

Easy to shut down  you just tell people to shut down, he said. Harder to get going under this new environment.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Someday restaurants in CNY will reopen. What will that look like?

How do I get a contact tracing job in NY? Work from home in coronavirus battle

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Tim Knauss is a public affairs reporter for syracuse.com/The Post-Standard. Contact him anytime: email | twitter | | 315-470-3023
Russias surging coronavirus epidemic is now the worlds second-largest, behind the United States.

What to watch: As Russia becomes a new epicenter, President Vladimir Putin appears almost paralyzed.

How it happened: Russias caseload had remained surprisingly low until mid-April, when it started rising sharply. Daily new cases have now been around or above 10,000 for the past 12 days.

Russias mortality rate remains low (2,305 deaths from 252,000 cases) but the deaths of many COVID-positive patients are being attributed to pneumonia or other causes.

Thats in line with how Russia has long treated deaths from diseases like AIDS, noted Yale University's Dr. Robert Heimer in a Wilson Center webcast.

Many of the deceased were health care providers. Severe shortages of protective equipment and delayed or ill-conceived policies have allowed hospitals to become hotspots.

Doctors have reportedly been forced to work even if they are in vulnerable groups or have already become ill. Meanwhile, "half-trained medical students... felt like raw military conscripts being sent into battle, barely trained to shoot, per the Washington Post.

At least three health care workers have fallen from windows in possible suicide attempts.

The disease has reached Putins inner circle, with his longtime spokesman and close adviser Dmitry Peskov hospitalized this week. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and several officials have tested positive.

Putin has been conducting meetings via video conference, often appearing a bit bored. Geopolitical games are interesting for him; lockdown is boring, political analyst Tatiana Stanovaya told the Moscow Times.

Putin brought Russia's ill-defined national non-working" period to an equally vague end on Monday.

Moscow, which has roughly half of all cases, will remain locked down.

What they're saying: Only good news comes from Putin. He only allows, encourages, promises, says Sergey Parkhomenko, a Russian political commentator. The decisions on closures, restrictions, and fines are left to local officials.

The devolution of authority during this crisis has been highly unusual, Parkhomenko says. Local officials that have little connection with the population have been handed responsibility but not resources, he adds.

Russian businesses have been instructed to continue paying their workers, but have received negligible state assistance. Moscow may be particularly reluctant to spend at a time of rock bottom oil prices.

What's next: The more passive Putin is not particularly popular. His approval rating has fallen to a historically low, if still enviable, 59%, according to the Levada Center.

The timing is unfortunate for Putin, who was forced to delay a constitutional referendum last month that could allow him to hold power through 2036.

The Kremlin reportedly wants to hold it as soon as June 24, perhaps to preempt what could be a brutal recession.

Before the epidemic, it was always absolutely guaranteed for him, Parkhomenko says. Now, its a big risk.

Go deeper: 20 Years of Putin  Tracing his rise from KGB to Kremlin
Pencils, paints, crayons and markers at the ready - Butler Gallery is calling on the young people of Kilkenny to put a little colour into their life!

As part of National Drawing Day, the Gallery has announced a colouring competition for children aged five to 12 years old. The competition will be based on imaginative and creative colouring of The Thosel by Paul Henry, a significant work from the Butler Gallery collection.

There are two categories for entry: children aged 5 to 7 and 8 to 12. Each category will have one winner, chosen by an expert judging panel. Each winner will each receive a prize of children's art materials worth 50.

Paul Henry's painting, The Tholsel, was one of the first artworks donated to the collection of Kilkenny Art Gallery Society in 1943, now Butler Gallery. It is a rare example of an urban scene by an artist most well-known for his depictions of rural and isolated scenes in the West of Ireland.

More than 80 years since this painting was created, it depicts a view of Kilkenny from the river, that will be the new view from Butler Gallery when it is relocated to Evans Home on Johns Quay in Summer 2020.

Work is ongoing at the Gallery, unpacking a magnificent permanent collection which has spent over four decades in storage.

The Gallery will increase the art and learning opportunities available in the south-east, while also bringing an architecturally significant building back to life for everyone to enjoy.

HOW TO ENTER

Download the colouring page The Tholsel from the Butler Gallery website by clicking on the link here

Use your imagination to create a vivid personal interpretation of this Kilkenny painting.

Download the accompanying application form and fill in. Please read the Terms and Conditions.

Take a photo or scan your colouring and send it, with the application form, to frontdesk@butlergallery.com with the title Colouring Competition by 5pm, on May 31. Make sure the quality of the image is very clear.

Winners will be announced on June 12 by an expert judging panel.
The Chairman of Eastern, Volta and Oti branches of the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI), Mr Dela Gadzanku has called on businesses in the Eastern Region to prioritize the welfare of their workers during this coronavirus pandemic era.



He said though businesses have been heavily affected by the outbreak of the coronavirus, there was the need for business owners to place a high priority on the welfare of their workers.



He said this is the time for all businesses to ensure that they provide the necessary logistics to protect their workers from infection of the coronavirus at their work places.



Mr Gadzanku said this when he visited some industries in Koforidua to empathise and access their level of observance of the safety protocols for protection against the spread of the coronavirus.



The visit by the AGI Chairman took him to B Foster Bakery, Intravenous Infusion limited, Maagrace Garment Industries Limited and Joycelyn Fit Fashion and Decor all in the New Juaben North and South Municipalities.



These companies have played a critical role by supporting various stakeholders in the Eastern Region since the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic.



Mr Gadzanku urged businesses to enforce all the safety measures and protocols to help protect their workers from contracting the coronavirus.



He assured them of AGIs support and indicated that the national leadership of the Association was working with government to address some of the key challenges they were facing.



He urged businesses in the region to support the fight against the spread of the pandemic, saying that the earlier it was eradicated the better for business activities to resume.



At the B Foster Bakery, Mr Felix Berbiye, Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the company stressed the importance of workers to practice all the safety measures to ensure that they were safe and avoid contracting the virus.



At the Maagrace Garments, one of the local companies producing the Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for the government, the Human Resource Manager of the company, Mr Reuben Kataku informed the delegation of their commitment to implementing all the safety directives in the course of their work.



Mr Patrick Ansah Antwi, General Manager of Intravenous Infusion limited, expressed his companys gratitude to the AGI for the visit and said they were prepared to continue observing all the safety measures and protocols.

Source: GNA









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Riad Ismat, who was well-known across the Arab word for his plays, books and critics, has died in the US at the age of 73 of coronavirus reports Al-Watan.

On Wednesday, the great writer, critic and playwright Riad Ismat, former minister of culture, died of coronavirus in Chicago. He was 73 years old.

Ismat was born in 1947 in Damascus, where he attended school and obtained a degree in English literature in 1968. His relationship with the theater began in 1967 while he was still a student, when he saw an English-language production of the Shakespeare play Much Ado About Nothing directed by the late Rafiq Sabban.

Afterwards, Ismat was active in the theater, publishing criticism and directing works for students of the Martyr Bassel al-Assad Institute, including Antigone by Sophocles. He also trained amateur actors for the Youth Organization and the Workers Union, presenting most of his theatrical texts in Syria and other Arab states including Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan and the occupied city of Jerusalem. Among those plays were A Game of Love and Revolution, That Which Does Not Arrive and Abla and Antar.

In 1982, Ismat received a diploma in theatrical directing from Cardiff University in Wales, then another doctorate in 1988 in the US. He wrote 33 books, including the plays The Banana Republic and Searching for Zeinobia, as well as the criticism books The Devil of the Theater, The Tragic Hero on the World Stage and Sound and Echo: A Study of the Modern Syrian Story. He also wrote screenplays and scripts for television series, including Halaku and Crown of Thorns.

Throughout his career, Ismat held a number of positions including Dean of the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts, assistant to the Minister of Culture, General Director of Radio and Television, an ambassador and finally as Minister of Culture in 2010.

After his beginnings with theater in 1967, he began publishing theatrical criticism. In 1972, he directed a student production of Sophocles Antigone at the Martyr Bassel al-Assad Institute, then Shakespeares Hamlet in 1973.

He presented most of his plays in Syria and other Arab countries, including Lebanon, Iraq, Tunisia, Libya and Sudan, especially A Game of Love and Revolution, which was first directed by Hussein al-Idlabi for the Damascus National Theater in 1975 and later performed at the Carthage Festival in Tunisia.

Ismat published 33 books of plays, stories and criticism. His most famous plays are A Game of Love and Revolution, Mourning Becomes Antigone, Sindbad, Nights of Shahryar, Abla and Antar, The Banana Republic and Matahari.

His most famous books of criticism are: Spotlight, The Devil of the Theater, The Tragic Hero on the World Stage, Sound and Echo: A Study of the Modern Syrian Story, Naguib Mahfouz: Beyond Realism, The Arab Theater: Dream or Knowledge and Memories of the Cinema.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
A more recent publication of this set of statistics is available. Latest publication: Index of turnover in industry 2021, November

Published: 15 May 2020

Turnover in industry decreased by 5.1 per cent in March

According to Statistics Finland, working day adjusted turnover in industry (TOL BCD) decreased in March by 5.1 per cent year-on-year. Of the main industries, turnover declined most in the forest industry, by 16.8 per cent from one year earlier. Seasonally adjusted turnover in industry (TOL BCD) grew by 0.4 per cent compared with February.

Annual change in working day adjusted turnover in manufacturing (BCD), % (TOL 2008)

After the forest industry, turnover decreased most in the chemical industry, where it was 14.8 per cent lower than one year earlier. Within the chemical industry, the turnover of the industries developed in different ways. As a result of the corona epidemic, turnover grew in the pharmaceutical industry, while the fall in the price of oil had a decreasing effect on the turnover of the entire chemical industry. In the index of turnover in industry, data are collected on the enterprise level, so data are not available on the product level. The turnover of the textile, clothing and leather industry decreased by 11.5 per cent and that of electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply by 8.5 per cent. Turnover grew in three main industries, most in the food industry, where it was 2.8 per cent higher than in March twelve months earlier.

Annual change in working day adjusted turnover in manufacturing by industry, March 2020, % (TOL 2008)

Industrial actions affected the export turnover and domestic turnover of the forest industry in February

Export turnover adjusted for working days decreased in February most in the forest industry, by 26.6 per cent from one year ago. In the chemical industry, export turnover declined by 2.3 per cent. In contrast, export turnover grew most in the food industry, where it was 24.0 per cent up on February of the year before. In mining and quarrying, export turnover grew by 11.1 per cent and in the textile, clothing and leather industry by 10.8 per cent from the previous year. Export turnover was also growing in the metal industry as well as in the electrical and electronics industry.

Annual change in working day adjusted export turnover and domestic turnover in manufacturing by industry, February 2020, % (TOL 2008)

Domestic turnover in the forest industry decreased by 29.4 per cent from one year back. Domestic turnover decreased by 10.5 per cent in mining and quarrying and by 7.2 per cent in the chemical industry. Domestic turnover grew in February most in the metal industry, by 5.0 per cent, and in the electrical and electronics industry, by 4.7 per cent from one year back.

Trend series of turnover, export turnover and domestic turnover in manufacturing (BC), January 2007 to February-March 2020, % (TOL 2008)

The index of turnover in industry describes enterprises whose main industry is manufacturing. The calculation of the indices is based on the Tax Administrations self-assessed tax data which are supplemented with data obtained with Statistics Finlands sales inquiry. The monthly turnovers of manufacturing enterprises can vary considerably, especially in the metal industries. The variation is mainly due to invoicing practices. The final invoice for major machinery deliveries and projects may be recorded in the sales of one month, even if the delivery had required the work of several months or years.

The factors caused by the variation in the number of weekdays are taken into account in adjustment for working days. This means taking into consideration the lengths of months, different weekdays and holidays. In addition, seasonal variation is eliminated from seasonally adjusted series, on account of which it makes sense to compare observations of two successive months as well.

In terms of turnover, data for the latest month are preliminary and are released at a delay of around six weeks. The data may become significantly revised particularly on more detailed industry levels in coming months. Export turnover and domestic turnover are, for the time being, still released at a delay of two and a half months.

Source: Index of turnover in industry 2020, March, Statistics Finland

Inquiries: Maija Sappinen 029 551 3348, Heli Suonio 029 551 2481, myynti.teollisuus@stat.fi

Director in charge: Mari Yla-Jarkko

Publication in pdf-format (342.4 kB)

Updated 15.5.2020

Referencing instructions: Official Statistics of Finland (OSF): Index of turnover in industry [e-publication].

ISSN=1798-596X. March 2020. Helsinki: Statistics Finland [referred: 20.1.2022].

Access method: http://www.stat.fi/til/tlv/2020/03/tlv_2020_03_2020-05-15_tie_001_en.html
DGAP-News: AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA / Key word(s): Disposal



The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

AURELIUS subsidiary Office Depot Europe announces divestment of its Nordics business Munich/Venlo, May 14, 2020 - Office Depot Europe, a portfolio company of AURELIUS Equity Opportunities SE & Co. KGaA (ISIN: DE000A0JK2A8) completed the divestment of Office Depot Nordics to CEO Frank Egholm in a family-office backed Management Buy-Out transaction. The business, also servicing other Nordic markets as well as its core business in Sweden, is set to benefit from further growth due to its strong market position and solid financing. A successful transformation lays the foundation for the MBO

Office Depot Europe's decision to divest its business in Sweden and the wider Nordics region comes after a successful transformation of the business since its acquisition by AURELIUS in January 2017. Since then, Office Depot's Nordics business has expanded its product and service offerings, its retail channel has been integrated into a multi-channel approach, and the business has continued to foster its position among the top 3 leading players in its core market, Sweden.



The goal is to become a market leader

Frank Egholm and the management team are excited to take on the next chapter in Office Depot Nordic's growth and have great plans for the future, involving the continued digitalisation, product innovation and increased focus on servicing customers across all channels. Entering a MBO transaction is a firm testament of the parties' confidence in the strength and profitability of the business. "I'm truly excited to have this opportunity because Office Depot Nordic is a fantastic company. We have come a long way the past few years, but there is still a great potential for evolving the business further. This change will fuel our ambitions of becoming an even more successful player in the Swedish market, and this deal marks an important milestone for us all in achieving that goal. We already have a great team in place to take us there. Our employees are our best asset and we as a management team are ready for the challenge. I'm very pleased to be a part of Office Depot Nordics' future, says Frank Egholm". Divestment of Nordics division follows the earlier divestment of the CEE division

Office Depot Europe exited its CEE (Central Eastern European) business in November 2019. The transaction also followed a very successful transformation, positioning Office Depot CEE as the local market leader with a wide array of B2B products and services. The exit of Office Depot's Nordics division follows the same strategic rationale, freeing resources to allow Office Depot Europe to focus on its stronghold European ecommerce centric business activities. About Office Depot Nordics

Office Depot Nordics has its nucleus in Sweden. Together with the involvement of partners, it is also servicing customers in Norway, Denmark and Finland. With its 450 employees it is one of Sweden's largest office suppliers covering the Nordics. Office Depot Nordics provide business supplies and services to help their customers work better and become more productive and efficient at work - regardless of their workplace. They are a single source supplier of the latest technology, core office supplies, print, and document services, business services, facilities products, furniture, and school essentials.





Contact:

AURELIUS Group

Anke Banaschewski

Investor Relations & Corporate Communications

Phone: +49 (89) 544799-0

Fax: +49 (89) 544799-55

E-Mail: investor@aureliusinvest.de

14.05.2020 Dissemination of a Corporate News, transmitted by DGAP - a service of EQS Group AG.

The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.



The DGAP Distribution Services include Regulatory Announcements, Financial/Corporate News and Press Releases.

Archive at www.dgap.de


Makeup artist Jay Manuel is opening up about his relationship with Tyra Banks since stepping away from the hit competition show, Americas Next Top Model in 2012.

In a recent interview with Variety, Manuel detailed some of his more "uncomfortable" experiences during his 18 seasons working as the creative director on the show, and how he hasn't maintained a close relationship with Banks, who served as host and executive producer.

"Over the past few years, we've emailed," Manuel, 47, said of staying in touch with Banks. "To be very honest, we really have no relationship to speak of, which is really sad."

Manuel revealed that the last time he saw the television personality was at BeautyCon in 2017 when the two coincidentally ran into one another.

RELATED: Tyra Banks Reveals She Gained 25 Lbs. Since Posing for Her 2019 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Cover

While the two haven't kept in touch, Manuel told the outlet that he looks back on his time with Banks, 46, on ANTM as a special experience.

"Our time together on ANTM was amazingly productive and, at times, magical," he explained. "We got to experience being part of a global phenomenon."

UNIVERSAL CITY, CA - DECEMBER 09: Model Tyra Banks attends the Q&A for NBC's " The New Celebrity Apprentice" at the NBC Universal Lot on December 9, 2016 in Universal City, California. (Photo by Amanda Edwards/WireImage)

Manuel is currently working on a book inspired by his time on ANTM entitled "The Wig, The Bitch & The Meltdown," set to be released on Aug. 3.

While the novel takes a satirical look at the reality show  referred to in the book as Model Muse hosted by supermodel Keisha Kash  Manuel admitted that he did not consult Banks or others from the series for their input.

RELATED: Tyra Banks' ModelLand Theme Park Delays Opening Due to Coronavirus Pandemic

Manuel also addressed recent criticism of Banks who has come under fire as ANTM clips resurfaced and were slammed for being insensitive and problematic. Recalling a challenge from Cycle 4 which asked contestants to "swap races," Manuel said that made him feel "so, so, so uncomfortable."

Story continues

"I was the creative director, but it was not my idea. That swapped race was a layer added in. It was supposed to be a different concept," he told Variety.

"I do think it's a little unfair for people to persecute Tyra now, especially because she has already taken heat for her past executive decisions in past years," Manuel said. "However, I can't really defend her either because when ratings were high and things were great, she remained a clear figurehead, because it was her show."

He continued, "Consistently, when st hit the fan and people wanted to talk about some of the things that were said on the show, we would have another singular EP come forward to claim that all creative decisions were made as the team, and I really wish that were the case, but that just simply is not true."

Been seeing the posts about the insensitivity of some past ANTM moments and I agree with you. Looking back, those were some really off choices. Appreciate your honest feedback and am sending so much love and virtual hugs.   Tyra Banks (@tyrabanks) May 9, 2020

Banks later responded to the backlash on Twitter, agreeing that some of ANTM's past moments were "really off choices."

"Appreciate your honest feedback and am sending so much love and virtual hugs," she wrote in a tweet earlier this month.
Abdul Qadeer Khan tells top court he is being kept prisoner by Pakistani agencies and not allowed to plead his case.

Abdul Qadeer Khan, who made international headlines in 2004 after publicly confessing his role in global nuclear proliferation, has petitioned Pakistans top court to say he is being kept prisoner by government agencies and not allowed to plead his case for freedom of movement.

Khan, widely described as the architect of the nuclear weapons programme in Pakistan that tested its first atomic bomb in 1998 to rival that of neighbouring India, was sacked from his official position after his confession, but granted clemency by then-President Pervez Musharraf.

He has since lived a heavily guarded and mostly secluded life in an upscale Islamabad neighbourhood. Authorities say he is under guard for security reasons.

I had been kept as a prisoner having no free movement or meeting with anybody, Khan said in a handwritten note submitted to the Supreme Court on Thursday.

The 84-year-old is said to have helped supply designs, hardware and materials to make enriched uranium for atomic bombs to Iran, Libya and North Korea.

A global nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, had said Khan was an important part of the nuclear black market and had help from people in many different countries.

In a televised statement in 2004 after meeting Musharraf, who was also the chief of Pakistans powerful army, Khan stressed he acted independently and the government had not authorised his activities.

Western diplomats have long doubted whether he could have acted alone. Talking to The Guardian newspaper in 2008, Khan had said the confession was handed into my hand.

Physical harm

Khan filed a petition last year saying that, despite earlier court orders allowing him freedom of movement under agreed terms, he was still kept under restraint and in fear of physical harm.

On Thursday, he sent a note to the judges hearing his case saying he was to appear before them the day before, but agents of the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) did not take him to the courtroom despite bringing him into the court building.

The SPD is headed by the Pakistani military and responsible for handling the countrys secretive nuclear weapons programme.

The government of Pakistan, which has been made respondent in the case, did not reply to Reuters news agencys requests for comment.

The court has directed the government to respond to Khans petition.

We havent received notice yet but it will come, Pakistans Attorney General Khalid Jawed Khan told Reuters through a text message, adding the court has to decide if it will accept the petition for regular hearing.

Khan also said in his note to the Supreme Court that he was being forced to withdraw his petition to that court and take it to a lower court.
As Manitoba post-secondary schools plan for e-learning for the foreseeable future, the future of hands-on programs and practicums remains uncertain.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

As Manitoba post-secondary schools plan for e-learning for the foreseeable future, the future of hands-on programs and practicums remains uncertain.

Students say in-person instruction in studies ranging from plumbing to health care is irreplaceable, making them question whether their courses will remain intact come fall  and even if they do, if theyll still want to enroll.

Earlier this week, the University of Manitoba announced its 2020 fall semester will take place online. The term will be extended into early 2021 so students can engage in a period of in-person activities in January, should it be required for their courses.

The University of Winnipeg, Red River College, and Manitoba Institute of Trades and Technology are also gearing up for indefinite e-learning. The University of Saint Boniface and Brandon University have yet to announce fall plans.

"There are a lot of courses that have on-hands training, like in carpentry and woodworking technology, students have to be on campus and build something," said Yash Patel, president of the Red River College Students Association.

"Students want to know: will all programs be offered?"

RRC spokesman Conor Lloyd said Thursday the schools plans are "as firm as they can be during a pandemic," and alternative delivery planning is underway.

Theres a possibility Red River might be able to offer some hands-on learning, he said, but it will depend on public health advice and different programs.

While instructors are getting creative by uploading lecture slides and hosting video lessons, practicums, an integral part of many programs, have also been suspended, owing to COVID-19 restrictions.

Harleen Kaur was finishing up her first year in the early-childhood education program when the daycare she was scheduled to do her practicum at closed its doors.

"Were all so frustrated staying at home that we just want to go back to our normal lives. COVID-19 has destructed our lives. I just want to go back to school, have my practicum I just want it to be normal soon," said Kaur, 19.

She ended the winter term with pre-recorded lessons from instructors; Kaur said she prefers in-person classes so she can engage directly with peers and instructors.

As for the practicum experience, Kaur said its invaluable: she can work with young children, learn from mentors and being an international student from India, learn how Canadian daycares operate.

On the now-virtual MITT campus, instructors are already engaging students in typically hands-on lessons via online meeting platform Zoom. In the culinary arts program, students are learning knife skills via one-on-one sessions with chefs and making three-course meals at home.

David Noorden, whos helping lead the colleges online transition, said instructors are getting creative, but he recognizes there are limitations. No decisions have been made about whether any MITT programs will have to be suspended in the fall.

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"The classroom is a really important place for students; the classroom is the great equalizer," said Brenden Gali, chairman for the Canadian Federation of Students  Manitoba. Without it, reliable internet and home distractions may complicate learning for students, said Gali, who studies English at U of W.

At the same time, administrators say students likely wont see tuition fees change because e-learning comes at a cost. The province is also reducing operating grants, citing the need for the public sector to find savings to support the front-line fight against COVID-19.

Meanwhile, the prospect of an online semester has left students such as Gali wondering if theyll take a break from school in September. English courses can take place online, he said, but peer work and intimate discussions arent the same.

"Everythings more clinical on a digital platform," Gali said. "There's a formality to the screen."

maggie.macintosh@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @macintoshmaggie
Ho Chi Minh City authorities are holding a major competition with the view of looking for innovation projects that effectively utilize artificial intelligence (AI) in the fields of manufacturing, business, and life.

On Thursday, the municipal Department of Science and Technology announced the launch of Ho Chi Minh City Artificial Intelligence 2020 (HAI 2020), which had been delayed for two months because of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

The contest, which seeks to encourage the development of AI technology and human resources in the southern metropolis, is organized by the science department in collaboration with the municipal Department of Information and Communications, Vietnam National University  Ho Chi Minh City, and the National Agency for Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Development (NATEC).

According to Nguyen Viet Dung, director of the municipal Department of Science and Technology, the competition is open to all individuals, teams, companies, and institutions with projects that apply AI systems in various fields including manufacturing, business, transportation, finance, health, education, and agriculture.

The total prize pool is VND550 million (US$23,600), including three grand prizes of VND100 million ($4,300) each and five consolation prizes worth VND50 million ($2,150) each.

On top of that, contestants also have a chance to take part in three months of training activities, mentorship and incubator programs valued at up to VND200 million ($8,600).

Finalists also have the opportunity to present their ideas to top investors to obtain follow-up funding. In my opinion, [these opportunities] are what individuals and start-ups badly need. They get to work with experts and other parts of the startup ecosystem to make their products or business models more perfect, Dung said at the press conference announcing the competition on Thursday.

They would meet with investors from all parts of the country, he added.

Registrations are open until the end of July 31, 2020.

The final round and prize-giving ceremony are scheduled to be held at the 2020 Ho Chi Minh City Innovation, Startup and Entrepreneurship Week (WHISE 2020) in November 2020.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
The New Patriotic Party (NPP) has refuted claims by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that it is colluding with the Electoral Commission (EC) to rig the December 7 Elections.



The Party said the President Akufo-Addo-led Government had shown better leadership than the NDC Presidential Candidate, Mr John Dramani Mahama, and based on that the electorate would renew the mandate of the Government in the December polls.



Addressing a news conference to respond to the NDC allegations in Accra on Thursday, Mr Peter Mac-Manu, the NPP Campaign Manager for the December 2020 Elections, said the Party did not need the EC to rig the polls in its favour, but would campaign to win based on its sound track record.



He recounted some achievements of the ruling government including the Free Senior High School that had enrolled 1.3 million children, employment of 100,000 graduates and the support offered to the ordinary Ghanaian during the COVID-19 pandemic.



These include supply of free water and subsidy on electricity as well as the restoration of industry and the economy.



"So we do not need the EC to rig the elections in our favour. NPP will win the election based on our sound track record," he said.



Mr Mac-Manu noted that all the excuses the NDC was making against the compilation of a new voter's register was premised on the fact that it could not wrest power from the ruling NPP Government based on performance.



He said even though the NPP would support the EC to compile a new voter's register and election management system if the election management body wished to do so, the Party would still contest and win the December polls with or without a new voter's register.



"This is because the Ghanaian electorate have confidence in the ruling NPP government since President Akufo-Addo had shown leadership and sought the welfare of the ordinary Ghanaian over the period of his tenure," Mr Mac-Manu stated.



He recalled that since 1996 the EC had compiled a new voter's register every eight years (that is 1996, 2004 and 2012) with the idea of improving the features of the electoral register to ensure the sanctity of the elections.



He, therefore, posed these questions to the NDC: Why is it that the NDC is against the compilation of a new voter's register that promises enhanced features? What is it about the 2012 Register that the NDC holds it so sacred? What is it that the NDC holds so sacred that if the register is replaced, it will affect the party's electoral fortunes?



Mr Mac-Manu said the NPP was not afraid to face the Ghanaian electorate in the December polls because the Akufo-Addo-led government had distinguished itself over the period and it was evident for everyone to see and make comparison with that of the NDC.

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.

Featured Video
They confirmed their blossoming romance back in February.

And Victoria's Secret model Georgia Fowler is still very much in the honeymoon phase of her relationship with boyfriend Nathan Dalah.

The Kiwi stunner shared her first Instagram picture of her Poke bowl businessman beau on Friday.

Love in lockdown! Model Georgia Fowler shares first picture of her cuddling up to her Poke bowl businessman boyfriend Nathan Dalah

In the loved-up snap, Nathan is seen with his head rested on Georgia's chest as he held her torso.

She also caressed his head, ruffling his dark locks as the pair soaked up the afternoon sun.

The 27-year-old showed off her phenomenal figure in a yellow crop top and matching trousers.

It's love'; Georgia only confirmed her relationship with Nathan in February when the couple attended Paris Fashion Week together that month

He's a lucky man! Nathan is the co-founder of salad chain Fishbowl, and has been self-isolating with the model in Sydney

Nathan is the co-founder of salad chain Fishbowl, and has been self-isolating with the model in Sydney.

Georgia is likely staying in her sister Kate's $7.5million home in Dover Heights.

Last year, it was reported by The Daily Telegraph that Justin Hemmes had purchased the property for Kate Fowler - which is a 10-minute drive from his Vaucluse mansion.

The heritage-listed harbour front home has previously been estimated to be worth 'more than $60 million'.

Stunning: Georgia rose to fame after starring in the Victoria's Secret Fashion Show from 2016-2018

Speaking to Stellar Magazine this month, Georgia said her boyfriend Nathan and sister Kate had been tasked with taking her photos for Instagram.

'I know how different angles can look... and making sure you're facing the light. I have to give them (Nathan and Kate) a bit of guidance. They haven't failed me yet,' she said, appearing to confirm they were isolating together.

Georgia only confirmed her relationship with Nathan in February when the couple attended Paris Fashion Week together that month.
US Navy destroyer 'sails through Taiwan Strait'

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 10:15 AM

The US Navy says one of its guided-missile destroyers has sailed through the strategic Taiwan Strait, a provocative move likely to anger China.

In a statement posted on its Facebook page on Thursday, the US Pacific Fleet said that USS McCampbell (DDG 85) had "transited the Taiwan Strait on Wednesday," showing images of the "forward-deployed US 7th Fleet guided-missile destroyer" on the way.

Taiwan's defense ministry also said in a statement that the American military vessel had sailed south on what it described as an "ordinary mission," adding that it was continuing in that direction.

There was no immediate comment from China, but it is expected to object.

Taipei views such US military measures as a sign of support amid its tensions with China.

Beijing has sovereignty over self-ruled Taiwan, and under the "One China" policy, almost all world countries recognize that sovereignty.

The US, too, recognizes Chinese sovereignty over the island but has long courted Taipei in an attempt to counter Beijing. Taiwan is one of a number of sticking points in the US-China relationship.

The administration of US President Donald Trump in particular has been cozying up to Taiwan amid tensions with Beijing over trade and other issues, including recent tensions over the COVID-19 pandemic.

Washington has no formal diplomatic relations with Taipei by law, but remains the island's largest weapons supplier and an international backer of Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen. According to the Pentagon, Washington has sold Taiwan more than 15 billion dollars in weaponry since 2010.

The latest move by the US Navy came just a week before Tsai's inauguration for a second and final term as president of the self-ruled island.

Washington and Beijing have boosted their military activities near Taiwan in the past few months, with the US sailing regularly through the sensitive Taiwan Strait, and China conducting air force drills in the vicinity of the island.

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Linkedin Elsa S. Hestriana (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:20 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84f2bd 3 Lifestyle physical-distancing,privacy,social-media,personal-space,Instagram,data-privacy,tech-companies Free

We have been physically distancing and working from home for two months now. But physical distance doesnt always grant us privacy when our personal space is no longer physical. This leads us to rethink how we value privacy and personal space  both in the digital and physical world  as we become more dependent on the internet than ever, and how their meanings have shifted.

Our private lives might not be so private when it is an open book to the tech giants, and their grip on our data only becomes firmer as our activity within their platforms increases. But apart from collecting more data, the technology they offer has also shaped our collective behavior toward privacy and personal space.

The true cost of convenience

From video-conferencing tools, instant messengers, app-based delivery services to interactive games platforms, internet-based services have provided us with even more convenience while we stay at home. However, while they appear to be free, these conveniences cost us our privacy.

Google Hangouts has become one of our first resorts for work meetings, and the surging intensity of its use only adds to what Google already knew about us. As a gentle reminder, Google doesnt only know the basic facts about you. They also know what youre thinking, your deepest fear and perhaps even your darkest secret. We type the exact keywords were thinking. We dont lie to our search engines, and they remember everything.

Were also witnessing increasing activities on social platforms like WhatsApp and Instagram, both owned by Facebook, whose transparency and accountability in securing its users data privacy have long been in question. Last month, Business Insider reported that Instagram Live usage jumped 70 percent between March-April in the United States alone.

To give you the picture of how much of ones data a platform can obtain, in 2011, Austrian law student Max Schrems demanded Facebook give him all the data it had about him. After two years of court battle, Facebook sent him a CD containing a 1,200-page PDF. The file included not only the list of friends he could see and the posts he published, but also the pages hed ever clicked on, all the advertising hed ever viewed and even sensitive messages he had deleted.

Quoting the American security technologist Bruce Schneier, Surveillance is the business model of the internet for two primary reasons: people like free and people like convenient. The truth is, though, that people arent given much of a choice. Its either surveillance or nothing, and the surveillance is conveniently invisible so you dont have to think about it.

Personal space is no longer physical

The convenience we obtain from these surveillance businesses has also shaped our collective behavior and approach toward privacy and personal space.

In a podcast with Voxs Ezra Klein last year, American author Dave Eggers said that weve grown accustomed to these tools that allow us to know what other people are up to, accepted it as a lifestyle and even assumed our right to know. Whether its getting email receipts, whether its parents surveilling their kids, even at college. Whether its spouses surveilling each other through their smartphones; all the spying people do on each other. People [are] surreptitiously taking photos of each other because its so easy now, and you always have a high-level camera in your hands. I think that we dont necessarily realize how quickly weve evolved and how quickly we have superseded our idea of our right to privacy by our right to know, said Eggers.

He further argued, There's a marketplace for this, and I think we've just become so comfortable with every level of surveillance.

The marketplace here is a market or demand created by the surveillance industry. These surveillance technologies have not only torn down the privacy wall around us, but theyve also shaped our behavior as well as our idea of privacy and how we value it.

Even before we were obliged to work from home, we often tolerated the acts of personal space intrusion. Sending late-night work emails or texts that could wait until the next morning is one of the smallest examples. Many of us probably dont think much about this. With the current technology, we are used to the swift movement of information and everything is just a text away.

For many people, this work-from-home period just further erodes their privacy and personal time  more work calls during unreasonable hours and the increasing demand from your colleagues for quicker responses. Some employers even go as far as obligating their employees to install employee-surveillance software that allows the superiors to monitor their staff while working from home.

Some companies would argue that they want to ensure their workers productivity, especially in a challenging economic situation like the moment. However, when we start taking privacy invasion lightly and act as if its absolutely normal, then we need to rethink how we value privacy and personal space, both of our own and of others. What seems to be happening right now is that as we stop expecting privacy for ourselves, we stop expecting it for others.

Invading others privacy is not normal. We are not entitled to someone elses personal space.

This pandemic has undoubtedly made us rethink many aspects of our lives, and privacy should be one of them. The discussion on our privacy in cyberspace has been around for a while now. But the behavioral changes that have occurred during this pandemic have urged us to take the discussion of privacy beyond our relationship with the tech giants. We must also reevaluate how we, as social beings, tolerate surveillance and accept privacy invasion as an everyday lifestyle, and how our expectations and values of privacy change, both in cyberspace and the real world.

Our personal space can no longer be defined as a physical bubble, even before this pandemic. If we cannot tolerate unwanted guests in our house, why should it be acceptable in the digital space? (wng)

***

Elsa is a communication professional and an International Relations graduate from the University of Indonesia with keen interests in data privacy and cybersecurity.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
ATHENS, Greece, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- TOP Ships Inc. (the Company) (TOPS) announced today that it has entered into a placement agency agreement with Maxim Group LLC relating to the sale of the Companys common shares (the Placement Agency Agreement). Pursuant to the Placement Agency Agreement, the Company entered into a securities purchase agreement with certain institutional investors in connection with a registered direct offering of an aggregate of 59,400,000 common shares at a public offering price of $0.135 per share (the Registered Offering). The aggregate gross proceeds of the Registered Offering is $8.0 million. The Registered Offering is expected to close on or about May 18, 2020, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions.



Maxim Group LLC is the sole placement agent in connection with the offering.

The common shares are being offered pursuant to a shelf registration statement on Form F-3 (File No. 333-234281) previously filed and declared effective by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). A prospectus supplement relating to the offering will be filed by the Company with the SEC. When filed, copies of the prospectus supplement, together with the accompanying base prospectus, can be obtained at the SEC's website at http://www.sec.gov or from the offices of Maxim Group LLC, 405 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10174, Attn: Prospectus Department, or by telephone at (212) 895-3745.

This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such jurisdiction. Any offers of securities will be made only by means of a prospectus supplement and accompanying base prospectus.

About TOP Ships Inc.

TOP Ships Inc. (TOPS) is an international owner and operator of modern, fuel efficient ECO tanker vessels currently focusing on the transportation of crude oil and petroleum products.

Story continues

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

Matters discussed in this press release may constitute forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 provides safe harbor protections for forward-looking statements in order to encourage companies to provide prospective information about their business. Forward-looking statements include statements concerning plans, objectives, goals, strategies, future events or performance, and underlying assumptions and other statements, which are other than statements of historical facts.

The Company desires to take advantage of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 and is including this cautionary statement in connection with this safe harbor legislation. The words believe, anticipate, intends, estimate, forecast, project, plan, potential, may, should, expect pending and similar expressions identify forward-looking statements. The forward-looking statements in this press release are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including without limitation, our management's examination of historical operating trends, data contained in our records and other data available from third parties. Although we believe that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because these assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond our control, we cannot assure you that we will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or projections.

For further information please contact:

Alexandros Tsirikos

Chief Financial Officer

TOP Ships Inc.

Tel: +30 210 812 8107

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The southwest monsoon is likely to hit Kerala on June 5, a delay of four days as compared to its normal onset date, the India Meteorological Department said on Friday. The onset of monsoon over Kerala marks the commencement of the four-month long rainfall season from June to September. According to the normal onset date, monsoon makes an arrival in Kerala on June 1. The onset of southwest monsoon over Kerala this year is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to normal date of onset. The monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on June 5 with a model error of plus or minus 4 days, the IMD said. The monsoon is likely to arrive over the Andaman and Nicobar islands by May 16, six days before its new onset date of May 22 due to a cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal. Even last year, the monsoon had reached the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago on May 18, two days ahead of its then normal onset date of May 20. But due to its sluggish pace, it reached Kerala on June 8. It covered the entire country by July 19.

According to the IMD forecast, monsoon is likely to be normal this year. The country receives 75 per cent of its rainfall from the southwest monsoon during June to September. It is not only crucial for farming in the country, but also for replenishing reservoirs, and more importantly to the economy which is still largely dependent on agriculture. Northeast monsoon is another phenomenon that brings rainfall to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, parts of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh from October to December. From this year, the IMD has also revised the dates of onset and withdrawal dates of the monsoon for several parts of the country based on the data from 1960 to 2019. The previous dates were based on the data from 1901 to 1940. However, the onset date for monsoon over Kerala, which is June 1, remains unchanged In states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, monsoon will be delayed by 3-7 days compared to the existing normal dates.

For the national capital, the new normal onset date for monsoon has been revised from June 23 to June 27 -- a delay of four days. Similarly, dates have been revised for Mumbai and Kolkata from June 10 to 11, and for Chennai from June 1 to 4. However, over extreme northwest India, the monsoon will arrive a little earlier, on July 8, as compared to the existing date of July 15. The new date for monsoon withdrawal from south India is October 15.
Accra, Ghana (PANA) - A regional humanitarian response hub in Ghana, set up by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to facilitate COVID-19 response efforts, is now fully operational with the first flights taking off on 14 May
KENT COUNTY, MI -- Kent County recorded its second-largest single-day tally for new COVID-19 cases on Thursday, but health officials say its no cause for alarm.

Kent County Health Director Adam London said hes focusing on averages over a three-day period that offer a better glimpse into where the countys COVID-19 cases are headed.

Kent County had 181 new cases on Thursday, May 14, second only to the single-day high of 205 cases on April 28.

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Our three-day running average still remains somewhat flat, he said in a daily video posted to the health departments Facebook page.

As of Thursday, Kent County has 2,627 cases of COVID-19 and 48 deaths.

Health leaders say 1,065 people have recovered -- meaning they are still alive 30 days after onset of COVID-19 symptoms.

Related: Michigan coronavirus cases spike, officials cite testing backlog

London said he believes Thursdays spike in new cases is partly due to a backlog of cases being reported by laboratories, as well as some large testing events that happened recently in Kent County.

The county is still trying to ramp up daily testing.

Kent Countys new cases had been showing a slight downward trend until Thursday. The weekly average for new cases from May 7-13 was 61.4, compared to 88.7 new cases from the week prior.

Local hospital data shows that the number of inpatients has remained stable during the past 10 days.

At Spectrum Health facilities in Michigan, the hospital system had 107 inpatients on May 5 with symptoms or confirmed cases. As of Thursday, that number was 109 inpatients.

At Mercy Health St. Marys hospital, the hospital had 29 inpatients on May 5 and also had 29 patients Thursday.

At Metro Health Hospital, there were six inpatients on May 5, compared to nine on Thursday.

Kent Countys data shows that 86 percent of the COVID-19 cases are in the urban area of greater Grand Rapids. A zip code map of case loads shows the highest number of cases generally in the densest population sectors, including southeast and central Grand Rapids.

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Coles workers have launched a class action that claims the supermarket giant allegedly underpaid staff over $150 million - more than six times the amount the company announced to the stock exchange earlier this year.

Coles revealed in February it had underpaid about 600 salaried staff $20 million over the past six years. It said five per cent of the company's liquor division salaried managers were also underpaid, flagging $3 million in provisions for backpayment and an additional $1 million in interest and costs.

A fresh class action against Coles claims the company has underpaid workers as much as $200 million. Credit:AAP

Employment law firm Adero Law on Friday filed a class action in the Federal Court covering more than 5000 former and current Coles workers. It estimates the Coles underpayment claim will be more than $150 million and could be as high as $200 million.

Adero is funding the litigation itself, but said it reserved its right to review the need for contributions from third-party funders if Coles did not admit liability for the underpayments and the case was not resolved in favour of Coles employees within 12 months.
WASHINGTON  In a final act before stepping down as chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., has asked the Trump administration to quickly declassify the last portion of the Senate Intelligence Committee's bipartisan report on Russian election interference, a 1,000-page volume on the committee's "counterintelligence findings."

In a joint announcement with ranking Democrat Mark Warner of Virginia, Burr noted that President Donald Trump's nominee to be director of national intelligence, Rep. John Ratcliffe R-Tex., "affirmed his commitment as DNI to an expeditious review of the committee's report" during his May 5 confirmation hearing. Ratcliffe is expected to be confirmed.

Burr has agreed to step down as intelligence chairman while the FBI investigates whether he sold stock based on inside information about coronavirus. In Friday's statement, he and Warner thanked committee staff for having "greatly added to our understanding of and response to foreign threats to our democratic process."

Image: John Ratclifffe, Richard Burr, Mark Warner (Andrew Harnik / Pool via AP file)

Although the Senate committee did not find evidence of a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia  something NBC News first reported in February 2019  this volume is the first bipartisan examination of the 2016 Trump campaign's repeated and oft-criticized interaction with Russians, some of whom were offering help in defeating Democrat Hillary Clinton.

A detailed re-examination of that saga in the thick of the 2020 election campaign could be embarrassing for Trump and his Republican allies.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation found numerous contacts among Trump aides and Russians, but no conspiracy.

"Although the investigation established that the Russian government perceived it would benefit from a Trump presidency and worked to secure that outcome, and that the Campaign expected it would benefit electorally from information stolen and released through Russian efforts, the investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities," Mueller's team wrote.

Story continues

The executive branch gets to decide what is and isn't classified, and some Democrats immediately expressed skepticism that the Senate volume report would be made public before November.

But Burr and Warner appear to have hedged their bets. In the statement, they said they prepared what they have deemed to be an unclassified version of the report, which, in theory, they could release on the Senate floor whether or not the DNI agrees.

Under the Constitution's Speech and Debate Clause, lawmakers may not be prosecuted for things they say as part of the legislative process. In 1971, an Alaska senator entered 4,000 pages of the classified Pentagon Papers into the Congressional record.

The committee has released four out of a total of five volumes in its comprehensive report on Russia's 2016 election interference. Previous volumes examined U.S. election security, Russia's use of social media, the Obama administration's response to Russian interference, and the January 2017 Intelligence Committee Assessment.

The latter volume, released last month, validated the intelligence assessment describing Russia interference in the 2016 presidential election  including Russian efforts to help Donald Trump  as accurate, thorough, and untainted by political bias.

It debunked a conspiracy theory being pushed by Trump allies that the Obama administration distorted intelligence to embarrass Trump.
In a city where the majority of residents are renters, city officials arent waiting around for help.

City leaders in Newark created a $1 million Emergency Housing Assistance Fund to provide low-income residents up to $1,000 each to help pay rent or utilities. Its a one-time assistance program unless the city can get more funds from the federal government, Newark Department of Economic and Housing Development Director Allison Ladd said.

"Were really hoping to not only help Newark residents thrive, but first survive during COVID-19, Ladd told NJ Advance Media on Wednesday.

Applications for city residents will be available starting May 18 on the citys website.

The rental assistance is being paid for with federal H.O.M.E. grants and possibly some dollars from the citys housing trust fund, which developers pay into in lieu of having low-income housing in their projects. The $1 million will not take away from other programs since the city received additional funds from the federal Housing and Urban Development Department when the coronavirus first reached New Jersey, Ladd said.

Newark Mayor Ras Baraka also signed an executive order that creates a moratorium on rent increases for the citys nearly 30,000 rent-controlled units. The executive order is in addition to another one the mayor signed in March that temporarily banned evictions.

We are a city of renters with only 22 percent of us owning our own homes, Baraka said. The COVID-19 crisis has left many tenants struggling to pay rent and some unable to pay anything. The actions today supplement our moratorium on evictions and will help tenants keep their homes.

The mayors freeze on rent increases covers additional dwellings that were not included in the portfolio of the New Jersey Housing Mortgage and Finance Agency, which voted in April to suspended rent increases for 36,000 of its rental units.

Not all dwellings in Newark are rent-controlled and the executive order does not apply to Section 8 units. For example, public housing and owner-occupied properties that have up to four units are exempt from the citys rent control ordinance. Some newly constructed or rehabilitated properties can be exempt too.

The executive order also prevents any increase in rent covered by Newarks rental control ordinance for parking, pets, the use of furniture, subletting or security. Landlords cannot increase damage and cleaning deposits either.

The moratorium is also retroactive to April 1. It will remain in effect two months after the state of emergency declaration in the city ends.

The city also created a $6 million fund in March to assist the homeless, artists and small businesses impacted by COVID-19. Those funds were reallocated federal grants and Newark officials have said it will not impact the citys ailing budget, which the mayor has warned will likely suffer revenue shortfalls.

Newark, meanwhile, is still focused on keeping development moving.

The City Council on May 6 approved 18 new developments, including a massive 1,000-unit project on the corner of Orange and Nesbit streets known as Peddlers Square. The city sold the property for $7.45 million and will work in good faith to consider the approval of a tax abatement of up to 30 years at a later date, according to the financial agreement.
WASHINGTON - A burgeoning insider trading investigation scrutinizing members of the U.S. Senate led the chairman of its Intelligence Committee, Sen. Richard Burr, to step down abruptly Thursday after FBI agents seized his cellphone seeking evidence related to stock sales he made before the coronavirus pandemic crashed global markets.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a statement that Burr, a North Carolina Republican, informed him Thursday morning of his decision to step aside as committee chairman "during the pendency of the investigation." The two agreed, McConnell added, "that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee" and was to take effect Friday.

Also Thursday, aides to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., acknowledged that she had been questioned by FBI agents about stock sales, which she has said were done by her husband and without her knowledge.

FBI agents, acting with approval from the "highest levels" of the Justice Department, served a search warrant for Burr's cellphone to his lawyer, and then went to Burr's Washington-area home to take possession of the device, according to people familiar with the matter, who, like others spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

Investigators also obtained a search warrant to examine data in the senator's cloud storage for his iPhone, people familiar with the case said. The Burr search warrants were first reported by the Los Angeles Times on Wednesday.

Burr's decision to surrender his role as chairman acknowledges the awkward, ethically fraught dynamic that would have existed if he had continued to lead a committee with oversight responsibilities for an agency conducting a criminal investigation of his conduct, and comes as he has fallen out of favor with President Donald Trump and his allies over his handling of the committee's sweeping, years-long investigation into Russia's interference in the 2016 U.S. election.

Trump took aim at Burr a year ago, when the intelligence committee issued a subpoena to compel testimony from the president's son, Donald Trump Jr. The move proved deeply frustrating for the president's defenders as they sought to dismiss the bipartisan investigation as a politically motivated hit job. Burr also drew the disapproval of many Trump supporters over his cooperative, collegial relationship with Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the committee's ranking Democrat. Trump has retweeted others' criticism of Burr as recently as Monday.

Burr's departure as Intelligence Committee chairman also has implications for the delicate balance of power between the government's executive and legislative branches, suggesting that an investigation alone may be enough to remove a senior lawmaker from a key post. In the case of Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., he did not step down from a ranking committee position until he after he was indicted on corruption charges in 2015 - a case that eventually fell apart.

A person familiar with the investigation of Burr and other senators said investigators are examining the timing of his trades and any communications concerning stock sales that he may have had with his brother and others. This person cautioned, however, that there are significant legal hurdles to bringing charges in such cases, particularly the Constitution's "speech or debate" clause which covers many of the activities of members of Congress.

"It's a very difficult case, that's going to have significant challenges," this person said, noting that the inquiries are complicated by the timing of certain trades, and who actually ordered them. "The most compelling case is against Burr, and the others appear to be very weak cases," the person said.

Melanie Sloan, senior adviser to American Oversight, a government watchdog group, said the known pieces of the case "suggest that Burr was involved in insider trading. That said, the speech or debate clause makes it extremely unlikely that the Department of Justice will ever be able to bring a case against the senator."

Sloan added that the debate surrounding Attorney General William Barr's handling of politically sensitive cases in recent months will only fuel doubts about the Justice Department's motives in Burr's case.

"The lack of public confidence in the Department of Justice leaves everybody wondering why they are doing what they are doing and if there is some other motive," she said.

Burr has denied wrongdoing and asked for the Senate Ethics Committee to review his financial dealings. Speaking briefly to reporters Thursday, he said he has been cooperating with federal investigators "from the beginning," and urged everyone "to let this investigation play out."

He said he stepped aside as chairman because the insider trading investigation "is a distraction to the hard work of the committee, and the members and I think that the security of the country is too important to have a distraction."

Tom Mentzer, a spokesman for Feinstein, said Thursday that she was "asked some basic questions by law enforcement about her husband's stock transactions." The spokesman said Feinstein "was happy to voluntarily answer those questions to set the record straight and provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband's transactions. There have been no follow up actions on this issue." She was questioned in April, aides said.

Disclosure records show Feinstein and her husband sold between $1.5 million to $6 million worth of stock between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18.

Two other lawmakers have faced public scrutiny over their stock moves before the pandemic - Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., and Sen. James Inhofe, R-Okla., Loeffler has denied playing an active role in the sales for which she faces scrutiny and called the outcry over the transactions a "political attack." Previously, Loeffler's aides had said she had not been contacted by law enforcement about her stock trades. On Thursday, a spokeswoman for the senator said she had not been served with a search warrant.

Inhofe's office did not respond to requests for comment.

The shake-up will force McConnell to reconfigure the Intelligence Committee's Republican side. Aides to the majority leader declined to comment Thursday afternoon when asked whom he might install as chairman. Burr is expected to remain on the committee even though he will not be chairman.

If McConnell chooses to go by seniority, Sen. James Risch, R-Idaho, would be next in line to chair the committee, but he already leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. After Risch is Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., a national security hawk who had been widely expected to take over the committee once Burr retires. But Rubio currently leads the Senate Small Business Committee, a once-sleepy panel now suddenly relevant with a small-business lending program at the center of a $2 trillion coronavirus pandemic rescue package passed by Congress last month.

Both Risch and Rubio declined to comment at the Capitol, as did their offices.

Another Republican, Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., defended Burr and said he believed the lawmaker's explanation that his trades were based on media reports he saw at that time on the business news channel CNBC.

"I don't believe he did anything criminally wrong, maybe used poor judgment, I guess, but I know Richard and he's the one guy I can tell you who actually does watch CNBC Hong Kong," said Graham. "The bottom line is, let's just see how this turns out. I've got nothing but good things to say about Richard Burr."

An FBI spokeswoman declined to comment, "in keeping with our standard practice of neither confirming nor denying the existence of our investigations."

The Justice Department has been investigating stock trades Burr made since March. The inquiry followed a review of public disclosures, first reported by the Center for Responsive Politics and ProPublica, that showed Burr and his wife sold 33 stocks worth between $628,033 and $1.72 million - including many in sectors hard-hit by the pandemic, such as the hotel, restaurant and shipping industries. Burr reportedly received daily coronavirus briefings in the weeks leading up to the February sell-off. His brother-in-law also sold off significant shares in February, ProPublica reported last week.

In early February, Burr co-wrote a Fox News op-ed in which he reassured Americans "the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats, like the coronavirus." On Feb. 13, he sold his stocks.

From late February through mid-March, the stock market posted steep declines as the coronavirus reached the United States and states began implementing stay-at-home orders that hampered or shut down large segments of the American economy.

Members of Congress were barred in 2012 from using information not available to the wider public. Burr was one of just three senators who voted against the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (Stock) Act, which extended insider-trading regulations to U.S. senators and representatives. At the time, he called the legislation "ludicrous."

No one has been charged under the Stock Act, and legal experts say it would be difficult to do so given court rulings in a prior investigation involving health-care stocks.

- - -

The Washington Post's Matt Zapotosky and Paul Kane contributed to this report.
Forbes fifth annual Small Giants List spotlights small companies that choose greatness over growth, including Edoc Service, Inc. "Edoc Service's culture is built upon living out its values and purpose in the most honest and vulnerable way. We couldn't describe a Small Giant better than that," said Hamsa Daher, Executive Director, Small Giants Community.

Edoc Service, Inc., a virtual company offering tools and services for greater productivity and collaboration, has been named to the Forbes Small Giants list, a list that celebrates Americas best privately owned and closely held U.S. companies.

The 2020 Forbes Small Giants best small companies in America list includes 25 companies that share a commitment to greatness over fast growth. Its a group of values-driven companies focused on serving their customers, employees, and communities.

Small Giants are companies led by purpose-driven entrepreneurs who intentionally choose greatness over growth, and its a group of leaders who prioritize their people. Making this list is a major milestone and our team is humbled and honored by this recognition, said Edoc Service founder and President/CEO Jim Mullaney.

This years list includes a national fitness bootcamp, a chain of Mexican bakeries, and a vineyard with 100-year-old roots in Chiles Casablanca Valley, among other notable, purpose-driven and people-centric companies.

Inspired by the best-selling book Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big by Bo Burlingham, the Small Giants Community was created to connect purpose-driven business leaders and teach the practices that make great, sustainable businesses. The companies may be small (company revenues range from $1.6 million to $91 million on this years list), but the companies foster extensive, lasting relationships with stakeholders and within their communities, according to Hamsa Daher, Executive Director of the Small Giants Community.

"What stood out about Edoc Service was that Jim Mullaney and the Edoc team created a high-trust, virtual working environment way before it was trendy, said Daher. Edoc Service's culture is built upon living out its values and purpose in the most honest and vulnerable way. We couldn't describe a Small Giant better than that."

As a totally remote company, Edoc Service was founded in 1997 when Mullaney set out to build a company where people could work at home, have a career and have a life.

Some 23 years later, Edoc Service still cares for employees in the totality of their lives. Trust and respect are still core to the culture at Edoc Service, where workers are empowered to set their own hours and act autonomously on behalf of the company.

To that end, the company practices financial transparency with open books and it also offers unlimited vacation to employees.

With a servant leadership approach, we empower employees to think and act like owners, said Mullaney.

To learn more about Forbes 2020 list of Small Giants, visit http://www.Forbes.com.

To learn more about Edoc Service and the virtual tools and services it offersincluding eSign by Edoc and transcription servicesvisit http://www.edocservice.com or call (513) 829-7101. To learn more about the Small Giants Community in Cincinnati, Ohio visit http://www.ebcincy.com.

To learn more about Small Giants and its yearly Summit, visit https://smallgiants.org/.

About Edoc Service, Inc.

As a totally remote company, Edoc Service, Inc. is passionate about transforming how business is done in America. Based in Farfield, Ohio, Edoc Services largest divisions are Scriptus (transcription); eSign by Edoc (digital signature platform); Onboard (digital new-hire paperwork); and Digital Labor Law (digital workforce posters). To learn more about Edoc Services tools for greater productivity and collaboration, visit http://www.edocservice.com.
Stock Market Latest Updates: Benchmark indices erase losses, Sensex, Nifty close marginally lower; auto, bank stocks decline

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"Technically, Nifty has fallen with a down-gap and closed near its intraday low. The trend continues to be down. On upmoves it could face resistance at 9236, while 9044 could offer support to the Nifty on down moves," said Jasani.

"Indian benchmark indices wiped out all the previous session gains with Nifty ending below 9150 level on May 14 due to unenthusiastic response to the relief package announcements made on Wednesday and amid weak global cues. Nifty closed down 240.80 points or 2.57% at 9142.75. Capital Goods and Media stocks were up while IT, Metals, Financials, and Telecom shares were down.

"In the second round of stimulus announcements made yesterday, the focus has been more on providing concessional credit and liquidity support rather than direct fiscal transfer (except for interest subvention and free food). The measures are welcome (although proliferation of schemes could have been avoided) and this could relieve the feared pressure on the fiscal situation but may not result in direct and immediate boost to demand. Hence the economic revival could take some time.

"Asian stocks were mildly up on Friday amid investor optimism about the re-opening of the U.S. economy from coronavirus lockdowns and possibly more stimulus that could fuel a recovery. In April, Chinas industrial output grew by 3.9 per cent, retail sales fell by 7.5 per cent and fixed asset investment fell by 10.3 per cent, suggesting an uneven recovery.

"Crude-oil prices rose on news of production cuts and stronger demand forecasts, with West Texas Intermediate Crude for June delivery up $2.27, or 9%, to end at $27.56 a barrel. The price of an ounce of June gold rose $24.50, 1.4%, to settle at $1,740.90 an ounce.

"The Dow staged the biggest turnaround in about two months on Thursday, as investors overlooked data that showed 2.98 million Americans lost jobs last week, bringing the total unemployed to about 36.5 million since COVID-19 pandemic began. A rebound in large financial stocks helped to turn stocks around in afternoon action, as investor skittishness abated with signs of recovering demand as some U.S. states reopen their economies.

Deepak Jasani, Head Of Research, HDFC Securities, said "The markets could open flat as bounce in global markets offset local disappointment. Indian markets could open flat today following a sharp rebound in US markets on Wednesday and Asian markets that are mildly up this morning.

The National Bureau of Statistics said Chinas economy was recovering but still faced many challenges as the coronavirus spread globally.

However, it continues to face major challenges in recovery as the pandemic has now swept the globe, affecting other major economies and trading partners.

After months of lockdowns, China is slowly reopening its economy as the coronavirus outbreak on the mainland has come under control.

That was faster than the 1.5 percent increase forecast in a Reuters poll on analysts and followed a 1.1 percent fall in March.

Chinas industrial output rose 3.9 percent in April from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, expanding for the first time this year as the worlds second-largest economy slowly emerged from its coronavirus lockdown.

Prices have been lifted by more signs that oil output is falling among OPEC and other major producers, a grouping known as OPEC+. But the market mood remains cautious, with the coronavirus pandemic far from over and new clusters emerging in countries where lockdowns have been eased.

Giving up earlier gains, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) oil was down 13 cents, or 0.5 percent, at $27.43 a barrel, having jumped 9 percent in the previous session. WTI is still heading for a third weekly gain, up more than 10 percent.

Brent crude was up 1 cent at $31.13 a barrel by 0115 GMT, after rising nearly 7 percent on Thursday. The global benchmark is roughly flat on the week after rising for the previous two weeks.

Oil prices were mixed on Friday after big gains a day earlier when the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicted crude stockpiles would start to shrink in second-half 2020 after surging while the coronavirus pandemic slashed fuel demand.

"The Nifty ended the previous session deep in the red extending its weakness as the day progressed after a Gap-down opening. Further, bulls need to protect the immediate support of 9100 following a flat opening. A sustained trade above 9100 could trigger short covering rallies taking the Index higher to its 20-DMA placed at 9255 and then 9300. However, failure to do so and a trade below 9100 could lead to extended selling pressure dragging the Index lower to levels of 9000 being the lower end of the range. Overall our markets continue to oscillate in trading band between 9000-9450," Agarwala said..

Aditya Agarwala, Senior Technical Analyst, YES Securities, said, "It will be a flat start to the Fridays session for the Indian markets as suggested by the SGX Nifty which is currently trading marginally higher by 30 points. The Asian markets are mostly trading in the red with mind cuts between 0.10%-0.30%, barring the TAIWAN market which is trading mildly higher. Overnight the US markets recovered smartly towards the end of the session to shut shop in the green. Currently, Dow Jones Futures is trading with minor losses of 0.20%.

Surendra Hiranandani, Chairman and Managing Director, House of Hiranandani, said, "Housing has always been a critical component of any economy. Governments efforts to trigger pace and activity in the sector through a Rs 70,000-crore stimulus package is commendable. Extension of the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme will encourage more demand and aid in clearing unsold inventory. The announcement to build rental housing complexes via public-private partnership will stimulate demand for raw materials, generate employment and thus provide a thrust to affordable housing . Overall todays announcement will certainly alleviate stress to a certain extent from the sector. The sector is hopeful for a liquidity push which has been a prime concern for the sector," Hiranandani said.

Siddhartha Mohanty, MD & CEO of LIC Housing Finance, said "The extension of PMAY CLSS for the MIG segment of borrowers in the income range Rs.6 to Rs.18 lacs is significant move. Government has been relentlessly focusing on promoting affordable housing in its mission of "Housing for All" by 2022. For HFCs, loans coming under the ambit of PMAY CLSS has been a major growth driver during the last two years. With an envisaged investment of Rs.70,000 cr, we can expect a major fillip to this segment. The positive effects will also accrue to the allied sectors like steel, cement etc besides generating employment opportunities.

Rajeev Singh, Director General, Indian Chamber of Commerce, said, "A package of Rs 2.30 lakh crore was extended to farmers through Kisan Credit Cards and NABARD along with Interest Subvention on Crop Loans till May 31. A special credit scheme is being launched for street vendors only which would benefit 50 lakh of them . A special interest subvention of 2% has been extended to borrowers under Mudra Shishu Category (<= Rs 50,000) after the ending of the moratorium period. The successive measures of Quantitative Easing in the last two days, would help to maintain aggregate demand and supply at present levels and maintain the economic equilibrium, which is deeply appreciated by the Indian Chamber of Commerce.

Sushil Mohta, Chairman, Merlin Group and President, Credai West Bengal, said, "Affordable rental housing scheme announced today is interesting, if proper business model is developed with support by Govt it can bring lot of cleanness in our cities and create a new asset class. We need to study the scheme in details and suggest the government to make it workable. Affordable Rental housing for white / blue collar is a great idea, as currently they stay in slums or Chawls in inhuman conditions. In many countries like Dubai etc, this scheme is applicable, but to deal with individual and collect rent will be very difficult unless one can rent out to corporates or suitable amendments are brought in currant rent laws. Govt should exempt this housing from land ceiling and give exemptions/ concession on income tax , municipal taxes in gst and banks should be asked to lend liberally at concessional rate

"The FM has announced that this document-free free ration will benefit approximately 8 crore people. During the announcement of measures during the COVID-19 times, when it comes to claimed beneficiaries numbers often easily run into crores! What are the sources of these data, especially when we do not have any scientific basis save the 2011 Census to even guesstimate migrant population save by extrapolations which will be based on some linear growth assumptions. Even assuming that the government has credible database, does not this statistic reveal that 8 crore people have been rendered without a ration card and they must have been deprived of the rights of foodgrains promised under the first relief measure by the FM on 26 March? Could the government not have realised that such a huge measure of population that too vulnerable lot have been left out?," he asked.

Prof K.R Shyam Sundar, XLRI, said, "The Finance Minister's second trance of relief measures have sought to address issues concerning generally the urban poor and more specifically the migrant workers and the street vendors. The biggest take-away and the only credible relief measure amongst the host of announcements made today is that migrant workers even without the ration card can avail 5 kg of rice or wheat and 5kg chana per family.

Commenting on the results, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, said Q4FY20 witnessed a muted growth of six per cent with revenues at Rs 1,644 crore due to operational challenges including one-time COVID-19 related impact on the companys biologics business.

The Bengaluru-headquartered biopharmaceuticals company said Q4FY20 revenue was up six per cent at Rs 1,644 crore. FY20 revenue grew 15 per cent at Rs 6,529 crore, while net profit (before exceptional item) rose four per cent to Rs 760 crore, according to a company statement.

Biocon Ltd''s net profit declined 42 per cent to Rs 123 crore in the fourth quarter of 2019-20 compared to the same period in the previous fiscal following muted revenue growth due to COVID-19 related impact on its biologics business, the company said.

"The Government of India is committed towards generating employment opportunities while ensuring that people across the nation get access to necessities such as food and shelter. Housing for All has been a major focus of the Government and the affordable rental accommodation scheme for migrant workers and urban poor will go a long way in ensuring the same. Moreover, this availability of organised housing facilities will lead to decongestion of urban spaces by reducing unauthorized occupancy & encroachment and thus, facilitate better town planning" he said.

Ramesh Nair, CEO and Country Head (India), JLL, said, "The second set of special economic measures were announced as a part of PM Modis Self-Reliant India movement. These measures focused on resolving the problems of migrant workers, street vendors and farmers.

"Incentivizing the state government agencies and converting government funding houses into affordable rental housing complexes will build trust and give a reason for migrants to stay back adding a feather to completion of Housing For All 2022. This stimulus package as a whole will act in a positive note if urgent implementation and planning is followed impacting relevant beneficiary for all businesses.

"The extension of the Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) with the infusion of Rs 70,000 crore that will assist in boosting the housing sector and middle income group will act as an added benefit. CLSS scheme will bring in cash flows for the Real Estate sector, thereby saving the affordable housing segment. This in a larger perspective will cater to the demand side of the economy as expected unlike yesterday which catered to the supply side.

Ashok Mohanani, Chairman, EKTA World & President-Elect NAREDCO, Maharashtra, said, "The recent announcement of the Finance Minister where the Centre would be accommodating Rs 11,000 crores to the states that will help set up basic necessities like food, water and shelter will give a temporary relief to the migrant workers. This measure will stop 60 to 65 percent of reverse migration which in turn will revive the construction activities and the economy.

Supreet Deshpande, CEO, said" NLP21 shows promising ability of acting on COVID-19 through multiple relevant targets. This enables NLP21 not only to prevent virus binding to the human cells and reduce the viral load but also clears damaged human cells to allow regeneration of healthier cells all of which are essential to address COVID-19 infection effectively, he said.

In a comparable viral assay study conducted by reputed laboratories in South Korea and United States, NLP21 has shown better viral inhibition ability than Remdesivir, Fevipiravir, Hydroxychloroquine, Lopinavir/Ritonavir etc. All these drugs at some point or the other have been considered as probable treatments for COVID-19 but their clinical outcome is as yet inconclusive, the company said.

NovaLead Pharma, Pune-based firm, has announced that it has received in principal clinical trial permission with DCG(I) for its Repurposed Drug discovery to treat moderate COVID-19. This approved drug codenamed NLP21 is in human use for several years for its original use without any side effects of concern, it said in a statement.

"I am quite proud of our decision to have Mumbai as one of the first destinations for increasing our long-haul services. It reflects the robust demand for flights to and from India, even in these unprecedented times," said George Ettiyil, Senior Director Sales, South Asia at Lufthansa Group.

In an official statement, the airlines said that is expecting to operate to over 130 destinations world over. The services in India will be restored to Mumbai from Frankfurt subject to regulatory approvals.

Airline group Lufthansa on Thursday said it plans to restart services to India, which is currently under hiatus due to coronavirus-induced lockdown, by June this year.

We look forward towards the facilitation directed towards increment of demand that will be possible the reduction of tax on consumption and cutting down on GST rates,said Mr. Sanjay Kumar, CEO & MD, Elior India.

"The first two sets of announcement on the stimulus package focused rightly on the capital formation amongst the industries ensuring the commodity supply for consumption in the economy. What is now important to hear from the government, what comes as the fifth pillar in the Bharat  Demand. Without the demand stimulus, the scaling of consumption will not happen; translating into demand-supply disequilibrium.

"Having said that, the basic premise to address the demand issue lies in the conundrum of the agriculture economy. Farmers are expected to reduce their credit risk and as their income is hit, they are likely to reduce land acreage for vegetable crops. This will lead to consumers paying a higher price for the essential food. However, with uncertainty in job market, the middle income group is likely to make conservative spends higher leading to crash in prices materialising into volatility in prices.

Sanjay Kumar, CEO & MD, Elior India, said, "The extension on the interest subvention till 31 May, 2020, sanctioning loans with low interest rates to the marginal farmers, refinancing worth 29,500 crore to the rural state, district and regional cooperative banks and the moratorium provided by the RBI will further strengthen the farmers in standing firm during this economic typhoon.

"Again the focus has been more on providing concessional credit and liquidity support rather than direct fiscal transfer (except for interest subvention and free food). The measures are welcome from human suffering alleviation perspective (although proliferation of schemes could have been avoided) and the modus operandi could relieve the feared pressure on the fiscal situation. However this may not result in direct and immediate boost to demand and hence the economic revival could take some time," Relli said.

Dhiraj Relli, MD & CEO, HDFC Securities, said, "The second round of the stimulus announcements expectedly deals with ways to alleviate the hardships caused to the farmers, migrant workers and street vendors due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown restrictions. A special drive to provide concessional credit to PM-Kisan beneficiaries, extension of interest subvention schemes for farmers at concessional rates, liquidity support for farmers and rural economy, extension of credit linked subsidy scheme for affordable housing for middle income groups are some intended ways to provide relief to these categories.

The 62-year-old Brazilian career diplomat's second four-year term was not scheduled to end until September 2021.

"At a virtual meeting of all WTO members on 14 May, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo announced that he would step down on 31 August, cutting his second term short by exactly one year," WTO said in a statement.

The World Trade Organisation (WTO) chief Roberto Azevedo on Thursday resigned unexpectedly, amidst the coronavirus pandemic that has affected the world economy, and trade at an unprecedented level.

Anshuman Magazine, Chairman & CEO - India, South East Asia, Middle East & Africa, said, "Following the announcement made by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, the industry welcomes the measures announced today by the Government. The announcement on rural infrastructure and affordable rental accommodations for urban and migrant workers under PPP partnership will open newer avenues for the construction industry. For middle-income group, the extension of Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) upto March 2021, is a positive step and will further strengthen demand in the affordable housing segment," Magazine said..

Rajesh Narain Gupta, Managing Partner, SNG & Partners, said, "This is one chance to showcase finest reforms to push India bound investments and therefore labour reforms need to be progressive in line with international experience. In zeal to protect labour it should not so happen that there are more bureaucratic hurdles. Business being the golden goose need to be kept alive and a fine balancing is required to ensure that the entrepreneurship is encouraged," he said.

"Announcing the scheme on providing affordable rented houses to migrant labour under the PMAY scheme will provide long term stability to them and may help in reinstating their faith in the current crisis. The Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) under which middle income group could avail reduced EMI under the PMAY scheme was applicable till March 2020. With interest rates already reduced, extending the CLSS scheme till March 2021 may provide the necessary boost in reviving demand for affordable housing," he said.

Sharad Mittal, CEO, Motilal Oswal Real Estate Fund, said, One of the biggest challenges faced by the real estate sector in reviving activity pertained to migrant labour. FMs announcement of providing free food grains to 8 crore migrant workers over the next two months and soon making their PDS cards portable across states will provide an incentive to the migrant works to return to the sites more quickly.

Each hospital will be armed with critical care capabilities, minor operation theatres, basic pathology and radiology, facilities for dialysis and blood storage and telemedicine units, the company said in a statement.

In Maharashtra, the hospitals are at Sangli (50 beds) and Buldhana (106 beds), and in Uttar Pradesh at Gautam Buddha Nagar (168 beds) and Gonda (106 beds). The treatment centres in Uttar Pradesh are in collaboration with a partner organisation. The decision to upgrade existing infrastructure was to bring speed and make use, wherever possible, of existing capabilities and services. The Trusts are attempting to hand over the facilities by June 15, 2020.

The Trusts intervention follows the Chairman Ratan N. Tatas statement that urgent emergency resources need to be deployed to cope with the needs of fighting the Covid-19 crisis, which is one of the toughest challenges the human race will face.

Tata Trusts is upgrading four government hospital buildings, two in Uttar Pradesh and two in Maharashtra, into Covid-19 treatment centres. The facilities, including both in-patient and out-patient wings, are permanent and will enduringly enhance health care in their locations, even after the immediate purpose is met.

M&M, Hero MotoCorp, Maruti and Axis Bank were the major losers in the Sensex pack.

Sensex dipped 245.33 points or 0.79 percent to 30,877.56 while the Nifty was down 62.35 points or 0.68 percent at 9,080.40 at around 10 am.

"Announcing the scheme on providing affordable rented houses to migrant labour under the PMAY scheme will provide long term stability to them and may help in reinstating their faith in the current crisis. The Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) under which middle income group could avail reduced EMI under the PMAY scheme was applicable till March 2020. With interest rates already reduced, extending the CLSS scheme till March 2021 may provide the necessary boost in reviving demand for affordable housing..

Sharda Mittul, CEO, Motilal Oswal Real Estate Fund, said, One of the biggest challenges faced by the real estate sector in reviving activity pertained to migrant labour. The FMs announcement of providing free food grains to 8 crore migrant workers over the next 2 months and soon making their PDS cards portable across states will provide an incentive to the migrant works to return to the sites more quickly.

Shishir Baijal, Chairman & Managing Director, Knight Frank India, said, "Thursdays announcement has reemphasized on governments agenda of promoting Affordable Housing and Housing for All. The extension of CLSS for another year will help demand for the affordable housing sector to inch back as and when the economy starts to revive. This in turn will help the construction sector to restart operations at the earliest possible. However, for demand for housing to return, irrespective of the category, the economy must start growing at a stable rate providing individuals financial security. Thus, to assess the overall impact on the real estate sector, we await Finance Ministers future announcements, including for infrastructure and other steps for demand augmentation.

The BTA secretary said that as per the government''s guidelines, a maximum two passengers would be allowed to board the metered taxis and that both would have to sit in the back seat.

He said that the association, in a meeting with senior West Bengal Transport department officials on Thursday, proposed the 30 per cent hike over meter readings at present rates.

The ubiquitous yellow taxis are likely to be back in the city's streets from Monday with a 30 percent hike in fares, Bengal Taxi Association (BTA) secretary Bimal Guha said in Kolkata on Friday.

In addition, parts-making companies began cranking this week to get components flowing, adding thousands more workers.

With it comes about 133,000 US workers pouring back into assembly plants that will open in the coming week, or just over half of the industry''s workforce before the pandemic, according to estimates by The Associated Press.

Until now, it was mostly hair salons, restaurants, tattoo parlors and other small businesses reopening in some parts of the country. But the auto industry is among the first major sectors of the economy to restart its engine.

Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the US job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus.

The meals are cooked in Akshaya Patra kitchens and the last mile distribution is done by the local authorities- govt and civic body teams. The cost per meal is Rs 20. The Alpha Urbane Project is a platform aims s to equip adolescents with the skills essential to tackle adversity and embrace opportunities that the 21st century has to offer. The students had an average goal of approx Rs 56,000 that would fund 2,800 meals. They had a collective goal of Rs 42.4 lakh which was to be achieved.

Around 75 students from schools and colleges across Mumbai started a crowdfunding campaign on Fueladream.com and have already raised Rs 46 lakh in just over 14-days to fund more than 2.34 lakh meals for daily wage labor, the poor, and migrant workers across Maharashtra. This is being done in partnership with the NGO - Akshaya Patra under the banner of the Alpha Urbane Project.

Indices extended the losses as Sensex dropped 286.09 points or 0.92 percent to 30,836.80 while the Nifty was down 73.10 points or 0.8 percent at 9,069.65 at around 11 am.

The response to the COVID-19 pandemic around the world has required governments around the world to introduce social distancing and lockdowns in unprecedented ways, said Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director in India in a webinar interaction with the media.

This takes the total commitment from the World Bank towards emergency COVID-19 response in India to $2 billion.

The World Bank on Friday approved $1 billion ''Accelerating Indias COVID-19 Social Protection Response Program'' to support the country''s efforts for providing social assistance to the poor and vulnerable households, severely impacted by the pandemic.

The GDP in south Asia will also be lower by 3.9-6.0 percent, mainly reflecting the tight restrictions in place in countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, ADB said in is updated assessment of the Potential Economic Impact of COVID-19.

"The global economy could suffer between $5.8 trillion and $8.8 trillion in losses - equivalent to 6.4 percent to 9.7 percent of the global GDP - as a result of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ADB said in a new report subsequent to its economic outlook released in early April.

Of this, the impact on south Asian gross domestic product (GDP) will be to the tune of $142-218 billion.

The global economy is expected to suffer $5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Friday.

Fynd has announced Fynd Platform, a solution built for SMEs and omnichannel brand partners to create and manage their own brand websites and mobile applications. The platform aims to remove the barriers that entrepreneurs face when building an online business and provides tools to connect with customers anywhere. The platform offers entrepreneurs the ability to completely control their website customizations, digital marketing strategies, and communication activities with an assurance of honest pricing.

Alim Khan, Senior Vice-President of Compulsive Businesses, PayU India, said There is a large segment of the population who are comfortable browsing online but are reluctant while making online payments, and several organisations which dont authorise their employees to initiate payments digitally. Through this solution, we have enabled merchants to reach out to customers and corporations who require semi-online solutions for payments.

PayU, online payment solutions provider, has introduced the EFT payment option, allowing merchants to offer a wider variety of payment options for their customers. Through EFT, PayU offers merchants an outreach to those customers who browse online, but lack access or are reluctant to engage in digital payments. This payment solution caters to organizations that require fast and seamless solutions for high-value transactions but are unwilling to transact online. The new offering from PayU will help merchants who would like to make inroads in Tier-2 and Tier-3 cities and towns, where customers preferred mode of payment transactions is through banks.

"Portability of welfare benefits for migrant workers and one Nation One Ration Card is expected to provide huge benefits to the weaker section of the population who will need to access the benefits given by the government from their current place of stay. Besides, the initiative to provide free food grain supplies to migrants for two months and making migrants who are neither covered under the National Food Security Act or State Card beneficiaries eligible to receive the benefit will support the poor section of the workforce. As per ILO estimates, working poverty rate percentage of employed were living below US$ 1.90 (PPP) per day India was 11% in 2019. These initiatives would especially support them." Singh said.

Arun Singh, Chief Economist, Dun and Bradstreet India said, "The 2nd phase of the stimulus measures targeted for the migrants and farmers is laudable. It has targeted the section of the population who has not only lost employment opportunities but faces a huge risk of finding new employment opportunities as business continue to work with lower workforce given subdued demand and fear of contagion impose limited reverse migration.

"For the migrant workers the availability of free food grains, concessional rental housing complexes, among other measures are expected to alleviate their stress by providing them some succour in the current challenging scenario. The measure to extend Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme (CLSS) for middle income group is expected to give a boost to the all-important housing sector which has significant multiplier impact on rest of the economy," Banerjee said..

Chandrajit Banerjee, Director General, CII, said, "The second tranche of stimulus package rightfully focussed on providing relief to poor including migrant workers, farmers, street vendors and members of tribal community which have borne the brunt of the lockdown necessitated due to COVID-19 outbreak. It is heartening to note that the immediate availability of Rs 30,000 crores of Emergency Working Capital Funds through NABARD for the small & marginal farmers is expected to meet post-harvest rabi and current kharif related work. In addition, the Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit boost to farmers through the Kisan Credit Cards will ensure that the ongoing agricultural operations are not interrupted due to lack of funds.

It had posted a net profit of Rs 277.39 crore during the corresponding period of the preceding fiscal.

The non-banking financial company on Thursday reported nearly 44 percent increase in net profit at Rs 398.20 crore for the quarter ended March 2020 on robust interest income.

On the BSE, the scrip advanced 7.23 percent to Rs 131.90. It jumped 7.19 percent to Rs 131.90 on the NSE.

Shares of Manappuram Finance on Friday jumped over 7 percent after the company reported nearly 44 percent increase in net profit for the quarter ended March 2020.

DK Srivastava, Chief Policy Advisor, EY India, said, Considering first and second stimulus tranches together, nearly 47% of the targeted Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package has now been covered. Todays package replicates the basic design of financing large stimulus magnitudes with minimal fiscal cost. Todays measures are a mix of short-term relief provisions and preparing for the new normal as reflected in the Affordable Rental Housing Scheme for migrant workers and urban poor. This second tranche focused on the poorer segments of the society including migrant labour, small and marginal farmers and urban poor. The emphasis is largely on the supply side of the economy. To invigorate the economy, more direct support to demand stimulation may now be needed.

M&M was the top loser in the Sensex pack dropping over 5 percent. Other losers included Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Finance, IndusInd Bank and Hero MotoCorp.

Sensex tumbled 301.18 points or 0.97 percent to 30,821.71 while the Nifty was down 78.00 points or 0.85 percent at 9,064.75 at around 11.55 am.

Rohit Poddar, Managing Director, Poddar Housing and Development Ltd. and Joint Secretary, NAREDCO Maharashtra, said "The government has rightly focused on ensuring an ecosystem to provide essential resources to migrant workers and daily wage earners, while the sector is eagerly waiting for a fiscal package for revival. Labour codes announced will enable better compliance along with a plethora of benefits for the workers. Rs. 70,000 cr boost to housing and MIG through extension of CLSS shall help in creating job opportunities leading to investment of Rs.70000 cr in housing. This shall also stimulate the demand for steel, cement, transport and other raw construction material. We look forward to the Affordable Rental Housing complexes for migrant workers and urban poor that shall help in addressing the housing problems for these workers."

Rajesh Narain Gupta, Managing Partner, SNG & Partners, said "This is one chance to showcase finest reforms to push India bound investments and therefore labour reforms need to be progressive in line with international experience. In zeal to protect labour it should not so happen that there are more bureaucratic hurdles. Business being the golden goose need to be kept alive and a fine balancing is required to ensure that the entrepreneurship is encouraged"

Wilfred Sigler, Director  Marketing & Sales, CRIF High Mark, a microfinance credit bureau said, "The slew of relief measures announced by the Finance minister is much -needed to cushion the bottom of the pyramid. This aid at the grassroot levels will ensure the health and safety of the workers and farmers who are most hit by the pandemic. The Rs 1500 crores interest subvention for the Mudra-Shishu Loans will be instrumental in helping small businesses bounce back and strengthen the microfinance segment. Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit for farmers, fishermen through Kisan Credit Cards is an additional measure to empower and boost rural economy. Collectively, these measures will instil more credit and confidence among the deserving Indian population."

Elaborating further the company said, "TAM (term ahead market) volumes increased 89 per cent year-on-year. The southern distribution utilities continued their preference for TAM contracts. On the price front, the day ahead market saw an overall decline in prices by 14 percent during Q4 FY20."

For the 2019-20 financial year, IEX recorded power sales volume of 53,862 MU, up from 52,189 MU in 2018-19.

The IEX had recorded electricity sales volume of 9,908 MU in the quarter ended 31 March 2019, IEX said in a statement on Friday.

Power sales volume jumped nearly 40 percent at Indian Energy Exchange (IEX) to 13,835 million units (MU) in the January-March period, following which its March quarter consolidated net profit witnessed a significant rise.

"Q4FY20 witnessed a muted growth of 6 percent with revenues at Rs 1,644 crore due to operational challenges including one-time COVID-19 related impact on our biologics business," Biocon Executive Chairperson Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw said.

Consolidated total income of the company rose up by 6 percent to Rs 1,644 crore as against Rs 1,557 crore for the same period year ago, it added.

The company had posted a net profit of Rs 214 crore for the corresponding period of the previous fiscal, Biocon said in a statement.

Biotechnology major Biocon has reported a 42 percent decline in its consolidated net profit to Rs 123 crore for the quarter ended March 2020, mainly on account of one-time coronavirus-related impact on its biologics business.

Faury once again warned that Airbus may not survive without change and insisted that radical, proactive and urgent steps were needed, according to people briefed on the presentation.

Chief Executive Guillaume Faury told Airbus bosses to face reality in a briefing on the crisis, which has left an estimated 14,000 aircraft or two thirds of the global airliner fleet idle and manufacturers and airlines battling to save cash.

Planemaker Airbus has told top staff that the company must be resized in plans to be set out by around end-June and is ready to cut jet production again to tackle any second wave of the coronavirus crisis, people briefed on the matter said.

Since 4 May, the begining of the third phase of the lockdown, employees of micro lenders have joined their offices in green zones, though collections and disbursements have not been started, he said.

"No state is disallowing opening of the MFI offices in green zones. The MFI portfolio is spread across the country and a substantial portion of that is in the green zones," Shrivastava told PTI.

Most employees of micro lenders have come back to their offices in green zones and have been able to establish contacts with their clients, either over phone or visiting them physically, Microfinance Institutions Network (MFIN) CEO Harsh Shrivastava said.

The micro-finance institutions (MFIs), which have been hit severely in the wake of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, are expecting that the repayments of loans given to the borrowers will actually start from June, an official of the industry body said on Friday.

Market recovered slightly in the afternoon session as Sensex was trading 214.29 points or 0.69 percent lower at 30,908.60 while the Nifty was down 54 points or 0.5 percent at 9,088.75 at around 1 pm.

European markets have opened with in the green with gains of 1 percent across all major markets which could bring some buoyancy in our markets as well, he said.

Banks, auto and media stocks continue to drag the Index lower while oil and energy stocks are active in trade on Friday.

"A sustained trade beyond 9,120 could trigger short covering rallies taking the Index to levels of 9,200-9,250. On the flip side, if bears maintain their selling pressure and push the Index below 9,040, then it can slide to lower to 8,970-8,900," said Agarwala.

Further, bulls have absorbed the initial selling pressure and have kept the Index above the lower end of the broad trading range i.e., 9,000, he said.

The Indian markets at half-time are trading with minor losses as headline index Nifty consolidates between 9,040-9,120, said Aditya Agarwala, Senior Technical Analyst, YES Securities.

GBS has also donated 25,000 face masks to Concern India, who in turn will be handing over these masks to the government hospitals and health workers.

It is also supporting NCBS for testing of 2,800 underprivileged people. With United Way, Bengaluru, GBS is funding 2,000 protective kits comprising of three-layer masks, disposable shoe covers, surgical gloves etc., and 2000 COVID-19 test kits that will be handed over to government hospitals.

GBS has extended its support to the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), a unit of Tata Institute of Fundamental Research (NCBS-TIFR) to develop local reagents, a solution that is used during the RNA testing to detect the virus.

Standard Chartered Global Business Services Pvt Ltd (GBS) has donated Rs 3.4 crore to support the fight against COVID-19 virus in India.

Anand Ramanathan, Partner, Deloitte India, said, "The government has addressed the needs of the marginalized sections such as small farmers, urban poor, tribals and migrant labour through the announcements today. The inclusion of the unorganized sector in the labour code will have implications for a large part of the informal economy across sectors. Overall, existing schemes such as a kisan credit, MNGREGA, MUDRA yojana, Food security and PDS have been used to positively impact over two thirds of the country's population from a food, health, livelihood and housing perspective.

Lohit Bhatia, President, Indian Staffing Federation said, "The second set of announcements by the Government seems to strengthen the cause of employee earnings (via proposal of national floor minimum wages), social security format for coverage of Gig and platform workers, as well as enhancing the coverage of ESIC to include all workers in a hazardous industry, besides extending to employers with less than 10 workers also as an option. Thursdays announcement read in line to Wednesday's focus on MSME sector with over 3.5 lakh cr of liquidity infusion coupled with turnover up to 100Cr treated as MSME will allow these 45 lac enterprises to grow further, employ more, and cover under social security schemes like ESIC providing healthcare benefits to nearly 12 cr workers and families. We wait to read the fine print and details of the said announcements which clearly show a movement towards Formalization will begin in the coming years"

Arun Nanda, Chairman, Mahindra Lifespaces Developers said, the company is poised for strong growth in a rapidly consolidating market. At Happinest, Subramanian has demonstrated his ability to imagine and engineer a new future for the sector, for the company and for our customers.

Arvind joined the company as chief executive officer of Mahindra Happinest, the affordable housing business, in September 2018.

He will succeed Sangeeta Prasad who resigned on 7 February this year. She had worked with the Mahindra group for over 11 years.

The board approved the decision in its meeting on Thursday.

Realty firm Mahindra Lifespace Developers on Friday said it has appointed Arvind Subramanian as Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of the company with effect from 1 July.

In his letter, sent on Thursday, Pawar sought the prime minister's "urgent intervention" to bail the industry out from the crisis now aggravated by the lockdown.

Pawar noted that Modi -- even before the lockdown came into force in March-end -- had taken some "important" policy initiatives like MSP, export of sugar, buffer stock and interest subvention on capex for ethanol production duly supported by financial measures, seeing the key industry was faced with a crisis.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar has written a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking bail out for the sugar industry from the crisis "aggravated exponentially" by the unprecedented lockdown imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

As part of this effort, the Vedanta team has helped develop a vegetable cultivation plan for the local farmers, whose source of income has been impacted adversely by COVID- 19.

In the fight against the global pandemic, the alumina refinery is looking at restoring and sustaining the livelihood of the local communities, he said in a statement.

The initiative aims to mitigate the effects of COVID- 19 on agriculture and allied activities in the area, the official said.

The Vedantas alumina refinery in Odishas Lanjigarh has provided seeds to the needy peasants in the area to help them develop a vegetable cultivation plan, a company official said.

GVK-MIAL managing Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj International Airport (CSMIA) has been recognized under the Best Airport Staff in India and Central Asia 2020 by Skytrax. The airport also ranked amongst the top 10 best airports worldwide under the 40-50 million passengers category.

In a letter to investors on Thursday, Franklin Templeton India President Sanjay Sapre said, Franklin Templeton is committed to ensuring an orderly and equitable exit for all investors at the earliest possible time and we have been working hard to expedite the process of returning your money.

The move comes days after markets regulator Sebi asked the fund house to focus on repaying investors at the earliest.

However, a negative outcome in the voting may delay the process to liquidate assets of the scheme and payment of money to investors, the fund house said.

After winding up its six debt schemes, Franklin Templeton Mutual Fund has now taken the first step towards returning investors'' money as it has started getting in touch with them with regard to voting process to get their consent.

Petitioner Shubham Kapaley tried to use his already existing VPA/ UPI ID for other transactions as well, however, the same issue of denial of interoperability persisted.

The petitioner approached the high court after Google Pay did not allow him to contribute to the PM CARES Fund, without making another VPA or UPI ID on its own app.

Justice Asha Menon, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, issued notices to the RBI, the Centre and Google India Digital Service Pvt Ltd and granted them three weeks to file their responses.

The Delhi High Court has sought response of the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) and the Centre on a plea seeking action and suspension of operations of the Google India Digital Service in UPI through its application ''Google Pay'' till it fully complies with interoperability.

Indices continued to recover as Sensex was trading 131.37 points or 0.42 percent lower at 30,991.52 while the Nifty was down 30.05 points or 0.33 percent at 9,112.70 at around 2 pm.

NBFC Financepeer Founder Rohit Gajbhiye said, "The major emphasis has been laid on improving the Liquidity which is the need of the hour. NBFCs have been reeling from quite some time and COVID19 pandemic added to the injury. The special liquidity scheme and the partial credit guarantee scheme 2.0 will provide much respite to the sector. This is a very well planned move given the fact that banks and other debt markets have low risk taking ability the govt has taken the onus on itself. This paves way for improving the credit flow in the system through a sustainable approach."

Ravi Saxena, MD, Wonderchef, said, "The first installment of 'Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan' comes as a much-needed booster for the MSME sector. Collateral free loans of 3 Lakh crore, and equity oriented Fund of Fund Rs 50,000 crore will give much needed liquidity to the companies in such a time of crisis. 20,000 cr worth of subordinate debt can prevent many companies from bankruptcy. By disallowing global tenders in government procurement up to Rs 200 crore the government has paved the way for MSME units to embark on a new journey of growth. Change in dedication of MSME is a small but very meaningful step in the right direction. Boosters to the real estate sector, NBFCs and DISCOMs are also very pragmatic in nature. Cash flow of companies has been helped with measures like support in TDS and EPF while practical considerations have been given to assessment and filing dates of returns," he said. .

Harish Sharma, Executive Director, REPL (Rudrabhishek Enterprises), said, "The first tranche came as breather amid corona crisis as the MSME sector received a big push. The announcements have been made with an aim to infuse liquidity and ease the functioning of the MSME. By tweaking the definition of MSMEs, the benefits will extend to a lot of units. Along with this, the collateral-free automatic loan for MSMEs worth Rs 3 lakh crore for four years coupling it with a no repayment of principal amount for the first 12 months will give a big relief to almost 45 lakh units. The 50,000 crore equity infusion through Fund of Fund will help the MSME units in leveraging it at daugter-fund levels and in expanding their size. By disallowing global tenders from the project worth Rs 200 crore, the government has eased out the competition for the MSMEs. This will give more opportunities to them and therefore, enormous growth can be expected in time to come."

"The situation is extremely dynamic and hence it would be challenging to provide a forecast for the year," said Shishir Baijal, Chairman and Managing Director of Knight Frank India.

In 2019, office rents in the National Capital Region of Delhi rose by four percent, driven by growth in co-working sector. Despite the record leasing activity last year, Knight Frank expects demand for grade A office space to soften.

Bengaluru's office market witnessed its highest gross take-up in a decade and the strong leasing momentum continued into Q1 20.

Given the present situation, the lockdown in India coupled with the challenges of a global recession is likely to dent prospects for the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) office market.

Office leasing activity across India's three tier-one cities -- Mumbai, Delhi and Bengaluru -- witnessed a drop due to the impact of COVID-19, according to the latest Knight Frank Asia Pacific market bulletin released on Friday.

Manu Gupta, Co-Founder, SEEDS (Sustainable Environment and Ecological Development Society), a not-for-profit organisation, said, "The finance minister's announcements regarding the relief measures for the migrant workers and street vendors is heartening, after having seen their plight and hearing their painful stories from across the country since the lockdown began. The wage hikes, easy credit facilities and food security measures that were announced will be a big support for their recovery. By the virtue of the informal nature of their professions and lives, civil society can aid the process of the benefits reaching the last mile through better targeting and community-based efforts. Concurrently, we can also deliver the necessary information to keep themselves safe while getting back to their usual lives.

"Free food grains to migrants for two months will ensure food security for over 8 crore people at this time, when livelihoods have been taken away from them. It will also ensure the cultivators from whom government procures food grains receive some returns, as they have struggling to market their produce and generate some income for their dependents"

Puneet Chopra, Partner, MSC (MicroSave Consulting) said, The announcement of One Nation One Ration Card is much needed. On the lines of a unique Aadhaar and digitization of various subsidies, it will allow a range of temporary migrants to avail PDS benefits".

March was the month in which the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe, with first Italy and then other countries imposing sweeping restrictions on public life and businesses.

The decline in the January-March period was the biggest since 2009.

The figures from the Federal Statistical Office offered a first glimpse of the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis to Europe's biggest economy, which the government is trying to limit with a raft of rescue programs.

The German economy shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday.

As many as 12 companies made 28 bids for 50 fields at the close of bidding on 17 January. Sources said 28 bids were received for 14 clusters, covering 50 fields, but none for three clusters that cover 14 fields.

ONGC clubbed the 64 fields in Gujarat, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu into 17 onshore contract areas by clubbing some of them. These have a cumulative 300 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent natural gas reserves.

"Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) placed Notice of Award (NoA) to seven successful bidders in 13 contract areas comprising of 49 marginal oil and gas fields," the company said in a statement.

Of these, the company has now awarded 49 of them.

ONGC had at the close of bidding in January received bids for 50 out of the 64 small and marginal oil and gas fields it offered in a bidding round for raising production by involving private companies.

Lesser-known firms such as Duganta Oil and Gas and Orissa Stevedores Ltd have won 49 small and marginal oil and gas fields that state-owned ONGC had bid out on government direction.

M&M, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma and ICICI Bank were the major losers in the Sensex pack.

Sensex was trading 48.51 points or 0.16 percent lower at 31,074.38 while the Nifty was down 9.95 points or 0.11 percent at 9,132.80 at around 3 pm.

It is expected that the finance minister may announce relief package for agriculture and aviation sectors.

Indices erased most of the losses ahead of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamans press conference at 4 pm on Friday.

HZL is one of the largest integrated producers of zinc and lead and a leading producer of silver.

HZL has intimated that its board of directors, through resolution passed by circulation on Tuesday, has approved interim dividend of Rs 16.50 per equity share - 825 percent on face value of Rs 2 per share for the financial year 2019-20 amounting to Rs 6,972 crore, Vedanta informed the BSE on Friday.

Vedanta owns 64.9 percent stake in the company, while the centre retains a 29.54 percent stake.

The board of Hindustan Zinc (HZL), a subsidiary of Vedanta, has approved an interim dividend of Rs 16.50 per equity share for FY20 amounting to Rs 6,972 crore.

"In addition to declining power demand -- which will hit short-term power prices and the utilisation of coal-based power plants -- state-owned distribution companies that rely on subsidies could delay making payments to power companies as the government is likely to pivot subsidies towards social and healthcare spending amid efforts to contain the outbreak," said Abhishek Tyagi, Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.

It said power demand will drop at least four to 5 percent in fiscal 2021 due to slowing activity and policy actions. Besides, companies are vulnerable to policy moves and payment delays from state-owned distributors.

Moody's Investors Service has changed its outlook for the Indian power sector to negative from stable on declining power demand, payment delays and an adverse impact from government measures that favour consumers over utility companies.

On sectoral front, auto, bank, IT, pharma remained under pressure, while metal, energy and infra witnessed buying.

M&M, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto and Ultra Cement were the top losers in the Sensex pack.

Sensex fell 25.16 points or 0.08 percent to 31,097.73, while Nifty was down 5.90 points or 0.06 percent at 9,136.85 at close amid a volatile session.

Benchmark indices closed marginally lower after staging a sharp recovery from the intraday losses and the Nifty ended above 9,100-mark.

"Free food grains to migrants for two months will ensure food security for over 8 crore people at this time, when livelihoods have been taken away from them. It will also ensure the cultivators from whom government procures food grains receive some returns, as they have struggling to market their produce and generate some income for their dependents"

Puneet Chopra, Partner, MSC (MicroSave Consulting) said, The announcement of One Nation One Ration Card is much needed. On the lines of a unique Aadhaar and digitization of various subsidies, it will allow a range of temporary migrants to avail PDS benefits".

Mrinal Kumar, Partner, General Corporate, Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas & Co. said, "Government-funded housing in cities being converted to Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHC) through public-private partnership (PPP) will give a much required impetus to the revival of the real estate sector and other related industries. The affordable rental scheme is a step towards addressing the issue of housing of urban poor and migrant workers and will provide them with access to quality accommodation and security to encourage these workers to not return to their native places in a crisis like COVID-19. Industries, manufacturing units and institutions will also be incentivised to develop AHRC on their unutilised land."

March was the month in which the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe, with first Italy and then other countries imposing sweeping restrictions on public life and businesses.

The decline in the January-March period was the biggest since 2009.

The figures from the Federal Statistical Office offered a first glimpse of the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis to Europe's biggest economy, which the government is trying to limit with a raft of rescue programs.

The German economy shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday.

As many as 12 companies made 28 bids for 50 fields at the close of bidding on 17 January. Sources said 28 bids were received for 14 clusters, covering 50 fields, but none for three clusters that cover 14 fields.

ONGC clubbed the 64 fields in Gujarat, Assam, Andhra Pradesh, and Tamil Nadu into 17 onshore contract areas by clubbing some of them. These have a cumulative 300 million tonnes of oil and oil equivalent natural gas reserves.

"Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) placed Notice of Award (NoA) to seven successful bidders in 13 contract areas comprising of 49 marginal oil and gas fields," the company said in a statement.

Of these, the company has now awarded 49 of them.

ONGC had at the close of bidding in January received bids for 50 out of the 64 small and marginal oil and gas fields it offered in a bidding round for raising production by involving private companies.

Lesser-known firms such as Duganta Oil and Gas and Orissa Stevedores Ltd have won 49 small and marginal oil and gas fields that state-owned ONGC had bid out on government direction.

M&M, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma and ICICI Bank were the major losers in the Sensex pack.

Sensex was trading 48.51 points or 0.16 percent lower at 31,074.38 while the Nifty was down 9.95 points or 0.11 percent at 9,132.80 at around 3 pm.

It is expected that the finance minister may announce relief package for agriculture and aviation sectors.

Indices erased most of the losses ahead of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharamans press conference at 4 pm on Friday.

HZL is one of the largest integrated producers of zinc and lead and a leading producer of silver.

HZL has intimated that its board of directors, through resolution passed by circulation on Tuesday, has approved interim dividend of Rs 16.50 per equity share - 825 percent on face value of Rs 2 per share for the financial year 2019-20 amounting to Rs 6,972 crore, Vedanta informed the BSE on Friday.

Vedanta owns 64.9 percent stake in the company, while the centre retains a 29.54 percent stake.

The board of Hindustan Zinc (HZL), a subsidiary of Vedanta, has approved an interim dividend of Rs 16.50 per equity share for FY20 amounting to Rs 6,972 crore.

"In addition to declining power demand -- which will hit short-term power prices and the utilisation of coal-based power plants -- state-owned distribution companies that rely on subsidies could delay making payments to power companies as the government is likely to pivot subsidies towards social and healthcare spending amid efforts to contain the outbreak," said Abhishek Tyagi, Moody's Vice President and Senior Analyst.

It said power demand will drop at least four to 5 percent in fiscal 2021 due to slowing activity and policy actions. Besides, companies are vulnerable to policy moves and payment delays from state-owned distributors.

Moody's Investors Service has changed its outlook for the Indian power sector to negative from stable on declining power demand, payment delays and an adverse impact from government measures that favour consumers over utility companies.

#CNBCTV18Market | Auto & metal top gaining indices this week, up 4% each Vedanta, Bharti Infratel, Hero Moto top Nifty gainers this week Nestle, Dr Reddys, GAIL top Nifty losers this week pic.twitter.com/FllXgqWxyM

On sectoral front, auto, bank, IT, pharma remained under pressure, while metal, energy and infra witnessed buying.

M&M, Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma, ICICI Bank, Bajaj Auto and Ultra Cement were the top losers in the Sensex pack.

Sensex fell 25.16 points or 0.08 percent to 31,097.73, while Nifty was down 5.90 points or 0.06 percent at 9,136.85 at close amid a volatile session.

Benchmark indices closed marginally lower after staging a sharp recovery from the intraday losses and the Nifty ended above 9,100-mark.

Stock Market Latest Updates: Benchmark indices erase losses, Sensex, Nifty close marginally lower; auto, bank stocks decline

New York: Asian stocks were set to rise on Friday amid investor optimism about the re-opening of the US economy from coronavirus lockdowns and possibly more stimulus that could fuel a recovery.

US President Donald Trump said he was open to negotiating another possible stimulus bill amid the novel coronavirus pandemic, but was taking his time to see if more federal action was needed.

Ahead of the Asian open, Hong Kong's Hang Seng index futures climbed 0.16 percent, Australian S&P/ASX 200 futures rose 0.85 percent, while Japan's Nikkei 225 futures were down 0.15 percent.

'Were expecting to see a positive situation evolve here, said Ryan Felsman, a senior economist at CommSec in Sydney, noting that Asian equities would likely follow the positive Wall Street lead, driven in part by gains in banking and energy.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 1.62 percent, the S&P 500 gained 1.15 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite rose 0.91 percent.

Stock markets have rallied more than 30 percent since their March lows following unprecedented government stimulus measures and central bank intervention to counter the impact of economic lockdowns. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell quashed talk of US interest rates going negative to kick-start investment.

Optimism over potential stimulus spurred investors to look past a report from the US Labor Department, which showed just under 3 million new jobless claims last week, pushing the seven-week tally well over 36 million.

Investors also shrugged off bellicose remarks from President Trump regarding US-China trade and a whistleblowers dire warnings that the United States could face the darkest winter if it does not improve its response to the pandemic.

Investors on Friday are awaiting monthly data from China that tracks industrial production, fixed asset investment and retail sales. The retail data will be an especially insightful indicator of Chinas recovery as its economy reopens, Felsman said.

Residents in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the novel coronavirus emerged, braved pouring rain in queues of more than an hour to take part in a government-led exercise to test the citys 11 million people for the novel coronavirus, a scale health experts describe as unprecedented.

The Japanese yen remained strong on the back of increased safe-haven demand, but is set to slip below the 107 yen per dollar mark, Ipek Ozkardeskaya, senior analyst at Swissquote Bank, said in a note.

In commodity markets, oil prices settled higher on Thursday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast lower global stockpiles in the second half of 2020, although worries remain that a second surge in coronavirus infections could occur in coming months.

Brent crude futures LCoc1 settled up $1.94, or 6.7 percent, to $31.13 a barrel.

US West Texas Intermediate crude futures settled up $2.27, or 9 percent, to $27.56 a barrel.

Emerging market stocks lost 0.92 percent. MSCIs broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan closed 1.32 percent lower.

Against a basket of its rivals, the dollar rose 0.20 percent, hitting a three-week high.

Benchmark 10-year US Treasury notes last fell 1/32 in price to yield 0.6218 percent.
A cabinet minister today declared he would be very comfortable sending his children back to school during the coronavirus crisis.

Brandon Lewiss intervention came minutes before teaching unions were due to meet the Governments chief medical adviser Chris Whitty to air concerns over the safety of pupils and teachers starting to return classrooms from next month.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said he had arranged todays meeting to brief unions on the scientific advice underpinning our approach.

Asked if he would be happy to send his children in, Northern Ireland Secretary Mr Lewis said his two children were older than school age, but said he absolutely would have done so.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis / AFP via Getty Images

I think I would be very comfortable with my children going back in a safe environment with social distancing, with schools able to advise children about all of those practical things we need to do in terms of staying alert  washing hands, practising social distancing. I think schools are a very good environment to do that.

His comments echoed John Gummers move in 1990 at the height of the BSE health crisis to feed his four-year-old daughter a beef burger.

The Government wants schools to phase in lessons from next month, starting with some primary classes and teenagers facing exams.

Unions and the Local Government Association have said it would put staff at risk of catching Covid-19.

But they were hit by a backlash when former Labour education secretary Lord Blunkett accused them of working against the interests of children.

Welsh first minister Mark Drakeford, who is taking a slower approach than the Westminster government, told the BBC: We can open schools as much as we like, but if people are not confident safety has been attended to, they simply wont turn up. The World Health Organisations coronavirus special envoy Dr David Nabarro said schools should open only when there was mass testing and the ability to track and trace outbreaks of Covid-19.

Other countries are saying very clearly we want to make sure that the capacity to test, trace and isolate is present throughout our country before we really start lifting the restrictions on movement, he said.

Labours Rachel Reeves told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: The Government do need to reassure teachers, teaching staff at schools, parents and pupils that it is safe to return and unless they do that teachers arent going to go back into the classroom and parents arent going to send the young people.
The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh affiliate trade union Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) has called for a nationwide protest on May 20 against the decision of various state governments to dilute labour laws. The office-bearers said demonstrations, planned at taluka and district centres and industrial estates, will be carried out by maintaining social distance.

Also read:UP allows industry to hire and fire! Suspends all labour laws, except three

The protest will be against freezing of labour laws and increasing working hours in various states, on migrant workers issues, payment of wages and job losses. The BMS will also call for the creation of more jobs in the unorganised sector and contractual jobs in the organised sector.

"The national office bearers' web-meeting held on May 13 strongly condemned the total withdrawal of labour laws in UP, MP and Gujarat and increase in working hours from 8 to 12 in states like Rajasthan, ;Maharashtra, Goa and Odisha. Many states are readying to follow the trend. This is unheard in history and is rare even in most undemocratic countries," Virjesh Upadhyay, General Secretary, BMS said in a statement.

Also read: Coronavirus crisis: Why MP's labour law changes are more balanced than UP

The protests will begin with a series of letters sent to district authorities from May 16 to 18 by local and state-level unions and federations on issues like payment of wages, job losses, relief measures to unregistered workers, migrant workers, self-employed workers, private transport workers, and problems of migrant labour stranded in their respective districts.

On May 30 and 31, BMS will organise state, industry, company and sector level conventions to press their demands, Upadhyay added.

Also read: UP labour law reforms: The big climbdown
The city of New Bedford has partnered with the American Red Cross and Joseph Abboud Manufacturing Corporation to ensure any resident who is in need of a mask gets one.

Mayor Jon Mitchell announced the initiative called MaskNB on Thursday. A series of drive-through events are scheduled for May and June to help distribute the masks at no cost.

The scientific basis for widespread mask use is growing stronger, but in order for that knowledge to make a difference, we need to take individual and collective action," Mitchell said. At an individual level, that means remembering to always wear a mask whenever you cannot practice social distancing.

The MaskNB distribution plan includes specific days for each of the six wards in the city. Residents will have an opportunity to obtain free cloth face masks at New Bedford High School on 230 Hathaway Boulevard on the following assigned dates from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.

WARD 1: May 30

WARD 2: May 31

WARD 3: June 6

WARD 4: June 7

WARD 5: June 13

WARD 6: June 14

Additional dates may be announced based on available supplies.

Residents are asked to limit their mask requests to those in their household or neighbor who have been advised to stay inside during the pandemic.

We are proud to continue to support New Bedfords efforts to fight COVD-19, said Joe Bahena, CEO of Joseph Abboud Manufacturing Corporation, which is located in New Bedford.

In late April, New Bedford announced a goal of delivering roughly 50,000 Abboud-made masks to first responders, essential workers, and vulnerable populations, including residents and staff of nursing homes, long-term care facilities, senior living facilities, shelters, and New Bedford Housing Authority facilities. Masks are also being provided to staff and patients of the Greater New Bedford Community Health Center, the staff and clients of the Meals on Wheels program, and elderly clients of the Immigrants Assistance Center. To date, the City has distributed more than 20,000 masks.

Were proud to partner with the City of New Bedford and Joseph Abboud Manufacturing Corporation to distribute masks to local citizens," Mitchell said. Public safety is an important mission of the Red Cross, and together we can help stop the spread of the COVID virus and protect our loved ones and neighbors, said Barbara Cotton, executive director of the Southeastern Massachusetts chapter of the American Red Cross.

Related Content:
Cinquieme edition des constats et les previsions de lequipe de la Mauritius Commercial Bank Ltd qui va permettre de comparer les chiffres avec la reponse du Ministre des Finance a la Private Notice Question.

Lequipe de la MCB avec a sa tete Vicky Hurynag avec Nuvin Balloo ainsi que Jessen Coolen fait le constat suivant sur la crise Coronavirus:-

Easing of COVID 19 lockdowns gathered further steam this week, with more countries reopening, notably in Europe . The IMF has hinted at a possible downgrade of its already gloomy global outlook for 2020 on account of sharper than expected growth contractions in major advanced economies in the first quarter of the year.

In Mauritius, the authorities are introducing new legislations to cater for the impact of COVID 19 and the progressive easing of the lockdown, although further clarity is deemed necessary regarding the modalities and conditions under which some measures would be put into effect

Sur la situation a Maurice, les analystes soulignent:-

The authorities are making provision for the legal impetus to enforce post lockdown measures such as sanitary measures to be applied, protect the country from a second wave of infections as well as enhance our responses to infectious diseases, and assist in stabilising the economy amidst the outbreak.

Concernant le secteur touristique, il est dit:-

Latest data from Statistics Mauritius indicate a 51 contraction in tourist arrivals for the month of March 2020 compared to the corresponding period last year. For the first quarter of 2020 tourist arrivals fell by 13 on a year on year basis.

Les scenarios possible seraient comme suit:=

 Scenario 1 58 based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions in early July

 Scenario 2 70 based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions in early September

 Scenario 3 78 based on the gradual opening of international borders and easing of travel restrictions only in early December The majority expects to see signs of recovery by the final quarter of 2020 but mostly in 2021 Based on previous crises, leisure travel is expected to recover quicker, particularly travel for visiting friends and relatives, than business travel.

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Tel Aviv University's technology transfer company, Ramot (Tel Aviv-Yafo, Israel) and biopharmaceutical company, Neovii (Rapperswil, Switzerland) have signed a research and license agreement to develop a novel and potentially life-saving COVID-19 vaccine.Neovii's long-standing and well-established experience and capabilities in developing, manufacturing and commercializing biopharmaceuticals will support the objective to have a vaccine ready for use in the general population on an accelerated timeline. Neovii will work in close collaboration with a team of scientists led by Prof. Jonathan Gershoni of TAU's School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology. The agreement grants Neovii the exclusive right to develop and commercialize a novel and recently patented platform technology conceived by Prof. Gershoni for the rapid discovery of epitope-based vaccines.The collaboration is focused on the development of a first-in-class COVID-19 vaccine that reconstructs the coronavirus's Receptor Binding Motif (RBM), a critical structure of its "spike" protein. The "spike" protein itself is the major surface protein that the virus uses to bind to the cellular receptor that acts as the doorway into the human cell. After the spike protein binds to the human cell receptor, the viral membrane fuses with the human cell membrane, allowing the genome of the virus to enter human cells and begin infection."We have been working on coronaviruses for the last 15 years developing a method of reconstructing and reconstituting the RBM structure of the spike protein in SARS-CoV and subsequently in MERS-CoV," explains Prof. Gershoni. "The moment the genome of the new virus was published in early January 2020, we began the process of reconstituting the RBM of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and expect to have a reconstituted RBM of the new virus soon. This is the basis for the new vaccine, which could be ready for use within a year to a year and a half.""The smaller the target and the focus of the attack, the safer and greater the effectiveness of the vaccine," he added. "The virus takes far-reaching measures to hide its RBM from the human immune system, but the best way to 'win the war' is to develop a vaccine that specifically targets the virus's RBM.""We hope that through this collaboration with Neovii, it will be possible to produce an effective vaccine that targets the coronavirus's Achilles' heel and will accelerate the development of a protective vaccine against this global threat," said Keren Primor Cohen, Ramot CEO.The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated how fragile and vulnerable our societies are in the face of a pandemic, said Jurgen Pohle, Neovii CEO. We are extremely excited about our collaboration with Professor Gershoni and TAU which provides Neovii with a first-in-class platform for the rapid development of promising vaccine candidates towards any future emerging pandemics including COVID-19. Furthermore, the COVID-19 vaccine is highly synergistic to Neovii's core expertise in the development and manufacturing of passive polyclonal antibodies and provides an opportunity to bring a COVID-19 immunotherapy in a rapid manner.
Aegean Baltic Bank of Greece (ABB) has chosen Wolters Kluwer's OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting and OneSumX for Risk Management as its integrated risk and regulatory reporting software solution, helping the bank to meet its Basel IV and CRD V obligations.

OneSumX for Regulatory Reporting combines bank data into a single source of data to ensure consistency, reconciliation and accuracy and includes Wolters Kluwer's Regulatory Update Service. This unique service is maintained by Wolters Kluwer experts who actively monitor regulation in 30 countries.

The bank will also implement a number of risk management modules, including OneSumX for Asset Liability Management (ALM). The ALM component of OneSumX for Risk Management is based on Wolters Kluwer's integrated platform, enabling balance sheet modeling, stress testing and dynamic planning. Wolters Kluwer's comprehensive OneSumX Liquidity Risk Management solution, meanwhile, combines a risk management/stress engine and regulatory reporting platform which will enables ABB to monitor, manage and report liquidity risk.

ABB, operating under the regulatory supervision of the Central Bank of Greece, provides corporate and investment banking products and services to shipping companies in Greece. The company is primarily involved in contracting and the administration of syndicated loans granted to shipping corporations.

"Wolters Kluwer's software provides the extensive functional coverage and scalability that the bank required when exploring options in both the risk and reporting fields," commented Konstantinos Hadjipanayotis, Chairman of the Board and Deputy CEO at ABB. "The software allows us to take a truly integrated approach to our risk management and regulatory reporting obligations," added Dimitris Daispyros, Head of Risk at ABB.

"We are delighted to be working with ABB on this important project for the bank. Basel IV and CRD V will present huge challenges for all banks and so we are happy to be assisting ABB with its all-important regulatory compliance," said Kris Van Bavel, Managing Director of Wolters Kluwer's Finance, Risk Reporting (FRR) business in EMEA. "Regulatory reporting and risk mitigation are key considerations for all banks now more than ever. Our experts are on hand to provide all important access to our award-winning software and we look forward to working with ABB on this implementation project."

Wolters Kluwer FRR, which is part of the company's Governance, Risk Compliance division, is a global market leader in the provision of integrated regulatory compliance and reporting solutions. It supports regulated financial institutions in meeting their obligations to external regulators and their own board of directors.

Wolters Kluwer FRR receives frequent independent recognition of its excellence and innovation, celebrating a record year for award wins in 2019. Risk magazine awarded the company its coveted Regulatory Reporting System of The Year Award for the second year running and Waters Technology has named the company the Best Market Risk Solution Provider in its annual Technology Rankings. Wolters Kluwer is also the #1 provider in both Regulatory Reporting and Liquidity Risk according to the RiskTech100, as compiled by Chartis Research.

About Wolters Kluwer Governance, Risk Compliance

Governance, Risk Compliance (GRC) is a division of Wolters Kluwer, which provides legal and banking professionals with solutions to ensure compliance with ever-changing regulatory and legal obligations, manage risk, increase efficiency, stay competitive and produce better business outcomes. GRC offers a portfolio of technology-enabled expert services and solutions focused on legal entity compliance, legal operations management, banking product compliance, and banking regulatory compliance.

Wolters Kluwer N.V. (AEX: WKL) is a global leader in information services and solutions for professionals in the health, tax and accounting, risk and compliance, finance and legal sectors. Wolters Kluwer reported 2019 annual revenues of 4.6 billion. The company, headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn, the Netherlands, serves customers in over 180 countries, maintains operations in over 40 countries and employs 19,000 people worldwide.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005024/en/

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Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear has given the green light for restaurants to reopen next week. The city of Paducah wants to shut down some downtown streets to traffic so business can use them for outdoor seating.
Leo Enright, the space journalist, former BBC correspondent and one time head of RTE radio news, is today selling his four-bed Temple Bar apartment for close to 1m. But when he and wife Lorraine Benson first bought it 30 years ago, the famous party district was down at heel.

The couple became space pioneers of sorts when they purchased the entire Aston Court block with a group of people they knew, and then divided it up to provide city homes for all.

By the late 1970s, Temple Bar was set to be demolished to build a bus station but CIE, delayed in its finances, rented the buildings out cheaply in the interim. Soon the area was buzzing with left-field shops and became a magnet for creatives. So in 1991, former Taoiseach Charles Haughey changed the plan, unveiling tax incentives aimed at revitalising the area and turning it into a cultural district. Enthused by this vision, Enright and Benson teamed up with friends the following year to buy the landmark quayside red-brick block on the corner of Aston Quay and Bedford Row for a "modest sum".

They sold the ground-floor units to retailers and then divvied the upper floors into 10 apartments. "We bought it at a time when Temple Bar was neither popular nor profitable," recalls 65-year-old Enright. "By grouping together as a gang of people, we could leverage enough money to buy the block. It wasn't a bad model and I'm not sure it wouldn't work in slightly different terms today. We had to bring in a senior counsel to advise us on how to divide it up."

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Enright and Benson ended up with 2,637 sq ft of living space spread across the building's second and third floors, which command views of the Ha'penny Bridge, River Liffey and Temple Bar.

But renovating an entire block was no easy feat, says Enright, who discovered that there had been a building on the site from the early 19th century that had been redeveloped in the 1930s with a new brick facade. The tough old construction proved difficult to work with.

"When we bought it, there were dingy little offices there," he says. "Our son Rob was brought into the apartment in a Moses basket, pushed through a hole in the wall because a proper entrance hadn't yet been finished."

Enright, who is currently on lockdown in Marseille, says: "We loved it [Temple Bar] in the early days, but as it became busier, we adapted." After a stint as RTE's London correspondent, Enright became the BBC's man in Dublin through the 1990s. A devoted space enthusiast, today he sits on the Board of Governors of the School of Cosmic Physics.

The original timber floors, high ceilings and sash windows were retained. The entrance hall leads to a vast open-plan reception room with a dining area overlooking the Ha'penny Bridge. A baby grand piano has long been the centrepiece of this room.

"Rob and his friends would jam there. The house was constantly filled with music." Enright has interviewed taoisigh, here, including Garret FitzGerald and John Bruton.

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There's a dual-aspect kitchen with dark-grey units and a breakfast bar. Off the kitchen is a utility room and a bathroom. Also on this floor is a dining room and the first of four bedrooms with an ensuite. The couple added a second kitchen to the original dining room to create an open-plan kitchen/living space.

The third floor has the other three bedrooms, the master with a walk-in wardrobe that leads to an ensuite bathroom. One side of the main bedroom overlooks the river and the other has access to the conservatory. A bathroom completes the upstairs accommodation.

After 30 years, Enright and Benson are downsizing. No 5 Aston Court is asking 995,000 through Knight Frank.
Since 2013, following strict enforcement of provincial wildlife legislation in the less studied regions of Asia, the overall trend of illegal reptile poaching is steadily decreasing. But it's too early to claim that the issue is solved. Poached reptiles are largely destined not only for the pet trade, but also folk medicines and snake charmer shows, according to the recent study led by the scientists from the Pakistan Museum of Natural History and the University of Peshawar published in the open-access journal Herpetozoa.

For the first time, the exploitation of reptiles for the pet trade has come to the attention of the public in the late 1960s. In general, illegal poaching is one of the problems we still face a lot all over the world, despite strict restrictions which are coming in force massively over the last decades. The wildlife trade leads not only to biodiversity loss (through the capture of protected species), but also threatens with a possible spread of animal-borne diseases, due to interspecies contact at pet and folk medicine markets. The case of the recent COVID-19 pandemic gives a lesson to learn, and in order to stop further occurrences, a focus on law-enforcement activities should be brought to wildlife trade hotspots.

In the particular case of Pakistan, a country with high species diversity of reptiles, still very little is known about the links between illegal wildlife trade and wildlife decline. The illegal poaching and trade in Pakistan are largely undocumented and it's difficult to bring accurate data since the trade involves many channels and follows informal networks. There is marginal information available about the medicinal use of wild flora and fauna for some parts of Pakistan, but there is no report on the commercialisation, harvest, market dynamics and conservation impact of these activities.

Since 2013, a number of confiscations of different reptile species and their parts from Pakistani nationals have been reported widely from across the country, which resulted in the enforcement of legislations regarding the wildlife trade in Pakistan.

An international team of researchers, led by Dr. Rafaqat Masroor from Pakistan Museum of Natural History investigated the extent of illegal reptile collection in southwestern Balochistan. Scientists tried to determine what impact these activities might have on the wild populations.

The field trips, conducted in 2013-2017, targeted Chagai, Nushki, Panjgur, Kharan and Washuk districts in Balochistan province. Over those years, scientists interviewed 73 illegal collectors. Most of the collectors worked in groups, consisting of males aged between 14 to 50 years.

"They were all illiterate and their sole livelihood was based on reptile poaching, trade, and street shows. These collectors were well-organized and had trapping equipment for the collection of reptiles. [...] These groups were locally known as "jogeez", who mainly originated from Sindh Province and included snake charmers, having their roots deep with the local hakeems (herbal medicine practitioners) and wildlife traders, businessmen and exporters based at Karachi city. [...] We often observed local people killing lizards and snakes, mostly for fear of venom and part for fun and centuries-old myths", share Dr. Masroor.

A total number of illegally poached reptiles, recorded during the investigation, results in 5,369 specimens representing 19 species. All of them had already been declared Protected under Schedule-III of the Balochistan Provincial Wildlife Act.

Amongst the reasons for the province of Balochistan to remain unexplored might have been the lack of government environmental and wildlife protection agencies, lack of resources and specialists of high qualification in the provincial wildlife, forest and environment departments, as well as geopolitical position and remoteness of vast tracts of areas.

Scientists call for the provincial and federal government to take action and elaborate a specific strategy for the conservation of endemic and threatened species as a part of the country's natural heritage both in southwestern Balochistan and whole Pakistan. The conservation plan needs to be consulted with specialists in the respective fields, in order to avoid incompetence.

Also, the research group suggests to strictly ban illegal poaching of venomous snakes for the purpose of venom extraction.

What is important to remember is that Balochistan represents one of the most important areas of Asia with a high number of endemic reptile species. The illegal capture of these species presents a threat to the poorly documented animals. Even though the current trend for captured reptiles is decreasing, more actions are needed, in order to ensure the safety of the biodiversity of the region.

###

Original source:

Masroor R, Khisroon M, Jablonski D (2020) A case study on illegal reptile poaching from Balochistan, Pakistan. Herpetozoa 33: 67-75. https://doi.org/10.3897/herpetozoa.33.e51690
The Chronicle was among the first in a wave of news organizations to launch a map tracking the spread of COVID-19, and our Coronavirus Tracker was the first such map dedicated to tracking California cases. It has since evolved into a robust resource documenting the virus regional impact.

The most recent upgrade includes details on how each Bay Area county is progressing against the six data benchmarks that local officials are watching for when considering lifting shelter-in-place orders.

Heres a look at how it began, and the work that gets done every day to keep the Tracker updated.

From one reporters spreadsheet to public resource

Chronicle health reporter Erin Allday first heard of the new coronavirus in early January through health blogs she follows. When the first person in the Bay Area tested positive for the coronavirus after arriving from Wuhan on Jan. 24, she began keeping track of U.S. cases for her own reporting. Her initial list had 15 cases across the country.

As cases increased, Allday took her data to The Chronicles team of newsroom developers to create a tracker similar to ones the team made for wildfires and earthquakes.

We hustled and got something up, said developer Audrey DeBruine. It had a California map and a U.S. map. We were doing California cases by county, and U.S. cases by state. There were so few that we were able to keep track of all of them to start out.

The Coronavirus Tracker went live on Feb. 28 with about 70 cases, with a simple bubble map using circles scaled to the size of each countys number of cases. (The developers have since switched to a choropleth map that uses colors and shading to better capture the virus spread across counties of varying population size.)

On March 4, there were 75 confirmed cases across California. Six days later, that number had more than doubled. By March 18, there were well over 1,000 cases statewide.

It started to snowball to the point where we realized maybe we cant keep track of every case in the U.S., DeBruine said.

Collecting the data

Early on in the outbreak, California wasnt providing county-level information on cases. So Allday established a process of visiting each of the 58 county websites to record the data.

When we would hear of a case, (the state) could not confirm or refused to release the information, she said. Its not easy to find the information. Every county does reporting differently.

Though there is now statewide reporting, it is often delayed by as much as 24 hours. So a team of Chronicle reporters and editors still manually check 58 county websites several times a day, seven days a week to update the Tracker with the very latest data.

Chronicle designer Michael Massa is now leading the process. He also mines the data regularly for new trends and patterns, analysis that winds up feeding into all of our coverage of the crisis. In mid-April, he spotted that the average number of cases reported in Bay Area counties over a seven-day span showed that cases were leveling off or declining across most of the region. Comparing seven-day case rates here to other hot spots in the country showed that the Bay Areas curve looked more like a flat line.

Putting the data in context

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.

From the beginning, it was clear to everyone involved the Coronavirus Tracker would need to be different from other data projects produced by the digital team. To ensure transparency, the tracker page includes detailed explainers, and as more data has become available the team has focused on ensuring the tracker also provides context around the numbers.

Its not perfect data by any stretch of the imagination, DeBruine said. Were here to guide people in how to interpret it as responsibly as we can.

At this point, Allday says she doesnt pay close attention to the daily case counts or county numbers because they can fluctuate quite a bit day to day. She focuses more on overall Bay Area numbers, particularly the new cases week-to-week and seven-day averages.

I think those give a better sense of what's happening over time without the daily hiccups, she said. They're also useful for comparing Bay Area trends to California and other regions, both in and outside the state.

The team has worked to display more data that puts case counts and deaths in context: testing numbers, hospitalizations and, now, numbers that show how each county is progressing on the indicators set by health officials as benchmarks for reopening.

Over two months into the project, the tracker remains our most-read story online each week. Readers contact Allday daily and tell her about the personal spreadsheets and maps theyve made to follow their own trends.

I didnt think it would spiral this far, I dont think anyone did, she said. I definitely never imagined in a million years the number of people who depend on it.

Kellie Hwang is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kellie.hwang@sfchronicle.com. Follow her on Twitter @KellieHwang
Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden has claimed he doesn't remember the former Senate staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993.

The former Vice President was asked whether he remembered Tara Reade, 56, a woman who accused him in March of reaching under her skirt and assaulting her when he was a senator and she his aide.

Speaking with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell yesterday, Biden was asked whether he remembered the woman - who was 29 at the time of the alleged assault.

'Well, to be honest with you, I don't,' Biden said.

'But let me get something clear, when a woman makes a claim that she has been harassed or abused, and this claim has changed... she should be taken seriously,' Biden said.

During an interview with MSNBC (pictured), Biden said he did not remember Reade during her time working as one of his aide's when he was a Senator, but insisted that she should be taken seriously

'She should come forward, share her story, she should be taken seriously and it should be thoroughly vetted. And in every case, what matters is the truth. The truth is what matters.

'And the truth of the case is nothing like this ever, ever happened... I give you my word. It never, ever happened. I give you my word. It never, ever happened.'

Following Biden's denial, O'Donnell brought his attention to a New York Times opinion piece titled 'I Believe Tara Reade. I'm Voting for Joe Biden Anyway' in which the author says that despite believing the accusations, she would still vote for Biden over Donald Trump, writing 'suck it up and make the utilitarian bargain'.

In response, Biden said: 'Well, I think they should vote their heart and if they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me. I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade.

'The fact is that look at Tara Reade's story. It changes considerably. And I don't want to question her motive, I don't want to question anything other than to say the truth matters,' he told the MSNBC host.

'This is being vetted, it's been vetted, [by] people [and] scores of my employees over my whole career. This is just totally, thoroughly, completely out of character. And the idea that in a public place, in a hallway I would assault a woman? ... I promise you. It never happened.'

Tara Reade (pictured) claims that Biden sexually assaulted her in a Congressional hallway when she was working as a Senate staffer in 1993

Reade has accused Biden of sticking his hand down her skirt and digitally penatrating her in a Congressional hallway when she worked for him as an aide in 1993.

The allegations evolved from what Reade had told reporters in 2019 when a number of women came out and said Biden had touched them inappropriately, though not in a sexual way.

Reade had previously claimed that Biden liked her legs and wanted her to waitress at a Capitol Hill cocktail party while she was on staff. Reade also complained that he was touchy-feely, putting his hands on her shoulders, neck and hair.

'This is not a story about sexual misconduct; it is a story about abuse of power,' she had told Vox reporter Laura McGann, who wrote about Reade's changing story in an essay Thursday.

Reade first told her sex assault story to journalist Katie Halper for her 'Katie Halper Show' podcast on March 25.

'None of that means Reade is lying, but it leaves us in the limbo of Me Too: a story that may be true but that we can't prove,' McGann wrote.

While a neighbor of Reade's recalls the ex-Senate staffer talking about an incident with Biden in the mid-90s, according to reporting from Business Insider, so far no official documentation has been produced. Reade has also said that the sex assault charges weren't included in any Senate complaint she said she made.

On May 1, Biden denied the allegations on-camera on 'Morning Joe,' which was his first television appearance pushing back on Reade's story.

'I'm saying unequivocally, it never, never happened,' Biden said.
(Photo : Kyodo/via REUTERS) Commuters wearing protective face masks are seen a day after the government announced the lifting of the state of emergency by the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in large parts of the country including Fukuoka, in Fukuoka, southern Japan, in this photo taken by Kyodo May 15, 2020.

Japan's suicide rate dropped by a quarter this year compared to last year as workers spend less time with work-related stress amid coronavirus pandemic.

The number of suicides this April was down by nearly 20 percent compared to the same month in 2019, according to Japanese officials.

More family time, lesser interactions with toxic people

In April 2019, around 1,814 people took their lives compared with a 19.8% decrease to 1,455 in April 2020. This marks the country's lowest suicide figure for at least the past five years. Officials believe that not going into the office, less commuting and more time with the family are factors in which the Covid-19 pandemic has affected the well-being of people.

Lockdown steps mean that work from home and have fewer interactions with authority figures - including threatening bosses, colleagues, or classmates, DailyMail reported. It has a positive impact on the mental health of people, the ministry has found, given the pressures of living through a global pandemic.

Despite the decrease in suicide in recent years, a rise has occurred among adolescents. Bullying and other problems at school are commonly cited causes. The start of the academic year, which starts in April in Japan, is an especially challenging period for some. But its postponement due to the pandemic may have saved lives, at least temporarily.

"School is a pressure for some young people, but this April there is no such pressure," said Yukio Saito, a former telephone counseling official for the Japanese Federation of Inochi-no-Denwa. "At home with their families, they feel safe," she told The Guardian.

As for adults, "traditionally people don't think about suicide" during times of national turmoil and disasters, Saito said. She noted the decline in cases of suicide in 2011, the year of the massive Fukushima earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown. One contributing factor in the reduced suicide rate is the significant decrease in the number of people commuting to workplaces, where they frequently work long hours and interact with toxic co-workers.

Suicide remains a social problem

Throughout Japan, suicide is seen as a significant social problem. Japan's suicide hotlines are still struggling to handle the influx of calls they get from people amid coronavirus pandemic.

Saito, who also served as chair of the Japanese Association for Suicide Prevention, said a prolonged economic downturn triggered by the pandemic could lead to a rebound in the cases. A massive rise in suicide cases of nearly 40 percent was recorded the year after the Asian financial crisis of 1997.

Japan Today reported many callers revealed concerns about their job security due to company closures or a dramatic decline in customer numbers. Other callers said they had suicidal thoughts after their family members were infected with the virus.

Saitama Inochi no Denwa, one of Japan's busiest hotlines, retained its 24-hour support operation. Several people each day openly confide their suicidal thoughts, the organization told Japan Today. Most callers are in their 40s and 50s, and during the economic crisis, discuss concerns about job security. Of the roughly 70 calls it has been receiving per day recently, approximately 70 to 80 percent are related to the coronavirus, the report added.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
1,640 foreign Tablighi Jamaat members were in India, only 66 contracted COVID-19: Jamiat

India

pti-PTI

New Delhi, May 15: As many as 1,640 foreign Tablighi Jamaat members from 47 countries were in India at the time of Nizamuddin Markaz gathering, of whom only 64 tested positive for COVID-19 and two more died of the virus, prominent Muslim organisation Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind said on Friday.

Jamiat president Maulana Arshad Madani said the "highlighting" of Tablighi Jamaat cases while talking about the total number of cases in the country had allegedly created an atmosphere of hatred against Muslims.

Release 3,300 Tablighi members from quarantine centres says plea in HC

Maulana Madani said that now when there are more than 78,000 cases of coronavirus, the Tablighi Jamaat figures are not being highlighted. Citing data compiled by his organisation through various embassies and the Nizamuddin Markaz, Madani said there were 1,640 members of foreign Tablighi Jamaat from 47 countries in India at the time of the Markaz incident.

Of them, 64 tested positive for the virus and two died due to it. All 64 people have now recovered.

The foreign Tablighi Jamaat members included those from Indonesia, Bangladesh, Malaysia, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Myanmar, Sudan, Singapore, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Philippines, Russia, Sri Lanka, US, Syria, Belgium, Brazil, Australia, and Afghanistan.

Out of the total foreign Tablighi Jamaat members, 739 are in Delhi and the rest are in other states, the Jamiat said. Maulana Madani said coronavirus spread has nothing to do with the Tablighi Jamaat but it was portrayed by vested interests to be the case to create ill-will against Muslims at large.

COVID-19 crisis: UP Police book 24 Tablighi Jamaat members for staying in mosque

Hundreds of Indians and foreigners attended a Tablighi Jamaat congregation in the Nizamuddin area of Delhi in March, ignoring warnings by the government against large gatherings in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak.

A number of people who attended the event were later found to be suffering from COVID-19. Earlier, government sources said foreign nationals, who attended the congregation will face punitive action if they are found to have participated in the gathering violating visa rules.
The German economy shrank by 2.2 per cent in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday.

The figures from the Federal Statistical Office offered a first glimpse of the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis to Europe's biggest economy, which the government is trying to limit with a raft of rescue programs.

The decline in the January-March period was the biggest since 2009.

March was the month in which the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe, with first Italy and then other countries imposing sweeping restrictions on public life and businesses.

Germany itself started shutting down in mid-March.

It never ordered factories closed, but companies did largely stop production in some areas such as the automaking sector and supply chains were disrupted.

Recent data showed a 15.6 per cent month-on-month decrease in factory orders in March, and a 9.2 per cent drop in industrial production.

The country started loosening restrictions on April 20 and the process has gathered pace recently.

Shops have now reopened, restaurants are gradually opening up and auto production has restarted.

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


WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - The New York Stock Exchange will partially reopen its trading floor on Tuesday, May 26, following two months of closure due to the COVID-19 pandemic.



'The NYSE trading floor will begin a phased reopening on May 26....and look forward to welcoming home members of our Trading Floor community,' Stacey Cunningham, President of the New York Stock Exchange, tweeted on Thursday.



The NYSE closed its equities and options trading floors and moved to fully electronic trading from March 23 on a temporary basis. The closure of the historic trading floor came after two people tested positive for COVID-19.



The facilities that were temporarily closed included the NYSE equities trading floor in New York, NYSE American Options trading floor in New York, and NYSE Arca Options trading floor in San Francisco.



In a Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday, Cunningham said that the NYSE would reopen its facility the day after Memorial Day to 'a subset of floor brokers' and with 'vital security measures'.



The announcement comes as more states in the U.S. start to ease coronavirus-induced lockdowns and reopen their economies.



On Thursday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo expanded the state's phased reopening to five regions. The regions in upstate and central New York are allowed to resume manufacturing, construction and agricultural operations as well curbside pickup at retail stores beginning Friday.



The NYSE president noted in the WSJ op-ed that the reopened NYSE trading floor will look different from the 'iconic images' people have grown accustomed to seeing on television throughout the trading day.



Floor brokers will return to the trading floor in small numbers first and will be required to wear protective masks as well as follow strict social-distancing requirements.



Meanwhile, the 'designated market makers' overseeing trading of the stock-exchange listed companies will largely continue to work remotely.



Cunningham said that all brokers and visitors to the NYSE will be required to avoid public transportation. They will be screened and have their temperatures taken at the entrance of the building.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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[May 15, 2020] Alana CityStyleBot is the Stimulus to Save the High Street Post COVID-19

CORK, Ireland, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alana 'CityStyleBot' is giving high street and independent fashion retailers an alternative virtual shop front to serve customers post COVID-19. Launched in February 2020, Cork Start Up Alana is an innovative Fashion and Beauty platform for consumers to purchase curated fashion looks and beauty products. Alana is powered by Artificial Intelligence meaning that it learns to recommend styles/brands that will suit each customer's unique taste. Alana suggests clothes from high street retailers and independent boutiques with a same day delivery service making the whole highstreet a virtual shopping center - one checkout - one delivery charge of 3.99. Alana helps retailers compete with major brands who have an established ecommerce foothold. According to ACI Worldwide there is a 74% growth in the average transaction volumes due to a dramatic rise in online retail this March in comparison to March 2019. Post COVID-19 Alana will launch its partnership with hotels and tour operators to create the ultimate City Break. This will be a rewarding new revenue stream for the Tourism Industry. Customers can use the virtual styling service or beauty stylists and have Alana deliver looks and products to their hotels, while still practising social distancing, ready for them to enjoy all the destination has to offer in style. Alana already has a crew of stylists working in New York and Ireland and is growing in global footprint. Community Manager Simone McCarthy says, "Alana is the uber of fashion giving customers access to clothes, accessories and more at their fingertips. For retailers it will boost online sales as well as showcasing their offering through the influencers affiliated with Alana. It is especially valuable for small independent boutiques who are not set up for online sales. There are so many independent fashion retailers that are not online and Alana App is a lifeline for them during COVID-19 as there is a readymade audience eager to keep up to date with fashion and indulge in some retail therapy." Alana is a superior user experience for shoppers due to the recommendation feature powered by Artificial Intelligence which gets to know a shopper's style and so can serve up clothes that are to the shoppers taste. Chloe Markham, Head of Fashion at Alana says, "Since joining Alana I have broadened my reach to a global audience. Alana allows women the luxury of having their own personal stylist at an affordable rate from the click of a button. It is fast, efficient, and affordable. We bring style to your door." Developed with UCC's Prof Barry O' Sullivan,Alana uses a patent pending technology within its AI recommendation engine. The unique gossip algorithm will tell you when your favorites are available and will alert you when that perfect dress arrives in store. Prof O'Sullivan says, "As users interact with styled looks on the platform, a user specific profile is generated that forms the basis of making highly personalised recommendations, helping to maximise the impacts of Alana on the high street."



Watch this space - major brand development announcement coming this Friday May 8th. Instagram: @Alana.ie, Twitter: @shopwithalana and Facebook: @alanaloves

Link to high res images in dropbox https://bit.ly/2L6KAIo About Alana Alana is considered the Uber of fashion offering a multi-store pick-up delivery service. Using state of the art artificial intelligence technology to bring fashionable outfits to our customers that we know they will love. Alana offers three distinct services to our customers: 1. We create styles and looks from which you can shop. You can choose to shop the whole look, items from the look or mix and match between looks. 2. We offer a multi-store pick up service meaning you can purchase items from multiple stores and will only ever pay one standard delivery rate of 3.99. 3. We also offer a bespoke virtual styling service. You can choose from any of our talented styling team and set up a virtual styling appointment. Here they will go through everything with you from budget, style, wardrobe decluttering, colours and more. Our Roots Backed by Serial Entrepreneurs Niamh Parker and Allan Beechinor a husband and wife team. They recognised the gap in the market for a multi-store delivery service. As a busy mother of four who loves fashion, Niamh had lost confidence in her style and her love for shopping as she did not have the time or the energy to go from shop to shop. Thus, Alana was created to allow the everyday woman with a busy lifestyle to buy back time. Alana is named after the couple's eight year old daughter Alannah in order to bring the children on the entrepreneurial journey with them. Global to Local Alana has a team of talented stylists based in Cork to New York! However, the mindset has always been to benefit our community. We do not store stock in warehouses, instead we collect items from local stores with the aim to save the High Street. We hope to benefit the environment from reducing packaging due to our multi-store shopping and also to benefit the local economy. By purchasing the items from local stores means supporting jobs in each City. Our mission is to save the High Street and provide retailers of all sizes a platform to be noticed, and sell to the world Virtual Style Sessions Alana is the stylish best friend you have always wanted. Our virtual styling sessions last one hour and cost just 35. Each appointment is completely tailored to the customer and the stylist of their choice will go through everything they want to discuss from style tips and tricks, colours, and seasons. "Since coming on board with Alana as Head of Fashion and as a stylist it has allowed me to further my reach and style women on a global scale as well as connecting local retailers to new customers. Alana allows women the luxury of having their own personal stylist at an affordable rate from the click of a button. It is fast, efficient, and affordable. We bring style to your door", Chloe Markham, Head of Fashion at Alana. Stylists are also supported by the recommendation system to help with the shopping and styling experience. Smarter Shopping Alana is the future of fashion, cleverly combining style with technology. Through the use of AI, Alana delivers personalised recommendations to our customers based on their own individual taste. No more aimless scrolling on multiple fashion sites! "Alana has a core component, a state-of-the-art AI engine, that uses personalisation to create an exceptional user experience" explains Barry O'Sullivan, AI Advisor. As users interact with styled looks on the platform a user-specific profile is generated that forms the basis for making highly personalised recommendations of other looks and items they might wish to consider. You can Shop the Look or Book a Stylist on Alana.ie and for more updates sign up for our newsletter. You can follow us on Instagram: @Alana.ie, Twitter: @shopwithalana and Facebook: @alanaloves If you have any questions, please email Simone on [email protected] or Niamh [email protected] View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/alana-citystylebot-is-the-stimulus-to-save-the-high-street-post-covid-19-301060036.html SOURCE Alana

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A school in Northern Ireland has claimed it was told to stop using Zoom and similar services (Peter Byrne/PA)

A Northern Ireland principal has claimed his school was told to stop using video-conferencing app Zoom due to security concerns.

BBC Radio Ulster's Nolan Show reported that the school was advised by a Department of Education official to stop using Zoom and other video-conferencing services as security could not be guaranteed.

It comes after reports of chats on Zoom and similar services being hacked with explicit material being displayed.

Many schools are relying on video-conferencing to allow them to continue teaching from home during the coronavirus pandemic.

The name of the affected school or its principal were not disclosed. Zoom sessions between teachers and pupils at the school have now been cancelled.

The Department of Education said they had no knowledge of the incident, but would "urgently investigate" any concerns.

A Zoom spokesperson said the company was "deeply upset" to hear of the incident and had recently introduced several measures to increase security.

In documentation seen by the BBC parents were warned that the school "strongly advised that we are unable to video conference with pupils for various significant child protection reasons".

"We await information from the Department of Education as to how schools might safely use this function".

NASUWT national official Justin McCamphill said the organisation "knew very little" about the incident, but were aware that Zoom was having security issues.

He acknowledged that efforts had been made to tighten up security on the program.

"If these things are still happening the message to schools should be stop using Zoom until these issues are resolved," Mr McCamphill told the Nolan Show.

The union official said that as far as he knew there had not been official guidance from the Department for Education on Zoom and similar services.

He said that NASUWT had produced advice for members that they "only should be using school based platforms, rather than commercial platforms".

"Our view is that if this is something that individual teachers wish to do, it should be on a department approved system," Mr McCamphill said.

A spokesperson for the Department of Education said: The Department expects schools to make provision for the children of key workers and vulnerable children and for remote learning, whether through the use of technologies or hard copy packs or a blend of both.

When schools are using technology, the safety and security of pupils must be the primary concern and for this reason schools continue to be encouraged to use the secure EA C2K services when setting up online learning opportunities and communicating with young people while they are home learning.

"EA C2K currently offer two video conferencing solutions within the secure education cloud network, Education Network NI and the Department recommends that schools make use of these.

The EA C2K service desk is available to continue to support school staff with technical and safeguarding advice around online learning during this challenging time.

The Zoom spokesperson said the company had a number of measures in place to help schools.

Zoom strongly condemns such behaviour and recently updated several features to help our users more easily protect their meetings," the spokesperson said.

"In addition to our offering of training, tutorials and webinars, Outschool and Nearpod are providing additional resources about online learning for educators.

"Zoom is committed to providing educators with the tools and resources they need on a safe and secure platform, and we are continuing to engage with all of our users on how they can best use Zoom and protect their meetings.

A spokesperson for the Education Authority (EA) said: We recognise the significant contribution of schools, as they continue to go above and beyond to provide both academic and pastoral care to children, young people and families during this challenging period and we are committed to supporting schools in their efforts to deliver effective home teaching and learning solutions.

"Our C2K network, which provides a range of online learning resources, currently offers two secure video conferencing solutions.

"Schools are encouraged to utilise C2Ks secure platforms and EA staff are available to provide professional training and safeguarding advice, upon request.

"We will continue to work closely with school leaders and further information on learning support is available at www.eani.org.uk.
Surfaces coated with a quaternary ammonium polymer have remarkable antiviral properties. They may even be capable of reducing the spread of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in areas with high risk for contamination, such as indoor environments or public places. University of Arizona researchers explain the antiviral potential of these in a new study published on the preprint server medRxiv*.

Image Credit: Fusion Medical Animation

Several months into the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic that has already claimed a large number of human lives and devastated economies worldwide, researchers still lack a complete understanding of the SARS-CoV-2 transmission process. We already know that the virus is primarily spread by droplets after coughing, sneezing, or even talking  all within a few feet range.

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) reported that the environmental stability of SARS-CoV-2 is up to three hours in the air after dispersal, four hours on copper, 24 hours on cardboard, and up to 23 days on stainless steel and plastic.

Inanimate surfaces that harbor both respiratory and enteric human viral pathogens are known as fomites. Levels of infectious viruses can be reduced by surface disinfection, consequently lowering their spreading potential in commercial, health care, and residential environments.

Alas, these surfaces can become recontaminated at any time after the usage of common liquid disinfectants that are generally wiped dry from surfaces. In recent years, many self-disinfecting surfaces with the ability to inactivate deposited pathogens have emerged. The main advantage of specific antiviral coating is rendering viruses non-infective in contact with a treated surface.

A research group from the Center for Water, Environment and Sustainable Technology at the University of Arizona in Tuscon, US, previously reported the use of a novel continuously active antimicrobial coating shown to reduce the spread of hospital-acquired infections in the clinical arena.

The second generation of this technology, designed to provide additional antiviral action, was recently developed. Hence, a new research endeavor by the same group looked to appraise the efficacy of this technology against a common cold coronavirus (human coronavirus 229E or HCoV-229E) so as to extrapolate the findings against SARS-CoV-2.

Appraising the antiviral coating performance

A strain of HCoV-229E was propagated and assayed in the human lung fibroblast MRC-5 cell line (which is commonly used in virology research, cytotoxicity testing, and even vaccine development), and then diluted to achieve the desired inoculum. The virus was then inoculated and dried onto control and treated carriers for testing purposes.

The American Society of Testing and Materials (ASTM) method was utilized to assess the antiviral coating performance. This quantitative technique is often used to evaluate the efficacy of sanitizers on pre-cleaned nonporous and non-food inanimate surfaces.

Finally, the efficacy of the test substance was determined by calculating the logarithmic reduction of infectious viral particles remaining after test product exposure during the 10-minute contact time, relative to the infectious viral titer in the control suspension.

The additional layer of protection

After conducting the experiments, the efficacy results were staggering; a reduction of more than 90% in the number of viral particles has been observed after ten minutes when compared to the untreated control surface and more than 99.99% within two hours.

Furthermore, when tested in suspension, the coating formulation yielded a greater than 99.99% reduction of HCoV-229E within only ten minutes of contact  showing remarkable residual efficacy against coronavirus.

This outcome presents a perfect opportunity for adequate control of COVID-19 transmission from contaminated fomites. However, this does not mean that regular procedures for high-touch surfaces should be completely neglected.

"Antimicrobial-coated surfaces are not meant to substitute for regular cleaning and disinfection of surfaces, but rather offer an additional barrier to reduce human exposure to infectious viruses from fomites," emphasize study authors.

High-touch fomites as an exposure route

During the fall season, pathogenic respiratory viruses (such as influenza and parainfluenza) can be found on at least one-third of common high-touch fomites, which therefore serve as an exposure route for the transmission of a wide array of infectious agents.

"It has been found that the contamination of a push plate door entrance into an office building can lead to contamination of 50% of the commonly touched surfaces and hands of office workers within four hours", emphasize study authors. "Interventions that employ disinfecting wipes have been shown to reduce the probability of infection in office settings," they add.

In any case, antimicrobial coatings could provide an additional layer of protection in hampering the spread of coronaviruses both indoors and in public places, where continuous contamination can be expected. They could actually prove to be an additional weapon in our armamentarium against COVID-19.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
Moroccos King Mohammed VI, supreme commander of the royal armed forces, commended the role played by the army in containing the coronavirus outbreak and their peacekeeping efforts in Africa.

In an Order of the Day marking the Royal Armed Forces 64th anniversary, the monarch expressed pride at the armys  permanent readiness to respond to the call of the Fatherland and to make the necessary sacrifices for its dignity and sovereignty, adding, to this is added this year, your immediate and strong involvement, pursuant to our high royal instructions, in the fight against the epidemic which is striking our country like other countries in the world, through the mobilization of all the human, material, medical accommodation and logistic resources available to our Armed Forces in order to participate in the fight against this pandemic and to limit its spread.

The King lauded the Royal Armed Forces professionalism and active contribution in the management of the pandemic citing the preparation and rapid deployment of military field hospitals, with the provision of a number of centers with a large reception capacity, in order to transform them, if necessary, into medical isolation units, in addition to the reinforcement of the hospital Centers under the ministry of Health by teams made up of doctors, nurses and social workers from the Royal Armed Forces, the Royal Gendarmerie and the Auxiliary Forces.

This gave rise to very beautiful images of national and professional solidarity with your civil counterparts in all the Kingdoms hospitals, said King Mohammed VI.

The King also praised the rapid interaction between the units of the various land, air and maritime components and the Royal Gendarmerie, and their strong involvement in the front lines of the fight against this pandemic, alongside the various bodies of National Police, the Auxiliary Forces, the Territorial Administration and Civil Protection Services, in raising awareness and implementing the measures of the health containment on the ground, which has fostered adherence and respect by all Moroccans for its implementation.

The Monarch also highlighted the professionalism and qualifications of the Royal Armed Forces and their sustained efforts to strengthen the surveillance and protection of the countrys land, sea and air borders by mobilizing the human element and providing it with the necessary equipment and the most advanced means of surveillance that enable it to effectively face the various threats.

Special emphasis was laid on the valor of the soldiers deployed in our southern provinces, in defense of our territorial integrity, as well as all the members of our Army who vigilantly and rigorously ensure the security of the borders.

The King also commended the members of the Royal Armed Forces taking part in peacekeeping operations in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Central African Republic, as well as the teams at the military field hospital in Zaatari.

In perfect symbiosis with the values of human solidarity rooted in our authenticity and our History, you have contributed to the enrichment of the Kingdoms capital in this field by organizing and supervising several international seminars, in partnership with the United Nations Organization, benefiting in this respect from the valuable and credible experience you have accumulated, said the Moroccan Monarch.
Everybody in Prince Charles' circle of friends said Princess Diana was an ideal match for the heir to the throne long before they started seeing each other.

Everybody, even the woman he left Princess Diana for, Camilla Parker Bowles.

When he presented Lady Diana Spencer as a potential suitor, Camilla was rooting that he picks her, as per biographer Howard Hodgson.

In 2007, he wrote, "Charles: The Man Who Will Be King," explaining how the Duchess of Cornwall attempted to welcome Diana after it was announced that she would become the Princess of Wales.

After the announcement of their engagement, Camilla even reportedly wrote to her, "Let's have lunch soon when the Prince of Wales goes to Australia and New Zealand. I'd love to see the ring. Lots of love, Camilla."

According to the author, Camilla's letter was "genuinely friendly" and that her intentions were "good."

The two had a great lunch together.

However, years later, Diana later remembered the meeting less fondly, believing that Camilla was only using it to work out when she would able to see Prince Charles after the wedding.

She told her biographer, Andrew Morton, "I didn't know about jealousy or depression or anything like that. I thought as far as she was concerned, that was her communication route. Still too immature to understand all the messages coming my way."

Camilla and Diana formed a close bond and had gotten to know each other.

They used to hang out at Bolehyde Manor, where Camilla lived with her husband at the time, Andrew Parker Bowles.

Diana, who used to be a nanny, would help Camilla look after her to small children, Tom and Laura.

"Camilla wanted to support her because she thought she was fun and made the Prince happy."

However, after the engagement, Lady Diana Spencer became distrustful of her friend.

According to Andrew Morton's book, he described how Diana was so upset by the Prince of Wales' decision to give Camilla a bracelet, with the initials G and F engraved in it just before his wedding in July 1981.

Diana was convinced that the initials meant "Gladys and Fred," which was said to be Prince Charles and Camilla's pet names for each other.

She also told Morton how she surprised Prince Charles and his friends by attending a celebration for Camilla's sister and engaged in a conversation with Camilla, where she told her she knew about their affair.

Princess Diana later recalled that Camilla said she had beautiful children before asking her what more could a princess still want in life.

And the Princess of Wales' response to that was, "I want my husband." Both women were left visibly shaken by the encounter.

When she confronted Prince Charles about the affair, the heir to the throne reportedly told her, "I refuse to be the only Prince of Wales who never had a mistress."

A couple of years pass by, there was no more contact between Camilla and Diana, but their relationship became very public when the royal marriage started shattering.

In an interview with Martin Bashir, Princess Diana famously said, "There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded."

READ MORE: Royal Love: Queen Elizabeth II, Prince Philip Making the Most Out of the Lockdown
Every year, for the entirety of Ramadan, the parking lot of the Mountain Mosque is packed each night  with some neighbouring businesses even offering up their lots for those attending congregational prayers.

This year, the doors are closed, with the COVID-19 pandemic seeing to the ban of all gatherings at places of worship in Ontario.

The nearly 2,000 Muslims that gather there are now at home.

Its usually bustling with activity, said Taher Ghouse, president of the Muslim Council of Greater Hamilton. Its always packed.

Throughout Ramadan, which began April 23 and will end May 24, Muslims worldwide observe a month of fasting, prayer, reflection and community.

Each night, they break their fast at dusk and usually, they head to the mosque and gather for iftar, their evening meal. But, amid the pandemic, they are unable to do so.

Its a time for spiritual revival, said Ghouse. That is what we miss now.

To help fill that gap, Ahmadiyya Muslim Jama`at Canada is hosting a virtual Ramadan event in Hamilton on May 16.

The event will be virtually attended by politicians and dignitaries and will include presentations on the importance of fasting and Ramadan itself, according to a release.

All Hamilton residents are welcome to take part and learn about the month of Ramadan.

The organization has hosted similar events for those living in Vancouver, Calgary and Windsor.

Those attending the event, slated to begin at 7:30 p.m., are encouraged to join the conversation around the event on social media using #VirtualRamadan. The live broadcast can be found at www.virtualramadan.ca.

Call to prayer

Last month, Hamilton City Council approved a motion allowing city mosques to broadcast their daily calls to prayer during the pandemic lockdown.

The symbolic twice-daily call to prayer, or adhaan  once at noon and again a half-hour before sunset  will be broadcast until the close of Ramadan on May 24.

Other regions in Canada and worldwide have also temporarily allowed the calls to prayer to be broadcast via outdoor speakers, including Peel, Halifax, Toronto and cities in Germany and the Netherlands.

Each broadcasted call to prayer in Arabic lasts about two or three minutes.
The employees were even told to submit falsified timesheets to make it look like they were still working full-time at the university, the report said. It was part of a poorly monitored and inconsistent system for firing certain workers, according to the report, which laid the blame squarely on Maimon, who served as GSUs president for 13 years.
On July 15, 1952, an exceptionally hot summer Tuesday in New York, thousands lined the waterfront on both sides of the Hudson and stuck their heads out of every window facing the harbor to get a glimpse of a ship.

Welcoming a new record breakera winner of the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, the unofficial yet highly prized honor denoting the worlds fastest shipwas not uncommon in those days. The ritual had been repeated more than half a dozen times in the previous 25 years. People had turned out in droves for the Normandie and for the Queen Mary, for the Bremen and the Europa and the Rex, as well as for the Queen Elizabeth and other contenders that never took the prize. The NYPD estimated that 100,000 packed the waterfront for the Normandies record-breaking arrival in 193530,000 in Battery Park grandstands specially erected for the occasion. The event made the front page of all eight of New Yorks daily newspapers, with the New York Journal putting out eight editions in a single day. WABC radio covered the arrival live for seven hours.

The race for the Ribandwhich, despite one farcical attempt at formalization, never existed as an actual awardwasnt just a contest of speed. It was for more than 100 years a competition among nations and a stage on which mankind demonstrated technological wizardry and aesthetic mastery. The stakes could be enormous. The first clear-cut case of one ships snatching the Blue Riband from anotherthe Great Western from the Sirius, in 1838essentially put the slower vessel out of business. Nations judged their maritime prowess in part by the quality of their transatlantic fleets, the most prestigious measure of which was the Riband.

The contest reached its apotheosis in the run-up to and aftermath of World War II. The ships built in that period surpassed all others in grace, luxury, speed, and size (and have since been bested only in the last category). They were the technical marvels of their time, the greatest of the works of man, in one writers phrase, and subjects of intense public fascination. Even people in landlocked little prairie townsfolks who would never see the ocean, much less an ocean linerknew the ships names and could tell them apart in photos with ease. The big ships were international celebrities in a way that no man-made object is today. Owners, builders, passengers, and spectators alike assumed that their ascendancy would continue forever.

The spectators on that hot July day didnt realize that this particular ritual would never be repeated again. The age of the transatlantic superliner would soon be over, a victim of the jet age. Today, the ships are almost forgotten, though two surviveincluding the SS United States, the last winner of the title. The men who built them, meanwhile, have been entirely forgotten, though the three greatest were heroes of industry, innovation, achievement, and perseverance.

The brain behind the United States belonged to William Francis Gibbs, a rail-thin, hollow-cheeked patrician who, even his friends conceded, looked like a cadaver. Born and raised in Philadelphia, Gibbs was seized by a passion for ships when his financier father took him, at age eight, to witness the launch of the SS St. Louis, a transatlantic liner built by a client of the family firm. This was my first view of a great ship, and from that day forward I dedicated my life to ships, Gibbs later recalled.

Gibbs had three obsessions, in fact: ships, fires, and superstitions. He would not sign letters containing 13 paragraphs, and he carried a small piece of wood in his wallet to knock on. He also designed some of the most innovative firefighting equipment ever built. His 1938 boat Fire Fighter, for 70 years the Fire Department of New Yorks flagship, put out dozens of fires in and around the harbor, including the blaze at Ground Zero after 9/11.

But ships were his true love. Young William flunked out of Harvard not because he didnt study but because he spent all his time teaching himself naval architecture, a subject for which the university had no formal program. To please his father, Gibbs reenrolled at Columbia, where he earned three degrees in two years. He took up the law, spent two years on his first case, won itand quit the next day to pursue his maritime dreams.

In 1915, Gibbs finagled an audience with J. P. Morgan, then owner of the worlds largest commercial fleet. At a time when the biggest ship in the world was less than 800 feet long, Gibbs pitched Morgan a pair of megaliners exceeding 1,000 feet apiece. Morgan commissioned a design, but less than two years later, the United States entered World War I, and the government forbade construction before any work had started. Gibbs found plenty of work planning and supervising the revitalization of the U.S. Navy. But he never lost sight of the big ship of his dreams.

Vladimir Yourkevitch, a young naval architect, was working for the Imperial Russian Navy in 1912, when Czar Nicholas returned from a visit to his first cousin, King George V of the United Kingdom, determined to build a navy as impressive as Britains. Yourkevitch, one of the juniormost men on staff, was not initially considered for this prestigious work. But he had radical ideas. He conceived a hull shape that was absolutely unusual and new: paunchy in the middle but extremely pointed fore and aft. Yourkevitch was convinced that the new shape would greatly reduce drag, allowing the ship to reach higher speeds and conserve fuel.

His superiors werent interested, so he pestered them until they agreed to test a model based on his theories. In test after test, his design handily beat the traditional hulls drafted by the old-guard staff. Still disbelieving, the Russian admirals arranged for a repeat at Europes most sophisticated and celebrated test tanka large tank of water that simulates ocean currents, waves, swell, and wind conditions for hull models submerged in it. Here, in Bremerhaven, Germany, Yourkevitchs model won yet again, and all the German marine engineers pronounced it years beyond anything they had ever seen. Yourkevitch got the job.

Construction began on four battleships of his design, but the Russian Revolution began before any could be completed. Yourkevitch fought briefly on the White Russian side, but by 1920 hed made his way to Turkey and then to Paris. No one in France would hire him to design ships, despite his entreaties. Dejected, he took the only job he could find: riveting cars on the Renault assembly line.

After the Great War ended, Gibbs rekindled his dream of building a big ship, but he could find no commissions. So much tonnage had been built before the war that the shipping trade faced a glut, which only intensified as the U.S. sharply limited immigration, cutting off what had been the shipping companies most reliable revenue streamtransporting European emigrants. Gibbs was, however, charged with refitting the German liner Vaterlandseized as a war prize and operated by the U.S. Navy as a troopshipfor commercial service under the American flag with the new name Leviathan. He did a magnificent job under trying circumstances, but the ship mostly lost money. Because of Prohibition, her crossings had to be dry; the European competition, once past the international limit, could and did serve booze. The Leviathan also had no comparable sister ship, the lack of which, for an aspiring front-rank liner, was always a drag on passenger loyalty.

Sir Percy Bates understood such problems well. He had been born into a shipping family and groomed for the business. At 31, Bates joined the board of Cunardsince 1839, the North Atlantics premier shipping lineand rose to vice chairman by the time he was 43, in 1922. Business was booming, and Cunards Mauretania held the Blue Riband, but Bates could see trouble ahead. His prestigious fleet was aging. Eventually, either the machinery or passenger enthusiasm would give out.

Successful North Atlantic passenger lines ran a weekly schedule. That is, every week, on the same day of the week, a ship from a given company would leave New York bound for Europe, and anothersimilar if not identical in size, speed, and accommodationwould embark in the opposite direction. At the dawn of the steam age, it took six ships to maintain such a schedule. By the eve of World War I, advances in technology and ever-increasing hull sizes had reduced the number to three.

Bates was not the first to wonder whether it could be done with two. Back in 1907, in the course of flunking out of Harvard, Gibbs had conceived the same ideabefore even the first three-ship weekly service had been built. But Bates was the man who would build the only two-ship service ever to sail. It is a measure of Gibbss genius that the dimensions and speed of Batess pair were almost identical to the numbers that Gibbs had calculated as a 20-year-old with no formal training.

In 1926, Bates took the first steps toward making this vision a reality, but the projected costs stirred the Cunard boards opposition. Two events changed their minds. First, in 1929, the aged Mauretania lost the Blue Riband after 22 years to the German liner Bremena replay of the events of 1897, when Germany first took the prize that Britain had held almost since the advent of steam. Bates feigned indifference. He always maintaineddespite a record that by then included 12 Blue Riband holdersthat safety and reliability were the companys only concerns. Records mean risk, and I am not for taking risks, Bates sniffed. I am certainly not in any racing mood. Yet he also quietly authorized the Mauretanias captain to make one last try. The old ship beat her best speed by a full knotan incredible feat, but not enough.

Second, Frances Compa- gnie Generale Transatlantique (CGT, or the French Line) announced that France, for the first time, would build a potential record breaker. That not only woke up Cunard; it got Vladimir Yourkevitchs attention, too. He assumed, as he would recall later, that shipbuilding engineering in Europe had made such incredible progress that my ideas would turn out to be too outdated. But from what he could see from the newspaper photos, none of his 15-year-old concepts had been incorporated into the latest ships. He was, he said, absolutely amazed and overjoyed to realize that Europe still hadnt got any nearer to the problems that he had solved in Russia. Yourkevitch determined then and there that he would design Frances new superliner. The only thing left to do was notify the owners.

Drafting the design for Cunards new liner turned out to be the easy part. The outlines were determined by the service requirements: it was clear that to run a weekly schedule with just two ships, those vessels would have to be far larger and faster than any that had come before. Later, when cajoled to boast about his creations, Bates would say merely that they represented the smallest and slowest ships which could fulfill the conditions necessary for a regular weekly service. From any other man, this would have been false modesty; the taciturn Bates meant every word.

In getting the initial vessel built, Bates faced obstacle after obstacle. First, he couldnt find sufficient insurance. The private market, remembering Lloyds stupendous losses from the Titanic and Lusitania disasters, balked at the necessary sums. So Bates worked out a deal wherein the governmentto help relieve unemployment in the Clydebank, in Scotland, where the ships would be builtwould underwrite a third of the risk.

The next hurdle was that Britain had no drydock large enough to service such gargantuan liners. A game of chicken between Cunard and the Southern Railway Company, owner of the Southampton docks, chewed up a year. Bates expressed his position tersely in a telegram to Britains Board of Trade, a government body tasked with promoting commerce, industry, and employment: No drydock, no ship. Bates eventually won the day. Incidentally, the resulting King George V Dry Dock not only proved profitable; it was invaluable during World War II and is the only drydock still in use in Southampton today.

On the other side of the Atlantic, there was no pier in New York big enough, either. The city was willing to build oneat a rent 15 times what Cunard was then paying, at a time when traffic and profits were falling. Bates once again had to play hardball. It seems to me, he wrote to his U.S. manager, as though we may have to consider providing a Southampton to the London which calls itself New York. Cunards first American port had been Boston, he reminded city hall, and perhaps Beantown would not mind picking up the trade again.

City hall caved, but that only led to another complication. Piers big enough to support the new liners needed to be 1,100 feet long, which would interfere with the Hudson Rivers deepwater channel. As a solution, the Army Corps of Engineers extended the piers the other directioninto Manhattanblasting and shoveling out a chunk of the island 325 feet wide by 15 blocks long. Ever notice how 12th Avenue takes a little jog eastward at 42nd Street and then jogs back west at 57th? Now you know why.

On December 1, 1930, the first keel plate was laid, with a launch date set for June 1932 and a maiden voyage planned for the following spring.

Vladimir Yourkevitch spent the closing months of the 1920s making a pest of himself with conduct that would, in our day, result in a restraining order. He wrote, he wired, and he calledwith exasperating persistenceofficials at CGT and the Penhoet shipyard, where the new French liner would be built. All his entreaties were ignored. Finally, he contacted an old friend from the Russian navy who had been welcomed into Frances military establishment. The officer got Yourkevitch a meeting.

The shipyard chairman, Rene Fould, barely concealed his disdain for Yourkevitchs poverty, his lowly job, and his broken French. Still, he took Yourkevitchs drawings and gave them to one of his engineers, expecting to hear no more of the matter. Weeks later, to Foulds astonishment, the engineer reported that the Yourkevitch design principles were better than any he had seen. Fould convened his entire staff to confirm the result. They did. He then persuaded CGT to let him disclose to a complete stranger the dimensions of the liner that it wantedrisking a disastrous leak that might give Cunard or some other rival line an advantage in planning a new ship.

For months, Yourkevitch stayed up late in his cramped Paris apartment drafting his dream ship. One of his friends later recalled that he created his work in primitive, refugee-style surroundings, where the drawing board was the most sacred object. On the walls, on the floor and on the desks there were volumes of correspondence, tables, diagrams. Once he was finished, there began a process that must have seemed like 1912 all over again. Since the French government would foot the bill for much of the new ships initial cost, Admiralty engineers were brought in to check Yourke- vitchs design. Convinced that his numbers had to be wrong, they insisted on a series of tank testsbut Yourkevitchs model, put up against 25 different French-designed hulls, won every time. Still unprepared to accept the results, the engineers traveled to Germany to run the tests in a more sophisticated tank. Yourkevitch won yet again. French officials made the unprecedented move of consulting the German designers of the Bremen. They agreed that Yourkevitchs design was superior. Even so, it took CGTs managers a month of anguished deliberations to decide to risk everything on this radical, untried design from an assembly-line worker at an auto plant.

But they did it. The French superliners keel was laid down in early 1931, on Yourkevitchs design. I had to sustain a long fight, Yourkevitch later recalled. The forms I suggested were so different from the ones that were generally accepted, that I had to argue in their favor to the end. Many confident and persistent men are cranks and kooks, but Vladimir Yourkevitch, it turned out, was exactly the visionary he believed himself to be. Virtually every ship constructed since has followed the principles that he discovered in Saint Petersburg with pencil and paper in the first years of the twentieth century. Decades later, when William Francis Gibbs was designing his masterpiece, the United States, the U.S. military allowed him access to the legendary ENIAC, the first supercomputer. He ran a series of sophisticated calculations to determine the best hull shape for minimizing drag, reducing fuel consumption, and maximizing speed. All on its own, the computer arrived at . . . the Yourkevitch hull.

During 1931, the British and French hulls went up as if in a race to see which nation could get into the water first. But that year was disastrously slow for passenger traffic on the North Atlantic. Cunard was running out of cash to continue construction. The subsidized French Line faced no such difficulty. Bates, by then Cunards chairman, suspended the companys dividend and slashed pay for every worker, including himself. It wasnt enough. Work on the hull was halted on December 11, 1931, a mere five months before the scheduled launch. The stoppage threw more than 13,000 men out of work and devastated the economy of western Scotland. Half the total wages paid in the Clydebank had been generated directly or indirectly by that one project.

Britain responded with a mixture of disbelief, outrage, compassion, and misplaced heroism. The Daily Telegraph editorialized: From the moment that particulars about her were made known, the British people took her to their hearts as the boat that was to recapture the lost Blue Riband of the Atlantic now worn, because worthily won, by the German Bremen. The decision to stop work will be felt as a direct blow to national pride. Cunard received thousands of letters from ordinary people offering small amounts of money to get work restarted. But the money wasnt enough.

534the hull, not yet named, was known by her yard numberrusted for 28 months, becoming home to thousands of nesting birds in the process. The French launched Yourkevitchs ship, christened Normandie, on October 29, 1932. Even worse, the Italian liner Rexnamed by Mussolini himself to curry favor with Italys royalist factionentered service that year and won the Riband in 1933. Britain was not just falling behind; she was losing to two of the North Atlantics also-rans.

Batess salvation came from an unlikely source. The White Star Line had been one of Cunards major rivals in the years before World War I. The loss of the ill-fated Titanic in 1912 and of her sister, the Britannic, in 1916 permanently crippled the companys competitiveness. Sensing an opportunity, Bates had tried for years to acquire White Star, but its directors always insisted on a merger on equal terms. Chancellor of the Exchequer Neville Chamberlain, who believed that Britains two main steamship lines faced a competitive disadvantage against the nationalized lines of the other European powers, had long cajoled Bates to give way. Now he had leverage. He hinted that, should Bates agree to a merger, the government could find its way toward a loan not just to finish 534 but to get started on a sister ship. For intellectual ammunition, Chamberlain commissioned a government report that concluded that the day when the two ships could be seen entering New York harbor flying the British flag can be regarded fairly as a spectacular expression of British technical performance.

The Prince of Wales, fated to be remembered as the Nazi sympathizer who gave up the throne for a shrew, played a constructive role in this drama. Convinced by David Kirkwood, the Clydeside MP, that the ship means work. It means life. It means the prestige of the British Empire and the Blue Riband of the Atlantic, the prince made a well-publicized visit to Clydebank families that helped turn public opinion in favor of the loan. Despite Labour grumbling about treasury funds paying for a millionaires ship, the loan passed, the CunardWhite Star company was created, and on April 3, 1934, work resumed on the hull. Six months later, the ship was launched and dubbed Queen Mary; the queen herself did the honors.

The Normandie made her maiden voyage the following May. The ship was in every respect a marvel: the first thousand-footer in history and the first to exceed not merely 60,000 tons but 70,000. Beautiful on the outsideYourke-vitchs improbable hull gave her a yachtlike elegance rare for such a large shipshe was a marvel on the inside as well, a floating apotheosis of the art deco style. Frances most prominent artists and designers provided decor, from Laliques towering glass fountains in the first-class dining room to the Babar murals in the childrens playroom drawn by Brunhoff himself. The works, grand and of a scale that would have been impressive enough on shore, were simply unprecedented for a ship.

The passenger list for the Normandies debut was packed with glitterati: New York and Paris socialites; the political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenel; his mistress (and stepmother), the writer Colette; the Maharaja of Kapurthala; Madame Lebrun, wife of the president of France. Also on board (in first class, courtesy of CGT) were Monsieur and Madame Vladimir Yourkevitch.

The Normandie needed only one more thing to make her triumph complete, and she got it, winning the Blue Riband from the Italian Rex on that first crossing. Until her last day at sea, the ships officers disclaimed any attempt at the Riband. That this was disingenuous nonsense became clear when, the record secure, the crew unfurled a 30-meter (one for each knot of speed) blue ribbon and flew it from the mainmast.

In keeping with maritime custom, CGT offered the public the chance to tour the ship while in port. One of the tourists was William Francis Gibbs. The tour route was supposed to be confined to the ships public spaces, but Gibbs managed to sneak into the engine and boiler rooms and later found his way to the smoking room, where he dictated stream-of-consciousness observations to an overwhelmed assistant.

Bates, too, wanted a peek at the new French liner. He dispatched five Cunard engineers to Plymouth, where they boarded the Normandie for the five-hour journey to her home port of Le Havre and combed the ship for any intelligence worth relaying to Liverpool. The worst thing they could find to say was that the Normandie suffered vibration in her afterdecks.

The following springten years after Bates first conceived the ship in his mind, and three years later than he had plannedthe Queen Mary finally made her own first crossing. Bates wrote to David Kirkwood: On the Queen Marys sailing day it seems appropriate that I should write a line to you to express my appreciation of your faith and help in this great work. This is only your due. I sail in her today a thankful and hopeful man.

For the normally laconic Bates, this was effusive language. Indeed, he was in such a good mood that, when queried by the press about a run at the record, he spoke the only nondisparaging words about the Blue Riband that ever passed his lips: With what is called the Blue Riband the Cunard Company today is indirectly concerned. If it can be obtained it will be a valuable advertising point, but its attainment is merely incidental to a far bigger fact.

Like the previous years maiden outing for the Normandie, this one was a grand affairpleasure craft, fireboats, packed waterfronts, and all. Most of the royal familyled by the new king, Edward VIIItoured the ships accommodations and dined on board the day before sailing, which happened to be the ships namesakes birthday. More than 100 reporters made the voyage, and hundreds more saw the ship off from the Southampton docks or greeted her in New York. Thirty thousand people toured her on both sides of the Atlantic. As the ship approached New York Harbor, World War I ace Eddie Rickenbacker flew out in a DC-2 to greet her, circled low, and dropped a bundle of carnations on her deck.

In two respects, the Queen Marys debut was more successful than her rivals. She was measured as slightly larger, though also slightly shorter, than the Normandie. (This advantage would not last; the following year, CGT added an enormous afterdeck salon that pushed its ships size past Marys.) Also, the British ship carried well over 1,800 passengers, nearly double the Normandies maiden-voyage total. Throughout the three seasons during which the two ships competed head-to-head, the Queen Mary proved consistently more popularand more profitable.

But she failed to take the Riband. Bates shrugged that off: All we require for this schedule is 28.5 knots, and I think we have got a ship which will do that and perhaps more. Some day we may find out what the vessel can do. That day came only a few months later, in August 1936, when the Queen Mary won the Riband. Bates, in character, explained that the voyage was just a fact-finding experiment. We are at the moment engaged in consideration of the details of the Queen Marys sister-ship, he said. To help us to a proper consideration of the details of the machinery and the propellers the round voyage such as the Queen Mary has run this last fortnight was of the greatest help.

The Normandie took back the Riband in March 1937. She then bested her own record that August, cracking 31 knots for the first time. But the Queen ultimately proved faster. A year later, she completed a crossing at an average speed of 31.7 knots, a record that would stand for 14 years.

One man who refused to be impressed by the Queen Marys success was Vladimir Yourkevitch, who, by this time, had parlayed his part in the Normandie saga into a thriving naval architecture practice. He never tired of pointing out that the Queen Mary needed 40,000 more horsepower than his Normandie to achieve that extra half-knot. Side by side on his office wall hung framed aerial photos of each ship at full speed. Thanks to her revolutionary hull, the Normandie cut through the water with barely a ripple, whereas the Queen Mary was surrounded by a foamy white wake.

In September 1938, Cunard launched Marys running mate, the Queen Elizabeththe honors performed, once again, by the ships namesake, wife of the man who inherited the throne after his brothers abdication. The king was supposed to attend as well, but the simmering crisis over the fate of Czechoslovakia kept him in London. Three days later, his prime ministerthe same man who, as chancellor of the exchequer five years earlier, had cut the deal to ensure that the ship got builtreturned from Munich declaring peace in our time.

Vladimir Yourkevitch hung around Paris in anticipation of being commissioned to design a ship to top the Normandie. The French Line made noises about such a project but shelved it because of low passenger traffic and lack of financing. Frustrated, Yourke-vitch emigrated to the United Stateson the Normandie, of courseand opened a naval architecture practice at 17 State Street in lower Manhattan.

A few blocks away, at 21 West Street, William Francis Gibbs was drawing up plans for the first major passenger ship to be built in America in more than a decade. She would not be the big ship of his dreams, but she would be the largest passenger liner ever constructed in the United States up to that time. Yourkevitch bid for the contract as well, but Gibbs won it. The ship would be named America. Eleanor Roosevelt presided over the launch, on August 31, 1939.

The next day, Germany invaded Poland, and crossing the North Atlantic suddenly got dangerous. All summer, as tensions increased, the Normandie and the Queen Mary had carried record-setting passenger loads westbound but sailed virtually empty eastbound. The day before the America was launched in Newport News, Virginia, the Queen Mary left Southampton carrying 2,332 paying passengersher largest commercial load ever. War was declared while the ship was en route; the crew blacked out the portholes to obscure the ships profile from prowling U-boats. By the time the Queen arrived in New York, the Normandie was sitting at the next pier south, her eastbound crossing first postponed, then canceled.

For six months, the two behemoths stood idle. Most of their crews were sent home aboard whatever merchant ships could take them. Small groups of seamen and engineers stayed behind to perform the ongoing task of staving off in-port deterioration. Weeks stretched into months, and the ships seemed to become permanent features of the West Side waterfront.

In London, politicians questioned why Britain should waste resources maintaining useless liners in wartime. One member of Parliament suggested that the Queen Mary be sold to the Americans. The bigger question was what to do with the Queen Elizabeth, still unfinished on the River Clyde. With no passenger traffic to speak of, many argued that Britain didnt need even one mammoth liner, much less two. Proposals ranged from converting the Queen Elizabeth into an aircraft carrier to breaking her up for steel.

But Britains top civilian naval official was the same man who had held the job during the previous world war. He well remembered how invaluable the great liners had been in that conflict, during which they ferried troops, supplies, prisoners of war, and wounded men to and from distant theaters. Thus did Winston Churchill not only scotch any talk of selling the liners; he personally saved the Queen Elizabeth from destruction.

The Germans knew that there were only two tides in the entire year during which the River Clyde would be deep enough for the liner to escape to sea. Work proceeded at a fevered paceon essential systems onlyto meet the earlier date. On February 26, 1940, a drab-gray Queen Elizabeth crept down the river unannounced, at first watched by fewer than 100 people. But as word spread, thousands crammed the riverbank to see off the worlds largest shipan honor that she would retain until the construction in 1961 of the USS Enterprise, Americas first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.

British subterfuge convinced spies that the Elizabeth was headed for Southampton. Churchill, knowing the southern port to be easily within range of German bombers, had other ideas. A courier brought the ships captain Admiralty orders in a sealed envelopenot to be opened until the Elizabeth was at seathat instructed him to make all haste for New York. Only then was the news announced to the ships 400 crewmen, most of whom hadnt brought even a change of clothes. Churchills misdirection worked: German bombers were spotted circling the entrances to Southamptons harbor several times in early March. Hitler had offered an enormous bounty$250,000 and an Iron Crossto any U-boat commander or bomber pilot who could sink one of the Queens.

When the ship was about a day from New York, she was spotted by a TWA airliner en route to Boston. The news soon spread and caused a sensation, leading the front pages of all the New York papers and making the newsreels. The Post admiringly referred to the ship as an Empress Incognito. The Times ran an editorial praising British maritime might and daring. Spectators, as ever, packed the riverfront to get a glimpse of her.

The Queen Elizabeth docked next to the sister she was meeting for the first time and three blocks up from the Normandie. (Longtime readers of City Journal may recall the magazines Autumn 2006 issue, whose cover reproduces a painting of the great event.) The worlds three largest shipsthe first-ever thousand-foot ships and the first-ever 80,000-tonnerswere together for the first time. It would also be the last time. Two weeks later, the Queen Mary left for Cape Town, Singapore, Sydney, and extended war service. The Queen Elizabeth followed in November, leaving the Normandie alone at her pier.

William Francis Gibbs had a busy war. No naval architects services were in higher demand; the Department of the Navy later estimated that his firm designed 75 percent of the American tonnage built during the war, including the concept and blueprints for the Liberty Ship. Gibbs became so integral to the war effort that in 1942, he made the cover of Time.

Bates was also integral, but in a different way. Cunards fleet proved invaluable to the Allies: instead of ferrying the well-heeled between Southampton and New York, it carried Tommies, Diggers, and GIs to and from far-flung theaters of war. For the first few years of the conflict, the Queens operated well clear of their U-boat-infested home waters. But as the focus of the war shifted back to Europe, the ships returned to the North Atlantic, carrying to Britain more than 1.5 million of the American and Canadian troops who would land in Normandy on D-day, liberate Western Europe, and defeat Nazi Germany. Winston Churchill later wrote that the two Queens helped to lessen the war in Europe by at least a year. It was an estimate that Percy Bates was never tired of repeating.

Yourkevitch, like Gibbs, spent the war years working on ship designs for the U.S. Navy, but he never achieved anything like Gibbss fame. CGT officials, not eager to publicize that Frances great triumph had been designed by a Russian, never exactly denied Yourkevitchs role in the Normandie, but neither did they go out of their way to acknowledge it. The French government decorated every senior member of Penhoet and CGT for services to Franceexcept Yourkevitch. A special edition of the British magazine The Shipbuilder, published to commemorate the Normandies maiden voyage, displays the photos of 23 men involved in her construction. Yourke-vitch is nowhere mentioned. In America, though, Yourke-vitch was respected enough to lecture at MIT, the University of Michigan, the Naval War College, and other top engineering and naval architecture schools.

For some two and a half years after the outbreak of war, Yourkevitchs most glamorous creation was tied up at her Hudson River pier, about halfway between his Riverside Drive apartment and his office downtown. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. government, under the right of angary, seized every nominally belligerent ship in an American port; since unoccupied France now cooperated with the Axis powers, that included the Normandie. The seizure made front-page news across the country. The Navy renamed the ship Lafayette and set about converting her into a trooper.

The first order of business was to carry off any furnishings and objets dart that could be moved. Some could not. The Grand Salon housed four towering Lalique glass lamps, supported by steel stanchions anchored to the decks. These had to be cut down with acetylene torches. The work began methodically on a cold Monday morning, February 9, 1942. A small crew of menone wielding the torch, one holding a shield to deflect sparks, the others standing ready to carry away debris and douse any flamescut through the stanchions base supports. As they cut through the last leg of the last stanchion, a small spark leaped onto some life jackets piled nearby. A fire started and spread fast.

A Keystone Kops routine followed. The men on fire patrol rushed forward to confront the flames but tripped over the buckets of emergency water, spilling their entire contents. No hose was at hand; then one was found in a neighboring compartmentbut its American couplings did not fit the French standpipes (something that other workers had already discovered but done nothing to fix). By that time, the flames had engulfed the Grand Salon and were spreading into passageways and other rooms. The Normandie boasted what was, at the time, the most sophisticated fire-prevention system ever put to sea. But the Americans had not bothered to staff the fire-control room and had even shut off the pumps that fed the system, preferring instead to rely on a small number of roving watchmen, almost none of them trained firefighters.

There was no systematic attempt to fight the fire. The workmen did not know the ship well enough to find their way through its warren of passages, and their equipment was woefully inadequate. By the time the FDNY arrived, the fire had spread up three decks and almost the entire length of the ship. Before long, all attempts to fight the fire from the inside gave way to efforts to fight it from the outsidelargely from city fireboats, including Gibbss 1938 masterpiece, the Fire Fighter. The boats pumped enormous jets of harbor water into the Normandies upper decks but could not keep pace with the spreading flames. By late afternoon, a column of smoke rose high above Pier 88. The water added so much weight to the burning ship that she began to list badly.

A huge crowd gathered on the West Side waterfront. Mayor LaGuardia himself, a notorious fire buff, showed up in his personal FDNY helmet and boots to survey the scene. Sitting in his office, Yourkevitch received a call from a Russian friend of his wifes: Vladimir Ivanovitch, your Normandie is burning! He raced uptown to find his beloved ship engulfed in flame. The staff officers of Rear Admiral Adolphus Andrews, who was in charge of the ship, ordered the fireboats to keep pumping, believing that the Normandie was stable.

Yourkevitchthe only man on the scene who understood the hulls buoyancy calculations and center of gravityknew otherwise. The Normandies list was dangerous and getting worse. More water meant more weight: eventually, the ship would capsize. In vain, Yourkevitch tried to get someone to listen to him. The only way to save the ship, he said, was to open the seacocks, let water flood into her bilge tanks, and allow the bottom to settle into the mud scarcely eight feet below. He claimed to be (and he surely was) the only person on the scene who knew the location of all the valves and offered to go aboard and operate them himself. Eventually, his proposal reached Admiral Andrews, who thundered, This is a Navy job! Dejected, Yourke-vitch drifted home.

Its debatable whether Yourkevitch could have survived the attempt to go belowdecks on the burning vessel. One thing, however, was certain: no other course of action had any hope of saving the ship, and the one that was followed sealed her fate. The water kept coming for several more hours until the mayor and the admiral both pronounced the fire contained. But the Normandies list continued to worsen, and workers could not pump water out fast enough. At midnight, she was listing so badly that the admiral ordered the ship evacuated. Pumping efforts stopped. The ships port side sagged further, increasing its angle almost imperceptibly, like the hands of a clock, until, at 2:45 AM on February 10, she keeled over into the Hudson.

When informed the next day, FDR pounded his desk and screamed at Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox. Public outcry over the disaster was cacophonous. Sabotage rumors and accusations flew widely. Thousands of citizens wrote letters to newspapers and to their congressmen, demanding that heads roll or offering tips on who done it. In 1939, the CGT liner Paris had burned at her Le Havre pier in an act of sabotage whose culprit and motive have never been determined. That disaster was fresh in the public mind in February 1942. Yet four subsequent investigations found that carelessness, not arson, had killed the Normandie.

Yourkevitch, never one to give up hope, immediately set about drawing plans for righting and refitting the ship. Several other architects, including Gibbs, also submitted detailed proposals. In one of the largest and most complex salvage operations of all time, the Normandie was righted and refloated in August 1943but only after her superstructure had been shorn off. Refit proved too expensive and impractical. The hulk was towed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where it lay until it was finally scrapped in 1946.

After the war, New York hotel magnate Hyman Cantor proposed building two enormous vessels and hired Yourkevitch to design them. The Russian plunged in with gusto, but his hopes were again dashed when Cantor was unable to secure financing. Yourkevitch died in 1964, never having landeddespite many attemptsthe commission that would enable him to top his Normandie. Against that one great disappointment, however, stands this indelible achievement: no single figure more changed the course of naval architecture in the last 100 years. Virtually every ship in the water todayfrom cruise ships to tankers to cargo haulers to aircraft carriersowes its form to Vladimir Yourkevitch.

The Queens put in months of postwar servicereturning American troops from Europe, taking prisoners of war home in the other direction, and delivering war brides to their new countries. Elizabeth was first to be released from government duty, in March 1946. Cunard rushed to get her ready for her first commercial crossing that October, which it billed as her maiden voyage. Even though she had been in service for six years and sailed some half a million miles, Elizabeth had never worn Cunard colors or carried a single paying passenger. Her commercial debut was to be a momentous event not just for Bates and for Cunard, but for all of Britain. The reborn passenger ships would be floating manifestations of the Britain Can Make It postwar PR campaignsymbols of the countrys emergence from war and return to its long-standing commercial greatness.

Sir Percy Bates was on the passenger list, of course. As he had sailed on Marys first trip in 1936 and had been scheduled to sail on Elizabeths aborted April 1940 maiden voyage, so he planned to go this time. The night before the voyage, Bates hosted the royal family for dinner in the first-class dining room. Then, as his luggage was being loaded, he disembarked to tie up a few loose ends at his office. There he collapsed from a heart attack.

He died two days later, Elizabeth well out in the middle of the Atlantic. Commodore James Bisset, the ships master, led a memorial service on board. Sir Percy Bates was mainly responsible for the building of these two great vessels, the Queen Mary and the Queen Elizabeth, Bisset said. He watched them grow from masses of steel girders and plates into the magnificent structures that they are today. They were the children of his brain. He lived for them, he worked for them, he wore himself out with anxieties for them, and he has died for them.

Less than a year later, in July 1947, the Queen Mary returned to commercial service, joining her younger sister for the first time in the role that both were built to play. Marys first-class dining room boasts a two-deck-high mural of the North Atlantica gigantic tableau with tracks showing the routes of the two sister ships. In the glory days, mechanically driven crystal models of each vessel plied that virtual sea, allowing passengers a glimpse of their progress. On August 3, 1947, the two modelsand the ships they representedconverged for the first time in peace. That mid-ocean meeting would be repeated almost every week for the next 20 years, 15 of which were the most profitable that Cunard ever enjoyed. The company paid back its loans to the British government, delivering a handsome profit to the treasury on its investment.

Forty years after he conceived the idea, William Francis Gibbs finally got the chance to build his dream ship. American defense officials were cognizant of the Queens role in winning World War II and painfully aware of their own countrys lack of any comparable merchant fleet. With a cold war budding, the need to move huge numbers of American troops could arise at any moment. The Navy persuaded Congress to bankroll 50 percent of the construction costs of a new liner, provided the ship be designed with quick conversion to military duties in mind. Formally, she would be called the United States. Her crew called her the Big U. But from the moment he got the contract until the day he died, Gibbs always referred to her simply as the big shipas if there were, and ever had been, only one.

Into his design, he packed a lifetime of insights, original and borrowed, book-learned and hard-won. The essentials of the Yourkevitch hull remained, but refinedsleeker, lower to the water, with a shallower draft. There wasnt an ounce of superfluous flesh on her, writes John Maxtone-Graham, author of the classic The Only Way to Cross, only a lean frame that hinted strongly at the Blue Riband. Rivets were flush-driven to reduce drag, a technique pioneered for aircraft by Howard Hughes. On the upper decks, welding substituted for rivets, a harbinger of the future: within a decade, rivets would disappear completely from shipbuilding. The hull had a glassy-smooth appearance unprecedented on the high seas.

The true greatness of the ship, however, lay belowdecks. The details of her power plant were kept secret for years, but we now know that, incredibly, she boasted two complete engine rooms (in case one was struck by a torpedo) and could generate steam heated to 980 degrees Fahrenheit at 1,000 psimore than twice as high as the pressure of the Queens steam, on fewer than half as many boilers. The best estimate of her horsepower (the official number is still a secret) is 240,00060,000 more than that of the Queens. We also know that on her trials, the United States achieved a scorching 38.32 knots and later even cracked 40the maritime equivalent of rocketry. On her maiden voyage, she averaged 35.59 knots over three and a half daysblowing away what the Mary could achieve on her fastest short burst.

Gibbs traveled on his big ship only once, for the maiden voyage, but called the bridge officers and engineers every day she was at sea until his death. The United States proved popular, but she scarcely cut into the Queens bookings. The decor was derided as sterile, and the lack of a true running matethe same problem that had afflicted the Normandiehurt. She was nonetheless a prominent and powerful symbol of American prowess during the early Cold War and remains the fastest single-hulled ship ever built.

Gibbs died on September 6, 1967. On that day, his greatest creation was in New York, beginning an eastbound voyage. As she passed Gibbss longtime office at 21 West Street, her flags flying half mast, the captain saluted her creator, and her whistle blew three loud blasts.

As the great liners had lived and thrived by speed, so they would die. Oceangoing transatlantic travel reached its peak in 1958, when more than 1.5 million paying passengers crossed by sea. But that year also saw the debut of the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, the first two commercially successful passenger jet aircraft. One year later, twice as many people crossed by air as by sea. The ratio would only grow.

The Queens were withdrawn from service in 1967 and 1968, the United States the following year. Elizabeth was eventually sold to a Hong Kong millionaire and fell victim to arson, though no suspects or motives were ever uncovered. She died as the Normandie had died, capsizing under the weight of water meant to quench the flames. The Queen Mary and the United States are, amazingly, still intact. The former is a floating museum and hotel in Long Beach, California. The latter is rusting in Philadelphia at a Delaware River pier, owned by a nonprofit conservancy that hopes to raise enough money to restore her to something like her former glory.

Twenty-five years was considered a long and full life for a liner. The Queen Mary sailed for 31 years, the Queen Elizabeth for 28, the United States for 17, and the Normandie for only four. When the end came, it brought no small degree of indignity to each of these great vessels. But perhaps the worst indignity is the extent to which their creators have been forgotten. These three great men did what they set out to do, against often infuriating obstacles and delays. In the process, they created jobs and wealth for thousands of people, linked the Old and New Worlds, helped win a war, captured the imagination of millions, and revolutionized shipping in ways that still affect everyday life. Long may the Blue Riband wave in their honor.

Photo: Well-wishers tip their hats to the Queen Mary as she is launched in 1934. (AP Photo)
According to the most recent government figures, almost 3 million workers applied for unemployment benefits last week in the United States, bringing the total number of jobless claims to roughly 36 million in the two months since the coronavirus forced businesses to shutter their doors. In addition, 842,000 people applied for aid through a separate federal program designated for self-employed and gig economy workers.

The report, issued by the US Department of Labor, indicates the premature reopening of the economy has done little to get Americans back to work, as its proponents have claimed. In fact, the number of unemployment claims last week is four times the record high recorded before March this year.

In Georgia, one of the first states to begin reopening parts of its economy, the number of unemployment claims reached 241,000. Florida, which allowed restaurants to open at one-quarter capacity, saw its claims rise to nearly 220,000 last week. Floridas unemployment agency is struggling to process the claims, meaning the actual number of unemployed is higher.

A woman looks at signs at a store in Niles, Ill., Wednesday, May 13, 2020. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)

Some states that have lifted restrictions, such as Texas and South Carolina, have experienced a decline in claims, prompting Donald Trump to tweet America is getting its life back.

Despite Trumps proclamation, many Americans are still facing hardship. The official unemployment rate for April soared to 14.7 percent from 4.4 percent in March as 20.5 million jobs were eliminated. In one month, the total number of jobs created in the last decade were wiped out.

The official unemployment numbers fail to fully grasp the severity of the issue. Government reports stated many workers who were furloughed or absent from work were still counted as employed in April. Additionally, millions of workers who were laid-off were discouraged and did not seek employment. If these workers were included in the official unemployment rate, it would reach nearly 24 percent.

According to projections by Goldman Sachs strategists, US economic activity as measured by gross domestic product (GDP) will contract by a staggering 39 percent in the second quarter, a revision of a previous prediction of 34 percent. Jan Hatzius and other economists predict that a 29 percent growth rate is expected in the third quarter, but growth will fall by 6.5 percent for the full fiscal year.

Goldman Sachs also predicts official unemployment will continue to rise. Previously, economists expected the unemployment rate to reach a high of 15 percent. However, new projections suggest a peak as high as 25 percent.

On Wednesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell reported that 40 percent of US households bringing in less than $40,000 a year lost a wage earner in March. This reveals the impact that the economic catastrophe wrought by the coronavirus has had on the poorest sections of the working class.

A report released by the Fed Thursday found that six percent of all adults either had their hours reduced or were forced to take unpaid leave. Altogether, 19 percent of adults reported either losing a job or experiencing a reduction in work hours in March.

This reversal of economic fortune has caused a level of pain that is hard to capture in words, as lives are upended amid great uncertainty about the future, Powell said at a virtual event hosted by the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington.

The scope and speed of this downturn are without modern precedent, significantly worse than any recession since World War II, Powell said. We are seeing a severe decline in economic activity and in employment, and already the job gains of the past decade have been erased.

Jobless workers in some states are still reporting difficulty applying for or receiving benefits amid the crisis. These include free-lance, gig and self-employed workers, who became newly eligible for jobless aid this year.

The federal stimulus payments from the CARES Act have still not been fully doled out to workers in dire economic straits. As of this week, the IRS has issued 130 million payments worth a total of $200 billion. This still leaves approximately 20 million Americans who are still awaiting financial assistance.

The levels of economic crisis currently experienced by tens of millions have not been seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s. According to Feeding America, up to 18 million children in America could become food insecure as a consequence of the coronavirus pandemic. All across the US, families wait in long lines at food banks to receive what little aid they can.

A massive crowd in lines hundreds of cars long turned out Thursday for food assistance from the North Texas Food Bank in Dallas, Texas. The organization told NBCDFW it has helped more than 32,000 families since the onset of the pandemic. The food bank has seen an influx of households who have not requested aid before, with one spokeswoman estimating up to half of those seeking aid now are doing so for the first time. The same scene is unfolding in cities large and small all across the United States.

The coronavirus pandemic has unveiled the bankruptcy of the capitalist system. Faced with an immense public health crisis, the American ruling class has shown it is utterly incapable of implementing elementary measures to protect the population from illness, hunger or economic devastation. Instead, the lives of the working class and their families are subordinated to the will of a tiny parasitic layer that elevates the pursuit of profit over human life.
Los Angeles, May 15 : Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg is in early negotiations to produce and star in spy movie "Our Man in New Jersey".

Wahlberg is in talks with streaming platform Netflix for the movie.

If the deal is sealed, Wahlberg will essay the role of a "blue-collar 007 James Bond-type character". Writer David Guggenheim is also in talks to develop the script. Stephen Levinson, who came up with the story idea, would produce with Wahlberg, reports variety.com.

Other plot details are being kept under the wraps.

Wahlberg and Levinson worked with Netflix earlier on the action-comedy "Spenser Confidential".

Recently, Wahlberg was seen in "Transformers: The Last Knight", "Mile 22", "Daddy's Home 2" and "Instant Family". He has also wrapped shooting of independent drama "Good Joe Bella, which is directed by Reinaldo Marcus Green.
Three more patients were discharged on Thursday after they recovered from Covid 19, bringing down the number of active cases in the district to 42.

Civil surgeon Dr Manjit Singh said of the three, two men aged 47 and 60 of Jawaharpur village were discharged from Gian Sagar Hospital, Banur, and one aged 30 of Mullanpur was discharged from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGIMER), Chandigarh.

There are 105 positive cases and 60 recoveries in the district as of now. On the other hand, no fresh case was reported on Thursday.

Patients from Jawaharpur will not be sent home directly, but will be kept at a quarantine facility at Nirankari Bhawan in Dera Bassi for another 14 days as a precautionary measure. The Mullanpur patient, however, has been sent home and directed to self-quarantine. Teams from the health department will continuously monitor his health.
>>> Vietnam presents medical masks to French associations and friends

This was the second spell of gifts offered by the Vietnamese side to assist the French people in containing the COVID-19 pandemic, following the handover of 15,000 masks a week ago.

The latest medical supplies were mobilised from the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, the Vietnam-France Friendship Association, the Hanoi Medical University, Vietnams Yen Bai province, the Typic Travel Vietnam Company, as well as some individuals and Vietnamese alumni associations in France.

Speaking at the ceremony, Vietnamese Ambassador to France Nguyen Thiep shared on the difficulties faced by the French people in the period of living with coronavirus, emphasising that in the spirit of solidarity and mutual assistance, the Vietnamese State and people are always willing to join hands to help the people of France soon overcome the disease crisis.

Christian Favier, chairman of the Val-de-Marne provincial council, expressed his gratitude for the valuable support from the State and people of Vietnam, considering this as a strong manifestation of the friendship and solidarity between the two countries.

Representatives of associations and hospitals in France said they felt very touched upon receiving the donations from Vietnamese partners and individuals, stating that the fine and time-honoured sentiments between the two countries people have now been further strengthened through the joint efforts against the pandemic.

Gerard Daviot (second from left), President of the France-Vietnam Friendship Association, expresses his gratitude for the valuable support from the Vietnamese people. (Photo: NDO)

Gerard Daviot, President of the France-Vietnam Friendship Association, said that the French people are happy with Vietnams rapid results in containing the disease and have been moved by the timely support from Vietnamese friends.

Vietnams meaningful gifts to the French people in the current context is vivid evidence of the spirit of sharing as well as the valuable friendship and solidarity between the states and peoples of the two countries, he affirmed.
Industry leaders from BFSI, manufacturing and retail sectors deliberated on the need for innovation and real-world digital transformation to reimagine businesses in the new reality at the Microsoft Envision Forum today. Senior executives and experts discussed the current challenges facing different industry verticals and also shared best practices they have adopted for employee safety and business continuity. Anchoring the dialogue at the first ever virtual edition of Envision, Microsoft reiterated its commitment to enable every organization to sustain, innovate and grow its business.

In the keynote session Anant Maheshwari, President, Microsoft India and Aarthi Subramanian, Group Chief Digital Officer, Tata Sons analyzed how the COVID-19 pandemic has triggered digital acceleration and the role that it will play in rebounding and building resilience in a fluid and evolving environment. Calling for a collaborative effort, Maheshwari said, COVID-19 has changed our businesses, communities, industries and world forever. No one company is going to solve a challenge like this alone, and it is going to take the private and public sectors working together to turn the tide on COVID-19. Our priority has been to keep our employees and communities safe; support frontline workers as well as help our partners and customers keep their businesses running. As we continue to work through the current situation and plan for the future, its clear that the change required is significant  as is the potential opportunity across industries. Technology will play a stronger role than ever before  enabling economic recovery and helping each one of us achieve more.

According to Ms. Subramanian, COVID-19 will accelerate the scaling of digital across industries and investments in Cloud, AI and cybersecurity. Digital transformation in companies will focus on new end-to-end customer journeys and we will see an increase in adoption of automation in manufacturing industries. They will also invest in enhancing employee engagement given the remote working model. Enterprises will build world-class digital infrastructure as a horizontal capability.

Maheshwari added that technology will play a major role in management of social sector programs across education, health, and public distribution, helping to strengthen the economy. He also called out the need for robust security solutions and trust as organizations build tech intensity for a new future.

Intelligent manufacturing for a better future: As manufacturers cope with fluctuating supply and demand and disruption in production, they are reconfiguring their production, supply chains, and services to stay operational and sustain deliveries in these unprecedented times. Mayur Danait, CIO, Pidilite, said, Manufacturing has always been a traditional business but post COVID, the sector will have to reinvent to enable a seamless partner ecosystem. Use of IoT to drive shop floor efficiencies and the use of digital collaboration, predictive analytics, bots and gamification of experience to drive engagement with end-users and channel partners are likely to be the norm going forward.

Reimagining the retail industry after the lockdown: Over the last couple of years, technology has enabled retailers to transform every aspect of the value chain. With the novel Corona virus crisis, the sector is trying to steer through major health and safety concerns for their employees, mandated store closures, drastic shifts in demand and evolving customer needs. Sanjay Bhattacharjee, Head  CRM, Titan Company Limited, said, There has been a paradigm shift in consumer mindset  from retail therapy to the inability to step out from home to physical distancing. The way customers shop has and will change dramatically, and this is the new reality in which we all have to function now. How brands are interacting and engaging with their customers makes a lot of difference. Going digital is the key to enable a virtual experience for customers  right from viewing products on the app to booking a product to its delivery. Through remote communication platforms, retail brands have the opportunity to establish a deeper connect with the buyer community than before.

Rebuilding the financial services sector post-COVID: Banking and financial services providers have adjusted operating models and services to support customers and help those who need the most assistance, while meeting regulatory and compliance obligations. According to Anoop Mahapatra, Deputy Managing Director, State Bank of India, SBI has been playing a pivotal role in the country and over the past decade the bank has been investing heavily in building an robust IT ecosystem to digitally transform the banking experience at SBI. It facilitated running the entire ecosystem seamlessly even during a difficult time such as now. Our 22000 branches and network of 58000+ ATMs are working seamlessly on a robust IT platform. Around 90% of the total transactions go through anytime channels i.e. other than branch channel and as such the post COVID impact on customer service is insignificant. Although there has been some drop in loan requirements, to overcome this SBI has a strong end-to-end AI/ML platform with number of AI based pre-approved loan products, to provide loans with ease and we hope the traction for the same will be built up in the coming days. The State Bank of India has also leveraged Microsoft Teams for its large workforce to stay productive and collaborate while working from home.

A key focus of the conference was the importance of reskilling the workforce as employees and organizations shift gears for the road ahead.

Responding to Covid-19 in India together

As India and the rest of the world respond to the Covid-19 outbreak, Microsoft has been working to do its part by ensuring the safety of its employees. The organization is striving to protect the health and well-being of the communities in which it operates, in addition to providing technology, solutions, tips and resources to businesses of all sizes and complexities to stay productive and help people to work and learn remotely, while they stay safe and connected.
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Linkedin Shilpa Jamkhandikar (Reuters) Mumbai, India  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:45 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8516ff 2 Entertainment Amazon-Prime,Amazon,bollywood,Amitabh-Bachchan,coronavirus,COVID-19,cinema,Gulabo-Sitabo,Shakuntala-Devi Free

Amazon Prime Video, Amazon's streaming service, will screen several new Indian films originally meant for theatrical release this month, sparking protests from cinema owners as the novel coronavirus outbreak upends Bollywood.

India has been under a strict lockdown since March 25 to battle the virus, leaving about 9,500 theaters shut and depriving Bollywood of box-office revenue.

So producers of seven films, including two Bollywood movies starring A-listers, such as Amitabh Bachchan and Vidya Balan, will stream the movies directly on Amazon Prime Video following a deal, the company said in a statement on Friday.

Gulabo Sitabo, a family comedy with Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana, which was set for release in April, will now stream directly on Amazon Prime Video in June, as will Shakuntala Devi, a biopic of the Indian mathematician of the same name.

Two of India's biggest cinema chains, Inox and PVR, who were meant to screen Gulabo Sitabo, bemoaned the decision.

"INOX will be constrained to examine its options, and reserves all rights, including taking retributive measures, in dealing with such fair-weather friends," Inox said in a statement.

The producers' guild said the comments from Inox were "abrasive and unconstructive".

PVR chief executive Kamal Gianchandani told the Indian Express on Thursday, after Amazon announced it would stream Gulabo Sitabo, that he was disappointed by the news.

The other five films in the Amazon deal are productions from the prolific, southern-language film industry.

Read also: Bollywood meets Hollywood with marriage of Eros and STX

Streaming platforms like Amazon and Netflix have in the past signed deals with Indian studios for digital rights, but mainstream releases have always prioritized theatrical revenues first.

In China, regulators aim to protect the industry by enforcing rules to stop movies premiering online, in particular by strictly managing "theatrical window period" requirements, a period for movies to be screened in cinemas before they can be shown elsewhere.

But analysts say the Amazon deal in India is likely the beginning of a broader trend, as lingering fears of coronavirus infection and lower discretionary spending keep people away from multiplexes and single-screen cinemas.

"There will be a reset in the way that producers and studios think about their portfolios," Vijay Subramaniam, director and head, Content, Amazon Prime Video, India, told Reuters in an interview.

Subramaniam said Amazon, which competes in India with Netflix and Disney's Hotstar, did not see acquisition costs going up for the streaming platform.

Bollywood is a huge draw for India's burgeoning online audiences, who - driven by cheap data and smartphones - are spending more time watching content online than ever before.

Media reported that more producers in Bollywood and the southern-language industry were in talks with streaming platforms for direct-to-digital releases.

Last month, theater owners in the southern state of Tamil Nadu threatened to boycott well-known actor Suriya over his decision to stream his film on a digital platform.

That film, Ponmagal Vandhal is part of the seven-film slate that Amazon announced on Friday.
I have written considerably about water temperature. However, it has changed over the years since I have written over 600 stories about trout fishing. And it should change as I gather new information. I caught my first trout in 1943, after I asked for money so I could buy my first fly rod. I can remember the place, in late May, where I caught a nine inch brook trout. The trout was under a bridge and Dad told me to let my lure go under the bridge to the trout. I landed my first trout that we ate for supper.

I was catching brook trout in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan where we lived. When we moved to Pardeeville, Wisconsin, I was catching brown trout in Columbia and Adams Counties. After graduating from college I made trips to Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and the Black Hills of South Dakota to catch trout.

Eventually, I learned that water temperature is really important for trout to feed. However, it took a long time before I realized that it is the most important tool to use to catch trout. After fishing trout for 65 years, I realized that the water temperature has to be at least 43 degrees for trout to take an interest in hitting your lure. Once the snow and ice leave the stream, spring is at hand. The water temperature begins to rise from 43 to 65 degrees and trout should normally hit better.

I started taking the temperature of the water in 1975. I would place my thermometer in the water, make about three to four casts and then look at the temperature gauge. I obviously didnt know what I was doing. After doing this for three years I realized that the temperature has to be rising for trout to want to feed. Trout are cold blooded and the temperature of the water where they are swimming is their temperature. So as the water temperature is rising they will need more food.

The most difficult factor of water temperature is when it is going down in the stream. Trout can identify a change of less the one-tenth of one degree. So before your temperature gage has gone down the trout have quit feeding. Hopefully, somebody will invent a trout thermometer that goes from 32 degrees to 72 degrees. Then we will have enough space for each degree to identify a drop of one degree.

In 1976 I was fishing Brunet Creek in Sawyer County. This is a trout stream that goes between two lakes so the temperature in the stream is usually high. I took the temperature of the water and it was 72 degrees. And no trout was hitting. However when I began casting between rocks where weeds were also growing I caught five brook trout. You see, the temperature of the water had some oxygen added where it went over the rocks and also from the weeds. So the water was much higher in oxygen that it should have been.

Under usual conditions, I say dont fish for trout if the air temperature is 90 degree or above. Because when the water temperature is above 67 degrees and the trout that fights to be free, if released, can die from a lack of oxygen.

Now this is something you are going to read here and nowhere else. Colder water has more oxygen in it that warmer water. So as the water temperature goes up from 67 degrees to 72 degrees the oxygen level in the stream goes down considerably. It goes down 5 degrees with each upturn of one degree water temperature. So with the water at 65 degree the oxygen level is down 5 degrees, at 66 degrees it is down 10 degrees, at 67 degrees it is down 15 degrees, and at 72 degrees it is down 40 degrees. So the trout that you catch, with the water at 72 degrees, they may not be able to survive in water of only 60 degrees of oxygen.

In summer time, watch your stream thermometer gauge and if it is above 67 degrees you should move upstream to colder water or quit fishing. Or come out early the next day before the sun is up and the water temperature is lower.

As soon as I arrive at the stream I am going to fish, I will take the water temperature. I will take the temperature every hour after that to find out if it is rising or going down. The air temperature can go down a couple degrees and you wont notice it unless you take the water temperature. If it is risingkeep fishing. If the water temperature has gone down a degree quit fishing and go home.

Recently while fishing Bishop Branch, the water temperature had risen a degree. In one and one-half hours, I caught and released nine brown trout. Then the rain came down harder and I quit fishing.

Keeping records is a smart thing to do, because if you do it long enough, you will have a record of where you can catch your biggest trout and also where you caught the most trout. Also you will know what lure is best each month of the trout season.

Jay Ford Thurston is the Broadcasters trout fishing columnist. He can be contacted at trout@mwt.net.

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Ghanas COVID-19 case count now stands at 5,530 according to data from the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

At a press conference in Accra on Thursday, May 14, 2020, the Information Ministry noted that the country has also seen an increase in number of recoveries from 514 to 674 and a death toll of 24.

Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah and other government appointees also outlined some of the things government is doing to curb the spread of the COVID-19 in Ghana so far.

READ ALSO: No TIN, no stimulus package  NBSSI boss speaks about GHC600 million soft loan

YEN.com.gh presents a summary of government's update on COVID-19 in Ghana on May 13, 2020.

1. Government is considering plans to arrest recalcitrant persons who refuse to adhere to basic guidelines such as wearing face masks in public spaces.

"The idea of I dont have money to buy should not be an excuse for anybody. We see people in the middle of the street begging for money. So that money you are begging for, use some to buy the mask.

Some cannot be worn on several occasions. We call them disposables. When you wear it and take it off, you throw it away. Its not many of us that can wear that one. But the ones they are sewing in Ghana are reusable but before you reuse, you have to wash it, disinfect and iron it," Health Minister, Agyeman Manu opined.

2. Also, it was revealed at the presser that government will not consider any future lockdown because it affects the state economically.

"Generally, a lockdown isnt something that is going to work any longer. A lockdown tilts a lot of things with its impact being quite severe. What we have to do now is to learn to live with the disease," Mr. Kwaku Agyeman Manu conceded.

3. Government further stated that it will issue guidelines to regulate workplace practices. This has become important because analysis by the Ghana Health Service (GHS) shows workplaces have become hubs of the spread of the virus.

"If we don't work towards curbing the spread of COVID-19, the result could be catastrophic for us," Mr. Agyeman Manu added.

READ ALSO: Passport offices to resume work on Monday after COVID-19 break

4. Government also says it is engaging stakeholders in education, sports, and religion to look at safety protocols to adhere to at gatherings.

5. So far 13 of the 16 regions in the country have recorded cases. Bono East, Savanna, and Ahafo Regions have none so far, according to the GHS official, Dr. Badu-Sarkodie.

YEN.com.gh earlier reported that some 32 Ghanaian nurses and midwives are down with COVID-19 while hundreds of their colleagues have also been quarantined following exposure to the virus, the President of Ghana Registered and Midwives Association (GRNMA), Mrs. Perpetual Ofori-Ampofo has revealed.

She made the revelation on the sidelines of the launch of the 60th-anniversary celebration of the association on Wednesday, May 13, 2020, which marks the international day for nurses.

Ghana's COVID-19 cases hit 5,127 | #Yencomgh

READ ALSO: 5 politicians who went to jail for causing financial loss to Ghana

Get interactive via our Facebook page.

Source: YEN.com.gh
Even after the Avengers: Endgame marked an end to the characters of Iron Man and Captain America in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the fans are still in love with their favorite superheroes.

In a recent tribute, an MCU fan has drawn a digital art of Iron Man and Captain America in stealth suits. The buzz around the fan art has refused to settle down even days after the post was first shared.

A Twitter user, named Best of Stony, shared a picture of the digital art and netizens have been going gaga over it. This Captain America with this Iron Man, read the caption. The tweet has received 4,300 likes.

this captain america with this iron man pic.twitter.com/Kzfhf1kVQM best of stony (@bestpicstony) May 9, 2020

Another user wrote, If I had seen that Iron Man suit I wouldnt have been able to walk out of the theater I wouldve been so shook, while another mentioned, They look like superior iron man and cap hydra.

If I had seen that Iron Man suit I wouldnt have been able to walk out of the theater I wouldve been so shook  damara IS SCREAMING BECAUSE OF PERCY JACKSON (@DamaraSoto2) May 10, 2020

They look like superior iron man and cap hydra. I don't care I'll always ship them CurlyK (@CurlyK17) May 10, 2020

Here are some of the other reactions:

I think we will collectively disintegrate and not because of thanos snap  (@HOLLANDAYA1996) May 10, 2020

VFX lead artist on Avengers: Endgame, Matt Aiken recently told comicbook.com in detail about the Iron Man suit.

We go all the way back to Avengers with Iron Man, so we've done a lot of Iron Man suits. In Infinity War and in Endgame, Iron Man has got the Bleeding Edge nanotech, made up of nanoparticles that can form a fluid and move around on the surface of the suit, and reform different weapons, and then kind of solidify and crystallize into a rigid, metal suit, he said.

Follow @News18Movies for more
The southwest monsoon is likely to hit Kerala on June 5, a delay of four days as compared to its normal onset date, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said on Friday.

The onset of monsoon over Kerala marks the commencement of the four-month long rainfall season from June to September.

Monsoon makes an arrival in Kerala on June 1, according to the normal onset date.

"The onset of the southwest monsoon over Kerala this year is likely to be slightly delayed as compared to the normal date of onset. The monsoon onset over Kerala this year is likely to be on June 5 with a model error of plus or minus four days," the IMD said.

Private forecasters Skymet and the Company, an IBM Venture, however, differ with the IMD on the onset date, with both predicting an early arrival.

While Skymet said the onset date of monsoon over Kerala is expected to be May 28 with an error margin of plus or minus two days, the Weather Company said monsoon will make an onset over Kerala on May 31.

The IMD said monsoon is likely to arrive over the Andaman and Nicobar Islands around May 16 and May 17, five to six days before its new onset date of May 22 due to a cyclonic storm in the Bay of Bengal.

However, the same cyclone will hinder monsoon's progress as it moves further.

"Currently, it (a low pressure area, the first stage of any cyclone) is in southeast Bay of Bengal. But as it moves further north and then northeast Bay of Bengal, it will affect the pace of monsoon. This will also have an impact on the onset of monsoon over Kerala," IMD Director General Mrutunjay Mohapatra said.

Even last year, monsoon had reached the Andaman and Nicobar archipelago on May 18, two days ahead of its then normal onset date of May 20. But due to its sluggish pace, it reached Kerala on June 8. It covered the entire country by July 19.

According to the IMD forecast, monsoon is likely to be normal this year.

The country receives 75 per cent of its rainfall from the southwest monsoon during June to September.

It is not only crucial for farming in the country, but also for replenishing reservoirs, and more importantly to the economy which is still largely dependent on agriculture.

The northeast monsoon is another phenomenon that brings rainfall to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, parts of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh from October to December.

From this year, the IMD has also revised the dates of onset and withdrawal dates of monsoon for several parts of the country based on data from 1960 to 2019.The previous dates were based on the data from 1901 to 1940.

However, the onset date for monsoon over Kerala, which is June 1, remains unchanged



In states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Jharkhand, Bihar and parts of Uttar Pradesh, monsoon will be delayed by three to seven days compared to the existing normal dates.

For Delhi, the new normal onset date for monsoon has been revised from June 23 to June 27, a delay of four days. Similarly, dates have been revised for Mumbai and Kolkata from June 10 to 11, and for Chennai from June 1 to 4.

However, over extreme northwest India, monsoonwill arrive a little earlier, on July 8, as compared to the existing date of July 15. The new date for monsoon withdrawal from south India is October 15.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Louisiana Senate Revenue & Fiscal Affairs committee Friday rejected an effort to cut taxes on free play promotions that the gambling industry says are necessary to bring customers back to casinos that have closed eight weeks because of COVID-19.

The promotions are aimed at attracting customers and keeping them coming by giving them, essentially, house money with which to gamble. The industry says the promotions have proven successful in the past, but is hampered by a tax that Louisiana imposes that few other states do.

Senators didnt disagree, but removing money from the state treasury at a time when Louisiana is facing deep financial problems was a concern for a majority on the panel.

So, if we vote for this resolution, were taking $29.3 million out of the state treasury, said state Sen. Eddie Lambert, R-Prairieville, on the hope that it generates more money than we give away?

Cut taxes, enact tort reform, expand tax breaks to start coronavirus recovery, business execs say On the heels of a legislative task force report recommending more tax breaks for businesses, a Louisiana House committee Monday advanced legis

Budget architects will begin Monday coming up with ways to make up an estimated $867 million shortfall in revenues. Lawmakers are looking at deep cuts in funding in popular services and programs.

Meanwhile, representatives in the House have been advancing bills that would subtract from what funds are available to supplement law enforcement salaries, pay for health care for one-fourth of the states residents, provide TOPS grants that cover tuition for college students meeting modest academic standards, along with a myriad of other services. One bill pending before the full House would suspend the severance tax on oil and natural gas production, which would require $212 million more in cuts, another would reduce the severance tax rates, which would remove $112.6 million from the treasury over five years, while a third measure would decrease state revenue by $378 million.

But the casinos are suffering from being closed since mid-March.

Richard Neal, manager of Golden Nugget Lake Charles, said casinos are expecting lower demand than usual for the next three months  at least. Casinos are allowed, in the Phase 1 reopening, to open half their games  craps tables, slot machines, and the like  but limit the number of customers to 25% of facilitys allotted capacity.

Casinos and video poker accounted for $731.6 million in state revenues in 2019. Legislative and administration economists project that amount will drop about $268 million because the casinos were totally shut down for so long.

The scoop on state politics in your inbox Get the Louisiana politics insider details once a week from us. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

It is our biggest marketing tool, without a doubt, Neal said of free play promotions. The industry in Louisiana brings in about $2.5 billion annually and spends about 10% of that amount in promotional marketing.

Well use promotional credits to try to stimulate demand and get people back, Neal said.

A 'Katrina-sized' $1 billion hit from coronavirus for Louisiana's budget, early estimates show Louisiana budget revenues are projected to take a $1 billion hit as the coronavirus hammers the state's businesses and workers, according to e

Unlike most states, Louisiana does not allow the casinos to credit the gambling that use the promotion. If a customer uses a free play promotion of, say, $20 at a blackjack table, then spends $80 of his own money, Louisiana taxes the full $100 spent. Mississippi, for instance, would tax only the $80.

Sen. Barrow Peacock, who sponsored Senate Concurrent Resolution 64, said he was skeptical at first. But he came to believe gambling officials were correct that removing the tax on promotions, as all but three states have done, would help attract more customers to spend more and thats how state government collect taxes.

We are in partnerships with these casinos, said the Bossier City Republican. Weve got to help these casinos, our partners, get back open.

Wade Duty, head of the casinos trade group, pointed that Louisiana takes 21.5% off the top of the amount gambled in the riverboat, land-based and racetrack casinos. But for the coronavirus shutdown, gambling has created hundreds of millions of revenues for the state year in and year.

The industry is a consistent producer, Duty said, adding that gambling hasnt had roller coaster rides of other industries, which when downturns occur the drop in state revenues has thrown the budget into crisis.

Voting for eliminating taxes on "free play" promotions (3): Sens Mike Reese, R-Leesville; Gary Smith, D-Norco; and Rick Ward III, R-Port Allen.

Voting against SCR64 (4): Vice Chairman Jay Luneau, D-Alexandria; Sens Eddie Lambert, R-Gonzales; Patrick McMath, R-Covington; and Rogers Pope, R-Denham Springs.
15.05.2020 LISTEN

Burundi has driven out the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in the country and three other health experts.

An unsigned letter from the foreign affairs ministry declares the WHO representative Dr. Walter Kazadi Mulombo and three others as persona non grata and gives them 48 hours to leave the country.

The others are Prof Tarzy Daniel, Dr Ruhana Mirindi Bisimwa and Dr Jean Pierre Murunda.

Burundi Foreign Affairs Minister Ezechiel Nibigira did not deny or confirm the letter in a phone interview, but a source at the ministry confirmed its authenticity to the BBC.

The ministry has not given reasons for the expulsion of the officials.

Burundi government is facing criticism for organising elections amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Campaign rallies by candidates for the presidency are taking place across the nation ahead of the 20 May election and no measures to contain the virus are being observed  sparking fears of its imminent spread.

In a press briefing on Wednesday, the International Crisis Group said the Burundi government is working in denial, questioning the number of coronavirus cases the country has announced.

The country has reported 27 cases so far including one death.
The federal government has warned Nigerians to stop consuming just anything because of coronavirus. The government lamented th...





The federal government has warned Nigerians to stop consuming just anything because of coronavirus.





The government lamented that some people were heard suggesting that bleach could cure the disease.





Bleach is poisonous; it could kill. It is not a cure for COVID-19, said Sani Aliyu, National Coordinator of the Presidential Task Force on COVID-19.





NAN reports that the official spoke in Abuja on Thursday at the daily briefing of the PTF.

Aliyu also directed that all essential workers be allowed free movement across the country.





He appealed to security agents to accord citizens deserved respect and that citizens must reciprocate such.





The PTF coordinator further warned that Africans are continuously being infected by the novel coronavirus and were not immune.





Hot or cold weather is not a factor in the transmission of COVID-19, Aliyu stressed.




London: Marking the seventh martyrdom anniversary of Arif Shahid, a Kashmiri nationalist leader who advocated independence of Kashmir from both India and Pakistan's rule, National Equality Party Chairman Sajjad Raja said agents of Pakistan's powerful military agencies killed the Kashmiri nationalist leader and hence they will never be traced.

Arif Shahid, who was the chairman of the Jammu Kashmir All Parties National Alliance, was shot in the neck at the gate of his home in Rawalpindi and till now the killers have not been identified.

"The killers of Arif Shahid will never be traced and they will never be arrested because they are not ordinary killers but agents of Pakistan's powerful military agencies," Sajjad Raja told ANI.

"However, we will continue to demand their arrest and continue to voice our helplessness to the United Nations and all other international forums," he told the news agency.

Arif was killed in the evening of May 13 by an assassin at the doorstep of 62-year-old Arif Shahids residence in Rawalpindi.

The killer pumped four bullets into him and left in a car in which he had come.

Sajjad said, "We will never forget the cause for which Arif Shahid Shaheed has sacrificed his life and we will continue it with full vigour till the success of his struggle."

Soon after his death in a piece in The Express Tribune, titled "Why they killed Arif Shahid" Pakistani academician Pervez Hoodbhoy critical of both India and Pakistan, wrote about the latter: "By supporting jihadists and targeting nationalists, it [Pakistan] has alienated world public opinion  and the Kashmiris. As far as the rest of the world is concerned, Kashmir has turned into a dead cause.
Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad, UPMSP is all set to release the UP Board Result 2020 for Class 10 and 12. According to sources, the result will be out at the end of June 2020. Candidates are advised to keep a check on the official website upresults.nic.in.

Here are the steps you need to follow to check your results:

Log on to the official website-upresults.nic.in.

Go to upresults.nic.in.

In the provided fields, enter your roll number and other details.

Click on submit and result will be displayed.

Earlier Uttar Pradesh Deputy Chief Minister Dinesh Sharma had informed that the evaluation of answer sheets, which were already conducted before the announcement of lockdown, has begun in various parts of the state. The minister had then stated that around 1.5 crore answer sheets of already conducted Class 10, 12 exams would be delivered to the teachers for evaluation.

According to a rough estimate by the UP Board, a total of 1.47 lakh teachers have been appointed to complete the assessment of high school and intermediate school students.

A total of 275 evaluation centres have been set for checking answer-sheets of UP Board 2020 result.

This year, around 56 lakh students appeared for the Class 12th and Class 10th for which the exams were held in March in the state. Last year, the Board released the annual examination results in April.
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LONDON (dpa-AFX) - BT Group Plc (BT.L) is in talks to sell a multi-billion pound stake in its Openreach division to infrastructure investors. The potential stake sale could value the unit at about 20 billion pounds, the Financial Times reported citing people familiar with the matter. Selling a stake in the subsidiary that runs Britain's broadband network would help fund a upgrade to ultrafast fibre to millions of homes. Potential buyers, including Australian bank Macquarie and a sovereign wealth fund, have held talks with BT in the past three weeks, the reports said. Talks are at an early stage and the mechanism by which investors would buy a stake in Openreach remains under discussion. BT reportedly considered spinning off its network division more than a decade ago but decided the business remained more valuable as a whole. It also resisted approaches from financial investors targeting Openreach in 2018. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
KYODO NEWS - May 15, 2020 - 14:29 | All, Japan, Coronavirus

Japan will test around 10,000 people for coronavirus antibodies starting from next month, as part of efforts to better understand the deadly infection, health minister Katsunobu Kato said Friday.

The tests, which look for specific proteins made by the immune system in response to the infection, will likely take in place in Tokyo and Osaka, among other prefectures, officials said. Potential areas include those that have reported a relatively high number of infections and those with fewer cases.

Testing is expected to help authorities grasp the extent to which the virus has spread in those regions, how many people will need a vaccination when one becomes available, and the outlook for infection numbers should there be a second wave.

It will also help determine whether Japan is on the way to herd immunity, achieved when a large portion of the population develops antibodies and protection from infection.

The tests use a blood sample and take less time than the currently dominant polymerase chain reaction test, which uses a swab from a patient's nose and requires a minimum of several hours to produce a result.

In the upcoming tests, the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare plans to use several methods to find antibodies and figure out the amount of antibodies in specimens, the officials said.

The tests come after the ministry last month conducted experimental screening for antibodies in donated blood in Tokyo and six prefectures in northeastern Japan, using test kits from five firms.

It found 0.6 percent of 500 samples from Tokyo had antibodies for coronavirus and 0.4 percent in the same number of samples from Aomori, Akita, Iwate, Miyagi, Yamagata and Fukushima.

But experts noted some of the test kits could have provided false results. In the screening, two samples of blood donated last year -- before coronavirus was confirmed in Japan -- tested positive for antibodies.

The first case of the contagious respiratory disease was identified in Wuhan, China, late last year.

It typically takes one to three weeks for the development of antibodies after someone becomes infected with SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that develops into COVID-19, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

There are various types of antibody test kits available for COVID-19 but doubts remain over their accuracy.

Kenji Mizumoto, a project assistant professor with expertise in infectious disease epidemiology at Kyoto University, said the screening would assist efforts to get a large picture of infections in the country, rather than numbers of infected people.

Related coverage:

Osaka to remove part of business suspension requests from Saturday

FOCUS: Japan-style virus fight still halfway despite easing of emergency

Japan lifts coronavirus emergency outside Tokyo, Osaka regions
Democratic presidential candidate and former Vice President Joe Biden at an event in Wilmington, Delaware, on March 12, 2020. (Carlos Barria/Reuters)

Biden Says He Had No Knowledge of Criminal Investigation Into Flynn

Former Vice President Joe Biden says that he did not know of a criminal investigation into Michael Flynn, the incoming national security adviser in late 2016 and early 2017.

I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office. Period. Not one single time, Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, said in an interview aired on MSNBC late Thursday.

Biden was not pressed on the issue.

It was the first time Biden spoke of the issue since declassified records showed that he made a request on Jan. 12, 2017, to unmask a U.S. citizen who turned out to be Flynn, a retired lieutenant general hired by then-president-elect Donald Trump as national security adviser.

Biden was on a list of people who submitted requests to the National Security Agency to unmask the identity of Flynn, NSA Director Paul Nakasone said in a letter.

The declassification came just one day after Biden initially said in a televised interview that he was unaware of any moves to investigate Flynn.

After the anchor noted that Biden was part of a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting during which Flynn was discussed, Biden changed his position.

I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted. Im sorry, he said.

Michael Flynn, President Donald Trumps former national security adviser, leaves the federal court with his lawyer Sidney Powell, left, following a status conference with Judge Emmet Sullivan, in Washington on Sept. 10, 2019. (Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP Photo)

I was aware that there wasthat they had asked for an investigation. But thats all I know about it and I dont think anything else, he added.

Bidens campaign, which has ignored requests for comment on the matter, didnt immediately respond when asked to clarify Bidens statements.

Sen. John Cornyn (D-Texas) was among those reacting to Biden denying knowledge of a criminal investigation into Flynn. Ask him if he knew of a counter-intelligence investigation, he wrote on Twitter.

While a counter-intelligence investigation was launched against Flynn in the fall of 2019, the probe reportedly didnt turn into a criminal one until after Biden left office.

The former vice president has faced harsh criticism for his role in the unmasking of Flynn.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Biden was caught red-handed and expressed concern Biden would abuse surveillance powers if hes elected president.

Unmasking refers to the process of making a U.S. citizens identity known.

Intelligence officials can target foreign nationals located outside the United States. During that surveillance, they can access information about U.S. citizens. To better understand specific information, government officials can request the unmasking of Americans.

Nakasone, the NSA director, said the individuals on the list were authorized recipients of the original intelligence report involving Flynn. The unmasking was approved through the agencys standard process, which includes reviewing whether the request is justified.
By PTI

AURANGABAD: The Aurangabad police has announced that teams of local youth will be formed to ensure proper enforcement of the COVID-19 lockdown in containment zones of the city. With COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra's Aurangabad district crossing the 800-mark, strict enforcement of lockdown becomes crucial in around 70 containment zones of the city.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, police commissioner Chiranjeev Prasad said teams of five to 10 youth volunteers each will be formed to help people in containment zones. He said that while small areas will have five volunteers, teams of 10 will help in larger settlements.

"These teams will supply essentials and ration to the needy, apart from monitoring people's movements in these areas," Prasad said.
Shares is the leading weekly publication for retail investors. It is packed with investment ideas, news and educational material to help build and run portfolios and get more from your money.

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A few weeks ago, I wrote about Jerry Coyne, 70, a renowned evolutionary biologist and U. of C. professor emeritus. For the past three springs, he has taken care of a duck he named Honey, who has repeatedly come to the campus pond to breed. When Honey reappeared for the fourth year, Coyne feared that because the school had been closed due to the pandemic, hed be denied the chance to tend her and her traveling companion, whom he named Dorothy. He sent a plaintive letter to the schools leaders asking for permission. He got it.
According to the US National Institutes of Health, studies showed remdesivir cut hospital stays by 31 percent.

Gilead Sciences Incs two clinical studies of its potential coronavirus treatment remdesivir will wind down by the end of May. The end of these trials effectively closes off a path of patient access to the antiviral medication, according to United States researchers involved in the studies.

The drug was given emergency use authorisation by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on May 1, but hospitals are concerned about access. We would like to see equitable and transparent distribution of this very precious resource, Dr Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told Reuters.

Gileads studies  one on patients with severe COVID-19 and the other on patients with moderate cases of the disease  have enrolled around 8,000 subjects, according to FDA statistics. The trials are open label, meaning they do not compare the treatment to a placebo, and participants know they are getting the drug.

Interest in Gileads drug has been high given some promising early data and the lack of approved treatments or preventive vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected more than four and a half million people and killed more than 306,000 worldwide.

Preliminary results from a trial conducted by the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) showed that remdesivir cut hospital stays by 31 percent compared to a placebo. The NIH is now studying remdesivir alone compared to remdesivir in combination with Olumiant, an anti-inflammatory drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis and sold by Eli Lilly and Co.

Remdesivir is still available on a compassionate-use basis for pregnant women or children under the age of 18, but most COVID-19 patients will soon have access only under the emergency use authorisation.

We participate in the Gilead clinical trials here at Tufts, Dr Boucher said. We were notified that they will wind down  no later than the end of May.

Gilead told Tufts it is transitioning to product distribution under the emergency use authorisation.

Researchers at Bostons Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have also heard that the two Gilead studies would stop enrolling patients by the end of the month.

Gilead, which has pledged to donate 1.5 million vials of remdesivir to fight the global pandemic, did not respond to requests for comment. The drug is administered by infusion in hospitals.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday said Gilead had committed to supply US hospitals with around 607,000 vials of remdesivir  about 40 percent of the donation, or enough to treat at least 78,000 patients.

After doctors had questioned the transparency of the allocation process, the federal agency said state health departments would distribute the drug.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America on Thursday asked to meet with the administration of US President Donald Trump to discuss how remdesivir will be allocated.

Gilead has said early results from its first study showed that the drug improved outcomes for patients with severe COVID-19, and it plans to announce findings from its second study in moderate patients later this month.
New York, May 15 : Launching "Operation Warp Speed" to ready a vaccine against Covid-19 by the end of the year, President Donald Trump said on Friday the US was working with India on the project.

"We are working very closely also with India," Trump said while speaking to reporters when he unveiled the project at the White House.

He also acknowledged the work of Indian-Americans on vaccine development projects.

There is a "tremendous Indian population in the United States, many of the people you are talking about are working on the vaccine too. Great scientists and researchers," he said.

Trump, who recalled his February visit to India, ended his comment on India saying, "Say hello to your Prime Minister!" Earlier, he said that India and other countries would have access to any vaccine or therapy developed by the US.

He said that the US and companies were not seeking to make a profit out of the crisis and wanted to make them available to all.

Trump said that the goal of "Operation Warp Speed" was to try to have a vaccine ready by the end of the year.

"We would love to see if we could do it prior to the end of the year," he said.

He said that Moncef Slaoui, who is the former head of GlaxoSmithKline vaccines division, would head the project with General Gustave Perna looking after the logistics.

Trump said that the vaccine would be available to all who wanted it and the military, the other arms of the government and the private sector would be fully mobilised to get them out.

The best candidates of the several under development would be made ready in advance and would go out as soon one gets approved.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
Nearly 100 migrant workers crossed the Yamuna, which flows along UP-Haryana border on some stretches, and reached Uttar Pradesh's Shamli district, police said on Friday.

The workers, who were stranded in Haryana due to the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, crossed the river and reached Kairana town in Shamli during Thursday night, police said.

The district authorities have sent them to a shelter home, police added.

The workers decided to cross the river as many inter-state borders have been sealed and movement without permission from authorities is not allowed.

On the intervening night of Wednesday and Thursday, six migrant workers walking to their homes in Bihar from Punjab were killed when a roadways bus ran over them in Muzaffarnagar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The gradual reopening of Oregons state parks system has now reached the central Oregon coast.

The Oregon Parks and Recreation Department reopened 25 state parks sites on the central Oregon coast Friday, including popular beachfront sites like Heceta Head, Seal Rock, South Beach, Jessie M. Honeyman and D River state parks. Some parks have fully reopened, but many are open with limited facilities and services.

Another 10 park sites along the central coast remain closed, including Beverly Beach, Boiler Bay and Roads End state parks.

The entire Oregon state parks system closed to the public on March 23, to help stop the spread of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, as counties are getting approved for the states Phase 1 reopening plan, park officials are slowly reopening those parks to the public.

A full list of Oregon state park reopenings is posted online at oregonstateparks.org.

Campgrounds at all Oregon state parks will remain closed with no anticipated date of reopening, officials said. The parks department previously announced that all reservations through at least June 8 have been canceled.

Fridays reopenings on the central Oregon coast followed several reopenings on the southern coast Thursday. All state park sites on the north Oregon coast  from Neskowin to Astoria  are still closed. State officials previously said that coastal parks would only reopen when park rangers and local communities were ready.

Many of Oregons most popular state parks remain closed to the public, including all park sites in the Columbia River Gorge, and others close to Portland like Silver Falls, Milo McIver and Stub Stewart.

State officials continue to urge Oregonians to avoid all non-essential travel, including day trips, and for those in urban areas to not travel more than 50 miles from home to recreate.

People who visit state parks are encouraged to take precautions to help prevent the spread of COVID-19. Officials said visitors should wear face masks and bring their own hand sanitizer, soap and water.

People are also asked to keep six feet of social distance while out at park sites, and to leave one space between their car and the car next to them. Visitors are asked to recreate only with those in their household.

--Jamie Hale; jhale@oregonian.com; 503-294-4077; @HaleJamesB

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
(Natural News) After being slammed by the coronavirus pandemic early this year, Europe is slowly emerging from its cordon sanitaire. Many countries have begun to unwind restrictions, and some have already allowed businesses to reopen.

As the region looks to move past the onslaught, its also become the focus of Chinas measures to boost its global presence. The move, which experts call mask diplomacy, is part of Beijings mission to restore its tarnished image mainly because of its mishandling of the outbreak.

For its part, the Communist Party of China (CCP) is pushing this agenda hard, as it seeks to establish itself as a country that managed to combat the deadly contagion and present itself as a competent aid-giver for those who are still battling the pandemic.

Its worth noting that while Beijing says its aid, most of the supplies delivered were actually commercial purchases. In fact  as Natural News has reported  some of the masks were poorly made, and some countries have reported medical tests from China were contaminated with bacteria and even faulty, like in the case of test kits that detected coronavirus from goats.

Despite these issues, Beijing has been inching its way into Europe, one mask at a time.

No such thing as a free lunch

In recent days, Beijing has made its presence felt in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE)  a group of countries comprising the Baltic states, former Yugoslavia states and post-World War II countries like Poland and Czechia, to name a few. Chinese state media outlets have sharply criticized the European Unions poor crisis management, even saying at the beginning of the outbreak that Italy was the source of the coronavirus.

At the same time, Beijing has been quick to send medical staff and aid to CEE countries  a move that strengthened its influence in the region. In Hungary, officials have praised Beijings quick response, while the president of Czechia has said that only China was there during the spread of the virus. The latters move, however, has been blasted by Zdenek Hrib, the mayor of the capital city Prague, saying that the medical supplies were neither humanitarian gift nor aid.

From Chinas perspective, its business, he told Bloomberg News.

Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, known for his pro-China rhetoric, has even called Chinese President Xi Jinping his brother.

The EU, for its part, pledged 15 million euros in immediate support and footed Serbias shipping of the 280 tons of emergency medical supplies that it bought. In response, Vucic blasted the bloc, saying that it wasnt willing to provide breathing machines. He did, however, kiss the Chinese flag when coronavirus medical aid landed in Belgrade.

A friendship kiss! Serbian President #AleksandarVucic greeted Chinese doctors who arrived in Serbia on Sat with "touching elbows" at Belgrade's Nikola Tesla Airport, kissing the Chinese flag in a show of gratitude for the country's timely support in assisting against #COVID19. pic.twitter.com/KQm5LYescF  Global Times (@globaltimesnews) March 22, 2020

Chinese diplomats in the European Union have doubled down their criticism of the blocs shortcomings. In France, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian summoned Chinas ambassador to France, Lu Shaye, over a post that claimed nursing personnel in the country left patients to die.

The article was posted at the time when German officials disclosed that Beijing tried to force their hand to speak positively about the countrys response to the coronavirus. In an interview with local newspaper Die Welt, intelligence officials warned that Beijing was using intensified information and propaganda policy with regard to the coronavirus.

An unlikely opponent

China cant afford to lose its hold on Europe  in particular, because of Taiwan. The small country, which Beijing has dismissed as a renegade state, has been using its success with the coronavirus to push its agenda to the global stage. In fact, the country has already launched its own charm offensive, gifting seven million masks to the EU. In the U.K., cybersecurity officials from Taiwan have expressed the desire to help the country develop coronavirus tracking apps, while Poland has sent its inaugural flight to Taoyuan Airport to pick up medical supplies. The flight, however, was late by two hours after Chinese officials refused to grant it access to airspace.

Taiwan has even demanded the World Health Organization  headquartered in Europe  to give the country access to the agencys first-hand reports about the coronavirus. (Related: World Health Organization (WHO) forced to release statement after awkward Taiwan interview.)

For Taiwan, what we want is first-hand information. Any second-hand information slows down any actions we take, and distorts our judgment about the epidemic, like were unable to see the woods for the trees, explained Health Minister Chen Shih-chung.

Learn more about the ongoing coronavirus pandemic at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

ORFOnline.org

Chinfluence.eu

WorldPoliticsReview.com

Bloomberg.com

Twitter.com

Express.co.uk

HongKongFP.com

FT.com

Telegraph.co.uk

TaiwanNews.com.tw
The Washington Post

From reading the comments on my recommendations, it would seem that most people just want a good, cheap buzz. But wouldn't you rather have a better cheap buzz? Here are five wines that justify a little research - or maybe just attention - to what you are buying so that you can have a much better drinking experience.

We start with a California red blend. Yawn, you say? But look at its pedigree. Then we have two outstanding chardonnays, one from a quality producer in a value region of Burgundy, another from a region better known for another grape - both excellent values. To top off this list as we (finally!) transition to warmer weather, we have a rose from a lesser-known region of Italy and a steak-worthy bargain red from Argentina to stock our summer wine lists.
The Missourians Opinion section is a public forum for the discussion of ideas. The views presented in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Missourian or the University of Missouri. If you would like to contribute to the Opinion page with a response or an original topic of your own, visit our submission form
Reformed underworld don N Muthappa Rai died battling cancer at a private hospital here on Friday, hospital sources said.

Rai, 68, was suffering from brain cancer for the past one year and was admitted at Manipal Hospital on Old Airport Road, where he died at 2.30 am, the sources said. Rai is survived by two sons.

Born into a Tulu-speaking Bunt family in Dakshina Kannada's Puttur town, Rai entered the crime world at a very young age.

Karnataka police issued arrest warrants against Rai in eight cases, including murder and conspiracy.

In 2002, Rai was deported to India from the United Arab Emirates. On arrival, he was questioned by various investigation agencies such as the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) and Intelligence Bureau (IB), and by the Karnataka police. He was later acquitted due to the lack of evidences.

In his reformed years, Rai founded charitable organisation 'Jaya Karnataka'.

Rai has appeared in Tulu film 'Kanchilda Baale' in 2011 and Kannada film 'Katari Veera Surasundarangi' in 2012.

Bollywood director Ram Gopal Varma wanted to make a movie based on Rai's life. The film roped in actor Vivek Oberoi for the lead role and was shot in Bengaluru, Mangaluru, Mumbai, Dubai and London. However, it has not been released due to production delays.

Rai was enthusiastic about the film and even celebrated his birthday with Varma and Oberoi.

After his cancer diagnosis, Rai withdrew from public life and resigned from Jaya Karnataka.

His last rites are likely to be performed at Bidadi on Friday, family sources said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For migrants who chose to stay and those looking to return, there may not be any drastic changes. At least not right away.

However, access to better quality of life and health will be a priority as they return to work as fear of novel coronavirus, or COVID-19 pandemic continues, say hiring executives and blue collar employers.

Recent times have seen thousands of migrant workers returning home to states such as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Odisha. Reverse migration of these workers, who are a critical workforce across industries, have led to labour shortage as offices and factories resume operations.

Companies are now managing with workers who chose to stay back and thinking of other ways to continue the business. This includes employing more local workforce and reskilling. However, most agree that migrant labour is critical.

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

Wages are unlikely to increase. However, companies will be mindful of how they treat their labour, says experts.

Anjali Raghuvanshi, Chief People Officer, Randstad India, said the crises has brought to the surface the plight of migrant workers and that there is no protection for them during such times.

Raghuvanshi explained that the reason the workers returned to their home towns is because they did not have accommodation and some of their employers did not pay them. "That should change."

Companies, another executive pointed out, will now offer better accommodation and access to health.

At this juncture, employers will be forced to ensure that living conditions of labourers are hygienic. Health factor would be priority, said Pravin Agarwala, co-founder, BetterPlace, a blue collar management platform.

Enterprises dont want to risk their factories shut down just because one of the workers tested positive. So, they will be careful about it even if they have to invest as the cost of non-compliance is far greater."

Agarwala said it is unlikely that their wages will increase. Migrant workers on average earn Rs 12,000 to Rs 13,000 per month. What would happen, Agarwala pointed, is that they would get additional pay in terms of bonus and incentives.

Factories will incentivise people to come back to work, said Alok Kumar, Director  Sales, Account Management & Global Accounts, ManpowerGroup India, a staffing firm.

For instance, if workers clocked attendance through the week, they might be given an extra day salary as bonus. Some firms are now willing to offer accommodation and maybe given additional allowance at the back of COVID-19, he added.

No, but at least its a good start. Industries, staffing firms and unions are now talking to the government about the issue at the back of COVID-19. These dialogues, Raghuvanshi, said should continue. Labour reforms planned should have a clause for protection of such workers during crises.
US health authorities issued an alert Thursday over a rare but sometimes deadly autoimmune condition among children that is believed to be linked to COVID-19.

Doctors who have treated the illness say patients sometimes have symptoms similar to a rare condition called Kawasaki disease, which causes blood vessels throughout the body to swell, leading to extreme pain.

The illness, which the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), was first reported in Britain in late April, where scientists also found the first clear evidence that infection with the coronavirus causes the Kawasaki-like inflammatory condition.

'Healthcare providers who have cared or are caring for patients younger than 21 years of age meeting MIS-C criteria should report suspected cases to their local, state, or territorial health department,' said the CDC.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), speaks during a white house press briefing in April. The CDC has issued an alert over a rare but sometimes deadline autoimmune condition among children, similar to the Kawasaki disease

New York health authorities said on Sunday they are investigating 85 cases of the pediatric illness. Jayden Hardowar, eight, of New York (left), and Juliet Daly, 12, of Louisiana (right), both landed in the hospital after experiencing the syndrome

The condition had previously been referred to as Pediatric Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome (PMIS) by the state of New York, where there have been more than a hundred reported cases, including at least three deaths.

The agencys case definition includes current or recent COVID-19 infection or exposure to the virus, a fever of at least 100.4 for at least 24 hours, severe illness requiring hospitalization, inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, lungs, skin or other nervous system.

The name and definition are similar to those used in Europe, where the condition was first reported several weeks ago.

MIS-C has been reported in at least 19 different states and Washington D.C. The condition has been reported in at least 110 New York children, with three young people - aged 5, 7 and 18 - dying from the disease.

Several other states, including California, New Jersey, Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, Washington have also reported cases. At least 17 cases have been seen in New Jersey, while California has seen six.

The CDC said that physicians should 'consider MIS-C in any pediatric death with evidence of SARS-CoV-2 infection,' referring to the virus that causes COVID-19.

But it is not yet known if the condition is limited to children, the CDC added.

Sunil Sood, a pediatrician at Cohen Children's Medical Center in New York, told AFP that some children had very mild forms of illness, but about half of the patients that he and colleagues had seen had to be treated in intensive care for heart inflammation.

Children with the illness are usually taken to hospital with a high fever that has lasted a number of days and severe abdominal pain. The most seriously ill may develop sepsis-like symptoms such as rapid breathing and poor blood circulation

The treatment involves injecting antibodies as well as administering steroids and aspirin in case patients experienced a sudden loss of blood pressure, called 'shock.'

He added that the cases mainly seemed to emerge four to six weeks after a child had been infected and had already developed antibodies.

'They had the virus, the body fought it off earlier. But now there's this delayed exaggerated immune response,' he said.

Doctors should be on the lookout for the condition and report suspected cases to local or state health departments. It should be suspected in all deaths in children who had evidence of COVID-19 infection, the CDC said.

Adding to the mystery, the cases were first reported in Europe and then in North America, but not in Asian countries such as China, Taiwan and South Korea where the virus first emerged.

There has been speculation that certain populations may be more genetically susceptible and others less so, said Sood, though that theory is not confirmed.

Six out of eight patients in a recent Lancet study from Britain were of Afro-Caribbean descent.

Scientists in the UK find first clear evidence that coronavirus infection is linked to Kawasaki-like inflammatory condition By Joe Pinkstone for MailOnline, 14 May 2020 Scientists have found the first clear evidence that infection with coronavirus causes the Kawasaki-like inflammatory condition affecting children. A study of eight children admitted to a Birmingham hospital with the condition reveals they were infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus several weeks before showing symptoms. All of the children tested negative in the traditional lab-based test used to diagnose COVID-19 in adults. However, a custom-built antibody test revealed the young patients had been infected with the coronavirus and produced antibodies to fight off the pathogen. Doctors who treated the children say antibody tests are the only way to accurately identify the presence of the virus in children suffering with the hyperinflammatory condition, which can be fatal. It remains unknown why the syndrome develops weeks after infection, but scientists believe it may be due to a severe overreaction from the body's own immune system. This 'immune-mediated pathology' causes the immune system to go haywire and can cause damage to the body's own cells. A similar phenomenon has been seen in adults, and it can be fatal to the sickest patients. Bertie Brown was admitted to Worcestershire Royal hospital last month on his second birthday after developing a fever and rash across his body The syndrome affecting children has been tentatively called PIMS-TS, for 'paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2'. However, the British scientists say the condition's definition is incorrect as it is not 'temporally associated' with the pandemic but is instead 'triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection'. A team of scientists led by Dr Alex Richter and Professor Adam Cunningham of the University of Birmingham studied eight young patients who were admitted to hospital between April 28 and May 8. Lab tests  which are used to identify COVID-19 and also to screen healthcare workers  came back negative for all eight individuals. These tests, called PCR tests, are extremely reliable and are 'the nearest to a gold standard for determining active infection'. Professor Adam Cunningham, who led on the research alongside Dr Alex Richter and Dr Barney Scholefield, told MailOnline: 'The PCR picks up the presence of the virus itself, so the virus needs to be present at the site in the throat where the sample (usually a throat swab is taken). 'If you clear the infection then there will not be virus there to detect. 'In response to infections, we often make antibodies, and these are usually detectable from 14 days after the first time you are infected. 'These antibody responses often persist in the body for months and often many years afterwards.' The average age of the children admitted to hospital was nine years old and five of the patients were boys. Chloe Knight, 22, revealed her two-year-old son, Freddie Merrylees (pictured), became ill just before the lockdown and was 'like a zombie' due to Kawasaki disease. The youngster had a rash on his body, a high temperature, red eyes and struggled to eat and drink Seven of the patients showed symptoms of both hyperinflammation and Kawasaki disease. One of the patients was expressing symptoms of hyperinflammation as well as some signs of toxic shock syndrome. The mysterious and dangerous condition is being described by top medical professionals as very rare and symptoms can include fever, abdominal pain, rashes and red lips and eyes. A very small group go into shock, in which the heart is affected, and they may get cold hands and feet and have rapid breathing. Of the eight children treated in Birmingham and studied as part of this landmark research, all patients had fever and at least one gastrointestinal symptom such as abdominal pain, vomiting and diarrhoea. Six of the patients required admission into paediatric intensive care due to heart-related issues and low blood pressure brought on by the disease. All showed positive signs after treatment and have since been discharged from ICU. Due to the reports in the media and claims from leading advisers and prominent politicians that this condition may be linked to the coronavirus pandemic, the researchers took blood samples for analysis from all eight children. They then developed an custom antibody test with the help of researchers at the University of Southampton. The test involves making an artificial copy of a key protein on the surface of the coronavirus which looks like a spike. This unique 'spike' is a key identifier of the killer virus and was first revealed in detail by Professor Max Crispin of the University of Southampton. He modelled the protein's surface spikes and this has allowed his team to produce an almost exact copy of the spike. In the Birmingham hospital, this artificially created version of the protein spike was mixed with blood samples from the patients. The researchers saw that some antibodies in the blood of the children bound to the spike, in the same way they would if the virus itself was invading. In the tests, researchers looked to see which of three different immunoglobulins (the technical name for an antibody) - IgG, IgA and IgM - locked onto the imitation virus. A positive IgM reading in the tests indicates a recent infection whereas a positive reading for IgG and IgA shows an older infection, the scientists say. The children in the Birmingham hospital had no IgM antibodies but did have IgG and IgA antibodies, showing that they were infected with SARS-CoV-2 several weeks previously. This time delay is the reason the PCR test did not detect the infection, the researchers say. 'IgM was not detected in children, which contrasts with adult hospitalised adult COVID-19 patients of whom all had positive IgM responses,' the researchers write in the study, which has been submitted to a preprint server and seen by MailOnline. 'For antibody responses, IgM responses develop first, before eventually waning and IgG responses dominating thereafter,' the researchers explain. 'Thus, high levels of IgG in the absence of IgM are typically suggestive of infection weeks or even months previously. ' This antibody test is conducted in a laboratory and is not a portable test. It is also fundamentally different to the test approved by the government today, which is manufactured by Roche. Roche's method uses a nucleoprotein to mimic the SARS-CoV-2 virus, not the viral spike. 'Using the native-like viral spike for antibody testing is proving a highly sensitive way of detecting exposure to SARS-CoV-2,' Professor Crispin told MailOnline. The researchers say their research shows that the only way to diagnose patients with symptoms of severe inflammatory syndrome who have tested negative for the PCR is via antibody testing. Dr Cunningham says: 'In our study, none of the children were positive by PCR, yet all of the children were positive by antibody testing. 'This may mean that the disease developed after the kids have already cleared the virus. 'If so, then serology may be more useful diagnostically for kids who are PCR negative. 'What the antibody test tells us is that these children have definitely been infected with SARS-CoV-2 at some time in the past, which will hopefully help doctors make decisions on how to treat these patients. 'Ultimately, both PCR and antibody testing have overlapping roles to play in diagnosing this syndrome. Really excitingly, the detection of the antibodies may also provide clues on how this syndrome develops.' As a result of their findings, the researchers suggest changing the definition of PIMS-TS, as the Kawasaki-like condition is now known. 'Since all patients were positive serologically, it may be worth considering amending the definition of PIMS-TS so that TS is not just "temporally associated with SARS-CoV-2 pandemic", but "triggered by SARS-CoV-2 infection",' the researchers conclude in their study. Advertisement

WHAT DO WE KNOW ABOUT THE SYNDROME? Children are being admitted in what has been described as a 'multi-system inflammatory state.' This refers to the over-production of cytokines, known as a cytokine storm - the overreaction of the body's immune system. In a storm, the proteins start to attack healthy tissue, which can cause blood vessels to leak and lead to low blood pressure Doctors say this also happens with Ebola, causing the body to go into shock. It has also been noted in older COVID-19 patients. WHAT SYMPTOMS DOES IT CAUSE? The majority of the children being hospitalized with the condition have suffered from a high fever for a number of days, severe abdominal pain and diarrhea. Some develop a rash and red eyes or red lips, while a very small group go into shock, in which the heart is affected and they may get cold hands and feet and have rapid breathing. The symptoms are similar to those caused by Kawasaki disease, a rare but treatable condition that affects around eight in every 100,000 children each year in the UK. WHEN DID OFFICIALS FIRST START TO SEE CASES? The UK's National Health Service (NHS) sent an alert to doctors on April 27, warning them to look out for signs of the syndrome. At the time they said cases had been appearing in tiny numbers in London for about three weeks. Since then they have spread further across the country and between 75 and 100 children are known to have been infected. Cases in the US have been reported in New York and in clusters in other states such as New Jersey and California.. IS IT CAUSED BY SARS-COV-2, THE CORONAVIRUS? Doctors are almost certain the illness is being caused by the coronavirus but they haven't yet been able to prove it. Cases began appearing as the UK's coronavirus outbreak hit its peak and similar conditions have been reported in China and Italy during the pandemic. However, not all children with the Kawasaki-like syndrome test positive for the virus. Swab testing has suggested some of the children have not been infected with COVID-19 at the time they were ill. But all patients have tested positive for antibodies, doctors said, meaning they have had the coronavirus in the past. They said this suggests it is a 'post-infectious phenomenon' which is caused by a delayed overreaction of the immune system, which may happen weeks or even up to a month after the child was infected with COVID-19. IS IT TREATABLE? Yes. All but one of the children who have been diagnosed with the syndrome have survived. The only child known to have died with it, a 14-year-old boy, died of a stroke that was triggered by the life support machine he was on. Doctors are currently treating the condition by using medications to calm down the immune system and dampen the overreaction. Dr Liz Whittaker, a paediatrician at Imperial College Healthcare in London, said the sickest children are usually very ill for four to five days and begin to recover a couple of days after starting treatment. Advertisement

The DailyMail.com reported that New York health officials were investigating 85 cases of a rare pediatric inflammatory syndrome believed to be linked to COVID-19, after Gov Andrew Cuomo announced the news at a press briefing on Sunday.

Since then, the total number of cases in New York has risen to 110.

At least three young children in the state have died from the illness and another two deaths are under investigation, Cuomo said.

'This is an issue that people need to be aware of,' he said, noting that it is affecting toddlers and elementary school-age children.

Cuomo said that the New York Department of Health is notifying other states about the illness because it is 'probable' that its occurring at a similarly alarming rate outside of New York.

'This does not present as a normal COVID case - COVID cases tend to be respiratory - this presents as an inflammation of the blood vessels, sometimes inflammation of the heart,' Cuomo said.

'It's possible these cases were coming in but were not diagnosed as related to COVID because they don't appear as COVID, but it is a situation that has taken the life of three New Yorkers.'

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio also voiced 'tremendous concern' over the uptick in cases on Sunday, as he confirmed that 38 had been detected in the Big Apple and an additional nine are awaiting confirmation.

'What it does is, basically, in a child's body triggers an intensive, almost overwhelming immune system response. And that actually causes harm to the body,' de Blasio said Sunday.

The mayor said all children with associated symptoms would now be tested for COVID-19 as well as antibodies.

De Blasio urged all parents whose children exhibited the symptoms to seek immediate medical attention.

Efforts are underway to collect information on the disorder potentially associated with COVID-19'.

On May 6, the New York State Department of Health issued an alert, calling on hospitals to immediately report any cases to the department.

Cases of rare, life-threatening inflammatory illnesses in children associated with exposure to COVID-19 were first reported in Britain, Italy and Spain.

However, doctors across the US - such as in California, New York and New Jersey - are starting to report clusters of kids with the disorder, which can attack multiple organs, impair heart function and weaken heart arteries.

Cuomo announced the first-known death from the illness a five-year-old had died at an NYC hospital - on May 8.

The following day, he revealed that two other children - a seven-year-old in Westchester County and a teenager in Suffolk County - had also died.

Cuomo said children had tested positive for COVID-19 or the antibodies but did not show the common symptoms of the virus when they were hospitalized.

'This is the last thing that we need at this time, with all that is going on, with all the anxiety we have, now for parents to have to worry about whether or not their youngster was infected,' he said at his daily briefing.

New York is helping develop national criteria for identifying and responding to the syndrome at the request of the Centers for Disease Control, Cuomo said.

Doctors still believe that most children with COVID-19 develop only mild illness and most will recover.
A Kentucky EMT worker shot dead in her home during a police raid was mistakenly targeted during a hunt for a suspect believed to be in a trap house more than 10 miles awaywho was already in police custody, a lawsuit and police records state.

Internal records obtained by The Courier-Journal show the Louisville Metro Police Department intended to execute several no-knock search warrants looking for a suspected drug dealer who lived in a different part of town. Instead, they entered Breonna Taylors home unannounced in the early morning hours of March 13 and opened fire.

Taylor, a 26-year-old certified EMT worker who worked for two local hospitals and was asleep at the time, was shot eight times in a case that has garnered national outcry and demands for a federal investigation from several prominent leaders, including Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA).

Breonna Taylor should be alive right now, Ben Crump, a civil rights attorney representing Taylors family, tweeted on Wednesday. Yet here we are, the loss of another innocent, young Black woman. Another beautiful life lost! Louisville Police, your officers need to be held accountable.

According to police records, the no-knock search warrant granted by a judge as part of a narcotics investigation was executed just before 1 a.m. on March 13.

Despite the no-knock provision, Louisville Metro Police Department Lt. Ted Eidem claimed officers had knocked on the door several times and announced their presence as police who were there with a search warrant.

A lawsuit filed Monday by Taylors family, however, alleges that not only did the plainclothes officers enter the home without knocking and without announcing themselves, but they approached the house in unmarked cars in a manner which kept them from being detected by neighbors.

Kenneth Walker, Taylors 27-year-old boyfriend, was startled awake from a peaceful sleep by the officers entry and believed the apartment was being burglarized. He used his legal firearm to fire one gunshot out of self-defense, the lawsuit states. The shot wounded an officer in the legand prompted return fire of more than 20 rounds into the home.

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The officers then entered Breonnas home without knocking and without announcing themselves as police officers, according to the lawsuit. Shots were blindly fired by the officers all throughout Breonnas home and also into the adjacent home, where a five-year-old child and a pregnant mother had been sleeping.

According to The Courier-Journal, the no-knock entry is only granted in investigations where there is reasonable suspicion that an announced entry would be dangerous. In this case, officers argued it was needed because these drug traffickers have a history of attempting to destroy evidence, have cameras on the location that compromise detectives once an approach to the dwelling is made, and have a history of fleeing from law enforcement.

In reality, neither Taylor nor Walker had any criminal history for drugs of violence, or any drugs at the apartment, the lawsuit states.

Records show Taylors address was listed on the warrant based on the belief that one of the suspects, Jamarcus Glover, used her home to receive mail, keep drugs, or stash money.

The affidavit summarizing the investigation alleges that Glover once went to Taylors apartment in January and left with a suspected USPS package before going to a known drug house. The warrant also states that a car registered to Taylor was seen in front of the drug house on several occasions, which was about 10 miles from Taylors apartment.

Sam Aguiar, an attorney also representing Taylors family, also said at a Wednesday zoom news conference that Glover and Taylor dated two years ago and had maintained a passive friendship. The lawyer, however, maintained the package delivered to Taylors house was an isolated incident and did not justify a no-knock warrant.

The lawsuit says that Gloverthe main target of search warrantswas located and identified by LMPD prior to the warrant being executed at Breonnas home. Despite his arrest, the officers elected to proceed with executing the warrant.

Breonna had posed no threat to the officers and did nothing to deserve to die at their hands, the lawsuit adds, calling the 26-year-old a beautiful human being who was also an essential front-line medical professional in this community.

Taylors case has jumped into the national spotlight in recent weeks, prompting several prominent activists, attorneys, and local ministers to demand an investigation into the shooting. A petition calling for charges against the three officers involved in the raid had garnered more than 80,000 signatures by Wednesday.

Im calling for the Department of Justice to investigate Breonna Taylor's death, former Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris tweeted Wednesday. Her family deserves answers.

Gov. Andy Beshear called the incident troubling and said there should be careful reviews of the investigation by the commonwealth attorney, Kentucky attorney general and U.S. attorney.

Dr. Bernice King, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr., called for the Justice Department to look into Taylors death on Wednesday and urged Beshear to act after the 26-year-olds life was cut short by a hail of bullets from the LMPD, who were in the wrong house & firing repeatedly.

We are saddened by the tragic death of Breonna Taylor and the circumstances surrounding her death, the Interdenominational Ministerial Coalition said in a statement calling for an FBI investigation. As truth seekers and believers, we seek the complete truth of the facts and the circumstances surrounding her death.

Walker has since been arrested and charged with assault and attempted murder of a police officer. The officersidentified as Jonathan Mattingly, Brett Hankison, and Myles Cosgrovewere reassigned pending the outcome of the investigation. The Louisville Metro Police Department declined to comment.

Crump, who is also representing the family of Ahmaud Arbery and joined Taylors legal team on Monday, said he is seeking for the reckless officers involved be held accountable to the full extent of the law for the execution of an innocent woman.

He told The Daily Beast on Wednesday he is cautiously optimistic that these officers are going to be held accountable because the police department has not provided any answers regarding her death or facts about how the incident occurred.

The national attention needs to shine on this case because black womens lives matter too, he said, adding that the police department had not taken responsibility for a senseless killing. It's far too often that when black women are killed they just dont get the same attention that is given to men. That needs to change. Breonna needs the same attention [given to] Ahmaud.

Amid public pressure, Louisville Mayor Greg Fischer on Tuesday called for a "thorough investigation" into Taylors case, stating that he had spoken with Louisville Metropolitan Police Department Chief Steve Conrad about the need for an extensive probe.

As always, my priority is that the truth comes out and for justice to follow the part of the truth, Fischer said in a statement on Tuesday, two months after the fatal incident. "Police work can involve incredibly difficult situations. Additionally, residents have rights. These two concepts must be weighed by our justice system as the case proceeds.

Fischer added that the police department's Public Integrity Unit was conducting an investigation and a final report would be handed over to the commonwealth attorney to determine if any legal steps should be taken.

Aguiar added Wednesday he hoped the national exposure of the 26-year-olds tragic death would shine a light on a very corrupt police department. The truth will be uncovered, he said.

Crump told The Daily Beast: If you ran for Maud, you need to stand for Breonna.

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A Florida Panhandle man who set up an illegal burn barrel on his property caused a wildfire that torched approximately 343 acres (139 hectares) of wild lands and damaged or destroyed about 59 homes, state officials said.

Allen Smith, 58, was arrested Tuesday and charged with misdemeanor counts of reckless burning of lands, violating open burning requirements and burning of illegal materials, the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services said in a news release.

Recklessly burning illegal materials puts lives, lands and property at risk, Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried said in a statement. When that occurs, its our responsibility to take swift action and bring perpetrators to justice, just as has happened here.

Smith had been burning prohibited materials in a barrel behind his Santa Rosa Beach home on May 5 and didnt fully extinguish the illegal fire before leaving it unattended, investigators said. The remaining hot materials escaped into the surrounding dry vegetation and caused it to ignite, officials said. The dry conditions and weather patterns allowed the fire to rapidly spread out of control.

Also last week, another wildfire to the west, between Santa Rosa Beach and Pensacola, burned about 2,200 acres (890 hectares). A prescribed burn by a private contractor got out of control.

Smith was being held on the Walton County jail on $5,000 bond. Jail records didnt list an attorney.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Catastrophe Natural Disasters Florida Abuse Molestation Wildfire Agribusiness
Desperate to return to



their home states, a group of 150 migrant workers hurled stones at the police in Dahej industrial area of Gujarat's Bharuch district on Friday morning, a senior official said.

The police lobbed two teargas shells to clear the mob that had gathered in the area to demand a return passage to their home states amid the COVID-19 lockdown, Bharuch district superintendent of police Rajendrasinh Chudasama said.

Migrant workers, stranded in the district because of the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, had staged several protests in the last two days in support of their demand that they be sent to their hometowns by Shramik Special trains, he said.

"Even on Thursday, many of them took to the streets. But they went back after I personally appealed to them to be patient as their online registration was done and they only had to wait for confirmation from the authorities," Chudasama said.

However, 150 of them once again came out on Friday, voicing the same demand and pelted stones on police vehicles, he said, adding two teargas shells had to be lobbed to disperse the crowd.

Meanwhile, around 400 labourers from Bihar held a peaceful rally in Botad town of Botad district on Friday, demanding immediate arrangements for them to travel back to their ancestral homes.

Before things could get out of hand, the police stopped the protesters at a market and convinced them to wait for confirmation of travel arrangements from the authorities, an official said.

Botad district collector Vishal Gupta claimed that migrants are stuck because approvals for sending them back are pending from the Bihar government since May 10.

"The district administration has made all arrangements to send the migrants back. We have done their medical check- ups and arranged for buses to ferry them to the railway station.

"There is a delay because the Bihar government has not given approvals for trains," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Mumbai, May 15 : An upcoming film titled 'Waah Zindagi" celebrates Prime Minister Narendra Modis Aatmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan (self-sufficient India movement), which he spoke of in his recent address to the nation.

Featuring veteran actors Sanjay Mishra and Vijay Raaz, the film is about the struggles of a man who aims to redeem his past, which in turn leads him on a journey to manufacture goods in India, even as he faces stiff competition from Chinese products.

"Waah Zindagi" is directed by FTII alumnus Dinesh S. Yadav and produced by Ashok Choudhary, who had earlier backed the National Award-winning film "Turtle".

Image Source: IANS News

"The script has a unique concept and a strong social message. The 'Make in India' concept would make India self-sufficient in many aspects. If we had this vision sooner, I am sure the scenario would have been completely different by now," said actor Vijay Raaz.

Producer Ashok Choudhary said: "With 'Waah Zindagi', we wanted to tell an entertaining yet purposeful story that evokes the need and relevance for Swadeshi in India. For the past few years, we weren't even realising how we were dumping our own people, our industries for cheaper replacements from China. So much so that a few people told us that the mainstream audience may not relate to this subject." He added: "With the Prime Minister's address, we hope that people start embracing this philosophy as their Art of Living rather than a temporary arrangement , and our film helps reinforce the feeling in them each time they watch it." Asked about the release of the film, the producer said that though the original aim was to go for a theatrical release, with the prevailing situation they are open to launching the film on OTT as well.

Latest updates on Howdy Modi Houston

-- Syndicated from IANS
A vaccine against the novel coronavirus appears to have provided protection against the deadly disease in six rhesus macaque monkeys.

It gives early hope for the vaccine, which is now undergoing human clinical trials.

There is no guarantee this result will translate to people, though.

A group of monkeys was exposed to the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The six animals that were vaccinated had less of the virus in their lungs and airways.

The trial took place in the US, involving researchers from the US governments National Institutes of Health (NIH) and from the University of Oxford.

The vaccine appeared to protect the animals against developing pneumonia.

Rhesus macaques have similar immune systems to humans.

Promisingly, the animals also didnt develop immune-enhanced disease  which BBC medical correspondent Fergus Walsh describes as a theoretical risk. Thats when the vaccine triggers a worse response to a disease.

How close to developing a vaccine are we?

This response was seen in some early animal vaccine trials against SARS  another coronavirus  and proved a stumbling block in developing a vaccine for that disease.

The study hasnt yet been reviewed by other scientists and formally published, but Prof Stephen Evans at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine described it as high quality and very encouraging.

Meanwhile, trials in the UK on more than 1,000 human volunteers are currently taking place through the University of Oxford.

There are more than 100 experimental coronavirus vaccines currently being developed.

Dr Penny Ward, a visiting professor in pharmaceutical medicine at Kings College London, said it was helpful to see that the vaccine didnt cause a worse disease response in these monkeys and that they didnt develop pneumonia after being vaccinated.

The vaccine is based on a small part of the viruss distinctive spike. The idea is that by getting the body to recognize a unique part of the virus when it is exposed to the whole thing it will know how to react, and produce the right antibodies to fight it off.

That did seem to be happening to the vaccinated macaques, which produced antibodies capable of fighting the virus.
PERTH, Australia, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alloy Steel International, Inc. (OTC: AYSI) advises that its 2020 Financial year Second Quarter Report for the six months ended March 31, 2020 is now available on www.otcmarkets.com website by searching for AYSI then choosing "Filings and Disclosure."

About Alloy Steel

Alloy Steel manufactures and distributes Arcoplate, a technically superior and market leading 'alloy overlay' wear plate, servicing the global marketplace from its modern manufacturing facilities in Perth, Australia. Arcoplate is used throughout the mining and materials processing industries, from opportunistic one-off specialty applications in small companies to large relationship based repeat business applications with leading international companies.

Arcoplate provides users with superior wear protection due to its premium alloy mix, its high ratio of carbide rich alloy and its unique manner of manufacture. The product's technical superiority combined with its unbeatable 'whole-of-life' cost has resulted in Arcoplate's wide acceptance in the mining and mineral processing industries to reduce wear in a host of fixed plant and mobile equipment applications.

In mining and materials processing industries, where premature equipment wear is the primary cause of downtime, to undertake repairs or refurbishment, Arcoplate can provide users with significant profit improvement. Arcoplate can substantially lower equipment downtime, resulting in higher production, whilst also lowering the overall cost of wear protection.

Furthermore, in applications where material 'hang-up' or 'carry-back' are also a significant cause of lost production, such as sticky materials that do not discharge freely from truck trays, buckets and chutes, Arcoplate's unique characteristic of polishing to a very low friction factor has the potential to virtually eliminate these problems, whilst simultaneously providing enhanced equipment wear life.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION

Thushara Sam Dahanayake

Company Secretary

+61-8-9248 3188

SOURCE Alloy Steel International, Inc.
Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about her search for self-acceptance.

At 60 years old, the star of Food Network's Valerie's Home Cooking is realizing that true acceptance comes from within, not the number on the scale  something she struggled with for many years.

Yet it was not always easy for her to talk about her feelings of sadness. Bertinelli, the third of five children born to Andrew, an executive at General Motors, and his wife Nancy, a stay at home mom, traces that difficulty back to her childhood in Wilmington, Delaware.

"When I came into the world, my mom was grieving," Bertinelli says in this week's issue of PEOPLE. "She was pregnant with me when my brother Mark died. He was only 17 months old. He died in the most horrible way. They were visiting a friends' farm and he wandered off unsupervised and drank poison out of a bottle that wasn't supposed to have poison in it. It was a soda pop bottle."

John Russo

For more from Valerie Bertinelli, pick up this week's issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

But Bertinelli didn't learn about his death until her early teen years. "The subject was too painful. My parents kept the tragedy locked inside."

Years later, when her grandmother died, she returned to Delaware for the burial and came to a new understanding of her parents' loss.

"My grandmother was buried not far from Mark's grave," she says. "I was holding Wolfie (her son with first husband Eddie Van Halen) who was 17 months old and thinking how did my mom survive? She had to keep going and I learned that from her. She had to carry on. She had a very hard life. She always tried to make the best of everything."

John Russo Valerie Bertinelli

RELATED: Valerie Bertinelli Describes Being Fat-Shamed as a Child  and How Shes Letting Go of the Scale at 60

That day when she saw her parents, she says, "I grew more in love with them, knowing what they had gone through."

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She also sees that the lesson of carrying on was "ingrained in me from a very young age," she says. "I felt like I had to make everyone happy. It's a big job for a little kid."

Courtesy Valerie Bertinelli Valerie Bertinelli standing beside her family cat in Clarkston, Michigan, in March 1971

Her father died in 2016 and her mother died last June. Looking back, she says, "I know they both did the best they could."

She thinks of her mom often and says, "every so often, I still want to call her up and ask her about a recipe."

RELATED: Valerie Bertinelli on Her 2009 PEOPLE Bikini Cover: 'There's a lot of Pride and a Lot of Shame'

She hopes by sharing her struggles, she can help others. "You can't make everybody like you  that is scientifically impossible  but you can connect with people who need to hear your story, and my hope is I hope I can connect with someone who needs to hear my story."

"More than ever we need to treat ourselves with kindness," she says, "and it starts with ourselves."
Public health, as well as health and workplace safety investigators, don't know exactly how all 226 residents and some 148 employees of a private seniors' home in the Town of Mount Royal became infected with COVID-19  a catastrophic outbreak that has killed at least 70 residents.

Quebec Public Health Director Dr. Horacio Arruda said Thursday that the CHSLD Vigi Mont-Royal appears not to have been managed with the level of infection prevention controls in place at hospitals.

With too few employees on duty, the seniors' home may not have been kept as clean as it should have been, or people may even have been dining together, contributing to the spread of the novel coronavirus, he said.

It is possible a faulty ventilation system was a source of transmission.

With staff getting infected despite wearing appropriate personal protective equipment, the health agency that oversees the home, the CIUSSS Centre-Ouest-de-l'Ile-de-Montreal, conducted an air-quality study, and experts found virus particles in the air in some rooms.

Could ventilations systems be a factor?

An infectious disease specialist at Sainte-Justine Hospital, Caroline Quach, said studies done elsewhere have found particles, known as virus RNA, in the air of patients' rooms  although not in ventilation systems  but whether those airborne particles are capable of infecting people is inconclusive.

Air filtration is important for filtering out all kinds of diseases and allergens, said Arruda, but it is "perhaps a very low factor in transmission" of COVID-19.

Dr. Mylene Drouin, the public health director for the Montreal region, agreed with Arruda. However, she said there is still much to learn about the spread of COVID-19 in long-term care homes and hospitals.

Ventilation may be one factor, Drouin said, but a multitude of possibilities for the spread of the coronavirus make it hard to control outbreaks like the one at Vigi Mont-Royal.

Dr. Cecile Tremblay, a microbiologist and infectious disease specialist at the Centre hospitalier de l'Universite de Montreal, told CBC News that ventilation systems have little to do with the transmission of COVID-19, as the disease is mainly spread through droplets.

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However, the virus can stay suspended in the air a "little longer" in a closed environment that lacks adequate air circulation, she said.

Ivanoh Demers/Radio-Canada

Staff, military now in hazmat-like gear

Even without conclusive studies about how ventilation systems affect the spread of COVID-19, the CIUSSS Centre-Ouest-de-l'Ile-de-Montreal ordered tests of the air quality at the TMR residence, due to problems with the ventilation system there dating back to late April.

"We were concerned that our staff members deployed to Vigi Mont-Royal had contracted the virus despite wearing the appropriate personal protective equipment," said CIUSSS spokesperson Carl Theriault.

Quebec's workplace health and safety board, the CNESST, has launched its own investigation into the home, where staff and military personnel are now wearing equipment not usually required in long-term care homes.

That protective gear includes waterproof gowns, N95 masks, visors, hoods, gloves that end at the elbows and shoe covers. Workers continue to wear it, despite the fact that inspectors have now said the air quality is now safe.

Google Streetview/Radio-Canada

The home is owned by Vigi Sante, a company that operates 15 long-term care homes in Quebec. The company's assistant director, Jean Hebert, said a crew was sent to repair the ventilation system on April 30  the day after the health board raised concerns.

Some 50 Vigi-Sante employees have returned to work after testing negative, Hebert said, and every precaution has been taken to ensure their safety and to protect residents.

Air quality was tested Wednesday and was found to be excellent, he said, and the facility is being disinfected to meet standards set by public health authorities. He said all staff have been provided the proper personal protective equipment, as well.

FIQ seeks court order to ensure nurses' safety

Quebec's largest nurses' federation, the Federation interprofessionnelle de la sante du Quebec (FIQ), disagrees with Hebert's assessment.

"People were [testing] positive at a phenomenal speed," said Sonia Mancier, president of the FIQ wing representing private-sector nurses.

Mancier said she believes the disorganization at Vigi Sante, including the mixing of hot and cold zones, encouraged the spread of the virus in several of the company's homes. She is also concerned about similar problems with ventilation systems at other homes owned by the company.

Radio-Canada

For example, 96 per cent of residents of CHSLD Vigi Dollard-des-Ormeaux, also owned by Vigi Sante, have tested positive, and 66 of them have died, according to internal documents obtained by Radio-Canada.

That same investigation shows 116 employees of that West Island facility also became infected.

The CIUSSS de l'Ouest-de-l'Ile-de-Montreal sent a team of workers to Vigi Dollard-des-Ormeaux, and a spokesperson said the situation is difficult but stable.

Other documents addressed to Quebec's minister responsible for seniors, Marguerite Blais, and obtained by Radio-Canada show there are two other homes owned by Vigi Sante with "significant" outbreaks: Vigi Pierrefonds and Vigi Reine-Elizabeth.

Earlier this week, the FIQ obtained a court order from the Quebec Superior Court to compel Vigi Sante to carry out air-quality inspections at Vigi Dollard-des-Ormeaux and Vigi Reine-Elizabeth and to provide protective equipment to all employees.

Even before the judge ordered the air testing on Wednesday, Vigi Sante said under oath that it had appointed three expert firms to carry out tests. The judge demanded that the results be sent to the union.
By Trend





The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) is constantly monitoring the detention conditions and health conditions of Dilgam Asgarov and Shahbaz Guliyev, who were detained by the Armenian servicemen in Kalbajar district, Ilaha Huseynova, head of the PR department of the ICRCs representative office in Azerbaijan, told Trend.

In accordance with the ICRCs mandate, the conditions of detention and treatment with the people detained in connection with the Armenia-Azerbaijan Nagorno-Karabakh conflict are monitored and assistance is rendered for the detainees to be in contact with their family members, Huseynova said.

The ICRC also maintains a dialogue with the people responsible for the places of detention by monitoring the health condition of the detainees and the process of rendering medical services to them, head of the PR department said.

The dialogue with the corresponding bodies is underway during the coronavirus pandemic, the topics of which are confidential, Huseynova added. The information about the health condition of these individuals is transmitted only to their family members.

The monitoring is carried out directly at the place of residence of these individuals, taking into account the rules and recommendations in connection with the existing situation, based on the principle of non-harm to the ICRCs activity related to the detainees, head of the PR department said.

During an operation in July 2014 in Shaplar village of Azerbaijani Kalbajar district occupied by Armenia, the Armenian special forces killed Azerbaijani citizen Hasan Hasanov, and took hostage two other Azerbaijanis, Shahbaz Guliyev and Dilgam Asgarov. A "criminal case" was initiated against them. All of them intended to visit the native places and graves of their relatives. Afterwards, a "court" sentenced Asgarov to life imprisonment and Guliyev to 22 years in prison.

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.
A Colorado county coroner says that state officials overruled him in classifying a man who had died from alcohol poisoning as a death due to coronavirus.

The 35-year-old man was found lying dead in a city park in Cortez by police, and Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers determined he had died of acute alcohol poisoning, after finding his blood alcohol concentration at .55, nearly double the amount considered lethal. After the deceased tested positive for coronavirus, Deavers said that state health authorities immediately characterized it as a death due to coronavirus.

Before the death certificate was singed, they had already listed it as a Covid death, Deavers told Denver-based CBS4. I can see no reason for this. The classification raised Montezumas coronavirus death count from two to three. Earlier this month, Cortez requested that the state allow it to reopen some businesses, but was denied. Our reviewers have some concerns about vulnerabilities in Montezuma County and want to monitor the situation before further considering a variance, the state health department said in response.

Another CBS4 Investigation last month found that the state health department had reclassified three deaths at a Centennial nursing home as Covid-19 deaths  contradicting the assessments of attending physicians, who ruled that all three were not related to coronavirus.

Deavers said the situation raises questions as to whether the state is intentionally manipulating its Covid statistics.

It does look like it, whether they are or not, I dont know, Deavers admitted. I dont know if thats what their intentions are. Maybe theyre trying to do it for some of the two trillion budgeted in for the Covid.

More from National Review
Mark Barnett: Ousted from Invesco

Invesco has ousted fallen star manager Mark Barnett citing 'disappointing performance', after his flagship funds floundered during Brexit and the Covid-19 crisis.

The exit of Barnett - a former protege of disgraced investor Neil Woodford - is accompanied by a shake-up of Invesco Perpetual's UK equity team and fund portfolio.

This will see James Goldstone and Ciaran Mallon become co-managers of Invesco Perpetual's Income and High Income funds.

The Income fund will be merged with the UK Strategic Income fund, and Martin Walker will take over the Perpetual Income and Growth Investment Trust, which Barnett was fired from last month.

Invesco offered 'appreciation of Marks profound commitment' to clients and colleagues over 24 years at the firm, while Barnett said he was 'extremely proud' of his career there.

But investing experts said his departure was 'no real surprise to anybody' and described his funds as having had 'a torrid time' of late.

One pointed out that since Barnett took over Woodford's old funds in March 2014, the FTSE All Share has returned 8.55 per cent while the High Income fund fell 22.48 per cent and the Income fund fell 23.46 per cent.

This means that the flagship funds have underperformed the wider stock market by more than 30 per cent.

Barnett had already announced the sale of all the unquoted investments from the two funds, after the disastrous performance of such unlisted holdings toppled Woodford's fund last year.

His departure follows the appointment of Stephanie Butcher as Invesco's chief investment officer at the start of this year.

Announcing the changes with immediate effect, she said: 'I have undertaken a comprehensive review of the UK equity range, recognising a period of disappointing performance and listening hard to client feedback.

Income and High Income funds underperform peers

Income fund: Brexit hits its holdings hard (Source: FE Trustnet)

High Income fund: Longtime underperfomance against peers (Source: FE Trustnet)

'When I became CIO in January, I made it clear I would not shy from introducing change where I saw it necessary.

'As we reorganise the UK Equities portfolio and after discussion with Mark Barnett, we have mutually concluded that this is the right time for him to hand over the leadership of these funds and leave Invesco.'

Ben Yearsley, director of Shore Financial Planning, said: 'It feels as if this has been coming for a while. Mark Barnetts funds have had a torrid time of late undone by firstly Brexit and latterly the Covid-19 outbreak.

'However, all managers have had to deal with those macro events. Value and UK domestic stocks have not been the place to have been invested for the last four years so arguably he was fighting a losing battle.

Other traditional equity income funds have weathered the turmoil far better Ben Yearsley, Shore Financial Planning

'However, other traditional equity income funds have weathered the turmoil far better so ultimately the poor performance has to be down to Mr Barnetts investment decisions.

'One intriguing thought is is this the bottom for value? It feels the wrong time to bail out of these funds.'

Ryan Hughes, head of active portfolios at AJ Bell, said: 'News that Mark Barnett has left Invesco will perhaps come as little surprise after the last couple years with performance suffering and questions being asked over the positions taken in the portfolios, particularly around illiquid small caps and unquoted companies.

'While Invesco would have been hoping that the steps taken to improve performance in recent months would have been sufficient, it is clear that making a clean break has been decided as the better course of action for both parties.

'With a review of the UK range also having taken place, Invesco clearly want to try and get their UK franchise back on the front foot, however it will take a long time for the new managers to turn around performance.

'Looking ahead, investors will need to think about whether they remain in the Invesco funds and further clarity will be needed from the new managers as to any portfolio changes that may be made.'

Darius McDermott, managing director of Chelsea Financial Services, said: 'Unfortunately, this news can come as no real surprise to anybody.

'The Invesco Income and Invesco High Income funds have performed very poorly, and there is a sense of inevitability about the situation.

'We have some sympathy for Mark because the funds have been in redemption ever since he took over from Neil Woodford  it is very difficult to perform well, if you are constantly having to sell holdings.

'That being said, he has had five years to make changes and try to turn things around, and the fact that the funds still had legacy holdings in illiquid and unlisted companies has exacerbated his problems.

'James Goldstone and Ciaran Mallon are safe pairs of hands but are likely to face the same challenges in terms of redemptions, and the headwind of the value style of investment still being out of favour.'
Highlights The Redmi Note 9 is expected to be a 5G device in China.

Xiaomi is expected to use a Dimensity 820 chipset for the Redmi Note 9 5G.

The Chinese model is also expected to use an OLED display.

This year's Redmi Note 9 series has brought substantial upgrades over the older model. The Redmi Note 9 Pro and its Max variant have gone high with cameras, fast charging and vast displays. Xiaomi, however, has different business strategies for individual markets and for its home market, i.e. China, it plans to go 5G for all its models. Hence, the Redmi Note 9 series for China is expected to see some China-specific upgrades and we have a hint of what it is going to be like.

A new Redmi device has been spotted on Chinese certification website Tenaa and based on the information it has to offer, it seems like the Chinese Redmi Note 9 Pro. Renders of the device show a design familiar to the Redmi Note 9 Pro in India but there are a couple of changes. The display appears to have a waterdrop-style notch instead of the punch-hole cutout found on the Indian model. This seems like a step back from the global model but it is not all bad news.

The listing mentions a 6.5-inch Full HD+ display that uses an OLED panel. This is a major upgrade from the LCD panel on the global model. Xiaomi is also using the OLED panel to its advantage by implementing an in-display fingerprint sensor. The aspect ratio stands at 20:9.

Since the Chinese model has to support 5G, Xiaomi is using a MediaTek Dimensity 800 series chipset, which is most likely going to be a Dimensity 820 chip. The Dimensity 820 is expected to be announced as an overclocked version of the Dimensity 800, retaining its 5G connectivity. Xiaomi is supposed to offer an option of 6GB and 8GB for the RAM along with options to choose between 64GB, 128GB and 256GB for the storage.

Since it is a Redmi Note device, the phone has a microSD card slot for expandable storage. Surprisingly, the battery capacity has been reduced to 4,420mAh, which is almost a 1,000mAh down from the 5020mAh found on the global models. Xiaomi is also going to bundle a 22.5W fast charger in the box.

The listing also mentions the camera on this device, with the main unit being a 48-megapixel camera and the front camera being a 16-megapixel unit.

Chances are that this could end up as the Redmi Note 9 for the Chinese market, given its smaller 6.5-inch footprint. If that is the case, the Chinese version could end up being more powerful than the global version, which uses a MediaTek Helio G85 chip. Xiaomi is expected to bring the Redmi Note 9 to India but which one of these devices becomes the Indian Redmi Note 9 is still a question.
India and Bangladesh: Lines on water cannot save Bay of Bengal fisheries

by Mohammad Arju

May 15,2020 | Source: The Third Pole

Bangladesh, India, and Myanmar have divided the Bay of Bengal, legally, but neither fish, nor fishers are bound by the lines on the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) maps. The fish do not know. In the hope of a better catch, fishers cross boundaries, knowingly or unknowingly. As more boats chase fewer fish, clashes are common. Fishers based in Coxs Bazar and Patuakhali fish harbours say that, traditionally, they used to fish side by side with vessels from other countries in the deep sea. Now, as it is becoming harder and harder to find fish, things are changing. Fishers come from long distances to find what they can, and are not welcome competitors. Even vessels from Sri Lanka have been seized and fishers arrested off the shores of Bangladesh. Sometimes the conflicts result in less legal action. The sinking of smaller vessels sometimes goes unreported, said several trawler skippers from Chittagong on the condition of anonymity.



Conservationists and fisheries managers caution that this is not just about the safety of the fishers, but how long there will be enough fish in the bay if the countries cannot transform conflict into collaboration. Absence of cooperation among Bay of Bengal countries to manage marine fisheries and wildlife is risking undermining many conservation measures taken on the national level, they say. There have been attempts to foster cooperation. India has the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC). the Global Environment Facility started one process, but not much has changed on the water.



Tensions and arrests in the sea



Bangladeshi fishers view the annual 65-day fishing ban as unjust, because they say fleets from neighbouring countries fish in Bangladeshs waters during the ban. Mahatub Khan Badhon, a lecturer of zoology at the University of Dhaka, said, Securing little benefits from the market and perception of uneven enforcement of the marine fishing ban surely affect the compliance of fishers and encourage fishers to delegitimise any such management measures. Badhon believes that ramping up enforcement is not the answer. Arresting and putting foreign fishers in jail, whether by Bangladesh, India or Myanmar, only increases human suffering. There is no evidence from past decades that it helps conservation or reduces conflicts over fishing. While a large number of artisanal or small-scale fishers are locked up in foreign jails for months, overfishing continues in the bay. As Nur Islam Majhi from Chittagong put it, There are always others who will cross boundaries with a hope that there are more fish in the sea. As skipper of an artisanal gillnetter, he has two decades of fishing experience and numerous encounters with boats from other countries just south of Mongla port.



Last year, the Bangladesh coast guard arrested over 519 Indian fishers and seized 32 boats off the coast in Patuakhali more than 125 kilometres inside the Bangladesh EEZ. This was during the 65-day ban on marine fishing, which kept Bangladeshi fishers stuck on land. The Indian fishers were sent back. But not everyone gets lucky. Statistics from coast guard show that in recent years more than a thousand Indian fishers were held in Bangladeshi waters and spent months in jail before release. On the other hand, it is difficult to find the numbers of Bangladeshi fishers jailed in other countries. When Bangladeshi fishers spend months in jail, in Myanmar, it can take years of imprisonment before return.



The how-to of not jailing fishers



Yugraj Singh Yadava of the Bay of Bengal Programme Inter-Governmental Organisation refers to the international law of the sea, that clearly directs countries not to jail or deliver any other corporal punishment to foreign fishers arrested in Exclusive Economic Zones. Headquartered in Chennai, the inter-governmental body is pushing for regional cooperation among the Bay of Bengal countries. Article 73 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) says: arrested vessels and their crews shall be promptly released upon the posting of a reasonable bond or other security. The law and subsequent international agreements also direct to have provisions for bilateral agreements, information sharing and other sorts of collaboration to avoid the suffering of fishers and protect fish that travel across national maritime boundaries. Yadava said, International laws provide enough guidance to States to deal with the issue. However, none of the countries in the region is doing so.



Mohammed Latifur Rahman, Director of Bangladeshs marine fisheries office, is of the same view. There is no effective collaboration among countries except a few opportunities for dialogues, he said in an interview from Chittagong. He hoped that India, which has the longest coastline along the Bay of Bengal, could help neighbours conduct collaborative explorations and studies on joint fish stocks. We need processes and mechanisms for data sharing and a functional platform to cooperate in marine fisheries management, he said.



Back in 2012, a study commissioned by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisations Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem project made several recommendations to deal with the arrest and repatriations of fishers, including joint patrols. In the long run, countries will need bilateral or multilateral agreements for the repatriation of fishers. The roles of employers, vessel owners, and governments need to be clarified. Countries also need to regularly inform artisanal fishers of the issues involved. The Bay of Bengal Large Marine Ecosystem Project was the only internationally funded initiative to facilitate trans-boundary collaboration for marine fisheries and environmental issues. But more than one decade after its launch, very few of the recommendations have been accepted by the respective governments.



Fish dont do borders



Many fish stocks regularly move between EEZs of two or more countries to feed or to spawn. Yadava explained that a few fish species like the Indian mackerel and the threadfin bream are distributed along the entire bay. Some other species like Hilsa and the Bombay duck are primarily found in specific areas. Smaller pelagic fishes such as anchovies, herrings and Hilsa migrate through the coastal waters of two or more countries. Some small pelagic fish, like the rainbow sardine, are found along the coastlines of all the Bay of Bengal countries.



Even demersal species such as lobsters, sea cucumbers and reef fish disperse across boundaries during larval stages. For example, the larvae of tropical lobsters may travel thousands of kilometres from the place of birth to the site of an adult settlement. Harvesting activities of one country, sharing a fishery resource, significantly affect harvesting opportunities of one or more other countries sharing the [same] resource, Yadava said. Joint stocks of fish in the bay are still to be identified, said Mohammad Sharif Uddin, Principal Scientific Officer of Bangladeshs Marine Fisheries Survey Management Unit. No studies are conducted yet to identify fish stocks straddling across multiple EEZs. During the last joint working group meeting with India, there was no progress on fisheries. Yadava confirmed, In the Joint Working Group meetings such issues are not adequately discussed, and hardly any conclusions reached.



Opportunity to conserve charismatic megafauna



There may be hope of this changing. Six Bay of Bengal countries have already joined the 1995 United Nations Fish Stocks Agreement. The most recent entrant was Thailand, which ratified the agreement in 2017. Myanmar and Malaysia have not joined yet. The agreement is about implementing UNCLOS provisions relating to the conservation and management of straddling fish stocks and highly migratory fish stocks. One of the significant parts of managing fisheries is reducing bycatch and conserving highly threatened species of marine animals. Badhon explained that species of sharks, rays, and sawfish migrate across large swaths of seas. Migratory wildlife species such as whale sharks, hammerhead sharks and sea turtles often get caught in fishing gears along with commercially important fishes. Since the entire Bay of Bengal makes up the extant range of these species, there is an opportunity to collaborate among all neighbouring countries.



Some of the countries protect these animals, but the scale of operation is not uniform. Without harmonised policy by all the countries in the region, conservation by one country alone may have limited benefits, Yadava said. He explained the protection of highly migratory sea turtles (leatherback turtle) by any one or two countries will not produce the desired results if other countries in the region do not follow protection measures. The dugong is another species that inhabits the Palk Bay and the Gulf of Mannar. India and Sri Lanka are yet to agree on suitable strategies to protect this iconic species from mortalities caused by the fishing operations. Yadava added that if the fisheries of the Bay of Bengal are to be sustained, active collaboration and joint management of the fisheries resources is a must. The resources exist, the countries are  in principle  not opposed, but as they delay both the fish and fishers in the Bay of Bengal continue to suffer.
Nick Kotz, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author who exposed health hazards in the nations slaughterhouses, the gamut of hunger in America and the politics behind the Pentagons B-1 bomber, died on April 26 in Broad Run, Va. He was 87.

His wife, Mary Lynn Kotz, an author, said he died in an accident on his cattle farm after he had mistakenly left his 2006 Mercedes in neutral as he tried to retrieve a package from the back seat. The car struck him as it rolled backward.

Mr. Kotz was a Washington correspondent for The Des Moines Register and its sister paper The Minneapolis Tribune when he wrote a series of articles in the mid-1960s on the unsanitary and unsafe conditions in meatpacking plants He found that many plants were not subject to federal inspection because they were not engaged in interstate commerce.
The number of reported coronavirus cases in India rose nearly 10.5 percent over the past two days to 81,970, data from the morning update of the ministry of health and family welfare (MoHFW) showed. This is roughly in line with the rate of increase in the previous 48 hours, when the reported case count rose to 74,281 on Wednesday.

So far this week, the number of cases has gone up by 22 percent (between Monday morning and Friday morning). This is a slower rate of increase compared to the previous four days, when confirmed cases had risen by 27 percent.

After tapering last month, Indias coronavirus trajectory has picked up this month, with new infections rising faster than several Asian peers and deaths rising faster than in most other badly-hit countries.

Indias case count has now roughly doubled in the last twelve days. This is a much slower rate compared to early-April, when cases were doubling every four days. Deaths have also seen slower rise compared to the trend in early-April but have picked up pace over the past couple of weeks. Indias death toll from covid-19 as of Friday morning was 2,649, roughly double what it was twelve days ago.

At the rate of compounded daily growth in this twelve-day period, the number of cases could cross 100,000 by next Tuesday, two days after the current phase of the lockdown ends. The continuing rise in cases poses a severe challenge for Indias strained medical capacity and overburdened health system.

At 20,466, Maharashtra leads in terms of the number of active cases, according to the health ministry update this morning. Active cases exclude deaths and recoveries from the list of confirmed cases.

Next on the list is Tamil Nadu with 7,368 active cases, followed by Delhi, with 5,310 patients still under treatment. Gujarat is fourth on the list with 5,252 active cases and Madhya Pradesh fifth with 2,018. The top five states together account for 79 percent of the active cases nationally, and the top ten states account for 93 percent of all cases. Nationally, the active case count was 51,401 as of Friday morning.

View Full Image Source: MoHFW

Over the past seven days, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, and West Bengal have seen the highest spike in cases among the top ten states with most cases. These three states account for 77 percent of all the new active cases in this period. Over the same period, fatalities have surged the most in Tamil Nadu, Delhi, and Maharashtra. These three states account for 53 percent of all covid-related deaths over the past seven days. Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh are the only two states in the top ten where the active case count has reduced in this period. Active cases have risen much slower in Gujarat and Rajasthan compared to previous weeks.

Among top ten states with most active cases, the case fatality rates are the highest in West Bengal (9%), Gujarat (6.1%), and Madhya Pradesh (5.4%). Indias case fatality rate continues to hover around 3.2%. Among all states, the case fatality rates are lowest in Odisha (0.5%), Kerala (0.7%), and Tamil Nadu (0.7%).

Over the past two days, Mumbai, Chennai, Thane, Ahmedabad and Pune districts have seen the biggest spike in confirmed cases nationally. These five districts account for 59 percent of new cases over this period, data compiled by howindialives.com last evening shows. Other districts that have seen a sharp spike over the past two days are Indore, Aurangabad (Maharashtra), and Kolkata.

View Full Image Source: MoHFW

View Full Image Source: NDMA

So far, 551 districts have confirmed cases in the country. Mumbai (16,690 cases) has reported the most number of cases nationally among all districts, followed by Ahmedabad (6,910) in Gujarat. Chennai (5,631) in Tamil Nadu, Pune (3,454) in Maharashtra, and Thane (3,287) in Maharashtra are the other leading districts. These top five districts now account for 49 percent of confirmed cases in the country.

Indore (2,238) in Madhya Pradesh, Jaipur (1,348) in Rajasthan, Kolkata (1,184) in West Bengal, Surat (983) in Gujarat, and Jodhpur (980) in Rajasthan are the other high-burden districts which figure in the list of top ten districts. The top ten districts account for 58 percent of all the confirmed cases nationally. District-wise data for Delhi are unavailable and hence not part of this list.

Most of Indias hotspots so far have been urban affluent districts, with richer states hit harder than the rest (https://www.livemint.com/news/india/mapped-the-spread-of-coronavirus-across-india-s-districts-11587179250870.html).

Meanwhile, the global coronavirus case count has crossed 4.4 million even as some badly hit countries begin to relax lockdown measures after over a month.

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NWS Weather Alert NOTE: This information is provided by the National Weather Service. Forecast may differ from local information provided by our own 69News Meteorologists

...WINTER WEATHER ADVISORY IN EFFECT FROM 3 AM TO 11 AM EST THURSDAY... * WHAT...Snow expected. Total snow accumulations of up to 2 inches, with local amounts up to 3 inches possible. * WHERE...Portions of northern New Jersey and eastern Pennsylvania. * WHEN...From 3 AM to 11 AM EST Thursday. * IMPACTS...Plan on slippery road conditions. The hazardous conditions could impact the Thursday morning commute. * ADDITIONAL DETAILS...Rain develops later tonight then mixes with and changes to snow during the early morning hours of Thursday. Temperatures are forecast to drop to near freezing by daybreak Thursday. PRECAUTIONARY/PREPAREDNESS ACTIONS... Slow down and use caution while traveling. The latest road conditions for the state you are calling from can be obtained by calling 5 1 1. &&
Taliban Truck Bomb Kills At Least Five In Eastern Afghanistan

May 14, 2020

At least five people were killed by a truck bomb near a military court in the city of Gardez in the eastern Afghan province of Paktia on May 14, officials said.

"Dozens of civilians are feared to be dead and wounded," said Tariq Arian, an Interior Ministry spokesman.

Emal Khan Momand, a military spokesman in Paktia Province, said the attack was carried out with a truck packed with explosives.

Five people were killed and 14 were wounded, Momand said.

In a statement, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the militant movement was responsible for the attack.

Arian blamed the militant Haqqani network, which has ties to Taliban militants.

The blast comes after gunmen attacked a maternity hospital in Kabul, killing 24 people, including new mothers and newborn babies, on May 12. A suicide blast claimed by the Islamic State militant group at a funeral in eastern Nangahar on the same day killed 32 people.

The Taliban denied any involvement in those attacks, which came amid a resurgence in violence that threatens to unravel a landmark agreement between the militant movement and the United States meant to put an end to the 18-year conflict.

Based on reports by Reuters and dpa

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/taliban-truck -bomb-kills-at-least-five-in-eastern- afghanistan/30611421.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Itanagar:

Four booklets reportedly written by former Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul, who allegedly committed suicide on Tuesday last, have been found in his room and handed over to police.

"We have not read the booklets so it cannot be assumed as suicide note. There was no diary found from the spot as has been reported earlier. Police have already registered a case and it is under investigation," Additional District Magistrate (ADM) Talo Potom, who conducted the inquest, told reporters here today.

The four 60-page booklets, titled 'Mere Vichaar' (My Thoughts), allegedly signed by Pul, were found in the room where Pul was found dead, the ADM said.

Potom said he had sealed the documents and handed it over to police. "I was only ordered to conduct inquest by the District Magistrate under Section 176 of the CrPc," he said.

The ADM said four mobile handsets and one tablet were also found and handed over to police. Principal Secretary (Home) Satya Gopal said that an inquiry would be carried out. Gopal said the medical board constituted by the state government has not submitted the post-mortem report yet. "They are duty bound to submit the report once it is finalised," he said.

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New Sonora Union High School District Superintend Ed Pelfrey View Photo

Sonora, CA  Sonora High has named a new superintendent for the district and he is no stranger to the school or the area.

The Governing Board is very pleased to announce the selection of Ed Pelfrey as the new Superintendent of Sonora Union High School District, said Dr. Jim Riggs, Board President.

District officials relay that Pelfrey actually began his career in Tuolumne and Stanislaus counties where he served as a social science teacher at both Sonora and Oakdale High Schools. He then took on the role of Sonora High Vice-Principal. But his roots to the area go even deeper as he also held the post of Columbia Elementary School Principal.

For the past five years, Pelfrey has been the principal at Ceres High School where he has racked up some top honors including Association of California School Administrators Region 7 Co-Administrator of the Year, the FFA Tri-River Region Star Administrator of the Year, and the Administrator of the Year for Ceres Unified School District.

Pelfrey education and certifications include an Associate of Arts and Bachelor of Arts degrees in Social Science from Butte Community College and California State University (CSU) in Sacramento, Administrative Services Credential from CSU, Stanislaus, and Superintendents Academy certification from the Association of California School Administrators in Sacramento.

District officials inform that the board will take action on Pelfreys employment contract at its Tuesday, June 9th meeting. He replaces Dr. Mark Miller who abruptly stepped down from the post in mid-February when he and the board announced they had agreed to part ways, as reported here. Millers last day is not until June 30th. The district did not disclose when Pelfrey will take over the job, but in the past have stated they wanted to fill the position by July 1st.
He also maintained that the Health Department does not have the statutory authority to require the presentation, and he maintained that was his fundamental objection to the rule.

Theres no statute that supports this, Gann said. We should be concerned about a state agency running a circle around the Legislature.

Gann referred to a failed 2017 bill that would have narrowed the acceptable reasons for exemptions.

Opponents disagreed that an educational presentation is a religious test and maintained that Ganns real objection is to mandatory vaccinations.

Its ironic that were rejecting rules dealing with vaccines during a global pandemic, but I guess thats what were going to do, said Rep. Cyndi Munson, D-Oklahoma City.

And that is indeed what they did, voting 69-29 for the rule rejections.

HJR 1040 now goes to the Senate.

Senate Bill 1102, by Rep. Kevin West, R-Moore, rewrites the Catastrophic Health Emergency Powers Act under which the state has been operating since early April.
All over the world, countries are trying to cope up with the drastic changes brought about by COVID-19, and the Philippines is no exception. National and local governments, private sector, and individuals are working hand in hand to help Filipinos through this crisis. Although most people are doing their part by staying home, there are still groups of people, mostly healthcare workers, who need to commute to work to do their jobs.

Toyota shows its support to frontliners and healthcare workers in a press release, saying: "Toyota Motor Philippines (TMP) salutes and gives its utmost respect to these frontliners providing such essential services. Being a good corporate citizen, the company would like to do its part to support the Department of Transportations Free Ride for Health Workers Program. Today, the company announces its collaboration with the Toyota Mobility Foundation (TMF), an independent non-profit organization aimed at enabling mobility for all, to provide sanitized, just-in-time transportation services for the healthcare frontliners in Philippine General Hospital."

tmp

Toyota's free mobility support provides up to 10 connected and sanitized shuttles which will cater to the different shifts of the workers to help ease their burden during commute. The service will work alongside a Just-in-Time booking app, allowing a more efficient process in setting the pick-up time and at locations close to home for workers for enhanced security.

Pras Ganesh, program director for the Asia Region of TMF shares, Using our expertise in mobility solutions, TMF aims to support the Philippines healthcare workers in their daily commute, by providing a solution that offers peace of mind to maintain their well-being with this sanitized, just-in-time free shuttle service.

To help reduce the risk of infection, the said shuttles will come with air purifiers and disposable seat covers replaced periodically, as well as regular cleaning and sanitation schedules. Shuttle drivers will don personal protective equipment as well, and the passenger seating distance will also be observed accordingly.

Story continues

Atsuhiro Okamoto, president of TMP, comments, To express our appreciation to the frontliners for their courage and sacrifice, Toyota partners with the Department of Transportation to support our modern day heroes. As a good corporate citizen of the Philippines, we will continue with our commitment to improve the quality of life of Filipinos, especially in these trying times.

tmp

Toyota's shuttle service will start its operation from mid-May and operate for a period of three months, with the potential to be extended based on necessity. In addition to this, the company has also donated 49 vehicles to various government hospitals, local government units, and other volunteer groups to transport frontliners, healthcare workers, and other essential workers, as well as a donation of PPE to a local hospital, and distribution of rice and grocery packages to families in certain communities.

Toyota Motor Philippines employees have also pooled their personal resources voluntarily to be able to provide more PPEs to healthcare workers, basic food supply to the less privileged, and monetary support to non-regular employees. In addition to this, Metrobank Card Corporation is giving Petron fuel rebates to frontliners who are Toyota Mastercard holders.

Photos from Toyota

Also Read:

Toyota PH outlines changes to accommodate new normal in business

Toyota Supra: A brief history of an iconic JDM
There is no conflict over long-term plans of merged territorial communities  President's rep on land issues

Ukrainian President's Plenipotentiary for Land Affairs Roman Leshchenko notes that the decentralization reform in Ukraine is approaching a logical conclusion, and is confident that it will be possible to complete it in the near future.

"There is no conflict over the long-term plans of the merged territorial communities. Of course, there are separate issues where we need to find mutual understanding," he said in a comment to Interfax-Ukraine on Thursday.

Leshchenko is confident that the President's Office, the Ministry for Community and Territory Development and the Verkhovna Rada's Local Government Committee, together with the community, will find a common language, take into account the positions and expectations of the community, and work out joint positive decisions to complete the decentralization reform that is needed for the people in the local communities.

"Future plans will be approved by the Cabinet on time and throughout Ukraine," he said.
A war of words has erupted between China and New Zealand after its foreign minister claimed a Chinese politician tried to stop the country going into lockdown.

New Zealand's foreign minister, Winston Peters, revealed his counterpart in China accused the country of 'overreacting' to the coronavirus crisis.

But China has denied any such conversation took place, saying it 'never dissuaded' the country from bringing in travel bans and restrictions.

In a statement on Friday, the Chinese embassy told Stuff: 'China respects the lockdown decision made by New Zealand Government and has never dissuaded New Zealand from going into lockdown.'

A hair stylist is seen colouring a woman's hair in Auckland on Thursday (pictured) after the country lifted some coronavirus restrictions

Australia and New Zealand both acted quickly to shut their borders - particularly with China, where the outbreak began - leading to some of the lowest infection rates in the world.

At an earlier press conference, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian, accused officials of 'creating trouble' by making claims against his country,

'We hope that certain people in New Zealand will stop spreading disinformation and creating trouble and work to enhance instead of undermining bilateral mutual trust and cooperation,' he said.

Mr Peters, who is also the country's deputy prime minister, said his first call regarding the COVID-19 crisis was with his Chinese counterpart.

Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters (pictured on March 12) revealed that his first call as foreign minister was speaking to his counterpart in China who asked them not to lockdown

'Without speaking out of turn, they wanted a discussion as to why we were doing it, because they thought it was an overreaction,' he told Stuff's podcast earlier this week.

'They didn't want us to go into lockdown  and I suppose they wanted a discussion about that.

'We had a long discussion, but in the end I said, "look, you'll understand we've heard what you've got to say; that we've got to protect our own people, and as fast as we can".

'And it ended up with, ''Well, I hope I see you one day,'' sort of thing.'

New Zealand went into lockdown on March 25 in order to protect its citizens from COVID-19, which had already killed thousands of people around the world.

Barbers give haircuts to customers at the French Barber on Thursday in Wellington, New Zealand (pictured) as restrictions ease to level two

A wet market in the Chinese coronavirus epicentre of Wuhan is seen open on May 4 (pictured) despite such markets believed to be the source of the virus

People were ordered to maintain social distancing and were only allowed out with one other family member for essential items.

Following a strict seven week lockdown, the country has slowly lifted some restrictions from level four to level two.

As of Thursday, the country eased further restrictions from level three to level two which will allow retail businesses, cafes, gyms and playgrounds to open.

Friends and family will also be allowed to gather outside of their households as long as safety measures are followed.

'As of today we have only 90 New Zealanders recorded with the virus, with only two in hospital,' Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said to parliament.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured, right) with Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters (left) in Wellington, New Zealand on Thursday

Police stop vehicles to heading north on state highway one at Warkworth on April 9 in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured)

'None of it has been through luck, but rather through hard work.

'We are ready to move to level two, to open up the economy, but to do it as safely as possible.'

On May 18, schools and early learning centres will operate as usual with students expecting to return to normal.

New Zealand has suffered a total of 21 deaths from COVID-19 and has no reported cases in the last three days.

Tensions between Australia and China continue to escalate as the government calls for a review from China to understand 'exactly' how coronavirus originated.

A hairdresser is seen back at work in Auckland, New Zealand, on Thursday after restrictions were lifted (pictured)

Vendors wearing masks sell seafood on Xihua Farmer's Market in Guangzhou, China on May 4 (pictured)

In the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak in Australia the federal government was told that the deadly virus may have been leaked from a Wuhan lab.

The Morrison government was told in February there was a 50 per cent chance it was accidentally released from a bio-containment facility located in the initial Chinese virus epicentre before more became known about it.

The government now believes it's unlikely the Wuhan Institute of Virology was the source of the virus which has claimed 89 lives in Australia and more than three million worldwide.

It comes after it was revealed two senior scientists from the lab - Peng Zhou and Shi Zhengli - previously studied bats at the CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory as part of research funded by both the Australian and Chinese governments.

Locals in Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, are seen being tested on May 14 (pictured)

'We want a clear, independent, fearless global review of the origins, the actions, and the global path forward, in relation to this and all future pandemics,' federal health minister Greg Hunt told the Daily Telegraph.

The work of Mr Zhou and Ms Zhengli is being examined by intelligence agencies from the 'Five Eyes' network comprising of Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the UK and the US as part of their investigations into the origins of coronavirus.

This later caused trade tensions as China banned meat exports from four Australian abattoirs as trade tensions between the two nations escalate in the wake of the coronavirus spread.

The Australian government now believes it's unlikely that China's Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured) was the source of the virus

Shi Zhengli (left) and Peng Zhou (right) jointly wrote a paper in January that said the new coronavirus probably originated from bats, similar to SARS

The meat suppliers - three from Queensland and one from New South Wales - sell around $1 billion worth of meat to China each year, making up around a third of total beef exports to our biggest trading partner.

China also threatened to slap an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley, a move which would cripple the industry.

The Kilcoy Pastoral Company, Beef City in Toowoomba, Brisbane's Dinmore meatworks and the Northern Co-operative Meat Company at Casino, New South Wales have been temporarily blacklisted.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told Daily Mail Australia the suspensions were due to 'highly technical issues' around labelling and health certification.

'My expectation is that the technical issues have all been addressed,' he told reporters on Tuesday afternoon.
Facebook, and a group of telecom companies including China Mobile International, MTN GlobalConnect, Orange and Vodafone, are collaborating to build the "most comprehensive" subsea cable to serve the African continent and Middle East region where nearly a billion people are still offline.

The project, called 2Africa, will see the companies lay cables that will stretch to 37,000km (22,990 miles) and interconnect Europe (eastward via Egypt), the Middle East (via Saudi Arabia), and 21 landings in 16 countries in Africa.

In a joint statement, the companies said they expect the system to be live by 2023 or early 2024. Once live, it should be able to deliver more than the total combined capacity of all subsea cables serving Africa today, with a design capacity of up to 180Tbps on key parts of the system.

The companies, which also includes Saudi Arabia-based telecom firm STC, Telecom Egypt, and African telecom firm WIOCC, say service providers in the countries where 2Africa cable lands will obtain capacity in carrier-neutral data centres or open-access cable landing stations on a fair and equitable basis.

Facebook and telecom operators did not reveal how much money they were investing on the project.

Najam Ahmad, Vice President of Network Infrastructure at Facebook, said 2Africa is a major element of our ongoing investment in Africa to bring more people online to a faster internet. We've seen first-hand the positive impact that increased connectivity has on communities, from education to healthcare.

The subsea cable would also help Facebook and others drive down their bandwidth costs.

The internet is an amalgamation of tiny bits of code that move around the world in cables across the ocean floor. As of early last year, 750,000 miles of cable have been laid out across the globe.

The involvement of Facebook, which maintains a number of other connectivity efforts to bring more people online, in 2Africa shouldnt come as a surprise. Telecom firms have long worked on undersea cable projects, but over the past decade, several American technology companies have joined the effort.

Story continues

Google, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon now own or lease nearly half of the undersea bandwidth, according to Washington-based research firm TeleGeography. Google alone has backed at least 14 cables globally.

Last year, the search giant unveiled Equiano, a privately-funded subsea cable to connect Europe and Africa. The first phase of this project was scheduled for completion in 2021. Both 2Africa and Equiano have commissioned Nokia-owned Alcatel Submarine Networks for building the cable.

American technology companies aren't alone in their fascination with laying cables across the globe. China's Huawei completed a 3,750-mile cable between Brazil and Cameroon in late 2018, and last year began work on a 7,500-mile cable connecting Europe, Asia and Africa.

It was also finishing up links across the Gulf of California in Mexico, WSJ reported last year, adding that some unnamed current and former U.S. officials were worried that the Chinese tech giant's cables were vulnerable to espionage. Huawei denied any threat.
New Delhi:

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will chair first all party meeting on Kashmir unrest in parliament today. The meeting, to be held around noon, has been called with the agenda to evolve consensus among all parties on ways and means to deal with ongoing unrest in the Kashmir valley.

The Kashmir unrest today entered day 35 and has claimed 56 lives while leaving over 6000 injured including several para-military and police personnel.

Apart from Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Rajnath Singh, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley and Minister of State in the Prime Ministers Office (PMO) Dr Jitendra Singh would represent the Government in the meeting. Leader of Opposition in Rajya Sabha and Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad and Congress leader in Lok Sabha, Malikaarjun Kharge would represent the main opposition party.

Of two main regional political parties in Jammu and Kashmir, National Conference has no presence in either House of the Parliament, while Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), which is coalition partner of BJP in J&K, could nominate veteran Parliamentarian Muzaffar Hussain Baig, party MP from Baramulla-Kupwara Lok Sabha seat, for the all party meet.

The PDP has four MPstwo each in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha after the resignation of Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti from Anantnag Lok Sabha seat.

This is the first All Party Meeting on Kashmir after 2010 unrest in the Valley, which had led to appointment of three-member Interlocutors on J&K including Dileep Padgaonkar, Prof Radha Kumar and MM Ansari though their report never saw light of the day.

The meeting has been scheduled for 12 noon in the Parliament House tomorrow, which is also last day of Monsoon session of the Parliament.







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Most Ghanaians have heeded the call by the government to support the fight to halt the spread of the coronavirus (COVID-19) in the country.



People all over the country, are now washing their hands regularly with soap under running water, using alcohol-based hand sanitizers to rub their hands frequently, while refraining from handshaking and keeping physical distances.



People are also now wearing face and nose marks and those who dont have urgent things to do in town, have been staying home to avoid contracting and spreading the virus.



Again, entrepreneurs and businessmen have also responded to the Presidents call for the local production of Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs).



This has resulted in abundance on the local market, hand sanitizers, nose and face masks, liquid soaps, Veronica buckets, tissue papers, and other detergents, which are being used by the majority of the people to protect themselves against the disease.



Commercial drivers have also agreed to reduce the number of passengers in their vehicles as a way of promoting physical distancing in their vehicles.



There are however, other people who see the outbreak of the virus as spiritual and therefore, want spiritual or religious intervention to stop the further spread of the disease in Ghana.



This category of people believes that, the pandemic is a punishment by God for the sins mankind had committed against Him.



It is therefore important that the world seeks the face of God, confess sins and ask for forgiveness.



One of such persons is Opanin Akwasi Yeboah, aka, Juaben Yeboah Koree, a native of Asante Effiduase, in the Sekyere East District of Ashanti.



The 75-year-old man, who paints barrels to earn a living travelled about 40-kilometres long journey from Effiduase to the Ashanti Regional offices of the Ghana News Agency in Kumasi, to put across what he described as my poor mans ideas and suggestions to the government.



According to him, the pandemic, which was claiming millions of lives and disorganized the socio-economic lives of the world, is not just a disease.



My son, this pandemic is not just a disease. Some have happened in the Bible before. Do you remember the story of Jonah? When the ship was about to sink, he remembered that he had sinned against God by refusing to go to where God had directed him to go. Jonah asked the captain of the ship to throw him into the sea and when that was done, the storm stopped.



Opanin Yeboah cited several other instances in the Bible and said it is time the President constituted a team of true and renowned men of God to pray fervently to God to tell us our sins and seek for forgiveness.



He was of the firm belief that, that was the only way this pandemic can go away and restore Ghanaians to their normal self.



Opanin Yeboah said though scientific knowledge was important in fighting the virus, the spiritual aspect could not be discounted.



He appealed to the President to give a little ear to his suggestion and constitute a team of ministers to intercede on behalf of the country and see what God could do.

Source: GNA









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Medical students to care about COVID-19 patients on voluntary basis  ombudsman

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16:40 15/05/2020

ST. PETERSBURG, May 15 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov)  St. Petersburg Rights Commissioner Alexander Shishlov has proposed that students taking practical courses in medical facilities providing care for coronavirus-infected patients are to deal with them only on the voluntary basis, the press-service of the Ombudsman informs on Friday.

Shishlov proposes to amend the respective provisions of an order regulating the specifics of such medical practical courses to the effect that the students were allowed to choose the medical facilities for taking such courses.

The proposals have been submitted to the government of Russia, the statement reads. The ombudsman has also asked Russias Rights Commissioner Tatiana Moskalkova to support his initiative.

According to St. Petersburg ombudsmans staff, currently the order in question envisages written consent on the part of medical students to care about infected patients; nevertheless, some of its other stipulations are of mandatory nature in this respect, what unjustifiably restricts the right of students to choose medical facilities not involved in combating COVID-19.
Crude oil transit via Ukraine shrinks by 40% over lower demand

16:00, 15.05.20 868

Ukrtransnafta in May will supply 750,000 tonnes of oil to European consumers.
The Air India Friday operated special charter flights to ferry 105 ONGC personnel from Patna, who would replace the staff working continuously for the past 60 days on oil exploration rigs and production platforms at Bombay High, an off-shore oil field, 176 km (approx) off the west coast of Mumbai.

Another flight, with nearly 120 ONGC workers, is scheduled to return to Patna later in the evening.The ONGC is mobilising around 5,000 personnel across the country to rotate its staff, stranded on duty and otherwise at different locations across India.

So far, we have lifted our personnel from Delhi, Chennai, Kochi and Kolkata, following all the precautions as prescribed by the Centre, said Deependu Kumar, chief engineer (drilling), Sagar Vijay Oil Exploration Rig, Bombay High.

Our company has taken all requisite clearances from the government before moving our logistics, taking full precautions and maintaining social distancing, keeping the middle seat inside the aircraft vacant during transportation of its personnel, he said.

The officials, who flew to Mumbai from Patna, were lifted from Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern UP. The Patna hub caters to Bihar, Jharkhand and eastern Uttar Pradesh.

They will be taken to the ONGCs Juhu heli-base to be finally taken by choppers to our exploration site, said Gautam Kumar, superintending engineer (production), who was coordinating the operation in Patna.

Swab samples of each of the ONGC staff were tested prior to departure, he added.

The 109 people who returned to Mumbai from Patna, had come to their respective hometowns, while those on field duty, both on-shore and off-shore, were stranded due to the lockdown. Oil operation comes under the Essential Services Maintenance Act.

An Airbus-320 aircraft from Mumbai lifted 105 ONGC personnel from here at 10am. We expect another charter flight, with ONGC personnel from Mumbai, to reach Patna around 5.30pm, said Neeraj Sinha, Air Indias airport manager, Patna. We took full precautions, as per the new standard operating procedure, before allowing the passengers on board, he said.

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A federal appellate court in Philadelphia has rejected former U.S. Rep. Chaka Fattahs latest bid to reduce his sentence, one of the longest ever imposed on a member of Congress convicted of corruption-related charges.

The West Philadelphia Democrat had argued that his sentencing judge should have shaved time off the 10-year prison term he received in 2016 after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit tossed his conviction on several bribery counts two years later.

But a panel of Third Circuit judges ruled late Thursday that U.S. District Judge Harvey Bartle III was justified when he decided to keep Fattahs sentence the same while re-sentencing him in July.

At the time, Bartle noted Fattahs convictions for other crimes, including racketeering conspiracy, money laundering, and mail, wire, and bank fraud, still stood  and that keeping the sentence the same would deter those in high places  from [abusing] the public trust.

His flagrant conduct undermines the confidence of the citizenry in the integrity of all public institutions and public officials, the judge said at the time. The cynicism saps the strength of our democracy.

Fattah, 63, served more than two decades in Congress representing parts of Philadelphia and Montgomery County before he was brought down by a federal corruption probe that found he had stolen federal grant funds, charitable donations, and campaign cash for years.

The initial verdict in his case came just days before the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in a case involving former Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell that narrowed the scope of what constitutes bribery in political corruption cases.

In tossing Fattahs bribery convictions in 2018, the Third Circuit found that the jury in Fattahs trial had heard overwhelming evidence that the congressman had accepted bribes from Herbert Vederman, a former Philadelphia deputy mayor, who was seeking a White House appointment. Those included cash payments to his children, college tuition for his South African au pair, and $18,000 to help with the purchase of a Poconos vacation home.

But because Bartle had instructed the jury under the old guidelines, it was unclear whether it still would have found him guilty had he used the new ones, the Third Circuit ruled.

Fattahs lawyers  Bruce Merenstein and Samuel Silver  declined to comment on Thursdays ruling.

U.S. Bureau of Prisons records show Fattah is still held at a federal prison in Wayne County. But Vederman, who was serving his 2-year prison sentence in upstate New York, has been released to house arrest as part of federal efforts to thin the inmate populations in response to the coronavirus pandemic.
A health worker is seen during a blood test for the CCP virus at Las Praderas nursing home in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Spain, April 23, 2020. (Juan Medina/Reuters)

US Issues First CCP Virus Workplace Guidance to Nursing Homes

The U.S. Department of Labor issued its first workplace guidance to nursing homes on May 14 since the COVID-19 pandemic swept the country and ravaged care facilities, saying residents, staff, and visitors should keep 6 feet (1.83 meters) apart.

The alert from the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) also said nursing homes should screen residents and staff for symptoms and should find alternatives to group activities.

OSHA, which is charged with setting and policing national working conditions, did not recommend testing of residents or workers by nursing homes, which have been hit by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus, since February.

A Department of Labor spokesperson declined to comment on the timing of the guidance and said the departments jurisdiction only applied to nursing home workers. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention has published guidance on when to conduct testing of residents and staff.

President Donald Trump said this week that nursing home residents should have access to testing if there was testing capacity.

AARP, a group that represents seniors, said care facility staff must have personal protective equipment (PPE), which OSHA recommended, as well as the necessary testing to identify cases and prevent the spread of the virus.

Nursing homes account for a large portion of the 85,000-plus deaths in the United States from COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP virus. The elderly and people with underlying chronic health conditions are among those at highest risk for severe illness and death.

Unions have criticized OSHA for not doing enough to protect workers, who have protested conditions at food-processing plants, warehouses, and fast-food restaurants.

Worker advocates have pushed Congress to direct OSHA to issue emergency temporary standards that all businesses must follow.

Businesses have complained they must navigate a complex mix of state and local standards as well as guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and have asked Congress to provide a shield against legal liability.

OSHA also recommended on Thursday that taxi drivers wear masks and drive with lowered windows and pharmacies should encourage online ordering.

Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia has defended his department and said it is investigating workplace safety complaints but that flexible guidance is better for businesses than rigid standards.

By Tom Hals

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 05:59:14|Editor: huaxia

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BRASILIA, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro on Thursday issued a provisional decree that seeks to limit public-sector liability for things that go wrong in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

As published in the Government Gazette, the decree states that civil servants and government employees or officials can only be held accountable for mishaps or oversights "if they intentionally committed the serious error in direct or indirect relation to" the measures being taken to combat the outbreak.

The decree defines a serious error as grave negligence, malpractice or recklessness.

As the decree is provisional, it takes effect immediately. Enditem
Last week, Conroe ISD announced its upcoming graduation dates, set to start June 1, after reviewing the guidelines set out by Gov. Greg Abbot to make gatherings safer during the COVID-19 pandemic. In a Facebook Live video Thursday, superintendent Curtis Null gave the community a more detailed look at what those ceremonies will look like.

The governors requirements covered several types of ceremonies, including virtual and vehicle ceremonies. After gathering feedback from students and campus administrators, CISD decided that the best way forward would be to hold outdoor ceremonies at Woodforest Bank Stadium in Shenandoah.

Through our conversation with the (Cynthia Woods Mitchell) Pavilion, it became evident to us that the social distancing rules was going to really limit the capacity of the pavilion, Null said of why the district decided to move all graduation ceremonies to Woodforest Bank Stadium.

The district has set up a webpage for graduation information at https://www.conroeisd.net/about/graduation-central/. Some ceremonies have been split into two to accommodate graduates and their families while still following social distancing guidelines.

Social distancing guidelines from the governor require that individuals and groups not housed together remain six feet apart. Every other row of the stadium will be blocked off, and families will sit four chairs away from each other in assigned seating.

The graduates themselves will be sat on the field and their section will correspond with the section that their family is in, and where the family is instructed to park, to allow for an easier arrival and departure for all attendees. All graduates will be given four tickets for guests. Had the ceremonies been held at the pavilion, they would have been limited to two or three tickets.

The last piece that we got from our seniors was We want to get this done as quickly as possible, dont drag this out longer than you have to, Null said.

The districts first graduation ceremony will be held on June 1, the first day that the state will allow for outdoor ceremonies to be held. Holding ceremonies in June will likely result in more graduates attending. Had the district waited, students joining the military, doing summer programs, or traveling may not have been able to attend graduation held in July.

The faster that we could make this happen, the more we felt like we had a chance to include as many kids as possible that wanted to be a part of this plan, Null said.

More Information CISD graduation schedule June 1: Hauke High School - 8 a.m. June 1: Caney Creek High School - 8 p.m. June 2: The Woodlands High School - 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. June 3: Oak Ridge High School - 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. June 4: Conroe High School - 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. June 5: TW College Park High School - 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. See More Collapse

Null said the district was also interested in moving quickly to get the graduation plans together because the state could change its decision or guidelines at any time as COVID-19 develops. The superintendent stressed that the district has no choice but to follow the guidelines if it wants to have graduation ceremonies and will be strictly enforcing them.

We feel like we have answered every single one of the questions, and if we could not have done that, if we could not feel like we could do this safely, we wouldnt to it, Null said.

Abbotts guidelines include limiting capacity at the ceremony, attendees will be screened prior to graduation for health concerns, there will be no rehearsals, social distancing of six feet must be adhered to, hand sanitizing stations and handwashing stations must be provided, the district must limit attendance of its own staff, and diplomas will not be given out the same way they typically do to limit the possible transfer of the virus, among other guidelines.

While the guidelines dont require masks, they do strongly encourage them. To help encourage this with its graduates, CISD will be providing special masks for each graduate designed specifically for them with their school brand. Graduates are not allowed to take group photos at the stadium after.

While the district has created a blueprint, specific details for each graduation will be created by the school.

We know it wont be perfect, we wish we could have you altogether, its just not an option, Null told the class of 2020. This is the best plan we could get to give you your moment and allow you to enjoy this, and your parents to be a part of it.

jamie.swinnerton@chron.com
The COVID-19 wont change the development trend of the Chinese economy despite its temporary impacts. As prevention and control measures become regular and routine, work resumption is speeding up across the country, and order of production and life is also restoring.

The volume of cargos passing the ship lock of the Three Gorges Dams has grown steadily as the demand for water transportation in the upper and middle reaches of Yangtze River increases following the gradual work resumption in China. In April, 412,400 tons of cargos were handled by the ship lock, up 13.31 percent from the previous month and a year-on-year growth of 5.47 percent. The volume has returned to and even surpassed the normal level. Photo by Zheng Kun/Peoples Daily Online

With various policies unveiled to stabilize employment and increase production, the Chinese society is upbeat about economic recovery.

Machines are now cranked up on a yoga mat production line of a company based in Jinjiang, southeast Chinas Fujian province, presenting a busy scene as usual, from foaming to printing, and to packaging.

When the four factories of the company resumed production in early February, only less than half of the employees returned, and now all of them are back, said Su Yugu, general manager of the company.

The output of the company hit 29 million yuan ($4.1 million) in the March-April period, said Su, who is now back on a tight schedule again as the sales of home fitness products, such as resistance bands and yoga mats, soared.

The company is one of the many Chinese enterprises re-embracing development, and work resumption is being accelerated nationwide.

Photo shows a busy production line of a special metals company affiliated to Maanshan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd. in east Chinas Anhui province. The company registered a record-high steel output in the first quarter of the year. Its turnover grew against headwinds with a sound momentum for work resumption. Photo by Luo Jisheng/Peoples Daily Online

At a factory located in an industrial park of Chinese electronics giant Hisense in Huangdao of Qingdao, east Chinas Shandong province, about 3,000 workers are busy manufacturing smart TV sets. The production capacity of the factory has fully recovered.

In central Chinas Henan province, the workshops of Henan Jinhui Stainless Steel Industry Group Co., Ltd. are also working around the clock to ensure on-time delivery of orders.

A number of major projects have restarted construction. In April, central Chinas Hubei province kicked off 464 new projects, each with an investment of more than 100 million yuan ($14.1 million). Besides, many projects at the 10-billion-yuan level have also resumed construction, such as the Core Hub of International Logistics of Hubei province and the Hubei section of the Zhengzhou-Wanzhou high-speed railway.

The hydro dam of the Aratax water conservation project, the largest of its kind in northwest Chinas Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region recommenced, aiming to secure the four million people living in the plain of Yarkant River during the flood season this year.

The Dagu Hydropower Station, the largest hydropower project in southwest Chinas Tibet Autonomous Region with a total investment of 12.2 billion yuan ($1.7 billion), has entered a peak season of construction. Its first generating unit is expected to provide power supply the next year as scheduled.

Key industries have resumed work in a steady manner. In Beijing, chain supermarkets, the housekeeping industry, the logistics industry, large wholesale markets, petrol stations, and secondary agricultural markets have all realized full work resumption. In Shanghai, the artificial intelligence and integrated circuit industries have fully restored production. In southwest Chinas Chongqing municipality, its two pillar industries  automobile and electronics  have generally restored full capacity.

Chinas outstanding achievements have won wide acclaim from the international community. United Nations Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator Mark Lowcock pointed out that the recovering Chinese economy will make a great contribution to securing a final victory in the global fight against the pandemic and ensuring the normal operation of the global economy.

Stephen Roach, a senior researcher at Yale University in the United States, believes that China is at the center of the global supply chain and plays an important role in global trade, hailing the countrys resumption of production as encouraging.

Aerial photo shows the Feilonghu Wujiang River Bridge under construction in southwest Chinas Guizhou province. The bridge, with a main span of 680 meters, is a key project of the Zunyi-Yuqing expressway which is scheduled to open to traffic by the end of 2020. The expressway is the most convenient channel linking the Chengdu-Chongqing economic zone and the economic coordination zone in northern Guizhou province with the Pearl River Delta and the Beibu Gulf economic zone in the south. Photo by He Chunyu/Peoples Daily Online

Chinese authorities have launched fiscal, taxation, and financial policies to restore the capital chain, which is the lifeline of enterprises.

The Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation have further exempted value-added taxes for small and micro-sized businesses and individually-owned businesses.

The Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS), together with two other departments, are expected to slash the social insurance contributions of enterprises by over 600 billion yuan ($84.6 billion) in the first half of the year.

The Peoples Bank of China and other departments have provided 2.85 trillion yuan ($400 billion) of low-cost lending for smaller businesses, especially micro-, small-, and medium-sized firms and individually-owned businesses, through special relending and rediscount.

A total of 90 policy measures in eight areas have been launched to accurately and effectively promote the resumption of production and assist enterprises.

Chinas policy makers reacted early and rapidly to restore the economy, said Martin Raiser, World Bank country director for China, noting that the country has provided additional liquidity to the market, periodically reduced and exempted taxation and social insurance premiums of companies, and granted targeted support to medium-, small- and micro-sized enterprises as well as companies operating in critical supply chains.

The Chinese government acted quickly to wake up the economy, and there is still policy room to support the economic recovery in the future, he added.

Employment stability guarantees social stability. Various departments, including the MHRSS, have successively issued policies and measures to stabilize employment, including that for migrant workers.

A campaign was carried out to guarantee the demand for labor of key enterprises, helping over 10,000 central and local key enterprises recruit nearly 500,000 people to ensure orderly production.

A total of 3.2 million companies have received 42.3 billion yuan ($6 billion) in refunded unemployment insurance premiums so far, which benefited 80.76 million employees. In addition, a 100-day free online skills training campaign was carried out, benefiting about 5.9 million people.

Kenneth Kang, Deputy Director in the Asia & Pacific Department of the International Monetary Fund, believes that China is gradually resuming production, and its economy is expected to rebound in the second quarter and continue to recover in the second half of the year. Chinas economy will grow substantially in 2021 as economic activity gradually normalizes, Kang said.

In the long run, Chinas economy will continue to move forward, and he has full confidence in the countrys long-term development prospects, said Alan Barrell, a professor with Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge.
The Swedish government announced on May 8 an expanded aid package for the media to cope with the financial losses caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and the Swedish Union of Journalists, Journalistforbundet, welcomed these substantial support measures for the media sector and workers.

On 3 April, the Swedish government announced a media aid package of 200 million SEK (around 18 million ), an amount that the Journalistforbundet claimed to be insufficient to protect the whole media sector.

Following the Swedish unions action, the Minister of Culture Amanda Lind announced on May 8 further measures to support the media industry and the government-funded cultural institutions

With this new plan, the government will support the media sector with an additional 500 million SEK (around 47 million  extra) fund.

Ulrika Hyllert, President of Journalistforbundet, said: This support package doesn't mean the danger is over. But we hope that this, together with the measures already presented, will make media companies more capable of managing the crisis. The hope is that we will not have to see mass layoffs.

The minister of Culture said that the new measures will cover more media outlets than the firstly announced aid package of April. The details of the new proposal will be presented in the following weeks.

The fact that money is provided is crucial not only for the media's survival but also for citizens' access to quality news. This is positive for democracy

"We at the Journalist Association have worked very hard to convince politicians of the need to save the industry and secure the publics access to information now and in the long term. It seems that the government has listened, said Ulrika Hyllert", who also remarked that the support scheme will protect not only the media but the citizens right to access quality information.

Despite welcoming the new package, the union claimed that there's not enough support for the freelance journalists, who have been greatly hit by the crisis.

The IFJ General Secretary, Anthony Bellanger, said: We welcome the Swedish government determination to save the media from this crisis and praise the Journalistforbundet for its hard work on protecting the media workers. We call on the government to complete the mission by announcing support measures for freelance journalists".
Other changes were afoot at the University of Houstons Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts before the COVID-19 pandemic, but this one brings a seismic shift.

Karen Farber, the centers director since 2005, is leaving to join the Buffalo Bayou Partnership as vice president of external affairs, a new position. Beginning May 18, Farber will oversee the Partnerships development, communications, programming and public art programs.

The public art component will be broad, including grassroots projects in neighborhoods and installations by international artsts at the Buffalo Bayou Cistern. Public art will be especially important as the Partnership moves forward with its East Sector Plan spaces, Farber said. We will be looking at how art can be a tool to connect people to the bayou and each other.

The Mitchell Center, meanwhile, has named Blaffer Art Museum director Steven Matijcio as interim director (he now holds both positions) and Melissa Noble as interim managing director. The Center is an organization, not a place, that supports interdisciplinary arts programs, artist residencies and community projects. Its work became higher-profile after Farber launched CounterCurrent, an annual festival of experimental performances, installations, talks and participatory events, in 2014.

Earlier this year, Farber told the Chronicle she thought CounterCurrent had run its course and would go on haitus after 2020. After the pandemic forced her to cancel the final festival, she re-organized and presented one element of it  the popular program Ten Tiny Dances  as a virtual experience. During her tenure at University of Houston she also hosted residencies with leading artists and a lecture series that brought luminaries including Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Theaster Gates and the Yes Men to Houston.

Faber said she wasnt looking for a change; that her move to the Partnership came about organically. The two organizations often partner, and she served on a Partnership committee. I dont know who said something first, she said. Its a strange time to be making a transition, but its been in the works for a while.

molly.glentzer@chron.com
Mark Wahlberg is in talks to star in Netflix spy movie Our Man in New Jersey.

Deadline report that the The Departed star would play a working class James Bond-type character in the action flick.

The former rapper and Calvin Klein model is also in line to produce the film alongside Stephen Levinson, who came up with the idea for the story.

New role: Mark Wahlberg is in talks to star in Netflix spy movie Our Man in New Jersey; seen here in LA in February

So 007: Deadline report that the The Departed star would play a working class James Bond-type character in the action flick; Daniel Craig is seen in Casino Royale in 2006

Safe House writer David Guggenheim is also in talks to pen the script.

Mark and Stephen recently worked with Netflix on the action comedy Spenser Confidential, in which Wahlberg played the titular character.

Rapper Post Malone also starred and Mark revealed how the pair snuck a beer onto the set to help the musician 'calm the nerves' ahead of his first acting role.

His team: Safe House writer David Guggenheim is also in talks to pen the script. Mark and Stephen recently worked with Netflix on the action comedy Spenser Confidential, in which Wahlberg played the titular character; seen in March

His love: The action star posing with wife Rhea Durham, a former model

The 48-year-old actor said: 'You know, he likes his Bud Light, and when he showed up to the set he thought, "Well, I could just take a 12-pack."

'You can't do that. We were able to sneak one in, in a Dunkin' Donuts cup... I got one in. It just was just to calm the nerves. It was the acting debut.'

The pair were friends before working together in the movie and Mark explained how he convinced the 'Circles' hitmaker to take his first steps onto the big screen.

His pal: Rapper Post Malone also starred and Mark revealed how the pair snuck a beer onto the set to help the musician 'calm the nerves' ahead of his first acting role. Seen in March

He said: 'He and I were friends. We were hanging out at my house one night and he was just going on and on about how he wanted to die in a movie.

'And I was like, "Well, I don't know about dying in it, but I'd like to see acting in a movie." And I knew he could pull it off.'
Federal regulators on Wednesday announced it declined certification of the N95 Masks California ordered from a Chinese company earlier this month costing $990 million.

This, as reported by Politico California, was a humbler characterization of an occurrence compared to what Gov. Gavin Newsome gave a week ago.

No further details were given by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health regarding reasons for declining its earlier issued certification to BYD, the Chinese firm to provide the N95 masks.

According to the agency, "an on-site evaluation on May 4, of the firm's N95-model respirators" believed the equipment unacceptable.

BYD, according to the federal regulators, can still tweak its "design and seek approval" again, under an accelerated review process.

Earlier Certification

Earlier on, Gov. Newsom said that federal certification for the said masks the state ordered from BYD had been delayed.

Relatively, several online news agencies reported that California paid $3.30 for each N95 mask as part of its deal with the Chinese firm.

Last month, the state reportedly "wired BYD a $495-million amount" as an upfront payment for said PPEs, considered as the best shields for nurses, doctors, and other critical health workers and frontliners against COVID-19.

Admittedly, the governor said his administration was slow in releasing contracts related to the pandemic which include the contract with the Chinese firm.

Addressing the public, Newsom said he did not want the details to risk the receipt of the N95 masks. The contract was released by the state after Newsom said the masks were arriving.

The governor added, they negotiated quite a fair price amidst all these noting that while the state paid a little over $3 for each mask, other states had to pay between $6 to $12 per mask.

Inspection Review Submitted to NIOSH

In a statement, the NIOSH said, the documentation's review for the mask's manufacturing, design, and quality infection "was concerning."

Last week, a news report said, Newsom admitted that the deal with BYD was having problems adding that had been deferred by a difficulty in federal approval.

Relatively a contract amendment dated May 6, which the state released, showed that the Chinese company needed to refund almost $250 million that was allotted for roughly 300 million N95s.

Also, according to Brian Ferguson, a spokesperson for the Office of Emergency Services said, the state's contract specified, it would not pay any amount for the device that was uncertified.

He elaborated, "It is a condition of the contract," not to mention, mandatory upon the seller to acquire "this required certification."

Despite the present condition of the deal, Ferguson said they remain positive that BYD will meet the requirements needed from them.

And, in any case, the company fails to do so, the spokesperson assured that they have built-in strong provisions for the protection of California.

In a statement it released on Wednesday, BYD said, the issues which the federal inspectors identified can be easily fixed and "were related to documentation control paperwork."

In connection to this, the company also shared a document that showed the equipment that had passed the breathing features tests.

Check these out!
And thats where a recent study in the British Medical Journal comes into play. This research indicates that telephone and texting can be the keys.

Heres the study: More than 1,000 women were followed from the third trimester of pregnancy through their childs second birthday.

In the first group, the control group, mothers were discharged from the hospital with the usual doctors visits scheduled, nothing else. The second group had educational booklets mailed to them periodically, with a nurse telephone call follow-up. And the third group had the same booklets with a texting follow-up, rather than phone calls.

Both intervention groups had better results  more tummy time and less screen time for their babies, more likely to introduce the right foods at the right time and less likely to give a bedtime bottle (which we know isnt good because of tooth decay).

Additionally, the intervention groups were more likely to have a family meal together when the kids were 1 year old. Interestingly, texting seemed to be as good as a telephone call for a follow-up in most cases.
(JNS)Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden said on Tuesday that if elected president, he would reopen the Palestine Liberation Organization Diplomatic Mission in Washington, D.C., and restore U.S. assistance to the Palestinian Authority.

The presumptive 2020 Democratic presidential nominee also reiterated that he would reopen the U.S. consulate in eastern Jerusalem, which primarily serves the Palestinians.

A priority now for the cause of Israeli-Palestinian peace should be resuming our dialogue with the Palestinians and pressing Israel not to take actions that make a two-state solu...
hospital

Getty Images/Christopher Furlong

A 12-year-old girl has become the first child to talk to the press about having a rare multisystem inflammatory syndrome that has been seen in over 100 children worldwide in recent months.

Juliet Daly, from Louisiana, went into cardiac arrest and required CPR.

One of her doctors said she "was about as close to death as you can get."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

A 12-year-old from Louisiana has survived a cardiac arrest linked to the coronavirus and a rare inflammatory disorder that has been seen in clusters of children around the world since the pandemic began.

Juliet Daly has made a full recovery after doctors performed two minutes of CPR to revive her.

The medical team later told her father, Sean Daly, that Juliet was suffering from the same multisystem inflammatory syndrome that over 100 children have recently been diagnosed with, including dozens across 15 states in the US.

Dr. Jake Kleinmahon, a pediatric cardiologist at Ochsner Hospital for Children in New Orleans, where Juliet was treated, told CNN that her case of the syndrome was a result of her immune system overreacting to the coronavirus, and causing inflammation throughout the body.

She "was about as close to death as you can get," Kleinmahon said.

Juliet was on a ventilator for four days, and left the hospital on May 15, according to TIME.

hospital

Getty Images

Juliet's did not initially have the breathing problems most adults have with COVID-19. Instead she had stomach pain and vomiting, and her lips turned blue.

"I really didn't understand how serious it was but I was scared," Juliet, the first child to talk to the press about the experience of the new multisystem inflammatory syndrome, told CNN.

There are plenty of unknowns about the new syndrome, which bears similarities to Kawasaki disease, a little-understood inflammatory disease that predominantely strikes children, and seems to be triggered by a virus or bacterial infection.

Story continues

The new syndrome has similar symptoms to Kawasaki, like fever and rash. Doctors have also recorded swelling of hands and feet, swollen lymph glands in the neck, and irritation and inflammation of the mouth, lips, and throat.

Some doctors are theorizing that having coronavirus can trigger the immune system's overreaction, and one recent study done by doctors in Bergamo, Italy, found a "strong association" between the two conditions.

The disease can be treated with high doses of aspirin or an IV drip of gamma globulin. Without treatment, 15 to 25% of people with disease will develop thinning or bulging of the walls of the arteries that supply blood to the heart, which can be fatal, according to the US National Library of Medicine.

At least three children in New York have died from the syndrome, and states like Kentucky and Michigan are also reporting cases. The CDC has published a health advisory warning doctors to look out for the symptoms.

Read the original article on Business Insider
(Newser)  President Trump's Mar-a-Lago club will partially reopen to members this weekend as South Florida slowly reopens from the coronavirus lockdown. An email sent Thursday to members says the Palm Beach resort's Beach Club restaurant, its pool and its whirlpool will reopen Saturday after being closed two months, but its main building that includes hotel rooms, the main dining area, and the president's private residence will remain closed. Members will have to practice social distancing, and lounge chairs will be set 6 feet apart, the AP reports. And they will have to bring their own towels. The Trump Organization did not return a call seeking comment. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a close ally of the president, has been slowly allowing the state to reopen, with the hard-hit counties of South Florida trailing the rest of the state.

story continues below

Mar-a-Lago executives told Florida officials last month that it was temporarily laying off 153 workers because of the shutdown, a decision the president defended at the time. "You can't have many hundreds of employees standing around doing nothing," he said April 21. "There's no customer. You're not allowed to have a customer." The federal government's economic relief bill specifically bars Trump's businesses, as well as those with ties to other top government officials and members of Congress and their immediate families, from receiving emergency loans and other benefits meant to help businesses retain workers during the pandemic. Palm Beach County has had nearly 4,300 confirmed COVID-19 cases since early March, and at least 263 deaths. As of 2018, Mar-a-Lago's approximately 500 members paid annual dues of $14,000.

(Read more Mar-a-Lago stories.)
(JNS)A top Israeli health official said on Tuesday that the government is about to launch a campaign to test the population for coronavirus antibodies.

Israeli Health Ministry director-general Moshe Bar Siman Tov told The New York Times that 100,000 Israelis across the country will begin undergoing serological testing in one to two weeks to gauge the extent of the spread of the virus thus far and prepare for a possible second wave. His interview came in the wake of an easing in Israel of many restrictions imposed on the public since the outbreak of the pandemic.

This is the most i...
UPDATED at 4:14 P.M. ET on 2020-05-18

Two deputies of Vietnams National Assembly have called for assembly oversight in the case of prominent death row inmate Ho Duy Hai, who last week was rejected in his bid for a new trial that would have sparked a reinvestigation into his murder case.

Ho was arrested in March 2008 and convicted nine months later of plundering property and murdering two female postal employees in Long An Province. The Peoples Court of Long An province sentenced him to five years for the theft, and gave him the death penalty for the murders. These sentences were combined, resulting in a death sentence.

Vietnams Supreme Peoples Court rejected a request by the countrys Supreme Peoples Procuracy to reinvestigate the case, prompting his family members to petition lawmakers over the decision Monday.

Hos younger sister Ho Thi Thu Thuy told RFAs Vietnamese Service Monday that his family had petitioned National Assembly deputies Luu Binh Nhuong and Truong Trong Nghia in the hopes that they will speak out in favor of a re-investigation.

Luu and Le Thanh Van, another assembly deputy, put in the request Thursday while sending a letter to the Communist Party of Vietnams chief, the president, and the assemblys chairman, asking them to look into five specific issues in the case that they say need to be solved in a cassation case.

Deputy Luu told RFA that the letter was also aimed to maintain state discipline and the partys prestige, to ensure justice and human rights, as well as to maintain confidence in the peoples courts.

On Thursday, the Ho familys legal advisor Tran Hong Phong told RFA he sent a petition and evidence of Hos alibi to President Nguyen Phu Trong. According to Tran, who reexamined the case files, evidence shows that the killer was left-handed, while the prosecution argued that Ho killed the women using his right hand in the initial and appeal cases.

Le Van Triet, who was once Vietnams trade minster, told RFA Thursday that the petition was justified, and it is the correct procedure for citizens to bring their concerns before the National Assembly.

The petition opens the door for the case to be reinvestigated.

I think the deputies petition has a certain value. The Judiciary Committee will also have to address a petition about this case and I hope that it will be able to be reconsidered, Ngo Anh Tuan, a lawyer from Hanoi, told RFA on the same day.

Fake news

The appeal by assemblymen is rare in Vietnam, a traditional one-party Communist state without independent courts or media and no separation of powers, with a legislature designed to rubber stamp ruling party decisions.

But the Supreme Peoples Courts rejection of the cassation trial caused a social media frenzy, but the government dismissed it as an attempt by activists to smear the judiciary system.

It was more dangerous when some national assembly deputies spoke untruths of the Ho Duy Hai case, because their ideas are based on news spread on Facebook, making the case out to be more complicated [than it actually is.] said the Vice Chief Justice of the court, Nguyen Tri Tue at a press briefing Tuesday, shortly after the rejection.

Several Vietnamese activists defended the role of social media platforms like Facebook in Vietnamese societal discourse.

I believe that Facebook at present has an important position in our society, Dang Dinh Manh, a lawyer, told RFA on Wednesday.

[Facebook] not only helps to popularize slogans to the community, it also [can be used to] consolidate strong power in a way that is independent from traditional media, the legislature, the executive branch and the judiciary, said Dang.

That is why the assembly deputies take advantage of social media to relay their sentiment to the public effectively, he said.

But the fact that Facebook is their only means to get their views out shows that deputies Le and Luu are also victims of the governments censorship, according to a Ho Chi Minh City-based independent journalist.

[It] proves that they party membersrepresentatives for the people, are also having their freedom of expression suffocated, Nguyen Ngoc Gia told RFA Wednesday.

Another Ho Chi Minh City-based journalist told RFA that the two deputies are merely getting with the times.

Posting their opinion one social media is a very progressive move. It means they read Facebook often and understand the sentiments of the people [they represent], said Suong Quynh

In Vietnam some local governments have enacted regulations that ban or limit civil servants use of Facebook, but except for the police, there is no official ban from the central government. Civil servants are, however, discouraged by Hanoi from expressing views publicly on platforms like Facebook.

The death of justice

Critics of the Supreme Peoples Courts decision not to reinvestigate the trial say that upholding the death sentence for Ho is the same as sentencing justice itself to death.

If Ho Duy Hai is sentenced to death, this regimes justice and fairness will also be sentenced to death along with this society and all its institutions, Pham Dinh Trong, a writer, told RFA.

Ngo said the prestige of the judiciary would take a massive hit in the eyes of legal professionals if they refuse to reconsider the case.

For those who have knowledge about legal matters, we will lose faith in Vietnams judiciary, because we will have realized that the serious wrongdoing [during the investigation] was not considered objectively at the national-level courts, said Ngo

Others reacted to the decision, saying that the court ignored irregularities in the investigation.

I felt indignant about the judgment, said Suong, who said she had protested on Hos behalf for the past seven years.

They rejected the petition even though there is much evidence of wrongdoing during the process of the investigation, she added.

Suong and others, along with civil organizations, signed a petition May 9 requesting clarification of the truth in Hos case.

Ngo said he had been optimistic that the death sentence would be canceled, but he does not think so anymore.

For the past few days I had trust in the [the judicial process], but now I can only say that I hope the case will be reconsidered.

The case so far

Observers have pointed to several procedural errors in Hos case, including that it was largely based on a confession that he later recanted, saying he had been forced to do so by police during his detention.

Additionally, prosecutors lacked crucial evidence, as no time of death for the two victims was ever established, fingerprints at the crime scene did not match Hais, and the murder weapons were misplaced by the forensic team.

London-based rights group Amnesty International has cited Hos mother as saying that he was tortured in prison, citing his deteriorating health and loss of weight.

Ho was originally set to be executed on Dec. 5, 2014 but was granted a stay a day earlier by then-President Truong Tan Sang.

In February 2015, the National Assemblys Committee on Judicial Affairs declared after a reinvestigation into the case that during both the initial trial and the appeal, there had been serious violations of criminal procedural law.

The committee urged that the case be reviewed on appeal, but in Dec. 2017, Long An provinces procuracy pushed for execution.

In November last year, Amnesty International sent a petition with 25,000 signatures to President Trong calling for Hos acquittal.

Between August 2013 and June 2016, Vietnam executed 429 people, while 1,134 people were given death sentences between July 2011 and June 2016, according to government figures released in 2018.

Reported by RFAs Vietnamese Service. Translated by Huy Le. Written in English by Eugene Whong.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this report incorrectly said that the murders occurred in Ho Chi Minh city. They occurred in Long An province.
The strongest work in the show is Mirror Ceiling: A Room with a Mattress and a Chair (20172020), a diptych with washy hazes of wallpaper and flooring patterns on the left, and on the right, images of an abandoned pallet and chair, all of it suffused by cement bursting through from the substrate. It suggests that constructing the home is really an act of excavation, digging until you have reached the foundations and then you have to decide, can I actually live here?

Its a great interpretation. I like the word excavation because I think about it like an archaeological dig. We talk about populations moving because of war and conflict; we talk about gentrification, about urban renewal, all of these have a history.

You include photographs of Wadi Salib, your neighborhood in Haifa, and a building that was inhabited by Palestinians until 1948. What were you intending?

After the [Arab-Israeli War] war the new government of Israel put new immigrants into what they called abandoned property. They werent abandoned, but people couldnt come back home. The new homeowner, the state of Israel, neglected the buildings for 60 years. Thats what you see in the painting, When Our Walls Were Green it Was all Different (2019). Oh, I wish I could walk you through it! [It had] trash on the ground and whats interesting about this place that I photograph is that now it has squatters and has trash from contemporary people coming into the space, making a home for those who dont have homes. [The work] has this history of looking for home and not just the specific story of Haifa and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Homes get destroyed for many different reasons and we all have a relationship to the home we grew up in, the home that we left behind, the home we want to make. How do we not make the same mistakes our parents made?
/ -- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathemathics (STEM) are increasingly recognized globally as elemental to the national development and productivity. Since 2011, STEM Learning, a social enterprise accredited by STEM.org - a US based international organization for STEM accreditation - is playing a pivotal role in shaping the country's future in a globalized world. And with the influence of artificial intelligence, big data and automation in the world being recognized, the demand for immersive STEM at the grassroots level is the need of the hour.

India is the second most populated country in the world, with the world's largest youth population. Youth are the innovators, creators, builders and leaders of the future. However, they can transform the future only if they have requisite skills and the opportunity to explore the world of opportunities.

Indian government is promoting initiatives such as Make in India, Skill India, Digital India to encourage manufacturing, technology usage and skill development in the country. It has also set up the Atal Tinkering Labs to focus on STEM in schools. Curiosity, innovation and thirst for knowledge towards STEM in kids can be encouraged by an early exposure to hands-on learning and practical knowledge in a more engaging and fun to learn environment.

STEM Learning is here to prove it. Across 23 states, with the installation of 1900+ Mini Science Centres (MSCs) each holding 80 models, 8000+ teachers have been equipped with the tools to educate 1 Million+ students.

The STEM MSC exhibits have been mapped with CBSE, ICSE, SSC, IGCSE and other IB boards for 5th to 10th standards. The 80 plug and play models are easy to understand and come with a detailed explanation of the model and explain more than 150 science and mathematics concepts. Besides this, the teachers are trained on the usage of the models to give a complete understanding of them.

MSC has now become a prerequisite for teaching science and maths to school children in a simpler way. It is innovative and interactive with a hands-on approach to facilitate the learning process. The idea is that if the students are given access to MSC, they will be able to think and explore more. As these table top models are plug & play, these models can be carried to classrooms.

MSCs are easy to install, user-friendly, they facilitate learning and a great tool. They benefit students and teachers which directly have an impact on the quality of provided in schools. This modern way of teaching not only helps students comprehend the concepts and their applications easily, but also helps in implementing them for the progress of the society as the students will be equipped with the required knowledge and skills for life.

MSCs maximize possible involvement of the child in the entire learning process. It strengthens their understanding of science and mathematical concepts and applies them in variety of situations in class room as well as life. It is very much helpful in developing their power of reasoning, enriching mental ability and boosts confidence and also develops mastery over basic scientific process.

STEM Learning is the only pioneering medium which provides MSCs across India. One of its aims is pedagogy transformation that includes capacity building of teachers through Teacher Training Programs.

15% increase in aptitude & inquisitiveness among students is seen due to the MSCs and this reassures teachers on their compelling use. Also, the effective teaching time is reduced by 60%-70%. Hence, more and more schools are opting for MSCs. Students have even started explaining the concepts to their fellow students, leading to peer to peer learning. The exhibits are plug and play so that the students can easily explore and contextualize the concepts, which also builds confidence in them.

The students get an opportunity to hold the models and explore their features to get a better understanding. Now students can look at the model, work with it independently and understand the scientific concepts, leading to an increase in their scientific temper. Once they've grasped the concept, they can use their imagination and direct their thought process towards application of those concepts. The outcome of such learning is successful science projects, that can be developed into prototypes of budding entrepreneurs.

Ashutosh Pandit, Founder of STEM Learning, said, "The idea of MSC germinated from the fact that when students are taken to any science centre, it is more of a picnic for them than a learning session. However, I have always felt that the students at their age may not understand the importance of this trip to the centre for their future. So why not bring the centre to their schools and embed it in their curriculum? So we started installing Mini Science Centres in schools across India to push, motivate and encourage students to stop fearing and start loving science and maths concepts and ingrain them forever. The students from remotest locations now have access to MSC exhibits and they are definitely valuing its importance due to the increase in scientific temper they themselves are witnessing. In fact, when we conducted the all-India competition, 'The National STEM Awards 2020', recently at over 50 locations, the enthusiasm and the vigor of the participating students was not to be missed. They were brimming with so much zest to perform and showcase their STEM skills attained with the help of MSC, it was astounding to say the least. The winners were mostly from remote location and we were elated to see girls perform so well. This proves that we have been able to achieve what we aimed for in the beginning: a huge impact in the learning process and transformation in teaching pedagogy. I am sure that the way MSCs have made a colossal difference in these students, we can make the same impact during virtual classroom sessions and online learning."



'Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn'. Benjamin Franklin's quote seems to have a huge bearing in terms of MSC and its significance in the learning process. The MSCs have brought quality education to the doorstep of school children across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Goa, Karnataka, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Assam and many other towns of India. The MSCs build students with holistic knowledge and this learning stays with them forever because of the hands on manner.

About STEM: Mini Science Centre



Mini Science Centre (MSC) is a prerequisite for teaching Science and Maths to school children in a simpler way. It aims to lessen the gap between contextual and rote based learning, and replace it with a practical approach, which will equip children with the skills and knowledge needed to get lucrative opportunities in their fields of interest.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New York,New York, April 27, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- After the terrorist attacks on March 25, 2020 in Har Rai Sahib Kabul Gurdwara, the Sikh Diaspora moved swiftly to condemn the persons, organizations and governments responsible. UNITED SIKHS immediately asked the United States to take action and protect religious freedoms. Within moments of the cowardly attacks against women and children;UNITED SIKHS rallied support from the international community, the U.S. Administration, Afghanistan authorities and Sikh Afghans on the ground to ensure that these attacks do not happen again.

ISIS has taken responsibility for multi-day terrorist shootings that left more than 50 people dead. On March 28th, after back to back days of terrorist attacks directed at the Sikh community; Afghanistan immediately issued by decree a 10-day ultimatum for Sikhs to leave the country. The choices given were to convert, flee the country or face further attacks until all Sikhs are dead or gone. These threats are being taken seriously by UNITED SIKHS and have deemed the decree or fatwa as an affront to the Sikh Nation.

UNITED SIKHS strongly asserts that the Islamic state attacks that took place in retaliation to the Feb. 2020 US/NATO/Coalition - Taliban agreement, the March military withdrawal and the withholding of aid to Afghanistan contributed to this violent and deadly outburst.

UNITED SIKHS started their campaign in the U.S. with the State Department and the American Sikh Caucus Committee to bring the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus to a safe haven. Wanda Sanchez, Chief Legal Counsel and Acting Legal Director said, "President Trumps commitment and resolve to protect religious freedoms around the world is at this moment being tested. Sikhs, Hindus and other ethno-religious and religious groups, who during the past 18 years were protected by the United States, NATOs military and Coalition forces. That presence of stability has now come under terrorist attacks in the area after the February 2020 agreement with the Taliban. The agreement should now rightfully include protections for these minorities who were supporters during the occupation. Those protections should include granting refugee status and political asylum. The protections should also not be undermined by the administration's internal, protective, immigration agenda.

The day after the first attack, UNITED SIKHS began working on obtaining security and safety for Sikhs in Afghanistan. UNITED SIKHS has partnered with the American Sikh Caucus Committee to move the issue of their safety and their migration forward. Harpreet Singh Sandhu, Executive Director, American Sikh Caucus said, "UNITED SIKHS was the first organization to reach out after the incident and we immediately reached out to the members of the Sikh Caucus. Our team quickly made contact with Congressmen , John Garamendi, Jim Acosta, Eliot Engel, House Foreign Affair, Senator Dick Durban and several international bodies of governance." Sandhu also added, "We are thankful to Congressman Jim Acosta and others we have personally asked to assist with this urgent issue."

Gurvinder Singh, International Humanitarian Aid Director said, " Numerous discussions have taken place in which multiple options were discussed with the State Department by UNITED SIKHS . Sam Brownback, Ambassador on Religious Freedoms has been key in having a direct dialogue with India and Pakistan. We now call upon President Trump, to order an executive action to provide safe harbor to Sikh Afghans in the USA immediately. UNITED SIKHS is thankful to Ambassador Sam Brownback and the Afghanistan government in enhancing their immediate security. We hope the U.S. can keep the minority community safe from further attacks.





The future for Afghan Sikhs is dim and changing daily. The wishes of the Afghan Sikhs and Hindus is towards India as a first choice because of extended families residing in India. If India cannot accommodate them, then Pakistan as an interim country to apply as refugees to Canada, UK and the United States.

UNITED SIKHS, Executive Director Jagdeep Singh, reported,  Humanitarian crises such as the one recently endured by Afghan Sikhs should not be mistaken as someone elses problem. Left unchecked in any country, these types of massacres manifest themselves in other parts of the world. 

UNITED SIKHS will continue to work with the United Nations, and other world governments and Sikhs in Afghanistan by providing necessary advocacy and humanitarian needs towards their resettlement in other countries.





About UNITED SIKHS: UNITED SIKHS is a U.N. affiliated, international non-profit, non-governmental, humanitarian relief, human development and advocacy organization, aimed at empowering those in need, especially disadvantaged and minority communities across the world. UNITED SIKHS is registered: as a non-profit tax exempt organization pursuant to Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code in the USA; as a Registered Charity in England and Wales under the Charities Act 1993, Charity Number 111 2055; registered in Australia as a not for profit NGO (ABN 24 317 847 103); and is a registered NGO in Belgium; as a non-profit organization in Canada; under the Societies Registration Act 1860 in Panjab and as a tax exempt organisation under section 80G of the Income Tax Act 1961; under the French Association Law 1901; under the Societies Registration Act 1860 in Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa, Pakistan; as a registered society under the Registrar of Societies in Malaysia (registered as UNITED SIKHS Malaysia Humanitarian Aid Organisation- Regn No: PPM-015-14-06042015); and an NGO pending registration in the Rep of Ireland.:
- Trevor Noah is not one to keep quiet, especially when it comes to US President Donald Trump

- Trump has been raising eyebrows ever since COVID-19 took over the world, with many feeling he hasn't been taking things seriously

- Lifting lock-down rules, Trump claims infection rates have decreased and Trevor gave him a piece of his mind

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Trevor Noah is not one to keep quiet, especially when it comes to political matters and US President Donald Trump.

Being raised in South Africa where freedom of speech flows freely through our veins, Trevor has never been scared to speak his mind.

Trevor often addresses some rather touchy topics on The Daily Show, and just because we're all in lock-down, that hasnt stopped him.

Trump has been raising eyebrows ever since COVID-19 took over the world. Most feel he has not been taking the virus seriously enough and is more concerned about the economy than the people.

US states have started to lift lock-down restrictions and Trump believes everything is hunky-dory.

Taking to social media with confidence, Trump claims that infarction numbers are decreasing all over the US.

Coronavirus numbers are looking MUCH better, going down almost everywhere. Big progress being made!

Trevor called BS on it all, responding to Trump letting him know that cases in his own home are still climbing.

Ishu, Trevor has no chill!

Coronavirus numbers aren't even going down in the White House.

In other news, Trevor Noah enjoys taking little jabs at America's president, Donald Trump. Whenever he can, he will make a remark or outright criticise the president.

Recently, the SA-born funnyman reacted to President Trump's reaction to the spread of the dreaded coronavirus.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download YEN's news app on Google Playstore now and stay up-to-date with major Ghana news!

Ghanaians share their thoughts on the mandatory wearing of face mask | #Yencomgh

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Taneja Center for Innovative Surgery at AdventHealth Tampa This will transform health care in Tampa Bay and provide a place for medical breakthroughs and pioneering surgeries that enable our community to access high-end and complex medical-surgical care right in our own backyard, said Mike Schultz, President and CEO of AdventHealth West Florida Division.

AdventHealth Tampa, the flagship 536-bed and tertiary hospital in Tampa Bay, placed the final beam atop the hospitals new six-story, 300,000 square foot patient and surgical tower Friday, May 15, at the corner of Fletcher Ave. and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. The topping off celebrates the structural completion of the $256 million project. Construction on the Taneja Center for Innovative Surgery at AdventHealth Tampa remained on schedule throughout the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic. When finished, the facility will be home to state-of-the-art complex surgical care and a beacon of medical innovation that will attract the worlds best surgeons situated in the heart of Tampas Uptown District.

This will transform health care in Tampa Bay and provide a place for medical breakthroughs and pioneering surgeries that enable our community to access high-end and complex medical-surgical care right in our own backyard, said Mike Schultz, President and CEO of AdventHealth West Florida Division. Our commitment to this expansion is about more than a new building, we are delivering on a promise to provide the best medical services that help our communities thrive.

The Taneja Center for Innovative Surgery honors the Taneja family, who provided a generous financial gift to the expansion project, the largest donation that has ever been given to the AdventHealth West Florida Foundation.

We know when a loved one is sick, you only want the best; the best doctors, the best medicine, the best care. After a long international search for our sons care, we found everything we were looking for at AdventHealth Tampa and we want to help others experience that kind of care and expertise close to home. We are confident the doctors and leaders here will bring world-class care for everyone in Tampa Bay, said Manju Taneja.

AdventHealth Tampa currently treats over 17,000 patients a year who need advanced medical and surgical care. The Taneja Center for Innovative Surgery will be well-poised to support this specialized medical care with 24 brand new operating rooms, a new hospital entrance and over 100 all-private, dedicated post-surgical patient rooms.

We are so fortunate to have an amazing team of expertly-skilled and top-trained surgeons who are the most highly sought after in the medically-complex areas such as neurology, cardiology, and digestive specialties. We are excited to build on that level of expertise by adding more complex surgical specialties in a new tower that can be a place of greater hope and healing for our patients, said Denyse Bales-Chubb, President and CEO of AdventHealth Tampa. The Taneja Center for Innovative Surgery at AdventHealth Tampa will be a destination for people who need highly specialized surgical care provided by the very best surgeons and experts in their field.

The new surgical and patient tower is expected to open in 2021 and will bring an estimated 117 new clinical jobs in the first year alone, and 587 new jobs by year five, with job and economic opportunities at all levels of experience and education. The project is well underway and in addition to the topping off ceremony, a few of the completed project milestones include an expanded parking deck with 300 new parking spaces, and a redesigned landscape.

This expansion is the largest of several construction projects in the AdventHealth West Florida Division. Additionally, expansion projects are underway at AdventHealth North Pinellas, AdventHealth Ocala, AdventHealth Sebring and AdventHealth Wesley Chapel.

About AdventHealth West Florida Division

The West Florida Division of AdventHealth has some of the nations brightest medical minds making lifesaving breakthroughs with surgical pioneers, scientists and researchers using leading edge technology and innovation to deliver our brand of whole-person care. Our network of care includes AdventHealth Carrollwood, AdventHealth Connerton, AdventHealth Dade City, AdventHealth Lake Placid, AdventHealth North Pinellas, AdventHealth Ocala, AdventHealth Sebring, AdventHealth Tampa, AdventHealth Wauchula, AdventHealth Wesley Chapel and AdventHealth Zephyrhills, as well as five freestanding offsite Emergency Rooms including AdventHealth Brandon ER, AdventHealth Central Pasco ER, AdventHealth Palm Harbor ER, AdventHealth TimberRidge ER, and AdventHealth Westchase ER. We are more than hospitals, as we have a robust system of care including specialty acute care, over 200 primary care and specialty employed physicians, Express Care at Walgreens clinics, urgent care centers, wound care, physical therapy, home care, mobile mammography and more. AdventHealth is a faith-based not-for-profit health care system with a mission of Extending the Healing Ministry of Christ. AdventHealth has hundreds of care sites and nearly 50 hospitals across the United States. For more information about AdventHealth, visit AdventHealth.com, or Facebook.com/AdventHealth.

About the Taneja Family Foundation

The Taneja Family Foundation is a family run foundation that believes in supporting philanthropic vision within the healthcare industry.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Each virus has its unique pattern of spread, and scientists are starting to get a handle on how the novel coronavirus behaves. This understanding is making it possible to rank the risks of different activities from high to low to trivial.

The most informative studies show how the disease is spreading in the real world  a big advance over the various simulations and models that, early on, showed only hypothetical scenarios.

The two drivers of the spread of the disease are close contact and crowding in closed spaces, said Muge Cevik, a virologist at the University of St. Andrews in the U.K. It spread through homeless shelters and nursing and care homes, where people were crowded with many others. It spread through peoples households, and through meat packing plants.

Cevik has been collecting and reviewing papers from around the world on disease transmission. There are some trends emerging, she says. Spending time dining together, being in public transport, might risk spreading the disease, but going to a market briefly, for five minutes or a transient encounter while you walk or run past someone, those are low risks.

The studies come from China, Singapore, Taiwan, and to a lesser extent the U.S. They were all done through contact tracing, which may turn out to be humanitys greatest strategy for fighting the Covid-19 pandemic. Contact tracing can stop chains of transmission, even after a disease is widespread, as physician and former World Bank president Jim Yong Kim explained in The New Yorker. Another major benefit is that it offers clues as to how the disease spreads. Each virus has its unique pattern.

The U.S. has done almost no contact tracing yet. A survey of people coming to hospitals in New York City in May revealed that most of them had been home, and were not working or taking public transport. But why isnt everyone admitted to the hospital being asked about this? Why arent we finding out who they live with, or who visited them, and tracking down where theyve been? The lost opportunities are staggering.

Story continues

Cevik said people often ask her how the disease could be so transmissible if it takes closed environments or close contact to spread. The first part of the answer is that after much speculation of extreme transmissibility, the data show something intermediate, with each infected individual transmitting the virus to between two and three others on average. But the important point, which is often missed, is that this is just an average. In the real world, most people transmit the disease to nobody, or one person, and a minority infect many others in so-called super-spreading events. It's those we must learn how to avoid.

The data show that nine percent of infected people are responsible for 80% of the transmissions, she says. Why? For one thing, the disease is apparently very infectious but only for a short window, and perhaps only in some cases. Contact tracing studies show people are most infectious right around the onset of symptoms, as well as a couple of days before and after. If someone in that stage goes to a party, or church service, or to work in a meat packing plant or nursing home, many other people will probably get sick.

One study in China showed how the virus spread at a business meeting and a restaurant. A contact tracing effort in Singapore revealed big clusters of cases stemmed from a business meeting, a church, and a visit to a shop. Another study, one of the few from the U.S., showed how one infected person in Chicago spread the disease to multiple people at a funeral and later at a birthday party, and one of those infected at the party then spread the disease to others at a church service that lasted more than two hours. Other studies connected outbreaks to crowded offices.

People who eventually developed severe symptoms were more likely to transmit the disease to others than were those who had mild symptoms, Cevik says. While its clear the disease can be spread by people before they have symptoms, its still an open question how many people have no symptoms and whether they are driving much of the spread.

Much of the material in these studies comes as a surprise to people, says Erin Bromage, a biology professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, who recently got 11 million views to a blog post he wrote on how the disease is transmitted. People think if you get exposed, you automatically get sick or become infectious, he explains. But even people exposed to sick family members in their homes dont always get sick.

Sharing a home or office does make transmission more likely, since length of exposure matters as much as distance from other people. People passing by you in a supermarket are unlikely to infect you. Outdoor environments appear much safer as well. In one study, which followed hundreds of cases, all but one transmission occurred indoors.

Id like people to stop wasting mental energy on the wrong things, Bromage says. To stop worrying about outdoors and bike riders since its such a low risk.

Bromage doesnt think strict lockdowns have to remain until we get herd immunity or a vaccine. But he would like to see businesses use the data available to start up without fueling major outbreaks. He sees hope for restaurants and hair salons in the new normal, and is advising such businesses in his community on how to minimize exposure.

As Harvard population medicine professor Julia Marcus recalled in a recent piece in The Atlantic, 20th century doctors eventually relented on advice for unpaired people to remain celibate until there was a cure for AIDS. They started talking about safer sex. Now its time to do the same with life under the coronavirus.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Faye Flam is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She has written for the Economist, the New York Times, the Washington Post, Psychology Today, Science and other publications. She has a degree in geophysics from the California Institute of Technology.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
President Donald Trump reacts as Dr. Anthony Fauci steps away from the podium after speaking and answering questions at the daily coronavirus task force briefing at the White House on U.S., April 22.

Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

The White House press secretary disputed recent polling that found Americans trust Dr. Anthony Fauci significantly more than they trust the president to provide accurate information about the coronavirus.

"I believe that the American people have a lot more trust in the president than that poll indicates," McEnany told CBS News. "I believe the American people have great confidence in this president's leadership."

An Insider poll conducted in late April similarly found that significantly more Americans trust Fauci than trust Trump when it comes to the pandemic response.

Trump publicly criticized Fauci's more cautious position on reopening schools on Wednesday, and McEnany said Fauci is just "one among many" experts Trump is listening to.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Thursday disputed recent polling that found Americans trust Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, significantly more than they trust President Donald Trump to provide accurate information about the coronavirus.

During a CBS News interview, McEnany was asked to comment on the network's new poll showing that 62% of Americans trust Fauci, while just 38% trust the president.

"I believe that the American people have a lot more trust in the president than that poll indicates," McEnany told CBS News. "I believe the American people have great confidence in this president's leadership."

An Insider poll conducted late last month found that 64% of Americans trusted Fauci, while just 19% trusted Trump to effectively handle the pandemic.

On Wednesday evening, Trump said he "totally disagrees" with Fauci on the risk posed by the coronavirus to children and how that affects schools reopening this fall.

While Fauci recently warned that officials shouldn't be "cavalier" about the danger the virus poses to children and that schools should not reopen too quickly, Trump insisted on Thursday that kids should return to school in the fall even without a widely available therapeutic drug or vaccine.

Story continues

"I was surprised by his answer actually because to me, it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools," the president told reporters on Wednesday.

During a Tuesday Senate hearing, Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, challenged Fauci's position on school reopenings and insisted that Fauci shouldn't be the "end-all" when it comes to the government's pandemic response.

Fauci responded that he's "never made myself out to be the end-all and only voice of this" and that he gives advice on public health, not the economy.

McEnany echoed Paul's view on Thursday, arguing that the president is listening to a host of experts and others, but said Trump still has confidence in Fauci.

"There's a lot of voices and, as Dr. Fauci noted, he is one among many," she said.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Sign Multi-Year Multi-National License Agreement

Empower Clinics to power online education platform for patients, retail locations, and their expanding network of franchisees with EuroLife's Cannvas.me

Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - EuroLife Brands (CSE: EURO) (FSE: 3CMA) (OTC Pink: EURPF) ("EuroLife" or the "Company"), a vertically integrated enterprise focused on the pan-European hemp, cannabinoid, and health and wellness sector, is pleased to announce that further to the letter of intent announced on February 25, 2020 it has signed a definitive agreement with Empower Clinics Inc. (CSE: CBDT) (OTCQB: EPWCF) (FSE: 8EC) ("Empower"), a vertically integrated and growth-oriented CBD life sciences company. The agreement grants Empower an exclusive license to EuroLife's "Cannvas.me" cloud based online educational platform in certain international jurisdictions. Empower will use the web-based education technology platform to deliver brand, product, and industry knowledge to employees and over 165,000 patients across Empower's six corporate clinics in Arizona, Oregon, its first franchise in Oklahoma and nationwide tele-health platform. The EuroLife platform will also serve a growing network of nationwide retailers in the United States.

Under the terms of the agreement, Empower has been granted an exclusive license of the Cannvas.me platform in the United States and Mexico with an option to expand to other jurisdictions. The agreement includes a three-year term with a three-year renewable option. An annual licensing fee will be paid over the life of the proposed agreement, consisting of a mixture of cash and stock totalling $460,000 of top line revenue for EuroLife over the course of the next 3 years.

"We needed a robust platform to reach our growing network of owned and franchised locations across the United States and EuroLife's Cannvas.me education platform exceeds all of our requirements," said Steven McAuley, chairman and chief executive officer of Empower. "We now have the ability to reach our employees and the patients they serve through a safe, secure and informative online education portal. I believe the ability to deliver consistent product education quickly and efficiently is a competitive advantage that we will leverage as we continue to grow our patient count and number of locations."

"I am very pleased to announce the agreement with Empower to license our Cannvas.me education portal to reach both employees and medical and retail consumers on an incredibly efficient basis," said Shawn Moniz, Chief Executive Officer, EuroLife Brands Inc. "I look forward to working with Steven and his incredible team at Empower as they expand their footprint across the United States."

Cannvas.me is a consumer education portal launched in 2018 for medical and recreational cannabis consumers. Through many discussions with industry stakeholders the management team discovered there was significant demand for a cloud-based education portal for licensed producers, retail dispensaries and other large to mid-sized companies in the cannabis sector. Executing on a renewed B2B technology model EuroLife recently delivered a redesigned budtender education portal for Aphria Inc. (see February 4, 2020 news release), the global cannabis leader with an unrelenting commitment to people, product quality and innovation. The portal allows Aphria to ensure retail employees across Canada are well-versed in Aphria's line-up of adult-use brands and enabled with information to provide superior customer service.

Further to the news releases of April 23 and May 4, 2020 regarding EuroLife entering into a letter of intent to acquire 100% of the issued and outstanding securities of CWE European Holdings Inc., a Canadian Corporation, which owns and operates HANF Hemp Stores in Germany and Luxembourg, the management team reports the transaction is progressing as planned. HANF operates a seed-to-sale hemp CBD business in German-speaking countries in Europe, with seven locations and over 300+ health and wellness SKUs on the shelves. Currently, EuroLife is working with HANF to finalize a definitive agreement and concurrently to secure new retail locations and expects to announce new location in the very near future.

About Empower Clinics Inc.

Empower (CSE: CBDT) (OTCQB: EPWCF) (FSE: 8EC) is a vertically integrated health & wellness brand with a network of corporate and franchised health & wellness clinics in the U.S. The Company is building its first hemp-derived CBD extraction facility and produces its proprietary line of cannabidiol (CBD) based products. The Company is a leading multi-state operator of a network of physician-staffed wellness clinics, focused on helping patients improve and protect their health, through innovative physician recommended treatment options.

About EuroLife Brands Inc.

EuroLife Brands (CSE: EURO) (FSE: 3CMA) (OTC Pink: EURPF) is a leading global markets cannabis brand empowering the medical, recreational and CPG cannabis industry worldwide through a data-driven CBD marketplace supported by exclusive and unbiased physician-backed cannabis education and detailed consumer analytics.

For additional information:

Contact: ir@eurolifebrands.com or visit EuroLifeBrands.com

No stock exchange or securities regulatory authority has reviewed or accepted responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Some of the statements contained in this release are forward-looking statements, such as estimates and statements that describe the Issuer's future plans, objectives or goals, including words to the effect that the Issuer or management expects a stated condition or result to occur. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. For a description of the risks and uncertainties facing the Company and its business and affairs, readers should refer to the Company's Management's Discussion and Analysis and other disclosure filings with Canadian securities regulators, which are posted on www.sedar.com.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55906
Flanz focuses his practice on intellectual property litigation with a concentration in patent, trade secret, and copyright matters. He has been a key team member in several high-stakes litigations where he has helped clients win or achieve favorable settlements, including returning a $500 million jury verdict in a widely-publicized, high-profile trial. Flanz's litigation experience includes drafting and arguing dispositive motions in court, and spans a broad range of technologies, including software applications, semiconductor technologies, optics, industrial machinery, mechanical devices, financial products, and pharmaceuticals. His clients have trusted him in matters before federal district court, state court, the Federal Circuit, the Patent Trial and Appeals Board, and the International Trade Commission.

Flanz also advises clients regarding intellectual property transactions, including patent valuation, validity, exclusivity, and freedom-to-operate. For example, he helped analyze key patents supporting a proposed combination of two major pharmaceutical companies valued at more than $150 billion. He is also a registered patent attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office and has a robust pro bono practice.

"We are always looking for up-and-coming lateral talent to add to our intellectual property litigation team," said Kurt Glitzenstein, Litigation Practice Group Leader at Fish. "We know Scott well from his two summers with us, and are excited to have him back as a mid-level associate at our firm. We look forward to continuing to build his trial skills, and putting them to great use for our leading technology and pharmaceutical clients."

Flanz received his J.D. from Stanford Law School in 2015, where he was the editor-in-chief of the Stanford Technology and Law Review. He received his A.B., Phi Beta Kappa and cum laude, from Cornell University where he double majored in mathematics and physics. During college, he performed research at Cornell's Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics using optics and high-frequency electronics to study Bose-Einstein Condensation.

Fish & Richardson, the premier global intellectual property law firm, is trusted by the world's most innovative and influential companies. From patent, trademark, and copyright prosecution and counseling to our full-service litigation practice, we work together to provide our clients with exceptional advocacy across the life cycle of intellectual property needs in the U.S. and around the world. Our deep bench of attorneys with first-chair trial experience in every technology makes us the go-to firm for the most technically complex cases. Fish was established in 1878, and now has more than 400 attorneys and technology specialists in the U.S., Europe, and China. Our success is rooted in our creative and inclusive culture, which values the diversity of people, experiences, and perspectives. For more information, visit fr.com or follow us at @FishRichardson.

Contact: Amy Blumenthal or Patricia Baressi

Blumenthal & Associates

Fish & Richardson P.C.

(617) 879-1511

(617) 368-2115

[email protected]

[email protected]

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 16:21:13|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Personal remittances or the money sent home by overseas Filipinos amounted to 2.62 billion U.S. dollars in February 2020, up 2.6 percent compared with the same period last year, the Philippine central bank said Friday.

On a year-to-date basis, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said remittances for the first two months of 2020 grew by 5 percent to 5.566 billion U.S. dollars from the previous year's level of 5.302 billion U.S. dollars.

BSP data showed personal remittances from land-based workers with work contracts of one year or more rose to 2 billion U.S. dollars, 3.5 percent higher than 1.9 billion U.S. dollars recorded in February 2019.

Meanwhile, the BSP said remittances from sea-based workers and land-based workers with work contracts of less than one year declined by 0.9 percent to 0.56 billion U.S. dollars from a year ago.

The government estimates the number of overseas Filipino workers at 12 million, accounting for one-tenth of the country's population.

BSP data showed that personal remittances sent home by overseas Filipinos in 2019 reached a record high of 33.5 billion U.S. dollars, 3.9 percent higher than the remittances recorded in 2018.

Remittances from overseas Filipino workers are forecast to decline as industries such as tourism bear the brunt of lower demand due to the impact of COVID-19 pandemic.

More than 25,000 overseas Filipino workers, both sea-based and land-based, have been repatriated due to the pandemic, data from the Department of Foreign Affairs said.

The Asian Development Bank has also projected the remittances from overseas Filipino workers to fall this year due to COVID-19. Enditem
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15) - The local government of Bacoor City in Cavite seeks to be placed under modified enhanced community quarantine, while the rest of Cavite transitions to general community quarantine beginning May 16.

Bacoor City Mayor Lani Mercado Revilla said Friday that the Regional Inter-Agency Task Force on COVID-19 approved the city government's request.

Revilla added that Bacoor City is the gateway of the province to Metro Manila and has registered the most number of COVID-19 cases in Cavite.

The Department of Health reported Friday that Cavite has 310 coronavirus cases, with 63 recoveries and 26 deaths. Revilla said that at least 96 of the reported cases are in Bacoor City.

The Department of Interior and Local Government earlier clarified that the Regional IATF is only a recommendatory body for the imposition, lifting, and extension of community quarantine in the provinces, highly urbanized cities, and independent component cities. The final decision on whether to impose, lift or extend a community quarantine in an area rests on the National Inter-Agency Task Force.

Meantime, Cavite Governor Jonvic Remulla reminded his constituents in areas that will be under a more relaxed community quarantine to secure the necessary passes before leaving their homes.

Malacanang decided to scale down Cavite to general community quarantine status beginning Saturday, May 16, after two months under strict stay-at-home rules.

READ: LIST: What daily life would be like in areas under modified ECQ, GCQ

Residents in GCQ areas will be allowed to head out, except for those aged below 21 as well as those 60 and older to limit infections.

Public transportation will also resume, but expect jeepneys and buses to run below full capacity to adhere to safe distancing. Traveling to and from provinces and cities which are under GCQ will be permitted.

The Central Luzon Regional Inter-Agency Task Force on COVID-19 also appealed to the national government's COVID-19 task force to implement a modified ECQ in Bataan, Bulacan, Nueva Ecija, Zambales and Pampanga, including the City of Angeles from May 16 to 31.
Indias one of the worlds largest expatriation exercises, Vande Bharat Mission, has been a massive success in its first phase. Through this initiative, India is helping its citizens stranded abroad to return home. The flights are being operated by Air India and its subsidiary Air India Express. So far, India has managed to bring back 6037 stranded citizens from 12 foreign countries under this initiative.



However, as every coin has two ends, there is some flip side to this rescue mission too. According to a report in HT, several evacuees among the 326 passengers who reached the city on Air Indias first Vande Bharat Mission flight from London last Sunday claimed that they were made to pay entire amounts for the 14-day quarantine period at expensive hotels.

 conde nast traveller

Though Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) stated that all returnees were sent to institutional quarantine and the ones showing symptoms were sent to isolation wards in hospitals. They also mentioned that all fliers were informed of this cost during booking. Yet there seemed to be a lot of miscommunication.



One of the passengers, who is a 60-year-old retired government official disclosed he and 50 other passengers had to pay around Rs. 87,000 for quarantine at a five-star hotel in Santacruz. He also mentioned that he spent over Rs 2 lakh for him and his wife including the airplane tickets.

 Twitter/@IndiainChicago

The man mentioned that after opting for a cheaper hotel, it was upgraded last minute. Our hotel was changed to a five-star one in Santacruz at the last minute and we had no say on it because the district collectors staff had taken over the process from BMC, creating confusion. The entire process is being handled in an unprofessional manner without consulting experts.



Another 46-year-old returnee, who suffers from kidney problems said, My parents are heart patients and I returned from London to take care of them. I am currently 15 minutes away from home but can only speak to my family over the phone. I have already paid Rs 63,000 for the isolation period.

In addition, even someone who was initially classified as a low-risk passenger was eventually made to stay at the hotel. I am not a threat to my neighbours as I live alone. I was identified as a low-risk passenger at the airport. There is no need for me to be at a hotel but we have no option, said the 32-year-old woman, who is a Khar resident. Responding to the several claims made, BMC stated that they instructed the hoteliers association to charge accommodation fees in four different instalments where the passengers won't have to pay in one go.

 Reuters

The BMC admitted that there were certain issues cited after the first flight from London landed, but directions were passed to resolve them. Meanwhile, the passengers also mentioned how the norms of social distancing and proper measures were not being taken care of at the airports. Most of the staff members werent wearing masks or gloves.

 Wikimedia Commons

Most airport officials we reached out for help were not wearing masks or gloves. There was no coordination, no proper distancing and confusion over going from one section to another. A day after our flight, we read reports that one of the airport staff was tested positive for Covid-19. My wife and I are both scared that we may have contracted the virus at the airport, one of the passengers said.



As this was the first flight, there were some issues. However, following improvisations, the process is much smoother now, the report quoted Mumbai International Airport Ltd (MIAL) spokesperson.

The second phase of the rescue mission will begin from May 16.
For a long time, humans believed that the Earth is flat. However, scientific researches and advancements, proved that our planet is round and it revolves around the Sun in its own orbit. Similarly, it was widely believed that the Earth had only one North Pole and the South Pole that are fixed in one place. But, recently, researchers have found that our planet has not one but three North Poles, out of which, one of the north poles is shifting from its original place at a top speed of 50-60 km a year.

The North Pole is moving from Canada to Russia at a top speed

Also Read | Record-size ozone hole over north pole heals due to polar vortex, scientists confirm

Scientists at Leeds University have found that the Earth has a total of three North Poles, out of which one is a geographic pole corresponding to the planet's rotation axis, the other is the geomagnetic pole that best fits a classic dipole and the third one is the North Magnetic Pole, the point where magnetic field lines are perpendicular to the surface. Out of the three, the North Magnetic Pole is shifting its place from Canada to Russia at a speed of 50-60 km per year, as per the research conducted by Leeds University.

This new observation brings us back to Sir James Clark Ross, a Polar explorer who made the first measurements at the site of the Earths north magnetic pole. It was two centuries ago when Sir Ross discovered that the pole is shifting quickly towards Russia. A team from Leeds University, recently explained that this shift of the North Magnetic Pole has been caused by the competition of two magnetic "blobs" on the edge of the Earth's outer core.

Also Read | Experts fear Mars rock samples might bring alien microbes to Earth

This can be explained simply, as the North Geomagnetic Pole is different from the North Magnetic Pole. This difference between the two poles is because the Earth's magnetic fields are not specifically dipolar. However, research has revealed that there is a lesser-known fourth pole which is the instantaneous North pole, where Earth's rotational axis meets its surface and the celestial North pole.

The team of Leeds University revealed that the shift of the North Magnetic Pole is due to the observant change in the flow in the molten material in the Earth's interior or Earth's core. According to them, the altered flow of the molten material has changed the strength of the regions above the surface, causing negative magnetic flux.

Also Read | Russia has 14,000 pieces of debris orbiting Earth, more than twice that left by US

Dr Phil Livermore, leading the team of Leeds University, further explained the situation by saying that the change in the pattern of flow has weakened the patch under Canada and it has slightly increased the strength of the patch under Siberia. He mentioned in a study that this is the reason behind the North Pole leaving its historic position over the Canadian Arctic and crossing over the International Date Line.

Reportedly inspired by Sir James Clark Ross, Dr Livermore and colleagues, over the past 20 years, were able to record this movement of the North Magnetic Pole using data from satellites measuring the evolution of Earth's magnetic field. This research was published by the team of Leeds University called the Nature Geoscience.

Also Read | 'Life' ending explained: What happens after Danny and Calvin reach Earth?

All Images Source: Shutterstock
Professional Development

Nonprofit to Offer 'Micro-Endorsement' PD through BloomBoard

An education nonprofit in Oklahoma is working with an education technology company to provide teachers with alternative credentials taken online that can get them raises. The Oklahoma Public School Resource Center (OPSRC) has begun offering "micro-endorsement" professional development delivered through BloomBoard. The programs align with district salary schedules and cost less than traditional graduate degrees.

The credentials are made up of a combination of micro-credentials teachers earn by studying particular topics and proving their competencies in courses delivered through the BloomBoard catalog.

According to BloomBoard, districts can design a master's level course of study for staff, made up of micro-endorsements, in subjects including social emotional learning, working with English language learners, computer science instruction and personalized learning. Pathways can also be tailored to individual educators' goals.

"This partnership couldn't have been more timely," said OPSRC Executive Director, Brent Bushey, in a statement. "While many teacher trainings have already been canceled this summer due to COVID-19, educators can still use BloomBoard to enhance their knowledge and expand their toolbox of instructional strategies. We believe more and more schools will be looking to support teacher practice for online and blending learning, and this is a win-win: graduate-level learning accessible anytime, anywhere and without the hefty cost."
Freshly steamed tamales are pictured at Mole Poblano in Philadelphia's Italian Market on Saturday, May 9, 2020. The restaurant is selling tamales on weekends. Read more

The corn husks and banana leaves are soaked. The masa filling is moist and ready. The slow-cooked meats, vibrantly colored salsas, and glistening dark mole await.

Its time to steam the weekend tamales, at last. This ingenious ancient food  a bundle of husk-wrapped corn dough and stuffings descended through 9,000-plus years of culture dating to the pre-Hispanic era  is suddenly more relevant in Philadelphia than ever.

From South Philadelphia to Northern Liberties, guest chefs take their turns for tamalera duty for COVID-19 fund-raisers and pop-up sales to keep families going, and sons fill in for knowing mothers now separated by the pandemic.

The stars are aligned for tamales right now, says chef Ana Caballero of Lost Bread Co., whos been hosting guest chefs from across the local Latino community for Proyecto Tamal, a weekly series from which the Saturday sales raise money for unemployed immigrant workers who are largely unable to access government assistance.

Were raising resources and awareness about a community thats in a vulnerable situation right now. But celebrating their food culture is also empowering," says Caballero, 33, a High Street/Fork alum and Honduran American who grew up in the tamale country of Central America. "Plus, tamales refrigerate well and travel well. Theyre the perfect quarantine food.

While tacos remain a far more familiar favorite, tamales inherent virtues of adaptability, affordability, and durability are better suited to nourish during the pandemic, says Pati Jinich, the Mexican cookbook author and James Beard-winning host of Patis Mexican Table on PBS.

Tamales are like the daily bread of Mexicans  as big as tacos there, but underappreciated in the U.S., she says. Theyre less easy to adapt into casual fast food, and more difficult to make.  But you have to eat tacos within 20 to 30 minutes. Tamales? You can take them on a journey.

The tamales journey to its status as a coveted Philadelphia staple has been steady but relatively recent. Its only been two decades since South Philadelphia began to see an influx of Mexican immigrants, a now-vibrant community that has helped revitalize the Italian Market with family-owned restaurants, bakeries, chamoyada shops, and markets. A warm pack of aromatic tamales (often with a chocolaty cup of warm champurrado atole) has become a ritual of weekend mornings south of Washington Avenue.

That ritual for many was interrupted for several weeks following the shutdown when South Phillys busiest tamale kitchen, Tamalex (1163 S. 7th St.), closed out of caution and while the owners focused instead on raising money to distribute despensa care packages of essentials to members of their community. With the despensa program now up and running, however, co-owner David Pina said it was time to reopen, pay some bills, and fire up the tamale pots again. Even at partial speed last weekend, producing 800 each night  compared to 1,100-plus before the shutdown  that has returned a tremendous resource of $2 bundles of full-flavored sustenance to an appreciative audience.

People kept calling us saying they miss tamales, and theyre excited to have it again, says Pina.

A much smaller operation nearby, but another local favorite, is Mole Poblano (1144 S. 9th St.), a cozy BYOB on Calle Nueve launched in 2012 by brothers Pedro and Javier Rios to give their parents  Ines Sandoval-Perez and Pedro Rios-Hernandez  a proper kitchen to produce the tamales and mole that had become legendary during their days as local street vendors.

The tamale torch there was recently passed to the next generation when Ines and Pedro returned to Mexico in January to care for their elder parents. The brothers and Javiers wife, Micaela Aparicio, stepped in to make all the typical Poblano variations most common in South Philly, stuffed with chicken in salsa verde, pork in puya chile salsa roja, or rajas-style with jalapeno, Oaxaca cheese, tomato, and fresh epazote. Their birthright, a fluffy tamale marbled with a cocoa-dark mole that combines both family specialties into one beautiful bundle, remains one of Philadelphias most special foods. Nonetheless, it hasnt been easy replicating the mothers touch.

It takes patience and Im still learning, says Javier, whos getting a feel for the two-hour process of working the masa with lard and chicken broth before filling the meticulously prepared corn husks with Aparicio, who also used to make the tamales with Ines. It takes me 10 hours to do what [my mother] did in eight.

Brother Pedro then comes in at 5 a.m. each weekend morning to steam them fresh for several hours before customers arrive around 10 a.m., often to bring them home to their families after church.

The communal nature of tamales  both making them in groups and eating them together as a family  has no doubt been disrupted for many by the era of social distancing. But with his parents now so far away and unable to return during the crisis, Javier says, carrying on the family tradition also makes him feel more connected to his mom.

Every time he makes a tamale now, says Javiers son, also named Javier, he values his parents more.

For chef Jennifer Zavala, who runs her Juana Tamale pop-up out of Underground Arts, making tamales is also about connecting to family roots. But its a heritage she says she never had a chance to fully grasp once her American mother and Mexican father divorced when she was 8, and she moved with her mom from Montana to Connecticut, where I was the only Mexican, a dark-skinned girl who didnt fit in.

In addition, Zavala doesnt speak Spanish well, so she says she hasnt felt fully part of the Mexican community, either. And yet, a quest to connect with that part of her identity has driven her to explore the most Mexican things I could make: mole and tamales.

Its a pursuit that has resulted in sustenance for her family and a business thats produced more than 9,000 tamales over the last three years between what shes made for concerts at Underground Arts and spontaneously sold out of the back of her pink and blue graffiti-covered van with TAMALES painted on the side.

Of course, Zavala, a lavishly tattooed former roadie chef, food trucker, Top Chef competitor, and cannabis activist, specializes in nontraditional flavors, from vegan smoked yam and kale tamales to her Golden Slipper stuffed with Italian sausage, potatoes, and peppers thats an homage to the cultural melting pot of her neighborhood: I make sure to represent South Philadelphia, always.

Some purists might wince. But the tamales ability to adapt to different environments and reflect the creativity of its makers has been a key to its survival over the millennia.

You can adapt a tamale to wherever you live in the world, say Jinich, who notes the stunning variety within Mexico itself, from renditions in Oaxaca wrapped in banana leaves (as opposed to corn husks), versions with masa from plantains, and the giant table-sized ceremonial mucbipollo chicken tamales of the Yucatan cooked underground for the Day of the Dead.

That diversity of tamale traditions is on full display at Lost Breads Proyecto Tamal, where Caballero has sought out unemployed local cooks from across Latin America whom  with funding from donors to cover the cost of ingredients, including masa made from freshly nixtamalized Lancaster corn by Cadence restaurant  are able to take home at least $1,000 from the proceeds.

And so there have been rarities like Guatemalan bean tamales, pigs head tamales lanquinero, and tamales stuffed with bone-in chicken from Olga Castillo, 33, a mother of three who came to Philadelphia after being extorted at gunpoint when leaving work one night from her job as a restaurant manager in Guatemala. Its an episode for which she is still paying debt lenders.

For Castillo, who once also made tamales professionally in Guatemala, being able to proudly make these specialties for an appreciative new audience has also allowed her to rekindle a comforting taste of home, not to mention help with finances.

The opportunity to earn money while unemployed was also a draw for Sergio Mateo, 35, a Puebla native with two insatiably hungry Philadelphia-born sons who was laid off from his line cook job at Bru Craft & Wurst. But it also gave him the chance to reconnect by phone with his mother and grandmother back in Mexico, where women are traditionally the primary tamale cooks, and they shared some of the familys tamale secrets  a pinch of cumin and cinnamon in the masa.

Tamales are a form of communication usually eaten and shared in family places, says Mateo. Theyre a way to reunite people for gatherings, wakes and celebrations.  But sometimes we also need help. So making and selling tamales is a way of sharing that flavor of love and also saying we are here right now  we are present.
Milspo Business Network is a community organisation that supports the partners and spouses of Military personal to achieve their business goals. It was created by RAF wife and Graphic Designer Jess Sands, who after her frequent house moves due to her husband's career in the forces, had to quit her dream job. Employers in her sector were reluctant to employ military partners due to the uncertainty of relocations.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the hive mind has evolved into much more than a business network; it is a lifeline to many partners who are isolated alone across the globe, from the UK to Cyprus and Australia and spouses who don't have any business interests have joined.

Solitary isolation has become prevalent in recent weeks due to military personnel being relocated on short-notice deployment to help with the pandemic. While others are isolated overseas because of travel restrictions

The digital community currently offers virtual meetups, themed meetups with expert speakers, workshops, training and much more. Milspo is holding meetups online every Wednesday at 10:30 am. It's a supportive, safe space to discuss any struggles they're having or even for a chat if they're feeling overwhelmed and solitary.

Here Jess chats to us about how it all began and her reaction to the Covid-19 crisis.

How did the Milspo Business Network start?

I started my own business in 2012 due to a military posting, and shortly after that started Miliprenures at my local base.

Every month we met and discussed business. It was a bit of a disaster! It was during the Afghanistan conflict and quite frankly most of us were just looking for someone to talk to. The business networking gently turned into a wine club  not much business talk but a lot of support through a difficult time.

Fast forward four years and with a few friends we have launched an online community.

We championed spouse businesses with the MOD, started the first ever spouse business directory in the UK, and supported military spouses in business. We had networking groups all over the UK Hampshire, London, Windsor  it was great!

Off the back of the passion for that community, in May 2018 I started a podcast series to showcase some of the amazing business owners that I had met since starting my own business.

It was a little passion project, funded by my own business. That passion project took off like no other!

There are now over 6,800 listeners to the podcast series, an online network with over 450 members and online networking events happening most weeks! The podcast series is now kindly sponsored by the Royal British Legion, and The InDependent Spouse CIC, the overarching legal company of The Milspo Business Network is growing from strength to strength.

What gave you the idea to create it?

It was very clear at the start of my entrepreneurial journey that military spouses and partners inbusiness face challenges like no other community. With military postings every few years, operational tours for up to 9 months, and absent partners it makes keeping stable employment all the more difficult.

Despite this adversity we are creating the most amazing businesses that not only allow us to financially contribute to our families it also gives us a new-found confidence that so easily gets lost due to the instability of modern military life.

I wanted to showcase these amazing partners to others so that they knew they could do it too. To create a movement and to show the world there is more to the military spouse than what you might expect.

I think by connecting dispersed but our inspiring network we can help each help build healthy businesses that empower Milspos to flourish.

What type of business do you run?

My own business is a design company. I mostly create branding for business and charities and run it from home/my military married quarter.

How did the outbreak of Covid-19 affect the group?

Overnight every member in the group suddenly became married to a key-worker. Some serving partners were deployed suddenly to help with the Covid-19 Support Force, and others, whos partners were already deployed abroad found themselves locked down either alone, away from family, or with their children. Members posted abroad found themselves locked-down in a foreign country without company. The majority of us found ourselves away from our families, due to military postings.

The network stepped in to re-purpose the online support it had given to weekly, online Milspo Meet-Ups. Each Wednesday we chat, check-in and support each other no matter where we find ourselves UK or abroad.

The meetings are business focused, so we can help each other keep our businesses going at this uncertain time, but are also evolving into support groups for those of us who are particularly isolated or struggling.

What are the highlights of running the network for you?

The comradery. The military community has always had each others backs, thats not just restricted to our serving personnel, and we have always looked after each other through war-time. Now we face a new home-front against coronavirus and we are rallying once again to make sure no one is left out.

Its a daily reminder that Im not alone. Having a place where like minded people interact and support each other is so powerful and some days I need to see other people doing great things to remind me that I too can achieve what feels like the unachievable!

Military family life is demanding and often the thought of adapting your business over and over again to the challenges can feel overwhelming.

Knowing there are people just a few clicks away who understand what you are going through and have tackled it themselves is invaluable.

Life can be hard but we are not doing it alone.

Away from the group, how do you spend your downtime?

The best part of military life means that its always a bit varied. If you spend your life moving every few years you tend to want to take advantage of living somewhere new, so we spend most of our time (when my husband isnt deployed) checking out our where we are living. That can be anywhere from central London, to an air base in the middle of nowhere  but theres always something to be found.

The best part of military life is also the patch  the housing where the majority of us live.

Weve been so lucky to have some wonderful neighbours where we have lived (a god send during lockdown) so we spend a lot of time socialising with them and looking out for each other if one of our partners is away. Its like a family away from your family. We are very lucky!

In business, who do you admire?

There are so many! Its important when you are running your own business to surround yourself with people who inspire you so I am a big fan of Jo Malone, Carrie Green (Female Entrepreneur Association) and Holly Tucker (Holly & Co/Not On The High Street) who have written some fab books on their business journeys. But, of course every single member of the Milspo Network who inspire me every day and help me carry on.

When you can talk to someone who has sent the person they love most to the deepest, darkest and scariest parts of the world and they are still holding it together and creating amazing businesses while helping others you know that you have found a group that is very special.
Our farmers are really unsung heroes who long ago built a culture of safety that is now benefiting our state during these difficult times

Western Plant Health (WPH), today applauded California farmers and agricultural businesses for their leadership in meeting the states essential need for fresh fruit and produce production while maintaining high public safety standards during the COVID-19 crisis.

Our farmers are really unsung heroes who long ago built a culture of safety that is now benefiting our state during these difficult times, said Renee Pinel, President & CEO of WPH. Without missing a beat, California farmers have kept filling our shopping bags in large part because their health and safety rules were already in place and the norm  not some new requirement arising from an emergency.

WPH, a trade association representing companies that supply farmers with fertilizers and crop protection products that help grow healthy crops, said that the states farm community has served as a national model for how to conduct business without compromising the safety of the food, environment, workers and neighboring communities.

While most people and industries were caught off guard by the COVID-19 crisis, California farmers were already taking many of the mandated safety precautions as a matter of routine, Pinel said. With such strict food handling and pesticide practices already in place, our farmers were able to continue supplying grocery stores and food banks throughout the state and nation.

She also noted that a decades-long collaboration with federal and state regulators was instrumental in helping build a culture of safety.

All Californians can be proud of the culture of safety that has been created on the states farms, said Pinel.

###

About Western Plant Health:

Western Plant Health (WPH) is a Sacramento-based trade association whose member companies promote the environmentally safe and agronomically sound use of their products. WPH members provide farmers with a wide range of crop protection and fertilizers necessary for safely growing crops that produce nutritious food and high-quality fiber, as well as horticultural products.
Global content studio, Lionsgate India, has launched a noteworthy initiative to bring the community experience of watching movies in movie theatres to live streaming, in partnership with Facebook India. Lionsgate Live! A Night at the Movies is a month-long campaign featuring four Fridays of complimentary movies streaming LIVE on Facebook. While the campaign was conceptualised by Lionsgate US, Havas Creative Mumbai will be executing the India communication with local flavour further enhanced by celebrity collaborations.

The storied Hollywood production company has lined up series of four live film screenings on four consecutive Fridays, for free, to raise funds for GiveIndia, a consolidated NGO platform working towards the rehabilitation of COVID-19 victims. Most importantly, audiences will have the chance to join Lionsgate India in showing support for those affected by the pandemic in the country. People will be able to donate via Facebook Fundraisers tool while watching their favourite movie.

Further, Twilight series starrer, Peter Facinelli and Now You See Me franchise famed Jesse Eisenberg have shared special video messages to extend their support to Lionsgate India in this noble initiative. Also, on board areBollywood celebrities including Ananya Pandey, Anil Kapoor, Sanya Malhotra and Raveena Tandon who are supporting the cause.Globally, this initiative has received huge appreciation, witnessing Hollywood stars like Jamie Lee Curtis, Gerard Butler, Margot Robbie and many more extending their support and joining this initiative.

Mr. Rohit Jain, Managing Director Lionsgate South Asia said, In these unprecedented times, Lionsgate has launched this global initiative to support families of millions of people who have been impacted by COVID-19. For this initiative in India, we have partnered with Facebook to create a fundraiser, the proceeds for the same will be contributed to reputed NGOs helping fight this pandemic. This will be a unique opportunity for viewers to extend their support and donate for this charitable cause. Moreover, we are delighted to rope in Ananya Pandey for this cause who will support us to spread awareness on this property.

Commenting on the collaboration, Arindam Sengupta, Managing Partner  West & South, Havas Mumbai said We are honoured to collaborate with Lionsgate to extend their global initiative in India for such a noble cause. In such unprecedented times, we all should do our bit, and LionsgateLIVE is a one such opportunity for Havas.

Over the next few Fridays on Lionsgate India's FB page at 8pm, there will be screenings of four popular films from the studio's library:

May 8: Twilight

May 15: Now You See Me 2

May 22: The Hunger Games

May 29: Wonder

Tune in on the link below at 8 pm every Friday, hit the donate button before, during or after the screening. Enjoy!

Link to Lionsgate Indias FB page:https://www.facebook.com/LionsgateIN/

Donation Link:https://bit.ly/LionsgateIndiaFundraiser
While most of the world is still battling with the coronavirus outbreak, Slovenia became the first nation in the European Union on May 14 to declare an official end to its COVID-19 epidemic. The officials announced the move after the country reportedly confirmed less than seven new cases of coronavirus infections every day for the past 14 days. More restrictions have now been eased in the country and people entering from other European Union states would no longer be subjected to a mandatory quarantine period of one week like it was in early April.

The country housing over two million people bordered with Italy, Austria, Hungary, and Croatia has reported 1,464 cases of COVID-19 disease and 103 deaths after declaring an epidemic back on March 12. Slovenias Prime Minister Janez Janza had said in the parliament that the country has tamed the epidemic over the past two months and lauded the best epidemiologic picture that Slovenia has in Europe.

Read - EU Weighs Stance Amid Concern Over Israeli Annexation Plans

Read - Top Scientists Manoeuvre Debate Away From Politics Amid Lockdown

Govt continues to relax restrictions

The government has considerably eased many restrictions that were initially imposed to flatten the curve of disease spread. The educational institutions will be allowed to accept students in preschools along with in the first three grades in primary schools. All shops and driving schools are also given a green signal to resume their services. However, the opening hours of food shops are still barred from 8:00am to 6pm except for the shops that were already open for less than ten hours prior to March 12.

The government continues to relax restrictions adopted due to the #COVID19 epidemichttps://t.co/fOcygAKBbs pic.twitter.com/n7yrlRJULM  Slovenian Government (@govSlovenia) May 14, 2020

Read - EU's Foreign Affairs Chief Calls For Independent Inquiry Into Coronavirus Origin

Read - COVID-19: Baltic Nations Launch Europe's First Pandemic 'travel Bubble' To Revive Economy

Image Source: AP
New Delhi, May 15 : The much-talked about 'Wuhan Diary: Dispatches from a Quarantined City by well-known Chinese literary writer Fang Fang, has released in India in the ebook format.

Published by HarperNonFiction, the audio will follow on May 26. The book, which will be translated into 15 languages is a compilation of the author's diary entries and social media posts that document 60 days of lockdown during the COVID-19 epidemic.

On January 25, 2020, after the Chinese central government imposed a lockdown in Wuhan, Fang Fang began publishing an online diary. In the days and weeks that followed, the acclaimed author's nightly postings gave voice to the fears, frustrations, anger, and hope of millions of fellow citizens, reflecting on the psychological impact of forced isolation, the role of the internet as both community lifeline and source of misinformation, and most tragically, the lives of neighbours and friends taken by the deadly virus.

An eyewitness account of events as they unfolded, Wuhan Diary captures the challenges of daily life and the changing moods and emotions of being quarantined without reliable information. Fang Fang finds solace in small domestic comforts, and is inspired by the courage of friends, health professionals, and volunteers, as well as the resilience and perseverance of Wuhan's nine million residents. But, by claiming the writerAs duty to record, she also speaks out against social injustice, abuse of power, and other problems that impeded the response to the epidemic and gets herself embroiled in online controversies because of it.

As the writer documents the beginning of the global health crisis in real time, one is able to identify patterns and mistakes that many of the countries dealing with the novel coronavirus pandemic have later repeated. She reminds that, in the face of the new virus, the plight of the citizens of Wuhan is also that of citizens everywhere. She writes: "The virus is the common enemy of humankind; that is a lesson for all humanity. The only way we can conquer this virus and free ourselves from its grip is for all members of humankind to work together." Dedicating the book to the people of Wuhan, Fang Fang says that it is also for those people who came to the city's aid during its darkest hour. All the proceeds from this book will be used to aid people who put their lives on the line for Wuhan.
A better system  one that empowers voters  is ranked-choice voting, which has seen a surge in popularity in recent years. Under the system, if a candidate does not receive more than 50 percent of the vote, the winner is decided based on votes garnered as the second, third or even fourth choice of voters. More than 20 cities successfully use this system, Maine has extended it to the upcoming presidential election, and four state Democratic parties are using it in their party-run presidential primaries. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam (D) recently signed two bills that authorize its use in Arlington and offer it as a local option across the state. Ranked-choice voting legislation had been introduced in both D.C. and Maryland but has yet to make it out of committee.
President Trumps public criticism of his own top coronavirus expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, is part of a broader policy of denying science and appealing to the most backward and reactionary social elements in America. The White House is seeking to whip up a fascistic movement to bolster the demands of big business to reopen the US economy, regardless of the cost in the health and lives of working people.

Faucis cautiously worded remarks to a Senate committee hearing Tuesday expressed the consensus of epidemiologists and other public health experts. He warned that state governments that have largely abandoned restrictions on business operations over the past three weeks are paving the way to a disastrous resurgence of COVID-19 and needless suffering and death.

At the hearing, Fauci made clear that the pandemic is not under control, that the real number of people who have died from COVID-19 is greater than the official tally of 80,000, that the effectiveness of the Remdesivir antiviral treatment is modest, and that recovering from COVID-19 does not guarantee immunity.

This hearing was followed yesterday by the devastating testimony before a House committee of public health official Rick Bright, who documented his repeated and failed efforts to warn the administration of the coming COVID-19 pandemic and to secure an adequate supply of tests, protective equipment and therapeutics. Bright made clear that the administrations decisions lead to countless deaths.

Rather than heeding his warnings, US health officials, acting in keeping with Trumps efforts to downplay the pandemic, fired him from his position as head of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday as he met with two governorsone a Democrat, the other a Republicanwho have dropped most coronavirus-related restrictions, Trump declared that Faucis criticism of state reopenings was not an acceptable answer.

Look, he wants to play all sides of the equation, Trump said, singling out Faucis statement that no vaccine or other medical treatment for COVID-19 would be ready by August, when schools and colleges would normally resume. I dont consider our country coming back if the schools are closed, Trump said.

Trump dismissed the reports of a new and deadly syndrome affecting children who have survived COVID-19, saying, Now when you have an incident, one out of a million, one out of 500,000, will something happen? Perhaps but you can be driving to school and some bad things can happen, too. He went on to repeat disproven claims that the danger of COVID-19 was limited to the elderly and those with preexisting health problems.

Trump condemned Bright on Thursday, calling him disgruntled, while Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar falsely claimed everything Bright called for had been carried out.

The US president continued his attack Thursday morning, telling Fox Business Network that he totally disagrees with Fauci over his reservations about reopening school systems. He went on to tell his interviewer, the Wall Street cheerleader Maria Bartiromo, We have to get our country open as quickly as possible. We cant keep going on like this.

Dr. Fauci has become a target of ultra-right attack for several months, with the #firefauci hashtag trending on right-wing social media. Pundits on Breitbart.com, Fox News and other such media outlets have denounced him as a political opponent of Trump, since he has declined to support Trumps endorsement of quack remedies for coronavirus and has admitted that a faster US government response to the pandemic would have saved lives.

In an appearance Thursday at a Pennsylvania company that distributes medical supplies, Trump embraced a policy of deliberately suppressing information about the pandemic. When you test, you have a case, he said. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didnt do any testing we would have very few cases. He later added, Could be that testings, frankly, overrated. Maybe it is overrated. On the day of Trumps visit to Pennsylvanias Lehigh Valleywhere he again ostentatiously refused to wear a maskthe coronavirus death toll in nearby Philadelphia passed 1,000.

While attacking science and medical knowledge, Trump endorsed protests in Pennsylvania and Michigan against coronavirus lockdowns, and hailed Wednesdays court decision in Wisconsin overturning that states lockdown order.

Trump is making an appeal to the most backward and confused right-wing elements, including Christian fundamentalists, militia groups and anti-vaxxers. These groups have little popular supportThursdays demonstration in Lansing, Michigan, for example, brought out only 200 peoplebut they are given vast publicity by the corporate media and presented as the expression of mass hostility to an approach to the pandemic which gives priority to public health.

Media coverage of the Wisconsin court decision, for example, focused on the reopening of bars and restaurants and their happy customers, while ignoring the fact that the vast majority of the states population supports the lockdown and has been observing it conscientiously. The coronavirus toll in Wisconsin now stands at nearly 11,000 cases and 421 deaths.

The consequences of these actions will be deadly. While the initial outbreaks of COVID-19 in the United States were concentrated in urban areas, four of the ten counties with the highest death rates from the disease are now in the rural south, including three counties in Georgia and St. John the Baptist Parish in Louisiana.

In the increasingly ferocious attack on science and medical experts, the Trump administration speaks for the financial oligarchy. While Trump has been the most vocal and consistent advocate of a premature return to work, this policy is being carried out by both Democratic and Republican governors.

If the principles of mathematics contravened class interests, Lenin once noted, they would encounter bitter opposition. Here it is not a question of the foundations of mathematics, but of the most basic scientific and public health measures necessary to combat the coronavirus pandemic and save countless thousands of lives.

The billionaires and their political representatives, both Democratic and Republican, having received their massive financial bailout from Congress and the Federal Reserve, care nothing for the fate of the workers whom they are now seeking to force back to work in order to resume the extraction of surplus value from their labor.

This campaign will involve not merely the threat of cutting off unemployment compensation and other benefits. That may well be sufficient to compel millions of workers to report back to their workplaces, but it will not be enough to keep them there as the toll of infection and death resumes its upward climb.

The brandishing of automatic weapons in the state Capitol in Lansing, Michigan and at other anti-lockdown protests is a warning of what is being prepared for workers who oppose the return to work and who resist working under unsafe, even deadly conditions.

The Socialist Equality Party opposes the return-to-work campaign being waged by big business and its political representatives in both parties. All those implicated in this effort, from President Trump to his Democratic opponent Joe Biden, to the Democrats and Republicans in Congress who voted unanimously for the corporate bailout, to the governors of both parties now relaxing or rescinding lockdowns, will have the blood of tens of thousands on their hands, if not far more.
While the Zionist project fulfilled its dream of a homeland in Palestine, Palestinian displacement has never stopped.

May 15, 1948, is a date inked in infamy for generations of Palestinians who know it as the Nakba, or the catastrophe, after the declaration of the state of Israel in Palestine.

On Friday, Palestinians mark the Nakbas 72nd anniversary since the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community in Palestine, transformed into Israel after former colonial sponsor the United Kingdom departed Palestine, which it had invaded and occupied during World War I.

For Palestinians, the Nakba does not just represent an historical event but a continuing process that began in the 1880s as European Zionist settlers started moving into Palestine to lay the groundwork for their future state.

While the Zionist project fulfilled its dream of creating a homeland in Palestine in 1948 after defeating five ill-equipped and outnumbered Arab armies, Palestinian displacement has never stopped.

Between 1947 and 1949, about 750,000 Palestinians out of a population of 1.9 million were expelled from their towns and villages to make way for the new Jewish immigrants.

Most of the these Palestinians fled to neighbouring countries, where they settled as refugees.

Children play amidst lines of laundry drying out at Baqaa Camp in Jordan in 1969 [AP Photo]

Only 150,000 Palestinians remained in Israel, which was founded on 78 percent of the total landmass of Palestine. The remaining 22 percent of the eastern part of Palestine was later annexed by Jordan and renamed the West Bank, and its residents became Jordanian citizens.

In June 1967, the West Bank was occupied by Israel along with the Gaza Strip, which had been under Egyptian military control.

According to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, about five million Palestinian citizens live in the occupied West Bank and blockaded Gaza Strip, and 1.5 million in Israel. Six million more live in the diaspora in neighbouring countries and worldwide.

Many Palestinians, however, argue that the Zionist victory is not complete.

Nakba not from the past

Palestinian scholar Joseph Massad argues that Palestinians can regain their homeland by resisting Zionist attempts to erase them from history and have them accept their defeat.

Massad, a professor of modern Arab politics and history at Colombia University in New York, wrote in Resisting the Nakba that Palestinians have succeeded in foiling the Zionist project of their total expulsion by rejecting the Zionist narrative that the Nakba is something from the past.

In resisting the Nakba, the Palestinians have struck at the heart of the Zionist project that insists that the Nakba be seen as a past event. In resisting Israel, Palestinians have forced the world to witness the Nakba as present action; one that, contrary to Zionist wisdom, is indeed reversible, wrote Massad.

This is precisely what galls Israel and the Zionist movement. Israels inability to complete its mission of thoroughly colonizing Palestine, of expelling all Palestinians, of gathering all Jews in the world in its colony, keeps it uneasy and keeps its project always in the present continuous.

Massads main argument is that Palestinian assertiveness and resistance has evolved over the decades to employ art and culture as a key to keeping the collective sense of nationhood alive and undo the Nakba.

The problem for Israel is not in believing and knowing that there is not one single place in its colonial settlement that did not have a former Arab population, but in its realization that there is no place today in its imaginary Jewish State that does not still have an Arab population who claims it, wrote Massad.

The current Israeli government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has made plans to annex large parts of the occupied West Bank in the coming months, in accordance with the proposal by the US government commonly known as the Deal of the Century.

The planned annexation would effectively kill the 1993 Oslo Accords between the Palestine Liberation Organization and Israel, which stipulated the establishment of a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem within five years after its signing.

Palestinians gather during a protest marking the 71st anniversary of the Nakba, or catastrophe, near the Israel-Gaza fence [Mohammed Salem/Reuters]

Adnan Abu Odeh, a Palestinian and former head of Jordan Royal Court during the reign of the late King Hussein, said he still believes in the reversibility of the Nakba, and that Palestinians will one day reconstitute themselves back in Palestine as a nation, despite the current political conditions against them.

Abu Odeh, 87, who was born in the Palestinian city of Nablus during the British occupation of Palestine, told Al Jazeera he does not believe Israel will remain in its present form for eternity, in part because it is still viewed by the Arabs as an alien body in the midst of their region.

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He added that despite official peace treaties between Egypt and Jordan with Israel, as well as Israeli gains in establishing official and unofficial relationships with several Arab countries, the fact remains that Israel allies itself with Arab governments only, not their people.

The Arabs still consider the Palestinian cause as their cause, even if their regimes didnt, he said.

As for what future lies ahead for Palestinians who are facing a much more powerful foe and often hostile Arab regimes, Massads message is to keep the resistance alive.

Those who counsel the Palestinians to accept the Nakba know that to accept the Nakba is to allow it to continue unfettered. Palestinians know better. The only way to end the Nakba, Palestinians insist, is to continue to resist it.

Follow Ali Younes on Twitter: @ali_reports
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Nirmala Sitharaman's second tranche of the stimulus package addreses farmers, migrant workers, street hawkers

Migrant workers from UP state sit stuffed inside a goods truck on the outskirts of Hyderabad hoping to be driven to their villages in UP. (AP)

New Delhi: After offering liquidity support to small businesses in the first tranche of the governments stimulus package, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced measures to support migrant labour, farmers, the poor and lower-middle-class people.

The government has given the lions share of assistance in the second tranche to farmers by offering Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit to 2.5 crore farmers through the Kisan Credit Card. Apart from this, the minister approved an additional Rs 30,000 crore for the emergency working capital fund through Nabard, which is over and above the Rs 90,000 crore provided through normal refinance route.

The government would provide a working capital loan of Rs 10,000 each to 50 lakh street vendors who have been hit hard by the Covid-19 pandemic. She also announced a 2 per cent interest subsidy for Shishu loans given under Mudra lending.

In big relief to migrant workers, Sitharaman also announced the launch of the National Portability Cards -- One Nation, One Ration Card -- which can be used in any ration shop in any part of the country as migrants move from state to state. However, she said this scheme would be implemented across India by March next year.

The government, Sitharaman said, would provide free foodgrains to all migrants for the next two months. They will be given five kg of wheat or rice per individual, one kg of pulse, one kg of (chana) even if a migrant worker does not have a BPL card. This scheme is going to cost the government exchequer worth Rs 3,500 crore. This will reach through the state governments who will be the implementing agencies, she said.

Sitharaman has also announced a new affordable rental housing scheme for migrant workers under the Public-Private Partnership (PPP) model. "This will be implemented through the PM Awas Yojana. New housing complexes could be developed by private players, whom the government will incentivise," Sitharaman said.

In an attempt to give a fillip to the housing sector and other allied industries, the government has extended interest subsidy by another year  till March 2021  to the purchase of flats in the affordable housing segment by spending Rs 70,000 crore.

Under the scheme, government-funded housing in the cities will be converted into Affordable Rental Housing Complexes (ARHCs) under the PPP mode through concessionaires. The new scheme will incentivise companies to develop such complexes on their private land.

She has also approved a package worth Rs 6,000 crore as Campa Fund to give employment for tribal people, especially for Adivasis involved in forestry-related work.
15.05.2020 LISTEN

Nelson Kyeremeh, 35-year-old NPP Parliamentary Aspirant for Berekum East constituency in the Bono Region, says he is confident of securing 65% of votes in the up-coming NPP parliamentary primaries in areas where the party has sitting MPs.

He said considering the fact that his campaign messages have resonated very well with the delegates, all indications point to a resounding victory for him and the party.

He told our correspondent in an interview that when voted as the NPP Parliamentary Candidate and subsequently as the MP for Berekum East, he would work hard to bring back the loss "golden city" image of the Municipality which would be manifested in the accelerated development and exposure my leadership will ensure.

Mr. Kyeremeh further pledged to facilitate the creation of jobs for his constituents through my work-and-pay policy, support for vocational and technical skill training, and lobbying public jobs for the people.

Another area of concern to him is sanitation. To this end, he hopes to improve the sanitation situation in the area and wellbeing of the people through frequent organization of medical screening and the massive provision of sanitation related kits and equipment for the municipality.

He says, he will also strengthen unity within the party, and between the party and Nananom and other stakeholders in the municipality to bring accelerated development to the people.

A native of Biadan near Berekum, Mr. Nelson Kyeremeh had his basic education at the Berekum Methodist School and continued at the Berekum Senior High School where he had his Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (SSSCE).

He holds an Advanced Diploma in Business Studies from the Institute of Commercial Management, U.K and a Graduate Diploma in Management Studies from the same institution, and currently pursuing an MBA in Leadership and Sustainability at the University of Cumbria, Ambleside, U.K.

Mr. Kyeremeh has ten years experience as a teacher and also served as the Business Development Manager for Wegdam Food Link BV, Netherlands and currently works as the Administrator at AGYENGOPLUS Transport & Logistical Services, Tema.

Besides, he also works as the Logistics Officer of LA Bianca Company Limited.

For the past five years, Mr. Kyeremeh has been distributing mathematical sets and pens to all Basic Education Certificate Examination candidates in public schools in Berekum municipality.

In 2018, he donated three brand new laptop computers to support the municipal quiz competition organized by the Municipal Directorate of the Ghana Education Service and also organized a weeks trip to Tema and Accra for the winners of the 2018 Municipal Quiz organized by GES for Basic Schools.

Besides, Mr. Kyeremeh has constructed a 24-seater ultra-modern toilet facility for Ahenbronso and also donated 200 pieces of LED street-light bulbs to Berekum Municipal and its environs.

He has also made several contributions towards the growth and development of the New Patriotic Party in the Berekum East constituency.

During the 2016 electioneering, he donated an amount of Gh.c 10,000 to support the partys campaign, acquired three brand new motor-bikes and 2,000 pieces of T-shirts as part of his numerous contributions towards the campaign.
Less than two weeks before the inauguration of the new Iranian Parliament (Majles) on May 28, competition for the speakership has heated up among various conservative factions. Is the Supreme Leader backing any faction, or does it make any difference to him?

Three of the main conservative factions have formed an alliance against another conservative faction to win the speakership of the Majles.

Iranian media reports say the traditional conservatives, the hardliner Paydari Front and the ultraconservative pro-Ahmadinejad factions announced their alliance Wednesday night May 13 after holding several meetings in what they later called the Committee of Seven.

The new alliance has still not said who is its final candidate for the posts of the Speaker of Majles and around 16 other posts at the Majles Presidium, but it is obvious that three factions will share the positions among their members.

Previously, Mostafa Mirsalim of the Islamic Coalition Party was nominated as the candidate for traditional conservatives, Morteza Aqa-Tehrani was nominated by Paydari and Hamid Reza Hajibabaei as the pro-Ahmadinejad camp's candidate for the top seat at the Majles.

The faction left out is the neoconservative group led by former Tehran Mayor Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf (Ghalibaf) whose members have sarcastically called the rival alliance as the "Anyone but Qalibaf Faction."

Qalibaf is a relative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei but it seems the country's ruler is letting chips fall where they may.

From another perspective, the competition over the top seat at the Majles is a race between two different parts of the Revolutionary Guard oligarchy. Former IRGC air force commander General Qalibaf is running against men lined up by former IRGC General Sadeq Mahsuli who has chosen to play the part of a kingmaker rather than a soldier on the ground. He was an interior minister in Ahmadinejad's first presidential term.

Mahsuli is known to be a billionaire and Qalibaf's municipality has been implicated in financial corruption cases involving billions of dollars. The competition that has been going on since February is likely to be about financial gains rather than political power as the Majles is not an independent player. Its most important decisions and legislations have been handed over to the heads of the three branches of the government (annual budget, the rise in gas price), Expediency Council (the FATF bills) and the Guardian Council which can always overturn any decision the Majles makes.

Two leading pro-Qalibaf members of the new Majles, Elias Naderan and Mohsen Dehnavi, have lashed out at the Committee of Seven, accusing them of "sowing discord among conservatives," and referring to the role of those who try to influence decisions from outside the Majles, possibly an allusion to Mahsuli, said "The Majles does not need a godfather."

On the other hand, the Committee's members say that Qalibaf was invited to the meeting about the alliance but he did not show up. The reason could be the resolution by the Committee barring anyone with an intention to take part in the Presidential election in 2021 from running for the post of Majles Speaker.

The resolution may have been particularly tailored to prevent Qalibaf's ambition to become Iran's next President.

According to reformist newspaper Etemad, before the new alliance was formed Qalibaf, who has some 50 supporters in the new Majles, managed to garner the support of another 50 new MPs to have an edge over Paydari's 80 supporters. The new alliance has changed the situation in support of the anti-Qalibaf camp as around 20 to 30 traditional conservatives and around 70 pro-Ahmadinjad MPs put the alliance in the top position. So, if nothing changes during the next 13 days, Mirsalim or someone else nominated by the alliance will take the top seat at the Majles.

Mahmoud Abbaszadeh Meshkini, a pro-Ahmadinejad MP, told Ebtekar newspaper in Tehran that this is an influential majority as the four conservative blocs have a total number of 200 to 230 MPs. The three blocs in the alliance have 170 to 180 MPs.

Some political observers in Tehran have already referred to Qalibaf's lack of political experience, although it is not clear whether he could have influenced the Committee's decision had he taken part in their meetings.

Although it does not look like that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei is interested in intervening in the matter, some analysts believe that Qalibaf shunned the invitation by the Committee out of complacence because of his kinship link to Khamenei's household.

However, as far as Khamenei is concerned, perhaps someone like Mirsalim who has proved his loyalty to the Islamic Republic and its traditional "values" during the past four decades as a member of the "old guard" would be a better choice to lead the Majles while some of Qalibaf's "modern" tendencies may not necessarily be consistent with traditional yardsticks.

On the other hand, a seasoned politician like Mirsalim would need less steering by Khamenei to lead the Majles in the difficult situation marked by a worsening economic crisis and a failing foreign policy.
Six migrant workers were killed and 95 others injured in separate road accidents in Uttar Pradesh when they were returning home during the ongoing lockdown to combat the coronavirus outbreak, the police said on Friday.

IMAGE: Image used for representational purpose only. A child sleeps on the footpath as the police stop migrants on the Delhi- Meerut expressway near Nizamuddin, New Delhi. Photograph: Vijay Verma / PTI Photo.

The accidents have taken place in Barabanki, Jalaun, Bahraich and Mahoba districts since Thursday evening, they said.

In Barabanki, a group of seven labourers returning from Surat to Bahraich were waiting for conveyance near Badel on the Lucknow-Ayodhya National Highway on Friday morning when a speeding truck hit them, killing three on the spot and injuring the rest.

Those killed have been identified as Shishupal (32), his brother Jeetendra (30) and uncle Mohan Nishad (40), the police said, adding that the four injured have been admitted to a hospital.

The group members were working in a handloom company in Surat in Gujarat and had left for their homes after the factory was shut due to the ongoing lockdown to combat the novel coronavirus outbreak. They reached Barabanki in a truck and were waiting for another vehicle to take them home, the police said.

In a separate accident, two people were killed and 40 injured when a truck carrying them from Mumbai to their homes in Uttar Pradesh fell in a ditch after being hit by another truck in Jalaun district.

According to Jalaun superintendent of police Satish Kumar, the truck with 46 migrant labourers, hailing from different districts of Uttar Pradesh, had started its journey from Mumbai four days ago and met with the accident on Thursday night.

The injured have been admitted to Orai Medical College, the police officer said.

The deceased have been identified as Sundari, belonging to Chitrakoot district, and Sher Bahadur Gautam of Bhadohi district.

Another truck, also ferrying migrant labourers from Mumbai, overturned after the driver lost control of the vehicle after hitting an electric pole on the Lucknow-Bahraich highway in Bahraich district, the police said.

The accident occurred under Chakkarpur police station and left 32 people injured, additional SP Ajay Pratap Singh said.

All the injured were rushed to Sadar Hospital where Ghulam Jilani (28), belonging to Bahraich, succumbed to injuries. All the injured are said to be natives of Bahraich, the SP added.

In Mahoba district's Panewadi township, a truck carrying migrants from Gujarat to Chhattisgarh overturned injuring 20 people.

The truck carrying about 70 to 80 migrant workers from Gujarat was on its way to Chhattisgarh when it overturned on Jhansi-Mirzapur National Highway, injuring 20 of them, circle officer (city) Jatashankar Rao said.

The accident took place in the wee hours on Friday morning, he said, adding that all the injured were however out of danger.
Can we deal with a pandemic and global warming at once  both urgent, one an immediate hit, the other a decade-long burn? Well, yes, because  even with front pages dominated by COVID-19  last month saw an astonishing concentration of decisions by international corporates to ditch carbon. And they slipped by, with the world looking the other way.

AGL's coal-fired Loy Yang power plant in the Latrobe Valley. Credit:Justin McManus

Apart from anything else, April's tilt against thermal coal puts paid to dreams in Canberra of a new coal-fired plant. After last months shift, nobody will invest in it, nobody will insure it.

"COVID is a severe sudden shock," one investment banker told me last week. "It will be over some time, but decarbonisation is happening. Institutional investors are leading and the coronavirus has not slowed it."

He might have been thinking of Japan, once reputed a hold-out on climate action. Not now. April brought announcements from Japans three largest institutional banks to exclude any financing of new coal-fired power. One, Mizuho, had been the worlds largest private financier of coal.
We wouldn't have thought that the US President has a limited vocabulary. Or does he? At a press briefing, US President Donald Trump said that nurses and healthcare workers sacrificing their lives to fight the Covid-19 pandemic is a "beautiful thing to see". Yes, 'beautiful'.

The video which has now gone viral on social media shows Trump saying, "[Doctors and nurses] are running into death just like soldiers run into bullets ... its a beautiful thing to see.

We hate to break it to you, but there is nothing beautiful about that.

Trump: [Doctors and nurses] are running into death just like soldiers run into bullets ... its a beautiful thing to see.pic.twitter.com/3d3yP2vQsS  Brian Tyler Cohen (@briantylercohen) May 14, 2020

Globally, millions of healthcare workers are putting their own lives on the line to treat coronavirus patients, all the while battling stigma and discrimination at the same time, not to be called heroes but simply because it is their job. Trump's speech comes at a time when the United States is reportedly facing a massive shortage of PPE kits and other protective gear which healthcare workers require if they're going to fight from the frontlines.

A data report by Time showed that as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in the US increases at an alarming rate, hospitals are getting overcrowded while the healthcare workers are practically running out of everything. No PPE kits, no eye shields, no gowns. Another report published by Al Jazeera showed that frontline workers in the US were literally begging for PPE kits and it is the shortage of protective gear which is exposing doctors and nurses to the virus causing them to fall sick and eventually die from Covid-19. In the report, one of the nurses even said that their death was inevitable and this crisis had taught them one thing - that their lives are expendable.

Amid all of this, Trump's comment that nurses and doctors dying is "beautiful" is ill-timed and insensitive. No doctor or nurse wants to die or give up their lives fighting the virus. But as the government fails to provide adequate gear, they are left with no choice. To sum it up in one line, nurses and doctors shouldn't have to "risk their lives" to save patients.

If it's so beautiful, he should try it.  tlesing (@TerrieEads) May 14, 2020

What kind of an Fd up person thinks running into death/bullets and dying is a beautiful thing?  CAROL  (@VoteBlueInNov) May 14, 2020

DOCTORS AND NURSES SHOULDN'T HAVE TO RISK THEIR LIVES TO TREAT SICK PEOPLE.  Kevin S (@kevspind) May 14, 2020

Wtf is wrong with him???  RoseSerranoNYArtist (@RoseSer38526924) May 14, 2020
When the 14-year-old girl arrived at her primary care doctors office on May 9, her blood pressure had dropped dangerously low and she was in cardiac failure.

She was taken by ambulance to Randall Childrens Hospital in Portland and diagnosed with pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, the first known case in Oregon of a newly discovered syndrome linked to COVID-19.

The syndrome, according to Dr. Mark Buchholtz, a pediatric critical care physician at Randall, is similar to Kawasaki disease, an illness that causes inflamed blood vessels. But the syndrome presents somewhat differently.

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We have not seen this before, Buchholtz said.

He said the girl was otherwise healthy and had no significant medical history. She did, however, test positive for antibodies of COVID-19.

Shes been following all of the recommendations, Buchholtz said, sheltering in place, not going to school.

She has been to the grocery store but she has not been around anyone sick, he added. Shes been wearing a mask and none of her family members have been sick.

Doctors dont know when the girl contracted the virus, only that she recovered from it and then came down with the syndrome, which is not communicable.

At Randall, doctors were able to stabilize the girl with a combination of medications to increase her blood pressure and decrease her immune response. After 48 hours, Buchholtz said, she was feeling much better.

She is still on medication to help her heart but Buchholtz thinks she may be able to go home within a week.

But it is day by day, Buchholtz said, noting the condition was identified on April 28 and there are many questions about what the long-term impacts of the disease may be.

In other parts of the country, victims of the new disease have not been so lucky. In New York, three children have died from the syndrome.

One effect of coronavirus has been a reluctance to go see doctors and go to emergency rooms, Buchholtz said. This is concerning for many reasons, but it is imperative, he said, that parents take children exhibiting symptoms of pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome to a healthcare professional immediately.

Those symptoms may include unexplained fever, abdominal pain or pink eye.

We are working to get our word out to the community that this is out there, it is not just in New York and California, Buchholtz said. We are seeing it.

Buchholtz urged parents of children with symptoms of any serious condition, including fractures and sprains, to seek medical attention.

The pediatricians and the docs have it set up in their offices to do this safely, he said. Its far better for the child to be treated earlier than later.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

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Paraguay Independence Day

Washington, DC - Michael R. Pompeo, Secretary of State: "On behalf of the people of the United States, I congratulate the people of Paraguay as you celebrate the 209th anniversary of your independence.

"Our bilateral relationship with your country is stronger than ever. In December 2019, President Abdo Benitez visited President Trump at the White House, where the two leaders pledged to deepen our partnership with the shared goals of increasing trade, strengthening democracy and transparency, and building security cooperation. In September 2019, Deputy Secretary of State John Sullivan and Senior Advisor to the President Ivanka Trump visited Paraguay to highlight our joint efforts to increase economic prosperity, especially support for women entrepreneurs. We commend Paraguay for your strong actions to combat the spread of COVID-19 and your continued commitment to combat corruption, fight transnational crime, and strengthen security in the Western hemisphere.

"As we join the Paraguayan people in celebrating democracy and independence, we remember the historical ties between the people of Paraguay and the United States, including the important role President Rutherford B. Hayes played in helping Paraguay remain independent. We look forward to our continued partnership and friendship in the years to come."
Restaurants and bars outside the Portland and Salem areas slowly began to welcome guests back to their dining rooms Friday under Oregons Phase 1 reopening plan, offering a preview of what a new normal might look like for the rest of the state.

Under Gov. Kate Browns plan, Oregon restaurants, bars, brewpubs and more are required to space customers by at least six feet and close by 10 p.m. Staff are required to wear masks, and to sanitize tables, chairs, menus, condiment containers and other touch points after each customer.

On Friday, 31 of Oregons 36 counties were allowed to enter Phase 1. Applications from Polk and Marion counties, home to some of the highest rates of infection in the state, were denied. Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, home to nearly half of the states population, have not yet submitted plans lift the stay-home order.

Oregon wine country destination Nicks Italian Cafe has already spaced its dining room tables apart by six feet and received its order of plastic menu covers that can be sanitized after each use. But the restaurant  found in the heart of McMinnville about an hour from Portland  does not plan to start serving dine-in customers right away, even after Yamhill Countys Phase 1 application was approved, according to chef-owner Carmen Peirano.

Were going to start with a soft opening of to-go service next week, Peirano said. There are a lot of restrictions in place that I want to familiarize myself with. I just want to make sure that we are moving forward with a sense of caution, and that we can make sure we can keep everyone safe, including customers and staff.

Peirano knows that once she does open her doors, Nicks can expect to see more diners making the drive from Portland. So far, the restaurants to reopen for dine-in service in McMinnville have been those with spacious outdoor dining areas. Peirano hopes that restaurants like Nicks without big patios will be allowed to expand with more sidewalk or even in-street seating through the summer.

In Bend, Deschutes County leaders pointed to their 12.4% unemployment rate in asking the state for permission to reopen. That permission was granted, as it was for 31 of 36 Oregon counties, despite Deschutes County only having six available contact tracers, far less than the 30 the state had previously said would be required. As of Friday, Deschutes County had 94 confirmed COVID-19 cases and zero deaths.

For Alberto Rodriguez, manager of the Hola restaurant in Bends Old Mill development, an unexpected side effect of re-launching dine-in service Friday was watching customers try to move their tables from their designated positions.

Between safety concerns and the restaurants small dining room, the Mexican-Peruvian chain decided to limit dine-in customers at the Old Mill location to the patio only. After gaining permission to expand into the right of way of the temporarily closed movie theater next door, that left room for five tables. Rodriguez measured the distance between each himself, adding blue signs to denote the six feet of separation.

But customers during lunch Friday tried to pick up their tables and move them into sunnier spots, Rodriguez said. Theyve also inquired whether they can take margaritas to-go, something that remains forbidden under Oregon law.

Further east in Bend, Crux Fermentation Project is allowing customers to linger on their big grassy patio, though its indoor dining room remains closed. Popular brunch spot Chow, Worthy Brewing and sister restaurants Drake and Washington announced plans to relaunch dine-in service next week. At the Old Mill development, Boxwood Kitchen joined Hola in testing the reopening waters, as did sausage and beer bar Bangers & Brews.

Back in the Willamette Valley, Bangers & Brews sister location in Eugene wasnt quite ready to reopen for on-premises dining, despite Lane County getting the green light to enter Phase 1.

The restaurant and beer bar, which opened in March of 2019, saw its dining room closed just before its one-year anniversary, said Darren Bollinger, who co-owns the location with wife, Josie Smets. Right now, the couple are offering takeout and delivery from 5 to 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday.

Were actually bigger and we have more outside seating than Bend, Bollinger said. Its just my wife and my decision to wait a couple of weeks to see how things are going. Were taking baby steps. But well get through it for sure.

-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell

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Like many physicians not initially on the front line of the COVID-19 pandemic, I watched with growing dread as stories from doctors and nurses started coming out from hot spots first in China then in Italy and then Seattle and New York. Seeing their faces and hearing their voices, I was struck by their exhaustion and fear but also by their sense of responsibility and duty. I wanted to help, to be useful, but I felt powerless. When New York City started calling for volunteers to work in their beleaguered public hospitals, I signed up, flew to New York, and spent a month working in an emergency department in East Harlem.

In 2014, I had been working in a hospital in Monrovia, Liberia as part of my disaster medicine fellowship when the first patients with Ebola came to our hospital. It was the start of an epidemic that would ravage the country and spread beyond its borders. I spent a few more weeks in the country before returning home and watching from a distance as Liberia became overwhelmed, and a number of my friends died, including the head of the emergency department, Dr. Sam Brisbane. I was struck these last few months by the same feeling of impotence as I felt then.

Returning home from New York, Ive had lingering doubts about the impact I made and am capable of making as a physician, not only during this pandemic, but during my non-disaster work too. Its not just that numbers were declining by the time I reached the city, or that this is a novel disease against which our treatments are limited; its that the numbers are overwhelming. Even if I can care for dozens of patients a week, when the numbers of patients are in the millions, what impact have I made? If our struggle against this disease is likened to war, then Im a single foot-soldier firing pot-shots against tanks and cannons.

Ive seen this nagging sense of futility in my colleagues too. Once after a draining shift, one of my co-workers wearily asked, What difference do you think we made tonight? How many of our patients lives changed because they came to see us? As emergency physicians, were seeing mental health patients we cant appropriately triage, victims of gun violence we cant stop, a staggering number of overdose deaths. We resuscitate and perform invasive procedures on elderly patients close to the end of their lives, were primary care providers for the homeless and uninsured, and we care for patients unable to afford insulin or unwilling to be vaccinated against the flu. Every epidemic  viral, or social, or traumatic  ends up on our doorstep. Its daunting.

But the inclination to quantify our worth as physicians comes from a flawed assumption: that our impact can be fit into a spreadsheet. This is understandable  history commends those who impact the most lives (I remember learning about Norman Borlaug, the man who saved a billion lives); news media and epidemiologists measure devastation in death counts; actuaries make adjustments based on quality-adjusted life years. Added up in a balance sheet this way, our impact would have certainly stretched further if we had been researchers or drug developers, if we had used our time and talents to grow rich and become philanthropists. In this pandemic, the value of any single physician will be slight compared to a smart public health policy or a robust economic stimulus.

This isnt who we are, though. We arent dire accountants, tallying our impact on patients in minutes and hours and years. And the war metaphor is also inadequate for what we do. Were not soldiers, and there are no generals and strategists. Our role is grander and much broader: its to be present when there is illness and suffering and crisis. We confront the ills that are laid at our doorstep. We are present and bear unblinking witness to the lives of our patients.

After my friend and colleague died in Liberia, I learned that his wife and adult children lived in Ohio. I attended his memorial service, met his family, and cried with them. The work I had done in Liberia was small, but here I was able to tell his son that his father was a hero, that he was a role-model for me, and that he accepted his risk and sacrificed himself seeing to the people of Liberia. Sam Brisbane didnt change the course of the epidemic, but he bore witness to and took care of the sick and dying. And I was able to attest to his life and his work.

We are already seeing  and will continue to see  similar stories coming out of this pandemic. Stories of heroism and bravery, of suffering and death. Doctors are bearing witness to the lives lost in their community, to fear and exhaustion, to hope and resilience. We are attesting to scientific advances rapidly being made around this disease, to innovation; to the lack of supplies and critical infrastructure gaps in our healthcare systems; to the minority communities, the immigrants, and the prisoners who are being disproportionally affected; to the inefficacy and dangerous ineptitude of our politicians.

We should recognize that this is our vital role. Its to sit with patients at their bedside and to hold their hand. Its to see their lives and their struggles. Its to note the importance of their existence, if not for the whole world, then for their family, if not for their family, then just for them. Its to see trends of sickness and not only fight it, but also to speak firmly and with clarity about these struggles, to let the world know what is happening in the ED hallways and the ICUs. It is our vital role to advocate for those who dont have a voice or resources to speak for themselves, for the victims of violence, the destitute, the mentally ill. Our role is to speak clearly and without wavering and say: Here is death, here is sadness, here is injustice, but also here is kindness and honor, here is humanity.

In this way, while we may care for a single patient, treat a single instance of disease, and even once in a while save a life, we are also bearing witness to our fellow humans. In this way, our impact on our patients lives, on our community, and on the entire world is immeasurable.

Josh Mugele is an emergency physician.

Image credit: Shutterstock.com
Prince Harry and Meghan Markle have been using their quarantine time to involve themselves in video calls left, right and centre.

And the Sussexes have once again popped up on a Zoom chat, although this time, it was totally unexpected.

Prince Harry and Meghan Markle dropped in on a Zoom call with mental health care workers yesterday. Photo: Rick Neal

It's the first time the former senior royals have been involved in a Zoom call together since quarantine began. Photo: Rick Neal

Giving fans a rare glimpse into their LA home, the much-loved royals showed up on a staff call for Crisis Text Line, a 24/7 helpline in the US, US, Canada and Ireland.

Staff member Ricky Neal shared a photo on Twitter of the royals on the call, writing: Still shocked that Meghan and Harry took over our staff meeting yesterday!

Earlier this week, Prince Harry popped up on BBC's The One Show. Photo: BBC

While Harry and Meghan have been involved in numerous video calls since being quarantined in LA, this is the first time weve seen them both together.

They both looked relaxed on the call, with Meghan wearing a buttoned-down blue shirt and Prince Harry appearing to be wearing a khaki short-sleeved shirt.

On Tuesday, a video emerged of Prince Harry on this third video call of the week, this time for BBCs The One Show.

In April, Meghan video chatted with members of the Hubb Community Kitchen. Photo: The Hubb Community Kitchen

Harry spoke with the families of WWII survivors who were badly injured during combat, while also addressing how groups like The Guinea Pig Club and the CASEVAC Club can offer help for war heroes.

On Monday, Prince Harry praised the "resilience" of young people amid the coronavirus pandemic in a video message for the charitable organisation OnSide.

And on Sunday, On Sunday, Harry shared a video on Twitter to mark what would have been the opening ceremony of the Invictus Games at The Hague in the Netherlands, which has been postponed until 2021 due to the coronavirus pandemic.

THANK YOU to Meghan, The Duchess of Sussex (and Harry, The Duke of Sussex, behind the camera), for celebrating their son Archies 1st birthday by reading Duck! Rabbit! for #SAVEWITHSTORIES! Donate now to help kids across America: https://t.co/p7wseXv7HW Happy birthday, Archie! pic.twitter.com/BcpElEa0fp  Save the Children US (@SavetheChildren) May 6, 2020

Last week, Prince Harry and Meghan Markle released a video of the duchess reading to their son, Archie, as they marked his first birthday.

Story continues

In April, Meghan was spotted on a Zoom call with members of the Hubb Community Kitchen, an organisation that was close to Meghans heart when she was working as a senior member of the royal family.

Got a story tip or just want to get in touch? Email us at lifestyle.tips@verizonmedia.com.
Daniel R. DePetris is a fellow at Defense Priorities and a columnist at the Washington Examiner.

Even before the coronavirus swept the planet, claiming the lives of over 280,000 people and infecting another 4 million worldwide, the U.S. and China treated one another with an overriding aura of suspicion and competition. The 2018 U.S. National Defense Strategy, the Defense Department's policy blueprint, labeled China a "revisionist" power. Beijing's military modernization has proceeded with the U.S. very much in mind.

China's early missteps in containing the virus, however, have turned relations between the two largest economies from competitive to downright adversarial in a short four months. Those in the Beltway who believe the U.S. would succeed in an environment where intensive rivalry dominate the U.S.-China relationship in every domain dangerously overestimate Washington's power, underestimate Beijing's capacity to retaliate, and callously dismiss the financial, geopolitical, and diplomatic costs such a rivalry would wreak on both the U.S. and the world.

Unfortunately, Washington has yet to prove it is willing or even able to see beyond the current cycle of noise and bombast. U.S. and Chinese officials are using the coronavirus crisis as a cudgel in an antagonistic, geopolitical clash-of-wills -- this, when a pandemic should be bringing the intellectual and scientific communities of the two powers together in search of effective treatments and a vaccine.

Indeed, with the coronavirus generating harsh reactions in Washington and Beijing and a veritable war of words between senior officials in both countries, a complete decoupling -- which would upend the global economy, causing more turmoil in the U.S. labor market -- is no longer inconceivable. In fact, discussions about China in Washington are no longer prefaced on begrudging but necessary cooperation, but within the prism of an ideological struggle that will define winners and losers in the 21st century.

The one denominator that provided the U.S. and China with a reason to preserve constructive dialogue with one another -- a $550 billion trade relationship -- is now a main arena for bilateral competition. The Phase One trade deal signed between the Trump and Xi administrations is skating on thin-ice, with new trade talks postponed for the foreseeable future. Chinese companies are being barred by the Trump administration from U.S. telecommunications infrastructure at the same time Beijing is expelling American journalists. According to the Wall Street Journal, the State Department has ordered embassies around the world to form China-centric working groups to monitor Beijing's influence and develop strategies to counteract it. U.S. and Chinese delegations are clashing with greater frequency in international fora, throwing sand in the U.N. Security Council's gears and complicating the work of the very organizations that are vital to stemming the virus.

The frostiness between the U.S. and Chinese governments is devolving to the American and Chinese populations as well, making pragmatic engagement more complicated. 66 percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of China, while Chinese approval ratings of the U.S. have decreased by nearly 20 percentage points between 2019 and 2020. On the U.S. side, relations U.S. with China are in effect trapped in a vicious cycle: the more the U.S. foreign policy elite views China in exclusively hostile terms, the more likely reflexive anti-China sentiment will grow among the American public. The more this hardline sentiment against China rises in U.S. popular opinion, the harder it will be for U.S. officials to argue effectively for a China strategy based on realism and restraint. The "new Cold War" narrative is in effect becoming a dangerous self-fulfilling prophecy.

Does China have a responsibility to come clean to the world about how it has handled the virus? Most certainly. Should there be some accountability levied on Beijing for the Chinese Communist Party's disinformation campaign and resistance to global assistance? One would have trouble finding anybody in the U.S. today who would disagree.

None of this, however, makes the idea of a U.S.-China economic rupture or a Cold War-style containment policy any less of a terrible idea. It is difficult to envision legitimate U.S. complaints such as unfavorable Chinese trading practices, intellectual property theft, and cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure being addressed, let alone solved, in such an atmosphere

We live in an extremely emotional time. Americans are scared, frustrated, and angry as tens of thousands of their fellow citizens have died and more than 30 million others are rendered jobless in just six weeks.

Yet it is precisely when emotions are running high when cool-headedness is most needed. There have been countless times in U.S. history -- the 2003 war in Iraq; the 2011 NATO intervention in Libya; the 2015 U.S. support for Saudi Arabia's military campaign in Yemen; nation-building in Afghanistan -- when decisions prefaced on hubris, arrogance, fear, or poor assumptions have cost the United States tremendous human and financial pain for little security benefit.

Cancelling U.S. debt to China or suing the Chinese Communist Party for compensation are emotional responses that will do nothing to manage the outbreak or rebuild Washington's bilateral relationship with Beijing once the crisis is over. As the U.S. foreign policy establishment debates China policy, it should keep in mind the golden-rule: good statecraft requires a calm, measured approach.

-- The opinions expressed in this op-ed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Military.com. If you would like to submit your own commentary, please send your article to opinions@military.com for consideration.
Schools in Punjab taking online classes can charge only tuition fee from students for the lockdown period, the state government said on Thursday.

Fees for admission, uniform or any other charges in any form can not be charged from students, it said.

School managements should also refrain from increasing the fee or any other charges during this academic session in view of the nationwide crisis Education Minister Vijay Inder Singla said.

In a press statement here, he said economic activities have reduced to the minimal due to the lockdown, hence there is a dire need to provide relief to parents of students. We have passed an order mandating the schools to charge just tuition fees during the lockdown period, he said, adding that the government order clearly states that only those schools, who are conducting online classes, can charge tuition fee, while others can not charge any fee.

Although interest of students is paramount for us but with the new guidelines we have tried to strike a balance by allowing private schools to charge tuition fee so that they can meet their monthly expenses and pay their staff timely, he said.

The minister said no school can expel any student if he fails to pay tuition fee in time or gets it delayed due to any reason. We have also provisioned that parents can pay tuition fees for their children on monthly basis instead of quarterly basis so that parents of the students are not burdened with the amount, he added.

Protecting the rights of the employees, the minister also instructed that schools can neither stop nor reduce the salaries of their teachers and other employees under any circumstances. Besides, schools managements have also been instructed that they cannot remove employee due to the lockdown and low affair of financial activities. Strict action will be taken against all those schools, which will either stop or reduce the salaries of the teachers and employees, Singla said, adding that the Education Department is monitoring the situation.
The coronavirus could turn out to be President Donald Trumps strongest ally in shifting the United States from a leader of the multilateral trading system to an inward-looking nation sheltered behind protectionist walls.

Were going to bring back manufacturing that we could never have done without this, as bad as this has been, because now people agree with me," said Trump in an Thursday interview on Fox Business. "A lot of people are saying, Trump was right.

The presidents vision has influenced myriad administration or congressional protectionist efforts, including a plan to sanction Chinese officials for alleged roles in the spread of Covid-19, a move to pull the U.S. from the World Trade Organization and Trump's suspension of financial support to the World Health Organization.

U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, in an op-ed published this week in The New York Times, argued the coronavirus was further accelerating a reshoring trend that had already increased because of Trump's shift to a more American-centric trade policy .

"As companies prepare to reopen their U.S. operations, many have found themselves held hostage to decisions made by foreign governments about whether their suppliers are 'essential' or not," wrote Lighthizer. "Every day I talk to business leaders who now acknowledge they underestimated the risk in decisions to move jobs overseas or to rely on the production of small but crucial parts in some far-off and often unstable country."

The pandemic has already hastened trends that could permanently change the global trading environment, leaving a world of shorter supply chains and more regional trade, less business travel and more video conferences.

Higher unemployment rates around the world could also fuel more nationalist trade policies, while rising tensions between the United States and China could create more fissures between the worlds two largest economies.

Story continues

But Trump also faces acute risks from his trade policy this election season.

If the administration does subsidize the return of American manufacturers or impose other trade restrictions it risks goading trading partners, including China, into responding in kind.

Trading partners also could increase the retaliatory tariffs theyve already thrown at American exporters based in swing states if Trump pushes too hard with new tariffs and other trade restrictions.

But as other leading trading nations work to update global governance, theyre already working around or against the U.S government rather than with it.

More than two dozen countries recently created an alternative trade court outside the World Trade Organization system, in response to the U.S. government blocking the appointment of new judges to the WTOs top appeals body.

Trade plummeting

Theres no denying the impact the coronavirus is already having on world trade, aside from any measures put in place by governments. The WTO forecasts a drop of 13 to 32 percent this year because of reduced demand and supplies.

Supply chains are under a lot of stress right now, Yvonne Bendinger-Rothschild, the New York-based executive director of the European American Chamber of Commerce, told POLITICO. Freight costs are through the roof, if you can even get on a plane or ship."

A further complicating factor emerged on Thursday, when WTO Director General Roberto Azevedo unexpectedly announced plans to step down in September, a year ahead of schedule. That starts a search for a new leader during one of the most unsettled periods for trade in recent history.

One question the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and other business groups have is whether the combination of the coronavirus and Trumps own America First tendencies will lead to new regulations and policies that undermine the free market principles that fueled U.S. economic growth for decades.

The U.S. Chamber believes in the free market system but we know that in these challenging days, there are going to be questions asked about our supply chains, and intensified debates around trade policies, said Myron Brilliant, the groups executive vice president and head of International Affairs.

Business wants to be a part of the solution and is already preparing for the realities setting in from the pandemic, including increasing digitalization and diversifying of supply chains," he added.

While the Trump administration has taken some steps to keep multilateral trade links open, it has not stepped forward with specific proposals to counteract the breathtaking drop in world trade.

For example, it has been silent so far on one widely discussed idea of pursuing international negotiations to eliminate tariffs on medical goods, which would reduce costs for both the current and future emergencies.

Instead, the White House has been considering a new executive order that would require federal agencies to buy pharmaceuticals and medical equipment from U.S. producers to increase self-sufficiency in those areas.

In addition, chief White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow has floated the idea of the government paying moving expenses of companies that want to relocate production back to the United States.

Lighthizer's office has excluded many medical goods from the 7.5 percent and 25 percent tariffs that Trump has unilaterally imposed on Chinese goods.

But it reacted last week coolly to a congressionally requested report from the U.S. International Trade Commission pointing out additional products where tariffs could be cut to help in the battle to contain or treat Covid-19.

Im personally very worried that the protectionism weve seen for a while in the U.S. will be now even stronger" and that we will have more travel restrictions, more trade barriers, said Harriet Berg, Norways consul general in New York.

Shifting China supply chains

Trump has vacillated over whether to stick to a new trade deal with China because of concern that Beijing might not meet its obligation to purchase an additional $200 billion worth of American goods over the next two years. Those comments fuel fears he could impose additional U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods, leading to further trade tensions and more separation between the worlds two largest economies.

China became a leading manufacturer of finished goods following its entry into the WTO in 2001, as well as the source of many intermediate products that U.S. companies used to make their own finished goods. Trade between the two countries soared, leading to a record U.S. goods trade deficit with China of $420 billion in 2019.

In a blunt effort to level the playing field, Trump has imposed tariffs on what grew to be more than $350 billion worth of Chinese goods. However, that prompted Beijings own retaliation against most American exports.

The trade war put enormous strains on supply chains built up over the last two decades, prompting many U.S. companies to shift their purchases to other countries, if not bring production back to the United States.

Now, the coronavirus is putting further pressure on both U.S-China trade and the overall relationship, forcing companies to consider the wisdom of remaining dependent on supplies from a country the Trump administration considers a foreign adversary.

Thats been underscored by other events of the past two decades that have disrupted trade, including the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami, the 2010 volcanic eruption in Iceland that grounded aircraft traffic and increasingly destructive hurricanes and other severe weather events.

I think from the mid-2010s onward, companies have really been looking at ... moving toward regional supply chain type of structures to mitigate risk, said Peter Anderson, vice president of global supply chain at Cummins Inc., an engine and power generation manufacturer, during a recent discussion hosted by the Hudson Institute.

Many companies moved production to China in the 2000s to take advantage of lower labor costs, as well as to be better positioned to sell in that huge market and surrounding countries.

Since then, advances in robotics and other technologies have eroded Chinas labor wage advantages. But that also means returning production to the United States wont necessarily lead to a job boom.

Coronavirus could accelerate nationalist trends

The coronavirus revealed how quickly countries can depart from free market norms during times of stress.

As Covid-19 spread and became a global pandemic, countries began clamping down on exports of personal protective equipment like surgical masks and N95 respirators, disposable gloves and medical gowns, as well as highly prized ventilators to treat the most seriously affected victims.

That has led to some calls for the WTO to negotiate tougher rules against when countries can impose export restrictions. However, without other changes, such as both governments and the private sectors building larger stockpiles, any stronger rules could just as well be broken during the next global health emergency.

The solution, some argue, is a rebalancing in favor of encouraging more local production, even if that means paying a higher cost for medicines and medical goods.

Cutting tariffs on all medical goods sounds appealing, but it also carries the risk of making the U.S. and other Western countries more dependent on Chinese production since that countrys generous industrial subsidies give local companies a huge cost advantage.

That makes some analysts think there will be a push in both the administration and Congress toward encouraging more domestic production, even if that means the American consumer could end up paying more for some products.

For its part, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is opposed to government mandates, but we welcome working closely with our government on incentives and policies that will unleash innovation, spur job growth and support badly needed investments in the United States, said Brilliant.

That said, we cant forget that 95 percent of the customers we want to sell to live outside of the U.S., so we must also remain strong advocates of a multilateral system, even one that we know needs to be reformed and modernized because we need all countries to play by the same basic rules, regulations and standards, he said.
19 passengers who arrived in Bengaluru, return to Delhi after refusing quarantine

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

Bengaluru, May 15: 19 passengers who travelled in the Rajdhani express from Delhi chose to return to their boarding station after they refused to undergo compulsory institutional quarantine of 14 days.

Around 543 passengers had boarded the train to Bengaluru on May 12, which arrived at the Sangolli Rayanna Railway station on Thursday morning. After they underwent the regular temperature screening upon de-boarding, they were asked to choose from the 3 options of institutional quarantine as prescribed by the government.

COVID-19 outbreak: Railways to keep record of destination address of passengers

Around 140 created a ruckus and refused to under quarantine. They demanded that they undergo home quarantine instead. The government has made it clear that they would need to undergo institutional quarantine.

Karnataka IG Police (Railways), D Roopa tried to convince the passengers and many agreed to undergo quarantine. However, for those who chose to oppose the same, arrangements were made for their return by the evening train.
Australians itching to travel overseas once coronavirus restrictions are eased should set their sights on Vietnam, Taiwan and New Zealand according to a travel guru.

Flight Centre founder and CEO Graham Turner believes jet setters could fly to international destinations close to Australia by July or August.

Mr Turner's bold claims come despite Alexandre de Juniac, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, warning international travel would not return to normal until 2023.

Speaking to Today on Friday morning, the Flight Centre boss admitted he did not have a 'grand plan' but quashed Mr de Juniac's three-year timeline.

'I think there's no doubt that we will be back flying internationally probably July, August to places like New Zealand and I think it will come back bilaterally, you know, for example, Vietnam or maybe Taiwan,' Mr Turner said.

'I would be very surprised if we're not back flying fairly normally within about nine to 12 months to most countries.'

Today host Karl Stefanovic questioned how Flight Centre was going to stay afloat during the pandemic after thousands of travellers were forced to cancel their plans.

'Look, if you look at the economic devastation, and it's not just us, but the vast majority,' Mr Turner said.

Mr Turner explained they had about 22,000 people on their books a few months ago and the number has plummeted to about 5,000.

He said he recognised the seriousness of the COVID-19 outbreak but stressed his concern about the economic ramifications and the need to travellers back in the air.

'And although the health risks are high with the coronavirus and it will continue, we're not going to get rid of the coronavirus globally, I think the economic risks are also so serious,' he said.

Speaking to Today on Friday morning, Flight Centre boss Graham Turner (right) said he would be very surprised if Australia is not back flying normally within about nine to 12 months to most countries

Mr Turner's bold claims come despite Alexandre de Juniac, chief executive of the International Air Transport Association, warning international travel would not return to normal until 2023. Pictured: A Qantas aircraft taking off from Sydney

'We do need to get back to some level of normality as quickly as possible. I think the governments have realised that.'

Mr Turner said it would not be good news if Australia's borders were to remain closed over the next year.

He said Flight Centre had reduced its monthly costs from about $230million to the $65million mark.

Mr Turner also predicted that normal interstate flights would resume in Australia by July.

Flight Centre in April closed more than half of its stores globally, including 40 per cent in Australia, and stood down or laid off 6,000 support and sales roles.

The travel agency also waived its usual cancellation fees on Saturday May 2 after come under heavy criticism for charging up to $300 per booking for travel cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Mr de Juniac warned the industry won't fully recover until 2023 while speaking to the ABC News Breakfast on Thursday morning.

Mr Turner said Flight Centre had about 22,000 people on their books a few months ago and the number has plummeted to about 5,000

Pictured: Australian residents returning from India are ushered towards waiting buses for the beginning of their 14-day mandatory quarantine

'What we have planned is to restart the industry, first by reopening domestic markets, then regional continental markets, such as Asia-Pacific, or Europe, or North America.

'At the end of 2020, the traffic should be between 50 to 55 per cent of the same level that was in place in 2019.

'So, we would lose something like half the traffic for the 2020.'

Both Australia and New Zealand currently require international arrivals to be isolated for 14 days, and the UK and Spain have also recently announced similar quarantine periods.

Mr de Juniac said international travel cannot re-start with mandatory quarantine periods in place, but the following 14-day quarantine period was deterrant to any would-be holidaymakers.

Founder and CEO of Flight Centre Graham Turner believes jet setters could fly to international destinations surrounding Australia by July or August

Australia's Chief Medical Officer Professor Brendan Murphy has also ruled out international travel for the foreseeable future as there is 'no clear roadmap' to reopening the nation's borders.

He told a Senate inquiry into the government's response to COVID-19 on Wednesday that border closures remained essential to defeating the pandemic.

'I can't see, I have no vision at the moment on the current international scene where international border measures of some very strong vigour won't be necessary,' he said.

'There is no clear roadmap out of this.'

Professor Murphy said interstate and territory borders would be reopened long before overseas travel, noting COVID-19 cases were still being imported weekly through returned travellers.
Almost All Smuggled Goods Into Iran Come Through Legal Ports

Radio Farda May 14, 2020

The Iranian parliament has disclosed in a report that 95 percent of smuggling into the country is done through legal ports of entry and procedures, using 31 different techniques.

The report covering a long period of more than a decade was read in the open session of the Iranian parliament on May 12.

According to the report, contrary to the statements of Customs authorities, 95% of smuggling into Iran is carried out through "official ports of entry and procedures".

The report's authors say they have identified 31 methods and techniques of smuggling goods through legal procedures and official ports of entry, but they stop short of elaborating on the legal methods used to smuggle goods into Iran and the ways to combat them.

Earlier, several lawmakers had also claimed that 70 to 90 percent of smuggling into Iran takes place through official borders and legal procedures.

Nevertheless, Iranian customs officials have repeatedly denied the allegations.

The role of government officials and those in power in spreading the phenomenon of smuggling goods and hard currencies is not a new topic in Iran. For years, the local media and the Islamic Republic officials have time and again talked about smuggling in their reports and speeches.

There is also smuggling of gasoline, oil products and food staples the neighboring country, due to subsidized prices in Iran.

Meanwhile, the issue of smuggling goods through military-controlled wharves has also been raised many times before.

During his second term as the president of the Islamic Republic (2009-13), the outspoken hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad implicitly referred to the members of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) as "our smuggler brethren".

His successor Hassan Rouhani, also said in February 2015, "A corrupt system that can import smuggled goods does not allow the country to grow." However, Rouhani also shied away from naming the culprit directly.

Dominated by the so-called reformists, he Islamic Republic's sixth parliament (2000-2004) also said in its investigation and probe into smuggling, "invisible wharves available to informal and supranational institutions" have a role in the smuggling of goods.

The report explicitly referred to three IRGC-controlled wharves in Chabahar, Khor Zangi, and Hormozgan, and several other piers run by the security forces. Mehdi Karroubi, the speaker of the sixth parliament, who is currently under house arrest, also spoke about the existence of 41 illegal wharves.

The current parliament's report on smuggling has also asserted that 22 to 33 percent of goods imported into Iran were smuggled.

According to the same report, only one percent of goods smuggled into Iran are discovered.

Furthermore, the report dismissed as unfounded claims by the officials of the Headquarters to Combat Smuggling of Goods and Foreign Exchange that the amount of smuggling in Iran has decreased to nearly thirteen billion dollars. The report has insisted that the amount is still between $21.5 billion to $25.5 billion.

Earlier, Hassan Rouhani's administration had also claimed that the volume of smuggled goods in Iran had halved.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/almost-all -smuggled-goods-into-iran-come-through -legal-ports/30611748.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

The value of trade turnover between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan amounted to $612 million over 1Q2020 compared to $621.7 million during the same period of 2019, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Statistics Committee.

The share of Uzbekistan in total value of Kazakhstans trade turnover was 2.9 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 3 percent during the same period of 2019.

Kazakhstans export to Uzbekistan amounted to $464.7 million over the period of 1Q2020 compared to $490.4 million during the same period of 2019.

Uzbekistans share in total volume of Kazakhstans export amounted to 3.3 percent during the reporting period of 2020 which corresponds to 3.7 percent during the same period of 2019.

In turn, Kazakhstans import from Uzbekistan amounted to $147.2 million over 1Q2020 compared to $131.2 million during the same period of 2019.

Uzbekistans total share in Kazakhstans import was 2.1 percent during the reporting period of 2020 compared to 1.8 percent in 1Q2019.

Total volume of Kazakhstans trade turnover amounted to $21 billion in 1Q2020 which indicates an increase from $20.4 billion during the same period of 2019.

Kazakhstans export amounted to $13.9 billion during the reporting period of 2020 ($13.3 billion in the same period of 2019), whereas import amounted to $7.09 billion ($7.1 billion).

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Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
(CNN)  The constant stress of living in the age of coronavirus is affecting more than your mental health and emotional coping abilities. It's likely taking a toll on your body as well.

"We're living in a sea of stress hormones every day," said stress management expert Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, an editor for "Contentment" magazine, produced by the American Institute of Stress.

"We're not designed for a constant application of these chemicals," Ackrill said. "The stress hormone cortisol just ravages our bodies when it's dumped into our system repeatedly."

Designed to keep you functioning throughout the day, cortisol levels are meant to rise in the morning and decrease as the day lengthens. The hormone's purpose is to maintain blood sugar levels to keep your brain and muscles functioning and suppress non-vital systems like digestion that might drag your energy down.

But when triggered by a stressful occurrence, cortisol levels suddenly spike, and can take hours to dissipate. If that stress is constant, those levels don't drop, leading to cortisol malfunction and a disease-causing boost in inflammation.

"Inflammation is behind diabetes. Inflammation is behind heart disease. It's behind all of the autoimmune diseases. It's behind asthma and allergies, and the list goes on," Ackrill said.

If you're genetically at risk or you already have an inflammatory condition, today's constant stress may well trigger or worsen your symptoms.

"The predispositions that people have, whether it is asthma or a history of migraine or underlying cardiovascular risk factors, stress on all of those are so much more acute now," said neuroscientist Peter Kaufmann, former deputy chief of the Clinical Applications and Prevention Branch of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

"People have daily stress and often times they don't have any control over it. That's when stress has its greatest impact," said Kaufmann, who is now the associate dean for research and Innovation at Villanova University in Pennsylvania.

Not dealing with that stress, he said, can even be deadly.

"In our work, we found that people who show physiological responses to mental stress have about a two- to three-fold higher mortality over the following five years," Kaufmann said.

Here's how stress may be impacting five of your body's key systems.

Your heart

Tension can directly increase heart rate and blood flow, and causes the release of cholesterol and triglycerides into the blood stream. Blood pressure can skyrocket from acute stress and may stay high as that stress continues.

Yet hypertension and other heart disease symptoms are silent, with no real signs that you might be entering a danger zone.

Some of our not-so-wonderful coping mechanisms, such as eating comfort food, drinking alcohol and smoking cigarettes or marijuana, can also raise our risk.

Then there's the very real fear that we may lose someone we love to the coronavirus, or perhaps we already have. All of that can create a perfect storm of physical malfunction that may even shorten our lives.

Kaufmann points to a recent study which showed how mental stress can cause a fall in cardiac ejection fraction -- a measure of how well your heart's main chamber pumps blood.

"The amount of blood that is pumped out by the heart with each stroke is reduced, and that fall is associated with a higher incidence of cardiovascular events, such as heart attacks, death, and unstable angina that requires hospitalization," Kaufmann said.

There's even such a thing as a stress-related heart attack, often called "broken heart syndrome." It occurs when the heart is stunned by sudden stress, and its left ventricle weakens.

"That has been shown to be triggered by severe acute events, such as the sudden loss of a loved one or an earthquake," Kaufmann said. "I think some of the post 9/11 cardiac events would fall in that category."

In most cases, when the acute emotional stress dissipates, the heart recovers and goes back to its normal shape.

"But I've had patients who have developed acute congestive heart failure, life-threatening arrhythmias, even death from this condition," said New York cardiologist and author Dr. Sandeep Jauhar in a prior CNN interview.

"I think it's the clearest example of how our emotional lives directly affect our hearts."

Your skin

One of the largest organs of the body, your skin is exquisitely sensitive to stress.

"The relationship between mind and skin is essential and undeniable," said dermatologist Dr. Adam Friedman, who is the interim chair of dermatology at the George Washington School of Medicine and Health Sciences.

"Stress absolutely exacerbates primary skin diseases from acne to psoriasis," Friedman said, "It can 'wake up' chronic viral infections like herpes simplex [cold sores] and herpes zoster [shingles]."

Dermatologists across the country that CNN spoke to report increasing telehealth calls since March on such stress-related skin conditions as acne, eczema, psoriasis and shingles, a painful, blistery rash that can develop after having chicken pox.

There's also an increase in calls from people experiencing the impact of increased hand washing and the wearing of personal protective equipment such as masks and gloves.

"Allergic contact dermatitis is huge right now where members of the public are now wearing gloves and masks they are not normally used to wearing," said Plano, Texas dermatologist Dr. Seemal Desai, who is on the board of directors for the American Academy of Dermatology.

"It's really quite alarming and disturbing how many skin conditions I'm seeing that are probably aggravated by stress and distress from the coronavirus," Desai said. "It's out of control."

Your lungs

Having chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, is a key underlying health condition that puts one at higher risk for a more severe case of Covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

A group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing issues, COPD includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Nearly 16 million Americans have COPD, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Stress and anxiety can cause shortness of breath, leading "COPD symptoms to become worse and lead to further anxiety, faster breathing and fear," says the National Emphysema Foundation on its website.

"We tend to not breathe as well when we're stressed in general, so our oxygen exchange is worse. There's also a panic on top of it, which makes it worse," Ackrill said.

Smoking is the leading cause of COPD and many other breathing-related illnesses. It comes as no surprise that smoking cigarettes or marijuana and the use of e-cigarettes may increase risk of severe consequences from Covid-19.

Asthma is another underlying health condition that puts one at higher risk for a more severe case of Covid-19. Here again, stress is a common trigger for an asthma attack, and it can make existing symptoms worse.

In fact, the stress a parent feels has even been linked to an increased risk for asthma in their children. One study looked at how parental stress affected the asthma rates of young children and found those with stressed out parents had a substantially higher risk of developing asthma.

"During an asthma attack it's almost like breathing through a straw because that inflammation is restricting the airway," said allergist Dr. Lakiea Wright in a prior CNN interview.

"You can imagine if a virus that causes extra inflammation gets in there, then that's going to be worse," said Wright, who specializes in allergies and immunology at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

"Those are the patients who might end up on ventilators to help with breathing because Covid-19 is doing a lot of damage in the lungs."

Your brain

Stress is considered one of the most common triggers for headaches -- not just tension headaches, but migraines as well.

Migraines are debilitating attacks that can level a person for hours to days with intense, throbbing pain, nausea and vomiting. According to the Migraine Research Foundation, the condition is the third most prevalent illness in the world, affecting 39 million men, women and children in the United States and one billion worldwide.

Stress can cause migraines, the pounding pain creates more stress, and the circular pattern can make it tough for headache and migraine sufferers to cope.

Chronic inflammation from stress can also affect the brain itself, shrinking or negatively affecting parts of the brain linked to memory, motivation and mental agility. That can lead to depression, anxiety and other mental disorders, which in another circular fashion are then made worse by stress.

Chronic levels of cortisol can affect other chemicals in the brain which modulate cognition and mood, including serotonin, which is important for mood regulation and well-being. Elevated cortisol levels can also interfere with sleep, a key necessity for a happier, healthier attitude.

Your gut

One thing stress doesn't do -- it doesn't cause peptic ulcers. That turned out to be a myth when science found this common type of ulcer is actually caused by a bacteria in the gut called H. pylori. Science estimates almost half of the world's population has H. pylori but not everyone gets an ulcer.

However, stress can make ulcers worse. In fact, it can boost pain, bloating, nausea and other stomach discomfort from nearly every gastrointestinal complaint.

First, we often overeat when tense, choose fatty comfort foods, overuse alcohol or smoke. All of those can increase chronic heartburn or gastroesophageal reflux disease, called GERD. Stress can affect how quickly food moves through the body, thus possibly causing gas, diarrhea and constipation.

And for people with irritable bowel syndrome, inflammatory bowel disease or Crohn's disease, stress can increase their painful symptoms, such as cramping and diarrhea.

Fight back against stress

One of the single best things to do to overcome stress is exercise. Exercise can create an anti-inflammatory response, improves mood, cognition and your physical health.

Staying socially connected to friends and family -- a challenge while we are socially distancing -- is another great way to battle stress.

Mindfulness and meditation are other key ways to ease tension, along with calming physical activities such as Tai Chi, yoga and gentle stretching.

Those methods often teach deep breathing, another key way to reduce stress that can be used in the moment.

To do it properly, breathe through your nose, hold it and then exhale very slowly out through your mouth like you're breathing through a straw.

"And when you breathe slowly out, you improve your whole picture of life and you reduce your nervousness," said trauma counselor Jane Webber, a professor of counselor education at Kean University in New Jersey, in a prior CNN interview.

Webber also recommends cracking a smile. Watch funny movies, listen to comedy routines, ask everyone you talk to on the phone to tell you a joke.

"Remember, you can't be anxious and smile at the same time. That's a physiological thing," Webber said.

Finally, do not hesitate to reach out for help, experts say. Cognitive behavioral therapy, a form of talk therapy that focuses on specific thoughts and actions, has been shown to help reduce stress when practiced with a therapist, Kaufmann said.

"It really takes people through mental exercises to understand whether or not certain kinds of reactions are appropriate under the circumstances and whether they have alternatives," he said.

"Without that cognitive aspect where people actually think about what's going on in their lives, you can't deal with the bigger issues simply by telling yourself to relax because those issues are going to continue," he added.

If this worldwide epidemic can help us begin to talk about our stress and take action, that would be good news, Ackrill said.

"For decades we've swept stress under the carpet," she said. "And without a model in our mind of what it was and without specific skills or resources to deal with it, most of us felt shame that we weren't dealing with stress well.

"Shame compounds it," Ackrill added. "But I think now it may finally become a safe topic. I think it may finally safer to be vulnerable. And boy, do we need that. We need people to talk about it."
Pro-Tibetan protestors hold picures of Gendun Cheokyi Nyima (The Panchen Lama) during a demonstration outside the Chinese consulate in Barcelona. (AFP)

Washington: The United States has urged China to release Tibetan Buddhism's 11th Panchen Lama, who was taken into captivity at the age of six by Chinese authorities.

In 1995, a young Tibetan boy Gedhun Choekyi Nyima was recognised as the 11th Panchen Lama, the second highest spiritual authority in Tibetan Buddhism after Dalai Lama. Days later Nyima had disappeared, becoming the world's youngest political prisoner.

"We do not have any idea of the whereabouts, and yes, we continue to press the Chinese authorities to release the Panchen Lama and to let him free, and let the world know where he is," Ambassador-at-Large for International Religious Freedom Sam Brownback told reporters during a conference call on Thursday.

"And this takes on an increased interest as China continues to assert the right to appoint the next Dalai Lama, which they do not have the right to do," Brownback said in response to a question.

Meanwhile, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), in a statement, reiterated its call for the State Department to fill the vacancy for the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues.

The appointment of the Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues is mandated by the Tibetan Policy Act of 2002, however, this position has been vacant since January 20, 2017.

Previous Special Coordinators have been crucial to raising the profile of religious freedom issues in Tibet and mobilising government resources to address the issue, it said.

The Chinese Communist Party is attempting to erase the unique identity of Tibetan Buddhism, noted USCIRF Commissioner Gary Bauer.

We need to utilise all of the policy tools available, including the position of Special Coordinator for Tibetan Issues, to confront this grave threat to religious freedom, he said.
NEWHOUSE, United Kingdom, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Honeywell (NYSE: HON) today announced that it will build a new production line capable of producing up to 4.5 million FFP2 and FFP3 disposable face masks per month at its Newhouse site in Scotland, United Kingdom. These masks will assist the U.K. government's response to the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak.

The U.K. government has ordered 70 million of the locally produced Honeywell SuperOne face masks, with production expected to start as early as July. The masks will be distributed by the Department of Health and Social Care to the U.K.'s National Health Service (NHS) and social care settings to protect frontline workers.

The new mask production line is expected to create approximately 450 jobs at Honeywell's Newhouse site.

"As a global leader of high quality personal protective equipment, Honeywell is committed to getting safety gear to those who need it most, including workers on the front line of the fight against COVID-19," said Will Lange, president of Honeywell's personal protective equipment business. "Our Newhouse facility has both the physical capacity and technical capabilities to launch a large-scale respirator production line in such a short timeframe. We are proud of our teams who are bringing new manufacturing capabilities to the United Kingdom as quickly as possible to support the country's response to the pandemic."

This is the third new face mask production line Honeywell has announced in the last two months. The company started two new manufacturing lines in the United States for the North American market.

Honeywell's Newhouse plant specializes in electronic systems assembly and testing and other advanced manufacturing capabilities for several of Honeywell's business groups, and will continue to do so alongside the new face mask line.

"These 70 million masks are the result of our challenge to U.K. industry to scale-up domestic PPE manufacturing," said Matt Hancock, Health Secretary, U.K. government. "This deal is brilliant news for the whole United Kingdom, which will not only deliver the masks we need but create around 450 jobs in Newhouse, Scotland. I'm delighted to team up with Honeywell to open up another avenue to get millions of masks to the frontline and strengthen our ongoing response to the outbreak."

Honeywell will supply the 70 million face masks from Newhouse to the U.K. government over an 18-month timeframe.

About Honeywell

Honeywell (www.honeywell.com) is a Fortune 100 technology company that delivers industry-specific solutions that include aerospace products and services; control technologies for buildings and industry; and performance materials globally. Our technologies help aircraft, buildings, manufacturing plants, supply chains, and workers become more connected to make our world smarter, safer, and more sustainable. For more news and information on Honeywell, please visit www.honeywell.com/newsroom.

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Honeywell UK Department of Health and Social Care Chris Martin News Desk [email protected] [email protected] +44 (0)7794 007 289



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The UN Human Rights High Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, has called for caution as more countries move to lift COVID-19 lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the coronavirus.

Nigeria is one of the countries that has eased its lockdown, instead imposing a dusk to dawn curfew (8 p.m. to 6 a.m.) nationwide.

Since easing the lockdown about a week ago, Nigerias coronavirus cases and resultant deaths have continued to increase, surpassing 5,000 cases on Thursday.

The governor of Nigerias most affected state, Lagos, has warned he could reimpose a lockdown on the countrys most populous state as residents serially violate safety measures put in place to check the spread of the virus.

Ms Bachelet, a former medical doctor, minister of health, and President of Chile, gave her advice while speaking to journalists from Geneva on Thursday.

She warned of potential risks, including the danger of a second wave that could cost many more lives if countries lift restrictions without adequate plans.

In the same breadth, she acknowledged the socio-economic difficulties resulting from prolonged lockdowns imposed by governments to stop the spread of the virus.

According to her, balancing the economic imperatives with the health and human rights demands of the COVID-19 response will be one of the most defining experiences for all leaders and all governments.

She said: Their place in history will be decided by how well or how badly they perform over the coming months.

If their response is based on the interests of a particular elite, causing the disease to flare up again in other less privileged or marginalised communities, it will rebound on everyone.

If an affected country comes out of lockdown too hastily, there is a danger that a second wave, costing many more lives, will be triggered sooner and more destructively than would otherwise be the case.

If the re-opening of societies is mishandled, all the huge sacrifices made during the initial lockdown will have been for nothing.

However, the damage to individuals and to economies, will not just be retained  it will be significantly amplified.

As of Thursday morning, the disease had infected more than 4.2 million people and killed no fewer than 294,000 others, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO).

The UN says COVID-19 continues to disrupt the lives of billions across the planet.

These include countless workers and students who are now confined to their homes in efforts to protect lives from the deadly disease.

Ms Bachelet urged countries to adhere to WHO guidelines in relaxing movement restrictions and lockdowns.

WHO guidelines emphasise that transmission needs to be controlled while healthcare systems must be able to detect, test, isolate and treat every case, and trace contacts.

The UN human rights chief also called for measures to protect employees as the disease continues to cost millions their jobs around the world.

Commuters in Lagos State [Photo: France24]

She urged authorities to ensure employees are protected when they return to their jobs.

For instance, she said those whose work involves contact with the public will need to be provided with masks, sanitizers and other shielding materials.

In addition, public transportation will need to be made as safe as possible, she emphasised

When lifting lockdowns, those without stable incomes, those not able to work remotely, and all those in essential jobs  which is not just health workers  will face the highest risks.

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It is finally starting to be noticed that disproportionate numbers of essential workers are migrants, and that most of them, despite being essential are often very poorly paid.

Moving forward will also mean consulting with citizens in decisions that affect their lives, including how to lift emergency measures, Ms Bachelet said.
Centre, West Bengal tussle again, now on repatriation flights

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 15: In yet another tussle with Narendra Modi government, the West Bengal government has claimed that it communicated with the Centre over bring back stranded Indian nationals from different countries in detail long back but the state awaits flights from the central government.

However, the MEA had said it does not discriminate between states, and the Centre's Vande Bharat mission is for all stranded Indians.

External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava made the comments in response to West Bengal Home Secretary Partha Chatterjee's accusation that the Centre was discriminating between states.

"The MEA does not discriminate between states. GOI's Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal. Over 3,700 of them have registered for repatriation from different parts of the world @MoCA_GoI @HomeSecretaryWB," Srivastava said in a tweet, tagging the post of Chatterjee.

GOWB keen to welcome back our people stranded in different countries and has long back communicated its agreement as well as quarantine arrangements details etc to GOI for special international inbound journeys. Letters attached. Bengal awaits flights. pic.twitter.com/D6k4eNNA9k  HOME DEPARTMENT - GOVT. OF WEST BENGAL (@HomeBengal) May 15, 2020

Chatterjee had tweeted, "Is the MEA asking us to believe that there are enough people to come from Georgia to Gujarat but none want to come to Kolkata? Also, there are enough people to come back to Bihar from Kyrgyzstan but not enough to bring back to Bengal? Stop this injustice !!! #MithyebadiBJP".

Srivastava also said that the Centre will facilitate flights to Kolkata if the state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine.

Coronavirus outbreak: In less than fortnight, COVID-19 cases spikes over three times in India

"Will gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if the state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. Will also help in return of West Bengal residents through land borders with neighbours. We hope to receive an early response on the matter. @MoCA_GoI @HomeSecretaryWB," Srivastava said in another tweet.

The government launched the Vande Bharat mission on May 7 to bring back Indians stranded in various countries due to coronavirus-related restrictions.
Taiwan Dispute Spotlights Political Challenges Ahead of WHO Meeting

By Tina Chung May 14, 2020

Next week the World Health Organization holds its annual meeting, where the U.S. will press for Taiwan to be included, despite China's objections.

At a time when the WHO is battling to curb the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. officials have accused the group of bowing to political pressure from China, backing Beijing's preference for excluding Taiwan, despite Taipei's success in the coronavirus fight.

U.S. officials also have accused the WHO of putting China-friendly politics ahead of its global health mission, arguing that Beijing's lack of transparency continues to hinder the global fight against the novel coronavirus.

Taiwan to receive invite from WHO director general?

This week, the U.S. State Department urged WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan as an observer to the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO's highest decision-making body, as his predecessor did, emphasizing that Taiwan's inclusion is consistent with all U.N. and WHO resolutions.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on "all nations" to support Taiwan's participation as an observer at the WHA, and in other relevant United Nations venues.

On Monday, Steven Solomon, the WHO's principal legal officer, said Taiwan's attendance to WHA was up to the WHO's 194 member states.

"To put it crisply, director-generals only extend invitations when it's clear that member states support doing so, that director-generals have a mandate, a basis to do so," Solomon said in a briefing with reporters.

He also said the WHO recognizes the People's Republic of China as the "only legitimate representative of China," in keeping with U.N. policy since 1971.

China has been opposed to Taiwan's participation in the WHO's annual meeting since 2016, after the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party's candidate Tsai Ying-wen was elected president. Beijing also stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan internationally, including successfully persuading most of Taiwan's last few diplomatic allies to sever ties.

In recent days, Beijing made it clear that it previously acquiesced to Taiwan's participation in WHA because of the prior Taiwan government's position on the eventual unification with China.

On Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman criticized a proposal submitted by several WHO members to include Taiwan in the WHA as an observer, calling it an effort to "severely disrupt this WHA and undermine global anti-pandemic cooperation."

Taiwan's past as WHO observer

From 2009 to 2016, Taiwan was invited by the former director-general to be an official observer. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an email to journalists this week that the current WHO chief should do the same.

"DG Tedros has the authority to invite Taiwan to participate as an observer, as his successor did before him. We are calling for him to do so."

The statement noted, "When the political party that the PRC did not favor won Taiwan's presidential and parliamentary elections in 2016, the invitation extended regularly by the DG abruptly and arbitrarily ended, beginning with the 2017 WHA."

The statement called Taiwan a part of the international community. It said Taiwan has admirably handled the COVID-19 pandemic and should rightly be invited to serve as an observer at the WHA. It also said, "Taiwan's participation is fully consistent with all UNGA and WHA resolutions."

Earlier this month, several countries, including Japan, Canada, and Britain, issued verbal demarches to WHO executives in Geneva, urging them to allow Taiwan to participate in WHA next week. The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday calling on Secretary of State Pompeo to devise a plan to help Taiwan rejoin the WHO.

At the end of last year, as news of atypical pneumonia began to emerge in Wuhan, China, Taiwan asked the WHO to share relevant information regarding the possible outbreak. Taiwan says its request was met with silence. Taiwan has complained its exclusion from the world health body harms the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese government considers Taiwan part of its territory and says Taiwan is using the epidemic to seek independence. In an interview on Fox News on May 12, Taiwan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaushieh Joseph Wu called the Chinese narrative "a lie" and emphasized Taiwan is not part of China.

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Many thousands of children of foreign Islamic State fighters travelled with them to conflict areas such as Syria and Iraq, or were born there. Now these children and their families face considerable legal and logistical challenges. They are unable to access basic services, or return to their countries of origin, especially if an adult in the family has been deprived of citizenship.

With many countries refusing or delaying efforts to repatriate, these children are in a particularly precarious situation.

An ongoing Dutch case, brought on behalf of 23 women and 56 children by a team of lawyers, shines a probing light on these issues. The central question of whether or not the decision to repatriate is a political choice will be watched closely by other countries.

Repatriation bid

The advocaat-generaal, Lodewijk Valk, who provides independent advice to the Dutch Supreme Court, advised the court in April that the Netherlands does not have to repatriate the Dutch women and children detained in northern Syria. The group is seeking collective repatriation as the children are not allowed to travel away from the region without adults.

In November 2019, the Court of The Hague initially ruled that the state should make every effort to allow repatriation of children. The conditions the children were living in were described as appalling. The judge went as far as to say that the state would be acting in a careless way if there were no active efforts to repatriate them.

This decision was then quickly reversed in ten days by the Appeals Court, which ruled that the groups repatriation was a political choice and not a legally enforceable right. Its this ruling that Valk now believes should be upheld  and its rare for the Dutch Supreme Court not to follow his advice. A final ruling is expected some time in summer 2020.

Valk stressed that the parents wrong choices should not be held against the affected children. He also suggested that an assessment of whether to repatriate each of the children should be on a case-by-case basis. He suggested that a request to repatriate the children only might have had a higher likelihood of success. Still, the children are not allowed to travel on their own and assessing the culpability of each mother for alleged activities within another jurisdiction and during a conflict would come with significant complications and long delays.

Story continues

There are additional complications in this case. Since the legal challenge began in 2019, some of the group have relied on people smugglers to escape the camps and their current whereabouts are unknown.

Dedi Grigoroiu via Shutterstock

Best interests of the child

The key question in this context is what is in the best interests of the affected children. Irrespective of whether a minor left their home voluntarily or was taken to Syria or Iraq by a family member, their home state has a special responsibility to guarantee their safety and wellbeing under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. It states that the best interests of the child should be the primary consideration in all actions.

If a state is to comply with its international obligations, childrens rights and wellbeing must not be compromised due to the decisions of adults and their alleged actions. If a childs mother is alleged to have played an active role in a criminal situation, individual assessments of the criminal conduct or security risks of a parent should not be a reason to delay the repatriation of a child. There are ample opportunities on return to investigate the conduct of the Dutch parents and assess whether they pose a risk of re-offending without affecting the children.

Childrens rights should not be practically enforced based on the worthiness of either the parents or the children. Its paramount that childrens prospective repatriation is not assessed through a national security lens, or on the question of whether or not bringing them home is conducive to the public good. Such an approach assumes, from a distance, that the children have been radicalised and that they may engage in criminal or terrorist activities in an unspecified time in the future.

Some countries such as Australia, Belgium, France and Norway have repatriated a limited number of children of Islamic State fighters. However, the reluctance to bring back children on the part of some European nations such as the Netherlands is likely to influence other countries in their future decisions too.

In light of the well-accepted international principles and obligations towards children, the safe repatriation of Dutch children living in Syria is urgent and it has already been unnecessarily delayed by court proceedings. Every child is deserving enough of legal protection from the country of their citizenship.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
WEST BLOOMFIELD, Mich. - A man accused of making credible death threats against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Attorney General Dana Nessel has been charged on a terrorism count, the Wayne County prosecutors office said Friday.

Robert Tesh made the threats via a social media message to an acquaintance on April 14 and authorities concluded the message amounted to credible threats to kill, prosecutor Kym Worthy said Friday in a news release.

She didnt provide any detail about the threats or how they were determined to be credible. Further details will be presented during court proceedings, she said.

Detroit police officers arrested the 32-year-old man the same day at his home. He was arraigned April 22 on a threat of terrorism charge. If convicted, Tesh could face up to 20 years in prison.

Worthy didnt explain the delay in releasing information about the threats, arrest and arraignment.

Emotions are heightened on all sides now, she told The Associated Press Friday. These threats ... they are not funny. They are not jokes. There is nothing humorous about it. Even if you dont carry it out, were going to charge you criminally.

The threats from Tesh were not specific to Whitmers stay-at-home order issued in March in an effort to stem the spread of COVID-19 in the state, according to Maria Miller, a spokeswoman for the prosecutors office. Whitmer has been the target of protests and rallies over her executive order which shut down most businesses in the state. The order is effective at least until May 28.

The alleged facts in this case lay out a very disturbing scenario, Worthy said. We understand that these times can be stressful and upsetting for many people. But we will not and cannot tolerate threats like these against any public officials who are carrying out their duties as efficiently as they can. You can disagree with their positions or their methodology, but you absolutely cannot act as this defendant allegedly acted or you will be charged criminally.

Hundreds of people protested Thursday outside the state capitol to call for a loosening of restrictions and for business owners to reopen in defiance of Whitmers order. The protest was led by Michigan United for Liberty, a conservative activist group that has sued Whitmer and organized or participated in several rallies since early April.

During a rally last month, some armed protesters entered the Capitol building.

As of Thursday, more than 4,700 people had died in Michigan from complications related to COVID-19.

Whitmer told reporters Friday she has never felt unsafe and credited the state police for keeping her safe.

It is never acceptable to make threats of violence to anyone, but our officeholders as well, she said. So we take (threats) very seriously. It is not easy. Id be lying if I told you that any of us this has been easy.

A spokesman for Nessel said in an email to the AP that her office was unable to comment on the arrest and charges since they relate to an open criminal matter.

Tesh was released from jail on April 29 after posting a $50,000 bond. He has been placed on a GPS tether. A probable cause conference is scheduled for June 3.

The AP left a message Friday seeking comment from Teshs attorney.

__

Associated Press writer David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan, contributed to this story.
Socially-distanced filming on Neighbours is working, according to an actor who stars in the Australian soap.

Stefan Dennis told This Morning that it has been fantastic because we have got the opportunity to get back to work.

(Ian West/PA)

I have to say, its working. Its actually working, he told the ITV programme.

Dennis, who plays Paul Robinson, added that because the production of television programmes around the world has largely not yet begun to restart, Neighbours is being used as a model of how it can be done.

The programme has pretty much led the way with this, he added.

He said that some of the crew on the programme are wearing protective equipment.

As lots of you have probably heard, Neighbours is back in production, but under very strict rules to prevent the spread of COVID-19. 

We caught up with some of the actors to see what its been like getting back on set and how they are ensuring cast and crew are staying safe. pic.twitter.com/TpmMQEzP7I  Neighbours (@NeighboursTV) May 7, 2020

When you walk into the make-up department it is like walking into a surgery because you have got the make-up artist with rubber gloves on, masks and full gowns and the wardrobe or the costume department, they have to be masked and gloved obviously, Dennis said.

We have to keep the one-and-a-half metre rule, that is extremely strict.

He added that a nurse checks the temperatures of those arriving on set before filming gets under way.

The actor said that being able to restart filming is almost like a 35th birthday present for us because of course this is our 35th anniversary.

(Dave Thompson/PA)

In the UK, filming of soaps including EastEnders, Coronation Street and Emmerdale were halted because of coronavirus.

However, EastEnders is now set to resume filming by the end of June, according to an article written by BBC director of content Charlotte Moore on Thursday in The Telegraph.

Plans that will see the production of Coronation Street and Emmerdale are also in their final stages, according to a spokeswoman for the ITV programmes.
By Azernews





By Ayya Lmahamad

Azerbaijan's national air carrier Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) airlifted 197 citizens via a charter flight from Kyiv to Baku on May 14, the companys press-service reported.

As reported, all arriving passenger obligatory have been quarantined.

AZAL operates charter flights to airlift citizens in accordance with the plan defined by the Task Forces under the Cabinet of Ministers.

As reported earlier, all measures are being taken to repatriate citizens from abroad.

So far, 20,000 Azerbaijanis have been airlifted from foreign countries due to COVID-19 crisis.

The citizens who registered on the portal I am going home were airlifted by plane from Moscow to Azerbaijan and 94 citizens were repatriated from Iran on May 5. Furthermore, on May 7, 212 citizens were airlifted to Azerbaijan by two charter flights from Istanbul, 50 citizens from Tashkent and 52 citizens from Riga on May 8. On May 12, Azerbaijani students were airlifted to Azerbaijan by charter flight from Moscow, as well as 124 people from Minsk.

Azerbaijan first introduced special quarantine regime on March 24 and since April 5, residents are required to obtain SMS permits to leave their homes.

As of May 15, Azerbaijan has registered 2,879 COVID-19 cases and 35 coronavirus-related deaths so far. The total number of recovered patients is 1,833.




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Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday welcomed Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's announcements for the agricultural sector, which is facing hardships due to the ongoing lockdown, and said the Modi government believes that India's development lies with the welfare of farmers.

In a series of tweets in Hindi, Shah said the Narendra Modi government would bring a central law to give farmers enough options to sell their produce at a better price.

"Modi government believes that India's welfare lies in the welfare of farmers. This unprecedented assistance given to farmers today shows Modiji's foresight to make the country self-sufficient by empowering farmers. For this, I congratulate @narendramodi ji and @nsitharaman ji," he said.

The home minister said he was confident that the decision of the Rs one-lakh crore 'Agriculture Infrastructure Fund' will give a new direction to the agriculture sector and the welfare of farmers of India.

"With the landmark decision of Agriculture Marketing Reforms, the Modi government will bring a central law that will give farmers enough options to sell their produce at a better price. He (the farmer) will be able to do barrier-free inter-state trade and through e-trading, his produce will reach every corner of the country," he said.

In the third tranche of the COVID-19 economic package, Sitharaman on Friday announced a slew of measures for the agriculture sector, including a Rs 1.63 lakh crore outlay and amending the stringent Essential Commodities Act to remove cereals, edible oil, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato from its purview.

Also, a new law will be framed to give farmers the option to choose the market where they want to sell their produce by removing inter-state trade barriers and providing e-trading of agriculture produce, she said.

Announcing the third tranche of an overall package of Rs 20 lakh crore to deal with the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Union finance minister said foodstuffs, including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onion, and potato, will be deregulated after the amendment to the six-and-half-decade-old Essential Commodities Act.

The Act empowers the government to regulate price as well as stocks of commodities.

The minister said after the amendment, stock limit will be imposed only under very exceptional circumstances like national calamities and famine when there is a surge in prices.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
- A professor of law and accounting, Stephen Asare, has shared ideas on how to transform legal education in Ghana

- He has been a key advocate for reforms in legal education

- According to him, seven key steps need to be taken in order to rebrand the tuition of law in the country

Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

Stephen Asare, a professor of law and accounting, has shared ideas on possible ways to transform legal education in Ghana.

According to him, urgent steps need to be taken to ensure that the study of law in Ghana is appealing to faculty and students.

READ ALSO: Professor Stephen Asare gives 4 reasons why LLBs may be useless beyond our borders

His suggestions on how to implement progressive reforms are as listed below:

1. Creation of a memorable learning experience:

Kwaku Azar opined that alumni of law faculties may be willing to turn back and support if they enjoyed their learning experience

2. Equipping students to go out and change industry and public sector:

Professor Asare explained that law students should be groomed to transform industries and the public sector. According to him, it is the a key way to brand students as agents of change.

3. Giving students earning power:

Students, Kwaku Azar believes, should be sufficiently educated on how to not just positively affect industries, but earn a decent living in their chosen profession.

4. Dissolving the GLC and replacing it with CLEP with no SC justices:

Professor Asare advocated for the creation of a Council for Legal Education and Practice (CLEP) to replace the General Legal Council (GLC). The CLEP, he noted, should have no Supreme Court justices as members.

5. Allow universities to design and experiment with all curricula:

In his opinion, tertiary institutions should be given the given the freedom to design and experiment their own curricula as this would bring dynamism and practicality to teaching and learning.

6. Offer bar examination to anyone with an LLB:

Kwaku Azar is of the opinion that everyone who possesses a First Degree in Law should be given the opportunity to sit for the Bar exam.

7. Change emphasis from changing litigators to training thinkers who can explore law as a tool for transformation:

Law students, he noted, should be trained to think in order to contribute to knowledge and solve legal challenges.

Professor Asare has been at the forefront of calls for reformation of legal education in Ghana.

Till date, he continues to argue that the system used to pass 128 out of almost 2000 candidates who sat for the 2019 Law Entrance Examinations is a sham and a scam.

The incident has led to increased calls for changes in legal education in Ghana, but at present, the GLC is the statutory body tasked with the responsibility of educating and passing Ghanaian lawyers.

READ ALSO: Dissolve GLC now! Kwaku Azar declares as Ghana law faculties miss out on African rankings

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Ghanaians share their thoughts on the mandatory wearing of face mask | #Yencomgh

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Amid the coronavirus pandemic, France is faced with a paradox: It has just made the wearing of masks compulsory in certain public spaces, but maintained the years-long ban on Muslim full-face veils. This suggests, as the Washington Post recently noted, if an observant Muslim woman wanted to get on the Paris Metro, she would be required to remove her burqa and replace it with a mask.

The French government made the use of face masks in public mandatory on May 10 in an effort to safely ease the countrys strict coronavirus lockdown. More than 50 other countries, from Germany to Uganda, had previously passed similar laws and provisions to stem the spread of the virus and get people back to work.

While in most countries the discussion about compulsory face masks focused on the effectiveness of the measure, in France, where not long ago the government proudly stated that the Republic lives with its face uncovered, this decision raised questions about the way the state defines French identity and values.

Face coverings started to be discussed in the context of French national identity for the first time more than a decade ago, during Nicolas Sarkozys presidency.

In October 2008, the High Authority for the Fight against Discrimination and for Equality (HALDE), Frances public watchdog group on discrimination, equated the wearing of a burqa to the submission of women in a ruling over an administrative decision that denied a woman wearing the garment access to the French-language classes that were required for her to remain in France. As it sided with the public authority that took the controversial decision, the watchdog said: The burqa carries the meaning of the submission of women which goes beyond its religious scope and could be considered as undermining republican values presiding over the process of integration and organisation of these lessons.

The ruling laid the foundations for the perception that this religious garment is not only fundamentally anti-feminist but also foreign to French culture. It also ignited a debate on republican values which quickly transformed into a debate on whether Islam is compatible with the French Republic.

Just a few months after the publication of HALDEs ruling, as the call for the banning of all Muslim face coverings became louder across the country, President Sarkozy himself joined in the debate.

In a State of the Nation address, the president claimed that face coverings worn by some Muslim women were not a religious problem but a problem of liberty and womens dignity and declared the burqa is not welcome in France.

Sarkozys words ignited another major public debate, with one side accusing the president of weaponising feminism and secular values to exclude Muslims from the French identity and the other emphasising the importance of protecting the nations core liberal values.

While the few women in France who wear full-face veils were never included in the burqa debate, several prominent public figures  mostly men  passionately argued that no one would willingly choose to wear such a garment and that anyone wearing it was undoubtedly a victim of male oppression. Failing to realise the irony of denying women agency over their own bodies and outfit choices while trying to save them from gendered oppression, these people eventually convinced the country that all face coverings should be banned to protect womens rights and French values.

As a result, in September 2010, the French Senate voted in favour of a bill banning the concealment of the face in public spaces. In March 2011, weeks before the ban came into force, the government issued a new circular about the scope of the ban and offered some cultural justifications for it.

To conceal the face is to infringe the minimum requirements of life in society, the circular stated. This also places the persons concerned in a situation of exclusion and inferiority incompatible with the principles of freedom, equality and human dignity affirmed by the French Republic.

The circular, therefore, officially acknowledged a link between the way a person chooses to dress themselves in public and that persons place in French society. To be recognised as a French person, the circular affirmed, one has to show her face in public, as a confirmation of her commitment to the common values and shared destiny of the country.

This is why the French governments recent decision to make the wearing of face masks mandatory in public places raised questions. The governments move to make face masks compulsory while refusing to reverse the ban on Muslim face veils reaffirmed the conviction many already had that the so-called burqa ban has nothing to do with the incompatibility of face coverings with the French way of life and everything to do with the states reluctance to include visible Muslims into the French national identity.

As millions of French people now participate in public life with covered faces without any issue, it is indeed clear that the French state banned Muslim face veils not to protect the values of the Republic, but to promote an assimilationist understanding of Frenchness that does not tolerate minority cultural expressions.

The coronavirus pandemic exposed the French states hypocrisy about several other forms of behaviour, too.

For example, back in 2019, following an attack on the Paris police headquarters by a Muslim employee, French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner delivered a controversial list of potential signs of radicalisation to the French Parliament. Alongside innocent cultural expressions, such as wearing a long beard, he suggested that a Muslim persons refusal to kiss someone to greet them, as many French people usually do, could be a sign of radicalisation. Now, however, the state is actively encouraging citizens to refrain from kissing each other in an attempt to stop the spread of the virus. There is, of course, no suggestion that refusing to kiss someone can infringe the requirements of life in society.

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the extreme measures that were taken to fight it, showed that neither the wearing of face veils nor other forms of Muslim cultural and religious expressions, have ever posed a threat to the French way of life. It showed that the motivation behind the burqa ban was not to protect republican values but to prevent Muslims from being included in public life. The French state simply used cultural markers that are associated with being French in the national psyche to draw the contours of an exclusionary national identity.

Now that COVID-19 demonstrated that one can indeed participate in public life and remain French without showing her face or kissing acquaintances, the nation could do well to rethink the way it treats Muslims.

The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial stance.
A member of the Nigerian Health Task Force fumigates a building in Abuja, Nigeria, as the city struggles to curb the spread of coronavirus. COVID-19 Photo by Kola Sulaimon/AFP via Getty Images

Public spending

boosting surveillance and assessment through upgrading laboratory capacity required for testing and detection;

efficient clinical management so that first responders do not become patients themselves, and

maintaining essential services such as food and agriculture, energy, law enforcement and public works to speed up recovery.

Vulnerable groups

Managing debt

Financial lifelines

Policymakers in Africa must now absorb lessons from the experiences of other countries and avoid policy mistakes. Most importantly they need to implement a Covid-19 policy manifesto that is capable of inoculating African economies from the crisis and reigniting economic activities after the pandemic.Such a manifesto would have to assemble all available levers of policy. This would require public health, fiscal, monetary, financial, labour market, environmental, industrial, regional integration, and social welfare policies.Public health policy is the first place to start. The Global Health Security Index shows that only 21 out of 54 African countries are somewhat prepared from a clinical perspective to deal with epidemic threats. The other 33 are completely ill-equipped.The pandemic is no time for fiscal distancing, the president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, recently noted . In other words, this is not the time to hold back government expenditure.Fiscal policy needs to respond from both the expenditure and revenue sides. It can be used to cushion the impact of the shock and minimise economic dislocation  a dual objective of saving lives and livelihoods.On the expenditure side, there needs to be urgent and generous spending on the health sector. This should happen regardless of how much room is in the budget.The pandemic offers policymakers an opportunity to build resilient health systems capable of withstanding the pressure from the pandemic and broaden access to health care. This can be achieved by:Assistance should also be targeted at the most vulnerable groups.Women and young people are among the most vulnerable groups to suffer the impact of the crisis. Policymakers should therefore extend direct financial payments to informal sector and insecure women and young workers with families.In addition, small and medium-sized enterprises should be helped to stay afloat. In Africa, more than 80% of economic activity is in the informal sector. Small and medium-sized enterprises are much more vulnerable to both demand and supply-side shocks from lockdowns. Hence governments need to use specific policies that target formal and informal sector enterprises.Since a significant number of small enterprises in the informal sector avoid or do not pay taxes, more general policies beyond tax relief, such as deferrals on rent and utility payments, can be used to target this group. This was done in Cote d'Ivoire . Lump-sum subsidies in the form of monthly one-off allowances can also be used to support small enterprises and keep them afloat.These additional expenditures will likely exceed revenues during the crisis. Governments must therefore have a fiscal recovery plan that would seek a careful balance between fiscal stimulus and fiscal consolidation: that is, tightly cutting back spending after the crisis.Debt sustainability should continue to be the priority. Without a post-crisis fiscal consolidation plan, sovereign debt defaults  a situation where governments are not able to pay back their debt  might be the next pandemic.Covid-19 will add to the debt burden of African economies and heightens the likelihood of a widespread and far-reaching sovereign debt crisis, if not properly managed.Before the pandemic, the projected average gross public debt for the continent for 2020 was as high as 60% of GDP. The African Development Bank estimates that the additional financing needed to deal with the pandemic would range from $110bn to $154bn in 2020 alone. This could further push up already high debt levels by another five percentage points to 65% of GDP by the end of 2020.On top of increased expenditure and collapsing tax, non-tax, and foreign exchange earnings, countries are also experiencing disorderly capital flight because of extreme risk aversion by investors. In turn this is fuelling volatile market movements and widening spreads on African sovereign bond yields, making African debt instruments riskier and pricier to investors.This leaves governments unable to refinance maturing debt.Although they have already sought debt repayment moratoriums from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, African policymakers need to actively seek debt repayment moratoriums from private, bilateral and multilateral creditors.The crisis forcefully supports the case for including state-contingent clauses that stipulate actions to be taken when a catastrophic event occurs in sovereign debt contracts. Crisis-contingent clauses in the debt contracts would have meant automatic debt relief for affected countries without the need to actively seek debt rescheduling by creditors. This model is already working well for Haiti whenever an earthquake occurs.Institutions such as the IMF World Bank and African Development Bank have announced financial packages tailored to the Covid-19 pandemic. These facilities provide a lifeline to implement the Covid-19 policy manifesto and inoculate African economies from the devastating effects of the pandemic.Policymakers should act quickly to save African lives and livelihoods.This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article
Now that Gov. Phil Murphy has reopened the Jersey Shore for the Memorial Day holiday, will the crowds come?

Experts and a poll said people are more likely to drive to the beach at Belmar than fly to French riviera. Another temptation to get them out of the house are lower than normal gas prices. But it will be a gradual transition from coronavirus staycation to vacation.

People will do micro-vacations, we will see an uptick in them in the U.S., said Sheldon Jacobson, University of Illinois professor of Computer Science, Math and Medicine. More will travel by car, taking vacations within a 500-mile radius. It will be localized like in the 1950s.

AAA officials also predicted that those who do vacation will gravitate to road trips.

GasBuddy, which tracks gas prices and use, is seeing a slight rebound in gas demand since mid-April, but the coronavirus still is a major factor in peoples summer vacation plans, said Sarah McCrary, GasBuddy CEO.

A total of 72% of the 1,820 people participating in a GasBuddy poll said that COVID-19 has directly affected their summer travel plans, with 48% taking fewer road trips than previously planned, 36% canceling airline trips and 24% who said they plan on making shorter trips, she said. Of all the regions in the nation, those living in the northeast are probably the most cautious with only 28%.

BREAKING: The Jersey Shore will be open in time for Memorial Day Weekend, with social distancing guidelines in place. The Shore is central to our Jersey identity and we want to ensure that families can safely enjoy it this summer. pic.twitter.com/BojwAZKih5  Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) May 14, 2020

Is Murphys announcement that beaches reopen on May 22 going to change some minds?

Very likely. One of the most interesting findings from the GasBuddy study is how a majority of people are unsure about taking a trip this summer versus a solid no, said Allison Mac, GasBuddy marketing director. That tells us that people are waiting to get news and updates and how safe they feel about traveling.

AAA, which traditionally issues an annual Memorial Day travel forecast, isnt doing so this year because of the effect of COVID-19 on the economy. But that doesnt mean Memorial Day will be a fiscal wipe-out.

With the beaches to open, and I assume that includes the small businesses, we think it will be extremely busy with lots of pent up demand from those weary of being sequestered at home, said Robert Sinclair, a AAA Northeast spokesman. If there are (beach capacity limits), folks should count on getting an early start" to beat traffic.

Even Murphy admitted that people are dying to let steam off, theyre dying to get out.

There is fatigue for people to sit home, Jacobson said. Ultimately people make choices, the bluntest is to stay home, then, the mask, gloves and hand washing is their responsibility.

Are other states willing to accept Jersey tourists and their cash or will they try and bar them as Rhode Island did early in the pandemic? There is no mechanism to prevent people from coming. The constitution gives certain rights and freedoms, Jacobson said. State could have mandates that they wont allow people to stay in hotels with certain state drivers licenses.

But hotel owners and tourism interests may push back against something like that, he said.

As the pandemic progresses and the curve flattens, people may ultimately change their plans

There could be a surge in last-minute, shorter road trips in the second half of summer, as people continue to access the situation, McCrary said.

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Larry Higgs may be reached at lhiggs@njadvancemedia.com.
Medicago Announces Positive Results in Animal Trials for Its Vaccine Candidate Against COVID-19

Details Category: Vaccines Published on Friday, 15 May 2020 10:03 Hits: 1384

QUEBEC CITY, Canada I May 14, 2020 I Medicago, a biopharmaceutical company headquartered in Quebec City, announced today that its vaccine candidate for COVID-19 induced a positive antibody response only 10 days after a single dose in mice.

These positive results are pivotal to initiate a clinical study in healthy volunteers. Once results from a second boost dose are available, Medicago will submit a clinical trial application to Health Canada and an investigational new drug submission with the FDA in the United States to allow for the initiation of human clinical trials this summer, said Nathalie Landry, Executive Vice-President Scientific and Medical Affairs at Medicago. We are very encouraged about these promising early results achieved with our plant-derived vaccine candidate developed in Canada.

Though the precise dosage for the vaccine in humans is not yet determined, Medicago estimates its current facilities in Quebec and North Carolina could produce up to 20 million and 100 million annual doses, respectively, of pharmaceutical-grade COVID-19 vaccines. Millions of doses could be available by the end of the year as needed.

"We are working hard to add another 20 million doses capacity in Canada and 100 million in North Carolina for 2022, ahead of the completion of our large-scale factory in Quebec in 2023, which would be able to produce more than 1 billion doses of COVID-19 vaccines per year, said Michael Schunk, Executive Vice-President Operations at Medicago.

In early March, the company produced a Virus-Like Particle (VLP) of the coronavirus just 20 days after obtaining the SARS-CoV-2 gene and quickly initiated pre-clinical testing. The company expects to initiate Phase I clinical trials this summer. Following this trial, it is anticipated that the Phase 2 study will begin prior to the end of 2020.

Medicago is a leader in plant-based technology having previously demonstrated its capability to be a first responder in a flu pandemic. In 2009, the company produced a research-grade vaccine candidate against H1N1 in just 19 days. In 2012, Medicago manufactured 10 million doses of a monovalent influenza vaccine within one month for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), part of the U.S. Department of Defense. In 2015, Medicago also demonstrated that it could rapidly produce an anti-Ebola monoclonal antibody cocktail for the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

The companys first product, a seasonal recombinant quadrivalent VLP vaccine for active immunization against influenza, is currently under review by Health Canada following the completion of a robust safety and efficacy clinical program involving over 25,000 subjects.

Medicagos plant-based platform

The company uses a proprietary plant-based technology to develop protein-based therapeutics. Unlike traditional vaccination development, Medicago does not use animal products or live viruses to create its products. Instead, it uses Virus-Like Particles (VLPs) that mimic the shape and dimensions of a virus, which allows the body to recognize them and create an immune response in a non-infectious way. Clinical trial data suggest that VLPs have a multi-modal mechanism of action that is different from that of inactivated vaccines, activating both arms of the immune system  antibody and cell-mediated responses.

Medicagos proprietary technology is rapid, versatile, and scalable. As soon as the genetic sequence of a virus is made available, Medicago can develop a clinical-grade vaccine candidate in only a few weeks. Its recombinant technology allows the production of a vaccine that precisely matches the circulating strains, such as in the case of seasonal influenza. The technology is easily scalable, allowing the company to increase volume of production by simply increasing the number of plants it uses.

Product portfolio and pipeline

Medicagos first product, a Recombinant Quadrivalent Virus-Like Particle (QVLP) seasonal flu vaccine is presently under review by Health Canada. Vaccine candidates for pandemic flu, rotavirus and norovirus are being tested across pre-clinical and Phase II clinical trials. Medicago is also developing antibodies against hMPV, RSV and Opioids.

Facilities

Medicago is headquartered in Quebec City, Canada, and plans to produce COVID-19 vaccines and antibodies in its Quebec pilot plant to respond to the immediate short-term demand. The company also has a manufacturing facility in Durham, North Carolina (USA), which is currently dedicated to the production of vaccines and antibodies for its clinical trials and is expected to support the launch of the quadrivalent VLP influenza vaccine once it is approved. A new state-of-the-art manufacturing plant is under construction in Quebec City, which will be fully functional by 2023 and will have the capability to deliver up to 50 million doses of recombinant quadrivalent influenza vaccine per year.

About Medicago

Medicago is a biopharmaceutical company with more than 450 employees in Canada and the United States. Medicagos mission is to improve global health outcomes by leveraging innovative plant-based technologies for rapid responses to emerging global health challenges. Medicago is committed to advancing therapeutics against life-threatening diseases worldwide.

For more information: www.medicago.com

SOURCE: Medicago
By Philip Pullella

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Francis joined an inter-faith day of prayer on Thursday to call on God to end the coronavirus pandemic, brushing aside criticism from ultra-conservative Catholic groups, with one accusing him of associating with "infidels".

A multi-faith committee formed after the pope's historic visit to the Arabian Peninsula last year came up with the proposal that Christians, Muslims and Jews pray, fast and perform charitable works on Thursday.

"Maybe there will be someone who will say 'This is religious relativism and it cannot be done," Francis said in the homily of his morning Mass at the Vatican on Thursday.

"But how can we not pray to the father of us all? Each one prays as they know how, as they are able to. We are not praying one against the other, one tradition against another ... (but) as brothers," he said.

The nine-member Higher Committee on Human Fraternity, which is based in Abu Dhabi, promotes dialogue among religions. It comprises Muslims, Jews and Christians, including a Vatican cardinal and one of the pope's private secretaries, who is an Egyptian priest.

In Thursday's initiative, the Committee expressed support for medicine and scientific research but also invited people to pray "according to the teachings of their religion," as well as to fast and do works of charity to ask God to end the pandemic.

"POISON FRUIT"

Not all Catholics heeded the appeal.

In a series of tweets, the traditionalist Catholic blog Rorate Caeli mocked the pope. One tweet called the inter-religious prayer day "Francis' Fast with Infidels".

Rorate Caeli accompanied its tweets with pictures of sumptuously laid tables overflowing with food, suggesting that Catholics should feast, not fast, on Thursday.

One was accompanied by a picture of a roasted piglet. Observant Muslims and Jews do not eat pork.

Another influential traditionalist group, The Society of Saint Pius X, called the pope's promotion of the prayer day the "poison fruit" of the Catholic Church's dialogue with Islam.

Story continues

The traditionalists, a vociferous minority in the 1.3 billion-strong Roman Catholic Church, have consistently criticised the pope since his election in 2013, particularly over his overtures to the Muslim world and his call for a Church that stresses mercy over doctrinal rigidity.

They have also opposed his support of agreements to limit global warming.

Despite their tweets, reaction to the committee's appeal among Catholics - as well as among Jews, Muslims and other Christian denominations - was mostly positive, with the hashtags #HumanFraternity and #PrayTogether going viral on Twitter.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, commonly known as Mormons, tweeted: "Our hearts are joined with our brothers and sisters in the Muslim, Catholic and other faith traditions".

In his own tweet, Francis said: "May God have mercy on us and put an end to this tragedy, this pandemic, as well as the pandemics of hunger, war, and children without an education. This we ask as brothers and sisters, everyone together."

(Reporting By Philip Pullella; Editing by Gareth Jones)
Minister of Education Claude Meisch held a press conference on Friday to communicate the newest updates on the reopening of schools on 25 May.

During his press briefing on Friday, minister Meisch focused on the reopening procedures in Luxembourg's preschools and kindergartens, also known as cycle 1. He conveyed his overall optimism that every last remaining issue, be that in the area of infrastructure or staff, would be resolved in time before 25 May. He also emphasised that the first phases in secondary education had all gone according to plan.

Communication is key

Meisch highlighted the importance of communication on all levels during these difficult times. He emphasised that the ministry had consulted a large variety of experts, scientists, and studies to determine adequate measures that would allow children of all ages to return to schools without increasing health risks. He noted that parent associations and unions had been involved in these discussions, although this had previously been contested in an open letter.

The minister further explained that Covid-19 would need to become a topic of conversation in class and that an educational video had been prepared by the ministry.

Additionally, Meisch explained that although no official supervision had been installed before the start of class at 8 am, children could be watched on school premises from 7 am onwards.

Sanitary adaptations in cycle 1

Further details were given about the adaptations made in Luxembourg's kindergartens. Work groups will be smaller than in primary schools to normalise the return to schools as much as possible. "We cannot forbid or even explain the prohibition of physical contact to children of that age", Meisch underlined.

Face masks are considered forbidden for children under the age of 2, and not recommended for children below 6. Meisch therefore highlighted the importance of relocating activities outside as much as possible and announced that playgrounds on school premises would be reopened during the day.

Competence centres

Minister Meisch also addressed the situation in Luxembourg's competence centres, which aim at the care and education of special needs children. He explained that all nine institutions had different purposes and thereby different conditions and adaptations.

He stated that work groups in these centres were not subject to adaptations, since the nature of the respective work would only allow for small groups in the first place. He used the past weeks to visit some of the institutions and supervise the new measures.

Planning for future adaptations



Claude Meisch had to admit that at this stage, no further preparations had been made for a second wave of infections that might lead to a renewed closing of schools in the autumn. He was positive nonetheless that adaptations could be made on the go and that home schooling had shown its benefices over the past weeks. He finished by explaining the ministry's priority of finishing the current academic year as well as possible to assure a new start in September would be possible for all school levels.
Chinas transportation, tourism and consumption rebounded markedly in the May Day holiday, and the domestic market saw adequate supplies with stable prices, maintaining general stability and releasing huge vitality.

During the five-day vacation, the total number of train, road, waterway and air trips made nationwide hit 121 million, about 24.3 million daily average, 17.9 percent higher than that of the previous five days. Domestic tourism revenue garnered 47.56 billion yuan ($6.7 billion) in the same period.

Travelers enter waiting rooms in Nanchang railway station in east Chinas Jiangxi province on April 30. (Photo by Hu Guolin/Peoples Daily Online)

The Ministry of Transport will further improve and better implement regular epidemic control measures, and use every feasible means to guarantee the supply chain of international logistics in the next phase, in a bid to facilitate economic and social development and the comprehensive resumption of production and life of the people, Liu Xiaoming, Vice Minister of Transport, introduced.

The holiday carried special significance for the tourism market, Wang Xiaofeng, an official with Ministry of Culture and Tourism (MCT), observed.

The travel industry was greatly revived, as the MCT made active efforts to meet peoples need for travel and help tourism enterprises resume work while ensuring epidemic control and reducing congregations, he added.

The MCT requested tourist attractions to limit their reception of tourists to as low as 30% of their maximum visitor capacity, and manage the flow of the tourists to avoid gatherings. At the same time, the travelers must make reservations beforehand and avoid peak time.

Tourists boat in the Luyang Lake Wetland Park in Yangzhou, east China's Jiangsu province on May 1. (Photo by Meng Delong/Peoples Daily Online)

To meet MCTs requirements, tourist attractions increased manpower and strengthened management and control measures at major areas.

From May 1 to 5, a total of 115 million domestic trips were made across China, generating revenue of 47.56 billion yuan. The figure almost accounted for 50% of that last year, promoting the unleashing of potential in tourism-related consumption amid the continuous efforts of epidemic control and prevention, according to Wang.

The five-day holiday witnessed a robust domestic market and a revival in consumption, which reflected the strong resilience and vitality of Chinas market.

The Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) said that key enterprises in retail industry showed a sign of remarkable revival, with a daily average sale up by 32.1 percent compared to the three-day Tomb-sweeping Day holiday in April.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 epidemic, 28 provinces and municipalities, as well as 170 cities across the country handed out consumption coupons totaling over 19 billion yuan, and soon stimulated consumption and boosted confidence, according to Wang Bingnan, Vice Minister of Commerce.

Customers shop at a duty-free store in Riyue Plaza, south Chinas city of Haikou on May 1. (Photo by Zhang Mao/Peoples Daily Online)

The promotion campaigns aimed at helping catering and retail industries, which were hit hard by the pandemic, and they worked fairly well to bring customers back, playing a very important role in stabilizing enterprises and industries, Wang added.

Generally speaking, the speedy recovery of the consumption market in the May Day holiday showed the advantages of Chinas ultra-large-scale market and the potential of domestic demand, Wang introduced.

Going forward, the MOFCOM will continue to promote the resumption of business amidst the ongoing containment efforts, expand consumer spending, work faster to unleash domestic demand, and provide solid support for maintaining economic development and social stability, ensuring and improving living standards and forming a strong domestic market, Wang remarked.
The Dow gained 60.8 points, or 0.25%, to close at 23,685.42. The S&P 500 advanced 0.39% to 2,863.70. The Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.79% to 9,014.56. Stocks alternated between gains and losses as investors pored through a slew of economic data and grappled with rising U.S.-China tensions.

U.S. monthly retail sales fell by 16.4% in April, a record. So-called core retail sales  which exclude auto, gas, food and building materials sales  dropped 15.3%. Meanwhile, The Trump administration moved to block semiconductor shipments to Chinese company Huawei. Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of Chinese state-run publication Global Times, tweeted on Friday that China would "restrict or investigate" U.S. companies including Qualcomm, Cisco Systems and Apple if the U.S. takes further action to block Huawei's supply chain. To be sure, a turnaround in retail stocks and gains in oil prices  along with better-than-expected consumer sentiment data  helped offset the concerns over consumer spending and trade.
Unlike the bellicose protesters, we seem to have adjusted to the new normal. I can order books from our independent bookstore and have them delivered by the owner to my front door (who needs Amazon!). I buy takeout from my favorite local restaurants, where the owners come to my car. Sure, masks are required at our True Value and recommended at our County Market grocery store, but thats hardly anything to raise ones blood pressure. My wife visits her 97-year-old mom at her assisted living apartment by sitting at a safe distance outside while her mom sits inside behind her screened door.
RACINE  To protect some of Racines most vulnerable population  those without a home  the citys principal homeless shelter has had to make some major adjustments, largely moving residents out of the shelter into other safer locations.

At the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and other federal agencies overseeing homeless programs, the Homeless Assistance Leadership Organization, referred to as HALO, has dispersed its homeless clients from its congregate 120-bed shelter at 2000 DeKoven Ave. to a variety of non-congregate sheltering locations.

HALO Executive Director Gai Lorenzen told The Journal Times that HALO clients are being housed at undisclosed motels and other locations, declining to elaborate further to maintain client privacy.

HALOs case managers continue to provide case management and assist clients in obtaining other community services, Lorenzen said. Our housing program continues to operate with case managers calling clients frequently to determine needs and arrange for services, including food boxes, to meet those need . Were still providing services  just doing it a different way than were used to.

Shelter finds new use

With its homeless shelter facility standing unused at present as the COVID-19 pandemic runs its uncertain course, HALO is serving the Racine community in a new way by allowing Racine County to use the building as a temporary 14-bed isolation center for those with COVID-19.

Since the (shelter) building would have been empty for a period of time, it made sense, since they needed an isolation center, for HALO to allow it to be used for that purpose, Lorenzen said.

Lorenzen praised the collaborative public-private partnership  Racine County, the City of Racine, private contractors, HALO volunteers and others  that came together to reconfigure the shelter into a temporary COVID-19 isolation center.

Hope Otto, director of the Racine County Human Services Department, expressed her appreciation to HALO for their active role partnering with county in its COVID response initiatives.

We found that HALO was a great partner to work with for establishing our isolation center, she said. Its something that we would hope to not have to use  to quarantine  but in the probably likely event that we do its nice to have the (HALO) facility available.

Otto said the isolation center, to be operated by Racine County, is set up for 14 beds, with built-in flexibility for expansion to meet growing needs for COVID-19 quarantine isolation housing as they may arise. An opening date has not been announced.

Were incredibly grateful for the leadership that (HALO Board Chairman) Jim Henderson, Gai, and (HALO Deputy Director) Nina (Thilleman) have provided and the willingness for their staff to be the first line of responders to help people who are in the greatest need and are perhaps the most vulnerable populations during this pandemic, Otto said. Were incredibly grateful for their leadership and the community service that theyre doing.

Challenges moving forward

How the COVID-19 virus will impact the health and safety of those experiencing homelessness and hunger is as yet unknown according to Seth Raymond, executive director of the Hospitality Center, a day shelter in Downtown Racine, that now can only provide carry-out food.

The long term impacts on our most vulnerable residents remains to be seen, he said. For now we are doing our best to maintain a high level of service combined with accurate public health information.

Challenges also remain for these organizations moving forward in what has been a fluid and ever-changing situation.

The challenge, especially for the Hospitality Center, is that our model is really hospitality and community and so the limits on group size restrictions is really a challenge for us when we look at what our operations look like going forward, Raymond said.

Were starting to plan for what it might look like when the Badger Bounce Back program allows us to have 50 people congregating in the space  what kind of  measures would we have to put in place to make that work.

Since the (shelter) building would have been empty for a period of time, it made sense, since they needed an isolation center, for HALO to allow it to be used for that purpose. Gai Lorenzen,

HALO executive director

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Ground zero: A woman walks on a foggy street in Wuhan, the Chinese city hit the hardest by the coronavirus. Photo: REUTERS/Aly Song

Europe should brace itself for a second deadly wave of coronavirus because the pandemic is not over, the World Health Organisation's top official on the continent has warned.

Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, delivered a stark warning to countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions, saying that now is the "time for preparation, not celebration".

Dr Kluge stressed that, as the number of cases of Covid-19 in countries such as the UK, France and Italy was beginning to fall, it did not mean the pandemic was coming to an end. The centre of the European outbreak is now in the east, with the number of cases rising in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, he warned.

Countries should use this time wisely and start to strengthen public health systems as well as building capacity in hospitals, primary care and intensive care units, he said.

Dr Kluge also warned that a second wave could coincide with an outbreak of other infectious diseases.

"I'm very concerned about a double wave - in the autumn, we could have a second wave of Covid and another one of seasonal flu or measles. Two years ago, we had 500,000 children who didn't have their first shot of the measles vaccine," he said.

Many experts have warned a second wave of the pandemic could be even deadlier than the first, pointing to the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic.

When it first emerged in March 1918, it had the hallmarks of the typical seasonal illness - but it came back in an even more virulent and deadly form in the autumn, killing an estimated 50 million people.

"We know from history that in pandemics the countries that have not been hit early on can be hit in a second wave," said Dr Kluge.

"What are we going to see in Africa and Eastern Europe? They're behind the curve. Some countries are saying 'We're not like Italy' and then, two weeks later, boom! They can unfortunately get hit by a second wave, so we have to be very, very careful."

In the absence of an effective treatment or a vaccine, Dr Kluge said any lockdown had to be accompanied by rigorous public health measures including comprehensive contact tracing and testing.

Dr Kluge said public behaviour would play a key part in keeping the virus at bay as many countries begin to relax their lockdown restrictions.

"We are now at a fork in the road - where our actions and individual behaviour determines which path we follow," he said yesterday.

"Emergency fatigue threatens precious gains we have made against this virus. Reports of distrust in authorities and conspiracy thinking are fuelling movements against physical distancing, other people are behaving over-cautiously.

Immunity

"Our behaviour today will set the course for the pandemic. As governments lift restrictions, you, the people, are the main actors."

Meanwhile, no more than 5pc of the population of France and Spain have contracted the disease, say two studies in a major blow to hopes of "herd immunity".

A mere 4.4pc of the French population - or 2.8 million people - have been infected, according to findings of the Pasteur Institute published in the journal 'Science' and based on models applied to hospital and death data.

Even in the worst-hit parts of France - in the east and the Paris region - the infection rate reaches only between 9-10pc on average, it found.

Such figures are considerably higher than the official count of cases but far too low to effectively stop the spread of the virus through group immunity.

"Around 65pc of the population should be immune if we want to control the pandemic by the sole means of immunity," it said.

Herd immunity refers to a situation where enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop it spreading.

The Pasteur Institute's infection rates were measured on Monday, the day when France started to unwind its almost two-month national lockdown.

Strict confinement led to a drastic decline of coronavirus's reproduction rate, falling from 2.9 to 0.67 over the 55-day virtual standstill of the country, said the researchers.

However, its findings suggest that "without a vaccine, the herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lockdown. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld after May 11."

Globally, the number of people confirmed to have died from Covid-19 has risen over 300,000, with 1.5 million believed to have recovered. ( Daily Telegraph, London)

Visit our Covid-19 vaccine dashboard for updates on the roll out of the vaccination program and the rate of Coronavirus cases Ireland

Telegraph Media Group Limited [2021]
This seasons lineup included the Tanglewood regulars Yo-Yo Ma and Emanuel Ax, and popular traditions like John Williamss Film Night and a sold-out James Taylor concert on the Fourth of July. John Legend, Brandi Carlile and Patti LaBelle were also on the schedule.

Mark Volpe, the Boston Symphonys president and chief executive, said the organization explored various alternatives to canceling the season, at one point sending a drone up above the expansive lawn to think about how social distancing might work. But with the thousands of people who congregate each summer in lines to the bathrooms and walk back to their cars at the end of the evening, he said, it just wasnt feasible.

The cancellation affects hundreds of the Boston Symphonys 1,300 employees, Mr. Volpe said in an interview on Friday  particularly the part-time staff who spend the summer parking thousands of cars, cleaning the grounds, selling food and beverages and keeping the festival secure.

You take Tanglewood out of the Berkshires in the summer, and that basically drives the hospitality industry, which is a big part of their economy, Mr. Volpe said. So this has the potential to be devastating to our many partners in the business community in the Berkshires.

The Tanglewood cancellation accounts for a total loss of $12.4 million in expected ticket revenue for the Boston Symphony. The organization has had secure finances and a robust endowment under the tenure of Mr. Volpe, whose planned retirement in February 2021 will be pushed back until the board is able to find a successor.
PROTEST THIS

In reference to all the protesters, shoulder to shoulder, wanting everything to open now, Im wondering why no one is protesting the federal governments inadequate support for all of us to stay closed for however long it takes so we can all be safe from COVID-19.

LOOK AND SEE

Pennsylvania, so were counting. Isnt this interesting to know where most of our coronavirus is coming from  the incubation chambers, prisons and nursing homes run by the states. Thank you, brother Wolf.

ONE IS NOT THE OTHER

As a Democrat and as a woman who has been raped, I do want to know if the allegation against Biden is true. But Trump followers, dont get it twisted with all your righteous indignation. Trump has had allegation after allegation, even rape allegations, and you continue to adore him and defend him. Im not a Biden fan but hes far more compassionate and a much better human being than Trump. Trump is a narcissist, a probable sociopath, and pure evil. God help us.

MADE IN CHINA

China really needs to be held accountable for what they have exported to the entire world. They not only delayed what should have been a proper warning to the rest of the World, but have not fully cooperated with our U.S. scientists in entering their country and allowing them to get to the bottom of this and sharing the test results of their monkey experiments. Along with the World Health Organization, Wuhan has undermined the truth and has under-reported the number of real CORONA-19 cases! Since Im out over $5,000 of what would have been income, Im looking forward to our governments report when it is completed so that China can be held accountable. In the meantime I hope and trust that U.S. pharmaceutical companies will start making all the drugs that the U.S. is importing from them!

RIDDLEWOOD KEN

LITTLE BRAINS AT WORK

Enough is Enough shows just how infinitesimal the tiny little brains of Trump supporters are, talking about the mayor and the police chief of Media being dictators. You know, as I stated before, only the people like Enough is Enough are the ones that are going to get sick and die from the coronavirus. I would say go for it, knock yourself out. But the problem is these people are so stupid they dont even realize that they could infect somebody in their family, possibly, that could get sick and die from it.

SMH

LOVE ARLO AND JANIS

From yesterdays paper, The Last Laugh in South Off: It says show a hand. I really do think Arlo And Janis is the best cartoon. Thats part of the reason I buy the paper. I look at it every day, and thank you for still keeping up the paper. I enjoy reading. I buy your paper every day.

BONNIE

NO LAUGHING MATTER

I was going to be snide and wonder when this president was going to get back to campaigning in person, as hes been doing since he got elected. I was going to suggest a big love fest at, say, Lincoln Financial Field, where his adorers, defenders, and supporters could crowd together in the tens of thousands, without masks, cheering wildly, sharing a few beers. But of course, even as a joke, that would have been irresponsible and tasteless. Nothing about this situation is especially amusing. It would have been irresponsible because the people who would happily attend another of those rallies would, sadly and unfortunately, return to their homes and neighborhoods, supermarkets and whatever else is open. And that could have been a death sentence for some people back home  innocent family members, friends and neighbors. Its the innocent people these selfish ignoramuses would likely infect who would earn my sympathy. Not the selfish ignoramuses themselves. Not those who have temper tantrums because they cant get their nails done or get a haircut, and who do not care a whit about how their actions affect others. I simply cannot muster any sympathy or concern for them.

JB


The European Medicines Agency predicted that there could be drugs to treat the new coronavirus in the next few months. The organization added that a vaccine might be approved in early 2021.

Dr. Marco Cavaleri heads the European regulators vaccines department. He said Thursday that approving medicines to treat COVID-19 might be possible before the summer noting several current clinical trials.

A recent study in the United States suggested that the drug remdesivir could help patients recover from the coronavirus faster. Patients who received remdesivir recovered on average four days earlier than those who got the usual care. Earlier, animal studies showed remdesivir was effective against SARS and MERS, two diseases also caused by coronaviruses. It helped prevent infection and some symptoms when given early enough in the disease process.

In France, a group of hospitals reported success with use of another drug, Actemra, against COVID-19. In a study of 129 coronavirus patients, 65 were treated with the drug while the other patients received the usual care. The doctors did not release details, but said they were preparing to publish results. Actemra is used to treat rheumatoid arthritis and other diseases.

Doctors around the world are also trying a treatment for infections that is about 100 years old: giving blood plasma from recovered patients to sick ones. Plasma is the yellowish liquid part of blood. The blood from former patients is filled with protein molecules that fight infection. These molecules can help survivors defeat COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.



Developing a vaccine

On Monday, the World Health Organization chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said there are around seven or eight top candidates for a vaccine to combat COVID-19. He added work on the vaccines is being accelerated and helped with an additional $8 billion by 40 countries.

It usually takes years to develop a vaccine. But Cavaleri said that if some of the vaccines already being tested prove to be effective, they could be approved as early as the beginning of next year.

Cavaleri cautioned, however, that many experimental vaccines never make it to the end and that there are often delays.

But we can see the possibility that if everything goes as planned, vaccines could be approved a year from now, he said.

Some experts have proposed cancelling the requirement for large, extended clinical trials. But, Cavaleri said that was not currently being considered.

He said that could change if the situation worsened. Things may evolve as the pandemic will evolve and we will see if we need to do something else, Cavaleri said.



Some officials have warned that a vaccine for COVID-19 might never be found. They note that previous attempts to develop a vaccine against related coronaviruses like SARS and MERS have all failed. But Cavaleri believes that a vaccine could be discovered with new technologies being tried around the world.

South Africas President Cyril Ramaphosa, the chair of the African Union, said a vaccine is our best hope of ending this pandemic.

On Thursday, he joined more than 140 world leaders and health experts calling on all countries to unite behind a peoples vaccine against COVID-19. They asked that the vaccine be available to anyone around the world at no cost.

Im Jonathan Evans.

Hai Do wrote this story from Associated Press and VOA stories. Mario Ritter, Jr. was the editor.

________________________________________________________________

Words in This Story

clinical adj. related to testing and work done on real patients

symptom(s) n. a change in the body or mind that shows the presence of a disease

plasma n. the watery, yellowish part of the blood

accelerate v. to move faster or gain speed
NEW YORK, N.Y. -- Mayor Bill de Blasio has not spoken to Health Commissioner Dr. Oxiris Barbot in two days during the coronavirus pandemic, he said Friday, as calls for her resignation mount after she reportedly blew off a request from NYPD top brass for 500,000 surgical masks.

De Blasio said he plans to speak to Barbot sometime this weekend after she reportedly said she didnt give two rats asses about your cops, when asked by NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan for more protective face masks for cops.

Ive been speaking to the commissioner constantly throughout this  we have a team of health care leaders and Im speaking to any number of them each and every day, a couple days ago was the last time I talked to [Barbot], and again, were going to have a more detailed discussion this weekend, he told reporters during a press conference Friday.

For the second day in a row, Barbot did not join the mayors daily press briefing Friday which she typically attends to take questions from reporters.

De Blasio has refused to take any action or call for Barbots resignation before speaking to her and Monahan first about the heated exchange, first reported by the New York Post.

He said Friday he had already spoken to Monahan but did not elaborate on what they had discussed.

He said Thursday he did not know about the exchange between Barbot and Monahan but if the commissioner really said those remarks, she would need to apologize to the NYPD right away.

Sources told the New York Post that Barbot made those remarks during a phone conversation in late March with Monahan.

Monahan had reportedly asked Barbot for 500,000 masks but she said she could only provide 50,000, the sources told the Post.

I dont give two rats asses about your cops, Barbot reportedly said, according to Post sources. I need them for others.

The call took place as a number of cops were calling out sick with symptoms of the coronavirus.

After Barbot rebuffed NYPD officials, they reportedly learned that the citys Department of Health had a large stash of masks, ventilators and other equipment.

The Post reported that the NYPD appealed to City Hall, which then arranged for the NYPD to get 250,000 surgical masks.

Monahan later reportedly complained to de Blasio in front of Barbot about the NYPDs need for personal protective equipment, saying, For weeks, we havent gotten an answer.

De Blasio reportedly then told Barbot to fix this right now when Monahan said the gear was vital to keeping cops safe.

Following reports of the exchange, Staten Island politicians and law-enforcement unions have been calling for Barbot to be fired.

Rep. Max Rose and his congressional rival Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis are among the list of Island pols who think Barbot should get the boot.

FOLLOW SYDNEY KASHIWAGI ON TWITTER.

*** CLICK HERE FOR COMPLETE COVERAGE OF CORONAVIRUS IN NEW YORK***
Local journalist at a major newspaper arrested on terror charges, a move sharply condemned by press advocacy groups.

Egyptian officials have arrested a journalist at a major newspaper on terrorism charges, his lawyer said, a move a global press advocacy group called a brutal campaign against journalists in the country.

Security officers burst into the home of Haisam Hasan Mahgoub in the capital of Cairo earlier this week, confiscating his phone and arresting him, lawyer Karim Abdelrady said.

Mahgoub, a regular correspondent at the independent Egyptian daily, Al-Masry Al-Youm, was questioned by prosecutors on Wednesday and detained on charges of joining and financing a terrorist group as well as spreading fake news that threatens national security, Abdelrady said.

The prosecutors did not specify what constituted fake news.

Another journalist, freelance photographer Moataz Abdel Wahab, faces charges in the same case, Abdelrady added.

Egyptian officials have increasingly deployed the vague accusation of fake news to silence and jail critics in the governments sweeping and often indiscriminate crackdown on dissent.

Among dozens of 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.

Alaa Abdelfattah was re-arrested in #Egypt in September 2019. Recently, his family posted on social media saying that his "life is in danger." Today, on #InternationalDayOfFamilies, CPJ recognizes all the families of imprisoned journalists. No journalist should be imprisoned. pic.twitter.com/qiqHb5f9gG  Committee to Protect Journalists (@pressfreedom) May 15, 2020

Brutal campaign to silence journalists

In a statement emailed to Al Jazeera, the International Press Institute (IPI) criticised Egypt for Mahgoubs arrest, describing it as part of a brutal campaign of President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi to silence critical journalists.

The Egyptian government continues to brazenly violate press freedom by arresting journalists, raiding media outlets and blocking news websites to stifle criticism, while the international community has turned a blind eye to the harassment of journalists in the country, IPI director of advocacy Ravi R Prasad said.

The international community should hold Egypts authoritarian regime accountable for the violation of human rights.

The IPI said Egypt has waged an aggressive campaign against the independent media, with more than 60 journalists behind bars in the country.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, a New York-based watchdog, linked Mahgoubs arrest to a clampdown that has accelerated in the shadow of the coronavirus pandemic, noting that he had recently covered human interest stories about the health crisis.

While some governments worldwide pardon prisoners during the time of COVID-19, Egypt is determined to keep its prisons full of journalists instead of letting them cover the pandemic and other news events freely, said Sherif Mansour, the groups Middle East and North Africa coordinator.

Egypts interior ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Since coming to power in 2013, el-Sisi has sought to quash opposition, branding his critics as terrorists and forcing news outlets to follow the official line or disappear.

Last week, el-Sisi approved amendments to the countrys emergency law, citing the coronavirus, with officials claiming the new measures were needed to address the legal vacuum caused by the outbreak.

The government is using the COVID-19 emergency to further tighten its grip, rights groups say.

In March, Egypt expelled a correspondent for the United Kingdom newspaper The Guardian over an article that indicated the coronavirus infection rate might be higher than officially reported.

Over a dozen people have been detained or slapped with steep fines over social media posts or reporting about the outbreak, according to Amnesty International.
ETX Daily Up

After the success of the first initiative that saw houses sold for one euro in the village of Sambuca in Italy, the town hall has relaunched the project with the arrival of a new batch. By partnering with Airbnb, for example, the mayor of Sambuca hopes to attract new participants, especially with remote working becoming a possibility for an increasing number of people.
Former atheist turned Christian recording artist Lecrae paid tribute to Ravi Zacharias before his recent passing.

Lecrae made a post on Facebook offering his praises to the widely known Christian apologist.

Because of Ravi Zacharias, I had answers to hard questions, he said. Who wouldve thought a tour bus full of young rappin city kids would go in between watching hip hop awards shows to theological debates and lectures? I just want to give this man his roses while hes still here. I know God is likely taking him home soon, but Im glad he was here during my lifetime.

Lecrae, along with an array of other celebrities chose to pay their respects publicly after Zacharias daughter and CEO of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries, Saran Davis gave an update on her father.

We have just learned that, while the tumor in my dads sacrum has been responding to the chemotherapy, the area where the cancer metastasized has actually worsened, she wrote in a statement. His oncologist informed us that this cancer is very rare in its aggression and that no options for further treatment remain. Medically speaking, they have done all they are able.

The Texas native hasnt been afraid to share his past struggles when transitioning from an atheist to a Christian, and he has faced criticism from some in the faith community for his continued ties with secular artists.

Ive been atheist, agnostic, seen the institutionalization of Christianity and wanted to throw it all away. Ive felt the hatred of people who claim to love God and it discouraged me. Ive tried to walk away but grace kept me, Lecrae once admitted.

Lecrae says because of the knowledge he has of Jesus, he has a relationship with God and rejects religion. He also revealed that after concerts he would spend hours poring over Zacharias faith based videos and lectures.

I didnt grow up in church; I dont know all the cultural rules and norms. Im a lil unorthodox, I dont call myself religious. Religion to me is following rules hoping to be right with God, the recording artist said.
Eli Beer, founder and president of United Hatzalah, saying the Shema upon arriving in Israel after battling COVID-19 for six weeks at a hospital in Miami, Fla.

(JNS)-United Hatzalah of Israel, the country's largest independent volunteer emergency medical response organization, put on an online fundraising telethon on Sunday to support the group's coronavirus fund.

Dubbed "Saving Lives Sunday: A Streaming Event Honoring First Responders and Welcoming Home Eli Beer," the program highlighted the life-saving work of the organization's 6,000 volunteer first responders, in addition to paying tribute to the organization's founder and president, Eli Beer, who just returned to Israel after surviving a six-week battle against COVID-19 in a Miami hospita...
I went to a music gig on Thursday, my first since the pandemic hit. When I arrived, there were no parking spots left at the venue  typical. I parked on the street nearby and walked toward the sound of I aint seen the sunshine since, I dont know when 

Johnny Cashs Folsom Prison Blues was being sung by local musician John Curry. His audience? The senior residents of The Village of the Heights, an assisted living facility in the near-north Houston neighborhood. About two dozen of them and staff members sat on chairs spread out in front of the building. Several more viewed the show from the balconies above. The attire was casual, although a couple residents dressed up for the occasion; a two-piece ensemble covered in a red rose pattern could be spotted in the crowd.
The World Health Organisation in 2019 designated 2020 to be The International year of the Nurse and the Midwife.

The nursing team in Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital is very proud of the work nurses do and has for many years joined with numerous other countries internationally to celebrate their role and the contribution they make to patient care.

Tuesday May 12 was selected as the date to celebrate international nurse's day many years ago as it coincides with the birthday of Florence Nightingale.

'2020 was planned to be our biggest celebration yet, with events organised to take place throughout the year, however due to the current Covid 19 pandemic our focus so far has been on maintaining the physical and mental health of our patients, our staff and the community,' a spokesperson stated.

'It's ironic that our theme for the international day of the nurse this year is - Nurses: A voice to lead - Nursing the world to Health.

'2020 is the year of the nurse and the midwife, the eyes of the world are on our profession in a way that we could not have anticipated, Nurses along with all health care workers and many other workers not directly involved in health but also required to maintain our essential services are with us in the spotlight and this tragic pandemic is revelling the irreplaceable work we all do.

'Our community has played a blinder in co-operating with the government's advice for maintaining social distancing to help us all fight this pandemic.'

To mark the International Day, some of Drogheda's historical buildings are going blue in celebration of the care, compassion and commitment of all the nursing staff.
New Delhi: Paytm Payments Bank Limited (PPB) has said that it will deliver cash at home to support senior citizens in Delhi NCR.

The cash withdrawal request can be raised through the banks app. Senior citizens can request for cash of minimum Rs 1000 and maximum Rs 5000, through this facility.

Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma holds 51 per cent share in Paytm Payments Bank, while the rest is held by One97 Communications.

Paytm Payments Bank claims to have already crossed Rs 1,000 crore in savings accounts.

The payments bank had earlier said that it has crossed Rs 600 crore in fixed deposit accounts as it witnessed growth during the lockdown period due to volatility in other assets.

"Paytm Payments Bank Ltd (PPBL) has crossed Rs 600 crores in fixed deposit accounts held with its partner IndusInd Bank," PBBL said in a statement.

PPBL offers its customers the choice to opt for a fixed deposit account with its partner bank, allowing them to earn up to 7 percent per annum interest, which is among the highest in the industry.

In April, a survey was done by done by consultancy firm Local Circles that showed that the nationwide lockdown has benefited digital payment platforms as 42 per cent Indians have increased the use of digital means for payments since after the lockdown was announced.

Buying essentials and mobile recharges are top use cases for digital payments, the survey found.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

Kazakhstan will send food products to Afghanistan as humanitarian aid, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

The topic was discussed during a phone call between Kazakhstans Minister of Foreign Affairs Mukhtar Tleuberdi and Afghanistans Minister of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Hanif Atmar.

The parties discussed future prospects of Kazakh-Afghan cooperation in political, trade and economic, and humanitarian areas.

Tleuberdi also informed Atmar on Kazakhstans decision to provide Afghanistan with humanitarian aid. In turn, Atmar expressed gratitude and noted that the Afghan side appreciates the assistance provided by Kazakhstans government.

He also said that Afghanistan is interested in importing grain and products of its processing from Kazakhstan. He further expressed Afghanistans interest in strengthening cooperation in the transit, transport and energy sectors, as well as in continuing the educational program offered by Kazakhstan for Afghan citizens.

Earlier this month Kazakhstan has sent humanitarian aid to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of provided support to countries during the COVID-19 outbreak.

On March 15, 2020, Kazakhstans president signed a decree introducing an emergency state in Kazakhstan due to the coronavirus outbreak, which came in force on March 16 and was to last till April 15, 2020.

Later, by a decree of Kazakhstan's president, the emergency state period in Kazakhstan was extended till May 1, 2020, and then till May 11, 2020.

The first two cases of coronavirus infection were detected in Kazakhstan among those who arrived in Almaty city from Germany on March 13, 2020.

The total number of coronavirus cases confirmed in Kazakhstan since the virus was first confirmed in the country amounted to 5,689 cases. This includes 2,639 people who recovered from the coronavirus, and 34 patients who passed away.

---

Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh


AMSTERDAM (dpa-AFX) - The Netherlands' goods exports declined for the first time in ten months in March and imports fell for the second straight month, and household consumption decreased at a record pace, amid coronavirus pandemic, figures from the Dutch statistical office CBS showed on Friday.



Merchandise exports fell 4.0 percent year-on-year in March, after a 0.9 percent increase in February. This was the first decline recorded after May last year, when exports fell 0.3 percent.



The latest decline was largely due to weaker demand for machinery and transport equipment, largely from Germany and the UK.



In March, exports of petroleum and chemical products were higher than a year earlier, the agency said.



Imports decreased 3.7 percent annually in March, following a 1.2 percent fall in the prior month. This was mainly due to lesser demand for minerals, means of transport and clothing.



Circumstances for exports in May are less favorable than in March, the CBS said, as German and European producer confidence was lower. Further, the opinion of both Dutch and European industrial entrepreneurs about their foreign order position deteriorated and the contraction of German industrial production was greater than in the previous month.



Separate data from the statistical office showed that the household consumption dropped 6.7 percent year-on-year in March, after a 0.9 percent rise in February. This was the largest contraction ever measured.



Households boosted their spending on essentials such as food and reduced expenditure on services and durable goods. Spending on food and beverages grew a record 9.1 percent in March.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de
Local official said an entire block in one camp, housing about 5,000 people, was shut off after a confirmed case.

Emergency teams were moving swiftly on Friday to prevent a coronavirus nightmare in the worlds largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a camp housing nearly a million Rohingya in Bangladesh.

Local government official Mahfuzar Rahman said on Friday an entire block in one camp, housing approximately 5,000 people, was shut off.

More:

We have locked down the block, barring anyone from entering or leaving their homes, he said.

Rahman added that they were also trying to contact-trace people the infected person had met and they would all be brought to isolation centres set up in the camps.

A senior advocate for Refugees International, Daniel Sullivan, said the first COVID-19 case was the realisation of a nightmare scenario.

A senior US official who has visited the refugees said it was only a matter of time for the virus to reach them.

The refugee camp is incredibly crowded. The COVID virus will spread through there very rapidly, said Sam Brownback, the ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom.

On Thursday, local health coordinator Abu Toha Bhuiyan said two refugees had tested positive.

But the World Health Organization (WHO) later said one case was a Rohingya man, and the other was a local man who lived near the camp and was being treated at a clinic inside the area.

WHO spokesman Catalin Bercaru told the AFP news agency that rapid investigation teams were being deployed and that the mens contacts were being traced for quarantine and testing.

Shamim Jahan from Save the Children said we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19, with no intensive care beds in the camps.

Virus warnings

There have long been warnings that the virus could spread like wildfire through the cramped, sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in the Coxs Bazar district bordering Myanmar.

Most of the Muslim refugees have been there since about 750,000 fled a 2017 military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar for which its government is facing genocide charges at the UNs top court.

In early April, authorities had locked down the surrounding Coxs Bazar district  home to 3.4 million people including the refugees  after a number of COVID-19 cases.

Bangladesh restricted traffic in and out of the camps and forced aid organisations to slash manpower by 80 percent.

The country of 160 million people is under lockdown and has seen a rapid rise in coronavirus cases in recent days, with almost 19,000 confirmed infections and 300 deaths as of Thursday.

Rights groups and others have also criticised Bangladesh for cutting internet access in the camps, which authorities say is to combat drug trafficking and other alleged criminal activities.

The lack of internet access has meant that information is hard to come by and that rumours abound, for example that coronavirus is always fatal.

Open communication is critical to promoting hygiene awareness and tracking the spread of the disease, Sullivan said.

I have been calling on the Bangladeshi government to give internet access. It just seems to me ludicrous that theyre not, Brownback told reporters in Washington, DC.
By Jessica Jaganathan

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - India's Gujarat State Petroleum Corp (GSPC) is seeking liquefied natural gas (LNG) for the first time since March, when it issued force majeure notices to its suppliers, as the South Asian country starts to ease a nearly seven-week lockdown.

GSPC is seeking five LNG cargoes for delivery over July to December, two industry sources said on Friday.

The tender closes on May 20, one of them said.

GSPC was one of three Indian companies to issue force majeure notices to their suppliers in late March as domestic gas demand and port operations were hit by a nationwide lockdown to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

GSPC in late March cancelled an earlier tender to import 11 cargoes for deliveries in May 2020 to March 2021.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said this week that India would look to ease its lockdown. The government has already allowed some economic activity to resume in areas where there are few cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

(Reporting by Jessica Jaganathan; Editing by Shri Navaratnam and Tom Hogue)
The question Ive been asked most frequently over the past 15 years has been When are you coming to Canada? says Holly Thaggard. Thats because since launching Supergoop!, the only prestige brand solely dedicated to sun care, Thaggard has revolutionized the category with her cheery, hassle-free formulas. They make slathering SPF a treat for the senses rather than feeling like a chore. But until today, regulations prevented Canadians from getting their hands on them.

Luckily, that all changes now as four of the brands hero products have finally landed on sephora.ca. We chatted with Thaggard to get the lowdown on the Supergoop!s northern expansion and ask the all-important question: What took so long?

Why was it so difficult to get Supergoop! into Canada? From a regulatory perspective, its not easy when your whole line is built on SPF. Both mineral and chemical [sunscreen] formulas are thought of very differently in Canada. Theres a different process for both. We actually hired someone about two and a half years ago to focus just on that. Thats how overwhelming it was. So Im super excited its finally happening.

Take me back to the beginning of Supergoop! What led you to launch a sun care line? So, my background was not actually in the beauty industry. Out of college, I was a third-grade school teacher, but after a year, I started to feel very confined to the four walls of the classroom. Im also a professional harpist, so I spent the better part of my 20s performing. I played a little backup for Aretha Franklin and travelled playing the harp. The whole idea for Supergoop! came after I met my husband, and a mutual friend of ours was diagnosed with skin cancer. My college roommate was going through her residency in dermatology, and I was talking with her about this, and she said, Holly, its not just about the beach. Its every single day. That little exposure that you get is cumulative. Thats when the entrepreneurial side kicked in. My parents are both entrepreneurs, and they taught me from a very young age to always look for the white space in things. I looked at the industry and, in the U.S., it was incredibly sleepy. It was owned by mass drugstore brands and was very seasonal. Big displays were put out in the summer then removed by fall. I learned through my research that one in five people gets diagnosed with skin cancer. Its the most common cancer in the world. I wanted to change the way the world thinks about sunscreen.

How did you want your brand to be different? The chemical formulations were full of very controversial ingredients, and the mineral ones were really heavy and thick and pasty. I was like, I get it, I get why nobodys wearing SPF every single day and were not teaching our youth to wear it. I recalled from my days of teaching that I never saw a tube of sunscreen on the playground. We teach our kids healthy habits like brushing their teeth, washing their hands at lunch, but SPF was not something we were prioritizing. From there, it was a matter of How do I create options that feel great on the skin and that people will want to wear? I used to hide peas in my childrens peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when they were younger. Thats how I think about SPF. We hide it in beautiful skin care products that are multi-functional and feel so great youd want to put them on at night.

How did you manage to achieve that? Its interesting. Our president, Amanda, who joined the team when I decided I needed help with the things I wasnt particularly skilled at, came from the beauty industry and her question was always Do you know how hard it is? She understood that nobody in the beauty industry wanted to touch SPF because its a nightmare. But because Id never done anything but SPF, its all that I knew. Its challenging, but thats what makes it fun and rewarding, knowing youre creating something for consumers that doesnt exist and is going to help them keep their skin healthy. That means thinking beyond your own skin type and tone, or your climate and activities, so that everyone can build their own SPF wardrobe.

Interesting. Why is it important to have a wardrobe of sun protection? You need to have not one SPF that youre going to wear every single day, but several different products that you can layer together in order to get the SPF claim. I say that because I know how much product goes into testing to get that claim and most people are not applying sunscreen as generously as they should be. You need to rely on multiple layers, starting with your hydration level. In Canada, we have two options for that, Zincscreen, which is a 100 per cent mineral or Daily Screen, which is the bouncy, clean chemical formula. Then your next step would be your primer. In Canada, were launching Unseen, which serves as a makeup-gripping primer. Were also launching the invisible setting powder, which is highly water- and sweat-resistant. Its also a great way to reapply sunscreen throughout the day, which is the key to keeping your skin healthy. Every SPF begins to break down the second you walk outside and oftentimes, people will fail to reapply throughout the day. A lot of people also use [the powder] on their hair part. Its a great way to protect your scalp without messing up your hair.

Your messaging is so joyful and distinct from traditional sun care brands. Why was that important for you? Our brand motto is live bright because we want everyone to get outside and enjoy the sunshine, but be smart about it and take care of their skin. So many sunscreen brands try to scare people into wearing SPF. We talk more about embracing the sunshine and how good it makes you feel, while being mindful of protecting your skin.

Supergoop! products:

Supergoop! Re(setting) Powder SPF 45, $40, Dailyscreen Moisturizer SPF 40, $50, Unseen Sunscreen SPF 40, $45, Zincscreen Mineral Lotion, $55, sephora.ca

This article contains affiliate links, which means The Kit may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by advertising. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information.

Katherine Lalancette is the beauty director of The Kit, based in Toronto. She writes about beauty and trends. Reach her on email at kl@thekit.ca or follow her on Twitter: @kik_tweets
There are certain things that are best left to the experts. If you want some beer, instead of making it on your own, youre better off going to shop and getting a pint for yourself. If you want to want a suit, you go to a bespoke tailor and get one made, or buy something off the rack; you wont get some cloth and make one on your own right?

 iStock

Similarly, when you want to make a statue or a sculpture, it would be best if you go to the professionals, or if you can, get in touch with Madame Tussauds. If you dont do that, you end up with something that is far from what you would normally expect.

 Twitter/MadameTussauds

The one in Madame Tussauds, London, is genuinely a good statue, and it drew hundreds of visitors a day, before the world went for a toss. Seriously, if you want to dedicate a statue to someone, they are guys you give a call.

 Twitter/MadameTussauds

Often when you buy stuff online, you may face some issues. This happens more so when youre buying clothes and shoes. However, in some cases, the difference between expectation and reality is a little too much to handle.

 Instagram/memelord

With the entire saga around the Dholera city project picking up steam, a Twitter user, who goes by the name of Aatmanirbhar Ballu, put up a photograph of a statue of Prime Minister Modi. To put it mildly, it isnt exactly what one would imagine it to be. Here, take a look.



The statue is very wrong, on a number of levels. And trust us when we say that Twitter had a field day. From being called, a fusion between Amit Shah, and PM Modi, to some other hilarious memes, this thread proved to be a goldmine. Here are some of the really hilarious ones.

We had the same reaction...

Thats a good one...

It's Naremit Moshah  Vikrant (@VikrantChangal May 14, 2020

Again, a good one

Oh, we dot want that to happen. We tell you, over enthusiastic fans always create problems... ( Embed -

Aise idea mat do bhai.....



Jaise hi time milega , crores kharcha kar ke ek aur statue bana denge ye log  LogicIndia (@india_logic May 14, 2020

Resource management my friend... ( Embed -

Good instead of making two statues of modi ji nd shah ji they have included both in one. Great job.  Whatever (@immmmmmmmmmlove May 15, 2020

Apple fan bois triggered

We loved Dragon Ball Z, too!

Fusion of Modiji and mota bhai pic.twitter.com/ReOvS2hVie  Sayyed Farhan (@Farhan2306 May 14, 2020

Even Obama be like.

Confisiya gae ke mota bhai Hain ya chhota Bhai..#DholeraSmartCity pic.twitter.com/BfISaW0tnM  Abby (@abbi_007 May 14, 2020

Kisne, indeed

All were saying is, come on, the man deserves better. Surely we have better sculptors who can do a better job. And seriously, if you want to make a statue, come with a proper budget next time.
Bike-borne miscreants



shot dead a 55-year-old man, who is the husband of a village head, in Bihar's Vaishali district on Friday.

The incident took place at Panapur chowk under the jurisdiction of Bidupur police station when four men riding two motorbikes started firing at Luv Kumar Singh injuring him seriously, Sadar Sub-Divisional Police Officer Raghav Dayal said.

He was initially taken to a local primary health centre and then to a private hospital in Patna, where he died.

Singh was the husband of Punam Devi, the village head ('Mukhiya') of Dilawarpur Govardhan panchayat.

The police recovered five empty cartridges from the incident spot, Dayal said, adding that the reasons behind the killing are being investigated.

The body has been sent to Sadar hospital in Hajipur for post-mortem examination.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The coronavirus pandemic has put the entire country in a state of lockdown. Bollywood stars have come out and set an example by doing their bit to help India in its battle with the coronavirus. Sonakshi Sinha joined the list of those Bollywood stars by putting her star power to a good cause and came up with a lovely idea.Recently, the actress made a post on social media urging her fans for donations which will be used for the creation of PPE kits. Today, the actress shared pictures in which cartons of the same are visible. Along with sharing the pictures, the actress revealed that kits will be sent to Sardar Patel hospital in Pune, a city which is a major coronavirus hotspot in the country. Sonakshis caption for the post read, All you lovely people! Heres the outcome of us coming together for our #CoronaWarriors!!! Thank you SO much for your trust and generosity!!! A large consignment of top grade PPE material is leaving the factory for Sardar Patel Hospital, #Pune right now Lets continue to protect our frontline medicos together shall we?!? (To donate go to www.tring.co.in/sonakshi-sinha). This made my day, and im sure itll make yours too!! LOTS of love and thanks again.Now that is how you use your star power to help others!
TOLLAND, Conn.  A 21-year-old Sturbridge woman died of injuries suffered Thursday night in a collision with another vehicle on Interstate 84 in Tolland, according to Connecticut State Police.

Madison L. Wetnicka of Sturbridge died at Hartford Hospital of injuries suffered in the crash, which happened just before 6 p.m. on I-84 between exits 68 and 69.

She was transported to the hospital by a helicopter ambulance.

Police said Wetnicka was traveling east in the right lane when she attempted to move to the center lane. Her Toyota Scion made contact with another vehicle, a Subaru Outback driven by Yetzaveli Cervantes Almonte of Willington, Connecticut.

As a result of the contact, Wetnickas car went off the road and into the median strip, where it began to roll over. She was ejected from the vehicle, police said.

Wetnicaka was not wearing a seat belt, according to police.

Cervantes Almonte was not injured.

According to the Hartford Courant, the eastbound lanes of I-84 were closed for about four hours while state police investigated the crash.
The Chinese government has been accused of creating the coronavirus pandemic thanks to its 'gross negligence, obsessive secrecy and brazen dishonesty'.

Its communist leaders are even using the catastrophe to advance their interests abroad while the weakened world struggles with death and recession, the United States ambassador to Australia claimed.

Describing Chinese president Xi Jingping's regime as 'bullies', ambassador Arthur B Culvahouse accused the nation of capitalising on the crisis for its own economic gain.

The country stands accused of covering up the existence of COVID-19 when it began spreading throughout China, killing 4,600 people.

A wet market in the Chinese city of Guangzhou is seen open on May 4 (pictured) despite such markets believed to be the source of the coronavirus outbreak

United States Ambassador to Australia Arthur B Culvahouse (pictured, left, in January with Prime Minister Scott Morrison, right) accused China of 'obsessive secrecy'

Officials believe that if Jingping's government had been honest from the beginning of the outbreak, countless lives could have been saved.

Writing a blog about America and Australia's 'unbreakable alliance', Mr Culvahouse said China had 'exported the virus to the world'.

'What Foreign Minister Marise Payne rightly referred to as destabilising activities are hardly new tactics from the CCP playbook,' he wrote.

'But they are being pursued with shocking new vigour as the rest of the world is focused on combating the COVID-19 pandemic.

'One which the CCP  through gross negligence, obsessive secrecy and brazen dishonesty  first covered up while exporting it to the world.

Workers at a factory in Wuhan are seen being tested for the coronavirus on May 15 (pictured) after the city ended its lockdown

Vendors wearing masks sell seafood on Xihua Farmer's Market in Guangzhou, China on May 4 (pictured)

'Sadly, in this playbook creating a global pandemic is treated as one more opportunity to advance geo-strategic objectives.'

Australian relations with China have been heavily strained since Mr Morrison - among other world leaders - began pushing for a global inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

His comments come as Australia secured the support of the European Union's top foreign minister to launch an independent inquiry into the pandemic.

An important EU motion is underway to help bring about the inquiry, which Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been aiming for for weeks.

Locals in Wuhan, the epicentre of the coronavirus pandemic, are seen being tested on May 14 (pictured)

Australian relations with China have been heavily strained since Scott Morrison began pushing for a global inquiry into coronavirus (pictured, Chinese President Xi Jinping)

The EU's Foreign Affairs High Representative and Vice President Josep Borrell told The Age that such an inquiry was critical.

'To strengthen our defences against future pandemics, we also need a thorough, independent scientific inquiry into the origins of the crisis,' he said.

China has been lobbying for the inquiry to be stopped before it begins, claiming it is 'politically motivated'.

But both the United States and the United Kingdom have backed Mr Morrison's calls to uncover the origins of COVID-19.

Street vendors in Wuhan are seen selling seafood on the streets (pictured) despite the coronavirus thought to have originated in one of its wet markets

A woman is seen selling meat a market in Wuhan on Friday (pictured), the epicentre of the deadly coronavirus

China has since hit Australia with $1 billion trade strikes on its barley and beef.

It is now feared that the Chinese government is set to slap further restrictions on Australian exports in retaliation to Mr Morrison's calls for the international inquiry.

China's state-controlled media and trade experts warned Beijing's boycott could extend beyond beef and barley, with iron ore - worth $63billion a year to Australia's economy - potentially next in line.

The Global Times newspaper, a mouthpiece for the communist government, suggested China could easily turn to Brazil for iron ore and other commodities - and did not need Australian exports.

Bombshell 'Five Eyes' Western intelligence dossier claims China lied about coronavirus China lied about the human-to-human transmission of coronavirus, made whistleblowers disappear and refused to help nations develop a vaccine, a leaked intelligence dossier reveals. The 15-page document drawn up by the Five Eyes security alliance brands Beijing's secrecy over the pandemic an 'assault on international transparency' and points to cover-up tactics deployed by the regime. It claims that the Chinese government silenced its most vocal critics and scrubbed any online scepticism about its handling of the health emergency from the internet. A staff member is picture carrying out nucleic acid testing work at a novel coronavirus detection lab in Wuhan on February 22 China has roundly come under fire for suppressing the scale of its early outbreak which did not afford other nations time to react before the disease hit their shores. Five Eyes - the pooling of intelligence by the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand - laid bare its scathing assessment of the Xi Jinping administration in a memo obtained by the Australian Saturday Telegraph. The smoking gun file claims to have found evidence the virus spawned in the Wuhan Institute of Virology, close to the wet market China says it came from and unearths 'risky' research on bat-related diseases stretching back years. It describes how Beijing was outwardly downplaying the outbreak on the world stage while secretly scrambling to bury all traces of the disease. China's alleged actions involved 'destroying' laboratory samples, bleaching wet market stalls, censoring the growing evidence of 'silent carriers' of the virus and stonewalling sample requests from other countries. The secrecy has fanned a clamour in Five Eyes nations for Western governments to come down hard on Beijing when the pandemic eventually passes. Tory MP Bob Seely told MailOnline that 'at the end of this when the dust settles it is also clear that there has to be a re-evaluation by the West of its relationship with China'. Advertisement

'The latest meat import suspension and the possible imposition of major tariffs on Australia's barley exports don't necessarily represent China's economic punishment for Australia,' the Global Times said on Wednesday.

'Though they may serve as a wake-up call for Australia to reflect on its economic links with China.

'While China is the only choice for Australia's massive commodity exports, Australia is not necessarily the only option for China.

Australia's biggest trading partners 1. China: 25.2 per cent 2. Japan: 10.1 per cent 3. United States: 8.7 per cent 4. South Korea: 4.8 per cent 5. Singapore: 3.8 per cent 6. India: 3.6 per cent 7. New Zealand: 3.4 per cent 8. United Kingdom: 3.2 per cent 9. Thailand: 3.0 per cent 10. Malaysia: 2.8 per cent Source: Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade data on market share for two-way trading partners as of 2018 Advertisement

'There are also other countries like Brazil that can supply huge amounts of iron ore, coal or LNG to China.'

Professor Willy Lam from the Chinese University of Hong Kong told the AFR China would continue to use 'economic coercion for political ends' because it 'doesn't want an independent inquiry into Wuhan'.

'This is well orchestrated and co-ordinated [by Beijing]. I think we will see more of this. This [coronavirus] is a weak spot in the narrative,' he said.

This week China suggested it would impose an 80 per cent tariff on Australian barley - and has already suspended imports of Australian beef from four major suppliers.

One third of Australia's exports - including iron ore, gas, coal and food - go to China, bringing in around $135 billion per year.

China has so far ignored Australia's attempts to discuss trade tensions over beef and barley imports, and state governments fear they could become the meat in the sandwich as the trade tangle heats up.

Federal Trade Minister Simon Birmingham confirmed his Chinese counterpart had not responded to requests for talks to end the diplomatic row.

'We have not secured said meeting yet. I would hope that would be forthcoming,' he told parliament on Wednesday.

But he later said it was more appropriate that industry sort out the problems with Chinese administrators directly.
Returning to class for the first time after the attack, Huyen wore a wig to cover a dent to her head and a lost ear.

Taking a deep breath, teacher Dang Thi Thanh Huyen entered her class at an English center near her house in Hanoi's Gia Lam District. Her students were surprised to see their teacher after a long period of absence.

- "What happened to your face?"

- "I got burned."

- "When will you recover?"

A beaming Huyen, 35, commenced the lesson, having never dreamed her life would be the same after an acid attack by her former husband.

The couple divorced in 2017, though Huyen had agreed to cohabitation for the sake of their daughter. In March 2018, during a fight, the husband threw acid over her body, in front of their child and Huyen's father.

"Five seconds later, I felt my body shrinking like a plastic bag on fire," she recalled. Guessing it was acid, she told her daughter not to touch her.

Huyen was taken to the National Institute of Burns where she spent five days in coma, the doctor informing her family to prepare for the worst.

Dang Thi Thanh Huyen and Dr. Vu Quang Vinh at the National Institute of Burns in 2019. Photo courtesy of Huyen.

When Huyen finally woke, she found her body covered in bandages. With her vision severely affected, she was bedridden for four months, entirely dependent on her father.

"I thought I could help my parents, but at the time, even pouring a glass of water proved impossible," Huyen recalled. When she cried, the tears stung her face. More than once, she considered suicide, "but I had no energy to kill myself."

She learned to speak like a baby, and five months later, was allowed to visit her little daughter who, after careful explanation, merely touched her mother's arms.

"I was less shocked to see myself in the mirror than by my daughter not recognizing me," Huyen said.

Following cranial surgery and skin graft, she started feeling better.

During rehabilitation, painkillers provided some relief, her body, and specifically her neck so scarred she could hardly tilt her head to drink water.

"My skin was stretched like a rope about to break. Sometimes the wounds bled, but I had to be patient," she recalled. Her parents hid all the mirrors at home to avoid their daughter failing into depression, but Huyen showed courage, photographing her face daily to witness her improvement.

In 2018, she moved to the hospitals Centre for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. After 28 operations, Huyen's face had recovered by up to 80 percent.

A newly confident Huyen has proven nothing can keep her down. Photo by VnExpress/Pham Nga.

"Of all the cases I have worked on, Huyen was one of the most serious, but I never saw her complain or be pessimistic," said Dr. Vu Quang Vinh, director of the Centre for Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery, adding she regularly encouraged fellow patients.

According to Vinh, one patient once wanted to commit suicide, but Huyen empowered her with stories, encouraging her to survive.

While at hospital, Huyen taught a nurse's child twice a week, completed several online courses and utilized social networks to keep abreast of news.

Huyen founded "Cong Dong Nan Nhan Bong Viet Nam" (Vietnam Burn Victims Community) for victims and their loved ones to share their experiences.

"Each of us has our own tragedy."

Huyen before the acid attack. Photo courtesy of Huyen.

Earlier this year, she was discharged. Doctors told her to stay at home, take rest, and prepare for more reconstruction surgeries. Huyen wants to return to work to earn some more money.

Looking at her mother's face, Nhim, the daughter, is now happier and more talkative then she used to be. That gave Huyen a lot of confidence.

"I am not too depressed looking at myself in the mirror," Huyen said, adding she is not ready to see her friends.

The English teacher is grateful for the supports she received from her family and students. She does not want to mention the person causing all the pain anymore.

"This body is just temporary. The most important thing is the ease of mind. I just want to live happily, make up for my daughter's loss and support my parents."
President Muhammadu Buhari, today May 13 officially announced renowned diplomat, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, as his new Chief of Staff.

Former Aviation Minister, Femi Fani-Kayode, expressed his displeasure over the appointment, and also has shared his thoughts in an article he titled ENTER THE PRESIDENTS NEW CHIEF OF STAFF.

FFK in his article says this is the first time in Nigerias history that we will be having a Fulani President and a Fulani Chief of Staff.

Gambari replaces late Abba Kyari who died in April.

200 years ago the Aare Kakanfo of the ancient Oyo Empire and the self-proclaimed Oba of Ilorin, Aare Afonja, rebelled against the Alaafin of Oyo and entered into a military alliance with a Fulani advisor, sorcerer and mercenary by the name of Alimi.

Predictably Alimi betrayed him and he ended up being tortured, dethroned and murdered. Not only did Alimi and his Fulani warriors kill him but they also murdered all his sons in the most cruel and barbaric fashion.

Alimi and his family took the throne for themselves and consequently the Oyo Empire, and by extension the Oduduwa nation, lost Ilorin to the Fulani and to the sons of Usman Dan Fodio.

Ever since that day a Fulani Emir, from Alimis Gambari family and lineage, armed with a flag and staff of authority from the Sultan of Sokoto, has ruled Ilorin.

There is no gainsaying the fact that the Gambaris are trusted servants and bonded slaves of the Sokoto Caliphate.

They see themselves as the guardians, protectors and defenders of the Caliphates southern border and they serve and protect its traditions, its faith and its political and economic interests. This has been the case for the last 200 years.

It is for this reason that they are often referred to by the sons and daughters of Oduduwa as mesu jamba (meaning a shifty, unreliable and treacherous).

To add to that, the saying goes beware of the Gambaris and the descendants of Alimi.

Enter Professor Ibrahim Agboola Gambari, Buharis new Chief of Staff and Nigerias former representative at the United Nations.

Contrary to popular belief and despite his second name, Agboola, this man is NOT a son of the south west or an Oduduwan but a Fulani Prince from the Royal house in Ilorin.

He is a descendant of Alimi. He is a Gambari. And to cap it all his brother, Emir Ibrahim Kolapo Sulu- Gambari, is the present Emir of Ilorin.

His forefathers stole our sacred Oduduwan lands, took our throne, carved up and divided our Empire, enslaved our people and have persecuted our leaders in Ilorin for the last 200 years denying them of their most basic liberties and rights.

And worse of all they have done this with the full blessing and support of the Sokoto Caliphate and the Sultan of Sokoto.

Wlith the appointment of Gambari as the Presidents Chief of Staff, for the first time in our history, we have a Fulani President and a Fulani Chief of Staff both serving a Fulani Government with a Fulani agenda.

This has never happened before and very soon the results will be self-evident. To make matters worse Gambari is himself a hardliner and he was Buharis Foreign Minister in 1984 when the latter was military Head of State. He served a tyrant and a dictator before and he is serving a tyrant and a dictator again.

And he served not just ANY tyrant and dictator but Nigerias greatest military tyrant and dictator and now he is set to serve Nigerias greatest civilian tyrant and dictator.

Unlike his predecessor in office the late Abba Kyari who was a Shuwa Arab, Gambari is a Fulani. His only interest throughout his distinguished career as a career diplomat was to do nothing but further and protect the interest and hegemonic agenda of the Caliphate in Nigeria and to justify and rationalise its greed, brutality, barbarity and excesses before the civilised world in various international fora.

Now he has come to help estsblish and entrench Buharis Islamisation and Fulanisation agenda. We welcome him and we will engage him in battle.

Abba Kyari has gone. A hardline Islamic fundamentalist and Fulani irredentist has now taken over his job. Nigerians will see the difference.

For those of us that have been in the struggle to liberate our people from the tyranny of Buhari for the last five years it is game on and back to the trenches.

The ceasefire is over and the war against ethnic and religious bondage and against injustice, subjugation, domination, nepotism, servitude and slavery has started again. May the best man win.
Fitzcarraldo, Roar, Wizard of Oz. (Getty/Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

With Tom Cruise planning to shoot a movie in space, he sets a new bar for moviemaking risk-taking.

Modern movie health and safety standards protect cast and crew from harm as best they can, but it wasnt always this way, and theres no way to protect against freak accidents or acts of God.

These are the 10 most dangerous movie sets ever staged

Apocalypse Now (1979)

Robert Duvall as Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore in Apocalypse Now. Paramount Pictures. (CBS via Getty Images)

Just as Colonel Kurtz descended into madness, so did Francis Ford Coppola slide slowly towards insanity while making Vietnam horror Apocalypse Now. The movie was already delayed and way over budget when Typhoon Olga completely destroyed the sets; production designer Dean Tavoularis recalls watching the rain until it was literally white outside and the trees were bent at a 45 degree angle.

Production was besieged by problems, not least the civil war that was tearing the Philippines apart at the time, meaning there was a constant need for bodyguards and security (one night the entire payroll was stolen). The cast buckled under the strain: Dennis Hopper was famously off his rocker and demanded cocaine before hed shoot his scenes, while lead Martin Sheen suffered a near fatal heart-attack on set and had to struggle for a quarter of a mile to find help. He was back on set just over a month later.

The Conqueror (1956)

The Conqueror, lobbycard, John Wayne, 1956. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

If the makers of John Waynes Genghis Khan biopic thought negative reviews were the worst thing that could possibly happen to them, they were wrong. The movie, with Wayne epically miscast as Mongol warlord Khan, shot on location in Utah, 137 miles downwind of an above-ground nuclear test site in Nevada. Tragically, over time, a huge percentage of the films cast and crew started showing signs of cancer, thought to be due to the proximity of radiation.

Read more: The most toxic movie ever made

The director, Dick Powell, died of cancer seven years later; Wayne and co-stars Susan Hayward and Agnes Moorhead died of cancer in the 70s; even visitors to the set were struck ill with tumours. People Magazine ascertained that of the 220 members of the films cast and crew, 91 of them developed cancer and 46 of those died as a result. No legal case has ever been filed.

Story continues

The Omen (1976)

British actor David Warner and American actor Gregory Peck on the set of The Omen, directed by Richard Donner. (Photo by Twentieth Century Fox Film/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Call it a curse or just good old fashioned bad luck, but working on the set of The Omen turned out to be a serious health risk. Cast and crew suffered not one but three separate lightning strikes mid flight; a hotel that producers stayed in was bombed by the IRA, as was a restaurant the cast were scheduled to visit; a tiger handler on the movie died during filming; a plane that was scheduled to be used on set was rescheduled as a commercial airliner and crashed, killing everyone on board.

Most spooky is the tragic accident involving special effects consultant John Richardson, who was in a car crash that killed his assistant. Richardson emerged from the wreck, looked up and saw a road sign reading 'Ommen, 66.6k. Also the date was Friday the 13th. Nope. Nope nope nope.

Roar (1981)

American future actress Melanie Griffith jumps into a swimming pool as her pet lion Neil grabs her leg and goes to bite her leg, Sherman Oaks, California, May 1971. (Photo by Michael Rougier/The LIFE Picture Collection via Getty Images)

Poor Tippi Hedren. Having survived death-by-pecking during Hitchcocks The Birds, she must have thought her days of being menaced by animals on set were over. Maybe she didnt read the smallprint in her contract for Roar. The movie sees Hedren and her three children (including her real daughter Melanie Griffith) return to see their husband only to discover his wild animals have gone really, really wild.

Tippi Hedren in 'Roar'

Shooting was carnage and several animal attacks were real and captured on film; Hedren was bitten in the neck by a lion and later required 38 stitches, but the take was kept in. Griffith was also attacked, requiring 50 stitches to the face; Jan de Bont on lensing duty was mauled by a lion and had to have his scalp reattached; the assistant director had his throat bitten open and almost had an ear ripped off. Theres a reason Disney used CG animals in The Jungle Book remake.

Fitzcarraldo (1982)

Filming on the set of Fitzcarraldo, directed by Werner Herzog, on location in Peru. Crew members hauling the paddle steamer. | Location: Peru. (Photo by jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma via Getty Images)

Director Werner Herzog went method in making his own mission impossible movie: the story called for an entrepreneur to hoist a huge 320-tonnes steamship over a steep hill in Peru to access a rich new mine of resources downstream, so Werzog attempted to stage it for real. This real-life Sisyphean task angered his cast and crew, who worked their fingers to the bone compensating for the lack of special effects  several crew members were injured staging the lift. Lead actor Klaus Kinski frequently raged at the pointlessness of it all, which upset the Peruvian natives working as extras on the movie. Herzog later claimed that the native chief offered, completely seriously, to kill Kinski for him, but the director declined... because he needed him to finish the movie. What a professional.

Ben-Hur (1959)

Truly an epic of epic epicness, Ben-Hur was an iconic movie but a gruelling experience for those who worked on it. 1000 builders worked tirelessly for over a year to carve the famous chariot racing arena from a rock quarry, while wranglers had to manage thousands more extras hired for filming, who would riot when they werent needed. The chariot race itself was fast and furious and carried the very real threat of death to the brave stuntmen willing to risk being trampled by a dozen horse hooves; stuntman Joe Canutt was tossed in the air by accident, cracking his chin on the chariot, but the shot was used to create the exciting set-piece where Tony Curtis clambers back up his horse. Rumours persisted that a stunt actor was killed during shooting and subsequently covered up, corroborated by film stuntman Fred Powells autobiography, but it has never been proven.

Hells Angels (1930)

On the set of Hell's Angels, directed and produced by Howard Hughes. (Photo by United Artists/Sunset Boulevard/Corbis via Getty Images)

Howard Hughes was many things  an adventurer, an entrepreneur, a genius  but an advocate for health and safety he was not. His aerial epic World War I epic contains some of the most jaw-dropping flight sequences ever captured, and all less than 30 years after the Wright brothers first took to the sky  the automobile equivalent would be if Fast & Furious was released in 1933. Sadly, Hughess vision was too lofty and there were several fatalities during shooting: three pilots were killed during production, as was a mechanic working on the movie. Hughes himself nearly checked out early, crashing the aircraft he was piloting as he attempted to film a steep pullout - he wound up fracturing his skull and having to have facial reconstruction surgery.

Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983)

Investigators look over wreckage of helicopter which crashed during filming of a movie in a private park near Castaic, California on Friday, July 23, 1982. (AP Photo/Scott Harms)

Its the movie that changed Hollywood forever, but for all the wrong reasons. The movie anthology of the classic sci-fi show was forever tarnished when, on 23 July 1982, a freak helicopter accident while filming led to the death of actor Vic Morrow and two child actors, who were later found to have been working illegally. The accident was caused when pyrotechnics were let off too close to the in-flight chopper, causing the pilot to make a crash landing; Morrow and the Vietnamese children, struck by the chopper blades, were killed instantly. Director John Landis and members of his crew were acquitted of manslaughter and though no one was found culpable for the deaths, the accident did lead to severe tightening of health and safety laws on movie sets.

The Passion Of The Christ (2004)

The Passion Of The Christ

One does not play the Son of God lightly. Mel Gibson warned actor Jim Caviezel that playing Jesus in his film, The Passion Of The Christ, would damage his career, but he couldnt realise it would damage his health, too. Caviezel was subjected to severe physical torture while filming: he was whipped twice by accident, which left a 14-inch scar on his back; he dislocated his shoulder while carrying the 150lbs cross; he caught hypothermia filming at night in Italy (Jesus didnt really do t-shirts); and most worrying of all, he was struck by lightning  tsk, everyones a critic, eh? The whole ordeal was so punishing on poor Jim, he had to have heart surgery when it was all over. Working with Mel Gibson is a total health hazard.

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)

A publicity still from the film, 'The Wizard of Oz', 1939. (Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images)

The super-happy fun-time technicolour classic? Dangerous? You better believe it: Oz was a real slog for the cast and crew. Proto-Tin Man Buddy Epsen had to drop out because the silver paint gave him respiratory problems, but replacement Jack Haley didnt fare much better, suffering an eye infection. The actors in the flying monkey costumes all suffered nasty falls when the winch keeping them aloft snapped, sending them crashing to the ground.

Margaret Hamilton, who played the Wicked Witch, suffered horrendous burns when a pyrotechnic explosion got too close and reacted to her face makeup. Even Terry, the dog who played Toto, got stepped on and almost died. All this time, we never knew The Wizard Of Oz was such a traumatic experience.
Asked to define what crimes Donald Trump is alleging Barack Obama and other former members of his administration committed under his "Obamagate" conspiracy theory, the president's top spokeswoman instead focused on alleged "wrongdoing."

When pressed, White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany only mentioned one potential crime: The leaking of the identity of Michael Flynn, Mr Trump's first national security adviser to reporters that showed up in articles indicating the retired Army three-star general was the subject of a federal probe.

Instead, Ms McEnany pointed to the highly disputed "dossier" of negative information compiled by former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, which has been disputed by Mr Trump and his team.

Ms McEnany, who is an attorney, complained about "wrongdoing" by the FBI.

She complained that Foreign Surveillance Intelligence Act court warrants were improperly issued so federal investigators could monitor communications involving members the 2016 Trump campaign.

Additionally, she contended that Sally Yates, a former senior Justice Department official, was "stunned" when then-President Barack Obama informed her of a federal probe of Mr Flynn.

But only once, contending that a leak of Mr Flynn's name to reporters, did she mention a possible criminal act  because, she said, such a leak might have been "a violation of his (Flynn's) Fourth Amendment rights."

Cornell Law School defines that amendment to the US Constitution this way: "The Fourth Amendment originally enforced the notion that "each man's home is his castle", secure from unreasonable searches and seizures of property by the government. It protects against arbitrary arrests, and is the basis of the law regarding search warrants, stop-and-frisk, safety inspections, wiretaps, and other forms of surveillance, as well as being central to many other criminal law topics and to privacy law."

Mr Trump alleged unspecified criminal actions by former Obama administration officials in a tweet last weekend, writing: "The biggest political crime in American history, by far!"

But on Monday, when asked to spell out those alleged crimes during a press conference, Mr Trump could not  or would not.

"You know what the crime is. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours," he told a Washington Post reporter.

"Obamagate" is a web of complicated and semi-related actions and investigations by and ordered by then-Obama administration officials. Mr Trump, cobbling them together, alleges they prove a push inside the Obama administration to take down his 2016 presidential bid and then hobble his presidency. Mr Obama has responded with a one-word tweet: "Vote."
HERNDON, Va., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- HawkEye 360 Inc., the first commercial company to use formation flying satellites to create a new class of radio frequency (RF) data and data analytics, today announced that Terry McAuliffe, former Governor of Virginia, and Chris Inglis, former Deputy Director of the National Security Agency, have joined the HawkEye 360 Advisory Board. Together, McAuliffe and Inglis bring decades of highly valuable experience in the government and defense sectors to HawkEye 360's Advisory Board.

"HawkEye 360 is honored to have Terry McAuliffe and Chris Inglis join our Advisory Board," said HawkEye 360's Chief Executive Officer John Serafini. "Both Terry and Chris have distinguished backgrounds that will help guide HawkEye 360 towards our goal of becoming a world leader in spectrum-based geoanalytics, serving the needs of commercial, government and international customers."

Terry McAuliffe served as the 72nd Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia and Chairman of the National Governors Association. During his time as Governor, McAuliffe implemented record breaking economic development initiatives that helped strengthen the Commonwealth's business environment by meeting the needs of emerging businesses and industries and supporting job creation. He also propelled Virginia to #1 in cybersecurity standards, by bolstering Virginia's cybersecurity ecosystem through the creation of a cybersecurity commission that emphasized cybersecurity policies and infrastructure to better secure consumer transactions and citizen data.

"HawkEye 360 is exactly the kind of business whose growth I encouraged during my time as Virginia's Governor," said Terry McAuliffe. "I look forward to applying my years of experience as a public official to advise HawkEye 360 as it develops its geospatial capabilities for the public and private sectors."

A veteran of the U.S. Air Force, Chris Inglis retired from the Department of Defense in 2014 following over 41 years of federal service, including 28 years at the National Security Agency and seven and a half years serving as its senior civilian and Deputy Director. He began his career at the NSA as a computer scientist within the National Computer Security Center followed by tours in information assurance, policy, time-sensitive operations, and signals intelligence organizations. Inglis is currently the U.S. Naval Academy's Distinguished Visiting Professor for Cyber Security Studies and a Managing Director for Paladin Capital.

"Across more than 40 years of national defense and cybersecurity work, I have been fortunate to witness firsthand the extraordinary contributions and enduring potential of geospatial intelligence," said Chris Inglis. "I am honored to join HawkEye 360's world-class team in its efforts to enhance and extract value from satellite data for the benefit of its diverse clients."

HawkEye 360 uses satellites that fly in a commercially unique formation to independently geolocate the origin of a wide range of RF signals. This proprietary source of data enables HawkEye 360 to locate and analyze previously undetected activity, providing new insights for maritime, emergency response, and spectrum analysis applications.

SOURCE HawkEye 360
(Natural News) Lockdowns are no longer about covid-19: The goal is regime change and the introduction of a reign of terror for all deplorables.

(Article by Dave Hodges republished from TheCommonSenseShow.com)

America Has Been Defeated by the Following Forces

We have seen a partial Nazification of America society, especially in places like Michigan, Texas, Main, New York, Illinois, Georgia, California and Arizona. America is being divided up among different ideologies in multiple domains. Our economic philosophy, since COVID-19, has become communist in which the right to work at your essential job, needed to put food on your childrens table, is regulated by government. However, the corporate elite (banks, box stores such as Walmart, large brokerage houses, Big Pharma, etc) in this country are largely unaffected and the corporate-controlled oligarchy, which dominates our government and controls portions of the Deep State, Congress, Supreme Court, and the Executive Branch. And yes, the corporate oligarchy is dedicated to the overthrow of the Republic, its civil liberties (eg freedom of speech and religious worship) and economic freedom.

This hybrid form of the emerging ruling structure also contains the worst characteristics of Nazi Germany. In Part Two of this series, I will be highlighting the events in California where it has been announced that the State is embracing medical martial law camps. This is something that Celeste Solum and myself have written about for years and now, and undeniably, that day has arrived. Until Part Two is published, my advice is to avoid all testing for COVID-19 as much as possible. The problem is not with the test, should you test positive for COVID-19, but with what several local authorities are implementing on a scale that even the Nazis would be envious.

The collective philsophy of the American/international oligarchy could best be described as one that espouses feudalism for the masses, at least those that are permitted to survive these tumultuous events!

The Lab Coat Coup Participants and Their Heinous Conflicts of Interests

Because of the nature of the emergency powers that have stripped Trump of his executive branch powers, the United States is under a Big Pharma martial law with Fauci sitting at the head of the table.

At the center of what I am now dubbing the lab coat coup against America are generationally embedded doctors with heinous conflicts of interest which clearly impacts their professional judgments in the performance of their federally mandated duties. Fauci and Birx exemplify the problem with allowing generational public servants to privately profit from their positions of authority at the expense of those that they are federally mandated to serve! Fauci, Birx et al., are the leaders of the Big Pharma Deep State appartus. Eventually, these conflicted public servants become owned by someone, for their own personal benefit and the benefit of their puppet masters!

Conflicts of interests for federal employees are illegal, but do not let the rule of law fool you that the public is somehow protected from the resulting abuses associated with conflicts of interest. With regard to the Deep State doctors, it is a case of rules for thee but not for me. Regardless of their conflicts of interest sources for the COVID-19 teams (eg Fauci, Redfield, Birx), Governor Ducey, Governor Newsom, Governor Cuomo, and Governor Whitmer, et al., every single one of these conflicted individuals ultimately owe their homage and servitude to none other than the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Many researchers have documented these gross conflicts of interest. The most outstanding work in the area of conflicted public servants has been performed by Dr. Judy Mikovits. Her stellar work is the most censored on the internet. She is taking an enormous risk, both professionally and with her personal safety to bring the American public the truth. These conflicts of interest will be further explored in Part Two.

However, as an example of these conflicts of interest, lets take a look at Arizona. Arizona Governor Ducey sits on the Board of Directors for T-Gen. T-Gen is working on the so-called vaccine which will be rushed to market with no conceivable way to be absolutely certain that the vaccine words in replicable testing and patient safety be damned in this all-too-short-window of public safety testing. Ducey has artificially kept Arizona locked down against all reason. On May 1st, the largest county in Arizona, Maricopa County, witnessed 67% of the deaths from COVID-19 were in live-in assisted care facilities for the elderly. Yet, this population represents only .000001% of the population of one of the largest counties in the country. The 20-44 age groups infection rate is the highest in the county, but they account for the least amount of deaths. Therefore, the data clearly shows that a targeted intervention, not a one-size-fits-all approach, is needed. But dont confuse Ducey with the facts because he has an agenda! Of course, and it obvious to this researcher, that if Ducey, Newsom, Whitmer, et al, can keep a large part of the population locked down, or at least partially locked down and these people are feeling the economic heat, they will gladly accept Bill Gates vaccine which will go down in history, due to the rapidity of its development as unsafe at any speed! Ducey is merely a microcosm of the public-harming conflicts of interest that exist for many of our political leaders. He is as guilty as Fauci in the deaths that are occurring because of the rampant unemployment (see the data set explanations below).

Mike Adams, in a discussion we had last night, both agree, that these officials should be charged with manslaughter. Remember, for every 1% increase in unemployment, the death toll goes up a minimum of 10,000 deaths. Some actuaries place the lock down toll, with regard to resulting fatalities, as 29 times greater than COVID-19 deaths (see South African actuaries).

Consider these numbers:

At the end of 2019, the United States had an unemployment rate of 3.5%.

On May 1st, the government reported 30.5 million job claims.

The number of fulltime workers just prior to the recognition of COVID-19 as a public threat was 110 million.

This makes the effective unemployment rate a whopping 27.72%. This is more than 5% more than at the apex of the Great Depression.

On May 8th, many are speculating that the unemployment claims will top 35 million!

Conclusions from the data (all statistics are from the Department of Labor):

On May 1st, the increase in unemployment came in at an amazing 24.2% increase from the baseline number!

The May 1st true unemployment rate equates to an increase of deaths in America to 240,200!

If the May 8th unemployment rate is at the 35 million jobless claims, the death curve will have increased by a stunning 32%!!! This equates to an increased of American deaths to 320,000!

This is clearly a case of the cure is worse than the disease.

Mike Adams has proposed a 5 point plan on my show several weeks ago that would have allowed for a relatively safe opening of our businesses.

In the course of our interview, Mike Adams presents a detailed 5 point plan which would basically eradicate the virus while returning America to normal. No wonder the New World Order wants to silence Mike Adams. Well, Mike is not censored here.

The Mike Adams and Dave Hodges interview can be accessed at this link.

If we would have followed Mikes plan, hundreds of thousands of lives could have been saved by keeping the social misery score to a minimum, while preventing the wholesale free-fall in the economy which will result in a communist being elected this November.

By the way, and I receive no renumeration for this notice, Mike Adams is a key speaker at the Gen Six virtual conference next week. One can register for the conference by clicking this link.

Conclusion

America is embracing Fascism, an elitist oligarchy and the beginnings of Gestapo-like enforcement as the Constitution is being put to death.

In Part Two, we will examine why every American should fear Bill Gates and his domination of the coming vaccines.

Further, we will review Celest Solum and my work on FEMA Medical Martial Law Camps and how the theoretical reign of terror just got very real in California.

Read more at: TheCommonSenseShow.com
The portals of Badrinath Temple were opened early on Friday in the presence of only 28 people, including the chief priest, due to the lockdown to stop the spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19), news agency ANI reported.

The doors of the famous shrine in Uttarakhands Chamoli district, which was decorated with strings of marigold flowers, was opened at 4:30am after a long winter break.

Devotees will not be allowed entry into the temple during that time. The decision has been taken in view of the guidelines issued by the Centre amid Covid-19 pandemic, Anil Chanyal, Joshimaths sub-divisional magistrate (SDM), had said in a statement earlier.

Religious ceremonies were also held on Wednesday at the Narsingh temple in Joshimath ahead of the scheduled date for the opening of the portals of the Badrinath temple dedicated to Lord Vishnu.

Around 10,000 pilgrims had visited the shrine last year on the first day of its opening as per an estimated figure.

Manujendra Shah, the king of the Tehri royal family who is considered the Bolanda Badri or talking Lord Badri, had on April 20 changed the date of opening of the portals of Badrinath shrine as the chief priest was under the quarantine after returning from Kerala.

This is the first time in history that the dates for the opening of portals of the shrines have been changed.

The portals of Kedarnath temple were also opened on April 29 after a six-month-long winter break. Pilgrims were prohibited from visiting the shrine because of the lockdown.

One of the most visited pilgrimage centres of India, Badrinath is one of the Char Dhams or the four main pilgrimage centres of the Hindus located in Garhwal hills.

The Badrinath Temple is along the banks of the Alaknanda River in Chamoli district at a height of over 10,000 feet.

(With agency inputs)
Health and voting

Re: Suit aims at Texas rules on mail ballots, Front Page, Tuesday, and Empty threat an attack on voters, health, Editorial, Tuesday:

There has been a lot of discussion about voting by mail. In Tuesdays paper, there was an editorial supporting voting by mail and an article about a new lawsuit filed by several groups in support of voting by mail.

The Texas Election Code, Section 82.002, defines disability. The law says, or of injuring the voters health. Being exposed to the virus at the election polls will injure voters health.

Richard Sharer

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: Voters should not have to choose between health and democracy

Joyous reopening

Re: Mondays editorial cartoon:

I would venture to bet that the vast majority of people condemning our president and governor for opening our economy have steady streams of income and savings in the bank  like the cartoonist who drew Trump opening a casket and labeled it Reopening.

I would like to see a picture of a single mom holding her arms joyously in the air because she can return to work and make some money to pay her rent and put food on the table for her kids.

Fred Martin, Fair Oaks Ranch

Call your reps

The White House wants to take a wait-and-see approach before passing the next piece of coronavirus relief legislation. But you can call your senators and representatives and let them know how you feel.

Their jobs are in your hands! Dont ever forget that.

Andy Miller
June 5 will mark the third anniversary of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) rift, the ongoing dispute and embargo of Qatar by its neighbors Saudi Arabia, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Clearly, the GCC, as a regional organization, has been under stress for some time, with very little progress from either local mediation efforts led by Kuwait, or any forceful mending of fences led by the United States. What spells the end of the GCC may be something more benign, yet widely disliked  taxes.

Saudi Arabia's decision to increase its value-added tax (VAT) by 200%, bringing it to a 15% tax on goods and services to begin on July 1, means that there is now no chance for regional economic integration and policy coordination. That policy coordination was the backbone of the GCC, the idea that the six states could enact a uniform policy on trade with each other, and the equal treatment of citizens as investors and property owners across their borders. Since 2017, the equal treatment of GCC citizen investors has failed, at a high cost to lost investment in business and real estate.

The GCC formed in 1981 in an effort at collective security in response to the Iranian revolution, and subsequently Iraq's invasion of Iran. But security cooperation and sovereignty, particularly between monarchies, are not easily aligned. As senior researcher Jeffrey Martini and colleagues at the RAND Corporation have argued, Within the sovereignty-sensitive GCC, economic cooperation was judged as more attainable than ceding decision-making over foreign affairs or merging their military capabilities into a truly integrated collective defense capability.

So, in 1983, the GCC launched its Free Trade Agreement, which reduced trade restrictions between member countries and facilitated trade flows in an effort at regional coordination. In 2003, the GCC marked another step forward with the establishment of a customs union. The common market, allowing free movement of people and goods, began in 2008. Intra-GCC trade has grown nearly fortyfold since its establishment; yet, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has demonstrated, intra-GCC non-oil trade remains low, at only 10% of total non-oil trade in 2016. The region tends to produce the same things, so complementarities in exports and trade are low. Out of the $85 billion intra-GCC trade in 2016, the UAE accounted for the largest share, mostly because it is a re-export hub, according to the IMF.

More recent integration efforts in coordinated monetary policy, shared electricity and trading platforms have also been unsuccessful. Now, even the notion of a coordinated tariff policy seems out of reach. Saudi Arabia and the UAE initiated the 5% VAT in January 2018. Bahrain came on board a year later, while Qatar, Oman and Kuwait have delayed, but not rejected outright, a commitment to enact a 5% VAT in the next two or three years.

The implication of failed regional economic policy on the treatment of citizen investors and now disparate taxes on consumption lead to questions on the remaining unofficial pillar of GCC economic cooperation, pegged currencies to the US dollar. (Kuwait has a currency basket including the US dollar.) There is now reason to see how GCC states will become more independent in both fiscal and monetary policy-making.

More importantly, the future of GCC economic policy now looks like a competitive landscape between members, in terms of their tax climate, treatment of foreign investors and interest in providing longer-term residency or citizenship rights to foreigners. But the simple cost of living and of doing business will go a long way to determine where people want to stay and invest, whether citizen or foreigner. This is not necessarily a bad thing. With more policy flexibility there can be more policy innovation, for those states able to take advantage of foreign investors and residents. In this sense, the smaller and wealthier GCC states are at an advantage over those with large populations to care for and large dollar-denominated debt burdens to shoulder.

Saudi Arabia has clearly prioritized its fiscal deficit as a policy problem and its high VAT may in the future be a source of government revenue. In the short-term, however, it makes the private sector less attractive as an investment destination compared to its neighbors. And for Saudi citizens, shopping in Bahrain just got a lot more attractive. For the GCC as a regional organization, its efficacy and usefulness as an engine of collective growth and policy coordination is probably over.
Capping a day in which he appeared with two Democratic women in the running to be his vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr. said on Thursday night that he did not remember Tara Reade, the woman who has accused him of sexual assault, and said that Americans probably shouldnt vote for me if they believe the accusation, which he has strenuously denied.

I think they should vote their heart, he said on MSNBC, asked about his message to voters who had been inclined to support him but believed the Reade allegation. I wouldnt vote for me if I believed Tara Reade.

Ms. Reade, a former Senate aide, has said that Mr. Biden assaulted her in 1993. After waiting for weeks to personally address her story, Mr. Biden did so earlier this month, though some allies and other progressives thought he should have taken on the issue more proactively, and sooner. In the interview on The Last Word with Lawrence ODonnell, Mr. Biden said that womens claims of assault should be taken seriously but should also be vetted, as he sharpened his questioning of Ms. Reades accusation.

Look at Tara Reades story, he said. It changes considerably. But I dont want to question her motive. I dont want to question anything other than to say the truth matters.


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Samsung got me. On paper, the company's Galaxy A51 appears to have everything you could want out of a $400 smartphone. A big, pretty screen. A multitude of cameras. A 4,000mAh battery. A flagship-inspired design, and a headphone jack. As an avid  some might say rabid  fan of ambitious midrange smartphones, I was ready for the A51 to take its place alongside other modestly priced standouts like the Pixel 3a XL and the iPhone SE. It never did.

Thats not to say the Galaxy A51 is a bad phone. Samsung got a lot right here, and over a week of testing, I found it perfectly pleasant at times. Sadly, all the things the company handled well couldn't fully offset some janky, inconsistent performance: This is a $400 device that sometimes runs like a $250 one. I dont think that's enough to make the A51 a bad smartphone, but it does make it a bad deal.

Key specs



Samsung Galaxy A51

Processor

Octa-core Exynos 9611

RAM/storage

4GB + 128GB

MicroSD card support

Yes

Main display

6.5-inch Infinity-O Super AMOLED display

Display resolution

1,080 x 2,400 (20:9)

Rear cameras

48MP f/2.0 wide camera with, 12MP f/2.2 ultra-wide camera (123 field of view), 5MP f/2.4 macro camera, 5MP f/2.2 depth sensor

Front-facing camera

32MP f/2.2 camera

OS

Android 10

Battery

4,000mAh

Charging

USB-C, supports 15W fast charging

Dimensions

158.5 x 73.6 x 7.9mm

Weight

172g

Fingerprint sensor

Yes, in display

Waterproofing

None

NFC

Yes

Headphone jack

Yes

5G support

No



Configurations

The Galaxy A51 I've been testing is a Verizon Wireless model with 4GB of RAM and 128GB of storage. (Disclaimer: Verizon is Engadget's parent company, but it has no influence over what we say.) Sprint and AT&T also offer this version of the A51, and no matter which carrier you choose, they'll all sell you the phone outright for $399. That doesn't sound too steep, but it's worth noting that the phone can be had for less when purchased unlocked, especially if you live outside the United States. If you're serious about owning an A51, scouting out a good deal is a must: This isn't worth $400.

Story continues

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

Flagship style

If there's one thing Samsung deserves credit for, it's that the A51 in no way looks like a $400 phone. With a surprisingly trim frame; an eye-catching, light-refracting finish; and some incredibly small bezels, this midrange model could easily pass for a phone that costs twice as much. As far as I'm concerned, this is the best-looking midrange smartphone out there. Just keep in mind that thanks to its display, the A51 might be a nonstarter for people with smaller hands  it's thin but still plenty large.

Of course, since this phone costs a fraction of what a flagship does, Samsung had to be judicious about balancing style and substance. Consider Samsung's choice of materials: Wrapping a phone in glass quickly makes its price tag jump, so the company used what it calls "Glasstic" for the A51's body. As the name suggests, that just means this phone has a plastic frame that sort of feels like glass if you don't scrutinize it too much. The Galaxy A51 also lacks an IP-rating for water and dust resistance, which is very common for phones in this price range. (Note: If you Google "A51 water resistance," you might see a search result from Verizon claiming the A51 is rated IP68  it absolutely is not.)

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

The rest of the phone's design is fairly standard. There's a USB-C port that supports 15W fast charging and a combination nanoSIM/microSD card tray on the phone's right side that you can use to augment the standard 128GB of storage. If you're a music fan, you'll also appreciate the proper headphone jack Samsung squeezed into the A51, since its single speaker is pretty awful.

What helps elevate the A51's design is its spacious, 6.5-inch, Full HD+ Super AMOLED screen. It's one of Samsung's Infinity-O displays which, if you're allergic to marketing BS, means there's a tiny hole cut out of the panel to accommodate a 32-megapixel front camera. Its remarkably small and would be easy enough to overlook were it not for the shiny metallic ring surrounding it  it's almost like Samsung wants you to keep looking at it. Thankfully, the rest of the screen is typical Samsung: Deep blacks, punchy colors, and great viewing angles considering the price. Its max brightness feels a little anemic so outdoor use can be a little tricky at times, but the display is very well-suited to binging on YouTube videos while you're sheltering at home.

The screen is very often the most expensive component in a smartphone, and I'm glad that Samsung went with the display it did here. It's not just easy on the eyes; its a great rebuttal to devices like the iPhone SE that rely on dated designs to keep costs down. Visually, the A51 is a stunner, but as my parents always used to tell me, looks aren't everything.

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

In use

The frustration here begins when you go to unlock the phone. There's an optical fingerprint sensor under the display, and it's... not great. When it does work, it usually takes a while to actually recognize my thumb. Too often, though, the sensor just didn't work. Normally, you'd see a bit of green whooshing around your finger to let you know the sensor was analyzing your print, but that didn't always appear. Repeated screen cleanings didn't fix the issue, and neither did re-enrolling my fingers. For your sanity, maybe just set up a PIN or an unlock pattern instead.

Once I made it in, a bigger issue became obvious pretty quickly  the A51 is noticeably laggy at times. Switching between apps frequently felt choppy, as did thumbing through pages of apps, and even just popping back out to the home screen. You know, the stuff you do every day.

To be clear, this doesnt happen constantly, and I didnt have much to complain about when the phone was firing on all cylinders. If you're the kind of person who just wants to watch videos and maybe send a few emails to the family, you might not even notice this momentary lag. But if you're a fan of smooth, consistent performance, be prepared for some disappointment  stuttering animations and delayed app launches are never too far away, and it gets old pretty quickly.

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

Exactly why the A51 runs the way it does isn't wholly clear, but part of the issue probably lies with Samsung's choice of chipset. Rather than use a Qualcomm Snapdragon like most US-bound Android phones, the company ran with its in-house Exynos 9611. From what I can tell, there's not much difference between this sliver of silicon and the Exynos 9610 Samsung started using in late 2018  some of the CPU cores are marginally faster and it supports a wider variety of rear cameras, but that's really it. That Samsung would splurge on a great screen and use a minor refresh of a chip that was announced a little over two years ago tells you a lot about its priorities.

The funny thing is, this chipset is no slouch. It falls somewhere between the $250 Moto G Power (with a Snapdragon 665 chipset) and the $470 Pixel 3 XL (with a Snapdragon 670), which is exactly what you'd expect considering how much these phones cost. The A51 benchmarks pretty well, too  its nowhere near flagship level, but well in line with other US-bound devices weve seen in this price range. That being the case, it seems more likely that this inconsistent performance is due to a lack of software optimization that could theoretically be fixed in a future update. (For what its worth, Samsung wouldnt confirm that any such updates were in the works.)

In fairness to Samsung, people contemplating a $400 smartphone probably know not to expect best-in-class performance. The bigger issue here is that its still a considerable sum to drop on a smartphone, and the A51's balance of performance and price just doesnt feel right.

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

The Moto G Power  a phone that costs $150 less with an older chipset  manages to run a little more consistently. And the Pixel 3a XL? Forget about it. The difference in smoothness and the overall quality of experience between these devices skews heavily in the Pixel's favor. Its also worth noting that all three of these phones have 4GB of RAM, so its not like Motorola or Google had more resources to work with here. And if youre not married to Android, there's always the iPhone SE. It's a $400 arrow aimed at Samsung's heart and runs just as well as Apples most expensive smartphones. Whether it's because of a heavy touch with software, poor memory management, or something else entirely, this questionable performance makes the A51 hard to recommend for the price.

I had hoped that epic battery life would've sweetened the deal here, but it doesnt. Despite packing a pretty sizable 4,000mAh (along with a mid-range chipset and a screen that only runs at 1080p), the Galaxy A51 is only good for about one full day of use. That's not awful by any stretch, but when other mid-range phones  like the Moto G Power  have battery lives measured in days instead of hours, the A51 can't help but feel a little disappointing.

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

Plenty of cameras

At this point, the one thing that could redeem the A51 is truly excellent camera performance. Calling the phone's trio of rear cameras "excellent" would be a stretch, but in most cases, they're good enough.

And that's right, I said "trio" although there are four lenses on the A51's rear. Most of the time you'll wind up using the 48-megapixel standard wide camera which, like most other phones with pixel-rich sensors, produces smaller 12-megapixel stills by default. As usual for a Samsung phone, the results feature lots of vivid colors, though pixel-peepers will notice a surprising lack of fine details upon zooming in. Thats despite Samsungs typical  and almost stylized  image processing, too. Big surprise, right? Like nearly every Samsung camera before it, this one seems tuned to deliver images that look slightly nicer than reality. These are great photos to post on Instagram, but maybe not for printing and mounting on your wall. Unfortunately, even the decently wide f/2.0 aperture doesn't help the A51's main camera much in low light  colors tend to look a little washed out, and details get smeared into oblivion.

Samsung Galaxy A51 camera samples Samsung Galaxy A51 camera samples

Meanwhile, the 12-megapixel ultra-wide camera turned out to be a pleasant surprise. It captures a 123-degree field of view with minimal barrel distortion around the edges, and its colors are even poppier and more saturated than what you'd get out of the main camera. If you're walking around and shooting photos on a clear day, those pale blue skies will turn out a little more neon than you'd expect. Since this camera is mainly meant to capture lots of attractive, well-lit space, it's no surprise that it struggles more than the main camera does in low light.

Rather than a telephoto camera (which was almost certainly too expensive for a phone like this), the A51's third sensor is a 5-megapixel affair for macro photos. I've wondered in the past who spends their time bopping around and looking for very small things to take photos of, but ever since testing the OnePlus 8 Pro, I've become one of those people. It's too bad, then, that this never produced the sort of crisp, super-tight images I was hoping for. That's partially because the camera's image processing seems to iron out some of those minute details, but also because the narrow depth of field means getting everything framed up just right can take some work.

And that last lens? It's for a 5-megapixel depth sensor that Samsung uses to capture data for more bokeh-filled portraits. It does its job well. I've seen more than a few phones struggle with accurately separating the subject from its background, but the A51 handles the task without much fuss.

Ultimately, no matter which camera you spend the most time with, be prepared for good  not great  results. If getting the best overall photo is your biggest concern, you'd still be much better off with one of Google's Pixel 3As or the iPhone SE. Samsung's real edge here doesn't lay in the quality of its images so much as the flexibility that multiple cameras provide.

Samsung Galaxy A51 review photos

Wrap-up

With the Galaxy A51, Samsung tried to bring some flagship style and features to an affordable smartphone. It wasn't completely successful, but the effort is appreciated. More than anything, what Samsung really got wrong here (in the US, at least) is the phone's price. If the Galaxy A51 cost closer to $300, as it does in certain overseas markets, Samsung's strange blend of style and stymied performance would be a lot easier to swallow. As it stands, though, the A51 never feels as consistently smooth as some of the truly great devices you can get for around $400 now.

Sure, the Pixel 3a XL and the iPhone SE lack the A51s panache, but theyre just nicer to use. And hey  if youre really itching for a Samsung phone and have some latitude in your budget, the slightly more powerful Galaxy A71 might be a better choice. If you can find a sweet deal  or don't mind trading an older phone in  the Galaxy A51 isn't a bad option. Anyone who doesn't need a phone now though should wait until Google releases its new mid-range Pixel and decide.
The number of daily coronavirus-related deaths fell to 138 on Friday, according to the latest figures from the Spanish Health Ministry. This is a drop from Thursday, when 217 victims were recorded, and the second-lowest figure recorded since the beginning of March. The number of daily coronavirus deaths was 184 on Wednesday, 176 on Tuesday, 123 on Monday, and 143 on Sunday.

For the first time since March 19, five of Spains 17 regions recorded no coronavirus-related deaths: the Balearic Islands, the Canary Islands, Galicia, Basque Country and La Rioja. In the past 24 hours, the regions of Aragon, Cantabria and Murcia each recorded just one fatality, while Navarre, Asturias and Extremadura each reported two.

The number of new coronavirus cases was 549 on Friday, the highest figure reported in a week

The total number of victims in Spain now stands at 27,459. This figure, however, continues to fall below the more than 30,000 deaths detected by the daily mortality monitoring system known as MoMo, which was created in 2004 to track the impact of heatwaves in Spain.

The number of new coronavirus cases, as confirmed by PCR tests, was 549 on Friday, the highest figure in a week. This brings the total number of infections since the beginning of the pandemic to 230,183. Catalonia recorded the highest number of new cases (151) and coronavirus-related deaths (59).

According to the latest figures, 346 coronavirus patients were admitted to hospital and 29 into intensive care (ICU) in the past 24 hours. Most of these cases were recorded in the Madrid region, which saw 95 hospitalizations and 10 ICU admissions. The large majority of Spains regions reported fewer than two ICU admissions.

Since Thursday, 1,409 patients have been discharged from hospital after recovering from the disease, bringing the total to 144,783.

France to introduce quarantine for travelers from Spain

France will impose a 14-day quarantine on travelers coming from Spain in response to the Spanish governments decision to impose such a measure on all international visitors, an official at the French presidential palace said on Thursday.

France will impose a 14-day quarantine from the moment Spain imposes the measure, based on the principal of reciprocity, the presidential official said.

On Tuesday, the Spanish government announced that it would impose a quarantine on all visitors to the country, including French residents and other residents of the European Union, in a bid to control the coronavirus outbreak.

The French official did not give the precise date of the quarantine, saying this was still the subject of bilateral talks. In Spain, the quarantine measures came into effect on Friday, May 15, and will last for the duration of the state of alarm, which is set to end on May 24, if Congress does not approve another extension.

Coronavirus detection

The region of La Rioja has detected the highest number of coronavirus cases via PCR tests in Spain. Thats according to the preliminary results of an antibody study into the prevalence of Covid-19, which were announced on Wednesday.

Health workers test blood samples for Covid-19 in the city of Ferrol in Galicia. Kiko Delgado (EFE)

The results showed that the northern region has detected 38% of positive cases  four times the average in Spain. Galicia came in second place with a 15.82% detection rate, followed by the Basque Country with 14.71%, and Navarre with 13.19%. These four regions were the site of significant coronavirus outbreaks, meaning more testing was required.

At the other end of the spectrum, Andalusia and the Canary Islands have only detected 5.51% and 5.99% of cases, respectively. These figures, however, do not reflect the great differences between the two regions. The Canary Islands has reported very few coronavirus cases, and two islands on the archipelago  Hierro and La Gomera  were among the first to move to Phase 1 of the governments deescalation plan. The southern region of Andalusia, on the other hand, was only partially able to move to this stage, with the provinces of Malaga and Granada remaining in Phase 0.

Valencia to subsidize cost of bicycles

The regional government of Valencia will subsidize the purchase of bicycles and scooters by up to 250 in a bid to promote sustainable individual transport and stimulate small business, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus crisis. The measure, which was announced by premier of Valencia, Ximo Puig, on Thursday, is part of a broader plan to promote sustainable mobility as the coronavirus restrictions are eased.

The 500,000-plan is aimed at helping residents in the region to purchase traditional bicycles, electric bicycles, personal mobility devices (like electric scooters) and electric bicycle conversion kits from participating shops and establishments that are headquartered in Valencia. The subsidies will range from 75 for an electric scooter (which typically costs no more than 450) to 250 for an electric bike (which typically costs no more than 1,400).

Health Ministry changes criteria for mothers with Covid-19

The Spanish Health Ministry has updated its protocols regarding the treatment of mothers with Covid-19 and their newborn babies. The first version of the guidelines stipulated that newborn should be isolated and separated from their mother.

A newborn girl sleeps in her mom arms at the Sant Pau hospital in Barcelona. Image taken by Mayte Torres (Getty Images)

But in the new version, updated on Wednesday, the guide states that the separation [of mothers and newborns] and avoiding skin on skin contact, kangaroo care [a method involving breastfeeding and skin-to-skin contact for low birth weight babies] does not appear to be recommended, especially in the moments immediately after birth.

Under the new guides, a mother with coronavirus must only be separated from her baby if it is required due to the seriousness of her condition.

With reporting by Marcs Bassets, Lucia Abellan, Cecilia Jan, Oriol Guell, Emilio De Benito and Cristina Vazquez.

English version by Melissa Kitson.
A 57-year-old police official



died of COVID-19 in Mumbai on Friday, an official release said.

The official, attached to the Motor Transport Department, had been sent on leave for the last 15 days in view of the raging pandemic as he was considered to be in the high-risk age group.

So far, the coronavirus pandemic has claimed lives of 10 police personnel in Maharashtra -- seven in Mumbai and one each in Nashik, Pune and Solapur.

Over 150 police personnel tested positive for coronavirus in Maharashtra since Thursday evening, taking the number of coronavirus cases in the police force to 1,153, officials had said earlier in the day.

It included 127 officers and 1,026 constables. 174 police personnel have recovered from infection.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A US Navy chopper takes off from USS Lincoln.

By Zhang Chi

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to play havoc in the US, the US military is under a lot of pressure on pandemic prevention and control. In the meantime, however, it is flexing muscles in multiple regions around the world, which has drawn close attention as that not only brings potential trouble for its development but also causes adverse effects on regional security.

The US is flexing muscles everywhere.

The US President Donald Trump summoned military generals to the White House on May 9, where he proclaimed on a high profile that the government would spend USD1.5 trillion rebuilding the US military. The military also flexed muscles around the world recently to demonstrate that the pandemic hasn't weakened its strength in the least.

On the one hand, the US Navy is flaunting the combat force of aircraft carriers. It declared on May 10 that over half of America's aircraft carriers are on the voyage now, which was corroborated by US media who claimed that the pandemic hasn't undermined the US Navy's combat force despite various setbacks.

According to a latest report, over 1/3 of the 299 American naval vessels that are performing their maritime tasks haven't reported any COVID-19 infections.

On the other hand, the US Air Force performed the "elephant walk." An American military website reported that the USAF performed an elephant walk at the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska on May 5, followed by integrated training in the Joint Pacific Alaska Range Complex, which showcased the USAF's capability of immediate response, resilience and global reach, according to Colonel Robert Davis, Commander of USAF 3rd Wing.

The US is enhancing combat readiness.

The US Defense Secretary Esper recently said that learning how to meet the training and combat readiness demands next year or until the emergence of the COVID-19 vaccine will be a new normal for the Pentagon. To this end, the US military has recently strengthened cooperation with its allies and continued to promote combat-readiness training.

According to reports by the Air Force Times, a weekly newspaper published in the US, the USAF recently assigned three types of strategic bombers to Europe, which was a way of telling the world that "the US Strategic Command is capable of maintaining the operational and global coverage capabilities of the strategic bomber force."

On the Asia Pacific, CNN reported that the US Pacific Air Force on May 1 announced the arrival of four B-1 bombers that boast the most massive weapon payload of all USAF aircraft at Guam's Andersen Air Force Base. It is learnt that they were to carry out training and perform strategic deterrence missions in the Asia Pacific.

According to a US naval officer, the newly arrived B-1 bombers can carry more weapons than the former B-52, including long-range anti-ship ballistic missiles. A former official at the Joint Intelligence Center of US Pacific Command pointed out that the unpredictability of the deployment would make it more difficult for the adversary to respond.

The US muscle-flexing reveals its anxieties.

Generally speaking, the US military is displaying its strength and combat-readiness training on such a high profile mainly to ease the external concern that the COVID-19 outbreak may have taken a toll on its combat capabilities, and to deflect the criticism of its inadequate outbreak response. Going forward, the US military's muscle-flexing moves will cause negative impacts on itself and regional security.

The epidemic prevention and control in America is facing more risks. The US Pentagon on May 12 released the news that 5,036 American service members and civil staffs have been infected with coronavirus, which amounts to 8,046 combined with infected family members.

Of the six aircraft carriers that claimed to set out for missions, the USS Nimitz and USS Ronald Reagan have both reported sailor infections, and the USS Harry S. Truman hasn't had a port visit for fear of infection. While the outbreak is far from being brought under effective control, the US military's constant display of strength and combat readiness training will put the efforts of pandemic control at higher risk.

The regional situation may become more unstable. The US military's constant muscle-flexing in Europe has incurred a strong response from Russia. The Russian and American air combat and reconnaissance forces have had multiple encounters recently in air space over the Baltic Sea, bringing uncertainties to regional security.

The Japan Times also reported that the US military also plans to equip its marines deployed in the Asia Pacific with the Tomahawk cruise missiles to counter the "predominant land-based cruise missiles and ballistic missiles" deployed by potential rivals in the region. This is bound to incur relevant countries' discontent and spark a new round of regional turbulence.
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Vincentian students desirous of returning home from Jamaica will now travel by One Caribbean. (Photo Source: ANN)

Several parents have banded together and have identified an alternative to the much debated US $1,339.29 (EC $3,619.29) airfare, that LIAT had affixed to a one-way flight home from Jamaica, for Vincentian students studying there.





LIAT has also requested a guarantee of fifty passengers and payment for any shortfall.

A letter dated May 11, 2020, signed by 2 concerned parents and sent to the "students studying in Jamaica, announced the alternative ride home, via One Caribbean, at a reduced cost.





This charter was arranged by concerned parents who, we were told, "only want to bring their children home.





They were able to negotiate a US $364.29 discount on the price offered by LIAT, but the apparent cost savings may not be realized as "some students would prefer to wait until the end of the month to leave, the letter noted.





Meanwhile, Prime Minister Dr. Ralph Gonsalves reported that his government has activated the National Student Loans Company, to respond to students who may not be able to afford the cost of the voyage home, and/or other associated costs, and to those who would need additional monies if they stayed on campus.





Since the deadline given by LIAT to complete arrangements for the proposed May 12 and 14 flights was already expired, students must be willing to pay for their housing costs over the next 2 weeks at least.





According to PM Gonsalves, this COVID-19 economic response targets at least 85 Vincentians who are studying in some 9 countries and have subscribed to the National Student Loans Programme.





One Vincentian student in Jamaica, told us, "Well some persons can opt to take a supplementary drawdown or not. This is still the case as some persons plan to do it to fund the One Caribbean flight.





It is unclear when the switched flights are set to begin, and even as the parents/wards urged their children to adhere to re-entry protocols, they emphasized, "this arrangement has nothing to do with the government and this cannot be subsidized, all payments must be made up front.





However, PM Gonsalves addressed the issue of arrival dates when he said that the first batch of 30 students was expected here either on Tuesday or Wednesday of this week.





During recent developments, Opposition Leader Dr. Godwin Friday proposed that the government and/or LIAT subsidize the students airfares beyond the purported US $400 per one way ticket that students would have normally paid.





"We gave LIAT $2.7M as part of the COVID relief stimulus package. A regional airline we gave them $2.7M and we cant find the money to bring our students home? . That should be used to subsidize the students to come home, its the least we can do, Dr. Friday declared.








By Fang Xiaozhi

Japan is one of the few countries in the world that possess advanced space technology and development capabilities. In the past few years, Japan has accelerated military buildup for space forces. The Japanese Defense Minister Taro Kono said recently that the Space Domain Mission Unit, first space force of the Self-Defense Force, will be officially established on May 18. According to reports, the Space Domain Mission Unit will be located at the Fuchu Base of the Japan Air Self-Defense Force in Fuchu City, Tokyo. The Space Domain Mission Unit will be tasked with tracking space debris and meteorites that could hit Japanese surveillance satellites orbiting earth, Kono said. It is reported that the new space unit will be staffed with around 20 personnel initially and the numbers will grow to about 120 in the future. It is expected to start operation in 2023 formally.

Japan's strategic intent behind this move is, to optimize the organizational structure of its space military power, mobilizing its own power and external support comprehensively, so as to seize the initiative in space military. Japan's former Defense Minister Gen Nakatani once said blatantly, "Whoever controls the space will be in a position to control the world, and the space control power will become one of the main prerequisites for the fight for air and sea power."

Documents that Japan issued in recent years highlighted the necessity of developing space force for national security, and clarified Japan's core projects of future space militarization. In December 2018, Japan further classified space as a key strategic domain that has become a matter of life and death in its latest National Defense Program Outline (NDPG), declaring that comprehensive measures should be taken to ensure Japan's dominant position in space.

The establishment of the Space Domain Mission Unit also manifests that Japan's strengthening military buildup in new domains of space, cyberspace, and electromagnetics in recent years, which has lead to progress in space militarization construction. It regards space as a crucial field in military strategy, equivalent to or even more critical than conventional warfare. Thus, Japan has planned in advance and given priority to space development, to ensure that it will go undefeated in international space competition.

Given the current competitive situation in security among major powers, Japan's move also intends to coordinate with the US strategic deployment. Space military cooperation is a new growth point for their bilateral defense cooperation, which will inject impetus to alliance strengthening. At present, Japan is in a relatively subordinate position while the United States might be more superior in the Japan-US space cooperation.

The competition in space is becoming a high ground of the future military game. If being able to make remarkable progress in such aspects as space surveillance and attack, and display its advantage in orbital reconnaissance, monitoring, and damage, Japan might keep consistent in space combat capabilities and form a coordinated relationship with the US, so as to obtain a more significant say and progressively improved position in Japan-US alliance and cooperation.

Japan's strategic goal is "becoming a space power in parallel with the United States, Russia, and Europe in the 21st century". It is predictable that as the new round of international competition in space grows increasingly fierce, Japan will continue to utilize and expand its edge in space technology. It will take small-win strategy to step up the development of new-type space weaponry, adjust and optimize the deployment and organizational structure of space forces, to build a more sophisticated space operational system with the integration of "reconnaissance, offense, defense, and support."

On the other hand, Japan might also proactively seek cooperation with other countries and strengthen cooperation with countries and regions such as the United States, Europe, Australia, and India through the joint efforts with space powers and the establishment of military space alliance to achieve "complementary advantages." This would indirectly serve to enhance Japans military capabilities in space, thereby making up for its deficiency of capabilities, and implementing the sharing of both benefits and responsibilities in space development.

In general, Japan's trend towards space militarization has been irreversible, and its impact on international space security deserves our long-term attention and high vigilance.

(Fang Xiaozhi, a researcher at the Institute of Strategic Studies and International Security, Fudan Institute of Belt and Road & Global Governance)
It's been a sad week for Ethan Allen Interiors Inc. (NYSE:ETH), who've watched their investment drop 13% to US$10.03 in the week since the company reported its third-quarter result. It looks like the results were pretty good overall. While revenues of US$150m were in line with analyst predictions, statutory losses were much smaller than expected, with Ethan Allen Interiors losing just US$0.01 per share. 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.

See our latest analysis for Ethan Allen Interiors

NYSE:ETH Past and Future Earnings May 15th 2020

After the latest results, the consensus from Ethan Allen Interiors' five analysts is for revenues of US$593.9m in 2021, which would reflect an uncomfortable 13% decline in sales compared to the last year of performance. Earnings are expected to tip over into lossmaking territory, with the analysts forecasting statutory losses of -US$0.10 per share in 2021. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$633.2m and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.28 in 2021. There looks to have been a significant drop in sentiment regarding Ethan Allen Interiors' prospects after these latest results, with a minor downgrade to revenues and the analysts now forecasting a loss instead of a profit.

There was no major change to the consensus price target of US$11.50, signalling that the business is performing roughly in line with expectations, despite lower earnings per share forecasts. 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 Ethan Allen Interiors analyst has a price target of US$12.00 per share, while the most pessimistic values it at US$11.00. The narrow spread of estimates could suggest that the business' future is relatively easy to value, or thatthe analysts have a strong view on its prospects.

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 Ethan Allen Interiors' past performance and to peers in the same industry. One more thing stood out to us about these estimates, and it's the idea that Ethan Allen Interiors'decline is expected to accelerate, with revenues forecast to fall 13% next year, topping off a historical decline of 1.3% a year over the past five years. By contrast, our data suggests that other companies (with analyst coverage) in a similar industry are forecast to see their revenue grow 2.3% per year. So it's pretty clear that, while it does have declining revenues, the analysts also expect Ethan Allen Interiors to suffer worse than the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The biggest low-light for us was that the forecasts for Ethan Allen Interiors dropped from profits to a loss 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. The consensus price target held steady at US$11.50, with the latest estimates not enough to have an impact on their price targets.

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 estimates - from multiple Ethan Allen Interiors analysts - going out to 2024, and you can see them free on our platform here.

However, before you get too enthused, we've discovered 4 warning signs for Ethan Allen Interiors 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.
Archaeologists from the Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) have uncovered a rare bronze coin from the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt. The obverse of this coin is decorated with a cluster of grapes and the inscription Year Two of the Freedom of Israel; its reverse features a palm tree and the word Jerusalem.

Bar Kokhba Revolt coins were issued by the Judean rebel state, headed by Simon Bar Kokhba, during the revolt against the Roman Empire of 132-135 CE.

During this period, large quantities of coins were minted in silver and bronze with rebellious inscriptions, all being overstruck over foreign  mostly Roman  coins.

Coins from the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt, which declared the rebels purpose  to liberate Jerusalem from Roman occupation after the destruction of the city  are well-known in archeology, explained Dr. Donald Tzvi Ariel, head of the IAA Coin Department, and colleagues.

Discovering such coins helps archaeologists map out the revolt, which took place approximately 1,900 years ago.

It is interesting to note that the rebels minted these revolt coins on Roman regime coins with stripped or damaged faces, possibly out of defiance of the Roman occupation.

The revolt coins featured the Temple facade, trumpets, a harp/violin, as well as the inscriptions: Redemption of Israel and Freedom of Israel.

The archaeologists examined over 22,000 coins discovered in archaeological excavations in the area of the Old City in Jerusalem and identified only four coins from the period of the Bar Kokhba Revolt.

One of these coins is the only Bar Kokhba coin found in the area on which the word Jerusalem appears, they said.

Despite their desire to do so, the Bar Kokhba rebels failed to breach the boundaries of ancient Jerusalem. This fact gives rise to the question of how four coins from the revolt period still managed to make their way into the city.

IAA archaeologists Dr. Moran Hagbi and Dr. Joe Uziel believe these coins were brought to Jerusalem by Roman legionnaires of the Tenth Legion, who participated in suppressing the revolt and saved the coins they found on the battlefields as souvenirs.

In the archaeological and historical research based on the testimony of the Roman historian Cassius Dio, it is accepted that the Bar Kokhba Revolt broke out in 132 CE, after Emperor Hadrian declared the establishment of a Roman colony called Aelia Capitolina, the researchers said.

This colony was built on the ruins of Jewish Jerusalem and began with the construction of a temple dedicated to the god Jupiter on the Temple Mount.

The establishment of the Roman city and the construction of an idolatrous temple in place of the Jewish Temple, in addition to restrictive religious decrees, distressed the Jewish population that had remained in Judea. This launched a widespread revolt against the Roman government under the leadership of Shimon Ben-Kosiba, known as Bar Kokhba.

The revolt itself lasted about five years, causing heavy casualties among the Roman legions  so much so that they had to deploy large military units from around the Roman Empire to complete their ranks.

The revolt ended with the destruction of hundreds of Jewish communities and villages that took part in the revolt. However, Bar Kokhba remains etched into the memory of the Jewish nation as a historical hero.
Actor Vicky Kaushal is all set to celebrate his 32nd birthday on Saturday at home amid lockdown. The actor is living with his brother Sunny Kaushal, action director father Sham Kaushal and mother at their Mumbai residence but says by staying home, we can help flatten the curve.

The actor has been learnt to flip an omelette during his time at home under the guidance of Sunny. Talking about what all he can make in the kitchen, the actor told Mumbai Mirror in an interview, I can, at best, whip up an omelette or a bhurji. But Sunny is a good cook, so I assist him.

Sunny not just taught Vicky to flip an omelette but also gave him a haircut at home.

Sunny Kaushal gives Vicky a haircut at home.

The actor revealed he used to have those mandatory birthday parties at home during his childhood. He said, There were no cell phones to take selfies and record the event, nor peer pressure to post them. It was just about having a good time with friends. Those simple days from my childhood are special.

Stepping ahead to raise funds for daily wage workers who are struggling to feed themselves and their families, Vicky on Wednesday invited his fans to donate for the cause and announced that the 3 lucky winners will have a virtual games night with the star.

The Uri star shared a video on Instagram announcing the virtual games night saying, Hi guys! How does a virtual hang out with me for a super fun game fan sound to you? He wrote along with the video, Loading... A virtual games night with me! Well get to know each other, play some dumb charades and have a great evening. Sounds fun na? Promise you it will be!

Also read: Virat Kohli-Anushka Sharmas wedding portrait in living room catches attention of their fans. See pics

Previously, Vicky donated a sum of Rs 1 crore to help the government deal with the crisis situation. While Im blessed enough to be seated with my loved ones in the comforts of my home, there are many who are not as fortunate. In this time of crisis, I humbly pledge to contribute an amount of Rs. 1 crore to PM-CARES and Maharashtra Chief Ministers Relief Fund, read his Instagram post.

We are in this together and well win this together. Let us all do our bit for a healthier and stronger future. Jai Hind. #IndiaFightsCorona, the post further read.

Follow @htshowbiz for more

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While Malaga and Granada provinces remained in Phase Zero this week, just over half of the country did wake up to new opportunities on Monday.

The move was not all plain-sailing, especially around bars that decided to open their outdoor terraces.

The first mass held in Seville cathedral at the start of Phase One. / EP

According to Phase One regulations, tables must be a distance of two metres apart and only 50 per cent of a terrace's usual capacity is allowed.

Scenes of people gathering outside some bars as if nothing had changed led some owners to close again, finding it impossible to enforce social distancing regulations.

According to the ATA (association of self-employed workers) only one in three bars has opened this week in cities such as Seville, Bilbao, Zaragoza, Palma, Oviedo or Almeria.

The police forces were also setting up stricter controls at provincial boundaries as the new phase allows movement, but only within the home province.
U.S. Secretary of the Interior David Bernhardt made two stops in Northeast Ohio May 14, including the Flambeau Outdoors facility in Middlefield.

Bernhardt toured the facility after a stop in the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. Flambeau Outdoors manufactures a variety of products for hunters and outdoorsmen.

The Department of the Interior stated that Flambeau has seen an uptick in sales as people venture outdoors during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

What a great story to walk through here and hear folks have been working throughout this whole effort and have done a really incredible job of moving forward in this period of time, Bernhardt said.

The Department of the Interior oversees the National Park Service. Following his Flambeau tour, Bernhardt discussed reopening plans for the parks.

National parks are in varying states of closure. Most park buildings, facilities, and restrooms have been closed. In some cases, entire parks are closed. At the Garfield National Historic Site in Mentor, the facilities are closed, but the outdoor grounds (walking trail and cell phone tour) are open 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. daily.

We have 60 public health officers, Bernhardt said. At the beginning we spent a great deal of time analyzing and coming up with a tool that everyone could use to say we need to ensure public health and safety, employee safety and visitor safety. We need to look at every facility, every service, every unit and go through a mitigation tool process and we worked with the public health officers to develop that.

Bernhardt said that now as various governors are moving forward with reopening plans, his departments job is to be right next to those governors, right on their shoulder.

As they reopen, were working to manage our facilities to be in conjunction with them in a way thats helpful and responsible, he said.

Bernhardt said hes done a number of site inspections throughout the country, as we move to align with those states and their processes.

State plans and the presidents plans will be factored into reopening decisions that will be analyzed on a facility-by-facility basis.

There are certain things that may not be the same when you go to the park than when you went last year, Bernhardt said. And concessionaires have businesses and they also have to make decisions about what they want to do and they may be different.

U.S. Congressman Dave Joyce, R-Bainbridge Township, joined Bernhardt during the secretarys stop at the Cuyahoga Valley National Park. A news release from Joyces office stated that stop included a site inspection, a discussion of safely expanding access to the national parks during the pandemic, and reopened a trail in the park.

Joyce and Bernhardt also heard from rangers and other park staff to discuss their experiences during the pandemic and hear their thoughts and ideas on restoring public access.

As the Cuyahoga Valley National Park begins to responsibly restore access to the public, I will continue to work side-by-side with Secretary Bernhardt and the Interior Department to ensure we are not only protecting the health and safety of the parks visitors, but also that of the park rangers and hardworking staff, Joyce said in a statement.
A protester walks by a restaurant open for takeout business as fellow protesters gather outside the Capitol Complex in Harrisburg on April 20, 2020. They are calling for Gov. Tom Wolf to reopen the state's economy during the coronavirus outbreak. Read more

By one of the tragic yardsticks we use now for measuring strong political leadership  the number of people dying  Gov. Tom Wolfs administration can be considered to be doing well. Pennsylvanias per capita death rate by the coronavirus stands at 31 per 100,000; while certainly too high, its a reassuring number when compared with New Yorks 140 deaths per 100,000 and New Jerseys 107.

And while Wolf is far from the telegenic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, he has, for the most part, provided a calm and consistent presence throughout the crisis that most people find reassuring. A recent Washington Post-Ipsos poll revealed that 72% of Pennsylvania adults approve of the governors handling of the crisis.

Wolf moved early to shut down the state, and unlike President Donald Trump, he has relied heavily on medical advice, particularly from Health Secretary Rachel Levine, to guide his major decisions. That means his decisions tend to favor health and life over commerce.

While thats the right call, that priority has infuriated some across the state who are protesting his reopening plan. The plan itself outlines clear criteria for opening counties, but the criteria for deciding which businesses can and cant operate under the shutdown isnt so clear. Businesses whose requests for waivers allowing them to operate have been denied have joined a growing chorus demanding more transparency into why such decisions are being made. (That hue and cry wasnt helped when in March, Wolfs former cabinet business was allowed to continue to operate; when the governor was questioned by Spotlight PA, the waiver was revoked.)

Some Republican lawmakers issued a subpoena for a more detailed release of business waiver information, which Wolf has rejected. The administration did release a more extensive list of businesses that were granted waivers, but many businesses complained their waivers were revoked right before the list was released.

Throughout, the process and criteria for granting waivers, and reasons for rejecting or rescinding them, has not been transparent.

Business owners are not the only people entitled to this information. Pennsylvanians need to know the underlying criteria for when they can start partaking in aspects of life and commerce that have been shut down. It can give the public confidence that there is a set of rational criteria for decisions over what is safe and what isnt.

Fueled in part by the confusion over waivers, many counties threatened to defy Wolfs reopening plan and open on their own. Wolf punched back, threatening to cut counties off from federal funding and punish those counties. Many counties have backpedaled from their defiant stance.

Shutting off access to information can be dangerous at any time  especially during a health crisis. Thats why Wolfs lack of support for a bill that would broaden access to public records during a disaster declaration is also troubling.

In the kind of crisis were currently experiencing, information is the best vaccine against confusion and fear. Wolf should continue his commitment to making decisions driven by science. But those decisions will be better understood and accepted if he commits equally to transparency.
The Registrar of Companies has directed companies wishing to hold Annual General Meetings (AGM) this year to do so virtually.

This is in view of the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic and the resultant restriction imposed under the Imposition of Restrictions Act 2020 (Act 1012) on public gatherings.

The Registrar-General, Jemima Mamaa Oware, in a statement, said the directive was in pursuant of the power conferred on the Registrar of Companies by section 378(2) of the Companies Act 2019 (Act 992).

Mrs. Oware indicated that the Registrar-General ought to be notified of the AGM before such a virtual meeting is held, and that notification of such meeting could be submitted to the head office in Accra or any of its regional offices in Kumasi, Sekondi Takoradi or Tamale.

She added that in the notification, the company should spell out the electronic system to be used to conduct the AGM, noting that the system should be fair to all members.

She continued that the notice of the meeting should be sent to every member electronically in accordance with provisions of each company's constitution.

The statement noted that the virtual AGM could be held using such modalities as are fair to all their shareholders.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the restriction on movements, companies may send their notifications to the Registrar-General by email to [email protected] for Accra, [email protected] for Kumasi, [email protected] for Tamale and infostdrgd.gov.gh for Sekondi-Takoradi.

---Daily Guide
Coronavirus has tipped Germany into a recession, with the country suffering its steepest quarterly contraction in more than a decade official data showed today.

The German economy shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2020, federal statistics agency Destatis said, calling the quarter-on-quarter decline 'the worst since the global financial crisis' in 2009.

It means Germany has joined Italy and France in entering a recession. French GDP fell by 5.8 per cent in the first quarter of this year, while Italy's dropped 4.7 per cent.

Coronavirus has tipped Germany into a recession, with the country suffering its steepest quarterly contraction in more than a decade official data showed. Pictured: The deserted central shopping street in the German resort town of Sellin

Members of the civil defence demount the fence between Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, and Constance, Germany, in Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, as lockdown is eased

Germany's statistics agency also revised its gross domestic product (GDP) figure for the final quarter of 2019 from zero growth to a contraction of 0.1 percent.

That means Germany has now experienced two consecutive quarters of decline, meeting the technical definition of a recession.

The worst is yet to come however, with economists warning that the full impact from the coronavirus restrictions will be felt more in the second quarter.

The German economy shrank by 2.2 percent in the first quarter of 2020, federal statistics agency Destatis said, calling the quarter-on-quarter decline 'the worst since the global financial crisis' in 2009

Economy Minister Peter Altmaier last month warned that Germany was headed for 'the worst recession' in its post-war history as the pandemic brought huge swathes of the economy to a standstill.

Like other European countries, Germany closed factories, shops, schools and restaurants from mid-March and asked workers to stay at home to help curb the outbreak.

The export-reliant powerhouse was also hammered by travel curbs and supply chain shocks worldwide.

'Private consumption, exports and investments in equipment shrank considerably as a result,' the German economy ministry said in a statement.

State spending and the construction industry were the only growth drivers in the first three months of the year.

It means Germany has joined Italy and France in entering a recession. French GDP fell by 5.8 per cent in the first quarter of this year, while Italy's dropped 4.7 per cent. Pictured: French citizens sit near the Eiffel Tower in Paris

'Two weeks of lockdown as well as supply chain disruptions... brought the German economy to its knees,' noted ING-Diba economist Carsten Brzeski.

'For the time being, things will get worse before they get better,' he added.

Some experts have forecast the German economy could contract by a whopping 10 percent between April and June.

The German government expects GDP to shrink by a record 6.3 per cent in 2020, a bigger slump than during the global financial crisis in 2008/2009.

Germany's first quarter slump is smaller than steep GDP plunges seen in France, Spain and Italy, two of the countries hit hardest by the virus in Europe. Pictured: A homeless person sits in Rome near The Vatican

But there are glimmers of hope on the horizon, with many experts saying Germany is well positioned to weather the storm.

The country's first quarter slump is smaller than steep GDP plunges seen in France, Spain and Italy, two of the countries hit hardest by the virus in Europe.

Berlin predicts the German economy will bounce back in 2021 and grow by 5.2 percent as the virus impact wanes and businesses reopen.

The country began easing lockdown restrictions in early May, allowing most shops to open again while restaurants and tourism also took their first tentative steps.

Sections of the fence between Switzerland and Germany are taken apart by members of the civil defence

Two civil defence workers carry a section of the metal fence that had been enforcing lockdown between Switzerland and Germany

A double fence had separated the two cities and their residents due to the lockdown and the border closure

Factories too are restarting their production lines.

'The timing of the lifting of the lockdown measures as well as the huge fiscal support by the German government... support the view that the German economy could leave the crisis earlier and stronger than most other countries,' Brzeski said.

To help the country through the COVID-19 crisis, Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has ditched its cherished policy of maintaining a balanced budget.

It has launched an ambitious rescue package worth 1.1trillion (974million) that includes state-backed loan guarantees, cash injections and schemes to put workers on reduced hours to avoid layoffs.

Several big-name firms such as sportswear maker Adidas, Condor airline and travel firm TUI have already received hundreds of millions of euros in government-backed loans, while Lufthansa is still negotiating a potential bailout.

But the economy will only rebound if Germany's biggest trading partners are also doing well, warned Jens-Oliver Niklash, an analyst for LBBW bank.

In a sign of more difficult times ahead, carmaker Volkswagen said Wednesday that it would suspend production again on some lines that had only just reopened. The demand for cars is simply not there, it said.

It comes despite an easing of lockdown in Europe, with a temporary fence between Kreuzlingen, Switzerland, and Constance, Germany, being demounted by members of the civil defence today.
A stretch of Interstate 5 will be closed in North Portland beginning late Saturday while workers build two new sign bridges across the freeway.

The Oregon Department of Transportation said the freeway will be closed between the Interstate Bridge and North Alberta Street from 11 p.m. Saturday until 6 a.m. Sunday. Ramp and lane closures will start as early as 7 p.m. Saturday, the agency said.

The new sign bridges will span the interstate just north of Alberta Street and just south of the Marine Drive interchange. Theyre part of a project to add signs in seven spots along the interstate between Marine Drive and Interstate 405.

These signs will help reduce crashes, improve travel time reliability and improve highway efficiency with new advisory speed signs, traveler information signs and relocated guide signs, the transportation department said in a news release.

Oregon Department of Transportation

Drivers should be aware of the following:

Southbound I-5 traffic will have to leave the freeway at State Route 14 in Vancouver.

Northbound I-5 traffic will have to leave the freeway at Alberta Street.

Northbound I-405 traffic can only exit to southbound I-5.

A number of ramps  including northbound ramps to and from Hayden Island and Jantzen Beach  will remain open during the closure.

Drivers will only be able to reach Hayden Island by taking the northbound on-ramp from North Marine Drive.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
VANCOUVERPeople who clean teeth, cut hair, work with children and serve food will be at high risk for coming into contact with COVID-19 when the economy opens, says a new report released Friday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Until now, many of these workers, who have to be in close contact with people as part of their jobs, have been protected from potential encounters with the virus by the bittersweet reality of being laid off. But thousands of workers are now facing those risks as provinces ease coronavirus restrictions and more businesses reopen.

There will be other outbreaks and they wont just be in oilsands and meat packing industries, said David Macdonald, the reports author, referring to some of the places COVID-19 outbreaks have occurred in Canada.

We really need to ensure workers are given some discretion, about how they return to work, and when, he said.

Macdonalds report analyzed Canadian jobs according to an American scale that measures how close workers have to get to other people to do their jobs. The scale, which doesnt take into account physical distancing or barriers implemented during the pandemic, runs from 1-100, with 100 indicating necessary, regular contact with other people.

Those at the top of the list  including dentists and dental hygienists, flight attendants, hair stylists and teachers  have largely either lost their jobs or scaled back significantly during the first phase of Canadas response to COVID-19.

Macdonald estimated that 1.7 million Canadian workers at high risk of being close to other people have lost work since February. Of those, 1.2 million were women.

As workers prepare to get back to their jobs, Macdonald outlined two major considerations that could help keep them safe: The extent to which workplaces are able to effectively implement social distancing, physical barriers and cleaning regimens, as well as workers feeling confident that they can refuse unsafe work.

Workers in Canada have statutory rights to refuse unsafe work under provincial occupational health and safety laws. But preliminary evidence from Ontario shows those work refusals are not always upheld.

Meanwhile, workers who feel its unsafe to return to work, such as those who are immunocompromised, may face an unsavoury decision between making a salary and feeling safe.

If they have to quit their jobs, they may even sacrifice benefits from the CERB.

Not all 1.7 million high risk workers will return to work right away, and some industries, such as grocery stores, and much of the health-care sector, have already implemented measures to protect workers.

Other high-risk industries are proceeding more cautiously.

Lou Arab, Alberta spokesperson for CUPE, the union representing flight attendants, said they have been pushing airlines to commit to more stringent measures to protect workers  like cancelling food service, and providing more personal protective equipment. The airlines are already providing workers with masks, he said.

But with flight schedules running at five per cent of normal and flights operating well below capacity, Arab said workers concerns about protections arent yet at their height.

As a union were a little bit more concerned with our members continuing to get paycheques, he said. When they come back to work, well be pressured by our members to pursue more aggressive safety strategies.

Dental professionals  dentists and hygienists  also topped Macdonalds list, and thats one service that is proceeding very cautiously with the easing of restrictions.

The British Columbia Dental Association says its members offices wont be open for service until it gets further direction on protecting patients and staff from COVID-19.

A statement from the association says full dental services will be introduced gradually and when its safe to do so, not on the opening date of May 19 when other services are set to resume in the province.

Premier John Horgan and public health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry have said guidelines for various sectors, including dentistry, are being developed, but havent yet been published.

Association spokesperson Dr. Alastair Nicoll says dental teams are experts at infection control and they want to ensure their practices are appropriately set up to comply with physical distancing and other requirements to reduce the transmission of the virus.

WorkSafe BC says industry-specific guidelines will be available on their website by the end of the week.

Nicoll says when patients do start returning to their dentists, theyll notice changes with assistants behind Plexiglas and chairs, and magazines and toys removed from waiting rooms.

Also at the top of the list were physiotherapists, teachers, musicians, oil and gas workers, fitness teachers, correctional service officers and chefs.

With a file from The Canadian Press

Read more about:
Oil markets have had yet another confusing week, this time not just because of the coronavirus and all the media attention that has garnered. But this week, disparate crude oil inventory data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) and American Petroleum Institute (API) left traders wondering which set of inventory change data--which is supposed to be representative of the balance between supply and demand--was the right data.

History suggests that markets will move after hours on Tuesday in response to whatever data the API dishes out. But because inventory moves are almost always priced into the market before the data release, the biggest price moves in response to the data release is not when inventories have moved up or down in a significant fashion, rather, it is when the data released differs significantly from what analysts had predicted.

Eighteen hours later, the markets look toward the EIA data. The moves here are triggered not only by the difference between analyst expectations and the actual data, but by how much it differs from the API data released the afternoon prior.

Often these two industry bodies--the official government data delivered by the EIA and the non-governmental API--are in lockstep. But from time to time, the data shows a signficant discrepancy between the two reports, leaving traders wondering which data set they should use.

The answer isnt as straightforward as one might imagine.

For 2020, the inventory moves--not the actual inventory, but the change in inventory--reported by the two bodies show clear evidence that the two sets of data are typically in sync.

This should inspire a fair amount of confidence in the data in general--at least over time. But, as the chart also shows, there are sometimes major differences.

In the first week of January, the two reports were more than 7 million barrels off, with the API reporting on January 7 that crude oil inventories fell by 5.945 million barrels, while the EIA on January 8 reported a 1.164 million barrel build. Expectations were that U.S. crude inventories would fall by more than 11 million barrels. Related: Are Venezuelan Oil Exports Poised For A Comeback?

Just a few weeks later, the situation was reversed. On January 29th, the API reported a 4.267 million barrel draw, while the EIA reported a 3.548 million barrel build--a discrepancy of nearly 8 million barrels. This suggests that the discrepancy is likely motivated by a timing issue in the reporting, rather than a difference in how the EIA and API collect and extrapolate data.

There were two other major discrepancies: the week of April 14 and this week, the week of May 12. And again, those two mostly negate the discrepancy cumulatively speaking.

Methodology Mayhem

Lets talk about those methods. Oil companies are required to report their inventory data to the EIA--it is not optional. For data supplied to the API, cooperation is voluntary. They both, however, enjoy similar response rates from companies, despite the fact that many consider the EIA to be the official data. Both bodies are thought to receive around a 90% response rate.

Also, since both sets of data are company reported, they should, in theory, produce strikingly similar results. And that is usually the case. But the four major discrepancies this year have caused many to wonder if one data set is superior to the other.

Before we answer that, lets look at the cumulative inventory changes for 2020. Of course, this is just a snapshot and ignores the data that came before, but it gives a pretty clear picture of how similar--or how different--the data reporting is. Related: Oil Prices Jump On Surprise Crude Inventory Draw

From January 7 to May 12, the cumulative inventory gain for crude oil reported by the API is 102.891 million barrels. For the EIA, the cumulative gains to inventory were 99.672 million barrels. This results in a total difference of just 3.219 million barrels.

Not too shabby.

But this data is not really used in a cumulative way. For the most part, it is the weekly snapshot of losses or gains that moves the oil price needle, and for this, the market is clamoring for more accuracy.

This weeks inventory difference between the EIA and API is striking. But if we look back a few weeks, we can see that the EIA reported a much higher build a few weeks ago--that discrepancy from a few weeks ago is now being righted.

So far in 2020, the big differences came in pairs, three or four weeks apart. This could cue data watchers to anticipate data corrections when the two differ.

But ultimately, the reason for the weeks-long gap before the inventory move discrepancies are rectified is not clear. The takeaway, perhaps, is that there is no clear right data, and traders would be wise to use both the API and EIA--as well as the rig count--to form opinions on market fundamentals. Additionally, traders might find value in using any large differences in the data to anticipate more of the same in future weeks.

By Julianne Geiger for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
Tannen Maury/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

When the Wisconsin state Supreme Court struck down the governors extended stay-at-home order in a bitterly partisan ruling on Wednesday, crowds descended on bars throughout the state, and local officials raced to impose or reaffirm restrictions meant to keep COVID-19 infections at bay.

Meanwhile, residents of neighboring Illinois saw opportunity.

The Daily Beast spoke with several Illinois residents who shared plans to travel this weekend to Wisconsin. While they generally said they were aware of coronavirus-related travel concerns, they echoed a simmering national debate about how long economies can be placed in hibernation.

Oh, and they were anxious to feel something again.

Anthony Hersick, 22, from Ingleside, Illinois, said he and some friends were planning on crossing the border to Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, to head to the bars and clubs in the area. Im a little worried [about COVID-19], but we are here to support our friends, he told The Daily Beast. As long as we follow the rules, thats good enough for me.

Hersick said he and his friends were close with some of the local DJs in Lake Geneva and they wanted to financially support them and the local businesses in the area that were struggling.

Kat Schimian, 32, is an Illinois resident and health-care worker who planned on taking a trip to Wisconsin this weekend with a group of friends by motorcycle. She said they would practice social distancing and didnt want to enter any establishments that are overly crowded. I want to enjoy my summer, but safely, she said.

Schimian mentioned that she had recently been tested to make sure she was not a carrier of the virus. She said there was a balance between keeping others safe and allowing people to choose mitigated risk.

Public health experts have repeatedly warned that tests are not always reliable and can sometimes produce false negatives. And people can still contract COVID-19 after being tested while remaining asymptomatic.

Story continues

The looming infusion of out-of-state bodies to Wisconsin was just the latest episode in a larger trend among Illinois residents surrounded by states and cities with varying levels of COVID-19 lockdown.

Gina Beena, 43, is from northern Illinois and said her family took a drive to Iowa last weekend.

It was worth the hour-and-a-half drive because we could enter the stores as a family, she said. It was awesome seeing other families with young kids shopping too.

But some Illinois residents expressed anger and frustration over their neighbors decision to cross state lines.

Quite frankly, those who find themselves wandering [across state lines] should be forced to stay there, said Patty Steel of Wonder Lake, Illinois. Your desire to sit in a restaurant is selfish and gross, especially after Wisconsin posted almost 300 daily cases of COVID-19 yesterday.

Chicago Alderman Sue Garza is responsible for the citys 10th Ward, one where she said she can walk to Indiana from [her] front porch. Garza said she was very concerned for her residents and that many of them were already crossing state lines.

It scares the hell out of me, she told The Daily Beast. There is no social distancing [in Indiana], everyone is on top of each other.

Garza said she is trying to impress upon Chicagoans to stay the course for just a bit longer. These people are coming back to their families, their grandmas, and their children, and no one is safe from this, she said. People who think they are invincible are playing with not just their lives but other peoples lives as well. And I dont think thats right.

On Thursday afternoon, during his daily press briefing, Illinois Gov. Pritzker addressed concerns about residents flocking to other, less shuttered states.

I would remind people that the virus is still out there, he said. Just because people opened doesnt mean they dont run the risk of contracting it. We are following the metrics for the state of Illinois. I wish we had a national plan but there isnt one. My job is to keep the people of Illinois safe and Im doing that.

Through a spokesperson, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling obviously partisan and incredibly reckless and dangerous.

When you ignore clear public health guidance and dont social distance or abide by Stay at Home orders, you are putting everyone at riskincluding yourself, but especially our eldest residents and those with underlying health conditions, she told The Daily Beast in a statement.

But pleas from local leaders were being ignored by many Illinois residents who felt the cost of closing businesses outweighed the need to shelter in place. Edith Brown, 56, is an IT worker from central Illinois. She was planning on traveling to St. Louis with a friend to get something to eat and to get a haircut.

Im more of a libertarian in my political views, she said. Poverty and losing your business or home has its own mortality rate.

Many Illinois residents who spoke with The Daily Beast did worry about backlash from residents of neighboring states when they cross state lines. Hersick, for one, said he was slightly worried about having Illinois license plates in Wisconsin this weekend.

Dr. Craig Klugman, a professor of bioethics and health sciences at DePaul University in Chicago, suggested the emerging inter-state travel spree exposed the flaws of a state-by-state approach to battling COVID-19. While governors and other officials might take drastically different approaches, the virus does not care, he said. The virus does not recognize it is leaving Illinois and entering Wisconsin.

Klugman said that the ethics were fairly clear-cut.

While you made the decision to expose yourself, your family, your friends, and your neighbors did not get to make that choiceyou forced it on them, he said. Klugman added that if people do decide to cross state lines, at the very least they should wear a mask, avoid touching their face, and wash their hands frequently.

Ask yourself a few questions: Do you really need that item or service? Can you survive without it? he said.

Echoing a slew of epidemiological models published in recent weeks, Klugman noted it was safe to assume that states opening up were likely to see an increase in infection and death rates.

That line on the map does not offer protection, he said. We are only as protected from infection as the weakest shelter-in-place orders of surrounding states.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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In a bid to decongest jails in



view of the novel coronavirus outbreak, the Madhya Pradesh government has decided to provide 120-day 'emergency leave' to prisoners at one go, officials said on Friday.

The 120-day emergency leave would be included in the sentence handed down to prisoners, a state government order said.

In an order issued on Wednesday, the MP Jail Department said in the case of emergency situations like epidemics and natural calamities or any other circumstance needing prison decongestion, detainees in certain cases would be eligible for emergency leave for a maximum 120 days together.

Earlier in March, the state jail department set a limit of 60-day parole for convicts and 45-day interim bail for undertrials.

This move came after the Supreme Court, in March, directed states and union territories to set up committees to consider releasing jail inmates on parole or interim bail in cases where maximum punishment is seven years.

Following the SC order, the MP government had set up a high-level committee which decided to give relief to 8,000 prisoners in view of the virus outbreak.

A senior MP jail official on Friday told PTI that, after the decision of the high-level committee, some 7,000 prisoners had been released, comprising 4,000 convicts who were released on 60-day parole and 3,000 undertrials on 45-day interim bail.

He said the high level committee had recommended the increase in release period of these 7,000 inmates by 45 days, which was upheld by MP High Court.

As per data tabled in the state Assembly last year, 125 MP jails had 42,057 prisoners against a sanctioned inmate capacity of 28,601.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[May 15, 2020]

Rackspace Awarded Multicloud Services Contract by Texas Department of Information Resources

SAN ANTONIO, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Rackspace today announced it has been awarded a contract by the Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) to provide multicloud solutions to support the states overall IT modernization effort.



Rackspace will provide DIR with operational, technical and security solutions across DIRs Data Center Services hybrid public clouds. Rackspace will also leverage its strong relationships with DIR cloud service providers Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform (GCP) to expand DIRs cloud strategy.

DIRs modernization efforts will help them deliver outstanding services to the Texas government and its residents, said Kevin Jones, CEO, Rackspace. We are proud to be awarded this contrac and to leverage our multicloud expertise to help them achieve that goal.







"The award of this contract is a critical step forward. DIR continues to seek innovative solutions for the shared technology services that further empower the Texas government to provide the people of Texas with the responsive, efficient and cost-effective services they deserve," said Amanda Crawford, Executive Director, DIR.

DIRs relationship with Rackspace paves the way for potential transformation efforts for DIRs portfolio of Texas agencies, all of which leverage technology solutions used by DIR.

About Rackspace

Rackspace is a global technology services company dedicated to accelerating the value of the cloud during every phase of customers digital transformation. As a recognized Gartner Magic Quadrant leader for the last four consecutive years, we are uniquely positioned to manage applications, data, security and multiple clouds worldwide. Passionate about customer success by delivering Fanatical Experience, we provide unbiased expertise with proven results across all the leading technologies. Headquartered in San Antonio, Rackspace has 40 global data centers and over 125,000 clients across 100 countries.

Media Contact:

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Linkedin Sausan Atika (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15 2020

Blood supplies across the country are dwindling as a result of fewer people participating in blood drives during the fasting month and exacerbated by the COVID-19 outbreak.

During Ramadan, when Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk, a decline in blood supplies is common because fasting saps peoples energy and because of a common conception that donating blood nullifies fasting. But the COVID-19 outbreak and physical distancing have further discouraged people from giving blood.

During the fasting month, the Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) typically records a 40 percent decrease in blood donations in each region from regular months, said PMIs Lilis Wijaya.

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Malaysia Issues FAQs On COVID-19 Tax Residency Issues

By Hans Esser, for Expatbriefing.com 15 May, 2020

The Government of Malaysia has issued new FAQs on international tax issues relating to COVID-19 travel restrictions.

The FAQs seek to reassure taxpayers that the Government will disregard a period in which a foreign tax resident individual is in Malaysia due to COVID-19 travel restrictions when deciding whether they should be treated as tax resident in Malaysia.

The FAQs further provide guidance on eased rules for businesses unable to convene a meeting of the board of directors.

The FAQs further state that the presence of key personnel in Malaysia owing to COVID-19 travel restrictions will not result in the creation of a permanent establishment.

Finally, the guidance discusses the tax affairs of individuals who would normally work in Malaysia but are unable to do so due to COVID-19 travel restrictions and also the tax affairs of non-resident individuals currently working in Malaysia due to COVID-19.

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In a packed episode this week, Adrian asks whether the gold rush for back-to-work thermal cameras in Ireland is warranted and looks at how startups are coping with life under pandemic conditions.

Thermal cameras are being painted as a key tech enabler to get Ireland moving again, from airports and hospitals to ordinary businesses. But TCDs Dr Seamus OShaughnessy explains their limitations to Adrian in plain English.



Then the founder and chief executive of one of Irelands most successful indigenous software firms, Phorest, tells Adrian about startup struggles during the current lockdown.



He also explains how his companys technology is helping hundreds of hairdressers in Germany to re-open safely.



The Big Tech Show is in association with Fidelity Investments.




Officials with the Texas Education Agency have outlined a possible year-round calendar adjustment for school districts to consider implementing for the 2020-21 academic year to help plan for inevitable disruptions caused by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

The school shutdowns caused by the pandemic could have a "devastating impact" on students and lead to some returning "nearly a full year behind what normally occurs," TEA officials said in a presentation that was recently posted online.
The suffocating thoughts keep Michelle Bonilla awake at night, tossing and turning in her bed.

She is six months pregnant with her first child. And she is a Linden police officer, a first responder facing an elevated threat of exposure to the coronavirus.

Bonilla, 27, is considered an essential worker as a patrol officer and has to report for work each day to police headquarters, despite knowing at least three colleagues have contracted the virus. They are among the roughly 500 law enforcement members across the state who have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

Bonilla was placed on light duty  reviewing body cam footage exclusively  prior to the pandemic due to her pregnancy. But she says social distancing is impossible in the area of headquarters where she works.

The thought of getting infected, of possibly harming her baby, never subsides. It has turned what is supposed to a joyous occasion into a nightmare, Bonilla says.

I am a hard worker, and I love the Linden Police Department, Bonilla said in an email to NJ Advance Media. I just want to do my job from home so I can contribute to the department without risking my babys life.

Pregnant essential workers on the front lines of the pandemic are struggling with an emotional tug-of-war, forced to choose between the jobs they love and protecting their unborn children.

NJ Advance Media interviewed five pregnant essential employees in three different fields  a police officer, three nurses and a paramedic. Four of them say the fear they have for their unborn babies can be paralyzing.

But their employers are ignoring their requests for accommodations, those four say, forcing them to report for duty at their places of work. They all face a heightened risk of exposure to the coronavirus while most New Jersey residents shelter at home and practice social distancing.

Some of the pregnant women are burning through paid time off to stay home  days they hoped to save for maternity leave. One nurse scrambles to find co-workers who are willing to take her place in COVID-19 units, stirring feelings of guilt and shame.

But their employers say those women signed up to work on the front lines and in times of crisis, and the public counts on them. And many hospitals and police departments are grappling with staffing shortages as nurses and officers have been hit especially hard in the pandemic.

Some point to the guidelines offered by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that say pregnant women seem to have the same risk as adults who are not pregnant and call mother-to-child transmission unlikely. But the CDC also says, We do not currently know if pregnant people have a greater chance of getting sick from COVID-19 than the general public.

What is known is that pregnant women face a higher risk of contracting viruses in the same family as the novel coronavirus and other viral respiratory infections, like the flu, according to the CDC.

For Bonilla, a Brick resident, the threat of COVID-19 looms over each day. Theres constant foot traffic in police headquarters from fellow officers and those who have been arrested. While she wears a face mask, others dont, she said.

Bonillas doctor and her union, PBA Local 42, support her. Bonillas supervisors agree that she can and should do this work from home in order to protect her and her unborn child from unnecessary exposure to COVID-19, reads a letter from the union.

During this unprecedented time and in the spirit of the governors message to allow people the ability to work from home when possible, we are trying to protect one of our officers who is on modified duty and capable of performing those duties from the safety of her home, Det. Timothy Hubert, the president of PBA Local 42, said in a statement.

Yet her request, the PBA letter states, has been denied. Linden Police Chief David Hart did not return multiple phone calls and an email seeking comment.

The U.S. Department of Labor says employers in New Jersey must provide reasonable accommodations for women who are pregnant. A reasonable accommodation, the law states, could be periodic rest, assistance with manual labor or a temporary transfer to less strenuous or hazardous work.

The question is: What is a reasonable accommodation during a still-developing pandemic?

Kelly E. Adler, an attorney with Marlton-based McOmber McOmber & Luber, said theres no exception to the laws given the pandemic.

Federal and state disability and accommodation laws still apply to front-line workers, said Adler, who specializes in employment law. Employers do not get to use the pandemic as an excuse to ignore these laws.

Front-line employees, especially those workers with pre-existing conditions or who are pregnant, have legitimate workplace safety concerns, Adler said. "Employers should make every reasonable effort to address them.

An ultimatum

The nurse was given an ultimatum: work or resign.

She is one of three nurses at Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune who are pregnant and say their pleas for accommodations are being ignored. The nurses spoke to NJ Advance Media on the condition that their names not be published because they fear retribution.

Two of the nurses are using sick time to avoid reporting to work. Their husbands are supportive, but also fear for their safety.

Hes terrified for me, one nurse said.

When one of them brought a doctors note outlining accommodations, her manager gave her the ultimatum, she said.

This is a very difficult situation to be put in, she said. Its been very hard choosing whether to put a baby at risk or my career. I never thought in a million years Id have to choose between the two. I love being a nurse.

The 29-year-old nurse, who works in a medical-surgical unit, said shes using sick time, but still fears retribution.

That would have been saved for maternity leave, said the nurse, who is five months pregnant. At some point, because we are calling out, there will be discipline.

Jersey Shore University Medical Center as photographed on Thursday, May 14, 2020. JSUMC is affiliated with Hackensack Meridian Health. Andrew Mills | NJ Advance Media for NJ.comAndrew Mills | NJ Advance Media

Another nurse, a 33-year-old woman who is pregnant with her third child, is still reporting to work in a critical care unit. A nurse for almost 10 years, she had her other two children, ages 2 and 5, while working for Jersey Shore. In the past, she explained, if you were pregnant and assigned a patient diagnosed with an airborne disease, like the flu, its an automatic  they dont give you that assignment.

They just switch with you, she said. Ive never had a problem.

Shes now on a schedule where nurses are floated to other hospital units with COVID-19 patients on a rotating basis. Because she gets someone to cover each of her floating shifts, shes constantly next in line, she explains.

Its been uncomfortable, said the nurse, who is 16 weeks pregnant. It makes you feel like youre just complaining, like Oh, youre just the pregnant girl complaining because you dont want to do it. But thats not the case at all.

You protect each other in this job, she added.

She said she had to argue with her doctor  who is affiliated with the same health care system as her employer  to obtain a note saying she should not be working with COVID-19 patients or those who are presumptive positive.

The response?

I was told that being pregnant is not a disability, she said of her supervisor.

Is it really that difficult to accommodate me in a time of need? the nurse said. How many times have I had to sleep at the hospital in a snowstorm or drive home in a hurricane? I did it. I didnt complain. A pregnant woman can get the flu and die, or get a respiratory infection and be sicker than the average person. I think they could have been a little more sensitive to the situation, more accommodating for us.

Firefighters and EMS crews held a tribute Monday, April 6, 2020 to thank hospital workers at Jersey Shore University Medical Center fighting the coronavirus outbreak. They applauded arriving workers in a receiving line and those leaving after long days.Photo courtesy Vanessa Langworth

In a statement, Kenneth N. Sable, the regional president for Hackensack Meridian Health  which oversees Jersey Shore University Medical Center  said, Both the CDC and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists do not propose creating additional restrictions on pregnant health care personnel because of COVID-19 alone.

As long as they adhere to Hackensack Meridian Healths personal protection policies and procedures, the statement continued, pregnancy does not prohibit Jersey Shore University Medical Center team members from caring for any patient.

Debbie White, president of the Health Professionals and Allied Employees (HPAE), said the union is working to ensure that pregnant health care workers have minimum exposure to COVID-19.

It is unconscionable that any healthcare employer would risk the wellbeing of a pregnant nurse and her unborn child, White said in a statement.

Other hospital systems in the state say they are accommodating pregnant employees who request not to treat COVID-19 patients.

CentraState Healthcare System, which operates CentraState Medical Center in Freehold, granted eight accommodation requests for pregnant employees, said spokeswoman Lori Palmer.

RWJBarnabas Health is encouraging pregnant staff members to speak with their managers and human resources regarding their assignments during the pandemic, according to spokeswoman Carrie Cristello.

Every effort is made to accommodate reassignments for pregnant staff members in direct contact with COVID patients, Cristello said in a statement.

The risk we take for our family

Stephanie Rowan keeps taking emergency calls, despite the risks.

She is one of the pregnant essential workers who continue on full duty despite having to interact with coronavirus patients.

Rowan, 31, works mainly as a paramedic in Easton, Pennsylvania. The Summit native also volunteers with emergency squads in Phillipsburg and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

Yes, there is fear, she explains, because there isnt a lot of knowledge about (coronavirus).

No one has the right answers, she continued. No one knows them at all. Its not like theyre choosing between pregnant people and non-pregnant people.

Thats not to say Rowan isnt taking precautions. She treats every EMS call as if the person has COVID-19. She wears extra personal protective equipment and changes her clothes before going home.

Im washing everything constantly, she said.

She and her husband, Rowan said, embraced this lifestyle knowing the risks involved.

I chose it knowing that any day I could get sick from anybody even before the pandemic hit, she said. This is the risk we take for our family.

Linden police officer Michelle Bonilla in front of city hall. Thursday, May 14, 2020. Patti Sapone | NJ Advance Media

Bonilla and the others also chose this line of work. But the coronavirus pandemic is unprecedented, they say.

Bonilla often plays out in her mind what could happen if she gets COVID-19.

If I got infected, my doctor told me a fever could have devastating effects on my unborn baby, and I may not be able to take drugs to treat the infection without endangering my baby, she said. The thought of me and my baby being infected without the ability to fight, it truly keeps me awake at night."

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Alex Napoliello may be reached at anapoliello@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
After a long winter break, the doors of Badrinath shrine will open early Friday for thousands of devotees, ITBP officials said.

It is expected that the portals will be opened at 4.30 a.m., the force deputed in the hilly town to guard India-China border, said.

As per an estimated figure registered last year, around 10,000 pilgrims visited the shrine last year on the first day of its opening. On Thursday, the temple and its surroundings were decked with quintals of marigolds.

Among the prominent personalities expected to offer flowers on the first day opening of the shrine are state Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Governor Baby Rani Maurya.
EDWARDSVILLE  Local political parties took little time in turning the Madison County Board of Healths resolution to establish guidelines to reopen county businesses and churches into a political issue.

On Tuesday the board  comprised of all the Madison County Board members  voted 26-2 in favor of the resolution which defies the stay-at-home order issued by Gov. J.B. Pritzker. The yes votes included all 15 Republicans and 11 Democrats. Voting no were Michael Doc Holliday, D-Alton, and Victor Valentine Jr., D-Edwardsville. Jim Dodd, D-Alton, did not participate.

Before the meeting, the Madison County Democratic Party put out a media release calling the plan dangerous and politically motivated.

We all understand that there must be a plan in place to help reopen Madison County, and to help save small businesses, retailers and manufacturers, but this plan would ultimately endanger those same small businesses across our county, said Randy Harris in the release.

He referred to verbiage in the resolution, noting that businesses may not be insured or lose their licenses, while the county avoids legal liability. He called it politics, plain and simple and a reckless plan by Board Chairman Kurt Prenzler to draw attention away from the ongoing corruption and lawsuits by members of his administration.

He also said Prenzlers focus on opening up is dangerous to many small businesses.

His release was followed Wednesday by a statement from Democratic Madison County Board chairman candidate Bob Daiber who will face Prenzler in the Nov. 3 election.

I support the safe and responsible return to normal business operations in Madison County, Daiber said. This is a public health issue, not a political issue. If Kurt Prenzler is going to pursue re-opening Madison County through this resolution, he must do so with a strict focus on the safety of the workers, businesses, and residents of Madison County, and not on his personal need to generate headlines that divert attention away from the rampant corruption within his administration.

More Information The complete releases are available online at www.thetelegraph.com. See More Collapse

Daiber called for Pritzker to speed up the timeline for moving through the various stages of his Restore Illinois plan. Seven Metro East Democratic state lawmakers earlier this week also asked the same of Pritzker.

Daiber said if the county moves ahead with this the reopening plan, it should do so with a strict focus on the safety of the workers, businesses, and residents of Madison County. That includes providing workers with masks and other personal protective equipment; making resources available so business owners and managers understand the liabilities surrounding reopening and best practices for doing so; increase funding for the Health Department to allow better contact tracing; and make sure the county is protected from legal and financial liability.

Tom Haine, the Republican candidate for Madison County States Attorney in November, also released a statement Wednesday saying he supported the board of healths bipartisan and common sense plan, noting it was vetted by a bipartisan drafting committee before passage.

Though the governors powers in the current pandemic are broad, our Constitution is not suspended, Haine stated. When the governor restricts religious gatherings and free travel and closes legitimate businesses, he raises fundamental Constitutional concerns.

Haine said if Pritzker decides to act against the county, he would face a flood of lawsuits.

On Thursday County Board Member Ray Wesley, chairman of the Madison County Republican Party, issued a release expressing disappointment in Democrats politicizing the reopening of businesses.

He noted Tuesdays resolution was drafted by a bipartisan committee of four Republicans and three Democrats, with the assistance of Madison County States Attorney Tom Gibbons, a Democrat, and several assistant states attorneys.

We didnt need any Democrat votes to pass this resolution, but we went to great lengths to include Democrats every step of the way and keep politics out of this plan, Wesley said. This plan wasnt about politics. It was about helping struggling people in our county.

Also on Thursday, Dean Webb, president of the Greater Madison County Federation of Labor, put out a media release claiming Prenzler was photographed Wednesday going in and out of an Edwardsville restaurant without a mask in violation of his own order.

Not only is this hypocrisy of the highest order, but he is intentionally putting workers and the public at risk by not following his own rules, Webb said. If the County Board Chairman wants every citizen to follow this directive, he has the duty and responsibility to live by the same rules.
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HALIFAX, NS / ACCESSWIRE / May 14, 2020 / Oceanus Resources Corporation (TSXV:OCN) ("Oceanus" or the "Company") announces that it is changing its name to Silver Tiger Metals Inc. and its trading symbol from "OCN" to "SLVR".Name and Trading Symbol ChangeEffective at the start of trading on Wednesday, May 20, 2020, Silver Tiger Metals Inc. ("Silver Tiger") will commence trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the new symbol "SLVR".There is no change in the share capital of the Company. The Company's new CUSIP number is 82831T109 and its new ISIN number is CA82831T1093. No further action is required by existing shareholders with respect to the name change. Certificates representing common shares of the Company will not be affected by the name and symbol change and will not need to be exchanged.CEO, Glenn Jessome, states, "We believe this name change more accurately reflects the Company's evolution as an emerging high-grade silver deposit in Sonora, Mexico. The new Silver Tiger name pays homage to the property's namesake historic El Tigre mine. The old El Tigre mine produced over 200 million silver equivalent ounces at an average grade of over 2 kgs per ton from 1903 to 1938. The old El Tigre mine forms a small portion of our 35 kilometer long, 28,000 hectare district size property. After acquiring the El Tigre property, our technical team focused on the low hanging fruit and drilled off and delivered our maiden NI 43-101 compliant resource estimate. It is the tenor of grade at El Tigre that excites us as we begin to drill the kilometers long un-mined high-grade vein extensions to the North and South of the old El Tigre mine." Private PlacementThe Company also announces a non-brokered private placement to raise up to $675,000 through the issuance of units at a price of $0.07 per unit. Each unit will consist of one common share and one-half warrant of the Company. Every two one-half common share purchase warrants of the Company entitles the subscriber to acquire one common share of the Company for $0.10 for a period of twenty-four months from the closing date. The Units issued pursuant to this private placement will be subject to a four month hold.The proceeds from the private placement will be used to explore and drill the Company's El Tigre Property in Sonora, Mexico and for general working capital purposes. The private placement is subject to final acceptance by the TSX Venture Exchange.VRIFY Slide DeckVRIFY is a platform being used by companies to communicate with investors using 360 virtual tours of remote mining assets, 3D models and interactive presentations. VRIFY can be accessed by website and with the VRIFY iOS and Android apps.Access the Silver Tiger Metals Inc. Company Profile on VRIFY at: https://vrify.com The VRIFY Slide Deck and 3D Presentation for Silver Tiger Metals Inc. can be viewed at: https://vrify.com/explore/decks/492 About the El Tigre PropertyFollowing the completion of the maiden El Tigre resource estimation (the full NI 43-101 technical report is posted to the Company's website and can also be accessed on SEDAR at www.sedar.com) the Company directed its exploration efforts at identifying other areas of silver-gold mineralization across the expansive property holdings (28,414 hectares). The Company's prospecting and mapping program identified in excess of 10 kilometers of favorable host stratigraphy (i.e. the El Tigre formation) with several areas of mineralization identified to the south, east and north-east of the old El Tigre Mine. The El Tigre formation is the rock package that hosts the historic El Tigre Mine, which operated from 1903 to 1938, and was reported to have produced a total of 353,000 ounces of gold and 67.4 million ounces of silver from 1.87 million tonnes averaging 7.54 g/t gold and 1,308 g/t silver (Steven D. Craig, B.A., M.Sc., P. Geo. 2012).The Company's drilling completed after filing its' 43-101 compliant resource estimate intersected similar-style silver-gold mineralization in the El Tigre formation at the Protectora, Caleigh and Fundadora areas to the north of the old mine, as well as to the south, past Gold Hill (see Figure 1 below). Drilling to the north of the old mine by the Company returned the following impressive silver-gold intercepts:Hole IDCommentFrom(meters)To(meters)Length(1)(meters)Au(g/t)Ag(g/t)AgEq(2)(g/t)ET-17-14488.2591.403.1510.11,990.92,748.4including88.2589.100.8537.27,338.910,128.9and188.65190.151.500.0241,107.31,109.1ET-17-14528.5029.250.7510.92,830.43,647.9ET-17-14890.1090.600.509.832,247.12,984.35Notes to Table:True width has not been calculated for each individual intercept, but true width is generally estimated at 75-90% of drilled width. Metallurgical recoveries and net smelter returns are assumed to be 100%.Silver Equivalent ("AgEq75") ratio based on silver to gold price ratio of 75:1 Ag:Au.These diamond drill holes were some of the last holes drilled by the Company with no follow up drilling in this area having been undertaken.As part of the Company's mapping and sampling program in the fall of 2019 to prepare for the upcoming drilling program, channel samples were collected fr
A headteachers union has warned that schools will be unable to hit the governments target for all primary school pupils to be back in classrooms before the summer holidays.

In a major blow to the lockdown easing plans, the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) said it had very significant concerns about ministers expectation that children would be able to return to school before the academic year ends.

These proposals, as they currently stand, are likely to prove impractical and unworkable in most schools, the NAHT said, adding the aim was not realistic.

Sending children back to school would free up parents. The government is now encouraging those who cant work from home to return to work.

In a blueprint for easing the lockdown, the government said it aimed for all primary school children to return to school a month before the summer holiday if feasible.

The NAHT, which represents 29,000 head teachers and other school leaders, said this would not work.

Unless there is a dramatic change in circumstances in the coming month, we do not believe this will be possible, the union said. We believe that the chances of the necessary conditions being met are exceptionally low.

The NAHT advice adds to a growing row between education leaders and the government over its plan for schools to reopen.

On Wednesday, NAHT joined with other teaching unions in urging the government to delay its 1 June target for the reopening of some primary schools.

An alliance of nine teachers unions said the plans had to be put on hold and that it was too early for any assurances that it was safe for children to return.

The joint statement said that classrooms of four- and five-year olds could become sources of Covid-19 transmission and spread.

We call on the government to step back from the 1 June and work with us to create the conditions for a safe return to schools.

One headteacher told The Independent that questions remained over the governments plans for a phased return to school, which would start with some children  including those in early years settings, reception and year 1  returning from the start of next month.

There needs to be transparency around the information on why they believe opening schools is safe, said Simon Smith, from East Whitby Primary Academy.

Matt Hancock was on the TV the other day saying we think it is OK. If we are talking about the safety of children, the safety of staff, we think it isnt good enough. I dont think you can social distance in schools with young children. 

Mr Smith said social distancing could be challenging in particular for nursery teachers, whose charges may need nappies changed or to be comforted if they are upset.

He told The Independent: We have to balance that sense of how we can be safe with humanity, otherwise we run the risk of creating schools that horrify children and they never want to walk into them again.

In the coronavirus recovery strategy released this week, the government said the target remained under review.

After Boris Johnson laid out the school plans in his speech on Sunday, one headteacher from the St Georges Church of England Primary School in Kent wrote to parents, saying: I am not going to sit here and write to you to say we can achieve social distancing in a school.

Howard Fisher added: What is missing from this discussion is a sensible, rational debate around better solutions, such as repeating a year and coming back when we have more science to support us. Believe me, I would rather any child repeats a year than go back too soon and have to lose a child.

The government wants children in early settings, reception, year 1 and year 6 back in school by 1 June.

Speaking about NAHTs concerns over the unrealistic aim, Rachael Warwick, executive headteacher of Ridgeway Education Trust, said: It is hard to know what realistic is in the current situation because it is unprecedented.

The president of the Association of School and College Leaders told The Independent: We need to make schools as safe as we possibly can and we need to be guided by the science. We need to work together collaboratively to make that happen, because we have a responsibility to start to reopen schools and to offer education to all children.

Another union has told its members they can refuse to go back to work unless they are given the same protection as other front-line workers, it was reported on Thursday night. The Guardian reported that NASWUT, in a letter signed by its general secretary, had said it would consider legal action to push back the 1 June re-opening date.

Education union leaders will on Friday meet with the Chief Medical Officer and other experts to hear reasons for the government's push to reopen schools.

England is the only part of the UK asking schools to begin phased reopenings from the start of next month, raising fears among teachers' unions about the risks of infection from the coronavirus.

Sending children back to school will be encouraged but voluntary.

Writing in Friday's Daily Mail, Gavin Williamson, the education secretary, set down a marker for the unions. Parents are doing a fantastic job helping children learn at home, but nothing can take the place of a teacher, he wrote. All of us in education have a duty to work together to get children back to school.

The Department of Education has been contacted for comment.
Handy woke up the morning of March 18 to a message from the nursing home that her mother had been put on oxygen. She called and was told Erwin wasnt sick but just needed a little help breathing. At 3 p.m., a nurse she didnt know  and who didnt know her mother  called to read a prepared legal statement, announcing that COVID-19 had entered the building. That nurse said she couldnt provide information about specific residents. Soon after, another nurse Handy didnt know phoned to say her mother was in rapid decline.

Handy demanded to speak with her mom but was told to call back later. When she did, the nurse said she held the phone to Erwins ear so Handy could say goodbye. But there was silence on the other end. When Handy called out after she was done speaking to her mom to thank the nurse, she got no response. She hung up not knowing if her mother ever heard her words.

The nursing home, according to New Jersey records, has reported 37 positive COVID-19 cases and 14 deaths. Handy wonders, since Erwins test results came in after she passed, if her mother was counted.

Erwin was cheerful and easygoing and loved children. The Framingham, Massachusetts, house that Handy grew up in was always open and full of kids. Erwin lit up around her 11 grandchildren and 10 great-grandchildren.

Her first grandson, Scott Thomas, 48, a retired Army colonel, credits her for the man he has become. His father, Erwins son, was young when Thomas was born, and his own mother was abusive, he says. Big Hun, as he called Erwin, became his everything  the selfless and supportive mother figure he needed, who epitomized for me what a parent should be.

Thomas, who now lives in Purcellville, Virginia, grew up spending weekends, summers and holidays with Erwin. During college, he lived with her and her youngest, Handy, who is like a sister to him. Because of Big Hun, he says, he was the first in the family to earn a masters degree.

On April 23, Handy got another phone call, this time from an assisted living facility in Fairfield, New Jersey. Erwins younger sister, 83-year-old Shirley Mercer, who never had children of her own and was like a second mother to Handy, had tested positive for the coronavirus.
Thousands of migrants, on the way to northern states from Maharashtra amid the coronavirus crisis, are pouring in at Sendhwa in Madhya Pradesh's Barwani district.

New Delhi : Demanding food and transportation, hundreds of migrant workers on Thursday pelted stones near Sendhwa on the Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra border.

Eye witnesses said that groups of migrants created ruckus, alleging that government machinery made no arrangement of food and transportation for them.

In the afternoon, some of them pelted stones, but nobody was injured in the incident, witnesses said.

Shailesh Tripathi, who reached Barwani from Pune, said migrants, which included pregnant women, senior citizens and children, were facing a lot of hardship in the absence of food, water and transportation facilities.

A large number of migrants were waiting for food and transport on MP-Maharashtra border for hours, and people from Satna, Rewa, Anuppur and other districts of MP were also among them, he said.

Barwani collector Amit Tomar said the migrants were sent to transit points in different districts in 135 buses from the border.

Stone-pelting took place as some migrants felt after the buses left that there would not be any more vehicles for those left behind, but officials reassured them and calmed them down, he said.

Meanwhile, the state government said that about 15,000 migrant labourers were taken from Sendhwa border (Bijasen Ghat border) to other places in the past three days while there has been a huge influx from Maharashtra.

"The maximum pressure of migrants is being faced at Bijasan Ghat on the border of Sendhwa (MP-Maharashtra). 5,000 to 6,000 migrant workers are reaching there every day," a government statement said.

Migrant workers were being transported by buses for free to Dewas transit point after providing them food and conducting medical tests, it said.

From Dewas, they are sent to Sagar, Chhatarpur, Guna and Shivpuri by buses.

Subsequently, migrant workers of other districts of the state are transported to their home districts and those from Uttar Pradesh, Jharkhand and Bihar are ferried to the border of UP, the state government said.

MP chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan appealed migrants not to panic.

"Do not panic in this hour of crisis, the government of Madhya Pradesh will ensure that every migrant worker reaches home. Arrangements for food, temporary stay, medical check-up and buses have been made. This arrangement will continue until all the migrant workers reach their destinations," Chouhan said.

Additional chief secretary ICP Keshari informed that over 2.26 lakh migrant workers were brought back to MP by road from other states while 86,000 migrants were brought by the special trains.
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Linda Spoonster Schwartz was on the telephone recently talking with a nurse friend in California when the inevitable topic of the pandemic came up.

Kate, did you see those pictures of those body bags? asked Schwartz, former state Department of Veterans Affairs commissioner, as well as the former assistant secretary for policy and planning for the federal Department of Veterans Affairs under Pres. Obama.

Of course Kate had seen the body bags. So had Schwartz. So had the rest of us.

Oh my God, it was Yeah, and did you go to that place you havent been in a long time? said Schwartz. The body bags, and the daily body count are all too reminiscent of the time Schwartz and others served in Vietnam, Schwartz as an Air Force nurse.

As the state cautiously prepares to get back to something approaching normal, Vietnam veterans want to make sure we remember one thing: Our frontline workers are going to need us post-pandemic, just as weve needed them during the pandemic. Veterans from the Vietnam War know what its like when much of the world gets back to normal, when the world wont ever be normal for some. That may apply most acutely to the people who have worked through this unprecedented crisis that has now claimed more victims than the Vietnam War.

So last month, a group of bold-faced named Vietnam veterans wrote a letter (posted on the Vietnam Veterans of America website) that steps through the mists of a half a century to stand in the breach.

The letter also draws stark parallels between veterans service at war, and front-line workers service in the pandemic.

Think about it. Neither generation was prepared for the fronts that drew them. As the letter said, the two groups share the same isolation from family, the endless, incoming casualties, and the power and pain of impossible triage decisions. And only someone who has served can ever understand the life-changing intensity serving requires.

Only theres an important difference between then and now, said Schwartz.

We were like talking about the fact that it took years for that many people to die, she said. This is just months. Its so hard to process or to even fathom whats happening.

This pandemic is everywhere - and the effect will linger beyond our ability to shop, get haircuts, and sit inside a restaurant. If we all simply move on, we do so at the risk of leaving important people behind.

Schwartzs father served during D-Day aboard the Susan B. Anthony. The transport struck a mine and had to be abandoned, and Schwartzs father ended up in the drink, covered with oil. He was eventually picked up, but, concerned hed been rescued by Germans, he elected to keep quiet. He was taken to a displaced persons camp located in what he thought was Germany. He eventually saw a priest in the camp and asked to speak to him. The priest, who thought Schwartzs father was German, was surprised. You speak English! he said.

Schwartz only learned the story because her mother once made her father sit down and tell her everything while she wrote it all down.

Schwartz, herself, was severely injured in a training mission in 1983 when a door blew off the aircraft she was riding in at 30,000 feet about 500 miles off the coast of Virginia. The apple Schwartz was eating went out the hatch, and Schwartz nearly followed. She was left with decompression sickness of the brain and spinal cord. For several years, she said, I was not hitting on all cylinders. Her husband, who is also a veteran, had to advocate for her.

She was discharged in 1986, but she never really left the battlefield. Instead, she became a skilled advocate who changed vets lives for the better, first in Connecticut and then nationwide. Veterans loved her. She was and is one of them. And she and others are not about to sit idly by while another generation returns from the front - even a domestic one - without the proper support. If theres one thing the Vietnam War left us, its the understanding that there is such a thing as post-traumatic stress disorder. We can call people heroes, but heroes deserve our attention after the hearts and banners come down.

The letter ends: You are not alone. We stand with you. As such, VVA has promised to support pandemic workers in whatever way they need. That band of brothers and sisters, said Schwartz, stand with you. It means that when this is over, were going to fight for what you need.
Educators are pleading with the department to revise or rescind the guidance. In Montana, school officials estimate that compliance would shift more than $1.5 million to private and home schools, up from about $206,469 that the schools are due under current law. In Louisiana, private schools would receive at least 267% more funding, and at least 77% of the relief allocation for Orleans Parish would be redirected, according to a letter state that education chiefs sent to DeVos. The Newark Public Schools in New Jersey would lose $800,000 in federal relief funds to private schools, David Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center, said in a letter to the governor of New Jersey asking him to reject the guidance.
Even as several congested areas in



Maharashtra's Pune city turned into COVID-19 hotspots, slum pocket of Janata Vasahat has managed to fight the virus with coordinated efforts of its residents and authorities.

Situated along Sinhgad Road, Janata Vasahat is spread over 2 to 3 km area and has a total population of 60,000.

The locality has only reported two cases of COVID-19 so far, and the Pune Municipal Corporation plans to keep it that way.

Pune municipal commissioner Shekhar Gaikwad attributed the success of controlling the spread to containment measures undertaken by the civic body and the geographical location of the slum.

"Nestled between a hillock called Parvati and a water body off Sinhgad Road, Janata Vasahat only has one entry and exit point, restricting people's movement in the area," the senior official said.

A couple of doctors from the civic body were active in the area and were working tirelessly to detect persons suffering from mild symptoms of COVID-19, he said.

"So early detection and tracking are crucial to the success we have achieved in this locality," he added.

The coordinated efforts of youth volunteers, corporators and the police in ensuring social distancing had also paid off, Gaikwad said.

When coronavirus cases started emerging from slums in Pune, the local police in Janata Vasahat tightened vigilance and started creating awareness as well.

Self-discipline exercised by residents of the locality along with coordination among the local groups, police and civic staff had kept the situation under control, said senior inspector Devidas Gheware of Datta Wadi police station in the locality.

Zonal medical officer of the locality Dr Deepak Pakhale said door-to-door survey, tracing of symptomatic patients, monitoring senior citizens suffering from comorbid conditions, distributing masks and sanitisers had helped keep Janata Vasahat safe from the pandemic.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WATCH HILL, R.I., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ocean House Management (OHM), New England's leading luxury hospitality brand, today announced its OH Well Program, a collection of safety and health measures for guests and associates from arrival to departure. This program will be in place for the June reopening of OHM's Rhode Island Atlantic Coast properties, including the Forbes 15-star Ocean House and the award-winning five-star Weekapaug Inn.

"Our goal is to provide outstanding guest experiences and luxury service combined with new health standards so guests can have an enjoyable and memorable visit," said Daniel Hostettler, OHM President and Group Managing Director. "We understand now more than ever, travelers are seeking safety, trust, flexibility and a sense of escape in their choices away from home. Ocean House Management will introduce new, unrivaled experiences with fun and flair at our hotels that will allow guests to still have their treasured getaways this summer."

The OH Well Program For Guest and Associate Safety

The OH Well program was developed based on information from leading authorities in health and epidemiology, state and government guidelines plus the creativity and knowledge of the expert teams at the properties. The program includes added processes for all areas of the hotels including guest rooms, public areas, activities and dining, beyond the properties' meticulous five-star standards.

Dine Well: Furniture spacing has been adjusted to ensure social distancing. Reservations will be required, and guests will receive single use menus. Enhanced food and beverage safety guidelines are being followed and surfaces will be sanitized with increased regularity.



A new family-style menu can be ordered and delivered anywhere outside on property (e.g., cabana on the beach, picnic table on lawn, terrace of a suite, etc.) to give families and couples who are overnight guests new options to dine together. Each property will offer a "fast-casual" style culinary option with a pick-up area to reduce interaction for guests. Ocean House will even have a new BarMobile, a craft cocktail cart to deliver cocktails and complimentary canapes to guest rooms between 5 and 7 pm .



Extraordinary dining experiences for guests and the community will be available with advance reservations. Outdoor venues feature beautiful water views, including the beloved Verandah and Seaside Terrace at Ocean House, along with Weekapaug Inn's Searoom, the Lawn and the Pondhouse, a private and interactive experience.



Furniture spacing has been adjusted to ensure social distancing. Reservations will be required, and guests will receive single use menus. Enhanced food and beverage safety guidelines are being followed and surfaces will be sanitized with increased regularity. A new family-style menu can be ordered and delivered anywhere outside on property (e.g., cabana on the beach, picnic table on lawn, terrace of a suite, etc.) to give families and couples who are overnight guests new options to dine together. Each property will offer a "fast-casual" style culinary option with a pick-up area to reduce interaction for guests. Ocean House will even have a new BarMobile, a craft cocktail cart to deliver cocktails and complimentary canapes to guest rooms . Extraordinary dining experiences for guests and the community will be available with advance reservations. Outdoor venues feature beautiful water views, including the beloved Verandah and Seaside Terrace at Ocean House, along with Weekapaug Inn's Searoom, the Lawn and the Pondhouse, a private and interactive experience. Stay Well : Hotel rooms and suites will be left empty for 24 hours between check out and check in whenever possible, providing added assurance for guests. Hand sanitizer wipes will be placed in each guest room for personal use throughout the stay. The properties have added the Molekule, a medical grade air purifier proven to destroy airborne viruses and bacteria, to be in all guest rooms as an added measure of cleanliness.



Guests will have a choice in their housekeeping services during their stay, with options ranging from full daily service to more limited service to a daily drop-off of terry and linens. Additional requests can be made at each guest's discretion. Common areas will be regularly cleaned and disinfected, and hand sanitizer stations will be located throughout the properties. Arrivals will be spaced out to allow for individual guest check in, and guests will be greeted at the front drive. Luggage will be placed in rooms and any surfaces touched will be sanitized.



: Hotel rooms and suites will be left empty for 24 hours between check out and check in whenever possible, providing added assurance for guests. Hand sanitizer wipes will be placed in each guest room for personal use throughout the stay. The properties have added the Molekule, a medical grade air purifier proven to destroy airborne viruses and bacteria, to be in all guest rooms as an added measure of cleanliness. Guests will have a choice in their housekeeping services during their stay, with options ranging from full daily service to more limited service to a daily drop-off of terry and linens. Additional requests can be made at each guest's discretion. Common areas will be regularly cleaned and disinfected, and hand sanitizer stations will be located throughout the properties. Arrivals will be spaced out to allow for individual guest check in, and guests will be greeted at the front drive. Luggage will be placed in rooms and any surfaces touched will be sanitized. Play Well: Beach and outside seating will be configured to allow for social distancing between groups of guests. Outdoor activities including croquet will be available with advance reservations and appropriate social distancing. Private chef classes and meals for families, couples and individuals remain available.

Reopening Preparation and Special Guest Offer

At a time when Ocean House marks its 10th anniversary since its historic rebuild in 2010, the property teams at all OHM Rhode Island hotels are skillfully planning to reopen in June, pending state guidelines. All staff members will go through COVID-19 training prior to opening and will sign a "healthcare commitment," including temperature taking, hand washing and other health practices.

In appreciation for guests returning, Ocean House and Weekapaug Inn will offer a complimentary night, Sunday through Thursday in November or December 2020 following a three-night stay this June.

For complete details on the OH Well program, hours of operation and the special June offer, visit www.oceanhouseri.com and www.weekapauginn.com, follow the properties on social media, or call 888.974.7613.

About Ocean House Management

Since the redevelopment of the AAA Five Diamond Ocean House in 2010, Ocean House Management, LLC has grown from a single luxury hotel to a collection of some of the most prestigious hotel properties in New England. Each hotel is an award-winning destination, with its own name and personality. Ocean House Management Collection is comprised of Ocean House (OceanHouseRI.com) and Watch Hill Inn (WatchHillInn.com) in Watch Hill, Rhode Island; the Weekapaug Inn in Westerly, Rhode Island (WeekapaugInn.com); the Inn at Hastings Park (InnatHastingsPark.com) in Lexington, Massachusetts; and now The Preserve Sporting Club and Residences in Richmond, Rhode Island (ThePreserveRI.com). For additional information, visit OHMCollection.com or follow the properties on social media.

About Relais & Chateaux

Established in 1954, Relais & Chateaux is an association creating delicious journeys in 580 unique hotels and restaurants throughout the world, operated by independent innkeepers, chefs and owners who share a passion for their business and a desire for authenticity in their relationships with their clientele. With properties around the world, Relais & Chateaux offers an introduction to a delicious lifestyle inspired by local culture and a unique dip into human history. The association's members are committed to protecting and promoting the richness and diversity of the world's cuisine and traditions of hospitality, and committed to preserving local heritage and the environment. relaischateaux.com #deliciousjourneys

Media contacts:

Laurie Hobbs at [email protected]

Text/tel: 612.220.1176

Claire Skinner at [email protected]

Text/tel: 904.303.8323

SOURCE Ocean House Management Collection
15.05.2020 LISTEN

One COVID-19 case has been confirmed in the Agona East District of the Central Region with 10 other suspected cases proving negative after contact tracing.

This was announced by the District Director of Ghana Health Service, Mr. Quianing Mends has announced

Briefing Newsmen at Agona Nsaba, Mr. Quaining Mends said the confirmed patient is a middle-aged woman who had travelled from Niger to the district through an unapproved route.

"Through an informant, the District Rapid Response Team went to the community to look out for her. She willingly complied with the team for her blood sample to be taken for testing.

Noguchi Medical Center confirmed that she has coronavirus in her system.

We quickly arranged for the Regional Ambulance to take her to the treatment center.

Then contact tracing was carried out. Blood samples of 19 people who had been communicating with her were also sent to Noguchi for testing

Thank God 10 of them proved negative including a 3- year old daughter of the woman. We are waiting for the rest of the suspects who are on mandatory quarantine and are being fed by the District Assembly"

According to the District Director of Health, contact tracings was still ongoing in the community where the confirmed case was recorded and to make sure all contacts were have been found thanking the people for their collaborative effort

" Agona East District Public Health Emergency Committee made up of Personnel from Ghana Health Service, Security Agencies, Traditional rulers, NADMO, Environmental Health among others are all over the district to create awareness and also enforce strict adherence to all preventive protocols"

Agona East District Chief Executive, Hon. Dennis Armah Frimpong while commending the Rapid Response Team for a good work done so far, encouraged them to go the extra mile to fish out for more suspects adding they should have constant contact with the people in the communities.

"The confirmed case was identified on April 27th and was quickly quarantined before her blood sample was taken to Noguchi for testing.

The result delayed until May 7th when it was confirmed to be positive.

Because she was living in the community, the delay created fear and panic. Thank God the results of 10 contacts proved negative. This has calm down fear and panic

The Assembly in collaboration with the Public Health Emergency Committee is ensuring that people keep to regular hands washing, the use of hand sanitizers, social distancing as well as wearing of nose masks

Thousands of Nose Masks and Hand Sanitizers have been supplied to the communities to curb the spread of Coronavirus pandemic" the DCE stated

Hon. Dennis Armah Frimpong stressed the need for Ghanaians to work hand in hand with His Excellency Nana Addi Dankwa Akufo Addo led NPP government to combat Covid-19 remaining them that restrictions on social gathering and others were still in force.
[birds chirping] [ice cream truck music] You remember when you was a kid, right? When you heard that bell, that bell was like almost going to Disney World because now you get to come outside and you get to get your ice cream that you always wanted, that rainbow or that vanilla cone with rainbow sprinkles or that chocolate cone with cherry dip, you know  whichever makes you happy. [ice cream truck music] I have an obligation. I have to take my trucks to the street. Why? Because I believe the ice cream trucks are essential service. Someone asked me why am I working in the coronavirus? Well, I mean, my customers actually wait for me. Whats up, Champion? Speaking Spanish: Chocolate or vanilla? You know, they can choose anybody. They can choose Mr. Softee, they could choose Carvel, but they choose to come to the FunTime Frostee truck because Ive been serving them for the past 26 years. You got it? Have a great day. Thank you. Its harder for us to social distance six feet to give you an ice cream cone. Thank you. I try to tell the drivers make sure that the truck is disinfected. Make sure that you got wipes. Make sure you got gloves. Make sure you got two masks. You know, make sure that the customer order back up. Hey, hows it going? As this coronavirus happens, as its going on, you know, the ice cream trucks have been kind of lonely. We had to transition to now wait for the customer. I think they coming. Theres no more stopping five minutes and going. Now, we have to stop 10 minutes, 15 minutes on a block, and get em downstairs. Well, when I hear the ice cream truck, I just come running. She acts like a child when she hears the ice cream truck. Im glad I heard the ice cream truck, cause its better than hearing the sirens of the fire truck and ambulance. Dos. A lot of people havent been buying ice cream because of the coronavirus. You know, they dont want to touch nothing. I know that, but this is a childhood thing, you know? The atmosphere now is crazy in New York City because Im a born New Yorker, and Ive know this place to be hustle and bustle. But driving around the neighborhoods now, its like  [sirens]  wow, is this really happening? Is this happening? [sirens] [ice cream truck music] And then when you hear the ice cream truck, you say, Oh, guess what? Hey, Joey, go get your clothes. Come on. Were gonna go get some ice cream. Now we feel normal again because now I can go outside, because now I can go bring my kids. We can have a little ice cream, stay outside, catch a little fresh air and then go back inside. Have a great one. We are essential. Were providing a service, making you and your family happy during the pandemic, without a pandemic, rain, sleet or snow, I feel that I can bring that joy to people. [ice cream truck music]
Despite the COVID-19 pandemic impacting energy demand across New Mexico and the world, and fossil fuel markets seeing historically low values and subsequently shrinking production, the states renewable energy industry continued to move forward as New Mexico leaders aimed to diversify the states energy economy beyond the boom and bust cycles of oil and gas.

On New Mexico State Trust Land, six leases were active for solar projects with a total capacity of 221 megawatts, per records from the New Mexico State Land Office, and 27 lease applications were filed for an added capacity of 2,917 megawatts.

For wind energy, nine leases were active with 245 megawatts of capacity, and 19 lease applications were filed to add 1,835 megawatts of wind power on State Trust Land.

A megawatt is often estimated to produce enough electricity to power 1,000 homes.

Most recently, construction began on 35,000 acres of State Trust land in Torrance County about 10 miles west of Encino for the La Joya Wind Farm, consisting of 111 turbines to generate a total of up to 306 megawatts of power.

The section on State Trust land will hold 74 turbines, generating 207 megawatts.

During the projects lifetime, it was expected to generate $41 million in revenue for New Mexico public schools, read a news release from the New Mexico State Land Office.

This project exemplifies New Mexicos smart use of public resources to create a sustainable economy and move us down the path toward a clean energy future, said Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham.

The lease negotiated by the State Land Office is a win-win for the people of New Mexico: It puts our public lands to work raising money for schools and helps diversify our economic portfolio.

New Mexico State Land Commissioner Stephanie Garcia Richard said the states Office of Renewable Energy continued to receive applications, permit requests and general inquiries about renewable energy development each week and that interest was high despite the drop in energy demand created by the pandemic and subsequent travel restrictions and stay-at-home orders.

She said the recent downturn in fossil fuels presented an opportunity for New Mexico to harness its renewable energy potential  part of a broader effort to diversify state land uses and reduced reliance on the volatile oil and gas market.

New Mexico has always been a great place to develop all forms of energy, but renewable only had a sliver, Garcia Richard said. Now, its becoming a powerhouse.

Legislation passed during New Mexico 2020 Legislative Session, along with the establishment of the Renewable Energy Transmission Authority (RETA) put the state in a position this year to increase its renewable portfolio, Garcia Richard said.

For the economic growth rationale alone, renewable energy is becoming a viable choice, she said. I do think that it would be more stable. The price per kilowatt has come way down in the last decade. This energy is cheaper to produce that it was a decade ago.

But she pointed to challenges in the state for the storage of renewable energy, and transmission to get the power from the rural areas it is generated to major metropolitan areas where it is needed

With advances in storage technology, its becoming more robust, Garcia Richard said. Thats definitely a challenge. Transmission is another challenge. We have to use it as we produce it.

And renewable energy alone would not replace the revenue the state could lose out on if it moved away from fossil fuels, she said, meaning New Mexico State Trust lands must also be diversified to increase manufacturing, technology, agriculture and recreational uses.

Even with all this interest in renewables, in comparison with the loss of revenue from oil and gas, this cannot fill that void, Garcia Richard said.

But she still hoped that New Mexico would one day use 100 percent clean or renewable energy.

The shale reserves are vast, but they are also finite, she said. No one thinks they will last forever. I think now is the time to put these transition plans into place.

A May 4 study from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis found renewables nationwide generated more electricity than coal every day in April, for the first time in history.

Renewable beat out coal only 38 days in all of 2019, per the study.

The transition away from coal for electricity generation has accelerated in 2020 due to a number of factors, particularly low gas prices, warmer weather, a significant amount of new renewable capacity connecting to the grid late last year, and more recently, lower power demand from the economic slowdown because of the coronavirus, the study read.

Adrian Hedden can be reached at 575-628-5516, achedden@currentargus.com or @AdrianHedden on Twitter.



2020 the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.)

Visit the Carlsbad Current-Argus (Carlsbad, N.M.) at www.currentargus.com

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Northern Irish farmers have showed their support to the NHS by donating locally produced food hampers to workers on the frontline.

Farmer-produced goods were given as gratitude to doctors, nurses and hospital staff who are battling against the Covid-19 crisis.

The Northern Irish produce in the hamper was sourced from Glenarm Castle, in County Antrim.

Producers supplied fruit and vegetables, Glenarm Shorthorn beef, Glenarm organic smoked salmon, eggs and sourdough bread.

The Ulster Farmers' Union (UFU) said farmers wanted to do something that would highlight their appreciation for the service NHS staff provide.

Deputy president Victor Chestnutt said: Members of the farming community who have been affected by the virus have been overwhelmed by the caring nature, commitment and dedication of our NHS staff.

"Farmers have overcome numerous challenges since this pandemic began to continue producing quality food for consumers and its great to be able to gift this hamper filled with local food."

Mr Chestnutt added that Northern Ireland produce is farmed to some of the highest standards in the world: "We hope our delicious homegrown produce is enjoyed by all NHS staff.

The UFU said the farming community is intertwined with the NHS, and the medical field is a vital service to the agriculture industry.

The Farm Families Health Checks Programme provides a service to farmers at local livestock marts and community events, and the service of the Air Ambulance has been critical to the NI rural community.

"We depend so much on our health care service and all those within in it," Mr Chestnutt said, "Their efforts cannot be commended or recognised enough."
It is not how most people picture police officers, but there he is, uniformed, mask on, strumming a guitar and singing well loved film songs to ease the tension at the station as people stranded in Jammu finally make the journey home.

A three-minute clip of Jammu and Kashmir police officer Bikram Kumar singing Bollywood songs in that unlikeliest of places, the railway station, on Thursday has been shared widely on social media, making him a social media star of sorts.

The deputy superintendent of police in Jammu (East) said it all happened in the spur of the moment. He saw a person carrying a guitar and walking towards the railway station and spontaneously asked him for it.

He then began belting out songs, "Papa Kehte Hain" from Aamir Khan's Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak and Gulabi Aankhen Jo Teri Dekhin, Sharabi Yeh Dil Ho Gaya from Rajesh Khanna's The Train.

The Papa Kehte Hain probably came from his missing his 16-month-old daughter Myrah, said the 35-year-old, smiling at comments that he has become a star.

"I have been on duty for many days and because of COVID-19, I am unable to see my daughter Myrah."



Little Myrah, who is at her grandparents home, was delighted at videos of her father singing.

"My wife is a doctor and Myrah is at my in-law's home. I received a video call from my in-laws today to show how Myrah was dancing on seeing my clips and shouting Papa...I think that was the best gift for my spontaneous action performed to cheer up stranded passengers moving out of Jammu," Kumar told PTI.

He added that the team had gone to the station to oversee the first train leaving for Delhi and to ensure there is no law and order situation.

"....I am happy my effort brought smiles on the faces of the people in the prevailing COVID-19 scare, the 2011 batch KPS officer said on people filming his concert.

Inspector General of Police, Jammu zone, Mukesh Singh also shared the video on his Twitter handle.

The video generated 18.9 K views and was shared, liked and praised by many users.

"The gesture shown by SDPO East Jammu is a unique one. Since trains have to start operation in a new protocol, passengers have to wait in a queue for some time. What better than a live guitar performance while they waited for their chance to board the train," the IGP told PTI.

He said police officers of Jammu province had risen to the occasion and devised unique ways to manage situations which otherwise could lead to law and order problems.

"SDPO Bikram has utilised his creativity to entertain the people and do his duty at the same time. I also appreciate the person who lent his guitar to the SDPO for this short while," Singh said.

Kumar, a B.Tech from NIT Hamirpur, said he started playing the guitar when he moved to Delhi for a job in the corporate sector after completing his engineering. That's when he bought his first guitar.

"After returning to Jammu, I started playing the guitar more often during get togethers with friends and at family functions," the officer, a self-taught guitarist, said.

His wife is posted as a registrar at a Jammu hospital.

The first special train with 1,000 passengers, including students arrived at Jammu Tawi Railway station from Delhi on Thursday morning. It left back for Delhi in the evening.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
GATINEAU, QC, May 15, 2020 /CNW/ - A strong workforce includes good job opportunities for youth. That is why the Government is working with employers across the country during this unprecedented time to make sure that young Canadians stay connected to the job market with safe and secure summer employment opportunities.

Today, the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, kicked off the hiring period for Canada Summer Jobs (CSJ) 2020. Starting today, thousands of opportunities are being posted to the Job Bank website for jobs available across the country. Thousands more will be posted over the coming weeks and months, with a target of approximately 70,000 placements.

Temporary changes to CSJ were announced by the Prime Minister on April 8, 2020 that were aimed at helping young people who are struggling to find summer work due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The flexibilities introduced this year include allowing employers to offer part-time positions, and an extension of the hiring period to the end of February 2021.

In the current COVID-19 economic climate, this year CSJ job placements will respond to both local and national priorities within the not-for-profit, small business and public sectors as well as jobs supporting the delivery of critical service in their community. Job placements could range from tele mental health support lines for youth, to delivering remote education services, to job placements in community services that focus on delivering supports to vulnerable populations affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

All youth are encouraged to search for CSJ-funded jobs in their communities by visiting jobbank.gc.ca or by downloading the free Job Bank app. Job seekers should keep checking Job Bank for updates on placements available in their communities, including Canada Emergency Student Benefit applicants who are able to work and are required to verify that they are looking for work as part of the eligibility process.

Quote

"We recognize that young people are particularly hard hit by COVID-19 and that is why we made changes this year to the Canada Summer Jobs program. I encourage Canada's young people to go to Job Bank and check out what's available to them. Youth are powerful leaders of change, and during these difficult times we are proud to support them as they help out our communities and shape a better and more resilient Canada."

 The Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion

Quick Facts

The CSJ program provides paid opportunities for all youth between the ages of 15 and 30 to develop and improve their skills within the not-for-profit, small business and public sectors. The program also supports the delivery of key community services to Canadians.

The changes to the CSJ program this year will help small businesses hire and keep the workers they need so they can continue to deliver essential services. Temporary changes to the program for this year include:

an increase to the wage subsidy, so that private and public sector employers can also receive up to 100% of the provincial or territorial minimum hourly wage for each employee (employers in the not-for-profit sector are already eligible for 100% wage subsidy);



an extension to the end date for employment to February 28, 2021 ;

;

allowing employers to adapt their projects and job activities to support essential services; and



allowing employers to hire staff on a part-time basis.

As part of these temporary flexibilities, the Government of Canada called on Members of Parliament for their support to help identify organizations that both support the delivery of essential services in the community and could hire youth for positions but did not apply for the CSJ program in 2020.

called on Members of Parliament for their support to help identify organizations that both support the delivery of essential services in the community and could hire youth for positions but did not apply for the CSJ program in 2020. These changes to CSJ 2020 are in addition to the Government of Canada's $9-billion package of comprehensive supports for youth announced by the Prime Minister on April 22, 2020 , which included a target of 6,000 job opportunities for youth through the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy.

package of comprehensive supports for youth announced by the Prime Minister on , which included a target of 6,000 job opportunities for youth through the Youth Employment and Skills Strategy. Today's announcement is part of the Government of Canada's COVID-19 Economic Response Plan, which already commits $146 billion in support to Canadians and businesses through these unprecedented times.

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SOURCE Employment and Social Development Canada

For further information: Marielle Hossack, Press Secretary, Office of the Honourable Carla Qualtrough, Minister of Employment, Workforce Development and Disability Inclusion, 819-654-5552, [email protected]; Media Relations Office, Employment and Social Development Canada, 819-994-5559, [email protected]

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Despite Chinas unilateral and unreasonable fishing ban in the East Sea, fishermen in central Vietnam are fishing within the countrys territorial waters in areas where sovereignty has been proven for generations.

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After a quiet period due to the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, Tam Giang fishing port in Nui Thanh district, the central province of Quang Nam has returned to its usual bustling. Thanks to a bumper crop and low fuel prices, fishermen can sell their catches quickly.

After selling all their catches, ships are ready for the next trips because for them, China's unilateral and unreasonable ban on fishing in their traditional fishing grounds is invalid and worthless.

Determining offshore fishing as its main development direction, Quang Nam's fishermen are constantly building and converting large-capacity vehicles with modern seafaring equipment to meet the demand for long-term trips.

Tam Giang fishing port is busy as usual. No one can stop the fishermen from their regular legal offshore fishing in the countrys territorial waters./.VNA
China's rare earth exports drop 20-30%, crippled by COVID-19 outbreaks abroad

Global Times

By Li Xuanmin Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/14 13:55:37

China's rare earth industry faces rising pressure due to overseas COVID-19 outbreaks, with exports falling 20 to 30 percent since April, while domestic demand has yet to return to pre-crisis levels, industry insiders told the Global Times.

Despite a drop in exports, China should still hold its rare earth as a bargain chip in trade talks with the US, or to combat US government' malicious crackdown of Chinese high-tech companies, analysts say.

The comments came after the Association of China Rare Earth Industry issued a notice on Thursday, which exempted membership fees for member companies in 2020. In the notice, the association admitted that the COVID-19 has inflicted "considerable damage" on China's rare earth industry, causing difficulties of varying degrees in the operations of many rare earth producers.

The association noted that overseas pandemic prevention measures and the fallout of the deadly virus on the world economy have also "exacerbated strains" on the Chinese rare earth industry in terms of production, operations, market expansion and sustainable development.

China dominates the global rare earth industrial chain and accounts for 95 percent of global rare earth output. Rare earths are indispensable for manufacturing modern electronic products such as smartphones, industrial robots, TVs, vehicles and weapons.

A manager of a large state-owned rare earth magnet maker based in Ganzhou, East China's Jiangxi Province, told the Global Times on Thursday that some local producers are now running only at 70 percent to 85 percent of their pre-virus capacities. Ganzhou is one of China's largest bases for rare earth minerals.

"The overseas demand for rare-earth minerals and magnets has weakened in recent months due to the pandemic. This has led to a chain effect. My company's overseas shipping volume has declined 20 percent to 30 percent since April. That means thousands in losses to our revenue," the manager said.

China's major export destinations for rare-earth products include the US, Europe and Japan.

The manager added that the coronavirus outbreak in late January and early February in China had rocked the company, with production halted for more than a month. The Global Times reported earlier that in February, China's rare earth sector was at 20 percent of its production capacity as companies face shortfalls on logistics and laborer supply.

Wu Chenhui, an independent industry analyst, said border lockdown measures are another barrier that hinders the free flow of rare earth products. "It also affects upstream exploration, which has been forced to cut supply. It will take a long time to return to pre-virus supply levels if downstream demand rises this year," he told the Global Times. But Wu stressed that China should not give up its rare earth card for long-term strategic interests.

In March, China's rare earth exports grew 19.2 percent year-on-year to 5,551 tons, customs data showed.



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TORONTO - Amid still rising case counts and further signs of the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday that businesses can take advantage of emergency wage subsidies until the end of August.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walks to the podium for a daily briefing outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, Thursday, May 14, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

TORONTO - Amid still rising case counts and further signs of the economic devastation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Friday that businesses can take advantage of emergency wage subsidies until the end of August.

One indication of the impact of the measures aimed at fighting the novel coronavirus was seen in the 57.6 per cent plunge in Canadian home sales in April compared with a year ago, to levels not seen in almost 40 years.

Another sign came from Ontario's fiscal watchdog, which reported about one in three workers in the province had been affected by the economic shutdown. The Financial Accountability Office released a report saying about 1.1 million workers had lost their jobs  just as many had their hours sharply reduced  because of the pandemic.

In extending the wage-subsidy program, due to have ended next month, the prime minister pleaded with business owners to hire new workers or rehire old ones to help get the sputtering economy moving again.

"Please take confidence from this announcement," Trudeau said in Ottawa. "You now have some runway to catch your breath as you get restarted. So please, bring back your employees."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau holds a press conference at Rideau Cottage during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ottawa on Friday, May 15, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sean Kilpatrick

Overall, Canada has seen more than 74,500 confirmed COVID cases and at least 5,550 deaths due to coronavirus disease. Quebec, the province hardest hit, reported its total caseload had climbed reasonably slowly to 41,420, an increase of 696. However, 50 more people died, pushing the provincial total to 3,401.

The Quebec government also said it would allow Ottawa-area residents to enter the province from Ontario, starting Monday.

Ontario reported 27 more coronavirus deaths on Friday, bringing its total to 1,825 amid another modest 1.6 per cent increase in overall cases. Nova Scotia said another four people had succumbed in the hard-hit Northwood nursing home in Halifax. The province has had 55 deaths and more than 1,000 cases.

Federal prisons also saw 13 more reported infections, with Correctional Service Canada saying 356 inmates had now tested positive, two fatally. Almost all infected prisoners were at the Federal Training Centre in Laval, Que., the Mission Medium Institution in N.C., or Joliette Institution, also in Quebec. At least 88 guards have had COVID.

With the long weekend and summer approaching, Montreal said it would transform 200 kilometres of city streets into bicycle and pedestrian corridors. The aim is to allow residents to get out and about amid public health rules. Mayor Valerie Plante said the fight against the epidemic had transformed travel in Montreal.

"It will be a very different summer for all of us," said Plante, whose city has been the epicentre of the pandemic in Canada.

Toronto, which cancelled all city-run summer camps and recreation events on Friday, has also begun creating more pedestrian space to allow for physical distancing.

While several provinces reported no new cases, one of them, Newfoundland and Labrador, became the latest to say its schools will stay closed this academic year. Education Minister Brian Warr encouraged students to continue studying online, and said the province was developing plans for when schools reopen in September.

In British Columbia, parents were being given the choice of allowing their children to return to class part-time in June, while Yukon Premier Sandy Silver was set to announce a comprehensive reopening plan. For now, only residents and a few others are allowed to enter the territory.

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Trudeau urged provinces to boost and co-ordinate testing for coronavirus and contact tracing for those infected to contain future outbreaks.

The prime minister also announced financial support for thousands of non-COVID medical researchers who face layoffs. The 15,000 researchers at hospital-based institutes didn't qualify for the wage subsidy.

Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer called again for Parliament to reconvene, saying the current approach of limited sittings and virtual meetings isn't good enough to hold the Liberal government accountable for the billions it's providing in emergency aid. Trudeau, however, said the current system was working well.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who encouraged social distancing over the long weekend, reassured people worried about grocery shortages that supply chains were strong. "The key is everyone only buys what they need," Ford said.

-With files from Canadian Press reporters across the country

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2020.
John Piper on what critics got wrong about his new book Coronavirus and Christ Theologian says 'coronavirus is a call for repentance to all of us'

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Popular Reformed theologian John Piper clarified his stance on whether the coronavirus is Gods judgment of sin and what the Bible says after a legal group called for an Army chaplain to be punished for sharing the minister's new book, Coronavirus and Christ.

In a 17-minute audio interview posted online Monday, the founder of DesiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary in Minneapolis, Minnesota, responded to claims made by the Military Religious Freedom Foundation and its founder, Mikey Weinstein, in a letter sent to U.S. Secretary of Defense Mark Esper last month.

Weinstein claimed that Pipers new book pushes the belief that the coronavirus is Gods judgment and could even be judgment for homosexuality.

MRFF called for Senior Chaplain Col. Moon H. Kim, the command chaplain of U.S. Army Garrison Humphreys in South Korea, to be court-martialed for sharing a PDF copy of Pipers new book with 35 other chaplains via email.

In the interview, Piper was asked if he thought Weinstein and MRFFs criticism of his new book is fair.

Well, Tony, some of it is. I think it would be fair to say that some of my views about what the Bible teaches, even rightly understood, the author of that letter hates. He hates what I think, Piper said.

They are, he says, incendiary, bigoted, vulgar  not just because he misunderstands, but, in part, because he does understand, and thats how he thinks and feels about some of what the Bible teaches.

Piper went on to say that Romans 5:16 states that all death is the result of Gods judgment on the human race because sin entered the world. Piper further noted that God is sovereign over the coronavirus, and sends it and ends it when He wills.

Piper added that homosexual intercourse is a sin and that the coronavirus is a call for repentance to all of us to bring our lives into alignment with the infinite worth of Jesus.



I consider all of those views to be true because they are what the Bible teaches, and therefore, theyre very valuable to know, Piper stressed. So I think its not just that he misunderstands, but that he gets some things right in those quotes, and he just doesnt like them.

Piper said there are three areas where Weinstein seems to misrepresent his stance in either the letter to Esper or an earlier interview with The Christian Post.



For example, when I say that some people will be infected with the coronavirus as a specific judgment from God because of their sinful attitudes and actions, he assumes that I know who those people are, or at least what kind of people they are, Piper said.



But heres what I write on page 72. ... The coronavirus is ... never a clear and simple punishment on any person. The most loving, spirit-filled Christian, whose sins are forgiven through Christ, may die of the coronavirus disease. But it is fitting that every one of us search our own heart to discern if our suffering is Gods judgment on the way we live.



Piper explained that God does judge people with sickness.



Thats very clear from 1 Corinthians 11:32, and there its even talking about Christians, Piper said. But John Piper or you or anybody else cant determine from outside who is experiencing the coronavirus as a judgment in a punitive sense, and whos experiencing it, say, as purification or whos experiencing it for other reasons that God may have.



Piper said his point is that God does many things for many reasons and people should do sober-minded self-assessment to discern what Gods purposes are in all that happens to us.



Piper also underlined that he is not saying every person who engages in homosexual acts and who gets the coronavirus is being punished by God for those acts.



In Romans 1:27 the Bible says that living in homosexual behavior is sometimes punished by God with a due penalty, which could be a disease, but not always, Piper said. And sometimes disease comes not as punishment, but as a merciful wake-up call that results in repentance and reconciliation and hope. Gods ways are simply more complex than the letter acknowledges.



I suspect though, Tony, that this clarification wont even come close to satisfying the author of this letter since he considers it drivel and vulgar to even suggest that God controls this disease and would judge anyone with it, Piper added.

Weinstein told CP that MRFF and the 22 Christian clients it's representing in the chaplain case do not have a misunderstanding of Piper's book. Weinstein doubled down on his disdain for Piper's Christian views.

"Pipers despicable assertion of 'misunderstanding' is a wretched insult to those 22 Christian armed forces chaplains who desperately came to MRFF for civil rights advocacy help to engage this superior military officer," Weinstein added in an emailed response to CP.

"As for 'not liking' Pipers declaration that the coronavirus is Gods judgment on sinners, and particularly for the 'sin' of 'homosexual intercourse,' [darn] right MRFF doesnt like it! Nor should ANY thinking, compassionate and caring human being 'like' such blatant and brazen prejudice, bigotry and bullying!"

In the interview, Piper also responded to Weinsteins claim in the letter that there is no pastoral care and comfort in Pipers beliefs about the coronavirus.

My response is Sir, no. You are profoundly wrong. We have the best news in the world for the hardest moments in the world  the best care, the best comfort, Piper said. The very heart of Christianity is that, through Christ, God rescues guilty sinners. Thats me and you and all of us. Through Christ, God rescues guilty sinners from his own wrath.

Piper then cited Romans 5:9: Since, therefore, we have now been justified by [Christs] blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God.



Thats what God sent Christ to do: rescue us from his own righteous punishment, Piper added.
Some might be shocked that Elon Musk had openly defied the local governments shelter-in-place order, a move that helped force the county to allow him to reopen the Tesla factory in Fremont next week, risking the safety of workers and the public to make luxury cars. We arent. While Musks move may be controversial, the attitude behind it is too common in Silicon Valley.

Silicon Valleys foundational ethos is to move fast and break things. When Facebook first made that their motto, Mark Zuckerberg meant to capture his companys, and Silicon Valleys ethos of radical innovation  that if you werent moving fast enough to break things, youd be left behind. But weve come to understand that for too many Silicon Valley firms, moving fast means breaking things at other peoples expense. And permission is not necessary.

Musks impatience to reopen the Tesla factory puts workers at unnecessary risk, and could still lead to dozens or hundreds of COVID-19 deaths via community spread. Zuckerbergs impatience about spreading unvetted news and political ads through Facebook has spread misinformation, undermined confidence in the media, and threatened our very democracy.

Startups like Lime flooded San Franciscos streets and sidewalks with e-scooters in the spring of 2018, seemingly overnight. Despite a cease-and-desist letter from the city attorney around unlawful public safety impacts and thousands of citizen complaints, companies continued to operate until the city instituted a permit program balancing mobility and climate goals with safety and public space protections.

Just last week the state attorney general and city attorneys from San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego filed a groundbreaking lawsuit against Uber and Lyft, alleging these corporations broke laws regarding minimum wage, paid sick days, workers compensation, unemployment insurance and more.

Uber, Tesla, Google spinoff Waymo and others are competing to put driverless cars operated by artificial intelligence on our streets, with little pause on live testing after fatal accidents. Under the hood of that experiment is the growing question of AI systems being rapidly deployed in health care, hiring, criminal justice, and education with little guidance.

Move fast and break things has made a virtue of disregard for our well-being and safety. And the consequences are particularly disturbing when these things broken are actually peoples lives.

Take, for example, the on-demand independent contractor model embraced by Uber, Lyft, DoorDash and Instacart. In their rush to dominate the market, theyve rejected the employer-based protection of their workers that we expect. Last week, we released the results of a large survey of ride share and food delivery workers in San Francisco, the heart of the gig economy.

We found that the gig economy, a supposed emblem of Silicon Valley entrepreneurship and opportunity, is actually impoverishing drivers. Shockingly, 20% of drivers we surveyed might be earning nothing once estimated expenses are accounted for. And 13% of food delivery drivers use food stamps to feed themselves, 32% reported sleeping in their car and 21% of workers had no health care, despite San Franciscos health care security law.

In this, Silicon Valley has not been so innovative after all, but replicated a common pattern of generating poverty jobs in the pursuit of profit.

What would be innovative is a public health system that eradicates the racial inequities in poor health and vulnerability. Or a food production and distribution system that generates living-wage jobs. Or a reliable public information and voting access system to ensure a well informed and engaged public drives our democracy.

Perhaps it is time for Silicon Valley firms to slow down and stop breaking things, and instead help create a California that works for all.

Chris Benner is director of the Institute for Social Transformation, and a professor of Environmental Studies and Sociology at the University of California Santa Cruz. Kung Feng is executive director of Jobs with Justice San Francisco.
The third outbreak was at a small residential-type care facility, which wasnt identified. Six people there had confirmed cases.

While the Virginia Department of Health tracks outbreaks in various settings, including jails and schools, the virus has been deadliest in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Across the state, almost 60 percent, or 558 of Virginias 955 deaths, as of Thursday, happened in long-term care facilities. There have been 1,077 cases of COVID-19 in 164 outbreaks.

The highest death toll at a long-term care facility in the United States occurred in Virginia. Nearly one-third of the population51 peopledied at Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Henrico County near Richmond.

Fearful that the same thing could happen elsewhere, Rep. Abigail Spanberger, D7th, whose district includes the Canterbury site, was among 18 legislators to ask the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to release more money to facilities serving the most vulnerable.

It is unacceptable that financial support for them has been so delayed, the letter stated. Without federal action, communities could experience tragedies on the scale of what central Virginia has already endured.
Virgin Australia collapsed on 21 April, putting 16,000 jobs under threat.

InterGlobe Enterprises, IndiGo's biggest shareholder company, has now said it has signed an agreement to participate in sale of Virgin Australia.

Billionaire Rahul Bhatia-owned InterGlobe owns 37.87 percent in IndiGo, while Rakesh Gangwal, his family members and his family trust own 36.64 percent in India''s largest airline.

Rahul Bhatia-led InterGlobe Enterprises signs agreement to participate in sale process of Virgin Australia. InterGlobe is bound by confidentiality requirements of agreement pic.twitter.com/FVJiQgh193  CNBC-TV18 (@CNBCTV18Live) May 15, 2020

Virgin Australia collapsed on 21 April, putting 16,000 jobs under threat.

The cash-strapped carrier announced it had entered "voluntary administration" to recapitalise the business after being battered by the pandemic, which has crippled the global airline industry.

"As regards Virgin Australia, InterGlobe Enterprises has signed an agreement to participate in the sale process and is bound by the confidentiality requirements of that agreement. We are unable to say anything further at this stage," InterGlobe Enterprises said, according to a PTI report.

Two days ago, there were reports that Indigo Airlines, is joining a list of bidders who have shown interest in Virgin Australia, Australia's second-largest aviation company. However, the company denied it in a filing with the exchanges.

Rahul Bhatia owns IndiGo, holding through InterGlobe Enterprises Ltd. The aviation firm has appointed an Australian consultant for the process.

On 12 May, news reports said: The entity has accessed data room and may take the process forward. However, no formal interest has been submitted yet, said a person about InterGlobes plans. A spokeswoman for InterGlobe said the firm would not comment on market speculation, according to a report in The Business Standard.

No bids have been put in yet. The first round of bids have have to be submitted by 15 May, according to a report in The Times of India.

IndiGo is interested in taking Virgin back to its roots as a low-cost carrier. It would then look to return it to profitability by running a lean and mean operation, news reports said.

Deloitte, the administrator for Virgin Australia, is seeking indicative bids by Friday T(today) and binding offers in June, targeting a deal by the end of that month, a report in Mint said.

Virgin Australia, Australia's second-largest airline, entered bankruptcy administration two weeks ago after the government refused the airline's request for a 1.4 billion Australian dollar ($888 million) loan after a debt crisis worsened by the coronavirus shutdown pushed it into insolvency, The Associated Press said in a report.

The airline's major shareholders are Singapore Airlines and Etihad Airways as well as Chinese investment conglomerates Nanshan Group and HNA Group. British billionaire founder Richard Branson holds a 10 percent stake, the report said.

Virgin said in a statement to the Australian Securities Exchange that it had appointed a team of Deloitte administrators to recapitalize the business and help ensure it emerges in a stronger financial position on the other side of the COVID-19 crisis.

It is one of the first major airlines to seek bankruptcy protection in response to the pandemic. Virgin's administrators have taken control of the company and will try to work out a way to save either the company or its business, The Associated Press said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:01:53|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The engagement of Chinese companies, such as the Alibaba Group, in electronic trade has rekindled sales for African businesses during the COVID-19 pandemic, a senior United Nations official said on Friday.

The Chinese engagement has in particular boosted the sales and trading of Africa's major economic commodities such as coffee, which lay fallow hitherto in storehouses for months due to freighting stand-stills caused by the COVID-19 global lockdown, Vera Songwe, Under-Secretary-General of United Nations and Executive Secretary of the UN Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) said on Friday.

"COVID-19 is particularly endangering global trade. That is why I am very happy to be part of this Electronic World Trading Platform (eWTP) initiative with the Alibaba business group," the ECA chief said.

"Africa, which has already been trading with China, can improve trading at this time based on a number of goods on which it possesses comparative advantage," Songwe added.

"Rwanda is already trading its Rwandan chili and coffee. We hope that with the eWTP, we can put more goods from the continent notably, coffee from Ethiopia, shea butter from Mali, white pepper from Cameroon, vanilla from the Comoros Islands and saffron from Madagascar, among others, on the platform," Songwe added.

"This is what happened during a livestream coordinated by the Alibaba Group to position small-scale world brands on the eWTP, an initiative which facilitates business-to-consumer (B2C) sales," the ECA chief said.

The cash-in is explained in terms of the wide access to customers especially in China via the eWTP whose huge demand, in terms of economies of scale, would now lower overall freighting costs for the supplies, according to the ECA.

The ECA chief, who addressed participants of the livestream from the ECA headquarters in the Ethiopian capital, Addis Ababa, said on Friday the ECA is taking action to getting "many more small brands from Africa with distinct products to access the platform and make sales during and after the current health crisis."

The UN ECA is helping to bring unique African products and their promoters to the platform in a practical COVID-19 response move.

The Rwandan coffee brand, known as Gorilla's Coffee, is one of the beneficiaries of its engagement with the Chinese Alibaba Group, through the eWTP.

David Ngarabe, CEO of the Gorilla's Coffee, who witnessed the sale of 3,000 bags of coffee with the help of a livestream session on April 14 that was coordinated by the Alibaba under the eWTP platform rejoiced at the feat following months of slack business as the COVID-19 lockdowns ruptured the supply chains especially to cafes and hotels.

Eric Jing, Alibaba Group Director and Executive Chairman of Ant Group, also said in an online discussion hosted by the UNECA that "we want to support SMEs worldwide to recover from the outbreak, resume production and secure orders in their times of need."

"Through the livestream, we look forward to reopening global trade, starting with helping businesses reopen," he went on.

The ECA chief also stressed that "at a time when the world is closing down, it is particularly important that we continue with trade because that's the only way we can build a prosperous world and a prosperous Africa, together with China."

As Africa thinks about building and strengthening its trade with itself, the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) remains the cornerstone of Africa's trade relationship with itself and the world.

With the opening up of the eWTP to more countries on the continent, Africa can do more together to ensure that no one is left behind from the COVID-19 crisis.

First proposed by Alibaba Group founder Jack Ma in 2016, the eWTP has been recognized by the G20 and launched in China, Malaysia, Belgium, Rwanda and Ethiopia.

It is a private sector-led, multi-stakeholder initiative offering SMEs easier access to new markets via simple and straightforward regulations.

It also offers training and support in areas such as e-commerce, logistics, financing, cloud computing and mobile payments. Enditem
Twitter and Square chief executive Jack Dorsey said Friday he will donate $10 million to an Oakland initiative to close the divide between students who have technology to learn at home and those who do not, contributing nearly all the money the campaign sought to collect a day after its launch.

In a tweet, Dorsey said the donation was to to give EVERY single child in Oakland access to a laptop and internet in their homes. He added he heard about the initiative, which city and school officials launched Thursday, and funded it immediately.

Wow, Mayor Libby Schaaf responded in a tweet. Thank you @jack and all those joining us on the mission to close Oakland's digital divide for good.

Oakland officials started the campaign to raise $12.5 million to provide 25,000 laptops and internet hotspots to families throughout the city. About half of the 50,000 students enrolled in Oakland schools are disconnected or under-connected from technology at home, officials said.

The vast majority of these students and families are from low-income backgrounds, students of color, undocumented, and/or have special needs, officials said in announcing the drive.

On Friday, school officials said they did not know how quickly the funds will materialize into tech because the stay-at-home order had created supply chain problems. But most students will now be able to hold on to nearly 18,000 computers they borrowed from the school through the summer.

What an incredible and incredibly generous gift, said Kyla Johnson-Trammell, superintendent of the Oakland Unified School District, in a statement. Students open to a limitless world of information at school and at home, and becoming more adept at using technology, is what we all want. We thank Jack Dorsey for joining the effort to make that a reality for all young people in Oakland.

Others who donated include Amazon, the Golden State Warriors and Salesforce.

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.

Earlier this week Dorsey also announced he planned to donate $15 million to San Franciscos COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund. His net worth is estimated at $4.6 billion, according to Forbes.

Ali Medina, the interim director of the Oakland Public Education Fund, which is facilitating all donations, said officials were excited about what the donation will mean for students.

Having a computer and internet access empowers our children to thrive academically during this pandemic and beyond, and boosts economic and health outcomes for their families, Medina said in a statement.

Alejandro Serrano is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alejandro.serrano@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @serrano_alej
Following last weeks arrest of a man who asserted he was infected with the coronavirus, two Conroe Police officers are currently practicing 14-day quarantine at home.

Officers were sent home as a precaution, said Conroe PD spokesman Sgt. Jeff Smith.

Upon being arrested for a misdemeanor charge on May 8, a man told the officers he had tested positive for COVID-19. He was found to have an elevated temperature at the Montgomery County Jail. Consequently, he was released with a warrant placed on him, Smith said.

The two officers are between their mid-20s to early 30s and are on paid on-duty injury leave, Smith said. They are about the fourth and fifth department officers to be placed on precautionary quarantine during the pandemic, according to Smith.

First responders in the greater Houston area have been facing down the COVID-19 threat.

On Thursday, funeral services were held for Harris County Sheriffs Sgt. Raymond Scholwinski who last week succumbed to the virus. As of May 6, the Houston Chronicle reported another 11 sheriffs office employees were hospitalized for COVID-19. Yet another 244 employees were confirmed positive for the disease, according to the Chronicle.

Since the COVID-19 outbreak in Montgomery County, at least 14 firefighters with The Woodlands Fire Department were quarantined after potentially being exposed to the virus during emergency calls. None were reported as testing positive, however.

The Conroe Fire Department has multiple measures in place to protect firefighters who come in contact with health emergency patients. This includes the use of customized N95 masks and repeated disinfecting of equipment.

Meanwhile, newly arrested people are screened for symptoms and placed on a 14-day quarantine when booked at the county jail.

jose.gonzalez@chron.com

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:18:22|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese authorities on Friday urged efforts to prevent any "new burning point" for the outbreak of COVID-19 from emerging, as no potential risk for another wide spread of the epidemic should go unnoticed.

The instruction was given at a meeting of the leading group of China's COVID-19 epidemic response, which was chaired by Premier Li Keqiang, also a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

The recent sporadic cluster of COVID-19 cases in northeast China and central China's city of Wuhan proved that the task to prevent the epidemic from rebounding is still arduous and should not be taken lightly, according to the meeting.

The group asked local authorities in such regions to strengthen epidemic prevention and control by filling up loopholes, deepening epidemiological investigation, improving the epidemic control measures for communities and other approaches.

As some countries are considering looser restrictive measures against COVID-19, measures to prevent imported cases should be further modified given the potential increase of international personnel exchanges and economic cooperations, according to the meeting.

The group called on local authorities to improve the normalized epidemic control measures amid the resumption of work, production, markets and education and to come up with targeted epidemic control measures for summer.

Effective ways to resume work, production and markets should also be shared across the country to facilitate economic bounce-back and reduce COVID-19's negative effect on the economy and the society to the lowest possible, the group said.

Wang Huning, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and deputy head of the leading group, attended the meeting. Enditem
Despite the recent stock market volatility triggered by the coronavirus crisis, local entrepreneur Graham Weston is bullish on the prospects for Frost Banks parent company.

Weston, co-founder of cloud computing company Rackspace, earlier this month spent $2 million to acquire 29,400 shares of San Antonio-based Cullen/Frost Bankers Inc.

Frost has the strongest banking franchise in Texas, Weston said in an email Friday. The stock seldom is sold at a discount!

Weston, a member of Cullen/Frosts board since 2017, joins insiders at other local companies who have taken advantage of the market downturn to load up on stock over the past couple of months. They include NuStar Energy LP Chairman William Greehey and Usio Inc. CEO Louis Hoch.

On ExpressNews.com: Rackspace co-founder Weston, five others to be inducted into Texas Business Hall of Fame

Westons involvement with Cullen/Frost represents a uniting of new and old San Antonio-area money, of sorts.

He previously made the Forbes billionaires list thanks to the fortune he built at Rackspace before it was sold for $4.3 billion to New York private equity firm Apollo Global Management in 2016. Cullen/Frost, where Weston, 56, serves as the youngest director, is the holding company for Frost Bank, a 153-year-old institution.

Prior to Weston joining Cullen/Frosts board, his Weston Urban entered into a deal to build the banks $142 million headquarters building. He is the managing member of the building owners general partner. He holds a 21 percent indirect ownership interest.

The partnership collected almost $5 million in rent from Frost last year. Those payments will approach almost $190 million through end of the lease, according to a March regulatory filing.

In connection with its new digs, Frost plans to sell two real estate parcels to entities affiliated with Weston for $6.5 million at some future date.

As a result of these arrangements, Weston is not considered an independent director.

Texas Inc.: Get the best of business news sent directly to your inbox

A regulatory filing shows Weston now indirectly controls 164,113 Cullen/Frost shares, which were worth about $10.5 million based on Fridays closing price of $64.24.Westons recent purchases are held by Trout Capital Ltd. He is sole owner of the partnerships general partner.

Trout Capital acquired the shares May 1 at prices ranging from $67.06 to $69.44. The stock hit a roughly four-year low of $49.22 on March 23 but has closed as high as nearly $100 in the last year.

Weston is co-founder of Geekdom, the tech and entrepreneurial co-working space on Houston Street. In addition, he does charitable work through the 80/20 Foundation, which promotes entrepreneurship and education.

Bill Greehey

NuStars Greehey paid almost $3.9 million to acquire 355,000 units in the San Antonio pipeline company in March. The unit prices ranged from $5.93 to $13.35. He bought the units March 10, 12 and 18. Some of the purchases occurred when NuStar was trading at all-time lows.

With oil prices tanking as the coronavirus spread, oil producers started shutting in wells, hurting NuStars pipeline business. As a result, the units have been trading way off their 52-week high of $29.53, set in September. The company has responded by reducing spending, preserving cash and strengthening its balance sheet, spokesman Chris Cho said in an email.

Besides Greehey, two of NuStars officers and five board members bought units in March.

Cho said the purchases send a strong signal to the marketplace that our board and leadership team are confident in NuStars sound business strategy and strong position to weather this economic downturn.

Greehey now owns almost 10 million units, which were worth about $128.9 million based on Fridays closing price of $12.93.

Greehey, 83, helmed San Antonios Valero Energy Corp. from 1979 through 2005, helping make it the nations largest refiner for a time. He then became NuStar chairman.

On ExpressNews.com: Bill Greehey  CEO turned philanthropist

In 2005, he started the Greehey Family Foundation and has given hundreds of millions to fund the foundation, as well as to mostly local causes.

Both the Greehey Foundation and Westons 80/20 Foundation have pledged donations to assist during the coronavirus pandemic.

Louis Hoch

On April 1, Usio CEO and President Louis Hoch acquired 300,000 company shares for $324,000, or $1.08 each. The shares vest 10 years from the purchase date or if there is a change in control.

Since the acquisition, the shares had risen in value to $549,000 as of Friday, when the stock closed at $1.83. Still, the stock is well off its 52-week high of $3.48, set June 20.

Hoch now directly owns almost 2.6 million Usio shares, worth more than $4.7 million. He is Usios largest shareholder, with almost 14 percent of the stock.

Usio provides electronic payment processing services to businesses, including for credit and debit card transactions. It was known as Payment Data Systems before changing its name last summer.

The company reported last month that it had received financial assistance through the Paycheck Protection Program, which Congress approved as a lifeline for small businesses during the pandemic. Usio received an $813,500 loan, which it said would ensure the employment of its 51 employees. The loan can be forgiven if the company meets certain criteria.

Usio received the loan even though it had $1.7 million in cash and $1.1 million in accounts receivable on its balance sheet at the end of March.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio companys prepaid cards providing coronavirus relief

On Tuesday, Usio reported that an increasing number of governments and charitable organizations are issuing prepaid cards with the company as a way to distribute relief funds to those affected by the pandemic.

Hoch, 54, has served in executive roles and on the board of the company since 1998. He took over as CEO almost four years ago. A regulatory filing describes him as an expert in payment processing, large systems development and call center operations.

A Usio spokesman didnt respond to a request for comment.

Patrick Danner is a San Antonio-based staff writer covering banking and civil courts. To read more from Patrick, become a subscriber. pdanner@express-news.net | Twitter: @AlamoPD
Toward the end of the interview, Biden was asked more broadly about what role he played related to Michael Flynn, the former Trump national security adviser who was under investigation at the end of the Obama administration and was showing up on intelligence reports that captured his communications with foreign officials.
After a sun-filled start to the weekend on Friday and Saturday morning, a storm is slated to sweep the Bay Area Saturday night into Sunday, delivering a dose of rain considered heavy for mid-May.

The North Bay is forecast to see the most rainfall with totals of 1 to 2 inches possible, while the Bay Area core is expected to measure .5 to .75 inch.

"Its a late-season winter-like system," said Scott Rowe, a forecaster with the National Weather Service Bay area. "This is something we would usually see in January or February."

Skies will be mostly clear on Friday with highs in the 70s in inland areas and in the mid-60s along the coast.

Saturday morning will be mostly sunny with clouds building through the day. Rowe said weather models are in disagreement on exactly when the system will arrive, but the first drops will hit in the North Bay, most likely between 4 p.m. and midnight Saturday.

Rainfall will gradually spread south, reaching the core of the Bay Area between midnight and 10 a.m. Sunday.

"If people are looking to try to get out of their houses and social distance during the day on Satuday you should not need an umbrella, but on Sunday you will," Rowe said.

While this storm wont significantly help the seasons below-average rainfall totals, it will wet the landscape and reduce the risk of wildfires sparking in the near future, Rowe said.

Temperatures are forecast to drop Sunday, with highs in inland areas about 5 to 10 degrees cooler than they were on Saturday. Coastal areas will see a less dramatic temperature drop of several degrees.

Showers will likely linger into Monday and there's a chance of thunderstorms in the North Bay and south into Marin County and San Francisco. Light sprinkles are also possible on Tuesday.

Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.
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Car-buying experience will nowhere be close to being as exciting as it was, thanks to all the precautionary and compulsory measures adopted by the dealers to keep COVID-19 at bay. Dealers across the country have agreed to open showrooms maintaining a strict vigil on social conduct.

Carmakers are offering test drives only against prior appointment. Only one person will get to drive the vehicle while a dealer staff member will sit in the rear seat. During pre-COVID-19 days it was normal for more than one person of a family to enjoy the first drive.

Tata Motors has committed to even changing all the protective covers used in the interiors of the vehicle that could be touched by the customer after each test drive.

Only one person drives the vehicle with a dealer staff member sitting in the rear seat to avoid any physical contact. Following every test drive, the vehicle will be fully sanitised including replacing protective covers shielding the interiors of the vehicle that come in contact while driving, Tata Motors stated.

But, even before the customer gets to test drive the vehicle, he will have to undergo thermal screening for temperature after being handed over a facial mask and a sanitiser. To maintain social distancing, dealers will be urged to restrict entry of customers into the showrooms to a prescribed level.

French car brand Renault is also leaving no stones unturned. Starting with frequent sanitisation of the showroom entrance door, especially the door handles to sanitising the cars steering, AC vent, dashboard, gear knob, door opening lever, infotainment system, door handle, IRVM (inside rear view mirrors), ORVM (outside rear view mirrors), ORVM knobs, glove box and seat belt buckle, amongst others.

Renault has even kick-started a process wherein its dealers will appoint an inspector who would be tasked to make sure that all safety processes are being followed.

Renault is also working with dealers to nominate COVID-Inspectors at dealerships to ensure all safety processes are followed and has scheduled training for all dealership employees to highlight the importance of adhering to all safety and hygiene measures, said the French car major.

Besides sales, dealerships have to also put their focus on the servicing of the vehicle. Due to the lockdown, scores of vehicles missed their service intervals including many that require urgent attention. As safety measures need to be followed at service centers also, carmakers have invested in creating a virtual connect.

Mahindra has launched, for the first time in India, a live video streaming of recommended repairs straight from the service bay, called CustomerLIVE. Whenever required, service advisors will go live with customers over video to explain the repairs identified during vehicle examination in the workshop and service advisors utilising standard 3D images of frequently used parts to explain any wear & tear.

Owners will be able to view their repair orders including the parts used, job operations carried out and other associated costs including providing necessary approvals and payments online, said Mahindra.

But, all this is coming at a cost. Regular disinfection procedures are adding to overheads of the dealers whose finances are already strained due to the 40-day lockdown.

R C Bhargava, the chairman of Maruti Suzuki said, About one-third of our dealers who have opened so far, 60 percent of them are in the rural areas. Safety protocols are being applied in showrooms as much as in our factories. The time a customer spends in the showroom is getting significantly reduced.

A little over 2,000 dealerships of Maruti Suzuki, Tata Motors, Hyundai, Honda, Toyota, Renault and Mahindra & Mahindra, have been opened so far. This is about the one-third of the total dealership strength of each of the manufacturers.

Green and orange zones have been given preference while showroom reopening in red zones is subject to approval from the local authorities.
Five miners were killed and another left seriously injured in an explosion May 10 at a Chinese coal mine in the Ta Oy district of Saravane province in southern Laos, sources told RFA on Thursday.



Two of those killed in the blast were Lao, with the other three and the injured worker all Chinese, a district official told RFAs Lao Service, adding that initial reports had said only four were killed.



In a later report, we learned that five had been killed, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. We are still investigating the incident, but have no further details yet.



The men who were killed had been trapped when rocks fell on them following the blast, another Ta Oy official said, citing accounts by witnesses to the explosion.



They said the miners had brought the explosives to the target area for blasting, but they dont know what happened after that. There may have been a malfunction of some kind. The rocks exploded, trapping the men and causing their deaths, he said.



The miner injured in the blast was sent to a local hospital for treatment, Ta Oy district governor Boun Neuang Luang Kham Tai told a Lao radio station in an interview later that day, adding that the bodies of the dead Chinese miners were taken to managers at the coal mine for handling.



We couldnt discuss more than this because of the language barrier between us and the injured man and company officials, he said.



The bodies of the Lao miners who were killed were returned to their families so that religious ceremonies could be held for them, and Lao authorities are conducting an investigation into the cause of the accident so that compensation can be claimed from the Chinese company, he said.



Stronger safety measures needed



A district villager who witnessed the incident told RFA that he wants the coal mine now to put stronger measures in place to protect the safety and lives of its workers and to provide fair compensation to the families who lost their loved ones.



If they are going to blast rocks, they should warn people to move far away from the areas of the blast, he said. What happened in this case should serve as a lesson for everyone to learn.



The Chinese company involved in the blast had been operating in Ta Oy since 2012, though how long they have held a concession from the Lao government to work there is still unclear, one district official told RFA, also speaking on condition he not be named.



The company has hired many workers to excavate coal and transport rocks by truck, and most of the tasks assigned to these men are very dangerous, he added.



The Lao Ministry of Planning and Investment reported on Jan. 15, that 2,607 Lao workers out of a total work force of around 27,000 are employed by foreign companies now invested in 12 special economic zones across the country.



Most workers are Chinese, making up about about 20,000 of the total, with Vietnamese workers numbering about 3,500, according to Ministry figures.



Chinese-owned industrial, hydropower, mining, and tourism projects in Laos have meanwhile caused friction with local residents over pollution, loss of farmland, and economic compensation for displaced villagers, sources told RFA in earlier reports.



Reported by RFA's Lao Service. Translated by Sidney Khotpanya. Written in English by Richard Finney.
China's central bank and financial regulators unveiled a sweeping plan to spur cross-border financial services, transactions and investments between Hong Kong, Macau and nine Guangdong provincial cities to develop the so-called Greater Bay Area (GBA) into one of the world's largest economic regions.

Under the plan, residents of Hong Kong and Macau can buy wealth management products sold by Chinese banks in the region, while the inhabitants of the Guangdong cities can tap financial products sold by the banks in Hong Kong and Macau, according to the announcement by the People's Bank of China, and the securities, bank and currency regulators.

Dubbed the Wealth Management Connect, the scheme is the fourth cross-border investment channel between Hong Kong and mainland China since 2014 " in addition to stocks and bonds " that ties the two financial markets together. It's also a milestone in Hong Kong's evolution as a financial gateway into China.

"The scheme will provide an opportunity for wealthy Hongkongers to diversify their portfolio with investments in the growth potential of the GBA, while providing more investment options for mainland China's population," said the Shenzhen Qianhai Authority's Principal Liaison Officer Witman Hung Wai-man, during the China Conference in Hong Kong by South China Morning Post. "This is a game changer that will tie the Bay Area cities closer with Hong Kong and Macau."

The Greater Bay Area, with a total population of 70 million people across 11 cities and a projected economy estimated at US$1.5 trillion, is the world's 13th-largest economy " ahead of Spain and behind South Korea " if it were a stand-alone economic entity.

The Chinese government is looking to nurture its development into a hi-tech megapolis, combining the technology, financial services and manufacturing prowess of southern China, to rival the Silicon Valley. After the unveiling of the plan, a plot of residential land at the Qiahai district in Shenzhen sold for a record 11.6 billion yuan (US$1.63 billion), as developers piled in to build homes for the expected influx of financial professionals into the GBA.

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SCMP Graphics alt=SCMP Graphics

In all, 2,135 funds authorised by Hong Kong's Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) stand to benefit if they are made available for sale throughout the GBA, with US$1.78 trillion of assets under investments spanning stocks, bonds and other financial products.

"The guidelines shed more light on the way forward, and the fund management industry warmly welcomes this," said Sally Wong, chief executive of the Hong Kong Investment Funds Association (HKIFA), the industry guild for international funds. "These SFC authorised funds offer a wide array of investment options, are well-regulated and have a very robust investor protection mechanism."

Hong Kong's insurance companies, which may be allowed to set up service centres in the GBA, are also eyeing the Wealth Management Connect to sell funds across the border.

"It will help provide better services to the mainland Chinese customers, and help overcome the inconveniences posed by the entry restrictions [into Hong Kong] during the Covid-19 pandemic," said Eric Hui Kam-kwai, chairman of the Hong Kong Federation of Insurers (HKFI).

Mainland Chinese customers bought HK$72.68 billion (US$9.4 billion) in insurance policies in Hong Kong in 2016 during the height of the cross-border influx, or 39 per cent of all premium collected in the city. This declined to HK$43.4 billion last year as Chinese regulators tightened their currency outflow rules to staunch capital flight, while anti-government protests in Hong Kong deterred Chinese visitors.

Other parts of the plan include support for the offshore yuan business in Hong Kong and Macau, and strengthening of Hong Kong's role as a global hub for the transaction of offshore yuan. A futures exchange will be set up in Guangzhou, while the fundraising of yuan-denominated funds to support the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) will be encouraged, including support for cross-border bank loans.

"The initiatives will further facilitate cross-border trade and investment, deepen Renminbi (RMB) internationalisation, promote financial connectivity and green finance in the GBA," HSBC's Asia-Pacific chief executive Peter Wong Tung-shun said in a written statement. "The GBA has the scale to rival well-known city clusters such as the New York Metropolitan Area, the San Francisco Bay Area, and the Tokyo Bay Area."

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.
Fort Bend County officials recently confirmed a second COVID-19-related death involving a resident of the Richmond State Supported Living Center (RSSLC). The case was one of two confirmed cases previously reported at the facility, which is one of 13 state-run homes for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.

We were saddened when we learned in the news media of the Richmond State Supported Living Center residents who were hospitalized and passed away from this terrible invisible enemy. Every single loss of life is heartbreaking for their families and loved ones, Fort Bend County Judge KP George said in a press release Wednesday. Dr. Jacquelyn Minter and her team continue to support the State agencies -- at their request -- to help ensure positive results for the residents and staff of this state facility.

News of the two COVID-19 positive residents was initially confirmed through a Fort Bend County press release March 31 announcing an epidemiological investigation at the facility, which remains ongoing and is being led by the Department of State Health Services (DSHS) with participation from the Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC), which operates the state assisted living facilities.

"Our staff is working alongside Richmond State Supported Living Center staff to implement additional infection prevention and control measures to protect the residents and staff, Jacquelyn Minter, Fort Bend County Health and Human Services director, said in a statement March 31.

RELATED: COVID-19 investigation launched at Richmond State Supported Living Cener

Emily J. Miller, spokesperson for the Fort Bend County Coronavirus Public Information Task Force, issued an update on the investigation Wednesday.

Fort Bend County started to assist in an epidemiological investigation at RSSLC on March 28 at the States request, Miller said via email. The Department of State Health Services (DSHS), which has the authority to investigate cases of communicable diseases at state owned and operated facilities, requested the Countys assistance.

For their part, Fort Bend County allocated $84,000 for testing kits and contracted lab services to facilitate on-site testing for all residents and staff.

The tests were given to staff and residents in order to get a speedy and clear snapshot of the spread of the virus on the campus, Miller wrote.

County officials also helped implement facility-wide infection prevention and control measures, such as taking staff temperatures and checking for symptoms before and after shifts. County officials also worked to group residents together who tested positive assigned to a group of staff members who did not interact with other residents or staff members. High-risk, exposed staff along with residents who tested positive were also kept apart from other residents and those considered at high-risk for 14 days. Epidemiologists and infection control practitioners from Fort Bend County Health and Human Services Department were sent to the Richmond facility to offer support and medical expertise. County officials say they even provided an office at the Rosenberg Annex for State Agency staff to work from when needed, Miller wrote. For their part, state officials have remained tight-lipped. When contacted via email, TDHHS chief press officer Christine Mann issued no statement. When asked how many residents and staff members tested positive, Mann said no information could be released due to Texas privacy laws, which are consider among the strictest in the United States by many legal experts. However, state officials provide twice-weekly reports online that list combined case counts for all the state-supported living centers and its state hospital. Of the 23 state-operated facilities, nine have reported at least one resident tested positive for COVID-19. And, of the 4,722 residents, the overall case count stands at 152 with the number of deaths listed as fewer than 10. State officials are also currently investigating at the Denton State Supported Living Center where Denton County officials currently report a total of 119 active cases with 55 residents and 64 staff members. The Denton facility is the largest of the 13 state-run facilities and is home to 446 people and employs 1,727 full-time staffers, according to Texas Department of Health and Humans Services annual reports.

Is there an increased risk of COVID-19 community spread to the City of Richmond?

The Richmond facility is home to approximately 320 residents and is the second largest of Texas state-supported residential facility serving a 13 county area that includes Austin, Brazoria, Chambers, Colorado, Fort Bend, Galveston, Hardin, Harris, Jefferson, Matagorda, Orange, Waller and Wharton. With more 1,300 full-time employees, Richmond SSLC is the fourth-largest employer for the City of Richmond. Many staff members live at the Richmond facility. But, there are also many staff members who live in Richmond and other nearby communities who travel back and forth to the facility for work on a daiy basis.

RELATED: Richmonds COVID-19 case counts increase 30 percent

As for visitors, officials say the Richmond facility has been closed to family members and non-essential visitors since March 13. Yet, every weekday cars can be spotted lining up at the front gate for temperature checks that allow admittance. Front gate visitor logs obtained via an open records request indicate almost two dozen people came and went from the facility since March 13. Although forms were mostly incomplete, the front gate list notes a mix of job applicants, doctors, contract workers, roof repair workers, a representative from the Texas Workforce Commissioner and at least one visitor.

When contacted by email, Richmond City Manager Terri Vela did not respond to a request for comment as to whether there were any concerns about the threat of community spread from the steady stream of people coming and going from the facility. Statistic indicate the City of Richmond has seen a slightly larger increase in the number of COVID-19 positive cases in recent weeks as compared to the county-wide total. Since May 1, county reports show Richmonds cases have increased 40 percent going from 15 to 25 confirmed cases, according to statistics compiled by Fort Bend County officials. The Richmond SSLC is located just outside Richmond and the data would be included among the countys extra-jurisdictional areas where counts have increased approximately 30 percent since May 1 from 581 to 819 confirmed cases, slightly higher as compared to the countywide total which as of May 15 has increased roughly 25 percent from 1,133 to 1,510 cases.

knix@hcnonline.com
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Global Bamboo Toothbrush Market Size is projected to grow from USD 525.8 million in 2018 to USD 842.1 Million by 2024 at a CAGR of 7%.

With 3.5 billion toothbrushes being sold each year, the bamboo toothbrush market has a wide scope for expansion, especially considering that the global toothbrush market is reaching maturity.

With numerous anti-plastic legislation being promulgated in various countries along with government support for eco-friendly alternatives for plastic goods, the bamboo toothbrush industry could eventually dominate the global toothbrush industry.

Market USP

A rapidly expanding consumer base and support from numerous governments for eco-friendly ventures are expected to drive market growth during the forecast period.

Segmentation

By End User

Adults: This is the larger segment due to rising consumer awareness of eco-friendly products. Adult toothbrushes are more robust and are easier to mass produce, making the adult toothbrush market an ideal launching pad for bamboo toothbrush manufacturers.

Children: This segment is projected to register a faster growth rate primarily due to the anti-microbial qualities of bamboo making it an ideal material for childrens toothbrushes. Moreover, the global population is supposed to increase exponentially by 2050 ensuring a large consumer pool.

By Distribution Channel

Store-Based: This segment has been further divided into retail stores, supermarkets, and hypermarkets and is currently larger. The primary markets for bamboo toothbrushes are Europe and North America where consumer goods are predominantly sold at brick-and-mortar stores.

Non-Store-Based: Bamboo toothbrushes do not find widespread appeal in Asia-Pacific, Latin American, and the Middle East & African; however, these regions have very large consumer bases actively looking for eco-friendly products. The way to reach them is through online channels of sales. Consequently, the non-store-based segment is projected to exhibit the higher CAGR.

Browse Full Report Details @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/bamboo-toothbrush-market-8182

By Region

North America

Europe: The largest regional market

Asia-Pacific: The fastest-growing regional market

Rest of the World

Key Players


By Pattharapong Rattanasevee





A month ago, the Singaporean government was praised domestically and internationally, along with those of Hong Kong and Taiwan, for its quick response and handling of the COVID-19 pandemic. Several efforts were taken to minimize the risk of transmission: strict border control, an intensive contract-tracing program, a home quarantine system and free vigorous testing for all citizens.



As of March 21, Singapore had only recorded fewer than 390 infections with zero deaths. But the drastic spike in cases over the past weeks has made it become the largest infected population in Southeast Asia and now among the highest number of cases per capita globally.



In fact, this "island" nation does have a number of advantages in countering the spread of the virus such as having a small population, limited land area and a single border, a forceful government, police force and laws as well as having an excellent healthcare system.



However, the grave mistake that Singapore made was the fact that it overlooked the potential transmission within its community of 1.3 million migrant workers.



Singapore's migrant workers, mostly from India, Bangladesh and other South Asian countries, are generally seen as the most vulnerable and marginalized groups in the country. Being Singapore's lowest-paid workers, they work in essential services such as at construction sites, shipyards, petrochemical refineries, or as cleaners in neighborhood estates.



They live in dormitories located almost hidden from view on the outskirts of the city, with poor and overcrowded living conditions and have limited access to healthcare and personal protective equipment. They sleep on bunk beds, 12 to 20 people packed into one room, poorly ventilated by small fans, and have communal toilets and showering facilities shared by hundreds of men on each floor. Typically, they earn about $430 a month, while the median monthly income for Singaporeans is $3,227.



The outbreak among the migrant worker community should not come as a complete surprise because these workers have continually received little attention from the government. Amnesty International issued a warning on April 6 about possible mass infection among migrant workers in quarantine and urged for more attention and better treatment, without discrimination.



Labor rights groups have even been warning for years that such poor and unsanitary conditions one day could bring disaster. Also, there have been reports of the spread of dengue, rubella and Zika among migrant workers in recent years.



Furthermore, the surge in cases among migrant workers has fanned the flames of criticism and scapegoating within society, and prevailing racist attitudes now seem to be on full display. Recently, a viral letter published in the country's largest Chinese-language paper straightforwardly blamed foreign workers' bad personal living habits for spreading the virus.



There have also been a large number of xenophobic comments on social media, including some calling for the deportation of sick workers and excluding the dormitory cases from the country's daily tally of COVID-19 cases.



This proves that the view from the letter is not uncommon among Chinese Singaporeans and could be a clear reflection of how poorly the government and most Singaporeans treated migrant workers, never mind that they have been and are a vital part of the country's growth and economic boom.



In fact, racism toward Indians is not a new story. Although Singapore has sought to project an image of being a metropolitan multicultural society, anti-racist and accepting of all races and religions to the world, there is still significant racism which sometimes cannot be easily noticeable in daily life routines but is more visible on the internet.



Even in some eccentric government policies such as intermarriage of different races, the racial quotas on public housing, the Chinese prime minister policy/(but) race-based presidency and the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Others (CMIO) classification system inducted into the national registration identity cards, these schemes show some degree of racial inequality.



The Sedition Act of Singapore and the Penal Code Chapter 224, two laws that prohibit racism, appear useful only in silencing debate and restraining overt displays of racism, but unable to grapple with the protracted racial disparities in education and economic status. Racial Harmony Day, celebrated every July 21 in Singapore to mark the progress made since the 1964 race riots, is literally fruitless.



According to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in a press release, "to our migrant workers, let me emphasize again: we will care for you, just like we care for Singaporeans. We will look after your health, your welfare and your livelihood. We will work with your employers to make sure that you get paid, and you can send money home ... This is our duty and responsibility to you, and your families." These promises have to be kept and monitored closely.



On the whole, the COVID-19 pandemic reveals some ugly truths about Singapore's racial inequality. It also gives valuable lessons to Singapore. Despite improving living conditions in dormitories and the well-being of these workers, the government still has a lot to do with racial disparities in society.



Every Singaporean knows that they have to rely on these workers because they serve the country by doing essential jobs that they do not want to do. Once the pandemic is over, the racial rift will still remain and likely to be deepened, but Singapore cannot maintain such an exploitative format.



Therefore, constructive measures and more engagement are required to erase these deep-rooted prejudiced sentiments from the general Singaporeans' mindset. However, racial conflict once caused Singapore to split from Malaysia in 1965, and it will significantly continue to hamper its society at least in the foreseeable future.





Dr. Pattharapong Rattanasevee (p.rattanasevee@yahoo.com ) is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Law, Burapha University, Thailand.








DAHUK, Iraq  On the morning of March 9, Samir Hassan Ali left his tent in Khanke camp, a displacement camp for Yazidis near the city of Dahuk. Samir, who worked as a volunteer teacher at a school near the camp, always came back home right after work, but not that day. When his relatives saw his tent was still empty late afternoon, they called the police. It didnt take them long to find his phone and wallet, next to the lake in Khanke. The next day, divers found his body in the water.

It is unclear why Samir, who was loved for his optimistic character and was a popular teacher, committed suicide. His brother Haji thinks it has to do with the hopeless situation Samir found himself in. Although Samir graduated from the physics department at the University of Mosul in 2013, he had never found a job in his field. To fill his days, he did a lot of volunteer work as a teacher," Haji said. We have been living in a tent for almost six years. Our family is very poor."

Like many Yazidis, Samirs family lost everything when the Islamic State (IS) attacked Sinjar in 2014. Thousands of men were murdered, 6,470 women and children were kidnapped and sold as slaves in markets in what was described by the United Nations as an "ongoing genocide" against the Yazidi minority. Almost the entire Yazidi population fled to the Kurdish region, where they ended up in displacement camps. Almost six years after IS attacked Sinjar, 360,000 of the once 550,000 Yazidis in Iraq remain internally displaced.

In addition to trauma, desperation is one of the reasons suicide rates among the Yazidis is alarmingly high, said Firaz Suleiman, a Yazidi psychologist. People have been living in tents or in unfinished buildings for almost six years now as they cannot return to their homes in Sinjar. Many of them are depressed," he said. Two weeks ago, a woman committed suicide in Kabarto camp, and after that I heard about another case in Germany. Basically, you hear about a case every month, sometimes even three. It is a very big problem."

As a psychologist working for an international nongovernmental organization in the outskirts of Sharya camp, Suleiman has treated many members from the Yazidi community. From the 635 cases who receive mental health care outside the camps, 120 individuals planned or attempted to commit suicide, he said. He estimates that 10% of the Yazidi internally displaced persons (IDPs) living in Sharya are thinking about ending their lives. But we dont have any numbers on the total number of suicides as the Health Department doesnt keep track due to privacy laws, and because the numbers have to come from aid organizations that are often working here temporarily, Suleiman said.

Many suicide cases go unreported due to the stigma, he added. People feel ashamed to talk about their problems with a psychologist, especially men. Even if they want to receive specialized psychological and psychiatric treatment, there are not enough specialists to treat them.

My sister Rasha got some form of psychotherapy for a few weeks, but it was not enough  she killed herself at the age of 18, said her sister Delberin Khudeda, adding that many of her family members have suffered from mental health illness ever since they fled Sinjar in 2014. It mostly had to do with the fact that she missed my brother so much; he was kidnapped by IS. But she also did not have any faith in the future as we were living in tents for years. She was crying all the time."

Although the authorities have no official statistics on the total number of suicides, Yazidi activists and doctors believe that the numbers have increased in recent months. The majority are young women and girls who in most cases where enslaved by IS. But there also is an increase among young Yazidi men, the various sources told Al-Monitor.

On Jan. 24, Anwar Khdir committed suicide by hanging himself in his tent. The 21-year-old student had been living in a displacement camp with his mother, four brothers and five sisters ever since IS conquered Sinjar in 2014. His father was killed during that attack. According to community members, Anwar could not handle the pressure of being the sole breadwinner for his family. Never ask for the reason of my suicide. Please do not cry, mom, Anwar wrote in a farewell letter to his mother.

Mirza Dinnayi, a Yazidi activist and head of Luftbrucke Irak, believes that the lack of prospects and poverty are the main reasons for the increasing suicide rates among men. Like in most oriental communities, Yazidi men are responsible for taking care of their families financially. But how are you going to manage that when there are no jobs? The unemployment rate is extremely high in Iraq, especially among IDPs," he said.

Dinnayi said that inside the camps poverty is on the rise. He added, Many families dont even have money to buy dinner. The men feel confused and guilty."

Organizations working on behalf of minorities fear that the coronavirus pandemic will affect the displaced communities across the country, including Sinjar. Between April and August 2019, 24 patients who were brought to the emergency room of Sinunis hospital had attempted suicide  six of whom died before arrival at the hospital or could not be saved, Medecins Sans Frontieres reported. The youngest victim was a 13-year-old girl who had hung herself; some even set themselves on fire.

These already traumatized communities now face restrictions of movement that will exacerbate underlying psychological distress that may lead to increased suicide rates," the organization wrote in a joined statement released on April 16, that was signed by organizations such as Yazda, the Iraqi Christian Relief Council and Jiyan Foundation for Human Rights.

According to Khalil Khalaf Daly, a general practitioner at Yazda and at the hospital in Sinuni, the number of suicides in Sinjar has already increased after the government imposed restrictions of movement and home quarantine. Most of them are young women who suffered from trauma caused by the genocide," he said. But there are also cases where domestic violence or honor issues within the family play a role. Staying at home due to the coronavirus outbreak most likely will make their situation worse. Tensions will rise when you are confined at home."

To reduce the suicide rates and tackle other serious mental health problems among Yazidi IDPs, many measures must be taken, Daly noted. First you have to make sure Yazidis can finally leave the camps and return to their homeland in Sinjar. Therefore, you need to provide security, stability and basic services such as water and electricity to the region. We need more government hospitals, schools and job opportunities."

In Sinjar region, there are currently only two hospitals and just one ventilator for a population of around 160,000 people. However, it is not the only reason why Yazidis are reluctant to return to their homes. Most of the area was destroyed and never rebuilt after the defeat of IS, and the region is currently run by different factions.

The different parties distinguish among people," he added. "Some people get jobs and salaries from one of the parties, even though others are more qualified than those chosen. They are left without rights."
AUSTIN, Texas (AP)  Two weeks into the reopening of Texas, coronavirus cases are climbing. New outbreaks still crop up. And at Guero's Taco Bar in Austin, which offers the occasional celebrity sighting, a log of every diner and where they sat is begrudgingly in the works.

It seems like a huge invasion of privacy," said owner Cathy Lipincott, who is nonetheless trying to comply with Austin's local public health guidelines by asking, but not requiring, customers to give their information.

RETAILERS REOPEN: Which Houston-area stores have reopened and what to expect when you go

Few states are rebooting quicker than Texas, where stay-at-home orders expired May 1. With cases still rising, including single-day highs of 1,458 new cases and 58 deaths Thursday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has defended the pace by emphasizing that hospitalization and infection rates are steady, and pointing out that Texas 1,200 deaths still lag similarly big states, including California and Florida.

But on the cusp of even more restrictions ending Monday, including gyms being cleared to reopen, a political confrontation is growing over attempts by big cities to keep some guardrails in place. The dispute underscores the gulf between Democrats who run city halls and GOP leaders who call the shots in the capital in Texas, one of a number of states where local officials and governors have clashed over restrictions during the pandemic.

The renewed tensions come at a moment when Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations top infectious disease expert, warned Congress this week of needless suffering and death if the U.S. moves too quickly. Nevertheless, Wisconsin's courts tossed out the state's stay-at-home orders, throwing communities into chaos as some bars opened immediately while strict local restrictions were kept elsewhere.

TEXAS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS: Texas reports 58 coronavirus deaths in one day, a record

In Georgia, Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms has also expressed unease at the speed that Republican Gov. Brian Kemp has reopened the state. Oklahoma lawmakers, irritated by local officials who imposed stricter measures during this health crisis, passed a House bill Thursday that would weaken the power of cities during the next one.

And in Texas, Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton this week lashed out at the cities of Dallas, Austin and San Antonio over what he called unlawful" local orders that are tougher than restrictions prescribed by Abbott, and threatened lawsuits if the cities don't back off. The warning came one day after El Paso pleaded to postpone easing up on any more lockdown measures in light of the number of COVID-19 cases there surging 60% over the past two weeks.

Unfortunately, a few Texas counties and cities seem to have confused recommendations with requirements and have grossly exceeded state law to impose their own will on private citizens and businesses," Paxton said.

City leaders said their local orders, which include more stringent emphasis on face coverings in public and restaurant protocols that aren't strictly enforced, don't conflict. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego, the county's top elected official, said he made his case to the governor during a phone call and asked for a few more weeks to assess data and reduce cases before more restrictions are lifted. But he doesn't think he'll get an answer before Abbott's public announcement Monday.

Im not fighting his plan, Im fighting his timing, Samaniego said. It looks like it would work for us months from now.

The spat is a reversal from the early days of the outbreak in Texas, when Abbott gave cities and counties wide latitude to issue restrictions as they saw fit. But Abbott has since taken the reins over how quickly Texas will reboot, which last week included moving up the reopening of hair salons following complaints from conservatives. Testing for most of May has fallen well short of Abbotts stated goal of 30,000 per day, although testing numbers have surged in recent days, according to state health officials.

Overflow hospitals set up in Dallas and Houston were dismantled without ever being used, and the rate of new cases in Texas has dropped since April even as testing has expanded, down to a seven-day average of 5.3% as of Thursday, according to data from Abbott's office. But experts still worry.

They see the decline going in and they pat themselves on the back and say, Look at the good work we've done, now we can let this happen and open up things,' said Dennis Perrotta, a retired state epidemiologist in Texas. And then we get slammed with a second peak."

In Austin, restaurants have grumbled over recommendations to log dine-in customers for the purposes of contact tracing, coupled with a warning that health officials otherwise might have to publicly out eateries if outbreaks spread. Some restaurateurs saw that as a threat, but at The Peached Tortilla, owner Eric Silverstein says his industry has to do what it takes to reopen.

We have no choice," he said. You kind of have to going back to doing some form of business."

A few blocks away at Brentwood Social House, a neighborhood coffee shop, owner Suzanne Daniels isn't so sure. Though her competitors have reopened, her indoor seating remains closed, and she doesn't know when she'll feel safe to follow them.

It feels early," Daniels said. In my gut, it doesnt feel right or good.

___

Associated Press writers Sean Murphy in Oklahoma City and Cedar Attanasio in El Paso contributed to this report.

___

Follow AP coverage of the virus outbreak at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak
Help India!

Bilal Khan, TwoCircles.net

India has nearly 139 million migrant workers toiling to earn a living in states and cities thousands of miles away from home. With a nationwide lockdown, these workers were stranded in many states  without money and even food, and desperate to go home. BILAL KHAN tells the story of four such workers stranded in Mumbai and their travails on the way to home.

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MUMBAI: Since the lockdown was enforced across the country following the COVID-19 pandemic, migrant workers  which include daily wage earners, have had to face hardship. The workers, stranded in states outside their home states, were desperate to go home. Although migrant workers are slowly being sent to their native places, however, thousands of them are still facing hardship and inconveniences despite the promises made by state governments.

Mohammed Sayeed, 36, is a migrant from Rajasthans Nagaur city who has been running a nagori dairy in Mumbai. Being without a home, Sayeed would live in the dairy with six other people. Because of the lockdown that was enforced on 24 March his dairy was shut, leaving him with no source of income. He managed to bear the expenses of staying in Mumbai for a month by spending his savings. However, after a month as the savings ran out he began thinking of ways to go home.

Sayeed left Mumbai on a motorcycle on May 7 with his four friends from the same native city. They had to take an inside route to escape police on highways which turned out to be dangerous for them. While we were passing through some villages, people recognized us as travelers and tried to block the route and send us back. They were anguished thinking we are carrying the coronavirus. However, we somehow managed to convince them and reached our native place in 30 hours, said Mohammed.

Sayeed says as people in Nagaur city are worried of migrants coming back to the city, they did not inform anyone in the family.

Sayeed and his friends directly visited the hospital where COVID-19 tests were conducted.

I had heard from my relatives that people are not welcoming anyone until quarantine is complete and the report is not negative. That is why instead of going home we went through the stated procedure. Currently I am in a quarantine center, added Sayeed.

Sayeed also said that the facilities in the quarantine center are good. They are provided with good foods. Iftar facility is also there for those who are observing fast in this Ramadan month, he said.

Sayeed is worried that he has some stock of food grains at his native home that he and his family of seven members can survive on for about 30-40 days. I dont have any plan as to what I will do once the stock is over. But, I am praying that the businesses will start again as soon as possible so that we can earn and at least put food on the tables, he adds.

Another migrant, Sirajuddin Khan, 28, left Mumbai for his native place Gonda in Uttar Pradesh on a motorcycle with four friends. They also took the inside route to avoid hurdles from police. They had to ride bikes through rough roads and pass through dangerous forests. They had no other option than to leave Mumbai. I was working in a furniture shop. I would earn Rs. 13,000 a month. Our employer refused to give us salary during this lockdown citing shortage of finance. We all were running out of money that is why we thought to leave for our (native) homes, Khan said.

Khan did not want to spend time in quarantine and he kept it hidden from people in his native place. Somehow his villagers got to know and informed the police before he could reach home. Before I could reach home I was caught by police and they sent me to quarantine at a tube well because all the schools and other places for quarantine are full here in UP, says Khan.

Migrant workers visiting Gonda are not being provided with food in the quarantine center. Families of quarantined people have to supply food for them.

Khan further added that villagers are scared if COVID-19 will spread in the village as more and more people are visiting Gonda. We were scared of the coronavirus when we were in Mumbai as it is in the red zone. Now people here in Gonda are scared of (us), who are their own people and who only left the native home for work, added Khan.

Nayeem Mohammed, 27, had left his native place Kendrapara, Odisha, 15 years ago and was working in a hotel in Hyderabad. He was earning Rs. 14000 a month. However, he has not been paid since the lockdown was imposed. To multiply his plight, his landlord has been also asking for rent of Rs. 5000 repeatedly. I have been surviving mostly on foods provided by NGOs. In such a bad situation, I was getting pressured by the landlord for rent and this made me choose to leave the city and go home, says Nayeem.

Nayeem further added that he has borrowed Rs. 4000 to pay for bus fare from Hyderabad to Odisha.

I will try to do some labour work in my native place to earn something so that my family and I can survive. We dont have much stock of foodgrains in my home because we dont have farms, added Nayeem.

Late in the night on 12 May, Nayeem reached Kendrapara and was sent to a quarantine center. He is married but his family of four members stay in Odisha. We are provided with all the essentials at the quarantine center including food. I hope my family will be safe when I visit home after spending days in the quarantine center, says Nayeem.

Asim Shaikh, 22, resides in Mumbais Abdul Rehman Street with four of his friends. All are from Murshidabad, West Bengal. They would earn money from loading and unloading goods from trucks and tempos and earn not more than Rs. 12000 a month. We are now dependent on NGOs cooked food. We have submitted the form on 5 May with medical screening certificates but we are yet to see any hope as to when we will be going home. Sometimes our contractors send us money but not enough to survive on, said Shaikh.

On 13 May they left Mumbai to Bhiwandi with hope that they will get some transport service to go to their native place. However, they fell short of money. The truck driver is ready to ferry us to West Bengal and is charging Rs. 5000 for one person. After asking help from family and contractors we still need about Rs. 500-1000 each. The truck driver wants the full money despite knowing our situation. We are trying hard to gather enough money, added Shaikh.

Even migrants visiting home in Uttar Pradesh are also paying Rs. 3500-4000 to truck drivers. The trucks ferrying migrants are packed with 45-50 passengers.

My family is scared of us carrying the coronavirus. That is why we will first visit the hospital for COVID-19 testing and remain in quarantine. We have children at home and we are scared of affecting others if we have the disease, added Shaikh.

The workers are blaming the government for not doing enough for the migrant workers.

The government has received a lot of funds as donation, but they are doing nothing to help us. It is becoming harder to survive day by day, said Shaikh.
(Newser)  Slovenia has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic at home. The European Union states government said Friday the COVID-19 spread is under control and there is no longer a need for extraordinary health measures, the AP reports. The government says EU residents are free to cross into Slovenia from Austria, Italy, and Hungary at predetermined checkpoints, while most non-EU nationals will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine. The first coronavirus case in Slovenia was recorded on March 4, a returnee from neighboring Italy. The nationwide epidemic was proclaimed on March 12. By May 13, there were 1,467 confirmed cases and 103 deaths in Slovenia.

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Germanys most populous state, meanwhile, has lifted a requirement for people arriving from other European countries to self-quarantine for 14 days, and other regions are expected to follow. The rule expired in the western region of North Rhine-Westphalia at midnight. The state government said Germanys states agreed with the federal government on Thursday to exempt travelers from other countries in the European Union, along with Iceland, Norway, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, and Britain. On Friday night, Germany plans to end two-month-old checks on its border with Luxembourg and loosen them somewhat on its borders with Austria, Switzerland, and France.

(Read more Slovenia stories.)
If theres anything more liberating than stripping off and plunging into the most picturesque bath on earth, were yet to hear it.

While the above scenario, for most of us, is a non-starter until at least next year, for those unencumbered by international flight restrictions, Iceland, otherwise known as the worlds coolest influencer hotspot, is now set to open to tourists by the 15th of June.

Even better, unlike some countries, which are discussing the need for tourists to be tested before departing their home country (and if their country of residence does not have the capability to do this, you  presumably  cant travel), Iceland plans to test tourists on arrival.

This means, unlike Greece and Sardinias recent plans, Icelands  potentially  may not depend so strongly on multilateral co-operation and the creation of a European bubble.

Or so you might think.

The catch, however, is that your home country might not allow you to travel in the first place (or at least not to come back), even if Iceland were to allow you to enter via their system. Which brings us back to where we started  the need for a travel bubble to go along with tourist testing.

Thats all speculation though.

To the known facts: Icelands prime minister Katrin Jakobsdottir announced on Wednesday, if all goes to plan, visitors will be tested for The Virus at the airport instead of having to undergo two weeks isolation on arrival.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Sarah  (@_sarahlatham) on Apr 30, 2020 at 5:30pm PDT

On top of that, from the 15th of May (tomorrow) some professionals arriving in Iceland (scientists, filmmakers, athletes etc.) will be eligible for a modified quarantine, officials said.

The Icelandic government also said travellers will probably be required to use the official tracing app already in use by 40% of Icelanders.

Icelands strategy of large-scale testing, tracing and isolating have proven effective so far. We want to build on that experience of creating a safe place for those who want a change of scenery after what has been a tough spring for all of us, Thordis Kolbrun Reykfjord Gylfadottir, minister of Tourism, Industry and Innovation said.

The land of waterfalls and wild horses is coping with the current global pandemic better than many countries around the world.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Scandinavia pictures (@scandinavia.pictures) on May 12, 2020 at 12:17pm PDT

As The Lonely Planet reports, May saw Iceland recording only three reported cases of COVID19, something that makes the country cautiously optimistic that it can find a way to safely welcome visitors once again.

To date Iceland has had 1801 cases of COVID-19 and ten deaths.

Iceland is not alone in its decision to encourage back tourists as soon as possible. As we reported last week, Greece, Sicily and Sardinia are currently constructing similar plans, with Sicily even offering to pay for some tourists flights and accommodation.

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By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Hours after the Supreme Court stayed the Madras High Court order to keep TASMAC shops closed until the lockdown period, the Tamil Nadu government on Friday announced that these shops in the non-containment areas would begin sale from Saturday.

However, the shops in malls and commercial complexes and in Chennai Police limits as well as Thiruvallur police limits will not function from Saturday.

Different colour of tokens will be issued for seven days of the week and the sales will take place between 10 a.m and 5 p.m.

"Only 500 tokens will be issued per day per shop. All those coming to the shops should wear masks," an official release here said.

TASMAC sources said "We have been instructed to strictly maintain social distancing and other norms for preventing the coronavirus infection. On May 7 and 8, around 3,700 shops were opened. But since the number of containment zones have gone up across the State during the past one week and also shops will be closed in Thiruvallur district, the number of shops will come down."

A senior sales personnel said, "There was a heavy crowd on May 7 and 8 since the shops were opened after a long gap of more than 40 days. Similar crowd would not be there as the days pass on. It will come to normal sales very soon. So, if we could manage the crowd well in the first few days, the rest of the days will be smooth."

A TASMAC personnel, on anonymity, told Express that the entire expenses on putting up barricades, providing food to the police personnel etc., have to be borne by the employees at the shop and

hence they increase the price unofficially.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 29: President Donald Trump is seen through a window speaking on the phone with King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abd al-Aziz Al Saud, in the Oval Office of the White House, January 29, 2017 in Washington, DC. On Sunday, President Trump is making several phone calls with world leaders from the Oval Office. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

Donald Trump this week signed an extension of last years national emergency declaration aimed at barring commercial trade with certain foreign telecom companies. The extension comes nearly a year to the day after the first order, this time extending things through May of 2021.

Per the original language, the order invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to deal with the threat posed by the unrestricted acquisition or use in the United States of information and communications technology supplied by persons owned by, controlled by, or subject to the jurisdiction or direction of foreign adversaries.

Specifically, its aimed at Chinese companies like Huawei and ZTE, against which the administration has levied all manner of national security complaints. Chief among them are accusations of government-tied spying and violations of sanctions against countries like North Korea and Iran.

Huawei has been especially hard hit, as the ban restricts the manufacturer's use of Google apps  a massive blow to its software ecosystem. Numbers from analyst firm Canalys earlier this month note than the companys shipments have declined by 35% in markets outside of its native China. Its true that the market was already on rocky ground for all manufacturers even before the COVID-19 pandemic, but Huaweis plummet is four times that of Apples in non-China markets, per the firm.

The company has been working on its own in-house alternatives to key Google apps. In the meantime, however, Huawei is going to have to rely on sales of older devices, while shipping new flagships without the necessary apps.
Bihar breached the four-digit-mark in terms of number of confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday when 19 people tested positive for the disease and took the tally in the state to 1,018, an official said here.

According to Principal Secretary, Health, Sanjay Kumar, Patna district reported its 100th case after a 26-year-old woman tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

Nearly half of the cases in the state capital have been reported from the Khajpura locality.

The Bihar Military Polices 14th battalion has also fallen prey to the contagion with 21 of its personnel having tested positive till date.

Three other women one each from Lakhisarai, Madhubani and Vaishali tested positive during the day and the Vaishali patient, who was 76-year-old, happened to be the oldest among the 19 cases, the official said.

Vaishali reported two cases the other being a 44-year-old man hailing from a different area in the district.

Siwan and Khagaria reported five cases each, raising the respective tallies for the districts to 43 and 41. Khagaria reported its first four cases as late as May 8 and all are migrant labourers. On the other hand, 32 patients from Siwan have so far been discharged after recovery.

The central Bihar district of Nawada reported one fresh case while two more people tested positive in Jamui, which became the last of the 38 districts in the state to be affected by the contagion earlier this week.

With 122 cases, Munger remains at the top while other badly affected districts comprising Rohtas (77), Nalanda (66), Buxar (59) and Begusarai (47).

Seven patients, including a woman, from Patna and one each from Munger, Vaishali, East Champaran, Sitamarhi and Rohtas have so far died while 438 have been discharged after recovery.

Altogether 32 police personnel, including those from the BMP, have tested positive across the state. An IAS officer was infected a couple of days ago in Nalanda district where he was deputed.

After the first two cases were reported in Bihar on March 22, it took four weeks for the tally to reach the three-digit-mark on April 19.

There has been a steep hike since then, attributed in no small measure to the heavy influx of migrants in special trains and buses.

The state government puts the number of those having landed till May 14 at 2.46 lakh, most of them from states like Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan and Punjab.

The number of migrants testing positive for COVID-19 upon return is 358, most of them from Delhi (102), Gujarat (98) and Maharashtra (82).

Total number of samples tested is 42,645 and the state is striving to raise its testing rate at present around 1,800 per day to nearly 10,000 a day so as to effectively check the spread of the contagion that has been galloping with migrants coming back in droves.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Mazda Releases FY March 2020 Full Year Financial Results













TOKYO, May 14, 2020; Mazda announced its medium-term management plan in November last year. The automobile industry is experiencing the kind of transformation which takes place only once in 100 years. It is imperative for the Company to make changes in various fields, including product planning, development, manufacturing, sales and service, in order to respond to the CASE (Connected, Autonomous, Shared and Electric) era. The Company set three management themes to work on in the six years of the medium-term management plan: "investment in unique products and customer experience," "curb expenses that depreciate brand value," and "investment in the areas we need to catch up". The Company is steadily moving forward with the plan by implementing initiatives to achieve targets in these areas while investing in technologies including CASE for its future growth.



In the first year of the medium-term management plan, in addition to launching its connected service, the Company introduced products that feature CASE technologies such as mild-hybrid electrification technology and advanced safety technologies that are integral to autonomous driving. Along with updating the existing product lineup with these new technologies, the Company also launched new-generation models, beginning with the Mazda3 last year. It was followed by the CX-30, the second model of the new-generation lineup in anticipation of the growing global SUV market. The Mazda3 and CX-30 are equipped with the new-generation gasoline engine Skyactiv-X, the first gasoline engine to use compression ignition. In October 2019, the Company unveiled its first mass-production electric vehicle, the Mazda MX-30, at the Tokyo Motor show, with sales starting next fiscal year.



With regard to the business environment surrounding the Mazda Group for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2020, the challenging situation continued as the demand declined globally from the previous year due to issues such as economic slowdown in China triggered by the US-China trade dispute and Britain's exit from the EU. In addition, uncertainty over future prospects rapidly increased due to the novel coronavirus pandemic in the fourth quarter. The outbreak of the novel coronavirus first impacted the Company's production and supply chain in China. The virus then spread globally, causing the suspension of economic activities and disruption in financial markets around the world, resulting in a significant impact on the Company's global sales activities.







About Mazda
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CONTACT - Investor Relations: Amsterdam +31.20.721.4133 Brussels +32.2.620.15.50 +33.1.70.48.24.27 Dublin

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EURONEXT N.V. ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING RESULTS

Amsterdam, Brussels, Dublin, Lisbon, London, Oslo and Paris  14 May 2020  Euronext today announced that, in its Annual General Meeting (AGM) that took place today, all but one of the items on the agenda were approved.

The items that were approved were as follows:

Proposal to adopt the 2019 remuneration report Proposal to adopt the 2019 financial statements Proposal to adopt a dividend of EUR 1.59 per ordinary share Proposal to discharge the members of the Managing Board in respect of their duties performed during the year 2019 Proposal to discharge the members of the Supervisory Board in respect of their duties performed during the year 2019 Re-appointment of Dick Sluimers as a member of the Supervisory Board Appointment of ivind Amundsen as a member of the Managing Board Appointment of Georges Lauchard as a member of the Managing Board Proposal to adopt a new remuneration policy with regard to the Supervisory Board aligned with the Shareholder Rights Directive II as implemented in Dutch law Proposal to appoint the external auditor Proposal to designate the Managing Board as the competent body to issue ordinary shares Proposal to designate the Managing Board as the competent body to restrict or exclude the pre-emptive rights of shareholders Proposal to authorise the Managing Board to acquire ordinary shares in the share capital of the company on behalf of the company Proposal to authorise the Supervisory Board or Managing Board (subject to approval of the Supervisory Board) to grant rights to French beneficiaries to receive shares in accordance with Articles L225-197-1 and seq. of the French Code of commerce

63% of the shareholders voted in favour of the following proposal, which was not enough to achieve the 75% threshold for approval:

1. Proposal to adopt a new remuneration policy with regard to the Managing Board aligned with the Shareholder Rights Directive II as implemented in Dutch law

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Consequently, the current remuneration policy, as approved at the Extraordinary General Meeting held on 8 October 2019, remains in place. The Remuneration Committee will assess improvements to be made to the remuneration policy for subsequent submission to the shareholders meeting.

As a reminder, the payment of the annual dividend will occur on 22 May 2020, with ex-dividend on 20 May and record date on 21 May.

CONTACTS -

Media

Pauline Bucaille: +33 1 70 48 24 41 ; media@euronext.com

Analysts & investors

Aurelie Cohen/ Clement Kubiak: +33 1 70 48 24 27 ; ir@euronext.com

About Euronext

Euronext is the leading pan-European exchange, covering Belgium, France, Ireland, The Netherlands, Norway, Portugal and the UK. With close to 1,500 listed issuers worth 3.3 trillion in market capitalisation as of end March 2020, Euronext has an unmatched blue chip franchise that includes 25 issuers in the Morningstar Eurozone 50 Index, and a strong diverse domestic and international client base. Euronext operates regulated and transparent equity and derivatives markets and is the largest centre for debt and funds listings in the world. Its total product offering includes Equities, FX, Exchange Traded Funds, Warrants & Certificates, Bonds, Derivatives, Commodities and Indices. In addition to its main regulated market, Euronext also operates Euronext GrowthTM and Euronext AccessTM, simplifying access to listing for SMEs. Euronext also leverages its expertise in running markets by providing technology and managed services to third parties. The Norwegian stock exchange and its custody & settlement subsidiary, together operating as Oslo Brs VPS, joined Euronext on 17 June 2019.

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The United States economy is powered primarily by consumers opening their wallets and shelling out for things, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of growth. So when retail sales register an historically awful plunge, the case for a long and painful recession grows stronger.

That is what happened on Friday. The US Commerce Department reported that retail and food service sales in April posted their biggest decline on record, plummeting 16.4 percent from the previous month, and 21.6 percent from the same period a year earlier.

The nations factories also took it on the chin. The US Federal Reserve said on Friday that total industrial production fell 11.2 percent in April  the largest monthly drop in the 101-year history of the index  while factory output collapsed 13.7 percent  also the worst ever recorded.

Fridays reports add to a mounting body of evidence that the US economy is in the throes of an epic downturn triggered by coronavirus lockdowns that have shuttered businesses and thrown more than 36 million Americans out of work since March.

To get an idea of the scale of the carnage  in February, the US unemployment rate was hovering near a 50-year low at 3.5 percent. In April, it skyrocketed to 14.7 percent. That month alone, more than 20 million Americans lost their jobs.

While cities and states across the country are starting to ease stay-at-home orders, and some businesses are slowly stirring back to life, the economy has a long way to go to recapture its pre-pandemic strength.

The coronavirus-induced recession has caused significant damage to the economy that the easing of social distancing measures alone wont fix, said Oxford Economics lead US economist Oren Kachkin in a note to clients. We forecast that industrial output losses will not be recovered until late-2021.

Key to getting the economy back on track is getting consumers spending again. But with many economists forecasting an unemployment rate still in double digits by years end, that could take some time.

While we believe the worst of the consumer retrenchment is likely behind us, the gradual relaxation of lockdowns and lingering virus fear will translate into a slow release of purse strings, said Oxford Economics senior US economist Lydia Boussour in a note to clients. In addition, the combination of elevated unemployment, depressed income, frail consumer confidence will continue to weigh on consumers appetite for spending.

The University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment Index released on Friday registered a slight improvement in May  an uptick chief economist Richard Curtin credited to virus relief cheques that improved consumers finances, as well as widespread price discounting boosting buying attitudes.

But other economists were not convinced.

Capital Economics chief US economist Paul Ashworth expressed doubt that those $1,200 cheques made all the difference when so many are out of work, adding: Its possible that the survey has been distorted by non-responses  but that should be less of an issue in this type of phone-based survey.

Earlier this week, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned that the US could be facing a protracted period of weakness and said more government spending may be necessary to avoid long-term economic damage.
The Ghana Standards Authority has certified a locally-made sanitizing tunnel, which is a disinfection method to eliminate bacteria and viruses from users and help reduce the risks of contagion among people.



The M240-5 sanitizing tunnel was assembled in Ghana by Adventure Trail Company Limited (ATLC), a Construction and Engineering Company, and features a five-nozzle beam sensor design.



It works by spraying disinfectant solutions on people thereby killing bacteria and other susceptible pathogens that may be on their bodies and clothes.

Once people enter the sanitizing tunnel, the sensor-activated nozzles in the chamber are initiated and sprayed on with the sanitation solution, thereby disinfecting their person and belongings and eliminating up to 99 percent of viruses and bacteria.



The World Health Organisation recommends that the highest antimicrobial efficacy can be achieved with tunnels with an alcohol content of 60-85 percent.

The M240-5 Sanitizing Tunnel has a spray system containing atomized liquid spray with 63 percent alcohol.



Mr Daniel Vincent Arthur, Head of Engineering, said the sanitizing tunnel was tested and conformed to three national and international standards, including; Household and similar electrical appliance safety (GS IEC 60730) and the Automatic electrical controls for household and similar use.

He said the product ticked all the standards required.



Presenting the certification to Mr Elie Abou Jaoude, the Chief Executive officer of ATCL, Mr Clifford Frimpong, Director of Physical Science Directorate, praised the ingenuity of Ghanaians during the time of crisis.

He said the sanitizing tunnel was suitable for the airports, shops and offices and public places for people to be sanitized as they entered and Ghana would be a safer place for all.



Mr Frimpong pledged the support of the GSA to Ghanaians that came out with inventions, adding that the Authority was ready to back industry to ensure that the countrys economy grows.

Commenting Mr Jaoude lauded the assistance from the GSA and expressed the hope that the sanitizing tunnel would go a long way to help protect people from COVID-19.



Professor Alex Dodoo, the Director-General of the GSA, said the use of the sanitizing tunnel is in addition to the observance of the various hygienic protocols, such as washing of hands.

Sanitising Tunnels are common in China, Japan, India and South Korea, where they have been deployed in public places.

Source: GNA









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This is the convening notice for the extraordinary general meeting of shareholders of Brunel International N.V. ("Company") that will take place on Monday 29 June 2020 at 2.00 p.m. CEST at the offices of the Company at John M. Keynesplein 33, 1066 EP Amsterdam.



AGENDA:

1. Opening

2. Appointment of Mr A.G. Maude as member of the Board of Directors (voting item)

ava@nl.abnamro.com (mailto:ava@nl.abnamro.com)

www.brunelinternational.net (http://www.brunelinternational.net)

www.brunelinternational.net (http://www.brunelinternational.net).

3. CloseThe agenda with notes is available for inspection and can be obtained free of charge from Brunel International N.V., John M. Keynesplein 33, 1066 EP Amsterdam, as well as from ABN AMRO Bank N.V. ("ABN AMRO", e-mail:), and can be viewed on the website of Brunel International N.V. ().The record date for the meeting is 1 June 2020 after processing of all subscriptions and withdrawals per this date (the "Record Date").Shareholders and others with meeting rights will not have physical access to the meeting. There will be a live webcast of the meeting via a link which will be available on the corporate website

The voting rights can only be exercised by a proxy granted by electronic means. Proxy and voting instructions can be given from 2 June 2020 until 22 June 2020 at 5 p.m. CEST via www.abnamro.com/evoting (http://www.abnamro.com/evoting) . The intermediaries will need to issue a statement via www.abnamro.com/intermediary (http://www.abnamro.com/intermediary) , no later than 23 June at 11 a.m. CEST stating that the shares were registered in the name of the holder thereof on the Record Date.
Mr Joseph Adda, the Minister of Aviation, has refuted allegation accusing him and Mr Yaw Kwakwa, the Managing Director of Ghana Airports Company (GACL), of diverting a contract meant to LCB Worldwide for the disinfection of airports.



The Minister said: By the standards and procedures of the Ministry and its agencies, LCB Worldwide (LCB) has no contractual relationship with the GACL, and the accusation of contract diversion is blatantly false.



We nonetheless concede that LCB has a contract with the Ministries of Transport and Health, and the scope of work to undertake that contract is squarely for the disinfection of the ports of Tema and Takoradi, and not Airports, which are not under the purview of the two ministries, which entered into the contract with LCB, he said.



A statement signed by Mr Adda and copied to the Ghana News Agency in Accra said the allegation was designed to force the Ministry and GACL to contract the companys services under duress.



The Ministry and its agencies will not countenance any engagement that does not go through due process as provided for under the Public Procurement Act even though it welcomes companies interested in any aspect of business in the sector, which they qualify to undertake, especially the likes of LCB, he said.



The Minister explained that LCB had earlier offered to undertake the disinfection exercise at the Airports at a cost of 19 million dollars, recoverable through a 20 dollar charge per round trip to be borne by air passengers.



However, the Governing Board of GACL did not find the offer of LCB acceptable and turned down the offer, as it would further add to a higher ticket cost for travellers.



To help appreciate the financial implication of the exchange rate, LCB, after investing this initial amount, would be drawing from passengers, the equivalent of GHC325 million per year.



These margins, the Minister said, were guaranteed in perpetuity, as the proposal stipulated no term limit, which runs contrary to the guidance and standards established by the International Air Transport Association and the International Civil Aviation Organisation on aviation-related charges.



The Minister for Aviation has demonstrated excellence since assuming leadership of the sector in 2018. Ghana attained an effective implementation score of 89.89 per cent, the highest by an African country at the time, after an audit by the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) in April 2019.



At ICAOs 40th Triennial Assembly in Montreal, Canada, in October 2019, this feat was duly recognised when Ghana became the only country after Qatar to receive awards for aviation safety and security, with Mr Adda receiving the distinguished honour of being the first Ghanaian Aviation Minister to address an ICAO Assembly, the statement said.



It said the countrys Kotoka International Airport (KIA) received two prestigious awards during this years Airport Service Quality Awards by Airport Council International, the global trade representative of the worlds airports.



Under the leadership of Mr Adda and Mr Kwakwa, KIA topped the ranking as Africas Best Airport by Size and Region whiles Terminal Three was named the Continents Most Improved Airport.



The disinfection exercise was necessitated following governments lifting of the coronavirus lockdown, to prepare the Airports to commence domestic flights after airlines expressed their readiness to begin operations.





Source: GNA









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In this article 1911-HK

This photo taken on February 28, 2020 shows workers producing face masks at a factory in Handan in China's northern Hebei province. STR | AFP via Getty Images

BEIJING  The unemployment rate in China remained near historic highs in April, highlighting the challenges the world's second-largest economy still faces in recovering fully from the economic shock of the coronavirus. China's official, but highly doubted, urban unemployment rate rose to 6.0% in April, from 5.9% in March, according to figures released Friday by the National Bureau of Statistics. "The pressure on employment is rather large," bureau spokeswoman Liu Aihua told reporters at least three times during Friday's press conference. That's according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks.

Although monthly figures for the overall economy show some recovery, challenges remain, such as resuming work and the impact of the virus overseas, Liu said. "Right now, the trajectory of economic development still requires observation, but ... based on the results of policies for resuming work and production, we have the confidence, ability and basis for extending the momentum of recovery and improvement." Liu noted that the bureau's survey found that at the end of April, the number of migrant workers who had returned to their jobs in the cities was about 90% of what it was a year ago. In early March, official figures showed the return to work for migrant workers from the poorest households in the country was about half of what it was a year ago. More than half of China extended the Lunar New Year holiday by at least a week in an effort to control the Covid-19 disease, which first emerged late last year in the Chinese city of Wuhan. By early March, the virus outbreak had stalled domestically while accelerating its spread overseas. Covid-19 has now killed more than 302,000 people worldwide, including over 4,600 in China.

Slowing economy to hit more jobs

Similar lockdowns on economic activity in the U.S. sent the unemployment rate soaring to 14.7% in April, the highest since World War II and up from months of historic lows near 4% or less. In February, the peak of the coronavirus outbreak in China, the unemployment rate jumped to a record high of 6.2%. For the 25 to 59-year-old group, the rate has hovered near 5.5% for the last three months. The average work-hours a week per employee also fell in April by 30 minutes to 44.3 hours, the data showed. China's unemployment data have been highly doubted, even after the country changed its methodology from worker claims to a survey in 2018 in an effort to capture more of the job losses. The urban unemployment rate has hovered near 4% to 5% for the last 20 years. "We think that pressure on employment will continue," Bruce Pang, head of macro and strategy research at China Renaissance, said Friday. He pointed to factors such as fewer new jobs due to slower economic growth, sluggish demand for Chinese exports and a record-high number of university graduates this year. The continued struggles of small and medium-sized enterprises, which contribute to the majority of jobs and growth in China, adds further pressure to employment. Pang pointed to third-party business registration data that showed 460,000 companies closed in the first quarter, while the establishment of 3.2 million new Chinese companies during that time still marked a nearly 29% decrease from a year ago.

Turning to new kinds of work
The University of Texas at Arlington and the city of Coppell in Dallas County are collaborating on robotic inspections of sewer pipelines and material testing of core samples from those pipelines to predict their service life.

Coupled with nonlinear finite element analysis and a developed machine learning algorithm, this project will lead to informed predictions of the remaining service life of the pipelines. The Energy-Dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, or electron microscope, analyzes chemical properties of the pipes that help predict their strength and service life.

Ali Abolmaali, professor and chair of UTA's Civil Engineering Department, will lead the $895,100 project, which will inspect about 149,000 linear feet of sanitary sewer pipe.

Arash Emami Saleh and Maziar Mahdavi, two UTA faculty research associates in the Center for Structural Engineering Research/Simulation and Pipeline Inspection, are co-principal investigators. Ron Lusk, the president of Public Water Solution, will manage the field robotic inspection data reporting.

This is the fifth city in which Abolmaali has used the robotics system to inspect pipes, with the intent of prioritizing which ones needs to be replaced and which can be refurbished.

"This project also will use artificial intelligence to predict life of the pipes," Abolmaali said. "From the cores, we'll do scanning electron microscope analysis, which will give the chemistry and property specifics of the pipes. That will give us a great determination to estimate the strength and life of the pipes."

In 2015, Abolmaali--a renowned pipe expert in structural pipe systems using material testing and finite element analysis--was awarded a grant to evaluate the conditions of some of the city of Arlington's pipes. He's performed similar projects in Ennis, Waxahachie and Frisco.

"This is another step forward for the North Texas community," said Peter Crouch, dean of the College of Engineering. "Professor Abolmaali's research builds even stronger ties between municipalities and the University. His work is a tremendous example of putting the practical side of research to use in something that is so beneficial and cost-saving to those communities."

Mike Garza, Coppell's assistant director of public works, said the project will give the city valuable information to inform future decisions about its infrastructure.

"We're excited to partner with UTA on this project," Garza said. "We want to make the best decisions for our residents and businesses. This project allows us to do that."

The work will be done through UTA's Center for Structural Engineering Research/Simulation and Pipeline Inspection. Abolmaali is its director.

In a separate project, Abolmaali recently designed a fiber-reinforced pipe and developed two American Society for Testing and Materials specifications for the first time. Using his leading-edge research in this area, he worked with industry associations and colleagues around the globe to establish that new standard.

He was recently awarded a $653,000 contract by the Texas Department of Transportation to test longer-lasting concrete pipes embedded with polypropylene fibers for strength and durability.

###
In a letter to Chairwoman of Vietnams National Assembly (NA) Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan, Matviyenko expressed deep gratitude to the Vietnamese NA and the Vietnam - Russia Friendship Parliamentarians' Group for their valuable solidarity amid the current difficult situation due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The medical supplies, including medical masks and means to prevent the spread of the SARS-CoV-2, will be distributed to medical institutions and social organisations to support Russian people, she said.

The Russian legislative leader also said she believes that with common efforts, Russia will soon overcome the pandemic as well as its impacts on society and the economy.

On May 14 morning, Russia recorded 9,974 new cases of COVID-19 during the previous day, raising the total to 252,245. The country also reported 93 more deaths, bringing the total fatalities to 2,305. Meanwhile, 5,527 patients were given the all clear, taking the total recoveries to 53,530.
Colorado state health officials are being challenged by a county coroner for saying that a man who tested positive for the coronavirus succumbed to the deadly infection when an investigation showed he had literally drunk himself to death.

Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers conducted an investigation that determined Sebastian Yellow, 35, had died of acute alcohol poisoning after his blood alcohol content came back at .55. That's about seven times the legal limit.

Yellow's body was found by police lying in a public park in Cortez on May 4.

The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, however, categorized Yellow's death as being due to COVID-19, and the information was used to update the state's death tally from the virus.

Montezuma County Coroner George Deavers (pictured) conducted an investigation that determined Sebastian Yellow, 35, had died of acute alcohol poisoning after his blood alcohol content came back at .55. That's about seven times the legal limit

The body of Sebastian Yellow body was found by police lying in a public park in Cortez on May 4. Yellow is pictured in an undated photo

'I can see no reason for this', Deavers told KCNC.

There have been 20,475 confirmed cases in Colorado of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for 1,062 deaths.

Across the country there have been 1,451,988 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, which has been blamed for 86,719 deaths.

The coroner's challenge of how Yellow's death was blamed on the coronavirus, when in fact he died from drinking, comes as the state has come under scrutiny for reclassifying deaths contrary to what doctors already have determined.

An investigation found state health officials reclassified three deaths at a Centennial nursing home as COVID-19 deaths after attending doctors ruled they were not related to coronavirus, reports KCNC.

Each of the dead residents had tested positive for the coronavirus, but their passing was blamed on other causes by the physicians, KCNC, which conducted the investigation, reports.

The state's official tally then increased the number of coronavirus deaths at the Someren Glen facility from four to seven, based on the disputed deaths.

On Thursday, Rep. Mark Baisley, a Republican representing Douglas and Teller Counties, wrote to District Attorney George Brauchler of the 18th Judicial District, calling for a criminal investigation into the reclassification of the deaths as well as criminal charges against state health department director Jill Ryan.

Baisley charged in a letter to Brauchler that the reclassificaitons were 'deliberate acts of certificate falsification.'

'I believe these acts of falsely altering death certificates to be criminal acts of tremendous concern to you and my constituents. I hereby request that you investigate this matter with the intent of bringing criminal charges against Jill Ryan.'

At an April 7 news conference, Dr. Deborah Birx of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force compared how other countries classify the deaths to US reporting.

At an April 7 news conference, Dr. Deborah Birx (pictured) of President Donald Trump's coronavirus task force compared how other countries classify the deaths to US reporting

'There are other countries that if you had a pre-existing condition and let's say the virus caused you to go to the ICU and then have a heart or kidney problem - some countries are recording that as a heart issue or a kidney issue and not a COVID-19 death,' Birx first said.

'Right now ... if someone dies with COVID-19 we are counting that as a COVID-19 death,' she added, about the US reporting.

That statement left some in the medical profession questioning whether COVID-19 data will be skewed when counting the actual number of people who died from the virus.
Thunder Bay, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Benton Resources Inc. (TSXV: BEX) ('Benton' or 'the Company') is pleased to announce that Clean Air Metals Inc. ("Clean Air") (formerly Regency Gold Corp.) has completed its previously announced reverse takeover transaction pursuant to the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange. In connection with the completion of the Transaction, Clean Air filed a filing statement dated May 5, 2020 (the "Filing Statement") in support of its application to the TSXV to become a "Mining Issuer" (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV).

Stephen Stares, president and CEO of Benton stated, "First and foremost the Benton team would like to congratulate Clean Air Metals on this significant milestone. Benton is a proud shareholder of Clean Air and is extremely excited that their first phase drill program will commence soon. Benton is hopeful that its significant investment in Clean Air will provide shareholder value in the future as the project is advanced by this dynamic team of explorers and developers."

The Transaction

Pursuant to the terms of the definitive option agreement dated January 6, 2020, as amended January 27, 2020 (collectively, the "Option Agreement") entered into between the Company and Clean Air, Clean Air has now completed the acquisition of an option (the "Option") to acquire a 100% right, title and interest in and to the Escape Lake Property.

Pursuant to the terms of a definitive share purchase agreement dated January 6, 2020 (the "Pan Agreement") entered into between Clean Air and Magma Metals PTY Ltd. ("Magma"), Clean Air has now completed the acquisition of 100% of Panoramic Resources Limited's indirect subsidiary, Panoramic PGMs (Canada) Ltd. ("Pan Subsidiary"), which owns the Thunder Bay North Project (the "TBN Project"). Pan Subsidiary is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clean Air. In consideration of the acquisition of Pan Subsidiary, Clean Air agreed to pay to Magma, over a three-year period, an aggregate of C$9 million, C$4.5 million of which was paid on closing of the Transaction.

In connection with the acquisition of the Option and the completion of the Transaction, and in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Option Agreement, Clean Air, among other things: (i) granted to Benton a 0.5% net smelter return royalty from production on the Escape Lake Property and a 0.5% net smelter return royalty from production on any mineral claims comprising the TBN Project over which a net smelter royalty has not previously been granted; and (ii) issued to Benton an aggregate of 24,615,884 common shares (the "Consideration Shares") in the capital of Clean Air.

Clean Air Metals Financing

In connection with the Transaction, Clean Air completed a private placement of subscription receipts (each, a "Subscription Receipt") on February 11, 2020, led by Paradigm Capital Inc. and Sprott Capital Partners LP (the "Co-Lead Agents") on behalf of a syndicate of agents, including Red Cloud Securities and Mackie Research Capital Corporation (together with the Co-Lead Agents, the "Agents") pursuant to which Clean Air issued an aggregate of 75,000,000 Subscription Receipts for gross proceeds of $15,000,000 (the "Offering").

The gross proceeds were held in escrow on behalf of the subscribers for the Subscription Receipts by Computershare Trust Company of Canada. As part of the completion of the Transaction, Clean Air and the Co-Agents delivered a joint notice to the Escrow Agent on May 13, 2020 confirming satisfaction of the applicable escrow release conditions, at which time each Subscription Receipt was automatically converted into one unit (a "Unit") of Clean Air, and the Escrowed Proceeds were released to Clean Air. Each Unit is comprised of one common share of Clean Air (each, a "Unit Share") and one-half of one common share purchase warrant of Clean Air (each whole common share purchase warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant is exercisable by the holder thereof for one common share of Clean Air (each, a "Warrant Share") until February 11, 2022 at an exercise price of $0.30 per Warrant Share, subject to adjustments in certain events.

The net proceeds of the Offering were and will be used to fund the cash portion of the consideration payable to Magma in respect of the acquisition of the TBN Project, to fund drilling for the TBN Property, and for general corporate purposes.

The securities issued upon conversion of the Subscription Receipts are subject to a statutory hold period until June 12, 2020, in accordance with applicable securities laws.

TSXV Approval and Resumption of Trading

Trading in the common shares of Clean Air was previously halted on October 15, 2019 at the request of Clean Air in connection with the announcement of the Transaction. The Transaction remains subject to final approval by the TSXV and fulfillment of all of the requirements of the TSXV in order to obtain such approval including, among other things, submission and acceptance of all documents requested by the TSXV in its conditional acceptance letter and payment of all outstanding fees to the TSXV. Until final approval of the TSXV is obtained and a Final Exchange Bulletin is issued, trading in the common shares of Clean Air will remain halted; however it is expected that trading will resume on or about May 22, 2020. Upon resumption of trading, the common shares of Clean Air will trade under the symbol "AIR" and Clean Air will be listed as a Tier 2 Mining Issuer.

Benton encourages readers to visit the Clean Air Metals Inc. website for complete company information at www.cleanairmetals.ca.

On behalf of the Board of Directors of Benton Resources Inc.,

"Stephen Stares"

Stephen Stares, President

About Benton Resources Inc.

Benton Resources is a well-funded Canadian-based project generator with a diversified property portfolio in Gold, Silver, Nickel, Copper, and Platinum group elements. Benton holds multiple high-grade projects available for option which can be viewed on the Company's website. Many projects have an up-to-date 43-101 Report available.

Parties interested in seeking more information about properties available for option can contact Mr. Stares at the number below.

For further information, please contact:

Stephen Stares, President & CEO

Phone: 807-475-7474

Email: sstares@bentonresources.ca

Website: www.bentonresources.ca

Twitter: @BentonResources

Facebook: @BentonResourcesBEX

THE TSX VENTURE EXCHANGE HAS NOT REVIEWED AND DOES NOT ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE ADEQUACY OR ACCURACY OF THIS RELEASE.

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements."

Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to gold price and other commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55947
The CBI has described as a "big victory" and a "milestone" the order of a UK court rejecting beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya's application seeking leave to appeal in the country's Supreme Court the verdict clearing his extradition to India in bank fraud case.

The 64-year-old businessman had 14 days to file his latest application to seek permission to move the higher court on the High Court judgment from 20 April, which dismissed his appeal against a Westminster Magistrates' Court extradition order certified by the UK Home Secretary.

The latest decision, referred to as a "pronouncement", means that under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, the UK Home Office is now expected to formally certify the court order for Mallya to be extradited to India within 28 days.

"Vide order dated 20.04.2020, a Division Bench of UK High Court has dismissed Mallya's appeal against the lower court order recommending his extradition to face trial in India," CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.

The decision of the UK High Court of Justice to order the extradition of Mallya is a milestone in the CBI's quest for excellence and a reminder that economic offenders, facing probes in large value frauds, cannot consider themselves as above the process merely because they have changed jurisdictions, he said.

"The judgment also vindicates the painstaking investigation by CBI, especially since Mallya had raised various issues with regard to the admissibility of evidence, the fairness of investigation itself and extraneous consideration, with a view to divert attention from his own acts," the spokesperson said.

He said, "The extradition of Vijay Mallya was sought to face trial in a 2015 case for offences of cheating, criminal conspiracy and abuse of official position by public servants, wherein the allegations of conspiring with public servants and dishonestly defrauding the IDBI bank to the extent of Rs 900 crore."

The agency had filed a charge sheet on the conclusion of the investigation on 24 January, 2017, which was followed by a request for extradition of Mallya on 31 January, 2017. Based on the request, he was arrested by the UK authorities on 20 April, 2017, but was given bail within hours.

The agency successfully waded through a complex legal battle for three years in Westminster Magistrate's Court and then the UK High Court of Justice to convince them on a prima facie case against him as well as compliance of ECHR norms on Human Rights and prison conditions.

"It may be mentioned that vide order dated 10 December, 2018, the Senior District Judge ruled in favour of Government of India and recommended extradition of Mallya to the Secretary of State. The appeal filed by Mallya was thereafter dismissed by the UK High Court on 5 April, 2019, on all five grounds," he said.

UK Division Bench admitted the appeal of Mallya only on one ground, which is "prima facie" case was made out against him or not and was rejected by it after the CBI presented robust arguments to support its case, the spokesperson said.

"The ground of prima facie case was heard by a Division Bench of UK High Court in February'2020 and was decided in favour of Government of India vide order dated 20 April, 2020," he said.

"CBI appreciates the painstaking investigation, the hard work and the meticulous efforts of Investigating Officer Suman Kumar, Additional SP, CBI, in successfully pursuing investigation and extradition proceedings against the fugitive," the spokesperson said.
CORK, Ireland, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alana 'CityStyleBot' is giving high street and independent fashion retailers an alternative virtual shop front to serve customers post COVID-19. Launched in February 2020, Cork Start Up Alana is an innovative Fashion and Beauty platform for consumers to purchase curated fashion looks and beauty products. Alana is powered by Artificial Intelligence meaning that it learns to recommend styles/brands that will suit each customer's unique taste. Alana suggests clothes from high street retailers and independent boutiques with a same day delivery service making the whole highstreet a virtual shopping center - one checkout - one delivery charge of 3.99. Alana helps retailers compete with major brands who have an established ecommerce foothold. According to ACI Worldwide there is a 74% growth in the average transaction volumes due to a dramatic rise in online retail this March in comparison to March 2019.

Post COVID-19 Alana will launch its partnership with hotels and tour operators to create the ultimate City Break. This will be a rewarding new revenue stream for the Tourism Industry. Customers can use the virtual styling service or beauty stylists and have Alana deliver looks and products to their hotels, while still practising social distancing, ready for them to enjoy all the destination has to offer in style. Alana already has a crew of stylists working in New York and Ireland and is growing in global footprint.

Community Manager Simone McCarthy says, "Alana is the uber of fashion giving customers access to clothes, accessories and more at their fingertips. For retailers it will boost online sales as well as showcasing their offering through the influencers affiliated with Alana. It is especially valuable for small independent boutiques who are not set up for online sales. There are so many independent fashion retailers that are not online and Alana App is a lifeline for them during COVID-19 as there is a readymade audience eager to keep up to date with fashion and indulge in some retail therapy."

Alana is a superior user experience for shoppers due to the recommendation feature powered by Artificial Intelligence which gets to know a shopper's style and so can serve up clothes that are to the shoppers taste. Chloe Markham, Head of Fashion at Alana says, "Since joining Alana I have broadened my reach to a global audience. Alana allows women the luxury of having their own personal stylist at an affordable rate from the click of a button. It is fast, efficient, and affordable. We bring style to your door."

Developed with UCC's Prof Barry O' Sullivan, Alana uses a patent pending technology within its AI recommendation engine. The unique gossip algorithm will tell you when your favorites are available and will alert you when that perfect dress arrives in store. Prof O'Sullivan says, "As users interact with styled looks on the platform, a user specific profile is generated that forms the basis of making highly personalised recommendations, helping to maximise the impacts of Alana on the high street."

Watch this space - major brand development announcement coming this Friday May 8th.

Instagram: @Alana.ie, Twitter: @shopwithalana and Facebook: @alanaloves

Link to high res images in dropbox https://bit.ly/2L6KAIo

About Alana

Alana is considered the Uber of fashion offering a multi-store pick-up delivery service. Using state of the art artificial intelligence technology to bring fashionable outfits to our customers that we know they will love.

Alana offers three distinct services to our customers:

1. We create styles and looks from which you can shop. You can choose to shop the whole look, items from the look or mix and match between looks.

2. We offer a multi-store pick up service meaning you can purchase items from multiple stores and will only ever pay one standard delivery rate of 3.99.

3. We also offer a bespoke virtual styling service. You can choose from any of our talented styling team and set up a virtual styling appointment. Here they will go through everything with you from budget, style, wardrobe decluttering, colours and more.

Our Roots

Backed by Serial Entrepreneurs Niamh Parker and Allan Beechinor a husband and wife team. They recognised the gap in the market for a multi-store delivery service. As a busy mother of four who loves fashion, Niamh had lost confidence in her style and her love for shopping as she did not have the time or the energy to go from shop to shop. Thus, Alana was created to allow the everyday woman with a busy lifestyle to buy back time. Alana is named after the couple's eight year old daughter Alannah in order to bring the children on the entrepreneurial journey with them.

Global to Local

Alana has a team of talented stylists based in Cork to New York! However, the mindset has always been to benefit our community. We do not store stock in warehouses, instead we collect items from local stores with the aim to save the High Street. We hope to benefit the environment from reducing packaging due to our multi-store shopping and also to benefit the local economy. By purchasing the items from local stores means supporting jobs in each City. Our mission is to save the High Street and provide retailers of all sizes a platform to be noticed, and sell to the world

Virtual Style Sessions

Alana is the stylish best friend you have always wanted. Our virtual styling sessions last one hour and cost just 35. Each appointment is completely tailored to the customer and the stylist of their choice will go through everything they want to discuss from style tips and tricks, colours, and seasons. "Since coming on board with Alana as Head of Fashion and as a stylist it has allowed me to further my reach and style women on a global scale as well as connecting local retailers to new customers. Alana allows women the luxury of having their own personal stylist at an affordable rate from the click of a button. It is fast, efficient, and affordable. We bring style to your door", Chloe Markham, Head of Fashion at Alana. Stylists are also supported by the recommendation system to help with the shopping and styling experience.

Smarter Shopping

Alana is the future of fashion, cleverly combining style with technology. Through the use of AI, Alana delivers personalised recommendations to our customers based on their own individual taste. No more aimless scrolling on multiple fashion sites! "Alana has a core component, a state-of-the-art AI engine, that uses personalisation to create an exceptional user experience" explains Barry O'Sullivan, AI Advisor. As users interact with styled looks on the platform a user-specific profile is generated that forms the basis for making highly personalised recommendations of other looks and items they might wish to consider.

You can Shop the Look or Book a Stylist on Alana.ie and for more updates sign up for our newsletter. You can follow us on Instagram: @Alana.ie, Twitter: @shopwithalana and Facebook: @alanaloves

If you have any questions, please email Simone on [email protected] or Niamh [email protected]

SOURCE Alana
OTTAWA - Canadas trade minister is thanking the departing head of the World Trade Organization for his help trying the reform the troubled referee for global trade.

Mary Ng highlighted the support Roberto Azevedo, who announced Thursday he would step down as director-general of the WTO Aug. 31, gave the Ottawa-led reform efforts.

Azevedo will depart one year before the end of his eight-year mandate at the helm of an organization that has been lambasted by the Trump administration for being unfair to the United States at the expense of China.

His departure came the same day Canada and 48 fellow WTO members signed a joint statement affirming their support for small- and medium-sized businesses hurt by the COVID-19 crisis.

Canada, which has been leading a coalition of about dozen countries  excluding the U.S. and China  to reform the WTO and save it from the damage inflicted by the Trump administration, affirmed its support for its central role in upholding international trade.

Azevedo cited personal reasons for the departure, and said he was acting in the best interest of the organization.

Canada has appreciated his leadership and dedication to rules-based trade, as well as his support for the work of the Canada-led Ottawa Group on WTO Reform, Ng said in a statement.

President Donald Trump took yet another shot at the organization Thursday, saying the WTO is horrible as restated his long-held grievance that it gives, in his view, preferential treatment to China at his countrys expense.

Trumps trade czar Robert Lighthizer was far more gracious in thanking Azevedo for his exemplary service

Despite the many shortcomings of the WTO, Roberto has led the institution with grace and a steady hand. He will be difficult to replace, Lighthizer said.

The U.S. has blocked the appointments to fill vacancies at the Appellate Body, which is an appeal court of sorts for the WTOs Dispute Settlement Body.

Because of the lack of judges on the body, Canada has joined with the European Union to replicate its function to keep the global trade dispute settlement mechanism functioning.

Phil Hogan, the EU commissioner for trade, said Azevedos departure gives the WTO the opportunity to address its many challenges and he said that has to happen quickly.

It is essential that we quickly chart a new path ahead at this critical and uncertain time for trade. It makes sense to proceed now with the succession process rather than wait until next year in order to be proactive, he said.

The trade challenges arising from the impact of COVID-19 require immediate planning for the future.

Debra Steger, who was Canadas senior negotiator during the creation of the WTO in 1995, said the organization needs to act to correct shortcomings in its management and governance structure.

The lack of leadership in strategic planning and policy-making is the major problem in the WTO, Steger, a senior fellow at the Centre of International Governance Innovation in Waterloo, Ont., said in a statement.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.
The Indian Army is examining a proposal for allowing civilians to join the force for a three-year tenure, officials said.

At present, the Army recruits young people under short service commission for an initial tenure of 10 years.

Read more

Also Read: Army proposal to induct civilians for three years must be deliberated in detail: Experts warn of security implications
Urban voters may like the idea of using more wind and solar energy, but the push for large-scale renewables is creating land-use conflicts in rural regions from Maryland to California and Ontario to Loch Ness.

Since 2015, more than 120 government entities in about two dozen states have moved to reject or restrict the land-devouring, subsidy-fueled sprawl of the wind industry.

The backlash continued last month when a judge in Maryland ruled that the possible benefits of a proposed 17-turbine project did not justify or offset subjecting the local community to the adverse impacts that will result from the wind projects construction and operation. The judges ruling probably spells the end of an eight-year battle that pitted local homeowners and Allegany County against the developer of the 60-megawatt project.

Objections to the encroachment of wind energy installations dont fit the environmentalists narrative. The backlash undermines the claim  often repeated by climate activists such as 350.org founder Bill McKibben and Stanford engineering professor Mark Jacobson  that we can run our entire economy on nothing but energy from the wind and sun. Many of those same activists routinely demonize natural gas and hydraulic fracturing even though the physical footprint of gas production is far smaller than that of wind. Three years ago, the late David J.C. MacKay, then a professor at the University of Cambridge, calculated that wind energy requires about 700 times more land to produce the same amount of energy as a fracking site.

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Rural residents dont want to see the red-blinking lights atop the turbines, all night, every night for the rest of their lives.

Rural residents are objecting to wind projects to protect their property values and viewsheds. They dont want to live next door to industrial-scale wind farms. They dont want to see the red-blinking lights atop the turbines, all night, every night for the rest of their lives. Nor do they want to be subjected to the audible and inaudible noise the turbines produce.

Even in California, which has mandated that 50% of the electricity sold in the state be produced from renewable energy sources by 2030, there is resistance to wind power. In 2015, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to ban wind turbines in L.A.s unincorporated areas. At the hearing on the measure, then-Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich said the skyscraper-sized turbines create visual blight  [and] contradict the countys rural dark skies ordinance.

In New York, angry fishermen are suing to stop an offshore wind project that could be built in the heart of one of the best squid fisheries on the Eastern Seaboard. Three upstate counties  Erie, Orleans and Niagara  as well as the towns of Yates and Somerset, are fighting a proposed 200-megawatt project that aims to put dozens of turbines on the shores of Lake Ontario. As in California, New York has a 50 by 30 renewable-energy mandate.

Outside the U.S., about 90 towns in Ontario have declared themselves unwilling hosts to wind projects.In April 2016, a wind project near Scotlands famous Loch Ness was rejected by local authorities because of its potential negative effect on tourism. Poland and the German state of Bavaria have effectively banned wind turbines by implementing a rule that allows turbines to be located no closer than 10 times their height to homes or other sensitive areas.

The defeat of the Maryland wind project came as a relief to K. Darlene Park, a resident of Frostburg and the president of Allegany Neighbors & Citizens for Home Owners Rights. We were up against an army of suits, she told me. Its like a brick has been taken off our shoulders.Parks tiny group relied on volunteers and a budget of about $20,000 as it fought the turbines all the way to the states public service commission.

Neither the communications director nor the CEO of the American Wind Energy Assn., which spends more than $20 million per year promoting wind power, would comment on the rural opposition to wind turbines. Their refusal isnt surprising. If the wind lobby  and their myriad allies at the Sierra Club, Natural Resources Defense Council and other environmental groups  acknowledges turbines negative effects on landscapes and rural quality of life, it would subvert their claims that wind energy is truly green.

Just as problematic for the industrys future: to increase wind-energy production to the levels needed to displace significant quantities of coal, oil and natural gas will require erecting more  and taller  turbines (new models reach to 700 feet). But the more turbines that get installed, and the taller they are, the more nearby residents are likely to object.

Wind energy simply requires too much territory. That means we cant rely on it for major cuts in emissions. Indeed, the more wind energy encroaches on small towns and suburbs, the more resistance it will face. That resistance will come from homeowners like Park who told me, We feel this renewable energy push is an attack on rural America.

Robert Bryce is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and the author, most recently, of Smaller Faster Lighter Denser Cheaper: How Innovation Keeps Proving the Catastrophists Wrong.

Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinionand Facebook
Carnelle Howell is very worried about his family members who work in close proximity to one another in a Demopolis chicken plant. He says two of his relatives tested positive for the disease, in addition to about eight other Foster Farms workers, but the bosses are not sharing information about the spread.

The managers are being very hostile and aggressive towards the employees once they bring the information (about infections) to them, he said. Its something they dont want to deal with. You know, rural Alabama, these people dont have a voice.

The company says it is being open with its workers at the plant, and its policy is to let exposed employees know that they came into contact with a sick person.

Foster Farms will immediately determine those employees who have had close contact with the diagnosed individual and advise that they self-quarantine and seek medical attention, said company spokesperson Ira Brill, who confirmed there are 11 known cases at the facility.

Its a situation repeating in offices and factories across the state, as each wrestles with similar questions: Do employees have the right to know if someone in the building tested positive? How much should employers disclose? How much is private and personal information?

Experts say there are no easy, black-letter answers. But in general, Alabama employers are not strictly required by law to tell employees if theyve been exposed to the coronavirus on the job.

I have not seen clear cut guidance from administrative or public health officials stating that you, as an employer, must notify other employees of other potential cases of exposure, said UA Law Professor Deepa Das Acevedo.

Once someone tests positive, the Alabama Department of Public Health may reach out to co-workers as part of its contact tracing efforts. But communication between employers and employees around spread of the disease in the workplace is a point of emerging tension.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey has granted immunity to some types of businesses, protecting them from lawsuits, provided they do not behave recklessly.

But legal experts told AL.com that wording in the state order leaves the need for bosses to disclose potential exposure to employees up to interpretation.

It remains unclearwhether or not telling other employees there was a case of exposure constitutes the kind of reckless behavior that would be outside the scope of the immunity created by the proclamation, said Acevedo, adding that the state workers compensation system already creates a barrier to workers suing employers except in the most extreme cases.

Personal Injury Attorney Jessica Zorn believes a legal argument could be made that workers should know of coronavirus cases at the workplace.

An employer has a duty by law to act reasonably when faced with a crisis, she said.

The employer likely has a duty to make sure that person who tested positive is not coming into the workplace and making other people sick.

To complicate matters, there are liability concerns for employers who share too much information under HIPPA or the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Generally what lawyers will often tell employers in these kinds of circumstances is to provide the minimum information required, said Acevedo, such as who was exposed, what they might have touched but not necessarily their name.

To Howell, whose relatives work at Foster Farms, the only adequate solution is to close up shop and sanitize.

The conditions of the facility need to be shut down and cleaned thoroughly, he said.

Foster Farms says it is taking reasonable steps to protect its workers, like handing out masks, erecting protective barriers, and encouraging those who feel unwell to get tested.

The CDC has not recommended shutting down meat packing facilities once coronavirus is identified there. It does advise employers to inform workers if they came in contact with a sick co-worker.

To Acevedo, coronavirus raises many uncertainties for the application of employment law. She says what is clear is that workers and managers alike will need to make quick adjustments to any positive cases at work.

If theres a flare up, are employers going to be willing and able to respond to that by altering their workplace practices? she asked. Were all going to have to be a lot more nimble in switching on and switching off our normal activity.

This article was updated to reflect that Alabamas worker compensation system already creates a barrier to workers suing employers except in the most extreme cases.
Uptaeb.edu.ve scored 41 Social Media Impact. Social Media Impact score is a measure of how much a site is popular on social networks. 2/5.0 Stars by Social Team

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PAGE TITLE ::: Universidad Politecnica Territorial de Lara Andres Eloy Blanco ::: DESCRIPTION ::: Universidad Politecnica Territorial de Lara Andres Eloy Blanco ::: ::: Universidad Politecnica Territorial de Lara Andres Eloy Blanco :::streaming hd, adui hd, streaming media, aac plus , fm en internet streaming web, streaming mp3, hosting, streaming KEYWORDS streaming hd, adui hd, streaming media, aac plus, fm en internet streaming web, streaming mp3, hosting, streaming audio hd, streaming movil::: musica, audio hd, fm en vivo por internet, radios on-line, radios online, radios web larastreaming.com, streami OTHER KEYWORDS



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Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

It will soon be possible to once again borrow a bestseller from the library or watch polar bears swim at the zoo.

About two months after Albuquerque halted most nonessential public services, city leaders say they will bring a few of them back now that Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham is relaxing certain restrictions implemented in March to combat COVID-19.

As part of a Phase 1 reopening plan, Albuquerque will reopen its office buildings and some outdoor recreation facilities  such as the shooting range and racket-sport venues  next week. By early June, the city plans to reopen portions of the ABQ BioPark and restart service at libraries.

Albuquerque Rapid Transit bus service will return June 13, though in a potentially reduced capacity.

Other facilities, such as city pools, remain off limits for now per current state guidance.

We plan to reopen in step with the state guidance for phase 1, Mayor Tim Keller said during a media briefing livestreamed Thursday from City Hall. But its not going to happen overnight, so youre going to have to give us a few weeks.

Keller has repeatedly warned that Albuquerques distinction as New Mexicos largest city, and a statewide hub for shopping, health care and air travel may require longer, tighter restrictions. He said Thursday that is the case for large cities in other states, citing Denver. But Albuquerques rate of COVID-19 spread is low enough to begin reopening with the rest of the state, he said.

Down the road, we hope thats always the case, but if its not, like Denver, well take our own action, he said.

The citys 49-page reopening plan outlines different rules for specific facilities. The Open Space Visitor Center, for example, will reopen next week, but no more than 25 people are allowed inside and the public cannot access the conference room or some other parts of the property.

Libraries should open June 2, but will not provide seating or public computer usage during Phase 1.

The BioPark, scheduled to reopen to members June 2 and to the general public June 9, will have timed ticketing that limits on-site attendance to 300 people at once.

Sarita Nair, the citys chief administrative officer, said guests can expect many new protocols at the zoo and elsewhere as the city moves ahead. She urged people to remain respectful and kind.

This Phase 1 reopening is going to require a lot of patience and understanding from our employees, from the public, she said. There are going to continue to be lines to get into places  you are going to have to maybe wait in line to get into an elevator. Things may open and they may need to close again.

Frustration is going to be part of that process.

Now that the governor has mandated New Mexicans wear masks in public, except when eating, drinking or exercising, the city will also require them at its facilities. The city plans to have some face coverings available to those without them and will deny entrance to people who are not wearing masks and do not accept those offered, said Jessie Damazyn, a spokeswoman for Kellers office.
Izzys, an all-you-can eat pizza buffet chain with 10 locations throughout the Pacific Northwest, celebrated its fourth decade in business last year.

Now the company is working on an app.

During Oregons Phase 1 reopening plan, Izzys plans to reopen nine of its outposts in Oregon and Washington for takeout dine-in service, according to Wendy Ochs, the companys operations manager. (A franchise location in Corvallis plans to change concepts.) Customers dropping by during that time could be able to select their pizza, salad or dessert on their phones or a device at the table, with employees in gloves and masks assembling each plate.

Were calling it a virtual buffet, Ochs said, where instead of having buffets where people go up, grab a plate and are using serving utensils, theyll be able to build their plate, right down to position of the food on the plate, then well build it and bring it to the table.

As Oregon counties seek to reopen restaurant dining rooms closed for nearly two months, one business sector is at severe risk of being left behind: self-service restaurants.

Buffets, salad bars, soda machines and growler refilling stations were specifically prohibited under Gov. Kate Browns Phase 1 reopening plan. Owners of sushi trains and self-service fro-yo stores are generally interpreting the rules to include their businesses as well.

The ban is already having an impact nationwide. Sweet Tomatoes, a San Diego-based salad bar chain, announced last week the company would permanently close nearly 100 locations across the United States, including four in the Portland metro area. In announcing the closure, CEO John Haywood noted that even Georgia, which has been criticized for reopening businesses too soon, hasnt allowed self-service operations to reopen.

Swagat owner Srimanth Chinnam doesn't plan to reopen his three Portland-area buffets anytime soon.Michael Russell | The Oregonian

Even before the details of Browns Phase 1 plan were released, Swagat owner Srimanth Chinnam was planning to keep his popular lunch buffet closed for a long time, perhaps until a vaccine is available.

Even if they allow it in Phase 3 or Phase 4 or whatever, in my opinion, its not going to be safe," Chinnam said. So many people touching the same spoonstheres no way to maintain social distancing at the buffet table.

Chinnam laid off around 20 of the 50 people who worked at Swagats three Portland-area locations on March 17, when Brown put an end to on-premises dining at restaurants and bars across the state. Most of those positions came from the service ranks.

But Swagat hasnt been hit as hard as other businesses, Chinnam said, partly because their curries and other food travels well. Takeout business has been brisk, particularly at Swagats original Beaverton location, which opened in 1992. The restaurant might experiment with thali meals, with a little bit of this and that, like a little buffet sampler plate, Chinnam said.

At the Sherwood location of Menchies Menchies Frozen Yogurt, owner David Brown said he was able to reopen Monday for takeout thanks to a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan.

We tried running, and Ill tell ya, business is miserable, Brown said. If it wasnt for the forgiveness part of the loan, we would not be open.

According to Brown, Menchies reopening strategy for franchisees includes masks and gloves for both employees and guests, social distancing enforcement and plexiglass shields in front of cash registers. But that system wont be allowed during Oregons Phase 1. And without self-service, well be bankrupt by winter.

The problem, Brown said, is that Menchies and other self-service operations rely on volume to turn a profit.

People come in, they create excitement, and you can do $700-$800 in business in a half hour," Brown said. "With people gloved up, youll never do that kind of volume. Its just not enough. And then of course you have to keep people spaced apart.

Kao Saechow, owner of downtown Portlands Sushi Ichiban, reopened for takeout service last week, bringing back three employees. But without the restaurants popular sushi train, sales have been slow.

Even if we were to open back up for dine-in business, because of the requirement to spread out customers by six feet, we can only fit ten people in the whole sushi bar, Saechow said. Thats not something that we can work out right now."

Saechow bought the restaurant, known by many as Punk Rock Sushi, from original owner Seiji Takahashi more than a decade ago. Now hes considering partnering with a third-party delivery app, but between the restaurants low prices and the fees those apps charge, its probably not worth it.

This is the worst time I have seen in business in over 10 years, Saechow said, including 2008.

-- Michael Russell, mrussell@oregonian.com, @tdmrussell

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
WASHINGTON  Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette said federal efforts to bail out the oil industry are not intended for overly indebted companies unlikely to survive the oil downturn.

Rather, Brouillette described the administrations focus on midsize oil companies with good balance sheets, which he predicted would come out of the pandemic stronger than ever.

Theres no question (the industry) is going to be changed. Many of the players were highly leveraged, and its fair to say youll see a lot of those go by the wayside, he said in an interview with energy historian Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of the consulting firm IHS Markit, that was posted online Thursday. What were focused on is strong companies, with very good technologies, very good at what they do, but simply facing an extraordinary time given the lack of demand.

OIL BLUES: Trump oil bailout struggles amid political divide

With global energy demand down an estimated 30 percent, a wave of oil sector bankruptcies and defaults is expected in the months ahead. This week, Oklahoma-City based Chesapeake Energy warned investors that it might not much longer be a going concern after reporting an $8.3 billion loss in the first quarter.

The Trump administration has moved to aid the oil sector through a number of financial mechanisms, most recently by expanding eligibility for the Federal Reserves Main Street program, set to loan hundreds of billions of dollars to keep companies afloat as shutdowns caused by the pandemic continue.

With many companies unlikely to meet the programs restrictions, analysts are expecting a withering of the U.S. oil industry, with larger, wealthier companies gobbling up domestic oil and gas fields.

Brouillette described that process as the nature of the free market but added that the U.S. oil sector would not necessarily be diminished as a result.

Every time (OPEC cuts production), people think the United States is going to leave the playing field, that the United States is dead, he said. That never really happens. They take a small break, and they come back stronger than ever. And I do think thats going to happen again.

james.osborne@chron.com

Twitter: @osborneja
The state of Vermont is now offering free testing for the virus that causes COVID-19 to anyone who wants one, even people without symptoms, the Vermont Health Department announced.

No referral from a health care provider is needed, although people are asked to make appointments in advance, the state said in a news release issued late Tuesday.

State officials are scheduling a series of pop-up clinics where people can be tested. It's part of a broader effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Vermont officials say the state has one of the lowest rates of growth in people infected with the virus and few people are showing symptoms, which means they are not requesting tests.

As of Tuesday, under 930 people in Vermont had tested positive for the virus and 53 people had died. The number of new cases reported daily is usually in the low single digits and there were two days in the last two weeks with no new positive cases of the virus reported.

Vermont Health Commissioner Dr. Mark Levine has said the state has ample testing supplies, and there is not a lot of demand for testing.

"We know that people who have no symptoms, but are going to develop COVID have at least a 48-hour period where they may be pre-symptomatic and capable of infecting someone," Levine said last week before the decision to offer testing to anyone was announced. "So it would be nice to find them ahead of time."

For most, the coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough. For some, especially older people and those with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.

Here are the latest coronavirus-related developments in Vermont:

Racial incident

Vermont Gov. Phil Scott said Wednesday he was deeply disturbed after hearing of a weekend incident in the town of Hartford in which a family of color that had moved to Vermont just before the virus outbreak was told they were not welcome here in front of their 11-year-old child. The incident began after someone spotted New York license plates on their vehicle and that person told the family the governor did not want them here, either.

"I have no tolerance for this kind of thing," Scott said during his regular virus briefing. "It's unacceptable. It does not represent my views or who I believe we are as a state."

Scott did not give the race of the family.

While there are travel restrictions in place in Vermont to stop the spread of the virus, Scott has said that people who have homes or family here are welcome.

"Our borders are not closed," Scott said. "Our travel guidance is clear. We allow people to return to Vermont, but they must quarantine for 14 days. It's the same for Vermonters who travel out-of-state and return home."

Scott said the police were investigating the Hartford incident, but it is not clear if any charges would be filed.

Scott said he called the family to apologize on behalf of the people of Vermont.

"The virus cannot be used as an excuse for hate, bigotry or division of any type for any reason," Scott said. "This virus knows no border and it doesn't discriminate. We are all in this together. Human decency will get us through this challenging time."

Prison

One staff member at the state's only prison for women has tested positive for the coronavirus, the Department of Corrections announced Wednesday.

The positive result from a staff member who did come into contact with inmates came after 84 voluntary tests were conducted Monday on staff members at the Chittenden Regional Correctional Facility in South Burlington.

Now, the remaining 47 staff and 74 inmates at the facility will be tested on Thursday.

Under plans set up by the Vermont Health Department, if a staff member or resident at any group residential facility tests positive for the virus, all staff and residents of that facility will be tested.

If any inmates test positive for the virus, they will be isolated at the South Burlington facility, the department said.

After an outbreak at the Northwest State Correctional Facility in St. Albans, corrections officials developed a plan through which most infected inmates were moved to a section of the Northeast Correctional Complex in St. Johnsbury until they recovered and could be returned to St. Albans.
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A new paper published on the preprint server medRxiv* in May 2020 suggests that India could be facing the end of a relatively mild outbreak of COVID-19 compared with many other countries.

Many studies have been published, starting from the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, based on a number of modeling techniques. Some of the more popular are the Singapore models and the CDDEP models, which have been applied to many countries, including India.

New Delhi, India - March 30th, 2020: Deserted Connaught Place at the time of lockdown due to quarantine for Covid 19, one of the largest business, commercial and financial centres in New Delhi, India. Image Credit: Prabhsas Roy / Shutterstock

Early Predictions About India

An early Indian study pegged the final number of cases at 13,000 and predicted that India would enter a state of equilibrium by the last week of May 2020. This projection was based on a combination of three models, an exponential/ logistic/SIR (susceptible-infected-recovered) model.

Another researcher reviewed the results of four studies based on an adaptation of the SIR model. Namely, the Susceptible, Infected, Exposed, and Recovered (SIER) model. These projections varied from suggesting that at the peak, India would remain at the least 100 cases /10,000 population, for a total of 1.35 infections, to a Cambridge study which predicted a decline in cases immediately following a 21-day lockdown. The reviewer rightly discounted all the conclusions as unbelievable, the more so since they were based on a paucity of data.

Another more recent study based on the situation in India specifically put forward an estimated basic reproduction number (R0) of 2.66 in the absence of any intervention, 2.00 if under moderate lockdown, and 1.5 under a complete lockdown. Another researcher predicted a mean of 211 deaths per week by week 5 and 467 per week by week 6 of the epidemic. Neither predicted the number of cases.

The inevitable conclusion drawn from these attempts to project the course of the pandemic in India is the difficulty of estimating with a reasonable chance of success. The current study, nonetheless, turns to the task with more confidence, based solely on the availability of more data.

AMRAVATI, MH, INDIA 22 MARCH 2020: Parked trains at Amravati railway station during curfew imposed as a preventive measure against the COVID-19, Appeal of Prime Minister Indi. Image Credit: CRS PHOTO / Shutterstock

How Was the Current Model Constructed?

With more than 50 successive days having passed since India registered the first 100 cases, it is possible, according to the researchers, to make more plausible predictions regarding the number of cases, the recoveries, the deaths, and the case fatality as the ratio of deaths to recovered patients at any stage. This was preferred to the more usual calculation of deaths to infected patients, since many patients are still hospitalized at any stage of analysis in the current scenario, and the outcome is unknown.

The researchers collected the data about each of these events from the website COVID19India.org starting from March 14, 2020, when India recorded the first 100 cases. From then on, they calculated the number of new cases, new deaths, and new recoveries each day until May 5, 2020, as well as the case fatality.

The Empirical vs. Theoretical Models

They then built what they term the Empirical Model, in which they analyze the rate of acceleration or slowdown in terms of the increase in new cases, in new recoveries, and new deaths. They avoided mathematical modeling, using only the observed trend in percentages.

These calculations were extended first to the end of May, when they were found to yield a somewhat correct picture of the course of the epidemic from April 20 to May 5, 2020. This led them to extend them further to the end of June as well.

Multiple epidemics have been modeled in the past, such as SARS, MERS, and HIV, which all are skewed to the right because of the sharp rise and slow fall. Based on the depiction of a similar trend in the current epidemic as well, the study also includes a Theoretical Model that uses a gamma function, since this shares the same property.

What Are the Current Projections?

The study found that on May 5, 2020, almost a third of patients had completed their disease course, having reached one of two outcomes  death or recovery. The death rate based on the total number of infections was 3.4%, but according to the death: recovery ratio, it is 8:1, for a case fatality of 11%.

On May 5, there were 127 deaths for 1,424 recoveries, giving a case fatality of almost 9%. In short, the researchers found a drastic decline in the fatality from almost 20% in the early phase to 10% in the week ending May 5, 2020.

Similarly, the initial rapid increase in the number of cases, which increased by 20% at one point, showed a steady decline by about 0.5% for several days towards the end of April. By May 5, 2020, the acceleration was only 6.4%.

The researchers attribute this to social distancing and lockdown and expect the decline to continue steadily until it reaches 0.1% when it may slow down a little due to the emergence of some new cases.

Projected Total Cases, Fatalities and Active Cases

The Empirical Model projection based on this shows that altogether, there may be 1,27,000 cases by the end of May, and 1,75,000 by the end of June. The peak number of new cases is likely to touch 3300 per day in the fourth week of May, following which it will begin to turn downwards. (However, at present the number of new cases in India has already crossed 3,900 per day in the second week of May, and is still rising).

Encouraged by this trend, the researchers say, At this rate, most of the epidemic is likely to end by the fourth week of June.

The total number of recoveries is also increasing by about 0.6% per day, having come up from 10.3% on April 10, 2020, to 29% on May 5. The last ten days of this period show the reverse trend with a decline of 0.5%.

The researchers expect that 41% of infected cases will recover by the end of May, and 56% by the end of June. In other words, almost 100,000 cases will recover by the end of June 2020.

The case fatality also shows a fall from about 25% in the early days of the epidemic to the current rate of 10% on May 5, remaining stable at this level.

The importance of being able to forecast the active caseload is obvious  these are the ones that may require treatment and thus place a demand on the healthcare system. The Empirical Model projects a peak in active cases at 75,000 in the second week of June 2020. Assuming that one in five will require hospital admission, and 10% will need invasive mechanical ventilation, this caseload will result in a hospital bed requirement of 15,000 (each bed to be occupied for about ten days), and about 7500 ventilators.

Empirical Superior to Theoretical Model

The Theoretical Model indicates that the peak will occur around the second week of May, at about 2500 new cases a day. (This has already proven to be too low an estimate, at the time of publication.) According to this model, the epidemic will nearly be over by the second week of July 2020.

Of the two, the scientists say that the Empirical Model appears to be more likely since

it is constructed on the basis of the findings already observed. it is possible that viral transmission will be markedly less in May and June, because of the dry heat and exposure to ultraviolet rays in sunlight over a significant part of the country.

The researchers postulate that the high percentage of recovery without treatment may be due to the strong immunity built up by the people of India. This, in turn, is supposed to be due to the vegetarianism practiced by a large part of the population, or more likely the high prevalence of BCG vaccination. A second finding is that the case fatality is about 10% if only the cases with known outcomes are taken into account.

The researchers say, This may eventually decline as our medical care system learns to manage these cases and new strategies such as convalescent plasma therapy and drugs such as Remedesivir succeed.

The deliberate avoidance of mathematical modeling, as well as the choice not to use the basic reproduction number, are because of the preferred usage of a trend-based projection based on data collected for over 50 successive days. The researchers say the end of the epidemic in India may well be in sight with much less loss of life and less suffering than has occurred in many developed countries.

However, the current scenario in India is less encouraging, with the current doubling time being 12 days, crossing the projected peak number of cases per day two weeks earlier, and the graph showing no signs of flattening as yet.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information.
As the novel coronavirus has swept the globe, Pentagon officials have scrambled to adjust everything from basic training to submarine deployments to prevent the pandemic from taking a lasting toll on the military's ability to respond to adversaries.

But the covid-19 crisis could yield a different sort of long-term impact on the military, one outside the Pentagon's ability to control: a possible reduction in military spending resulting from the country's emerging economic meltdown.

Pentagon leaders are requesting a defense budget of $705 billion for fiscal 2021, representing half of the federal government's discretionary spending and probably once again ensuring that U.S. military spending is far greater than that of any other country.

But current and former officials say a sustained reduction, even if modest, could make it harder for the Pentagon to achieve its long-deferred goals of modernizing military operations and competing more effectively with China at a time when the United States remains tied down in insurgent conflicts in Afghanistan and the Middle East.

Already, lawmakers have approved more than $2 trillion in emergency stimulus spending in measures that are designed to provide a lifeline to revenue-starved states and that have generated debt concerns among fiscal conservatives.

Robert Hale, who served as Pentagon comptroller during the Obama administration and is now an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, said widespread forecasting of a severe economic downturn - including high deficits and high unemployment - could result in a "modest decline" in defense spending in the order of 2 to 3% in real terms.

"That will still be very hard for the Pentagon to handle," Hale said, as it heads into what was already supposed to be a "bow wave" period of large outlays on next-generation bombers, tanker aircraft and other big-ticket items.

The Pentagon spending cuts are expected to be far smaller than those that followed the triggering of automatic budget caps in 2013, called sequestration. But even reductions of a smaller scale could disrupt the department's plans to implement a 2018 strategy that prioritizes retaining dominance over "great power" competitors.

Even before the pandemic, Pentagon leaders had warned of difficulties ahead as they projected a flattened budget following an increase of about 20% between fiscal years 2016 and 2020.

Making the case for the Pentagon's 2021 budget proposal in early March, Defense Secretary Mark Esper told lawmakers that the requested spending level required "many tough decisions to ensure our highest priorities were adequately funded."

Now, the situation looks far more dire. Speaking in a briefing hosted by the Brookings Institution last week, Esper said he was concerned that the stimulus spending would exacerbate the United States' debt problem and potentially "throw us off course" at the Defense Department.

"So there is concern there that that may lead to smaller defense budgets in the future at the critical time at which we need to continue making this adjustment, where we look at China, then Russia, as our long-term strategic competitors," he said.

Reduced spending could represent what experts called a "double whammy" at a time when the military may also be facing a challenge to readiness resulting from the virus, which has delayed or precluded trainings worldwide and reduced the number of recruits.

According to Todd Harrison, director of defense budget analysis at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, fiscal patterns since the late 1970s show that periods of high deficits have been followed by cuts to defense budgets, from big reductions during President Ronald Reagan's second term in office to the deep declines resulting from sequestration beginning in 2013.

"If we see 2 to 3% [cuts] a year over five years, then DOD is going to have to go back and take a new look at its strategy," Harrison said. While China and Russia would remain top priorities, secondary missions in Africa or Latin America could face more significant cuts, he said.

Counting on a flattened budget, Esper in 2019 ordered a review to identify ways to streamline global military operations and make room for expanded emphasis on China. But potential trimming of U.S. activities in Africa have already raised objections on Capitol Hill, an indication that future attempts to cut missions or weapons programs are likely to encounter congressional resistance.

With less money, those trade-offs could become more dramatic. "They just have to be more ruthless," Harrison said.

Mackenzie Eaglen, a former congressional adviser on defense matters who is now at the American Enterprise Institute, said there had already been some bipartisan support for constraining defense spending before the covid-19 crisis, potentially including from the president himself. Earlier this year in his State of the Union address, President Trump proclaimed that the military had been "completely rebuilt."

While it's not clear when lawmakers will make constraining high deficits a political imperative, Eaglen noted, "there are more than just debt pressures on the budget," she said.

Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he anticipates "acute pressure" on the defense budget, driven in part by sustained unemployment, increased savings and decreased consumption. "So you've got all these huge pressures that you'll have on the budget, and that will translate to the defense budget," he said in an interview.

That could be intensified by a possible shift among Americans' priorities, who in recent decades have associated national security threats largely with terrorist threats overseas. Now, defense spending could become a renewed target.

"I think what you will see is much more of a focus by the American people on, you know, how will you protect me and my hometown," Reed said. "Now, I think with the pressure on budgets, it'll be more difficult probably to build as fast or as much as they wanted to do."

Other lawmakers say defense cuts are not inevitable. "The world's not going to be any safer after COVID," Rep. Mac Thornberry of Texas, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said in a call last week with reporters.

"I think it's a mistake for DOD or anybody to just reflexively say, 'Oh, my gosh, we've had to spend all this money on COVID, so I'm sure we're going to get another 20% cut to our budget,'" he said. "That should not be the way they plan."

Budget experts said that if lawmakers decide to trim military spending, the Pentagon could try, as it has done in the past, to allay the impact by slowing weapons procurement, potentially including decisions to purchase fewer of expensive items such as the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, or by attempting to accelerate plans to retire older jets or ships.

Hale said the economic situation could have financial silver linings for the military. For example, the military typically spends about $15 billion a year on fuel, but the global oil prices collapse could reduce those costs, he said.

Budget experts said the Pentagon is likely to stick with its pre-coronavirus projections for its fiscal 2022 budget proposal, which the department is now finalizing and which would be included in an overall administration request next year.
An eerie art installation located in a barren field in the Finnish countryside recently went viral after someone accidentally stumbled upon it while searching on Google Maps.

With quarantine and isolation measures still in place in many countries around the world, people are spending a lot of time online looking for cool places to visit once they can travel again. Many a re using free tools like Google Maps and end going deeper down the rabbit hole than they originally anticipated. Thats probably how some people recently discovered The Silent People, a creepy-looking art installation that left them scratching their heads about why anyone would fill a field with hundreds of scarecrows and dress them as real people.

Photo: Timo Newton-Syms

Seen from afar, The Silent People installation looks like a perfectly still army of people all facing the same way. Its only when you take a closer look that you realize its made up of wooden frames covered in human clothes and heads made of pear, which does a surprisingly good job of emulating human hair. Even knowing that its an art installation, you still feel uneasy looking at the almost one thousand still figures, but knowing absolutely nothing about it and sudeny finding it on Google Maps can really freak a person out.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ritva Huttunen (@the_silent_people) on Oct 4, 2018 at 5:41am PDT

Dont ask me how someone stumbles upon a relatively obscure installation located on Highway 5, outside of Suomussalmi, in Finlands countryside, but they somehow do, and many of them post their finding on social media, which is how the eerie installation of artist Reijo Kela started getting a lot of attention online lately.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Ritva Huttunen (@the_silent_people) on Nov 14, 2018 at 3:07am PST

Inaugurated way back in 1988, The Silent People, or Hiljainen kansa in Finnish, was originally located in a field in Lassila, a neighborhood of Helsinki. It was then moved in the Market Place of Helsinkis Senate Square, then on the banks of the river Jalonuoma, Ammansaari, and finally settled in this empty field outside Suomussalmi in 1994.

View this post on Instagram #winter_clothes #power_place #hiljainenkansa #silentpeople #niittykahvila #suomussalmi A post shared by Ritva Huttunen (@the_silent_people) on Sep 26, 2017 at 10:58am PDT

Interestingly, Suomussalmi Youth Workshop maintains the The Silent People, changing the clothes of the wooden figures twice a year, using clothes collected through donation, which somehow makes this offbeat attraction even creepier.



And if youre feeling curious about what Reijo Kela wanted his Silent People to symbolize, you can keep scrathing your head, because hes not willing to reveal the answer. People have been speculating about the meaning of the installation for decades, but so far we only have theories. The most popular version is that the figures represent those lost during a fierce battle that took place nearby during the Winter War of 1939-1940 between Finland and Soviet Russia.
Police booked a coronavirus positive (Covid-19) positive patient in Dehradun on Friday for violating home quarantine norms.

The man tested Covid-19 positive on Thursday. Earlier, he had visited Delhi along with his family members to meet his in-laws. However, he got stranded there because of the nationwide lockdown restrictions, which were imposed on March 25 to contain the spread of Covid-19 outbreak. He managed to return to Dehradun on May 12, said Arun Mohan Joshi, deputy inspector general (DIG) police, Dehradun.

Though he tested Covid-19 positive, he did not comply with the home quarantine norms.

He was found to be roaming in his neighbourhood and meeting local residents flouting the district administrations order to stay under home quarantine. He has been booked under the relevant section of the Indian Penal Code and the Disaster Management Act, 2005, for violation of lockdown restriction, the DIG added.

Uttarakhand has reported 79 Covid-19 positive cases till Friday, as six migrants were found infected a day before.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - le 15 mai/May 2020)

The common shares of The Alkaline Water Company Inc., have been approved for listing on the CSE.

Listing and disclosure documents will be available at www.thecse.com on the trading date.

Founded in 2012, The Alkaline Water Company is headquartered in Scottsdale, Arizona. Its flagship product, Alkakline88, is a leading premier alkaline water brand available in bulk and single-serve sizes along with eco-friendly aluminum packaging options. With its innovative, state-of-the-art proprietary electrolysis process, Alkaline88 delivers perfect 8.8 pH balanced alkaline drinking water with trace minerals and electrolytes and boasts our trademarked label "Clean Beverage.' Quickly being recognized as a growing lifestyle brand, Alkaline88 launched A88 infused in 2019 to meet consumer demand for flavor-infused products. A88 infused flavored water is available in seven unique all-natural flavors, with new flavors coming soon. Additionally, in 2020, the Company launched A88CBD Infused brand, featuring a broad line of topical and ingestible products. These products are made with lab-tested full-spectrum hemp and include salves, balms, lotions, essential oils, bath-salts, CBD infused drinks, beverage shots, tinctures, capsules, gummies, and powder packs.

_________________________________

L'inscription a la cote du CSE des actions ordinaires de The Alkaline Water Company Inc. a ete approuvee.

Les documents d'inscription et de divulgation seront disponibles sur www.thecse.com a la date de negociation.

Fondee en 2012, The Alkaline Water Company est basee a Scottsdale, Arizona. Son produit phare, Alkakline88, est une des principales marques d'eau alcaline disponible en vrac et en portions individuelles avec des options d'emballage en aluminium respectueuses de l'environnement. Avec son procede d'electrolyse proprietaire innovant et a la pointe de la technologie, Alkaline88 fournit une eau potable alcaline a pH equilibre parfaite de 8,8 avec des oligo-elements et des electrolytes et beneficie de notre label de marque Clean Beverage. a lance A88 infused en 2019 pour repondre a la demande des consommateurs en produits infuses d'aromes. L'eau aromatisee A88 infused est disponible en sept saveurs uniques entierement naturelles, avec de nouvelles saveurs bientot. De plus, en 2020, la societe a lance la marque A88CBD Infused , qui propose une large gamme de produits topiques et ingerables. Ces produits sont fabriques avec du chanvre a spectre complet teste en laboratoire et comprennent des onguents, des baumes, des lotions, des huiles essentielles, des sels de bain, des boissons infusees au CBD, des boissons, des teintures, des capsules, des bonbons gelifies et des emballages en poudre.

Issuer/Emetteur: The Alkaline Water Company Inc. Security Type/Titre: Common Shares/Actions ordinaires Symbol(s)/Symbole(s): WTER Number of securities issued and outstanding/ Titres emis et en circulation: 59 133 592 Number of Securities reserved for issuance/ Titres reserves pour emission: 26 403 269 CSE Sector/Categorie: Diversified Industries/Societes diversifiees CUSIP: 01643A 20 7 ISIN: US 01643A 20 7 8 Boardlot/Quotite: 100 Trading Currency/Monnaie de negociation: CDN$/$CDN Trading Date/Date de negociation: Le 19 mai/May 2020 Other Exchanges/Autres marches: N/A Fiscal Year end/Cloture de l'exercice financier: Le 31 mars/March Transfer Agent/Agent des transferts: TSX Trust Company

The Exchange is accepting Market Maker applications for WTER. Please email: Trading@theCSE.com

If you have any questions or require further information please contact Listings at (416) 367-7340 or E-mail: Listings@thecse.com

Pour toute question, pour obtenir de l'information supplementaire veuillez communiquer avec le service des inscriptions au 416 367-7340 ou par courriel a l'adresse: Listings@thecse.com
Everything you need to know about skiing the Northeast this winter

Whether you want to stay close to home or head north, here's everything you need to know about skiing or snowboarding in the Northeast and New York this season.
Press Release

May 15, 2020 Pia seeks inclusion of 'Futures Thinking' in national policymaking Embedding 'Futures Thinking' into the country's national policies will enable the government to be more prepared for future crises and emergencies comparable to the magnitude of the COVID-19 disaster. Thus said Senator Pia S. Cayetano as she supported proposals to institutionalize Futures Thinking initiatives that would drive sustainable developments throughout the country. "Isn't a crisis the best time to get people into the Futures Thinking mindset, given that we are already in one now because of COVID-19?" the senator asked at the continuation of the hearings of the Senate Committee on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Innovation, and Futures Thinking Committee hearing on Thursday (May 14). "On one hand, there's this urge to solve problems in the now. But it's also the right time to start thinking [about] how we can make adjustments for [future generations]. Because technically, if we had started planning 20 years ago, we could've been more prepared for the problems we face today," she added. The panel, which Cayetano chairs, invited foreign and local experts to its second 'virtual' hearing to share their perspectives on the need for foresight in determining what innovations and strategies are needed to adapt to the 'new normal' following the pandemic. Members of academe from the Development Academy of the Philippines (DAP), led by Senior Vice President Dr. Lizan Perante-Calina, provided a local context into the discussion by presenting their proposed "Strategic Foresight Framework for the Philippines." Dr. Perante-Calina stressed the need to institutionalize Futures Thinking through effective legislative action and earmarking annual appropriation for such efforts. She further proposed the creation of an independent Futures Thinking office to help build a community of Filipino futurists that can focus on capacity building and research. DAP Fellow on Strategic Planning Dr. Ma. Oliva Domingo added that the creation of the independent body would ensure the continuity of Futures Thinking initiatives, and would move the country from foresight to action. "The lessons of COVID-19 are telling us now that indeed, we need to rock the boat ourselves to prepare for the future. And whatever we embark on needs to resonate with our beliefs, traditions, and our own stories, including the importance of family, which also means inclusiveness, participation, and that nobody gets left out," she further noted. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) representative Prateeksha Singh, for her part, identified several best practices from across the globe that have successfully institutionalized Futures Thinking in the public sector. She particularly cited the Welsh government's "Well-being of Future Generations Act," a law that requires public bodies in Wales to think about the long-term impacts of their policy decisions. Under the law, the Future Generations Commissioner is given the role of being the "guardian of the unborn," which means driving public bodies to consider Futures Thinking as part of their policymaking process. "One of the biggest values of foresight is looking at possible impacts. That is where policymaking really comes into play," Singh stated. Meanwhile, the resource persons congratulated the Philippine Senate for establishing an independent Committee on SDGs, Innovation, and Futures Thinking, which now serves as the "champion" of Futures Thinking in the legislative branch. "I haven't come across a committee like this... I think it is an excellent initiative... How most change works is there is a group of champions that initiate it... My hope is that this Committee... will be that champion, and you can [engage] other senators with you in various initiatives," The Change Initiative's Jost Wagner stressed. "What really helps enable Futures Thinking and whole foresight practices is if an organization has in place some kind of a system or process... We see that as a great benefit, and of course, people who facilitate it," Futures Platform's Saku Koskinen stated. "We are very happy that we have this opportunity to share this information with champions. The Committee takes the lead as one of the change-drivers in Futures Thinking," added DAP Fellow on Strategic Planning Dr. Alex Brillantes.
Angry workers confirmed that they were not informed of the deaths of their fellow workers concerning the coronavirus. The coronavirus has taken the life of an Amazon worker from Indiana, as confirmed by Amazon itself.

The total death count of Amazon workers in the online shopping empire is seven, and the surviving workers have not been formally informed of these tragic incidents.

Some workers in Amazon's Indiana branch have to make do with rumors first before actually being informed by Amazon itself after consulting the higher authorities of the company about the pressing issue.

Turning a Blind Eye

It's a known fact that Amazon is one of the wealthiest corporations right now during this health crisis. However, due to this incident, critics say that it could only show that Amazon may have been hiding a few things from the public eye.

According to an article by the Verge, the company has previously fired workers that have protested against being forced to work during the ongoing pandemic.

It is stated in a recent letter that Amazon prioritizes its workers and customers in regards to the coronavirus pandemic. Amazon has established social distancing measures within its physical stores and delivery couriers.

Additionally, Amazon will be hiring 100,000 individuals to be able to cater to everyone's needs for online shopping. Each one of his workers will be monitored regularly for any signs and symptoms of coronavirus and will be insured if ever a case starts up.

The company stated that their top concern is ensuring both the "health" and "safety" of their employees and they also expect to invest an approximate amount of $4 billion from the timeline of April to June due to COVID-related initiatives in order for them to get products to both customers and employees in a safe way.

Read Also: Tesla Still Illegally Operates and Elon Musk Gets Away with It: Alleged "Intimidation Tactics" Used to Force Employees to Work Despite Coronavirus

Speaking Out Against the Silence

Two former tech employees spoke out through Twitter about their severed ties with Amazon. Emily Cunningham, a former tech employee of Amazon, stated in a tweet that Amazon lacks proper sanitation of its work environment. Another former tech employee, Maren Costa, encouraged her former colleagues at Amazon to speak out and not be afraid of the message that Amazon is sending to them.

The promises Amazon has made could have been made in vain as the terminating of loyal workers and hiring a large number of newcomers may not be handled well due to the fact that Amazon is not able to maintain a safe environment within its premises. Jeff Bezos has yet to say something about this issue on the death of several Amazon workers because of the coronavirus.

Although the facility was already cleaned, the next shift came in as usual. For the majority of the IND8 workers, the actual risk feels particularly unwarranted. This is because they are currently processing returned merchandise instead of sending out certain goods to homebound customers. According to the employees themselves, "We're not essential" and continued with the question, "why are we not shut down?"

Amazon remains to be profiting despite the current pandemic as most people are told to avoid going outside, resulting in an increase in the number of deliveries and sales of Amazon since the start of the pandemic. Jeff Bezos is one of those rare people who have increased their net worth even during the coronavirus.

Read Also: Jeff Bezos Could Become the World's First Trillionaire by 2026 Earning over $2,500 Per Second, Thanks to Coronavirus
By Deena Beasley

May 15 (Reuters) - Gilead Sciences Inc's two clinical studies of its potential coronavirus treatment remdesivir will wind down by the end of May, closing off a path of patient access to the antiviral medication, according to U.S. researchers involved in the studies.

The drug was given emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on May 1, but hospitals are concerned about access.

"We would like to see equitable and transparent distribution of this very precious resource," Dr. Helen Boucher, chief of infectious diseases at Tufts Medical Center in Boston, told Reuters.

Gilead's studies - one in patients with severe COVID-19 and the other in moderate disease - have enrolled around 8,000 subjects, according to FDA statistics. The trials are "open label" meaning they do not compare the treatment to a placebo and participants know they are getting the drug.

Interest in Gilead's drug has been high given some promising early data and the lack of approved treatments or preventive vaccines for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus that has infected over 4 million people and killed more than 305,000 worldwide.

Preliminary results from a trial conducted by the U.S. National Institutes of Health showed that remdesivir cut hospital stays by 31% compared to a placebo. The NIH is now studying remdesivir alone compared to remdesivir in combination with Olumiant, an anti-inflammatory drug approved for rheumatoid arthritis and sold by Eli Lilly and Co.

Remdesivir is still available on a compassionate use basis for pregnant women or children under the age of 18, but most COVID-19 patients will soon have access only under the emergency use authorization.

"We participate in the Gilead clinical trials here at Tufts," Dr. Boucher said. "We were notified that they will wind down ... no later than the end of May."

Gilead told Tufts it is transitioning to product distribution under the emergency use authorization.

Story continues

Researchers at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center have also heard that the two Gilead studies would stop enrolling patients by the end of the month.

Gilead, which has pledged to donate 1.5 million vials of remdesivir to fight the global pandemic, did not respond to requests for comment. The drug is administered by infusion in hospital.

The Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday said Gilead had committed to supply U.S. hospitals with around 607,000 vials of remdesivir - about 40% of the donation, or enough to treat at least 78,000 patients.

After doctors had questioned the transparency of the allocation process, the federal agency said state health departments would distribute the drug.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America on Thursday asked to meet with the Trump Administration to discuss how remdesivir will be allocated.

Gilead has said early results from its first study showed that the drug improved outcomes for patients with severe COVID-19, and it plans to announce findings from its second study in moderate patients later this month. (Reporting By Deena Beasley Editing by Bill Berkrot)
Firms That Took a PPP Loan Under $2 Million Get Safe Harbor Break

The Trump administration said firms that took loans of less than $2 million under the COVID-19 small business relief program can count on a break in the form of not having to prove to auditors that the pandemic had a negative impact on their business.

New guidance issued Wednesday (pdf) for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) by the Small Business Administration (SBA) and the Treasury Department said all loans granted under the $2 million threshold will be seen as having met the good faith standard, namely that current economic uncertainty justifies their need for the loan because theyre less likely to have access to other resources.

The guidance appears to assume that all smaller businesses have suffered financial hardship in some way amid the outbreak of COVID-19, the disease caused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus, the novel coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan, China, late last year and spread across the globe.

Any borrower that, together with its affiliates, received PPP loans with an original principal amount of less than $2 million will be deemed to have made the required certification concerning the necessity of the loan request in good faith, the SBA and Treasury said in the new guidelines.

Besides assuming smaller borrowers have less access to liquidity amid the pandemic-driven economic crunch and so a safe harbor for them is justified, the SBA and Treasury said giving such firms a break will help them keep and rehire employees.

This safe harbor will also promote economic certainty as PPP borrowers with more limited resources endeavor to retain and rehire employees, the two agencies said.

The move will also let federal authorities focus their limited auditing capacity on bigger players.

In addition, given the large volume of PPP loans, this approach will enable SBA to conserve its finite audit resources and focus its reviews on larger loans, where the compliance effort may yield higher returns, the SBA and Treasury said.

Also, companies that took loans over the $2 million mark will still have the opportunity to make a case that they took the loan in good faith. They will be subject to a compliance review to check if they met PPP requirements. Companies that are unable to prove they need the loan will have to repay the balance and they will be ineligible for loan forgiveness.

Also, firms that took loans of more than $2 million that they didnt need will be allowed to repay the money without legal consequences. This reverses an earlier warning that the government could pursue such loan-takers criminally.

Last month, after a backlash following reports that big companies collected millions from the program intended to help small businesses struggling amid the outbreak, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said borrowers had criminal liability for taking loans they didnt need.

I want to be very clearits the borrowers who have criminal liability if they made this certification and its not true, he said, according to CBS.

The PPP program extends loans of up to $10 million, which are forgiven if firms spend the money mostly on paying workers, who must be kept on the payroll for eight weeks.

The idea behind the program was to encourage companies not to lay off staff amid the outbreak and so minimize the social impact of the pandemic. Also, because firms would spend less time on re-hiring workers and re-booting their businesses once stay-at-home orders are lifted, the policy would support a robust economic rebound.

The purpose of this program was not social welfare for big business, Mnuchin told CNBC. The purpose of this program was to help small businesses.
UC Riverside scientists have solved a 20-year-old genetics puzzle that could result in ways to protect wheat, barley, and other crops from a devastating infection.

Ayala Rao, professor of plant pathology and microbiology, has been studying Brome Mosaic virus for decades. Unlike some viruses, the genetic material of this virus is divided into three particles that until now were impossible to tell apart.

"Without a more definitive picture of the differences between these particles, we couldn't fully understand how they work together to initiate an infection that destroys food crops," Rao said. "Our approach to this problem has brought an important part of this picture into very clear focus."

A paper describing the work Rao's team did to differentiate these particles was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Inside each of the particles is a strand of RNA, the genetic material that controls the production of proteins. The proteins perform different tasks, some of which cause stunted growth, lesions, and ultimately death of infected host plants.

Two decades ago, scientists used the average of all three particles to create a basic description of their structure. In order to differentiate them, Rao first needed to separate them, and get them into their most pure form.

Using a genetic engineering technique, Rao's team disabled the pathogenic aspects of the virus and infused the viral genes with a host plant.

"This bacterium inserts its genome into the plant's cells, similar to the way HIV inserts itself into human cells," Rao said. "We were then able to isolate the viral particles in the plants and determine their structure using electron microscopes and computer-based technology."

Now that one of the particles is fully mapped, it's clear the first two particles are more stable than the third.

"Once we alter the stability, we can manipulate how RNA gets released into the plants," Rao said. "We can make the third particle more stable, so it doesn't release RNA and the infection gets delayed."

This work was made possible by a grant from the University of California Multicampus Research Program and Initiatives. Professors Wiliam Gelbart and Hong Zhou of UCLA, as well as graduate students Antara Chakravarthy of UCR and Christian Beren of UCLA, made significant contributions to this project.

Moving forward, Rao is hoping to bring the other two viral particles into sharper focus with the expertise of scientists at UCLA and UC San Diego.

Brome Mosaic virus primarily affects grasses such as wheat and barley, and occasionally affects soybeans as well. According to Rao, it is nearly identical to Cucumber Mosaic virus, which infects cucumbers as well as tomatoes and other crops that are important to California agriculture.

Not only could this research lead to the protection of multiple kinds of crops, it could advance the understanding of any virus.

"It is much easier to work with plant viruses because they're easier and less expensive to grow and isolate," Rao said. "But what we learn about the principles of replication are applicable to human and animal viruses too."

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BERLIN - The German economy shrank by 2.2% in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday.

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BERLIN - The German economy shrank by 2.2% in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday.

The figures from the Federal Statistical Office offered a first glimpse of the damage caused by the coronavirus crisis to Europes biggest economy, which the government is trying to limit with a raft of rescue programs.

The decline in the January-March period was the biggest since 2009.

March was the month in which the coronavirus pandemic hit Europe, with first Italy and then other countries imposing sweeping restrictions on public life and businesses. Germany itself started shutting down in mid-March. It never ordered factories closed, but companies did largely stop production in some areas  such as the automaking sector  and supply chains were disrupted.

Recent data showed a 15.6% month-on-month decrease in factory orders in March, and a 9.2% drop in industrial production.

The country started loosening restrictions on April 20 and the process has gathered pace recently. Shops have now reopened, restaurants are gradually opening up and auto production has restarted.
President Vladimir Putin on Thursday said the coronavirus crisis was easing in Russia as the number of new daily cases fell below 10,000 for the first time in nearly two weeks. Health officials said they had registered 9,974 new infections in the last 24 hours, bringing Russia's tally to 252,245, the second-highest in the world after the United States, with a total of 2,305 deaths. But the number of new cases has been dropping and Thursday's tally was the first below 10,000 since May 2. "Over the past weeks, all our efforts have been aimed first and foremost at pushing back against the coronavirus epidemic," Putin said in a televised video-conference with scientists and officials. But, he added, "the situation is changing now, and this gives us an opportunity to once again focus on our current and long-term agenda". The Kremlin this week began easing a national lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, despite the steady rise in infections. Putin's meeting was focused on genetic research and plans for Russia to launch three top research centres in the field. Rinat Maksyutov, the head of the Vektor State Virology and Biotechnology Centre, told Putin at the meeting that research was ongoing on several potential vaccines against the coronavirus. The top secret lab complex in Siberia has developed six prototype vaccines and Maksyutov told Putin that "three promising ones" had been chosen for the next stage of pre-clinical studies. He said he hoped to be able to register an experimental coronavirus vaccine in September. "I am very much counting on your work being finished... and the registration of this vaccine against coronavirus being carried out in September," Putin told Maksyutov. - Moscow launches antibodies tests - Putin said the research centre needed to ensure its intellectual property rights on the vaccine. It was unclear if he meant that a vaccine should be ready for use by September. The Vektor laboratory conducted secret biological weapons research in the Soviet era and stockpiles viruses ranging from Ebola to smallpox. Several senior Russian officials have tested positive for the coronavirus, including Putin's spokesman, but Culture Minister Olga Lyubimova on Thursday said she had fully recovered. Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin and the construction minister were also infected and Putin said on Thursday that Education Minister Valery Falkov had tested positive but was no longer infected. Russia says its high number of cases is due in part to a massive testing campaign that has seen six million tests carried out. Moscow accounts for roughly half of all infections and the city said it would be launching mass voluntary tests for antibodies from Friday, with 70,000 invitations to be sent out every three days. Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said mass random testing is important to gauge when to further ease containment measures, which were ordered in the Russian capital in late March and last to the end of this month. Despite its high number of cases, Russia's official coronavirus fatality rate is low in comparison to countries like the United States, Britain, Italy and Spain. Authorities say this is because Russia was able to learn lessons from the experiences of western Europe, moving quickly to isolate travellers and people at risk, and launch a vast campaign to test and quarantine those infected. But critics have cast doubt on the figures, accusing the authorities of under-counting by blaming virus-related deaths on other causes.
By Benjamin Oreskes | Los Angeles Times

LOS ANGELES  With the coronavirus-induced shock to the economy crippling businesses of all sizes and leaving millions of Americans out of work, homelessness in the United States could grow as much as 45% in a year, according to a new analysis conducted by a Columbia University professor.

That would mean an additional 250,000 or so people would be without permanent shelter compared with the 568,000 who were homeless in January 2019, according to government data.

California is likely to see a smaller increase in homelessness than the nation overall  up 20% from about 150,000 to 180,000 people. The analysis relies on the largely constant rise in unemployment across the United States. Therefore, states with fewer homeless people are likely to see bigger percentage increases than California, which is already home to a quarter of the nations homeless population.

Dan OFlaherty, the professor who conducted the analysis and has studied the economics of homelessness for decades, says the downturn is exacerbating whats already a public health crisis on many American streets.

This is unprecedented, he said. No one living has seen an increase of 10% of unemployment in a month.

This week, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that the jobless rate in April reached 14.7%  a level not seen since the Great Depression. And as of last week, nearly 3 million workers applied for unemployment benefits, bringing the total to 36.5 million over the last two months.

On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom offered an even grimmer picture of what is to come for California, projecting that unemployment will peak at 24.5% and end the next year with a jobless rate of 18%.

Many economists believe it will only get worse.

Among people who were working in February, almost 40% of those in households making less than $40,000 a year had lost a job in March, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday, citing a separate Federal Reserve survey. This reversal of economic fortune has caused a level of pain that is hard to capture in words, as lives are upended amid great uncertainty about the future.

The federal government has spent trillions of dollars so far to put more money in peoples pockets with stimulus checks and small business loans, but many Americans continue to struggle to make ends meet as the economy remains mostly shuttered to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

In the meantime, a patchwork of local and state measures has emerged to provide relief to renters and homeowners.

Congressional Democrats released a proposed $3 trillion stimulus package this week that includes $100 billion in emergency rental assistance. The bill provides $11.5 billion to fund homeless prevention programs, $75 billion to aid homeowners struggling with their bills and a more expansive eviction moratorium than what was in earlier legislation.

The response from Republicans has been lukewarm.

Also this week, Newsom announced a plan to ask landlords to forgive rent payments in exchange for equally sized tax credits spread out over a 10-year period starting in 2024. The tax credits would be transferable, meaning the property owner could sell them to an outside investor and get cash immediately.

In the city of Los Angeles, landlords are currently not allowed to evict tenants who have been affected by the coronavirus. The L.A. County Board of Supervisors has passed similar protections for renters in unincorporated areas.

Dan Flaming, president of the Economic Roundtable in L.A., said these provisions to help keep some people in their homes over the next few months wont last forever.

There will be a day of accounting, he said. When someone has three or four months rent due, what happens then?

Flaming said that theres a powerful connection between unemployment and homelessness. What industries lay off and cut workers pay also will influence the size of the increase in homelessness. He also noted that public employment programs would greatly benefit those who are soon to find themselves out of work.

OFlaherty said that this research model doesnt account for how homelessness might be affected by rent relief efforts or changes in the housing market, such as a decline in rental prices.

Still, the analysis shows the possible scale of the problem that Los Angeles and other cities and counties could face going forward. Whats more, cities, counties and states will have fewer funds to respond to the homelessness crisis because of the coronavirus-prompted decline in tax revenue.

To arrive at his estimate, OFlaherty started with the explosive drop in employment. He used a previous study that found that during the Great Recession, for every 1% jump in the unemployment rate, homelessness per 10,000 people grew by 0.65.

He then looked at several projections for unemployment in July, which could rise to 16%, and arrived at the fact that a total of 800,000 Americans would be homeless by summer.

Our best guess about what the future will be is what the past has been, OFlaherty said, referring to how homelessness grew in the last recession.

In typical times, local and state government estimate changes in their homeless populations based on federally mandated point-in-time counts. The data from L.A. Countys count is expected to be released in June, but wont reflect the rapidly changing situation on the ground as it was conducted in January  months before the economic upheaval of the pandemic and efforts to get vulnerable homeless people into shelters and hotels.

Still, Flaming said no matter how quick the economic turnaround, the upticks in homelessness are here to stay.

People do everything in their power to hang on to shelter and complete destitution is a lagging outcome, he said. Recovery from complete destitution lags even more, so the increases in homelessness that we see are likely to be with us for a while.

More people on the streets and in shelters means more people who are vulnerable to contracting the coronavirus because they cant shelter in place and isolate.

Were supposed to shelter at home. Were supposed to wash our hands, OFlaherty said. Were supposed to do all these things the homeless people cant do. Its not only a tragedy for the people involved. Its a way of feeding the COVID fire a little bit more.
New York, NY (May 15, 2020) The Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation has named five physicians with novel approaches to fighting cancer as Damon Runyon Physician-Scientists. A scientific committee comprised of leading cancer researchers who are physician-scientists themselves has selected the awardees through a highly competitive and rigorous process. Recipients of this award are brilliant young doctors showing bold initiative and a commitment to finding new cures for cancer.

Only one percent of all doctors are physician-scientists, and this number is at risk of shrinking further due to lack of funding. To help increase the number of physician-scientists--critical to moving scientific discoveries from the lab to patients--Damon Runyon created the Physician-Scientist Training Award. This provides physicians, who have completed specialty fellowship training, the opportunity to gain research skills and experience in translational and clinical research. To address the financial burden that often deters physicians from pursuing a research career, Damon Runyon provides significantly higher funding than most research fellowships--$460,000 over four years. The award also retires up to $100,000 of medical school debt still owed by an awardee (the average medical school debt is now more than $200,0000).

"Physician-scientists have the unique ability to blend their insights from treating patients and working in the laboratory in a way that enables and accelerates medical advances," said Yung S. Lie, PhD, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation. "If the current shortage of physician-scientists continues, we risk a situation in which major laboratory research discoveries may not reach patients at all, and that would represent a true crisis in cancer research."

The Physician-Scientist Training Award was established in 2015 thanks to the generosity of Damon Runyon Board Members Leon Cooperman and Michael Gordon.

2020 Damon Runyon Physician-Scientist Training Award Recipients:

Elisa A. Aquilanti, MD, with mentor Matthew L. Meyerson, MD, PhD, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston

Without new treatment options, patients diagnosed with glioblastoma brain tumors continue to have poor survival outcomes. Dr. Aquilanti aims to validate a new drug target called telomerase, a protein complex that elongates telomeres that cap the ends of chromosomes. Telomeres shorten with each cell division until they reach a critical length, and the cell stops dividing or dies. Many tumors activate telomerase to prevent the telomeres from shortening so their cells can divide indefinitely. Telomerase activation may be one of the main drivers of glioblastoma, occurring in over 85% of cases. Once she demonstrates that telomerase activity leads to cell death in glioblastoma, she hopes to develop a novel tool for screening drugs that can target telomerase. Additionally, she will explore whether alternative telomere maintenance pathways can develop in response to telomerase inhibition.

Jonathan C. Dudley, MD, with mentor Bert Vogelstein, MD, at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Baltimore

Earlier cancer detection usually means a greater chance of remission or cure, but cost-effective and highly specific cancer screening is not yet available for most cancers. More than 90 percent of cancers harbor aneuploidy, an abnormal number of chromosomes in a cell; this abnormality is highly specific for cancer and can be detected with DNA sequencing. Dr. Dudley is developing a new approach for detecting cells with abnormal amounts of DNA, which could identify cancer sooner. He aims to apply this approach to urine and Pap smear samples to create an inexpensive and sensitive screening test for bladder, ovarian and endometrial cancers.

Dennis J. Hsu, MD, with mentor Sohail F. Tavazoie, MD, PhD, at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center and The Rockefeller University, New York

DNA stores the information for making all the proteins in an organism. Transfer RNA (tRNA) plays a key role in building the proteins from this blueprint. tRNA molecules recognize specific sequences (three-letter codons) and deliver the corresponding amino acids needed to make a protein. Dr. Hsu recently found that certain starvation conditions can cause some tRNAs to be modulated in colorectal cancer cells. He will study the changes in tRNA levels that occur in response to cellular starvation states. He aims to shed light on how cancer cells adapt to starvation, which potentially can lead to new therapeutic approaches to target metabolic dependencies in cancer.

Andrew L. Ji, MD, with mentor Paul A. Khavari, MD, PhD, at Stanford University School of Medicine, Stanford

Squamous cell skin cancer or cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) is the second most common cancer in the United States. In cases when the tumor cannot be surgically removed, treatment options are limited. Dr. Ji is focusing on intratumoral heterogeneity, the diversity of cell types and tumor cell subpopulations that characterize these tumors. Current cSCC treatments do not effectively target all subpopulations within a tumor, which leads to survival of some cancer cells and therapeutic resistance. He aims to understand how intratumoral heterogeneity arises within cSCC tumors, focusing on how cell-cell communication within the tumor microenvironment influences this process. This research may guide the development of improved treatment strategies.

Natalie Vokes, MD [The Mark Foundation for Cancer Research Physician-Scientist], with mentor Eliezer M. Van Allen, MD, at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Boston

The treatment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has changed dramatically with the development of immune-activating checkpoint inhibitors, given alone or with chemotherapy. However, most patients' tumors eventually develop resistance to these drugs. Dr. Vokes is investigating this process by collecting data on the genetic and immune features of pre- and post-treatment tumors. She will then use computational algorithms to integrate these features into a model that predicts which patients are likely to respond to checkpoint inhibitor therapy and also sheds light on the difference between therapy given alone or with chemotherapy. A better understanding of how tumors evolve resistance will guide the design of more effective therapies for all patients and improve therapy selection for individuals.

DAMON RUNYON CANCER RESEARCH FOUNDATION

To accelerate breakthroughs, the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation provides today's best young scientists with funding to pursue innovative research. The Foundation has gained worldwide prominence in cancer research by identifying outstanding researchers and physician-scientists. Twelve scientists supported by the Foundation have received the Nobel Prize, and others are heads of cancer centers and leaders of renowned research programs. Each of its award programs is extremely competitive, with less than 10% of applications funded. Since its founding in 1946, the Foundation has invested over $375 million and funded more than 3,750 young scientists. Last year, we committed nearly $22 million in new awards to brilliant young investigators.

100% of all donations to the Foundation are used to support scientific research. Administrative and fundraising costs are paid with revenue from the Damon Runyon Broadway Tickets Service and our endowment.

For more information visit damonrunyon.org

###

CONTACT

Meghan McCurdy

Director, Communications and Marketing

meghan.mccurdy@damonrunyon.org
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- Its looking more and more likely that the new Israels government agreed between Benjamin Netanyahus Likud party and Benny Gantzs Blue and White coalition will proceed with a plan to annex large parts of the West Bank. In Israel and the U.S., much discussion has focused on when exactly the land-grab might occur, and how the Trump administration would react to it.

President Trump, remember, has already blessed the idea of annexation. But, as I have suggested before, he may not want it to happen before presidential election in November. Netanyahu and Gantz will undoubtedly be expecting some guidance from Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when he arrives in Jerusalem today.

Little attention is being paid, however, to how annexation will be perceived by other actors. In much of the world, there is already growing unease over the future Israel will be imposing on the Palestinians. If the five million Palestinians living in the territories occupied in 1967 are deprived of more land without even the basic rights of citizenship, it may become impossible for Israel to escape the stigma of an apartheid state.

Nor will the international community fail to notice that the Israelis are unilaterally abrogating solemn treaty commitments. In the 1993 Declaration of Principles it agreed with the Palestinian Liberation Organizationunder the sponsorship of the U.S. and RussiaIsrael promised not to annex occupied territories. Breaking that word, even with American approval, will cause serious and lasting diplomatic damage.

How would the world react to annexation? Among the major powers, Russia and China will likely issue formal expressions of regret, but do little else: Moscow and Beijing will not risk their strong ties to Israel over this issue. Europe is another matter, however.

More than likely, European governments will regard the newly-annexed areas illegitimate, as they do many other Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Although there is little they can do to actually prevent the annexation, they can impose an economic cost on Israel. Members of the European Union are already considering punitive measures, ranging from restrictions on trade agreements and the denial of grants.

Story continues

Many European countries have laws distinguishing between goods and services produced in illegitimate settlementswhich are labeled to show their origin or excluded from advantageous trade termsand those produced in Israel proper. Israelis setting up businesses in annexed land could struggle for access to European markets.

There will be a political price, as well. Over time, Europeans will increasingly view a greater Israeli state as fundamentally illegitimate because it has been rendered indistinguishable from settlements. This view will inform the policies European governments adopt toward Israel.

Most emerging countries will likewise take a dim view of annexation: they have a stake in an international system that prohibits land-grabs by war. India could conceivably regard it as vindication of its own policies in Kashmir, but will at least express pro-forma disapproval. South Africa, Brazil, Mexico and others will be more forceful in their criticismespecially in the United Nations and other multilateral bodiesand will resist the normalization of an expanded Israel.

The same goes for the Islamic nations, even distant ones like Indonesia and Nigeria. In the Middle East, annexation will deepen hostility toward Israel from a wide range of actors, from Iran and Turkey to Islamist groups. And if Hezbollah and Hamas step up attacks on Israeli targets, they will have a ready-made justification that many Muslims around the world will find persuasive.

Annexation would virtually rule out diplomatic recognition of Israel by other Arab countries, even those that have recently been cultivating closer strategic relations, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It would even threaten relations with Arab states that do recognize Israel: Egypt and Jordan.

In the longer term, the reactions of Arab and other Muslim states will be governed by what the Palestinians do. The annexation plan leaves them marooned an autonomous area in the West Bank, entirely surrounded by the expanded Israel. Netanyahu, who calls this a state-minus, is calculating that Palestinians will have no option but to take whatever they can get.

This is wishful thinking. Palestinians will not surrender their historic claims and national aspirations in exchange for a West Bank enclave with limited self-rule within a greater Israel. A violent new uprising may be inevitable, requiring a military response from the Israeli Defense Forcesin turn risking more international opprobrium.

Even without a conflagration, Israel will essentially be suppressing the basic human rights of millions of peopleand there wont even be a pretense of this being a temporary situation, pending an eventual peace agreement. No amount of support from the Trump administration can erase that stain.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Hussein Ibish is a senior resident scholar at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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AM Best has affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a-" of Al Ahleia Insurance Company S.A.K.P. (Al Ahleia) (Kuwait). The outlook of these Credit Ratings (ratings) remains stable.

The ratings reflect Al Ahleia's balance sheet strength, which AM Best categorises as very strong, as well as its strong operating performance, neutral business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management (ERM).

Al Ahleia's balance sheet strength is underpinned by risk-adjusted capitalisation at the strongest level, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR). The balance sheet strength further benefits from the absence of financial leverage and good financial flexibility through access to capital markets. An offsetting factor is the company's significant holdings in private equity and real estate funds, which exposes its capital base to potential volatility. AM Best now views Al Ahleia's dependence on reinsurance as modest, with high cession rates of its direct portfolio diluted by significant retention of reinsurance business written by the company's subsidiary, Kuwait Reinsurance Company K.C.S.P. (Kuwait Re).

Al Ahleia has a five-year average (2015-2019) return on capital of 9.4%, supported by solid technical performance and positive, albeit volatile, investment earnings. The group's direct insurance portfolio has a track record of excellent performance, supported by favourable inward reinsurance commissions. On a consolidated basis, technical margins are reduced by the lower profitability of reinsurance business underwritten by Kuwait Re; however, the reinsurance operation remains robust, demonstrated by a combined ratio of 96.5% in 2019. Prospective consolidated earnings are expected to reflect the continued excellent performance of Al Ahleia's direct insurance operations, as well as the benefits of strategic decisions implemented by Kuwait Re to strengthen the profitability of its reinsurance portfolio.

Al Ahleia has an established position as a top four insurer in Kuwait's direct market, with a leading market share in the commercial insurance segment. The group achieves geographical diversification through its reinsurance operation, Kuwait Re, which provides proportional and non-proportional cover to cedants in the Middle East and North Africa, Asia-Pacific and Central and Eastern Europe. On a consolidated basis, Al Ahleia wrote gross premiums of KWD 98.3 million in 2019, with Kuwait Re contributing KWD 54.2 million.

Whilst Al Ahleia and Kuwait Re have in place risk management frameworks considered appropriate for their specific risk profiles, Al Ahleia is still developing a comprehensive group-wide ERM framework. As the group's risk profile continues to develop, it will become increasingly important for Al Ahleia to enhance its ERM capabilities, particularly in areas such as capital management and market risk.

This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best press releases, please view Guide for Media Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best Rating Action Press Releases.

AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specializing in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com.

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Linkedin Riza Roidila Mufti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:08 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84ddf2 1 Business AP-II,flights,Soekarno-Hatta-International-Airport,crowd,queue Free

State airport operator Angkasa Pura (AP) II is applying new policies at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport in Tangerang, Banten, after images of passengers crowding the airport went viral.

The policies include dividing passenger lines into four sections, separating the document verification and health check process, as well as limiting flights to only seven per hour.

AP II is set to enforce the new rules, aimed at supporting physical distancing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19, in the airports Terminal 2 and Terminal 3 starting on Friday.

We have carried out an evaluation and subsequently implemented the new policy. Today, on May 15, the departure process for domestic routes is going well at Soekarno-Hatta, both in Terminal 2 and 3, said AP II president director Muhammad Awaluddin in a statement released on Friday.

The new system is expected to prevent the congestion of passengers at the airport. The first section of the passenger line will be designated for document verification, while the second section is for passengers filling in forms such as the Health Alert Card (HAC).

Meanwhile, airport health office personnel will assess the passengers health in the third section of the line, while the last post is for passengers passing the inspection to proceed to check-in counters.

Images of crowding passengers in the countrys biggest airport circulated on Thursday, apparently caused by an influx of passengers coming for morning flights. Thirteen departures were scheduled between 6 a.m. and 8 a.m., according to AP II communications manager Febri Toga Simatupang.

The passengers were lining up to get all their flight documents checked as additional requirements, such as a negative COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, rapid test results or health documents from a hospital or clinic, as well as a return ticket, are needed to fly during the COVID-19 mitigation period.

With the new system, this mornings passenger flow was seamless for the domestic departure process at Terminal 2, Awaluddin said, adding that a similar procedure was also being applied at Terminal 3, with some adjustments.

Meanwhile, the airport will also limit hourly flights to up to seven flights to avoid passenger crowding. On Friday, Soekarno-Hatta International Airport will only serve a total of 54 departures and 56 arrivals.

The countrys airport served up to 1,200 flights daily on normal days before the pandemic.

The airports stakeholders have also agreed to cap the aircraft capacity for each flight to 50 percent to further ease the departure process while supporting physical distancing efforts, the operator stated.
SILVER SPRING, Md., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is alerting the public to early data that suggest potential inaccurate results from using the Abbott ID NOW point-of-care test to diagnose COVID-19. Specifically, the test may return false negative results.

"We are still evaluating the information about inaccurate results and are in direct communications with Abbott about this important issue. We will continue to study the data available and are working with the company to create additional mechanisms for studying the test. This test can still be used and can correctly identify many positive cases in minutes. Negative results may need to be confirmed with a high-sensitivity authorized molecular test," said Tim Stenzel, M.D., Ph.D., director of the Office of In Vitro Diagnostics and Radiological Health in the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

The FDA is sharing early information available about potential inaccurate results in the spirit of transparency. The agency has been working with Abbott to analyze the information gathered to date and has worked with the company on a customer notification letter to alert users that any negative test results that are not consistent with a patient's clinical signs and symptoms or necessary for patient management should be confirmed with another test.

The FDA looks at a variety of sources to identify and understand potential patterns or significant issues with the use of the Abbott test. No diagnostic test will be 100% accurate due to performance characteristics, specimen handling, or user error, which is why it is important to study patterns and identify the cause of suspected false results so any significant issues can be addressed quickly.

The agency is aware of some scientific studies that have identified accuracy issues with Abbott ID NOW and is investigating whether it could be due to the types of swabs used or the type of viral transport media (material used to transport the patient's specimen). While there is important information to gather from these studies, it should be noted these studies have limitations, including small sample size, potential design biases, or tests that may not have been executed according to the manufacturer's instructions for use, an important part of scientific research. This is why external scientific studies are one part of the FDA's overall evaluation of a diagnostic performance.

The FDA has received 15 adverse event reports about the Abbott ID NOW device that suggest some users are receiving inaccurate negative results. The agency is reviewing these reports. It's important to note that the adverse event reports the FDA receives from manufacturers, health care providers, health care facilities, and patients can be incomplete, inaccurate, or unverified, so agency staff must meticulously comb through the reports to identify crucial data to support any signals or patterns about device use.

Moving forward, Abbott has agreed to conduct post-market studies for the ID NOW device that each will include at least 150 COVID-19 positive patients in a variety of clinical settings. The FDA will continue to review interim data on an ongoing basis. The information gathered from the post-market studies can further help the agency understand the cause or patterns of any accuracy issues and inform any additional actions the company or the FDA should take.

The FDA will keep working with Abbott to further evaluate these accuracy issues and will publicly communicate any updates.

Consumers or healthcare providers can reach Abbott directly at (224) 667-6100 or by email.

Media Contact: Emma Spaulding, 240-753-3903

Consumer Inquiries: Email, 888-INFO-FDA

The FDA, an agency within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, protects the public health by assuring the safety, effectiveness, and security of human and veterinary drugs, vaccines and other biological products for human use, and medical devices. The agency also is responsible for the safety and security of our nation's food supply, cosmetics, dietary supplements, products that give off electronic radiation, and for regulating tobacco products.

SOURCE U.S. Food and Drug Administration
On April 28, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held an extraordinary meeting of BRICS Ministers of Foreign Affairs (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) via videoconference as part of important events planned this year after Russia took over the chair-ship from Brazil.

The BRICS Foreign Affairs Ministers who took part in the meeting included Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar represented India; Ernesto Araujo Foreign Affairs Minister of Brazil; Wang Yi, State Councilor and Foreign Minister of China and Ms. Grace Naledi Pandor, Minister of International Relations and Cooperation of the Republic of South Africa.

The ministers reviewed the impact of the current global crisis provoked by the outbreak of COVID-19 on the system of international relations and agreed that there is no alternative to using both bilateral and multilateral forms of cooperation, unite behind efforts without any hidden agenda, in finding a collective response to the challenges and threats posed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The meeting exchanged in-depth views on possible joint measures on how to contain COVID-19 and deal with the financial, trade, economic, and social consequences of the pandemic. They discussed important issues related to developing five-way cooperation, including the calendar of events for Russia's BRICS Chairmanship in 2020.

"We believe that it should become a very good reinforcement for our countries' economies when they're coming out of the crisis stage and resume economic operations," Lavrov noted during the meeting.

The international community should unite to ensure the most positive outcome of efforts in tackling the crisis but acknowledged that such efforts are being undermined by sanctions imposed on some countries, and suggested that the sanctions should be lifted or removed.

In the opening speech, Lavrov emphasized the priority in dealing with the COVID-19 outbreak, protect people's lives and health as well as the global economy. "The need to uphold multilateral principles and rely on international law in formulating solutions to current cross-border threats is an urgent challenge. We are convinced that it is very important to strengthen the solidarity of BRICS countries," he said.

The BRICS heads of state adopted a decision a couple of years ago to expand cooperation in the fight against infections and the joint production and use of vaccines, according to Lavrov, and suggested: "BRICS has to accelerate the implementation of this initiative."

Cooperation on countering infectious diseases has long been a priority for BRICS. For instance, the final declaration of the 2015 BRICS summit in Ufa, Russia, contains instructions by the leaders to jointly work on managing the risk of disease outbreaks, including the current new coronavirus.

"We are concerned about growing and diversifying global threats posed by communicable and non-communicable diseases. They have a negative impact on economic and social development, especially in developing and in the least developed countries," the 2015 BRICS declaration adopted in Ufa, Russia. It was the Seventh BRICS Summit, held under the theme "BRICS Partnership  a Powerful Factor of Global Development" under the chair-ship of Russia.

That declaration further stated: "In this context, we commend the efforts made by the BRICS countries to contribute to enhanced international cooperation to support the efforts of countries to achieve their health goals, including the implementation of universal and equitable access to health services, and ensure affordable, good-quality service delivery while taking into account different national circumstances, policies, priorities and capabilities."

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi echoed Sergey Lavrov's call for unity and solidarity. In an official statement released by the ministry, Wang said that the BRICS should "stand firm by multilateralism, by the UN-centered international system" and "champion the approach of consultation and cooperation."

"Through joint efforts, we will safeguard the legitimate rights and interests and space for development not just for ourselves but also for all other emerging market and developing countries," Wang Yi said.

With its rapid spread in many parts of the world, COVID-19 has put lives and health of people around the world under grave threat, seriously disrupted the global economy, and posed severe challenges to BRICS, the minister said, while acknowledging further that "as representatives of major emerging countries with global influence, BRICS countries must act in the interest of the well-being of humankind, and stand by justice and equity."

Wang Yi, however, proposed the following:

First, uphold multilateralism and improve global governance. The sudden onslaught of COVID-19 reminds again that BRICS interests are, closely entwined and the future. A challenge that respects no border and makes no distinction of ethnicity has only made global governance more important, not less, building a community with a shared future for mankind.

China's strategic assessment is that COVID-19 will not change the theme of the times which remains peace and development; it will not cut short the historical trend toward multi-polarity and globalization, and still less will it deter humankind from its firm pursuit of civilization and progress.

In a time of crisis, BRICS must stand firm by multilateralism, by the UN-centered international system, and by the purposes and principles of the UN Charter. BRICS needs to sustain coordination in the UN, the G20 and other multilateral frameworks to keep up secure and smooth functioning of global industrial and supply chains, and defend the multilateral trading regime with the WTO as the cornerstone.

BRICS should continue to work for making development the centerpiece of the global macro policy agenda, and expedite the delivery of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Second, BRICS should come together in the spirit of partnership to combat COVID-19. Under the personal leadership and direction of President Xi Jinping, the Chinese government and people have fought a people's war against COVID-19. China has acted according to the principle of shoring up confidence, strengthening unity, ensuring science-based control and taking targeted measures.

As the virus hits more countries around the world, China is doing everything it can to help those in need. In spite of substantial demand at home and growing pressures to meet foreign orders, China has provided a large amount of medical supplies to fellow BRICS countries, and facilitated the purchase of such supplies through commercial channels.

Going forward, China is ready to step up the sharing of information and experience with BRICS countries and conduct joint research and development of drugs and vaccines, respecting each other's sovereignty and national conditions.

Third, BRICS should uphold unity and coordination to forge a powerful synergy. President Xi Jinping stated that the virus is a common enemy of humanity and can be defeated. Living in a global village, no one could stay safe when others' houses catch fire.

Likewise, in fighting COVID-19, victory can only be secured when the virus is brought under control in all countries. China has been a strong force behind international anti-epidemic cooperation because its own experience has made it fully empathetic with other peoples suffering from similar difficulties.

As countries battle the disease in light of their own situations, China called for mutual understanding and respect for these efforts, and sharing and learning from each other's experiences. The global community should never be distracted in its collaborative response by finger-pointing or the blame game, allow new tensions and divisions to be created as a result of politicization or stigmatization.

In view of the weaknesses and inadequacies exposed during this crisis, BRICS needs to enhance global public health governance, make it a higher priority on the international agenda, and work together to build a community of health for all.

Fourth, China will work with all BRICS members to support Russia's Chairmanship. China also supports Russia's initiative to formulate a Strategy for BRICS Economic Partnership 2025.

On his part, Indian Foreign Affairs Minister Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar noted that BRICS, which brings together almost 42 percent of global population, with impressive growth, investment and trade share, has an important role to play in shaping the global economic and political architecture.

He highlighted the initiatives and various decisive steps taken early by India. For example, India is providing pharma assistance to nearly 85 countries, including many countries in Africa, on a grant basis, to support their response to the pandemic. This has been widely welcomed.

He further emphasized that the pandemic is not only posing a great risk to the health and well-being of humanity but is also severely impacting global economy and output by disruption of global trade and supply chains. Economic activity across sectors has been negatively impacted leading to loss of jobs and livelihoods.

He emphasized the need to provide support to businesses, especially small and medium scale enterprises, and the efficacy of traditional medicine systems to strengthen immunity be recognized and that BRICS should support these efforts.

Jaishankar emphasized the current challenge that underlines the need for reform of multilateral systems and that a reformed multilateralism was the way forward. He referred to the centrality of development and growth in the global agenda. India reaffirmed its support for Russian BRICS Chair-ship in 2020 and under the theme "BRICS Partnership for Global Stability, Shared Security and Innovative Growth."

The BRICS member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) collectively represent about 26% of the world's geographical area and are home to 3.6 billion people, about 42% of the world's population and with a combined nominal GDP of $16.6 trillion.

*Kester Kenn Klomegah is a Special Representative for Africa on the Russian Trade and Economic Development Council. He is an independent research writer, who served previously as Moscow Bureau Chief for Africa Press Agency (APA) and Inter Press Service (IPS), and has won awards including the Golden Word Prize for a series of analytical articles on Russia's economic cooperation with African countries.
Makarand R Paranjape By

Is Hinduism locked in an existential struggle against Abrahamic faiths, especially Islam and Christianity? Not necessarily. As I have argued in my earlier writings, particularly Altered Destinations: Self, Society, and Nation in India (London, 2010) and Making India: Colonialism, National Culture, and the Afterlife of Indian English Authority (Dordrecht, 2013), the Sanatani and the non-Sanatani can coexist without conflict.

That is because the Sanatani, with its inclusive and open-ended belief systems, has the capacity both to absorb and allow radical differences. Also, and this is something we tend to forget, non-Sanatani systems, religious or secular, also have Sanatani elements of pluralism, non-exclusion, and acceptance of difference.

The real problem occurs when the non-Sanatani becomes anti-Sanatani. This can be true of theologically justified armed invasion and occupation as applicable to much of the Islamic conquest of India. Or, on a smaller scale, of the Portuguese assault and inquisition in Cochin and Goa, and the early French rule in Puducherry, where religious aggression accompanied imperialistic conquest.

The British ruled differently, using a Macaulay-inspired educational, intellectual and cultural rebooting of India that, unfortunately, turned out to be anti-Sanatani in many of its features. Marxism and modernity, too, obviously non-Sanatani, can also be very viciously and virulently anti-Sanatani.

Likewise, Dravidianist and Ambedkarite extremism, with their reverse racism, targeted hate campaigns and divisive politics, may also be included in the roster of anti-Sanatani movements. In more recent times, a combination of these forces have resulted in a rather powerful anti-India or, as some go to the extent of arguing, breaking-India narrative.

What, then, would be the fitting response from the Sanatani side to such threats? The answer, rather obvious to those who have studied the Sanatana traditions, would be a principled and carefully executed combination of defence and offence. The defence, like a shield, protects us when we are most vulnerable; the sword thrusts, rather than slashes, where the adversary is at its weakest.But in the process, when the Sanatani dons the fierce mask that almost resembles its opposite, it must never lose its Sanatani essence, which remains plural, non-exclusive, open-ended. The Sanatani, after all, is exceptional precisely because it has no one point of origin, no one book or prophet, no one doctrine or ideology, no one church or belief system. Without origin or closure, the Sanatani permits a great variety of both precepts and practices with some fundamental underlying structures.

In its fight against the anti-Sanatani, if the Sanatani becomes indistinguishable from its opponent, it would lose its self. Worse, the loss of the Sanatani, bad enough for itself, would also be catastrophic for the world. Whatever the symbol or deity of our battle against our adversaries, the more benign and sober form of it as well as ourselves must remain the normal and default mode.

After all, a deity which is angry all the time, even the new and rather popular graphic of angry Hanuman, will eventually turn on its own followers, having run out of enemies. Anger directed outward at real or imagined foes will come back to consume us too if we do not know the art of stilling it. Hence, all our rituals and ceremonies end with Shanti Mantras. Energies invoked for specific purposes must also be stilled and quietened for cosmic balance and harmony to be restored.

It is in this light that we must view the ghar wapasi of nearly 300 so-called Muslims of Haryana to Hinduism in two recent instances. The earlier one occurred on April 18, when six families with some 35 members returned to Hinduism in Danoda Kalan, a village in the district of Jind in Haryana. The more recent incidence was on May 8 in which 40 families consisting of some 250 people returned to Hinduism.

In both instances, the trigger was the last rites of a deceased elder. By opting for cremation over burial, the reconverted returned to their Hindu identity. Earlier, I used so-called Muslim to describe these families because they lived like Hindus, for most part retaining Hindu customs and names, but were listed as Muslims. According to their own traditions and legends, they were converted to Islam during the times of Aurangzeb. One reason for their return, it was reported, is that they belong to the Dom community, recognised as a scheduled caste, and thus eligible for benefits if they identified as Hindus rather than Muslims.

It is very important to underline that what these two cases illustrate is the basic and brutal fact that most Indian Muslims were once Hindus or people of indigenous faith practices. The road to their return to the Hindu fold should not only be wide open but underwritten with security, dignity, acceptance and love. Without the first two, all ghar wapasi efforts will be futile.

Once it is established that the return to Hinduism is as per the law, that is without fear or inducement, then both government and non-government agencies should ensure that such returnees are not harassed or hounded by the former co-religionists. After all, in several non-Sanatani religions, the price for apostasy is very high, as high, in fact, as death itself.

The Sanatani, as I said earlier, is an open system. That does not mean that it is a one-way stream, with people leaving the Hindu fold to become Muslim, Christian, Sikh, Buddhist, Marxist or even secularist. It means that those who left can also return. Whenever they like. It is up to us, as modern Hindus, to make their return both meaningful and sustainable. We must create the felicity conditions for their welcome and integration into Hindu society.

In this regard, it is a gross misunderstanding to claim that Hinduism is non-proselytising, though of course the word has a totally different connotation for us. The fact is that most of Vaishnavism, right up to the worldwide success of ISKCON, is based on attracting converts. There is no reason that should change now. If at all, Hinduism today should be made even more appealing to both returning and new converts.

Makarand R Paranjape

Director, Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla. Views are personal
Taiwan has provided supplies and health assistance not only to friendly states, but to countries in Asia, Africa and South America that have close ties with China. It has routed face-mask donations to China-friendly African countries through the Vatican, one of Taipei's few diplomatic allies, and held an online medical seminar with doctors from countries that have recently switched ties from Taipei to Beijing, including the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. A recent Twitter campaign for Taiwan's participation in the assembly gained a push from Twitter users in India, Thailand and Hong Kong.
Maneuvering the lockdown, contradictory government mandates and the always looming threat of both the virus and starvation, the first wave of migrants finally returned to their hometowns this week.

Maneuvering the lockdown, contradictory government mandates and the always looming threat of both the virus and starvation, the first wave of migrants finally returned to their hometowns this week.

Homecoming has never looked so bittersweet.

In the current spirit of being vocal about local we waited at Banda station to welcome the first train of labourers returning home from Surat on the newly-running Shramik Express trains.

After the Central government allowed for the movement of migrant labourers back to their home states, the Indian Railways began operating special trains to service these workers given that the nationwide lockdown has been further extended to 18 May, with the possibility of yet another extension.

The Shramik Express trains have been planned at the behest of state governments. Ten states are currently availing the offer to repatriate their workers: Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Telangana, Kerala, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Jharkhand and Gujarat.

Officials say the Indian Railways has operated 602 Shramik Special trains since 1 May and ferried home eight lakh migrants.

The people we greeted were on the Shramik Express train from Surat to Uttar Pradesh. The train carried 1,220 workers who will be screened for the virus and then taken to their respective hometowns on roadways buses.

Anita, a young wife, travelled with her two children from Surat, back home to Banda. Her sense of relief palpable, We had a business in Surat. That also stopped and we started having trouble getting food. I was also missing home. I'd left my parents behind, my in-laws, my family. I am happy to go home. Its a good feeling.

Jeevan, another labourer from Surat said, There was no food [in Surat]. The food markets would open for just an hour and we would go and get our supplies. When asked if any government rations or subsidies were offered, he said, We paid for everything. I spent whatever I had. I had to come home. The landlord was making my life difficult. He said, If you don't pay up, you can't stay here.

This seems to fly in the face of the orders issued by various state governments to prevent evictions and rent collection for at least a month during the lockdown. Jeevan said, No ones following that order.

Shyambabu concurred. He too couldnt pay his rent and so was forced to leave the city. We weren't getting food or anything and the room owners kept telling us go, go! I usually pay Rs 1,800 [rent]. If you don't have money, how can you pay? Of course there are problems. I didn't get my wages, we couldn't get our rations, we couldn't get food or water.

The lockdown has debilitated the lives of millions of migrant labourers in our cities who live paycheck to paycheck in an attempt to provide for themselves and their families back home. Shyambabu continued, When we couldn't get anything, we were scared. About whether we were going to get home or not, or how, especially since the lockdown was on.

Shyambabus fears are well founded. After a series of missteps by the Central and state governments, provisions were finally made to facilitate travel for migrant workers. Previously, both the Central and state governments had clamped down on the movement of labourers, resulting in several brutal, but highly preventable accidents, such as the migrant unrest and lathicharge in Mumbai.

Further, the dehumanisation of migrants continued through sub-par relief camps and quarantine facilities and arbitrary police violence: In one horrific case, migrants travelling back home on foot were even sprayed with disinfectant. More recently, 16 workers leaving Ahmedabad for Madhya Pradesh were killed after a train ran over them while they took a break from their arduous, 600-kilometer walk to their hometowns.

There seems to be a clear trend emerging: migrant labourers are increasingly being seen as expendable when they are not producing. The Karnataka government drew criticism last week after cancelling the states Shramik Special trains, stating that migrant workers would not be allowed to leave since construction work in the state was beginning again.

That decision has since been reversed.

However, coupled with the relaxation of labour laws in Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, and Gujarat in order to attract foreign investment, there is a growing tendency to see migrant workers as a resource instead of as human beings with very real needs. It is no wonder that the people we spoke to were astounded and grateful that they were able to return home relatively unscathed.

While some labourers were happy with their train ride back, others were not so lucky. A special train from Vadodara to Gorakhpur that stopped at Banda saw the death of an old woman for health reasons unrelated to the coronavirus. Authorities on the train allegedly ignored symptoms of her illness.

Our current conversations, however, pointed to different problems. Roshni and her sister, visiting family in Surat, said, Paani nahi mila, khaana nahi mila, toh dikkat toh hogi na (we werent given food or water, so of course, wed have problems).

But while there may be no food or water, at least the stations were sanitised. We spoke to the man who has been in charge of disinfecting the station for over a month now. His torn gloves bear testament to the grim state of affairs. When asked whether he was afraid of exposing himself to the virus, he said, "Yes, I am scared. Jaan hai toh jahaan hai. Yet, it seems that fear does not exempt him from carrying on.

The railways is charging the labourers anywhere between Rs 600 to Rs 710 for their ticket. The fare includes the price of regular sleeper class tickets plus superfast charges of Rs 30 and an additional charge of Rs 20.

One can see the irony and the apathy behind asking the poor to pay for their own tickets home while the government is simultaneously launching its largest repatriation effort in history to bring back Indians stranded abroad. The railway ministry is also supposed to provide one meal for trains longer than 12 hours, while state governments have been made responsible for providing food packets and water to the passengers at the stations of origin.

The railways ministry has said that state governments can pay the ticket fare on passengers behalf. However, many states have refused to foot the bill for their most vulnerable. The miscommunication and constant back and forth between the Centre and state governments has played out through the real trauma and hardships of their citizens.

Caught in the interstices, these labourers are deprived of safety nets and of their rights. Prime Minister Narendra Modis most recent, 30-minute speech did not spare a single moment to address or acknowledge the plight of Indias labourers.

In the face of the States gross negligence and failure, these labourers were forced to take his aatmanirbharta to its logical conclusion and help themselves. While some survived, many didnt. Self-reliance means nothing without institutional support.

Khabar Lahariya is India's only grassroots, feminist news and media platform, run by an all-women team of reporters, editors and media practitioners, reporting on media-dark geographies of the north Indian hinterland.
Taking a dig at West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar, TMC MP Mahua Moitra on Thursday said in a situation where the post of governor falls vacant, a person applying for it must have the basic reading of the Constitution.

The Trinamool Congress (TMC) government in West Bengal and the Raj Bhawan have been engaged in a bitter war of words for the last few months over states Covid-19 response and its various policies.

Situation Vacant- 1 post of Governor for State of WB. Qualifications required- 1. BASIC reading of Constitution 2. Ability to respect dignity of office & not shoot mouth off indiscriminately 3. Modicum of self respect in daily life w/o fawning over political masters shamelessly, Moitra tweeted.

There was no immediate reaction from the Raj Bhawan or the governor regarding the tweet.

The West Bengal BJP unit, however, slammed the TMC for repeatedly disrespecting the post of governor and showing disregard for constitutional norms.

Just because the governor is saying legitimate things, the TMC is unable to tolerate and has been repeatedly insulting him and trying to demean his post. We condemn such statements against the post of the office of governor, West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.

Over the past two months, the state government and the Raj Bhawan have been engaged in a war of words over states preparedness in handling the Covid-19 situation.

The face-off escalated earlier this month, with Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee accusing Dhankhar of repeatedly interfering in the functioning of the state administration, and the governor contending that the state cannot be governed as a personal fiefdom.
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Watching The Great, Hulus gleefully anachronistic take on Catherine the Greats (Elle Fanning) rise to power in Russia, and specifically Nicholas Hoults Emperor Peter, I was struck with what by now has become a familiar observation. Oh god, its Trump.

The parallels are so specific its hard to imagine they were not drawn intentionally. Peter is a thin-skinned narcissist clinging to the belief that everyone around him loves him, even as they are all plotting his death behind his back. He responds to threats with torture and murder. He is fabulously stupid and criminally clueless. He hates women, science, and advice. When asked what its like to rule a country, he shrugs, Its not that hard, actually. In a running gag, whenever he makes an offensive joke and no one laughs, he turns to the crowd of sycophants constantly in orbit and repeats, Did you hear? I said and they all laugh dutifully.

In fact, the character so closely mirrors the current Commander in Chief that the series feels prophetic of Trumps coronavirus response nearly two centuries later. For instance, while Peter is drawing up battle plans with generals, he spitballs, What if we snuck up on them in the dark? When a smallpox outbreak hits the castle, he briefly flirts with Catherines science-backed inoculation idea before going ahead with the original protocol of simply setting all infected and possibly-infected peasants on fire. Receiving word someone is plotting a coup, he takes the practical step of just torturing everybody. Trumps public musings on disinfectant as a virus cure, his outright rejection of scientific expertise, his practice of summarily firing and pillorying anyone he views as a threat, all are represented here.

Several filmmakers have often said, all film is documentary, so its likely that the shows timing isnt a coincidence. Telling, since so much of the plot revolves around a familiar debate  is it possible to influence the emperor from within the administration or is this a blow-the-whole-thing-up situation? I think what makes The Greats version of Trumpian leadership so effective is that it hits at a particularly uncomfortable truth: that President Donald Trump is a joke were forced to take seriously, and how degrading that can actually feel.

Story continues

Since Trump became president, and even before, there has been a proliferation of Trump-inspired or Trump-like characters in popular media (including Trump himself), some intentional and some incidental. But its telling that the depictions of Trump that feel most true to life are comedic.

The Hollis Doyle character in Scandal uses Seedy Businessman Trump as a model. In a review in Time, Daniel D'addario observes that Scandals take on Trumpism fell short of the full-range of Trump excess, unfortunate in a show built around politics in its most off-the-rails imagining. Perhaps by taking the character a little too seriously, in ascribing to him some canniness, the show missed whats most captivating and horrifying about Trump  its not just bad principles, its a lack of principle altogether, compounded by true clownishness that is hard to square with any kind of sober depiction.

Veep comes closer. In her 2016 Best Actress Emmy acceptance speech for playing Selina Meyer, just before the 2016 election, Julia Louis-Dreyfus noted, Our show started out as a political satire, but it now feels more like a sobering documentary. So I certainly do promise to rebuild that wall  and make Mexico pay for it. That it wasnt until three seasons later that the show began to take direct swipes at Trump is a testament to what low-hanging fruit Trump as a figure truly is.

The Greats absurdist framing allows the creators to take Trumpism to its logical conclusion, which is, at its core, dark slapstick. In this world, a cruel joke or passing thought is the same as public policy. And when the joke collides with its resulting horror, the show is briefly jolted into the harsh light of cold reality. When Peter revives after an attempted poisoning, for instance, he cheerily brushes past the four hanging bodies of innocents hed ordered executed for their unintended involvement, an unexpectedly gruesome image that sent me hurtling back to our current political climate gut-first.

Watching characters attempt to temper Emperor Peters alarming and nonsensical ideas brings to mind Dr. Deborah Birxs attempt to explain to Trump, with a straight face, that no, sunlight is not a cure for Covid-19. Its funny, until you remember that people are dying. Liberal pundits and politicians rail against the incompetence of the Trump administration, but this feels like a hollow assessment. Incompetence implies at least a degree of seriousness, if haphazard. Trump is more like a Monty Python sketch come to life.

Hulu

RELATED: Donald Trump Cares What Brad Pitt Thinks About Him, Too

To see the current leader of my country, whose character is already so sinister and absurd it doesnt need exaggeration, reflected so closely in this piece should perhaps make me depressed. But I actually felt oddly comforted.

That the characters in the show, from Peters best friend, to Catherine and her co-conspirators, to the noble whose only crime was keeping his beard, see no way to stop the madness short of military coup feels frankly cathartic. It gives me a sense of you see it too right? that no amount of grave the emperor has no clothes tweets can do. Id like to imagine Melania Trump as a sort of Catherine the Great, quietly plotting a hostile takeover from behind the scenes (even if I dont believe it).

If broad satire is the only genre far-reaching enough to meet the moment now, we might as well call this presidency what it is. A joke.

The Great is now streaming on Hulu.
China on Friday reacted guardedly to US President Donald Trump's threat to cut off the bilateral relationship between the world's top two economies and asked America to meet it halfway in the fight against the coronavirus.

Relations between the two countries nosedived after the coronavirus outbreak, which originated from the central Chinese city of Wuhan, and spread to other parts of the world.

The pandemic has claimed over 85,000 lives in the US, the highest in the world.

Trump, who has been pressing China to agree for an inquiry into the origin of the virus, including the allegation that it emerged from a bio-lab in Wuhan, further hardened his rhetoric on Thursday by threatening to cut off US ties with Beijing.

Reacting to Trump's threat, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian reacted guardedly, saying that the relationship is in the fundamental interest of the two countries.

"To maintain the steady development of China-US relations is in the fundamental interests of the people in both countries, and is conducive to world peace and stability," Zhao said.

"At present, China and the US should continue to strengthen cooperation against the epidemic, defeat the epidemic as soon as possible, treat patients, and restore economy and production. But it requires the US to meet halfway with China," Zhao said.

There has been increasing pressure on Trump from American lawmakers to take action against China.

"There are many things we could do ... We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said on Thursday in an interview with Fox Business "You'd save USD 500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship." Trump said that his relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping is "very good" but added: "right now I just don't want to speak to him".

Trump's threat followed after China on Tuesday released a new list of US products which will be exempted from the second round of additional tariffs on American products.

Trump launched a trade war with China in 2018, demanding Beijing to reduce a massive trade deficit of over USD 539 billion.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The National Identification Authority (NIA) has reacted to the allegation by the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) that it was conspiring with the Electoral Commission (EC) to rig the 2020 general elections in favour of the New Patriotic Party (NPP).



The NIA in a press statement on Friday challenged the NDC to provide evidence to support the allegation.



NIA is not part of the election management architecture in Ghana. There is no conspiracy between NIA and EC to rig the 2020 elections. Election rigging is a serious criminal matter with dire political, economic and social consequences for any nation.



Any person, party or institution alleging such a criminal conspiracy has a duty to report same to the police and provide the requisite evidence to support investigations and/or prosecution, the NIA said.

The NDC at a press conference on Thursday said activities of the NIA and the Electoral Commission ahead of the 2020 polls were all geared towards rigging the elections.



The National Chairman of the NDC, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo, for instance alleged that the NIA prioritised the Ashanti Region and Eastern Region, deemed a stronghold of the NPP during its registration exercise.



He said the NIA deployed a number of its equipment to the region in a bid to capture more people so the NPP could get more voters to be captured onto the new electoral roll.



The NIA in responding, however, said it does not operate on the basis of political strongholds.



Our operations planning is based on population statistics obtained from the Ghana Statistical Service. There has been no deliberate effort to prevent applicants in any region to register, it said.



Read full response below;





NIA RESPONDS TO NDC CLAIMS

The following constitutes the responses of the National Identification Authority (NIA) to the

claims made by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) at its press conference in Accra on

Thursday, 14th May 2020: NDC CLAIM #1: NIA and EC are acting in concert to rig the 2020 elections

Ken Attafuah-led NIA and Jean Mensa-led Electoral Commission have conspired to rig the 2020

elections in favour of the NPP and ate executing that criminal design.



Response: NIA is not part of the election management architecture in Ghana. There is no

conspiracy between NIA and EC to rig the 2020 elections. Election rigging is a serious criminal

matter with dire political, economic and social consequences for any nation. Any person, party or

institution alleging such a criminal conspiracy has a duty to report same to the police and provide

the requisite evidence to support investigations and/or prosecution.



The governance architecture of NIA goes beyond the current Chief Executive Officer, i.e., Prof.

Ken Agyemang Attafuah. The day-to-day administration and management of the affairs of NIA is

led by the Executive Secretary, but polies governing the operations of NIA are set and regulated

by the NIA Governing Board, which also reports to the President of the Republic through a

Minister of State at the Presidency  in this instance, the Hon. Dr. Anthony Akoto Osei, MP,

Minister for Monitoring and Evaluation and Minister responsible for the National Identification

2

System (NIS). It must be noted that the NIA Governing Board comprises the Chief Executives of

various statutory agencies involved in identity management or that require accurate, reliable,

complete and up-to-date data for efficient service delivery, such as SSNIT, NHIA, Statistical

Service, GRA, Births and Deaths Registry, and Ghana Immigration Service. It also has two

eminent academics  a Professor of Law at the University of Ghana Business School, and a

Professor of Agricultural Economics from Central University, and chaired by a distinguished

retired public servant. The members of the Board are women and men whose individual and

collective integrity and decency are beyond reproach.

Thus, the Ken Attafuah-led NIA cannot just act as it pleases; on the contrary, it is subject to the

policy direction and control of the NIA Governing Board. Thus, a decision to collaborate with any

state institution such as the Electoral Commission in any enterprise must be directed or approved

by the Governing Board, which also directs or approves the commencement, discontinuation or

resumption of a mass registration exercise in any region.

NDC CLAIM #2: Exclusion of the Voter ID as Ghana Card registration requirement was both

unlawful and illegitimate

Response: This claim is most astonishing. The amendment of section 8 of Act 750 to exclude the

Voter ID Card, Drivers License, Baptismal Certificates and weighing Cards as valid registration

requirements was effected by Parliament without a whimper of opposition or protest from any

member of Parliament. The exclusive reliance on Birth Certificates, Passports and Certificates of

acquired Citizenship was supported by the NDC in Parliament. Indeed, the amendments received

the unqualified endorsement of the Minority MPs in Parliament, and the MPs who spoke on the

Bill were mainly from the Minority side, with each of them enthusiastically support for the

amendments. Indeed, as Hon. Innusah Fusseini put it, the MPs were satisfied that ample provision

had been made in the Bill to cater for those Ghanaians who had neither a birth certificate nor a

passport, namely the "vouching for" process. In these circumstances, the exclusion was both legal

and legitimate, having been passed by the Ghanaian Parliament and on sound legal and social

grounds.

3

By virtue of L.I. 2111 passed in 2012, the Ghana Card is the ONLY identity card to be required

and produced whenever identity must be established or proved. By law, there are 17 mandatory

uses of the Ghana Card, and failure to produce the card will result in the denial of a service, facility,

right or opportunity to which a person may otherwise be entitled.

For the record, the mandatory uses of the Ghana Card as contained in the said Legislative

Instrument include application for and issuance of a passport; application for and issuance of a

driver's licence; opening individual or personal bank accounts; transfer and registration of land by

an individual; transactions pertaining to individuals in respect of pensions; transactions specified

under the National Health Insurance Scheme; purchase of a SIM card; transactions relating to

pensions, transactions relating to insurance policies, transactions that have social security

implications, registration as a voter; acquisition of a SIM card; payment of taxes; consumer credit

transactions; and applications for public or government services, facilities, approvals, permissions

or benefits. The inclusive development needs of the nation demand that all Ghanaians be enabled

to register for and be issued with the Ghana Card.

NDC Claim #3: NIA has only registered 11 million Ghanaians and issued only 7 million cards.

Response: NIA under the current Government has done remarkably well given the initial

challenges that confronted it, namely, limited technical capacity (1050 MRWs instead of 2500)

and financial resource constraints. Starting with a daily average of approximately 30,000

registrations per day in late April 2019, NIA's latest daily average registrations stand at over

120,000 due mainly to invigorated equipment capacity and the attainment of operational

excellence by the technical staff.

With this significant boost in daily throughput, a minimum of 100,000 applicants can be registered

each day. Thus, NIA can register 3 million Ghanaians in approximately 30 working days, and the

overall national target of 12million would have been met by 27th March 2020, when the nationwide

mass registration exercise would have ended. The national target of 16.7million people would have

been achieved in the subsequent mop-up exercise that was planned to end in June 2020.

4

NDC CLAIM #4: Instant Issuance has failed

Response: The instant issuance strategy is an innovation introduced by NIA to address its

perennial inability to issue printed cards over the years. Network connectivity permitting, instant

printing is the preferred mode of card printing, followed by the second option of deferred printing,

and lastly centralized printing. Nationwide, over 70% of all cards are issued instantly, with the

Volta Region having the best experience.

It is noteworthy that, between 2008 and 2016, NIA issued only 900,000 Ghana Cards. In less than

one year  between 29th April 2019 when mass registration started and 20th March 2020 when the

exercise was truncated  NIA issued 7,091,769! A total of 127,723 are in various stages of

adjudication. NIA has printed the majority of cards in backlog (3,683,955), and is ready to issue

them to Ghanaians once NIA resumes its field operations.

NDC Claim #5: Suppression of registration in NDC strongholds

Response: There is no truth to this allegation. NIA does not operate on the basis of political

strongholds. Our operations planning is based on population statistics obtained from Ghana

Statistical Service. There has been no deliberate effort to prevent applicants in any region to

register.

NDC Claim #6: The Sworn-Oath Option has been slow and cumbersome

Response: While it is true the exclusion of the voter ID card as a primary registration requirement

has increased the number of applicants needing to be vouched for, this process has been a part of

our electoral practice under the Fourth Republic. The only difference now is that requirement that

the oath be sworn before a Commissioner for Oaths or Magistrate. This ensures greater document

integrity as guarantors appreciate the consequences of perjury in swearing the oath of identity.

NIA ensures that a Commissioner for Oaths is available at every registration centre, at no cost to

the applicants. Indeed, over 70% of applicants for the Ghana Card used this method to validate

their citizenship nationwide.

5

NDC Claim #7: NIA mobilized unprecedented numbers of equipment and personnel into Ashanti

Region.

The NDC alleges that, while NIA deployed an average of 2000 MRWs in all the NDC strongholds,

it miraculously acquired and sent 5,092 MRWs, 800 Card Printers, 3,192 MRWs into the Ashanti

Region, which is NPPs stronghold.

Response: It is not true that NIA deployed over 5000 MRWs into the Ashanti Region. The

maximum number ever deployed was 3,600, as some of the old equipment had become faulty and

some of the new ones were kept at the Head Office and used for hot-swapping when some of the

equipment fails.

It is true that a larger number of Mobile Registration Workstations and other ancillary equipment

were deployed into the Shanti Region relative to Greater Accra, Volta, Oti, Savanna, North East,

Northern, Upper East, Upper West, Ahafo, Bono, and Bono East Regions. But the same number

of equipment sent into the Ashanti Region was also sent to the Western, Western North, Central

(clustered as one NIA Operational Region) and the Eastern Region. As noted earlier, these

decisions were influenced solely by population density and equipment availability. Based on

operational realities on the ground, NIA requested for additional equipment in July 2019 in order

to scale-up its operations, and received same in October 2019. Some of the new equipment were

deployed to the Upper East, Upper West, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo Regions (clustered as one

NIA Operational Region) as soon as they were assembled, loaded with software, tested and readied

for use in late October and November. By the start of the mass registration exercise in the Ashanti

Region on 11th December 2019, most of the equipment were technically ready for use.

The concept of strongholds of NDC and strongholds of NPP has never been in NIAs

contemplation or operational planning. The figures used by NIA for setting its registration targets

figures were obtained from the Statistical Service and not from the EC.

6

It must be emphasized that 50% of registration officials engaged by NIA were recruited from the

regions where the registration exercise was being undertaken. It is hard to contemplate that such

officials will condone an agenda to disenfranchise their compatriots as the NDC seeks to suggest.

NDC Claim #8: NIA jumped from Greater Accra straight to Northern Region for improper

political reasons

The NDC queries why NIA did not go straight to the Eastern Region which is the most proximate

region to Greater Accra region, but rather went straight to the Northern Region. The NDC claims

that it is curious that Eastern Region was the last and Ashanti the last-but-two regions to be

registered, and that, this was deliberately orchestrated to procure electoral advantage to NPP to the

disadvantage of NDC.

Response: The Volta Region is just as proximate to the Greater Accra Region as the Volta Region

is. In 2008, NIA started the mass registration exercise in the Central Region in July 2008,

proceeded to the Western Region, went next to the Eastern Region, and then the Volta Region in

June/July 2009. This was during the tenure of Prof. Ken Attafuah as Executive Secretary between

July 2008 and July 2009. Following a lull in operations, NIA resumed operations in Greater Accra,

went to Ashanti and, eventually, finished the exercise in the three northern regions in 2013. This

time round, in 2019, NIA elected to start the mass registration exercise in Greater Accra, and

proceeded anti-clockwise to the Volta, Oti, Northern, Savannah, North East, Upper East, Upper

West, Bono, Ahafo, Bono East, Ashanti, Western North, Western, Central and, finally, Eastern

region. S in 2008, there was no political calculation in this operational design, just simple logical

flow to reduce cost, taking into account the nations topography, transportation network, population

density and such related appropriate considerations. There was no mischief or malevolence, and

no advantage to any political party or administrative region.

It must also be emphasized that the Management and Staff of NIA are drawn from all parts of this

country, and they all appreciate the benefits of all Ghana having a credible National Identity

System. This sound appreciation of the tremendous benefits of the Ghana Card to citizens and the

nation is what drives NIA Management and Staff to execute our mandate with dedication and

7

loyalty to the nation. Voting and elections do not form part of NIA mandate, and do not drive what

we do at NIA.

The NIA Governing Board, Management and Staff are well aware of the impact their success will

make in Ghanas development. We wake up every day determined to achieve just that. Contrary

to the NDC claims against NIA, the following are the values, realities, ethos and considerations

that drive and motivate NIA Governing Board Members, Management and Staff in the discharge

of their duties:

1. Meeting the sustainable development goals of providing legal identity for all Ghanaians

and qualified foreigners in Ghana.

2. Contributing to the nations effort to decrease Cybercrime and Internet fraud. A credible

national ID system has great potential of removing anonymity from our country.

3. Supporting the Ghana Immigration Service in Immigration Enforcement activities.

Ghanas immigration officials on enforcement duties will be able to easily identify

nationals and foreigners.

4. Providing effective and reliable identity verification and data exchange platforms to

enhance business transaction in the country. At the Results Fair held at the International

Conference Centre early this year, the Banks represented at the open forum expressed keen

interest in seeing NIAs verification models come on board for easy verification of the

Ghana Card.

5. Facilitating the smooth usage of a credible, robust, dependable and modern smart Ghana

Card with tremendous functionalities. The NHIA and SSNIT have decided to stop issuing

ID cards to their members and rather piggy-back on the Ghana Card because of the utility,

quality and value of the Ghana Card. NIA welcomes any other state institution that would

want to use one of the 14 loadable applets on the chip embedded in the Ghana Card. If the

EC decides to make the Ghana Card one of its primary registration documents, that would

further prove the quality and dependability of the data NIA is collecting.

8

6. Removing the difficulties encountered by passport applicants. The Ghana Card, which is

also an ECOWAS CARD, is a passport for use within the West African sub-region. Thus,

16.7 million Ghanaians will be issued with a passport for free by the end of the mass

registration and mop-up exercises. Using the Ghana Card will make on-line applications

for paper passports as easier and quicker.

7. The National Identity Register will facilitate the generation of credible data for national

development planning purposes. We can tell from the data, for instance, which category of

professionals we need to train and encourage for national development, and the number of

persons who are vulnerable, and in need of special assistance.

The Way Forward

NIA has used the opportunity afforded by the lock-down induced by the COVID-19 pandemic to

print most of the cards in backlog and to adjudicate the hundreds of thousands of applications that

had gone into adjudication because of conflicts and inconsistencies in personal information

provided by some applicants to the NIA in previous and the current registration exercises. The data

released are being printed, and all cards in backlog and adjudication should be printed by end of

May 2020 for issuance to the applicants.

At the appropriate time, NIA will resume and complete the mass registration exercise in the Eastern

Region. It will then undertake a mop-up mass registration exercise in the Greater Accra Region

during which time it will also issue the cards to those Ghanaians whose cards are ready. In addition,

NIA will undertake a mop-up exercise in five (5) Regions which had the lowest registration results,

namely Upper East, Upper West, Bono, Bono East and Ahafo regions, and issue all the printed

cards to the applicants resident in those regions. Finally, NIA will set up Regional, Municipal and

District offices across the country to ensure continuous registration and issuance of the Ghana

Card.

SGND: ACI. FRANCIS PALMDETI

HEAD, CORPORATE AFFAIRS, NIA









Source: Daily Graphic









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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The Member of Parliament (MP) for Evalue Ajomoro Gwira (EAG) Constituency of the Western Region, Hon Catherine Ablema Afeku has distributed over five hundred food items to some communities in her constituency.

The items worth thousands of cedis include rice, cooking oil, tin tomatoes, and other glossaries that were distributed to the aged.

The gesture was in addition to a recent similar exercise embarked on at some parts of her constituency aimed at cushioning the vulnerable during and after the lockdown.

The beneficiary communities include Kegyina, Keyina, Eselenu, and Yedeyesele.

Presenting the items on her behalf, the Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Nzema East Municipality, Mr. Frank Okponye reiterated the Mp's commitment and support to all irrespective of their affiliation.

He added that the Mp through her contacts and efforts in putting in place measures that would seek to alleviate and improve the wellbeing of the constituents, this he stressed as the provision of portal drinking water systems to the remote communities in the constituency and other social intervention needs.

He used the exercise to sensitize the beneficiaries on the healthy and safe measures to protect themselves from contracting the coronavirus and also distributed some protective items such as nose masks to them.

---EbiamoTVGH
An e-Sewa Kendra (eSK), a one-stop centre for accessing various services in district courts, was made operational at Tis Hazari district courts on Friday, in pursuance to eSK programme initiated by the e-committee of the Supreme Court on pan-India basis.

Sidharth Mathur, Delhi Higher Judicial Services officer, who is posted as Central Project Coordinator at Delhi High Court, informed that the details of facilities provided by the eSewa Kendra (eSK) can be accessed through web link https://delhidistrictcourts.nic.in/2020/misc/eSevaKendraDelhiDistrictCourts.pdf which has been posted at the web portal of Delhi district courts.

The e-committee of the Supreme Court has approved the establishment and operationalisation of eSKs.

Mathur said the eSKs shall function as one-stop centre for accessing all e-courts and initially, they may roll out several services for the litigants, including handling inquiries about case status, next date of hearing and other details.

The district courts portal mentioned the facilities to be provided through the eSKs which include that it will also facilitate e-filing of petitions right from scanning of hardcopies, appending e-signatures, uploading them into CIS and generation of filing number.

The facility will assist the litigants in online purchase of e-stamp papers/e-payments, downloading of --courts mobile application for Android and IOS, handling queries about judges on leave, location of a particular court, its cause-list and whether the case is taken up for hearing or not.

The eSKs will guide people on how to avail free legal services from the District Legal Service Authority, High Court Legal Service Committee and Supreme Court Legal Service Committee and facilitate disposal of traffic challan in virtual courts as also online compounding of traffic challans and other petty offences.

It will explain the method of arranging and holding a video conference court hearing and providing soft copy of judicial orders/judgments via email, WhatsApp or any other available mode.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Visited New Zealand in aftermath of attacks which killed 51 people in March 2019

Told community who were targeted last year 'I stand here ready to help you'

Prince William reconnected with some of survivors over a video call on Thursday

The Duke of Cambridge joined a video call to reconnect with members of the Christchurch Muslim community that he met last year in the aftermath of the Al-Noor and Linwood mosque terrorist attacks.

During the call, Prince William, 37, talked to Imams and representatives from the Al-Noor and Linwood mosques, and the Muslim Association of Canterbury, about how their community is doing 14 months on from the attacks.

In April last year, the father-of-three visited New Zealand on behalf of Her Majesty The Queen to pay tribute to those affected by the Christchurch mosques terrorist attack, which killed 51 people during Friday Prayer on March 15, 2019.

The Duke met Imam Alani Lateef, Imam Gamal Fouda and Farid Ahmad, all of whom joined him on today's call.

Prince William, 37, told members of the Christchurch Muslim community who were targeted in a shooting massacre last year 'I stand here ready to help you' in a video call on Thursday. Pictured, top row left to right: Farid Ahmad, Imam Gamal Fouda and Imam Alani Lateef. Middle row left to right: Dahabo Ali, Mohamed Jama, Dr Megan woods and Faisal Sayed.

This comes as the gunman, Australian white supremacist Brenton Tarrant, 29, is due to be sentenced after pleading guilty to 51 counts of murder, 40 counts of attempted murder and one count of terrorism.

The shooting was the deadliest in New Zealand's modern history, and the government responded by banning most semi-automatic weapons.

Prince William spoke about grief and healing with Imam Alani Lateef and Imam Gamal Fouda from the mosques, members of the community including Farid Ahmad who lost his wife Husna in the attack, and representatives from the Muslim Association of Canterbury.

He said: 'As-Salam-u-Alaikum,', meaning 'Peace be unto you', before asking about how the killings were still being felt by the community today.

During his two-day visit to New Zealand last year, Prince William headed to the Justice and Emergency Services Precinct, where he met with the police and St John's Ambulance staff, the first responders on the scene of the Christchurch terrorist attack

The Duke of Cambridge shook the hand of Imam Gamal Fouda of Masjid Al Noor as he arrived at the Mosque in Christchurch last year

Community member Dahabo Ali told the duke she knows some families who are 'still in shock' and raw emotions have resurfaced following the guilty plea.

When the duke asked about the impact of the shootings on the younger generation, she said: 'The youth are making Islamic identity normal so Islamophobia is something of the past rather than something continuing to fight every single day.

'People are continuing to not only feel safe but have their voices heard and being seen in New Zealand.

'I think with everything that happened we are being heard and seen and things are changing.'

Prince William told them: 'I'm really proud of all of you, the whole community and the New Zealand Government for how you have all dealt with such an atrocity.

The Duke of Cambridge met with young members of the Muslim community of Christchurch during a two-day visit after the attack on March 15

William also met with the family of five-year-old Alen Alsati and her father Wasseim, who were among the people who had been wounded in the attack, and were recovering at the Starship Children's Hospital in Auckland

'You are a role model for how something so tragic can be negotiated with the utmost grace and dignity.

'I only hope that it's been a year now and acknowledgement memorial of attacks go on at some point that Covid-19 has delayed and I only hope that brings further healing for all of you.

'But I stand here ready to help in any way I can. If there is more than needs to be done don't hesitate to reach out.'

Currently, Muslim communities around the world are observing Ramadan - which this year began on April 23 and will end on May 23.

Prince William spoke with the community following Iftar - the evening meal that breaks the fast.

Faisal Sayed, general secretary of Linwood Islamic Centre, told him the community has 'rallied together' to deliver food to families during the 'very unique Ramadan' and Imams have been using social media to connect with their flock.
Coronavirus (COVID-19) tally as compiled by Johns Hopkins University. (Previous numbers in parentheses.)

Total U.S. confirmed cases: 1,725,656 (1,703,989)

Total U.S. deaths: 101,706 (100,651)

Total global cases: 5,851,494 (5,731,837)

Total global deaths: 361,270 (356,606)

Savings rate hits record during pandemic shutdown

With U.S. households confined to their homes for the last two months, Americans have socked away a record amount of cash. The U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis reports that personal income rose sharply in April as Americans began receiving government stimulus payments.

At the same time, consumer spending dropped sharply, leading to a savings rate of 33 percent, the highest on record.

Its always a good thing when households are able to save money, but some economists think too much saving wont help the economy recover. They say the next few weeks may be critical as consumers have more chances to spend at stores and restaurants.

Chicagos reopening has been delayed until next week

Illinois joined a number of states in reopening most businesses, including hair salons, restaurants, and retail stores. But Chicago will wait until next week to join the party.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has delayed the citys limited reopening until Wednesday, June 3 after Dr. Deborah Birx, the coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, expressed some concern about the city. She said the number of cases in Chicago appears to have leveled off but has not gone down as it has in some other parts of the country.

In the rest of Illinois, restaurants can open outdoor dining areas with tables six feet apart. Retailers can reopen with no more than 50 percent of normal capacity.

Some stimulus payments mistaken for junk mail

Millions of Americans are still receiving their economic impact payments from the government, and some are mistaking them for junk mail. The Treasury Department has shifted from sending paper checks to sending prepaid debit cards that many recipients say look like credit card solicitations.

Reports have begun to circulate on social media about recipients cutting up the cards or tossing them in the trash, unaware that the card contains their long-awaited payment.

The latest round of payments come in plain white envelopes with the return address: Money Network Cardholder Services, PO Box 247022, Omaha, NE 68124-7022.

Mixed data on housing

The coronavirus has had a huge impact on the housing market, bringing sales and listings to a near standstill. Where the market goes from here isnt exactly clear.

In its monthly statement, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that pending home sales plunged more than 21 percent in April. That category is a measure of contracts for home sales that were signed but not yet closed. NAR said thats likely the low for the year.

At the same time, Zillow reports there is evidence that both buyers and sellers are returning to the market. However, it notes that inventory levels are still extremely tight, leading to higher prices for the homes that are selling.

Prescriptions for hydroxychloroquine surged in March

After President Trump mentioned the 60-year-old antiviral drug hydroxychloroquine at a briefing in March, prescriptions for the drug surged by 2,000 percent.

Researchers at Brigham and Womens Hospital and Harvard Medical School compared the number of prescriptions issued from March 15 to March 21 with the same period in 2019. This year there were 45,858 prescriptions written compared to 2,208 the year before.

A number of health experts have been highly skeptical of the drug as a treatment for the coronavirus. However, some doctors who have prescribed it for their patients said it is very effective, but only when taken in conjunction with zinc.

Around the nation
By Trend

The subsidiary of the Azerbaijan Railways CJSC, ADY Container LLC, will import cargo on favorable terms, a source in the ADY Container told Trend.

According to the source, it is offered to transport cargo from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to Azerbaijan, as well as by transit from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan to Georgia and Turkey through Azerbaijan.

Aiming at prevention of problems arising from the movement of other vehicles during the cargo transportation by entrepreneurs, importers and exporters in the country within the current pandemic situation, ADY Container LLC, as a state-owned company, offers cargo transportation services on more favorable terms.

Cargo transportation from Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan will be carried out via multimodal transportation of 20, 40 and 45-foot containers of the company, the source noted.

ADY Container LLC has begun expanding cooperation, mainly with countries in the Far East region - China, Japan, South Korea, as well as with Ukraine, Turkey, Russia, Iran and India, in order to increase the volume of cargo transportation along the international East West Transport Corridor, North-South Transport Corridor and Trans-Caspian International Transport Route.

ADY Container LLC is engaged in the storage, maintenance and transportation of containers in accordance with international standards.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Bengaluru, May 15 : Given the current COVID-19 scenario, modern workers need a streamlined laptop they can use to collaborate from nearly any remote location and according to a Lenovo India executive, the new ThinkBook series is here to empower small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with providing enhanced security and redefining productivity.

The company recently launched lightweight yet sleek ThinkBook 14 and ThinkBook 15 at a starting price of Rs 30,990.

"The new wave of young business leaders expect their workplace devices to do more but with a minimalist look. ThinkBook is a perfect fit to fill this existing product gap in the SMB marketplace," Ashish Sikka, Director SMB, Lenovo India, said in a statement on Friday.

Backed by customer research, ThinkBook is specially designed for SMBs buying laptops for perceived design and price advantages, but also miss out on business grade features and security in the process.

For multi-tasking, ThinkBook 14 and ThinkBook 15 are equipped with AMD Radeon 625 and 620 graphic cards respectively, making content consumption more enjoyable, loading web pages faster, streaming video smoother, and displaying images clearer.

To facilitate fast file transfers, they are built with a USB Type-C port. The long battery life in both the laptops keeps them running all day with RapidCharge technology that charges up to 80 per cent in just one hour.

The new ThinkBook laptops come with 'Smart Power On' feature where the 'Power On button' is integrated with a fingerprint reader (FPR) for easy biometric authentication to ensure only authorized users can turn on the device.

Apart from hardware, Lenovo also offers business-grade services including international warranty and support upto 5 years to help SMB decision-makers prevent productivity interruptions with faster and hassle-free support, said Sikka.

The ThinkBook 14 comes with up to 10th Gen Intel Core i7 6-core processor, AMD Radeon 625 graphics, dual drive support within SSD-only model size, full-function Type-C port (Gen 2), Hidden USB port, Wifi6 and battery life up to 12 hours.

Key features of the new ThinkBook 15 are up to 10th Gen Intel Corea i7 6-core processor, AMD Radeon 620 graphics, dual drive support within SSD-only model size, Hotkeys for Skype for Business and Smart Power On (optional), and similar battery life.

"Our vision of 'smarter technology for all' is a world where every person and business has access to technology that enables them to achieve their own intelligent transformation," said Sikka.
Officer Charles "Rob" Roberts, a 20-year veteran of the Glen Ridge Police Department in New Jersey, died from COVID-19 on Monday.

The department says Roberts contracted the virus in April while on the job. After nearly three weeks in the hospital, he became one of the latest officers of more than 100 to die from COVID-19, according to an analysis of reported coronavirus deaths compiled by the Fraternal Order of Police.

Experts say police officers not only have to deal with death in their ranks but also the lasting trauma from the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.

Record number of US police officers died by suicide in 2019, advocacy group says

Tom Coghlan, a former NYPD psychologist, told ABC News that policing during the pandemic is "emotionally taxing" on officers in the field and that much like 9/11, trauma for law enforcement officers from the COVID-19 crisis won't hit until well after the pandemic is over.

"We saw an uptick in suicides and an emotional treatment needs, not in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. It was a year to 18 months after that. You started to see the uptick in suicides and the uptick in emotional troubles," he said.

PHOTO: Houston Police cadets wear masks as they prepare to have their class photo taken during a graduation ceremony at the Houston Police Academy, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Friday, May 1, 2020, in Houston. (David J. Phillip/AP Photo)

What differentiates this crisis, Coghlan said, is that the impacts are global.

"I think what you're going to see is a year to 18 months after this hits its apex. I think that that's when you're going to start to see the real uptick in emotional needs. And then hopefully not potentially suicides," he said.

Steve Casstevens, the head of the International Association of Chiefs of Police told ABC News that police officers have a lot to deal with during COVID-19.

"I think you're going to see ... the same because we are trained professionals that need to respond to the call, fix a problem, respond to the next call, fix a problem, respond to the next call and fix a problem. Then we have to go home and fix our problems at home. And then we do it over and over again," Casstevens said. "We don't have time to just sit back and reflect on the dangers of the day."

Story continues

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.

Casstevens, who is also the police chief in Buffalo Grove, Illinois, stressed that it is "absolutely critical" for police departments to provide multiple avenues for an officer to seek help.

"That sometimes means, simply talking to your police chaplain, because some people are more comfortable talking to a faith-based person or you must have a peer support group established in your department because some officers don't want to talk to the chaplain, but they're more comfortable talking to one of their peers or a third avenue," he said

He said that those options come from the top  from courageous chiefs and executive staff.

Law enforcement groups say the continued toll of the novel coronavirus especially hits home for the law enforcement community now because it is Police Week, an annual gathering of law enforcement officials that usually takes place in Washington, D.C., and honors fallen officers.

Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.) a former police chief, spearheaded the Law Enforcement Mental Health and Wellness Act, which was signed into law in 2018. The bill provides resources to address mental health challenges faced by members of law enforcement.

"Law enforcement officers risk their lives every day to keep us safe, but now every encounter potentially carries the risk of infection," Demings said. "And even as they worry about keeping their communities safe, they, like all of us, are also worried about the health and safety of their families. We have a responsibility to keep our officers safe from both the physical and mental dangers of the job. That means providing the training, personal protective equipment, counseling, and support that they need."

MORE: Violent crime down in many big cities amid coronavirus lockdown, police say

The emphasis from law enforcement groups now more than ever is mental health.

The Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Foundation said it is asking all of its chapters and lodges to perform a virtual roll call to check in with their members on sick leave.

"Camaraderie can be chicken soup for an officer's soul, and that is why I am asking our great national law enforcement organizations to initiate virtual rolls calls of their sick members. This proactive initiative would add to the mental health services law enforcement is offering," Jon Adler, a former Justice Department official and president of FLEOA, said in a release.

What to know about 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 US and Worldwide: coronavirus map

In an effort to boost morale during the pandemic, Blue Help, a nonprofit group that tracks law enforcement suicides, asked departments what they needed most  and they responded that they needed PPE and coffee, so along with their partners, Blue Help sent coffee and gloves to police departments in 49 states.

"During this pandemic, officers find themselves under more pressure than ever before," Nick Greco, a Blue HELP board member, told ABC News. "Not only are they dealing with an unknown, unseen enemy, but the daily stress of the job itself. Now more than ever, officer mental health and wellness must be a priority. Officers should utilize their peer support programs, EAP [emergency assistance program], or seek out counseling from private providers. Reducing stress and anxiety is a challenge that can be dealt with through eating healthy, drinking more water, taking walks or even simply getting fresh air during a shift to clear one's mind."

Chuck Wexler of the Police Executive Research Forum told ABC News that many first responders will need support.

"There's no question that police officers, health workers, ambulance drivers are being subjected to enormous trauma, which really underscores the importance of providing them with mental health support in the days and years ahead," he told ABC News.

Law enforcement groups urge mental health awareness amid coronavirus originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
New Delhi, May 15 : The Union Home Ministry on Friday urged states and Union Territories to ensure that migrant workers do not walk back home as the government is running special buses or Shramik specials to facilitate their journey.

The Ministry directed them to widely disseminate the arrangements for travel among the migrant workers and counsel them to not walk when they can travel in buses and trains.

With the cooperation of states and Union Territories, the Ministry of Railways is running more than 100 Shramik special trains per day. The Ministry said it is ready to arrange additional trains as per their requirement.

In a letter to State Chief Secretaries, Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla stated, "The government has allowed movement of migrant workers. It is now the responsibility of all states and Union Territories to ensure that movement of stranded migrant workers who are willing to go to their home states is facilitated." Ajay Bhalla urged them to ensure that there is no movement of migrant workers on roads and railway tracks as the same is facilitated through special buses or Shramik special trains.

In the letter, the Union Home Secretary alluded to a letter dated May 11 pertaining to faster movement of stranded migrant workers through buses and Shramik special trains.

In the letter, the situation of migrant workers walking on roads and on railway tracks was highlighted and it was advised that in case, they are found in such condition, they should be counselled, given shelters, food and water till they board the trains or buses to their native places.

Bhalla, however, rued that movement of migrant workers walking on roads, railway tracks and travelling in trucks is still being noticed in different parts of the country.
The 39 health workers of the Ho Teaching Hospital (HTH) who have been prevailed upon to self-quarantined was for security and precautionary reasons, Mr Amos Dzah, Public Affairs Officer of the Hospital has said.



He said samples of 38 staff excluding the positive case by a patient was being tested at the Ho COVID-19 Testing facility saying, not all health workers in the pool had direct contact with the patient.



Mr Dzah told the Ghana News Agency that a joint team from the Ho Municipal Hospital and the HTH have begun contact tracing for possible testing towards containing the spread of COVID-19.



He said the woman in question was brought in unconscious and foaming, but staff on duty resuscitated her after which they noticed she had difficulty in breathing.



The Public Affairs Officer said the patient was then subjected to the protocols and had her swaps taken and analysed, which turned out to be positive.



He said the precarious nature of this particular case made it impossible to isolate the patient from the onset in an answer to a question of avoiding the bureaucracy or laborious processes in these times.



Meanwhile, Dr Archibald Letsa, Volta Regional Minister has received a cutting edge testing and research (PCR real-time) equipment with its accessories for the Ho COVID-19 Testing Centre through the Ministry of Health, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Ghanas Atomic Energy Commission (GAEC).



The equipment has the capacity to test up to 2,300 samples within 24 hours with the Centre which hitherto could test between 100 and 300 samples within the same time frame.



The Region as of Thursday has recorded 34 confirmed cases, 28 recoveries with no deaths whilst five patients are responding to treatment from the facility designated for that purpose.

Source: GNA









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Still bearing the marks of his dramatic arrest on Thursday morning, Ricardo 'Rick' Barbaro has appeared in a Melbourne court charged with the murder of 26-year-old Ellie Price.

After a 10-day manhunt across state lines, Barbaro, 33, fronted Melbourne Magistrates Court on Saturday dressed in black tracksuit pants and the same grey sweater he was wearing when in custody in Sydney.

Ricardo Barbaro escorted to a prison van at Burwood Court in Sydney on Thursday. Credit:AAP

Barbaro had no supporters in the courtroom for the brief hearing, which was mostly formalities between magistrate John Lesser and Barbaro's lawyer Campbell MacCallum, who was speaking from interstate.

Barbaro sat quietly in the dock and spoke only when asked by the magistrate if he was coming off medication or drugs.
Muslim pilgrims during the annual Islamic Haj pilgrimage in Mecca in 2019. (FILE PHOTO: Ashraf Amra/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

SINGAPORE  The Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) said on Friday (15 May) that it has decided to defer the Haj pilgrimage plans of 900 pilgrims from this year to the next, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

All 900 pilgrims who have registered to perform their pilgrimage this year will be automatically rescheduled to do so in 2021 instead.

MUIS added in a media release that while Saudi Arabia has yet to make an official announcement on the status of this years Haj pilgrimage to Mecca, it has taken the deferment decision in conjunction with the Ministry of Health (MOH) as a responsible stakeholder.

The annual Haj pilgrimage involves the gathering of about 2.5 million people from all over the world, in the city of (Mecca), the council said in the media release. As with the case of overseas travel, there are inherent risks for Singaporean pilgrims to participate in the Haj and contract the virus.

During a virtual press conference on Friday, Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli said that all 900 Singaporean Haj pilgrims who booked a spot for this years journey will be given priority for next years trip.

As for whether this would affect the booking of places for the 2021 Haj pilgrimage, he said it was too far ahead of time to look at the various scenarios that we may have to face.

But what we can assure our pilgrims now is that the 900 already registered will be given priority. I think that is the best assurance we can give, said Masagos.

How we will face whatever situations, the future is something that we will tackle when the situation arises, he added.

MUIS chief executive Esa Masood said letters would be sent to all Haj pilgrims registered for this year and that those who are re-thinking their trips can get in touch with their travel agents for possible refunds once the circuit breaker period ends on 1 June.

Several factors in deferment decision

MUIS cited several factors in its decision to defer the Haj pilgrimages.

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First, more than 80 per cent of those scheduled to perform Haj this year are above 50 years old, putting them under the category of individuals facing a greater risk complications and mortality if they contract COVID-19.

Second, younger pilgrims who are working have expressed challenges in obtaining leave to perform the Haj and concerns over their job security, given the current challenging economic situation. This is compounded by the fact that Singaporean travellers must serve 14-day Stay-Home Notices upon their return to Singapore.

MUIS said that, in past years, pilgrims would usually have made payment and secured their travel arrangements and accommodation before the month of Ramadan. However, with the uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, it has become increasingly challenging to adequately prepare logistical and administrative requirements for the pilgrimage.

Furthermore, with Singapores healthcare resources fully committed to managing COVID-19 and other pressing hospital requirements, MUIS is unable to assemble a team of doctors and nurses to support this years Haj delegation.

Fatwa Committee supports decision

The Fatwa Committee in Singapore convened to discuss the matter, and supports the decision for the deferment of Haj for Singaporean pilgrims to the following year for reasons of their health and safety.

The committee is of the opinion that in the current context, not all the pre-conditions for a safe Haj are met, and therefore, they recommend that the Singapore delegation defer its Haj plans in order to avoid potential harm, MUIS said.

The council has also consulted the Association of Muslim Travel Agents (AMTAS) Taskforce on the welfare, health and safety of the pilgrims, and received the taskforces support to defer the Singapore delegation.

At the press conference, Singapores Mufti Nazirudin Mohd Nasir described the Haj deferment as another major and difficult adjustment we have had to make to our religious life given our challenging circumstances.

The good news for pilgrims is patience in itself  waiting for a safer time to go to Haj  is a very important form of worship in Islam with the greatest reward, he added.

Monitoring developments in Saudi Arabia

MUIS said that it has been monitoring the developments in Saudi Arabia since the announcement of the suspension of Umrah pilgrimage to minimise the spread of COVID-19 to Mecca and Medinah.

In March, Saudi Arabias Ministry of Haj and Umrah issued an advisory to Haj agencies around the world to stop taking on new reservations or payments for Haj pilgrimage this year. Saudia Airlines also announced the suspension of all international flights until further notice.

The Ministry of Healths director of medical services Kenneth Mak noted that there has been widespread and sustained community transmission of the coronavirus within Saudi Arabia.

As of 13 May, the country has seen about 14,000 confirmed COVID-19 cases, over 250 deaths and has also seen a steady increase of more than 1,000 new daily cases since mid-April.

Mak also pointed to the fact that pilgrims in Mecca would come from a variety of countries, some of which are considered as having a high risk of community transmission.

In the midst of a COVID-19 outbreak, there is a risk (pilgrims) may they may get exposed to infections being carried by other people who may... not have much symptoms, and there is a risk that they will bring back that infection and transmitted (it) among our own local community when they return, he added.

MUIS will send letters to the affected pilgrims on the details on the Haj deferment, and the next steps they should take. Should pilgrims have any clarifications, they can contact their respective Haj general service agents or the MUIS hotline at 6350-5369.

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Malaysian prosecutors have dropped money laundering charges against a producer on The Wolf of Wall Street.

Riza Aziz, the stepson of ex-Prime Minister Najib Razak, reached a settlement with the government and was discharged on Thursday without being formally acquitted, meaning that prosecutors can revive the charge.

The anti-graft agency said in a statement that the government will recover $107.3m of overseas assets involved in the case  about 43% of the $248m Aziz was accused of having laundered from the 1MDB state investment fund. Riza is also required to pay an unspecified fine.

The move was slammed by Human Rights Watch on Friday as a triumph for impunity and corruption. Former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said he was worried the decision could set a precedent in graft cases in which thieves will be let off if they return the stolen money.

Riza was the third person in his family to be charged last year over the 1MDB graft scandal that helped Mahathirs alliance oust Najibs long-ruling government in May 2018 elections. Both Najib and his wife Rosmah Mansor face multiple graft charges, and are currently on trial. Najib says his family was targeted by Mahathirs government as political vengeance.

Rizas discharge came under current Prime Minister Muhyiddin Yassins government, which came into power in March amid political manoeuvring and Mahathirs resignation. The new government includes Najibs party, which has several other leaders also facing graft charges.

Riza Aziz walking free is a triumph for impunity and corruption, and running roughshod over the rights and interests of the Malaysian people, said Phil Robertson, Human Rights Watchs deputy Asia director.

I think letting Riza Aziz go is all about gauging the publics reaction for potential next steps that could involve Najib. No one should forget that putting a former Malaysian PM on trial was unbelievable to start with and this was never going to be an easy road, Robertson said.

Mahathir, a two-time prime minister, quit in February to protest his ally Muhyiddins move to pull their party out of the ruling alliance and form a Malay-majority government with Najibs party and several others.

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Mahathir, 94, said on Friday that he couldnt accept the prosecutors settlement with Riza.

I am worried because there are many other thieves in this country, he said. There is a possibility that in the future, the big criminals that stole a lot of money will be let off if they return the money.

Najib set up the 1MDB fund to finance development in Malaysia when he took office in 2009, but it accumulated billions in debts and US investigators allege at least $4.5bn were stolen from the fund and laundered by Najibs associates.

Prosecutors last year alleged that $248m misappropriated from 1MDB were channelled into bank accounts of Rizas company, Red Granite Pictures Inc, which produced films including the Martin-Scorsese-directed film The Wolf of Wall Street, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

US investigators alleged Red Granite used money stolen from 1MDB to finance Hollywood films. Red Granite has paid the US government $60m to settle claims it benefited from the 1MDB scandal, and the US returned the money to Malaysia.

The Associated Press contributed to this story
Men are seen on a vessel at a port by the bank of the Yalu river in Sinuiju, North Korea, opposite the Chinese border city of Dandong, May 2, 2019.

North Korea has allowed a military-controlled seaport on the countrys west coast to reopen, indicating that the military is resuming its foreign currency earning trade activities while the rest of the country remains on lockdown to combat the coronavirus epidemic, sources told RFA.

Haeyang port, which is the largest port in North Pyongan province, is located in Ryongchon county. It was among maritime ports closed off at the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak in January along with the countrys land border with China. The stoppage of all trade with China resulted in a decimated the local economy.

Since the end of April, the seaport in Ryongchon has been reopened, a source working in the trade industry who requested anonymity to speak freely told RFAs Korean Service May 5.

This means that trade between North Korea and China has resumed after a long hiatus due to the coronavirus crisis, said the source.

The source said only companies with ties to the military can utilize the port, however.

It is the largest seaport in the province, and only the military has the rights to it. The port is currently being used by trade companies affiliated with the military to earn foreign currency, said the source.

The reopening of Ryongchon port is an official resumption of trade, but it is still the only port trading right now.

Trade by sea has resumed, but the general ports in Dongyang and Unpasan, near the border area of North Pyongan province remain blocked, said the source.

Authorities resumed trade in [Ryongchon] port first in preparation for a worsening food shortage among military units. They are allowing foreign currency-making companies to trade over the sea with China, so they can procure food for the military, the source added.

Ships that had been docked at other ports are now trying to take advantage of the situation in Ryongchon.

Since were trading again, trade vessels that had been waiting the trade freeze out in general ports such as those in Dongyang and Unpasan are now flocking to [Ryongchon], the source said.

But each vessel must contribute U.S. $500 to the military to use the port here, the source said, adding that the vessels utilizing the port include military fishing boats and ordinary boats hauling rice.

Another trader in North Pyongan Province, who requested anonymity for legal reasons, told RFA on the same day, Haeyang port is a [relatively] newly established foreign currency earning port that was built with the aim of securing military funds. [It has been around] since the inauguration of the Kim Jong Un regime [in 2011].

The port is wider than most other ports and is connected to the West Sea, so many trading ships regularly use it, the second source said, using a colloquial Korean name for the Yellow Sea.

Since the epidemic started, trading companies, including those owned by the military, were struggling to keep their heads above water as trade was stopped.

The coronavirus crisis has caused the military to suffer serious financial difficulties as maritime port trade had been suspended altogether, said the second source.

To overcome this, military trading companies have been engaging in smuggling since mid-March using the port of Unpasan, where the border command is stationed. The smuggling of trade companies belonging to the military was possible because the authorities tacitly allowed it, the second source added.

According to the source, the border command is mainly concerned with shipping costs and will not thoroughly check on what is being shipped.

I can bring in anything, but the shipping cost per ton is 3,500 Chinese yuan ($494). If we pay that, we can bring in everything, including agricultural machinery and cranes, in all sorts of ways through Dongyang or Unpasan, the second source said.

But regular traders are asking why the government is giving preferential treatment to the military trading companies, and they are forced to continue taking risks by smuggling.

In April, smuggling by the military and some of the other national foreign currency making companies was rampant. The authorities were concerned about coronavirus coming in, so they started controlling it more strictly, the second source said.

But now that the port [at Ryongchon] has been reopened and only the military-affiliated trading companies are allowed to go try to make foreign currency, the general trading companies are protesting, the second source said.

Why do they give only preferential treatment to the military?

Reported by Hyemin Son for RFAs Korean Service. Translated by Leejin Jun. Written in English by Eugene Whong.
High on a foggy hill in southern Mexico, someone was giggling. The sound emanated from a hut shaped like a beehive, which, when you drew close, was bathed in the scent of eucalyptus. The person giggling was a new mother named Anarosa, relaxing with the village sauna mistress and a friend who was telling dirty jokes.

They were taking part in a lifesaving ritual for new mothers, observed in Anarosas village in Chiapas, and in variations around the world  including Houston. Its called a cuarentena, and it requires new mothers to observe 40 days of social isolation except for their closest family and friends. As a result, rural Mexican women like Anarosa are among the worlds experts in appreciating and sticking to medical quarantine. What they know can help the rest of us defend against COVID-19.

Its no coincidence that cuarentena sounds familiar: like quarantine, it comes from the Latin word for 40, which is the traditional number of days for enforced medical isolation. And traditional cuarentena are indeed enforced  by the whole community. Here are the rules: For the first 40 days after giving birth, a new mother must stay home, and in some cases, in bed. (Anarosas village allowed two mandatory exceptions: two or three aromatherapy saunas plus house calls from the village massage therapist. Only an irresponsible mother would skip either duty.)

The goal? Exactly the same as the social distancing were practicing here: to keep vulnerable people safe. In remote areas with no doctor, no plumbing and pigs and chickens underfoot, just walking outside can expose new mothers to lethal infection. Families know from experience what research confirms: loss of a new mother endangers the well-being of all her children. The family scattering after a death can strain the resources of a whole community.

But a cuarentena is also designed to protect the mothers immune system and emotional health. In contrast to the current pressures to use our time at home to achieve, a cuarentena forbids new mothers to do anything taxing at all. During pregnancy, a woman may walk miles for water and firewood, grind pounds of corn, and cook and scrub until the day she gives birth. During the cuarentena, she may not wash even one dish. No laundry; no cooking. Dire taboo prohibits her from so much as touching a broom. Instead, everyone in the community treats the 40 days of a cuarentena as a medically, emotionally  and even spiritually  sensitive time. A woman is being a good mother just by resting.

We take care of ourselves, Anarosa told me. I heard these words over and over while learning about cuarentenas. When I met Anarosa, she was living in Akron, Ohio, where shed been working with other Mayan immigrants in a pencil factory and quit right before having her second baby. She loved the American anesthesia, but doing a cuarentena here was much harder.

In traditional cultures like hers, the grandmother typically organizes loved ones to do 100 percent of a new mothers chores. Neighbors drop off special foods: beans, chocolate with cinnamon, and wild purslane, a natural antidepressant. Family members whisk the baby off to be changed. Along with her baby, the new mother is protected as if she is a newborn.

In Akron, while her husband worked at a tree nursery, Anarosa spent the 40 days after giving birth at home, where her sister-in-law, Carmen, shouldered her cleaning and cooking. She knows Ill do it for her one day, Anarosa said when I visited. Carmen, a broad-shouldered woman in shorts and T-shirt, looked exhausted. But Anarosa, lounging with her baby as bananas simmered on the stove, looked beatific. How are the first days going? I asked tentatively.

Very tranquil, she said with a smile.

While its not termed that way, mental health is key in a cuarentena. A new mother must have quiet companionship, help with breastfeeding and peace. In Chiapas, Anarosa was served regular cups of atole, a delicious, Guinness-like mix of corn and milk rich in complex carbohydrates. In Houston, the owner of La Guadalupana Bakery explained to me that each serving of atole must be carefully warmed on the stove, like a baby bottle.

This extreme attentiveness to new mothers helps explain some astonishing aspects of Latino health, said Dr. Amelie Ramirez, Chairman, Population Health Sciences department at UT Health San Antonio. In the United States, where Mexican-born women are among the poorest, least-educated newcomers, their babies are 10 percent less likely to die in the first hour, day and week of life than those of non-Hispanic U.S.-born women.

And unlike U.S.-born women, one in seven of whom suffer postpartum depression, mothers in remote, preindustrial communities  like Anarosas village  sometimes report less postpartum depression as we understand it. While doctors cant predict which mothers will develop PPD, there are known risk factors: a history of depression, recent change of homes, sleep deprivation  and isolation. Structure, and strong emotional and practical support can buffer those risks, said medical anthropologist Laurence Kruckman, author of a groundbreaking cuarentena study based in Colombia.

Its one of the paradoxes of American life, of course, that this level of care for new mothers  a norm in poorer cultures  is almost impossible to recreate here. We live too far from our families; we are too mobile to ask neighbors for that kind of help. Above all, most women simply cant afford to take off work for 40 days to care for their newborn, and paid maternity leave remains a benefit only the fortunate tend to have.

Seventy-three-year-old Eva Hernandez remembers her long-ago cuarentena in Mexico City dreamily. I didnt do much of anything, she said. I relaxed and looked at my handsome baby. But a half century later in Houston, when a similar approach to quarantine is just as medically important for someone her age, she cant afford to stay home from her job cleaning houses. Even so, shes kept the habit of meticulously safeguarding her health. I wear my little mask whenever I leave the house, she said. I protect you and you protect me.

Its a protective mindset that recent generations of Americans havent felt the need to take on. Yet for new mothers, that undervaluing of care has led to an epidemic of maternal mortality  an epidemic in which fully half of deaths happen after a mother has given birth. African American women suffer from this poor care the most .

In the absence of a vaccine or a cure for COVID-19, the cuarentenas habits of humility and prevention can also help us defend ourselves against COVID-19. In the mountains where I lived, there are no doctors, Anarosa said. There is no medicine. We cant just go to a doctor to fix things if we get sick.

People in traditional societies also know the emotional costs of isolation  boredom, anxiety, fear  and the cuarentena offers tricks for making it less difficult. Peer pressure and seemingly random taboos, like not touching a broom, help new mothers stick to the rules. Beloved comfort foods really do make a difference  though in a cuarentena, those foods, like atole, also are high in nutrients. Routines and ritual create a feeling of order.

But most importantly during the era of COVID-19, the cuarentena shows that humble, daily choices save lives. New mothers can be nurtured like newborns. We can alter our habits, like the Mexican laborers in Akron who improvise housework to let their wives rest. Being gentle is a kind of medical care. And, most important of all, protecting the vulnerable is a prescription for protecting ourselves.

Kolker is the author of  The Immigrant Advantage: What We Can Learn About Newcomers to America About Health, Happiness And Hope , newly released as a Penguin Random House audiobook.
Always get three quotes. Thats the golden rule. Get three quotes when youre hiring tradies, get three quotes when youre buying whitegoods, get three quotes when youre choosing a short profound epigraph for the start of your new novel that will make readers think youve got something important to say about the human condition when its actually a pretty shallow read.

Well, no longer do I have to break tradies' hearts because now I can do my own tradie-work...

But the Three Quote golden rule can be hard, especially with tradies. I always feel bad for the ones I reject, like Im breaking their hearts. I feel like I should say to them: Look, youre great but youre just not what I need at the moment ... youre going to make a lucky customer really happy someday, I know it."

Then I imagine them crying at home in front of the TV, watching old tradie rom-coms and eating a tub of Connoisseurs Salted Caramel ice-cream with a bricklaying trowel.

Well, no longer do I have to break tradies' hearts because now I can do my own tradie-work; I have the time, the energy, and the all-consuming fear of an uncertain financial future. The kitchen tap was leaking and I thought, "Hmmm, I can fix that myself  I dont need to call The Tap Doctor with his seven-year medical degree in Colorectal Surgery and Rubber Washer Replacement".
An Australian tanning mousse and mist have been selling out during isolation as women attempt to prolong their summer skin colour into the winter months.

Spray Aus, which is co-owned by WAGS Rebecca Judd and Nadia Bartel, was founded in 2014 with no parabens or PEGS included in the formulation, a difference from other chemical brands that has shoppers stocking up.

'The Deep Dark Mousse ($39.95) and Tan Mist ($24.95) have been flying out the door,' Bartel told The Daily Telegraph.

Spray Aus, which is co-owned by WAGS Rebecca Judd (right) and Nadia Bartel (left), was founded in 2014 with no parabens or PEGS included in the formulation

'Having the option to apply tan yourself at home and achieve a salon look has still been desirable in lockdown,' Bartel said

'Having the option to apply tan yourself at home and achieve a salon look has still been desirable in lockdown.

'A little bit of self-care can make you feel brighter and we have noticed our community expanding their home tanning range since our studios were forced to close.'

The Australian government ordered certain premises close, including spas, nail salons, beauty salons, waxing salons, tanning salons, tattoo parlours and massage parlours on March 25.

Hairdressers and barbers were allowed to stay open so long as they observe strict physical social distancing of 1.5 metres and spread out customers in the store.

The Australian government ordered certain premises close, including spas, nail salons, beauty salons, waxing salons, tanning salons, tattoo parlours and massage parlours on March 25

With Spray Aus salons included in that shuttering, their loyal fans have been purchasing the individual bottles of tanning lotions from Mecca's online store to stay bronzed

The order was a move to reduce the spread of COVID-19, which can easily pass between humans through close contact.

With Spray Aus salons included in that shuttering, their loyal fans have been purchasing the individual bottles of tanning lotions from Mecca's online store to stay bronzed.

The brand sells a dark mousse - which should be rinsed after one hour for a medium-dark tan, 2-4 hours for a dark tan or 4-6 hours for a deep tan - a regular spray tan that takes eight hours to develop and a mist for the face.

Both Judd (pictured) and Bartel believe exfoliating before you apply the tan is an 'absolute must' and using a mitt will allow for an even coat to be distributed

There is also a moisturising tan extender ($29.95) and tan remover ($24.95) for those occasions where you want to control the colour of your skin in the long and short term.

Both Judd and Bartel, who co-own the label with founders Emily McKay and Ellie Pearson, believe exfoliating before you apply the tan is an 'absolute must' and using a mitt will allow for an even coat to be distributed.

Using small amounts of moisturiser around your ankles, knees and elbows is acceptable but you don't want to overdo it, says Bartel, because it will interfere with the colour of the tan.
Comparing present-day events with those in the past may be tempting, but can be dangerous. In 1918 the modern world suffered its first great pandemic, the so-called Spanish Flu, and it was one of the greatest killers of the 20th century, with an estimated 50 to 100 million people losing their lives. One in every four inhabitants of the planet were infected.

A century later, scientific advances have meant that a disaster such as that cannot repeat itself, but there are still plenty of things about that infection which are not known, and some ideas which are about to be brought back to the table. The origin of the virus is still unknown, as are the real figures about how many people were affected or what the pattern of contagion was like.

Spanish flu hit the world in three waves. Each was different and the final one continued so long that people were still dying from it in 1920.

The first wave

The first wave was in the spring of 1918. The first detected case was in a military camp in Kansas, USA. Scientists call this infection, which spread among the troops who were due to fight in the First World War, the 'herald wave', because it announced the arrival of the others.

The infection spread in Europe once the American troops arrived. In Spain, it was detected around the third week in May. The fact that the press in Spain, which didn't participate in the war, openly reported the epidemic, while the other countries applied war censorship, led the virus to become known as Spanish Flu and it remains permanently associated with this country.

Researchers believe that one of the key places for the spread of the flu was Madrid, where the San Isidro festivities were taking place. Social contacts during the fair multiplied the number of contagions, and even King Alfonso XIII caught it. The government then applied strict confinement measures, which even brought postal deliveries and the telegram service to a halt.

The mortality rate was 0.65 per thousand, and the pandemic lasted for two months. A similar situation occurred in the rest of the world, although South America and Australia were not affected.

The second wave

The second phase of Spanish flu occurred in the autumn of 1918. In Spain, there are several theories about how it spread. Some believe it was because the soldiers doing military service returned home in the summer, or that Portuguese people who returned home by train after the war ended, were to blame. A mutation of the virus has not been ruled out. This time, the number of deaths soared. In some places, summer festivals increased contagion, and churches were ordered to stop ringing their bells at funerals, so people didn't panic about how many there were.

In Zamora, one of the cities most affected, where the mortality rate was triple that in the rest of Spain, the Church helped to spread the disease. Bishop Antonio Alvaro y Ballano claimed it was caused by sin, and started to hold masses to combat the flu. During these, the faithful would kiss the reliquaries of San Roque, patron saint of the sick. The number of new cases shot up. Also, this time, more doctors were affected than during the first phase.

Elsewhere on the planet this second wave was also worse and spread much more. There is no unanimous opinion about where it began, but there is speculation about Liberia, the city of Boston in America or the French port of Brest. In Australia, which had escaped the first wave, the arrival of troops from Europe resulted in 80,000 deaths.

The third wave

Spanish flu returned in the early months of 1919, although this time, generally speaking, it was not as lethal as during the second wave. Scientists suspect that the population had by then developed sufficient immunity for the incidence of the virus to have less effect. In countries such as Japan, for example, the flu was to last until 1920. By the time the illness was over in Spain, eight million people had died.

The state of science at that time meant that certain data is not available. For example, not much was known about the virus until 1933, so the causes of the illness were a mystery in the early 20th century. It has now been established that children between the age of one and three, and people aged between 21 and 30 were most affected most. The place of origin of the virus has never been confirmed, although scientists have suggested three cities: Etaples, in France; Haskell, in the USA, and Xhanxi, in China.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 10:58:39|Editor: huaxia

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HELSINKI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Finnish government on Thursday launched a major reshuffle in the state-owned postal company Posti, with Sanna Suvanto-Harsaae named as its new chairman and half of the nine board members replaced.

Posti will face a "complex change during the upcoming four critical years," Suvanto-Harsaae said in a media release.

Maija Strandberg, a senior financial counsellor in the Prime Minister's Office, told business daily Kauppalehti on Thursday that the state wanted more people and labor market experts on the board.

Denying any "active plans" to make Posti a public company, Strandberg said that the chairman and the state are pondering on "strategic alternatives."

Posti was plagued by a long strike in November 2019, and then Finnish Prime Minister Antti Rinne said that the company had not followed instructions from his cabinet. Rinne resigned in December in the wake of the postal strike.

Suvanto-Harsaae, a Finnish businessperson who has been the head of 30 different companies, was described by local media as an experienced board member in several Nordic companies. She has also ranked first in the list of female decision-makers published by Finnish business week Talouselama.

With around 22,000 employees, Posti had an annual turnover of 1.5 billion euros (1.62 billion U.S. dollars) last year. Enditem
Boeing Delivers 100th P-8A Poseidon Built for the U.S. Navy

SEATTLE, May 14, 2020 -- The U.S. Navy received its 100th P-8A aircraft from Boeing [NYSE: BA] today as the global fleet, which also includes the Indian navy and the Australian and U.K. air forces, approaches 300,000 flight hours of hunting submarines and providing aerial reconnaissance capabilities around the world.

"We're honored by the Navy's faith and confidence in our employees and the P-8 system," said Stu Voboril, vice president and program manager. "Our focus has been, and will be, on delivering the world's best maritime patrol aircraft, bar none."

The P-8 is a proven long-range multi-mission maritime patrol aircraft capable of broad-area, maritime and coastal operations. A military derivative of the Boeing 737 Next-Generation airplane, the P-8 combines superior performance and reliability with an advanced mission system that ensures maximum interoperability in the battle space.

This is the 94th mission-capable airplane to enter the U.S. Navy fleet, with six additional jets used as Engineering Manufacturing Development test aircraft. The 100th fully-operational delivery is scheduled for later this year. Boeing has also delivered 12 jets to the Royal Australian Air Force, two to the U.K.'s Royal Air Force and eight P-8Is to the Indian Navy. Multiple U.S. Navy squadrons have deployed with the P-8A Poseidon, and the Indian Navy and Royal Australian Air Force are conducting missions with the P-8 as well.

For more information on Defense, Space & Security, visit www.boeing.com. Follow us on Twitter: @BoeingDefense and @BoeingSpace.

# # #

Contact:

Kymberly VanDlac

Defense, Space & Security

Mobile: +1 425-210-7851

Kymberly.y.vandlac@boeing.com



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HALIFAX - Chorus Aviation Inc. saw profits drop by more than 150 per cent year over year last quarter as the COVID-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the airline industry.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Joe Randell, left, president of Chorus Aviation, talks with his employees at the Jazz Aviation heavy maintenance base in Enfield, N.S. on Monday, July 16, 2012. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Andrew Vaughan

HALIFAX - Chorus Aviation Inc. saw profits drop by more than 150 per cent year over year last quarter as the COVID-19 outbreak wreaks havoc on the airline industry.

The regional aviation company reported a net loss of $17.3 million for the quarter ended March 31, compared with earnings of $33.45 million last year, as net income decreased by $50.7 million due in part to a change in net unrealized foreign exchange losses.

Chorus has placed more than 3,000 workers on temporary layoff or off-duty status, on top of slashing capital expenditures and cutting compensation for management and staff to trim costs.

The reductions come as its contract work for Air Canada Express has been chopped by 90 per cent for April and May. Delayed delivery of planes from Bombardier will further hit revenue in the partnership, Chorus said.

The company has also had to delay the planned expansion of its leasing division because of market uncertainty, saying "substantially all" of its current leasing customers have asked for some form of temporary rent relief.

Chorus said it received only one quarter of its contractual lease payments for April.

Clients CityJet and Virgin Australia are undergoing "bankruptcy-like procedures and it is not clear whether either airline will need these planes," wrote Financial Bank analyst Cameron Doerksen.

As the federal government gears up to deliver relief measures for hard-hit industries, smaller airlines worry they'll be left out.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced Monday that federal financing will be available to the country's largest employers to help weather the COVID-19 economic crisis. Loans will start at $60 million for companies with at least $300 million in annual revenues.

Chorus and other regional carriers, most of which fall far short of that threshold, fear they might go under without a tailor-made support program from Ottawa as border shutdowns and the collapse of global travel continue to choke off demand.

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For the first quarter, Chorus reported revenue rose less than two per cent year over year to $350 million.

Adjusted net income reached $25 million, up from $19 million last year, as it started off the year in a good financial shape before the pandemic hit. Adjusted earnings per share hit 16 cents, up from 13 cents a year earlier and beating analyst expectations of 17 cents, according to financial markets data firm Refinitiv.

The airline's total liquidity now stands at $265 million, including a recent US$100 million unsecured loan.

The company's share price fell seven per cent or 18 cents Friday to close at $2.39 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2020.

Companies in this story: (TSX:CHR)
FILE PHOTO: A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu

By Josh Horwitz and Yimou Lee

SHANGHAI/TAIPEI (Reuters) - In a race to position itself in the latest trade battle between the United States and China, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd made it just under the wire.

The world's biggest contract chipmaker unveiled plans for a $12 billion plant in Arizona on Friday just hours before Washington outlined a proposal to amend tech export rules that could restrict TSMC's sales to China's Huawei.

A U.S. Commerce Department official said TSMC's decision to locate the plant in the United States generated "good will" at the department, the drafter of the law that would require TSMC and others to get U.S. licences to sell chips to Huawei.

The move shows the delicate balancing act by TSMC to stay on side with Washington, which has stepped up criticism of Chinese trade practices and Beijing's handling of the novel coronavirus, while protecting its China business, analysts said.

"TSMC has to figure out how to best leverage and benefit from the U.S.-China tensions," said Liu Pei-chen, tech analyst at government-backed think tank Taiwan Institute of Economic Research.

It could not escape them so its room for manoeuvre consisted of negotiating the best terms for the U.S. factory it could, she said. Analysts estimate TSMC generates around 60% of its revenue from the United States and some 20% from China.

Liu said TSMC would enjoy the first-mover advantage as U.S. President Donald Trump seeks to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China ahead of Nov. 3 presidential election.

U.S. government officials were not immediately available to comment on whether the investment would make it more likely that TSMC would get a licence to supply Huawei.

TSMC said it was working with outside counsels to interpret the rules in good time and maintains long-term collaborations with equipment partners around the world.

Huawei did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

Story continues

The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei from global chipmakers, in an action that could ramp up tensions with China.

The proposed export rule amendment requires foreign companies that use U.S. chipmaking equipment to obtain a U.S. license before supplying certain chips to Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL], or an affiliate like HiSilicon.

U.S. CHINA BALANCE

Semiconductors play a key role in both consumer electronics and defense equipment. The vast majority of the most advanced chips are made in Asia, which has caused concern among U.S. officials as a strategic rivalry with China deepens.

"Building a fab (production line) in the U.S. starting with 5 nanometre technology is not the cheapest option for TSMC, but it would help address fears of U.S. IPs and technologies theft. TSMC may continue its operations in China to serve domestic and other clients." Citi analysts said in a note.

With a small production plan that would contribute just 3-4% of its total output, the new U.S. plant may hit TSMC's margins, but the splurge underscores the extent TSMC is willing to spend to protect its customer base in its two biggest markets.

"The scale & technology is similar to what TSMC did in China, suggesting a balance between the U.S. & China," said Bernstein analysts, noting it took 7 years for TSMC's Shanghai fab to break even in operating profit level and 2-3 years for its Nanjing plant.

PRONE TO CHANGE

While huge in terms of foreign investment in the United States, the plan is small by TSMC's standards, and the company carefully planned to spend it over 9 years, leaving enough room to make downward adjustments depending on market situations.

Its compatriot Foxconn pledged a $10 billion investment in Wisconsin and to create 13,000 jobs in 2017 when Trump became President, but it has not met early hiring targets and has said it has been reconsidering its plans.

"Considering the state of Foxconn's construction in the U.S., as well as the U.S. election this year, its not impossible that these plans for building the fab could change," said Gu Wenjun, chief analyst at Shanghai-based consultancy ICWise. Foxconn was not immediately available for comment.

While U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said chips from the new plant will power everything from artificial intelligence to 5G base stations to fighter jets, some analysts said 5 nanometre chips from the plant will no longer be the most advanced technology by 2024 when it begins production.

"This is more of a political response from TSMC to the US government's demands," Gu said.

TSMC said the plant was a business decision.

"Our intention to build and operate the fab in the U.S. is a business decision, to address the best interests of our customers," it told Reuters.

Some analysts also said the plant was too small to be economically efficient and the size of U.S. incentive and price from customers who prefer U.S. production would likely decide its profitability.

Yet the announcement is unlikely to be welcomed by Beijing who would see it as Washington's attempt to control more of a crucial supplier to its national tech champion Huawei, and only spur its ambition to build its own chip supply chains.

"I think it would be foolish for China to punish Taiwan or TSMC, given so many of its own companies still rely on it," said Stewart Randall who tracks the chip sector at Shanghai-based consultancy Intralink.

"Huawei will continue using TSMC for all high-end chips and China will continue investing in local companies to be self-reliant at some point."

China's state-controlled Global Times reported on Friday, citing a source close to the government, that China was ready to take a series of countermeasures against the U.S. plan to block shipments of chips to Huawei. Authorities in Beijing could not be immediately reached after hours for comment.

(Writing by Miyoung Kim; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
PHILIPSBURG:--- Prime Minister and Chair of the Emergency Operations Center (EOC) Silveria Jacobs hereby updates the general public for today, Thursday, May 14, 2020, as part of the process to keep the community of St. Maarten informed about the latest developments and the Governments COVID-19 containment, mitigation and response measures.



Based on the latest available data provided by Collective Prevention Services (CPS) Epidemiologist Eva Lista-de Weever, for today, May 14, 2020, as of 4:00 PM, there have been no new reported COVID-19 confirmed cases. The data does, however, show an increase of one more person in self-quarantine and two more persons in self-isolation. The number of persons with laboratory-confirmed COVID-19 currently hospitalized at the Mobile Medical Pavilion has decreased to two patients. Furthermore, CPS updates that its community outreach testing campaign continues in the community on Saturdays and Sundays as businesses are closed on these days. Contact tracing as needed to ensure that the virus is contained will also continue.

A meeting between the governments of St. Maarten and St. Martin to synchronize the de-escalation measures took place this afternoon, May 14. During the meeting, both governments were able to give a presentation on their phased de-escalation plans with a special focus on educational institutions and public transportation in regard to school busses. Also, discussed in the meeting was the synchronization of border control measures for each phase of the economic re-opening plans as well as proposals for border re-opening after community testing has taken place.

The governments of St. Maarten and St. Martin were not able to agree moving forward on the re-opening of the internal borders until further assessments are done regarding the medical and health aspects of the COVID-19 virus and its effect on the population in terms of community spread. Once this information has been gathered, both governments will meet next week, to further ascertain the date that the border controls will be lifted. The government of St. Martin shared that they are currently evaluating their school opening to see how many students will be returning. However, this is being done before any further discussions take place at an executive level in regard to their students who reside in St. Maarten attending school on St. Martin. Despite St. Maartens governments concern for these students, there was no agreement made for such. As per the schools on St. Maarten, only schools that have indicated that they will be re-opening will open. Therefore, parents are asked to stay updated and in contact with their childs school.

Public transportation busses continue to be inspected by the Ministry of TEATT and will be given the green light to commence working on the public roads as long as they meet the safety guidelines. However, they must remain within our Dutch borders until the government has finalized discussions with their French counterparts.

As we are re-opening our economy in phases, things may seem to be reverting to normal. However, we cannot afford to become complacent, where our safety and the safety of our loved ones are concerned. Rather, we must maintain the personal protection guidelines always. I encourage you to educate your children about the new norm and ensure that they too understand and follow the safety guidelines. Most importantly, be an example to them in demonstrating this. Let us remember that mitigating the spread of COVID-19 depends on us all. I commend your efforts thus far as we continue to fight the COVID-19 virus, and encourage each of you to ensure that these practices are habitual for you and your family, concluded Prime Minister Jacobs. The mitigation of the spread of the virus depends on the behaviour of the St. Maarten people. Lets stop the spread of this virus together. Together we can! Stay blessed St. Maarten.
Antarctica: This is the first ever high-resolution, three-dimensional, true-color map of Antarctica. (Image courtesy USGS, NASA, National Science Foundation, and the British Antarctic Survey)

Australia Must Keep Eyes Wide Open on Chinas Antarctic Claim

A Canberra-based defence think tank is warning the federal government to take a more proactive approach to engaging the Chinese communist regime in Antarctic affairs as future interests over the icy continent may diverge.

On April 27, the Australian Strategic Policy Institute released a new report titled Eyes Wide Open that outlines Chinas ambitions for the continent, and how they could potentially conflict with Australias.

Anthony Bergin, a co-author of the report, told The Epoch Times that Australia was the main country to get China into the Antarctic system and has supported it with training and logistics support via Tasmania.

However that was all predicated on the idea that its much better to have the Chinese in the system, than outside it. But we have to be careful were not being seduced into assuming positive outcomes will result, he said.

Australia currently has a territorial claim over 42 percent of Antarctica and operates four research stations there.

The CCPs Antarctic Expansion

The Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) established in 1961 is a key agreement governing international relations on the continent. The treaty is considered one of the most successful sets of international agreements because it has relied on the goodwill and peaceful cooperation between nations to uphold.

In 1983, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) ratified the treaty, since then it has been steadily expanding its footprint on the continent.

Currently, the regime has four research stations on the continent, despite having no territorial claim, and is building a new one. It operates two Antarctic icebreaker research vessels.

Chinas 31th Antarctic exploration team aboard the icebreaker Snow Dragon returns to Waigaoqiao dock in Shanghai, China, on April 10, 2015. (VCG via Getty Images)

The regime is also building what it claims to be the largest krill ship in the world for Antarctic fishing, with several more already in construction. China has also invested heavily in Antarctic tourism, becoming one of the largest tourist markets for the continent.

The CCP, along with Russia, is simultaneously mounting a claim for the Arctic in the northern hemisphere, ratcheting up tensions with the United States, Canada, and Finland.

Disrupting International Cooperation

Bergin said there were plenty of blinking, yellow lights around Chinas involvement in Antarctic affairs. One issue has been its disruption to international decision-making, which traditionally focused on scientific research and conservation.

China, as well as Russia, sees the continent through the lens of development and extraction, he said. Long term, it sees (Antarctica) has the capability of being exploited. Now, that can be in bioprospecting, fisheries, tourism, and minerals, etc.

A Gentoo pinguin bites a gopro camera in Orne Harbour, Antarctic, on March 05, 2016. (Eitan Abramovich/AFP via Getty Images)

Our judgement was Australias interest and Chinas over the longer term will diverge, said Bergin.

Last year, at a meeting for the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR), Australia tabled a proposal to establish a conservation zone for wildlife protection. However, the bid was rejected by China and Russia. This was the eighth time such a bid was rejected, with China or Russia opposing the measure.

Tony Press, former head of the Australian Antarctic Division told the ABC that the outcome of the 2019 meeting raised questions over why Russia and China had the authority to veto such decisions.

He said, It raises questions about the behaviour of parties in ignoring the views of the vast majority of members.

According to Bergin, Australia wants China invested in the rules of the Antarctic Treaty, but my judgement is, China in the long term would prefer to re-write a lot of the rules.

Military-Civil Fusion Doctrine Cause For Concern

The CCPs doctrine of military-civil fusion was introduced by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, which mandated Chinese civilian technologies could be repurposed for military use if needed.

The U.S. State Department has expressed concerns with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning the Silicon Valley Leadership Group earlier this year about the doctrine.

Berger said, Theres absolutely no reason why Antarctica would be immune from this doctrine.

Particular technologies, particular pieces of scientific research, could be morphed into part of a bigger system. Its not so much we would expect a direct military threat from Antarctica, he said.

Drones, remote submersible systems, satellite technologies that the Chinese are using in Antarctica, some of the experiences using them could be valuable for military purposes elsewhere.

View of Chinas base in the King George island in Antarctica, on March 13, 2014. (Vanderlei Almeida/AFP via Getty Images)

Berger recommended Australia regularly inspect Chinese stations and involve the defence department. He conceded that Australia was in the dark regarding the CCPs long term intentions around its technologies.

We dont know, we havent made any systematic and regular effort to find out the nature of how Chinese science might have military applications.

Academics have pointed out that Antarctica could be useful for various surveillance and reconnaissance systems, and would assist Chinas satellite navigation system BeiDoua rival to the U.S. GPS system.

The federal government reaffirmed its commitment to Antarctic affairs with the release of a new 10-year strategic plan on April 26. The plan is underpinned by a $2.8 billion (US$1.8 billion) commitment and will provide a framework around scientific research, environmental management, and human interaction.
To the editor:

South Korean officials are scrambling to contain a new coronavirus outbreak. This is in a country that has gotten high marks for their response to the epidemic. This new wave of cases has been traced to nightclubs and bars.

Experimental evidence shows the ability of half of a quantity of coronavirus to live on a hard surface drops from 18 hours in 70-75 degrees, 20% humidity to 1 hour in 95 degrees, 80% humidity. In Midland County, we will not have a lot of 95 degree, 80% humidity days this summer, so it seems reasonable that we will still have a coronavirus threat.

We are now encouraging people to come on up north this summer. Since we cant close I-75 to stop people from coming north from the coronavirus hot spots in southern Michigan, we can expect travelers to visit our motels, gas stations and drive-through restaurants. As we relax our guidelines so travelers can also visit local bars, pizza parlors, and sit-down restaurants, our risk in Midland County will increase. We know that in addition to temperature and humidity exposure to the sun can kill the coronavirus, but in none of the places I just mentioned is there much if any solar.

All this makes me want detailed data reporting and interpretation for Midland County to start now and continue all summer. Lets hear from the Midland County Health Department and MidMichigan Health on a regular basis (at least twice a week) in a report on Midland County that includes the number of new tests conducted, percentage of the population that has been tested, the ratio of positive tests to total tests, the age of the people who have tested positive, and the level of tracing in progress.

I know all of the people that have died so far in Midland County from the coronavirus have been over 70, and since I am over 70, having comprehensive Midland County data reported on a regular basis is important to me to determine if I want to venture out to stimulate the local economy.

LEE SMITH

Midland

Editor's note: The CDC's official stance at this time is that people can catch COVID-19 regardless of how sunny or hot the weather is. Countries with hot weather have reported cases of COVID-19. To protect yourself, make sure you clean your hands frequently and thoroughly and avoid touching your eyes, mouth, and nose.
Missouri on Tuesday plans to conduct the nation's first execution since the coronavirus outbreak was declared a global pandemic in early March, a decision that comes amid renewed questions over the inmate's guilt.

Three jurors who convicted Walter Barton in the 1991 murder of a mobile home operator have said in affidavits that they now have doubts about the verdict, The Kansas City Star reported this week.

"It is a nightmare because the original case against Mr. Barton was a close one," his attorney, Frederick Duchardt Jr., told the newspaper. "It is a worse nightmare because evidence, never heard by the jury who rendered judgment, undermines the key evidence used to convict."

Image: Walter Barton. (Missouri Department of Corrections via AP file)

Barton, 64, has been tried five times for the murder, maintaining his innocence throughout. His first two trials ended in mistrials, both in 1993. The following year, a jury convicted him and sentenced him to death, but the Missouri Supreme Court overturned the verdict because of how the judge restricted the defense team's closing arguments.

Barton was convicted again in 1998 and given the death penalty. But a new trial was ordered, in part, after it was discovered that the state had failed to correct perjured testimony.

His fifth trial in 2006 also ended in a guilty verdict and a death sentence. The following year, the state Supreme Court narrowly upheld the decision in a 4-3 ruling, and Barton's subsequent appeals have been unsuccessful.

Prosecutors said Barton knew the victim, Gladys Kuehler, 81, who operated a mobile home park in Ozark, Missouri. Barton, who had been living out of his car, was reportedly visiting Kuehler's granddaughter and a neighbor at the property on the night Kuehler was beaten, sexually assaulted and stabbed 52 times.

Barton previously lived at the mobile home park but had been evicted about two weeks before the killing, according to local news reports. Kuehler's granddaughter and her neighbor found the body.

Story continues

Police at the time noted apparent bloodstains on Barton's clothing, which Barton said came from him having pulled Kuehler's granddaughter off the body. At Barton's trial, a blood spatter analyst said three small stains on his clothing would have come from the impact of a knife.

At the heart of the case has been whether the prosecution's blood spatter evidence  a form of forensic analysis that has been questioned in recent years over its accuracy  was properly countered by Barton's defense team at his 2006 trial.

Since then, Barton's current defense team ordered an independent bloodstain analysis. That examiner found that the small bloodstains on Barton's clothing were consistent with his version of events that night and that the actual killer's clothes would have been soaked in blood, given the victim's wounds.

Over the past couple of months, three former jurors signed affidavits agreeing that the new bloodstain-pattern analysis was "compelling," Duchardt said, according to The Star. Those jurors also said that during deliberations, there were disagreements over whether to convict Barton, and if there was analysis presented like the one they reviewed more recently, it would have played a part in the deliberations.

One of the jurors, the foreman at the trial, added that he would have been "uncomfortable" supporting the death penalty if the defense had presented such analysis during testimony, Duchardt added.

There have been renewed calls and petitions from groups such as Amnesty International and the American Civil Liberties Union for Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, a Republican, to intervene in the planned lethal injection. His office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday, but told The Associated Press that the office anticipates that the execution will go on.

The Missouri Attorney General's Office earlier this month asked a court to reject Barton's petition over his impending execution after the state Supreme Court already denied his request for a hearing last month. The court said the new analysis and other claims made by his defense team do "not show actual innocence by a preponderance of the evidence ... nor does it rise to the level of clear and convincing evidence required for a freestanding claim of actual innocence."

An appeal is still pending in federal court.

Barton's execution would be the first in the U.S. since March 5, when Alabama inmate Nate Woods was executed for his role in the fatal shootings of three Birmingham police officers in 2004. That case prompted a last-minute push by supporters who said it was mishandled and affected by longstanding racial biases in the criminal justice system. Woods was black.

Barton's execution is scheduled for a prison in Bonne Terre, where there have not been any confirmed cases of the coronavirus, according to the AP. The spread of the virus in prisons has added another layer in how his death must be handled.

The decision to proceed with the execution has drawn scrutiny from anti-capital punishment groups who note that prison visits remain halted at Missouri's correctional facilities through June.

Missouri Department of Corrections spokeswoman Karen Pojmann told the AP that those entering the prison will have to submit to temperature checks and will be offered face coverings. Duchardt said that some of Barton's supporters will be able to attend, and witnesses will be divided into three rooms.
Businesses are urging U.S. lawmakers to shield companies from what they fear could be a flood of lawsuits by workers and consumers blaming employers for exposing them to the new coronavirus.

But so far, court records show few such cases have been filed and some legal experts say the threat of liability is exaggerated because of the difficulty of proving where someone was infected.

Those cases havent materialized and I doubt they will, David Vladeck, who teaches civil procedure at the Georgetown University Law Center, said on Tuesday at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a liability shield for businesses.

As of Wednesday, only 45 of 1,018 coronavirus-related lawsuits were personal injury or medical malpractice cases against a business, the areas of most concern for trade groups. The analysis was based on a case tracker by the Hunton Andrews Kurth law firm.

Of the 45 cases, 28 were against Princess Cruise Lines. The rest were against three other cruise lines, two meat processing companies, Walmart Inc., a senior living facility operator, two care centers, a hospital and a doctors group.

Congress Standoff

Congress appeared to be heading for a legislative standoff this week with Democrats demanding another stimulus package to help support a shattered economy and Republicans pushing to protect businesses from lawsuits.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wanted to make sure opportunistic trial lawyers are not lurking on the sidewalk outside every small business in America, waiting to slap them with a lawsuit the instant they turn the lights back on.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and retail and leisure trade groups told Congress that the novel coronavirus and the patchwork of evolving health guidance from state and local authorities created legal uncertainty for companies.

Some state and local governments having eased restrictions imposed to combat the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 1.4 million people and led to at least 85,000 deaths in the United States, according to a Reuters tally.

A liability shield would give businesses the confidence to reopen without the looming threat of lawsuits by customers or employees who get COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Protections would not be available for companies guilty of gross negligence, recklessness or willful misconduct.

Consumer groups have argued that current law provides adequate protection for businesses that act in good faith.

Removing the threat of liability would discourage Americans from returning to work, dining out and resuming other activities, the consumer groups said.

Case Tracker

Since the first case related to coronavirus was filed on March 9, the vast majority of the lawsuits filed in state and federal courts are unrelated to someone suing a business for COVID-19 exposure, according to the case tracker.

About a third of the cases filed have been brought by prisoners seeking release from a coronavirus-hit facility. Hundreds more have been brought by businesses, mostly over insurance coverage or contracts.

There are 197 class actions, largely brought by consumers, stemming from disputes over insurance, lending, tuition and ticket refunds.

The idea of a mountain of liability is grossly exaggerated, said Paul Bland, the executive director of Public Justice, a litigation advocacy group.

Harold Kim, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, said that surveys have shown businesses are worried about lawsuits and the number of cases is rising.

Enacting targeted and temporary liability protections for these businesses shouldnt depend on how many lawsuits are filed right now, Kim said.

Remington Gregg of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said he doubts that consumer litigation will increase sharply when the economy reopens.

Proving that a person was exposed at work or a business, rather than during their commute or grocery shopping, is legally difficult.

Lawyers dont want to take losing cases and lawyers know how difficult it is to prove these claims, Gregg said.

(Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware Editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)

Topics Lawsuits COVID-19 USA
Hotel occupancy rates are set to plummet this year due to the coronavirus pandemic, and a recovery is only expected next year.

The Vietnam National Administration of Tourism expects foreign tourist arrivals to fall by 70 percent this year from 18 million last year if the disease is contained globally by June. The drop will be 75 percent if the pandemic continues until September.

Property consultancy CBRE said in a recent report that whatever the scenario there would be a huge fall in the number of tourists this year sending hotel occupancy rates plummeting.

In Hanoi, occupancy rates could fall from over 80 percent last year to about 29 percent if the disease is contained in June, and to 25 percent if contained in September, and average tariffs would drop by 13 percent and 20 percent in the two cases, it said.

In Ho Chi Minh City, rates could drop to 25 percent and 21 percent respectively from over 70 percent last year, and rents could fall 15 percent and 22 percent.

Fifteen new hospitality projects with 3,000 rooms were scheduled to enter the market by 2023, but there have been delays in construction because of the coronavirus.

Mauro Gasparotti, director of Savills Hotels Asia Pacific, said most hotels have closed partially or fully to reduce costs, and only key personnel are still working to prepare for reopening.

In any event, a full recovery is unlikely until next year, he said.

Since international air services have yet to resume, in the short term local tourism will be the only source of demand. Younger people and independent travelers, would play a key role in the recovery of the industry, he added.

There is still uncertainty about when tourist numbers will return to pre-pandemic levels, he said.
Mary Travers, who was killed by the IRA in an attack on her magistrate father

So, Gerry Adams isn't a convicted criminal after all. As a life-long republican, the closest associate of green-booked IRA volunteers, who had been told to expect either death or imprisonment, Adams has found old age, an easy conscience and a clean record.

An ironic part of his having his convictions quashed for attempting to escape from internment in Long Kesh is that, at the time, he wanted those convictions.

The second most ironic part is that he wasn't trying to escape at all. The entire point of the operation was to get arrested and convicted, and then moved to the wing where the sentenced men were.

That plan worked and Gerry Adams was made officer commanding the bombers and gunmen in Cage 11.

That he was an OC over men like Bobby Sands and Danny Lennon and Bik McFarlane should not, of course, be taken to mean that he was himself a member of the IRA.

That question was dealt with later by the High Court in Belfast in another of Adams's legal victories.

When he was charged with membership of the IRA evidence was prepared and a witness was standing by to say that he had seen Adams receive a flag-lowering homage in Long Kesh one Easter Sunday.

Adams had referred to the IRA men on the run at an ard fheis in the first person plural, but his lawyer P J McGrory introduced a plea of No Bill.

This was a request to Justice Lowry, and he decided in advance of the trial that there was no case to answer. Adams would not even have to recognise the court and plead not guilty. Lowry examined the papers and agreed.

And these aren't the only occasions of Gerry befuddling the efforts of those who would have put him away.

In 1983 he was charged with disorderly behaviour. This followed some antics while electioneering in the New Lodge Road area with a tricolour from the window of a car.

It was a gratuitous charge, but if you believe, as some did, that he was then the chief of staff of the IRA - an appointment which, like OC Cage 11, perhaps does not require one to actually be a member of the IRA - then the outcomes might have been historically significant, especially so if you believe that Gerry Adams was a vital linchpin of the peace process and that the eclipsing of the military wing by the political would not have happened without him.

Magistrate Tom Travers adjourned the hearing for lunch. Adams asked for permission to stay in the court building over the lunch period for his own security and this was refused. Travers went home to his daughters to eat with them.

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Adams and his friends drove up to Long's on Grosvenor Road for fish and chips and were ambushed by the UDA on the way.

The bullet-riddled car made it to the Royal Victoria Hospital and, instead of hearing the sentence that Travers had in mind for him that afternoon, Adams was sitting up on a hospital trolley giving an interview to Eamonn Mallie.

The guns used in the attack had, apparently, been interfered with. Or perhaps it was just shoddy gear (what do I know?). The men survived. The UDA team led by John Gregg was intercepted by British soldiers. And, by the time Adams was fit to return to court, Tom Travers was not. The guns used in an IRA ambush on him and his family coming from Mass two weeks later were also flawed, but more effective.

Gunmen killed Travers's daughter Mary, a primary school teacher, and wounded Travers himself. Shots aimed at the head of Travers's wife failed. The gun jammed.

The weapons had been relayed to the scene down a pair of surgical tights worn by Mary McArdle.

Travers identified one of the gunmen as the late Joe Haughey, but his evidence was not accepted and Haughey was acquitted.

When he returned to work he sought out the file on Gerry Adams to complete the disorderly behaviour hearing, but he was told that it was lost and the case could not proceed.

So, Gerry Adams is used to good outcomes in court.

It was Christmas Eve when he staged a charade of trying to escape from Long Kesh.

Other men in the huts watched amazed and scoffed at his apparent stupidity. He and three other men were approaching a high metal fence with wire-cutters.

They had no more prospect of getting out of the camp by that route than they had of reaching the Moon. And they knew it.

We can't know what to believe of Adams's own accounts of the "escape" attempt. He has developed the story in different ways at different times in his own writing.

He described the antics of the men to distract attention and help others to get away. He says one of them put on an English accent to confuse the soldiers and barked orders at them.

In one version a British officer came to Adams in his cell, where he was frightened and close to tears, pleading with other IRA men in neighbouring cells to behave and not make things worse. The officer gave Adams a cigarette and wished him "Happy Christmas, Paddy".

Adams has been acquitted of the crime of trying to escape from internment because he was not legally interned. His papers were signed by someone not authorised to decide against him.

Adams had as much legal right to escape from Long Kesh as from a kidnapper.

He has pulled off an amazing coup here and it may lead to millions of pounds being paid out in compensation to those whose custody orders were also not legally valid. It offers nothing to those whose internment was legal.

And that is another irony, given that those republicans who were interned would never have acknowledged the legitimacy of their detention anyway.

When Adams was interned he was lifted along with men who were proud to proclaim their membership of the IRA, like Brendan Hughes, who did actually escape from Long Kesh.

In Cage 11 Adams taught the men that they were political soldiers. He dismissed the idea being put about by some who sympathised with them that the IRA was made up of people caught up in circumstances.

They asserted that the state was illegitimate and, therefore, nothing it did had a sound legal basis.

So, the greatest irony of all is that he has now sought absolution from the highest British court and is glad to have it.
Christian groups sue NC Gov. Cooper over restrictions on indoor worship services

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Two congregations, a pastor and a conservative Christian group are suing North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper for a broader exemption to a state order banning indoor gatherings of more than 10 people.

Berean Baptist Church of Winston-Salem and Peoples Baptist Church in Greenville joined the Christian conservative mobilization network Return America in filing a complaint Thursday with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina.

The Christian groups are seeking injunctive relief from state executive orders aimed at combatting the spread of the coronavirus by limiting mass gatherings, including church services.

The congregations have been unable to hold in-person, indoor worship services since the governor first signed the orders.

According to the complaint, Coopers orders are unconstitutional both facially and as applied to Plaintiffs.

Governor Coopers Orders have been interpreted, applied, and enforced by his Office and local law enforcement authorities as prohibiting indoor gatherings for religious worship by more than 10 people, the lawsuit reads.

The Orders are not neutral laws of general applicability because they target Constitutionally protected activity, significantly burdening the Plaintiffs right to freedom of religion and assembly, establishing an orthodox form of religious exercise approved by the State, all the while providing broad exemptions for many other gatherings of more than 10 people that are not constitutionally protected.

Return America, a coalition of religious leaders and educators headed by Berean Baptist Pastor Ronnie Baity, held a rally in downtown Raleigh outside of the states legislative building on Thursday to announce the lawsuit and demand that the restrictions be lifted.

According to The Associated Press, the rally was attended by about 500 people.

Freedoms curbed eventually becomes no freedom at all, Baity was quoted as saying. If theres ever been a time our communities need the church, it is now.

Earlier this month, Cooper signed Executive Order 138 announcing the launch of phase one of the governments plan to gradually reopen the state.

According to a statement by the governors office, the phase-one order has no limit on attendance for worship services as long as they are held outdoors and follow proper social distancing guidelines as much as possible.

Indoor worship services and weddings are allowed for gatherings of 10 people or fewer in the same confined space, the statement adds.

However, nothing prevents an indoor worship service from being shifted to multiple services over a period of time, or held in different rooms, to meet the requirements of the Phase One Order.

The governor's office also noted that the limit on attendees can be lifted for a religious gathering in which it is not possible to conduct worship services outdoors or through other accommodations.

There may be situations in which particular religious beliefs dictate that some or all of a religious service must be held indoors and that more than 10 people must be in attendance, the statement from the governors office explains.

Baity told WRAL that the lawsuit centers around the concern that churchgoers "First Amendment rights have been squandered. Representing those plaintiffs in the lawsuit is lawyer and pastor David Gibbs, Jr. of the Christian Law Association.

"We have the ability to open our churches safely, with higher standards than they are asking us to do," Gibbs explained.

Cooper has defended the state's restrictions on indoor worship, explaining that "we don't want our churches to become hotspots for the virus."



When people are gathered together indoor, the virus has a significant chance to spread from one person to the next, Cooper said in a press conference this week.



Weve seen tragic consequences when thats the case. We hope congregations all across North Carolina will make good decisions about what is right to look after each other.

Churches will be allowed to hold indoor services as part of the second phase of the states reopening plan. Phase one is slated to expire on May 22. Under the second phase, churches will still need to limit their capacity for services.
M inisters and teachers unions have been told to stop squabbling as Boris Johnsons plan to get pupils back to school next month descended into chaos.

Childrens commissioner Anne Longfield called for the two rowing sides to find a solution, warning it would be extremely damaging to keep children at home much longer.

The Government plans to reopen schools to pupils in Reception and Year 1 and Year 6 from June 1 at the earliest.

But unionists insist the move would put teachers, children and parents at risk of becoming infected by coronavirus.

Anne Longfield called for the two sides should come together (REX/Shutterstock) / Rex Features

The British Medical Association made a surprise intervention in the heated clash on Friday and backed teaching unions over conflicting evidence that schools would be safe .

Crunch talks between unionists and the Governments scientific advisers on Friday also seemingly did little to break the stalemate as the NASUWT teaching union said it raised more questions than answers and hit out at flimsy science.

Now Ms Longfield has called on the unions and ministers and agree to a safe, phased return to school before the summer along with rigorous Covid-19 testing of staff, pupils and parents.

The Oasis Trust plans to reopen all of its 35 schools from June 1 / PA

All sides need to show a greater will to work together in the interests of children, she said.

We cannot afford to wait for a vaccine, which may never arrive, before children are back in school.

Its time to stop squabbling and agree a staggered, safe return that is accompanied by rigorous testing of teachers, children and families.

She also urged the sector to consider using school buildings for summer lessons and family support after schools break up in July.

Citing the overwhelming evidence that prolonged absence from school is damaging to childrens mental health and social mobility, she added: All sides need to show a greater will to work together in the interests of children.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said it was vital schools reopen and accused unions of scaremongering.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said schools will reopen in a phased way / PA

But Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said following Fridays meeting: The meeting that we had earlier this afternoon frankly was not conclusive in relation to the evidence base to support the proposal for the wider reopening of schools. That evidence is flimsy at best, in terms of the international comparisons being used.

Meanwhile, Kevin Courtney, joint secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said "very many questions that were asked were not addressed" during the meeting.

New research from the childrens commissioner found that only three out of 57 nurseries attached to NHS hospitals in England have reported a confirmed case of Covid-19 among children.

Teaching unions have warned it is not safe to reopen schools in June / PA

Liverpool city council became the first to publicly defy the Government plan, telling parents in a letter that it cannot reopen schools on June 1.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the plan, adding:I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so, and it is safe to do so.

Dr Jennie Harries, the deputy chief medical officer for England, said the risk to teachers and pupils was very small and diminishing with time and warned of very important long-term health risks to children if they stay at home.

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesman said: Getting children back to school and nurseries is in their best interests and all those working in education have a duty to work together to do so.
German police yesterday seized arms and explosives in a raid at the home of a special forces soldier, the defence minister and army sources said - an embarrassment to a military trying to deflect accusations that it harbours right-wing extremists.

It was not clear if the soldier had intended to use his weapons to carry out an attack.

Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer said the military would not tolerate members who "act in a radical way".

The Dresden prosecutor general said "a large amount of evidence" was confiscated during the raid at the property of the 45-year-old German man in Nordsachsen, near Leipzig, in the eastern state of Saxony.

He is suspected of violating Germany's Weapons Control Act.

The Dresden prosecutor said the raid had been carried out based on information from the army's counter-intelligence unit.

It did not say if the soldier had been detained, but Ms Kramp-Karrenbauer said he may no longer wear an army uniform or enter military premises.

Germany is struggling to tackle a rise in far-right radicalism which has culminated in attacks, including a shooting rampage in Hanau in February when a racist gunman killed 11 people, including migrants and himself.

This has coincided with efforts by the German army to root out extremism in its ranks after a scandal in 2017.

A report by the military intelligence in March said Germany had uncovered eight right-wing radicals in the armed forces and 27 individuals who have reservations about the post-war democratic constitution.

The radicals were discovered after a military intelligence unit investigated 592 individuals suspected of holding broadly anti-constitutional views.

The investigations were prompted by the arrest in 2017 of an army officer who was suspected of planning a racially motivated attack. Legal proceedings in that case are continuing.

Also in 2017, Nazi memorabilia, including Nazi-era Wehrmacht helmets, was found at a barracks.

Given Germany's Nazi past, many lawmakers insist on "zero tolerance" for far-right extremism and have demanded action.
Ben Shephard updated GMB fans on Kate Garraway's husband Derek Draper's progress as he continues his coronavirus battle.

Speaking on Friday morning, the TV host, 45, gave fans the latest news from his co-star: 'A lot of you have been asking how Kate, Darcey, and Billy are, and Derek. We can update you because Kate did last night on her Instagram.'

In her post, Kate detailed how she had FaceTimed her comatose husband during the weekly Clap For Carers initiative and gushed that she 'believed he can hear us'.

Shock: Ben Shephard updated GMB fans on Kate Garraway's husband Derek Draper's progress as he continues his coronavirus battle

During the video call, Kate beamed as she watched children light smoke coloured flares, while talking to her husband, who she believes could hear her.

Derek, 52, is understood to be in an unresponsive critical condition following seven weeks in intensive care after being admitted to hospital with COVID-19.

Kate took to Instagram to share a video of her son Billy, 10, showing a lego version of his family, with Derek taking centre stage on a stand.

The following morning, Ben then read out her post, saying: 'So our #nhsclap was a little different tonight. We still clapped & cheered as much as ever but I couldn't film on my phone as had Derek on FaceTime throughout!

Critically-ill: Kate's husband Derek Draper, 52, remains in a coma as he continues his battle against coronavirus (pictured in December)

'Of course we can't KNOW but I believe he can hear us [he's still in a coma] & thought at least the incredible @nhs team's looking after him would hear our gratitude...

'Love to all in these terrible times - the separation from loved ones whatever the reason is so tough.'

After reading the post, Ben then went on: 'She's been doing this and a lot of people can share thoughts with their loved ones. The feedback we've had from people in comas has been that they can hear things.'

Earlier on Thursday, Kate shared a thank you to fans for their ongoing support.

The presenter, who has regularly kept followers updated with Derek's progress, told how the messages of support have 'meant the world' to her as her husband fights for his life in hospital.

Touched: During the video call, Kate beamed as she watched children light smoke coloured flares, while talking to her husband, who she believes could hear her

Writing in her latest blog post, Kate said the kind words were 'comforting' as she tries to remain strong for her husband and children Darcey, 14, and William, 10.

She said: 'I wanted to send a huge thank you to all of you who have sent me such wonderful messages wishing Derek well. It has meant the world to me.

'I am sorry I have not been able to reply to them individually, as I am sure you will understand that I am focusing on my family and Derek right now.'

The TV host continued: 'In quieter moments I am reading all of your messages and they are so comforting and wonderful to read.'

Sweet: After reading the post, Ben then went on: 'She's been doing this and a lot of people can share thoughts with their loved ones. The feedback we've had from people in comas has been that they can hear things'

Kate is said to be phoning her husband, with whom she raises children Darcey and William on a daily basis while he remains on a ventilator in intensive care.

Talking to COVID-19 survivor Julie Stanfield, her daughter Gabrielle and the NHS staff who saved her life on Wednesday's edition of GMB, Ben, 45, admitted his co-host had found a degree of reassurance in calling Derek.

He said: 'One of our colleagues, Kate Garraway, has said that one of the things that has been really comforting for her is the fact that the staff are taking her phone in the evenings and she can talk to her husband.

'She has no idea if he's responding but it certainly gives her a sense of comfort and there is the hope that it is.'

Challenges: Kate and Derek have been married for 14 years (pictured in 2010 with their son Billy)

Last Thursday, Kate updated her supporters to reveal Derek was 'still with us' and 'fighting so hard' to beat coronavirus.

And the following day, Kate was given hope while her husband battles on in hospital, by fans sharing their stories of recovery from COVID-19 after weeks in ICU.

The GMB presenter thanked a fan for telling her about her own husband's survival of the virus, following a seven-week stint in intensive care.

Derek is best-known for his career as a former lobbyist. During his time as a political adviser he was embroiled in two political scandals - 1998's Lobbygate and in 2009 a scandal surrounding LabourList, the website he edited.

Thankful: Kate has been sharing the clap for carers on her Instagram every week

He went on to write two books - Blair's 100 Days and Life Support - before retraining as a psychotherapist.

Kate and Derek have been married for 14 years, with the former lobbyist cheering his wife on for the duration of her stint on I'm A Celebrity last year, he flew out to Australia with their two children to meet her.

The couple, who wed in September 2005, have previously discussed their union, with Derek admitting that he feared she was 'a high-maintenance TV bimbo'.

Following her stint on I'm A Celebrity, the couple were planning to renew their vows in the coming months.
Syracuse, N.Y.  Anyone looking for a final a decision on big summer events in Central New York like the New York State Fair will probably be waiting awhile longer.

Well make the decisions when we have to make the decisions, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today during a press conference at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse. But lets see what the facts are at the last minute that we have to make a decision.

The coronavirus pandemic has already upended numerous CNY summertime favorites. The Taste of Syracuse has been canceled, along with a number of concerts at the St. Josephs Health Amphitheater at Lakeview.

READ MORE: We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Nonessential businesses first closed in the state in March to slow the spread of the virus.

Cuomo said today he didnt want to guess about what the facts might be weeks or months from now. He also didnt say exactly when he would make a decision on the fair.

This situation changes every two weeks, he said. Whats happening here is facts are changing.

During his last visit to Syracuse in April, Cuomo said events like the fair couldnt happen this year unless the entire state was in a position to reopen. Otherwise, Central New York would be mobbed with visitors from other regions, creating a major risk of spreading the virus rapidly across huge crowds of people.

The possibility of calling off the fair is heartbreaking, Cuomo said.

Five regions in the state, including Central New York, will begin a phased reopening of their economies on Friday. The regions are those less stressed by the pandemic.

Theyve all met seven reopening benchmarks set by the state.

Nonessential businesses in other areas, including Western New York, the Capital Region and the New York City area will remain closed.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Malls cant reopen in Phase 1, but curbside pickup allowed for interior stores

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598
She has been isolating alone at her home in Chelsea throughout lockdown.

And Georgia Toffolo seemed to be getting into the spirit, as she uploaded a series of hilarious Instagram pictures on Friday, of herself posing like a Desperate Housewife while wearing bright yellow Marigolds.

The Made In Chelsea star, 25, posed in a black evening dress and heart-shaped black sunglasses and even held her dog up in one of the pictures.

Hysterical: Georgia Toffolo, 25, seemed to be getting into the spirit as she uploaded a hilarious Instagram picture on Friday of her posing like a Desperate Housewife

She tied her short blonde tresses back as she pouted for the camera in one shot before seeming to burst out laughing in another.

Georgia, also known as Toff, posted the picture for her 1.9million followers alongside the caption: 'Desperate Housewife 2020.'

The I'm A Celebrity winner posted a similar picture with her dog, Monty, at the end of April as she posed in a dressing gown and sunglasses while holding a glass of white one in one hand and Monty in the other.

She has also been previously seen walking the pampered pooch around London in a pushchair specially designed for puppies.

Pampered pooch: The Made In Chelsea star, 25, posted a similar picture with her dog, Monty, at the end of May as she posed in a dressing gown and sunglasses

Doting dog mama: Georgia protected her new puppy Monty in a dog pushchair on Wednesday as they enjoyed a walk

Georgia explained that her dog can't walk on the floor as he's not had his second lot of vet jabs due to the UK coronavirus lockdown.

She defended her dog pushchair and joked that people think she's 'barking mad' for the precautionary measures.

Taking to her Instagram story, she explained: 'People think I'm barking mad for the pushchair, if not, the dog is never going to see the outside. The second lot of jabs have been cancelled at the vets because of COVID-19.

'I need to get this puppy out and used to the sound of streets, I can't put him on the floor because he hasn't had all his jabs.'

Breaking the rules? Georgia met up with her father and a friend in Chelsea on Sunday despite suggesting she was isolating alone

The reality star was also recently accused of ignoring official advice for a second time as she went for a stroll with her father and a friend on Sunday.

She appeared in close proximity to her friend, who was carrying a dog, and father Gary Bennett as they headed to her home.

Government rules at the time stated that people living in different households should not meet and that people should should not be in gatherings of more than two in public.

For the outing, Georgia looked ready for summer in a frilly white shirt, denim shorts and open toed white sandals.

Essential travel? Georgia reportedly flouted lockdown rules previously to attend a dog's birthday party [pictured with her own dog, Monty]

She carried a wicker picnic basket as well as a handbag, and accessorised with sunglasses.

It comes after she was previously criticised for flouting lockdown rules to attend a dog's birthday party.

The reality star joined her friend Jess Hydleman at her house in London, where two men were also in attendance, reported The Sun.

The party was for Jess' dog, where they took part in a Zoom call to celebrate - despite lockdown rules stating people should only leave their homes for exercise and essential trips for food or medication.
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By Henri-Pierre Andre and Matthias Blamont

PARIS (Reuters) - Sanofi chief executive Paul Hudson said on Thursday it was vital that any coronavirus vaccine reach all parts of the world, after angering the French government earlier by saying some countries would get priority access.

But the CEO of the French pharmaceutical giant stood firm on the need for a faster, more collaborative European effort in the hunt for a vaccine to the new coronavirus that has killed over 298,000 globally and crippled economies worldwide.

Hudson told Bloomberg on Wednesday that vaccine doses produced in the United States could go to U.S. patients first, given the country had supported the research financially.

French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe had said there should be no favourites in the roll-out of an eventual vaccine. Equal access was non-negotiable, he said.

Hudson said on Thursday it was vital that any coronavirus vaccine reach all regions and he was sorry that his earlier remarks had created such a storm.

"I have been campaigning on European readiness to treat COVID-19 for months, building capacity in Europe, making sure we are ready, getting governments in the EU aligned," Hudson told an event organised by the Financial Times.

Sanofi, which has urged stronger European coordination in the hunt for a vaccine and has U.S. financial support, clarified that any such vaccine would be made available to all.

There is no vaccine and no known treatment for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the new coronavirus. Drugmakers are racing to develop what would be a lucrative prize, but have sought financial support to mitigate the risks.

Sanofi is working on two vaccine projects against COVID-19. One is with British rival GlaxoSmithKline Plc that has received financial support from the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) of the U.S. Health Department, and the other with U.S. company Translate Bio that will use a different technology.

"NON-NEGOTIABLE"

Story continues

Given the support from BARDA, doses produced by Sanofi in the United States are expected to go to U.S. patients first, a prospect that has raised concern in Europe.

"A vaccine against COVID-19 should be a public good for the world. The equal access of all to the virus is non-negotiable," Philippe said on Thursday.

Philippe said he had reinforced this message to Sanofi's chairman, Serge Weinberg, who in return had assured the prime minister of the distribution in France of any Sanofi vaccine.

Hudson's initial comments upset President Emmanuel Macron, an Elysee palace official said. A presidency official will meet with Sanofi representatives next week, the official added.

Sanofi has 18 production sites in France.

Hudson said Europe lacked a body akin to BARDA.

"That model does not exist in Europe," he said, even though there was support from governments to establish one.

The controversy has raised questions over whether Europe has been too slow to respond in terms of organising and funding vaccine research. Sanofi reiterated on Thursday that the United States had moved more quickly in this regard.

The charity Oxfam said pharmaceutical companies should not be able to decide "who lives and who dies".

Officials meeting at the World Health Assembly next week must demand that vaccines and tests are patent-free, Oxfam said in a statement. They should also be distributed equitably to all countries.

"Governments must work together to stop corporations profiteering from the pandemic and save the lives of people across the globe," Oxfam said.

(Reporting by Henri-Pierre Andre and Jean-Stephane Brosse, Writing by Sarah White and Benoit Van Overstraeten; Editing by Nick Macfie, Richard Lough and Mark Heinrich)
Donald Trump tours medical equipment distributor Owens and Minor in Allentown, Pennsylvania: REUTERS

Donald Trump spoke about his administration's drive to develop and manufacture a vaccine for the American public by the end of the year when speaking in the Rose Garden at the White House on Friday. The president boasted the US would take "warp speed" action to create a vaccine by the end of the year, despite experts warning that timeline would take a "miracle".

The president also claimed the US economy would be "amazing" by the fourth quarter, just hours after reports revealed retails have plummeted 16 per cent. The plummeting sales were sparked after stores were forced to close in-store services across the country amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In other news, Mr Trump took to social media to applaud his Keyboard Warriors for pushing the Obamagate conspiracy theory on his behalf, to which Barack Obama himself responded (indirectly) with a one word tweet: Vote. He called on Senator Lindsay Graham to bring in Mr Obama for a Senate hearing about his latest conspiracy theory, but the Republican senator denied his request.

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Vietnamese citizens returning from overseas do health declarations at a centralised quarantine camp.  VNA/VNS Photo

HCM CITY  Viet Nam reported one new imported COVID-19 case on Friday afternoon, raising the tally of infections to 313.

The 313rd patient is a 28-year-old Vietnamese man residing in Yen Thanh District, Nghe An Province who returned to Viet Nam from UAE on May 3 on the flight numbered VN0088, seat 51K.

He was quarantined upon arrival at Bac Lieu Province Student Dormitory and transferred to the provincial general hospital for treatment after testing positive for the virus.

Earlier, on May 7, 17 other passengers of the flight were confirmed infected with COVID-19. Ministry of Health sent a task force to Bac Lieu Province to help local doctors take care of the patients.

As of Friday, Viet Nam reported 173 imported cases which were isolated upon arrival. Of 24 infections reported on Friday morning, 23 are currently in stable condition and one has started developing pneumonia.

More than 12,000 people are in isolation at centralised quarantine camps, medical facilities or at home.

Viet Nam has gone 29 days without community transmission. PM Nguyen Xuan Phuc on Friday urged the Government, ministries and State agencies to come up with a new, long-term strategy which is both effective in terms of public health and sustainable for the economy.  VNS
GST on textiles will not be increased from 5 to 12 per cent: FM Sitharaman

It is not BJP money: Nirmala Sitharaman on IT raids on 'Samajwadi perfume' trader

Budget Session 2022 to commence on January 31; Union Budget to be tabled on February 1

FM Nirmala Sitharaman to address press conference at 4:30 pm, likely to clear air on Antrix Devas issue

FM Sitharaman on Devas-Antrix issue: Cong has no moral right to speak about crony capitalism

FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces third tranche of Rs 20 lakh crore economic package

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, May 15: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday held a press conference in New Delhi where she briefed the media persons on the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package. This would be her third press conference in a week.

Addressing the media, the Finance Minister said that today's tranche focuses on agriculture and said, "In the last two months, a number of measures have been taken to support farmers. The MSP purchases to an extent of Rs 74,300 crores was made. Further under PM Kisan fund transfer of Rs 18,700 crore was made in the past two months."

How mobiles can be potential carrier of coronavirus in healthcare institutions

Sitharaman also said that the agriculture has endured a lot and ensured India reached many heights. "The holding may be small, but he has produced a great yield," she said.

The Finance Minister is seen announcing a series of tranches of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Coronavirus outbreak: In less than fortnight, COVID-19 cases spikes over three times in India

Earlier, PM Modi announced the package during his address to the nation on Tuesday, vowing to make the country 'Atmanirbhar'. He also said that this will be 10 per cent of the country's Gross Domestic Product or GDP.

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Story first published: Friday, May 15, 2020, 16:36 [IST]
Over 52,000 shield protectors for the face were filed

On May 14, Lithuania filed the humanitarian aid on the request of Ukraine  protection means necessary for the fight against Covid-19 as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania noted.

It was noted that the aid was filed within the Eastern Partnership. Armenia, Moldova and Georgia will also get it. The military aircrafts will deliver it. The aid will be transferred to Ukraine by land.

The ministry stated that over 52,000 shield protectors for the face were filed. They cost 100,000 euros. They were produced in Lithuania.

As we reported, Ukraines President Volodymyr Zelensky thanked Austrias President Alexander Van der Bellen and the Austrian government for efforts to help Ukrainians who experienced difficulties with evacuation.

Besides, the Council of the European Union made the decision to provide Ukraine with 1.2 billion Euros for overcoming the economic and social consequences of coronavirus.
The Government last week announced a roadmap for re-opening Ireland. Following the publication of the roadmap, they also announced a series of measures to support impacted businesses.

Here in Louth, some of these supports will be delivered by Louth County Council and its Local Enterprise Office.

Head of Enterprise at Louth County Council Thomas McEvoy explains: "Businesses across Louth have been impacted by the necessary restrictions imposed by Government. As the first port of call for business in the county, our immediate priority was to try to stabilise local companies and help them get through this phase. But now our focus turns to re-opening and a new set of measures are being rolled out to get business going again."

Full details of the supports available to business are listed on: www.localenterprise.ie/response

The headline measure is a 250m Restart Fund that will help SMEs to get back on their feet with supports of up to 10,000. For larger companies, the Pandemic Stabilisation and Recovery Fund will make capital available on commercial terms. The Sustaining Enterprise Fund, managed by Enterprise Ireland, will support manufacturing and internationally traded services.

Rates are being waived for 3 months for commercial businesses in the hospitality, retail, leisure and childcare sectors, forced to close due to public health requirements. The waiver is effective from 27th March. Government will fund Local Authorities to make up for the waived rates, thus ensuring that full services are still delivered to the public.

Tax liabilities have also been "warehoused" with no enforcement action and no interest being levied for a 12 month period. This means that the tax is still due but businesses have an additional 12 months to submit the payment, which should aid cashflow.

These measures are in addition to the Business Continuity Voucher, the Trading Online Voucher, MicroFinance Ireland low interest loans, mentoring and online business training being provided by the Louth's Local Enterprise Office.

Thomas concluded "Our message to business in Louth is simple. In these challenging times, supporting local business and jobs is now more important than ever. Whatever challenges your business is facing, email us at info@leo.louthcoco.ie or visit www.localenterprise.ie/louth. The team at the Local Enterprise Office are here to help and support."
The house of representatives has asked the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) not to allow Aminu Tambuwal, governor of Sokoto, mislead them with his biased position on the bill to control infectious diseases.

According to the lawmakers, the governors demand that the bill be suspended was informed by Tambuwals personal and partisan opposition to the emergence of the current house leadership under Femi Gbajabiamila.

On Wednesday, the governors forum had asked that the bill be suspended after Tambuwal, its vice-chairman and former speaker of the house, briefed them about during their virtual meeting.

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However, Benjamin Kalu, the House spokesman, in a statement said the lawmakers said while they will welcome any contribution the governors have regarding the bill, the constitution does not demand that they must concur with such legislation.

It is rather surprising that the NGF, in arriving at its decision, relied on an update from the Governor of Sokoto State, who, apart from being a lawyer, is a former Speaker and an ex-ranking member of the House, who should know better and guide the Forum accordingly, Kalu said in the statement issued on Thursday.

We assume that his position was informed by his well-known personal and partisan opposition to the emergence of the current leadership of the house considering his obvious stance in 2015 and 2019.

Unlike in a constitution amendment matter, where state houses of assembly have a defined constitutional role to play in effecting any review to it, Bills such as the Control of Infectious Diseases are not by our constitution subject of the concurrence of state houses of assembly or state governors. We do believe that our respected Governors are aware of these lawful processes of legislation and should not be misguided by the biased position of a former speaker.

Read Also: National Assembly No Longer Safe For Lawmakers  Reps Spokesman

Notwithstanding, the House expresses its readiness to work with the Committee raised by the NGF to meet members of the Green Chamber on the Bill. The Governors are our critical stakeholders in nation-building, and we understand the importance of working with our Governors at critical moments such as this pandemic period.

The green chamber invited the governors forum to make its position on the bill known through a memorandum during the planned public hearing as no single Governor has called the Speaker or anyone in leadership to express his views till date.
Lenovo's first gaming phone under the Legion brand has been the subject of a long teaser campaign, but were yet to see a launch date or proper specs sheet from an official source.

Today, the companys Weibo profile posted another short teaser, highlighting that the handset is meant to be operated in horizontal orientation. That was already hinted by previous rumors that the revealed the Legion Phone will have a pop-up selfie camera on the side and main shooters in the center of the back panel.

The layout of the user interface of the Legion Phone will have extra optimization for landscape mode, with the Settings menu and its sub-menus opening on both sides of the screen.

That way you can maximize the visualization area and while the phone was probably a placeholder, it could also be the Legion Phone with no cameras or notches on the front.

We already know the Legion phone will have 90W charging, gamepad accessories and will arrive with game-changing liquid cooling technology.

The manufacturer also claims the phone will be the first to surpass the 600,000 threshold on AnTuTu, something modern Snapdragon 865-powered phones are still struggling - the Mi 10 Pro can go as high as 593,769.

Source (in Chinese) | Via
An 11-year-old boy is one of three young people arrested after a man was stabbed in a street in Leeds.

The victim, a 32-year-old man, was rushed to hospital with serious injuries after the attack in Whingate, Armley in the west of the city last night.

Two other boys, aged 15 and 16, also remain in custody after being arrested with the 11-year-old.

A large police presence is in Armley, west Leeds this morning after a man was stabbed in a street. Three boys, aged 11, 15 and 16, have been arrested in connection with the attack

Police were called to the scene in Whingate just after 9pm last night after a 32-year-old man was stabbed

Police tape stretches across a number of roads in the city this morning, with several officers also at the scene

Today, a police cordon stretches across the road as forensic teams scour the area for evidence.

The cordon is in place at the eastern end of Armley, off Town Street while tape stretches across Whingate Grove, Aberdeen Road and Aberdeen Walk, with several officers at the scene.

Detective Inspector James Entwistle, of Leeds District CID, said: 'We are treating this incident very seriously and are currently carrying out extensive enquiries to establish the full circumstances.

'We would like to hear from anyone who witnessed the incident or who has any information that could assist the investigation.'

A map, pictured, shows where a 32-year-old man suffered serious injuries after being stabbed in west Leeds last night

A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police added in a statement: 'Detectives are appealing for information after a man was stabbed in an incident in Leeds last night.

'At 9.18pm yesterday police were called Whingate, in Armley, where a 32-year-old man had been stabbed in the street.

'He was taken to hospital for treatment to serious injuries. His condition is described as stable and his injuries are not believed to be life threatening.

'Three males, aged 11, 15 and 16, have been arrested in connection with the incident and are currently in custody.

'A large scene is currently in place to undergo forensic examination and specialist searches.'
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has admitted he was 'wrong' to say the Obama administration failed to leave a plan for a pandemic.

His admission comes just days after McConnell told President Donald Trump's daughter in law Lara Trump that 'the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this'.

But the former president's officials struck back, stating they left a 69-page Pandemic Playbook for the Trump administration 'that they ignored'.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (pictured) has admitted he was 'wrong' to say the Obama administration failed to leave a 'game plan' for a pandemic

The document listed the novel coronaviruses as ones to watch that could require a major government response and addressed issues such as PPE, testing and funding.

The US is the worst-hit country in the coronavirus pandemic with more than 1.4 million infected and upwards of 85,900 dead.

Speaking to Fox News, McConnell said: 'I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan, so I clearly made a mistake in that regard.'

In an online conversation for the Trump campaign last week, McConnell said: 'They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true?

McConnell told the President's daughter in law Lara Trump that 'the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this'

Obama (pictured) officials struck back, stating they left a 69-page Pandemic Playbook for the Trump administration 'that they ignored'

'We want to be early, ready for the next one because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this.'

After his claims, Ronald Klain, a campaign adviser to Biden and the former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator, responded via Twitter.

He wrote: 'We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored.

Speaking to Fox News, McConnell (pictured) said: 'I was wrong. They did leave behind a plan, so I clearly made a mistake in that regard'

'And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office... that they abolished.

'And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75%.'

The Obama playbook, which was 40 pages plus appendices, contained advice on questions to put forward, decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what, CNN reported.

Trump had his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wave a pandemic 'plan' at reporters on Thursday to show the president was in control of the outbreak

She also carried the 2019 after-action report from the Crimson Contagion wargame, which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness

The color-coded book addressed a number of issues, including testing, funding, personal protective equipment, emergency declarations, border control measures, diplomacy, the use of the military, public communication, and even mortuary services.

Trump had his press secretary Kayleigh McEnany wave a pandemic 'plan' at reporters on Thursday to show the president was in control of the outbreak.

But she was also holding an after-action report from the 'Crimson Contagion' simulation exercise which took place in 2019.

This harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness plan.

The simulated scenario tested the capacity of the U.S. federal government and 12 states to handle a severe influenza outbreak originating in China, and warned of a disorganized response, funding shortfalls, and dangerous shortages of ventilators and medical masks.

The plan was brought out after a whistleblower testified on Capitol Hill that a 'dark winter' was ahead because of a lack of 'standard, centralized, coordinated plan.'
Barabanki : , May 15 (IANS) Holding aloft a flower from the Parijat tree, Babu Lal, 72, exclaims, "Phool aa gaya, bimari chali jayegi (flower is blooming, the disease will go away)." He firmly believes that the flowering of the Parijat tree, which is said to be a rare sight, is a good omen and will drive away coronavirus. The Parijat flower is white that turns golden as it wilts.

A farmer by profession, Babu Lal admits that he has been fascinated by the flowers of the Parijat tree ever since he was a child.

"This is the third time in my life that I have seen a Parijat flower even though I live barely 5 km from here. The first time I saw the flower was when I got married and then when my father was critically injured in an accident. The doctors had given up on him, but I saw the flower and he recovered. Now I have seen the flower again and I am sure that the prevailing crisis will be over soon," he said.

Other locals also swear by the Parijat and insist that the flowers bring good tidings.

"Parijat ka phool shubh hai. Agar kisi ne dekha hai, to achcha hi hoga (the Parijat flower is lucky. If someone has seen it, it will bring good tidings)," said Yaduvendra Singh, a local medical representative.

This Parijat tree is a protected tree, situated in Kintur village in Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh. The much-revered tree is also known as 'the tree from paradise' due to its mythological significance.

It is said to belong to the Mahabharat era.

There are a number of legends about this tree, which have popular acceptance. One of them is that Arjun brought this tree from heaven and Kunti used to crown Lord Shiva with its flowers.

Another saying is that that Lord Krishna brought this tree for his queen Satyabhama .

According to the Harivansh Puraan, the Parijat tree is a 'Kalpavriksha', or wish bearing tree, which is found mainly in heaven.

Newly-weds visit the tree for blessings, and every Tuesday, a fair is held where local people worship the tree.

Director of the Central Institute of Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (CIMAP), Anil Kumar Tripathi, said, "Flowering in the endangered tree is rare and it takes years to blossom." Another scientist at CIMAP said, "Flowering in Parijat generally takes place five years after plantation. It happens around the onset of monsoon. There is no surety that it will happen every year or after a fixed number of years." The importance of this ancient and much-revered tree can be gauged from the fact that the district magistrate has strictly prohibited any kind of damage to the tree.

In 2015, the Parijat tree was found to be decaying due to bacterial and fungal infections, mainly due to offerings of sweets, water and milk made by the devotees.

The forest department took the help of scientists at the National Botanical Research Institute (NBRI) and a team of senior scientists, led by S.K. Tiwari, had collected samples of the tree's healthy tissue and wood from the affected portion and the soil to find the cause.

The sample analysis showed the tree was infested with multiple bacteria and fungi. The NBRI treated the tree and administered chemical treatment. It also recommended a microbial bio-pesticide (Bacillus based inoculants) to be applied on its trunk and leaves thrice a year to keep it clean of infections.

Apart from the 'original' Parijat tree at Kintur, there are four such trees in Lucknow, one each at CIMAP and Lucknow University, and two at NBRI.

The state government, a fortnight ago, had decided to identify 'heritage' trees and the Parijat is one of them.

The 'heritage' tree tag will entitle such trees to an elaborate conservation plan by the state biodiversity board.

Through a government order, all district officials have been asked to compile an exhaustive list of trees that have survived four human generations (considering one generation is of at least 75 years) or are more than 100 years old and have religious, mythological or historical connect.

The first-of-its-kind initiative in UP will help identify, locate and mark revered trees that have stood the test of time and are preserved in folklores.
Amid the current regional and international context, Vietnam urges parties to not take any action to further complicate the situation in the East Sea, said Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang.

Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang

Hang made the statement at the ministrys regular press conference on May 14 while answering reporters queries about the information that Chinese navy surveillance aircraft KJ-500 and KQ-200 appeared on Da Chu Thap (Fiery Cross Reef) in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.

Regarding the information, she reiterated that Vietnam has sufficient historical evidence and legal basis to assert its sovereignty over Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa archipelagos in accordance with international law.

All activities of the parties in these two archipelagos without the permission of Vietnam are null and void, the spokeswoman affirmed./.VNA
Across the world residential care and nursing homes have shown to be highly vulnerable to COVID-19. In Canada, these complexes have seen hundreds of deaths as result of the deadly virus. Here in Nova Scotia, Northwood has faced a significant outbreak of the virus and its impacts have been devastating.



We asked Dr. Kenneth Rockwood why residential care and nursing homes are being so heavily hit by the virus and what can be done to mitigate risks and protect the residents of these facilities.



Why are residential care and nursing homes more vulnerable to COVID-19?



There are a few reasons these places are more vulnerable. The first is that they contain more older people who are at risk. We know that around the world, the people who have been most at risk both to contract illness and to die of it have been older people, and particularly older people living in long-term care. We believe this is due first to their degree of frailty. That is one of the areas we are investigating. The hypothesis is that even though more people who are frail or severely frail will develop the disease, it will not affect everyone with that degree of frailty.



The second risk is that within a nursing home, practices that typically serve everybody well, like having group meals and physical interactions, are not good if you are trying to enforce social distancing. Those practices are generally sound; they are just not good in this circumstance. Related to that is the challenge that some people who are in long-term care have dementia and cannot easily learn the new rules. They find it hard to understand why they should have a face mask or why they cannot touch somebody with a face mask to see if it is them, and so on.



In addition, other factors within a community increase risk. For example, if you have health care workers who have bus schedule changes because of low demand  and they are paid such that they cannot afford anything other than the bus  the bus ride that perhaps took 45-minutes now takes 2-hours. It is easy to see why the workers would decide to carpool together to work.



So, there are practices that extend beyond individual health and the nursing home itself. They have to do with the environment in which nursing home health care is provided. The issue is complex, and people who are riding in with one solution are unlikely to get it right. We have to respect the complexity of the problem.



What can be done to mitigate the risk of COVID-19 entering these buildings?



We know that COVID-19 is a predominantly respiratory illness. It spreads through particles from the respiratory tract of an infected individual; coughing and sneezing are the dominant ways of transmission. It can also be transmitted by touching a contaminated surface and then rubbing the eyes, nose, or mouth. These are efficient ways to infuse the virus into the body, even more efficient than blood. So, we should try to reduce the risk of transmission. For the most part, social distancing and then meticulous handwashing. As I said, those things are challenges in long-term care. However, some nursing homes have successfully managed the situation by quarantining the people who likely have been exposed and isolating those who have the illness.



What can governments, health-care workers and administrators of these homes learn from current practices and experiences to protect residents from COVID-19 and other potential pandemics that could emerge in the future?



We need to recognize that long-term care institutions still might be the main sources of illness in a second wave. For example, at the Nova Scotia Health Authority, we initially decided the best thing to do  for good reasons  was to make sure that we had the hospitals as empty as possible to accommodate the demand that was going to come chiefly from the community. As a consequence, we moved people out of the hospital into long-term care just before the pandemic. However, that made it harder when the pandemic struck to isolate people with COVID-19 in the nursing homes.



It is very challenging to move people in a nursing home. It is not like a hospital where they might have just their suitcase. People in long-term care have a ton of things. I expect that some of these solutions are going to be architectural. For instance, creating a locker that is mobile so that people can easily move from their rooms. Also, we are going to need to look seriously at whether there should be anything other than single rooms in long-term care, including retrofitting existing long-term care facilities.



We are going to need to imagine that if people have to manage in their own room, those rooms will be designed to accommodate that, to make it not as constraining. Theres talk of wall-mounted screens that can be used for more than TV; these screens can be entertaining, calming, and so on. We also need to figure out quickly best transportation for workers. If it turns out that many of the workers are living in one area, we could have school buses, moving people back and forth in a manner that ensures social distancing.



Finally, we should look at the notion that it is hard to get people to work in continuing care. We also know that mostly they are not well paid. As a result, some must work in more than one institution. We need to look seriously into paying them more. I think that we should look at creating a reserve corps (possibly from the hospitality industry) who, in pandemic time would not available to be upskilled and help provide personal care in nursing homes. There are people with skill sets and dispositions that could allow them to take on this additional work.
There is no shortage of essential commodities and medicines in the northeastern states and Jammu and Kashmir in the wake of the ongoing lockdown, Union Minister Jitendra Singh was informed on Friday.

Singh held a meeting with resident commissioners of the northeastern states and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir via video-conferencing here.

The resident commissioners conveyed to the minister that there was no shortage of essential supplies or medical equipment in their respective states and the UT, and thanked Singh's office for continuous follow-up of each of their issues, an official statement said.

Singh, Minister for the Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), received COVID-19-related feedback from the Delhi-based resident commissioners of the eight northeastern states and the UT of Jammu and Kashmir.

The minister briefed the representatives about the various arrangements made in the last two to three days for the movement of the people living in different parts of the country to reach their respective native places.

He said the process of 'Shramik Special' trains is continuing and appreciated the role of resident commissioners, many of whom were designated nodal officers, for coordinating the same, the statement said.

Singh said his office was in regular touch with all the state and UT governments, and the resident commissioners had been asked to follow up with his office and the central government on issues related to their respective states and UTs.

He also observed that while the northeast had received all-round appreciation for effective management against the spread of COVID-19, Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh had decisively fared better than many other states and UTs in the country.

The hour-long video conference was attended by resident commissioners from Arunachal Pradesh (Jitendra Narain), Assam (K C Samaria ), Manipur (P K Singh), Mizoram (Ajay Choudhary), Nagaland (Jyoti Kalash), Sikkim (Ashwani Kumar Chand), Tripura (Chetanya Murthi) and Jammu and Kashmir (Neeraj Kumar).

Singh also spelt out how they were effectively trying to streamline the movement of migrant labourers and students so as to ensure that crowding was avoided and, at the same time, the requests received were also duly responded to.

The resident commissioners also gave positive feedback from among all sections of the people about the Rs 20-lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

They said this had been universally welcomed in each of the states and Union Territories, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sony SAB, Indias leading GEC is a true living room brand dedicated to spreading happiness through its light-hearted values driven content that brings the entire family together. On International Day of Families, Sony SAB has launched a fun music video featuring some of Indias most loved characters from Sony SAB shows. The song aims to send across a positive message to families to stay strong, united and together smile through such difficult times.

The video features Sony SABs old and current family members together in an endeavour to spread joy with their extended family, the viewers while also encouraging them to stay united, stay happy and face all the challenges with a smile - #MushkilonPeMuskurao. The campaign prominently features artists who have established a special place in Indian television viewing audiences' hearts with some of the most entertaining roles like Kavita Kaushik as Chandramukhi Chautala in FIR, Hussain as Jaiveer in Sajan Re Jhooth Mat Bolo, Sumit Raghavan as Vasant Ghotala in Badi Door Se Aaye Hai, Avneet Kaur as Yasmine in Aladdin: Naam Toh Suna Hoga, Deven Bhojani as Anna in Bhakarwadi, Dev Joshi as Baalveer in Baalveer Returns and many more.

This campaign originates from the simple thought of enjoying every minute of your time with your family. When you have your family by your side, you can cross any hurdle in life, their love and support is what keeps you going. Sony SAB heartily thanks their viewers for the love that they have showered upon the channel, its shows and its characters through the years and encourages them to continue to stay happy and smile through lifes adversities  #MushkilonPeMuskurao.

Today, Sony SAB showcases a strong line up of acclaimed shows like Taarak Mehta Ka Ooltah Chashmah, Aladdin- Naam Toh Suna Hoga, Tenali Rama, Bhakharwadi, Maddam Sir and Baalveer Returns which also achieved the distinction of being named as the most searched Indian television show across the world according to Google's annual trends report 'Year in Search' for 2019. Strengthening its programming even further, the channel will be launching two new path-breaking shows later this year: Tera Yaar Hoon Main and Hero- Gayab Mode On. Sony SAB is also launching a fresh content filler show  Kuch Smiles Ho Jayeinwith Alia to stand by their promise to bring laughter and happiness during these unprecedented times.

Video Link: https://www.facebook.com/ SABTV/videos/245378096675032/
By Trend

The work on the implementation of the Absheron field development project is underway upon the schedule, Trend reports referring to the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan SOCAR.

No changes are planned to be made, the company said.

SOCAR President Rovnag Abdullayev received French Ambassador to Azerbaijan Zacharie Gross on May 14. The issues of cooperation between SOCAR and French companies were discussed during the meeting, the message said. The ambassador stressed that the energy sector is one of the main pillars of cooperation between France and Azerbaijan and expressed satisfaction with the fruitful development of these relations.

"The French TOTAL company participates in the Absheron field development project together with SOCAR. The successful implementation of this project is of great importance for France. It is planned to receive first product as part of the development of the first phase of the project soon, the company added.

Another French company with rich international experience in engineering took part as the main contractor in the modernization of SOCARs Azerikimiya production union, the message said.

According to the company, the ambassador also spoke about the activity of Baku French lyceum, which operates with the support of SOCAR. The ambassador said that he visited the lyceum several times and informed Rovnag Abdullayev that the students' parents are satisfied with the conditions created there.

The parties also discussed the issues of cooperation within the Caspian Environmental Protection Initiative, exchanged the views on other spheres, which, in their opinion, promise successful prospects for further partnership, the message said.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
[May 15, 2020] GeorgiaALIVE Unveils COVID -19 Resource Exchange

GeorgiaALIVE Inc., a leadership initiative for a vital economy, today unveils the GeorgiaALIVE Exchange, a marketplace of regional services and resources relating to the COVID-19 response for both organizations and individuals. GeorgiaALIVE is working with groups across the state-including Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology (News - Alert), Georgia Chamber of Commerce, Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), Invest Atlanta and others-to populate the exchange with needs, items for donation and for purchase. Facilitating Connections, Resources and Leadership Since its inception, GeorgiaALIVE has quickly become a central source for all coronavirus-related information in Georgia, including PPE and resource access. To further momentum, the group has launched the GeorgiaALIVE Exchange as a hub where businesses, nonprofits and other organizations can feature their COVID-related offering - supplies, capacities, technologies, or assets specific to COVID-19 response and/or development programs. "Our team has created the exchange to bring Georgia the innovations and resources it needs to address the novel coronavirus," says Ben Balsley, executive chairman of AGA; and chairman of GeorgiaALIVE's Innovation and Resources committee. "Ultimately, we enviion a Craigslist type of platform, driven by user generated needs and resources."



One example of resources on the GeorgiaALIVE Exchange is Alpharetta-based Maptician and its Care Initiative. In response to the COVID-19 crisis, Maptician is offering a modified version of its cloud-based workplace management software to small and mid-sized homeless shelters. The new module, called Maptician Care, is free of charge to these shelters through the end of 2020. New features to aid shelters during this time include bed placing with distancing guides, points of interest like hand sanitizer and highlighting of areas in need of more frequent cleaning, and new dashboards to track availability and occupancy. "We built Maptician to help businesses manage their office space, yet we quickly realized that our software could help shelters optimize their space to allow them to serve as many people as possible, while still meeting social distancing guidelines," shares Nick Eurek, president and co-founder of Maptician. "We, along with GeorgiaALIVE and the other companies listed in the Exchange, hope to make a tangible difference in the fight against COVID-19."

For inclusion in the Exchange, or to connect with a featured company or service, reach out to [email protected] and title your email "Exchange." About GeorgiaALIVE GeorgiaALIVE, a Georgia corporation with pending nonprofit status, was initially formed out of an effort to track the spread of the novel coronavirus and associated COVID-19 disease across the U.S. and specifically within the state of Georgia. With a dual mission of saving Georgia lives while supporting the safe and full reopening of the state's economy, the organization fights the coronavirus pandemic through initiatives that inform, educate and provide access to critical resources to Georgia citizens and businesses. GeorgiaALIVE has quickly become a central source for all coronavirus-related information in Georgia, including PPE and resource access, best safety practices for daily life, safety guidelines for the workplace. For more information, visit GeorgiaALIVE.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005097/en/

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Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday held several meetings with his ministry's officials ahead of the announcement of guidelines for the fourth-phase of the coronavirus-induced lockdown that begins from Monday, officials said.

Shah, who was in his North Block office for nearly five hours on Friday, held meetings with top officials of the ministry, including Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla.

Senior officials have been busy in finalising the guidelines for the fourth-phase of the lockdown, a home ministry official said.

However, details of Shah's meetings were not known immediately.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Tuesday, had said that the lockdown 4.0 will have a "completely different form", with new rules.

Modi had also said the guidelines will come before May 18.

Officials said greater relaxations and flexibility will be seen in the lockdown-4, which will begin on Monday, with gradual reopening of railways and domestic airlines while powers will the given to states and union territories to define COVID-19 hotspots.

The final guidelines will be issued by the home ministry only after going through suggestions of state governments.

State governments and union territories administrations were supposed to submit their recommendations by Friday.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Linkedin Apriza Pinandita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 09:28 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82cdc5 1 World COVID-19,UN-peacekeeping-force,UN-Security-Council,UN-peacekeeping,peacekeepers,Retno-Marsudi Free

Indonesia has renewed its call for the world to refocus on maintaining and supporting peacekeeping operations, as countries in conflict are being hit even harder by the COVID-19 pandemic than countries at peace.

Foreign Minister Retno L.P. Marsudi on Thursday reiterated Indonesias concerns about the impacts of the coronavirus crisis in conflict countries, saying that Indonesia was committed to upholding any and all efforts to resolve conflict and build peace.

As we are all aware, COVID-19 has an enormous impact for all countries, including countries affected by conflict. The situation on the ground, which is already fragile due to ongoing conflicts, is now worsened by COVID-19 due to limited health infrastructure, fragile security, challenging economic situations and humanitarian conditions, Retno told a press briefing on May 14.

The COVID-19 crisis had disrupted peacekeeping operations (PKO), making it difficult for conflicting parties to engage and discuss peace, while also limiting the movement and activities of peacekeepers, Retno said.

Access to humanitarian aid and logistics had been disrupted due to the unavailability of transportation, she added.

Read also: COVID-19: Nearly 90,000 Indonesians return home after more than 700 infected abroad

In this regard, Indonesia continued to stress the importance of ensuring the safety and health of UN peacekeepers at the UN Security Council (UNSC) meetings.

At least 13 countries with PKO have confirmed COVID-19 cases. Sixty-four peacekeepers have contracted the virus, Retno said, citing UN data.

Although no Indonesian peacekeepers had contracted the disease to date, the country remained fully alert in following developments on the ground, she added.

Indonesia is the largest country among UNSC member states in terms of contributing peacekeeping troops, and the eighth largest among all UN member states.

Therefore, Indonesia will closely follow the impact of COVID-19 on our peacekeepers, Retno said.

On March 23, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued an appeal for a global ceasefire during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"To warring parties, I say: Pull back from hostilities. Put aside mistrust and animosity. Silence the guns, stop the artillery, end the airstrikes. This is crucial to help create corridors for life-saving aid," he states in the press release published on the UN website.

As a non-permanent member of the UNSC, Indonesia welcomes and supports the [UN secretary-general's] call, Retno stressed at Thursday's briefing.

Read also: Indonesia to prioritize quality in peacekeeping contributions as UN funds evaporate

Along with other members of the UNSC, Indonesia was currently drafting a resolution on measures to address COVID-19 challenges, particularly peace and security.

Unfortunately, the draft has yet to reach consensus. The longer the UNSC cannot agree on the draft, [the more] it sends a negative signal on the ground, and could even worsen the situation for [people] in many conflict areas, Retno said.

The UNSC should focus on enhancing cooperation to protect the people in conflict areas, and Indonesia was ready to continue contributing to negotiations on the draft resolution, she concluded.
Saint Peter's Basilica will fully reopen to all visitors on Monday after a two-month closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Holy See said Friday.

The largest Catholic church in the world has been disinfected ahead of the opening, with a team of suited and masked cleaners on Friday spraying every surface of the 23,000-square metre (250,000-square foot) site.



Pope Francis is not yet expected to lead any public religious ceremonies either in the basilica, which can accommodate 60,000 people, or in Saint Peter's Square, as the Vatican seeks to avoid crowds.



The Vatican State, an independent enclave in the heart of Rome, has applied the same anti-virus measures as Italy, where the official death toll from the virus stands at over 31,000.



The basilica has been closed for all religious ceremonies since March 10, when the Italian government imposed a nationwide lockdown, but individual worshippers were allowed access for private prayer.



Workers on Friday cleaned the sumptuous marble floors in the 16th century building, wielding spray canisters on the giant doors to Bernini's famous bronze Baldachin.



Vatican health official Andrea Arcangeli said the spray used was "a solution based on dilute chlorine, dosed to avoid damaging precious surfaces and works of art".



The basilica, as well as three other papal basilicas, is expected to follow a recommendation from Italy's interior ministry limiting attendance at religious celebrations in enclosed places of worship to 200 people.



Beginning Monday, the Vatican's Swiss guard will limit access to the basilica, with the help of volunteers from the Order of Malta.



The use of thermal scanners to measure the temperature of visitors is under study, but only for major religious festivals, the Vatican said.



Pope Francis will celebrate a private mass on Monday, broadcast by video, in front of the tomb of John Paul II, on the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Polish-born pontiff.



Beyond the Vatican, Catholics on Monday will be able to attend masses, baptisms, weddings and funerals in Italian churches, provided they abide by a series of measures, including wearing masks and sitting or standing well spaced apart.






Three members of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) who were allegedly abducted by state security agents in Harare on Wednesday have been found alive but badly beaten and traumatized, according to the opposition party.

MDC deputy spokesperson Luke Tamborinyoka said Harare West lawmaker Joannah Mamombe and her colleagues Cecilia Chimbiri and Netsai Marova, were dumped Friday by unknown assailants at Muchapondwa shops in Musana, Bindura South.

Tamborinyoka said the three were bruised and traumatized as they were allegedly forced to eat human waste by their assailants, who seized them while they were staging a public protest in Harare over the failure by President Emmerson Mnangagwas government to provide food aid during the ongoing nationwide lockdown to curb the spreading of coronavirus COVID-19.\

They are in very bad shape and they have told horrendous tales of torture and abuse. Hon. Mamombe and Netsai Marova are having difficulty in walking while Cecilia Chimbiri is complaining of severe head pains.

Tamborinyoka said some MDC members, lawyers and police attended to the three in Muchapondwa before they were ferried to a Harare hospital.

After receiving a distress phone call from the dumped cadres who had been accommodated by a sympathetic villager in Muchapondwa, a group of MDC officials that included Secretary for Welfare Maureen Kademaunga and deputy Organing secretary Hon. Happymore Chidziva immediately alerted lawyers and the police and drove to the area in Bindura South where they found the three cadres in very bad shape. They are heavily traumatised.

According to the party's rescue team that drove to Bindura with lawyers and the police, the three women indicated that they were first taken to Harare Central Police station after being "arrested.

Tamborinyoka said the MDC activists were later taken from the police station by unknown assailants and driven away in a black Wish vehicle.

The men who drove them away covered the ladies' faces with what looked like sacks. They remember being taken to a forest and being put in a pit where they were brutally assaulted. They are telling horrendous stories of abuse and humiliation that include being forced to eat human excreta  The ladies are still heavily traumatised and their clothes are torn.

Police spokesperson Assistant Commissioner Paul Nyathi was not reachable for comment as he was not responding to calls on his mobile phone.

Nyathi told the state-controlled Herald newspaper on Wednesday that police arrested some protesters on Wednesday, who were ferried to Harare Central Police Station. A few hours later police said they had no record of any arrests, resulting in a national and international outcry over the alleged abduction of the three women.
EDMONTONErnie Tsu saw light on the horizon for Calgary restaurants reopening. Then, all of the sudden, he was tallying their financial losses.

Extremely frustrated, was how Tsu, who owns a local restaurant and brewery, pegged restaurant owners in the city after Albertas eleventh hour decision to keep eateries and barber shops there closed, even as the rest of the province got the green light to reopen Thursday.

Calgary and Brooks, Alta., in the south, are still dealing with a relatively large amount of cases of COVID-19. They will reopen more gradually, with only some retail businesses returning this week.

Tsu, who owns Trolley 5 Brew pub in downtown Calgary, said his restaurant was waiting for several more days to open, but that he knows other restaurants in the city had ordered in lots of inventory ahead of the provinces May 14 Stage 1 opening date.

Tsu is also a board member with the Alberta Hospitality Association, and said they asked restaurants who were poised to open to send in their inventory invoices so they could track the money that was spent.

In terms of spending incurred by businesses as they expected to reopen, were looking at over $500,000 of inventory thats been brought in, said Tsu.

Now with ... almost a two week push back, that obviously crushes them. It devastates them in terms of cash flow.

Just a day before businesses were getting ready to reopen, Alberta Premier Jason Kenney announced that Calgary and Brooks would be exempt, pushing the date for restaurants and barbershops reopening in those cities to May 25.

We didnt take this decision lightly, the premier said at a press conference Wednesday.

Nathan Newman said hed been preparing for a Thursday reopening at his two downtown Calgary establishments, The Derrick Gin Mill & Kitchen and Unlimited Champagne Lounge.

Were just going to have to eat the cost and start up again on the 25th, if thats the date, said Newman, adding the money and time spent wont go to waste in the end.

A lot of it is salvageable for the most part, he said. Its just more of a tease than anything else. We were really excited.

In Brooks, Margaret Plumtree with the local chamber of commerce said they knew a slower rollout was a possibility, but she would have liked to have seen better communication from the province.

As much as the chamber and our businesses understand the need to keep everyone safe, that (announcement) was very last minute, she said.

There have been 1,068 COVID-19 cases in Brooks, a city of 15,000. More than 600 cases have been seen among workers at the JBS slaughterhouse, a major employer.

More than three quarters of the provinces roughly 1,200 active COVID-19 cases are in Calgary and Brooks. Health officials have seen unknown sources of community spread in the two jurisdictions and so recommended that the cities reopen more gradually.

While he counts public safety as priority number one, Tsu said there were some solutions to the immediate problems restaurants are facing.

Solution one is open up, like let Calgary open up, said Tsu, Solution two is, because it was at the last minute, come up with a reimbursement plan for the perishables that theyre going to have to throw out.

Tsu said Calgarians could also flock to nearby jurisdictions that have been allowed to open, namely Airdrie and Cochrane. He said people can easily drive to those places for their restaurant and hair cutting needs.

It does not make any sense.

At a Thursday press conference, Calgary Mayor Naheed Nenshi said he wasnt included in the provinces decision-making process, which instead involved the provinces chief medical officer of health and the Alberta government. Nenshi said he only learned about the decision to further restrict Calgary on Wednesday.

While he said it was the right decision, Nenshi noted hed previously argued for taking the highest level of restriction and applying it throughout the province. He added that he had a lot of sympathy for the folks who were saying, I wish we had a bit more time to plan for this. 

The mayor urged people to be kind and forgiving due to the unprecedented nature of the decision making around reopening the economy.

Ultimately, its not something worth barking about in a place where were trying to be kind and everyones doing the best they can.

Stage 2 of Albertas economic reopening plan is set for June 19, when restrictions will be further lifted. If the government is satisfied with public health data, Calgary and Brooks could participate in this stage as well.

For now, in the rest of Alberta, businesses that decide to open must operate at 50 per cent capacity. Retail stores can open, along with barber shops, museums and art galleries  but with strict public health guidelines in place.

Since Kenneys announcement Wednesday, there were 50 new cases of COVID-19 identified throughout the province and one new death in Calgary.

Albertas chief medical officer of health, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, said on Thursday that she understood some in Calgary and Brooks felt the gradual relaunch was unfair.

We have been focusing our planning on a balance of protecting the health of Albertans from COVID-19 and the health of Albertans from the impact of a prolonged shutdown, she said.

If we move too far in either direction, neglecting the other, our outcomes will be worse.

With files from The Canadian Press

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The Acting Country Representative for WHO in Ghana, Dr. Neema Kimambo has congratulated the Government of Ghana for this achievement and challenged the Foods and Drugs Authority work hard to sustain the gains and to reach the ultimate; which is Maturity Level 4.

She said, Ghana has strengthened its medicines regulatory system to ensure the safety, quality, and effectiveness of medical products manufactured, imported, or distributed within the country.

Dr. Kimambo said this when she handed over the official letter from WHO communicating the achievement of Regulatory Systems Maturity Level 3 by the FDA to the Ministry of Health.

She explained that there are four levels of regulatory systems classification starting from Level 1, where only some elements of regulation exist, and up to Level 4 corresponding to the advanced regulatory system. Level 3 indicates that the system is well-functioning and integrates all required elements to guarantee its stable performance.

She indicated that Ghanas achievement reaffirms the collaboration between WHO and governments towards realizing the targets of universal health coverage and sustainable development goals.

Ghana and Tanzania are the only two of WHO African Regions 47 countries to have attained a Level 3 ranking. Tanzania achieved the classification in November 2018. WHO is working with countries in the region to improve the performance of their national regulatory systems and facilitate comprehensive oversight of medical products. She added

Dr. Kimambo said that WHO was proud of Ghanas achievements and will continue to support medicine regulation by developing internationally recognized norms, standards, and guidelines, and by providing technical assistance and training to enable countries to implement global guidelines to meet their specific health needs.

The Chief Executive Officer of the Ghana Foods and Drugs Authority, Mrs. Delese Mimi Darko said that the benchmarking process has been very stringent and long, but she is she salutes all her staff for their hard work and resilience in ensuring this milestone achievement

The Minister for Health, Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu said that the Government over the year has invested in strengthening regulatory systems in Ghana and is happy that the FDA has given the value that transcends the whole of Africa.

The President and the Government of Ghana is proud of this achievement. Ghanaians must continue to have confidence in the FDA because their only agenda is to keep Ghanaians safe and that would be pursued without fear or favour he added.

Hon. Kwaku Agyeman-Manu also made a passionate appeal to other regulatory agencies to strategically partner with the FDA to learn and adapt best practices.

Present at the brief handing over ceremony were Director for Technical Coordination at the Ministry of Health, Dr Martha Gyansa-Lutterodt, Directors of the Ministry of Health, WHO staff, FDA staff and Board of Directors as well as a cross-section of the Media.
NORTHAMPTON - State police charged a 32-year-old Springfield man with drug trafficking after finding crack cocaine in his backpack during a Wednesday night traffic stop on Interstate 91, police said.

Peter Garrett was charged with trafficking cocaine and possession of heroin. Troopers found 27 grams of crack cocaine, 100 baggies of heroin, and $2,400 when they searched his backpack, police said. In addition, they found a digital scale and a folding knife.

Trooper Bryce Molnar pulled over a Chevrolet Cruz just after 6 p.m. near Exit 18 in the southbound land after witnessing it swerve suddenly and nearly hit another vehicle. Garrett was not the driver but was a passenger in the rear seat.

When Molnar walked over to the vehicle, he could see Garrett in the back seat with a hand reaching toward the backpack at his feet, police said. Fearing a weapon in the bag, Molnar ordered Garrett out of the car and placed him in the back of his cruiser while he searched where he had been sitting, police said.

He was arrested when the drugs were found, police said.
A Co Meath entrepreneur has been nominated for a top award along with a number of global brands.

Indeora, a healthy magnesium-based deodorant was created by Eimear Tully and has been shortlisted in the Best in Wellness category of The Vogue Beauty Awards 2020.

Eimear Tully

The deodorant spray, scented with natural coconut and vanilla oils took over two years to research and develop and is stocked across Ireland and the UK

After being selected as a top pick by Vogue Beauty and Lifestyle Director, Kathleen Baird Murray, Indeora was nominated by The Vogue team in their 2020 Global Beauty Awards.

It was a huge surprise to find out that we were nominated," Eimear said.

"I am very proud of the fact that all our development and manufacturing is done here in Ireland and its amazing to see an Irish-made brand shortlisted among some very large global beauty brands.

"Our healthy deodorant has been well received generally and this nomination by Vogue shows that there is a growing movement towards health and wellness products in the world of beauty.

Eimear outlined the inspiration behind the product, that she is preparing for a US launch in the near-future.

I grew up with asthma and used antiperspirant sprays for years but it affected my breathing, so I tried many of the natural ones available, but I felt they could be improved on in terms of effectiveness and ease of use," she said.

"After I conducted some market research and got positive results, I decided to delve further into research and development to create a simple and healthy alternative for underarm care."

The winner is decided by public vote with the winners being announced in the British Vogues August 2020 issue.

Eimear is a participant on Starting Strong, a sister programme of the award-winning business development programme Going for Growth, which assists ambitious female entrepreneurs to achieve their growth aspirations. The programme is supported by Enterprise Ireland and KPMG.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (SeongJoon Cho / Bloomberg)

Though President Trump and other conservatives blame China for the enormous damage inflicted here by the coronavirus, legal experts say the recent efforts to sue Beijing in U.S. courts for the trillions of dollars in losses are almost certain to fail.

That's because of the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of 1976, which stands as a strong barrier to suing a foreign state, including a "political subdivision" or "instrumentality" of a foreign government. The law warns judges that a "foreign state shall be immune from the jurisdiction of the courts of the United States and of the states," with just a few exceptions.

One is for "commercial activity" that is "carried on in the United States by a foreign state" or causes "a direct effect" here. For example, if Argentina sold bonds in this country and defaulted on them, it could be sued for the losses. Similarly, if China made a contract with California to supply medical equipment, it could be sued if it failed to deliver what was promised.

The other major exception is for terrorism. The law says a "foreign state shall not be immune" for claims arising from terrorism, including an "act of torture, extrajudicial killing, aircraft sabotage, hostage taking or the provision of material support or resources" to those who carry out such acts.

But that has not prevented class-action lawyers and state attorneys from filing broad suits seeking huge damages from China over the deaths and economic losses caused by COVID-19, which is believed to have originated in Wuhan, China.

Last month, Missouri's Atty. Gen. Eric Schmitt filed the first state claim, a lawsuit in federal court in St. Louis seeking to hold the People's Republic of China and the Chinese Communist Party liable for "an appalling campaign of deceit, concealment, misfeasance and inaction by Chinese authorities that unleashed this pandemic." Chinese officials "are responsible for the enormous death, suffering and economic losses they inflicted on the world, including Missourians, and they should be held accountable," he said.

Story continues

Experts on international law and the foreign sovereignty law said they saw little chance for these claims to win in court.

"These suits are not going anywhere for several reasons, primarily the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act," said J. Maria Glover, who teaches at the Georgetown Law School. She said the suits appear to be symbolic and political. "They are looking for someone to blame, and there's plenty of blame to go around, but these suits have almost zero chance of success in court," she said.

"I'm not a big fan of the Chinese government," said Tom Ginsburg, a University of Chicago law professor. He said the United States and other nations have reason to be troubled by the conduct of Chinese officials. "But I think these suits will be dismissed. They are addressed to Chinese government entities, and they are entitled to immunity."

Lawyers for the Berman Law Group, which filed a class-action claim in a federal court in Miami, say their suit steers around the immunity barrier by citing the Chinese Communist Party.

"They are not the government or a state. They are a separate, independent entity, so they don't enjoy any immunity," said Jeremy Alters, who worked on the suit.

Missouri's lawyers rely on the same claim. "The Communist Party is not a foreign state or an agency or instrumentality of a foreign state, and is not entitled to any form of sovereign immunity," the suit says.

Experts on the immunities law, also known as FSIA, say that argument will not work.

"In China, the CCP is the state," said Chimene Keitner, a professor of international law at UC Hastings in San Francisco and a former State Department lawyer. "Courts generally do not view attempts to 'plead around' the FSIA favorably."

She cited rulings by a federal judge in Florida who held that the Communist Party of Cuba was an agency or instrument of the Cuban government, and another by a federal judge in New York who said China Central Television is an instrument of China because it is a mouthpiece for the government.

As if to acknowledge a problem with Missouri's claim, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), the state's former attorney, introduced a federal bill on April 14 called the Justice for Victims of Coronavirus Act so as to "hold the Chinese Communist Party responsible for causing the COVID-19 global pandemic."

He explained that his bill, if enacted into law, "would strip China of its sovereign immunity and create a cause of action against the CCP for reckless actions, like silencing whistleblowers and withholding critical information about COVID-19."

Missouri officials and the class-action lawyers say they have not served their complaints on the Chinese government. That process is complicated and can take months, lawyers say. Chinese authorities would then have 60 days to file a response in the U.S. courts.

In Beijing, Chinese officials and state media have condemned the lawsuits as politically driven and legally unfeasible, and threatened that Chinese companies might in turn sue the U.S. government for incurring losses due to mishandling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

"This kind of lawsuit has no factual or legal basis. It only invites ridicule," said Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Geng Shuang at a press briefing on April 22. He defended China's government as "open, transparent and responsible" and said U.S. courts had no jurisdiction over the Chinese government's actions, based on the principle of sovereign equality under international law.

"Such frivolous litigation will not help the U.S. with its epidemic response, nor will it contribute to the global cooperation in this regard. The right course of action for the U.S. side is to dismiss this abusive lawsuit," he said.

State news agency Xinhua, in a commentary published on April 30, called the lawsuits "nothing but political pandering by a few U.S. politicians to win elections."

The Chinese Communist Party's official newspaper People's Daily wrote in an editorial on May 3 that U.S. claims of compensation from China for COVID-19 are a "shame for human civilization."

It also asked why the U.S. had not been forced to compensate the world for deaths and financial losses caused by the 1918 flu pandemic, AIDS epidemic or the 2008 global financial crisis.

In Washington, Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo has not commented on whether U.S. states, entities or individuals should be allowed to sue China, but he has been emphatic in blaming China for the origin and spread of the disease. He has suggested the virus might have even been produced in a laboratory in Wuhan  a claim dismissed by most scientists  and has accused the ruling Communist Party of lying to conceal the scope of the danger.

In the past, the U.S. government has traditionally resisted allowing their citizens to sue foreign governments for actions overseas out of a fear that other nations would likewise permit their citizens to sue the United States.

Vanderbilt law professor Ingrid Wuerth said the 1976 law aimed to take politics out of these disputes by telling judges they must dismiss lawsuits against foreign states. "The real audience for these suits is probably Congress," she said. Lawmakers are free to amend the law and open the door to suits against China and others. "That would be terribly unwise," she added.

Keitner agreed that such suits would fail in the end. "The worst possible thing that Congress could do right now would be to further politicize sovereign immunity by creating jurisdiction for these suits, which are unlikely to result in any actual financial recovery even if they do go forward."

Savage reported from Washington. Su reported from Beijing. Times staff writer Tracy Wilkinson in Washington contributed to this report.
US President Donald Trump has said that he "could cut off the whole relationship" with China, in one of his strongest comments against Beijing in the wake of the Asian giant's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the media reported.

"There are many things we could do," Trump told Fox Business on Thursday, adding: "We could cut off the whole relationship."

The Trump administration has been mulling avenues to possibly punish or seek financial compensation from China for what it sees as withholding information about the virus, which originated in the city of Wuhan, capital of Hubei province, last December.

On Monday, the administration cut investment ties between US federal retirement funds and Chinese equities.

Speaking exclusively to Fox Business, the President raised the impact of ending relations, saying: "Now, if you did, what would happen? You'd save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship."

Trump also said "right now I don't want to speak to" his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping.

"They should have never let this happen," Trump said. "So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn't feel the same to me.

"The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn't feel the same to me."

Although the pandemic originated in China, the US currently accounts for the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the world.

According to the Johns Hopkins University, the number of COVID-19 cases increased to 1,417,889 on Friday, with 85,906 deaths.
A young mother in Kumasi is grieving after a woman who allegedly posed as a worker at the Komfo Anokye Hospital (KATH) allegedly stole her baby.



According to 19-year-old Mariam Yahaya, she had returned to the hospital on Wednesday for a medical review after her delivery by Caesarian Section.



While on her way to one of the wards at the hospital with her baby, a woman approached her and asked if she was coming for a checkup.



Mariam Yahaya responded to all questions and ended up giving her National Health Insurance Scheme card and other medical forms to the woman.



Mariam explained that the woman insisted that she [Mariam] has to get a face mask and gloves before entering the ward.



She then handed over her medical forms, the NHIS card and GHS5 to the woman to help her get the protective gear from a pharmacy outside the hospital.



The woman then requested to help Marian with the baby since the young mother found it difficult to walk to the pharmacy.



While at the pharmacy, the woman asked Mariam to wait, but after some time, she could not trace the supposed helper who had her baby.



The reason why I gave my baby to her was that she requested for my NHIS card and the medical form. She told me those were the requirements before nursing mothers could be given free face mask and hand gloves at the hospital. I have never seen the woman, but I can identify her when I see her. This is the first time I have given birth. My baby is fair in complexion and has a birthmark on its thighs, she added.



Mariam, who looked devastated and flanked by relatives could not hold back her tears when she recalled the incident that led to the disappearance of her baby.



She has appealed to Government and the public to help her find the baby.



Mariams husband, 21-year old Nasiru Abubakar, who is equally devastated, told Citi News that since I heard the issue, I couldnt eat and I am so frustrated. That is my first child and it is not easy to lose a baby to a total stranger just like that.



Police in the Ashanti Region has begun investigations into the incident.



The Management of the hospital said its attention has been drawn to the matter and it would assist police in their investigations.





Source: citinewsroom.com









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Following his admittance to intensive care with coronavirus in April, prime minister Boris Johnson is preparing a more interventionist drive to tackle UK obesity in the ongoing and long-term fight against Covid-19.

Mr Johnson is convinced his Covid-condition became more serious because of his weight  said to be 17.5 stone at the time he was taken to hospital, according to a report on 15 May.

This is not the most time the severity of coronavirus has been linked to a patients weight  when asked about the British death toll compared to other European nations, health secretary Matt Hancock said the age profile and factors like obesity should be accounted for  but does being overweight or obese actually change your prognosis?

What is defined as overweight in the UK?

The NHS uses BMI (or body mass index) as the primary measure to judge a persons weight. It says that although this is not accurate for everyone it is generally the most reliable method.

For most adults, having a BMI of 18.5 to 24.9 means you are considered a healthy weight. A BMI of 25 to 29.9 is considered overweight and a BMI of over 30 is considered obese.

Obesity impacts one in every four people in the UK and 20 per cent of children aged 10 to 11 are classified as obese. According to the latest ONS data a further 35 per cent of people are considered overweight.

Men are more likely than women to be overweight or obese and people aged 65-74 are the most likely to be overweight or obese of any age group.

Does obesity make coronavirus more dangerous?

Being overweight or obese increases general risk factors including type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, some types of cancer such as breast and bowel, and having a stroke.

Early on in the spread of the virus, having a history of coronary problems or diabetes were identified as increasing vulnerability (figures released by the NHS on 14 May showed a quarter of coronavirus patients who have died had diabetes), but obesity was not explicitly referenced.

Now preliminary studies have shown obesity can make coronavirus more dangerous as well.

Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Show all 13 1 /13 Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Cheryll Mack, 46, a registered nurse in the emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The Covid-19 spread has affected a lot of livelihood, a lot of people's lives. It has created a crisis, death in general. So I would like to ask not one single person, but all people worldwide, to converge and join the platform that this is something that nobody can fight individually," said Mack. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Laura Bontempo, 50, an emergency medicine doctor wears her personal protective equipment she uses when she sees patients, while posing for a photograph after a nine-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moments have actually been separating families from patients, there is a no-visitor policy now and taking people away from their loved ones is very challenging," Bontempo said. "I'm used to treating sick patients. I treat sick patients all the time. It's very different knowing that the patient you are treating, is actually a risk to you as well. That's the main difference here. No one who works in hospitals is afraid of treating sick people. Just want to keep staff safe and the patients safe at the same time." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Ernest Capadngan, 29, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment during the shift was just seeing Covid patients die helpless and without their family members beside them," Capadngan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Martine Bell, 41, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a six-hour shift outside the hospital where she works. "The hardest thing in all of this, has been taking care of fellow healthcare providers. It really hits home and it's really scary when you see someone that could be you coming in and now you're taking care of them. It's also hitting home that once healthcare providers start getting sick, who is going to be taking care of the public," Bell said. "It's very stressful, everyone is on edge. We don't know who's coming in next, or how sick they're going to be, or if we are going to get a whole bunch of people or if we're not going to get no one. It's a really stressful and just a completely unusual time for all of us." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kaitlyn Martiniano, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital. "We have a lot of patients and they are pretty sick right now but we have not yet been hit as hard as New York or Seattle, so I feel like we are very lucky with that so far. Every day you have to just be optimistic." Said Martiniano. "I think the reason that we are not being hit as hard right now is because so many things are closed, and because so many people are staying at home." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tracey Wilson, 53, a nurse practitioner in an intensive care unit (ICU), poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I had a patient fall out of bed today and I had to call his wife and tell her and she couldn't come see him, even though she pleaded and begged to come see him," Wilson said. "There is a lot of unknowns and with that unknown is a lot of anxiety and stress that we're not used to dealing with." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Meghan Sheehan, 27, a nurse practitioner in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "I think the hardest moment has been the fear that lives within all of us. There is a lot of unknown right now. We fear what's going to happen tomorrow, how the emergency department will look next week when we come in. We have fears about our own colleagues, whether they will fall ill. We also fear that we could be asymptomatic carriers and bring this virus home to our families and our loved ones. There has been a lot of fear over our supplies and whether we'll run out. And then obviously there is the fear that we will see patients and not be able to do everything we normally can to help save patients' lives," Sheehan said. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Kimberly Bowers, 44, a nurse practitioner in an ICU, poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was a young woman who died and her family wasn't able to be here with her," Bowers said. "I think right now, it's just frustrating and scary just not knowing what comes next." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Tiffany Fare, 25, a registered nurse who works at a biocontainment unit poses for a photograph after a 13-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works. "One of the hardest moments was having to see a family member of a Covid patient, say goodbye over an iPad, rooms away. That was a tough one, I can't imagine how hard it would be to be saying goodbye, you can't see your loved one and then they're gone," Fare said. "My team has been really great to me. We've worked really well together and we've really come together in this crisis. We don't really know each other, we all come from different units within the same hospital, so for us to come together and work so well as a team, it's been a journey but I think that's what is giving me hope." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Dr Kyle Fischer, 35, an emergency medicine doctor, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift, outside the hospital where he works. "Since it's a new virus, we don't have any experience with it. For most diseases I am used to seeing it and taking care of it and this, I don't have any starting place. I know what I'm hearing from New York, I've read all of the papers it seems like, but no one knows what the correct answers are, so there's a huge amount of uncertainty and people are really, really sick. So it's hard to second guess whether or not you are doing the right thing when you think you are but you never quite know," said Fischer. Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Julia Trainor, 23, a registered nurse at a surgical ICU, poses for a photograph after a 14-hour shift, outside the hospital. "The hardest moment was having to put a breathing tube in my patient who could no longer breathe for herself and after the breathing tube went in, we called her family and the husband, of course, couldn't visit her because of visitor restrictions at the hospital. So I had to put him on the phone and hold the phone to her ear, as he told her that he loved her so much and then I had to wipe away her tears as she was crying," said Trainor. "I'm used to seeing very sick patients and I'm used to patients dying but nothing quite like this. In the flip of a switch, without the support, they're completely isolated. They're very sick. Some of them recover and some of them don't. But the hardest part, I would think, is them having to go through this feeling like they are alone." Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Lisa Mehring, 45, a registered nurse who works in a biocontainment unit with Covid-19 patients, poses for a photograph after a 12.5-hour shift, outside the hospital where she works in Maryland. "Seeing these new moms have babies has been the hardest moment along with having do their pumping for the new moms and them not being able to be with their newborn children, it's hard to think of the family that they are missing," Mehring said. Photos Reuters Inside US hospital: A day fighting the coronavirus Jacqueline Hamil, 30, a registered nurse in an emergency department, poses for a photograph after a 12-hour shift outside the hospital. "The hardest moment of my shift today, I was in charge, and we had a really sick patient that was in a really, really small room and usually, when we have sick crashing patients, we can have a ton of resources and a ton of staff go in and help with the nurse and the doctors that are taking care of that patient. But due to the patient being ruled out for the coronavirus, we could only have five or six people in the room at a time and putting on all the gowns and gloves and masks and face shields to protect us in case the patient does have coronavirus, it takes a while, so the nurse that was in there, ended up being in the room for you know 6, 7 hours with minimal breaks and it was hard being in charge and knowing that she was stuck in the room and really nothing I could do to help her," Hamil said. Reuters

On 28 April, a questionnaire sent to 166 UK hospitals found that out of 17,000 patients, those who were obese  with a body mass index (BMI) of more than 30  had a 33 per cent greater risk of dying than those who were not obese.

Professor Calum Semple at the University of Liverpool, told The Telegraph, people with a BMI over 30 "do particularly badly from Covid disease, so they're more likely to go on to the intensive care units and to go on to die".

A day later, on 29 April, Imperial College London published further analysis of the same data showing that being male or obese reduces the chance of survival from coronavirus.

Then on 7 May, as more data emerged, a study of 430,000 NHS electronic health records from Glasgow University found being obese doubles the risk of going to hospital because of severe coronavirus symptoms.

And if other health conditions linked to obesity such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes were also taken into account the risk would be even higher, the researchers said.

Recommended Caring for someone with dementia during a pandemic

Scientists are concerned that this trend in obesity-led complications could mean Covid-19 is more of a threat to younger people than previously believed, which could be a particular problem for regions with higher levels of obesity.

A study in the Lancet journal said: As the pandemic hit the Johns Hopkins Hospital [USA] in late March, 2020, younger patients began to be admitted to our ICU, many of whom were also obese. An informal survey of colleagues directing ICUs at other hospitals around the country yielded similar findings.

At this time, news editorials were noting obesity as an underappreciated risk factor for COVID-19. This risk is particularly relevant in the USA because the prevalence of obesity is around 40 per cent versus a prevalence of six per cent in China, 20 per cent in Italy, and 24 per cent in Spain.

Why is obesity causing more deaths?

Studies have suggested a number of reasons, including that people with obesity are being more likely to have pre-existing underlying health conditions like diabetes.

The World Obesity Federation, which represents members of the scientific and medical communities, says: Furthermore people with obesity who become ill and require intensive care present challenges in patient management.

For example, it is more difficult to intubate patients who are obese. It can be more challenging to obtain diagnostic imaging (as there are weight limits on imaging machines), patients are more difficult to position and transport by nursing staff, it says.

Prof Naveed Sattar, from the University of Glasgow told the BBC: Because people are more overweight, they also have a demand for more oxygen. So that means their system is actually undergoing greater pressure.

And Dr Dyan Sellayah, from the University of Reading said: Eventually the obese body becomes overwhelmed by the lack of oxygen getting to the major organs.

What is being done about the risk?

On 4 May Public Health England (PHE) announced a review into how different factors  including ethnicity, gender and obesity  impact health outcomes from COVID-19.

It says: The exercise is part of a rapid review being led by Public Health England (PHE) to better understand how different factors such as ethnicity, deprivation, age, gender and obesity could impact on how people are affected by COVID-19.

It is also understood that the prime minister wants to use the pandemic, and the obesity implications, as an opportunity to reinvigorate the campaign against obesity in the UK. For example, it is reported Mr Johhson will encourage the public to walk and cycle more where possible rather than using public transport.
Theres an easy way for Manitoba to avoid reductions at post-secondary institutions and other government-funded agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: postpone more than $100 million of planned tax and fee cuts this year.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Theres an easy way for Manitoba to avoid reductions at post-secondary institutions and other government-funded agencies during the COVID-19 pandemic: postpone more than $100 million of planned tax and fee cuts this year.

The University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg and Red River College are facing a combined funding cut of $23.6 million, resulting in layoffs and service reductions. Its a tough  and entirely unnecessary  blow to the three Winnipeg-based centres of learning, which are still operating at full capacity and grappling with new technology costs to deliver online courses to students.

Premier Brian Pallister claims the cuts are necessary to redirect tax dollars to the front lines of health care to fight the novel coronavirus pandemic. However, hes also going ahead with a slew of tax and fee cuts which will do little to help those who need the most support right now.

Im all for tax cuts during good economic times, especially in a province that has some of the highest rates in the country. But cutting taxes during an economic crisis, when the province will have to borrow record amounts to replace billions in lost revenue, defies common sense.

To avoid cuts to universities and colleges, the Pallister government could start by postponing a plan to remove the provincial sales tax from property insurance premiums, scheduled for July 1.

The plan, worth $75 million on annual basis, wasnt even in the 2020 budget. It was a 2019 Tory election promise that wasnt supposed to come into effect until 2021, at the earliest.

Pallister changed that April 3, moving the tax break up to this year. He said it was part of governments "support and relief" for Manitobas fight against COVID-19.

Its hard to imagine how removing the PST from property insurance premiums helps Manitobans fight a pandemic.

The province could also postpone a plan to remove the PST from income-tax preparation services, scheduled for Oct. 1. The move will cost the province $5.5 million annually, but will do little to help people and struggling businesses during an economic downturn.

Pallister could also delay the planned removal of probate fees on the estates of deceased persons. The current probate fee is $70 on the first $10,000 value of an estate, and $7 per $1,000 thereafter. The Tories, who plan to remove the fee July 1, say Manitoba will be the first province in Western Canada to do so. The move is expected to cost the public treasury $7.8 million a year.

Finally, wed all like to pay less to register our vehicles, but is now really the time to cut those fees?

One of Pallisters weaknesses as a leader is an inability to set aside ideology in favour of pragmatism during a crisis.

The Pallister government announced in its 2020 budget a 10 per cent cut to vehicle registration fees (collected by Manitoba Public Insurance on behalf of the province). That works out to $15/year per vehicle owner. Crown Services Minister Jeff Wharton confirmed the fee cut Tuesday, which will cost the province $15 million annually in lost revenue.

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.

All told, postponing those four tax and fee cuts would provide the province with $103 million in revenue  more than enough to cancel out the hit to colleges and universities, with plenty left over to help struggling businesses and people who have lost their jobs because of the pandemic.

Pallister says he plans to go ahead with the cuts in order to put more money "on the kitchen tables" of Manitobans  a platitude that may have had some legitimacy during good economic times, but not during one of the worst economic downturns since the Great Depression.

One of Pallisters weaknesses as a leader is an inability to set aside ideology in favour of pragmatism during a crisis.

His ideology served Manitobans well when the province needed a premier four years ago to clean up the financial mess left behind by the former NDP government. Manitoba is better positioned to weather the financial storm brought on by the pandemic as a result of Pallister's fiscally responsible policies.

Clinging to the idea of tax cuts, however, while slashing funding for important public institutions during a recession, is the opposite of the common sense Pallister claims to possess.

tom.brodbeck@freepress.mb.ca
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Linkedin Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Sat, May 16 2020

As illegal drug producers in the lower Mekong region in Southeast Asia continue to consolidate their operations, Indonesia has seen a decline in the price of synthetic drugs like methamphetamine, a new United Nations report has revealed.

According to a report from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), the surging supply of synthetic drugs has pushed down prices to their lowest in a decade.

The report found that the regional supply of methamphetamine has steadily increased as drug operations in the infamous Golden Triangle region of the lower Mekong have become more efficient, making it more affordable for drug users.

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"We have reached a stage where it has become very critical for the government to institute compulsory mass testing for the COVID-19, especially at high risk companies and market places amid the governments fight against the deadly Coronavirus," this is the urgent call coming from Public Health and Development Consultant, Mavis Ama Frimpong.

She believes such places have been epicenters for the spread of the virus in recent times yet overlooked.

The former Eastern Regional Minister and an aspiring NDC MP for Abirem constituency commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government for an incredible job during this pandemic but noted that more needs to be done.

Government is still on contact tracing and testing but we have to focus on mass testing. Some companies and market places are now high-risk centers. Public transport drivers should not also be left out. At least random testing on them should be done, he said in an interview with a Koforidua-based radio station.

Adding that More people are been infected with the virus from companies and public places. The government must act quickly with mass testing to avoid higher cases in the country.

Stigma

Mavis Ama Frimpong also condemned stigmatization on persons living with the virus.

According to her such behavior doesnt encourage people with the virus to go for testing. They will rather prefer to live with it normally than going to the hospital. We must stop the stigmatization.

Employers must to also terminate contracts of persons with the virus, she noted.

Ghana's COVID-19 Case Count Now 5,530; 674 Recoveries, 24 Deaths

Ghana's confirmed cases of the Coronavirus is now 5,530, according to the Ghana Health Service.

This is an increase of 122 positive cases since the last update on Wednesday, May 13.

There have been 57 new cases in the Greater Accra Region, 62 new cases in the Ashanti Region, two new cases in the Central Region, and one in the Western North Region.

The death count still stands at 24 with the death to positivity rate standing at 0.43 percent, Director of Public Health at Ghana Health Service, Dr. Badu Sarkodie, noted at a press briefing on Thursday morning.

Regional breakdown below

Greater Accra Region - 4,204

Ashanti Region - 788

Central Region - 194

Eastern Region - 99

Western Region - 61

Western North Region - 57

Volta Region - 34

Upper East Region - 26

Oti Region - 24

Upper West Region - 21

Northern Region - 19

North East Region - 2

Bono Region - 1

Savannah Region - 0

Ahafo Region - 0

Bono East Region - 0

---King Edward Ambrose Washman Addo/Peacefmonline.com/Ghana
By Peter Nurse

Investing.com - European stock markets posted gains Friday, helped by a strong end to Thursday's session on Wall Street, positive corporate news and better than expected Chinese industrial production data.

At 4:25 AM ET (0825 GMT), the DAX in Germany traded 1.3% higher, France's CAC 40 rose 0.9%, while the U.K.'s FTSE index was up 1.2%.

Earlier Friday, China reported that its industrial production increased 3.9% year-on-year in April, beating analyst forecasts of a 1.5% increase and giving a sign that the Chinese industrial juggernaut is picking up steam again. However, for a second straight month,retail sales lagged badly, slumping 7.5% year-on-year.

Closer to home, the latest reading for first-quarter GDP in Germany confirmed a 2.2% slump, its steepest three-month decline since the 2009 financial crisis.

In corporate news, Swiss luxury group Richemont fell 2.2% after warning that the luxury sector could take three years to recover from the current crisis.

In the U.K., BT Group (LON:BT) jumped 7% after the Financial Times reported it was in talks to sell a multi-billion pound stake in its wholly owned network subsidiary, Openreach, to infrastructure investors.

Bookmaker William Hill (LON:WMH) soared over 10% as it managed to obtain from its banks latitude regarding some debt covenants, news that overshadowed the inevitable slump in revenue due to the total absence of sport and the closure of its betting shops.

French manufacturer Imerys (PA:IMTP) climbed 14% after saying it had reached an agreement to resolve legal liabilities regarding its North America talc unit.

Overnight, the major indices on Wall Street all closed higher, aided by sharp gains towards the end of the session as a White House spokeswoman said President Donald Trump was open to another possible stimulus bill, but will not sign the bill put forward by House of Representatives Democrats.

The Democrats had put forward another relief bill, totalling $3 trillion, earlier in the week, but this had been rebuffed by the Republicans. That Trump could support another bill, presumably drafted by his party this time, helped dilute fears that there would be no more largesse coming from the federal government.

Story continues

Oil futures caught the positive tone Friday, helped by the industrial production data out of China, the world's largest importer of crude.

At 4:25 AM ET, U.S. crude June futures traded 2.8% higher at $28.34 a barrel. The international benchmark Brent contract rose 2.9% to $32.03.

Elsewhere, gold futures rose 0.3% to $1,745.25/oz, while EUR/USD traded at 1.0817, up 0.1%.

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SEATTLE (dpa-AFX) - Starbucks has asked landlords of many of its company-owned stores to give it a break on rent for the next twelve months as the coffee giant's sales have been hurt by the coronavirus pandemic.



The Seattle-based company has sent a letter to its landlords, saying that starting June 1 and for at least the next twelve months, it will need changes to lease terms and base rent structures. The letter was signed by Starbucks Chief Operating Officer Roz Brewer.



Starbucks is one of the largest companies in the U.S. by the number of stores. It has 8,800 company-operated stores in the country.



The request for rent relief by Starbucks comes after the company recently announced plans to reopen most of its coffee shops, as COVID-19 restrictions ease in the U.S. Starbucks had closed most of its company-operated stores in the U.S. and Canada in late March.



On May 4, Starbucks said it plans to reopen 85 percent of its U.S. coffee shops by the end of that week and more than 90 percent of its stores by early June, under modified operations and hours.



The company said it will place new protocols such as mobile ordering, contactless pickup, and cashless payments to enforce social distancing and curb the further spread of the coronavirus.



In late April, Starbucks reported a more than 50 percent fall in net income for the second quarter to $328.4 million or $0.28 per share from $663.2 million or $0.53 per share in the year-ago period. Adjusted earnings of $0.28 per share also missed analysts' expectations.



Revenue for the quarter declined 4.9 percent from last year to $6.00 billion, reflecting lost sales related to the COVID-19 outbreak. Lost sales include the effects of temporary store closures, modified operations, reduced hours, and reduced customer traffic.



Starbucks CFO Pat Grismer had told analysts during the recent earnings call that the company has stayed current on its rent but was in talks with its landlords on 'commercially reasonable lease concessions' in the current environment.



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Board debated how big a role it should play in discussing if model is best for job

The Government's tracing app advisors 'cannot decide whether to tell ministers to ditch its current strategy in favour of an Apple and Google version'.

The ethical advisory board debated how big a role it should play in discussing whether the model is the best design, during a meeting on Thursday.

The app is part of the Government's 'test, track and trace' plan for controlling the virus and allowing the UK to re-open and return to some form of normality.

The ethical advisory board debated how big a role it should play in discussing whether the tracing app (pictured) model is the best one available, during a meeting on Thursday

It works using Bluetooth signals to detect when two phones come close to each other. When someone develops symptoms of COVID-19, they notify the app which then uses the Bluetooth log to inform other users that they may also have the virus.

The board, chaired by Professor Sir Jonathan Montgomery, fear these people will be discriminated against in the future if the tool is used to identify people who do and don't have the disease.

Members of the board also expressed concern over risks of compromising the design due to a rush in using the technology without proper testing, according to The Guardian.

Known as contact tracing, it is a way of keeping one step ahead of the virus by isolating people who don't have symptoms yet, but may still be infectious.

Professor Montgomery and colleagues said those who do not have smartphones must be protected by manual contact tracing.

This is also part of the Government's contact tracing scheme, and will involve a pledged 18,000 call handlers who conduct interviews with COVID-19 cases.

The technology is being trialled on the Isle of Wight, a sign telling people in the region to download the app, above, ahead of a national rollout expected around mid-May

HOW WILL THE NHS APP WORK? NHSX's contact tracing app, which hasn't yet been named, will be a voluntary download that members of the public will be encouraged to use. The Government hopes at least half of the population of Britain will agree to use it. The more people use it the more effective it will be. It will require people to put in the first half of their postcode, to give vague location details, and to keep their bluetooth switched on when they leave the house. Whenever someone comes into close contact with someone else using the app - generally defined as within 6'6" (2m) - the app will log the meeting. Each person's profile will then build up a list of all the contacts they have had while using the app. These will be anonymised and stored as codes rather than identifiable pieces of information such as names or addresses. If someone is diagnosed with the coronavirus, or develops suspicious symptoms, they will be told to log this in the app. The app will then upload the data to a central NHS server, which will be able to send anonymous warnings to everyone that that person had come into contact with during the time they may have been infectious. The alert will advise people to self-isolate and tell them they are at risk of infection. If one of the contacts of the original patient then becomes ill, the same process will begin with them. Advertisement

But the app risks sidelining millions of people who don't have a mobile phone when ministers roll it out nationwide, with one in five Britons not owning a phone.

It's likely these people will be of an old age and therefore most vulnerable to catching COVID-19.

Commenting on the matter, cybersecurity specialist Jake Moore, from software protection company ESET, told MailOnline: 'There are still a large number of folk of an older age who don't own a smartphone, and these people are predominantly those who are most at risk.

'It is vital that the older generations who are more susceptible to reacting badly to the virus are in fact using the app and able to be alerted quickly and efficiently to the notifications. However, if 21 per cent of Britons do not own a smartphone, then the app is arguably flawed for those most at risk.'

It comes as more than half of the residents of the Isle of Wight have downloaded the Covid-19 contact tracing app being trialled on the island, it has been revealed.

Speaking at the daily Downing Street briefing on Thursday, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said more than 70,000 people had downloaded the software.

He said: 'There are now over half the residents of the Isle of Wight, where this is being tested out, who have downloaded the tracking app for the first time, or, in total, rather the actual number is 72,300.'

The NHS app is part of the Government's test, track and trace strategy, and is central to its efforts in slowing the spread of coronavirus.

The technology is being trialled on the Isle of Wight ahead of a national roll-out expected around mid-May.

Earlier this month, Mr Shapps said that around 50% to 60% of people will need to use the software for it to be effective.

Mr Shapps also said visitors to the UK would be asked to download the app.

He added: 'One of the things we will be asking people to do at the border when they come in is to download the app.

'And provide us with contact details, so that we know where people are.'

The app is available on Apple IOS version 11 and higher and Android version 8 and higher.
Vietnam recently held unofficial phone discussions with the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand to look into post-COVID-19 cooperation and economic recovery,

according to Spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Le Thi Thu Hang.

People at a quarantine centre in Hanoi's Thach That district have their body temperature checked

At the ministrys regular press conference on May 14, Hang said amid the ongoing complex developments of the pandemic around the world, which have been causing severe impact on almost all nations, as a responsible member of the international community and with a wish to contribute to common efforts against COVID-19, Vietnam has been actively cooperating with other countries, regional organisations, especially ASEAN, and UN organisations; and taking part in many discussions under various forms and at different levels such as international and regional conferences, bilateral or multilateral phone talks among senior leaders, ministers, and deputy ministers.

Recently, Vietnam joined the US, Japan, the Republic of Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand in unofficial phone talks, she affirmed, noting that during the talks, the sides updated each other on the disease situation in their respective countries, regions and the world. Vietnam and the countries also shared experience and pandemic prevention and control measures, along with effective cooperation forms in citizen protection, provision of medical supplies and humanitarian aid, maintenance of transport and trading, and creation of the best possible conditions for post-COVID-19 economic recovery, the spokeswoman noted.

Vietnam believes that via cooperation and discussion mechanisms and with a constructive and responsible spirit, countries and the world community will soon manage to control and defeat the pandemic while gradually restoring socio-economic development, she added./.
A woman wearing a protective face mask in France. The country is slowly reopening after almost two months of strict lockdown.

Escalating tensions over China's handling of the coronavirus pandemic could be a "major risk" to economic recovery and may even lead to a trade war worse than the one between Beijing and Washington, one investor told CNBC.

From the U.S. to Europe to Australia, more and more world leaders are calling for China to be investigated over the origins of the outbreak, which was first reported in the Chinese city of Wuhan in late December.

As economies prepare to reopen again after weeks of lockdown to stem the virus' spread, recovery could be derailed by political tensions, said David Sokulsky, CEO and chief investment officer of Concentrated Leaders Fund.

"That's a major risk which isn't being priced in at the moment," he told CNBC's "Capital Connection" on Thursday.

"As we pass peak infection rates, the politicians are going to want to blame somebody, and the obvious target for that blame is China," he added.
Emorys 42nd annual Staff Fest Friday, May 15, 2020 Join activities online: 12 p.m.  Official kick off 11 a.m.  Fun run/fun walk time opens 12:05 p.m.  WERQ dance fitness 12:30 p.m.  Team trivia challenge 12:30 p.m.  Eating Healthy at Home webinar 1 p.m.  Zumba 1 p.m.  Employee Council 50-year celebration 1:30 p.m.  Team trivia challenge 1:30 p.m.  Eating Healthy at Home webinar 1:30 p.m.  WorkLife update 1:45 p.m.  Daily refresh

Staff Fest, a time-honored Emory tradition, always occurs on the Friday after Commencement to celebrate the universitys staff for the success of the academic year. While 2020 looks very different, the 42nd Annual Staff Fest will go on  virtually. The event takes place Friday, May 15, from 12 p.m. until 2 p.m. with a full slate of interactive and engaging programs designed to help Emory staff reconnect with each other while having some fun.

With the theme of Stronger Together, Staff Fest kicks off at noon with a special video message from President Claire E. Sterk. The message will be sent out via email, along with a Staff Fest Guide and Zoom links for participating virtually.

Staff Fest attendees will enjoy some of the same activities they normally find during celebrations on the Quad, but also will notice some new events. Highlights include:

Fun run/fun walk

The Fun Run/Fun Walk has been a Staff Fest tradition for many years, says Melissa Morgan, senior manager of wellness programs. Even though we cant get together for an in-person race this year, we can still get outside to walk or run and share the experience with each other.

Employees are invited to walk, jog or run a 2-mile course in their own neighborhood or their favorite nearby park anytime between 11 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. Those who wish can submit their time to get on the Gold, Silver or Bronze level lists:

Gold: Under 20:00 minutes

Silver: 20:00  29:59 minutes

Bronze: 30:00 minutes or more

Dance fitness (Zumba and WERQ)

Dancing is also a Staff Fest favorite, so the virtual version will not disappoint. People of all fitness and experience levels can enjoy Zumba, a fun, Latin-inspired, calorie-burning dance aerobics class.

A new addition to the line-up this year is WERQ, a dance fitness exercise similar to Zumba but with more hip-hop.

Staff Fest team trivia challenge

The popular volleyball competition has been replaced by the Staff Fest team trivia challenge, which also invites some healthy competition. Participants will join via Zoom and will be placed on teams to see who can complete trivia and puzzle challenges the quickest. Certificates will be awarded to the winners.

Employee Council 50 year celebration

John Bence, Employee Council president and university archivist, will give a brief presentation about the history of the Employee Council as it celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2020.

Other activities

With a focus on self-care, there also are sessions on Eating Healthy at Home and Managing your WorkLife during this challenging time.

Staff Fest will close with Daily Refresh, a unique opportunity to practice gratitude and promote resilience, hosted by the Faculty Staff Assistance Program.

For more fun, wear a favorite Staff Fest t-shirt from years past or enter the virtual background contest. More details on all activities can be found on the Staff Fest web page.
The federal government of Nigeria has stated that it is not under obligations to disclose the whereabouts of the Chinese doctors who came into the country to help in the fight against the novel coronavirus as they are not Nigerias guest but CEECCs.

The health minister, Osagie Ehanire made this known during a media briefing on Thursday.

I think not all of them were doctors and I heard that some of them are technicians, but they are staff of CCECC. The Ministry of Health is not their host, so we cant always explain what happened to them or where they are. There seems to be a lot of interest in these doctors. But they are the staff of the company and I think that they are on a company Visa.

Read Also: Coronavirus: Chinese Doctors Cant Attend To Our Patients  NMA, NARD

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I will be very happy if you dont ask me about where they are because they are not really our guests. But we have been able to learn some things from them by interacting with them from their experience in their country and they did tell us and we shared ideas on what they did in their country in managing COVID-19, Ehanire said.

The 15-member Chinese medical team made up of doctors, nurses, and laboratory technicians, arrived at the Nnamdi Azikiwe International Airport, Abuja, on April 8, 2020, with medical equipment worth about $1.5 million, and went in for two week quarantine period according to Covid-19 protocols.
TEL AVIV, Israel  As the Nazis murdered Jews and ransacked their property on the infamous nights of Kristallnacht in 1938, 13-year-old David Toren stayed with his wealthy great-uncle in Germany admiring a painting hanging in the sunroom depicting two men on horseback on a beach.

Within a year, Toren would be smuggled out in a series of rescues for Jewish children organized by several European countries. Left behind, his family would perish in the death camps and their vast art collection would be seized by Nazis and later traded by unscrupulous dealers.

Toren went on to serve in the Israeli pre-state militia before moving to America where he eventually built a successful law practice on the 54th floor of the World Trade Center. Later in life, even as a degenerative eye condition robbed him of his sight, the images of his past never escaped him.

Image: This undated family photo shows David Toren, who died on April 19, 2020 in his Manhattan home from symptoms of the coronavirus at the age of 94. (Peter Toren / AP file)

Toren died on April 19 in his Manhattan home from symptoms of the coronavirus. He was 94. He left behind his son Peter and two grandchildren.

Peter Toren said his father spent his final years pursuing the art collection his family lost in the war.

He had sued the government of Germany for his great-uncles collection and in 2015, after a lengthy saga, recovered the Max Liebermann work Two Riders on the Beach that so moved him in his youth.

He regarded it as justice and felt very strongly about it, said Peter Toren. The art is something that was taken from his family and it was something there was a possibility of getting back. He couldnt get back all the lives that were exterminated.

Born Klaus-Gunther Tarnowski in Breslau, now part of Poland, Toren and his family at first seemed immune to the rise of the Nazis. His father, a decorated World War I veteran, was a prominent lawyer who was allowed to practice even after the Nazis forbade most Jews from doing so.

But eventually he too was taken away to a concentration camp and with his wife, died in Auschwitz.

Torens great-uncle, the wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann, was forced to flee and the Nazis pillaged his extensive collection. Many of the works ended up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a notorious German art dealer who traded in what the Nazis called degenerate art  works deemed inferior because they were un-German  to help fund the war machine.

Story continues

Much of Gurlitts collection remained unseen for decades and experts feared they had been lost or destroyed. But a vast horde of more than 1,200 works resurfaced by surprise in 2012 when German authorities raided a Munich apartment belonging to his son Cornelius while investigating him for tax evasion. Paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were discovered.

The discovery brought renewed attention to the many unresolved cases of looted art that was never returned to original Jewish owners or their descendants.

Toren was the only descendant of his great-uncle, whose daughter died in Auschwitz, leaving him to stake a claim. After reclaiming Two Riders on the Beach, he tracked down another piece that had made its way to Israel. After a lengthy negotiation he got back Basket Weavers as well, an Impressionist work depicting five boys weaving baskets out of straw.

His son Peter Toren said further efforts were ongoing to acquire more than 50 documented antiques seized from Friedmanns collection.

Torens grandson, Ben, said his grandfather pursued the art collection in retirement with an unsentimental focus and tenacity as he did in his law career. He very strongly felt that these paintings were his paintings and it gave him a lot of purpose, he said.

But he never presented himself as being any kind of victim and he never asked for any pity, he quickly added. His life experience required of him to have a rock-solid exterior. Thats how he presented himself to the world.
What majority shareholder in the mine owns: new questions in the Inskoy mine case

 RIA Novosti, Sergey Averin

13:00 15/05/2020

A court process over extortion of 51% of shares in the Inskoy coal mine has brought to light a range of pressing legal issues demanding a serious consideration in the present context. Among these issues is a comparison of an alleged extortion of shares with a similar action with respect to the title of property, and, on the whole, if there is a possibility to extort the title of property of an enterprise.

How the value of the shares object to the extortion should be valued? Is it appropriate to size up the property on the basis of the book value of the fixed assets? These questions of law enforcement and judicial practice raised in the previous material on the Inskoy mine case RAPSI addressed to experts in these legal issues.

Former representatives of the Kemerovo regional authorities and local businesses are being charged since 2018 with extortion on an especially large scale of shares and property title at the balance value of 2.7 billion rubles (about $36.7 million at the current exchange rate) of an enterprise, at that time with multibillion-ruble debts.

The value of property of Inskoy mine has been established on the basis of the data presented in a bookkeeping balance sheet with respect to the fixed assets value. However, the prosecution failed to take into account the mines liabilities totaling to 11 billion rubles (about $143 million). The defense, in turn, believes the charges of extortion with respect to the property title are inappropriate because, among other things, the market value of the object of extortion has not been determined. At the time of an economic crisis, such a specific situation in the sphere of law becomes especially topical and needs to be analyzed.

RAPSI has polled famous criminal law experts, formulating its questions as follows: A citizen is charged with extortion, at that, it is recognized that the object of the crime is the property of the victim represented by shares at the nominal value of 250,000 rubles (about $3,500), whereas their market value makes 1 ruble, and the property title, i.e. the right to the fixed assets at the book value of 2.5 billion rubles (circa $34 million). The question is if the nature of this crime be defined as extortion of shares and the property title of a corporate entity?

Piercing the corporate veil

Gennady Esakov, Head of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of the Higher School of Economics, LL.D. is of the opinion that extortion of shares is equivalent to extortion of the property title:

As concerns criminal cases, the judicial practice allows so to speak the piercing of the corporate veil. In this case real valuable property on the balance sheet of an independent legal entity is the ultimate object of the property-related offences. The case law demonstrates that in the process of appraisal of damages caused by the offence the value of the property being sort of behind the shares may be taken into account. Extortion of shares will be regarded only as an instrument of access to managing the property. Such an approach has been fixed in the judicial practice, although there is a number of questions in this respect from the point of view of civil law.

The position of the prosecution in the Inskoy mine case demonstrates exactly this approach. It focuses primarily on the details of the very process of extortion of shares, including the motives driving the defendants, who, according to the case materials, were not clearly profit-motivated to replace the shareholder. In the course of the pretrial investigation the market value of the property was also not taken into account, investigators just did not try to estimate it.

Ownership title cannot be extorted

Samvel Kochoi, Professor of the Department of Criminal Law of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), Honorary Figure of Russian Higher Education of the Russian Federation, LL.D. believes that the statement of offence is incorrect and contradicts the case law:

Only property may be recognized as the object of extortion; a right cannot be the object of crimes against property in principle. It follows from the Judgement of the Plenum of Russias Supreme Court of December 17, 2015, No. 56 On judicial practice relating to cases over extortion (Article 163 of Russias Criminal Code).

The said Judgement defines property as documentary fixed possibility to exercise owners or legal holders powers in relation to certain property. Nevertheless, Russias Civil Code defines property title neither as a thing, nor any other property, including property rights.

Basing on the aforesaid norms the expert comes to the conclusion that the right to property by no means can be considered to be the object of extortion.

The essence of the matter is in the details

Ivan Klepitsky, Professor of Kutafin Moscow State Law University (MSAL), LL.D., notes that when hearing a case over extortion a court to correctly qualify it needs at the very beginning to determine the method of appraisal of damages. It is necessary to choose either the value of shares proceeding from stock exchange quotations, if any, or the value of the share in the capital. At that, it should be not about the nominal value:

The question as it has been formulated is a question of fact, not of law. It is necessary to look at who extorts what and from whom. At that, it will be inadmissible to segment the essence  object of extortion is either shares, or control over capital. If criminal intent is to seize or retain control  it is extortion of a property-related operation (a deal with property); in this case it would be correct to appraise the amount of extortion taking into account not only assets, but also debts of the company, as well as the respective share in its capital. In case the intent is only to seize shares and it is not related to participation in the management  the amount will not be a great one. In case there are doubts about the amount, it may be subjected to expert evaluation; however, the expert is to know what exactly was extorted and if there was an interest as to participation in management. In any case extortion is criminally liable, no extortion is to be defined as a petty one.

It is important to add that in the Inskoy mine case a number of important arguments has not been paid due attention because of the failure to conduct an expert evaluation of the market value of shares. Firstly, the amount of dividends on profits the defendant claimed alleging he lost them could not be in fact gained because of the changes in the market situation in 2018 and later. Secondly, according to a number of witnesses the enterprises property has been extremely worn out. Thirdly, the enterprise was in debt and it was bankrupt. The prosecution failed to mention all these facts.

Majority shareholder is not equal to owner

Pavel Yani, Professor of the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology of Lomonosov Moscow State University, member of Academic Advisory Boards at Russias Supreme Court and the Federal Chamber of Lawyers, Academic Advisor of the Research and Educational Center Criminal and Legal Examination of Lomonosov Moscow State University, LL.D., is of the opinion that even a majority interest does not give its owner rights to the property of an enterprise:

Civil legislation envisages separateness of property owned by a legal entity. Only founders of state-owned and municipal unitary enterprises have proprietary rights to properties of enterprises. Shareholders in commercial organizations do not have ownership rights as to properties of legal entities, shares in which they own. All such properties belong on the basis of ownership title to these commercial organizations; these properties are created at the expense of contributions from the founders (participants), shareholders, as well as produced and purchased by an enterprise in the process of its activities. Exactly such an approach has been confirmed by numerous court decisions and judicial practice.

The expert has also noted that when determining the amount of extortion only the market value of shares in the company may be taken into account, but not the value of the property owned by the company. Therefore, in this case the object of the incriminated extortion of shares and the right to the property owned by the victim cannot be included in the property title of the company.

Sound understanding of figures and facts

A court process with respect to a case over extortion requires attention to details of the respective illegal behavior, the establishment of facts, details, and an appraisal of damages on the basis of an expert examination. The expert monitoring the case have arrived to a conclusion that a range of facts and details, which influenced the formation of the position of the prosecution as to the Inskoy mine case were the result of an interpretation and not of an examination. As a result, the evidence provided by witnesses about a unique complex situation of the enterprise different from that in some other ordinary case is difficult to be unambiguously verified by figures and facts.

As a result, four years after the crime was committed the court has not been able to find a definite answer to the question about the aims the defendants, ex-representatives of the regional administration, ex-officers of security agencies, and businessman Alexander Shchukin pursued in the course of the events resulting in the change of the mines management. No answer has been found also with respect to the justification of the amount of damages the prosecution alleges the defendants caused.

In the context of the judicial practice, the case of the Inskoy mine gives rise to a discussion about what is to be taken into account when investigating a case over extortion of shares, and if current practices need to be changed, for example by making obligatory to carry out expert evaluation in order to determine the value of the object of extortion  shares and participating interests in the charter capital.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15) - Eastern Samar grapples with picking up the pieces in the aftermath of severe tropical storm Ambo amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Ambo (international name: Vongfong), the first tropical cyclone to hit the country this year, first hit land at San Policarpio, Eastern Samar province.

Governor Ben Evardone said the damage caused by Ambo is comparable to Typhoon Yolanda in 2013. He added that a number of local governments are short of calamity funds as these were spent for COVID-19 response efforts.

Based on my observation this morning until this afternoon, I think the devastation, in terms of infrastructure and agriculture, I think can be compared to Yolanda. The major difference, during Yolanda, some hundreds and thousands people died unlike this one, Evardone told CNN Philippines News Night.

Evardone said Ambo also destroyed a church, evacuation centers transformed into COVID-19 isolation areas and crops.

He also appealed for help from the Air Force to reach the inaccessible towns of Jipapad and Maslo.

The weather bureau said Ambo is bringing moderate to intense rains in many parts of Luzon.

It is expected exit the country on Monday.
Keith Urban treated some frontline healthcare workers to a VIP drive-in concert on Thursday night.

The country crooner, 52, invited around 200 people from Tennessee's Vanderbilt University Health to join him for a night of music at the Stardust Drive-In movie theater, about 40-miles outside of Nashville.

And wife Nicole Kidman, 52, was there to support, cheering him on from an appropriate distance.

Sharing his gift: Keith Urban played a drive-in concert for healthcare workers on the frontlines of coronavirus on Thursday night

The Academy Award-winner shared a photo of herself from before the event, gazing at the drive-in as a crew diligently crafted a makeshift stage area.

Though her back was too the camera, Nicole's signature strawberry blonde locks and lovely ensemble made it clear it was the Aussie talent.

Kidman praised husband of 14-years Keith and workers on the frontlines of coronavirus in her post, writing: '[Keith] just had to play!!

'Isolating with live music at last night's first #UrbanUnderground drive-in gig for the incredible #frontline workers at @VanderbiltHealth  xx'

Preparation time! The Academy Award-winner shared a photo of herself from before the event, cheering on her husband of 14-years

Hits: During the 75-minute show, Urban played some of his hits, including Blue Ain't Your Color and The Fighter, but also played new songs off his upcoming record The Speed of Now, Part 1

Keith's latest gig was mostly just him and two other musicians playing on a flatbed truck in front of about 125 cars.

Urban performed for a crowd of more than 200 medical workers from Vanderbilt Health.

'It's like glorified karaoke,' Urban told The Associated Press, of the set up that included a band member playing pre-recorded tracks and another guitar/keyboard player.

In the wake of the new coronavirus outbreak, Urban hadn't played a live show since February. Urban said it took him and his promoter Live Nation about a month to plan the surprise drive-in concert, although more drive-in concerts are currently being planned throughout the country.

'All the cars are tilted forward so they've all got a great view and you've got this freakin' killer video wall behind the stage,' said Urban.

Stripped down: Keith's latest gig was mostly just him and two other musicians playing on a flatbed truck in front of about 125 cars

During the 75-minute show, Urban played some of his hits, including Blue Ain't Your Color and The Fighter, but also played new songs off his upcoming record The Speed of Now, Part 1.

Urban said the thrill of playing live again was amazing, even as the crowd looked - and sounded - a little different. He asked the healthcare workers to send him selfies of themselves, which he put on the screen behind him.

'There would just be a random lights flashing out there, then a horn and a cheer over there, and then I realized it was all these people popping up on screen behind me,' he said.

Urban said that he wanted to thank all the healthcare workers who have been on the frontline of the coronavirus pandemic.

'Walking on stage, it was just huge gratitude, particularly for that audience last night,' said Urban.
U.S. opposes verification of biological weapon production: Russian FM

People's Daily Online

(Xinhua) 09:28, May 14, 2020

MOSCOW, May 13 (Xinhua) -- The United States categorically opposes the adoption of a protocol to the convention of banning biological and toxin weapons, which would establish a mechanism to verify compliance by member countries with their obligation not to produce such weapons, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Wednesday.

"The United States' reluctance to ensure transparency of its military-biological activities in different regions of the world, of course, raises questions about what is really happening and what goals are being pursued," Lavrov said during a news conference following an online meeting of foreign ministers of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

Lavrov said that since 2001, Russia, together with other countries, has advocated an agreement on the preparation of such a protocol.

He said that Russia has repeatedly drawn attention to the creation and development of biological laboratories all over the world, most of which work under the auspices of the Pentagon.

"These laboratories are densely formed along the perimeter of the borders of the Russian Federation, and, accordingly, next to the borders of the People's Republic of China," Lavrov said.

He added that the SCO is preparing an action plan to ensure sanitary and epidemiological safety -- specifically, biosafety -- with a summit to be held this year in St. Petersburg.

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Coronavirus test results have recently been a cause of concern as several countries have claimed to have reported false test results. Recently, Abbott Laboratories tests were under scrutiny as a report from New York University said that they could have missed half of the positive cases. The company was used at the White House to test coronavirus infections.

On May 11, as many as 33 previously confirmed COVID-19 cases from a laboratory were found to be "false positives" in Singapore. Russian officials, On May 8, reportedly said in a statement that tests throughout the country often give the wrong result. The statement brings into question the veracity of official statistics.

South Korea also faced the same problem in the beginning of the month when the country said that dozens of patients who recovered from corona tested positive again. But after research, they said that the tests were false positive. South Korea had reported more than 350 such cases as of May 6, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC).

False test results pose a serious challenge for a country in its fight against coronavirus as it means that many people who are not infected (false positives) could be getting treatment in hospitals while many others who actually have coronavirus (false negative) could be out there transmitting the disease to others.

Read: Explainer: As Countries Ease Lockdown, Heres Why 2nd Wave Of COVID Is A Serious Concern

What is false positive?

A false positive test is when the test results show that a person has contracted coronavirus but in reality that person does not have the disease. Some reports claim that false positive can even show antibodies indicating that a person has immunity while they don't.

What is false negative?

A false negative result means that the person is told that he does not have coronavirus but in reality he has. False negative tests can prove extremely dangerous for a society in its fight against coronavirus as it means that a person with coronavirus is out there living a normal life infecting his contacts and risking his own health as the treatment cannot be started because the person tested negative for coronavirus while he actually has it.

Recent data reportedly suggests that about 15% of all tests conducted in the United States are returning false negatives. It means of every 100 individuals infected with COVID-19, 15 of them are told they don't have it.

Reason for false results?

There can be numerous reasons for getting false results. One of them is when a sample is contaminated with coronavirus, it can show false positive.

The second reason could be fault test kits. A rather funny yet serious incident came to light from Tanzania where the President questioned test kits as goats, papaya and sheep allegedly tested positive for the novel coronavirus. Considering the lack of specificity in case of testing kits, sometimes the kits pick up some other pathogen present in the blood which is not SARS-CoV-2.

Another reason could be a human error. As these tests and analysis have human involvement on different levels, they are subject to a human error. There can be a fault in reading or analysing the results.

The specificity of the test is another fact. The test you are taking has to be specific to that particular disease to be able to show accurate results. The specificity of the test is determined by what part of the genetic sequence of the virus you are targeting as several viruses share part of their genetics. In the case of coronavirus, RT-PCR (tests done using reverse-transcription polymerase chain reaction) are said to show accurate results as they target a certain genetic sequence similar to SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The accuracy of tests also depends on what stage the samples were collected. Samples collected too early may give false negative result.

In the case of recovered patients, as it possibly happened in South Korea, sometimes the test detects old particles. However, these particular do not pose a significant threat to the patient or people near him anymore.

Read: Explainer: As Sweden Attempts To Achieve Herd Immunity Against COVID, Here's What It Means

Margin of error in test kits

According to reports, the margin of error of the rapid antibody test kits is between 15-20%, which experts claim, is huge.

Types of tests for coronavirus

RT-PCR

This test is done using a nasal or throat swab and while it is complicated, time-consuming and expensive, the tests are found to b highly accurate.

Rapid antibody test

In rapid antibody test, patient's blood is used as sample to detect antibodies. Also known as serology test, it is quick to perform and gives results within a few minutes.

Read: Explainer: How New Zealand's 'elimination Policy' Got COVID Cases Down To Zero In 6 Weeks

Read: It's Not Over Until It's Over: List Of Countries Fearing Second Wave Of Coronavirus
Helios Towers Ltd. plans to acquire additional mobile-phone tower sites in South Africa from Eagle Towers Ltd. as it expands its presence in Africas most industrialized economy.

The London-based company first entered South Africa in 2019 through a partnership with Vulatel Ltd. that brought the group 500 sites. It will add another 65 with this deal, which it expects to be concluded by the second half of the year, Chief Executive Kash Pandya said by phone.

Helios also received an order from the countrys largest mobile-phone operator, Vodacom Group Ltd., to build towers over the next 15 months. Vodacom recently announced that it would start rolling out 5G services in South Africas three largest cities.

Tower companies have been expanding in Africa to take advantage of faster internet connections and takeup of smartphones across the continent. Meanwhile, wireless carriers around the world have been disposing of tower assets to free up capital for other ventures, creating a sweet spot for deal-making.

Helios is working on a number of deals that will come through during the next month or two, said Pandya, and expects acquisitions to be concluded by end of the year depending on the impact of the global coronavirus impact.

We have seen a degree of slowdown in terms being able to travel and engaging with the parties when it comes to deal negotiations, said Pandya. Its a little bit slower at the moment as the government and regulators hunker down.

Helios is in talks with lenders and development-finance institutions about raising debt for large deals if needed later in the year, Chief Financial Officer Tom Greenwood said on the same call. The company has about $146 million in cash, and $100 million in debt facilities, following a London share sale last year.

The shares have gained 7% since the listing late last year, valuing the company at about 1.2 billion pounds ($1.5 billion).

Helios is also looking to enter other African countries, including Senegal, Morocco, and Egypt, Greenwood said. It currently holds a portfolio of about 7,000 towers.
The Delhi High Court was informed on Friday that the AAP government has decided to release the members of Tablighi Jamaat, who have completed mandatory quarantine and show no coronavirus symptoms.

The submission was made at the outset of the hearing on a petition seeking release of nearly 3300 Tablighi Jamaat members, who have been put under various quarantine centers for nearly 40 days and not released despite negative reports of COVID-19.

A bench of Chief Justice D N Patel and Justice C Hari Shankar, which conducted the hearing through video conferencing, was told by the counsel for the petitioner that they wish to withdraw the petition as the Delhi government has already directed for release of Tablighi Jamaat members who do not show any symptoms of COVID-19.

The court allowed petitioner Sabiha Quadri, a social worker, to withdraw the plea.

The plea, filed through advocate Shahid Ali, had alleged that many people have been illegally lodged in quarantine centers and submitted that several persons who are staying in those centers have written letters to the authorities but they have not been considered.

It had sought direction to the authorities to comply with the guidelines of 14 days quarantine and to constitute a high level committee to enquire as to whether continuous confinement of members of Tablighi Jamaat is violative of the provisions of the Constitution.

After being exposed to a large gathering on March 31 amid the COVID-19 or coronavirus lockdown many members of Tablighi Jamaat from Markaz Hazrat Nizamuddin were taken out by the authorities and lodged in different quarantine centres in Delhi. Some of them were sent to the centres a few days later after being detained from various mosques.

A total of 3288 people from Tablighi Jamaat have been put under different quarantine centers and till date none has been released from there, despite the fact that they are not in any manner infected with the disease (coronavirus) and in case of many members, three consecutive reports with negative endorsement have come, the plea said.

The Centre was represented through advocate Amit Mahajan in the proceedings.

On May 6, the Delhi government had said the Tablighi Jamaat members who have completed mandatory quarantine and show no coronavirus symptoms can go home.

In April, COVID-19 cases in Delhi spiked after hundreds of many Tablighi Jamaat members, who had attended a large congregation in Nizamuddin, tested positive.

The other members were directly taken to quarantine centres to contain the spread of COVID-19.
WhistlePig Rye Whiskey is pleased to announce the introduction of WhistlePig HomeStock Whiskey, a whiskey blended together, while apart. The limited edition whiskey was created via a virtual crowd blending experience in collaboration with Flaviar, a leading online spirits club. WhistlePig will donate 20% of online sales via Flaviar & Caskers from HomeStock to the U.S. Bartenders Guild (USBG) Foundations Emergency Assistance Program, which provides COVID-19 Relief Grants to bartenders. HomeStock is the first variant from WhistlePigs award-winning portfolio that stretches outside of the Rye category, also using Wheat and Barley whiskeys.

WhistlePig HomeStock Whiskey is a result of an innovative, multi-faceted immersive crowd-blending experience designed to lift spirits and raise vital funds for the U.S. bar industry community. The collaboration between WhistlePig & Flaviar and the entrepreneurial nature of both companies ensured this concept went from idea to reality in just a matter of weeks. An engaging exclusive content program was created and hundreds of WhistlePig Blend Your Own whiskey kits were dispatched to a combination of Flaviars membership of whiskey enthusiasts and industry professionals, who were asked to experiment at home before submitting their preferred recipe. The at home blending kits included samples of WhistlePig Rye, wheat and barley whiskeys, along with blending tools and instructions, were universally welcomed by whiskey lovers stuck indoors.

Pete Lynch, WhistlePigs Master Blender, is no stranger to crowd-blending, which has formed the basis of WhistlePigs award-winning FarmStock range, but he would usually host sessions around the country in person. Adjusting to the times, he shared his expertise via a video from the WhistlePig Farm and distillery in Vermont and written instructions. With the submissions received, Lynch analyzed the data and determined the three most popular styles of whiskey submitted.

Thousands of consumers tuned in to Flaviars social media pages to take part in a live blending session, hosted on April 28 by spirits industry veteran, Dan Dunn and Lynch. During the live stream, all three whiskeys were blended, tasted and then voted upon to decide which should be bottled as WhistlePig HomeStock.

Despite over half of the submissions being Rye dominant, the surprise winner, with 44.1% of the votes on the night, was Blend Number 3, which involved 45% Rye, 30% Wheat and 25% Barley.

Jeff Kozak, CEO, WhistlePig Whiskey, adds HomeStock is a truly special blend for us, not only due to how it was made but its the first time were releasing a whiskey that features something other than Rye. Were thrilled that this blend got voted as the winner, it could be a sign of things to come from us in the future as a natural extension of our famed FarmStock range.

Grisa Soba, Co-Founder of Flaviar, comments: Were going to be talking about this period in history for a long time, and what we all did to stave off cabin fever. Instead of saying they learnt how to make sourdough or banana bread like some kind of quarantine cliche, Flaviar members will be able to brag about learning to blend whiskey during lock down and being part of a piece of liquid history that they can now own and savor. Exclusive content and experiences like this have always been a big part of Flaviar and weve just taken it to another level.

On the nose, HomeStock is sweet and fruity, with pipe tobacco, vanilla and orange vest. Upon tasting, one will experience a big hit of baking spice with toffee, with nutmeg, roasted nuts, ripe berries and a great mouthfeel. The finish on HomeStock is long, spicy and lovely.

WhistlePig HomeStock Whiskey is now available for pre-order via Flaviar and Caskers, priced at $72.99 per 750ml.

ABOUT WHISTLEPIG RYE WHISKEY

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Cattle rancher Brett Kenzy, center, with his wife and children, along with his mother, brother, and his brother's family

Growing up, Brett Kenzy didn't like working on his family's cattle ranch farm in Gregory, South Dakota, about 160 miles west of Sioux Falls. "I hated it. I resented that I had to work all the time," Kenzy, now 48, tells CNBC Make It. But Kenzy's father, Ralph, a third generation cattle rancher, always told Kenzy and his older brother, George, that they were "never going to get rich ranching," and that the beauty of the profession has nothing to do with money. If there was ever a time to keep that in mind, it's now. With major plants closing due to sick workers and low cattle prices on top of that, Kenzy and other cattle ranchers are bleeding money and having to make hard decisions. While Kenzy has not, some farmers have had to euthanize livestock like chickens and pigs that they cannot sell, and many farmers and ranchers have had to cut back on expenses to stay afloat. Kenzy, like most cattle ranchers, has certainly faced tough times before, but the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic are just different. "[It's] just become such a survival game," Kenzy tells CNBC Make It.

'I'm six weeks late on loan payments'

Kenzy has worked on his family's mid-sized ranch, which has about 2,500 cattle at various stages of production, nearly his whole life, except for the time he attended South Dakota State University (he has a bachelors degree in animal science) and during a stint in the military. He took over the farm with his brother when their father died in 2012. The brothers have a small feedlot where they wean baby calves away from their mother at about nine months old to grow them into cattle. They then sell those cattle to meat-packers to be slaughtered for food. Normally, Kenzy and his brother sell their cattle once a year. For 2020, Kenzy was expecting an annual payday of about $360,000 on April 1. But by then, for example, for a 900-pound northern feeder steer (a "feeder" is an 11-month-old calf, and northern are a more expensive breed), the price had fallen so low (from somewhere around a normal price of $1.40 to $1.45 per pound to about $1.10 a pound, Kenzy says) that he decided to keep the approximately 300 cattle they had ready to sell, hoping prices would go back up. That didn't happen, and last week, Kenzy sold half his ready cattle. He says he lost about $200 a head. But Kenzy considers himself lucky that he even has the option to hold on to his cattle for a few more months. Kenzy typically sells his cows one step below what's known as "finished." Ranchers who sell "finishers" raise their cattle until they reach peak size of 1400 to 1500 pounds and therefore can't keep their cattle longer  every day finished cattle wait to be sold, they gain unneeded fat, which makes them less valuable. Most ranchers are currently losing about $300 a head on finished cattle, Kenzy says, and it's why some ranchers may be forced to kill their livestock if things continue. Kenzy says his goal with the cattle was just to break-even this year, but now he knows that is not likely. Even the partial loss forced Kenzy to get an extension on the loans the farm has taken out for for equipment and operational costs over the years. "I'm about six weeks late on loan payments," Kenzy says. "And the first thing your banker tells you is that you have to cut back on family living expenses." It was tough to tell his wife, Jessy, with whom Kenzy has five kids and two foster children. (Kenzy's brother and mother also live on the ranch.) "We live pretty modesty already," he says. "We don't go on family vacations and we don't buy new equipment for the ranch." Plus, as a rancher, his family has seen lean times before. (Since 2015, when cattle prices were at historical highs because of the drought, cattle prices have been on the decline, according to the USDA.) So they know how to make ends meet, he says.

'Meat rationing will occur'
Expert Advice with Leanne Jopson

There's been a huge change in the Residential Tenancies Act in Victoria, with new laws introduced in Victoria making it easier for tenants to bring their a four-legged friend into their home.

From March 2nd 2020, renters will be able to seek written approval from their landlord if they wish to get a pet, and landlords will only be able to refuse if they have permission from the Victorian Civil and Administrative Tribunal (VCAT).

The changes also mean landlords are not permitted to unreasonably reject applications from prospective tenants, on the basis theyll be accompanied by a pet.

Can a landlord refuse a pet?

The onus is on the landlord to apply to VCAT if they want to refuse their tenants request.

Landlords have 14 days to apply for a VCAT order preventing the animal from taking up residence in the property. When the pet in question is an assistance dog, landlords are not able to refuse consent under any circumstances.

In considering such applications, VCAT will look at factors such as the type of property, what kind of fixtures, fittings and appliances are present, and what species of pet the tenant is asking to be allowed, along with local council regulations and how the pet might impact on neighbours or other residents.

For landlords, this means if you want to avoid your tenants bringing pets into your investment property, youll need to have a good case to present to VCAT to back this up  for example, an apartment owner might argue that high-density living is not suitable for a large dog, or for neighbours who would be disturbed by said pup.

When do these new laws take effect?

Leases signed before March 2nd 2020 that have a no pets clause are still valid until the end of the agreement. However, landlords wont be able to stipulate that pets arent allowed on any future tenancy agreements.

The Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) predicts that VCAT will see a massive influx of applications from landlords trying to prevent animals entering their premises.

However, there are other options, such as adding extra clauses to a lease regarding damage caused by animals, or ensuring the bond is sufficient to cover this  or even coming to a mutual agreement with your tenants around frequent professional carpet cleaning and fumigation, for example.

For tenants, it might be a good idea to come to the party armed with a reference from your previous landlord stating that youve kept the property clean and in good repair, and your pet hasnt caused any nuisance, to spare you the bother of the landlord trying to block your request. You can download a Pet Request Form from the Consumer Affairs Victoria website, and once you send this to the landlord, they have 14 days to apply to VCAT.

For more information on the changes, head to Consumer Affairs Victoria or the Victorian Government website.

........................................................................................................

Leanne Jopson is National Director of Property Management at Metropole, and has 20 years experience in real estate.

Leanne brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to maximise returns and minimise stress for her clients.
Plans are "well-advanced" for a major office and retail development at 82-98 Devonport Road.

Property development and investment company, Willis Bond & Co has plans to develop the 4300 sq. metre Devonport Road site, which is currently the subject of a conditional sale and purchase agreement with the owner, Tauranga City Council.

Craigs Investment Partners will likely be the anchor tenant for the building, which will feature a high-quality, mixed-use development approach incorporating commercial and retail spaces.

Current plans envision a six-level, above-ground office space above ground-floor retail, with pedestrian linkages connecting Devonport Road and The Strand with the waterfront and the Matapihi footbridge.

Willis Bond & Co Managing Director, Mark McGuinness says the venture solidifies a long-standing relationship with Craigs Investment Partners.

Weve worked with Craigs for over 30 years, so it is fitting that were able to work on this project together, and support Tauranga City Councils efforts to revitalise the Tauranga city centre."

Willis Bond & Co is well-known for its award-winning developments, recently taking the top architecture award for their Wynyard Central apartment development, along with a number of commercial property awards for their work on Wellingtons PwC building.

Weve learnt a lot about what it takes to construct quality buildings and communities through our developments in Auckland and Wellington. This will be a landmark project for us in Tauranga and one were very excited about," says Mark.

Craig Investment Partners chair, Neil Craig, says the company had outgrown its existing premises.

The Devonport Road development will cater for our 230 current staff and provide the space we need to grow.

Weve been looking for a suitable waterfront site for some years now. This site meets all of our requirements and clearly signals Craigs intention to keep its head office in Tauranga for the long-term.

One of New Zealands leading investment companies, Craigs has 19 offices around the country, employing around 540 staff, with an additional 50 percent holding in a similar investment advisory business in Australia.

Mayor Tenby Powell says the decision to sell council-owned properties at 82, 84, 90, 94, 96 and 98 Devonport Road to facilitate the development comes as part of a wider initiative to re-consolidate councils office-based services in a single location and revise the master plan for the future use of the Willow Street Civic Precinct.

The master plan process has not progressed at all for close to two years and we need to clarify what our aspirations are for the Willow Street site and engage with hapu so that we understand the historic issues which may impact upon its development.

At the same time, we have an urgent need to rationalise the inefficient and expensive use of three separate city-centre buildings for our civic administration functions. One option would be to lease space in the exciting new building planned for 90 Devonport Road and council has agreed to explore that possibility with the developer.

Tenby says the Devonport Road development will create a significant number of jobs during the construction phase and achieve councils strategic objectives of realising value and facilitating quality commercial development.

Were in the fortunate position of being able to act as the catalyst for a marquee project, which in conjunction with the nearby Farmers retail, commercial and residential development, will provide some real impetus to the city-centre economy and create an attractive inner-city environment where people will want to live, work and play.

A report setting out councils civic accommodation needs, with recommended actions to address the longstanding issues involved, was adopted by elected members at a public excluded meeting on 24 March.

The report has now been made public (with redactions to protect commercially sensitive information) and will be made available on council's website.

The purchase price for councils Devonport Road properties will be disclosed following the completion of a due diligence feasibility investigation, and confirmation that the sale is unconditional.
Two victims of an attack by white-clad mobsters in the Hong Kong border town on Yuen Long on July 21, 2019 on Friday hit out at a police-backed report that concluded there was no collusion between police and the attackers, in spite of a long delay in responded to multiple emergency calls on the night, and photos of officers chatting with groups of men wielding weapons in white T-shirts.



The victim, who gave only his surname Tseng, said he was among dozens of passengers, protesters, and passersby attacked by individuals wielding sticks and poles inside Yuen Long MTR station on that day, suffering severe injuries in the process.



"I think their theory is unconvincing, and doesn't explain what happened," Tseng said of the lengthy report by Hong Kong's Independent Police Complaints Council (IPCC), which despite its name relies entirely on evidence generated by police, and has no independent investigatory powers.



"I think what most people wanted to know was the relationship between [police and the triads], and what mistakes the police made in their handling of the situation, or in their communications," he said. "But this report ... concludes that there was no collusion."



"But of course, we know that the IPCC has no powers of independent investigation, and that's why they reached such a conclusion," Tseng said.



Democratic Party lawmaker Lam Cheuk-ting, who was himself attacked by gang members in white T-shirts in the same incident, dismissed the report as "garbage."



"I am very angry," Lam said. "This report is garbage. It contains no condemnation or criticism of the police ... the IPCC is basically doing PR for the police."



Police investigate themselves



The IPCC has been criticized by its own experts, rights groups, and protesters as a toothless body that relies on the police investigating themselves.



In January, it announced it was quashing a much fuller report in spite of growing international criticism of police violence against protesters throughout 2019.



Friday's report is a greatly curtailed version, focusing on a handful of contentious incidents that have been the focus of public complaints and demands for redress.



An international panel of law enforcement experts hired by the IPCC stepped down at the end of last year, saying they no longer wished to be associated with the probe, as the IPCC lacked the necessary powers to carry out a credible inquiry.



The IPCC report found that "The polices failure to take timely action in certain instances did fuel allegations of collusion against the police."



It blamed inadequacies in the police command structure for their inaction during the first 37 minutes of the attack.



IPCC chairman Anthony Neoh on Friday defended widespread police violence during last year's pro-democracy and anti-extradition protests, saying it was the duty of police to maintain law and order.



"Under the violence they had to face in performance of their duty, the police had found it necessary to resort on occasion to the use of force," Neoh said.



The IPCC report also claimed that police had only employed force in reaction to "illegal action" by protesters or in self-defense, a claim that has been undermined by months of social media footage and live video streams from the front lines of the protests.



Public concerns dismissed



The report was highly dismissive of public concerns over the Aug. 31, 2019 attack by riot police on unarmed passengers in the absence of journalists inside Prince Edward MTR station, which gave rise to unconfirmed reports of at least one death at the scene.



It found that the use of the remote San Uk Ling detention facility was inappropriate for detained protesters, particularly those who were already injured.



While it noted that being able to identify individual police officers -- something that has been made very difficult through lack of visible information throughout the protests -- was key to transparency and accountability, it stopped short of requiring it, saying only that the police were "heading in the right direction."



The report also denied that Indonesian journalist Veby Indah had been hit by a police rubber bullet, claiming that journalists had already been asked to leave the footbridge where she was standing to cover the day's protests.



But fellow journalist and eyewitness Sarah Zheng said the report was "inaccurate," providing a link to the Facebook Live broadcast of the incident.



"[The] FB live ... shows police raise their guns & retreat down stairs, then protesters run forward," Zheng wrote via her Twitter account on Friday. "One nears corner of the stairs with a shield. Police fire & hit Veby. She falls to the ground."



According to Zheng, police could be heard discussing leaving the area among themselves, but at no point do they tell journalists to leave.



In total, it made 52 recommendations, including calls for better communication with the public over the actions police take to enforce the law.



'Bloodied but not broken'



Amnesty International said in its 2019 annual report that Hong Kong protesters are 'bloodied but not broken' in the wake of abusive policing tactics for which the authorities have yet to be held accountable.



It said the Hong Kong protest movement, which began in June 2019 with mass popular opposition to extradition to mainland China, had demanded accountability in spite of increasingly harsh treatment by the authorities



Reported by Lu Xi and Man Hoi-tsan for RFA's Mandarin and Cantonese Services. Translated and edited by Luisetta Mudie.
The decision of Vedanta's promoters to take the firm private by buying out shareholders at Rs 87.50 a share is "opportunistic and the price does not reflect the fundamental value of the equity", Institutional Investor Advisory Services said on Friday.

The promoters will have to offer a significantly higher exit price if the bid is to succeed, it added.

Last week, billionaire Anil Aggarwal-run Vedanta Resources, the London-based holding company, saidit will buy back Vedanta shareholders at Rs 87.50 a share and take the company private.

The offer price was at 9 per cent premium over the previous day's closing price, but since then the stock has rallied and closed at Rs 92.90 on the BSE on Friday.

"The free float market capitalization of Vedanta is around USD 2.2 billion and we expect the parent to shell out significantly more, if the delisting is to go through," the shareholders advisory said in a note.

Attributing the move to go private to promoters' debt repayment pressures, the advisory said, "Vedanta delisting at a floor price of Rs 87.50 is opportunistic. The stock is currently trading close to its 52-week low, which is a steep discount to its historic five-year average as a natural fallout of the current economic environment and the COVID-19 crisis."



"The current market price does not reflect the fundamental value of the equity," it said.

The advisory urged Vedanta directors to properly guide the shareholders and not to shrug their shoulders saying the reverse book building will determine the price.

"As in the past, this announcement too, suggests that minority shareholders are a hinderance to the promoters' ambition," it said.

Independent directors have a fiduciary responsibility to guide shareholders on the delisting bid, it said and pointed out that the independent directors of Essar Energy had in 2014 rejected the promoter Essar Global Funds' bid to delist terming it as opportunistic.

"Independent directors must avoid taking cover from regulation. Delisting guidelines protect the rights of minority shareholders.

"It will be a shame if the board throws these regulations back at shareholders saying since the price is determined by reverse book-building, you decide the price," it said.

The board is meeting on May 18 and it must articulate "whether retail shareholders must vote for delisting and also indicate a price range that reflects the intrinsic value of the stock."



It can be noted the Vedanta group has funded almost all its recent corporate actions using debt. The stake buy in Anglo American and the delisting of Vedanta Resources all resulted increasing debt at the holding company level.

The group, which has an aggregate debt of around USD 17 billion as of March 2020, is facing high repayment pressures. It needs USD 1.9 billion, including USD 670 million bonds due nextJune, to service its debt.

The report also noted that in the past, the group had undertaken deals bypassing shareholder approval to access cash from group companies and specifically cited the USD 125 million loan by one of Cairn India's subsidiaries to a Vedanta subsidiary in 2015.

Sebi's delisting of equity shares regulations of 2009 provide sufficient protection to minority shareholders as it says the votes cast by the public shareholders in favour of the delisting must be at least two times the number of votes against it. If the promoters can control 90 per cent shares at close of the delisting process, then the process is deemed concluded.

The shareholders advisory also called on institutional investors to play their rightful role in protecting their as well as minority shareholders' interests. Mutual funds together owned 10.9 per cent of voting rights as of March 2020.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Taiwan's TSMC to build Arizona chip plant as U.S.-China tech rivalry escalates FILE PHOTO: A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu

By Stephen Nellis and David Shepardson

(Reuters) - Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co Ltd <2330.TW>, the biggest contract chipmaker, said it plans to build a $12 billion factory in Arizona in an apparent win for the Trump administration's efforts to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China.

The plan, which will create over 1,600 jobs, comes as U.S. President Donald Trump steps up criticism of Chinese trade practices and Beijing's handling of the novel coronavirus ahead of the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.

Trump has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas and now a steep economic slump brought on by the coronavirus is driving a government-wide push to end U.S. production and supply chain dependency on China.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross touted the deal as "another indication that President Trumps policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing."

TSMC is a major supplier to U.S. tech giants such as Apple Inc <AAPL.O> and Qualcomm Inc <QCOM.O>, as well as Chinese firms like Huawei Technologies [HWT.UL], which Washington has put on a trade blacklist.

"This project is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive U.S. semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading U.S. companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States," TSMC said.

While huge in terms of foreign investment in the United States, the plan is small by TSMC's standards. For 2020, TSMC's capex plan is $15-$16 billion.

The Taiwanese chipmaker said the plan was to build the plant over nine years.

"The budget... suggests the eventual scale won't be big," Bernstein analysts said in a note, adding revenue contribution from the plant will stay at around 3%-4%.

"The scale and technology is similar to what TSMC did in China, suggesting a balance between the US & China."

A U.S. Commerce Department official said TSMC's decision to locate the plant in the United States generated "good will" at the department, the drafter of a law that would, if implemented, severely restrict TSMC chip sales to Huawei.

Story continues

Credit Suisse analysts said proposed restrictions could threaten TSMCs 14% of sales from Huawei, escalate U.S.-China tensions and delay the rollout of the next-generation 5G mobile network.

"While it is hard to be certain, we believe that TSMC announcing a U.S. Fab could remove the threat of further Huawei restrictions in the very near-term at least," JP Morgan analysts said in a note.

Shares of TSMC, the world's most valuable semiconductor company with a market capitalisation of about $255 billion, exceeding Intel Corp's <INTC.O>, closed up 1.7% on Friday, outperforming a 0.3% gain in the main Taiwan stock market <.TWII>.

ADVANCED CHIPS

The plant, the biggest foreign investment by TSMC, will produce the most sophisticated 5 nanometer chips, which can be used in high-end defense and communications devices.

TSMC manufactures the bulk of its chips in Taiwan and has older chip facilities in China and Washington state.

Its chips power Apple's iPhones and the iPhone maker works closely with TSMC to become the first to take advantage of new advances in its chip-making processes.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said chips from the new TSMC plant will power everything from artificial intelligence to 5G base stations to F-35 fighter jets.

Semiconductors play a key role in both consumer electronics and defense equipment. The vast majority of the most advanced chips are made in Asia, which has caused concern among U.S. officials as a strategic rivalry with China deepens over the origins of the deadly coronavirus.

While Intel has major manufacturing operations in the United States, it supplies only its own chips rather than making them for outside customers.

The Trump administration has been in talks with both Intel and TSMC to build a plant in the United States, and Intel said last week it was in discussions with the Department of Defense about improving domestic sources for microelectronics and related technology.

The TSMC announcement is not expected to derail the Pentagons efforts to bolster the supply chain for microprocessors, despite the Commerce Department's working on the TSMC deal independently, a person familiar with the matter said.

Apple and Intel declined to comment.

TSMC said that construction of the Arizona facility would begin in 2021 with production targeted to begin in 2024, and that it would be able to process up to 20,000 silicon wafers per month. Each wafer can contain thousands of individual chips. The investment will be made from 2021 to 2029.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the latest details of TSMC's plans.

(Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco, and David Shepardson, Alexandra Alper and Mike Stone in Washington, Karen Freifeld in New York; Yimou Lee in Taipei; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Leslie Adler, Muralikumar Anantharaman and Stephen Coates)
New Delhi, May 15 (UNI) In order to give a boost to domestic defence and aerospace manufacturing, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has approved the launch of Defence Testing Infrastructure Scheme (DTIS) with an outlay of Rs 400 crore for creating state of the art testing infrastructure for this sector.

The scheme would run for the duration of five years and envisages to set up six to eight new test facilities in partnership with private industry, a defence official said.

This will facilitate indigenous defence production, consequently reduce imports of military equipment and help make the country self-reliant.

The projects under the scheme will be provided with up to 75 per cent government funding in the form of Grant-in-Aid, the Ministry of Defence said in a statement.

The remaining 25 per cent of the project cost will have to be borne by the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) whose constituents will be Indian private entities and State Governments.

The SPVs under the scheme will be registered under Companies Act 2013 and shall also operate and maintain all assets under the Scheme, in a self-sustainable manner by collecting user charges.

The equipment/systems tested will be certified as per appropriate accreditation.

While majority of test facilities are expected to come up in the two Defence Industrial Corridors (DICs), the Scheme is not limited to setting up Test Facilities in the DICs only.

UNI ASH SHK1858
kid mask coronavirus

Getty

Young people seem to be less vulnerable than older populations to the coronavirus, and tend to experience mild symptoms when they do get it.

But reports of a poorly-understood and deadly inflammatory disease among kids has parents rightfully worried.

Symptoms of COVID-19 in kids are similar to those in adults, and pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome may be marked by more gastrointestinal issues.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

When the novel coronavirus invaded the US, public-health messaging focused on the most vulnerable: older Americans and those with underlying conditions, like heart and lung disease.

Young people, especially children, seemed to be largely protected, and research has held that message up.

In an April study of more than 2,500 US children and adolescents with COVID-19, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that under-18-year olds made up only 1.7% of all reported coronavirus cases, even though they make up 22% of the population.

Most infected kids had mild or asymptomatic cases, similar to research from the Chinese CDC. Only 14%, at most, kids aged 1 to 17 with the disease were admitted to the hospital.

But new reports of children with COVID-19 coming down with, and sometimes dying from, a mysterious respiratory illness dubbed "pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome" has parents understandably on edge.

The syndrome had affected at least 100 children and killed at least three in New York alone by May 12. In Europe, where it was reported earlier, there were at least 100 cases in seven countries by April 30.

Here's how to spot symptoms of both conditions in your child:

Symptoms of COVID-19 in kids is similar to those in adults

Like adults, children who come down with COVID-19 may experience the following symptoms:

Cough

Shortness of breath or difficulty breathing

Fever

Chills

Muscle pain

Sore throat

New loss of taste or smell

Story continues

Also like adults, this list isn't exhaustive and continues to evolve as more people are tested and diagnosed. For instance, some people, including children, who test positive have other symptoms like a runny nose, vomiting, or diarrhea.

hospital

Getty Images

Symptoms of the rare inflammatory syndrome being seen in kids include gastrointestinal issues

Pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome seems to appear after kids have come down with COVID-19.

While at first doctors weren't sure if or how the condition was connected to the coronavirus, a study published May 13 in the Lancet found there was a "strong association" between the two.

The medical community's best theory is that the syndrome is "due to the immune response of the patient," Dr. Jeffrey Burns, a critical care specialist at Boston Children's Hospital, told CNN.

The syndrome has been likened to rare childhood conditions such as Kawasaki Disease or toxic shock syndrome. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics, symptoms include:

A persistent fever

Abdominal pain, diarrhea, or vomiting

Rash or changes in skin color

Difficulty breathing

Fatigue or confusion

If you notice symptoms of either condition in your child, call your pediatrician.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Princess Eugenie has thanked a breakfast brand for donating 'over a million bags' of oats to a care package scheme for vulnerable people across the country.

Taking to Instagram, Eugenie, 30, shared a picture of NHS healthcare workers clutching huge bags of porridge oats that had been donated by Cheshire based brand MornFlake.

The real posted: 'Thankyou to @MornFlake who have been donating 100s of bags of their oats to hospital workers but also over a million now to the @Defrauk care package scheme - a national initiative which sends care parcels out to vulnerable people across the country.'

Princess Eugenie has played an active role on social media during the pandemic, highlighting work done to support NHS staff working on the frontline.

Princess Eugenie, 30, has thanked a breakfast brand for donating 'over a million' bags of oats to a care package scheme

The 30-year-old shared a snap of health workers carrying boxes full of oats as she thanked the Chesire-based company

It comes days after she she thanked a takeaway chain for donating to frontline staff at The York hospital as it emerged that Sarah Ferguson has briefed eateries to make any donations 'convenient'.

Earlier this week, Eugenie shared a picture of the colourful goodie bags containing pasta that had been donated to NHS workers at the York Hospital.

The royal wrote: 'Thank you to Eataliano UK who donated and delivered their pasta to the team on the fronttline at York Hospital'.

Meanwhile, her mother Sarah Ferguson, 60, shared a picture of hospital staff holding trays of brownies, writing: 'Thank you so much for the cake and brownie donations to Northwick Park Hospital'.

It comes days after Princess Eugenie thanked a takeaway chain for donating to frontline staff at The York hospital

The baker behind the brownies, Nisha Khurana, later took to Instagram to reveal the brief she had been given, focusing on 'comfort' when she baked for hospital staff.

She wrote: 'Absolutely delighted to have been given the opportunity to contribute towards the generous donations to the NHS by Sarah, Duchess of York.

'From the beginning comfort and convenience were the main focus for what I was going to produce. With that in mind, and a cup of tea in hand, I settled on individually baked slices of brownies, coffee and walnut cake, banana cake and lemon bread.'

She added: 'Made even sweeter by the donation going to the renal unit at the Northwick Park Hospital who have been instrumental in keeping many people alive and well, including my mum'.

Sarah Ferguson, 60, shared a picture of hospital staff holding trays of brownies, writing: 'Thank you so much for the cake and brownie donations to Northwick Park Hospital'

The baker behind the brownies, Nisha Khurana, later took to Instagram to reveal the brief she had been given, focusing on 'comfort' when she baked for hospital staff

In an effort to keep spirits high, Sarah has also introduced a daily story time slot, during which she reads a bedtime story on YouTube.

It is thought that Eugenie and her husband Jack Brooksbank are isolating with Sarah Ferguson at the Royal Lodge in Windsor.
Spains Official State Gazette (BOE) on Friday published an order extending restrictions on non-essential travel for people coming into Spanish territory until June 15.

The move acknowledges a recommendation by the European Commission to prolong the temporary restriction on non-essential travel to the EU until 15 June. The restrictions on travel into the EU space went into effect on March 17, although Brussels asked member states to allow free internal movement for European citizens.

Exceptional travel conditions are part of the fight against the spread of the coronavirus, which has claimed over 27,000 lives in Spain, according to the official count.

The Spanish government recently announced a 14-day self-quarantine for international travelers, effective today and until the end of the state of alarm.

Besides the quarantine, non-essential travel will be heavily restricted

Besides the quarantine, non-essential travel to Spain will be heavily restricted. As a rule, Spanish authorities will only let in Spanish citizens, permanent residents of Spain, and regular residents of the Schengen area (26 countries that include the EU members, Norway, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Andorra) who are in transit to their place of residence.

Exceptions are also made for cross-border workers, healthcare professionals and caregivers on their way to work, diplomats and individuals who can prove an essential reason to travel, including for humanitarian reasons.

The order stipulates that authorities may also turn away EU citizens and their relatives for public health reasons if they are not registered as residents of Spain, or headed directly to their place of residence in another member state, Schengen-associated state or Andorra.

An exception is also made for the spouse of a Spanish citizen, or partner in a similar relationship that is registered in a public registry, and for descendants and parents living with the citizen, as long as they are traveling with this citizen or on their way to reunite with him or her.

The order goes into effect on Saturday, May 16 and will remain in place until midnight on June 15. This pushes the travel restrictions beyond May 24, the date when the current state of alarm is due to end in Spain, although Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez, of the Socialist Party (PSOE), will ask Congress for permission to extend it to June 29.

After two months under one of Europes strictest lockdowns, Spaniards have gradually recovered some mobility through a deescalation plan that is currently underway.

English version by Susana Urra.
Vietnams industrial real estate will benefit as foreign investors move production out of China after the Covid-19 pandemic, industry insiders say.

A recent report by VNDIRECT, a leading brokerage in Vietnam, says that the trend of moving production out of China is set to become increasingly evident following the pandemic, and Vietnam, with its proximity and low land and labor costs, will be a more attractive destination than other Southeast Asian countries.

The average industrial land price of $103.5 per square meter per term in Vietnam compares favorably to Malaysia ($224.5) and Thailand ($182.5).

Vietnams business income tax of 20 percent is among the lowest in Southeast Asia, compared to Malaysias 24 percent, Myanmars 25 percent and the Philippiness 30 percent, it said, adding that Vietnam also offers more tax incentives to companies operating in industrial parks.

The countrys many trade agreements, especially the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement which is set to come into effect this year, will be another positive factor in attracting foreign investors, it said.

Industry insiders also say that Vietnam, with 258 industrial parks operating by the end of last year, has great potential to welcome more foreign investment diverted from China, as Apple, Google and Microsoft have all reportedly been making plans to begin production in Vietnam this year.

Su Ngoc Khuong, senior director of real estate service firm Savills Vietnam, said Vietnams political stability and fast economic growth are positive factors for drawing foreign investment.

A recent report by real estate service firm Jones Lang LaSalle (JLL) shows that Vietnams industrial land prices rose by up to 12 percent year-on-year in the first quarter despite pandemic impacts.

Ready-built factories costing $3.5-5 per square meter per month are favored by businesses as indicated by their high occupancy rates, it said.

"Industrial park developers remain confident that demand for land will continue to grow and therefore land prices are expected to increase in line with the long-term potential of Vietnams industrial segment," said Stephen Wyatt, country head of JLL Vietnam.

Most industrial land developers have posted strong numbers in the first quarter despite the pandemic.

Sonadezi Chau Duc, which manages a real estate park in Ba Ria-Vung Tau, saw revenues surge 2.5 times year-on-year to VND121 billion ($5.1 million); while Long Hau Corp, with an industrial park in the southern Long An Province, saw it surge 20 percent to VND206 billion ($8.8 million); and Kinh Bac City Development Holding Corp, which manages eight industrial parks nationwide, saw an increase of 11 percent to VND556 billion ($23.7 million).

VNDIRECT analysts said that Vietnam was ready to become an alternative manufacturing hub to China, adding that the southern province of Ba Ria-Vung Tau and the northern provinces of Bac Giang and Hai Duong could become new industrial hotspots thanks to improved infrastructure.
The city of Colorado Springs is encouraging residents, businesses and community groups to turn on their lights for one hour Wednesday night to
Former Real Housewives Of Orange County star Kara Keough Bosworth continues to mourn the death of her baby boy at six days old.

And on Thursday, the 31-year-old posted a long statement to her Instagram in which she promised she would keep her son's memory alive to his older sister Decker, four,

Kara wrote: 'I promise that this girl will hear about her baby brother. She will love him. She will miss him. When people ask how many kids I have, she will hear an answer that includes McCoy. Shell hear me wishing him a goodnight and saying I love you when I tuck her in.'

Never forget: Kara Keough Bosworth promised in an Instagram post Thursday she would keep her son's memory alive to his sister Decker, four, after the newborn died six days after birth

She went on: 'He was here. He matters. And saying his name will always make my heart leap for joy. It might hurt for awhile, too, maybe forever. But itll also bring happiness and pride.'

Kara concluded: 'I will always be Decker & McCoys mama. For as long as Im living, my babies theyll be.'

Baby McCoy passed away on April 12 after a home birth in which he got stuck in the birth canal during delivery.

Talking to Good Morning America, Kara said she was 'literally begging God to save my baby' as she fought 'a Herculean effort' for nine minutes to push out her son with the help of a licensed midwife.

Lost: 'He was here. He matters,' the 31-year-old former real Housewives of Orange Country star said of baby boy McCoy. The infant passed away on April 12 after a complicated home birth

Trauma: Talking to Good Morning America , Kara said she was 'literally begging God to save my baby' as she fought to push out her son with the help of a licensed midwife

Siblings: Kara made sure that her daughter Deckergot to meet her baby brother even as he lay in hospital with severe brain damage with no hope of recovery

Love: Kara and husband Kyle Bosworth said goodbye to their son six days after his birth and decided to donate his organs to help others

She had committed to an unmedicated delivery and entered a birthing pool during labor with her husband Kyle by her side.

When it came time to push, the baby got stuck after his head was delivered, a condition known as shoulder dystocia, and it caused his umbilical cord to be compressed, cutting off his oxygen supply and causing devastating brain damage.

The midwife called 911 when it became apparent the infant was not breathing and he was rushed to hospital.

Although medics managed to get his heart beating again, the newborn suffered traumatic brain damage and couldn't be saved.

Kara is the daughter of Jeana Keough who was a housewife on RHOC from season one to five and continued to make friend or guest appearances on the Bravo show up until season 12.
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Armed men, a man dressed as Santa Claus, a pop-up barber giving haircuts, and protesters holdings signs which compared President Trump to Rambo and Dr. Anthony Fauci to a Nazi were among hundreds who descended on Pennsylvania's state capitol to demand Governor Tom Wolf lift the statewide lockdown.

Demonstrators chanted Open us up and Let us work as they gathered on the steps of the Capitol building in Harrisburg while others in cars circled the area and honked their horns in agreement.

Wolf, a Democrat, has faced stiff opposition from Republican-run counties in his state who are demanding that he allow businesses to reopen.

Protesters urging the state government to end the coronavirus COVID-19 shutdown and reopen businesses gather outside the Pennsylvania state capitol in Harrisburg on Friday

One of the protesters offered others a chance to get a haircut. Nonessential businesses like salons, beauty parlors, and barber shops across the state have been shuttered by the state due to the pandemic

Another protester got a lot of attention after showing up in a Santa Claus costume. Others asked to take a selfie with Santa

Others held signs saying that COVID-19 is 'no worse than the flu' and that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious diseases expert, should be fired

A number of counties have even defied the governors lockdown by allowing nonessential activity to resume.

Pennsylvania State Rep. Russ Diamond, a Republican who represents Lebanon County, was greeted with cheers after reminding the protesters that county leaders defied Wolf by reopening the economy.

Diamond and others also demanded that the states secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine, resign.

Some of the protesters were heard chanting Lock her up! and Impeach Wolf! according to the York Daily Record.

Another demonstrator wearing the colors of the American flag holds up a sign which reads 'Open Pennsylvania now'

A Trump supporter drove a Trump-themed pick-up truck near the protesters in Harrisburg on Friday

Governor Tom Wolf came under fire from the protesters after imposing a weekslong lockdown during the pandemic

A trucker drove by the protest after having written 'Jesus is my vaccine' on his truck in Harrisburg on Friday

Another sign waved by protesters at the demonstration in Harrisburg on Friday reads 'Stop the COVID con job'

One demonstrator holds an American flag in one hand and a sign in the other which reads 'Selfish and proud'

Another demonstrator holds a sign which reads 'Grandparents for herd immunity' in Harrisburg on Friday

Wolf has been accused of overstepping his authority by imposing what some consider to be one of the strictest lockdowns in the country.

The mild-mannered Wolf has had to decide how far to go in enforcing the orders, mindful of criticism that hes nothing short of a tyrant.

And visiting the state Thursday was President Donald Trump, stoking the conflict with tweets such as one that said Pennsylvanians 'want their freedom now.'

He told reporters before leaving Washington that Pennsylvania ought to start thinking about opening it up. You have a lot of people who want their freedom, and theyll get their freedom very soon.

Like in swing states Michigan and Wisconsin, Republicans are trying to ensure that Democratic governors, rather than Trump, take the blame.

Tom Wolf is going to be as much on the ballot as much as the president, the Legislature and Congress for his handling of this, but hes going to be judged not just by Republicans but by Democrats and independents, said Lawrence Tabas, chairman of Pennsylvanias Republican Party.

For Democrats who have stood by Wolf, thats just fine right now.

Polls show that the public has generally embraced how Wolf  who easily won reelection in 2018  has managed the crisis.

Demonstrators blasted Wolf and the state's secretary of health, Dr. Rachel Levine (pictured with Wolf in the sign held up by the protesters in the middle)

One of the demonstrators drove by with a sign that superimposed Trump's face on the body of Rambo

Another protester holds up a sign denouncing Levine. 'Fake stats,' reads the sign, which also calls Levine a 'COVID-19 liar'

A group of men apparently belonging to a right-wing militia is seen above on the steps of the Capitol in Harrisburg

Several of the protesters waved American flags while protesting in Harrisburg on Friday

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that more than two in three people surveyed from April 27 to May 4 approve of how Wolf has handled the outbreak.

Trumps approval nationally in the same poll was at 43 per cent.

The political fight as much over peoples well-being and public health  federal health officials are aligned with Wolfs cautious approach  as it is over who will be blamed for the states economic devastation if it is not on the mend by Election Day.

About 2 million Pennsylvania residents have lost their jobs since mid-March.

Food and milk giveaways draw long lines.

Some people have gone two months without money because of the states problem-plagued online unemployment benefits portal.

The protests appear to be working, as the governor moved on Friday to at least partially lift the lockdown in several counties.

Another 2.6 million people across western Pennsylvania began to emerge from pandemic restrictions on Friday as Wolf prepared to announce that 12 more counties soon would join them in a partial easing.

Wolf planned to announce that Adams, Beaver, Carbon, Columbia, Cumberland, Juniata, Mifflin, Perry, Susquehanna, Wyoming, Wayne and York will be the next batch of counties moving to the yellow phase of his reopening plan, effective May 22, The Associated Press has learned.

They are primarily in the south-central and northeast regions of the state.

Theyll join residents of 13 lightly impacted counties - including the cities of Pittsburgh, Johnstown and Altoona - where Wolf lifted his stay-at-home orders on Friday and gave permission for retailers and other types of businesses to reopen.

Twenty-four counties across a vast swath of primarily rural northern Pennsylvania were the first to see a partial reopening last week.

One of the protesters who drove by in their cars displayed a cardboard cut-out of President Trump's head attached to the passenger seat

Other demonstrators held up signs denouncing 'socialism' and the coronavirus lockdown

One protester wore a Trump-themed face covering while holding a pitchfork with a sign attached that read 'No coward'

One protester held a sign which read 'Fear the new normal, not the virus' in Harrisburg on Friday

Other protesters in Harrisburg made signs comparing both the governor, Wolf, and Fauci to Nazis

Another protester dressed in black and wearing a mask holds a sign which reads 'The end is near' in Harrisburg on Friday

Protesters hold signs which read 'My rights don't end where your fear starts!' and 'Fear is a liar' in Harrisburg on Friday

Another protester holds a sign which reads 'The new symbol of tyranny.' It includes a photo of a face mask, which the protester compares to a muzzle

Another protester in Harrisburg attended the demonstration wearing a 'Trump 2020' face mask on Friday

Young girls were also in attendance during the anti-lockdown demonstration in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, on Friday

All told, by the end of next week, more than 40 per cent of Pennsylvanias population of 12.8 million will have seen an easing of pandemic restrictions that were intended to prevent hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with very ill COVID-19 patients.

The states efforts to contain a virus outbreak that has sickened over 60,000 and killed more than 4,300 statewide have cratered the Pennsylvania economy, and Wolf is under pressure from Republican and some Democratic county officeholders to reopen more quickly.

Some GOP-controlled counties have vowed to lift restrictions on their own  without Wolfs blessing  bringing threats of retaliation from the Democratic governor.

In the counties where Wolf has lifted restrictions, people are now permitted to gather in groups of up to 25, although larger crowds remain prohibited.

A wide range of retailers, offices and industrial sites can resume operating while observing state and federal health guidelines intended to prevent viral transmission.

However, gyms, barber shops, nail salons, casinos, theaters and other such venues are required to remain closed and other restrictions will remain in place, including a ban on youth sports.

And bars and restaurants may still offer only delivery or takeout service.

Pennsylvania, which borders hard-hit New York and New Jersey, has about the 10th highest rate of coronavirus infection nationally, according to federal statistics.

Wolf on Friday moved to partially lift restrictions in several counties in Pennsylvania, though most areas won't be easing the lockdown until June 4

Trump supporters and protesters hold American flags as they look on during the demonstrations in Harrisburg on Friday

A protester outlines the words 'neither liberty or safety' at a rally against the coronavirus in Harrisburg on Friday

Another protester waves a flag which makes Trump appear as Rambo with the words 'No more bulls***'

A protester dressed as Santa Claus waves from a top-down convertible as it drove near the State Capitol in Harrisburg on Friday

A protester wearing a red 'Make America Great Again' hat and covering his face with a red bandanna is seen above in Harrisburg on Friday

A man holds a taxidermy wolf head during protests denouncing Governor Wolf in Harrisburg on Friday

One woman holds up a sign which reads 'We are not the cowards' during a demonstration in Harrisburg on Friday

A man with an assault rifle gestures on the steps of the Pennsylvania Capitol Building in Harrisburg on Friday

'Beware of the wolf in sheep's clothing,' reads one sign. Another sign reads: 'Stop crying Wolf!'

Critics of Wolfs shutdown orders, primarily Republicans, contend that they are inflicting undue suffering and are no longer warranted, saying he has met his original objective of ensuring that hospitals did not become overwhelmed.

Local officials have cited the opinions of doctors at their area health systems who say the states economy can safely reopen and co-exist with the virus.

Sign-waving protesters, many of them without masks, staged another rally at the state Capitol on Friday to protest the shutdown.

Small business owners in particular have chafed against Wolfs closure of 'non-life-sustaining' businesses, saying it threatens to drive them out of business.

A handful of gyms, barbers, hair salons and restaurants have opened in defiance of the governor, saying they can operate without putting their employees or customers health at risk.

Wolf has said they are jeopardizing their business licenses and other governmental approvals to operate.

About 2 million Pennsylvania residents have lost their jobs since mid-March.

Food and milk giveaways draw long lines.

Some people have gone two months without money because of the states problem-plagued online unemployment benefits portal.
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 The flags of 194 nations line the headquarters of the World Health Organisation in Geneva. They bear the colours of its "194 bosses" or member states. "And they all think we're too friendly with the others," sighs spokeswoman Dr Margaret Harris. But it's two countries, in particular, now occupying the attention of the WHO as it grapples with its first major pandemic since it formed at the end of World War II. China and the United States, both facing criticism for their handling of the COVID-19 crisis at home, are pointing the finger at one another. And, after praising China for its transparency, despite the country's initial attempts to keep the outbreak quiet, the WHO has come under fire itself. US President Donald Trump offered an early performance review of the United Nations agency in April when he tweeted, "The W.H.O. really blew it". Days later, he announced he was pulling the agency's US funding. When the world first got a taste of what a new coronavirus could do, in the panic of the SARS outbreak 20 years ago, the WHO was applauded for how it swung into action, marshalling nations to stamp out the virus within months. This time the virus on the loose is even more dangerous, spreading faster and further than SARS, often undetected, yet deadlier than the flu, with no known treatments or vaccines. Since SARS, the world is still more connected but a new mood of nationalism is testing diplomacy. Many experts warn the WHO is now facing the world's worst outbreak in a century in a weakened state  hamstrung by decades of funding cuts, bureaucracy and political pressure. So what powers does the WHO actually have and why is it struggling to get countries to follow its advice?

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WHO head Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, who has called on countries to pull together and act fast to stop the spread of the new coronavirus. Credit:Getty Images, digitally altered What is the WHO? On April 7 1948, 72 years ago to the day that Trump fired off that angry tweet, the WHO was born. As the first specialised arm of the newly formed UN, it had a sweeping mandate to lift people everywhere to the "highest standards" of health  and big plans to wipe out infectious diseases such as malaria. But even then countries didn't want it getting involved in their sovereign affairs. The organisation was given responsibility but no enforcement power, says global health expert at the University of Sydney Adam Kamradt-Scott. When its malaria eradication program failed, so too did its plans to take a "hands on" approach, he says. During the Cold War, it instead proved its value as a health diplomat  encouraging its own arms race between the US and the Soviets in smallpox vaccinations under a program that eventually saw the disease wiped off the face of the Earth by 1981. Today, with more than 150 offices around the world but a budget roughly the size of some hospitals, the WHO is still largely a coordinating body, organising vaccination programs, convening research groups, tracking drug resistance and helping countries improve their healthcare. As Liberal MP Dave Sharma writes: "If we didn't have [the WHO], we'd have to invent it." When an outbreak hits, it's the agency tasked with leading the world's response, juggling science, politics and logistics. It can declare a public health emergency of international concern (or a PHEIC, which is rather unfortunately pronounced "fake"), distribute resources, make recommendations to countries and demand scientific justification if they're ignored or exceeded. The agency can also call on its members to report outbreaks within their borders if it hears word of them. But if they refuse, Harris admits the WHO's only real option is to "name and shame"  and even that can cause headaches. "There's no [precedent] of fining or throwing anyone out," she says. "We're a science organisation, we don't have any police powers." Countries join the WHO by ratifying the UN treaty that underpins it. Funding comes from their membership dues and now mostly via voluntary contributions from nations and private donors tied to specific projects, with very little in the tank for emergencies.

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Like all UN bodies, the WHO has been accused of bending to the will of the superpowers China and America. But Kamradt-Scott says almost one-third of its member states are from the African bloc and these nations hold a lot of sway too. It was from African politics that the current director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus emerged, although, when his election secured backing from Beijing, he was also widely considered "China's pick". Loading Sometimes the WHO has been condemned for doing too little, such as when it waited so long to declare an emergency during the 2014 Ebola outbreak in Africa that the UN had to step in. At other times, it's been accused of crying wolf, hurting economies by pushing for tough containment measures against disasters that never arrived. When it became clear that the world's last pandemic, swine flu in 2009, was not as deadly as first thought, the WHO was accused of amplifying the crisis to benefit the pharmaceutical companies some of its experts worked with. The agency was cleared of any undue influence or wrongdoing by three separate reviews but Kamradt-Scott notes it never fully embraced the call for transparency that followed. Harris admits the WHO pulled too far back after swine flu ("and I do wonder if that flu is why we struggle to convince countries to prepare for pandemics [we know] are coming"). But while the "chronically underfunded" agency still relies largely on goodwill and experts volunteering their time, she says it has now ramped up its role on the ground to fill gaps that emerged during the Ebola crisis. "We're now right out there, under gunfire, where it's too dangerous for [charities and] other services to go," she says. Already, a WHO staffer has been lost in the COVID-19 fight  a driver ferrying samples of the virus out of Myanmar was shot dead in April. A WHO worker in the Congo removes her protective outfit after decontaminating the house of a pastor with Ebola in June 2019. Credit:Getty Images. Digitally altered.

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How did the WHO respond to COVID-19? Back at WHO HQ in Geneva, a small team of disease hunters was listening "to the chatter" online when the first signs of the outbreak appeared on social media and medical forums. By then, Harris says, it was already the last day of 2019, about a month or two after scientists suspect the virus first jumped from wild animals into humans. "We usually see something earlier than that," she says. "But we saw some things online [on social media] first and then Wuhan's health services posted about these cases of atypical pneumonia they were getting so we went to China to find out more." While countries are obligated to report to the WHO, the agency must wait for a formal invitation before sending in a team. "We can't just turn up on the doorstep and say, We're the WHO, open up, show us all your labs'," Harris laughs. "No country is comfortable about the idea we've come to assess them. During [South] Korea's MERS outbreak [in 2015], it took them two weeks to let us in." Loading But Harris denied reports China had knocked back the WHO's initial requests to send in investigators, saying the agency's China office was already working on the ground in early January and Adhanom flew over later that month for a sit-down with China's President, Xi Jinping. "It did take us a while ... about 10 days to set up who was going to be on the team [because] we try to get not just a range of experts but a range of different countries represented," Harris says.

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WHO investigators did not test samples from the suspected source of the outbreak  a wet market in Wuhan known to sell wildlife  she says. Their focus was on the clinical data and the country's response as the outbreak took hold. During this pandemic, as well as bringing together the best medical minds, the WHO is moving critical supplies around the world  including via an emergency UN air bridge due to travel bans  and helping coordinate drug and vaccine trails. If a vaccine proves successful, Harris says the agency will also help arrange an equitable and sensible rollout among nations. In Berlin, graffiti shows masked presidents Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, who are now locked in a war of words over the outbreak. Credit:Getty Images, digitally altered Was the WHO too slow to act? The agency's committee first met to assess the threat from the coronavirus in late January but, split down the middle, did not declare an emergency or PHEIC until a second meeting days later on January 30. Kamradt-Scott says the WHO has grown increasingly literal in its interpretation of an outbreak's risks  waiting for clear international spread rather than just the "potential" for it referred to in the guidelines. "Of course, by then the genie's out of the bottle." Loading Still, while the WHO did sound its top alert that day, the world was waiting for it to use another word: pandemic. Australia "declared" a pandemic on February 27. By the time the WHO used the term on March 11, the crisis had well exceeded its own definition, with cases in more than 100 countries. Making such a declaration no longer triggers any formal response, as it did under the old pandemic alert system ("That was quietly dismantled after swine flu," Harris says). But it would help guide country responses on the ground.

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Memorial Day 2020 will soon be here, and with it comes a time to honor and remember the men and women who died while serving in the U.S. military.

Originally known as Decoration Day, it originated in the years following the Civil War and became an official federal holiday in 1971. It is observed the last Monday of May.

Maybe you are like many Americans who observe Memorial Day by visiting cemeteries or memorials, holding family gatherings, and participating in parades. Some refer to the day as the unofficial beginning of the summer season.

The day honors heroic humans who gave their lives to fight for the freedoms that we hold so dear. But did you know that members of the animal kingdom have also given their all to help in that fight for our freedoms?

According to Wikipedia, military animals are trained for use in warfare and other combat-related activities. Horses, elephants, camels, rats, pigs, and even pigeons have been deployed for various specialized military functions. The most familiar members of the animal kingdom to serve in the military are, of course, dogs.

Amazing Judy

Recently, I read a fascinating story on Facebook about a purebred English pointer named Judy. In that post, The Dog Bible tells us that she was born in Shanghai, China, in 1936 and died in 1950 in Tanzania, and for thirteen years she lived a truly amazing life. During World War II, she was the mascot of several Royal Navy ships in the Pacific and was captured by the Japanese in 1942 and taken to a prison camp.

There she met Aircraftsman Frank Williams who shared his small portion of rice with her. She became a wonderful morale booster for the POWs. She barked when poisonous snakes, crocodiles, or even tigers approached the prisoners.

Eventually the prisoners were shipped back to Singapore but not without Judy. Prisoners smuggled her out with them in a rice sack  and she never whimpered or betrayed her presence to the guards.

The next day, the ship was torpedoed. Williams pushed Judy out of a porthole in an attempt to save her life even though there was a 15-foot drop to the sea. As Williams was making his escape, he was recaptured and sent to a new POW camp.

He didnt know if Judy had survived, but soon he began hearing stories about a dog helping drowning men reach pieces of debris after the shipwreck. Then, when Williams arrived at the new camp, he said, I couldnt believe my eyes!

Reunited!

As I walked through the gate, a scraggly dog hit me square between the shoulders and knocked me over. Id never been so glad to see the old girl!

They spent a year together at that camp in Sumatra. Judy saved my life in so many ways, said Williams. But the greatest of all was giving me a reason to live. All I had to do was look into those weary, bloodshot eyes and ask myself, What would happen to her if I died? I had to keep going.

Once hostilities ceased, Judy was then smuggled aboard a troopship heading back to Liverpool. In England, she was awarded the Dickin Medal (the Victoria Cross for animals) in May, 1946.

Her citation reads: For magnificent courage and endurance in Japanese prison camps which helped to maintain morale among her fellow prisoners, and also for saving many lives through her intelligence and watchfulness.

At the same time, Frank was awarded the White Cross of St. Giles for his devotion to Judy. Frank and Judy spent a year together after the war visiting the relatives of English POWs who had not survived the camps. Judy was always a comforting presence to the families, he said. They raised money for charities and appeared at dog shows throughout the country.

When Judy died at the age of 13, Frank spent two months building a granite and marble memorial in her memory which included a plaque describing her life story.

Even though Judy spent most of her life with the British military, her efforts certainly benefitted the Allies, including Americans. As we take a few moments on May 25th to honor those who made the ultimate sacrifice, let us remember Judy and all she did for her guys.

Bette Anne Thaut is a member of the Beatrice Humane Society's Board of Directors.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 10:51:32|Editor: huaxia

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WASHINGTON, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Two NASA astronauts entered quarantine on Wednesday to prepare for a historic launch to space on a SpaceX spacecraft, according to a latest NASA release.

NASA astronauts Robert Behnken and Douglas Hurley will fly on SpaceX's Crew Dragon spacecraft, which is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket on May 27, from Launch Complex 39A in Florida.

It will be NASA's first SpaceX crewed flight to the International Space Station (ISS).

For crew getting ready to launch, "flight crew health stabilization" is a routine part of the final weeks before liftoff for all missions to the space station, according to NASA.

Spending the final two weeks before liftoff in quarantine helps ensure the astronauts arrives healthy, protecting themselves and their colleagues already on the ISS, said NASA.

Behnken and Hurley will be the first American astronauts to fly to the ISS aboard an American spacecraft launched from American soil since the retirement of the Space Shuttle Program in 2011.

They will meet up with the Expedition 63 crew already in residence aboard the orbiting laboratory. Enditem
A key feature of inclusive governance is the ability of citizens to make their voices heard, which fosters greater political participation and builds partnerships between governments and civil society organizations. Communicating issues of concern as citizens help to improve evidence-based policymaking that benefits all members of society and shows respect for diversity, human rights, and equality before the law. Too often however, the voices of the most vulnerable are not heard. This year, the International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia under the theme "Breaking the Silence" reminds us all that the voices of the LGBTI community are routinely excluded under an umbrella of indifference, stigma, and discrimination.

Across the Caribbean a new movement of more interconnected LGBTI youth uses social media to express their everyday realities, often reaching policymakers they would not otherwise have been able to. In Haiti, they claim their right to start a family. In Jamaica, they express their concerns on how inequality, violence, and discrimination deprive them of reaching their full potential, while in the Dominican Republic, they talk about their aspirations for an inclusive and decent labour market for trans people. The "Being LGBTI in the Caribbean" project, to raise the voices of LGBTI people, launched in June 2019 its campaign "Proudly Caribbean", which has reached more than 70,000 people on social media. The initiative strives to inspire optimism through the messages of 23 representatives of the LGBTI community who share their experiences in English, Spanish, and Creole.

Artistic spaces help to promote empathy, inclusion, and respect for human rights. In theatre monologues are used to externalize the inner world of a character, revealing their thoughts, ideas, and emotions without intermediaries. This served as a tool for 20 transgender people in the Dominican Republic who received specialized training and then shared their realities on stage at the Narciso Gonzalez Cultural Center.

Seeking to advance inclusive public policies, "Being LGBTI in the Caribbean" organizes a series of National Dialogues in which LGBTI activists engage technical and political staff of their governments, the private sector and religious leaders among many others, to discuss issues that affect them most, be it access to health, education, decent work or access to justice. Recommendations facilitate policy advocacy, which has already influenced progress evident in the recently approved National Gender Equality Plan 2020  2030 of the Dominican Republic that now takes into account the priorities and needs expressed by the LGBTI community.

The global crisis stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic affects the LGBTI community in many ways. In recent discussions, LGBTI people from around the world highlighted common problems that have been exacerbated during the pandemic, such as healthcare, HIV treatment, abuse of force on the streets by security forces, or the importance of legal recognition of gender identity, especially in instances where quarantine measures mandate mobility based on sex-recorded in identity documents. LGBTI persons, particularly young people, are at risk of violence when they are required to confine in households that are not safe for them, or often have difficulties to access mitigation measures implemented by governments due to the discrimination and exclusion suffered by many.

UNDP has been investing in efforts to ensure that, at every stage of the response to the crisis in the Caribbean, the voices of the LGBTI community are taken into account. Civil society organizations are supported as they conduct surveys on the impact of the pandemic. Rreliminary results show that there is strong demand for counseling, food, and sanitation, and support in reporting crimes during this time. Concerns also include that for many in the community physical distancing and self-isolation in safe spaces is a luxury for very few.



The reality of LGBTI people matters in all contexts, but even more so during a crisis that put the most vulnerable at greater risk. Today, more than ever, we must listen to LGBTI voices to prevent human rights abuses, to ensure that public health measures to stem the spread of the coronavirus protects the rights of all. Only then can we walk together to create a new normal that is more inclusive and equal, a normal that leaves no one behind.




Pressure is mounting on insurer FBD after one of Ireland's most famous pubs became the latest business to issue High Court proceedings against the company.

Sean's Bar, in Athlone, Co Westmeath, is taking action against FBD over its refusal to pay clients for business interruption claims during the Covid-19 crisis.

Dublin bar Lemon & Duke, which is co-owned by Irish rugby stars Sean O'Brien, Jamie Heaslip and Rob and Dave Kearney, also initiated legal proceedings against the insurer this week.

A senior publican hit out at the company because FBD provided a written statement earlier this year, seen by the Irish Independent, guaranteeing that his policy would cover coronavirus - yet it is now refusing to pay out.

Meanwhile, the owners of a family-run bar and restaurant have made an official complaint to the financial ombudsman after FBD refused to pay out on a business interruption claim - despite their policy explicitly covering infectious diseases.

Patrick and Aileen Hanley, who run the Strand Cahore, in Cahore Point, Co Wexford, got legal advice that their policy was "rock-solid" and should entitle them to compensation.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Mr Hanley said FBD informed him it would be "unreasonable" to expect the company to pay out on business interruption claims regarding Covid-19.

"The bizarre thing is they have exclusions in their policies, such as you can't claim in the event of a terrorist attack or a sonic boom, but there is no mention of a pandemic, which I would have thought was far more likely than a sonic boom.

"We paid our premium, it's in our policy that we're covered and yet we're told we're being unreasonable.

"They are saying we are closed due to social distancing and not Covid-19."

Running

Mr Hanley and his wife have been running the award-winning bar and restaurant since 2018.

The pair are now operating a grab-and-go service out of a hatch on the premises to try to keep the business alive.

"It may be impossible for us to come back.

"We are in a bad place as a result of the FBD situation," he added.

FBD did not respond to a request for comment.

Meanwhile, the Alliance for Insurance Reform has confirmed that Drury Porter Novelli, the firm handling its public relations, has notified the group it would no longer be doing so "due to a conflict of interests" because it was now handling PR duties for FBD.

Peter Boland, director of the Alliance Insurance Reform, said: "We note the development, but FBD have a serious case to answer with many of our members and they would be better resolving the situation quickly and fairly.

"No amount of PR and advertising will change that.

"Drury are leaving us on good terms, it was a conflict of interests," he added.

When asked to comment, Drury Porter Novelli said it could not discuss client matters.
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In the early morning of February 25, 2020, police in the Manzini region of Swaziland raided the home of Zweli Martin Dlamini, the editor of the privately owned news website Swaziland News, and arrested him, according to media reports and the journalist, who spoke to CPJ via messaging app.

Police told Dlamini that they were investigating him for suspected sedition and seized laptops, cellphones, hard drives, and other electronic devices before taking him to police headquarters in the capital, Mbabane, Dlamini said.

At the headquarters, officers questioned Dlamini about two articles he published in Swaziland News about King Mswati III, one published on February 3 accusing the king of lying about the political and economic situation in the country, and another from February 21, accusing the king of promoting a cultural ceremony where women could be sexually abused.

Dlamini said that officers handcuffed him to a bench and tried to suffocate him by putting a plastic bag over his head, saying that an officer told him to forget about your rights.

Police released Dlamini without charge after holding him for about six hours, but did not return his laptop or other devices, he said. He fled Swaziland to South Africa the next day, February 26, he said.

In a statement given to the South African Broadcasting Corporation on March 8, Swaziland police spokesperson Phindile Vilakati said authorities were investigating the circumstances around Dlaminis arrest and that, while she was not aware of his allegations of abuse in detention, Dlamini could report it to authorities.

On April 9, Dlaminis lawyers filed a complaint with the countrys Commission on Human Rights and Public Administration, which CPJ reviewed, accusing the police of torture and humiliation and alleging that they violated Dlaminis right of expression and right to a fair trial.

The complaint also included a medical report dated February 28 by a doctor whom Dlamini consulted in South Africa, which noted that Dlamini showed signs of assault and had nasal irritation, difficulty breathing, and chest pains from the attempted suffocation. Dlamini said he thought the officers may have put a chemical irritant in the bag they placed over his head.

On April 10, one day after that complaint was filed, Swaziland News published a report questioning the kings health amid the pandemic.

Also that day, police raided Dlaminis home again and confiscated material including contracts for employees of Swaziland News and took the journalists wife, Nompendulo Nokuthula Mkhonta, into custody, leaving their two young children alone in their home, according to Dlamini and an affidavit filed by his wife in a court application against further harassment by the police, which CPJ reviewed.

Officers took Mkhonta to the Mbabane police headquarters where they questioned her about Dlaminis whereabouts, slapped her across the face, and called her unpalatable words, according to the affidavit. She alleged that officers also handcuffed her and covered her head with a plastic bag to suffocate her.

The affidavit says that the authorities released Mkhonta without charge after about three hours. The document states that police did not present a search warrant during their raid.

On April 16, Dlamini was due to appear in court as part of an assault case stemming from a dispute with a family member, he said. He told CPJ he missed that date because he is still in South Africa, and that a warrant for his arrest on contempt charges had been filed. Police previously arrested him on February 7 and held him until February 10 for failing to appear in court in that case, according to Dlamini and news reports.

Dlamini said that he believed the case had been hijacked for political motives.

In a statement sent to CPJ on April 30, government spokesman Sabelo Dlamini, who is not related to the journalist, disputed that Dlamini was wanted for criticizing the king in his February articles.

No journalist in this country is wanted by the police for criticizing authorities, he said, alleging that authorities were instead seeking Dlaminis for the April 10 report about the kings health.

According to an April 10 warrant, which CPJ reviewed, police are seeking Dlaminis arrest for allegedly violating regulations passed in March, which penalize anyone found spreading false news about the virus with up to five years in jail or a fine of 20,000 emalangeni ($1,082).

However, that warrant states that Dlamini allegedly violated those regulations on April 1 by spreading unauthentic information. The only article related to COVID-19 posted by Swaziland News on that date was a summary of a press conference given by the countrys health minister, according to CPJs review of the outlets content.

Responding to a question about the allegations of torture in the journalists complaint, Sabelo Dlamini told CPJ via messaging app that Dlamini had a right to seek legal recourse to prove his allegations.

Dlamini previously fled Swaziland to South Africa in December 2017 after claiming he had received a death threat from a local businessman, and his then newspaper, Swaziland Shopping, was shut down by the government, the journalist told CPJ at the time and as was reported by regional news outlets.

He returned to Swaziland in November 2018, after both the businessman who threatened him and the prime minister had died, he said.

Sabelo Dlamini accused the journalist of lying about those 2017 events, saying he was able to return to Swaziland and was not arrested despite continuing to be highly critical of the king and the government, and using his platform to a pursue a political agenda of regime change.
M atching foundation to your skin tone has always been a tricky thing to do, let alone when youre buying a new product online and cant test it on your skin or see how the texture is.

A US beauty company, Il Makiage, thinks it has this process down thanks to its Power Match algorithm, which uses AI to help customers find the foundation or concealer that perfectly matches their skin. Its a hit on its home turf  the company is the fastest-growing beauty company in the US  and its finally launching in the UK today.

I love London and I was looking forward to having an excuse to be in London more often, jokes Il Makiages CEO Oran Holtzman, who launched the company along with his sister, Shiran Holtzman-Erel, in 2018. Besides that, the UK is a great fit for an online beauty brand: it has the highest e-commerce sales penetration in Europe, and the spend on beauty products in the UK is also one of the highest in the world.

Tech is slowly weaving its way into the beauty world, whether it's brands allowing you to try on products using augmented reality or incorporating more customisation into products. But still, consumers tend to make more than 90 per cent of their beauty-related purchases offline.

This is the gap that Il Makiage is trying to fill. The company has a large in-house team of developers, data scientists and engineers. Last year, it acquired the Y Combinator-backed start-up NeoWize to bring its machine learning prowess in-house to improve on its algorithms. The founders, Omer Nevo and Yoav Cafri, came from elite intelligence units in the Israel Defense Forces, before founding the start-up with the aim of using machine learning and deep learning algorithms to transform e-commerce.

It also helps that more than 10 million US users have tried out the Power Match AI  all this data goes back into the algorithm to improve its accuracy, so Il Makiage says its correct 94 per cent of the time.

Il Makiage

Tech is also infused in the companys e-commerce platform, Kenza, which draws on the skills of micro and macro-influencers to create content around the products and display them in a way that appeals to savvy millennial and Gen-Z digital shoppers. For the UK launch, Il Makiage worked with over 100 influencers, including the likes of Ellis Atlantis, Sasha Ellese, and Belinda. Though the company does operate pop-ups in the US, all closed at the moment, of course, the overwhelming majority of sales take place online.

Holtzman thinks the current global lockdown will force more beauty companies to embrace online sales in a way they have maybe shied away from before. This pandemic will cause long-lasting change in consumer behaviour and the shift that is happening to online may never return, he says. If online used to be a nice plan in the mix of channels, its going to be the most important channel and no company will be able to win without having strong tech and online capabilities.

Complexion products, such as foundation and concealer, are the brands best-selling categories though its long-lasting lipstick has earned its own fair share of praise too. Holtzman wont drop any hints about what else the brand is exploring: Were working on many new things that were very excited about, he says.

For now, the company is focusing on getting its UK launch right and isnt letting a tiny thing like a global pandemic hold it back. More than 70 per cent of UK women use concealer or foundation at least once a week. For us thats awesome, says Holtzman.

Its never easy to launch a new brand in a new country but we are coming with a strong proof of concept and I think we have the ability to do well.

Sign up for Il Makiages waitlist now
Saudi-led coalition continues attacks on Yemen despite epidemic

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 6:30 AM

The Saudi-led coalition continues to launch airstrikes on various areas across Yemen at a time when the war-ravaged county is grappling with the new coronavirus outbreak.

Yemeni sources said Saudi warplanes shelled towns and districts in Yemen's north, northwest, center, and west on Wednesday.

The towns of al-Khob and al-Sha'ab in northern al-Jawf Province, the Shada'a district of northwestern Sa'ada Province, and Qanieh region in the central province of al-Bayda were all hit.

The sources said several districts in Yemen's western, coastal province of Hudaydah also came under Saudi-led coalition attacks.

The coalition claimed on April 8 that it was halting military strikes in support of the United Nations (UN)'s peace efforts and to avoid the further spread of the new coronavirus in Yemen. However, shortly after the announcement, the coalition's warplanes struck positions at several Yemeni regions, and the aggression continued.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the coronavirus outbreak could rip through war-torn Yemen as its population has some of the lowest levels of immunity to disease.

The coronavirus, which causes a respiratory disease known as COVID-19, has spread across many Yemeni cities and governorates, with the total number of infections in the country standing at 65 and the number of fatalities at 10. Many more cases are suspected to be undetected.

Saudi Arabia and a number of its regional allies launched the war on Yemen in March 2015 in order to subdue a popular uprising against its former regime, which had been allied to Riyadh.

The US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a nonprofit conflict-research organization, estimates that the war has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the past five years.

More than half of Yemen's hospitals and clinics have been destroyed or closed during the war by the Saudi-led coalition, which is supported militarily by the UK, the US, and other Western countries.

At least 80 percent of the 28-million-strong population is also reliant on aid to survive in what the UN has called the world's worst humanitarian crisis.

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Karnataka reports 41,457 new Covid cases; 25,595 from Bengaluru alone

2 cops deputed for CM Bommai's security held for trying to 'extort' money from drug peddlers

Karnataka govt revises guidelines for testing, quarantine and isolation: Check here

Watch: Over 1,000 gather at village Temple fair at Ramanagara,flouting all norms

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: Flouting all social distancing norms, people gathered in large numbers for a village temple fair in Ramanagara district, Karnataka.

The incident took place at the Kolagondanahalli village of Ramagara, 50 kilometres away from Bengaluru.

More than thousand people gathered for a village temple fair at Kolagindahalli, Ramanagara district violating Lockdown norms .. No Masks No Social distancing ... @CMofKarnataka @DKShivakumar @police_rmn @CEORAMANAGARA pic.twitter.com/XRqDNzKKKM  yasir mushtaq (@path2shah) May 15, 2020

They had taken permission from the Panchayat Development Officer, N C Kalmatt.

Following a report by the Tehsildar, he has suspended by the Ramanagara Deputy Commissioner.

It may be recalled that a political battle had erupted after five persons had tested positive in the Ramanagara district prison. The former chief minister of Karnataka, H D Kumaraswamy had alleged a conspiracy in shifting those arrested in connection with the Padarayanapura violence in Bengaluru.

Ramanagara had not reported a single COVID-19 case. Those who were supposed to be in quarantine were moved to Ramanagara. This is not a good decision, Kumaraswamy had said.
Vidya Balan-starrer "Shakuntala Devi" biopic is the latest major Bollywood movie to go for a direct digital release on Amazon Prime Video after Amitabh Bachchan-Ayushmann Khurrana's "Gulabo Sitabo" amid the coronavirus pandemic, which has led to the closing of cinema halls.

Amazon Prime Video on Friday announced its direct-to-service line-up spanning five Indian languages, which include Hindi films Gulabo Sitabo and Shakuntala Devi, Tamil legal drama Ponmagal Vandhal, Tamil-Telugu bilingual movie Penguin, Sufiyum Sujatayum in Malayalam and Kannada features Law, French Biryani.

The movies will premiere exclusively on Prime Video over the next three months and will be available in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Over the last 2 years, Prime Video has become the destination of choice for our customers to watch new releases, across the languages, within weeks of their theatrical release.

"Now we're taking this one step further, with seven of India's most-anticipated films premiering exclusively on Prime Video, bringing the cinematic experience to their doorstep, Vijay Subramaniam, Director and Head, Content, Amazon Prime Video, India, said in a statement.

Gaurav Gandhi, Director and Country General Manager, Amazon Prime Video India, added that the digital premiere will give a large global release footprint to these films.

We feel truly excited about this initiative and are confident of delighting our Prime Members with this offering he said.

"Shakuntala Devi" producers and lead star Vidya also announced that the biopic on the mathematician will exclusively premiere on the digital platform this June.

Vidya said she is thrilled to be able to entertain the audiences in these unprecedented times.

Delighted to announce that you will get to see #ShakuntalaDevi very soon on @PrimeVideoIN with all your loved ones. Thrilled that we will be able to entertain you in these unprecedented times. #WorldPremiereOnPrime #ShakuntalaDeviOnPrime, the actor posted on Twitter alongside the poster of the movie.

Written and directed by Anu Menon, the film has been produced by Sony Pictures Networks Productions and Vikram Malhotra.

The film also stars Sanya Malhotra, Amit Sadh and Jisshu Sengupta in pivotal roles. The biopic was scheduled to be theatrically released on May 8 but was delayed due to COVID-19.

Ponmagal Vandhal, starring Jyotika in the lead, is set to premiere on the streaming platform on May 29, while Keerthy Suresh's Penguin and Ragini Chandran's Law will release on June 19 and June 26, respectively.

French Biryani will bow out on July 24 and release date for Sufiyum Sujatayum is yet to be announced.

Shoojit Sircar's Gulabo Sitabo on Thursday became the first major Bollywood film to opt for a straight to digital release amid the pandemic. The film will premiere on Amazon Prime Video on June 12.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
JOHN was dissatisfied. Mary was unhappy. Marriage at the Crossroads.

What is all this you might wonder?

Well, its the headline of an advertisement on the corner of page 12 from a Limerick Leader dated Saturday, July 2, 1938.

The advertisement goes on: But the marriage takes the path to happiness after Mary learns to do the wash a far easier, better way...with Rinso!

The ad for washing powder is just a tiny peek through a keyhole into what life was like in Ireland some 82 years ago.

The copy of the 1938 paper was brought to the attention of staff at the Leader last week by Kilmallock man Raymond Moloney.

It was brought to his notice by local woman Kathleen Mulcahy after it was found in Maurice Power Solicitors in Kilmallock where she works. The late Maurice gave her the copy.

The reason it was handed over by Kathleen to Raymond is because the likelihood is it originally belonged to his late father Jim Moloney who was a clerk at Powers and also reported for the Leader for around half a century.

I think my father kept it because the first article he put into the Leader was in it. He was only 21 years of age. He has the four corners of the piece marked with an X which he always did so it was easy to find it then. He was working in Powers Solicitors and he was a reporter for the Leader for around 50 years, Raymond explained.

The paper consists of one section with 16 pages priced at two pence.

Its absolutely beautiful. The only page in very bad condition is the front page. The front page is all ads. There isnt a story on it. No story. There are only eight photographs in the whole paper and one of them is of Mick Mackey. Its absolutely lovely to read it. You can see where youd buy such a thing for two shillings and sixpence.

Raymond, who lives in Martinstown, ran a butchers shop in Bruree for several years. He has fond memories of his father during his reporting days with the Leader.

My father loved it, he recalled. He cycled to Croom to cover South Board meetings. I suppose it was the extra money. He did all the matches in Kilmallock. He did everything.

As there were no mobile phones at the time Jim would stand in the old phone box in Kilmallock outside Cahills, across the road from Jimmy ORourkes butcher shop, ringing the various newspapers.

Hed call in the details and reverse the charges to the paper, said Raymond. He was all shorthand. He would post in reports. He would call in a short bit of maybe 100 or 150 words to Radio Eireann for instance. If there was an intercounty match in Kilmallock, hed ring Radio Eireann or the papers with 150 to 200 words. Theyd take it down above in shorthand I suppose like himself. He used to put ads in the papers for people. If they had something for sale they would say Jim, would you put this on for me? Hed put it on and theyd come back then and pay him.

Jim, who was married to Jenny, died aged 86 in 2004. They had eight children, Virgilius, Kieran (RIP), Raymond, Seamus, Val, Marian, Padraig and Gary.

I think he gave up the reporting when he was around 75. He gave it a good lash, smiled Raymond.
Ministry of Finances proposal to increase the quota for credit poured into the securities sector is largely backed by market experts.

An employee operates a cash register at the VNDirect Securities Corporation. Credit that banks are using to finance securities companies for margin lending remains at a relatively low level.  Photo tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn

Ministry of Finances proposal to increase the quota for credit poured into the securities sector is largely backed by market experts.

The Ministry is studying a proposal to increase credit for securities companies for margin lending by loosen credit quota that banks are allowed to lend securities company, instead of the current regulation, which stipulates the quota doesnt exceed 5 per cent of the banks chartered capital.

According to the State Securities Committee, credit that banks use to finance securities companies for margin lending remains at a relatively low level, standing around VND30.5 trillion (US$1.3 billion), accounting for only about 0.4 per cent of total outstanding loans of the commercial banking system.

If the proposal is approved, securities companies will have more money to lend investors for margin trading.

Loosening credit quota to more than 5 per cent of the banks chartered capital can be considered as a measure to support all industries affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. In my opinion, this proposal is reasonable in the context that the Government has issued many stimulus packages, said Ngo The Hien, deputy head of analysis at Sai Gon  Ha Noi Securities Company (SHS).

Capital flows from securities companies utilised for margin lending, including both equity and bank loans, play an important role for investors and the stock market, he told news site tinnhanhchungkhoan.vn.

Investors' awareness of margin trading has been enhanced and the risk control system of securities companies has been improved significantly, thus the bad debt ratio arising from securities lending remains at a very low level.

If the proposal of the finance ministry is approved, the credit source for the stock market will be increased, thereby creating new sources of money to support investors in both the short and long term, Hien said.

According to Huynh Anh Tuan, Deputy General Director of Everest Securities Company, the proposal to loosen credit for the securities sector is a good news for the stock market because the demand for loans from securities companies is quite large.

But as securities is considered a risky sector, many commercial banks are hesitant to lend to them, especially when companies often do not have collateral, Tuan said.

Reduced margin debt in the first quarter of 2020 was mainly due to market price fluctuations, investors were forced to sell, as well as a sharp decline in market capitalisation, affecting the loan.

However, the market went back up to the present level, the demand for margin increased, causing the demand for capital mobilisation of securities companies increased.

Nguyen Huu Binh, head of analysis at Vietnam Investment Securities Co said commercial banks arent allowed to spend more than 5 per cent of its charter capital for margin loans, which is an out-dated regulation and no longer suitable for current practice.

With the increasing size of the stock market, the demand for margin loans is rising, while raising charter capital in the short term is not an easy move for banks.

According to Le Duc Khanh, director of market strategy department at PetroVietnam Securities (PSI), in addition to the raise of credit quota, there should be solutions to boost investor participation in the market.

For domestic investors, it is necessary to encourage them to open trading thus attracting domestic cash flow, Khanh said.

The new Securities Law will take effect early next year with the application of international financial reporting standards, which helps enterprises disclose information in both English and Vietnamese, supporting foreign investors to access information better.

This can attract more foreign investors to join the stock market, Khanh said.

Declining margin loans

Margin loans have also declined in the first quarter of this year. At securities company in Q1, margin loans were estimated at VND50 trillion, down by 14 per cent year-on-year.

The highest margin loan was reported by Mirae Asset Viet Nam Securities Company with VND7.2 trillion, a decrease of 2.9 per cent year-on-year, followed by SSI Securities Corporation with VND4 trillion, down by 25 per cent against last year.

Margin trading is subjected to a number of restrictions. For example, the total margin loan at a securities company to a single customer must not exceed 3 per cent of the lenders equity.

As the margin loan has a maximum term of three months, with an additional three-month extension. This often forces investors to sell securities to pay debt when the loan maturity expired.

It can be assumed that securities companies do not lack the resources to lend, but investors are hindered to borrow due to tight regulations.

Credit is currently poured into the securities sector mainly through two channels  the loans that securities companies take from banks for margin lending and loans that single investors borrow directly from banks.

Margin trading refers to the practice of investors borrowing money from brokerage companies to purchase securities worth more than the investors net asset value in their accounts.  VNS

Covid-19 changes positioning of largest securities companies in Vietnam The number of securities companies that saw profits decrease or took losses in Q1 were much higher than the number of companies that maintained growth.
HAMILTON  No one wants to fall on their sword.

First-year Democratic Mayor Jeff Martin of Hamilton and Robbinsville Mayor Dave Fried, a Republican, blame ex-Mayor Kelly Yaede for forcing them to raise sewer rates this year amid a global pandemic.

But Martin largely went along with Yaedes 2019 sewer budget while he was president of the Democrat-controlled council.

While Yaedes alleged gimmicky budget played a major role in the overall financial standing of the Hamilton sewer utility, Martins complicity in it cannot be ignored as Hamilton and Robbinsville residents learned Friday of the townships plans to raise rates for the first time in more than a decade.

This was the right thing to do, Martin told The Trentonian. Not doing it would be far worse.

The townships announced the proposed rate increases in a joint statement following what Martin and Fried called a comprehensive review.

Robbinsville residents will pay $85 more per household, or about $425 a year. Hamilton residents get the hometown deal of $78 more per household for a total of $390.

The townships are adjusting non-residential rates, but didnt provide specific numbers of how much theyll increase.

Increases must be approved by each legislative body, take effect in July and will be reflected on the October bills, officials said.

The rates increases will fund improvements to the aging Hamilton Township wastewater facility that the mayors said needs dire upgrades.

Martin said the water plant cannot survive any longer at its current rates without jeopardizing its operations.

Fried blamed the Yaede administrations decision to use all of its surplus and one-time revenue, among other gimmicks, to avoid this inevitability.

Last year, the Yaede administration proposed $17.8 million in total sewer utility appropriations, or 7 percent less than the $19.1 million in appropriations from 2018.

Martin warned the proposal could bankrupt the utility.

He emailed state official Melanie Walter of the New Jersey Department of Community Affairs, saying Hamilton Council had grave concerns with the administrations spending plan.

The Democratic-led council eventually adopted Yaedes $107.3 million general budget that reduced the municipal purpose tax rate by 1.25 percent, and they also approved her 2019 sewer budget plan with few amendments that cut total appropriations by $10,000.

Martin said at the time he was far more comfortable with the amended sewer budget.

Its a budget I am comfortable voting with that I am happy to vote yes on, he said.

The 2019 dedicated sewer utility budget and general appropriations budget approved by Hamilton Council essentially kicked the can down the road, forcing the township to consider an increase to the sewer rate and municipal purpose tax rate this year.

Yaede suggested now is not the time for Hamilton Township to be increasing its sewer rate.

Until Robbinsville pays what it owes and in a timely fashion, the former mayor said Friday in a statement, Hamiltons elected officials should not increase any sewer rates. When is enough enough for our residents?

Robbinsville was built on the backs of our ratepayers, Yaede added. People are hurting  a town at least a fifth of the size of Hamilton should not be holding our ratepayers hostage.

Yaede called this joint decision on sewer rates pure politics before people and said the proposal to increase costs is crushing and demoralizing residents at a time when they are struggling to put food on the table and pay mortgages.

Fried, the Republican mayor of Robbinsville, told The Trentonian there was no choice but to hike sewer rates.

You have to either cut services and end up with a problem, he said. Not do upgrades and end up with a problem. Or increase rates.

The announcement comes months after Martins administration dropped a lawsuit brought by former Mayor Yaedes administration against Robbinsville over $2.8 million in unpaid sewer bills.

The lawsuit  filed in August 2019, months before the November election  was viewed as a way for Yaede to convince voters she was fighting for township taxpayers.

She used it as a campaign club to claim Martin was looking out for Robbinsville taxpayers more than Hamiltonians.

The litigation highlighted the frayed relationship between Yaede and Fried, who bickered over the bill and a rate study.

Yaede claimed Robbinsville hadnt paid its fair share for 15 percent of its flow. Fried claimed the municipality was current on its tab.

The Yaede administration waffled over the rate study after agreeing to split the costs with Robbinsville and setting aside $15,000 for it in the sewer budget.

Hamilton went on to allege Robbinsville owed $2.8 million for 2018 and 2019 sewer service, more than the $1.9 million it shelled out for sewer services in 2017.

Robbinsville filed a separate public records lawsuit against Hamilton related to the billing dispute, which was resolved in October once Hamilton provided all requested documentation under the state Open Public Records Act to its neighbor.

Robbinsville paid $1,000 in special service fees to Hamilton for producing the documents, court records show.

Hamilton had racked up more than $18,000 in legal fees when it decided to abandon the legal scrape.

In dropping the suit, Martin said the township would do our own calculations on how much Robbinsville owed following a productive meeting.

I think its an olive branch from both sides, Martin said in February. Both sides recognize the slate is wiped clean. Its a fresh start.

The townships said Friday theyve agreed to share costs on a rate study as they hammer out a long-term settlement.

Hamilton operates a regional wastewater treatment facility that has served both townships since 1976. Sewage is treated at Hamiltons Water Pollution Control plant before being discharged into Crosswicks Creek.

Hamilton hasnt raised rates since 2008 and Robbinsville since 2011, officials said.

Former GOP mayoral candidate and township gadfly David Henderson said thats part of the problem.

No ratepayer is happy when they have to pay more but the way government works its inevitable, he said. Its been a drain on the general accounts of Hamilton Township for years. A responsible mayor and administration would have taken a look at costs year-by-year and raised it as necessary instead of keeping it artificially low.

The Hamilton utility files annual reports with the state each February to ensure its self-liquidating, officials said.

Calculations done as part of the report help officials determine the amount of funding required for the utility to remain solvent so operations arent impacted.

Martin said in February the township would solicit bids for the rate study, which the townships will rely upon to determine future shared costs.

The township couldnt immediately provide information about how much is needed for the utility to remain self-liquidating.

Martins chief of staff Bianca Jerez said the Request for Proposal for the rate study should be posted on the township website next week.

The township plans to pursue $10.5 million in improvement projects to the utility, scheduled over the next two years.

The upgrades include $2.8 million to rehab a digester, $2 million for rehabbing the Yardville-Groveville pump station, $800,000 to replace a generator at the Klockner pump station, $800,000 in repairs of underground infrastructure and $500,000 for electrical equipment upgrades at the plant.

Dennis Pone, chairman of the Hamilton Township Republican Committee and Yaede acolyte, accused Martin of allowing Robbinsville off the hook to the detriment of Hamilton residents and businesses.

Certainly, its very bad timing, he said alluding to the coronavirus pandemic thats led to an economic downturn in Hamilton and across the country. If Robbinsville paid its full share of their flow over the last few years, there would be no need for an increase at all in Hamilton.

Despite the pending rate increases, township officials said residents are paying less than those living in other municipalities in Mercer and Burlington counties.

They based those conclusions on a 2018 survey conducted by the Hamilton Township Water Pollution Control that found a family of four living elsewhere in Mercer and Burlington counties pays between $600 to $900.

The rate increases are expected to be introduced at next weeks Hamilton council meeting.
Mumbai: The Maharashtra State Board Of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education will be releasing the HSC and SSC result 2020 by June 10. The results will be declared on the official website of the board, mahresults.nic.in.

Maharashtra SSC, HSC Results 2020: Follow the steps mentioned below to check your result:

Visit the official website of Maharashtra Board, which is mahresults.nic.in

Go to the link in the latest section that reads Maharashtra 10, 12 board results

Click on the link to be redirected to a new page

Enter your details to see your result.

Download your result, which will appear in a PDF format for your future reference.

This year around 15 lakh students appeared for Class 10 and 12 examinations in the state. The candidates are advised to keep a check on the official website for regular updates.

Earlier in April, the Maharashtra government had decided to cancel two pending paper of SSC Examination for Maharashtra Board Students looking at the situation of coronavirus pandemic. Maharashtra School Education Minister Varsha Gaikwad had announced state governments decision to cancel the pending Geography and Work Experience papers of Maharashtra State Board of Secondary and Higher Secondary Education (MSBSHSE).

For these two subjects, students are to be assessed on the basis of on the respective rules for these subjects.


BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - As more than 200 countries continue to fight the devastating coronavirus, Slovenia has become the first European country to declare an official end to its endemic.



'Today Slovenia has the best epidemic situation in Europe, which enables us to call off the general epidemic,' Prime Minister Janez Jansa said on Thursday, even as new infections are being reported in the mountainous nation of two million.



'Since the danger of spreading the SARS-CoV-2 virus remains, some general and special measures will remain in force,' the government said in a statement.



Public gatherings are not allowed and social distancing rules and mask wearing are mandatory in public.



A total of 1,464 people were infected and 103 people died in Slovenia since its onset two months ago, according to data from the Johns Hopkins University, updated at 10.45 am Friday.



The Balkan state, which borders Italy, has seen only a handful of daily cases in the past fortnight.



Travelers from any EU country will no more be required to quarantine on arrival in Slovenia.



The deadly virus that originated in the Chinese city of Wuhan in December has spread to nearly every continent and threatening communities as case numbers continue to rise.



Authorities in 214 countries and territories have reported more than 4,444,000 novel coronavirus cases and more than 300,000 deaths.



Japan is lifting its state of emergency everywhere except in the country's eight most populous prefectures, which include Tokyo and Osaka.



Desperate stories are emerging from inside Russian hospitals, where doctors are reportedly falling ill at an alarming rate.



Russia has announced a total of 252,245 confirmed coronavirus infections, more than any other country except the United States. Even so, President Vladimir Putin lifted a nationwide lockdown on Monday, saying that the country's hospitals were prepared and that doctors had everything they needed.



The French government protested the suggestion that the U.S. would get first access to a coronavirus vaccine being developed by the French pharmaceutical company Sanofi.



Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

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For a government that loves to parade its popular groundswell of support, the Indian State can be remarkably chicken-hearted when it comes to dealing with dissent. Its favoured tool is Sedition  referred to as the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code by Indias most high-profile sedition convict, Mahatma Gandhi. In his trial where he pleaded guilty to charges brought by the British government, Gandhi stated that If one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite to violence.

On the face of it, we should not even be having this discussion. A bare reading of Section 124A of the IPC, as well as repeated guidance from the Supreme Court (Kedar Nath vs State of Bihar, 1962, consistently followed), makes it amply clear that only a violent revolution against the government attracts the charge of sedition.

Yet, look at some of the instances where sedition law has been invoked recently:

On May 11, the Gujarat Police arrested the editor of a Gujarati news portal for his report about the Chief Minister likely to be replaced.

Three Kashmir journalists, including a photographer who uploaded photographs on social media, had cases registered against them in April.

An Assam MLA was arrested under the section for saying that quarantine centres were worse than detention centres meant for illegal immigrants, while a politician in Ludhiana was booked for putting up a Facebook post stating that there were no ventilators in the district.

These come close on the heels of an overdrive of sedition cases filed during the anti-CAA protests, most alarmingly, against parents and teachers of nine-year-olds who had performed in a school play; as well as several other youngsters who created art-work against, or expressed solidarity with fellow-protestors.

Last year, an FIR was filed against 49 civil society activists who wrote an open-letter to the Prime Minister against the spate of mob-lynching in the country. Earlier instances include a case against Amnesty International for organising a debate on Kashmir, and an actor who said that Pakistan is not hell.

None of these cases even remotely come within the ambit of sedition. In fact, data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) show that 2016 and 2017 had merely one conviction each for sedition, while in 2018, there were two.

So then why does the police pursue sedition cases almost willy-nilly? The answer lies in the now-familiar refrain: in India, the process is the punishment.

The offence of sedition, under law, is cognisable (a policeman can investigate and arrest without oversight of a magistrate) and non-bailable (you are not entitled to bail as a matter of right). So if a case is filed against you, the police has the power to arrest you. Under law, you are to be produced before a magistrate within 24 hours. The police inevitably blows the offence out of proportion, and seeks custody of the accused so that they can be investigated, and the magistrate inevitably grants such custody. The police now have 90 days to file a charge-sheet. While the accused is entitled to apply for bail, given the magnitude of the allegations and the polices claims that evidence is still being unearthed, often bail is denied.

If a charge-sheet is not filed within 90 days, the accused is entitled to bail by default. If it is filed, the magistrate then scrutinises whether a case is made out under law. This three-month period of incarceration would be enough to drain the accused of financial resources (cost of engaging lawyers as well as professional revenue foregone), not to mention their spirit. Carrying a maximum sentence of imprisonment for life, the charge of sedition is one of the gravest.

At best, the charge is quashed, and the accused is acquitted. Else, there is a long-drawn trial that might drag on for years. On the other hand, the police is almost never made accountable for their actions.

It is almost ludicrous that these cases are still employed. Until the State is made accountable for frivolous cases, they will continue to be used as a tool for stifling dissent. Democracy will continue to be the real victim.
Los Angeles City Atty. Mike Feuer filed a lawsuit to stop a Koreatown store from selling untested herbal remedies advertised as preventing COVID-19. (Francine Orr / Los Angeles Times)

The Los Angeles city attorney's office filed suit Wednesday against an herbal remedy specialist, accusing the store of trying to pass off an untested radish paste as a safeguard against the coronavirus, officials said.

The civil lawsuit accuses Insan Healing in Koreatown of touting the item as a must-have product for the protection and prevention" of coronavirus contagion, even though it has not been tested by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, court filings said.

The radish paste costs $99.95 per bottle and is made from a combination of "white radish harvested during frost," garlic and ginger that can enhance a person's immune system, according to the Insan Healing website.

References to the coronavirus and COVID-19 had been taken down by Thursday afternoon after the lawsuit was filed, but the city attorney's office provided screenshots showing the claims that the paste could help with coronavirus prevention.

"We've got to stop those who use the fear fueled by the COVID-19 crisis to prey on people desperate to avoid the virus," City Atty. Mike Feuer said in a statement. "Today it's radish paste, which the defendants are peddling as, 'a must-have product for the protection and prevention of the COVID-19, cold and flu season.' We allege that claim is false, and we're taking the defendants to court. In this public health emergency, consumers are entitled to accurate information. Their lives may depend on it."

The suit seeks an injunction blocking the sale of the item and fines of up to $2,500 per violation of California's unfair competition law, which bars false advertising.

Insan Healing was founded in 2013 by Angela K. Oh, a Culver City resident, filings with the secretary of state show. The company sells a variety of healing products including teas, foods and Korean bamboo salt. Oh did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.

Attempts to capitalize on people's concerns about the coronavirus have attracted the attention of law enforcement in recent days. A Santa Monica woman was arrested Wednesday for peddling dozens of unapproved COVID-19 tests.
Canadian telecom companies say demand for their services has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and will change business once the lockdown ends.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

A woman uses her smart phone as apps are shown on an iPad in Mississauga, Ont., on Monday, November 13, 2017. Canadian telecom companies say demand for their services has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Canadian telecom companies say demand for their services has surged during the COVID-19 pandemic and will change business once the lockdown ends.

Rogers Communications Inc. told a House of Commons committee that home internet usage is up more than 50 per cent, voice call usage on its wireless network is up 40 per cent, and 1-800 toll-free calls are up more than 300 per cent.

The Toronto-based company said its customers are making more than 50 million wireless voice calls per day while use of toll-free lines has augmented to access federal support programs.

Dean Prevost, president of Rogers for Business, said its technicians "are frontline heroes."

He said they've supported health-care providers by deploying temporary cell sites on wheels, increased capacity to hospitals, run fibre in parking lots and fields and extended fixed wireless to create new COVID-19 testing centres. They have also provided more Wi-Fi for hospitals, seniors homes and homeless shelters.

Rogers said it has helped customers by lifting usage caps for home internet plans, eliminating overage charges, waiving Canadian long-distance calling fees for homes and small businesses, and waiving international roaming fees.

Prevost said he expects business, including its own, will change dramatically as employees return to work.

"We need to think about how we do that and that will lead to a very different way in which we deploy our forces across the country, a different way in which we use our real estate and as we do that it leads to a different thinking in terms of the tech and capabilities we have," he said in virtual testimony to the industry committee.

Liberal committee member Lloyd Longfield said the country is at a "pivot point."

"Business is going to change in terms of what they're going to ask from networks and I wonder about the capacity for us to deal with those questions both from industry and from government regulations."

Vancouver-based Telus Corp. said it is consistently experiencing four times the network traffic of its busiest day pre-COVID. It plans to reveal a report next week that shows Canada has the fastest wireless speeds in the world.

"COVID-19 has exposed how important connectivity is to all Canadians," said vice-president Tony Geheran.

Between March 18 and 31, Telus has moved virtually all its call agents to work from home and facilitated more than 30,000 doctor appointments since launching its virtual visit platform in April.

Like others, the company has committed not to disconnect customers. It has waived fees for low-income families and students in need.

Geheran said the crisis has accentuated the need for better internet access for rural Canadians, which Telus has invested heavily in. Of $5 billion put into infrastructure over the past six years, $1 billion has gone to connect 40 per cent of all rural Canadian homes to Telus services.

But he said companies need support from federal and provincial governments. In particular, he said the country needs a new approach to spectrum policy.

Cogeco Communications Inc. said that since the beginning of the crisis, there has been 60 per cent greater use of internet service during the day, a 40 per cent boost in traffic for video on demand, a 20 to 40 per cent growth in video streaming services, including Netflix, and added use of telephony services.

The company said it has been able to meet the increased demands by having invested to ensure there's reliable infrastructure. It committed to invest more than $1 billion more over the next four years but said it needs a stable regulatory regime.

"The current crisis has revealed how vital our role is. However, everyday we see Canadians still have needs to be connected or to receive higher internet speeds," said Leonard Eichel.

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.

Xplornet Communications Inc., the largest rural-focused internet provider, said it has seen a 30 to 40 per cent increase in daytime use and has suspended overage fees to the end of June.

"The pandemic has demonstrated the critical importance of expanding access to rural broadband," C.J. Prudham, executive vice-president and general counsel, said in a virtual presentation to MPs.

Spectrum is the oxygen that our network needs to breathe, she said, noting that Canada has not consistently pursued a balanced spectrum policy that meets both urban and rural needs.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.

 With files from Joan Bryden in Ottawa.

Companies in this story: (TSX:T, TSX:RCI.B, TSX:CCA).
Tirupati: The Superintendent of Police for Tirupati Urban District Avula Ramesh Reddy took people into surprise after he joined the farmers in planting paddy saplings in the agriculture fields on the outskirts of the town. Reddy took the work in his uniform and was seen wearing a mask while helping the farmers in cultivation.

His sudden interactions with the farmers cheered them up during their hard times and the farmers hailed his effort. One of the farmers K Gurappa Naidu said, "its first time we closely intersected with the policeman that to SP of our district, he is a very simple man who planted faster than us, I felt happy and proud to see big officer coming to us asking about our welfare. Gurappa added, '' He has also asked us to invite him further during harvesting.''

Reddy has also announced to donate his 50 percent salary to fund the education of meritorious students.

Not just farmers but his colleagues are also seen lauding his effort towards society. Shiva Prasad Reddy Yerpedu Circle Inspector said, ''He is role model for us, I never saw an officer like him in my entire service. The way respects colleagues its great. He is extremely down to earth.''

Speaking with Zee Media, Reddy said, "We should respect farmers around us, we are distributing rice and vegetables in lockdown. All that is possible because of this farmer and one should always remember that. Therefore we should always respect their efforts.''

Avula Ramesh Reddy is the 10th SP of the Tirupati urban police wing and took charge of the office on February 8, 2020. He belonged to 2007 batch of IPS officer who has joined Andhra Pradesh Cadre on deputation from Tripura Cadre. He hails from Kanigiri, Praksham District of Andhra Pradesh.
By IANS

MUMBAI: Amid the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown as multiplexes remain shut, the streaming platform Amazon Prime Video is going all out in a bid to revolutionise the way we might watch films in the future. After confirming the Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer "Gulabo Sitabo" for a digital release recently, the OTT platform now announces six more highly-anticipated Indian films, including "Shakuntala Devi" starring Vidya Balan, for digital premieres over the next months.

All these films will directly go to Amazon Prime bypassing traditional theatrical release.

Across five Indian languages, apart from the above-mentioned Hindi releases, the direct-to-home menu features the Tamil legal drama "Ponmagal Vandhal" starring Jyotika, the Keerthy Suresh starrer "Penguin" (Tamil and Telugu), "Sufiyum Sujatayum" (Malayalam) starring Aditi Rao Hydari, "Law" (Kannada) starring Ragini Chandran and Siri Prahlad, and Danish Sait's next film "French Biryani" (Kannada).

The movies will premiere on the streaming platform over the next three months and will be available in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

"Ponmagal Vandhal" (Tamil) will release on May 29. The legal drama is written and directed by JJ Fredrick, and produced by Jyotika's husband, Tamil superstar Suriya, along with Rajsekar Karpoorasundarapandian. In fact, as reported earlier by IANS, the Tamil Nadu Theatre And Multiplex Owners Association threatened to ban all releases featuring Suriya, or produced by his banner 2D films, in the wake of the his decision to release "Pon Magal Vandhal" directly on the popular OTT platform.

However, that does not seem to deter others. "Penguin" (Tamil and Telugu) will go live on June 19. The film is written and directed by Eshavar Karthic. The film is produced by Stone Bench Films and Karthik Subbaraj. While "Law" (Kannada) is slated for June 26, "French Biryani" (Kannada) will release on July 24.

Shoojit Sircar's "Gulabo Sitabo" will release on June 12.

The release dates of "Shakuntala Devi" and "Sufiyum Sujatayum" are yet to be announced.

"We're taking this one step further, with seven of India's most-anticipated films premiering exclusively on Prime Video, bringing the cinematic experience to their doorstep," said Vijay Subramaniam, Director and Head, Content, Amazon Prime Video, India.

"Indian audiences have been eagerly awaiting the release of these seven films, and we are delighted that we will now be premiering these movies for our customers -- who can enjoy watching these from the safety and comfort of their homes and on a screen of their choice," said Gaurav Gandhi, Director and Country General Manager, Amazon Prime Video India.

Meanwhile, exhibitors are naturally not pleased with Amazon Prime's unprecedented move.

As part of a long press statement issued on Thursday evening, and without naming any film or production house in particular, the multiplex chain INOX stated: "The decision of production house to deviate from the globally prevalent content windowing practice is alarming and disconcerting. Cinemas and content creators have always been into mutually beneficial partnerships, where one's action provided fillip to another's revenues."
A judge has determined that Mary-Kate Olsen cannot file for divorce from husband Olivier Sarkozy in New York City right now because the proceedings are considered "not essential."

With the New York courts having been closed since March because of the coronavirus pandemic, the fashion mogul and former "Full House" child star filed an emergency petition for divorce under the "essential matter procedure" last week but was denied by a judge.

2017 Take Home A Nude Art Party And Auction To Benefit (Astrid Stawiarz / Getty Images)

The request, which was first reported by The New York Post, was initially filed on April 17 and then refiled last week as an emergency matter.

"Only essential/emergency matters are allowed to be filed," Lucian Chalfen, director of public information for the Office of Court Administration, told NBC News in a statement.

"The original filing was rejected by the New York County Clerk because they did not follow the essential matter procedure. They refiled under the essential matter procedure and the matter was referred to an ex parte State Supreme Court Judge. He just decided that it is not essential so they cant file anything at this point."

Olsen's representatives did not comment when reached by NBC News.

She claimed in her application that it was an emergency because Sarkozy expected her to move out of their home by Monday.

"I am petrified that my husband is trying to deprive me of the home we have lived in and if he is successful, I will not only lose my home but I risk losing my personal property as well," she wrote in the filing, according to The New York Post.

Olsen, 33, has been married to Sarkozy, 50, a French banker and brother of former French President Nicolas Sarkozy, since 2015.
By Lisandra Paraguassu and Anthony Boadle

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil lost its second health minister in a month on Friday after President Jair Bolsonaro demanded wider use of unproven anti-malarial drugs to fight the coronavirus outbreak, adding to turmoil in one of the pandemic's worst global hotspots.

Brazilians banged pots from windows and health experts reacted with outrage at the resignation of Nelson Teich, the second doctor to leave the top Health Ministry job as the outbreak explodes. Brazil's confirmed cases climbed past Germany and France this week, growing at a daily pace second only to the United States.

Bolsonaro had demanded on Thursday that Teich issue federal guidelines for the early use of hydroxychloroquine to treat coronavirus patients, despite studies that cast doubt on the effectiveness of the malaria drug for COVID-19 and raised concerns it may cause heart problems.

"I was elected to make decisions. And the decision about chloroquine goes through me," Bolsonaro told business leaders in a video conference on Thursday, adding that his call to end state orders on social distancing should also be the last word.

"Just like a commander in battle: He has to decide. Are people going to die? Unfortunately, people are going to die," he said.

Teich, an oncologist and healthcare entrepreneur, gave no reason for quitting in brief comments to journalists on Friday. He had also become out of step with Bolsonaro's push to reopen the economy, expressing surprise at a news conference on Monday when he learned of a presidential decree allowing gyms, beauty parlors and hairdressers to open.

Military members of the Brazilian cabinet are pushing for interim health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an active-duty army general, to take over full-time, a government official told Reuters, requesting anonymity to discuss confidential talks.

The presidential press office did not respond to a request for comment.

Story continues

Bolsonaro's chief of staff, Walter Braga Netto, told journalists that Teich had left for "personal reasons" after a friendly conversation with Bolsonaro on Friday. The president "had a different vision about which protocol to follow," Braga Netto said, without elaborating.

Late on Friday, the Health Ministry said it was finalizing new guidelines for early treatment of coronavirus patients, including proposed medications. Asked about the statement, a ministry representative told Reuters that hydroxychloroquine would be one of the medications cited.

Teich's predecessor, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, a former lawmaker and military medic, was fired on April 16 for resisting Bolsonaro's demands to promote hydroxychloroquine and fight against state governments' isolation orders.

OUTBREAK ACCELERATING

Growth of the coronavirus outbreak in Brazil has set daily records in each of the past three days. The Health Ministry confirmed more than 15,000 new cases of the virus on Friday.

Brazil has confirmed more than 218,000 cases so far, on pace to pass Italy's nearly 224,000 cases this weekend as it closes in quickly on Spain and the United Kingdom despite rolling out far fewer tests.

Brazil's death toll has risen by more than 800 per day to nearly 15,000 on Friday, as the crisis overwhelms hospitals in several cities and public cemeteries resort to mass graves.

"Let us pray," Mandetta, the former health minister, said on Twitter after Teich's resignation, calling for faith in science and support for Brazil's public health system.

Opposition and allied politicians criticized Bolsonaro's intransigence on Friday. Lawmaker Marcelo Ramos of the centrist Liberal Party said the president would only accept a minister without regard for science-based public health policy.

Congressional opposition leader Alessandro Molon warned that Brazil was heading toward a public health catastrophe and said the president should be impeached.

"Bolsonaro does not want a technical minister, he wants someone who agrees with his ideological insanity, like ending social distancing and using chloroquine," Molon, of the Brazilian Socialist Party, said in a statement.

Bolsonaro's handling of the coronavirus has been widely criticized globally as he has shrugged off the severity of the disease and told Brazilians to ignore quarantine restrictions.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month cautioned against the use of hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus, warning it could cause heart problems. President Donald Trump, another world leader who has played down the pandemic's dangers, at one point touted the drug as a "game changer."

Two new studies published on Thursday found that patients on hydroxychloroquine did not get better significantly faster than those not treated with the drug.

(Reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu and Anthony Boadle; Additional reporting by Maria Carolina Marcello, Marcela Ayres, Ricardo Brito and Jake Spring; Editing by Brad Haynes, Sonya Hepinstall and Leslie Adler)
The Information Minister said, of the 5,530 cases count recorded; 3,787 (representing 68 per cent) were through enhanced contact tracing surveillance, while 1,628 (32 per cent) were through general surveillance (those who reported to health facilities).

Mr Oppong Nkrumah made the revelation during the meet the press series organised by the Ministry of Information, to give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

The Minister said countries in Europe and the Americas, were reporting the general surveillance numbers; "that is people who had fallen sick and have come to the hospitals".

He reiterated that those countries were not doing enhanced tracing and testing like what Ghana was doing.

"That is why for example if you take today's numbers 5,530; if we were doing what everybody was doing, we will only be reporting 1,628, because that is a general surveillance numbers, that is those who have contacted the system to be tested," he said.

He said Ghana had about 3,787 people through enhanced contact tracing; that is people who had been exposed to the virus, and the surveillance team had gone to search for them.

"We have been deliberately spiking our curve, it is a different strategy, because we want to find it early and deal with it. In so doing the majority of the 3,787 from what they tell us are not sick, they don't have symptoms, but they have been exposed to the virus," Mr Oppong Nkrumah stated.

"So, if you are going to work a quick mathematics out of that 3,787 out of 5,530 at the back of the envelope, that is about 68 per cent. So Ghana's numbers 5,530 about 68 per cent of them are people that we went out to search for in the enhanced contact tracing," he said.

He said trying to compare Ghana's method of tracing the disease with other countries was like comparing oranges to apples.

Adding that Ghana's formula for tracing the COVID-19 virus was very different.

"If you didn't do enhanced contact tracing surveillance, they would have been in the community spreading (the disease).

So, that by the time today, you are reporting 1,628, which is what you would have been, if we were doing general surveillance. You have about 5,000 or extra of about 4,000 in the community that you don't know of, spreading it."

He explained that by the time they would have found 4,000 (infected persons), 16,000 would also be out there spreading the disease.

"That is the wisdom in Ghana's change in strategy to go for the enhanced contact and tracing. That we go out early, find these persons and give them the kind of support," he said.

---GNA
DENVER - After a couple days of hard hiking last fall, Tim Brass thought it was time to track down a motor. He was bowhunting in a trophy unit near Creede, and plenty of other hunters were using a motorized trail for swift access.

His friend offered an e-bike. Brass got his elk.

Best hunting experience of my life. And that tool made it a lot easier to get the elk out of there, Ill tell you that. It made it bearable, for sure, said the Colorado policy director for the 40,000-member Backcountry Hunters and Anglers group.

But that pedal-assisted hunt wasnt enough to flip Brass into a wholehearted embrace of e-bikes. He points to wildlife surveys showing animals increasingly bothered by all types of explorers adventuring deeper into Colorados wildest lands.

Do we want people to be able to ride a bike twice as far in a day? Do we want to allow them where motorcycles cant go? What if we know the impacts to wildlife will be greater? Brass said. The fact is, these things have a motor that lets people go deeper and further much easier than ever before. It can be a bit of a slippery slope when it comes to allowing motorized use on non-motorized routes.

Allowing e-bikes on non-motorized trails, as ordered by the secretary of the Interior Department last fall, is pitting traditional pedalers versus e-bikers as federal land agencies craft rules to implement the new order. Cyclists fear the embrace of electric-assisted pedalers could get all bikes banned from trails. Trail builders worry about impacts from motorized bikes that can reach more than 50 mph. E-bikers fret their opportunities to explore public lands could be relegated to motorized thoroughfares.

Thousands of public land users are flooding the public comment portals in what is emerging as one of the most controversial rules in years for the Bureau of Land Management.

For Jake Roach, the CEO and co-founder of QuietKat, the Eagle-based maker of off-road e-bikes, the conflict boils down to outdoor elitists who are able to power themselves into the backcountry.

I think what you find is that currently in public lands access, its basically set up to really benefit the individual who has a lot of time and is in really good shape, said Roach, whose QuietKat has seen explosive growth in recent years. That is not necessarily the demographic of the typical American taxpayer.

Roach is helping to mobilize the growing swell of e-bikers to sway federal land managers to allow the electrified rides. He hopes to spread the idea that e-bikes might not only open public lands to a wider range of users, but disperse those users across public lands.

The first mile is crowded, but once you get past that first mile, it can get lonely, Roach said. Spreading out the public on public land can only add value. Theres a perception that outdoor elitists want to keep public lands for themselves and thats not a fair assessment of how public lands should be used.

The Bureau of Land Management, the National Park Service and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service all last month proposed rules that would open non-motorized trails to electric-powered mountain bikes. Each agency is asking for public comment on the plan. The rule comes from a controversial order issued in August by Interior Secretary David Bernhardt directing the agencies managers to develop rules allowing e-bikes on all bike trails.

Bernhardts Secretarial Order 3376 described how electric motors on bikes expanded access to recreational opportunities. Bernhardt shifted the definition and regulation of e-bikes from motorized vehicles to bikes and gave land managers 14 days to craft rules that allow electric bikes everywhere bicycles are allowed on National Park, BLM and U.S. Fish and Wildlife lands.

Its taken a bit longer than two weeks, and the proposed rules  all published in early April  stop short of Bernhardts call for immediate opening of all non-motorized trails to e-bikes. The BLMs proposed rule for e-bikes, for example, directs local land managers to generally allow e-bikes on bike trails where appropriate using decisions made in compliance with the National Environmental Policy Act.

(While allowing e-bikes on traditional bike trails, the rules  and Bernhardts order  prevent e-bikes from any wilderness trails where mechanized travel always is prohibited.)

The agencies are collecting public comments on the rule through June 8. The Park Service and Fish and Wildlife plans are not proving too controversial, with a total of about 500 comments on the agencys online portals. (Each of those agencies largely prohibit bikes on backcountry trails, so the rules add e-bikes to largely motorized routes where bikes already are allowed.)

But for the BLM, which manages nearly 500,000 miles of roads and trails, the comments are piling up thousands deep as human-powered advocates and e-bike users square off.

BLM spokeswoman Maribeth Pecotte said the agency is studying e-bike use on non-motorized trails using analysis under the National Environmental Policy Act and its community-surveying processes for developing travel management plans that determine where certain types of vehicles are allowed.

Pecotte said the agency expects the public-comment process will identify areas where e-bikes are totally appropriate and meet community goals and objectives set in regional resource management plans.

And there will be places where they might not be appropriate, she said.

The agency is closely examining areas where BLM trails connect with county or Forest Service land that might have different rules for e-bikes to make sure there is consistency for trails that traverse different management areas.

Pecotte said the agency wants to conduct site-specific planning for e-bikes, measuring their impact as well as the perspectives of local trail users. She suspects more people are growing accustomed to e-bikes and the end result of the BLMs review will expedite that acceptance by opening more trails to the electrified rides.

The more people are exposed to e-bikes, the more they accept them as time goes by and I think they will come to accept them more as they become more prevalent, she said.

E-bikes are grouped into three categories. Class 1 e-bikes have a motor that kicks in when the rider is pedaling and tops out at 20 mph. Class 2 e-bikes have a motor that doesnt require pedaling and also tops out at 20 mph. Class 3 e-bikes have motors that deliver power only when the rider is pedaling and go faster, up to 28 mph. Those classes are getting blurred though as e-bike technology grows. Southern Californias Hi-Power Cycles, for example, is making an 82-pound mountain bike with an electric motor that can hit 55 mph.

Its that blurring that troubles Scott Winans, the longtime head of the Colorado Plateau Mountain Bike Trail Association. For more than a decade, he has guided his team of volunteer mountain bikers in building and maintaining hundreds of miles of rolling single track across the Western Slope. Since 1989, the group has built trails for non-motorized use, with banked berms and tight turns made for pedalers, not throttle twisters. The groups trail work is largely on BLM land, making the Colorado Plateau a national testing ground for new e-bike access rules.

COPMOBA is supporting Class 1 e-bike access on some, but not all non-motorized trails it maintains around five communities in Western Colorado. They oppose Class 2 or Class 3 e-bike access on any non-motorized trails. But most importantly, the association wants land managers to follow the same public processes it followed for more than 30 years of trail-advocacy work.

Winans and his association have issues with the top-down order allowing e-bikes. He hopes this current round of public comment is just the first of many more rounds of public review allowing local BLM land managers to craft trail-specific management plans for e-bikes.

Thats the process Western Slope mountain bikers have been following for decades as they work to develop new trails on BLM land, Winans said. And its part of the process any time theres a change to the agencys local travel management and resource management plans.

This is tough because we have such a solid community coalition that has come together to address trails from a local perspective and a bunch of stakeholders have worked together for many years to build a great plan and the feds, in essence, throw that out the window, Winans said.

Theres a similar sentiment on the Uncompahgre Plateau, where farmers, hunters and water-users in the North Fork Valley spent decades crafting a plan that would limit oil and gas development in the valley only to have that plan dismissed earlier this year under the Trump Administrations energy dominance agenda.

The system of public land management is not built for sudden shifts through presidential agendas or secretarial orders.

Highlighting recreation in land management processes is arduous, and its taken decades for the outdoor recreation industry to win a seat at the land-management table alongside energy and agricultural interests. It takes years of work to win approval for a new trail before shovels hit dirt, as evidenced by the 12 years of planning behind the Grand Valleys new Palisade Plunge trail off the Grand Mesa. The community has to be shown the value of the trail to sway public support, land agencies have to work together and plans must follow environmental laws, Winans said.

Getting a project from idea to implementation is just a huge, huge process, he said. Just because a secretarial order flows into the community and makes a statement that this change is very straightforward, well, just saying that does not make it true.

Winans says e-bike advocates should be wary of celebrating a top-down order that suddenly changes decades of planning and work.

All these long processes and tools, they are really important to keep in the toolbox for the future, Winans said. The ship that runs slowly moderates extremism. Sometimes you may hate that its so slow to turn, but sometimes it saves your bacon and prevents bad decisions from flowing into the system on a moments notice.

The Boulder-based International Mountain Bike Association  or IMBA  is crafting its lengthy analysis of the proposed e-bike rule. The associations executive director, Dave Wiens, said this public comment period will lay the foundation for trail-by-trail identification of e-bike access in future planning by the BLM.

He hopes the BLM requires environmental study for every trail network that shifts non-motorized use regulations to allow e-bikes.

IMBA, the umbrella organization for more than 200 local mountain bike associations, does not support Class 2 or Class 3 bikes on non-motorized trials. The groups primary concern is that expanding access to e-bikes could lead to human-powered bikes losing access. That worst-case scenario looks something like this: If an e-bike is now regulated like a bike, maybe instead of fighting e-bikes its easier to change a trail designation to prevent all bikes.

Were well-positioned to be balanced in our assessments and consider any implications that could impact mountain biking at-large, in order to always protect access for traditional, non-motorized mountain bikes, Wiens said.

Roach has seen his QuietKat company grow from a start-up in 2012 to a national leader in the e-bike industry. He considers QuietKat as part of the growing overlanding business, where travellers deploy well-equipped vehicles to venture beyond defined paths. While his QuiteKat bikes work well on roads, hes focused on off-road and not necessarily competing against urban bikes.

His bikes are sold in 126 Bass Pro shops and about 150 independent retailers, and soon QuietKat will launch a branded bike with Jeep. A demo of the Jeep-branded QuietKat appeared discreetly in the carmakers Super Bowl commercial.

Look, this is not about if e-bikes happen on public land, Roach said. Its about when.

Roach worries the BLMs comment period may be used to identify areas where e-bikes should be banned. His concern is that locally approved plans may restrict e-bikes from bike trails and keep them contained to areas where motorized use is allowed. Which is not the expansion of e-bike access pushed by the Bernhardt order, he said.

My thinking is that this process should help the BLM make the rules easier to follow and not make it more confusing for a wider array of locations, Roach said. The whole process is very antiquated and really needs a revamp. Our systems and our economies move so much faster now than they did in the 1960s, when most of these rules were made. And so do our bikes.
The move came a day after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) reacted to Bengal education minister's tweet.

Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government on Friday made public its two recent communications to the Centre as proof that it stands ready to receive flights carrying stranded people and quarantine them for Covid-19.

The move came a day after the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA)'s said it would arrange such flights to Kolkata if the state government would confirm its willingness to "receive" the air passengers and "quarantine".

The MEA was reacting to a complaint by West Bengal education minister Partha Chatterjee's allegations that no arrangement of flights has been made by the Centre so far.

The West Bengal home department tweeted, "GOWB (Government of West Bengal) keen to welcome back our people stranded in different countries and has long back communicated its agreement as well as quarantine arrangements details etc to GOI for special international inbound journeys. Letters attached. Bengal awaits flights." It also posted two letters with a list quarantine centres.

In one of the communiques revealed by the state government on May 8, West Bengal chief secretary Rajiva Sinha told Union home secretary Ajay Bhalla and foreign secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, "It is said that the standard operating protocol (SOP) and the guidelines may kindly be maintained strictly to avoid any chance of spread of COVID-19, as initial spread of infection has been incidentally through foreign returnees only. The required preparations for institutional quarantine facilities for the foreign returnees have been put in place. It is, however, requested that the details of the passengers reaching Kolkata may kindly be intimated in advance to make other necessary arrangements."

On May 11, Rajiva Sinha informed the Centre of the arrival destination, the Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose International Airport, the contact details of the state government's nodal officer Rajesh Pandey, a list of 12 hotels as 'Pay & Use Quarantine Centres' and three government quarantine centres in a letter to MEA additional secretary (PSP) & Chief Passport Officer Arun K Chatterjee.
HARTFORD  Finding a place to pee was difficult before the coronavirus pandemic, but its even harder now for bus drivers who rallied at the state Capitol Friday for hazard pay, personal protective equipment, and workers compensation for presumed infection on the job.

We move Connecticut, Veronica Chavers, a driver with the Amalgamated Transit Union, said. We are the ones that transfer the heroes to the hospitals.

She said Connecticut bus drivers are the ones who are taking nurses to grocery store workers to work and that makes them front-line workers, too. However, theyre not getting the respect or the pay that they deserve.

She said two bus drivers have died and many more have contracted the virus or are in self-quarantine.

The bus drivers work for CTtransit, which is the Department of Transportation subsidiary that oversees bus operations in Hartford, New Haven, Waterbury and Stamford and paratransit service in some parts of the state.

CTtransit declined to comment and deferred all questions to the Department of Transportation.

The state of Connecticut was scheduled to receive $488 million from the CARES Act, the federal coronavirus stimulus bill, to support bus and rail transit. However, the money has not been distributed to Connecticuts transit partners yet.

AFL-CIO President Sal Luciano said bus drivers are on the front lines and deserve to receive hazard pay.

Your risks are amplified, Luciano said. Everytime an essential worker gets on your bus after treating patients, or dealing with the crowds at the grocery store you are put at risk. And because of your increased risk, the least Governor Lamont should do is compensate and protect the states bus drivers for risking their lives.

The state of Connecticut says it has distributed 53,650 masks to transit providers.

Chavers said although they are only allowing people to board the buses through the rear door, the buses lack barriers to protect the drivers.

We need our drivers to be safe, Chavers said.

The DOT said it has requested enhanced cleanings and masks are required on board buses.

In addition, the DOT said they included transit operators in the category of critical essential worker for priority COVID-19 testing purposes.

We continue to praise our transit operators, who we consider heroes moving heroes, Judd Everhart, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation, said. Unlike rail, which has seen a 97 percent drop in ridership, buses continue to carry 50 percent of their previous ridership  this shows how important this service is.Artan Martinaj, the business manager for the local ATU in Hartford, said the hardest part for him is seeing drivers using diapers because one of the drivers was suspended previously for urinating behind a bush.

Were fighting a war and we dont know who is our enemy, Martinaj said.

He said when a doctor walks into a room they know a patient is sick, but bus drivers dont know who may or may not be carrying the coronavirus.

Nobody deserves to be treated like animals, Martinaj said.

Asked earlier in the day Friday whether drivers would be allowed to use the bathrooms at restaurants when they reopen for outdoor service on May 20, Paul Mounds, Gov. Ned Lamonts chief of staff, said theres nothing that would prohibit the restrooms from being open.
But beyond the partisan considerations, a broad cross-section of congressional scholars, parliamentary experts and former officials warn that the decision could have unintended and long-lasting consequences, altering the course of the body in fundamental ways that few rules changes in the last two centuries have.

Most agree the shift to remote voting is unlikely to prompt a real constitutional challenge. Even if some third party were to sue to try to stop the plan, the courts tend to be reluctant to second-guess the ability of either chamber of Congress to set its own rules and function as it sees fit.

The more nagging questions, even to those who support the changes, have to do with what happens next. What will become of the in-person, back slapping, ear-whispering, wheeling and dealing that powers the Congress?

Even if that is not a requirement, the institution is built on that practice and that understanding, said Michael Stern, a former senior legal counsel to the House who writes about congressional legal issues. It is not built upon the idea that members can sort of legislate independently from each other.

He added, There is a pretty strong argument that if you cut that out, you are losing something, and you may not know how significant it is until its gone.

Losses may be hard to measure. Lawmakers, who are outfitted with large staffs employed to offer expert advice and draft the finer points of bills, nonetheless often do much of their most consequential legislative work in person. They hammer out a compromise amendment in a hushed conversation during a committee meeting. They provoke debates. They whip votes on the floor of the House, find unexpected allies and have to explain themselves, face to face, to their peers when they go back on their word.

Daniel Schuman, the policy director of Demand Progress, a progressive organization that presses for government transparency and accountability, said the absence of such interactions would accelerate trends in the modern Congress that have already concentrated power in the hands of the majority  particularly the speaker  at the expense of committees and ad hoc policy alliances between like-minded Republicans and Democrats.
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The Delhi government has suggested opening of metro services from next week, but only for government employees and people engaged in essential services, even as it recommended that religious places, gyms and cinema halls remain closed during the fourth phase of the lockdown.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal also said though the number of COVID-19 cases will increase due to relaxations in the lockdown post May 17, the Delhi government has made sufficient arrangements of hospitals, intensive care units, ambulances and ventilators.

The Kejriwal government has launched an exercise to draft standard operating procedures for the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown's upcoming phase, officials said.

The number of coronavirus cases in the national capital mounted to 8,895 on Friday and the death toll climbed to 123, a health bulletin said.

It said cumulative death figures refer to fatalities where primary cause of death was found to be COVID-19, as per the reports of the Death Audit Committee on the basis of case sheets received from various hospitals.

Transport Minister Kailash Gahlot held a high-level meeting with officers to formulate a strategy for the fourth phase of the lockdown, while Health Minister Satyendar Jain told reporters that in the times to come, one will have to learn to live with the coronavirus.

The nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25 to April 14, then extended to May 3 and again to May 17 to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"There was a time when we all thought that this pandemic will be over by May 1 due to summer. But now we have seen that in the Latin American countries also the pandemic is increasing.

"The temperature of these countries is very high. This shows that we have to learn to live with COVID-19," Jain said.

On the Delhi government's stand on resumption of economic activities, he said it feels that there should be a balance between the fight against COVID-19 and economic activities.

"We are fighting against COVID-19 with full effort but now we have to start economic activities. Therefore, the measures should be followed. When the lockdown was imposed, at that time we were not prepared to fight this pandemic but now we have prepared ourselves to fight this pandemic," Jain said stressed.

The Delhi government on Thursday submitted suggestions to the Centre advocating significant opening of economic activities. This included starting of metro services.

However, only central and Delhi government employees and people engaged in essential services will be permitted to use the metro service, Kejriwal said in his suggestions to the Centre.

It has also recommended opening of all shops in markets, but on odd-even basis.

The Delhi government has suggested that all cinema halls, gymnasiums, swimming pools, theatres and bars will remain closed. Even barber shops, spas and salons will be prohibited from operating.

Movement of individuals engaged in all non-essential activities will be prohibited between 9 pm to 5 am, the recommendations said.

On starting metro services, a standard operating procedure (SOP) for safe operation of metro trains and buses was discussed in a meeting attended by Gahlot and top officers of the transport department and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC).

Gahlot said the decision to resume Delhi Metro services will be taken by the central government.

Sources said whenever the metro services are ordered to be resumed, there will be thermal scanners to test temperature of commuters, sanitisers and stickers on social distancing norms pasted on seats and platform floors.

On regular days, the average daily ridership of the DMRC is over 26 lakh.

"Discussed SOPs for safe opening of Delhi metro & buses with officials of @TransportDelhi, @OfficialDMRC, @dtchq_delhi, @DimtsLtd @DDC_Delhi & experts from @WRIIndia. If central govt. allows, Delhi is confident of running public TPT under the leadership of @ArvindKejriwal," Gahlot said in a tweet.

The minister said that public cooperation will be key to the successful resumption of transport services.

"Social distancing, contactless ticketing and disinfection will be the three pillars of our strategy to run public transport safely. And all of this will be possible only if people of Delhi cooperate. Delhi will be back on its feet only if people and the govt work together," he said in another tweet.

Gahlot said weekly passes and use of electronic ticketing machines to minimise contact, alternate seating arrangements to maintain social distancing and thermal screening devices will be ensured in DTC and cluster buses.

He said the number of passengers on a bus will be kept to around 20 to ensure proper social distancing. Also, civil defence volunteers, marshals and enforcement personnel will be deployed at bus queue shelters to implement social distancing, the minister added.

Since the city government reopened a handful of outlets on May 4 amid the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, Delhiites have consumed liquor worth around Rs 170 crore in 10 days



An official said that the Delhi government has earned an additional Rs 70 crore from the sale on account of Special Corona Fee".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Adam Sandlers company, Happy Madison Productions, which Sandler founded around twenty years ago, recently produced a new Netflix comedy. The Wrong Missy stars Orange Is the New Black alum Lauren Lapkus, and also features actors David Spade and Rob Schneider. But what is the Netflix film The Wrong Missy about?

The Wrong Missy comes from Adam Sandlers production company, Happy Madison Productions

David Spade as Tim Morris and Lauren Lapkus as Missy in The Wrong Missy | Katrina Marcinowski/NETFLIX

The Los Angeles Times explained that, in the Adam Sandler-produced The Wrong Missy, David Spade plays Tim Morris, a man who cant get over his former fiancee. Tim goes on an arranged blind date with a woman named Melissa (Lauren Lapkus), described as an antic, eccentric, unpredictable handful. Then, Tim encounters another Melissa (played by Molly Sims), and develops some chemistry.

Before a corporate retreat to Hawaii, he means to invite Sims Melissa but texts Lapkus Melissa by mistake, the Times recap continued. By the time he realizes the mix-up, its too late. Thus sets off an interesting, to say the least, trip.

Adam Sandler doesnt direct or even star in the movie but his influence is all over The Wrong Missy. The Los Angeles Daily News noted:

 while Sandler himself doesnt appear in it, the movie that debuts on Netflix on Wednesday, May 13 has Happy Madison veterans on screen  in addition to Spade, such regulars as Rob Schneider, Nick Swardson, and Jackie Sandler, Adam Sandlers wife  and off.

Also, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, the Wrong Missy script is written by Chris Pappas and Kevin Barnett, who wrote the 2016 Spade-Sandler vehicle The Do-Over.

Cast member Lauren Lapkus steals the show in The Wrong Missy

But the standout comedian from The Wrong Missy is actress Lauren Lapkus. She previously appeared in Between Two Ferns, Orange Is the New Black and Crashing. Lapkus told the Daily News about what it was like to shoot the Netflix film.

One thing thats really nice is that there is a feeling of family within the production because a lot of people are actually related, The Wrong Missy star explained. But even if theyre not related, theyve worked together for like 20 years.

Lapkus was completely onboard with The Wrong Missy because of David Spade. The actress, whose background is in improv comedy, told the publication that she had grown up watching [Spade] on Saturday Night Live.

It was really, really cool to get to work with him, she continued. Hes just so funny, and hes extremely kind. Lapkus went on:

That was the main push behind me going to the audition, but once I really got into the material and got to do the movie it was so fun because this role is just so crazy. Missy truly can say anything, and shes just living on another planet, so its very fun to play a character like that.

The 2020 Netflix movie gets ambivalent reviews

As most reviewers agree, the 2020 film is a fun romp, mostly fueled by Lapkus great lines  but its not a must-see.

Lauren Lapkus and Rob Schneider in The Wrong Missy | Katrina Marcinowski/NETFLIX

The Wrong Missy is a lightweight throwaway, the kind of movie it is difficult to suggest one actually choose to watch, but if your algorithm somehow lands on it provides a certain harmless diversion, the Times critic penned.

Within a day of its release, The Wrong Missy was already trending No. 1 on Netflix U.S. So, it seems like people need a laugh.
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Linkedin Olivia Macharis and Nadim Farajalla (The Jakarta Post) Project Syndicate/Beirut  Fri, May 15, 2020 11:05 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8379a2 3 Opinion hand-washing,climate-change,climate-change-Indonesia,COVID-19,coronavirus,inequality Free

The COVID-19 crisis has highlighted the fragility of the world order. Governments have sought to limit the spread of the virus through lockdowns and travel restrictions, which have stalled economies and created a global recession. Poorer countries, lacking the resources and resilience to mitigate the pandemic, will be hit hardest. Like climate change, COVID-19 will exacerbate global inequalities.

That parallel offers valuable lessons. As with shifting weather patterns and loss of intact ecosystems and biodiversity, COVID-19 is a threat multiplier. Just as policymakers address the short-term effects of greenhouse gases and fossil fuels, governments have scrambled to address the immediate health and economic consequences of the virus, while overlooking broader security risks. And yet, as with climate change, ignoring the socio-political dimensions of the crisis leads to increased instability, extremism, migration, and outbreaks of new or recurring epidemics.

The spread of COVID-19 will affect sections of society most vulnerable to climate change. Disadvantaged populations face higher health risks because of a lack of access to adequate water, sanitation, and health facilities. The poor, homeless, or displaced often lack the ability to self-isolate in the absence of suitable homes, job security, or a social safety net. In the United States, for instance, death rates have been disproportionately high among African-Americans, a reflection of longstanding structural inequalities.

Read also: Hand washing to counter COVID-19 still a luxury for Indonesias urban poor

The effect of COVID-19 on food security also is similar to that of climate change. Disenfranchised communities suffer more from the consequences of disruptions to supply chains and a tightening of international trade. The livelihoods of small-scale farmers, pastoralists, and fishermen are adversely affected as well, while small and medium-size enterprises may be forced into bankruptcy or closure, driving low-income and middle-class citizens into poverty.

The ominous consequences dont stop there. As with climate change, the pandemics destruction of livelihoods will reduce the opportunity costs of resorting to violence or may even create economic incentives to join armed groups, heightening the risk of conflict. The potential for violence is especially high in fragile political systems, within communities that have a history of conflict, and among the politically marginalized.

Governments inadequate or irresponsible handling of the COVID-19 crisis, of which Brazil and Nicaragua offer textbook examples, will strain relations with citizens and lead to increased public concern and dissatisfaction. It would not be surprising for tensions to culminate in civil unrest on a broader level, given the number of countries where food and water shortages, triggered by the states failure to adapt to climate-related setbacks, have fueled social upheaval.

There is also a serious risk that official mismanagement of the public-health crisis will marginalize populations even more and increase tensions along geographical, ethnic, or sectarian lines.

Likewise, people nursing grievances against their governments may exploit the pandemic to undermine the states authority. In the Lake Chad region, devastating droughts and a lack of government relief led to increased radicalization and recruitment efforts by Boko Haram and other jihadist militias.

And, as with climate change, political elites aiming to mobilize support or conceal shortcomings can manipulate the crisis by scapegoating, which may cause more severe forms of violence. In Algeria, the government has exploited the health crisis to suppress the opposition, while nationalist politicians in the US and Europe have blamed migrants and foreigners for the spread of the virus, fueling stigmatization, discrimination, and racist attacks.

Read also: Hand-washing: A luxury millions of Yemenis can't afford

Indeed, many have noted the risk that the crisis may provoke a profound backlash against refugees. With camps for internally displaced persons particularly susceptible to outbreaks of contagious diseases, new inflows of people fleeing conflict or the effects of climate change may face stiffer resistance from authorities and local communities. At the Greek-Turkish border, security forces fired live ammunition and tear gas at refugees, demonstrating the lengths to which national governments will go to repel asylum seekers and migrants.

The COVID-19 pandemic has confronted the world with a test that it seems to be failing. Cooperation and inclusive approaches to addressing the multifaceted consequences of the crisis have been lacking. Policymakers cannot focus only on containing the pandemic, but must also invest in the future. That includes pursuing rapid, far-reaching, and unprecedented changes to limit global warming and strengthen our collective response to the threats it poses.

The world may now be more receptive to such reforms. We have no choice. While we may be able to manage the COVID-19 pandemic with social distancing, new antiviral drugs, and eventually, one hopes, a vaccine, climate change represents an even larger existential threat, because its effects have no defined treatment or lifespan.

There may be a reset button for the post-pandemic global economy, but there is none for the planet on which it depends.

***

Olivia Macharis and Nadim Farajalla are respectively researcher and program director of the Climate Change and Environment Program at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
Keeping the world running amid the Covid-19 pandemic are the front line warriors such as medical professionals, who are fighting this battle equipped with a constant supply of PPE kits, masks and gloves. And hundreds of people working at the airports have devoted themselves to smoothen the process of import, transport and distribution of such products.

At Delhi airport, there are almost 400 people working round the clock to avoid glitches in the supply. As a part of the governments Lifeline Udan initiative, as of May 11 with the help of 506 flights, 862.39 tons of essential cargo have been transported to different parts of the country.

Convincing their families has been the biggest challenge for most. I havent met my mother for 20 days, and for their safety, I prefer staying away. She has been worried for me but understands the importance. I always wanted to serve the nation and this is my chance, says Anshul Gupta, project head (medical supplies) and cargo manager.

Sanskiriti Yadav, assistant manager, cargo, says that she is staying in Delhi, away from her Lucknow-based parents, but is disheartened at the behaviour of her neighbours. I walk four kilometers daily to reach my workplace. My neighbours look at me in disgust and ask me to stay at home for their safety, but what Im doing is for the safety of millions, adds Yadav. To keep my team motivated, as some havent met their families for weeks, we have meetings and sessions every morning. I tell them to perform yoga and have immunity boosters. They are informed on a daily basis about precautions to be taken during this time, explains Gupta.

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Police in Georgia have launched a homicide investigation after the bodies of two stepsisters with bags over their heads and their clothes in tatters were found under a highway overpass earlier this week.

Vanita 'Vera' Richardson, 19, and Truvenia 'Bean' Campbell, 31, were discovered unresponsive beneath the East Rome Bypass bridge near the bank of the Etowah River Wednesday morning, Floyd County Chief Deputy Coroner Connie Chandler confirmed.

A Georgia Bureau of Investigation press release said the sisters deaths were ruled homicides. The cause of the victims' deaths were not immediately released afer the completion of their autopsies.

Vanita 'Vera' Richardson, 19 (left), and Truvenia 'Bean' Campbell, 31 (right), were found dead with plastic bags over their heads underneath an overpass in Georgia Wednesday

A work crew made the shocking discovery beneath the East Rome Bypass bridge near the bank of the Etowah River

Early reports said their victims' clothing was in tatters and there were spent shell casings nearby

Two maintenance workers came across the bodies at around 11am while working in the area and called 911, reportedly telling a dispatcher that the women had plastic bags over their heads and that their clothing was in tatters, reported WSB-TV.

Scanner traffic indicated that spent shell casings were found at the scene, but that has not been confirmed by the authorities.

Richardson attended Armuchee High School in Rome, The Rome News-Tribune reported.

Floyd County Schools spokesperson Lenora Doss said Richardson was scheduled to graduate next weekend.

Richardson (left) was scheduled to graduate high school next weekend. The deaths of both women were ruled homicides

'We are deeply saddened and heartbroken by the news of the death of one of our students,' Doss stated. 'We extend our deepest sympathies to the Armuchee Community and her friends and family at this time.

'Our thoughts and prayers are with them. Vanita will be remembered for being a fun-loving, humble, and motivated student who was making strong plans for her future.

'Even throughout the school closures, Vanita's passing is felt by all. In particular, the staff members whose lives she touched with her caring personality and big heart.'

GBI investigators are asking anyone who may have been in the area of the overpass between Tuesday at 10.30pm and Wednesday at 11am to contact them at 1800-597-8477.
Rambana and Roache live in Silver Spring and had tried to obtain a marriage license in Montgomery County. But at that time, the courthouse there was not processing licenses due to the pandemic. The couple opened D.C. Superior Courts website and saw the court had resumed processing online applications and performing marriages. Couples do not have to be residents of the District to obtain a license, but their ceremony has to be performed in the city.
Iowa legislative leaders approved a plan for lawmakers to resume in-person work at the Capitol on June 3 with the expectation of finishing a budget and other essential work the following week.

Lawmakers, who suspended their session March 16 as part of the effort to slow the spread of the coronavirus, will operate under new health and safety guidelines approved by the Legislative Council in a telephonic meeting Thursday.

Were trying to take every precaution to make members feel comfortable coming back, House Speaker Pat Grassley, R-New Hartford, said.

However, concerns were voiced that the guidelines didnt go far enough to protect lawmakers who are elderly, have preexisting conditions or underlying health concerns.

Before entering the Capitol, legislative staff and members of the public, but not lawmakers, will be required to go through a health screening consisting of having their temperatures taken and answering a few questions.

Senate Majority Leader Jack Whitver, R-Ankeny, said lawmakers cannot be denied access to the Capitol when the Legislature is in session.

I appreciate whatever constitutional rights people think they have not to have their temperature taken, Sen. Joe Bolkcom, D-Iowa City, said, but hoped all lawmakers would wear personal protective equipment and undergo the screening as the neighborly thing to do.

There are no plans for remote voting for members who might not feel comfortable being part of a mass gathering in Des Moines, which is one of the nations COVID-19 hot spots.

Once inside the Capitol, personal protective equipment will be encouraged but not be mandatory.

Procedurally, Republicans, who control both chambers, said they will set June 5 as the second funnel deadline, which requires bills to have been approved by one chamber and a committee of the other to advance to final approval.

Whitver and Grassley said they will provide guidance on what legislation they intend to take up, but did not take a suggestion from Democrats to decide before June 3 which bills the majority party has agreed to pass.

Revenue questions

Before lawmakers return, Gov. Kim Reynolds and the legislative leaders want the Revenue Estimating Conference to meet and evaluate the states financial position before lawmakers create a fiscal year 2021 budget.

The leaders pointed to the healthy surplus and reserve accounts under their conservative budgeting practices. However, much has changed in the two months since the REC last met, Grassley said.

When the REC met in March, the three-member panel predicted state tax collections would grow by $76.1 million above the current expectation to nearly $8.091 billion for the current year. The panel lowered the fiscal 2021 outlook to 1.8 percent growth  nearly $8.237 billion, which was $12.3 million less than its December 2019 estimate.

The Legislative Services Agency reported Thursday the year-over-year decline in state tax revenue from March 19 to May 13 was $531 million  34 percent.

Total tax receipts Thursday were 2.37 percent below May 14, 2019, with personal and corporate income taxes each off nearly 7 percent. Sales taxes were running 5.2 percent ahead of this point in 2019.

Much of the decrease is due to Iowa extending the deadline for paying income taxes from April 30 to July 31, the Legislative Services Agency said.

The numbers are really bad, but it doesnt seem to be permanent yet, said Jeff Robinson, a senior tax analyst for the agency.

Changes

In addition to health screenings for the public before entering the Capitol, the Legislative Council said social distancing guidelines should be practiced. If thats not possible, people are encouraged, not mandated, to wear a face mask or shield, which will be made available at the Capitol.

Hand sanitizer stations will be positioned throughout the Capitol.

Committee meetings will take place in either the Senate or House chamber and be livestreamed on the legislative website, https://www.legis.iowa.gov/, and may be viewed on television monitors throughout the Capitol.

House-Senate budget subcommittee meetings will be discontinued. Budget bills will go through each chambers Appropriations Committee.

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[May 15, 2020] INVESTIGATION ALERT: The Schall Law Firm Announces it is Investigating Claims Against Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company and Encourages Investors with Losses of $100,000 to Contact the Firm

The Schall Law Firm, a national shareholder rights litigation firm, announces that it is investigating claims on behalf of investors of Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company ("Hamilton Beach" or "the Company") (NYSE: HBB) for violations of the securities laws. The investigation focuses on whether the Company issued false and/or misleading statements and/or failed to disclose information pertinent to investors. Hamilton Beach announced on May 11, 2020, that it would fail to file its quarterly report for the first quarter 2020 in a timely manner. The Company stated that the delay was caused by "certain accounting irregularities with respect to th timing of recognition of selling and marketing expenses and the classification of certain expenditures within the statement of operations at its Mexican subsidiary." The Company added that its "Audit Review Committee has commenced an internal investigation" focusing on "the realizability of certain assets of the Mexican subsidiary." Based on this news, shares of Hamilton Beach fell by almost 9% on the same day.



If you are a shareholder who suffered a loss, click here to participate. We also encourage you to contact Brian Schall of the Schall Law Firm, 1880 Century Park East, Suite 404, Los Angeles, CA (News - Alert) 90067, at 310-301-3335, to discuss your rights free of charge. You can also reach us through the firm's website at www.schallfirm.com, or by email at [email protected].

The class in this case has not yet been certified, and until certification occurs, you are not represented by an attorney. If you choose to take no action, you can remain an absent class member. The Schall Law Firm represents investors around the world and specializes in securities class action lawsuits and shareholder rights litigation. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and rules of ethics. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005588/en/

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Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  State prosecutors recommended criminal charges against a teacher whose online post offered a 50 million reward for anyone who would kill President Rodrigo Duterte.

The Department of Justice in a May 13 resolution ruled that the warrantless arrest of public high school teacher Ronnel Mas was invalid, but added that the "defect" was "untimely cured" by his own admission to the media that he posted a bounty for Duterte's slay.

"It is undeniable that the arrest of Ronnel Mas made by the NBI (National Bureau of Investigation)-Dagupan operatives does not fall within the ambit of warrantless arrest contemplated by the law," read the order signed by Assistant State Prosecutor Jeannette Dacpano and approved by Prosecutor General Benedicto Malcontento.

For a warrantless arrest to be valid, the prosecutors said the Rules of Court requires that the offense "has just been committed," contrary to what happened in Mas' case. The teacher posted his tweet on May 5, and he was tracked down and apprehended six days later in Sta. Cruz, Zambales.

"Inciting to sedition is not a continuous crime for which the offender may be arrested without a warrant duly issued by the proper authority," the prosecutors stressed. They said the arresting officer did not even have conclusive evidence that Mas was behind the tweet and not someone impersonating him.

"Be that as it may, the defect of Mas's warrantless arrest was ultimately cured when Mas extra-judicially admitted to the media that he indeed personally posted the provacative text on his own Twitter account," the prosecutors said.

They were referring to Mas' apology where he admitted to posting the tweet to catch people's attention. This paved the way for the prosecutors to recommend to the Regional Trial Court of Zambales the filing of a complaint against him for inciting to sedition. The crime is punishable with up to six years in prison.

"The words 'I will give 50 million reward kung sino makakapatay kay Duterte. #NotoABSCBNShutDown' clearly suggests violent means to topple the Duterte administration," the prosecutors ruled.

They added that the reward offer "is rousing commotion or disturbance in the State."

The Alliance of Concerned Teachers has called for Mas' release, saying he was only expressing "the anger and frustration of the hungry masses" amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra, in an earlier statement, said that although Mas has apologized, this does not mean he can escape criminal responsibility.

At least four people across the country have been accosted by police for online posts offering a bounty for anyone who can kill Duterte, as well as a post questioning Senator Christopher "Bong" Go's pervasive presence in Malacanang.

READ: Police acted on 'good reason' in arresting online critics of Duterte  PNP

Authorities have since defended their actions, with the Philippine National Police saying officers were just acting based on evidence, and the National Bureau of Investigation saying they are also hunting down those who made threats against Vice President Leni Robredo and other officials.
The South Delhi district administration on Friday wrote to the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), raising issues faced by its students stranded in the NCR due to the Covid-19 lockdown. The district administration has suggested the university allow these students back into the campus taking all precautions.

In a letter addressed to JNU vice-chancellor Jagadesh Kumar and registrar Pramod Kumar, sub-divisional magistrate (Mehrauli) office wrote, Its to inform that several emails have been received in this office from the students of JNU regarding denied of entry into the campus due to fear of COVID-19 infection. Students have also informed that they are facing difficulties as their money have exhausted and requested their entry into the campus to stay in their respective allotted hostels [sic].

Keeping in view the severity of the situation, JNU may approach the district surveillance officer for medical screening of the students who are willing to enter the campus to avoid hardships to them at this critical juncture [sic], the letter added.

The university had, on March 19, asked the students to vacate their hostels citing the lockdown announced by the Delhi government. Following this, several students had left for their homes or their friends or relatives places. The remaining students were allowed to stay back in hostels after the nationwide lockdown was announced on March 24 and public transport facilities were suspended. The university, however, had prohibited the entry and exit of students from the campus citing safety measures.

JNU Students Union (JNUSU) president Aishe Ghosh said that the union has written to the administration requesting them to allow the students stranded in the NCR back to their hostels. The students can be screened and can be asked to quarantine themselves for the appropriate amount of time. The campus has adequate space that can be utilised as a quarantine facility. We have written to the district magistrate office as well, she said.

South Delhi district magistrate BM Mishra said that considering the hardships of stranded students, his office has suggested the JNU administration allow them entry to the campus.

A final-year PhD scholar, who did not wish to be quoted, said that she had to leave the campus on March 21.I had come to Munirka to live with a friend, thinking that Id be back to the campus within a few days. When the lockdown was extended, her parents took her back to their home in Noida. Now Ive been living here alone and the landlord is asking me for the rent. I cant afford the rent. Im totally out of money, she said.

Both the JNU vice-chancellor and registrar did not respond to calls and texts for comment. A senior official, who wished not to be named, said, The university will discuss this and will soon make a decision keeping in mind the safety and security of the JNU community.

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Sonoma County is joining two nearby counties in asking Gov. Gavin Newsoms office for an advancement to Phase 2 of the states coronavirus reopening plan, saying the governors mandated benchmarks set the bar unreasonably high.

The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors is expected to vote on the variance request on Monday. Solano and Napa County have also filed documents asking to reopen more quickly. Advancing to Phase 2 of the states plan would allow them a quicker resumption of business for dine-in restaurants, stores, shopping malls and other businesses, while advising people to heed shelter-in-place mandates and social-distancing guidelines.

Its a reasonable request with the understanding that we protect the lives of the people who live here first and foremost, but we also acknowledge that health is beyond just physical, Sonoma County Supervisor Shirlee Zane told The Chronicle.

Eighteen California counties, the majority in rural areas, have received the green light from Newsoms office to begin reopening their local economies under Phase 2, because they met all the criteria, including: no more than one case per 10,000 residents for 14 days, the capacity for 1.5 tests daily per 1,000 residents, 15 contact tracers per 100,000 residents, a controlled hospital capacity and zero COVID-19 related deaths for 14 days.

Thirty other counties have also filed for variances with the state.

Zane said she believes the states criteria are based less on science than politics, and the bar is set unreasonably high for counties like hers. This is about the spirit of the law, rather than the letter, Zane said. We have definitely met that criteria in a broader sense.

Sonoma County has one of the lowest case rates in the Bay Area  less than 2 cases per 10,000 residents  but did have a COVID-19 death within the last 14 days, a 90-year-old woman who had pre-existing conditions. It also has a higher number of positive testing results, and 50 contact tracers for the region, falling short on both counts of the benchmarks set by the state. But the criteria have been a moving target, county Supervisor David Rabbitt said, and Sonoma County hopes to work with the state to re-evaluate the regulations in the context of progress the county has already made. Hes concerned about inessential businesses in light of what stands to be lost if the shutdown continues in Sonoma County.

He expects the tourism industry, which in 2019 saw 10.8 million visitors, to be the sector hit hardest.

Sonoma County residents say the economic ramifications of the pandemic feel weighted in the context of what the area has already gone through from wildfires in recent years.

There is a sense that weve survived something that the Bay Area has not, have gone through something that the Bay Area has not, so we get disaster in a different way, said the Rev. Lindsey Bell-Kerr, a Methodist pastor who lives in Santa Rosa. In some ways, its like  we have suffered, so we have a right to reopen.

Bell-Kerr, 35, has been noticing that attitude in the cultural discourse around reopening. Shes worried about the potential, especially because she works mostly with vulnerable communities, including homeless people and seniors. We havent seen a spike here in Sonoma County so theres this push to reopen, she said. But not having reopened is why we havent seen a risk. ... We have to imagine what it would look like if we did reopen.

Scott Strazzante / The Chronicle

But many residents maintain that taking the risk is not only paramount for supporting the economy of Sonoma County but also in controlling other negative health outcomes sprouting from the virus.

Bill Clark, a data scientist who lives in Santa Rosa, has had numerous conversations with his wife, a nurse, about the inevitability of their infections  theyve even wondered whether theyd be better off contracting the virus now, while the hospitals are far below capacity, than later when a surge might handcuff the system.

Considering the improbability of a vaccine in the next year and the speed with which the virus moves, Clark, 46, believes its a matter of when people will get it, not if. He thinks a fluid and reopened system that works in tandem with hospital capacity is the most rational decision. Having the virus spread slowly, he says, doesnt serve any good purpose, and only delays the inevitable, while fueling worse outcomes for those sheltering in place who have lost their jobs or are stuck at home.

Everyone keeps trying to make it about money versus lives, Clark said. I think of it in terms of lives versus lives; there are real consequences in terms of peoples health.

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.

The Napa County Board of Supervisors, at a special meeting Thursday, approved a report from health officer Dr. Karen Relucio affirming that the county is ready to allow more businesses to reopen. County officials are seeking approval from the California Department of Public Health to move into the next phase.

If approved, the county would be able to open dine-in restaurants, retail in-store service, and schools and child care facilities. The county has 83 total cases and a positive test rate of 2.8%. Of its three deaths, one was reported in the last 14 days, on May 10, but Relucio noted that indicator cannot be viewed in isolation.

Napa County, like Sonoma County, has also requested permission to open wineries and tasting rooms  which would be contingent on state approval.

We do need to give businesses an opportunity to bring their employees back, said Supervisor Alfredo Pedroza. Its about a recognition that our local conditions allow us to move forward  I am very confident in what we have put forward today.

Solano County Supervisor Erin Hannigan said the board has asked county public health officer, Dr. Bela Matyas  who signed off on their attestation of readiness  to question the governors office about whether religious establishments can be added during Phase 2 instead of Phase 3.

Officials in Solano County reported two more deaths related to the coronavirus Thursday, bringing the countys total to 14, seven in the last four days. Hannigan said a large proportion of the countys cases have been confined to an outbreak at a convalescent home in Vallejo, which the board hopes makes the case that the county has little community spread.

San Francisco Chronicle staff writer Anna Bauman contributed to this report.

Annie Vainshtein is a San Francisco Chronicle reporter. Email: avainshtein@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @annievain
The FM could announce the third economic relief package for the ailing travel, tourism and aviation sectors. All these three sectors have been badly hit since the coronavirus pandemic-hit loackdown was imposed in India. Travel and tourism, restaurants and aviation sectors companies have been practically shut for around two months now and today's announcements could allay their fears. Some common demands of these sectors are tax holiday, GST (goods and services tax) holiday and payment of salaries to the employees by the government.

Check out all the latest updates on Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman presser on BusinessToday.In live blog

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Indian Army HQ in Delhi sealed after soldier tests positive; COVID-19 cases-81,970

4.58 pm: Agriculture marketing reforms to provide marketing choices to farmers

Government to bring in law to implement agriculture marketing reforms to provide marketing choices to farmers; law will provide adequate choices to farmer to sell produce at attractive price, says FM Sitharaman.

Government to bring in law to implement agriculture marketing reforms to provide marketing choices to farmers; law will provide adequate choices to farmer to sell produce at attractive price#AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/LdnhUGoPZ1 - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.53 pm: Government will amend Essential Commodities Act to enable better price realisation for farmers; Agriculture food stuffs including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato will be deregulated, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman

4.49 pm: Essential Commodities Act (ESA) to be amended

Potatoes onions, cereals, oils to be deregulated. ESA amended to ensure that export demand dont get affected, says FM Sitharaman.

4.47 pm: Atma Nirbhar Bharat Abhiyan

In a major announcement, Government extends Operation Greens from Tomatoes, Onion and Potatoes (TOP) to all fruits and vegetables. FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces Additional Rs 500 crore for supply of all fruits and vegetables.

TOP to TOTAL In a major announcement, Government extends Operation Greens from Tomatoes, Onion and Potatoes (TOP) to ALL fruits and vegetables#AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/EGRSp9oGqe - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.43 pm: FM Nirmala Sitharaman live speech

2 lakh beekeepers to benefit from Rs 500 crore crore funding, says FM Sitharaman.

Government to implement a scheme for infrastructure development related to Beekeeping; aims to increase income for 2 lakh beekeepers with special thrust on capacity building of women#AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/YifQlh39uy - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.40 pm: Rs 4,000 crore funds for herbal cultivation

To promote herbal cultivation in India Government commits Rs 4000 crore; move aims to cover 10 lakh hectare under herbal cultivation in 2 years; corridor of medicinal plants to come up across banks of Ganga, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

4.36 pm: FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces Speical animal disease control programme

100% vaccination for Rs 53 crore live stock. Rs 13,300 crore outlay for vaccination of 53 crore livestock such as cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and pig population in India, says FM Sitharaman.

4.34 pm: Rs 20,000 crore for Fishermen through Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY)

Government to launch Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana for integrated, sustainable, inclusive development of marine and inland fisheries to plug critical gaps in fisheries value chain; move will provide employment to over 55 lakh persons & double exports to Rs 1 lakh crore, announced FM Sitharaman.

4.31 pm: Atma Nirbhar Bharat: Rs 10,000 crore scheme for formalisation of Micro Food Enterprises (MFE)

Aiming to implement PM's vision of 'Vocal for Local with Global outreach', a scheme will be launched to help 2 lakh Micro Food Enterprises; Improved health and safety standards, integration with retail markets and improved incomes to be key focus areas, says Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

4.28 pm: Agriculture gets push

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman says, "In a move to strenghten infrastructure in agriculture, financing facility of Rs. 1 lakh crore will be provided for funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate & aggregation points."

In a move to strenghten infrastructure in agriculture, financing facility of Rs. 1 lakh crore will be provided for funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate & aggregation points#AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/I6XsQI6EE9 - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.23 pm: Rs 1 lakh crore for strengtheing farm gate infrastructure: FM Sitharaman

4.20 pm: Govt's Rs 20 lakh crore mega booster

To help Fisheries sector, operations of Marine Capture Fisheries and Aquaculture has been relaxed to cover Inland Fisheries, says Finance Nirmala Sitharaman.

To help Fisheries sector, operations of Marine Capture Fisheries and Aquaculture has been relaxed to cover Inland Fisheries #AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/9FIctB0a5F - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.17 pm: FM Nirmala Sitharaman live speech

Funds transfer worth Rs 18,700 crores has been done under PM KISAN in past 2 months and PM Fasal Bima Yojana claims worth Rs 6,400 crores released in past 2 months: FM Sitharaman.

Funds transfer worth Rs 18,700 crores has been done under PM KISAN in past 2 months and PM Fasal Bima Yojana claims worth Rs 6,400 crores released in past 2 months: Union Minister @nsitharaman#AatmaNirbharDeshpic.twitter.com/hQlqbiwlG0 - PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

4.13 pm: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman speech

Rs 18,700 crore cash transfers to farmers during lockdown, says FM Sitharaman.

4.11 pm: 11 relief measuers announced in support of agri, and allied services

4.08 pm: FM Nirmala Sitharaman announces relief measures for Agriculture and allied activties

4.05 pm: FM Nirmala Sitharaman speech begins

Finance Minister begins media briefing on 3rd tranche of Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus package.

3.52 PM: Aviation sector's demands

Emergency relief followed by a thorough revival package to bring the sector back on its feet

Six-month moratorium on working capital loans taken by the airlines

Cash infusion to support part-payment of salaries for 6 months Moratorium on outstanding payments like airport charges, aviation turbine fuel, GST

Bring ATF under GST framework

Open credit lines from banks to support the sector's revival

Direct cash injection in form of grants if lockdown is extended

3.47 PM: Restaurant industry's demands

Unemployment pay cover to all employees (covered under the ESIC Act) in full till lockdown and 50 per cent post that till March 2021; can be a mix of cash and free food grains

Extending moratorium on retail loans by employees to help them with cash flows.

Complete waiver of all license fees and minimum rent for utilities for six months

Postpone renewals of licences, permits and registrations

Restoration of input tax credit on GST. This is long-standing demand of the industry

3.40 PM: Travel and tourism industry's demands

3-6 months additional moratorium (on top of RBI's three months moratorium) on all working capital

Short term, interest-free loans for rebuilding business and immediate transmission to hotels, tour operators, travel agents (online and offline)

Deferment of all statutory dues such as GST, advance tax payments, provident fund, ESIC, and customs duties for at least 12 months

3.38 PM: The tourism sector accounts for 10 per cent of the GDP, and gives employment to 3.8 crore people directly and indirectly.

3.35 PM: Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference on Aatma Nirbhar Bharat at 4 PM.

Union Finance Minister @nsitharaman will address a press conference on #AatmanirbharBharat#EconomicPackage



: National Media Centre, New Delhi



: 4:00 PM



Watch on PIB's https://t.co/s3MYzJJmjV  PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

3.30 PM: "We have made about 30 demands in our presentations. Though we haven't heard anything from the government, we have kept our fingers crossed," Akshay Kumar, Vice-Chairman of industry body FAITH (Federation of Associations in Indian Tourism & Hospitality), say.
Burma Lockdown Lifted in Village That Reported Myanmar's First COVID-19 Case

A Chin State government official visits Keptel Village in Tedim Township on April 14 to provide food and drinks at the entrance of the village. / IPRD Tedim

MANDALAY  The Chin State government on Friday lifted the lockdown in Keptel Village in Tedim Township, where one of the countrys first COVID-19 cases was reported.

Keptel was placed under community quarantine on March 21, after one of the countrys first confirmed COVID-19 patients, a 36-year-old groom-to-be who had recently returned from the US, visited the village and held prayer services there ahead of his wedding. The village was placed in lockdown on March 23.

However, government officials said some other restrictions such as travel restrictions are still imposed.

Weve lifted the lockdown. The locals can go outside of the village but they will not be allowed to stay outside of their village overnight. And they must wear masks, wash their hands and take their body temperature whenever they go out or come back, U Soe Htet, the Chin State municipal minister, told The Irrawaddy.

Travel restrictions are still imposed in Chin State, especially in Tedim and Hakha, where confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported.

The groom was discharged from Tedim Hospital at the end of April, after laboratory results showed he tested negative for COVID-19.

Four confirmed cases in Tedim, all of whom had contact with the groom, have recovered and tested negative and are awaiting for another lab result at Tedim Hospital. One other case in Hakha also tested negative after making a recovery and was discharged from Hakha Hospital. However, she has to stay in hotel quarantine until a final lab test shows a negative result.

We took another swab today of all the cases in Tedim. If they test negative this time, we will discharge them from the hospital and will keep them in hotel quarantine. The case in Hakha was given a final swab test, U Soe Htet added.

Chin State has recorded six positive cases, including Case No. 1, the groom. Four cases related to Case No. 1 are being treated at Tedim General Hospital. Case No. 150, who tested positive after coming back from China, was being treated at Hakha General Hospital.

Meanwhile, in Kalay in Sagaing Division, which borders Tedim in Chin State, four out of six confirmed cases related to Case No. 1 were discharged from Kalay General Hospital on Friday.

The two remaining confirmed cases at Kalay General Hospital are in good health and both have tested negative once.

The patients are being kept under medical surveillance at Kalay General Hospital and their health is stable.

A semi-lockdown and stay-at-home order in Kalay Township were lifted effective Friday.

There are still some community restrictions on households in Tedim that had contact with Case No. 1 and his mother.

You may also like these stories:

Myanmar to Reopen Schools in July with COVID-19 Challenges

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Hanoi, May 14  Vietnam Technological and Commercial Joint Stock Bank (Techcombank) on Thursday received full disbursement of its inaugural US$500 million syndicated loan facility.

The facility was signed on April 17 and approved by the State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) on April 29 this year.

The facility is a three-year senior unsecured loan that offers an interest margin of 1.50 percent per annum over USD London Inter-Bank Offered Rate (LIBOR). Loan proceeds are for general corporate and working capital purposes.

The overwhelming success of this transaction affirms the international lenders solid confidence in Techcombanks robust credit profile and customer-centric business strategy.

As part of Techcombanks regular funding plan, the syndication was launched in mid-February this year, at an original deal size of $300 million.

Due to the overwhelming response from the international syndication market, the facility amount was increased to $500 million to help accommodate the oversubscription.

A total of 24 financial institutions  headquartered in Australia, China, India, Singapore, Taiwan, and the United Arab Emirates  joined the transaction.

The facility was coordinated by United Overseas Bank Limited (UOB), who also acted as the facility agent for the transaction.

UOB, together with Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Limited, CTBC Bank Co., Ltd, First Abu Dhabi Bank PJSC and Taishin International Bank Co., Ltd.  collectively known as the Mandated Lead Arrangers, Underwriters and Bookrunners (MLAUBs)  jointly underwrote and arranged the facility for Techcombank.

Lim Lay Wah, UOBs managing director and global head of financial institutions group  which includes banks, non-bank financial institutions, global property funds and financial sponsors, said, At UOB, we have been steadfast in our commitment to contributing to Vietnams economic growth and the continued development of the financial industry for more than 20 years.

UOB is pleased to have been entrusted with coordinating Techcombanks inaugural syndicated offshore loan facility. This landmark fundraising deal is the single largest syndicated loan transaction secured by a financial institution in Vietnam, Lim Lay Wah said.

Techcombanks track record in the industry enabled it to attract the largest syndicate of lenders for a Vietnamese financial institution to-date at the close of primary syndication.

Our support for Techcombank is an example of how we help our financial institution clients achieve their business goals by identifying and structuring the most appropriate financing solutions for them, she added.

Phung Quang Hung, managing director and standing deputy CEO of Techcombank, said, We are delighted with the successful closing of our debut international syndicated loan as planned despite the turbulence caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The success of this transaction in this challenging environment is a testament to the international markets confidence in Techcombank and marks a major milestone in the banks plans to diversify its funding.

On behalf of Techcombank, I would like to thank all the banks involved for their commitment, support and diligence to ensure the success of this remarkable transaction, he said.

Established in 1993, Techcombank is one of the largest joint-stock banks in Vietnam and a leading bank in Asia.

Techcombank pursues a proven customer-centric strategy in providing a broad range of tailor-made banking solutions and services to almost eight million retail and corporate customers in Vietnam through an extensive network of over 300 transaction offices across the country and its market-leading digital banking services.

The banks ecosystem approach implemented across multiple chosen key economic sectors further differentiates Techcombank in one of the fastest-growing economies in the world.

Techcombank is rated Ba3 by Moodys and BB- from S&P and was named Best Bank in Vietnam by Euromoney in 2018, Vietnam House of the Year by Asia Risk and Best Payments Bank in Vietnam by The Asian Banker in 2019.

In the same year, the bank ranked first among the Vietnamese banks by Basel II CAR and third among the top 500 most profitable private companies in Vietnam.

Techcombank is listed on the Ho Chi Minh Stock Exchange (HOSE) under the ticker TCB.
One of only six extant microscopes owned by Darwin is possibly the earliest he used  as well as the first to come to auction
President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new taxes on American companies like Apple to dissuade them from moving their manufacturing bases from China to countries like India and Ireland instead of the US amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with Fox Business News, Trump said that taxation was an incentive for the companies to return manufacturing bases to the US.

Apple said now they're going to go to India. They're going to do some production in India away from China, he was asked.

"If they do, you know, we gave Apple a little bit of a break because they're competing with a company that was a part of a trade deal that we made. So it was a little bit unfair to Apple, but we're not allowing this anymore. You know if we wanted to put up our own border like other countries do to us, Apple would build 100 per cent of their product in the United States. That's the way it would work, he said.

According to the New York Post, Apple is looking to shift a significant portion of its production to India from China.

Supply lines of many tech companies manufacturing in China were disrupted after the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

These... companies have to get on the ball because they're going not only to China--...--You look at where they're going--...They're going to India and they're going to Ireland and they're going all over the place, they make them," Trump said in the interview.

"So, you don't think you need to do anything in terms of incentives," he was asked.

I have to do it, Trump said.

One incentive, frankly, is to charge tax for them when they make products outside. We don't have to do much for them. They have to do it for us, Trump said. Trump said that he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US.

And now they're not fighting. These stupid supply chain that are all over the world, we have a supply chain where they're made in all different parts of the world and one little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up. I said we shouldn't have supply chains. We should have them all in the United States. We have the companies to do it. And if we don't, we can do that," he added.

Trump has routinely threatened to raise tariffs on consumer electronics during his ongoing trade war with China.
This screengrab taken from an undated handout video from Amnesty International released on May 12, 2020 shows prisoners in an overcrowded jail at an unknown location in Cambodia.

Cambodia has shrugged off a report by Amnesty International faulting a three-year-old government war on illegal drugs for systematic human rights violations and a public health crisis, saying rights need to be put aside to fight the narcotics problem.

In Substance Abuses: The Human Cost of Cambodias Anti-Drug Campaign, the London-based human rights watchdog says that the campaign has focused on detention and prosecution rather than protecting health.

In recent years, the entire region has been put to task as supplies of methamphetamine have resulted in dwindling prices and increased availability. It has surpassed heroin as the drug of choice across Southeast Asia.

The report, published Wednesday, documents how the Cambodian government has engaged in arbitrary arrests and detention, wrongful convictions, torture and other ill-treatment, in order to fight back against cheap meth.

Khieu Sopheak, a spokesman for Cambodias Ministry of Interior, rejected the AI report, telling Reuters news agency: When it is an anti-drug campaign, there is never a respect for human rights."

"During the anti-drug campaign, human rights need be put aside, so it is clean," he said. He rejected the reports evidence that police made arbitrary arrests or accepted bribes to let detainees avoid prison.

According to the report, the campaign was originally envisioned at its January 2017 start as a six-month crackdown, but was extended indefinitely. Since the beginning, at least 55,770 people have been arrested on suspicion of using or selling drugs, a large majority of whom are from poor and marginalized backgrounds.

The report was based on interviews conducted at the end of 2019, with 51 people who were arrested and detained in the crackdown, or their family members.

The accused are often treated as if they are guilty, a presumption they are almost unable to shake, the report said.

They asked me how many times I sold drugs . The police officer said if I didnt confess, he would use the taser on me again, Sreyneang, a 30-year-old Phnom Penh woman who was convicted of trafficking told AI. The report said this type of forced confession was common among those interviewed.

Sreyneang spent six months in pre-trial detention with her baby son in what the report said was inhumane conditions, and was convicted to 2.5 years for trafficking, an experience that interviewees said was characteristic of the anti-drug campaign.

In the case of every interviewee, the accused was convicted in unfair trials, was not offered bail as an alternative to pre-trial detention, and none were made aware of their rights, with only two provided free legal aid.

AI estimates that about 60 percent of Cambodias prison population are there on drug-related charges. Since the start of the campaign, the number of prisoners climbed by 78 percent, with the largest prison, called CC1, housing 9,500 inmates, about five times its capacity.

The overcrowding has made the countrys prisons a breeding ground for disease.

If one person got a respiratory infection, within a few days everyone in the cell got it, said Long, a former CC1 inmate.

Maly, a 40-year-old mother struggled to raise her daughter in her overcrowded cell in the CC2 prison.

She wanted to move around, she wanted more space, she wanted to see the outside. She wanted freedom She often got fever and flu. Because we had no space, my child normally slept on top of my body, Maly said.

Those fortunate enough to not be sent to prison were forcibly sent to what the government calls rehabilitation centers, which the report described as having conditions worse than in the countrys prisons.

Though these centers claim to treat people with drug dependence, in reality they operate as punitive and abusive detention centers, utterly lacking in medical facilities and properly trained staff. Rather than receiving evidence-based treatment, detainees are detained against their will and face systematic abuse, the report said.

People formerly interned at the centers have alleged that they and their fellow inmates experienced torture, forced labor, sexual violence, and deaths in detention while there.

The report also stated that the decision on whether to send a detainee for rehab or to press criminal charges follows no systematic pattern, but several of the interviewees spoke of being asked to pay bribes to be sent to rehab instead of facing trial.

The overcrowding in both the prisons and the rehabilitation centers in the era of COVID-19 is potentially catastrophic.

AI pointed out how other governments reduced their prison populations in response to the global epidemic by releasing non-violent and at-risk prisoners or those detained sans adequate legal basis.

In light of this public health emergency, it has never been more urgent for the Cambodian authorities to address the countrys detention overcrowding crisis, AI said.

According to the report Cambodia did the exact opposite, with arrests increasing in the early part of 2020.

Amnesty International called on Cambodia to urgently review its approach to drugs, with a priority on healthcare and the abandonment of what it called failed, abusive practices. It also called for a permanent end to the drug detention centers, with those released afforded sufficient health and social services.

Moreover, in order to fully protect the rights of people who use drugs and other affected communities, the authorities should move without delay towards the decriminalization of the use and possession of drugs for personal use, said AI.

It recommended aid donors and other partners in Cambodias development to oppose the governments approach to rehabilitation and criminalization, and provide technical and financial support to assist Cambodia if the government decides to reform its drug policies.
PITTSBURGH, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Federated Hermes, Inc. today announced that monthly fund composition and performance data for Federated Premier Municipal Income Fund (NYSE: FMN) as of April 30, 2020, is now available in the Products section of FederatedInvestors.com. To order hard copies of this data or to be placed on a mailing list, call 800-245-0242 x5587538, email [email protected] or write to Federated Hermes, 1001 Liberty Avenue, Floor 23, Pittsburgh, PA 15222.

Federated Hermes, Inc. (NYSE: FHI) is a leading global investment manager with $605.8 billion in assets under management as of March 31, 2020. Guided by our conviction that responsible investing is the best way to create wealth over the long term, our investment solutions span 163 equity, fixed-income, alternative/private markets, multi-asset and liquidity management strategies and a range of separately managed account strategies. Providing world-class active investment management and engagement services to more than 11,000 institutions and intermediaries, our clients include corporations, government entities, insurance companies, foundations and endowments, banks and broker/dealers. Headquartered in Pittsburgh, Federated Hermes' more than 1,900 employees include those in London, New York, Boston and several other offices worldwide. For more information, visit FederatedHermes.com.

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SOURCE Federated Hermes, Inc.

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Fourteen people who have returned to Uttarakhand from other states have turned Covid-19 positive, including one 29-year-old man who came from Delhi with his mother and tested positive on Friday in Dehradun.

According to the government officials, till Friday evening, over 2.12 lakh people had registered on the state website to return to Uttarakhand. Of these, the state government has so far brought back 82, 834 people through trains and buses, while over 6,000 people have returned to the state in their own vehicles.

33,990 people have registered with the government to return to their respective states from Uttarakhand. Of these, 16,229 have been sent to their respective states.

On Friday one person tested positive in Dehradun, taking the total to 79 cases in Uttarakhand. 50 of these have recovered, leaving 28 active cases.

Fridays patient was Dehraduns 40th in total and the 11th active case. The doubling rate in the past seven days in the district has come down to 29.86 from 167.38 days on Tuesday.

For Coronavirus Live Updates

JC Pandey, public relations officer (PRO), state health department, said, the 29-year-old man from Dehradun was tested at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rishikesh. This man had come with his mother from Delhi. His mother had tested Covid-19 positive on May 13, he said.

After Dehraduns 40, US Nagar has reported the most infections at 16, followed by 12 in Nainital, 7 in Haridwar, 2 in Almora and one each in Uttar Kashi and Pauri Garhwal.

The state has nine containment zones including five in Dehradun, two in Haridwar and one each in Nainital and US Nagar.

On Thursday, six people including a ten-year-old girl with travel history from New Delhi tested positive for Covid-19. Three cases were detected in Udham Singh Nagar, while other three were from Dehradun district, including a 36-year-old woman, who became the first positive case to be reported in the hill station of Mussoorie.

Authorities in Uttarakhand are worried about the possibility of some among the huge mass returning to the state carrying the infection with them. Last week, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had acknowledged it as a big challenge. The state is expecting at least 2-2.25 lakh migrants to return, of which about 25,000 are expected to be infected, the chief minister had said during a Facebook live session.

On May 13, Uttarakhand High Court had expressed concern over many returning migrants testing positive for Covid-19 and sought to know from the state and the Central government if it was possible to medically examine each person before they were allowed to return to the state since merely thermal screening was not enough.
HANOI  Vietnam reported 24 new coronavirus infections on Friday, all of which were imported cases involving Vietnamese citizens returning from Russia who were placed under quarantine on arrival, the countrys health ministry said.

They are among 340 Vietnamese citizens stranded in Russia who were brought home on a flight from Moscow that landed at Van Don International Airport in the northern province of Quang Ninh on Wednesday morning.

The passengers were sent to three different quarantine facilities in the northern provinces of Thai Binh, Quang Ninh and Hai Duong to be monitored for COVID-19, the respiratory disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Twenty-four of them have tested positive for the disease, the Ministry of Health said.

Among the patients, 23 are being treated at Thai Binh Province General Hospital in the namesake province, while the remaining patient has been sent to Hospital No. 2 in Quang Ninh.

The Southeast Asian country has gone 29 days without a domestically transmitted infection and has registered a total of 312 cases, with no deaths, the ministry said.

Over 83 percent of Vietnams confirmed cases have recovered.

Eight COVID-19 patients, all Vietnamese nationals, were given the all-clear by the National Hospital for Tropical Diseases in Hanoi on Thursday.

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From the evidence, the case could be made that if President Barack Obama had terrorist Osama bin Laden killed in May 2011 at the latter's Abbottabad compound in Pakistan, Obama would have had to bring him back from the dead to do so.

On December 26, 2001, the Egyptian newspaper a-l Wafd posted a death announcement for bin Laden, citing as its source "a prominent official in the Afghan Taleban movement." According to the source, bin Laden had received a formal Islamic burial ten days prior in Tora Bora.

On July 30, 2002, CNN headlined an article "Sources: No bodyguards, no bin Laden." Apparently, several members of bin Laden's security team had been captured and shipped to Guantanamo. Reported CNN, "Some high-level U.S. officials are already convinced by such evidence that bin Laden, who has not been seen or heard from in months, is dead."

On October 7, 2002, CNN ran a speculative article citing Afghan president Hamid Karzai, headlined "Karzai: bin Laden 'probably' dead." On May 10, 2003, the U.K.'s Independent headlined an article, "Bin Laden died from wounds suffered in Tora Bora air raid, says Arab expert." The expert in question traced his death to December 2001, the same month as the notice in the Egyptian paper.

Bin Laden had been in poor health for several years. In March 2000, Asia Week described him as having "a kidney infection that is propagating itself to the liver and requires specialized treatment." Additionally, a mobile dialysis machine had been delivered to his hideout in Kandahar in the first half of 2000. Examining a video from December 2001, CNN medical correspondent Dr. Sanjay Gupta argued that bin Laden was likely suffering from "chronic kidney failure, renal failure."

Le Figaro of France reported that bin Laden had made several discreet trips to Dubai for treatment before September 11, 2001. Clearly, he had a chronic, life-threatening illness. For him to have lived ten years after the September 11 attacks without access to high-level care would have required a minor miracle. With his almost total control of the American media, Barack Obama was the one president capable of pulling a miracle off.

There are those who believe that Operation Neptune Spear was orchestrated to improve Obama's falling poll numbers and remove his questionable birth certificate from the news. Whatever the real objective of the raid, skeptics argue, it was not to capture bin Laden.

In Spring 2011, Obama was feeling the heat. Donald Trump had forced the birth certificate issue into the mainstream media, and Jerome Corsi's much anticipated book, Where's the Birth Certificate?, was due to be released on May 18. Under pressure to respond, Obama made an unusual TV appearance on April 27 to put the issue to rest.

Five days later, Obama was back on TV announcing what Politico called an "astounding military and intelligence triumph." Unfortunately, there were as many unanswered questions about bin Laden's announced death as there were about Obama's announced birth certificate.

Appearing on 60 Minutes after the raid, Obama said: "This was a very difficult decision, in part because the evidence we had was not absolutely conclusive." Obama chief of staff Leon Panetta wrote in his memoir, Worthy Fights, "The doubts and worries were heavy." Panetta cited the concern of defense secretary Robert Gates that "our evidence remained entirely circumstantial."

Obama did little to shore up that evidence after the fact. Skeptics asked why there were no photos or videos of bin Laden, dead or alive. The administration said they were "too gruesome" and would have posed a grave risk to national security.

John Brennan, then Obama's counter-terrorism adviser, briefed reporters the day after the raid. "We are going to do everything we can to make sure that nobody has any basis to deny that we got Osama bin Laden," said Brennan.

"Everything we can" should have included showing the body. It was allegedly taken by helicopter to the USS Carl Vinson in the North Arabian Sea, about 850 miles from the compound where bin Laden was supposedly killed.

All but a few of the ship's 5,000 crew members were ordered below deck before the body was dropped into the sea. A CBS News report on the ship's return to San Diego on June 16 noted that the sailors were "sworn to secrecy about their historic mission," a mission that only a handful witnessed.

Judicial Watch, through a FOIA request, received heavily redacted copies of relevant emails among military brass. As the emails make clear, "less than a dozen" officers were even informed of the burial, and "no sailors watched." There was also great concern expressed that the brass get the story straight before the ship returned to San Diego.

The emails also claim "that traditional practice for Islamic burial was followed." But Mohammed al-Qubaisi, Dubai's grand mufti, said of the bin Laden burial: "They can say they buried him at sea, but they cannot say they did it according to Islam. Sea burials are permissible for Muslims in extraordinary circumstances. This is not one of them."

Two years after the raid at Abbottabad, Admiral William McRaven had all photos, videos, and documents destroyed, allegedly because Navy protocol demanded it. The Department of the Navy Records Management Program (DONRM), however, does not support McRaven's claim. DONRM has, as its principal goal, the "preservation of records having long-term permanent worth." If any records had such worth, it would seem that those from Operation Neptune Spearhead did.

Questionable too is the famed picture of Obama in the Situation Room, allegedly watching the raid in progress. The photo was likely staged, perhaps even Photoshopped. As Leon Panetta later admitted, "[w]e had some observation of the approach there, but we did not have direct flow of information as to the actual conduct of the operation itself as they were going through the compound." A close examination of the Situation Room photo shows Obama with a tinge of gray in his hair that was absent from his TV presentation supposedly just hours later.

Then, too, the story about the raid kept changing. In its day-after article, Politico knowingly reported, "Bin Laden was shot in the face by the SEALs during a firefight after resisting capture." Politico's source was John Brennan, whose credibility was considerably higher then than now. Brennan claimed that the team was prepared to take bin Laden alive, but he resisted, using a wife as a human shield.

There were a few in the media who remained skeptical. A day later, on May 3, one asked Obama spokesman Jay Carney about Brennan's misstatements "such as that the wife was shielding bin Laden and it turned out it wasn't the wife and there may not have been a shield and it wasn't clear whether or not bin Laden had a gun."

Carney responded by providing the media a sanitized "narrative" of events: "They were engaged in a firefight throughout the operation, and Osama bin Laden was killed by the assaulting force." When asked, Carney was even less specific about what, if anything, the national security team watched in the Situation Room.

Where Obama was on the day of the Abbottabad raid finally remains as uncertain as where he was on the night of the attack on the Benghazi consulate four months later. In the latter case, eight months would pass before a reporter asked the question Chris Wallace of Fox News put to presidential adviser Dan Pfeiffer: "What did the president do the rest of that night to pursue Benghazi?"

When Pfeiffer stonewalled, Wallace pressed, "No one knows where he was, or how he was involved, or who told him there were no forces."

No one still knows.
Former Obama national security adviser Susan Rice said she would "certainly say yes" if asked to be Joe Biden's running mate for the 2020 election.

"I'm humbled and honoured to be among the extremely accomplished women who are reportedly being considered in that regard," Ms Rice told PBS on Thursday. "I know Joe Biden well. I've worked with him very closely. I know he'll be a great president of the United States."

Ms Rice committed to "doing all" she could to help the former vice president unseat Donald Trump come November after previously working alongside him for the Obama administration.

So when she was asked if she would accept the vice president nomination, Ms Rice said: "I would certainly yes."

"Should I say no?" Ms Rice added. "You know, I think everybody who's been asked that question has given the same answer. So that's not a surprise."

Although she showed interest in the position, Ms Rice added her first priority was helping Mr Biden win the election, whether he picked her as his running mate or not.

"It's not about me. It's not about my ambitions," she said.

At the start of the search for vice president, Mr Biden vowed he would select a female running mate to join him on the ticket.

The list of potential vice president candidates, which reportedly included Ms Rice, also named Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren, who was Democrat's top choice, according to a CBS News' poll. Following Ms Warren was California Senator Kamala Harris.

Ms Rice was tied for sixth place in the poll alongside Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, one of the state governor's making headlines for her battle with the state's Republican-led legislature to maintain stay-at-home measures during the coronavirus pandemic.

Another notable name was Stacey Abrams of Georgia, who gained notoriety from her run for in 2016 gubernatorial election.

The Biden campaign has not indicated when it would announce who would run alongside the former vice president.
Mr Archibald Donkoh, the Acting Upper West Regional Director of the National Youth Authority (NYA), has urged the youth to prioritise the development of their communities and the nation as a whole.



He said the youth had the energy, innovative ideas and skills that could be channeled into the national and community development drive, but queried whether they were ready to avail themselves for the task.



Mr Donkoh, said this at a sensitisation forum at Wechiau on the possible influence of the Coronavirus Disease (COVID-19) pandemic on teenage pregnancy and child marriage.



It was organised by the Upper West Regional Youth Parliament in partnership with the NYA and Plan International Ghana and attended by selected stakeholders including; traditional authorities and Assembly Members.



The youth have to avail themselves and volunteer their energies, innovative ideas and skills towards the betterment of their communities and the nation, but are they ready to do that, he questioned.



Mr Donkoh urged the young people to discipline themselves to enable the decision makers in society and other stakeholders to take them seriously and to involve them in decision making process.

He explained that the NYA had recognized the Youth Parliament initiative as the most effective way to build the capacity of young people and to involve them in the decision making process.



The NYA Director noted that treaties such as the African Youth Charter, the Sustainable Development Goals and the Ghana Youth Policy also called for deliberate efforts to involve the youth in the decision making process.



Mr Kamaldeen Iddrisu, the District Development Coordinator, Upper West Regional Programme Unit of Plan International Ghana noted that they had prioritised childrens rights, especially, equal rights for girls hence their decision to partner the Youth Parliament to carry out the sensitisation activities.



He said through their activities in the Wa West District, they had influenced the formation of watch-dog committees in some communities in the district to help fight child marriage and teenage pregnancy.

Source: GNA









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It was 1995, and the phone was ringing in the Scouting Ireland headquarters.

At the other end of the phone was a man who started talking about how he had been abused by a scout volunteer over the course of three years from the age of 10.

The man was able to recall at least eight different instances of abuse at the hands of 'Subject A', which had happened more than 20 years before.

He also revealed how Subject A would let his friends - some from UK scouting organisations, some who weren't involved in scouting at all - abuse children as well.

The reason the man was calling now was because he had just seen a picture of his abuser, in full scout uniform, at a scout event.

At first, nothing was done.

The report was ignored, or passed on.

Finally, the person who answered the phone managed to get a hearing.

Subject A, the abuser, seemed relieved. He said it was known he was not able to control his sexual impulses when among young people, and he had unsuccessfully tried to resign from Scouting Ireland before.

Some 20 years on from first abusing the man on the phone, Subject A left the organisation.

The case was only recently reported to the gardai.

The case of Subject A is one of a number of "shocking and deeply disturbing" case studies included in Ian Elliott's report on Scouting Ireland.

The report said the "horrific" case of Subject A, who is now dead, was an example of a failure to protect young people from sexual predators.

Subject A, a "self-confessed, prolific sex offender", was supported and protected by others in Scouting Ireland who have allegations against themselves.

It was one example of what the report described as a culture of self-interest and cronyism in a "seriously dysfunctional organisation with sex offenders dominating the leadership for decades".

Far from being asked to leave, sex offenders rose to the top. The report said those with a sexual interest in children were "protected and supported by others who had a similar interest".

Sex abuse "was known about and tolerated within scouting in some situations".

The report said senior volunteers who were prepared to be unpopular by tackling abuse when they saw it "were the exception rather than the rule".

One victim reported how a national officer had let another scout leader use his home to abuse the victim.

Someone who tried to report a senior volunteer for abuse was told the person was "too important to be accused of abuse".

Mr Elliott's report seems incredulous that there are still people who think this abuser was a "great scout".

In another case, a "prolific" abuser, who was also a priest, was brought to the attention of his superiors after five young teenage boys came forward.

A letter to Scouting Ireland's headquarters about the man's actions was never filed, and was hidden at the home of another alleged abuser.

A close link between the Christian Boy Scouts of Ireland and the Catholic Church led to "noted clerical offenders" being involved in scouting, and the review said that these abusers "found an acceptance of their practices".

The report told how a scout leader had shown up at a camp only to see a person who had left scouting because of a sexual abuse allegation and a known sex offender priest together "in the middle of a group of young people".

The report found that abuse was covered "by a combination of incompetence and intent".

In 2018, a survivor contacted Scouting Ireland and reported how he had been raped by a former scout leader who had given the victim alcohol.

The report said there seemed to be widespread knowledge of the former scout leader's abuse.

When the abuser died, volunteers refused to participate in a guard of honour at his funeral.

One senior volunteer said he had been asked to "keep an eye on" the abuser at camps.

Despite this, there was no reference to allegations of abuse in files about the man.

The report criticised the "chaotic" record-keeping at Scouting Ireland.

There were records of people who were accused of abuse having to resign, but no paperwork relating to the reason why they were resigning.

The loss and destruction of documents means the true scale of the abuse cover-up may never be known.

In some cases, people accused of abuse were allowed to keep records in their home.

An alleged abuser was using records in his house to either prevent investigation or "manipulate people".

In one case, the family of a deceased volunteer burned records which he had kept in his home.

In another, a retired senior volunteer tried to use the shredder in the Scouting Ireland office to destroy records relating to a "prolific offender", which he had been keeping in his home.

Even a man who was a confirmed sex abuser, who had been prosecuted three times, had no records kept on him.

Protecting Scouting Ireland's reputation was prioritised.

When abusers were discovered, they would sometimes be asked to resign - keeping their "good name" and allowing them to move on to another youth organisation.

Mr Elliott said he believed what happened in Scouting Ireland "could be present in other Irish youth organisations".

Mr Elliott was initially recruited to carry out a "desktop", document-based review, but ended up working with Scouting Ireland for two years on new safeguarding structures.

"My work was supported by some and bitterly opposed by others. This remains the case," he said.

In some cases, people tried to "frustrate the process of holding people accountable".

The report said the practice of protecting "mates" was still evident in Scouting Ireland, even as the major review into sexual abuse was being carried out.

"This had embedded a culture of protection from perceived attack from those outside your clique, over the prioritisation of the safety and protection of young people in the organisation.

"Where the protection of the clique became more important than safeguarding the vulnerable young person," the report said.

Scouting Ireland yesterday apologised to victims of abuse in the group.

Anne Griffin, CEO of Scouting Ireland, said she wanted to assure all of its members and the wider public that Scouting Ireland is a very different organisation today.

"Over the past three years we have implemented new governance and safeguarding structures which I believe help us to stamp out any lingering elements of this damaging behaviour," she said.

Young people who may be in crisis and need support can text SCOUTS to 086 1800 280 to speak to a trained volunteer
Haryana Roadways received lukewarm public response on the resumption of bus services on Friday.

The services were closed since chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar had announced lockdown in view of the coronavirus pandemic on March 23.

On Day 1, buses from eight depots operated to and fro on several routes with 196 passengers, earning a total revenue of 42,580 to the roadways.

As per the data provided by the directorate of state transport, government of Haryana, seven buses that hit the roads were from Panchkula, the largest number among all the depots. Almost 35% of the passengers (68) that travelled from various districts in the public carrier were from Panchkula depot itself.

Further, only one passenger travelled between Panchkula and Karnal in the morning, while a maximum of 20 passengers took the journey from Narnaul to Rewari late afternoon.

29 ROUTES DESIGNATED

As many as 29 routes were designated for the resumption of the bus service, but nine of them were suspended in absence of bookings.

A Kaithal-bound passenger was stuck in Ambala due to the unannounced cancellation of the bus service. Sanjeev, an assistant professor, travelled from Nawanshahr (SBS Nagar) in Punjab to Ambala Cantonment (Haryana) to board a bus for his home, but was stranded due to the suspension of the service. I travelled with a friend on a two-wheeler early morning with a curfew pass and the ticket that I had booked online. On reaching Ambala Cantonment bus stand, I came to know that I was the only passenger travelling to Kaithal and this was the reason they suspended the bus service. I didnt receive any cancellation message and now, Im stuck here, he said.

The guidelines issued on Thursday said that only passengers with online tickets would be allowed to board the buses and no window tickets would be sold.
SHORELINE  The oversize black laundry basket delivery, filled to the brim with goodies, was a pleasant surprise.

With a carrying strap, the basket was overstuffed with a fuzzy hooded blanket, hair products, a 2020 necklace, an aromatherapy diffuser, a Girl Power emblazoned coffee mug and a tie-dyed face mask, all topped off with a dozen doughnuts from Guilfords Blazing Fresh Donuts.

The delivery was a way for the Scarpellino family to lift the spirits of a Guilford High School senior during the COVID-19 pandemic.

It was kind of making up for the things that I lost, said Guilford High School recipient Abigail Boender.

The connection was made through Facebook.

Parents along the Shoreline are creating Facebook pages to put seniors in the spotlight. While there is Adopt a 2020 Senior Connecticut, area parents thought it would be more meaningful to have local pages.

These include Adopt a Daniel Hand High School Class of 2020 Senior, Adopt a Guilford High School Class of 2020 Senior and Adopt a Morgan Class of 2020 Senior.

It is all about making connections and adoptees are receiving texts, emails, cards, flower, pizza or ice cream deliveries and baked goods, participants said.

The individual posts include photos of the senior, plus a small biography, including what makes them special. Anyone in the community can adopt them.

While participation is voluntary, page administrators hope to have 100 percent participation, meaning every senior is adopted. For seniors who are not on social media, connections are being made via phone calls or email to try and include everyone.

Guilford High School has 286 graduates, more than 150 have been adopted; Madison has 289 seniors, about 75 adopted and Clinton, with 151, with over 100 adopted at press time.

While some gift givers are totally secret, others are not. Everyone connected to the project stresses that what is most important is the community coming together for the senior class.

Theyve already lost so much and they stand to lose so much more and its just a really sad time and I think theyre all having a hard time, said Amy Paris, administrator of Adopt a Guilford High School class of 2020 senior.

These missed milestones include senior prom, senior breakfast, class outings, award ceremonies, sporting events and possibly, graduation.

Paris daughter, Isabelle, is a senior heading to University of South Carolina to study marine biology.

I thought all of those things would really upset her, and they have, but I think what is really on her mind now is graduation, the mother said.

I think shes afraid theyre going to cancel graduation and have to do something virtually, which means these kids are really never going to be able to be together again as a class and I just think thats really sad, she said.

These kids, their senior year, was really cut in half, basically, said Danielle Scarpellino, who, along with her husband, Joe, are raising Mea, 15; Julia, 13 and Luca, 11, who all attend Guilford Public Schools.

Some of the best things about high school are these last few months of your senior year, she adds. So, I immediately was like, Oh, Im adopting one of these kids.

For Boender, it has been a new friendship that she is grateful to have at this particular time.

They were all super nice, said Boender. She brought almost everyone in her family, which really made me feel included.

She really sent that point home that Im with them, she said, referring to Scarpellino.

I think its wonderful, said Abigails mother, Jill Boender.

The thought that a complete stranger would care enough to take the time out of their day to think about her and put something together, she added, and then take the time to come meet her, was  it was really, really moving and it made her feel really special.

Rachel Salvo, mother of Madison senior Miller Salvo, noted that Adopt a Daniel Hand High School Class of 2020 senior is a community-wide effort.

Its just a nice way to bring the community together as a whole and just recognize that we caretheres people that love them and really appreciate all the achievements that theyve accomplished and all their successes, she said. Its a great way to give back and celebrate our community as a whole.

Erin Gaudet, whose daughter Heidi is a 2020 graduate of the Morgan School in Clinton, started Adopt a Morgan Class of 2020 Senior. She chokes up when she talks about how the coronavirus has affected this graduating class.

My heart just breaks for them, she said, her voice cracking. I look at the kids and its their senior year. It is springtime. They should be out there and they should be playing their sportstheres so many senior moments that these kids have been looking forward to.
Lakeshore Bone & Joint Institute, which has locations across the Region, has reopened all services, resumed surgery and expanded telemedicine.

After Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb's executive order allowed the resumption of electric surgeries, Chesterton-based Lakeshore Bone & Joint Institute reopened most of its locations. That includes its Orthopedic Urgent Care Center at 3691 Willowcreek Road in Portage, which is open for walk-in orthopedic services from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Lakeshore Bone & Joint Institute has established a number of enhanced safety procedures as it resumes scheduling most types of appointments. Patients and staff must wear masks. All patients and visitors will be screened upon entry. Only patients can come into the office with the exception of minors or those requiring assistance.

Social distancing will be mandatory.

By quickly adapting to these changes and adopting a forward-thinking approach, we can keep minimizing risk of potential viral exposure to as many individuals as possible, Dr. Thomas Kay, the practice's president, said.
Im a Christian, Robinson told me. One of the things that came to me in my meditations in the morning is that so many people around the world live in pandemics pretty often, and we just never thought about it. If anybody told us last year that wed be living this way now, we wouldve said, No, youre not making any sense.
Napa Valley supports The Drinks Trust via online course

Napa Valley Vintners (NVV) is supporting members of the UK wine trade affected by the Covid-19 crisis by donating 25 for every member of the trade who completes the free Napa Valley Rocks online course.

The class explores the unique soils, climate, history and wines of Napa Valley.

The money will be donated to The Drinks Trust (formerly The Benevolent), which is receiving unprecedented demand during these times.

The Drinks Trust has been supporting members of the drinks industry since 1886, offering support and services to help its community thrive, to upskill, to broaden their knowledge, to network and learn from one another.

It is also there to support them in challenging times, with wellbeing and financial assistance.

Rosemary Cakebread, proprietor of Gallica and chair of NVVs international marketing committee, said: "London and the United Kingdom have long been a centre of great importance for wine producers, and a valued and supportive market for Napa Valley wines.

"In this challenging moment, its only right that Napa Valley chips in and supports our friends in the UK hospitality trade."

NVV will donate up to 12,500. To help reach the goal, 500 members of the UK and Irish wine trade are needed to complete this activity.

NVV will also send a bottle of Napa Valley wine to each trade person who completes the course to enjoy. Those who receive bottles at home are encouraged to post on social media using #itsfromNapa, #NapaCares and #TheDrinksTrust.

Learn more at www.napavintners.com

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The family and friends of a former Green Beret detained in Venezuela for his role in a failed coup have said he was misled into believing it had the direct backing of President Donald Trump.

A childhood friend claims that Luke Denman, 34, believed the Drugs Enforcement Agency was in on the plot and that they would send in a helicopter to fly Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro back to the United States, according to the Wall Street Journal.

'He messaged at one point or another, they had gotten the green light from Trump,' said Daniel Dochen, who told the WSJ that he last spoke to Denman a week or two before the start of the mission in early May.

Denman was arrested on May 4 alongside fellow former Green Beret Airan Berry, 41, and dozens of Venezuelans for the failed attempt to overthrow President Maduro.

President Trump and the U.S. government denied any 'direct' involvement in the botched raid and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has said that 'every tool' will be used to secure the release of the Americans involved.

'He messaged at one point or another, they had gotten the green light from Trump:' Friends say Luke Denman, pictured in an interrogation video with Venezuelan authorities last week, believed that the failed Venezuelan coup had the support of President Donald Trump

Luke Denman (left) and Airan Berry (right) were arrested after a failed attempt to overthrow Venezuela's President Nicolas Maduro on May 4. Friends of Denman now claim that the former Green Beret was misled and believed the raid had the backing of the U.S. government

Another friend of Denman's, Braxton Smith, told the Wall Street Journal that he first spoke to him about the mission last Fall.

Smith, an attorney, alleges that Denman told him the raid was fully sanctioned by the U.S. government.

'I had asked him one time to shoot me the contract so I could look it over to make sure he wasn't getting into something crazy,' he said, but added that he never saw the contract.

Denman was recruited by Canadian-born former U.S. soldier Jordan Goudreau, 43, who has identified himself as the coup ringleader in a video posted to social media as the raid began.

'I told him, when you're going somewhere wearing the uniform of a U.S. soldier, there's a certain amount of responsibility that, in the public light, they have,' his brother Mark Denman said.

'When you're operating under these contracts, God knows.'

Mark said he has since spoken to Goudreau, who did not take part in the raid as his boat broke down in March and he had to return to Florida because of coronavirus travel restrictions, but did not receive any more information on the plan.

'I don't know if he has some grand master plan and betrayed his men in order to execute that plan. I don't know. Maybe he himself is a pawn in this thing,' he said.

'Monday morning, I thought my brother was dead, and if he wasn't dead something horrible would happen shortly thereafter. It looks like that's not happening, so I'm extremely thankful for that.'

Denman's family are growing increasingly frustrated that the State Department is not doing more to work toward their release after the Americans were charged with conspiracy and terrorism on May 8.

The family of Luke Denman, pictured, have voiced concern that the State Department is not working for his release as they claim he was misled before taking part in the failed coup

His relatives told the WSJ that they had contacted State Department Bureau of Consular Affairs as well as the U.S. Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, and the Swiss Embassy in Caracas.

The U.S. has broken diplomatic ties with President Maduro and closed its embassy in Caracas last year. Instead, the U.S. recognizes Maduro's opposition Juan Guaido as the country's legitimate leader.

The family added that they are now working with companies who claims to have contacts in the Venezuelan prison who will be able to reach the Americans.

'They don't have to [tell us what they're doing],' Denmans's mother Kay said.

'It would be nice to know that things are being moved down the road here.'

Denman's friends' claims come a week after it was revealed that the DEA and the Department of Homeland Security knew about the training camps and had been tipped off earlier this year that Goudreau was allegedly weapons smuggling in Colombia.

Former Green Beret Jordan Goudreau (pictured center) has claimed responsibility for a failed operation to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro in a plan named 'Operation Gedeon'

A DEA source admitted that an informant tipped the agency off before March but a formal probe wasn't opened as it did not know who Goudreau was at the time.

The DEA official speaking to the Associated Press said the information was also passed on to the Department of Homeland Security.

The DEA believed that the weapons were destined for leftist rebels or criminal gangs in Colombia, former officials said on the condition of anonymity.

Goudreau, Denman and Berry had served together in Iraq and Afghanistan and Goudreau offered them the job in Venezuela through his Florida-based company Silvercorp USA.

In an edited interrogation video broadcast on Venezuelan state TV on May 7, Denman claimed he was first approached about the job by Goudreau in early December but was given limited details about what was involved.

In the interrogation video, Denman also stated that he had taken the job offer from Goudreau because he believed it was working to free the Venezuelan people from Maduro.

Luke Denman (right) and Airan Berry (left), both former U.S. special forces soldiers, were arrested on May 4 for their part in an attempted coup of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro. Denman, 34, featured in a video released by Venezuelan state TV last week in which he claimed the Goudreau coup was under the command of President Donald Trump

'I thought I was helping the Venezuelans take back control of their country,' he said, adding that he expected to make between $50,000 and $100,000 for the mercenary work.

He was questioned about the leadership of the plot and when asked who commanded Goudreau, he claimed it was President Trump.

Berry and Denman were sentenced in their first court appearance on May 8 and face up to 25 to 30 years in prison.

The former soldiers said they flew to Colombia on January 16 and after training, they accompanied the troops by boat to Venezuelan to oversee the plan and ensure that an airport was secured through which Maduro could be flown to the United States.

The U.S. had established a $15million reward in March for information that led to the arrest or conviction of the socialist leader.

The incursion was quickly shut down by Venezuelan authorities on Sunday and Monday, however, and 31 arrested, as Maduro revealed that Venezuelan intelligence had facilitated the plot in Colombia, and they had been lying in wait for it to launch

Venezuelan authorities say that 50 have not been detained after further searches for more coup members.

Goudreau is currently under federal investigation in the U.S. for arms smuggling after identifying himself as the person behind the plot in a video posted to social media and claiming that he had provided the coup members with training and equipment.

He claims to have signed a $212million contract with Guadio, a claim the opposition has denied.

Maduro has presented an alleged signed contract during press conferences as proof that Guaido was involved in the plot to overthrow him.

On May 8, Venezuela requested the extradition of Goudreau and two U.S.-based Venezuelans for their roles in the failed incursion.
GettyImages 1162094109

Oklahoma began allowing nail salons to reopen on April 24, 2020.

Getty Images/Extreme Photographer

A nail salon in Bartlesville, Oklahoma, said an employee tested positive for COVID-19  just days after it reopened.

"We have received a positive COVID-19 test from a staff member who was in the salon on May 5-7," The Nailspot said in a May 13 Facebook post. "If you were in the salon on these days you could have been potentially exposed."

Oklahoma allowed nail salons and other "personal contact" businesses to reopen on April 24.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Nailspot opened its doors for the first time in weeks on May 5. Just over a week later, the beauty parlor in northeast Oklahoma is closing them again after an employee was infected with the coronavirus.

"We have received a positive COVID-19 test from a staff member who was in the salon on May 5-7," the Bartlesville shop announced in a May 13 post on Facebook. "If you were in the salon on these days you could have been potentially exposed."

It's not clear where the employee contracted the novel coronavirus, which causes the respiratory disease known as COVID-19.

Related: Dr.Fauci Warned About the Dangers of States Reopening

"Washington County Health Department recommends that any customer that was in the salon during this time self-isolate for 14 days and if symptoms arise to contact Washington County Health Dept for further information and instruction," the salon wrote in its Facebook post. Nailspot plans to reopen on May 26.

Oklahoma was one of the first states to begin reopening its economy during the pandemic, with Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, allowing salons, spas, and pet groomers to resume service on April 24.

Restaurants, gyms, and movie theaters followed suit on May 1.

In California, by contrast, authorities have refused to allow nail salons, in particular, to reopen.

"This whole thing started in the state of California, the first community spread, in a nail salon," Gov. Gavin Newsom claimed in a May 7 address. "I just want to remind everybody of that and that I'm very worried about that," he added, though  to the consternation of salon owners  he did not provide supporting evidence.

Story continues

Oklahoma's guidelines on reopening call for increased handwashing at such "personal contact" establishments, noting that "[r]emaining six feet apart as in other businesses is not possible."

The guidelines do not call for either employees or customers to wear masks, suggesting only that employees consider wearing them "if the customer requests."

In a May 3 post announcing its plans to reopen, the salon suggested that clients bring their own masks. "If you do not have one, we will try to provide you with one," it said.

At least 284 people have died from COVID-19 in Oklahoma, according to the state government. Six new deaths were announced May 14, down from nine fatalities announced May 5, when The Nailspot reopened  the same number of deaths announced April 24, when salons were legally permitted to resume business.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has committed $48.1 million in additional support for mental health in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, while announcing states and territories can start to resume more elective surgeries.

The national cabinet of state and territory leaders on Friday adopted the National Mental Health and Wellbeing Pandemic Response Plan, put together by Christine Morgan, chief executive of the National Mental Health Commission.

National Mental Health Commission boss Christine Morgan and Prime Minister Scott Morrison announcing additional mental health funding. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

The Prime Minister said with the introduction of more telehealth services, more people were seeking medical consultations for mental health.

"We are now seeing the number of presentations and consultations occurring for mental health now back to levels that were being experienced pre-pandemic. Half of those being done through the telehealth mechanism," he said.
Presumptive 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden bumbled his way through a virtual roundtable he hosted on Thursday afternoon, as questions regarding the former Vice Presidents mental acuity continue to mount.

Concern of Bidens mental sharpness has been the subject of constant debate ever since he launched his White House bid last April, following a number of blunders he's made during televised interviews and campaign speeches in the months since.

And the self-proclaimed gaffe machine did little to mitigate those apprehensions during a monologue about soaring unemployment levels on Thursday, in which he wrongly claimed 85,000 jobs have been lost in the US as a result of COVID-19, and millions of Americans have died.

The former Vice President appears to have got his numbers confused. In reality, at least 85,000 Americans have died, while 36.5million have lost their jobs.

We're ... in the middle of a pandemic that has cost us more than 85,000 jobs as of today. Lives of millions of people. Millions of people. Millions of jobs, a tongue tied Biden almost unintelligibly babbled at the beginning of the stream.

You know, and we're in a position where, you know we just got new unemployment insurance, this morning, uh, numbers  36.5 million claims since this crisis began.

During a monologue about soaring unemployment levels on Thursday, Biden wrongly claimed 85,000 jobs have been lost in the US as a result of COVID-19, and millions of people have died

Much like his other livestreamed events, the broadcast was also marred with technical difficulties and audio glitches, but for the most part Biden managed to reign in the gaffes.

President Trump has routinely poked fun at Biden regarding his well-documented stumbles and slips-of-the-tongue, suggesting the Democrat is mentally unfit to hold office.

Last week, in response to Biden teaming up with former rival Bernie Sanders to name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez co-chairwoman of a climate change panel, Trump said: If you asked him who he named, he wouldnt even know it Joe has absolutely no idea whats happening.

When quizzed about the prospect of Biden leading the economic recovery if hes elected in November, Trump said: Biden cant do it. He doesnt know hes alive.

Another question raised against Biden in recent weeks is who he will announce as his running mate for his 2020 White House bid.

During Thursday's roundtable, Biden was joined via video by Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, and Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont to discuss the ongoing coronavirus pandemic

Biden told Gov. Whitmer shes done one hell of a job leading her state through the COVID-19 outbreak, following a series of high-profile clashes with anti-lockdown protesters.

President Trump has routinely poked fun at Biden over his well-documented stumbles, suggesting the Democrat is mentally unfit to hold office

President Trump has routinely poked fun at Biden over his well-documented stumbles, suggesting the Democrat is mentally unfit to hold office

The former vice president, who called Whitmer such a good governor, wasnt the only one to applaud her during the virtual meeting, with praise also voiced by Murphy and Lamont.

Whitmers leadership has attracted national attention and fueled rumors of a possible spot for her on the Democratic presidential ticket.

Theres got to be federal support to state and local levels of our government, so that we can come out of this crisis stronger and more united, Biden told the governors, who detailed the challenges theyve faced wrangling assistance from the White House.

Whitmer, an outspoken critic of Trump, shared concerns of a potential second wave of coronavirus if states such as Michigan and Ohio ease lockdown orders too early.

All of these aggressive actions are starting to pay off, but were nowhere out of the woods, yet, Whitmer said.

Shortly before securing the presumptive nomination, Biden promised to announce a female running mate after the historically diverse presidential field was narrowed down to two older white men.

Joe Biden insists he does not remember sexual assault accuser Tara Reade in MSNBC interview Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden has claimed he doesn't remember the former Senate staffer who accused him of sexually assaulting her in 1993. The former Vice President was asked whether he remembered Tara Reade, 56, a woman who accused him in March of reaching under her skirt and assaulting her when he was a senator and she his aide. Speaking with MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell yesterday, Biden was asked whether he remembered the woman - who was 29 at the time of the alleged assault. 'Well, to be honest with you, I don't,' Biden said. 'But let me get something clear, when a woman makes a claim that she has been harassed or abused, and this claim has changed... she should be taken seriously,' Biden said. 'She should come forward, share her story, she should be taken seriously and it should be thoroughly vetted. And in every case, what matters is the truth. The truth is what matters. 'And the truth of the case is nothing like this ever, ever happened... I give you my word. It never, ever happened. I give you my word. It never, ever happened.' Reade (pictured) claims that Biden sexually assaulted her in a Congressional hallway when she was working as a Senate staffer in 1993 Following Biden's denial, O'Donnell brought his attention to a New York Times opinion piece titled 'I Believe Tara Reade. I'm Voting for Joe Biden Anyway' in which the author says that despite believing the accusations, she would still vote for Biden over Donald Trump, writing 'suck it up and make the utilitarian bargain'. In response, Biden said: 'Well, I think they should vote their heart and if they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me. I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade. 'The fact is that look at Tara Reade's story. It changes considerably. And I don't want to question her motive, I don't want to question anything other than to say the truth matters,' he told the MSNBC host. 'This is being vetted, it's been vetted, [by] people [and] scores of my employees over my whole career. This is just totally, thoroughly, completely out of character. And the idea that in a public place, in a hallway I would assault a woman? ... I promise you. It never happened.' Advertisement

Whitmers leadership has attracted national attention and fueled rumors of a possible spot for her on the Democratic presidential ticket

Among the frontrunners are California Sen. Kamala Harris and former Georgia state House majority leader Stacey Abrams, who are both seen as choices that could potentially help boost turnout among black voters.

Elizabeth Warren is a name also often mentioned, for her possible ability to help rally the progressive wing behind Bidens campaign.

Gov. Whitmer, meanwhile, is seen as a running mate who could potentially help Biden carry Michigan  a state Trump won by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2016.

Despite an intense standoff between Whitmer and armed protesters at Michigans State Capitol earlier this month, the Governors approval rating on her response to the pandemic is at 72 percent  significantly higher than Trumps national rating at just 43 percent.

Whitmer last appeared alongside Biden in person at his primary-eve rally in Detroit in March, the last rally he held before mass gatherings were banned across the nation.
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren is the latest to join the tussle between the Centre and the states on the question of bringing back migrant workers to their homes. On Thursday, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said that arrangements had been made for the return of migrant workers by 105 trains over a period of one month.

Union Minister Piyush Goyal responded to Banerjees statements by claiming that the state needed to run 105 trains a day if it wanted to get back all its citizens stranded across the country.

On Friday, the union railway minister repeated his attacks against, mainly Opposition-governed states  West Bengal, Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Jharkhand  which he claimed were not accepting the 1,200 trains being offered by the railway ministry to get the stranded passenger to their homes.

We can start 300 trains daily but there are states which are giving very few permissions to trains. UP has given permissions to 400 trains, Bihar to 200 trains. But West Bengal has so far given permission to only 7 trains. Jharkhands CM also issued a statement that he was ready to accept his people in the state. Then why arent these states giving us permission to run the required number of trains, Goyal said.

Responding to the claims of the union railways minister, Hemant Soren, in a series of tweets, said that his state had given NOCs to 110 trains.

He also posted a letter written by Jharkhands chief secretary to home secretary requesting permission to operate a chartered plane to Andaman and Nicobar Islands to bring back over 300 workers of his state.

It's been FOUR days & we are still awaiting necessary clearances/ NOC from @PIBHomeAffairs to initiate the process. Jharkhand Govt will bear the costs of the flights to Ranchi, if MHA permits us. We need a humane approach now & be sensitive to those who have faced the worst, he said in a statement issued on Twitter.

An official close to the Jharkhand CM said that Soren was the first CM to speak to the railway minister, to write to the home minister and the prime minister requesting that the stranded migrant workers of his state be brought back by special trains.

The first special train was thus initiated by this pressure from Telenagana to Ranchi. Since then there's been a steady flow of migrant workers via trains and buses to Jharkhand from other states. But with around 7 lakh workers registered on the state portal expressing the desire to return, it's a Herculean task , much bigger in scale and size than the Vande Bharat mission, the official close to the Soren said requesting anonymity.

According to a press release issued by the Railway Ministry, as on 14 May 2020, a total of 800 Shramik Special train services were run across the nation, through which more than 10 lakh passengers reached their home states.
Rukaiyah Adams, Joe McFerrin and Kali Thorne Ladd

Adams is chair of Albina Vision Trust. McFerrin is president and chief executive of Portland Opportunities Industrialization Center. Thorne Ladd is executive director of KairosPDX.

Gov. Kate Brown has identified seven prerequisites for Oregon counties to reopen that include: making sure that protective equipment and testing capacity are adequate, implementing new safety arrangements, and collecting and analyzing data about COVID-19 cases in their communities. Like many leaders locally and nationally, Gov. Brown has continually asserted that the decisions about when and how Oregon will be reopened will be based on data and science. Specifically, the plan calls for the capacity to test at least 30 people per 10,000 residents in each region on a weekly basis to monitor prevalence and conducting a study of 100,000 Oregonians led by OHSU to better understand infection patterns with real-time mapping.

Data-driven solutions are exactly what weve been asking for, but the validity and fidelity of the data are key to their effectiveness.

National data clearly show that COVID-19 has had a disproportionate impact on black people. This is due to the numbers of black folks who perform jobs deemed essential, have pre-existing health conditions that exacerbate the effects of COVID-19, live in multi-family buildings and share faith traditions that value closeness and community connection. And some Oregon data has already indicated a disproportionate impact on the Latino population, which has been hit hard by the coronavirus. But the plan for reopening Oregon did not even acknowledge the imperative for gathering information based on race.

This was a shocking omission. There is little doubt that a state-wide, race-neutral approach to gathering data about COVID-19 paired with a state-wide, race-neutral method of analyzing that data will yield results that undercount the prevalence of infection and death for black Oregonians. It will also underestimate the attendant catastrophic financial outcomes for us. Reopening without this level of rigor and analysis will inevitably come at our expense.

We will not allow that to happen.

In order to reopen in an equitable manner, Gov. Brown and the Oregon Health Authority need to do the following.

 Collect good data: This means ensuring that information about race is collected for every test. As of May 12, in the data presented by the Oregon Health Authority on the severity and rates of COVID-19 by race, a whopping 37.8% was reported without race  either as other or not available. How can we know if black people are disproportionately impacted if more than a third of the data does not include a race identifier? This is not an inadvertent omission or error being allowed by the health authority  it is negligent exclusion.

 Quickly and consistently release data: The Oregon Health Authority must release the collected data, including disaggregated data as well as positive and negative outcomes, quickly and on a set schedule. We need to know how this virus is impacting black people, families and communities in real time.

 Include all of us in data sets: This means that the data must include a truly representative sample, even if that requires over-sampling. Black people must be included in statistically significant numbers in all data sets that inform the governors decisions.

 Ensure that any ongoing study correctly account for black people: Statisticians know that even well-designed studies do not yield results that are entirely accurate. Therefore, raw data are adjusted to improve accuracy. Thoughtful adjustments may be necessary here. Black people are a relatively small part of the statewide population of Oregon. But in some zip codes and in many public-facing jobs, we are a huge part of essential retail, health care, and other sectors of a well-functioning economy. Therefore, in order to have confidence in any statewide COVID-19 study, it must both adequately sample black people and make necessary adjustments so that the reported results are accurate enough to inform sound decision making. We do not support a reopening plan that is superficially based on data and science, but practically reinforces disparate outcomes based on race.

We did not pen this op-ed to appeal to enlightened self-interest. We do not want our health outcomes contingent on our neighbors concerns about their own personal health. Nor are we trying to engender guilt. We do not seek charity for vulnerable populations. We are saying that public health should be just thata plan for the public. And that means all of us. Furthermore, if data will drive decisions, policies and resources, it must be good data accompanied by targeted and purposeful methods.

Sadly, what we are witnessing right now is two ostensibly scientific hands of the state at odds. Without immediate and definitive leadership from Gov. Brown and the Oregon Health Authority, the earnest science of healing our human bodies will be undermined by bunk scientific conclusions derived from incomplete data.

Tony Hopson, Sr., of Self Enhancement Inc., Bishop CT Wells of Emmanuel Temple Full Gospel Pentecostal Church and Ron Herndon of Albina Head Start also co-authored this piece.
Even before marrying into the royal family, Meghan Markle has maintained a personal blog called "The Tig." The said blog site gave fans a glimpse of Meghan's personal life because she made it a platform to share her thoughts about food, travel, fashion and beauty.

However, after getting engaged to Prince Harry, Meghan was instructed by the royal family to shut down her personal blog and social media accounts. But since she is used to writing down her thoughts, the 38-year-old former "Suits" actress reportedly kept a diary during her entire time in the United Kingdom -- from the time she arrived as Prince Harry's girlfriend up to the moment she left as Duchess of Sussex.

A source close to Meghan revealed that the Duchess kept a daily journal and documented her time with Prince Harry. It is like a first-person memoir written by Meghan herself narrating her experience as commoner-turned-royal.

Royal biographer Andrew Morton believes that Meghan's journal could turn into a best-selling autobiography, and it will surely send shockwaves to the Buckingham Palace.

"She is a good writer, with a nice turn of phrase. Remember, she studied English in her first year at Northwestern College," Morton, who wrote the books "Meghan: Hollywood Princess" and "Diana: Her True Story," told the Daily Mail.

He claimed that Meghan's own words in a book would give her "total control" of the narrative, something she would love to have ever since seeking life outside the royal family.

Revamping Her Image

The revelation about Meghan's diary came after one of her close friends said that the Duchess desperately wants to shut her "demanding diva" image -- one who is rude to royal staffers. This is the same reason why Meghan wants their new book "Finding Freedom" out as soon as possible.

"Meghan seems to think that readers will finally understand the monumental anguish and turmoil she had to endure with a stiff upper lip. Meghan said people need to see her vulnerable side, something the book does in great detail," the insider said.

"I think [Meghan] wants people to feel sorry for her, or at least have compassion for her and all she's been through, which has been anything but a fairy tale."

"Finding Freedom: Harry and Meghan and the Making Of A Modern Royal Family," written by royal writers Omid Scobie and Carolyn Durand, will be out on August 2020 and is already expected to be a global bestseller.

Other Royals With Diaries

Meghan is not the only royal who kept a diary to document her extraordinary experience being married into the royal family. Prince Harry's late mother, Diana, also reportedly kept a diary herself.

According to Morton, the fall of Diana's marriage to Prince Charles led her to document her thoughts and the reason behind her decisions during that time. She reportedly contacted Morton after learning that the author is researching to write a book about her.
The New Deal programs of the 1930s created dozens of new government agencies that carried the regulation of business to new heights, tried to tell farmers what they might raise or what they might not raise, gave labor organizations legal protection and even got into the banking business.

Social Security

Probably the most revolutionary of all the New Deal undertakings lay in the field of Social Security. Conditions during the depression era of the 1930s made legislation in the area seem abundantly apparent. Some historians think the Social Security Act was the most complex measure ever considered by Congress.

By the 1930s, most of the industrialized nations of Western Europe had enacted some kind of social insurance legislation providing for old-age care and unemployment compensation. For a number of reasons, the U.S. had lagged behind in such efforts.

It was not until the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt that an effective social security measure was adopted in this country.

Not a radical idea

There was nothing radical about a plan for old-age pensions. By 1930, almost half the states had some kind of old-age pensions, but they were generally limited in scope. Only Wisconsin had a working unemployment compensation plan. Even the Democratic Party platform of 1932 called for a pension and unemployment plan. In Congress, four members had introduced legislation in 1932 that provided for some social relief that followed the pattern of Wisconsin. The bills were debated in committee and died producing no fruit.

Special committee

It was now Roosevelts turn, and he wanted something to complement his recovery program out of the depression conditions. In the summer of 1934, Roosevelt decided to take the initiative. He asked Congress to delay action on any existing bill while he appointed a special committee to look into the aspect of social security. The committee was to present to Congress a comprehensive measure during the 1935 year.

In June 1934, the deeply loved or roundly hated 32nd president established the Committee on Economic Security, headed by Secretary of Labor Francis Perkins. She had served in Roosevelts cabinet when he was governor of New York and would hold the Federal Labor office title until 1945. This longevity made her an insider on the decision-making processes of the New Deal and being involved in all stages of the preparation of the Social Security Act.

Cradle to grave

The committee charge was to produce a simple plan that would cover everyone in the country from the cradle to the grave. The Perkins committee spent most of the time debating two problems: whether the unemployment system was to be a national or a state program, and whether or not the old-age insurance was to be self-supporting or was to receive revenues from the general tax fund.

After much debate and some reservations, the committee chose the state-federal approach, so if the Supreme Court should strike down the act, the state system would still be able to function.

On the question of old-age pensions, the committee faced the problem of providing for those workers who would be retiring soon without a sufficient number of contributions in the system to return a reasonable pension. The solution that was negotiated provided that the system should be self-supporting and a large reserve fund would be established.

Submitted to Congress

The Social Security Bill was submitted to Congress Jan. 17, 1935. The atmosphere, in both chambers of Congress, was already filled with warnings that this was socialism, that the act would destroy individual responsibilities and the principles of self-help. Certainly, the Supreme Court would strike it down as violating the Constitution.

But members in both houses of Congress soon realized that something had to be done to rid the landscape of soup kitchens, Hoovervilles, unemployment, dust storms and the American Communist Party propaganda.

Beyond Congress, there arose an intense opposition from some segment of the general public. Huey Long of Louisiana, who presented the Every Man a King address, encouraged a more extensive bill. Francis Townsend of California had a private revolving pension scheme and Father Charles Coughlin, a Roman Catholic priest on the radio in Michigan, talked about a Union of Social Justice.

The American Federation of Labor, National Association of Manufacturers and the American Communist Party all had a dimes worth of objection to the plan. The opposition to the plan was more noisy than effective and failed to register with most voters.

The Social Security Act passed in the Senate on a vote of 76 votes to six and in the House by 371 votes to 33 Aug. 14, 1935. Roosevelt signed the measure immediately.

Details of the plan

Money to fund the plan was to come from a tax to be levied on the wages of the employee and the employers payroll. Benefits would be payable at age 65. In addition, the federal government would extend grants to the states for the care of the destitute and provide matching funds for the care of dependent mothers, children and the blind and for public health services.

A Social Security Board was established to administer the various provisions of the act. Experience with the Social Security Act and implementation of its provisions have led Congress to amend the original legislation repeatedly over the years.

While clearly revolutionary for America at the time, the Social Security Act was considered inadequate by many of its supporters. The idea that a worker should pay one-half of the cost of his own retirement stopped far short of most of the European models.

As some pointed out, the worker would already be paying a disproportionate share as a consumer because the employers payroll tax in the program would immediately be passed on in the form of higher prices.

The New Dealers responded that the worker contribution built up equity that would make it impossible for subsequent administrations to deny him his coverage.

A weak feature of the original law was its limited scope since it omitted farm workers and domestics from making contributions and contained no health insurance provision of any kind.

However, the act represented the beginning of a growing awareness that the federal government had a responsibility to provide certain social benefits to a maturing nation. Thats your history!
Hitting out at West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar over his tweet lauding the Centre's economic package, the TMC on Friday said he should contest the next state Assembly polls on a BJP ticket.

The governor, earlier in the day, hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "efforts to mitigate the woes of farmers" across the country and urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to join the Centre's PM-Kisan scheme.

"Applaud efforts @narendramodi to mitigate wows of FARMERS. MIGRANTS and STREET VENDORS. PM-KISHAN beneficiary farmers will get 2 lac crore concessional credit boost through KISAN CEDIT CARDS. Street Vendors will get initial working capital Rs 10,000/," he said in a tweet.

Dhankhar, who had been vocal about the state government's alleged combative approach towards the Raj Bhavan, termed the economic package announced by the Centre as a "farsighted game changer package".

"Migrants will get FREE RATION for TWO MONTHS: 5 Kg grains per person & 1 Kg chana per family per month Urge @MamataOfficial to adopt PM-KISAN so farmers get assistance through KISAN CREDIT CARDS. Already 70 lac farmers have lost seven thousand crores due to non adoption," he added.

Reacting to Dhankhar's statement, senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and MP Kalyan Banerjee said the tweets show that the governor is functioning as an agent of the BJP and suggested that he contest next year's state Assembly polls on a ticket from the saffron party.

"The Hon'ble Governor of West Bengal @jdhankhar1, your tweet depicts that you have become absolutely Central Govt. employee and acting as an agent of your political party BJP. The economic package declared yesterday produces nothing and frustrates the mind of the people of Bengal," he wrote on Twitter.

Underlining that no relief is in the offing for the poor people of Bengal, the TMC leader said the governor is acting at the behest of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

"I understand your limitation and you have to carry on the flag of BJP at Raj Bhawan.

"I have never seen a senior advocate like you after becoming Hon'ble Governor has become the conduit pipe of the Central Govt. and for any political party. You can continue your act as per dictates of @AmitShah and the BJP. I invite you to contest ensuing assembly election so that you can get a befitting reply from the people of West Bengal," Banerjee said.

The chief minister had, on Wednesday, slammed the Centre claiming that its special economic package is a "big zero" and has nothing for the states.

She had also said the Centre is "misleading people" amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The Bengal government and the Raj Bhawan had, over the past two months, frequently engaged in acrimonious exchanges over the state's handling of the COVID-19 situation.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When a young Indian tourist arrived in Canada on March 7, among the objectives of the planned 12-day vacation was to fulfil a dream of visiting the Niagara Falls. Instead, nearly two months after she was originally scheduled to return to India, 32-year-old Smitha B from Bangalore remains stranded in the Greater Toronto Area.

Now staying at a hotel in Brampton courtesy the community organization Canada India Foundation (CIF), next door to a family of four in a similar quandary, Smitha said, My dream place was Niagara, but I didnt get to go anywhere. People like me ended up like this. That is, stuck in Canada, as her return flight to India on March 19 was cancelled and she has struggled to survive in a foreign country and has been relying on the meals and the free hotel room provided by the CIF.

However, now Smitha is hopeful of finally returning to Bangalore and ease the anxiety of her worried parents, who live in Mysore. She has registered with the Indias High Commission in Ottawa for one of the first lot of repatriation flights from Canada that will be operated by Air India, beginning May 20.

Like her, there are many who desperately want to return to India but werent able to because of the lockdown and the absence of air connectivity. Indias High Commissioner to Canada Ajay Bisaria said nearly 5,000 people had registered on the missions website for the flights.

Initially, there will be five flights from Canada: three from Toronto and two from Vancouver; and these will fly over 1400 Indians back home. Each ticket will cost over Rs 1.25 lakh. The flights will connect the travellers to a number of destinations in India: Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Amritsar and Jaipur.

Bisaria said the flight arrangement was based on domicile of the passengers since travel between states in India was still problematic. The first list of passengers will have those with compelling reasons to return to India.

Depending on demand, the Indian government will commission more such flights and Bisaria has advised Indians stranded in Canada to keep registering with the High Commission, if they hadnt so far, since there may be more beyond the five that will leave, beginning on May 20.

Canadas High Commission in India has also informed its citizens in India that they can also buy tickets on these commercial flights to return to Canada, as Air India is accepting reservations for the outward destination.

Meanwhile, Smitha, waiting to return home, understands that on arrival she will have to undergo mandatory quarantine for 14 days. But, for her, only the journey matters at this time.
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

The family of a man who was fatally shot by an Albuquerque police officer in late March has filed a lawsuit against the city, police department and the two officers involved in his death.

The suit, filed Tuesday in state district court, says Albuquerque city government and the police department have not done enough to train officers on how to interact with people who have mental or behavioral health disabilities.

On March 30, Albuquerque Police Department officer Edgar Sandoval shot 52-year-old Valente Acosta-Bustillos inside his home in the 900 block of Edith SE after Acosta-Bustillos daughter called and asked APD to do a welfare check on him. He later died at a hospital.

As evidenced by the large number of police shootings in Albuquerque, the City of Albuquerque, by and through the Albuquerque Police Department, has failed to adopt any meaningful strategy to protect the safety and well-being of citizens living in Albuquerque who suffer from mental and behavioral health disabilities, the lawsuit says.

Lapel camera footage shows Acosta-Bustillos swinging a shovel at Sandoval and officer Joseph Bush before Sandoval opens fire. Bush shot him with a Taser first, but it was ineffective.

Acosta-Bustillos had an arrest warrant at the time after he failed to show up to a pretrial services appointment for felony battery and assault charges he picked up March 8 for allegedly threatening a neighbor, court documents show.

Sandoval arrested him after the March 8 incident, according to a criminal complaint.

By March 30, family and coworkers had not heard from Acosta-Bustillos for over a week, so his daughter, Veronica Ajanel, called APD to check on him.

Bush and Sandoval found Acosta-Bustillos working in his yard with a shovel and began casually speaking with him in Spanish because the officers knew from previous interactions that it is his preferred language, the suit says.

The suit also says that an APD sergeant had made arrangements for Acosta-Bustillos to get mental health treatment at a local hospital.

Defendants Sandoval and Bush had previously responded to similar welfare safety checks for Valente Acosta-Bustillos on behalf of the family, and both defendants were aware of his mental and behavioral health issues, the lawsuit says. The Albuquerque Police Department and defendants Sandoval and Bush knew him well.

The officers followed Acosta-Bustillos into his house and tried to arrest him after learning he had an active warrant.

The suit is asking for punitive damages, and damages for the familys pain and suffering.

APD spokesman Gilbert Gallegos declined to comment on the lawsuit.
 Flash

Chinese mainland citizens were largely satisfied with their own government's COVID-19 crisis response, while citizens in Western countries felt their governments did poorly, according to the findings of a global survey released on May 6.

The first-of-its-kind global survey was jointly conducted by Singapore's leading social research agency Blackbox Research and technology company Toluna between April 3 and 19.

The survey measured the sentiments of approximately 12,500 people from 23 countries and regions towards their governments' COVID-19 crisis management efforts.

The survey was assessed using four key performance indicators: political leadership, corporate leadership, community, and media.

The result revealed that Chinese mainland came in first with an index score of 85, with the most respondents rating its performance favorably across the four indicators.

Vietnam came in second (77), followed by a tie between the United Arab Emirates and India (59).

New Zealand (56) is the only Western country with an index score higher than the global average of 45, indicating that citizens in Western countries are generally less satisfied with their countries' performances.

David Black, founder and CEO of Blackbox Research, said the study confirms that the crisis has dented Western psyches in terms of expectations about national preparedness in many areas.

He said, "For many of these countries, this pandemic is unprecedented. Governments are still coming to terms with a crisis they did not expect, and public confidence suffered as a result."
WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind.  Purdue Extension announced on Friday (May 15) that county 4-H fairs can occur after the Purdue University restrictions on face-to-face events end June 30.

Local 4-H fair boards, 4-H councils and county extension educators may continue planning for events through the month of June in alignment with Indianas Back on Track plan and in consultation with local health officials.

Purdue Extension will comply with all federal, state, and local regulations and public safety guidelines and will adhere to Purdue University policies for public health and safety, said Jason Henderson, senior associate dean of the College of Agriculture and director of Purdue Extension. The Back on Track plan provides guidelines which will be followed to ensure the safety of our 4-Hers, families, and communities.

Interested community members should follow local county extension social media pages to receive the most updated 4-H county fair information.

Purdue Extension prohibited face-to-face meetings and events in response to COVID-19 restrictions through June 30. During this time, extension 4-H educators and 4-H volunteers have offered virtual programming to protect the health and safety of youth and families.

County 4-H fairs may begin on July 4, if local health officials confirm the county has reached stage five in the Indiana Back on Track plan. Fairs must adhere to social distancing guidelines, screen employees and volunteers working on behalf of Purdue Extension daily, and follow industry best practices regarding disinfecting high traffic areas and offering hand sanitizer and cleaning stations to employees and guests.

County 4-H educators have received implementation guidance. The guidance, developed from industry and government best practices, will aid 4-H councils, fair boards and county educators in planning over the next six weeks. In some cases, 4-H councils and extension boards may choose to virtualize their fair experience due to financial limitations, PPE availability or other locally determined restrictions. Purdue Extension 4-H specialists have developed models for virtual 4-H fairs in preparation that some counties may not be able to adequately follow federal, state, and local guidelines.

We want to make sure we are doing everything possible to protect our 4-Hers, their families and the community, said Casey Mull, assistant director of extension and 4-H youth development program leader. All 4-H youth who want to exhibit this summer will be able to through virtual or face-to-face mechanisms.

Purdue Extension staff members work in all 92 Indiana counties providing information in agriculture and natural resources, health and human sciences, community development and 4-H youth development.

Source: Casey Mull, mullc@purdue.edu

Media contact: Jason Henderson, (765) 494-8489; jhenderson@purdue.edu

Agricultural Communications: 765-494-8415;

Maureen Manier, Department Head, mmanier@purdue.edu

Agriculture News Page
U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif) has proposed a coronavirus peace plan between the United States and Iran to prevent instability during the global pandemic.

In an opinion article published by Bloomberg on May 14 the senior Democratic Senator proposes two approaches to reduce tensions between Washington and Tehran.

First, meetings between the foreign and defense ministers of the two countries to reduce tensions and avoid war. Feinstein wrote, Face-to-face meetings would reduce the chance of missteps that could accidentally lead to war, a situation possible today with Iranian boats recklessly engaging U.S. ships in the Persian Gulf.

The United States and President Donald Trump personally have on many occasions offered talks with Iran without pre-conditions, but Iran has rejected these offers. While its presidential administration has demanded an end to sanctions before any negotiations could take place, the countrys ruler Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has banned any talks with the United States.

The second approach recommended by Sen. Feinstein prescribes a temporary and partial lifting of U.S. sanctions on Iran, including Washingtons support for a $5 billion loan request by Iran from the International Monetary Fund, with oversight mechanisms within or similar to the Swiss Humanitarian Trade Arrangement, to facilitate the flow of much-needed goods to the Iranian people while safeguarding against the regimes diversion of funds for malign purposes.

Sen. Feinstein adds that these discussions could lead to a more comprehensive framework of discussions on Irans nuclear program, ballistic missiles and regional aggression.
In 2016, former Costa Rican President Luis Guillermo Solis vowed to expand the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. He called on to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights to require the countries to implement same-sex marriage.

In 2018, the Costa Rican constitutional court made headlines after they declared same-sex couples in the nation will be allowed to register for marriage by mid-2020. Tens of thousands of citizens spilled out to the nation's capital to participate in the 2019 pride march. According to reports, members of the Lutheran Church in Costa Rica joined the pride march organized by March for Diversity. Activists from Nicaragua also engaged in the rally in hopes their government would also allow LGTBQ+ community members to register for marriage.

According to a report by Q Costa Rica, people of the same sex can start registering with the Civil Registry on May 26, an announcement applauded by many. The ruling was called a 'historic decision' as it would make Costa Rica the first socially conservative country in Central America to officially acknowledge the right.

However, recent reports suggest politicians may be delaying the enactment of the landmark gay marriage ruling. Costa Rican lawmakers and government officials criticized their fellow politicians, leading to a punch-up between party members.

On Tuesday, 20 politicians reportedly introduced a motion that would delay the ruling from taking effect for up to 18 months. The lawmakers claimed they 'lacked enough time' to review the decision due to other issues such as the COVID-19 crisis.

Rights activists and government officials say the conservatives' efforts to delay the ruling undermined the constitutional court's decision on the matter. Luis Salazar, the presidential commissioner for affairs concerning the LGBTQ community, believes arguing on an issue that has already been settled. He said the country still had other problems to resolve while confronting the pandemic.

According to local media, the argument over the ruling came to a head-on Tuesday when the National Liberation Party's deputy, David Gourzong, reportedly got involved in a physical altercation with a legislative adviser, Giancarlo Casasola Chaves.

In a statement released to the press, the legislator apologized for attacking the deputy but claimed: "insults lead to violence." He said he was offended when the adviser used insulted lawmakers who signed the document in a WhatsApp chat.

He announced he would seek legal actions against the official despite being called to resign by fellow politicians.

Thirty-eight of Costa Rica's 57-member assembly are required to vote in favor of the ruling to be able to bring the issue to the top of the list. If they fail to accumulate the needed votes, the ruling would most likely be suspended until the May 26 deadline.

Enrique Sanchez, the nation's first openly gay congressman, believes the politicians who uphold conservative views had little chance of gaining the majority.

Many Latin American countries are beginning to embrace same-sex marriage and the rights of the LGBTQ+ community. Gay couples are allowed to register for marriage in other countries in the Americas-including Argentina, Colombia, Brazil. Ecuador, Uruguay, and some parts of Mexico.





Want to read more? Here are the latest news from the Americas:
Evan Vucci, STF / Associated Press

He's not on the ballot this year, but Gov. Greg Abbott shifted into campaign mode this week in response to heat he took from his right flank last week for not moving quickly enough to open certain businesses amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Plus: Surprise, surprise Sen. John Cornyn now says people who just lost their health insurance should sign up for coverage under Obamacare.
Gardai are investigating after a man presented himself to a Dublin hospital with apparent gunshot wounds last night.

A 19-year-old man was shot in the shoulder and leg in north Dublin.

They have sealed off two locations in the northside suburb of Darndale.

Gardai from Coolock were called out to reports of a shooting around 9pm last night.

When they got to the scene in Darndale, they found a burning moped in Primrose Grove and sealed off two locations in the area.

But around that time, a man appeared at Beaumont Hospital having been shot twice.

He is aged in his late teens and his condition is not thought to be life-threatening.

A garda forensic team is due to examine the areas sealed off.

No arrests have been made and inquiries are continuing.

Local TD Aodhan O Riordain has said the shooting - the latest in a series of these incidents in the area - is "extremely worrying".

"Another shooting and an extremely worrying development and we have had a number of these incidents over the last period of time.

"I have been calling for the last year for a dedicated crime taskforce to be established.

"During the general election, the Minister for Justice said he would establish the taskforce in order to get to the root cause of these incidents.

"If we don't examine why these incidents are happening then they are just going to continue."

Mr O Riordain said that violent crime has not gone away during the Covid-19 crisis.

"We need to see action on this now," he said.

Communities shouldnt have to live in fear of violence and parents shouldnt have to worry that their children mightnt be safe when playing outside their homes.

Children growing up shouldnt be conditioned to think this type of violence is normal.

We need to see a real commitment from Government on this before the situation gets out of hand.

Anyone with information is being asked to call Coolock Garda Station on 01 666 4200 of the Garda Confidential Line 1800 666 111.




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Nadine Dorries is unlikely to be fired from her role as the United Kingdoms health minister after once again using social media to promote fake news that appears to hold an Islamophobic agenda, say analysts.

Dorries retweeted a video of opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer that had been doctored to make it appear that in his previous role as director of public prosecutions he was reluctant to prosecute grooming gangs.

The edited video made it seem as though he were blaming the young victims, saying many had consumed alcohol and hadnt reported the abuse straight away.

It had originally been posted by a far-right account known for Islamophobia. Dorries added the word revealing to her retweet.

The existence of sex abuse gangs in which the abusers were Muslims has become a touchstone issue for British far-right groups, who falsely claim the gangs are representative of Muslims in the UK.

Maria Caulfield and Lucy Allan, also Conservative MPs, also retweeted the video. All three later deleted their posts, but none have yet made a public apology to Starmer or the wider public.

3 Conservative MPs Nadine Dorries, Maria Caulfield and Lucy Allan today shared a doctored video from this Islamophobic far-right account ICYMI: Dorries has a history sharing from the far-right & propagating Islamophobia (see thread) Will action be taken this time? ht @hughster pic.twitter.com/pWllnMDl5R  Miqdaad Versi (@miqdaad) May 14, 2020

The actions of Nadine Dorries give credence to the view that our current government is perhaps not the bastion of the brightest and the best, said Mark Shanahan, head of the department of international relations at the University of Reading.

But when one sees her spreading of fake news was echoed by two further conservative MPs, it also becomes clear that [Prime Minister] Boris Johnson has rather limited options on who he can bring into government, so perhaps for now, Dorriess place is safe, he told Al Jazeera.

200513115755940

She also provides what could be a welcome distraction for Johnson  who remains under fire for his lacklustre leadership of the UK during the pandemic. As long as the public and media are exercised by Dorriess misguided attack on Keir Starmer, the pressure is lifted a little bit on the underperforming prime minister.

A request for comment made to Keir Starmers office was not responded to by the time of publication, but a Labour Party source earlier told the PA news agency: This is a doctored video tweeted by a far-right social media account. As a government minister, we hope Nadine Dorries acknowledges this and takes it down.

Number 10 Downing Street, the office of the prime minister, told Al Jazeera that the three MPs had been privately reprimanded by Conservative Party officials.

These Tweets have rightly been deleted, a spokesman said in a statement.

The MPs involved have been spoken to by the Whips Office and reminded of their responsibility to check the validity of information before they post on social media sites.

Dorries has a record of sharing far-right disinformation, having previously claimed Muslim men could claim state welfare payments for multiple wives and implied that Mayor of London Sadiq Khan  who is a Muslim  bore responsibility for sex abuse gangs in northern England.

She has also said that Johnson did not go far enough in a widely-denounced newspaper column, written before he was prime minister, when he claimed Muslim women wearing hijabs looked like letterboxes and bank-robbers.

Whats revealing is that: 1. Youve spread fake news and indulged a smear being promoted by the far right. 2. You had time to do this despite being a Minister in the Department of Health during a public health crisis. Its either malevolence or stupidity. Probably both. https://t.co/dT5ekmtUcn  Wes Streeting MP (@wesstreeting) May 14, 2020

The Number 10 line will be to feature its reprimand of Nadine Dorries and take no further action, Scott Lucas, professor of international politics at the University of Birmingham, told Al Jazeera.

After all, this is not the first time that Conservative Party outlets have put out a misleading video. [The] Conservative Central Office went so far as to set up fake websites, attempting to undermine the Labour opposition, in the December general election.

During last years election campaign, the Conservative Party was criticised for rebranding its Twitter account as if it were an independent fact-checker during one of the leaders debates, and for building a spoof website that imitated the Labour Partys branding while being misleading over the contents of the oppositions manifesto. It used the URL labourmanifesto.co.uk, and the party bought advertising space on Google to make sure it showed at the top of searches for Labours election pledges.

The party has also been accused of institutional Islamophobia, but after saying it would carry out an internal probe, plans for a full independent investigation were this week dropped.

The Conservative party did not respond to a request for comment for this report.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 12:55:31|Editor: huaxia

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XINING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Though summer has already begun, farmers on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau are still busy with their spring plowing of highland barley, a crucial staple for local residents.

In a makeshift tent set up in the field, villagers from Hainan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in northwest China's Qinghai Province sat around a fire, planning their costs and harvest for the year.

The Tibetan farmers have tried to grow their traditional grain crop in a novel and greener way.

They apply 800 kg of organic manure on one mu (about 0.067 hectares) of land to get the same fertility as using chemical alternatives, which increases the cost by more than 200 yuan (about 28.2 U.S. dollars), according to Nojin Cering, who used to be a village head.

"The government advocates the cultivation of organic crops by offering subsidies, and that has eased our burden," he said.

In 2016, Nojin Cering set up a specialized cooperative in his village to plant highland barley and rape. The cooperative has rented more than 10,000 mu of land this year, 6,000 mu of which will be growing highland barley.

The cooperative has absorbed 37 poor households this year. "Each household will increase their income by 4,000 to 5,000 yuan if the weather is favorable," he said.

Highland barley has a 3,500-year history of cultivation on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, and is widely planted in eastern Qinghai and the Tibetan-inhabited regions in the southern part of the province at an altitude of more than 3,000 meters.

In 2018, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the State Council Leading Group Office of Poverty Alleviation and Development identified highland barley planting as an industry unique to Qinghai and eligible for government support.

The planting area of highland barley in Qinghai topped 1 million mu a year later, accounting for a quarter of the nation's total.

Triso Daye, head of a cooperative in Chengduo County of Yushu Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, said all the cooperative's 714 mu of arable land has been planted with black highland barley that will be sold at twice the price of the common variety.

What makes the locals more confident is that the pre-orders of their harvest have already sold out.

The county government has also signed an agreement with a local biotech company. The company provides black highland barley seeds and guides farmers with scientific planting, and will purchase their harvest at a quality-based price after deducting the cost of the seeds.

Wu Kunlun, director of the provincial key laboratory of highland barley genetics breeding, said highland barley breeding research institutions in Qinghai have made a dent in yield and variety improvement.

Qinghai will promote the use of organic fertilizer across the province over the next five years, according to an agreement signed between the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the Qinghai provincial government last year.

Through the use of modern technologies and the promotion of the enterprises + bases + cooperatives + farmers, the traditional crop will be cultivated into a green industry on the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, said Wang Yuhu, head of the provincial department of agriculture and rural affairs.

"Our ancestors survived by growing highland barley, while we thrive by doing the same thing," Triso Daye said. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 01:12:42|Editor: huaxia

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NAIROBI, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Zhejiang Business Association Kenya, an association of Chinese business owners in Kenya, on Thursday donated 70,000 face masks to the government to help combat the COVID-19 outbreak.

Chen Jianbin, secretary-general of Zhejiang Business Association Kenya told journalists in Nairobi that COVID-19 is a global problem that will only be defeated through cooperation.

"With this donation, we hope to assist our Kenyan brothers and sisters to overcome COVID-19 which knows no borders," Chen said.

Zhejiang Business Association Kenya which was established in 2018 brings together over 60 locally owned businesses by people from Zhejiang province in China.

Chen also praised Kenyan government's strong leadership in containing the spread of the virus.

The donations will be disbursed to the various government departments including the health, immigration, police, University of Nairobi and the Kenya Investment Authority.

Lawrence Karanja, chief administrative secretary, Ministry of Industry, Trade and Enterprise Development, said that the donation is timely as it will compliment government efforts to combat the spread of coronavirus.

Karanja noted that assistance is an indication of the strong and cordial ties that exist between Kenya and China.

"We need friends like this who can help us in our time of need," Karanja noted. Enditem
Workers compensation insurance provider Texas Mutual Insurance Company has announced the appointment of Jeff Lentz as its senior vice president of underwriting. In his new role, Lentz will oversee the companys corporate underwriting, underwriting support services, regional underwriting, distribution, agency operations, business development and customer engagement.

We have a long history of taking care of our agents, policyholders and injured workers, and Jeff has been an important part of that for many years, said Jeanette Ward, Texas Mutual chief operating officer. His many years of underwriting expertise, experience with the company and in the insurance industry contribute to the companys vision of building a stronger, safer Texas through innovative and responsive service to our customers.
WASHINGTON - Weeks before a Republican donor and top White House ally becomes postmaster general, the U.S. Postal Service has quietly launched a review of its package delivery contracts and lost its last senior official who was not appointed by President Donald Trump.

The moves, confirmed by six people with knowledge of the Postal Service's inner workings but not authorized to speak publicly, underscore how Trump is moving closer to reshaping an independent agency he has dubbed "a joke."

The Postal Service in recent weeks has sought bids from consulting firms to reassess what the agency charges companies such as Amazon, UPS and FedEx to deliver products on their behalf - often in the "last mile" between a post office and a customer's home. Higher package rates would cost shippers and online retailers billions of dollars, potentially spurring them to invest in their own distribution networks instead of relying on the Postal Service.

Trump for years has alleged, without evidence, that the Postal Service is undercharging companies, particularly Amazon (whose founder and chief executive, Jeff Bezos, owns The Washington Post). The agency has steadfastly rejected that assessment, saying it charges what it can given a competitive marketplace.

The Postal Service and White House declined to comment.

Trump has recently threatened to withhold a $10 billion line of credit approved by Congress in a coronavirus stimulus package unless the Postal Service quadruples what it charges to deliver packages. Independent analysts warn that such a change would devastate the agency, which increasingly has relied on such deliveries for a fast-growing portion of its business.

But recent developments show Trump's efforts to reshape the USPS are gaining traction. Every member of the agency's bipartisan governing board is a Trump appointee. Democratic Vice Chairman David Williams resigned April 30, fed up with what he considered Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin's meddling, according to people familiar with his thinking. The postmaster general and deputy postmaster general also sit on the board, but do not vote on postal rates or personnel matters.

And last week the panel announced it has tapped Louis DeJoy, the finance chairman of the 2020 Republican National Convention, as the new postmaster general.

Also, Deputy Postmaster General Ronald Stroman announced his resignation on Friday. Stroman had years of experience working with congressional Democrats and had become the agency point man on vote-by-mail initiatives for the November election.

Stroman did not respond to a request for comment.

Trump and Mnuchin have sought to attach terms to a $10 billion emergency loan to the USPS that would allow the administration to dictate package prices, review and alter bulk-discount contracts known as negotiated service agreements or NSAs, appoint the next postmaster general and direct negotiations with labor unions.

Conversations between Treasury and postal officials on the loan began last week where those terms were discussed, according to congressional staffers briefed on the meetings. Progress has slowed since then as House Democrats finalized language for another pandemic stimulus plan.

The reevaluation of those bulk-discount contracts signals how swiftly the independent agency and its board of governors have fallen under the administration's influence, say people familiar with the White House's plans. As one Senate aide involved in the emergency funding negotiations put it: "It is game, set, match right now with the Postal Service."

Democrats and labor unions see DeJoy, the incoming postmaster general, as the polar opposite of outgoing Postmaster General Megan Brennan, a onetime letter carrier who rose through the agency's ranks and fought to keep it independent of the White House. They worry DeJoy will be too deferential toward Trump and Mnuchin. But conservatives have hailed his business record as an executive of a national logistics firm.

DeJoy did not respond to a request for comment.

Congressional Democrats had attempted to thwart the White House's growing influence with the Postal Service by including funding and no-strings-attached borrowing in the $3 trillion Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, or Heroes Act, which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., unveiled Wednesday. It includes $25 billion in aid and new language forbidding Treasury from attaching conditions to the earlier $10 billion loan.

"At the very moment House Democrats are trying to rescue the Postal Service by providing emergency cash and removing onerous loan terms, the president and his cronies continue to try and leverage this pandemic to privatize and dismantle the USPS," said Rep. Gerald Connolly, D-Va., who chairs the House subcommittee responsible for postal oversight. "It's shameful and will hurt every American and business."

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., quickly rejected much of the bill, and lawmakers in both chambers say they expect the Senate to whittle down much of the USPS funding. McConnell has signaled a willingness to follow the White House's agenda on postal matters.

Advocates are fighting to persuade Senate Republicans to preserve the no-strings-attached borrowing provision. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Steve Daines of Montana, Dan Sullivan of Alaska and Pat Roberts of Kansas joined with five Democrats last week in a letter to McConnell and Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., that called for "significant emergency appropriations" and unconditioned borrowing. That could still leave the postal provisions short of the requisite support to avoid being gutted, advocates worry.

"I don't know if you can convince them by logic or reason. You may have to convince them by force of votes," Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., said of the GOP-controlled Senate. "Basically, insist on it in negotiations, show that the American people are behind it and use it as leverage in the negotiations. If they want something, they'll have to agree with this."

Postal leaders have told lawmakers they expect the agency to lose $13 billion this year as the pandemic causes the volume of personal and marketing mail - on which USPS makes its highest profit margin - fall by close to 20% and 45%, respectively.

Package volumes, though, have skyrocketed as a homebound nation dived into e-commerce. Packages typically constitute 5 percent of postal volume, but 30 percent of its revenue, postal experts say. During the pandemic, volume has surged 70 percent, propping up the agency's finances. The Postal Service frequently contracts with shippers and internet retailers to perform "last mile" delivery, or the final leg of an item's journey, to a customer's home.

But Trump often cites packages, and the Postal Service's relationship with Amazon and other online retailers, as the main driver of USPS's financial woes. He falsely stated in April that the agency loses $2 to $5 each time it delivers a package for "Internet retail companies." The Postal Service is required by law to charge enough on each package to cover the cost of delivery and a percentage of the agency's overhead expenses.

Much of Trump's ire is aimed at Bezos and his ownership of The Post. Trump has been critical of the newspaper's coverage of his administration, and his policy priorities on mail issues appear to target Amazon directly, independent experts say.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

One former senior administration official who was present for Trump's discussions with some Postal Service employees said he repeatedly railed about Amazon and Bezos and told Brennan, the outgoing postmaster general, and others to raise rates. When told that the rates were fixed by the contacts, Trump regularly grew irate, the official said.

The agency reviews these deals annually, both for individual contracts and for each mail product, according to one person with knowledge of the postal pricing process. Such audits are included in annual reports to the USPS's leadership but rarely scrutinize packages, because they represent a relatively small slice of the agency's volume.

The private nature of the agency's review and the solicitation of outside consulting firms in late April to conduct it may point to agency leaders' interest in crafting a case for package rate increases to present to the Postal Regulatory Commission, the person said, though the USPS still may choose not to pursue price changes.

Companies can receive discounts with the Postal Service if they deliver a large quantity of packages directly to a postal facility nearest to the parcels' final destination, said John Haber, founder and chief executive of Spend Management Experts, a logistics consulting firm in Atlanta.

Those discounts are often marginal, often only 5% to 10% off normal shipping rates, according to a former Amazon executive who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the company's internal business practices.

Analysts say higher package prices or even smaller bulk discounts would hurt Amazon disproportionately because it is both a retailer and shipper. Other shipping companies can pass higher costs on to merchants and customers; since Amazon both sells and delivers products, it has less room to defray the expense.

It would hurt small businesses even more, though, that don't have their own distribution networks, experts say, and rely on the Postal Service as a secure, cheap way to reach customers across the country.

The bulk discounts do, though, ensure that shipping companies continue work with the Postal Service, providing the post office with a reliable and brisk package business, Haber said.

Raising rates on NSAs would drive crucial clients away from USPS, and lead them to cover more "last mile" deliveries on their own. Amazon already delivers roughly half of all packages itself, according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley.

"I can promise that will happen," Haber said. "Amazon is going to bring that stuff in house if the price of using the Postal Service is too much."

Trump's supporters argue that once the Postal Service raises package prices, it should focus on paper mail delivery, still its most profitable product, and scale back its package business.

"Packages are bigger, they're bulky, they're heavy. They're not as efficient to deliver as envelopes," said Paul Steidler, who studies the Postal Service at the right-leaning Lexington Institute. "The packages bring in revenue, but they don't necessarily bring in profitability."

- - -

The Washington Post's Jay Greene in Seattle contributed to this report.
U.S. Army Cadet Command has ordered that all cadet summer training, traditionally held at Fort Knox, Kentucky, will be significantly adjusted to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"CST 2020 planning is in progress, and all appropriate measures are being undertaken to ensure the health and safety of our cadets, cadre and civilians," Maj. Gen. John Evans, head of Army Cadet Command, said in a recent Army news release, describing the decision not to hold cadet training courses at Knox this summer.

"The situation regarding the pandemic is still evolving and, because of this, plans for CST 2020 have been adjusted so we can still meet all of our training requirements, but the inability to complete training as we normally do will not hinder any cadets ability to move forward in ROTC."

Related: Army Defends Decision to Have West Point Graduation

The decision comes about two weeks after the Army came under scrutiny for its decision to return about 1,000 cadets to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point for a June 13 graduation ceremony that will feature a speech by President Donald Trump. West Point and Army officials say that the cadets had to return anyway to complete final medical procedures prior to entering the service that can only be completed at West Point.

Army ROTC produces about 70% of the officers entering the service each year and is available through nearly 1,000 college campuses around the country.

Every year, Fort Knox hosts the Basic and Advanced Camps that expose cadets to field training and soldier skills. But this year, these camps will be held on other campuses during the fall semester, according to the release.

Advanced Camp will be broken up so some basic tasks, such as first aid, map reading, and donning nuclear, biological and chemical protective gear, will be taught on college campuses, according to Richard Patterson, spokesman for Cadet Command.

Other skills, such as live-fire exercises and navigation courses, will be taught during rigorous off-campus field training exercises during the fall and spring semesters. These exercises will be held on major military installations and will be certified by each respective brigade commander, according to the release.

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Cadets who commission in academic year 2021 will complete a two-week course that will include a leadership field training exercise and select warrior tasks, such as live hand grenade training, a night infiltration course, and buddy team live fire exercise.

Senior cadets who have completed all other commissioning requirements except Cadet Summer Training will not be required to attend training at Fort Knox and will commission on time, according to the release.

The Distributed Basic Camp program will provide cadets an additional program of instruction in an on-campus setting prior to the start of their fall semester to qualify them for the advanced course load of Military Science Level III classes, the release adds.

Basic Camp is designed for individuals who come into ROTC later in college. It teaches initial military science-level material, such as drill and ceremony, rank identification and military customs.

Other CST courses typically conducted off of Fort Knox -- such as internships, the Nurse Summer Training Program, military badge-producing schools and Cadet Troop Leader Training --will not be conducted this summer, the release states.

"One of our main focuses remains to develop leaders by accessing, training and educating," Evans said. "The decision to adjust the implementation of summer camps will allow leaders to focus on setting conditions so movement and training can be conducted in a safe manner in the future."

Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com.

Read More: ROTC Cadets Now Firing and Maneuvering with Live Ammo at Camp
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 00:12:02|Editor: huaxia

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KAMPALA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese medical experts on Friday shared their experience of responding to the COVID-19 pandemic with their counterparts in Uganda and South Sudan.

Speaking at the opening of the meeting held via Webinar, Aeneas Chuma, UNAIDS Regional Director for Eastern and Southern Africa, said the world is facing one of the biggest challenges that is not only affecting the health sector but could potentially set the world back by many years.

"Life will not be the same again, as all evidence thus far suggests that the virus is here to stay until we achieve herd immunity or find a vaccine," Chuma said.

He said the epidemic knows no boundaries and therefore there is need for global solidarity in combating it.

"Now more than ever, it is important to stand together and extend help to each other, at all levels. We must show kindness, compassion, and empathy wherever possible," he said, noting that there have been cases of global solidarity where countries have provided medicines, expertise and human resources to sustain health services.

Chuma hailed the support of Jack Ma and the Alibaba Foundation to many African countries in containing the disease. Jack Ma sent various medical supplies to Africa to help fight the pandemic.

Anthony Garang, acting chairman of South Sudan Doctors' Union, described the meeting as a unique opportunity to learn from their Chinese counterparts who were on the COVID-19 frontline in Wuhan.

"We hope to see more of similar initiatives come up during and after COVID-19 pandemic," Garang said.

Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist of the China Center for Disease Control and Prevention (China CDC) told the meeting that China implemented strict measures to stop the spread of the disease.

In case of imported cases, Wu said China is implementing among others screening of passengers among which include providing a 14-day history and health status. He said for suspected cases, they are transferred to designated hospitals while close contacts are taken to designated hotels quarantine.

He said travelers whether foreigners or domestic face two weeks' quarantine in the designated hotels, depending on the risk evaluation and local policy.

Wu also responded to various questions which among others included creation of a herd immunity to halt the spread of the pandemic. He said there are two ways, one that includes exposing the population to the virus. He said this may lead to severe cases including fatalities. He said the other option is development of a vaccine, which is ongoing and may be available at the end of the year.

Luo Congjuan, chief physician The Affiliated Hospital of Qingdao University made a presentation on the diagnostic and treatment protocol of COVID-19.

The meeting was organized by UNAIDS China Office, World Health Organization, and WeDoctor, a medical health technology platform. Uganda Medical Association and South Sudan Doctors' Union were co-organizers.

The webinar came shortly after one held with the Kenya Medical Women Association on April 18.

The meetings, according to observers, aim at sharing experience and knowledge in COVID-19 prevention and treatment to contain its spread in Africa.

Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases across Africa rose to 75,866 as of May 15 evening. Enditem
TBILISI -- Georgias president says she has pardoned two jailed opposition leaders -- a former Tbilisi mayor and an ex-defense minister -- in a bid to salvage a foreign-brokered deal between the opposition and the ruling party on election reforms.

President Salome Zurabishvili made the announcement late on May 15, a day after opposition parties threatened to abandon the agreement if "political prisoners" were not released.

The sides have failed to move forward since the deal was inked on May 8, triggering what Zurabishvili called a political crisis that threatened the democratic and European future of the South Caucasus nation.

Georgias opposition parties also vowed to boycott parliamentary sessions until several jailed politicians who they say have been convicted on politically motivated charges are freed.

They claim the release was a condition of the May 8 deal, which the governing Georgian Dream party denies.

The two pardoned politicians are Gigi Ugulava, a former mayor of Tbilisi and leader of European Georgia-Movement for Freedom, and former Defense Minister Irakli Okruashvili, who leads the Victorious Georgia party.

Describing the two as odious figures, Zurabishvili insisted she was not pardoning political prisoners.

I declare with full responsibility that today there are no political prisoners in Georgia, the president said.

Ugulava, who helped organize anti-government protests in summer 2019, was sentenced earlier this year to 3 years and 2 months on charges of misusing public funds. It was his second conviction on similar charges.

Okruashvili was sentenced to 5 years in prison after being found guilty of organizing and taking part in the violence that marred the rallies, which lasted for weeks.

Opposition parties insisted that Georgia's electoral system unfairly favored Georgian Dream, and demanded it be changed to a proportional system ahead of parliamentary elections set for October this year.

Under the March 8 memorandum of understanding facilitated by U.S. and EU officials, parliament should consist of 120 members elected through a proportional voting system, while 30 members would be elected through a majority system.

The electoral threshold for proportional elections will be set at 1 percent and a capping mechanism will mean that no single party receiving less than 40 percent of the votes cast will be allowed to hold a majority of seats in parliament.

Under the current electoral system, 73 of 150 parliamentary seats are claimed by candidates who finish first in district races. The remaining seats are distributed proportionally to the national share of the vote that a party wins.

This led to Georgian Dream, led by billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, winning 76 percent of the legislature's seats even though it won just less than half of the popular vote.

The U.S. and European Union ambassadors welcomed the pardon as a positive move for "political de-polarization" and a contribution toward implementing the March 8 agreement ahead of upcoming elections in the autumn.
Mozambique's armed forces have killed 50 Islamic extremist fighters this week in two battles in the country's north where the insurgents have launched 11 attacks this month, the government said on Thursday.

The attacks show a marked increase in extremist violence in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province, causing considerable trouble for the government and the foreign companies investing billions of dollars in projects to produce liquefied natural gas from gas fields off the Indian Ocean coast.

The extremists, who pledge allegiance to the Islamic State group, risk giving Mozambique the type of threat that Boko Haram has become in Nigeria, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs Tibor Nagy told journalists earlier this month.

"Boko Haram was just a small movement, and because of the way the Nigerian government initially responded to it, it grew into a very serious threat, Nagy said, adding that Mozambique should take a different approach.

There has been a three-fold increase in the number of violent incidents in Cabo Delgado in the first four months of 2020 versus the same period last year, according to data compiled by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project.

Mozambique's most northeastern province, Cabo Delgado is where ExxonMobil and Total are developing the gas projects. There are also lucrative ruby and graphite mining ventures.

About 1,100 people have been killed since the extremists launched their violent campaign in October 2017, according to ACLED.

The conflict accelerated in late March when the fighters took control of the strategic port of Mocmboa da Praia for 24 hours. Two days later, on March 25, they took another coastal town, Quissanga, and stayed there for several weeks while trying to win support from Muslims there and in the surrounding district, according to local reports.

At the same time, another band of the insurgents headed inland toward Mueda, a historic military base and the hometown of Mozambique's president, Filipe Nyusi.

They suffered heavy losses in battles along the way and failed to reach the town, according to Mozambique's military and defence forces.

The fighters on April 7 killed 52 young men in Xitaxi village, allegedly taking revenge for their comrades who were killed, the government said.

The government said the rebels also killed an undisclosed number of civilians on Ibo island, denying accusations by the opposition party, Renamo, that state forces had killed them.

Government forces are pursuing a campaign against the extremists with support from helicopters provided and operated by a private South African security company, Dyck Advisory Group, led by retired Zimbabwean colonel Lionel Dyck.

The air support is credited with helping the Mozambican military turn back the insurgents before they reached the provincial capital of Pemba on April 28.

There is a dire need for the government's counter-offensive but a sustainable solution demands comprehensive government intervention which attends to years of social and governance neglect, said Jasmine Opperman, an analyst with ACLED.

The military has a limited capacity, Opperman said. Insurgents will merely pull back, focus on sustained winning of hearts and minds, and await time to resurface." The government can't afford to incur civilian casualties that would lose it local support, she said.

While saying the fighters have similarities to other insurgents in Nigeria, Somalia and West Africa's Sahel region, Opperman said Mozambique's group is unique.

Cabo Delgado is giving birth to its own unique brand of extremism. she said.

The Mozambican government should have headed off the conflict with inclusive development, with greater social, territorial and ethnic equity in the distribution of resources, Joao Mosca, director of Maputo-based think tank the Center for the Study of the Rural Environment, wrote in a recent paper.

Military solutions are not possible, he said, warning that they bring high human, material, and financial cost, without generating development.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Zamfara State Governor, Bello Matawalle, has hailed the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) for arresting two Chinese nationals for allegedly offering N100 million as a bribe to its zonal head in Sokoto, Abdullahi Lawal.

The EFCC, on Monday, arrested Meng Kun and Xu Koi with cash it said they offered Mr Lawal in a bid to compromise ongoing investigations of a construction company, China Zhonghao Nig. Ltd, handling contracts awarded by the Zamfara State Government between 2012 and 2019.

The contracts were for the construction of township roads in Gummi, Bukkuyun, Anka and Nasarawa towns; and 168 solar-powered boreholes in 14 local government areas of the state.

Mr Matawalle, in a statement signed by his spokesperson, Zailani Bappa, hailed the anti-graft agency for exposing the contract scammers who tried to bribe their way to prevent investigations into the multi-billion naira contract fraud in the state.

I want to specifically commend the leadership of Ibrahim Magu and his able Zonal Head in Sokoto, Alhaji Lawal Abdullahi, for moving this case to a significant stage by this arrest and further proving to the world our cries against the atrocities perpetrated by the immediate past administration in the state, Mr Matawalle said.

Sometimes back, I cancelled the unexecuted multi-billion naira contract awarded to this same Chinese company and called for the refund of the money. I still call on Mr President to assist the State Government to fast track the retrieval of this money and repatriate it back to the state so that we can actually provide the water and electricity to the rural areas, Governor Matawalle said.

READ ALSO:

It is pertinent here to call on the President, Muhammadu Buhari, to further endorse his confidence on Mr Ibrahim Magu and his team as it is becoming obvious by the day that those calling for his removal actually have skeletons hiding in their wardrobes.

This is indeed, similar to the calls for the removal of Service Chiefs where we discovered that those against them actually have cases to answer in terms of aiding and abetting banditry and other heinous crimes in our dear state.

We have worked with these Service Chiefs and we have seen their excellent handiwork in genuine fight against banditry and other terror in our dear state. I call on President Muhammadu Buhari to equally further endorse his support and encouragement to all of them, Governor Matawalle further said.
BRENTWOOD, Tenn., May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Tractor Supply Company (TSCO), the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States, today announced its participation in the following upcoming conferences:



RBCs 2020 Global Consumer & Retail Virtual Conference on May 27, 2020. The Companys 30-minute presentation will begin at 10:40 a.m. Eastern Time.



Bairds 2020 Virtual Global Consumer, Technology and Services Conference on June 3, 2020. The Companys 30-minute presentation will begin at 9:40 a.m. Eastern Time.

Hal Lawton, President and Chief Executive Officer; Kurt Barton, Chief Financial Officer; and Mary Winn Pilkington, Senior Vice President, Investor and Public Relations, will attend these conferences. The events will be webcast live on the Companys website at IR.TractorSupply.com . The webcasts will be archived and available at the same location shortly after each presentation.

About Tractor Supply Company

Tractor Supply Company (TSCO), the largest rural lifestyle retailer in the United States, has been passionate about serving its unique niche, as a one-stop shop for recreational farmers, ranchers and all those who enjoy living the rural lifestyle, for more than 80 years. Tractor Supply offers an extensive mix of products necessary to care for home, land, pets and animals with a focus on product localization, exclusive brands and legendary customer service that addresses the needs of the Out Here lifestyle. With more than 33,000 team members, the Company leverages its physical store assets with digital capabilities to offer customers the convenience of purchasing products they need anytime, anywhere and any way they choose at the everyday low prices they deserve. At March 28, 2020, the Company operated 1,863 Tractor Supply stores in 49 states and an e-commerce website at www.TractorSupply.com .

Tractor Supply Company also owns and operates Petsense, a small-box pet specialty supply retailer focused on meeting the needs of pet owners, primarily in small and mid-size communities, and offering a variety of pet products and services. At March 28, 2020, the Company operated 180 Petsense stores in 26 states. For more information on Petsense, visit www.Petsense.com .

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Tractor Supply Company

Contacts:

Mary Winn Pilkington (615) 440-4212

Marianne Denenberg (615) 440-4345




One-third of deaths caused by the coronavirus in Illinois are African-American, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.), a nurse who assisted the Obama administration in pandemic preparedness, told Mike Allen at an Axios virtual event on Friday.

The big picture: African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic people and other people of color are more likely to become seriously ill from the coronavirus due to chronic health conditions and the effects of economic inequality, several studies have found.
Less than a mile from the Aqsa, the decades-old Jaafar Sweets shop in Jerusalem has witnessed a sharp decline in business during the fasting month, selling about half as much as it did in 2019. The Israeli government has allowed sweets shops in Jerusalem to be open for takeout orders only, and the shops large seating section was empty.

During Ramadan, we usually have people from everywhere enjoying our sweets, but we now only have a fraction of that, said Adnan Jaafar, the third-generation owner of the shop, sitting near a display of baklava, knafeh  an Arabic dessert made with shredded phyllo dough  and other sugary delights.

Perhaps the most significant change at Jaafar Sweets is that it has removed from its menu of offers qatayef, a sweet and heavy Ramadan dessert, a fried pancake that is ordinarily filled with either walnuts or cheese.

Its the first time in 70 years we arent selling them, Mr. Jaafar said. There arent enough customers to justify the effort to make them.

More than 16,500 people in Israel are known to have been infected by the virus and 264 have died. In the West Bank and Gaza Strip, 375 cases have been reported with two fatalities.

As the days of Ramadan have progressed, several Palestinians and Arab citizens of Israel have started to object to the decision to close the Aqsa to the public, with some arguing that if Jews can pray in a socially distanced manner at the Western Wall just below it, Muslims can do the same in the compound.

It makes no sense, said Ribhi Rajabi, a truck driver from Jerusalem, sitting in the shade under an olive tree by his home in the city. If the Jews can pray without a problem in a small area, we obviously can in a space several times the size.
Iran's FM Zarif compares US 'disinfectant' advice to Iran deal comments

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 6:08 PM

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says the very US administration that has suggested use of "disinfectants" as a coronavirus cure is still behaving as if it is still a party to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal that it has quit.

Tweeting on Thursday, Zarif referred to US President Donald Trump's remarks during an April 23 briefing, where he theorized about the possible medical benefits of disinfectants in the fight against the virus, saying "you see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number on the lungs."

Zarif also reminded how the US administration left the nuclear agreement -- that the United Nations Security Council has endorsed through its Resolution 2231 -- in May 2018, with Trump calling the historic accord "the worst deal ever."

The US administration, however, recently started speaking as if it was still a participant in the agreement.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington was resolved to extend an arms embargo against Iran that will expire under the nuclear agreement in October.

Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook also told reporters, "We are operating under the assumption that we will be able to renew the arms embargo."

The top Iranian diplomat compared the attitudes in their inanity, saying, "Those who muse about injecting disinfectant to "clean" the coronavirus, also argue that they are a "participant" in a UN Security Council Resolution endorsing a deal that they long ago "ceased participating" in. Their own words."

In similar remarks earlier on Thursday, Zarif said that making "foolish" claims by US officials is nothing new.

Referring to Trump, Zarif said "it is not unexpected of those advising people to drink or inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus to come forward and say they are still a party to the agreement after officially leaving it."

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JACKSON, MI  Like in its neighboring counties, Jackson County has seen its fair share of COVID-19 news this week.

But, aside from reporting the number of positive COVID-19 cases confirmed this week, there were other stories coming from Jackson County community.

From layoffs expected at Jackson Public Schools due to budget shortfalls, to two woman being sent to prison for stabbing a man to death in the street two years ago, a lot has been going on in the Jackson area.

Here are some headlines you might have missed this week.

Layoffs likely at Jackson Public Schools with budget shortfalls expected

Jackson Public Schools is preparing for budget cuts and layoffs for the upcoming year.

The cuts come as Michigan is expected to lose between $1 billion and $3 billion in tax revenue thats used to help fund school districts statewide as unemployment skyrockets during the COVID-19 pandemic.

I went from having a brother-in-law to being handed a box of ashes, family tells killers heading to prison

Marvin Bearden wasnt looking for a fight while walking home through downtown Jackson in late August 2018, but one found him.

What started as a drunken altercation between him and two women near the intersection of First Street and Washington Avenue quickly escalated into a fist fight that ended in Bearden, 63, being stabbed multiple times and left to die in the street, witnesses of the crime said.

Beardens attackers, Sjiwana Taylor, 48, and Savanna Frinkle, 22, were each found guilty of second-degree murder by two separate juries in mid-February. On Tuesday, May 13, Jackson County Circuit Judge John McBain sentenced Taylor to 30 to 75 years in prison and Frinkle to 22 to 60 years.

New Dollar General store now open near downtown Jackson

Jackson has a new store that sells groceries within walking distance of downtown.

The newly constructed Dollar General, 216 W. Morrell St., is officially open for business as of May 5, making it the companys 19th location in Jackson County.

Construction of the new store began in early 2020.

Jackson manufacturer creates device to turn paper towels into disinfectant wipes

Most products sat on the shelves at RTD Manufacturing Inc. for two months after Michigans coronavirus pandemic started.

Unable to do the work it normally does for the aerospace and automotive industries and on inspection equipment, the Jackson machine shop was hurting, Project Manager Irvin Stone said. Then he saw a social media post from another Jackson manufacturer, Technique Inc., saying it had run out of disinfecting wipes.

Stone started brainstorming ways to solve the common problem, and soon created and patented Towl-Wet.

Motocross rider injured in head-on crash into tractor grooming racetrack

A motocross rider was seriously injured Wednesday when he rode over a berm and crashed into a tractor grooming a dirt racetrack, police said.

Police and rescue crews were called to the 16000 block of 28 Mile Road at 5:45 p.m. May 13, for a report of a motorcycle crash on the privately-owned Moto eXtreme track.

Deputies discovered an 18-year-old Albion man was riding his Husqvarna motocross bike on the track when he crashed head-on with the tractor, police said.

Zoom calls with goats from Albion farm help people through pandemic

The Esham Family farm is usually bustling with business during the spring.

Goats are born around this time, and customers want to come see and take yoga classes with the animals. But this year is different.

Due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, the baby goats born March 15 came into a world slowed down. As the pandemic continued and public gatherings were canceled, owner Tina Esham got an email from a yoga-class regular.

A farm in California had resorted to goat Zoom calls to make up for the lack of business. Three weeks ago, Esham decided she would try it too.

Jackson County mother and daughter pen childrens book about their dogs adventures

Rita Klopfenstein and her daughter Abby live with six dogs, some birds, a ferret, turtles and even more animals on 40 acres of land.

As animal lovers who enjoy collaborating, the duo found a way to incorporate all their animals into one project. They recently completed a childrens book about two of their six dogs, The Adventures of Hobart and Gibson.

Medical marijuana shops can now sell recreational product in Jackson

Medical marijuana shops in Jackson are now able to sell recreational marijuana, too.

The amendment to the citys marijuana ordinance was passed 5-1 by the City Council at its virtual meeting, Tuesday, May 12. Councilman Freddie Dancy, Ward 2, voted against the amendment.

Shops already selling medical marijuana can now apply and more easily transition to sell recreational  also called adult use  marijuana, in the same building, Mayor Derek Dobies said. The shops must follow state laws in dividing medical and recreational business.

Special assessments capped at $15,000 by Jackson City Council, Franklin Street hearing delayed

Special assessments for residential properties are now capped at $15,000 in the city of Jackson.

An amendment to the citys special assessment ordinance setting this cap was unanimously passed by the Jackson City Council at its virtual meeting Tuesday, May 12. It means residential properties will not have to pay more than $15,000 in special assessments moving forward.
What was initially believed to have been a body, found off a major north Queensland road, has turned out to be a "lifelike" sex doll, police say.

A crime scene was declared after officers were called to a trail off the Bruce Highway, south of Bowen, about 7am on Friday.

Police and SES at the scene off the Bruce Highway on Friday. Credit:7 News Brisbane / Twitter

Forensic police began investigations into what had been reported as a "body wrapped in a blanket".

But on Friday afternoon police confirmed the object was actually a lifelike replica doll, before a spokesman further clarified it was an anatomically correct female sex doll.
The US is trying to cut off Huawei's global chip supply, China threatens retaliation

Things are heating up between the US and China  the US Department of Commerce is tweaking its export rule to strategically target Huaweis acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain US software and technology, reports Reuters.

Last year, the Department of Commerce put Huawei on the so-called entity list, which effectively banned US companies from selling hardware and software to Huawei. A ban that was extended into 2021. Today, things got worse as the Commerce Secretary says that Huawei has been able to acquire US tech by buying from foreign producers that use it, circumventing the ban.

Once the new rule goes into effect, these foreign companies will require a license from US before they can supply chips to Huawei and its affiliates (this applies to companies that use chip making equipment from the US).

This clearly targets Huawei, but will also greatly affect TSMC, which fabs a significant portion of HiSilicons chips at its foundries. These chips end up in Huawei and Honor phones as well as Huawei telecom equipment.

The Taiwanese chip maker is currently talking to lawyers to see how the new rule will affect it. This news comes just a day after it announced a $12 billion deal to open a 5nm foundry in Arizona, but its too early to tell if that deal will be affected.

Its not just TSMC that got caught in the crossfire either, a total of 114 Huawei affiliates have been blacklisted due to national security concerns.

China is already threatening retaliation, including investigations and possible restrictions on Apple, Cisco and Qualcomm, who rely on Chinese factories. It may also suspend the purchase of Boeing planes.

These companies may face trouble on two fronts as President Trump threatened to impose taxes on companies that manufacture their products abroad, specifically name-checking Apple.

Source
The latest novel coronavirus news from Canada and around the world Friday (this file is no longer updating. Click here to read the latest). Web links to longer stories if available.

6:52 p.m. Air Canada plans to lay off at least 20,000 employees as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to wreak havoc on the airline industry, The Canadian Press reports.

Effective June 7, the layoffs will impact more than half of the company's 38,000 employees, the airline said.

The move comes amid border shutdowns and confinement measures that have tanked travel demand, prompting Air Canada to ground some 225 airplanes and slash flight capacity by 95 per cent.

At a minimum, layoffs will reach 19,000  half of the current payroll  and could go as high as 22,800.

The blow echoes Air Canadas announcement in March to let go of nearly half of its workforce under a cost-reduction scheme.

The carrier proceeded to rehire some 16,500 laid-off flight attendants, mechanics and customer service agents in April under the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy, but has not committed to maintain the program past June 6.

5 p.m. Ontario health units report 23,402 cases of COVID-19, up 394 or 1.7 per cent, according to the Star. The number of people who have died is 1,926, up 24.

3:45 p.m. There are 160 new cases of COVID-19 in Toronto, said Dr. Eileen de Villa, medical officer of health for the City of Toronto.

De Villa spoke about the availability of testing for Torontonians. She said that it was first thought that COVID-19 presented in symptoms of fever, coughing and difficulty breathing. It is now known, she said, that it can reveal itself in headaches, sore throat, runny nose, nausea, diarrhea and abdominal pain.

Residents can get tested if they are experiencing one or more of these symptoms at a local assessment centre, de Villa said.

Mayor John Tory announced festivals, parades and major events in Toronto this summer are cancelled.

This includes the Taste of the Danforth, the Beaches Jazz Festival and the Honda Indy, among others.

Summer camps, which many parents rely on for child care, and recreational programs are also cancelled. Refunds are forthcoming.

I know this decision will upset many families and it will cause hardship for those who rely on theses camps and programs the most, but nothing is more important than the health of our children, Tory said.

The City is preparing a modest plan B, to be unveiled in mid July, for these if circumstances improve and the Province approves of it.

Asked what modified summer camp would look like, Tory said it would need modified staffing and spacing for about half the number of kids who normally do City camps.

The new CampTO plan will require the province to lift provincial orders on day camps to go ahead. If allowed, there would only be capacity for about half the children usually enrolled: spaces for 5,300 kids aged six to 12 per week.

On talks between Ontario and federal governments to help cities financially, Tory said huge progress had been made as mayors had got Premier Ford to talk to the Federal government. Tory said he is hopeful both governments will soon announce some form of aid for cities.

Fire chief Matthew Pegg addressed the issue of homeless encampments. Pegg said the City has experienced 55 fires in these camps, 15 of them in the last two weeks. On May 1, a resident died in one in a homeless encampment. The camps have propane tanks and gasoline cans in them.

Protesters encouraging people to stay or enter homeless encampments are putting people in harms way and interfering with the ability of City staff to fight the spread of COVID-19 among the homeless, Pegg said.

The City has removed hazards from growing number of encampments, teams visit sites to try to give people in them housing options, said Pegg, who added that 97 people have been moved into safe spaces since the start of the pandemic response.

Tory said the aim is always to offer housing options to people. He defended the process of giving notice, providing options and then clearing out the camps, saying it is the responsible thing to do.

3:26 p.m. To slow the spread of COVID-19, the City of Toronto is extending the cancellation of City-led and City-permitted major festivals and events with attendance of more than 250 people through July 31, and those with attendance of 25,000 or more through August 31. The resumption or cancellation of professional sporting events is not included in the decision.

The Citys announcement includes festivals, conferences and cultural programs held in facilities managed by City divisions or public locations, such as roads, parks and civic squares, the City said in a press release. Issued permits are now cancelled and permits that have been applied for will not be issued.

This decision follows the cancellation of all such events up to June 30, announced by the City on March 30, and the cancellation of Canada Day events, the City release said.

The cancellation of major mass participation events of more than 250 people until July 31 includes Salsa on St Clair, Toronto Outdoor Art Fair, Honda Indy, Toronto Triathlon Festival, Beaches International Jazz Festival, and Big on Bloor, among others.

The cancellation of major mass participation events of more than 25,000 people until August 31 includes Jerkfest, Taste of the Danforth, Taste of Manila, and Toronto Chinatown Festival, among others.

3:20 p.m. Correctional Service Canada reports 356 inmates have tested positive for COVID-19, an increase of 13, The Canadian Press reports.

All the new cases have been in the hard hit Federal Training Centre in Laval, Que., which now has 161 cases.

To date, two prisoners have died, CP reports.

Almost all infected inmates are incarcerated at the training centre, the Mission Medium Institution in B.C., which has seen 120 cases of coronavirus disease, or Joliette Institution in Quebec.

In addition, at least 88 guards have been infected.

2:30 p.m.: The City of Toronto now says tee times at five city-run golf courses are almost fully booked for this weekend.

The long weekend is nearly sold out, but there are still a few slots available on Tuesday and Wednesday, the city said in a news release.

Tee times can be booked through the city website or by calling the course. Details and COVID-19-related restrictions are here.

2:19 p.m.: Canada and the United States are both very comfortable with their mutual ban on non-essential cross-border travel, but Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland wont say if the Americans want to extend the restrictions beyond June 21.

Recent media reports suggest the U.S., fearing the importing of COVID-19 cases, wants an indefinite timeline for existing restrictions at both its southern and northern borders. Its not clear if that pertains to the ban on non-essential travel or is specifically aimed at curtailing immigration.

Freeland refused Friday to discuss the details of Canadas ongoing talks with the U.S. beyond describing them as very, very cordial and very constructive.

2 p.m.: The Canadian Forces say five members working in long-term care homes during the COVID-19 pandemic have tested positive for the illness.

Four of them are in Quebec and one is in Ontario.

The military says nearly 1,700 members of the Forces are working in nursing homes where regular staff have been overwhelmed by COVID-19, in some cases becoming sick themselves.

Quebec in particular has seen severe COVID-19 outbreaks in long-term care facilities, including one in the Montreal area where residents had been nearly abandoned by the staff.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says the federal government is considering paying those military members extra, as it would on hazardous deployments abroad.

The Canadian Forces are promising reports on the illness in those deployed to nursing homes every two weeks.

1:50 p.m.: New Brunswick is reporting no new cases of COVID-19 today.

There have been 120 cases in the province, and 119 of those patients have recovered.

Chief Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Jennifer Russell, says people need to continue to follow health guidelines during the holiday long weekend.

1:40 p.m.: Parents in British Columbia will be given the choice of allowing their children to return to class on a part-time basis in June.

The government says its goal is for the return of full-time classes in September, if it is safe.

Under the part-time plan, the number of students allowed in schools will be reduced.

For kindergarten to Grade 5, most students will go to school half time, such as alternating days, while grades 6 to 12 will go to school about one day a week.

The province says there are already about 5,000 students in classrooms, including children of essential workers and those needing extra support.

1:35 p.m.: Quebec is reporting an additional 50 deaths today linked to COVID-19, bringing the provincial total to 3,401.

Provincial health authorities also reported 41,420 confirmed cases, an increase of 696 in the past 24 hours.

Premier Francois Legault noted it has been some time since those numbers have been that low as he wrapped up a two-day visit to Montreal, the epicentre of COVID-19 cases and deaths in the province.

Legault says the province will give Montreal one million masks to distribute and provide $6 million to transit agencies in the Montreal area to make masks more widely available.

1:10 p.m.: Prince Edward Island is accelerating its Renew PEI Together plan by planning to reinstate some services sooner.

Phase two of the plan will still begin May 22 as scheduled, but the third phase will now begin June 1 instead of June 12.

Premier Dennis King says the decision was based on several factors, including the lack of new cases of COVID-19 on the Island in the last 17 days.

Phase three would allow gatherings of up to 15 people indoors and 20 people outdoors, organized recreational activities and the opening of child care centres and in-room dining.

1 p.m.: Ontario Premier Doug Ford is addressing reporters at his daily briefing. A livestream of his news conference is available at thestar.com

12:58 p.m. (updated): Torontonians can now read a book or spread a picnic blanket in a city park without fear of being ordered to move along.

Park restrictions used to tell people not to linger, to minimize spread of COVID-19.

Parks green space is available for public use for those wishing to rest or read a book, the rules now state. You are allowed to bring a picnic to the park or sit on a blanket and enjoy the park setting as long as everyone present is a member of a single household, and that they remain more than two metres away from others not from their household who may also be in the park.

Park picnic tables, however, remain off limits as part of a broad ban on use of park amenities introduced in March.

The citys five golf courses open Saturday but people will not able to just show up and golf.

Tees times can and must be booked in advance through the citys website or by calling the golf course, guidelines state.

People who drop-in or walk-in will not be permitted access to the course, and those who do golf must practice physical distancing.

Off-leash dog enclosures in city parks remain closed but should reopen soon. Mayor John Tory has said city staff are checking new provincial regulations to ensure dog park use is no longer prohibited.

12:45 p.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says provinces looking to reopen their economies will need to significantly boost and co-ordinate testing and contact tracing to contain future outbreaks of COVID-19.

Trudeau says testing and tracing that transcends provincial boundaries will be essential as restrictions begin to be eased and people travel more.

He says a national approach will require the provinces to work with Ottawa on a collective effort.

12:45 p.m.: Prince Edward Island is reporting no new cases of COVID-19 Friday. There have been 27 cases on the Island and all have recovered.

There have been no new cases in 17 days. Almost 4,600 tests have been conducted.

12:45 p.m.: Newfoundland and Labrador reported no new COVID-19 cases for the eighth consecutive day today.

The province also adjusted its total count of confirmed COVID-19 cases to 260, down from 261.

Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Janice Fitzgerald says one case that was previously reported as positive is now being recorded as inconclusive.

Three people are in the hospital due to the virus and 248 people have recovered.

12:24 p.m.: A standoff between Torontos homeless and city officials is underway at several encampments downtown. Police officers, city workers and heavy machinery are downtown as they take down the tents.

The city says it is clearing tents that were abandoned after moving several people into housing last week. But Jason Phillips says an eviction notice went up a few days ago on the tent where he lives underneath the Gardiner Expressway.

He says the city offered him a spot in a shelter, which he refused because he feels safer outside during the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a woman stood in front of a bulldozer that was set to take his tent down, Phillips says the city offered him a hotel room  which he accepted.

12:14 p.m.: Ontarios regional health units are reporting another 358 COVID-19 cases and 30 new deaths since Thursday morning, according to the Stars latest count.

As of 11 a.m. Friday, the health units have reported a total of 23,057 confirmed or probable cases of COVID-19, including 1,905 deaths. The 358 cases reported in the last 24 hours  a low 1.6 per cent jump  was in line with a flat trend in recent days; the province has seen an average of 355 new cases reported per day over the last seven days.

Still, as a whole, the daily growth in new COVID-19 infections across Ontario has fallen steadily since peaking at more than 700 cases a day in late April.

Meanwhile, the total of 30 deaths reported in the province since Thursday morning was once again below the recent average, a sign the rate of new fatal cases may be beginning to slow about two weeks after the peak in the provinces daily case totals.

Earlier Friday, the province reported that testing labs had completed 18,354 tests the previous day, continuing several consecutive days of increases. In the Stars count, days with larger numbers of reported cases have tended to follow increases in testing, and vice versa.

Because many health units publish tallies to their websites before reporting to Public Health Ontario, the Stars count is more current than the data the province puts out each morning.

The province also said 986 patients are now hospitalized with COVID-19, including 179 in intensive care, of whom 135 are on a ventilator  numbers that were down slightly. The province also says more than 16,500 patients who have tested positive for the coronavirus have now recovered from the disease  nearly three-quarters 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  1,825  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.

12 p.m.: Nova Scotia is reporting four more deaths related to COVID-19, bringing the provinces total to 55. All of the latest deaths occurred at the Northwood long-term-care home in Halifax.

There have now been 1,034 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in the province after eight additional cases were reported today.

Health officials say the Northwood home has 25 residents and 15 staff with active cases, while another care home has one infected staff member and a third facility has one infected resident.

11:50 a.m.: British Columbias minister responsible for multiculturalism says she can no longer remain silent about the rising number of hate crimes toward people of Asian heritage during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a statement, Anne Kang says she is deeply saddened by the recent rise in physical and verbal attacks as well as an increase in vandalism.

Kang says she is compelled as a government representative, immigrant and British Columbian to speak out against these vicious acts.

The Vancouver Police Department has reported that the number of anti-Asian, hate-related crimes spiked in April, with 11 occurring last month, compared with 12 for all of 2019.

Kang, who moved to Canada from Taiwan, says the pandemic is affecting everyone and acts of violence and aggression will not be tolerated.

11:40 a.m.: Three more residents have died at Scarboroughs Altamont Care Community as the death toll rose to 49, according to the latest numbers from the province.

The 159-bed facility is currently dealing with 62 confirmed staff cases as well as 66 confirmed resident cases.

11:24 a.m.: Ontarios fiscal watchdog says about one in three workers in the province has been affected by the economic shutdown caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Financial Accountability Office released the finding in a new report today on job losses in Ontario since the crisis began.

The FAO says an estimated 1.1 million workers in the province have lost their jobs, and another 1.1 million have seen their hours sharply reduced.

According to Statistics Canada, Ontario lost 689,200 jobs in April, bringing its employment down to the lowest level since 2009.

Ontarios unemployment rate climbed to 11.3 per cent in April, the highest it has been since 1993.

The FAO says nearly 87 per cent of the job losses between February and April came in the private sector.

11:20 a.m. (updated): Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says a federal wage subsidy for employees in businesses hit hard by COVID-19 will last at least until the end of August.

The subsidy was set to expire in the first week of June.

Trudeau says the idea is to give employers more runway, and confidence to resume operations slowly if they have to.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is to reveal details of a broadening of the program shortly.

Trudeau also says the government will make adjustments to the program, including changes to the threshold for how much qualifying companies revenues must have declined, to ensure employers can access the help as business kicks back up.

The subsidy covers 75 per cent of wages for employers that have seen sharp declines in revenue since the novel coronavirus pandemic hit Canada hard in March, up to $847 per worker, per week.

11:15 a.m.: Trudeau announces $450 million in wage support to universities and health research institutes so they can retain the researchers and labs weather the shutdown.

Up to 15,000 researchers at hospital-based research institutes were facing layoffs because, due to a technicality, dont qualify for the wage subsidy.

Research unrelated to the deadly coronavirus that causes COVID-19 was halted in mid-March, including clinical trials and research into cancer, stroke and other diseases. Hospital-based institutes have warned that much of the funding they rely on to pay for that research  including charitable donations, contributions from foundations and clinical trial contracts with pharmaceutical companies  has evaporated.

Trudeau promised earlier this week to personally look into the matter after a question from the Stars Tonda MacCharles.

11:05 a.m.: According to the most recent provincial numbers Friday, Chartwell Ballycliffe Long Term Care Residence in Ajax has 30 resident deaths related to COVID-19, two more than the day before.

Fewer than five staff now have confirmed cases of COVID-19, according to the governments numbers, while there are six active cases among residents.

The a 100-bed facility is located south-west of Highway 401 and Harwood Avenue South.

11 a.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to address reporters at his daily briefing. A livestream of his news conference will be available at thestar.com

10:30 a.m.: A day after the province reported it had seen the lowest total of new COVID-19 cases in a day since late March, it now says the low number was the result of reporting glitch.

Weve learned of a small glitch with yesterdays #COVID19 reporting, Health Minister Christine Elliott said in a tweet Friday. Because of a one-time data upload issue, yesterday missed 87 cases.

After the province announced just 258 new cases Thursday, the fewest by its count since March 29, the Star notified the ministry of an apparent discrepancy in its data. In a detailed breakdown, the province reported an increase of just 45 new cases in Toronto. Meanwhile, on Thursday afternoon the city reported a jump of 153 confirmed and probable cases over the same reporting period.

The province did not clarify whether the missing cases were from Toronto.

The missing cases from Thursdays report were included in the count of 428 new cases the province reported Friday but, Elliot said, both days counts should be adjusted.

While theyre captured in todays update, the real day-over-day numbers are 345 new cases on May 14 and 341 today, she said.

In a statement, spokesperson Hayley Chazan added that the numbers still continue to trend downward as we expand our COVID-19 testing guidelines to ensure we keep a close eye on any shifts in community spread and identify and contain new cases.

The Star maintains a separate count of COVID-19 cases and deaths based on the tallies posted to the websites of Ontarios 34 public health units.

On Thursday, the Star counted a single-day increase of 360 confirmed and probable cases, which was in line with relatively a flat trend in recent days amid a longer-term slowdown.

Because many health units publish tallies to their websites before reporting to Public Health Ontario, the Stars count is more current than the data the province puts out each morning.

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.

10:20 a.m.: Schools in Newfoundland and Labrador will be closed for the rest of the school year, the provinces education minister confirmed today.

Brian Warr says in-school instruction has been cancelled for the year and a plan for September will cover various scenarios depending on the situation with the COVID-19 pandemic at the time.

Warr says parents and students in the provinces English and French school districts are encouraged to continue their studies with teachers through Google Classroom and other online tools.

The department says 2,500 students in the English School District have received devices like laptops and tablets out of 4,000 identified as in need, and more devices are being sourced.

10:15 a.m.: Conservative Leader Andrew Scheer is again calling for a return of Parliament.

The House of Commons stands adjourned until May 25, though has returned several times in a modified form to pass emergency aid legislation.

Committees are also still meeting virtually, and a special one dealing solely with response to the COVID-19 pandemic meets twice a week virtually and once in person.

But Scheer says as restrictions begin to lift across the country and a slow economic recovery begins, it is even more important to be able to keep the Liberal government accountable for the billions in aid theyve spent.

9:50 a.m.: Russian doctors say they are treating a woman who may have contracted coronavirus for the second time after recovering from it.

The woman was discharged from a hospital in the Siberian city of Ulan-Ude after receiving treatment for coronavirus and testing negative for it in early April. But two weeks later she started having respiratory symptoms again and tested positive for the virus for the second time.

She was readmitted to the hospital and is currently being treated, says its chief doctor Tatyana Symbelova.

The question is whether its a reinfection, because 15-16 days passed between discharged and respiratory symptoms appearing, or the disease she had earlier coming back. It is not entirely clear for us at this point, Symbelova says.

According to the World Health Organization, no studies have shown people who have recovered from the coronavirus are immune to becoming infected again.

Russia reported over 262,000 coronavirus cases on Friday and 2,418 deaths.

9:20 a.m.: Premier Doug Ford is strongly hinting that limits on social gatherings could soon be eased, lifting the cap from five people to 10.

Read the story from the Stars Robert Benzie.

9:20 a.m.: Yukon Premier Sandy Silver is expected to announce what he says will be a comprehensive reopening plan as the territory copes with the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a social media message posted earlier this week Silver says the announcement will come today but he also says his government is not ready to declare the risk has ended in Yukon.

The last case of the new coronavirus was reported in the territory on April 20 and health officials say all 11 cases recorded since the start of the pandemic have now recovered.

Entry into Yukon is still banned to all but residents, non-resident family members, deliveries or anyone transiting the territory to a neighbouring jurisdiction, but those people must stay on prescribed routes and complete their trip within 24 hours.

8:40 a.m.: The City of Mississauga will be reopening its two owned golf courses, BraeBen and Lakeview. Golf courses are the first city facilities in Mississauga to open, according to a news release.

Im supportive of the provinces decision to reopen golf courses with strict physical distancing and enhanced health and safety measures in place. I know many golfers are anxious to hit the green and enjoy the great outdoors. While the experience may be a bit different this year, the safety of players and staff is our top priority right now, mayor Bonnie Crombie said in a statement.

Most golfers I know spend most of their time away from others looking for their ball. These reopenings will also help the city recover lost revenue and address our financial losses as a result of this pandemic.

BraeBen will open to customers on Saturday and Lakeview will open the following week on May 21.

8:25 a.m.: People who clean teeth, cut hair, work with children and serve food will be at high risk for coming into contact with COVID-19 when the economy opens, says a new report released Friday by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.

Read the story from the Stars Alex McKeen.

7:52 a.m.: The German economy shrank by 2.2 per cent in the first quarter compared with the previous three-month period as shutdowns in the country and beyond started to bite, official data showed Friday. That means Europes biggest economy went into recession following a small dip at the end of last year.

The decline in the January-March period was the second-biggest quarterly decline since Germany was reunited in 1990, exceeded only by a 4.7 per cent drop in the first quarter of 2009 at the height of the global financial crisis, senior statistics office official Albert Braakmann said.

7:17 a.m.: Global shares advanced Friday on signs of improvement in Chinas economy after it reopened from its pandemic shutdowns.

Benchmarks in Europe opened higher following an upbeat session Friday in Asia.

Factory output rose in April as Chinas virus-battered economy reopened but job losses depressed consumer spending, a key driver of growth, challenging the ruling Communist Partys push to revive normal activity.

Investment in factories and other fixed assets also improved as businesses reopened after Chinas deepest economic slump since at least the 1960s, official data showed Friday.

6:06 a.m.: Moscow authorities on Friday began free coronavirus testing for all residents. Under the program announced by Mayor Sergei Sobyanin, tests for coronavirus antibodies, a marker of infection, will be conducted at 30 clinics throughout the city.

The program will allow officials to know precisely how many Muscovites had coronavirus and developed immunity, how many people are infected or are suspected to have coronavirus, the mayor said in a blog post Thursday.

Moscow, with a population of more than 12 million, accounts for half of the countrys more than 262,000 reported infections.

5:50 a.m.: Mexico reported its largest one-day rise in coronavirus cases, with 2,409.

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell said Thursday the country is at the most difficult moment in the pandemic. It was the first time in Mexico that the number of new cases exceeded 2,000 in one day.

In percentage terms, the 6% increase was not the biggest one-day jump.

Officials also reported 257 more deaths from COVID-19, for a total of 4,477 since the pandemic began. There have been higher one-day death tolls this week.

The increase in cases comes four days before Mondays scheduled partial reopening of key industries such as mining, construction and automobile assembly.

5:36 a.m.: Slovenia has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic at home.

The European Union states government said Friday the COVID-19 spread is under control and there is no longer a need for extraordinary health measures.

The government says EU residents are free to cross into Slovenia from Austria, Italy and Hungary at predetermined checkpoints, while most non-EU nationals will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine in what is a major step for the small Alpine country as it accelerates the easing of restrictions.

5:31 a.m.: Authorities have reported the first coronavirus case in the crowded camps for Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh, where more than 1 million people are sheltered.

The person from the Rohingya community and a local person who lives in the Coxs Bazar district who also tested positive have been isolated, Mahbub Alam Talukder, the countrys refugee commissioner, said Thursday.

Aid workers have been warning of the potential for a serious outbreak if the virus reached the camps. The dense crowding with plastic shacks standing side by side housing up to 12 residents each mean the refugees would be dangerously exposed to the virus.

5:23 a.m.: The World Bank has approved $1 billion in emergency response to support Indias efforts at providing social assistance to poor and vulnerable households severely impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.

A bank statement says the move will increase its total commitment to India to $2 billion. A $1 billion package was announced last month for Indias health sector.

An immediate allocation of $750 million will help scaleup cash transfers and food benefits to provide robust social protection for essential workers involved in coronavirus relief efforts and benefit migrants and informal workers, the bank statement said late Thursday.

5:17 a.m.: Typhoon Vongfongs ferocious wind and rain left at least one dead in the Philippines and damaged hundreds of coronavirus isolation facilities and homes, along with rice and corn fields in five hard-hit eastern towns alone, a governor said Friday.

The typhoons maximum sustained wind speed dropped to 110 kilometres per hour with gusts of 150 kph but it remains dangerous especially in coastal and low-lying villages, forecasters said. Vongfong was expected to blow out of the countrys north on Sunday.

Office of Civil Defence Director Claudio Yucot said the evacuations took time because workers needed to wear masks and protective suits and could not transport villagers to shelters in large numbers as a safeguard against COVID-19.

5:05 a.m.: Ukraines human rights ombudswoman has appealed to authorities to find a solution for scores of infants born to surrogate mothers for foreign parents who are stranded because the countrys borders are closed under coronavirus restrictions.

Ukraine has a thriving surrogate industry and is one of the few countries that allows the service for foreigners. Concern is high that a long border closure will place a burden on clinics and distress the parents.

4 a.m.: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to announce today an extension to the federal governments 75 per cent emergency wage subsidy  just as businesses across the country are taking the first cautious steps toward reopening after a two-month, pandemic-induced shutdown.

He is also expected to announce significant financial support for thousands of medical researchers whose work is unrelated to the COVID-19 crisis.

The $73-billion wage subsidy program was initially slated to run until June 6.

Trudeau last week said it would be extended and today hell reveal for how long. The extension is expected to be for at least an extra month.

Thursday 9:17 p.m.: China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus.

The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus Friday, all local cross-infections in the northeastern province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported a death was on April 14.

Just 91 people remain in treatment for COVID-19 and 623 others are under isolation and monitoring for being suspected cases or for having tested positive without showing symptoms, including 11 newly detected.

In total, China has reported 4,633 deaths among 82,933 cases since the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.

China has maintained social distancing and bans on foreigners entering the country, but has increasingly opened up the worlds second-largest economy to allow both large factories and small businesses to resume production and dealings with customers.

Thursday 6:15 p.m.: Even as Canada and the U.S. continue to strictly limit cross-border travel, the union representing Canadian border officials say they need more support to effectively screen travellers for COVID-19.

And that need could only grow, as Canadian officials prepare for an inevitable increase in traffic as the two countries slowly begin to reopen their economies.

But along the Canada-U.S. border, where only essential travel is allowed, anyone exhibiting COVID-like symptoms is screened by health officials over the phone.

My understanding is theres not a sufficient number of officers at Health Canada and (the Public Health Agency of Canada) to be on site. Apparently there are only a handful in Canada of those experts, said Jean-Pierre Fortin, the head of the Customs and Immigration Union, in an interview Wednesday.

Click here to read more of Thursdays coverage.

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NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Certain defining moments in life cause you to drastically change your viewpoint and how you conduct yourself. This can either be by reassessing your priorities or a rapid shift in how you maintain your day to day life. For Melanie Dupuis, she had this moment after suffering a terrible vehicle highway crash, which made her reevaluate her life at the time."It was otherwise a beautiful day when suddenly our lives changed by someone's careless driving. This transport driver selfishly speeding and swerving in between the three-lane highway caused the collision that sent us flying into the guardrail. Our Suburban instantly rolled four times across the highway and left us lying on our roof facing oncoming traffic. Miraculously, despite all odds, we survived. Bystanders came to our rescue by stopping oncoming traffic going over 100km/hour and helping us crawl through our broken windows. As soon as the ambulance arrived, they put me on a backboard and secured my neck with a collar and we were both rushed to the hospital. This near-death experience was life-changing." Recounts Melanie.Thankfully, though seriously hurt from this accident, Melanie and her husband recovered from the horrific crash. It did, however, cause her to rethink her choices at the time. When she was on leave, she realized that her current job situation was not for her and wanted to change her life."Rolling across the highway left me with a very severe concussion. By doctor's orders, I was off work for a couple of months which allowed me the opportunity to self-reflect. The reality that my three precious children almost lost us put my life goals into high gear. It was suddenly non-negotiable. The thought of someone else determining when and where I work made me feel physically ill. So at only 39 years old, I quit my cushy, pensioned, unionized full-time job to pursue my dreams. I was free!" Explains Melanie.Though Melanie was scared to start this new life, she was excited by the sudden prospect of freedom from her previous job. She and her husband began mentoring in real estate and have become incredibly successful in helping their mentees change their lives."My husband and I, known as Investor Mel and Dave, have a large following of over 50,000 people on my various social media platforms. I am best known as Canada's Top Investing and Mentoring Couple who bought 12 multi-family properties (56 units) in less than 12 months using none of my own money. I now solely own 100 apartments/24 properties and my key to success is using creative financing strategies. Let me specify, I have no joint venture partners. All of my properties are 100% in my ownership which means that I keep all the cash flow, equity, and appreciation and I do not have to negotiate, consider, discuss and share profits with partners!" Exclaims Melanie.From there, Melanie and her husband have accomplished incredible feats and have been recognized for their successes in the real estate industry. She is spreading her knowledge of the real estate world."I have over 11 years' experience in real estate investing and I also own a property management company, Dupuis Properties, for which I won "Business of the Year" award. I have a best selling book "Real Estate Investing Secrets - A No B.S. Guide to Creating Wealth & Freedom and along with 19 other women, will be launching a book on powerful women real estate investors that will be available this fall. I am a speaker and mentor who specializes in helping others achieve financial, time, and location freedom through real estate investing with our life-time mentoring program. I won the 2020 Canadian Business Award as Leading Expert in Real Estate Investing and have helped hundreds of my mentees change their lives." States Melanie.To learn more about Melanie and her husband, you can follow them on Instagram @investormeldave, and you can check out their website at www.investormeldave.com . Also, you can check out Mel's online master class on how she bought 12 properties in less than 12 months using creative strategies at www.12in12months.com CONTACT:Paula Henderson202-539-7664phendersonnews@ gmail.com About VIP Media GroupVIP Media Group is a hybrid PR agency. Their diverse client base includes top-class entrepreneurs, public figures, influencers, and celebrities.SOURCE: VIP-Media
Hogs Close with Triple Digit Gains Barchart - 35 minutes ago Front month lean hog futures ended the session $0.70 to $2.07 stronger. April was up the most, which reduced the spread to May to $4.62. Feb hogs are now a $9.05 discount to April. USDAs National Average... HEG22 : 82.300s (+0.86%) HEK22 : 95.975s (+1.72%) KMG22 : 93.325s (-0.96%)

Corn Closed Double Digits Higher Barchart - 35 minutes ago Corn prices rallied on Wednesday ending the session back above the $6 mark. For old crop, the session ended 10 3/4 to 11 cents in the black but went home 4 cents off the highs. New crop prices closed 7... ZCH22 : 610-4s (+1.83%) ZCPAUS.CM : 5.9707 (+1.89%) ZCK22 : 611-0s (+1.83%) ZCZ21 : 588-6s (+0.77%) ZCPZ21US.CM : 5.7930 (-0.49%)

Triple Digit Strength for Wednesday Cattle Barchart - 35 minutes ago Live cattle prices rallied $0.87 to $1.50 during the Wednesday session. Central Stockyards weekly FCE auction sold none of the 3,580 head listed. Bids were capped at $137-$138. USDA had cash sales activity... LEG22 : 138.550s (+0.64%) LEM22 : 138.475s (+1.02%) GFF22 : 161.400s (-0.03%) GFH22 : 165.625s (+0.12%)

Shootin' the Bull Swift Trading Company - 1 hour ago Packers are included in the aspects of no one having had the opportunity to buy replacement inventory at a lower price. As well, if they begin to adhere to the inflationary aspects further, they will...

Crude Closes Higher as IEA Raises its Global Crude Demand Forecast Barchart - 1 hour ago February WTI crude oil (CLG22 ) on Wednesday closed up +1.53 (+1.79%), and February RBOB gasoline (RBG22 ) closed up +2.52 (+1.04%). WTI crude oil and RBOB gasoline prices Wednesday extended Tuesday's... CLH22 : 85.14 (-0.77%) RBH22 : 2.4484 (-0.53%)
A community sentencing policy is being considered by Ghana's Cabinet.

The Information Minister, Kojo Oppong Nkrumah has said.

Some legal brains have in the past proposed that community service should be entrenched in Ghana's laws as a means of checking overcrowding and to further decongest the country's prisons.

In the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, such calls have been renewed.

At a press briefing on Thursday, Mr. Oppong Nkrumah revealed that Cabinet is working on a community sentencing document which will make such options available.

You know in Ghana we don't have a community sentencing policy If successful, when Cabinet is [assessing] laws, all of these become options that can be embarked upon, he remarked.

Community sentencing would allow a convicted person to carry out some activities in the community as a form of punishment.

Ghana also has a Non-Custodial Sentencing Bill which the Ghana Prisons Service has been advocating for its quick passage.

The Director of Prisons in Charge of Operations, Isaac Kofi Egyir said the service has made their inputs in getting the Bill passed.

We in the Ghana Prisons Service have been strong advocates for quick passage of the law that regulate non-custodial sentences. I think that this is the right time that we all put our hands together to get this passed as quickly as possible to save the situation. We have made our inputs and it has gotten to the appropriate authorities and it is being worked on.

Amid congestion concerns in the wake of COVID-19 pandemic, 808 prisoners were granted amnesty by the President.

The category of convicts who benefitted from the President's gesture included first-time offenders, seriously ill, inmates on death row commuted to life imprisonment, inmates serving life sentence commuted to 20 years definite term, and very old prisoners ranging from 70 years and above.

---citinewsroom
The director of Migrant Rights Centre Ireland, Edel McGinley has said meat plant workers are frightened and angry and are uncertain if they are being protected in their workplaces.

Ms McGinley told RTE radios Today programme that she is very concerned and worried about the outbreaks of Covid-19 clusters in meat processing plants.

Measures had not been put in place quickly enough to protect meat plant workers against Covid-19, she said and her organisation had been contacted by many concerned meat plant workers.

It is not obvious what is happening at these places of work and whether the situation is being dealt with in any co-ordinated way.

Workers had also complained that there were no proper sick pay schemes in place making it difficult for them when they became ill and attempted to apply for social welfare.

Two weeks was not enough sick leave as some could be ill for much longer, she said.

This also raised the issue of whether some meat plant workers were going back to work too soon, she added.

Ms McGinley called for deep cleaning of any plants where there was an outbreak of the virus.

Such plants should be closed and not reopened until it was safe to do so.

She also called for greater clarity for workers on what their entitlements might be.

The onus is on employers to assist people in these situations to apply for sick pay at a lower rate, she said.
Two casinos operated by Oregon tribes will reopen to the public next week, becoming the first casinos to resume operations in the state amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The Mill Casino Hotel in North Bend will reopen to the public on May 18, while Chinook Winds Casino Resort in Lincoln City will reopen on May 21. Both casinos have been closed since March.

The Chinook Winds Casino Resort announced Thursday that it would reopen in phases and operate shortened hours to give workers time to disinfect and clean.

The casino said it plans to enforce social distancing measures and adhere to lower occupancy limits than normal. The casino will also require patrons and employees to wear face coverings and have their temperature checked.

We are ready to welcome all those who feel safe to visit," said Michael S. Fisher, the casinos general manager, in a statement.

The Mill Casino will also have modified hours, a reduced capacity and other social distancing measures in place when it reopens. All guests will be asked a series of questions, have their temperature checked and be provided with a mask before entering.

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said during a March press conference that she had no authority to decide whether tribal facilities closed or took other steps during the coronavirus crisis. But all nine tribal casinos still opted to close temporarily due to the outbreak.

The closure of the casinos has dealt an economic blow to tribal governments, which rely on the money to fund jobs and services.

An employee that worked at the Wildhorse Resort and Casino in Pendleton tested positive for COVID-19 in March. That casino remains closed.

-- Jamie Goldberg | jgoldberg@oregonian.com | @jamiebgoldberg

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Lynda Baker has become teacher as well as parent to her son, Bradly, who has Down syndrome, since schools shut down in March to stop the spread of COVID-19. (Courtesy of Lynda Baker)

Special-Needs Students StruggleBut Also ThriveAmid School Shutdowns

ORANGE, Calif.Bradly Baker, who has Down syndrome, is a sophomore at Orange High School in Orange, California. The transition to at-home learning disrupted a routine that hes relied on for years.

Hes very routine, very schedule-based, his mother, Lynda Baker, told The Epoch Times. He knows Monday through Friday what his day is going to look like. And when this sudden shutdown of the schools happened, that changed.

Brenda Lebsack, a special education teacher in Santa Ana, told The Epoch Times many of her students have also struggled to understand the interruption to routine.

They put on their backpacks and wait at the door for the bus, because they dont understand why their bus is not coming, she said.

A Mothers Fear of Failure

Bradly is very speech-delayed, Baker said. He would be considered a 3- to 4-year-old mentally, but hes 16. His 3-year-old brother talks better than he does.

Baker has had to reorient her routine to help him with his weekly assignments.

Lynda and Bradly Baker. (Courtesy of Lynda Baker)

It takes an effort to sit down and look at the computer and the schoolwork, and try to be the speech therapist, and an occupational therapist, and the PE [physical education] teacher, and his teacher, she said. So Im trying to juggle all of that the best I can.

Baker does the bookkeeping for her familys business. Before the pandemic, she would go to her mother-in-laws house each day to work. Now, she works at home while managing Bradlys education.

He has goals we put in place, and annually, we check to see how he met with those goals. And so, as a parent, if he doesnt meet those goals come October, Im going to feel like I didnt do a very good job, she said.

On top of that, Im trying to explain to him that we cant see our friends, she added.

Baker says Bradly is very social, and feeds off his peers.

Because he cant really speak, his way of feeling like a part of a group is being silly, high-fiving his friends, and making jokes. So hes not able to have that socialization, which has been a really hard thing for him, she said.

Miss PE

Lebsack is an adapted physical education teacher at seven schools in the Santa Ana Unified School District. Her students have autism, Down syndrome, cerebral palsy, and various other health challenges.

I miss my students terribly and look forward to things getting back to normal, she said. However, we were told things may not exactly go back to normal, since there may be a gradual rollout due to social distancing.

She said staggered learning might be the approachstudents could be scheduled in morning and afternoon shifts to decrease the number present at one time. But thus far, the directives have been very vague.

In the meantime, Lebsack has started a YouTube channel, where she creates customized videos for her students.

Since most of the children she teaches are nonverbal, the key to teaching physical education comes down to modeling. They can watch me and do what I do, she said.

Some of her students who have limited language abilities refer to her as Miss PEthey cant remember her name, but they remember what she teaches.

Like most kids, they enjoy fun physical activities, she added. So theyre usually excited when they see me coming.

Better Progress at Home for Some

Dr. Caprice Young is superintendent for Learn4Life charter schools, which has 25 percent more special-needs students than traditional schools.

We go out of our way to welcome them and craft personalized programs, she told The Epoch Times.

Many of Learn4Lifes special-needs students have actually thrived better through at-home learning than they did in the classroom.

About 15 percent of our students have radically increased their engagement and academic progress, Young said.

She oversees 20 schools and more than 85 learning centers in California, Ohio, and Michigan.

A teacher counsels a student at a Learn4Life charter school prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn4Life welcomes special needs students into an inclusive student body. (Courtesy of Learn4Life)

Students on the autism spectrum have found learning online to be a focused way to excel, she said. Students with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) find it to be less distracting.

She said she knows it has been challenging in many ways for parents as well as studentsthe disruption to routine, coping with stress related to the pandemic overall, and more.

But, a silver lining is that parents have benefited from being able to observe their students learning process.

Baker agrees.

Its been hard, but at the same time, Im really seeing the good in it, as I see how his teachers interact with him, she said. Bradlys at-home-learning includes video education and shared fitness classes online.

Im sitting there, and Im taking notes to see how theyre teaching, and what works for him, Baker said.

Shes also encouraged by the love that they have for Bradly, and the time that they spend with him.

It just kind of brings me to tears, because the teachers are just amazing with these kids, and it makes me appreciate them much more, she said. They are so encouraging and uplifting.
By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 15, 2020 | 02:26 PM | PADUCAH

The second round of Paducah Small Business Relief Fund financial assistance for local businesses is being distributed Friday.The City of Paducah says thanks to the generosity of community donors, each of the 50 "non-essential" businesses in this round is receiving a $2000 check that can be used for payroll, rent/mortgage, or utilities. The city matched the donations dollar-for-dollar.The city says a third round of funding is possible in the future.The Small Business Relief Fund program has raised more than $58,000 so far, and is a partnership among the City of Paducah, West Kentucky Community & Technical College, and the Community Foundation of West Kentucky.To see the list of recipients and more information about the program, or to donate to the fund, click the links below. You can also contact the Community Foundation at 270-442-8622.

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Five percent of New York City's population has fled since the coronavirus pandemic gripped the city, new smartphone data reveals.

From March 1 to May 1, about 420,000 residents of the Big Apple - home to nearly 8.4 million people - particularly from the wealthiest neighborhoods, reported The New York Times.

While there was relatively little change in some zip codes, others such as SoHo, the West Village, Morningside Heights, the Upper East Side, the Financial District, Midtown, Gramercy and Brooklyn Heights emptied by at least 40 percent.

Meanwhile, Manhattan's overall population has fallen by almost 20 percent as the lockdown enters its third month.

Income was perhaps the strongest indicator of how many residents in a particular neighborhood had fled.

NYC has been the epicenter of the U.S. outbreak with more than 186,000 cases of coronavirus and more than 15,300 confirmed deaths with at least 5,000 more probable deaths.

Five percent of New York City's population, or 420,000 people, left between March 1 and May 1 amid the coronavirus pandemic. The bottom 80%, who earn less than $90,000 per year, mostly stayed while the top 1%, who earn about $2.2 million per year, left

Popular destinations among so-called 'coronavirus refugees' include Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, the Hamptons, Hudson Valley, the Jersey Shore and southern Florida

Some neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side and the West Village emptied by at least 40%. Pictured: A doctor walks his dog right up the middle of an abandoned 3rd Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side, April 11

WHAT THE CELL PHONE DATA SHOWED Nearly 420,000 New York City residents left between March 1 and May 1

Neighborhoods such as the Upper East Side and SoHo saw populations drop by at least 40%

People mostly fled to Long Island, upstate New York like the Catskills and Florida, all of which are popular summer home destinations

Residents who left were in neighborhoods made up of mainly whites with household incomes of more than $100,000 per year Advertisement

For its report, The Times looked at data provided by New Mexico-based Descartes Labs, a geospatial imagery analytics company.

The company used anonymous smartphone geolocation data to track where New York City residents were in February, and whether they left the city or not after the pandemic.

The sample population was 140,000 people from nearly every census-counted neighborhood in the five boroughs.

While smartphone data is not perfect, and not every resident owns a smartphone, it provides a general idea about New Yorkers' mobility.

Between March 1 and March 15, there was a small trickle out of New York. But, after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the city's schools would be shut, there was a mass exodus.

The Times found that residents from neighborhoods where the median income is $90,000 or less (the bottom 80th percentile) stayed in their homes.

NYC 'refugees' flee to small East Coast towns Martha's Vineyard, MA - 29 cases Nantucket, MA - 13 cases Newport, RI - 197 cases / 4 deaths Suffolk County, NY (The Hamptons) - 41,920 cases / 1,645 deaths Cape May County, NJ (Ocean City) - 442 cases / 32 deaths Ocean County, NJ (Jersey Shore) - 7,366 cases / 522 deaths Monmouth County, NJ (Jersey Shore) - 6,815 cases / 439 deaths Data as of Friday, May 15 Advertisement

About 10 percent of those is the top 10th percentile fled and about 25 percent of the top 5th percentile did the same.

However, more than one-third - 35 percent - of the top one percent - escaped to summer homes in Long Island, upstate New York, or other states.

According to CNBC, the top one percent of New York City earns bout $2.2 million per year on average and the top five percent annual income is about $480,780.

The data is consistent with other reports of wealthy New York City residents having fled.

People that live in vacation towns, such as the Hamptons in Long Island and the Catskills in upstate, complained that their grocery stores were being emptied by city people who were living in their summer homes.

Last month, officials said the price of rental homes in the Hamptons soared from $5,000 per month to more than $30,000 for a two-weeks period.

Small town populations practically doubled as Big Apple residents fled to their summer homes, but locals said city dwellers were bringing COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, with them.

Cases in Suffolk County, where the Hamptons, began jumping by nearly 1,000 in a single-day and deaths by 100 in one day. However, the region only has 2,710 total hospital beds and 322 ICU beds.

In upstate New York, Rensselaer County's county executive Steve McLaughlin even appealed to Governor Andrew Cuomo to ban travel from New York City, but to no avail.

And The City reported that communities such as SoHo, Chelsea, the West Village, the Lower East Side and Fordham saw a drop in garbage tonnage by up to five percent.

However areas with more middle-class residents, such as Astoria in Queens, saw an increase in trash by around 12 percent.

Overall, Descartes Labs found that New York City's total population decreased by 5.2 percent and Manhattan's by 18.6 percent.

The Times found these numbers to be consistent with two other papers it looked at, one from NYU and another from a company, Tealytics, that looks at cell phone tower data.

So what does this reveal about who is and isn't living the city?

The residents of these wealthy neighborhoods where more than 25 percent fled are overwhelmingly white, about 68 percent, according to the newspaper.

However, this is not representative of New York City's populations because less than half the city - 42.7 percent - is white, according to US census data.

More than three-quarters of these neighborhoods have residents with college degrees or higher and rents of more than $2,000 per month.

Residents who stayed mainly lived in poorer neighborhoods, had high school diplomas or less and earned less than $90,000. Pictured: People wait in line outside of a Costco in Brooklyn, May 14

This means that neighborhoods mostly made up of blacks, Asians and Hispanics mostly went unchanged.

Residents who didn't flee are often in neighborhoods where most have a high school degree or less and pay about $1,500 per month in rent.

Most telling, however, was the median household income.

According to The Times, more than 50 percent of the residents who fled earned more than $100,000 and almost 33% brought in more than $200,000.

'There is a way that these crises fall with a different weight on people based on social class,' Dr Kim Phillips-Fein, a history professor at New York University, told The Times.

'Even though there's a strong rhetoric of: "We're all in it together," that's not really the case.'

Most New Yorkers did not go far. The Times analysis found that, when they escaped, they mostly went to Nassau or Suffolk County in New York, Martha's Vineyard, Cape Cod, Rhode Island, northeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern Connecticut.

However, there were a few pockets across the US that became more populated with New Yorkers including southern Florida; Los Angeles, California; Phoenix, Arizona; and Chicago, Illinois.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo extends stay-at-home order until June 13

By Jemma Carr for MailOnline

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (pictured in his press briefing yesterday) has extended the state-wide coronavirus lockdown to June 13

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo has extended the state-wide coronavirus stay-at-home order until June 13 but regions that meet reopening requirements can start to reopen before then.

The extension of the PAUSE plan simply allows Cuomo to keep regions that do not meet requirements closed until June 13.

It does not mean that they won't open before then.

It simply extends his original NY Pause order that expires on Friday May 15.

Five regions have met the requirements to reopen and they will start with construction, manufacturing and curbside retail on Friday.

They are the North Country, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, Southern Tier and Central New York are all ready to reopen.

New York City has not yet enough of the requirements. It still needs to grow its hospital bed and ICU bed capacity and reduce the number of people being hospitalized with the virus every day.

The first phase is to allow people who work in manufacturing, construction, wholesale trade and retail back to work but only if they practice social distancing.

The biggest practical change for consumers is likely to be curbside retail which will allow some clothing stores, electronics stores, furniture, florists, jewelry, and sporting goods stores to reopen.

The rules mean they cannot allow customers inside - instead, they must put in place a curbside pick-up system with customers placing orders online then picking them up on the street.

It is unclear how long it will take for them to transition to phase two, which allows office workers to return to their jobs if their employers think it is safe.

Cuomo has previously suggested that a period of two weeks between each stage may be a good enough time to monitor if it has led to an increase in infection rate.
Media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi, has demanded explanations from medical experts on what type of disease coronavirus really is. There ha...

Media mogul, Raymond Dokpesi, has demanded explanations from medical experts on what type of disease coronavirus really is.





There have been debates across the world over the similarities of the illness to malaria.





This has led to warnings against the use of a malaria drug Chloroquine by health officials and bodies.





On Thursday, the National Agency for Food, Drug Administration and Control (NAFDAC) restated its warning about the medication.





Prof. Mojisola Adeyeye, NAFDAC Director-General, said: Nobody should buy chloroquine and use. If you have COVID-19, go to a doctor. We have warned Nigerians, do not take chloroquine.





But after he was discharged, Dokpesi, the founder of DAAR Communications, owners of African Independent Television (AIT) and RayPower FM, declared that he was confused.





He said: I still have doubts in my mind and I need to be educated. Whats the difference between COVID-19 and malaria? Every drug we were given were malaria medications.





A number of persons who tested positive were checked in reputable labs, hospitals in Abuja and were found to have malaria parasites in their bloodstreams. When did malaria become synonymous with COVID-19?





For now, the only authorized treatment for the pandemic is Remdesivir.





However, Remdesivir is limited in supply, a situation that has caused countries to seek alternative antidotes.





The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that Madagascar must scientifically test its solution for coronavirus.





Madagascar had commenced shipment of the herbal remedy called, COVID Organics to African nations including Nigeria.





Last week, a team of experts announced the discovery of a mixture they said proved effective.





The combination includes two antiviral drugs and one immune system booster.




Afghanistan has said its decision to resume offensive operations against the Taliban and other terrorist groups following two attacks on Tuesday that killed scores of Afghans, including newborns, was a legitimate defensive position.

Tuesdays attack on the maternity hospital in Dasht-e-Barchi area of Kabul prompted Afghan President Ashraf Ghani to switch from an active defensive mode to an offensive mode and to resume attacks on the Taliban.

The Taliban has distanced itself from the attack on the maternity hospital, which was carried out by four suicide attackers clad in military uniforms, according to reports in the Afghan media. All the attackers were also killed.

In order to keep its people secure and thwart such terrorist attacks, the Afghan government declared its legitimate defensive position against those who claim the responsibilities for such incidents, Afghan ministry of foreign affairs said in a statement.

Also read: India condemns attack on maternity hospital in Afghanistan capital

Undoubtedly, any country who would face such attacks ending with the martyrdom of infants and mothers, would take the same position. In fact, the Afghan government has made its best efforts for bringing sustainable peace, and would continue its efforts, it added.

The statement came after Russias presidential envoy Zamir Kabulov told TASS that Ghanis order to launch an offensive against the Taliban and the suspension of the release of Taliban prisoners will halt the peace process in the war-ravaged nation.

This is regrettable because by his actions the head of the Kabul administration actually stalls the process of moving towards the launch of intra-Afghan negotiations. Such actions clearly indicate that Kabul is not much interested in the early launch of intra-Afghan talks, Zamir Kabulov was quoted as saying by TASS.

The Afghan foreign ministry said the government took an initiative and developed a peace plan in three articlesceasefire during the coronavirus pandemic, immediate start of talks and release of prisoners from both sides.

It pointed out that the proposal was firmly endorsed by neighbours and regional and international colleagues but there was no positive respond from Taliban.

Had the Taliban positively responded to that proposal, such terrorist attacks, no matter who is responsible for, could have been averted, it said.

Afghanistan called upon other nations to announce their endorsement of the peace proposal and persuade the Taliban to join the peace process.

It is evident, that those who havent positively responded should take the responsibility for having no progress in the peace process, it said.

Peace is the most important priority of the Afghan government, meanwhile, the Afghan government would utilize all resources to ensure the security and defend its people.
The U.S. President has submitted the nomination of Ambassador of the United States of America to Ukraine Keith W. Dayton to the Senate.

Nominations sent to the Senate: Keith W. Dayton, of Washington, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Ukraine, reads the announcement on the website of the White House.

Pursuant to the US law, the nominations of high-ranking officials, including US ambassadors abroad, must be approved by the Senate.

This usually involves holding the hearings with the candidate in the Senate committee which decides whether to recommend him or her during the vote in the Senate. After the nomination is approved by a majority of senators, the President appoints an official by a decree.

As reported, U.S. President Donald Trump nominated Keith Dayton for the post of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to Ukraine in early May.

ol
/ -- The Hospitality Industry has multiple career options to offer today because it prepares an individual for decision making and leadership. Hence, it require individuals' who have a service aptitude and managerial skills in them to be successful in this service oriented industry.

To cater to this need, NMIMS School of Hospitality Management (SoHM) is born with a vision to develop future ready leaders in the service industry. Through its '3 YearBBA - Hospitality Operations & Management' program, the learning becomes more encompassing, as SoHM offers every student the best of Hospitality & Management.

Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies (NMIMS) was established in 1981 by Shri Vile Parle Kelavani Mandal (SVKM) to meet the growing demand for management In 2003, NMIMS was declared a 'Deemed to be University' under Section 3 of the UGC Act 1956.

At SoHM, the students will be taught, mentored and closely monitored by a team of experts to motivate the students to help them attain the best of their potential. The School will be creating leaders of tomorrow who can be disruptive and innovative at the same time and will adapt easily with respect to the changing paradigms in the Hospitality industry.

School's Mission:



To inculcate the service ethos of positive attitude, customer service, professionalism and environmental care.

To impart deeply rewarding and remarkable educational experience through exceptional training and placement.

To create leaders who can solve hospitality industry challenges through creative thinking and innovation.

To encourage research and entrepreneurship in the hospitality industry.

The School encourages lifelong learning and helps students take on the challenges of the professional world with confidence. It imparts hands-on training, critical thinking, research and application, thereby giving the students an all-round platform to excel.

BBA- Hospitality Operations & Management (6 Semesters):



The teaching methodology comprises classroom lectures, industry visits, projects, events and internship. The course includes:Introduction to fundamentals of Hospitality Operations & Management in the first two semestersIntense Operations and Management in volume based business in the third semesterMandatory industry internship in the fourth semester to get operational experienceFocus on Specialization and Entrepreneurship in fifth and sixth semestersFacilities: The School has state-of-the-art infrastructure comprising practical labs, classrooms and recreational spaces for students' overall development. Other facilities include:Basic Training Kitchen & RestaurantBakery & ConfectionaryHousekeeping Lab & Training Guest RoomFront Office LabLibrary, Music Room, Games Room and moreEligibility: Students passing from various streams of 10+2 with a minimum of 50% will be admitted through an entrance test, post which the students are screened through a personal interview.

After graduating from School of Hospitality Management, the students will be ready to work in any segment of the service industry, anywhere, with a world of opportunities in front of them.

Intake: 60 students



Campus tours are available on appointments.

About NMIMS



With the legacy of 40 years, NMIMS Deemed to be University has grown to being not only one of the top-10 B-schools in India but also emerged as a multi-disciplinary, multi-campus University at Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Indore, Shirpur, Dhule, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chandigarh and seventeen constituent schools that include Management, Family Business, Engineering, Pharmacy, Architecture, Commerce, Economics, Law, Science, Liberal Arts, Design, Performing Arts, Mathematical Science, Agricultural Science, Hospitality Management, Branding & Advertising and Distance Learning. In addition, we have nine Centres of Excellence as well at the University



Website: hospitality.nmims.edu



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The Union Health Ministry on Friday issued guidelines on preventive measures, isolation and quarantine for healthcare workers deployed in COVID and non-COVID areas of hospitals.

The ministry advised the healthcare facilities to activate their Hospital Infection Control Committees (HICC) which would be responsible for implementing the Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) activities and organising regular training for staff.

A nodal officer (Infection Control Officer) shall be identified by each hospital to address all matters related to Healthcare Associated Infections (HAIs), the advisory said.

The nodal officer has to ensure that healthcare workers in different settings of hospitals use PPEs appropriate to their risk profile, as detailed in the guidelines issued by the ministry, and they have undergone training on IPC and are aware of common signs and symptoms, need for self-health monitoring and prompt reporting of such symptoms, it added.

The officer also has to make provisions for regular (thermal) screening of all hospital staff and ensure that all healthcare workers managing COVID-19 cases are provided with chemo-prophylaxis under medical supervision, the ministry said.

On actions for healthcare workers, the advisory says it needs to be ensured that all preventive measures like frequent washing of hands/use of alcohol-based hand sanitisers and respiratory etiquettes (using tissue/handkerchief while coughing or sneezing) are followed at all times.

"He or she shall use appropriate PPE at all times while on duty. A buddy system to be followed to ensure that there is no breach in infection prevention control practices," it said.

Under the buddy system, two or more-person teams are formed amongst the deployed hospital staff who share responsibilities for his/her partner's safety and well-being in the context of appropriately donning and doffing of PPEs, maintaining hand hygiene and taking requisite steps on observing breach of PPEs.

The advisory also asks healthcare workers to follow social distancing and use masks to prevent transmission or acquiring infection.

"Pregnant/lactating mothers and immuno-compromised healthcare workers shall inform their medical condition to the hospital authorities for them to get posted only in non-COVID areas," the advisory said.

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Cindy Ali, who was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her disabled daughter, has been freed amid the pandemic pending an appeal that contends her trial judge erred in his instructions to the jury and unfairly presented a key witnesss testimony.

The appeal, prepared by lawyers James Lockyer and Catriona Verner, calls Alis conviction a miscarriage of justice and seeks a new trial.

Ali, accompanied by family, walked out of Grand Valley Institution for Women on April 20 after the Crown consented to her release on bail.

Grand Valley has had eight inmates test positive for COVID-19 and at least one inmate had to be hospitalized. All have recovered, according to the latest Correctional Service Canada data.

Ali, who has underlying health issues that make her vulnerable to the virus, has no other criminal history.

Married, with three other daughters, Ali returned to her family in Toronto for the first time since her March 6, 2016 first-degree murder conviction, which came with an automatic life sentence and no chance of parole for 25 years.

Her daughter, Cynara Ali, 16, had cerebral palsy, was prone to seizures and was dependent on her family for care. At her trial, Ali, who was home alone with her on Feb. 11, 2011, testified that two male intruders barged into the family home that day looking for a package, and that her daughter suffered a seizure.

Ali dialed 911 to report a home invasion and that Cynara had stopped breathing. She later died in hospital.

Ali was initially charged with manslaughter, failing to provide the necessities of life, obstruction and negligence causing death, but the charge was later raised to first-degree murder.

In a factum filed May 1 with the Ontario Court of Appeal, Lockyer and Verner contend that trial judge Justice Todd Ducharme unfairly presented the testimony of a witness who saw two men near the home before the 911 call, and that Ducharme undermined the trial in his instructions to the jury on Alis post offence conduct and whether the crime scene had been staged.

The Crown argued the home invasion was made up and that Ali murdered her daughter by smothering her with a pillow, in part for financial reasons. The Crown also argued a letter from the home invaders that arrived several weeks after Cynaras death was also made up.

The handwritten letter, addressed to the Ali family, said the invaders had gone to the wrong address in search of a package.

The appeal argues that descriptions of the home invaders given by both Ali and the witness were strikingly similar, but the judge minimized the weight of that testimony.

The jury was presented with a choice between a not-guilty verdict if they believed there had been a home invasion, or a first-degree murder conviction if they did not.

In the appeal, Lockyer and Verner argue the jury was improperly instructed on how to proceed if they found the home invasion was made up; they were essentially instructed on a step-by-step basis to find that if the Appellant made up the story of the home invasion, she was guilty of culpable homicide which could only have been by way of smothering Cynara with the pillow, which led directly to a finding of a planned and deliberate murder.

Whether there was a home invasion thereby became the fulcrum for a first-degree murder conviction.

The appeal further argues that there is no evidence to support a deliberate, planned murder, and that the judge erred in his instructions on motive.

The verdict should be quashed as a miscarriage of justice and a new trial ordered, the appeal contends.

Grand Valley and four other federal prisons have experienced COVID-19 outbreaks during the pandemic. Overall, there have been 343 federal inmate positive cases, and two deaths.

Ali was released on bail by consent of the Crown, meaning her release was not contested.

Its a tremendous relief that shes on bail, especially because there was a COVID outbreak, Lockyer said in a phone interview, adding the appeal otherwise speaks for itself and declined to answer questions.

Lockyer said he expects the appeal to be heard before the end of the year.
As the COVID-19 pandemic swept into Montana, it spread into the Marias Heritage Center assisted living facility, then flowed into the nearby 21-bed hospital.

Toole County quickly became the state's hot spot for COVID-19 deaths, with more than four times the infection rate of all other counties and the most recorded deaths in the state. Six of the state's 16 COVID deaths through Tuesday have occurred here.

But another danger loomed: What if it got into the prison, less than 4 miles away from the hospital and assisted living facility? The county was nearly overwhelmed as it was. Across rural America, prisons and jails sit in places like Toole County that have minimal intensive care unit beds and ventilators and few additional medical resources. Many hospitals there were strained before the pandemic.

This rural, 5,000-person county tucked under the Canadian border might not have seemed like a breeding ground for the contagion. It is a primarily agricultural community almost twice as large as Rhode Island situated in the Great Plains under a big Montana sky. Some areas of the county don't have cellphone coverage, much less internet, and winters are cold enough that people plug in their cars not because they are electric but because they must heat the engines to keep them from freezing.

"When you look at the per capita infection rate in the county and deaths, unfortunately, in our community, it's very, very staggering," said William Kiefer, CEO of the Marias Medical Center, which is affiliated with the assisted living facility. "And the impact is clearly similar to what's happening in some of the urban areas that have been hit really hard."

The two original cases of COVID-19 at the assisted living facility exposed 63 staffers at the center and the affiliated hospital. Thirteen tested positive, and one was hospitalized. All of them recovered. It took a monumental effort by the entire county to keep the hospital from shuttering.

At the worst point, Kiefer and his CFO were the only original staff members not quarantined and able to work. The Montana National Guard helped wash laundry, former employees came out of retirement to fill in, nurses worked as many as five different roles for weeks on end, and quarantined staff coordinated administrative work from sunup to sundown while isolating from their families.

But, through it all, the dreaded coronavirus hasn't yet crept into the site of one of the community's largest employers, the Crossroads Correctional Center prison. It holds almost 15% of the county's total population with a 712-bed facility for both federal and state inmates.

Almost 70% of the nation's more than 1,100 prisons are located outside of metropolitan areas, according to 2017 research by John M. Eason, an associate professor in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

But in many of those same communities, rural hospitals that would be tasked to care for inmates during a pandemic have since struggled, with more than 120 rural hospitals closing nationwide in the past decade.

It is not just the inmates behind bars, but also the people in the surrounding community, many of whom work at the facilities, who would be at risk. The employees leaving prisons and jails daily could spread the virus to inmates on the inside and community members on the outside. Already such rural communities on average have sicker and older populations than the rest of the country, even before considering the added risk of close-quartered prisons and jails.

"What is at stake is, in some way, always what's been at stake," said Jessica Pishko, the senior legal adviser at the Justice Collaborative, a nonprofit focused on the justice system. "The most vulnerable are already the ones who are the most impacted."

The Justice Collaborative released a report last month finding that 12% of people held in jails are in counties without intensive care unit beds. In Montana, the report said, over a third of jail detainees are in counties without them. And Toole County has none.

Of course, not all people infected with the coronavirus end up in need of intensive care, but even a small number of serious cases in a small jail or prison could overwhelm limited resources.

The Marias Medical Center has two ventilators and added a six-bed COVID-19 isolation tent behind the hospital. It has two regular staff nurses. But, like many rural hospitals, it is designed to stabilize patients and then transfer them to other, bigger hospitals, if needed. Those are some 80 and 160 miles away.

COVID-19 has only magnified the existing resource problems of the medical center.

"We almost got pushed to the limit where we didn't have sufficient staff to maintain our emergency room open, and that would be catastrophic to a community," Kiefer said.

In normal times, the facility saw about five of the prison's inmates a month in the emergency room. Now, amid the pandemic, officials from the medical center and county have been coordinating with the company that runs Crossroads to form plans in case a new wave of COVID-19 compromises the facility. Ryan Gustin, a spokesperson for CoreCivic, which runs Crossroads, said they are all sharing information to "strengthen our collective response."

The Montana Department of Corrections also helped the private prison distribute educational materials, such as newsletters detailing information about the virus and prevention. As of Monday, no inmates had tested positive in Montana state-run facilities and three staff had tested positive.
As her decorated white Ford slowed to a stop in front of Texas A&M University-San Antonios main building, Lisset Martinez-Berman slipped out in her graduates cap and gown.

She approached a tent where university officials handed her a disinfected diploma cover and congratulated her. A photographer directed her to stand on a blue x taped next to the campus fountain. Six feet or more behind her stood University President Cynthia Teniente-Matson and the costumed school mascot, General the Jaguar.

Numerous signs had advised participants in the curbside commencement ceremony that only grads should get out of their cars. But Martinez-Bermans mother was too proud of her daughter, her oldest child and a first-generation college graduate, to heed those warnings.

Wearing a mask, Maria Berman ran up behind the photographer  about 6 feet away  and took a quick picture on her phone before running back to the car.

This was commencement in the age of the novel coronavirus. It wasnt the ceremony the more than 1,000 graduates of A&M-San Antonio and their families had looked forward to when the universitys first freshman class started school. But it still was enjoyable, Lisetts father, Ivan Martinez, said in Spanish.

There were no speeches, and the line of vehicles moved forward efficiently to repeat the brief photo op again and again. Teniente-Matson blew kisses to graduates, waved at family members and shouted from a distance how proud she was of them.

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In fall 2016, the still-new university on the citys southern edge had welcomed its first class of four-year students, having admitted only juniors and seniors transferred from other schools in its earliest years.

Now they were graduating, and Teniente-Matson said the day turned out to be extraordinary.

For me, its heartwarming to have this compromise. Its very special to see the spirit of the graduates, she said.

A traditional ceremony is planned for September, but officials organized the drive-up edition Friday, the planned spring graduation date, in two shifts, morning and evening. Martinez-Berman and her friend Jordan LeJeune chose the morning slot, betting the lighting would be better for photos.

Im glad the school is doing the curbside at least on the day that wouldve been graduation, Martinez-Berman said. At least were being seen.

LeJeune echoed the sentiment, adding, Who knows whats going to be happening in September?

LeJeune is moving back to her hometown for the time being with her degree in history. She had some job interviews but everything seems to be on hold due to the virus.

Martinez-Berman, whose degree is in psychology, was accepted to a graduate program at the University of Connecticut, but is waiting for word on whether she should physically go in the fall or start classes online in San Antonio.

On ExpressNews.com: A few dozen A&M San Antonio dorm students are riding out the coronavirus storm

Martinez-Berman said she was surprised when she felt nervous as she took her walk to the photo site.

Now that Im here, yeah, I feel like I graduated, she said.

Before LeJeunes photo, university officials presented her with the graduation stole she earned for being a Jaguar Ambassador, essentially a representative of the university, especially at events with guests of the president and vice presidents. A campus official straightened out the back of the stole as it draped over LeJeunes shoulders before she walked up for her photo.

When they handed me my stole I thought I was going to cry, she said.

Martinez-Berman and LeJeune, both 22 and friends since their freshman year, met early at a nearby gas station to drive onto campus together. LeJeune and her parents, who came from her hometown in Brusly, La., then followed Martinez-Berman and her parents onto Jaguar Way, off Zarzamora Street.

The pair took selfies of themselves afterward while they waited for their parents to park so they could take graduation photos at different campus vantage points. They hadnt been back since mid-March, when universities across the state started emptying out to slow the spread of COVID-19.

The friends felt like they never got to give their campus a proper goodbye. They hoped to do so during their joint photo shoot.

As other drivers exited the one-mile stretch of University Way, the main entrance off Loop 410, they stopped to park and let their graduates take photos with the Torre de los Suenos, the tower of dreams, and signs waving in the wind that congratulated seniors.

A&M (San Antonio) is such a small school but in a good way, Martinez-Berman said. You walk in the halls and you know everybody. Everyone is so friendly, you feel like its a family. Thats what Ill miss the most, being in a school that really cares.

Krista Torralva covers several school districts and public universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Krista, become a subscriber. Krista.Torralva@express-news.net | Twitter: @KMTorralva
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" " The world is dark and nebulous, and the moon is the only guiding light. What happens next? BORIS HORVAT/AFP/Getty Images

Immediate follow-up question: What if there were no life in the universe? The sun, after all, is a star. No stars, no sun, no life.Well, if you stumbled across this starless, lifeless universe, you'd find yourself floating through a frigid expanse of nothingness wishing that you had brought a warmer coat. Decent burritos would be harder to find. Every once in a while a neutrino would blip into or out of existence.

So let's revise the question: What if there were no visible stars? We'll say the sun and planets still exist, but for some reason no extrasolar stars can be seen from Earth. Let's say this is because our solar system is surrounded by a dark nebula. Nebulae are large clouds of dust and hot gas, and usually they're in the process of coalescing to form stars. As such they're very bright, but occasionally a cloud of interstellar dust will be thick and cold enough to block visible light without giving off much light itself.

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We'll operate under the assumption that our sun developed normally but that we drew an unlucky galactic poker hand, and our solar system is positioned inside a dark nebula. Just as life was developing on Nebula Earth, the solar system began drifting into a dust cloud, and the stars started to dim. As the dust became thicker over the next few million years, the night sky grew darker and darker until, on the night that the first brave little lungfish wiggled onto land, the sky was almost completely black. Only a few red smudges from the last, brightest stars to shine through the nebula remained in the night sky. By the time humans bothered to look up, all they saw was a moon and the planets in the darkness.

Humans on Nebula Earth are at a technological disadvantage. Throughout our history we've been using the stars for setting up calendars, navigating, knowing when to plant crops and developing science, especially physics. The ability to predict the motion of the stars was a big source of authority for priests in ancient Egypt. Without a divine mandate, priests on Nebula Earth have a harder time persuading anyone to help build the pyramids.

But it would be difficult to predict the broad effects of so many technological limitations. So let's focus on a single aspect: celestial navigation.

Early European sailors on Nebula Earth can cruise around the Mediterranean Sea if they keep the coast in sight. It's fairly easy to tell which direction you're headed with a sundial and a compass, but at night it's nearly impossible to determine your position without the stars for reference. Out of sight of land, sailing gets more dangerous  a single storm scrambles any sense of your position. Travel over the open sea is next to impossible, as any sea voyage that takes more than a day has a margin of error that grows every day as the bearing becomes more and more inaccurate.

With no advanced seafarers, all significant human migrations on Nebula Earth occur over land. Australia, the Americas and Greenland, which were settled by land migrations when sea levels were lower, are inhabited but remain isolated well past the time that they were colonized by Europeans during our history. Other islands that were settled using celestial navigation, such as New Zealand, Iceland and Hawaii, are empty of humans. While they're technically reachable by ship, sailors who stumbled on one of these islands would never be able to find their way back  if they ever made it home.

Without sea migration, Nebula Earth's political landscape is dramatically different from real Earth's. European expansion is hamstrung. Left to themselves, the Aztec and Inca, two of the most technologically advanced societies in the Americas, become the most powerful states in the Western Hemisphere. Across the Atlantic Ocean, countries such as Britain, France and Spain that pursued aggressive colonial expansion during the age of sail are never able to build and maintain colonies far from home. States in India and China, which were colonized or economically dominated by Europeans on real Earth, maintain their independence.

Here's where Nebula Earth starts to get really politically interesting. Without sea navigation, overseas trade is restricted. Small merchant ships cruise the Mediterranean, allowing trade between Europe and the Middle East, but the greatest source of international trade is the Silk Road, a long network of trade routes beginning in Constantinople that stretches across Central Asia to India and China.

On real Earth, caravans moved back and forth along the Silk Road trading silk, precious stones and spices for thousands of years. On Nebula Earth it becomes the most important (and possibly only) major trade route in the world. Any nation that controls a significant portion of the route quickly becomes wealthy, but it's also a target for bandits and vulnerable to conquest from powerful neighbors. And most of the land along the road is barren and difficult to settle, making it hard to hold on to. Just as in our own history, parts of the Silk Road change hands often. Major players over thousands of years are the Greeks, Turks, Han Chinese, Mongols, Persians, Scythians and other nomads of the Central Asian steppes.

As it did in the real world, the route changes hands among historical empires as China and India trade indirectly with a weakened Europe, sometimes through the Islamic world and sometimes through Central Asian horse empires. In eastern Central Asia, the Manchu-Chinese conquer the remains of the Junghar steppe empire, and Russia expands through westward colonization and conquest. Russia and China officially set their borders with each other in treaties signed in 1689 and 1727, each demanding control of international trade in their domain.

Here's where our histories diverge. On real Earth, the Russian-Chinese treaties destroyed the economy of Central Asia. Peripheral countries, seeking to avoid a monopolized trade, found alternative routes, mainly through maritime trade and British colonies in India. Trade along the Silk Road ground to a halt, damaging the economies of both China and Russia [source: Beckwith]. On Nebula Earth, however, this overseas trade isn't an option. For Europeans, there is no trade with the New World to offset the economic damage of the Silk Road closing. There's no littoral zone  on the water, close to shore  trade-route system to reach the East. There are no sugar plantations in the Caribbean, no European-controlled silver mines in the New World and no slave trade across the Atlantic.

Maybe Russia becomes the dominant force in an impoverished Europe. China, free from European incursions, expands its territory east into Japan and south into the islands of the South Pacific to control the spice trade, possibly even colonizing Australia. Meanwhile, India grows richer and more powerful, as the rest of the world attempts to bypass the Russo-Chinese trade monopoly. As Nebula Earth enters the 20th century, western and northern Europe remain cultural and economic backwaters under the dark night sky. There are no world wars, or at least none led by European countries, but Russia, India and China are dominant global powers. In Africa, Somalia and Ethiopia form an increasingly important overland economic and cultural hub between Europe and India. And far across the oceans, an undisturbed North and South America await contact with a new and unpredictable Old World.
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Photo filters available on applications such as Snapchat and Instagram have reportedly been vital in triggering body dysmorphic disorders among the youth who opt for cosmetic surgeries in an effort to look like an edited version of themselves. Rising disposable income levels in developing countries coupled with high adoption rates of invasive and minimally invasive cosmetic procedures drive the market majorly. Moreover, cosmetic surgeries are increasingly becoming affordable, and the trend of medical tourism has helped spur the growth of the market.

The Global Cosmetic Surgery Market has been growing persistently and is set to capture a CAGR of 7.8% over the forecast period of 20172023, reveals Market Research Future (MRFR) in a minutely analyzed research report. The global cosmetic surgery market has been observing continued growth on account of social and cultural factors such as the influence of social media and films. Interestingly, physical appearance is a social phenomenon, and the people are overwhelmingly driven to opt for cosmetic surgeries by the desire to look beautiful, flawless and young. Advertising and marketing are instrumental in shaping the cosmetic surgery market as they reinforce such beliefs among consumers which makes them indulge in cosmetic surgeries.

Technological developments in procedures and availability of skilled surgeons have helped consumers shake off their inhibitions regarding cosmetic surgeries. The rise in youth population is also a critical factor in propelling the market growth. The young population is more influenced by social media, changing beauty standards, peer pressure and form a large base of the cosmetic surgery consumers. On the downside, the side effects associated with cosmetic procedures and the high cost of cosmetic surgeries are significant market restraints. However, with more number of men opting for cosmetic procedures, the trend is likely to provide potential growth opportunities to the market. These factors in combination will help the market achieve a valuation of USD 21.97 Bn by the end of 2023.

Segmentation

The global cosmetic surgery market has been segmented based on surgery type which comprises liposuction, eyelid and nose surgery, body contouring, facial reconstruction, cosmetic implants and others. The body contouring segment has been further segmented into tummy tuck, breast lift, others. The cosmetic implants segment has been further segmented into breast augmentation, buttock implants, chin & cheek implants.

Access Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/cosmetic-surgery-market-3157

Regional Analysis

The global cosmetic surgery market spans across the regions of North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East & Africa. North America holds the maximum share of the market owing to an increase in awareness and growing acceptability of cosmetic surgery in the region, especially the US. Moreover, the region is technologically advanced which has resulted in the development of less painful and non-invasive procedures. The Asia Pacific region is expected to showcase relatively fast growth over the forecast period, with key contributions from Japan, India, and China. There is a shift towards Latin America and Asia Pacific for owing to medical tourism for cosmetic surgeries.

Competitive Landscape

The notable players in the global cosmetic surgery market include Johnson & Johnson, Cutera, Inc., Allergan, Inc., Valeant Pharmaceuticals International, Syneron Medical Ltd., Genesis Biosystems, Inc., and others.
A mother who gave birth to Australia's first ever naturally conceived quintuplets has split from her husband.

Kim Tucci, 30, from Perth, had three children four years ago and thought she would be 'four and done', when she became a one in 55 million statistic and gave birth to Australia's first ever naturally conceived quins.

Now, Kim has announced she is splitting from her husband Vaughn, after the couple 'outgrew' their relationship and she said she 'really lost myself'.

Despite the breakup, the mum-of-eight added that she and Vaughn intend to co-parent their many children as a 'team'.

A mother who is famous for giving birth to Australia's first ever naturally conceived quintuplets has split from her husband (Kim Tucci pictured with one of her kids)

Kim Tucci, 30, from Perth, had three children four years ago and thought she would be 'four and done', when she became a one in 55 million statistic and gave birth to Australia's first ever naturally conceived quins (the quintuplets pictured)

Now, Kim has announced she is splitting from her husband Vaughn, after the couple 'outgrew' their relationship and she said she 'really lost myself' (the couple pictured in happier days)

Kim (pictured with her children) said she has been quiet recently, because she has been learning to put her happiness first for the first time in her life

'I'm sorry I haven't been around much lately. The last couple of months have been one of the most difficult times I have ever endured,' Kim posted to her 58,000 followers on Instagram on Thursday.

'I have had to learn to put my happiness first and that was a really hard lesson to learn.'

Kim went on to say that she and Vaughn have decided that 'unfortunately we don't have a future together', and they will not be going forward as a couple 'but rather a team for our gorgeous children'.

'Marriage is hard when children come along, it's hard not to lose each other in-process and at times two people can really outgrow a relationship and the only way forward is in separate directions,' Kim explained.

'...I really lost myself over the last few years, I didn't know my own place in life and I was so uncertain who I was. I was also scared of the judgment I may receive if I was my authentic self.'

Kim (left and right with Vaughn) said that she and Vaughn have decided that 'unfortunately we don't have a future together', and they will not be going forward as a couple 'but rather a team for our gorgeous children'

Kim said while she is 'sad to close this chapter' of her life, she is excited to see what the future holds.

The 30-year-old mum of eight added that she had 'bad depression not so long ago'.

'I felt like I was losing a grip on reality,' she said.

'Now, I have left all the negativity go, I'm the happiest I have been in such a long time. I'm happy that Vaughn is happy and I know that life can only get better for both of us from here.'

The two parents will continue to parent their eight children under the age of 12 together (the quintuplets pictured)

'Marriage is hard when children come along, it's hard not to lose each other in-process and at times two people can really outgrow a relationship and the only way forward is in separate directions,' Kim explained (pictured with Vaughn)

Kim and Vaughn got together in their teenage years, and then had three children in their twenties before going on to become the parents of Australia's first naturally conceived quintuplets in 2016 (the quins pictured)

Kim and Vaughn got together in their teenage years, and then had three children in their twenties before going on to become the parents of Australia's first naturally conceived quintuplets in 2016.

What are Kim's top parenting tricks? * Remove the toilet brush from the bathroom while toilet training. * Keep talcum powder in your car to get rid of excess sand after a trip to the beach. * Soak your kids' clothes in boiling water for several hours to remove berry stains. * Keep nappies everywhere so you're never caught without - from the car to the garage and the house. Advertisement

There was no history of multiple births in Kim's family, but Kim and Vaughn said they decided 'we can do this' when they became parents of eight overnight.

Since then, the Tuccis' lives have been a whirlwind of nappies, feeding, bedtimes and baths - as they juggle busy family life with careers and homemaking.

Speaking previously to FEMAIL earlier this year, Kim offered a look inside her busy household - where she has been known to go through '30 pairs of undies a day' while toilet training her quins.

'The best thing I've learned with the toilet training is that you need to remove the toilet brush for the duration of the training,' she told Daily Mail Australia.

'Otherwise, they'll all just be playing with it and trying to put it in their mouths without realising it's not to be eaten.

'You should also keep nappies absolutely everywhere - including the car and the garage.

'There are times when I haven't had enough on me and there has been a poo explosion.'

The mum-of-eight shared her other parenting tricks, including soaking her kids' clothing in boiling water for several hours to get rid of berry stains and keeping talc in the car to get rid of sand after a day at the beach.

'You just rub it on their sandy bodies and they won't carry it into the car with them,' she said.

There was no history of multiple births in Kim's family, but Kim and Vaughn said they decided 'we can do this' when they became parents of eight overnight (the quins pictured as babies)

Over the years, Kim has also learned how to best budget for her little ones - confessing she only spends $350 on feeding her family of 10 each week (the kids pictured at the dinner table)

Kim said she has all sorts of parenting tricks up her sleeve, including keeping sand in the car which helps to get rid of sand from the beach (the kids pictured at the beach)

What are Kim's top budgeting tips? * Shop around and go to multiple supermarkets in order to get the best deals. * Embrace Flybuys and make sure to activate the rewards before you go shopping. Kim is using all of the money she saves for Christmas presents. * Bulk buy the items you know you are going to need like laundry liquid and washing powder. * Buy your fruit and vegetables in bulk to save money. * Cook everything in one big cook up to ensure everything gets eaten. * Buy homebrand items and choose the cheapest items for every food type. They are often just as good. Advertisement

Kim has also learned how to best budget for her little ones - confessing she only spends $350 on feeding her family of 10 each week.

'I usually do a big shop at the weekend and go to Coles, Woolworths and Aldi to make sure I buy from the cheapest supermarket,' she said.

'I also buy all of our fruit and vegetables from a local market, as it's cheaper.'

Kim said the items that go down fastest in her household are what you might expect: bread, milk and cheese.

'We probably go through eight or nine loaves of bread a week, 60-70 pieces of fruit, 20 litres of milk and a giant block of cheese,' she said.

'But I get the 85 cent bread instead of the $4 option. You know what? They're not going to know the $4 stuff.'

The mum-of-eight said she is 'lucky' insofar as none of her children are fussy eaters.

'But I do have a recipe up my sleeve that ensures they eat all the vegetables they might complain a bit about,' she said.

Kim said if she can't be bothered to properly cook one night, she'll simply heat up some spaghetti, chuck all of her leftover vegetables including sweet potato, pumpkin, carrot and zucchini into the oven with their skins on and then whizz them up in the blender.

'I turn that into a pasta sauce and add some meat sometimes and they have no idea they're getting so much veg,' she said.

She also likes to get ahead of the breakfast rush - by preparing big batches of porridge that just need to be heated up in the morning and ensuring all the bowls and spoons are ready the night before.

Kim gave birth to the quintuplets naturally (pictured pregnant with the quins) and has been met with a wave of support since she announced that she was splitting from her partner

After sharing the news of her breakup online, Kim was met with a wash of praise from others who have divorced and have children:

'What a strong lady. Glad to see you've reached a happy place,' one commenter wrote.

'Thinking of you and your family. I've been through it all and know how heartbreaking it can be,' another added.
The Chief Justice of Nigeria, Tanko Muhammad, has written to the chief judges of states on the urgent need to decongest Nigerian prisons due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr Muhammad, in a circular dated May 15, said the inmates population at various custodial centres across the country presently stands at about 74,127 out of which 52,226 are Awaiting Trial Persons (ATPs).

Most of these custodial centres are presently housing inmates beyond their capacities and the overcrowded facilities pose a potent threat to the health of the inmates and the public in general in view of the present circumstances, hence the need for urgent steps to bring the situation under control, he wrote.

He drew the attention of the judges to the need to take urgent measures towards the speedy trial of cases and decongestion of custodial centres in the country in view of COVID-19 Pandemic. Recently, the United Nations called on countries of the World to consciously reduce the population of prison inmates since physical distancing and self-isolation in such conditions are practically impossible.

Mr Muhammad said it has become imperative for Your Lordships to

embark on immediate visit to all custodial/correctional centres within your

respective States to identify and release deserving inmates, where that has not

been done already.

During the requested visit, the Chief Judges are enjoined to consider

conditional or unconditional release of Awaiting Trial Persons who have spent 6

years or more in custody. ATPs who have no confirmed criminal cases against

them, aged inmates and terminally ill may be discharged. It is expected that

particular attention should be on the aged, those with health issues, low risk

offenders, those with no sufficient legal basis to remain in custody, inmates

convicted for minor offences with or without option of fines and inmates who

have less than 3 years term left to serve having served a substantial term of their

service for offences that attract 5 years and above. Payment of fines may be

made in favour of inmates convicted of lesser offences with option of fine, who

are in custody because of their inability to pay such fines. The list of deserving

inmates as provided by the Correctional Service Formations across the Country

with above criteria is hereby attached for your guidance.

A report on the proposed visits is required to be forwarded to me for

compilation and onward transmission to Presidential Committee on Correctional

Service Reform and Decongestion Secretariat, Federal Ministry of Justice,

Abuja.

Finally, there is the need to ensure that Your Lordships direct lower courts

to comply with requirements of the Administration of Criminal Justice Act/law

in issuing remand warrants in criminal cases especially in cases which are not

within their jurisdiction. This will regulate the volume of entry of Awaiting

Trial Inmates into custodial centres.

Mr Muhammads directive comes weeks after a violent protest by inmates at the Kaduna prison led to the killing of some prisoners by officials.

PREMIUM TIMES reported how the prisoners were demanding their release because of the coronavirus pandemic and also need to ensure other safety measures like regular handwashing are enabled in the prison.

The prison authorities said they are still investigating the incident.

Before the Kaduna prison protest, the attorney-general of the federation, Abubakar Malami, had also spoken on the need to decongest the prisons.
Heres where a little knowledge can go a long way. A wine simply marked California might suggest an innocuous, inexpensive wine. But the Paring is a label from two highly regarded Santa Barbara County wineries, Jonata and the Hilt, using grapes from younger vineyards or barrels that didnt quite make the more expensive wines. The Parings other wines  syrah, chardonnay and pinot noir  are all designated from Santa Barbara County and its subregions. So it is reasonable to assume that some of this delicious Bordeaux-style blend of cabernet sauvignon, merlot, cabernet franc and petit verdot is sourced from farther north. The winery doesnt tell us where the grapes came from, but Napa Valley cult winery Screaming Eagle is under the same ownership, so it figures they would have access to some good fruit. Winemaker Matt Dees has crafted an elegant, energetic wine that combines power with finesse. The winery is donating $1 for each bottle sold through the end of June to the Restaurant Workers Community Foundation. Alcohol by volume: 14.5 percent.
(Natural News) Several pilots of the United States Navy have sighted unidentified flying objects (UFOs), according to reports released by the Navy under several Freedom of Information Act requests.

The reports, obtained by The Drive and published on Tuesday, share eight instances when Navy pilots encountered unidentified aircraft in the 2010s. Several of the reports provide details about how the Navy pilots encountered what looked like unmanned drones or missiles, while others involved encounters with much smaller flying objects.

UFOs more likely to be enemy drones than extraterrestrials

Each of the eight incidents occurred in the Eastern United States, off the coasts of Virginia and North Carolina. All but one of the eight incidents occurred between 2013 and 2014. The last incident occurred in 2019.

The release of these incident reports follows the Navys release of three unclassified videos showing Navy pilot encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena, as they are more widely known in official parlance, between 2004 and 2015. None of the videos released show any of the incidents cited in the reports. (Related: Will the U.S. Navy release the full video of their 2004 UFO encounter off the coast of Mexico?)

In a June 2013 report, a Navy pilot mentioned seeing an aircraft that was white, without any marking and approximately the size of a drone or missile. Another incident from November of the same year mentioned a pilot seeing an object that had a wingspan of approximately five feet and was also colored with without any distinguishable marking or features. A December 2013 report mentioned a pilot seeing a small white visual return when he was sent to investigate a certain location.

The March 2014 report had a pilot describing seeing a small metallic-looking object that he believed was approximately the size of a suitcase. The pilot got within 1,000 feet of the object, but was still unable to determine what kind of aircraft it was.

In the last incident, which occurred in February 2019, a Navy pilot reported seeing a red weather balloon despite the fact that aviation authorities said that there were no active devices in the area.

Unidentified aircraft poses a security threat

Im glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available. The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications. The American people deserve to be informed. https://t.co/1XNduvmP0u  Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) April 27, 2020

All the reports pointed out that a lot of the unidentified aircraft may be drones. One report stated that, due to the small size, the aircraft was determined to be a UAS, or an unmanned aerial system, the Department of Defenses official name for drone aircraft.

However, even if the Navy and the Pentagon are in agreement that the unidentified aircraft are most likely drones, neither one could identify exactly who was operating the drones. This presents a serious threat to public safety and security, especially since the east coast of Virginia is restricted airspace for military training.

I feel it may only be a matter of time before one of our F/A-18 aircraft has a mid-air collision with an unidentified UAS, wrote one of the authors of a report.

In many ways, [drones] pose a greater midair risk than manned aircraft. They are often less visually significant and less radar apparent than manned aircraft, the report added.

Theres also the possibility that the drones may be operated by other nations such as Russia, China, Iran or North Korea, and these drones may be sent to the United States to collect information about the militarys operations and capabilities.

However, some experts believe theres also a possibility that these unidentified aircraft are being piloted by extraterrestrials.

Luis Elizondo, former head of a program run by the Pentagon to study recordings of aerial encounters, stated that the unidentified aircraft are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the United States inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.

This has made Elizondo to conclude that the Navys encounters may be compelling evidence of extraterrestrial objects.

Sources include:

TheHill.com

BusinessInsider.com

Edition.CNN.com
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 07:12 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd824252 4 City teenagers,toddler,murder,murder-case,sexual-abuse,rape-case,rape-victim,Central-Jakarta,social-affairs-ministry Free

A 15-year-old girl who is accused of killing her 5-year-old neighbor in a shocking murder case in March was allegedly the victim of sexual abuse and is currently 14 weeks pregnant, an official has said.

The latest grim revelation in the case unfolded after the girl underwent physical and psychological examination at the Kramat Jati Police Hospital in East Jakarta.

The Social Affairs Ministry's Social Rehabilitation Director General Harry Hikmat confirmed the girl's pregnancy and her circumstances on Thursday.

"She's in two positions at once; a murder suspect and a sexual-abuse victim," Harry said, as quoted by kompas.com.

"[The suspect] was sexually abused [allegedly] by three people very close to her, she is 14 weeks pregnant at the moment."

Read also: Residents in shock, fear as 5-year-old girl found murdered

The murder case was first revealed when the girl suddenly turned herself in on March 6 at the Taman Sari Police Station in West Jakarta, claiming that she had killed her 5-year-old neighbor the previous day.

During a search of her house, officers found the body of the younger child bound and gagged in a closet in her bedroom.

Police claimed the junior high school student calmly said that she choked and drowned the 5-year-old in a tub and that she was satisfied with the killing.

Officers also confiscated a number of drawings depicting disturbing images, such as a crying woman and a person bound by ropes, during the search. Investigators claimed they also found writings containing messages such as I want to torture a baby, with pleasure or should I be ignorant and keep calm and dont give me torture and also a message on a whiteboard saying that the girl was disappointed with her family.

According to the neighbors, the girl's parents divorced when she was little and she lived with her father and stepmother.

During the preliminary investigation, the police found that the teen liked to watch horror movies and "idolized" Chucky  the main character in Childs Play, about a murderous, possessed doll.

The teen's confession led the police to suspect that her preference for horror movies could have driven her to commit the alleged murder. The police also surmised that the teen's mental health was a major motivational factor, noting that she came from a broken home. They also discovered that she channeled her feelings into her drawings and writings.

Read also: Movies not behind toddler's murder, experts say

The girl is currently undergoing rehabilitation in Handayani Children's and Social Rehabilitation Center while awaiting trial.

Harry expressed the hope that police officers could investigate the sexual abuse allegations to determine whether they were a factor in the motivation for the homicide.

"The sexual-abuse allegations need to be investigated too to find a logical conclusion as to why [the suspect] committed the violence," he said.

Separately, Central Jakarta Police Criminal Unit head Adj. Sr. Comr. Tahan Marpaung said on Thursday that the police had arrested and named three male suspects for allegedly raping the girl.

The three men are reportedly her two uncles and her boyfriend.

Tahan said the girl told investigators during her questioning that the perpetrators had raped her several times. Her uncle had even threatened to disseminate a video of him raping her if she dared to report the crime, Tahan added.

"The case dossier is P21 [complete]. We are now waiting for the trial," Tahan said as quoted by Antara. (nal)
As party conventions approach, their outcomes dont seem in doubt. Barring a wildcard development, former Vice President Joe Biden will be the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate set to take on incumbent Republican President Donald Trump this fall.

For markets, getting presumptive nominees helps uncertainty fall and typically helps boost stock returns later in election years. Of course, this year the interruptions to business tied to COVID-19 likely outweigh that, at least in the near term. Moreover, the outbreak adds some unique twists to the election. However, in Fisher Investments view, falling political uncertainty is still a positive worth notingeven if its power to lift markets is delayed by coronavirus responsesparticularly since it may help turbocharge a recovery later in the year if the disruptions to business globally continue to abate.

Falling political uncertainty generally benefits markets by affording investors a clearer view of the likelihood sweeping policy changes materialize. In Fisher Investments view, such major shifts often roil stocks, as they create winners and losers, with the latter generally more upset than the former are happy. Early in an election season, when many candidates are competing for their party bases attentionoften via bold policy proposalspolitical uncertainty is high. With so many contenders and ideas, the vast number of potential outcomes makes it nearly impossible for markets to assign probabilities to them. Then, primaries winnow the field, adding clarityparticularly once presumptive nominees emerge. Markets can assess their policy priorities, which also tend to moderate as nominees tack to the middle in an effort to woo centrists and independents.

Simultaneously, House and Senate races develop, helping markets anticipate the likely makeup of the next Congress. Gridlock typically dampens legislative risk, whereas one party sweeping the White House and both chambers of Congress usually heightens it. As markets learn more about the likelihood of these and other election scenarios, uncertainty typically falls, helping boost returns as election years progress.

Exhibit: Returns in US Election Years



Source: FactSet, as of 04/08/2020. S&P 500 price returns, 01/03/192812/31/2016.

Bear markets are still possible in election years, as the present one demonstrates. Politics isnt the only stock market driver. But we think the overall pattern is still noteworthy.



This election year, political uncertainty began falling a little earlier than usual. Biden became the presumptive nominee on April 8, when Senator Bernie Sanders ended his presidential bid. Barring an unexpected twist, the contested Democratic convention many had speculated about seems highly unlikely. Bidens crowning now seems inevitable.

But we think markets have been focused on the coronavirus economic fallout thus far, muting politics influence. How that plays out could have a bigger impact on returns this year. If business and travel restrictions lift sooner than expected, the positive surprise will likely bolster stocksand vice versa if that takes longer. That factor will likely be the key to stocks course from here.

Although COVID-19 developments probably supersede politics impact on stocks in the near term, we think the election can still have a notable influence. If waning coronavirus business interruptions propel stocks to new highs in the next couple of months, falling election uncertainty is likely an added tailwind. If widespread, onerous shelter-in-place orders persist into the years second half and the bear market continues, rising political clarity may alleviate the downside somewhat.

Presently, plenty of electoral fog remains. RealClearPolitics average of major national polls presently gives Biden a 4.4 percentage point advantage, perhaps reflecting voters tendency to view incumbents less favorably during a recession.[i] But we think it is far too early to assign polls much weight now, especially since the economys state in November is so up in the air. In our view, the victor will likely be whoever campaigns better in the lead-up to Novemberunknowable today, particularly given this years unique variable of the pandemic. Coronavirus probably impacts the campaigns in several waysthough not clearly to either candidates advantage, in our view.

First, restrictions preventing large gatherings and in-person get-out-the-vote efforts likely will likely give the candidate with a better social-media, online, television and direct-mail strategy an early edge. It likely also elevates the importance of large donors and political-action committees, although that doesnt favor either candidate clearly. Second, how voters perceive the Trump administrations coronavirus response mattersas in whether they credit or blame federal or state officials handling of virus containment efforts. It is too soon to say how this will play out, but it is a matter worth watching.

Finally, as in every election, voter turnout matters a great deal. The coronavirus adds a wrinkle here, too. Will people stay away from polling locations in order to avoid possible crowds or lines, particularly if there is a second wave of coronavirus in the fall? Or will the US imitate South Korea, where turnout for the April 15 parliamentary election was the highest since 1992?[ii] Will more states allow mail-in voting? How might this affect turnout? None of these questions appear answerable today.

Despite all the current unknowns, as the general election progresses, markets likely will start accounting for developments that help them anticipate the eventual outcome. Later polls will likely be one helpful data point. As 2016 showed, even election-eve national polls dont necessarily reveal the candidate likely to win the Electoral College. Surveys in battleground states like Florida, Michigan and Wisconsin may be more telling, especially as voters preferences solidify closer to November. Markets will likely also watch which candidates message seems to be resonating more with voters, particularly independents.

Party-base enthusiasm is also key. This heavily influences Congressional races, too, since they frequently hinge on which party is better able to mobilize its base. We didnt anticipate huge coattails for either presidential candidate precoronavirus, and it is premature to assess whether that has changed. But if it does, markets likely will anticipate it.

As stocks digest these and other variables, political uncertainty should fall. While COVID-19 likely will concentrate falling uncertaintys impact closer to the electionand make it harder to seewe think it will likely exert considerable influence on 2020 market returns.

Investing in stock markets involves the risk of loss and there is no guarantee that all or any capital invested will be repaid. Past performance is no guarantee of future returns. International currency fluctuations may result in a higher or lower investment return. This document constitutes the general views of Fisher Investments and should not be regarded as personalized investment or tax advice or as a representation of its performance or that of its clients. No assurances are made that Fisher Investments will continue to hold these views, which may change at any time based on new information, analysis or reconsideration. In addition, no assurances are made regarding the accuracy of any forecast made herein. Not all past forecasts have been, nor future forecasts will be, as accurate as any contained herein.

[i] Source: RealClearPolitics, as of 05/12/2020.

[ii] South Korea's Ruling Party Wins Election Landslide Amid Coronavirus Outbreak, Justin McCurry, The Guardian, 04/15/2020.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  Several malls in Metro Manila, Laguna, and Cebu City are set to reopen on Saturday  but shoppers may be in for a different experience, as the establishments institute measures to ensure their safety.

With the three areas transitioning to a more relaxed modified enhanced community quarantine, non-leisure shops in malls are now allowed to reopen at 50-percent capacity, so that the public can avail of essential goods and services.

Restaurants will also be reopened, but only take-out or drive-through purchases are allowed.

Malls in Metro Manila have been closed for two months since the first enhanced community quarantine was imposed in the region on March 15.

Several SM Stores, Megaworld malls and other commercial centers all over the country are set to reopen with more stringent measures to ensure that shoppers, retail partners, and employees will be protected against COVID-19.

Wearing of face masks, temperature checks, and the use of disinfectants and sanitizing foot mats are now a must before entering malls. Physical distancing will also be strictly enforced, with markers stuck on floors to direct people where to stand and indicate the distance shoppers should be from each other.

SM said its malls are being cleaned and disinfected prior to the opening, and will be done throughout operating hours. It added that all employees and agency frontliners, such as janitors and security guards, will undergo antibody rapid testing.

Meanwhile, Megaworld is encouraging contactless purchases with the use of mobile or cashless transactions at select stores. Designated pick-up counters and drive-thru stations for online takeout orders and deliveries have also been established.

It said valid IDs must also be presented at the entrance and only guests ages 21 to 59 will be allowed to enter, following the guidelines set by the national government.

The wi-fi will be disabled while the aircon temperature will be raised to discourage the public from lingering inside the mall.

In Taguig City however, officials said malls will remain closed for the weekend pending guidelines for the modified enhanced community quarantine.

In a statement, local authorities said they have consulted with Ayala Malls, Megaworld Lifestyle Malls, SM Supermalls and Vista Mall over the matter.

Meanwhile, only supermarkets and essential businesses inside malls are allowed to operate.

With the expected surge of mall-goers, police are intensifying their visibility in the establishments, especially in mall entrances, to make sure the public follows rules.

We need the cooperation of our kababayan. We call on them to still avoid unnecessary travel. If it is not that important, it is still better to stay at your homes, Joint task force COVID Shield Commander PLt.Gen. Guillermo Eleazar said in a statement on Friday.
The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has accused China of blocking the World Health Organisation (WHO) from raising the alarm on COVID-19 in January.

China was also accused by the intelligence agency of stockpiling medical supplies from around the world at the time, reports Newsweek.

Since the outbreak of coronavirus in the world, US, Spain and Russia have been the worst-hit countries with most deaths so far, according to Worldometer.

The Newsweek reports also that the CIA documents reveal that China threatened the world health body that it would stop cooperating with its investigations into the disease if it declared an emergency.

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Quoting Der Spiegel, a German publication, the news outlet said China was first indicted for alleged cover-up by German intelligence last week.

German intelligence accused China President Xi Jinping of personally applying pressure on Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general on January 21.

Read Also: It Is A Shame That China Claims To Help Nations Yet Brutalize Africans Living There

Christian Lindmeier, WHO spokesperson, said the Chinese president and Ghebreyesus did not communicate on January 21 or 22.

Dr Tedros did not communicate with President Xi on Jan 20, 21 or 22. Dr Tedros and his senior team met with President Xi in Beijing on Jan. 28, Lindmeier said.

The issue of PHEIC did not come up in that meeting.

Since the outbreak of the disease, 4,527,823 cases have been reported with 1,706,406 recoveries and 303,438 deaths globally.
US President Donald Trump gave an upbeat assessment Friday of the chances of developing a Covid-19 vaccine, saying he hoped one will be ready by the end of 2020.

We are looking to get it by the end of the year if we can, maybe before, Trump said, as he delivered an update on the race for a vaccine.

We think we are going to have some very good results coming out very quickly, he told reporters in the Rose Garden of the White House.
WASHINGTON, D.C.  U.S. Reps. John Shimkus, Mike Bost, Rodney Davis, Darin LaHood and Adam Kinzinger sent a letter Friday to Congressional Leadership urging that Congress take action to prevent governors from withholding federal funds appropriated by Congress for local municipalities that allow their small businesses to reopen in accordance with federal health guidelines, but ahead of arbitrary timelines outlined by states.

Following last weeks announcement of the Restore Illinois plan by Gov. J.B. Pritzker, the Illinois Republican delegation heard from mayors, sheriffs, county board officials and constituents with deep concern that the current guidelines outlined by the state will cripple the livelihoods of communities downstate.
Chinese people are changing their way of experiencing travel, shifting from binge shopping to more of an integration into local culture, according to a recent report some influence of the Internet and mobile technology has enhanced the autonomy of Chinese tourists.

An RV campground in Qianxi county, Hebei province. (Photo/People's Daily Online)

In 2019, Chinese tourists independently traveled to thousands of destinations around the world. In order to better meet the needs of tourists, online travel agency platforms have launched new methods of higher-quality travel, creating the ability to travel in smaller groups with more freedom and flexibility, making the trip a more customized personal experience.

During the May Day holiday this year, statistics show young people have become the main force of tourism, unlike previous group tours, more autonomous projects such as hiking, RV travel, cross-country road-trips, camping and travel shooting are more favored.

The relevant official from the Tourism Authority of Thailand also revealed that Chinese tourists who have visited Thailand many times generally want to explore new sightseeing projects and scenery.

Chinese tourists in Thailand are not limited to visiting traditional scenic spots, with many opting to include places that are not considered to be tourist attractions in their itinerary, as in-depth experiences are becoming the preferred choice of more and more Chinese tourists.

The notion that Chinese tourists go on a shopping spree abroad has changed, and their way of consumption today is more rational and practical.

Several travel agencies and overseas Chinese tour guides, reported that in the past when Chinese traveled abroad, they mainly visited luxury stores, buying high-end bags and watches, but now they are more likely to visit spots for local people to buy more practical and popular goods.
By Akbar Mammadov

The Azerbaijani Defence Ministry has said that the 10,000-strong drills scheduled for May 18-22 are in line with the international law, adding that the scale of the drills have intimidated the Armenian military-political leadership.

Our army conducts exercises within the internationally recognized borders of the country, and there is no question of violating the requirements of international documents. We reiterate that Azerbaijan has the right to conduct exercises within its borders with the involvement of any number of troops and various military equipment, the ministry said in a statement published on May 14.

Referring to the UN Secretary General's call for adherence to the world ceasefire, The Ministry of Defense stressed that official Yerevan must first comply with the requirements of four UN Security Council resolutions on the withdrawal of Armenian forces from the occupied territories of Azerbaijan.

It should be noted that the regular training of the Armenian armed forces in the occupied territories of Azerbaijan, the concealment of large quantities of weapons, ammunition and other military equipment, evading the control of international organizations, constitute a gross violation of international norms and principles, including the main requirements of the Vienna Document by official Yerevan, the ministry added.

The ministry noted that Armenias strong reaction to the planned drills is aimed at distracting the world community and international organizations as an occupying power.

Furthermore, the ministry warned that any provocation attempt by Armenian forces will be immediately and decisively thwarted by the Azerbaijani army.

The Azerbaijan Army will hold large-scale operational-tactical drills on May 18-22.

The exercises will involve up to 10,000 military personnel, up to 120 tanks and armored vehicles, up to 200 missiles and artillery systems of various caliber, multiple launch rocket systems, and mortars, up to 30 army, and frontline aviation, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles for various purposes.

---

Akbar Mammadov is AzerNews staff journalist, follow him on Twitter: @AkbarMammadov97

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan appears skeptical of Atty. Gen. William Barr's decision to drop the case against Michael Flynn. (Dominic Bracco II / Washington Post)

When Michael Flynn's case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in 2017, Flynn's allies were ecstatic.

Sullivan was best known for tossing out the corruption conviction of Ted Stevens, the former senior Republican senator from Alaska, in 2009 and berating the prosecutors for withholding exculpatory evidence.

Flynn's allies hoped Sullivan would take the same skeptical approach to the prosecution of the retired three-star Army general who briefly served as President Trump's first national security advisor, only to be fired after three weeks and later plead guilty to lying to federal agents.

But Sullivan has been hard on Flynn every step of the way, and now he's pushing back on Atty. Gen. William Barr's extraordinary attempt to dismiss the case. The result is an unusual, perhaps unprecedented, legal tug-of-war involving one of the most high-profile prosecutions from the Russia investigation.

"We are in completely uncharted waters," said Paul Rosenzweig, a former federal prosecutor.

Barr's decision means the Justice Department is essentially teaming up with the defense team to end the prosecution. Sullivan's response could send Flynn to jail anyway.

He asked John Gleeson, a retired federal judge and former mob-busting prosecutor in New York, to argue against Barr's motion. And he said Gleeson should recommend whether to charge Flynn with criminal contempt for perjury in court.

The saga began when Flynn pleaded guilty on Dec. 1, 2017, to lying to FBI agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador during the presidential transition period. He later reaffirmed his guilt when questioned by Sullivan during another hearing.

But Flynn sought to withdraw his plea this year. "In truth, I never lied," he wrote in a Jan. 29 court filing.

Now Sullivan presumably wants to know whether Flynn was telling the truth when he pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents, a felony  or to the judge, thus potentially committing perjury, when he stood by his guilty plea. Either way puts Flynn in potential jeopardy.

Story continues

The convoluted maneuvering has legal experts straining to think of similar scenarios in the past.

"It's unusual for the government to want to withdraw a case after the guilty plea. And it's unusual for it to be in such a highly political context. And it's unusual for the judge to have any reason to question the decision to withdraw a case," said Erwin Chemerinsky, the law school dean at UC Berkeley. "It's just such an extraordinary circumstance."

Chemerinsky described Sullivan as "independent," adding that "he's a judge who will do what he thinks is right."

Michael Flynn arrives at the federal courthouse in Washington in 2018. (Associated Press)

Trump, who has never shied away from criticizing judges, complained about Sullivan in a Fox Business interview that aired Thursday.

Flynn's "got a judge that I guess doesn't like him very much," Trump said. "Maybe the judge doesn't like me very much."

President Reagan first named Sullivan, a Washington native, as a Superior Court judge in 1984. President George H.W. Bush, another Republican, elevated him to the appeals court in 1991, and President Clinton, a Democrat, nominated him to the federal bench in 1994.

Sullivan oversaw the 2008 corruption trial of Stevens, the senator from Alaska who was convicted of accepting gifts from oil and construction firms. When it emerged that prosecutors had withheld evidence from the defense team, Atty. Gen. Eric Holder asked for the case to be voided.

In nearly 25 years on the bench, I have never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct I have seen in this case, Sullivan told the prosecutors in scathing remarks. He then appointed a lawyer to conduct an independent investigation into the Stevens prosecution.

Flynn's supporters were encouraged by this track record, especially when Sullivan directed prosecutors working for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to turn over any exculpatory information to Flynn's lawyers. It was a standard order, but some saw a hint that the judge was on Flynn's side.

"He must suspect a defect in the guilty plea," said Andrew Napolitano, a Fox News legal commentator.

That hope dissipated when Flynn appeared for sentencing on Dec. 18, 2018. Sullivan asked Flynn to reaffirm his guilt and excoriated him for secretly working as a lobbyist for Turkey while he was advising Trump's campaign on national security issues.

Arguably, that undermines everything this flag over here stands for, Sullivan said. Arguably, you sold your country out!

Flynn, who served in the Army for more than three decades and handled battlefield intelligence operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, later said he was "stunned" by Sullivan's comments.

"The entire experience was surreal, and that day was one of the worst days of my life," he wrote in a court filing.

Sullivan decided not to sentence Flynn until he had finished cooperating in a separate prosecution of his former business partners. Prosecutors ultimately did not call Flynn as a witness in that trial, which took place last summer.

Flynn hired a new lawyer and began fighting to clear his name. Trump, who repeatedly mused about pardoning his former aide, cheered him on.

Sullivan did not accept Flynn's conspiracy-tinged arguments that the Justice Department and the FBI were guilty of wrongdoing, not him. The judge concluded that Flynn "has failed to establish a single Brady violation," a reference to the requirement that the government provide exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys.

It thus was a shock last week when Barr asked the judge to dismiss the case. Despite Flynn's guilty plea, Barr said the Justice Department couldn't prove he was guilty and agents didn't have a valid reason to interview him in the first place.

Legal experts said it's possible Sullivan could reject Barr's motion and still sentence Flynn since he already pleaded guilty.

"It would almost create chaos in the system," said Peter Johnson, a criminal defense attorney who teaches at UCLA.

George Terwilliger, a former deputy attorney general, said Sullivan had erred by appointing Gleeson to argue against the Justice Department. Before he was named, Gleeson co-authored a Washington Post op-ed criticizing Barr's move to drop the Flynn case, writing "this is the rare case that requires extra scrutiny."

"What [Sullivan] has done, in essence, is attempt to appoint a private prosecutor," Terwilliger said.

Sullivan's decision to consider holding Flynn in contempt was "beyond unorthodox," he added. "It would be truly bizarre to say it's contemptuous conduct for someone to exercise their right to try to withdraw their guilty plea."

Rosenzweig agreed that Sullivan was pushing his authority to its limits, but only in response to an unorthodox move by the Justice Department.

Sullivan acted "in the face of what is clearly a politicized and contrived decision by Atty. Gen. Barr, whose sole purpose seems to be saving the president from the embarrassment from having to pardon Flynn," he said.
I am pleased to report that the OAGF has published the details of inflow into the FGN COVID-19 eradication support accounts. As at May 14, 2020, the sum of N792,121,613.89 (Seven Hundred and Ninety Two Million, One Hundred and Twenty One Thousand, Six Hundred and Thirteen Naira and Eighty Nine Kobo) has been credited into the TSA account from various in-country sources.
If you guessed Hawaii, then you're right. Researchers from the University of Hawai'i at Manoa School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology reveal that the Puhahonu volcano now holds the distinction as Earth's most extensive and hottest shield volcano.

Ocean explorers and volcanologists used several pieces of evidence to point out that the volcano located within the Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument now beats Mauna Loa.

After careful survey of the ocean floor along the calm Hawaiian volcano chain and rock analysis in the UH Manoa rock collection, researchers have put up a model of the results they gathered, leading them to this new conclusion.

They determined that the Puhahonu volcano, which meant 'turtle rising for breath', was almost two times bigger than the Mauna Loa. Back in 1974, it was already suspected to be the largest Hawaiian volcano, but due to limited survey data, it was concluded that Mauna Loa was the most massive volcano instead.

According to Michael Garcia, the lead author of the study and a previous professor of Earth Sciences at SOEST, it was suggested that hotspots that make up the volcanic chains like the ones in Hawaii are subjected to continuous cooling over one to two million years, after which, they die.

However, he adds that they have learned that hotspots can go through pulses of melt production from their study. Garcia said that a small pulse led to the creation of the Midway cluster of presently extinct volcanoes, and other far larger ones were responsible for creating Puhahonu. He says that this will change textbooks all around the world about how mantle plumes work.

Previous studies concerning the Hawaiian Islands have concluded Mauna Loa as the largest, but this was due to the inclusion of the base of the volcano below sea level. This was not considered in the study of 1974. Now, broad surveying and modeling using approaches similar to those used for Mauna Loa now point to Puhahonu being the largest.

According to volcanologists, the study features Hawaiian volcanoes and draws attention to an unpopular part of the state of Hawai'i containing symbolic cultural, historical, and ecological significance.

Garcia explains that they are also sharing to everyone that the volcanoes should be called the Hawaiian names they initially possess, rather than converting them to Western names. Their work was funded by the University of Hawai'i, National Science Foundation, and Schmidt Ocean Institute.

Also Read: Scientists Find 'Magma Intrusion' at the Yellowstone Volcano





What are Shield Volcanoes?

Shield volcanoes are considered the biggest volcanoes on Earth. A well-known example is the Hawaiian shield volcanoes. Shield volcanoes are almost entirely made from basalt, a type of lava that is very fluid when erupted.

Due to this, shield volcanoes are not steep. Eruptions at shield volcanoes are only explosive if water escapes into the vent. Usually, they are characterized by a low 'fountain' spurt that forms cinder cones and douses cones at the vent. Nonetheless, about 90% of the volcano is lava rather than pyroclastic substances.

Shield volcanoes are the product of high magma supply rates. This occurs when the lava is hot and underwent minimal transformation since the time it was created. Shield volcanoes are the frequent product of hotspot volcanism, but they can also be spotted along volcanic arcs associated with subduction or all by themselves.

Examples of shield volcanoes are Kilauea, Mauna Loa, Erta Ale, Fernandina, Karthala, Masaya, Tolbachik, and of course, the Puhahonu.



Read Also: Krakatoa Volcano Erupts Along with Three Other in Indonesia; Locals Beg It to 'Sleep' as They Still Battle Against Coronavirus
- According to a post doing the rounds on Facebook, African leaders have endorsed Madagascar's 'Covid-19 'vaccine'

- Presidents, including Cyril Ramaphosa, have endorsed the organic cure being distributed by the nation, reads the claim

- Briefly.co.za explores this allegation to determine if there is any truth to it

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A post being widely circulated on social media claims that a Madagascan 'vaccine' for Covid-19 has been endorsed by African leaders.

The post further claims that leaders including Cyril Ramaphosa and presidents from Egypt, Kenya and Rwanda have held a meeting and have not been left behind, after endorsing the adoption of Covid-19 organic medicine made available by the republic of Madagascar.

Published early in May, the post promised that the organic cure would be widely distributed in African nations.

Briefly.co.za reported that the herbal drink, dubbed Covid-Organics, has been strongly endorsed by President Andry Rajoelina, but that no evidence had supported the claim that the tonic cures the virus.

READ ALSO: WHO issues warning against use of Madagascars Covid-19 herbal cure

The World Health Organization recently published a statement revealing that medicinal plants, like the one being used in the tonic, are being considered as possible treatments for Covid-19 and should be tested for efficacy and adverse side effects.

WHO and African countries, according to the statement, are collaborating to ensure safe and effective traditional medicine development on the continent with the agency providing financial and technical support.

The African Union commented that it is still in talks with Madagascar, with a view to obtain technical data regarding the safety and efficiency of a herbal remedy, recently announced by Madagascar for the reported prevention and treatment of Covid-19.

However, the union took great care to highlight it would be working with the Africa Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to explore the safety and efficacy of the Covid-Organics.

This statement on the subject is far from a beaming endorsement and there is also little evidence to support the claim that African presidents met to endorse the cure.

Africa Check reports that the World Health Organization, despite collaborating with Africa to test traditional answers to the pandemic, has also warned using untested products can be dangerous.

Enjoyed reading our story? Download BRIEFLY's news app on Google Play now and stay up-to-date with major South African news!

Source: Briefly News
* Indonesia set for second straight week of losses * China retail sales fell 7.5% vs forecast of 7% * Thai shares flat By Pranav A K May 15 (Reuters) - Philippine shares dropped more than 1% on Friday, dragged down by the financial sector, while stocks in Indonesia hit an over three-week low after data showed that Southeast Asia's largest economy swung back to a trade deficit in April. Markets in the region were also pressured by worsening Sino-U.S. relations over the new coronavirus, as President Donald Trump said he had no interest in speaking to his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping right now and suggested that he could even cut ties with China. "As the US faces the worst of the health crisis, President Trumps attempts at deflection seem likely to engender hawkish policy towards China, threatening business relations and the trade outcomes of 2019," ANZ Research said. Banking stocks, which have seen their profits shrink due to the pandemic, dominated the losses in the Philippines, with Metro Pacific Investments and BDO Unibank falling 2.2% and 1.2%, respectively. Indonesian shares were 0.4% lower, having fallen as much as 1.2% earlier. The country's $350 million trade deficit in April was larger than the $200 million gap expected in a Reuters poll, as exports and imports plunged. The country's benchmark was poised for its second straight weekly loss. Further weighing on sentiment, retail sales in China, the region's biggest trade partner, fell by 7.5% in April, compared with a forecast 7.0% fall, even as industrial production data came in better than expected. "I believe the market is chasing its tail increasingly and the retail sales has given the short term negative ascendency," senior market analyst at OANDA Jeffrey Halley said. Stocks in Vietnam ticked lower, while Thai shares were little changed as energy stocks lent support on the back of higher oil prices. Meanwhile, the Malaysian benchmark index added 0.6% and was set for a third straight session of gains, helped by industrial stocks. Shares of MISC Bhd rose 2.6%, while Sime Darby Bhd gained 2.1%. For Asian Companies click; SOUTHEAST ASIAN STOCK MARKETS AS AT 0405 GMT Change on the day Market Current Previous close Pct Move Singapore 2526.65 2522.31 0.17 Bangkok 1280.67 1280.4 0.02 Manila 5586.46 5654.7 -1.21 Jakarta 4492.933 4513.834 -0.46 Kuala Lumpur 1404.96 1397.25 0.55 Ho Chi Minh 829.02 832.4 -0.41 Change so far in 2020 Market Current End 2019 Pct Move Singapore 2526.65 3222.83 -21.60 Bangkok 1280.67 1579.84 -18.94 Manila 5586.46 7,815.26 -28.52 Jakarta 4492.933 6,299.54 -28.68 Kuala Lumpur 1404.96 1588.76 -11.57 Ho Chi Minh 829.02 960.99 -13.73 (Reporting by A K Pranav in Bengaluru; Editing by Aditya Soni)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 06:15:29|Editor: huaxia

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"This year marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. More than ever, we need multilateralism, a strong United Nations, a robust Security Council, and solidarity and cooperation among member states," the Chinese envoy said.

UNITED NATIONS, May 15 (Xinhua) -- A Chinese envoy on Friday called for unity and mutual trust among members of the United Nations Security Council, while stressing that international community needs multilateralism more than ever before.

"We should strengthen unity and mutual trust and engage in constructive cooperation," Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, told the Council's open video teleconferencing (VTC) meeting on its working methods.

"This year marks the 75th anniversary of the United Nations. More than ever, we need multilateralism, a strong United Nations, a robust Security Council, and solidarity and cooperation among member states," he said.

"Council members should take the lead in upholding the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, the international system with the UN at its core, and the international order underpinned by international law," the envoy added.

"Strengthening communication and cooperation among Council members is the basis for the Council to promote political settlement of hotspot issues. It is fundamental to improving the efficiency and effectiveness of the Council's work," said Zhang.

A screen capture image shows Zhang Jun, China's permanent representative to the United Nations, attending a virtual handover ceremony via Zoom, in New York, the United States, April 21, 2020. (Xinhua)

The ambassador said that "China calls on all Council members to take a responsible and constructive attitude, commit to equal-footed consultation, increase mutual trust, dispel misgivings, and seek common ground and resolve differences. On major issues concerning international peace and security, Council members should build broad consensuses, accommodate the concerns of all parties, prevent politicization, and make sure the Council plays a crucial role at critical moments."

Speaking about the Council's responsibilities, Zhang said that "we should focus on the responsibilities of the Council to address prominent and pressing issues that threaten international peace and security."

"The world today faces many problems that are related to peace and security in one way or another. The Council should be focused on its priorities, results-oriented, keep to the right direction, and not become a grocery store that tries to offer everything," he said.

The envoy noted that the Council should concentrate on regional and international hotspot issues, promote political settlement of disputes and continue to keep Africa as its priority.

"We must be committed to addressing root-causes of conflict together with other bodies, ensuring development through peace and promoting peace through development," Zhang added.

"Regarding thematic issues that go beyond the mandate of the Council, the Council should work in close coordination with other UN bodies like General Assembly and ECOSOC (the UN Economic and Social Council). At present, it is imperative to conduct international cooperation against COVID-19, support the secretary-general's appeal for a global ceasefire and immediately lift unilateral sanctions," said the ambassador.

"Bearing in mind the expectation of the international community, the Council should adopt a responsible and constructive approach, prevent politicization and take actions in addressing the negative impact on maintaining the international peace and security," he said.

The UN Security Council holds a meeting on the Iraq issue at the UN headquarters in New York, the United States, March 3, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

Talking about the specific working methods of the Council, Zhang said that "we should adhere to impartiality and transparency, and enhance communication and coordination with relevant parties and bodies."

"The Security Council belongs to all UN member states, and discharges its mandate on their behalf. We should heed the views and recommendations of member states, especially the countries concerned, and increase their engagement," he added.

"We should strengthen coordination and communication with other UN bodies, in particular the General Assembly and ECOSOC and other specialized agencies, so as to create synergy in our cooperation. We should work closely with the Secretariat, counting on its professional support and meanwhile providing necessary political guidance," said the ambassador.

As for the role of the Council's rotating presidency, Zhang said that "president of the Council plays a leading role in this regard."

"During Council presidency in March, China reached out to countries concerned and regional organizations for their views before the Council meetings on relevant issues. China maintained close coordination with president of the General Assembly, president of ECOSOC and the secretary-general. Such practices proved conducive to the Council's work, and would be helpful if continued," he said.

"We encourage the presidencies for different months to better coordinate with each other, so as to enhance integrity and synergy, and avoid duplication," said Zhang.

Zhang Jun (C), China's permanent representative to the UN and the UN Security Council's president this month, speaks during a briefing at the UN headquarters in New York, the United States, March 2, 2020. (Xinhua/Li Muzi)

As for the capacity building, the ambassador said that "we should strengthen capacity building to be better prepared in handling emergencies."

"The Council's work is crucial to peace and security of the world. All actions of the Council must be based on rules and have solid legal basis. Meanwhile, China supports the Council in improving itself on the basis of observing the UN Charter and its provisional rules of procedure to better address new circumstances and challenges in discharging its mandate," he said.

Referring to the challenge caused by COVID-19, the envoy said that COVID-19 is posing a formidable challenge to the work of the Council. "The good thing is the Council keeps working and never stops."

"In March, with joint efforts of all Council members and China, we devised new working modalities for emergencies. For the first time, the Council held video conferences and adopted resolutions through written procedures. These practices have enriched the Council's working methods and improved its working mechanism, enabling the Council to deliver tangible results at a difficult time," said Zhang.

"We need to further explore ways to strengthen capacity building of the Council and increase its preparedness for emergencies in the future. Further efforts should be made to provide stable technical support and sufficient conference service," he added.

(Article by Wang Jiangang, Video by Xie E)


The novel coronavirus has been detected in one of the southern Bangladesh camps that are home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, officials said on Thursday, as humanitarian groups warned the infection could devastate the crowded settlement.

An ethnic Rohingya refugee and another person have tested positive for COVID-19, a senior Bangladeshi official and a UN spokeswoman said. It was the first confirmed case in camps more densely populated than most crowded cities on Earth.

"Today they have been taken to an isolation centre after they tested positive," Mahbub Alam Talukder, the Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner, told Reuters by phone.

The other patient was from the "host population", a term usually referring to local residents outside the camps, the UN spokeswoman said.

Coronavirus infections have been gathering pace in recent days in Bangladesh, which has reported 18,863 cases of COVID-19 and 283 deaths.

Aid workers have warned of a potential humanitarian disaster if there is a significant outbreak in the refugee camps outside Cox's Bazar.

Dr Shamim Jahan, Save the Children's health director in Bangladesh, said in a statement the virus already had overwhelmed the country.

"There are only an estimated 2,000 ventilators in all of Bangladesh, serving a population of 160 million people. In the Rohingya refugee camps  home to nearly a million people  there are no intensive care beds at this moment", he said.

"Now that the virus has entered the world's largest refugee settlement in Cox's Bazar we are looking at the very real prospect that thousands of people may die from COVID-19. This pandemic could set Bangladesh back by decades."

US ambassador at large for international religious freedom, Sam Brownback, told Washington reporters by phone: "I've been to the refugee camp. It is (so) incredibly crowded that the COVID virus will spread through there very rapidly, unfortunately. They have to have access to adequate healthcare".

Health facilities lack staff and space, while people in the camps do not have enough soap and water or space to protect themselves, said Manish Agrawal, Bangladesh Country Director at the International Rescue Committee.

"Here, people are living 40,000 to 70,000 people per square kilometer. Thats at least 1.6 times the population density on board the Diamond Princess cruise ship, where the disease spread four times as fast than in Wuhan at the peak of the outbreak," he said.

"Without efforts to increase healthcare access, improve sanitation, isolate suspected cases and decongest the camp the disease will devastate the refugee and local population here, where there is a much lower standard of living and a higher rate of existing illness that make refugees more susceptible to the virus," he said.

More than 730,000 Rohingya arrived from Myanmar in late 2017 after fleeing a military crackdown. Myanmar is facing charges of genocide at the International Court of Justice in the Hague over the violence. The army denies genocide, saying it was fighting a legitimate battle against Rohingya militants who attacked first.
By PTI

JOHANNESBURG: Chotubhai Makan, a Gandhian enthusiast and the last surviving person in South Africa to have witnessed Mahatma Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930, has died at the age of 96.

Makan, who died on Thursday, was also a well-known Gujarati leader in South Africa and spent his entire life in the service of the community in various capacities, including serving as chairman of the Hindu Seva Samaj of the old Transvaal province and on a number of religious, cultural and educational bodies of the community.

He also played an instrumental role in attempts to revive the Tolstoy Farm, once a thriving commune near Johannesburg, started by Gandhi during his stay in the city.

He was the last surviving person in South Africa to have witnessed Mahatma Gandhi's famous Salt March in 1930, protesting against the steep tax imposed by the British on salt.

Makan frequently recalled at public celebrations of Gandhi's life in South Africa how he was just six years old when he accompanied his mother as thousands lined the streets of India to watch Gandhi and his associates undertake the march in protest against British colonial rule in the country.

"That incident and an explanation by his mother about Gandhi's role in India's independence set Makan on a lifelong path of becoming a Gandhian enthusiast, said a long-time friend and neighbour, Jivan Ramjee.

"At public gatherings, Makan would always bring along some of his archives of articles and photographs amassed over decades about Gandhian activities in South Africa, which were keenly browsed by the younger generation," Ramjee added.

Makan also related a story about how he had been tasked with the responsibility of returning to India the original ladder used by Gandhi to reach his bed in a loft at one of the places where he stayed in Johannesburg.

It was found during the 1960's by the new owners of a house.

The ladder had been kept at the old Gandhi Hall in central Johannesburg that was built by the Samaj at the turn of the last century before it was expropriated by the apartheid-era white minority government five decades ago when the thriving Indian community around the area were forcibly resettled in the township of Lenasia, some 30 km away.

Makan was cremated in Johannesburg on Thursday afternoon in a ceremony attended only by some of his many relatives, as the current lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic allows a maximum of 50 people to attend a funeral.

He leaves his wife Hema, four children, and numerous grand- and great grandchildren.
A Kenyan PhD student of the University of Mysore (UoM), has thanked Mysureans for their courtesy and help, during the coronavirus lockdown.

Kenneth Munene Mbae said that his guide and professor, S Umesha, department of studies in Biotechnology, chauffeured him around for tests and other formalities to facilitate his travel back home.

I am married, with a 13-year-old daughter. I am pursuing a PhD degree in Biotechnology, under the Indian Council of Cultural Relations (ICCR) scholarship for African students. I am from the Department of Food Science, Meru University of Science and Technology, Meru, Kenya, he said.

India and Kenya have a long standing relationships and cooperation in commerce, education and healthcare. Many Kenyan businessmen, patients and students were stranded in India as international flights were stopped. The uncertainty on resumption of normalcy caused distress among many. When the High Commission of the Kenyan Republic announced plans of a repatriation flight, I was eager to return home, until the situation stabilises, Mbae said.

Among the requirements to board the flight, back home, was a COVID-19 free certificate. Owing to the hurried arrangement of the evacuation flight and the demand that the certificate be obtained within seven days prior to the flight, the task to secure the certificate from Mysore Medical College and Research Institute, the only testing facility then, in Mysuru, seemed difficult. However, my research guide Umesha referred me to Dr M S Basavaraju, chief medical officer of UoM, who was extremely helpful, he said.

Mbae said, Dr Basavaraju liaised with the authorities concerned and I was directed to the district Hospital, for sampling. The sample was swiftly analysed alongside others and the report was ready in 24 hours. I was delighted to have a negative COVID status. I am indebted to the district administration and Health department of Mysuru for their efficiency.

In the absence of public transport and taxis Umesha chauffeured me in his private car, whenever I required to reach a specific destination, in pursuit of the COVID test. As I return home, I look forward to successfully undergoing the prescribed 14 days quarantine in Kenya, before meeting my family. Despite the setback caused by COVID outbreak, I hope to complete my PhD degree once the situation gets better, he said.
Commonalities among Abrahamic faiths go deep. The Old Testament of Judeo-Christian traditions instructs believers to love your neighbor as yourself, as in the New Testament Jesus reminds his followers that there is no commandment greater than these. In Islam, the prophet Muhammad teaches us that no one becomes a true believer until they love for their neighbors what they love for themselves.

The strong similarities between the traditions offer us a reminder that we may rely on each other for guidance as we maneuver the difficulties presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. We are coming together to protect the health of congregants and the general public, while also providing the comfort many find only in faith.

The lockdown began in late March and meant canceled congregational gatherings for all three faiths during some of their holiest days. For Jews, Passover began on April 8; for Christians, Easter fell on April 12; and for Muslims, Ramadan began April 24 and runs through May 23, with the major Eid holiday falling the next day.

Ramadan during lockdown means imams are challenged with finding ways to connect with Muslims who often use this holy month to spiritually recharge. The holy period is characterized as a month of intense spiritual practice, serving as some say an Olympic stride of faith, often coupled with spending long nights at the mosque. This year, Muslims who wait all year for Ramadan or are especially religious during this time, have had to find a different way to connect with the mosque and all that it used to offer to them.

To make those changes easier, imams are seeking advice from each other, of course, but also from our brothers and sisters in Christianity and Judaism, who already experimented with virtual worship during Passover and Easter, to evaluate the implications of moving our services online. As I reach out to friends from churches and synagogues for input, the same theme is expressed: what is important is doing what is safe and responsible, preserving life, and protecting the community. This concept is expressed in the Holy Quran as, Whoever saves one life  it is as if they saved all of humanity (Quran 5:32).

Many of the comments made during our conversations could not have been said better. Rev Melissa Maher of Mercy Street reminded us that many services, once taken for granted, are no longer doable. This past Easter, she continued to provide virtual prayers and messages, but was not able to provide a virtual communion. Still, Vanessa, a devout Catholic millennial friend, tells me how much she loves the convenience of virtual service. She says it brings less time pressure and less social anxiety associated with decorum, for instance.

While we all agreed that everyone is thankful to be able to use technology to worship online, the experience feels like it falls short of complete. Though it is a privilege to be able to do so, virtual congregations often do not stimulate the same levels of connectivity one feels with fellow worshippers in person. The words may not resonate the same as with a live presentation. People miss the physical contact, such as the handshake and the hug.

Rabbi Gideon Estes, who uses Zoom for services, pointed out how stark the beginning and ending of the sessions become due to a lack of schmooze time. I am certainly going to implement his tip of allowing some time for attendants to mingle and converse virtually before and after each session, as it is so important for congregants to feel as though they do have a spiritual community.

All faith groups remain uncertain when to open up back to in-person services but all agree it will never be the same anymore.

All faiths strive to nurture their deeply held beliefs and work for the betterment of individuals and community. The commonalities of the different faiths show how we share many roots, beliefs, goals and challenges and encourage us all to strengthen our relationship with one another and work together towards the common good and the wellbeing of humanity.

Hamid is both a practicing neurologist and Imam.
The Austrian Health Minister on Friday told a news conference that Britain's relatively high daily coronavirus infection rate was "frightening many in Europe at the moment."

Rudolf Anschober held up a graph showing the average daily infection growth rate over the past ten days in different European countries, among which Britain stood out at 7.7%.

Germany, Switzerland and Italy all had rates of 3% or lower.

Austria has flattened its infection curve and reopened parts of the economy this week.

Should the infection rate remain low, officials have said they will open remaining stores and businesses on 1 May. On 16 April, Austria had an infection rate of 1.8%.

The Central European country has officially recorded 14,476 COVID-19 cases and 410 deaths.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks.

But the virus is highly contagious and can be spread by those with mild or no visible symptoms.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and could lead to death.
Paul Scherrer Institut

Villigen, 14.05.2020 - Decision support for car buyers: Researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute have developed a web tool called the Carculator that can be used to compare the environmental performance of passenger cars in detail. The program determines the environmental balance of vehicles with different size classes and powertrains, and presents the results in comparative graphics. The entire life cycle of the passenger cars is taken into account, including the manufacture of the vehicles and the environmentally relevant emissions from driving.

Anyone who wants to buy a new car surely gives some thought to its environmental balance sheet. However, our gut feeling can be deceptive. The general public was recently surprised by the finding that a battery electric car is already the most environmentally friendly option in Switzerland and many other countries, even when the manufacture of the battery is figured in. This was the result of a PSI study led by environmental scientist Christian Bauer.

Now the same research group has developed a web tool that makes the data and results of their ongoing studies accessible to both end users and the research community. The program, playfully named the Carculator, can be found at the website carculator.psi.ch, and guides the interested layperson through a selection of parameters: which type of engine should be used, petrol-burning or diesel, for example, or one powered by natural gas, a fuel cell, or a battery - that is, an electric car. "Our tool offers a very wide range of engine types", explains PSI environmental scientist Romain Sacchi, who led the development of the Carculator. "In addition, it can differentiate between a large number of fuels: Besides the common ones, we have also integrated bio- and synthetic fuels of various origins, and we have considered future technologies such as CO2 capture and storage in hydrogen production."

Besides the engine type and fuel, those who use the Carculator can also enter the size category of the vehicles to be compared, from subcompact cars to vans. The user also selects the country where the vehicles are to be used - because this differentiates the electricity mix for electric cars - as well as the year, between 2000 and 2050, when the cars will be registered. For the future, the electricity mix can also be manually entered to test the effects of different scenarios.

The tool also assesses the environmental impacts of the entire life cycle of passenger cars, including the manufacture of the body and all other components, such as batteries for electric motors.

Several environmental indicators in the result

The results which the Carculator delivers in the end are both detailed and comprehensive. "Many people think first and foremost about the climate impact by greenhouse gas emissions: that is, CO2 and gases that produce a similar effect, such as methane. Yet there are further relevant environmental indicators, and these too can be investigated", Christian Bauer explains.

For this reason, the tool shows not only the calculation of all greenhouse gases - added together and expressed in CO2 equivalents - but also those for the release of particulates, harmful nitrogen oxide emissions, and all of the usual environmental assessment indicators such as pollution of water bodies.

The Carculator graphically presents these values for all selected vehicles in parallel, for ease of comparison.

The most comprehensive tool for comparison - and completely transparent

The Carculator also gives professionals a look behind the scenes: If the program is installed from the website, all the underlying calculations can be viewed, assessed, and even changed. "This is primarily intended for those in the research community who want to know how we did our work, and who might want to use our calculations for further studies of their own", Sacchi says.

This complete transparency should prove helpful in the public debate. "Up to now, when it comes to the environmental impact of different means of transportation, arguments are still too often based on ill-founded results with biased assumptions behind them", says Sacchi. "We want to put an end to this through our transparency."

With the Carculator, the PSI researchers have succeeded in providing a unique tool. "I can say in good conscience that we have created the world's best comparison tool for passenger cars to date", says Christian Bauer. "But we're not finished yet - the upcoming versions of the tool will also include trucks, planes, and public transportation."

The Carculator was developed as part of the initiative on Efficient Technologies and Systems for Mobility of the Swiss Competence Centre for Energy Research (SCCER Mobility).

Text: Paul Scherrer Institute/Laura Hennemann

About PSI

The Paul Scherrer Institute PSI develops, builds and operates large, complex research facilities and makes them available to the national and international research community. The institute's own key research priorities are in the fields of matter and materials, energy and environment and human health. PSI is committed to the training of future generations. Therefore about one quarter of our staff are post-docs, post-graduates or apprentices. Altogether PSI employs 2100 people, thus being the largest research institute in Switzerland. The annual budget amounts to approximately CHF 407 million. PSI is part of the ETH Domain, with the other members being the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, ETH Zurich and EPFL Lausanne, as well as Eawag (Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology), Empa (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) and WSL (Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research).

Address for enquiries

Dr. Mirjam van Daalen

Head of Communications

Paul Scherrer Institute

CH-5232 Villigen PSI

Phone: +41 56 310 56 74

mirjam.vandaalen@psi.ch

Publisher

Paul Scherrer Institut






Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  The Philippine Embassy in Stockholm, Sweden is open once again after an eight-year-long closure, the Department of Foreign Affairs announced on Friday.

The agency said the embassy will be providing consular services such as passport and visa extensions to Filipinos from Sweden and Finland, which were previously done in Oslo, Norway.

"The reopening of the Embassy...is the result of efforts of the landing team, which arrived in Sweden in late 2019," said the DFA in a statement.

The embassy was closed back in 2018 due to "economic constraints," the department added.

However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, strict measures will still be in place. Those who would like to avail of the embassy's services would have to call ahead at +46-7253-5407 or email at stockholm.pe@dfa.gov.ph. Consular applications such as passport extension, visa and civil registry will only be available twice a week and passport renewals will still have to be done in Oslo.

The DFA said the embassy will accommodate requests on May 19 and 21 from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.. Sweden is home to 15,000 Filipino workers while Finland hosts 4,000 of them, the agency added.
FREDERICTONFishermen began setting traps Friday as the spring lobster season opened across much of the Maritimes, but processors in New Brunswick warn theyll be turning some lobster away because of a shortage of workers.

At issue is the halt on temporary foreign workers entering New Brunswick imposed last month by Premier Blaine Higgs as part of efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19.

Higgs said at the time there were already about 1,500 temporary foreign workers in the province who, along with 70,000 unemployed New Brunswickers, could fill the jobs of fish processors and agriculture workers.

The province even organized a virtual job fair, but many jobs remain vacant.

We were getting 120 foreign workers, said Luc Doiron of Suncoast Seafood in Grande-Digue, N.B. Obviously none of them are in so, we are replacing them with a few Canadians, but not much. Well be down at least 50 per cent of what we can normally process.

He said he has only managed to make four or five new local hires. Doiron said many of his temporary foreign workers had been coming for years and held key positions on the production line.

He said hes turning away business that will go to plants in other provinces, and it may be impossible to get that business back in the future. For us to run our plant at 50 per cent capacity and try to turn a profit is going to be very difficult, he said.

On Friday, Higgs wasnt prepared to say his ban on the foreign workers was a mistake. Instead he said the decision was made on public health grounds, adding that it may have been a factor in the province having just one active case of the virus Friday.

Higgs said it was disappointing that 70,000 people are unemployed in the province and yet so few have applied for the posted jobs.

He said the Canada Emergency Response Benefit, which provides $500 per week for up to 16 weeks, is dissuading people from applying for the jobs.

Yes it has been a factor, and one we have discussed across the country, Higgs said, calling it the federal program of paying people four months to stay home and not to need to even look for a job.

But Doiron downplayed the programs impact, saying he has been trying to hire New Brunswickers to work in his plant for the last decade with little success.

Liberal Leader Kevin Vickers said the decision to stop temporary foreign workers from entering was a big mistake.

There were proper protocols in place to ensure quarantines, social distancing, and all the aspects would have been done, Vickers said. Theres no question in my mind that this could have been done in a safe and responsible manner without endangering the health of New Brunswickers.

Higgs said he will continue to work with processors to find a solution.

The spring lobster season opened two weeks later than usual because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The fishing industry worked with public health officials to ensure operations could begin while respecting measures such as social distancing.

High winds prompted fishermen in one area along the Cape Breton coast to delay their opening until Saturday morning.

Read more about:
Yi-Chin Lee, Staff / Houston Chronicle

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday denied a request to toss out an appeals court ruling that halted additional protections for older inmates in a Texas prison unit, according to a seven-page statement from Justice Sonia Sotamayor.

A lawsuit against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, brought by two elderly inmates in the Wallace Pack Unit, alleged that the prison agency wasn't doing enough to protect the mostly geriatric population from COVID-19. In the original lawsuit, the inmates requested access to hand sanitzer, cloth masks and widespread testing at the Navasota unit, among other protections.
SINGAPORE - An American cargo pilot who admitted to poor judgment in breaking a quarantine order to buy medical supplies became the first foreigner imprisoned in Singapore for breaching its restrictions meant to curb the coronavirus, his lawyer said Friday.

FedEx pilot Brian Dugan Yeargan, 44, of Alaska, was sentenced to four weeks Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to leaving his hotel room for three hours to buy masks and a thermometer, defence lawyer Ronnie Tan said.

Singapore has one of the largest outbreaks in Asia, with 26,000 cases. More than 90% of those infected are foreign workers living in crowded dormitories, while the government recently began easing restrictions for the local population.

The tiny city-state has strict penalties for those who breach quarantine rules, dont wear masks in public or fail to adhere to social distancing measures. Quarantine violators face up to six months in jail, a fine of up to 10,000 Singapore dollars ($7,000) or both.

Tan said Yeargan and his two co-pilots were taken to an airport hotel to serve 14-day quarantines upon arriving from Sydney on April 3. It was required because they stated in their health declarations they had visited China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan and the United States in the two-week period before their arrival, Tan said.

Health officials checking on Yeargan found him missing from his room on April 5. Yeargan told the court he took the metro downtown to buy a thermometer and a few boxes of masks before he was to fly home on April 6.

Tan said Yeargan needed the items because they were in short supply back home and his wife has been ill. Yeargans wife had breathing difficulties but tested negative for the coronavirus in March, he said.

Tan said Yeargan lost his daughter in a tragic incident four years ago and the possibility of another death frightened him. Yeargan told the court his two co-pilots had flown out on April 6 as scheduled but he had been held back in his room. He also said he had to give up an assignment to fly a humanitarian aid mission to COVID-19-hit countries for the U.S. Air Force due to his blunder in Singapore.

In his address in court, Yeargan said he was sorry, he made a poor judgment and that he shouldnt have gone out, Tan said. The American also said he has the highest regard for the Singapore people and its laws, Tan added.

The court said in its ruling that Yeargan should have asked someone to obtain the items for him.

Tan said Yeargan was relieved because prosecutors had sought a sentence of up to eight weeks. He said he will apply for a remission for good behaviour, which could see the American being released in three weeks.

The Anchorage Daily News reported Yeargan is from the Eagle River community and serves with the Alaska Air National Guard. It said he last spoke to his parents on Mothers Day. Hes taking care of himself, Jim Yeargan was quoted as saying.

FedEx spokeswoman Davina Cole told the newspaper the company adhered to all regulations from government authorities related to containing the virus.

Yeargan was the first foreigner sentenced for violating quarantine orders, but several Singaporeans have been jailed for between five and six weeks for leaving their homes.

Singapore imposed a partial lockdown on April 7 and loosened restrictions Tuesday, with food manufacturers, barbers and laundry shops opening doors three weeks before the lockdown ends June 1.
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Global Miticides Market was valued at US$1.10 Bn in 2017, global market size forecasted to reach US$2.1 Bn by the end of 2026, expected to grow at a CAGR of 8.42% for the forecast period.

Global Miticides Market is segmented by foam, by source, by crop Foam, by application, by region. In terms of foam, Global Miticides Market is classified into Powder and Liquid. Biological and chemical are the source segment of the Global Miticides Market. Based on crop type, the market is categorized into Fruits & Vegetables, Cereals & Grains and Oilseeds & Pulses. The major application of Miticides include Foliar Spray and Soil Treatment. Geographically Global Miticides Market is segregated into North America, Latin America, Asia-Pacific, Europe and Middle East & Africa.

Insects are considered as one of the most diverse species living on earth. Though the majority of insects provides benefits to the environment, there are insects which pose threat to entire countries or regions. Some of the harmful bugs or insects are: Aphids, Spider Mits, Colorado potato beetle, Caterpillars etc. Miticides are one those chemical pesticides that are effective against these kinds of mites posing threat to the plants.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/10781

By Crop Type, the liquid segment is anticipated to dominate the market during forecast period. Liquids are mostly chosen as they do not cause dust Crop type on spraying, give high effectiveness due to smaller particle size, low packaging volume and do not cause flammability or toxicity.

On the basis of source, the chemical segment dominated the miticides market in 2017. The use of chemical miticides for plant and crop protection is constantly growing.

On the basis of crop Foam, the fruits & vegetables segment accounted for the largest market share; this can be attributed to growing health-consciousness among consumers and rising incomes, which result in increased consumption of a wide variety of products, particularly fruits & vegetables.

Foliar spray is the most widely used mode of application, owing to its ease and high effectiveness and expected to dominate the market for forecast period.

The Asia Pacific region is projected to be the fastest-growing market for miticides between 2018 and 2023. The increasing awareness about miticides and continuous technological advancements are factors contributing to the growth of this market. In addition to this, the growing demand for crops and rising cultivation in the countries of Asia Pacific have forced agribusiness companies to expand their supplier and manufacturing base in the region.

Request for Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/10781

Valent Biosciences, FMC Corporation, DowDuPont, Certis, Nufarm Limited, ADAMA, Syngenta, OHP Inc., Bayer AG, Nihon Nohyaku Co. Ltd., Nissan Chemicals Industry, BASF, Gowan Company LLC, Plat Crop Type Solutions are the key players of the miticides market.

Scope of the Global Miticides Market:

Global Miticides Market by Foam:

Powder

Liquid

Global Miticides Market by Source:

Biological

Chemical

Global Miticides Market by Crop Foam:

Fruits & Vegetables

Cereals & Grains

Oilseeds & Pulses

Global Miticides Market by Application:

Foliar Spray

Soil Treatment

Global Miticides Market by Region:

North America

Europe

Asia-Pacific

Middle East & Africa

Latin America

Key Player Analysed in the Global Miticides Market:

Valent Biosciences

FMC Corporation

DowDuPont

Certis

Nufarm Limited

ADAMA

Syngenta

OHP Inc.

Bayer AG

Nihon Nohyaku Co. Ltd.

Nissan Chemicals Industry

BASF

Gowan Company LLC

PlatCrop Type Solutions

More Info of Impact Covid19@ https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/covid-19-analysis/10781
Motorola launched its latest Edge and Edge+ smartphones recently in the US and India launch was later confirmed by a company official. Less than a month since its launch in the US, Motorola is launching its flagship Motorola Edge+ smartphone in India on May 19.

Flipkart has posted the teaser of the launch of Motorola Edge+ in India under Flipkart Unique section, so it should be exclusive to Flipkart. It will be unveiled on May 19th, 2020 at 12 PM, and it is not clear if Motorola will host an online event for the same. Notably, there is no mention on the launch of the Motorola Edge smartphone with Snapdragon 765G in India yet.

We should know the pricing and availability information of the Motorola Edge+ on May 19th.

Motorola Edge+ specifications

Display: 6.7-inch (2340  1080 pixels) Full HD+ OLED 19.5:9 aspect ratio, HDR10 + with 90Hz refresh rate, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection

6.7-inch (2340  1080 pixels) Full HD+ OLED 19.5:9 aspect ratio, HDR10 + with 90Hz refresh rate, Corning Gorilla Glass 5 protection SoC: Octa-Core (1 x 2.84GHz + 3 x 2.42GHz + 4 x 1.8GHz Hexa) Snapdragon 865 7nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 650 GPU

Octa-Core (1 x 2.84GHz + 3 x 2.42GHz + 4 x 1.8GHz Hexa) Snapdragon 865 7nm Mobile Platform with Adreno 650 GPU RAM: 12GB LPPDDR5

12GB LPPDDR5 ROM: 256GB UFS 3.0

256GB UFS 3.0 SIM: Dual SIM (nano + nano)

Dual SIM (nano + nano) OS: Android 10

Android 10 Rear cameras: 108MP rear camera with 1/ 1.33 Samsung sensor, 0.8m pixel size, f/1.8 aperture, OIS, Laser autofocus, 16MP 117 ultra-wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture, macro mode, 8MP telephoto lens with OIS for 3x optical zoom, f/2.4 aperture, 6k at 30fps, 4k 60fps Front camera: 25MP front-facing camera with 0.9m, f/2.0 aperture

108MP rear camera with 1/ 1.33 Samsung sensor, 0.8m pixel size, f/1.8 aperture, OIS, Laser autofocus, 16MP 117 ultra-wide-angle lens with f/2.2 aperture, macro mode, 8MP telephoto lens with OIS for 3x optical zoom, f/2.4 aperture, 6k at 30fps, 4k 60fps In-display fingerprint sensor

3.5mm headset jack, Dual stereo speakers tuned by Waves

Water-repellent

Dimensions: 161.07 x 71.38 x 9.6mm; Weight: 203g

161.07 x 71.38 x 9.6mm; 203g Connectivity: 5G SA/NSA Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, NFC, USB Type-C

5G SA/NSA Dual 4G VoLTE, Wi-Fi 6 802.11 ax (2.4GHz + 5GHz), Bluetooth 5.1, GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, NFC, USB Type-C Battery: 5000mAh with 18W wired and 15W wireless fast charging, 5W wireless reverse charging
NEW YORK, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Q BioMed Inc. (OTCQB: QBIO), a commercial stage biotech company, announces the launch of its marketing campaign for its FDA approved non-opioid metastatic bone pain drug Strontium89 (Strontium Chloride Sr-89 Injection, USP). A product website for U.S. healthcare professionals and consumers has been launched at Strontium89.com to support Q BioMed's full scale digital marketing program reaching both healthcare professionals and patients.

In the Strontium89 pivotal trial, as many as 79% of patients had pain relief with Strontium89, and twice as many patients treated with Strontium89 had no pain for 3 months compared with placebo. Further, new pain sites were less frequent in patients treated with Strontium89[1],[2]. Strontium89 is administered once every 3 months via injection, and patients can be re-treated if needed. With an estimated 10 million people living with bone metastases, Q BioMed anticipates broad market re-acceptance for this well-established, non-opioid option for bone pain management. Please see Important Safety Information below.

Q BioMed's marketing campaign is focused on driving awareness of Strontium89 availability, product benefits and safety profile, appropriate patient populations, and on providing support for ordering and administering treatment. The initial digital marketing campaign is designed for maximum impact by reaching physicians without in-person sales representative interactions during the current social distancing and other extraordinary circumstances due to COVID-19. Q BioMed is also deploying a direct-to-patient campaign, outreach to patient advocacy groups, and intends to roll-out an in-person sales force to complement the institutional sales outreach conducted by its distributor, Jubilant Radiopharma. Under this distribution relationship, Q BioMed has the ability to serve patients in all 50 states; Strontium89 has a favorable reimbursement status with Medicare, Medicaid and most private insurance companies.

"Q BioMed continues to ramp up commercial activities for our newly launched Strontium89. We are highly encouraged by the keen interest and engagement that we have already seen from healthcare providers. Several institutions are considering the use of Strontium89. We are confident that as our outreach grows, we'll see increasing use of Strontium89 for patients who can benefit from non-opioid pain relief for bone cancer metastases," stated Q BioMed CEO Denis Corin.

Q BioMed plans to launch the drug in global markets, including Europe, in the coming quarters.

Learn more at www.Strontium89.com.

INDICATIONS AND IMPORTANT SAFETY INFORMATION:

INDICATIONS AND USAGE

Strontium Chloride Sr-89 Injection, USP is indicated for the relief of bone pain in patients with painful skeletal metastases. The presence of bone metastases should be confirmed prior to therapy.

WARNINGS

Use of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection in patients with evidence of seriously compromised bone marrow from previous therapy or disease infiltration is not recommended unless the potential benefit of the treatment outweighs its risks. Bone marrow toxicity is to be expected following the administration of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection, particularly white blood cells and platelets. The extent of toxicity is variable. It is recommended that the patient's peripheral blood cell counts be monitored at least once every other week. Typically, platelets will be depressed by about 30% compared to pre-administration levels. The nadir of platelet depression in most patients is found between 12 and 16 weeks following administration of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection. White blood cells are usually depressed to a varying extent compared to pre-administration levels. Thereafter, recovery occurs slowly, typically reaching pre-administration levels six months after treatment unless the patient's disease or additional therapy intervenes. In considering repeat administration of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection, the patient's hematologic response to the initial dose, current platelet level and other evidence of marrow depletion should be carefully evaluated. Verification of dose and patient identification is necessary prior to administration because Strontium-89 Chloride Injection delivers a relatively high dose of radioactivity.

Strontium-89 Chloride Injection may cause fetal harm when administered to a pregnant woman. There are no adequate and well-controlled studies in pregnant women. If this drug is used during pregnancy, or if the patient becomes pregnant while receiving this drug, the patient should be apprised of the potential hazard to the fetus. Women of childbearing potential should be advised to avoid becoming pregnant.

PRECAUTIONS

Strontium-89 Chloride Injection is not indicated for use in patients with cancer not involving bone.

Strontium-89 Chloride Injection should be used with caution in patients with platelet counts below 60,000 and white cell counts below 2,400.

Radiopharmaceuticals should only be used by physicians who are qualified by training and experience in the safe use and handling of radionuclides and whose experience and training have been approved by the appropriate government agency authorized to license the use of radionuclides.

Strontium-89 Chloride Injection, like other radioactive drugs, must be handled with care and appropriate safety measures taken to minimize radiation to clinical personnel.

In view of the delayed onset of pain relief, typically 7 to 20 days post injection, administration of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection to patients with very short life expectancy is not recommended.

A calcium-like flushing sensation has been observed in patients following a rapid (less than 30 second injection) administration.

Special precautions, such as urinary catheterization, should be taken following administration to patients who are incontinent to minimize the risk of radioactive contamination of clothing, bed linens and the patient's environment.

Strontium-89 Chloride Injection is excreted primarily by the kidneys. In patients with renal dysfunction, the possible risks of administering Strontium-89 Chloride Injection should be weighed against the possible benefits.

PREGNANCY

Teratogenic effects. Pregnancy Category D. See Warnings section.

NURSING MOTHERS

Because Strontium-89 Chloride Injection acts as a calcium analog, secretion of Strontium-89 Chloride Injection into human milk is likely. It is recommended that nursing be discontinued by mothers about to receive intravenous Strontium-89 Chloride Injection. It is not known whether this drug is excreted in human milk.

PEDIATRIC USE

Safety and effectiveness in children below the age of 18 years have not been established.

ADVERSE REACTIONS

A single case of fatal septicemia following leukopenia was reported during clinical trials. Most severe reactions of marrow toxicity can be managed by conventional means.

A small number of patients have reported a transient increase in bone pain at 36 to 72 hours after injection. This is usually mild and self-limiting, and controllable with analgesics. A single patient reported chills and fever 12 hours after injection without long-term sequelae.

You are encouraged to report negative side effects of prescription drugs to the FDA.

Visit www.FDA.gov/medwatch or call (800) FDA-1088.

Please see full Prescribing Information for Strontium-89 Chloride Injection.

References:

1. STRONTIUM CHLORIDE Sr-89 INJECTION, USP THERAPEUTIC [package insert]. Angleton, TX: IsoTherapeutics Group, LLC; 2020.

2. Porter AT, McEwan AJB, Powe JE, et al. Results of a randomized phase-III trial to evaluate the efficacy of strontium-89 adjuvant to local field external beam irradiation in the management of endocrine resistant metastatic prostate cancer. Int J Radiat Oncol Biol Phys. 1993;25(5):805-813.

About Q BioMed Inc.

Q BioMed Inc is a biotech acceleration and commercial stage company. Q BioMed is focused on licensing and acquiring undervalued biomedical assets in the healthcare sector. Q BioMed is dedicated to providing these target assets the strategic resources, developmental support, and expansion capital needed to ensure they meet their developmental potential, enabling them to provide products to patients in need.

Please visit http://www.QBioMed.com and sign up for regular updates.

Investor Relations:

Keith Pinder

+1-(404)-995-6671

[email protected]

SOURCE Q BioMed Inc.

Related Links

https://qbiomed.com


Brazzaville, Congo (PANA) - The national coordination of the management of the coronavirus pandemic, chaired by Congolese President Denis Sassou-Nguesso Thursday adopted a progressive de-confinement plan, an official source told PANA here
The residents of a Kerala village have hardly stepped out of their houses for a week now, and not just because of the lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The 13,000-odd residents of Thannithode village in central Keralas Pathanamthitta district have been forced to stay put in their homes because of a tiger which killed one person last week.

Three sharp-shooters, 50 forest and district officials and some villagers have since then been on the trail of the big cat which strayed into human habitat and killed a rubber tapper.

Though the officials and the villagers put up a cage with a goat in it to catch the big cat, but it attacked a cow instead.

It all began with the attack on the 38-year-old rubber tapper Bineesh Mathew on May 6. When his colleagues heard cries for help and rushed to him, they found a tiger dragging him to a nearby bush. After they pelted stones and tried to distract the tiger by making noises, the animal left a dead Mathew and went back in to the forest.

It is a big tiger. It is either aged or injured. This happened around 12 noon, said T Mathew, another tapper, who witnessed the attack.

Following the death of the tapper, Pathanamthitta district collector PB Nooh declared prohibitory orders in the village.

After the incident, the animal was sighted at many places and attacked several cows, goats and dogs in the area. Though the forest officials have spotted the tiger through night vision cameras and drones, it is yet to be caught.

We have faced threats of elephants, wild boars and other animals. But this is the first time we are facing the tiger threat. It was spotted at many places before the attack. We dread to even allow our children outside our house, said MS Indira, a panchyat member of the area.

The village is situated on the fringes of a deep forest. Indira said that the tiger has evoked more fear in the villagers than the Covid-19 pandemic.

Wildlife experts say tiger attacks are very rare in Kerala which houses two tiger reserves and five wildlife sanctuaries,.

We are trying our best to tranquillise it and shift it to deep forests. Many top forest and vet officials are camping in the area and will try their best to capture it alive. If they do not succeed, we will shoot it, said state forest minister K Raju who announced a relief of Rs 10 lakh to the family members of the victim.

However, conservationists have asked authorities to relocate the animal instead of shooting it.

In November 2018, a female tiger Avani was shot dead in Maharashtras Yavatmal by a hunter hired by the forest department. The tigress had Avni had allegedly killed 13 people since June 2016, forcing the forest department to initiate a hunt for her. Her killing had led to widespread protests by the animal rights activists leading to the state government initiating a probe into the animals killing which was closed in February 2019.

However, the Uddhav Thackeray-led state government reopened investigations into the killing of tigress T1 or Avni in January this year.
Stock markets around the world tumbled as mounting concerns over a prolonged economic downturn rattled investors.

Share prices tanked as figures showed more than 36m Americans have claimed unemployment benefits in the past eight weeks.

The market slump came as Spain's coronavirus death toll rose to its highest in a week  prompting fears of second wave of infections.

Share prices tanked as figures showed more than 36m Americans have claimed unemployment benefits in the past eight weeks

And it followed a stark warning from the World Health Organization's emergencies chief, Michael Ryan, that the coronavirus 'may never go away'.

The FTSE 100 fell 2.8 per cent, or 162.51 points, to 5741.54, while the FTSE 250 shed 3 per cent, or 473.53 points, to 15404.59, as the global Covid-19 death toll edged closer to 300,000.

In Europe, Germany's Dax fell 2 per cent and France's Cac by 1.7 per cent.

Traders also fretted about relations between the US and China after Donald Trump said he was very disappointed with Beijing over its failure to contain coronavirus, adding that the worldwide pandemic cast a pall over his trade deal.

Wobbles on the stock market have sent investors fleeing into Government bonds, seen as a safe haven in times of uncertainty.

Stock Watch - Byotrol Disinfectant maker Byotrol surged 16.8 per cent, or 0.79p, to 5.5p after it signed licensing deals and said first-quarter sales would hit a record high. Demand for the group's products has surged amid the coronavirus pandemic, with sales of more than 1million in both March and April. The AIM-listed group has struck a 10-year licensing agreement in the US for its long-lasting sanitiser spray and a contract with SC Johnson, also in America, for its alcohol-free hand sanitisers.

The yield  or how much interest they pay relative to their price  has slipped into negative territory for UK bonds, meaning investors are so keen to buy them they are effectively paying to own the debt instead of getting a return.

Some of the biggest fallers on the Footsie were housebuilding stocks, including Berkeley (down 5.7 per cent, or 235p, to 3915p) and Persimmon (down 4.7 per cent, or 102p, to 2049p), as surveys suggested it could take 11 months for house prices to recover to pre-lockdown levels.

Oil giants also tracked lower, with BP down 1.7 per cent, or 5.2p, to 296.45p and Shell falling 5.3 per cent, or 65p, to 1158.4p.

The International Energy Agency estimates oil demand will fall by a record 8.6m barrels a day, or around 9 per cent of pre-lockdown demand, for the whole year.

The price of Brent crude oil was up 3 per cent to $30 a barrel last night.

Shares in embattled travel companies also traded lower, with cruise operator Carnival shedding 0.9 per cent, or 7.8p, to 830.4p and budget airline Easyjet falling 0.9 per cent, or 4.5p, to 484p.

But British Airways-owner IAG slid 3.2 per cent, or 5.5p, to 168.2p after chief executive Willie Walsh said the Government was seriously damaging the chances of a recovery for the industry.

IAG also revealed British Airways has provided cash refunds on a staggering 921,000 tickets, is still processing 47,400 and has given customers vouchers instead of a refund on 346,000 further bookings.

Miners Glencore and Anglo American were dragged lower by the economic malaise, but also fell after Norway's 820billion sovereign wealth fund excluded them  and a slew of other commodities groups  from its portfolio because they produce coal.

Glencore shares fell 1.4 per cent, or 1.96p, to 136.5p. Anglo American fell 1 per cent, or 13.4p, to 1364.2p.

Revenues dropped 15 per cent at Wincanton in April, as an early lockdown surge in grocery deliveries tapered off at the same time as other sectors for which it trucks good around stalled.

The update drove its shares down 12.7 per cent, or 29p, to 199p.

Mid-cap food group Greencore also chugged lower, falling 14.3 per cent, or 24.1p, to 144.1p after analysts at Jefferies downgraded it from 'buy' to 'hold'.

Brokers believe the firm, which makes takeaway food such as sushi, wraps and microwave meals for grocers, will struggle for longer than they previously thought after sandwich sales through supermarkets fell by 60 per cent  double the 30 per cent drop forecast.
A phone number included on the Test Nebraska website was also not working, Kirk said. She called multiple times, from her phone and her boyfriend's phone, but received an automated message the call could not go through.

"I was kind of bummed, and I gave up at that point," Kirk said.

Later that day, the Central District Health Department said the notification that no testing slots were available through the Test Nebraska initiative was an error. In fact, there were plenty of openings available, the department announced on its Facebook page.

Kirk was told if she drove to the testing site at Fonner Park she would be given "an override of sorts" to get tested by the Nebraska National Guard.

She completed the assessment a second time before driving through the testing location Tuesday, receiving a nasal swab from a uniformed member of the Guard, she said.

Although she had symptoms and qualified for testing through Test Nebraska, state officials chastised the Central District Health Department for inviting Kirk and others to come in for tests without scheduling an appointment through the website first.
People across Kilkenny have come together to take part in the One Million Stars to End Violence project.



In community groups, pre coronavirus, and now in their homes, people are weaving stars as part of an art project that began in Australia and is now about to decorate the Mill in Kells, Kilkenny.



The One Million Stars to End Violence project began in 2012 by Samoan - Australian artist, Maryann Talia Pau. Siobhan McQuillan brought the project to Kilkenny.

What began as a personal response to the rape and murder of a young Irish woman, Jill Meagher, in Melbourne, grew into an international movement.

Maryanns goal was to weave and collect one million stars however 2.4 million were received.



Siobhan was introduced to the project while living in Sydney. The project installation was so impressive, and I was touched by the compelling visual impact it had along with the powerful message that together we can stand against violence while connecting with members of the community, she said.

Since returning from Australia I have been working with Amber Womens Refuge. As an art therapist I saw the valid potential of bringing people together through a creative activity, working to raise domestic violence awareness, offer support and create conversations.



The Amber Star projects aim is to raise awareness and provide information about domestic violence in the Kilkenny/ Carlow area. This began prior to Covid-19 by reaching out to a wide age and social demographic through weaving workshops in the community. Groups worked towards the goal of assembling the stars together in a public installation. It is hoped the exhibition will take place during the 16 Days of Activism, later this year.



Above: Members of the Loughboy Knitting Group, pre-coronavirus, who came together to weave stars.

The Covid-19 crisis saw the end of groups star weaving, however people continued to weave stars at home. A WhatsApp group started, then an Instagram page (@irelandstarweavers), for people to share stories.

As a celebration of the International Day of Living in Peace and International Day of Light, weavers in Kells will be hanging their woven stars at Mullins Mill beside the Kings River, from Sunday, May 10.



The Kells star display will culminate in a night vigil on May 16, when the stars will be lit up as a show of support for all those experiencing a challenging and difficult time during Covid-19.

People can join in by hanging stars outside their homes or in their windows.

To coincide with the vigil there will be a virtual concert, via Zoom, on Saturday night.



Since the start of lockdown there has been a 30% increase in domestic abuse reports.

In Kilkenny the Amber helpline is available 24/7 on 1850424244.



Kilkenny County Council are delighted to partner with Amber Womens Refuge to support this project in raising awareness around domestic violence.

This project will also encourage people to get creative and facilitate a common community goal supporting peoples well being at this difficult time.
It was still dark, sometime between 5 a.m. and 6 a.m. on Nov. 2, 2019, when David Thomson arrived at 25 Towercrest Dr. and began damaging a pickup truck parked outside a townhouse unit.

Inside the Hamilton Mountain home, 32-year-old Cheryl Nicholl, likely alerted by the noise, came out and yelled something like: What are you doing?

The truck belonged to her boyfriend, 62-year-old Donald Lowe, who was upstairs in bed.

But instead of retreating, Thomson chased Nicholl into the house and upstairs into the bedroom. Very quickly he turned his gun on the couple, killing them both in their bed.

This is what happened in the final moments of Nicholls and Lowes lives, police believe.

Staff Sgt. Dave Oleniuk, who was the case manager for the double-homicide investigation, said police sat down with both victims families and told them everything soon after the shooting.

Thats because there will never be a court case as Thomson killed himself with a single gunshot to the head in a Brantford motel room as police were closing in.

Oleniuk revealed the details of the double homicide Friday, after the Special Investigations Unit concluded its own investigation into Thomsons death. The police watchdog was called to investigate because Hamilton tactical officers from the emergency response unit were outside, trying to talk with Thomson, when he turned the gun on himself.

Hamilton police just got the gun  a Glock 22  from the SIU and it needs to be officially examined. However, Oleniuk said police strongly believe its the same gun he used to kill Nicholl and Lowe.

On Friday, the SIU cleared Hamilton police of wrongdoing in Thomsons shooting death.

In his analysis, SIU Director Joseph Martino said its not clear whether the 33-year-old had already intended to take his own life, or whether he chose to do so when he knew police had found him. What is clear is that no officers were in the room or fired their guns.

Thomson and Nicholl briefly dated many years ago, but Oleniuk stressed the double homicide was not domestic. Rather, the pair appear to have kept in minimal contact through the years.

Thomson was deeply troubled. He was known to police and also had mental health issues.

At the time of the double homicide, Thomson believed Nicholl owed him money. Oleniuk wouldnt specify how much, only in the thousands.

He believed she owed him some money, but we cant confirm that if she actually did, he said.

There is no evidence he was harassing Nicholl or demanding money before the shootings.

Whether the debt was real or imaginary, homicide investigators are certain he showed up at the home that morning with his mind set on taking action.

After the shooting, police believe Thomson drove around for a while. The bodies of Nicholl and Lowe werent found until that evening when police responded to a well-being check.

Parked outside was Lowes pickup truck with four slashed tires.

Meanwhile, Thomson left Hamilton sometime overnight Saturday, and by early Sunday, he had checked into the Days Inn on Fairview Drive in Brantford.

He had gathered his property, there was every indication he was fleeing, Oleniuk said.

Thomson tried to get a friend to help him destroy evidence, Oleniuk said. Instead, the friend went to police, which is why tactical officers were outside the Brantford motel late that Sunday night.

Police evacuated the motel of other guests. Around 11:15 p.m., officers tried to speak with Thomson through a megaphone, the SIU said in the directors report released Friday. In the report, they do not name Thomson.

Police repeatedly called for Thomson to come out of his room and surrender, the SIU said. At 11:16 p.m., a single gunshot rang out.

When police went into Thomsons motel room, the 33-year-old was lying on one of two beds in the room, a Glock 22 gun under his left hand and a .40 calibre cartridge case resting on his chest.

He had a gunshot wound under his chin. The bullet was found in the wall 11.5 centimetres above the headboard, with parts of it found on the floor of the next room.

Inside the room, police also found cash, a green duffel bag and a backpack with a large quantity of drugs.

Clint Twolan, president of the Hamilton Police Association, said he was pleased the turnaround time for the SIU investigation was relatively quick.

They did everything they should have, he said of the officers actions that night, but added its just too bad how it ended.

Lowe, who went by Donnie or Don, left behind four children and four grandchildren. He was a longtime Chapmans ice cream truck driver.

His son Taylor Lowe told The Spectator his dad was a loving and kind person who would do anything for anybody.

He said his dad seemed happy with Nicholl  the couple had been dating a year. In her obituary, Nicholls was remembered as a loved mother, daughter, dear sister and aunt.

Nicole OReilly is a Hamilton-based reporter covering crime and justice for The Spectator. Reach her via email: noreilly@thespec.com

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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The Ohio Department of Education has asked Ohio parents for feedback as they continue work on a plan for possibly re-opening K-12 schools next school year.

State education officials have asked the Ohio Parent Teacher Association to come up with feedback to their draft re-opening plan. The Ohio PTA has set up a short online survey for parents, asking three things:

1. What are your main questions?

2. Will you send your child to school if they reopen in the fall?

3. Will you send your child to school if masks are mandated?

Mandy Minick, a spokeswoman for the Ohio Department of Education, said state education officials reached out to the PTA because theyre trying to be as inclusive as possible and its important that the concerns and ideas of everyone impacted are shared and heard.

Required masks currently are a part of the school re-opening plan, framed by state education officials as a discussion guide for local school districts to come up with solutions that make the most sense for their communities as they work to re-open while managing coronavirus. The document is a draft and remains a work in progress.

Much of the plan is open-ended. But the section about safety measures is described as more of a series of requirements. The current version includes required masks for all people on school grounds and for those using school transportation, as well as at-home temperature checks, widely available hand sanitizer and efforts to maintain six feet of distance between students. DeWine has described schools possibly having students come in two days a week in different shifts, with virtual learning the other days, to maintain smaller classroom sizes.

Face masks, which health officials began recommending earlier this year partially in response to a grassroots campaign, increasingly have emerged as a hot-button cultural issue recently. As other countries have reopened schools in recent days, some have required masks while others havent.

Health experts say when worn properly, masks can help prevent the spread of the coronavirus and other germs. But they arent for everyone, including those with asthma or anxiety issues.

Safety measures are meant to protect students, families and staff.

While children are not believed to at great risk from COVID-19, experts say they are likely to transmit it to others. Many Ohio teachers are older or have underlying health conditions that make them more likely to become seriously ill.

Take a class of 25 kids, 26 kids, and theyre all from different families, Gov. Mike DeWine said during a Thursday appearance on Fox News. And they come in, and one of them is not showing any signs, no temperature or anything. But we know many people who have this dont show the signs. And that child then spreads it to 25 other kids. You go back to 25 families.

DeWine also said he has not yet made a final decision on whether he will allow K-12 schools to reopen next school year.

Read recent coverage by cleveland.com:

Ohio plan envisions masks for students and teachers, at-home temperature checks when schools reopen

Ohio K-12 students could go to school two days a week in fall, with online learning

Ohio officials backing off mandatory face mask requirement for re-opening businesses

Get used to masks: Dr. Amy Acton said Ohioans might need to wear masks for a year to stop coronavirus
Afghan security forces arrested three senior South Asia Islamic State members including the group's regional leader, the government said on Monday.

The militant group's head of South Asia, Abu Omar Khorasani, was arrested in Kabul alongside the group's spy chief and public relations officer, the General Directorate of National Security (NDS) and Interior Ministry said in a statement.

"NDS will continue its comprehensive and targeted operations to hunt down senior leaders of regional terrorist groups and destroy the joint hubs of these terrorist networks," the statement said.

South Asia Islamic State is mainly focused on a small presence in Afghanistan, largely in the north, though it has waged high profile attacks further south in the capital.

Afghan security forces arrested eight members of a network grouping Islamic State and Haqqani militants responsible for bloody attacks in the capital including on Sikh worshippers, the country's security agency said last Wednesday.

The ongoing violence underscored the challenges to securing lasting peace in Afghanistan even after the United States signed a troop withdrawal agreement with the militant Taliban in February.

The Taliban, which says it opposes the Islamic State and has fought the group, has since held off on large-scale attacks on foreign forces or in major centres, though it has continued attacking Afghan security forces throughout the provinces.

On Monday, there were four roadside blasts in the capital which wounded four civilians, including a child, according to Kabul's police. No group immediately claimed responsibility.

Clashes in eastern Laghman province between security forces and the Taliban killed six security force members and wounded five, according to Haroon Yousufzai, a local military spokesman. The ministry of defence said the Taliban also suffered heavy casualties.

The Afghan government and foreign powers including the United States have been calling on the group to reduce violence, saying it is hindering progress on moving towards formal peace talks.

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The school district's strategic plan also calls for the YMCA to occupy the vacated Ready building. The move would allow the organization to expand.

We have a huge benefit to have the YMCA in the town of Griffith, Dudlicek said.

The district has faced other recent changes, including staff members have been laid off because of declining state and tax revenues and anticipated costs to expand curriculum offerings in fields like science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

This does not make sense if we are trying to be a fiscally responsible school system, according to one of the public comments issued to the school district. One month we are closing schools, the next month we are giving long term contracts to our current superintendent.

There also were many electronic public comments in favor of Riise's contract extension and supportive of the work she has done in the community.
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Linkedin Silvia Aloisi and Sophie Yu (Reuters) Milan/Beijing  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:01 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84d7ae 2 Lifestyle luxury,luxury-bags,luxury-brand,chanel,Louis-Vuitton,coronavirus,COVID-19,France,China Free

Top luxury brands from Chanel to Louis Vuitton have increased prices of some of their most coveted products as they seek to make up for sales lost during weeks of coronavirus lockdowns.

High-end houses have all reported brisk business in South Korea and the key Chinese market, where shops began to reopen in March, partly offsetting a slump in Europe and the United States - where restrictions are only just starting to be lifted.

But with consultancy Bain estimating sales for the $300 billion sector to fall by up to 35 percent this year, bringing to a crushing halt a decade of spectacular growth, luxury groups are moving quickly to protect margins.

Chanel said on Wednesday it was increasing prices on its iconic handbags and some small leather goods by between 5 percent and 17 percent around the world as the pandemic had pushed up the cost of certain raw materials.

"These adjustments are made while ensuring that we avoid excessive price differentials between countries," it said.

Industry powerhouse LVMH's star fashion label Louis Vuitton - which the company said last month was enjoying sales growth in excess of 50 percent in China in early April - has also been hiking prices of handbags in the United States and Europe.

As an example, its Neverfull MM Monogram bag, which costs $1,500 on its website, was priced at $1,430 at the beginning of May and at $1,320 at the end of October, for an overall increase of nearly 14 percent.

The data were collected by Reuters using the Internet Archive, a repository of past web pages. Louis Vuitton declined to comment.

In China and South Korea, people were queuing outside Chanel stores as soon as rumors of imminent price increases began to spread on social media. Xie Lan, a documentary maker in Beijing, said she had managed to buy a handbag for nearly 30,000 yuan ($4,225) before the price hike.

"Work is busy and stressful, I wanted to give myself a treat," she said by phone.

US jeweler Tiffany, which is being bought by LVMH, increased prices of some of its products in South Korea by 10 percent on May 6, a Seoul store manager told Reuters.

Read also: South Korea shoppers line up before dawn ahead of expected Chanel price hike

"Tiffany regularly reviews its pricing strategy including within each of the markets in which we do business to reflect among other things, currency fluctuations and business input costs," a spokesman for the company said in response to a Reuters query, declining to elaborate further.

Analysts said that the strongest brands like Louis Vuitton could be tempted to push prices up given the hit to sales from the virus crisis, which has caused a freeze on international travel and a recession in Europe and the United States.

"It's a strategy to defend margins," said Luca Solca, luxury goods analyst at Bernstein, adding however that not all labels will follow that route because it could trigger a backlash from consumers.

Tod's said on Wednesday it was not planning any significant change to the group's pricing policy for now.

Brands are also grappling with a large amount of unsold stock which they will be reluctant to sell at a big discount in stores, outlets or online out of fear of denting full-price sales and the aura of exclusivity of their goods.

Raising prices also carries risk. In Beijing, Luna Xin, a finance broker, said she was giving up for now on her dream of buying the mid-sized Chanel Classic Flap, whose price had gone up on Thursday by 14.5 percent to 48,900 yuan, she said. "Last September, it was only 39,000 yuan, and now, only a bit more than half a year later, it costs 10,000 more," Xin said.

Chinese shoppers are key for luxury brands as they accounted for 35 percent of global luxury spending in 2019. Bain expects their influence on the sector to grow even further in the next few years - making up nearly half of all luxury sales in 2025.

With global travel not expected to return to normal levels for up to two years, Chinese consumers who used to make two-thirds of their luxury purchases abroad will largely be shopping at home, accelerating a trend that was already under way.

That means that luxury brands are under pressure to further align prices in mainland China - which have traditionally been higher than in other parts of the world - to encourage Chinese consumers to buy in their own country.

Prices in China have gradually come down in recent years, as the government cut import duties and other taxes that had kept them higher. Brands had also spent massively on marketing and rents when they first began trying to crack the market there.

"We believe it is essential not to penalize our clients on the basis of geographic considerations," Chanel said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:49:32|Editor: huaxia

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COPENHAGEN, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Denmark's GDP shrank by 1.9 percent in the first quarter, the biggest quarterly decline since the 2008/2009 financial crisis, according to preliminary figures released Friday by Danmarks Statistik, the country's central statistics office.

"The Danish economy is clearly affected by the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic," according to Danmarks Statistik.

"This is especially evident in areas affected by the shutdown in March, especially for passenger transport, hotels, restaurants, public services, culture, and leisure," the office added.

The only positive takeaway in the new figures comes from commodity-producing industries such as agriculture, industry, and construction, which are showing "no clear signs of a decline," said the office.

As less data than usual is available because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Danmarks Statistik is expected to revise its calculations as more figures emerge.

Meanwhile, the country's 2020 GDP may drop 3 percent to 10 percent, Denmark's national bank estimated in an analysis released in April. Enditem
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  Eighty more healthcare workers have caught the coronavirus disease, the Department of Health reported on Friday, bringing the total infected frontliners to 2,245.

From the new count, 1,431 cases are active or are currently experiencing the illness, including 398 who are not exhibiting symptoms, five severe cases, and one who is in critical condition.

The DOH said 812 nurses, 660 doctors, 137 nursing assistants, 81 medical technologists, 42 radiologic technologists and 260 from other professions tested positive for COVID-19. The current number of cases means 19 percent of the country's total  or one in every five cases  is a health worker.

The national tally has already breached the 12,000 mark.

The total number of recoveries among medical personnel has also risen to 779 with 42 additional survivors, while the death toll is still at 35.

The department reiterated that the number of new cases among healthworkers has continued to go down since April 11.

Authorities had attributed the drop in numbers of infected medical personnel to the distribution of sufficient personal protective equipment to health facilities. National Task Force on COVID-19 response chief implementer Carlito Galvez, Jr. on Thursday said the country's supply of PPE has stabilized with more deliveries expected to arrive next week.

Earlier, the World Health Organization said it was alarmed by the country's rate of infection among health personnel, back when it was still at 13 percent, which it said was possibly due to lack of enough PPE sets.
"An extra AC 3-tier coach has been attached to the special train (#02691) to take the 19 passengers who refused the mandatory 14-day quarantining on returning to the city earlier in the day," Bengaluru railway divisonal manager A.K. Verma told IANS after the train chugged out of the city station at 8:30 pm.

Bengaluru: Only 19 passengers, who refused to undergo the 14-day institutional quarantine in the city after arriving in a special train earlier in the day, left for New Delhi in the return train, an official said on Thursday.

Though initially about 160 returnees wanted to go back to Delhi by the night train, about 141 withdrew later and reconciled to undergo the mandatory quarantine, as about 500 returnees did during the day, albeit very reluctantly.

"Sending the passengers unwilling for quarantining in the return train was decided by the Karnataka government in consultation with the Railway Police Force (RPF), as they cannot go home for the next 14 days and to avoid a law and order problem in the station, as many of them resorted to protests in the station since they arrived earlier in the day," said Verma.

Though 920 passengers boarded the superfast train in New Delhi on Tuesday night, 680 arrived in this tech city earlier in the day, as 240 of them alighted at 5-6 stations en route to their destination.

About 200 of the returnees protested against institutional quarantining in hotels and hostels and insisted on going home for same to ensure they are free from coronavirus.

When the state health and civic officials told the returnees, including women, children and senior citizens that they have to be in compulsory institutional quarantine for 14 days before going home in the city or other places in the southern state, finally 660 of them opted for quarantining as they had no other place to go.
By Online Desk

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is announcing the third tranche of measures related to Prime Minister Modi's Rs 20 lakh crore Atmanirbhar Bharat package on Friday.

On Thursday, Sitharaman announced the second tranche of measures related to Atmanirbhar Bharat. The 2nd tranche of package laid focus on migrant workers, street vendors, small traders, small farmers.

On Wednesday she announced the first tranche of measures in which she detailed out 15 new and some enhanced measures to revive businesses. She had also announced a host of fiscal and regulatory measures for MSMEs, Real Estate, NBFCs, EPF, and Discoms.

Sitharaman will be holding daily press conferences till Sunday.
China, UK and African nations in COVID-19 webinar

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-05-15 10:01

As the COVID-19 is still spreading across the world, international cooperation is crucial to fighting against the pandemic. Around 600 people took part in a video conference on May 13, where Chinese and British experts shared experience in non-hospital care with their African counterparts.

The attendants and audience were government officials, experts, scholars, medics and community workers from China, the UK, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Burundi, and Kenya.





Due to the limited medical resources and anti-epidemic supplies in many developing countries in Africa, some mild and moderate COVID-19 patients have to stay at home, getting home-based care. While discussing the topic of community transmission, Wu Zunyou, chief epidemiologist at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (also known as China CDC) said that it is important to move the patients from the community to a medical environment. That is why China adjusted its anti-epidemic strategy and set up shelter hospitals (also called makeshift hospitals). Dr. Wu then introduced the operation and functions of Chinese shelter hospitals and the services available.

Dr. Zhang Wenhong, head of the Infectious Diseases Department at Huashan Hospital is the leader of Shanghais anti-COVID-19 clinical expert team. During the video conference, he talked about Shanghais experience of fighting against the pandemic. Using the extended Spring Festival Holiday, the government encouraged citizens to stay at home as much as they could to stop the transmission. Shanghai has also carried out testing on all suspected cases and tracked all close contacts. Early detection and timely measures are important for containing the epidemic, said Zhang.

He also made an analysis of Africas anti-epidemic situation. As he observed, the mortality of COVID-19 patients in the continent is high, but it is relatively low among the population under the age of 50. African countries are working hard to keep the epidemic at a low level while reducing its impact on society. Therefore, Zhang believes that the entire society should help the elderly and the vulnerable, while the young labor force can resume their work on the premise of following social distancing rules.

Zhang also suggested that on a personal level, individuals have to take personal protective measures (like wearing masks); and on the government level, massive testing should be provided to fully break the transmission chain.

The pandemic, in the eyes of Sir Oliver Letwin, senior fellow at the Legatum Institute in the UK, is not only about medicine, science and health care, but also about culture and sociology. There is not a template for any country to respond to the disease outbreak, and the methods will vary. Many countries are also faced with the tension between maintaining economic activities and controlling the epidemic, and the governments have to adjust the policies according to the development of COVID-19.

It requires all of us as a global village to fight against the pandemic, and we are happy to see that countries are together to fight, said Monica Mutsvangwa, Information, Publicity and Broadcasting Services Minister of Zimbabwe. She also expressed her gratitude to China and many other countries for their helping hand in donating resources. According to the minister, the country is now using every media to promote anti-epidemic rules like washing hands, especially in rural areas. Traditional leaders like chiefs have also been trained to make sure all people are aware of the dangers.

China and the United Kingdom are important partners for Africa. Helping Africa to fight the coronavirus is in the common interest of all three parties, said Liu Xiaoming, Chinese Ambassador to the UK at the video conference. By quoting a saying of late South African President Nelson Mandela When people are determined, they can overcome anything, Ambassador Liu expressed his firm belief in mankinds ability to combat the pandemic. He hopes this will write a new chapter of mankinds anti-epidemic cooperation, and promote the building of the community of a shared future for mankind in the 21st century.
The Rajasthan government has increased the annual income limit of parents from Rs one lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh under for their children to get free under the Right to Act.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot has approved the proposal to this effect, an official said on Friday.

The spirit of the Right to Act will be strengthened by this approval, he added.

By increasing the income limit, more children from weaker and disadvantaged groups will get free admission in non-government schools, Gehlot said in a statement.

With this decision of the government, a large number of children of this category will also be able to get free education in big and well-known private schools, which are deprived of studying in such school after the previous BJP government reduced the annual income limit of parents from Rs 2.5 lakh to Rs one lakh, the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thiruvananthapuram, May 15 : The lone Keralite in the Union Cabinet V. Muraleedharan on Friday hit back on Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan and held him responsible for the slow evacuation of the Kerala diaspora from the Middle East.

Muraleedharan is the Union Minister of State for External Affairs and presently a Rajya Sabha member from Maharashtra and was responding to Vijayan's remarks made on Thursday.

Vijayan had said that Muraleedharan has some 'problem' and is unaware of what happens at the Centre.

Reacting to it, Muraleedharan said Vijayan speaks like this because in Kerala, every decision is taken by Vijayan and other Minister's have no role.

"But in Delhi, it's not like that as every department is looked after by the concerned ministers. The problem with Vijayan is that he only writes to Prime Minister. What he should best do is, call his bureaucrats and find out from them, what are the Central guidelines. Then he will not speak like this," said Muraleedharan.

Muraleedharan blamed Vijayan for not abiding by the Central guidelines.

"We are ready to bring all the Kerala diaspora who wish to return from the Middle East. Here the problem is, it appears that Kerala, which speaks about having set aside 1.35 lakh rooms for isolation, are not there. This was evident when people who arrived on the naval ship from Maldives as they were running from pillar to post," added Muraleedharan.

"If Vijayan claims he has this many rooms in his custody, then why is he not adhering to the central guidelines of putting all in 14 days institutional isolation. He says Kerala will go in for a week's isolation and then people will be send to their homes to be in isolation for the rest of the days," added Muraleedharan, who hails from Kozhikode and is a former State BJP president.

"We are very clear that we are ready to bring in all the diaspora, but we do not wish them to be under duress, once they reach here, as they are already stressed there," said Muraleedharan.

He also pointed out that numerous requests have come from people who are willing to come on chartered flights.

"Here also the issue is the state government has to give permission," said Muraleedharan.

This is the second round of tit for tat between the two.
New Delhi, May 15 : ITC Ltd Chairman Sanjiv Puri said the agriculture sector reforms announced on Friday will encourage investments in food processing.

"It is heartening to see the reforms announced for the agri sector that provides livelihoods to about half of India's work force. Amendments to the ECA, reforms in agricultural marketing and risk mitigation through predictable prices will empower farmers, strengthen agri-food processing linkages and enable demand-driven value added agriculture," he said.

"The reforms will encourage investments in food processing and together with the infrastructure outlays will contribute in shaping a competitive agri value chain, reduce wastages and raise farmer incomes," Puri added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a special economic and comprehensive package of Rs 20 lakh crore - equivalent to 10 per cent of India's GDP on May 12.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced measures to strengthen agriculture infrastructure logistics, capacity building, governance and administrative reforms for agriculture, fisheries and food processing sectors.

She also announced measures for governance and administrative reforms for agriculture sector.

These include amendments to Essential Commodities Act to enable better price realisation for farmers.

The government will amend Essential Commodities Act, to deregulate agriculture food stuffs including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato. Stock limit will be imposed under very exceptional circumstances like national calamities, or famine with surge in prices. Further, no such stock limit shall apply to processors or value chain participant, subject to their installed capacity or to any exporter subject to the export demand.
Hon Hai Precision Industry, also known as Foxconn, forecast another revenue decline after profit plunged by the most on record in the March quarter, when the novel coronavirus froze much of its China production and walloped global smartphone demand. Apple's most important manufacturing partner recorded an 89 percent decline in net income, to $70 million, in the first three months of the year. Global shipments of smartphones fell at their fastest rate on record in the first quarter.
A drinks industry group wants funding from both sides of the border to finance small whiskey producers international growth.

The Ibec-affiliated Drinks Ireland-Irish Whiskey Association has said that, with visitor centres closed, and sales channels  like bars, hotels and restaurants  shut, 2020 will prove very different to 2019 when global sales of Irish whiskey doubled and record numbers visited distilleries.
Amid the unprecedented outbreak of deadly coronavirus as lockdowns have been imposed on major countries, millions are confined only to their homes. To pass time, Venezuelans have been passing wine across rooftops to celebrate 'happy hour' and it is giving birth to friendships over pleasant conversations with music playing in the background. Venezuela has been under lockdown to curb the further spread of COVID-19 disease when neighbours started enjoying the sunset together. According to international reports, a real estate agent clueless of figuring out a way to utilise time wandered to her houses rooftop in Los Palos Grandes neighbourhood when she saw the neighbours exchanging conversations across the buildings.

Read - David Warner Creatively Plays Music In New TikTok Clip With Kitchenware, Wine Glass: Watch

The tradition of enhancing friendships among neighbours began when people shared wine by pouring the drink into a plastic container tied to a fishing line and then throwing it to someones house nearby. The container was then retrieved and shared among other neighbours. This tradition has now evolved into sharing of coffees, having dinner gatherings while also following the social distancing guidelines. As of May 15, Venezuela has publicly reported at least 455 cases of COVID-19 disease with at least 10 deaths.

Did you know that people in Venezuela often pass wine across rooftops to celebrate happy hour during quarantine?@billwamukota #COVID19 #DefeatCoronaKE pic.twitter.com/WypdMf717M  Brian Mrira (@BrianMrira) May 14, 2020

Read - Top US Restaurant Uses Mannequins To Fill Seats Amid Re-opening; Serves Wine To Them

Read - Grit And Red Wine: Famous War Photographer Beats Virus At 97

Man pours wine for his neighbour

Another incident involving wine had taken the internet by storm during the month-long lockdown when a man poured wine from his window to someone living downstairs. The video showing the transfer of drink amused the internet users who also deemed it as lockdown love story. The unforeseen circumstances have led people to find unique ways to remain in touch and interact to pass time while being indoors. Apparently, the user who posted the video shot by someone else met the woman living a floor below him while banging pots for healthcare workers. It was when he asked the girl to get a glass of wine when other neighbours were left in awe.

Met the girl downstairs tonight banging pots out the window for healthcare workers. Told her to hold out her wine glass. Bystanders saw. pic.twitter.com/mWh65D0qza  Phillip Kirkland (@philsince87) April 4, 2020

Read - Ricky Ponting Launches New Wine Business By Naming First Champagne As 'Close Of Play'

Read - Taylor Swift Enjoys A Glass Of Wine Amid COVID-19 Lockdown; Calls It 'big Isolation'


Sinn Fein health spokesperson and local TD, Louise O'Reilly has said she is baffled as to why the government have still not initiated stricter entry restrictions to the State, such as those successfully adhered to in New Zealand in their efforts to combat COVID-19.

Deputy O'Reilly said: 'For some time now, many members of the general public, media and politicians have been highlighting the need for stricter entry restrictions to curb COVID-19 transmission.

'The government has failed to act in this regard. For weeks now, as the vast majority across the State adhere to a strict lockdown, people have still been arriving into the State from abroad.

'It is baffling that there are still a significant number of travellers arriving at our seaports and airports who are neither residents nor have a valid reason for travelling to Ireland.

'It is also confusing as to why residents returning home are not being assessed when they arrive as to the risk they pose of carrying COVID-19 and whether they need to be medically quarantined or be provided with a place to isolate for 14 days.

'Since March 19, the New Zealand border has been effectively closed to almost all. The ban, which applies to all arrivals by land or sea, with the exception of permanent residents and residents with valid travel conditions returning to New Zealand, has been pivotal to their successful efforts to reduce COVID-19 transmissions.

'Their regulations also ensure that those arriving home are medically assessed, with high-risk persons medically quarantined, and all other arrivals have been managed in isolation facilities.

'These measures, along with their day-to-day public health response, have clearly been a success as the country has been able to contain the virus to the point that they have had no new cases of COVID-19 for the past two days.'

She concluded: 'It is truly baffling that the government haven't enacted a travel ban to all entering this State, with the exception of residents.'
New Delhi, April 20 (IANS) Condemning the Palghar incident where 3 persons were killed by a mob, the Congress, here on Monday, criticised the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for attempting to politicise and communalise it and asked the Maharashtra Chief Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 15 : The Congress slammed the government's Rs 20 lakh crore package, saying it has "only 13 zeros" for farmers after the Finance Minister announced the third tranche of welfare schemes for the farmers on Friday.

"This is a big 'jumla' and Rs 20 lakh crore is only 13 zeros for the citizens of the country," alleged Randeep Surjewala, Congress chief spokesperson.

The Rs 20 lakh crore package is not relief to countrymen but "voodoo economics" as there is no reality in the so called package, said Surjewala.

The party claimed that the minister is only repackaging the Budget and she should apologise to the farmers as no direct benefit is being given to the farmers and that it is "only headline and no helpline".

It described the three-day package announcement as only a "loan distribution drive" for already distressed farmers.

During the coronavirus pandemic, farmers and labourers are facing the most difficulty. Instead of giving them relief the Modi government is hurting the farmers and labourers and instead of providing help, it is pushing the farmer into a debt trap, said Surjewala.

He alleged that it is clear the Modi government neither understands the pain of the farmer nor the problems of farming. Therefore, the farmers have not been extended any help, even worth a single penny.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced that the Centre will set up a Rs 1 lakh crore agri infrastructure fund for farm-gate infrastructure for farmers.

She said that financing facility of Rs 1 lakh crore will be provided for funding in agriculture infrastructure projects at the farm-gate and aggregation points such as primary agricultural cooperative societies, farmer producer organisations and agriculture entrepreneurs, among others.
The latest:

As the nation enters a third month of economic devastation, the coronavirus is proving ruinous to state budgets, forcing many governments to consider deep cuts to schools, universities, health care and other basic functions that would have been unthinkable just a few months ago.

Many states expect their revenue to plunge by 15% to 20% because government-ordered lockdowns have wiped out much of the economy and caused tax collections to evaporate. That puts statehouses billions of dollars in the red for the fiscal year that usually begins in July.

The projected gap in California is more than a fifth of its spending plan and in Oklahoma, a sixth. Michigan may have to slash up to a quarter of the money it sends to schools.

Theres no crisis weve had that even comes close to this, said Greg Albrecht, chief economist for the Louisiana Legislature. This is a (Hurricane) Katrina-sized downgrade in the forecast. A forecasting panel slashed the states income projections by $1 billion because of the virus.

Before the pandemic, most states had generally healthy budget situations and were working on adding to their reserves. Now state finances are in peril regardless of the actual number of infections. In nearly every state that has estimates, the projected budget gaps are bigger than the emergency savings.



Governors and lawmakers hope for at least a partial bailout from Congress, which is considering a relief package that could provide money to keep teachers in classrooms, parks open and police on the streets.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said his state needs $61 billion in federal support "or we will wind up aggravating the situation by forcing cuts to local governments.

You know who local governments are? Thats police, firefighters. You want me to cut hospitals? Hospitals are the nurses and the doctors who just got us through this and everyone celebrates as heroes. If you dont fund the state, thats who youre cutting in terms of finances.

One state that stands to survive with minimal cutbacks is South Carolina, where revenue in the $10 billion budget that starts July 1 is expected to be down by perhaps $1 billion  but all of that shortfall was in extra money the state expected to collect in taxes and fees before the pandemic crash. Utah officials said they may be in a similar situation, with enough reserves to weather the pandemic. And Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, said Wednesday his state is still projecting a surplus a year from now, although smaller than originally planned, and does not anticipate budget cuts.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a nonpartisan but generally left-leaning think tank, projects a cumulative budget gap of $650 billion for state governments through the next two fiscal years.

House Democrats included nearly a third of a $3 trillion aid bill for state and local governments. The plan is scheduled to get its first vote on Friday. A bipartisan version expected to be introduced in the Senate calls for $500 billion for governments.

FBI seizes GOP senator's phone in investigation of stock trades after coronavirus briefings, report says

Federal agents seized a cellphone belonging to Sen. Richard Burr on Wednesday night as part of a Justice Department probe into stock transactions he made ahead of the sharp market downturn sparked by concerns over the coronavirus, a law enforcement official told the Los Angeles Times.

The North Carolina Republican turned over his phone after agents served a search warrant at his home in the Washington area, the official told the newspaper.

The warrant and subsequent cellphone seizure mark a notable step in the probe into whether Burr sought to profit from information he obtained in nonpublic briefings about the virus's spread. CNN has reached out to Burr, his attorney, the Justice Department and the FBI for comment.

Burr, who leads the Senate Intelligence Committee, has been scrutinized for selling up to $1.7 million in stocks in February after he received closed-door briefings about the virus before the market began trending downward.

He has denied any wrongdoing -- saying he made the trades based solely on public information, not information he received from the committee -- and he asked the Senate Ethics Committee to review the sales after they were made public.

Wisconsin Supreme Court blocks governor's stay-at-home extension

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers' administration overstepped its authority when it extended the governor's stay-at-home order through the end of May, the state Supreme Court ruled Wednesday.



The 4-3 ruling marks a defeat for Evers as Republican legislators, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic and with the aid of the conservative-controlled high court, continue to chip away at the Democratic governors powers.

The decision invalidates the order but not immediately. The majority chose to leave it in place until May 20 to give the Legislature and Evers' administration time to come up with a new coronavirus plan.

Evers issued a stay-at-home order in March that closed schools and nonessential businesses. The closures battered the state economy, but Evers argued they were necessary to slow the virus' spread. The order was supposed to lift on April 24, but Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Andrea Palm, an Evers appointee, extended it to May 26.

Republicans, worried about the economic fallout, asked the Supreme Court on April 21 to block the extension. The Republicans said Palm exceeded her authority and argued that the extension amounts to an administrative rule, requiring legislative approval.

Evers administration countered that state law clearly gives the executive branch broad authority to quickly enact emergency measures to control communicable diseases. Attorney General Josh Kaul also noted that Evers' order was similar to that in at least 42 other states and has saved many lives.

Nearly seven out of 10 Wisconsin residents still back Evers safer at home order, based on a Marquette University Law School poll released Tuesday. However, the support had dropped from 86% in March to 69% in May, driven by increasing opposition from Republicans, the poll showed.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

Evers' administration faced an uphill battle in convincing the court to keep the order in place. Conservative-leaning justices hold a 5-2 majority. Four of the the five conservative justices joined on the majority opinion.

Chief Justice Patience Roggensack wrote for the majority that the order equates to an emergency rule that Palm can't enact unilaterally. The order creates criminal penalties that Palm has no authority to create, she added.



The GOP has not offered any alternative plans. The state's chamber of commerce has suggested allowing all businesses to open at once while compelling higher-risk establishments and operations to take increasingly strict mitigation measures such as requiring employees to use protective gear.



The GOP move against Evers mirrors actions taken by Republican-controlled legislatures in other states, most notably against the Democratic governors in nearby blue wall states Michigan and Pennsylvania. All three are critical presidential battlegrounds in November.

Nearly 27 million Americans may have lost job-based health insurance, study shows



Nearly 27 million Americans may have lost their employer-based health insurance amid sweeping layoffs due to the coronavirus pandemic, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation report released Wednesday.

Not all of those people will be left uninsured, however. Some 12.7 million would be eligible for Medicaid and another 8.4 million could qualify for subsidies to buy coverage on the Affordable Care Act exchanges  though Kaiser notes they would have to sign up for that coverage.

But that would still leave about 5.7 million people who would have to shoulder the full cost of new policies, which could prove too expensive for newly unemployed people. They could continue their employer coverage through COBRA, but would have to pay the entire premium, which totals $7,188 for a single person and $20,576 for a family of four, on average  putting that group at risk for becoming uninsured.

The report is the latest in a series of dire projections of how the steep economic downturn has likely left millions of people without employer-based policies, which cover roughly 153 million non-elderly workers and their dependents.

More than 33 million people or 1 in 5 Americans  have filed initial unemployment claims over the past seven weeks. And a record 20.5 million jobs were lost in April, sending the unemployment rate up to 14.7%.



US on track towards more deaths as states ease restrictions, researcher warns

Nearly every state in the U.S. is moving toward reopening from pandemic closures, but a leading researcher warns that doing so puts the country on an "unfortunate trajectory" to more coronavirus deaths.



At least 48 states will be partially reopened by Sunday in the midst of a pandemic that has infected more than 1,300,000 people and killed 82,387, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

An influential model cited often by the White House now predicts that 147,000 people in the nation will die from the virus by August, the researcher behind the model Dr. Chris Murray told CNN's Don Lemon Tuesday. It's an increase of 10,000 deaths from two days earlier and double what was projected two weeks ago.

"We originally had thought that people would go the distance, keep social distance in place right until the end of May," Murray said. "But what's happened is states have relaxed early."

And the public is following their government's lead, he said. He sees more people gathering in groups, increasing the mingling that brings new cases, Murray said.

And as Murray's team predicts a worsening situation, Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Dr. Anthony Fauci said Tuesday that the number of coronavirus deaths already in the U.S. is likely higher than recorded.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk introduces the new battery-powered Cybertruck at the Tesla Design Center in Hawthorne in November of last year. (Frederic J. Brown / AFP/Getty Images)

To the editor: Up to this time I was always supportive of Tesla Motors Chief Executive Elon Musk and his risky investment in creating a 21st century vehicle. Unfortunately, by opening Tesla's Fremont factory against the orders of Alameda County officials, he has disgraced himself.

Musk's total disregard and lack of empathy for human life appalls many of us. I had, in fact, recently decided to buy two of his Teslas, but that will no longer be happening.

His behavior toward government officials trying to save the lives of Californians from COVID-19, calling them "fascist," was despicable. He has taken a threatening and dispassionate attitude toward his workers, which is totally unacceptable.

We now know where Musk's real principles lie, so we will not lie with him.

Adrian Bernotti, Cathedral City

..

To the editor: Musk is the greatest innovator of this century. However, he shows his ignorance when he calls our state "fascist" for implementing its stay-home order.

Last century, fascists murdered 6 million European Jews and started World War II, which took more than 60 million lives globally. The state's pandemic rules have clearly saved lives. Real fascists don't save lives.

So yes, Musk can leave California and let another car company take his place. Ford and General Motors will certainly be making more electric cars in the coming years.

Mark Haskin, Marina del Rey

..

To the editor: Several descriptions of Musk toward the end of Michael Hilzik's column struck me as familiar. Just substitute Musk for President Trump:

"This isn't the behavior of a [president]. It's the behavior of a child."

"[Trump's] desperation to get production moving again has melded with a paranoid streak."

"Just think about how much better off [the country] would be in its quest to reopen production if its [president] acted like a grown-up."

Barbara Luther, Orange
Nearly 70 percent of homeowners with mortgages have loans somehow supported by the federal government. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, two government-sponsored entities, buy many loans from lenders and package them into investments that are akin to government bonds. Other borrowers who often put less money down have their loans insured by the Federal Housing Administration. Because of the governments involvement in those loans, regulators have laid out options available to borrowers who must skip payments, and in almost all cases they can push back what they owe until the home is sold or refinanced or when the loan term is up.

The situation is often murkier for borrowers, like Carla Knight of Queens, whose loans are held by private investors.

Until recently, Ms. Knight, 50, worked as a paraprofessional caring for mentally challenged children while they rode on a school bus that now sits idle. Her paycheck was reduced before she was laid off completely on May 4.

After her pay cut, Ms. Knight called her mortgage servicer, Mr. Cooper, which said it would provide a three-month forbearance on her $198,000 loan with a lump-sum payment due when she restarted payments.

She called again after she was laid off, and the servicer extended her forbearance to six months  but shed still owe a lump-sum payment. Come September, Ms. Knight said, she would owe roughly $13,500. If she isnt allowed to push that back, her only alternative is to pursue a loan modification, which could, for example, allow her to extend the length of her mortgage. But thats a more complicated process and often requires an application.

The uncertainty is unsettling. Ms. Knight, who lives with her 13-year-old twins and granddaughter in a four-bedroom home, said she had asked the company if the payments could be tacked on to the end of her mortgage. But they keep telling me they have modifications, she said.
A recent wave of COVID-19 infections and deaths has highlighted the brutal cost of being an essential Hispanic worker.

Latinos are overwhelmingly overrepresented among people infected with the virus relative to their share of the population, according to Rogelio Saenz, professor of demography at the University of Texas at San Antonio. Saenz, who wrote recently about the issue on the Latino Decisions blog, analyzed data from the 38 states and the District of Columbia that report COVID-19 infection cases and/or deaths for Latinos.

Its no surprise that Latinos have been so hard hit by the virus. Essential services these days usually consist of harvesting, preparing, cooking, selling or delivering food, and often for companies that dont offer personal protective equipment, health insurance benefits or paid time off for illness.

Worse, not only are these truly essential workers often toiling in this country without the proper permits and authorizations  for cruelly low wages  but theyre seen by many as disposable and definitely not important people.

For example, Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack had a telling reaction recently during legal arguments over keeping the state closed for business. In response to the example of Brown County and the JBS Packerland meatpacking plant  which saw coronavirus cases soar from about 60 to almost 800  she said: These were due to the meatpacking, though. Thats where Brown County got the flare. It wasnt just the regular folks in Brown County.

Worker advocates, such as Voces de la Frontera Director Christine Neumann-Ortiz, told local media that many of the meatpacking plant workers are black and Hispanic, making Roggensacks statement racist, because it implied those workers lives were less worthy than the lives of others.

Again, thats not astonishing, because brown people, especially those who are immigrants, have been dehumanized for years and talked about as not worthy of the same consideration as everyone else.

Even as jails and prisons across the country make smart decisions about how to lower the size of their populations in ways that will not put communities at risk for crime, immigration enforcement and incarceration continue unabated. And there has been little transparency, oversight or response to inquiries about what is being done to ensure that there are no massive COVID outbreaks in these facilities.

Congressman Mark Pocan, D-Wis., spoke about the problem Wednesday during a Facebook live video hosted by the Community Immigration Law Center of Madison, Wis. Pocan told viewers that the Kenosha County Sheriffs Department moved all of its Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees out of the detention center as part of its COVID-19 response. However, Pocan said, they scattered the 170 men and women to Illinois, Texas and parts unknown rather than releasing them.

Its just a disregard for the people they have in custody, Pocan said. We know that ICE is still very active and not taking COVID-19 into consideration. ... The fact that theyre still doing raids is really crazy. Pocan also said that he has tried getting information about ICE operations in his state to no avail. Of my seven years in Congress, they are the hardest agency to get information from, even though Im on the appropriations committee. In many ways, they act like a rogue agency.

Pocan was speaking as news broke about the first immigrant in ICE detention who had died of complications from coronavirus infection.

Just as worker advocates have been predicting for months that essential workers were at high risk of being infected with COVID-19, so have activists for unauthorized immigrants been saying that the ongoing immigration crackdowns, presidential bluster and the inhumanity of ICE operations would kill immigrants in detention and put their jailers and caretakers at risk.

The dominoes have started to topple.

Now, how many dead grocery store clerks, meat plant processors and grocery delivery people who dont have any real access to preventive equipment or health care have to die in order to get some relief for workers who have so far been cut out of federal stimulus packages?

How many detainees and doctors, social workers, pro bono lawyers, prison guards and janitors have to die before ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. Border Patrol pause their mass incarcerations and gathering of people who are at high risk for infection?

And how many times do journalists of color have to tell the same story about how black and brown people are being callously thrown at the pandemic virus before people will start actually caring?

estherjcepeda@washpost.com
INVESTOR ALERT: Law Offices of Howard G. Smith Announces Investigation of Abbott Laboratories (ABT) on Behalf of Investors

Law Offices of Howard G. Smith announces an investigation on behalf of Abbott Laboratories ("Abbott" or the "Company") (NYSE: ABT) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of federal securities laws.

On May 14, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that early data "suggest[s] potential inaccurate results from using the Abbott ID NOW point-of-care test to diagnose COVID-19 . . . and [that] the test may return false ngative results."







On this news, Abbott's share price fell sharply during intraday trading on May 15, 2020.

If you purchased Abbott securities, have information or would like to learn more about these claims, or have any questions concerning this announcement or your rights or interests with respect to these matters, please contact Howard G. Smith, Esquire, of Law Offices of Howard G. Smith, 3070 Bristol Pike, Suite 112, Bensalem, Pennsylvania 19020 by telephone at (215) 638-4847, toll-free at (888) 638-4847, or by email to [email protected], or visit our website at www.howardsmithlaw.com.

This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005511/en/
TRENTON  Community service remains alive and well during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Trenton-based physician Dr. Vedat Obuz has delivered crucial personal protective equipment or PPE to fellow frontline workers earlier this week, and on Friday he plans to donate 2,500 washable face masks to the capital city.

As a physician, Obuz said in a press statement, its difficult to stand by and watch health care workers at Capital Health Regional Medical Center and other facilities provide life-saving care to their critical patients without having the necessary protection to limit the spread of the disease to themselves and their other patients. Im pleased that Im in position with the help of the Turkish American Steering Committee to donate these much-needed supplies.

The good doctor and TASC, a nonprofit advocacy group, bestowed 500 hazmat suits and 4,500 surgical masks to the capital citys trauma center on Wednesday.

Al Maghazehe, president and CEO of Capital Health, thanked Obuz and TASC for gifting this all-important gear, calling it an act of exceptional generosity.

COVID-19 is a highly contagious respiratory illness that has killed at least 9,946 residents of New Jersey, according to state Department of Health data released Thursday.

In Trenton, at least 2,206 city residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 54 have died from coronavirus complications, data show.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends wearing cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, particularly in areas of significant community-based transmission.

In New Jersey, Gov. Phil Murphy has ordered the employees and customers of essential retail businesses to wear cloth face coverings while working or patronizing the business.

With face masks being an essential item during this global pandemic, Obuz and TASC on Friday are scheduled to donate 2,500 washable face masks to the capital city on Friday.

The Mayor Reed Gusciora administration, in turn, will redistribute those masks to local Trenton residents who cannot afford or find masks for personal use.

Gusciora applauded the efforts by Obuz and TASC, saying its great people are stepping up to the plate helping us out.

Theres so much despair out there, he added, and it is so great when people do help us out.

The Central Jersey Chinese-American Association and other organizations donated critical PPE to the capital city last month at Trenton Fire Department headquarters, and the CDC Foundation recently provided 30,000 European certified high-grade protective masks for Trentons first responders.

In addition to providing washable face coverings, Obuz and TASC on Friday are planning to donate a two-week food supply to the citys Reading Senior Citizens Center.

I know how difficult this time has been for so many of my senior patients who have been restricted in their movements, Obuz said in a press statement. With COVID-19, many of our seniors who typically attend the center are not receiving their free meals and we wanted to make sure they didnt worry about basic necessities such as food during this stressful time.

Numerous community partners, including the Turkish American National Steering Committee and the Latino Merchant Association of New Jersey, are stepping up to provide Trenton residents with so-called grab-and-go meals during this time of economic hardship and public health emergency.

Obuz, who has been practicing medicine in Trenton for more than 20 years, has recently been cleared of any wrongdoing in a criminal probe brought against him.

The U.S. government in May 2019 charged the doctor with health care fraud but later dismissed all charges on March 17 after he mounted a rigorous defense.

Successfully defending his reputation, Obuz in a statement said that no emotional or material cost is too high to preserve the sacrosanct relationship between the physician and their patient.
World Health Groups Ask India to Rescind Gilead's Patents for COVID-19 Drug

Gilead Sciences Inc. pharmaceutical companys headquarters in Oceanside, California / REUTERS

NEW DELHITwo health advocacy groups have written to the Indian government asking it to rescind patents given to Gilead Sciences for the drug remdesivir so it can be distributed more fairly to coronavirus patients around the world, particularly in poorer nations.

Drug patents in India are an important issue as many countries depend on generic drugmakers to make and sell cheaper versions of critical drugs to them. Gileads three patents in India for remdesivir stem from 2009 when the drug was in development to treat Ebola.

Remdesivir is the only drug approved to treat COVID-19 patients after promising early trial results prompted U.S. regulators to grant emergency use authorization on May 2.

To expand its access, Gilead said this week it had signed non-exclusive licensing pacts with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan, allowing them to make and sell remdesivir for 127 countries.

But health access groups say the pacts mean cheaper forms of the drug may not become available in nations seen as non-profitable to the five drugmakers.

The licenses divide the global market into two and profitable markets are retained with Gilead and less profitable markets are given to the five generic companies, said K. Gopakumar, senior legal researcher at Third World Network, which sent a letter to the Indian government on Wednesday.

The letter by Third World Network, a Malaysia-based non-profit group, followed a similar appeal by Indias Cancer Patients Aid Association last week.

The aid group Doctors Without Borders has also opposed Gileads patents on remdesivir, saying such licensing pacts are not acceptable amid a global health emergency.

Gileads patents on remdesivir in India allow it to exclusively make and sell the drug in the country until 2035 unless it licenses those rights out.

A Gilead spokeswoman told Reuters in an email that the company is actively considering every potential pathway to make the drug available to those who need it as fast as possible.

She said the company was in talks with the UN-backed Medicines Patent Pool and the United Nations Childrens Fund to expand access to it.

Compulsory licensing will not solve the challenge of limited supply, the spokeswoman said, referring to a provision under which countries can allow manufacturers to make certain drugs without the patent owners consent.

Indias commerce and health ministries did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

Indias Cancer Patients Aid Association said it might pursue legal action, noting that cancer patients have compromised immunity and are highly susceptible to the virus.

It is imperative at a time like this that no monopoly rights be granted, so that more manufacturers can produce the drug to be made available to all the people who need it, at affordable costs, it said.

Except for remdesivir, there are currently no other drugs or vaccines approved to fight coronavirus, which has killed more than 200,000 people globally.

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Pubs are struggling with the lockdown. (PA)

Pub and brewery chiefs have warned that up to 70 million pints of beer could go to waste as pubs lie empty during the coronavirus lockdown.

The British Beer & Pub Association (BBP) said it was a great shame vast quantities of British beer would go off before pubs were able to reopen under the governments plans.

The governments exit strategy from the lockdown puts pubs, restaurants and bars low on the priority list, with concerns over virus risks meaning no reopening until 4 July at the very earliest.

Social distancing rules are expected to be ordered if they do reopen, significantly limiting customer numbers and leaving many pubs unviable without continued government support. Consumers are also expected to be reluctant to socialise in large groups, meaning a double hit for pubs, according to the BBPA.

READ MORE: Pubs pin hopes on takeaway pints and Zoom quizzes

The need to destroy so much beer really shows how much our brewing and pub sectors have been affected by this crisis, said Emma McClarkin, chief executive of the BBPA, a leading industry body.

She said some unsold beer could be used for animal feed and to create organic fertiliser for farming, however. Thousands of pubs and brewers have begun selling takeaway and delivery services for beer, other drinks and food, but most are shut and are battling to survive.

McClarkin called for extra cash for the industry, particularly for firms unable to reopen. many more of our nations pubs and the brewers that supply them with beer will struggle to survive closure and beyond.

She warned last week up to 15,000 pubs could be permanently shut if the government does not allow reopening before the end of September.

But beer chiefs have welcomed the announcement of a government-led taskforce for the sector this week.
Colbeck says a senior group, meeting twice-weekly, was set up to help manage the Newmarch outbreak, including federal and state representatives, a staffer from the aged care regulator, a senior doctor, a commonwealth medical officer and an infectious diseases expert as well as Millard himself. But the Anglicare chief insists lack of clarity remained about which protocols to apply and who was responsible for them. Family members of residents gather outside Anglicare's Newmarch House in Caddens on May 5. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer As an example, Millard cites the decision by the state health department to preference caring for the stricken residents in situ, rather than by way of transfer to hospital. "The biggest issue, that multiple people have commented on, was the question of why weren't these people taken to a hospital? Big question. Very early on it was very clear to us that the state health approach was to have a containment of the outbreak. I won't say at all costs, but their priority was to achieve containment, and [their] solution to containment was to keep these people in the home.''

That meant, he says, not "facilitating" the movement of residents out to the relevant hospital, which was Nepean. Instead, the approach of NSW officials was to treat residents in place under the state's "hospital-in-the-home" program. Loading That didn't mean denying a resident's wish to be transferred to hospital if they really wanted more aggressive treatment such as ventilation, he concedes. (Seven did move out for treatment). But it is telling that, in the end, only two of the 16 COVID-19 deaths occurred outside the home. In response to questions from the Herald, a NSW Health spokesperson defended the treatment protocols, pointing to nationally agreed guidelines on managing COVID-19 in aged care facilities which state there'll be "transfer [of] residents to hospital only if their condition warrants". The spokesperson also accused Newmarch of "struggl[ing] to comply with their responsibilities under the national guidelines" and said NSW Health then "assisted in providing infectious disease specialists, palliative and geriatric specialists".

But Newmarch was not a hospital, and it was unrealistic to expect it to function like one, Millard argues. Hospital-in-the-home' care might have sounded "sensible" in theory but had drawbacks when applied in an aged care facility (as opposed to being delivered inside an individual's home). For a start infection control was a far greater challenge. Newmarch, as a residential facility, had been fitted out for familiarity and comfort, with carpets, soft furnishings and each resident's treasured possessions on site. There were not the wide corridors, holding bays and easily swabbed down spaces that a hospital provides. A second significant hurdle was drastic shortages of PPE [gowns, shoe covers, masks, gloves] in the first week or more of the outbreak, coupled with gaping staff shortfalls. Newmarch had built up some PPE stocks prior to the outbreak. It believed it had assurances from a range of suppliers that more would be forthcoming if needed. "Our preparedness was solid," Millard insists. But when the crunch came the promises evaporated. "People would tell you, yes, no problem' but when you actually started knocking on the door, pushing and shoving on the door, there ain't nothing inside," he says.

"The assumption was that when we had an outbreak, access to the national stockpile would be easy, it would just flow. It didn't flow as quickly as it needed to." Workers leave Anglicare's Newmarch House on May 5. Millard says his staff had cared for residents with ''tremendous compassion. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer While there was enough protective gear to care for those who were COVID-19 positive, it wasn't sufficient to cover staff attending other seemingly non-positive residents, he says. "And that's a key learning for everybody about an outbreak. You must assume that every resident in that home is positive." He insists however that "good medical care was being delivered". Now fully equipped, Newmarch is churning through a staggering number of protective items each day: 2000 gowns; 12,000 gloves; 50 sets of goggles; 400 shoe covers; and 30 face shields at a total cost of $21,000 daily. The vast majority of items get used once and are then thrown out. Even an interaction as simple as setting up a resident with an iPad to call home requires kitting up. "It was the perfect storm," Millard says. "I don't think everyone understood at that stage that you have to apply a clear strategy of [assuming] everyone is positive until proven otherwise  Every interaction has to be with full PPE, and the maths just follows."

On the staffing front, Millard says it proved impossible to get the number of registered nurses they needed on site, at least for the first week to 10 days. While Anglicare had invested in a reserve staff force, this proved insufficient to compensate for the sheer numbers of workers that had to be sent home to self-isolate as the outbreak escalated. He describes Tuesday, April 20, as the "blackest" day for understaffing. "On that day, across the 24 hours, we had only nine registered nurses when we were looking to deploy 28, which is what we have now," he says. "There were eight or nine agencies we were working through; they just couldn't supply that many people." Newmarch was so desperate for staff on April 20 that the residential manager and the clinical care expert put in place by NSW Health, Professor James Branley, had to pitch in with tasks as fundamental as managing residents' bathroom needs. Millard acknowledges the Newmarch team was stretched too thin at that time to attend to communicating effectively with families, who grew increasingly anxious with some setting up a protest site outside. That prompted a personal intervention from NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard, who spoke to Millard about it.

"Was it good? No, it was not acceptable," he concedes. "But the context that we were in, our priority was seeking to provide care to the residents; all our efforts went into that." Colbeck rejects any suggestion that the Commonwealth fell short. He says the federal offer of workforce support was initially refused because Anglicare itself said it had adequate contingency plans in place. "When these plans were unsuccessful, the Commonwealth began supplying and continues to supply a majority of the Newmarch workforce," Colbeck told the Herald. He also says Newmarch has been the only facility where the aged care regulator has had to issue a formal notice of compliance in relation to COVID-19  as it did last week when it insisted Anglicare appoint independent adviser Andrew Kinkade or risk losing its licence. Colbeck says he wants the current federal royal commission into aged care to examine the Newmarch outbreak so "we understand properly what has occurred here." Millard says he accepts that intervention by the regulator. "If I was in her (Janet Anderson, the aged care quality and safety commissioner) shoes I would do the same thing". But he says the situation now is "vastly different to what it was three, even two weeks ago." NSW Health says "the apparent incapacity of the Anglicare management to comply with its obligations" had prompted Hazzard to ask the Commonwealth to develop a protocol dealing with situations where "an aged care facility cannot fulfil its obligations under the national guidelines".
A clinical trial has begun to evaluate whether the malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, given together with the antibiotic azithromycin, can prevent hospitalization and death from coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, is sponsoring the trial, which is being conducted by the NIAID-funded AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG). Teva Pharmaceuticals is donating medications for the study.

The Phase 2b trial will enroll approximately 2,000 adults at participating ACTG sites across the United States. Study participants must have confirmed infection with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, and be experiencing fever, cough and/or shortness of breath. The investigators anticipate that many of those enrolled will be 60 years of age or older or have a comorbidity associated with developing serious complications from COVID-19, such as cardiovascular disease or diabetes. Participants will be randomly assigned to receive short-term treatment with either hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin or matching placebos. People living with HIV and pregnant and breastfeeding women also are eligible to participate in the study. The first participant enrolled today in San Diego, California.

We urgently need a safe and effective treatment for COVID-19. Repurposing existing drugs is an attractive option because these medications have undergone extensive testing, allowing them to move quickly into clinical trials and accelerating their potential approval for COVID-19 treatment. Although there is anecdotal evidence that hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin may benefit people with COVID-19, we need solid data from a large randomized, controlled clinical trial to determine whether this experimental treatment is safe and can improve clinical outcomes." Anthony S. Fauci, M.D., NIAID Director

As of May 13, the World Health Organization (WHO) has reported 4.17 million cases of and 287,399 deaths from COVID-19 worldwide. In the United States, 1.36 million confirmed COVID-19 cases and 82,246 deaths have been reported as of May 13, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Currently, there are no specific therapeutics approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat people with COVID-19. Hydroxychloroquine is FDA-approved to prevent and treat malaria, as well as to treat the autoimmune diseases rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. Some preliminary reports have suggested that hydroxychloroquine, alone or in combination with the FDA-approved antibiotic azithromycin, may benefit people with COVID-19. Numerous clinical trials are planned or underway, including a recently launched study supported by NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute evaluating the safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine for treatment of adults hospitalized with COVID-19. On March 28, FDA issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) to allow hydroxychloroquine and medical-grade chloroquine to be distributed from the Strategic National Stockpile and prescribed by doctors to hospitalized adolescents and adults with COVID-19, as appropriate, when a clinical trial is not available or feasible.

Participants in the ACTG study, called A5395, will receive oral medications to take at home. Those randomly assigned to the experimental treatment group will take 400 milligrams (mg) of hydroxychloroquine twice on the first day and 200 mg twice daily for an additional six days. They also will take 500 mg of azithromycin on the first day and 250 mg daily for an additional four days. The control group will receive equivalent numbers of placebo pills. Neither the participants nor the study team will know who received experimental treatment or placebo until the end of the trial.

Participants will record their symptoms, adherence to treatment, and major events such as hospitalizations in a diary for 20 days. Study staff will follow up with participants by telephone during this period. When possible, participants will come to the clinical research site for an in-person visit at day 20. Additional follow-ups will be conducted by telephone three and six months after treatment starts.

The main objective of the study is to determine whether hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin can prevent hospitalization and death due to COVID-19. Additionally, investigators will evaluate the safety and tolerability of the experimental treatment for people with SARS-CoV-2 infection. While hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin are both considered safe in most people, they can cause side effects ranging from headache and nausea to, rarely, heart rhythm problems that can be life-threatening. Because of the risk of heart problems when hydroxychloroquine is used alone or combined with azithromycin, FDA cautions that use of hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19 should be limited to clinical trials or for treating certain hospitalized patients under EUA so clinicians can monitor patients for adverse effects.

"This study will provide key data to aid responses to the COVID-19 pandemic," said ACTG Chair Judith Currier, M.D., of the University of California, Los Angeles. "We are pleased to be able to leverage ACTG's existing infrastructure for HIV treatment clinical trials to quickly implement this important study."
Isolation is all the rage nowadays. Life on a private island just might be the antidote.

For $13 million, you could buy not one but two islands just off New Rochelle, NY, in Long Island Sound.

One of the islands comes complete with a house with a fascinating backstory. Measuring in at 2 acres, Columbia Island is the smaller of the two islands, and its neighbor, Pea Island, is about 5 acres.

The two-story brick home sits on Columbia Island and has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a sleek kitchen, and a huge amount of living space. It is 5,625 square feet, with views of the New York City skyline from the roof.

There are giant windows in the living room, kitchen, and dining areas," says the listing agent, Patti Anderson. "Every bedroom has a door to the outside, and everywhere you look, from whatever side of the house, there are water views."

Exterior Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Interior Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Al Sutton, a human rights activist, retired physician, and charter member of the African Freedom Coalition, is the current owner. Hes in his mid-80s and bought the island in 2007.

He resuscitated the structure and turned it into a showpiece. When he bought it, the seawall was crumbling and the building was in disrepair.

Before Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

The owner lives in Manhattan, and this has become just a labor of love for him, Anderson says.

He feels like he's done a lot of work, and he's put in a lot of money, probably over $9 million. He has created this amazing, spectacular property, but he just feels like it's time for someone else to take over.

The home is completely self-sustaining, with two independent solar panels to provide power and batteries to store it, diesel generators, as well as a reverse osmosis desalination system to turn water from the Sound into potable water. The island is close enough to the coast to receive Wi-Fi and cellular signals.

Boat dock Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

The boat ride between the island and New Rochelle takes only about seven minutes, and from there, it's just a few minutes to the train station, then only about another 30 minutes into Manhattan.

[Sutton] was seeking sort of a Zen utopia away from the chaos of Manhattan, but he wanted to maintain that ability to get right back to work and get right back into the city, Anderson explains.

So the location and the nature of the unique and isolated private island really appealed to him.



Watch: Round House in Upstate NY Is a 'Rare Architectural Delight'



Columbia Island was once known as Little Pea Island, but was renamed in 1941 when the Columbia Broadcasting Studios, aka CBS, bought it as a location for a radio tower for CBS and ABC.

The networks moved their radio tower off the island in 1963. After they vacated the premises, Mary Healy and her husband, Peter Lind Hayes, a Vaudeville duo who often performed together, bought the island, converted the structure into a private home, and broadcast their weekly radio show from there.

In 1966, they donated the island to the College of New Rochelle, and it eventually came into Sutton's possession.

Sutton purchased neighboring Pea Island from the Huguenot Yacht Club. It has not been developed, and has many indigenous plants and birds, as well as sandy beaches.

Pea Island Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Map Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

It's almost like Pea Island is Columbia Island's backyard, Anderson says.

There's about 0.2 nautical miles between the islands, so you could paddleboard or take a little skiff or inflatable boat, or a kayak. It's really easy to get back and forth.

The islands have been on and off the market for almost a year. And although the main house is made of brick and concrete, it doesnt feel sterile, Anderson explains.

It's got radiant heat with concrete floors, so the concrete retains the heat," he says.

That means that even in the dead of winter, "it's really cozy out there and quite comfortable.

Lower level Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

The islands are a private oasis that is nevertheless close to the action of NYC. That could prove to be perfect for several kinds of buyers.

Anderson told us that he believes the profile of the ideal buyer for the property would be a mogul in search of a one-of-a-kind property.

Or, as he puts it: Anybody who's seeking privacy, who loves the water, and who wants bragging rights to say they own their own island off the coast of Westchester County, NY, 30 minutes from Manhattan.

Aerial view Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Bedroom Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Kitchen Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Bathroom Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Pea Island beach Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Exterior Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

Aerial view Julia B. Fee Sotheby's International Realty

The post Private Island Paradise Listed for $13M Sits Just 30 Minutes From Manhattan appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
Marwa al-Khafaji was catapulted into the front lines of Iraq's battle with the new coronavirus.

The young Iraqi doctor's struggles mirror those of her nation's battered health system, laid bare by the pandemic.

Hospitals without supplies, medical staff without training, health workers intimidated by an unknown disease, and the stigma associated with infection and quarantine.

At least 115 people have died among 3,032 confirmed coronavirus cases across Iraq, according to Health Ministry statistics.

Government officials described the ministry's response as adequate.

But Khafaji's story, as well as interviews with half a dozen doctors and nurses, reveal a haphazard response.

Periodic decrees lack backbone, with no comprehensive strategy from a government constrained by its caretaker status.

In mid-March, Khafaji, 39, grew alarmed when her elderly mother, Dhikra Saoud, showed signs of respiratory distress.

Days before, her father had shown mild flu-like symptoms that she treated at home.

She was certain it was coronavirus. She went to three different hospitals, but each time, doctors refused to test her mother.

Her symptoms worsened the next day. A tearful Khafaji pleaded to a physician friend at 3 a.m., "Please, "give my mother the test." He agreed.

On March 19, policemen came to the house to take both mother and daughter to the hospital. Both had tested positive.

The use of security forces was a repercussion of the stigma: People often refuse to be quarantined, so police are sent to ensure they do.

Fear of stigma has been a main driver of the coronavirus' spread, doctors say, as people hide their illness and avoid seeking help.

On April 10, Khafaji and her mother tested negative for the virus and were permitted to go home.

Her homecoming after 20 days in a hospital isolation ward was tainted by spite.

Someone had barricaded her family home's gate with a concrete block.

The message from the neighbors was clear: she had survived coronavirus, but the stigma of having had the disease would be a far more pernicious fight.

By May, she was back putting in 12-hour shifts at the hospital on an 800 US dollars a month stipend, the average physician's salary in Iraq.

She had asked to be moved to the waiting room for virus patients, to bring experience to good use.

Iraq's centralized health system, largely unchanged since the 1970s, has been worn down by decades of wars, sanctions and prolonged unrest since the 2003 U.S. invasion, with little investment from successive governments.

There are eight physicians and 1.4 beds per 1,000 people, according to World Bank figures.

The entire country of 38 million has at most 600 ventilators, a Health Ministry official said.

One Karbala doctor, Assel Saad Saleh, said his hospital, meant for up to 300 patients a day, now sees more than 1,000.
BONITA SPRINGS, Fla.

May 15, 2020

Brenda Lyon

May 15, 2020

BRENDA LYON

Indiana University

Brenda Lyon

/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- In 2019 an American Psychological Association survey focused on sources of stress reported that 71% of respondents had concerns about mass shootings; 69% had concerns about health care; 60% worried about acts of terrorism; 56% were worried about climate change; 45% about sexual harassment; 64% worried about work; and 60% about money.Now with the recent pandemic, it's certain that stress is at an all-time high. The American Psychological Association Stress in America survey cited that 3 out of 4 Americans experienced at least one stress symptom top of the list are -- 45% insomnia, 36% anxiety, 35% anger, and 34% fatigue. In fact, 8 out of 10 Americans say they frequently or sometimes encounter stress in their daily lives.What if there was a proven way to conquer and finally eliminate stress? There is! Dr.tackles this urgent problem in her evidence-based book Haven't You Suffered Enough: Clinically Proven Methods to Conquer Stress, launchingby O'Leary Publishing. Dr. Lyon, Clinical Nurse Specialist, shares her proven stress-reduction and elimination techniques that are grounded in validated theory and research and have been developed over thirty years of study.Dr. Lyon has effectively helped hundreds of people learn how to both prevent and eliminate stress entirely and its accompanying symptoms of emotional and physical suffering. For those who are feeling overwhelmed, experiencing anxiety, chronic anger, guilt, or frustration (the hallmarks of stress) this book provides clear strategies to minimize stress.While Dr. Lyon's work is grounded in science, her book is designed to provide the same warmth, encouragement, and confidence Dr. Lyon's clients received in session with her. Through real-life examples, the reader will learn how to transform their mindset from stressed to peaceful even in the midst of trials. It's time to break out of the never-ending cycle of stress management and find a remarkable, simple and effective way out.DR., PhD, CNS, RN is Professor Emerita at theSchool of Nursing. During her 34-year career in private practice, she worked with patients guiding them through stress and stress-related physical illness. Dr. Lyon has conducted over 350 stress-reduction workshops nationwide and has authored numerous award-winning publications on conquering stress. She is a Fellow in both the American Academy of Nursing and the interdisciplinary National Academies of Practice.SOURCE Dr.
Since May 9, fierce debates have spread throughout in the South Caucasus over which side did the grandfather of the current Prime Minister of Armenia, Nikol Pashinyan, fight for during the Great Patriotic War - the Soviet Union or Hitler's Germany? The question arose after a harmless, at first glance, Pashinyan's post on Facebook, in which he shared a photo of his grandfather Nikolai Pashinyan. Yerevan.today, a publication close to the previous authorities, which office was raided by law enforcement officials in September of 2018 as part of the authorities fight against the counter-revolution, quickly published information from the German archives about Nikolai Pashinyan, the Nazis henchman.

The certificate of the burial of the Wehrmacht states that someone named Nikolai Pashinyan, bord in the village of Enokovan (Ijevan), was a soldier of the 8190 Armenian Legion, was shot in the stomach on September 29, 1943. Information about the defector is also confirmed by the central archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. Pashinyan Sr. was buried at the German military cemetery of the city of Zvyachel (as the Ukrainian city of Novograd-Volynsky was called on German maps).You can see how this cemetery looked in archive photos:

After information about Nikolai Pashinyan, who fought for Hitler, appeared, the Armenian Prime Minister added in the post that his grandfather's patronym was Arakelovich, obviously,hoping to refute the critics.

According to Armenian authorities, two Nikolai Pashinyan were conscripted from Ijevan in 1941. And both were born in 1913. One of them went missing in February of 1943, and the other, at some point, began to collaborate with the Nazis (there's no indication when exactly did it happen) and was killed in September of 1943. Date of Nikolai Arakelovich's, ie Pashinyan's alleged grandfather's disappearance - February of 1943. Nikolai - the collaborator - was shot at the end of September of 1943. Given so many coincidences, it cannot be completely ruled out that we're talking about the same person - given the fact that accuracy of the documents of those years, is pretty poor. In other words, taking into account the outlined time frames, Pashinyans missing grandfather could have joined the ranks of the Wehrmachts Armenian legion and then killed in September of that year.

It should also be noted that Nikol Pashinyan did not provide absolutely any documents confirming that his grandfather's middle name was Arakelovich, and not Vartanovich. Moreover, it's pretty suspicios that the data about "Arakelovich" is extremely blurry - only the year in the date of his birth was revealed.

Perhaps only 80-year-old Vova Pashinyan, the father of the Armenian Prime Minister, can shed light on the situation, providing the media with his information, which will prove his fathers middle name. Until he does, the public has every reason to consider Nikol Pashinyan a descendant of the Nazi collaborator.
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DUBLIN, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Millimeter Waves: Emerging Markets 2020" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

A new market study that explores the current state of millimeter wave technology and market opportunities for systems operating in the millimeter wave range. This in-depth investigation discusses millimeter wave technologies already creating significant markets, emerging market opportunities, and overall market development. The report surveys today's technologies and applications, separates hype from reality and assesses applications where millimeter wave technology will open up significant new markets, with market forecasts going out to 2025.



Millimeter wave (MMW) radiation, that portion of the electromagnetic spectrum generally defined as roughly 20 GHz to 300 GHz, has gained commercial traction in the past two decades. Accelerating evolution in technology and changes in the regulatory environment have expanded opportunities in existing millimeter wave applications and opened new, potentially significant markets.



MMW imaging is established in airport security and markets are rapidly growing in loss prevention, where systems can quickly scan employees leaving a manufacturing facility to prevent theft. New technology will soon dramatically reduce the cost of such imaging systems, allowing their adoption in a much broader range of venues such as courthouses, concerts, stadiums, schools, dance clubs, and many others.



MMW systems are also transforming telecommunications, offering data rates that can approach those of optical fiber. E-band links are quickly capturing markets in backhaul, where they can be deployed quickly and at a small fraction of the cost of laying optical fiber.



Millimeter waves may be the only viable solution to the bandwidth challenges facing today's telecom industry as it transitions to next-generation 5G networks. Some 4G networks are already approaching the theoretical limit on how much data can be squeezed into a given band. The Internet of Things is bringing tens of billions of devices, including tracking tags, body sensors, vehicles, clothing and a broad range of appliances, sensors and other technologies, all connected to mobile networks. Wireless data transfer volumes will be thousands of times greater than they are today, with demand for data transfer rates at 10 to 100 times faster than has been practical recently.



One of the most exciting frontiers in telecommunications is fixed wireless Internet access, where MMW systems are about to facilitate a game-changing market shift. As small, highly flexible startups move to offer MMW-based wireless Internet access across broad geographic regions, the walls that once served to separate the various access suppliers are breaking down. The result is a Wild West scenario where a large number of players, large and small, compete to offer consumers and businesses up to gigabit data rates at low cost.



Automotive radar is another burgeoning market. Eventually, as collision avoidance systems in cars and trucks become standard and even mandated in some places, the advantages of millimeter waves in achieving low-cost radar systems with high resolution will lead to billion-dollar revenue streams.



The market study makes use of extensive, in-depth interviews with industry executives, market development managers and government and academic researchers. The report provides a survey of the current state of the art in millimeter wave technology, an assessment of potential applications in terms of their commercial viability, discussion of market development and forecasts for individual markets from 2020 to 2025.



The outlook for millimeter wave technology is extraordinarily promising. Steady reductions in hardware cost and progress in system development are dovetailing with growing demand in a number of markets and, in some cases, greatly relaxed regulation, all leading to growth in widely diverse markets. Depending on the market, that growth is already well underway, is starting now, or will start soon. Most importantly, some of the most significant markets, including security and telecommunications, are not only potentially quite large but relatively immune to economic conditions. Developers in other applications are making use of new technologies to bring millimeter wave systems within striking distance of mass markets.



Some emerging markets require little more than the education of users in the capability of millimeter wave systems while in others, that case has already been made and equipment sales are growing rapidly. In most areas, technologies have matured to the extent that scientific understanding is not an issue; instead, the principal requirement is bringing prices in line with market demand.

Key Topics Covered:



Part 1: Overview



Part 2: Technology and Hardware



Part 3: Technical and Safety Issues



Part 4: Public Policy, Regulation, and Standards



Part 5: Application Summary



Part 6: Imaging



Part 7: Telecommunications



Part 8: Consumer & Automotive



Part 9: Millimeter Wave Defense & Security Markets



Part 10: Other Millimeter Wave Markets



Part 11: Millimeter Wave Semiconductor Markets



For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/2wb6ml

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.



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Piyush Goyal calls upon G-20 nations to ensure access to essential medicines

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: India has called upon the G-20 nations to ensure access to essential medicines, treatments and vaccines at affordable prices.

In the Interventions during the 2nd G20 Virtual Trade & Investment Ministers Meeting, held through Video-conferencing, the Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal asked the G20 members to first focus on immediate and concrete actions that can ease the distress being faced by people all over the world due to Corona pandemic.

Rs 20 lakh crore project: All that the FinMin said at the briefing

He said that the unprecedented situation calls for solidarity and a balanced, inclusive and calibrated response. An overriding priority for all countries at this time, is to save precious lives. He strongly called for agreement to enable the use of TRIPs flexibilities to ensure access to essential medicines, treatments and vaccines at affordable prices. He also called upon the G-20 nations to also agree to provide diagnostic and protective equipment, and healthcare professionals across borders where they are most needed.

Goyal said that doing away with the policy instrument of export restrictions is not a panacea that will guarantee access to medical products and food for all. In fact, such a step is likely to lead to a flight of these critical products to the highest bidder, making them inaccessible to the resource-poor. He said that more effective and lasting way to ensure food security of the most vulnerable, would be by agreeing to eliminate the historic asymmetries in the Agreement on Agriculture, and delivering on the long-standing Ministerial mandate to establish permanent, adequate and accessible disciplines on Public Stockholding for food security purposes by the 12th Ministerial Conference of the WTO.

Using untested medicines to treat COVID-19 could be dangerous: WHO warns

Goyal said that learning from this extremely distressing experience, the world has to come together to build partnerships among like-minded nations with shared values of democracy, rules-based and transparent business models and concern for humanity as a whole. India wishes to contribute to this global effort. He said in the last few months, we have embarked upon an ambitious reform agenda under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to transform our country.

Our future will be crafted on five pillars - a strong and vibrant economy, massive infrastructure development, building modern systems with stable and predictable regulatory practices, leveraging the huge demographic dividend our democracy offers and the growing demand for goods and services of 1.3 billion Indians. We are confident we will emerge stronger after the implementation of the announcement of Prime Minister Modi of a special economic package amounting to around 10 per cent of our GDP.
Representative Image

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The Maharashtra Labour Commission has sent a notice to Pune-based KPIT Technologies for not adhering to state directives and enforcing up to 50 percent pay cut for full-time employees across India from April to September 2020.

Signed by Assistant Labour Commissioner Nikhil Walke, the notice directed the company to comply with state orders restricting pay cuts and layoffs, or face strict action.

The order further asked for a report once corrective action is taken.

The order was sent after the National Information Technology Employees Senates (NITES) union filed a complaint against the company. Harpreet Saluja, general secretary, NITES said more than 200 employees have been asked to work part-time and their salary has been reduced by 50 percent.

We have high hopes from the Supreme Court as our public interest litigation (PIL) for illegal layoffs and salary cuts by IT, ITeS, BPO and KPO companies is scheduled to be heard on May 15.

Earlier, in an email to employees, Kishor Patil, Group CEO, said: The overarching approach, as stated earlier, is that of safeguarding jobs over maintaining individual salaries and levying significantly higher cuts for senior grades than those for junior grades.

While the chairman will not draw any variable component, others will face a cut of 10-50 percent depending on one's job band. "Compensation structure will also be changed as variable pay and special allowance components will be deducted depending on your job band. Any remaining amount will be deducted from the fixed salary," the mail added.

Moneycontrol has seen a copy of both the email and the notice issued to the company. KPIT Technologies did not respond to the email sent by Moneycontrol.

The engineering services company employs over 6,000 people and has Honda, Denso, BMW, Hitachi and Cummins in its client list.

This is not the first time the Labour Department has issued a notice. Tech Mahindra had also received one for suspending shift allowance of employees.
Read what is in the news today.

Politics

 Vietnam urges parties not to take any action to further complicate the situation in the East Vietnam Sea, the foreign ministrys spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang said at the ministrys regular press conference on Thursday while answering reporters queries about the information that Chinese navy surveillance aircraft KJ-500 and KQ-200 appeared on Da Chu Thap (Fiery Cross Reef) in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.

 The 12th plenum of the 12th Party Central Committee wrapped up in Hanoi on Thursday after four days of working. All agenda items were completed.

Society

 Vietnam logged 24 new cases of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) on Friday morning, all of whom are Vietnamese citizens brought home from Russia on Wednesday and were quarantined upon arrival. The countrys tally is at 312, with 260 recoveries and no deaths.

 Ten people were killed and 13 others seriously injured when a wall collapsed on workers at a construction site at Giang Dien Industrial Park in Trang Bom District, Dong Nai Province in southern Vietnam on Thursday afternoon.

 Vietnamese lawmaker Luu Binh Nhuong, deputy head of the National Assembly Peoples Aspirations Committee, has submitted a petition to Party General Secretary and State President Nguyen Phu Trong and NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan asking for a review of a high-profile case involving death row inmate Ho Duy Hai.

 Experts have proposed that Vietnam scrap personal income tax for at least six months or until the end of the year to cushion the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on its citizens.

 The five most recent tests on a British pilot who is critically sickened by COVID-19 in Ho Chi Minh City have all returned negative for the coronavirus, the municipal Hospital for Tropical Diseases said on Thursday. The infirmary will send the patients sample to the municipal Pasteur Institute for a confirmation test before transferring him to Cho Ray Hospital for infection and intensive care treatment.

 Nearly 200 Vietnamese citizens stranded in the Philippines were brought home on a Bamboo Airways flight on Thursday afternoon. They landed at Can Tho International Airport in the namesake Mekong Delta city and were transported to quarantine facilities in the neighboring provinces of Dong Thap and Ca Mau.

Business

 Vietnam is ready to cooperate with countries, including Canada, in recovering the global trade and supply chain, Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh told Canadian Foreign Minister Francois-Philippe Champagne during their phone talks on Thursday.

World News

 The novel coronavirus has infected over 4.52 million people and killed more than 303,000 around the globe as of Thursday morning, according to statistics. More than 1.7 million patients have recovered from COVID-19.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!
Delhi HC asks Centre, Google to respond to mans plea to remove articles on his conviction in criminal case

Who is Saurabh Kirpal? Indias likely to get its first openly gay judge of Delhi high court

Delhi HC dismisses plea to stop publication, sale of Salman Khurshid's book : 'Ask people not to buy it'

Plea to de-link Aarogya Setu app from website promoting e-pharmacies: Centres response sought

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: The Delhi High Court sought the Centre's response on a plea seeking to de-link from Aarogya Setu mobile app a website which is promoting sale of medicines through e-pharmacies.

Justice Jayant Nath, who conducted the hearing through video conferencing, asked the central government to file the reply within 10 days and listed the matter for further hearing on May 29.

The plea, filed by South Chemists and Distributors Association, said the website, www.aarogyasetumitr.in, is linked to the official mobile application Aarogya Setu in a highly illegal, arbitrary and discriminatory manner as the website promotes and acts as a marketing tool for e-pharmacies only.

Aarogya data for health purposes to be deleted in 180 days

It said that the homepage of the website states here are some essential healthcare services you can avail from the safety and comfort of your home and then lists only the e-pharmacies.

There is no mention that medicines can also be procured by the local pharmacy stores which operate offline. It is submitted that the respondents (authorities) cannot be allowed to mislead the users of a government developed and mandated mobile application to believe that the drugs for treatment of COVID-19 or to contain the spread of the disease are available only through the e-pharmacies, said the plea, filed through senior advocate Sudhir Nandrajog and lawyers Amit Gupta and Mansi Kukreja.

The Centre, represented through Additional Solicitor General Maninder Acharya and lawyer Kirtiman Singh, opposed the plea and said these are extraordinary circumstances and the website has been developed for easy accessibility of medicines to COVID-19 patients.

The petitioner's counsel said the court has also asked the Centre to respond to the oral submission that offline pharmacies / local chemists having licences be also listed on the website.

The petition said there is absolutely no basis for a government-owned platform be used to promote private commercial ventures.

Aarogya Setu now mandatory for railway travel

It sought direction to the Ministry of Electronics and IT, National Informatics Centre and Niti Aayog to take steps so that the name 'aarogya setu' or any identical/ deceptively similar name is not mis-used to sponsor the commercial interests of arbitrarily hand picked entities.

The Aarogya Setu application makes use of bluetooth and GPS to alert users who may have encountered people who later test positive for the coronavirus.

It further sought to take steps for immediate closure of the website.

The plea said the authorities have allowed government developed mobile application 'Aarogya setu', which has been launched with a salient feature of limiting the spread of COVID-19, to be used for the benefit of selected handpicked companies

The mobile application 'Aarogya setu' itself gives a link to website http://www.aarogyasetumitr.in/ which gives a wrong and misleading impression to a user that the website as well as the information made available on it is also government mandated and approved, it said.

COVID-19: 1.4 lakh Aarogya Setu users alerted of possible infection, says govt

It claimed that the similarity in the names of the mobile application and the website is intentional and the website seeks to take advantage of the name and goodwill which has been generated by Aarogya setu, even though the website is not government owned.

The plea said the criteria for getting listed as a vendor on the website is that the entity should be an e-pharmacy, which is arbitrary, without any intelligible differentia, wholly illegal and discriminatory.
Pawar sought the prime minister's "urgent intervention" to bail the industry out from the crisis now aggravated by the lockdown.

Mumbai: NCP chief Sharad Pawar haswritten a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi seeking bail out for the sugar industry from the crisis "aggravated exponentially" by the unprecedented lockdown imposed to contain the spread of COVID-19.

Pawar noted that Modi -- even before the lockdown came into force in March-end -- had taken some "important" policy initiatives like MSP, export of sugar, buffer stock and

interest subvention on capex for ethanol production duly supported by financial measures, seeing the key industry was faced with a crisis.

In his letter, sent on Thursday, Pawar sought the prime minister's "urgent intervention" to bail the industry out from the crisis now aggravated by the lockdown.

"Raised concerns through letter to Hon. @PMOIndia and requested his urgent intervention to bail out #sugar industry from crisis aggravated exponentially by unprecedented nationwide lockdown in the wake of pandemic #COVID?19," Pawar tweeted.

Raised concerns through letter to Hon. @PMOIndia and requested his urgent intervention to bail out #sugar industry from crisis aggravated exponentially by unprecedented nationwide lockdown in the wake of pandemic #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/73MYTSt5l5  Sharad Pawar (@PawarSpeaks) May 15, 2020

The former Union agriculture minister also enclosed a letter from the chairman of Maharashtra State Co-operative Sugar Factories Federation Ltd while raising the concerns related to the sector.

"As #COVID-19 crisis is worsening day by day, some immediate relief measures are suggested by the federation," Pawar said.

The federation has suggested making provision of funds for clearing export incentives and buffer stock expenses pending since 2018-19 and 2019-20.

It has called for increasing the MSP of sugar ranging from Rs 3450 to Rs 3750 with grade wise increment. The federation has demanded making provision of one-time grant of Rs 650 per tonne on average cane crushed during the last two years.

It also insisted on converting outstanding working capital into short-term loan and rescheduling all term loans for 10 years with a moratorium of two years on the lines of the Mitra Committee recommendations.

The federation has pitched for treating sugar mills' distilleries as strategic business units (SBUs). On a standalone basis, banks should finance ethanol projects sanctioned under the interest subvention capex scheme announced by the Centre in 2018, it said.

"Hoping that the honourable @PMOIndia would look into the matter and initiate necessary relief measures to resolve the crisis worsened due to Pandemic #COVID?19," Pawar said.
Editors Note: In recognition of National Historic Preservation Month, local historian Cindy Reinhardt will tell the stories behind some of Edwardsvilles historic buildings in a series of articles during the month of May.

EDWARDSVILLE  Although the house at 112 Elm Street is more than 150 years old, it has been at its current location for only a century. Before the house was moved from 1023 St. Louis Street, it was one of the oldest homes on that street and remains among the oldest homes in Edwardsville. In last weeks article on 1023 St. Louis Street, it was speculated that the older house (now at 112 Elm) may have been built for Moses and Isabelle Sherman. Since then, new sources have been found that specify who built the house and when.

David Gillespie, the owner of the property before it was developed, sold it to Charles and Adelaide (Isbell) Springer for $675 on July 5, 1869. Charles Springer was born in Indiana, a cousin to the other Springers who would later move to St. Louis Street. After graduating from law school in 1858, he moved to Edwardsville where he became the law partner of David Gillespie (also a relative). Charles enlisted in the Union Army early in the Civil War and rose to the rank of colonel before being mustered out Jan. 16, 1866. He was active in Republican politics and elected as one of Madison Countys representatives for the 1869-1870 Illinois Constitutional Convention.

After the war, he returned to his law practice in Edwardsville and by the end of the year, he married his long-time sweetheart, Adelaide Ada Isbell. They were married in December 1866 at Altona, Iowa, where her father was pastor of the M. E. Church. Back in Edwardsville, the couple built a house on St. Louis Street, the house that is now at 112 Elm Street.

In a biography of her husband written for the History of Jones County, Iowa in 1869, Ada told the author, Removing to Edwardsville, four years of perfect blessedness were granted and a perfect home erected, in which they lived nearly two years, when death, who spares neither friend or foe, but always takes the best, tore down this bright hearthstone and put out its altar fires.

After surviving four years of war, Charles, 36, died suddenly on Nov. 15, 1870, of complications from a disease he contracted during the war. He was buried in Edwardsvilles City Cemetery, adjacent to Luck Cemetery. A year later, Ada moved to Evanston, for a teaching position at Northwestern University. The following year, in the fall of 1872, she returned to Iowa due to the ill health of her sister and mother. She took a position as principal at the Jones County Academy. In 1875, Ada moved her husbands remains to Iowa so that she could someday be laid to rest next to her family and her husband.

Although the 1873 Atlas of Madison County still shows David Gillespie as the owner of the property at 1023 St. Louis Street, court records prove that since 1869 the property was by owned by the Springers. A warranty deed dated July 7, 1881, transferred ownership from Ada Springer to Moses B. Sherman for $2,000. Since the property soon after was being referred to as the Sherman place, it is probable that the Shermans leased the house until purchasing it in 1881. Mrs. Sherman was a relative and the 1880 census shows the Shermans were living on St. Louis Street.

Moses Sherman came to Edwardsville as a teacher in the 1850s. Although he taught for many years, he went on to have a varied employment history. When he died in 1901, he was working a deputy clerk for the county. The Sherman household was a musical one. A newspaper article on the history of Edwardsville musicians said that Moses and his daughter, Mattie, had powerful voices. Mattie participated in local musicals and plays for two decades before her marriage to Thomas Ramey. However, regarding Mattie, the article also said, she always sang a fraction of a beat behind the rest of the congregation at church, with the result that the hymns became slower and slower.

In 1919, the lots in the 100 block of Elm Street were purchased by contractor Ciro Erspamer and within a year he moved the house at 1023 St. Louis Street to its new home. The house was rolled on logs to its new location at 112 Elm Street. Erspamer completely renovated the house, adding a basement, doubling the flooring, and rewiring to upgrade electricity. A two-sided porch was removed from the house and replaced with a modern front porch that gave the house a 20th-century appearance.

The first family to occupy the house in its new location, the Edward A. Fresen family, enjoyed the novelty of running hot water, a gas stove, a coal furnace in a usable basement, and a telephone, all things that were unavailable at their previous residence. The exterior of the house, originally clapboard, was changed to white stucco, probably by Erspamer, and later to shake-shingle siding. Although very attractive, the only visual hints of its earlier origins are an open walnut staircase and the style of the four-panel doors throughout the home.

Thanks to Edward (Ed) Fresen Jr., this house has a well-documented history containing both Eds memories as well as additional research. After 35 years as a minister, Ed returned to Madison County after retiring. He took graduate classes at SIUE in the 1980s, but also participated in SIUE gerontology outreach courses that worked with seniors encouraging them to document the past.

The Fresen family consisted of the parents, Edward and Elsbeth (Plassmann) Fresen and their children, Ed and Ruth. Edward was a second-generation American, but his wife was born in Germany so German was spoken at home. Their children didnt learn English until they started school.

Edward Fresen Sr. (1884-1956), attended Jones Business School in St. Louis to study bookkeeping. Sometime after his marriage in 1906, he moved from Horseshoe Lake to Edwardsville when he was hired as a cashier for Citizens State Bank. In 1917, he was hired by Charles Boeschenstein to work at the new National Bank of Edwardsville as a cashier where he would work for the remainder of his career, retiring as bank president. Eds passport savings book was the first issued by the new bank.

The familys first home in Edwardsville consisted of rooms rented from Phoebe Montgomery at 829 St. Louis Street. Ed Jr. was born there in 1910. They then rented the house at 1009 St. Louis Street (1914-1919) where daughter Ruth was born in 1915. Their third move, in 1920, was to the St. Louis Street house that had been moved to 112 Elm Street. They rented for a few years, but then purchased the house in 1922. Members of the Fresen family would live there until 1982.

Ed lived on or near St. Louis Street until he left for college in 1928. He remembered that the lots on Randle, behind 1023 St. Louis Street, were very steep. During construction of the new courthouse in 1914-15, dirt from the courthouse basement was used to fill some of the hollows. Eds father would later bring in additional truckloads of dirt to level the yard on Elm Street.

When Ed Jr. was a child the area looked much different than today. West of Elm Street, between Grand Avenue and St. Louis Street, there were no houses. There were a few houses on St. Louis Street, but none on the south side of Grand Avenue where there was a trash dump. Randle Street did not yet exist west of Elm Street. But for the most part, it was a woodland paradise for children to play in with a clear stream, wildflowers, hills and the trestles of the Yellowhammer streetcar line.

Ed and his sister were two of very few children on and around St. Louis Street before 1920. The neighborhood was populated with attorneys, judges, merchants and bankers. Many new homes were being built by professional men near the ends of their careers, whose children were now adults. However, by the time Eds father died in 1956, he was one of the few older residents of a neighborhood that was by then populated with young families and children.

The Fresen home was the only house on Elm Street in Eds childhood. Across the street, where there is a house today, was the Springer barn. The house next door, at 114 Elm Street, was built by Ciro Erspamer in 1922 for Oliver Thornton.

Ed walked to Columbus School every morning, returning home for lunch after first stopping at the butcher to buy meat for the noonday meal, then returning for afternoon classes. His father also walked to work, but if the weather was especially bad, they might catch the streetcar on Elm that left them off downtown next to his fathers office building. Neighborhood children were all very conscious of the streetcar, especially when sledding down Elm Street towards the tracks. The Fresens took the streetcar to Granite City to visit relatives or to St. Louis on shopping excursions. In the mid-1920s the Fresen family purchased their first car, a Model T Ford, from Bothmans. The Fresens were friends of the Bothmans so, their automobiles were always Fords.

While living at 1009 St. Louis Street, the Fresens were in quarantine twice, once when Ruth contracted typhoid and again for influenza in 1918. Eds mother and sister both contracted the flu and although both survived, his mother was never in good health after that. Elsbeth Fresen died in 1933 at the age of 41. In 1938, Edward married Marie Quernheim and they enjoyed many wonderful years together until Edward became ill in the early 1950s. He died in 1956. Marie continued to live in the house on Elm until it was damaged by fire shortly before her death in 1982.

The current owners purchased this home 35 years ago. By coincidence, the house is currently on the market which allows those interested to view interior photographs showing the staircase and doors dating to the 1860s.

Information for this article was obtained from resources at the Madison County Archival Library, the memoirs of Ed Fresen, and from the current owner.

If you have questions about this article, contact Cindy Reinhardt at (618) 656-1294 or cynreinhardt@yahoo.com.
Update: The CDC has since released more specific guidance .

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has released a decision tree to guide decisions about reopening schools amid the coronavirus pandemic.

But the one-page graphic, posted Thursday night, still leaves unanswered questions for education groups that have called for more detailed federal guidance on the issue.

The chartpart of a series of decision trees for different businesses and public settingsguides school school leaders through a list of factors like their ability to screen students and staff for illness, to protect vulnerable people who are at higher risk, to encourage social distancing in buildings, and to monitor issues like student absences. (Click on the snapshot below for a full-size version).

The new graphic does not address questions about seemingly conflicting parts of previously announced White House guidance on reopening the country.

That guidance calls for states to ease restrictions in a phased approach only after they ensure they have adequate testing, tracing, and hospital surge capacity and only after theyve seen declining rates of the virus for 14 consecutive days. Schools would reopen in the second phase, after 28 days of declines.

Education groups have said schools need more direction than the document provides, noting that it calls for schools to reopen in the same phase it cautions against crowds of more than 50 people.

At a hearing this week, Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said the federal direction on reopenings is criminally vague.

Murphy pressed Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, on reports that administration officials had shelved more specific g uidance than what was included in the White House directive. That shelved report, originally reported by the Associated Press, also included more detail than the decision tree posted this week.

On the other hand, Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said decisions should be made at a district level. He questioned why schools need to be closed in a blunt exchange with Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nations chief epidemiologist.

States have started planning for fall reopenings, but district leaders still have many unanswered questions about how to avoid crowds on school buses and in cafeterias and what level of coronavirus testing is necessary to monitor community spread.

Representatives of education groups tweeted their reactions to the new decision tree Friday morning, saying it lacks some information schools need to safely reopen.

For guidance like this to be really helpful and meaningful, it has to be actionable and applicable, tweeted Noelle Ellerson Ng, the associate executive director of AASA, the School Administrators Association. This remains too vague to truly inform decisions.

Photo: Servepro employee Joseph Felks cleans chairs and other items at Joyner Elementary School in Tupelo, Miss., March 11. --Thomas Wells/The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal via AP

Follow us on Twitter @PoliticsK12 . And follow the Politics K-12 reporters @EvieBlad @Daarel and @AndrewUjifusa .
Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador announced on Wednesday morning a plan for the "gradual" resumption of economic activities.

The plan includes restarting factories in the automotive, mining and construction industries by as early as Monday. Other parts of Mexico's economy and social systems  such as public schools  could reopen by June 1.

"It is not a return to normal, it is the return to the new normality," Obrador said during his daily press briefing. "There have already been changes, reality has changed, it is another reality, and we have to start this stage with other procedures, other methods, other attitudes, other behaviors."

Mexico's reopening will include a new four-color coding system in place by June 1 to tell people and businesses what activities will be allowed.

Obrador said Mexico's lockdown  which began March 30  will remain in place, but by Monday, industries like construction, mining, and car and truck manufacturing will be allowed to operate under certain health protocols to protect their workers.

Auto manufacturers in the United States are still heavily reliant on Mexican factories. U.S. officials and automakers have been pressing Obrador and his administration to reopen factories that are crucial to North America's supply chain.

Christopher Landau, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, launched a Twitter campaign last month prodding the Mexican government to reopen factories.

"There are risks everywhere, but we don't all stay at home for fear we are going to get in a car accident. ... The destruction of the economy is also a health threat," Landau tweeted on April 21.

Volkswagen's Mexico unit said it is planning to reopen its assembly plant in Puebla and its engine factory in Guanajuato City on June 1.

General Motors Company (NYSE: GM) and Ford Motor Company (NYSE: F) have not announced when they will reopen their factories in Mexico.

Story continues

During 2019, the U.S. imported $25.5 billion in auto parts from Mexico and exported $16.6 billion.

Laredo, Texas, was the top international port of entry for auto parts imports and exports from Mexico in 2019, accounting for $7.01 billion.

Tony Payan, director of the Houston-based Center for the United States and Mexico at the Baker Institute, said the reopening of U.S.-Mexico supply chains will likely be gradual.

"In regards to the trucking industry, logistics and binational trade will recover, but trucking and logistics is a factor of the rest of the economy," Payan said. "Because if people are not consuming, the orders are drying out. Therefore factories are slowing down and therefore logistics, warehousing and transportation is also slowing down."

Photo Credit: General Motors

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Citywide

This Monday, May 18, San Francisco retail businesses with street-facing storefronts will be allowed to reopen for pick-up, as long as there is no intervening spike in COVID-19 cases or hospitalizations.

"Allowing retail to operate storefront pick-up is a great step for our small businesses, which have been struggling since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic," Mayor London Breed said in a statement earlier today. "Businesses that will be allowed to open next week wont be able to operate like they used to, but this hopefully offers a measure of support."

The SF Department of Public Health also released further guidelines yesterday, stating that no more than 10 store employees may be on-site at any time. With six-foot social distancing mandated, small stores may have to limit themselves to even fewer employees than that.

Richard Weld, the owner of toy store Tantrum, says that's not a concern  it's just him managing orders at the moment. He's temporarily closed his Cole Valley store, and will operate pick-up out of Tantrum's Inner Richmond location (248 Clement St.)

"Weve been monitoring the situation very carefully," Weld said. The store has spent the last month and a half stocking up and mailing out deliveries, and starting Monday, it will allow customers to pick-up pre-ordered goods.

After someone orders online, "we'll try to have it ready [for pick-up] within the hour," he said.

Dog Eared Books (900 Valencia St.) just started delivery this week, and manager Ryan Smith said customers have already been asking about pick-up as well.

A friend, who is a carpenter, is currently building a custom-made sneezeguard to protect employees when customers walk up to get their books. The city's regulations also require customers to stay six feet apart and wear some sort of face covering while waiting in line outside the store.

"I dont anticipate that to be a problem," Weld said, adding that while there may be a learning curve, he expects his customers to be reasonable.

Story continues

Smith hopes that pick-up will save Dog Eared's staff time. "Packing stuff [for delivery] is much more labor-intensive" compared to selling books before the shelter-in-place, he said.

Photo: Shane Downing/Hoodline

While Breed said in a press conference on Wednesday that allowing pick-up "is going to be critical to think about economic recovery," both Weld and Smith expect delivery and pick-up orders to remain pretty much even.

Despite the demise of kids' birthday parties under the shelter-in-place, Weld says a lot of his customers are still being considerate and purchasing presents to drop off at a friend's house.

With "a lot of people waiting until the very last minute to buy presents," pick-up should add some ease to their lives. And it will brighten his day as well.

"I'm excited to see people again," he said.
Hollywood actor Matt Damon has sent an extra special message to a secondary school in south Dublin.

The actor has been staying at his home in Dalkey in south Dublin for the duration for the lockdown with his family.

His presence at the leafy suburb town has made international headlines after he was photographed holding a SuperValu shopping bag.

However, he has kept a low profile until his neighbour Bono convinced him to give an interview to a local radio station last week.

He has now recorded a video message for the Leaving Cert class in the local secondary school, the Loreto Abbey in Dalkey, sending them best wishes on their graduation on what would have been their last day in school.

"Hey, this is Matt Damon, I just want to say congratulations to the Loreto Abbey graduating class of 2020," he says.

BREAKING: (hearts!) Special message just now from the lovely lad next door, for the 6th yr girls, Loreto Abbey Dalkey. Cool surprise org by their amazing teachers on what would have been their final day in school. Fair play #MattDamon #LeavingCert pic.twitter.com/4PQttJyNQb  Flor MacCarthy (@florNEWS) May 15, 2020

"You guys are awesome and I'm sorry you have to do all this from quarantine.

"But congratulations, what an achievement, good for you guys, thinking about you," he adds.

Speaking on Spin 1038's Fully Charged, he said that his home in the town is "absolutely gorgeous".

"I'm with my whole family, I've got my kids and we have teachers with us because we were planning on missing school for about eight weeks," he said.

Video of the Day

"So we've got what nobody else has which is actually live human beings teaching our kids.

"We feel guilty, like we've got this kind of incredible set up in this place which is, I mean it's just absolutely gorgeous."
A baby which was shot twice in the leg during an attack on a Kabul maternity unit which killed 24 people including mothers, nurses and newborns has survived.

Three gunmen, suspected to be members of terror group ISIS, entered the building in the Afghan capital dressed as police officers before throwing grenades and opening fire with rifles on Tuesday.

At least two of those shot dead were newborn babies and 15 men, women and children were injured. The attackers were later shot dead.

But one of the newborns, who was born just three hours before the attack, survived after doctors operated on her shattered right leg, the Times reported.

And during the attack, another mother was forced to give birth in silence while hiding in a room with other pregnant women and a midwife as carnage unfolded around them.

A baby which was shot twice in the leg during an attack on a Kabul maternity unit which killed 24 people including mothers, nurses and newborns has survived

The surviving injured newborn was among several of babies which have been taken to be cared for at the Indira Gandhi Children's Hospital in Kabul.

Her mother, Nazia, died in the attack and the newborn was given the same name by her father Rafiullah after he had laid his wife to rest.

Dr Noor ul-Haq Yousafzai, a director at the hospital, told the Times: 'We set Nazia's fracture, so she will be able to walk when she grows up.'

'But to see a newborn baby, just three hours old, shot twice. Everyone is shocked. This is inhuman.'

And the mother who gave birth in silence was helped by a midwife who severed the baby's umbilical cord with her hand.

'The mother was in pain but was trying not to make any sound,' the midwife said.

Three gunmen entered the building in the Afghan capital dressed as police officers before throwing grenades and opening fire with rifles on Tuesday. Pictured: A surviving baby is carried out of the wrecked building by a soldier

'She even put her finger in the newborn baby's mouth to stop her from crying,' the woman told AFP by phone on Friday, her voice still shaking three days after the attack.

The raid on the Barchi National Hospital has sparked international outrage.

There were 26 mothers in the hospital on the morning gunmen posing as members of the Afghan security forces burst in, said the Doctors Without Borders charity, which runs the maternity ward.

Eleven of them were killed during the hours-long attack, including three in a delivery room with their newborn babies. Five were wounded.

Another 10 sheltered in 'safe rooms', which are common in Afghanistan and are often armoured to protect the occupants from gunfire or rockets.

The midwife, who spoke to AFP on the condition of anonymity, also rushed to one of the safe rooms when the emergency siren went off.

As she and some of the women huddled inside, they could hear gunshots as the attackers went from room to room throughout the hospital.

Then one of the women began to give birth.

'We helped her with our bare hands, we had nothing else in the room except some toilet paper and our scarves,' the midwife said.

At least two of those shot dead were newborn babies and 15 men, women and children were injured. The attackers were later shot dead

'When the baby was born, we cut the umbilical cord using our hands. We used our headscarves to wrap the baby and the mother.'

As the terrified women tried to stay quiet, they could hear the gunmen outside asking them to open the door.

'But we knew they were not (security force members),' she said.

Three gunmen were later killed by Afghan security forces.

After the attack 18 babies were taken to another hospital for treatment - some of them carried from the scene by heavily armed soldiers.

No group has claimed the attack, but the United States blamed the Islamic State group.

U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad, the architect of the country's pact with the Taliban, said in blaming ISIS militants that they opposed any Taliban deal and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

But a senior Afghan government official said the patterns of recent attacks showed the involvement of the Taliban and the affiliated Haqqani Network, whose head, Sirajuddin Haqqani, is the deputy chief of the Taliban.

But one of the newborns, who was born just three hours before the attack, survived after doctors operated on her 'shattered' right leg

Another of the babies to have survived was also pictured being treated, at the French Medical Institute for Children in Kabul

The official, who declined to be identified, questioned Khalilzad's assessment as 'premature' adding that all the evidence suggested it was not Islamic State who carried out the raid on the hospital.

The Taliban has warned it is 'fully prepared' to counter Afghan forces.

It comes after an Afghan mother volunteered to breastfeed 20 of the surviving newborns after their mothers were killed.

Feroza Younis Omar, who is the mother of a 14-month-old child and works at the country's Economic Ministry, is helping the recovering newborns at Ataturk Hospital in Kabul.

She said: 'All of us have been damaged by criminals who are destroying humanity in Afghanistan. I am one of those.'

Khadija, one of the few survivors of the attack, revealed that she had been forced to wait to hug her newborn son for the first time as the armed group stormed the unit just hours after she gave birth.

It comes after Afghan mother Feroza Younis Omar (pictured) volunteered to breastfeed 20 of the surviving newborns after their mothers were killed and injured in the attack on the Doctors Without Borders maternity unit

The mother(pictured), who works at the country's Economic Ministry, has a 14-month-old child and is breastfeeding babies who were in the maternity unit targeted by gunmen on Tuesday

Pictured, a nurse cares for a newborn baby who survived the attack. At least twenty newborns were left without caretakers. Some were transferred to the Ataturk Hospital in Kabul while others are being cared for at the city's Indira Gandhi's Children's Hospital

An Afghan mother feeds a newborn baby at the Ataturk Hospital in Kabul

She said the intensive care ward had been full of smoke and bullets but both she and her son survived, with Khadija herself having to hide under a table to avoid the bullets.

Following the attack, some of the newborns left without mothers or anyone to care for them were transferred to the Ataturk Hospital in Kabul.

The hospital's head doctor Jannat Gul Askarzada told reporters: 'Twenty babies have been brought to Ataturk Hospital. One of them was sent to the children's health hospital for orthopedic treatment.'

As the news hit the headlines in Afghanistan, many people took to Twitter to praise Feroza Younis Omar for her efforts and a hashtag bearing her name went viral.

'Masoom Musakhail' tweeted: 'That is the Humanity to feed the baby of martyred Mothers.'

On Wednesday, the families of around 15 babies, whose mothers were killed, were awaiting news on what will happen to the children. Pictured, a rescued mother and her newborn baby receive medical attention

Others have now stepped forward to lead by her example and assist families involved in the attack.

Aziza Kermani, from Kabul, told local media: 'I am ready to adopt one of the babies who have lost their mother or whose families do not have the financial ability to raise them.'

Meanwhile, another resident of the capital who only gave her name as Fatima told a local outlet that she came to the hospital to help the children.
Tighter prime cattle numbers and more balanced consumer demand is supporting the farmgate price in Scotland, according to the latest market commentary.

April slaughter statistics show that Scottish abattoirs processed 15% fewer cattle per week than during March.

Compared to April 2019, this years Scottish April prime cattle kill has been 3.5% lower, having been 9 percent higher during March.

Across the UK, the weekly prime cattle kill during April was 11% lower than during March and 3.2% lower than a year ago, said Stuart Ashworth, Director of Economics Services with Quality Meat Scotland (QMS).

Meanwhile, since the introduction of lockdown measures in Ireland, their abattoirs have handled almost 23% less prime cattle per week during April than in March and 17% fewer than a year ago.

The volume of home-produced beef on the market both in the UK and Ireland has then tightened considerably as April has progressed, having been much higher during March, he added.

The latest trade data from Customs and Excise, although still provisional, shows that UK beef exports in each of the first three months of the year were higher than last year.

Similarly, although beef imports during March were much higher than in February, they were slightly lower than a year earlier, as they had been throughout the first quarter of 2020.

Looking at December census data from the UK and Ireland, it suggests prime stock supplies should be slightly tighter than a year ago.

Across the UK 5% less male cattle of 1-2 years old were recorded on holdings in December 2019 than December 2018.

"In Ireland, it was 4 percent less, as female numbers in this age group were also reduced, said Mr Ashworth.

It is then a little surprising that over the first quarter of 2020 that the UK slaughtered 3.7% more prime cattle than a year ago and Ireland around 2% more.

Equally, though, this higher kill in the first quarter of 2020, combined with census data, suggests that prime cattle supplies should tighten considerably in coming months, he added.

Although measures taken to control Covid-19 have reduced the speed at which slaughter and cutting plants can handle cattle, a lower number of cattle being available for slaughter will also have affected slaughter numbers during April.

According to Mr Ashworth, the recent movements in prime cattle prices may well be a reflection of basic livestock availability.

Additionally, although mince remains a dominant product, supermarket shelves are now carrying a more balanced range of cuts.

It follows promotional activities by QMS and other levy boards that helped to show consumers that here are more ways to use beef than in mince-based products.

Furthermore, some food service businesses are re-opening, both traditional take-away businesses, but also pubs and restaurants converting to takeaway menus.

Demand and the number of customers for beef is changing and helping to provide better balance to the market which, alongside tighter available livestock numbers, will offer support to producer prices, Mr Ashworth said.
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Donald Trump called a crowd of his supporters who lined his limousine route in Pennsylvania 'a wonderful reception' Friday - even though virtually none wore masks or practiced socially distancing.

The president tweeted 'thank you' in a break between White House events to the people of Upper Macungie Township, PA, along with a video shot from his motorcade of supporters mobbing the shoulder.

'Such a wonderful reception yesterday in Pennsylvania. Thank you! #MAGA,' he said.

He had traveled to in the state on Thursday to visit the Owens & Minor Inc. factory, a medical distribution facility that has sent millions of N95 masks and other protective gear to hospitals and health care workers across the country.

It makes masks - but he did not wear one. As he left, hundreds of Trump supporters, many of them waving flags or holding campaign signs and flags, lined the motorcade route to the plant in Upper Macungie Township, a suburb of Allentown in the Lehigh Valley region.

At the plant itself, there were thousands of Trump supporters, almost all of them holding up their phones to record the moment, as they crowded together chanting 'USA' and 'Four more years'. Dozens rushed in for a closer look at the motorcade as it entered the plant grounds, KYW-TV reported.

Spot the mask:

Socially distanced? Many of the supporters lining Trump's route were far less than the six feet apart the CDC prescribes for everyone for safety

President Donald Trump gestures to supporters as his motorcade to drives past on Thursday in Allentown, Pennsylvania

At one point in the motorcade route, Trump's supporters bum-rushed the motorcade in excitement

People line the side of the road waiting for the motorcade with President Donald Trump to drive past on Thursday

While some of the president's supporters were seen wearing masks, the vast majority were not

Supporters line the side of the road waiting for the motorcade of President Donald Trump to drive past on Thursday

Only a small number of the crowd numbers were observed to be wearing face coverings or masks.

In the factory, Trump himself did not wear a mask, marking the second time he wasn't pictured with a facial covering as he traveled outside of the White House.

In his remarks to the workers, Trump praised them for social distancing but expressed nostalgia for the age before it was required.

'All that social distancing. Look at you people all spread out six feet. That's pretty impressive. But we like it the old way a little bit better don't we?,' he said.

People gather outside as US President Donald Trump visits medical supply distributor Owens and Minor Inc. in Allentown

Supporters line the side of the road waiting for President Donald Trump's motorcade to drive past on Thursday

A man salutes as President Donald Trump's motorcade drives past on Thursday in Pennsylvania

A pretzel vendor works the crowd as supporters gather outside the warehouse for Trump's visit

The workers wore matching neon green/yellow company T-shirts with 'Empowering our customers to advance healthcare' on the backs. All wore face masks.

The president, in a rare moment of personal reflection, mentioned his older brother Fred, who died in 1981 at the age of 42 from complications due to alcoholism.

Trump noted his brother attended the nearby LeHigh University.

'When ever I think of this area I think of my brother,' he said.

But he quickly pivoted to some of his more popular political talking points, treating the event more like a campaign rally. The music playing was the same play list that airs at his rallies.

Trump complained the Obama administration left him ill equipped to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

'The cupboards were bare,' he said.

President Trump made the trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to thank workers and did not wear a mask

Factory workers listening to the president's remarks wore masks and sat six feet apart

Supporters gather outside the warehouse of medical equipment distributor Owens & Minor prior to a visit by Trump

Supporters gather outside the warehouse of medical equipment distributor Owens & Minor during a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump during the coronavirus outbreak, in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Protesters gather outside the warehouse to express their opposition to Trump amid a crowd of his supporters

He also got a hit in at former vice president Joe Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump attacked him with his favorite moniker 'Sleepy Joe Biden.'

He attacked Biden's role leading the Obama administration's response to the N1H1 epidemic, better known as the swine flu.

'Most of the N95 were distributed during the N1H1  now you know who says that right? Who says N1H1? Sleepy Joe Biden,' Trump said.

There was scattered laughter among the factory workers.

Trump spoke in a massive warehouse, with wire shelves piled high all the way to the top with medical and cleaning supplies in cardboard boxes of varying sizes.

There was a giant American flag hanging down from the framework at the roof at one end of the building.

A crowd of people look on as the motorcade carrying President Donald Trump passes on the way to a tour of Owens & Minor

Hundreds of Trump supporters, many of them waving flags or holding campaign signs and flags, lined the motorcade route to the plant in Upper Macungie Township

Pennsylvania is a state crucial to the president's re-election. He narrowly won it in 2016

In Pennsylvania, Trump added to the pressure Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is under from home-state Republicans to roll back stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns

Pennsylvania is a state crucial to the president's re-election. He narrowly won it in 2016.

It was Trump's second trip outside Washington in as many weeks as tries to convince the public that it's time for states to begin to open up again, even with the virus still spreading.

Trumps remarks came as federal whistleblower Rick Bright testified before a House panel on Thursday about his repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of respirator masks that he says went nowhere.

In Pennsylvania, Trump added to the pressure Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is under from home-state Republicans to roll back stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns after effectively containing the states outbreak early on.

'We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening things up a bit,' Trump said during a speech at the warehouse. Trump claimed some places in the state had been 'barely affected.'
Sixty-four lived in Oak Lawn; 27 lived in Chicago Ridge; 24 lived in Country Club Hills; 23 each resided in Bridgeview and Chicago Heights; 22 each lived in Homewood and Orland Park; 20 each in South Holland and Palos Heights; 19 lived in Matteson; 16 each in Harvey and Burbank; 15 in Hazel Crest; 13 in Park Forest; 11 in Evergreen Park; 10 in Markham; nine each lived in Blue Island and Richton Park; eight lived in Palos Hills; seven each in Dolton, Flossmoor and Tinley Park; six lived in Crestwood; five each in Lemont and Oak Forest; four each lived in Riverdale, Lansing, Midlothian, Frankfort, Calumet City and Calumet Park; three each lived in Robbins, East Hazel Crest, Palos Park, Steger, Justice and University Park; two each lived in Alsip, Hickory Hills, Glenwood, Hometown, Sauk Village, Orland Hills, Olympia Fields and Thornton; and a single resident each lived in Burnham, Merrionette Park and Worth.
We have been expanding hours and offerings gradually over the past couple weeks, Vilmin said. With that said, we will continue to expand in a thoughtful and organized way that is safe for our customers and our employees. Bars are also starting to open back up at different paces. Moonlight in Beaver Dam was busy when it re-opened Thursday morning after a two-month spell of carry-out and delivery. Cocktails opted to do carry-out only for the rest of the week, with next weeks scheduled to be determined. Old Hickory is working through considerations over staffing, inventory, liability and safety. It isnt as easy as turning the lights on and business as it was, Dockside, outside Beaver Dam, posted on Facebook. Other bars are starting to announce opening dates: Toppers Tap on Wednesday night, Mr. Madisons on Monday. Morrys is figuring out how to proceed while ritually practicing social distancing and sanitizing and asking others to do the same if they visit. Pumpkin Center Tap noted they will regularly sanitize and distance seating, but customers are entering at their own risk. Bars in Juneau were posting Facebook updates about opening Thursday and Friday.Dodge County Health Officer Abby Sauer issued a press release Thursday stating that conditions do not warrant local government orders at this time.
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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / MGX Minerals Inc. ("MGX" or the "Company") (CSE:XMG)(FKT:1MG)(OTC:MGXMF) is pleased to announce an agreement with Dykes Geologic Systems Inc. for over 1,000 digital data files and drawings covering the Heino-Money gold deposit and Tillicum Claims, including, excel spreadsheets of all the data, drill holes, assays, surveys, underground workings and assays, trenches, topography, geology and 3D model, as well as sections and plans through the deposit and original scans of documents. The Company will pay $42,500 CDN to the Vendor comprised of $7,500 in cash and 500,000 shares at a deemed price of $0.07. See British Columbia MINFILE 082FNW234 for detailed information regarding the deposit and claims.Figure 1 - 3D Drill Hole Model (Assessment Report 27144)Historical Exploration and Production SummaryIn 1981, a bulk sample of 58 tonnes shipped from the Money Pit averaged 78.8 grams per tonne gold. In 1986, a 3175- tonne bulk sample was shipped to the Dankoe mill at Keremeos and yielded 109.44 kilograms of gold (Assessment Report 19437). In 1993, as a result of mining at the Heino-Money zone, a total of 5503 tonnes of mineralization with an estimated head grade of 24.4 grams per tonne gold was shipped to the Goldstream mill (MINFILE 082M 141) for processing. Approximately 102,443 grams of gold and 149,546 grams of silver were recovered into concentrates that were shipped to Japan for smelting (George Cross News Letter No. 237 December 10, 1993).Summary of production from Heino-Money zone, 1981 to 1993:YearMined tonnesMilled tonnesAu grams recoveredAu troy ounces recoveredAu troy oz/t (recovered ounces/ton)Ag troy ounces recoveredAg troy oz/t (recovered ounces/ton)19935,5035,503102,4553,2940.5995,2750.95919919,207296198522716848,3511,5546.8501,6587.304198158584,2391462.5171051.810The property contains several mineralized zones with various amounts of work on each: soil geochemistry, geological mapping, trenching, diamond drilling and underground development and sampling. By far, the majority of work was concentrated in two areas: Heino-Money and East Ridge Zones. In addition, are the Grizzley, Annie Flats and Silver Queen Occurrences (MINFILE 082FNW220).The East Ridge zone is 300 metres east of the Heino-Money zone. Gold mineralization occurs in a blanket-like zone that straddles the contact between porphyritic diorite and meta-arkose, quartzite, siltstone and minor argillite. The gold-bearing, near-vertical calc-silicate skarn structures occur within a 9.1 to 24.3- metre zone that strikes northeast and dips 70 degrees northwest. The skarn structures have widths that vary from 1.5 to 4.6 metres, but average 2.1 metres. The East Ridge zone has been traced by drilling for 1100 metres along strike and 365 metres down-dip at an average width of 1.5 metres. The East Ridge zone is comprised of two parallel upper skarn structures 0.9 to 1.5 metres thick and a lower skarn structure. Gold occurs in randomly distributed high- grade pockets separated by areas of lower grade material. Within the zone, gold-bearing sulphide mineralization consists of pyrrhotite, pyrite-marcasite, arsenopyrite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite, galena and native gold with tracesExploration activity in 1982 included 1128 metres of diamond drilling : 16 holes on the Heino-Money zone, eight holes on the East Ridge zone and three holes on the Jenny zone. In 1983, a 60.9-metre crosscut adit was driven on the East Ridge zone and further geochemical surveys and trenching carried out. Diamond drilling was done in 18 holes on the Heino-Money zone. Drilling in 1983 totalled 2319 metres in 38 holes. In 1984, a 60-metre adit was driven into the upper part of the Heino-Money zone. Further diamond drilling was done in five holes on the East Ridge zone. La Teko provided financing of exploration to the end of 1985 ($2.28 million) to earn a 39.6 per cent interest in Esperanza. La Teko was unable to provide further financing and the 1982 option agreement expired at the end of 1985. In 1986, Esperanza Explorations completed a drill program of 25 surface diamond drill holes, totalling 835.5 metres and nine underground diamond drill holes, totalling 176.8 metres, including DDH Haus86-6 which intercepted 12.8 meters @ 90.57 g/t Au. Underground development included 153 metres of drifting and 46.5 metres of raises. By this time, 5 levels had been developed at elevations of 2112, 2130, 2148, 2160 and 2171 metres on the Heino-Money zone. In 1989, a further 10 diamond drill holes, totalling 1437.6 metres, were completed on the East Ridge zone.In 1989, Esperanza Explorations Ltd wrote a summary of the mineralization on the Heino-Money Zone (Property File 825275, Roberts, 1989):The gold mineralization is contained in a near vertical skarn structure which averages about six feet in width and which, to date, has been delineated over a strike length of about 600 feet and a vertical extent of 300 feet. The mineralized zone remains open both on strike and to depth.In 1993, Bethlehem Resources Corporation and Goldnev Resources Inc. optioned the property andobtained a permit for an underground mining operation. Mining commenced in mid-August of that yearand was completed in late October. A total of 29,009m of surface and 3,865m of underground drilling for a total of 376 holes. In addition, underground development consisting of 1,374m in the Heino-Money zone and 410m in the East Ridge zone was completed.In 1994 Columbia Gold Mines Ltd. (formerly Esperanza Explorations Ltd.) commissioned Ross Glanville & Associates to carry out a valuat
Helping fishing communities, fisheries and processors like Trident Seafoods, Ocean Beauty Seafoods and Cooper River Seafoods get the coveted salmon to market, often in less than 24 hours from being pulled from the water, is Alaska Air Cargo's specialty. The airline plays a critical role in the economic vitality of Cordova, Alaska, where more than 50 percent of residents work in the fishing industry.

"Alaska Air Cargo has long been a partner of the Alaska seafood industry," said Torque Zubeck, managing director of cargo for Alaska Airlines. "Now more than ever, we provide a critical service that directly impacts the economic vitality of the region. In Cordova alone, more than half of residents are directly involved in the fishing industry or related business."

As a thank you for their efforts on the frontlines of the battle against coronavirus, Alaska Airlines, Trident Seafoods, Ocean Beauty Seafoods, Copper River Seafoods, Copper River Marketing Association and famed Seattle chef Tom Douglas are partnering to provide a delicious meal to health care heroes, and feed the community, while raising money for Food Lifeline.

"I love everything about Copper River salmon," said chef Tom Douglas. "I love the richness of its delicate flesh and flavor. It's very short season makes it a true delicacy. I am glad we get to share it with our health care workers and the Greater Seattle community."

Douglas will feature salmon donated by the seafood processors and the Copper River Marketing Association to prepare over 200 meals for Swedish Hospital medical professionals working on the frontlines of the coronavirus pandemic. Pilots, flight attendants and management employees from Alaska will be on hand Saturday to deliver the meals and thank workers for their efforts.

"We're thankful for Alaska Airlines, Copper River Marketing Association, Trident, Ocean Beauty, Copper River Seafoods and especially Tom Douglas for providing our heroic health care workers at Swedish Ballard with the meal today," said Swedish Ballard Chief Operating Officer Kasia Konieczny. "While this pandemic has been difficult for us all, it is great to see the community coming together, like these partners, to provide for one another."

On Sunday, May 17, fish lovers are invited to partake in the festivities, while social distancing, of course. For a limited time and while supplies last, Trident and Douglas will be "Grilling for Good." He and his Serious TakeOut team will prepare grilled Copper River sockeye salmon entrees available for purchase through the Tom Douglas website, with all proceeds donated to Food Lifeline.

Alaska Air Cargo transports more than 30+ million pounds of cargo annuallyincluding seafood, mail and freight and operates the most extensive air cargo operation on the U.S. West Coast of any passenger airline.

Alaska Airlines and its regional partners serve more than 115 destinations across the United States and North America, providing essential air service for our guests along with moving crucial cargo shipments, such as food, medicine, mail and e-commerce deliveries. With hubs in Seattle; San Francisco; Los Angeles; Portland, Oregon; and Anchorage, Alaska, the airline is known for low fares, award-winning customer service and sustainability efforts. With Alaska and its Global Partners, guests can earn and redeem miles on flights to more than 800 destinations worldwide. Learn more about Alaska at newsroom.alaskaair.com and blog.alaskaair.com. Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air are subsidiaries of Alaska Air Group (NYSE: ALK).

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New Delhi, May 15 : There seems to be no respite for the Central Reserve Police Force which is battling a different enemy -- COVID-19. As on Thursday, three more of its personnel were detected with the deadly virus, taking the total number of affected personnel to 254.

Out of the 254 cases, only five have recovered so far while one trooper of the paramilitary force has succumbed. There are 248 active cases in the CRPF as of now.

The 31st Battalion based in East Dehi's Mayur Vihar has been the worst hit. This unit shares the bulk of the cases plaguing the CRPF. So much so, it has been quarantined completely and the probe too has been reportedly ordered to ascertain what has gone wrong.

CRPF is one of India's prominent paramilitary forces stationed across sensitive areas such as terrorist-infested Jammu and Kashmir and Maoist-hit Chhattisgarh. The fForce has grown into a big organization with 246 battalions which includes RAF, COBRA and Special Duty Groups. But with an increasing number of its personnel being infected with COVID-19, it has both the force as well as the North Block worried.
By Trend





Protecting citizens in all areas is a priority for the government, Chairman of the Azerbaijan Banks Association (ABA) Zakir Nuriyev said during a program on Azerbaijan's state national television channel, Trend reports.

The special attention paid by the government to the protection of citizens in all areas makes it possible to guarantee full compensation for protected deposits.

The share of insured deposits from the deposit portfolio of liquidated banks is 99 percent and compensation will be made in full at the expense of the Azerbaijan Deposit Insurance Fund (ADIF). At the same time, even the remaining percentage of uninsured deposits, as well as deposits of legal entities and account balances will be compensated by the assets sold, he noted.

ABA chairman also noted that the return of uninsured deposits is a laborious process, however, the safety of all savings and their full compensation are guaranteed.

Commenting on the terms, Nuriyev noted that the process of issuing compensation to depositors of liquidated banks will begin no later than the end of May 2020.

On April 27, by the decision of the board of the Central Bank of Azerbaijan (CBA), temporary administrators were appointed at AtaBank OJSC, AGBank OJSC, NBC Bank OJSC and Amrah Bank OJSC, and then, on April 28 and May 12, the licenses of all four banks were canceled and the bankruptcy process was launched.
It is with complete disgust that we ask you, Mayor Rell, for an apology to the full citizenship of Wethersfield and for the resignation of Wethersfield town councilor Brooks Parker for not only the foul language at last nights budget session, but more significantly, the lack of regard for the challenging budget process, especially in these very difficult times, the leadership of the Democratic Town Committee wrote in a letter to Mayor Mike Rell.
The installation of the water storage facilities would ensure regular supply of water for handwashing towards the fight against COVID-19 in the Eastern region.

Mr Appaw-Gyasi, expressed his appreciation to Vivo Energy Ghana and its retailers for the timely intervention at the markets and lorry parks to combat corona virus from Koforidua and its environs, when he cut the tape to inaugurate the project.

The initiative formed part of Vivo Energy Ghana's Retailer Sustainability Programme, launched to support the fight against COVID-19 in various retail communities.

Other items donated to the central market and lorry parks included; boxes of hand washing soaps, tissue paper, nose masks, hand sanitizers and four foot-operated handwashing facility to encourage regular handwashing in these densely populated areas.

The team also donated infrared temperature guns to the New Juabeng Municipal Assembly.

The Retailer Sustainability Programme forms part of Vivo Energy Ghana's comprehensive programme on COVID-19 prevention being rolled-out to complement the government's efforts in combating the virus from Ghana and ensuring the decentralization of support to local communities.

The gesture is timely and I must commend Vivo Energy Ghana and its retailers who operate under the Shell brand for the intervention. I am very hopeful that this support will help curb the spread of the virus among residents and commuters who use the lorry parks. I want to urge everyone to use the facilities anytime they visit these places to reduce the cases in the region, he advised.

Nana Ama Bonsu, the Market Queen of the Koforidua Central Market, said the installation of the water storage tanks would help solve the water challenges at the market, especially during the period, where water was an essential element in the prevention of COVID-19.

The Eastern Regional Chairman of the Ghana Private Road Transport Union (GPRTU), Mr. Johnson Kyereh, lauded Vivo Energy for the kind gesture and charged his members to continue to patronise Shell's quality fuels and engine oils to support the company's initiative.

Commenting on the programme, the Managing Director of Vivo Energy Ghana, Mr. Ben Hassan Ouattara, reiterated the company's commitment to supporting the government's efforts against the virus to ultimately bring life to normal.

As an energy company, we care about our people, customers and communities and believe that the Vivo Energy Retailer Sustainability Programme will help to reach, protect and minimize the impact of this life-threatening virus on people, especially those in our rural communities, he said.

He further urged the beneficiaries to use the items for its intended purpose, while observing the safety protocols and the President's directives on social distancing and wearing of nose masks.

Since the launch of the Retailer Sustainability Programme, various government institutions have benefitted from it.

They include the National Commission for Civic Education and Effiankwanta Regional Hospital in the Western Regional, Tamale Teaching Hospital in the Northern Region, Kenyasi Health Centre and Ahinsan Camp Prison in the Ashanti Region.

---GNA
That powerlessness has been a frustration for federal politicians over decades; they spend so much money on schools but have such little influence over them. "There is perennial dysfunction in federal-state relations," says one close observer, who does not want to be named. "The best case scenario is almost always that the states go through the accountability motions, which is itself distracting and sucks up resources, and do what they were going to do anyway." Adrian Piccoli, a former NSW Education Minister, says the Commonwealth has one, blunt tool at its disposal to influence schools. "It's called money," he says. The federal government makes funding conditional on reforms, then the states "spend a lot of time working out how to get the money without doing it," Piccoli says. Failed Commonwealth initiatives include the independent public schools push, and repeated attempts to introduce performance pay for teachers. Tehan has so far only had two takers in his attempt to introduce phonics checks around the country. Illustration: Simon Letch Credit: Co-operation has improved recently; there are now national teaching standards, and a national curriculum (although NSW and Victoria kept their own). But debate continues over whether they have been useful, or just create another tangle of bureaucracy. "I don't know at what point we will stop pretending that the federal government can significantly improve schools," says Ben Jensen, chief executive of education consultancy Learning First. In the past few years, the Commonwealth has also formalised its role as the main funder of non-government schools, which has made it "much more directly involved in funding some sectors of schooling than almost anywhere else in the economy," says Peter Goss, School Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute.

Federal politicians - particularly Coalition ones - have encouraged the growth of the private school sector because they encourage parental choice. Some also believe they want to use the private systems - which are regulated but not run by states - to extend their influence over schooling.

"[Private schools] are in between [the two governments] - not really accountable to anyone," says one insider. But that hasn't worked either. Private schools might doff their cap to governments, and co-operate on policy issues, but they will ultimately make decisions in the interest of their own students - as highlighted in the COVID-19 crisis when Victorian private schools rebuffed federal Education Minister Dan Tehan's attempt to use money to get them to defy the premier, and again when their NSW counterparts ignored the NSW government's plan to return students to school in favour of their own. "We now see some of the consequences of that support for independent schools," says Goss. "They are harder [for governments] to control." That has ramifications for public schools, too. The public school sector feels pressure to match the approach of private schools, lest it be seen to have lower standards. Private schools have influenced government policy a few times during the pandemic; back in January, the NSW Department of Education backflipped on its plan to allow students returning from China - where the virus had taken hold in Wuhan - to go straight back to school after private schools asked them to stay home for two weeks. Earlier this month, NSW public schools scrambled to bring back year 12 because private schools did it first. Going their own way: NSW Education Minister Sarah Mitchell with Premier Gladys Berejiklian. Credit:AAP But even within the government sector, many argue that the COVID-19 crisis has shown how little influence state education chiefs have over their own schools. When NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian asked parents to keep their children home on March 23, teachers in NSW public schools rushed their lessons online. While the department developed a website featuring guidelines, templates and training material for teachers and parents, each school had to develop their own strategy.

"We need to ask really big questions about why we haven't had any economies of scale and quality assurance [during remote learning]," says Rachel Wilson, an associate professor of education at Sydney University. "The teachers are killing themselves doing lesson planning, while they should be given material that's quality-assured, and spending their time working on their relationships with students." Critics say this was the result of years of cutting back central education departments, and shifting most responsibilities to schools. There are many benefits to school flexibility, but it also means that in a time of crisis the department - which has been running distance education for 100 years - can no longer swiftly intervene at school level. Loading "What we've seen in COVID-19 is weak central systems, which have often not had the ability to provide a high-quality starting point for how to move online - or how to bring kids back in [to the classroom]," says Goss. "They've had to figure it out by themselves. I fear we are about to see this play out again, as schools reopen." NSW Department of Education Secretary Mark Scott rejected suggestions the department's response was inadequate. "The feedback we've had overwhelmingly has been gratitude for the creation of that learning from home website - the traffic around that has been absolutely enormous," he says. "There's been more traffic to that ... than there was to the NSW Health website in the heat of the pandemic, because of the quality of support that was provided."

Within all this, the deeply entrenched inequities in Australia's school system have become more pronounced. While some schools had top-notch online learning systems ready to launch, others have had to scramble to not only furnish their students with laptops and internet access, but give them tables and chairs. In some more disadvantaged areas, schools - both public and private - also delivered food to their students, knowing that the only decent meals they received where the ones they were fed at school. "Some schools were able to pivot rapidly and extensively," says Paul Kidson, an education academic at the University of Wollongong and a former independent school principal. "They were well prepared, they could roll stuff out, flick switches. Other schools were struggling to provide that support at school, let alone deliver it remotely. That's a funding issue, but it does go to the core of how structural inequities were just reinforced at a moment like this." The problems frustrating the education sector for years they have been thrust into the spotlight by COVID-19, not only via headlines about the high-level battles between governments and sectors, but by the unprecedented insight millions of parents have had into their own children's education, as they helped them with lessons. "If you can take any positive out of this whole experience, is that schools are front of mind for a lot of people now," says Piccoli. Loading Dr Jensen argues the parental insight into their child's everyday classroom activities could be the most significant by-product of the COVID-19 crisis. "It's shone a light on the weeds of teaching and learning - that is where teachers live, and where all the hard work is done," he says. "Education policy has not gone into the weeds for a decade-and-a-half. We have been hopping out of providing support at that level, and instead all this money is going into the high-level stuff."
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  The Agriculture Department has partnered with Grab Philippines for the sale and delivery of fresh produce from local farmers and food growers amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Under the partnership, the ride-hailing firm will be delivering online through its GrabExpress feature vegetables, fruits, and meats purchased by Metro Manila customers from the agency's eKadiwa initiative.

READ: Agriculture dept. launches online marketplace

We are hopeful that these local produce can reach far and wide through the technology and wide delivery network of GrabExpress," said Grab Philippines President Brian Cu.

The Department of Agriculture is currently selling major agricultural products from farmers and food growers through its "Kadiwa ni Ani at Kita" program at more affordable prices. The agency has teamed up with local governments and the private sector for the program.

Earlier this month, Agriculture Secretary William Dar said many farm and fishery producers have expressed their desire to participate in e-commerce in light of store closures and rules on physical distancing.

He said this is part of the "new normal" for agriculture and fishery sectors in light of the coronavirus pandemic.
Are President Donald Trump and Dr. Anthony Fauci talking past each other when it comes to reopening the nations schools?

As the president remains impatient to get schools that were closed due to the coronavirus open again as part of bringing the rest of the county back online, the nations top epidemiologist continues to sound the alarm about making sure all reopenings are done without risking a reignition of the pandemic.

That tension took center stage this week as news coverage of Faucis testimony before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee seemed to suggest head-on conflict between the two over the issue of when schools can reopen. A closer look at their statements shows its a lot more complicated than that.

Heres what you need to know.

Trumps Comments

Trumps remarks came in several media appearances Wednesday.

I was surprised by his answer actually because its just to me its not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools, Trump told White House reporters Wednesday in response to a question about Faucis Tuesday testimony, in which Fauci laid out factors that need to be considered as states prepare to reopen schools for the next academic year.



Earlier Wednesday, Fox Business reporter Maria Bartiromo had asked Trump about Faucis caution that little spikes of climbing disease rates might turn into outbreaks if states dont meet federal criteria before opening businesses, schools, and public spaces.

So Anthony is a good person, a very good person Ive disagreed with him, Trump said in response. We have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open, we have to open our country. Now we want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible, we cant keep going on like this ... Youre having bedlam already in the streets, you cant do this. We have to get it open. I totally disagree with him on schools.

Some headlines about Trumps comments gave the impression that Fauci had said definitively that all schools should remain closed in the fall.

In reality, Fauci said the ability to open schools depended on the dynamics of the pandemic in a given region. He cited the White Houses own guidance on opening up America again, which Trump announced April 16. Fauci said leaders should meet proper criteria before easing restrictions, but he did not rule out schools reopening buildings for the fall semester.

Faucis Comment on Vaccines and Schools Got a Lot of Attention

One of Faucis comments in particular stirred up a lot of response.

Committee Chairman Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn, asked Fauci how he would advise a public school principal of a university chancellor on how to reassure families that its safe to return in August.

I would tell [the chancellor] that, in this case, that the idea of having treatments available, or a vaccine, to facilitate the re-entry of students into the fall term would be something that would be a bit of a bridge too far, Fauci said.

But, even without a vaccine, leaders can reopen schools once they are confident their states and communities have the capability to test the population frequently, to trace the spread of the illness, and to quickly quarantine people who may have been exposed, Fauci said.

Some on Twitter left out the second part of Faucis comments, seeming to suggest he was saying schools shouldnt open at all until there is a vaccine. At the end of the meeting, Alexander circled back to the comments and asked him to clarify.

Absolutely not, Fauci said, when asked if a lack of a vaccine meant students couldnt return to school.

Little Spikes

Faucis comments on little spikes of increased virus cases turning into outbreaks referred to easing virus restrictions more generally, not just in schools.

He cited criteria in White House guidance, which calls for states to ease restrictions in a phased approach only after they ensure they have adequate testing, tracing, and hospital surge capacity and only after theyve seen declining rates of the virus for 14 consecutive days. Schools would reopen in the second phase, after 28 days of declines.

Some governors have eased restrictions on businesses and public spaces without meeting those benchmarks, Fauci said.

What Ive expressed then, and again, is my concern that if some areas ... jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks, Fauci said. Therefore I have been being very clear in my message to try to the best extent possible to go by the guidelines, which have been very well thought out and very well delineated.

Kids and the Coronavirus

Another exchange that got attention: Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., asked Fauci why schools should be closed when mortality rates for children who test positive for COVID-19 are relatively low compared to older populations. Some reporters have looped Faucis cautious response into the discussion about Trump and reopenings.

I think the one-size-fits-all, that were going to have a national strategy and nobodys going to go to school is kind of ridiculous, Paul said. We really ought to be doing it school district by school district, and the power needs to be dispersed, because people make wrong predictions.

When it comes to effects of the coronavirus on children, we should be humble about what we dont know, Fauci said. He cited reports of rising rates of a related inflammatory illness among children in the United States, but he did not say anything about schools in that response.

Researchers are still studying childrens immunity to the virus, their ability to contract it asymptomatically and transmit it to others, and their vulnerability to related conditions. State and district leaders are also concerned about protecting the health of older and medically vulnerable staff when buildings open.

States Are Preparing for School Reopenings

States around the country already have started preparing for the 2020-21 school year. Some have said they would prepare a menu of reopening options, including a combination of distance and in-person learning so that buildings dont become too crowded. Some states, like California, have said such decisions will be in the hands of districts. And some have said schools will reopen, but must be prepared to close again if virus rates spike in their areas.

Learn more about state plans here.

What Trump Said About Schools

Its not clear if Trump was pushing for schools to open now or emphasizing that he doesnt want them to remain closed in the fall. Some states have ended or will soon end their school years. And, by Education Weeks count, 48 states, four U.S. territories, and the District of Columbia have ordered or recommended school building closures for the rest of the current academic year.

Trump previously has urged schools to reopen. On Wednesday, he echoed an earlier urging that some older teachers, who are more vulnerable to severe cases of the virus, should stay home.

Trump and Fauci also have been repeatedly questioned about their working relationship, especially as the president faces political pressure about his handling of the crisis. Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez said Wednesday that Trump would be to blame if schools struggle to resume normal operations in the fall.

Photo: Senators listen as Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, speaks remotely during a virtual Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing Tuesday. Seated at table on left are Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, Sen. Mike Braun, R-Ind., center, and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky. --Win McNamee/Pool via AP

Follow us on Twitter @PoliticsK12 . And follow the Politics K-12 reporters @EvieBlad @Daarel and @AndrewUjifusa .
DALLAS, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Elah Holdings, Inc. (OTC:ELLH) has released its interim unaudited report for the first quarter of 2020. This report and additional company information can be found at www.elahholdings.com under the Financial Releases section of the website.

About Elah Holdings

Elah Holdings, Inc. (formerly known as Real Industry, Inc.) is a reorganized holding company led by experienced business leaders that is seeking to acquire profitable businesses in the commercial and industrial markets to generate sustainable profitability and cash flows, unlock the value of our considerable tax assets, and use creative deal structures that reduce risk and ultimately create long-term value for our shareholders. For more information, visit by OTC Markets Group, a centralized electronic quotation service for over-the-counter securities under the symbol "ELLH."

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SINGAPORE, May 14 (Reuters) - Singapore's residual fuel oil inventories rose 4% in the week ended May 13 despite lower net import volumes, official data showed on Thursday, in a sign of sluggish marine fuels demand at the world's top bunkering hub. - Onshore fuel oil stocks rose by 851,000 barrels (about 134,000 tonnes) from the previous week to 24.987 million barrels, or 3.935 million tonnes, data from Enterprise Singapore showed. - Residual fuel stocks were 5% higher than a year earlier. - This came despite lower net import volumes which dropped 42% from the previous week to a two-week low of 348,000 tonnes, less than half of the 2020 weekly average of 704,000 tonnes. Weekly figures, however, are volatile. - Spot bunker fuel demand was sluggish in the Singapore hub over the past few weeks, said four trade sources. - Singapore marine fuel sales slipped to a two-month low of 4.114 million tonnes in April, down 5% from March but were 11% higher than year earlier levels, official data showed on Wednesday. - For the week, most of Singapore's net fuel oil exports were to China at 60,000 tonnes, followed by 17,000 tonnes to Papua New Guinea and 10,000 tonnes to Vietnam. - The largest net imports into Singapore were Malaysia's 143,000 tonnes, followed by the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with 94,000 tonnes, Russia with 38,000 tonnes and Taiwan with 35,000 tonnes. - Singapore fuel oil imports from the UAE, a frequent exporter to Singapore, resumed after an unusual five-week absence due to unprofitable export economics from the UAE and ample Singapore supplies, two trade sources said. - Singapore fuel oil stocks have averaged at 23.552 million barrels, or 3.709 million tonnes, per week so far this year, compared with 21.081 million barrels, or 3.32 million tonnes, in 2019. May 13 Total Imports Total Exports Net Imports Fuel oil (in tonnes) ALGERIA 4,730 0 4,730 AUSTRALIA 15,783 0 15,783 BRAZIL 26,492 0 26,492 CHINA 0 60,001 -60,001 ESTONIA 0 0 0 HONG KONG 0 0 0 JAPAN 14,891 0 14,891 KOREA, REP OF 19,012 0 19,012 MALAYSIA 161,080 18,128 142,952 PAPUA NEW GUINEA 0 17,055 -17,055 RUSSIA 38,462 0 38,462 SPAIN 33,572 0 33,572 SRI LANKA 0 0 0 TAIWAN 35,065 0 35,065 THAILAND 10,105 0 10,105 UNITED ARAB 93,705 0 93,705 EMIRATES UNITED STATES 0 0 0 VIETNAM 0 9,978 -9,978 TOTAL 452,899 105,162 347,737 (Reporting by Roslan Khasawneh; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:28:04|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China reported steady afforestation progress in the first four months of the year despite the COVID-19 epidemic, the country's forestry and grassland authorities said Friday.

The country had completed 46.96 percent of the annual afforestation target during the January-April period, with a total of 47.4 million mu (about 3.16 million hectares) of trees planted by the end of April, the National Forestry and Grassland Administration (NFGA) said at a press conference.

Provinces including Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Henan had already fulfilled their year-round afforestation tasks, while places such as Hebei, Anhui and Guangdong had completed over 50 percent of the annual afforestation tasks, the NFGA said.

China plans to increase afforested areas by 6.7 million hectares by the end of this year, in order to fulfill a long-term afforestation plan of increasing forest coverage rate to 23.04 percent by 2020, and to 26 percent by 2035. Enditem
The Texas City Management Association recently presented 2020 City Council of the Year honors to Deer Park.

The award recognizes achievements in eight areas of emphasis, from financial management to community awareness, TCMA President Kenneth Williams said in a press release.

Throughout 2019, the Deer Park City Council demonstrated efforts that went above and beyond in these areas, showing strong and unified leadership for their community.

Mayor Jerry Mouton said of the council in the release, It is their hard work and dedication to our community that made our council a strong candidate for this achievement.

This recognition addresses the efforts of council during the (March 2019) Intercontinental Terminals Company fire and response, as well as major internal tasks like the completion of our 2019 Strategic Planning process, City Manager Jay Stokes said.

Elected officials are Mouton and council members Sherry Garrison, T.J. Haight, Tommy Ginn, Bill Patterson, Ron Martin and Rae Sinor. Former City Council member Thane Harrison also was recognized.

The TCMA is an organization of local government officials that focuses on promoting high standards of governance, service, leadership, ethics, and education, according to the groups website.
Berkeley is joining a growing list of Bay Area cities, including San Francisco and San Jose, looking to turn parking lots, streets and sidewalks into outdoor dining spaces for restaurants during the coronavirus pandemic. The efforts are familiar, but where Berkeley takes its proposal a step further is by including public parks as potential dining areas.

Mayor Jesse Arreguin, who worked closely with Vice Mayor Sophie Hahn on the proposal, said it is consistent with the states guidelines regarding physical distancing and prioritizing outdoor seating for restaurants. It will be put in front of the City Council on June 2.

Im hoping we can get it done by this summer. Thats probably where well be in order to start opening restaurants, he said. We want to do this safely, but we also want to help our businesses reopen.

There are more than 350 restaurants in Berkeley, and most are small businesses employing fewer than 50 workers. Following the Bay Area shelter-in-place order, Berkeleys food scene was hard-hit by layoffs and closures. Arreguin said the urgency tied to the proposal is a direct response to growing fears that more restaurants will close in the coming weeks if theyre unable to generate additional revenue. More outdoor seating could be a solution, he said, but added that decisions still have to be made regarding what streets would be closed off.

Dona Savitsky, who owns Tacubaya in Berkeley, reopened this week for the first time since March. She said business is down  the restaurant is doing around $2,000 in sales per weekday through takeout and delivery orders, compared to the $5,000 to $7,000 it was doing before the pandemic  and any proposal to expand seating for restaurants would be a boon to the industry.

In theory, I think its a great idea. Everyone wants to sit outside anyway, and if thats going to increase our sales, oh boy do we need that, she said.

Still, Savitsky said she has questions about the proposals potential implementation. She said she wonders about alcohol sales outdoors and how the states Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control laws would be applied between restaurants that have liquor licenses and those that do not, but happen to share the same outdoor seating on a street corner or sidewalk.

Gianluca Guglielmi, who operates Berkeleys Donato and Co. restaurant with chef Donato Scotti, said he approves of the proposal, but wonders about the cost to restaurant owners. Outdoor dining is more complicated than just moving a couple of chairs, he said.

You would have to buy outdoor furniture and those kinds of things. If people are sitting out there for a few hours at your restaurant, they want to be comfortable, he said. If this is just something that lasts a few weeks or a few short months, it might not be worth buying so many new things to put outside. But if it lasts longer, then you have to start thinking about that and making that investment.

Berkeleys proposal comes after San Francisco officials announced plans to use streets and parking lots for dining. San Jose leaders took a similar approach with their proposal, called Al Fresco San Jose.

Food Guide Top 25 Restaurants Where to eat in the Bay Area. Find spots near you, create a dining wishlist, and more.

Arreguin said he envisions the outdoor dining in Berkeley lasting beyond the pandemic.

(Berkeley) is going to be moving into Phase 2 soon, but were going to move ahead thoughtfully and based on data, he said, referring to a stage in Gov. Gavin Newsoms plan for a gradual reopening of the state economy where more businesses can reopen if public health milestones are met. So not only is this proposal around how to start reopening restaurants and cafes, but it is also a way to reclaim our streets and public spaces for public use.

As of Thursday, 19 counties were approved by Gov. Gavin Newsoms office to quickly reopen their local economies. The counties  Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Lassen, Nevada, Mariposa, Placer, Plumas, San Benito, Shasta, Sierra, Sutter, Tehama, Tuolumne and Yuba  met state-set benchmarks in containing the coronavirus.

Justin Phillips is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jphillips@sfchronicle.com Twittter: @JustMrPhillips
I think as we get closer to the election, people retreat to what they know best. In establishment Democratic politics, at the national level at least, that means going after swing white voters, said Quentin James, co-founder of Collective PAC, who said he would be happy with any of the black women contending for the job. Theyre going to make every excuse in the book to justify picking Gretchen Whitmer, Amy Klobuchar or  even though I agree with her politics  Elizabeth Warren.
In an apparent indication to a Chinese role, Army Chief Gen M M Naravane on Friday said there were reasons to believe that Nepal objected to India laying a road connecting the Lipulekh pass in Uttarakhand at the behest of someone else even as he asserted that the Army is dealing with incidents of face-offs with Chinese military on a case-by-case basis.

In an interaction at a defence think-tank, Gen Naravane said India will have to remain "alive" to a scenario of a "two-front" war along the northern and western borders, but noted that he does not foresee the possibility of every confrontation leading to such a situation.

On the Army's big-ticket proposal to induct youngsters for a three-year tenure under the Tour of Duty (ToD) concept, the Army Chief said the idea germinated following feedback from school and college students that they want to experience military life without opting a permanent career in the Army.

Gen Naravane said the ToD will help the Army in cutting down revenue expenses on account of payment of pensions and other benefits.

Replying to a question, he said the Army has received an order from the government to cut expenditure by 20 per cent from the current fiscal due to the COVID-19 crisis, adding the force is implementing it without compromising on its combat readiness.

Expenditure is being cut through a variety of measures including restricting large movements of troops, he said in the video-conference organised by Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses.

On Nepal raising objections to India laying the Lipulekh-Dharchula road, Gen Naravane said the reaction by the neighbouring country was surprising.

"The area east of Kali river belongs to them. The road that we built is on the west of the river. There was no dispute. I don't know what they are agitating about," the Army Chief said.

"There has never been any problem in the past. There is reason to believe that they might have raised the issues at the behest of someone else and that is very much a possibility," he said.

The 80-km-long strategically crucial road at a height of 17,000 feet along the border with China in Uttarakhand was thrown open by Defence Minister Rajnath Singh last week.

Nepal on Saturday raised objection to the inauguration of the road, saying the "unilateral act" was against the understanding reached between the two countries on resolving border issues.

On two separate incidents of face-offs between Indian and Chinese troops, the Army chief said there was no link between the two, adding "We are dealing with them on a case-by-case basis. I have not seen any concerted design into the face-offs."



On the two-front war, he said it is a possibility and that the country will have to remain prepared to deal with such a scenario.

"It is a possibility. It is not that it is going to happen every time. We have to be alive to all contingencies which can happen, various scenarios that can unfold. We have to remain alive to the possibility.

"But to assume that in all cases both fronts would be 100 per cent active, I think that would be an incorrect assumption to make. In dealing with the two-front scenario, there will always be a priority front and a secondary front. That is how we look at dealing with this two-front threat," Gen Naravane said.

He said the priority front would be addressed in a different manner while the secondary front will be kept as dormant as possible just to conserve resources to focus on the priority front.

"We should not look at a two-front scenario just as a military responsibility. A country does not go to war with its armed forces alone. It has other pillars like diplomatic corp and other organs of government which will come into play to make sure that we are not forced into a corner where we will have to deal with two adversaries at the same time and in full strength," he added.

"I think that's where the whole-of-the-nation approach will come into play," said the Army Chief.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US threatens to trigger return of UN Iran sanctions as Russia reaffirms opposition

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 5:55 AM

The United States has threatened to trigger a return of all United Nations sanctions on Iran if the UN Security Council does not extend an arms embargo on Tehran that is due to expire in October.

US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "one way or another" Washington would ensure the arms embargo remains. He said the United States has drafted a Security Council resolution and "will press ahead with diplomacy and build support."

The Trump administration is hell-bent on extending the embargo on the sales of conventional weapons to Iran. The ban on arms deliveries to and from Iran will expire in October under the resolution 2231 that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and world powers  the US, Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany. Washington is legally prohibited from seeking its extension as it left the deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), in May 2018.

"If American diplomacy is frustrated by a veto, however, the US retains the right to renew the arms embargo by other means," Hook wrote, citing the ability of a party to the Iran nuclear deal to trigger a so-called snapback of all UN sanctions on Iran, which includes the arms embargo.

Iran has warned the United States that it will not accept any violation of the UN Security Council resolution that mandates the lifting of the arms ban against the Islamic Republic, saying the country is absolutely entitled to the ban's cancellation.

"The United States and other countries should know that Iran will not accept violation of Resolution 2231 under any circumstances," Iranian President Hassan Rouhani told last week.

"Under the resolution, it is Iran's absolute right to be soon relieved of the ban," the president added.

If the embargo were to be renewed amid Washington's pressure, Iran's response would be "clear," Rouhani noted, without giving details.

In late April, the US circulated to a small number of council members a draft UN resolution that that would indefinitely extend the U.N. arms embargo on Iran. It would strike the expiration of the arms embargo from the council resolution that endorsed the 2015 nuclear deal.

A resolution needs nine yes votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain to be adopted by the 15-member Security Council. Russia has already signaled it is opposed to extending the arms embargo.

"Arms embargo, a byproduct of nuclear deal"

Russia's UN ambassador said Tuesday that Moscow will oppose any attempts by the United States to extend the arms ban and reimpose UN sanctions against Iran.

Vassily Nebenzia's comments made clear that the Trump administration will have a tough time advancing any measures to impose further punishment on Iran in the UN Security Council, where Russia has veto power, the Associated Press said.

Nebenzia said the arms ban is "a byproduct" of the nuclear deal, known as the JCPOA, and was temporary.

"It expires in October. ... And for us that's clear, that's clear," he said. "I do not see any reason why an arms embargo should be imposed on Iran."

Nebenzia was also asked about the controversial matter of the Trump administration possibly seeking to use the "snapback" provision in the 2015 Security Council resolution endorsing the nuclear deal, which would restore all UN sanctions against Iran that had been lifted or eased under the terms of the nuclear agreement.

The Russian ambassador stressed that "to trigger a snapback you have to be a participant of the JCPOA, and the US proudly announced on May 8, 2018 that they withdrew from the JCPOA and closed the door behind."

"Now, they knock on the door and say, just wait a second we forgot to do one little thing on the JCPOA, but let us back, we'll do it and we'll leave again,'" he said.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said late last month that renewing the UN arms embargo against Iran is out of the question.

"For us, the case of the existing ban on arms deliveries to and from Iran was closed with the adoption of Resolution 2231. The embargo regime expires in October this year," Ryabkov said.

He criticized the US for its selective approach to Resolution 2231, saying Washington itself stopped adhering to its provisions two years ago and has since spared no effort to prevent other nations from abiding by the resolution through introducing unilateral sanctions.

US President Donald Trump quit the 2015 Iran nuclear deal in 2018, reimposing sanctions against Tehran. But Washington argues it can trigger a return of UN sanctions because the 2015 Security Council resolution enshrining the deal still names the US as a participant. "This is ridiculous," Russia's UN Ambassador Nebenzia told reporters on Tuesday. "They are not members, they have no right to trigger."

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As Tamil Nadu crossed 10,000 cases on Friday  the first case, a 45-year-old man with a travel history to Oman, was detected in early March  a wholesale market of fresh fruit, vegetables and flowers in Chennai became the latest warzone for the administration battling the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.

According to a state government official, around 4,000 people linked to the market have already been tested out of which 1,000 are primary contacts. At least 2,500 positive cases currently pertain to the Koyambedu Market cluster, which is higher than the 1350 cases in the state linked to the Tablighi Jamaat religious conference.

The Koyambedu hotspot is also responsible for cases in 10 districts other than Chennai. We have either carried out facility quarantine or home quarantine of those who started the journey from Koyambedu, the official quoted above said.

Spread over 54 acres, Koyambedu market complex is one of the largest wholesale market complexes for perishable goods in India. It houses more than 1000 wholesalers and over 2000 retail shops. On May 4, 300 of the 527 new cases reported were found to be linked to the market. Within hours, it was shut down.

According to S Ram Mohan, a core committee member of the Joint Action Committee of vegetable vendors associations at Koyambedu market, the district administration had shut down flower and fruit sales well before May 4. By then, even the vegetable retailers had stopped operations.

On April 28, retail traders and fruit sellers from Koyambedu were relocated to a suburb. Expecting wholesalers to do likewise would have been difficult as few open spaces in the city have the capacity to handle 3,000 tonnes of vegetables each day, GD Rajasekaran, president, Koyambedu Periyar Market Association, said.

On April 24, the state government announced a hard lockdown for four days, between April 26 and 29. This led to a spate in panic buying. Mohan recounted scenes of utter chaos in Koyambedu in the two days before the hard lockdown was enforced. On April 30, another round of panic buying ensued after people realized that the second leg of the national lockdown, which was expected to end on May 3, would likely be extended.

Last week, chief minister Edappadi Palaniswami blamed the traders for not vacating the market in March itself. Now, because many from Koyambedu had travelled to other districts, the number of infected there has gone up. This is the reason for the spike in cases in Chennai also, he said. However, Mohan countered this and said that no official meeting was held between the wholesale vendors and the authorities in March or April.

Super-spreading events have played a much bigger role in the virus spread in Tamil Nadu than in Maharashtra and Gujarat  two other states that have seen huge numbers of Covid-19 cases, experts said.

The spike in numbers due to the Koyambedu cluster is immediately noticeable. Between April 24 and May 3, the average daily new cases reported in Tamil Nadu were 134; from May 4 to May 13, the average grew to 620 a day. Persons linked to the market have spread the virus the neighbouring states of Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.

T Jacob John, a former professor of Virology, Christian Medical College (CMC), Vellore blamed ad-hoc decisions and panic among people because of the total lockdown. To contain the disease, all people must wear masks outside their home and maintain hand hygiene, he said.

The good news is that the state is testing much more than it was even last month. The state had conducted the highest total number of tests as per the HT dashboard at 280,023 as of Thursday night, which translates into 4179 tests per million people, far higher than the national average of 1540 per million people.

The more you test, the more you find. Tamil Nadu is finding more cases because they are testing more, said Dr V Ramana Dhara, professor at Indian Institute of Public Health-Hyderabad. These cases are probably occurring in other states too, but they are not testing more, he added.

The increase in number of cases is something to be expected especially as the most stringent components of the lockdown are relaxed. We are seeing the residual of a couple of major clusters, for instance, the Koyambedu cluster, Dr Ram Gopalakrishnan, an infectious disease specialist said.
The Lagos State Universal Basic Education Board, LASUBEB, is set to kick-start the distribution of food palliatives to primary school pupils at home.

The Chairman of Lagos SUBEB, Wahab Alawiye-King disclosed this on Thursday when he visited the warehouse where the food palliatives were kept in Ikeja.

Alawiye-king disclosed that the food palliative measure was part of the Presidential directive that the homegrown school feeding programme must continue in spite of schools closure.

He noted that government agencies have been working relentlessly for the past weeks to ensure that the directive was carried out hence the reason for the monitoring of the exercise.

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Alawiye-king also stated that transparency would be strictly adhered to as international and local organisations were part of the monitoring group to ensure that the food palliatives got to the right households.

The LASUBEB Chairman stated that over 37,589 households are being targeted for the pilot scheme with 202 centres already designated for the distributions.
Astronomers measured pulses coming from the distant Delta Scuti stars, which are twice brighter than the Earth's sun. Delta Scuti stars rotate so rapidly that it slightly flattens, scrambling their pulsation patterns and produce what seems to be a chaotic pulsation at first.

Unexpectedly, these pulses were musical, and some even harmonize with other nearby stars. They pulsate in interesting ways that have so far defied understanding.

According to Daily Mail, it is the first time that harmonies have been measured from Delta Scuti stars. Tim Bedding from the University of Sydney and his team of astronomers recorded the pulsing patterns of 60 new Delta Scuti stars.

Stars are Musical Instruments

In an interview with ABC News, Bedding said that "stars are like musical instruments. They can play many notes simultaneously, and there are all different types of pulsations."

Using the data from NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS), which was launched in 2018 to identify planets outside the solar system, Bedding and his team of astronomers were able to come up with their research.

They were surprised to notice some harmonized patterns emerge as they first expected that the pulsing patterns from the stars are just random noise. Bedding said that initially, they thought that the pulses would produce something that sounds like a cat walking on the piano playing random keys with no method.

"To use a musical analogy, many stars pulsate along with simple chords, but Delta Scuti stars are complex, with notes that seem to be jumbled. TESS has shown us that's not true for all of them," Bedding said.

Stellar pulsations are a common phenomenon observed through measuring variances in light waves emitted by a star. Many stars oscillate in rhythmic patterns because of the acoustic waves produced by burning hydrogen, or small waves produced as different bodies of gas in the star center pass through or near each other.

Bill Chaplin of the University of Birmingham told Sky News that, inside the stars, these pulsations cause the star's brightness to change every so often. Understanding a star's pulsations gives the astronomers the only way of creating a detailed picture of what the star looks like inside.

Read Also: [Listen] NASA's Sonified Hubble Deep Space Image of the Galactic Treasure Chest Will Give You Chills

Asteroseismology

The field of asteroseismology looks at how old a star is, and a star's condition and temperature. The discovery of pulsations is beneficial in astronomy in determining which stars are young or old as newer stars tend to burn at a relatively consistent rate. In comparison, older stars create more irregular pulses.

It is still a mystery how the Delta Scuti stars have formed a harmony, but one theory suggests that they could have come from the same larger gas cloud around the same time before diffusing through the universe.

But for Bedding, discovering the harmonized pulsations could also just a random chance. He said that the stars in the universe are oriented randomly, so whoever looks at that direction was lucky to have discovered the harmonized pulsations.

Read More: The Truth Behind the Smiley Face Venus, Jupiter and the Moon Will Form on May 16
Lebanon's finance minister said Friday his crisis-hit country was ready to comply with a request from the International Monetary Fund to float its struggling local currency after receiving foreign aid.

Ghazi Wazni told AFP that Lebanon would also slash by half the number of commercial banks in its oversized banking sector in a bid to alleviate its worst financial crisis since the 1975-1990 civil war.

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FRANKFORT, Ky. - State parks will start reopening soon as Kentucky continues to ease restrictions amid the coronavirus outbreak, Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday.

The parks will reopen June 1 in an effort to revive tourism revenue, Beshear said at his daily briefing. People can make park reservations starting May 19, he said.

Visitors will be expected to follow social distancing and health guidelines, he said.

Reopening to the public will be state resort parks, recreational parks, lodges and cabins beginning June 1, he said.

State resort parks designated to house some coronavirus patients wont reopen to the public June 1, Beshear said. Those are Lake Cumberland, Lake Barkley, Blue Licks Battlefield and Buckhorn Lake.

He reported four more virus-related deaths in Kentucky, bringing the states death count to at least 332 since the pandemic began.

Beshear reported 252 more coronavirus cases, raising the statewide total to more than 7,440 cases. New cases were inflated by an outbreak at a federal prison in Lexington, he said.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up within weeks. For some, especially older adults and those with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, even death.

___

Follow AP coverage of the pandemic at https://apnews.com/VirusOutbreak and https://apnews.com/UnderstandingtheOutbreak.
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The Vatican was sanitised by men wearing protective overalls ahead of masses restarting next week, as it revealed it will test the temperatures of the faithful before Sunday Mass to curb the spread of coronavirus.

Men wearing protective overalls and masks were seen sanitising St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican today. Workers sanitised all the statues in the basilica, including beneath the baroque sculpted bronze canopy of St. Peter's Baldachin.

The Basilica, the largest Catholic church in the world, was disinfected on Friday, with a team of suited and masked cleaners spraying every surface of the 23,000-square metre (250,000-square foot) church.

This comes as Saint Peter's Basilica will reopen to visitors on Monday, after a two-month closure due to the coronavirus pandemic, the Holy See said on Friday.

The Vatican was sanitised by men wearing protective overalls this morning after it revealed it will test the temperatures of the faithful before Sunday Mass to curb the spread of coronavirus

Men wearing protective overalls and masks were seen sanitising St Peter's Basilica in the Vatican on May 15 amid the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured, a man drives a floor cleaning machine

The hygiene measures were announced on Thursday ahead of liturgical celebrations restarting and applies to the Vatican's four Roman basilicas - including St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City

Public Masses were banned as part of the initial coronavirus lockdown measures on March 10, a decision that caused fury among the country's Catholic population

The Vatican will conduct temperature checks will at least on Sundays and feast days when larger crowds are expected in an attempt to prevent the spread of coronavirus as masses restart

The Vatican revealed it is planning to check the temperatures of the faithful before they enter its basilicas for Sunday Mass in new hygiene measures.

The measures apply to the Vatican's four Roman basilicas - including St. Peter's Basilica in Vatican City.

The temperature checks will at least occur on Sundays and feast days when larger crowds are expected.

The regulations are even more stringent than those adopted by Italian bishops for ordinary parishes around the country.

It prohibits anyone with a fever or who has been in contact with a COVID-19 patient from attending Mass.

Public Masses were banned as part of the initial coronavirus lockdown measures on March 10, a decision that caused fury among the country's Catholic population.

The bishops told the government they could 'not accept seeing the exercise of freedom of religion being compromised'. Most of Italy's churches have remained open during the crisis, but only for individual prayer.

The Vatican's safety measures are even more strict than at parish churches, which will resume public masses on Monday, following a detailed hygiene and security protocol that prohibits anyone with a fever or who has been in contact with a COVID-19 patient from attending Mass

Churches will restart mass across the nation from May 18 as Italy has set out steps to ease social distancing measures and as it enters 'phase two' of its lockdown exit plan, which sees people allowed outside their homes

Men wearing protective overalls and masks spray sanitiser on the famous marble cherubs during the sanitation of St. Peter's Basilica during deep clean

Workers in protective gear were seen sanitising beneath the baroque sculpted bronze canopy of St. Peter's Baldachin inside St. Peter's Basilica as the Vatican underwent a lengthy cleaning process ahead of masses restarting

The Vatican also revealed it is planning to check the temperatures of the faithful before they enter its basilicas for Sunday Mass in new hygiene measures. Pictured, a floor cleaning machine is used in St Peter's Basilica

Masses for the public can resume on May 18 but under strict conditions outlined in a protocol signed by Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and Cardinal Gualtiero Bassetti, president of the Italian Bishops Conference.

The Vatican hasn't said when Pope Francis would preside over his first post-lockdown celebration in St. Peter's, but it has agreed with the prelates who run its basilicas to adopt necessary safety guarantees.

But the Pope appeared at the chapel of the Domus Sanctae Marthae in the Vatican to conduct a private and livestreamed mass on May 14.

During the mass, the Pope called for believers of every religion to call on God for mercy during the pandemic.

He joined other religious leaders in marking May 14 as a day of prayer, fasting and acts of charity to ask God to stop the coronavirus pandemic.

Pope Francis holding the Holy Bread while celebrating the Eucharist during a private and live broadcast morning mass at the chapel of his Santa Marta residence in The Vatican

Italy has reported 223,096 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 31,368 fatalities, according to official figures. Pictured, men walk through the basilica during the sanitation process

Pope Francis joined other religious leaders in marking May 14 as a day of prayer, fasting and acts of charity to ask God to stop the coronavirus pandemic. Pictured, the area around St Peter's statue is cleaned

Laws which had forbidden Italians from leaving their houses without permits and restricted shopping to supermarkets were eased on Monday May 4, allowing for people to travel within their regions and for markets to reopen

The Vatican hasn't said when Pope Francis would preside over his first post-lockdown celebration in St. Peter's, but it has agreed with the prelates who run its basilicas to adopt necessary safety guarantees

The bishops told the government they could 'not accept seeing the exercise of freedom of religion being compromised' when churches were closed during lockdown. Most of Italy's churches have remained open during the crisis, but only for individual prayer

'We are all united as human beings, as brothers and sisters, praying to God each according to our own culture, traditions and beliefs, but brothers and sisters praying to God.

'This is important: brothers and sisters fasting, asking God to pardon our sins so that the Lord would have mercy on us, that the Lord would forgive us, that the Lord would stop this pandemic,' he said according to Crux.

Italy has reported 223,096 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 31,368 fatalities, according to official figures.

The country has set out strict steps to ease social distancing measures and the nation is now entering 'phase two' of its lockdown exit plan.

Laws which had forbidden Italians from leaving their houses without permits and restricted shopping to supermarkets were eased on Monday May 4, allowing for people to travel within their regions and for markets to reopen.

It was the first European country to be hit by the COVID-19 pandemic.
A senior IAS officer from Madhya Pradesh on Friday blamed the Maharashtra government for a chaotic situation and crisis at the MP border, a charge refuted by Maharashtra government officials.

Bijasan on the MP-Maharashtra border in Barwani district, 313 kilometres south west of Bhopal, has seen a good number of labourers from Maharashtra heading to various parts of MP, UP, Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan etc being dropped at the border by Maharashtra governments state transport buses since Monday, officials said.

This has led to a surge in the crowd of labourers and their family members coming in trucks, mini trucks, cars, taxis, auto-rickshaws, bikes etc and even walking and riding bicycles since lockdown restrictions were put in place from March 23, to cover hundreds of kilometres, according to officials.

While the MP government arranged to send MP labourers to their destinations in buses from the border for quite some time, it added 100 more buses to the fleet to drop other states labourers at the UP border since Tuesday albeit with change of buses twice en route. But the number of buses provided by the MP government so far has been hardly able to accommodate the labourers with their number swelling leading to frayed tempers on the border on Thursday and stone pelting by a section of labourers on government personnel. However, none were injured, officials said.

Responding to journalists questions on his visit to Bijasan on Friday, Commissioner of Indore division Akash Tripathi said, Its not our responsibility. Maharashtra should not do this. Also, they are dropping wrong people at wrong places. People from eastern MP districts like Rewa, Satna etc are also being dropped here. Even eastern UPs people are being dropped here on the western side. They should be dropped at a further point or they should be sent by trains. What is happening is wrong. But our chief minister has taken this stand on a humanitarian ground that since they are walking long distances we should use our buses to send them up to the UP border.

He said, We have now increased the number of buses from 100 to 200 given the crowd of other states people and made available buses in the morning to avoid any chaotic situation. We are making all out efforts to see to it that the migrant labourers from other states dont have to walk in such scorching heat but we have our own limitations of resources. If they have to send labourers to borders they should limit the number.

In reply to a question on social distancing norms thrown into disarray, the senior IAS officer said, We are trying our best to see that they travel on seats in buses and are wearing masks but crowd management is a big issue here. In such a situation complete compliance of the norm is difficult. Besides, we see a huge crowd in trucks coming from Maharashtra and hardly any social distancing norms followed.

As per officials, after lockdown 2.0, the number of such labourers has gone up from 20,000 to 25,000 per day from a few thousands in the beginning.

For the past about 12 days the district administration has allowed the other states labourers to enter the state without facing any hassles unlike earlier when the border was opened after intervals and it witnessed frequent confrontations between two sides.

Three cops were injured in a stone pelting incident on May 3. Till the bus service was started for other states labourers by MP government since Tuesday those walking or riding bicycles used to be accommodated in trucks and other vehicles at the insistence of police personnel but a large number of workers continued to walk after finding no space in trucks and other vehicles, said officials.

Nimad region in Madhya Pradesh comprising of Khandwa, Khargone, Burhanpur and Barwani districts witnesses higher temperatures than other parts of the state in summers. The nearest district in UP is Lalitpur district from Bijasan, about 600 kilometres away, while Jhansi which labourers mainly prefer to go to is about 650 kilometres away.

Nitin Kareer, additional chief secretary, revenue department, Maharashtra government who is in charge of the operation related to workers said, We are not leaving anyone on the border. We are ready to send them by train and also sending some of them by buses, only in the cases where we get permission from the Madhya Pradesh government. Some cases may have happened, Im not denying that but otherwise we are in touch and have not heard anything like this from them (Madhya Pradesh government).

(With inputs from HT Maharashtra bureau).

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As several filmmakers announced their decision to go straight to streaming services to release their films during lockdown, some exhibitors have expressed their disappointment in the matter. The Producers Guild of India (PGI) has sent out a statement in response, saying "it is disappointing to see abrasive and unconstructive messaging from some of our colleagues in the exhibition sector."

"Statements that call for 'retributive measures' against producers who decide to take their movies direct to OTT platforms - especially at a time when cinemas are unfortunately closed for the foreseeable future - do not lend themselves to a constructive or collaborative dialogue on the way forward for the industry," the PGI said.

Multiplex chain INOX had released a statement on Thursday expressing "extreme displeasure and disappointment" over the film Gulabo Sitabo releasing on OTT. Without naming the production house or the film, the theatre chain said such a move was "disconcerting".

Kamal Gianchandani, CEO of PVR Pictures, had told Huffpost India, "We are disappointed with Gulabo Sitabo's decision to go straight to a streaming platform. We were hoping that the producers would accede to our request to hold back their film's release till cinemas reopened."

The PGI has listed the reasons why some producers were forced to consider the digital option at a time when it is uncertain when movie theatres will resume operations. Here are some of the points:

* The production sector (just like the exhibition sector) is suffering hundreds of crores of losses on a daily basis. Elaborate and expensive sets erected for under-production films have had to be taken down due to no date in sight for shoots to resume, with the sunk cost of the set and studio rentals to be borne completely by producers - as insurers refuse to cover the cost.

* Shoot schedules have had to be abruptly cancelled due to the lockdown, with huge cancellation charges being

borne completely by the producer - again with no support from insurers.

* Re-opening of cinemas is bound to be staggered across the country, with each State government rightly making its own decision on the appropriate time to re-open cinemas in their State, depending on the intensity of the outbreak there. Producers of Hindi movies will have to wait for cinemas across the entire country to re-open, as the economics of the

business require an All India release. For cinemas to be open across the entire country, it is clear we are sometime away.

"The production fraternity would like to work collaboratively with the exhibition sector to ensure that once cinemas do re-open across the country, we do all we can to bring audiences back in large numbers to experience our movies in the way they were always meant to be enjoyed - at the theatres," the statement concluded.

Here's the full statement:

IMPORTANT... Release of films on #OTT and response by exhibition sector... Producers Guild of India reacts... OFFICIAL STATEMENT... pic.twitter.com/mbnzIFgsMa taran adarsh (@taran_adarsh) May 15, 2020

Read: INOX Slams Gulabo Sitabo's Premiere Announcement On Amazon Prime, Warns Of 'Retributive Measures'

Read: After Gulabo Sitabo, 7 Films Spanning 5 Indian Languages are Going Straight to Amazon Prime Video

Follow @News18Movies for more
U.S. officials also have accused the WHO of putting China-friendly politics ahead of its global health mission, arguing that Beijing's lack of transparency continues to hinder the global fight against the novel coronavirus.

At a time when the WHO is battling to curb the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. officials have accused the group of bowing to political pressure from China, backing Beijing's preference for excluding Taiwan, despite Taipei's success in the coronavirus fight.

Next week the World Health Organization holds its annual meeting, where the U.S. will press for Taiwan to be included, despite China's objections.

 Taiwan to Receive Invite from WHO Director-General?

This week, the U.S. State Department urged WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan as an observer to the World Health Assembly (WHA), the WHO's highest decision-making body, as his predecessor did, emphasizing that Taiwan's inclusion is consistent with all UN and WHO resolutions.

Earlier this month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on "all nations" to support Taiwan's participation as an observer at the WHA, and in other relevant United Nations venues.

On Monday, Steven Solomon, the WHO's principal legal officer, said Taiwan's attendance to WHA was up to the WHO's 194 member states. "To put it crisply, director-generals only extend invitations when it's clear that member states support doing so, that director-generals have a mandate, a basis to do so," Solomon said in a briefing with reporters. He also said the WHO recognizes the People's Republic of China as the "only legitimate representative of China," in keeping with UN policy since 1971.

China has been opposed to Taiwan's participation in the WHO's annual meeting since 2016, after the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party's candidate Tsai Ying-wen was elected president. Beijing also stepped up efforts to isolate Taiwan internationally, including successfully persuading most of Taiwan's last few diplomatic allies to sever ties.

In recent days, Beijing made it clear that it previously acquiesced to Taiwan's participation in WHA because of the prior Taiwan governments position on the eventual unification with China. On Thursday, the Chinese foreign ministry spokesman criticized a proposal submitted by several WHO members to include Taiwan in the WHA as an observer, calling it an effort to "severely disrupt this WHA and undermine global anti-pandemic cooperation."

 Taiwan's Past as WHO Observer

From 2009 to 2016, Taiwan was invited by the former director-general to be an official observer. A U.S. State Department spokesperson said in an e-mail to journalists this week that the current WHO chief should do the same.

"DG Tedros has the authority to invite Taiwan to participate as an observer, as his successor did before him. We are calling for him to do so." The statement noted, "When the political party that the PRC did not favor won Taiwan's presidential and parliamentary elections in 2016, the invitation extended regularly by the DG abruptly and arbitrarily ended, beginning with the 2017 WHA."

The statement called Taiwan a part of the international community. It said Taiwan has admirably handled the COVID-19 pandemic and should rightly be invited to serve as an observer at the WHA. It also said, "Taiwan's participation is fully consistent with all UNGA and WHA resolutions."

Earlier this month, several countries, including Japan, Canada, and Britain, issued verbal demarches to WHO executives in Geneva, urging them to allow Taiwan to participate in WHA next week. The U.S. Senate passed a bill Monday calling on Secretary of State Pompeo to devise a plan to help Taiwan rejoin the WHO.

At the end of last year, as news of atypical pneumonia began to emerge in Wuhan, China, Taiwan asked the WHO to share relevant information regarding the possible outbreak. Taiwan says its request was met with silence. Taiwan has complained its exclusion from the world health body harms the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Chinese government considers Taiwan part of its territory and says Taiwan is using the epidemic to seek independence. In an interview on Fox News on May 12, Taiwan's Minister of Foreign Affairs Jaushieh Joseph Wu called the Chinese narrative "a lie" and emphasized Taiwan is not part of China.


India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

Coronavirus outbreak: In less than fortnight, COVID-19 cases spikes over three times in India

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, May 15: The number of COVID-19 cases in India has shot up more than three times in less than 20 days. On Thursday, close to 4,000 new cases were discovered, taking the total number of confirmed cases above 81,000.

According to the Health Ministry, about 53,000 cases are active and more than 28,000 had recovered from the disease.

Coronavirus lockdown: In two days, 14 migrant workers killed in road accidents

As expected earlier, Tamil Nadu over took Gujarat to become the highest second state with COVID-19 caseload. But, the southern state has shown a slight slowdown in the last two days. On Thursday, Tamil Nadu reported 447 new cases where it took the state to the second position.

Presently, Tamil Nadu has 9,674 confirmed cases, a large number of them having been contributed by the Koyambedu market cluster in Chennai, while Gujarat, where 324 more people tested positive on Thursday, has 9,592.

Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

Maharashtra can be seen way ahead with 27,524 confirmed cases. Also, it can be seen that Mumbai alone has more cases than any other state.

Despite the restrictions on movement having eased, several travellers have become new carriers of the novel coronavirus. In many states, particularly those who are receiving their people working in other states, a bulk of new cases are among those who have been on the move in the last few days.

Coronavirus outbreak: Uttar Pradesh records more than 2,000 recovery, 1.5 lakh tests

Presently, Odisha is a state with the fastest-growing coronavirus numbers, reported 61 new cases, almost all of them among returning workers or their immediate contacts. The state now has 672 confirmed cases.

Similarly, Punjab is facing similar problem from a few days ago. A large number of pilgrims returning from Nanded in Maharashtra having tested positive, seems to have crossed the hump as of now. Recently, the number of new cases have come down considerably.

Delhi, the national capital of India has put up efforts to adjust the deaths that have happened in the last few days but were not counted in official bulletins.

On May 14, the Delhi government added nine more deaths to its tally, taking the total to 115. None of these deaths had happened in last 24 hours.
Russia-linked cyberespionage group Turla targets diplomatic entities in Europe with a new piece of malware tracked as COMpfun.

Security experts from Kaspersky Lab have uncovered a new cyberespionage campaign carried out by Russia-linked APT Turla that employs a new version of the COMpfun malware. The new malware allows attackers to control infected hosts using a technique that relies on HTTP status codes.

COMpfun was first spotted in the wild in 2014 by G DATA researchers, Kaspersky first observed the threat in autumn 2019 when it was employed in attacks against diplomatic entities across Europe.

You may remember that in autumn 2019 we published a story about how a COMpfun successor known as Reductor infected files on the fly to compromise TLS traffic. reads the analysis published by Kaspersky. The campaign operators retained their focus on diplomatic entities, this time in Europe, and spread the initial dropper as a spoofed visa application.

The Turla APT group (aka Snake, Uroburos, Waterbug, Venomous Bear and KRYPTON) has been active since at least 2007 targeting diplomatic and government organizations and private businesses in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, North and South America, and former Soviet bloc nations.

The list of previously known victims is long and includes also the Swiss defense firm RUAG, US Department of State, and the US Central Command.

In March the APT group employed two new pieces of malware in watering hole attacks targeting several high-profile Armenian websites.

The COMpfun malware analyzed by Kaspersky implements a new technique to receive commands from the C2 as HTTP status codes.

COMpfun is a remote access trojan (RAT) that could collect system data, logs keystrokes, and takes screenshots.

The new variant of the COMpfun malware includes two new features, the ability to monitor when USB removable devices plugged into or unplugged from the host, and the mentioned C2 communication technique.

The first feature was implemented to allow the malware propagating itself to the connected device.

The second feature was implemented to avoid detection, Turla vxers implemented new C2 protocol that relies on HTTP status codes.

HTTP status codes provide a state of the server and instruct clients on action to do (i.e. drop the connection), COMpfun exploited this mechanism to control the bot running on the compromised systems.

We observed an interesting C2 communication protocol utilizing rare HTTP/HTTPS status codes (check IETF RFC 7231, 6585, 4918). Several HTTP status codes (422-429) from the Client Error class let the Trojan know what the operators want to do. After the control server sends the status Payment Required (402), all these previously received commands are executed. continues the analysis.

For example, if the COMpfun server would respond with a 402 status code, followed by a 200 status code, the malicious code sends collected target data to C2 with the current tickcount.

Below the list of commands associated with common HTTP status codes:

HTTP status RFC status meaning Corresponding command functionality 200 OK Send collected target data to C2 with current tickcount 402 Payment Required This status is the signal to process received (and stored in binary flag) HTTP statuses as commands 422 Unprocessable Entity (WebDAV) Uninstall. Delete COM-hijacking persistence and corresponding files on disk 423 Locked (WebDAV) Install. Create COM-hijacking persistence and drop corresponding files to disk 424 Failed Dependency (WebDAV) Fingerprint target. Send host, network and geolocation data 427 Undefined HTTP status Get new command into IEA94E3.tmp file in %TEMP%, decrypt and execute appended command 428 Precondition Required Propagate self to USB devices on target 429 Too Many Requests Enumerate network resources on target

The malware operators retained their focus on diplomatic entities and the choice of a visa-related application  stored on a directory shared within the local network  as the initial infection vector worked in their favor. The combination of a tailored approach to their targets and the ability to generate and execute their ideas certainly makes the developers behind COMPFun a strong offensive team. concludes Kaspersky.

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs  Turla, malware)

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 8

Trend:

Over the past 24 hours, Armenian armed forces have violated the ceasefire along the line of contact between Azerbaijani and Armenian troops 26 times, Trend reports referring to Azerbaijani Defense Ministry.

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.
File photo

The deputy chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Kaduna State, Shuaibu Idris Lauje and his daughter have been abducted from his home by unidentified gunmen, Daily Trust reports.

His house is located in Kwanan Zango, closed to Maraban Jos in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State.

Daily Trust gathered from family sources that Lauje and his daughter were whisked away by gun wielding men at 1:30 am on Thursday when the gunmen stormed the community shooting sporadically to instill fear among residents.

It was not clear if the gunmen had targeted Laujes home as family sources say the abductors are yet to make contact.

The APC Chairman in the State, Emmanuel Jekada, has confirmed the attack to Daily Trust.

He said that security agents have been notified of the development.

However, the Kaduna State Police command spokesperson, ASP Mohammed Jalige, did not answer his calls.

He did not also reply to a text message sent to him seeking confirmation.

Kaduna has been expecting attacks by bandits for a while now and the security agencies seem to be overwhelmed.

Just two days ago, gunmen invaded Gonar Rogo, a remote village in Kajuru council area of the State, and killed 15 people while also injuring five others.
TOKYO, May 15 (Reuters) - Japan should boost coronavirus testing and offer more generous cash payouts to households as the epidemic could last for several years, an economist appointed to a government panel on the virus response said on Friday.

The government can fund huge spending on the coronavirus by issuing more bonds, which the central bank can buy to avoid causing a rise in long-term interest rates, said Keiichiro Kobayashi, who was appointed on Tuesday to join a committee advising the government on measures to combat the pandemic.

"It could take up to four years," he said, referring to the time needed to develop and distribute an effective vaccine or medicine to combat the virus.

Consumption will fall globally during that time, he said.

That means stronger measures are needed to keep Japan's economy from suffering prolonged, deep stagnation including paying 100,000 yen ($934) a month for every citizen that suffered a sharp drop in income from the outbreak, Kobayashi told Reuters.

The programme would cost the government up to 24 trillion yen, said Kobayashi, who is an economist at the private Tokyo Foundation for Policy Research.

The most important thing is to alleviate public anxiety about the coronavirus and its fallout, he said.

"It's necessary to take steps to make people feel safe by strengthening testing and isolation capabilities," Kobayashi said.

Kobayashi said he planned to share his proposals with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his cabinet.

The government appointed several private-sector economists to the panel, which had consisted mostly of medical experts, as efforts to contain the virus put deeper strains on an economy already on the cusp of deep recession.

Japan has reported nearly 16,000 coronavirus infections and over 650 deaths. ($1 = 107.0800 yen) (Reporting by Kazuhiko Tamaki, writing by Sakura Murakami Editing by Robert Birsel)
India must gear up to face community transmission of COVID-19: Health expert

India

pti-PTI

Bengaluru, May 15: India must gear up to face the possibility of community spread of the COVID-19, a prominent health expert said on Friday, cautioning that there could be more widespread transmission of the novel coronavirus due to easing of the lockdown.

On some experts suggesting that there is already community transmission (stage 3) of the virus in the country, President of Public Health Foundation of India, Prof. K Srinath Reddy maintained that it is a matter of definition.

With 45 fresh cases, Karnataka's COVID-19 tally breaches 1,000-mark

Because, if one looks at the spread to people without history of travel or history of contact, certainly there are several such cases, he said. "But most of them are concentrated around the original points of entry of the foreign travellers or the travel routes of their contacts.

So, these people who are describing it as stage 2 still are saying this is traceable local transmission, it is not unpredictable community transmission, he told PTI. Therefore, we are avoiding the term community transmission. It is a matter of definitions and language; we need not debate that really, Reddy, who formerly headed the Department of Cardiology at All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), said.

But he said it should be recognised that community transmission has occurred in virtually every country which experienced this pandemic in a major form and India should also be prepared for it and act as though it is happening and take all precautionary containment measures. There is not only risk and but actually threat of community transmission, said Reddy, who presently serves as an Adjunct Professor of Epidemiology at Harvard.

According to him, nations in South East Asia, including Malaysia, and India in particular, have kept the COVID-19 death rates per million of the population low compared to countries where the pandemic broke out around the same time.

Coronavirus outbreak: In less than fortnight, COVID-19 cases spikes over three times in India

He said the low death rate in India could be the benefit of multiple factors such as younger age group, more rural population, temperature and climatic conditions as well as the benefits the containment measures which preceded lockdown, and then got much more consolidated with the lockdown.

"Its quite possible that all of these factors have been helpful and we have seen that benefit, Reddy said.

But we need to continue to consolidate that. There are some risk factors, when the lockdown opens there will be much greater mobility of people, there could be more widespread transmission of the virus, so we have to maintain as much as possible physical distancing, continue practices like wearing masks and hand-washing as precautionary measures, he said.

Things are going to be difficult in overcrowded areas, especially slum areas. We will have to try and provide as much facilities as possible, particularly for elderly people and to people with co-morbidities, whether they can be provided temporary shelters elsewhere with good social cares.

Fortunately, he said, most of the infections are restricted to large cities and areas radiating around them. Referring to return of migrant workers, he said care must be taken to see that they themselves will not be victims of the epidemic, and at the same they dont infect others.

"But most important thing is to protect the rural areas (from COVID-19) because two-thirds of India is in rural areas, and the transmission of the virus is low there because mobility is low, Reddy said.

Several precautionary measures have to be taken in order to contain the virus because the risk of transmission will certainly increase with the lifting of the lockdown. We must recognise that this virus is going to stay on for some time and we have to make sure that at least for the next one year, we try and keep the virus as slowly moving as possible by physical distancing and other protective measures like masks and handwashing."

Evolutionary biology of the virus says that when the movement is greatly restricted and its chances of transmission are greatly reduced, the virus actually can turn into a milder virus, said Reddy, who is also an Adjunct Professor of the Rollins School of Public Health, Emory University and Honorary Professor of Medicine at the University of Sydney.

So, we will have to do everything to reduce the transmission, speed and number, at the same time try and moving it towards milder form to our own defensive measures.

So, while there are threats, there are also opportunities for us to protect ourselves and even control not only the spread of the virus but also the virulence of the virus, he added.
Almost $3 million in drugs hidden in food rations was allegedly imported into Australia from America with the help of two glamorous friends who stood to earn as little as $1,000.

Israh Chahine and Alexandra Karanfilovska, both 23, were caught by police allegedly speaking about the illegal shipment on the phone.

The delivery, which appeared to contain food ration packages from the United States, was intercepted by the Australian Border Force on Wednesday, May 6, the St George Shire Standard reported.

Further inspection of the consignment allegedly revealed 5.7kilograms of methamphetamine, which police claim has an estimated street value of $2.7million.

The pair were charged with importing commercial quantity of border controlled drug and participating in a criminal group after police raided their Arncliffe homes, in Sydney's south, on Wednesday May 13.

Alexandra Karanfilovska (pictured) and Israh Chahine allegedly helped import almost $3million worth of meth in food packages from America to Australia

Israh Chahine (pictured) and Alexandra Karanfilovska charged with importing commercial quantity of border controlled drug and participating in a criminal group after police raided their Arncliffe homes, in Sydney's south, on Wednesday May 13

Police will allege the package was addressed to Chahine but was sent to Karanfilovska's address.

'It suggests a high degree of planning beyond being the consignee and taking possession, then passing it on,' Prosecutor Chelsea Brain told Magistrate Alexander Mijovich.

Chahine and Karanfilovska were allegedly caught discussing how much money they would make over the phone after the package was delivered to the pair's co-accused Adam Ayshan and Mohamad Hawchar.

'After Chahine has taken the package to Ayshan, she contacts Karanfilovska and says 'are you happy with $1,000?',' Ms Brain told the court.

'Karanfilovska asks how much Chahine received, she says $2,000, and that she doesn't want to do it again for $1,000.'

Ahmad Dib, the solicitor for the two women, claimed they were not aware the package contained drugs.

Ayshan and Hawchar were arrested at a Roselands unit on Wednesday and face the same charges.

Inspection of the consignment allegedly revealed 5.7kilograms of methamphetamine, which police claim has an estimated street value of $2.7million

Australian Border Force intercepted the delivery, which appeared to contain food ration packages from the U.S., on Wednesday May 6

Ayshan did not apply for bail while Hawchar requested bail at Parramatta Local Court but it was refused.

They will face Central Local Court on July 9.

Chahine was granted bail after her family offered their $850,000 family home as security. Karanfilovska was also bailed after three people contributed $19,000.

They are only allowed to leave their homes with an approved chaperone.

Their matter will return in Downing Centre Local Court on July 14.
An upbeat Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday he is confident state residents will handle the reopening of Louisiana's economy with good sense and avoid any resumption of strict stay-at-home orders sparked by the coronavirus pandemic.

"I am actually confident we can do this in a responsible way," Edwards told reporters. "I think we can do this and keep cases down."

The governor made his comments as restaurants, businesses and barber shops Friday began taking advantage of looser rules after nearly two months of restrictions triggered by the health emergency.

Edwards said residents have clearly taken the health threats seriously since the state was a global hot spot.

"We have made tremendous progress," he said. "Just think where we were six or seven weeks ago."

The state, and the New Orleans area in particular, earlier experienced some of the highest number of positive tests per capita for the virus in the world.

"But at the same time we know we made progress because people complied with the orders," Edwards said.

"I am optimistic," he added.

"But we are going to keep an eye on things through testing, through the contact tracing," Edwards said.

Dr. Alex Billioux, assistant secretary for the state's Office of Public Health, said in the early stages of the pandemic the peak of the cases in Louisiana was expected to be around May 15.

Instead, Billioux noted, the state is moving to lift some of the restrictions that have been in place for weeks.

The governor announced Monday that the state would move to Phase 1 of the economy's reopening after his current stay-at-home order expires Friday.

+9 Louisiana to enter Phase I of coronavirus reopening, but 'Its not mission accomplished' Louisiana will begin the first phase of reopening its economy Friday, nearly two months after Gov. John Bel Edwards issued a stay-at-home orde

That means previously shuttered churches, barber shops and restaurants can operate at 25% of capacity, and a host of other businesses are allowed to resume business on a limited basis.

Restaurants will be allowed to move from carry-out to dine-in services and casinos, gyms, lap pools, motor vehicle offices, nail and beauty salons and movie theaters are turning their lights back on.

Residents are still being urged to wear masks or other face coverings in public, maintain social distancing and that those 65-years-old or with health conditions that make them susceptible to the virus continue to limit their travel.

The state reported 348 new cases of the virus Friday, bringing the total to 33,837.

Another 31 residents died from COVID-19  the illness caused by the virus  and fatalities total 2,382.

Vaccine news in your inbox Once a week we'll update you on the progress of COVID-19 vaccinations. Sign up today. e-mail address * Sign Up

Edwards, in response to a question, said "I hope and pray" that no order is needed for tougher restrictions because of a dangerous spike in cases.

"I don't know what that will look like," he said.

The governor noted that any such setback would damage the state's already reeling economy, including record unemployment claims, plummeting oil prices and a nearly $1 billion hole in state revenue estimates.

A 'Katrina-sized' $1 billion hit from coronavirus for Louisiana's budget, early estimates show Louisiana budget revenues are projected to take a $1 billion hit as the coronavirus hammers the state's businesses and workers, according to e

Edwards said the state will be on guard for a possible second wave of the virus in the fall, which happened during the Spanish flu epidemic in 1918.

"We are aware that that is a possibility," he said.

Edwards said state officials "are not going to let our guard down" and continue testing and contact tracing to minimize any outbreaks.

Coronavirus contact tracing, testing ramp up as Louisiana draws closer to potential reopening Louisianas ability to test for the coronavirus and track down those who came into contact with the infected--two vital elements of reopening 

The governor said 298 contact tracers finished their training this week, and he encouraged residents to answer if they get a call to let them know they came in contact with someone who tested positive for the virus -- 877-766-2130.

He said the number is connected with the firm the state is contracting with for the service and noted that similar steps have been taken in the past for smallpox and other ailments.

The person that tested positive for the coronavirus is not identified.

Edwards also announced that the state has won approval from the U. S. Department of Agriculture to help feed 611,430 public school students during the pandemic.

Louisiana schools to remain closed for academic year amid coronavirus, John Bel Edwards says Gov. John Bel Edwards said Monday he will order public schools to remain closed for the rest of the academic year because of the coronavirus, 

The assistance is meant to replace the breakfasts and lunches students would have received during the 50 days classrooms were closed to help combat the spread of the virus.

It applies to students who qualify for free and reduced-price meals  85% of public school students.

Families will be notified by local school systems and can qualify for debit cards of $285 per child.

"This might be the only way some of our most vulnerable children can obtain a nutritious breakfast or lunch," Edwards said in a statement.
Senior ministers and BJP leaders met at party chief JP Naddas residence on Thursday to discuss the prevailing Covid-19 situation in the country.

Union home minister Amit Shah was among those present at the meeting which is understood to have discussed strategy to reach out to the poor and underprivileged sections in the country.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Tuesday announced a comprehensive Rs 20 lakh crore special economic package for the country to become self-reliant and deal with Covid-19 crisis.

Suggestions were also sought from the leaders on what more needs to be done to alleviate the distress during the trying times.

Sources said this was the first such meeting held at the residence of Nadda with majority of union ministers present along with party leaders since lockdown started.

The issues discussed at length in the meeting related to migrants including Centres financial help to run shelter homes and aid provided to states to keep migrants, problems faced by them and reluctance of some states to allow trains bringing migrants.

The financial package to boost economy was also discussed and ministers and party leaders were asked to get their doubts clarified on the package details announced by Sitharaman.

Government has given money to keep shelter homes running. Also, they have permitted states to use SDRF funds for providing food and water, a source said.

Another source said that reluctance to allow trains bringing migrants too was discussed.It is a federal structure and states have say in many matters. Many like West Bengal and Maharashtra are not too forthcoming with allowing trains. For them bringing migrants is a problem despite the aid provided by the Centre, the source said.

Another party leader said it was a meeting to give an insight into Centres schemes and implementation of the policies.

Those present at the meeting also included Union ministers Ravi Shankar Prasad, Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, MA Naqvi, Jitendra Singh, Prakash Javadekar, Thawar Chand Gehlot, Santosh Gangwar, Smriti Irani, Rattan Lal Kataria, Mansukh Mandavia besides party leaders GVL Narasimha Rao, Sudhanshu Trivedi, Meenakshi Lekhi, Gopal Krishna Agarwal and Shahnawaz Hussain.

Sources said finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman and commerce and industry and railways minister Piyush Goyal were present at the meeting.

The government has announced a series of steps for the poor, migrants and other sections impacted by COVID-19.
Seth Klarman (Trades, Portfolio), manager of the Baupost Group, disclosed this week that his top five buys for the first quarter were Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL), Facebook Inc. (NASDAQ:FB), HD Supply Holdings Inc. (NASDAQ:HDS), Energy Transfer LP (NYSE:ET) and XPO Logistics Inc. (NYSE:XPO).





Klarman received an economics degree at Cornell University and an MBA at Harvard University. The author of "Margin of Safety" invests in a wide range of securities, ranging from fairly traditional value stocks to more esoteric investments like distressed debt, liquidations, foreign equities and bonds.

According to an August 2017 CNBC article, Klarman has three underlying pillars of his investing approach: "analyze the potential for loss before gain, absolute over relative returns, and forget macro investing, instead focus on individual investment ideas." Klarman also warned that investing is not just about producing absolute returns, but also about paying attention to the risks incurred to generate return.

According to the latest ADV form, Baupost manages approximately $30.2 billion in assets, with an equity portfolio value of approximately $6.75 billion. The equity portfolio contains 32 stocks, with a turnover ratio of 25% and eight new positions. The top three sectors in terms of weight are communication services, technology and consumer cyclical, representing 43.30%, 16.12% and 14.49% of the portfolio.

Alphabet (Google)

Klarman purchased 300,500 Class C shares of Google parent Alphabet, giving the position 5.18% equity portfolio weight. Shares averaged $1,361.82 during the first quarter.

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The Mountain View, California-based company operates a wide range of interactive media platforms, including Google Search, Google Play and YouTube. GuruFocus ranks Alphabet's financial strength 8 out of 10, driven by a strong Altman Z-score of 10.29 and debt ratios that outperform over 63% of global competitors.

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Google's profitability ranks 10 out of 10 on positive investing signs like operating margins outperforming over 80% of global competitors and a GuruFocus business predictability rank reaching four stars out of five.

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Gurus with large holdings in Google include Dodge & Cox, PRIMECAP Management (Trades, Portfolio) and Al Gore (Trades, Portfolio)'s Generation Investment Management.

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Facebook

Klarman purchased 1,984,000 shares of Facebook, giving the stake 4.91% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $199.62 during the first quarter.

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The Menlo Park, California-based social media giant announced on Friday that it plans to incorporate GIPHY, the visual expression and creation platform, into Instagram. GuruFocus ranks Facebook's financial strength 8 out of 10 and profitability 9 out of 10 on several positive investing signs, which include a strong Altman Z-score of 12.94, debt ratios that outperform over 60% of global competitors, expanding operating margins and a return on assets that outperforms over 88% of global interactive media companies.

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Robert Olstein (Trades, Portfolio)'s firm also established a new position in Facebook during the quarter.

HD Supply

Klarman purchased 6,217,930 shares of HD Supply, giving the holding 2.62% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $37.50 during the first quarter.

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The Atlanta-based company engages in industrial distribution services in facilities and home improvement maintenance, repair, operations and specialty construction. GuruFocus ranks HD Supply's profitability 7 out of 10 on several positive investing signs, which include expanding operating margins and returns that are outperforming over 91% of global competitors.

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Energy Transfer

Klarman purchased 12,105,005 shares of Energy Transfer, giving the position 0.83% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $10.77 during the first quarter.

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The Dallas-based company owns a large platform of crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquid assets primarily in Texas and the U.S. midcontinent region. GuruFocus ranks Energy Transfer's profitability 7 out of 10: Even though the company's three-year revenue decline rate of 11.3% underperforms 76.42% of global competitors, operating margins are expanding and outperforming 70% of global oil and gas companies.

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XPO Logistics

Klarman purchased 845,877 shares of XPO Logistics, giving the position 0.61% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $77.86 during the first quarter.

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GuruFocus ranks the Greenwich, Connecticut-based transportation and logistics company's profitability 6 out of 10: Although it has a high Piotroski F-score of 7 and a return on equity that outperforms over 80% of global competitors, operating margins are underperforming approximately 60% of global logistics companies.

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Disclosure: No positions.

Read more here:

Top 5 Buys of Ray Dalio's Bridgewater in the 1st Quarter

Andreas Halvorsen's Top 5 Buys in the 1st Quarter

Top 5 Buys of Jeremy Grantham's GMO in the 1st Quarter







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This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






A 25-year-old pizza deliveryman from Long Island has been identified as the man who was allegedly killed by an off-duty rookie NYPD cop earlier this week.

Christoper Curro was fatally shot twice in the head and twice in the neck, and left for dead in Famringdale, New York, on Tuesday night.

On Friday, it was announced that the state Attorney Generals Office has taken over the investigation into the shooting, which is standard procedure whenever an unarmed civilian is killed by a police officer.

Curro's stepmother, Ellen, told local news outlets that the 25-year-old grew up and was best friends with his alleged killer, 26-year-old Errick Allen, who had recently joined the NYPD and was assigned to a 109th Precinct in Queens.

Scroll down for video

NYPD cop Errick Allen, 26 (left), allegedly shot and killed his best friend, Christopher Curro, 25 (right), during a heated argument in Long Island on Tuesday night

Officers with the Nassau County Police Department responded to the scene in front of a Farmingdale home off Langdon Road at 8.05pm on Tuesday to investigate the homicide

According to the victim's stepmother, Curro was shot five times, including twice in the head, twice in the neck and once in the shoulder, after he and Allen got into a heated argument outside a home off Langdon Road in Farmingdale shortly after 8pm on Tuesday.

There are still lingering questions about the subject of the men's dispute, with police sources claiming that Allen allegedly opened fire on Curro to prevent him from hurting someone.

A neighbor who lives near the crime scene told the New York Daily News she heard from Curro's stepmother that the argument between her son and Allen was over a woman, but Ellen has denied saying that.

The stepmother called Curro's killing an 'execution,' adding that after firing the fatal shots, Allen took off from the scene to go to his father's house, leaving his friend's bullet-riddled body sprawled out in the street.

'For a cop to do that and leave your best friend for dead ... thats atrocious,' Ellen said. 'Its unconscionable. Errick was his best friend. He grew up with Chris. These are not two strangers. They grew up with sleepovers in each others houses.'

The stepmother added that her husband - Curro's father - had just lost his mother to the coronavirus.

Curro worked as a deliveryman for Crostini N Broadway, a pizza shop located in Massapequa.

'We are deeply saddened by the loss of our friend,' his employer stated in a Facebook post on Thursday. 'He was quiet, kind, hard working, funny, and an all around good person. We all miss you immensely and youll never be forgotten. RIP our dear friend Chris.'

Speaking at an unrelated event in Oceanside on Wednesday, Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said that the altercation escalated from a verbal disagreement to a physical altercation.

Curro worked as a deliveryman for a Massapequa, New York, pizzeria. He had just lost his paternal grandmother to COVID-19

'There was an altercation between two gentlemen; it started over a conversation they were having,' Ryder said, according to Newsday. 'They met up. A struggle ensued. During that struggle, a weapon was produced and the victim was shot and killed. The person that was involved in that struggle, fighting also with that other individual, was a New York City police officer.'

Ryder described the victim and the alleged gunmen as being 'childhood friends' who 'grew up together.'

'It's just an altercation between two individuals and the gun was produced and the individual who was shot was shot in the head and he died last night and the other individual is being discussed with homicide,' said Ryder.

During Mayor de Blasio's Wednesday coronavirus press briefing, NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea said that the department was informed of the shooting almost immediately.

'An NYPD officer discharged a firearm,' Shea said during the press conference. 'That case is being investigated by the Nassau County District Attorney's office and the Nassau County Police.

He is an NYPD officer that discharged his firearm, ' Shea continued. 'As a result of that discharged, the individual was struck in the head and killed and it is an ongoing and very early part of that investigation.

'We were conferred with almost immediately last night and that is an active investigation.'

Allen graduated from the academy a few months ago and was assigned to the 109th Precinct in Flushing, Queens, sources told the New York Daily News.

Nassau County Police Commissioner Patrick Ryder said that the altercation escalated from a verbal disagreement to a physical altercation

Spoke to the stepmom of the #LongIsland man who was shot dead by NYPD Officer Errick Allen  his best friend  on Tuesday night. She says her stepson was shot five times, but cant understand why.



This wasnt self defense. This was an execution.https://t.co/feBJnRGS4Q pic.twitter.com/vpiBf4emUh  Esha Ray (@ByEshaRay) May 13, 2020

While he did not name the officer, neighbor and police sources identified the NYPD cop as 26-year-old Errick Allen. Allen is said to have fled the scene before returning later with his father

The rookie cop left the scene and returned home, where he told his father what happened. The pair returned to the scene, soon after.

But by then, cops had been called by a passing motorist who saw the victim's body in the street.

'Somebody was driving by and saw the dead body in the street and got out because he thought it was a joke,' neighbor Mary Fanelli, said. 'But then he realized what it was and called 911. Apparently the guy that shot him left the scene and came back.'

The 62-year-old said that Allen was grilled by police once he returned to the scene.

A passing motorist saw the body and called police to the scene

'He was sitting on the curb and they were all around him,' she recalled. 'Apparently it was his gun. The other guy was not armed.'

Fanelli said that the two were 'best friends' who graduated from Farmingdale High School.

Allen has been suspended without pay for 30 days following the shooting, according to NYPD Chief of Department Terence Monahan. Authorities are trying to determine whether he should be criminally charged.
Nigeria, on Thursday, recorded 193 new cases of COVID-19 as the number of infected people exceeded 5,000. Three people also died from the virus on Thursday.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), with Thursdays figure, the total tally of infected people in the country rose to 5,162, from 4,971 reported on Tuesday evening.

The public health agency in a tweet Thursday night said the new cases were reported in 15 states. These are Lagos, Kano, Jigawa, Yobe, Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Ogun, Plateau, Gombe, imo, Edo, Kwara, Borno, Bauchi, Nasarawa and Ondo states.

All the reporting states already had at least a case of the virus.

Till date, 5, 162 cases have been confirmed, 1, 180 cases have been discharged and 167 deaths have been recorded in 34 states and the Federal Capital Territory, the NCDC said.

The details of the 193 new cases are as follows: Lagos  58, Kano  46, Jigawa  35, Yobe  12, FCT  9, Ogun  7, Plateau  5, Gombe  5, Imo  4, Edo- 4, Kwara  3, Borno  3, Bauchi  1, Nasarawa  1 and Ondo  1.

Breakdown

Nigeria has so far tested 30,657 persons since the beginning of the pandemic in the country.

A breakdown of all the confirmed cases so far shows that 5,162 infections have been reported in Nigeria since the index case in February. Of that number, 3,815 cases are still active, 1,180 have recovered and have been discharged, and 167 deaths have been reported.

NCDC said two cases reported Wednesday from Kaduna, were repeat tests. Therefore, Kaduna has a total of 114 confirmed cases

We apologise to @contactkdsg and remain committed to ensuring the release of accurate and reliable data, it said.

A breakdown of the 5,162 confirmed cases shows that Lagos State has so far reported 2, 099 cases, followed by Kano  753, FCT  379, Katsina  224, Bauchi  207, Borno  191, Jigawa  176, Ogun  134, Gombe  124, Kaduna  114, Sokoto  112, Edo  92, Zamfara  73, Oyo  73, Kwara  56, Osun  42, Rivers  33, Yobe  32, Kebbi  31, Nasarawa  29, Plateau  25,:Delta  22, Adamawa  21, Ondo  19, Taraba  17, Akwa Ibom  17, Ekiti  15, Enugu  12, Niger  10, Ebonyi  9, Imo  7, Bayelsa  6, Benue  4, Anambra  2 and Abia  2.

Since the federal and state governments eased the lockdown in various states, many Nigerians have flouted the guidelines put in place by the government to combat the spread of the disease.

The Secretary to the Government of the Federation, Boss Mustapha, during the Presidential Task Force briefing on Thursday said the countdown to the end of the first phase of eased lockdown approved by the president begins on Thursday so that the economy could gradually reopen.

He said the government is also assessing the level of compliance with the guidelines and the impact on slowing down the spread of COVID 19.

Mr Mustapha said, The statistics on COVID 19 have continued to come out daily and the indications are that our testing strategy is yielding results because we can now give care to those that need it.

In due course, we shall make further recommendations before the second phase commences, he said.
Drones are deployed during a demonstration at the Los Angeles Fire Department ahead of DJI's AirWorks conference in Los Angeles, California, on Sept. 23, 2019. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinese-Made DJI Mavic Drones May Be Taken off US Market Over Patent Infringement

The popular Mavic series of drones made by Chinese manufacturer DJI may be yanked from the U.S. market as early as July after a ruling by the International Trade Commission (ITC) found the devices infringe on a patent held by Autel, another Chinese firm.

DJI, the worlds largest maker of drones, infringed on a patent held by Autel, according to Steptoe, the law firm representing Autel before the trade commission. The chief administrative law judge of the ITC recommended that the infringing productsincluding Mavic Pro, Mavic Pro Platinum, Mavic 2 Pro, Mavic 2 Zoom, Mavic Air, and Sparkbe banned from importation into the United States.

If the chief administrative law judges determination is upheld by the full commission, these products could be taken off the U.S. market as early as July, Autels law firm said in a statement.

Autel has also filed a petition to extend the import ban to other DJI devices, including the Phantom 4 and Inspire series drones.

DJI declined to comment.

The ruling arrived amid increased scrutiny by federal law enforcement over theft of intellectual property (IP) by the Chinese communist regime. The Department of Justices China Initiative has significantly ramped up investigations into IP theft and related matters with cases open in every U.S. state.

DJI is also facing a congressional inquiry over allegations that its devices send data to China. A group of GOP lawmakers on the House Judiciary Committee sent letters to the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice on May 14 as part of the inquiry.

A DJI Mavic Zoom drone flies during a product launch event at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City on Aug. 23, 2018. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

DJI drew attention from Congress after news reports emerged about its loan of 100 drones to state and local law enforcement agencies to help with enforcing social distancing guidelines amid the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) virus pandemic. As of March this year, nearly 1,100 state and local agencies had at least one DJI drone in their fleets, according to a study by Bard College, accounting for roughly 90 percent of all the drones in use by state and local authorities.

The Mavic series of drones are the most popular DJI devices. The company is the dominant player in the U.S. and global consumer drone market.

This ruling is seminal and may be the basis for decisive legal action against other vanguard companies of the CCP worldwide economic influence campaign. This is where rollback of the CCP begins, John Mills, former director of cybersecurity policy, strategy, and international affairs at the Pentagon, said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

A number of federal agencies have taken steps to warn against or outright ban the use of DJI drones.

The U.S. Army appears to have used DJI devices at least until August 2017, when the drones were banned due to increased awareness of cyber vulnerabilities associated with DJI products, according to a notice obtained by sUAS News. At the time, DJI drones were the most widely used off-the-shelf unmanned aerial device in the Army, the notice stated.

The Homeland Security Investigations office in Los Angeles went a step further in an unclassified bulletin (pdf) issued last year, stating with high confidence that critical infrastructure and law enforcement entities using DJI systems are collecting sensitive intelligence that the Chinese government could use to conduct physical or cyber attacks against the United States and its population.

The Department of Homeland Security released a similar notice in May 2019, warning that U.S. officials have strong concerns about any technology product that takes American data into the territory of an authoritarian state that permits its intelligence services to have unfettered access to that data or otherwise abuses that access, Reuters reported.

The Department of Interior (DOI) formally grounded its drone fleet early this year except for emergency missions. The departments notice didnt single out Chinese-made drones, although a spokesman told The Wall Street Journal three months earlier that the grounding was in response to national security concerns around Chinese-made drones. Prior to the grounding, the DOI had cleared DJIs government edition drones in 2019 after an extensive study.

Correction: a previous version of this article incorrectly described the ownership of Autel. The company is based in China.
Malaysians have been unable to watch movies in cinemas since the MCO started on 18 March.

15 May  Cinema Online, Malaysia's Favourite Movie Site, ran a survey asking fellow Malaysians just how soon they are willing to return to cinemas once CMCO is lifted.

Not surprisingly, more than half of the movie-loving nation  52.94% to be exact  responded that they are willing to return within a month once cinemas reopen.

Key findings of the survey are as follows:

52.94% of Malaysians in general will return to the cinemas within a month once they reopen.

30% said they will be either first in line to buy a movie ticket or wait until the movie they want to watch is playing.

Independent survey conducted nationwide had 800 respondents from ages 15 to 60.

Respondents were primarily from Klang Valley  66.45%.

30% of them said that they will be either first in line to buy a movie ticket or wait until the movie they want to watch is playing. Most of them are also more willing to watch the movie alone rather than with companions, though some did opt to watch with family as well.

The independent survey, conducted nationwide over a 2-week period on Cinema Online's various platforms and social media, had 800 respondents from ages 15 to 60. Over 66% of the respondents were from Klang Valley.

Marcel Lariche, the Managing Director of Cinema Online, said that this survey was pertinent to see the genuine interest of Malaysians in returning to the cinemas once they reopen. This was also done to quell the current negativity and fear of news that have been circulating undermining local cinemas.

Cinema Online, being an important component of the cinema industry in Malaysia, believes its role is not only to serve the industry but also bridge the cinemas or exhibitors and the movie distributors to the movie-lovers primarily and the public in general.

Most likely, local moviegoers are less than two months away from being able to step into cinemas again. At the moment, the earliest movie currently slated to open in local cinemas is the Pekin Ibrahim and Mona Allen-starring Malay horror movie "Salina", scheduled for release on 2 July 2020.

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There are six titles currently set to be released in local cinemas this July, which include Hollywood movies "Mulan", "Tenet" and the next instalment of "The Purge".

However, if the CMCO is lifted by next month and local distributors begin scheduling their movies' releases for June, moviegoers could begin frequenting cinemas earlier than expected.

Cinemas across Malaysia, be it from major or smaller cinema chains, have been on temporary closure since the Movement Control Order (MCO) was enforced by the local government on 18 March 2020.

More than two months later, Malaysians are now in the Conditional MCO (CMCO) phase, which allows the reopening of certain economic sectors. However, places that are generally hubs for large gatherings, such as cinemas, will remain closed until further notice.

As such, local moviegoers haven't been able to visit their favourite cinemas to catch the latest movies. (Not that there any new movies releasing at the moment, since Hollywood and other film industries alike have put film releases on hold while the world works together on battling the pandemic).

(Photo source: Chen Yee Fei | Divercity)
Q. This is a chair my father brought home in the early 1950s in lieu of his legal bill. My mother was upset but still wanted the chair. But Dad offered it to me for study purposes in my room and I was thrilled  I loved the colour. It has a label underneath for Liberty Ornamental Iron Ltd. Toronto  Canada that says Style Craft with instructions on how to clean the Vinyl Plastic upholstery  do not use strong detergents. Thanks for what you can tell me. The turquoise chair  so out of place in my parents home  still makes me smile!

Anne, Ottawa

A. I agree  the colour is striking and fun. Your chair marks the midpoint of a 40-year era of Canadian industrial manufacturers in the design field of the Mid-Century Modern era. New designs and materials made for the masses were typical products with tubular steel, often chromed and vinyl upholstery. There would have been a set of at least four chairs and a matching table. Items of Mid-Century have been avidly collected for several years now. I found no information about the company itself. Your glowing chair is a nest egg worth $75.

Q. My mother purchased this Rolex watch as a gift for my father who was in the Canadian Air Force in the 1940s. I do not know what she paid for it. The original case says Rolex The Worlds Most Accurate Wristwatch. Oyster Centregraph Shock Resisting Swiss Made appears on the 24-hour watch dial face and its crystal has a 2.5 cm diameter (6.4 inches). The watch strap is not original. The serial number is 447140. The watch is running and keeping time well. I am wondering what its value might be. Thank you.

Janet, Ottawa

A. You have quite a scarce watch. The Swiss watch company, Rolex continues today with top ratings. Apparently, these watches were sold to Canadian soldiers going overseas during and after the Second World War. Its small size would avoid damage. The general model was made during the 1930s and your watch dates to 1946-47. There is wear on the lugs where the band pins fit and the face has some staining, but running condition is a very big plus since repairs can be expensive. The band might have been leather originally. It will tick to a value of $550.

Q. This large painting on canvas was bought by my father from a general antique shop. The artists name on the front seems to be clearly H. Perre with more info that I cant read. It has a small detailed house with a smoking chimney and tiny cattle near the riverbanks. It is a bit dirty but in good shape. One backside label is The T. Eaton Co. Limited Toronto. The other is strange  a doctors printed label with names of past owners, a date of 1920, and Shake the bottle. Any history and value are welcome. Thank you.

Marjorie, Simcoe, Ont.

A. Henri Perre (1828-1890) was born in Strasbourg, Alsace, and became a soldier who fled, after involvement in the Saxony rising of 1849, to the United States where he was involved in the Civil War. He eventually landed in Toronto becoming a member of the Ontario Society of Artists. He taught at the Ontario School of Art and was a founding member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts and also exhibited with the Art Association of Montreal. This is typical of his work reflecting the Hudson River School. The rest of the signature includes Montreal 83 for 1883 when he frequently travelled between Montreal and Toronto. It is dramatic with the sunlit cows in the foreground and the storm in the distance. The Eaton company had very good art galleries in both their Toronto and Winnipeg stores early in the 20th century. Its worth $1,500.
Thousands of Australian defence manufacturing jobs have been thrown into doubt by United States President Donald Trump's threat to end offshore manufacturing of parts of the Joint Strike Fighter.

However, senior government and defence sources insisted they are not overly concerned by the President's comments, saying they would wait to see whether he followed through on the pre-election posturing.

An F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Australia is among several countries that contribute to the international supply chain for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which is run by American defence giant Lockheed Martin.

Australia has agreed to buy 72 of the aircraft as part of a $17 billion program, and more than 50 Australian companies are delivering parts fitted to every F-35 globally, sharing $1.3 billion in work.
Even when a business is losing money, it's possible for shareholders to make money if they buy a good business at the right price. For example, although Amazon.com made losses for many years after listing, if you had bought and held the shares since 1999, you would have made a fortune. But while the successes are well known, investors should not ignore the very many unprofitable companies that simply burn through all their cash and collapse.

So should Infant Bacterial Therapeutics (STO:IBT B) shareholders be worried about its cash burn? For the purposes of this article, cash burn is the annual rate at which an unprofitable company spends cash to fund its growth; its negative free cash flow. The first step is to compare its cash burn with its cash reserves, to give us its 'cash runway'.

View our latest analysis for Infant Bacterial Therapeutics

When Might Infant Bacterial Therapeutics Run Out Of Money?

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 March 2020, Infant Bacterial Therapeutics had cash of kr501m and no debt. In the last year, its cash burn was kr54m. Therefore, from March 2020 it had 9.3 years of cash runway. While this is only one measure of its cash burn situation, it certainly gives us the impression that holders have nothing to worry about. You can see how its cash balance has changed over time in the image below.

OM:IBT B Historical Debt May 15th 2020

How Is Infant Bacterial Therapeutics's Cash Burn Changing Over Time?

Although Infant Bacterial Therapeutics reported revenue of kr75k last year, it didn't actually have any revenue from operations. To us, that makes it a pre-revenue company, so we'll look to its cash burn trajectory as an assessment of its cash burn situation. Over the last year its cash burn actually increased by 19%, which suggests that management are increasing investment in future growth, but not too quickly. However, the company's true cash runway will therefore be shorter than suggested above, if spending continues to increase. Admittedly, we're a bit cautious of Infant Bacterial Therapeutics due to its lack of significant operating revenues. So we'd generally prefer stocks from this list of stocks that have analysts forecasting growth.

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Can Infant Bacterial Therapeutics Raise More Cash Easily?

While Infant Bacterial Therapeutics does have a solid cash runway, its cash burn trajectory may have some shareholders thinking ahead to when the company may need to raise more cash. Companies can raise capital through either debt or equity. One of the main advantages held by publicly listed companies is that they can sell shares to investors to raise cash to fund growth. By looking at a company's cash burn relative to its market capitalisation, we gain insight on how much shareholders would be diluted if the company needed to raise enough cash to cover another year's cash burn.

Since it has a market capitalisation of kr1.1b, Infant Bacterial Therapeutics's kr54m in cash burn equates to about 4.7% of its market value. 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.

How Risky Is Infant Bacterial Therapeutics's Cash Burn Situation?

As you can probably tell by now, we're not too worried about Infant Bacterial Therapeutics's cash burn. In particular, we think its cash runway stands out as evidence that the company is well on top of its spending. Although its increasing cash burn does give us reason for pause, the other metrics we discussed in this article form a positive picture overall. After taking into account the various metrics mentioned in this report, we're pretty comfortable with how the company is spending its cash, as it seems on track to meet its needs over the medium term. On another note, we conducted an in-depth investigation of the company, and identified 4 warning signs for Infant Bacterial Therapeutics (2 are a bit unpleasant!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

Of course Infant Bacterial Therapeutics 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.
The Supreme Court on Friday said it was impossible for anyone to stop migrant workers from walking back to their homes and refused to direct the government to give them shelter or free transportation.

How do you stop people who want to keep walking? Can anyone go and stop them? Impossible for anyone to stop them, a bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao, Sanjay Kaul and BR Gavai said.

The court refused to entertain the plea after the Centre informed that arrangements have been made for the migrants to return home, but some don't want to wait and start walking on foot.

Migrants must have patience to wait for their turn, Solicitor General Tushar Meha told the bench.

Mehta said authorities can only request these people not to start walking on foot as using any force to stop them would be counter-productive.

The petitioner, lawyer Alakh Alok Srivastava, also highlighted the issue of 16 migrant workers getting killed after being run over by a train in Aurangabad last week, to which the court responded: How can anyone stop this when they sleep on railway tracks?

The workers crushed to death by a freight train last Friday had been walking along the rail tracks for around 45km and slept there due to exhaustion, officials had said.

The bench, which said it was not inclined to hear the plea, observed that it is impossible for the court to monitor who is walking and who is not walking.

It also berated the advocate, saying his petition was "totally based" on newspaper clippings. "Every advocate read incidents in the paper and become knowledgeable about every subject. Your knowledge is totally based on newspaper clippings and then you want this court to decide. Let the state decide. Why should this court decide or hear? We will give you special pass. Can you go and implement government orders?" the court said, dismissing the petition.

The petitioner had wanted the court to pass directions to all district magistrate to identify those stranded and ensure shelter, food and free transport for them.

Dozens of migrant workers have fallen sick or died on their way home, either from fatigue or in accidents, underscoring the extreme risks the poor have been exposed to under measures to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

Migrant labourers have been walking back to their rural homes since the lockdown was announced in March as their income dried up overnight. The Centre, criticised for ignoring their plight, started running special Shramik trains earlier this month to ferry them home. The Railways says over a million have been sent back so far.

But activists, which helps such migrant labourers, said many were still trying to get home on foot because registering for the transport was too difficult.
Democratic presidential hopefuls Former New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg (L) and Former Vice President Joe Biden (R) speak during a break in the ninth Democratic primary debate of the 2020 presidential campaign season co-hosted by NBC News, MSNBC, Noticias Telemundo and The Nevada Independent at the Paris Theater in Las Vegas, Nevada, on February 19, 2020.

Billionaire and former presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg is plotting a massive spending blitz to back Joe Biden's quest for the White House.

The former New York mayor and his closest political advisors are discussing whether Bloomberg's expenditures will include major donations to pro-Biden super PACs, Biden's joint fundraising effort with the Democratic National Committee, or another independent group, according to people familiar with the conversations. These people declined to be named as the talks were private.

There are at least three super PACs backing Biden that Bloomberg could give to: Unite the Country, Priorities USA and American Bridge. Donors can give unlimited funds to super PACs, but are limited in how much they can give to campaigns and joint fundraising campaign committees.

"As Mike has said, he supports Vice President Biden in defeating Donald Trump. We're currently looking at how to best support Vice President Biden as well as Democratic victories up and down the ballot in November, just as Mike Bloomberg has done in previous cycles," a Bloomberg spokesperson told CNBC.

Though it's unclear how much Bloomberg will eventually spend, some of the people familiar with the matter noted that they anticipate Bloomberg to end up spending in excess of $250 million to support Biden, the apparent Democratic nominee. Any major financial support from Bloomberg backing Biden does not include what he could put toward assisting congressional Democrats. After dropping out of the Democratic primary for president in March, Bloomberg endorsed Biden and later announced his campaign would transfer $18 million to the DNC.

With six months to go until the general election, Bloomberg investing part of his $58 billion net worth would be a critical boost for the former vice president. Biden and other leaders of the Democratic Party have been trying to build a general election juggernaut that would have a chance of overcoming President Donald Trump's war chest.

The coronavirus pandemic has forced all campaigns to go virtual and, although Biden kept up with Trump in fundraising in April, raising $60.5 million, he is still behind in cash. The president's campaign and the Republican National Committee have a combined $255 million in reserve. The Biden campaign told reporters on Friday that it had $103 million on hand at the end of April when combined with the DNC.

A Real Clear Politics polling average shows Biden ahead of Trump nationally by close to 5 points.

Bloomberg has become a major contributor to Democratic campaigns and causes favored by the party, including gun safety. His contributions helped Democrats become the majority in the U.S. House of Representatives during the 2018 congressional midterm elections.

"Historically, the former mayor has spent big, spent late and won. Look at the history because Democrats have often won big with Bloomberg's backing," said a person close to Bloomberg who is also familiar with the talks. Bloomberg's team has previously said that he spent $110 million on Democrats throughout the 2018 congressional campaign.

Biden joined Bloomberg and more than 350 local leaders, including city mayors, on a virtual forum on Thursday to discuss the efforts being made to combat the coronavirus. Although Bloomberg didn't show his hand on how he plans to help Biden, he praised the former vice president and even took a moment to reflect on when the two faced off in the Democratic primary.

"You might remember we didn't work quite as closely this past winter, but we have always been united in this love of country and public service and that's what this is all about," Bloomberg said. Biden had praise for Bloomberg, too. "Mayor Bloomberg has been one of the great mayors of this country and also one of the great leaders of this country," said the former vice president.

Tweet:

Bloomberg had planned on creating a super PAC that would target Trump. But he decided against it and ended up laying off field staff in key battleground states across the country. He finished spending $1 billion on an entirely self-funded campaign that only secured 55 delegates, including a victory in the American Samoa caucuses on Super Tuesday.

The former New York mayor has previously said he would not rule out spending up to $1 billion against Trump, whether he was running for president or not. Trump's campaign manager, Brad Parscale, has said they plan to spend at least $1 billion defending the president and getting him reelected.

The 2020 election cycle is looking to be one of the most expensive yet, especially as it pertains to campaigns' spending on advertisements. A recent study by Advertising Analytics shows campaigns could end up investing $6.7 billion in advertising alone. They cite the coronavirus as one of the reasons there could be such a focus on ads this year. "The lack of face-to-face campaigning driving higher shares of budgets to paid media," the report said.

Since his short-lived run for president, Bloomberg has focused on funding a large-scale tracing and testing program that could help fight the coronavirus. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's team has previously said that Bloomberg is contributing up to $10 million to those efforts.

Bloomberg's tech firm, Hawkfish, has been working with Bloomberg Philanthropies on creating social media assets that promote the program and discuss the impact of the coronavirus, according to a member of the philanthropic group. Many of the videos it has put together are on the Twitter and Facebook pages of Bloomberg Philanthropies.

While the firm has struggled to pick up clients as political organizations are switching gears due to the coronavirus pandemic, Biden's team still has not ruled out bringing on the Bloomberg-backed entity.

A spokesman for the Biden campaign did not return a request for comment.
Cities and counties across the country may have handed plaintiffs attorneys an argument to use in lawsuits against insurers that seek business-interruption coverage for losses caused by coronavirus closure orders.

Jurisdictions as far asunder as Los Angeles, Calif. and Key West, Florida include verbiage about property loss or damage in emergency directives that explain the reasons that businesses are being ordered to shutter. Those orders, in turn, are being cited in lawsuits that seek to persuade the court that coronavirus has caused property damage, which triggers business-interruption coverage.

Chris Cheatham, owner of analytics software provider RiskGenius in Overland Park, Kansas, noted in a blog post earlier this month that the language had been used by communities across the nation. He even built an interactive map that links to city, county and state emergency orders and ranks them as either low, medium or high risk to insurers. The highest risk? Orders that say coronavirus causes property damages. Orders that mention property damage, but dont make a direct statement about what is causing it, are tagged as low or medium risks.

Defense attorneys widely dispute the notion that a virus can be construed as physical damage to property that merits coverage, even in policies that dont specifically exclude coverage. Many plaintiffs attorneys say otherwise and are itching for a courtroom showdown.

Analysis: Insurers Feel Rising Legal Heat for COVID-19 Business Interruption Exclusions How Social Inflation May Affect Coronavirus Business Interruption Losses Pressure Builds on Insurers to Be Part of Coronavirus Business Solution

Please keep in mind that I am not declaring any particular language will or will not result in a valid claim or successful litigation, Cheatham wrote in his blog. I am pointing out government language that I believe will be used (and is already being used) by attorneys to support claims and litigation for COVID-19 business interruptions.

Propensity

Cheatham said its clear that a plaintiffs attorney had a hand in placing such language into at least one emergency order. He pointed to a news article in the Keys Weekly that explained how the term property damage ended up in a March 21 emergency directive by Key West Mayor Teri Johnston and City Manager Greg Veliz.

Attorney Darren M. Horan told the newspaper that he suggested the language during a meeting that was attended by City Commissioner Clayton Lopez, who relayed the message to City Attorney Shawn Smith. Horan said such language is important for policyholders who have insurance either for business interruption or orders by civil authorities because there is no coverage without property damage, according to the report.

Neither Smith nor Lopez could be reached for comment. Horan, however, responded to an email from the Claims Journal.

Horan said during his meeting with Commissioner Lopez, he offered a copy of an emergency order issued by New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell. The order says the coronavirus causes property damage because of its propensity to attach to surfaces for long periods of time.

That order was cited in what may have been the first lawsuit by a business owner seeking coverage for coronavirus-related closure: a complaint filed in Orleans Parish by Attorney John W. Houghtaling on behalf of the owner of the Oceana Grill in New Orleans. Houghtaling is seeking a state court declaration that his client is owed business-interruption coverage.

The interactive map with Cheathams blog post shows that the propensity to attach to surfaces language was used in several similar emergency orders by local governments in Florida.

One of them is an emergency resolution by the Board of Commissioners for Pinellas County, which says the virus has a propensity to attach to to surfaces and is causing property loss or damage in certain circumstances.

County Attorney Jewel White said she and her staff came up with that language on their own, with no input from any plaintiffs attorneys. White said the state statutes that the county relies on to use emergency powers specifically mention the protection of property. Typically in Florida, such emergency declarations are issued because of hurricanes, she said.

White said she did not personally draft the order, but she and her staff were concerned about the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak on businesses, particularly on long-term care facilities. She said shes not an insurance expert and was not aware that the language would have any impact on the viability of business-interruption claims.

We were trying to invoke everything we could, to give us as broad authority as possible, she said.

The Ogletree Deakins law firm maintains a directory of emergency orders by state government and some local jurisdictions. A review of that database shows that property damage is not mentioned in most of the statewide closure orders by governors or state health officers.

Orders by Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards and West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice are exceptions. Both mention property, but with far less detail than a number of the local orders.

Whereas

California Gov. Gavin Newsom was the first in the U.S. to issue a statewide stay-home order on March 19. Executive Order N-33-20 makes no mention of property damage.

But many local orders do, typically within a series of paragraphs that start with whereas.

An emergency order issued by Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti states that COVID-19 is physically causing property loss or damage due to its tendency to attach to surfaces for prolonged periods of time.

Garcettis order was cited in a lawsuit filed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles against the Chubb Group of Insurance Companies seeking coverage for income losses from event cancellations and the closure of its facilities. The center operates the Museum of Tolerance, as well as a film production company and educational programs. Houghtaling represents the center.

Similarly, a March 18 order by Napa County health officer Karen Relucio discusses physical damage to property caused by the virus.

That order was cited in a lawsuit filed by renowned chef Thomas Keller against The Hartford seeking coverage for business-interruption losses from his two Napa County restaurants. Houghtaling is assisting with Kellers lawsuit.

Steven Badger, an insurance defense attorney with the Zelle LLP law firm in Dallas, said the origin of the property damage language is clear.

Theres no secret that the language was added in several initial emergency orders at the request of plaintiffs lawyers, with other municipalities then simply copying the same language, he said in an email.

Badger also said the wording of emergency orders will not control whether a policy must responder under the civil authority coverage.

Civil authority coverage is intended to apply when access to covered property is prohibited due to physical damage to a nearby property, such as a fire or building collapse, he said. Here, there was no physical damage to nearby property. It is clear that the primary cause of local COVID-19 emergency orders was the desire to stop the spread of the virus in people  to flatten the curve  and not due to any actual physical damage to property that had already occurred.

About the photo: The Oceana Grill, shown here, is one of many restaurants suing to collect losses from coronavirus closure orders.

Topics Lawsuits Florida Property
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Linkedin News Desk (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:21 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd86020e 1 Business Peruri,finance,medium-term-note,correction Free

State-owned securities paper and bill printing company Peruri has said it is in good financial condition after an error in The Jakarta Post suggested the contrary.

Audit results from the public accounting office for our 2019 financial results show that Peruri is a very healthy state-owned enterprise [financially] with AAA ratings, Peruri finance director Winarsih Budiriani said in a statement to the Post on Friday.

Last year, the company reported 21.53 percent year-on-year (yoy) growth in revenue to Rp 3.9 trillion (US$ 261.9 million).

Peruri also saw its profit surge to Rp 725.31 billion in 2019, an increase of 152.25 percent compared to the previous year.

The statement served as a response to an article published in the Post on Friday titled SOEs scramble to pay debts in time.

In the article, the Post mistakenly said Peruri had missed interest payments on its medium-term notes (MTN). It was, in fact, Perum Percetakan Negara Republik Indonesia (PNRI) that failed to make the payments.

Peruris business includes printing rupiah bills, passports, immigration documents, excise tape, duty stamps, land certificates and other securities documents. Its digital securities service is currently gaining traction.

PNRI is responsible for the countrys printing industry, including publishing, multimedia and business development, according to its website. The company prints government documents and information, including regulatory documents and voting ballots. It also prints and publishes materials for state-owned enterprises and private entities.
By Express News Service

Russell Crowe is set to star as a mobster in Paramount Pictures thriller American Son. The film will be directed by Andrew Rapman Onwubolu, known for his work in crime drama Blue Story.With screenplay by Dennis Lehane, the film will be based on French movie A Prophet (2009), reported Variety. A Prophet won the grand prix at the Cannes Film Festival (2009) and was also nominated for best foreign-language film at the Oscars (2010).

American Son revolves around a man (yet to be cast), who falls under the control of a ruthless mobster (Crowe) while in prison. He builds a multiracial crime syndicate, takes down his mentor, and earns a place for his crew alongside the Italian and Russian mafias. H Moritz and Toby Jaffe will serve as producers via Original Film.Crowe will next be seen in Unhinged, which is set to release in theatres on July 1. It will mark the first movie to return to theatres since the coronavirus pandemic.
Five Canadian Forces soldiers have been infected with the novel coronavirus while serving in Quebec and Ontario nursing homes  four in Quebec and one in Ontario  the Department of National Defence said today.

That word came after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed the news in response to questions from CBC News and Radio Canada journalists at his daily media availability this morning.

Watch | Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reacts to military cases of COVID-19:

The department offered few details, other than a breakdown of the infections by province and a list of the protective measures the military was taking for the 1,675 service members taking part in the assistance operation. That operation was launched in response to pleas from both provinces for help in long-term care facilities overrun by COVID-19 cases.

Separately, the country's top military commander, in his weekly letter to the troops, acknowledged that some members of the military had also been quarantined for assessment.

"We continue to work to mitigate the threat, employing all the necessary protocols, with the advice of our CAF Surgeon General, but the reality is our personnel are working in an environment where the threat is high," said Gen. Jonathan Vance, the Chief of the Defence Staff.

Vance did not say how many troops are in quarantine.

A veteran's advocate who has been tracking the pandemic deployment said one of the four service members infected in Quebec was performing duties at the Villa Val des Arbres in Laval, a suburb of Montreal.

That infected soldier, who has not been identified, was part of a team of military members who arrived at the seniors home on April 20 in response to an urgent request for assistance from the Quebec government, said Sylvain Chartrand of Canadian Veterans Advocacy.

After the soldier tested positive for the novel coronavirus, the entire team was removed from the home. It's not clear whether they were told to isolate themselves.

Story continues

'We're proud of the work that we're doing'

A second case is said to be a military dentist who also took up duties in one of the long-term care centres  possibly in the Montreal area, the current epicentre of the COVID-19 outbreak in Canada.

National Defence did not provide details about the other three confirmed cases, but pledged to release statistics every two weeks on the deployment in order to reassure military families and the public.

The highest-ranking officer in Quebec, Brig.-Gen. Gervais Carpentier, insisted the operation's COVID-19 caseload is low, given the size of the deployment, and that the troops received medical checks and proper training prior to deployment.

"It's a tough situation. We never wished for this kind of situation, but we're proud of the work that we're doing," Carpentier told CBC News.

Carpentier would not discuss details of the service members' cases or indicate how sick they are right now.

He said the risks were known going in and the troops were well-equipped and well-trained.

"The important part of our preparations was to make sure that we knew how to don and wear the personal protective equipment to ensure ... max safety for personnel," said Carpentier.

A 'high contamination risk'

How much protective equipment the troops wear depends on the extent of the outbreaks in the homes where they're deployed; Carpentier said the military is taking its cues from provincial health authorities.

Chartrand, however, has doubts.

He said he is not going to question the adequacy of the protective equipment but, with regards to the Laval case he was tracking, he was told the soldiers in the detachment were all changing in and out of their equipment in the same room, in violation of provincial health protocols.

That should be investigated, Chartrand said.

"That's a contamination risk. A high contamination risk ... So, I mean, do they have proper training?"

With so little known about COVID's long-term health implications, Chartrand said, the federal government should declare the pandemic deployment a special duty operation. That would allow troops to claim veterans benefits  if they end up needing them.

He was supported in his call Friday by NDP defence critic Randall Garrison.

"Canada's troops are always ready to step in when they're needed in a crisis and they deserve to compensated for the important work they do on the front lines  overseas and here at home," Garrison said in a statement.

Watch | Brig.-Gen. Gervais Carpentier on Canadian Armed Forces members who have tested positive for COVID-19:

"There are always risks in what they do and they go into that knowingly and willingly, and that is why we offer them our deepest gratitude every day," Trudeau said.

"At the same time, we need to make sure that we are doing everything we can to protect them, so we will look at the protocols in place and see if and how they can be strengthened ... ensuring that cases of COVID-19 don't spread throughout the [Canadian Armed Forces] and others who are serving their country."
A migrant labourer hailing from Madhya Pradesh embarked on a journey back home from Hyderabad on foot over two weeks back due to the lockdown, pulling his pregnant wife and a two-year-old daughter on a makeshift wooden cart, has reached his home state, an official said on Friday.

Their 17-day arduous journey, during which they claimed to covered a distance of over 700 kms, finally ended on Thursday after they reached Lanjhi in Balaghat district, the official said.

Sub Divisional Officer of Police (SDOP) Lanjhi, Nitesh Bhargava, said the family was spotted on the MP-Maharashtra border on Thursday, after which arrangements were made for their further journey till home.

Sharing their ordeal with PTI, 32-year-old Ramu Ghormore and his wife Dhanvantri Bai, said, "We worked as labourers in Hyderabad under a contractor. After the lockdown came into force, there was no work at the site. As our source of income stopped, we started facing difficulties in arranging even two meals a day."



"We then sought help from some people and requested them to make arrangements for our travel to the native place. However, nothing happened for a long time," they said.

Ghormore said, "As there was no solution in sight, we decided to start our journey on foot till our village in Lanjhi with my daughter Anuragini in my arms."



However, after some distance my wife was unable to walk further, he said.

"After that I created a handcart with the help of a bamboo and other locally-made material, including wheels and a lever made of tube to pull it," he said.

When they reached Rajegaon on MP-Maharashtra border, the authorities stopped them and enquired about them, where the couple shared their story.

Bhargava said that as per Ghormore's account, he walked over 700 kms for 17 days with his family on cart.

"The man had made a handcart on which his wife and daughter were sitting. He came pulling them from Hyderabad," the official said.

After they reached the MP border, they were provided with food.

"A private vehicle was arranged for them to send them back to their home in Kunde village in the district, which is about 18 km away from the border," Bhargava said.

A police official said that besides this family, nearly 400 other labourers also reached Rajegaon from Andhra Pradesh and Telangana on foot.

"They were medically examined, provided food and pain-killers. They were later sent to their destinations," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
China is likely to come up with a fiscal stimulus package during the upcoming annual meeting of the country's top legislature, including raising fiscal deficit and expanding government debt, to contain the economic impact of COVID-19 epidemic and accelerate recovery, according to officials and experts.



The government will moderately raise the fiscal deficit ratio, issue special Treasury bonds to counter the COVID-19 impact, increase local government special bonds and continually implement tax and fee cuts, to proactively offset the economic downturn, Finance Minister Liu Kun said on Thursday.

An increase in the fiscal deficit will release positive signals and stabilize market confidence, and help ease the government financing difficulties as the budgeted income for this year is projected to be lower than last year, Liu said in a statement on the ministry website.

The issuance of special Treasury and more local government special bonds will expand government-led investment, promote consumption and strengthen domestic demand, he said.

Liu stressed that the fiscal policy will be more proactive, to maintain economic fundamentals focusing on "six priorities": safeguarding employment, people's livelihoods, the development of market entities, food and energy security, the stable operation of industrial and supply chains, and the smooth functioning of society.

These economic targets were listed for the first time at a meeting of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee on April 17, chaired by Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

To implement the fiscal measures, the minister said tax relief measures would be added especially for small and medium-sized enterprises hit by the virus, including maintaining lower value-added tax rates and corporate pension rates. Also in the cards is an increase in the unemployment relief.

According to political advisers, the central government will disclose the size and usages of COVID-19 special Treasury bonds and the full-year quota for local government special bondsthe two major instruments to increase government spending, during the upcoming annual meeting of the third plenary session of the 13th National People's Congress, the country's top legislature.

Liu Shangxi, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and head of the Chinese Academy of Fiscal Sciences under the Ministry of Finance, said: "Expanding public consumption is one of the major goals of fiscal policy to offset the COVID-19 shocks." In face of the unprecedented challenges, fiscal stimulus should be used to control risks, different from the traditional role of expanding demand through increasing investment.

Some economists expressed concern that higher bond issuances, especially the local government special bonds to fund infrastructure projects, and weaker revenue due to further tax cuts and fee exemptions, may weaken local government fiscal positions and further increase their debt burden and contingent liabilities.

"To date, direct fiscal measures from the Chinese central government have been moderate and deployed with higher reliance on monetary easing," said Michael Taylor, managing director of the Asia-Pacific region at global credit ratings agency Moody's.

China's direct fiscal support differs from that of the major developed economies which includes, besides spending on healthcare and tax relief, large spending on job retention schemes and unemployment insurance, as well as direct cash payments, according to Moody's.

"Rather than housing and traditional infrastructure projects adopted in response to the global financial crisis, the target of public investment in infrastructure will be for projects such as telecommunication networks, healthcare services and facilities that promote sustainability and productivity," said Taylor.

"The funding mechanism has also shifted from government-backed bank lending to bond financing, especially for local government special bonds, which are more transparent," he said.
Maybe this is OT but I have a Kevin Bacon story to share.



He was seated right next to my table at a restaurant one time. My friend and I were talking in a whispering manner, but I guess Kevin Bacon took it as if we were talking about him so he demanded the waiter to be seated elsewhere. He also gave my friend and I a cold stare when he left his table. Lol like sure, we dont even care about you? We didnt even realize it was him till he was demanding the waiter for a different table. My friend and I were not talking about him FYI and we have been whispering way before he came into the picture. We definitely were not being ratchet either for him to react that way.



It was an encounter to remember and I am always reminded of it every time Kevin Bacon is brought up lol.





Edited at 2020-05-15 01:17 am (UTC)
Obesity is costing Western Australia's health system close to $340 million a year, with experts renewing calls for a ban on junk food advertising.

A report by WA's Department of Health found health conditions related to excess body mass were responsible for 9.3 per cent of all hospitalisations in 2016.

The report projects that by 2026, such hospitalisations will have risen by 54 per cent - and the costs to the health system increased to $610 million - unless the problem is addressed.

Two-thirds of WA adults were above a healthy weight and nearly half were not active enough. Credit:Shutterstock

Excess body mass was responsible for 8.1 per cent of all deaths in WA in 2016, with men more likely to die prematurely.
The US military offered its condolences to Iran after Iranian sailors died in a friendly fire incident Sunday.

A spokesman for US Central Command, also known as CENTCOM, said the incident during an Iranian naval training exercise Sunday was tragic.

U.S. Central Command offers our sincere condolences to the Iranian people for the tragic loss of life when an Iranian anti-ship cruise missile struck the Iranian auxiliary vessel Konarak in the Gulf of Oman on May 10, 2020, Capt. Bill Urban said in a statement sent to Al-Monitor today.

The accident occurred when an Iranian naval ship accidentally fired a missile at another ship during a training in the Gulf of Oman  the body of water between Iran and the Arabian peninsula; 19 service members died and 15 were injured.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later called for an investigation into the deaths, asking military commanders to shed light on what transpired.

Iran regularly conducts naval exercises in the Gulf of Oman. The area is near the strategic Strait of Hormuz, which is the maritime passageway for 20% of the worlds oil traffic.

The US offer of condolences comes at a time of high tensions between the two countries in the Persian Gulf. US President Donald Trump threatened to destroy Iranian ships that harassed US ships in the Gulf last month after Iranian speedboats crossed the bows and sterns of US ships there at close distances.

In its statement, CENTCOM also criticized Iran for holding the exercise in a busy body of water. While we are troubled that this mishap occurred in such close proximity to a high-traffic international shipping lane and at a time when most of the region's focus is on the fight against COVID-19, the unnecessary loss of life is regrettable, said Urban.
A U.S. soldier stands at a site of Iranian bombing, in Ain al-Asad air base, Anbar, Iraq, on Jan. 13, 2020. (Qassim Abdul-Zahra/AP Photo)

5 Countries Certified as Not Fully Cooperating with US Counterterrorism Efforts

Cuba returned to list of countries not cooperating fully in countering terrorism after being dropped in 2015

U.S. State Department certified that Iran, North Korea, Syria, Venezuela, and Cuba were not cooperating fully with U.S. counterterrorism efforts in 2019 and notified Congress about it on May 12, according to a statement.

Cuba has been certified as not fully cooperating with antiterrorism efforts the first time since 2015 for refusal to extradite ten leaders of the ELN (National Liberation Army) which claimed responsibility for a bombing attack in Bogota, Colombia, in January 2019 that killed 22 people and injured 60, the statement said.

Police work close to the scene where a car bomb exploded, according to authorities, in Bogota, Colombia, on Jan. 17, 2019. (Luisa Gonzalez/Reuters)

A consequence of being certified as not fully cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism efforts is the prohibition of the sale or export of arms, weapons, other defense articles or services to the certified countries. The certification also serves as a notification to the U.S. public and international community.

The Cuban government provides refuge to U.S. fugitives who are charged with political violence, e. g. the Cuban regime has refused to extradite Joanne Chesimard, who was convicted of executing New Jersey State Trooper Werner Foerster in 1973, the statement justified.

Cuba had been on the list of countries not fully cooperating with U.S. antiterrorism since 1997, according to a Congressional Research Service report (pdf).

In 2014 President Barack Obama changed U.S. policy toward Cuba to move the policy away from sanctions and toward engagement, the report said.

Obama certified that the Cuban government has not provided any support for international terrorism during the preceding 6-month period and has provided assurances that it will not support acts of international terrorism in the future, the report said. In addition, a memorandum was presented stating that Cuba had taken steps to fully distance itself from international terrorism and to strengthen its counterterrorism laws, according to the report.

As a result, Cuba was removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism and the list of countries not fully cooperating with U.S. counterterrorism effort in 2015, the report stated.

A woman holds a T-shirt reading Victim of the FARC during a protest outside at the Special Jurisdiction for Peace (JEP) headquarters in Bogota on July 13, 2018. (Raul Arboleda/AFP/Getty Images)

Terrorism in Venezeula

ELN, a Marxist guerrilla group, designated by the United States as a terrorist organization remained also active in Venezuela in 2019.

Venezuelas former President Nicolas Maduro and members of his regime have created a conducive environment for terrorism in the region and continued doing it in 2019 even though Maduro was not recognized as Venezuelas president during this period.

Individuals linked to dissidents of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) that was founded based on the communist ideology and has not complied with a peace deal signed in 2016 remained active in Venezuela in 2019.

The U.S. Justice Department has also criminally charged Maduro and some of his regime members for running a narco-terrorism partnership with the FARC for the past 20 years.

A Hezbollah supporter chants slogans, as he holds a picture of the late Iran revolutionary founder Ayatollah Khomeini (L) and Irans Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (R) during a Hezbollah-organized rally in Beirut, Lebanon, Fri., April 17, 2015. (Bilal Hussein/AP Photo)

Middle East

Iran continued to be the worlds largest state sponsor of terrorism, the State Department said in a statement. It has supported Hezbollah, Palestinian, and other terrorist groups in the Middle East.

Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plays a major role in organizing and leading terrorist campaigns globally mostly through its Quds Force. It has been involved in killing U.S. citizens and was designated by the United States as a foreign terrorist organization.

The former head of Quds force, Qassim Soleimani was killed by a U.S. airstrike in January.

Syria continues to provide weapons and military support to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad permits Iranian IRGC and its militia to operate in Syria. The Syrian support for terrorists and its relationship with IRGC grew stronger in 2019.

North Korea

North Korea gave refuge to four Japanese individuals who took part in the hijacking of a Japan Airline flight in 1970 and they continued to live in North Korea in 2019.

The hijackers were members of a terrorist group heavily influenced by the Maoist ideology, called the Japanese Red Army Faction, according to NK News website.

The Japanese government also continues to investigate the fate of 12 Japanese citizens who are believed to have been abducted by North Korean authorities between 1970 and 1980.
Clinica Universidad de Navarra and the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal), a center supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation, have launched a clinical trial to investigate the efficacy of ivermectin against COVID-19. The aim of the study, carried out in collaboration with Idifarma, is to determine whether administration of ivermectin is associated with a shorter viral clearance time.

Ivermectin has been shown to have an antiviral effect against other single-chain RNA viruses, including dengue and yellow fever, and it has successfully inhibited the replication of those viruses in vitro. We are also interested in assessing the drug's immunomodulatory role because one of the major problems with the SARS CoV-2 virus is the disordered immune response it causes." Carlos Chaccour, a specialist affiliated with Clinica Universidad de Navarra and ISGlobal and principal investigator for the new study

Ivermectin was recently shown to inhibit the replication of SARS-CoV-2 in vitro at very high doses, but this effect has not yet been studied in vivo. The new study will investigate this question in a randomized trial. Twenty-four patients with mild disease and no risk factors will be given a single oral dose of ivermectin or placebo less than 48 hours after the onset of symptoms.

These newly diagnosed patients will not require hospitalization, so follow-up will be carried out in their homes during their period of self-isolation. "We will give patients a single dose when they come to the clinic for a diagnostic test," explained Chaccour. "This will be followed by a month-long period of home-based follow-up, during which we will take five nasal swabs and monitor their symptoms. This will allow us to see whether ivermectin helps to clear the infection more quickly." The SARS-CoV 2 Ivermectin Navarra ISGlobal Trial (SAINT) is being funded by Clinica Universidad de Navarra and ISGlobal.

All participants will be recruited from Clinica Universidad de Navarra in Pamplona and their immune response will be jointly analyzed by the Clinica and ISGlobal.
An ex-government scientist has warned the United States could face its darkest winter in modern history over coronavirus, in comments made to US Congress.

Dr. Rick Bright, who Donald Trump dismissed last month after criticism, said on Thursday that Americans were not as prepared as they could have been to manage the pandemic.

Dr. Bright had headed the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, which is developing a vaccine.

The president described Dr. Bright as disgruntled and said on Twitter that he never met him or even heard of him.

But Dr. Bright told Congress that not only was the US not prepared for the pandemic, but that more was to come.

There will likely be a resurgence of COVID-19 this fall and be greatly compounded about the challenges of seasonal influenza, said Dr. Bright. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.

First and foremost, we need to be truthful with the American people. Americans deserve the truth, continued the scientist.

The truth must be based on science. We have the worlds greatest scientists. Let us lead.

His testimony highlights the ongoing struggle between science, health and diseases experts and Mr Trump political aims.

More than 80,000 Americans have now died from Covid-19, with the death count anticipated to be much higher.

Mr Bright also told the House of Representatives subcommittee on Thursday health that lives were lost because of government inaction in the early stages of the outbreak.

The same criticism has been issued against Mr Trump multiple times since the outbreak began.

Dr. Bright added that he got no response when he raised an internal warning about medical equipment shortage in January.
Why is Mr. Adongo continuously pushing the false narrative of two separate economic data? It is fictional, diversionary, and a base attempt to take away from the government's concentrated efforts to protect its citizens from the COVID-19 crisis.



For the avoidance of doubt, this is the IMF's assessment of Ghana's economy at the April 15th, 2020 Spring meeting, "Ghana's economy was growing robustly before the pandemic. Macroeconomic health of the economy had been restored, inflation trending downwards. A lot of issues in the banking sector had been addressed, and fiscal accounts were, by and large, under control" (Mr. Abebe Aemro Selassie, IMF African Department Director).



To understand this, the data the government of Ghana reported to the IMF is the "true" data, which, according to Hon. Adongo shows that the economy is worse than the data reported in the budget statement.



If Adongo agrees with the IMF, for which reason he wrote to thank the IMF, how then was he not able to reach the same conclusion as the IMF African Department Director, which is that Ghana's economy was growing robustly before the pandemic and that other economic indicators were trending in the right direction?



Could this be the same economy that Hon Adongo was referring to? How can the same government supposedly "suppressing figures to help hide the true state of the economy and to deceive Ghanaians and, by extension, investors and the international community," as falsely stated by Hon Adongo, be praised by the IMF? It appears as though Hon Adongo is confused about the macroeconomic data on the state of the economy that he is vehemently chastising, and simply manipulating information and making false claims all in an attempt to discredit President Akuffo Addo's government.



Perhaps at this point, the IMF's assessment of the Ghanaian economy as robust before the COVID-19 will settle Hon Adongo's confusion about the economy or the data. It is clear from Hon. Adongo's statement that he trusts the IMF, and knows that the IMF cannot offer any false assessment, given its interest and commitment to member countries.



Therefore, this disingenuous behavior to paint a false picture of the economy and its underlying data is inhumane and rather disappointing of an Honourable Member of Parliament, especially at a time of worldwide distress when all other governments and its oppositions have joined forces to subdue the impacts of the global pandemic on economic activities and the lives of people. Instead of making such preposterous claims and swaying attention from our current crisis, Hon. Adongo needs to join forces in the fight against the COVID-19  it is the only humane thing to do!

Source: Executive Director of the Danquah Institute/Richard Ahiagbah









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Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton will step down at the end of next month, with his successor expected to be a local, appointed from within the ranks of the existing senior command.

After seriously considering extending Mr Ashtons five-year term for several months until the coronavirus crisis stabilised, the state government has decided to press on with interviews to find his replacement.

Chief Commissioner Graham Ashton with Police Minister Lisa Neville at a media conference in February. Credit:Paul Jeffers

The decision was confirmed on Friday afternoon when all police were notified by internal email.

Police Minister Lisa Neville, confirming Mr Ashton's tenure ends on June 26, said the outgoing chief should be immensely proud of the contribution he has made to Victoria.
Around a dozen protesters were camped out at the intersection outside the Fisher Ham and Meat Co. headquarters in Spring on Friday, demanding the meat processing facility be shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Dani Alexander, one of the organizers of the event, called factory farms and slaughterhouses breeding grounds for new strains of dangerous bacteria and viruses, likening the spread of coronavirus from animals-to-humans to diseases such as bird flu and swine flu.

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People think that these small family-owned businesses are somehow more compassionate towards the animals but the terms such as humane and organic are meaningless labels that do little or nothing to improve the lives of animals and ultimately still involve violent death for an individual who did not want to die, Alexander said.

Alexander said pandemics like coronavirus wouldnt stop until people transitioned to a plant-based food system and called the pandemic one of the many global devastation side effects of the meat industry.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, several early COVID-19 patients in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China were found to have had some link to an animal market. The CDC states that while the origin of the virus was an animal source, the virus is believed to be primarily spread person-to-person and there is currently no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with food or that animals significantly contribute to the virus spread.

The protesters were also outside to protest the condition of workers who have to continue going into meat processing plants during the pandemic, but Alexander said she didnt know the conditions of the Fisher plant.

Theres no glass walls to the slaughterhouse, otherwise the world would be vegan, she said. All of this happens behind closed doors. If we knew the conditions of what the workers were going through, how the food is processed, these industries would fail.

Protestors walked at all four corners of the intersection of Carrot Street and Spring Cypress Road outside the Fisher building, 5023 Spring Cypress Road.

TEXAS WATERWAYS: Yes, Texas rivers and lakes are open. Here are 8 worth a day trip.

Mallory Barker, the co-organizer of the protest, said she wanted to speak for the animals and workers who she believes were being equally exploited by the meat industry.

Were taking animals lives and were putting our own lives at risk doing so, Barker said.

Barker said there was danger in any job, and that she was a nurse, but that people are seeing coronavirus spread in the meat industry. A report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found nearly 4,200 workers at 115 U.S. meatpacking plants had been infected with coronavirus, with 20 workers dying.

Were not against the workers at all, we just want them to have better, safer jobs, Barker said.

There were a few counter-protesters at the event, including a man dressed in a pig costume, and another man dressed in a bacon costume with a sign that on one side said I [heart] bacon and the other side said Jeffrey Epstein didnt kill himself.

The protester in the bacon costume, Chuck Berend, said he wasnt affiliated with Fisher Ham and Meat Co., but just lived a half-mile down the road and had seen the protesters outside before. Berend said the idea came about a few months ago after he and his wife talked about how much they love bacon and decided to counter-protest.

We just like bacon and we like these people, theyre very nice, Berend said about the Fisher Ham and Meat Co. owners. They sponsor swim teams, they sponsor FFA teams, theyre really nice people. Theyve been here for a long time and they do a great job.

Berend said certain jobs were critical to keep going during the pandemic, and that included jobs in the meat industry. Though he wasnt sure of the Fisher companys pandemic measures, he said most plants must keep high standards of cleanliness anyway due to diseases like E. coli and salmonella.

Dolly Vyas-Ahuja was another protester outside who said the reason she was protesting was because of the pandemics caused by eating animals. She is also a filmmaker, making a documentary called The Land of Ahmisa to try to persuade India to adopt a vegan lifestyle.

We need to stop all slaughterhouses today if we want to save our children, our future generations and the planet, Vyas-Ahuja said. Its not about the taste anymore, its about people dying.

Fisher Ham and Meat Co. did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

paul.wedding@hcnonline.com
The federal government of Nigeria has stated that it never ran to Madagascar for help in fighting the novel coronavirus.

According to the chairman of the PTF and Secretary to the Government of the Federation SGF, Mr Boss Mustapha, Madagascar volunteered to donate its COVID-19 cure to Nigeria for use in the spirit of brotherly love.

The issue of Madagascar. Let me explain that Nigeria did not ask Madagascar for any solution. That has to be very clear because I have seen some narratives out there giving credence to a line of story.

Read Also: Madagascan Remedy Is A Challenge To Nigerian Herbalists  Shehu Sani

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That, for me, is only distractive. Nigeria did not ask. The Madagascan government decided to airlift quantities meant for African countries and so that of West Africa was airlifted to Guinea-Bissau. So, all the members of ECOWAS have their commodities off-loaded in Guinea-Bissau and that was the one I referred to, that we were making arrangements to evacuate.

But the impression out there was as if we abandoned homegrown solutions and were looking for Madagascan solution. We did not ask for it, but it was taken in the spirit of brotherly love, or African brotherly love.

We have asked our ambassador there to establish the location, the quantity etc. He has done that. We have to make an arrangement for its freighting out of Guinea-Bissau. There are no flights, so there are so many things we have to consider.
For more than 50 years, Cornelia Vertenstein, 92, has taught piano lessons from her home in Denver. Every week, through all those years, a parade of children came to her door, books in hand.

They practiced for an hour at the Chickering & Sons piano that Ms. Vertenstein and her former husband, both Holocaust survivors from Romania, bought for $600 in 1965, two years after landing in the United States.

And when the children left, at least the little ones, Ms. Vertenstein gave them a sticker for encouragement. They gave her a hug.

The coronavirus has put an end to those visits. But Ms. Vertenstein would not let it put an end to the lessons. And she certainly would not let it cancel spring recitals.
[May 15, 2020] NTT: Conclusion of a Cooperation Agreement with ITER

NTT (News - Alert) Corporation (NTT, President & CEO: Jun Sawada) concluded a Cooperation Agreement on the ITER Project with the ITER International Fusion Energy Organization (ITER Organization).

By supporting the ITER Project, which has the objective of building the world's first experimental hydrogen fusion reactor, NTT will accelerate "Development of innovative environment and energy technologies", and contribute to the reduction of the environmental impact of customers, companies and society. This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005951/en/ ITER construction site in Provence in the south of France (Photo: Business Wire) 1. Background

The ITER Project is an extraordinarily large international project that has the objective of building the world's first experimental hydrogen fusion reactor (ITER) to prove the scientific and technical feasibility of the fusion energy for peaceful purposes. The ITER Organization, an international organization with seven members - Japan, the European Union, Russia, the United States, South Korea, China, and India - is engaged in the ITER Project. NTT is aiming at "Zero Environmental Impact" by supporting customers, enterprises, and society in reducing their impact on the environment through our R&D aimed at creating innovations that break through conventional limitations and by pursuing business activities designed to decrease deleterious effects on the environment. For example, NTT is preparing to establish the Space Environment and Energy Laboratories, which will undertake research with the goal of creating innovatve energy and environmental technologies.







*IOWN (Innovative Optical and Wireless Network) is a future communications infrastructure to create a smarter world by using cutting-edge technologies like photonics and computing technologies.

https://www.rd.ntt/e/iown/ 2. Scope of Cooperation

Under the strategic intent of this Cooperation Agreement, NTT will collaborate in the following areas.

Exploration of innovative future Information and Communication Technology, including ultra-high-speed network, ultra-low latency network connectivity, data storage, computing, and global network infrastructure.

Exploration of the concept "IOWN" including All-Photonics Network, Digital Twin (News - Alert) Computing, and Cognitive Foundation. This is the first time that the ITER Organization has signed a Long Term Non-Commercial Cooperation Agreement with a private Japanese company. As a general ICT player capable of providing full-stack, full-lifecycle services on a global scale, the NTT Group will collaborate on information distribution and control platforms in preparation for ITER's first plasma in 2025 and beyond.

NTT will work out the details and conclude an implementation agreement. 3. Executive statements

"With an aim of achieving zero environmental impact, NTT is conducting R&D to create the innovations needed to achieve this goal, and carrying out its business activities in a manner that reduces its effects on the environment. Safe and permanent fusion energy is one of the most promising technologies in this important endeavor. We believe that NTT's groundbreaking R&D activities, including IOWN, and our ability to construct global infrastructure can make a valuable contribution to the ITER Organization, a leading research entity in this area. Under this agreement, we will work closely with the ITER Organization to demonstrate the feasibility of fusion power at an industrial scale for the first time in human history."

-Jun Sawada, President & CEO, NTT "We, with the seven ITER Members, believe that fusion power can become a clean and safe vital contributor to the global energy mix for our civilization starting in this century for numerous millennium, and the progress of the ITER Project is essential for that path. I am pleased to have global ICT companies like NTT as one of our long-term non-commercial collaboration partners, with the solid capacity to develop advanced global ICT technologies as well as the capability to envision innovative future technologies strategies such as the IOWN concept that fusion will definitively need."

-Bernard Bigot, Director-General, the ITER Organization About NTT

NTT believes in resolving social issues through our business operations by applying technology for good. We help clients accelerate growth and innovate for current and new business models. Our services include digital business consulting, technology and managed services for cybersecurity, applications, workplace, cloud, data center and networks all supported by our deep industry expertise and innovation.

As a top 5 global technology and business solutions provider, our diverse teams operate in 88 countries and regions and deliver services to over 190 of them. We serve 85% of Fortune Global 100 companies and thousands of other clients and communities around the world. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005951/en/

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BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Many foreign political parties have sent messages to China, which call on countries worldwide to pursue the vision of building a community with a shared future for mankind, strengthen cooperation in the anti-epidemic fight and join hands in tackling risks and challenges.

In messages recently sent to the International Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, foreign political party leaders speak positively of China's achievements in curbing the spread of the epidemic and its contribution to the global fight against the virus, urging against politicization of the disease and stigmatization of other countries.

Chairman and First Secretary of the Zimbabwe African National Union-Patriotic Front Emmerson Mnangagwa, who is also the Zimbabwean president, said the pandemic is a common enemy of mankind which the international community should work together to defeat.

Noting that an epidemic outbreak is a natural phenomenon, Mnangagwa said that we must respect science and avoid making groundless accusations. China has paid a huge price to contain the spread of the epidemic and accumulated useful first-hand information and experience for the global fight against the disease. China's contribution should be recognized by the international community, he said.

Zimbabwe will continue to stand united with China to win the battle against the epidemic, he added.

Solly Afrika Mapaila, first deputy general secretary of the South African Communist Party (SACP), expressed his gratitude to China for its great sacrifice in the fight against the pandemic.

Together with political parties around the world, the CPC has called for promoting international cooperation in the battle against COVID-19, which charts the course for the international community to triumph over the virus, he said, adding that the SACP opposes the move of politicizing public health issues, and is committed to safeguarding international cooperation in the anti-epidemic fight.

Chairman of the Free Egyptians Party Essam Khalil said that under the strong leadership of Xi, China has won the battle against the epidemic in the shortest time possible.

China's actions have, once again, proved to the world that the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind is the only way to safeguard human health and security, he said, stressing that politicizing the pandemic and stigmatizing other countries is unpopular. Instead, countries should focus their attention on anti-epidemic cooperation.

He expressed his hope that China will continue to promote international anti-epidemic cooperation and help countries worldwide to overcome the virus at an early date.

President of the Socialist Party of Serbia Ivica Dacic said that the Chinese people stand on the first line of defense in the fight against the pandemic, and have made huge contributions and sacrifices in order to safeguard the health and safety of people around the world, which deserves the respect of all countries worldwide.

Dacic, who is also first deputy prime minister and foreign minister of Serbia, said his country strongly condemns the politicizing and extremist remarks of some countries on the epidemic issue.

In this global public health crisis, China pursues the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, and shows a high sense of international responsibility, which deserves high praise from the world, he added.
Despite China's unilateral fishing ban on waters around Vietnam's Truong Sa (Spratly) and Hoang Sa (Paracel Islands), fishermen in Quang Ngai are heading out to sea to protect their fishing grounds.





The Sa Ky Fish Port in Binh Son District is still busy with boats coming in and out.



Boat QNg 95122 TS has just arrived full of fish after more than a month in the Paracel Archipelago. The boat owner, Nguyen No was preparing foods and fuel to continue his next trip.



Asked about the China's recently-announced fishing suspension in the area, the fisherman said that he heard about it but did not care because it was groundless.



"We fishermen in Quang Ngai all know about the ridiculous ban and were very angry at it," he said.

The Spratly and Paracel Islands have been our traditional fishing grounds for years. Although we have been facing some difficulties with bigger Chinese vessels chasing and attacking our boats, we will still continue to fish there."



A boat owned by captain Tran Hong Tho was attacked by a Chinese vessel on April 2, 2020. He lost billions of VND in the damage but is still preparing for the next trip despite the Chinese suspension.



At Ly Son Island District, there are 60 boats with 850 fishermen who are working at the Spratly and Paracel Islands. Local authorities are calling on fishermen to continue going to sea to earn their living and contribute in protecting the country's islands.



Chairman of An Hai Fisheries Association, Nguyen Quoc Chinh said that Chinese coast guard vessels often chase and attack their boats.



"They steal our fishing equipment and beat the fishermen," he said. "But we are determined to protect our Spratly and Paracel Islands."



In a document sent to the peoples committees of coastal cities and provinces on May 11, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development said that cities and provinces should encourage fishermen to continue fishing in Vietnams waters and ask them to go fishing in groups to support each other.



Vessels licensed to go fishing in the Gulf of Tonkins joint fishing area during 2019-2020 are not allowed to move to the east of the Gulf of Tonkin delimitation line, the document said.



Authorities of the cities and provinces must direct competent agencies to enhance management and inspections over the exploitation of fishery products in waters, especially the departure times of fishing vessels.



Localities are also asked to promptly report contingencies relating to fishing vessels and fishermen to the hotline of the Vietnam Fisheries Resources Surveillance, at 024 6273 7323.



The Chinese Bureau of Fisheries is implementing the suspension of fishing from 12am on May 1 to 12am on August 16 in various waters, some of which are within Vietnams sovereignty in the East Sea (internationally known as the South China Sea). Tienphong/Dtinews

Vietnam rejects Chinas unilateral fishing ban in East Sea Foreign Ministrys spokeswoman Le Thi Thu Hang has said Vietnam rejects Chinas unilateral decision on fishing ban in the East Sea from May 1 to August 16.
Endemol ShineIndia has optioned the classic Inspector Ghotedetective series of novels by H.R.F. Keatingfor adaptation into a multi-part returnable drama.

The Perfect Murder (1964) introduced Inspector Ganesh V. Ghote, an officer in the Bombay CID and won the British Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger award. Intended as a one-off, success in America and the UK led Keating to write 25 titles featuring Ghote, published over a 45-year period before his death in 2011.

Abhishek Rege, CEO Endemol Shine India said: We at Endemol Shine India look forward to bringing alive the inimitable world ofInspector Ghote first created by H.R.F. Keating in the 1960s.Our attraction to the series, along with the prestige of reintroducing the legacy of H.R.F. to a new audience,was the wide appeal and popularity of this lovable Indian Inspector. This universe celebrates not just a highly endearing and enduring character but also the nostalgia of a slice of our collective past, history and culture.The joy as producers and creators is to be able to create content that cuts across demographics and geographies because it is uniquerelatable and entertaining. 

The new book-to-screen deal is timed with Severn House republishing each of the Inspector Ghote novels and Level Best Books publishing a new biography H.R.F. Keating: A Life of Crime by Keatings wife, actress Sheila Mitchell, on 28th April 2020.

Sheila Mitchell said: I am absolutely thrilled that Harry is being celebrated in so many ways some nine years after he died and I am quite sure that, with Endemol Shine Indias reputation, they will find a way not only to bring the essential Ghote to the screen but also that their adaptation will introduce him to new generations.

The new biography gives an intimate view into the life and writings of one of the most revered authors of British crime fiction in the second half of the twentieth century. At the age of 94, this is Mitchells literary debutand features an introduction from Len Deighton.

Dramatic rights were acquired by Endemol Shine India from broadcast agent James Carroll at Northbank Talent Management on behalf of Peter Buckman at The Ampersand Agency and the H.R.F. Keating Estate. Mumbai-based agency The Story Ink was the advisor on the deal for Endemol Shine India.

Sidharth Jain, Producer & Founder at The Story Ink, said: The Inspector Ghote Series is a much coveted and exciting addition to Endemol Shine India & The Story Inks joint development & co production slate.Im very happy for The Story Ink to be part of this thrilling collaboration.

Henry ReymondFitzwalter Keating was born in Sussex in 1926. After a short period working as a subeditor on The Times, he went on in 1963 to review crime fiction for them for fifteen years. He published his first novel in 1959, and the first of the Inspector Ghote series in 1964.

Endemol Shine India is one of the leading and most valuable content production companies in subcontinent across television, film and digital content. The company is a joint venture bringing together Endemol Shine and CA Media to create a global content creator, producer and distributor across scripted and non-scripted genres.

Northbank Talent Management is a talent and literary agency based in central London representing thought leaders, broadcasters and writers across all media throughout the world. Northbanks team has decades of collective experience in the publishing, broadcast, brand licensing and corporate speaking industries which makes for a powerful offering in full-service talent representation.

The Ampersand Agencyis a small, selective, and successful literary agency with offices in London and Oxfordshire. Representing brand names like Georgette Heyer and H R F Keating, its reputation for discovering new talent started when they took on Vikas Swarup, whose first novel was sold in over 40 countries and turned into the multi-Oscar winning film Slumdog Millionaire.

The Story Ink is Indias first premium story company and has also become Indias No.1 book to screen development and production company. With more than 10 coproductions in the pipeline, and more than 75-book to screen adaptation deals in the last 18 months, The Story Ink has redefined accelerated project development in India.
U.S. President Donald Trump poses for a photo with Chinese leader Xi Jinping during a meeting on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan, on June 29, 2019. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)

US Steps Up Confrontation With Chinese Regime Amid Pandemic

News Analysis

The Chinese regimes mishandling and disinformation surrounding the pandemic has re-escalated US-China tensions, while beaming a spotlight on the Trump administrations ongoing campaign to counter Beijing in areas from trade to national security.

The pandemics disruption of global supply chains has hastened an administration initiative to reduce manufacturing dependence on China. Meanwhile, a raft of other measures across U.S. government agencies combating security and other threats posed by the regime are also coming to the fore.

President Donald Trump has taken a whole-of-America approach to tackling the challenge of the Chinese Communist Party, state department spokesperson Morgan Ortagus told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

This pandemic has highlighted just how correct, I think, President Trump has been since he began campaigning for the office in 2015 about the need to protect our borders, to bring crucial manufacturing home, and  importantly for America, to have reciprocal relationships around the world, to have an even playing field, Ortagus said.

And thats what were calling for in our relationship with Chinawhether its in trade, or whether its working on this pandemic, or national security issues.

The president and senior administration officials have stepped up their criticism of the regimes coverup of the virus outbreak, while the administration conducts an investigation into the viruss origins. The president has said that tariffs would be the ultimate punishment for Beijing, although White House officials have indicated they are not considering punitive measures against the regime.

There are many things we could do, Trump told Fox Business on May 14. We could cut off the whole relationship.

He added: Now, if you did, what would happen? Youd save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship, referring to the United States trade deficit with China.

Hardening Stance

Washington has in recent years taken a tough line on China issues. But the pandemic has supercharged efforts in certain areas, Walter Lohman, director of the Asian Studies Center at Washington-based think tank Heritage Foundation, told The Epoch Times.

The pandemic has put issues surrounding Americas supply chain vulnerabilityparticularly in pharmaceuticals and medical suppliesfront and center, he said. The administration is currently looking for ways to spur companies to move their sourcing and manufacturing away from China, according to Reuters.

White House economic advisor Larry Kudlow in April floated the idea of helping U.S. companies relocate from China by allowing them to deduct from their tax returns the entire cost of capital spending associated with the move.

On the trade front, Trump last week said he was very torn about the phase-one U.S.-China trade deal reached in January. He told Fox News that the pandemic has changed his views on the matter since the deals signing, adding that he was having a very hard time with China.

Under the deal, the communist regime agreed to buy an additional $200 billion of American goods and services, including farm goods, over the next two years. While both sides during a recent phone call agreed to meet their obligations under the agreement, trade data for the first quarter shows that China is far behind the pace necessary to meet its purchase target.

Earlier this week, the administration directed the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board (FRTIB)the independent body that oversees the pension fund for federal employees and military membersto halt plans to invest in Chinese companies that pose national security and human rights concerns.

The Board in 2017 decided to shift its investment strategy for its $40 billion international fund to track an index that includes China-based stocks of companies under scrutiny in Washington. Among the companies are Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology, which was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist last year because the companys technology was being used for the repression of Uyghur Muslims in Chinas western Xinjiang region, as well as aircraft and avionics company Aviation Industry Corporation of China, which supplies weapons to Chinas military.

In a letter from Kudlow and National Security Adviser Robert OBrien to Labor Secretary Eugene Scalia on Monday expressing opposition to the investment move, the officials cited the significant and unnecessary economic risk of investing in Chinese companies, noting the possibility of future sanctions will result from the culpable actions of the Chinese government with respect to the spread of the virus.

The move was due to take effect later this year, but the FRTIB announced on May 13 it would indefinitely delay those plans.

The administrations pressure in this instance signaled a warning shot to the regime, Stephen Moore, an economist and former Trump campaign adviser, told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.

Theres a real sense that the United States has to be more punitive with China because of what has happened with COVID  that has been so devastating to the United States, Moore said.

Trump also indicated on May 14 that his administration is looking very strongly at requiring Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges to comply with U.S. accounting rules. Currently, the regime blocks U.S. regulators from examining the audit papers of Chinese companies, saying they contain state secrets.

He noted, however, there would be drawbacks with this approach.

Lets say we do that right. So what are they going to do? Theyre going to move their listing to London or some place else, Trump said.

Tech Focus

Lohman said he expects the administration will continue to tighten rules concerning the transfer of sensitive technology to China.

The Department of Commerce recently released rules to make it tougher for U.S. companies to export certain types of advanced technology to China that might aid its military.

It now requires U.S. companies to obtain licenses to sell certain itemsincluding semiconductor production equipment and sensorsto companies in China that support the Chinese military, even if the items are for civilian use.

Meanwhile, Chinese telecom and technology firms remain under intense scrutiny from the United States over their national security risks. Since last May, a raft of Chinese companies, including Chinese telecom giant Huawei, were blacklisted from doing business with American companies due to security concerns or abuses of human rights.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month commenced steps to bar three Chinese state-controlled telecom companies from operating in the United States, citing security risks stemming from the concern that they are subject to influence from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr recently told The Epoch Times the agency is conducting a review of all Chinese companies operating in the country.

Congressional Push

Separately, Congress has been increasingly vocal in taking a stand against the regime, with a mounting campaign spearheaded by Republican lawmakers to hold Beijing accountable for the global health crisis.

A range of bills have been introduced to do this, including legislation that would strip China of the protection of sovereign immunity so it could be sued in U.S. courts, imposing sanctions on the regime, and reducing supply chain dependence on China.

Lawmakers have also put forward initiatives targeting Chinese tech companies, including a plan to ban federal employees from using tech platforms under the influence of the CCP, such as Tencent, Alibaba, and Baidu.

Meanwhile, the regimes infiltration of college campuses has come under increased scrutiny.

Ranking Republicans from seven House committees in early May pressed Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos for information on Beijings investment in American colleges to further its strategic and propaganda goals. The lawmakers noted that Beijing-funded culture programs such as Confucius Institutes serve as a vehicle to promote Beijing propaganda to American students, as well as a gathering ground for Chinese intelligence agencies.

Last week House Republicans launched a new task force to combat threats from the CCP. The 15-member China Task Force expects to release a report later this year covering issues such as Beijings influence operations in American academic institutions, its efforts to gain a technological advantage over the United States, and its handling of the initial outbreak.

Their coronavirus coverup is yet another wake up call to the evolving threat they pose to the world, said House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who heads the task force.

Not only do we have to hold the CCP accountable for their role in the spread of coronavirus, the United States must take bold action to address the CCPs malign agenda and better compete with China on the world stage, he said.
Media bodies on Friday raised concerns over incidents of alleged misuse of the law by authorities in India to "intimidate" journalists and "curtail" press freedom.

The Press Council of India on Friday expressed concern over the alleged threat of criminal prosecution and questioning of an Indian Express journalist by the Delhi police and asked its commissioner to submit a report on the matter.

Since the matter affects the free functioning of the press, while taking suo-motu cognizance of the matter, a report on facts of the case is being called for from the Commissioner of Police, Delhi, the print media watchdog said in a statement.

The Press Club of India, meanwhile, condemned the slapping of sedition charges on an editor of a Gujarati portal and the reported filing of 10 FIRs against six journalists in Himachal Pradesh, saying such actions are a "blot on our democratic aspirations".

In a statement, the Press Club of India said going on the basis of a "string of seemingly malafide actions" against journalists by BJP-run states and the Centre-controlled Union Territories, it calls on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda to step in to bring "sanity to the proceedings".

The Vienna-headquartered International Press Institute (IPI), a global network of editors, media executives and leading journalists for press freedom, also expressed "grave concern over the misuse of the law by authorities in India to intimidate journalists and curtail press freedom".

"The rapid decline in India's press freedom is alarming," IPI Director of Advocacy Ravi R Prasad said.

The Indian government has resorted to various tactics to prevent independent media from criticizing the government and reporting about the pandemic, the IPI alleged.

The Editors Guild of India on Wednesday had condemned the slapping of sedition charges on the editor of the Gujarati portal and the Indian Express journalist being asked by the Delhi Police to join the probe into Tablighi Jamaat leader Maulana Saad's audio clip, saying the state and central governments should desist from misusing the law to threaten free press.

In a statement, the Guild had said it notes with concern a growing pattern of misuse of criminal laws to intimidate journalists in different parts of the country.

The Guild had first highlighted the incident of Dhaval Patel, editor and owner of a Gujarati portal, ''Face of Nation'', being booked for sedition and detained by the state police on May 11 for publishing a report suggesting the possibility of a leadership change in the state due to criticism over rising coronavirus cases.

The second instance of "egregious and high-handed action" has come from Delhi Police, it had said.

"On May 10, the Delhi Police sent a notice to Mahender Singh Manral, Special Correspondent, The Indian Express, through the City Editor and Chief Reporter, The Indian Express, requiring the journalist, who had reported that police investigations found the possibility of the audio clip of Tablighi Jamaat leader, Maulana Saad, being doctored, to join a probe on this matter on May 10," the statement said.

"While Manral wasn't charged under any law, he was threatened that failure to join the probe could result in legal action under Section 174 of the IPC with punishment of a prison term and fine," it had said.

The Press Club of India had also condemned the questioning of Indian Express journalist by the Delhi Police.

The Press Club of India, in its statement on Friday, said the latest media victims of deplorable police actions "evidently in cahoots with the ruling party- emerge from Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh".

The Press Club said in Himachal Pradesh, six journalists from various districts of the state have reportedly had as many as ten FIRs registered against them.

"The reason for this unwanted police attention is that the journalists in question have reported on the plight of migrant workers and on the shortcomings of the state authorities in dealing with relief in the fight against COVID-19," it said.

These are legitimate areas of enquiry for journalists and examples of high-handed and irregular behaviour by those in authority, the Press Club said.

"Before these cases in Gujarat and HP, the administration and police in Uttar Pradesh, J&K and Delhi had already presented shocking examples of suppression of the media so that their questionable actions do not get to be known to the wider world," it said.

"We condemn such actions. They are a blot on our democratic aspirations," the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Dunn County Health Department has issued a local order after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down the Wisconsin Department of Health Services safer at home order.

Together health department Director KT Gallagher, Dunn County Sheriff Kevin Bygd and Menomonie Police Chief Eric released a joint statement regarding the next steps to keep the community safe and healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In response the health department issued administrative order 20-01 which states mass gatherings are advised to be avoided, businesses shall use safe business practices, all non-essential travel is discouraged and schools shall remain closed. The order is effective immediately and will remain until May 26.

Our next steps center on working in partnership with citizens, business owners, clergy and other various community members to implement best practices to protect ourselves from COVID-19, the joint press release states. This is absolutely necessary because COVID-19 can spread from one low-symptom person to dozens of people without them even realizing they are jeopardizing the health of others.

Local law enforcement will no longer enforce or respond to possible violations of the previous state order, the release states, as the new order looks to turn from an enforcement order to a partnership.

County residents are advised against gathering in groups of 10 or more people at place of work, play or worship. Gatherings that bring together people in a single room or confined space should preserved physical distancing, follow all public health recommendations issued by the health department, the DHS and the Centers for Disease Control.

Business are ordered to have policies in place to monitor their staff on a regular basis for symptoms or COVID-19 or exposure to a known case, support working from home, encourage hand washing, wearing of masks and physical distancing and have supplies to ensure proper disinfection and cleaning. Business must also cooperate with public health investigations related to confirmed or suspected cases of the virus and assist in identifying and contacting contacts of cases, end all door-to-door operations and review and consider integrating guidelines of safe business practices presented by the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation (wedc.org/reopen-guidelines/).

Travel that is non-essential outside of ones community is discouraged. Residents are allowed to travel to work or take care of dependents. Those that work in the Twin Cities area are asked to be extra cautious and monitor themselves for symptoms. Individuals who travel outside of their community should limit contact to non-households members for 14 days and monitor symptoms closely.

In accordance with the Supreme Courts order, all public and private schools in the county will remain closed. Staff are allowed on school property for basic operations, to distribute food or to support distance learning.

It is our most sincere hope that if we all work diligently together to adhere to the above guidelines we will protect our most important community commodity, the lives of our citizens, Gallagher, Bygd and Atkinson said.

Those in need of assistance or those with questions are encouraged to contact the health department, sheriffs office or Menomonie Police Department.

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DALLAS, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The American Board of Trial Advocates recognizes that the COVID-19 global pandemic has created s ignificant challenges affecting the lives of our fellow citizens and all sectors of our business communities. As our country struggles to adapt in these life altering times, the danger to disregard laws which are unpopular increases. A recent situation in Texas highlights this danger and reinforces the importance of maintaining the faith, trust and confidence in our third, co-equal branch of government; our judicial system, which has served America since its inception.

The judiciary was put to a test last week when a salon owner in Dallas defied lawful orders to close her business for health and safety reasons. These orders were issued by Texas' governor and its attorney general and applied to all non-essential businesses. Despite that fact, the salon owner openly and repeatedly defied the orders and publicly tore them up on camera. When summoned to appear in court before a judge and asked to apologize and agree to abide by the law in the future, she would do neither. Instead she proclaimed she would continue to remain open going forward. The judge then enforced the order issued by the governor by sentencing the salon owner to seven days in jail, one of the consequences enumerated in the order for its violation.

While the consequence for the salon owner was unfortunate, this was a typical progression of the legal system when a law is violated. The salon owner's story was nationally publicized with the judge being harshly criticized as vindictive. Thereafter the governor of Texas contradicted his own orders and freed the salon owner from jail while at the same time criticizing the judge who was enforcing the very orders issued by the governor. The Texas attorney general also harshly criticized the judge. The judge remained silent, as judges are required to do as part of their oath. In consequence, harsh public criticism of the judge ensued, reaching as high as the White House, and threats of violence, removal from office and racial disparagement began to circulate about the judge.

Portraying the salon owner as a crusader or the judge as a villain in these circumstances is misplaced and completely misses the mark. The salon owner publicly violated a law put in place for the safety of the community. The judge took the legal steps required by law and his oath to uphold that law.

Typically, a case such as this should reinforce why America relies on our judicial system to ensure that our communities are as safe as possible, recognizing that we cannot alleviate all risks while ensuring that all the courts follow consistent guidelines and directives. It is also why we can rely on citizen jurors to serve without threat of retaliation. And, most importantly, it's why we can ask our judges to make decisions without the threat of being attacked for upholding the rule of law.

The American Board of Trial Advocates acknowledges this is a critical time in our legal history, that dissent is part of our American fabric, and that an independent judiciary should be able to withstand criticism. But unjust, unfair and prejudicial disparagement of the judicial branch when it is enforcing the law is an attack on the rule of law. And, to blame the unfairness of a lawful order on a judge charged with enforcing a law is neither safe nor healthy for a democracy that depends on educated, well-informed citizens and leaders and an orderly process of law enforcement.

Luther J. Battiste, III

National President, American Board of Trial Advocates

About the American Board of Trial Advocates

Preserving the quality and independence of the judiciary has been a hallmark of ABOTA's efforts for decades, and the organization believes that confidence in the nation's judicial system is profoundly important. More on this topic can be found in the ABOTA white paper, Preserving a Fair, Impartial and Independent Judiciary. Founded in 1958, ABOTA is an invitation-only national association of experienced trial lawyers and judges. ABOTA and its members are dedicated to the preservation and promotion of the civil jury trial right provided by the Seventh Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. ABOTA membership consists of more than 7,600 lawyersequally balanced between plaintiff and defense  and judges in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

For more information contact:

Brian Tyson at (800) 932-2682

[email protected]

SOURCE American Board of Trial Advocates

Related Links

http://www.abota.org


Amid stray incidents of



stone-pelting and unruly behaviour over the past week by migrants amassed at the Madhya Pradesh border, a senior official from Indore on Friday said Maharashtra should send these stranded people directly to their native Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

Bijasen Ghat near Sendhwa town in Barwani district on the Maharashtra-Madhya Pradesh border is the main halt for migrants moving from Maharashtra to states like UP and Bihar amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown and there have been cases of stone-pelting and other law and order hiccups over allegations of lack of facilities.

On a visit to the area on Friday, Indore Divisional Commissioner Akash Tripathi said, "We are making efforts at the state level so that Maharashtra can be told to send these migrants directly to their destinations in UP and Bihar by trains. Besides, Maharashtra should send them in limited numbers so that we can handle them properly."



Queried on whether it was MP's responsibility to transfer the migrant workers being brought to the state border by Maharashtra in buses, he said, "Maharashtra should not do this. This is not our responsibility. Maharashtra is also leaving them in the wrong places."He said the neighbouring state was leaving migrants from eastern MP districts like Rewa and Satna, as well as those from eastern UP, at this border, which is located on the western side.

"They (Maharashtra) should send them (migrants) by trains. This is wrong but MP chief minister (Shivraj Singh Chouhan) has taken a decision on humanitarian grounds to provide them (migrants from other states) buses because they were walking to their destinations. MP is the first state to provide transport facility to migrants of other states so that they don't need to walk," Tripathi said.

Tripathi said he had told Maharashtra officials to control the influx so that the arrangements can be made to send them to their destinations.

"We have limited resources. We can't increase the number of buses from 100 to 200 in a day. We have to make Simhastha Mela-like (a massive religious congregation in Ujjain) arrangements here".

Earlier on Thursday, the state government had said stranded people arriving at Bijasen on the MP-Maharashtra border were being transported after medical screening to Dewas transit point, from where they are being sent to Sagar, Chhatarpur, Guna and Shivpuri through buses.

Migrants from other states are being ferried till their respective borders, it had said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
An official at Lebanons central bank has been arrested on currency manipulation charges. The Lebanese pounds value has plummeted during the coronavirus and economic crises in the country.

A Lebanese state prosecutor ordered the central banks director of cash operations, Mazen Hamdan, arrested Thursday for alleged currency manipulation. Hamdan allegedly bought US dollars from currency exchanges and weakened the pounds value on the black market, Bloomberg reported.

The central bank denied the allegations and released its foreign currency transactions today.

The Lebanese pound used to have a stable exchange rate vis-a-vis the US dollar. For years, $1 was pegged to roughly 1,500 Lebanese pounds. However, there are now multiple competing exchange rates in the country: one on the black market, one recognized by the government and a third one being used by banks.

Since October, banks have restricted depositors access to their US dollar accounts  no longer allowing any withdrawals in dollars. This, a scarcity of dollars and various other factors such as the poor state of the economy have resulted in a large depreciation of the pound, leading to an approximate loss in value of 60%.

The currency issues and poor employment prospects before and after the coronavirus have led to popular displays of anger in Lebanon. Anti-government protests that started in October resumed in late April and people physically attacked banks this month.

Last week, the head of Lebanons currency exchange syndicate was arrested, according to the Lebanese newspaper The Daily Star.

The Lebanese government is currently seeking billions from the International Monetary Fund to help alleviate its economic issues.
Hot Girl Summer rapper Megan Thee Stallion gave her 26.1M social media following quite an eyeful on Thursday with her latest bikini-clad thirst trap.

In the 15-second clip filmed Wednesday, the 25-year-old Texan flipped the bird and sipped from a bottle of Don Julio 1942 Tequila, which retails for well over $100.

Stallion (born Pete) showed her fans precisely why she's known as the 'twerk queen' serving up all the cake and bouncing her booty right at the camera.

'Mood': Hot Girl Summer rapper Megan Thee Stallion gave her 26.1M social media following quite an eyeful on Thursday with her latest bikini-clad thirst trap

Megan's seductive backyard dance drew comments of approval from her celebrity pals French Montana, Kandi Burruss, La La Anthony, and Slim Thug.

Stallion was wearing a nude-colored $39.99 Fashion Nova 'Brazilian Beach' bikini as part of her paid partnership with the California-based fashion brand.

Fashion Nova - founded in 2006 by Richard Saghian - is said to pay powerful influencers and celebrities between $20K-$50K to promote their products.

Armed in her sexy swimwear, the Texas Southern University student enjoyed a poolside beverage with two others to celebrate the immense success of her viral TikTok hit from March, Savage.

Middle finger: In the 15-second clip filmed Wednesday, the 25-year-old Texan flipped the bird and sipped from a bottle of Don Julio 1942 Tequila, which retails for well over $100

Serving up all the cake! Stallion (born Pete) showed her fans precisely why she's known as the 'twerk queen' bouncing her booty right at the camera

Fire! Megan's seductive backyard dance drew comments of approval from her celebrity pals French Montana, Kandi Burruss, La La Anthony, and Slim Thug

Megan's remix featuring 24-time Grammy winner Beyonce has sold well over 1M units in the US - all of which benefits Houston COVID-19 charity, Bread of Life.

Stallion originally met the 38-year-old R&B diva, as well as her eight-year-old daughter Blue Ivy Carter, at their lavish home on New Year's Eve.

'Oh my god we really danced, like, all night. I was really in there cutting up. I was like "Wow, Beyonce accepts my turn up she likes ratchet Megs" and I love it,' the Houston hip-hop star told Apple Music host Ebro Darden last month.

Barely contains her curves! Stallion was wearing a nude-colored $39.99 Fashion Nova 'Brazilian Beach' bikini as part of her paid partnership with the California-based fashion brand

Cheers! Armed in her sexy swimwear, the Texas Southern University student enjoyed a poolside beverage with two others to celebrate the immense success of her viral TikTok hit from March, Savage

'I really can't believe it, because being from Houston Beyonce is just Queen. That's all you know. There's no debate, there's nothing else to say - who's better than Beyonce?'

Megan was already acquainted with the 38-year-old R&B diva's husband Jay-Z since she's managed by his company RocNation.

On Monday, the talented Texan twosome reached the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 right beneath Doja Cat's song Say So featuring Nicki Minaj.

Charity song: Megan's remix featuring 24-time Grammy winner Beyonce has sold well over 1M units in the US - all of which benefits Houston COVID-19 charity, Bread of Life

'We really danced all night!' Stallion originally met the 38-year-old R&B diva (M), as well as her eight-year-old daughter Blue Ivy Carter (L), at their lavish home on New Year's Eve

'We've come so far,' Stallion marveled.

'I promise to keep working hard and getting better everytime! Thank y'all for growing with me. Look at all this girl power!'

Megan tweeted she was especially 'happy to be apart of the history' since this week marked the first time four black female solo artists have occupied the top two spots.

'Look at all this girl power!' On Monday, the talented Texan twosome reached the No. 2 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 right beneath Doja Cat's song Say So featuring Nicki Minaj
President Donald Trumps envoy for international religious freedom commended Iran and Yemens Houthi rebels for releasing some Bahai political prisoners in a bid to reduce the risk of COVID-19 spreading throughout densely populated prisons.

In Yemen, I was very pleased about the Bahai release that took place, Ambassador Sam Brownback told reporters Thursday. We continue to have concerns about how Bahai are treated there and in, unfortunately, a number of different countries around the world, and most particularly Iran. Although Iran did release a number of Bahai from prison  and I was very pleased that they were willing to do that  but theyve had a lot of heavy persecution against Bahai in unfortunately a number of different countries around the world.

But the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom subsequently told Al-Monitor that the Houthis have yet to release any Bahai prisoners despite their promises to do so.

Why it matters: Iran has a long history of harsh discrimination against the Bahai faith, a minority religion that originated in 19th-century Persia. Tehran released some 20 Bahais last month as part of a furlough to depopulate the overcrowded Iranian prison system as the coronavirus sweeps through the country. Although Iran has released more than 50,000 prisoners on furlough, an estimated 50 to 100 Bahais still remain in jail.

Because of the general prison conditions in Iran, we are extremely concerned about the remaining prisoners, Bahai international community chief representative Bani Dugal told VOA Persian last month. We dont know whether any of them have contracted the virus, because those details are hard to ascertain. But Im sure they are vulnerable.

Additionally, Yemens Iran-backed Houthi rebels said they would release all Bahai prisoners in March while pardoning Hamed bin Haydara, who had received a death sentence that the Bahai community had condemned as religiously motivated.

Whats next: Iran also released jailed US citizen Michael White as part of its COVID-19 furloughs  though other American prisoners remain in Iranian prisons. Iran has raised the prospect of a prisoner swap for Sirous Asgari, an Iranian who contracted COVID-19 in an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility he has been held in despite his acquittal on sanctions evasion last year.

Know more: Iran and the Houthis may be particularly heavy-handed when cracking down on the Bahai faith, but the small community also faces discrimination throughout the broader region. Mohammad Ersan details the Bahai struggle for civil rights in Jordan.

Update: May 20, 2020. This article was updated to note that the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom has said no Baha'i prisoners have yet to be released by the Houthis.
Bhubaneswar, May 15 : After the Supreme Court, the Orissa High Court (HC) has asked lawyers appearing through video conferencing not to wear black coat and gown as a precautionary measure to contain spread of COVID-19 infection.

The court advised the lawyers to wear plain white shirt/white salwar kameez/white saree with plain white neckband instead until further orders.

"In view of the ongoing pandemic of COVID-19, under prevailing circumstances, the learned advocates appearing before the High Court of Orissa through virtual court system, as a precautionary measure, need not to wear black coat and gown till the medical exigencies exists," said an HC order.

The order has been issued by Chief Justice Justice Mohammad Rafiq on Thursday.

Earlier on May 13, the Supreme Court had issued a circular relaxing the dress code for advocates.

After considering medical advice in light of the ongoing pandemic, the Apex court had directed to avoid black coats and gowns for the time being.
Gov. Phil Murphys Executive Order 124, which permits the state Department of Corrections to grant temporary home confinement for prisoners who meet certain conditions, is dangerous, especially for at-risk populations such as the elderly, disabled and children.

Some of these non-violent criminals were jailed for white collar "crimes. They preyed on the vulnerable and got caught. What will stop them from taking advantage of the vulnerable while serving time at home?

The executive order does not stop the clock on a home-sentenced prisoners time served. This means that once the pandemic lifts, they will have will have to return to prison for any balance of their sentence, with the at-home time counted as part of their incarceration period. How is this punishment?

During this pandemic, victimization of seniors has increased. Not only are heinous people posing as census takers to obtain confidential information, they are making phone calls stating claiming that people need to reapply for their health coverage.

Please consider that past history is a great indicator of future behavior. How can the state ensure that any criminals who have abused or victimized seniors or children, wont do the same in home confinement?

This mandate does not consider the safety of past and potential victims.

Siobhan Hutchinson, Columbus

School chiefs must step up during crisis

People always say that a crisis often leads to innovation. So, how about it school leadership?

Is it time to finally end the ridiculous number of separate school districts in New Jersey. How about at least requiring more shared services among districts?

I could see one remote teacher providing basic instruction across a large number of classrooms, with local teachers providing individual support as needed. Or  forgive the heresy  superintendents for some low-population districts could be shared.

If the financial concerns from the pandemic unfortunately requires a number of non-tenured teachers to be cut, does that mean all planned capital expenses by a district can continue unabated?

Also, who is working on statewide purchases of protective equipment for schools, so districts arent competing?

Where is the leadership?

Bill Tyler, Morristown

Is Star-Ledger hiding exculpatory Flynn story?

Why were there no news articles in the May 14 Star-Ledger concerning a controversy about now-dropped criminal charges against Gen. Michael Flynn, president Donald Trumps first national security adviser?

News stories in other media have indicated that former Obama administration officials were involved in requests to unmask Flynn while he was being investigated in relation to the 2016 Russian election interference probe.

In our opinion, this is the biggest scandal to appear in American history. But, perhaps you can't bear to print news that might vindicate what Donald Trump has been saying for the past three years: that not only was Flynn improperly charged by the FBI, but top Obama officials, possibly Joe Biden and Obama themselves, could have been behind a shameful plot to try to take down an incoming president of whom they disapproved.

This is a historic situation, but not one word from your paper.

David S. and Meryl Rehaut, Randolph

No rewards for bad bathroom etiquette outdoors

Regarding the stories that visitors left feces and bottles of urine behind after Gov. Phil Murphy reopened state and county parks, but not their restrooms, starting the weekend of May 2-3:

This past week, Murphy announced that the bathrooms would reopen so long as they undergo frequent and proper cleaning.

Instead of rewarding bad behavior by opening the restrooms, he should have just closed the parks again. Im as happy as the next person that the parks are open, but shocked that people would behave like  knuckleheads.

Do they act like this in their own homes?

Margaret Spelrem, Somerset

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A community quarantine centre in



Manipur's Imphal East district was sealed after a man who was lodged in the facility tested positive for COVID-19, an official said on Friday.

Imphal East Deputy Commissioner Rangitabali Waikhom said the Jamia Galina Aziz Girls School which was a designated quarantine centre was declared a "containment zone" and the building "completely sealed" as per the Manipur Epidemic Diseases COVID-19 Regulations 2020.

A 31-year-old man who had been quarantined in the centre since May 13 tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday.

The COVID-19 positive patient was now lodged at an isolation ward of Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Medical Scienes here.

He had come from Mumbai along with four others in a hired vehicle and reached the state on May 13.

Officials said the patient is "asymptomatic as of now."



Meanwhile, a Health Department release said contact tracing of the patient has already started.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The output of Hungarys construction sector fell by 3.4% year on year in March, the steepest decline in more than three years, as the government introduced movement restrictions because of the coronavirus pandemic, data released by the Central Statistical Office (KSH) show.

Commenting on the data, Anita Boros, the state secretary of the innovation and technology ministry, said the decline was moderate thanks to the governments economic protection efforts, which allocated 65 billion forints to aiding the construction industry.



That funding went mainly to development and job preservation in SMEs, she said. The 2020 decline was also from a high base in 2019, she added.
By Express News Service

BHOPAL: Two young siblings who are natives of Madhya Pradeshs Khargone district, pursuing medical studies abroad, were booked by MP police on Friday for threatening to spread the deadly novel coronavirus in entire Khargone district.

Importantly, after their parents tested positive for the COVID-19, the brother-sister duo too tested positive for the deadly infection on Wednesday.

While on way to the Khargone district hospital in an ambulance on Thursday, the siblings shot a video, which became viral on various social media platforms later.

In the video, the sister wearing double face mask is seen sneezing and coughing, threatening to spread the killer infection in entire Khargone district. The video has triggered panic in the town.

In the video which has gone viral in social media, the young girls brother isnt visible but is audible, where he is heard saying, "were going on vacation with chai (tea) and adds that the disease is an ailment of the rich people."

FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES HERE

With the video uploaded over social media going viral, the police took cognizance of the matter on Friday and booked the siblings under section 188 (disobedience to an order duly promulgated by public servant) 269 (negligent act likely to spread infection of disease dangerous to life) and 270 (malignant act likely spread infection of a disease dangerous to life) of IPC and u/s 52 and 54 of the Epidemic Act 2005, Khargone Kotwali in-charge Lalitsing Dangur said.

Meanwhile, the young girl has retracted her video statements on Friday, saying she had made the threatening statements out of sheer frustration and anger due to various kinds of public discussions after her parents contracted the infection and were hospitalized.

The West MP district Khargone has so far reported 99 COVID-19 positive cases and eight deaths. As many as 62 patients have also been discharged from hospitals in Khargone after turning negative for the killer virus.
A Spectator investigation of COVID-19 testing in Hamilton has revealed gaps in the way public health reports and collects data.

The citys health unit is not directly keeping track of the number of tests completed at its three assessment centres, and instead relies on the health networks and primary care clinicians who oversee the sites to forward them that information.

Its a process that, on some occasions, can take days to filter through and reach public health officials, said Dr. Elizabeth Richardson, Hamiltons chief medical officer of health.

We get the data in batches, she said. We dont necessarily get it every day and update it every day.

The citys east and west assessment centres, which opened March 16, are overseen by St. Josephs Healthcare Hamilton and Hamilton Health Sciences. The drive-thru test site, which opened April 20, is overseen by a group of primary care clinicians.

Richardson said each assessment centre is responsible for compiling a daily report of how many people visited their sites and the number of tests theyve completed.

But public health cant guarantee they receive those reports simultaneously or on the same day.

The reporting of information out of the assessment centres is one where we dont necessarily ask them for daily reports, Richardson said, noting public healths primary focus amid the crisis has been to understand the number of positive cases and outbreaks, as well as followup on lab results.

We ask them for reports as soon as theyre able to share them. They may give us a report for one day and then not be able to send another report until two days later.

Epidemiologists say the lag in daily testing data thats available to public health presents transparency issues and limits the publics capability to understand the extent of an outbreak.

We should be transparent about our limited data-collection capabilities, said Colin Furness, an infectious disease expert from the University of Toronto. The public may not want to hear that  but I think we have to be really transparent about that, because its a circus otherwise.

It means that their (testing) data doesnt actually mean much day-to-day, because we dont know if its accurate.

In terms of the publics understanding of where were at, we absolutely need solid testing data thats consistently collected, consistently reported, and used in a transparent fashion, said Dr. Ross Baker, a longtime professor at the University of Torontos Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation.

The Spectator has previously reported that public health had no idea how many people have been tested in the city.

On Monday, that figure was revealed for the first time  not by public health, but instead by ICES, an independent, non-profit research institute.

The group stated in a report that 11,182 people have been tested in Hamilton as of April 30, among the highest per region in Ontario. The Ministry of Health said in a statement Thursday that public health units (PHUs) are encouraged to use the reports findings.

Given the provincial lab data provides a more complete picture of COVID-19 testing in the province, PHUs may choose to use ICES report to gain a more complete understanding of testing, a ministry spokesperson said.

Public health reports the cumulative number of tests completed as well as the cumulative number of visits per person to its assessment centres on its website daily. The data  which is exclusive to tests completed at the centres and does not include long-term care homes or hospitals  is available to the public for just 24 hours before being updated with new cumulative counts.

The Spectator began taking screenshots of the citys case status website on April 20 to establish a timeline of how testing numbers have changed over time. It found several inconsistencies in the data and how information is being measured and stored by public health.

In some cases, the number of completed tests spiked drastically before reverting back to a normal rate. In others, the number of completed tests either nearly doubled the number of people who visited assessment centres or matched them exactly.

For instance, cumulative testing totals posted by public health in late April and early May show some large spikes in the numbers. Between April 27 and April 29, Monday to Wednesday of that week, public health reported completing 792 tests from 797 visitors to its three assessment centres. Then from Wednesday to Friday that week, April 29 to May 1, they reported 862 additional completed tests from just 438 visitors.

While that week marks the biggest increase in completed tests since Hamilton opened assessment centres in mid-March, its a statistical anomaly.

The spikes were prefaced by two weeks where public health averaged 96.5 completed tests and roughly 103 visits per day. In the 11 days subsequent to May 1, they averaged 62 tests and 62 visits per day.

Public health officials could not explain why the total number of completed tests fluctuated to the extent they did over the last week of April and start of May. They also could not explain why the number of completed tests was nearly twice the number of people who visited assessment centres from April 29 to May 1, nor why those counts were equal in the following 11 days.

Most notable from The Spectators analysis was a sudden day-to-day drop of eight per cent in public healths cumulative count of completed tests.

On May 3, the unit reported having completed a total of 5,450 tests since assessment centre testing began on March 16. On May 4, that number plummeted to 5,021 tests  a drop of 429. It took four more days until the cumulative test count was back to higher than it was on May 3.

Richardson said she wasnt sure why the decrease occurred. All I can say is (that) it looks like we had an error in what got posted to the web.

The only other thing (it) might have been is the assessment data and the long-term care data being reported together, and weve separated those back out again, she added.

The Spectator presented its collection of data to public health last week and asked for context regarding the datas inconsistencies. The unit initially said they wouldnt be able to comment until they knew the source of the numbers. When told the source was the Hamilton Public Health website  and, specifically, screenshots from the daily testing reports  public health began working on a response.

We dont keep snapshots of our website, Richardson said.
FLORENCE, S.C.  A man was tackled and arrested on the floor during the Wilson-Hartsville basketball game. Lt. Mark Blair of the Hartsville Police Department reported that he received information from another officer that Jeremiah Josey, 19, of Hartsville, who was wanted on a probation violation was at the game.
Says Using Children To Steal Is Sacrilegious

The Peoples Democratic Party(PDP) has described the federal government school feeding programme as a big scam.

According to a statement on the official Twitter handle of the party, the scheme is just a cover-up by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) to siphon billions of Nara.

According to a statement issued by the National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Kola Ologbondiyan, while it is clear that the APC-led administration school feeding programme had always been a scam, the claims to feed school children even when schools are closed is a colossal racketeering taken too far.

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This, it said, went to further expose that stealing and corruption are deep-seated in the DNA of the APC and its administration.

Read Also: Why FG Would Continue With School Feeding Programme Despite Lockdown: Minister

While the PDP has nothing against any transparent effort to provide succor to Nigerians, particularly our children, at this critical time, our party rejects the on-going fraud in which school children, who are in their respective homes, bearing the brunt of the failures of the APC administration, are being used as metaphors to divert public funds to a few corrupt individuals in the Buhari presidency.

Nigerians are witnesses to how the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Hajiya Umar Farouq, had always stammered, makes conflicting pronouncements and points to the presidents speech as a cover each time Nigerians demand the details of her humongous spending, the party said.
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - French stocks were moving higher on Friday after the latest data showed a solid recovery in top consumer China. China's factory output rose for the first time this year in April, suggesting that the world's second-largest economy is slowly emerging from its coronavirus lockdown. Industrial production in China was up 3.9 percent year-on-year year in April, the National Bureau of Statistics said. That exceeded expectations for an increase of 1.5 percent following the 1.1 percent decline in March. However, retail sales and fixed investment data missed estimates. Investor sentiment was also underpinned by talk of further stimulus in the United States and China. U.S. President Donald Trump is open to negotiations on another possible stimulus bill amid the coronavirus pandemic, but not the one put forward by House of Representatives Democrats, a White House spokeswoman reportedly said. China is likely to come up with a fiscal stimulus package to shore up the economy during the upcoming annual meeting of the country's top legislature. The benchmark CAC 40 was up 38 points, or 0.89 percent, at 4,311 after declining 1.7 percent the previous day. Manufacturer and miner Imerys soared 14.6 percent after the company said it had reached an agreement to resolve legal liabilities regarding its North America talc unit. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
A Dublin GP has said keeping children out of school until September because of the coronavirus "has a risk as well".

Dr Aoife Ni Sheaghdha wants primary schools to re-open with limited capacity from June.

She said while she understands the need to protect the health of people in the community, children need routine and stimulation.

Primary and secondary schools closed in March and it is currently unclear if they will re-open in September.

Dr Ni Sheaghdha told Newstalk radio's Lunchtime Live: "There's no medical evidence that children are at high risk of transmitting this virus.

"So it doesn't make sense for the schools to be postponed for a prolonged period of time anymore.

"And... school is good for children, and the not being at school is having an impact on their mental and physical health."

"At the start of the lockdown we didn't know much about this virus - it made sense - there was a worry that children were super-spreaders, so it made sense for the Government to shut down all the schools and see what's happening.

In the weeks and months since then, there's more and more evidence coming that actually children aren't super-spreaders with Covid, they don't seem to transmit it between each other or to people at high risk.

"So I feel it's a living document and I feel the Government should address this".

She quoted HIQA and the ECDC as saying that the transmission between children appears to be very low.

"Denmark opened [schools] a month ago, and they've been fine there hasn't been - thankfully - a big surge of Covid cases after that, so that's a good sign and a reassuring sign".

"School is good for children - it mightn't feel like that when you're running out the door at 8.30 for the school run, but we know children thrive on routine, they socialise with their friends.

"And not going to school has a risk as well.

"We can see it: it's impacting on their mental health, children learn through play, not through laptops, not through remote learning.

"And this is not a slight on the teachers and parents, I think they're doing a fantastic job, but unfortunately children are just not designed to learn remotely and largely.

More importantly, though, school is a safe haven for children.

But she said she is not calling for a complete return to school.

"I don't see why we can't do smaller classes - 10 people, two hours a day - and rotate it for two or three times a week - and see how it goes and do it gradually.

"Rather than everybody go back in September".
In the Caribbean, Defence is producing fittings for medical equipment, to support the fight against coronavirus. These efforts are being made by the Royal Netherlands Navy in Curacao by using a 3D printer.

The idea for the project was born because reports were received from various sources that medical equipment was needed on the island. As a result, a new project was started, with the plan to investigate whether there was demand for various medical applications for preventing and combating coronavirus on Curacao and in the rest of the Dutch Caribbean.

Demand for medical equipment

An initial analysis showed that there is a demand for a number of items that Defence can provide, some of which by using 3D printers, in the efforts to combat coronavirus. These parts/items are:

Fittings for snorkel masks so that they can be used as oxygen masks in hospitals;

Face shields;

Respirators;

Splitters (so that more than one patient can use a single ventilator).

While the Curacao Medical Center (CMC) currently has sufficient personal protective equipment in stock, that is not the case for other medical facilities such as hospices, dentists, clinics, supermarkets, and GPs (General Practitioners Committee).

Sergeant Barry of the Engineering Department is enthusiastic about the project. He commented that it was a great thing to provide the country and region with essential medical equipment at a time of crisis. In this way, Defence is demonstrating that it is working hard to support the fight against coronavirus in the Caribbean, not only in a highly visible way but in the background too. He went on to say that supporting civil authorities was one of the main tasks of the Flag Officer in the Caribbean and that it was certainly doing so with this project!

What is 3D printing?

3D printing or additive manufacturing is a process whereby three-dimensional objects are produced from a digital file. Objects created by 3D printing are made by means of additive processes, whereby the object is built up layer for layer until it is complete. Each layer is a thin horizontal cross-section of the object.

In 2018, the Expertise Centrum Additive Manufacturing (ECAM) in Den Helder was granted permission to purchase 10 new 3D printers, one of which was intended for use in the Caribbean. The Maritime Sustainment Division of the Flag Officer Caribbean received the 3D printer in 2019 in order to test whether it was possible to print parts or spare parts for the various ships and coastguard boats.

The 3D printers used by Defence are suitable for several types of filament, the plastic that is used for printing objects. The various types of filament available include hard, soft, and flexible filament and even wood filament. For medical applications, Defence uses the standard PLA filament. For projects that demand greater material strength in the object to be printed, Defence uses harder filament types, such as tough PLA.

Follow-up project

The greatest demand is currently for face shields. In collaboration with XEROX, Defence was able to acquire transparent plastic shields, and subsequently, the project team set to work printing the headbands. Tests were then carried out to see whether the design needed to be modified. The tests were carried out by the CMC, a supermarket, a doctors surgery, T experience (crowd management), and GPs.

On the basis of the tests, Defence will modify the design and print more runs. In addition to Defence, the 3D task group consists of Green Phenix, Make it 3D and DRC Curacao Tech Meetups.
Founder and leader of the International God's Way Church, Angel Bishop Daniel Obinim has reportedly been rushed to the hospital, following an ''arrest warrant'' for the man of God.



The 'Angel' is said to have been hospitalized after Police stormed his church to invite him for interrogation for being complicit in an issue before the Police.



Narrating the incident, Peace FM's News Anchor and Presenter, Nana Yaw Kesseh said on Peace News @ 6 pm that 'Angel Obinim' was conducting counselling sessions in his church when the Police arrived and was asked to follow them to the police station.



According to an eyewitness report, he asked to be excused for a moment in his office and on returning he suddenly fell sick and couldn't walk again so had to be rushed to the hospital for medical attention.



The Police personnel are, however, "policing" him at the hospital till he recovers for interrogation.



Listen to details in the video below





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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The Kurdistan semi-autonomous region of Iraq is ready to hand over to the federal government 250,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil production and the oil revenues it generates, Middle East Monitor reports, citing a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Last month, the federal government of Iraq stopped paying salaries to KRG public sector employees because of the dispute over oil revenues. At the end of 2019, Kurdistan and the federal government of Iraq had agreed that KRG would transfer oil revenues and 250,000 bpd to the federal government.

But the federal government has said that Kurdistan has failed to send oil or cash Baghdads way.

The federal government of Iraq pays nearly half of the sum necessary to cover KRG administration employees.

Kurdistan, for its part, was severely hit by the oil demand and oil price collapse in March and April and is struggling with payments.

The Kurdistan Region is going through difficult economic times due to falling oil prices and the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, and must make adjustments due to limited financial resources, Prime Minister Masrour Barzani said at a KRG cabinet meeting this week.

After weeks of negotiations and a meeting between KRG representatives and officials from Iraqs federal government on Wednesday, the spokesman for Kurdistans Regional Government, Jutiar Adel, said, as carried by Middle East Monitor:

Within the framework of the agreement concluded in 2019, we are willing to deliver 250,000 barrels of oil per day to the federal government. We are also committed to transferring the financial revenues generated from oil sales to the Iraqi state treasury.

Meanwhile, Kurdistan said last month that it would defer payments to oil companies operating in the region for the oil sales they had made between November 2019 and February 2020, as Iraq and the Kurdistan region are struggling to meet their obligations after the oil price crash.

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The Indian Air Force is likely to get the delivery of the first batch of four Rafale jets from France by July-end, people aware of the developments said on Friday.

The four fighters were supposed to fly to their home base in India in May 2020, but the plan was delayed due to the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) outbreak. Confinement measures announced by France to battle the outbreak temporarily halted production at aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviations Merignac facility.

India ordered 36 Rafale jets from France in a deal worth Rs 59,000 crore in September 2016 as an emergency purchase to arrest the worrying slide in the air forces combat capabilities.

According to the delivery schedule, the first 18 jets (including the four in the first batch) are supposed to be delivered to the IAF by February 2021, with the rest expected by April-May 2022.

France handed over to India its first Rafale fighter during a ceremony attended by defence minister Rajnath Singh and his French counterpart, Florence Parly, in Merignac on October 8, 2019, which coincided with the IAFs 87th founding day.

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A stretch of highway that connects Las Vegas to Reno, Nev., was cracked by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, forcing officials to shut it down. (Courtesy of Nevada Highway Patrol)

Nevada Highway Cracked and Closed After 6.5 Earthquake

A stretch of highway that connects Las Vegas to Reno, Nev., was cracked by a 6.5 magnitude earthquake, forcing officials to shut it down.

No injuries were reported following the quake, but Nevada Highway Patrol photos revealed cracks along U.S. Highway 95 that were caused by the earthquake.

In a travel advisory, the Nevada Highway Patrol wrote: Earthquake damage at US-95 and Esmeralda County MM 89 has closed the highway between SR-360 and US-6 (Coaldale Junction). Use an alternate route and expect delays while @nevadadot makes repairs.

We felt that earthquake here at our Sacramento office. Anyone else feel it? #CAwx https://t.co/uDfIOXfg8P  NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) May 15, 2020

Does being woken up by your dog barking at a shaking closet door, thinking in your haze that it was the other dog scratching herself, then a ghost, then a burglar, before finally going ahh, its an earthquake count? https://t.co/EkqMp4F7Bs  Colton Lochhead (@ColtonLochhead) May 15, 2020

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) said the tremor hit near Tonopah, and several aftershocks were reported.

It really shook a lot of groceries off the shelves, Keith Hasty, an employee at a gas station in Tonopah, said in a Las Vegas Review-Journal report.

It shook, but it wasnt that much, Nye County sheriffs Capt. David Boruchowitz said in Pahrump, Fox 11 reported. There was no damage reported at two historic landmark businesses in Tonopah.

According to the USGS, people from Salt Lake City, Utah, to the Central Valley in California reported shaking.
A campaign launched two years ago by Chinese authorities in Tibet to combat crime is also targeting political dissidents, critics of corruption, and activists promoting use of the Tibetan language, Human Rights Watch said in a report on Friday.



Also drawing attention from the police are Tibetan supporters of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, who is viewed by Beijing as a dangerous separatist intent on splitting the formerly independent Himalayan country away from Chinese rule, HRW said.



Launched in January 2018, Chinas drive against so-called underworld forces was officially aimed at combating drug dealing, gambling, and other gang-related crimes, HRW said in its report, China: Tibet Anti-Crime Campaign Silences Dissent.



Since then, though, courts in Tibetan areas of China have used gang crime charges to sentence at least 51 Tibetans up to 9 years in prison for peacefully petitioning or protesting issues related to religion, environmental protection, land rights, and official corruption, HRW said.



Recent reports in Chinese state media meanwhile reveal that local authorities have now been ordered to use the anti-crime drive to crush support for greater freedom in Tibet, especially if critics of Chinese government policy in Tibet can be seen as a group, as spokespeople, or as supporting the Dalai Lama, HRW said.



A directive issued by the Tibet Autonomous Regions (TAR) Public Security Bureau also now bans Tibetan religious figures or other locally respected figures from mediating local disputes, an activity not previously considered by authorities to be illegal, HRW said.



Also targeted by the campaign are attempts by Tibetan activists to protect Tibets environment from damage caused by Chinese mining or other infrastructure projects, efforts described by officials as an illegal occupation [by the protesters] of land.



Chinas anti-crime campaign in Tibet is just another way to prevent Tibetans from exercising their internationally guaranteed rights, HRWs China Director Sophie Richardson told RFAs Tibetan Service this week.



The Chinese government has long sought to criminalize any criticism raised [against it], particularly by Tibetans, Richardson said.



A coordinated, global response to Beijing is now needed to change the ruling Chinese Communist Partys behavior toward Tibetans, Uyghurs, and human rights defenders in China, Richardson said, adding that China is now also flexing its muscles within the UN system in ways that threaten UN human rights mechanisms.



Therefore, governments around the world need to [launch] a coordinated campaign now to make pushback a priority, Richardson said.



This campaign goes beyond the CCPs regular guidelines and gives additional authority to Chinese local officials, police, and [political] leaders to detain and harass Tibetans accused of suspicious activity, added Wangden Kyap, a senior researcher at London-based Tibet Watch.



'It's just an excuse to crack down'



Its just an excuse to crack down on Tibetans, Kyap said, adding that the campaign has traumatized Tibetan communities and sown mistrust among Tibetans afraid of being reported by informers to the Chinese authorities.



Under Chinas anti-crime campaign, restrictions on religious freedoms have also increasingly escalated, especially under the leadership of Chinas president Xi Jinping, added Tenzin Tsetan, a research fellow at the Dharamsala, India-based Tibet Policy Institute.



This can be viewed as a systematic Sinicization of Tibetan Buddhism, which along with the Dalai Lama is perceived by Chinas Communist Party as a potential threat to its authority, Tsetan said. Therefore, the CCP has put this campaign into effect.



Examples previously reported by RFA point to abuses carried out by authorities in the TAR and other Tibetan areas of China under the name of fighting crime.



In December 2019, Anya Sengdraa resident of Gade (in Chinese, Gande) county in Qinghais Golog (Guoluo) Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture was sentenced to a seven-year prison term on a charge of disturbing social order after he complained online about corrupt officials, illegal mining, and the hunting of protected wildlife.



[His] arrest and conviction fits a wider pattern of harassment of Tibetan activists and environmental defenders, which has seen hundreds of arrests, London-based Free Tibet said, adding that roundups by Chinese police are now being conducted as part of a crackdown on so-called criminal gangs.



Development projects in Tibetan areas have led to frequent standoffs with Tibetans who accuse Chinese firms and local officials of pilfering money, improperly seizing land, and disrupting the lives of local people.



Many result in violent suppression, the detention of protest organizers, and intense pressure on the local population to comply with the governments wishes.



Reported by RFA's Tibetan Service. Translated by Tenzin Dickyi. Written in English by Richard Finney.
By Sudhi Ranjan Sen

India plans to switch to locally-made fighter jets, two years after asking global companies to submit proposals to supply 114 combat aircraft in the worlds biggest warplane contract.

The countrys air force is finalizing plans to induct indigenously made Light Combat Aircraft, Tejas to boost the capability of its aging combat aircraft fleet, Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat said in an interview in New Delhi. It will buy an additional 83 jets, apart from an earlier deal for 40 aircraft, for $6 billion, he said.

The Indian Air Force is switching that to the LCA, Rawat said, when asked about the global tender for jets. The IAF is saying, I would rather take the indigenous fighter, it is good.

Read: Coronavirus India update: State-wise total number of confirmed cases, deaths on May 15

The decision is a set back for the likes of Boeing Co., Lockheed Martin Corp. and Saab AB who were in the race for the $15 billion order and another sign that India is abandoning costly foreign defense purchases which have been plagued by bureaucratic delays and a funding crunch. Prime Minister Narendra Modi this week stressed the need to buy locally made products to boost an economy battered by the COVID-19 outbreak.

Since it has been decided to go the indigenous route, the Ministry of Defence must ensure ramping up capacity at Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd., the builder of the jet, said Manmohan Bahadur, additional director general at the New Delhi-based Centre for Airpower Studies. The IAF, like the other services, has to maintain the required edge over our adversaries -- emotions have to be eschewed.

The induction of jets will help India emerge as a key defense exporter due to its relatively low price, Rawat said in his office in New Delhi. Several countries may be interested in purchasing the aircraft once they see them in operation with the airforce.

The process to buy fighter jets started more than a decade ago. India scrapped a long-awaited order with Dassault Aviation for 126 Rafales worth $11 billion in 2015, but has since bought 36 of the planes to speed replacement of older aircraft.

In April 2018, India floated a global tender seeking responses from global manufacturers to purchase 114 jets. The deal attracted initial offers from global giants like Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Swedens Saab AB and the Russian-made Sukhoi Su-30Mki and Su-35. At least 85% of production was to be in India, according to the initial document.

While New Delhi is the worlds third-biggest military spender, its air force, navy and the army are still equipped with weapons that are largely obsolete.

Local Production

The move to indigenous fighters marks a shift to start using locally made weaponry, Rawat said. The defense forces will be using a lot more domestically produced goods, and there is an understanding there may be some quality issues in the beginning, but these will be improved, he said.

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The artillery guns, air defense systems and radars will all be indigenous systems as well. We are doing well with artillery guns and in air defense systems, he added. We are also looking at ammunition manufacturing in our country in a very big way.

Modi had made clear his intention of reducing Indias dependence on foreign made weapons platforms soon after taking over as leader in 2014 but the progress hasnt been remarkable.

India desperately needs new aircraft to replace ageing Soviet-era jets. It needs about 42 squadrons of fighters to defend its western and northern borders simultaneously but is making do with about 31 squadrons only. By 2022, it is likely to add on two more squadrons of the Rafale fighter.

While the IAF is backing the indigenous fighter program, there are several glitches, including faster delivery schedules and quality issues that still need to be ironed out. As per plans, the 123 Tejas fighters are to be followed by the Mark-II variant which are medium weight fighters. The test flight for the next generation Tejas aircraft is likely in 2022.

US, China and India were the worlds three biggest military spenders in 2019, followed by Russia and Saudi Arabia. The two Asian countries made it to the top three for the first time according to a recent report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. For the fiscal 2020-21 India has earmarked $ 66.9 billion for defense but budget cuts are imminent because of COVID-19 pandemic.
Retired comprehensive supply ship handed over for museum collection

PLA Daily

Source: China Military Online

Editor: Chen Lufan

2020-05-14 00:03:56

QINGDAO, May 13 -- The retired naval comprehensive supply ship Hongzehu (Hull 881) was officially removed from the PLA Navy and handed over to the Memorial Hall for the Birthplace of PLA Navy in Taizhou City, east China's Jiangsu Province on May 12, 2020. It will be the permanent collection there and open to the public.

At around 10 a.m., the handover ceremony was conducted by a naval combat support flotilla under the PLA Northern Theatre Command at a military port in Qingdao. The ship's hull number 881 has been covered with paint.

For the past 40 years, the Ship Hongzehu remained good performance under the careful maintenance of generation after generation of crew members. Chief Master Sergeant Zhu Renbing, who has been on the battleship for 24 years, completed the last unmooring.

The Ship Hongzehu, renowned as China's number one supply ship, is one of the first-generation comprehensive supply ships independently designed and built by China. It was launched on September 6, 1979, and got commissioned in 1980. It has sailed over 5 continents, 3 oceans, and 29 ports in 26 countries, with a total voyage of more than 330,000 nautical miles, successively carried out more than a thousand major combat training missions, and set 16 records for the PLA Navy fleet including the first voyage around the world and the first-time passing through the Panama Canal.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 00:26:57|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese medical experts pose for a group photo with local officials upon their arrival at Algiers International Airport in Algiers, Algeria, May 14, 2020. A team of Chinese medical experts on Thursday arrived in Algeria to help the North African country fight the COVID-19 pandemic. (Xinhua)

ALGIERS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- A team of Chinese medical experts on Thursday arrived in Algiers, capital of Algeria, to help the North African country fight the coronavirus.

During their 15-day stay in Algeria, the Chinese experts will share their experiences in COVID-19 treatment with their Algerian counterparts.

Speaking upon the experts' arrival in Algeria, Chinese Ambassador to Algeria Li Lianhe said the Chinese medical team is composed of 20 medical experts who specialize in areas including respiratory, intensive care, infectious diseases, nursing, building and management of hospitals, and Chinese traditional medicine.

Li said the Chinese medical mission highlights the distinguished relations between China and Algeria.

Mohamed El Hadj, Director General of Health Department at Algerian Health Ministry, said "China and Algeria have different ways of dealing with the COVID-19 infections, and we will learn from their experiences and they will learn from ours." Enditem
Imphal/Guwahati, May 15 : In a significant diplomatic gesture, Myanmar on Friday handed over 22 insurgents belonging to six northeast outfits to India, officials said. According to security officials, these militants include self-styled home secretary of National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction) Rajen Daimary.

The officials said on condition of anonymity that the 22 insurgents linked to NDFB(S), United National Liberation Front, People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (Pro), Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup, People's Liberation Army, and Kamtapur Liberation Organisation (KLO) were brought to India on a special aircraft and handed over to Manipur and Assam police separately.

A senior security official in Guwahati said that the development is an "exceptional diplomatic success" of National Security Adviser Ajit Doval.

Twelve of the 22 terrorists are linked to four insurgent groups in Manipur while the remaining 10 are associated with NDFB (S) and KLO of Assam.

The Assam and Manipur police wanted these guerrillas for various crimes and violence.

In view of the COVID-19 pandemic, police authorities of Assam and Manipur would follow all health protocols, including quarantine, of these insurgents.

Several extremist outfits of northeast India, including anti-talks faction of United Liberation Front of Asom (Independent) operate from neighbouring Myanmar territories, considered as a safe haven for the outlawed groups.

Besides hideouts, the NE insurgents have training camps in the Myanmar forests for newly-recruited cadres.

Four northeastern states - Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Manipur (398 km), Nagaland (215 km) and Mizoram (510 km) - shares 1,643-km of unfenced Indian border with Myanmar.
Union Tribal Affairs Minister Arjun Munda on Friday said his ministry has been giving special attention to coronavirus positive cases detected among the tribal population and necessary steps are being taken to stave off its spread in indigenous communities.

The minister said migrants form a large part of India's tribal population and these people have been returning to their villages due to the lockdown.

According to estimates, around 55 per cent of the 10.4 crore tribal population live outside tribal blocks.

"According to data available with us, there is a negligible number of coronavirus positive cases in tribal areas. However, we have been giving special attention to the cases detected so far. States and Union territories are regularly monitoring these cases," Munda told reporters during an online launch of a digital training programme for tribal youths.

The government has been working on empowering ASHA and anganwadi workers at the grassroots and this will help keep the number of cases stagnant.

"We have stopped the entry of traders from urban areas into tribal haats (markets). ASHA workers have been creating awareness among particularly vulnerable tribal groups (PVTGs) about cleanliness, sanitisation and physical distancing, he said.

The minister said he himself has had meeting with chief ministers and ministers of states through video conference on the issue.

"Around 2,000 tribal students have returned to their villages in Meghalaya, while 15,000 students have returned to Nagaland tribal migrants have also been coming back. We have been emphasizing on the duties of states and local administration to deal with it properly, he said.

The coronavirus-induced lockdown has forced tribal migrants working in various parts of the country to return to their blocks and villages.

Experts fear that the reverse migration can have a devastating effect on indigenous communities as tribal migrants can possibly be carrying the coronavirus and the health infrastructure in tribal blocks is weak.

Munda also launched the GOAL (Going Online As Leaders) programme of the ministry in partnership with Facebook.

The programme is designed to provide mentorship to tribal youths through digital mediums.

Digital literacy has gained importance in view of challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic. The GOAL programme has come at the right time to provide a platform to tribal youths and women to move ahead in life, he said.

The programme intends to upskill and empower 5,000 tribal youths to harness the full potential of digital platforms and tools to learn new ways of doing business, explore and connect with domestic and international markets.

Munda said that the programme has been designed with a long term vision to develop the potential of tribal youths and women to help them acquire skills and knowledge through mentorship in various sectors including horticulture, food processing, bee keeping, tribal art and culture, medicinal herbs, entrepreneurship among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
London: Travellers to the UK will be asked to download the national tracing app to help monitor coronavirus infections, as part of the new quarantine rule that critics have slammed as too little, too late.

For the second day in a row, scientists advising the government's strategy refused to state what, if any, medical rationale for exempting passengers from France from the quarantine exists. The UK's quarantine is expected to come into force on June 1, several months after Australia introduced the measure to halt the spread of COVID-19.

Arrivals at London's Heathrow. Soon visitors will be asked to download an app like CovidSafe. Credit:AP

The UK's quarantine will not be policed as it is in Australia and New Zealand after some were caught breaking the rules. Instead, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said travellers to the UK would be asked to download the tracing app at the border and supply their contact details.

"We're working on the detail of this, let's wait until we've seen it," he said of the exemptions.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison has allocated $48 million to boost mental health research, services and awareness in an effort to get ahead of a forecast spike in suicides due to coronavirus.

Mr Morrison said the COVID-19 mental health recovery plan, endorsed by state and territory leaders at national cabinet meeting on Friday, would enlist "the best brains in Australia" to collect data, model the mental health impact of the crisis and plot the path out.

National Mental Health Commission chief Christine Morgan and Prime Minister Scott Morrison announce the mental health recovery plan. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Health Minister Greg Hunt said $7.3 million would be spent on research and data collection, $29.5 million on reaching out to vulnerable groups such as the elderly, people from non-English-speaking backgrounds, Indigenous Australians and those with pre-existing mental health conditions, and $10.4 million on a national "It's okay not to be okay" awareness campaign.

The government's suicide prevention adviser, Christine Morgan, said the plan aimed to fill gaps in service availability during the pandemic. While increased use of tele-health services had allowed many Australians to access support, not everyone was getting the care they needed.
The state has seen some of its largest daily increases in COVID-19-related deaths this week, as Gov. J.B. Pritzker warned business owners and local governments of consequences they will face if they defy his stay-at-home order.

Pritzker said there are no easy decisions in a pandemic and he sympathizes with local elected leaders struggling with difficult choices.

But what I dont have sympathy for is those so intent on disregarding science and logic, so afraid to tell their constituents what they may not want to hear  that they put more peoples lives at risk, the governor said during a virtual news conference from his home in Chicago.

Pritzker has faced pushback from local officials across the state who are seeking to reopen sectors of their economy earlier than the May 29 date when regions can begin moving to the third phase of his reopening plan.

But, Pritzker said, those leaders were not elected to do whats easy, they were elected to do whats right.

He also warned of consequences for businesses that try to reopen too quickly.

For the small minority of businesses that choose to ignore the medical doctors and the data, and to ignore your legal obligations to residents of your community, there will be consequences, he said.

Those include revocation of licenses for those businesses and professionals licensed by the state.

Counties that try to reopen in defiance may not be reimbursed by FEMA for damage they cause, because they ignored the law, he said. Local law enforcement and the Illinois State Police can, and will, take action. But there is no consequence the state could impose that is greater than the harm that you will do to your own communities.

The General Assembly will convene a legislative session next week to focus on pandemic response, a state budget and other matters. Pritzker said he respects Republican calls for bills requiring legislative approval to extend his disaster proclamation, but he said all actions thus far have been aimed at public health.

I think everybody understands that what Ive been doing is following the science and the data and doing whats best for our economy, given that the virus is out there, he said. I want to remind everybody that when people get sick, and when they die, that too has an economic cost aside from the terrible cost to families and communities. Theres also an economic cost to our state when thats happening, so take that into account when youre suggesting that we should follow a different path.
Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef is pleased to announce the addition of Grammy-winning artist Mac Powell to its global ministry team. An Atlanta native, Powell will be based at The Church of The Apostles as "Artist in Residence" when not on tour with Dr. Youssef. The announcement comes as The Church of The Apostles celebrates 33 years of fruitful ministry.

"Mac has been blessed by God with great musical talent and a voice like no other," says Dr. Michael Youssef, founder and president of Leading The Way. "I am thrilled he's chosen to join our team and am sure God will use him mightily as we minister together around the globe."

Powell is slated to travel with Dr. Michael Youssef to lead worship at Leading The Way LIVE events - including the Oct. 2 gathering at the Moody Center in Northfield, MA, and a special event in Sydney, Australia Oct. 31. Leading The Way is the media and evangelism outreach of Dr. Youssef, which broadcasts television and radio programs in 26 languages across six continents.

"I've seen from afar the great ministry that Dr. Youssef has had around the world," says Powell. "So to be able to be part of that - I'm really excited."

Powell has performed in front of millions of people around the world as frontman for Third Day. The group transformed Christian music, selling 10 million albums, earning four Grammy awards, an American Music Award and 24 Dove Awards. Powell has been inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame. Along with his new position with the Church of The Apostles and Leading The Way, Powell will continue his career touring and recording contemporary Christian music.

Tags : Dr. Michael Youssef mac powell mac powell news Leading The Way Leading The Way with Dr. Michael Youssef
A woman wearing a face mask amid concerns over the COVID-19 coronavirus walks holding her smartphone past a Huawei shop (L) on a street in Beijing on April 22, 2020. (NICOLAS ASFOURI/AFP via Getty Images)

US to Block Huawei from Global Chipmakers, Closing a Loophole Company Had Been Exploiting

The Trump administration on May 15 announced plans to block Huawei from obtaining semiconductors from global chipmakers made with U.S. technology, the latest move to clamp down on Chinese tech firms that pose national security risks.

The U.S. Department of Commerce said it was amending an export ruleknown as the foreign direct product ruleto strategically target Huaweis acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. software and technology.

The administration last year put Huawei and 114 affiliates on an entity list citing national security concerns, barring the company from doing business with U.S. firms.

However, the company has been able to find a workaround to this blacklisting by purchasing from foreign chip fabrication firms that use U.S. technology or software, department officials said.

There has been a very highly technical loophole through which Huawei has been in able, in effect, to use U.S. technology with foreign fab producers, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business on May 15. He called the rule change a highly tailored thing to try to correct that loophole.

The department said its decision cuts off Huaweis efforts to undermine U.S. export control.

Huawei, the worlds largest maker of telecom gear and second-largest smartphone maker, has come under intensifying scrutiny in the United States over concerns that its products could be used by the Chinese regime for spying or to disrupt communication networks. U.S. officials cite the companys close ties to the regime, as well as Chinese law which compels companies to cooperate with intelligence agencies when asked.

Huawei, which relies on semiconductors for its smartphones and telecom gear, did not immediately comment on Friday. The company previously suggested that the Chinese regime could retaliate against the United States if more restrictions were placed on the firm.

The Chinese government will not just stand by and watch Huawei be slaughtered on the chopping board, Huawei Chairman Eric Xu told reporters on March 31.

In response to the announcement, Chinese state-run media Global Times wrote on Friday that Beijing was ready to place U.S. companies on an unreliable entity list, as part of countermeasures in response to the new limits on Huawei.

The countermeasures include launching investigations and imposing restrictions on U.S. companies such as Apple Cisco Systems, and Qualcomm, as well as suspending purchases of Boeing airplanes, the report said, citing a source.

Beijing first announced plans to draft an unreliable entity list of foreign companies in retaliation to the United States blacklisting of Huawei last year. However, since then no further details had been revealed.

Under the rule change, foreign companies that use U.S. chipmaking technology will be required to obtain a U.S. license before supplying certain chips to Huawei, or an affiliate like HiSilicon, a semiconductor manufacturer owned by Huawei. The rule targets chips designed or custom-made for Huawei.

In order for Huawei to continue to receive some chipsets or use some semiconductor designs tied to certain U.S. software and technology, it would need to receive licenses from the Commerce Department.

Separately, the Commerce Department extended a temporary license that was set to expire Friday to allow U.S. companies, many of which operate wireless networks in rural America, to continue doing business with Huawei through Aug. 13. It warned that it expected this would be the final extension.

Escalating Action

The new restrictions on Huawei come amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing triggered by the regimes mishandling of the pandemic. This has accelerated the administrations plans to reduce its supply chain dependence on China.

In recent weeks, the administration has taken a series of measures aimed at countering security threats posed by Chinese telecom firms, and to prevent the transfer of sensitive U.S. technology to China.

The Commerce Department recently released rules to make it tougher for U.S. companies to export certain types of advanced technology to China that might aid its military.

It now requires U.S. companies to obtain licenses to sell certain itemsincluding semiconductor production equipment and sensorsto companies in China that support the Chinese military, even if the items are for civilian use.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last month commenced steps to bar three Chinese state-controlled telecom companies from operating in the United States, citing security risks stemming from the concern that they are subject to influence from the Chinese Communist Party.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Jan. 27, 2020. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

Senator Proposes New Bill to Safeguard US Research After Recent Arrests of Chinese Professors

Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) announced that he will soon introduce legislation to protect American research and intellectual property, after another researcher was caught concealing his participation in a Chinese state-run job recruitment program.

The program, called the Thousand Talents Plan (TTP), was rolled out by Beijing in 2008 to recruit promising science and tech researchers from foreign countries to work in Chinafor the ultimate goal of fulfilling its ambition for global tech dominance.

Dr. Wang Qinga naturalized U.S. citizen and a former employee of the Cleveland Clinic, one of the top-rated hospitals in the worldwas arrested on May 13 on charges of false claims and wire fraud related to more than $3.6 million in grant funding he and his research group received from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), according to a press release from the Department of Justice (DOJ).

According to the criminal complaint, Wang signed on to TTP in 2008.

Wangs case was the third in less than a week. A professor at the University of Arkansas was arrested on wire fraud on May 8 for failing to disclose funding from TTP and Chinese companies. Days later, a former Emory University professor was convicted for tax fraud related to his earnings while participating in TTP.

I commend DOJ, U.S. Attorney Herdman and the FBI for arresting another alleged member of Chinas Thousand Talents Program, said Portman, in a May 14 press release from his office.

Speaking on the Senate floor on May 13, Portman gave an outline of the new bill, named the Safeguarding American Innovation Act.

The bill would require the federal Office of Management and Budget to track federal grantswhere the money is, where it is going, and how its being used.

It would also authorize the State Department to deny visas to foreign researchers if its determined that their entry could pose a threat to U.S. national security.

Additionally, the bill would require research institutes to have safeguards in place to prohibit unauthorized access to their sensitive research.

Finally, it would require U.S. universities to disclose foreign gifts of $50,000 or more and fines for failing to report such gifts.

Wang Qing

Wang, an expert specialized in genetics and cardiovascular disease, graduated from Chinas Gansu Agricultural University in 1984. He then received his Ph.D. in genetics and developmental biology from Cornell University in 1993. He was affiliated with the Cleveland Clinic since 1997.

According to a statement from the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation), Dr. Wang deliberately failed to disclose his Chinese grants and foreign positions and even engaged in a pervasive pattern of fraud to avoid criminal culpability.

Following Wangs arrest, Cleveland Clinic issued a statement, explaining that Wang was terminated following an internal review about his ties to China, which was conducted after the NIH warned about his research ties to China. It is unclear when exactly he was fired.

Wang was a professor of molecular medicine at Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University and a professor at the Lerner Research Institute.

While employed at Cleveland Clinics Lerner College of Medicine, Wang received several NIH grants. According to the criminal complaint, he failed to disclose he was also the dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at Chinas Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) at least on four occasions from 2014 to 2018. Failing to disclose affiliations with other universities is a violation of the grants terms.

Wang was also director of the Human Genome Research Center at the HUST, according to the criminal complaint.

Wang also received at least one grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China, an agency run by Chinas State Council, according to the complaint. The Chinese money was used for some of the same research funded by the NIH grants.

Dr. Wangs false representations and promises led NIH to approve and fund grants to Dr. Wang and his research group at Cleveland Clinic, the FBI statement said.

When applying for three different Chinese grants, Wang also lied about his employment at Cleveland Clinic, saying that his employment had ended in 2004 in one application and 2008 in the other, according to the criminal complaint.

During Cleveland Clinics internal review, Wang admitted on March 3 that China paid him $3 million for his participation in the TTP. Additionally, he was also given free travel and a three-bedroom apartment on the HUST campus for his personal use.

He also admitted to holding recruiting events on behalf of HUST at the Harvard Medical School, University of California at San Francisco, and University of Texas Southwestern, offering to provide around $200,000 to $300,000 in personal compensation per person in addition to research funding, access to graduate students, and laboratory space at HUST, according to the criminal complaint.

Wang admitted to having successfully recruited 40 to 50 researchers for HUST, according to the criminal complaint.

Wang also failed to disclose to Cleveland Clinic that he took genetic samplesdonated by families from the United States under a cardiovascular disease program at the clinic-to China for his own studies, according to the criminal complaint.

Prosecutors also found that Wang did not disclose to NIH or his employer that he was under obligation with the Chinese government to share his U.S.-funded research with entities in China.

As this case demonstrates, Chinese government-supported talent plans continue to encourage people, regardless of nationality, to commit crimes, such as fraud to obtain U.S. taxpayer-funded research, said Robert R. Wells, acting assistant director of the FBIs Counterintelligence Division, in the FBI statement.

Changjiang Scholars Program

TTP was not the only Chinese state-run recruitment program that Wang signed up for.

In 2005, Wang was selected to become an expert under the Changjiang Scholars program, a recruitment program rolled out by Chinas Ministry of Education in 1998 to attract exemplary academics from the West.

Wang spoke to Chinese state-run media Peoples Daily in December 2008, during which he reflected on why he went back to China.

The all-around development of [my] motherland and the education atmosphere of the Huazhong University of Science and Technology deeply touched me. My career lies in China, and my new dreams fall on Yujia Mountain, Wang said. Yujia Mountain is located near HUST in Wuhan.

Peoples Daily reported that Wang met with another HUST professor named Yang Junguo at a academic conference held in the Chinese city of Tianjin in 2002. And it was Yang and the HUSTs then-vice president Ding Lieyun who successfully convinced him to return to China.

Wang and Yang then became director and deputy director at the HUSTs Human Genome Research Center, respectively.

According to Peoples Daily, HUST also successfully recruited Wangs student Liu Mugen, who did his Ph.D. thesis research at the Lerner Research Institute where Wang was teaching.

Wang said he successfully recruited four unnamed scholars abroad to return to China and work at HUST and that he and the school would rely on different channels to attract more talents.
The rigid bulk packaging market in Europe is expected to grow by USD 0.73 billion during 2020-2024. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact can be expected to be significant in the first quarter but gradually lessen in subsequent quarters with a limited impact on the full-year economic growth, according to the latest market research report by Technavio.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005320/en/

Technavio has announced the latest market research report titled Rigid Bulk Packaging Market in Europe 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Request challenges and opportunities that influence COVID-19 pandemic Request a free sample report of the rigid bulk packaging market in Europe

Europe is the world's largest producer and exporter of wine. The wine industry in Europe is increasing at an average of 5 to 7 hectoliters annually. The rise in production, consumption, and export of wine has increased the demand for cost-effective and safe transportation facilities. Wine producers in Europe are increasing their preference for rigid bulk packaging as it allows the transportation of twice the quantity of shipment compared to individual unit packages. Rigid bulk shipping also helps manufacturers and wine shippers in lowering transportation costs, thereby reducing overall carbon emissions. Therefore, the rising production and consumption of wine in Europe is expected to drive the growth of the rigid bulk packaging market during the forecast period.

To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR40781

As per Technavio, the rising free trade agreements in Europe will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other significant trends and market drivers that will influence market growth over 2020-2024.

Rigid Bulk Packaging Market in Europe: Rising Free Trade Agreements in Europe

The number of free trade agreements between European countries and many developed and developing countries has increased over recent years. For instance, on May 11, 2016, the EU -MERCOSUR Association Agreement was signed to ease trade activities between the EU and the MERCOSUR states (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay). Similarly, in September 2017, the Comprehensive Economic Free Trade Agreement was signed between the EU and Canada. This agreement increased the trade activities between the EU and Canada. Such free trade agreements are increasing the volume of imports and exports in Europe. This is providing significant growth opportunities for market players and is expected to boost the growth of the rigid bulk packaging market during the forecast period.

"Growing adoption of autonomous technologies in electric trucks and the rising focus on the development of electric trucks by prominent truck manufacturers will further boost market growth during the forecast period," says a senior analyst at Technavio.

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Rigid Bulk Packaging Market In Europe: Segmentation Analysis

This market research report segments the rigid bulk packaging market in Europe by product (Drums, Pails, and Others) and geography (Western Europe and Eastern Europe).

The Western Europe region led the rigid bulk packaging market in Europe in 2019, followed by Eastern Europe respectively. During the forecast period, Western Europe is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to the growing demand for customization and innovations in rigid bulk packaging in the region.

Technavio's sample reports are free of charge and contain multiple sections of the report, such as the market size and forecast, drivers, challenges, trends, and more. Request a free sample report

Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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PHILADELPHIA, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The investor rights lawyers at Goldman Scarlato & Penny, PC ("GSP") are investigating potential claims on behalf of investors in certain funds managed by TCA Fund Management Group, following recent charges for fraud by the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC").

TCA Funds investors who invested in TCA Global Credit Fund or TCA Global Credit Master Fund may contact GSP partner Alan Rosca to discuss about their investments or provide useful information, at 888-998-0530 or via email at [email protected]. Attorney Rosca's investigation indicates that the TCA Funds used a network of investment advisors and firms to raise money from investors. The GSP securities lawyers are evaluating potential claims against firms and advisors that recommended TCA Fund investments to investors without first conducting adequate due diligence as to those funds and their management.

On May 12, 2020 the SEC alleged a TCA Fund fraudulent scheme perpetrated by TCA Fund Management and certain individuals. The Commission alleged that TCA fraudulently inflated its funds' asset values by at least $130 million and concealed the true TCA Fund performance from investors. The TCA Fund managers improperly collected inflated management fees. The Court appointed a TCA Fund receiver for those TCA Funds.

Investor Claims for TCA Fund Losses

Some of the TCA Fund investors may have claims against investment advisers and firms that sold TCA Fund investments to them without first conducting adequate due diligence, according to attorney Rosca.

Investment professionals have a duty to conduct adequate due diligence as to the investments they recommend to their customers, and may be held liable when they fail to do so, according to attorney Rosca.

What TCA Fund Investors Should Do

TCA Fund investors who are concerned about their TCA Fund investments should contact securities attorneys Alan Rosca or Paul Scarlato for a free, no-obligation evaluation of their options at 888-998-0530 or [email protected].

The GSP lawyers represent investors who lose money as a result of investment-related misconduct. They are preparing to take action and seek compensation on behalf of victimized TCA investors. They take most cases of this type on a contingency fee basis and advance the case costs. There are no fees or costs if no recovery.

For more information about the GSP attorneys and their practice areas and admissions, visit https://investorlawyers.org/. Attorney advertising.  GSP 2020.

Related Links: https://investorlawyers.org/TCA-Fund-investor-center/

SOURCE Goldman Scarlato & Penny, P.C.

Related Links

http://www.investorlawyers.org


In a continued effort to make education affordable and accessible, the Bowling Green State University Board of Trustees approved two special fee waivers to aid students at its May meeting. The Board of Trustees also affirmed the Universitys commitment to academic excellence by awarding promotion and tenure to 43 faculty members and welcomed national trustee George N. Miller Jr.

Most BGSU graduate degrees will be significantly less costly for out-of-state students who hold a bachelors or masters degree from any Ohio college or university. These students are now eligible for a reduced non-resident surcharge at BGSU. The board approved a new $1-per-credit-hour fee for fiscal year 2021. The current fee is $332 per credit hour.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine asked all public universities in the state to consider such waivers in an effort to help retain talent in the state.

As a public university for the public good, BGSU has an obligation to attract, retain and educate tomorrows leaders who are essential to Ohios economic vitality, said BGSU President Rodney K. Rogers. Were pleased to do our part in making a BGSU graduate degree more accessible and affordable for our Ohioans.

In recognition that BGSU courses will continue to be delivered fully online this summer because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the board also approved a 50 percent reduction in the Universitys general fee for summer courses. The Bowling Green campus general fee supports student services and activities as well as related debt, technology infrastructure and facility costs. Some but not all of these services will be curtailed in an online learning environment.

We recognize the financial challenges this global pandemic has created for our students and their families, Rogers said. This adjustment in fees prioritizes a fair and equitable approach.

The 50 percent fee reduction would remain in effect if the University is unable to return to an in-person, residential learning environment for the fall semester as planned.

The trustees recognized and celebrated the achievements of 43 faculty members with the awarding of promotion and tenure. Nine faculty were promoted to full professor, 13 received tenure and were promoted to associate professor, and others were promoted to teaching professor and associate teaching professor.

Were pleased to provide our faculty with opportunities to advance their careers, said Dr. Joe Whitehead Jr., provost and senior vice president for academic affairs. Great faculty make great universities. Their teaching, research and creative activities serve our students and our communities, creating public good.

Faculty promoted to full professor:

David Bixler, Music Performance Studies

Dr. Stephannie Gearhart, English

Dr. Amanda Koba, School of Human Movement, Sport and Leisure Studies

Dr. Matthew Kutz, School of Human Movement, Sport and Leisure Studies

Dr. Lan Li, School of Teaching and Learning

Trinka Messenheimer, School of Counseling and Special Education

Dr. Melissa Miller, Political Science

Dr. Beth Sanders, Human Services

Dr. Daniel Wiegmann, Biological Sciences

Tenure and promotion to associate professor:

Dr. Angela Ahlgren, Theatre and Film

Dr. Clare Barratt, Psychology

Dr. Barbara Bergstrom, School of Art

Dr. John Boman, Sociology

Dr. Daniel Bommarito, English

Dr. Andrea Cripps, School of Human Movement, Sport and Leisure Studies

Dr. Robert Dyer, Computer Science

Dr. Colleen Fitzgerald, Communication Sciences and Disorders

Dr. Yuning Fu, School of Earth, Environment, and Society

Dr. Kevin McCluney, Biological Sciences

Dr. Thomas Mowen, Sociology

Dr. Jason Whitfield, Communication Sciences and Disorders

Dr. Yan Wu, Computer Science

Promoted to tenure:

Dr. Sharath Sasidharan, Accounting and Management Information Systems

Promotion to associate professor:

Steve Boone, Theatre and Film

Promotion to QRF Teaching Professor

Dr. Emily Anzicek, School of Media and Communication

Marcelle Dupay, School of Art

Irina Franke, Mathematics and Statistics

Dr. Allison Goedde, School of Teaching and Learning

Donna Greenwald, Marketing

Lucinda Hunter, English

Maggie Leonard, Visual Communication and Technology Education

Tracy McGinley, Natural and Social Sciences/Criminal Justice

Dr. Shelley Waltonen Moore, Visual Communication and Technology Education

Dr. Daniel Pavuk, Biological Sciences

Dr. Geoffrey Stephenson, Theatre and Film

Mearl Sutton, Marketing

Elizabeth Zemanski, English

Promotion to QRF Associate Teaching Professor

Karen Black, Applied Sciences/Visual Communication Technology

Laura Lachmiller, Accounting and Management Information Systems

David Saltzman, Music Performance Studies

Cynthia Spitler, Human Services

Gregory Walterhouse, Political Science

Dr. Jennifer Wolter, World Languages and Cultures

The board also approved the appointment of Chicago health care business leader George N. Miller Jr. as a BGSU national trustee. He will replace Bruce Nyberg on the board.

Miller, president and CEO of The Loretto Hospital, a nonprofit safety-net hospital on the west side of Chicago, is a BGSU alumnus with an undergraduate degree in business administration. A longtime supporter of the University, he was a 2018 inductee into BGSU's Academy of Distinguished Alumni.

Trustee Miller brings a wealth of experience and expertise in health care to the board, Rogers said. We look forward to his leadership as we work to build and expand our academic programs in these high-demand areas.

The board honored outgoing National Trustee Bruce Nyberg, and Leah Fishman, graduate student trustee. Trustee and alumna Betty Montgomery was elected as the new chair of the Board of Trustees. Trustee and alumnus David OBrien was elected vice chair.

This afternoon, BGSU will share information and announcements regarding its plans to address the budget shortfall due to the COVID-19 global pandemic.

Media Contact:

Alex Solis

Deputy Chief of Staff and University Spokesperson

asolis@bgsu.edu
BMW Brilliance Automobile (BBA), a joint venture between the BMW Group and Chinese car maker Huachen Auto Group, resumes operation in the northeastern Chinese city in Shenyang amid the COVID-19 outbreak, while many factories in the world have been forced to announce closures.

BMW Brilliance Tiexi plant construction commencement ceremony. (Photo/Courtesy of BMW Brilliance)

On Feb. 12, BBA started construction of the Dadong Plant expansion project, resuming production of its Tiexi and Dadong plants in Shenyang five days later.

The venture rolled its 3-millionth car off the production line on Feb. 27, and started the project of the assembly workshop of its Dadong plant on March 12, 18 days ahead of schedule.

On April 1, BBA kicked off the construction of its Tiexi plant, the BMW groups largest overseas production base.

Starting construction of our new Tiexi plant is concrete proof that even in these challenging times, BMW Brilliance is fully committed to China and our investment projects in Shenyang, said Johann Wieland, BBAs president and CEO, on the groundbreaking ceremony for the new plant.

The company completed all 16 major approval procedures for the Dadong Plant expansion project in just one day. Johann Wieland said Shenyang governments solutions at a critical moment in the fight against the coronavirus enabled the company to start construction on schedule.

We have full trust in the Chinese government that they are capable of managing the crisis and defeating the epidemic, Wieland noted, adding that the company will stand together with the Chinese people to overcome difficulties.

As BBA imported almost all auto parts 17 years ago, today the company has over 400 suppliers of spare parts in China. These Chinese suppliers can ensure amazingly high quality, Wieland noted.

A workshop of BMW Brilliance. (Photo/Courtesy of BMW Brilliance)

Now, Shenyang has become the BMW Group's largest production base worldwide and largest R&D center outside of Germany.

BMW's confidence in China comes from the country's continuous opening-up policy. Chinese President Xi Jinping announced to ease foreign equity restrictions on automobiles at the opening of the Boao Forum for Asia Annual Conference in April 2018.

In October of that year, the BMW Group paid 3.6 billion, increasing its stake in BBA to 75 percent from 50 percent. The German carmaker has become the first beneficiary since China relaxed the joint-venture equity limit for the automobile sector.

When the epidemic control was at its toughest and most critical period in February, 27 foreign employees from BBA recorded a video to support China.

While seeing reports of some overseas Chinese being treated unfairly due to the outbreak in China, Martin Orotelli from Germany, one of the BBAs employees, said its necessary to support China and its time for all to respond to the disease together and lend a helping hand, which aligns with BMWs corporate culture.
The state of emergency was brought in over fears that a spike in infections could overwhelm Japan's health system AFP/Philip FONG

Images of salarymen crammed into Tokyo commuter trains fuelled warnings that Japan's capital could become the "next New York City" if the virus took hold.

Yet the country of 126 million has recorded 16,024 cases and 668 deaths, according to the health ministry - rates so far below comparable nations that many have been left scratching their heads and others suspicious that authorities are not giving the full picture.

Mask-wearing, removing shoes, bowing not shaking hands, low obesity levels and even consuming certain foods have all been advanced as possible cultural reasons for the puzzlingly slow spread.

And with reported new cases dropping sharply in recent weeks, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is expected later Thursday (May 14) to lift a state of emergency for most of the country.

But against this backdrop of apparent success, critics say the true extent of the crisis in Japan is unknown given relatively low rates of testing.

As of May 11, the health ministry said there had been 218,204 tests, by far the lowest per capita rate in the G7, according to Worldometers.

Even the government's own coronavirus expert, Shigeru Omi, has admitted "nobody knows" whether the true number of coronavirus cases "could be 10 times, 12 times or 20 times more than reported".

Ryuji Koike, assistant director of Tokyo Medical and Dental University Hospital, told AFP that while Japan had lower death and infection rates than many countries, "this doesn't mean we're doing well".

He added: "I don't think (the decreasing number of infections) is due to government policies. I think it looks like Japan is doing well thanks to things that are not measurable, things like daily habits and Japanese behaviour" - such as good hygiene and not shaking hands.

However, Kazuto Suzuki, professor of public policy at Hokkaido University, said Japan's strategy of tracing clusters and only testing people with acute symptoms had proved sufficient for the relatively low numbers of cases.

"Test, test, test is not the Japanese strategy," he told reporters.

With a ratio of positive cases to tests of around 7.5 per cent, "the testing is sufficient", he said.

But, he warned: "If there is an exponential outbreak again, we need to have more testing."

Suzuki put Japan's success down to near universal mask-wearing and a culture of hygiene and hand-washing.

"JAPAN PUZZLE"

Japan was exposed early in the coronavirus pandemic with a first case in January and the arrival a month later of the Diamond Princess cruise ship near Tokyo, at that time the biggest cluster outside the epicentre in China.

Following what was largely seen as a bungled response to the ship, Abe recommended schools close in late February, even with fewer than 200 daily cases nationwide.

As the number of infected rose - hitting a daily record of 700 on Apr 11 - there were fears the virus was surging and putting pressure on Japan's healthcare system.

So Abe declared a state of emergency on Apr 7, giving regional leaders the power to urge people to stay indoors - a much softer form of lockdown than seen elsewhere, with no punishment for transgressors.

To ease the pain on the world's third-largest economy, Abe also pledged 100,000 yen (US$930) for every citizen as part of an emergency stimulus package worth around US$1 trillion.

But the handouts were the result of an embarrassing u-turn and he has also been widely mocked over the haphazard distribution of two cloth masks per household, a programme dubbed "Abe-no-masks".

A recent Kyodo News poll showed that 57.5 per cent were unhappy with the Abe government's response to the pandemic, with only 34.1 per cent approving.

Abe's performance has been "uneven", Tobias Harris, an expert on Japanese politics from Teneo consultancy, told AFP.

"I think he has struggled to stay ahead of events since the beginning, has not communicated effectively, and has been poorly served by his lieutenants," added Harris.

While policies such as school closures probably helped to contain the disease, Harris cited high standards of hygiene, a generally healthy population and masks as more likely reasons behind Japan's low death rate.

However, any speculation should come with a pinch of salt given so much remains unknown about the disease, warned the analyst.

"It may take more knowledge to answer the Japan puzzle."
Rating: Worth a drive

Ever since owners Doug and Lori Horn opened Dough Pizzeria Napoletana restaurant in 2007 inside a Castle Hills shopping center, it has been considered one of the premier pizza destinations in the city. Food Network personality Guy Fieri made a stop in 2011 for an episode of his popular show, Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives, delivering praise that continues to trigger a surge in business after regular reruns.

A 2018 Express-News review found some serious problems at the original Blanco location after a second location opened downtown at Hemisfair. There were no issues there for this visit, though for now, everything is temporarily available only for curbside service.

The key to the Dough experience is based on two anchors: fresh mozzarella made on-site daily, and a pair of 2-ton ovens that were hand-built and imported from Naples, Italy. The ovens are equipped with lava stone and can hold 800- to 1,000-degree temperatures with ease, allowing the pizzas to be cooked in 90 seconds with fiery thin crusts dotted with the appropriate amounts of speckled char.

Dough is a pizza utopia worthy of a drive from any part of the city. It features a higher price point than most other area pizzerias (all pizzas are 12-inches), but patrons get what they pay for.

More Information Dough Pizzeria Napoletana Locations: 6989 Blanco Road, 210-979-6565; 518 S. Alamo St., 210-227-2900 Online:doughpizzeria.com Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily (or until the mozzarella runs out) Takeout/delivery: Both, with delivery available through multiple third-party options (order both through doughpizzeria.com) See More Collapse

On ExpressNews.com: 52 Weeks of Pizza: Ramis scores with a Greek pizza thats all bliss, no tragedy

Best pizza: Any of the four pizzas sampled for this visit could take this honor, but we pick winners here, and that has to go to the Ezzos Cupping Pepperoni ($18). Great pizzerias must nail the classics and this one came loaded with a mountain of delectable slices on top of the pie, that true to its name, cupped those spicy meat juices.

Other pizzas: The Famous Pork Love ($22) was Fieris favorite during the episode he filmed and is a proper lesson in cured meats with speck, pancetta and soppressata paired with the housemade sausage. The meats were distributed with care, with just enough to get a strong meat flavor throughout without being overpowering and too salty.

On ExpressNews.com: 52 Weeks of Pizza: Chicagos Pizza among few to survive S.A. curse of the deep dish

In a classic Margherita di Bufala ($17) , Dough allowed the flavor of the plum tomato sauce to shine with subtle hints of basil. After enjoying my one slice, this one was actually stolen by my 13-year-old daughter and consumed in its entirety within 30 minutes.

The New Fontina ($17) was the most surprising slice of this pizza pilgrimage. The creamy fontina cheese blended well with the roasted mushrooms and crunchy onions, but the balsamic glaze spiraled atop the pizza like the perfect doodle delivered an ultra-sweet finish that tasted like a four-star dessert.

Chuck Blount is a food writer and columnist covering all things grilled and smoked in the San Antonio area. Find his Chuck's Food Shack columns on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.comTo read more from Chuck, become a subscriber. cblount@express-news.net | Twitter: @chuck_blount | Instagram: @bbqdiver
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread in the Mexican border city of Mexicali, operations initially continued "as normal" at Autolite plant, a US-owned factory.

Ultimately, the Autolite workers went on strike, reportedly "making spark plugs for export," in disapproval of the alleged failure to implement sanitary procedures of the management.

Following the protest, the state's secretary of labor shut the plant down. After a few days of stoppage, one of the workers who got fired for participating in the protest received a text message.

The said text message contained an invitation for the worker to return to work under the condition that he "did not drive there: the parking lot of the factory should stay empty." He also said Autolite offered him, along with the other returning workers a 250-peso bonus, on top of a vacation day.

The said employee initially decided it was not worth the risk although he admitted, dozens of other workers were amenable with the terms, and Autolite stayed open and operational.

More Factories Reopened

Other than Autolite, several other factories reopened in the Baja California state. The border states of Mexico are considered home to over 6,000 maquiladoras.

Maquiladoras, in Mexico, "are largely foreign-owned factories manufacturing products for export." This Mexican term is also associated with plants, employing a large number of workers who are now considered the focus of several COVID-19 outbreaks.

Nevertheless, official initiatives to keep "maquiladoras" closed and control the fast spread of COVID-19, have turned under strong pressure from businesses, as well as the officials of the American government who have pressed the Mexican government to keep plants and factories operating at any cost.

Incidentally, the Mexican state, Baja California that has the largest number of maquiladoras, is currently a state reported having the second-biggest number of deaths from COVID-19.

The Tijuana-based labor rights group, Ollin Calli director, Mago Avalos said, some maquiladoras claim it is more practical to pay a fine for non-compliance "than to lose contracts that cost millions of dollars."

For the factory workers, Avalos added, "It is better to have the employees working even if they become ill," than rest and still get paid.

The Mexican government, on Wednesday, came out with a plan to slowly reopen the economy starting May 18 and beginning with mining, construction, and transportation manufacturing sectors although, many "maquiladoras" did not close at all.

Workers Died of the Virus

Specifically in Ciudad Juarez, 18 textile factory workers have reportedly died of COVID-19. A US-owned factory, Lear Corp claimed it stopped operations along the 200-mile border on March 27. More so, the factory said it already transferred its affected workers to a private health facility to undergo treatment, all expenses paid by Lear Corp.

Essentially, 24 cases, Avalos said, have been confirmed among factory workers in Tijuana and 17 others in Mexicali. However, the director continued, the exact figure is perhaps, far more as the COVID-19 test is severely limited, not to mention, the health system being chronically overloaded.

Check these out!
A miner has been banned from leaving Australia to be with his girlfriend in the UK for the birth of their first child because the government claims the evidence documents he sent them are 'blurry.'

Paul Walker, 33, from Rockingham in Perth, WA has lived in Australia for eight years and planned to return to the UK on Sunday to be with his girlfriend, Anna Smith.

But Mr Walker became a permanent resident two years ago and under coronavirus travel restrictions, he is unable to leave the country without special permission from the government.

He claims to have sent the Department of Home Affairs several documents over the past few weeks to apply for an exemption, but the department said they were hard to read and didn't provide 'sufficient information or evidence,' 9News reported.

Paul Walker (left), 33, from Rockingham in Perth, WA has lived in Australia for eight years and planned to return to the UK on Sunday to be with his girlfriend, Anna Smith (right)

Mr Walker said he also sent the department a letter from the hospital in England, which included proof of his relationship with Ms Smith and an ultrasound picture of his baby.

Even though Mr Walker provided all this information, he said the department has asked him for more details eight times about his situation.

If Mr Walker doesn't arrive in the UK in time to spend 14 days in self-isolation, he won't be present for Ms Smith's caesarean on June 9.

'I just want to leave, I just want to go home,' Mr Walker said.

Mr Walker said he was frustrated knowing other people have been approved for exemptions to leave Australia within hours for reasons such as a funeral.

'I'm not one of these people who usually kick off on things like this, but where are our human rights?' Mr Walker said.

Ms Smith said she is worried about her partner not being present during the birth and if he doesn't arrive on Sunday, she has no idea when he will be able to see his son.

She already has two children to take care of and she relied on Mr Walker to look after them while she was in the hospital.

Ms Smith claims there is no one else available to help her.

'I'm going to be by myself having his baby and I'm worried sick as I've got two other children as well that need looking after when the baby's here,' Ms Smith said.

The Department of Home Affairs has been contacted for comment.
Dana Kursh By

Living here in namma Bengaluru, I admire the way India is combating the coronavirus epidemic. With the same admiration, I follow what is happening back home in Israel and how both our nations are showing resilience and innovation to fight the virus. Here, we are still under lockdown, but back in my homeland, restrictions are starting to ease, as Israel made the tough choice early on and was one of the first countries to go into a full lockdown. These measures have led to low infection rates and even lower mortality rates, enabling the country to return to full operation.

In Israel, just as in India, we are finding solutions for this new world. From respirators, start-ups and vaccines, to drive-through testing centres and telemedicine, Israel is leading the global fight against the virus. Startups have come up with solutions for hand sanitation, symptom detection, antimicrobial fabrics and more. An innovative respirator has been developed by Israels Air Force, joining forces with Microsoft Israel, Magen David Adom (Israels national emergency response service), and others. This respirator can be mass produced at a low cost and is open source, meaning its design and assembly information is available to the public.

Israels hospitals have led the way by sharing their best practises with global partners. Just this week, I participated in a webinar with leading Indian and Isreali hospitals, including Rainbow Hospital from Bengaluru, sharing experiences and best practices. Sheba Hospital in Israel has started a first-of-its-kind telemedicine programme to minimise contact between medical staff and coronavirus patients, treating not only inpatients, but also those quarantined at home. Israel aerospace industries have teamed up with the defence ministry to develop a remote monitoring system that effectively minimises contact between carers and patients. Using advanced optical sensor technology, radar and artificial intelligence, this new system can record patients vital signs from far, reducing the risk of exposure to medical staff.

The Israel Institute for Biological Research on May 5 announced a major breakthrough in finding a treatment for Covid. The Institute has isolated a monoclonal antibody that effectively neutralises the virus using blood samples taken from Covid patients, making it the first lab in the world to achieve the milestone. It is now seeking a biological manufacturer to mass produce the treatment. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with his Indian counterpart Narendra Modi and discussed cooperation to deal with the spread of the coronavirus. The scope for medical cooperation between India and Israel is wide. Just this week, Israel suggested 50 topics in health and science where it can cooperate with India on Covid solutions.

Dana Kursh, Consul General of Israel to South India
SACRAMENTO  Californias coronavirus budget woes are going to hit education hard.

In a revised state budget plan that Gov. Gavin Newsom unveiled Thursday, guaranteed funding for public schools and community colleges dropped by $19 billion, or nearly a quarter, compared to January projections.

Newsom proposed using federal stimulus money, redirecting pension payments and temporarily raising corporate taxes to minimize the losses. But California is still facing a nearly $7 billion shortage next year for school funding, the single biggest item in the state budget, as the coronavirus pandemic ravages the economy.

The financial blow comes as many school districts already find themselves hurting for cash because of rising pension payments and other costs. Safety protocols to prevent the spread of the virus that would allow schools to reopen in the fall would add a new burden. Education advocates are anticipating a repeat of the mass layoffs, pay reductions and program cuts that hit schools during the past recession a decade ago.

E. Toby Boyd, president of the California Teachers Association, the states largest teachers union, said the revenue losses would probably mean larger class sizes for students, an end to many arts programs and cancellation of team sports.

Youre basically going to take the joy out of learning, Boyd said.

The state budget still must be negotiated with the Legislature, which must pass a plan by June 15 or go without pay. Funding levels for schools and community colleges are largely locked in by Proposition 98, a formula that voters approved in 1988. But at a news conference Thursday, Newsom said he would prioritize school funding, which he called an investment in the future.

Numbers change, values dont have to. Values remain, the governor said. I want you to know that we are not just going to roll over and accept $19 billion of cuts to public education.

His proposal includes giving schools $4.4 billion from the states federal stimulus funding and reserve accounts to address learning loss related to early school closures this spring. Newsom would also redirect $2.3 billion from paying down unfunded retirement liabilities to help school districts meet their pension obligations over the next two years, and he would temporarily limit corporate tax credits and write-offs, which could net schools $1.8 billion in new revenue next year.

As a gesture that the cuts are not permanent, Newsom would also provide a supplemental budget appropriation to schools starting in 2021, worth up to $13 billion.

But the dire financial forecast means the governor had to reverse $1.7 billion of proposed spending increases, primarily for teacher preparation and retention. If Congress doesnt come through with a stimulus package for states and local governments, schools are also set to lose 10%, or about $6.5 billion, from their base funding next year, and another $350 million for special programs.

Troy Flint, spokesman for the California School Boards Association, said every district will have to figure out for itself how to close that gap.

Many school districts have already been pushed to the brink of insolvency by pension, health care, special education and transportation costs that are rising faster than funding increases.

The school boards association conducted a survey of nearly 200 districts and county offices of education in February and found that nearly 80% were on track for deficit spending by the end of the school year. Even before the pandemic, the San Francisco Unified School District was scrambling to deal with a financial hole in the tens of millions of dollars, largely caused by a spike in the number of special education students.

So this shock will have a greater effect even than what was experienced in the great recession, and that was devastating, Flint said. It represents the biggest funding crisis that schools have experienced, at least in living memory, if not ever.

Flint said schools that dont have large reserves or the ability to borrow will be very challenged, and will probably have to lay off teachers.

The governors budget includes no dedicated funding for additional costs that may arise as schools try to figure out how to open safely in the fall, such as personal protective equipment, a more frequent cleaning schedule and staggered learning schedules.

Many schools will find it difficult, if not impossible, to reopen in the fall, Flint said. In turn, he said, that would prevent many parents from returning to work and the economy from fully reopening.

With fewer options available for the state, which must balance its budget, advocacy will turn to the federal level. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has proposed a nearly $1 trillion bailout for states and local governments, though Republican leaders swiftly rejected the plan.

Boyd said he was optimistic that Congress would come through with additional support for schools because education is a bipartisan issue.

It goes across political lines. Education is the one equalizer, he said. If that means adding to the federal debt, then so be it, because our students deserve it.

The California Teachers Association is also one of the major proponents behind a November ballot initiative that would raise an estimated $12 billion per year by increasing property tax assessments for large commercial properties. It would add about $5 billion for schools, and the rest would go to local government services.

Boyd said the current budget crisis has only affirmed the need for the measure. During the past recession, 33,000 of the unions members lost their jobs. For some older students, this will be the second time their education has been interrupted with huge cuts.

Its just horrifying to think of that, he said.

Newsom has not endorsed the initiative, which is fiercely opposed by business groups. But he said Thursday that he would consider it, among other tax proposals that have been put forward.

Yes, we will pursue conversations with the Legislature, leaders all up and down the state, Newsom said, and we hope we can help guide some consensus about what is most appropriate to put forward to the voters this November.

Alexei Koseff is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: alexei.koseff@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @akoseff
Labour Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon urged people in the North East to disregard the Governments new advice and to stay at home as the area records a high COVID-19 R rate. (Getty Images)

A local council leader in an area with a rising R rate has branded new coronavirus guidance reckless - and urged central government to work alongside regional authorities when issuing advice.

Labour Gateshead Council leader Martin Gannon urged people in the North East to disregard the new advice and to continue to stay at home.

The government has been accused of sending mixed messages and causing confusion over its stance on returning to work and other social distancing measures  such as meeting family and friends in outdoor spaces  after it unveiled its new three-stage COVID-19 Recovery strategy.

As part of his plan to ease the coronavirus lockdown, Boris Johnson advised that people in England who are unable to work from home should return to the workplace from Wednesday, avoiding public transport if possible.

But new research from Public Health England shows the COVID-19 R rate in the North East is double than that of London - with around 4000 infections believed to be taking place in the area each day.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

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Speaking on BBC Radio 4s Today programme on Friday, Cllr Gannon criticised the new guidelines and said: Our message in Gateshead is for people to stay home.

He added: We havent got the same powers as Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, we dont have the same legislative powers, but if I did have those powers I would be saying Im doing exactly what they are doing in Scotland.

The R rate in the North East of England Im told is twice the rate of London and we have significant numbers of deaths, our hospitals are still busy, so therefore Im extremely concerned.

I think what the Government is doing nationally is reckless. It may be OK in some of the leafy suburbs, it may be alright in some of the rural villages, but it is not OK in Gateshead.

Story continues

We understand our people, we understand what is going on here and I think we should advise our people accordingly.

Figures from Public Health England show there are 9,352 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the North East. (Getty Images)

According to the latest figures released by PHE on Thursday, there are 9,352 confirmed cases of coronavirus in the North East  a rise of 94 from the day before.

In total 1,215 people who had tested positive for coronavirus have died across the North Easts hospital trusts.

Speaking to Yahoo News on Friday, Gannon said central government should trust and collaborate with local government to address the link between social issues and rising numbers of COVID-19 cases in the region.

Labour councillor for Gateshead, Martin Gannon, has urged residents in he North East to remain at home (Martin Gannon)

He explained: We have had a very good local testing regime in the area - however, I think there is sufficient evidence that shows areas that suffer from social depravation, such as high-density housing, low educational achievement, low income, joblessness - all the traditional stuff - theres underlying health problems.

Its clear that there is some kind of link there between social depravation and the virus. The data shows the R rate in north east and Humberside is double what it is in London, and some areas could have a rate as high as 1.1.

The Gateshead council leader warned against the government issuing national advice to cover all areas of England, continuing: We have areas where the rate is not lower than 1.

The Gateshead council leader said central government should avoid issuing national advice, and collaborate further with local authorities. (Getty Images)

We have highly deprived wards and also affluent, leafy suburbs - so the data shows that you can't have one single piece of national advice to cover all areas.

The government needs local knowledge and local expertise and thats the biggest criticism. The problem is not party politics, but central government.

You cant direct these operations from the centre, whether its food supplies, PPE, testing - what needs to happen is a partnership between local and central government.

We know our communities, they need to give us the confidence and resources - they need to trust and work in partnership with local government.

Coronavirus: what happened today
Unlike Maryland or Massachusetts, Illinois is not contracting with an outside agency, but implementing this within the Department of Public Health. In a May 1 press briefing, Pritzker and the tracing program expert Dr. Wayne Duffus described the program, and Duffus talked about the possibility of hiring public health experts as well as others, some of whom may need training even in terms of basic computer skills, as well as recruiting volunteers. But when asked about timing, Duffus said this: Wed like to start at the end of the month, and possibly with a soft rollout, so were getting all the pieces that we need together, and trying to uncover any limitations that may arise before we actually roll it out.
COVID-19 did not stop the Webb County Sheriffs Office from recognizing its deputies during the 2020 National Law Enforcement Officers Week Awards.

But this year, sheriffs officials had to accommodate and practice social distancing.

We wanted to do this in a safe manner, measuring our distance, having our mask, having our gloves and having all the precautions that the professionals put out there, Sheriff Martin Cuellar said.

Deputy of the Year honors were bestowed upon Deputy Jose Israel Sanchez.

It was unexpected. Hard work pays off. Ive been working hard for the last two years to help out the community, Sanchez said. It means a lot to me. It means everything. I always wanted to work here. Now, being recognized as the Deputy of the Year is great.

Deputy Jose Esquivel was recognized as the Rookie of the Year. The recognition caught him by surprise.

I feel ecstatic. Honestly, I did not expect this award. Sheriff Martin Cuellar is on top of everything. He is always checking up on everything, Esquivel said.

Cuellar honored the best of the best in the following categories: Meritorious Service, Sheriffs Award, Life-Saving Award, Supervisor of the Year, among others.

Cuellar said the pandemic did not stop his office from recognizing the men and women who go above and beyond their duty.

We decided to have it because were not going to let COVID-19 stop us. We are going to continue to do what we have to do. These recognitions are a must in my view, Cuellar said. Its important because our men and women need to be recognized for the job that they do, especially right now.
International students will be able to enrol in online courses while abroad this fall and still be eligible for a Post-Graduation Work Permit after moving to Canada.

Canada announces major study and work visa change for fall 2020 International students will be able to enrol in online courses while abroad this fall and still be eligible for a Post-Graduation Work Permit after moving to Canada.

Canada announces major study and work visa change for fall 2020 International students will be able to enrol in online courses while abroad this fall and still be eligible for a Post-Graduation Work Permit after moving to Canada.

Canada announces major study and work visa change for fall 2020 International students will be able to enrol in online courses while abroad this fall and still be eligible for a Post-Graduation Work Permit after moving to Canada. Kareem El-Assal Shelby Thevenot Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif

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Canada is making a major change to its Post-Graduation Work Permit (PGWP) rules for international students who want to study in Canada beginning this fall.

The PGWP enables international students to gain Canadian work experience after completing their educational program at a Canadian designated learning institution (DLI).

International students must have completed a full-time program of at least eight months in length at a DLI in order to be eligible for the PGWP. Their study program must have lead to a diploma, degree, or certificate. The ultimate length of the PGWP depends on the length of the students program of study in Canada.

Students can begin program online, and still be eligible for 3-year PGWP after coming to Canada

Normally, online courses do not count toward the study requirement for a PGWP application. However, given coronavirus-related travel interruptions around the world, Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) is now allowing international students to study online while overseas and still be eligible to apply for the work permit after graduation.

IRCC announced the reform during the evening of May 14, 2020.

New international students will be able to begin their programs at a Canadian DLI online in fall 2020 and complete up to 50 per cent of the program while abroad, and then still be able to obtain the PGWP to work in Canada after completing their studies.

IRCC also noted that international students will not have time deducted from the length of their PGWP for the period they spent outside of Canada, up to December 31, 2020.

In a hypothetical scenario, a new international student can begin their program at a Canadian DLI online this coming fall, and still be eligible for a PGWP for the maximum three years so long as they arrived to Canada by the end of 2020 and completed a qualifying educational program at a DLI of at least two years in duration.

See if you are eligible to study in Canada in fall 2020

Why this is a major announcement

The PGWP is highly coveted among Canadas international students since it enables them to work in Canada for up to three years after completing their studies.

Such work experience provides them with a major advantage when submitting their federal and/or provincial immigration application, which 60 per cent of international students plan to do, according to the Canadian Bureau for International Educations annual survey of foreign students.

Under Express Entrys Comprehensive Ranking System (CRS), for example, former international students are rewarded with additional CRS points for their Canadian education and work experience.

In addition to federal pathways, a variety of Provincial Nominee Program (PNP) streams also exist to help former international students transition to permanent residence.

In recent months, more former international students have received invitations to apply for permanent residence through Express Entry draws that have only selected Canadian Experience Class and PNP candidates.

This major announcement will encourage more international students to pursue their studies in Canada this fall, rather than deferring their post-secondary education. The reason for this is that international students who wish to eventually apply for Canadian immigration will want to capitalize on the opportunity to complete a portion of their studies in their countries of origin, while still being able to access the same benefits had they been required to physically study in Canada.

Another major benefit is the cost to study in Canada will decline for them, since they will not have to incur additional living expenses at the outset of their Canadian education.

Announcement will be a boon for Canadian economy and jobs

Nonetheless, this policy reform should prove to be a boon for the Canadian economy since the tuition that international students will pay will help to support jobs at colleges and universities across Canada. Moreover, international students will support economic activity in a number of ways once they arrive to Canada, through their spending, labour, and the taxes they will pay as workers.

Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the over 640,000 international students in Canada were contributing $22 billion annually to the economy and supporting some 170,000 Canadian jobs.

See if you are eligible to study in Canada in fall 2020

Furthermore, many of these students will eventually make the transition to permanent residence, which will help Canadas economy over the long run since they will possess the key human capital characteristics that support strong labour market outcomes of Canadas immigrants. These characteristics include being young in age, fluent in English and/or French, and possessing Canadian education, work experience, and social and professional connections.

In early April, IRCC first applied this measure to international students whose courses started in May and June. The May 14 announcement is an extension to the students who will begin their semester in September.

Though international students who received their study permit after March 18 are still not able to come to Canada, new permits are still being processed and IRCC says they will notify new students as to when they are able to travel to Canada again.

Canada will become even more attractive to international students

Canada has proven to be one of the worlds most attractive destinations for international students in recent years due to the following reasons:

Canada offers a very high quality of education;

students and their spouses and partners can work during and after their studies;

Canada offers the opportunity to study and live in English and/or French environments;

Canada is a very safe country;

Canada welcomes immigrants, international students, foreign workers, and visitors from some 200 countries each year;

Canada is more affordable than other popular international student destinations, in part because of the weaker Canadian dollar; and

there are over 80 permanent resident pathways for international students; in 2018, nearly 54,000 former international students obtained Canadian permanent residence.

This newly-announced reform makes Canada even more attractive for international students.

See if you are eligible to study in Canada in fall 2020

 2020 CIC News All Rights Reserved
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 04:02:34|Editor: huaxia

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MUSCAT, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The Omani Ministry of Health on Thursday announced 322 new confirmed cases of COVID-19, bringing the total number of cases in the country to 4,341.

According to a statement issued by the ministry, all new cases, including 80 Omanis, are related to community contact.

The statement also said 14 patients have recovered, bringing the total recoveries to 1,303. One more death was recorded, bringing the death toll to 18.

According to a video press conference organized by the Supreme Committee in charge of dealing with the spread of COVID-19, the country has conducted 61,000 medical tests for COVID-19.

"The gatherings during Ramadan contributed greatly to increasing the number of cases. In two days only, we recorded more than 600 cases, including 322 cases today, and 298 cases yesterday," Omani Minister of Health Ahmed Al-Saidi said.
What The Study Did: This study compares COVID-19 cases in border counties in Iowa, which didn't issue a stay-at-home order, with cases in border counties in Illinois, which did.

Authors: George L. Wehby, Ph.D., of the University of Iowa in Iowa City, is the corresponding author.

To access the embargoed study: Visit our For The Media website at this link https://media.jamanetwork.com/

(doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.11102)

Editor's Note: Please see the article for additional information, including other authors, author contributions and affiliations, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures, and funding and support.

###

The full study is linked to this news release.

Embed this link to provide your readers free access to the full-text article This link will be live at the embargo time http://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2020.11102?utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_term=051820

About JAMA Network Open: JAMA Network Open is the new online-only open access general medical journal from the JAMA Network. On weekdays, the journal publishes peer-reviewed clinical research and commentary in more than 40 medical and health subject areas. Every article is free online from the day of publication.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:49:37|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writers Yang Xiaohong, Ling Xin, and Chen Junxia

GENEVA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- At a virtual meeting of all World Trade Organization (WTO) members on Thursday, WTO Director-General Roberto Azevedo announced that he would step down on Aug. 31, cutting his second term short by exactly one year.

Analysts have said that after the paralyzing of the WTO's Appellate Body, Azevedo's early departure might once again diminish confidence in the multilateral trading system.

The Appellate Body, which reviews appeals of dispute cases and is normally composed of seven members, has been unable to hear any new cases since Dec. 11, 2019, as it only has one judge left due to a repeated blockage of the nomination of its members by the United States.

WHY LEAVE EARLY?

"It is a personal decision -- a family decision -- and I am convinced that this decision serves the best interests of this organization," Azevedo said, adding that his decision is not health-related or aiming to pursue any political opportunities.

He said that his premature departure would allow members to select his successor in the coming months, without diverting political energy and attention from preparations for the 12th WTO Ministerial Conference set to be held in 2021.

Meanwhile, the COVID-19 pandemic has significantly slowed down many WTO activities. "This offers us a window to launch the selection process with less impact than usual on our work," he said.

The WTO chief plays a key role in the group's functioning. According to the organization's structure, all agencies of the WTO Secretariat are responsible to the director-general.

Specifically, the WTO head, in addition to appointing staff of the Secretariat and leading the body, is responsible for submitting the WTO's annual budget and financial reports to the WTO Committee on Budget, Finance and Administration.

Some analysts have pointed out that the Secretariat without a director-general will become a "caretaker government," making it difficult to accomplish anything.

Citing "a bigger role to play" for the director-general, Lu Xiankun, managing director of consulting institution LEDECO Geneva which is in close collaboration with international organizations, said that the WTO head also plays a vital role in ensuring the normal functioning of the dispute settlement mechanism.

In the daily routine, the chief can also convene informal meetings, listen to members' opinions, and advance WTO-related work, Lu added.

Born in 1957, Azevedo was first appointed WTO head in 2013 for a four-year term. In 2017, WTO members re-appointed him for a second term, which would end on Aug. 31, 2021.

Lu said that Azevedo's early departure may also be related to the current situation of the WTO.

Noting the organization is "in deep trouble," Lu said the three major functions of dispute settlement, multilateral trade negotiations and trade policy monitoring are hindered. Trade conflicts between major economies have occurred, differences among members have widened, and the group's own reforms seem to be in the middle of nowhere, he said.

SELECTING A NEW CHIEF

Azevedo said that in accordance with relevant WTO regulations, the General Council should start the selection process for the new chief as soon as possible.

The selection process normally would be initiated nine months before the end of the current director-general's term. It lasts about half a year and is generally divided into three stages.

First, WTO members should nominate candidates within one month after the start of the process. Then, the candidates have three months to introduce themselves to WTO members, and express opinions on related issues facing the organization. Finally, the General Council narrows down the scope of candidates through consultations, and makes the appointment decision.

Currently, with about three months left before Azevedo's departure, the selection of the director-general will not be able to proceed in accordance with normal procedures. If the candidate cannot be confirmed by Aug. 31, the General Council should appoint one of the current deputy director-generals as acting chief until the appointment of a new chief.

At present, there are four deputy director-generals, namely, Yonov Frederick Agah of Nigeria, Karl Brauner of Germany, Alan Wolff of the United States and Yi Xiaozhun of China.

Some analysts have pointed out that the WTO is a member-driven, consensus-based organization, and decision-making power is mostly in the hands of members. Therefore, Azevedo's early departure has more symbolic than substantial impact on WTO work. Enditem
National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Freddie Blay has appealed to companies in the Ellembelle District to donate towards the completion of a police barracks for the Esiama Divisional Police Command.



He called on individuals and corporate society to make the security of the District their topmost priority to pave the way for development.



Mr Blay said this when he donated 100 bags of cement out of 400 bags he pledged the Esiama Police Command towards the completion of a-10 million Ghana Cedis accommodation facility for police personnel at Esiama.



Donating on behalf of Mr. Blay, the Constituency Chairman, Mr. Samuel Akainyah said the donation followed an appeal made by the police command and assured them that Mr. Blay would soon deliver the remaining 300 bags of cement.



He said the Constituency Executives were in constant talks with Mr Blay to impress upon him to do more for the Esiama police command.



Receiving the cement, the Esiama Divisional Police Commander, Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Dodzi Hlodzi said upon assumption of office two months ago, he appealed to personnel at the command to contribute towards the construction of the barracks since the command had no barracks.



He announced that so far the personnel have contributed 115 bags of cement towards the project.



ACP Hlodzi thanked Mr Blay and the NPP Executives for the swift response to their plight and appealed to public-spirited individuals and corporate societies in the Nzema area and Ghana at large to donate generously towards the project.

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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An emergency financial benefit for essential workers shouldn't go to Winnipeg firefighters or firefighter-paramedics, their union boss has suggested.

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This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

An emergency financial benefit for essential workers shouldn't go to Winnipeg firefighters or firefighter-paramedics, their union boss has suggested.

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Firefighters signed up for dangerous work and are doing the work they've always done, so they shouldn't receive a proposed "pandemic pay benefit" of up to $1,000, according to a letter United Firefighters of Winnipeg President Alex Forrest wrote to Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister.

"Our work has always been dangerous and demanding, and this is already recognized in the auspices of the collective agreement that we have negotiated with our employer. We are proud to honour this agreement and even in this challenging time we expect no more and no less than what our contract provides," the letter stated.

Forrest confirmed to the Free Press he sent the letter to the premier and was informed Pallister's office received it Thursday. He said he wrote it after he heard from some union members who felt other front-line workers would be more in need of a financial benefit.

The letter praised Pallister and the federal government for considering extra pay for essential workers who are "in traditionally low-paid professions and are making extreme personal sacrifices to keep this great province running."

The letter comes in response to the premier's announcement Wednesday that the provincial government would be consulting with labour and business groups to decide how to distribute Manitoba's share of a $4-billion federal wage top-up program for essential workers. Workers who qualify could be in line for a one-time, four-figure payment, "maybe $1,000 or so for our front-line workers," Pallister said Wednesday, "But don't hold me to it... The actual amount will be determined after we get advice on the breadth and length of the program from these folks."
Parks investment  money, time and creativity  in online curriculum allows Gunderson to plan a partial reopening for the fall semester. He knows that safety has leapt to the top of the agenda for many parents and students. Hell answer that by housing half as many students on campus and reducing classroom capacity by two-thirds. Students will take some of their classes in person and some online. Or if they are unsure about returning, they have the option of doing every class from a distance.
What had been a rather civil Democratic Party primary campaign for the 3rd Congressional District flared up on Thursday when two candidates released statements criticizing another candidate, Teresa Leger Fernandez, for the support shes receiving from so-called dark money groups.

The statements were released following the taping of a candidate forum co-sponsored by the Albuquerque Journal that will air on KOAT-TV at 4 p.m. Sunday.

In a news release late Thursday afternoon, John Blair said that during the taping of the forum Leger Fernandez refused to denounce the dark money groups that are supporting her campaign. He called for Leger Fernandez to demand the removal of ads from multiple dark money groups supporting her campaign.

Teresa has failed a simple test of our partys values, Blair said. Its clear that Teresa is unwilling to reject the help of secret special interests and rich donors, and thats exactly what makes people hate politics.

Two hours later, Marco Serna released a statement saying, I am deeply disappointed to hear that Ms. Leger Fernandez has turned a blind eye to the influence of dark money in her campaign, especially when she has claimed to be a candidate for the people of New Mexico.

Earlier Thursday, a brief included in Politicos Morning Score reported that two seemingly related dark money groups, Perise Practical Inc. and Avacy Initiatives Inc., have spent more than $300,000 on positive bio spots that promote Democrat Teresa Leger Fernandez and highlights her background and connection to the community.

Leger Fernandezs campaign manager, Emma Caccamo, responded to the criticism from Blair and Serna with a statement to the Journal saying that the campaign was New Mexico powered and that it hadnt received any corporate PAC money.

We dont know anything about any other groups and saw their ads when everybody else did, she said.

Television ads for Leger Fernandez, a Santa Fe attorney originally from Las Vegas, New Mexico, have been running with frequency on local television stations, especially during news broadcasts.

Blair, a native Santa Fean with governmental experience at the state and federal level, and Serna, the 1st Judicial District Attorney, are also running TV ads.

Leger Fernandezs campaign itself had raised more than $1 million through the first quarter of 2020, according to documents filed with the Federal Election Commission. She trailed only former CIA operative Valerie Plame, who had raised nearly $1.7 million and is also running TV ads, in fundraising up to that point. But both candidates had similar amounts of money  each with more than $600,000  left in their respective war chests as of March 31.

Leger Fernandez has gained momentum during the campaign. She won the delegate vote by a wide margin at state Democratic Partys pre-primary convention in March, earning the first position on the ballot for the June 2 primary election. She also has picked up endorsements from such groups as EMILYs List, End Citizens United, Planned Parenthood and the Sierra Club. And earlier this week received the endorsement of 1st Congressional District incumbent Deb Haaland.

The 3rd Congressional Districts Democratic primary has seven names on the ballot. Besides Leger Fernandez, Plame, Blair and Serna, Sandoval County Treasurer Laura M. Montoya, state Rep. Joseph L. Sanchez of Alcalde and environmental attorney Kyle J. Tisdel of Taos are running for the seat being vacated by Ben Ray Lujan, who is running for U.S. Senate.
The recapitalization fits squarely within the Revolent Capital Solutions investment thesis, partnering with a tenured management team and leveraging the precise operational guidance and support to propel the companys future growth.

Based in Tampa, Florida, Revolent Capital Solutions is a strategic acquirer focused on the facility services and management space. Three Sixty Seven acts as the exclusive advisor for Revolent Capital Solutions.

Revolent Capital Solutions Managing Partner, Bryson Raver, stated, We are excited to partner with Tom Tokars and the team at Armstrong Building Maintenance by continuing to build upon the 40-year legacy of serving our customers with unparalleled cleaning services.

Three Sixty Seven Advisors Managing Principal, Nicole Levy, stated, The recapitalization fits squarely within the Revolent Capital Solutions investment thesis, partnering with a tenured management team and leveraging the precise operational guidance and support to propel the companys future growth.

Three Sixty Seven Advisors Managing Principal, Graham Woodard, added, We would like to congratulate all parties involved and our proud to deepen our roots as a leader in the commercial facility services M&A market.

About Three Sixty Seven Advisors

Three Sixty Seven Advisors is a leading middle market M&A Advisory firm based in Tampa, FL. For more information regarding Three Sixty Seven Advisors please visit https://www.threesixtyseven.com/ or contact Graham Woodard at gwoodard@threesixtyseven.com or Nicole Levy at nlevy@threesixtyseven.com
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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says a federal wage subsidy for employees in businesses hit hard by COVID-19 will last at least until the end of August.

The subsidy was set to expire in the first week of June, only a few weeks after the first payments rolled out.

Speaking outside his Ottawa residence Friday, Trudeau said the idea is to give employers more runway and confidence to resume operations slowly if they have to. He is also asking companies to bring back their employees.

Finance Minister Bill Morneau is to reveal details of a broadening of the program later today, including what Trudeau said will be expanded eligibility.

A release from Morneau's department said eligibility rules will allow Indigenous-government-owned corporations or partnerships to qualify, as well as amateur athletic associations, registered journalism organizations, and private colleges and training schools.

Trudeau also said the government will make adjustments to the program, including changes to the threshold for how much qualifying companies' revenues must have declined, to ensure employers can continue getting help as business kicks back up.

"As the economy reopens, there is a danger of unintended consequences," he said.

"If part of the eligibility criteria for getting the wage subsidy is a decrease of 30 per cent of your business, we wouldn't want people who are getting back their business going to feel like they have to hold back on their growth, on their expansion, on their rehiring in order to be able to continue benefiting from the wage subsidy."

Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, said the simplified wage subsidy would be a boost for small businesses and a relief for seasonal industries like tourism looking ahead to a soft summer.

"It is a major shift on the part of the federal government towards getting Canadians back to work and carefully reopening the economy. This is welcome news," Kelly tweeted.

The subsidy covers 75 per cent of wages for employers that have seen sharp declines in revenue since the novel coronavirus pandemic hit Canada hard in March, up to $847 per worker, per week. The legislation that created the subsidy gave the government the authority to extend qualifying periods for help through to the end of September.

The hope was that the subsidy would pull workers onto payrolls and away from the a $2,000-a-month emergency benefit for employees who have either lost their jobs or seen their incomes drop below $1,000 a month.

Federal figures posted Friday morning show just under eight million people have applied for that Canada Emergency Response Benefit, receiving just under $35.9 billion between them. The program had a budget of $35 billion.

The latest federal figures show Ottawa has paid out $3.36 billion in wage subsidies to 123,642 companies, the vast majority of which are for under $100,000 in aid.

The figures are far below what federal officials envisioned for the program that aims to keep employees tied to their job for when business activity resumes.

Trudeau also said the government will provide the same level of payroll support to universities and health-research institutes through a $450-million fund.

The Canadian Press

UPDATE 8:47 a.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says a federal wage subsidy for employees in businesses hit hard by COVID-19 will last at least until the end of August.

The subsidy was set to expire in the first week of June, only a few weeks after the first payments rolled out.

Speaking outside his Ottawa residence, Trudeau says the idea is to give employers more runway and confidence to resume operations slowly if they have to. He is also asking companies to bring back their employees.

ORIGINAL 8:00 a.m.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addresses Canadians from outside his home in Ottawa about the federal government's response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Trudeau is expected to announce today an extension to the federal government's 75 per cent emergency wage subsidy  just as businesses across the country are taking the first cautious steps towards reopening after a two-month, pandemic-induced shutdown.

He is also expected to announce significant financial support for thousands of medical researchers whose work is unrelated to the COVID-19 crisis.

The $73-billion wage subsidy program was initially slated to run until June 6.

Trudeau last week said it would be extended and today he'll reveal for how long. The extension is expected to be for at least an extra month.

Under the program, the federal government is currently picking up the tab for 75 per cent of an eligible company's payroll  up to a maximum of $847 per week per employee  from March 15 to June 6.

-with files from the Canadian Press
When Methodist Hospital suspended visits by Hearts Need Art, an arts program originally designed to aid cancer patients, as part of the effort to fight COVID-19, founder Constanza Roeder instantly got much busier.

Thats because it was important to her to make sure that the services that the nonprofit provides to patients, caregivers and medical staff  including visual arts classes, writing sessions and music performances  would still be available.

We knew that the needs of our patients were not going to decrease, they were going to go up, said Roeder, who was inspired to create the program by her battle with leukemia as a teenager. Our mission is to provide moments of joy, self expression and connection, which reduce feelings of depression, anxiety and loneliness. So we asked, how are we going to continue to serve our patients now that they are more isolated than ever?

As with so many things in this era, they took to the internet, allowing them to swiftly expand their reach, something that Roeder and her team had long wanted to do, but had envisioned it happening much more gradually.

I was just astonished at how quickly they could adapt their services, said Lisa Kiehne, vice president of oncology services at Methodist and Methodist Childrens Hospital. I think within a week or a week and a half, they had completely updated their website and found this scheduling platform, and they could offer live calls and on demand calls here in the hospital.

On ExpressNews.com: Blue Star Contemporarys online offerings include a new podcast

The organization launched in 2016, offering arts programs to patients in Methodists cancer ward. It recently broadened its mission to offer services to patients elsewhere in the hospital, Kiehne noted.

And now, thanks to its shift into the virtual realm, those services also are available to people facing serious illnesses and others across the country. Hearts Need Arts now works with people across the city and the state, as well as in California, Florida and Illinois.

Roeder estimates that the 10 artists who lead Hearts Need Art sessions work with 10 to 12 individual patients each week, with an additional 10 to 30 taking part in group sessions. The organization has the ability to reach more people, she said, and there clearly is an interest: I get inquires almost every day.

We have groups that have scheduled live concerts for their medical units for patients and for the nurses, and one of our musicians will give them a live concert based on music they request, she said. Were offering a little bit of hope and joy in otherwise dark and stressful situations and places.

In addition to the appointment-based sessions, Hearts Need Art also reaches another 30,000 people each month with its livestreams through its Facebook page (@heartsneedart), which anyone can access. Those sessions emphasize interactivity and include music performances, writing prompts and visual arts projects. Next week, the program will start doing some livestreaming on its Instagram page, as well, in hopes of reaching younger audiences.

All of this is not an until-the-pandemic-passes expansion. Roeder sees this as a more lasting change to how the organization operates.

The way that its going to expand access for these types of programs longer-term is really mind blowing, she said. Its really an awesome launching off point rather than a pivot.

On ExpressNews.com: Auction of banner from Artpace show will benefit SA refugee center

We were one of the first arts-in-health programs to get kicked out of our hospital, so we were one of the first to make the pivot to a virtual platform.

The program is listed in a database of COVID-19 arts resource programs from across the country maintained by the University of Floridas Center for Arts in Medicine. Some healthcare workers have reached out to request services after finding that listing, Roeder said, but word of mouth also has played a role. A lot of social workers recommend it to their colleagues.

Thats how Khanhi Nguyen-Bakar, an oncology social worker with the Leonard Cancer Institute in Mission Viejo, California, learned about Hearts Need Art. After doing a little of her own research, she signed up for a session for a breast cancer support group she leads. Some members were a little reluctant to try it They said, Oh, I cant, Im not an artist, she said  but she was able to persuade 10 to give a visual art class a try.

The class began with a breathing exercise, followed by time with some coloring pages.

Nguyen-Bakar said she was particularly struck by the silence at times during the session as everyone focused on the task at hand.

For a few moments, nobody said a word, which was really nice, she said. It was this good feeling  we knew everyone was doing their thing and escaping.

One woman shared that working on the exercise brought to mind a trip she had taken with her family to the Amalfi Coast in Italy: She went to this super-Zen place in this little lesson, Nguyen-Bakar said.

San Antonian Lidia Friesenhahn, who was diagnosed with uterine cancer last year and is in recovery, knows what a big difference Hearts Need Art makes. Friesenhahn was connected to the program through the ThriveWell Cancer Foundation after she was released from the hospital, and she now takes three sessions each week.

She wasnt sure what to expect when she started and was pleasantly surprised both by what she was able to do and by how much she enjoyed it.

It makes me happy and excited, she said. You look forward to the next session and whats going to come up next.

Hannah Garrison is one of the artists with whom Friesenhahn takes classes. Garrison has been working with Hearts Need Art for about a year.

When she was able to work in the hospital, she especially loved painting window art in patients rooms, delighting in their responses. She painted whatever they requested  one asked for a rendering of Vincent van Goghs Starry Night, another wanted pandas.

It really brightened up their rooms, she said. To see their faces as Im painting, as its unfolding in front of their eyes, is the best feeling in the world.

On ExpressNews.com: Las Casas performing arts scholarship finals move online

Garrison can personally vouch for the power of the arts during challenging times. She was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2017 and also has wrestled with depression.

Honestly, I dont know if I would have been able to get through some of the mental health issues I was dealing with and the physical symptoms of multiple sclerosis if I had not been doing some sort of art, she said. I wasnt even trying to be good at art, though I did get my BFA from UTSA. This illness sort of brought me down for quite a long time, and just the act of doing art for arts sake, thats really helped me. I honestly couldnt feel anymore grateful for this job.

Musician Caitlin Noel, who is graduating from Johnson High School, has been working with the organization for the past three years, drawn to the work when several people at her school were diagnosed with cancer. It helped her find enough confidence to sing as well as play piano, and also helped her choose a career path.

She plans to study neuroscience at the University of Southern California starting this fall, a choice she made because of all shes learned about the impact of music on the brain.

It reduces the length of hospital stays, lowers the heart rate, lowers blood pressure  there are so many crazy things it does when it interacts with our brains and our bodies, Noel said. When people are listening to music, even when its in the background at work or while theyre doing schoolwork, theyre still getting this dose of healing. I think these livestreams and all we do with music are about creating a catalyst for hope and healing.

Guitarist Jaime Varela is the programs musician-in-residence. When he was able to play in the hospital, he performed at patients bedsides and, once a month, in the lobby.

Ive been a musician for a long time, and Ive never really thought I was going to be playing at a hospital, said Varela, who also plays with a few bands in town. That was the last venue I ever thought Id be playing music, and all of the sudden, its become my job  its my full-time job now. Im grateful beyond words to try to make people feel better through music because its incredible.

These days, he works with people online one-on-one and also does two-hour livestreams. All of the work is tremendously meaningful to him.

I really feel good giving a dollar to a homeless person or helping anyone in any way I can, but if I can help people through the thing that I do best, which is playing music, that is magical, he said.

Roeder is not remotely surprised by the growing demand for arts programs by her organization and others.

Its one of those things where the hierarchy of needs would make us think that when humans are in distress and their basic needs are being challenged, that things like creativity and the arts are unnecessary, but what weve seen throughout human history is that in times of scarcity, there is an explosion of creativity and artmaking, she said.

This is how we cope and survive during times of stress.

dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN

Deborah Martin is an arts writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Deborah, become a subscriber. dlmartin@express-news.net | Twitter: @DeborahMartinEN
The novel coronavirus pandemic has not spared the wealthy, individuals with at least US$1 million in assets, having halted the untrammelled economic growth and rise in financial markets seen over the previous decade, according to wealth information and insights provider Wealth-X.

If in the previous decade, spanning 2010 to 2019, banking, business and consumer services dominated the industries run by affluent individuals, in the coming years, the technology sector will become a significant source of wealth, according to A Decade of Wealth, its companys latest report.

The rapid spread of Covid-19 around the world in the first half of 2020  accompanied by dramatic falls in economic output and volatile shifts in financial markets  has had a considerable impact upon the wealthy, the report said. Not only has it brought to an immediate halt the unbroken upward trend in global growth over the past decade, it has also threatened a sharp correction in world asset markets and increased the risk of intensifying rivalries.

The global economy is likely to contract by 3 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund in April, its deepest slump since the Great Depression almost a century ago, as governments impose lockdowns to curb the spread of the deadly pandemic. Meanwhile, the United Nations World Economic Situation and Prospects report, released on Wednesday, forecast that the pandemic was likely to reverse four years of growth from the global economy, about US$8.5 trillion in total output, or more than a third of the United States estimated US$21.4 trillion economy. In the same report, the UN also forecast a 3.2 per cent decline in the global economy this year.

Stocks, a favourite asset class for many investors, are likely to retreat, with investment bank Goldman Sachs saying this week it expected an 18 per cent drop in the S&P 500 in the next three months.

Wealthy individuals will be concerned about their finances and businesses, as stock markets remain volatile, while a correction is likely in prices of real estate and other luxury goods, Wealth-X said. The vast majority of wealthy individuals own and/or operate a business, so the speed and scale of the downturn means that quite a few companies will be struggling, be it from a solvency, liquidity and/or operational perspective, it said.

Story continues

Wealth-X said the share of technology as the main source of wealth was likely to be significant, given that such businesses can cross borders fairly easily, face comparatively low barriers to entry and can increase in scale more rapidly than more traditional industries.

Wealth also clearly shifted to much of Asia in the past decade, driven mainly by China, as Asians with at least US$5 million in assets more than tripled. Besides China, Asian countries such as Bangladesh, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand and Pakistan were among the 10 fastest growing wealth markets from 2010 to 2019.

In the past decade, the wealthy population across the globe grew by more than half, with the number of global millionaires doubling to more than 25 million individuals between 2005 and 2019. Both the number of very-high-net-worth individuals, with assets of at least US$5 million, and ultra-high-net-worth individuals, whose assets amount to at least US$30 million, also more than doubled in the same period. These 25.2 million individuals, or 3.23 per cent of the estimated 7.8 billion population in the world, controlled US$104 trillion, or a third of the global private wealth in 2019, up from US$50 trillion in 2005.

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Mumbai, May 15 : Amid the ongoing lockdown, actor Priyanshu Painyuli is going through fitness training at home to prepare for his character as an army officer in his next, "Rashmi Rocket".

"We can't be sure of anything for the next few months and that's causing a great deal of anxiety in everyone. It's hard to stay motivated when you don't know when you can get to work again," Priyanshu said.

"But for actors, work is not just shooting at a set. It's also prepping for the character. For my next film, I need to look like an army man. It won't be an easy feat to achieve that without a gym and a trainer but I want to keep at it so that I don't have to start from ground zero. I have been in touch with my trainer over calls and video chats. He has been monitoring my meals and my exercise. I have set weekly fitness targets for myself. My structure has to broader so my entire fitness regimen now focuses on building muscles and achieve a tougher look," he added.

Directed by Akarsh Khurana, "Rashmi Rocket" also stars Taapsee Pannu.

Latest updates on Lockdown diaries

-- Except for the title, this story has not been edited by Prokerala team and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed
With all due respect to medical illustrators, the singular symbol of the COVID-19 pandemic will not be the digital rendering of a red virus spore that floats in the background of newscasts like a nightmare balloon. No, the definitive visual of the pandemic is the face mask. Its on the cover of Vogue Spain and on the faces of a papparazzi-ed Ben Affleck and Ana de Armas strolling through L.A. Like your keys, its the thing you dont leave your house without. Home sewers the world over are making masks from spare cloth and evoking a wartime effort of pitching in. Many of us are wearing our masks dutifully  and complaining about fogged-up glasses and pinched ears in the process. Life Science Intelligence, a medical tech analysis firm, puts mask sales at 305 per cent higher than pre-pandemic estimates.

Though theyre still hard to come by for some, each day I learn about another designer who has started making non-medical masks. Hilary MacMillan, Izzy Camilleri, Ellie Mae Studios, Horses Atelier and Mackage are just a few of the dozens of Canadian brands who are using their equipment and materials to create non-medical protective gear, with most profits going to charity.

The mask has undergone a swift image makeover  what once represented selfishness and paranoia in the face of scary times is now a marker of protection, social solidarity and trust in authority. But its also a new way to assert ones good taste and status. On my community Facebook group, a local seamstress is charging $15 for one of her handmade masks, but $25 for one made from a faux-Burberry check fabric. Early into the lockdowns, New-York-based illustrator and street-style darling Jenny Walton fashioned her own mask from a blush-pink Prada dust bag. The beauty of her creation  the soft pleats of satin, the delicate ribbon ties, the bootleg intentionality of a Prada logo  was eerie to behold. Designer Christian Siriano was one of the first major luxury brands to join the mask-making effort, but he also created couture-level face coverings tessellated with shimmery paillettes. These fantastical, esthetically pleasing pieces can either represent a soothing escapism (if youre being kind) or needless frivolity (if youre not). With disease swirling, do face masks have a right to become style signifiers?

My boyfriends family, all avid quilters, were quick to start making masks for their community. When they asked me what fabric to Id like mine to be made from  perhaps a jaunty chartreuse or tie-dye?  I was deliberately ambivalent. Anything, beige, whatever! I was lucky to have easy access to a mask, why get carried away with such surface-level details? To get caught up in a plaid or polka dots? debate would be to undermine the very purpose of the mask  a conscientious act for the greater good, I thought.

Then, something shifted. Like many cities, Toronto carefully, so carefully, started to tease plans of loosening the rules, opening doors and entering a new phase of living through a pandemic. I started to grapple with the idea of sitting in my office in a mask for eight hours at a time  my cheeks becoming sweaty and my lower lashline irritated as the scratchy cotton inched up my face with each breath. If I had the choice to wear a mask that fits a little better, and, yes, looks a little better, I doubt Id turn it down. After all, if you lost your luggage for just a couple of days, youd buy the simplest, quick-fix replacements until you were reunited with your things. But what if your luggage went missing for months, or a year? Wouldnt you be compelled to upgrade your temporary belongings?

Its worth noting that it was not this pandemic that gave rise to designer face masks. When I was in Beijing last winter, I spotted plenty by Balenciaga and Off-White in the trendy, moneyed area of Sanlitun. But with surging global demand, Off-Whites mask has skyrocketed to fashion search engine Lysts number one spot  a sartorial sign of the times.

While logos and beautiful patterns are part of what makes certain masks sell out faster than others, brands are also taking factors of comfort and function into account. Montreal-based outerwear brand Mackage, run by co-chief creative officers Eran Elfassy and Elisa Dahan, designed masks to feature adjustable ear loops, expandable nose and chin coverings and laser perforations for breathability in the shape of the brands logo (because the fabric is waterproof, this is both a decorative and very necessary feature). We went through about 10 iterations [of the design] before we went to market, says Elfassy. It took us a few weeks to get it right because we knew that we wanted a sustainable mask that would be made here in Canada out of unused fabric in our archive. From a comfort perspective, it was important that our mask was designed to release pressure from behind the ears given that we now have to wear these masks for longer periods of time. Its already sold out in every colour. Fundamentally, from the get-go we didnt want to compromise fashion for function, says Dahan.

Reporting on fashion for the past few years has often meant writing about brands claiming to have created the perfect this or the perfect that. The perfect T-shirt, the perfect flats, the perfect shower cap (yes, really). Companies are appealing to consumers by attempting to distil something to its most essential elements while rhapsodizing about its ability to make your life better. Combine this quest for studied perfection with the unstoppable rise of individuality and you have the ideal conditions for masks to emerge as articles of desire.

While fashion brands are busy crafting beautiful masks, scientists and engineers are on a quest to make masks work better. Jiaxing Huang, a professor of material science at Northwestern University in Illinois, is currently researching a chemical add-on to masks that can destroy COVID-19. Fibre tech firms like Israels Agraman and Czechias Respilon are making masks lined with copper, which has powerful antimicrobial properties. Techy, direct-to-consumer shoe brand Atoms has also developed a mask fused with copper thread (which will break down after 30 washes). If and when these highly considered masks become more widely available for purchase, they will almost certainly come with a higher price tag and limited quantities  thus widening the gap between the haves, the have-nots and the hypebeasts.

Growing up in post-Soviet Ukraine, I recall learning how to put on a gas mask at school  a holdover, I suppose, from the radiation fears of Chernobyl and the Cold War. The gas mask is a terrifying object: dull, army-green rubber and bulbous lenses evoking a surreal robot goldfish. But todays face masks, unlike those GP-5s from my grade two class, are not merely props in an absurdist preparedness exercise. Cloth masks are here to stay as objects of protection and, if you wish, personal expression. And as the dust of urgency settles, I will probably consider the look of a mask just like anything else I put on. To cite superficiality and decry the masks evolution into a fashionable thing would be missing the point.

Face value: Stylish face masks from Canadian designers

Narces: For each mask sold, two will be donated to a local health care centre. Narces mask, $30, narces.com

Izzy Cammileri: These masks come in around-the-ear or behind-the-ear elastic options. For each one sold, one will be donated to a hospital. Izzy Cammileri mask, $15, izadaptive.com

Caitlin Power: These masks are made-to-order from stretchy bonded fabric, copper wire and organic cotton and are washable. Caitlin Power, $100 (pack of 4), caitlinpower.com

Ellie Mae Studios: Instead of elastic, these masks feature adjustable fabric ties. Ellie Mae Studios, $20, elliemaestudios.com

Mackage: This mask features extendable nose and chin covers, adjustable ear loops and head strap, and the logo is laser perforated for breathability. The mask is washable, made in Canada, and 100 per cent of profits go to the United Way. Mackage, $38, mackage.com

Nonie: These cotton masks are lined with a fabric made from polypropylene filaments. Nonie, $33, houseofnonie.com

Peace Collective: Peace Collective's masks include a paper filter and a timely PSA. Peace Collective, $30 (pack of 2), peacecollective.com

This article contains affiliate links, which means The Kit may earn a small commission if a reader clicks through and makes a purchase. All our journalism is independent and is in no way influenced by advertising. By clicking on an affiliate link, you accept that third-party cookies will be set. More information.
Governor Bill Lee directed the Unified Command Group to expand COVID-19 testing efforts into public housing communities across the state. Testing is being done by the Tennessee National Guard this week at all public housing sites in Nashville and next week, the National Guard will be coming to family sites in Chattanooga.

CHA board member and Mary Walker resident Jeff McClendon said, Its time to put your health first and be tested by healthcare professionals- - no matter if they are in uniform or in full PPEs. Our residents always wanted to be tested and were glad to see that this will finally happen. Whether the tests are positive or negative, its important to know the test outcome so youll know what to do.

Were continuing to build on our success with community testing, in partnership with the Chattanooga Housing Authority, said Tennessee Health Commissioner Lisa Piercey, MD, MBA, FAAP. Our testing events with housing authorities in Tennessees metropolitan areas will enhance access to COVID-19 testing for Tennesseans who may be particularly vulnerable to the virus.

CHA Board Chair Jim Levine said, The CHA always has been open to any qualified healthcare professional providing COVID-19 testing opportunities for our residents. Were grateful for the leadership and hard work leaders put in that will now allow our residents to be tested on site if they so desire.






Fianna Fail is demanding a Dail debate on historical sexual abuse in the Irish scouting movement.

An internal review commissioned by Scouting Ireland by child safeguarding expert Ian Elliot has found it is hard to determine the full extent of the problem because records have been lost and destroyed.

But 356 survivors have already come forward and 275 alleged abusers have been identified.

Anne Rabbitte, the Fianna Fail spokesperson on children, believes there is more to be uncovered.

"Not all files were produced and some files could have been dispensed with and that is why I am looking for a debate in the Dail," said Ms Rabbitte.

"We have written to the Ceann Comhairle requesting an opportunity for the Fianna Fail party to bring it through so we can have a debate right across the house on this because not one record has been made available.

"We need to discuss why that hasn't happened."

Ms Rabbitte said the state's support for victims of abuse in the past has been lacking.

"We have numerous reports, this is not the first one that has shone a light on historical cases.

"But we have to learn how to manage them in a proper manner when we have people who come forward that they are not re-traumatised, that we don't make them feel like they are a victim again."
COLOGNE (dpa-AFX) - German airline Lufthansa Group (DLAKF, DLAKY) said it is expects to operate its airlines services in June, with over 1800 weekly round trips to more than 130 destinations by June end. This includes over 106 German and European destinations and more than 20 intercontinental destinations. The group also said over 20 long haul destinations will soon be available again and the first batch of flights will be available for reservation in the booking systems from May 14 onwards. All destinations can be booked on lufthansa.com. Lufthansa will resume its long haul flights to and from Frankfurt from second half of June, subject to possible travel restrictions. SWISS plans to resume services to destinations in the Mediterranean region, and other major European cities such as Paris and Brussels, with Moscow to be added to the programme. Lufthansa, SWISS and Eurowings will thus be offering more than 70 weekly frequencies overseas until mid-June. As per reports, the airline group had grounded about 700 aircrafts or nearly 90 percent of its total capacity in March as travel demand nosedived following travel restrictions due to the outbreak of COVID-19. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The tensions spilled over into the United Nations on Friday when China said that the urgency of the pandemic demanded that the United States pay its delinquent U.N. assessment, which by some calculations exceeds $2 billion. The American Mission to the U.N. responded by saying that the United States customarily pays its assessments at years end and that China was eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis.

In its first months, the outbreak delivered a political blow to Mr. Xi, after officials held back information and discouraged doctors from reporting cases. Mr. Trump appeared confident that the United States had little to fear, and he praised Mr. Xis handling of the crisis.

Only weeks ago, Mr. Xi and Mr. Trump spoke by telephone and proclaimed their unity in the face of the coronavirus. Mr. Trump declared his respect for Mr. Xi, and Mr. Xi told him that countries had to respond in unison against a global health emergency.

Their brittle unity collapsed as coronavirus deaths exploded in the United States. The White House and the Republican Party tried to shift the focus of ire, blaming China for reacting slowly and covering up crucial information.

The backlash, in turn, has reignited the battle over trade, technology, and other issues, with the United States on Friday issuing rules that would bar the Chinese telecom giant Huawei from using American machinery and software. Public sentiment in the United States and other countries has also hardened against China, according to recent polls.

I have a very good relationship, but I just  right now I dont want to speak to him, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Xi on Thursday. A spokesman for Chinas foreign ministry, Zhao Lijian, brushed aside Mr. Trumps threat to sever relations, saying on Friday that the two countries should cooperate.
Ukraine's Deputy Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories Ihor Yaremenko and Head of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine Matilda Bogner have discussed Russia's responsibility for armed aggression against Ukraine, the press service of the Ministry for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories has reported.

According to the report, the sides discussed Russia's responsibility and the situation in eastern Ukraine due to Russian aggression, human rights violations in Ukraine's temporarily occupied territories of Donbas and Crimea, as well as other important topics.

In particular, Yaremenko emphasized the position of the Ukrainian government and the international community that condemn Russia's armed aggression against Ukraine and warned against any form of recognition of Russia's role, except as a party to the international military conflict.

"It is important to consolidate the efforts of the international community, including international humanitarian organizations, to prevent the aggressor country from hiding behind its proxies in the Ukrainian Donbas and to prevent the Russian Federation from avoiding responsibility for the crimes committed. Only the recognition of Russia's responsibility can help improve the situation and thus reduce the number of human rights violations," Yaremenko said.

Bogner, in turn, emphasized the priority of ensuring the protection of citizens during the armed conflict and reducing casualties among civilians and highlighted the main problems of the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in this area.

The sides paid special attention to the need to contain the pandemic caused by COVID-19 in the territories of Ukraine temporarily occupied by the Russian Federation, as well as Russia's responsibility for the spread of COVID-19.

In addition, the parties paid attention to the situation with Russian occupation administrations restricting access for monitoring and humanitarian missions to temporarily occupied territories.

"It was noted that blocking the admission of monitoring and humanitarian missions under the pretext of quarantine and the use by the Russian Federation of the pandemic to legitimize such actions is absolutely unacceptable. The UN continues to support the position of unimpeded access to the population affected by the Russian aggression on both sides of the contact line, first and foremost, to provide humanitarian assistance as well as to study the needs map," the ministry said.

The parties also discussed cooperation in gathering information on human rights violations in the temporarily occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk regions and in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, remedies for victims of Russian aggression, including violations of property rights in Crimea, illegal conscription, militarization of education in temporarily occupied territories, as well as the general situation regarding the negative socio-economic consequences for Ukrainian citizens due to Russia's armed aggression.

Photo: mtot.gov.ua
Enrollees under the N-Power programme will receive their April stipends in the coming week, the minister of humanitarian affairs, Sadiya Farouq, has said.

N-Power is one of the National Social Investment Programmes (SIP) designed by the present administration to reduce poverty, unemployment and social insecurity among Nigerians.

It involves the deployment of thousands of unemployed graduates to schools and other institutions to work there while the government pays them a stipend of N30,000 monthly.

The enrollees have been clamouring for their April payment since the announcement of the lockdown in some states due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ms Farouq, while responding to questions at the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing on Friday, said the payment process has reached the final stage.

It is in the final stage of payment and by early next week, they will get their payment, Insha Allah.
Be on the lookout for nursing homes and assisted living facilities that are trying to snatch coronavirus stimulus checks from residents who are on Medicaid.

They cant legally take your stimulus payment, according to a new Federal Trade Commission (FTC) alert.

In a blog post, the agency said its received reports from states around the country that say some facilities have taken the checks, claiming they count as resources under Medicaid rules.

Not true, the FTC said.

Its recommending those who have loved ones who receive Medicaid benefits and live in nursing homes and assisted living facilities file a complaint with their states attorney generals office if the facility refuses to turn over the stimulus payments.

In New Jersey, you can file a complaint online or by calling (973) 504-6200. The FTC asks that you also file a complaint with the consumer agency.

The FTC explains the stimulus payments, according to the CARES Act, are a tax credit.

Tax law says that tax credits dont count as `resources for federal benefits programs like Medicaid, the FTC said. So when Congress calls these payments `tax credits in the CARES Act, that means the government cant seize them. Which means nursing homes and assisted living facilities cant take that money from their residents just because theyre on Medicaid.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage

If youre not sure what happened to your loved ones payment, ask the facility and explain the law.

The FTC offered more back up if youre dealing with a facility that doesnt want to hand the stimulus payment back.

You can go right here to get the federal tax law that says refunds arent considered a `resource in federal benefits programs. And you can click this link to get the Congressional Summary that talks about the funds as tax credits not countable as resources for federal government programs. (Its on page 3.) And heres even more helpful information from the National Center on Law & Elder Rights for people who live in nursing homes or assisted living facilities, the FTCs blog post said.

In another blog post directed to businesses, the FTC makes it clear that nursing homes and assisted living facilities dont have a right to the payments just because a resident is on Medicaid.

The New Jersey Division of Consumer Affairs said it hasnt received any complaints of this kind. It said consumers with complaints about stimulus payments and nursing homes should report it to the National Center for Disaster Frauds national hotline (866-720-5721).

State and federal law enforcement agencies in New Jersey regularly review complaints through the hotline, the agency said.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at bamboozled@njadvancemedia.com.
A care home boss and her retired doctor husband died with coronavirus in the same hospital just 10 days apart.

Retired radiologist James Oniah, 79, and his wife Mary, 61, who worked for the Maria Mallaband Care Group, both lost their lives at King George Hospital in Redbridge.

The couple moved to the UK from Africa and lived in Ilford, with Mrs Oniah having trained in Zambia before coming to London to work as a midwife and then moving into care home management. Her husband chaired a foundation to support other ex-pats from his home city of Onitsha in Nigeria.

The Zambians Together initiative, set up to help the community through the pandemic, has started a fundraising campaign for the couples family, so far raising more than 16,000.

A GoFundMe appeal said: They ended the fight for their lives against Covid-19 at King George Hospital in London 10 days apart, leaving behind children and a wider network of family and friends who all considered them their mum and dad.

A spokesman for MMCG, which runs more than 80 care homes across the UK, said: Mary was a valued colleague and friend to many people in our company. She will be sorely missed. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to her family at this difficult time.

A colleague described her as passionate, determined and dedicated, saying: A truly wonderful lady who with her infectious smile, deeply held compassion for others and a twinkle in her eye, touched the lives of everyone lucky enough to have called her a colleague and a friend.

Patricia Okechukwu, secretary of the Onitsha Progressive Foundation, described Mr Oniah as a very funny man, very jovial, who enjoyed life and was proud of his heritage.

Meanwhile, tributes have been paid to retired nurse Veronica Joy Curnell, 70, a mother-of-two and grandmother who worked in the NHS for more than 30 years. Her daughter Krystal Coley was allowed into the intensive care unit at Kings College Hospital to see her on the night before she died on Easter Sunday. She said she would cherish their final moments together, adding: I felt privileged having that moment and felt some closure knowing I had been with her for those hours just sitting by her side holding her.

Ms Curnell, who had diabetes and hypertension, was admitted with Covid-19 symptoms on April 3 after having trouble breathing.

She was working at Guys and St Thomas Hospitals Trust when she retired in 2005 to care full-time for her husband before his death and had registered as a childminder in Southwark until 2014. Her daughter described her as the heart of her community, saying: My mum was someone who got on with everyone. Young people would always come to her for advice and she opened her door to anyone that needed help.

The donation page can be found here.
Senator Lamar Alexander on Friday said a $500,000 grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission for designing mountain bike and hiking trails along the Foothills Parkway in Cocke County will increase tourism and economic development opportunities in the area.



Cocke County is one of Tennessees most economically distressed counties, and these mountain bike and hiking trails will bring more of the 12 million visitors who come to the Smokies each year to Cocke County, which will increase tourism and economic development opportunities in the county, Senator Alexander said. For the past several years, I have been working with Governor Lee, Senator Blackburn, the Conservation Fund, Cocke and Sevier county officials, state representatives and officials from the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and the Cherokee National Forest to develop mountain bike and hiking trails along the undeveloped section of the Foothills Parkway in Cocke County. We heard some really good ideas in our roundtables, and thanks to this funding from the Appalachian Regional Commission, those are ideas are going to become a reality.



Cocke County is very grateful to the Appalachian Regional Commission for this award. We are so appreciative to the vision and foresight of Senator Alexander, our state leaders, the Conservation Fund, the Cherokee National Forest and Great Smoky Mountains National Park. This collective effort will benefit Cocke County for decades to come, Cocke County Mayor Crystal Ottinger and Partnership President Lucas Graham said.



Officials said, "The Foothills Parkway is in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Senator Alexander attended the ribbon cutting for the newest section of the Foothills Parkway in November 2018. There are currently 33.5 miles of undeveloped road in the Foothills Parkway between Wears Valley in Sevier County and Cosby in Cocke County. Senator Alexander has been working with federal, state and local officials over the past few years to develop recreational opportunities such as bike trails and hiking trails so people can experience the Smokies while we wait for funding for the road construction along the remaining miles of the undeveloped section."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 22:18:00|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Wang Ke (R) hands over anti-epidemic supplies donated by the Chinese government to Mabula Mchembe, permanent secretary of Tanzanian Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, May 15, 2020. (Xinhua)

DAR ES SALAAM, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese embassy in Tanzania on Friday handed over the first batch of anti-epidemic supplies donated by the Chinese government to help the east African nation fight COVID-19.

The supplies include 2,000 N95 protective masks for medical use, 10,000 surgical masks, 10,000 surgical gloves, 10,000 medical isolation shoe covers, 2,000 pieces of protective clothing, 2,000 medical protective goggles and 500 infrared thermometers.

Chinese Ambassador to Tanzania Wang Ke handed over the medical supplies to Mabula Mchembe, permanent secretary of the Ministry of Health, Community Development, Gender, Elderly and Children, in Tanzania's commercial capital, Dar es Salaam.

Wang said she hopes the supplies will be swiftly distributed to healthcare workers to enable them to be better equipped to treat COVID-19 patients and save lives.

The ambassador said the China-Tanzania joint fight against COVID-19 is the epitome of China-Africa relationship.

"Currently, COVID-19 is still spreading in Africa, and the situation is becoming increasingly serious, which poses a severe threat to people's lives and health," Wang said.

Mchembe, the permanent secretary, thanked the Chinese government for the supplies which he said will provide relief to healthcare workers on the frontline of fighting COVID-19.

He also thanked private health facilities for their good cooperation with the government in treating COVID-19 patients as well as patients suffering from other diseases. Enditem
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BETHESDA, Md., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Broad Street Realty, Inc. (OTC:BRST) today provided an update on the impact of COVID-19 on the Company's business.

"In light of these unprecedented times, we thought it was important to provide a general update on the impact of COVID-19 on the operations of Broad Street Realty," commented Chief Executive Officer and Chairman, Michael Z. Jacoby. "The health and safety of our coworkers, tenants and communities are Broad Street's top priority. Given the importance of the role that our necessity-focused shopping centers play in the communities we serve, we have been carefully monitoring the impact of COVID-19 and have been taking proactive measures to maintain the strength of our business and ensure the continuity of operations as local conditions permit."

Early on during this pandemic, the Company established a temporary COVID-19 impact response team to be proactive and anticipate issues arising as a result of the pandemic. The Company has worked hard to maintain an open line of communication with its tenants and offer assistance where possible, including helping them identify local, state and federal resources that may be available to support their businesses and employees. The Company has had a number of tenants request various forms of rent relief, which the Company is evaluating on a case-by-case basis.

As of May 14, 2020, the Company had collected 70% of contractual rent due for the month of April and 53% of contractual rent due for the month of May, and the Company had agreed to defer 20% of contractual rent due for the month of April and 23% of contractual rent due for the month of May. Collections and rent deferrals to date may not be indicative of collections or rent deferrals in any future period.

"The impact of COVID-19 is real and significant," said Mr. Jacoby. "The pandemic has caused interruptions and slowdowns in our and our tenants' businesses, as well as our ability to complete the seven pending mergers with Broad Street entities. I am proud of the entire Broad Street team that is working hard each day to manage our business, and we will continue to actively monitor the implications of COVID-19 on our and our tenants' businesses and take further actions that are in the best interests of our employees, tenants and stockholders. It is our intention to provide all of our stakeholders with additional information when we report our results for 2019 and the first quarter of 2020. We thank all for your patience."

About Broad Street Realty, Inc.

Broad Street Realty, Inc. is a fully integrated and self-managed real estate company that owns, operates, develops and redevelops primarily grocery-anchored shopping centers and mixed-use properties in the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast and Denver, Colorado markets. Broad Street is also a market-leading commercial real estate services firm that delivers cost-effective solutions for office, industrial and retail clients. The company has extensive experience in tenant representation, landlord representation, property acquisition and disposition, real estate development, project/construction management, finance, strategic consulting, property management and asset management.

Forward-Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the U.S. federal securities laws. These statements are based on current expectations of the Company's management with respect to the matters described in this press release. While the Company's management believes the assumptions underlying its forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, such information is necessarily subject to uncertainties and may involve certain risks, many of which are difficult to predict and are beyond the control of the Company's management. These risks include, but are not limited to: uncertainties related to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the unknown duration and economic, operational and financial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic and the actions taken or contemplated by U.S. and local governmental authorities or others in response to the pandemic on the Company's business, employees and tenants, including, among others, (i) changes in tenant demand for the Company's properties, (ii) financial challenges confronting tenants, including as a result of decreased customers' willingness to frequent, and mandated stay in place orders that have prevented customers from frequenting, some of the Company's tenants' businesses and the impact of these issues on the Company's ability to collect rent from its tenants; (iii) operational changes implemented by the Company, including remote working arrangements, which may put increased strain on the Company's IT systems and create increased vulnerability to cybersecurity incidents, (iv) adverse impacts on the Company's liquidity and access to financing on attractive terms, or at all, and (v) prolonged measures to contain the spread of COVID-19 or the premature easing of government-imposed restrictions implemented to contain the spread of COVID-19; the inability to complete the remaining mergers due to the failure to satisfy other conditions to completion of the remaining mergers, including the financing condition and obtaining consent from the requisite lenders, or otherwise; the ability to recognize the benefits of the mergers; the Company's substantial leverage as a result of indebtedness incurred and preferred equity issued in connection with the mergers, which could adversely affect the Company's ability to pay cash dividends and meet other cash needs; the Company's ability to repay, refinance, restructure and/or extend its indebtedness as it comes due; the availability of financing and capital to the Company; the Company's ability to identify, finance, consummate and integrate additional acquisitions or investments; adverse economic or real estate developments, either nationally or in the markets in which the Company's properties are located; adverse changes in financial markets or interest rates; the nature and extent of competition for tenants and acquisitions; other factors affecting the retail industry or the real estate industry generally; and other risks that are set forth under "Risk Factors" in MedAmerica's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2018, and other documents filed by the Company with the Securities and Exchange Commission from time to time. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. All subsequent written and oral forward-looking statements attributable to us or any person acting on our behalf are qualified by the cautionary statements in this section. Except as otherwise may be required by law, the Company undertakes no obligation to update or publicly release any revisions to forward-looking statements to reflect events, circumstances or changes in expectations after the date of this press release.

SOURCE Broad Street Realty, Inc.

Related Links

http://www.broadstreetllc.net


ATLANTIS, Fla.  The priests cellphone buzzed again.

An hour earlier that day, April 1, he had given last rites to yet another COVID-19 patient at JFK Medical Center. But now he was needed again.

So the Rev. Gabriel Ghanoum repeated his routine  solemn, courageous and tragically all too familiar  as a humble and technologically savvy hospital chaplain on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

He slipped his freshly scrubbed hands inside surgical gloves. He pulled a hospital gown over his clerics collar. He shrouded his face with protective masks.

Father Gabriel Ghanoum, chaplain at JFK Medical Center in south Florida, prepares to enter the room of a dying patient in April.

And as he walked into a room where the only sounds were the woosh and hum of a ventilator, he pulled out his smartphone. It was sealed inside a clear sandwich bag.

Pressing buttons through plastic, he dialed a woman in Austin, Texas, patched in her brother in Atlanta and put them on speakerphone.

With his left hand, he raised the phone above the face of Tom Craciun, 77, a champion swimmer now in the final moments of a battle with the disease.

His gloved right hand holding Craciuns, he recited the Sacrament of the Sick  "Our Lord Jesus Christ who promised through the apostle James, is there anyone sick among you? ... "

When he finished, he stood in silence. And the voices of grieving children and grandchildren, crying out of his phone from the seclusion of their homes in two states, said final goodbyes.

Then the priest hung up. Alone now with a nurse and the patient, he sang through his face mask a spiritual hymn  "I have decided to follow Jesus ... no turning back ... the world behind me, the cross before me. ..."

I kept singing until his last breath, he said.

About an hour later, the priests phone would buzz again.

Like he came down from heaven

Father Gabriel, as Ghanoum has come to be known in his nine years as JFK's hospital chaplain, has the name of an angel, and that's exactly what he is to many grieving relatives barred from the hospital by strict visitor policies.

Story continues

The most wonderful priest, like he came down from heaven, Craciuns daughter, Nancy Jean Pierce, would later say.

But Father Gabriel is also a mortal, 67-year-old man not immune to an invisible disease that has killed more than 100 people in Palm Beach County since March 14.

Every experience is very humbling and very powerful, he said, because you come to know the legacies, the stories, of the dying, but also of the living. You become the spiritual and emotional archivist.

Its dangerous, too.

The moment you have fear, then you cannot be near, he said. You have to have trust in what you are doing. The main goal is bringing in the family that cannot see their loved ones and telling them, We are in it together. You are not alone.

No one dies alone

At many hospitals, chaplains offer counsel and prayer from the safety of a phone or from behind a door.

Ghanoum prefers a more creative approach, one that uses technology to both prevent what he calls the disease of separation and promote JFKs motto during the crisis: No one dies alone.

Father Gabriel Ghanoum talks about his role in palliative care and last rites at JFK Medical Center during an interview at St. Nicolas Melkite Greek Catholic Church in Delray Beach, Fla., on April 15, 2020.

Using his smartphone and apps like Zoom and FaceTime as clerical instruments, Ghanoum serves as the emotional proxy between the dying and their immediate family, who can virtually watch or listen as last rites are administered.

Yes, Ghanoum acknowledges, the process requires him to stand beside contagious patients. But other members of JFKs team are already doing that.

If the nurses and doctors and respiratory techs are on the front line, I should be there, too, he said.

He covers up in a medical gown, bunny suit, and two face masks, including an N95 mask.

In his pocket, in a blessing bag, he carries a rosary blessed in Rome. It gives him strength.

His presence at JFK inspires doctors and nurses, many of whom have been reduced to tears by COVIDs unrelenting toll. Some pray with Ghanoum during their shifts.

I am always in awe of him, said Rabbi Joanna Tract, a member of JFKs palliative care team.

Earthquake survivor

The coronavirus pandemic isn't the first time he has faced death.

In 1985, Ghanoum was a 32-year-old bank executive based in Mexico City. After midnight one day in September, he returned home late from a business trip, restless from jet lag. At 6:30 a.m., after tossing and turning, he decided to head to his office downtown, about 30 minutes away, to check messages and grab breakfast.

I didnt have to work that day, he said, but I followed my instincts. Something was telling me to move.

As he approached downtown, he heard what sounded like a bomb exploding. As buildings were collapsing from the violence of a 8.0-magnitude earthquake, he jumped from his car and ran to a nearby museum for protection.

The quake lasted 13 seconds and killed more than 5,000 people.

After pulling survivors from the rubble, he learned that his own house had been destroyed, his dog crushed by the collapse of a building next door.

He wondered what might have happened to him if he had fallen asleep the night before.

The earthquake in Mexico was a turning point for me, he said. I was questioning the purpose and meaning of my life.

The idea of the priesthood, which he had considered as a teenager, took hold. By 1993, he was ordained at St. Jude Catholic Church in Miami.

I have never regretted my decision, said Ghanoum, now head pastor at St. Nicholas Catholic Church in Delray Beach.

Three in one day, twice in the same week

On April 1, he gave last rites to three patients, one before Craciun and one after.

Three days later, on April 4, he did it for three more patients, including Jose Diaz Ayala, a sergeant with the Palm Beach County Sheriffs Office. The office tweeted a photo, taken by Ghanoum, of JFK doctors and nurses standing over an American flag in Ayalas honor.

He said Ayalas relatives thanked him for his compassion and asked him to officiate at his funeral service at a later date.

A couple of days before Craciun died, at Ghanoums suggestion, Craciuns daughter and son, along with their own children, made audio recordings of their personal goodbyes to the dying man.

From their homes in Texas and Georgia, they texted the files to Ghanoum, who played the recordings on his phone, which he held next to Craciuns ear. Craciun, on a ventilator, was barely conscious, but Ghanoum said he felt the dying mans hand move as one of the grandchildren said goodbye.

I broke down, he said. I cried.

One day, when the pandemic is gone, the Craciun children plan to invite Ghanoum for dinner at her dads South Palm Beach condo.

This has been a blessing and a very humbling experience, Ghanoum said.

This story is not about me, he said. This is about we  how you can do good and see good in others. I hope it can inspire other people to do good in the world.

Support journalism: Stories like this are possible because of our subscribers

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Priest links grieving families with dying coronavirus patients
Gargling with mouthwash may prevent infected patients spreading the coronavirus, scientists have claimed. (Getty Images)

Scientists from Cardiff University are calling for research into whether high-street mouthwashes could reduce the spread of the coronavirus.

The virus is surrounded by a fatty membrane. The scientists have argued the membranes of similar pathogens were disrupted when exposed to ingredients commonly found in mouthwashes, like ethanol, povidone-iodine and cetylpyridinium.

Gargling with mouthwash could inactivate the coronavirus in the throat, helping to prevent it spreading via coughs and sneezes, they added.

Although it is unclear whether this would be the case, the team argued there has been no discussion on the potential role of mouthwash in combatting the outbreak.

Early research suggests the coronavirus is mild in four out of five cases, however, it can trigger a respiratory disease called COVID-19.

Alexander Nubel, goalkeeper of Bundesliga football team FC Schalke 04, wears a mask in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. (Getty Images)

Coronavirus: Urgent need to test potential of mouthwash

Safe use of mouthwash  as in gargling  has so far not been considered by public health bodies in the UK, said Professor Valerie ODonnell, lead author of a paper on the subject.

In test tube experiments and limited clinical studies, some mouthwashes contain enough of known virucidal ingredients to effectively target lipids in similar viruses.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world

Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area

Explained: Symptoms, latest advice and how it compares to the flu

What we dont know yet is whether existing mouthwashes are active against the lipid membrane of [the coronavirus].

Our review of the literature suggests research is needed as a matter of urgency to determine its potential for use against this new virus.

This is an under-researched area of major clinical need and we hope research projects will be quickly mobilised to further evaluate this.

Coronavirus: Relatively dilute ethanol could be highly effective

Studies have suggested the coronavirus replicates in the salivary glands and throat, the scientists wrote in the journal Function.

Story continues

They argued the pathogen is highly sensitive to agents that disrupt lipid bio-membranes.

The circulating coronavirus is one of seven strains of a virus class that are known to infect humans.

Other strains cause everything from the common cold to severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars), which killed 774 people during its 2002/3 outbreak.

The scientists argued past research has demonstrated inactivation of coronaviruses by biocidal agents.

Mouthwashes vary widely in composition, with an ethanol content that typically ranges from 14% to 27%.

Ethanol  the chemical compound in alcohol  has been shown to kill fellow coronaviruses severa acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) and Middle East respiratory syndrome (Mers) at concentrations of 60% or higher, like in hand sanitisers.

The scientists set out to uncover the effectiveness of oral-based ethanol solutions at dampening or reducing viral load.

They concluded there is a paucity of data on whether lower, and therefore less toxic, ethanol concentrations inactivate viruses with a fatty membrane.

Most studies simply reiterate the use of higher concentrations.

One 2007 paper found 20% ethanol completely inactivated three viruses in the laboratory.

In 2017, scientists found exposing a coronavirus to 34% ethanol completely prevented subsequent viral replication.

Research has also suggested low-concentration ethanol can kill off viruses like herpes and flu when combined with anti-viral essential oils.

These studies indicate that relatively dilute ethanol will be highly effective against enveloped viruses, wrote the Cardiff scientists.

However, there is an urgent need to determine how coronaviruses are impacted by dilute alcohol under biologically-relevant conditions (mucosa, mouth etc), and whether in combination with non-toxic, membrane-disrupting agents, oral inactivation of [the coronavirus] could be achieved.

They argued existing mouthwashes  and those specifically-tailored to combat the infection  could be tested in the laboratory, clinical trials and at-home settings.

We highlight that already published research on other enveloped viruses, including [other strains of] coronaviruses, directly supports the idea that further research is needed on whether oral rinsing could be considered as a potential way to reduce transmission of [the coronavirus], wrote the scientists.

The team stressed, however, it is unclear whether mouthwashes would have any effect. Safety and length of exposure also need to be investigated.

While we await potential studies, they insisted the public continue to adhere to official guidance on how to ward off infection.

People should continue to follow the preventive measures issued by the UK government, including washing hands frequently and maintaining social distance, said Prof ODonnell.

A healthcare worker wears a mask in Gregorio Maranon Hospital in Madrid. (Getty Images)

What is the coronavirus?

Since the coronavirus outbreak was identified, more than 4.3 million cases have been confirmed worldwide, according to Johns Hopkins University.

Of these cases, over 1.5 million are known to have recovered.

Globally, the death toll has exceeded 297,400.

The coronavirus mainly spreads face to face via infected droplets expelled in a cough or sneeze.

There is also evidence it is transmitted in faeces and can survive on surfaces.

Symptoms include fever, cough and slight breathlessness.

The coronavirus has no set treatment, with most patients naturally fighting off the infection.

Those requiring hospitalisation are given supportive care, like ventilation, while their immune system gets to work.
(Natural News) A total of 2.981 million Americans filed for unemployment insurance this past week, the Department of Labor reported Thursday. The figure raises the eight-week total for jobless claims to more than 36 million, by far the biggest loss in U.S. history.

Last week was the sixth straight week in which new jobless claims have fallen. However, claims remain elevated at a level that dwarfs that of the largest week of U.S. job losses following the 2008 financial crisis where 665,000 claims were filed.

They remain grotesquely high by all but the most recent standards, Ian Shepherdson of Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a note. In the worst single week after the crash of 2008, claims reached just 665,000.

The recent nonfarm payroll report showed a U.S. economy ravaged by the coronavirus pandemic. Talking to Business Insider Thursday, Nick Bunker, an economist at Indeed, explained that the numbers reflected the continued deterioration of the labor market. (Related: Moodys warns new coronavirus wave will plunge US economy into depression.)

Continued claims also continue to surge

In addition to initial jobless claims, continued claims  those who have been approved for unemployment filing each week for their benefits  have also continued to surge. According to Labor Department data, continued claims hit nearly 23 million in the week that ended on April 25 (continued claims data lags behind initial claims by a week).

Historically, the sum in initial jobless claims between survey periods vastly surpasses the change in continuing claims, and the latter tracks much more closely with the change in the number of unemployed especially during recession, wrote Bank of America economists led by Alexander Lin in a May 6 note.

Continued claims numbers will be important for this reason going forward. These numbers show how many Americans are dealing with extended periods of unemployment. This can have massive repercussions on consumer sentiment and spending.

Consumer spending is a cornerstone of the U.S. economy. With this in mind, getting people working and earning money as quickly as possible will be key in any recovery.

Last weeks job report showed that the U.S. economy lost 20.5 million payrolls during the month and sent the unemployment rate to 14.7 percent, its highest since the Great Depression. However, even the staggering count was most likely an undercount of the full scope of the devastation caused by restrictions meant to stimy the spread of the pandemic.

In March, the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis projected that the unemployment rate would reach 32 percent by the second quarter. This would set a record high, beating the estimated 24.9 percent unemployment rate set during the Great Depression.

Reopenings may help keep the depression short

While the totals for both initial and continuing claims remain high, economists expect the employment outlook to brighten up somewhat as more states begin loosening their restrictions.

With most states only beginning to ease their lockdowns within the last 10 days, we expect a much bigger swing in hiring versus firing over the next couple of weeks, which suggests the unemployment rate will begin to drop back, stated Capital Economics chief U.S. economist Paul Ashworth.

Last Fridays jobs report also contained a silver lining that could give a glimmer of hope for the labor market. During the month of April, there were 18.1 million people who were classified as on temporary layoff. This is a tenfold increase from the previous month.

This means that these workers think they have jobs waiting for them once the economy reopens.

If thats true, then thisll be the shortest depression in history, said Robert Frick, a corporate economist with Navy Federal Credit Union, to Business Insider.

Sources include:

CNBC.com

BusinessInsider.com
Clare Goslant was in search of an affordable place to live in Washington, when she took time off between her junior and senior years at Harvard for an internship with the World Wildlife Fund.

What she found was the International Student House, a community of young students and interns in the district that provides dormitory-style accommodations and two meals a day.

It was there where she also found Alex Plum, who was in a masters program in East Asian studies at Georgetowns foreign-service school.

There was a group of girls, all the same age  21 or 22  we all had a bit of a crush on him, but thought he was dating someone else in the house, said Ms. Goslant, 26. I sent him a text message asking if hed want to go out sometime.
Two hundred years ago 5,000 people from Britain were settled in the south eastern part of South Africa in an area around present-day Makhanda and Port Alfred, then called the 'Zuurveld', by the British colonial authorities. To some South Africans (and particularly to many of their descendants) they are heroised as having brought development and 'civilization' to the area.

But should South Africa celebrate or mourn their arrival and legacy?

The settlers were allotted land which African people had occupied for millenia. The western Cape of South Africa had long experienced the dispossession of indigenous land under the regime of merchant capitalism of the Dutch East India Company from the mid 1600s . But British colonialism ushered in powerful and devastating new dynamics.

From roughly the 1770s, wandering Dutch-speaking farmers tried to settle east of the Cape Colony. But for 40 years, their new and strong neighbours, the amaXhosa, resisted their efforts. They fought each other in 100 years of wars, which left the Xhosa weakened .

Once the British took over in 1806, via diplomatic agreements in Europe, everything changed. In the first great removal in South African history, the Xhosa were dispossessed. It began with the expulsion of 1811/1812. What followed was an additional 70 years of war.

The Zuurveld was the crucible of South African history in the sense of being the area where the country's diverse peoples first encountered each other. It was also the crucible of settler capitalism.

So what should we do with this 200th anniversary? It offers an invitation to sober reflection on where South Africa has travelled as a nation over two centuries and how the savage inequalities established in the past, continue in its present.

Scorched earth policy

This first round of expulsion was particularly cruel. Crops were destroyed, cattle confiscated, homes burnt. This led to 20,000 people under Chief Ndlambe's leadership being forced across the Fish River and later the Keiskamma and ultimately the Kei.

This 'scorched earth policy' has been described by the victors as 'a superbly executed campaign' .

British colonialism drove this process of dispossession, employing unprecedented levels of force which soon led to yet another war. As tensions escalated, the British simply went over the borders and seized Xhosa cattle. At the beginning of 1818, the largest to date of such raids saw 2,000 head of cattle taken. By November that year, the number of cattle taken by force from the amaXhosa in yet another raid was 23,000.

The ensuing fifth 'frontier war' in 1819 left the British once again as military victors. The colonial forces nominally controlled the old Zuurveld, as well as new stretches of land beyond the Fish River boundary.

By then, experience had shown that the amaXhosa would not simply stay away from their former homes by diplomatic agreement. The conquered land could only be maintained in British hands by filling it up with its own people.

In other parts of the empire indirect rule, using indigenous leadership, often worked. But this had proven impossible in the borderline areas of the Eastern Cape. The settlement of the 5,000 British in 1820 was a direct outcome of the latest war. It was to be the largest settler scheme undertaken in the whole of the colonial era.

After 1820 a small elite group of British settlers built on this process to create a new and savage social order: settler capitalism.

Settler capitalism

Capitalism involves the process whereby both the means of production and labour become commodities. While in this case the initial dispossession was driven by colonialism, the process of commoditisation was driven by an elite that developed their own brand of settler capitalism.

Deeply embedded in British colonialism, these settler elites soon articulated and perpetuated a virulent racism. It followed hot on the tail of the most massive attack the amaXhosa had ever waged against the Colony. On Christmas Eve 1834, 12,000 to 15,000 armed invaders crossed the full length of the Fish River boundary in one huge wave. They burnt settler farmhouses, killed the occupants and confiscated livestock.

It was an all-out attempt to get rid of the unwelcome neighbours. Most of the direct engagements in the Zuurveld forced the British settlers to abandon virtually the whole country east of Algoa Bay, saving only the towns of Grahamstown and Fort Beaufort. The Xhosa now carried guns as well as their assegais and shields.

But in 1835 the colonial forces soon went on the offensive and cleared the Xhosa not only out of the Zuurveld area once again, but also from strictly Xhosa-occupied lands further east. They suffered severely when the British applied the same strategy as in 1811  a scorched earth policy which destroyed their economic base.

As a result, many were reduced to eating herbs and roots and forced to seek employment in the Colony from the very people who had destroyed them. Once again, the large-scale importation of British troops secured a military victory for them after nine months of fighting.

A militarised racism

The deep-seated racism of settler capitalism was linked to war. The war of 1834-35 was the first in which the settlers participated, and it created a particularly vitriolic racism. In the words of one of the settler elite, Mitford Bowker, the Xhosa were 'ruthless, worthless savages' .

The landscape around Grahamstown was the scene of many violent encounters in the wars of dispossession and the settler elite were directly involved as soldiers, as a source of supplies to the British forces and as members of the colonial administration. They had the most to gain, in the form of new lands available for their own use. Some of these same people made small fortunes as war profiteers and war mongers. Overall, as Timothy Keegan wrote , the British settler elite, were marked as exhibiting acquisitive, warmongering propensities.

This settler elite promoted their personal economic interests. They did so initially through the occupation and commoditisation of Xhosa land and through establishing and extending lucrative trading networks. Land speculation was extensive and involved buying up conquered lands and establishing sheep and cattle farms. Cattle sales and wool exports became the basis of many settler fortunes. Between 1837 and 1845 property prices in the Eastern Cape quadrupled .

Settler capitalism also involved the incorporation and exploitation of the amaXhosa as wage labourers.

The war of 1835 resulted in the importation of 16,000 amaMfengu as cheap labour for the colonists, while the war of 1846 concluded with major labour recruitment among the defeated amaXhosa . Settler capitalism also involved the establishment of the financial institutions and infrastructure to promote speculation and trade.

The new social order that emerged was defined by racism, primitive accumulation and 'free' labour. It involved a continual displacement and transformation of social relations. What historian Clifton Crais calls 'racial capitalism' ,

tore up communally based societies and began to replace them with a single colonial order.

It is not hard to see the roots of the 20th century apartheid policies in the legacy of the settlers. From 1811, they advocated total domination and geographical separation along race and colour lines. Over the entire 19th century, the principles of dispossession, accumulation and domination grew and affected more and more land and people.

The Society, Work & Politics Institute (SWOP) receives funding from the Ford Foundation.

Julia Wells does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

By Jacklyn Cock, Professor Emerita in Sociology and Honorary Research Professor in SWOP, University of the Witwatersrand And

Julia Wells, Associate Professor Emeritus and Head, Isikhumbuzo Applied History Unit, Rhodes University
Nitin Gadkari, in conversation with Firstost, says, India must evolve to adapt the art of living with the coronavirus

Nitin Gadkari, Union minister of road transport and highways and micro, small and medium enterprises is known as a doer.

The highways, built by NHAI are major employment generators. But as the traffic remains absent from those wide four-lane roads due to the nationwide lockdown, focus shifts to the plight of migrant workers who are forced to take the journey to their homes on foot.

In such a scenario, Prime Minister Narendra Modis thrust on MSME sector to protect jobs and small businesses, places premium on Gadkaris role. He has to play a critical role in nations bid to revive the economy and take steps towards the building of an Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India).

In the times of pandemic, he is someone who has quickly adapted to the latest technology to continue his ministerial responsibilities. He interacts with stakeholders throughout the country by holding several video conferences, taking their feedback and addressing their issues.

He firmly believes that India has the capacity and the grit to not just fight the current pandemic, but also to take the country to the next level in the times to come. He says, "at this stage we need to evolve art of living with the coronavirus."

In an exclusive conversation with Firstpost, he spoke at length on the prevailing situation, challenges and opportunities ahead. Here are edited excerpts from an interview conducted over Skype.

You made your mark as a top performer with the speed and scale with which you undertook construction of national highways. The highways were taken as sign of new India, faster lane comfortable drive but unfortunately you must have seen same highways these days are in news for thousands of people migrant workers walking on foot for hundreds of kilometers. Some numbing heart touching accidents of these migrants workers have taken place. How would you explain this dichotomy?

This is very unfortunate. I have directed NHAI to make provision for food and water for migrant workers at all toll booths. Then we had people taking a ride over trucks. This was very unfortunate. Let me tell you the reasons of it. I contacted districts, interacting with about 60 crore people. The feed which I received gave a sense that the virus has caused a great deal of fear among people. Because of this fear people have developed anxiety. They think that before the worse happens, they should get back to their native place and face the situation as it may develop out there. This fear was not only among people in lower strata of society but also among relatively well-off sections of people. We had not expected that people would start walking for long distances, begin moving in auto-rickshaw from Mumbai to places in Bihar and UP. I saw disturbing visual of people inside a mixer-truck.

How do you find a solution of this fear anxiety?

Under these circumstances it is very important that we instill a sense of self confidence among people. Positivity and self confidence are two most important things. This cant be done by the government alone, various sections of society has to come forward and media has an important role in this. This was my appeal to all those with whom I interacted. I used to assure them, Hum Honge KamyabKosish Karne wale ki Kahbi haar nahi hoti. The latter is a pick from Atal Bihari Vajpayee poem. I give them examples including that of Tenzing Sherpa and Richard Nixon.

You had given directive to NHAI to provide food and water to migrant workers. Could the NHAI have done more?

There are multiple dimensions to the issue. The government provided buses at some stages and points but then the apprehension of spread of infection was there. At this stage we need to evolve the art of living with coronavirus. I have spoken a lot about it, the hygiene and social distancing norms. Railways have started a new system of booking. This is the first experience of its kind. Nobody had seen a crisis of this kind.

NHAI is a big employer. Has highway construction work began to its capacity?

The work has started. We have resumed work on around 90 percent of projects. We have built labour camps, following social distancing and other Covid-19 norms. If work begins and people get employment, they would tend to stay where they are, and won't to their native place which they had left in search of work opportunities.

We come to the issues relating to your other ministry MSME, which is now in headlines. It is being looked up a sector which could potentially put Indian economy back on the track and even take it forward. For the first time the Centre is coming out with a focused plan. Experts are talking about it. Do you think the MSMEs can actually deliver the way it has been hyped?

See, the first thing is that MSMEs contribute 29 percent to the GDP. 48 percent of the total exports of our country is from MSMEs. So far MSMEs have created 11 crore jobs and it is my endeavor that the sector should create five crore additional jobs in next five years. Our idea is to increase the export contribution of this sector from the current 48 percent to 60 percent, and the contribution to GDP should go up to 50 percent from the existing 29 percent.

Isnt that very ambitious?

I have taken an angle that 115 aspirants districts, which are socially, educationally and economically backward need to develop at faster pace. We need to decongest cities. Build industrial clusters along the highways. Build smart cities and smart villages there. We need to provide employment locally. The villages which have gram panchayats and 10,000 people live there, can have industries. That industry could convert that village into a smart village, providing houses, school, health centre, and employment to the locals  village development clusters would be developed.

That sounds even more ambitious

I believe you originally belong to Bihar. Let me tell you a formula for Bihar. The crude oil import bill is very high. Our ethanol economy has gone to Rs 20,000 crore, it can be increased five folds to one lakh crore. Ethanol is made from sugarcane, molasses. Now I have asked them to make it from food grains and corn. We have food grain storage for next three years. We dont have more storage capacity. At some places it is rotting due to rain water and so on. If the rotten food grain is auctioned it will go up to Rs 8-9. Punjab Food Corporation has fixed base price as Rs 6.5 for rice.

One ton rice can produce 400 liters of ethanol. I am proposing to build 500 rice and corn based distilleries. The investment made in the industry would be in next four-five years. The ethanol produced would be bought by petroleum ministry. I want to put those 500 distilleries in Bihar, UP, Haryana, Punjab, states where rice is produced.

A comprehensive plan for agro industries is being prepared. Similarly there are plans for fisheries, honey and cattle farming. Nothing is waste, even toilet water is not waste. You can make use of it and also make money if you have the vision, technology and determination to do better.

PM has given a call to make Atmanirbhar Bharat. What does the term `Atmanirbhar really means for nation and how long it could take to achieve?

We have inherited twin thought of Swadeshi and Swablamban. Atmanirbhar Bharat means decreasing reliance on imports and increasing exports through up-gradation of technology. There is a difference between modernisation and westernization. We have to modernize technology, have to upgrade, export have to increased and decimate bhay, bhookh, atank aur bhrastachar (fear, hunger, terror and corruption) and give employment to people. We have to build an India which is prosperous, developed, and an economic powerhouse. The current crisis could be a blessing in disguise. There are always some people who create problems in opportunities and there are some people who create opportunities in problems.
This week, Seventh Sense Consulting LLC, a Virginia Based, Minority Owned, 8a, Service Disabled Veteran Owned Small Business (SDVOSB) specializing in full acquisition lifecycle support, program management, seta, logistics and management consulting was named #16 on the Virginia Chamber of Commerce Fantastic 50 list.

The Virginia Chamber of Commerce celebrates their 25th anniversary this year, recognizing 50 of the fastest growing businesses in the Commonwealth. To be eligible to receive this recognition, you must be a company privately held in Virginia and have shown revenues between $200,000 and $200 million. Seventh Sense has successfully demonstrated and strived to maintain a positive revenue growth and net income this fiscal year, resulting in being in the top 20 percentile of the fastest growing businesses headquartered in Virginia. Seventh Sense CEO Herb Watson said, This prestigious award is a direct reflection of all the hard work demonstrated by a number of Family members. So, I simply say thank-you!

Of the companys recent success in revenue growth and expansion of business in over 10 states, Seventh Senses vision is to provide Enlighted Solutions that deliver lasing value which is evidenced through strategic initiatives to create 100 new jobs and opportunities in 2020 for the family members across

the country.

About Seventh Sense Consulting LLC,: Seventh Sense Consulting LLC Seventh Sense Consulting, LLC was founded in 2012 with one purpose: To focus on bringing new and innovative solutions to Government agencies and helping them apply new ways to improve mission performance. Seventh Sense is a SBA 8(a) certified, SDVOSB company focused on delivery of solutions across a wide scope of Government management domains.

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Customers chat as they social distance waiting to enter Dundonald Nurseries in Belfast as Garden Centre's in Northern Ireland reopen after the lockdown. PA Photo: Liam McBurney/PA Wire

The Executive has implemented further easing of the coronavirus lockdown measures allowing bigger outdoor gatherings, private worship in churches and golf courses to open.

First Minister Arlene Foster also said she was shocked to see the Belfast Telegraph report on the parties at a city centre apartment complex.

Read More

Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill said big gatherings of people were "killing people".



Gatherings of up to six people from different households can also meet outdoors.

Private worship at churches will be allowed, after being deemed "low risk" from spreading the virus, however normal church services will not be allowed.

"Drive-in" church services can also go ahead, as will drive-in cinemas, theaters and concerts. Golf courses will also reopen.

First Minister Arlene Foster urged people to act with common sense and continue to social distance and to adhere to hygiene measures.

She said she would have liked to unlock all of stage one of the plan out of lockdown but medical advice did not allow it. She said that while it was disappointing, the matter would be kept under review. She said they hoped to allow small weddings to resume.

"These have been hard won freedoms and when you do exercise those freedoms, it is important no one else is put at risk," Arlene Foster said.

Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill noted it was two months since the first death was reported. She said there had been much progress since, but "we are not out of the woods yet".

"Public compliance and support has held firm and there is no doubt people have showed patience at this difficult time," she said, "going forward, our whole society will be alert to spreading the virus."

Ms O'Neill said the relaxations of restrictions announced are aimed at giving people hope there is light at the end of the tunnel.

The establishment of a graduate entry Medical School at Ulster Universitys Magee campus was also announced,

Earlier it was announced there have been six further Covid-19 deaths in Northern Ireland. It brings the Northern Ireland death toll to 482 people.

Read More

Northern Ireland also took its first tentative steps out of the coronavirus lockdown on Monday.

Garden centres and recycling facilities reopened, angling is also allowed again while marriage ceremonies involving someone with a terminal illness can take place.

Read More

Check out our live blog below to see how Monday's developments unfolded.
(Newser)  An American FedEx pilot has become the first foreigner jailed for breaching Singapore's strict quarantine regulations. Alaska resident Brian Yeargan, 44, and two co-pilots were told to spend 14 days isolated in an airport hotel before entering the city after arriving from Australia on April 3. They had planned to fly out on April 6but on April 5, Yeargan left his room and took a train downtown to go shopping for face masks and other equipment, the Straits Times reports. Health officials conducting a check discovered he was gone. On Wednesday, he was sentenced to four weeks in jail. Prosecutors said that during his 3-hour absence from the room, he alighted from an airport train in a busy station with around 1,000 people present before visiting four stores in a shopping mall.

story continues below

Defense lawyer Ronnie Tan says Yeargan had been quarantined because he had visited China, Hong Kong, Macau, Japan, and the US in the 14 days before he arrived in Singapore. Tan said Yeargan, who could have faced a 6-month sentence, wanted the face masks for his wife, who had been ill, the AP reports. Prosecutors said he could have asked FedEx or somebody else to obtain the items. Yeargan told the court "he made a poor judgment and that he shouldn't have gone out," Tan said. The pilot's father, Jim Yeargan, tells the Anchorage Daily News that his son is a former US Army Ranger. "That tends to make you tough," he says. "Hes taking care of himself." (Australia jailed a man for a "breathtakingly arrogant" quarantine breach.)


Madhuri Dixit Nene, the name itself sparks several emotions in ones heart. She surely knows how to swoon the audience with her graceful moves and expressions and thats the reason she still remains as relevant in the industry as ever. Madhuri reunited with two of her co-stars on the big screen last year with whom she delivered several hits before taking a sabbatical from acting back in 1999. We are talking about none other than Anil Kapoor and Sanjay Dutt. While Madhuri worked with Anil Kapoor in Total Dhamaal in 2019, she also collaborated with Sanjay Dutt on Kalank in the same year. Both these films gained a lot of popularity because of Madhuri and her reuniting with her previous co-stars. So, on her birthday today, we thought about listing down 5 of her previous co-stars we cant wait to watch her with again.
Around 53% pilgrims, who had tested positive for Covid-19 upon their return from Takht Hazur Sahib in Nanded, Maharashtra, have recovered and have been discharged from hospitals.

On Friday, 44 Covid-19 positive Nanded-returnees were discharged from the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Amritsar, and 51 patients from the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee (SGPC)-run Sri Guru Ram Dass (SGRD) Charitable Hospital.

Civil surgeon Dr Jugal Kishore said, As per the health department, 609 pilgrims had returned to Amritsar from Nanded. Around 263 pilgrims tested positive for Covid-19 at the Virus Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (VRDL) in GMC Amritsar.

Around 346 pilgrims, who had tested negative for the disease, have been quarantined in their homes after they finished their 14-day quarantine at government institutions. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

RECOVERED PATIENTS HOME QUARANTINED

Around 346 pilgrims, who had tested negative for the disease, have been quarantined in their homes after they finished their 14-day quarantine at government institutions.

Among the 263, 26 Nanded-returnees were discharged from GMCH on May 12 while 19 were discharged on May 13. On Friday, 95 more Nanded-returnees were discharged from hospitals in Amritsar, after they tested negative for Covid-19 in two consecutive RT-PCR tests, he said.

150 PATIENTS HAVE RECOVERED IN DISTRICT

Around 35,000 RT-PCR tests have been conducted in GMC Amritsar, Patiala and Faridkot. (Sameer Sehgal/HT)

Of the 301 Covid-19 patients in the district, 150 have recovered from the disease. There have been four fatalities.

Punjab medical education and research minister OP Soni said, Around 53% Nanded returnees, 140 out of 263, in Amritsar have recovered from Covid-19. The remaining patients are asymptomatic and stable. They tested positive in their re-tests but are likely to recover soon, said Soni.

Around 35,000 RT-PCR tests have been conducted in GMC Amritsar, Patiala and Faridkot. As many as 600 tests have been conducted in Amritsar in the last four days and all of them were negative, said Soni.
Mandatory Credit: Photo by Polaris/SIPA/Shutterstock (10034013f) Governor-elect Kristi Noem of South Dakota Donald Trump meets with newly elected governors, Washington DC, USA  13 Dec 2018

Due to a wholly inadequate federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, it has largely been up to states to execute their own plans to protect residents. State responses have varied widely, largely divided by party line: Democratic governors have imposed more restrictions and protections, while Republican governors have tended toward looser regulations and a decide for yourself mentality. South Dakota is one of just eight states whose governors chose not to issue stay-at-home orders. As a result, two South Dakota tribes, the Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux Tribes, have taken matters into their own hands when it comes to protecting their members and their land from the deadly virus, setting up checkpoints on roads leading to their reservations. Now, Gov. Kristi Noem is threatening to take legal action against the tribes if they do not remove the checkpoints, continuing her history of antagonizing Native people in her state.

In early April, both tribes set up checkpoints as part of their emergency response to the spread of COVID-19, hoping to keep the virus out of their communities. Both are sovereign nations and the state holds no authority over tribal lands in South Dakota, unless tribes expressly grant it to them; there are nine Native tribes in South Dakota, all of which predate both South Dakotas statehood and the founding of the United States.

And, the checkpoints seem to be working  while the rest of the states deals with rising numbers of infections, confirmed cases on the reservations are low, with just one on the Cheyenne River reservation and two on Oglalas Pine Ridge. As one of our elders said, You dont lock the door once the wolf is in the room  you lock it before it gets in. Thats our philosophy, Remi Bald Eagle, the intergovernmental affairs coordinator for Cheyenne River, told The Guardian.

Instead of following their lead, Gov. Noem is threatening to sue the tribes. Last Friday, Noem said they would take legal action to force the tribes to take down their checkpoints, in letters issued on her website. Noem gave a 48-hour warning and stated that checkpoints were interfering with traffic. Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Chairman Harold Frazier wrote in a response letter that protecting livelihoods during the pandemic should not be met with threats. We will not apologize for being an island of safety in a sea of uncertainty and death, Frazier said. We invite you to join us in protecting the lives of our people and those that live on this reservation.

Story continues

Today I sent letters to two South Dakota tribes asking them to immediately cease interfering with or regulating traffic on US and State Highways and remove all travel checkpoints. (1/3)  Governor Kristi Noem (@govkristinoem) May 8, 2020

Despite initial threats, in a press conference this past Tuesday, Noems language appeared to soften as she admitted that any intervention would have to be federal. But, this is not the first time the South Dakota governor has created tension with the tribes in her state. She championed a law that sought to target anyone who publicly voiced support for the protests against the Keystone XL pipeline, calling them riot boosters. That law was challenged in court last year and she was forced into a settlement. Her relationship with the tribes is so contentious, in fact, that she is banned from entering Pine Ridge.

The Cheyenne River Sioux and Oglala Sioux Tribes recognize that Indigenous populations are more vulnerable to the impacts of COVID-19 than many, as is evidenced by what is happening to the Navajo Nation right now, which is being decimated by the virus. The Nation has more cases of COVID-19 than eight states combined. Native folks suffer from health disparities, lack of resources, and high poverty rates that all make them especially susceptible.

As a member of the Oceti Sakowin, I find it unconscionable that even in the face of imminent death during a earth-shattering pandemic, Noem appear[s] to be more offended by being told no by tribesand concerned with asserting colonial dominancethan abiding by treaty law under the Constitution, Ruth Hopkins writes at The Appeal. We will not assist the governor in normalizing mass death and using the people of South Dakota as guinea pigs. We are the people of Sitting Bull, Spotted Elk, and Crazy Horse. We were here before European invaders arrived and we fully intend to be here after Western civilization has gone the way of the dinosaur.



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How This Writer Is Helping Navajo People Right Now

Wisconsin's Supreme Court Overturns State Lockdown

Stop Calling Coronavirus "The Great Equalizer"
Undocumented immigrants who live in California and did not qualify for Washington's $2trillion CARES act stimulus package will be able to apply for state government aid beginning Monday.

Governor Gavin Newsom created the $75million Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project in April to provide assistance to undocumented adults who have been severely economically impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

Each applicant will be eligible for $500 and could receive as much as $1,000 depending on their household size.

The federal stimulus package passed by Congress in March excluded individuals who are unlawfully living in the United States from receiving the $1,200 individual stimulus checks and unemployment benefits.

Julio Peralta is an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala and is looking forward to applying for relief from the $75million aid package that was created by California governor Gavin Newsom to help the state's undocumented population of 2 million. Newsom is unemployed and is a parent to a 16-year old son (left) and a 12-year-old daughter (center) who suffers from spina bifida

Migrant laborers wear face masks at a field in Greenfield, California

Governor Gavin Newsom set up the $75million Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project in April to provide assistance to undocumented adults who are economically impacted by the coronavirus epidemic

In order to qualify for Newsom's state relief, which is available on a first-come, first-served basis, undocumented applicants must be over the age of 18 and demonstrate that the coronavirus epidemic has caused a financial burden in their lives.

There are at least 12million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, including two million in California. One out of every 10 employees that make up the state's work force is undocumented.

The $75million fund will be diverted to 12 community organizations, which will be tasked with distributing the money throughout California.

The economic assistance could not have come at a better time for undocumented immigrants who have been left without any source of income since California's economy was crushed by the ravaging coronavirus pandemic.

Julio Peralta, 45, is an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala who is a single father to a 16-year-old son and a 12-year-old girl who is relegated to a wheelchair because of her spina bifida condition.

The lack of work has not allowed Peralta to meet his monthly rent payment for April and May.

If approved, he hopes to use the money toward an affordable home for his family.

Another undocumented migrant, who only identified her self as Magdalena, had to step aside from her job making face masks at a factory because her mother recently fell ill.

'I haven't been working for a week now because my 74-year-old mother became ill and we don't know if it is from the coronavirus,' the 47-year-old woman said. 'My daughter took her to the clinic on Monday, but they didn't want to do the [coronavirus] exam.'

Migrant laborers prepare for exercises before the start of their work shift at a farm in California

Newsom is expecting to add $50million to the fund via donations from philanthropy organizations.

The California program is the second in the nation that has stepped up its efforts to provide financial assistance to the undocumented population, many of whom pay taxes but are still not allowed to enjoy the same benefits that pertain to legally employed residents.

In late April, several community organizations in Colorado raised $250,000, which was used to provide $1,000 checks to 250 undocumented residents across the state.

The money was raised by Denver Foundation, the Glendale-based Rose Community Foundation, 30 individuals and a private donor. The Village Exchange Center, Denver charity fund Impact Charitable, the Denver Foundation and the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition distributed the funds.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi brushed off GOP complaints about the size of the latest coronavirus package leaders are bringing to a vote Friday, saying it is smaller than the 2017 Trump tax cuts.

She spoke hours before the House was to vote on the $3 trillion measure  which provides $1 trillion in relief to state and local governments hard hit by the coronavirus, while providing for another round of $1,200 payments to taxpayers.

'This will make a remarkable difference for them to defray the cost of the coronavirus but also to offset the revenue loss they have from the coronavirus,' Pelosi told MSNBC Thursday night. 'This amount of money is not as much as Republicans put forth for their tax scam bill,' she said in reference to the 2017 tax cuts.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 06:11:06|Editor: huaxia

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GENEVA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The coordinated response to coronavirus crisis has reinforced the tie between Switzerland and European Union (EU), Ignazio Cassis, head of the Swiss Federal Department of Foreign Affairs, said Friday.

"We have cooperated a lot with our neighbors on very concrete issues, we got along well and I hope this will leave traces in our relations," he was cited by Swiss broadcasting company RTS as saying on Friday.

According to the information from the Swiss Government, Switzerland has helped 2,000 European citizens return home with its repatriation flights, and the hospitalization of French patients in Switzerland also earned gratitude from its neighboring countries.

"We are in a global crisis which requires a global response," stressed Cassis, "all alone, we are too weak, we need others."

As virus shutdowns relaxed, Switzerland has decided to reopen the borders with France, Germany and Austria from June 15.

So far, the COVID-19 case tally in Switzerland has reached 30,514, and the death toll stands at 1,595. Enditem
The 12 signs in the zodiac calendar have their own traits that define a person. The positions of the sun and the planets decide how the day will look for us. Wouldnt it then be helpful if you started your day by knowing what s going to come your way? Go on and find out if the odds are in your favour today:

* Aries (March 21-April 20): The possession of a property booked by you may take some more time. Performing exceptionally well in a competitive situation on the academic front is foretold. Those feeling low on the financial front will manage to improve their position. Some developments on the professional front are likely to favour you. Those conscious of their physique are likely to join a gym. You will come closer to spouse as differences begin to disappear.

Love Focus: Those seeking romance can expect to get lucky, as cupid smiles on them!

Lucky Colour: Dark Grey

Lucky Alphabet: R

Lucky Numbers: 1,3,4

Friendly Zodiac Today: Aries & Cancer

Be careful of: Taurus

* Taurus (April 21-May 20): A good bargain on the property front may come your way, so dont remain indecisive. You will remain favourably poised on the academic front. A favourable day is foreseen for those playing the stocks. Those in the promotion zone can expect the outcome to be positive. You will be totally geared up for a family member who needs medical attention. Certain developments on the family front will be most exciting.

Love Focus: Those romantically inclined are certain to find someone to enjoy the day.

Lucky Colour: Lemon

Lucky Alphabet: A

Lucky Numbers: 2, 5, 9

Friendly Zodiac Today: Cancer & Virgo

Be careful of: Aries

* Gemini (May 21-June 21): Going on a vacation with family will prove immensely exciting. A property is likely to come into your possession soon. You are likely to fare well on the academic front. Repayment of a loan taken for property is not likely to pose any problems. Things progress most satisfactorily on the professional front. You are likely to enjoy good health, even if you are feeling a bit under the weather at present.

Love Focus: You are likely to take your romance to the next level.

Lucky Colour: Blue

Lucky Alphabet: B

Lucky Numbers: 3, 6, 8

Friendly Zodiac Today: Libra & Sagittarius

Be careful of: Cancer

* Cancer (June 22-July 22): Those planning a vacation can expect a fabulous time with their dear ones. Renting out property on lucrative terms is foreseen for house owners. Your fondest wishes are likely to be fulfilled on the academic front. Money invested in the past promises to bring good returns. Being entrusted with an important assignment on the professional front will be a feather in your cap. Meditation and yoga will come in handy to counter stress, but you will have to be regular. An outing with friends and family is in the pipeline.

Love Focus: Someone who is interested in you on the romantic front may give come hither looks, so dont miss out on the opportunity!

Lucky Colour: Forest Green

Lucky Alphabet: M

Lucky Numbers: 2, 5, 4

Friendly Zodiac Today: Sagittarius & Aquarius

Be careful of: Gemini

* Leo (July 23-August 23): A decision regarding a disputed property will be in your favour. Someones guidance may prove a godsend on the academic front and bail you out from a tight situation. Some positive steps taken on the financial front are likely to pay rich dividends. Your efforts on the professional front will come in for praise. A respite from bodily ailments is foreseen as the phase of perfect health commences.

Love Focus: Romantic feelings are likely to be shared by the one you love, so expect a scintillating time!

Lucky Colour: Turquoise

Lucky Alphabet: P

Lucky Numbers: 3,8

Friendly Zodiac Today: Aquarius & Aries

Be careful of: Virgo

* Virgo (August 24-September 23): Shopping with family will be fun, but it will be mostly window shopping! Property owned by you is likely to give good monetary returns. Best options are likely to be made available to you on the academic front.

Priority work facing you will be completed successfully. Some of you may spend the money given to you for some essential purchases on your own interests.

Love Focus: A love at first sight situation cannot be ruled out for some, so get set for a whirlwind romance!

Lucky Colour: Cream

Lucky Alphabet: T

Lucky Numbers: 9, 7, 2

Friendly Zodiac Today: Aries & Gemini

Be careful of: Leo

* Libra (September 24-October 23): Domestic front brightens up with the arrival of a good news from a relative or a close friend. A property matter, pending for long, will proceeds smoothly. You will be comfortable as far as finances are concerned. You may get a pat on the back at work for something that you have achieved. Desire for good physique may motivate some to join a gym or start an exercise regimen.

Love Focus: Newlyweds are likely to find togetherness most fulfilling.

Lucky Colour: Yellow

Lucky Alphabet: A

Lucky Numbers: 1, 7, 3

Friendly Zodiac Today: Gemini & Leo

Be careful of: Scorpio

* Scorpio (October 24-November 22): Value of property owned by you is likely to escalate, so expect good returns to flow in. A scholarship or monetary compensation can be expected by some on the academic front. Some of you will need to consolidate your position financially. Chance to impress those who matter at work, may come to you. You will be able to keep yourself slim and trim by regular exercises. Domestic issues will be sorted out amicably..

Love Focus: Much sharing and caring can be expected by those in love.

Lucky Colour: Dark Green

Lucky Alphabet: D

Lucky Numbers: 7,2,6

Friendly Zodiac Today: Virgo & Sagittarius

Be careful of: Libra

* Sagittarius (November 23-December 21): You will help ease the domestic atmosphere with your wit and humour today. A property deal proves profitable, as you get it much below the market price. You will have enough money to translate your ideas into action. Your work on the professional front may come in for praise by those who matter. Some of you may go in for a lifestyle change for the sake of health and benefit.

Love Focus: Happiness on the love front is assured, as you find yourself much closer to lover, than before.

Lucky Colour: Purple

Lucky Alphabet: L

Lucky Numbers: 3, 6, 9

Friendly Zodiac Today: Sagittarius & Pisces

Be careful of: Capricorn

* Capricorn (December 22-January 21): Some of you may enrol into some courses for higher studies. Property owners are set to get handsome returns from property. Someones help on the academic front will prove a godsend. Your foresight will help conserve money. You will manage to overcome stiff competition on the business front and be able to hold your own. An ailment is likely to show signs of abating. Family will be more than responsive to your needs.

Love Focus: Beloved is certain to brighten up your day by doing something special.

Lucky Colour: Light Red

Lucky Alphabet: N

Lucky Numbers: 2,5,8

Friendly Zodiac Today: Aries & Gemini

Be careful of: Sagittarius

* Aquarius (January 22-February 19): You are likely to enjoy perfect health. Support from a family member will prove a blessing in disguise. A lions share is likely to come your way through inheritance. Your excellent performance may find you rubbing shoulders with the creme de la creme on the academic front.

Money flows in unabated as additional income from a different source gets generated. This is an excellent day when you achieve much, both on the personal and professional front.

Love Focus: Romantic endeavours of those looking for love will bear fruit, as someone falls for you.

Lucky Colour: Pink

Lucky Alphabet: O

Lucky Numbers: 1,4,7

Friendly Zodiac Today: Gemini & Leo

Be careful of: Pisces

* Pisces (February 20-March 20): A chance to meet your old relations and friends is likely to materialise soon. A dispute regarding property needs to be cleared fast, before it becomes a festering wound. You will succeed in steadying your financial front. Your efforts on the professional front are likely to be appreciated by superiors. Some of you are likely to become health conscious.

Love Focus: You may find much fulfilment in your love life, as partner seems more than eager to please you!

Lucky Colour: Rosy Brown

Lucky Alphabet: R

Lucky Numbers: 1, 5, 9

Friendly Zodiac Today: Leo & Libra

Be careful of: Aquarius

The astrologer can be contacted at psharma@premastrologer.com or support@askmanisha.com.

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Sen. Jason Lewis, D-Malden, and Rep. Alice Halon Peisch, D-Wellesley, conduct Wednesday's virtual hearing of the Joint Committee on Education.

Dire Outlook for School Budgets Across Commonwealth



Glenn Koocher of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees testifies before the committee on Wednesday. BOSTON  School districts across the commonwealth face a "dreadful" situation with regard to their fiscal year 2021 budget, legislators were told on Wednesday.

The Joint Committee on Education took more than four hours of testimony from state education officials, school administrators, teachers, parents and other stakeholders in an virtual oversight hearing on "Remote Learning and the Status of K-12 Education."

Although much of the testimony centered on the commonwealth's and districts' efforts to implement remote learning plans on the fly in the wake of March's closure of school buildings, the conversation frequently strayed to looking at the road ahead for public schools.

It was clear that much is unknown about the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on school finances, but two things are known: Recovery from the virus will increase districts' costs, and the stunted economy will reduce districts' revenues.

Already, in the Berkshires, Pittsfield Public Schools are planning to make $1.4 million in cuts to their fiscal 2021 spending plan.

"Budgeting, of course, is a key function of school committees, in collaboration with our municipal officials and superintendents," said Glenn Koocher, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Committees. "This is a very dreadful situation. We just don't know what's going to happen.

"We are concerned about losing our best people. We are concerned about those districts that negotiated collective bargaining agreements before the virus. We've encouraged everyone who is engaged in trying to get a contract negotiated now to look no further than one year and to be very conservative with how they view their spending obligations."

At the state level, the commonwealth, which distributed $5.2 billion in Chapter 70 aid to schools in FY20, is seeing its FY21 budget squeezed by losses in income tax revenue because of high unemployment and mounting costs to fight the pandemic and support victims of the crashing economy.

Locally, municipalities also are incurring costs from the pandemic, and they are losing revenue from rooms and meals taxes and the cannabis tax receipts that some cities and towns already were building into their revenue structure.

"We have a meeting of all of our superintendents, assistant superintendents and business officials [Thursday]," said Tom Scott, the executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. "We have some communities that are talking about a 25 percent reduction and actually have built a budget on that. I think that's a pretty extreme position to take, but there are some who have gone to that extreme.

"What we have talked about a lot is talking about a level service budget to maybe looking at something in a 5 to 10 percent [cut].  What I anticipate is that we won't have anything concrete until maybe July at best."

In the meantime, Scott said, school districts are going to be faced with some difficult decisions.

"This may require a reduction in force," Scott said. "We may see a loss of personnel. That's one of the areas our legal counsel will be talking about with superintendents coming up: How do you think about that? How do you deal with that?

"In this climate, with everything that is going on, the idea of making reductions in staff is very painful. But it's an eventuality that we may have to face, so we need to prepare for it."

Decreased revenue likely is one struggle that school districts will face.

Increased costs is the other.

Several of those testifying at Wednesday's hearing mentioned that when schools do reopen, social distancing guidelines likely are still to be in place. That means, potentially, more school bus runs to spread out children instead of putting them two to a seat, and staggered school hours that don't put all the students in the building at the same time.

It also means greater costs incurred for more regular thorough cleaning of classrooms -- both labor costs and material costs. It means a greater need for social/emotional supports for children who may have been traumatized by the pandemic and more individualized or small group instruction for students who may need additional help catching up after losing three months of classroom instruction. It means supplying personal protective equipment for staff and, possibly, children.

"We have schools that don't have nurses," Scott said. "It seems to me that you're going to have to have a nurse in every school. How do you deal with that question in and of itself?

"The issues and questions are continuous, and it's overwhelming when we start to dig into it and try to figure it out.  Superintendents are getting pressured and asked, How are you going to open school?' We try to say to them, 'The state's working on this. We'll try to do this as standardized as we can.  Health issues are going to drive a lot of this.'

"But there are going to be some serious potential costs to this."

And there is the serious possibility that the current school closure will not be the last school closure attributed to the novel coronavirus. School officials already are thinking about the possibility of a so-called "second wave."

"All of this will likely affect what instruction will look like as well," Secretary of Education James Peyser told the legislators. "That means some of the lessons we are learning this spring, both positive and negative, will need to inform how we approach teaching and learning in September.

"There's no question that remote learning will be a much larger factor in planning for the next school year. Even if we were able to start school in a quasi-normal fashion, we have to be prepared for the possibility that in-person education will be interrupted again."

As for the remote learning plans already implemented this spring, results have been a mixed bag, according to the testimony on Wednesday. While some youngsters may have thrived in an independent learning environment, others have struggled, and, in the extreme, some have disengaged entirely, officials said.

State and local officials both praised the efforts of Massachusetts' teachers to reinvent their lesson plans and learn new ways of reaching students.

"Teachers have been forced to teach using tools and platforms for which they have received little or no training, and they're not complaining," said Amy Looman, the principal of Colrain Central School in the Mohawk Trail Regional School District. "Teachers were trained to provide instruction in person using a variety of tools and technology, but that's very different from online learning.

"My teachers are resilient, and because of their dedication to their students and their work, they're learning as they go and adapting, but it is far from easy."

Nor is it easy on families, many of whom are struggling to provide children with adequate internet access and/or access to enough devices in families with multiple students. Colrain's Looman and Kim Stevens, a parent in the Colrain district, were invited to testify to the Joint Committee by state Sen. Adam Hinds, D-Pittsfield, who wanted to show his colleagues the particular challenges of remote learning in rural communities.

And even when the technology works, the challenge persists for teachers who are trying to walk the line between giving enough work for students to stay engaged and not giving so much work that they are overwhelmed.

"We are learning and adapting as we go along," said Scott of the superintendents' association. "We know there is great variability in expectations from home. Some parents don't understand why we can't provide a regular day of instruction while others are not sure they can continue with the daily demands of home life and provide education support for children. Parents are understanding the complexity of good teaching: when to press the gas and when to ease up.

"I don't think we're ever going to reach that satisfactory point for all.  When I was a principal, oftentimes, I would ask parents about homework: Are your children receiving not enough homework, or are they receiving too much homework? Oftentimes, I would receive 50 percent of the parents raising their hands for one and 50 percent of the parents raising their hands for the other. This is not dissimilar to that."
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Kuala Lumpur, May 15 : Some places of worship in Malaysia reopened on Friday after an almost two-month long lockdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The capital Kuala Lumpur along with some other states such as Selangor, Perak and Johor, has eased a ban on mass prayers in mosques and other religious places starting Friday with congregations limited to 30 people or less and physical distancing measures to prevent the spread of the infection, reports Efe news.

Zulkifli Mohamad Al-Bakri, the religious affairs minister of Malaysia, said in a statement on Thursday that the gradual opening of mosques will allow Muslims to prepare for the Eid holiday, which marks the end of the fasting month of Ramzan and falls on May 24 this year.

Zulkifli said that the government was aware of the importance of praying in mosques for Muslims although he added that prayers could be done at home as well.

The restrictions on prayer have not been applied to "madrasas".

On May 4, Malaysia, which has more than COVID-19 6,800 cases and 112 deaths, began a staggered easing of restrictions on the activities and movements of people that had come into effect on March 18.

One of the biggest coronavirus outbreaks in the country occurred at a religious event attended by about 16,000 people from countries around the world at the Sri Petaling mosque in Kuala Lumpur between February 27 and March 1.

At least 600 people who attended this religious gathering tested positive for COVID-19, including 200 Malaysians as well as Filipinos, Indonesians and Thai, who took the coronavirus infection back to their countries.
Many economists at Western financial institutions now say a second dip this summer is more likely than any other result and are predicting that Beijing will have to step up government spending to offset the further slowdown.

Supply is significantly outpacing demand, said Larry Hu, the chief China economist at the Macquarie Group, an Australian financial conglomerate. It requires stimulus to get China out of the second part of the W.

Finance Minister Liu Kun wrote in a column on Thursday in The Peoples Daily, the official mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, that China should make more use of fiscal policy to maintain economic growth. It was the clearest signal yet that when the countrys legislature gathers at the end of next week in Beijing, China may unveil an expansionary budget that creates a larger deficit and approves issuing more government bonds.

The National Peoples Congress is scheduled to convene for its annual session starting next Friday, 11 weeks after it is usually held. Beijing also announced on Friday that it would ease restrictions on banking and other financial services among Hong Kong and adjacent areas of mainland China in an attempt to increase economic growth there.

Some economists are already optimistic. According to the governments China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, shipments of smartphones to stores and other retailers within China were up 17 percent in April from a year earlier. That strong demand suggests that tens of millions of Chinese had the wherewithal to upgrade their phones even after the pandemic faded, said Xu Sitao, the chief China economist at Deloitte.

As the worlds largest oil importer by a wide margin, China is also enjoying a huge windfall from the plunge in global oil prices. Chinas growth this year could surprise on the upside, Mr. Xu said.

New coronavirus infections had largely disappeared in China by the start of last month, according to official reports. Only a dozen new, locally transmitted cases were officially acknowledged nationwide in the first week of April. Data suggest that practically all factories and many other types of businesses were open throughout last month.
Amid the current regional and international context, Vietnam urges parties not to take any actions that would further complicate the situation in the East Vietnam Sea, the foreign ministry's spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang said Thursday.

Hang made the statement at the ministrys regular press conference on Thursday while answering reporters queries about the information that Chinese navy surveillance aircraft KJ-500 and KQ-200 appeared on Da Chu Thap (Fiery Cross Reef) in Vietnams Truong Sa (Spratly) archipelago.

Regarding the information, she reiterated that Vietnam has sufficient historical evidence and legal basis to assert its sovereignty over the Hoang Sa (Paracel) and Truong Sa archipelagoes in accordance with international law.

All activities of the parties in these two archipelagos without the permission of Vietnam are null and void, the spokesperson affirmed.
By Rachel Leven

San Jose Spotlight

Employees who work at Silicon Valley's homeless shelters are putting themselves on the frontlines of the pandemic to protect the county's most vulnerable residents, even as many live on the margins themselves.

Two homeless service providers in Santa Clara County told San Jos Spotlight that, between them, six of their hundreds of shelter workers have tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The county doesn't have data to show how widespread the COVID-19 outbreak is at homeless shelters.

"These are incredibly high-risk environments," said Ben King, an epidemiologist and clinical assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In light of expected future pandemics and the inability to contain this virus, he said, "the very nature of shelter work has to change."

Some local shelter workers are worried about being exposed to the virus and bringing it home to their families, said Shaunn Cartwright, an advocate for the county's unhoused residents. While that's led some employees to step back from their jobs, others continue to "take that risk every single day," she said.

"They could say, 'Peace out. I'm not paid enough for this. I'm going to stay home.' But they come to work," Cartwright said. "They're forgotten heroes."

South Bay shelter providers said they have implemented costly protocols to keep their spaces safe for everyone, including their workers. While HomeFirst and LifeMoves had a small number of people at facilities test positive, none are known to have had large outbreaks in their shelters like the ones occurring elsewhere.

They are also supporting their workers by providing masks, offering more paid leave and temporarily increasing pay.

"Our frontline shelter workers are first responders," said Andrea Urton, CEO of HomeFirst. "They should be respected, cherished and honored as such."

City and county officials say they've worked with shelters to ensure they have materials and support to keep workers and homeless residents safe. They've also pushed to get residents out of congregate shelters and into hotels and motels to prevent the spread of the deadly virus, where possible.

"We are providing around-the-clock support," a spokesperson for the county wrote in an email.

The federal government has identified outbreaks at homeless shelters across the country. When those flare-ups occurred, workers were affected just like unhoused residents.

One study found 31 employees at five shelters in Boston, Seattle and San Francisco with outbreaks tested positive for the virus, accounting for about one-fifth of the employees tested there. When smaller outbreaks occurred at 14 other shelters, two employees total tested positive, the study showed.

Shelter workers are a vulnerable population themselves. In San Jose, homeless shelter workers get paid an average of $18 per hour, according to ZipRecruiter.

In a city with some of the most expensive ZIP codes in the country, that kind of pay leaves some living paycheck to paycheck. There's also no local union, a tool that can help workers advocate for themselves.

On top of that, the pandemic adds health risks.

Homeless shelter providers HomeFirst and LifeMoves each have had shelter workers test positive for the virus. HomeFirst officials said five workers out of more than 200 employees contracted the virus. At LifeMoves, one employee out of 300 tested positive.

The federal government recommends testing homeless residents and shelter staff where clusters have been detected and, if possible, before they occur.

King said steps like social distancing and handwashing in shelters are also crucial. Similar to the health care industry, he said shelter workers ideally should wear single-use N95 masks to protect from exposure to the virus.

Additionally, shelter providers have reduced, sometimes by half, how many people are allowed to stay in each shelter to make social distancing possible.

Jeff Scott, a spokesman for the San Jose Housing Department, said the city opened three new pop-up shelters and the county opened one too, to make up for the number of beds lost due to social distancing in permanent shelters.

The Valley Homeless Healthcare Program provides tests for all shelter workers when someone in the facility tests positive for the virus.

While all three providers mainly provide cloth masks for workers, Bruce Ives, CEO of LifeMoves, said his employees have access to N95 masks and face shields when workers may have been exposed to the virus.

Shelters rattled off a host of other steps they've taken to protect shelter workers, from purchasing ultraviolet sanitizing lights to screening people for symptoms before they enter shelters.

Shelter officials say they've also temporarily increased employees' pay and some offered additional leave.

"The average working person is about $400 away from being homeless at any given time, and a lot of those people are our shelter workers," said Urton. "We made a commitment to keep our employees financially-whole during this process."

It's likely that the pandemic will change how homeless shelters operate to protect workers and clients. Scott said some changes like social distancing at shelters will remain in place "for the foreseeable future."

As shelters get used to this new normal, some providers worry about meeting an increased need for shelter services that were already scarce as a recession appears imminent.

A March memo from the county shows temporary housing options before the pandemic could shelter nearly 2,100 people, including emergency shelters, weather-dependent shelters, safe parking and interim housing programs. In 2019, Santa Clara County had 9,706 homeless residents.

Contact Rachel Leven at leven.p.rachel@gmail.com or follow @rachelpleven on Twitter.

This story was originally published by San Jose Spotlight. Please use the following link when sharing: https://sanjosespotlight.com/forgotten-heroes-the-plight-of-silicon-valley-homeless-shelter-workers/

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.
WASHINGTON - A former top U.S. vaccine official and an executive of a medical mask maker in Texas each told Congress on Thursday they believe lives were lost because of missteps by the Trump administration in its early handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Rick Bright, who filed a whistleblower complaint after he was removed from a senior post at the Department of Health and Human Services last month, said his superiors dismissed urgent warnings in January and early February about an impending shortage of N95 respirator masks. Bright also said the administration delayed potential work on a U.S.-made vaccine by not acting fast enough or forcefully enough to press China for samples of the virus. And Bright said his removal showcased how, generally, politics overtook science as President Donald Trump took center stage in responding to the U.S. crisis.

Bright alleged he was reassigned to a lesser post and locked out of his email account as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority after pushing back against plans for the government to invest in unproven covid-19 treatments such as the anti-malarial drug hydroxychloroquine. The therapeutic that Trump touted largely has been abandoned by the government as trials since showed it can cause heart problems and other side effects in covid-19 patients.

Bright also went further, painting a bleak picture of the U.S. government's ability going forward to manage a second wave of the virus if one coincides with the country's winter flu season.

Bright said there is still "no master plan" for assessing the need for and distribution of masks, testing swabs and other medical equipment. Bright also said the government was doing a disservice to Americans by playing down the possibility that it could take years to develop a vaccine that could be ready for mass distribution.

The United States faces the "darkest winter in modern history" if it does not develop a more coordinated national response, he said. "Our window of opportunity is closing."

House Republicans, an HHS spokeswoman and even Trump himself attacked Bright as the day went on.

"I don't know the so-called Whistleblower Rick Bright," Trump tweeted Thursday morning, "never met him or even heard of him, but to me he is a disgruntled employee, not liked or respected by people I spoke to and who, with his attitude, should no longer be working for our government!"

In a statement, HHS questioned why Bright, who has been on medical leave with hypertension since his removal, "has not yet shown up for work" and is "using his taxpayer-funded medical leave to work with partisan attorneys."

Republicans picked up the line of questioning on Bright's health, repeatedly asking if he was testifying as a federal employee on sick leave or as a private citizen. Bright said he had been on sick leave until this week, and under a doctor's care for hypertension. He said he was using personal vacation time to testify.

Bright at times referenced Peter Navarro, Trump's adviser for trade and manufacturing, saying Navarro had pushed the mask issue to the forefront, but that only happened in mid-February.

Navarro on Thursday was more critical of Bright: "I see him not just as a disgruntled employee but as a deserter in the war on the China virus," Navarro said. "That's a harsh thing to say, but here's what I mean: He was asked to move to NIH to be the field general for a billion-dollar testing effort to protect and defend the American people, and he refused that assignment so he could cling to his old job. He deserted his post and he's not a guy I'd ever want to share a foxhole with."

Inside the Capitol, House lawmakers on the Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health wore face masks and spoke into microphones shielded with disposable covers. Many donned rubber surgical or cleaning gloves, and the witness table was sprayed with disinfectant and wiped down with Lysol wipes between speakers.

After the cleaning, Mike Bowen, co-owner of Prestige Ameritech, the country's last full-line medical mask manufacturer, took his place at the witness table and recounted how he had offered to HHS to ramp up production of N95 masks in January, but his plan was cast aside.

Bowen had four mothballed manufacturing lines capable of making 7 million N95 masks a month. He said they could be restarted, probably within about 90 days, if the government would commit to a long-term contract so he could hire the 100 or so employees needed to restart production.

Emails show an HHS official responded to Bowen on Jan. 22, writing that the government was not "anywhere near" ready to engage in such a plan. Within six weeks, the government would be in a much different posture, searching the globe for masks, seizing shipments and signing contracts for tens of millions to pay novice distributors up to $5.50 per mask, or seven times what Bowen charged the government.

Under questioning, Bowen said that if HHS had taken him up on his offer, he could have been producing an additional 7 million N95 respirators a month by now.

Republicans pressed Bowen on why he hasn't gone ahead and done so. Bowen said that he has already expanded as much as he can. He has increased production to 2 million a month, up from 75,000, and would soon double that to 4 million a month.

Going further and restarting the four lines without a contract of at least a year could force him to hire the more than 100 people, train and then fire them months later. Bowen said he went through that after the government cut short expected contracts in 2009 during the H1N1 pandemic, and it nearly bankrupted the business.

Bowen also pushed back on Republicans, saying he was troubled by the line of questioning he witnessed all morning.

"I've watched all of this a little while ago. It seemed like everyone who was beating up on Dr. Bright was a Republican and everyone who was defending him was a Democrat. I'm a Republican, I voted for President Trump and I admire Dr. Bright," Bowen said. "I don't know what he did in all of the other activities, but I think what he said made a lot of sense, and I believe him."

Asked later if he was troubled by the administration's response to the pandemic, including reassigning Bright, Bowen said he had been.

"I'm a lifelong Republican, and I'm embarrassed by how that's been handled," Bowen said. "Like Rick Bright said, it's the scientists we need to be listening to, and we're not."

Earlier in the day, Bright said it was the warnings from Bowen that made him realize the country was in for a crisis.

"Tell me about just one specific moment when you had that sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach because you were not seeing the response you knew needed to happen," asked Rep. Paul Sarbanes, D-Md.

"Congressman, I'll never forget the emails I received from Mike Bowen "indicating that . . . our mask supply, our N95 mask supply, was completely decimated, and he said: 'We're in deep s---. The world is, and we need to act,' " Bright said.

"I pushed that forward to the highest levels I could in HHS and got no response. From that moment, I knew that we were going to have a crisis for our health-care workers because we were not taking action. We were already behind the ball. "

"Listening to your testimony gives me chills," Sarbanes responded, "because it adds up to one inescapable conclusion: It didn't have to be this way."

Bright also described meetings with HHS leaders including Robert Kadlec, the assistant secretary for preparedness and response, saying his superiors dismissed his concerns during key early weeks.

Bright also cast doubt on hopes that a vaccine could be made available on an emergency basis within 18 months, testifying that he considers that an "aggressive schedule."

"A lot of optimism is swirling around a 12- to 18-month time frame, if everything goes perfectly," Bright told a House panel. "We've never seen everything go perfectly. My concern is that if we rush too quickly and consider cutting out critical steps, we may not have a full assessment of the safety of that vaccine."

Bright's assessment stands in stark contrast to that of Trump. During an interview broadcast Thursday morning, the president said he is optimistic a vaccine will be available by the end of the year.

Bright's whistleblower complaint was newly bolstered by the Office of Special Counsel. A letter dated Tuesday and released by Bright's attorney showed OSC had concluded there is a "substantial likelihood of wrongdoing" on the part of HHS for retaliating against Bright and reassigning him. The OSC forwarded the matter to Secretary of Health Alex Azar, whose office must now investigate and report its findings to Congress and the White House.
The affected traders have been moved to two Presbyterian School parks within the centre of Dormaa-Ahenkro as a measure to ensure adherence to social distancing protocol to stem the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

They were split into three groups - meat and fish sellers remained at the main weekly market, vegetables and fruits sellers occupied one of the parks, while the root and tuber types of foodstuff sellers were also stationed at the other park.

Mr Justice Owusu Ansah Pobi, the Environmental Health Officer of the Assembly told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on Tuesday at Dormaa-Ahenkro.

He said some of the relocated traders complained that they did not have sheds as shelters, but authorities had now provided them with canopies in that regard.

Responding to concerns that most of the traders still did not adhere strictly to directives on social and physical distancing and hygiene protocols, Mr Pobi explained that the situation was created by particularly the buyers since two or more traders could encircle a particular trader at time, he added.

The Environmental Health Officer observed that a number of sellers and buyers at the markets had increased because more traders had come from Kumasi after the lockdown.

---GNA
HOLYOKE  Families of deceased veterans can apply for burial assistance through the citys Department of Veterans Services. Income-eligible families can receive a reimbursement up to $4,000.

The burial assistance is there to help families with defraying the cost of funeral expenses if they meet the guidelines of the program, said Jesus Pereira, director of Veterans Services.

Under Massachusetts Department of Veterans Services rules, single veterans must have under $5,000 in assets, or $9,800 for married veterans.

Our office will assist with any and all applicants that apply for the burial expense, Pereira said.

Pereira applied for a $40,000 Community Development Block Grant to bolster the program, which the state usually refunds through a Chapter 115 budget line item.

Applicants must demonstrate the veteran lacked the funds to defray burial costs. Our office will do our due diligence to determine that only eligible Veterans receive this benefit, Pereira said.

The department has received two applications for veterans who died at the Soldiers Home in Holyoke. The facility was savaged by the coronavirus, with 74 residents succumbing to the respiratory disease it causes. The Soldiers Home is now the subject of state and federal investigations.

For more information about the burial assistance program, contact the Holyoke Department of Veterans Services at 413-322-5630 or email Pereira at pereiraj@holyoke.org. The office remains closed to the public.

In related news, the department and United Veterans of Holyoke will hold a virtual Memorial Day program May 25 starting at 11:30 a.m.

The program will feature a tribute to residents who died at the Soldiers Home and remarks from Mayor Alex Morse, City Council President Todd McGee and state Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke.

The groups invited Army Spc. Luis Louis Delgado as the featured speaker. Chris Sims, of the War Memorial Commission, will preside over the ceremony, which will be broadcast by Holyoke Media.
As India moves towards the end of the third phase of the national lockdown implemented in order to contain the spread of coronavirus, News18 reached out to eleven states in order to find out their strategies on how they plan execute the fourth phase.

Lockdown 4, as coined by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his address to the nation on Tuesday "will be of a completely new colour."

Punjab

Sources in the chief minister's office said that the lockdown will continue. However, curfew relaxations will be further increased. The state has asked for more say in zone status and micro-planning along with seeking more central fiscal support. Highly placed sources informed that the state has also sought for conditional opening of MSMEs in red zones.

Haryana

Lockdown with modifications are likely to continue in the state. Along with this, borders will remain restricted with conditional access. State transport will begin in 10 districts. The state is also planning to resume bus services to only Delhi railway station starting 18 May. Industrial and commercial activity will increase in the fourth phase of the lockdown.

Himachal Pradesh

Sources in the chief minister's office informed that lockdown and modified curfew with increased commercial activity will be the major focus. State borders will remain closed with restricted entry. Industrial and commercial activity will slowly pick up. The state government will seek more permissions for economic activity. Intra-state movement is planned to increase. The state government plans to be tighter than other states in managing inbound movement.

Odisha

Sources informed that Odisha will have strict lockdown norms in containment areas only. Other areas will have relaxed lockdown norms with focus on social distancing.

Uttar Pradesh

In India's most populous state, lockdown will continue in red zones. However, one-third shops in a market will be allowed to open outside the sealed spots in red zones.

Private offices have already been allowed to open with 50 per cent staff. Manufacturing and agriculture activity has already resumed with certain conditions.

In orange and green zones normal life with restrictions will continue. Malls, gyms, restaurants, schools etc will not open.

Bihar

The state government sources informed that lockdown will continue along with giving relaxation for commercial activities in certain sectors, especially in rural areas and retail sector.

Gujarat

Lockdown will certain relaxations will continue in the state. Offices in red zones too (outside containment zones) will be allowed to open with 30 per cent staff for few hours in a day. However, the lockdown will be strict in containment zones. Final call will be as per Centres guidance.

Madhya Pradesh

As per sources in the chief minister's office, economic activities will start in the green zones. It is possible that shops will be opened in the green zone under the odd-even formula. The areas of the red zone which have survived from infection will also witness controlled economic activity.

Rajasthan

Except the affected areas, the Rajasthan government is not in favor of further extending the lockdown. The government wants economic activity to begin in the green zone. CM Gehlot has demanded from the PM that the zone determination for the lockdown be at the state level so that economic activities can be started.

Assam

Sources in the state government said that Assam is in favor of extending the lock-down by another two weeks. Assam will have strict lockdown norms in containment areas only. Other areas will have relaxed lockdown norms with focus on social distancing.

Lockdown will be relaxed in phases, however it all depends on the number of new cases detected.

Maharashtra

The Maharashtra government on Thursday expressed its intent to extend the lockdown in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad and Malegaon till May 31, which have emerged as COVID-19 hotspots in the state, a senior official said on Thursday.

The possibility of extending the restrictions at these places was discussed during a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray on Thursday.
Ministers were reportedly warned of sustained coronavirus transmission of Covid-19 in the UK two weeks before they told care homes it was 'very unlikely' residents would be infected.

The Scientific Pandemic Influenza Modelling committee (SPI-M) released a statement on February 10 which stated that there was a 'realistic probability' that there is already a 'sustained transmission in the UK'.

Yet on February 25, Public Health England told the care home sector that there was 'currently no transmission of Covid-19 in the community'.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer and Prime Minister Boris Johnson clashed in Parliament yesterday over the handling of coronavirus in care homes

It comes as Boris Johnson faces massive pressure over the coronavirus care home crisis.

Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the PM of misleading the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this week, after he denied the Government had previously said the virus was unlikely to break out in care homes.

The SPI-M, which feeds into the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage), found on February 10: 'It is a realistic probability that there is already sustained transmission in the UK, or that it will become established in the coming weeks,' the Times reported.

Shadow care minister Liz Kendall said the document shows that 'there were clear warnings that community transmission was happening as early as February.'

'Care homes should have been identified as high risk even before there was community transmission, with a comprehensive plan put in place to protect residents and staff with the PPE, testing and wider support that has tragically been found so lacking,' she said.

Labour leader Keir Starmer accused the PM of misleading the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Questions earlier this week, after he denied the Government had previously said the virus was unlikely to break out in care home

The Labour leader took aim at the Prime Minister over official guidance from February which he said advised 'it remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home will become infected'

National director at PHE, Paul Johnstone insisted that all of the organisations guidance, including those relating to care homes, is based on the latest scientific evidence.

'The care homes guidance we produced in February was related to what we knew at the time, and with further evidence, it was updated in March,' he told the publication.

Boris Johnson was on the rack over care homes following an explosive confrontation with Sir Keir Starmer over whether they had been abandoned to coronavirus.

The Labour leader accused the PM of misleading the House of Commons after he denied the Government had previously said the virus was unlikely to break out in care homes.

Almost 10,000 care home residents have now died of coronavirus, accounting for a quarter of all victims.

He ambushed Mr Johnson at Prime Minister's Questions by quoting official guidance that had been in place until March 12  well after coronavirus had started being transmitted in the UK.

In a section on face masks, Public Health England advice to the care sector said: 'It remains very unlikely that people receiving care in a care home or the community will become infected.'

Sir Keir said it showed the Government had been 'too slow to protect people in care homes'.

Mr Johnson replied that 'it wasn't true' to say the advice said that. He later refused to apologise and accused Sir Keir of quoting selectively from the guidance.

The Prime Minister admitted to MPs however, that the lockdown could not be lifted until the coronavirus crisis in care homes had been dealt with.

He said: 'Solving the problem in care homes is going to be absolutely critical  getting the R down not just in care homes, but across the country  to our ability to move forward as a nation with the stepped programme that I announced on Sunday.'

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt (pictured on Thursday) said an 'over-focus' on the risk of a flu pandemic meant the government had not thought about the need for wide-scale screening

The Labour leader also called on Mr Johnson to account for official figures showing 10,000 'unexplained' deaths in care homes last month.

Sir Keir said there were 18,000 more deaths in April in care homes than the average for that month  but only 8,000 were recorded as coronavirus-related.

He pointed to figures from the Office for National Statistics which showed at least 40 per cent of coronavirus deaths in England and Wales occurred in care homes.

Yesterday former health secretary Jeremy Hunt condemned the failure to deploy coronavirus tests on patients discharged into care homes.

The former health secretary said an 'over-focus' on the risk of a flu pandemic meant the government had not thought about the need for wide-scale screening.

And he insisted checks on patients sent back to care homes was an obvious 'thing that needed to happen'.
SSR Mining said today it had net income of $24 million in Q1, up from $5.7 million during the same period a year ago.

Adjusted attributable net income was $38.8 million or 31 cents per share. During the same period a year ago the company recorded $17.2 million of adjusted attributable net income.

Cash balance at quarter end was $398.4 million and marketable securities of $50.3 million, while total convertible debt outstanding was reduced to $230 million during the quarter.

The company achieved quarterly consolidated production of 107,331 gold equivalent ounces at cash costs of $824 per payable ounce of gold sold.

In March SSR Mining suspeneded its Puna Operations and Seabee Gold Operation in Saskatchewan due to COVID-19 restrictions.

"Although we expect the COVID-19 pandemic to adversely impact production and operating income in the short term, particularly at our Seabee Gold Operation and Puna Operations where operations are currently suspended, we continue to monitor the situation closely. The Marigold mine continues to operate with limited impact from COVID-19 and we have implemented numerous measures intended to protect our employees, including ensuring physical distancing and providing additional protective equipment," wrote the company.

The company expects to put Seabee back online in June 2020 at the earliest.

Earlier this year the company withdrew its guidance.
Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Friday hailed the government's third tranche of economic package to leverage unorganised micro food processing firms, saying it would help position India as a "world food factory".

Badal, in a statement, said the new scheme for micro food processing enterprises, with an outlay of Rs 10,000 crore shall leverage the collective strength of farmer producers organisation (FPOs), Self Help Groups (SHGs), Cooperatives and existing food processing enterprises in unorganized sector.

This will "position India as a world food factory," she said. The Minister said that micro food processing enterprises constitute almost 98 per cent of the sector and 66 per cent amongst them are based in rural areas.

"Their potential was hitherto untapped. They shall now act as the new growth engine for India's rural economy," she noted.

Badal also welcomed the extension of the existing Tomato Onion Potato (TOP) scheme to cover all fruits and vegetables for next six months.

"It shall facilitate storage and movement of perishables and result in price stabilization . A much needed support for farmers in the COVID-19 times," she added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The problems of high temperature superconductor (HTSC) are important for the physics community and even the whole science area. Ever since its discovery, many researchers have conducted various studies, still lacking of widely accepted solutions. Recently, Prof. Jiangping Hu from Institute of Physics, Chinese of Science, proposed the "gene" theory of high temperature superconductivity based on the electronic properties of existing quasi-two dimensional HTSCs, and used it to search for new families of HTSCs. According to this theory, their group further explored the conditions of expressing of the "gene" in high symmetric three-dimensional structure and predicted cobalt compounds in the zinc-blende structure as new families of HTSC.

This work is titled as Unconventional high temperature superconductivity in cubic zinc-blende transition metal compounds, recently published in SCIENCE CHINA Physics, Mechanics & Astronomy. The researchers used the group theory, electronic band and slave-boson mean-field method to analysis the symmetries of electron motion and to predict the properties of superconductivity. This is a d-wave superconducting state spontaneously breaking time reversal symmetry and maintaining nodes in diagonal directions.

To be specific, the structure considered in this work is the zinc-blende structure as shown in Figure 1. Under this structure, the local symmetries are the same to the global symmetries, which keeps the degeneracy of the t2g orbitals from the three-dimensional representation of Td group. When the electronic configuration is close to d7, those three orbitals are isolated near the Fermi surface, with strong hopping and antiferromagnetic super-exchange in all the directions, triggering the expression of HTSC "gene". The pairing wave under this environment is d+id, breaking time reversal symmetry. This pairing wave vanishes at the bulk diagonal direction in the Brillouin zone, as the direct analogy of quasi-two-dimensional superconductivity in cuprate. By adopting band structure and mean-field calculation, the electron doped zinc-blende cobalt-oxygen-nitrogen compounds may realize such physics.

This result further enriched the prediction of families of HTSCs according to the "gene" theory. If verified by the following experiments, the "gene" theory would be justified and more HTSCs materials would be found.
Disturbing footage has emerged showing thick black smoke billowing from a crematorium operating non stop in Mexico City as the coronavirus pandemic overwhelms the country's capital.

Storage rooms full of bodies and discarded coffins piling up outside the building could also be seen in the footage, as the city burns bodies on an 'industrial scale'.

The video report from Sky News, which has been investigating the crisis in the country's capital, also says that there is a three-day waiting list before Covid-19 victims can be taken to the crematorium.

The country has now reached its 'peak moment' in the coronavirus crisis according to Mexican officials, but many people doubt the government's assertion that the curve is flattening.

Mexico's true mortality rate could be five-times higher than the government's figures state, according to Sky News sources, with morgues, crematoriums, funeral homes and hospitals running out of space to store bodies in its capital city.

In footage from Sky News, black smoke can be seen billowing out of the chimneys of a crematorium in Mexico City, which is reportedly burning bodies on an 'industrial scale'

The first cases of the coronavirus in Mexico were recorded on February 28. Since then, the number of coronavirus cases officially reported by the government has risen to 42,595, with 4,477 related deaths.

However, what the investigating reporters have seen in the city indicates that the official government data is inaccurate.

Sky News also said that health department insiders believe the mortality rate in Mexico could be as much as five times higher than the official figures suggest.

The Mexican government has claimed that the country has reached its 'peak moment' and has been able to flatten the curve, and that they expect to see a decrease in the number of Covid-19 related deaths in the coming days.

'What the world knows about Mexico is that we are taming the pandemic, and we are basically doing this because Mexican people are making a conscious effort,' said the country's president Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador during a briefing to the nation.

A funeral home in Mexico City, with black smoke billowing out of the chimneys, pictured on May 11

America Denise Flores carries the urn with the ashes of her mother Felipa Jimenez, 68, who died due to the coronavirus disease, away from a funeral home in Mexico City, May 11

Assistant Health Secretary Hugo Lopez-Gatell echoed the president's suggestion that the country had seen the worst of the pandemic.

He said that yesterday was the 'the most difficult moment of the first wave of the epidemic', but added that the country 'could not relax measures' that are in place to slow the spread.

Lopez-Gatell's comments - an epidemiologist and Mexico's coronavirus tsar - come despite the country preparing to easy some lockdown measures that have been in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

On Monday, Mexico is due some of its key industries, including mining, construction and vehicle assembly, which makes use of a number of factories near the U.S. border.

According to the BBC, Lopez-Gatell said that the re-opening of these businesses at this stage will mostly be preparatory, and that a more broad restart is set for June 1.

In much of Mexico City, which is the second largest city in Latin America, Sky News says there are almost no social distancing measures in place, with some businesses and open air markets operating normally despite the pandemic.

'The ovens never stop burning,' says the Sky News report, as the footage shows thick black smoke billowing out from a crematorium in Mexico City, where they are cremating bodies on 'an industrial scale.'

The crematorium is reportedly at full capacity as the number of bodies being delivered continues, with hearses queuing outside waiting to deliver.

Workers at a funeral home in Mexico City bring another body to be cremated. Hospitals, funeral homes and crematoriums are reportedly all at full capacity with Covid-19 victims

An employee of a crematorium in Mexico City awaits the arrival of another body suspected to have died from the coronavirus. Behind him, a pile of discarded corpses sit in the car park

Crematorium workers are shown wearing full hazmat gear as they unload hearses and take coffins into the crematorium's storage, and the large ovens.

Discarded coffins are then shown outside of the crematorium, waiting to be cleared. The video was reportedly captured early morning, and a large pile of coffins can already be seen forming outside.

The footage then shows the investigator walking through the morgue, showing bodies lying on gurneys, waiting to be burned, as the narrator explains that they have visited numerous crematoriums, hospitals and funeral parlors in the city.

All are at full capacity, struggling to deal with the number of bodies. Furthermore, Government data released on Thursday showed that more than half of the hospitals in Mexico City were at full capacity with coronavirus patients.

The Sky News report shows bodies being stored in the crematorium's autopsy room having run out of fridge storage space

Outside the crematorium, a long queue of hearses can be seen waiting to deliver the bodies to the crematorium

Storage rooms and autopsy rooms are also being used in the mortuaries to store bodies as the fridges are completely full.

'Everyone is lying, obviously. Everything here is a mess' says a man interviewed by the Sky News reporter. He is waiting for his sister to collect the remains of her husband.

He says that the government won't give exact numbers of how many people have died. 'And I'm not just talking about Mexico City,' he says, 'but the entire country.'

Outside the crematorium, the footage shows mourning families saying goodbye to their deceased loved ones, as only five people can enter the building at one time.

As the death toll in Mexico continues to rise, the Mexican government have claimed the curve has been flattened. Pictured: new graves are built inside the Pantheon of San Lorenzo Tezonco in Mexico City on May 14

Mexican casket makers face their own challenge to keep up with the demand, which has risen by 15 per cent, and fight competition from the black market. Pictured: coffins of the Litomex company in Mexico May 13

Many of those dealing with the pandemic in Mexico have dismissed the government's assertions that the curve has been flattened.

Citing an anonymous official within the government, Sky News said the the number of deaths are being under-counted, and that the actual number of deaths is at least five-times higher than what the government has released.

When senior private sector medical specialists first warned the government about the pandemic in January, they were reportedly told that there was 'nothing the government could do', increasing the belief that the government is letting the virus take its course, willing to deal with the fallout later.

By not publishing accurate death figures, it is believed that the government is trying to contain panic in the poorer areas of the city that have been hit the hardest by the virus.

Mexico City has an unofficial population of 30 million, with millions living in poverty and cramped conditions, perfect for the virus to spread among the population.

Yesterday, Mexico saw its biggest spike in the number of cases, rising by 2,409, bringing the official total to 42,595. It was the first time the country had seen more than 2,000 fresh cases in a single day.

On Wednesday, the country recorded its highest number of Covid-19 related deaths, with 353, taking the total to 4,477.
Migrants undergo thermal screening after arriving from Keralas Ernakulam Railway Station by a special train at Jagannathpur Railway Station, during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, in Ganjam district. (PTI)

New Delhi: The RSS-affiliated trade union BMS on Thursday condemned the "total withdrawal" of labour laws by the BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat, and announced a countrywide agitation against it.

The BMS also said migrant workers' problems have aggravated during the novel coronavirus-triggered lockdown mainly because there is "gross violation" of laws by most of the states.

Criticising the freezing of labour laws as well as increase in the working hours from eight to 12 hours in some other states, Bharatiya Mazdoor Sangh (BMS) general secretary Virjesh Upadhyay said in a statement, "It is learnt that many other states are readying to follow the trend. This is unheard in history and is rare even in most undemocratic countries."

"...we are pushed to the wall and there is no other way out except going for agitation. Hence BMS decided nationwide agitation in solidarity with the fight against the anti-worker ordinances in UP, MP, Gujarat as well as increase of working hours in Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Goa and Odisha," the trade union said.

The organisation will observe 'Nationwide Protest Day' on May 20, besides other agitation programmes.

The decision was taken at the BMS national office-bearers' web-meeting held on May 13, in which it "strongly condemned the total withdrawal of labour laws in UP, MP and Gujarat."

"The meeting also discussed pandemic situation due to COVID-19 and its effects on various sectors. It welcomed the package declared by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the details announced in the first stage by the Finance Minister," according to the statement. In Uttar Pradesh, key labour laws have been suspended for three years.
Increased risk of heart disease, high blood pressure and type two diabetes later in life for child abuse survivors, new study finds

Childhood maltreatment is thought to affect 1 in 4 children in the UK and 1 in 3 globally

People who have experienced maltreatment during childhood are significantly more likely to develop conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and type two diabetes in adulthood, a new UK study has found.

Childhood maltreatment, which includes any form of physical, sexual or emotional abuse or neglect experienced by those under the age of 18, is a prevalent global public health issue thought to affect 1 in 4 children in the UK and 1 in 3 globally.

This study, led by the Universities of Birmingham and Warwick, reviewed anonymised data from 241,971 patients using medical records from GP surgeries between 1995 and 2018. 80, 657 patients were identified to have a history of childhood maltreatment compared with a control group of 161 314 unexposed patients. The study is the first to use UK primary care data to explore the relationship between childhood maltreatment and cardio-metabolic disease.

Results of the study, published today in the Journal of the American Heart Association, showed that those with a history of childhood maltreatment were 71% more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, and 42% percent more likely to develop high blood pressure as well as the risk of developing type 2 diabetes doubled. Patients were also at a 75% increased risk of dying of any other cause during the study period.



Although the research could not ascertain why this relationship exists, previous research suggests that exposure to childhood maltreatment can influence the alteration of the immune, metabolic, neuroendocrine, and the autonomic nervous system. Additionally, this group may experience greater exposure to other risk factors which may be associated with cardio-metabolic disease.



Lead author Dr Joht Chandan of the University of Birminghams Institute of Applied Health Research and Warwick Medical School at the University of Warwick said Considering the high prevalence of childhood maltreatment globally, these findings suggest a substantial, but preventable burden of cardio-metabolic disease.

The findings are particularly notable within the United Kingdom, where conditions such as heart disease, high blood pressure and type 2 diabetes pose an increasing burden on the health service. Considering that an estimated 1 in 4 children within the UK are affected by maltreatment, our findings could suggest that a significant proportion of the cardio-metabolic disease cases may be attributable to maltreatment. Therefore, there is a clear public health message that requires a population- based approach to not only prevent childhood maltreatment but also the negative consequences as a result of it.



This latest study adds to a growing body of research published by the team at the two Universities examining the physical and psychological effects of domestic abuse and childhood maltreatment. Earlier this year, the team published research that found that women who have experienced domestic abuse are 40 per cent more likely to die from any cause compared to the general population while a study in 2019 found that abused or neglected children are four times more likely to develop serious mental illness.

Notes to editors:

For more information please contact Sophie Belcher, Communications Manager, University of Birmingham, on +44 (0)7815607157. Alternatively, contact the Press Office out of hours on +44 (0)7789 921165.
15.05.2020 LISTEN

The NDC Constituency Secretary for the Yapei Kusawgu has described Ghana's Parliament as a building for diligent persons with proven records of integrity and not a creche for infants.

"Parliament is a house of records, a house where serious government business takes place."

He jabbed the NPP Parliamentary Candidate "Mr Abu Kamara, Ghana's parliament is seriously not meant for toddlers and people who lack high moral character and proven integrity."

Mr Latif lddi Atingpo said this in a reaction to an audio which surfaced on social media alleged to be a tape of the NPP Parliamentary candidate Hon. Abu Kamara.

Last night at 8 o'clock a Bole based radio station Nkilgi FM released an audiotape they believed to be the voice of the NPP Parliamentary Candidate Hon. Abu Kamara shedding insults on the District Chief Executive for the Central Gonja District and his plans for the people.

Mr Iddi Latif said the NPP Parliamentary candidate Hon. Abu Kamara has shown disloyalty to his own party in the alleged audio by endorsing Ex-President Mahama ahead of the December 2020 elections.

"In that tape, Abu Kamara unleashed serious attacks on the persona of president Akufo Addo and the DCE for central Gonja Hon. Mustapha Mahama to an extent he concludes, his target is not for Akufo Addo to win as President but rather to spend NPP Campaign money. He chastised the DCE for taken them for granted for far too long. He added Akufo Addo can not develop Gonjas. The only person who can develop Gonjas is John Mahama. The daydreamer also mentioned that, he will kick Hon. John Jinapor out of parliament in order to bring development to Yapei Kusawgu constituency."

But Hon. Abu Kamara has denied allegations of the said tape saying it was false and edited for mischief.

Mr. Iddi Latif counted some achievements of the Member of Parliament for the constituency who is also former Minister of Energy Hon. John Jinapor saying he was a blessing to them

"Many health centres have received several hospital equipments including beds and brand new motorbikes for effective health delivery.

"Fixed many boreholes across the length and breadth of the Constituency for access to portable drinking water"

Touching on development in the education sector in the constituency he said:

"Over one hundred graduates and undergraduates students have benefited from the MP'S share of Common fund to pay fees."

The constituency secretary also spoke about some ongoing projects undertaken by the MP in the area:

"Three brand new ultra-modern toilet facilities are springing up at the following communities Yapei, Sankpala and Kusawgu.

He said the constituents will not hesitate to vote for any candidate except Hon. John Jinapor since he is a blessing to them.

"We can not, and will not afford to sell out our colour TV in exchange for black and white. We the good people of Yapei Kusawgu constituency holds Hon. John Abdulai Jinapor in high esteem. He is a gift from God to us and always making us proud on the floor of parliament."

He said with convention.
A food delivery courier for Grubhub Inc. wears a protective mask in New York, U.S., on Monday, April 6, 2020.

With the survival of many independent restaurants hanging in the balance, lawmakers are stepping in to limit how much third-party delivery companies like DoorDash and Grubhub can charge restaurants for orders for the duration of the coronavirus pandemic.

The New York City Council on Wednesday voted to restrict food delivery fees paid by restaurants to delivery providers like Grubhub's Seamless to 15% or less of the order. The council also voted to approve caps of 5% for nondelivery services. Mayor Bill de Blasio still has to sign the bill into law, but he has previously voiced support.

Jersey City, New Jersey, Seattle and San Francisco have implemented similar caps on delivery fees through emergency orders last month.

Without restrictions on delivery fees, restaurants typically pay between 15% and 30% on orders placed with delivery providers. Even before the pandemic forced dining rooms to close and restaurant sales to plummet, restaurateurs were lobbying for regulation on the fees cutting into their already razor-thin profit margins. The crisis forced many holdouts to join the platforms in the hopes of keeping their businesses afloat.

"We've kind of seen an acceleration from off-premise dining of about 10 years in about 10 weeks," said Andrew Nolan, a principal in advisory at KPMG. "It was trending that way, and off-premise has definitely been a growing segment of the market, but in the last few weeks, we've definitely seen an acceleration of that."

Uber Eats and DoorDash waived some commission fees for impacted independent restaurants, while Grubhub deferred payments for qualifying restaurants.

Delivery companies say that limits on commission fees just passes along the cost of delivery to consumers, leading to reduced orders for the restaurants it was supposed to help.

"We've already seen negative impacts of this in San Francisco," Grubhub CEO Matt Maloney told analysts on the company's earnings call. "Our preliminary data shows that on average, our independent restaurants are seeing over 10% fewer orders since the fee cap."

He added that many customers have shifted to ordering from large chain restaurants that were not impacted by the city's emergency order. Grubhub said in a statement that fee caps "will not withstand a legal challenge."

A spokesperson for DoorDash said in a statement that a cap on restaurant commission fees will hurt earnings for its delivery drivers and could reduce restaurant sales.

"Regulating the commissions that fund our marketplace  particularly during these unprecedented times would force us to radically alter the way we do business, set a far-reaching precedent in a highly competitive market, and could ultimately hurt those that we're trying to help the most: customers, small businesses and delivery people," a spokesperson for Uber Eats said in a statement.

The fee caps are temporary, but a potential merger between Uber and Grubhub could mean more permanent regulatory scrutiny. The two companies have had discussions about a deal, according to people familiar with the matter, but CNBC's David Faber reported Tuesday that they are at odds over a price. Neither company confirmed that Uber made an offer to acquire Grubhub.

"We believe it is unlikely that these fees caps are eliminated any time soon, and especially if both companies merge," BTIG analyst Peter Saleh wrote in a note to clients Tuesday.

Some consumers are becoming savvy to the hefty commission fees as restaurants ask that they order takeout with a phone call rather than placing an order with a delivery app.

Giuseppe Badalamenti, owner of Chicago Pizza Boss, posted his Grubhub receipt on Facebook, showing that he made only $376.54 on $1,042.63 in orders after the company's fees. The post racked up more than a thousand comments and was shared by thousands of users.

"Grubhub is a fee for service model  meaning restaurant owners select the services they want and only pay a commission when we help generate a sale," Grubhub said in a statement. "We are happy to work with any of our partners on finding a plan that helps them manage costs while continuing to grow their business."

And new rules in Chicago will likely increase consumer awareness. Starting May 22, third-party delivery providers will have to give customers an itemized breakdown of all charges, including the commission fee paid by the restaurant.
As the third phase of lockdown is nearing its end, the Maharashtra government has decided that it would continue the restrictions for Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune and other hotspots till May 31.

As mentioned in a report in Mumbai Mirror, the Maharashtra government has decided to extend the lockdown restrictions for areas with a large number of cases but will opt for the Centre's new guidelines for the rest of the districts. The decision to extend the lockdown was taken on Thursday morning at a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray and Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar. Revenue Minister Balasaheb Thorat, Urban Development Minister Eknath Shinde, PWD Minister Ashok Chavan and Chief Secretary Ajoy Mehta also attended the meeting at the mayor's bungalow.

Municipal Commissioner IS Chahal, who is also the disaster management chief, told the daily if the lockdown is not continued beyond May 18, BMC's efforts to curb the spread of coronavirus would go waste.

Thackeray had earlier hinted the lockdown in the state might be extended till the end of the month as experts advised him the number of cases was expected to rise the most in May.

Meanwhile, areas under BMC saw an increase of 998 cases on Thursday, as mentioned by the daily. Seventy cases were reported in Thane, 64 in Navi Mumbai, 21 in Mira Bhayander and six in Kalyan-Dombivali. Forty-six deaths were reported in MMR on the same day. Maharashtra has reported 27,524 cases of coronavirus, with 6,059 recoveries and 1,019 deaths.

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: COVID-19 stimulus package! FM Nirmala Sitharaman's 3rd presser today; cases-81,970

Also read: Coronavirus: Delhi Medical Association writes to PM Modi over non-payment of salaries for three months
2020 has been a challenging year for stock market investors, with market volatility wiping out recent gains. Fortunately, the dividends on offer from shares like First Community (south Carolina) (NAQ:FCCO) offer a potentially better bet in the hunt for sustainable returns.

With so much uncertainty around the reliability of some dividends, it's understandable that investors are searching for the best payouts available. Part of the challenge is that shares on attractively high yields are often turning out to be 'dividend traps' - where the payouts are soon cut. So what should you be looking for in the search for sustainable dividend income?

Here's a checklist of measures and a summary of why First Community (south Carolina) - which is a player in the Banking Services industry - scores well against them...



GET MORE DATA-DRIVEN INSIGHTS INTO NAQ:FCCO 

1. High (but not excessive) dividend yield

Yield is an important dividend metric because it tells you the percentage of how much a company pays out in dividends each year relative to its share price. That makes it easy to compare dividend payouts right across the market.

High yields are obviously appealing but be careful of excessively high yields (usually above 10%) because they can be a sign of problems. When the market suspects a company may be unable to sustain its dividend, the share price will fall and actually push the yield higher - and this can be a trap. So it pays to be wary of excessive yields.

First Community (south Carolina) has a dividend yield of 3.06%.

2. Dividend growth



Another important marker for income investors is a track record of dividend growth - and evidence that the growth will continue. Consistent dividend growth can be a pointer to companies that are carefully managing their payout policies - and rewarding their shareholders over time. Rather than aggressively dishing out earnings, dividend growth companies tend to have more modest yields, but are better at sustaining their payouts.

Story continues

First Community (south Carolina) has increased its dividend payout 7 times over the past 10 years - and the dividend per share is forecast to grow by 9.09% in the coming year.

3. Dividend safety

Attractively high yields obviously turn heads - but its important to know that a dividend is affordable. Dividend Cover (similar to the payout ratio) is a go-to measure of a company's net income over the dividend paid to shareholders. Its calculated as earnings per share divided by the dividend per share and helps to indicate how sustainable a dividend is.

Dividend cover of less than 1x suggests that the company cant fund the payout from its current year earnings - and might be relying on other sources of funds to pay it.

First Community (south Carolina) has dividend cover of 3.06.

Next steps

With these three important rules, you can track down shares that offer a reasonable yield, with a record of growth and safety. On this basis, First Community (south Carolina) could be worth a closer look.

To find out more you might want to take a look at the First Community (south Carolina) StockReport from the award-winning research platform, Stockopedia. StockReports contain a goldmine of information in a single page and can help to inform your investment decisions.

To find more stocks like First Community (south Carolina), you'll need to equip yourself with professional-grade data and screening tools. This kind of information has traditionally been closely guarded by professional fund managers. But our team of financial analysts have carefully constructed this screen - Stockopedias Dividend Stock Ideas - which gives you everything you need. So why not come and take a look?

Plus, if youd like to discover more about dividend investing, you can read our free ebook: How to Make Money in Dividend Stocks.
Americans have, historically, been eager to view themselves as a nation of individuals, rather than a collective. Our early philosophers  Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau  preached a gospel of self-reliance. Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist, Emerson wrote in 1841. Nineteenth-century visitors to the country, such as the French statesman Alexis de Tocqueville, were struck by both American optimism and American obsession with individual liberties. Americans believe their freedom to be the best instrument and surest safeguard of their welfare, Tocqueville wrote in 1835, . . . to secure for themselves a government which will allow them to acquire the things they covet and which will not debar them from the peaceful enjoyment of those possessions.
A Charleston, South Carolina makeup artist implicated in an affair with the husband of Southern Charm star Cameran Eubanks called the 'hurtful' allegations 'blatant, unfounded lies' in a response to the rumor mill.

Rebecca Leigh Wash on Thursday took to Instagram to make clear that not only did she not have an affair with Eubanks' spouse Jason Wimberly, she's never even met the man.

'I have been wrongfully accused of having a relationship with the husband of Cameran Wimberly of Southern Charm,' Wash said. 'I have never met Jason or Cameran Wimberly in my life.'

The latest: A Charleston, South Carolina makeup artist implicated in an affair with the husband of Southern Charm star Cameran Eubanks, Jason Wimberly, called the 'hurtful' allegations 'blatant, unfounded lies.' Eubanks and Wimberly were seen in a social media shot in February

Wash said that she's been shaken to her core amid the controversy, noting that she has no affiliation with the show - except for her zip code.

'I am not a religious follower of Southern Charm, but as a makeup artist and resident of the Charleston area, it is impossible to not know who the cast of the show is,' she said. 'I have never laid eyes or interacted with Jason Wimberly, Cameran, or anyone in their beautiful family other than on television.'

Wash said she has made acquaintance with Kathryn Dennis - in a 'limited interaction in a professional capacity' - who has been linked to being the source of the rumor.

'The allegations that this rumor was started by Kathryn Dennis are even more hurtful,' Wash said. 'I met Kathryn one time in July 2018 when I did her makeup for a photo shoot for a local clothing store. I have not seen or spoken to Kathryn since.

Setting the record straight: Wash laid out the details of the scandal - or lack thereof

Controversy: A number of people associated with the Bravo show - including Naomie Olindo and Eubanks - chimed in on the post from the makeup artist

'To suggest that I am somehow associated with these allegations is dumbfounding, hurtful, and malicious. I am so sorry to the Wimberly family that someone would cut so low as to attack the core tenant of anyone's life - their family.'

In response to Wash's post, Eubanks said in a repost the makeup artist 'is the victim here' and undeserving of the attention she's received.

'It is so sad that this kind, beautiful and innocent girl had to be drug into the mud,' Eubanks said. 'I signed up for this by being on TV. She didn't. @RebeccaWash is the victim here.'

Response: In her own Instagram post, Wimberly said the rumor was developed as a ratings ploy

Accused: Multiple people have said or implied Dennis started the rumor about the infidelity

In her own post, Cameron said that the rumor was a ruse to drum up controversy and ratings.

The show's Naomie Olindo also reposted Wash's post, saying 'it's s*** like this' that's the reason she, Eubanks and Chelsea Meissner left the Bravo series. She added at her former costar, 'Shame on you @kathryndennis for this and MANY other things.'

Dennis has not responded to the allegations as of Thursday.

The show's seventh season, featuring Austen Kroll, Craig Conover, Shep Rose, Madison LeCroy and Danni Baird, has suspended production amid differing shutdown conditions nationwide in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The brother and sister were dressed in smart outfits and shared a coffin

Due to Covid-19 only a handful of family and friends were allowed to be there

A mother whose two children were allegedly stabbed to death by their father has buried them in a shared coffin with their favourite teddy bear after holding a tiny funeral due to coronavirus lockdown.

Heartbroken Nishanthani Nithiyakumar, known as Nisa, tenderly touched the faces of her young son and daughter before saying goodbye in a Hindu ceremony in west London this week.

The 35-year-old left several photographs of Nigish, three, and Pavinya, one, at their graveside, taken when they were babies as this is how she wants to remember them, a relative told MailOnline.

Nisa said she wanted the share photographs of the children because she wants people to know her suffering but has no words to express what she is feeling.

A mother whose two children were stabbed to death at the family home has buried them in a shared coffin with their favourite teddy bear after holding a tiny funeral due to coronavirus lockdown

Just 10 close friends and relatives were able to support Nisa through the moving religious service which was followed by a brief burial ceremony at Greenford Park Cemetery, west London

Heartbroken Nishanthani Nithiyakumar, known as Nisa, tenderly touched the faces of her young son and daughter (pictured) before saying goodbye in a Hindu ceremony this week

The 35-year-old left several photographs of Nigish, three, and Pavinya, one, at their graveside, taken when they were babies as this is how she wants to remember them, a relative told MailOnline

Nisa (pictured with her husband and the two children) said she wanted the share photographs of her homage to the children because she wants people to know her suffering but has no words to express how she is feeling

The tragic siblings died after suffering knife wounds at their home in Ilford, east London on Sunday, April 26.

Their shop-keeper father Nadarajah Nithiyakumar, 40, has been charged with their murder and faces trial.

Just 10 close friends and relatives were able to support their distraught mother through the moving religious service which was followed by a brief burial ceremony at Greenford Park Cemetery, west London.

As she kissed her children, who were dressed in smart outfits, Nisa said: Dont worry daughter, your brother will now guide you. Look after each other.

Among those supporting her was Gopala Krishnan, the children's uncle.

'It was a very sad day, he told MailOnline. We are devastated by what happened and are still trying to come to terms with it. None of this makes any sense.

'Nisa and the rest of the family wanted to share these pictures so that you know about our sorrow and deep pain because there are no words that can explain how we feel.'

Another mourner who also attended the funeral said: This was such a heartbreaking time. Everybody felt for Nisa and she will be looked after by her family.

The police who are investigating their death came to pay their respects and were brilliant but nothing can bring the children back. But everybody will help Nisa and give her love.

Since the burial, relatives have been visiting the grave to pour milk over it and recite prayers, which are traditional Hindu rituals.

As she kissed her children, who were dressed in smart outfits, Nisa said: Dont worry daughter, your brother will now guide you. Look after each other

Since the burial, relatives have been visiting the grave to pour milk over it and recite prayers, which are traditional Hindu rituals

Among those who supported her was Gopala Krishnan, the children's uncle. 'It was a very sad day, he told MailOnline. We are devastated by what happened and are still trying to come to terms with it. None of this makes any sense'. Pictured with Nigish and Nithin

An inquest was opened at Walthamstow Coroner's Court last week and revealed that Pavinya was declared dead at the scene shortly before 6pm while Nigish died in hospital two hours later

An inquest opened at Walthamstow Coroner's Court last week revealed that Pavinya was declared dead at the scene shortly before 6pm while Nigish died in hospital two hours later.

The next inquest hearing was scheduled for November.
A former music teacher has been jailed for sexually abusing a teenage student over four months, which included a weekend stay with her at a five-star Melbourne hotel.

Daniel Zampatti was a music teacher at Christian College Geelong when he repeatedly kissed and intimately touched the 17-year-old girl between July and October 2016. He was married and in his mid-30s at the time.

One Saturday in September that year, Zampatti drove the girl to Melbourne and they stayed a night at the Sheraton, swam in the pool, showered together, ate dinner in Chinatown and spent the night in the same bed.

Zampatti told his wife he was going to the snow that weekend with friends, the County Court heard on Friday, and the girl told her parents she was staying at a friend's house.

Judge Michael Tinney jailed Zampatti, 39, for two years and three months, and found the crimes were too serious to warrant a call by defence lawyers for him to be put on a community correction order.
Survivors of a wall collapse that crushed ten to death in Dong Nai Province on Thursday speak of physical pain and trauma.

Pham Thanh Phu and his wife were standing on scaffolding five meters high to plaster a wall when he heard someone yelling "Wall's collapsing!"

Before he had time to respond, Phu was buried under a stack of metal.

"It felt like the sky had fallen. Metal pressed against my chest - my arm hurt so bad I thought it had been severed. I passed out shortly after," Phu, 44, said while under treatment at Trang Bom General Hospital in Dong Nai Province.

The 12-meter-high, 100-meter-long wall had collapsed around 3 p.m. at a construction site for South Korean AV Healthcare, which produces tampons, diapers and milk bottles, in Giang Dien Industrial Park of Trang Bom District on Thursday.

With a wound to his head and a broken left arm, Phu turned around to check on his wife, Le Thi Tuyet Linh, 41, who suffered injuries to her face.

Pham Thanh Phu and his wife Le Thi Tuyet Linh at the Trang Bom General Hospital in Dong Nai Province. Photo by VnExpress/Dang Khoa.

As Linh recalled, along with other workers, she and her husband were working near the middle of the wall at the time of the incident. Luckily for them, the collapse occurred towards the other end, causing them to merely fall from the scaffolding.

As Linh and her husband were pulled from the mess, she reached out for Phu, who did not respond.

"Waking up in the emergency room and seeing my husband able to move, I was so happy that I almost cried," Linh said.

From Vinh Long Province in the Mekong Delta, Phu traveled over 200 kilometers (124 miles) northeast to Dong Nai, a neighbor of HCMC, employed at the construction site for two months at a salary of VND400,000 ($17) per day.

When the contractor announced it needed more masons at VND290,000 per day, he urged Linh to take the job, who brought their two children to Dong Nai.

"We could not make money at home so this was the right move."

Now, out of danger, Phu said he hopes to recover soon and get back to work, "or else I would have to take my wife and kids home, empty handed."

Two beds away from Phu, Vo Van Bac, 45, was busy tending to his wife.

Bac was digging a manhole next to the wall when strong winds arrived. He did not pay much attention to the habitual gust since the construction site is surrounded by vacant land. When he heard the sound of scaffolding and bricks falling, however, he threw his shovel down and ran just as the wall collapsed.

"It was so frightful. There were people buried under the wall and I could only see their heads," he said.

Those lucky enough to escape the collapse rushed to the rescue. A shocked Bac called out to his wife Dang Thi Suot, 44, who was nowhere to be found.

With the help of his colleagues, Bac found Suot lying motionless under layers of iron and concrete. "Her feet were crushed and bleeding."

After rescuing his wife, he rushed to look for his aunt, Truong Thi Lan Thanh, 51, who only suffered injuries to her face, arms and feet. Her husband, like Bac, had escaped intact.

From An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta, Bac, Suot, Thanh and her husband moved to Dong Nai to work after drought and salinity left their fields ravaged.

They had only worked at the construction site for 10 days after Vietnam eased its social distancing rules, established in the beginning of April to contain Covid-19.

"This is too scary. My uncle and I plan to have our wives take the kids back home," Bac said.

Part of the collapsed wall at the construction site of AV Healthcare at Giang Dien Industrial Park in Dong Nai's Trang Bom District. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan.

Bui Chi Cuong, a mason from Ca Mau, another Mekong Delta province, is still in shock recalling the wall crumbling only five meters from where he was stationed.

Cuong, who had taken a 10-minute break, swung around when he heard a big sound, seeing "the entire wall fell like a domino," following a strong wind.

"Dust hovered over everything and I could not see much. I heard people screaming for help. Along with other workers, I rushed to rescue five people trapped inside the rubble."

Some workers were not lucky enough to escape death, however.

In a group, they had left their hometown in Thoi Binh District of Ca Mau to work in Dong Nai. On Friday, those left of the initial party, brought the bodies of Nguyen Van Cuong, 56, and Nguyen Van Diep, 37, back home.

Transporting her husband's body, Nguyen Thi Suong could not hold back her tears as she recalled the moment she saw him crushed by tons of concrete. The couple had left their home two months ago to work at the construction site after their aqua farm was affected by salt intrusion.

Cuong worked on the scaffolding while Suong, 55, mixed plaster on the ground.

"As it was almost break time, I called him down to drink some water, but he insisted on finishing some work first. Minutes later the entire wall fell down and crushed him," she lamented.

Suong was standing two meters away when the accident happened. "When I returned, I could not see him. He had already passed away when we found him."

Nguyen Thi Suong sits on a car that carries the body of her husband's Nguyen Van Cuong back to their hometown in Ca Mau Province. Photo by VnExpress/Phuoc Tuan.

The family of Diep suffered similar misfortune.

At the end of April, their shrimp farm was severely damaged by salinity, leaving them empty handed.

To make ends meet, Diep had to leave his wife and two kids to find work in Dong Nai.

Le Quang Trung, deputy director of Dong Nai Health Department, said 15 victims of the wall collapse are receiving treatment at Trang Bom General Hospital. Most are now in stable condition and did not suffer critical injuries.

Initial investigation revealed 60-70 workers were present at the site when the accident took place, said Colonel Tran Tuan Trieu, deputy director of Dong Nai Police Department.

Eight were killed on the spot while two died at hospital. Of the deceased, one is female and the rest men.

Most victims are from the Mekong Delta, he confirmed.

An investigation has been launched into the incident.

Ha Duy Hai, director of Dong Nai-based Ha Hai Nga Co. Ltd, the project contractor, and two of his inferiors have been detained for probing.

Police have interviewed 35 workers who managed to escape the incident.
We met with senior police officers within the hierarchy and it was agreed a superintendent and above should investigate the matter. The issue that we were raising was whether a senior officer in the police force can be investigated by a junior officer, Sithole told Southern Eye.
An aerial view of Rex Airlines aircraft at Sydney Airport on April 22, 2020 in Sydney, Australia. (Ryan Pierse/Getty Images)

The Rex Factor in Australias National Airline Market

In a market-disrupting move, regional carrier Regional Express Airlines (Rex) has announced that it is considering the feasibility of scaling up its domestic operations as Virgin Australia scrambles to save itself through voluntary administration.

We may well have a three-airline market, Rexs deputy chairman John Sharp told The Australian Financial Review.

The Rex board released a statement to the ASX (pdf) on May 13 that said several parties had come forward with offers to financially back the airline.

The Rex board  has begun talks with potential partners to extend its operations to establish domestic operations, in addition to its regional services.

Rex estimates that it requires about $200 million to make it happen. The board will make a decision in the next 8 weeks, and if it goes ahead they aim to commence operations in March 2021.

We have been talking to half a dozen private equity and investment banking entities about investing in this new venture, Sharp told the AFR.

Rexs operations would be somewhere between Qantas and Jetstar, but not cost as much. It would lease about 10 narrow-bodied jets, which is four fewer than Tiger Airways fleet.

Sharp said its a good time for the move, saying, We are doing this because we see an opportunity. We have the advantage of having successfully run an airline for 18 years.

Rex was founded in 2002 after major Australian airline group Ansett failed. Rex now flies to 60 regional destinations and turns a profit every year (pdf), even as other national airlines saw major losses.

The most significant aspect of this is we will be the only capital city operator that is debt-free, Sharp said.

In contrast, Virgin Australia currently owes $7 billion to more than 12,000 creditors. The airline was founded in 2000 and flies to a number of cities, countries, continents, but has not made a profit for several years.

The Queensland Labor government announced this week that it is preparing a bid to buy a stake in Virgin, following its previous offer of a $200 million bailout and calls for the federal Coalition government to buy a stake in the airline to prop it up in order to protect the jobs of its 10,000 employees.

In response, Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday reiterated the position hes maintainedthat Virgin must find a market-based solution to its problem.

We want a competitive aviation market here in Australia. We want to see these two airlines flying and competing and giving a great deal to the flying public and to ensure that the freight keeps moving around this country, Morrison said.

Morrison said Virgins employees are looking forward to the airline emerging able to stand on its own two feet and employ the thousands of Australians that it does and be successful.

As Virgin Australia went into voluntary administration in late April, it engaged Deloitte, and suspended trading on the ASX on April 14. Virgin Australia stood down 8,000 staff in March to try and stay afloat but went into freefall on the back of strict travel bans caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, commonly known as novel coronavirus.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn exits a vehicle as he arrives for his sentencing hearing at U.S. District Court in Washington on Dec. 18, 2018. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

The Secret Side Deal in the Flynn Case

Commentary

The revelations of new evidence in the Michael Flynn case are coming so fast and furiously that its hard to keep up.

It was in June last year that the retired Army lieutenant general fired his longtime lawyers from the firm Covington & Burling and replaced them with a new defense team, led by Sidney Powell.

When theres a change of counsel, the departing counsel is supposed to turn over the entire case file, which is exactly what Covington & Burling claimed they did at the time.

However, on April 28 this yearwithout any advance warningFlynns former defense team informed the court that it had just discovered an additional 8,600 documents in the case file that had not been given to his new legal team. And, according to recent interviews by Powell, that number has now ballooned to more than 17,000 documents.

What prompted the lawyers at Covington & Burling to suddenly go back and take another look inside their offices for more Flynn case files?

Well, I have a theory.

The Low-Key New Special Prosecutor

Without announcing it at the time, Attorney General William Barr in January appointed Jeffrey Jensen, U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, to the role of special prosecutor. Barr quietly gave Jensen the task of going into the District of Columbia U.S. Attorneys Office to review the Flynn case.

There was no announcement, and for about a month, it wasnt publicly known that Jensen was even in that office doing his investigation.

From late January to mid-February, everyone was focused on the Roger Stone case and the contretemps that erupted over his sentencing, resulting in four Mueller special counsel prosecutors resigning in protest.

Then on April 24, it was announced through official DOJ channels and court filings that Jensen had just handed sealed documents to Powell.

Sidney Powell, author of the bestseller Licensed to Lie and lead counsel in more than 500 appeals in the U.S. Fifth Circuit, in Washington on May 30, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

I believe it was this official disclosure from the DOJs special counsel to Powell that suddenly lit a fire under Covington & Burling to rush to the court four days later and disclose that they still had untold thousands of Flynn case files in their possession.

Some of those documents that Jensen found during his review have now been unsealed by the court.

And each of unsealed documents thus far has filled in another piece of the puzzle in the Flynn case.

The Secret Side Deal

The unsealed documents, among other things, have revealed a secret side deal that Mueller special counsel prosecutors had made with Flynns defense team from Covington & Burlinga deal that neither side had revealed to the court.

The prosecutors had threatened to charge both Flynn and his son, Mike Flynn Jr., with multiple felony crimes related to illegal lobbying and assign them both stiff prison sentences, unless Flynn agreed to plead guilty to the far less serious crime of making a false statement during an interview with federal agents.

The huge problem here for the Mueller special counsel office and Flynns former lawyers was that this secret side deal to force Flynn into a guilty plea by threatening his son wasnt disclosed to the court. Lead prosecutor Brandon Van Grack had filed an official plea agreement with the court in which he swore that every deal or any understanding reached between the prosecution and the defense was contained in writing within that document.

A key paragraph in the plea deal agreement between Flynns lawyers and the special counsel office clearly states:

No agreements, promises, understandings, or representations have been made by the parties or their counsel other than those contained in writing herein, nor will any such agreements, promises, understandings, or representations be made unless committed to writing and signed by your client, defense counsel, and the Special Counsels Office.

The threat to prosecute his son in order to coerce Flynn into a guilty plea to a lesser charge appears nowhere in that plea filing, which means Van Grack deliberately lied to the court.

Covington & Burlings Damage Control Move

It appears to me that the Covington & Burling lawyers couldnt take the chance that Jensen had discovered their secret side deal in his review of the Mueller prosecution teams documents.

The only damage control move they had left to make was to do exactly what they did: rush to the courtroom to suddenly claim they had just discovered thousands of documents they had failed to disclose previously.

As Margot Cleveland explains in The Federalist, its a very serious act of gross misconduct if a prosecutor and defense lawyer conspire to hide a side deal from the presiding judgeespecially a strong-arm deal like this. Its a direct violation of a defendants constitutional rights.

Its not only Van Grack and the prosecution team that would be in trouble for hiding this deal from the judge; Flynns former lawyers also could be found to have participated in a conspiracy to mislead the judge.

One of the chief reasons Flynn has filed to withdraw his guilty plea is because hes claimed to the presiding judge, Judge Emmet Sullivan, that he had received ineffective counsel from his lawyers, who had an unwaivable conflict of interest that they didnt disclose to him.

Covington & Burling making a secret side deal to help prosecutors strong-arm their client to plead guilty to a crime he didnt commit would certainly qualify as ineffective counsel.

The cumulative result of all these late disclosures is that the DOJ is now asking for the court to dismiss the case.

On the same day the DOJ filed that brief with Judge Sullivan asking him to dismiss its case against General Flynn, Van Grack resigned as lead prosecutor.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and author of Nobody Asked For My Opinion  But Here It Is Anyway! He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Pool / Getty Images

With more than 80,000 Americans lost and the economy in shambles, its hard to believe that we may not have seen the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic. And yet a succession of experts have issued dire warnings this week about just such a frightening prospect.

The latest is Rick Bright, a vaccine expert and Health and Human Services official demoted after criticizing the administrations promotion of unproven treatments for the virus. Ousted last month as director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, a small agency created in the wake of 9/11 to prepare for bioterrorism, pandemics and similar threats, Bright told a House subcommittee Thursday that this virus will overcome us in significant ways in the fall without a more coordinated and effective national response. Without better planning, he said, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.
US President Donald Trump has categorically ruled out any plans to renogotiate the trade deal agreement with China. The two countries, in the beginning of the year, had signed of a trade deal which brought an end to the two-year tariff war.

On Thursday, Trump said, "The Chinese said somewhere that they would like to renegotiate the (trade) deal. We are not going to renegotiate." Trump was quoted as saying in an interview to an American news channel.

He further said that he does not want to speak to Chinese President Xi Jinping, "I have a very good relationship, but I just -- right now I don't want to speak to him," he said.

Trump suggested that US could do something about it like cut off relationship with China and save $500 billion.

"There are many things we could do. We could do things, we could cut off the whole relationship... You would save USD 500 billion, if you cut off the whole relationship. Look, at what point does -- and I said this for years I said it with other countries also you know -- China is not the only country ripping us off at the NATO where we defend Europe for nothing by the way essentially nothing I was able to get them to pay hundreds of billions of dollars more," he said.

The US is upset with Beijing's handling of the coronavirus pandemic, the outbreak which broke in China in December last year before spreading across the world killing over 3,00,000 people, including 80,000 in America.

The lawmakers and opinion-makers in the US are putting pressure on Trump to take stringent action against China. Moreover, Trump and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have already claimed that the deadly virus originated from China's Wuhan Institute of Virology.
A financial fund that acquires social housing for public bodies has claimed before the High Court that the previous owner of an apartment it acquired has unlawfully re-entered and is trespassing on the property.

The action has been taken the Davy Platform ICAV, an asset management umbrella fund established to provide Social Housing to local authorities, against Gerard O'Sullivan, who it is alleged is the former owner of the house located at Rosebank Place, Clondalkin, Dublin 22.

It is alleged that Mr O'Sullivan, who denies any wrongdoing and says he is the owner of the property, has without lawful permission re-entered the two bedroomed property and is claiming that the apartment is his family home.

The fund also claimed that a Ms Fiona O'Brien who is believed to be a niece of Mr O'Sullivan, is also trespassing at the property. She claims she is residing at the apartment on foot of a lease granted to her by Mr O'Sullivan.

As a result of their failure to vacate the property the fund seeks an injunction requiring the defendants to vacate the property, and that they cease trespassing or interfering with the apartment.

The fund, represented by Michael O'Sullivan Bl, claims that it purchased the property from a fund Promontoria Oyster DAC for 173,000 in October 2018. It wants to refurbish the property so it can be used by South Dublin Co Council for its housing needs.

Counsel said the fund is the legal registered owner of the apartment, and the defendants have no defence to its action.

Any issues the defendants have with Promontoria over the sale of the apartment was between those parties, the fund claims.

The fund had believed that the property was vacant, but early last month it received a report that a tenant was living there. Following its investigations, it discovered that the defendants have occupied the property.

The matter came before Mr Justice Senan Allen on Friday.

Representing himself Mr O'Sullivan denies he is a trespasser.

He told the court that he is the owner of the property and that any purported purchase of the apartment by the fund, he added, was illegal.

He asked the court to adjourn the case as he needed time to obtain lawyers or to reply to the fund's claims against him. He said that he had only received the papers in the case on Thursday.

In reply, counsel said that claim by Mr O'Sullivan was "disingenuous" as the parties had exchanged correspondence since April 22 last, when counsel said Mr O'Sullivan was served with the proceedings at Kennelsfort Road, Upper in Dublin.

Counsel said the injunction application was urgent, and his client was anxious for it to be heard as soon as possible.

The judge, noting both sides' positions, said he was adjourning the matter for a week to allow Mr O'Sullivan formally reply to the fund's claims.

The judge said that Ms O'Brien, who Mr O'Sullivan said was cocooning and awaiting the outcome of a Covid-19 test, would have to either attend the hearing or obtain legal representative if she wanted to be heard on the application.
SAINT MARY-OF-THE-WOODS, Ind.  The Sisters of Providence of Saint Mary-of-the-Woods, Indiana, recently welcomed a new addition to its alpaca herd, Providence Raphael Anthony.

Providence Raphael Anthony, "Tony" for short, was given this name in honor of Archangel Saint Raphael, the patron saint of nurses, doctors, and medical workers, and Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Disease at the National Institute of Health.

He was born on Sunday, April. 26.

The alpaca herd is part of the Congregation's ministry, White Violet Center for Eco-Justice, and has been since 1998. Currently, there are 38 alpacas at White Violet Center. The Congregation chose to have alpacas to fit with their values and commitment to Earth.

Visitors are reminded that all buildings on campus are still closed to the public and social distancing guidelines must be maintained while outdoors.

The Sisters of Providence are a Roman Catholic Congregation of Women Religious founded by Saint Mother Theodore Guerin in 1840. The Congregation of nearly 260 women religious and more than 280 Providence Associates collaborate with others to create a more just and hope-filled world through prayer, education, service and advocacy. The Sisters of Providence have their Motherhouse at Saint Mary-of-the-Woods located just northwest of downtown Terre Haute, Ind.

Pope John Paul II beatified Saint Mother Theodore Guerin on Oct. 25, 1998, and Pope Benedict XVI canonized her a Saint on Oct. 15, 2006.

Today, the Sisters of Providence minister in 17 states, the District of Columbia and Asia, through works of love, mercy and justice.

For more information about the Sisters of Providence and their ministries, log on to spsmw.org.

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Oneida, N.Y.  Green Empire Farms has 60 days to finish construction on its two bunkhouses for migrant workers, Madison County officials said today.

But those dormitory-style buildings at the big farm under glass are not nearly large enough to house the companys migrant workers. County Public Health Director Eric Faisst said today the company had hoped to put 74 workers in each of the two buildings, but they would likely only fit 60.

That leaves at least 130 of the more than 250 migrant workers with no place to live.

The workers have been living in three local hotels. They were living four to a room, two to a bed. Faisst and other county officials said those cramped living quarters fueled the largest coronavirus cluster in Upstate New York.

Of those workers, 169 tested positive for the coronavirus. Two hotel workers became ill with the coronavirus and the husband of one died from the virus.

The state, the county and the federal Occupational Health and Safety Administration are all investigating the farm and the living quarters.

The outbreak became a lesson in super-spreading during Gov. Andrew Cuomos reopening news conference in Syracuse today.

One person in a large gathering, any density, can infect dozens, Cuomo said. Thats what we just learned again in Madison County. So it is about the gathering. One infected person, it will take off on you.

At that news conference, Howard Zucker, the commissioner of the state Department of Health, said the state been working with Madison County and Green Empire to address the housing arrangements, but also to see what may have gone wrong.

Were investigating everything, Zucker said.

A spokeswoman for Mastronadi Produce did not return a phone call about the living situation.

Martha Alaniz, whose company MAC Contracting provides the migrant labor, was surprised that the Green Empire bunkhouses were not big enough for all the workers.

Wow, she said, after hearing the onsite housing would only fit 120 workers.

Green Empire Farms opened for business in August without finishing the migrant living quarters. The current group of migrant workers has been in town since December.

So far, 64 acres of the farms planned 100-acre greenhouse growing system are complete.

The workforce at the farm depends heavily on migrant labor: There are more than 250 migrant workers and roughly 180 local workers.

Madison County only became aware of the size of Green Empires migrant workforce during the coronavirus outbreak.

It is unclear whether the workers who will not fit in the bunkhouses can continue living in the hotels. County spokeswoman Samantha Field said the county is still looking into whether the hotels could meet the criteria set out under state public health law for migrant farmworker housing.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

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Someday restaurants in CNY will reopen. What will that look like?

How do I get a contact tracing job in NY? Work from home in coronavirus battle

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Marnie Eisenstadt is a reporter who writes about people and public affairs in Central New York. Have an idea or question? Contact her anytime: email | twitter| Facebook | 315-470-2246.
On March 10, 1980, a BBC Panorama special dubbed "If The Bomb Drops" was shown and it featured a young Jeremy Paxman. It was aired during the time when tensions in the Cold War were high as the Nuclear Arms Race was heating up and on Christmas Day in 1979, the Soviet troops had invaded Afghanistan, in which the US and the UK backed the opposition.

The conflict between the countries sparked fears of World War 3 and the UK government began planning on how it would mitigate the effects of a nuclear attack if it happens, so they released information broadcasts such as Protect and Survive.

A nuclear war that would have wiped out the UK

During the footage of the special "If The Bomb Drops", Colonel Jonathan Alford, the former deputy director at the Institute of Strategic Studies, said that Russians do not accept the mutual part of Mutual Assured Destruction or MAD. Russian clearly think that one day, a nuclear exchange will be made and if that happens, they want to have less damage than the US.

Colonel Alford said that Russia may look at something like 200 targets in the UK and may allocate nearly as many as 400 weapons to the destruction of those targets. Alford added that if the took a map of the UK and put pins in all the military targets, he thinks they would be interested in, there would not be many parts of the UK left.

Later in the program, Paxman took a helicopter ride over London, to assess the impact of nuclear bombs on the capital in case it happens. He said that a one-megaton bomb exploding 7,000 feet above the House of Commons, would create a fireball over a mile across, over Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, which is the heart of London. The fireball would last for 10 seconds and it will reach temperatures of hundreds of thousands of degrees.

Also Read: North Korean City Sealed Off, Sparking Rumors About COVID-19 Cases

Paxman added that over an area for about a mile, down as far as Vauxhall Bridge, there would be winds of 700mph, while some of the more substantial buildings might be left partially standing or shifted on their foundations. Anything else, including human beings, would have simply vanished in just seconds.

What would have happened?

If a nuclear war happens, anyone living in the center of a city like London would be annihilated instantly. However, those living a bit further away from the city could also be in the firing line because of the radioactive fallout that will be caused by the atomic explosion.

So where should people be if they want to survive an atomic explosion? A nuclear historian at the Stevens Institute of Technology, Alex Wellerstein, designed a tool called Nuke Map that lets you see what would happen when bombs are dropped on major cities. It will show you how far the damage would be and how fast the annihilation could be.

The strength of nukes is measures by explosive power. It ranges from one kiloton or the force of 1,000 tonnes of TNT and a megaton meaning one million tonnes of TNT.



Related Article: North Korean Leader Kim Jong-Un Sell Fake Beards, Eyebrows and Eyelashes Despite Sanctions

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
We are fully committed to and hyper-focused on ensuring the safety of our site so the team may continue to produce food for the American people, Sabra Dipping Co. said in a statement.

Sabra, based in White Plains, N.Y., opened its factory in the Ruffin Mill Industrial Park in 2010 and has expanded it several times.

Sabra said it has taken a number of steps to prevent the spread of COVID-19, including moving employees who can work from home off site; providing employees with protective gear, including face masks; adjusting shift schedules for production workers to support social distancing; and doing temperature checks for employees before they enter the site.

Maruchan, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Toyo Suisan Kaisha Ltd., opened the local plant in 1989 and also has expanded it several times.

Following the discovery of the infections, we conducted a deep cleaning based on CDC guidelines, the company said. We will continue to enforce safety and sanitization precautions above and beyond what has been outlined by the CDC and the health department, and, as of now the plant is in operation.
Musicians and songwriters pocketed a record 810million from royalties payments last year.

But the industry has warned the cancellation of live performances because of the coronavirus pandemic will hammer artists income in 2020 and 2021.

The total royalties paid rose 8.7 per cent on 2019, according to PRS for Music, the organisation that ensures UK songwriters, composers and publishers get paid when their music is played or performed anywhere in the world.

Music industry revenues were boosted by tours from the Spice Girls, Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton John's (pictured) Farewell concerts

While the amount earned from music streaming services such as Spotify rose 23 per cent to 179million, around a quarter, or 222million, came from public performances.

Revenues were boosted by tours from the Spice Girls, Ed Sheeran and Sir Elton Johns Farewell concerts.

Social distancing measures have forced staple festivals such as Glastonbury and Reading to cancel this summers events, while many artists have had to scrap planned tours.

PRS for Music chief executive Andrea Martin told the BBC: We know very well that were in unprecedented, unpredictable times.
Some of these measures are predictable  all patients must wear masks and are screened for fever and other symptoms of COVID-19, the illness caused by the coronavirus. Other changes are more innovative. For example, Anderson's practice has practically eliminated the traditional waiting room, and instead encourages patients to wait in their cars until they receive a text from the office to come in for their appointment.

"It's allowed us to leverage technology to make it more convenient, Anderson says. You can come in the door and go right back to the exam rooms. You don't have to wait. Preregistration and advance checkout also eliminate the need to stand in a line with others before and after your appointment. And I think that adds to the convenience and access, he says.

Some practices will space out appointments to keep the number of people in the office to a minimum, making it easier for everyone to keep their distance from others, the AMA's Harris says. The AMA also recommends that doctors limit the number of visitors who come with a patient to an appointment, so be sure to ask about any new rules when you schedule your visit.

"The new normal is going to be the new normal for a long time, and it will be different, Harris says.

How to prepare for a doctor visit

You can do a few things ahead of your appointment to ensure your in-person visit goes smoothly. Anderson recommends packing a cloth face covering and some hand sanitizer for when you don't have immediate access to soap and water. It's also a good idea to write down your health conditions and the medications you take ahead of time so you don't leave any off during your visit. And don't forget to include any drug allergies you may have.

"It's important for providers particularly to know if you have diabetes or if you are immunocompromised, for example. So from a patient standpoint, keep that information and carry some protective equipment with you, Anderson says.

Without a vaccine, risk for exposure to the coronavirus can be anywhere. But if patients and staff follow the safety precautions put in place, a trip to the doctor's office should be a relatively safe experience. It's probably more dangerous to go to a grocery store than it is to come and see us in our office, Anderson adds.

When to go to the emergency room

In addition to a decline in routine visits in the last few months, physicians offices have also noticed a steep decline in the number of patients coming in for acute care. Hospital emergency rooms across the country have also reported a marked drop in visits since the start of the coronavirus outbreak  and experts say this is a concerning trend.

"I know that folks have been worried about going to the emergency department, but if they would have thought of calling 911 before COVID-19, they should remember that they should continue to do that during this pandemic, Harris says.

Difficulty breathing, difficulty speaking, chest or upper abdominal pain, uncontrolled bleeding and changes in vision all warrant trips to the emergency room, according to the American College of Emergency Physicians. Injuries such as twisted ankles or noncompound fractures can often be taken care of in a physician's office or urgent care center, Anderson says. But it's always a good idea to call ahead to make sure.

"We don't want anybody to delay those things, because delayed primary care actually turns into emergencies, One Medical's Rothman adds.

Telehealth is here to stay

Even with routine appointments back up and running in some areas, telehealth is expected to stick around. That method of health care delivery has expanded rapidly during the crisis, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation. In mid-April, the Cleveland Clinic reported that demand for virtual visits was up more than 1,000 percent since the start of the outbreak. Other polls have found that more than 20 percent of adults have used telehealth services during the pandemic.

"I think telehealth is here to stay because of the convenience and access piece of it, Anderson says. It also allows us to do some interesting things with care management for chronic disease  it allows us virtual triage options, and I think it will show a reduced cost of care in the long run because patients have more available access to ask questions and get the care that they need virtually.

That said, telehealth will never replace in-person visits, Harris says. Instead, it will likely be integrated into our overall new health ecosystem.

"There will continue to be a role for telehealth, but we will have to make sure that role is in the service of patients and that we continue to see good outcomes, Harris adds.
A Louisville woman was forced to give birth in a hospital parking lot and her husband resorted to using a knitted face mask to tie-off the umbilical cord, after they arrived to find the doors to the facility were locked.

Shocking 911 audio reveals the moment Sarah Patrick is left with no choice but to deliver her son on the sidewalk outside Baptist Health Louisville in Kentucky while her husband David Patrick pleaded with dispatchers to send medical help.

'She is literally on the floor in the parking lot, she cannot get up,' David is heard saying in the frantic 911 call, as Sarah is heard screaming in the background.

Louisville woman Sarah Patrick was forced to give birth to her son in a hospital parking lot and her husband David Patrick resorted to using a knitted face mask to tie-off the umbilical cord, after they arrived to find the doors to the facility locked (the couple pictured with their son Navi Bond Patrick)

The ordeal began when Sarah went into labor in the early hours of the morning on May 9 and the couple, who have two other children, set off for hospital, reported the Courier Journal.

The couple said they arrived at the Women First pavilion at Baptist Health Louisville and tried to get inside, only to find the second set of automatic doors were locked.

'We had no idea why, and it was probably 30 or 40 degrees out,' David told the Journal.

With panic setting in, they tried another set of doors which were also locked.

Things turned more frantic when Sarah's waters broke as she was stood in the road by a parking garage.

'We're in the middle of the street, and she can't move,' David said.

Shocking 911 audio reveals the moment Sarah Patrick (pictured with her newborn son) is left with no choice but to deliver her son on the sidewalk outside Baptist Health Louisville

Her husband David Patrick pleaded with dispatchers to send medical help and is forced to help deliver their child

'She nearly collapses in front of the labor and delivery sign.'

David dialled 911, and the dispatcher talked him through how to help deliver his son before medics arrived on the scene.

'I'm not a doctor. I don't have a number to reach anyone in the building. We're basically in a concrete wilderness,' David told the Journal.

'She's in a lot of pain, and she's ready to get this thing over with.

'I put my phone speaker and set it down. My wife is screaming. ... 'He's coming! He's coming!''

David continued: 'I suddenly see about a third of the top of my new son's head so I was like, "Oh my gosh. This is really happening."'

The couple have told how the concerned father was then forced to use a homemade COVID-19 face mask to cut the umbilical cord, as it was the only thing to hand as Sarah lay on the ground outside the hospital

The couple with their newborn son and two other children. They said mother and baby are both 'perfectly healthy'

The baby arrived safely on the ground outside the hospital and David wrapped their new son in his leather jacket.

The concerned father was then forced to use a homemade COVID-19 face mask to cut the umbilical cord, as it was the only thing to hand.

'We both had boots on, so we didn't have shoe strings available,' David told the Journal.

'But my grandmother had knitted COVID-19 masks for the family. I found a mask and rolled it like a really tight tortilla.'

An ambulance arrived on the scene and finally took mother and baby inside.

David told the Journal Sarah and their newborn son, Navi Bond Patrick, are both 'perfectly healthy'.

The couple said the hospital's security director visited them to apologize for the incident.

Baptist Health Louisville told DailyMail.com that there is an intercom button to gain entry at the second set of doors.

'Patients who come to Baptist Health Louisville, who are pregnant and in labor, can always enter the hospital in the middle of the night through the Emergency Room or enter through the entrance to the Labor and Delivery department which is located in the front of the building at 3900 Kresge Way,' the hospital said in a statement.

'Both entrances have signage and both entrances are open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week. Other entrances to the hospital are closed after 7 p.m. until 5 a.m.'
Amazon workers protesting the company's policies during the coronavirus pandemic on May 1 in Hawthorne, California.

Tommaso Boddi/Getty Images

Amazon will stop paying warehouse workers an extra $2 per hour at the end of this month.

The pay raise was brought in during March to compensate workers for coming into work during the coronavirus pandemic.

Amazon reported 26% revenue growth in its first quarter, as the pandemic drove more consumers to shop online.

One Amazon worker told Business Insider they thought the decision to end the heightened pay is "disgraceful."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Amazon will at the end of May scrap the $2 hourly raise it introduced for warehouse workers coming in during the coronavirus pandemic.

"We're going to do one more extension on it and push it out until the end of the month," Dave Clark, Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations told Recode.

The $2 raise has been in effect since mid-March alongside increased overtime pay, and was originally slated to run through to the end of April but the company extended it.

"I feel like it's too soon," one Amazon warehouse worker told Business Insider, adding they found out about the final extension via news reports rather than company communication.

"I had to find this out through news outlets. I do understand the economy is reopening, but the demand has not decreased and if anyone expects things to go back to normal anytime soon, it would be unrealistic. I believe that it should be extended into the month of June, so that they can have a better grasp of our new normal as we watch the economy recover," they said.

Another warehouse employee called the decision "disgraceful."

"Staff put themselves at risk every day. Also with the harsh regime and difficult targets the workers more than deserve the pay rise permanently. It just shows how very little regard Amazon has for its overworked employees," they said.

A third employee whose warehouse now has over 20 confirmed cases of COVID-19 called the decision a "slap in the face."

Story continues

Amazon also cut a policy allowing workers to take unlimited amounts of unpaid time off at the end of April, a policy originally introduced to allow workers to stay home if they felt unsafe without fearing repercussion. "Now they're forcing people to go to work because if you run out of unpaid time off, that's it, you're fired," one Amazon employee told The Guardian.

An Amazon spokesperson told Bloomberg its pay incentives for employees since the beginning of the pandemic have racked up to nearly $800 million. The company also said at the end of last month that in total it expects to spend $4 billion on increased wages, personal protective equipment, and increased cleaning of its facilities.

Inside Amazon's Thornton, Colorado warehouse (picture taken in March 2019).

Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Amazon has seen a massive spike in demand since the beginning of the year with customers stuck in their homes. The firm reported a 26% revenue spike in its first-quarter financials to $75.5 billion. It has had to balance this surge against the safety of its warehouse staff  with limited success.

Amazon employees have told Business Insider that although Amazon has brough in policies like social distancing, in practice these are impossible to enact inside the warehouses.

In France the company shuttered its warehouses after a court last month ruled its protections were inadequate, and limited the company to only shipping essential items until it could bring its employee safety up to scratch.

In the US workers have gone on protests, partly fuelled by the firing of vocally critical employees. In one case worker Christian Smalls was fired after leading a walkout at his Staten Island warehouse. Amazon asserts Smalls was terminated for violating social-distancing policy, but Smalls believes it was because of his activism.

A leaked memo from a meeting at which CEO Jeff Bezos was present showed Amazon's top-level executives discussed how best to handle the press fallout from Smalls' firing, with the company's top lawyer saying he was "not smart or articulate" and Amazon should "make him the face of the entire union/organizing movement."

Christy Hoffman, general secretary for the internal workers' union UNI Global Union told Business Insider: "Amazon's announcement to end hazard pay shows yet again that the tech giant won't act in the best interest of workers unless pushed.

"It is the same attitude that has already motivated workers to strike, take the company to court and demand respect on the job. As the deadly coronavirus outbreak continues, Amazon should put workers first and pay a premium for their labor."

"Since the early days of this situation, we have worked closely with health authorities to respond proactively, ensuring we can continue to serve communities while taking care of our associates and teams," an Amazon spokeswoman told Business Insider.

"We have also implemented proactive measures at our facilities to protect employees including increased cleaning at all facilities, maintaining social distance in our sites, and adding distance between drivers and customers when making deliveries," she added.

Are you an Amazon employee? Got a tip? Contact this reporter at ihamilton@businessinsider.com or iahamilton@protonmail.com.

Read the original article on Business Insider
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 03:51:35|Editor: huaxia

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ROME, May 14 (Xinhua) -- A further 262 COVID-19 patients had died in the past 24 hours in Italy, bringing the country's toll to 31,368, out of total infection cases of 223,096, according to fresh figures on Thursday.

The number of recoveries rose to 115,288, an increase of 2,747 compared to Wednesday. Nationwide, the number of active infections fell by 2,017 to 76,440, according to the Civil Protection Department.

Of those who tested positive for the coronavirus, 855 are being treated in intensive care, a decrease of 38 compared to Wednesday, and 11,453 people are hospitalized with symptoms, a decrease of 719 over the past 24 hours.

The remaining 64,132 people -- or 84 percent of those who have tested positive -- are in isolation at home without or with only mild symptoms.

The Lombardy region whose capital is Milan still had the lion's share of cases (29,956), followed by its neighbors Piedmont (11,891), Emilia-Romagna (6,301) and the Veneto region whose capital is Venice (4,718).

In the rest of Italy's 20 regions, case totals ranged from 4,096 in the central Lazio region where Rome is located, to 80 cases in the northern Valle d'Aosta region in the Alps.

5-BLN RESCUE PACKAGE FOR CULTURE, TOURISM

At a press conference broadcast on Facebook earlier in the day, Cultural Heritage and Tourism Minister Dario Franceschini said that the government's brand-new, 55-billion-euro (almost 60 billion U.S. dollars) Recovery Decree contains 4 billion euros for the tourism industry and 1 billion euros for the cultural sector.

The measures include hefty tax, rent and mortgage exemptions for hotels, restaurants, tour operators, travel agencies, seaside establishments, and cultural institutions -- such as theaters and cinemas -- which have lost or stand to lose significant chunks of their revenue due to the pandemic.

"This proves there is an awareness of the strategic importance of these two sectors in our country," Franceschini said.

The biggest package is a 2.4-billion-euro "holiday bonus", allocating 500 euros to families with income of up to 40,000 euros a year for stays in Italian agri-tourism facilities, bed and breakfasts, camp grounds, hotels, and village resorts between July 1 and Dec. 31 this year.

"This will mean helping families but also injecting liquidity into the reception facilities," the minister said.

In addition, Franceschini said his ministry is setting up a 150-million-euro tourism fund to protect the sector from being snapped up by foreign investors.

"The culture sector has been dramatically impacted -- museums have not seen a single euro of revenue," Franceschini noted as he introduced a 210-million-euro emergency fund for private-sector cultural enterprises and a 100-million-euro fund to partially cover the lost revenues of Italy's 400 state museums.

"These measures will allow them to cross this desert," Franceschini said.

There are also a strategic 100-million-euro fund open to "private entities that want to invest in culture in our country," and 245 million euros to support Italy's film industry.

Lastly, said Franceschini, the city of Parma, which is Italian capital of culture "in this unfortunate year 2020" will remain capital of culture in 2021.

Italy's museums are set to reopen on May 18.

EXPORTS CONTRACT DRASTICALLY

Also on Thursday, Italy's national institute of statistics ISTAT said the pandemic has caused exports and imports to contract by 16.8 percent in March compared to the previous month.

"On a yearly basis, the drastic fall of sales on foreign markets of machinery, motor vehicles and leather goods makes up more than half of the drop in exports," ISTAT analysts wrote. "Reduced purchases of motor vehicles, metals, oil, and natural gas make up about 9 percentage points of the drop in imports on an annual basis."

The strong contraction of exports on a monthly basis is due to a significant decrease in sales to non-European Union (EU) markets (-18.5 percent) and to the EU (-15.2 percent).

Exports were down by 4.1 percent and imports were down by 5.1 percent in the first quarter of 2020 compared to the preceding quarter. Due to fewer sales to both non-EU (-14.7 percent) and EU countries (-12.2 percent), exports plunged 13.5 percent in March compared to the same period in 2019.

The sectors that bucked the trend on a yearly basis in terms of exports were pharmaceuticals (+32.5 percent) and food, beverages and tobacco (+13.5 percent).

On a yearly basis, the countries that contributed the most to the decrease in Italy's exports were the UK and the OPEC countries, both down 24.3 percent.

Imports also decreased "drastically" year-on-year (-18.1 percent) in terms of purchases from non-EU countries (-21.7 percent) as well as EU countries (-15.5 percent). Enditem
Puducherry Chief Minister V Narayanasamy announced on Friday he would contribute every month 30 per cent of the pension amount he was receiving for having served as an MP.

The senior Congress leader who has been a Rajya Sabha member and also a Lok Sabha MP, was a Minister in the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh.

He was receiving Rs 45,000 as pension, the chief minister said, adding "I have decided to contribute 30 per

cent of the pension amount every month to the COVID-19 Relief Fund in Puducherry to strengthen the financial position of the administration to combat the pandemic."

He also appealed to others to follow suit and help augment the state's funds.

Narayanasamy also hailed President Ram Nath Kovind's announcement to forgo 30 per cent of his salary for the PM CARES fund to combat the pandemic.

The chief minister also urged government staff to extend their cooperation to help the administration wriggle

out of the current fiscal crisis due tpcaused by the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

He referred to the salary cut for government staff effected by several States including Kerala, Telangana and

Andhra Pradesh and the Tamil Nadu government's move to freeze hike in DA as a measure to fight pandemic.

Narayanasamy said he had written letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to bring the "poor financial position of Puducherry government" to their notice.

"I will seek the Centre's cooperation to help Puducherry recover from the present critical position," he added.

He reiterated his plea to the Centre to provide Rs 5,000 to every poor family so that the poorer sections would have the wherewithal to purchase grains and carry on their life.

Narayanasamy appealed to people in the Union Territory "to learn to live with the virus as the institutions like WHO had already expressed the view that the pandemic would not vanish."

Meanwhile, Lt Governor Kiran Bedi has also announced several austerity measures.

In her WhatsApp message to mediapersons, she said she had put on hold purchase of a new car for the office of

Puducherry government in New Delhi.

Bedi said she had been donating one-third of her salary each month to the PM CARES Fund even before the

pandemic set in.

Hailing the President for announcing that he would forgo 30 per cent of his monthly salary, she said he had set the right example for the whole country through his gesture.
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Linkedin Ghina Ghaliya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 09:22 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82cc26 1 Politics Gerindra-Party,Prabowo-Subianto,Jokowi,2024-presidential-election,cabinet,COVID-19,coronavirus Free

Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto is reportedly lying low amid a string of controversial policies enacted by President Joko Jokowi Widodos administration to contain the spread of COVID-19 and limit its economic fallout.

The Gerindra Party, of which Prabowo is the chairman, joined the pro-government coalition after bitterly contesting the 2019 presidential election. Even within the coalition, the party has sometimes been openly critical of the government. The former opposition party initially rejected the issuance of Regulation in Lieu of Law (Perppu) No. 1/2020, which expanded the governments spending authority to manage the impact of COVID-19, but the party eventually gave its approval for the regulation in a House of Representatives plenary meeting on Tuesday.

The partys members have been divided when responding to other policies, such as the establishment of the preemployment card, whether and how to ease large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) and, most recently, the Health Care and Social Security Agency (BPJS Health) premium hike. Some have been outspoken against the measures, while the others have remained silent.

Prabowo and Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Edhy Prabowo, a fellow member of Gerindra, have reportedly chosen not to appear in the spotlight alongside other Cabinet members during the pandemic.

Gerindra deputy chairman Arief Poyuono, who often criticizes the government, brushed off reports of tension, saying that the party was still loyal to Jokowi. However, he called on Jokowi's ministers to avoid making blunders that could cause anxiety and mistrust in the public.

Read also: Jokowi calls for caution in easing of PSBB after mudik ban relaxation

The other ministers should be like him [Prabowo]. Hes not someone who triggers public anger toward Pak Jokowi, he told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

Arief said Prabowo had not complained to other party members about their criticism of the government. Instead, Jokowis two-time presidential competitor had reminded his subordinates in the party to remain critical of the government.

In mid-April, after not speaking in public for quite some time, Prabowo posted a video on Twitter, saying that Jokowi was fighting for the nation and the people.

"I look closely at his decision-making methods and I see that he always considers public safety, the poor and the weak. I also see his commitment to combat corruption," Prabowo said.

Arief said Prabowo's message was a reminder to party members to be supportive of Jokowi as a leader but not to be silent when his aides faltered during the crisis.

Read also: In PSBB we trust

"Prabowo wants to defend Jokowi, his boss, because he has been criticized by some figures and political parties outside the government," he said.

Arya Fernandes, a political analyst from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) said that of all the parties in the coalition, Gerindra was facing the most complicated situation as its members were divided over Prabowo's decision to join the Cabinet. He said the party might be worried that government blunders would cause Gerindra voters to jump ship to other parties.

"They cannot do much in a time like this. [It] would greatly benefit the opposition parties. Considering Gerindra voters' behavior, the Prosperous Justice Party (PKS) would get most of the advantage from a migration," Arya said.

Arya added that Gerindra's position was different from Golkar when it joined the government in Jokowi's first term as a veteran party with a strategic position in the legislature.

"Golkar can influence the rhythm of the coalition, but Gerindra's political effect is not as dominant."

Read also: PDI-P maintains close ties, sees future with Gerindra

"I think Prabowo understands this, so he doesnt want to appear as a government fanatic or be too flashy. He also wants to protect the psychology of Gerindra voters," Arya said.

Indonesia Political Review executive director Ujang Komarudin also thought Prabowo's silence was a result of his position in the Cabinet.

He is trapped by political reconciliation. Although he knows that some policies are not pro-people, like it or not, Prabowo should stay silent because he is Jokowis aide, he said.

Ujang said Gerindra would remain in the Jokowi coalition even though the alliance had put the party in difficult circumstances.

Gerindra is in a dilemma. They need public support to win in the 2024 race, but on the other hand, they are in Jokowis coalition. They must accept it, although it might hurt their chest, he added.
New Jersey has already moved its upcoming primary elections  which include races for president, U.S. Senate, and U.S. House  from June 2 to July 7 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Now, Gov. Phil Murphy has signed an executive order to make the elections mostly be vote-by-mail, though each county will have a limited number of in-person polling places.

Murphy announced Friday that all registered Democratic and Republican voters will receive a mail-in ballot with prepaid postage to vote in the July 7 primary. Unaffiliated or inactive voters will get an application to apply for mail-in ballots, the governor said.

Voters can drop off ballots at regular mail boxes and secure drop-boxes that counties will be required to set up.

We will ensure every vote is counted," Murphy said during his daily coronavirus briefing in Trenton. Our goals are twofold: to maximize our democracy while minimizing the risk of illness. We want everyone to participate in a safe and fully democratic process."

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

Officials say the outbreak appears to be slowing in the state. But the state reported another 201 deaths attributed to COVID-19 on Friday. And Murphy said he had no choice but to set up vote-by-mail for the primary.

We cannot responsibly, for an election less than two months away, he said. We dont have any other choice to be vote by mail because we dont know what its gonna look like July 7.

Though the state has increased voting by mail in recent years, this will be an unprecedented expansion.

But Murphy said he knows many people prefer to vote in person, and those with disabilities may not be able to fill in a vote-by-mail ballot. Thus, the state will require at least one polling location to be opened in all 565 municipalities in New Jersey, with social-distancing protocols, including the sanitizing of touch-screen voting machines.

Murphy announced April 8 that he was moving New Jerseys primary elections from June 2 to July 7 to allow the state more time to recover from the outbreak. He said he would announce later whether the election would be in-person or all vote-by-mail.

Voters in the primary will cast ballots for the major-party nominations for president, Cory Bookers U.S. Senate seat, and all 12 of the states seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

The governor previously delayed a number of local elections to May 12 and made all those races vote-by-mail only. Thirty-three New Jersey municipalities held races via mail this past Tuesday, and there were issues with some ballots not being counted in Paterson.

Murphy said he had no insight into what happened in Paterson and that the state is conducting a postmortem" on the May 12 election.

New Jersey, a densely populated state of 9 million residents, has reported at least 10,138 total deaths attributed to COVID-19, with at least 143,905 total cases, since the outbreak started March 4. Only New York has more deaths and cases among American states.

But Murphy has said in recent days the states number of daily new deaths, cases, and hospitalizations from COVID-19 have dropped significantly to the point where he can keep peeling back the near-lockdown orders he installed over the last two months to fight the virus.

On Wednesday, the governor announced he will allow nonessential retail businesses to offer curbside pickup and nonessential construction to resume, while also allowing drive-in and drive-through events, such as church services.

On Thursday, Murphy announced beaches, boardwalks, and lakes can be open this summer as long as they follow social-distancing rules restrictions.

On Friday, he also announced elective surgeries can resume May 26.

And Murphy said the state may take more steps to reopen in the coming days.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Brent Johnson may be reached at bjohnson@njadvancemedia.com.
James Avery Artisan Jewelry is closing its workshop in Fredericksburg, one of several the South Texas jewelry empire operates in the Hill Country.

The Fredericksburg Craftsman Center at 108 Industrial Loop will shut down July 12 due to unforeseen business circumstances, and the closure is expected to be permanent, the company told the Texas Workforce Commission in a notice this week.

Eighty-two employees in manufacturing operations are being laid off, but foundry workers are not affected. A foundry operation in the facility will stay open, said spokeswoman Amy Zink.

Some laid-off employees will be offered transfers to the Kerrville Craftsman Center, based on criteria such as skill level and performance, the retailer said. Workers who arent offered a transfer will receive four to eight weeks of pay, up to two weeks of accrued sick paid personal time and health insurance for six months.

The retail sector has been hit especially hard by the coronavirus pandemic, resulting in a welter of store closures and layoffs. Retail sales in April plummeted a record 16.4 percent from a month earlier, the Commerce Department said Friday.

James Avery announced in mid-March it was closing its stores and most of its manufacturing facilities.

It operates 90 stores in four states as well as workshops in Kerrville, Comfort and Hondo. Zink said the company has no plans to close those plants.

James Avery jewelry is also sold at more than 220 Dillards stores across the U.S., several airport stores and online through its website.

In early April, the retailer furloughed about 75 percent of its workforce, or roughly 2,100 people, and cut salaried employees pay.

We will begin to call associates back on a limited basis as we reopen corporate offices, stores and manufacturing in the coming weeks, Zink said.

Malls and nonessential businesses in Texas were allowed to reopen beginning May 1 at 25 percent capacity. Most James Avery stores have offered curbside pickup since late April.

We are weighing all options as we plan our store and manufacturing openings, with associate and guest safety as our number one priority, Zink said. We hope to reopen a select number of retail stores soon for in-store shopping.

The company, known for its charm bracelets, rings and other sterling silver and gold designs, was started by the late James Avery in 1954 in his mother-in-laws Kerrville garage.

He sold his first piece two weeks later, hired his first employee in 1957, opened his first store in 1973 and expanded the business from there, according to previous San Antonio Express-News reports.

The company is known for its faith-based designs. Averys first piece, the Plain Latin Cross, is still available for purchase. Texas is another theme reflected in its jewelry, which includes charms and rings shaped like the state, Whataburger charms and key chains with state schools initials.

Avery handed the reigns of the company over to his son Chris Avery in 2007 and died in 2018. Last year, Chris Avery announced he was retiring as CEO but remaining chairman of the board.

John McCullough, formerly the companys Chief Operating Officer, took the helm, the first time in the history of the business it would be led by a non-family member.

madison.iszler@express-news.net
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 05:06:25|Editor: huaxia

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CAIRO, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The Egyptian government started on Thursday inspecting hotels in resort cities to check their implementation of anti-COVID-19 measures and readiness to partially reopen for local tourists, an official told Xinhua.

Government committees, formed by the Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities, Ministry of Health, Egyptian Hotel Association (EHA) as well as representatives from the provinces of the South Sinai, Red Sea, Luxor and Aswan, did the inspection, said Abdel-Fattah al-Aasy, assistant minister of tourism and antiquities for monitoring tourism and hotel facilities.

This came amid the government's "coexistence" plan to resume economic activities while fighting the novel coronavirus.

"Only those hotels that meet the anti-COVID-19 precautionary measures will be allowed to receive local guests with a limit of a 25-percent occupancy," al-Aasy explained.

The official added that those hotels have to meet the conditions and implement the measures approved by the cabinet in accordance with the guidelines of the World Health Organization.

He noted that the committees have just started their inspection of hotels, expecting the approved hotels to start receiving guests during the holiday of Eid al-Fitr (fast-breaking feast) that follows the ongoing Muslim holy month of Ramadan.

Egypt is currently free from foreign tourists since the country suspended flights starting from March 19 to curb the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"Increasing hotel occupancy over 25 percent in the near future depends on the situation of the pandemic in Egypt," al-Aasy said.

EHA chief Maged Fawzi said in a statement on Thursday that 172 hotels in Egypt had applied for inspection in preparation for their partial reopening.

Egypt's suspension of international passenger flights in March was accompanied by closure of hotels, which led to a shutdown of the tourism sector that accounts for for up to 15 percent of Egypt's gross domestic product (GDP).

As of Thursday, Egypt has confirmed a total of 10,829 COVID-19 cases, including 571 deaths and 2,626 recoveries. Enditem
A $17 million museum featuring Vietnam's agricultural history and prowess will be built in the Mekong Delta province of Vinh Long.

The museum will be constructed on an area of 11 hectares in Vung Liem, a rural district. In preserving the value and legacy of Vietnamese agriculture, it seeks to recognize the significant contributions of the nations farmers, particularly those from the Mekong Delta.

The museum, built at a total cost of VND400 billion ($17 million), will have display sections that recreate the southern countryside during the old times. It will also have facilities for organizing events.

The artifacts and documents for each specialized display topic will be arranged according to four periods: agriculture under the Kingdom of Funan and Chenla before 1698; the Nguyen Lords and Nguyen Dynasty period (1698-1858); the French colonial period and that of the Republic of Vietnam (1858-1975); and in the Mekong Delta during the period from 1975 to present with Doi moi (economic reform).

Work on the museum is set to begin in 2022 and expected to last five years.

Vietnam has over 160 museums, including private ones, but none of them is an agricultural museum.

The Mekong Delta, the country's rice basket that also accounts for a major part of its fruit and seafood supply, is being hit by the worst saltwater intrusion this year. By mid-March, saltwater had intruded 50-110 kilometers into major rivers, all branches of the Mekong, two to eight kilometers more than in 2016.

This, combined with drought, has affected the delta in recent years and forced many farmers to leave the delta and look for work in HCMC and nearby provinces.
Maura Higgins and Chris Taylor are being 'shipped' by fans.

The reality stars - who appeared together on Love Island 2019, albeit with different romantic partners - cropped up in a throwback snap shared by Maura, 29, on her Instagram on Thursday.

In it, she stood looking cosy with Chris, 29, on a night out together.

Give them what they want! Maura Higgins and Chris Taylor are being 'shipped' by fans

She was sharing the photo to advertise that they will be taking part in an Instagram Live on Saturday, from their respective states of lockdown, to have a singalong.

Fans decided they should give romance a stab. One posted: 'These 2 would actually make a great couple I know you were friends couple on love island last year but the chemistry is unreal give it a go maybe [sic].'

Another agreed: 'I was rooting for yous 2 to get together since love island, your both my 2 fav characters [sic].'

'I know you're just friends but I've always shipped you two,' another remarked.

Just friends? The reality stars appeared together on Love Island 2019, albeit with different romantic partners

Wife swap? Maura left Love Island on the arm of Curtis Pritchard [pictured right], but the couple have since split

Fans decided they should give romance a stab, with one posting: 'These 2 would actually make a great couple I know you were friends couple on love island last year but the chemistry is unreal give it a go maybe [sic]' [pictured with 2019 winner Greg O'Shea]

Maura left Love Island on the arm of Curtis Pritchard, but the couple have since split.

Chris was in a brief coupling with Harley Brash, but this was even shorter-lived.

Maura was linked with her Dancing On Ice pro partner Alexander Demetriou after he separated from his wife of four years, Carlotta Edwards, last month.

But she has rubbished these claims - and admitted this week that she would consider going back onto Love Island because she 'needs a man'.

Maura said during a Q&A on Instagram: 'It doesn't bother me. We're in 2020 and a man and woman cannot just be friends...'

Newly-single: Maura has said she would consider going back onto Love Island because 'I need a man'

All over: Maura's revelation comes after Dancing On Ice star Alexander Demetriou confirmed he has separated from wife Carlotta Edwards (pictured together last November)

Maura also revealed that she has struggled with adjusting to fame since leaving the Love Island villa, but assured fans that she is still single.

Asked if she would ever return to Love Island, the Irish beauty replied: 'Well, to be honest, I need a man. So maybe I'll go back in next year, you never know.'

Last month, Alexander, 28, took to Instagram stories to confirm he had split from Carlotta amid reports that he became 'besotted' with Love Island beauty Maura.

Sad times: The reality star was asked by a fan if she's bothered by the speculation surrounding her and Alexander's relationship following the news he and his wife had split

Confirmation: The professional skater took to Instagram stories to confirm the news and revealed to his followers that it had been a 'tough time' for him

In a statement posted on Instagram stories, Alexander said: 'I'm sorry I have been quiet on social media recently but it's been a tough time for me personally.

'Carlotta and I have separated. Although it saddens me that we can no longer be together, I feel this is best for both of us.

'I'm looking forward to what the future will bring but in the meantime let's all say home and stay safe.'

A friend of the former couple recently told their marriage troubles 'came as a shock', as they were so close before the last Dancing On Ice series.
Campus News

Three graduating UB students share stories of triumph

UBNOW STAFF

You never go back to normal, but you can make a bigger impact because of what you have gone through. Thats what Ive been trying to do these past eight years. 

With virtual commencement exercises ramping up this weekend at UB, heartstring-pulling stories abound. Three graduating students have shared their stories of triumph with UBNow in the hopes of inspiring others.

First-generation success story

Adrian Vega Bautistas journey toward obtaining a masters degree in higher education administration from UB has not been easy. But he hopes his story of overcoming mental health, family and financial challenges inspires his two younger brothers  one of whom is completing his associates degree; the other will soon graduate high school  to achieve what he will when he participates in the Graduate School of Educations virtual commencement this morning.

It feels like a big accomplishment, not only for myself, but for my whole family, says Vega Bautista, who was the first in his family to graduate high school  both his parents went no further than ninth grade.

I hope to help my younger brothers see what they can potentially do in the future. I want to show them that it can be done.

Born in Mexico, Vega Bautista immigrated with his family to the U.S., residing briefly in California before relocating to Dunkirk, New York, when he was 7 0r 8. As a child, Vega Bautista worked alongside his parents, who are agricultural workers, on weekends and during summers. He continued working in high school to help his parents with rent and other bills.

He received his bachelors degree in Spanish and literature from SUNY Oneonta.

Leaving home to attend college five hours away in Oneonta was difficult for the family-oriented Vega Bautista. His father has been the sole income provider ever since Vega Bautistas mother was injured on the job and had to endure two major surgeries.

Vega Bautista leaned on the support of his classmates and professors in the Graduate School of Education to endure the challenges hes faced. Among them were Nathan Daun-Barnett, associate professor of higher education administration, who helped Vega Bautista obtain a graduate assistantship so he could pay rent.

Trying to focus in school but at the same time making sure that my parents were OK really took a toll on me mentally and academically because I was always thinking of them, he says.

In addition, three of Vega Bautistas grandparents passed away over the past few years. Last weekend, Vega Bautista sat and talked with his family, reflecting on his journey.

Its really been one of the toughest things, dealing with mental health issues, family deaths, life. But knowing that I can now help my parents and my family out after finishing this degree, Im so thankful for the support I received, he says.

Vega Bautista accepted a summer position with UBs Educational Opportunity Program. Afterward, he plans to seek full-time employment in higher education, where he hopes to develop programming for multicultural initiatives and assist students of color, showing them that, despite all the obstacles they may face, they can overcome, just as he did.
New Delhi, May 15 : Conglomerate InterGlobe Enterprises on Friday said that it has signed an agreement to participate in the sale process of Virgin Australia.

The conglomerate has a presence in civil aviation, hospitality, travel commerce, airline management, aircraft maintenance engineering, advanced pilot training and real estate.

It is the parent company of airline major IndiGo and its largest shareholder.

"As regards Virgin Australia, InterGlobe Enterprises has signed an agreement to participate in the sale process and is bound by the confidentiality requirements of that agreement. We are unable to say anything further at this stage," InterGlobe Enterprises said in a statement.

At present, Virgin Australia is in the administration phase of the Bankruptcy Code.

The Virgin brand had entered into the Australian aviation market for the first time in the year 2000.

A new brand Virgin Australia was formed in May 2011.
Recently people on the right have started pushing a ludicrous pseudo-scandal theyre calling Obamagate. It holds that investigations by Barack Obamas administration into Russias attack on the 2016 U.S. presidential election were a form of illicit sabotage of Donald Trump and his team. The story doesnt really make sense, which is why, when asked about Obamagate, President Trump couldnt describe it. But at the heart of the conspiracy theory is unmasking, the routine practice by which national security officials find out the names of Americans who appear on intelligence intercepts of foreign actors. Trumpists have tried to turn this into a sinister and portentous term.

Obamagate exists to rewrite the history of Robert Muellers investigation into Russian interference to make Trump the victim, rather than someone who actively sought Russias help and then took steps to reward the nations president, Vladimir Putin, for providing it. Trump often accuses others of misdeeds that he is guilty of; recall his sputtering response to Hillary Clinton calling him a Putin puppet in a 2016 debate: No puppet! No puppet! Youre the puppet! In Obamagate, he is accusing his opponents of politicizing intelligence because of a political vendetta, which is what his administration is currently doing.

Richard Grenell, the erstwhile Twitter troll now serving as the acting director of national intelligence, just released a list of Obama officials whose unmasking requests revealed the name of Michael Flynn, who would soon become Trumps national security adviser. Flynn had lots of sketchy contacts before Trumps inauguration. Besides a call to the Russian ambassador at the time, Sergey Kislyak, that he lied about to the F.B.I., he was also tied to a purported scheme to kidnap and extradite a Turkish cleric living in Pennsylvania, among other escapades. Naturally, his name surfaced in foreign communications monitored by American intelligence agencies, communications that national security officials had good reason to want to learn more about. Republicans, however, seem determined to pretend to believe that Flynn was the target of a deep state plot.

This sub-Benghazi conspiracy theory could be cropping up now because the right hopes to use it against Joe Biden, who as vice president requested one of the unmaskings that turned up Flynns name. Its even possible that Trumps lawless attorney general, Bill Barr, might use Obamagate as a pretext to open an investigation into Biden. But Obamagate is also a way to distract at least some segment of the country from a very real and very grave scandal: Trumps calamitous mishandling of the coronavirus crisis, exemplified by suspected political retaliation against Dr. Rick Bright, one of the governments foremost vaccine experts.
A minor Dalit rape victim, whose father was threatened by the alleged rapist's brother, killed herself in Bachaupur village here, police said on Friday.

She hanged herself on Thursday evening after witnessing her father being threatened by Sonu Gautam (30), whose younger brother Sachin had allegedly abducted and raped her six months ago, they said.

Circle Officer (Sadar) Rishikesh Yadav said Sonu Gautam hurled expletives on the victim's father in her presence which could have drove her to take the extreme step, Yadav said.

Police arrested Sonu Gautam and booked him for abatement to suicide, criminal intimidation and intentional insult.

The girl was raped on December 19 and Sachin was arrested and sent to jail, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
North Korean Supreme leader Kim Jong Un may be trying to hide from coronavirus. Kim is believed to have returned to a resort on North Korea's east coast amid the coronavirus pandemic, according to news reports. Two leisure boats switched places recently in front of the Wonsan villa, hinting at a probable visit by the North Koreran leader.

The boat movements are on the same lines as earlier when Kim had gone missing for three weeks, the reports added. The experts are of the view that Kim is avoiding coronavirus infection at his Wonsan villa away from public gathering.

The North Korean state media recently claimed that Kim Jong Un attended a public event in the first week of May in Sunchon with other senior officials, including his sister Kim Yo Jong. It was his first public appearance since April 11, when he chaired a party meeting to discuss the coronavirus outbreak and reappoint his sister as an alternate member of the Political Bureau of the party's Central Committee. The conjectures over his health had risen after Kim missed the birthday celebration of his late grandfather Kim Il Sung on April 15.

The report brought to rest the recent global speculations on his health and whereabouts. North Korea's Supreme leader was reported to be celebrating the completion of a fertiliser factory near Pyongyang. The global news agency Reuters reported a descriptive article in the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper sharing several photos of Kim wearing black and smiling. The pictures also showed thousands of workers, many masked, standing in lines at the event.

Also read: Jeff Bezos may become world's first trillionaire in 6 years; Mukesh Ambani in 13 years: Report

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown 4.0! Delhi reports 472 new cases in 1 day; India's COVID-19 tally-81,970
Norm Knight started his NASA career in the '90s with the space shuttle, impressed by the engineering marvel that launched like a rocket, hauled space station parts like a truck and then landed like a glider.

When space shuttle Atlantis touched down for the last time on July 21, 2011, Knight was on Houstons mission control management team overseeing that landing. Nine years later, hes helping with the May 27 liftoff where NASA and SpaceX will resume astronaut launches from Florida. But this time, the vehicle will be reminiscent of the compact Apollo capsule that inspired his youth rather than the massive shuttle that nurtured his career.

It was sad to see the shuttle retired, he said. It was a winged glider coming home that was like no other.

Yet hes excited for the SpaceX launch. NASA has spent years working with SpaceX, founded by billionaire Elon Musk, and Boeing to develop vehicles that could ferry astronauts to the International Space Station. The government agency provided funding and expertise but the companies designed the spacecraft that they own and operate. NASA will buy seats as a customer.

More about the launch: NASA discusses its first astronaut launch from U.S. soil since 2011

Compact capsules are simpler and faster to design than the bulky shuttle orbiter, which was 122 feet long with a 78-foot wingspan. A capsules placement on top of the rocket, rather than alongside it like the shuttle, can help keep astronauts safe.

Still, Knight said it was difficult watching the shuttle retire after flying 30 years and 135 missions. NASA was suddenly dependent on Russia for reaching the International Space Station. And around that same time, President Barack Obama canceled the agencys prior moon mission, the Constellation Program, where Knight and others had placed their post-shuttle hopes.

That was a very hard time at NASA, Knight said. It really left the agency in a lot of turmoil relative to, What are we doing? What is NASAs role now?

But he sees a vision again. The launch of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon spacecraft, the final major test before SpaceX receives NASA certification for more regular flights to the space station, is a successful milestone for NASA collaboration with the private sector. That will be crucial in the agencys new moon program, Artemis  NASA plans to buy seats on vehicles that will lower astronauts to the moon.

More leeway

NASAs Commercial Crew Program, established as a standalone program on April 5, 2011, takes a very different approach from the Space Shuttle Program where NASA made all the design decisions and then owned and operated the vehicles.

NASA would give its contractors 10,000 to 12,000 requirements for a shuttles design. These requirements ranged from the ability to reach a certain orbit to how much stainless steel was included in bolts, said Phil McAlister, director of commercial spaceflight development at NASA headquarters.

For Commercial Crew, NASA only had 300 requirements. And they were mostly related to safety, such as an abort system to carry the spacecraft away from the rocket should a problem occur during launch and a statistical calculation that placed loss of crew at no more than 1 in every 270 flights.

NASA did not care if the Commercial Crew companies proposed a winged vehicle or a capsule, as long as the system was safe, reliable and cost effective. Sierra Nevada Corp., one of the final three contenders, proposed a winged vehicle.

McAlister said the companies entire systems were evaluated, and the Sierra Nevada proposal was very strong. Still, wings did factor into the decision.

Both Boeing and SpaceX use a capsule spacecraft, which is a lower complexity design than (Sierra Nevadas) winged spacecraft, according to a 2014 document explaining the Commercial Crew selection, and therefore minimizes the work and time required to complete development.

NASA chose SpaceX and Boeing in September 2014, and the two companies have contracts and Space Act Agreements worth $8 billion; NASA has thus far provided just under $6 billion to help with development.

Keeping it simple

Boeing and the companies its acquired over the years have experience building capsules and space shuttles. It picked the capsule design for the CST-100 Starliner.

It was a shorter road to get that fully developed and in use, Boeing spokesman Steven Siceloff said, and it met NASAs needs.

SpaceX did not respond to requests for comment. But during a May 1 news conference Benji Reed, SpaceX director of crew mission management, said the Crew Dragon was built on decades of capsule heritage as well as the companys uncrewed cargo capsule, which began delivering supplies to the space station in 2012.

Update on Boeing: Boeing to redo its Starliner spacecraft test that failed to dock with the space station

Phil Smith, a space industry analyst at Bryce Space and Technology, said capsules are structurally simpler than winged spacecraft when designing and modeling how a vehicle will behave while landing. A capsule comes in like a cannonball. Fixed wings, however, act one way at a certain speed or air density and then a completely different way at other speeds or air densities, presenting design challenges.

Flying a winged vehicle back from orbit is more complicated than bringing back a capsule, said Jeffrey Hoffman, a retired shuttle astronaut and professor in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

But winged vehicles havent disappeared. Sierra Nevada Corp. is still developing its Dream Chaser spaceplane, retooling it to deliver cargo rather than people to the International Space Station. Steve Lindsey, a former space shuttle commander and the senior vice president of strategy at Sierra Nevada, said the Dream Chasers ability to land on airport runways gives it global reach. And the force of gravity during this landing is gentler than in a capsule that lands in the ocean or on airbags in the desert. Some experiments, such as growing protein crystals, are delicate and sent into space specifically for its lesser gravity.

Ultimately, Sierra Nevada is still working toward flying people.

Virgin Galactic is likewise planning to use a winged vehicle for suborbital space tourism. WhiteKnightTwo is a custom-built, dual-fuselage jet aircraft and attached to its belly is the winged SpaceShipTwo, where passengers will sit.

Virgin Galactic has launched its pilots and an employee into weightlessness, but it has not yet flown paying customers.

Safety

Space travel is risky, with two space shuttle accidents killing 14 people, but designs using capsules can have features to help minimize risk, especially during launch, said Scott Hubbard, adjunct professor in Stanford University's Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and former director of NASA's Ames Research Center.

The Columbia shuttle broke apart during reentry in 2003, but the damage that caused this accident occurred during launch. A large piece of insulating foam fell off the shuttles external tank, which held fuel for the main engines, and punctured a hole in the wing of the space shuttles orbiter. This caused the vehicle to overheat during reentry.

Placing a capsule on top of the rocket prevents it from being pummeled by launch debris.

The Challenger space shuttle broke apart 73 seconds after launch in 1986. One of its solid rocket boosters had a leak in the O-ring that caused an explosion and destroyed the orbiter vehicle. The orbiter could not escape the boosters during this part of the ascent.

You could lose almost one of anything and you could get back safely, Hoffman said. Obviously, they didnt plan for a major explosion or failure of the solid rocket booster.

For Commercial Crew, NASA required an ability to remove crew from dangerous launch situations. SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada included this in their proposals.

SpaceX and Boeing are using a pusher system with specific abort motors to push the crew up and away from the rocket. Its a feature astronaut Doug Hurley, who will be one of two astronauts on the May 27 flight test, addressed during a news conference. Its a pretty safe design, Hurley said. It gives us abort capability from the pad all the way up into space, which the space shuttle, I think has been well publicized, didnt have that capability in all phases.

Hubbard, who helped investigate the Columbia accident, felt the space shuttle was retired partly due to its safety concerns. He said the vehicle was so complex that there could have been more failures NASA was lucky to not encounter.

New era

Not everyone thought this was a fair opinion. Knight, for instance, felt that NASA was managing the shuttles risks.

Promoted from chief flight director to the deputy director of flight operations in 2018, Knight will be at Kennedy Space Center on May 27 representing NASAs astronauts and flight operations by providing a go (or no-go) to the agencys launch manager. Both NASA and SpaceX must give the green light before liftoff.

Another winged vehicle: Mysterious spaceplane prepares for launch

After the launch, Knight will return to Houston to assist with other portions of the flight test, which is being run by teams in Florida, Houston and the SpaceX headquarters in California. Astronauts Hurley and Bob Behnken could spend between 30 days and 119 days on the space station before splashing down in the Atlantic Ocean.

Knight hopes this is part of a longer road NASA is paving into space, partnering with commercial companies to bring the rest of us along.

Im excited to see this thing lift off, Knight said. Its going to be a bright shining star for our future in space. Its really the beginning of a new era.

andrea.leinfelder@chron.com

twitter.com/a_leinfelder
W hile on holiday in Tuscany, a woman who feels invisible lusts after a charming youth (a 26-year-old Tom Hiddleston, in his first ever film role). Hiddlestons character is an Etonian with an occasionally vampiric stare, a hinterland of anguish and some glorious dance moves. Tuscany looks splendid, but Hiddlestons spindly beauty is what inspires awe.

Hiddlestons now a legend. So, within art-house circles, is writer-director, Joanna Hogg. Its astonishing that Unrelated, released in 2007, isnt better known, but maybe its something to do with the fact that Kathryn Worth, who plays the invisible woman, has herself disappeared from view (shes a middle-aged actress, go figure). Suffice to say, this British drama is stuck in the shadows, when  like Worth  it deserves to bask in the sun.

Hoggs camera-work is quietly mischievous. Anna is observant and attractive but also excruciatingly diffident. When she arrives at the magnificent villa of her friend, Verena (Mary Roscoe), she spots pretty young things huddled by the pool: Verenas children and Verenas nephew, Oakley (Hiddleston), whose energetic intimacy makes the night air hum. Our heroine is led off to her bedroom and, like a disloyal pet, the camera takes its own sweet time to follow. We get the hint. The kids (not Anna) are where its at.

Yet, thanks to the subtle script, Annas self-doubt becomes intriguing. During a party game with the grownups, she has to guess her identity and eventually discovers she is Eeyore. She knows only an Eeyore-ish person would complain about being labelled an Eeyore, so she pretends not to be disappointed. Over the next few days, Oakley starts to pay her attention and shes delighted. Oakley and his little tribe allow Anna to re-invent herself as fun.

This is one of those movies which starts well and gets better. In crowded Sienna, Oakley asks Anna why she doesnt have children. Watch Worths gymnastic lips. Anna is entranced by Oakleys invasive curiosity; she keeps laughing and her giddiness seems genuine. But, intermittently, her lips tighten and droop and we sense that, as well as being sexually excited, shes acutely distressed. Later, in a spartan hotel room, she opens up to Vreena and the result is one of the most wrenching scenes in cinema history.

25 underrated movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime 1 /33 25 underrated movies on Netflix and Amazon Prime The Miseducation of Cameron Post  Netflix Chloe Grace Moretz plays the titular role in this powerful drama. After shes discovered kissing the prom queen, Moretzs character is sent to the gay conversion camp called Gods Promise, where she rallies together with fellow disciples in the face of terrible adversity. Booksmart  Amazon Prime Video Olivia Wildes directorial debut Booksmart is an inspired comedy and coming-of-age movie, and one of the funniest films of last year. Swots Molly (Beanie Feldstein) and Amy (Kaitlyn Dever) head out for a night of partying, realising theyve forgotten how to have fun during their high school studies. Captain Fantastic  Netflix In this quirkier than a Wes Anderson convention, this comedy drama centers around a family who have grown up in isolation, with father Ben (Viggo Mortensen) teaching how to live their lives away from capitalist society. Paris is Burning  Netflix This groundbreaking documentary captures the spirit of the trailblazing ball culture of 80s New York, taking us into the lives of the African-American, Latino, gay and transgender communities who made it one of the most influential LGBTQ+ movements of the 20th century. Blindspotting  Netflix This uniquely styled comedy drama follows a man with just days left on his sentence, whose future is thrown in doubt after witnessing a police shooting. Its much funnier and quirkier than it sounds, trust us. Whats Eating Gilbert Grape  Amazon Prime Video This early 90s cult classic follows Johnny Depps young shop clerk in small town America, tasked with looking after his obese mother and mentally impaired younger brother. Theres also one of the first movie performances from Leonardo DiCaprio to look out for. Ingrid Goes West  Netflix Take a trip with Aubrey Plazas outsider Ingrid, as she travels to Venice Beach to infiltrate the Insta-fabulous life of her favourite influencer in this dark, oddball comedy. Dolemite is my Name  Netflix This Netflix drama is a real return to form for Eddie Murphy. Plenty of people were calling for him to be recognised during awards season for his performance as Rudy Ray Moore, the star of blaxploitation films in the 70s. Private Life  Netflix Private Life is one of the few Hollywood movies of recent times that tackles the subject of middle-aged couples trying to have children. Its sensitive and quietly devastating, featuring the best Paul Giammatti performance in years and a great turn from Kathryn Hahn. Okja  Netflix We told you Boon Jong-Ho would be back. A genetically-enhanced super pig and a young girl form an unlikely and beautiful friendship in this gem, going head to head with a superfood conglomerate. This Netflix original was dismissed as vegan propaganda by some when it came out in 2017, but its so much more. Blinded by the Light  Amazon Prime Video A love letter to the songs of Bruce Springsteen, based on the memoirs of Sarfraz Manzoor and directed by Bend It Like Beckhams Gurinder Chadha, this movie is a coming-of-age tale that will resonate with most viewers  fans of the Boss, or not. Atlantics  Netflix This Cannes prize-winning debut from filmmaker Mati Diop tackles a challenging subject matter  the tragic deaths of migrants at sea  in a surprisingly life-affirming way, following a love story at the very edges of human capabilities. Annihilation  Netflix This brilliantly weird high-concept sci-fi is one of the best original Netflix movies yet, following cellular biology professor Natalie Portman as she ventures deeper into a mysterious zone called the Shimmer. Think heart of darkness with added aliens. Under the Skin  Amazon Prime Video In Scarlett Johanssons impressive, varied and sometimes controversial career, Under the Skin stands out as her strangest movie. Here she plays an alien life form who drives around Scotland in a van seducing men, only for them to meet terrifying, unexpected fates after visiting her apartment. The Tale of Princess Kaguya  Netflix Netflix users are blessed with the Studio Ghibli back catalogue on demand. Theyre all worth checking out, of course, but while the likes of My Neighbour Totoro get all the praise, 2013s The Tale of Princess Kaguya features some of the studios most breathtaking animation and elegant storytelling, and is one of our top picks. The Wife  Netflix Glenn Close can count herself unlucky not to have picked up a long-awaited Oscar for her towering performance in this subtle drama, playing a woman who questions everything after her self-obsessed husband received the Nobel Prize. The Two Popes  Netflix Critics including the Standards Charlotte OSullivan tipped this two-hander drama for success at the Oscars a while back. Its gone under the radar slightly since then, but the performances from Jonathan Pryce and Anthony Hopkins as Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio respectively are electric. Blue Ruin  Netflix Bloodthirsty revenge flick Blue Ruin is a slow-burning delight, and one that might easily go unnoticed on Netflix without an A-list cast to entice viewers. Its a violent and visceral watch at times, but its also a compelling look at human endurance and the impacts of reopening old wounds. Cube  Amazon Prime Video More high-concept sci-fi, this time in the form of an independent Canadian movie from the 90s, where a group of friends find themselves trapped in a maze of cube-shaped rooms, all booby-trapped and not what they seem. Its bonkers, in the best way. American Animals  Amazon Prime Video This esoteric take on the heist movie centres around the real library robbery at Transylvania University, where a group of students attempted to steal a collection of rare books. The movie cuts from dramatisation to documentary footage, and is well worth exploring. Filth  Amazon Prime Video James McAvoy throws the kitchen sink at his performance as a troubled and misanthropic detective in this uniquely distressing and compelling drama, featuring all the guts and grime youd expect from an Irvine Welsh adaptation. The Ritual  Netflix Horror films following inexperienced groups of travellers into the woods have become a sub-genre all of their own, but The Ritual is better than most. This supernatural horror is intelligently done and genuinely scary in places, with strong performances from the likes of Rafe Spall. Snowpiercer  Amazon Prime Video This high-concept thriller helped announce Parasite director and Korean master Bong Joon-Ho to a bigger western audience. Snowpiercer follows a revolt onboard a train, which is carrying the last humans alive on earth in the aftermath of a second ice age. More from Bong Joon-Ho later. Good Time  Netflix The Safdie Brothers anxiety-inducing Uncut Gems is one the most talked about films of the year  and quite rightly, its fantastic  but their previous film Good Time is just as compelling. Robert Pattinson gives one of the best performances of his career, playing a desperate conman in the aftermath of a botched heist. The Big Sick  Amazon Prime Video This alternate take on the classic rom-com tells the story of Kumail (Kumail Nanjiani) and Emily (Zoe Kazan), who must learn to deal with adversity and cultural contrasts following Emilys shock health diagnosis. Its beautiful, funny, moving and well worth your time.

The film was made for 150,000 and every penny has been well spent. Anna wants to go to an Iggy Pop concert and asks, Is he still alive, by the way?

One day that line will induce feelings of sadness but seeing as 73-year-old Iggy is still going strong, it merely adds to the sense that everyone  no matter how old  has the right, sometimes, to be the centre of attention. Throw in the sweetest of happy endings and you have yourself 110 minutes of magic. Enjoy.

110 mins, 15. Unrelated is available to watch on BFI Player and Amazon Prime
Loading The New Zealand Sinologist Anne-Marie Brady says that this is precisely the correct approach for countries like Australia and NZ. "I call it the sound of one person arguing," Brady says. "In fact, it's a family secret in my home  you let the person let rip, but you don't respond." Governments need to remain calm and resolute in the face of Chinese bluster, she says. Brady makes the point that China isn't actually angry at Australia. "It's putting on a show of anger," for effect. To respond in any way other than calm resolution is simply to allow Beijing to achieve the effect it seeks. So Morrison wasn't just putting on a bit of bravado on Friday when he told a press conference: "What the Australian government is doing is completely unremarkable. We are standing our ground on our values and the things that we know are always important," he said. "And those things are not to be traded. Ever." But what about the chorus of complaints about the government's position? Some business leaders and state governments have demanded that Australia solve the problem through diplomacy, use some "pragmatism", to protect the trading relationship.

"That stuff just emboldens Morrison," says a key participant. "He's in the trenches on this." Illustration: Jim Pavlidis Credit: And, of course, when a business person calls for "pragmatism", the word used this week by Elders chief executive Mark Allison, he is calling for the abandonment of principle. A senior cabinet minister says that when an Australian chief executive tries to tell him that the federal government needs to back down in the face of Beijing's threats, "I tell them to go back to their offices and get their cybersecurity experts to check their computers and see what China is doing to them." This week it's barley exports to China, which were worth $916 million last year, and beef exports to China, valued at $2.6 billion.

What if Beijing goes further, cutting other Australian exports as well? The ambassador's threat to Australia listed four sectors in particular  beef, wine, tourism and higher education. The Morrison government is braced for it. In fact, companies and industries which ask Trade Minister Simon Birmingham for help get this reply: "Triple-check your export certifications and your labelling so you don't give them an excuse." Loading In public, the government is careful to play along with China's pretence  its trade complaints against Australia are based purely on trade technicalities. But every member of the government knows full well that this is not about trade. This is about the Chinese Communist Party trying to bully Australia into submission. "Remember that Morrison is also seeing all the other things that China has been doing to us, most of which aren't visible to the public," says an adviser. "The economic coercion just comes on top of all that." Recall that Australia's former national security adviser Duncan Lewis said last year that China was seeking to "take over" Australia's political system covertly. And that in 2017, when Malcolm Turnbull introduced laws against foreign interference in Australia, he said "we will not tolerate covert, coercive or corrupting behaviour in our country".

That is the bigger game. We have yet to see the actual enforcement of these laws, but informed sources say that Australia is getting closer to making arrests and deportations under these laws. Morrison is able to draw strength from three other vital sources. One is the Labor opposition. Anthony Albanese and his leadership group support the government position. Some dishonest media efforts in the past few days have tried to portray Albanese as somehow "soft on China". To get to this position, they've had to conduct some strange contortions. Albanese's position, as he told the ABC's Leigh Sales on Thursday: "Australia is quite right to say that, just as if we have a death in this country that is unexplained we have a coronial inquiry, here we have 300,000 deaths. There is nothing remarkable about saying, Well, we need to know what the cause of that is. Not as an academic exercise but so that we can ensure it never happens again." This is exactly the government position. Australia's Agriculture Minister, David Littleproud, says that "everyone seems to be on the same page. In terms of the structural policy, Labor is in lockstep with us. Their criticism is about messaging."

So long as the opposition stands with the government, other criticism is irrelevant and the Chinese Communist Party cannot play one side against the other. The call for an inquiry is a national position, not just a government one. Loading The second vital source of support for Morrison is also a key factor for Labor. The Australian public overwhelmingly is in favour. Indeed, the people have been years ahead of the elites in their concern about Beijing's efforts to dominate Australia. As the Lowy Institute's Michael Fullilove explains: "Australian opinion has been moving this way for a while. Last year's Lowy poll showed people's trust in China dropped by 20 percentage points in a single year, from 52 per cent to 32. "China's behaviour has hardened and Australian policy and Australian public opinion has hardened in response."

A new Lowy poll this week was further evidence. Sixty-eight per cent of people said they felt "less favourable towards Chinas system of government" when thinking about its handling of the epidemic. And 93 per cent said Australia had handled it well. Many Australian politicians have been taken aback at the people's levels of fear, worry, distrust and even anger at China. "The political class is catching up with the community, 100 per cent," said a government MP this week. "Even just last year, it was considered impolite to criticise China in political circles." Why? "It's been an elite consensus, and elite consensus is a powerful thing." Loading Another government MP says that his public criticism of China in recent weeks "gets by far the biggest public response of anything I have ever talked about. It's off the charts." The third vital source of strength is the fact that Australia is not alone. There's a Chinese proverb that you "strangle the chicken to frighten the monkey". This has been Beijing's longstanding practice of picking off one country at a time, hoping to frighten others into submission as it does so.
BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Here are the latest developments on COVID-19 in China:

-- Chinese health authority said Thursday that it received reports of three new confirmed COVID-19 cases on the Chinese mainland Wednesday.

The three cases were domestically transmitted, with two in Liaoning Province and one in Jilin Province, the National Health Commission said in its daily report.

No new suspected cases or deaths were reported Wednesday on the mainland, according to the commission.

-- No new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in central China's Hubei Province Wednesday, the provincial health commission said Thursday.

By the end of Wednesday, Hubei had six confirmed COVID-19 cases, all in the provincial capital of Wuhan and including one in severe condition and one in critical condition.

-- Northeast China's Jilin Province reported one new confirmed COVID-19 case on Wednesday, local health authorities said Thursday.

The provincial health commission said the domestically transmitted case lives in the same residential community with an earlier confirmed case in Fengman District in the city of Jilin.

-- No new confirmed COVID-19 cases were reported in northeast China's Heilongjiang Province on Wednesday, the provincial health commission said Thursday.

By Wednesday, the province had reported a total of 559 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 386 imported cases.

-- More than 7,500 people in the northeastern Chinese city of Shenyang have been put under medical observation and are undergoing nucleic acid testing for COVID-19, the municipal government said Thursday.

The measure came as local authorities have strengthened their response to the coronavirus epidemic after the city recently reported three confirmed cases.

-- China has sent a group of medical experts to Algeria to aid its fight against COVID-19.

On Thursday morning, 15 medics from the southwestern Chongqing Municipality and five from the Macao Special Administrative Region departed Chongqing for Algeria. They will help with the anti-epidemic work there.

-- Hainan, the southernmost island province of China, has donated 30,000 disposable medical masks to its sister state Penang, Malaysia, local authorities said.

The masks are expected to arrive in the Malaysian state within three to four working days via a direct flight and will be used to support local epidemic prevention, according to the provincial foreign affairs office.

-- All pandas at the Chengdu Research Base of Giant Panda Breeding in southwest China's Sichuan Province have tested negative for the novel coronavirus, the base said Thursday.

The base asked an authoritative organization to conduct nucleic acid testing on its pandas after media reported that several tigers and lions at New York City's Bronx Zoo tested positive for COVID-19, according to Zhang Zhihe, director of the base.
In the 15th high level GOM meeting held today in Delhi's Nirman Bhawan, it was informed that about 79% coronavirus cases in India have been reported from 30 municipal areas.

The Group of Ministers (GoM) on COVID-19 was on Friday informed that there are 30 municipal areas, which account for 79 per cent of Indias coronavirus caseload. The GoM had in-depth deliberation on containment strategy and management aspects of COVID-19 as well as the measures being taken by the Centre and various States. The GoM was informed that there are 30 municipal areas which are constituting 79 per cent of Indias caseload, an official release said.

The 15th meeting of the high-level GoM was held at Nirman Bhawan here today, under the chairmanship of Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan. Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Puri, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, and Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityananda Rai also attended the meeting. Among others who were also present in the meeting were Minister of State for Shipping Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, Minister of State for Health and Family Welfare Ashwini Kumar Choubey and Chief of Defence Staff Bipin Rawat.

A detailed presentation on the present status of COVID-19 cases globally and within the country was made. Worldwide the total number of COVID-19 positive cases stand at 42,48,389 with 2,94,046 deaths and the fatality rate pegged at 6.92 per cent, whereas in India, the total number of COVID-19 positive cases stand at 81,970 with 2,649 deaths and the fatality rate pegged at 3.23 per cent. So far, a total of 27,920 people have been cured. And if seen in the last 24 hours, 1,685 patients were found cured. This takes the total recovery rate to 34.06 per cent, adds the release.

Also Read: Andhra Pradesh government sets up facility every 50 km to feed migrant workers

The presentation also highlighted that the impact of lockdown was seen on the doubling rate, which improved from 3.4 days in the pre-lockdown week to 12.9 days in the last week. The GoM had in-depth deliberation on containment strategy and management aspects of COVID-19, as well as the measures being taken by the Centre and various States.

GoM discussed that focus of COVID-19 management strategy needs to be on the States with the highest number of confirmed cases and highest number of fatalities, and on treatment and case fatality management, for which timely detection of infection and contact tracing were the best way forward, says the release further. The ministers also discussed the challenges before various States/UTs arising from the returning migrant labourers and the returnees from abroad.

Also Read: World Bank extends $1 billion aid to India in its fight against COVID-19

The GoM was also apprised that various recommendations of the Government of India for the containment zone management pertaining to indicators, root causes and action required are already shared with the States/UTs for better and effective management of COVID-19 by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

The GoM was also apprised about the growing medical infrastructure in the country and was informed that as on today, a total of 8,694 facilities comprising of 919 dedicated COVID hospitals, 2,036 COVID Health Centres and 5,739 COVID Care Centres with a total of 2,77,429 beds for severe and critical cases, 29,701 ICU beds and 5,15,250 isolation beds in care centres, are available.

Also, as on date, 18,855 ventilators are available to combat COVID-19 in the country. The Centre has also provided 84.22 lakh N95 masks and 47.98 lakh Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) kits to States/UTs/ Central institutions.

The GoM was also informed that domestic manufacturers have reached the production capacity of nearly 3 lakh PPEs per day and about 3 lakh N-95 masks per day which is sufficient to meet the requirement of the country in the near future. In addition, manufacturing of ventilators by domestic manufacturers has also started and orders have been placed.

Dr Balram Bhargava, DG, ICMR, informed the GoM that the testing capacity has increased in the country to 1,00,000 tests per day through 509 government and private laboratories. Nearly 20 lakh cumulative tests have been conducted in the country, as on date. Advance machines for ramping up the testing facility has also been procured and ordered, the release said.

Also, the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) had been equipped with the COBAS 6800, a fully automated, high-end machine for performing real-time PCR testing COVID-19 in the service of the nation. COBAS 6800 will provide quality, high-volume testing with a high throughput of test around 1200 samples in 24 hours. The current availability of testing kits is sufficient enough and is being distributed through 15 depots of ICMR to the States/UTs.

The GoM was also informed about the efforts taken by the Ministry of External Affairs, Ministry of Civil Aviation in cooperation with the State Governments to prepare a staggered timeline of flights to bring back Indian citizens from various countries under the Vande Bharat Mission.

In Phase-1 of the exercise, around 12,000 Indians have already been brought back and quarantined in the respective States. All due procedures like screening at the point of embarkation, and paid institutional quarantine facilities in the States have been undertaken as per the laid down guidelines.

Also Read: Coronavirus update: Positive cases in India nears 82,000 mark, toll hits 2,649, total 3,967 cases recorded in last 24 hours

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Police are investigating what led to a stabbing in a Southeast Portland 7-Eleven store early Thursday.

Officers arrived at the store just before 2 a.m. and found one person with a chest wound and another person still holding a knife, according to Portland Police.

Some officers tended to the wounded man until paramedics took the man to the hospital, and other officers took the armed person into custody, police said.

The Police Bureau said Thursday afternoon that no one has been charged in connection with the case. They did not say why, citing an active investigation.

A worker at the 7-Eleven, on Southeast Grand Avenue and Taylor Street, declined to discuss what happened when reached by phone Thursday afternoon.

Police said the wounded man is expected to survive.

Officers asked any witnesses who have more information about what happened to call Det. Jason Koenig at 503-823-0889 or jason.koenig@portlandoregon.gov

-- Molly Young

myoung@oregonian.com
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (centre) addresses the meeting of permanent Government members on May 15 (Photo: VNA)

He made the comment while chairing a meeting of permanent Government members on May 15 to look into the prevention and control of the pandemic.

The National Steering Committee for COVID-19 Prevention and Control reported that Vietnam hasnt seen any new community infections for 28 days and transmission risks in the community are very low yet still latent.

The pandemic remains unpredictable in many countries in the region and the world. The risk of transmission from elsewhere will grow as international flights gradually resume, more flights are conducted to repatriate Vietnamese from overseas, and investors and experts from COVID-19-hit countries come to Vietnam.

In particular, it is quite difficult to radically control travel over border crossings, so the risk of imported cases that may then cause community infections always exist, according to the committee.

Addressing the meeting, PM Phuc said that for the past month or so, measures to fight COVID-19 while promoting production, business, and social security have been carried out in an effective manner and prevented domestic economic disruption.

Applauding the efforts of the health sector and others and authorities at all levels in COVID-19 prevention, control, and treatment, the PM said the repatriation of Vietnamese people stranded overseas has led to an increase in coronavirus infections but relevant agencies have coordinated well to quarantine these people and prevent community transmission.

He also took the occasion to tell overseas Vietnamese to remain calm, comply with the host countries health policies, and avoid rushing home, which may create an unsafe environment and difficulties for local anti-COVID-19 efforts.

Repeating the need to stay vigilant as there is still no vaccine, the PM said that to reach the dual targets of economic development and fighting the pandemic means measures must stay in place to prevent the disease from spreading from other countries, including maintaining the suspension of the entry of foreigners and requiring foreign experts and those arriving for official purposes be quarantined under the supervision of the health sector.

The Ministry of National Defence must further tighten the management of border residents travel over border crossings, and the health sector and relevant agencies need to step up IT application in prevention and control and maintain rapid response teams to quickly detect infections and seal off affected areas.

Factories, businesses, and individuals should boost production, foreign trade, and domestic tourism while preparing to reopen the country to foreign tourists, initially those from countries that have controlled the pandemic well, the PM said.

It is also necessary to create the necessary conditions for foreign experts, skilled workers, and students to come to Vietnam, while fostering exports, especially of medical face masks and COVID-19 test kits made in Vietnam, and developing a vaccine and a treatment regimen.
The number of people flying is steadily increasing since the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) reported its record low checkpoint traffic numbers.

On April 14, TSA announced just 87,534 travelers passed through its security checkpoints nationwide. On Monday, that number was back up to 215,645.

Despite the increase of people flying, the coronavirus pandemic is far from over. More than 4 million cases have been reported worldwide and more than 275,000 people have died. The nation's top health experts are still encouraging Americans to stay at home to stop the spread of covid-19.

RETAILERS REOPEN: Which Houston-area stores have reopened and what to expect when you go

As more people return to the airport, they'll notice that it's not business as usual. There's new infrastructure in place, and new protocols being followed to protect travelers and air travel employees from the coronavirus. In addition to deep-cleaning procedures, here are some of the top line changes to expect.

- You'll wear a mask at the airport and on the plane.

With the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is recommending everyone wear a face cover when out in public, be prepared to wear one in an airport and on your flight, too. A face mask may be required by the airline, the airport or the local government.

"American, like other U.S. airlines, requires customers to wear a face covering while on board, and this requirement is enforced at the gate while boarding," an American Airlines spokesperson told The Washington Post in a statement. "Some passengers are exempt, such as young children and those with a medical reason why they cannot wear a mask. The policy also does not apply while eating or drinking."

In some cases, if a passenger arrives to a flight without a face mask, one may be provided by the airline.

- You'll interact with airport staff through glass.

TEXAS DEATH TOLL CLIMBS: Texas reports 58 coronavirus deaths in one day, a record

Like in grocery stores, airlines and airports are installing "sneeze guards" in places like check-in counters, security checkpoints, gate lecterns and restaurants to protect against the coronavirus.

"We put up sneeze guards throughout the terminal between customers and employees [and] at the gate when you scan your boarding pass," Mike Hanna, vice president of operations for United Airlines at O'Hare International Airport, told NPR.

Some airlines, like United, are shutting down their self check-in kiosk services to reduce the number of touch points at the airport, in addition to offering touch-free kiosk services to check bags. If you don't want to interact with a gate agent to check in for a flight, make sure you check in and have your boarding pass for your flight on your phone.

- You'll encounter new TSA procedures.

TSA has been making adjustments throughout the pandemic to address health and safety concerns of fliers. One of the most obvious adjustments is that travelers can expect to practice social distancing while waiting in line at airport security checkpoints.

On May 7, TSA announced its staff must wear face masks at screening checkpoints. Travelers are allowed to wear face masks throughout the screening process, however a TSA agent may ask the traveler to pull it down to confirm their identity.

TSA is allowing passengers to carry on one liquid hand sanitizer, up to 12 ounces, until further notice.

Passengers can also ask TSA officers to change gloves during their screening process. The agency recommends travelers be particularly vigilant about following rules for carry-on bags if they don't want officers to have to touch their belongings more than necessary.

"We are advising travelers to place personal items such as wallets, keys or phone in their carry-on bags to be screened through the X-ray system," TSA said in a statement. "Anything that you'd hold up to your face that's in your pockets - put those items in your carry-on bag, not in the bin."

- You'll have your temperature checked.

As one of covid-19's symptoms is fever, screening travelers' temperatures with contactless infrared thermometers is becoming more common at airports around the world.

Air Canada, Air France, Singapore Airlines, Malaysia Airlines, Cathay Pacific and others have announced temperature checks for passengers.

London's Heathrow Airport is carrying out the screenings at some departure, the BBC reported. Hong Kong has been temperature screening arriving and departing passengers since April.

As of now, the only U.S. airline planning to check the temperature of passengers is Frontier. Earlier this month, the carrier announced that starting June 1, anyone with a temperature of 100.4 degrees or higher would not be permitted to fly.

Other airlines, including JetBlue and Southwest, are pushing for TSA to take passengers' temperatures at the security check point. The International Air Transport Association is also a proponent of the practice for both travelers and staff.

- You'll board with fewer people.

The choreography of boarding and deplaning may be different from what you are used to. Major airlines have announced changes in boarding procedures to encourage social distancing between passengers.

To avoid the usual crowds gathering in front of the boarding gate, Delta is boarding customers 10 at a time.

JetBlue is boarding passengers in the back of the plane first instead of its normal boarding procedure.

"This will help reduce the number of customers passing each other to get to their seats," the company's website said. "In addition, customers will be asked to remain seated upon arrival until the row in front of them has completely cleared before deplaning."

Southwest flight attendants will act as ushers to coordinate passengers disembarking.

- You'll fly with fewer people - sometimes.

While many people are still seeing far fewer passengers on board flights than before the pandemic began, the days of travelers flying on near-empty planes may be coming to an end. Last week, a photo went viral of a packed United flight. Now United says it will alert travelers if they're going to be on a full flight, giving them the option to cancel or reschedule their trip.

"Because our schedule is so reduced (we're only operating a single flight a day in some destinations), there are a small number of flights where our customers are finding planes fuller than they expect," the airline's website said. "We'll do our best to contact [passengers booked on full flights] about 24 hours before their departure time so they can decide whether to adjust their plans before they arrive at the airport - and we'll provide this option at the gate, if more than 70% of customers have checked in."

Other airlines are capping seating to prevent crowding. Delta has pledged to cap seating at 50% in first class and 60% in Delta Premium Select, Delta Comfort+ and Main Cabin, and eliminated the middle seat as an option for seat assignment.

American Airlines introduced a "relaxed seating" policy that blocks 50% of the middle seats on each plane, as well as those near attendants' "jump" seats.

Southwest starting reducing the number of available seats by a third on May 2.

"As a note, Southwest chose to reduce available seats rather than block middle seats so that families, and those traveling together, may still sit together while allowing others to space out among empty seats at comfortable distances," the airline said in a statement.

- You'll experience limited or eliminated food and beverage services.

Many airlines are making changes to their in-flight food and drink services.

"We're paring down to essential onboard food and beverage options in an effort to reduce physical touch points between customers and employees," Delta announced on its website. "Since many airport offerings are limited at this time, we recommend packing your own food items and encourage you to review TSA guidelines before bringing food through security checkpoints."

Delta, among other airlines, is temporarily cutting ice, alcohol, snacks for purchase and special meal services. Some airlines, like Southwest, have eliminated food and drink services altogether. Pack food and a water bottle for your flight.

You may want to pack food for the airport, too.

"While some airport concessions have closed or have reduced hours due to the decline in passenger traffic, there are still many options for passengers to pick up food or make purchase retail items," Becca Doten, managing director of media relations at Los Angeles International Airport, told The Washington Post in an email. "Restaurants are not offering table service, but will sell items that can be eaten while maintaining distance from others."
Today, the Journal concludes its endorsements in contested primary races for the state Legislature. For information including candidate Q&As, district maps and news stories as they are published, go to ABQJournal.com/election2020.

NEW MEXICO HOUSE

District 20  Democratic primary, Meredith Dixon

Dixon is well-prepared to serve in the House, with a background in politics and community organizations. She has worked for fellow Democrats U.S. Sen. Tom Udall and N.M. House Speaker Brian Egolf, telling the Journal Editorial Board shes proud of taking Egolfs job-listening tours outside the Rio Grande corridor to places like Roswell.

Describing herself as a pragmatic progressive, Dixon says she wants to put aside hyper-partisanship and bring people together on issues like crime fighting. She wants to tackle systemic issues that lead to crime and supports community policing councils and technology to pinpoint crime, including gunshot detection systems.

The Democratic primary winner will face Republican Michael Hendricks in the general election to represent the district that covers parts of southeastern Albuquerque, including the Four Hills area. One-term District 20 Democratic Rep. Abbas Akhil, the first Muslim member of the Legislature, is not seeking reelection. Akhil narrowly defeated Republican Rep. Jim Dines in 2018.

District 23  Republican primary, Ellis McMath

McMath, a concealed-carry firearms instructor and hot springs enthusiast, says Arizona, which achieved statehood in 1912 along with New Mexico, has thrived because of its business-friendly environment while New Mexico has lagged economically because of its tax environment. He has a point.

He says New Mexicans are a conservative people who face a radical, progressive, liberal agenda. The retired air traffic controller is focused on crime, the military and believes strongly in parental notification for abortions involving minors. He counsels at the Metropolitan Detention Center and told the Editorial Board judges have their hands tied because of liberal laws and he wants to work on criminal justice reform.

The winner of the Republican primary will face incumbent Democrat Damon Ely of Corrales in the general election to represent the district that encompasses Corrales and part of Albuquerque west of the Rio Grande.

District 27  Democratic primary, William Orr

Orr, a retired geriatrician, says hes running to add an independent physicians perspective to the House.

He says the federal Affordable Care Act made great strides in expanding health care access but a simplified billing system is needed to attract more doctors to the state.

Orr supports a single-payer health system with exceptions for Medicare and the military. He wants to eliminate multiple billings from multiple insurance companies and move to a health insurance system not necessarily tied to employment. He said the pandemic has demonstrated troubling disparities in access to health care in many remote areas of the state that need to be addressed.

Orr says he became more politically active after President Donald Trumps victory.

District 27  Republican primary, Robert Godshall

Godshall, a retired federal immigration officer, ran for the District 27 seat two years ago, losing by 193 votes to Democrat Bill Pratt, who died in December. Prior to Pratt, the district was represented for nearly 24 years by Republican Larry Larranaga, who died in October 2018.

Godshall worked as a Border Patrol agent for five years, then as an investigator with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement before retiring about 12 years ago. His professional insight into immigration and border security could be of great benefit.

Godshall told the Editorial Board he gives credit to Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham for holding down coronavirus infection rates, but that her policies inflicted too much economic pain on businesses. He wants to work to broaden the states tax base and eliminate loopholes for gross receipts taxes, with the goal of reducing GRT rates to 5%.

The winner of the Republican primary will face the winner of the Democratic primary to represent the district that covers part of the Northeast Heights, including neighborhoods along Academy NE.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.
In context: Wednesday's look at Unreal Engine 5 running on a PlayStation 5 devkit certainly raised many eyebrows. It also fired up a round of "Whose Console is Better" among the Xbox and PlayStation communities. You know it's getting close to release time when debate, hype, and controversy starts heating up. Both makers will now start vying for your attention.

Earlier this week, Epic gave us a beautiful dive into the technology of the next iteration of Unreal Engine. In case you missed it, we reposted it belowit's really worth a look. It showcased two new core technologies used for virtualized geometry and dynamic global illumination. Even more intriguing was that the tech demo was running on a PlayStation 5 development kit.

While Unreal Engine has always been platform agnostic, the choice of demonstrating UE5's newest capabilities on PS5 hardware raised some controversy in the community. Why not show it off on the Xbox Series X, or better yet, high-end PC hardware?

When asked this question, Epic said that the PS5 just happened to be the hardware targeted for this specific demo.

"The demo we revealed is running on PS5 because that's been our target platform for this particular experience," an Epic spokesperson told Kotaku.

To quell criticisms of favoritism, Epic added that Unreal Engine 5 will remain platform agnostic and that the new Nanite and Lumen core technologies will also work on Xbox Series X.

"UE5, with core technologies like Niagara VFX and Chaos physics and destructionand the newly revealed Nanite virtualized geometry and Lumen dynamic global illuminationis also targeting Xbox Series X," the spokesperson said.

When explicitly asked if Wednesday's "Lumin in the Land of Nanite" demo could run on a Series X, the only reply was, "We aren't running it on XBSX."

Of course, just because Epic is not running the demo on Microsoft's console does not mean that it can't run on it. Any number of reasons could have prompted the decision, but all are speculation. Maybe the demo is an early build of a game planned as a PlayStation exclusive. It is also possible the devs just chose the PS5 hardware at random. But maybe it's because they needed the fastest storage system out there for the demo to run at its best, and the PS5 has it.

That's right. According to Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney, the PlayStation 5's storage system outclasses anything available on PC or even HEDT systems.

"[The PS5] has an immense amount of GPU power, but also multi-order bandwidth increase in storage management," said Sweeney in a press briefing. "We've been working super close with Sony for quite a long time on storage. The storage architecture on the PS5 is far ahead of anything you can buy on the PC for any amount of money right now. It's going to help drive future PCs."

While Sweeney's comment is likely to rile up the PC Master Race and create even more controversy, the leapfrogging of consoles over PC rigs makes sense.

"Sony has shown more information on this point than Microsoft, but both companies have emphasized custom silicon baked into their upcoming consoles, specifically intended to allow the CPU to be fully devoted to gaming," says ExtremeTech. "From an architectural perspectiveif you can't deliver more performance through higher and higher clock speeds, deliver higher performance by making more efficient use of the CPU. PC's don't have an analogous function block."

Regardless of whether Sweeney's statement is valid, or not, it would not be the first time consoles have outclassed PCs with newer gaming devoted tech. The Xbox 360 was the first hardware to have a programmable GPU. This jump was good for the gaming PC market because Nvidia soon followed with the programable G80. Sony's new storage architecture should be no different. PC and consoles have always had a symbiotic relationship despite all the oneupmanship.

Of course, Microsoft was quick to downplay the demo while still claiming to have the most powerful hardware.

"The fidelity seen in the Unreal Engine 5 tech demo is something that people can expect for next-gen gaming across devices," said a Microsoft spokesperson. "Developers around the world, including the majority of our 15 Xbox Game Studios teams, are using Unreal Engine to build their future projects. We look forward to partnering with Epic and working closely with Unreal 5 across our development teams when it releases in 2021."

Head of Xbox Marketing Aaron Greenberg added on Twitter, "[The UE5 demo was] super impressive and [I] can only imagine what the new Unreal 5 Engine will look like on the world's most powerful console."

Barbs back and forth are par for the course as console wars heat up, both between the companies and the fans. But it's still too early to be making fair assessments. Until consumers and reviewers have the new hardware in hand, saying one is significantly better than the other at this point is either marketing hype or fanaticism.

Rest assured that the back and forth will continue up to and through the launch of the next-gen systems this winter. You can also bet that Microsoft is undoubtedly planning a similar jaw-dropping XBSX reel to build up hype and take back the sudden attention Sony's PS5 console has received.
Aadhithya MS By

Express News Service

TIRUCHY: Hundreds of workers from Tiruchy and Thanjavur districts who had gone for temporary jobs to the UAE, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries have appealed to the Indian government and other officials to arrange for their return to Tamil Nadu by arranging special flights.

The workers would have returned earlier, if not for the lockdown. Tiruchy native Raja and 150 other persons are stranded in Saudi Arabia. Speaking to TNIE, Raja said, "We have all come for an oil plant shutdown job that was completed by April. Due to the lockdown, we are stranded here. All that we earned has been spent on surviving here." The workers were staying in camps arranged by their employers. They were fed and paid while they had work, but since their work period got over, they have been cooking for themselves and spending their earnings on basic needs as they wait to return home.

Justin, who hails from Maraneri village near Boothalur in Thanjavur district, had also gone for shutdown work in Abu Dhabi and is stuck there in a camp. He told TNIE, "In my company alone, there are 140 of us from Tamil Nadu. This is temporary work on a one-month contract. Employers do not support us anymore. We would have been home by now if not for the lockdown. All our earnings are exhausted and getting through each day is an ordeal. I work only temporarily in Abu Dhabi whenever plant shutdown jobs are available. I am otherwise a farmer and cultivate two acres back home. This is the period for cultivation and I need to get back."

These workers said their colleagues from other States have already returned home on special flights. It is only workers from Tamil Nadu who are stuck in these countries. The stranded workers asked for a special flight to Tiruchy to transport them back home, as most of them are from the State's central districts.

They made videos with all of them standing outside the camp, wearing masks and making their pleas to the authorities for special flights.
Deputy General Secretary of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Boamah Otokunor has revealed that should the Electoral Commission (EC) go on with the compilation of the new voters register, the majority of Ghanaians will lose their right to vote in the 2020 general elections.



According to him, this will happen if the EC is allowed to compile the new voters register using passports and the national identification card as the only requirement for getting citizens registered onto the electoral roll.



He mentioned this in an interview on Happy 98.9 FMs Happy Morning Show with host, Samuel Eshun. Peter Otokunor said, We have around 17million people on the old voters register but if the new register is compiled, only 8million Ghanaians can vote in the upcoming election.



Breaking the numbers down, the politician disclosed that currently, there are around 19million eligible voters in the country. He noted that a little over 2million Ghanaians have passports but 1million out of the number are eligible voters. And regardless of the NIA having registered 11 million people, only 7 million people have received their national identification cards. When we add this numbers, then, only 8million Ghanaians can vote in the 2020 general elections, he explained.



The politician furthered that the other parties were surprised seeing a document the EC presented to parliament which could cause this problem without consulting the Interparty Advisory Committee (IPAC). The EC didnt consult us before presenting a document that would require Ghanaians to present either a passport or national identification card to get registered on the new voters register, he reiterated.



The politician noted that the NDC is motivated to prevent the compilation of the new voters register to stop the attempt of the commission to exclude eligible Ghanaians from the electoral roll.



The National Democratic Congress together with other political parties and some Civil Society Organizations have fought the ECs idea of compiling a new voters register from the genesis. The NDC has accused the NPP and the EC for having dubious intent to compile the register whilst the NPP claims the new register is meant to get first-time voters unto the voter roll.

Source: happyghana.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.

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We are excited to work with Saskatoon Business College to make higher education even more accessible...

National American University (NAU) is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Saskatoon Business College (SBC) in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan to enhance educational opportunities for graduates of SBC.

The relationship between the two institutions allows SBC graduates to continue their education in an NAU Canada Online degree program, including bachelor degree programs in Business, Health Care Management, Information Technology and Management. Under the agreement, NAU will provide SBC graduates the opportunity to participate in online classes at a reduced tuition rate and study when and where they choose.

National American University has a long history of working with community and technical colleges to help working adults and other non-traditional students take the next step in their education and career journey. We are excited to work with Saskatoon Business College to make higher education even more accessible to SBCs degree-seeking students in Canada, commented Dr. Ronald Shape, National American University President.

For more information, please contact Amanda Oppel at 816.412.7702 or aoppel@national.edu.

About National American University

Regionally accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, National American University has been preparing students for careers in technical and professional fields for nearly 80 years, with over 20 years of online education experience. Today, NAU offers online doctoral, masters, bachelors associate, diploma, and certificate programs, including programs in Health Care Management, Business, Accounting, Technology, Criminal Justice, and Strategic Security.

About Saskatoon Business College

Saskatoon Business College (SBC) was founded in 1907. SBC is a registered career college providing short (9-12 month) diploma programs for students seeking professional training to work in a variety of business or administrative environments. SBC offers programs including Business, Administrative, Legal, Computer and Health Care.
EU launches legal action against UK over citizens rights

The European Commission has launched legal action against Britain for a failure to comply with EU rules on the free movement of people.

The UK has four months to respond to the claim from the top Brussels body, which cites a string of shortcomings in the way Britain has handled the issue of citizens rights during the post-Brexit transition period.

The move is the latest salvo in an increasingly bitter post-Brexit war of words between the two sides as they try to thrash out a future trade deal.

The Cabinet on Thursday received an update from the UKs top negotiator on the latest round of talks, with David Frost telling ministers that the UK was not asking for anything special, bespoke or unique from the European Union.

The Commissions new infringement notice claims that current UK law limits the scope of EU citizens in the UK and curbs the ability of European citizens and their family members "to appeal administrative decisions restricting free movement rights.

Accusing the UK of having breached European directives on free movement of EU citizens, workers and the freedom of establishment, the Commission reminds UK ministers: EU law on free movement of persons continues to apply to and in the United Kingdom as if it were still an EU Member State during the transition period.

The Commission added: Furthermore, the rights of EU citizens resident in the UK after the end of the transition period, as set out in the Withdrawal Agreement, are built on the rights that they currently enjoy in the United Kingdom under EU rules.

And it says: For these reasons, the Commission decided to send a letter of formal notice to the United Kingdom  the first step in the infringement process.

The United Kingdom now has four months to take the necessary measures to address the shortcomings identified by the Commission. Otherwise, the Commission may send a reasoned opinion to the UK authorities.

The Prime Ministers official spokesperson said on Wednesday: We will look at what the EU has to say and we will respond in due course.

Long-standing critics of Brexit were quick to pounce on the infringement notice from the EU.

Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesperson Christine Jardine said: "It is beyond frustrating that it has got to the point where the UK Government is facing legal action to protect the rights of people who contribute so much to this country.

The fact that the Commission feels it has to take this action to protect rights after the transition period reflects terribly on the UK government and their actions.

"The current crisis has made it clear just how vital immigration is. For our NHS and social care systems, EU workers are key.

Britain formally left the EU on 31 January but it remains in a transition period during which it is closely aligned to most of its regulations.

Talks on what happens at the end of that period are currently ongoing, but appear to be mired in disagreement over issues including how far Britain wants to diverge from EU rules, the jurisdiction of the blocs top court, and future access to Britains fishing waters.

According to Number 10, Frost, who is heading up the UKs video-conference negotiations with his EU counterpart Michel Barnier, told Cabinet ministers that the UK would keep pressing for a free trade agreement based on precedent, similar to those the EU has already got with other countries like Canada.

He said, however, that the EU has asked far more from the UK than they have from other sovereign countries with whom they have reached free trade agreements, the spokesperson added.

For instance theyve asked for the same access to our waters that they did when we were still in the EU, for the UK to stay bound to their laws and rules, and for the UK to automatically follow EU decisions on areas such as workers rights even though we have much higher standards than they do.

And Downing Street said Cabinet had given its full support to the UKs stance and agreed that we wont agree to demands to give up our rights as an independent state especially when the EU has shown from their agreements with other countries like Canada that these controls are not necessary.
Cork and London based property development company, BMOR, today announced their intention to lodge plans for a mixed-use development, supporting the regeneration of one of Cork Citys most historic street.



Key features of this proposal include the planned restoration of Colemans Lane which, since medieval times has provided direct access between North Main Street and Grattan Street and, the development of a pocket park, which will be accessible to the general public.



The developers are finalising negotiations with several Cork-based building contractors to undertake the construction of this project which is expected to generate in the region of 150 construction jobs. Following the completion of the North Main Street development, a further 30 permanent job positions will also be created.

As well as opening a new office on the South Mall, BMOR have underlined their goal of helping to regenerate Cork city and county by embarking on number of other developments in the area. These developments form part of BMORs plans to grow their portfolio here, the first of which is a 43-house residential development in Killeens, where construction will commence once the lockdown is lifted.



Speaking this week, Director at BMOR, Paul Irwin said, "As a Cork native, it gives me great pleasure and pride to present our ambitious plans for Cork City. The scheme, designed by O'Mahony Pike Architects, balances the rich heritage of North Main Street with sleek, innovative, and contemporary design. We believe this project will help to kick start the exciting redevelopment plans envisaged for this part of the city."

Source: www.businessworld.ie
Christ Embassy Allegedly Gets Internet Company Installing Fibre Cables Arrested After Accusing Them Of Installing 5G

A business consultant has accused a branch of the Christ Embassy Church of effecting the arrest of staff of an internet company while they were fixing fibre cables in the neighborhood.

Orok Unoh, said the internet service providers were running fibre cables to his house on Wednesday, May 13, when the Christ Embassy Church in the area accused them of installing 5G and got police to arrest them.

Unoh wrote: So an Internet provider was running fiber cables to my house yesterday. The Christ Embassy Church along the pathway got them arrested on the grounds that they believed were installing 5G.



Pastors must really be careful with how they misinform their flock.

Religion and stupidity make for a terrible cocktail.

The founder of Christ Embassy Church, Pastor Chris Oyakhilome, has been quite vocal in condemning the installation of 5G and warning of the dangers.

Below are reactions to Unohs allegation, including a reaction from Daddy Freeze.
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If there wasn't enough to worry about already for high school students, it's Advanced Placement exam season, too.

The tests -- which come with the potential of college credit and, as a result, thousands saved in tuition for students who earn a passing score of 3 or higher -- are already high stakes, even without the background context of a pandemic and escalating economic and mental stress.

But this year, the logistical challenges brought on by the coronavirus crisis have taken it to the next level.

The exams, which are normally held in person at schools, are being administered remotely.

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This year's exams are "open note," meaning students are allowed to refer to notes and books while taking the tests. Still, the College Board, which administers the exams, has had to thwart efforts by some students to take advantage of the home testing environment and cheat, Trevor Packer, the College Board's senior vice president of advanced placement and testing, said on Twitter.

And even among the majority who are following the rules, some students and parents say the process is technically complicated.

According to a walk-through by the College Board, this is how it's supposed to go: students are assigned a unique "e-ticket" number. When they log in with this number, it takes them to their test. If it has one question, students have 50 minutes to respond. If there are two questions, students get 30 minutes to answer the first question and 20 minutes for the second one.

The College Board says students can type responses to questions in Word or some other document format -- then attach the file or copy and paste the text into the browser with the exam.

They can also write their responses out on paper, which is also handy for students taking tests in subjects like calculus where they have to show their work. To submit, students must take a photo of the handwritten pages and attach them to the file.

This is where things start to get tricky.

If you see this screen with the message We Did Not Receive Your Response(s), it means your AP Exam answers were NOT successfully submitted, and you should request a makeup at https://t.co/xiizrJahZb. pic.twitter.com/f3P3YiLK1W  The College Board (@CollegeBoard) May 12, 2020

When there are five minutes left, a timer at the bottom of the page turns red.

"That's when you should wrap up your work and start submitting your response," the video advises.

If the tests were administered in person, that would be as simple as closing your booklet, sealing it, and handing it in. Online, it's way more complicated.

Frustrated students and parents have flooded social media with complaints about the system not accepting their responses, though overall, 1.47 million tests have been administered so far and, according to the College Board, "our data show the vast majority of students successfully completed their exams, with less than 1% unable to submit their responses."

"We found that outdated browsers on students' devices were associated with these difficulties, and so we reminded students to update their browsers to the latest version," the statement reads. "And today, we saw a decrease in both outdated browsers and copy-paste issues."

Given the wide variety of devices, browsers, and versions students are using, we anticipated that a small percentage of students would encounter technical difficulties, and we have a makeup window in June so students have another opportunity to test.  Trevor Packer (@AP_Trevor) May 11, 2020

As for the students photographing their responses, those using iPhones will see it's not as simple as taking a picture. The photos have to be uploaded as .png, .jpg or .jpeg files. But iPhones and iPads don't always capture images in these formats. Some automatically save photos as HEIC files, which the exam can't accept. That means some students have to take some extra steps to make sure they can upload those files with their answers.

If you want to submit a photo of a handwritten AP Exam answer from an iPhone or iPad, make sure to change your camera settings so your photos are saved as JPEGs, not HEICs. Go to Settings > Camera > Formats > Select Most Compatible.



More details: https://t.co/Hqg0CKbB4A. pic.twitter.com/DZ0lLttDgm  The College Board (@CollegeBoard) May 12, 2020

And of course, this all assumes the test taker has access to a device that reliably connects to the internet, which the campus closures and move to distance learning have shown is not the reality for many students.

"While almost all AP students have smartphone access, we want to ensure that no digital divide prevents a student from earning the college credit they deserve," the College Board wrote in a statement. Staff reached out to more than 10,000 students to help connect them to devices.

Figuring out all of this technical stuff is crucial, as the College Board reminds in the walkthrough.

"You can get partial credit for a partial answer, but you will not get any credit if you submit nothing."

Which is exactly what happened to Nate Young's daughter, a 10th grader. We're not using her name to protect her privacy, as she's still in high school.

Young said his daughter took a practice test with the new format without a problem, but towards the end of the Glassell Park teen's actual AP European History exam on Wednesday, Young began to hear her screaming "No! No! No!" and some choice curse words.

"And then she came out of the room, bawling," he said.

She couldn't upload an image of her handwritten responses -- and the red clock had ticked, ticked, ticked down.

Time was up.

Like others who ran into technical problems, Young's daughter was offered the opportunity to retest in June. But, as Young explained, after a difficult year of adapting to unusual and uncertain circumstances, she was looking forward to putting this test, at least, behind her.

"She was hoping to be finished with this," he said. "So now they've essentially just extended the race for her."

Between the first week and second weeks of AP testing, the College Board announced it will offer what it's calling a "backup email submission" process.

Here's how it will work. If a student is unable to upload answers -- the system will now prompt them with a unique email address to send responses immediately after the test.

AP students took nearly 2.2 million AP Exams last week, and were so proud of every student who tested. We also share the deep disappointment of those who couldn't complete their AP Exams.



We're providing a new safeguard for students moving forward. https://t.co/MawNGSg07H pic.twitter.com/fLfo7fTBR4  The College Board (@CollegeBoard) May 17, 2020

But the College Board is only offering that option to those taking AP exams going forward, so the students who ran into problems last week, like Young's daughter, will still have to re-test in June.

"To protect the security and validity of Exams, we can't accept submissions from students who tested May 11-15," the organization wrote on Twitter. "However, these students can feel confident that the email backup option will be in place for them during the makeup Exams."

UPDATE, May 17: This post has been updated to reflect the College Board's announcement that it will now offer a backup email submission option to students who are unable to submit their answers during the exam.
Book jackets for the three versions of Percival Everett's "Telephone," each slightly different. (Graywolf Press)

The author and USC professor Percival Everett is no novice when it comes to wrestling with heavy themes  free will, epistemology, the problem of evil. In 35 books, including the novels Erasure, So Much Blue and I Am Not Sidney Poitier, he has interrogated the ways many people mistake the surface of a situation, or the parts they see, for the whole. But his narratives live at ground level too, in characters who face shattering decisions and situations that both reflect and defy the expectations put on black writers like himself.

All of which is to say that what he has done with his latest novel, Telephone, is both utterly surprising and completely in character. Everett has written three versions of the book and released them simultaneously, without telling the reader which she has bought. (The only clue is a slight difference on each front cover.) The structure of branching possibilities isnt entirely unfamiliar to anyone whos seen Sliding Doors or grown up on Choose Your Own Adventure novels  except that Everett is doing the choosing and asking us to figure out why.

Having read all three versions, I can say without divulging spoilers that the stories diverge at three different fulcrum points, in which thoughts either do or do not lead to actions, plans then are or are not followed to completion. What may flummox readers is not knowing whether these choices make any difference.

Robert Frost explored this paradox in The Road Not Taken, only to have his intent of mocking an indecisive friend misinterpreted by generations as an ode to nonconformism. His conclusion that the road less traveled by made all the difference is clearly ironic. Everett makes his fork in the woods a goose foot, with three plots in pursuit of safe harbor from an oncoming storm.

The novel revolves around Zach Wells, a professor of geology and paleobiology; his wife, Meg; and their adolescent daughter, Sarah. Upon his return from a research trip, Zach notices that his daughters chess-playing skills, usually razor-sharp, appear to have lost their edge. Campus politics complicates his life  particularly a student with a crush on him. And when he opens a package containing a shirt he ordered, he finds a tiny note in the pocket that reads "Ayudame." Someone seems to be asking for help, but is this a practical joke?

Story continues

Percival Everett, author of "Telephone," with crow. (Graywolf Press)

One of the subthemes of Telephone is the extent to which the accidents of our birth  especially gender or race  shape the choices we are allowed to make. Zach recognizes this in his own family: I tried to tell my daughter, while she could understand, that women are hunted in this world. I tried to tell her without telling her, without saying it in plain language. I did not want her to be afraid in life. Zachs interactions with all the women he encounters  his colleague, his student, his wife, his daughter and eventually the sender of the note  reveal that the gulf between our intentions and actions is in fact not the space where we exert control over what happens to us. If wishes were horses, beggars would ride, the proverb insists, but it makes no allowance for the beggars riding skills or the horses compliance. Action meets fickle reality.

There are pleasures and ramifications in Telephone beyond the question of whether his very high-concept gambit will pay off. They begin with the opening rant, which feels almost nauseatingly timely: People, and by people I mean them, never look for truth, they look for satisfaction. There is nothing worse, certain painful and deadly diseases notwithstanding, than an unsatisfactory, piss-poor truth, whereas a satisfactory lie is all too easy to accept, even embrace, get cozy with.

What Everetts achingly beautiful prose adds to the intellectual dilemma  a classic should I stay or should I go  is to underscore the role of emotions in limiting our free will. The grief that we feel when circumstances strip us of attachments and illusions is explored on multiple levels. Reading descriptions of Zachs paternal love, I could feel Everetts sentences resonating in my chest.

But back to the gambits. A clue to Zachs strategy  and Everetts  lies in the section Castling Short, which features a series of moves in a chess game between him and his daughter. Rather than trying to defeat Sarah, Zach seems intent on a draw (in other words, stasis). But when she castles short, swapping king and rook, he wonders what else might be possible. That two pieces could move at once seemed like magic to me, enough so that I wished I could make a similar move in real life. What such a thing would look like I had no idea. Everetts three versions of Telephone explore what could happen if we recognized that either/or is yet another fiction.

Sarah explains to her father that the reason she consistently beats him is because he is unwilling to sacrifice pieces. You cant protect everybody, she tells him. You just have to get the better of it or get the position you want. This applies readily to Zachs entire life  until events outside his control force him to choose. Or not choose.

Like watching a skilled juggler execute a six-ball fountain, the experience of reading Telephone is astonishing. Everett maps out the plot to guide readers through emotional territory while using abstract concepts as trail markers. For millennia, theologians have wrestled with the existence of evil. Pantheism explained it by making some gods good and some evil, but monotheism posits one omnipotent being responsible for both.

In seeking answers, Christians imported concepts of predestination from the metaphysics of Plato and Aristotle with mixed  and sometimes disastrous  results. Everett alludes to those arguments before moving to the obvious alternative. For the French philosopher Voltaire, the catastrophic 1755 Lisbon earthquake demonstrated that to believe in an omniscient god you had to accept the random deaths of thousands. Like Voltaire, I hold contempt for such a god, Zachs colleague declares.

As an atheist, Zach rejects all notions of a god in control of fate. As a scientist, he tests his explanations against his data  his way of trying to know the world. But what if knowledge ends up paralyzing us? Perhaps Telephone is not about choice but about the stories we tell ourselves about choice.

Everetts three Telephone novels test emotional and philosophical truths by exploring whether any of Zachs choices can help him wrest control of a narrative intent on breaking his heart. Can he offset one harmful decision by making a better, unrelated one? And who keeps the balance sheet in such a universe? I hated the notion of redemption, Zach thinks in this moment of crisis. But here I was in the world, in this world. I would do something. As he discovers, not all redemption stories go according to plan.

Berry writes for a number of publications and tweets @BerryFLW .

Telephone



Percival Everett



Graywolf: 232 pages, $16




After watching Celine Sciammas Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019), Mr. Perry decided to change his tactic.

I had this marquee at my disposal  or the businesss marquee at my disposal  and I liked the idea of not only getting people to watch this great movie but of trying to speak in more hopeful terms, he said.

Mr. Perry, who has worked at the Lake Theater & Cafe on and off for 23 years, said the two-screen theater is both a home for his staff and a home-away-from-home for his patrons. And though digital support is no substitute for the physical community that hes missing, its still nice to see people laugh.

The fact that it did catch on made me happy because it essentially showed theres a place for more hopeful messages; that dark humor isnt the only way we can express ourselves, Mr. Perry said, before laughing. It was also fun to see everybody think I was high, too.
* Top lithium producer has to repay $1.9 bln of Citic loan in Nov

* Has bond coupon payment due in May and owes Australia JV money

* M&A deal that piled debt on firm agreed almost exactly 2 yrs ago

By Tom Daly BEIJING, May 15 (Reuters) - China's Tianqi Lithium , one of the world's top lithium producers, said on Friday it was talking to banks about adjusting the terms of its debt as a key repayment on a loan looms and the lithium market tanks.

The company previously said it was weighing asset sales or bringing in strategic investors after a plunge in prices for lithium, a key ingredient in electric vehicle batteries, left it struggling to repay a multibillion-dollar loan taken out to fund a major acquisition in 2018. In response to a question on an interactive investor platform on Friday, Tianqi said it was "actively" communicating with various partner banks with regard to "adjusting the maturity structure of the debt, relaxing loan conditions and other measures" to ease its liquidity problems. It agreed to buy a 23.8% stake in Chilean miner Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile , or SQM, in May 2018 for $4.1 billion, most of which came from a $3.5 billion syndicated loan led by state-owned bank Citic Group .

Around $1.9 billion of that loan is due to be repaid by November 2020, the company said, answering a separate question. Tianqi, whose market capitalisation has slumped well below the price it paid for the SQM stake, said it was also communicating with local governments, regulators and creditors to safeguard credit lines.

Prices for lithium have plunged more than 70% since Tianqi agreed the acquisition as supply overwhelms demand, which has now been hit by the coronavirus outbreak.

On top of the loan, Tianqi has a $5.6 million interest payment due on May 28 on a $300 million bond maturing in 2022. The yield on the bond has ballooned out to around 60%, according to Refinitiv Eikon data, as investors sell off on perceived higher risk of a Tianqi default. Tianqi, which posted a 6 billion yuan ($845 million) net loss in 2019, has been downgraded by ratings agency Moody's on four separate occasions since September and is now rated at the Caa1 junk grade.

The Chengdu-based firm also owes around $100 million to its Australian joint venture Talison Lithium, which operates the giant Greenbushes lithium mine and an on-hold processing plant at Kwinana. Tianqi has been linked with the sale of part of its 51% stake in Talison, in which it partners U.S.-based Albemarle Corp , as it looks to cut debt. ($1 = 7.0987 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Payback time (Reporting by Tom Daly; additional reporting by Min Zhang in Beijing, Melanie Burton in Melbourne and Andrew Galbraith in Shanghai; editing by Mark Potter)
Elliott Atwell, 30, is accused of sending male enhancement pills to a 16-year-old living in New Jersey, according to a news release from the federal court system's Western District of Virginia. He was arrested at his home Thursday. He is charged with two counts of dispensing drugs without a valid prescription, each of which could result in a year of imprisonment and a $1,000 fine.
The Trump International Hotel is seen in April 2017

A US court on Thursday reopened a case challenging the income from foreign entities that President Donald Trump makes through his hotel in Washington.

Without ruling on the contents of the case, a federal appeals court reversed a decision made last year by three of its judges who had closed the matter based on procedural issues.

Trump's personal lawyer Jay Sekulow and the Department of Justice both said they disagreed with the reversal and would be filing an appeal to the United States Supreme Court.

The decision means that the proceedings brought by the attorneys general in Washington and the neighboring state of Maryland, which accuse the president of violating the "emoluments clause" of the US constitution, can continue for now.

The phrase refers to a section in the first article of the US Constitution that prohibits public officials from receiving gifts, payments or titles from foreign states without permission from Congress.

The plaintiffs say the clause is violated when foreign delegations patronize the Trump International Hotel, near the White House, in an effort to curry favor with the president.

According to media reports, the embassies of Kuwait, Bahrain and the Philippines have hosted events at the upscale hotel.

The real estate mogul-turned-president entrusted the management of his businesses to his sons after inauguration in 2017, though Trump held onto his shares in the Trump Organization, which brought in $435 million in revenue in 2018.

The president and the Justice Department argue that the emoluments clause is intended to stop public officials from taking bribes, not from carrying out regular functions of business, as Trump says he is.
By Delana Isles

THE GOVERNMENT has been presented with yet another report, this one gleaned from a survey of micro, small and medium-sized enterprises (MSME) in the Turks and Caicos Islands.





The survey, conducted by the Providenciales Chamber of Commerce, solicited responses from the chambers members which then informed a six-point economic relief proposal to the Government.





Ronald B Saunders, president of the Providenciales Chamber of Commerce, stated in the report that the intention of the survey was to hear from members, specifically the MSME sector, what they needed to survive this crisis and ways in which the Government could help businesses.





Respondents believe that the Governments failure to support non-Turks and Caicos Islander MSMEs will result in companies failing, with individuals across the territory losing their jobs, adding to the already expected unemployment problems.





These businesses felt that they should be included in the MSME Business Stimulus Grants.





The chamber report said its membership feels that the Government should also reach out to the business community to advise them of proposals and provide sufficient time for both feedback and implementation.





The report outlined that every business polled reported significant impacts, with 75 percent having seen their revenue drop by more than 90 percent.





The primary concerns facing business, in terms of expenses, are wages (85 percent share this concern), utilities (75 percent), payroll taxes such as National Insurance and National Health Insurance (65 percent), rent (65 percent) and loan repayments (30 percent).





Customs duties are a concern for only 10 percent of these businesses, the report said, as such most businesses may not feel any relief under the duty waivers and exemptions.





The six proposals included in the report are:





Adjustment of severance remuneration to reflect reality

It is recommended that businesses are allowed to lay off staff without requiring them to pay severance, if they are provided with a guaranteed specific rehire date for a term of no less than six months.





If an employee is laid off between March 15 and December 31, 2020, severance is deferred until July 31, 2021.





If the employee has been reemployed for a period of six months before July 31, 2021, the employee is no longer eligible for severance.





Most businesses will be unable to pay severance as outlined in the Employment Ordinance.





If businesses are forced to pay, such as through complaints lodged via the Labour Tribunal, this increases the likelihood of many MSMEs failing and ceasing operations.





Tourism is unlikely to resume in June, July and August of 2020 to any significant extent.





If businesses are forced to start paying out severance, they will fold and employees will be unemployed.





Starting a new business can take months and years of planning, and it is critical to keep these businesses operational to provide continued employment.





Second round of stimulus grants

If any funds remain in the $10 million allocated to MSMEs by October 31, 2020, the remaining funds should be distributed (in equal proportion) to past grantees which met and continue to meet the criteria.





This is instead of returning funds to the Governments consolidated fund or Treasury.





Not all businesses will qualify based on the eligibility criteria, and considering that the $10 million has already been allocated, this would be a welcome relief for businesses which would have survived until October 31, 2020.





Work permit fee deferral and reduction

For some MSME businesses, the cost of work permits can represent a significant year-end expense.





These businesses should be given the opportunity to generate this money in December, January, February and March in order to retain staff and continue offering their services.





The post will need to be advertised to Islanders as usual, the only difference is a reduction in fee, and if approved, a deferred payment date.





Businesses will have to apply and be granted a work permit in the normal process, this includes advertising for the position as currently required.





However, if the work permit is granted, there will be a 33 percent reduction in the cost, and the payment is due April 30, 2021, in order to give the business time to accrue the necessary revenue.





Extension of validity for commercial vehicle registrations

Commercial vehicle registrations, including those for rental cars, public service vehicles, and heavy equipment, where registration expires on December 31, 2020, would have either their validity extended through April 30, 2021, or a reduction in fees of 33 percent and a deferred due date of April 30, 2021.





For some businesses, such as car rentals and construction companies, the cost of vehicle registration will be a high year-end cost.





This affects many MSME contractors, rental companies, and public service operators.





Businesses will have to renew and registrations granted as normal.





Tourism tax credit for MSME independent tourism operators

It is likely that many MSME tourism businesses are not going to survive this crisis.





MSMEs registered for tourism tax, classed as Independent Tourism Operators, should receive a credit for the first $1,000 monthly in tax due, instead of being tax exempted if their monthly revenue is $4,000 or less.





This is proposed to be a permanent, rather than temporary change, to support and encourage entrepreneurship in the Turks and Caicos Islands.





Changes to directors liability for trading while insolvent

Some businesses may technically become insolvent during this crisis, as directors attempt to weather the storm.





Under the law, these directors can become liable for debts incurred by the company.





Considering the current economic situation, the laws regarding trading whilst insolvent and the liability of directors should be suspended.





Further concerns

The chambers report outlined that some of the respondents that indicated they would seek assistance under the Governments Business Stimulus Grant Programme have since approached the chamber.





This is upon learning that they do not qualify based on the eligibility criteria, namely the majority-Turks and Caicos Islander ownership criteria.





These businesses, the report says, have put forward arguments that they pay high work permit fees ($9,500 for self-employed), many of them employ Turks and Caicos Islanders, and simply that they need assistance as well.





MSMEs pay many of the same taxes as their larger counterparts (such as business licence fees and incorporation fees), and the Government hasnt waived these fees, instead deferred them.





Many of these businesses are expected to pay Government licences and fees shortly which far exceed what would be received under the stimulus grant.




At least 185 nurses hailing from Manipur and working in private hospitals in Kolkata have left for their home state after resigning from their jobs following the recent spike in the number of coronavirus cases here,



sources said on Friday.

This will add to the prevailing shortage of nurses in the facilities here amid the ongoing the COVID-19 pandemic, said a senior official of a private hospital from which nine nurses have quit.

Apart from feeling unsafe staying in the city after the number of coronavirus cases and deaths due to the disease started rising, the nurses from the Northeastern state, which has only one active case now, chose to quit their jobs because of pressure from their parents to return home, sources in various private hospitals in the city said.

"Our parents are concerned and we are also quite stressed when the cases are rising everyday here. Our state is a green state and we feel going back home. Our state government is helping us. Family and parents are our priority," one of the nurses who resigned said when contacted over the phone.

No confirmation can be made from the government about its "help".

The number of active cases in West Bengal rose to 1,407 on Friday. A total of 153 people have died directly due to COVID-19 in the state so far and 72 others succumbed because of other comorbidity conditions where the presence of coronavirus was incidental.

"If we remain alive, we will get another job," the nurse told PTI on condition of anonymity.

Nurses from Manipur have started leaving since Monday in buses and small vehicles, sources said adding that after they reach their home state, they will be sent for home or institutional quarantine.

Apart from the 185 who have left, 132 others are scheduled to return to Imphal taking a transit route through Assam and Nagaland, according to a well-placed source.

"We apprehend there will be a significant crisis, as more and more nurses are leaving the city for home. Since occupancy is low across all hospitals, we will be able to manage now. But once planned surgeries restart full-fledged, we will feel the pinch," AMRI Hospitals Group CEO Rupak Barua said.

There has always been a shortage of nurses in West Bengal due to lack of sufficient nursing colleges and this has led to a huge demand-supply gap, said Barua who is also the chairman of the Healthcare Sub-committee, CII Eastern Region.

"We have been dependent more on nurses from other states, particularly from Manipur, Tripura and other Northeastern states, along with Kerala," he said.

Some of the facilities of Kolkata that are facing the crisis include Charnock Hospital where 27 nurses resigned, followed by 25 in Peerless Hospital, 16 in Fortis Healthcare, 11 each in IRIS Multispeciality Hospital and Bhagirathi Neotia Woman and Child Care Centre, and 10 each in Apollo Gleneagles Hospitals and Sri Aurobindo Seva Kendra, sources said.

There are several other hospitals in and around Kolkata where Manipuri nurses have quit their jobs and left for their homes.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic, the surgeon general exhorted Americans to STOP BUYING MASKS! Public-health officials argued that only medical workers needed personal protective equipment, and besides, people could not be trusted to put masks on correctly.

A few weeks later, masks have become a symbol of civic responsibility, following new CDC guidelines encouraging their use. Politicians and journalists don them at press conferences, castigating their bald-faced colleagues. The surgeon general even posted a how-to guide for making masks out of T-shirts.

What explains the change? A large body of literature finds that surgical masks and respirators, while imperfect, reduce the spread of pathogens transmitted through droplets. An infected individual wearing a mask is less likely to shed the virus onto other people or surfaces, and even if droplets penetrate a mask, the viral load will be lower than it would have been otherwise, reducing the severity of an attendant infection. A 2003 study of the SARS outbreak in Hong Kong found that medical workers who wore masks were significantly less likely to contract the virus. Another study found that even homemade masks are better than nothing. But public-health authorities downplayed the effectiveness of masks in order to preserve the supply for medical workers in greater need of personal protective equipment.

The belated guidelines are welcome. But for many on the political right, this initial noble lie reinforced a broader distrust of government. Bureaucrats willingness to obfuscate meant that individuals had to make reasoned decisions on their own rather than rely on government dictates. The mask imbroglio cast doubt on the claim that experts alone could address the pandemic and bolstered the case for a localized response.

Suddenly theres a new trend: mask-skeptics on the political right. After Vice President Pence got flak for not covering his face on a visit to the Mayo Clinic, Trumps base has come to see masks as a symbol of government overreach. Fox News host Laura Ingraham dedicated a segment to denouncing mask use: Theyll say this whole mask thing is settled science just like they do with climate change. Of course, its not and they know it. Ohio governor Mike DeWine, who initially mandated the use of masks in his state, rolled back the requirement in the face of public backlash, reasoning that people were not going to accept the government telling them what to do. Some pundits have even argued that mask-wearing is a sign of cowardice.

Story continues

The irony is that civil-libertarian objections to masks make draconian measures more likely. The more people refuse to wear masks, the greater the risks of reopening. Where mask-wearing has taken hold  in Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea, for example  life has proceeded in quasi-normalcy: Many businesses and schools are open, and people are free to socialize. The comparatively repressive East Asian democracies have retained more civil liberties than the U.S. thanks, in part, to the rational behavior of their citizens.

The efficacy of masks strengthens the anti-lockdown case. It is exactly the kind of spontaneous decision-making that often renders government intrusion needless and inefficient. The invisible hand of the free market depends on rational individuals acting in their self-interest. Weve seen this phenomenon in jurisdictions that did not lock down but nonetheless saw sizable reductions in economic activity. People did not want to contract COVID-19 and took reasonable steps to minimize their risk.

But the anti-mask crowd now advocates eschewing ones individual interest in favor of empty symbolic gestures  an example of the irrational behavior that statists use to argue against free markets. Conflating personal protective measures with government overreach all but guarantees that the latter will be necessary.

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ANKENY  Apparently theres nothing like a stay-at-home global pandemic to drive Iowans to drink.

Officials with the Iowa Alcoholic Beverages Division announced Friday liquor sales in March  the month Iowa confirmed its first cases of the coronavirus  jumped 26 percent to $31.9 million. Iowans followed that up by buying $28.6 million worth of spirits in April.

Much of the sharp increase in liquor sales in March is believed to be attributable to changes in consumer behavior due to COVID-19, according to an agency news release. That occurred as Iowa bars and restaurants were ordered closed to the public for sit-down service on March 17 to help prevent the spread of the virus.

As a result, Iowans appeared to shift to purchasing liquor by the bottle for at-home consumption, according to the news release.

Iowas alcoholic beverages division sells liquor to off-premises retailers  such as liquor stores, grocery stores, and convenience stores. But it is unable to track individual purchases of liquor by consumers.

State officials did note, however, that sales data for March 16 through April 1 indicated an 82 percent increase in the number of cases of 1.75 liter-sized liquor products the division sells to off-premises retailers compared with the same time frame in 2019.

Case sales of standard-sized 750 milliliter bottles increased by 51 percent, a surge that caused agency officials to conclude the sales spike is believed to be due to increased, by-the-bottle purchases by consumers.

We cant be certain that these sales figures demonstrate an increase in personal consumption. Iowans may have simply changed where they are continuing to enjoy their favorite spirits products, said division administrator Stephen Larson. Regardless, we encourage all Iowans who choose to consume alcohol to always do so in a moderate and responsible manner.

Despite being ordered closed to the public for sit-down service, bars and restaurants have been granted temporary alcohol sales privileges to help generate much-needed revenue. Gov. Kim Reynolds also issued a proclamation allowing bars and restaurants to sell unopened bottles of liquor to go. On the week Reynolds took that action in March, the divisions case sales of 50 milliliter bottles of liquor increased 60 percent over sales the same week in 2019.

The governor signed another proclamation March 31 allowing bars and restaurants to sell mixed drinks and cocktails made on-site to go. In the week that followed, the divisions case sales of 750 milliliter bottles of liquor increased by almost 20 percent.

The governors fast action in this area was critical in helping to prop up Iowas bars and restaurants at a time when they were asked to sacrifice greatly to protect public health, said Larson.

At the same time, Iowas largest independently owned liquor stores that supply bars and restaurants reduced their purchases from the states alcoholic beverages agency by 44 percent since March 17. Last month Reynolds issued a proclamation reopening restaurants in 77 of Iowas 99 counties for limited sit-down service effective May 1 and she expanded that statewide effective Friday  action that division officials said could boost demand for liquor purchases by restaurants.

One other negative impact of the COVID-19 outbreak in Iowa was a sharp drop in applications for short-term, temporary state licenses for sought for special events like fairs, festivals and concerts during spring and summer  many of which have been canceled due to concerns associated with large crowds and social distancing.

State licensing data showed a sharp decline in the number of 5- and 14-day alcohol licenses issued in March and April, as well as applications submitted for licenses for May, June and July, according to the division.

Meanwhile, renewals and applications for class E liquors licenses from liquor stores, grocery stores and most convenience stores that allow sale of liquor for off-premise consumption held relatively steady in March and April to comparable 2019 data, officials said. The same was true for class C liquor licenses held by bars and restaurants allowing the sale of liquor, beer and wine for on-premises consumption.
Mark Hamill doesn't know when Star Wars fandom became so toxic (Image by Lucasfilm)

Mark Hamill has opened up about the toxicity of Star Wars fandom, insisting that he is shocked by just how divided die-hard lovers of the franchise have become.

Hamill, who shot to fame as Luke Skywalker in the sci-fi saga, opened up to Daily Beast about the constant reactions to the films, candidly admitting that he doesnt know when or how the fandom became so contentious.

Read More: 'Star Wars': Mark Hamill explains why we've seen the last of Luke Skywalker

I dont know when, over the period of time, fandom became so contentious, he began. But people are really opinionated, and you cant help but be opinionated yourself, because youve lived with the character so long.

So whether it was on Episode VII, VIII or IX, Id have disagreements, and I would say to whoever it was, Well, I dont know if thats right. But everyone shares the same goal: you want to make the best movie you can.

Cast member Mark Hamil attends the premiere of "Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker" in Los Angeles, California, U.S. December 16, 2019. REUTERS/Phil McCarten

Hamills opinion on The Last Jedi has been widely discussed, as the actor openly admitted he told writer and director Rian Johnson that he disagreed with his treatment of Luke Skywalker. But at least Hamill enjoyed working with the new cast, even though he would have loved to have worked with them more.

I love the new cast. I think the characters are great and all the actors are just perfect. I wish Id gotten to work with them more, obviously, because I was so isolated. But you know, I never expected to come back at all.

Read more: Where will the Star Wars franchise go next?

It was bittersweet, but I was able to enjoy it from a different perspective than years ago when I was in my twenties. So it was just fun to be a part of it, and it was sad in a way, because I knew it would be the last time Id ever play Luke.
KENT COUNTY, MI  With five children, Keisha Lamont was ready to get outside  her family joined hundreds Friday, May 15, at Boulder Ridge Wild Animal Park, despite Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order.

Its nice to get out of the house, Lamont, who was joined by her mother, Joni Pabon, told MLIve.

I have five kids and having them in the house all the time has just been chaos. Getting them all out today  its like a breath of fresh air, I guess.

Whitmers orders to stay home and close non-essential businesses, in effect to slow the coronavirus spread, expire May 28. But up to 400 visitors from nearby communities and across the state visited Boulder Ridge on Friday.

The park is located at 8313 Pratt Lake Ave. SE in Alto, about a 30-minute drive from Grand Rapids in southeast Kent County.

Manager Josh Baker said the park took many steps to keep visitors and staff safe amid the COVID-19 pandemic that had delayed the zoos opening and has kept other businesses closed.

He said that the park had always planned to open Friday, when a stay-at-home order was originally set to expire  and decided to keep that date despite Whitmers extension of her order to May 28.

Baker said that many businesses, including the zoo, which has a limited season to make money, are being hurt by state emergency orders. His animals have to be fed and cared for whether the gates are open or not.

On its website, Boulder Ridge asked visitors to consider buying memberships in this financially hard time for our zoo.

Obviously, everybody hopes theres no repercussions, Baker told MLive. If there are repercussions, well just take them as they come."

He said some private zoos on the east side of the state have opened. John Ball Zoo in Grand Rapids and Binder Park Zoo in Battle Creek remain closed.

Kent County sheriffs Lt. Joel Roon said early Friday afternoon that police had not been called to the animal park.

The standard protocol is to respond if a complaint is filed. Police would talk to the owner, write a report and submit the information for prosecutors to review.

The process from that point typically involves additional engagement with the business if it is determined that they shouldnt be open per the (executive order), the goal of which is to gain compliance," Roon said.

Ryan Jarvi, press secretary for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in an email: Since the first Stay Home, Stay Safe order was issued, any criminal enforcement action will come from local law enforcement if they deem it warranted.

The zoo works to give visitors an educational experience and promote conservation, including support for endangered species. It features many animals, from giraffes to kangaroos to zebras. During the summer, baby animals are featured, a popular attraction.

The fact that theyre open, I think, is awesome, Lamont, the mother of five, said, before she headed back to Hastings.

I think it is ridiculous that the stay-at-home order is still in place personally. I mean if a million people can be at a grocery store all day long, why cant people be out here enjoying their life instead of being locked in a house 24/7. I feel like it is pointless.

Her mother said everyone kept their distance inside the, with workers frequently wiping surfaces. About half of the visitors wore face masks, which were for sale in the gift shop.

Workers could decide if they wanted to wear masks.

Concession stands were not open but visitors can bring their own food.

The park usually opens May 1 and is a destination for many school groups every spring.

The park announced many safeguards to protect workers and visitors from the spread of the coronavirus including:

Tickets are being sold online, as well as the front office.

Season memberships that speed the entry process.

Separate entrance and exit for social distancing.

Sneeze guards at cash registers and feed stations.

Markings to promote a safe distance between visitors.

Hand sanitizer at cash registers, feed stations and other areas of the zoo.

Those who feed animals are asked to wash hands or use sanitizer and only feed that is sold at Boulder Ridge can be fed to animals.

Seating will be limited on Safari Ride.

Masks are not required but recommended. Those who are sick or have a fever are asked to stay home.

If you do not feel comfortable coming to the zoo then please dontStay home until you do feel comfortable with the guidelines we have put in place, according to the website.

Read more:

Coronavirus prompts projected $3.2B drop in Michigan tax revenue, more losses expected

Detroit man arrested, accused of threatening to kill Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, AG Nessel

He has a criminal history and wants to be a Michigan lawmaker. Thursday, he carried a doll in a noose to the state Capitol.
The citizens of Iguala in the southern Mexican state of Guerrero, encountered several billboards hanging on different sites recently. They read:

People of Iguala, we ask you to please stay inside your home, we do not want chaos outside. You have to respect the lockdown, we will seriously hurt those who we catch outside.

This wasnt the work of some over-zealous local government official. The messages were put up by the local narco cartel. This was not an isolated case: criminal gangs have also been imposing curfews in other Mexican states and Brazil and El Salvador.

States within states

During the coronavirus pandemic, governments have undoubtedly been the lead actors in imposing restrictions on their populations while financially supporting individuals and firms for lost income. But in numerous countries, governments have very limited capacity or have to live with mafia-type organisations. These groups differ from standard criminal operations because they act like a state within a state.

As researchers Gianluca Fiorentini and Sam Pelzman wrote in 1995 of these groups, they perform inside [their] territory those activities that typically characterise a collective decision-makers intervention on the economy: levying of taxes, coercive provision of public goods, and regulation of private agents through non-fiscal tools. Little has changed since.

Read more: El Chapo is no Robin Hood  but social bandit myth still endures in Latin America

Mafia outfits have lost profits in many of their core businesses during the pandemic, such as drug dealing, human trafficking and gambling. But they still have plenty of money from previous years activities to be able to step in with support. Besides imposing curfews, they have been providing various public services. These vary hugely around the world, but there are some common trends.

For one thing, these oranisations have been providing free food and other essential goods to poor people who are running out of cash. A few weeks into the Italian lockdown, for example, this was happening in Naples and Palermo.

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In Naples, the local camorra crime gang has even been making home food deliveries to people along with illegal drugs. This comes as no surprise in a region where the state was slow to provide help even to those who are entitled to such benefits, never mind the unentitled millions who earn a living in everything from agricultural labour to domestic work but are not tax-registered. Criminal groups in southern Italy have also been providing financial help to individuals, with gifts of sometimes 300 or 400 at a time (266 to 354).

In Mexico, the criminal cartels have also been providing food to the poorest in the states of Guerrero, Michoacan, Tamaulipas and Guanajuato. They seem to take marketing more seriously than their Italian counterparts. The Gulf cartel of north-east Mexico, for example, has been handing out boxes of food and hand sanitiser sealed with a sticker bearing its name and logo. Meanwhile, such has been the shortage of health supplies in parts of Mexico that some hospitals have even been seeking the help of the cartels to procure the necessary equipment.

Central Mexico

Organised crime groups have also been delivering essential goods in Colombia, South Africa and Japan. In Japan, for instance, the yakuza distributed masks and toilet paper when they were scarce in supermarkets.

In Brazil, at a time when President Jair Bolsonaro has been underplaying the severity of the pandemic, gangs have reportedly been offering hand sanitiser to people in the favelas. Such groups can easily access these goods by exploiting their business networks and trafficking routes.

Business backing

Criminal groups are also providing financial help to struggling local businesses. One example is the ndrangheta, the strongest mafia group in Italy, which is offering loans at interest rates lower than the local banks. These loans are primarily aimed at the likes of small businesses in construction and hospitality, who cant access credit from banks but urgently need liquidity. The ndrangheta and similar groups have plenty of funds to make available.

Mexican criminal groups are also giving out loans to small businesses. No doubt the coronavirus response from President Lopez Obrador is an added incentive: he has been refusing to borrow to provide a stimulus package, while continuing the countrys austerity drive  despite protests from many Mexicans.

Yet support can work both ways. The huge amount of money that some governments are injecting into the economy will provide optimal opportunities for fraudulent business claims and the like. The sight of mafia bosses in Italy being released from jail to protect them from coronavirus is only going to help these groups to take advantage.

Without a doubt, the help that mafia-type organisations are offering to households and firms will come at a high cost for many countries. The criminals are trying to gain political capital and extend control over their territory. When the crisis is over, they will ask for favours in return, such as money laundering or protection from the police. And a higher unemployment rate will tempt more people to join their ranks to secure stable earnings.

For the time being, the governments of countries where these mafias operate must not only deal with the coronavirus but limit the advancement of these groups at the same time. This is an additional important reason for supporting the general public at this difficult time, even if there may be no perfect solution to groups that have been entrenched for many years.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Matteo Pazzona does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Scientists have spotted a new planet towards the center of the galaxy that bears some eerie similarities to Earth. Astronomers at the University of Canterbury (UC) have described the planet as a Super-Earth planet.

The University of Canterbury, in a press release, said, "The planet would have a mass somewhere between that of Earth and Neptune, and would orbit at a location between Venus and Earth from the parent star".

The planet's year lasts about 617 Earth days, Canterbury university added.

The new planet is among only a handful of extra-solar planets that have been detected with both sizes and orbits close to that of Earth.

Dr Herrera Martin, who is one of the lead researcher in the discovery, said the planet was discovered using a technique called gravitational microlensing.

Microlensing is the method of discovering planets at truly great distances from Earth. In the gravitational microlensing method, one star passes in front of another, it bends the light like a lens, making it brighter. If the lens-making star has a planet, it makes another star even brighter.

"The combined gravity of the planet and its host star caused the light from a more distant background star to be magnified in a particular way. We used telescopes distributed around the world to measure the light-bending effect," Martin said.

This particular microlensing event was observed during 2018 and designated OGLE-2018-BLG-0677. Scientists combined microlensing observations gathered by two facilities: the Optical Gravitational Lensing Experiment based in Poland; and the Korea Microlensing Telescope Network, which consists of a trio of instruments in Chile, South Africa and Australia.

"Dr. Herrera Martin first noticed that there was an unusual shape to the light output from this event, and undertook months of computational analysis that resulted in the conclusion that this event was due to a star with a low-mass planet," the university said.

The research is explained in a paper published on May 7 in The Astronomical Journal.

Also read: Nirmala Sitharaman Presser Live: Free foodgrains for 8 cr migrants; Rs 5,000 cr credit scheme for vendors

Also read: Over Rs 4 lakh crore loan disbursed to 3 crore farmers under PM-KISAN, says FM
Members of the Spanish NGO Maydayterraneo prepare to sail back to the Aita Mari rescue boat with around 90 migrants in February Members of the Spanish NGO Maydayterraneo prepare to sail back to the Aita Mari rescue boat with around 90 migrants in February (AFP Photo/PABLO GARCIA)

Paris (AFP) - More and more migrants are crossing, Europe is closing its ports and no humanitarian ships are carrying out rescues. As the coronavirus pandemic dominates headlines, activists fear the Mediterranean is the scene of an overlooked "tragedy".

A handful of migrant landings have taken place in recent weeks, including 79 people who arrived last weekend in Italy -- a country under fire even before the outbreak for refusing to allow private vessels carrying migrants to dock.

International organisations and NGOs say the situation is bleak, as all rescue operations were ceased as of last week.

"If there is no help at sea and countries drag their feet to rescue and allow people to disembark, we're going to end up with a fairly serious humanitarian situation," said Vincent Cochetel, special envoy for the central Mediterranean with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

He estimates that 179 people have died in the area since January.

Italy and Malta closed their ports at the beginning of April as the pandemic hit Europe hard. At that time, only two rescue boats were in operation -- the Alan Kurdi vessel run by the German NGO Sea-Eye, and Aita Mari chartered by the Spanish organisation Maydayterraneo.

Both have now been grounded by the Italian coastguard for "technical" problems, a move denounced as unjustified by campaign groups.

Meanwhile Malta's Prime Minister Robert Abela said last month that he was under investigation for his role in the death of at least five migrants who tried to sail from Libya to Italy. A Maltese patrol boat allegedly cut the cables of the migrant dinghy's motor.

- More departures -

The situation is all the more dire, Cochetel said, as departures from the Libyan coast have nearly quadrupled compared with the same period a year ago, with 6,629 attempts to reach Europe between January and the end of April.

The number of departures from Tunisia had more than doubled, Cochetel said.

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"Whether or not there are (rescue) boats at sea, it has no influence on departures -- this period of coronavirus has amply proven that," he said.

He said that "75 percent of migrants in Libya have lost their jobs since the lockdown measures, which can lead to despair".

Sophie Beau, general director of SOS Mediterranee, a French-based NGO that charters a rescue boat called the Ocean Viking, questions the motives behind the withdrawal of the two vessels.

"Two boats one after the other, it really raises questions about why they were seized," she said.

The Ocean Viking will return to sea "as soon as possible" despite the "criminalisation" of aid groups, Beau said.

"It's very dramatic... and counter to international maritime law, which requires us to help anyone in distress as quickly as possible," Beau said.

"Now, as there are no witnesses, we don't know the extent of the possible tragedy taking place" in the Mediterranean, she added.

- 'Invisible shipwrecks' -

The central Mediterranean "remains the most dangerous maritime migration route on Earth," the International Organization for Migration warned.

"In the current context, risks that invisible shipwrecks are occurring out of sight of the international community have grown," it said.

Beau warned that "managing the epidemic, closing ports and borders... in addition to these constraints, there is also the lack of a coordinated mechanism," referring to the agreement on the distribution of migrants between European countries after they have disembarked.

The agreement was drawn up in Malta at the end of 2019 but has been slow to materialise.

In a joint letter sent to the European Commission and reviewed by AFP, the French, Italian, Spanish and German interior ministers called for the establishment of a "solidarity mechanism" for "search and rescue" at sea.

"Currently, a handful of member states carry an excessive burden, which shows a lack of solidarity and risks making the whole system dysfunctional," they said in the letter.

Pending a European agreement, and in the absence of humanitarian vessels, 162 migrants are currently stranded at sea on two tourist vessels.
The Gujarat High Court has



asked the state government to take necessary steps to regulate the "exorbitant" fees charged by private hospitals which are authorised to treat coronavirus patients.

The order was passed on Thursday by a division bench of Justices J B Pardiwala and Ilesh Vora which took suo motu (on its own) cognisance of reports about various issues related to the coronavirus pandemic, including high cost of treatment in private hospitals.

The bench warned private hospitals against charging high amount for treatment of COVID-19 patients.

The HC, in its ruling, noted that some private hospitals authorised by the government to treat coronavirus patients in Ahmedabad are charging fees "running in lakhs of rupees and an ordinary man will never be able to afford to avail adequate treatment from a private hospital".

The bench directed the state government to ensure that private hospitals do not charge "exorbitant fees for the treatment of COVID-19 patients".

Since state-run hospitals are almost full with COVID- 19 patients, the bench stressed that the government should authorise more private medical facilities to treat such cases.

The HC noted that fee structure of such private hospitals "should be regulated by the state government for the purpose of COVID-19 treatment".

"These are difficult times and not the time to do business and earn profit. Medical services are the most essential service and private hospitals can not demand lakhs of rupees from a patient.

"Few private hospitals in Ahmedabad are demanding exorbitant fees running in lakhs of rupees. This is absolutely unjustified and deserves to be deprecated," said the high court.

While asking the state to step in and "resolve the issue" immediately, the court even issued a warning to private hospitals.

The bench said "If private hospitals do not budge and continue to demand exorbitant amount, then this court will have to take legal action, including cancellation of licence".

Gujarat, which had recorded 9,592 coronavirus cases and 586 deaths till May 14, is one of the states worst-hit by the viral infection.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
15.05.2020 LISTEN

Members of the Social Workers Association of Ghana (SWAG) have called on the Government to involve them in the fight against the spread of Coronavirus.

The SWAG says although the primary function of the social worker is to enhance human well-being and help meet the basic human needs of all people, its members have been excluded from the frontline in the fight against the disease.

The Association observes that by the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the 1992 Constitution of Ghana and the Local Governance Act 936 of 2016, Social Welfare Officers are to play a lead role since they are clothed with the mandate to promote and protect the rights of the vulnerable in the society. They claim that these responsibilities are also specified in the Administrative Instructions Manual and Operational Manual of the Local Government Service.

They regretted that for all these years they have not been represented at the Office of the Local Government Service, the Ministry of Local Government and Rural Development, and strangely in the National Response Team on COVID -19 Pandemic.

To SWAG, the exclusion of its members undermines the very roles and functions of Social Work, which include Contact Tracing, Re-unification, Community Mobilization and Sensitization, Psycho-Social Counseling and Support, Education against stigmatization, Medical Social Work, Child, and Family Welfare Services and many other equally important services that help with the well-being of the vulnerable in society.

The COVID -19 is a global pandemic and the psychological trauma associated with the viral infection of an individual or a family member cannot be overemphasized. This has led to destabilized families resulting in various kinds of abuses, child delinquency, unemployment, increased number of orphans and vulnerable children, economic hardship on families, and other negative social consequences. These issues undoubtedly call for social workers involvement to help address them to make Ghana a better place to live in.

According to SWAG, the under utilization of the services of its members is a drawback on attempts to address the welfare needs of the vulnerable, marginalized and the disadvantaged in Ghana.

Another sensitive issue which Social Workers want the government to be aware of and address swiftly is the recruitment of non- professionals into the Department while, institutions such as; School of Social Work, University of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Methodist University and so on are producing professional Social Workers. We are of the view that these nonprofessionals lack the requisite knowledge, skills and ethics of the Social Work profession.

Again, SWAG is strongly of the view that ministries are policy formulating bodies so the Ministry of Gender, Children, and Social Protection (MoGC&SP) is not an exception ministry, therefore, it should not be seen as policy implementer.

Social Workers have the technical expertise hence our involvement is a right, and a right not exercised is a right lost.
Olivier Sarkozy and Mary-Kate Olsen attend the 2017 Take Home A Nude Art Party and auction at Sotheby's on October 11, 2017 in New York City. (Photo by John Lamparski/WireImage)

Mary Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy's apartment is seen on May 13, 2020 in New York City. News broke today that the couple will be divorcing after five years of marriage. (Photo by Gotham/GC Images)

Mary-Kate Olsen and estranged husband Olivier Sarkozy, centre, and their New York City apartment at the centre of an impending divorce battle, inset

Mary-Kate Olsen's request for an emergency divorce order has been denied.

The 33-year-old actress was asking Manhattan courts to allow her to divorce Olivier Sarkozy as she claims he is trying to throw her out of their house amidst the current crisis, but Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Michael Katz has now thrown out her petition and insisted it wasn't an essential matter.

Mary-Kate Olsen submitted court papers to New York's Supreme Court where she asked for an emergency order as she is "petrified" about losing a roof over her head and her personal property, especially during the time of this health crisis.

She wrote: "My husband has terminated the lease on our New York City residence ... without my consent. This application is an emergency because my husband expects me to move out of our home on Monday, May 18, 2020 in the middle of New York City being on pause due to COVID-19.

Expand Close Mary Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy's apartment is seen on May 13, 2020 in New York City. News broke today that the couple will be divorcing after five years of marriage. (Photo by Gotham/GC Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mary Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy's apartment is seen on May 13, 2020 in New York City. News broke today that the couple will be divorcing after five years of marriage. (Photo by Gotham/GC Images)

"I am petrified that my husband is trying to deprive me of the home we have lived in and if he is successful, I will not only lose my home but I risk losing my personal property as well."

Due to the pandemic, Mary-Kate says she can't "look for another apartment right now, let alone retrieve my separate property belongings and am gravely concerned my husband will dissipate, dispose of and / or secret".

It came after she filed Ina summons and complaint to New York's Supreme Court on April 17 to ask for a divorce. She wrote: "It was clear my marriage was over ... the relationship has broken down irretrievably." However, the courts were not taking applications at the time.

Mary-Kate and Olivier - who is 17 years her senior - tied the knot in November 2015, after getting engaged in 2014.

During their five-year marriage, she has remained characteristically private but in 2017, gave rare insight into her life behind closed doors.

"I have a husband, two step-kids and a life; I have to go home and cook dinner," she told Net-a-Porter's The Edit.

Expand Close Mary-Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy attend the Youth America Grand Prix at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 19, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images) / Facebook

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Whatsapp Mary-Kate Olsen and Olivier Sarkozy attend the Youth America Grand Prix at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 19, 2018 in New York City. (Photo by Mark Sagliocco/Getty Images)

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"I ride horses on the weekends," she continued. "You find the thing that helps you relax and if you don't have it, you have to look for it. Or you get burned out and then you're not productive."
Around 1,500-odd consumer durable stores have opened up in green zones across the country and guess what is selling the most? Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, food processors, coffee machines and personal hygiene products such as electronic razors and epilators. Neeraj Bahl, MD and CEO, BSH Home Appliances, says that his company has met its monthly target of dishwasher sales in just seven days. "There has been a surge in demand for dishwashers. People are now understanding the value of a well-equipped kitchen after staying at home for an extended period. Kitchen and bathroom are the two most ignored places in Indian homes."

Discretionary spends are likely to get impacted on the other side of the coronavirus lockdown. While a consumer may think twice before upgrading his/her air-conditioner, TV, refrigerator, consumer durable majors believe that with concepts such as work from home are here to stay, the average consumer will spend to make his/her home more comfortable, as he/she would be spending more time at home than ever before. Therefore, consumer durable brands going forward plan to invest a lot more on convenience products. "Working from home implies multi-tasking, which will lead to demand in products which will help people multi-task," says Manish Sharma, President and CEO, Panasonic India and South Asia. So, from robotic vacuum cleaners to intelligent washing machines, which will enable consumers to efficiently use water and detergent, Panasonic plans to fast-track some of its new launches. Also, on the cards is the launch of MirAle (Future Of Living Space) in Japanese, as part of which the company will partner with builders to launch smart homes.

Godrej Appliances, which has high-temperature wash options in its high-end fully-automatic washing machines, is now extending it to its semi-automatic machines. "Hygiene will be a huge area of concern for consumers and washing clothes at a high temperature is a proven way of killing germs," explains Kamal Nandi, Business Head and VP, Godrej Appliances. Godrej is also planning to launch refrigerators with more storage space as staying and working from home would mean more cooking and need to store.

Similarly, Bahl of BSH Home Appliances, also expects a surge in its mixer grinder, which has stone pounding blade. "It is patented to us and gives the effect of a traditional sil-batta," he explains. "I see a bump in demand for washing machines, dishwashers, and larger refrigerators. People who are missing conveniences will fill up, while those who already have TV and washing machines may not want to invest in new ones," agrees Ritesh Ghosal, Chief Marketing Officer, Croma.

But if discretionary spends dip and pay-cuts and job losses become a reality, will consumers invest in a high-end dishwasher or a robotic vacuum cleaner? Innovations will be democratised so that the consumers get the best value, says Sharma, of Panasonic. Godrej, for instance, has democratised its high temperature wash technology and made it available for its semi-automatic washing machines. However, Bahl of BSH believes that mass and mass premium will take a hit post the lockdown and growth will mostly come from premium products as consumers of that category would have the spending power.

Consumer durable head honchos are not expecting a sustained surge in demand. They expect pent up demand to surface post the lockdown, followed by sluggish growth. "If the COVID situation doesn't improve in the next couple of months, Diwali and New Year could be sluggish," says Bahl.

DIY (Do it Yourself)

Necessity is the mother of invention and the consumer durable brands have reinvented they way they offer after sales services to consumers. Godrej Appliances during the lockdown has launched a service called Remote Assist, through which if a consumer called its call centre with a maintenance complaint, the call centre employee tried to assist the consumer by encouraging him/her to try solve the problem on their own. "If it's a minor problem, the call centre executive would guide the consumer on the phone and try to sort it out. He would even send the consumer a video tutorial. We have solved over 7,000 complaints through voice and video assistance," says Nandi.

"For the first time in our history we have solved 1,500 cases through video support. These were problems as simple as something getting stuck in the drain-pipe of the washing machine," adds Bahl.

Sharma says that after-sales services in future will be a hybrid model, wherein, even after the lockdown, his company would solve all those problems that can be attended to through a video or phone call without sending the technician to the consumer's home. "The technician will go to consumer's homes only if it is really required."

Digitalisation

The future will see an increased off-take of digital sales, as the fear of the virus would force people to stay indoors and the durable majors are gearing up for the same. Durable retailer, Croma, is working with TCS to launch its own app which will enable consumers to see inventory across all its stores and shop accordingly. "We are creating a mechanism to request a call back from the store and creating a mechanism to close the sale without going to the store. This also enables appointment-based shopping at a store. We are also planning a video chat option where you will be able to walk the aisles of a store," explains Ghosal of Croma.

However, bulk of consumer durable sales happen out of traditional multi-brand stores which don't have digital infrastructure. Godrej, says Nandi, is helping their traditional dealers to set up web sites. "We are creating digital content for our trade partners, we are giving them e-catalogues so that they can start generating leads digitally."

Panasonic, says Sharma, is first focusing on supply chain efficiencies. "We need to have a focus on inventory management. We have accelerated real-time connection on our platform so that we can see our trade partners inventory and they can see ours. This will enable us to uplift their skills and help them manage their inventory both online and offline."

While trade partners will have to learn to adjust to the new normal, Bahl of BSH expects brands to focus much more on their own omni-channel platforms. "This will lead to a surge of brand stores as consumers will not want to go to a crowded place to shop. They will browse online, choose the product and then go to the brand store to touch and feel it."

Consumer durables sales in the first quarter of FY21 is expected to dip anywhere between 40-50 per cent, and their bounce back depends entirely on how India is able to tackle the invisible enemy called Coronavirus. For the time-being all that cash rich companies can do is to understand future consumption trends and innovate accordingly.

Also Read: Sitharaman press conference: What will FM announce for tourism, hospitality, aviation sectors?

Also Read: Jeff Bezos may become world's first trillionaire in 6 years; Mukesh Ambani in 13 years: Report

Also Read: IndiGo to buy Virgin Australia? InterGlobe Enterprises to participate in sale process
*This Article was put together with the aim of educating the public on the new Payments Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987). Due to its length, this Article shall be published in three parts.

PART 2: THE OVERVIEW OF THE PAYMENT SERVICE ACT

THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES ACT 2019 (ACT 987)

The Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987), which repeals the previous Payment Systems Act passed in 2003 (Act 662), was assented to by the President of Ghana on 13th May 2019. It is aimed at providing an enabling regulatory environment for digital payments. Its purpose is to:

amend and consolidate laws and guidelines relating to the connection of payers and recipients of money by payment instruments or electronic money (Payment Service),

and

regulate institutions which issue electronic money and provide Payment Service.

The Payment Systems Act applies to banks, specialised deposit-taking institutions, Payment Service Providers, Dedicated Electronic Money Issuers, and their affiliates and/or agents. [1]

Under the Act, the Bank of Ghana has overall supervisory and regulatory authority [2] in all matters relating to payment, settlement and clearing systems. This power gives the Bank of Ghana the mandate, inter alia,

for the issuance of electronic money, payment instruments, payment service providers and electronic money businesses[3]; to ensure that financial services are extended beyond traditional branch-based channels to the domain of every day transactions[4]; to ensure that electronic money is only provided by authorized financial institutions regulated by the Banks and Specialised Deposit Taking Institutions Act 2016 (Act 930) and duly licensed non-bank entities which are engaged solely in the business of electronic money and activities related or incidental to the business of electronic money[5]; to ensure that customers of electronic money issuers benefit from adequate transparency, fair treatment and effective recourse mechanism[6]; for the formulation, monitoring and review of policies on payment systems in Ghana[7] for the authorization of banks and specialized deposit-taking institutions to conduct business under the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019[8]; for the licensing of non-bank financial institutions under the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019[9]; for the approval of foreign entities in the country who wish to establish representative offices[10] for any other payment system or product, the Bank of Ghana may determine.[11]

In furtherance of the mandate of the Bank of Ghana under the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, the Bank of Ghana is to establish a Payment Systems Advisory Committee [12] to advise the Bank of Ghana on,

the regulation and oversight of payment systems under the Act the operational and technical stands on the payment systems in place all other incidental or related matters affecting payment systems and services, and settlements and clearing of payments.

The Payment Systems Advisory Committee is to include [13] a representative from the National Information Technology Agency [14] ; the Governor of the Bank of Ghana; a representative from the Ministry of Finance; and relevant stakeholders to be determined by the Bank of Ghana.

These powers of the Bank of Ghana, are supplemented by the power to release notices, and guidelines for the implementation of the Act. These powers, nonetheless, do not give the Bank of Ghana the authority to pass subsidiary legislation. Hence, for matters which require legislation, the Minster for Finance, is the proper authority to pass the legislation. [15]

Per the Payment Systems and Services Act, there are two broad categories of individuals (artificial or natural) who must be licensed or authorised to carry out any business related to electronic businesses, payment systems and services. These are Payment Service Providers and Electronic Money Issuers.

The grant of the authorisation or license is given by the Bank of Ghana, and is valid for 5 years subject to yearly renewal. The yearly renewal process requires payment of the renewal fee, submission of a tax clearance certificate and any other information requested by the Bank of Ghana. [16]

An application for a license or authorisation may be either accepted or rejected within 90 days after submission of all necessary documentation to the Bank of Ghana. The license or authorisation according to the Act should have been applied for latest by February 2020 [17] ; however, this deadline has been since extended to December 2020. [18]

The grant of the license or authorisation however, may be revoked [19] by the Bank or suspended [20] .

The license or authorisation may be suspended by the Bank of Ghana where the payment service provider has failed to meet the infrastructural, or any other requirements specified by the Bank of Ghana. [21] The license or authorisation may also be suspended by operation of law under any other enactment, or in instances where the Bank of Ghana is satisfied that the payment service provider is conducting its business in a manner detrimental to the interest of the payment system. [22] Where the Bank of Ghana intends to suspend a license or authorisation, Bank of Ghana must give notice to the payment service provider to show cause why the suspension should not be carried out. [23] The Act natheless, fails to state how long this notice must be; notice in this case must be reasonable. [24]

Should the payment service provider fail to provide payment services for a continuous period of 6 months after the license or authorisation is granted, the license or authorisation may be revoked. [25] The same goes, if the payment system provider ceases to operate for a continuous period of more than 6 months [26] , goes into liquidation or is declared insolvent [27] , or is engaged in a pattern of unsafe financial practices. [28] The revocation is on notice to the payment system provider and does not limit the right of the Bank of Ghana to initiate any other action against the payment service provider. On revocation the payment system provider is mandate to pay to all customers, all electronic monies held, within 10 days of the revocation. [29]

PAYMENT SERVICES PROVIDERS

Payment System Providers are defined in Section 102 of the Act as any body corporate licensed or authorised to provide payment services (services to facilitate the transfer of funds between two people using the various forms of payment instruments [30] or electronic money).

According to Sections 7 of the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, all non-bank entities must acquire a license to operate a payment system i.e. to operate as a payment system provider.

To obtain said license, the corporate body must

Apply for the license using a prescribed form. The application for the license mandates the company to share its particulars, a business plan, financial projections for at least 5 years, the bank account to be used, expansion plan (if it intends to expand its business operations) and the nature and functionality of the proposed payment services.[31] Have a valid certificate from the Data Protection Commission[32] Have a minimum of 30% equity participation held by any Ghanaian.[33] Maintain a minimum paid-up capital to be determined by Bank of Ghana.[34] Pay the necessary license fee[35] Have a board of directors with at least three members, two of which must be resident in Ghana. Out of the two resident directors, one must be the CEO of the company.[36] Have the appropriate technology for fraud monitoring, relevant third-party certifications of compliance, a system capable of interoperability and a cyber-security policy (where applicable).[37] Keep proper books of accounts and information technology systems and make sure said books are audited. The audited report is to be submitted to the Bank of Ghana.[38] Agree to be bound by the universal principles of consumer protection.[39] Set up an effective customer care procedure and system for intended customers of the applicant to submit complaints.[40]

An application for a license may be rejected [41] where,

The applicant or any of its shareholders have been convicted of a crime involving a financial transaction in any jurisdiction; The application contains false or misleading information The applicant fails to respond to any other additional requests from the Bank of Ghana concerning the application within 30 days; The documents submitted under the application are incomplete or; The Bank of Ghana has reasonable grounds to believe that the applicant is incapable of providing the necessary services for the provision of payment systems.

Given the recent decision of the Bank of Ghana to revoke the license of Heritage Bank while an action against the owner of Heritage Bank, Seidu [42] Agongo, it is possible for a license to be rejected on basis that there is a pending action involving a crime of a financial nature against the applicant or any of its shareholders. Additionally, under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Act 2016, a license may be revoked if it is found out that the shareholders of the financial institution are no longer fit and proper persons. The Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Act 2016 defines a fit and proper person [43] as,

a person who is suitable to hold the particular position which that person holds or is to hold as regards

the probity, competence and soundness of judgment of the person for purposes of fulfilling the responsibilities of that person; the diligence with which that person fulfils or is likely to fulfil those responsibilities; whether the interest of depositors or potential depositors of the entity are threatened, or likely to be, in any way threatened by the person holding that position; and that the integrity of the person is established and the qualifications and experience of the person are appropriate for the position in the light of the business plan and activities of the entity which the person serves, or is likely to serve, taking into account the size, nature and complexity of the institution;

In Section 2 of the Payment Systems and Services Act, the Act is to be read together with all other relevant enactments including the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Act 2016. This suggests that a license or authorisation may be declined where the Bank of Ghana is of the opinion that a person is not a fit and proper person as described in Section 156 of the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Act 2016.

This rejection, however, is not the end of the road for the applicant, the applicant may apply again provided that the noncompliance for which the application was rejected, have been cured.

Where the corporate body seeking to be a payment service provider is regulated under the Banks and Specialised Deposit Act 2016 (Act 930), the corporate body must apply for authorisation rather than a license. [44] The application for authorisation must set out the nature and functionality of the intended services, a business plan, financial projections for 5 years, an expansion plan (if it intends to expand its business operations), and any other information requested by Bank of Ghana. Additionally, the applicant must have fulfilled [45] the following requirements,

Have a board of directors with at least three members, two of which must be resident in Ghana. Out of the two resident directors, one must be the CEO of the company.[46] Pay the necessary processing fee[47] Have the appropriate technology for fraud monitoring, relevant third-party certifications of compliance, a system capable of interoperability and a cyber-security policy (where applicable).[48] Agree to be bound by the universal principles of consumer protection.[49] Set up an effective customer care procedure and system for intended customers of the applicant to submit complaints.[50]

The application for authorisation may be rejected [51] by the Bank of Ghana, in the event that,

The application contains false or misleading information The applicant fails to provide the additional information requested by Bank of Ghana within 30 days The documentation submitted is incomplete The Bank of Ghana has reasonable grounds to believe that the applicant is incapable of running such a business.

ELECTRONIC MONEY ISSUERS

Electronic money issuers are defined in Section 102 of the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, as a payment service provider that can issues electronic money. On successful application of a license or authorisation to be a payment service provider, the corporate body may subsequently, operate as an electronic money issuer [52] , albeit with further authorisation and licensing.

Section 22 of the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, states the additional requirements to operate as an electronic money issuer as follows [53] ;

Provision of the nature and functionality of the intended electronic money operations Information on the proposed electronic money services to be offered A business plan Financial projections for 5 years Expansion plans where applicable Any other additional information requested by Bank of Ghana.

The application to be an electronic issuer may be rejected by the Bank of Ghana, the acceptance or rejection must be communicated to the applicant within 90 days.

The Act also permits corporate bodies to register as Dedicated electronic money issuers. As an applicant for a license to be a dedicated electronic money issuer, bodies not regulate under the Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Institutions Act 2016, must [54] ,

Be duly incorporated under the Companies Act 2019; Include in its regulations of incorporation a stipulation that the electronic monies owed to its customers are held in trust and shall not be encumbered in case the company is wound up; Ensure that its significant shareholders and directors are fit and proper persons; Ensure that it engages in only the business of electronic money and related or incidental activities like money transfers and remittances or set up a separate entity for such business if its main business is different from or not related to electronic money; Ensure that the company has 30% equity participation of a Ghanaian; Ensure that the body has a customer float account holding bank Ensure that any other requirement set by the Bank of Ghana is fulfilled.

Additionally, the body corporate must fulfil the following requirements [55] ;

Provide the particulars of the applicant including a list of its significant shareholders and their corresponding share percentages; Information on all bank accounts to be used in the operation of the electronic money business; Provide documentary evidence of the capital to be used including the original sources of the funds

AGENCY RELATIONSHIPS UNDER THE PAYMENT SYSTEMS AND SERVICES ACT 2019

On acquisition of licenses or authorisation, companies are allowed to appoint agents [56] to serve their customers. [57] This provision makes it possible for the various mobile money agents across the country to operate. Any corporate body that wishes to use agents is must apply to the Bank of Ghana for authorisation first. [58] The applicant is to provide the following information to the Bank of Ghana on application;

The type of services the intended agent would provide[59] The geographical coverage of the agent over a 3-year period[60] The intended used of any master-agent[61] Due diligence policies, procedures and reports on the agent[62] Copies of all draft agency agreements[63] which shall inter alia define the rights and responsibilities of both parties, set out the scope of work to be performed thereunder, specify permissible actions, a confidential clause and a clause granting the Bank of Ghana unfettered access to the agent/master-agents internal systems, information, data and documentation. All policies and procedures available and applicable to the provision of services through the agent[64] A description of the technology to be used and all applicable policies and procedures[65] Risk assessment report of the operations the agent is to perform including mitigating measures to be adopted to control identified risks[66] An internal audit report on the internal controls to be used in the agency and for any master-agent[67] Anti-money laundering and countering financing of terrorism policies and procedures[68] The operational policies and procedures of the principal including policies on the monitoring and enforcement of compliance by agents and master-agents[69] All policy documents on how the principal intends to address the risk of the agent overselling or overcharging[70] Full incentive structures for agents and master-agents including fee and revenue sharing structures[71]

The Principal or master-agent in this case is also mandated to have policies and procedures for the conduct and due diligence [72] of agents/master-agent, and provide the particulars of the agent/master-agent within thirty days of appointment to the Bank of Ghana. [73] Thus, reducing the risk of financial fraud, which in recent times has proven a challenge to Ghanas drive for a thriving digitised money industry, particularly for MTN Ghana Ltd. [74]

To ensure that fit and proper persons are engaged as agents or master-agents, the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 obliges principals to consider the following in assessing the eligibility [75] of the prospective agent/master-agent;

The agent/master-agents criminal records if any in matters relating to finance, fraud, honesty or integrity Any negative information in credit reference bureaus Business experience and track record where applicable Any other matter which impacts on the person

In addition to the above, the agent/master-agent to be, must not be classified as non-performing borrower by any bank or specialised deposit-taking institution at least a year before appointment and for the duration of the agency agreement. [76]

After appointment, the permissible activities [77] of the agent/master-agent shall perform under the agency agreement shall include;

Functions associated with the marketing of credit, savings, investment and insurance products[78]; Receipt, verification and forwarding of applications for the functions listed in (a) above to a bank or specialised deposit-taking institution; Receipt, verification and forwarding of applications for payment cards, account opening and cheque books to a bank or specialised deposit-taking institution; Mail delivery to customers Other activities authorised by the Bank of Ghana

Among the list of activities that are not permitted [79] for agents are;

Cashing bank cheques Undertaking foreign exchange transactions Grant guarantees in any transaction the agent/master-agent performs and/or facilitates Appraisals of credit and insurance applications Making advance payments from funds released by the principal Subcontract part or all of its contractual obligations under the agency agreement. Branding or holding themselves out as a bank or special deposit-taking institution

Agents/master-agents are not bound by exclusivity to a specific principal and may enter agreements with more than one principal. [80]

All Agents/master-agents caught engaging in non-permissible activities shall pay an administrative fine of Gh12,000. [81]

TO BE CONTINUED

[1] Section 1, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[2] Section 3(1), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[3] Section 3(2)(b), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[4] Section 3(2)(e), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[5] Section 3(2)(f), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[6] Section 3(2)(g), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[7] Section 3(2)(i), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[8] Section 3(2)(k), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[9] Section 3(2)(l), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[10] Section 3(2)(m) Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[11] Section 3(2)(n), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[12] Sections 4(1) & (2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[13] Section 4(3) Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 (Act 987)

[14] The National Information Technology Agency (NITA) is a public service institution under the control of the Ministry of Communications. The Agency was established in 2008 for the implementation of IT policies in Ghana

[15] Section 100, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, All regulations passed shall be on the advice of the Bank of Ghana and which advice is binding on the Minister

[16] Section 19 and 27(1), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[17] Section 104(2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, An existing Electronic Money Issuer or Payment Service Provider shall apply for authorisation or licence under this Act within nine months of the coming into force of this Act

The Act came into force on 13th May 2019, nine months from this would be 13th February 2020.

[18] Bank of Ghana extended the deadline by a notice to June 2020 and which extension was further extended to December 31st 2020 on 30th March 2020.

See https://www.bog.gov.gh/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/NOTICE-EXTENSION-OF-DEADLINE-FOR-MEETING-THE-MINIMUM-CAPITAL-REQUIREMENTS.pdf

Last visited on 5th May 2020

[19] Section 13, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

See also Section 14, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, the general public shall be informed of the revocation of the license.

[20] Section 12, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[21] Section 12, Ibid

[22] Section 12, Ibid

[23] Section 12, Ibid

[24] See Article 296(a) & (b) of the 1992 Constitution of Ghana, Where in this Constitution or in any other law discretionary power is vested in any person or authority;

that discretionary power shall be deemed to imply a duty to be fair and candid; the exercise of the discretionary power shall not be arbitrary, capricious or biased wither by resentment, prejudice or personal dislike and shall be in accordance with due process of law

[25] Section 13(1)(h), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[26] Section 13(1)(i), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[27] Section 13(1)(f) & (g), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[28] Section 13(1)(e), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[29] Section 13 (6), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[30] Section 102, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, payment instruments refer to any medium, electronic or written for ordering payment or transmission of money.

[31] Section 8(2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[32] Section 8(1)(b), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[33] Section 8(4), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[34] Section 17, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[35] Section 19, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[36] Section 18, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[37] Section 20, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[38] Section 40(5)

[39] Section 44, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[40] Section 47, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[41] Section 8(8), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[42] See https://ghanatalksbusiness.com/owner-of-heritage-bank-seidu-agongo-is-not-fit-and-proper-to-own-a-bank-bog/

https://www.ecofinagency.com/finance/0701-39486-ghana-central-bank-revokes-license-of-heritage-and-premium-banks

Last visited on 12/04/2020

[43] Section 156, Banks and Specialised Deposit-Taking Act 2016

[44] Section 10(1), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[45] Section 10 (3), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[46] Section 18, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[47] Section 19, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[48] Section 20, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[49] Section 44, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[50] Section 47, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[51] Section 10 (5), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[52] Section 21, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[53] Section 22 (3), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[54] Section 23, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[55] Section 24, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[56] An agent is defined under Section 102 of the Payment Systems and Services Act 2019 as a person who provides agency services to customers on behalf of a principal under an agency agreement. Agents are extended to include Agent Network Managers who directly provide banking services or electronic money services to end users.

[57] [57][57] Section 86, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[58] Section 86(2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[59] Section 86 (3) (a), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[60] Section 86 (3) (b), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[61] Section 86 (3) (c), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

See also Section 102, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, a master-agent is a legal person with an agreement with the principal to contract and manage agents that provide banking or electronic money services or payment services to end users on behalf of the principal

[62] Section 86 (3) (d), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[63] Section 86 (3) (e), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019, the draft agreements must be in accordance with the provisions of the Act under Section 87

[64] Section 86 (3) (e), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[65] Section 86 (3) (f), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[66] Section 86 (3) (g), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[67] Section 86 (3) (h), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[68] Section 86 (3) (i), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[69] Section 86 (3) (J), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[70] Section 86 (3) (k), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[71] Section 86 (3) (l), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[72] Section 89 (3), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[73] Sections 92 and 93, Payment Systems Act 2019

[74] As at 2017, MTN sanctioned an estimate of 3,000 agents for mobile money fraud

See https://www.businessghana.com/site/news.general/154472/MTN-sanctions-3-000-agents-for-mobile-money-fraud

[75] Section 89 (1), Payment Systems Act 2019

[76] Section 89 (2), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[77] Section 90, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[78] AirtelTigo currently provides insurance services to its users

See https://www.airteltigo.com.gh/VAS/insurance

Last visited on 6/4/2020

[79] Section 91, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[80] Section 94, Payment Systems and Services Act 2019

[81] Section 91 (5), Payment Systems and Services Act 2019
The finance ministry on Friday announced several reforms in the agriculture sector in keeping with Prime Minister Narendra Modis vision to transform the farm sector. Nirmala Sitharaman announced that government was looking to amend the Essential Commodities Act to deregulate prices of food items including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions, and potatoes among others. In addition, the minister also unveiled an eight-point-reform programme aligned with the self-sufficient India vision.

Our focus is that India stands up on its own, so there is a lot in terms of empowering people and sectors. Entitlement will be given where it is required but it is about making India self-reliant, Sitharaman said while announcing the package for the agricultural sector.

Also Read: Nirmala Sitharaman special Covid-19 package: Prices of essential commodities to be deregulated

Here are the details of the eight-point farm reforms announced in the third tranche of the 20,000 crore Atma Nirbhar Bharat special economic package to combat the crisis triggered by cronavirus epidemic.

1. One lakh crore Agri Infrastructure Fund for creating farm-gate infrastructure for farmers including cold chain and post harvest management structure in the vicinity of farm gate. Financing facility of 1,00,000 core will be provided for funding agriculture infrastructure projects and aggregation points. This fund is to be created immediately.

2. 10,000 crore scheme for formalization of Micro Food Enterprises. This scheme promotes Vocal for Local with Global Outreach vision outlined by PM Narendra Modi in his last address to the nation, where he stressed on self-reliance as the mantra for Indias economic growth in the post coronavirus world. The scheme, government said, will help 2 lakh MFEs, farmer producer organization, self help groups and cooperatives in technical upgradation, improved incomes, better health and safety standards and integration with retail markets.

3. 20,000 crore for fisherman through Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) to fulfill critical gaps in fisheries value chain and for integrated sustainable inclusive development of marine and inland fisheries. Out of this, 11,000 crore is meant for marine, inland fisheries and acquaculture and 9,000 crore is meant for infrastructure like fishing harbours, cold chain, markets etc. This fund infusion is likely to help in additional fish production of 70 lakh tones over 5 years and gain in employment to over 55 lakh persons.

4. A total outlay of 13,343 crores for Naitonal Animal Disease Control programme was announced.

5. Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund of 15,000 crore was being created for supporting private investments in Dairy processing and value addition and cattle feed infrastructure.

6. 4,000 crore was earmarked for the promotion of herbal cultivation which will bring in an additional 10,00,000 hectare of land under cultivation in the next two years. Such a corridor could be developed on both sides of river Ganga, said Sitharaman.

7. 500 crore for beekeeping initiatives in the rural areas.

8. 500 crore for Operation Green to prevent the wastage of agricultural produce due to disruption of supply chains during the lockdown. This will be extended for the next six months from crops like tomatoes, potatoes and onions to all fruits and vegetables. This involves subsidy for transportation and storage.
Many international manufacturers are expected to relocate their investments out of China after the epidemic ends. Vietnam is one of the destinations.

When launching an emergency stimulus package on April 7, the Japanese government called for re-establishing supply chains.



The government decided to reserve 240 billion yen, or $2.2 billion, in the additional budget plan for the 2020 fiscal year to support Japanese companies to relocate factories in their home country or Southeast Asian countries.



JETRO HCM City Chief Representative Hirai Shinji said Japanese enterprises need to learn a lesson from the high reliance on one country as the input material supply source.



Shinji said Vietnam will be one of the destinations for Japanese enterprises to consider because Vietnam is an economy with high growth rate. The countrys risk management capability is highly appreciated by Japanese companies as the government of Vietnam has been controlling the epidemic well.

At present, the adverse impacts of Covid-29 may affect Japanese enterprises plans to scale up their business in Vietnam. However, most large Japanese corporations are present in Vietnam and will pour more capital into the manufacturing sector in Vietnam.

At present, the adverse impacts of Covid-29 may affect Japanese enterprises plans to scale up their business in Vietnam. However, most large Japanese corporations are present in Vietnam and will pour more capital into the manufacturing sector in Vietnam.



Up to 75 percent of enterprises set up in Vietnam in the last five years said they wanted to expand business here, a relatively high proportion compared with the other countries that JETRO has surveyed recently, according to Shinji.



At the same time last year, when asked about the possibility of Vietnam attracting foreign investors in the US-China trade war, Tran Duy Vu, deputy CEO of Kizuna IZ Infrastructure Development, said it would be not easy because of the high attractiveness of the market with more than 1 billion people.



He said China is a global production base which supplies materials to many countries so it would be more expensive for international investors to seek non-China supply sources.



However, after the interruption of the Chinese material supply source because of Covid-19, Vu said, many manufacturers in the world will have to reconsider their strategy and try to put eggs into many different baskets. That is why Kizuna continues pouring capital in more workshops to receive investors after Covid-19.



VinaCapital had predicted that the US-China trade war would accelerate the process of foreign investors relocating their production bases to Vietnam. And now the epidemic will make the process go even more quickly.



JLL also said Covid-19 may serve as a catalyst to speed up the relocation process after it was accelerated by trade tensions last year. Southeast Asia in general and Vietnam in particular will become more attractive to multinational groups in the future.

Kim Chi

COVID-19 outbreak to accelerate relocation wave from China to Vietnam While COVID-19 will have a negative impact on Vietnam's economic growth in 2020, it will boost the relocation of manufacturing facilities from China to Vietnam.
Growing optimism is offering support to crude prices, which have more than recovered from the negative $37.63 recorded on April 20.

Prices are now approaching the $30 level, gaining $1.87, or 6.8 percent, to close at $29.43 per barrel Friday on the New York Mercantile Exchange. For a brief period Friday, the near-month June futures contract was higher than the next-month July contract for the first time since mid-March.

The market is beginning to normalize given the demand situation, but we remain in an oversupply situation, economist Ray Perryman told the Reporter-Telegram by email. There may be some noise next week as contracts expire on May 20, but it should not be as disruptive as the prior one.

With a number of producers citing $30 oil as a price that could stimulate some increased activity, Perryman said, I dont think that prices around $30 are going to stimulate much production at present. The situation remains highly uncertain, and that price level remains at the lower end of what makes sense for most producers. Because of the OPEC++ agreement and the cuts we are seeing in response to the current environment in the major shale areas in the US, Canada and elsewhere, we only have to regain 40-50% of the lost demand to restore the market to more orderly functioning and prices to more sustainable levels. That should happen as things open up over the next few months.

Jay Young, president and chief executive officer of King Operating Corp., a privately owned oil and gas company, cited several factors for rising crude prices.

He said in an email that the U.S. rig count is down almost 70 percent from a year ago, while U.S. production has dropped from 13.1 million barrels of oil per day to 11.6 million barrels per day in two months and will continue to decline throughout 2020.

In the geopolitical arena, Saudi Arabia and Russia did what they set out to do: They flooded the market with oil and drove prices down. They obviously did not know the pandemic and decreased demand would hurt prices. They are trying to put oil companies out of business. They also do not want prices this low forever, so they will sell oil at higher prices in the future, he said.

All this is setting the stage for a HUGE supply problem by the end of 2020 and first half of 2021, he said, listing the following reasons:

--U.S. oil companies are shutting in wells, and high-pressure oil wells  shale wells  do not come back and produce as they did before.

--The reason U.S. oil production has increased from 6 million barrels a day to 13 million barrels per day is because of shale wells in three basins: Permian, Eagle Ford and Bakken. These wells typically decline up to 60 percent in their first year of production.

For these reasons, Young said, U.S. production will decline and we will be searching for oil.

Bloomberg reported that members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries are optimistic that the worst of the oil crisis is over and they see signs that the global economy is starting to recover. Chinas industrial output increased in April for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak, signaling economic recovery aided by government stimulus efforts. Meanwhile, states in the U.S. are beginning to ease lockdown measures.

Stockpiles at the key U.S storage hub in Cushing, Oklahoma, fell last week for the first time since late February.

Still, Bloomberg reported, oil prices remain down more than 50 percent this year and demand is far below pre-virus levels, but BP Plc sees evidence of consumption rising, and the International Energy Agency said the markets outlook has improved. Additionally, Saudi Arabia will slash supply to its customers around the world in June as part of OPEC and its allies record production cuts.
Photo: iStock

You can leave your umbrella at home through Saturday, but light rainfall is in the forecast for Sacramento later in the week, according to the seven-day forecast from drone-powered weather service Saildrone. The greatest chance of rain is expected on Monday at 55%, with the potential for light rainfall of 0.24 inches.

The coming week will see varying temperatures. The weather will bring a weekly high temperature of 85 degrees today and dip to a high of just 70 degrees on Monday.

Skies will be cloudy through Saturday, turning mostly cloudy on Tuesday. Winds are forecast to reach a modest high of 14 mph on Sunday, while today will be quieter with a top speed of just 8 mph.

This story was created automatically using Saildrone's local weather forecast data, then reviewed by an editor. We also incorporate historic weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Talks between Canada and the United States seem to be heading towards extending the suspension on non-essential travel between the neighbouring countries due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The shutdown is now expected to last through at least June 21, and as some U.S. states and Canadian provinces reboot their economies, it has left many wondering when it will be safe to cross the borders.

A leading Canadian epidemiologist thinks the longer the wait, the better.

I would keep it closed for as long as possible until the Americans have their act together...the Americans dont have their house in order, they really just dont, said Dr. Gerald Evans, Chair and Medical Director of Infection Prevention & Control at Kingston Health Sciences Centre.

The border closures went into place on March 21, which still allowed for the flow of trade and goods to continue, but barred any travel which was deemed non-essential. The two countries re-upped the agreement on April 18 and it was set to expire on May 21.

The tale of COVID-19 in the two countries has been drastically different. In the U.S., theres been more than double the total number of cases and deaths per population of one million. Globally, the U.S. has the most deaths caused by COVID-19.

America opened too quickly, expert says

I think from the Canadian perspective the big problem is opening the border too soon to the usual traffic would be a mistake because here we havent had the same degree of disease activity, said Dr. Evans.

In some states like Iowa, Wyoming and North Dakota, the governors never issued a stay-at-home order, while most states have allowed for the reopening of retail businesses. In very few states, there were state-wide directives regarding lockdowns in place, and in North Carolina they continued to allow mass religious gatherings.

I think the Americans have gone to opening up their economy and society in general much too quickly, said Dr. Evans.

Demonstrators take part in an "American Patriot Rally," on the steps of the Michigan State Capitol in Lansing, demanding the reopening of businesses. (Getty)

Evans' line of thinking is matched by Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force who told Congress this past Tuesday that re-opening too soon could lead to a second, potentially larger spike.

Story continues

If some areas, cities, states or what have you jump over those various checkpoints and prematurely open up without having the capability of being able to respond effectively and efficiently, my concern is that we will start to see little spikes that might turn into outbreaks, Fauci said. The consequences could be really serious.

Dr. Evans is quick to point out that if physical distancing and good hygiene is not being practiced in the U.S. then that second wave could wreak more havoc than the initial.

The risk in that second wave is exactly what Dr. Fauci said, you have to reintegrate social distancing which will further setback an economic opening that is sustainable, he said.

In Dr. Evans view, if Canada does open its border to Americans, it could have a huge impact on the Canadian health system. He also added that travel and open borders were what led to the initial mass spread of COVID-19.

The movement of those Americans who may be infected could cause a resurgence in Canada which results in us having the same problem and having to close everything again, he said.

Slow and steady

While P.E.I, the Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon combined have less than 100 total cases, premiers in all the provinces and territories are taking segmented and mild-mannered approaches to reopening society. There are still limits on gatherings, physical distancing is still being recommended and the concept of a slow reopening is music to Dr. Evans ears.

Were doing a much more deliberate and planned reopening of society, were taking it a month at a time, limiting what can go on, but the problem is it could be messed up if we allow a big influx of Americans, said Dr. Evans.

Dr. Evans fears if borders are reopened and tourism restarts as normal or even at fifty percent, it could result in the virus being spread quickly.

If we open the borders like normal were going to have numbers of people who will travel to Canada to visit family or friends or to be tourists, if were not doing the right things, it could end badly, said Dr. Evans.

A second wave as a result of reopening the borders is a major concern for Dr. Evans, especially if Canada reopens to a country that has poorly handled the pandemic.

Everyone needs to put it in perspective that we need to get on top of this virus and prevent a resurgence, he said.

Mixed messages

While both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Evans are on the same page, U.S. President Donald Trump has been insisting governors liberate their people and cheering on the reopening of businesses. The inconsistent messaging from top officials in the White House Coronavirus Task Force has led to conflict and confusion resulting in a large partisanship divide.

Here political leaders and medical people are saying theres no rush, where in the U.S. youre getting mixed messages about liberating states, said Nelson Wiseman, a professor of Political Science and Director of the Canadian Studies program at the University of Toronto.

According to Wiseman, the same cannot be said about Canada where the pandemic hasnt been as politicized and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has allowed Dr. Theresa Tam to carry the load, especially on health directives.

Youre getting conflicting messages from the U.S. and the president is saying something else  you never hear Trudeau not being consistent with Dr. Tam, he said.

A recent poll conducted for CNN shows Dr. Faucis trustworthiness at 72%, whereas only half as many of the Americans surveyed (36%) trusted Trumps advice on the pandemic. In contrast, a poll by Ipsos showed very favourable numbers for PM Trudeaus handling, which sits at 72%.

Faucis ratings are way higher than the presidents where if you look here, the ratings for Dr. Tam and Trudeau are about the same, theres not the same partisanship here, he said.

Part of the favourability for Trudeau and Canadas handling of the pandemic by Canadians is tied into the fact that nearly 67% of Canadians surveyed believe the country needs to have the ability to vaccinate against COVID-19 before opening society and the economy again. Dr. Evans feels the government is keen to continue listening to the health professionals due to current public perception.

Right now the politicians are on the side of scientists and medicine principally because political pressure from the public is we dont want people dying, he said.

While Dr. Evans thinks Canadian politicians can stave off pressures from a small minority for the time being, he understands public perception could soon change.

Therell be pressure, theres no question about it and as time goes by it will increase and that may influence what the politicians eventually do, he said.

Wiseman points to how leaders in the countries, specifically Ontario Premier Doug Fords handling of COVID-19 protestors versus Trumps handling of an armed militia which stormed the Michigan capitol building explains the disparity in attitudes.

When people protested at Queens Park the premier called them yahoos, whereas in the States the president said theyre fine people, he said.

Dr. Evans believes Canadians trust in the public healthcare system is one of the things working in healthcare officials favour and has led to them adhering to their advice.

We see division in the States because Americans tend to be more distrustful of their government and health systems, said Dr. Evans.
Owner Michael Mattson toasts the re-opening of the Friends and Neighbors bar following the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to strike down Governor Tony Evers' safer-at-home order against coronavirus disease (COVID-19) in Appleton, Wisconsin, U.S. May 13, 2020. Picture taken May 13, 2020.

William Glasheen/USA TODAY via REUTERS

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday voted 4-3 in favor of overturning Gov. Tony Evers' coronavirus stay-at-home order.

Chief Justice Patience Roggensack described the emergency rule, imposed by Health Secretary Andrea Palm, as a "controlling, subjective judgment."

Justice Rebecca Dallet, however, said the decision would "undoubtedly go down as one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this court's history. And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price."

As Wisconsinites descended on bars across the state, Evers accused the high court and Republican-controlled legislature of causing "chaos."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Wednesday voted 4-3 in favor of overturning Gov. Tony Evers' coronavirus stay-at-home order.

Chief Justice Patience Roggensack described the emergency rule, imposed by Health Secretary Andrea Palm, as a "controlling, subjective judgment."

Justice Rebecca Dallet, however, said the decision would "undoubtedly go down as one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this court's history. And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price."

As Wisconsinites descended on bars across the state, Evers accused the high court and Republican-controlled legislature of causing "chaos."

The Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to revoke Gov. Tony Evers' coronavirus stay-at-home order was met with jubilation and crowded bars on Wednesday.

Club Ritz reopens to patrons following the Wisconsin Supreme Court's decision to strike down Governor Tony Evers' safer-at-home order in Kaukana, Wisconsin on May 13, 2020.

William Glasheen/USA TODAY via REUTERS

According to local news outlets, several bars made the decision to open within hours of the high court handing down a 4-3 vote that the Evers administration doesn't have the authority to extend the lockdown until May 26. The Tavern League of Wisconsin went so far as to share the news on Facebook: "You can OPEN IMMEDIATELY!" it told members.

Story continues

At the Iron Hog Saloon, in Port Washington, unmasked patrons ignored social-distancing rules over drinks. Chad Arndt, the owner, told WISN that he instituted more cleaning protocols but understood that people might be afraid of falling sick and choose to stay home.

"I hope they respect my feelings that I would like to come out, and I would like to start getting the economy going again," he said.

Gary Bertram, a patron, agreed. "If people want to quarantine, quarantine. If you don't want to quarantine, don't quarantine. Go out and do what you normally do," he told WISN.

At Jake's Supper Club, in Menomonie, tables were placed further apart, staff wore face masks, and hand sanitizer was available, WQOW reported. But owner Peter Gruetzmacher admitted that patrons "all kind of consider themselves family," which might complicate social-distancing efforts.

A patron at Limanski's Pub told TMJ-4 that he thought the risk when going to a bar for drinks was roughly on par with when someone steps out to buy groceries.

"We're the Wild West," Evers told MSNBC's Ali Velshi on Wednesday night, reacting to scenes of celebration in bars statewide. "There are no restrictions at all across the state of Wisconsin  So at this point in time  there is nothing that's compelling people to do anything other than having chaos here."

'I can't believe there's a state in the nation with this type of chaos'

So far, Wisconsin has more than 10,900 confirmed coronavirus cases and at least 421 deaths, based on data from Johns Hopkins University.

For the majority, Chief Justice Patience Roggensack described the emergency rule as a "controlling, subjective judgment." But liberal Justice Rebecca Dallet dissented, saying the ruling "undoubtedly go down as one of the most blatant examples of judicial activism in this court's history. And it will be Wisconsinites who pay the price."

The Supreme Court ruling gave closed business the green light to reopen, removed limits on the size of public gatherings, and granted people permission to travel, the Associated Press reported.

"Today, Republican legislators convinced four members of the state Supreme Court to throw the state into chaos. They have provided no plan. There's no question among anybody that people are going to get sick. Republicans own that chaos," Evers said, according to AP.

Governor Tony Evers (@GovEvers) May 14, 2020

Schools remain shut, and local governments retain the ability to impose restrictions. Dane County authorities immediately enforced a mandate that mirrored the statewide order while city officials in Milwaukee announced that their existing stay-at-home rules would stay in place.

"In the meantime, we're going to have 72 counties doing their own thing," Evers said, per AP. "I can't believe there's a state in the nation with this type of chaos."

In a tweet on Thursday, Trump applauded the Supreme Court's decision, touting Wisconsinites' desire to "get on with their lives."

Evers' stay-at-home order went into effect in March and affected schools and nonessential businesses. It was set to end on April 24, but Health and Human Services Secretary Andrea Palm, who was appointed by the governor, extended it to May 26, launching a legal battle to reopen the state.

In the hours after the Supreme Court ruling, #RIPAmerica was trending on Twitter and social media was overrun with angry reactions to the news emerging out of Wisconsin.

Carolyn Shore Aresu (@CSAresu) May 14, 2020

 Nezukoooo0  V.S. Coronavirus (@UntoldExtacy) May 14, 2020

Reopening amid the coronavirus pandemic has also led to unrest in other states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: rmahbubani@businessinsider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider
Tear gas has joined chocolate and vanilla among the flavors at a Hong Kong gelato shop to recognize the pro-democracy movement in the semi-autonomous region of China.

Sharp black peppercorns are the main ingredient of the new addition to the menu at the Songo Gelato shop, according to the owner, Chung Yiuwa.

He said that he had tried other ingredients like wasabi and mustard the harsh taste of tear gas, before ultimately deciding that peppercorns replicated it best.

While many people buy the "very spicy" flavor, the shop's most popular choice is champagne-flavored gelato which was inspired by times of celebration during the protests, Chung said.

He added that the flavor was designed to serve as a reminder of the protests which were sparked by a controversial bill that would have allowed residents to be extradited to China.

Although the bill was shelved, the demonstrations transformed into a wider movement against the erosion of civil liberties that were promised after the city was handed over to China in 1997.

Image: Tear gas flavor ice cream is sold at a small ice-cream shop in Hong Kong (AP)

Protesters took to the streets every Sunday for months, although others took place on weekdays too. As they grew increasingly violent, police fired rounds of tear gas to disperse the demonstrators.

More than 16,000 rounds were fired during the protests, according to authorities in the former British colony, which is governed by a unique model that guarantees freedoms not granted in mainland China.

Anita Wong, who experienced tear gas at one of these protests, said the icecream did taste like the real thing.

"It feels difficult to breathe at first, and its really pungent and irritating," she told the Associated Press. I think its a flashback that reminds me of how painful I felt in the movement, and that I shouldnt forget.
Three people have been arrested in a hit-and-run in Scarborough on Thursday that left a 10-year-old boy with life-threatening injuries, police say.

The boys 38-year-old mother and a 50-year-old man unrelated to the family suffered non-life-threatening injuries in the collision. The boy remains in critical condition.

The investigation, which Toronto police Sgt. Jason Kraft called fluid and ongoing, spans three locations.

The first scene, where the collision occurred just before noon, is at Eglinton Avenue East and Cedar Drive, near Markham Road.

Thats where the driver of a 2019 Chevrolet Cruze jumped the curb and collided with the three victims who were standing on the corner, waiting to cross Eglinton.

Police said the vehicle continued a short distance and struck a light pole, before the driver fled the scene in the vehicle heading east on Eglinton.

The second scene is around Deekshill and Budworth Drives, about a seven minute drive north-east of the first scene. Three people were seen getting back into the same vehicle and leaving the area.

The final area is in Whitby where investigators arrested three people and seized the Cruze, Kraft said.

Rondell Solomon, 20, of Ajax, and Annalise Reck, 20, of Mississauga, and a 17-year-old girl from Mississauga were each charged with accessory to a dual procedure offence.

Reck is also charged with failure to comply with a release order.

The teen was also charged with obstructing a peace officer and two counts of failing to comply with a release order.

A man in his 20s seen leaving the second scene is encouraged to contact investigators, Kraft said.

The 10-year-old remains in hospital, Kraft said.

Our thoughts are with him and his family at this time, he said.

The investigation is ongoing by Traffic Services and investigators are asking for witnesses from the two separate locations of Eglinton Avenue East and Cedar Drive and Deekshill Drive and Budworth Drive to step forward.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-1900, Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-TIPS (8477), online at www.222tips.com, online on our Facebook Leave a Tip page, or text TOR and your message to CRIMES (274637).

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Police in South Florida say arrest warrants have been issued for two NFL players.

Multiple witnesses accused the New York Giants' DeAndre Baker and Seattle Seahawks' Quinton Dunbar of an armed robbery at a party, authorities said Thursday.

Baker's lawyer said Saturday the 22-year-old cornerback turned himself in. After a Saturday arrest, Baker is being held in jail, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.

Attorney Michael Grieco, Dunbar's lawyer, also said Saturday that the 27-year-old cornerback also turned himself in. Grieco said the warrant was based on "uncorroborated witness statements that have since been recanted."

Baker and Dunbar were attending a cookout at a Miramar home Wednesday night when a fight broke out, and Baker pulled out a handgun, the warrant said.



Grieco said Friday he has five signed affidavits from witnesses that exonerate his client in an armed robbery.



Grieco told The Associated Press that the five witnesses attested that Dunbar was not involved in the robbery. Grieco previously said the affidavits were presented to prosecutors in Broward County.

Law enforcement and the state attorney's office are both now aware that my client is innocent, Greico previously said.



Baker's attorney also shared a similar statement on social media, saying, "We have had affidavits from several witnesses that also dispute the allegations and exculpate our client."

Baker allegedly pointed a gun at an attendee of a party and directed two people to take money and valuables from other attendees, according to a police report.

Dunbar allegedly assisted Baker in taking peoples money and valuables.

The items taken included at least $12,400 in cash and several watches, including an $18,000 Rolex and a $25,000 Hublot, according to a police report.



Police said the four men then fled the home in three vehicles: a Mercedes Benz, a Lamborghini and a BMW. Witnesses said the vehicles were parked in a way that would make it easy to leave quickly, leading detectives to believe the robbery was planned. No injuries were reported.

Baker and Dunbar are both from Miami.

We are aware of the situation. We have been in contact with DeAndre, the Giants said Thursday in a statement. We have no further comment at this time.

The Seahawks said previously they were aware of the situation and were deferring comment to the league and local investigators.

Dunbar spent Thursday morning on a video conference with the Seattle media for the first time since being traded from Washington to the Seahawks in March.

You just want to feel wanted at the end of the day. ... I just hope to repay them with the way I carry myself as a person, Dunbar said on the video conference.

The Associated Press and Hearst TV contributed to this report.
A six-day trial for a 24-year-old Augusta man charged in the drowning death of a 19-month-old girl has been rescheduled to begin on Aug. 3.

Damian Garrett is now scheduled to stand before Judge Stephen Carras and a jury between Aug. 3 and Aug. 10, facing charges of felony-murder and first degree child abuse stemming from the Sept. 17 death of Skylar Papple. Garrett was in a dating relationship with the toddler's mother at the time of the incident.

According to Michigan Legislature, both charges of carry a penalty of imprisonment for life or any term of years decided by the court.

Trial proceedings will begin at 8:30 a.m. each day.

A trial was originally scheduled to begin on May 11, though the Michigan Supreme Court ordered the delay of all jury trials until June 22 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Garrett's last appearance in court was on Jan. 30, when he chose to waive a plea offer from Midland County Prosecuting Attorney J. Dee Brooks. Garrett is represented by attorney Dan Duke.

Midland County Central Dispatch responded to an emergency call for medical assistance on the afternoon of Sept. 17 at Northwind Forest Apartments, located at 5220 Hedgewood Dr., according to an affidavit from Garrett's arraignment. During interviews with police detectives, the affidavit states Garrett made admissions regarding his role in Skylar's death, saying that while he was bathing Skylar, she got upset about her hair getting wet and began to scream. He became frustrated and hit or pushed her in the back, causing her to fall forward and hit her head on the bath faucet, and fell facedown into the water and stopped moving.

Garrett would go on to claim he struck Skylar on the top of her head when she resisted him trying to wash her hair, the affidavit states. Garrett said he knocked Skylar down about four times, striking her head on the bath tub in the process.
Detectives charged Dural man Brett John Callaghan, 37, with the additional crimes including grooming a child under 14 years for unlawful sexual activity and supplying a prohibited drug to a child under 16 on Thursday

A man accused of abducting and raping a 12-year-old girl in Sydney's north has been hit with an additional seven charges by NSW Police.

Detectives charged Dural man Brett John Callaghan, 37, with the additional crimes including grooming a child under 14 years for unlawful sexual activity and supplying a prohibited drug to a child under 16 on Thursday.

The girl was reported missing after visiting Hornsby Westfield shopping centre with friends on April 28 and failing to meet her parents afterwards.

Detectives said the girl travelled from the shopping centre to a Thornleigh skate park where she was seen leaving with a young girl and a man she did not know.

The 12-year-old allegedly agreed to travel with Callaghan to his Dural property, where police allege she was sexually assaulted before being found about 1.15am the next day.

The girl was also sexually assaulted by Callaghan while in his vehicle, police said.

NSW Police Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec last month alleged the other young girl was used to build trust with the victim but the two children did not know each other.

'We're not sure but we can suspect this other young girl was with this male ... that gave her a sense of comfort, sense of safety to say, this guy may be a parent and it's OK to leave with them,' Det Supt Kerlatec told reporters.

Callaghan - who was charged on April 29 - had his matter heard in Parramatta Local Court on Thursday for the second time following a forensic order by police.

He will remain behind bars and is due to face the same court on June 25 on ten charges including two counts of aggravated sexual intercourse with a child aged between 10 and 14.

Detectives said the girl travelled from a Hornsby shopping centre to a Thornleigh skate park where she was seen leaving with a young girl and a man she did not know
Before the coronavirus pandemic, mental illness was already one of the world's most pressing public health concerns, affecting hundreds of millions of people. According to the WHO, 1 in 4 people globally will be affected by a mental health condition; however, we know that 4 out of 4 are in fact significantly impacted by them.

With millions now forced into quarantine, the magnitude of this compounds significantly. Studies have shown that physical distancing and stress related to the coronavirus crisis are having an increasing impact on mental health, amplifying the urgency for this initiative.

It is critical, now more than ever, that we come together to promote acceptance, inspire hope and destigmatize mental mealth conditions. The Mental Health Coalition platform will be a place where individuals seeking help or guidance can access resources from our partners and better understand ways to discuss mental health.

"This is a critical moment in time. The collective consciousness from the pandemic has created an unprecedented urgency to address the crisis now," states Founder and Chairman of The Mental Health Coalition, Kenneth Cole. I am proud to bring together a community of the most impactful mental health service providers in the country, leading academics, creative, media, and business leaders with the common goal of changing the mental health narrative in a way that will empower rather than diminish those individuals living with Mental Health conditions. We are aligned with the goal of ending the related devastating stigma. I believe that together we can end the stigma, but only together ."

The visual identity of www.thementalhealthcoalition.org was created by Paula Scher at the internationally acclaimed design firm Pentagram and features a "square peg in a round hole" to represent that there is no "normal" when it comes to mental health and that everybody fits. The coalition is introducing this icon in the hopes that it will become the global symbol for mental health. The icon also appears in the branding Scher created for "How Are You, Really?".

The new proprietary www.howareyoureally.org, will use digital storytelling to create and share stories crafted with a focus on language, lived experiences and advice for mental health, self-care and coping strategies. The effort will leverage the voices of celebrities, influencers and advocates, and popular culture to discuss mental health in an open, authentic and provocative way. The platform is conceived and coordinated by Catie Cole, Co-Founder, CTO & Content Director of The Mental Health Coalition. Research has shown that authentic storytelling can reduce stigma and barriers to help-seeking for people who are struggling or living with mental health conditions. The "How Are You, Really?" initiative creates safe spaces for anyone to be vulnerable, authentic, empathetic and hopeful by sharing their truth and experiencing other people's stories. This interactive process facilitates understanding and empowers individuals to speak up and access resources and support. We believe that participants will be a part of a life-changing, coordinated effort that will encourage and support an open and honest expression that will ultimately destigmatize mental health conditions.

The initiative prompts the most universally and commonly asked question and also the question rarely answered, 'How Are You, Really?'. This initiative challenges people to answer this as honestly as they are able, allowing themselves to be vulnerable, empathic, and/or anywhere in between. By individuals sharing their truth about how they really feel, there is much scientific and anecdotal evidence that it will be healing for them and at the same time will support and inspire many others who are living with a mental health condition. We believe that participants will be a part of a life-changing, coordinated effort that will encourage and support an open and honest expression ultimately destigmatize mental health conditions.

The challenge will be launched by posting your video and then challenging others to authentically answer that same question "How are you, really?," and sharing their stories at www.howareyoureally.org and on Instagram and Twitter.

In addition, iHeartMedia, the number one audio company in the United States, will air a series of PSAs across its 850+ radio stations beginning today through the end of the month that encourages participation in the challenge. The series of radio spots will feature on-air personalities including Ryan Seacrest, Steve Harvey, Bobby Bones and Elvis Duran.

Participants supporting the challenge include Arielle Kebbel, Cheyenne Jackson, Chris Cuomo, Deepak Chopra, Elizabeth Chambers, Hunter McGrady, Kesha, Mayim Bialik, Oliver Platt, Michael Strahan, Stanley Tucci, Whoopi Goldberg and many more.

The leading mental health organizations joining this important endeavor include:

Active Minds

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention

Anxiety and Depression Association of America

Brain & Behavior Research Foundation

Bring Change to Mind

Child Mind Institute

Crisis Text Line

Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance

Didi Hirsch Mental Health Services

Fountain House

Headstrong Project

Mental Health America

Mindful Philanthropy

National Alliance on Mental Illness

National Council for Behavioral Health

Suicide Awareness Voices of Education (SAVE)

The Jed Foundation

The Steve Fund

The Trevor Project

UCLA Depression Grand Challenge

Vibrant Emotional Health

Well Being Trust

Creative partners that helped to bring The Mental Health Coalition to life include Ad Council, iHeartMedia, Kenneth Cole Productions, Lift, Oberland, Pentagram, Prinkshop and more.

About The Mental Health Coalition

The Mental Health Coalition (www.thementalhealthcoalition.org), is comprised of an unprecedented group of the most passionate & influential NGOs, advocates, celebrities and media organizations that have joined forces to address the devastating stigma surrounding mental health. This will be the first collaborative effort of this scale committed to changing the way people talk about and care for mental health. To actualize the mission, the coalition is launching a storytelling initiative as they believe storytelling to be a powerful tool that encourages open dialogue around mental health. The creative platform (www.howareyoureally.org) formally launches on May 15, 2020 timed to Mental Health Awareness Month.

SOURCE The Mental Health Coalition
(Natural News) Coronavirus cases in Texas are rising every day. The state has been reporting more than 1,000 new cases of COVID-19 for seven consecutive days.

This rate of increase has been happening every day since May 8, according to data gathered from the Texas Department of State Health Services. The state even announced on May 14 its largest daily increase in both new cases and fatalities, with 1,448 new COVID-19 cases and 58 additional deaths.

Gov. Abbott insists on reopening Texas despite mounting COVID-19 cases

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced that some businesses in the state will be allowed to resume operations at the beginning of May. Since then, Texas new coronavirus cases have been increasing by 1,000 almost daily  with exceptions for May 4 and May 7, when the number of new cases dipped below 1,000.

In television interviews he conducted across the state on May 14, Abbott focused on Texas increasing number of daily tests. The state was able to reach its previously set goal of 25,000 COVID-19 tests per day.

Texas record high number of new COVID-19 cases comes days ahead of an expected announcement by Abbott about reopening more businesses on Monday, May 18.

Abbott told KRIV, a Houston-based TV station, that his administration is considering both allowing additional businesses to reopen and allowing an increased capacity of customers for currently operating businesses. He said that his medical team is working on creating social distancing strategies to allow bars, one of the businesses that have not yet been permitted to resume functioning, to open their doors once more. (Related: Texas movie theaters, malls and restaurants reopen with airport security-style checkpoints.)

Abbott, in a different interview, assured that Texas hospitals still have enough capacity to handle a possible surge in COVID-19 cases. He further insisted that the state is experiencing a downward trend in rates of positive cases and coronavirus-related hospitalizations.

In an interview with KBTX in College Station, Texas, Abbott insisted that the real data shows that the COVID-19 growth rate in the state is leveling off.

The fact of the matter is, hospitalizations in the state of Texas has stayed relatively flat during this entire time.

Listen below to The Health Ranger Report with Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, as he talks about how one-third of Texans refuse to wear masks when shopping at retail stores:

Paxton to force local officials to abide by reopening guidelines

On May 12, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton even warned local officials and county judges to not try and enforce stricter and unlawful coronavirus restrictions than those that the state government has mandated. Texas is currently going through its first phase in its reopening strategy, which Abbot has stated will run through May 18.

Paxton issued letters to three counties  Travis, Dallas and Bexar  and two mayors  San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg and Austin Mayor Steve Adler  warning them that some of their anti-coronavirus measures are, according to Texas state law, unlawful and can confuse law-abiding citizens.

Some of the unlawful and unenforceable measures include restrictions on allowing places of worship to operate, tracking customers who visit certain restaurants, imposing penalties for not wearing masks and shelter-in-place orders.

Unfortunately, a few Texas counties and cities seem to have confused recommendations with requirements and have grossly exceeded state law to impose their own will on private citizens and businesses. These letters seek to avoid any public confusion as we reopen the state, said Paxton in a statement.

I trust that local officials will act quickly to correct any orders that unlawfully conflict with Texas law and Governor Abbotts Executive Orders.

Paxton added that Abbotts executive order about the states reopening strategy supersedes any locally issued stay-at-home order.

Visit Pandemic.news for the latest updates on COVID-19 and business reopening strategies across the United States.

Sources include:

TheHill.com

TXDSHS.map.ArcGIS.com

TexasTribune.org

Star-Telegram.com

TexasAttorneyGeneral.gov
Student attendance, measured through digital and other participation, was 57% during the first week of planned instruction of new material after coronavirus halted in-person instruction, district officials said. Read more

In the Philadelphia School Districts first week of graded teacher-led instruction since schools were shut down in March by the pandemic, 57% of students participated in school remotely, officials said Thursday.

At the elementary-school level for the week of May 4, fewer than half of students logged on, completed paper packets, or otherwise showed evidence of participation  48% of students in K-8 schools were marked present. In middle and high schools, the figure was 73% of students participating.

An analysis of district data show that for the 2018-19 school year, for all schools, average daily attendance was 92%.

District chief of staff Naomi Wyatt, who presented the pandemic participation data at a school board committee hearing Thursday night, said she did not believe the numbers were a full reflection of student efforts. In some cases, students making contact with school staffers other than their teachers were not captured, Wyatt said.

Its important to note that this is early participation data. Its not fully representative of student participation, said Wyatt. She said the process is new, and teachers and staff are still learning.

 READ MORE: When coronavirus hit, schools moved online. Some students didnt.

Participation is not limited to online logons. Students or their parents can register participation by text, phone call, sending photos of work, or entering Google Classroom, the districts preferred online portal.

Overall, 83,742 of the districts roughly 125,000 students  64%  received free loaner Chromebooks to help them complete schoolwork online, but some families still lack internet access. And the district has been unable to locate about 1,500 children despite efforts by school staff.

At the middle and high school levels, students can mark themselves present via Classroom. Teachers are responsible for all participation marks for students in K-8 schools, and that likely factored into the lower elementary numbers, Wyatt said.

But elementary school students, particularly the youngest, often require not just parent supervision to complete their work, but often parent instruction. If parents are working inside the home or outside of it, juggling multiple children, or have other responsibilities, thats a tough equation to solve, board member Julia Danzy noted.

They really are dependent upon the parent, Danzy said of young elementary school children.

 READ MORE: Schools brace for budget cuts as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the economy

Board President Joyce Wilkerson asked Wyatt how the district will figure out whether students are learning anything.

This is all very new," Wyatt said. "The first challenge now is making sure students have the supplies, that theyre participating, and as we get deeper into instruction, making sure that the instructions rigorous and that students are assessed.

Wyatt said she expected the process to smooth out, but the window for improvement is small.

Because of technology gaps and the need to pivot instruction that had generally not incorporated extensive amounts of distance-learning elements, Philadelphia students went 53 days between the last day of in-person learning and the first day of teachers presenting new content.

The school year ends for students on June 12, and grades go in the week before. And even for in-person instruction, attendance typically plummets after Memorial Day.

Superintendent William R. Hite Jr., in a Thursday news conference, said theres no doubt that students will behind in September. Instruction thats occurring now is designed to lessen that regression, Hite said.

Those children are not going to be where they would normally be, given the fact that we have been out of school so long, said Hite. He said the district was planning for schools to open for in-person instruction in September, if public health agency guidance permits it, and that once they do, adjustments must be made.

We are planning once children are back in school and once we do some of the managing trauma and reestablishing communities, we do plan to do some kind of assessment for every child, the superintendent said.

The Philadelphia Inquirer is one of more than 20 news organizations producing Broke in Philly, a collaborative reporting project on solutions to poverty and the citys push toward economic justice. See all of our reporting at brokeinphilly.org.
New Delhi: After a minister in the West Bengal Government triggered a huge row by accusing the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) of discriminating against West Bengal and not organising any repatriation flights of Indian nationals from abroad to the State in the Vande Bharat Mission, MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava tweeted late on Thursday night that the MEA does not discriminate between states and that the Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal.

The MEA said it would gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if the West Bengal state government would confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. The MEA also said it would also help in return of WB residents through land borders with neighbours, adding that it hoped to receive an early response on the matter.

The controversy was triggered after West Bengal Higher and School Education Minister Partha Chatterjee tweeted angrily, Is the MEA asking us to believe that there are enough people to come from Georgia to Gujarat but none want to come to Kolkata ? Also, there are enough people to come back to Bihar from Kyrgyzstan but not enough to bring back to Bengal?? Stop this injustice !!! Mr. Chatterjee is also the Secretary General of the ruling Trinamool Congress in the State.

MEA Spokesperson Anurag Srivastava then tweeted late on Thursday night, MEA does not discriminate between states. GOIs Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal. Over 3700 of them have registered for repatriation from different parts of the world. Will gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. Will also help in return of WB residents through land borders with neighbors. We hope to receive an early response on the matter.

An estimated 32,000 Indian nationals from a total of 31 countries including an additional 18 countries will be repatriated back to India from May 16 to 22 via 149 flights in the second phase of the Vande Bharat Mission compared to the ongoing first phase in which Indians are being repatriated from 12 nations from May 7 to 15.

So far, 12,000 Indians have been repatriated in the ongoing first phase. The MEA had said earlier on Thursday that the Vande Bharat Mission is the largest and most complex exercise ever undertaken by the government for the repatriation of our nationals stranded overseas.

The additional 18 countries covered under the second phase include Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Japan, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Krgyzstan, Belarus, Georgia, Tajikistan and Armenia. Sources said that about 32,000 Indian nationals are expected to be repatriated in the second phase.
New Delhi: Youtube, the Google-owned video service, is back again after suffering a brief worldwide outage.

The video service went down for a couple of minutes in the wee hours of Friday.

Thousands took to social media to report about the error messages received or video streaming issues. Soon, twitter was flooded with hilarious memes on the outage.

all of us staring at our screens wondering if its just that we have shitty internet or that YouTube died#YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/yUkWd3uC3M  sheed (@sheedbbie) May 14, 2020

YouTube just went like this, I don't know if I should laugh or cry at this point #YouTubeDOWN pic.twitter.com/kJnLC4KvD2  Xion A. (@Macintosh_rar) May 14, 2020

#YouTubeDOWN How ya'll mfs look still tweeting when Youtube is back up. pic.twitter.com/hbY784Rc8D  IISkullzyII (@IISkullzyII) May 14, 2020

Users also posted some funny memes after Youtube was back again

#YouTubeDOWN

My mind: FUCK THERE'S GOING TO BE NO YOUTUBE... WHAT AM I GOING TO WATCH?? I HAVE NOTHING ELSE TO DO 10 minutes later :YouTube back up Me: pic.twitter.com/iocmdFJmlv  Selena (@Quantumshy) May 14, 2020

Though the website was restored, the company is yet to issue any statement on the reason behind the outage.
MC3 Courtney Strahan / Contributed photo

NORTH BRANFORD  The Navy shared an image of Hunter Calestro, a North Branford resident currently serving in the Atlantic, in a press release Friday.

Calestro, an aviation electronics mate 3rd class, is pictured cleaning the window of an F/A-18E Super Hornet, assigned to the Knighthawks of Strike Fighter Squadron (VFA) 136, on the flight deck of the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75) in the Atlantic Ocean on May 12, according to the Navy Office of Community Outreach.
Various entities of Resolution Life have acquired, reinsured, consolidated, or managed 28 life insurance companies since 2003.

Though the company might be an unfamiliar name in Australia and New Zealand, Resolution Life is well established and respected, wrote Resolution Life president and chief operating officer John Hele in an open letter to AMP Life policyholders in March. Thats because we play an important role in the global life insurance market.

When an insurer, like AMP, wants to sell some or all of its life business, such as AMP Life, Resolution Life is there as a prospective purchaser. For us, acquisitions are an opportunity to grow the number of customers we serve worldwide.

This makes snapping up the life insurance operations of Westpac sound even more plausible.

Earlier this month, Westpac Group chief executive Peter King described the life insurance unit as among the companys several businesses where Westpac doesnt have sufficient scale or where the returns are insufficient for the risk. These also include superannuation and retirement offerings, as well as general insurance.

Over the coming months we will conduct a detailed strategic review on the best options for these businesses, announced King, whose camp aims to simplify and focus on banking. This will include considering whether they would ultimately be more successful under different ownership.
About 75 more inmates at the Bexar County Adult Detention Center tested positive for the coronavirus in the span of 24 hours, the largest single-day increase in cases since testing began at the downtown lockup nearly two months ago.

As of Thursday evening, 386 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19, accounting for roughly 1 out of 5 cases in Bexar County. Of those, 74 had recovered and 14 were released, leaving about 300 inmates with infections in the jail.

This thing is definitely no joke, Sheriff Javier Salazar said during a news conference Thursday. Every couple days, just when we think we have it figured out, something happens.

The uptick comes after several days of single-digit increases at the jail, leading officials to think that the outbreak was tapering. In the last nine days, only 13 inmates had tested positive for COVID-19, according to the Sheriffs Office.

Then came the surge Thursday.

Salazar said a majority of the recent cases involved a group of inmates who were tested before returning to work in the facilitys kitchen. According to Salazar, the group had been quarantined since April 17 after one worker was possibly exposed to the virus.

Chief Avery Walker said we should test all of them before we let them return to the kitchen, Salazar said, referring to an assistant chief deputy with the jail. Thankfully, he did because a good number, at this point, have come back (with) COVID.

On ExpressNews.com: At Bexar County jail, inmates complain of superficial cleanings, scarce soap and flimsy masks

Salazar thinks that the inmates likely contracted the virus before April 17, as no one has been transferred into that unit in the last month, though its possible it could have originated with a detention deputy.

It had been over 14 days. We probably could have let them back into the kitchen without any testing, Salazar said. Clearly, that standard needs to be re-evaluated.

A majority of the inmate workers who contracted the virus never experienced symptoms, Salazar said. They will remain in a quarantined unit until a later date.

It is not clear if they will undergo testing a second time before possibly returning to work.

In the interim, female inmates have been helping employees with Aramark, which provides meal services in the jail, prepare daily meals.

This week, after the first female inmate tested positive for COVID-19, that program also was suspended. Since then, three more women inside the jail have contracted the virus, officials say.

Salazar said he wasnt sure if any of the women who contracted the virus had recently worked in the kitchen. He said the program was suspended as a precaution.

On ExpressNews.com: One month later, no sign of respite at jail in San Antonio

According to University Health System, which provides medical care inside the jail, about 1,400 inmates have been tested for COVID-19  accounting for roughly half the jails population.

Of those, about 680 inmates tested negative, and 330 are awaiting results.

Of the inmates who have tested positive, about 240  or 62 percent  were asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic at time of testing, officials say.

UHS has the capacity to test about 150 inmates and 150 staff every day. UHS recently obtained new equipment to process more tests, and Salazar hopes that 200 or 250 inmates could be tested daily.

If we can up the number of tests, then I will absolutely push for that, Salazar said. It will increase our numbers, but I would rather know sooner rather than later.

Emilie Eaton is a criminal justice reporter in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Emilie, become a subscriber. eeaton@express-news.net | Twitter: @emilieeaton
On May 13, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said that the deadline for the completion of real estate projects would be extended by up to six months in the face of the COVID-19 and that it should be treated as a Force Majeure event under the Real Estate Regulatory Act (RERA) 2016. This announcement was followed up by the Centre issuing an advisory to all states and union territories to treat the pandemic as an act of God and suo motu extend the completion dates of projects.

While this will certainly provide relief to real estate builders in completion of projects as no cases can be registered against them for the period nor will they be liable to pay any penalties to the authority or the homebuyers, it does not seem to offer any immediate relief in the form of interest/EMI waivers to buyers except that the measure safeguards their interests to get delivery of their homes with a delay of few months.

RERA was brought in to regulate the real sector in 2017, with states allowed to draw up their own rules under a broad framework laid out by the Centre.

Why was this necessary

There are as many as 51,850 real estate projects registered under RERA across the country and it was felt that submission of individual applications by builders for extension of project timelines and processing them individually was not feasible. With this order, as and when issued by the respective states, all projects in such states get an extension.

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It would help developers as the construction activity has been adversely hit due to the ongoing lockdown. It would give some elbow room to projects as they gradually restart operations once the lockdown restrictions are eased.

It will aid in smoothening the operations as construction projects would have to grapple with issues related to adequate availability of labour due to reverse migration and supply chain issues with respect to timely availability of key raw materials such as cement, steel.

This would save most ongoing projects from going into default due to delay in completion because of total work stoppage during the lockdown.

They will now get a six-month suo-moto extension for project registration and completion of projects (with scope for a further three-month extension).

No individual applications from real estate developers will be needed to get this extension. Regulatory Authorities will issue fresh Project Registration Certificates with revised timelines for such projects. All timelines for compliances will get changed concurrently.

RERA provisions invoked in the Central advisory

The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) issued an advisory to all RERA authorities to treat the pandemic COVID-19 as force majeure being a natural calamity, as it is adversely affecting the regular development of the real estate projects and automatically extend registration of RERA-registered projects, which were due on or after March 25, by six months ad further period of upto three months, if the situation in a particular state or any part thereof needs special consideration in view of the pandemic.

According to the advisory issued by the Centre, Regulatory Authorities may, in pursuance of section 37 of RERA read with other enabling provisions, in their respective jurisdictions issue following orders/directions to the effect that 'notwithstanding anything contained to the contrary and by virtue of powers conferred under section 37 read with section 34 (f)of the RERA, the registration or extension thereto under Section 5, 6, 7 (3) of the RERA or rules thereunder, all registered projects under jurisdiction of regulatory authority for which the completion date or revised completion date or extended completion date as per registration expires on or after 25th March, 2020.

Section 37 of RERA states that the authority can issue such directions from time to time to the promoters or allottees or real estate agents, as the case may be, as it may consider necessary and such directions shall be binding on all concerned.

Section 34 defines the functions of the Authority to include registration and regulation of real estate projects and real estate agents registered under the Act and part (f) states that its role is to ensure compliance of the obligations cast upon the promoters, the allottees and the real estate agents under this Act and the rules and regulations.

Section 5 of RERA empowers the Authority to grant registration to a real estate project within 30 days and provide a registration number,

Section 6 of RERA states that the registration granted to a builder may be extended by the Authority if it receives an application from the builder due to force majeure. The Authority can also extend the registration in reasonable circumstances, provided there is no default on the part of the promoter, for the period as it considers necessary, which shall, in aggregate, not exceed a period of one year:

This section also defines force majeure to mean a case of war, flood, drought, fire, cyclone, earthquake or any other calamity caused by nature affecting the regular development of the real estate project.

Section 7 (3) of RERA says that the Authority instead of revoking the registration under sub-section (1), permit it to remain in force subject to such further terms and conditions as it thinks fit to impose in the interest of the allottees, and any such terms and conditions so imposed shall be binding upon the promoter.

Legal experts say the advisory sent out to the states and union territories has sought to utilize both Section 6, Section 34(f) and Section 37 under which RERA authorities have general powers to issue directions. All states would now issue individual orders.

It is expected that RERAs across states will exercise their power under Section 37 Section 34 (f) and wherein they will change the completion date prescribed in the registration certificate issued to the builders under Section 5. The completion dates will be changed by default. The builder will not have to apply individually. In case, the realtor requires a further extension under Section 6, that too may be considered in addition to this timeline, says Sunil Tyagi, the senior partner and co-founder of Zeus Law.

By exercising their power under Section 37, the authorities are expected to change the date of completion prescribed under Section 5 and in the registration certificate itself. If the registration certificate had December 2020 as the completion date, it would now read June 2021, he explains.

However, if the developer requires a further extension, he would have to apply for it under Section 6 separately.

This is a general extension granted by invoking section 37. This will be over and above the one-year extension permitted under section 6. After six months, the builder can approach the authority and seek an individual extension of six months on grounds of any other force majeure. That would be for another force majeure event besides this force majeure which is COVID-19, he says.

So far, RERA authorities in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have given extensions for completion of projects registered under the law by 3-6 months.

Madhya Pradesh has extended by six months the completion deadline of registered projects that were to be completed on or after March 15.

Rajive Kumar, chairman, UP RERA told Moneycontrol that for now six months force majeure extension and attendant consequences will apply. Theoretically, authorities that have already extended the timelines would now have to extend the period further.

Soon after the Centre issued its advisory to state RERAs, the Rajasthan Real Estate Regulatory Authority issued an order extending by a year the deadline of projects registered before March 19, 2020, waiving off the fee for the extended period.

However, the fee prescribed by RERA on August 16, 2019, will have to be paid, the order said.

It clearly stated that "Being on the ground of force majeure, the aforesaid extension will be in addition to the extension already granted or that may be granted to a project under the First Proviso to section 6 or under section 8 of the Act."

As per the order, developers will be able to divide projects into more than one phase and amend building plans so that the interests of the allottees are not affected. All changes will require the nod of at least two-thirds of the allottees, the order said.

This will provide a six-month suo-moto extension for project registration and completion of projects (with scope for a further three-month extension).

The ministry statement had said that in the absence of urgent remedial regulatory measures under Real Estate (Regulation and Development) Act, 2016 (RERA), there is also a possibility of many real estate projects getting stalled leading to litigation etc. This may ultimately result in non-delivery of flats to the homebuyers, who have invested their lifetime savings for their dream homes.

It is vital to take remedial measures now to ensure that COVID-19 does not lead to a complete breakdown of the real estate sector. In the prevailing circumstances, the primary objective is to address the concerns of homebuyers by ensuring suitable regulatory relief to the real estate projects so as to create a win-win situation for all the stakeholders  it will enable developers to complete the projects so that home buyers get the delivery of their booked houses within the revised timeline, it said.

Builders have welcomed the governments decision. Sanjay Dutt, MD & CEO - Tata Realty and Infrastructure Limited, said that the Governments decision to treat the COVID-19 period as an event of force majeure to extend the registration and completion date by six months for all registered real estate projects will alleviate a great amount of stress on the developers Due to the lockdown, migrant labourers have been displaced and all construction work came to a grinding halt.

The announcement to treat COVID-19 as an event of Force Majeure and as an Act of God, and permission to extend project completion timelines and other statuary compliances under RERA by six months is a positive step for the developer community. It will enable them to deliver projects to the end consumer under the new timeline, said Anshuman Magazine, chairman and CEO India, South East Asia, Middle East and Africa.

Some lawyers say that this de facto extension of timelines by six months would mean that all the penalties that might ensue as per the builders original timelines will no longer have to be paid. There will be no liabilities (penalties) to be paid to either buyers or the authorities, says a legal expert.

The government, in its statement, said that the extension of the timelines will protect the interest of homebuyers as they will get the property, though delayed by six months.

This measure will save the projects and enable the developers to complete the projects within the revised time lines thereby safeguarding the interest of home buyers as it will ensure delivery of their booked flats/homes within the revised timeline. Delay of a few months is certainly better than not getting booked houses at all, the ministry statement has said.

Homebuyers, however, will have to bear another six months of delay in possession of the apartment. He would have to bear the additional liability of paying rent for six months.

Under the income tax law, homebuyers are entitled to a deduction on certain interest payments. These are available to the buyer provided he has received possession of the unit. This would now be delayed, says a tax expert.

It was to offset such liabilities, that a compensation provision was provided under RERA. Under Section 19 (4), an allottee is entitled to claim the refund of amount paid along with interest at a rate as may be prescribed and compensation provided under the Act.

This would not hold for the next six months, says a legal expert, adding in that respect relief would now only be available and limited to builders and not homebuyers. A buyer will no longer be able to exercise his right to cancel the booking.

This is akin to granting immunity to the builder and putting a moratorium on the rights of a buyer to make any claims for delay. There should ideally have been a provision for an equal amount of respite for buyers who are unable to pay EMIs or interest for these six months, he says.

Homebuyers say that if the force majeure benefit is extended to builders, similar benefits should also be granted to them too.

While the force majeure benefit is extended to builders, in the same way homebuyers should also be taken care of suitably. The interest component of the loan should be waived as homebuyers are now facing job cuts, lack of job security and over and above that they have to pay rent, said MS Shankar, general Secretary, Forum for Peoples Collective Efforts.

The builders should bear the interest part till homebuyers gets possession of his/her flat, as due to no fault of the buyer they are forced to pay both rent and EMI. If the project gets completed as per RERA completion date, the financial impact on the homebuyer will be only EMI not rent. Hence, the RERA Authorities, while utilising their discretion to extend the project, should direct the builders suo-motu to compensate the interest part of the EMI till possession of the flat is granted," he said.

He also said that the extension of project completion should be for the actual lockdown period.

Other legal experts are of the view that the government's advisory seeks to provide respite to both buyers and builders.

The payment plan for most buyers is construction linked. If there is no construction activity on site for three months, there will be no demand for payment from the builder to the buyer for that period. The buyer would indirectly be getting relief. For a Rs 1 crore loan, if the bank has disbursed only Rs 40 lakh to the developer for four floors that have been completed, the buyers EMI would be restricted to Rs 40 lakh only. Banks may continue charging interest for the amount that has been disbursed, says the lawyer.

Also, the relief granted to builders is only for construction timelines and not on the financial front. They would have to continue servicing their financial obligations to their lender, he says.
Who would not support the Self-reliant India Mission? This is something that's at the core of Indian ethos and connects directly with the people. This is another name of 'swadeshi'. Mahatma Gandhi used the idea of swadeshi to defeat the British, and his swadeshi was a manifestation of self-reliance. I see Prime Minister Narendra Modis 30-minute televised address to the nation as a course correction, with the resolve to go on the path of promoting local, which obviously is an anti-thesis of the globalisation of today. A path to see India economically independent and self-reliant.

Observing history, we find that countries of the present-day developed world didn't progress by copying the development models of other countries. They devised their own strategies and policies to develop themselves. But it seems in their obsession with the models of other countries, our policymakers neither posed trust in the people nor in the ethos, thought process and the entrepreneurial spirit of the citizens. They didnt ever have confidence that people can be kept at the centre of any development inspiration. Not that our people didn't have the capacity or capability; the problem was in the mindset of our policymakers.

In the last 70 years, policymakers never trusted our indigenous industries, resources and entrepreneurs. That is, we did not trust ourselves. From 1950 onwards, our policymakers led by Jawaharlal Nehru were obsessed with the Russian model of development: he tried this model, which is also called the Nehru-Stalin Model. Public sector-based philosophy was at the core of this model. It was thought that the public sector would spearhead the growth of this country, and this would usher in the growth of consumer goods industry and agriculture, and the services sector was not given any heed. Suddenly, in 1991, it was realised that the model on which our economy was based had failed, and the country was in trouble due to mounting foreign debt, depleted foreign exchange reserves, and danger of sovereign default was looming.

It was said that the only way the economy could be saved was by adopting the path of globalisation (based on the Washington Consensus). We handed the baton over to Foreign Direct Investment (FDI), and multinational corporations, i.e, foreigners. This new system was capital-based, and that too foreign capital-based. Monopolisation and capturing markets was the priority of the big foreign capital. The obvious argument put forth in defence of this model was the accelerated growth that happened afterwards. Growth in GDP did happen after 1991 due to production of more luxury goods and also due to the services sector, serving primarily the beneficiaries of that GDP growth. However, if we see closely, that growth was jobless, faceless, rootless and above all ruthless. By allowing the import of subsidised Chinese goods on the one hand, and foreign capital to acquire our already well-run companies (what we call brownfield FDI) in the name of globalisation, we invited job losses and economic inequalities within our own border, and the menace of unmanageable balance of trade and current account balance of payment deficit.

Unbridled globalisation of this kind sent several local industries out of business. The obvious outcome was decline of local manufacturing, job losses and pauperisation of the working class and also the rural population, as agriculture and the rural economy was totally out of focus in the narrative of the LPG (Liberalisation, Privatisation and Globalisation) policies. Unemployment and poverty made people dependent on government doles.

They were being made dependent on government support, instead of nurturing them into valuable contributors to society.

MNREGA and Right to Food started becoming new norms. But they are all doles to keep people silent and believers in the democracy. However, this policy cant make people contribute to social and economic development. In the absence of any light to go forward to make growth more participatory, inclusive and job-oriented, talks were on to provide universal basic income, which was another form of doles to the people.

This cannot go on. However, in the present narrative of globalisation and private corporate and MNCs-based model of carrying out economic activities, these are the only solutions, though they are obviously untenable.

PM Narendra Modi has been pushing for make-in-India, start-ups, Khadi etc. However, the policy of dependence on imports facilitated by lower tariffs and thoughtless FDI/FPI continued unabated.

That is why we can say that PM Modis push for local, what has been termed as 'vocal for local', is a step in the direction of self-reliance, which was needed for a long time. It is time to revive those local industries that were taken for granted in the era of globalisation. It is time to usher in economic policies that produce welfare, sustainable incomes, help job creation and, all in all, put faith in the people.

We should not forget that the sad state of our social sectors is also due to the lack of public expenditure on health and education, which is a side effect of the withdrawal of the government from the social sector, and handing over these welfare-enhancing sectors to private profiteers.

Modis call is sunrise for a new day.

PM Modi, with his historic speech, has set the foundation for India to take not only a quantum jump, but also create more opportunities and respect for indigenous entrepreneurs. The PMs call to be 'vocal for local', will have strong resonance. The PMs appeal has a large reach, and it will strengthen indigenous and local brands among the consumers, to ultimately become global brands. The constant endorsement of PM Modi would help these entrepreneurs get more respect and acceptance globally.

To deal with the miseries caused by the Chinese virus, different countries have been making efforts with the government and the quantum of this support is measured by the support in terms of percentage of GDP.

In this context, the PMs bold step of stitching together a package of Rs 20 lakh crore, nearly 10 per cent of GDP, offering relief and opportunities for labour, small retailers, small entrepreneurs, microenterprises along with farmers, honest tax payers and other businesses, can not be termed just as a relief in the present crisis. Perhaps, on the face of it, this can be seen as a package to rebuild our base for small businesses, which had been suffering for long, due to onslaught of China, apathy of the governments and dominance of foreign capital. Push for local will help achieve this goal.

So this opportunity needs to be used to rebuild the economy based on local manufacturing and other businesses.

This will take the country into a more positive direction.

We can expect that this package will not only lead to ending the ills of badly designed and implemented 1991 liberalisation and subsequent integration into exploitative globalisation, but will also lead to employment-oriented inclusive growth.

Though talks of trade war, putting brakes on globalisation had started long ago, we see the mood the world over has further accelerated with attack of the Chinese virus and the resulting pandemic. This has accelerated the collapse of the existing model of globalisation. The model, which is not only exploitative but has also reduced the opportunities for job creation. The era of economies of scale is passe, and the forthcoming era is of economies of scope. The Chinese virus will be a natural non-tariff barrier for various products in many jurisdictions. The PMs statement that during the pandemic, 'local' has been extremely supportive and saved countrymen from miseries is important. In the new era, push for local, would help these local businesses to prosper.

In this context, PM Modi is absolutely right when he says that the Indian model of globalisation would be more inclusive and will lead to opportunities not only in India, but also in the partner emerging economies. Indias business ethos always believed in partnership, not exerting ownership. PM Modis call for rebuilding globalisation on the principles of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam, or 'the world is one family', gels with Indian thought process.

The Prime Minister has identified this situation as an appropriate time to take a quantum jump.

PM Modi has determined five pillars for achieving self-reliance: a) economy with potential for quantum jump, not incremental growth, b) investments in infrastructure, c) technology-driven services, d) demographic dividend and e) reforming the supply chain.

Along with push for growth which is essential to put the economy on track with orientation towards sustainability, employment growth, inclusive growth and equality in distribution, an opportunity has arisen due to this pandemic, and that is a large number of companies are now unwilling to continue their production centres in China and want to relocate. Many are eyeing India as their favourite destination, and India too wants to seize this opportunity to add one more engine to its growth story. This plug-and-play model of attracting these companies could be a good strategy. However, there is a note of caution, that we should not tweak our laws to their advantage and against the interests of our working class, including farmers.

We need to be judicious in our approach. For all those global investors who want to shift their base from China to India, we can facilitate them with providing land and infrastructure with a rider that they do backward integration for utilisation of domestic content and secondly they should not eye our domestic market and be constrained with an obligation to export a significant part of their production. These two conditions, namely domestic content requirement and export obligation are no new conditions; they are most common riders imposed on foreign investors in different countries. There is yet another condition which needs to be imposed on foreign investors, and that is imposition of a cap on outgo of royalty and technical fee. Its most unfortunate that the UPA government lifted the cap on outgo of royalty by MNCs and that was never attempted to be reimposed. In light of new developments, its time to stem the outgo of royalty for existing as well as prospective investors.

(The author is National Co-convener, Swadeshi Jagran Manch. Views expressed are personal)
The Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for reopening of state-owned liquor vends in Tamil Nadu by staying a Madras High Court order which had ordered their closure for the time being on the ground that there was violation of guidelines, such as social distancing, meant to contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, S K Kaul and B R Gavai, in the proceedings held through video conferencing, stayed the May 8 order of the High Court after taking note of the appeal of state government's firm, Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC), which sells alcoholic beverages in the state.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the TASMAC, said the High Court should not have imposed its own conditions for sale of liquor by entering into the state's domain of policy making.

He said that it was state's prerogative to decide how to conduct sale of liquor and contended that High Court cannot decide the mode of selling.

We do not have tender services, it is impossible. How can we sell online. There are many issues regarding adulteration and other such considerations. How can we trust someone to carry liquor, Rohatgi said.

Lawyer PV Yogeswaran, appearing for the persons who had moved the High Court, said the sale of liquor was not a fundamental right and precautionary measures must be taken in view of COVID-19 pandemic. He urged the bench not to intervene in the matter.

The Tamil Nadu government on May 8 had moved the top court challenging the High Court order saying that the closure of such shops would lead to "grave losses" in state's revenue and complete halt in commercial activities.

The High Court had ordered closure of liquor outlets noting that there were huge crowds and no social distancing was being maintained by tipplers. It, however, had allowed doorstep delivery of booze through online mode.

The state government firm, in its appeal, termed the High Court order a case of "judicial overreach" and said online sale and home delivery of alcohol were not possible in the entire state.

"It is pertinent that online modes of effective liquor sales are not even available in the vast majority of state at present and can only be implemented after following the due procedures under law," TASMAC said in the appeal.

"It is pertinent that in the state of Tamil Nadu all liquor retail is owned and operated by TASMAC thus the net effect of the High Court's order is complete and indefinite standstill of the sale of liquor in the state leading to grave losses to the state's revenue and commercial activity in the state," the plea said.

TASMAC said that there was as many as 10 PILs pending in the High Court on the issue and it has "reasons to believe that the entire batch of writ Petitions if not some have been filed by vested private interest, so has to make enormous commercial gains, from the unfortunate situation."



The state government firm referred to the apex court's observation in which it had asked states to consider non-direct contact or online sales and home delivery of liquor during the lockdown period to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

"The High Court in passing the impugned judgment has bypassed and misinterpreted the order dated May 08, passed by a three member-bench of this (Supreme) Court...in which this court (SC) declined to direct States to close down liquor stores pending the lockdown and left it to each State's discretion to consider non-direct sale including online sale/home delivery of liquor," it said.

"The Supreme Court order recognised that States have a broad margin of power to determine whether and how to effect sales of liquor in this lockdown period and therefore, the Impugned Judgment, is a clear case of judicial overreach and is not sustainable in light of the Supreme Court Order, the plea said.

The appeal said that the state government decided to open the liquor shops on May 5 after keeping in mind the directives issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs on May 1 allowing the sale of liquor in the state subject to restrictions such as ensuring social distancing.

Some of the petitioners, on whose plea the HC ordered closure of liquor vends in the state, has also moved the apex court by filing caveat to ensure that they be also heard if the top court passes any order on the plea of TASMAC.

The high court order restraining sale of liquor off the counters was passed on a petition filed by advocate G Rajesh, besides a plaint from the actor Kamal Haasan-led Makkal Needhi Maiam (MNM).

The High Court had said there was total violation of its interim order, when it declined to stay a government order allowing resumption of sale of liquor through outlets.

After a dry spell of 43 days due to the COVID-19 lockdown since late March, liquor sales resumed at TASMAC outlets in Tamil Nadu, except state capital Chennai, on May 7.

Heavy rush was witnessed at most places with people standing in serpentine queues even as the move to allow sale of liquor came in for flak from opposition parties and others, who raised apprehensions that it would lead to further spread of the novel coronavirus, which as of May 8 has affected over 6,000 people in the state.

Tamil Nadu had decided to open retail liquor outlets, citing relaxation of lockdown norms by the central government. Tipplers in border districts of the state were also making a beeline to neighbouring Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka where liquor sales resumed on May 4.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
NEW YORK - Federal authorities on Thursday brought charges including murder, attempted murder, and murder conspiracy against 10 men accused of being part of the notorious MS-13 gang.

U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue of the Eastern District said the men were all in custody in connection to three killings and other crimes. One was arrested Wednesday in Maryland; five were arrested Thursday, four in New York and one in California; and four were already in detention.

The murders and crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants are trademark MS-13 offences  cold-blooded, senseless and brutally violent  and pose a grave danger to the residents of our communities, Donoghue said in a statement announcing the arrests.

One of the killings in the federal complaints was of Andy Peralta, a 17-year-old found dead in April 2018 in a Queens park. Authorities said he was beaten, stabbed and strangled because he was mistakenly believed to part of a rival gang.

Another was Victor Alvarenga, killed in November 2018 in Queens. Authorities said he was walking down the street when he was approached and subsequently shot multiple times in the body and head.

The third was Abel Mosso, shot on a Queens subway platform in February 2019. Authorities said he was assaulted on a subway then dragged onto a station platform, with onlookers warned by his assailants not to get involved.

Donoghue said if convicted, six of the men face mandatory sentences of life in prison and are eligible for the death penalty. Three of the men face maximum sentences of life in prison and the last man faces up to 15 years in prison.
(Natural News) Remember the early days of the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, China, when China was running mobile cremation ovens 24/7 just to keep up with disposing of all the dead bodies?

Now, a government official whistleblower from Mexico has provided details to Sky News that seem horrifyingly familiar: Mexico is cremating dead bodies on an industrial scale while the Mexican government is lying to the world about the true number of dead.

A Sky News investigation explains that the news organization, has documented cremations and funerals and gained access to morgues and storage rooms full of bodies. The government claims that the virus curve has been flattened and that there will be a dramatic drop off in virus related deaths in the coming days But that has been dismissed by many dealing with the crisis as incorrect.

Sky News continues: (emphasis added)

An official within the government, but speaking anonymously, confirms the official figures are undercounting the actual mortality rate by a factor of at least five.

As part of its investigation, Sky News has collated mortality figures and contacted or visited dozens of hospitals, crematoria and funeral parlours.

With the help of staff, Sky News has accessed multiple hospital morgues and filmed rooms filled with bodies in bodybags, lying on gurneys or even stacked on wooden pallets because the morgue fridges are already full.

There is currently a three-day backlog for cremation at every public crematorium in the city Black smoke billows out over cemeteries as the ovens are cremating on an industrial level in the city but the bodies dont stop coming.

In fact, the ovens simply cannot cope and there are regular reports of breakdowns only adding to the backlog.

In full hazmat suits, crematorium staff are working around the clock bringing bodies to huge ovens for disposal.

In other words, it sounds a lot like Wuhan in January.

Some believe 21 million died in China how many will die in Mexico?

According to official statistics  that no one believes are high enough, mind you  Mexico currently claims 42,595 infections and 4,477 deaths. If the whistleblower mentioned above is to be believed, there are probably more like 200,000 infections and 20,000+ deaths in Mexico already, but even if you dont believe the higher estimated, the exponential growth of infections and deaths in Mexico will make those numbers a reality soon enough.

As you can see, the deaths in Mexico are following an explosive, exponential growth curve that looks nowhere near any kind of flattening. This chart is from Worldometers.info, accessed on May 14th.

As we have previously warned, both Mexico and Brazil are set to explode with coronavirus fatalities in the coming months, as the governments of both nations have largely taken a denialism approach to the pandemic.

Throughout the whole identification process neither the director nor the family member wore masks, gloves or goggles, apparently oblivious to the danger of exposure to an infected corpse, reports Sky News. This description should horrify any rational person who understands the extreme transmissivity of the coronavirus.

Heres another horrifying description from the story that should send chills down your spine:

At another hospital, we were taken into one of three storerooms workers said were used to keep the bodies. We watched as a funeral parlour worker had to pick through corpses piled onto a wooden pallet to find the tag for the right body he had been ordered to remove for cremation. None of the temporary morgues in the hospitals were refrigerated and the workers confirmed all the bodies were considered to be COVID-19 cases.

Essentially, Sky News is describing a perfect storm for the explosion of coronavirus cases in a nation that simply doesnt have the modern health care infrastructure to handle the victims in any sort of appropriate manner.

Mexican culture is also an impediment to any sort of coordinated lockdowns or long-term social distancing measures which are known to have finally achieved dramatically lower rates of hospitalizations and deaths in places like New York. In Mexico, much of the low-wage economy functions with a short time duration, where people are paid wages daily, and they use that money to purchase food for that evening. The very idea of long-term financial planning is so far out of the realm of awareness for many rural and low-income workers that to even propose an extended lockdown is unthinkable.

There will be no extended lockdowns in Mexico. The virus will run its course, largely unimpeded.

And that means in a nation of 126 million people, if just one-third get infected (about 42 million), based on very conservative infection fatality rates (IFR) of 2%, we would expect about 840,000 fatalities in Mexico over the next year or so as the coronavirus sweeps through the population.

If hospitals are overwhelmed at any time during the peaking fatalities, that 2% rate could skyrocket to 10% or even higher. In effect, we could be looking at over a million deaths in Mexico in the coming year.

As Sky News explains:

The upward curve of death looks set to rocket, the health service cant cope and social distancing, let alone lockdown, is largely being ignored in Mexico City. Short of a vaccine or a miracle, the effect on this society and this city could be utterly catastrophic.

And given that no vaccine even exists  and might never exist in an effective form  Mexico is starting in the face of catastrophe, not miracles.

Exponential spread in Mexico will lead to catastrophic consequences for both Mexico and North America

According to official numbers out of Mexico, the number of coronavirus infections is currently doubling every two weeks. This is far slower than what is widely known as an unmitigated doubling rate of 3.5 days, but its still exponential growth. And even if we take the governments current numbers as gospel, it means that Mexico will see a progression something like this:

June 1: 80,000 infected

June 15: 160,000 infected

July 1: 320,000 infected

July 15: 640,000 infected

August 1: 1.2 million infected

 and so on. It doesnt take long for this math to get to astronomical numbers. What stopped this exponential spread in the United States was the emergency lockdown orders. That interrupted the replication of the virus, which spreads from the lungs of one person to the lungs of another, especially in indoor shared air environments. It seems impractical for Mexico to follow such lockdown practices without setting off an immediate, catastrophic economic collapse that could threaten the very survival of the nation. So it seems almost certain that Mexico is going to just go for herd immunity, even if it means burning through the population at large and brutally enduring millions of fatalities.

This also means, importantly, that infected illegal aliens from Mexico will likely be carrying the coronavirus to sanctuary cities in the United States  a scenario I first warned about in February.

Effectively, this means that the U.S. will not be safe from the coronavirus until we lock down our Southern order and stop the illegal immigration. Yet this isnt being done. Instead, American citizens are being locked down while illegals are allowed free passage into the United States, where they will no doubt be allowed to participate in Democrat-run fraud-by-mail voting schemes in the November election, while receiving free health care and probably even government bailout money in the mean time.

Without border protection, if Mexico is overwhelmed by the coronavirus, the USA cant possibly keep it under control because new infections will be seeded into the United States via the unprotected border.

And that will likely result in more lockdowns of US citizens, due to no fault of their own.

Thus, the freedom of Americans quite literally depends on deploying the military to the border and halting all illegal immigration.

But thats not happening. Instead, Trump is preparing to deploy the US military to mass vaccinate the American people like cattle. That seems to be Trumps priority right now, sadly.

In effect, the American people will be prisoners in their own homes because illegals keep bringing new infections into the United States (and nobody is willing to protect the border).

The lockdowns, in other words, have been weaponized against humanity. Watch this important mini-documentary for more details:
Massachusetts officials are preparing to distribute about $500 million in coronavirus relief funding to towns and cities suffering the impacts of the pandemic.

Gov. Charlie Baker and Lt. Gov. Karyn Polito announced the plans on Thursday evening, along with guidelines to local municipalities seeking funds and looking to avoid dipping into reserves to cover deficits and unexpected costs related to the public health crisis.

The $502 million, in addition to funds allocated directly to Boston and Plymouth County, accounts for about 25% of what the state will receive through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Acts Coronavirus Relief Fund for states and municipalities. The relief fund provided $150 billion for state and local governments, including $2.7 billion for Massachusetts.

The Baker-Polito administration on Thursday said the funds should be sufficient to address incurred or expected eligible COVID-related expenses.

Towns and cities executive officers can apply for funds through a web-based application form.

The cities of Springfield and Worcester are eligible for $13.6 million and $16.3 million, respectively.

For a list of eligible amounts for municipalities throughout the state, see the states guidelines here.

To the extent that municipalities are unsure of their precise needs, or need money for cash flow purposes, they are free to request funds from the federal Coronavirus Relief Fund, with the understanding that unspent amounts will need to be returned to the Commonwealth, according to the the guidelines released by the state Thursday. While this approach may be a little complicated due to possible multiple funding sources for similar expenses, providing municipalities with funding now eliminates or reduces FY20 deficits and helps with cash flow issues.

The funds must cover necessary expenditures incurred due to the outbreak between March 1, 2020 and Dec. 30, 2020. The funds may not be used to substitute lost revenue and may not supplant state or municipal spending or funds already budgeted before the CARES Act was signed by President Donald Trump on March 27, according to the guidelines.

Municipalities will have another opportunity to seek funding to cover eligible COVID-19 costs incurred during fiscal year 2021.

The state said potential expenditures could include staffing, overtime, quarantine and isolation costs for first responders; temporary staffing needs to cover quarantined municipal staff; cleaning buildings; specialized cleaning equipment; public housing; shelter for homeless; signage and education materials on COVID-19; and COVID-19 testing, among other expenses.

Related Content:
Japan will provide a medicine to treat Covid-19 to 30 countries including Hungary, free of charge, Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said, after phone talks with his Japanese counterpart.

Szijjarto thanked Toshimitsu Motegi for his country including Hungary in the group of recipients, while the Japanese minister congratulated Hungary on its handling the coronavirus epidemic.



Szijjarto said that Japan would send 12,200 Avigan pills, sufficient to treat 100 patients. Szijjarto said Japan was open to future cooperation opportunities with regard to coronavirus research.



The two ministers agreed that a direct Budapest-Tokyo flight would be launched once the epidemic is over, Szijjarto said. He also noted that the government on Wednesday had decided to lift any entry restrictions for Japanese business travellers.



Photo:

koronavrus.gov.hu
NEW YORK, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Sebastian Cina, Jr. and Jaclyn Hockenjos were set to be wed this Saturday, May 16 at The Venetian in New Jersey. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic the couple, like many others across the nation, was forced to postpone their nuptials until October. Rather than focus on the negative, the couple is going to commemorate the day by launching a fundraising campaign called #WithThisRingYoullBeFed and are inviting friends, family and supporters to drive by their home and visit their website to make donations.

Sebastian Cina, Jr. and Jaclyn Hockenjos Creators of the #WithThisRingYoullBeFed Campaign.

"We were devastated when we found out we had to postpone our wedding," said Jaclyn Hockenjos, a first-grade teacher at Applegate Elementary School in Freehold, New Jersey. "Then we thought about it and realized we could use it as a platform to help people in our community, and that's exactly what we intend on doing."

The Future Mr. & Mrs. Cina have partnered with Fulfill NJ, formerly the Food Bank of Monmouth County, to raise money and awareness about the current hunger crisis people are facing as an ancillary effect of the Coronavirus outbreak. The campaign entitled #WithThisRingYoullBeFed will continue to raise funds for the organization until their rescheduled wedding date this coming October.

"Giving back to the community is very important to us," said Sebastian Cina, Jr., Manager of family-owned Auto Pro Collision in Freehold, New Jersey. "We recently raised money for Fulfill at Auto Pro, and it sparked the idea to do the same for our wedding."

The couple has created a website, www.withthisringyoullbefed.com, to accept donations, and is also encouraging other couples in the same situation to join them in raising money for the charity of their choice.

Family, friends, and campaign supporters are also invited to a Drive By Show of Support being held this Saturday, May 16 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. at the couple's home. Monetary donations as well as select nonperishable food items will be accepted on-site.

For more information about the campaign, for directions to attend the drive by show of support, or to become a part of the movement and donate please visit HTTP://WWW.WITHTHISRINGYOULLBEFED.COM, follow the couple on Instagram @withthisringyoullbefed, or text the word VOWS to the number 313131.

CONTACT

Anthony Rapacciuolo

PRcision LLC

(718) 490-5023

[email protected]

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Couple Launches #WithThisRingYoullBeFed Campaign

Sebastian Cina, Jr. and Jaclyn Hockenjos Creators of the #WithThisRingYoullBeFed Campaign.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 22:05:56|Editor: huaxia

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BELGRADE, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The relations between Serbia and Hungary have become even stronger after the COVID-19 pandemic and economic exchanges continue to increase despite the crisis, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban agreed at their meeting here on Friday.

Vucic and Orban confirmed that bilateral relations are "the best in modern history, both in political and in economic fields, as well as in other spheres of life," said a statement issued by the Serbian president's office.

Vucic thanked Hungary for its support to Serbia in its European integration process, as well as for its assistance in the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic.

Bilateral trade was worth 1.76 billion euros (1.9 billion U.S. dollars) in 2019 and, despite the crisis, this figure increase by 8.37 percent in the first quarter of this year.

Vucic also recalled that he had specifically asked for additional support from Hungary to Serbia's European integration process and said he was confident that, with the help of Hungary and other countries, his country will be able to become a member of the European Union (EU).

The two leaders also reviewed cooperation projects, such as the Belgrade-Budapest railway and the construction of a gas pipeline across Bulgaria to Hungary that will connect to the so-called TurkStream pipeline.

Orban said that work is accelerating on the Belgrade-Budapest high-speed railway project with the active involvement of Chinese partners, and that these investments will mean a lot for the whole of Europe in the future.

The two countries have managed to keep the volume of bilateral trade unchanged even during the peak of the battle against the coronavirus and successfully coordinated their measures on the cross-border movement of people, Orban underlined.

He said that both countries have won the first battle against COVID-19 but acknowledged that the battle to restart the economy is still ahead.

Orban praised Serbia's economic development, predicting that it will continue to grow at a fast pace in the future, and confirmed that Serbia has gained a significant reputation in the European political arena.

"We see that Serbia is getting stronger every day, and that it will be able to contribute to the development and progress of the whole region," Orban added. Enditem
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Linkedin Norman Harsono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:42 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd86118b 1 Business Adaro,coal,lockdown,financial-report,profit Free

Coal miner PT Adaro Energis profit shrank by 17.36 percent year-on-year (yoy) to US$98.17 million in the first quarter amid falling coal prices and slumping demand in the coronavirus-ridden Asian economy.

The publicly listed coal miner, which was the most profitable company of its kind last year, booked an 11 percent yoy sales decline to $750 million in the first quarter, according to Adaros latest financial report released on Friday.

Read also: Indonesias largest power plant on schedule to operate next year

Our performance in this year's first quarter reflects the operational excellence of our core coal assets as we recorded solid production volume amid the difficult market condition," Adaro president director Garibaldi Thohir in a statement on Friday. "In this challenging time for the global economy and the coal market, we continue to improve our efficiency, ensure discipline in spending and maintain a solid balance sheet."

Adaros revenue fell, as its higher sales volume was offset by falling prices. The companys yearly sales volume rose by 8 percent to 14.39 million tons. The price of coal fell by a sharper 27.3 percent yoy to $66.6 per ton in the Jan-March period, based on Indonesias coal benchmark prices (HBA).

The companys costs also declined by 5 percent to $552 million amid reduced mining activity and fuel consumption as Adaro implemented cost control measures.

Read also: Indonesia's coal giant ventures deeper into renewable energy

The global demand for coal collapsed earlier this year as businesses and industries around Asia  the worlds largest coal market  suspended their businesses at the behest of their respective governments following the COVID-19 outbreak.

Adaro, like other Indonesian coal miners, faces export risks over Indias recently extended lockdown. The South Asian country is Indonesias second-largest coal buyer behind China.

The company, which is traded on the Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) under the stock symbol ADRO, fell 2.12 percent on Friday. The benchmark Jakarta Composite Index (JCI) fell 0.14 percent.
Thousands of kiwi kids have taken part in the country's largest backyard triathlon after the usual event was canceled due to COVID-19.

The virus caused the premature end to the 2019/2020 season of the Weet-Bix Kids TRYathlon series.

Event organisers received hundreds of messages from children around the country who were still desperate to take part, hoping to create their own DIY event in their backyards.

Sanitarium spokesperson Peter Davis says the company was thrilled to see such tenacity from the children.

We were blown away by their ability to adapt to the situation and take the initiative for their own event, and thought we'd better stick to the tradition of providing them with a medal.

More than 2,650 kids completed their own version of the TRYathlon; biking, running and swimming, sometimes in their own bathtubs to participate in the event.

Peter says all 2,658 children who took part in the events have had their medals posted to recognise their dedication and achievement.

The TRYathlon events have always been a place where families come together and these DIY TRYathlons have shown that if you have a great attitude you can achieve whatever you set out to. We are so impressed with the motivation of these children but also the wonderful support that their parents have given them too.

Peter says the event which is now entering its 29th year will need to adapt to post COVID-19 requirements.

We are working through how our events may change in response to this and may offer a virtual option in the future for those children who are unable to attend an event due to its geographic location, or if it has sold out.
Depiction of a floating classroom depicting "The Floating Water Works: A Classroom on the River," supplied by the Philadelphia Water Department. Read more

The Philadelphia Water Department plans to create a floating outdoor classroom in the tidal Schuylkill near the Fairmount Water Works, according to documents submitted to the Army Corps of Engineers.

The project would be built along the east bank of the Schuylkill, immediately downstream of the Martin Luther King Drive Bridge and almost parallel with the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The floating classroom would consist of a 5,400-square-foot structure anchored in the water, with almost 1,000 square feet of floating docks tied to it. Two ramps would connect the structure to a 1,000-square-foot platform next to the river.

It would also connect to the Schuylkill River Trail via a walkway. The goal is to educate children and the general public on water quality and conservation. It is also designed for boat access.

The plans do not include an estimate of the projects cost or time frame for when it would be built, and there was no mention of whether the coronavirus pandemic would have an impact on timing. And it would have to go through a permitting process.

The outdoor classroom is still a project in development, energized by our amazing freshwater mussel hatchery at the Fairmount Water Works Interpretive Center (FWWIC), spokesperson Laura Copeland said in an email. The Floating Water Workshop, as the mussel hatchery does, furthers PWD/FWWICs mission to connect our residents to their water environment.

The project is a collaboration with regional partners, and money is being raised through donors, she said.

The plans require a permit from the Army Corps, which will determine probable impacts on the environment, aesthetics, floodplain issues, and other concerns. (The Schuylkill is tidal up to the Fairmount dam, and the classroom would be able to be raised during a flood.)

Copeland said the permitting process will ensure that the project will not have any harmful impact on the rivers ecosystem. PWD is also applying for permits from the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection and National Marine Fisheries.

The classroom would add to another public-access improvement in the area in recent years: a $4.2 million boardwalk and trail on the river that opened in 2018. The 380-foot boardwalk juts over an island, offering an elevated view of the nearby Fairmount Water Works, the Art Museum, and Boathouse Row.

The classroom would be open six months out of the year, from June through November, as an extension of the Fairmount Water Works. From December to May, the structure would be moved to an enclosed basin at Penns Landing.

Its size should enable large classes to be held on the river, though plans were not specific as to the number of people it could accommodate.

Though plans were ready in January, a public notice was posted by the the Army Corps in mid-April. The corps has just finished soliciting comments from the public, as well as from federal, state and local agencies, on the project. Federal officials will then decide if a public hearing is needed.

The plans drew some backlash from anglers, who say it could impact shad because of that location.

Bill Gordon, a member of the Delaware River Shad Fishermens Association, regularly fishes for shad in the area where the platform would be built. He said it is one of the few banks accessible to anglers.

Gordon, of Media, said the classroom would be a threat to shad, which have made a big recovery in the river, because it would provide cover for invasive species that feed on the fish, such as snakeheads and flathead catfish.

The classroom would essentially cover all of the area that is now open, Gordon said. Right now, its a good fishery and there are a lot of fish to be caught.
From work ethic to quality assurance, construction firm owner Gabriel Btesh explains the skills essential for making it as a contractor

PANAMA CITY, PANAMA / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / According to Gabriel Btesh, simply mastering five key skills can be the making of an aspiring construction contractor. A highly successful construction company owner based in Panama City, Panama, Btesh shares the basis of what he believes it takes to make it in the industry.

"The construction industry lives and dies on five primary skills and abilities," says Gabriel Btesh, speaking from his office in Panama City, the capital of the Central and South American Republic of Panama. These, he goes on to reveal, are work ethic, communication skills, problem-solving, project management, and quality assurance.

Work ethic, Gabriel Btesh suggests, is mandatory and non-negotiable. "Without drive and motivation, nothing will get done, and you will fail," says Btesh rather succinctly.

Equally important is communication, according to Gabriel Btesh. "From listening to clients to conversing with other professionals on the job, many will argue that communication skills are some of the most important, if not the most important, in the construction industry," he explains. A good communicator, Gabriel Btesh claims, is often a good listener, too - an added bonus on any construction site.

Gabriel Btesh's third required skill is problem-solving. "Problems will always arise in construction - it's simply the nature of the business, despite all best-laid plans," suggests the expert.

What's important, though, is how such problems are handled, Gabriel Btesh believes. "Someone adept at problem-solving will stay focused, stay calm, and find the best solution in the quickest time," Btesh goes on, "and without this ability, any aspiring construction contractor may already be doomed to fail."

Gabriel Btesh has, in the past, spoken at great length on a wide variety of construction-focused topics. These include opening up about raising the bar for architectural integrity in Panama, the construction industry and its economic benefits, his philosophy for the field, and his socially conscious approach to large-scale property development. Gabriel Btesh has also shared the importance of family and ethical business practices in his construction sector pursuits.

Story continues

Finally, Gabriel Btesh turns to project management and quality assurance. Project managers may be certified, Btesh points out, or simply have developed a professional understanding of the practices, methods, concepts, and tools required to fill a project manager role.

"Two separate skills or abilities, project management and quality assurance ensure professionalism, high standards, and an ability to complete jobs on budget when utilized in tandem," explains Gabriel Btesh, speaking, he says, from great experience.

"Providing work that's backed up by quality assurance and an inherent skill in project management is what will build a construction contractor's reputation in the long term," reveals Gabriel Btesh. "This, then, in turn," adds the construction company boss, wrapping up, "is what will attract future clients and ensure success, not just in the coming weeks and months, but in coming years and decades as well."

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An International trade and Investment lawyer, Francis Korankye-Sakyi has said that Ghana has adequate legal regime on money laundering but the main problem facing it is the satisfactory implementation of the laws. He intimated for example that apart from Act 930 and the supervisory mandate of the Bank of Ghana over the activities of financial and banking institutions, Ghana has the Anti Money Laundering Act of 2008 (Act 798)(as amended)with the sole aim of fighting the canker of money laundering. Aside all these it also has the Anti Money Laundering Regulation of 2011(LI 1987). But, according to the international investment lawyer, notwithstanding all these the EU has a problem with how the laws are applied and implemented within Ghana to sufficiently curtail the criminal activities of such people.

He defined money laundering as situation where someone suddenly acquires huge money through means that are deemed suspicious or dubious. "It is normally and properly called dirty money in other jurisdictions," he said. Explaining further, he added that it is a way of trying to disguise criminally acquired money and getting it into the formal economy. He explained that as connoted by the word "laundering" which simply means washing something, money laundering is washing illegally acquired money to remove all suspicions of criminality and integrating it into an economy.

Expatiating further, the international investment lawyer said money laundering has been in existence for several years but became pronounced and demanded attention of countries across the world during the 1980's when drug trafficking was at its peak by which time the whole world realised that people were finding dirty ways of making money and also making sure same money was put into the system to destabilise economies. He pointed out that discussions on money laundering in international finance, banking and law incorporate illegal trade and proliferation of small arms and terrorism and considered as same.

Mr. Korankye-Sakyi was speaking to GBC Radio Central Morning Show on Tuesday 12th May, 2020 on the issue of why Ghana has been blacklisted over Money Laundering by European Union.

In responding to how those dirty monies are washed into the formal economy, he said there are three ways of laundering money.

The first stage, he said is called placement, where the illegally acquired money from drugs, illegal arms trading or terrorism and are deposited into the banks and various financial institutions. He continued that, assuming someone dabbles in drugs and makes money in Cape Coast, he finds a means to deposit all the money into various accounts in various banks and give himself or herself some time to cover up. "Sometimes the deposits are made not only in their countries but into offshore banks across the world". "This in law is called the predicate offence" Mr. Korankye-Sakyi added.

Explaining further, he said if financial surveillance isn't strong in the countries where the placement is done, then the first huddle is jumped. "Those who launder money sometimes work in concert with some banks and financial institutions and normally as a gang activity".

He continued that, the second stage called layering allows the money launderers to withdraw the money and invest in legitimate businesses "across the country and the world and this is done in bits and in pieces including buying properties, assets, shares and other investments."

The final stage of washing laundered money into official circles according to Mr. Korankye-Sakyi is called integration. At this stage money launderers begin to use the proceeds of their various investments across the world and begin to control the system. "At this stage, it would be seen as engaging in legitimate businesses with clean money".

The legal brain averred that, "this is normally done with some connivance from the financial sector and such persons begin to influence even how national laws are made within countries."

Reacting to why the EU has blacklisted Ghana in relation to money laundering, he said Ghana has a lot of laws including the banking act with display of notices on money laundering as a criminal offence boldly in all banking halls in the country. But, according to him, notwithstanding all these the EU has a problem with how the laws are applied and implemented within Ghana. He continued that it's worrying in the report to find Ghana among countries like Botswana, Mauritius, Panama and even Kenya that are fast becoming tax havens. Tax havens according to Korankye-Sakyi are countries who have relaxed laws concerning their financial sector with low rate of taxation for investors and financial secrecy in order to encourage more people to go and invest in those countries. For the EU to add Ghana to their blacklist is just alerting Ghana to begin to monitor operations of its international banks on the back of recent reforms in order to check such criminal dealings within the country.

Mr. Korankye-Sakyi said without proper mechanisms put in place, criminals who are able to launder money become very powerful and cause a lot of problems to the financial sectors of the countries they operate within. "They become very powerful and sometimes foster wars, terrorism and violence. When this happens, and countries are blacklisted, genuine businessmen who want to do business with the EU are marked with suspicion and that isn't good enough".

He ended by advocating that, Ghana must do better by enforcing its laws going forward such that it shall be removed from such a blacklist.
[May 15, 2020] Apple Growth Partners' Principal Named ystark! Twenty Under 40

Apple (News - Alert) Growth Partners (AGP), award-winning accounting and business advisory firm, proudly announces tax principal Mark Lapikas, CPA, CGMA, MTax, MBA, as one of ystark!'s Twenty Under 40 recipients for 2020. Lapikas will be recognized during the 13th annual Twenty Under 40 awards event hosted later this year. In partnership with the Canton Regional Chamber of Commerce and The Canton Repository, ystark!'s Twenty Under 40 recognizes leaders that work or live in Stark County across multiple industry sectors. Recipients are selected on career acumen, community service, and personal and professional accomplishments. As a graduate from Canton Central Catholic High School, Lapikas continued his career trajectory in Northeastern Ohio, completing his post-secondary education at the University of Akron. Lapikas is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA). He began his career with AGP in 2006 and has quickly worked the ranks to become a principal in July 2018. Prior to his promotion as principal, Lapikas was the former director of tax, where he successfully managed the firm's tax department. In this ole, Lapikas was appointed by AGP Chairman, Chuck Mullen, to help open and initially manage the firm's newly debuted office in Canton.



"Mark was a significant player in opening our Canton office. As a Massillon native, Mark had an established client base in Stark County, which motivated our firm to open our brand-new office in Belden Village," says Mullen. "Mark exemplifies the Shared Values within our firm through his professional achievements and community involvement, which is why he makes an excellent Twenty Under 40 recipient." After opening the Canton office, Lapikas was appointed to the firm's Executive Committee, as he helped onboard a new full-time senior tax manager to maintain the day-to-day operations of the Belden Village location.

"Our firm trusted Mark to help establish a physical presence in Canton in 2018, and since then, we've grown our client base within Stark County. Mark's local knowledge and leadership were critical to expanding our footprint in Northeastern Ohio," comments Mullen. "Mark is an excellent example of a young professional that is both dedicated to his career and community." About Apple Growth Partners Apple Growth Partners is an award-winning accounting and business advisory firm with more than 75 years of helping grow local businesses. With offices in Cleveland, Akron, Canton, and Kent, AGP offers a full range of services, including audit and assurance, tax planning and compliance, business valuation, litigation consulting, employee stock ownership plans, and transaction advisory services. To learn more, visit www.applegrowth.com. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005540/en/

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Tourists appeared ready to roam Grand Canyon National Park again after it partially reopened Friday, despite objections from Navajo officials and others that it could hurt efforts to control the coronavirus.

By 7:30am, more than two dozen people were enjoying viewpoints along the South Rim.

Among them were friends Jack Covington from Texas and Judy Smith from Tucson, Arizona. They had planned their trip to the Grand Canyon a year ago since Covington had never seen it. They changed their plans and were visiting other places in northern Arizona when they found out the park would be open.

'We figured wed go for an adventure, and we got lucky,' Smith said.

The Grand Canyon had been closed since April 1, one of the last big national parks to shut down completely to visitors. At the time, health officials in Coconino County said keeping the park open put employees, residents and tourists at risk.

A spokeswoman for Coconino County Health and Human Services did not immediately return messages seeking comment Friday.

Recent Baylor University graduate Cady Malachowski takes a photo with Andrew Fink at the Grand Canyon on Friday

Tourists are once again roaming portions of Grand Canyon National Park when it partially reopened Friday morning, despite objections that the action could exacerbate the coronavirus pandemic

A Park Ranger blocks off a trail along Rim Drive at the Grand Canyon Friday in Grand Canyon, Arizona

Park officials said the South Rim entrance will only open from 6-10 a.m. through Monday. Commercial services within the park remain closed. Those include hiking trails, visitors centers, hotels and restaurants - the places people tend to congregate. Visitors were told to bring food, water and hand sanitizer. There are no overnight accommodations available. Some restrooms along with portable ones were available.

Meanwhile, the residential area where more than 2,000 people live year-round was cordoned off with cones and barrels to keep visitors away from the housing areas. About 20 miles (32 kilometers) of roadway were accessible to tourists that allow them to walk along the rim of the canyon and stand at a number of viewpoints.

'We saw this route as a good option to reopen,' Grand Canyon spokeswoman Lily Daniels said. 'Were kind of mirroring how the operational stance was prior to us closing, that was a phased closure.'

It reopened Friday, in line with the expiration of Gov. Doug Duceys stay-at-home order.

Signs went up reminding tourists to keep their distance from another and stay in groups of less than 10. Park employees also were giving friendly reminders, Daniels said.

Guests arrived at the Grand Canyon on Friday from as early at 7:30am. The National Park has increased recreational access at the South Rim to selected viewpoints

U.S. Park Rangers close the entrance to the Grand Canyon for the day. The South Rim will reopen May 15-18 for incoming traffic from 6-10 a.m. with limited day use access

Andrew Fink takes a photo of recent Baylor University graduate Cady Malachowski at the Grand Canyon on Friday

'Its mostly self-awareness, but we are still encouraging the same guidelines that the CDC is putting out,' she said.

The National Park Service says it is working with federal, state and local public health authorities to closely monitor the pandemic and using a phased approach to increase access on a park-by-park basis.

'This initial reopening phase will increase access to our public lands in a responsible way by offering the main feature of the park for the public, the view of the canyon, while reducing the potential exposure of COVID-19 to our nearly 2,500 residents,' Grand Canyon National Park Superintendent Ed Keable said.

The Grand Canyon will also be open from Friday to Monday of Memorial Day weekend with increased access and extended hours.

U.S. Park Rangers wave through the final visitor of the day before closing the entrance to the Grand Canyon for the day Friday

The National Park Service is using a phased approach to increase access on a park-by-park basis during COVID-19 pandemic

The parks gets about 6 million visitors a year, most of whom go to the South Rim. Those entrance gates were open Friday, and tourists were allowed in free. Visitors were blocked from entering at the East Rim entrance to limit travel through the Navajo Nation, where coronavirus has hit residents hard.

However, officials on the Navajo Nation, which stretches into northern Arizona, expressed disappointment at the reopening. There have been at least 3,632 positive cases and 127 deaths on the reservation, which also includes parts of New Mexico and Utah.

'We welcome the economic benefits that tourists bring, but we are also fearful of the potential negative impacts and had hoped that when the Grand Canyon closed on April 1, the park would remain closed until our positive COVID-19 numbers have flattened,' Navajo Nation President Jonathan Nez said.

The Sierra Club also cited the Navajo Nation in its criticism of the reopening. Alicyn Gitlin of the Sierra Clubs Grand Canyon Chapter said it could result in a 'patrolling and enforcement nightmare.'

'Cases in Coconino County where Grand Canyons South Rim is located are still rising,' Gitlin said. 'The large population that lives at Grand Canyon and all nearby communities are put at risk by this move.'

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and death.

Jack Covington and Judy Smith view the Grand Canyon a tourists a once again roaming portions of A Grand Canyon National Park when it partially reopened Friday morning, despite objections that the action could exacerbate the coronavirus pandemic(AP Photo/Matt York)

A visitor takes a photo at the Grand Canyon. Tourists are once again roaming portions of Grand Canyon National Park
In April Pakistan became the first export customer for the Chinese VT4/MBT-3000 tank equipped with ERA (Explosive Reactive Armor) that can defeat or degrade most kinds of anti-tank weapons. This includes high-speed metal penetrators. Pakistani tanks receiving this type of protection is important because ERA has become a lot more effective. ERA is a block of explosives that explodes when hit by solid metal or HEAT warhead used by ATGM (Anti-tank guided missiles), RPGs and some tank gun shells. HEAT forms a superhot plasma when it strikes something and the plasma can melt through most armor. The ERA explosion disrupts the formation of the plasma and prevents much of the penetration of the tanks metal armor.

First developed by Russia in the 1960s, soon other nations, like Israel, also adopted and further developed the concept. Soon ERA was also able to stop the more common high-speed metal penetrator type warheads. There are now many types of ERA and China does not export all of them. Pakistan is Chinas largest export customer and often the first to get new Chinese military tech.

In response to ERA, many current models of the ATGMs have a top attack warhead that defeats ERA by detonating as it goes over the tank and penetrating the thinner armor on top, which also lacks ERA. The only protection against this is an expensive APS (Active Protection System). China has one, the GL5 PS, in development and the VT4 tanks are among the first to receive it if the customer wants to pay half a million dollars and add a ton of weight to each APS equipped tank. At the moment GL5 is only meant for exported tanks. China cannot afford to equip its own tanks, at least not yet.

During the first incidents of ERA use against ATGMS, crews were visibly alarmed, because their armored vehicle was shaken but not penetrated. Since then crews of ERA equipped tanks are usually shown a video of ERA testing, including the interior of tanks when the ERA goes off. ERA exploding is still a danger to nearby troops and civilians but in practice this has not been a major problem.

Pakistan had been trying to create its own tank development and production capability but gave that up back in 2018 and ordered the first batch of VT4s in 2019. Pakistan would like to get several hundred. That depends on the Pakistani economy, which is in bad shape and getting worse. China expects to be paid on time for arms shipments.

Once Pakistan decided to get out of the tank manufacturing business, the army placed an order for a hundred 52 ton VT4 tanks. This is an updated version of the 330 46 ton VT1/Al Khalid tanks Pakistan already has. The Al Khalid was a joint China-Pakistan project to create a Pakistani tank that could be built in Pakistan. But basically the Al Khalid was a variant of the Chinese VT1 (also known as the MBT2000). The VT1 was the export version of the Chinese Type 90 tank. Actually, the Type 90 (an improved T-72) was not accepted by the Chinese army, which instead went with the 54 ton Type 99, a superior T-72 variant that entered service in 2001, underwent a major upgrade (the 58 ton Type 99A) in 2011 and is still in production with over a thousand in service so far. China would have built more Type 99s were the tank not so expensive (nearly $3 million each). There are more than twice as many cheaper 43 ton Type 96 tanks in service. These cost about half as much as the Type-99 and are considered adequate for most potential battlefield opponents. The VT4 is similar to the Type 99 in size, performance and price.

The VT1 entered service first in 2001 equipped with Ukrainian engines and a few other imported items but was mainly Chinese. The Al Khalid had trouble finding an engine that could handle the desert conditions on the Indian border where Indian and Pakistani tank battles tend to be fought. Because of these delays, Pakistan bought 300 Ukrainian T-80UD tanks, which are upgrades of a Russian Cold War design that could handle hot, sandy environments. That was mainly because the Ukrainian built engine which Pakistan ultimately bought for its Al Khalid.

The rest of Pakistans 2,000 tanks are based on much older (1950s) Russian models, with some upgrades. Pakistan also looked at the latest Ukraine had to offer but decided to go with China, which has access to more advanced tech than Ukraine and is willing to be competitive when it comes to price. This confidence in China was based on how the 2012 agreement worked out. For that deal, Pakistan and China also agreed to jointly market the Al Khalid tank. There were no customers because there were a lot of improved T-72s on the market, including the Chinese MBT-2000. Al Khalid was more expensive to develop because Pakistan began the project in 1991 and made a lot of mistakes. The Al Khalid ended up costing ten percent more than the MBT-2000 and Pakistan was unable to keep its costs under control. When it came time to develop and install a major upgrade for Al Khalid it was pointed out that China already had what Pakistan wanted in the VT4. In the end the Al Khalid demonstrated why Pakistan has never been a major player in the arms export business and this deal with China was more for show than anything else. Same thing with the JF-17 jet fighter joint development that resulted in an expensive variant of the American F-16.

What makes T-72 variants different is the quality of the components used. The T-72 was the most successful Russian post-World War II tank design and the basic model was pretty solid and reliable. The T-72 also proved to be a good platform for variants that added new (or more) armor, better electronics and improved engines that resulted in some impressive tank models. The most outstanding of these has been the Russian 46 ton T-72B3. As proof, consider that most of the new tanks the Russian army has received since 2000 have been refurbished and much upgraded T-72B3s. Currently, the Russian Army has about 3,000 tanks in service and most (65 percent) are T-72B3s, which you hear little about. The new breakthrough design, the T-14, has fewer than a hundred in service and cuts in production (which began in 2015) were recently announced with only 10-20 a year being built. The T-14 is mostly about publicity. The T-90 has been produced in large quantities, but not for Russia. The T-90 was a 1980s project that was to incorporate T-80 features into many upgrades of the T-72. Originally it was designated the T-72BU but when Russia finally began production in 1993 it was renamed the T-90. That succeeded in making the tank an export success and most (84 percent) of those produced were for export. In fact, India and Algeria each have more T-90s in service than Russia. Worse Russia has quietly put over a third of its newly 550 built T-90s into a reserve. While the T-90s were loudly proclaimed to be the next big thing built the Russian army preferred the refurbished T-72s in the form of the T-72B3. These proved to be more reliable, something that got little publicity. While all the upgrades (new engine, gun, fire control and protection) made it nearly as expensive as the T-90, it was preferred by the troops and the older officers quietly agreed that it was a better tank than the new T-90/T-72BUs.

The best Chinese T-72 mod is the Type 99, which is 25 percent heavier than the T-72B3 and even more expensive to build. Thats because the Type 99 has better armor protection and electronics. The Chinese can afford this while the Russians cannot, its as simple as that. Chinese manufacturing capabilities are, on average, superior to what the Russians had when the Cold War ended and for tank design and production that makes a big difference. India and Pakistan have not been able to match Russian or Chinese production standards or development capabilities, which is largely due to corruption and government regulations that make it difficult to innovate and excel. Most of the best South Asia (India and Pakistan) design and production talent moves to the West. A glance at the design and development stars in the West, especially the United States, shows a lot of these South Asians playing leading roles. China managed to keep more of this talent at home and even attract some that had settled in the West to return. In the end high-tech, like everything else, is about the people creating it.
NASA on Friday set the stage for a global debate over the basic principles governing how humans will live and work on the moon, as it released the main tenets of an international pact for moon exploration called the Artemis Accords.

The accords seek to establish safety zones that would surround future moon bases to prevent what NASA, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration, called harmful interference from rival countries or companies operating in close proximity.

The accords would also permit companies to own the lunar resources they mine, a crucial element in allowing NASA contractors to convert the moons water ice into ingredients for rocket fuel or mine lunar minerals to construct landing pads.

The accords are a key part of NASAs effort to court allies around its plan to build a long-term presence on the lunar surface under its Artemis moon programme.

What were doing is we are implementing the Outer Space Treaty with the Artemis Accords, NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine told Reuters news agency, referring to a 1967 international pact that emphasises that space should be used for peaceful rather than military uses.

The framework will be used as an incentive for nations to adhere to US norms of behaviour in space, he added.

It applies to Low Earth Orbit; it applies to the moon as well, Bridenstine said. The accords also require countries to adopt standards of the United Nations Space Debris Mitigation Guidelines  which govern the prevention of hazardous space debris  and the UN Convention on Registration of Objects Launched into Outer Space, which would require countries to provide orbital details of their space objects.

The US Congress passed a law in 2015 allowing companies to own the resources they mine in outer space, but no such laws exist in the international community. The Artemis Accords, consistent with the space policy of the administration of US President Donald Trump, appear to clear the way for companies to mine the moon under international law and urge countries to enact similar national laws that would bind their private sectors space operations.

Why would private companies take the risk of going to mine resources if the legal situation was they could be kept from owning them? Lori Garver, former deputy administrator of NASA, asked Reuters. So anything this does to clear any of that up could really help advance progress in space development.

China and Russia

Reuters reported earlier this month that the Trump administration was drawing up the Artemis Accords.

In response, Russias space agency chief Dmitry Rogozin criticised Washington for excluding Russia from early negotiations over the space exploration pact, drawing parallels with US foreign policy in the Middle East.

The principle of invasion is the same, whether it be the Moon or Iraq. The creation of a coalition of the willing is initiated, Rogozin wrote on Twitter. Only Iraq or Afghanistan will come out of this.

China said it was willing to cooperate with all parties on lunar exploration to make a greater contribution in building a community with shared future for mankind, a spokesperson for Chinas foreign ministry said in a statement faxed to Reuters.

The safety zones  while intended to encourage coordination  have prompted questions on whether the accords align with the Outer Space Treaty, which states the moon and other celestial bodies are not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means.

The size of the safety zones would vary depending on the nature of the site they surround and would not constitute appropriation, Bridenstine said.

They would follow the principle that basically says Im gonna stay out of your way, youre gonna stay out of my way, and we can all operate in this space, he added.

However, there is a question over who determines the sizes of the safety zones, said Ram Jakhu, associate professor at McGill Universitys Institute of Air and Space Law in Canada. Safety zones are necessary, but they can also be abused in a way that it may become appropriation.

But Mike Gold, NASAs associate administrator for international relations, told Reuters the language on moon mining shouldnt worry other nations.

The principles that are being put forward here is nothing that we believe any responsible spacefaring nation would disagree with, he said.

Via the Artemis Accords, we hope that the future will look a lot more like Star Trek, and a lot less like Star Wars by getting ahead of these issues, Gold said.
Left parties on Friday said that Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's economic package for the agricultural sector would do nothing to help farmers in distress and is yet another "mega repackaging".

Sitharaman on Friday said the third tranche of economic package will deal with giving relief to agriculture and allied industries.

She said the package would also focus on infrastructure and building capacities in agriculture and allied activities.

"Agricultural distress was deepening even before the (COVID-19) pandemic. Rabi harvest is still not procured at MSP. Kharif sowing will begin in June. There's acute shortage of seeds, fertilisers and other inputs. This package doesn't even recognise this, let alone financially assisting farmers," CPI(M) general secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted.

"Mega repackaging once again. Part 3 of the Rs 20 lakh crore financial package on agriculture deals more with post-COVID period rather than addressing the crisis itself and its devastating impact on rural India," he said.

Yechury said all the measures suggested by Sitharaman were mid term and long term. There were no immediate measures to provide relief, he claimed.

"FM had no answers when asked what are the new expenditures! Obfuscation - Modi style," Yechury tweeted.

All India Kisan Sabha president Hannan Mollah also criticised the package and said that it was "conspiracy to permanently lockdown peasant agriculture".

"The package on agriculture announced today by the finance minister is nothing but yet another great betrayal of peasantry. The package did not heed the demands of peasantry for immediate provision of Rs 7,500/ month to peasant and agriculture workers households, comprehensive loan waiver to free the peasant households from indebtedness among others, he said.

CPI general secretary D Raja also said that none of the measures announced could address the ground situation of hunger and joblessness.

"Most of it ongoing schemes. Clear attempt to centralise powers in the hands of Union government. The package failed to address the current crisis, problem of migrants, daily wagers and the poor.How can India justify the hunger deaths?" asked Raja.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Oscar winner Diane Keaton showcased her kooky yet conservative sense of style while also protecting herself from the coronavirus during an outing in Brentwood on Thursday.

The eccentric 74-year-old - who's high risk due to her age and asthma - matched her grey CDC-recommended mask with her chic hat and tailored plaid pantsuit.

LA Mayor Eric Garcetti extended the stay-at home order 'beyond May 15' due to the 35,392 confirmed COVID-19 cases in LA County, which has led to 1,711 deaths as of Thursday.

Dapper! Oscar winner Diane Keaton showcased her kooky yet conservative sense of style while also protecting herself from the coronavirus during an outing in Brentwood on Thursday

High risk due to her age and asthma: The eccentric 74-year-old matched her grey CDC-recommended mask with her chic hat and tailored plaid pantsuit

On Wednesday, Keaton (born Hall) shared a deepfake video of President Trump's face superimposed on a defiant toddler deflecting questions about his handling of the global pandemic.

'Sarah Paulson sent this to me this morning!' Diane - who boasts 2M social media followers - wrote.

'This little boy made me laugh out loud for the first time in two months!'

The funny clip originated on Monday's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live where they doctored a real video of a girl called Lily, who was accused by her mother of 'touching' their pet Jude's food.

'This me laugh out loud for the first time in two months!' On Wednesday, Keaton shared a deepfake video of President Trump's face superimposed on a defiant toddler deflecting questions about his handling of the global pandemic

The real deal: The funny clip originated on Monday's episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live where they doctored a real video of a girl called Lily, who was accused by her mother of 'touching' their pet Jude's food

The Poms producer-star has been far more active on social media while in quarantine at her lavish 8K-square-foot Pacific Palisades mansion alongside 15-year-old Golden Retriever, Emmie.

Keaton is most likely an empty nester now that her 25-year-old daughter Dexter and 20-year-old son Duke have both grown up.

Diane never wed despite heated romances with her castmates Jack Nicholson, Warren Beatty, Al Pacino, and Woody Allen.

'Let's just get that straight. That one's important. I haven't been on a date in, I would say, 35 years. No dates,' the LA native confessed in the August edition of InStyle. 'I have a lot of male friends. I have a lot of friends, but no dates. No mwah-mwah.'

'Kook': Diane has been more active on social media while in quarantine at her lavish 8K-square-foot Pacific Palisades mansion alongside 15-year-old Golden Retriever, Emmie (pictured May 7)

Never married: The Poms producer-star is most likely empty nester now that her 25-year-old daughter Dexter (L) and 20-year-old son Duke (R) have both grown up

Keaton will perform on next Monday's virtual concert Night of Covenant House Stars also featuring Jon Bon Jovi, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, Dolly Parton, and Dionne Warwick.

The homelessness coronavirus benefit livestreams on Amazon Prime Video, Broadway on Demand, iHeartRadio Broadway, Facebook, Twitch, YouTube, and Stars in the House.

Diane spent September 16-October 19 in Boston shooting Dennis Dugan's indie rom-com Love, Weddings & Other Disasters alongside Andrew Bachelor, Jeremy Irons, and Maggie Grace.

The movie will have its world premiere at the Toronto Film Festival, which is still scheduled for early September despite the fast-spreading respiratory illness - according to Variety.

Streaming next Monday! Keaton will next perform on the virtual concert Night of Covenant House Stars also featuring Jon Bon Jovi, Meryl Streep, Martin Short, and Dolly Parton
Drug dealer Kenneth Hunter, 41, was jailed for seven years at Newcastle Crown Court

A cocaine-dealing chip shop owner has been jailed for seven years and had his 19,500 speedboat seized after an industrial-sized cash-counting machine was found wrapped in a bin bag inside the hull.

Drug dealer Kenneth Hunter, 41, spent 133,000 on two food businesses and a collection of flashy vehicles - including a 50,000 Range Rover and a 16,500 'party bus' - despite having no registered source of income from 2016 until 2019.

He was arrested at his home in Houghton-le-Spring, Sunderland, on May 2 after an eight-month-long police operation ended with his 'trusted lieutenant' William Trott, 39, being arrested for driving while disqualified and then later for conspiracy to supply class A drugs.

Jonathan Walker, prosecuting, told Newcastle Crown Court: 'The Crown's case is the co-accused Trott was the trusted lieutenant of Hunter, a delivery man who was at the beck and call of Hunter and would do much of his running around and delivering.'

Police officers watched as Hunter sat in his Range Rover nearby when Trott met their associates to exchange money and drugs. One meeting involved two kilos at a McDonald's in Sunderland last October.

The pair were oblivious as officers from Northumbria Police's Priority and Organised Crime team (POCT) tracked their movements.

When disqualified driver Trott got into his car, officers pounced and arrested him.

Hunter spent 133,000 on two food businesses and a collection of flashy vehicles - including a 50,000 Range Rover (pictured) and a 16,500 'party bus' - despite having no registered source of income from 2016 until 2019

The arrest triggered a search of his home where a haul of two kilos of cocaine and 12 kilos of amphetamine were discovered along with other items of drug paraphernalia.

As Trott's home was searched police watched Hunter 'neurotically driving backwards and forwards' between Trott's street and his home.

Hunter 'panicked' and called him - which police saw flash up on Trott's phone because they had seized it at that point.

Hunter was arrested later that day at his home, which he rented at a 'significant monthly cost'.

Hunter also owned an Audi S5 (pictured), a 20,000 Mercedes, a Vivaro van, a Yamaha racing bike worth 5,800, a Honda motorbike worth 6,000, a Honda CRF motorbike worth 3,700

A search of the house led officers to a receipt for a 19,500 speedboat (pictured) which was tracked down and seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act along with a range of other vehicles. Inside officers found an industrial cash counting machine in a black bin liner

A search of the house led officers to a receipt for a 19,500 speedboat which was tracked down and seized under the Proceeds of Crime Act along with a range of other vehicles.

Newcastle Crown Court heard he had a 50,000 Range Rover, a 'party-style bus' which was on ebay for 16,500, an Audi S5, a 20,000 Mercedes, a Vivaro van, a Yamaha racing bike worth 5,800, a Honda motorbike worth 6,000, a Honda CRF motorbike worth 3,700 and a Quicksilver speedboat worth 19,500.

Inside his speedboat they found an industrial cash counting machine in a black bin liner.

William Trott (pictured), 39, was arrested for driving while disqualified

Jonathan Walker, prosecuting, said: 'The defendants, over seven to eight months were involved in a conspiracy between themselves and other parties to supply cocaine in significant quantities.

'Hunter would deliberately keep himself out of the picture. On a number of occasions he attended at the scene of various collections and deliveries and was able to observe from close by.'

Inquiries with HMRC showed he had no legitimate income between 2016 and 2019, yet he owned thousands of pounds worth of vehicles.

Hunter admitted conspiracy to supply drugs and was jailed for seven years, while Trott, also from Houghton-le-Spring, admitted conspiracy to supply drugs and possession with intent to supply.

Trott will be sentenced on May 26 after his case was adjourned to allow time for him to provide evidence of the good work he says he has been doing in prison.

Following the case, Detective Sergeant Amber Renton said: 'Our officers work incredibly hard to make sure our communities are safe and to prevent harmful substances being sold on our streets.

In Trott's home a haul of two kilos of cocaine and 12 kilos of amphetamine was discovered along with other items of drugs paraphernalia

'We know that people's lives can be destroyed from drug use and it is our duty to pursue those offenders who have a role in supplying, distributing and dealing these awful substances.

'As part of Operation Sentinel, our joined up approach to tackling serious and organised crime, we will continue to carry out strike action, searches and seizing items to disrupt and prevent offenders continuing their illicit activities.

'I'm pleased with today's sentencing and hope it serves as a warning to anyone involved in this kind of criminality. We will pursue you and bring you before the courts and thanks to the Proceeds of Crime Act, we will strip you of your assets and anything of value your life of crime has afforded you.'
The UK government has spent around 20m on contracts for HIV and malaria drugs including one touted by Donald Trump which has little or no evidence of working to treat Covid-19.

Donald Trump promoted hydroxycholoroquine as a 'game changer' in the fight to end the pandemic as recently as yesterday, but a recent survey found it did not improve the odds of survival in 600 coronavirus patients.

According to The Guardian, the government has entered 16 contracts with British companies for hydroxychloroquine, and chloroquine phosphate used for malaria and other diseases and placed major orders for lopinavir-ritonavir, used to treat HIV, in the last two months.

The UK government began ordering hydroxychloroquine around the same time Donald Trump suggested it could be a cure for the coronavirus infection

Dr Rick Bright, the US' former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority. revealed his caution about prescribing two anti-malaria drugs on Thursday

There is no evidence that any of the drugs can effectively treat Covid-19, although testing is now being carried out in the hope that the drugs could be used to keep people out hospital and ease the virus' symptoms.

Yesterday Donald Trump said: 'We've had a tremendous response to hydroxychloroquine,' adding: 'A lot of people have sworn by it.'

His comments came the same day Dr Rick Bright revealed his caution about prescribing two anti-malaria drugs touted by Trump - chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine  without benefit of rigorous double-blind scientific study.

Bright is the former director of the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority.

Research in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that the lopinavir-ritonavir treatment 'did not show any observable benefit for patients with severe coronavirus 2019 beyond standard care,' according to The Guardian.

It comes after a survey in New York found hydroxycholoroquine had little impact on survival rates of patients.

Of the 600-some coronavirus patients treated at 22 New York City area hospitals, some were treated with hydroxychloroquine alone, others were treated with the malaria drug plus the antibiotic azithromycin, and a third group got only the typical supportive care.

Tests continue to be carried out on how effective hydroxychloroquine is in treating Covid-19 patients

'We don't see a statistically significant difference between patients who took the drugs and those who did not,' Dr David Holtgrave, who led the SUNY Albany study told CNN.

The UK government started purchasing around 2m worth of hydroxychloroquine tablets on March 11, around the time Donald Trump claimed it could be a cure for the virus. There has been no evidence to suggest this.

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: 'Clinical trials are currently under way to assess whether existing medicines are safe and effective for treating Covid-19, with more than 10 drugs being tested in this way.'
Aircraft at Tan Son Nhat Airport in HCMC in April 2020. Photo by VnExpress/Quynh Tran.

The establishment of new carriers would resume from 2022 as the aviation industry recovers under the most optimistic scenario, the Transport Ministry proposed.

The ministry estimated Vietnams aviation industry to see 42.7 million passengers this year, down 46 percent from a year prior. The figure doubles its worst-case-scenario forecast in February, which was a 23 percent drop to 61.2 million passengers.

Under the new scenario, domestic carriers would carry 32.6 million passengers this year, down 40 percent from a year ago.

"Currently, the fleet of domestic carriers operate 214 aircraft. Vietnamese carriers have just resumed domestic routes following the social distancing ease on April 23, alongside some international cargo flights with a payload ratio of less than 50 percent," Deputy Transport Minister Le Anh Tuan said.

Under the most optimistic scenario, the transport ministry stated Vietnams aviation market figures for the next two years could recover against 2019. Specifically, the aviation industry is forecast to reach 78 million passengers in 2022, of which domestic airlines would handle 57 million.

The government now needs to focus on reopening domestic and international routes and support existing airlines to overcome difficulties caused by the Covid-19 crisis.

In its response to the Covid-19 pandemic, Vietnam banned most domestic and international flights in March and April, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses for the two largest carriers, Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet.

The carriers have resumed domestic flights, while international flights remain suspended except for special ones approved by the government.

Vietnam has five commercial airlines in operation: Vietnam Airlines, Jetstar Pacific, Vietjet Air, Vietnam Air Services Company (VASCO) and Bamboo Airways.

Airports across Vietnam served near 116 million passengers last year, up 12 percent from 2018, with Vietnam Airlines and Vietjet dominating the market.
A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind.
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New York: United States' special envoy Zalmay Khalilzad's advice to India that it should talk to Taliban forces about its concerns on terrorism has earned criticisms from American scholar Michael Rubin.

"His advice is poor and suggests Khalilzad has become less a statesman and more of a gambler who, mired in losses, believes that if he is allowed to play one more hand, he can somehow pull victory from the jaws of defeat," Rubin told ANI.

Questioning Khalizad's strategy, he said, "Its fatal flaw was Khalilzad's belief that the Taliban was an independent and indigenous political movement even though its leaders reside in Pakistan and take commands from Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency. It is the failure to address this simple fact that inflates Taliban ambitions."

"Not only did Khalilzad cut the elected Afghan government out of the pact's negotiation, but he also long refused meaningful input from New Delhi when its input could have addressed key weaknesses," he said.

"While Khalilzad may press India to engage the Taliban, it is unclear whether the US government would accept the same advice if the shoe was on the other foot. In 1995, the United States formally designated Hezbollah to be a terrorist group. Yet today, Hezbollah maintains a growing presence not only in Lebanon, but also operates in Syria. Should Indian envoys visit Washington and demand the State Department engage Hezbollah, they would be politely shown the door," the American scholar told the Indian news agency.

He made the remarks at a time when Khalilzad recently said India-Taliban engagement should take place.

India is an important force in Afghanistan and it would be appropriate for that [India-Taliban] engagement to take place, Khalilzad told The Hindu.

The long-awaited historic accord between Washington and the Taliban that set the stage to terminate the longest war in modern American history and paved way for the intra-Afghan talks was signed on February 29.
Just 1,500 coronavirus contact tracers out of a promised 18,000 had been appointed by the start of this week, a Cabinet minister has admitted.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said that while 'about 15,000' applicants have signed up to be a tracer, just 1,500 people have actually been hired.

Ministers promised 18,000 tracers would be recruited by mid-May as part of Number 10's three-step 'test, track and trace' battle-plan to fight the virus.

MPs have described the blunder as a 'shambles' and have demanded to know if the target will be met in time for June, when schools are set to reopen.

It is the latest in a series of shortcomings for the Government, which failed to hit its 100,000 daily testing target for seven days in a row this month.

Ministers hope contact tracing will reduce transmission of COVID-19 by identifying and alerting people who may have been exposed to the virus, so they can protect themselves and others around them by self-isolating.

The contact tracers are set to be deployed at the same time as the NHSX mobile app, which is being trialled on residents on the Isle of Wight.

The app works using Bluetooth signals to detect when two phones come close to each other. When someone develops symptoms of COVID-19, they notify the app which then uses the Bluetooth log to inform other users that they may also have the virus.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis (left) said that while 'about 15,000' applications have been received, only 1,500 people have currently been hired as Covid-19 contact tracers. As the Government's mid-May deadline for the recruitment of 18,000 recruits passed, shadow cabinet office minister Rachel Reeves (right) called the approach 'a shambles'

The Government will launch a widespread contact tracing scheme to track down people who have been in touch with infected patientsz

Mr Lewis told Sky News today: 'I don't think we've got to 18,000 [contact tracers] just yet. I think there's about 15,000 applications... we're looking to, as you say, get up to 18,000.'

Pushed again on how many of the 15,000 applicants have been appointed, he added: 'As of this morning, I'm not sure of exactly how many of the 15,000 have been hired. Earlier in the week, it was about 1,500. It would have gone up since then.'

How contact tracers will help Britain recover from Covid lockdown An army of 18,000 contact tracers will be trained in the coming weeks to help Britain recover from its lockdown. The job of these people will be to quiz anyone who tests positive for the coronavirus about who they have been in contact with and where they have been around the time they become ill and the days before it. The tracers will make a list of people considered to have been put at risk by the patient, and those people will be notified that they might have the coronavirus. If contacted by tracers, people will be asked to self-isolate and to be vigilant about changes in their health and about social distancing. If they become ill, they will be tested. If a contact becomes infected, the same process begins for them and their social network. The idea is to keep track of how the virus moves through social circles and to try to stay a step ahead of it and prevent wider spread. Experts expect to be able to track at least 80 per cent of the people a coronavirus patient has come into contact with within 24 hours of diagnosis. Council staff and civil servants are expected to be at the frontline of this effort. Advertisement

The job of the tracers will be to quiz anyone who tests positive about who they have been in contact with and where they have been around the time they become ill and the days before it.

The tracers will make a list of people considered to have been put at risk by the patient, and those people will be notified that they might have the disease.

As the Government's mid-May deadline for the recruitment drive passed, shadow cabinet office minister Rachel Reeves called the approach 'a shambles'.

In a letter to Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, Ms Reeves called for answers as to whether there will be enough contact tracers in place to allow the UK to ease its way out of the current lockdown.

Ms Reeves said Labour thought it was a 'mistake' to have stopped contact tracing in March and said it 'supported' moves to establish a 'comprehensive strategy for contact tracing both through the use of a suitable mobile phone app and a manual tracing service'.

Addressing concerns surrounding some children returning to school in June, Ms Reeves said it was the Government's responsibility to make sure schools were safe and to have a comprehensive contact tracing system in place.

'The Government do need to reassure teachers, teaching staff at schools, parents and pupils that it is safe to return - and unless they do that, teachers aren't going to go back into the classroom and parents aren't going to send the young people,' Ms Reeves told Sky News.

Describing some of the steps needed to ensure this, she added: 'That's through a combination of measures.

'Testing, for example, where I'm afraid the approach so far has been a shambles, ensuring that there are enough rooms in the class to teach children if the class sizes are going to be reduced.

'The onus really is on Government to prove that it is safe and to work with the teachers and the teaching unions rather than treating them as some sort of enemy to progress because that's not going to help anyone.'

In a letter to Cabinet Office Minister Michael Gove, Ms Reeves also questioned the reported hiring of private firm Serco to put in place the manual contact tracing team. (Above, contact tracers working in Brussels, Belgium)

In her letter to Mr Gove, Ms Reeves also questioned the reported hiring of private firm Serco to put in place the manual contact tracing team.

'It is my understanding from these reports that Serco have been asked to provide 18,000 staff, despite some public health professionals suggesting as many as 50,000 staff are needed, and that these staff will be provided with just one day of training before starting work,' she said.

'Contact tracing is a skilled role, handling highly sensitive information, the consequences of which are profound both in terms of public health and the economy.

'Yet job advertisements for manual contact tracing staff are presented as a "work from home opportunity", at an hourly rate of less than the living wage.'

The job of the contact tracers will be to quiz anyone who tests positive for the coronavirus about who they have been in contact with and where they have been around the time they become ill and the days before it.

The tracers will make a list of people considered to have been put at risk by the patient, and those people will be notified that they might have the coronavirus.

If contacted by tracers, people will be asked to self-isolate and to be vigilant about changes in their health and about social distancing. If they become ill, they will be tested.

If a contact becomes infected, the same process begins for them and their social network.

The idea is to keep track of how the virus moves through social circles and to try to stay a step ahead of it and prevent wider spread.

Experts expect to be able to track at least 80 per cent of the people a coronavirus patient has come into contact with within 24 hours of diagnosis.

Council staff and civil servants are expected to be at the frontline of this effort.

It comes as advertisements by high street pharmacist Boots seeking to recruit an army of hundreds of unpaid volunteers to test people for coronavirus sparked criticism, with unions saying it took the 'notion of volunteering way too far'.

Up to 800,000 Britons could be told to self-isolate EVERY DAY under rigorous contact tracing regime in worst-case scenario, study suggests

By VANESSA CHALMERS for MailOnline

Up to 800,000 Brits could be told to self-isolate each day through a contact tracing regime, if the government's draconian lockdown was lifted today.

Rigorous contract tracing is due to start within weeks as part of Number 10's three-step 'test, track and trace' battle-plan to fight the virus.

It involves instructing Brits to self-isolate if they have been in contact with someone who has either tested positive for COVID-19 or developed tell-tale symptoms.

But it could impact tens of thousands of people every day, according to researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM).

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine estimate that for every 5,000 new cases in the UK every day, 190,000 people would be told to self isolate by contact tracers. It goes up to 770,000 for every 20,000 new cases. With just app-based tracing, the number of people that would need to self isolate reduces because an app doesn't identify as many people

They produced estimates based on the effects of manual contact tracing or the use of an app - both of which the government plans to use. But the team did not look at the effects of both methods combined, which would likely overlap.

They projected for every 5,000 new cases in the UK every day, 68,000 people could be asked to quarantine themselves each day if officials relied solely on a tracing app.

But this dropped to just 54,000 people under the same scenario, if Brits were limited to seeing a maximum of four people each day to contain the outbreak.

Under a regime using only an army of volunteers to manually trace the spread of the virus, the figure was as high as 190,000 people a day, or 140,000 with a limit on the size of social gatherings.

When the same model was applied to 20,000 new cases a day - a situation experts believe could be likely if the lockdown was lifted today - it suggested up to 770,000 people may be asked to self-isolate each day through manual tracing, or 580,000 if Brits are told to stick to seeing only four people each day.

While the figure was in the region of 220,000-270,000 under the same scenario for the app.

All those people may be asked to stay indoors for 14 days in case they were infected with the virus.

Around 3,000 people are testing positive for COVID-19 per day in Britain but that figure does not include thousands of patients with either mild or no symptoms.
U.S. transfers to Ukraine equipment, incl. medical one worth $25 mln to use in JFO area

The United States, as part of security assistance, has handed over to Ukraine night vision devices, thermals, walkie-talkie sets and medical equipment with a total value of more than $25 million for use in the Joint Forces Operation (JFO) area, the U.S. Embassy said.

"Despite COVID19, our security assistance to Ukraine continues! This week, the Office of Defense Cooperation received more than $25 million in night vision devices, thermals, radios, and medical equipment for Ukraine to use in the JFO zone," the Embassy of the United States in Ukraine said on Twitter on Friday.

The Embassy also said that the United States stands strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression.
(Newser)  More than two years after she was rescued by Pakistani forces, the FBI is offering a reward for the Taliban-linked captors of US woman Caitlan Coleman and her husband, Canadian citizen Joshua Boyle. A reward notice states that the government will give up to $1 million for information leading to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible. Colemanwho gave birth to three children during her five years in captivityand Boyle were kidnapped by the Haqqani Network soon after they arrived in Afghanistan in 2012, the Guardian reports. "The FBI is dedicated to not only bring American citizens back home, but also to bring them justice after years in captivity," said FBI official Timothy R. Slater, though he did not explain why the bureau waited until now to offer a reward.

story continues below

Coleman is now estranged from Boyle, who was charged with sexual assault and forcible confinement soon after they arrived in Canada. She has custody of their children and now lives in Pennsylvania. The charges against Boyle were dismissed last year. Coleman says Boyle had Taliban sympathies which she did not share. "For the perspective of people who may still have questions of whether our five years in captivity was 'voluntary,' this certainly does clear that up," she tells ABC. "The US government wouldn't offer a million dollars to catch our kidnappers if they thought otherwise." Last year, she said she feared Boyle more than the Taliban guards during their years in captivity. (Read more Caitlan Coleman stories.)
I want Joe Biden in the White House, and I trust that hes got a process for putting together the right team to help him do that from the vice president on down to the cabinet members, Duckworth said. I personally have always answered the call when my country has asked me to serve.
COVID-19: UK Extends Deadlines For Input On Tax Reforms

by Jason Gorringe, Tax-News.com, London

15 May 2020

The UK tax agency has extended various deadlines for responses to consultations and for other work on tax reform, in light of COVID-19.

Most consultation deadlines have been extended by three months, including on the Plastic Packaging Tax, a call for evidence on Vehicle Excise Duty, and a consultation on the HMRC Charter. The Government has said it remains committed to implementing the planned reforms.

Consultations on duty-free and tax-free goods carried by passengers and on the VAT treatment of overseas goods will continue to the existing timetable. This is to provide businesses with clarity as early as possible on the policies that will apply from the end of the Brexit transition period, and to provide them with enough time to prepare.

The Government has confirmed, too, that it is going ahead with its fundamental review of Business Rates, and a call for evidence will be published in the coming months.

Alongside the consultation extensions, the publication of some documents announced at Budget 2020, including work on tax conditionality and a consultation on stronger penalties for tobacco tax evasion, will be pushed back until the Autumn, the Government has said.

The Government has said it will set out in due course when it will publish other tax policy documents, including the consultation on aviation taxation and a call for evidence on disguised remuneration schemes.
PYONGYANG: In an unexpected move, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is reported to have replaced the head of the countrys main intelligence agency and the Supreme Guard Commander, who is in charge of protecting him and his family.

According to the South Korea based-English daily 'Korea Herald', Kim had replaced Jang Kil-song as director of the countrys main intelligence agency Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB) in December 2019 with Lt Gen. Rim Kwang-il. Rim was also reportedly appointed as a member of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers Party.

Meanwhile, Army General Yun Jong-rin, who had been the North Korean leader Kim's chief bodyguard since 2010, has been replaced by Kwak Chang-sik as the new Supreme Guard commander. Yun Jong-rin is also a member of the ruling party's central committee, according to reports.

According to the South Korean Unification Ministry, Lt. General Rim Kwang-il was promoted as the director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau, replacing Jang Kil-song last December.

North Koreas RGB is believed to be involved in some of the most high-profile attacks, espionage, clandestine operations and cyber warfare the regime has carried out against, mostly, South Korea, Japan and the US. South Korea believes that it was RGB, which orchestrated the 2010 torpedoing of South Korean naval vessel Cheonan, in which 46 sailors were killed. At the time, hardline military general and former NK nuclear envoy Kim Yong-chol was heading the agency since its initiation in 2009.

The North Korean leader later appointed Rim as a member of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers Party in December, a move pointing to his rising influence in the party.

Whereas Kwak Chang-sik is believed to have been appointed the new Supreme Guard commander last April, replacing Gen. Yun Jong-rin, who has been protecting Kim since 2010. Kwak is not much known to the outside world and his name began appearing in state media last year.

It is still not clear why the two former top-ranking serving officials were replaced. The South Korean Unification Ministry also refused to confirm the position of Kims younger sister Kim Yo-jong, who has received spotlight recently as the possible heir apparent of the regime.

It is believed that she could be either part of the Organization and Guidance Department, Propaganda and Agitation Department, the Ministry said.
Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) -Steppe Gold Limited (TSX: STGO) ("Steppe Gold" or "the Company") is extremely pleased to announce its financial results for the quarter ended March 31, 2020.

The Company announces that the Company's interim consolidated financial results for the first fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2020 have been filed on SEDAR.

The full version of the Condensed Interim Consolidated Financial Statements and Management's Discussion & Analysis can be viewed on the Company's website at www.steppegold.com or under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com. Amounts are expressed in United States dollars unless otherwise noted.

HIGHLIGHTS

Financial Results for the Three Months Ended, March 31, 2020

On January 20, 2020, the Company's Adsorption-Desorption Recovery (ADR) Plant was fully commissioned by the Professional Inspection Agency of Mongolia and declared ready for use.

On January 30, 2020, the Company received funding from the Mongolian National Investment Fund PIF SPV. The fund has subscribed for a 12% two-year secured convertible debenture of the Company in the principal amount of $3 million.

Cash was $1.8 million at March 31, 2020, compared to $0.67 million at December 31, 2019. The increase was primarily due to cash received from financing, offset by cash utilised in operating activities.

Subsequent to quarter end the Company commenced its first gold sales and sold a total of 5,233 oz of gold and 1,372 oz of silver in two separate deliveries to the Central Bank of Mongolia. This generated net cash flow before stream obligations of $8.5 million.

On April 9, 2020, privately held debentures with a total value of $2,500,000 were converted into 4,807,692 common shares of the Company.

Loss from operations for the quarter was $3.9 million ($0.09 per share) compared to a loss of $0.5 million ($0.01 per share) for the quarter ended March 31, 2019.

Steppe Gold Limited

Steppe Gold is Mongolia's premier precious metals company.

For Further information, please contact:

Matthew Wood, Executive Chairman

Bataa Tumur-Ochir, CEO and President

Shangri-La office, Suite 1201, Olympic street

19A, Sukhbaatar District 1,

Ulaanbaatar 14241, Mongolia

Tel: +976 7732 1914

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements:

The above contains forward-looking statements that are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated in our forward-looking statements. Factors that could cause such differences include: changes in world commodity markets, equity markets, costs and supply of materials relevant to the mining industry, change in government and changes to regulations affecting the mining industry. Forward-looking statements in this release include, among other things, statements regarding the trading of the Common Shares and business, economic, and political conditions in Mongolia. Although we believe the expectations reflected in our forward-looking statements are reasonable, results may vary, and we cannot guarantee future results, levels of activity, performance or achievements. We disclaim any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55922
GELLES Nick, what did you do as you started to see community spread in California, where youre headquartered? What steps did you take to ensure that your fulfillment centers were not going to be a vector for this disease?

NICK GREEN We feel the responsibility to our team members every bit as much as we do to our customers. I can remember getting up at an all-hands at the end of February and saying really clearly in no uncertain terms: Our No. 1 priority has to be the safety of our employees. If you cant stay safe, were not going to be able to continue shipping products to our members.

The mandate that I gave to the teams in the fulfillment centers was, What do we have to do, not just to be a safe place to work during this pandemic but actually the safest place to work? Hopefully everyone is trying to reach that superlative, but it was really set in motion for us, this idea that theres no compromises. This has to be the first, second and third priority.

By mid-March, we made full-station wipe-downs mandatory during the shift. We rearranged parts of the warehouse so workers could have more space. We staggered breaks so that people werent clustered in the break rooms. And we started doing full-facility clean-downs between shifts.

GELLES Linda, what has the demand looked like at Blue Apron over the last couple of months?

KOZLOWSKI Toward the end of March and really into the beginning of April is when we saw about a 27 percent uptick in demand. The demand not only came from new customers coming in, but actually a lot of it was from existing customers who were engaging more deeply with the service and people who had previously tried the service coming back and using us again.

GELLES Have you increased your marketing spend at all as a result of this?

KOZLOWSKI In the very early days of this, we actually turned off any sort of acquisition marketing spend and focused those marketing dollars more on how do we retain and engage existing customers, serve them better, give them the information they need and frankly, also, just help them be more comfortable staying at home. For example, what to do with your kids on the weekend, recipes for breakfast, things that just help people adapt to this new world.

GELLES Nick, what has demand been like at Thrive Market?

GREEN We really saw two waves of demand, and they were very distinct. The first I call the bunker-building wave, if you will, or the preppers. That was the very end of February, early March, until the stay-at-home orders went into place. That was very acute demand on a handful of specific products and categories  hand sanitizer, toilet paper, surface cleaners. We placed a purchase order for toilet paper that was larger than every purchase order we had placed in the last three years combined. We saw an 80-times spike in demand for hand sanitizer, so we went through six months of hand sanitizer in about three days. Pretty insane stuff.
He began his tenure at ACHS in 2016. Prior to that he was the assistant principal for curriculum at York Community High school for five years, the division chairperson for English at West Chicago for five years and an English teacher at Neuqua Valley High School for eight years.
(JTA)-After Marilee Shapiro Asher was admitted to the hospital in mid-April sick with COVID-19, her daughter got a call from the doctor telling her she ought to get down there right away. Her mother likely had only 12 hours to live.

"Well, he doesn't know my mother, does he?" Joan Shapiro said.

What the doctor didn't know was that Asher, a 107-year-old working artist, had already survived one global pandemic. And she was about to survive another.

In 1918, then about 6 years old, Asher contracted the Spanish flu, a deadly strain of influenza estimated to have killed at least 50 million people worldwide.

"What she told my brother and I, she remembers being sick upstairs and coming downstairs and seeing her father, who she adored, and knowing that if she saw her father everything would be OK," Shapiro said.

Fast forward a century and change: Asher had contracted the new coronavirus, which is particularly lethal for older people. She wound up spending five days in the hospital, undergoing a course of antibiotic treatment before being sent home to Chevy Chase House, a senior living community in Washington, D.C. She was never put on a ventilator.

"It's remarkable," Shapiro said. "That's all I can say. It's just unbelievable. I think perhaps it's because of her art that she's still involved in."

Well into the eighth decade of her art career, Asher was due to open a major solo exhibition later this month at the Studio Gallery in Washington, but that was canceled due to the coronavirus.

Born to an affluent Chicago family in 1912, Asher began studying sculpture in 1936 and took up painting a few years after she moved to Washington, in 1943, with her first husband, Bernard Shapiro. Her first solo exhibition was held at American University in 1947.

In D.C., the family attended Temple Sinai, where Asher served on the art committee. It was through her association with Boris Aronson that the famed Broadway set designer came to create the synagogue's ark, Shapiro said.

Bernard Shapiro died in 1974. Nearly 20 years later, at the age of 80, Asher remarried: She and childhood friend Robert Asher wed at the Cosmos Club in Washington. Robert Asher died in 2008.

In the early 2000s, seeking a less physically demanding alternative to sculpture, Asher took up digital photography. She studied digital art at the Corcoran School of Art and began manipulating photographs on her computer. She was 88 at the time.

Her work is now in the permanent collections of the Smithsonian and the Baltimore Museum of Art.

Asked the secret of her longevity last year on the activist Ralph Nader's radio program, Asher chalked it up to exercise and art.

"Here at the facility for senior living I go to tai chi class and to a yoga class, which helps to keep me kind of limber," she said in the interview. "That's very important. But even more important is one's having an interest, having something that makes you want to get up in the morning and do it."

Asher began feeling unwell in March. It started with general fatigue and gradually grew more acute, impairing her eyesight and making it difficult for her to breathe. By the middle of April, she had all but stopped eating.

By then, the coronavirus pandemic was in full swing, and at the insistence of her children and a nurse at her senior living facility, Asher went to the hospital.

"I am quite certain that she thought that she was going to die," Shapiro said. "I really think she thought that."

Asher returned home from the hospital on April 28. Shapiro says she has good days and bad ones, adding that her mother wasn't strong enough to do an interview.

"She's at the edge of the woods," Shapiro said.

In 2015, Asher published a memoir, "Dancing in the Wonder for 102 Years," in which she writes: "Dear God, I don't know who you are or where you are or if you are. But I do want to thank you for my life and all the perks I have enjoyed. I want to thank you also for 30 more years than are usually allotted according to your Bible. I hope I have not overstayed my welcome. Sincerely, Marilee."
Photograph: Eric Gay/AP

US officials gave dozens of detained immigrant parents an ultimatum  allow your children to be released from detention without you or face indefinite detention together, according to legal representatives from the countrys three family detention centers.

In one chaotic day on Thursday, US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) instituted what legal representatives for detained families called an indefinite detention or family separation policy. Ice officials met with asylum-seeking parents, gave them papers and told them conflicting things about what signing the documents meant, advocates said.

At the countrys largest family detention center in Dilley, Texas, a lawyer said Ice stopped mothers from keeping copies of the document and ignored their requests to speak to attorneys before signing.

One mother reported that Ice officers were very mad when she refused to sign, they were intimidating, they were speaking firmly to her and when she said she didnt want to sign, they told her it wasnt really up to her, said Allison Herre, managing attorney for the Dilley Pro Bono Project.

Related: US expelling hundreds of child migrants, citing coronavirus pandemic

The attorney Bridget Cambria represents families at Berks detention center in Pennsylvania and said the pro-bono law firm Aldeas phone line was flooded with calls from families on Thursday.

The families were each upset, most of them were crying, Cambria said. Because immigration had called them down one by one and told them that if they wanted their children to leave detention, they had to sign a paper that would separate the parents from the child.

Ice did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Because prisons are a cauldron for infectious disease, the US immigration detention system is facing additional scrutiny amid the Covid-19 outbreak.

People inside these facilities are detained on civil immigration violations, not criminal charges, and the government has the power to release them unless they are considered a danger to the community.

Story continues

In February, advocates urged the government to release people held in the worlds largest immigrant detention system to minimize the spread of coronavirus before it was too late.

Last week, Carlos Ernesto Escobar Mejia became the first person to die from Covid-19 in immigration custody.

The push to have parents release their children but remain detained themselves came the day before the government was due to provide a report to a court on how many children are in detention as part of the Flores settlement. That agreement says the government must hold children in the least restrictive setting and release them as quickly as possible, generally after 20 days in detention.

Donald Trumps administration has repeatedly attempted to end these court-ordered protections and has kept children well past the 20-day limit.

On Thursday, there were 163 children at the detention centers in Dilley, Berks and Karnes City, Texas, detained an average of 137 days, attorneys said. Lawyers wrote to the independent monitor for the Flores settlement to report on what they described as a coercive and unconstitutional attempt to put in place a indefinite detention or family separation policy.

My assumption is that they will be using what they have done today to convince federal judges that they have complied with the Flores settlement and other orders of federal courts, Cambria said. I am telling you right now they have not.

The chairman of the House homeland security committee, Bennie Thompson, urged the Trump administration to end the practice immediately.

While the number of Covid-19 cases in Ice facilities continues to rise daily, the administration should use its authority to release families  together  as much as possible, Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, said in a statement. Parents should not be placed in the impossible position of choosing between the safety of their children or being separated.
WASHINGTON - Democrats on Thursday said that President Donald Trump, in attempting to turn his "Obamagate" theory into an attack on his presumptive Democratic challenger, was once again abusing the powers of his office to smear his political opponents.

But they expressed hope that Joe Biden, who has endured a fusillade of attacks from Trump over the past two years, would not get bogged down by it.

The claims from Trump and his allies are not fully rooted in the facts, as he attempts to tag Biden with being behind efforts to obtain reports that included the name of the national security adviser, Michael Flynn, whose communications had been captured during U.S. surveillance of foreign officials.

"He's flailing around. The whole thing is crazy," said Neera Tanden, a former top adviser to Hillary Clinton who now leads the Center for American Progress. "Whatever you want to say about the attacks on Biden, they have not been working. So we just have a new one. The Biden campaign should just state the facts and move on.

"Trump has an insatiable appetite for lying. And the more the media responds to this, the more he'll just keep lying," she added.

David Plouffe, a former adviser to President Barack Obama who at times has been critical of Biden's campaign, said Trump was creating a dangerous diversion.

"Our current President is calling for his predecessor and his current challenger to be jailed. In America," he wrote on Twitter. "It's not clever political tactics - it's unprecedented and sick."

Trump was impeached by the Democratic-led House - and acquitted by the Republican-run Senate - as a result of his request that the Ukrainian president investigate Biden and his son Hunter for the latter's role on the board of a gas company.

In responding to Trump, Biden's campaign has often tried to aggressively combat misinformation while not allowing Trump to dictate the terms of the conversation. It has taken solace in the fact that he still won the nomination and that Trump's attempts to damage him have not been reflected in polls, which have given Biden an edge.

Some Democrats still privately worry about the Biden campaign's ability to respond to the attacks from Trump. While Biden remains a distrusted figure among partisan media on the left and right, Trump maintains control over - and demands fealty from - conservative media outlets that can turn even a small spark into a large brushfire.

Central to Republican attacks this week was a newly declassified list that included Biden among several dozen Obama administration officials who may have had access to intelligence reports that named Flynn.

The newly released document says that all standard procedures were followed as part of the process known as "unmasking," a routine practice that occurs if top officials can show they need to know the name of Americans or legal residents interacting with foreigners targeted by spy agencies.

It notes that while the officials on the list had access to the report, "we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information." Biden is listed as having had access to the information - not necessarily as one who requested it - and there is no indication that he read it or knew about it.

Nonetheless, Trump and his supporters this week spoke of the list as though the Democratic presidential hopeful was caught conspiring to commit wrongdoing.

"It's troubling in many ways," Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., said. "We sort of have the smoking gun because we now have the declassified document with Joe Biden's name on it."

Trump, who began tweeting about "Obamagate" last weekend, pointed at Biden almost immediately after the list became public.

"This was all Obama. This was all Biden," Trump told Fox Business on Wednesday. "These people were corrupt. The whole thing was corrupt. And we caught them. We caught them."

Flynn has emerged as a focal point for pro-Trump conservatives in recent weeks as part of an effort to undo his 2017 guilty plea for lying to FBI investigators who were asking him about his conversations with Sergey Kislyak when Kislyak was the Russian ambassador. Trump fired Flynn, who pleaded guilty but now argues that he was entrapped as part of an effort orchestrated by the Obama administration.

The attacks on Biden come as the likely Democratic nominee has been leading Trump in polls and the president has been under fire for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Biden's campaign on Thursday declined to say whether Biden himself made the request that resulted in Flynn being identified. Rather, campaign spokesman Andrew Bates pointed to the widespread concerns at the time regarding Flynn's actions.

"These documents simply indicate the breadth and depth of concern across the American government - including among career officials - over intelligence reports of Michael Flynn's attempts to undermine ongoing American national security policy through discussions with Russian officials or other foreign representatives," Bates said in a statement.

"Importantly, none of these individuals could have known Flynn's identity beforehand," he added. "These documents have absolutely nothing to do with any FBI investigation and they confirm that all normal procedures were followed - any suggestion otherwise is a flat out lie."

The newly released document with Biden's name was declassified this week by Trump's acting director of national intelligence, Richard Grenell. The document listed about 40 Obama administration officials who, between Nov. 8, 2016, and the end of the administration, had access to reports that identified Flynn, rather than keeping his name redacted.

The document said that 16 individuals had made an unmasking request, which resulted in Flynn's name being revealed. Biden is listed as one of those who had access to the report, but it is unclear if he was the one who made the request or if someone did it on his behalf.

The request for Biden to see the information came Jan. 12, 2017, an active day for him. It was eight days before leaving office, and Biden was preparing for his last foreign trip as vice president, heading to Ukraine and Switzerland. It was a day when Obama would surprisingly bestow the Medal of Freedom on him and also a day when Biden would confirm that he and Obama had been briefed the week before on what would become the infamous dossier on President-elect Trump.

Inside the Obama administration, there had been growing concern for weeks about contacts between incoming Trump administration officials and foreign governments.

At the time, there were constant reports and rising fears among national security officials about what was emerging from contacts between various Trump officials and foreign governments.

Republicans this week also pointed to Biden's interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" in which he appeared to say he had been unaware of the investigation into Flynn. They noted that, according to testimony that came out during the Mueller investigation, Biden, Obama and other officials had been present for a Jan. 5, 2017, White House meeting in which Flynn came up.

"I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn," Biden told ABC initially in the Tuesday interview, before turning toward Trump and the coronavirus. "This is all about diversion. This is a game this guy plays all the time."

When George Stephanopoulos pressed Biden, pointing out that he was at the Jan. 5, 2017, meeting with Obama where the topic came up.

"No, I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted," Biden said. "I'm sorry.

"I was aware that there was - that they asked for an investigation, but that's all I know about it, and I don't think anything else - look. Think about this. Can you imagine any other president of the United States focusing on this at the moment when the country is just absolutely concerned about their health, the health of their children?"

- - -

The Washington Post's Robert Costa contributed to this report.
Charleston Stage, the largest professional theater company in the state, will delay the opening of its upcoming season until January 2021, citing "the uncertainty of the current COVID-19 health emergency," according to a news release.

It is with great regret that we are having to delay the opening of our season," founder and Producing Artistic Director Julian Wiles said in a statement. "The magic of live theater is about a gathering of live audiences and live performers together celebrating, interacting and enjoying the play or musical at hand. At present, we could not see a way to gather together while still ensuring the safety of our audiences and our performers."

The postponement is meant to protect the theater-going community and safeguard the financial health of the organization.

"This brief intermission from production will give us the financial strength to return with a full staff in January once we begin production again," Wiles said. "If conditions do improve, this would also give us the resources and flexibility to reopen sooner."

Charleston Stage will reduce its operating budget over the next nine months by 60 percent  almost $1 million  and furlough 19 of its 29 staff members for at least a few months. The organization will seek to raise $200,000 in donations to continue scaled-down operations, maintaining a small staff and preparing for future productions. Donations can be made online at CharlestonStage.com/CurtainUp.

Associate Artistic Director Mary Beth Clark announced that the companys theater school classes and SummerStage Musical Theatre Camp have been canceled.

Due to the required social distancing because of the pandemic, we simply could not find a way to safely hold these classes for our students at this time," Clark said. Classes could resume sometime in the fall if circumstances improve.

The new MainStage season will open at the Dock Street Theatre with the musical "A Closer Walk With Patsy Cline" in February 2021, followed by the Charleston premiere of Agatha Christies "Murder on the Orient Express" in March, "Kinky Boots" in April and "Bright Star" in June.

A Family Series production of E.B. Whites childrens classic "Charlottes Web" is set for January.

Adjusted ticket packages for Charleston Stages 43rd season will go on sale June 15. Go to CharlestonStage.com, or call 843-577-7183 or email boxoffice@charlestonstage.com after Memorial Day.
Technavio has been monitoring the automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market and it is poised to grow by USD 3.10 bn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of over 5% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005033/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact

The market is fragmented, and the degree of fragmentation will accelerate during the forecast period. ABB Ltd., Robert Bosch GmbH, Delta Electronics Inc., Eaton Corporation Plc Emerson Electric Co., Fuji Electric Co. Ltd., General Electric Co., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Rockwell Automation Inc., and Siemens AG are some of the major market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Aggressive policies supporting the growth of renewable power has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. However, cost challenges due to retrofitting might hamper market growth.

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market is segmented as below:

End-user Solar Energy Wind Energy Others

Geography APAC North America Europe MEA South America



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Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market report covers the following areas:

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market Size

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market Trends

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies inception of new business models as one of the prime reasons driving the growth of automation solution market in renewable power generation industry during the next few years.

Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market, including some of the vendors such as ABB Ltd., Robert Bosch GmbH, Delta Electronics Inc., Eaton Corporation Plc Emerson Electric Co., Fuji Electric Co. Ltd., General Electric Co., Mitsubishi Electric Corp., Rockwell Automation Inc., and Siemens AG. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Automation Solution Market in Renewable Power Generation Industry Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist the growth of automation solution market in renewable power generation industry during the next five years

Estimation of the size of automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the automation solution market in renewable power generation industry market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of the vendors in automation solution market in renewable power generation industry

Table Of Contents :

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Market characteristics

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Five forces summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Comparison by end-user

Solar energy Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Wind energy Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Others Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by end-user

Customer Landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC Market size and forecast 2019-2024

North America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024

MEA Market size and forecast 2019-2024

South America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

ABB Ltd.

Robert Bosch GmbH

Delta Electronics Inc.

Eaton Corporation Plc

Emerson Electric Co.

Fuji Electric Co. Ltd.

General Electric Co.

Mitsubishi Electric Corp.

Rockwell Automation Inc.

Siemens AG

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

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The death toll due to COVID-19 rose to 2,649 and the number of cases climbed to 81,970 on Friday, registering an increase of 100 deaths and 3,967 cases in the last 24 hours since Thursday 8 am, according to the Union health ministry.

IMAGE: Bengaluru artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy has painted an image of a man wearing a mask on the stairs at the entrance of JC Nagar police station, to raise awareness about the importance of wearing a mask during COVID-19 pandemic. Photograph: ANI Photo

The number of active cases stood at 51,401 while 27,919 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said. "Thus, around 34.06 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

The total confirmed cases include foreign nationals too.

Of the 100 deaths reported since Thursday morning, 44 were in Maharashtra, 20 in Gujarat, 9 in Delhi, 8 in West Bengal, five each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, four in Rajasthan, two each in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and one in Andhra Pradesh.

Of the 2,649 fatalities, Maharashtra tops tally with 1,019 deaths, Gujarat comes second with 586 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 237, West Bengal at 215, Rajasthan at 125, Delhi at 115, Uttar Pradesh at 88,Tamil Nadu at 66 and Andhra Pradesh at 48.

The death toll reached 35 in Karnataka, 34 Telangana and 32 in Punjab.

IMAGE: Patients who recovered from COVID-19 show victory sign as they leave after being discharged from Sahyadri Hospital, during the nationwide lockdown, in Karad. Photograph: PTI Photo

Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir have reported 11 fatalities each due to the disease while Bihar has registered seven and Kerala has reported four deaths.

Jharkhand, Chandigarh and Odisha have recorded three COVID-19 fatalities each while Himachal Pradesh and Assam have reported two deaths each.

Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Puducherry have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.

More than 70 per cent of the deaths are due to co-morbidities (existence of multiple disorders), according to the ministry.

IMAGE: Migrants travel in a truck amid heavy rain and storm to reach their native places, during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, in New Delhi. Photograph: PTI Photo

The data updated on Friday morning showed the highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 27,524, followed by Tamil Nadu at 9,674, Gujarat at 9,591, Delhi at 8,470 Rajasthan at 4,534, Madhya Pradesh at 4,426 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,902.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 2,377 in West Bengal, 2,205 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,935 in Punjab.

It has risen to 1,414 in Telangana, 994 in Bihar, 987 in Karnataka, 983 in Jammu and Kashmir and 818 in Haryana.

Odisha has reported 611 coronavirus infection cases so far while Kerala has 560 cases. A total of 197 people have been infected with the virus in Jharkhand and 191 in Chandigarh.

IMAGE: Railway employees provide water to migrants travelling in trains during the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown, in Jabalpur. Photograph: PTI Photo

Tripura has reported 156 cases, Assam has 87 cases, Uttarakhand has 78, Himachal Pradesh has 74 cases, Chhattisgarh has 60 and Ladakh has registered 43 cases so far.

Thirty-three COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Goa reported 14 COVID-19 cases while Meghalaya and Puducherry registered 13 cases each.

IMAGE: Police personnel conduct a flag march during the ongoing nationwide covid-19 lockdown, at Raja Park, in Jaipur. Photograph: ANI Photo

Manipur has three cases. Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Dadar and Nagar Haveli reported a case each till how.

"Our figures are being reconciled with the Indian Council of Medical Research," the ministry said on its website.

State-wise distribution is subject to further verification and reconciliation, it said.
Filmmaker Goldie Behl said that when his wife, Sonali Bendre was diagnosed with cancer in 2018, he had put his work on hold. He further added that going to New York for Sonali's treatment for six months, was life altering for the family.

"The film slate has not been affected by COVID-19, I have put it on hold for the moment. I am focusing more of my energies, ever since 2018, after I went to New York with Sonali, it was a life altering situation for all of us. I have decided to focus more on the digital platform. So the film slate is on pause right now, but because of my own decision and not COVID-19," Behl told PTI.

Last year, Behl made his digital debut with ZEE5's RejctX. The filmmaker asserted that currently, his production house, Rose Audio Visuals, is focusing entirely on the digital platforms and looking at the young-adult space and genre.

"I am enjoying the OTT world. I haven't given a thought to film direction. I'm not saying I won't ever make one, but I'm not consciously looking to make a film or seeking a film script," said Behl.

In the same interview, Goldie Behl also reacted to the reports of rising demand of digital platforms in India owing to the pandemic. However, the filmmaker feels that the theatrical cinema has battled against several formats and has still emerged stronger.

Sonali Bendre: Dealing With A Life Threatening Disease Has Helped Me Deal With COVID-19 Pandemic

"Since my childhood I've been hearing various formats coming in and destroying the cinema hall experience. But the theatrical experience hasn't really gone away and I don't think it ever will. But the kind of content which will be consumed in the cinema hall will have to change," said the Drona director.

He further added, "The content will have to be that much better and striking that you cannot get on your TV set or mobile phones. More than the consumption habit, that's the change which will happen. The kind of content which will drive people to come out and go to the theatres.
Yesterday, the US government extended its trade sanctions against Huawei and its subsidiaries for one more year after Donald Trump re-signed the Executive Order. In response, it is being reported that China is ready to retaliate against Apple, Qualcomm, and other US-based firms.

Reports coming out of China indicated that the Chinese government is ready to take serious action against US-based firms, including Apple and Qualcomm, as the US government is trying to block shipments of semiconductor chips to Huawei and its subsidiaries. If the US forces Taiwanese semiconductor firm TSMC to stop making chipsets for Huawei, the Chinese smartphone giant wont be able to sell any device anywhere in the world.

Apparently, China is looking to put US companies on an unreliable entity list, and put pressure on them by launching investigations and imposing restrictions against doing business in China and with Chinese firms. According to the report from Global Times, Cisco and Boeing would also be on the Chinese list.

Sources close to the matter have reportedly mentioned that China is being forced to take forceful countermeasures to protect its own legitimate rights, if the US moves ahead with the plan to bar essential chip companies like TSMC to do business with Huawei and other Chinese firms.

The Chinese government could launch investigations against Apple, Boeing, Cisco, and Qualcomm through local laws such as Cybersecurity Review Measures and the Anti-Monopoly Law. It could also ban Chinese airlines from buying airplanes from Boeing. All the US companies mentioned here are highly dependent on the Chinese market and Chinese partners for their businesses.

Our Take

Apple sells a lot of smartphones and other devices in China, and a ban on the company to sell its products in China could be a huge blow.

Moreover, a lot of Apple products get manufactured and assembled in China, and a ban on the Cupertino-based tech giant from doing business with Chinese firms could disrupt the whole supply chain, thereby affecting its sales across the world.

What do you think about Donald Trumps Executive Order and adding Huawei to the entity list?

[Source: Global Times
Work to erect barbed wire fences along the India-Bangladesh border in Tripura resumed on Friday, with night curfew still in place across the unfenced stretch to check infiltration and smuggling, officials said.

Of the 856-km-long India-Bangladesh border in the state, 67.5 km remains unfenced.

The fencing work had come to a halt following the imposition of the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

Several parts of Sepahijala, Dhalai and South Tripura districts adjoining Bangladesh, including Sabroom in the southernmost tip of the state, are still unfenced.

District Magistrate of Sepahijala CK Jamatia said work has begun along an 8.5-km stretch spanning parts of Nabadwip Chandranagar and Kailashnagar villages.

"When the lockdown was imposed, the BSF (Border Security Force) made a temporary barrier with barbed wire coils along the unfenced areas. Now, the NBCC, the designated construction agency, has recommenced fencing work. Night curfew is on along the border areas to prevent infiltration," he said.

Brahmneet Kaur, the district magistrate (DM) of Dhalai, said the BSF has intensified patrolling since the imposition of the lockdown, especially along the unfenced parts, to keep a check on illegal activities.

South Tripura DM Debapriya Bardhan said work in his district has been delayed due to objections raised by the Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB).

Earlier in April, Tripura Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb had urged people living in the vicinity of the international border to aid the BSF in its efforts to prevent untoward activities.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Gamblers lined up outside casinos in Arizona and Oklahoma to play on the slot machines as Las Vegas remains closed.

Mangers at the casinos said their machines have been placed at least six feet apart and limited seating will be allowed at tables for games like blackjack.

In Arizona, Harrah's Ak-Chin Hotel and Casino in Maricopa and Fort McDowell Casino near Fountain Hills reopened partially on Friday morning as Gov Doug Ducey's stay-at-home order expired.

Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, casinos in the central and western parts of the state say they have also redesigned with social distancing restrictions and sanitation safeguards in place to protect against a resurgence of the coronavirus.

In Arizona there have been at least 13,169 confirmed cases of coronavirus and 651 deaths, and in Oklahoma 5,087 cases and 285 deaths.

Dozens of gamblers lined up outside casinos in Arizona and Oklahoma as they reopened this week. Pictured: People lined up all the way to the parking lot at the Lucky Star Casino in Concho, Oklahoma, May 15

At Lucky Star Casino in Oklahoma, guests and employees received temperatures checks either manually, via thermal imaging camera, or both. Additionally, plexiglass shields have installed. Pictured: Customers lined up outside of Lucky Star Casino, May 15

A line of people stretched to the parking lot at Arizona's Ak-Chin Hotel and Casino (pictured), which has been redesigned social distancing restrictions and sanitation safeguards

After a customer is done playing at a slot machine at Lucky Star, an employee will receive an alert to clean the machine. Pictured: Tobias Morales disinfects gaming machines in preparation for the reopening of Lucky Star Casino, May 15

In Arizona, the Ak-Chin Tribal Council earlier approved the reopening of its casino, with slot machine banks arranged to allow for social distancing and limited seating at blackjack tables. Poker, keno and bingo games were not resuming yet.

'We look forward to welcoming back our casino guests,' Robert Livingston, the casino's general manager, said in a statement.

Footage taken from above by an ABC15 news helicopter on Friday morning showed several hundred people lining up outside the Ak-Chin casino.

The customers, mostly middle aged and elderly, including a few on motorized scooters, appeared to be respecting social distance with large spaces between each other. Few were wearing masks.

Along with social distancing and sanitizing measures, the casino that belongs to the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation will conduct temperature checks using handheld scanners and thermal cameras.

Anyone with a reading over 100F will be denied entry.

And Gila River Hotels & Casinos said casinos will have new non-smoking sections on slot machine floors that observe social distancing and hard plastic shields had been installed in key areas including the cashier cage and some dining venues.

Hand sanitizing stations were being prepared at entrances and social distancing will be encouraged throughout.

To maintain social distancing at slot machines, whenever a customer sits down at a machine at Lucky Star, the two on either side will disable. Pictured: Debbie Blanchard, of El Reno, Oklahoma, plays on a gaming machine at Lucky Star Casino, May 15

Some casinos, which are usually 24-hour operations, now have limited hours. Pictured: A man plays on a gaming machine at Lucky Star Casino, May 15

Nationwide, some 500 Native American casinos have shut down. Pictured: Gladys Whittington (left) and Sandy Christian (right) play at a gaming machine at Lucky Star Casino, May 15

Casino staff members in Oklahoma were also eager to get back to work.

'It was time for everyone to get back to work, we were ready to get back to work,' said Sam Caruso, general manager of the Thunderbird Casino in Norman, Oklahoma.

Rampart Casino in Las Vegas 'lays off hundreds of employees' with a recorded VOICEMAIL A Las Vegas casino laid off 'hundreds of employees' through a recorded voicemail on Tuesday, after the staff had already been furloughed. A number of employees at Rampart Casino in Summerlin allegedly received a recording from the property's vice president Michelle Bacigalupi in which they were informed they were permanently laid off, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. A separate termination letter dated May 8 and branded with the Rampart and JW Marriot logo was acquired by VitalVegas.com and is said to have been sent to other employees using the same wording as the recorded message. The Rampart casino is located within the JW Marriott Las Vegas resort. The exact number of employees laid off is uncertain, but it is reported by VitalVegas that only 200 of the 1,700 staff at the property will remain. It is also unclear if the staff involved worked solely at the casino or if they were linked to the JW Marriott. The hotel's website states that while perceived as one entity, it is not associated with the Rampart Casino but the letter holds its branding. DailyMail.com reached out to both the Rampart Casino and and Marriott International for comment. Advertisement

'It just seemed like the right time to do it. We decided to do what we call a soft opening without a lot of fanfare.'

The reopened casino in Norman limited the number of patrons to between 200 and 225, while a sister facility in Shawnee allowed about 100 inside.

Caruso said both are about one-third of their usual capacity and no table games are open.

Those inside must wear masks and maintain six feet of distance from others, but couples are allowed to sit together. Temperature checks are being performed at the door.

'Every guest that has come in the facility has been very appreciative. They understand and when we tell them to put a mask on they put their mask on,' Caruso said.

Additionally, the usually 24-hour casino has limited operating hours, and is open from 10am to 10pm.

Lucky Star Casinos - owned by the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe - also recently opened, reported KFOR.

'Most of our casinos are located in western Oklahoma,' Lucky Star Casinos COO Andy Rednose told the station. 'A lot of our counties have very few if no cases in the counties.'

Guests and employees received temperatures checks either manually, via thermal imaging camera, or both.

To maintain social distancing at slot machines, whenever a customer sits down at a machine, two on either side will disable, according to KFOR.

When the guest leaves, staff will receive an alert to clean it before it is used by someone else.

Additionally, plexiglass shields have installed so staff and customers can maintain distance, but table games aren't open.

Several other tribal casinos in the state remain closed. Chickasaw Nation Governor Bill Anoatubby said that tribe's casinos will remain closed at least through Friday.

'Health professionals advise that recent measures enacted to help mitigate the spread of the virus are beginning to work because of widespread participation,' Anoatubby said in a statement.

Casinos also remain closed in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada, which is very dependent on gambling tourism. Pictured: A sign displays a message about the closure of a gaming area with slot machines at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, May 14

But Democratic Gov Steve Sisolak has said gambling venues will not be among businesses restarting activities during the first phase of Nevada's reopening. Pictured: Flight board monitors above a closed gaming area at McCarran International Airport

The Cherokee, Choctaw and Muscogee (Creek) nation casinos also remain closed.

'Local health benchmarks do not suggest that now is the time to reopen ... the Muscogee (Creek) Nation casinos,' Principal Chief David Hill said in a statement.

However, the Choctaw Nation of announced tentative plans to re-open casinos and resorts on June 1.

Of approximately 130 tribal casinos statewide, five have reopened on a limited basis, according to Oklahoma Indian Gaming Association director Sheila Morago.

Nationwide, some 500 Native American casinos have shut down.

Casinos also remain closed in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada, where the economy is heavily dependent on gambling and tourism in general.

Nevada gambling officials last week approved rules to limit customers, keep gamblers spaced apart from each other and disinfect dice and cards when the state's casinos do reopen.

But Democratic Gov Steve Sisolak has said gambling venues will not be among businesses restarting activities during the first phase of Nevada's reopening.
Boaters headed towards the Tennessee River Gorge aka Grand Canyon of Tennessee from Chattanooga to enjoy the fall foliage will have to pass through Suck Creek and will have little or no difficulty navigating through the historical area known as The Suck.

That was not always the case prior to the erection of the Hales Bar Dam by the Tennessee River Power Company (TEPCO) headed by Chattanooga engineer Joseph Conn Guild, and the Chickamauga Dam up the Tennessee River in the late 1930s and 1940s. Hales Bar Dam construction started in 1905 and two nearby towns of Guild (now known as Haletown) and Ladds were built to house the thousands of workers that were needed to build the dam.

On November 1, 1913, the dam was completed at a cost of $237,000,000 in todays value but had a checkered past with leaks and deaths of workers and private citizens.

After the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was passed in 1933 litigation occurred as to the constitutionality of the law which gave TVA the right to buy the assets of Hales Bar Dam for $78,000,000. The location of the Suck southwest of Chattanooga consisted of strong currents and whirlpools that were hazards and dangerous to any boats trying to transverse the area.

Just before the start of the Civil War and through 1886 steamboats were a popular mode of transportation on the Tennessee River. Because the water level at the Suck was so low that the riverboats drafted too deep to get through the area it became necessary to dredge out where Suck Creek flowed into the river. Even after the dredging to make the river deeper the steamboats still had difficulty navigating this area when it rained heavy because Suck Creek would spill large amounts of water into the river that caused a suction which made it very difficulty for the steamboats to get through.

Several dangerous spots soon acquired colorful names by the local inhabitants such as Tumbling Shoals, the Pot, the Skillet, and the Pan and each became difficult for rivermen to avoid the downstream journey hazards and also restricted upstream travel. The idea of building human winches on the shorelines to go to the bow of the steamboats was developed in order for slaves to turn the giant wooden winches in order to pull the large boats through the Suck.

With the erecting of the Hales Bar Dam water levels in Chattanooga rose permanently and today the area is relatively quiet compared to older times but some whirls still exist. In 1964 construction began on Nickajack Dam, six miles downstream from Hales Bar Dam and was completed in 1967 at a cost of $73,000,000 and Hales Bar was taken out of service and the dam portion was removed.



* * *

Jerry Summers

(If you have additional information about one of Mr. Summers' articles or have suggestions or ideas about a future Chattanooga area historical piece, please contact Mr. Summers at jsummers@summersfirm.com
Sailors stand on deck of the China Navy guided missile destroyer Taiyuan as it passes by Qingdao, April 23, 2019. The China Marine Corp participated in an anti-piracy drill in the South China Sea as part of an escort force with the Taiyuan on May 5, 2020.

Amid the recent muscle-flexing in the disputed South China Sea, one maritime drill went largely unnoticed that could be an important harbinger of Chinas strategic thinking, and how its forces could project power across heavily contested waters.

It involved the Peoples Liberation Army Marine Corps -- an arm of the Chinese military that is growing fast as the PLA develops expeditionary forces that can operate further from Chinas shores.

The strength of the Marine Corps, or PLANMC, has nearly tripled over the past three years to 35,000 troops, according to a report prepared by Janes for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission. The corps has also become a more visible presence in the South China Sea.

On May 5, the PLANMC undertook an anti-piracy exercise near the Paracel Islands that showed off its capabilities to Chinas neighbors at a time of rising tensions in the region. The exercise simulated covert, amphibious assaults by the PLANMC with fast-moving speedboats and naval aviation aircraft, integrating the corps operations with the Peoples Liberation Army Navy.

Troops from Peoples Liberation Army Marine Corps at a Marine Day get-together with visiting U.S. Marines in Zhanjiang, China on Nov. 16, 2006. U.S. Marine Corps via Wikimedia. The corps is expected to feature in another military exercise planned in the South China Sea in August. This time, they will be simulating an island seizure operation, Kyodo News reported this week, citing anonymous Chinese sources. It is part of a two-and-a-half-month-long series of drills involving the army, navy, and the PLANMC that began this Thursday off Chinas northern coast.

Chinas state media has not confirmed such an island-seizing exercise would take place, but a Global Times article published Wednesday hinted that such an exercise would be warranted and designed to simulate a takeover of Taiwan and its outlying islands in the event of a secession. Taiwan is a self-governing democracy that Beijing regards as part of China.

Taiwan said Wednesday it would be monitoring the movement of Chinas military. Other claimants in the South China Sea -- Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam  are also likely to eye any such maneuvers by Chinese amphibious forces with some concern.

Andrew Scobell, the Bren Chair in Non-Western Strategic Thought at Marine Corps University, said the PLANMC is meant to be the nucleus for Chinas armed forces as they operate further afield. The PLA is intent on improving its expeditionary capabilities and the Marines are considered a key -- if not the core -- component of this expeditionary force. he said.

The South China Sea is an obvious and convenient training ground for Chinese marines, Scobell said, although he added that he did not know whether there were plans for a permanent PLANMC presence there.

He said even if there were a permanent presence, the corps would likely stay in the background as Chinas military already does during confrontations with other countries in the region  leaving that kind of activity to the China Coast Guard or maritime militia.

He said that for Chinas military planners, the PLANMC is a high priority because of their amphibious capabilities. The Marines are supposed to be a rapid response force, Scobell said.

But he added that they have been primarily focused on non-combat operations in recent years, especially anti-piracy missions.

Experts say theres certainly a need for anti-piracy capabilities in the seas of Asia.

The inter-governmental information-sharing group based on the Regional Cooperation Agreement on Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery against Ships in Asia, or ReCAAP, says in its latest quarterly report that theres been a sharp increase in armed robberies at sea in Southeast Asia.

But most of the lawlessness was in the Straits of Malacca or in the Sulu Sea. There were very few incidents in the South China Sea during 2019.

The Paracel Islands is not really an area where we find piracy, said Lydelle Joubert, an expert on global piracy and counter-piracy efforts with the nonprofit group, Stable Seas.

She was referring to the islands in the northern half of the South China Sea near where the PLANMCs anti-piracy drill took place  disputed between Vietnam, the Philippines, and Taiwan. The Paracels were placed under Xisha District in a controversial move by China in April to assert administrative control over the disputed features  along with the Pratas Islands currently occupied by Taiwan.

We do get conflict between fishing vessels from countries and the Chinese Coast Guard, but you cant classify that as piracy, she said.

China does contribute financially to regional information sharing centers focused on piracy in the region. But Jay Benson, also with Stable Seas, said virtually all of Chinas anti-piracy efforts at sea were concentrated in the Gulf of Aden off the coast of east Africa. There are no recorded joint patrols aimed at anti-piracy between China and Southeast Asian states, aside from joint patrols China has undertaken up the Mekong River.

Which all serves to fuel skepticism about whether the PLANMC May 5 drill was motivated by Beijings concern about piracy in the South China Sea, or to send a message to the other claimants.

According to a press release by the official news outlet of the PLA, the drill focused on improving the ability to respond to air and sea conditions, and escorting Navy ships as they moved through contested areas.

The drill coincided with signs that China has stepped up its deployment of expeditionary capabilities to its islands and bases in the South China Sea. Repeat sightings of military aircraft prompted Janes to report this week that Chinas naval aviation force may be rotating deployments through Fiery Cross Reef, its main base in the Spratly Islands.
Yes, they do exist, and many are open to the public. In the United States, more than 100 facilities describe themselves as sanctuaries or rescues for big cats. Valerie Taylor, executive director of the D.C-based Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries (GFAS), says aggressive marketing campaigns have increased the need for differentiation. Facilities that keep animals in deplorable conditions can identify themselves as comparable to those of the highest quality, she said. And while the industry is poorly regulated  as amply evidenced by the show  its easy to research whether the sanctuary you want to visit is legitimate.
A majority of trainee Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers--96 out of 182--left Mussoories Lal Bahadur Shastri National Academy of Administration for their respective districts by road amid the national Covid-19 lockdown last week to begin their year-long field training as assistant collectors. The rest, allotted postings in farther states, are awaiting the resumption of flights to follow suit, officials aware of the matter said.

Trainee officers normally spend anywhere between a month and three months at state academies mostly at the beginning of their field training and attend lectures. Officials said due to the unprecedented nature of the Covid-19 pandemic, they are being moved directly to districts.

Those who could travel by road left on Saturday morning for their respective districts. The others, who will be travelling to states such as Sikkim, Assam, Telangana, Karnataka and West Bengal, are waiting for flights to resume, said an official at the Academy, which is Indias premier training institution for civil servants. The official said the trainees left after their convocation was held on May 8.

Click here for the complete coverage of the Covid-19 pandemic

Some of the 96 officers travelled in cars sent by their respective states to pick them up from the Academy while others first travelled on 30-seater buses from Mussoorie to Delhi before leaving for their districts.

There were 15 of us on each bus to ensure social distancing norms, said a Rajasthan cadre trainee officer. Once we reached Delhi, seven of us were screened at the Rajasthan House, where we stopped for lunch. The officer said after that, they took cars and reached Jaipur on Saturday evening. Each car had two people. The officer said normally, they have month-long lectures at the state academy. But this year, we are moving directly to our districts... on Wednesday.

The officer said he had been in touch with the collector of his district. My district is in a red zone... We have also had call-ins with various additional secretaries to understand what [our] different roles will entail. The officer said there was a feeling of apprehension, anxiety and excitement at starting work during the pandemic. This is a once in a lifetime learning opportunity. We have a lot of questions but are eager to learn.

A second trainee officer, who was picked up from the academy, said he reported directly at his district, a Covid-19 hotspot, in Uttar Pradesh on Sunday. ... I went to one of the areas where people had tested positive for Covid-19, the second trainee said. Today, I was attached to the DC at the railway station where a train with migrant labourers from Ahmedabad arrived.

The second officer said he observed the overall process of screening of the labourers, understood the quarantine norms and how to distribute rations. It is a great first-hand learning experience.

Those, who are still at the academy, are brushing up their regional language skills and getting clued in about the state administrations. Since many of them are not familiar with the regional languages, they are taking language courses, watching films and keeping tabs on the local news, said the official cited above. Many are also in touch with the respective state administrations. ...the West Bengal trainees had a video call with the principal secretary of health over the weekend.

A trainee from the Assam cadre said they were in touch with the state government to work out the transportation details. Travel by road or trains to our districts, nearly 2,000 km away, would not have been feasible. So we are waiting for flights to resume. The Assam cadre trainee said they spoke to officials about their roles, the procedures they will have to follow, especially in light of the pandemic, once they reach their districts. We are using the Microsoft Teams app to do our video calls with senior officials and learning how schemes like MGNREGS [Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme] will play a crucial role in the coming days.

Padamvir Singh, the former Academy director, said the role of assistant collectors under training depends on their supervisors--the district collectors (DCs) and district magistrates (DMs). This is the time they spend learning about the different departments they will be in charge of as DCs and DMs, said Singh. However, in this pandemic situation, they can be used to collect data and help out in administration. They have no legal powers. So their role will be ancillary.

Singh added that after spending some time under training, an officer can also be put in charge of their own projects. Since they have no legal powers yet, they can effectively act as helping hands so long as their training is not hampered.
Schools in Liverpool will not reopen on 1 June despite Boris Johnsons plans to ease lockdown, officials have said.

Only children of key workers and vulnerable children will be allowed in school in the city from June 1, which was suggested by the government as when schools will start to reopen to all children.

The announcement comes after Liverpools mayor Joe Anderson raised safety fears over children going back into classes, saying he was minded to resist the suggested 1 June partial reopening date for specified years.

Schools in Liverpool will not reopen on 1 June in line with government suggestions, the city's council has said. (Picture: PA)

His comments come amid concerns by some parents, teachers and unions over the government plans announced on Sunday evening.

Liverpool City Council said the reopening of schools would be staggered, with pupils only allowed to return when headteachers, governing bodies, council officials and unions deem safe.

Steve Reddy, the councils Director of Children and Young Peoples Services, said on Friday he was writing to all parents to tell them not to expect schools to reopen for everyone on 1 June.

In the letter he said: Our guiding principle is that schools can only reopen to other pupils when it is safe to do so and not a moment before.

Only once we can be sure that schools are safe for both children and staff will they be able to open to more children. The safety of your child, and of our staff, is our top priority.

Some parents have asked me when schools may fully reopen. This will vary from school to school. Each headteacher has to rigorously assess the risks of fully reopening for their particular school.

The size and layout of the school building, and the availability of staff, will affect their assessments. It will be the case that the schools will do it differently. Your childs headteacher will be in touch with you in due course.

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He added: We will not be pressuring anyone to send their child to school since you know your children and personal situation best. Once you have all the information, you will be able to make an informed decision.

The Government has made it clear they will not be fining parents for not sending children into school during this term.

However, if you are supported by a social worker and your social worker advises that your child needs to attend school, it is important you follow this advice.

Liverpool and the wider region has seen some of the UKs highest infection rates for coronavirus.

Announcing his plans to ease lockdown restrictions on Sunday, the Prime Minister laid out plans for a phased return of schools, saying reception, year 1 and year 6 pupils may be able to return on 1 June at the earliest.

He also expressed his desire for secondary school pupils with exams next year to get at least some time with their teachers before the holidays.

But his plans have been criticised by teaching unions, with one branding them nothing short of reckless.

Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU) said: We think that the announcement by the government that schools may reopen from 1 June with reception and years 1 and 6 is nothing short of reckless.

Coronavirus continues to ravage communities in the UK and the rate of COVID-19 infection is still far too great for the wider opening of our schools.

She added: If schools are re-opened to blatant breaches of health and safety, we will strongly support our members who take steps to protect their pupils, their colleagues and their families.

The worst outcome of any wider re-opening of schools is a second spike of COVID-19 infection.

Patrick Roach, general secretary of the teachers union NASUWT, said the governments announcement risks thousands of schools rushing to make decisions about how best to safeguard the health and safety of children and staff in the absence of any clear national guidance.

Coronavirus: what happened today
Dressed in Ottoman-era attire complete with a surgical mask, Sufi singer Eren Cosan wakes people up with his drum in the early hours for "sahur"  the last meal before a day of fasting that begins before sunrise. But unlike most Ramadan drummers who simply pound on the drum, Cosan sings traditional Sufi songs whose lyrics are very much in tune with the woes of a Ramadan amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A short clip that showed Cosan singing Give me a remedy, my sultan went viral May 10, reaching nearly a million viewers through Twitter and news sites. Cosan, a self-taught singer, and another musician, Umit Turker, were filmed from a balcony on a street in Mamak, an Ankara neighborhood that has been a traditional stronghold of the ruling Justice and Development Party.

His newfound fame caught Cosan by surprise. I was not even aware that we were filmed, let alone that the clip became viral, until the next day, he told Al-Monitor. He took the job of Ramadan drummer because he needed money. Normally, our Sufi band does very well this time of the year because we perform at wedding ceremonies and Ramadan concerts. But all collective activities shivered down due to the coronavirus, he said, adding that the municipality paid drummers 100 Turkish liras ($14) a day.

The Ramadan drummers are normally paid in tips from the locals. But the Interior Ministry banned them from going door-to-door to collect tips as part of measures against the pandemic, which has caused nearly 4,000 deaths in Turkey. Therefore, local authorities decided to pay Ramadan drummers a daily fee, particularly after some of them said they would go on strike if they were not allowed to collect tips.

Yet the public still finds ways to help the drummers. People who want to tip do it now by placing it in a basket they lower from their balconies, Mehmet Selcik, a drummer in Istanbuls Zeytinburnu district, told the semi-official Anadolu news agency.

This Ramadan is different, Cosan, who describes himself as a firm believer, told Al-Monitor. This year, God has shown us how very vulnerable we are, with just one invisible virus bringing all people, including the mighty and the vain, to their knees. Mankind has been arrogant and aggressive, inflicting harm on nature, animals and weaker beings such as women and children. We now need to rediscover our spirituality and show solidarity and compassion for each other.

In Turkey, a country with more than 80 million residents, peoples approaches to Ramadan differ widely, depending on their level of piety or socio-economic class. The Islamic holy month may be rather low-key in some Westernized and wealthy neighborhoods in big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara or Izmir, except for special puppet theaters for children in chic malls or posh iftars, the post-sunset meal, at five-star hotels. In more conservative Anatolian towns, people observe the rites meticulously, often closing down restaurants during the day and even harassing people who eat, drink, smoke or consume alcohol in public while others fast.

Ramadan also marks an annual high point for both traditional and modern retailers. Markets put out special Ramadan megapacks of food, soft drinks, nuts and candy; shopping malls offer Ramadan events complete with Ottoman costumes and puppet and shadow theater and traditional bazaars decorate their shop windows with lanterns in anticipation of shoppers.

Ever since the 1990s, Ramadan has been highly commercialized in Turkey, Mustafa Sen, an associate professor of sociology at Ankaras Middle East Technical University (METU), told Al-Monitor. It has been about Ramadan packs in markets, commercials for family-size soft drinks on television and rich fast-breaking menus. The confinement caused by the pandemic has put an end to all the trimmings and show-off aspects of Ramadan this year, but it would be difficult to say whether these changes, caused by a very unique and particular situation, will endure.

This year, the traditional Ramadan tents, organized by political parties and municipalities to offer meals to the poor, were banned. Bakeries were required to bake the pide, the traditional flat bread topped with black sesame seeds, earlier in the day to prevent long queues at sunset. Online, the bread-baking craze has been replaced by people who bake pides at home and post photos.

Though some cities have reopened the traditional bazaars, Istanbuls Grand Bazaar, which has its heyday during Ramadan, is closed until June 1 and mosques, where practicing Muslims go for tarawih  night prayers special to Ramadan  are closed until mid-June. But mahyas, messages spelled out with lights strung between the minarets of mosques, shine on, often with messages about the pandemic such as Stay home.

The novel coronavirus has also left its mark on the songs of the drummers. A band that roamed the streets of Istanbul on the first day of Ramadan reworded a traditional wake-up song with a reference to the pandemic: Wake up, dont stray, get up and pray, maybe it will keep COVID-19 away.

Keeping the virus away means that the traditional family iftars are no longer an option. I look forward to the Ramadan for a family iftar, Hatice Akkan, a cleaning lady in the Aegean port city of Izmir, told Al-Monitor. It is the only time of the year that we put aside our political differences in the extended family and enjoy a meal. But my father is over the age of 65 and my son works in a factory, so we cannot come together; it is too risky. We have video calls during the meal, though, so it feels like we are together.

She added, I wonder what will happen on the Eid  I would really like to go and visit my father if there is no lockdown. Turkey celebrates Ramazan Bayrami, or Eid al-Fitr, on May 24-26 and it is yet unclear whether there will be a lockdown for the holiday.

For some academics, though the coronavirus has kept us away from family, it has brought us closer to strangers. This year we have seen unprecedented social solidarity, which is part of the Ramadan spirit, said Ayca Ergun, another associate professor of sociology at METU. Starting with Ankara and Istanbul, many local authorities have paid electricity, water and utility bills of citizens unable to do so. Business people and artists stepped in to close debt accounts in corner grocers or pay the bills of people they do not know at all.
U.S. President Donald Trump has sent a congratulatory letter to Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev on the occasion of Republic Day on May 28.

"On behalf of the American people, I send my sincere greetings and congratulations to you and the people of Azerbaijan on the occasion of Republic Day on May 28. The United States strongly supports Azerbaijan's sovereignty and independence," the letter reads.



Trump also noted that the U.S. and Azerbaijan have cooperated for nearly 30 years to strengthen international security, diversify European energy routes and sources, and build a brighter future for the people of two great nations.

"I appreciate Azerbaijan's important contributions in these areas and encourage all steps that promote democratic governance and protect the rights and freedoms we have pledged to uphold. In the face of the coronavirus pandemic, the United States stands with the people of Azerbaijan," the U.S. leader stressed.

Trump also noted that as a co-chair of the OSCE Minsk Group, the U.S. will remain engaged in supporting negotiations to find a lasting and peaceful resolution of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.
Health experts called for further investment in education, jobs and leadership for nurses and midwives at a ceremony to celebrate International Nurses Day (May 12) in Hanoi on Tuesday.

A practical session for nursing students at Ha Tinh Medical College in central Vietnam.  VNA/VNS Photo Anh Tuan

The event is part of a major three-year "Nursing Now" campaign from 2018 to 2020, aimed at improving health by empowering nursing around the world.

The World Health Organisation and International Council of Nurses campaign aims to attract the attention of national and international leaders about the essential role of nurses and midwives in keeping the world healthy.

The campaign focused on five core areas, including nursing and midwives deeply participating in health policy making; improving the quality of nursing human resources; enhancing the leading role of nursing; identifying areas where nurses can have the greatest impact; and sharing best care practices.

Nurses and midwives have increasingly played an important role in improving the quality of healthcare services as well as improving their professional positions and images, said Prof. Dr. Luong Ngoc Khue, Director of the Medical Services Administration under the Ministry of Health, at the event.

Khue stressed that the nursing team also made very important and effective contributions in the fields of policy development, care management, training, care practice and scientific research.

Quality of patient care has improved remarkably through the renewal of models of care assignment, patient care organisation and standardisation of nursing techniques. Especially in the prevention of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses and midwifes have made very effective contributions with doctors and other health workers to gradually drive back the virus, said Khue.

President of the Vietnam Nurses Association Pham Duc Muc said that during the fight against COVID-19, thousands of Vietnamese nurses were courageous in dealing professionally with dangerous diseases.

The COVID-19 pandemic helps us gain a deeper and more persuasive view on the contribution of nurses and midwives, as frontline soldiers. They overcame the risks of the pandemic, embarked in dangerous places, coordinated with physicians, carried out a series of activities such as: screening, isolation, infection control, monitoring, and provided quality care and a spiritual support for COVID-19 patients.

The success in COVID-19 prevention and control in Vietnam is a great achievement of the entire political system and the health sector, in which it is impossible not to mention the great and silent contribution of nurses, added Muc.

The Vietnam Nurses Association representative also requested the health ministry to handle shortcomings which are considered bottlenecks affecting the quality of nursing services. They include the shortage of human resources in nursing; reforming nurse education programmes following standards recommended by WHO and ASEAN member states; enhancing the positions of nurse managers in participating in making health policy.

According to the association, since 1990, the nursing management system has been established from central to provincial health departments and hospital levels. Nursing education has been brought to university and post-graduate training programmes, which have opened more opportunities for nurses and midwives to progress in their careers.

According to the World Health Organisation the world has about 28 million nurses and midwives, including 120,000 in Vietnam. Nurses and midwives make up nearly 50 per cent of resources in healthcare. They are present in all levels of the healthcare system, and they provide the most frequent and continuous services. VNS

VN to have American-standard cardiovascular treatment model for the first time Beginning this month, Vinmec Central Park International Hospital in HCM City has applied a comprehensive cardiovascular treatment model, which enables early diagnosis and multidisciplinary treatment.
A world-famous bar in Venice that once mixed drinks for the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Orson Welles and Ernest Hemingway has announced it may have poured its last drop, and will not be reopening after lockdown  as its owner raged against the Italian government.

As reported in Venezia Today, Harrys Bar will stay closed as lockdown eases in Italy, with bars and restaurants allowed to reopen from May 18. The bar was forced to shut at the beginning of March as the country scrambled to deal with the devastating impact of Coronavirus.

Owner Arrigo Cipriani told the paper: Im not opening on Monday, with those guidelines it is going to be impossible. These are silly conditions written by people without ideas and they stay this way, we wont be opening  not on Monday, not ever.

Cipriani, whose father opened the bar in 1931, continued: Italian hospitality means welcoming, and good food. It needs love, freedom, and these [conditions] are things of concentration camps.

These men in Rome worry about our health but they dont worry about what will come next: starvation, because with these guidelines, people will starve.

Cipriani went on to say: There should be four metres square around customers, and Im going to have to ask them for written permission to know which kind of relationship there is between them. Its crazy. About the booking, they say its preferable to book  but is it an obligation or not? I fear no-one is going to show up. The world has stopped.

The outspoken Cipriani took over the bar from his father in 1950, which was by then one of the most famous in the world, having been name-checked in Evelyn Waugh's 1947 novel Brideshead Revisited. In its heyday, it drew stars including Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock and Truman Capote, and is said to have invented both the Bellini cocktail and carpaccio, a way of preparing meat and fish. In 2001, Harry's was named a national landmark by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Affairs.

That history now looks to come to a close, as Cipriani mooted retirement  or at least a move.

I havent counted how many people could fit here, but I know I would have to fire at least 50 of my 75 employees if I wanted to open this way  Im 88 years old, I can always retire at this point.

Harrys Bar stays closed, and that means Im going to open in Ibiza: the Spanish government has already put some money down to open.

Italy had originally announced June 1 as the date for bars and restaurants to reopen, before bringing the date forward this week.
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Linkedin Ni Komang Erviani (The Jakarta Post) Kuta, Bali  Fri, May 15 2020

The Bali Police have dropped their investigation into the deaths of two Australians found dead on the island earlier this month. The decision was made following requests from the respective families of the victims.

On May 5, Australian Christopher Steven Tolley was found lifeless in his hotel room in Seminyak, a beach resort area in southern Bali.

The 48-year-old was found dead on the bed of his hotel room on Tuesday afternoon after missing his check-out time. His body was taken to the Sanglah Hospital for further investigation. A swab test for COVID-19 came back negative.

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A member of the opposition NDC Legal Team, Lawyer Abraham Amaliba, has asked the ruling NPP not to get overly-excited following the recent ruling on the NCA $4m Scandal.



An Accra High Court presided over by Justice Kyei Barfuor handed a six-year jail term to Mr. William Tetteh Tevie, Eugene Baffoe-Bonnie, and slapped a five-year jail term on Salifu Osman, a former National Security representative coordinator.



Justice Eric Kyei Baffour found them guilty of causing a $4 million financial loss to the state.



Some Communicators of the ruling government see the ruling as a sign of the government's willingness to fight corruption.



The Bono Regional Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Kwame Baffoe Abronye in a panel discussion on UTV said unlike the previous NDC administration, President Akufo-Addo has shown a strong commitment to fighting the corruption canker.



However, Lawyer Amaliba says their excitement is misplaced because 'it is easy to take your opponents to court'.



Speaking in an interview on Neat FM's 'Me Man Nti' programme, he asked President Akufo-Addo to drag members of his administration who have been accused of corruption to court since that is where the real commitment to fighting the canker lies.



"They shouldnt praise themselves or clap for themselves . . . the test is to take your own people to court. It is easy to take your opponents to court; it doesnt mean you are fighting corruption. Selective prosecution will not lead to fighting corruption. If you are on a stop malaria crusade, you fight mosquitoes everywhere; you dont select the kind of mosquitoes you should kill . . . it is never done," he told host McJerry Osei Agyemang.



Citing the Australian visa scandal and other corruption allegations levelled against some members in the ruling government, he said, in other to stop opposition people like him from talking, "If I were the President, I would have put one or two of them before court. But President Akufo -Addo will not do that, he will rather clear you".



Listen to him in the video below





Source: Rebecca Addo Tetteh/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
By Express News Service

BENGALURU: Reformed underworld don Muthappa Rai, (68) who was battling cancer for the past year, passed away in Bengaluru, in the early hours on Friday.

Rai, an entrepreneur and founder of pro-Kannada organisation Jaya Karnataka, had retired from public life after he was diagnosed with cancer. He was residing in Bidadi on Mysuru road and is survived by his wife and children.

According to family sources, Rai's final rites will be conducted at his residential premise and no public will be allowed to attend the funeral due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

A month ago, Central Crime Branch (CCB) had questioned Rai as part of an ongoing investigation into gangster Ravi Pujari, who was extradited from Senegal recently.


Macau Heavyweight SJM Holdings Trumpets Advancing Development

Published May 15, 2020 by Lee R

A beacon of adaptation has been spotted in Macau that gives new hope for a way forward.

In news that will bring a collective sigh of relief for Macau, Hong Kong's SJM Holdings Limited has announced plans to move 1000 employees from its mainstay Casino Grand Lisboa holding to work in the updated Grand Lisboa Palace facility.

The Latest Location

The new facility is now almost entirely complete and on track to open for business during the second half of the year, which is actually barely two months away.

SJM's Ambitious Project

SJM Holdings is a force within the China protectorate, operating a range of 20 gambling-friendly venues spread across Macau. Work began on the 2,000-room Grand Lisboa Palace in February of 2014 as a venue designed to compete with rival properties of the time such as Melco Resorts' $3.2 billion Studio City Macau.

The Grand Lisboa Project

The idea for Grand Lisboa Palace was spawned as part of a larger $5 billion development featuring three branded five star hotels under Palazzo Versace and Karl Lagerfeld, hosting a 290,000 sq ft casino and a range of shops and restaurants.

Reallocating Resources

SJM Holdings Limited claims that the move to relocate the workers will serve to reduce costs at the 13-year-old Casino Grand Lisboa, which will continue to operate with 1000 less workers on the payroll.

Within Budget

SJM also placed total expenditure on the Cotai Strip project so far at just over $4.2 billion, with no more expenditures necessary until opening.

Dealing with Corona

As for Macau slowdowns caused by the Coronavirus, SJM Holdings Limited has requested bank waivers on its financial covenants for up to six quarters, but has announced no plans on cutting any local staff or reducing compensation at this point while remaining very optimistic that Macau can get back to its prior levels.

Outlook

With the new facility reportedly having enough space to accommodate social distancing requirements, it is refreshing to see an effective adaptation by a major player in the Macau gaming landscape.
Enterprises seek more than financial aid for Covid-19 recovery

Vietnamese enterprises are asking for both financial support and administrative reforms to aid their recovery from the Covid-19 crisis, the government says.

"Eighty percent of businesses believe that the government's solutions are appropriate and timely. However, they expect stronger actions," Planning and Investment Minister Nguyen Chi Dung said at a recent meeting between Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and businesses.

"The recommendations went beyond financial aid packages to further simplification of administrative procedures, greater transparency and clarity in policies, and more righteousness and positive attitude from enforcement officials."

Minister of Planning and Investment, Nguyen Chi Dung. Photo by VnExpress/Quang Hieu.

Dungs assessment was backed by surveys conducted by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry (VCCI).

"When asked about their needs, large enterprises answer that they do not ask for money as the country is struggling, but (for better) mechanisms," said VCCI chairman Vu Tien Loc.

Loc explaind "mechanisms" as solutions to remove bottlenecks in administrative procedures, promoting public investment and implementing measures to "release the economic front."

He said public investment would generate momentum for economy recovery and create jobs alongside private investment and foreign direct investment.

If the bottlenecks are removed and due public investments made, "there is no reason that we cannot reach (the targeted) GDP growth rate of over 5 percent," Loc noted at the meeting.

Vu Tien Loc, VCCI's chairman at a May 9 conference in Hanoi. Photo by VnExpress/Quang Hieu.

A rapid survey of nearly 130,000 businesses by VCCI showed 86 percent saying they were negatively affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. An average 30 percent year-on-year drop in revenue was seen in the first four months.

The business community reported a double whammy of a shortage of input materials and a sharp decrease in the output market.

The survey also found that businesses have been proactive with survival measures including applying flexible working hours, cutting production costs, and looking for alternative markets.

Minister Dung said that the disruption in supply chains and value chains would continue to exert greater post-crisis impacts. For instance, mergers and acquisitions could put Vietnamese businesses with potential in danger of being acquired at low prices.

However, he added: "This is an opportunity for Vietnam to show ourselves to the world as an advantageous, safe investment destination ready to welcome shifting capital flows. These special advantages can push Vietnam one step ahead towards economic recovery and establish a new (stronger) position for itself."
The Central Tibetan Administration has urged stranded community members to remain wherever they are instead of trying to make their way home here, cautioning against the possibility of bringing coronavirus to the seat of the Dalai Lama.

CTA president Lobsang Sangay on Thursday said while the organisation is making every effort to get travel passes for people stranded due to the coronavirus lockdown, it is difficult to obtain them in some states due to the large migrant population returning home.

He said if possible Dharamshala residents should stay where they are instead of heading home.

Dharamshala is home to the Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama as well as the CTA, often known as the Tibetan government-in-exile.

The CTA president urged Tibetans around the world, particularly in Europe, to follow precautionary measures as Europe gradually reopens.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In yet another tragic incident, three migrant workers were killed and four injured after a vehicle hit them from behind in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh in the wee hours on Friday, while they were on their way to Bahraich and Shravasti from Surat, Gujarat.

The incident was reported from Barabankis Ramnagar Tiraha around 2:30am on Friday. While two of the migrant workers died on the spot, another succumbed to his injuries at a district hospital. The injured were referred to the Trauma Centre in Lucknow and are currently under treatment there.

The police claimed that prima facie it seemed they were hit by a heavy vehicle from behind. The deceased have been identified as Jitendra, Shishupal from Bahraich and Mohan from Shravasti.

Seven people were brought late night for treatment out of which two were brought dead, while one more succumbed to his injuries later on. Remaining were referred to Lucknow for further treatment. All the dead and injured had suffered head injuries, which suggested that they were hit by some vehicle, said a doctor posted at the district hospital Barabanki.

Earlier, a woman and a child returning from Gujarat were killed after the truck they were travelling in, along with several other migrant workers, rammed into a stationary truck at the National Highway under Akbarpur Kotwali in the Kanpur Dehat area of Uttar Pradesh. Sixty others were injured. Some of them are reportedly critical.

In a similar incident, 18 migrant labourers, who were on their to Kaushambi, met with a road accident when the pick-up truck in which they were travelling turned turtle after the driver lost control near Selraha. They were travelling from Maharashtras Kalyan for four days in a truck.

Meanwhile, a couple was crushed to death and their two children were critically injured after a vehicle hit them in Lucknows Shaheed Path. The migrant family was headed to Chhattisgarh on a bicycle after they reportedly ran out of resources during the ongoing lockdown.
West Bengal "long back" communicated to the Union government the preparations made to welcome back people stranded abroad, the state said on Friday, replying to the Centre's assertion that repatriation flights can be facilitated to Kolkata if Bengal confirms the arrangements to receive and quarantine passengers.

Indians stranded in various countries due to COVID-19-related restrictions are being brought back in special flights under the Centre's Vande Bharat Mission.

"GOWB (government of West Bengal) keen to welcome back our people stranded in different countries and has long back communicated its agreement as well as quarantine arrangements details etc. to GoI for special international inbound journeys. Letters attached. Bengal awaits flights," the West Bengal home department tweeted.

It also shared the two letters written by West Bengal Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha to Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla and the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on May 8 and 11. The letters mention the details regarding preparations for institutional quarantine facilities for foreign returnees.

On Thursday, the state and the Centre had locked horns over West Bengal not being allotted any repatriation flight.

West Bengal Education Minister Partha Chatterjee had alleged that the Centre was discriminating between states in terms of allotting repatriation flights under the Vande Bharat Mission.

The charge was denied by the MEA within a few hours with its spokesperson, Anurag Srivastava, tweeting, "The MEA does not discriminate between states. GOI's Vande Bharat Mission is for all stranded Indians, including those from West Bengal."



"Will gladly facilitate flights to Kolkata if the state government will confirm arrangements to receive and quarantine. Will also help in return of West Bengal residents through land borders with neighbours. We hope to receive an early response on the matter. @MoCAGoI @HomeSecretaryWB," Srivastava had tweeted.

Chatterjee, while reacting to the MEA's reply, wondered why the Centre was yet to act when the state government had already informed it about the details sought for allotting repatriation flights.

The issue took a political hue with the BJP lapping up the issue to attack ruling Trinamool Congress in West Bengal.

"We have seen how the state government has been dilly-dallying the issue of bringing back citizens stranded in other states. Initially, they didn't apply for special trains to ferry migrants. So, it is quite expected that they have not applied for flights to bring back citizens of Bengal stranded abroad," Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh said.

Instead of trying to play to the gallery by issuing statements on Twitter, the state government should come out with concrete proofs on whether it has applied for any repatriation flight, he said.

"The West Bengal government should make arrangements to bring back our citizens", Ghosh said.

The exchange of words on allotment of Vande Bharat Mission flights comes close on heels of the Centre and the state sparring on running of 'Special Shramik' trains to ferry stranded migrant workers hailing from Bengal back home.

The West Bengal government was last week rapped by the Centre for not allowing trains to ferry migrants, stranded in other states.

The state government had denied the charge and said it had already requisitioned trains to bring back migrant labourers.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 07:00:31

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ZURICH-SCHLIEREN, SWITZERLAND / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Molecular Partners AG (SIX:MOLN), a clinical-stage biotech company that is developing a new class of custom-built protein therapeutics known as DARPin therapeutics, today announced the presentation of preclinical data from three of the company's programs at the American Academy for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting II, June 22-24, 2020.Data to be presented on MP0317 (FAP x CD40) include in vitro and in vivo experiments which show that MP0317 displays significant tumor-localized immune activation without systemic toxicity seen with anti-CD40 antibody administration. In human B cells and dendritic cells, MP0317 was found to activate the CD40 pathway solely in the presence of fibroblast activation protein (FAP)-positive cells, confirming its strict dependence on FAP-mediated crosslinking. In a mouse model, a mouse-specific FAP x CD40 DARPin molecule was found to substantially inhibit the progression of FAP-positive tumors without showing any of the toxicities seen with administration of a mouse CD40 antibody. FAP is a tumor-associated antigen abundantly expressed in many solid tumors, which Molecular Partners is leveraging to co-locate MP0317 to its target tissues.Data to be presented on the peptide-MHC DARPin program review the creation of bispecific DARPin T cell engager proteins that bind with high specificity to a HLA-A2: SLL peptide-MHC complex. The constructed DARPin proteins were observed to effectively activate T cells at a range of concentrations and to carry out highly targeted cell killing exclusively on those cells that were positive for NY-ESO-1, from which the SLL peptide is derived. This demonstrates proof-of-concept for the ability of DARPin therapeutics to effectively drug peptide-MHC complexes.Thirdly, a poster to be presented on AMG 506 / MP0310 (FAP x 4-1BB) describes pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic research to establish the optimal dose range for this novel tumor-localized immune agonist. AMG 506 / MP0310 is now in a Phase 1 clinical study.The details are as follows:MP0317: An oral presentation of MP0317 titled "A tumor-targeted CD40 agonistic DARPin molecule leading to antitumor activity with limited systemic toxicity" will take place during the minisymposium entitled "Immunomodulatory Agents and Interventions" and will be accessible at www.aacr.org Peptide-MHC DARPin: "Application of the DARPin technology for specific targeting of tumor-associated MHC class I: peptide complexes", Poster No. 690AMG 506 / MP0310: "Selection of first-in-human clinical dose range for the tumor-targeted 4-1BB agonist MP0310 (AMG 506) using a pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamics modeling approach", Poster No. 2273Following their presentation, the posters will be made available on the corresponding section of the Molecular Partners website.Financial CalendarAugust 26, 2020Publication of Half-year Results 2020 (unaudited)October 29, 2020Interim Management Statement Q3 2020About DARPin TherapeuticsDARPin therapeutics are a new class of custom-built protein therapeutics based on natural ankyrin repeat proteins that open a new dimension of multi-functionality and multi-target specificity in drug design. A single DARPin candidate can engage more than five targets within a single molecule, and its flexible architecture and small size offer benefits over conventional monoclonal antibodies or other currently available protein therapeutics. DARPin therapeutics have been clinically validated through to registration via the development of abicipar, Molecular Partners' most advanced DARPin drug candidate. The DARPin platform is a fast and cost-effective drug discovery engine, producing drug candidates with optimized properties for development and very high production yields. DARPin is a registered trademark owned by Molecular Partners AG.About Molecular Partners AGMolecular Partners AG is a clinical-stage biotech company developing a new class of custom-built proteins known as DARPin therapeutics, designed to address challenges current modalities cannot. The company has compounds in various stages of clinical and preclinical development with a focus on oncology. Molecular Partners has formed partnerships with leading pharmaceutical companies to advance DARPin therapeutics across multiple therapeutic areas.For more information regarding Molecular Partners AG, go to: www.molecularpartners.com For further details, please contact:Seth Lewis, SVP IR, Comms, & StrategyTel: +1 781 420 2361Tom Donovan, U.S. Mediatom@ tenbridgecommunications.com Tel: +1 857 559 3397Thomas Schneckenburger, IR & European MediaTel: +41 79 407 9952DisclaimerThis communication does not constitute an offer or invitation to subscribe for or purchase any securities of Molecular Partners AG. This publication may contain certain forward-looking statements and assessments or intentions concerning the company and its business. Such statements involve certain risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause the actual results, financial condition, performance or achievements of the company to be materially different from those expressed or implied by such statements. Readers should therefore not place reliance on these statements, particularly not in connection with any contract or investment decision. The company disclaims any obligation to update these forward-looking statements, assessments or intentions.SOURCE: Molecular Partners AG
The Syrian government has announced that thousands of citizens have been placed in quarantine, to prevent the spread of coronavirus in the country writes SANA.

The Health Ministry announced that the total number of people who have been quarantined as of Feb. 5, 2020, until now is 6,781. Of those people, 4,224 of them having been discharged while 2,557 are still under observation.

In a statement on Thursday, Assistant Director of the Infectious and Terminal Diseases Department at the Ministry Dr. Atef al-Tawil said that 13 planes transporting 2,770 Syrians stranded abroad have arrived in Syria coming from nine countries via Syrian Airlines over the two past weeks, noting that quarantine centers have been prepared to accommodate all the incoming persons, in cooperation with the Ministries of Higher Education and Scientific Research, Awqaf, and Social Affairs and Labor.

The Ministry added that tests to detect the coronavirus for the coming Syrians are free of charge, while giving priority to the elderly, those with chronic diseases, pregnant women and people with disabilities.

The Ministry indicated that the epidemiological situation is being monitored at the national level to guarantee the health security of the citizens and curb the infections.

So far, 48 cases of coronavirus have been registered in Syria, with 29 of the patients having recovered while three passed away.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
While confirmed coronavirus cases remain low in Crosby and Huffman, testing options are similarly sparse.

Only two cases have been confirmed in the Huffman area in the zip code 77336, while the Crosby zip code 77532 has seen 29 cases as of May 14.

ABBOTT: Bars, daycares and sports can return under phase 2 of reopening Texas

Corey Steele, operations section chief for COVID response with Harris County Public Health, said low confirmed cases could be a combination of both a testing desert and an actually low amount of confirmed cases, which is why they would work to get testing toward the eastern edge of the county to give the population the opportunity to get tested.

For residents of Crosby and Huffman, the nearest coronavirus permanent testing location is at Stallworth Stadium in Baytown, which is about a 15-mile drive from Crosby and a 24-mile drive from Huffman.

However, the Harris County Public Health department has set up a system of mobile testing sites that change locations throughout the county on a weekly basis.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Texas reports massive jump in COVID-19 cases in single day

Harris County Precinct 2 hosted a mobile site at the Crosby Community Center running between April 26-28 where officials tested between 100-150 residents per day, said Scott Spiegel, who serves as press secretary for Precinct 2.

Harris County Precinct 4 hosted two temporary mobile testing site in Humble until Saturday, May 9, which is a 30 minute drive from Crosby and a 20 minute trek from Huffman.

BACK TO BUSINESS: Lake Houston area restaurants, retailers cautiously reopen

The first mobile testing site operated in Humble from April 20-22. The county tested more than 600 people and more confirmed coronavirus cases followed. On April 20, there were 11 confirmed cases in the Humble-area zip code 77338. As of May 14, there were 138 confirmed cases in the same zip code.

My office was been working tirelessly to have more testing access in all parts of the precinct. I pushed hard for the first mobile testing site to open up in Harris County to be located at Grayson Community Center, which is in the Cloverleaf/North Channel-area, said Harris County Precinct 2 Commissioner Adrian Garcia whose area covers the eastern and southeastern parts of Harris County. The mobile tests sites have also been in place at various times in Crosby, Galena Park, Deer Park, and other parts of the precinct as well. So the county is doing its best to spread the access to testing as much as possible, given the limited resources.

Humble has the highest amount of coronavirus cases in the Lake Houston area, followed closely by the 77396 zip code to the south with 101 cases and the 77346 zip code covering the Atascocita area with 96 cases. Kingwood remains lower, with 45 cases in the 77339 zip code and eight cases in the 77345 zip code.

COVID-19 CASES: Texas Coronavirus Map: See the latest numbers on our interactive tracker

There are two fixed COVID-19 testing sites inside the 610 Loop, and there are 10 others that are inside of Beltway 8. But the further out one gets, the more spread out the fixed testing sites are. In order to get a free COVID-19 test, people need to fill out a brief questionnaire from HCPH and select a testing site.

I will continue to fight for every area of my precinct to get them a mobile testing site, said Garcia.

elliott.lapin@hearst.com
The Myanmar military handed over a group of 22 northeast insurgents to the Indian government on Friday afternoon. The insurgents, wanted in Manipur and Assam, have been brought back by a special plane, people familiar with the development told Hindustan Times.

This is a huge step for the Myanmar government and a reflection of the deepening ties between the two countries, a top government official said soon after an aircraft with a planeload of insurgents took off from Myanmar.

The plane first made a stopover in Manipur capital Imphal, before heading to Assams Guwahati. The insurgents have been handed over to the local police in the two states.

Also Read: Packed in Myanmars decision to deport 22 insurgents, a sharp message to others

This is the first time that the Myanmar government has acted on Indias request to hand over leaders of the northeast insurgent groups, a senior national security planner said about the operation driven by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. This is seen as a result of increasing intelligence and defence cooperation between the two countries from both sides.

DEPORTED: (Left, top) Self-styled Capt Sanatomba Ningthoujam of UNLF, (Left, bottom) Lt Pashuram Laishram of PREPAK-PRO, (Right, top) Rajen Daimary, home secretary (NDFB-S) and Right, Bottom) self styled Capt Sansuma Basumatary (NDFB-S) (HT Photo)

Among those deported by Myanmar are some senior and long-wanted Indian insurgent leaders such as NDFB (S) self-styled home secretary Rajen Daimary, Capt Sanatomba Ningthoujam of UNLF and Lt Pashuram Laishram of PREPAK (Pro).

12 of the 22 insurgents are linked to four insurgent groups in Manipur: UNLF, PREPAK (Pro), KYKL and PLA. The remaining 10 are linked to Assam groups such as NDFB (S) and KLO.

PLANELOAD OF INSURGENTS NDFB (S) Rajen Daimary @ Rebgon, self-styled Home Secy Self-styled Capt Sansuma Basumatary @ Sarontsai Gagaram Basumatary @ Capt. Gamsha Surju Brahmo @ Brammo SwrjiSula Sukuram Brahma KLO Shanker Deb Barman @ Silukar @ Siluksh Bhajan Barman @ Tiger Koch Bishu Roy @ Bishwa Singha Koch Jitendra Roy @ Mangak Koch Dhono Roy @ Sgt. Bahadur UNLF Naoba Meitei @ Nganba Masoom @ Sinthoi Balaram Takhellambam @ Loijing Self-styled Capt Sanatomba @ Ningthoujam @ Manaoba Pratap Meitei @ Naitomnganba Sanjoy Meitei @ Naocha Ajoy Akoijam @ Uttam PLA Athoi Meitei @ Koiramba Kennedy Aribam @ Nongdren PREPAK (Pro) Self-styled Lt Pashuram Laishram @ Arjun Premananda Meitei @ Harjit KYKL Santosh Meitei @ Kanta

The treacherous terrain along Indias over 1,600-km border with Myanmar makes the area ideal for camps of insurgent groups that have been fighting the Indian state for decades.

But pressure has been building on the insurgent groups over the last few years after the Myanmar military agreed to conduct operations.

Last year, the Myanmar army carried out continuous operations through February and March 2019 on the basis of pin-pointed intelligence provided by Indian security agencies.

The Myanmar army attacked multi-group terror camps at Taga in the north of the country across the Vijaynagar salient in Arunachal Pradesh in the first phase, and decimated Arakan, Nilgiri and Haukyat camps in the second.

The 22 insurgents were caught by the Myanmar army in Sagaing Region in these operations.

Also Read: In 2019 joint op with Myanmar, Indian army deployed hammer and anvil tactics

A national security official said Myanmars decision to hand over the insurgents is a huge message to the outfits that Naypyidaw is in sync with New Delhi on dealing with them.

Indian officials expect Myanmars action to be a deterrent to groups that had assumed the dense forests across the border could insulate them from action. Just as the one created by the United Arab Emirates, once considered a haven for Indian criminals on the run, when it started deporting criminals and terrorists wanted in India.

If Pakistan also acted against terrorists as these two countries do, then there would hardly be any terror group there too, a senior national security official lamented.

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CORPUS CHRISTI, TX, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Uranium Energy Corp (NYSE American: UEC, the "Company" or "UEC") is pleased to report the completion of a 49-hole drilling and sampling campaign at its Alto Parana titanium oxide project located in eastern Paraguay. The drilling program was completed prior to the recent COVID-19 measures the Company announced and is the first phase of a Preliminary Economic Assessment ("PEA") planned for the project. The recently completed drilling campaign targeted the initial mining zone and will be used to update the current resource*.

Amir Adnani, President and CEO, stated, "This drilling program is an important step towards development of the PEA, as we continue to advance our monetization strategy for the project. While we are working to unlock Alto Parana's value, our primary focus remains on the Company's core U.S. uranium business with low cost, fully permitted in-situ recovery projects in Texas and Wyoming."

The Alto Parana project is one of the world's highest-grade and largest ferro-titanium deposits with a CSA National Instrument 43-101  Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Properties ("NI 43-101") compliant resource of 4.94 billion tonnes at 7.41% TiO 2 *. Mineralization occurs at the surface, with an average thickness of 6.61 meters. Additionally, future development and mining can benefit from excellent infrastructure with proximity to a major hydroelectric power source. Prior to UEC's acquisition of Alto Parana, approximately $25 million was invested in the project, including pilot testing from mining through the smelting processes.

The 49-hole drill campaign was centered in the initial mining area and was laid out on a 400-meter by 400-meter grid with each test hole averaging 10 meters in depth. The entire interval was core-drilled, and core recovery was maintained at 90% or greater. A total of 49 holes were drilled and yielded approximately 500 samples. The samples are currently being prepared for the earliest possible shipment to analytical laboratories in Canada and Peru. Once results are received, work will be initiated on a new resource estimate* for the planned PEA. The field work and resource estimate are being overseen by Don Hains, PG, as the Qualified Person under NI 43-101*.

In closing, Mr. Adnani added, "Last week we learned of the passing of J. David Lowell, who discovered the Alto Parana project and is known as one of the world's most successful exploration geologists. We would like to acknowledge his renowned career, express our gratitude for his work on the Alto Parana project and offer our sincere condolences and thoughts to his family, friends and associates."

The technical information in this news release has been prepared in accordance with the Canadian regulatory requirements set out in NI 43-101 and was reviewed by Clyde L. Yancey, PG, Vice President-Exploration for the Company and a Qualified Person under NI 43-101.

About Uranium Energy Corp

Uranium Energy Corp is a U.S.-based uranium mining and exploration company. In South Texas, the Company's hub-and-spoke operations are anchored by the fully-licensed Hobson Processing Facility which is central to the Palangana, Burke Hollow and Goliad ISR projects. In Wyoming, UEC controls the Reno Creek project, which is the largest permitted, pre-construction ISR uranium project in the U.S. Additionally, the Company controls a pipeline of uranium projects in Arizona, New Mexico and Paraguay, a uranium/vanadium project in Colorado and one of the highest-grade and largest undeveloped Ferro-Titanium deposits in the world, located in Paraguay. The Company's operations are managed by professionals with a recognized profile for excellence in their industry, a profile based on many decades of hands-on experience in the key facets of uranium exploration, development and mining.

Stock Exchange Information:

NYSE American: UEC

+Frankfurt Stock Exchange Symbol: U6Z

WKN: AJDRR

ISN: US916896103

*Notice to U.S. Investors

The mineral resources referred to herein have been estimated in accordance with the definition standards on mineral resources of the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum referred to in NI 43-101 and are not compliant with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") Industry Guide 7 guidelines. In addition, measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources and inferred mineral resources, while recognized and required by Canadian regulations, are not defined terms under SEC Industry Guide 7 and are normally not permitted to be used in reports and registration statements filed with the SEC. Accordingly, we have not reported them in the United States. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of the mineral resources in these categories will ever be converted into mineral reserves. These terms have a great amount of uncertainty as to their existence, and great uncertainty as to their economic and legal feasibility. It should be noted that mineral resources which are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources will ever be upgraded to a higher category. In accordance with Canadian rules, estimates of inferred mineral resources cannot form the basis of feasibility or other economic studies. Investors are cautioned not to assume that any part of the reported measured mineral resources, indicated mineral resources or inferred mineral resources referred to herein are economically or legally mineable.

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Except for the statements of historical fact contained herein, the information presented in this news release and oral statements made from time to time by representatives of the Company are or may constitute "forward-looking statements" as such term is used in applicable United States and Canadian laws and including, without limitation, within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, for which the Company claims the protection of the safe harbor for forward-looking statements. These statements relate to analyses and other information that are based on forecasts of future results, estimates of amounts not yet determinable and assumptions of management. Any other statements that express or involve discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance (often, but not always, using words or phrases such as "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans, "estimates" or "intends", or stating that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and should be viewed as forward-looking statements. Such forward looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of the Company to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such risks and other factors include, among others, the actual results of exploration activities, variations in the underlying assumptions associated with the estimation or realization of mineral resources, the availability of capital to fund programs and the resulting dilution caused by the raising of capital through the sale of shares, accidents, labor disputes and other risks of the mining industry including, without limitation, those associated with the environment, delays in obtaining governmental approvals, permits or financing or in the completion of development or construction activities, title disputes or claims limitations on insurance coverage. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking statements, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions, it can give no assurance that its expectations will be achieved. Forward-looking information is subject to certain risks, trends and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those projected. Many of these factors are beyond the Company's ability to control or predict. Important factors that may cause actual results to differ materially and that could impact the Company and the statements contained in this news release can be found in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The Company assumes no obligation to update or supplement any forward-looking statements whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements contained in this news release and in any document referred to in this news release. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities.

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In a display of contempt for Native American tribal sovereignty and the health of impoverished reservation residents, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem last Friday demanded the Sioux tribe lift checkpoints it had set up to stop the introduction of the coronavirus into tribal territory. The governor threatened the tribes with a federal lawsuit if they didnt comply within 48 hours.

In early April, Oglala and Cheyenne River Sioux tribes located on reservations in southwest and central South Dakota established a series of roadblocks on state and local highways that run through their reservations. The checkpoints were established before reservation residents had detected cases of COVID-19 in an effort to prevent the astonishing cases and deaths seen on the Navajo Nation in the American Southwest. Both tribes also limited non-residents from entering their reservations and made entry conditional on answering health questionnaires.

On May 12, the Oglala Sioux tribe president Julian Bear Runner announced an executive order locking down the Pine Ridge Reservation for 24 hours, after two COVID-19 cases were detected.

South Dakota has seen jumps in new cases, including at the Smithfield Foods Sioux Falls meat processing plant, which saw protests against dangerous working conditions last month.

As of Thursday morning, South Dakota has 3,732 cases and 39 deaths. In the populated counties around Sioux Falls, infection rates are as high as 1 in 62. Among Native Americans in South Dakota, there are at least 184 cases of COVID-19.

Governor Noems contempt for the health of the South Dakota working class exemplifies the response of the ruling class as a whole. Noem said that 70 percent of South Dakota would be infected and worked to guarantee those numbers by refusing to issue stay-at-home restrictions or limits on interstate travel. Referring to the checkpoints, Cheyenne River Sioux chairman Harold Frazier told Time magazine, We have every legal right to do what were doing. Were just trying to save lives, and the lives of all the reservation, not just our [tribal] members.

Due to the impoverished conditions on the reservations in South Dakota, the coronavirus is poised to decimate the Sioux. Like the Navajo Nation, the Oglala Sioux tribe is located on the Pine Ridge Reservation, which encompasses some of the poorest counties in the US. Recently, the social devastation facing workers in Pine Ridge was dramatized in the 2018 film The Rider .

Speaking to local news, Debra White Plume, a member of the Oglala Sioux tribe, summarized the dangers the pandemic poses: I am worried that it could spread like wildfire.

The Sioux are no stranger to ruthless oppression at the hands of the US government, and Governor Noems claim is the latest in a series of blatant treaty violations by federal and state governments. The Lakota Sioux resisted the brutal US occupation and forceful assimilation into the 1890s, and the conditions imposed by US imperialism more than a century ago persist today.

The Dawes Act of 1887 forced Native Americans to adopt capitalist property relations, destroyed tribal governments, and opened up Native land to white settlement. In 1890, the US government violated the 1868 Fort Laramie Treaty, breaking up the Great Sioux Reservation into five smaller reservations. While separating children from their families and re-educating them in brutal boarding schools, the Bureau of Indian Affairs, with the backing of the US Army, forced tribes like the Sioux to farm arid, inhospitable land.

In the winter of 1890, after crops failed, the US government halved rations and forced the Lakota into starvation. On December 28, 1890, Lakota people who registered their resistance by participating in the religious Ghost Dance movement were forcibly relocated to a camp on Wounded Knee Creek, in the Pine Ridge Reservation, and massacred by the US Army. Historians estimate that as many as 300 Lakota, most of whom were women and children, were killed.

In 1973, during a revolutionary upsurge of workers around the world, members of the American Indian Movement (AIM) held an open meeting in the town of Wounded Knee, on the Pine Ridge Reservation, protesting the tribal presidents corruption and abuses and the US governments failures to fulfill treaties. The protest resulted in a 71-day standoff with the US Marshals and Federal Bureau of Investigation that was punctuated by violent exchanges of gunfire and the deaths of two Native American supporters, as well as the alleged murder of civil rights activist Ray Robinson.

More recently, in 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe attempted to block construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline under Lake Oahe, which supplies the tribes drinking water. In the fall of 2016, after the US government dismissed the tribes concerns, tens of thousands of protestors gathered in Standing Rock in opposition. Their camps were surrounded by law enforcement and the Army National Guard, and protestors were assaulted with water cannons, flash grenades, and beatings. Six hundred protesters were arrested, dozens sustained serious injuries, and the pipeline received bipartisan support.

Though the US legal system has historically proven to be a dead end for tribes, the South Dakota Governor has no legal power to demand the removal of checkpoints on highways that pass through tribal land and that reservation residents deem necessary for public health. This Wednesday, Noem claimed that any tribal interaction with traffic otherwise passing through the reservation is unlawful and could actually increase the risk of spreading the virus on the reservation. Noem, who has demonstrated her indifference to spreading the virus, is worried about disruptions to business. In reality, the checkpoints have allowed contact tracing that identified the known cases on Sioux land.

In addition, the US Constitution outlines a government-to-government relationship between tribes and the federal government in the commerce clause, which authorizes Congress to regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with Indian Tribes.

While the US Department of the Interior directed tribes to discuss travel restrictions on government-owned roads with state authorities, South Dakotas malign negligence and refusal to limit travel has led cases to spread to every corner of the state, demonstrating the futility of negotiating with the state for road closures. According to Cheyenne Sioux chairman Harold Frazier, these roads are maintained by the state, but they dont own them.

History also shows that identarian movements, legal proceedings, and standoffs with US imperialism end in defeat for Native American workers and poor farmers. Only by turning to the working class as a whole, by expanding the struggle against the pandemic into a struggle against capitalism and for socialism, can the residents of the reservations resolve the historical questions and brutal conditions they face.
GRAND RAPIDS, MI -- About 15 percent of businesses recently polled by the Grand Rapids Area Chamber of Commerce say they wouldnt be able to weather another month of Michigans stay-at-home order for the novel coronavirus.

Another 31 percent of businesses that responded said they werent sure if they would be able to survive another month of it, and the final 54 percent of businesses said they would be able to, according to Rick Baker, president and CEO of the chamber.

The survey was sent out to the chambers 1,800 or so members across the greater Grand Rapids area. About 264 companies have responded so far.

Baker cautioned that the results shouldnt be taken as a statistically accurate picture of the areas business landscape.

Rather, he said, the feedback allows the chamber to check the pulse of its members.

I wouldnt take these numbers and apply them across the broader business community and say, Oh my God that means 15 percent of the businesses are going to close, Baker said.

You cant draw that conclusion, but what it does say is of those companies that responded to the survey, 15 percent of them are concerned about their ability to maintain for another month under the current stay-at-home order.

Though a large swathe of different industries replied to the poll, data was not immediately available to see if some industries more than others felt they wouldnt be able to survive another month of the current stay-at-home order restrictions.

Baker speculated that those businesses with a bleaker outlook are likely among the industries experiencing a full closure of services, or about 29 percent of the poll respondents.

He called the 15 percent figure, or about 40 businesses, fearing closure if faced with another month of the current shutdown a high percentage thats a little alarming.

Any loss of business is a concern to us, its peoples livelihoods and there are families that are impacted, both the owners and the employees of those companies, Baker said.

You think about some of the small businesses, those are what create the great neighborhoods that people want to live in. Any loss is really concerning to us.

Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order expires May 28. She told MLive on Thursday, May 14, that retail and pet grooming businesses may be among the industries that get a green light to reopen in some capacity at the end of the month.

If the number of new cases of COVID-19 continues to decline over the next two weeks, the governor said retail would probably be in the next phase of reopening, which she hopes Michigan will enter into after the order ends.

Retailers catering to essential needs have remained throughout the stay-at-home order. Some others were allowed open, but only in a limited curbside pick-up and/or delivery fashion.

State officials earlier this month outlined a six-phase approach to reopening the states economy. Michigan is currently in phase three. While "other retail, with capacity limits," would be reopened under phase four, restaurants and bars wouldn't be allowed to reopen until phase five.

As of Thursday, May 14, state health officials reported a total 49,582 cases of COVID-19 with 4,787 deaths associated with the virus. Some 22,686 people have recovered, according to the most recent data.

The phases outlined in Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's "MI Safe Start Plan" to reopen the Michigan economy. (Courtesy Graphic | State of Michigan)

Whitmer and the states top health official said Wednesday that there are numerous determining factors, not just trends of new COVID-19 cases and deaths, that guide how fast the state moves through the phases.

Baker and others in the business community are partnering on creative ways some industries could reopen and still cater to enough business to meet the bottom line. In the restaurant and bar industry, that may mean accommodating for more outdoor seating to allow more customers at a safe distance from each other.

Still, the majority businesses polled by the chamber believe it wont be until at least 2021 until their business returns to pre-pandemic levels.

Here is the breakdown of how businesses responded to that survey question:

18 percent of believe they will return to normal by year-end.

48 percent believe they wouldnt return to normal until sometime during 2021.

28 percent believe it will take until between 2022 and 2024.

6 percent had projections shorter or longer than the extremes of those respondents.

The economic toll of the partial economic shutdown likely wont be known until the state starts to reopen.

Some may find the cost of reopening too great, and others may have quietly closed their doors for good but have gone unnoticed because other businesses are temporarily shut down right now, Baker said.

The chamber does not have accurate speculations on what percentage of businesses may be lost in the greater Grand Rapids area due to the partial shutdown, Baker said.

According to a survey released May 5 by the Small Business Association of Michigan, one in seven small businesses, or 14 percent, are not confident they will survive the pandemic.

Another 28 percent of business owners said they are positive their businesses wont shutter because of it.

The Small Business Association of Michigan said the findings are based on their survey of more than 1,300 Michigan small businesses in late April.

Read more:

Friday, May 15: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Kent County launches employer screening program to find coronavirus hot spots

Meijer expanding store hours starting Friday
The 40k Cosplay Community is still united in these strange times.

We might be separated from each other physically, we might not be able to see each other in person But the spirit of community is so strong in the Warhammer 40k world. This week, we take a look into the hearts of some amazing people and see just how the current crisis has affected them-and what keeps them going strong.

The last few weeks of self-isolation have lead to a LOT of free time trolling the internet. I normally spend a fair amount of time looking online for new cosplay ideas, artists I havent yet discovered, and new sources of inspiration, but the Quarantine has exacerbated that to the extreme. While glancing at one of my favorite groups (40K Cosplay on Facebook) I came across a heartwarming post from one of my very favorite cosplayers  Dyfrig Griffiths of Iron Warrior Cosplay. If you havent heard of him, you obviously havent been reading the Bell of Lost Souls Cosplay beat for the last few years, because I have featured this gentleman NUMEROUS times (and for good reason). From my Cosplay Artist Spotlight with him to the Iron Warrior Sax Time video series, down to the beautiful tribute to Brands Great Army Dyfrig has been at the heart of the 40K Cosplay Community for as long as I have been covering it.

So as I clicked along through the 40K Cosplay group last week, I paused to look over a post that Dyfrig put up that day- a gorgeous group shot of a huge group of Cosplayers.

The Caption read:

Really missing my Warhammer family, they are all amazing and beautiful individuals. This is us at Warhammer fest. One big happy Warhammer Cosplay family and I cant even begin to tell you how much I want to see them all again! IRON WITHIN!! -Dyfrig Griffiths

This got me to thinking. I absolutely love how close-knit the 40k community is, so why dont we take some time to showcase it?

I sent a private message to Dyfrig, asking him to message his army and have them send me an email with a picture, their social media links, and answers to a few questions. I was NOT prepared for the magnitude of responses, folks. For the next week my inbox was FLOODED with emails, from all parts of the world. I am astounded, and honored, and humbled to see so many people banding together with the sole purpose of connecting, sharing their stories, and showing how much our community CARES. I hope you enjoy the results!

Iron Warrior Cosplay

What cosplays do you do?

I cosplay as a few things: Ghostbuster, Steampunk, a Verymental Professor, and my main cosplay The Iron Warrior Space Marine from Warhammer 40K. This will not be the only 40K cosplay I do as last year I took ownership of a Grey Knight Terminator that is currently under restoration in my workshop. 

Where are you located?

I am located in the beautiful country of Wales, UK I live in a small village just outside of Carmarthen in the county of Carmarthenshire.

How has the quarantine affected you?

Its hit me in a big way, I had some mental health issues not long ago but thanks to all my amazing friends and supporters who just came out of nowhere to support me and to pick me up, it was just amazing to have that kind of support when I really needed it. As for things not mental health related Ive been okay, working on props mostly.

Over a 2 week period, I made a Space Marine scale Chainsword a smaller human scale Chain Axe (used all the off cuts from the Chainsword to do that  ) and then just recently painted up my Space Marine scale Power Hammer, I kinda burnt myself out doing this but Im happy the results of my efforts. I upgraded the knees of my suit, they are now different compared to the photo of me in my suit Ive sent in, I dont have a very decent photo of the suit as it is right now with the new knees, so this older photo will have to do for now.

I really miss my cosplay family and my Warhammer cosplay family, in general I miss my friends and would just want this all to end and, I want everything to go back to the way it was you know? I miss the events and people, just the whole convention scene has vanished until this virus ends, I just hope it ends soon.

What keeps you going/motivated during these times?

Other than my cosplay stuff? Ive got my beautiful side project going on, I am restoring a 1953 TE20 Ferguson Tractor, its a vintage tractor and I have a passion for vintage machinery, Ive restored things in the past but this is the biggest project Ive taken on. Shes coming along slowly but I dont have to rush, this lockdown isnt going anywhere anytime soon sadly.

Where can we find you online?

https://www.facebook.com/theironwarriorcosplay/

https://www.instagram.com/iron.warrior.cosplay/

https://twitter.com/IronWarriorsIV

IRON WITHIN!!!

Merc Stark

What cosplays do you do?

Most of my cosplays tend to be heavy armor or post-apocalyptic themed. Im making doom slayer armor right now and planning a cyberpunk one. My Warhammer cosplay is a tech priest.

Where are you located?

Currently, Im located in the US so sadly Im cut off from a big portion of the Warhammer cons.

How has the quarantine affected you?

The quarantine has been a huge shock since my whole schedule and life has been flipped around. Especially with having a family. Now during the day I have more opportunity to work on cosplay and even work on ones for my kids and teach them about it.

What I miss most about the cosplay community is how much is feels like a family. Youre bound to make a friend at a con no matter what. Theres always someone to share interests with, give advice on cosplays, or just talk to during rough times. What keeps me motivated is my passion for making costumes. I entered the hobby with no clue where to start and have grown so much, its become a large part of my life and now I get to share it with my kids.

What keeps you going/motivated during these times?

Its been a wild ride having to switch working schedules, balance online school, and limit outings so suddenly. Of course, the cancellation of cons is quite a disappointment as well. Especially when youve worked months on one costume. But the hope of seeing your con family next year is still strong and getting to talk to them online help even more so!

Where can we find you online?

My page is: https://www.instagram.com/merc_stark/ thank you!

Ranger of Krieg Cosplay

What Cosplays do you do?

I do Death Korps of Krieg cosplays mostly, switching between a Guardsman and Commissar but its usually the Commissar.

Where are you located?

Im based in South Wales in the UK.

How has the quarantine affected you?

Quarantine has been really annoying, namely the delays on supplies or just outright unavailability of them. But its recently let up a bit and I can get back to work on some projects.

I currently have a Vox Caster in the works for a cosplay Im going to be wearing alongside Iron Warrior Cosplay as well as some chainmail for a side project. Ive also been working on my Death Korps miniatures and making terrain for them which has kept me busy.

I really miss being with my cosplay friends, some of them are really close friends of mine and it sucks not being able to visit them. We were scheduled to go to Warhammer Fest this month but it got canceled due to quarantine. Although, we did improvise a Zoom call and had a get together on there whilst wearing our cosplays which proved to be very fun indeed.

What keeps you going/motivated during these times?

Its hard to find motivation in quarantine, there are days when you look at your half-finished prop and think of absolutely anything else you can do apart from it. But thats sometimes good, you dont want to be burnt out in quarantine. I think its all about keeping balance in your activities, working on cosplays 24/7 is the quickest way to make you hate what you do. Maybe work on stuff 2 or 3 days a week and do something else for the other days. Theres quite literally no rush at the moment.

Where can we find you online?

Harry of Ranger of Krieg Cosplay on Facebook and on Instagram.

Altar of Madness

What cosplays you do?

Techpriest & Valhallan Commissar (this is absolutely non-official, its something I designed myself ^^ )

Where you are located?

Orleans, France

How has the Quarantine affected you?

The quarantine forces me to work from home, so my job isnt the same anymore. About cosplay, luckily, my cosplay supplies shop still delivers craft supplies, so Ive been able to work on my current project. Actually, the quarantine helped me to get more time to work on my projects, but I cant always buy want I need to finish them

What you miss the most about the cosplay community/what you love most about it?

What I miss the most right now are photoshoots and cons. I was supposed to go to 2 cons in July but now Im really not sure Ill be able to go and enjoy them. And about photoshoots, even if the quarantine is now over in France, I dont want to take risks and Im still going to wait for the situation to get better before I go to shoots again.

What keeps you going/motivated during these times?

Daily crafting! I manage to get 1 hour of craft (at least) each day to work on a cosplay armor. And cosplay friends: each week-end I chat on discord with a friend while crafting, thats a good way to get motivated!

Where can we find you online?

Saphirone Cosplay Art

What cosplays you do?

As a big fan of Warhammer, I have a metric ton of project with my first and latest project being a fully equipped Blood pact soldier with armor, clothes, weapons, and gear crafted and painted by hand in its (almost) entirety. Its not and will not be my only project related to Warhammer 40k or even Fantasy as I plan one day to create a Mechanicus, an Eversor, or to cosplay as Wulfrik the Wanderer and Karl Franz from the fantasy universe. I even got a duo project of Gotrek and Felix planned, needless to say as I also cosplay other universes outside, Im loaded in projects for a decade or two.

Where are you located?

I live in Eastern France, Alsace.

How has the Quarantine affected you?

Being forced to stay at home, without being able to work and earn my life meant not only suddenly having all the time I wanted to work on my crafts and hone my skills, but it also meant being wise in my craft spendings and focusing on not losing contact with all the friends and people who share my passion for cosplay or even Warhammer. Heck, Ive never done so much Warhammers RPGs than during my time in quarantine.

Still, not being able to go out, to meet these peoples in person, was still a hard challenge. I do miss the conventions and meetups.

What you miss the most about the cosplay community/what you love most about it?

I miss seeing them in person, where they cere and show their creations to us. Through a photo, theres a lack of perspective. Im someone curious and I just love seeing a cosplay Under every angle, see what has been handmade, what techniques have been used to do their paint job, how did they fix design problems, or made it more comfortable to wear. Facing the person, the scale of its cosplay and all the work and love put into it is something I dearly miss, for you cannot really feel it at a 100% through a picture.

What I do love, is how people stay in touch within the Community. How they have used that time to experiment and share their works, their feelings of pride. How they do not shy away from showing the ropes around. There is a spirit bringing a universe we hold dear to life in our world, whenever one shows the chainsword he is painting or the Space marine she made. This Community loves what they do. And this is what I love about it.

What keeps you going/motivated during these times?

My desire to, myself, bring a bit of this 40k into reality. When I do a cosplay, no matter its origin or universe I craft it and wear it so that people think, even for a fleeting moment, that in front of them is not the cosplayer, but the character they know and love. That they get this little moment of kismet of seeing someone who shares this fondness for lore or a story.

I Always wished to do Something with my hands, but sometimes the mind wasnt there to keep up and I questioned why I was doing that. All I needed was one convention, out of the costume, to see all these peoples in their cosplay, to talk with them, and to my dear surprise discover that they do recognize me even out of it, to light the flames again and raise the banner. It pushes me to do better, to be better.

I might not have any pictures of relevant 40k cosplays to show it, as Im still working on my first, but its an important step for me as its first I did with the will to do it right, and bring a smile to as many faces as I can.

What more can there be to say? Except to all theses peoples out there, sanding foams, cutting pvc and carving wood that what they are doing is not meaningless. They are brightening and shaping a bit of our reality, even if its only for the time of a smile.

Where can we find you online?

Facebook and Instagram

Join us next week for more stories from the Warhammer 40k Cosplay Community!

~Join us next week for more Cosplay Coverage~

Have a Cosplay question you would like Mayhems Muse to answer? Know a Cosplayer youd like to see featured? Send an email here!

Learn more about Mayhems Muse
Story Highlights Concerns about COVID-19 testing and hospital capacity steadily declining

About half of Americans still worried about hospitals and COVID-19 tests

Young, nonwhite and nonrural respondents most likely to worry

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Substantially fewer Americans are worried now than two weeks ago about the availability of coronavirus tests as well as hospital supplies and services. The percentage worried about each has declined roughly 10 points since the week of April 20, and now about half of Americans worry about each issue.

In early April, Americans were briefly more concerned about the availability of hospital supplies and services than coronavirus tests. Since then, the U.S. public has grown less worried about the capacity of healthcare facilities and concern about the availability of tests has remained slightly, though consistently, higher than that for healthcare capacity. The percentage of the public who are very or moderately worried about testing availability has declined 10 percentage points in the past two weeks.

These changes likely reflect the expansion of coronavirus testing in the U.S. in recent weeks, as well as the closure of temporary hospital facilities and reduced crowding in places like New York and Detroit.

Younger, Nonwhite and Nonrural Americans Worry Most

Americans' current levels of concern vary widely across demographic groups, especially by area of residence, race and age.

Concerns about availability of coronavirus tests declining % Very worried/Moderately worried April 6-12 May 4-10 Change % % pct. pts. Gender Men 55 49 -6 Women 66 56 -10 Age 18-29 74 63 -11 30-49 65 58 -7 50-64 49 42 -7 65+ 59 50 -9 Race Nonwhite 66 64 -2 White 59 48 -11 Place of residence City 71 65 -6 Suburb 61 57 -4 Small town/Rural area 54 42 -12 Party identification Democrats 84 78 -6 Independents 60 52 -8 Republicans 30 22 -8 Gallup Panel, 2020

Nonwhite respondents are 16 percentage points more likely than their white counterparts to be concerned about the availability of coronavirus testing. Moreover, while white Americans are 11 points less worried than they were one month ago, concern among nonwhite Americans has been essentially flat, shifting only two points over that period. This reflects Center for Disease Control data that suggest the coronavirus has disproportionately affected racial and ethnic minorities.

Additionally, those living in cities and suburbs are 15 to 23 points more likely to harbor these concerns than those living in small towns and rural areas, perhaps owing to higher rates of exposure in densely populated cities. Urban and suburban respondents have also been less encouraged by recent expansions in testing: while rural Americans are 12 points less concerned with the availability of tests than they were on April 12, those in suburbs and cities are now four and six points less worried than they were at that time, respectively.

The gap based on where Americans live widens when respondents are asked about concerns around hospital capacity. Urban and suburban Americans are more worried about this issue than rural Americans by 24 and 17 points, respectively.

Americans less worried about availability of hospital supplies and services % Very worried/Moderately worried April 6-12 May 4-10 Change % % pct. pts. Gender Male 57 43 -14 Female 70 52 -18 Age 18-29 83 68 -15 30-49 71 52 -19 50-64 55 39 -16 65+ 54 42 -12 Race Nonwhite 72 56 -16 White 60 45 -15 Place of residence City 72 61 -11 Suburb 67 54 -13 Small town/Rural area 56 37 -19 Party identification Democrat 84 70 -14 Independent 65 50 -15 Republican 37 19 -18 Gallup Panel, 2020

Despite evidence from the CDC that older adults are more susceptible to coronavirus, Americans under the age of 50 are more likely to be concerned about testing and hospital services than those 50 and older. However, the age group at the highest risk -- those over 65 years old -- is slightly more worried than those between the ages of 50 and 64, and that level of worry has declined less in the last month than it has for those under 50.

Political affiliation may explain at least some of the demographic differences in the level of concern across age, race and region. Though all partisan groups have become less worried about hospitals and testing availability since early April -- at a roughly equal pace -- Democrats are more concerned than Republicans by a margin of more than 50 percentage points. While independents are more than 20 percentage points less concerned than Democrats about hospitals or testing, they are still more than twice as likely as Republicans to say they are worried.

Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.
(Natural News) South Korean officials are facing difficulties handling a recent outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID-19) linked to nightclubs in Seouls popular Itaewon neighborhood. Several of the nightclubs in question are frequented by gay customers, some of who have been wary of coming forward for testing due to the countrys conservative culture.

Authorities are trying to track more than 5,500 people who visited the bars between April 24 and May 6. More than half, however, remain out of reach while the number of infections linked to the bars continues to rise. Seoul Mayor Park Won-soon confirmed that 101 coronavirus cases have been linked to the nightclubs, up from 86 yesterday.

South Koreas quarantine system is now facing a challenge after the group infection from the Itaewon clubs, said Yoon Tae-ho, director-general for public health policy at the health ministry, during a briefing Tuesday. Yoon confirmed that the country tested 12,000 people Monday, up from a daily average of about 5,000.

Threat to South Koreas testing strategy

The nightclub outbreaks pose the most significant threat yet to South Koreas success in controlling the coronavirus within its borders through rapid and widespread testing. Instead of imposing strict lockdown measures, the country has largely relied on its testing program, which allowed health officials to identify and isolate people infected with the virus before they could be able to spread it. (Related: South Koreas coronavirus testing spree is keeping its death rate low.)

This strategy relies on peoples willingness to get tested and volunteer personal information. For months, the strategy worked  from late April until the most recent outbreak, Seoul saw the number of new daily cases drop to only one or two, sometimes even zero.

For the Itaewon outbreak, officials have encouraged anyone who visited any of the affected bars during the past could of weeks to get tested. However, this is complicated by the fact that the incident happened in a popular area for gay people, which goes against the countrys more conservative views.

According to Kwak Hye-weon, a professor at Daekyeung University, the countrys culture can make it harder for gay people to come in for testing. That makes potential victims of the infection more likely to stay in the dark rather than voluntarily come forward for testing.

Encouraging people to get tested

For their part, South Korean health officials are promising that anyone who visited the bars and wants to get tested will not be subject to any prejudice.

I heard some people are reluctant to get tested for fear of being criticized, said Korean Centers for Disease Control and Prevention head Jeong Eun-kyeong during a recent press briefing. We will try hard to make sure everyone receives a test without feeling uncomfortable or prejudiced against.

South Koreas drive-through testing sites may help solve the issue. In late February, when a cluster of cases in Daegu City was tied to a religious sect, health officials encouraged people worried about anonymity to get tested that way.

I think they should do the same this time to avoid the worst and help potential patients get tested out of public sight, said Ki Moran, an epidemiologist at the National Cancer Center.

Health officials have also promised that they would not ask for or reveal too much personal information if people come forward.

Yoon stated that people looking to get tested dont need to specify the club they visited. Just tell us you were in the same district and want to be tested, for free.

A days hesitation would cost the entire community an entire month before returning to normal daily life, he added.

Learn more about the ongoing coronavirus outbreak over at Pandemic.news.

Sources include:

Bloomberg.com

CBSNews.com
The US military accused Russia and the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad of attempting to leverage discontent among Arab populations in eastern Syria to undermine Kurdish-led authorities affiliated with the Syrian Democratic Forces.

A Pentagon Inspector General report released on Wednesday cited CENTCOM as saying that unspecified state actors in the region were pressuring civilian populations to realign and renounce support for the SDF.

CENTCOM spokesperson US Army Maj. John Rigsbee later responded to Al-Monitors request for clarification via email, writing that the Syrian regime and Russia are the most active in attempting to influence local populations to sever ties with the SDF.

Wednesdays report also said the existential threat the Kurdish-led forces now face is no longer [the Islamic State] but Turkey. IS was territorially defeated in March 2019. The Turkish government then launched a military incursion against the SDF in October, drawing fighters away from operations against IS.

The US military reported in March that there was no immediate indication Turkey was preparing a renewed attack on the SDF.

Though CENTCOM said a majority of northeast Syrias Arab population tacitly support the SDF, Wednesdays report characterized local grievances, particularly in Deir ez-Zor, as a potential security risk.

The relationships are strained further by ethnic rivalry, poor security conditions, particularly in [Deir ez-Zor], perceptions of neglect, and accusations against the SDF of heavy-handed security actions, the inspector general report reads. Conscription has also been a point of contention between the SDF and local populations.

Deir ez-Zor has seen protests against the both the SDF and the Assad regime, which control opposite sides of the Euphrates River in the province. Since the Barack Obama administration, US officials have been wary about the potential for discontent among Arab populations with the Kurdish-led administration.

Though the Assad regime has vowed to retake the countrys northeast by force, it remains unable to do so as long as sufficient US forces remain in Syria alongside the SDF. But that has not stopped Damascus and its allies from attempting to make inroads with local populations under SDF control.

The Assad regime, Russia and Iran all have efforts to try to influence some of the Arab tribes on the SDF side of the Euphrates River in Deir ez-Zor, said Nicholas Heras, head of the Middle East Security Program at the Institute for the Study of War. Key to this effort are Damascus-based councils of sheikhs loyal to the regime, Heras explained.

In particular, the regime has tried to work on branches of the Baggara tribe, which is on both sides of the river, Heras told Al-Monitor. Baggara members also make up a significant part of the SDFs Deir ez-Zor Military Council.

In 2018, members of Liwa al-Baqir, an Iran-linked pro-regime militia that consists largely of Baggara tribesmen, were reportedly killed by US airstrikes alongside Russian mercenaries and other pro-regime forces while attempting to seize the Conoco natural gas field in Deir ez-Zor from the SDF and US military.

US officials have long pushed the Kurdish-led authorities toward greater ethnic inclusivity in decision-making. But CENTCOM and the US Defense Intelligence Agency gave conflicting accounts in Wednesdays report on just how politically open the SDF and autonomous administration have actually been in recent months.

CENTCOM said the SDF and Syrian Democratic Council (SDC) have made great strides toward including both Arab and Syriac Christian civilian and military leaders in positions of authority. In contrast, the Defense Intelligence Agency told the inspector general that Kurds still control the positions of influence in northeast Syria. The agency also said the SDF and the SDC continue to show unwillingness to share power with Arabs, even in the Arab-majority regions of the northeast where Arab fighters probably represent a majority of the SDFs front line forces such as Deir ez-Zor.

A spokesperson for the SDC did not immediately return a request for comment.

The United States says the light infantry SDF is increasingly able to stand on its own as a counter-terror force. However, the autonomous administration is unlikely to endure in the long term absent a negotiated political settlement with its neighbors.

The SDF is no closer to an agreement with the Assad regime, according to Wednesdays report, in part because the United States has sought to disincentivize the Kurdish-led body from making any deal with Damascus that would relinquish control of the lucrative oilfields of Deir ez-Zor, a prize the US military has continued to help to defend. Washington aims to keep Syrias natural resource wealth out of the Syrian governments hands as leverage toward a favorable political settlement to the conflict.

Nor is Turkey showing any overt willingness to tolerate the YPG, which it considers to be the Syrian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, considered a terrorist group by Ankara and many of its Western allies.

Meanwhile, though IS attacks are reportedly down in northeast Syria overall, security threats persist. The YPG-affiliated Rojava Information Center reported Tuesday that Ahrar al-Sharqiya, a Turkey-backed Syrian opposition militia, claimed credit for two attacks in April near the SDF-controlled town of Ain al-Issa outside of the Turkey-backed militias area of operations.

Members of the same militia assassinated Kurdish politician Havrin Khalaf in October during Turkeys military incursion against the SDF.
William R. Burtless, M.D.,medical practitioner in Midland was born near the city of Jackson, Mich. (About 1847, age 33, 1880 US Census). His parents, James B. and Susan (Carnes) Burtless settled soon after their marriage in Seneca County, NY, where they were members of the agricultural class of society. They came to Michigan about the year 1845 and in 1847 returned to Seneca County where they resided three years, returning at the end of that time to Michigan.

They settled near Coldwater and maintained their residence there a number of years. The mother died about the year 1856. The father then resided in Midland Township, Midland County.

Dr. Burtless attained to man's estate in Branch County and passed the years of his early youth obtaining his elementary education and alternatively assisting on the farm of his father. He became interested in the progress and issues of the Civil War and at last decided in risking the fate of the soldier. He enlisted Jan.10, 1864, in Co. M, 11th Cav., under Capt. Frisby. The regiment was assigned to the Western Army and was active in service chiefly among the guerillas of North and South Carolina, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.

Dr. Burtless was wounded in a skirmish in Kentucky, April 12,1864, and during the attack on Saltville, WV, he received a Minie ball wound on his left foot and soon afterward the leg was shattered by a bursting shell. He was taken prisoner and placed in a rebel hospital located opposite the notorious Libby Prison at Richmond. He was in vigorous health at the time and weighed 168 pounds. After being wounded he lay three days on the field without food or drink, and suffered the loss of a large amount of blood.

His privations after he was captured were after a pattern that have stamped the southern character of that period with an ineffaceable stigma and which he was only able to withstand by his splendid powers of physical endurance. He was paroled at the end of three weeks and weighed 93 pounds.Three months before his discharge from the service of the United States, he rejoined his regiment and served during the remainder of his period on enlistment in the capacity of corporal.

After being mustered out he came to Tecumseh, Lenawee Co., Mich., and became a student in the union school at that place. He completed a course of study, after which he passed a year in the Baptist College at Kalamazoo. In the fall of 1871, he matriculated in the Literary Department of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. He withdrew from the university at the end of his sophomore year, in the spring of 1873. Soon after, he embarked in a mercantile enterprise at Auburn, Bay County, associated with Ira Swart. The relation terminated at the end of two years.

While attending school at Tecumseh, he gave some attention to the study of medicine, and in the fall of 1876 he entered the Medical Department of the university where he was graduated in the spring of 1878 in medicine and surgery. In July of the same year, he initiated his practice in Midland. His business in the department of surgery was especially extensive and included a wide spread territory. He belonged to the State Medical Society and the American Medical Association.

Dr. Burtless owned a fine residence and grounds in Midland, several building lots variously situated in the village and 155 acres of farming land adjoining the corporation. He held a third interest in 2,000 acres of timberland in Larkin Township and had the same claim in 130 acres of land adjoining his farm.

Dr. Burtless was married in 1874, in Tecumseh to Sarah, daughter of Dr. J.S. and Sarah Hamilton. She died in January 1875 leaving a son, Earl, who died when 11 months old. Dr. Burtless married a second time June 23, 1877, to Emma C. Blodgett, daughter of Charles S. and Laura P. Blodgett. The only child of this marriage - Hattie - died at the age of 11 months.

EDITOR'S NOTE: The Midland County Historical Society is partnering with the Midland Daily News for "A Window to Midland's Past," which will feature historical pieces in print and online at ourmidland.com. This particular piece was compiled by retired historical society director Gary Skory from the 1884 Biographical Album. It was originally published on June 17, 1993.
Mid-February, when the world was starting to go pear-shaped, I had to travel to an area where Id previously experienced anti-Asian sentiment. So a few days before the trip, I emailed my (white) hairdresser frantically: I know this sounds crazy but can you can make me blonde? Im traveling next week and Im worried about being mistaken for Chinese and blamed for the coronavirus.

Lets skip the ridiculousness of the idea for a second to focus on the important bit: Why had I worded my request so offensively? I could have just said I was worried about xenophobia. Why was I throwing people of Chinese descent under the bus? Its like that old joke about the two people running away from a bear: You dont have to outrun the bear, you just have to outrun the other guy. Except in this case: You dont have to deal with racism; you just have to make people racist at someone else.

My panic was a humbling reminder that I should never be overly confident that I would do the right thing in the face of fear. Sure, wanting to avoid racial profiling is a survival instinct. But survival instincts are often amoral and, if unchecked, can easily turn ugly.

I ended up not dyeing my hair because a sudden allergy attack made it ill advised. Also, it was stupid.
When he announced Thursday that beaches would reopen, Gov. Phil Murphy said during his coronavirus press briefing: The Jersey Shore, after all, is where memories are made. The last thing any of us wanted was a summertime down the shore to be a memory.

That may be true, unless youre planning to visit Point Pleasant Beach, where brand new restrictions make it impossible to park anywhere near the ocean.

Around the same time Murphy made his comments about the shore on Thursday, Point Pleasant Beach Mayor Paul Kanitra announced on Facebook that all parking east of the railroad tracks  about a half-mile from the sand  will be for residents only.

All parking east of the railroad tracks will require an emergency placard to be displayed at all times, Kanitra wrote. Two placards will be issued per household. Residents with driveways are encouraged to utilize those fully.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

The mayor said 15-minute parking is allowed for customers patronizing a business for curbside pickup. Contractors, landscapers and delivery drivers are exempt from the new parking rule, he said.

The restriction went into effect Friday, as Point Pleasant Beach reopened one of its beaches, at Maryland Avenue Municipal Beach. Jenkinsons, Martells and nearly all businesses on the boardwalk remain closed.

Kanitra did not return calls from NJ Advance Media seeking comment and clarification on the new restriction.

Early on Thursday, however, he told Good Day New York that his police force is only one-third the size it normally is this time of year.

He told NJ Advance Media last month that Point Pleasant Beachs population increases from 4,500 to more than 50,000 in the summer and that security is a concern.

Were putting in a couple of parking restrictions to just try and limit some of the numbers (of beachgoers), Kanitra told the TV program.

Kanitra also said he hoped to limit the number of visitors until just before the Fourth of July to give businesses a chance to figure out how to open without experiencing a spike in new coronavirus cases.

In his Facebook post, Kanitra said he hopes to lift the parking restriction next month.

We anticipate rolling back the temporary parking restriction sometime in early to mid-June as we move towards a broader reopening, he said.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Anthony G. Attrino may be reached at tattrino@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
Convalescent Plasma Is Safe for Treating COVID-19, Study Finds

'Early indicators suggest that transfusion of convalescent plasma is safe in hospitalized patients with COVID-19,' researchers said

A new study shows that an experimental procedure that uses convalescent plasmaessentially blood from recovered patientsto treat COVID-19 is safe.

Researchers from Mayo Clinic, Michigan State University, and Johns Hopkins University, tracked 5,000 patients who received convalescent plasma transfusions and found few side effects and low mortality in those receiving the experimental treatment.

The study, a pre-print version not yet peer-reviewed, was posted Thursday on a health sciences server called Medrxiv (pdf). Pre-print studies report new medical developments that are not yet approved to be used to guide medical practice.

The researchers measured the impact of convalescent plasma transfusions on hospitalized adults with severe or life-threatening COVID-19 in the first four hours after receiving the experimental treatment, and then seven days on.

They found that what are known as serious adverse events (SAE) occurred in fewer than 1 percent of the treated patients after seven days, while the mortality rate was 14.9 percent, leading them to conclude the treatment is safe.

Given the deadly nature of COVID-19 and the large population of critically-ill patients included in these analyses, the mortality rate does not appear excessive, the researchers wrote in the study abstract.

These early indicators suggest that transfusion of convalescent plasma is safe in hospitalized patients with COVID-19, they added.

The seven-day mortality rate was 14.9% reported here is not alarming, particularly because some of these plasma transfusions may be characterized as attempts at rescue or salvage therapy in patients admitted to the ICU with multi-organ failure, sepsis and significant comorbidities, the researchers noted

In total, there were 36 reported SAEs, including 11 transfusion-related acute lung injuries, seven instances of transfusion-associated circulatory overload, and three cases of severe allergic transfusion reactions.

The study noted that a treating physician concluded that only two out of the 36 SAEs were definitely related to the convalescent plasma.

In April, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) asked patients who had recovered from COVID-19 to donate plasma to help in the development of blood-related therapies.

The agency said people who have fully recovered from COVID-19 have antibodies in their blood to ward off future infections, and their plasma could potentially be used to devise treatments for severely ill patients.

Convalescent plasma is an antibody-rich product made from blood donated by people who have recovered from the disease caused by the virus, the FDA said in a release April 16, adding that there are studies suggesting that convalescent plasma has the potential to lessen the severity or shorten the length of illness caused by COVID-19.

Researchers of the above-described study, titled Early Safety Indicators of COVID-19 Convalescent Plasma in 5,000 Patients, noted that they were prompted to explore the new treatment after encouraging results from a study of the SARS-CoV-1 outbreak. That examination found that 80 patients in Hong Kong who were diagnosed with the illness, which bears some similarity to SARS-CoV-2, the scientific designation for COVID-19, were discharged earlier from hospital after receiving convalescent plasma within 14 days.

These results are consistent with the notion that convalescent plasma may be an effective treatment of coronavirus infections and that earlier administration is more likely to be successful, the researchers wrote.
Roman Lozynskyy, Ukrainian MP, Golos faction

Each crisis demonstrates how strong we are. The crisis showed us the real capacity of the government trying to come up with the people. The people had come outdoors  the quarantine was softened. The business had started to protest  and was permitted to work.

Present authorities are not the ones we deserve. They should analyze the situation and act in advance, they should lead the people. But I have also some good news. The authorities we need, do exist. They exist in Ukrainian oblasts. See it for yourself.

Who pays for the fight with coronavirus?

Recently the government has published a combined report on the expenditures on the prevention of the spread of coronavirus for March-April. More than 1.8 bln UAH was spent, local budgets gave  of this sum.

Firstly, local budgets lose 9.65 bln UAH due to the state budget cuts. In particular, the State Fund of Regional Development and the subventions for the support of the amalgamated territorial communities development had been cut. And immediately after this, the government put on local communities the greatest burden of the fight with coronavirus.

For instance, since the beginning of the lockdown, more than 640 mln UAH has been spent on the purchase of medications. Local communities constitute 76% of this sum (495 mln UAH comparing to 145 mln UAH spent by the government). The purchase of masks, antiseptics, and express-test was more fair: 0.5 bln UAH expenditures were almost equally divided between state and local budgets.

Obviously, these numbers do not include hundreds of thousands of masks, protective screens, and robes and floods of antiseptics from volunteers. As in 2014, they covered the task that the state failed. But I will get into this issue later.

We all share the common goal - rich local communities. In perfect Ukraine, they should be capable to manage any challenge. But the current lockdown situation is different. It showed that in case of a crisis the government washes its hands in innocence, slipping it to the local level.

So how do communities manage the problem on the local level? Their examples are truly inspiring.

First story: talk is cheap

On the first day of the quarantine, the government stated that in a week it would solve all the problems of antiseptics producers and there would be no lack of disinfectors. However, there was an extreme lack of antiseptic, and its prices remarkably rose. A joke even appeared in social networks: it is better to save money in liters of antiseptic than in Ukrainian currency (which was speedily depreciating in March).

Who managed this problem best of all? Regions. In Kotykivka village (Ivano-Frankivsk region), the village chief Ivan Verezhak did not seek for an expensive antiseptic but produced it directly at the village council building. The village chief and locals consulted doctors on how to do it and, by blending spirit, peroxide of hydrogen and glycerin produced more than 20 liters of antiseptic. By doing so, they have saved dozens of thousands of hryvnias. Just recall what the price of antiseptic was in March!

Second story: buy if you need

The saga of centralized state purchases for the fight with coronavirus has lasted for more than a month and a half. At first, the past minister of health Ilya Yemets was blocking it, as he wanted his own person to control the money flows. The current minister Maksym Stepanov supported Yemets' approached: he blocked the purchase of protective robes produced in Ukraine in order to buy Chinese ones with the same sum of money. Chinese robes appeared twice more expensive and its quantity was significantly less. Consequently, Ukrainian doctors did not receive 50 thousand robes and Ukrainian robe producers - order for dozens of millions of hryvnias.

In the Volyn region, community chiefs of 3 neighboring communities did not divide money and discuss who will gain the biggest cut. Boratynska, Lypynska, and Pidhaytsivska amalgamated territorial communities spent 500 thousand hryvnias each for the purchase of lung ventilators, individual protection means, and express-tests. Only a week has passed since the expenditure of money to the moment when doctors obtained the equipment. Do you know why it happened in such a prompt manner? The answer is that exactly community chiefs will be the first to be asked by the locals what they did to provide the hospitals with means necessary to treat coronavirus.

Third story: Protect the most vulnerable

Today there are more than 17 thousand coronavirus-patients. Every fifth of them is a medic. It proves that the government has failed to protect those who are on the frontline of the war on disease. Although planes with individual protection means and express-tests have regularly came from China to Ukraine, we do not know what was their final destination.

Doctors neither knew it. Instead, they asked volunteers to buy masks and robes, to raise money for lung ventilators. In response to it, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, the leader of Golos established the initiative #ActTogether and donated 1 mln UAH of his personal savings for the needs of hospitals in Lviv and Odesa regions. Lviv businessmen and benefactors had raised money, bought tissue, and the fabrics, founded by our MP Yaroslav Rushchyshyn sewed thousands of protective robes. They were transferred to the hospital of Lviv and Lviv region.

It could be a story about the cooperation of local authorities, activists, and the government. But Prime Minister Shmyhal and his team appeared to be a weak link in the matter of rescue of the country. They do not want to learn. They want to rule. That is why successful local mayors and chiefs are under threat.

The governing party which does not have the team has clearly understood, who really is able to govern. As a result, it began to prepare new local elections rules for them, which are unfair and unjust. Its aim is to make all these people to bow and scrape before it, to make them take on t-shirts with some party symbolics. Hence, our common task is to protect them. They are the authorities worth of being protected.
The novel coronavirus pandemic has now killed more than 307,000 people worldwide.

More than 4.5 million people across the globe have been diagnosed with COVID-19, the disease caused by the new respiratory virus, according to data compiled by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. The actual numbers are believed to be much higher due to testing shortages, many unreported cases and suspicions that some governments are hiding the scope of their nations' outbreaks.

Since the first cases were detected in China in December, the United States has become the worst-affected country, with more than 1.4 million diagnosed cases and at least 87,493 deaths.

Today's biggest developments:

TSA screens most passengers since March 25 New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware agree to open state beaches April retail sales plunge 16.4% NYC releases age, race breakdown of cases of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome

Here's how the news developed Friday. All times Eastern. Please refresh this page for updates.

8:20 p.m.: CDC director: Models project 100K COVID-19 deaths by June 1 /h3>

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Robert Redfield said in a tweet Friday evening that the models the agency follows project that there are likely to be at least 100,000 deaths from COVID-19 in the United States two weeks from now.

"CDC tracks 12 different forecasting models of possible #COVID19 deaths in the US," he wrote. "As of May 11, all forecast an increase in deaths in the coming weeks and a cumulative total exceeding 100,000 by June 1."

CDC tracks 12 different forecasting models of possible #COVID19 deaths in the US. As of May 11, all forecast an increase in deaths in the coming weeks and a cumulative total exceeding 100,000 by June 1. See national & state forecasts: https://t.co/PI1AtLCCmt pic.twitter.com/iylBnom5U0  Dr. Robert R. Redfield (@CDCDirector) May 15, 2020

Over 87,000 people have died from COVID-19 in the United States as of today, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins, so that would be about 13,000 more deaths in the next 15 days.

Story continues

The University of Washington's IHME model, used by the White House, projects the U.S. death toll will surpass 100,000 on May 22.

4:35 p.m.: 220 cases of Kawasaki-like illness in US

There are at least 220 possible and confirmed cases of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome linked to COVID-19, an inflammatory syndrome with features that overlap with Kawasaki disease.

The illness affecting young people has been reported innearly half of all U.S. states.

With over 200 possible cases, doctors warn reports of rare, coronavirus-linked child inflammatory illness likely to rise

Some of these patients have tested positive for either COVID-19 or for COVID-19 antibodies, and some tested negative. Other cases are still under investigation.

There are at least 119 cases of the rare disease in New York state, where three related fatalities also were reported.

Mom of child with COVID-related disease speaks out: What parents should know

New York is leading the national effort to combat the new syndrome, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said this week.

Pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome (PMIS) is a rare condition, but it is life-threatening. It's important that parents know the signs and symptoms of PMIS. Symptoms include persistent fever, rash, abdominal pain and vomiting. Learn more: https://t.co/aJRglkITPl pic.twitter.com/covIk3LqQ5  nychealthy (@nycHealthy) May 15, 2020

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.

3:50 p.m.: Louisiana restaurants reopen at 25% occupancy

Friday marks the first day restaurants, museums, malls, gyms, barbershops and hair and nail salons can open in Louisiana. However, all of those business must limit occupancy to just 25% and follow sanitation and physical distancing guidelines.

PHOTO: Waitress Gina Lauricella serves customers indoors, for the first time since the state shutdown, at Charles Seafood Restaurant in Harahan, La., May 15, 2020. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Restaurants already were allowed to conduct outdoor service.

PHOTO: Customers practice social distancing while waiting to buy seafood at Schaefer Seafood in New Orleans, April 11, 2020. (Claire Bangser/AFP via Getty Images, FILE)

Gov. John Bel Edwards said Friday he feels optimistic about residents complying with the rules.

"The people of Louisiana took the stay-at-home order seriously. They were responsible, they were safe and we have greatly slowed the spread," he said.

CDC releases new guidance on how states can safely reopen

Louisiana has over 33,000 diagnosed cases.

PHOTO: The New Orleans Health Department, LCMC Health, and LSU Health Sciences offer free coronavirus disease (COVID-19) walk-up testing at the Treme Recreation Center in New Orleans, Louisiana, May 12, 2020. (Kathleen Flynn/Reuters)

2 p.m.: TSA screens most passengers since March 25

Transportation Security Administration agents screened over 234,000 passengers across the country on Thursday, highest number of travelers seen since March 25.

PHOTO: Passengers, some wearing masks and protective gear, queue for their flight at Terminal 1 of John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) amid the novel coronavirus pandemic on May 13, 2020 in Queens, N.Y. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

With face coverings and social distancing, COVID-19 ushers in new age of air travel

The pandemic has caused air travel to plunge. For comparison, this same time last year, 2,611,324 people were screened on one day across the U.S.

1:30 p.m.: Slowing in number of cases at NJ long-term care facilities

While New Jersey's long-term care facilities have seen an outsized proportion of the state's deaths -- 5,289, more than half the reported 10,138 -- Gov. Phil Murphy on Friday reported a slowing in the number of newly reported cases at those facilities.

PHOTO: Medical workers prepare to transport a patient from Andover Subacute and Rehabilitation Center while wearing masks and personal protective equipment (PPE) on April 16, 2020 in Andover, N.J. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images, FILE)

The state's nursing homes have been particularly hit hard by the virus. The New Jersey attorney general's office started investigating the state's long-term care facilities in April. The state has asked the public to report any misconduct anonymously through an online portal.

Faces of the coronavirus pandemic: Remembering those who died

The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs plans to provide five 10-person health care strike teams that will join staffs at long-term facilities until June 30, Murphy said Thursday.

Meanwhile, Murphy said that elective surgery and other invasive procedures can resume on May 26, calling it a "big step forward for public health."

PHOTO: People stand in line for to receive a free COVID-19 test on May 4, 2020 in Jersey City, N.J. (Kevin Wexler/NorthJersey.com via USA Today Network)

12 p.m.: New York beaches will be open for Memorial Day

As summer nears, officials in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware have agreed to open state beaches on the Friday of Memorial Day weekend -- with strict precautions, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Friday.

PHOTO: Workers prepare the beach in Belmar, N.J. for the summer season amid the coronavirus pandemic, May 12, 2020. (Wayne Parry/AP)

Cuomo said he agreed to open New York's state beaches because neighboring states were opening theirs, and if New York remained closed, New Yorkers would flock to the other states', overcrowding them.

PHOTO: Surfers head to the beach in the early morning hours on April 25, 2020 in Long Beach, N.Y. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Images)

Beaches must remain at 50% capacity, and masks will be required when social distancing isn't possible, Cuomo said.

Picnic areas, playgrounds, arcades, amusement rides and concessions will remain closed. Playing sports on the beaches will be prohibited.

Beaches run by local governments can also open if the local officials enforce rules. If rules aren't enforced, those beaches will close, Cuomo said.

What's your state's coronavirus reopening plan?

In New York state, 132 people succumbed to the virus on Thursday, but the number of cases is on the decline, Cuomo said.

PHOTO: People wait on a long line to receive a food bank donation at the Barclays Center, May 15, 2020, in the Brooklyn borough in New York City. (Stephanie Keith/Getty Images)

Five New York state regions have met stated benchmarks and can start to reopen Friday.

In those regions -- North Country, Mohawk Valley, Central New York, Finger Lakes, Southern Tier -- retail can reopen for curbside pickup. Employees and patrons must wear masks, Cuomo said, and gloves are preferred.

New York City's open streets policy could be permanent fixture, experts say

For stores where curbside is not practical, customers can pick up their items inside, but stores must maintain an occupancy of no more than 50%. Employees and patrons must wear masks for these transactions, too, Cuomo said.

For the state's remaining regions -- New York City, Long Island, Mid Hudson, Capital District and Western New York -- "New York PAUSE" is extended to May 28, Cuomo said.

PHOTO: Pedestrians wear protective masks during the coronavirus pandemic as the pass businesses that are closed on 42nd Street, May 15, 2020, N.Y. (Frank Franklin Ii/AP)

10:35 a.m.: NYC releases age, race breakdown of cases of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome

New York City has 110 cases of pediatric multi-system inflammatory syndrome associated with COVID-19, an inflammatory syndrome which has features that overlap with Kawasaki disease, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday.

Of those 110 young people, 54% tested positive for the coronavirus or antibodies. One young person has died, the mayor said.

MORE: Teen girl recovering in ICU with new coronavirus-related illness similar to Kawasaki disease

De Blasio on Friday released a breakdown of the data by gender, race and age.

New York City's cases are 57% male. African Americans make up 24% of the cases, with Hispanics constituting 14%, Asians 10% and whites 9%, de Blasio said.

Children 4 or younger make up 35%, children 5 to 9 make up 25%, kids 10 to 14 make up 24% and ages 15 to 21 are 16%.

There will be weekly webinars with up to 700 pediatric providers to discuss ways to combat the disease, the mayor said Thursday.

PHOTO: Cyclists ride on the Queensboro Bridge on May 13, 2020 in New York City. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images)

PHOTO: A Broadway sign is seen near the Theater District in Manhattan as theaters remain shuttered due to COVID-19 pandemic on May 13, 2020 in New York City. (Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/Getty Images)

Meanwhile, the mayor said Friday that the New York Police Department will continue to enforce bans on non-essential gatherings, prioritizing dispersing groups of more than six adults.

But absent a serious danger to the public, the NYPD won't take enforcement action for failing to wear a face covering.

PHOTO: A woman wearing a mask walks past a sing reading 'I heart NY' at Terminal 5 of John F. Kennedy Airport (JFK) amid the novel coronavirus pandemic on May 13, 2020 in Queens, N.Y. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

The city still plans to distribute face coverings and encourage New Yorkers to wear them, the mayor said.

The mayor on Friday also introduced a plan to keep New Yorkers cool and safe during the summer heat, including giving air conditioners to all low-income seniors and creating non-traditional cooling centers like at auditoriums, libraries and gyms.

PHOTO: A couple enjoys the sun in a park in Queens on May 13, 2020 in New York City. (Johannes Eisele/AFP via Getty Images)

9:30 a.m.: April retail sales plunge

Retail sales in April fell a record 16.4%. The expectation was for sales to fall 12.3%.

The biggest decline in spending happened in clothing and clothing accessories retailers, where sales fell 89.3% from the same period last year.

MORE: Nearly 3 million Americans file for unemployment, bringing total to over 36 million

Furniture stores got crushed, down 66.5%, as retailers of electronics and appliances saw sale decline 64.8%. Restaurants and bars fell 48.7%.

The one bright spot was grocery stores: Americans ate at home more, spending 13.2% more there than they did last year.

9 a.m.: Las Vegas airport offers PPE vending machines

Las Vegas' McCarran International Airport is now offering PPE vending machines with items including hand sanitizer and gloves for purchase.

PHOTO: Alcohol disinfecting wipes and bottles of hand sanitizer are displayed in a personal protective equipment vending machine in the Terminal 1 ticketing area at McCarran International Airport on May 14, 2020 in Las Vegas. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

PHOTO: Masks and gloves are displayed in a personal protective equipment vending machine in the Terminal 1 ticketing area at McCarran International Airport on May 14, 2020 in Las Vegas. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

McCarran said it was the first airport to install these vending machines.

A new option to help protect yourself and others while traveling. LAS was the first airport to install PPE vending machines from which travelers can purchase items like gloves and hand sanitizer. These machines can be found in T1 ticketing and near the T3 TSA checkpoint. pic.twitter.com/1suaVel412  McCarran Airport (@LASairport) May 14, 2020

8:30 a..m.: Oprah to give commencement address on Facebook at 2 p.m. ET

Oprah will broadcast a commencement address for the class of 2020 on Facebook and Instagram at 2 p.m. ET. on Friday.

PHOTO: Oprah Winfrey speaks during Oprah's 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus Tour presented by WW (Weight Watchers Reimagined) at Chase Center, Feb. 22, 2020, in San Francisco. (Steve Jennings/Getty Images, FILE)

Miley Cyrus will perform her song "The Climb," and other celebrities from Simone Biles to Jennifer Garner to Lil Nas X will share their messages for the graduates.

6:38 a.m.: New York barber who gave haircuts despite closures tests positive for COVID-19

A barber in New York who was secretly giving haircuts in defiance of coronavirus closures has tested positive for COVID-19, according to Ulster County health officials.

"We are taking extraordinary measures to try and minimize the spread of this dangerous disease and learning that a barbershop has been operating illicitly for weeks with a COVID-10 positive employees is extraordinarily disheartening," Ulster County Health Commissioner Dr. Carol Smith said in a statement.

The names of the barber and business were not released by officials, but said the establishment is on Broadway in Kingston, New York.

What to know about 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

The county health commissioner advised anyone who received a haircut in the past three weeks at a barbershop in the area to seek testing.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's New York Pause directive says no barbershops, beauty salons and other "personal hygiene services" are allowed to be open at this time.

"As much as we would all like to go out and get a professional haircut, this kind of direct contact has the potential to dramatically spread this virus throughout the community and beyond," Smith said in a statement Wednesday.

Cuomo extended the state's stay-at-home order Thursday until June 13.

In New York, there are more than 343,000 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and at least 27,641 deaths.

5:10 a.m.: Milwaukee order allows salons, malls, playgrounds to reopen

In its new order, the city of Milwaukee announced Thursday how salons, malls and playgrounds can reopen.

The Moving Milwaukee Forward plan allows for some businesses to open provided physical distancing and protective measure requirements are followed.

PHOTO: Owner Paul Furrer cuts the hair of Jeff Jones at Rich's Barber Shop on Thursday, May 14, 2020, in Waukesha, Wis. The store re-opened after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Tony Evers' stay-at-home order Wednesday. (Morry Gash/AP)

Other businesses allowed to reopen include day spas, tattoo parlors, tanning facilities, most retail establishments, public beaches, nail salons and more.

There are still limits and restrictions on many of these openings, including how many people can be inside establishments at a time and that beaches are only open for walking, biking or running.

"A measured, phased in-approach that utilizes data-driven gating criteria and aligns with federal and state metrics is needed for Milwaukee County," the city said in a statement.

Despite the Wisconsin Supreme Court order overturning the state's stay-at-home order, the city of Milwaukee said bars and restaurants must still remain closed.

The city's plan continues to allow for delivery and takeout at restaurants and bars, but no seating is allowed and no food or drink is allowed to be consumed on-site.

"To the residents of Milwaukee, we want things to be back to normal as much as you do, but the virus is still here and our normal has changed. We are all in this together and we will get through this together," a joint statement from Alderwoman Marina Dimitrijevic, chairwoman of the Public Safety and Health Committee and Common Council President Cavalier Johnson said.

In Wisconsin there are more than 11,275 diagnosed cases of COVID-19 and at least 434 deaths.

ABC News' Will Gretsky, Ahmad Hemingway, Josh Hoyos, Rebecca Jarvis, Rachel Katz, Amanda Maile and Olivia Rubin contributed to this report.

New York beaches to open, with restrictions, amid coronavirus pandemic originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
LANSING, MI -- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signed another set of executive orders Thursday night including a two new orders directed at tax appeal deadlines and access to telehealth options during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Executive Order 2020-86 encourages the use of telehealth options for patients and doctors across the state as a way to ensure more residents have access to health care while still being able to practice social distancing and staying home as much as possible. Doctors will be allowed to prescribe medications to patients without doing an in-person examination, including narcotics with the exception of methadone.

Medical records may be shared electronically for health care providers who are engaging in telehealth services as part of the order. Among the types of health care that can be done via telehealth are: mental health care, drug treatment and home health services.

The order also mandates insurance carriers must cover virtual check-ins and e-visits and must not impose any additional requirements for coverage.

Telehealth provides a way for patients to safely consult with their doctor and receive health care services while continuing to practice social distancing and limit potential exposure to COVID-19, Whitmer said in a press release. This Executive Order ensures Michiganders who need health care during this ongoing pandemic can still receive care while staying safer at home.

The order is in place through June 10, 2020.

Executive Order 2020-87 relaxes deadlines for the tax appeals process at the local level. Residents and businesses will still have the opportunity to dispute the assessed taxable values on their properties during the COVID-19 pandemic. The order extends certain equalization filing and meeting deadlines for local and county officials. It also extends the deadline for filing petitions to appeal assessment determinations involving commercial and industrial property.

Because of the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, local government offices have been closed making it difficult for appeals to be filed and for government reports to be filed.

Per the order, boards of review meeting in July will also meet to hear assessment protests for individuals who were not able to file protests in March. The May 31 jurisdictional deadline to file a petition with the Michigan Tax Tribunal to challenge the assessment determination for commercial real property, industrial real property, developmental real property, commercial personal property, industrial personal property or utility personal property is extended to July 31, according to the state.

However, the July 31 jurisdictional deadline for assessment disputes of property classified as agricultural real property, residential real property, timber-cutover real property or agricultural personal property is not impacted by the order.

With county offices closed due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic its important to ensure business owners have an opportunity to appeal their property tax assessment and get questions answered, and for local and county officials to have more time to file reports, Whitmer said in a press release. This Executive Order extends several important deadlines ensuring we can continue to flatten the curve.

This order applies only to the 2020 tax season and applies retroactively to April 6, 2020.

Executive Order 2020-85 is an extension of a previous order that protects renters from being evicted during the COVID-19 pandemic. Renters may not be evicted under any circumstance, even if they cannot pay rent at this time. The order applies to renters and those who own a mobile home and pay rent on a property at a mobile home park.

Its critical Michiganders can self-quarantine and continue staying safer at home without fear of being evicted, Whitmer said in a press release. This Executive Order gives renters and mobile home owners some peace of mind as we continue to flatten the curve.

This order is extended through June 11.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

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

Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus

Friday, May 15: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Groups pick sides as legislature, Whitmer head to court over Michigan state of emergency

He has a criminal history and wants to be a Michigan lawmaker. Thursday, he carried a doll in a noose to the state Capitol.
Urban Commons, a Los Angeles-based real estate investment and development firm, and sponsor to the leaseholder of the Queen Mary, has released a report that outlines the economic impact produced by the Queen Mary in 2019.

While the Queen Mary attracts more than 1.5 million visitors per year, it may feel difficult to put a dollar amount on what the ship brings to Long Beach and the surrounding region. Urban Commons, with the help of Beacon Economics, has produced a report that demonstrates exactly that. Along with the fiscal and social impacts the Queen Mary provides, the new study nails down the economic benefits the ship brings to the City of Long Beach, as well as Los Angeles County.

This is the largest study of its type ever performed on the ship, taking into account associated spending, job creation, labor income and spending in Los Angeles County, as well as Long Beach transient occupancy and sales taxes - all attributed to the Queen Mary. In Los Angeles County for example, the Queen Mary generated $205.3 million in economic output, with $93.7 million spent in the City of Long Beach. The entire report can be read on the City of Long Beach website by clicking the below link.

Were incredibly proud of what the Queen Mary means to the City of Long Beach and what she contributes to the City and beyond, said Taylor Woods, Founder and Principal at Urban Commons. While COVID-19 has impacted every hotel globally, we look forward to travel restrictions being lifted so the Queen Mary may continue to boost economic output, jobs and taxes for the City of Long Beach and the surrounding region in the process.

The ship supported 2,224 jobs in Los Angeles County, with 1,374 of those in the City of Long Beach. The Queen Mary is directly responsible for employing 577 individuals across Southern California, roughly 57% of those are in the City of Long Beach and 36% from other areas of Los Angeles County. The remainder of employees come from neighboring counties including Orange County and Riverside County.

The Queen Mary is a glorious piece of history, but unlike many historical treasures, the contributions it makes today continue to impress, added Mazen Bou Zeineddine, a Senior Analyst at Beacon Economics and one of the report authors. As an iconic Southern California attraction, it generates and supports a tremendous amount of economic activity both directly and indirectly.



Ends

Key Findings

Key findings from the Economic Impact Report:

In Los Angeles County, spending associated with the Queen Mary generated $205.3 million in economic output, supported 2,224 jobs and contributed $84.8 million in labor income

In Long Beach alone, spending generated $93.7 million in economic output, supported 1,374 jobs and contributed $42.7 million in labor income

Overall, expenditures totaled about $115.2 million in 2019. Event attendee and hotel guest spending accounted for 97%, and vendor spending accounted for the rest

Additionally, in Los Angeles County, spending generated $6.1M in tax revenue

In Long Beach alone, $3.3 million in tax revenue was raised, including $1.4 million in Transient Occupancy Tax (TOT) from the Queen Mary

The Queen Mary directly employs 577 individuals across Southern California. Roughly 57% of their employees are located in the City of Long Beach, while roughly 36% are from other areas of Los Angeles County. The remainder of employees come from neighboring counties including Orange County and Riverside County

The Queen Mary provides notable social impacts to the community through historic preservation, charitable contributions and cultural celebration

The full report can be read here: http://www.longbeach.gov/globalassets/city-manager/media-library/documents/memos-to-the-mayor-tabbed-file-list-folders/2020/may-12--2020---queen-mary-economic-impact-report

About Urban Commons

Urban Commons is a Los Angeles-based real estate investment and development firm with a successful track record of developing, repositioning and rebranding assets throughout the United States. The company focuses on improving under-managed and under-utilized assets by developing innovative solutions that promote optimal economic, social and environmental returns.

Since founding in 2008, Urban Commons has owned, operated and developed a variety of real estate properties including several dozen hotels, apartments, retail, office, and senior care, throughout the United States including the development of nearly one million square feet of commercial retail space.

About the Queen Mary

Located in the Port of Long Beach, the Queen Mary, an Urban Commons property, features a rich maritime history, authentic Art Deco decor, and stunning views of the Pacific Ocean and Long Beach city skyline. At the time of her maiden voyage in May of 1936, she was considered the grandest ocean liner ever built. The Queen Marys signature restaurants include Sir Winstons, Chelsea Chowder House, Observation Bar, as well as, a weekly award-winning Royal Sunday Brunch served in the ships Grand Salon. History buffs enjoy the ships museum with various daily tours, and currently the ship is featuring their newest exhibitions, Their Finest Hours: Winston Churchill and the Queen Mary. The Queen Mary features 35,000 square feet of event space in 13 remarkable Art Deco salons as well as a tri-level, 45,000-square- foot Exhibit Hall. The Queen Mary boasts 347 staterooms including nine suites. The Queen Mary is located at 1126 Queens Highway in Long Beach.

About Beacon Economics

Founded in 2007, Beacon Economics, an LLC and certified Small Business Enterprise (SBE) with the state of California, is an independent research and consulting firm dedicated to delivering accurate, insightful and objectively based economic analysis. Leveraging unique proprietary models, vast databases and sophisticated data processing, the company specializes in sustainable growth and development, real estate market analysis, economic forecasting, industry analysis, economic policy analysis and economic impact studies. Beacon Economics equips its clients with the data and analysis required to understand the significance of on-the-ground realities and to make informed business and policy decisions.
Almost 50,000 British Airways customers are still owed refunds despite the airline suspending most flights in March, it was revealed today.

Willie Walsh, boss of its Spanish parent company, has also revealed that 921,000 tickets for 2.1million flights were refunded in cash - but 346,000 customers accepted a credit voucher for a future flight.

But there are still 47,400 people who are yet to see their money two months after the coronavirus crisis began.

Thousands of British holidaymakers are owed up to 7billion for trips cancelled because of the global coronavirus pandemic with banks and airlines accused of flouting the law by refusing refunds.

There is growing anger that the Government has not intervened when lenders and travel firms are illegally withholding cash that should be paid within a week for flights and 14 days for package deals.

It came as Transport Secretary Grant Shapps defended the proposed two-week quarantine for people arriving in the UK and said: 'It seems fair and right that if we are asking the British people to stay at home and make such huge sacrifices in their own lives, then we would expect anybody coming back to the country to do the same thing'.

BA has grounded most of its fleet but is still to refund all the customers for their tickets with 47,000 still waiting

The Competition and Markets Authority has revealed that four out of five complaints it is getting every day is from British consumers being denied travel refunds and the UK watchdog will soon announce a new crackdown.

How coronavirus has affected UK airlines 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

Airlines including BA, easyJet, Jet2, Virgin Atlantic, Ryanair and TUI have been accused of effectively breaking the law by pushing customers to accept credit-note vouchers which have little consumer protection and could prove worthless if a carrier went bust.

Willie Walsh has also confirmed 12,000 job cuts at the airline will still go ahead despite the Government extending its furlough scheme until the end of October.

IAG's chief executive Willie Walsh told MPs on Monday, before the extension announcement by Chancellor Rishi Sunak, that he was not 'picking on' British Airways.

Instead, he explained, the timing of the decision was due to the UK's labour laws, which mean staff must be given a 45-day consultation period ahead of any redundancies.

But Mr Walsh's IAG, which also owns airlines including Iberia and Aer Lingus, said on Wednesday the redundancy consultation will continue, after he was asked to put it on hold.

He wrote: 'I was pleased to see the announcement by the Chancellor that the CJRS (furlough scheme) is being extended.

'We commend the Chancellor for his decision and applaud his efforts to breathe some life into a dying economy.

'His actions will provide some additional relief to our people and our business.

'However, we must act now to secure the maximum number of jobs possible, consistent with the reality of a structurally changed airline industry in a severely weakened global economy.

'I want to confirm therefore that we will not pause our consultations or put our plans on hold.'

On Monday in evidence to the Transport Committee, he said the redundancies were at BA because 'the labour legislation in Ireland and Spain - the two other major countries in which we operate - it's different. We're required to do it in a different way'.

Committee chairman Huw Merriman said that while it is clear the aviation sector 'is on its knees right now', the extension of the Government's furlough scheme until October would allow BA employees to keep their jobs despite most flights being grounded.

Airbus and Tui are set to slash thousands of jobs as planes around the world are grounded.

The Airline industry has been trashed by the lockdown with BA now only flying from Heathrow (pictured) after shutting its Gatwick operation

In a further sign of the damage the coronavirus outbreak is doing to business, aircraft maker Airbus stands ready to axe more than 10,000 staff, possibly within days.

And tour operator Tui warned that up to 8,000 jobs will go at its business following the dramatic collapse in air travel and holiday bookings.

The prospect adds to the misery sweeping travel, aviation and aerospace. Plane maker Boeing is cutting 16,000 jobs while 12,000 staff face the axe at British Airways, 3,000 at Virgin Atlantic and 3,000 at Ryanair.
Krafft Angerer/Getty ImagesAstrid Kirchherr, the German photographer who befriended The Beatles during their time performing in the clubs of Hamburg, Germany, and took some of the earliest pictures of the band, died Tuesday, May 12, at age 81, German newspaper Die Zeit reports.

According to the paper, Kirchherr passed away after a short, serious illness.

Kirchherr was a local art student when she became friends with The Beatles in 1960. At the time, the band featured John Lennon, Paul McCartney and George Harrison on vocals and guitars, along with Pete Best on drums and Stu Sutcliffe on bass.

According to Rolling Stone, after going to watch a Beatles performance, Astrid snapped some famous black-and-white photos of the group at a local fairground. She also is credited with influencing the band's style. Later in 1960, she became engaged to Sutcliffe, who left The Beatles the following year and moved to Hamburg to live with Kirchherr and to study painting at a local college. Sadly, Sutcliffe died of a cerebral hemorrhage in April 1962 at age 21.

In 1964, The Beatles hired Kirchherr to be a set photographer while the band was filming A Hard Day's Night. She photographed George Harrison for the inside of his 1968 album Wonderwall, but gave up photography soon after and focused on a career in interior design.

Astrid served as a consultant for the 1994 film Back Beat, which focused on The Beatles' time in Hamburg and Kirchherr's romance with Sutcliffe.

Pete Best paid tribute to Kirchherr in a Twitter message posted Friday that reads, "Absolutely stunned to hear the news of Astrid passing. God bless you love. We shared some wonderful memories and the most amazing fun times."

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
If Batman dies as part of 'Death of the Justice League,' could Lex Luthor become DC's new Dark Knight?

A rich billionaire with money to spend on vigilantism? Lex Luthor could be your next Batman
BATON ROUGE, La.  Louisiana lawmakers wont try to force business interruption insurance policies to cover the widespread closures caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Sen. Rick Ward, a Port Allen Republican, scrapped the proposal Wednesday amid concerns it could crater the states insurance industry and embroil Louisiana in litigation.

Louisiana was one of at least seven states where similar bills have been introduced. Legislation is still being considered in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Massachusetts and South Carolina, according to the Insurance Journal.

Ward sought to retroactively require insurance companies to pay for coronavirus losses since March 11 for any business that had a policy for business interruptions, even though most of those policies have exemptions for such an outbreak.

What the vast majority of business owners have found out was that a shutdown due to a virus or pandemic was an exclusion from coverage, Ward told the Senate Insurance Committee.

Sometimes extreme circumstances require some extreme measures to be taken, he said. In order to protect some of these businesses that are struggling at best and at worst are going bankrupt, that is something we should consider.

Republican senators on the committee, many of whom are business owners, said their business interruption policies wont cover the impact of the coronavirus. But they resisted trying to force the coverage, saying the policies fine print indicated the exclusions, even if they didnt notice them.

Committee Chairman Kirk Talbot, a River Ridge Republican, said he was surprised when he learned that his insurance policy wouldnt help him with losses related to the COVID-19 disease caused by the coronavirus. Still, he questioned how lawmakers could force the companies to pay for losses if businesses didnt pay premiums to provide that level of coverage.

I think premiums would be outrageous if they did cover those things, so I dont think people would have had the coverage anyway, said Sen. Mike Fesi, a Houma Republican.

Insurance Commissioner Jim Donelon, a Republican, called Wards proposal dangerous. He said insurance companies cant afford it. The industry will bankrupt.

Because of the opposition, Ward stripped the retroactive coverage requirement from his bill.

The rewritten measure, which was sent to the full Senate without objection, simply would require business interruption policies to include a form clearly listing the types of incidents that wont be covered by the insurance.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
CAMEROUN :: Three people arrested for ivory trafficking :: CAMEROON

Three people have been arrested for elephant ivory tusk trafficking in Douala in the Littoral region. They were arrested during a crackdown operation carried out by the Littoral Regional Delegation of Forestry and Wildlife in collaboration with the Police.

The operation was also carried out with the technical assistance of LAGA, a non-governmental organization. They were found with two ivory tusks in the trunk of their car during the arrest.

The two of the three suspects were arrested at the Bonamoussadi neighborhood, when they were about carrying out an illegal transaction that involved the sale of two ivory tusks weighing over 26kg. The two men transported the ivory tusks in the trunk of a car. They had carefully and skillfully wrapped the tusks which were found inside a bag. The car belongs to a customer at the automobile repair workshop where one of the traffickers works.

Further investigations by wildlife officials led to the arrest of the third trafficker. She was nabbed a couple of hours later at the Cite des Palmiers neighborhood on her way to church. According to sources close to the case, she gave the ivory tusks to one of the arrested traffickers to sell. Following preliminary investigation, it was found out that one of the traffickers belongs to a larger network dealing in illicit trade in wildlife, mining products including ivory and gold.



African elephants are the largest land animals in the world today. The average African elephant will grow to between 2.5 to 4 meters tall measured from shoulder to toe according to National Geographic. Female elephants also called cows have the longest gestation period of all mammals, lasting as long as 22 months. They are herbivores and can eat as much as 150kg of food daily because of their size. They also passed out most of the grasses and plants they eat undigested and can deposit 150kg of dung in a day. African elephants have tusks made of ivory and are present in both male and female elephants. Unfortunately, mans greed for ivory has led to a massive decrease in the population of African elephants. Only 400.000 elephants are estimated to be left today in the world against 1.3 billion in the 1970s.

Elephants are classified as protected species according to the wildlife legislation governing the sector. Thus trafficking of elephants parts is totally prohibited. The law stipulates that anyone who is found in possession of any part of a protected wildlife species is considered to have killed the animal and is liable to a prison term of maximum 3 years and or a fine of up to 10 million FCFA.

The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) in 1989 laid a total ban on the international trade in ivory to protect elephants from the scourge of poaching. The ivory trade, highly prized in Japan and China for carving, jewelry, traditional stringed instrument, and names seals, causes the death of 40,000 African elephants each year. In the past decade, their population has shrunk by 110,000 animals to 415,000 specimens, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). It is in this light that China and Japan, the main consumers of ivory, banned the trade in ivory on their territories. This may be considered as a rising commitment to fight for the protection of this endangered species.
Bengaluru, May 15 : Karnataka Medical Education Minister K. Sudhakar on Friday said there is no trace of Covid community transmission in the state.

"There is no trace of community transmission in Karnataka. Twenty five per cent of cases trace back to domestic and international travel," he said in a tweet.

Presenting statistics, he said 7 per cent cases in the state had co-morbidities such as diabetes, hypertension and others.

"Average daily growth in the state is 5.4 per cent while it is 11.8 per for the country. With positivity rate of 1 per cent, there is one case for every 100 tests," he said.

Sharing analysis for Covid cases totalling 981 till Thursday noon, Sudhakar said 625 cases or 64 per cent patients were contacts of earlier cases.

Two common ailments regularly found in Covid patients were Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI) and Influenza-like Illness (ILI), both accounting for 48 cases or 5 per cent and 24 cases or 2 per cent of overall cases, respectively.

Covid patients with travel history within India were 177 or 18 per cent and patients with international history were 69 or 7 per cent.

Currently, Karnataka is battling 1,032 Covid cases, out of which 520 are active cases isolated in designated hospitals.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)
The Myanmar army on Friday handed over to India 22 insurgents from the Northeast, including self-styled home secretary of NDFB (S) Rajen Daimary, in a clandestine operation monitored by National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, officials said.

The insurgents were brought to India on a special aircraft and handed over to police forces in Manipur and Assam where they are wanted, they said.

This is considered an "unprecedented diplomatic success" led by Doval who was carrying out deliberations with the Myanmar military resulting in the first such handover of insurgents by India's eastern neighbour, they said.

It is also a sign of deepening diplomatic and military ties between the two countries, they said.

Ten of these insurgents are wanted in Manipur while the rest are wanted in Assam, they said.

The police will take care of all health protocols including quarantine in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, they said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Major Rtd Osahene Kojo Boakye Gyan

15.05.2020 LISTEN

The Bono Regional Criminal Investigation Department of the Ghana Police Service today visited the residence of the ringleader in the June 4th uprising, Major Rtd Osahene Kojo Boakye Gyan at Babianiha in the Jaman South Municipality.

The visit was to arrest or pick him for comments made on a radio station that if the EC wants a civil war they'll get it.

In an interview with Jaman Radio morning show host Alhassan Bin Jibril Spelele, the former soldier said he told the security men that he's not fit to go to Accra and for that matter if they can provide an ambulance he'll go with them.

Osahene declined to give details of whatever went discussed but said he's not fit to go to Accra and that the officers had since left.

Osahene Boakye Gyan claimed the EC, having a desire to rig the 2020 elections with the tacit assistance of the ruling NPP, is hell-bent on having a new register.

He said "the NPP won power with the biggest electoral margin; so what has gone wrong? He questioned.

He, however, indicated that his civil war comment was made because he overheard an NPP activist on Jaman Monday morning claiming if elections are held today, Nana Addo will be re-elected with some one million, three hundred thousand votes difference and that generated the issues. In his understanding he thinks the NPP has cooked up the figures already and are simply looking for the means to legitimize their rigging by undertaking a registration exercise (through the EC)....," he alleged.
Film critic Justin Chang is searching for the Ultimate Summer Movie  with help from Times readers who voted Bridesmaids as their pick for Week 2.

Chang and columnist Mary McNamara discuss Bridesmaids" live at 6 p.m.on May 14. Watch the conversation on the the Classic Hollywood Facebook Page. Or tune in on YouTube or Twitter.

In this new story revisiting "Bridesmaids," Times writers discuss the enduring appeal of the 2011 Kristen Wiig-starring comedy, the obtuseness of the Are women funny? debate and the pros and cons of that scene.

Los Angeles Times critic Justin Chang and columnist Mary McNamara host week 2 of "The Ultimate Movie Summer Showdown" discussing "Bridesmaids" with guests co-writer Annie Mumolo and co-writer/actress Kirsten Wiig (Ken Kwok/Ken Kwok/Los Angeles Times)

To recap the rules: Each week, Chang presents you with a list of 16 movies from 1975 to 2019, all of which were released during that summer week. Readers vote on Twitter to determine a winner. You watch the movie on your own, then we convene at 6 p.m. on Thursday for a livestreaming event hosted by Chang and featuring special guests.

Week 3: In the latest battle, Times readers chose "Mad Max: Road Fury" as the next summer movie. Join Chang at 6 p.m. on May 21 for a live conversation on the Los Angeles Times Classic Hollywood Facebook Page, YouTube and Twitter.




Sixteen-year-old Nash Hamby was well on the road to earning his drivers license and the independence that comes with it when the coronavirus blocked the way.

He had finished his online drivers education class, passed the Department of Motor Vehicles learners permit exam, taken two mandatory behind-the-wheel lessons with a driving instructor, and put in many hours of practice driving with his mom, Heather.

With her assistance, Nash even managed perhaps the most difficult task  getting an appointment for a driving test at the DMV. If all went well, on April 22, just beyond the six-month training period for young drivers, he would have his license.

I had one more drivers class, and then I was going to take the test, Nash said. I was ready.

But the pandemic and shelter-in-place orders forced the DMV to shutter its offices on March 27 and cancel all appointments. Officials say they have no idea when they might resume behind-the-wheel tests, even as they slowly reopen offices around the state. Driving schools, which are part of the process for California teens to get licenses, have also been shut down as nonessential businesses.

These actions have left Nash and thousands of other California teens unable to get their licenses, putting the brakes on what has long been an American rite of passage. The DMV doesnt know how many teens might be waiting to take a spin with a driving examiner, but more than 120,000 behind-the-wheel tests for teens and adults were canceled by April 30, DMV spokeswoman Anita Gore said.

The shutdown distressed many young adults working on getting their licenses.

We had lots of disappointed teens, said Erika Vieyra, owner of Bay Area Driving School. It was a little heartbreaking.

Once the DMV finishes reopening its offices in phases, which is tentatively scheduled to occur by May 29, the agency will begin rescheduling appointments. But would-be drivers will have to wait until the department can figure out a safe way to conduct driving tests with an applicant and examiner sitting side by side in a vehicle.

Gore said in an email that reinstating the driving tests is difficult because physical distancing is impossible for in-car testing. The DMV will resume driving tests when it is safe to do so and with appropriate protective equipment, she said.

That offers little reassurance to teens who are eager to drive to school or cruise around town once the stay-at-home restrictions end.

Desra Dervin, 16, of Napa was scheduled to take her driving test Wednesday in Ukiah, a three-hour drive from her home. It was the closest appointment she could find when she signed up two months ago.

It was going to be worth it, Desra said. I was so close.

Teens and their parents fear the already challenging task of scheduling a DMV appointment will become nearly impossible when driving tests return.

Im worried about the wait, Desra said. There were already jokes about how slow the DMV is, but its going to take a long time to work through that backup. Theyre going to have to do something about it.

A sophomore at Napa High School, Desra also takes college courses at Napa Valley College a half hour away from home. She was looking forward to the freedom of driving herself rather than begging her 18-year-old brother Quentin  Hes my usual chauffeur, she said  for rides.

My family is really busy, always doing a lot of different things, so that license was going to be helpful, she said. Plus, I like to drive.

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.

The backlog will also hit driving schools, as Californias process for drivers younger than 18 requires three two-hour lessons behind the wheel with a professional instructor. Vieyra said her Hayward-based school, which operates throughout the Bay Area, already has a wait list of 50 students, but shes still working on a plan to safely offer driving lessons when its not possible to maintain the physical distance of more than 6 feet that health experts recommend.

In addition to wiping down steering wheels, seats, armrests and controls between lessons, Vieyra said, shes considering limiting lessons to one student at a time and having students wear masks and gloves and drive with the windows down when possible.

How the DMV will handle the issue of driving tests is uncertain. Officials with the department declined to comment on possible safety measures or changes in how testing is done.

The DMV did give drivers in training a little bit of relief this month, extending all learners permits that were due to expire between March and June 30.

Pressure from parents of teens itching to get behind the wheel prompted Georgia and Wisconsin officials to temporarily drop behind-the-wheel testing requirements for teen drivers with permits. Californias DMV doesnt plan to take that approach.

California is not considering allowing people to drive without a license, Gore said.

So far, the inability to get a license hasnt been a problem, Nash said. But come fall, when hes a junior at Dublin High School, he plans to take an auto shop class at Livermore High School, which requires a 15-mile drive. He was also planning to help shuttle around his two younger brothers.

Right now it doesnt really affect me too badly because Im still stuck inside because of the quarantine, he said. But when the quarantine ends, its going to be annoying because I should have been driving already. There will be a bunch of stuff I could have done.

Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuan
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 20:51:32|Editor: huaxia

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Chinese President Xi Jinping makes a keynote speech at the closing meeting of the first session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 20, 2018. (Xinhua/Yao Dawei)

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- An article, titled "Speech at the First Session of the 13th National People's Congress", which was delivered by Chinese President Xi Jinping, will be published Saturday in the 10th issue of the Qiushi Journal.

Xi, also general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and chairman of the Central Military Commission, delivered the speech at the closing meeting of the session on March 20, 2018.

The article stresses that people are the creators of history and real heroes, and the magnificent development history of the Chinese nation was written by the Chinese people.

The endeavor of the Chinese people has led to a tremendous transformation of the Chinese nation in which it has stood up, grown rich, and is becoming strong, says the article.

The article points out that the great national spirit, fostered, passed down and developed by the Chinese people during their long-term struggle, has offered a strong impetus for the development of China and the human civilization.

"We must base our efforts on the interests of the people," says the article, demanding efforts to focus on addressing the most pressing, most immediate issues that concern the people the most.

"We must also ensure that all Chinese people could share the happiness and pride in the historic course of national rejuvenation," the article says.

Noting that only when people have faith, will the nation have a bright future and strength, the article says that now socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, and the hard-working and brave Chinese people have shown more confidence, self-respect and self-improvement.

"The path, theory, system and culture of socialism with Chinese characteristics have radiated with great vitality, while miracles keep happening in our land," says the article.

The world we live in is full of hopes and full of challenges, notes the article.

Stressing that China will never pursue development at the expense of others' interests, the article says China's development does not pose a threat to any other country and China will never seek hegemony or engage in expansion.

Only those who are accustomed to threatening others see everyone as a threat, the article adds.

Continuing to hold high the banner of peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, China will stay on the path of peaceful development and continue to pursue a mutually beneficial strategy of opening up, says the article.

China will contribute more Chinese wisdom, Chinese solutions and Chinese strength to the world, to push for building an open, inclusive, clean and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security and common prosperity, according to the article.

"Let the sunshine of a community with a shared future for humanity illuminate the world," it says.

The leadership of the CPC is the defining feature of socialism with Chinese characteristics, notes the article.

To shoulder the historic responsibility of leading the people in the great social revolution, the CPC must have the courage to reform itself, always preserve the character of a Marxist governing party, always remain ahead of the time, and always be the backbone of the Chinese people and the Chinese nation, the article says. 
All five Britain's Got Talent Golden Buzzer acts have been chosen. (ITV)

While the TV landscape has been hugely disrupted by the coronavirus, Britain's Got Talent has been able to air its pre-recorded auditions for this year as usual.

Five weeks into the first stages of the competition and viewers have seen a Golden Buzzer act selected in every one, meaning each of these acts have been fast tracked to the live semi-finals.

Due to social distancing measures it remains to be seen just when the live shows will be able to air, but it is hoped to be later in the year.

Read more: Amanda Holden releases song for NHS

Judges Simon Cowell, Amanda Holden, David Walliams and Alesha Dixon as well as presenters Ant and Dec have all pressed the coveted button on an act this series meaning the Golden Buzzer line-up is complete.

Heres who has already sailed into the semi-finals.

Sign Along With Us - David Walliams

Sign Along With Us were praised by David Walliams for their positivity and energy. (ITV)

The first act of the series to be covered in the celebratory confetti was Sign Along With Us when they won over Walliams.

The group was led by 18-year-old Jade Kilduff along with her brother Christian, 5, who has cerebral palsy and is registered blind, who both went viral in 2019 after posting videos of themselves signing along to songs.

Sign Along With Us, which is comprised of members aged four to 58, performed 'This Is Me' from The Greatest Showman soundtrack and received a rapturous applause from the judge and audience.

Every one of you gave everything to this performance, it was an amazing, positive message for people out there and all I can say is Walliams send before pressing the button and giving them their place in the semi-finals.

Jon Courtenay - Ant and Dec

Jon Courtenay's emotional song won over Ant and Dec. (ITV)

Ant and Dec typically choose one act between them and this year it was lucky comedy music man Jon Courtenay who got their vote.

The father-of-two explained how he'd had a career in show business but had never made it quite as far as he'd have liked. His sons were in the audience for his emotional performance which saw him play the piano and sing about his own life story.

Story continues

Read more: Simon Cowell gets son Eric a role in Scooby Doo movie

At the conclusion of his well-received act, the 46-year-old's oldest son came hurtling onto the stage to hug his father and Ant and Dec stepped out of the wings to give him the Golden Buzzer boost.

Fayth Ifil - Simon Cowell

Fayth Ifil gave a powerful rendition of Proud Mary and won over Simon Cowell. (ITV)

The schoolgirl from Swindon had a voice beyond her years when she belted out Tina Turner's Proud Mary in front of a wowed crowd and judging panel.

Ifil, who has West End experience in School of Rock and the Tina Turner Musical, brought the crowd to their feet with her confident rendition of the classic.

It was Cowell who hit the Golden Buzzer for the youngster, and it was clear her parents Jere and Lorraine were bursting with pride as they cheered her on.

Honey and Sammy - Amanda Holden

Honey and Sammy are Amanda Holden's Golden Buzzer pick. (ITV)

Mother and daughter duo Honey and Sammy got off to rocky start on the talent show when their first song failed to impress Cowell who thought their voices who be better suited to something else.

They came back later in the day to sing Freya Riding's Lost Without You and the re-do paid off when Holden gave them her Golden Buzzer.

Read more: BBC axes Simon Cowells The Greatest Dancer

Prior to their singing, Honey, 14, explained how she had entered them into the competition without her 43-year-old mother's knowledge. She told the judges how Sammy had also beaten cancer in recent years, with their story moving Holden.

Every single lyric that you got right and sang just seemed so poignant to your story, it was just the most wonderful thing to witness, she said.

Nabil Abdulrashid - Alesha Dixon

Nabil Abdulrashid was a hit with Alesha Dixon. (ITV)

Croydon based comedian Nabil Abdulrashid tickled the crowd with his observations on his life as a Muslim, as he joked about his name and being "poked at the airport".

The funnyman found a fan in Dixon as she reached for the Golden Buzzer, much to Abdulrashid's surprise.

"I didn't do that... you did that! Trust me! You're edgy, you're charismatic and I just loved it, I absolutely loved it, you're fantastic.

"I didn't think I was gonna do that today, but it just felt right, you are a breath of fresh air," she told the 34-year-old.
Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says the first shipment of U.S. crude oil to Belarus will depart this week.

It is the latest step in warming relations and expanding trade ties between the two countries and comes as negotiations between Belarus and Russia over the price and supply of oil became contentious.

Pompeo said on May 15 that the deal strengthens Belarusian sovereignty and independence and demonstrates that the United States is ready to deliver trade opportunities for American companies interested in entering the Belarusian market.

It also fulfills a commitment the United States made to Belarus when Pompeo visited Minsk in February -- the first visit to the country by a sitting U.S. secretary of state since 1994.

Belarusian Foreign Minister Vladimir Makei confirmed the shipment, saying he did so with satisfaction.

A spokesman for the Belarusian state petrochemicals concern Belneftekhim told reporters the tanker will leave Beaumont, Texas, on May 17 and is expected to reach the port of Klaipeda in Lithuania in early June.

Pompeos statement said the United States stands ready to meet the needs of countries that, like Belarus, want to benefit from enhanced energy security based on supply diversification and trade rooted in the U.S. commercial values of free enterprise, the rule of law, and transparent deals free of corruption.

The United States also urged Belarus to build on the progress it has made to increase the access of U.S. businesses to its market and undertake reforms necessary to join the World Trade Organization (WTO), he added.

The oil shipment is part of a competitive deal by United Energy Trading with assistance from U.S. firm Getka and their Polish partner UNIMOT, Pompeo said.

With reporting by Interfax
BTS debuted in 2013 with very little hype and attention. However, through hard work and creative marketing, they went on to find big success in South Korea and become the most popular boy band in the world.

BTS seems to be doing very well at the moment, but was there ever a time when they thought about halting their journey together? After all, groups breaking up is a common phenomenon in the music industry. Read on below to find out whether disbandment was ever on BTSs mind and what their future might look like.

BTS | Noam Galai/Getty Images

BTS thought about disbanding in early 2018

Its not clear how many times BTS has thought about disbanding, but the group revealed that they did seriously consider it once in 2018, right when they were getting a lot of recognition around the world.

At the Mnet Asian Music Awards in December 2018, member Jin revealed during one of their acceptance speeches that BTS thought about breaking up earlier that year.

I remember early this year. We were mentally struggling at the beginning of the year, Jin said. While talking amongst ourselves, we even considered disbanding.

Of course, BTS never actually disbanded. Jin continued by expressing his gratitude for being able to get past the tough time, saying: I think its so fortunate that we got ourselves together and was able to bring good outcomes. I want to thank my members who helped me get myself together and the ARMYs who love us.

Thanks to their decision to stay together, BTS ended up gaining even more achievements in the next couple of years. They released three movies, had two world tours, and found themselves charting at number 8 on the Billboard chart with their hit single Boy With Luv.

Will BTS disband because of South Koreas mandatory military service?

RELATED: The Shocking Dark Side of BTS and Other K-Pop Group

BTS is at the top of their game, and they have been working nonstop for seven years. However, that might all change soon as the members have to fulfill their two-year mandatory military service.

Jin, the oldest member, is due to enlist in 2020. Some fans have also been calling for all of BTS to enlist together instead of members leaving one at a time. A Change.org petition read: If BTS members will go separately they are going to lose too much time and popularity that will probably have a very bad impact on the countrys economy, culture, and tourism.

Regardless of whether BTS enlists together or separately, its clear that the group will halt their activities for at least a couple of years. What BTS will do after the completion of their military service is still unknown. Looking at some older K-pop groups, such as Super Junior and Shinhwa, who are still active and popular after all of their members returned from the military, it seems that BTS would have a bright future ahead as well.

BTSs contract lasts until 2026

RELATED: 5 K-Pop Bands Like BTS You Should Follow

Fortunately for fans, BTS actually renewed their contract in 2018. The group originally had a seven-year contract that lasted until 2021, though their new contract will now allow them to stay together until 2026.

They could, of course, renew their contract again in the next few years, but that is hard to predict at the moment. In any case, the fact that BTS wanted to go on beyond their original seven years is a good sign that the members have a strong desire to stay together and continue making music for fans.
The government on Friday announced a Rs 1.63 lakh crore package for agriculture and allied sectors aimed at strengthening infrastructure, logistics and capacity building at farm gate.

Announcing the third tranche of an overall package of Rs 20 lakh crore to deal with the economic fallout of COVID-19 pandemic, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced a Rs 1 lakh crore Agri Infrastructure Fund that will finance projects at farm-gate and aggregation point for efficient post-harvest management of crops.

Besides, schemes for micro food enterprises, cattle vaccination, dairy sector, herbal plantation, beekeeping, and fruits and vegetables were also announced.

She said the government will provide Rs 1 lakh crore for aggregators, farmers producers organisations (FPOs), primary agri cooperative societies, agri entrepreneurs and startups under the agri infrastructure fund.

The fund will be created at the earliest, she said.

Lack of adequate cold chain facilities and post-harvest management infrastructure in the vicinity of farm gates is causing gaps in the value chain, she said.

Sitharaman also announced Rs 10,000 crore fund to support 2 lakh micro food enterprises (MFEs) for promoting health and wellness, herbal, organic and nutritional products.

The government will also launch a Rs 20,000 crore Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana for the development of marine and inland fisheries.

Of this, Rs 11,000 crore will be earmarked for activities in marine, inland fisheries and aquaculture while Rs 9,000 crore for infrastructure creation such as fishing harbours, cold chain and markets.

This, she said, will provide employment to over 55 lakh persons and double exports to Rs 1 lakh crore.

The Finance Minister said the ongoing National Animal Disease Control Programme for Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) and Brucellosis will look at 100 per cent vaccination of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, and pigs against FMD at an outlay of Rs 13,343 crore.

Also, a Rs 15,000 crore Animal Husbandry Infrastructure Development Fund was announced to support private investment in dairy processing, value addition and cattle feed infrastructure.

The government has launched a Rs 4,000 crore fund to promote herbal cultivation in about 10 lakh hectares of area, she said, adding that the scheme will help generate Rs 5,000 crore income for farmers. Along the bank of Ganga, a corridor of medicinal plants will be developed over 800 hectares area.

Another Rs 500 crore has been earmarked for beekeeping initiatives, helping 2 lakh beekeepers.

The government extended Operation Greens from tomato, onion and potato to all fruits and vegetables by providing an additional fund of Rs 500 crore. This money would go into providing subsidy on transportation from surplus to deficient markets as well as on storages including cold storages.

The scheme prevents any distress sale by farmers, she said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Express News Service

MUMBAI: As Maharashtra is facing the huge labour shortage, the government and political parties are pitching for the son of the soil (Marathi manoos) agenda while recruiting new workers in various industries.

According to the Maharashtra industries department, the government has given 65,000 industries permissions to restart their industrials operations. "Out of 65,000 units, the 35,000 have already started where more than nine lakh employees are engaged."

Maharashtra Industries Minister Subhash Desai said that they want to restart the engine of the economy and the local people have more opportunity to grab the current opportunity.

"The large numbers of migrant workers in Maharashtra had to go to their native state. There are labour shortages that can be filled by the local people. We will give priority to the son of the soil as we have policy also. The government will also give them training and as per their qualifications and training, the industries which are facing the worker's shortage can be hired these local youths," Desai said.

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Desai said they will also set the board where the local unemployed youths can register and get the job as per their skill and qualifications.

NCP chief Sharad Pawar also had a meeting with the Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray and other Ministers of Maha Vikas Aghadi where they decided to give more relaxations to the industries in the fourth lockdown from May 18.

MNS chief Raj Thackeray had first espoused the demand of recruiting more sons of the soil in industries. He had said that the migrants have left now in fear and panic of COVID-19, now the unemployed youths of Maharashtra should be given priority while recruiting the people in industries.

The exodus of migrants are continuing, they are leaving Mumbai metropolitan region and going back to their home state. They are commuting in tempo, auto and other any means of transport to go back to their native places.
Leaker Max Weinbach has released rumoured information about an upcoming cheaper Samsung Galaxy Fold Lite.

According to Weinbach, this smartphone will not support 5G but will use the powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 865 chip.

The smartphone will reportedly offer 256GB of storage and will use a mixture of parts that came out from 2018 to 2020 to save money on costs.

He also explained that the display would not use the ultra-thin glass present on the original Galaxy Fold and its outer display will be smaller  more like the Z Flip than the original Fold.

The smartphone would reportedly be built out of aluminium, as well as glass on the outside.

I would also like to say, this is more rumour than leak. I believe its real but Id still say rumour, added Weinbach.

Pricing and availability

According to Weinbach, the Galaxy Fold Lite would cost $1,099  Nearly half the price of the original Galaxy Fold.

It will be available internationally, Weinbach added.

Display Supply Chain Consultants CEO Ross Young claimed that the smartphone will be called the Galaxy Fold Special Edition rather than the Galaxy Fold Lite.

He also said that it will be launched in July, and quoted the same $1,099 price in a tweet he has since deleted.

Young also claimed in this tweet that quantities will be limited to about 55,000 worldwide, and the handset will look just like the Galaxy Fold 1.

Samsungs foldable smartphones

The original Galaxy Fold suffered significant problems with its display design, which resulted in the foldable smartphone being delayed for months.

However, after its official September launch, Samsung reported that it had sold a million Galaxy Fold units by the end of the year.

Samsung has already launched a second foldable smartphone  the Galaxy Z Flip  which uses a clamshell folding technique rather than the one used by the Galaxy Fold.

Its global pricing  $1,380  is positioned about halfway between the rumoured Galaxy Fold Lite and the original Galaxy Fold.

Samsung is also rumoured to be working on a Galaxy Fold 2, and these rumours suggest it may be released in August.
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Linkedin Dzulfiqar Fathur Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 15:49 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84be4b 1 Business Indonesia,DBS-Indonesia,COVID-19,donation,StapleFood,test-kits,Southeast-Asia,Malaysia Free

Private lender PT Bank DBS Indonesia has donated thousands of test kits and staple food assistance worth Rp 26 billion (US$1.7 million) to support the governments coronavirus response.

Aside from food assistance for unemployed or furloughed workers, the bank donated 100,000 rapid test kits, 15,000 viral transport mediums, 5,000 swabbing kits, two portable machines to perform polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests and 3,000 reagents, said Paulus Sutisna, the banks president director.

We believe that greater accessibility to testing will bolster the effort to handle the spread of COVID-19, Paulus said in a virtual press briefing on Thursday.

Indonesia, the second-hardest-hit country in Southeast Asia, has not done enough testing, with only about 8.3 tests per confirmed case as of May 14. It is far lower than neighboring Malaysia, which has performed 40 tests for every confirmed case, according to data provided by Our World in Data, a publication of global socioeconomic data.

To improve its handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, which has infected over 16,000 people and killed more than 1000, the government seeks to do more tests especially in hard-hit regions.

National COVID-19 task force head Doni Monardo said his office would distribute the test kits from DBS Indonesia to East Java, the second-hardest-hit province in the country with 1,772 confirmed cases, accounting for 11.5 percent of the national aggregate.

The priority, of course, is regions seeing a surge in cases, Doni said in the same briefing. We hope with this help from test kits, the task force can significantly increase the number of samples tested for early detection and prevention of further spread.
Youve looked forward to this for roughly 18 years. Its time for your family to celebrate the graduate. And what you had envisioned  family and friends filling the house, senior ceremonies  has been docked due to COVID-19. You can still have all the parties you want. Maybe you have a family-focused Zoom (after all, Grandma doesnt need to hear all the inside jokes from friends) and a huge one for friends. Nows the time to get out of your cliques  invite everyone from your senior class, including all your besties as well as the kids you rarely got a chance to talk to. Make it a big and cohesive senior party, online. Youre the host, so you need to do a little bit of advance work. Just like any other party, youll want to think through the decorations, the food, your outfit and  in our new normal  where to host online. You can knock this out of the park if you want, and make it a moment to remember. Here are five ways to make it happen.
The district administration has reserved 950 beds in hotels and government buildings inside Punjab Agricultural University (PAU) to quarantine foreign returnees, said Sanyam Aggarwal, nodal officer, Covid-19, Ludhiana, on Friday.

He said that while 800 beds have been reserved in hotels, 150 are in PAU.

Stating that currently there are eight foreign returnees in the district, he said that Ludhiana is expected more influx in the coming days.

In a press statement issued here on Friday, Aggarwal informed that around 250 persons have confirmed about their return to the city to the district administration. We are expecting nearly 1,000 such persons as many of them will also be accompanied by their family members. He said that majority of these people are from Dubai, United States of America, Canada, Australia and United Arab Emirates.

The nodal officer said all persons will be screened for Covid-19. If a person is symptomatic, their samples would be taken, but in case they dont show any symptoms on arrival, their samples will be taken after they complete the 14-day quarantine period, Aggarwal said.

He stated those found positive for Covid-19 would be shifted either to the Ludhiana civil hospital, or the Mother Child Hospital near Vardhman, here.

He said those staying at the government facilities will be charged 500 for double occupancy and 300 for single occupancy. These also include the food charges.

He said the district administration had tied up with hotels, where foreign returnees can stay on payment basis. He said the charges of private hotels start from 1,300 per day, including food, for single occupancy and the room can be shared between two persons if they belong to the same family. He said around 20 hotels with 800 rooms have registered themselves with the district administration in Ludhiana. He said the people will be given an option to stay in a hotel or in a government facility.
State governments, in competition to attract foreign investment, have eased regulations vis-a-vis the two big imperatives: land and labour. The knee-jerk measures are justified on the grounds of job creation, that is, converting India's 'youth bulge' into a demographic dividend.

The dilution of protective labour legislation has been welcomed by industry bodies, on the premise that these laws hurt the workers they are supposed to protect, by pushing them into informal employment.

Are labour reforms oriented towards highly competitive MNCs the best way forward for India in the wake of the pandemic? Any why has the Centre allowed the states to muddle its ongoing effort to rationalise labour laws?

The ad hocism by the states runs counter to the move towards an overarching legal framework in the form of four labour codes which will subsume India's 44 central and 387 state labour laws (not to mention some 27,000 labour compliances).

They have adopted different approaches, suspending or modifying existing laws to extend hours of work, permit hire-and-fire, eliminate cumbersome inspections and so on. Uttar Pradesh, for example, has suspended all but three of its 38 labour laws.

But several of those laws don't apply any more, having been subsumed by the Code on Wages 2019  which specifically prohibits extending hours of work without paying overtime or lowering minimum wages below the existing level.

The status of the Code on Industrial Relations is just as confusing. On the one hand, the Centre has issued advisories against non-payment of wages and retrenchment during lockdown. On the other, Parliament's standing committee on labour maintains that in case of natural calamities (such as Covid), paying wages is unjustifed and workers can be laid off, with monetary compensation.

It's not clear whether these are short-term measures and what is in store for India's workers in the long-term. Shrinking the protective legislative umbrella could actually contribute to strengthening the labour movement, by causing more workers to unionise.

A weak labour movement is undesirable, because it enables exploitation and leads to labour unrest, when workers cannot channel their demands through institutionalised grievance redressal mechanisms. On the other hand, Kerala-style labour militancy undermines cooperation with employers and leads to an investor-unfriendly climate.

The ideal is a 'social partnership' between labour unions and employers, such as Germany's 'codetermination (workers' participation in decision-making)' model, which testifies that a strong labour movement and economic progress are not mutually exclusive.

The German example has inspired efforts towards codetermination outside Europe, such as in South Korea. Institutionalized workers' participation in managerial processes is believed to contribute to democratisation of the economy, higher productivity and harmonious industrial relations.

In India, trade unions have preferred collective bargaining over participation. Negotiations with employers are undertaken by union representatives rather than those directly elected by workers and participation has been confined to productivity and welfare-related issues.

Thus, neither employers nor the highly-politicised trade unions have furthered workers' participation in India, despite initiatives by various governments. Codetermination seems further off than ever in the current scenario.

The Centre should have notified rules under the Code of Wages 2019 and speedily passed the remaining three labour codes, to ensure uniformity. Instead, it has backed the states.

Land laws have also been subject to ad hocism by states, which have diluted provisions of the Right to Fair Compensation & Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation & Resettlement (LARR) Act 2013, in order to build vast industrial 'land banks'.

Industry bodies (and the World Bank) had red-flagged land acquisition as a major impediment to 'ease of doing business', because the highly fragmented nature of land holdings in India makes it difficult to aggregate land for large projects. Consequently, land banks have become integral to the industrial policies and ease-of-doing-business reforms of state governments.

Behind these land banks lies a troubled history of expropriation, loss of livelihoods and disruption of communities. According to reports, even revenue forest and village commons have been converted for industrial use. Can the number of jobs created compensate for mass displacement?

A public interest litigation challenging the amendments to the LARR Act by various states was filed in the Supreme Court in 2018. Meanwhile, in 2019, the Madras High Court refused to allow the Tamil Nadu government to bypass the LARR Act.

The Centre's stand is clear; itself having failed to dilute the LARR Act through the ordinance route, it supports the states. Draconian land acquisition policies led to farmers' agitations and consequently, the passing of the LARR Act. Turning the clock back will worsen the agrarian crisis and add to joblessness.

Admittedly, job creation is a priority, with a median age of 26.8 years and 5  10 million youth joining the workforce annually. A large population of unemployed or under-employed youth is a recipe for social unrest. But ad hoc labour and land policies seem oriented towards making workers and farmers more rather than less vulnerable to livelihood insecurity.
The Chief Justice of the



Calcutta High Court has allowed changes in dress code of lawyers in view of the medical exigencies due to the COVID-19 outbreak, a senior official said on Friday.

On a recommendation of the committee for all COVID-19 related matters, Calcutta High Court Chief Justice T B N Radhakrishnan directed that advocates of the HC and the subordinate courts will wear "plain white shirt or white salwar kameez or white saree, with a plain white neck band" during the hearings conducted through video conference.

The direction came after Chief Justice of India (CJI) S A Bobde had on Wednesday said the judges and the lawyers should not wear coat and gown for the time being as they make it "easier to catch virus".

The dress code will remain in force "till medical exigencies exist or until further orders," Calcutta High Court registrar general Rai Chattopadhyay said in a notification.

The same dress code will also be made applicable to the officers and registrars of the high court until further orders, excepting use of white band, it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
They contracted the virus from a 54-year-old monk who died of COVID-19 on May 12.

Eleven monks from the Horodyshche monastery in Shepetivka district, Khmelnytsky region, have tested positive for the novel coronavirus.

They became infected after they had been in contact with a 54-year-old monk who died of COVID-19 on May 12, Khmelnytsky Governor Dmytro Gabinet said during an online briefing on May 15, according to an UNIAN correspondent.

Read alsoUkraine gets ready to launch massive COVID-19 antibody testing

The monastery is subordinate to the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate.

"All of them are now receiving outpatient treatment," Gabinet said.

In addition, the monastery was put in quarantine on May 14  visits and events for visitors and members of the church are not allowed.

This decision was made by Shepetivka district's biosecurity and emergency commission.

As of 15:00 Kyiv time on May 15, there were 252 laboratory-confirmed coronavirus cases in Khmelnytsky district.
Russian seamen captured by pirates near the coast of Equatorial Guinea are alive, the work on their liberation is ongoing, the Russian Embassy in Cameroon said Friday

MOSCOW (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th May, 2020) Russian seamen captured by pirates near the coast of Equatorial Guinea are alive, the work on their liberation is ongoing, the Russian Embassy in Cameroon said Friday.

"As far as we know, Russian seamen captured by pirates near the coast of Equatorial Guinea on May 9 at night are alive, two of them are lightly injured," the embassy said on Facebook.

According to the diplomats, the seamen may be in Nigeria.

The authorities of Equatorial Guinea and the shipowner are working to free them, the embassy said.
The US will place huge multi-hundred million dollar bets on producing vaccines currently in trials, official says.

The US government plans to stockpile hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that are currently under development, in hopes of having a successful vaccine ready for mass distribution as soon as possible, a health official has said.

Germanys coronavirus-hit economy has contracted by 2.2 percent in the first quarter of the year in its steepest three-month slump since the 2009 financial crisis.

Wuhan, the Chinese city planning to test all of its 11 million residents, has assessed more than three million people since April and will focus its testing efforts on the remaining residents.

Officials confirmed the first coronavirus infection of a Rohingya refugee in the sprawling camps in southern Bangladesh.

Globally, more than 4.5 million people have been infected and more than 306,000 have died from COVID-19, according to Johns Hopkins University. About 1.6 million people have recovered.

Here are all the latest updates:

Friday, May 15

22:15 GMT  US prepares for graduation under lockdown

With the majority of Americans still under coronavirus-related lockdowns and school and college campuses closed, students who are set to graduate in 2020 are seeking other ways to mark this milestone  they will not get a chance to don a scholarly cap and gown and celebrate with friends and family.

On Saturday, TV networks will broadcast an event called Graduate Together, with former President Barack Obama and basketball player LeBron James, while Obama will be joined by his wife Michelle and other names from the worlds of politics and entertainment for a YouTube event on June 6 called Dear Class of 2020.

Meanwhile, students are doing what they can to celebrate. Convoys of cars beeping their horns have become a common sight in US towns, while others are holding ceremonies at home with their families.

22:00 GMT  Brazil cases continue to surge

Brazils health ministry confirms 218, 223 cases of the coronavirus, and 14,817 deaths as numbers continue to surge. Brazil has the highest number of confirmed cases in Latin America.

21:45 GMT  Panama extends international flight

Panama has extended by one month to June 22 its ban on international flights due to the coronavirus outbreak, the countrys aviation authority said on Friday.

The Panama Civil Aviation Authority said in a statement the suspension was due to concerns about public health.

21:30 GMT  Trump says he wants to make COVID-19 vaccine free

US President Donald Trump said he was looking at possibly making a coronavirus vaccine available free of charge.

Were looking at that, actually, Trump said when asked by a reporter at the White House whether a vaccine would be free.

20:45 GMT  IMF approves $520 mn emergency loan for Jamaica

The IMF has approved a $520 million loan for Jamaica to help the island nation deal with urgent needs raised by the COVID-19 pandemic.

The shock of coronavirus came after the country successfully graduated from an IMF-supported reform program, but is now hit by the need for emergency spending amid a travel shutdown, the Washington-based crisis lender said.

Despite the authorities best efforts, the pandemic is severely impacting the Jamaican economy, as a sudden stop in tourism and falling remittances are generating a sizable balance-of-payments need, IMF Deputy Managing Director Tao Zhang said in a statement.





20:30 GMT  Latin America govts using repression in COVID-19 fight: Amnesty

Lockdown measures put in place across Latin America to limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic have repressed civil liberties and violated human rights, a rights group said on Friday.

Amnesty International said it has verified nearly 60 incidents in the region over the past seven weeks that show governments using arbitrary, punitive and repressive tactics to enforce quarantine orders.

The footage we have verified from across the Americas since late March provides worrying indications that governments are reverting to the kinds of repression we documented in 2019 and earlier, but this time to enforce pandemic-related public health measures, said Erika Guevara-Rosas, Americas director at Amnesty International.

Read more here.

Riot police preparing to contain people who were detained for violating El Salvadors nationwide lockdown measures in San Salvador, El Salvador [Jose Cabezas/Reuters]

20:10 GMT  Brazil outgoing health minister thanks Bolsonaro, gives no reason for quitting

Brazils outgoing health minister Nelson Teich said in a press briefing on Friday that he had decided to resign from his position, becoming the second person to leave the top public health position in less than a month in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.

Teich thanked President Jair Bolsonaro for offering him the opportunity to work as minister and said he had given it his best but gave no reason for why he had chosen to resign.

19:50 GMT  Amazon planning to reopen its French warehouses from May 19

Amazon has said it is aiming to gradually reopen its French warehouses from May 19 as the US e-commerce giant is finalizing an agreement with unions and work councils that should put an end to a spat that led to a more than one-month closure of the sites.

Its six French warehouses have been closed since April 16 following court rulings that ordered it to restrict deliveries during the COVID-19 pandemic or face hefty fines.

We are currently finalizing a process with French unions and works councils, and we are hopeful that we will be able to re-open our French fulfillment centres in the coming days, Amazon said.

A worker carries Amazon boxes during a delivery in the Bronx, New York [Angus Mordant/Bloomberg]

19:30 GMT  Lot of work to do as EU seeks deal on pandemic recovery fund: Senior official

There is no agreement yet between European Union countries on how much of the blocs proposed new coronavirus recovery fund should be handed out as grants to member states and how much in loans, a senior EU official has said.

The official spoke to Reuters news agency on the condition of anonymity as the EU executive in Brussels pushed back until May 27 the unveiling of its new proposal for the blocs next long-term budget, and the accompanying Recovery Fund, aiming to kick-start growth on the continent headed for its worst-ever economic downturn.

The jackpot question is what is the size and what will be loans and grants, the official said. Here there is a lot of work to do This process is an extremely fragile one.





19:15 GMT  Six people held in Cameroon for distributing face masks

Opposition activists have been arrested in Cameroon for distributing face masks and disinfectant gel, their lawyers and Human Rights Watch said.

The six individuals were arrested on Monday in a busy market in the capital Yaounde. They are all supporters of main opposition leader Maurice Kamto, who lost the 2018 presidential election to veteran leader Paul Biya.

Cameroons government has banned an initiative by Kamto to collect funds to fight the novel coronavirus, ordering banks to close its accounts and freeze the money.

19:00 GMT  Eurovision organisers plan alternative show to replace cancelled contest

Diehard Eurovision fans will not go entirely without this year, organisers have said.

The 2020 song contest was cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic, but its organisers are set to host an alternative television show on Saturday, with video performances from past and present participants.

The two-hour-long, non-competitive show called Europe Shine a Light will be broadcast by 40 public broadcasters across Europe. The makers said they want to celebrate what Eurovision stands for and create a sense of unity across borders.

The show will include all of this years entries together, singing Love Shine a Light from their respective living rooms by video link. The song by Katrina and the Waves was the winning entry in the 1997 Eurovision contest.

Fans watch on a big screen the 2019 Eurovision song contest final in the fans zone by the beach in Tel Aviv, Israel [File: Corinna Kern/Reuters]

18:40 GMT  France reports 104 more deaths, raising total to 27,529

French health authorities have reported 104 new coronavirus deaths or a slowing increase of 0.4 percent, bringing the total to 27,529, still the fourth-highest in the world.

In a statement, the ministry added the number of confirmed cases had risen to 141,919, up from 141,356 on Thursday, which is also a rise of 0.4 percent in 24 hours.

18:20 GMT  IMF Georgieva urges tech companies to be responsible with pandemic windfalls

Big technology companies that are reaping gains as result of increased reliance on online systems during the coronavirus crisis should work to increase access to the digital economy for all, the head of the IMF has said.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva told an event hosted by Politico that the crisis was devastating the global economy, but it also offered an opportunity to tackle persistent inequality and other priorities such as climate change, if recovery funds were properly focused.

I very much hope that the leadership of tech companies will see this as a chance to demonstrate responsible capitalism, responsible behavior, she said.

A student takes online classes at home, with his companions, using the Zoom APP during the coronavirus outbreak in El Masnou, north of Barcelona, Spain [Albert Gea/Reuters]

18:00 GMT  Indian media accused of Islamophobia for its virus coverage

Critics have accused a large section of Indian media of blaming Muslims for the spread of the coronavirus, which so far has infected more than 82,000 people in the country and caused 2,649 deaths.

Read more here.

The alleged Islamophobic campaign by the news media has had real consequences [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

17:40 GMT  Trump: US government will invest in top vaccine candidates

US President Donald Trump has said the government would invest in all the top coronavirus vaccine candidates and said a list had been narrowed to 14 promising possibilities with a plan to narrow further.

At an event in the White House Rose Garden, in which many administration officials wore masks but the president did not, Trump expressed his hope that a vaccine would be in place before the end of the year and said his administration would mobilize its forces to get a vaccine distributed once one was in place.

17:20 GMT  UK may look into how care homes make deaths public

Britains health minister Matt Hancock has said he may look into care homes approach to making coronavirus deaths public after authorities declined to disclose the number of deaths in individual care homes.

Across the United Kingdom, thousands of people have died in care homes after becoming infected with the coronavirus, according to the governments own statistics.

Campaigners for the welfare of elderly people and their relatives told Reuters they want the UK government to be more transparent after they were not informed that coronavirus deaths were happening in the care homes.

I didnt know about that and its certainly something that Id like to look into because our overall approach in this is that transparency is the best way forward, Hancock said at the daily Downing Street briefing.





17:00 GMT  Ireland to introduce mandatory 14-day quarantine for travellers: PM

Ireland will introduce a legally binding 14-day quarantine period for travellers arriving in the nation, Prime Minister Leo Varadkar has said.

The Irish cabinet agreed to make it mandatory for arrivals to fill out forms outlining where they will quarantine. Were going to examine means by which it can be enforced thereafter, Varadkar said.

Travellers from the British province of Northern Ireland will be exempt.





16:40 GMT  WHO probing possible COVID-19 link to rare disease in children

The WHO has said it was studying a possible link between COVID-19 and an illness similar to Kawasaki disease that has sickened and killed children in Europe and the United States.

Initial reports hypothesise that this syndrome may be related to COVID-19, WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a virtual briefing, calling on clinicians worldwide to help better understand this syndrome in children.

16:20 GMT  Italys daily death toll and new cases dip

Deaths from the COVID-19 epidemic in Italy fell to 242 on Friday, against 262 the day before, the Civil Protection Agency said, while the daily tally of new cases dipped to 789 from 992 on Thursday.

The total death toll since the outbreak came to light on Feb. 21 now stands at 31,610 the agency said, the third highest in the world after those of the United States and Britain.

The number of confirmed cases amounts to 223,885, the fifth highest global tally behind those of the United States, Spain, Britain and Russia.

People registered as currently carrying the illness fell to 72,070 from 76,440 the day before.





16:00 GMT  WHO head says vaccines, medicines must be fairly shared

Scientists and researchers are working at breakneck speed to find solutions for COVID-19 but the pandemic can only be beaten with equitable distribution of medicines and vaccines, the head of the World Health Organization has said.

Traditional market models will not deliver at the scale needed to cover the entire globe, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told a briefing in Geneva.

15:40 GMT  France: First case of child dying from Kawasaki-like disease

A nine-year-old boy has died in France from a Kawasaki-like disease believed to be linked to coronavirus, his doctor said on Friday, the first such confirmed death in the country as similar child fatalities are being investigated in New York and London.

The child died after a neurological injury related to a cardiac arrest, said Fabrice Michel, head of the paediatric intensive care unit at La Timone hospital in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille.

Read more here.

Pupils wearing protective face masks are seen in a classroom at a primary school during its reopening in Paris [Benoit Tessier/Reuters]

15:30 GMT  Brazil health minister resigns after just weeks on the job

Brazils health minister Nelson Teich has handed in his resignation his office said, after less than a month on the job as the country becomes a world hotspot for coronavirus.

Teich, who disagreed with right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro, will hold a press conference later Friday. Brazil has now surpassed Germany and France and had more than 200,000 confirmed cases of the virus as of Thursday.

The resignation comes less than a month after Teichs predecessor, Luiz Henrique Mandetta, was dismissed by Bolsonaro after the two sparred over the countrys coronavirus response.





15:20 GMT  Yemen reports 21 new cases including 3 deaths

Yemens Saudi-backed government reported on Friday 21 new coronavirus cases, including three deaths, the coronavirus committee said on Twitter.

The committee added that 13 of the new cases were in Aden, and eight in Hadramout, including the three deaths.

The Aden-based government committee said the tally for confirmed coronavirus cases in areas under its control now stands at 106, including 15 deaths.





15:00 GMT  German football league Bundesliga is back after break

Germanys Bundesliga will be the first major football league in Europe to resume after a two-month break due to the coronavirus pandemic, despite many fans opposing the resumption of the season.

The Bundesliga, however, will not be the same when it restarts on Saturday with no children to accompany players to the field, no contact between rivals in the tunnel before the games, and no handshakes with the referee or match officials.

The games will be played in empty stadiums with only about 300 essential staff and officials attending. Players have been told not to spit, celebrate in groups or touch hands with teammates.

General view of a match ball during the warm up before the match that will be played behind closed while the number of coronavirus cases grow around the world [Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters]

14:45 GMT  UK death toll rises 384 to 33,998

The number of people who have died in the United Kingdom after testing positive to COVID-19 has risen by 384 to 33,998, Britains health ministry has said.

The number of deaths was as of 1600 GMT on Thursday, the government said. A total of 236,711 people had tested positive for the virus as of 0800 GMT on Friday.

14:20 GMT  US to stockpile vaccine candidates as trials continue: Health secretary

The US government plans to stockpile hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that are under development to combat the novel coronavirus with the goal of having one or more vaccines ready to deploy by the end of the year, the health secretary has said.

Weve got over 100 vaccine candidates that have been discovered, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox Business Network.

What were doing now is were narrowing those down to the core group that were going to place huge multi-hundred million dollar bets on and scale massive vaccine domestic production so that we by the end of the year, we hope, would have one or more safe and effective vaccines and hundreds of millions of doses.

The first human trials of potential coronavirus vaccines began in March [File: Ted S Warren/The Associated Press]

14:00 GMT  Denmark reports zero deaths for first time since March

Denmark, the first country in Europe to gradually start reopening, reported no coronavirus-related deaths on Friday from the day earlier for the first time since March 13.

Denmarks total number of confirmed cases rose by 78 to 10,791 since Thursday, with the number of hospitalisations falling by 10 to 137. The death toll remained unchanged at 537.

Milestone today: In the last day we have had 0 deaths as a result of COVID-19 in Denmark, Health Minister Magnus Heunicke said on Twitter.

13:40 GMT  Pandemic teleworking is straining families: EU study

The COVID-19 pandemic is placing unprecedented strain on families and working life, an EU study showed on Friday, with more than a fifth of people who now work at home in households with younger children struggling to concentrate on their jobs.

The study by EU agency Eurofound, which seeks to improve living and working conditions, found that over a third of people working in the 27-nation European Union had started teleworking as a result of the pandemic.

Of those, 26 percent live in households with children under 12 and a further 10 percent with children aged from 12 to 17. Of those living with younger children, 22 percent reported difficulties in concentrating on their jobs all or most of the time. That compared with 5 percent of households with no children and 7 percent with older children.





13:25 GMT  Georgia will end state of emergency on May 22  PM

Georgia will end the state of emergency it declared over the new coronavirus on May 22, Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia said.

The South Caucasus country of 3.7 million, which has registered 671 cases of the coronavirus and 12 deaths as of Friday, introduced the state of emergency on March 21 and extended it on April 21.

The state of emergency entails a night curfew from 9 pm till 6 am, closure of restaurants, cafes and most shops, a suspension of public transport and a ban on gatherings of more than three people. Grocery stores, pharmacies and petrol stations remain open.

This Joseph Stepansky in Doha taking over from Umut Uras.

12:55 GMT  Austrias Swiss and Liechtenstein borders to fully reopen on June 15

Austria has struck the same border-opening agreement with Switzerland and Liechtenstein as the one it previously announced with Germany, to fully allow travel from June 15, Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has said.

We have reached an agreement with Germany, Liechtenstein and Switzerland, namely a significant easing from today and a full opening of borders from June 15, he told a news conference, adding that talks were under way with its eastern European neighbours.

12:40 GMT  Czech Republic eases lockdown

The Czech Republic has said it would allow gatherings of up to 300 people later this month as coronavirus infections remained among the lowest in Europe.

Gatherings including sports events will be allowed as of May 25, when businesses including restaurants and pubs will also be allowed to open, Health Minister Adam Vojtech said.

Shopping centres, cinemas, barbers and restaurant terraces opened on Monday after nearly two months under lockdown in the country of 10.7 million people.

A worker in a protective suit disinfects the statue of first Czechoslovak President T. G. Masaryk at Hradcanske Square in Prague in March [Martin Divisek/EPA]

12:25 GMT  Norway likely to keep travel restrictions until August 20: PM

Norway will likely maintain current travel restrictions to and from the Nordic country until Aug. 20, Prime Minister Erna Solberg has said.

The measures include official advice against travelling abroad unless necessary, a 10-day quarantine for all people returning from abroad and barring entry to most non-Norwegians who do not have the right to live and work in Norway.

12:05 GMT  French lockdown led to less drug trafficking and spike in prices

The lockdown imposed in France to combat the coronavirus led to a sharp drop in drug trafficking and a huge spike in prices, officials have said.

Interior Minister Christophe Castaner told a news conference that there had been a drop of 30-40 percent in drug trafficking in France, while anti-drug trafficking official Stephanie Cherbonnier said prices jumped by 30-60 percent.

We have noted a massive increase in prices, said Cherbonnier, who added that drug traffickers had sought to get around the lockdown by using home delivery and drive-in services.

11:45 GMT  Spains coronavirus death toll climbs by 138 on Friday: ministry

Spains death toll from coronavirus registered its lowest increase since Monday as health authorities registered 138 new fatalities, the health ministry reported.

The overall coronavirus death toll rose to 27,459, while the number of diagnosed cases rose to 230,183 cases from 229,540 on Thursday, the ministry said.

11:30 GMT  Slovenia first EU nation to declare end of epidemic at home

Slovenia, a mountainous nation of two million people, has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic at home.

The European Union member states government said the COVID-19 spread is under control and there is no longer a need for extraordinary health measures.

Read more on this story here.

The first coronavirus case in Slovenia was recorded on March 4 [Jure Makovec /AFP]

10:50 GMT  Water shortages cause hardships in Zimbabwe amid ogoing pandemic

Water shortages are causing increased hardships for many in Zimbabwe, on top of the coronavirus restrictions in place and a crippling economic crisis.

Social distancing, here? You cant avoid the pushing, everyone wants a drop, a resident in Chitungwiza says.

Social distancing, here? You can't avoid the pushing, everyone wants a drop." In parts of Zimbabwe, water scarcity is a problem amid the #coronavirus pandemic. pic.twitter.com/IbFn4zv4qJ  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 15, 2020

10:20 GMT  Hundreds get virus at main Kazakh oil field

More than 400 people have tested positive for the coronavirus at Kazakhstans top-producing oil field, health officials have said.

The number of infections at the giant Tengiz oil field rose from 17 on Thursday to 401 by Friday, according to officials in the Atyrau region.

They said the workers were being treated and their contacts traced. However, Health Minister Yelzhan Birtanov on Thursday criticised quarantine measures at the field.

09:55 GMT  Japanese economist: Coronavirus could last years

Japan should boost coronavirus testing and offer more generous cash payouts to households as the epidemic could last for several years, an economist appointed to a government panel on the virus response has said.

The government can fund huge spending on the coronavirus by issuing more bonds, which the central bank can buy to avoid causing a rise in long-term interest rates, said Keiichiro Kobayashi, who was appointed on Tuesday to join a committee advising the government on measures to combat the pandemic.

It could take up to four years, he said, referring to the time needed to develop and distribute an effective vaccine or medicine to combat the virus. Consumption will fall globally during that time, he added.

Japan has reported nearly 16,000 coronavirus infections and over 650 deaths [Koji Sasahara/AP]

09:35 GMT  Hong Kong economy contracts 8.9 percent in first quarter

Hong Kongs economy shrank 8.9 percent in the first quarter compared with a year earlier, the government said, as the coronavirus pandemic dealt a heavy blow to the city following months of social unrest.

It is the third straight quarter of year-on-year contractions for the Asian financial hub, and its worst quarterly drop since records began in 1974.

The first quarters pace compares with a decline of three percent in the previous quarter, and an advance estimate of negative 8.9 percent.

09:15 GMT  Portugals economy tanks 3.9 percent in first quarter

Portugals economy contracted 3.9 percent in the first quarter from the preceding three-month period as the coronavirus epidemic and subsequent restrictions on movement started taking their toll mainly in March, official data showed.

The National Statistics Institute also said in its flash estimate that the countrys gross domestic product shrank 2.4 percent compared to the same period a year earlier.

In the fourth quarter of 2019, the economy grew 0.7 percent quarter-on-quarter and 2.2 percent year-on-year.

08:55 GMT  Malaysia reports 36 new coronavirus cases with no new deaths

Malaysia has reported 36 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours with no additional deaths, the health ministry said.

The country has recorded a total of 6,855 infections with 112 fatalities.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, Malaysia has recorded a total of 6,855 infections with 112 fatalities[EPA]

08:30 GMT  Virus-hit German economy suffers worst contraction since 2009

The German economy contracted by 2.2 percent in the first quarter, its steepest three-month slump since the 2009 financial crisis as shops and factories were shut in March to contain the spread of the coronavirus, preliminary data showed.

On the year, gross domestic product in Europes largest economy fell by 2.3 percent from January to March after a 0.4 percent expansion in the previous three months, seasonally adjusted figures from the Federal Statistics Office showed.

Analysts polled by the Reuters agency had expected national output to shrink by 2.2 percent quarter-on-quarter and two 2 percent contraction year-on-year in seasonally adjusted terms.

08:15 GMT  Philippines coronavirus infections top 12,000, deaths pass 800 mark

The number of novel coronavirus cases in the Philippines has passed the 12,000 mark, and more than 800 people have now died, the health ministry said.

In a bulletin, the ministry reported 16 more coronavirus deaths, bringing the total to 806. It recorded 215 additional infections, increasing the total tally to 12,091. But 123 more patients have recovered, bringing total recoveries to 2,460.

07:50 GMT  Russia reports 10,598 new coronavirus infections

Russia reported 10,598 new confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus, pushing its nationwide case tally to 262,843.

Russias coronavirus taskforce said 113 people had died over the last 24 hours, bringing the official death toll from the virus to 2,418.

Russias coronavirus taskforce says 113 people died in the country over the last 24 hours [Anadolu]

07:35 GMT  China: COVID-19 risks from imported cases are controllable

The risk of a COVID-19 resurgence in China from so-called imported infections is controllable, an official of the National Health Commission (NHC) said.

China reported four new coronavirus cases on the mainland on May 14, all of them locally transmitted. China has banned most foreigners from entering its borders since late March as the pandemic spread globally.

NHC Vice Minister Zeng Yixin also told reporters during a briefing that some COVID-19 vaccines are set to complete their second-phase clinical trials in July.

07:18 GMT  Ghanas dancing pallbearers urge people to stay home

The Nana Otafrija service group, known as Ghanas dancing pallbearers, provides funeral services featuring men dressed in black and white suits and sunglasses.

They get down to festive beats while carrying a coffin on their shoulders in funeral ceremonies.

The pallbearers have been enjoying international fame in pandemic times, urging people to stay home and exercise social distancing.

They say: Now remember, stay at home or dance with us.

"Now remember, stay at home or dance with us." Ghanas viral dancing pallbearers are urging people to stay indoors amid #coronavirus. pic.twitter.com/VTmubKhJLZ  Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 15, 2020

06:50 GMT  UK approves Abbotts COVID-19 antibody test

The UK has given the green light to Abbott Laboratories to produce a COVID-19 antibody test, shortly after it gave the same approval to Swiss drugmaker Roche Holding, health officials said.

Mass antibody testing with millions of kits is being considered by many countries as a way to speed the reopening of economies devastated by lockdowns and to introduce more tailored social distancing measures.

06:20 GMT  Thailand reports seven new coronavirus cases, all from overseas

Thailand has reported seven new coronavirus cases, while the number of deaths remained unchanged at 56.

The new cases were all patients who arrived from Pakistan last week and have been in state quarantine, said Taweesin Wisanuyothin, a spokesman for the governments Centre for COVID-19 Situation Administration.

Thailand has confirmed a total of 3,025 cases since the coronavirus outbreak started in January and earlier in the week reported zero new daily cases for the first time in two months.

Thailand has confirmed a total of 3,025 cases since the coronavirus outbreak started in January [Gemunu Amarasinghe/AP]

Hello, Im Umut Uras in Doha, Qatar, taking over from my colleague Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives.

Im handing over to my colleague, Umut Uras, in Doha, Qatar now. Heres a quick summary of the latest developments:

 Slovenia called an end to its COVID-19 outbreak, becoming the first country to do so.

 Cafes and pubs are reopening in parts of Australia

 Brazil cases hit a daily record even as President Jair Bolsonaro lobbied business leaders to pressure the governor of Sao Paolo to lift lockdown measures.

05:35 GMT  Chinas factory output posts first increase for 2020

Chinas factory output rose for the first time this year as the worlds second-largest economy slowly emerged from its coronavirus lockdowns.

Industrial production climbed 3.9 percent in April from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, faster than the 1.5 percent increase forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts and following a 1.1 percent fall in March.

But China continues to face significant challenges in its services sector, particularly in retail. Of particular concern for policymakers ahead of next weeks annual meeting of Parliament is the prospect of a spike in unemployment, which poses serious political risks for the nation of 1.4 billion.

Overall, this set of data shows only small and gradual improvements in economic activity, which could upset markets as China is seen as the first out economy from COVID-19, said Iris Pang, chief economist for Greater China at ING.





05:02 GMT  Study says virus could infect more than 200 million people in Africa

A World Health Organizations (WHO) modelling study has indicated the coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa and infect 231 million people in a year unless urgent action is taken.

Authors of the research said even though many African nations have been swift to adopt containment measures, health systems could still quickly become overwhelmed.

That would divert already limited resources to tackle major health issues in the region, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition, worsening the effects of coronavirus.

The region will have fewer deaths, but occurring more in relatively younger age groups, amongst people previously considered healthy  due to undiagnosed non-communicable diseases, the report said, adding that these trends are already emerging.





Transmission is estimated to be greatest in smaller nations, with Mauritius found to have the highest risk of exposure. Of the continents larger countries, South Africa, Cameroon and Algeria were also in the top 10 for exposure risk.

03:52 GMT  S Korea reports 17 more cases linked to Seoul night club cluster

The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) has reported 29 new cases, 17 of which are linked to bars and clubs in Seouls nightlife district of Itaewon.

The latest figures brought the total number of cases in the Itaewon cluster to 148.

The Yonhap news agency said health authorities will disinfect nightclubs and bars this weekend, in an effort to prevent the Itaewon infection cluster from expanding into a mass outbreak.

3:18 GMT  Chinas Wuhan tests almost a third of residents

Wuhan, the original epicentre of Chinas coronavirus outbreak, has tested more than three million residents for the pathogen since April and will now focus its testing efforts on the rest of its 11 million population, according to state media.

The priority will be residents who have not been tested before, people living in residential compounds that had previous cases of the virus, as well as old or densely populated estates, the official Xinhua News Agency said, citing a Wuhan government meeting.

Authorities in Wuhan plan to conduct tests on everyone in the city after detecting a cluster of infections over the weekend  the first since the citys lockdown was lifted on April 8.

A medical worker takes a swab sample from a resident to be tested for the COVID-19 coronavirus in Wuhan in Chinas central Hubei province on May 14, 2020. [STR/ AFP]

02:54 GMT  Bangladesh urged to end internet blackout in Rohingya camps

A UK charity is urging authorities in Bangladesh to lift internet restrictions in camps housing hundreds of thousands of Rohingya refugees after the first cases of the coronavirus were detected there on Thursday.

We urge Bangladesh and the international community to do everything they can to ensure that all necessary aid reaches those who need it, said Tun Khin, president of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK (BROUK).

This must also be a wake-up call to the Bangladeshi authorities to lift internet restrictions in the camps. The current blackout is not just preventing aid groups from doing their jobs, but also blocking refugees from accessing life-saving information.





02:26 GMT  Truck drivers test positive at Costa Rica-Nicaragua border

Health officials in Costa Rica said 23 truck drivers entering the country from Nicaragua have tested positive for the coronavirus in the past week.

All of them were asymptomatic. Two others who showed symptoms were turned away without tests.

The results are another sign that the spread of the virus in Nicaragua could be greater than its government has acknowledged. The country has reported only 25 confirmed cases and eight deaths, and its government has not imposed social distancing measures and continues to promote mass gatherings.





02:12 GMT  US alerts doctors to COVID-19 linked condition in children

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned doctors about a serious rare inflammatory condition in children linked to the coronavirus.

The CDCs case definition includes current or recent COVID-19 infection or exposure to the virus, a fever of at least 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celcius) for at least 24 hours, inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, or lungs.

The agency called the condition multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children.

01:54 GMT  Four million girls at risk of child marriage

The global charity World Vision says four million girls are at risk of child marriage in the next two years because of the coronavirus pandemic, with deepening poverty likely to drive many families to marry off their daughters early.

The risks are further exacerbated by the fact that schools have been closed and organisations working to combat child marriage have been finding it harder to operate during lockdowns.

When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic rates of child marriage go up, Erica Hall, World Visions child marriage expert, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. If we dont start thinking about how to prevent it now it will be too late. We cant wait for the health crisis to pass first.

Pupils observing social distance rules listen to their teacher at the Saint Germain de Charonne school in Paris on May 14, 2020, as primary schools in France reopen this week [Franck Fife/ AFP]

01:38 GMT  Trumps Mar-a-Lago club to partially reopen

US President Donald Trumps Mar-a-Lago club will partially reopen to members this weekend as South Florida slowly reopens from the coronavirus lockdown.

An email sent on Thursday to members said the Palm Beach resorts Beach Club restaurant, its pool and its whirlpool will reopen on Saturday after being closed for two months, but its main building that includes hotel rooms, the main dining area and the presidents private residence will remain closed.

Members will have to practice social distancing and lounge chairs will be set two metres (six feet) apart. They will have to bring their own towels.

01:31 GMT  China hits one-month mark since last reported virus death

China has gone a month without announcing any new deaths from the coronavirus.

The National Health Commission reported four new cases of the virus on Friday, all local cross-infections in the northeast province of Jilin where a cluster of uncertain origin has been detected in recent days. The last time the commission reported any deaths was on April 14.

In total, China has reported 4,633 deaths among 82,933 cases since the virus was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.

01:25 GMT  Brazil cases hit daily record

Brazil has registered a daily record of 13,944 new cases of the coronavirus on Thursday as President Jair Bolsonaro urged business leaders to push for lifting lockdown orders in the countrys financial centre, Sao Paulo.

Health ministry data showed a total of 202,918 confirmed cases and 13,933 deaths in Brazil, the hardest-hit country in Latin America, at the end of Thursday.

But Bolsonaro, who opposes the lockdowns, told a virtual gathering of business leaders to play tough with Sao Paulo Governor Joao Doria, who has issued social distancing orders and said he will not comply with Bolsonaros latest decree to reopen gyms and beauty salons.





One man is deciding the future of Sao Paulo, Bolsonaro said, referring to Doria. He is deciding the future of Brazils economy. With all due respect, you have to call the governor and play tough  play tough  because its a serious issue, it is war. Brazil is at stake.

Sao Paulo, Brazils most populous state and home to a third of its economic output, has seen hospitals pushed to the limit as it records the worst outbreak in the country.

00:12 GMT  Slovenia calls an end to its coronavirus epidemic

The Slovenian government is calling an official end to its coronavirus epidemic, becoming the first European country to do so after authorities confirmed less than seven new coronavirus cases each day for the past two weeks.

People now arriving in Slovenia from other European Union states will no longer be obliged to go into quarantine for at least seven days as was the case from early April, the government has said in a statement. But a 14-day quarantine remains in place for people coming in from non-EU states.

Citizens will still have to follow basic rules to prevent a possible spread of infection, the government has said, without elaborating. People have been required to wear masks in indoor public spaces, stand at least 1.5 metres (five feet) apart and disinfect hands upon entering public spaces.

The country of two million people has so far reported 1,464 coronavirus cases and 103 deaths.





00:04 GMT  Cafes and bars reopen in parts of Australia

New South Wales (NSW), Australias most populous state, is reopening restaurants, cafes and bars after a two-month shutdown, under the condition they limit customers to 10 at any one time.

Gladys Berejiklian, premier of NSW, has cautioned people to remain vigilant and maintain social distancing.

Easing restrictions has failed in so many places around the world and I dont want that to happen in NSW, I want people to have personal responsibility for the way we respond, Berejiklian told reporters in Sydney.

In the Northern Territory, pubs are opening with no restrictions on patron numbers and there are no limits on public gatherings or house visits.

Victoria, Australias second-most populous state, is currently retaining most of its lockdown measures.

Hello and welcome to Al Jazeeras continuing coverage of the coronavirus pandemic. Im Zaheena Rasheed in Male, Maldives.

You can find all the updates from yesterday (May 14) here.
NSW Treasury Secretary Michael Pratt says the state and nation is likely already in recession as a result of the coronavirus, which he said had had a "profound impact on the NSW economy".

Mr Pratt delivered this assessment on Friday at a NSW upper house inquiry, which is scrutinising the Berejiklian government's response to the COVID-19 crisis.

"It is likely that national and state economies have entered a period of recession, the first in nearly three decades," Mr Pratt told the hearing.

NSW Chief Economist Stephen Walters echoed this view, saying: "It's pretty clear that the economy of NSW is in a recession."
A patron is reflected in the window of Mike's Food Stop food truck, which until last winter was set up on Market Street on Drexel University's campus. Read more

Philadelphia, the only jurisdiction in Pennsylvania to pull food trucks off the streets during the coronavirus pandemic, has heard a proposal that would allow some vendors to set up in designated private lots with restrictions.

The move would be a small consolation for hundreds of vendors, who have also lost the ability to sell at public festivals, which are verboten.

City officials confirm that they had a positive meeting Tuesday via Zoom with Matt Rossi, president of the Philly Mobile Food Association, to discuss the groups proposal to use three private parking lots initially. The plan would be toraffle off a limited number of spots each day for three savory trucks and one dessert truck. Customers would place and pay for orders in advance then pick them up from tables next to the trucks in the lot. The windows would remain closed.

The proposed lots are on Bustleton Avenue just south of Cottman Avenue in the Castor section; on Woodhaven Road near Philadelphia Mills in the Far Northeast; and at 2401 Aramingo Ave., in a shopping center near the Girard Avenue off-ramp of I-95 in Port Richmond.

The association represents 68 vendors, many mom-and-pop businesses whose owners have been crushed financially by the shutdown, said Rossi, who owns 10 trucks as well as two Nicks Roast Beef restaurants in Northeast Philadelphia.

All licensed and insured vendors would have access to the lot raffle, under Rossis proposal.

No timetable has been indicated for the proposal, and meetings continue.

 ASK US: Do you have a question about the coronavirus and how it affects your health, work and life? Ask our reporters.

Advance ordering, cashless payment, and contactless pickup, in theory, are identical to systems in place at many brick-and-mortar restaurants now offering takeout. But in practice, other restaurants insist that customers walk inside to pick up and pay for food  not ideal, when door handles, credit cards, and cash are factored in.

Trucks were allowed to operate for at least a week after sit-down restaurant service was halted in the city on March 16. But they quickly raised concerns when officials noticed customers walking up to order and milling around while waiting. All mobile vendors are treated the same under the law, regardless if they are full-size mobile vendors, small pop-up carts, or ice cream trucks. The city is also concerned about enforcement, especially when it comes to monitoring roving vendors. Under the current order, food trucks may only cook in a commissary and provide delivery.

Authorities in other jurisdictions apparently do not consider these issues to be challenges. Some Philadelphia-based trucks have even been vending legally in New Jersey.

A city spokesperson said the proposal would be reviewed by departments including Law, Public Health and L&I for compliance with the existing state and city orders. The city is preparing plans for a phased reopening in coordination with the guidelines presented by the state.

Since the rise of the food-truck movement, vendors have never had it easy. In April 2019, food trucks parked near Temple University were concerned that their futures could be in jeopardy if the city began enforcing a 2015 ordinance that required they pack up and leave their vending spots each night.

Last summer, City Council banned food trucks from public streets in the 10th District, which encompasses parts of Northeast Philadelphia. Councilman Brian ONeill has said brick-and-mortar businesses complained about street vendors that ate into their profits but didnt pay rent.
/ -- On the occasion of International Day against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia (IDAHOTB), Johnson & Johnson India is proud to underline its commitment to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) community. Today, J&J India makes history by joining a league of a select few companies in announcing same-gender partner Mediclaim benefits, as well as inclusion in other family benefits like Holiday Plan, Relocation policy, Refundable Medical Advance & Adoption Leave.

Steps that further demonstrate how important gender equality and inclusion at workplace is to the organisation. Johnson & Johnson believes in an ecosystem that is fair and embraces diversity.

Sarthak Ranade, Johnson & Johnson D&I Sponsor and Managing Director, Janssen India said: "Diversity and inclusion is a reality of how we live and work at Johnson and Johnson India and is deeply rooted in the values instilled by our Credo. Open&Out, our global internal program that comes under the Employee Resource Group (ERG) has been making great efforts to promote equal access to opportunities for all our people in every corner of J&J. The inclusion of same gender partners in the Mediclaim and other policies will advance the culture of inclusion and create a better employee experience."



Emrana Sheikh, Head - Human Resources, Johnson & Johnson India announced this stating: "We believe in making inclusion real and are offering equal benefits for LGBTQ employees to include various family benefits including Mediclaim cover to same-gender partners. This comes at a time when such coverage is difficult for a standalone LGBTQ+ customer, it becomes much easier if the company takes the responsibility. Johnson & Johnson wants to provide a safe and welcoming work environment that supports every individual in feeling proud, integrated and equal."



Last year, on IDAHOTB, Johnson & Johnson India reaffirmed its commitment to the LGBTQ+ community by creating Employee Resource Group Open&Out and also participated in the Queer Azaadi Mumbai (QAM) Pride March.

About Johnson & Johnson:



At Johnson & Johnson, we believe good health is the foundation of vibrant lives, thriving communities and forward progress. That's why for more than 130 years, we have aimed to keep people well at every age and every stage of life. Today, as the world's largest and most broadly-based healthcare company, we are committed to using our reach and size for good. We strive to improve access and affordability, create healthier communities, and put a healthy mind, body and environment within reach of everyone, everywhere. We are blending our heart, science and ingenuity to profoundly change the trajectory of health for humanity.

Learn more at www.jnj.com. Follow us at @jnjglobalhealth.

About Open&Out:



Johnson & Johnson globally has 12 Employee Resource Groups (ERGs), one of which is Open&Out. Open&Out is a voluntary, employee-led resource group for colleagues who are open-minded & out to make a difference for the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) professionals and their straight allies within the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
United Overseas Australia Limited (ASX:UOS) stock is about to trade ex-dividend in 3 days time. Ex-dividend means that investors that purchase the stock on or after the 19th of May will not receive this dividend, which will be paid on the 9th of June.

United Overseas Australia's next dividend payment will be AU$0.02 per share, on the back of last year when the company paid a total of AU$0.025 to shareholders. Calculating the last year's worth of payments shows that United Overseas Australia has a trailing yield of 3.7% on the current share price of A$0.68. Dividends are a major contributor to investment returns for long term holders, but only if the dividend continues to be paid. So we need to investigate whether United Overseas Australia can afford its dividend, and if the dividend could grow.

Check out our latest analysis for United Overseas Australia

If a company pays out more in dividends than it earned, then the dividend might become unsustainable - hardly an ideal situation. United Overseas Australia paid out a comfortable 40% of its profit last year. A useful secondary check can be to evaluate whether United Overseas Australia generated enough free cash flow to afford its dividend. What's good is that dividends were well covered by free cash flow, with the company paying out 0.7% of its cash flow last year.

It's encouraging to see that the dividend is covered by both profit and cash flow. This generally suggests the dividend is sustainable, as long as earnings don't drop precipitously.

Click here to see how much of its profit United Overseas Australia paid out over the last 12 months.

ASX:UOS Historical Dividend Yield May 15th 2020

Have Earnings And Dividends Been Growing?

When earnings decline, dividend companies become much harder to analyse and own safely. Investors love dividends, so if earnings fall and the dividend is reduced, expect a stock to be sold off heavily at the same time. That's why it's not ideal to see United Overseas Australia's earnings per share have been shrinking at 3.6% a year over the previous five years.

Story continues

Another key way to measure a company's dividend prospects is by measuring its historical rate of dividend growth. United Overseas Australia has delivered 5.2% dividend growth per year on average over the past ten years.

To Sum It Up

Has United Overseas Australia got what it takes to maintain its dividend payments? United Overseas Australia has comfortably low cash and profit payout ratios, which may mean the dividend is sustainable even in the face of a sharp decline in earnings per share. Still, we consider declining earnings to be a warning sign. Overall, it's hard to get excited about United Overseas Australia from a dividend perspective.

In light of that, while United Overseas Australia has an appealing dividend, it's worth knowing the risks involved with this stock. We've identified 4 warning signs with United Overseas Australia (at least 1 which is concerning), and understanding them should be part of your investment process.

If you're in the market for dividend stocks, we recommend checking our list of top 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.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 00:29:16|Editor: huaxia

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LHASA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Southwest China's Tibet Autonomous Region invested nearly 400 million yuan (about 56 million U.S. dollars) in 2019 to launch about 110 projects on the protection, repair and utilization of the region's cultural relics, according to local authorities.

Among the total, the central government has allocated a special fund of 296 million yuan last year to 56 projects on the protection of cultural relics in the region, said Liu Shizhong, director of the administration of cultural heritage of Tibet.

The regional government appropriated about 90 million yuan and launched 53 programs for cultural relics preservation, Liu added. Enditem
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Antonio Gonzalez Pacheco, a Spanish police officer who was accused of torturing opponents of Gen. Francisco Francos regime, died on May 7 at a hospital in Madrid. He was 73.

Local media reports said the cause was Covid-19, but officials at the hospital, San Francisco de Asis, declined to comment.

Spains deputy prime minister, Pablo Iglesias, said on Twitter that it was shameful for democracy and also for us as a government that Mr. Gonzalez Pacheco died without ever standing trial for the crimes he was accused of during the Franco dictatorship. The government announced earlier this year that it would strip him of the police decorations he had received.
Marvel fans are some of the most dedicated and hardcore fans in the world. And, just like how Star Wars fans or Game of Thrones fans dont like spoilers, fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) also dont like spoilers.

Unfortunately, though, Disney is in the business of making money, and that usually means making trailers that look cool. Sometimes, the best scenes of a movie are at the very end, and that means that Disney will sometimes use those scenes for its trailers.

For the hardcore Marvel fans though, this ultimately means that many trailers for Marvel movies are full of spoilers, and some fans dont like that.

Why spoilers matter

Robert Downey Jr. earned a hefty sum as Iron Man. | Photo by Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic

While some people like spoilers, many people dont. Thats really the whole purpose of spoiler alerts, but for commercials, thats sometimes not possible. In any case, since the Marvel movies are basically like a book where each movie is a different page, anytime Marvel or anyone else posts spoilers, it can ruin the surprise for some fans.

Surprises are one of the biggest reasons why fans dont want to see or hear spoilers. Many iconic moments in movies, such as Darth Vaders I am your father, moment, wouldnt be as impactful if audiences knew that he was actually Luke Skywalkers father.

In the Marvel movies, there are also a ton of surprises that couldve been ruined by spoilers. For example, in Spider-Man: Far From Home, fans didnt know that J. Jonah Jameson would be back, and played by the same actor as before. If that scene was spoiled for fans, then the moment just wouldnt have been as cool as before.

How the trailer for Captain America: Civil War spoiled it

In the very first trailer for the movie, Disney ended it on a high note by showing Iron Man and Captain America fighting each other. These scenes were at the end of the movie and were definitely some of the coolest action sequences that Disney couldve chosen to show. That said, it totally spoiled the movie.

Thats because the first and second parts of the movie set up Baron Zemo as the main villain. His plan, in the movie, was to release the other Winter Soldiers that Russia had created.

But since Disney showed Iron Man and Captain America fighting it out instead of fighting a bunch of Soviet super0soldiers, Marvel fans kind of figured out that Baron Zemos plan wouldnt work.

Of course, Baron Zemo, in the end, said that his real plan was to get Iron Man to fight Captain America and thus, destroy the Avengers. This seemed like a cop-out for some fans, as it just made Baron Zemos grand plan even more complicated and complex than it really had to be.

What Marvel is doing about it now

In any case, Marvel knows that fans hate spoilers and it, along with Disney, is trying their best to solve these issues. One of the more recent things that theyve done was, before the first trailer for Spider-Man: Far From Home was released, they played a spoiler alert from Tom Holland talking about the trailer.

This could be a good way of warning Marvel fans that what theyre about to see has spoilers, and as such, it will give fans a chance to not watch it. For Avengers: Endgame though, Marvel has gone with a different strategy. The first trailers kept things hush-hush, but then, after the movie broke records, Marvel and Disney decided that they could spoil things in the trailers.

This could be a good compromise as spoiler-conscious fans avoided Avengers: Endgame spoilers entirely, while people who didnt care too much for Marvel could see trailers with all the cool moments a few weeks later.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu delivers an speech at his Jerusalem office on March 14, 2020, regarding the new measures that will be taken to fight the CCP virus in Israel. (Gali Tibbon/AFP via Getty Images)

Swearing-In of New Israeli Government Delayed by Infighting

JERUSALEMPrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his rival-turned-partner, Benny Gantz, on May 14 postponed the swearing-in of their controversial new government as the Israeli leader rushed to quell infighting within his Likud party.

In a joint announcement, the two men said they would hold a swearing-in ceremony on May 17 to give Netanyahu more time to hand out coveted Cabinet appointments to members of his party.

After three deadlocked and divisive elections, and a year and a half of political paralysis, Israel had hoped to swear in the new government on May 14.

Netanyahu and Gantz, a former military chief, announced last month they would put their differences aside and join forces to steer the country through the coronavirus crisis and its severe economic fallout.

It came at the price of the dissolution of Gantzs Blue and White party and his reneging on a key campaign promise not to serve under Netanyahu, who is scheduled to go on trial this month for corruption charges. Their much-scrutinized coalition deal, resulting in the most bloated government in Israeli history and new legislation to help Netanyahu cling to power, could only come about after the countrys Supreme Court ruled it had no legal grounds to block it.

Despite the criticism, Gantz argued that teaming up with Netanyahu was the only way to avoid a fourth election.

Just as the government was set to be sworn in late May 14 under strict social distancing guidelines, the two men announced the delay in a joint statement, saying Gantz had agreed to a request by Netanyahu to wait until May 17.

The coalition deal calls for Netanyahu to serve as prime minister for the governments first 18 months before being replaced by Gantz for the next 18 months.

Their blocs will have a similar number of ministers and virtual veto power over the others major decisions. Because Netanyahus bloc includes several smaller parties, he only has a limited number of Cabinet ministries to hand out to the Likud rank and file.

Yohanan Plesner, president of the non-partisan Israel Democracy Institute, said the incoming governments main achievement would be ending the longest political deadlock in Israeli history. But he said the deep distrust between the opposing camps left doubts on how they could govern together.

The jury is still out if indeed the political deadlock is over and if we have a broad government that will exercise its authority, he said.

Gantz will start out as defense minister, with party colleague and fellow retired military chief Gabi Ashkenazi serving as foreign minister. Netanyahus top deputy in Likud, outgoing Foreign Minister Israel Katz, will become the finance minister. Yariv Levin, perhaps Netanyahus closest ally, will become the new parliament speaker. The coalition will also include a pair of ultra-Orthodox Jewish parties and some other individual defectors to add up to 73 out of parliaments 120 members.

Critics have already accused the government of being out of touch by creating so many Cabinet posts at a time when unemployment has soared to 25 percent as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Critics also object to the newly created position of alternate prime minister. The post could allow Netanyahu to remain in office even after the swap and throughout his corruption trial and a potential appeals process.

The new position includes an exemption from a law that requires public officials who are not prime minister to resign if charged with a crime.

Netanyahu has been indicted with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals involving trading favors with wealthy media moguls. He denies any wrongdoing and blames the charges on a media-orchestrated plot to oust him.

Since his indictment last fall, he has repeatedly lashed out at the countrys legal system. His legal woes and fitness to serve were central issues in the recent election campaigns.

Another hot topic will be Netanyahus intention to introduce Israeli plans to annex parts of the West Bank as early as this summer. The coalition agreement allows him to present an annexation proposal as soon as July 1.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo made a one-day visit on May 13 for talks that included discussions on President Donald Trumps Mideast plan, which envisions handing 30 percent of the West Bank to permanent Israeli control.

In an interview published on May 14 with the pro-Netanyahu daily Israel Hayom, Pompeo said the talks looked at all the ways to move forward.

The Palestinians claim the entire West Bank, captured by Israel in the 1967 Mideast war, as the heartland of an independent state. Annexing chunks of this territory would likely put an end to the Palestinians already diminishing hopes of a two-state solution and would anger the international community, which overwhelmingly supports Palestinian statehood.

Gantz says he will only support such a move with international backing.

Netanyahus nationalist base is eager to push for annexation before the U.S. elections in Novemberin case Trump is replaced by Joe Biden, who has said he opposes unilateral annexation.

By Aron Heller
For the 72nd Nakba anniversary, Palestinians took to social media and digital initiatives to commemorate the day.

Demonstrations across Palestinian cities and towns to commemorate the Nakba have been cancelled due to the coronavirus pandemic this year.

Instead, Palestinian activists took to social media to commemorate the 72nd anniversary of the Nakba, or Day of Catastrophe.

May 15 marks the day hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes by Zionist paramilitaries, which ushered in the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.

More than a third of the Palestinian population, totalling around 750,000 people, became refugees. Today their descendants number in the millions, including six million in the diaspora.

Last year, Israeli troops wounded at least 47 Palestinians during the Nakba demonstrations.

In the occupied West Bank, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas authorised digital activities to mark the anniversary.





On Thursday, activists launched an Arabic hashtag which translated into Palestine as a whole to affirm the Palestinian right of return as well as drawing awareness to the Israeli occupations attempt to undermine the Palestinian cause, including the latest plans to annex parts of the occupied West Bank.

For the 72nd Nakba anniversary, we will not accept a reality where Palestine is occupied by even one inch, Dawoud Abu Dalfa, a Palestinian journalist, said on Twitter.

We only know a complete Palestine, and we have confidence and belief that the Israeli occupation will not last.

Other online and digital initiatives to commemorate the Nakba includes the free app Palestine VR, which aims in part to connect millions of diaspora Palestinians with their forefathers towns and villages, some of which now lie abandoned in Israel.

Coming to Palestine is transformational, especially for Palestinians who arent allowed to visit, said Ramallah-based Palestine VR founder Salem Barahmeh, 30, as he guided Zoom participants through the apps 47 virtual tours of Gaza, Jerusalem and the occupied West Bank.

We want to share Palestine with them, and help them feel and understand this place.

Majd al-Shihabi, a Palestinian refugee born in Syria, is part of a team that developed Palestine Open Maps, an interactive database of Palestinian villages and Jewish towns as they stood in 1948.

Palestinians anywhere can see visual details of their villages, reinforcing our understanding of what Palestine was like before the exodus, al-Shihabi, 31, said from Beirut.
Battery alliance between top two conglomerates offers win-win model



Samsung Electronics Vice Chairman Lee Jae-yong and Hyundai Motor Group Executive Vice Chairman Chung Euisun met on Wednesday. The two exchanged views on the supply of next-generation batteries for electric vehicles. This was the first time that the heirs-apparent of the nation's two largest conglomerates met to discuss business. The top-two business groups have had a rivalry based on starkly different corporate cultures.



It had been far from desirable for the two business giants to treat each other as if they were total strangers so far. Lee and Chung need each other more than any others. Samsung Electronics has jumped into the business of supplying electronic equipment for electric cars  the global IT giant took over Harman International Industries for this purpose four years ago. In addition, Samsung SDI is competing with local and foreign rivals to expand its share in the global battery market. Samsung Electronics' securing of Hyundai Motor as a friendly force is a pragmatic decision.



For Hyundai Motor, too, Samsung SDI is a partner of utmost importance. Cars have come to be classified as electronic products  nearly all global automakers have begun to take part in the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. At this year's event, Hyundai Motor showed a personal air vehicle (PAV) model together with Uber. Chung, at a town hall meeting with executives and employees last year, predicted his company's future business portfolio would be automobiles (50 percent), PAV (30 percent) and robotics (20 percent). For Hyundai Motor, the battery making affiliate of Samsung would be an indispensable partner.



The Lee-Chung meeting also falls in line with government policy. In a speech that marked the start of his fourth year in office last Sunday, President Moon Jae-in said, "The government will develop three industries  system semiconductors, bio-health and futuristic vehicles  as new growth engines." The Samsung Group is a major player in the system semiconductors and bio-health sectors while Hyundai Motor is a pioneer in future cars.



For Korea to emerge as a leading country in the post-coronavirus world, the strategic alliance between Samsung and Hyundai is quintessential. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the world is now watching the emergence of enhanced economic nationalism. The Samsung-Hyundai alliance is a win-win model to prepare for the post-coronavirus economy in a preemptive manner.






LG Chem's EV battery plant in Nanjing, China. Courtesy of LG Chem



By Kim Hyun-bin



LG, SK and Samsung are expected to engage in fierce competition in the electric vehicle (EV) battery market as demand is expected to surge in the coming years.



The market is considered by many as vital as European countries have been swiftly replacing gasoline vehicles with more eco-friendly ones. The pace of the move is expected to create a shortage of electric vehicles starting in 2023.



According to Market Tracker SNE Research, EV battery demand, which stands at 434 Gigawatt hours (GWh), is predicted to increase to 2,985 GWh by 2030  a 588 percent surge.



European countries have been strengthening environmental regulations and most are planning to expand the supply of EVs.



In 2023, demand for EV batteries is expected to be 406GWh while supply is predicted to be 335GWh, a shortfall of about 18 percent. The pattern is expected to worsen by 2025, with a supply shortage of around 40 percent.






Arsonists have burned two more 5G cell phone towers to the ground after radical conspiracy theorists claimed the technology was spreading coronavirus.

Plumes of smoke were seem coming from an industrial area in Auckland in the early hours of Friday morning.

Police found a tower ablaze in Todd Place, Otahuhu before then discovering another tower alight on Savill Drive, Favona.

Acting Detective Inspector Shaun Vickers said the fires were deemed suspicious.

Several arson attacks have been carried out on 5G cell towers in New Zealand over the past few months as conspiracy theorist claim the technology spreads coronavirus (stock image)

'At around 2:38am, a police unit has spotted smoke on Todd Place, Otahuhu and on further inspection the cell tower has been located on fire,' he said.

'Police were also called to another incident on Savill Drive, Favona at around 3:44am.

'Our enquiries are ongoing into both incidents and we are treating these matters seriously.'

Arsonists carried out a similar arson attack on Tuesday when they set a cell tower in Mangere alight.

Several attacks on cell towers have been linked to anti-5G protesters including an incident in April where a man filmed a friend pouring petrol on a tower before setting it alight

In April, a man filmed a friend allegedly pouring petrol over cables and setting a 4G tower alight in Manurewa before sharing it to Facebook.

'Now sent the message out,' a man can be heard saying before the tower exploded in flames.

'F*** you 5G, f*** you government, f*** you new world order.'

The attacks have become so frequent that last month New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern was forced to address the claims that 5G had caused the coronavirus pandemic.

'I almost hesitate to even speak to it on this platform. It is just not true,' she said.

On Sunday a group of about 300 people gathered are Parliament House in Melbourne to protest the lockdown

The group consisted of anti-vaxxers and people who believe 5G waves spread coronavirus

On Sunday, 300 people protesters including anti-vaxxers and 5G conspiracy theorists gathered at Parliament House in Melbourne.

Police arrested 10 people as the group, which included families with small children, as they violated social distancing rules during a pandemic.

Australian chief medical doctor Professor Brendan Murphy said later on Sunday the protest was the result of 'a lot of very silly misinformation'.

'There is absolutely no evidence about 5G doing anything in the coronavirus space,' Prof Murphy said.
Maldives: Ooredoo Maldives names fishing advocate as new brand ambassador

May 15,2020 | Source: Telecom Paper

Ooredoo Maldives has named Zuvaan Masveriya Hassan Saajin as its new brand ambassador. He has worked the past five years as an advocate of the fisheries industry in the Maldives with the aim of reviving the love for fishing among young people. The 21 year-old started his journey as a fisherman at a young age and since then,it has become his goal to spread awareness in the community, encouraging more young people to consider fishing as a career field.



As part of their new partnership, Ooredoo will be collaborating with Saajin to create awareness about the modern fishing industry and the opportunities available for young fisherman. Together with Saajin, Ooredoo will also be workingto identify and provide digital solutions that addresses current concerns and difficulties for the fishing community.
Writer Gaurav Solanki who reportedly had altercation with makers of Saif Ali Khans show, Dilli, has quit the second season of the show. The writer, celebrated for Article 15, confirmed distancing himself from the second season, though he claimed he took the decision because he is working on another project.

A Mid-Day report quoted Gaurav as saying,I am developing something else and want to concentrate on my script. There was no fall out. If I wanted to concentrate on my film, I knew Id have to leave, and decided to do so in the midst of writing season one itself.

Gaurav did not reveal details of the new project but told the daily, that he is developing the script, which is precious for him.

Also read: Hrithik Roshan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar share favourite 90s movies, Andaz Apna Apna and Govinda films are clear winners

The show, directed by Ali Abbas Zafar, was earlier titled Tandav and came in the limelight when reports of Gauravs fallout with the director began doing rounds. Gaurav had alleged that the makers did not call him or involve him on sets while shooting. Its ironic and unfortunate that after writing the script, I havent been part of the shooting. Thats new for me because I have usually been involved in the entire process. Its like giving your baby to someone else, having them grow up in your absence and seeing them after they have grown up in a certain way, Gaurav had said.

However, lead actor Saif had said the directors decision on sets is the last word. Saif had said in an interview, Its not a writers place to be on set and direct [the show]. What a director decides to do with the source material is up to him; he can chuck it or burn it. He can respect it or disrespect it as he deems fit for the story he is trying to tell. Ali has made the most of (the material at hand).

Good writers like Gaurav are gems. Neither he nor I can tell a director what to do. He is the boss. If Ali decides to say, please walk into the room backwards, its your job to do it. Unless he feels that the material has been tampered with, this shouldnt even be a conversation, the actor added.

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Moldovan President Igor Dodon said on Friday that he canceled a working visit to the Belarusian capital of Minsk planned to start on May 17 due to the requirement of entering self-isolation for two weeks upon his return

CHISINAU (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th May, 2020) Moldovan President Igor Dodon said on Friday that he canceled a working visit to the Belarusian capital of Minsk planned to start on May 17 due to the requirement of entering self-isolation for two weeks upon his return.

"Next Tuesday, a meeting of the EAEU [Eurasian Economic Union] heads of state will be held in Minsk. It has been decided to hold it online, but Mr. Lukashenko separately invited me for a working visit. On Sunday, I had planned to travel to Minsk, but I would have had to spend 14 days in quarantine upon my return, so I have decided not to go," Dodon said at a press briefing.

Earlier in the day, Lukashenko announced that the summit, scheduled to take place on May 19, will be held via video conference as countries across the globe have closed their borders due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

On Friday, Moldova's Health Ministry reported 192 new cases of COVID-19, up from 147 registered the day before. In total, 5,745 cases of the disease have been confirmed in Moldova since the start of the outbreak.

Moldova was granted the status of an observer at the EAEU in May 2018.
As the world grapples with the rapid escalation of the Coronavirus pandemic, which has had far-reaching consequences across all aspects of society, the Commonwealth Secretary-General, Rt. Hon. Patricia Scotland QC has advocated more robust and coordinated multilateral response to the crisis.

In edited audio excerpts from an interview with Nimi Princewill, Scotland highlighted the Commonwealth's response to the pandemic as well as interventions to support member countries, particularly small and vulnerable states through the crisis.

The Secretary-General also made recommendations for long term economic recovery and job creation post-COVID-19; expansion of the G20's debt relief initiative to include more poor countries in Africa while underscoring measures to tackle the global surge in domestic violence.

The following are excerpts from that conversation.

Nimi Princewill: How worried should we be for young people, especially those in the informal sector with no job security, paid leave or option to work from home in the face of this global health crisis?

Secretary-General: 60% of the Commonwealth's population are under the age of 30. It is a huge worry for us because the Coronavirus is proving not only to be a public health crisis but also an economic one. Out of the 3.3 billion employed people in the world, more than 4 out of 5 are affected by the total or partial closure of workplaces.

Even before the Coronavirus pandemic unfolded, the Commonwealth needed to create 50,000 jobs a day just to absorb new entrants to the workforce, according to the (2020 State of the Digital Economy in the Commonwealth) report. Coronavirus has made this situation more pressing, with a likely surge in unemployment. Those in the informal economy are especially vulnerable in this crisis.

Commonwealth countries therefore need to put in place effective policy measures that would ensure that this entire segment of the economy do not crumble as a result of the pandemic. We have recently commissioned a study on COVID-19 impacts on the informal sector in African, Caribbean and Pacific countries and will share the findings in due course.

To help economic long term recovery and generate jobs post-COVID-19, Commonwealth countries can look at investing in the digital economy, both in terms of the digital infrastructure and regulatory frameworks but also equipping people with digital skills to thrive in this environment. The work of the Commonwealth Connectivity Agenda supports the development of the national digital economy.

Countries can also work towards upscaling micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) through enhanced value-addition, low carbon sustainable production and processing, aimed at increasing access to regional and international markets.

Governments can also leverage intra-Commonwealth trade to boost trade and economic growth. The Commonwealth Advantage enables member states to trade up to 20% more with each other, than with non-members at a 21% lower cost, on average.

Nimi Princewill: The healthcare systems of most countries grappling with COVID-19 have been stretched beyond their capacities. What interventions are being implemented by the Commonwealth to support member countries, especially the developing ones?

Secretary-General: The Commonwealth has long advocated for Universal Health Coverage. The issue is crucial in the face of COVID-19 in order to strengthen health systems to make healthcare more accessible and equitable across the Commonwealth.

Universal Health Coverage means every single person, each Commonwealth citizen, should have access to the health care they need, without having to be exposed to financial hardship.

We must take action to deliver on UHC across the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth Health Ministers Meeting is convening virtually this week (14 May) to discuss strategies to tackle this crisis together with partners, particularly the World Health Organisation.

The aim is to review the Coronavirus response at regional and national level; share good practice strategies, solutions and models; and identify priorities for coordinated action. But also, ministers will discuss how to keep pre-COVID-19 health challenges including NCDs, malnutrition, immunisations, malaria, etc. as government priorities for action.

On a more practical level, the Commonwealth is also developing a price-sharing database for medical supplies. This pandemic has exposed the acute shortage of essential health supplies, drugs, equipment and tests. Prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, we were developing a price-sharing database for medicines, aimed at cutting the costs of essential medicines, vaccines and technologies, especially for poorer countries.

The Commonwealth has also launched a Coronavirus Tracker, which identifies risks, gaps, and key areas where the Commonwealth can add value in supporting the fight against COVID-19. It is designed to provide data-driven insights to help policymakers and key decision-makers in Commonwealth countries plan and respond to the pandemic.

Nimi Princewill: Is the Commonwealth championing the cause of debt relief for member states struggling to service their external debt due to the economic fallout of the pandemic?

Secretary-General: Yes, we are. Debt can hinder sustainable development and work against poverty reduction. In light of the huge economic impact of COVID-19, the G20 recently took a major step to approve debt relief for 77 of the worlds poorest countries and asked the private sector to contribute to these efforts. But this should only be a first step. They should expand these efforts to include other vulnerable countries, and other poor countries in Africa that are not low-income or least developed countries, and small states.

The debt service relief, which allows indebted countries to save these monies over the next two years is a good approach. The G20 could look at debt write-offs after this period when they have a clearer picture of their own impacts and a good understanding of how poor and other vulnerable countries are being economically impacted.

Nimi Princewill: There has been a global surge in domestic violence as a result of movement restrictions aimed at curbing the spread of COVID-19. What can urgently be done to address this terrifying situation?

Secretary-General: The pandemic has amplified the longstanding gender inequalities that exist in our world today. Measures to control COVID-19 spread, such as lockdowns, are causing a higher rate of domestic abuse. If a victim is locked into the same home as the perpetrator of the violence and doesn't have an opportunity to leave, this intensifies the risk.

Developed and developing countries report a 25 to 300% increase in calls to domestic violence helplines and a higher number of domestic homicides. These victims may not receive the urgent help they need if shelters are reduced, hospitals overburdened and staff are ill or self-isolating.

Already, I have been meeting with counterpart organisations such as the Organisation Internationale de la Francophonie, the Pacific Island Forum, to explore collaboration and mechanisms to ensure that women are at the centre of post-COVID recovery planning.

The Commonwealth is also undertaking pioneering research to quantify the cost of domestic violence. Our research in Seychelles for instance, shows that gender-based violence leads to estimated costs of 4.625% ($65 million) of the countrys national income. We are also working No More Foundation to accelerate our efforts to bring down the cases of domestic violence and sexual assault in the Commonwealth. Global companies such as Avon and The Body Shop are supporting this campaign.

Nimi Princewill: How do we manage the environmental consequences of COVID-19?

Secretary-General: In the short term, the pandemic, ironically, has reduced global greenhouse gas emissions. This is already evident as global air traffic dropped by about 60% over March and April, and air quality in the worlds major cities improved dramatically.

However, in the long term, this reduction in overall carbon footprint will not in itself stop climate change. Levels of carbon dioxide were at record levels last year and were still 18% higher in 2015 to 2019 than the previous five years.

It is therefore crucial that moving into a post-COVID-19 world, we take measures to revive our economies and support low carbon industries and businesses. The new normal must be driven by sustainable green and blue economies, underpinned by a new awareness of just how much personal choices can affect the environment. There is an opportunity now to invest in nature that will then pay for itself in the economic and societal benefits it will provide for us.

So far, renewable energy uptake seems to be growing despite the economic disruption, whereas fossil fuel use has fallen dramatically. On one hand this looks encouraging, however, the loss of growth in the global economy from declining oil prices and the knock-on effects for the job market will put pressure on governments to extend subsidies for fossil fuels. This would effectively take us backwards in taking action against climate change.

So we need to look at this carefully to make sure we have a balanced approach which will enable our members across the Commonwealth continue to thrive. For example, in Nigeria, 90% of the GDP is driven by fossil fuel.

Alternatively, there is the opportunity for governments to steer stimulus packages towards sustainable green and blue investments, creating new jobs in carbon reducing industries rather than carbon polluting ones.

In the blue economy, for instance, there is an opportunity to invest in natural capital such as mangroves and other coastal ecosystems, that provide highly efficient and cost effective coastal protection, support local fish production and livelihoods, and are incredibly effective carbon sinks. The Commonwealth Blue Charter and Commonwealth Climate Finance Access Hub are examples of flagship programmes that can support a more sustainable Commonwealth in the future.

Listen to the full interview here:





Nimi Princewill is a Nigerian writer and social reformer Email: [email protected] Twitter @princewill_nimi
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Hyderabad Muslim Womens Forum is one of the latest civil society organizations to strongly condemn arrests of women activists who participated in anti-CAA protests  Gulfisha, Safoora Zargar and Ishrat Jahan.

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The forum, consisting of prominent faces that initiated, coordinated and led anti-CAA marches in the Telangana state, has called out to the governments attempt to intimidate through incarceration and false cases stating that these are more shameful if not downright criminal, given the prevailing global health crisis when physical distancing is a matter of utmost priority and overcrowding of prisons a worldwide issue.

Khalida Parveen who has been instrumental in leading womens protests across the country against CAA, NRC and NPR is a well-known figure in the Hyderabad Womens Forum. Others include academics, counsellors, journalists, lawyers and social activists like Kaneez Fathima, Sabah Quadri, Ayesha Faruqi, Noorjahan Siddiqui, Mandakini, Nikhat Fatima, Sana Wahab, Sharifa Siddiqui and several more. SAFA and Help Hyderabad are a few non-governmental organizations that have joined the fight against the governments targeting of Muslim activists.

The forum has spoken in favour of protests, highlighting that all the three women who are detained have been protesting peacefully and democratically against the CAA, NRC, NPR and the group denounces such tactics of the authorities to direct similar charges against other activists, students and organizations. The group has refuted claims of involvement of any of the three in the Delhi violence using available evidence and has outlined their ill-treatment in detention. Accordingly, Ishrat Jahan who is a former Municipal Councilor and active participant in anti-CAA protests in East Delhis Khureji area is being tortured in jail. Gulfisha, a student leader in the anti-CAA protests at Seelampur, is falsely charged with sedition while Safoora Zargar, now in the second trimester of her pregnancy, has been wrongfully accused of being a key conspirator of the Delhi violence.

The Muslim womens coalition is one of the leading voices that has also spoken against the misogynistic trolling on social media about Safooras personal life, her marital status and pregnancy, stating all of this as utterly reprehensible and outside all bounds of common decency. As women rights activists, the forum has endorsed their support for the immediate release of Gulfisha, Safoora and Ishrat on the grounds that it is illegal to deny these three women activists access to lawyers and visits by families and absolutely wrong to arrest them during the time when the courts are functioning at their lowest capacity and least regularity and the arrested cannot access legal remedies. It has further highlighted that the authorities are using false narratives to link the anti-CAA protests with the violence in Delhi in March 2020 to charge these women as key conspirators of the violence when the actual instigators continue to enjoy impunity and remain free.

These arrests are undue and authoritarian use of power, states the Hyderabad Womens Forum, indicating that the timeliness of such activities connotes the vengeful and petty attitude of the government and the authorities who are intended to simply harass the women. Expressing serious concerns over such anti-democratic curbs on the rights and civil liberties of these activists, the forum has alleged that the government is actually placing risks of health and safety by making such arrests at a time when the country is fighting COVID19.

Demanding the unconditional and immediate release of Gulfisha, Safoora and Ishrat and dropping of false charges against the three female activists, the Hyderabad Muslim Women Forum has urged the government to halt all such malicious attacks, detentions and arrests of students, activists and organizations.
International research shows for the first time that interferon-2b improves virus clearance and decreases levels of inflammatory markers

(Toronto - May 15, 2020) - An international team of researchers led by Dr. Eleanor Fish, emerita scientist at the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute, University Health Network, and professor in the University of Toronto's Department of Immunology, has shown for the first time that an antiviral drug can help speed up the recovery of COVID-19 patients.

According to the new study, published today in Frontiers in Immunology, treatment with interferon(IFN)- 2b may significantly accelerate virus clearance and reduce levels of inflammatory proteins in COVID-19 patients.

The research team found that treatment with this drug, which has been used clinically for many years, significantly reduced the duration of detectable virus in the upper respiratory tract, on average by about 7 days. It also reduced blood levels of interleukin(IL)-6 and C-reactive protein (CRP), two inflammatory proteins found in COVID-19 patients.

Dr. Fish says that the research team considered IFN- therapy for COVID-19 after they demonstrated interferon provided therapeutic benefit during the SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003.

"Rather than developing a virus-specific antiviral for each new virus outbreak, I would argue that we should consider interferons as the 'first responders' in terms of treatment," says Dr. Fish.

"Interferons have been approved for clinical use for many years, so the strategy would be to 'repurpose' them for severe acute virus infections."

Boosting a natural defense mechanism

Interferons are a group of signaling proteins released by the human body in response to all viruses. As Dr. Fish explains, they are a "first line of defense."

They target different stages of a virus's life cycle, inhibiting them from multiplying. They also boost an immune response by activating different immune cells to clear an infection. Some viruses, however, can block this natural defense mechanism.

"But it is possible to override this block. If a virus blocks interferon production, then treating with interferon can offset this."

Study details

The researchers conducted this exploratory study on a group of 77 patients with COVID-19 in Wuhan, China. These patients were admitted to Union Hospital, Tongii Medical College, between January 16 and February 20, 2020. They represented moderate cases of the disease as none of the patients required intensive care or prolonged oxygen supplementation or intubation.

Despite the study's limitations of a small, non-randomized group of patients, the work provides several important and novel insights into COVID-19 disease, notably that treatment with IFN-2b can accelerate viral clearance from the upper respiratory tract and also reduce circulating levels of inflammatory factors that are associated with severe COVID-19.

Dr. Fish says a randomized clinical trial is a crucial next step. According to her, a clinical trial with a larger group of infected patients who are randomized to treatment or placebo would further this research.

In the meantime, the findings from this study are the first to suggest therapeutic efficacy of IFN-2b as an available antiviral intervention for COVID-19, which may also benefit public health measures by shortening the duration of viral clearance and therefore slowing the tide of the pandemic.

###

For more information or to book an interview with Dr. Eleanor Fish please contact:

Ana Fernandes

Senior Public Affairs Advisor, UHN

437-216-4597

ana.fernandes@uhn.ca

About UHN:

University Health Network consists of Toronto General, recently voted one of the Top 10 Hospitals in the World according to Newsweek Magazine, and Toronto Western Hospital, the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre, Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, and the Michener Institute of Education at UHN. The scope of research and complexity of cases at University Health Network has made it a national and international source of discovery, education and patient care. It has the largest hospital-based research program in Canada, with major research in cardiology, transplantation, neurosciences, oncology, surgical innovation, infectious diseases, genomic medicine and rehabilitation medicine. University Health Network is a research hospital affiliated with the University of Toronto. http://www.uhn.ca
Three times, Mariana* stood up to the violent gangs that took over her once-idyllic hometown in Honduras. The first time, they laughed with scorn, she said. The second time, they threatened to kill me  and the third, it almost cost us our lives.

Mariana, 42, belongs to the Garifunas, a small Afro-indigenous community whose way of life is in jeopardy. After the third threat, she knew she and her children had no choice but to abandon her home and flee. In 2016, they joined the ranks of hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people in Honduras.

According to government statistics, some 247,000 Hondurans are estimated to have been internally displaced within the country since 2004  the vast majority of them fleeing extorsion, coercion and targeted threats by gangs and other criminal organizations.

Around one-third of those displaced report having had their property seized by their persecutors, and many eventually end up having to move to another country. Some 95,000 Hondurans had applied for asylum or refugee status abroad by December, 2018, according to statistics from UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency.

If they resist recruitment by gangs, they risk being killed or having to flee for their lives.

For generations, Marianas family lived in peace in the traditional Garifuna enclave, on the northern Caribbean coast. Mariana recalls hot afternoons when her children would play in the shade of the mango trees and coconut palms that flanked the modest home she inherited from her mother.

That all changed around nine years ago, with the arrival of the gangs, which also operate widely in neighbouring El Salvador, as well as in Guatemala and Mexico. The sound of birdsong and the rhythms of the waves that once echoed through the house were replaced by screams and the sudden crack of gunshots  the sounds of gang members executing those who opposed their reign.

Aaron,** the leader of the gang who had taken over Marianas town, took an interest not only in Marianas family home  located in the perfect spot to ply the drug trade  but also in one of her daughters, 16-year-old Natalia.* When his notes promising luxury gifts failed to sway the high schooler, Aaron tried to kidnap Natalia instead.

The attempt failed, and Mariana sent Natalia and her sister to live with relatives in another town. The move infuriated Aaron, who saw it as a threat to his authority.

He couldnt stand to be challenged by a woman, Mariana recalled. Especially a poor black woman like me.

Aaron and his fellow gang members went after Marianas youngest child, Adrian,* then 14, beating him up every time they crossed paths with him. Once again, Mariana confronted Aaron, but once again her bravery backfired. Adrian was shot in the leg.

Mariana realized she had no choice but to flee. She bundled Adrian into a taxi and the two drove about as far away as they could get without crossing any international borders.

As soon as she and Adrian left, the gang took over their house, transforming the family home into a so-called casa loca, or crazy house in Spanish, where victims are taken to be tortured and killed.

I never imagined Id be forced to leave my whole life behind.

UNHCR is working with the Honduran government, partner organisations and civil society to bring humanitarian assistance, protection and hope to the countrys internally displaced people. The agency is increasing the capacity at shelters and stepping up its resettlement programs. UNHCR is also helping to strengthen the Honduran governments response to the phenomenon, supporting the creation of a national registry of seized and abandoned property and providing training to hundreds of judges, among other initiatives.

Chronic violence and persecution present young Hondurans with grim prospects for the future. If they resist recruitment by gangs, they risk being killed or having to flee for their lives, said Andres Celis, UNHCRs Representative in Honduras.

See also: Death threats drive refugees to flee coronavirus lockdown

Today, despite COVID-related lockdowns in Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, internally displaced people and community leaders report that criminal groups are using the confinement to strengthen their control over communities. This includes the stepping up of extortion, drug trafficking and sexual and gender-based violence, and using forced disappearances, murders, and death threats against those that do not comply.

In a small country such as Honduras, even fleeing does not always result in lasting safety. It takes just several hours, by car, to travel from coast to coast. With gangs spreading throughout the country, many displaced people remain vulnerable to their persecutors even after uprooting themselves from their communities and support networks. Many internally displaced people end up fleeing more than once, each time farther away from home.

Around four years after she was displaced, Mariana is still struggling to restart her life. She now cobbles together her earnings as a street vendor to make rent in the small apartment where the family lives.

I never imagined Id be forced to leave my whole life behind, she said as she wiped away the tears that streamed down her face.

*Names changed due to protection concerns.

**Fictitious name.
Johnny Depp continues to face legal battles and is determined to win against those who wronged him. Good thing he has really some good allies.

Allegedly, the "Pirates of the Caribbean" actor's former lovers, Winona Ryder and Vanessa Paradis, are ready to defend Depp's character in his libel suit against British newspaper The Sun.

Depp is suing the newspaper after the tabloid published an article in 2018, which referred to the actor as a "wife-beater."

The article contained the allegations of his former wife, Amber Heard, that he committed domestic violence.This is why she llater filed for divorce after requesting for a restraining order.

Johnny Depp denied the accusations.

The hearing was conducted via video conference due to the coronavirus. Lawyers of the 56-year-old actor argued that statements from his former lovers, Ryder and Paradis, should be included as evidence in his case against the publication.

Actress and model Vanessa Paradis, who has two children with the A-list celebrity, said in her statement, "I've known Johnny for more than 25 years. We've been partners for 14 years, and we raised our two children together."

She added, "Through all these years, I've known Johnny to be a kind, attentive, generous and non-violent person and father."

Paradis concluded, "He was never violent or abusive to me."

In court documents, his relationship with the model ended in 2012, just before he and Heard became together, and the first alleged report that he "has been violent."

Winona Ryder has also come to Johnny Depp's defense.

In her statement, she revealed how she couldn't wrap her head around the accusations of the blonde beauty.

"He was never, never violent towards me. He was never, never abusive at all towards me."

Depp's case versus is being heard at the Royal Courts of Justice three weeks from July 7.

His lawyer, David Sherborne, said that Depp wishes to travel to London from his home in France to give evidence.

In a statement released to Deadline, Sherborne said that the pre-trial review was a hearing of The Sun's attempts to first publicly smear and then "seek to exclude the testimony of multiple witnesses against their friend, Amber Heard."

"One witness will not be heard from is Dan Wootton, the co-defendant who wrote the Sun article about Johnny Depp and JK Rowling, but refuses to testify as to its truth."

After the hearing on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Amber Heard said that they are glad they did not have the same experience as her.

"However, one woman's experience does not determine the experience of another woman."

Justice Nicol, the presiding judge, previously said that parts of Amber Heard's evidence relating to the allegation of sexual violence would be heard in private.

Amber Heard's claims are subject to even messy legal proceedings in the US.

Johnny Depp is suing his ex-wife for $50 million for allegedly defaming him with domestic abuse allegations in an op-ed article she wrote for The Washington Post.

The article detailed how the "Aquaman" actress describes herself as a domestic abuse victim, despite numerous denials from Depp.

The lawsuit also mentioned Heard's secret relationship with tech giant Elon Musk a month after tying the knot to Depp in February 2015.

READ MORE: Mary-Kate Olsen Net Worth: Billions Secure Through 'Ironclad Prenup' After Filing Divorce [DETAILS]
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- ADC Therapeutics SA, a late clinical-stage oncology-focused biotechnology company pioneering the development and commercialization of highly potent and targeted antibody drug conjugates for patients suffering from hematological malignancies and solid tumors, announced today the pricing of the initial public offering of 12,245,631 shares of its common shares at a price of $19.00 per share. The gross proceeds from the offering, before deducting underwriting discounts and commissions and estimated offering expenses payable by ADC Therapeutics, are expected to be approximately $232.7 million. The shares are expected to begin trading on the New York Stock Exchange on May 15, 2020 under the ticker symbol "ADCT." The offering is expected to close on May 19, 2020, subject to customary closing conditions. In addition, ADC Therapeutics has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 1,836,844 additional common shares.



Morgan Stanley, BofA Securities and Cowen are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

The offering is being made only by means of a prospectus. Copies of the prospectus relating to the offering may be obtained, when available, from Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC, Attn: Prospectus Department, 180 Varick Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10014, by telephone at (866) 718-1649 or by email at prospectus@morganstanley.com; BofA Securities, Inc., NC1-004-03-43, 200 North College Street, 3rd floor, Charlotte, NC 28255-0001, Attn: Prospectus Department, or by email at dg.prospectus_requests@bofa.com; or Cowen and Company, LLC, c/o Broadridge Financial Solutions, Attn: Prospectus Department, 1155 Long Island Avenue, Edgewood, NY 11717, by telephone at (833) 297-2926 or by email at PostSaleManualRequests@broadridge.com.

A registration statement relating to these securities has been filed with, and declared effective by, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy these securities, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. There is no intention or permission to publicly offer, solicit, sell or advertise, directly or indirectly, any securities of ADC Therapeutics SA, such as the common shares, in or into Switzerland within the meaning of the Swiss Financial Services Act ("FinSA") and these securities will not be listed or admitted to trading on the SIX Swiss Exchange or on any other regulated trading venue (exchange or multilateral trading facility) in Switzerland. Neither this document nor any other offering or marketing material relating to these securities, such as the common shares, constitutes or will constitute a prospectus pursuant to the FinSA, and neither this document nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the common shares constitutes a prospectus pursuant to the FinSA, and neither this document nor any other offering or marketing material relating to the common shares may be publicly distributed or otherwise made publicly available in Switzerland.

About ADC Therapeutics

ADC Therapeutics SA is a late clinical-stage oncology-focused biotechnology company pioneering the development and commercialization of highly potent and targeted antibody drug conjugates (ADCs) for patients suffering from hematological malignancies and solid tumors. The Company develops ADCs by applying its decades of experience in this field and using next-generation pyrrolobenzodiazepine (PBD) technology to which ADC Therapeutics has proprietary rights for its targets. Strategic target selection for PBD-based ADCs and substantial investment in early clinical development have enabled ADC Therapeutics to build a deep clinical and research pipeline of therapies for the treatment of hematological and solid tumor cancers with significant unmet need. The Company has multiple PBD-based ADCs in ongoing clinical trials, ranging from first in human to pivotal Phase 2 clinical trials, in the USA and Europe, and numerous preclinical ADCs in development.

Loncastuximab tesirine (Lonca, formerly ADCT-402), the Company's lead product candidate, has been evaluated in a 145-patient pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of relapsed or refractory diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) that showed a 45.5% interim overall response rate (ORR), which exceeded the target primary endpoint. Camidanlumab tesirine (Cami, formerly ADCT-301), the Company's second lead product candidate, is being evaluated in a 100-patient pivotal Phase 2 clinical trial for the treatment of relapsed or refractory Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) after having shown an 86.5% ORR in HL patients in a Phase 1 clinical trial. The Company is also evaluating Cami as a novel immuno-oncology approach for the treatment of various advanced solid tumors.

ADC Therapeutics is based in Lausanne (Biopole), Switzerland and has operations in London, the San Francisco Bay Area and New Jersey.

Investors Contact

Amanda Hamilton

ADC Therapeutics

amanda.hamilton@adctherapeutics.com

Tel: +1 917-288-7023

EU Media Contact

Alexandre Muller

Dynamics Group

amu@dynamicsgroup.ch

Tel: +41 (0) 43 268 3231

USA Media Contact

Annie Starr

6 Degrees

astarr@6degreespr.com

Tel.: +1 973-415-8838




In its quest to find a permanent location for the newest combatant command, the Defense Department is expanding the list of potential bases to house U.S. Space Command.

The DoD will begin a "revised approach for determining the permanent location of U.S. Space Command headquarters," according to an Air Force statement published Friday.

Read Next: Official Space Force Flag Unveiled at the White House

"The revised approach considers the newly established U.S. Space Force emerging organizational structure and analyzes its effects on the limited number of highly specialized personnel and infrastructure required to support both the Space Force and Space Command," according to the statement.

U.S. Space Command, the 11th unified combatant command, stood up in August ahead of the establishment of the Space Force. SPACECOM is responsible for military operations related to space, while the Space Force, the newest military branch, organizes and trains space personnel. Like the other military branches, the Space Force has its headquarters at the Pentagon.

The undertaking has been tasked to the Department of the Air Force, which has been the predominant military leader in terms of space operations since 1954, according to officials.

Last month, the Space Force began redesignating Air Force units with a space-only mission; it will realign and rename Air Force bases to Space Force bases accordingly. In March, the Air Force said it would also restart its search for a permanent headquarters for SPACECOM as a result of staff and personnel movements between Space Command and the Space Force.

The Air Force on Friday said the latest move "expands the number of locations eligible for consideration to host the permanent U.S. Space Command headquarters, and provides a comprehensive and transparent analysis before selecting a final location."

The service did not provide an updated list of base contenders. A request for comment was not immediately returned.

"Colorado Springs, Colorado, remains the location for the provisional headquarters for U.S. Space Command headquarters until a permanent headquarters location is selected and facilities are ready in approximately six years," the Air Force said. "We anticipate selecting a preferred U.S. Space Command location early next calendar year."

Defense Secretary Mark Esper disclosed in March that some lawmakers whose states are vying to host SPACECOM felt the process hasn't been transparent enough.

"During my talks on the Hill prior to my nomination, particularly after my hearing here, I visited the House and heard from members on both sides of the aisle that they thought the process that had been run was unfair and not transparent," he said during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing March 4. "So I directed at that time that we pause in place ... [and] we directed it be revisited and a different approach be taken."

In May 2019, the Air Force announced it was weighing four Colorado locations, including Buckley Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Peterson Air Force Base and Schriever Air Force Base, to accommodate SPACECOM. Other options are the Army's Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

A decision was originally due this summer.

Congressional leaders on Friday had mixed responses to the Pentagon's latest move to extend its search.

Rep. Mike Turner, a Republican from Ohio, threw Dayton's Wright-Patterson Air Force Base into the ring.

"The Space Force should utilize our community for its unique capabilities and establish the U.S. Space Command headquarters here in Dayton," Turner said in a statement. "I will be fully supporting our community's bid to host this combatant command, which supports a mission critical to our nation's national security."

But Rep. Jim Cooper, a Tennessee Democrat, denounced the Pentagon's announcement as farce, and a waste of time and resources.

"This is worse than a boondoggle. It's a moondoggle," he said in a statement. "This is more Trump Administration grandstanding on the Space Force ... just in time for release of the new Steve Carell sitcom. The Pentagon is creating its own parody."

The Pentagon will begin circulating a list of evaluation and screening criteria to bases across the country. The installations are eligible to "nominate themselves as potential candidate locations by following the process outlined in a letter from the Department of the Air Force to the nation's governors which includes a nomination form and screening and evaluation criteria,"according to the statement.

"The potential candidates will receive additional information from the Air Force as part of the process for assessing their suitability to host the U.S. Space Command headquarters, based on the approved requirements and evaluation criteria," it added.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Related: SecAf Reveals When New US Space Command HQ Will Be Selected
Islamist militants have killed five soldiers in an attack on a military outpost in restive northeast Nigeria, army sources said Thursday.

Fighters from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) in several trucks opened fire on troops at a checkpoint outside the town of Mainok in Borno state on Wednesday, they said.

"We lost five soldiers in the surprise attack on the checkpoint," a military officer, who did not want to be named, told AFP.

Troops from the town intercepted the militants, leading to a gunfight in which "some of the terrorists" were killed and two vehicles fitted with machine guns were recovered, he said.

Another military source said the five soldiers manning the checkpoint were "outgunned" by the insurgents.

The jihadists were said to have taken three military vehicles away.

The army said late Wednesday its troops killed nine "Boko Haram terrorists" in an ambush, outside Mainok.

Spokesman Sagir Musa said two soldiers were "slightly wounded" in the encounter, without mentioning any fatalities from troops.

Mainok, which lies along the 120-kilometre (75-mile) highway linking Maiduguri and Damaturu, the capital of neighbouring Yobe state, is an ISWAP stronghold.

The area has seen an upsurge in abductions of civilians, prompting increased military deployments to confront the insurgents.

ISWAP which split from Boko Haram in 2016, has intensified attacks against the military since the middle of 2018.

In January, 22 soldiers were killed in three separate ISWAP attacks in the area, according to military sources.

The decade-long jihadist conflict has killed 36,000 people and displaced around two million from their homes in northeast Nigeria.

The violence has spread to neighbouring Niger, Chad and Cameroon, prompting a regional military coalition to fight the insurgents.

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More and more auto plants are reopening across the country, which should drum up more business for Northwest Indiana's struggling steel mills.

Workers will report back to the Chicago Assembly Plant in Hegewisch, the Chicago Stamping Plant in Chicago Heights and other Ford plants around the country Monday.

General Motors and Fiat Chrysler also will reopen plants next week after taking extra precautions to protect workers from the spread of coronavirus that has killed more than 86,000 Americans. Honda, Toyota and Mercedes-Benz started reopening their American plants across the country this past week.

Automakers have been placing new health and safety measures into place in response to the viral outbreak, such as taking the temperature of workers when they report to work. Autoworkers will be provided with face masks, face shields or safety glasses with side shields so they can work on assembly line jobs that are not conducive to social distancing.
The Titan Company's Jewellery arm, Tanishq, has started re-opening its stores in a phased manner. Apart from the store's staff maintaining the regular hygiene norms such as sanitising the store at regular intervals and wearing masks and gloves, the store has started appointment shopping and isn't allowing more than five customers to be present at the store at a given time. However, the lifestyle major's MD, C.K. Venkatraman's dilemma is to get people to dress up and celebrate special occasions even while they are at home. After all, in the new normal, post the lockdown people would continue to stay and work out of home. Going out to restaurants or attending weddings and parties will be out of bounds till a vaccine for Coronavirus is invented. "This has put pressure on dressing up and the challenge we are dealing with is how do we create desire when consumers are sitting at home," says Venkatraman.

Venkatraman, who took charge as MD in November last year, after the retirement of Bhaskar Bhat, is fascinated by a video posted by a Scottish couple, wherein they have created a make-belief restaurant for their kids. The wife plays the role of a waitress, while the husband is the chef. From an elaborate menu card with starters, main course and desserts to even chef's special dish for the day, the couple offer a complete restaurant experience to their kids during the lockdown. "Can we create a similar make-belief world? Can we persuade people to dress-up, dine-in at their own homes and celebrate special occasions," he wonders.

Venkatraman says that his various teams are continuously rattling their brains to find newer ways of getting consumers to consume their products within the comforts of their home. The company's jewellery arm has recently launched video-assisted shopping on its web site. A consumer can request for a video call and the sales-person at the store would do a virtual display of the jewellery. Venkatraman says once the lockdown is lifted, the company would even encourage home trials of jewellery. "Customers can choose the jewellery online and our sales team will go to their home to enable them to try it out. There will be a considerable reshaping of shopping habits in the days to come," he says.

So, does he expect jewellery shopping to switch online completely or for that matter even watches? He says that 70 per cent of jewellery shopping will still happen at the stores. "It's only the small ticket size products like an ear-ring that has an opportunity to be sold online," he says. But what will leap-frog according to him, is the omni-channel model, where people will select jewellery online and either come to the store to try it out and close the sale or request for a home-trial appointment.

What would be the company's innovation strategy? "Our focus would be on lower price-points as consumers will want to conserve cash till this crisis dies out," he says.

Also Read: Sitharaman press conference: What will FM announce for tourism, hospitality, aviation sectors?

Also Read: Jeff Bezos may become world's first trillionaire in 6 years; Mukesh Ambani in 13 years: Report

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and/PRNewswire/ -- SkylineDx announces the publication of two ASCO abstracts describing a biomarker that identifies a subgroup of skin cancer (cutaneous melanoma) patients that could benefit from adjuvant therapy as their melanoma is at high risk of recurrence, but who are currently not diagnosed as high risk because they do not have metastasis in their sentinel lymph nodes. At present only melanoma patients that have detected metastasis in their lymph nodes (clinical stage III) are referred for adjuvant therapy. In a US cohort totaling 837 patients, 637 (76%) patients had no nodal metastasis in which the biomarker (named the CP-GEP model) was able to identify 327 (51%) patients at high-risk of melanoma recurrence within 5 years. This group has a similar prognosis as the treatment eligible stage III patientsClinical trials on adjuvant treatment are moving towards the inclusion of non-metastatic stage IIB and IIC patients. Nonetheless, a stage-specific optimization of the CP-GEP model identified an additional 45% of stage IIA patients in the above-mentioned cohort, currently excluded from trials, with a demonstrated worse prognosis than stage IIC and IIIA patients. These patients should be considered for inclusion into a trial to investigate if treatment with adjuvant systemic therapy can prevent their melanoma from returning. The optimized CP-GEP model for this prognostic utility will be further researched under the Peregrine Study Initiative in the Falcon R&D Program.Melanoma specialist, Dr. Alexander Eggermont, Chief Scientific Officer of the Princess Maxima Center in the Netherlands, says: "Over the last years significant progress has been made in advancing adjuvant treatments for metastatic stage III melanoma patients. However, large population-based studies demonstrate that approximately 50% of melanoma-related deaths occur in patients that were originally diagnosed with non-metastatic disease. The discovery of the prognostic CP-GEP model to select high-risk Stage IIA patients for adjuvant therapy is a significant breakthrough that can potentially benefit thousands of patients annually.""One of our core value statements is to think about how our innovation can impact many lives", comments, CEO SkylineDx. "It is confronting to see the potential undertreatment in these skin cancer patients. Some are going home, partially reassured of not having metastasis, only to find out later that the melanoma has returned relatively fast. There should be a research focus on the improvement we could achieve in defining personalized treatment pathways on the basis of individual risk."The CP-GEP model calculates the risk of melanoma returning on an individual basis through a combination analysis of 8 genes from the patient's primary tumor, the tumor thickness and the patient's age. The model has been previously published in JCO Precision Oncology.The prognostic use of the CP-GEP model is the main focus of the Peregrine Study Initiative, developed under the wings of the Falcon R&D Program. More information on www.falconprogram.com.SkylineDx is a high-tech commercial-stage biotech company headquartered inand a commercial office and CAP/CLIA certified laboratory in, USA. The company uses its expertise to bridge the gap between academically discovered gene expression signatures and commercially available diagnostic products with high clinical utility. With the focus on diagnostics, SkylineDx assists healthcare professionals in accurately determining the type or status of the disease or to predict a patient's response to a specific treatment. Based on the test results, healthcare professionals can tailor the treatment to the individual patient. To learn more, please visit www.skylinedx.com.Link to this press release on website SkylineDx (click here)Bellomo et al., 2020. Model combining tumor molecular and clinicopathologic risk factors predicts sentinel lymph node metastases in primary cutaneous melanoma. JCO Precis Oncol 4:319-334 (click here)Eggermont et al., 2020. Using a clinicopathologic and gene expression model to identify melanoma patients at high risk for disease relapse. Online poster presentations are scheduled forat. Link to ASCO abstract.Wever et al., 2020. Identification of stage IIA melanoma patients at high risk for disease relapse using a clinicopathologic and gene expression model. Link to ASCO abstract.

View original content:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/prognostic-model-reveals-high-risk-melanoma-patients-that-need-a-clinical-trial-301059389.html



SOURCE SkylineDx BV




NIPSCO is forming plans on 13 coal ash ponds: five in Michigan City, plus four at the former Bailly Generating Station and four at R.M. Schahfer Station, he said. Work at the latter eight ponds would likely happen sometime between 2023 and 2028, Meyer said. In total, nearly 237,000 cubic yards is scheduled to be removed at Bailly, while over 996,000 is scheduled at Schahfer, he said.
In early July 2016, amid an outpouring of grief and anger over the police shooting of Philando Castile in the Twin Cities, an unknown organization called Dont Shoot used Facebook to invite demonstrators to a protest. But something was very wrong.

The demonstration was set for the wrong police department, and all of the well-known local groups listed in the announcement disavowed involvement. Eventually, concerned local activists took over the event. It was only much later that they learned Dont Shoot was likely a front for a Russia-linked organization that was using Facebook to sow discord across the United States.

These events would have been less surprising had the activists known about the prior century of Soviet and Russian influence campaigns directed against the United States and its allies, which is laid out in crisp detail in Active Measures: The Secret History of Disinformation and Political Warfare, by Johns Hopkins University professor and cyberwar expert Thomas Rid.

Rid, who testified before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence in 2017 on disinformation operations, recounts elaborate and sometimes shocking tactics used to disinform democratic societies and inflame passions. The goal of disinformation is to engineer division by putting emotion over analysis, division over unity, conflict over consensus, the particular over the universal, Rid writes. And it is nothing new.

In the 1950s and 1960s, the KGB distributed fake letters intended to look like racist American KKK literature, and clandestinely directed the vandalism of synagogues and Jewish headstones in New York to make neo-Nazism appear as a rising threat, the book says, citing the accounts of Soviet-bloc defectors. Yet the same agents distributed accurate information on racism in America, to antagonize the KKKs opponents.

KGB agents werent simply posing as the KKK  remarkably, the same Russian operators posed as an African-American organization agitating against the KKK, Rid writes.

The United States Central Intelligence Agency used its own active measures to disinform enemies. In the 1950s, a long-running CIA project published everything from forged pamphlets to glossy gossip and jazz magazines woven with disinformation to weaken Communist manifestations in East Germany.

But the U.S. eventually ramped down its disinformation efforts, while the Soviet efforts escalated.

In 1978, Soviet officials working through a major KGB front organization called the World Peace Council organized a symposium with an official U.N. agency to inflame European fear and anger over the U.S. plans to deploy neutron weapons, which could vaporize humans without damaging buildings. A peace demonstration with more than 40,000 legitimate peace activists soon overtook Amsterdam, and President Jimmy Carter postponed and eventually shelved plans for the weapon.

Active Measures has much to say about the shadowy internet influence campaigns that followed the rise of Vladimir Putin from KGB intelligence officer to Russian president, though attributing the source of internet activity is always tricky. Ultimately, Rid concludes that Russian and Russia-linked efforts to fill the internet with disinformation most likely did not cause many people to change their minds in 2016.

Rid is more concerned about a different species of online political warfare  the highly effective hack and leak method of prying loose actual secrets and leaking them online, as a group called the Shadow Brokers did with the National Security Agencys hacking tools in 2016, to devastating effect. Sometimes real documents are leaked, and other times theyre doctored with forged material first.

Either way, if the goal is to engineer division by putting emotion over analysis and conflict over consensus, its hard to imagine a more efficient way of doing that than forcing all information to flow through ubiquitous screens that make it easy to obfuscate authorship and authenticity on a mass scale. Lets be careful out there, everyone.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister



Bhupesh Baghel on Friday once again urged the Centre to allow the states to decide on red, green, orange zones based on the severity of the coronavirus situation in the districts under their jurisdiction during the fourth phase of the lockdown.

In a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Baghel said it is necessary to restart business and commercial activities with complete precaution in order to bring the economy back on track during the fourth phase of lockdown, an official statement issued here said.

However, he also cautioned that opening of inter-state borders at this moment will not be appropriate, it added.

"The state should have rights for demarcation of its districts into green, orange and red zones on the basis of coronavirus cases. The Centre should fix transparent criteria for the purpose," Baghel said in the letter.

In a letter written to the PM on Monday, Baghel had made a similar demand.

At present, the Centre decides on demarcation of areas as red, green, orange zones on the basis of coronavirus cases.

"Permission should be given to allow sale of essential as well as non-essential items in all areas, except containment zones. All types of showrooms and workshops related to vehicles should be allowed to operate," he said in the letter.

Though hotels can be permitted to provide only lodging facilities with the condition of maintaining social distancing, restaurants, bars, spa, etc in these premises should not be given any relaxations, he said.

Opening of inter-state borders at this moment will not be appropriate and inter-state transport should be allowed only for ferrying labourers and other people stranded due to lockdown, he said.

"Restrictions should remain on the non-essential interstate transport till June 15," he added.

In addition to workers' special trains, new trains should be run only with the consent of the states concerned. Similarly, air services should be resumed only to ferry the stranded people, he asserted.

Construction work in urban areas should be allowed with the condition of adhering to maintaining social distancing, he said.

He further suggested that independently working technicians, electricians, mechanics etc should be permitted to operate their shops, he said.

Urging the PM to consider his suggestions, Baghel said that empowering the states will definitely enhance their ability to fight the pandemic.

He said that Chhattisgarh is always ready to cooperate with the Centre and other states in this battle, the statement said.

The nationwide lockdown, which was first enforced on March 24, has been extended twice, on April 14 and May 4. The third phase will end on May 17.

In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said there will be a fourth phase of the lockdown, which will be very different from the earlier three phases.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A former employee at the social support center in Ho Chi Minh City has been sentenced to four years and six months in prison for molesting multiple teenage girls during their stay at the facility.

The Peoples Court in Binh Chanh District imposed the punishment upon Nguyen Tien Dung, 49, a records employee at the citys social support center, which is managed by the municipal Department of Labor, War Invalids and Social Affairs, during his trial on Friday morning.

Dung was convicted of molesting persons under 16 years old. He had also pled guilty to the crime.

He was usually in charge of keep watch of the social support center at 9:00 pm every day. The defendant claimed to have often drunk a lot of beer, thus was unable to control his sexual desires.

Dung regularly came to a room where young girls under the centers care were staying, gave them food and cigarettes, and sexually abused them.

Nguyen Tien Dung stands his trial at the Peoples Court in Binh Chanh District, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, May 15, 2020. Photo: T.L. / Tuoi Tre

Police investigation showed four girls aged from 14 to 17 were his victims.

The girls reported the incidents to police officers after they had left the social support center, stating that the molestation started in September 2019.

Dung was arrested in November the same year.

Aside from the jail term, Dung was required to pay each victim VND10 million (US$430) as compensation.

He is also banned from working at education and child support centers for four years after completing his prison term.

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Over 1,000 Indians stranded in Bankey and Bardiya districts of Nepal because of the lockdown were handed over to Indian authorities at Rupaideeh on the Indo-Nepal border here, a senior official said on Friday.

As many as 723 Nepalese, who were in different shelter homes for quarantine on this side of the border, were also handed over to Nepalese authorities, Bahraich District Magistrate Shambhu Kumar said.

The exchange of Indian and Nepalese citizens took place on Thursday night in the presence of SP Vipin Mishra and senior officers of the Sashatra Seema Bal along with Nepalese officials, the DM said.

Most of these Indians belong to Bahraich and other districts of Uttar Pradesh and other states, the DM said, adding those coming from Nepal have been kept in shelter homes in Bahraich and are being screened.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Natural News) As the COVID-19 pandemic rages on, many environmentalists are now sounding an alarm over another enemy this global outbreak is highlighting: plastic.

Millions of people around the world are now living in a country where wearing masks has been deemed mandatory. From Vietnam, Israel to Cuba, Germany and France, people are required to wear masks if they step out of their homes. Some countries have even put hefty fines for violators. Qatar, which enforced a nationwide order for everyone to wear medical face masks on May 16, is prepared to fine people up to $55,000 (200,000 Qatari riyals) for not wearing a face mask.

While there is sufficient scientific evidence indicating that wearing medical face masks such as surgical masks and N95 masks can reduce the spread of the coronavirus, it has led to one unintended consequence: An uptick in plastic pollution. (Related: The dumbest thing youll read all day: CNN says wearing a mask in public to protect yourself  and others  is RACIST.)

Coronavirus could reset the clock in global fight against single-use plastics

It isnt just face masks as well, as health workers all over the world have been forced to use more and more personal protective equipment (PPE) such as medical gowns and disposable medical gloves. Taxis in France have begun installing plastic barriers to protect both the driver and his passengers from each other. Supply chains are straining to fulfill a surge in demand for both plastic medical supplies and single-use packaging.

Governments have even suspended bans on single-use plastics. The United Kingdom has suspended a charge on plastic bag use for online deliveries. The southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has suspended a ban on single-use plastic bottles and bags.

Plastic bans across the U.S. are at risk of being overturned amid fears that coronavirus can cling to reusable bags, cups and straws pic.twitter.com/U68YlpmNID  Bloomberg QuickTake (@QuickTake) April 21, 2020

Even parts of the United States arent immune to this rollback of plastic bans. Maine has postponed its ban on the use of plastic bags, while New Hampshire and Cambridge, Massachusetts, have banned the use of reusable bags, as these containers might become vehicles for the coronavirus.

Environmentalists have even warned that the recent progress made toward reducing the worlds use of single-use plastics is being undone by the global pandemic.

Theres even evidence to suggest that the global consumption of single-use plastics will radically increase this year. For example, once Italy lifts its national lockdown, estimates from the Polytechnic University of Turin show that the country will need one billion masks and half a billion gloves per month for the foreseeable future.

Listen to The Health Ranger Report by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, and hear about how the Trump administration is three months behind the rest of the world in its rule mandating that officials (finally) wear face masks at all times.

Coronavirus plastic waste already affecting parts of the globe

The United Nations has estimated that 13 million tons of plastic are dumped into the sea each year, and that half of the plastic the world produces is for single-use items. This is going to increase as the coronavirus pandemic worsens.

Furthermore, a report made by the World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) said that If just 1 percent of the masks were disposed of incorrectly and dispersed in nature, this would result in as many as 10 million masks per month polluting the environment.

This pollution can already be seen in several parts of the globe.

In Kalamata, a Greek city southwest of Athens, discarded gloves, bottles of hand sanitizer and wet wipes can be seen littering parks, sidewalks and roads.

In the Soko Islands, a group of uninhabited islands several nautical miles from Hong Kong, Gary Stokes of the conservation group OceansAsia found around 100 masks washed up on the beach.

https://twitter.com/blogTO/status/1242516448846794752

We hadnt noticed this many masks before in such a remote location, said Stokes, who believes that the discarded masks came from either Hong Kong or China. When we found them, it only had been six to eight weeks since people had started using these masks.

An increase in plastic waste has also been observed in large urban areas, such as in London and New York City.

The coronavirus pandemic is forcing people to make a choice between personal safety and environmental health. Environmentalists have raised the alarm and are fearful of the negative consequences the uptick in single-use plastics usage has for wildlife and the fight against plastic pollution. As governments continue to fumble their response to the pandemic, the worse off the environment will be once the crisis ends.

Sources include:

France24.com

AlJazeera.com

Blogs.WorldBank.org

WEForum.org

EuroNews.com

DW.com
Stephanie Trojan made the one-hour trip from Selingsgrove to Harrisburg Friday to protest what she considers Gov. Wolfs abuse of emergency power to keep residents locked down.

She and her friends were among the first to arrive on the Capitol steps Friday morning.

Were here today because we believe in freedom, she said. We believe Wolf is way out of bounds.

People need to return to work, she said, and she believes they can do so safely.

While Trojan didnt lose her job from the shutdown she is a stay-at-home mom she said she felt strongly that businesses should be allowed to responsibly open their doors again.

We did what was asked of us, she said of the initial lockdown order in March. But now its time to move on. Why is Pennsylvania still locked down?

For Trojan, it was the second trip to Harrisburg for a protest against the states shutdown in the past month. She also attended an April 20 rally by the same organizers from the Reopen Pa. Facebook page, which was started by Matt Bellis, of Lancaster, and Teo Las Heras, of Norristown.

While the Reopen Pa. group bills itself as nonpartisan, the crowd Friday clearly leaned Republican with Trump shirts, hats and flags widely displayed. A half-dozen vendors also sold Trump gear.

Nearly everyone in the shoulder-to-shoulder crowd for the noon rally was maskless and shouting support for the cause, but Trojan said she wasnt concerned about her health in the outdoor environment.

She said she didnt get sick after the packed April 20 rally and many others in the crowd said likewise.

Capitol police estimated Fridays crowd at about 1,750 to 2,000, although organizers believe many more than that attended. The crowd was slightly smaller than the group that gathered on April 20, according to police. The previous rally drew an estimated 3,000 or more people, according to some Harrisburg officers.

Among the attendees Friday was Cain Conlin, of Dauphin County, who wore cowboy hats and held a sign saying: Cowboys to reopen Pa.

He was upset that Dauphin County remained in red status Friday, with the highest restrictions still in place. State officials, however, said the countys number of COVID-19 cases continues to rise.

Conlin said his machine shop was shut down because of Wolfs proclamation in March and hes been unable to work since then.

They need to open up all of Pa. not just some counties, he said.

Ashley Asper, 35, said the shutdown has been hard on her three young daughters, who live in Cumberland County and had to miss their dance recitals and kindergarten graduation.

The numbers are no greater than the flu numbers, and were hiding in our houses for a disease that isnt going to kill the mass population, Asper said.

66-year-old Barb Banocy attended the rally with Asper and her daughters. She thinks Wolf has been invisible to the public during the shutdown.

Its my job to keep myself safe, not his, Asper added.

When asked if she thinks Cumberland County should be on the list of those moving to yellow, Banocy said, Yellow doesnt help. I want to be able to go to church.

A Berks County man carried a stop sign with Open PA scribbled on the back. He said he works for an essential business, and supported Wolfs initial response to the coronavirus. But he was turned off by Wolfs threats to take away funding from counties who want to make the decision to reopen for themselves.

I believe if you take the necessary precautions we can do this and still have a strong economy, and still be safe at the same time, he said

The Berks County man said hes watching a business hes known his entire life be devastatingly affected by the virus.

I would like to see Gov. Wolf removed out of office, he said. Hes gone down a slope that is irreversible.

Several attendees Friday said Wolfs hard stance against counties that threatened to rebel prompted them to show up on the Capitol steps Friday.

Eileen Esbenshade, of the Selinsgrove area, said Wolfs announcement to threaten to cut federal emergency funding to counties wanting to move themselves into the yellow phase infuriated her.

I think President Trump should cut the funding to Pa., then, she said. Its not fair that hes blackmailing the counties.

But Esbenshade said she believes Wolfs threats against defector counties is empty, because the Legislature is controlled by Republicans, including Sen. Doug Mastriano, of Adams County, who has said they would work to get the emergency funding for all counties.

Mastriano was one of several speakers who addressed the crowd Friday. He chided the governor for not being in his office and for not being willing to talk to his constituents on the Capitol steps.

The guy should be at work, Mastriano said. He should know how his edicts and proclamations have affected and shattered your lives.

Wolf previously said county leaders who wanted to unilaterally move themselves into a less-restrictive status were cowards, which was another statement that most people in the crowd bristled against.

The cowards are the ones hiding behind their desk hiding in their homes, hiding behind a microphone refusing to talk to people, Mastriano said. Thats the face of cowardice.

Some people carried signs that said: Gov. Wolf, the cowards are here," Be fair and reasonable, All businesses are essential, We dont give in to threats, and My body, my choice, no masks, no contact tracing. Some signs promoted wild conspiracy theories and at least one contained the name of an extremist anti-government group.

While some protesters carried large rifles at the April 20 rally, there was only one protester Friday with a large rifle and he stood high on the steps near the organizers. Similar rallies across the country have attracted gun-rights groups, anti-vaxxers, militia groups and internet subcultures.

The states Department of Health Secretary Rachel Levine also drew particular scorn during the rally from speakers and the crowd, who chanted at times: Levines gotta go.

The speakers repeatedly pointed out how she removed her own 95-year-old mother from a care center amid the pandemic but didnt alert the public or allegedly take more aggressive action early to stop the spread of COVID-19 in nursing homes.

Nearly 70-percent of the states deaths from COVID-19 so far have occurred in nursing or care home residents.

Levine has countered that it was her independent and intelligent mothers decision to leave the home.

There are no restrictions on moving people from a long-term care facility, Health Department Spokesman Nate Wardle said.

Bellis, who helped organize the rally, said Pennsylvanians need to live their lives. He said he believes COVID-19 is serious, but that businesses can open reasonably and responsibly.

Were here to deliver a loud and clear message, Bellis said. "Governor: Give up the power.

Bellis repeated that phrase throughout his remarks.

Police said Fridays rally caused no major problems and resulted in no arrests.

Harrisburg Police Commissioner Thomas Carter said: They have a right to protest in a peaceful manner and thats what they are doing.

READ: Lebanon County commissioners rebel, vote 2-1 to move to yellow ahead of states timetable

READ: Man facing death battles back from COVID-19 with help of bold new therapy
Substances used to replace ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) may be just as problematic as their predecessors, a new study shows.

In 1987, Canada implemented the Montreal Protocol, a global agreement to protect Earth's ozone layer by ceasing the use of substances like CFCs. Unfortunately, the CFC-replacement substances used to replace them are proving problematic as well, with accumulating levels of their degradation products recently found in the Canadian Arctic.

"In many ways, the degradation products from these substances may be just as concerning as the original chemical they were meant to replace," said Alison Criscitiello, director of the Canadian Ice Core Lab (CICL), housed in the University of Alberta's Faculty of Science. "We are seeing significant levels of these short-chain acids accumulating in the Devon Ice Cap, and this study links some of them directly to CFC replacement compounds."

An ice core drilled on the summit of Devon Ice Cap in the Canadian high Arctic shows a tenfold increase in short-chain perfluorocarboxylic acid (scPFCA) deposition between 1986 and 2014. scPFCAs form through atmospheric oxidation of several industrial chemicals, some of which are CFC replacement compounds. scPFCAs are highly mobile persistent organic pollutants and belong to the class of so-called "forever chemicals" because they do not break down. A few preliminary studies have shown toxicity of these substances to plants and invertebrates.

"This is the first multi-decadal temporal record of scPFCA deposition in the Arctic," explained Criscitiello. "Our results suggest that the CFC-replacement compounds mandated by the Montreal Protocol are the dominant source of some scPFCAs to remote regions."

Over the past four years, Criscitiello and colleagues drilled four ice cores across the eastern Canadian high Arctic. This interdisciplinary work is thanks to a strong collaboration between Criscitiello and the labs of York University atmospheric chemist Cora Young and Environment and Climate Change Canada research scientist Amila De Silva.

These same Canadian Arctic ice cores also contain significant levels of perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs). These results demonstrate that both perfluoroalkyl carboxylic acids (PFCAs) and perfluorooctane sulfonate (PFOS) have continuous and increasing deposition on the Devon Ice Cap despite North American and international regulations and phase-outs. This is the likely result of ongoing manufacture, use, and emissions of these persistent pollutants, as well as their precursors and other new compounds in regions outside of North America.

"These results show the need for a more holistic approach when deciding to ban and replace chemical compounds," explained Criscitiello. "Chemicals degrade, and developing a strong understanding of how they degrade in the environment, and what they degrade to, is vital."

###

The paper, "Ice core record of persistent short?chain fluorinated alkyl acids: Evidence of the impact from global environmental regulations," is published in Geophysical Research Letters(doi: 10.1029/2020GL087535).
New Delhi, May 15 : Corporate governance advisory firm, Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IIAS) has said that Vedanta's independent directors, at the May 18 board meeting, must articulate whether shareholders must vote in support of the delisting, and indicate a price range that they believe reflects the intrinsic value of the stock.

In a note on the proposed Vedanta delisting, IIAS has said that as in the past, this announcement too, seems to suggest, that minority shareholders are a hinderance to the promoters' ambition.

"IIAS believes, however, that the board should not take cover of regulations, but proactively guide shareholders on what it considers is the correct price at which the delisting must take place. Vedanta's set of well-established and seasoned independent directors are possibly the best placed to articulate a reasonable stance on the issue", it said.

Vedanta's board needs to guide investors and IIAS as Vedanta's independent directors have a fiduciary responsibility to guide shareholders on VRL's delisting bid.

This is in line with the practice followed in other markets. For example, it said independent directors of Essar Energy in 2014 rejected Essar Global Funds Ltd's bid to delist -- the committee of independent directors had termed that bid "opportunistic". The issues are not very different here, it added.

"Independent directors must avoid taking cover from regulation. Delisting guidelines protect the rights of minority shareholders when companies want to delist. It will be a shame if the board throws these regulations back at shareholders saying that as the price is going to be determined by reverse book-building, you decide the price" the advisory firm said.

IIAS said Vedanta's independent directors, at the May 18 board meeting, must articulate whether shareholders must vote in support of the delisting, and indicate a price range that they believe reflects the intrinsic value of the stock.

Institutional investors have a role to play in protecting the interests of all minority shareholders. Mutual funds together owned 10.9% of voting rights on March 31. There are several large shareholders too, these can together ensure that their delisting bids reflect the intrinsic value of the business, IIAS said.

IIAS said the group's past behaviour seems to suggest that minority shareholders are a hindrance to the promoters' ambition. Cash flowing from the operating companies to the holding companies has been an element of concern for shareholders, and some of the transactions have taken investors by surprise.

"To that extent, delisting the company and allowing the promoter full rein is in the longer-term interest of all stakeholders. That does not take away from the low price being offered. Investors need to take advantage of the regulatory protection and put in a bid that reflects the value of the company", IIAS said.

The delisting resolution is a special resolution: the votes cast by the public shareholders in favour of the resolution must be at least two times the number of votes cast against it. The SEBI (Delisting of Equity shares) Regulations, 2009 provide sufficient protection to minority shareholders.

IIAS said the delisting will be determined via a reverse book building process. The price at which VRL can acquire public shareholding that takes VRL's shareholding to at least 90% of the paid-up capital will be the discovered price - at which point VRL can decide if wishes to proceed with the delisting. Therefore, although the floor price is set at Rs.87.50, the discovered price - based in the bids put in by investors - will likely be much higher.
tech2 News Staff

There might be a link between people who suffer from a Vitamin D deficiency and them getting infected with COVID-19 and mortality rates.

This study was conducted by researchers of Northwestern University and their results have been published in the journal medRxiv.

Vadim Backman, head author of this study and Walter Dill Scott Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Northwesterns McCormick School of Engineering noticed differences in the mortality rates from country to country and there were some theories that healthcare quality, age, testing rates or the different strains of the virus might be responsible. However, he was not convinced.

None of these factors appear to play a significant role, Backman said in a statement. The healthcare system in northern Italy is one of the best in the world. Differences in mortality exist even if one looks across the same age group. And, while the restrictions on testing do indeed vary, the disparities in mortality still exist even when we looked at countries or populations for which similar testing rates apply. Instead, we saw a significant correlation with Vitamin D deficiency."

The team of researchers looked at patients from countries with high COVID-19 mortality rates, such as Italy, Spain, and the UK and found that infected patients had lower levels of Vitamin D compared to patients in countries that were not as severely affected. They also found a strong correlation between Vitamin D levels and cytokine storm  a hyperinflammatory condition caused by an overactive immune system.

Cytokine storm can severely damage lungs and lead to acute respiratory distress syndrome and death in patients, said Ali Daneshkhah, a postdoctoral research associate and the papers first author, in a statement. This is what seems to kill a majority of COVID-19 patients, not the destruction of the lungs by the virus itself. It is the complications from the misdirected fire from the immune system.

Immunity against the virus

We have two types of immune systems - an acquired immune system and the innate immune system.

Acquired immunity or adaptive immunity creates immunological memory after an initial response to a specific pathogen, and provide long-lasting protection against the pathogen.

The innate immune system is an older evolutionary defence strategy and comes into play within hours of an antigen's appearance in the body. These mechanisms include physical barriers such as skin, chemicals in the blood, and immune system cells that attack foreign cells in the body explains The Biology Project by The University of Arizona.

Backman also explained why death rates among children with regard to COVID-19 are lower. He said, "Children do not have a fully developed acquired immune system, which is the immune systems second line of defence and more likely to overreact."

Children primarily rely on their innate immune system, Backman added in the statement. This may explain why their mortality rate is lower.

Why is Vitamin D so important?

According to the statement, Vitamin D helps to enhance our immune systems and prevents our immune systems from becoming overactive. Having a healthy level of Vitamin D could protect patients against severe complications, including death, from COVID-19.

Taking supplements is a good way to ensure you are getting your daily dose of Vitamin D. Another way to getting Vitamin D is to expose yourself to natural sunlight.

However, NHS states that taking too many Vitamin D supplements over a long period of time can cause too much calcium to build up in the body. This can weaken the bones and damage the kidneys and the heart.

Backman said, However, it is clear that Vitamin D deficiency is harmful, and it can be easily addressed with appropriate supplementation. This might be another key to helping protect vulnerable populations, such as African-American and elderly patients, who have a prevalence of Vitamin D deficiency.
Kate Malone was on the phone with someone when she began to choke up.

The person on the other end of the line was a client as the public defender worked through their case.

Malone, in an interview with MassLive, explained her client had been bounced around the system, and he was going to spend a couple more days in jail than he needed to, and there was nothing she could do.

The courts were closing that Friday in April. Legally, she was trapped by the hour of the day and the day of the week.

For 10 days prior to that phone call, Malone had been busy making incessant phone calls, firing off emails and filing motions in court for her client to be released. Her clients case was eventually called to a different court. But because his new probation officer had not had a conversation with his previous one, the officer could not verify anything Malone said.

By the time the judge was able to hear her clients case, the defendant had spent two extra weeks in custody than he should have, and it looked like he was going to spend another three more days in jail.

How am I supposed to tell this person, Im really sorry, but youve got to sit for another three days'?, Malone told MassLive. " I dont know is all I can say.

The issue was eventually resolved the following week, but at the time, Malone felt defeated and frustrated by hurdles that would not have ordinarily been in front of her.

Malones client had been shuffled between courts and parole officers shortly after in-person legal proceedings were being halted due to the coronavirus pandemic. She is one of the many defense attorneys whose work has been completely altered by the public health crisis.

My client just totally fell through the cracks. Every day Im filing motions, Im calling people, Im doing everything I can, and I just felt so helpless, she said. I cant imagine how my client felt.

Over the course of two months, criminal legal proceedings have moved from the courtroom to the phone - and Malones typical day of representing defendants has changed regularly along the way.

The attorney, who became a public defender just last year, said that she and other lawyers are constantly tuning into webinars about how to adapt their advocacy efforts to the COVID-19 outbreak.

The situation is changing week to week, though, she said.

Everythings done remote now. Initially, at the start of the pandemic, we were going into the jail, Malone said. "As the situation unfolded, we had to make a decision about what was the best way to represent our clients but also protect them.

Its challenging not to be with them and have that conversation with them face to face, but the reality is that the more people that come in and out of the jail, the more likely it is that COVID is going to be transmitted.

The pandemic has posed a slew of challenges for defense attorneys throughout the state, who are finding themselves encountering new problems every week.

Concerns have arisen about how to effectively communicate with clients in jail, how to bring translators onto telephonic court proceedings to aid defendants who cannot speak English and how to get sheriffs offices to set up video conferencing between the incarcerated and their lawyers.

Courthouses in Springfield, Holyoke and Worcester County have had to temporarily shut down multiple times after staff members at each location tested positive for the virus as well, and many private practices have been forced to grind to a halt because of the health crisis.

Throughout it all, public defenders like Malone as well as her roommate and colleague Jessica McArdle - both of whom work in the trial unit of the state Public Defender Division in Springfield - have had to adapt to the ever-evolving situation.

Amid frustrations and roadblocks, the two lawyers are working to adequately represent their clients, despite not being able to see them face to face.

As questions continue to crop up for Malone and McArdle on a daily basis, the pair are also fielding calls from concerned defendants and their loved ones, who have inquiries of their own. Many of their clients are worried about the risk of infection in the jail system and the future of their criminal cases.

On a daily basis, youre getting calls from clients from the jail, and Ive never heard the stress, the fear, the desperation that I was hearing consistently in every single phone call, Malone said. Cases arent moving right now. Were not resolving cases, so people are just going to sit until this is over, unless they get out.

Inmates are not just worrying about their own predicaments inside the jails. They are also concerned about the situations of their family members outside prison walls, some of whom may be in a demographic more at risk of developing severe, potentially life-threatening symptoms from the viral respiratory infection.

McArdle described a client whose mother has heart failure. She was in and out of the hospital even before the pandemic hit and continues to need medical assistance. With face-to-face contact being restricted, communication between the mother and son has proven difficult.

He continues worry about her while locked up.

Not being able to have regular updates and just being worried that shes going to get COVID-19 and hes not going to be able to see her or help take care of her has been really stressful, she said.

Pretrial matters are not being heard either, so trying to stay in contact with clients and give them updates on their cases can be difficult for public defenders.

There is a great deal of uncertainty as well about how legal hearings will change as state officials begin to think about reopening the state. Massachusetts courts are currently working to rework procedures addressing non-emergency matters, according to Malone.

But attorneys cannot see a firm end in sight for social distancing restrictions issued by the state, so it is unclear when incarcerated individuals will be able to return to the courtroom.

The best we can do is say, Hey, Ill stay in touch with you. Stay in touch with me too. I dont have any information for you right now. I know you were supposed to be in court tomorrow, but thats not going to happen. Courts not open until June, McArdle said. We also dont have any say in the matter.

Kate Malone and Jessica McArdle - both roommates and attorneys who work in the trial unit of the state Public Defender Division in Springfield - are two of the many public defenders in Massachusetts whose work lives have been completely uprooted by the coronavirus public health crisis. Here, they work at their dining room table, as nearly all court proceedings are now being held over the phone. (Jackson Cote/MassLive)

Representing the incarcerated from the dining room

On a Monday morning, legal papers, Dunkin iced coffee cups and a polka dot face mask littered the dining room table of Malone and McArdles Springfield apartment. Their windows looked out to Forest Park.

The dining room table has become the pairs makeshift office over the course of the pandemic, with the two being able to bounce ideas off each other as they tackle cases every day. The attorneys fielded phone calls, shot off emails and printed documents throughout the morning.

Under normal circumstances, public defenders work lives are unpredictable. They have to be ready for their day to change at a drop of a hat," Malone said.

But with the current public health crisis, work conditions have grown strange and unprecedented, according to Malone. The attorney has become what she calls a constant table dweller.

I miss the courtrooms, she said. I just cant wait to stand up in a courtroom again.

The two attorneys have known each other for roughly two years after meeting while playing on the state public defenders softball team, The Reasonable Doubtfielders." McArdle was an attorney with the Children and Family Law Division of the Committee for Public Counsel Services at that time, and Malone was still in law school, interning at the Northampton office of the Public Defender Division.

The roommate-lawyer pair sat Monday morning waiting for an email from the Springfield District Court clerks office about the incarcerated individuals they would need to assist that day.

In pre-pandemic times, the attorneys would sit in Courtroom One of Springfield District Court, and prosecutors would provide them with discovery documents about the defendants they would be representing. Since the scale of the disease ramped up in Massachusetts, though, procedures have shifted.

At the start of the crisis, as social distancing guidelines were first being introduced, the two lawyers would drive to their office, and their supervisor would hand them arrest reports, complaints from the courts, copies of defendants criminal histories and other materials needed to aid their clients. The lawyers would then read over the paperwork and head to jail.

Six staff members from the trial unit of the Public Defender Division in Springfield, including McArdle and Malone, were volunteering to go into the Hampden County Jail and House of Correction at the time to minimize the number of lawyers going into the correction facility.

We didnt want to be bringing in more attorneys than necessary, because we didnt want to be endangering people that are incarcerated, Malone said. And we also wanted to protect ourselves, and a lot of our colleagues have children, have health conditions.

The same documents that were easily given to McArdle and Malone by prosecutors before the virus emerged are now being emailed to them. Nearly all legal matters are being dealt with over the phone.

The process has definitely changed several times as this has been going on, and were adapting, McArdle said.

The public defenders cases run the gamut of drug and motor vehicle crimes to domestic incidents and firearm offenses. The number of people they represent fluctuate daily too, but they mainly take on cases in Springfield and Holyoke.

My caseload is pretty diverse, Malone said, adding that Springfield District Court is one of the busiest courts in the state.

Before the attorneys shifted gears and stopped going into the jail entirely, they were meeting their clients in a no-contact space and talking to the incarcerated individuals over the phone. The lawyers who volunteered to go into the correction facility would wear gloves and face masks.

Everyone was scrambling to arraign people in the early days of the outbreak, Malone said. She recalled appearing for a bail day in Ludlow and representing a stream of clients back-to-back without the normal resources she normally would have, taking notes as she did so.

The lawyer, who was not permitted to take off her face mask, was also not allowed to bring a water bottle into the jail. After interviewing so many clients without pause, her mouth became so dry that she developed a coat of salt on her lip.

The attorney felt like she was in a war zone" as she moved from one client to the next.

It was just sort of this assembly line. You couldnt even keep people straight, and it was really overwhelming, and then you would just argue, Malone said. We just felt like it wasnt safe for us to keep doing that.

Bail hearings were initially done via video conferencing. Inmates appeared before judges, sometimes wearing beanies and always sporting self-made face masks. District court judges could only see the defendants eyes, McArdle said.

The attorneys were remote too, so judges, who would normally be able to see the public defenders, could only hear their voices. McArdle was concerned that, with the reduced visibility of both the defendants and their representation, judges would easily disconnect.

Its just totally dehumanizing," she said. All the judges have is this image of somebody that they dont know, in a bright orange jumpsuit, with a mask and a beanie on. It was just such an awful feeling to see this kind of playing out.

Defendants with open cases are also prevented from going about their lives right now as only emergency matters are being heard by the courts due to the pandemic, McArdle noted.

She is seeing some clients who are prohibited from moving to other states, others who are not able to find employment and many who cannot resolve their cases. There are so many unknowns, McArdle said.

Their lives are on hold right now, she said.

A single positive aspect of the outbreak right now, McArdle said, is that communities are working hard to reduce the number of people being arrested. Instead of taking people into custody for lower level offenses, authorities are issuing summonses with future court dates for people to respond to.

Amid all the chaos posed by the crisis, defense attorneys have found that some members of law enforcement, even those who they do not always see eye to eye with, have been meeting many of their needs.

The Hampden County Sheriffs office has stepped up during pandemic, Malone added, and has been very sincere in its desire to help her clients. Case workers have emailed her on a regular basis and worked hard to connect her to the inmates she is tasked with representing.

They have been accommodating. The case workers especially have been wonderful about helping connect me with my clients, she said. I do appreciate that, and even though were not always on the same page, the staff has been incredibly accommodating.

McArdles job has evolved too. She and other public defenders work is now centered on getting held clients released from jail.

Weve been trying to do everything we can hand to minimize the number of people being held right now, McArdle said. Our work has changed. Its shifted.

Kate Malone and Jessica McArdle - both roommates and attorneys who work in the trial unit of the state Public Defender Division in Springfield - are two of the many public defenders in Massachusetts whose work lives have been completely uprooted by the coronavirus public health crisis. Here, they work at their dining room table, as nearly all court proceedings are now being held over the phone. (Jackson Cote/MassLive)

Behind bars: Defense attorneys work to get prisoners released amid the crisis

Getting prisoners released from jails and prisons, where the risk of contracting coronavirus may be high, has become a hot-button issue for defenders and prosecutors alike.

Along with dealing with the day-to-day challenges of the pandemic, the work lives of Massachusetts defense attorneys have been altered by the state Supreme Judicial Court, which ruled last month that many pretrial inmates who have not committed violent offenses may be eligible for release.

Following a petition lodged by the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts the Committee for Public Counsel Services and the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyer, the SJC decided that certain detainees can be considered for presumptive release on personal recognizance.

There are restrictions however. Individuals considered for release cannot be charged with violent offenses, like homicide or vehicular manslaughter, or crimes for which they need to be registered as a sex offender.

Over the span of more than four hours in April, lawyers from the Committee for Public Counsel Services made their argument for specific pretrial detainees to be releases. It was done by phone.

Defense attorneys are now working feverishly to get their clients out of correction facilities, according to Randy Gioia, deputy chief counsel for the Public Defender Division of Massachusetts.

Thats the work weve chosen to do is to help our clients, and right now, were focused on helping our clients who are locked up behind the wall, in cages, in a place where the risk of the spread of the virus is very high. We want to try to get out as many of our clients as we can," Gioia told MassLive. That is the main focus of the work of a public defender right now.

Malone is proud that her office and the defense bar as a whole have been aggressive about getting people who are eligible out of jail, the lawyer said. She and McArdle are two of the many public defenders now adapting to the SJC ruling and filing motions to get some of their clients released.

All of Malones clients who were arrested are now out of custody, but not every case was resolved because of the Supreme Judicial Courts ruling. COVID-19 certainly played a role, though, the lawyer said.

Even with the SJCs ruling, though, not all of the Public Defender Divisions worries were resolved. There are still a number of inmates defense attorneys want released, McArdle pointed out. That decision helped out pretrial inmates, but it did not do much for those already behind bars.

That was helpful for us being able to file new motions and get new clients released and kind of minimize the number who are being held, McArdle said about the courts decision. It didnt do a lot for our clients who have already been sentenced.

She added, The work has definitely not decreased. I feel like its changed drastically. Were doing different types of things than what we have normally done in our day to day, and every week it feels like things are changing.

The SJC is now considering expanding prisoner releases. The same advocacy groups that filed the earlier petition are seeking to increase the number of inmates released to allow for appropriate social distancing inside correction facilities.

Among the groups of inmates the organizations want released from prison are those whose age or underlying medical conditions put them at a higher risk of developing potentially fatal symptoms from the respiratory infection. They also want prisoners who have been civilly committed to a jail for alcohol or substance-use disorders to be considered for release.

Keeping people locked up in jails and prisons drives up transmission of the viral respiratory infection, the advocacy groups argued, and following social distancing guidelines is close to impossible in correctional facilities.

Officials with the Massachusetts Department of Correction have argued differently, though.

They claimed the agency has put multiple measures in place to stave off transmission of the disease, including housing infected inmates separately from those who do not have the virus, closing commonly used spaces like dining halls and restricting contact between prisoners.

But prohibiting certain sentenced inmates from being released not only increases the risk of COVID-19 infection, its also violates the prisoners constitutional rights, the advocacy groups argued, specifically those guaranteed to them by the Eighth Amendment, which bans cruel and unusual punishment, and the 14th Amendment, which upholds equal protections of the law to all U.S. citizens.

Attorney James R. Pingeon, who represented the plaintiffs in their case against the DOC in a hearing last week, told the seven-member court that the disease is spreading rapidly throughout the states correction system.

To date, seven individuals incarcerated by the state have died from the virus. Of the more than 7,300 prisoners in Massachusetts, 362 have been infected as of Wednesday, according to DOC data.

The release process should be done slowly, Pingeon noted, as the DOC analyzes which inmates are eligible to be let go from prison to maintain proper social distancing.

If conditions at a prison are objectively unsafe, the state has an obligation to provide a remedy," Pingeon said.

Kate Malone and Jessica McArdle - both roommates and attorneys who work in the trial unit of the state Public Defender Division in Springfield - are two of the many public defenders in Massachusetts whose work lives have been completely uprooted by the coronavirus public health crisis. Here, they work at their dining room table, as nearly all court proceedings are now being held over the phone. (Jackson Cote/MassLive)

'I dont really have answers: The obstacles public defenders are encountering

One of the biggest issues public defenders are facing amid the pandemic is a simple one: communication.

With attorneys working from home and public defender offices throughout the state remaining largely closed, facilitating communication between county sheriffs so defense attorneys can effectively and privately talk with their clients has proven difficult, Gioia said.

Law enforcement officials have an ethical responsibility to ensure communications are confidential, but that is sometimes hard to guarantee, the deputy chief counsel argued.

Its so hard to have meaningful communication, private communication with your client whos locked up, which is the essential ingredient of any zealous representation of a person accused of a crime, Gioia said.

Gioia would like to have protocols in place where lawyers can call a sheriffs office, schedule a time to interview the inmate they are representing and then be able to talk with their client on a secure, unrecorded line, he added.

The Public Defender Division is working to get sheriffs to set up Zoom conferencing, so attorneys can see their clients face to face, but the effort has hit roadblocks, Gioia said.

In fact for one sheriffs office, we have a computer were ready to loan to them thats set up with an operating system and a browser," he said. We havent had a taker yet, and thats a concern for me. I think sheriffs should be accommodating.

State policies surrounding the pandemic are changing day to day, so it is important that attorneys be able to regularly provide updates to their clients, Malone said. Answering defendants inquiries is not always possible, though, when the situation is constantly changing.

I have clients asking me questions where I could tell them on any normal day, This is what well do, and theyre pretty simple and straight-forward things," Malone said. Now, I dont really have answers, and a lot of people are in this weird limbo, and its hard to just figure out very basic things."

Public defenders are also concerned about how effectively they can represent individuals over the phone. Under normal circumstances, family members who know their loved one has been arrested can come to court to provide support, McArdle said.

Defense attorneys will then be able to meet their clients family and potentially talk with them to get background information and improve their argument. Having people who support a defendant may bolster a persons case before a judge as well, McArdle said.

If were in court and this person has their mom, their dad, their sister, their girlfriend, other family members showing support, thats really compelling to argue to a judge, she said. Obviously, with this transition to how bails are happening, we dont have that contact necessarily with the people who support our clients.

Gioia is hoping that court hearings will eventually transition to Zoom and that families will then be able to at least observe hearings to show their concern. While Gioia does not like video conferencing at all, it is better than holding hearings over the phone, he said.

Its hard for a judge to evaluate who theyre dealing with when theyre only dealing with them in a two-dimensional Zoom conference," Gioia said. Its not a good substitute. Its better than nothing and probably better than a telephone hearing at this point, but it should be temporary.

As the COVID-19 outbreak continues, the deputy chief counsel is seeing an array of rights that are being thrown into question. The right to be present in court, the right to confront and cross-examine ones witnesses, the right to have a jury trial and the right to present ones own witnesses: All are being impacted by the public health crisis, Gioia pointed out.

How do you present your witnesses to a court when thats being done remote?, the attorney asked. These are the fundamental rights.

Defense attorneys work is important now more than ever, he argued. The lawyers in his office are working hard to, to the extent they can, protect the rights of their clients, Gioia said.

Public defenders work right is nothing short of saving peoples lives," he added.

Massachusetts courthouses will likely reopen after June, but judges will rely on virtual hearings if in-person appearances arent necessary, according to a letter issued by the Supreme Judicial Courts justices Thursday.

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All set for the kill, why Armys hit-list has most terrorists from the Hizbul Mujahideen

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: The Indian Army will keep up the momentum and go for the big terrorists in the Valley.

After gunning down, Hizbul Mujahideen's top terrorist, Riyaz Naikoo, the Army has come up with a new list of top 10 terrorists. The focus would be on these terrorists as they are capable of re-building the terror groups. Moreover, with the emerge of a new group The Resistance Front (TRF), whose main purpose is to recruit, it is important that we get to these top terrorists, an official, who did not want to be named told OneIndia.

Topping the list is Saifullah Mir alias Ghazi Haider alias Doctor Sahab. A Grade A terrorist, he hails from Pulwama. He heads the Hizbul Mujahideen.

With Hizbul down, Pakistan gives special emphasis to Lashkars TRF

Mohammad Ashraf Khan of the Hizbul Mujahideen is second in the list and has been active since 2016. He is a resident of Tengpawa. Third on the list is Junaid Sehrai of the Hizbul Mujahideen. He too is a Grade A terrorist.

Mohammad Abbas Sheikh also a member of the Hizbul Mujahideen has been active since 2015 and features fourth on the list.

Mohammad Abbas Sheikh who is fifth on the list is an active member of the Hizbul Mujahideen since 2015.

Zargar Zahid, an old hand of the Jaish-e-Mohammad is fifth on the list. He has been responsible for scores of recruitments into the terror group. He has been with the outfit since 2014.

Top Hizbul terrorist, Riyaz Naikoo killed

Lashkar-e-Tayiba terrorist Shakir features sixth and has been active since 2015. Faisal of the Jaish-e-Mohammad and Maulvi Sahab alias Sheraz Lone of the Hizbul Mujahideen are seventh and eighth on the list.

Saleem Paray of the JeM and Owais Mallick of the Lashkar-e-Tayiba are ninth and tenth on the list.

The officer cited above say that there would be a more aggressive approach. There has been too much activity among the terror groups off late and they are taking advantage of the pandemic to further the activities. The security forces are busy with COVID-19 duties as well and this they are trying to take to their advantage.

It is a crucial time now and it is important to continue the momentum after the killing of Naikoo. The attacks at Keran and Handwara were a set back for the forces, but they back strong and eliminated Naikoo, who was a top terrorist in the Valley.

The Armed Forces and the Intelligence are also keeping a close watch on the TRF. The TRF which is controlled by the Lashkar-e-Tayiba has been formed with two intention- ensure deniability for Pakistan and recruit as many locals as possible.

Eliminating Naikoo: How the math went wrong for this dreaded terrorist

Most of those wanted on the list are from the Hizbul Mujahideen. It is important that we go after the Hizbul Mujahideen all out as they have a better connect with the locals and are capable of recruiting locally. Moreover, they target civilians and the local police as well, the officer also noted.

At least 28 terrorists have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir in April alone. The Forces are also keeping a close watch as the terror groups have managed to recruit 35 locals since the past three months. This is also coupled with the fact that Pakistan has activated most of its launch pads along the border. Intelligence reports say that there are at least 400 terrorists who are waiting to infiltrate.
RMIT University has come under fire for asking staff to volunteer to take on teaching work previously done by hundreds of laid-off casual employees.

The university's School of Science this week published a "volunteers needed' callout in its newsletter.

RMIT is asking permanent staff to take on work usually done by casuals. Credit:Jason South

"We're currently recruiting volunteers with a high research focus to assist with teaching, tutorials and marking in semester 2," it read.

"Our casual staff budget must decrease by 40 per cent in the second half of the year, so if you're able to give some time and take some pressure off our academic staff, please contact your Associate Dean."
Amazon Prime's much-awaited series Pataal Lok, starring Jaideep Ahlawat, Neeraj Kabi, Gul Panag, Abhishek Banerjee, is finally out. Here's how audiences are reacting to it-

This weekend has witnessed the release of one of Amazon Primes ambitious offering Paatal Lok, which has been backed by Bollywood actor Anushka Sharma. Starring Jaideep Ahlawat, Neeraj Kabi, Gul Panag, Abhishek Banerjee and more, Paatal Lok revolves around high profile criminal case in which four suspects are arrested in connection with attempt of murder of a prime time journalist. As interesting as the premise sounds, the word of mouth among the audiences is equally promising.

Soon after Paatal Loks release on Amazon Prime, Anushka Sharma shared a photo on her Instagram account in which she had tuned in Paatal Lok on her television screen. Sharing the photo on her profile, the actor wrote in the caption that people of all loks are now watching Paatal Lok.

Just within hours of Paatal Loks release, reviews have started pouring in social media suggesting that it is a gripping watch. One of the social media user said that after Sacred Games, Paatal Lok offers exceptional direction and unveils the veil off the real talent in the Hindi film industry. Another social media user praised Paatal Loks writing and performances and called it the best thing that has happened in lockdown.

#pataallok saw it today. Post sacred games this one is another case of exceptional Direction. For me one thing digital cinema has done is lifted the veil of real talent of the industry and I could see past the nepotism infested Bollywood. Thank you #AnushkaSharma  Vikas Singh (@ChinuChivita) May 15, 2020

@PrimeVideoIN ' s #pataallok is one of the brilliant stuffs happened in lock down! What a great writing and ofcourse acting!  If Someone (@aaryuu10) May 15, 2020

#pataallok a nexus between media , politics and crime. Oh dang !

Thanks @AnushkaSharma for bringing out these gritty stories . Its so relatable and speaks so strongly to our times !#indianpolitics is a gamble. https://t.co/XvKffMUeV8  Shalin Paliwal (@paliwal_shalin) May 15, 2020

Just finished #pataallok and loved it. @PrimeVideoIN have best Indian content among all ott platform.@Jaiahlawat you are fabulous.@nowitsabhi your expressions are killing.

Waiting for season 2@AnushkaSharma pic.twitter.com/c1eUGkAl9m  Jaideep Singh (@Jaideep121299) May 15, 2020

@PrimeVideoIN #pataallok

Intense  Dark  Gruesome  Thriller  CrimeDrama  Dirty Politics  Police  Media  System  Elections  Erotic  Mythology  Social. Every possible Genre Of Filmography Have been packed in this show. Top-Hole Content with a great Concept. 

1/2  Gotu Manthan Dave (@GotuDave) May 15, 2020

Speaking about playing the lead in Paatal Lok, Jaideep Ahlawat recently told a news portal that leading such a big web project is an amazing feeling. It also comes with more responsibility as you represent so many people. Moreover, the writers and director have put in a lot of hard work into the project.

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BY KENNETH NYANGANI

AN economist has said Zimbabwe should cut military expenditure and channel the resources towards revival of the health sector and economy.

Prosper Chitambara made the remarks yesterday in Mutare at the Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe (LEDRIZ) engagement workshop with local scribes.

We can do without a military. Lets reduce the personnel in the army because we are not under any threat, but channel more resources to health and social services. For example, Japan has channelled more resources to health and social services than to the army, he said

We have found out that if you address health and social services chances of an uprising are very low, so I am urging my country to be like Japan.

- Advertisement -

Government has been accused of channelling more financial resources towards the military for fears of an uprising as dissent increases due to a collapsing economy, amid a wave of human rights abuses.

Last month, secretary for Defence Mark Grey Marongwe said the Defence ministry requires $25 billion in 2020 if the value of the local currency against the United State dollar stays the same. The money would mostly be channelled towards funding of the national army.

Chitambara said the government has fallen short on policies that benefit people and jobs provision.

We have seen decisions that only benefit people in the short term; our government policies are meant to benefit people in short term, but will cry in the long term. We have an example of freebies, printing money and borrowing, we have also noticed that State enterprises have been captured for political expediency, he said

African countries rely more on extractive industries and the industry is heavily capitalised and very few jobs are created. We need to create more jobs if we want to fight poverty because through jobs we can fight poverty, he said

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First Majestic Silver Corp. AG reported adjusted earnings of 4 cents per share in first-quarter 2020, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate of 3 cents. The company had reported adjusted loss per share of 1 cents in the year-ago quarter.



Including one-time items, the company reported a loss per share of 15 cents as against the earnings per share of 1 cents recorded in the prior-year quarter.



The company generated revenues of $86 million in the first quarter, down 1% on a year-over-year basis. Also, the top line missed the Zacks Consensus Estimate of $95 million.



The company temporarily postponed the sale of 292,000 ounces of silver and 700 ounces of gold, due to the volatility in silver and gold prices at the end of the first quarter.

First Majestic Silver Corp. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

First Majestic Silver Corp. Price, Consensus and EPS Surprise

First Majestic Silver Corp. price-consensus-eps-surprise-chart | First Majestic Silver Corp. Quote

Operational Update



First Majestic produced consolidated silver equivalent ounces of 6,195,057, down 1% from the prior-year quarter. The companys consolidated gold production was 32,202 ounces compared with the year-ago quarters 32,037 ounces. Consolidated silver production declined 6% year over year to 3,151,980 ounces.



First Majestic recorded consolidated cash costs per ounce of $5.16, down 19% from the year-ago quarter. Consolidated all-in sustaining costs (AISC) of $12.99 per ounce came in 1% higher than the prior-year quarter. Total production cost was $82.41 per ton, up 24% year over year. The company realized an average silver price of $17.36 per ounce during the quarter, representing a year-over-year increase of 10%.



First Majestic reported mine-operating earnings of $21.1 million in the March-end quarter compared with the year-ago quarters $10.3 million. This upside resulted from a 10% increase in average realized silver price and lower cost of sales and depletion, depreciation and amortization due to the temporary suspension of lower margin mines.



Financial Position



The company ended the first quarter with $145.2 million of cash in hand, up from the prior-year quarters $91.5 million. It recorded an operating cash flow of $12 million in the reported quarter compared with the prior-year quarters $33 million. The company had total available liquidity of $204.9 million, including $65 million of undrawn revolving credit facility.



Guidance Suspension



The company suspended its previously-issued annual guidance for the current year and is currently reassessing the same following the Mexican Government update on May 13. The coronavirus pandemic is likely to hurt First Majestics near-term production and liquidity.



The companys operations at San Dimas, Santa Elena and La Encantada mines were temporarily suspended in the month of April in compliance with the Mexican Ministry of Healths decree to mitigate the risks associated with COVID-19.



On May 13, the Mexican Government officially confirmed that mining is now deemed essential and can restart operations on May 18, 2020. Consequently, the company is implementing restart procedures across its mine sites, while maintaining strict sanitary controls and supporting local communities, and expects full production rates will be reached in early July.



Price Performance



Shares of the company have gained 45.4% over the past year, outperforming the industrys growth of 15.5%.

Story continues





Zacks Rank & Other Stocks to Consider



First Majestic currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).



A few other top-ranked stocks in the basic materials space are Newmont Corporation NEM, Barrick Gold Corporation GOLD and Franco-Nevada Corporation FNV, each currently carrying a Zacks Rank #2. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



Newmont has an expected earnings growth rate of 90.2% for 2020. The companys shares have surged 103.6% in the past year.



Barrick Gold has an estimated earnings growth rate of 60.8% for the ongoing year. Its shares have soared 112.7% over the past year.



Franco-Nevada has a projected earnings growth rate of 19.2% for the current year. The companys shares have appreciated 92.5% in a years time.



Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020



In addition to the stocks discussed above, would you like to know about our 10 finest buy-and-hold tickers for the entirety of 2020?



Last year's 2019 Zacks Top 10 Stocks portfolio returned gains as high as +102.7%. Now a brand-new portfolio has been handpicked from over 4,000 companies covered by the Zacks Rank. Dont miss your chance to get in on these long-term buys.



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First Majestic Silver Corp. (AG) : Free Stock Analysis Report



To read this article on Zacks.com click here.
By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 14, 2020 | 05:23 PM | PADUCAH

On Thursday, Officers with the Paducah Police Department were called to the intersection of South 6th Street and Kentucky Avenue after a report of a collision. Tracey Lampley, a PATS bus driver, reportedly told officers that she was driving through a green light when her bus was hit by another vehicle. The driver of the other vehicle, 36-year-old Zachary Collier, told officers that he couldn't remember how the collision happened.







Officers say Collier then failed a field sobriety test multiple times. He was arrested and lodged in the McCracken County Jail. Some of the passengers of the bus were taken to the hospital after complaining of neck and back pain.





Collier is being charged with a second offense DUI. Earlier in the week we reported on his first arrest after his vehicle allegedly ran off the road, hit a tree, landscaping, and a sign at BB&T Bank. That story can be found at the link below.

A Paducah man is facing his second DUI charge of the week after a collision involving a PATS bus.

On the Net:
(Bloomberg) -- SoftBank Group Corp. spent about $2.3 billion in the past two months buying back its own shares, adding market support as the Japanese company prepares to report record losses next week.

The company bought 250.6 billion yen of its own stock since March 13, about half of the 500 billion yen budget for the re-purchase slated to run through next March. It purchased 58,648,400 of its own stock as of April 30, amounting to roughly 40% of the 145 million planned total, SoftBank said in a statement on Friday.

The Tokyo-based company, led by founder Masayoshi Son, has said it expects to book a record 1.35 trillion yen operating loss for the year ended March 31 when it reports financial results Monday. SoftBank had been among the most aggressive investors in startups in recent years, but it is now marking down the value of stakes in companies such as WeWork, Oyo Hotels and Uber Technologies Inc.

Read more: SoftBanks $23 Billion Buyback Helps Investors Ignore Profit Hit

The buyback announced in mid-March initially failed to lift SoftBanks stock amid concerns the conglomerates portfolio of startups is particularly vulnerable to the economic shock from the coronavirus pandemic. When the shares plunged more than 30% in the week that followed, Son took an unprecedented step to unveil a second re-purchase of as much as 2 trillion yen.

The stock gained almost 70% since SoftBank said it plans to sell assets to raise as much as 4.5 trillion yen over the coming year to buy shares and slash debt. The shares closed little changed at 4,574 yen in Tokyo on Friday, ahead of the buyback announcement.

Read more: SoftBank Heads for Record Loss After $80 Billion Startup Spree

The companys Vision Fund business, technology investments that contributed more than half of its reported profit a year ago, has swung to a projected 1.8 trillion yen loss. The companys overall net loss will likely reach 900 billion yen.

(Updates with share price moves from third paragraph)

Story continues

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
HINGHAM, Mass., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Hospital heroes around the country are working tirelessly making personal sacrifices while also going above and beyond the call of duty. Talbots recognized the tremendous need for clean and comfortable clothing for female nurses, doctors and dedicated administrators. As a gesture of the brand's gratitude and appreciation, Talbots wanted to celebrate these everyday superheroes by donating comfortable apparel.

To date, Talbots has shipped over 11,000 items (including yoga pants, cotton tee-shirts and socks) from their T by Talbots athleisure collection as well as pajamas for those who have been sleeping at the hospital. Over 4,000 dedicated female workers have received Talbots donations at overburdened hospitals in both Massachusetts and New York, where Talbots has corporate offices. Many workers have used the clothing to change into before arriving home, protecting their family from the virus that could be lingering on their scrubs while others are enjoying the comfortable clothing under their PPE.

As CEO, Lizanne Kindler said, "We are so very grateful for the opportunity to make an impact on the lives of these inspiring front line workers. Sending Talbots donations is just a small way of saying thank you while recognizing their dedication, compassion and devotion to patients during the Covid-19 pandemic."

Katherine A. Rafferty, Director of Community Affairs at Mount Auburn Hospital said, "This year Nurses Week was very different at Mount Auburn Hospital. There was little time for the traditional celebrations. Our clinicians and staff are supporting COVID-19 patients with extraordinary skill, compassion and dedication. But on Nurses Day, over 600 nurses received a gift bag from Talbots filled with leggings, a shirt and socks. For a brief while, there was laughter as nurses exchanged items with one another  'anyone want to trade a medium for a small'; 'I'll give you my short sleeve for your long sleeve.' Deals were made and smiles were seen. T by Talbots items brought joy to the Mount Auburn Hospital staff during the most trying of times. Thank you Talbots for helping us celebrate Nurses Day with style."

Additionally, Talbots has donated 10,000 non-surgical masks to the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and the brand is also selling a three-pack of decorative, printed masks on Talbots.com for $25.00 with 20% of proceeds going to The American Red Cross.

The brand is also launching a weekly social campaign called #ForeverGrateful which will highlight everyday heroes, the women who are showing up in their community each day with heartfelt heroic acts, both big and small. Check it out at @TalbotsOfficial

To date, the following hospitals have received Talbots donations:

New York City Hospitals:

Lenox Hill Hospital

Elmhurst Hospital

Mount Sinai Hospital

Massachusetts Hospitals:

Mount Auburn Hospital

Mass General Hospital

South Shore Hospital

Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Newton  Wellesley Hospital

About Talbots

Established in 1947, Talbots is a multi-channel retailer of women's apparel, shoes and accessories. Currently the Company operates over 500 Talbots stores throughout the U.S. and Canada. Its online shopping site is located at www.Talbots.com.

Press Contact:

Meredith Paley

[email protected]

212.841.1845

Related Images

staff-at-mount-auburn-hospital-in.jpg

Staff at Mount Auburn Hospital in Cambridge, MASS

Staff at Mount Auburn Hospital enjoying their Talbots donations on National Nurses Day

staff-at-lenox-hill-hospital-in.jpg

Staff at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City

Staff at Lenox Hill enjoying their Talbots donations

image3.jpg

talbots-face-mask-mixed-print-3.jpg

Talbots Face Mask - Mixed Print (3 Pack) $25.00

SOURCE Talbots

Related Links

https://www.talbots.com


King Abdullah II of Jordan said in an interview with the German magazine Der Spiegel that Israeli annexation of parts of the West Bank will lead to a massive conflict with Jordan."

Why it matters: This is the harshest statement by the King regarding possible annexation of parts of the West Bank by Israel. It comes days after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Israel for talks with Israeli leaders and ahead of the swearing in of the new Israeli government on Sunday.

What hes saying: When asked if Jordan would suspend its peace treaty with Israel if the annexation takes place, King Abdullah said: I don't want to make threats and create an atmosphere of loggerheads, but we are considering all options."

The King stressed that all parties in the region should focus now on fighting the coronavirus together rather than dealing with unilateral annexation of the West Bank.

that all parties in the region should focus now on fighting the coronavirus together rather than dealing with unilateral annexation of the West Bank. Leaders who advocate a one-state solution do not understand what that would mean. What would happen if the Palestinian National Authority collapsed? There would be more chaos and extremism in the region," he said.

The backstory: The coalition deal that allowed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to form a new government says he can bring "the understandings with the Trump administration" on annexation up for a vote in the cabinet or parliament as early as July 1  but only with the full agreement of the White House.

The Trump administration does not view the new Israeli government's July 1 deadline to begin the process of annexing parts of the West Bank as a "do or die" date, a senior U.S. official told me.

What's next: Jordan has been lobbying the U.S. and EU member states for the last several weeks to discourage the new Israeli government from moving forward on annexation of the West Bank. The foreign ministers of the 27 member states of the EU met today via video conference to discuss the issue.
by Carlyle Douglas





Some light has been shed on a 2020 Easter incident in Layou.





Around 2pm in the holy hours of Good Friday, the voice of a woman pierced the reverence of the atmosphere with a bellowing of, "(Expletive) policeman fuh dead!





Later that day, news spread that Cosmos Young, a well-known auto-mechanic and long- standing resident of Layou, had been shot by police.





THE VINCENTIAN first sought clarification from the Police Public Relations Department, but was met with a "no comment response.





However, a recent interview with Young shed some light on the reason for the Good Friday profanities by the woman.





According to Young, on Holy Thursday he was repairing a jeep in front of his home. He took a break, left on a bicycle belonging to Rodney Francis and which he was accustomed using, to run a quick errand.





He did so and returned to working on the jeep. He admitted to not returning the bicycle to the spot from where he had removed it, but instead had lodged it in his yard.





Sometime elapsed and he was approached by three men who turned out to be Police Officers in plain clothes. He was questioned about the bicycle, during which the officers accused him of stealing tit.





Young said he was ordered to accompany them to the police station so that he could clarify the matter. He objected to the order, offered some resistance, all the while insisting that he did not steal the bicycle.





Realising there was no sense in prolonging his objection/resistance, he mustered the courage to ask the officers if he could finish the repair job on the jeep, before he went to the police station.





It was then, according to Young, that he was shot in the thigh of his left leg by an officer he described as "fair-skinned and tall, who then picked up a hammer he, Young, was using, as if to indicate that he had used his firearm to avert a threat.





The bullet, he said, reportedly shattered the bone and he has had to have an externally affixed metal splint to hold it together.





Young is now partially disabled, unable to walk and move about unaided, and when THE VINCENTIAN visited with him recently, he grimaced in pain as he used his hands to move his injured leg.





As a result of the injury, Young is unable to ply his trade, and is dependent on others for his daily upkeep, including meals.





The fact that he occupies the top story of his house, adds to his isolation.





Young has been charged with stealing the bicycle, and assaulting (cuffing) a police officer while in the process of executing his duty.





The matter was down for hearing last Wednesday at the Layou Court, but was postponed until next week Wednesday.
Construction companies in Singapore have been asked to follow strict safety measures like the regular testing of the foreign workers for the coronavirus once the work resumes on the pending projects next month after the completion of the "circuit breaker" period, a senior government official has said.

Singapore's Manpower Minister Josephine Teo has said the government will gradually lift some of the measures in June that are targeting the migrant workers to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

Foreign workers living in dormitories in Singapore form the bulk of the COVID-19 infections in the country which till Thursday has recorded 26,098 cases.

Singapore on Tuesday allowed some businesses, including food manufacturers, barbers, specific food retail outlets, to reopen.

Construction companies must implement safety measures for workers when projects gradually resume after the "circuit breaker" period ends on June 1, including regular COVID-19 tests and managing their interaction, Channel Asia reported on Friday.

Every worker will be required to download contact tracing app TraceTogether, and employers should put in place a system to track the daily health status of every worker, said Hugh Lim, CEO of the state agency, Building and Construction Authority (BCA), told reporters on Friday.

Currently, about 20,000 workers, or about five per cent of the construction workforce - have been allowed to work on a small number of critical infrastructure projects during the circuit breaker period.

Lim expects another 20,000 workers to gradually resume work next month.

Work will resume on critical and time-sensitive projects from June 2 as these cannot be left idle for too long due to safety concerns. These are multi-million-dollar projects such as part of the subway and tunnelling of a deep tunnel sewerage system.

Previously suspended residential renovation works will also be allowed to resume, Lim said.

Employers will also have to house and separate workers based on the projects they are working on under a cohorting strategy, and provide transport services between the work site and their accommodation, Lim said, adding that workers from different projects will not be allowed to mix with each other.

At the work sites itself, companies will have to appoint safe management officers to enforce the safety measures, put up health advisory posters and infographics in the foreign workers' native languages, and install technology-enabled processes - such as the digital SafetyEntry system used islandwide right now - when workers enter and exit specific zones within the worksite.

Workers will be split into teams and restricted to work in a single zone; no cross-deployment or interaction between workers in different teams will be allowed, according to the Channel report.

Contractors must provide workers with individually packed meals and utensils as well as masks while they are on the job.

Facilities that are shared and heavily used will have to be well-ventilated and disinfected frequently, while hand-washing stations must be installed at exit points.

Two other labour-intensive and employing a large number of foreign workers industries - the marine and offshore and the process sector - are also developing their own COVID safety plans that will be released in due course, Ministry of Manpower permanent secretary Aubeck Kam said.

The BCA said that it will audit and inspect work sites to make sure they observe these COVID-19 safety rules.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Technologists and health officials around the world are racing to develop smartphone apps to trace who has been in contact with carriers of the novel coronavirus.

Contact-tracing, a disease control tactic that traditionally relies on patients memories of their movements, identifies people they might have infected so they too can be isolated.

First generation apps that use bluetooth technology

Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology used for things like connecting wireless headphones to a smartphone. It detects when another Bluetooth signal is near and can estimate the distance between devices  making it a good tool for contact-tracing.

Singapores TraceTogether, launched in March, was the first Bluetooth-based contact-tracing app. When a person tests positive for COVID-19, health authorities can look at the persons Bluetooth history and, in Singapores case, call all the people on that list and order them to quarantine.

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

Countries that have launched similar Bluetooth apps include Australia, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

But these apps face obstacles. Most of the population has to use them if they are to be effective. On Apples iPhone, the app has to be open at all times for it to work, which is a drain on the battery. Apps may fail to record some encounters between iPhones and devices running Googles Android operating system, or between pairs of older Android devices.

Apps that will use the Apple-Google bluetooth approach

The two tech giants said last month they would build special software to make Bluetooth apps work better. At first, this will be a tool that developers can integrate in their apps. That is due out in coming days.

Later this year, Apple and Google will include the tool in software updates, meaning users can log contacts without having to download an app.

The two companies set strict privacy rules. Apps cannot collect any personal data, including where contacts happened. Contact data is stored only on the phone, and when a user is confirmed as infected an anonymous notification about possible exposure will go directly to other phones.

In France, Norway, Britain and the United States, governments complained this is too limiting, as they wont be able to see where disease clusters are. But given the challenge of making apps work smoothly without the Apple-Google tools, the Norway, U.K. and some governments in the U.S. told Reuters they are now considering giving up on collecting location data.

Many European countries including Germany and Italy have agreed to go with, or shown interest, in the Google-Apple approach, with a Swiss-led consortium, DP-3T, leading the way.

Apps that use phone location data

The GPS satellite system, as well as cellphone towers, make it possible for governments and network operators to track smartphones and many other types of mobile phones. Using a database, health authorities can then see when and where a person who tested positive crossed paths with other people.

The data isnt perfect: GPS can be inexact in a crowded high-rise, for example, and cell-tower data varies in precision. Systematic use of such data to track people is invasive and thus anathema to many people and governments.

Still, Ghana, Iceland, India, Israel, Norway and the several U.S. states have rolled out apps that use location data.

Apps that go beyond contact tracing

Some countries, notably China, have developed apps that collect personal health data, travel and other information useful for disease control and identifying individuals at risk. Chinese citizens must carry a health code app that rates their risk level to enter shops or ride on trains, for example.

Indias app has similar functions, and Colombia told Reuters it hopes to launch an app with a digital passport feature.

Private companies around the world may also require such apps for people to return to work.

OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE CONTACT-TRACING APPS

It remains unknown whether Bluetooth-based contact-tracing apps will be effective. The early apps still only have limited adoption and are hampered by their lack of the Apple-Google technology. A major concern is that apps will log an overwhelming number of erroneous ontacts. Privacy worries could limit uptake of the apps and make them ineffective.

OTHER METHODS OF HIGH TECH CONTACT-TRACING

Many law enforcement and spy agencies can track people without consent via phones, surveillance cameras and other methods. Such techniques have been used in China for COVID-19 tracking. Israel uses such systems also for that purpose, though not without controversy.

Commercial spyware companies have also tried to sell their systems for COVID-19 tracking.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:00:52|Editor: huaxia

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HONG KONG, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Andrew Au, an economist of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government, said Friday that the economy will hopefully improve gradually in the second half of the year if the local COVID-19 epidemic remains well contained and Hong Kong's major trading partners are successful in reopening the economy.

Au said at a press conference that the HKSAR government will continue to closely monitor the situation and introduce measures as necessary to support enterprises and safeguard jobs.

The HKSAR government on Friday published revised economic figures for the first quarter of the year.

According to the figures, Hong Kong's GDP slumped 8.9 percent year on year and 5.3 percent quarter on quarter during the January-March period, both the largest for a single quarter ever on record. Goods and services exports dropped 9.9 percent and 37.8 percent from a year ago, respectively. Private consumption shrank 10.1 percent, and investment went down 14.3 percent.

The labor market also worsened in the first quarter, with the jobless rate up to 4.2 percent, the highest in more than nine years.

Au said the government has lowered the GDP growth forecast for 2020 to negative 4 percent to negative 7 percent, considering lackluster economic performance in the first quarter, uncertainties of the pandemic and difficult global economic situation, as well as massive relief measures. Enditem
Disadvantaged and marginalised people face worsening health inequalities as a result of the difficult choices made by NHS hospitals in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. Public health doctors, writing in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, say that the restriction of non-urgent clinical services, such as gynaecology, sexual health and paediatrics, and the precipitous decline in emergency department attendances, will affect marginalised groups, disproportionately. Emergency departments, which in March 2020 saw a 44% decline in attendances, are often used for routine care by vulnerable people, such as homeless people and migrants, who can find it difficult to access general practice and other community services.

In their article, the authors explore the nature of health inequalities relating to the response to Covid-19 by hospital trusts and suggest approaches to reduce them. One concern highlighted is the suspension of carbon monoxide screening for pregnant women. Younger women, and those living in more deprived areas, are more likely to smoke during pregnancy. Lead author Sophie Coronini-Cronberg, consultant in public health at Chelsea and Westminster NHS Foundation Trust, said: "It remains vital that maternity services continue to ask women (and their partners) if they smoke or have recently quit, and continue to refer those who smoke for specialist cessation support." Official guidance advises postponing face-to-face smoking cessation clinics during the pandemic. Ms Coronini-Cronberg said: "We encourage providers to provide alternative remote services, to ensure these are equitable and to promote these tenaciously."

The authors also point to the problem of inaccurate baseline data for disease prevalence and progression which for many conditions can vary by ethnicity. Miss Coronini-Cronberg said: "It is imperative that we rigorously capture baseline data so that we understand the impact of key risk factors on disease prognosis, including Covid-19." The authors write that while ethnicity data are generally accurately captured for white British patients, for minority groups only 60-80% of hospital records capture ethnicity correctly. "We risk reaching incorrect conclusions based on flawed data", they say.

Other areas of concern highlighted by the authors include the inequalities faced by contracted workers who may provide critical hospital functions such as security, cleaning, portering and catering and who are more likely to be migrants.

The authors conclude: "The NHS has taken swift action to expand capacity and reorganise services to help ensure that health services can help with an influx of seriously ill Covid-19 patients. Difficult choices have been made, and some unintended consequences are inevitable. Policymakers, managers and clinicians should take pause during this phase to protect the most vulnerable groups in our society from negative unintended consequences and avoid worsening health inequalities."

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A NSCN(IM) militant wanted in



connection with the killing of a former MLA and 10 others in Arunachal Pradesh was arrested by security forces from Longding district, an official said.

Personnel of the Indian Army in a joint operation with district police apprehended the rebel identified as self- styled 'Sergeant Major' Puman Wangsu from a forest near Longphong village in the district, Kohima-based Defence spokesman Lt Col Sumit Kumar Sharma informed.

Based on a specific intelligence input, the joint team launched an operation in the forest located close to the village.

During search operation on Tuesday last, the troops apprehended the cadre while trying to flee from the location, the spokesman said.

The apprehended cadre was handed over to Longding police station for further investigations, the spokesman added.

Forty-two-year-old Tirong Aboh, the MLA representing Khonsa West assembly constituency along with his 20-year-old son Loggem Aboh and Wangngoi Hakhun and eight others were killed in an ambush near Bogapani, around 20-km from Khonsa, the headquarters of Tirap district on May 21 last year.

The MLA along with others was on his way to Khonsa from Dibrugarh in Assam in four vehicles when suspected NSCN (IM) militants stopped the convoy and fired upon.

The National Investigating Agency (NIA) had registered a case on June 10 after the state government handed over the case to the agency.

The NIA first arrested a self-styled 'Lieutenant' of the NSCN (IM) Yangte Josaham from Dimapur in August last year.

Josaham is the area commander of the outfit for Longding.

In another breakthrough, security forces arrested self-styled Corporal of the National Socialist Council of Nagalim (Khaplang-Kitovi) from Changlang district in Arunachal Pradesh on May 12 last.

The militant, who was apprehended during a joint operation near Sankha Havi on the district by Assam Rifles and Changlang district police, has been identified as Tonlang Pangtha, the spokesman said.

Security forces also recovered a 9 mm pistol with magazine, nine rounds of live ammunition and one mobile phone from the arrested rebel.

The apprehended cadre along with the recovered items has been handed over to Changlang police station for further investigations, the spokesman added.

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


Tims Find Small Scale Mining Operations Investor Update

Canberra, May 15, 2020 AEST (ABN Newswire) - Alt Resources Ltd ( ASX:ARS ) is providing this update on the planned mining operations at the Tim's Find gold deposit, located in the Mt Ida South region of the Mt Ida and Bottle Creek Gold Project. The Company lodged the Tim's Find Mine Plan (TFMP) application with the Department of Mines Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) on 7 April 20201.Under the proposed mine plan, mining operations were scheduled to commence in July 2020 pending the mine plan approval by the DMIRS, the availability of the Blue Cap mining fleet and access to a third party processing plant.To date the Company has been unable to confirm or lock down contracted milling capacity to process the Tim's Find ore. The Kalgoorlie Lakewood Mill is fully booked for the remainder of 2020 and further into mid 2021 with no additional milling capacity available.Subject to the advice from Lakewood, the Company was negotiating an ore sale agreement with the Paddington mill with ore scheduled to be delivered September through October 2020 under that agreement. The Company has now been advised by Paddington that all their spare milling capacity through to early 2021 has now been contracted to a larger Company.The very strong Australian gold price has led to significantly increased demand for milling capacity in the Western Australian Goldfields region with multiple small-scale mining operations commencing during the first quarter of 2020 and larger producers also looking for additional mill capacity to process ore. The lack of milling options has also led to an increased toll treatment cost per ore tonne. The Company will not commence mining operations at the Tim's Find project without a contracted milling solution in place and is discussing other milling solutions.About Aurenne Alt Resources Pty Ltd

Aurenne Alt Resources Pty Ltd is an Australian based mineral exploration company that aims to become a gold producer by exploiting historical and new gold prospects across quality assets and to build value for shareholders.
China is preparing to place U.S. companies including Apple and Boeing on an unreliable entities list in response to newly announced sanctions on tech giant Huawei.

China will take forceful countermeasures to protect its own legitimate rights, a source told Chinas government-owned Global Times. The country could cease purchasing planes made by Boeing, and impose restrictions or even launch investigations into Qualcomm, Cisco, or Apple under Chinese anti-monopoly and cybersecurity laws.

The threat comes after the U.S. Commerce Department announced sanctions that would prevent companies from selling semiconductor ships to Huawei if the chips are manufactured with American technology. The U.S. considers Huawei a national security threat, alleging that the Chinese government can gain access to data gathered by Huawei networks around the world.

Senator Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) welcomed the new sanctions on Friday.

Lets cut to the chase: Chinas main export is espionage, and the distinction between the Chinese Communist Party and Chinese private-sector businesses like Huawei is imaginary, Sasse said in a statement. Huaweis supply chain depends on contracts with American companies and the Commerce Department ought to take a careful look at how we can effectively disrupt our adversary.

The Global Times reported earlier this week that the Chinese government was considering sanctions on U.S. lawmakers who have taken a hawkish line against the country, including Senators Josh Hawley (R., Mo.) and Tom Cotton (R., Ark.).

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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Lucky Minerals Inc. (TSXV:LKY)(OTC:LKMNF)(FRA:LKY) ("Lucky" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement with Canaccord Genuity Corp. to act as financial advisor to sell, by way of a private placement, up to 23,333,333 post-consolidation units of the Company (the "Units") at a price of C$0.15 per Unit (the "Offering Price") for gross proceeds of up to C$3,500,000 (the "Offering"). Concurrent with closing the Offering, the Company will undertake a consolidation of its share capital on the basis of one (1) new share for each seven and one-half shares (7.5) currently outstanding.The Company has entered into an agreement with a syndicate of strategic investors led by Palisades Goldcorp Ltd., as lead order for $1,000,000.Each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (a "Common Share") and one common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant") exercisable into one Common Share for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the Offering (the "Closing Date") at an exercise price of C$0.22 per Warrant.A cash commission equal to 7% of the gross proceeds of the Offering and warrants to purchase such number of Units as is equal to 7% of the Units sold may be payable on part of the Offering (the "Compensation Warrants"). The Compensation Warrants will be exercisable for a period of 12 months following the Closing Date at an exercise price equal to the Offering Price. Additionally, Canaccord will receive a cash commission equal to C$25,000 and share consideration equal to $25,000 to be issued at a price equal to the Offering Price.The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for exploration expenditures on the Fortuna Property in southern Ecuador as well as working capital and general corporate purposes.The Offering is subject to the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the TSX Venture Exchange and may close in multiple tranches. All securities issued pursuant to the Offering will be subject to a four-month hold period in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws.Share Consolidation:The Company also announces that the Board of Directors have agreed to consolidate the share capital of the Company on the basis of one (1) new share for each seven and one-half shares (7.5) currently outstanding (the "Share Consolidation"). At present there are 192,788,812 shares issued and outstanding, which would result in 25,705,175 shares being issued and outstanding on a post-consolidated basis before the Offering. The Company will not be changing its name as part of the Share Consolidation.The Company's board of directors believes that it is in the best interests of the Company to adjust its capital structure through the consolidation of its common shares in order to position itself as a more attractive long-term investment by completing the above-mentioned Offering.The potential benefits of the Consolidation include:Greater investor interest - As a new gold-focused explorer, Lucky is expected to appeal to many new investors. The primary motive for the equity consolidation is to complete the above-mentioned Offering and expand the ownership of Lucky common shares to new investors.Reduced Price Volatility - As a result of the anticipated higher post-Share Consolidation Common Share price.Improved Working Capital - After closing of the Offering, which is dependent upon the Share Consolidation, greater capital will be available to advance the Company's projects and achieve major milestones.The exercise or conversion price of, and the number of Common Shares issuable under, any convertible securities of the Company will be proportionately adjusted upon the completion of the Share Consolidation.Shareholders who hold their shares through a securities broker or dealer, bank or trust company, will not be required to take any action with respect to the share consolidation. No fractional shares will be issued in connection with the Share Consolidation. The Share Consolidation has been approved by the Company's board of directors and is subject to approval from the TSX Venture Exchange.About Palisades GoldcorpPalisades Goldcorp is Canada's largest resource focused merchant bank. Palisades' management team has a demonstrated track record of making money and is backed by many of the industry's most notable financiers. With junior resource equities valued at generational lows, Palisades' management believes the sector is on the cusp of a major bull market move. Palisades is positioning itself with significant stakes in undervalued companies and assets with the goal of generating superior returns.About LuckyLucky is an exploration and development company targeting large-scale mineral systems in proven districts with the potential to host world class deposits. Lucky owns a 100% interest in the Fortuna and Emigrant Projects.The Company's Fortuna Project is a royalty-free 550km2 (55,000 Ha, or 136,000 Acres) exploration concession. Fortuna is located in a highly prospective, yet underexplored, gold belt in southern Ecuador. Lucky has entered into a memorandum of understanding on Fortuna with First Quantum Minerals Ltd. ("First Quantum") whereby First Quantum is able to earn up to 70% on primary copper targets.The Emigrant Creek Project covers a 15 km2 area in an intensely altered and mineralized porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum system in southern Montana.ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD"Adrian Rothwell"Chief Executive OfficerThis news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to sell any of securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to or for the account or benefit of U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available.Further information on Lucky can be found on the Company's website at www.luckyminerals.com and at www.sedar.com , or by contacting Adrian Rothwell, President and CEO, by email at investors@ luckyminerals.com or by telephone at (866) 924 6484.Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (
Building materials giant Boral is temporarily closing more plants as a coronavirus-induced softness in the residential construction market continues to weigh on demand for its products.

The $3.2 billion ASX-listed business warned on Friday that its profit margins had fallen betwwen 3-5 per cent in the first four months of 2020, with the COVID-19 economic shock and the lockdowns taking their toll.

Boral, whose earnings have been hit by the shock from COVID-19, is temporarily closing some plants to manage costs. Credit:Ben Rushton

Boral said it would cut capital expenditure by 15-20 per cent to about $330 million this financial year, and cut labour and discretionary costs to preserve cash. It will shut its kiln at Berrima NSW for up to three weeks in June. The kiln manufactures clinker, the base material used in cement manufacturing.

Boral already has four North American plants either fully or partially closed in response to government mandates. All up, about one in four of its North American workforce of 6900 have been temporarily stood down.
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Governor Ikpeazu Hails State Command Of The NDLEA And Warns Criminals To Steer Clear Of Abia State

The Governor of Abia State, Okezie Ikpeazu, PhD has sent a message of commendation to the Abia State Command of National Drug Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) for successfully combating a gang of criminals and illegal drug peddlers around the Ngwa Road by Mosque Street area, especially within the premises of College Primary School.

Following repeated complains by the members of the public over the activities of some criminals around that area ranging from sexual assaults, sale and use of illicit drugs, snatching of bags and armed robberies, the Governor challenged security agencies, especially the NDLEA to move into the area and take all lawful and necessary steps to rid the place of the criminal elements.

The State Command of the NDLEA conducted a successful operation there yesterday, leading to the arrest of four of the suspected criminals, seizure of some illicit substances and destruction of the hideout used by the criminals as a haven for their operations.

Governor Okezie Ikpeazu salutes the gallantry of the officers of the State Command of the NDLEA led by the State Commander, Mr. Akingbade Bamidele and urged them to sustain the tempo and ensure that illicit drug peddlers are chased away from all corners of the State.

The Governor decried the increasing abuse of illicit drugs by some people in the State and warned that his administration shall be very relentless in the war against hard and illicit drugs in the State.

He charged the NDLEA to ensure that the arrested suspects are charged to court immediately and made to face the full wrath of the law.

Governor Ikpeazu also directed the Deputy General Manager of ASEPA, Aba Zone to, as a matter of urgency, mobilize his men and equipment into that area ensure that a thorough cleaning exercise is carried out there while the State Government will take further steps to help make the area uncomfortable for criminals to operate.
Well-known TikTok influencer Mawada Eladhm was arrested on Thursday on charges of violating the values and principles of the family within Egyptian society, the prosecution general said.

Eladhm will be detained for four days pending investigations by the prosecution.

In a statement, the prosecution accused Eladhm of establishing and running websites and accounts through social media that violated family values and principles.

The vice police arrested her on Thursday; she had fled her residence at an upscale New Cairo compound and moved around between Cairo and the North Coast following an arrest warrant issued by the prosecution earlier this week, the prosecution said, and was arrested in a compound in 6 October city.

The security authorities tracked her down through her car.

The statement detailed that during her arrest, the authorities found a laptop, a mobile phone without a SIM card connected to MiFi, and a handbag.

Eladhm has 3.1 million followers on the popular social network. The first video on her official account, which is still open, is dated to 2018.

She has an Instagram account followed by 1.6 million people, and her account on YouTube has over 300,000 subscribers.

Eladhm, whose primary fame came via posting videos in which she lip synced and danced, was arrested along with another woman in March for violating the curfew imposed by the Egyptian government to curb the spread of coronavirus in the country.

She was later released on EGP20,000 bail.

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Megachurch Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne meets with Sheriff who had him arrested

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Leader of Revival International Ministries and The River at Tampa Bay Church in Florida, Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne, appears to be mending fences with Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister who had him arrested in March for hosting in-person church services during the coronavirus pandemic.

Howard-Browne, who had warned that Chronister would have to deal with Jesus" for his decision to arrest him, announced in a post on Facebook on April 29 that he met with the sheriff at his home and discussed plans to reopen the county.

Breaking News: So honored to meet with Sheriff Chad Chronister today! He came to our house and met with @adonicashowardbrowne and I. We had a great lunch together. We discussed the way forward in the opening up of Hillsborough County and the role of the @rivertampabay River Church in cooperation with the Hillsborough County Sheriffs department. Its time to get our County back to normalcy - thank you Sheriff Chronister, he wrote.

Chronister confirmed the meeting in a statement to the Tampa Bay Times.

I met with Pastor Howard-Browne to discuss the future, not the past, the sheriff said. We have committed to moving forward together.

The megachurch pastor was arrested in March for what officials said was the violation of a "safer-at-home" order, which prohibited large worship services during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. His arrest order shows that he was charged with unlawful assembly and violation of public health emergency rules, which are both second-degree misdemeanors, punishable by up to 60 days in jail and a maximum fine of $500.

The charges are being contested on the megachurch pastors behalf by Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit litigation, education, and policy organization dedicated to advancing religious freedom, the sanctity of life, and the family.

At the time of Howard-Brownes arrest, Chronister  who had previously appeared at the pastors church as a guest of honor during his Sheriff Appreciation Day  called the pastors decision to hold in-person worship services reckless.

"Our goal is not to stop people from worshiping," Chronister said at a news conference, "but the safety and well-being of our community must always come first.

"Its a shame that someone has taken advantage of this. For whatever reason, I just dont understand it. The only reason I can see is its a reckless reason  to put your parishioners in jeopardy," the sheriff said.

Many Floridians were upset about Howard-Brownes arrest, Florida Politics reported, and Brian Boswell, a former Hillsborough County Sheriffs detective, has filed to run against Chronister for his position. Boswell served 25 years with HCSO but was forced out of his position after disciplinary action dating back to 2014 triggered a demotion, reduction in pay, suspensions and ultimately his job, the publication noted.

Howard-Browne said Chronister will be at his church as soon as it's open for worship services again.

Sheriff Chad will be there on the opening Sunday when we restart in-house meetings. We will keep you posted as to when that will be, Howard-Browne noted.




Over the years, people have realized that the Samurai can go places that even the more accomplished off-roaders cant. Currently sold as the Jimny worldwide, Suzuki has sold almost three million copies to date since its inception in 1970. Although the Samurai was quite famous in the States, there are a few things that not many people know about. So, heres a list of 10 surprising facts about the Suzuki Samurai.

The Suzuki Samurai reached our shores in 1985 but lived a very short life before the sales hit rock bottom. However, that was enough for enthusiasts and purists to realize that this little off-roader will be remembered for ages to come by. The Samurai was cheap and affordable, and its compact size made it stand out from the horde of other big, bulky, off-road SUVs and trucks.

Its Not The First four-wheeled vehicle Suzuki Sold In The U.S.

Contrary to the beliefs that the Samurai was the first four-wheeled vehicle that Suzuki sold in the States, the seeds had actually been planted two decades before the Samurai was introduced.

In 1968, a Japanese company called Hope Motor Company introduced a small four-wheel-drive vehicle with a 359 cc Mitsubishi engine called the ON360. Suzuki later purchased this company and transitioned the ON360 into the 1970 LJ-10 ("Light Jeep"). The LJ-10 was imported to the States by the Marketing Head of Suzuki at that time, Tim Sharp, and was sold in California, Nevada, and Arizona. The tiny engine was not successful here, so Suzuki later went on to introduce the Samurai, and the rest is history.

The Samurai Was Essentially A Rebadged Jimny

The LJ-10 went on to be monikered the Jimny in 1970. Suzuki introduced its second-gen in 1981. In 1985, the company started exporting it to the U.S. as a 1986 model.

So, the Samurai sold here was actually the second-gen Jimny that was sold elsewhere. It came with a carbureted 1.3-liter overhead-cam four-cylinder mill that made 63 horses and 74 pound-feet of torque. The four-wheel-drive vehicle featured a five-speed manual gearbox. As for the dimensions, it measured 135 inches in length, 60.6 inches in width, and 64.6 inches in height. The short 80-inch wheelbase was deemed to be the culprit for the rollovers. It weighed 2,059 pounds. Suzuki had priced the Samurai at $6,200 for the base trim and $7,500 for the top model.

Suzuki Samurai specifications Engine 1.3-liter overhead-cam four-cylinder Horsepower 63 HP Torque 74 LB-FT Transmission five-speed manual Length 135 inches Width 60.6 inches Height 64.6 inches Wheelbase 80 inches Weight 2,059 lbs

You Can Blame Consumer Reports For The Samurais Premature Death

The Samurai was selling like hotcakes and was deemed to be a runaway success. Suzuki even had to quickly speed up its expansion plans in the States. In 1988, an employee of Consumer Reports rolled the test car under normal driving conditions and gave it an unacceptable rating along with the comment  easily rolls over in turns. The company insisted NHTSA to issue a recall, but the latter refused. But still, the damage was done. The CR report spread like wildfire and the Samurais sales plunged by 70-percent.

In 1996, Suzuki even sued CR for $60 million in damages and unspecified punitive damages. However, both the companies settled out of court in 2004. In the settlement, CR agreed to mention the agreement that it never intended to imply that the Samurai easily rolls over in routine driving conditions. And it notes that it never questioned the safety of any other Suzuki model and, in fact, praised the Suzuki Sidekick and recommended the Suzuki Vitara/XL-7.

The Samurai Holds A Guinness World Record That Is Still Unbeaten

An adventure duo from Chile holds the record for driving to the highest altitude by car. Which car, you ask? Pretty obvious, isnt it? The duo, Gonzalo Bravo and Eduardo Canales, climbed 6,688 m (21,942 feet) on the slopes of the Ojos Del Salado volcano, Atacama, Chile on 21 April 2007 in a 1986 modified Suzuki Samurai. Other than the obvious suspension and tire change, the Samurai was also equipped with a supercharged G16A four-cylinder mill.

When The Samurai Rained On The Wranglers Parade

When the Chilean duo reached the high point, they saw a sign that the previous record holders, Matthias Jeschke and his team, had left there. The folks had used a Jeep Wrangler for their record attempt. The sign read: Jeep Parking Only: All others dont make it up here anyway. Gonzalo and Eduardo passed this sign and brought it back with them. To this day, the Samurais record remains unbeaten. Jeep would perhaps be happy that the Samurai didnt live for long since it almost became a threat to the Wrangler.

The Samurai Was Even Offered With Two-Wheel Drive At One Point

People praise the little SUV for its fantastic four-wheel-drive system, but did you know that it was sold in a two-wheel-drive configuration as well?

In 1990, Suzuki gave the Samurai a little tweak. It added throttle-body fuel injection and increased the power to 68 horses. The next year, Suzuki introduced the two-wheel-drive system to cover all the bases and boost sales.

But, as expected, it didnt have a lot of takers and the automaker pulled the plug on this variant in 1993.

The Samurai Exceeded Suzukis Initial Expectations

When the Japanese automaker introduced the Samurai in the U.S., they expected around 1,200 examples to be sold a month and imported the same here accordingly. But thanks to the pricing and the overall proposition that was on offer, the demand far exceeded this, and Suzuki was soon selling 8,000 copies a month. It sold 47,000 examples in the first year, which is a record for the best first-year sales list of any Japanese cars in America. In the first three years itself, Suzuki had sold over 150,000 Samurais in the U.S. The company had to speed up its expansion plans to cater to this growing demand.

The Consumers Reports Article Made A Huge Impact On Suzukis Future In The U.S.

In 1989, Suzuki introduced the Sidekick. Unfortunately, it was at the time when the Samurais sales were declining thanks to the CR articles effect. Although the Sidekick was bigger, more powerful, and a lot more stable, it didnt succeed in the market and met the same fate as the Samurai. It is believed that the long-lasting impression of the CR article kept people away from this four-wheel-drive vehicle as well. Chevy rebadged it and sold it as the Geo Tracker in the North American market, but even this didnt survive for long.

Suzuki Introduced A Samurai That Could Drive Better On-Road

Although the Samurai was presented as a hardcore off-roader, Suzuki tried to create an iteration for better on-road use as well. This model was introduced in 1988 and was fitting called the "1988" model. In this iteration, the Samurai included softer suspension settings and a larger anti-sway bar to reduce body roll. A lower 5th gear ratio  .865:1 versus the earlier .795:1  increased engine rpm and power on the highway. Suzuki introduced a new aluminum radiator, a redesigned valve cover, and a larger transfer case U-joint flanges.

On the inside, it looked more appealing as the dash was completely redesigned. Square air vents replaced the round ones and the three-spoke steering wheel made way for a four-spoke unit. Seats were redesigned for comfort during long journeys and rubber shifter knobs were added to extract the raw feedback the shifts gave.

Fun fact: In a rather dull-witted move, the automaker removed the rear seats in 1994 because the U.S. had made the rear seat shoulder belts mandatory and the Samurai didnt have any. This was a sign that Suzuki had given up hopes on the product, and within a year, it pulled the plug on the vehicle.

Would The Wranglers Future have been In Jeopardy If The Samurai Had Stayed Longer?

This is big speculation, but do you think the Wranglers sales wouldve taken a big hit if the Samurai wouldve survived? When introduced, the Samurai cost almost two-thirds the price of the Wrangler at that time. The Wrangler was introduced in 1983, so it didnt have the legacy back then what it has now. In fact, in 1986, sales figures dropped to 16,853 from 37,956 examples sold the previous year. Suzukis little off-roader was launched in 1986. Was this the Samurai-effect? Sales sure picked up later, but if not for the CR article, could the Wranglers future have been in jeopardy?

People may say that they belonged to different categories, but Suzuki introduced a bigger Sidekick that would also take on the Wrangler even more closely, and whos to say that Suzuki wouldve come up with a plan for the Jeep SUV? We dont know how it wouldve turned out, but Jeep should probably be happy that Suzuki didnt succeed with both the products.
As people around the world wonder when the coronavirus might go away, experts say: Maybe never. The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that the new virus, which has infected 4.3 million people worldwide, may become endemic, just like the HIV virus, and that people may have to learn to live with it.

It could stay embedded in communities even if a vaccine is found, said WHO emergencies director Mike Ryan during a virtual news conference from Geneva. "HIV has not gone away, but we have come to terms with the virus," he said. About 100 organizations worldwide are working on developing a coronavirus vaccine. Even if they find one that works, containing the virus will take a "massive effort," the WHO official said.

Meanwhile, the California-based Gilead drug company has reached agreements with several companies to make its antiviral drug Veklury, the brand name of remdesivir, available in 127 countries to help treat COVID-19.

After weeks or months under lockdown, people around the world are eager to return to their normal lives, but the pandemic is showing no signs of going away, at least for now. Some countries, like New Zealand and Thailand, reported no new cases Wednesday, and Australia came close. Once hardest hit, Italy and Spain have both slashed the number of new cases.

But Russia has reported more than 10,000 new infections per day for the past 11 days. It has the second-highest number of COVID-19 cases after the United States. The country's prime minister and the president's spokesman are being treated for COVID-19. There are fears the situation may worsen because the country's official nonworking period ended Tuesday.

Some countries that seem to have halted the spread, like Germany and Korea, have seen a resurgence of cases. A spike of new infections in Lebanon prompted the government to reimpose a four-day lockdown Wednesday after it began gradually lifting restrictions earlier this month.
Iran seizes 4 trawl fishing boats in southern waters

May 15,2020 | Source: Xinhua

The Iranian authorities seized four trawl fishing boats in the country's southern waters on Wednesday, Tasnim news agency reported.



Eight foreign nationals were arrested in the operation, according to border police of Hormozgan Province.



The boats and the detainees were handed over to the judicial authorities for violating fishing regulation, Tasnim said.



Over the past years, Iran has seized a number of foreign boats for deep-sea trawl net fishing in its southern waters.

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Theme(s): Fishing Craft, Gear and Fishing Methods.
The Turkish authorities detained four more popularly elected mayors in Turkeys Kurdish-majority southeast today, part of an ongoing campaign against the Kurdish-friendly People's Democratic Party (HDP), the third largest party in the Turkish parliament. A fifth mayor was also fired but not detained.

The mayors were hauled away from their homes, stripped of office and replaced with government-appointed trustees, a pattern that has been repeated across the Kurdish-dominated region before and since the nationwide municipal elections in March 2019.

The mayors are accused of links to militants from the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is waging an armed campaign for autonomy against the Turkish state. The group is classified as terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and the European Union.

Two of the jailed mayors were elected in the cities of Igdir and Siirt, while the others were elected in the Siirt province districts of Baykan and Kurtalan.

The arrests raise the number of HDP mayors in prison to at least 21. The government has appointed administrators to 45 of a total of 65 municipalities won by the HDP last year. Human Rights Watch said in a February report that after their appointment, trustees did not convene the local councils [dominated by HDP councilors], effectively neutering their decision-making role in local government.

Police entered the family home of Siirts co-mayor Berivan Helen Isik by force. Doors were broken and windows shattered, triggering a storm of protest on social media.

The first order of business for her successor was to hang a large portrait of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his office. Ali Fuat Atik, who served as Siirts provincial governor until assuming his mayoral duties today, was seen entering the municipality building accompanied by his security detail, who carried various sized photographs of the Turkish president.

HDP co-chair Mithat Sancar lambasted the dismissals in a news conference today, saying, This amounts to a rejection of democracy; this amounts to a refusal to recognize the popular will. Sancar added, The Kurdish people do not fear pressure, they will not be cowed.

The newly formed Deva Parti, led by a former Economy Minister Ali Babacan, joined in the rebukes. In a statement relayed via Twitter, the party called the arrests arbitrary and a usurpation of voters will.

Babacan is touted as a potential rival for leadership of Turkeys center right and has signaled that he is willing to accommodate the Kurds' demands for linguistic freedom and more autonomy.

The main opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), which won Istanbuls metropolitan municipality with the help of HDP voters, also voiced expressions of sympathy. CHP lawmaker Ozgur Ozel said the fact that the dismissals were continuing indicated that Erdogan had returned to his normal state of being "nourished by polarization and othering [of Kurds].

Hundreds of HDP officials, including lawmakers, have been imprisoned on similar and often thinly evidenced charges of either belonging to or propagandizing on behalf of the PKK. Human Rights Watch examined 18 cases in which courts ordered the pretrial detention of mayors and concluded that the courts decisions relied on vague and generalized allegations against the mayors by witnesses, some secret, and details of their political activities, which fail to establish reasonable suspicion of criminal activity that would justify detention.

Meral Danis Bestas, an HDP lawmaker for Siirt, summed up popular sentiment: The [Erdogan] regime is bent on crushing Kurds even if they find them in outer space.
The boss of takeaway company Just Eat is joining Moneysupermarket as chief executive.

Peter Duffy was set to leave Just Eat after the company merged with Dutch food delivery rival Takeaway.com, as Takeaways Jitse Groen became boss of the newly combined company.

But price comparison site Moneysupermarket has hired him and Duffy will join the board at the beginning of September.

The companys former chief executive, Mark Lewis, had already announced he would step down at the end of August.
Public Health and Development Consultant, Mavis Ama Frimpong is advocating for compulsory mass testing at high risk companies and market places amid governments fight against the deadly Coronavirus.



Companies, Market Places Mass Testing



She believes such places have been epicenters for the spread of the virus in recent times yet overlooked.



The former Eastern Regional Minister and an aspiring NDC MP for Abirem constituency commended President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo and his government for an incredible job during this pandemic but noted that more needs to be done.



Government is still on contact tracing and testing but we have to focus on mass testing. Some companies and market places are now high-risk centers. Public transport drivers should not also be left out. At least random testing on them should be done, he said in an interview with a Koforidua-based radio station.



Adding that More people are been infected with the virus from companies and public places. The government must act quickly with mass testing to avoid higher cases in the country.



Stigma



Mavis Ama Frimpong also condemned stigmatization on persons living with the virus.



According to her such behavior doesnt encourage people with the virus to go for testing. They will rather prefer to live with it normally than going to the hospital. We must stop the stigmatization.



Employers must not terminate contracts of survivors and infected persons.", she noted.



Ghana's COVID-19 Case Count Now 5,530; 674 Recoveries, 24 Deaths



Ghana's confirmed cases of the Coronavirus is now 5,530, according to the Ghana Health Service.



This is an increase of 122 positive cases since the last update on Wednesday, May 13.



There have been 57 new cases in the Greater Accra Region, 62 new cases in the Ashanti Region, two new cases in the Central Region, and one in the Western North Region.



The death count still stands at 24 with the death to positivity rate standing at 0.43 percent, Director of Public Health at Ghana Health Service, Dr. Badu Sarkodie, noted at a press briefing on Thursday morning.



Regional breakdown below



Greater Accra Region - 4,204



Ashanti Region - 788



Central Region - 194



Eastern Region - 99



Western Region - 61



Western North Region - 57



Volta Region - 34



Upper East Region - 26



Oti Region - 24



Upper West Region - 21



Northern Region - 19



North East Region - 2



Bono Region - 1



Savannah Region - 0



Ahafo Region - 0



Bono East Region - 0

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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The Covid-19 tally in Bihar breached the four-digit-mark on Friday after at least six people tested positive for the novel coronavirus, taking the total number of confirmed cases in the state to 1,005, a top official said.

According to Principal Secretary, Health, Sanjay Kumar, five of the cases were reported from Khagaria district, while one person tested positive in Siwan. All of them are adult males.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

The state had reported its first couple of cases on March 22 and the tally crossed the 100-mark on April 19.

The steep rise in incidence since then has been attributed, to some extent, to influx of migrants who have been returning to their native places in droves, by the Shramik Special trains or hired vehicles.

Bihar Health Department has put the number of migrants testing positive between May 4 and May 15 (till 10 AM) at 358.

A total of 2.46 lakh people have come to the state by the rail route, ever since the first Bihar-bound Shramik Special reached Danapur on May 2, officials said.

Government officials coming in close contact with infected people have also been found to be vulnerable to the infection. The department on Friday confirmed that a young IAS officer of 2017 batch, posted in Nalanda district, was among those who had tested positive on Tuesday.

In addition, more than 30 police personnel have tested positive across the state, 21 of them from Bihar Military Polices 14th battalion at Khajpura locality in Patna, where an infection chain was triggered with over 20 residents of a by-lane Bijli Gali having tested positive last month.

Nonetheless, Bihar boasts of a good recovery rate and a low mortality rate.

Till Friday morning, the number of those who have recovered stood at 412. Only seven persons have died most of them with co-morbidities the figure being a tiny fraction of the nationwide fatalities, though the state comprises 10 per cent of the countrys population.

The number of samples tested so far is 43,371, the department said. With the recent spurt, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has been making efforts to drastically raise the daily average of testing currently at around 1,800 samples to 10,000 or more.
Its necessary, and I think thats the position that independent bookstores are supposed to be in, she said. We know that our margins are slim to nonexistent, but we should still be helping out the community in the most effective way that we can and thats through giving people books. I have a strong belief that interest incites learning. Parents will come into the store with their kids and say: They hate to read, and the real thing that needs to happen is they need to find something that theyre interested to read. That will get them reading. Whatever they read, it opens the door for them to read more.
A sadistic rapist in prison for torturing women has admitted to murdering a 61-year-old man 25 years ago and to soliciting his brother to kill a woman.

Graham Thomas Sales, 56, told a NSW Supreme Court hearing on Friday he killed Ronald Richard Penn, 61, a Central Coast man who vanished from his Bateau Bay home in October, 1995.

Sales also confessed to soliciting his brother, Ross Sales, to murder his partner Jennifer Forgacs a month later, on November 21, as she headed into Wyong Local Court to take an apprehended violence order out against him.

The then-24-year-old was blasted with bullets into her upper left shoulder, forearm and face but remarkably survived.

Graham Thomas Sales, 56, confessed to killing Ronald Penn, 61, and soliciting the murder of his girlfriend 25 years ago at a NSW Supreme Court hearing on Friday

'Guilty, thank you,' Sales told Justice Elizabeth Fullerton, in relation to the crime against his former girlfriend, The Daily Telegraph reports.

Sales was due to be arraigned during the hearing but was instead committed for sentence on charges of murder and solicit to murder.

He will be sentenced on July 24.

Mr Penn's death had remained a mystery and his body is yet to been found.

His white Mazda van was found burnt-out in bushland in Berkeley Vale on October 27 - three days after his last confirmed sighting at Downing Centre Court where he faced a traffic offence.

Three men including two described as Aboriginal and one caucasian were seen near the vicinity of Mr Penns van shortly after it was set alight about 10pm, and were later seen leaving in a red Ford laser, hatchback, or similar vehicle.

The missing man only had a few clothes and personal belongings with him when he vanished.

His bank accounts also lay dormant and his driver's licence was never renewed, investigators said in 2015.

Sales said he murdered the former railway worker - who had loosely become his driver because he did not have a license- in The Entrance North between October 23 and October 28.

Ronald Penn, 61, (pictured) has never been found after vanishing from the Central Coast in October 1995

He's already serving a 31-year minimum term at Lithgow prison for his long history of horrifying and sadistic abuse against traumatised women and children during the 1980s and 1990s.

Sales was found guilty of 21 offences including raping women with household objects, forcing them to eat their dinner off the floor and hogtying them and putting them face down in the bath.

In 2018, he was given another four years after after pleading guilty to six counts of sexual and aggravated sexual assault, kidnapping, common assault and two counts of threatening the officer in charge during a fiery outburst in the witness box.

Sales will return to court in July for a disputed facts hearing.

Days before Mr Penn vanished, he was pulled over in his Mazda car seated alongside Sales his brother Ross Sales in Charlestown, near Newcastle, according to police records.

Strike Force Rankmore detectives take cadaver dogs to a bushland area where Ronald Penn's burnt out vehicle was found during a search in 2014

Police alleged at the time they were following Ms Forgacs who had finally summoned the courage to flee his violence and had escaped to a refuge.

Police believe Sales tracked her down there a few days later and unsuccessfully tried to abduct her.

An interim apprehended violence order was taken against him, and Ms Forgacs was being transferred by car to another refuge in the Hunter Valley when the three men were pulled over near New Castle, following close behind.

Police charged Sales with breaching the interim apprehended violence order and a court date was set for November 21, 1995.

Police believed Mr Penn was murdered before his car was found, and dumped at an unknown location and alleged the motive was to prevent him being subpoenaed and have to give evidence during the AVO proceedings.

Ross Sales was charged with shooting Ms Forgacs but got off on the grounds of mental illness in 1996.

Police began re-examining crime scenes related to Mr Penn's disappearance in 2014, but did not have a breakthrough until Strike Force Rankmore detectives finally managed to get Ross Sales, then 43, to confess to his involvement in both crimes.

He was charged and later convicted of being an accessory after the fact to Mr Penns death.
ABC News, NBC News, CNN and The New York Times spent an entire week headlining the shooting of Ahmaud Arbery and playing up the racial angle but they've all ignored the shocking murder of an elderly white couple by 29-year-old Sheldon C. Francis -- which many suspect may have been a racial "revenge" murder for Arbery.





The story the mainstream media ignored:



Man murders elderly couple, 85 and 86, with 'scoped' rifle, in cold blood, with no prior connection to victims.



Then escapes to local woods for 6 hours during shootout before he was pronounced dead.https://t.co/qLyh4sCNri  Orwell & Goode (@OrwellNGoode) May 13, 2020



From National File, "Gunman With Scoped Rifle Hunts, Kills Elderly Couple Visiting Son's Grave":

An elderly couple who were visiting the grave of their son, who had suffered from Down's Syndrome, were shot in cold blood by a man with a scoped rifle.



The Maryland couple, in their mid-eighties, were gunned down at a Bear, Delaware, graveyard in a merciless unprovoked attack.



The New York Post reports that the gunman, identified as Sheldon C. Francis, 29, from Middleton, was found dead by authorities following the shooting.



A black-clad Francis had gunned down the couple from Elkton on Friday morning, killing the woman later identified as Lidia Marino, 85, at the scene, while the husband later identified as Paul C. Marino, 86, died a day later in hospital.

The Red Elephants shared more details on the story over the weekend after getting a tip from a local source.





Elderly couple Assassinated in Cemetery  Reports Suggest Revenge For Ahmaud Arbery, Shooting May Have Been Racially Motivatedhttps://t.co/RN852WdwJP  K00L Elefante (@DaKoolElefante) May 11, 2020



From The Red Elephants:

"He's 29. And no connection (to the victims) at all," [the source said.] He was wearing a black hoodie black pants, black mask, hood up, black gloves, black boots."



"I know the guy had a lot of ammo. It seems as if he set himself up in the ditches with ammo because the police were saying that their drone could see him but they couldn't get eyes on him. He had to have planned this for a while because most people don't know those woods like that."

"Social media posts from Sheldon suggest that he was particularly troubled by the killing of Ahmaud Arbery," MTO News reported. "And authorities are now exploring whether the cemetery shooting may have been racially motivated."



MTO News' reporting has not been confirmed yet by police and it appears any social media accounts he may have had have been scrubbed.



On Wednesday afternoon, I searched the archives of ABC News, NBC News, CNN and The New York Times for "Sheldon C. Francis" and "Sheldon Francis" and found zero stories on the case.







Local CBS News affiliates covered the shooting but CBSNews.com did not.







"Imagine that the circumstances were reversed and if on Friday a young white man had hunted down an elderly black couple visiting their son's grave at a veterans' cemetery," Steve Sailer said in a column on Taki Mag.



"The national media would be in full cry over this racist atrocity," he said. "President Trump would attend the funeral. The prestige press would demand that whatever web sources of information and opinion the gunman had followed should be, First Amendment or not, permanently exterminated."



Sailer continued: "But what happens when it's The Megaphone itself that may have egged on the killer? For example, a search of the New York Times archives finds 104 articles mentioning the name of Ahmaud Arbery so far just in the month of May. That's even more saturation coverage than the Times normally devotes to late-breaking developments in the Emmett Till case."



"The possibility that the cemetery killer was inspired to shoot some random whites by the enormous media hoopla over the still-ambiguous death of Arbery is not something that the prestige press is rushing to look into."



Though the case was covered in a few local news outlets, the national media has effectively instituted a near-total media blackout.



Instead, such as in the case of the New York Times on Tuesday, they've chosen to headline stories about the supposed "racism" of jogging.









Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter, Facebook, Gab and Minds.




BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - European stocks rebounded on Friday as investors took comfort from Chinese data showing that the country's industrial output increased in April for the first time since the coronavirus outbreak, adding to early signs of a recovery. Sentiment was also underpinned by talk of further stimulus in the United States and China. Meanwhile, investors shrugged off domestic data showing that the euro zone economy shrank by a record 3.8 percent in the first quarter. The pan European Stoxx 600 climbed 1.25 percent to 330.79 after falling 2.2 percent on Thursday. The German DAX rallied 1.9 percent, France's CAC 40 gained about 1 percent and the U.K.'s FTSE 100 was up 1.4 percent. Manufacturer and miner Imerys soared 13.5 percent after the company said it had reached an agreement to resolve legal liabilities regarding its North America talc unit. Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta and Glencore soared 4-6 percent, while oil & gas company BP Plc rose 1.3 percent and Royal Dutch Shell advanced 2.6 percent. Petrofac, a provider of oilfield services, dropped 1.6 percent after saying it expects the Covid-19 pandemic to result in delays in construction activity and tenders until 2021. Telecoms group BT Group surged 7.3 percent on reports that it was in talks to sell a multi-billion-pound stake in its infrastructure arm Openreach. Bookmaker William Hill jumped 8.3 percent. The company said covenants on a revolving credit facility have been waived for 2020 and reset for 2021. Swiss drugmaker Roche rose 1.1 percent as it announced the launch of a new digital diagnostic solution that may simplify and accelerate screening of Covid-19 patients. Lufthansa Group shares advanced 1 percent. The airline said it expects to operate its airlines services in June, with over 1800 weekly round trips to more than 130 destinations by June end. This includes over 106 German and European destinations and more than 20 intercontinental destinations. GEA jumped 12 percent after it delivered solid first-quarter results in a challenging year. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Police are trying to determine the identity of an 'attention seeking' man who wore a Ku Klux Klan-style hood into a Colorado grocery store on Thursday.

Customers at City Market in Dillon, west of Denver, were left stunned when the man strolled into the store and wandered down the aisles around 12.30pm.

Fellow shopper, Don Nechkash, snapped a photo of the offender, whose homemade hood had a swastika scrawled onto it.

'I just couldn't believe what I saw. It just blew me away,' Nekash told KDVR Friday.

'He was walking around and just very obviously looking for attention. It was blatantly obvious because he would pick up a product and walk around and kind of look at different people just waiting for someone to say something'.

Nekash added that a number of patrons inside the store approached the man and called him 'a racist'.

Police are trying to determine the identity of an 'attention seeking' man who wore a Klu Klux Klan hood to a Colorado grocery store on Thursday

Meanwhile, a video taken by another shopper shows management confronting the man near the frozen foods section of the store.

The store manager told 9 NEWS that she asked the man to leave the premises.

Police were called to the scene, but arrived after the offender had taken off.

Dillon Police Chief Mark Heminghous says investigators will look through surveillance footage to=see if they can find the man's vehicle and, possibly, its license plate number.

They are also asking for the public to come forward if they know the identity of the man.

'He was walking around and just very obviously looking for attention': The man was reportedly strolling up and down the aisles in a bid to be noticed

Fellow shoppers branded the man 'a racist', before management asked him to leave the store

'Right now, they're trying to identify him, contact him and take it from there. 'Obviously, we take this kind of action very seriously,' the police department stated.

Meanwhile, City Market released its own statement following the incident, saying: 'We train our associates to embrace diversity and inclusion and to show respect to every customer and one another.

We ask our customers to respect these values as well when in our stores. Our store leaders are empowered to swiftly and respectfully address anyone who disregards these values, which includes blatant symbols of hate and intolerance.'

It's not the first racist incident that has hit headlines in Dillon - a town of around 1,000 people, 95% of whom are white.

Last November, a man was arrested on misdemeanor charges of harassment and bias-motivated crime after making derogatory remarks about Mexicans.
Up to 60 staff at a meat plant in Edenderry, Co Offaly, have tested positive for coronavirus.

Rosderra Meats says it has put in place significant Covid-19 control measures.

All staff have been told not to come to work when they are feeling sick or have symptoms of the virus.

Rosderra Meats also has over 120 cases of Covid-19 at another factory in Roscrea, Co Tipperary.

Former Minister for Communications, Independent TD Denis Naughten has expressed fears that a second wave of Covid-19 could hit the country when restrictions are eased next week.

Mr Naughten said he feared the second wave because of the increase of clusters of Covid-19 in meat plants which could be replicated in other industries when restrictions are eased from May 18.

The rate of infection in some meat plants was one third and half of the work force he told Newstalk Breakfast.

The controls in meat plants are not working, he said.

Mr Naughten questioned the number of veterinary staff in the Department of Agriculture responsible for the enforcing of regulations in meat plants.

The problems in meat plants are as a result of a combination of factors, he said, such as the lack of information for both employers and employees on how the regulations should be implemented.

The first infections in meat plants happened six weeks before screening of staff commenced, this time lag was a concern, he added.

It seemed like lessons were not learned after what happened in nursing homes.

The Roscommon TD said he did not think the problem with clusters of workers in meat plants having Covid-19 would have an impact on meat supply, though it could have an impact on the kill.

His fear was about the management of the system not just in the meat industry, but how it (virus) is being managed by the HSE.

There is a significant problem with contact tracing and if that is replicated next week, that will be a big problem.

SIPTUs deputy general secretary for the private sector, Gerry McCormack told RTE radios Morning Ireland that the problem was that from the beginning of the pandemic some employers in the meat industry did not take the issue seriously.

When this crisis began plants were given guidelines, not protocols. There is a question if some should have opened, some were not essential.

Some employers didnt take it seriously and failed to implement social distancing and didnt put processes in place to help workers, he said.

Mr McCormack compared the meat and dairy sectors, saying that the dairy sector was very well regulated with a completely different demographic.

He pointed out that between 70% and 90% of workers in the meat industry are migrants, many cohabitating in accommodation.

They were also afraid to say anything if they became ill.

Additional reporting by Digital Desk
TUSCOLA COUNTY  The Tuscola County Board of Commissioners unanimously passed a resolution May 14 opposing Gov. Gretchen Whitmers executive orders.

According to the resolution titled Move Tuscola County Forward, the action was taken after hearing reports from Tuscola County EDC Director Steve Erickson, Sen. Kevin Daley and Rep. Phil Green.

The resolution details many of the governors executive orders enacted since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and establishes a timeline for most actions to date.

According to the resolution, the governor is acting outside of her powers because the state Legislature voted down the extension.

Daley said he was approached by one of the Tuscola County commissioners and a commissioner from Lapeer County, both of whom were wanting to support the Legislatures opposition to the governors action.

Daley said a group named Move Michigan Forward had previously drafted a resolution for the Legislature. Daley said the resolution wasnt adopted, instead the Legislature voted to let the emergency declaration expire. The group was able to modify its resolution to be applicable at the county level.

Rep. Green said he was not part of the drafting of the resolution, but he will be one of the group that receives it. According to Green, the resolution essentially tells the governor where the county stands.

The best thing to say is it starts developing a movement and lets elected officials above the county level know what the opinions of the county officials are, Green said. It allows the governor to know what other jurisdictions think.

The resolution states the governor has not provided scientific data to justify the state of emergency being declared equally across all the counties in Michigan.

According to Fridays numbers released by the state Tuscola County, which has had 166 confirmed cases and 17 deaths, ranks 22nd out of Michigans 83 counties in the number of coronavirus-positive cases.

The resolution states the governors actions have resulted in oppressive consequences on businesses and infringed on individual rights.

The resolution states that the commissioners demand the governor provide, within three days, the following information:

1. The daily number of available hospital related beds occupied by all patients since Jan. 1, 2020, segregated by in-patient beds, negative air flow beds, and intensive care unit beds.

2. The daily number of available hospital related beds occupied by verified COVID-19 patients since Jan. 1, 2020, segregated by in-patient beds, negative air flow beds, and ICU beds.

3. The daily number of emergency room visits in total and the daily number of emergency room visits by patients testing positive for COVID-19 since Jan. 1, 2020.

4. The daily number of verified COVID-19 hospitalizations and verified COVID-19 deaths that are related to retirement or nursing homes since Jan. 1, 2020.

5. The daily number of verified COVID-19 hospitalizations and verified COVID-19 deaths of individuals who have had other pre-existing or underlying health conditions, since Jan. 1, 2020, with a segregation of those health conditions and a breakout of verified COVID-19 hospitalizations and verified COVID-19 deaths by age, gender, and race.

6. The daily number of ventilators available and daily inventories of hospital Personal Protection Equipment since April 9, 2020.

7. The number of medical professionals that have been furloughed, had work hours reduced, or received a cut in pay since March 10, 2020.

The commissioners also request the same information be provided by the local health department and hospitals.

Also in the resolution, the commissioners demand the state stop adjusting data based on subsequent information the state later collects.

Green said the state Legislature has asked for similar data from the governor and she has yet to provide the data. In part, this is what prompted the Legislature to sue the governor, according to Green.

The Legislature has been asking for the same information since March, he said. The information that is readily available in Ohio and Indiana isnt readily available here. We want to make a good decision based on science and information for our people.

According to Daley, a similar resolution is being considered by commissioners in Lapeer County and the resolution template has been provided to other senators for the counties they represent.

The commissioners ask the public to continue following the national guidelines for safe social distancing and encourage the businesses in Tuscola County to determine their best approach for reopening based on national guidelines.

Michigan State Police Caro Post Commander F/Lt. Brian McComb said he hopes businesses do not take the resolution as a sign that they can resume business because the governors orders remain in effect. Up to this point the Caro Post has maintained a moderate line when it comes to enforcing orders, intervening when called upon by the public.

We are still under the governors executive orders and directives, McComb said. We have to enforce the governors order if called upon to do so.
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaks to the media before the opening of the Berlin representation of Google Germany in Berlin on January 22, 2019.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement: "We continue to engage with the ongoing investigations led by the Department of Justice and Attorney General Paxton, and we don't have any updates or comments on speculation. Our focus is firmly on providing services that help consumers, support thousands of businesses, and enable increased choice and competition."

The DOJ is aiming to file a case as soon as this summer, according to the report. At least some of the state attorneys general involved in the multistate probe led by Texas are likely to file suit in the fall, the Journal reported.

Google will likely face at least one antitrust lawsuit related to its advertising business from both the U.S. Department of Justice and state attorneys general in coming months, according to The Wall Street Journal .

The states' investigation has been mostly focused on Google's online advertising business, according to the report, though CNBC previously reported that its scope had expanded to include both search and its Android mobile operating system. Even if some states bring a suit against Google related to its ad business, it's possible others could choose to pursue separate cases following different legal theories.

The DOJ's probe has focused on Google's ad business, but also more broadly on allegations that it has used its dominance in the search market to squash competitors, according to the Journal. The publication was not able to learn which legal theories the DOJ would seek to pursue if it brings a case.

It remains to be seen whether the state and federal enforcers will join together in a case against Google or go off on their own. State attorneys general usually welcome the opportunity to work alongside federal enforcers, who bring a vast trove of resources to the table. But the relationship between the states and the DOJ has appeared fraught over the past few years, most clearly when a group of state attorneys general challenged the department's approval of T-Mobile's merger with Sprint, which ultimately cleared.

The report suggests that enforcers have not been slowed down by the coronavirus pandemic which has caused most of their staff, like other workers throughout the country, to work remotely. Both the DOJ and Texas' Paxton have signaled they were still fully open for business during the crisis.

The news comes nearly one year after reports began surfacing that the DOJ had begun a probe into the company's competitive business practices. Google also faces a probe by the House Judiciary Committee alongside three of its tech peers. That probe, which is now expected to wrap up in the spring, will culminate with legislative proposals, rather than an enforcement action.

Google previously faced a federal investigation by the Federal Trade Commission regarding its search business. The FTC closed that case in 2013, unanimously opting not to bring a lawsuit, though a report later inadvertently sent to the Journal revealed staff had recommended pursuing a case. If the states or DOJ chooses to pursue a lawsuit against Google, it would become the most significant tech antitrust case since the government's case against Microsoft which was originally brought in the late 1990s.

Read the full report in The Wall Street Journal.

WATCH: How US antitrust law works, and what it means for Big Tech
A new scientific paper published on the preprint server medRxiv* shows that the spread of COVID-19, the respiratory illness that has spread across the world to kill hundreds of thousands in 2020, shows that weather conditions reduce the spread of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).

Novel Coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 Transmission electron micrograph of a SARS-CoV-2 virus particle, isolated from a patient. Image captured and color-enhanced at the NIAID Integrated Research Facility (IRF) in Fort Detrick, Maryland. Credit: NIAID

The Threat

The spread of the novel coronavirus illness COVID-19 across countries and continents has been nothing short of terrifying, with the total toll having crossed 4.5 million in terms of infected cases, and over 300,000 deaths, in just over four months.

COVID-19 typically begins with fever, a dry cough, and shortness of breath develops later. The incubation period seems to be 5-6 days, on average, and not above 14 days. Most fatal cases terminate with acute respiratory distress syndrome and multi-organ failure.

The rapid spread of the virus prompted the World Health Organization (WHO) to call it a pandemic.

Climate and Viral Spread

Some climatic conditions can cause more significant interaction between the virus and humans, facilitating faster and greater contact and, therefore, more extensive host infection.

Other meteorological variables can lead to increased human-human interactions, and to the persistence of the virus on environmental surfaces, which can foster the spread of the infection from one human to another.

Earlier research on the correlation of weather conditions and the spread of the novel coronavirus have been conflicting. In Northern Europe, earlier studies have shown that influenza virus spread is more easily under cold conditions and an increased ultraviolet index.

A study from Jakarta, Indonesia, showed the only weather variable to show a significant correlation with the spread of the virus was the average temperature.

On the other hand, a recent Chinese study found that there was no link between heat or ultraviolet exposure and viral transmission.

Testing Weather-COVID-19 Associations In Japan

The current study was focused on determining whether this association was meaningful.

The study was carried out in Japan across all the prefectures. The total numbers of confirmed COVID-19 cases in each of them were collected in the period from January to April 2020. Similarly, the population density for each square kilometer of the inhabitable area was obtained for 2020. Finally, meteorological data was collected for each capital city of the prefectures over the same period.

The weather data included the monthly air temperature in degrees Celsius, the wind speed in m/s, the air pressure at sea level in hPa, the relative humidity in percentage, the percentage of possible sunshine, the monthly total for the duration of sunshine in hours, the amount of rain in mm, and the monthly average for maximum daily ultraviolet index.

To arrive at a more meaningful index of viral spread, the researchers calculated the total number of COVID-19 patients divided by the total population per 100 square kilometers of inhabitable area, which would compensate for gross differences in population density.

What Did the Findings Show?

The analysis of the data showed that the incidence of COVID-19 varied with the meteorological data. The number of new cases went down significantly with air temperature, air pressure, and ultraviolet radiation.

Caution: Human Behavior Ahead

Many other factors come into play, however, as explained by eminent epidemiologist Marc Lipsitch, of Harvards T. H. Chan School of Public Health. He lists at least four modifiers among environmental conditions that could influence viral spread:

Dry cold conditions favor the spread of the flu virus because it is more stable and survives longer. This may not apply to SARS-CoV-2, which is able to make its way in widely different climate zones, from equatorial to Arctic zones.

SARS-CoV-2 can survive for up to 72 hours on plastic and stainless steel surfaces between 21-23 oC) and with 40% relative humidity. At 4 oC they can survive for more than 28 days.

People spend more time indoors during winter and are closer to each other, which favors the spread of respiratory pathogens. In the case of COVID-19, it is not clear whether children, for instance, get the infection as easily, or spread it less, or more, than adults do. This is an area where urgent research is needed. The host immunity may wane during winter, due to variations in the level of vitamin D, melatonin (a light-sensitive hormone which regulates the bodys circadian rhythms). The number of susceptible hosts in the population at any time may interact with the above factors to cause seasonal variation, as well as prompt seasonal epidemics. Since SARS-CoV-2 is a new virus, the low immunity level in the population is a crucial advantage that masks any potential seasonality.

The researchers conclude, Higher air temperature, air pressure, and UV may be associated with less Covid-19 incidence, which should be confirmed by further epidemiological investigations taking other risk and protective factors of COVID-19 into account.

However, scientists caution against pinning our hopes on weather changes rather than changes in human behavior in stopping viral transmission. Environmental researcher Miguel Araujo of Madrids National Museum of Natural Sciences warns, This is not a one-variable equation. The virus spreads from human to human. The more humans at any given place and the more they get into contact with each other, the more infections there will be. Their behavior is key to understanding the propagation of the virus.

*Important Notice

medRxiv publishes preliminary scientific reports that are not peer-reviewed and, therefore, should not be regarded as conclusive, guide clinical practice/health-related behavior, or treated as established information
External Article

15 May 2020

Hotel revenue managers have their work cut out for them now during the COVID-19 environment and once travel demand resumes. Veteran revenue managers have experienced downturns before and know the challenges that accompany them, but this time around, they will have artificial intelligence and machine-learning software to assist them in setting pricing strategies. Still, lower travel demand due to the coronavirus and historic hotel performance declines are a testing ground for this technology. Sources said the lessons learned in past downturns will apply to revenue strategy in the current environment. Tina Meredith, VP of revenue management at PM Hotel Group, said in an email interview that she worked in the hotel industry through the past two recessions and worked in revenue management during the Great Recession years.

Hotel revenue managers have their work cut out for them now during the COVID-19 environment and once travel demand resumes. Veteran revenue managers have experienced downturns before and know the challenges that accompany them, but this time around, they will have artificial intelligence and machine-learning software to assist them in setting pricing strategies. Still, lower travel demand due to the coronavirus and historic hotel performance declines are a testing ground for this technology. Sources said the lessons learned in past downturns will apply to revenue strategy in the current environment. Tina Meredith, VP of revenue management at PM Hotel Group, said in an email interview that she worked in the hotel industry through the past two recessions and worked in revenue management during the Great Recession years.
Karl Stefanovic has rubbished reports that he's heading to Hollywood with wife Jasmine Stefanovic to chase a talk show career.

On Friday PS Sydney hinted at rumours the Today show host could follow in the footsteps of late night titans like David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel.

However Karl denied that he was making a move to Tinseltown despite his Channel Nine contract ending in December.

Hollywood hotshot? Karl Stefanovic (pictured) has rubbished reports that he's heading to Hollywood with wife Jasmine Stefanovic to chase a talk show career

The 45-year-old called the claims 'complete rubbish' adding, 'My hands are kinda full at the moment anyway,' referring to his newborn daughter, Harper.

Karl however admitted he may be expanding his Instagram variety show to network television.

The TV host has been posting the low-quality production to his social media for a number of weeks and believes it has room to improve.

Legend of late night? On Friday PS Sydney hinted there was talk the Today show host could follow in the footsteps of late night titans like David Letterman and Jimmy Kimmel. The 45-year-old called the claims 'complete rubbish'

Karl added that: 'My hands are kinda full at the moment anyway,' referring to his newborn daughter, Harper, who is pictured with his wife Jasmine

He tells PS Sydney: 'We believe there is a gap in the market for smaller productions, we have a lot of ideas we want to pitch to Nine.

'And yes I have a few Hollywood heavy hitters among my friends, and it would be a bonus if something was picked up there too, but our main focus is local'.

It comes after Woman's Day magazine reported that Karl is, 'plotting his escape to Hollywood' with wife Jasmine, 36.

Room to move: The Today show host's channel Nine contract ends in December

New venture: Karl admitted he may be expanding his Instagram variety show to network television. The TV host has been posting the low-quality production to his social media and says he may invite his Hollywood star friends to appear

Sources close to the publication claimed that the actor 'knows he's a big star and what he's worth'.

'He thinks he's being undervalued here and believes he can crack the big time over in Hollywood,' they went on to say.

With the father-of-three setting his sights on becoming an 'A-list Hollywood reporter', it's further claimed that Karl and Jasmine are looking to purchase a '$2.9million mansion in Beverly Hills'.

Hot shot: It comes after Woman's Day magazine reported that Karl is, 'plotting his escape to Hollywood' with wife Jasmine, 36. Sources close to the publication claimed that the actor 'knows he's a big star and what he's worth'

Claims: The father-of-three is reportedly planning on becoming an 'A-list Hollywood reporter', and that Karl and wife Jasmine Stefanovic (pictured in May, 2019), are looking to purchase a '$2.9million mansion in Beverly Hills'

Karl made his Today comeback in January alongside new co-host Allison Langdon.

Despite initially getting a healthy jump in the ratings, the embattled breakfast show continues to struggle to find an audience.

Last month, the Today show recorded its lowest ratings of 2020, with a paltry 171,000 metro viewers tuning in.
ANKARA, May 14 (Reuters) - Turkish lira firmed to 6.9 against the U.S. dollar after a Reuters report said on Thursday that Turkey's government had appealed to foreign allies in an urgent search for funding.

Treasury and central bank officials held bilateral talks in recent days with counterparts from Japan and the United Kingdom on setting up currency swap lines, and with Qatar and China on expanding existing facilities, three senior Turkish officials said. (Reporting by Ece Toksabay Editing by Jonathan Spicer)
Greg McMichael, who retired in 2019, appeared to lose his power to arrest for years after failing to obtain training.

Gregory McMichael, who was charged in shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, spent years of his decades-long tenure at a Georgia district attorneys office without maintaining proper training as a law enforcement officer which led to a suspension, records obtained by Al Jazeera reveal.

McMichael, 64, and his son Travis were charged with felony murder and aggravated assault in the February 23 killing of Arbery, a 25-year-old unarmed Black man, in the predominately white neighourhood of Satilla Shores, about 280 miles (450km) outside of Atlanta, Georgia.

The McMichaels were not arrested for more than two months after the killing. It was not until a video was released showing the deadly encounter and an ensuing national outcryfor action that the pair were arrested, on May 7.

Ahmaud Arberys killing has become a rallying cry for racial justice [Courtesy of Marcus Arbery/Handout via Reuters]

Some have alleged McMichaels long work tenure at the Brunswick district attorney office  where he worked from 1995 to 2019  played a role in the delayed arrest.

District attorneys from Brunswick and Waycross, Georgia, both recused themselves from the case due to professional ties to the McMichael family. Georgias attorney general has requested a probe into their response.

The records, delivered to Al Jazeera by the Glynn County open records officer, show that in 2014 McMichael was suspended for a lack of hours in required training. McMichael first lapsed in training hours in 2006.

It appears McMichael did not have the power of arrest from 2006 to 2014, a power necessary for law enforcement to carry out several tasks. This could present legal difficulties, according to the documents. McMichael again lost his power to arrest just months before he retired in 2019.

Liability

A 2014 email to District Attorney Jackie Johnson, the current DA of Glynn County whose office is currently under investigation in relation to the Arbery case, shows that another investigator who spoke with McMichael about the lapse in training found that liability for any improper actions by Greg would fall on Greg, the District Attorneys Office and you personally.

Johnsons office did not immediately respond to Al Jazeeras request for comment. Johnson has denied any bias in the case in interviews with local media.

Johnson wrote to the agency overseeing McMichaels training certification that the lapse was a great embarrassment to me and Investigator McMichael.

McMichael lists personal health and financial difficulties, as well as a failure to receive proper accreditation, as reasons for the lapse in training hours in a document that appears to be part of a waiver for hours missed.

McMichael suffered a heart attack in October 2006, he says in the document.

The document includes further claims of health concerns, both for himself and his wife, including a second heart attack in 2009. That year, McMichael writes, he filed for bankruptcy due in part to medical expenses.

As is the case with many heart attack survivors, I began to suffer from post heart attack Clinical Depression, he writes.

The depression made me unable at times to focus on important tasks like attaining the proper hours of law enforcement training, McMichael continued.

Further lapse

Years of records appear to show that McMichael was viewed as good at his job by supervisors, though disorganised.

An undated performance evaluation says McMichael completes tasks in a timely manner, many of which are beyond the scope of his daily requirements.





It continues: Although often lacking neatness in his personal office, he interacts well with his fellow employees and often mediates conflicts.

Previous evaluations critiqued McMichael for not dressing appropriately  though he showed improvement  and disorganisation. All say he was respectful of colleagues and some claim he readily admitted his faults.

McMichael lapsed in training again in 2019 after failing to obtain the necessary training in 2018 and was given a different role instead of making up the hours due to his impending retirement, documents show.

The McMichaels have told police they pursued Arbery because they believed he was a burglary suspect. Arberys mother said she believes her son was just going for a job in the neighbourhood.

While the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a tragedy, causing deep grief to his family  a tragedy that at first appears to many to fit into a terrible pattern in American life  this case does not fit that pattern. The full story, to be revealed in time, will tell the truth about this case, Frank Hogue, one of the attorneys representing McMichael, said in a statement emailed to Al Jazeera.

Numb

For Arberys family, the pattern is clear. Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arberys mother, has called out the slow law enforcement response to her sons killing.

I think no arrests have been made because of the title he carried as a retired police officer, Wanda Cooper-Jones, Arberys mother, said in an appearance on ABCs Good Morning America programme last week.

A small roadway memorial marks the area where jogger Ahmaud Arbery was shot and killed in Brunswick, Georgia [Erik S Lesser/EPA]

Now that the McMichaels have been apprehended and charged, she is hopeful.

I was in a numb state because I had waited for  two months and two weeks, Cooper-Jones told the NBC Nightly News programme.

Cooper-Jones said she hopes justice will be served.
China has responded to the threat by the United States President, Donald Trump to cut trade ties with it due to the coronavirus pandem...





China has responded to the threat by the United States President, Donald Trump to cut trade ties with it due to the coronavirus pandemic.





On Friday, China stated that the two countries were better off as partners.





Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, gave the position of the Chinese government at a media briefing.





Lijian noted that China and America should cooperate to end the pandemic for the sake of reviving economies and rebooting industrial production.

The stable development of U.S.-Chinese relations is in the fundamental interest of people from both countries and is also favourable for global peace and stability, Sputnik quoted Lijian as saying.





China and the United States should now strengthen cooperation in combating the COVID-19 epidemic in order to defeat the coronavirus as soon as possible, cure patients, resume production, and develop the economy.





President Trump had declared that bilateral ties might be halted over Beijings alleged responsibility for unleashing the coronavirus.





The American leader and his administrations officials insist that the virus was developed in a lab in Wuhan, Hubei province.





China strongly denies culpability, explaining that its policies were transparent throughout the outbreak.





The globes most populous nation often refers to World Health Organisation (WHO) comment that cleared Beijing of any wrongdoing.





This week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Department of Homeland Securitys Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) accused China of attempts to hack the ongoing vaccine research on coronavirus.





The U.S has recorded over 1.4 million cases of coronavirus and 87,000 deaths.
Education Minister sets out current thinking on how pupils in Wales can return to school

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 15th, 2020

The Welsh Government has today published a document setting out how it is considering the next phase for schools in response to COVID-19.

It follows a roadmap for moving out of lockdown which was also published today.

Education Minister, Kirsty Williams, has described the working document as setting out our current thinking for how schools, other education settings and childcare providers operations will change to allow social distancing and other factors.

Most schools have been closed since the start of the pandemic, with some open for the children of critical workers and vulnerable children.

However speaking at this afternoons daily Welsh Government press conference, First Minister Mark Drakeford said: We have an ambition of being able to bring some cohorts of children back into school before the summer holidays.

But that is not going to be the general position. Schools will not open in full before the summer holidays. Im very happy to repeat that and to make it clear this afternoon.

A decision framework for the next phase of education and childcare builds on the five principles published by the Minister last month.

The Welsh Government is working with scientists, public health experts, teachers, education providers, trade unions and local authorities to consider the options for the next phase for schools and settings with similar challenges, such as childcare providers and further education colleges.

Schools will not be open for more pupils on June 1st in Wales. There will be no immediate change, but a series of decisions have to be taken. Hear from @wgmin_education as we publish the plans and challenges for the next phase https://t.co/koQTF2noQt pic.twitter.com/8KNGHVJY6C  Welsh Government (@WelshGovernment) May 15, 2020

Practices introduced in Denmark around the use of other buildings to increase capacity; regular handwashing and cleaning; staggering arrivals and departures; and use of floor markings, are being considered in Wales, the document reveals.

Kirsty Williams said: As the Education Minister for Wales, I will make the decisions on how and when more pupils in Wales will return to school. Today I am sharing further information on how those decisions will be reached.

Nothing would make me happier than seeing our classrooms full again. But I want to be clear that this framework does not  and I will not  set an arbitrary date for when more pupils will return to school.

Setting a date before we have more evidence, more confidence and more control over the virus would be the wrong thing to do.

This will not be one decision but a series of decisions over time increasing, or if need be, decreasing operation. These changes will be complex, with many different considerations. I want the working document to be a stimulus for wider discussion and feedback.

I am sharing this today to be as transparent as possible. I want everyone to know the extent of the issues related to the next phase.

When we are ready to move into that next phase, I will ensure that there is enough time for preparation and for staff to carry out any necessary training.

This framework sets out the high-level decisions that will need to be taken by Ministers.

This will be supported by decisions and activity at each level: Welsh Government will provide guidance but it will be for schools and other providers, working with local authorities as appropriate, to develop ways of working (in line with that clear guidance), which allow for the return of children/learners to a safe and supportive environment. The document states.

How will the Welsh Government decide to reopen schools?

The document published today states: In gathering evidence for these decisions, we will draw on a range of expertise and evidence.

We are meeting with the following groups regularly, if not weekly.

-> Technical Advisory Cell: children and education subgroup  this includes a range of Welsh Government officials and expert advisors to provide evidence on the scientific and health factors and implications.

-> Headteachers and leaders stakeholder group  drawing together a reference group of leads of schools and other providers from childcare through to university.

-> Strategic Education Delivery Partners stakeholder group  providing reference from local authorities, regional consortia, Estyn, further education and Qualifications Wales.

-> Trade Unions partnership.

-> Colegau Cymru Principals forum.

-> Childcare and Play Stakeholder Reference Group  includes representation from the childcare and play sector, Care Inspectorate Wales, Estyn, local authorities, Social Care Wales and the Future Generations, Childrens and Welsh Language Commissioners.

The framework document goes onto to say: Confidence of parents/carers, children and young people are key factors in our consideration.

Work is continuing to ensure we gather their attitudes, view and opinions systematically to inform decision-making.

In addition, we are considering international evidence around learning and child health and well-being.

We are drawing on a range of international examples of response to disruptions to learning.

For example, we are considering practice in Denmark around the use of other buildings to increase capacity; regular hand-washing and cleaning; staggering arrivals and departures; and use of floor markings.

You can read more here: The decision framework for the next phase of education and childcare: considerations, planning and challenges
By Express News Service

MADURAI: The COVID-19 patients at the Government Rajaji Hospital (GRH) are to be served by three robots donated by SASTRA Deemed-to-be University in Thanjavur. Speaking at the inaugural function held at the hospital on Thursday, Minister for Revenue R B Udhayakumar said the robots costing Rs 1 lakh each would serve food and medicine to COVID-19 patients at the exclusive COVID-19 Superspeciality Hospital.

The Minister, during his address, said the robots would effectively aid in maintaining social distance at the hospital block where COVID-19 patients are being treated. "These robots would convey any message from the doctors and nurses to the patients. Besides, they would carry water, food, fruits, and medicines," he added.

Foundation for Innovation Research at SASTRA Technology (FIRST) is a technology-based business incubator initiative that nurtures start-up businesses. Tiruchy-based Propellor Technologies that was incubated with the FIRST invented the multi-functionality robot named ZAFI GO.

Specially designed to support doctors and nurses at COVID-19 wards, the robot has a range of 1,500-metre radio-controllable system. It also has trays mimicking arms to carry food and essentials weighing a total of 15 kilograms. With the help of a pre-programmed software, the robot facilitates interaction between the healthcare workers and the patients, said sources. Each robot can serve 10-15 patients in one go and its battery back-up would last for about three hours. SASTRA Deemed-to-be University had earlier donated five ZAFI GO robots to Thanjavur Medical College Hospital and two robots to Mahatma Gandhi Memorial Government Hospital in Tiruchy.

Also present during the inaugural were Collector TG Vinay and Dean Dr J Sangumani.
Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia opened their common borders at the stroke of midnight, creating the first "travel bubble" within the European Union in a bid to jump-start economies broken down by the coronavirus pandemic.

A dozen Estonian border guards removed all signs directing vehicles to stop at the border and huddled together at the roadside for cake and coffee.

"We have the little celebration because the border is now open again," officer Martin Maestule told Reuters on Friday just after midnight as the first cars sped through on the region's reopened main road.

Citizens and residents of the three generally sparsely populated Baltic nations are now free to travel within the region, though anyone entering from outside will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

"The Baltic Travel Bubble is an opportunity for businesses to reopen, and a glimmer of hope for the people that life is getting back to normal," Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said in a statement.

The neighbours opened as the EU executive seeks to coax the 27 member states to reopen internal borders and restart wider travel, albeit with safety measures such as requiring people to wear face masks on planes.

New coronavirus infections in the three Baltic republics have slowed to a trickle with none of the countries reporting more than a dozen new cases on Thursday. Authorities have loosened lockdowns since late April.

The region as a whole has recorded fewer than 150 deaths from the disease - far below individual larger euro zone countries such as Italy, Spain, France or Germany.

"The Baltic states are close partners, have a similar epidemiological situation and their economies are well integrated, so the free movement of people as well as goods is very important for the region," said Arnoldas Pranckevicius, the European Commission representative in Lithuania.

"Opening the borders is up to the member states, and the European Commission expects them to talk to each other, to coordinate their actions and to not discriminate against nationals of other EU members."

Some 120 vehicles crossed the border between Latvia and Lithuania in first five hours of Friday, officials said.

"We are driving to pick up our puppy - we will meet the new member of our family for a first time," Latvian Ervins Butkevics said as he crossed into Lithuania. "It's a date!"

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia - the three poorest members of the euro zone - expect their economies to shrink by 7-8 percent this year, in line with the rest of the currency union. Lithuania has warned of a "double digit" drop if economies are not reopened by the summer.

Estonia has given an emergency loan of 100 million euros ($108 million) to Baltic Sea shipping firm Tallink, badly hit by the lockdowns, while Lithuania is setting up a state-run facility to provide loans or assume assets of key companies if they do not survive the crisis.

The Baltic countries were quick to close their borders and impose lockdowns.

"There is no reason to fear that opening the border will cause the spread of the virus," Estonian Interior Minister Mart Helme said.

Travel restrictions were eased between Finland and Estonia, as well as between Poland and Lithuania, this week but only for those on the move for business or education.

But neither Poland nor Finland is rushing join the full "travel union" with their Baltic neighbours, despite an invitation to do so.

"At first glance, I think that, for instance, Poland and Finland would be logical and potentially good candidates," Latvian Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins said.

Poland and Finland have also reported relatively low numbers of coronavirus infections and deaths.

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Jesper Larsen, a headteacher in Copenhagen, Denmark, said Danish schools were able to go back to class a month ago because the country's society respects government guidelines

While British schools will not begin to reopen after lockdown until the beginning of June at the earliest, at my school here in Denmark virtually all the children were back in class a month ago.

Gerbrandskolen primary school on the outskirts of Copenhagen, where I am Skoleleder, or head teacher, welcomed back nearly all of its 800 pupils on April 14, after the Easter holidays.

Most Danish schools for Grade Five and below  the under-11s  did the same. Secondary schools will reopen on Monday, May 18.

When I look across the North Sea to the UK, where teachers unions are resisting the Governments call to go back to work, I feel very glad that I live and work in Denmark.

I can understand why union leaders might be concerned. I only wish they could come to see how we have managed the situation in Denmark, or at least talk to their counterparts here via video link. Then they might well be reassured.

In fact, they would see that conditions here are actually even safer, more hygienic and more disciplined than they were before the lockdown.

Danish society is typified by respect for authority. When government officials produce guidelines, we listen because we trust them. We dont automatically assume we know better.

Thats how Denmark was able to establish an airtight lockdown before any other European country except Italy.

On March 11, when our prime minister Mette Frederiksen gave a televised press conference to announce that schools and businesses would close until further notice, there were only 514 people in the country believed to have coronavirus (compared to 416 in the UK at that time).

While some countries might have considered Denmarks measures premature or draconian, our people were willing to listen to the authorities.

And our swift response appears to have paid off. Our toll stands at 533 deaths related to coronavirus, which is grim but not nearly as awful as the UKs estimate of perhaps 50,000.

At the start of this week, shops, restaurants and cafes here reopened, and on Tuesday the state epidemiologist Kare Molbak declared the danger of a second coronavirus wave very unlikely.

Most importantly for me and my pupils, we have been able to carry on teaching. This has been achieved by splitting classes in half. Usually well have about 25 children in a classroom but currently its 12 or 13.

This means having many more teachers. Usually we dont use teaching assistants here but my staff has risen from just over 70 to nearly 110, so  as you can see  Ive been hiring.

I am delighted to say many young and enthusiastic candidates have applied, eager to get out of lockdown and put their energy to good use.

The children have responded magnificently too. We began by enlisting the help of parents to explain that things were going to be different, but young people are very good at adapting quickly to new regimes.

We start each day by washing our hands at the pump in the school yard, and thats a signal to everyone that things are no longer the same, that the whole day will have an emphasis on health.

Whenever anyone enters or leaves a room, they wash their hands. We are getting through gallons of hand sanitiser, and hand lotion too, to prevent their skin from drying out.

Children must sit a mandatory metre apart  it was two metres, but the government has now revised that advice.

On March 11, Danish prime minister Mette Frederiksen announced that schools and businesses would close until further notice when there were only 514 people in the country believed to have coronavirus, compared to 416 in the UK at that time. Picture: Stock

This rule doesnt apply rigidly in the playground, because children are bound to bump up against each other outside.

Medical guidance is that the virus is much more likely to be transmitted by pupils in close proximity indoors.

They are put into groups of five or six for play, and those groups dont change during the week, though we might occasionally swap group members around at weekends.

The best police for these rules are the children themselves. They are the first to tell each other to wash their hands or keep their distance.

Children love to know where the boundaries are, and behaviour in class has in fact been even better than before.

Partly because of the rigid new rules, and partly because of the higher ratio of adults to children, we are now seeing no arguments or fighting at all.

There also seems to be virtually no sickness. That is partly down to social distancing, of course, but also because of the enhanced hygiene standards.

We have cleaning staff patrolling the bathrooms and the communal corridors at all times, wiping and spraying with disinfectant.

I would like to see this new cleaning regime continue indefinitely, because its highly cost-effective: I no longer have to worry about the expense of hiring supply teachers to replace those calling in sick.

Since April 14, we have had just one teacher report symptoms of suspected Covid-19.

That was our only, minor scare. We didnt panic. The teacher was advised to see a doctor and, following a positive Covid-19 test, is now fully recovered.

Other adults who had been in contact with the patient were tested, and all came back negative.

Parents were asked to keep an eye on their children for symptoms and no one reported anything.

A few felt the children should also have been tested, but the government guidance in these circumstance is that only the adults need be concerned. Im a teacher, not a doctor, so I follow the official medical advice.

The unions here have presented no problems. From the outset, they were keen to see their members resume work, though they did have issues about the length of the working day. We compromised. Children now have 25 hours of lessons a week, arriving at 8am and leaving at 1pm each day.

For all but the very young pupils, the ones in reception class, that is a reduction in school hours. I cant say I approved of it, but I accept the agreement.

An after-school club is available until 4pm but very few pupils use it  less than a dozen.

Most families have been flexible, with parents working in the morning and sharing childcare in the afternoon, and I think many enjoy the extra time they can now spend with their children, playing or helping with their homework.

The simple fact is, weve gone back to school and everything is fine. I really hope that Britain can take notice of the Danish example and feel reassured.
[May 15, 2020] Broadening the STEM Horizons for K12 Education in India Through Mini Science Centre

MUMBAI, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathemathics (STEM) are increasingly recognized globally as elemental to the national development and productivity. Since 2011, STEM Learning, a social enterprise accredited by STEM.org - a US based international organization for STEM accreditation - is playing a pivotal role in shaping the country's future in a globalized world. And with the influence of artificial intelligence, big data and automation in the world being recognized, the demand for immersive STEM education at the grassroots level is the need of the hour. India is the second most populated country in the world, with the world's largest youth population. Youth are the innovators, creators, builders and leaders of the future. However, they can transform the future only if they have requisite skills and the opportunity to explore the world of opportunities. Indian government is promoting initiatives such as Make in India, Skill India, Digital India to encourage manufacturing, technology usage and skill development in the country. It has also set up the Atal Tinkering Labs to focus on STEM education in schools. Curiosity, innovation and thirst for knowledge towards STEM in kids can be encouraged by an early exposure to hands-on learning and practical knowledge in a more engaging and fun to learn environment. STEM Learning is here to prove it. Across 23 states, with the installation of 1900+ Mini Science Centres (MSCs) each holding 80 models, 8000+ teachers have been equipped with the tools to educate 1 Million+ students. The STEM MSC exhibits have been mapped with CBSE, ICSE, SSC, IGCSE and other IB boards for 5th to 10th standards. The 80 plug and play models are easy to understand and come with a detailed explanation of the model and explain more than 150 science and mathematics concepts. Besides this, the teachers are trained on the usage of the models to give a complete understanding of them. MSC has now become a prerequisite for teaching science and maths to school children in a simpler way. It is innovative and interactive with a hands-on approach to facilitate the learning process. The idea is that if the students are given access to MSC, they will be able to think and explore more. As these table top models are plug & play, these models can be carried to classrooms. MSCs are easy to install, user-friendly, they facilitate learning and a great tol. They benefit students and teachers which directly have an impact on the quality of education provided in schools. This modern way of teaching not only helps students comprehend the concepts and their applications easily, but also helps in implementing them for the progress of the society as the students will be equipped with the required knowledge and skills for life.



MSCs maximize possible involvement of the child in the entire learning process. It strengthens their understanding of science and mathematical concepts and applies them in variety of situations in class room as well as life. It is very much helpful in developing their power of reasoning, enriching mental ability and boosts confidence and also develops mastery over basic scientific process. STEM Learning is the only pioneering medium which provides MSCs across India. One of its aims is pedagogy transformation that includes capacity building of teachers through Teacher Training Programs.

15% increase in aptitude & inquisitiveness among students is seen due to the MSCs and this reassures teachers on their compelling use. Also, the effective teaching time is reduced by 60%-70%. Hence, more and more schools are opting for MSCs. Students have even started explaining the concepts to their fellow students, leading to peer to peer learning. The exhibits are plug and play so that the students can easily explore and contextualize the concepts, which also builds confidence in them. The students get an opportunity to hold the models and explore their features to get a better understanding. Now students can look at the model, work with it independently and understand the scientific concepts, leading to an increase in their scientific temper. Once they've grasped the concept, they can use their imagination and direct their thought process towards application of those concepts. The outcome of such learning is successful science projects, that can be developed into prototypes of budding entrepreneurs. Ashutosh Pandit, Founder of STEM Learning, said, "The idea of MSC germinated from the fact that when students are taken to any science centre, it is more of a picnic for them than a learning session. However, I have always felt that the students at their age may not understand the importance of this trip to the centre for their future. So why not bring the centre to their schools and embed it in their curriculum? So we started installing Mini Science Centres in schools across India to push, motivate and encourage students to stop fearing and start loving science and maths concepts and ingrain them forever. The students from remotest locations now have access to MSC exhibits and they are definitely valuing its importance due to the increase in scientific temper they themselves are witnessing. In fact, when we conducted the all-India competition, 'The National STEM Awards 2020', recently at over 50 locations, the enthusiasm and the vigor of the participating students was not to be missed. They were brimming with so much zest to perform and showcase their STEM skills attained with the help of MSC, it was astounding to say the least. The winners were mostly from remote location and we were elated to see girls perform so well. This proves that we have been able to achieve what we aimed for in the beginning: a huge impact in the learning process and transformation in teaching pedagogy. I am sure that the way MSCs have made a colossal difference in these students, we can make the same impact during virtual classroom sessions and online learning." 'Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn'. Benjamin Franklin's quote seems to have a huge bearing in terms of MSC and its significance in the learning process. The MSCs have brought quality education to the doorstep of school children across Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Goa, Karnataka, Delhi, Himachal Pradesh, J&K, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, Assam and many other towns of India. The MSCs build students with holistic knowledge and this learning stays with them forever because of the hands on manner. About STEM: Mini Science Centre



Mini Science Centre (MSC) is a prerequisite for teaching Science and Maths to school children in a simpler way. It aims to lessen the gap between contextual and rote based learning, and replace it with a practical approach, which will equip children with the skills and knowledge needed to get lucrative opportunities in their fields of interest.



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COVID-19 on Long Island: Counties Differ on Achieving 7 Metrics to Reopen

Health & Wellness

By Ls Cohen Published: May 14 2020

Both counties reported a total of 83,138 positive cases.

Numbers reported daily by Nassau and Suffolk counties show that there are a total of 83,138 positive cases on Long Island as of Thursday night.

Suffolk reported that there are 44,704 confirmed cases at this time and Nassau reported 38,434 total Covid-19 positives.

Suffolk County also reported that there are 575 patients hospitalized. Of those, 183 are in the intensive care unit.

For the first time in a long time we are below 200, said Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone in a press conference on Thursday.

In Suffolk hospital capacity is at 69% and ICU capacity is around 67%.

In Nassau, there were 712 people hospitalized and of those 229 are in the ICU.

Suffolk County has administered 124,052 Covid-19 tests, with 30.3% of those tested were confirmed positive for COVID-19. In Suffolk, 57,936 antibody tests were issues with 7,160 showing positive for antibodies.

Nassau County did not report on the total number of tests administered.

There continues to be more evidence that the rate of infection is declining, said Nassau County County Executive Laura Curran during a press conference on Thursday.

She said that means we should be doing more.

Its time to expand testing.

Nassau is planning to ramp up antibody tests

We know there is a demand for antibody tests, said Curran.

She wanted that while the presence of antibodies is a presumption that a person is immune for a period of time, that is not definite given that there are many variables and unknowns, including the possibility that the virus could mutate annually like the flu.

Its not necessarily a guarantee of immunity, Curran said.

Those seeking to get tested for antibodies in Nassau County should make an appointment by calling (516) 396-7500.

Sadly, 3,688 people have died so far on Long Island from Covid-19. 1,697 deaths were in Suffolk County and 1,991 in Nassau County from Covid-19.

In the United States, there have been 1,436,690 confirmed cases and 85,846 have died due to Covid-19 to date.

Stats show that over 5,904 people have recovered from Covid-19 on Long Island so far.

According to New York State statistics, Long Island as a whole meets 4 of 7 metrics to reopening. During her press conference, Curran said Nassau County meets 5 out of 7.

Bellone pointed to a dashboard that Suffolk County has on its website showing its progress toward reopening. At the time this article was written that it had met 4 of the 7 metrics.

We are watching those numbers very, very carefully, Curran said.
Two great visionaries, one great city, united in a spirit of virtuoso dissent. So we like to think, and there are images to prove it. A big-haired Jack Mundey being carried feet-first by three coppers from a 1970s protest in the Rocks. Architect Richard Leplastrier, rowing his kids to school from their island home or explaining why glass  that most modern material  is the enemy of architecture. Sydneys streets, crusted with intricate enterprise and thronged with creative ferment. But these images now flutter in the basement of history, yellowed relics of a distant past.

Jack Mundey's arrest in October 1973. Credit:Robert Pearce

Leplastrier, still revered at 81 and going strong, was the subject of Anna Caters lovely new doco, Framing the View, which premiered on ABCTV last Tuesday. Two days earlier, the death of Mundey, environmental unionist extraordinaire, released a deluge of grief, despite his grand age of 90.

In COVID-Sydney both the grief and the reverence are intensified because the city these men helped shape and inspire  the Sydney of wild larrikin energy  has all but vanished. So the spotlight on these men, during these dark times, seemed to show an eras end.

Politicians and real-estate agents insist weve turned the COVID corner. Well they may bray. Certainly, traffic is back. Aggression is back. But Saturday traffic jams, once a jumble of kid-crammed SUVs heading to school sport, are now a roar of articulated lorries, weaponised loads of gravel and cement that speed through local streets for yet more towers and motorways.
The Electoral Commission (EC) is accusing the National Democratic Congress (NDC) of peddling falsehood to tarnish its image in the eyes of the public in relation to its decision to compile a new voters register.

During a press conference on Thursday, May 14, 2020, the National Chairman of the NDC, Mr. Samuel Ofosu-Ampofo accused the EC of Conspiring with the National Identification Authority (NIA) and the government to rig the 2020 General Elections.

According to him, the exclusion of the Voter ID card as a form of identification during the upcoming registration exercise is to suppress votes as part of a ploy to keep President Nana Addo in power after the elections.

In a response to that press conference, the Electoral Commission says all those accusations are calculated attempts by the main opposition party to tarnish its image.

The Electoral Commission is not oblivious of the calculated attempts by the NDC to repeatedly peddle untruths and falsehoods aimed at tarnishing its image and causing disaffection for it.

It is impossible for the Commission to conspire with any political party or institution as being speculated by Mr. Ofosu-Ampofo and the NDC since the electoral processes remain transparent at all levels, a press statement from the EC signed by its Acting Director of Public Relations, Mrs. Sylvia Annor has said.

On the allegation of excluding the national ID as a form of identification in the upcoming registration, the EC explained: An applicant who does not have the Ghana card or Passport may resort to obtaining two (2) guarantors to facilitate their registration and therefore, the exclusion of the Voter ID card as a requirement will not lead to suppression of votes.

Moreover, the new CI, if passed by parliament, will afford guarantors the opportunity to guarantee for upwards of ten (10) applicants instead of five (5) as stipulated in the current CI. This makes it possible for applicants without Ghana card and passports to also register.

The Electoral Commission further stressed that it is committed to overseeing free, fair, and credible Presidential and Parliamentary Elections on December 7, 2020, as mandated by law.

Full statement from the EC below:
A French bishop welcomes the faithful at the Notre Dame Cathedral, in Chartres. (JEAN-FRANCOIS MONIER/AFP)

The latest data did not reflect a precise picture of the last 24 hours as it included two days of deaths in nursing homes, which were not included in the toll the day earlier.

Over the last day, 123 people died in hospitals while over the last 48 hours 228 people died in nursing homes, the health ministry said.

Recent positive trends continued, with 129 fewer people in intensive care for a total of 2,299, a figure that exceeded 7,000 at the peak of the crisis.

The latest figures came as France on Thursday enjoyed the fourth day of the partial easing of a nationwide lockdown imposed on Mar 17 to battle the virus.
With coronavirus cases and deaths plateauing as South Carolina officials continue to take steps to reopen the state, the return to normal has come in fits and starts, with residents, businesses and organizations remaining anxious that the disease could flare up.

In a sign of the still-uncertain times, the Summerville YMCA and other facilities announced they would reopen swimming pools and gyms Monday under new state guidelines, but officials have canceled the Cooper River Bridge Run. And Charleston Stage  the largest professional theater company in the state  will delay the opening of its upcoming season until January, citing the uncertainty of the current COVID-19 health emergency, according to a news release.

The S.C. Department of Health and Environmental Control announced nine new coronavirus deaths and 232 cases on Friday.

The latest daily update brings the number of deaths in the state to 380 and the total number of those infect to 8,407 since the illness was first diagnosed in the Palmetto State in early March, DHEC said.

Of the deaths announced on Friday, eight were individuals over age 65, DHEC said. Three lived in Sumter County. And one patient each came from Cherokee, Clarendon, Fairfield, Florence and Pickens counties. In addition, one person whose age was between ages 35 and 64 died in Clarendon County, DHEC said.

On Thursday, state health officials partnered with Saluda Regional Medical Center and held a free, mobile coronavirus testing clinic, DHEC said. In all, 375 people were tested and 11 testing events were scheduled for Friday statewide.

"Currently, there are 58 mobile testing events scheduled through June 5 with new mobile clinics regularly added," DHEC said.

Anyone interested in finding mobile testing near them can visit www.scdhec.gov/covid19testing.

Charleston officials said on Friday they plan to reopen the James Island Recreation Center and Herbert Hassel swimming pools on Monday. Hours will be limited, social distancing and other restrictions will be in place  restrooms will be open, but you can't change clothes in locker rooms  and reservations will be required by calling the pools. Swimmers will also have to have their temperatures checked before entering the pool areas.

Reservations can be made at 843-708-4104 for the James Island pool or 843-724-7344 for the Hassel pool.

Earlier this week, state court officials signaled that in-person jury trials could resume as early as July.

The memo, sent by S.C. Supreme Court Chief Justice Donald Beatty spurred criticism from some lawyers worried that trials are conducted in close quarters and resuming the proceedings could pose a public health risk as the virus continues to spread around the state.

In Charleston on Friday, Mayor John Tecklenburg said the city would allow outdoor dining on private property and public sidewalks for the near future. Business must apply first, however.
There is a healthy debate taking place right now inside the state of Texas about balancing public health and economics.

It is hard to know what the right answer is. Editor Stewart Doreen has stated before that he could see a more open economy right now if people were required to wear masks. But overall, we support Gov. Greg Abbott and the measures he has taken so far.

We know that not everyone agrees with our view. Some people wanted to see the economy fully open a long time ago. They have their reasons, and for the most part, they are understandable.

Others have said that the governor went too far, and it was the Legislature -- and not the governor -- that should have called the shots on this one. We say good luck with that. Even if a special session had been called, the idea of the Legislature coming to a consensus quickly with a common-sense plan is laughable. It frankly is not in their DNA.

Are there questions about whether the governor should have the type of power that he has assumed over the past few months? Sure. That seems like a fair question, and during the next legislative session, there can be a spirited debate about that point. But it is far-fetched to think there have been Texas leaders chomping at the bit to put their ideas ahead of the governor. Abbott showed leadership that prevented Texas from becoming another state overrun by coronavirus cases. He also seems very open to bringing the economy back as fast as possible. We think he has operated in a manner that has been appropriate for Texas.

But apparently, there are some ready to kick the governor to the curb. Good luck with that. If someone wants to overthrow Abbott in an intraparty challenge, you better be armed with more than an endorsement from a salon owner. The most conservative governor some of us will ever know deserves better, and so does conservatism.

Midlanders come together in darkest hours

We were shocked and horrified to learn about the stabbing of a Midland ISD employee Tuesday morning in central Midland.

All our prayers go out to the Fannin Elementary family and those who knew 44-year-old Iracema Diaz. We dont know why horrible events such as this homicide took place, but we wish her family and friends Godspeed in dealing with the events of Tuesday.

We wanted to take this opportunity to thank those who came together on the Fannin Elementary campus Tuesday night to celebrate Diaz. In a dark hour, we saw the best in Midlanders, delivering flowers and coming together for someone else. Thank you to the Facebook site MISD Homework for the promotion of the event. Your support of education and those working for the district was evident this week.

Still, we hope all Midlanders take a moment to think of Diaz and say a prayer for her family.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 14

By Tamilla Mammadova  Trend:

Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili talked on the phone with President of Finland Sauli Niinisto, Trend reports referring to Georgian presidents press service.

The heads of state spoke about the coronavirus-related situation in Georgia and Finland and remote education process, as access to education in a crisis situation is very important.

The president of Georgia briefed her Finnish counterpart on the tourism plan prepared by the Georgian government and noted that Georgia and Finland need closer cooperation in the field of tourism.

Zourabichvili also stressed the importance of cooperation in the field of cyber security between the two countries.

The presidents touched upon issues on Georgia's European integration. Zourabichvili said that the current crisis was an opportunity for Georgia to deepen relations with the European Union and take specific steps towards Europe.

---

Follow the author on Twitter: @Mila61979356
Axiom Space signed a full floor lease in the Hercules II building in the Clear Lake area for relocation of its headquarters in August.

The Houston-based company was seeking a modern office with room for growth near NASAs Johnson Space Center.

In January, the company was awarded a contract by NASA to attach a commercial module to the International Space Station as part of the agencys plan to open the station for commercial use. When the ISS is retired, the module with a research and manufacturing facility, a crew habitat and large-windowed Earth observatory, would be detached and operated as a commercial endeavor.

Derrell Curry and Noah Kruger of Savills assisted Axiom in finding an office that could be developed and modified as the project evolves and the workforce expands. The office at 1290 Hercules Ave. will have a combination of open areas and enclosed offices, lab and shop spaces.

MORE: Houstons Axiom Space signs contract with SpaceX to fly private astronauts

Axiom has about 50 employees and aims to grow to 250 by the end of the year, according to Savills.

The building owner, Capital Commercial Investments, was represented by Matthew Seliger, Doug Little and Louann Pereira of Transwestern Real Estate Services. The deal is the largest in the Clear Lake submarket to be completed since the COVID-19 stay-at-home order took effect, according to Transwestern.

We are extremely pleased to have developed a creative solution with Axiom Space, especially during the current situation with COVID-19, said Seliger. Despite the challenges of working from home during a global pandemic, we stayed highly focused to ensure the execution of this complicated and fast-paced transaction.

Occupancy in the Clear Lake submarket reached 83.9 percent in the first quarter, up from 81.9 percent in the first quarter of 2019, according to Transwestern.

The 31,327-square-foot lease brings the two-story building to 52 percent leased. The space has been vacant since before CCI purchased the property in 2017.

A renovation with new lobbies, elevator cabs and spec suites at the Hercules I and II buildings, helped seal the deal. The campus is less than a mile from the entry to Johnson Space Center.

Our improved headquarters is ideal for our companys progress and growth, Axiom President and CEO Michael T. Suffredini said in an announcement. The optimal location and expansion arrangement will best enable us to successfully continue our project development and research for years to come.

katherine.feser@chron.com

twitter.com/kfeser
A member of Charles de Gaulle airport personnel wears a protective face mask and visor. (Photo by IAN LANGSDON/EPA POOL/AFP via Getty Images)

Gavin, age 10, the son of the late Glen Ridge Police officer Charles Rob Roberts, looks on during the funeral service of his father, who died of coronavirus. (Photo by TIMOTHY A. CLARY/AFP via Getty Images)

A man walks his dog past a new mural in Dublin's city centre inspired by the new HSE 'Hold Firm' campaign which took it's inspiration from a poem by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

Follow the latest coronavirus news in Ireland and across the world on the Independent.ie live blog.

22.03 15/05/2020

Family overjoyed after 'warrior' grandmother (94) recovers from six week coronavirus battle

Expand Close Maire Walsh (94) beat the coronavirus. / Facebook

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Dublin family said they are overjoyed that their warrior grandmother (94) has finally come home from hospital today after a six week battle with coronavirus.

Maire Walsh from Templeogue, who last spent a night in hospital when she gave birth to her fourth child 56 years ago, was hospitalised on April 3 after testing positive for Covid-19.

With four children and ten grandchildren, her family is delighted she has beaten the virus and came home today from St Michaels Hospital in Dun Laoghaire after two negative tests.

Read More

Garda overtime cut across the country amid Covid-19 pandemic

Garda overtime has been cut across the country as the organisation continues to deal with the Covid-19 pandemic, Independent.ie has learned.

The policing of Covid-19 checkpoints and Irish ports are expected to be among the areas impacted by the cutbacks.

Senior management have ordered that no further overtime will be sanctioned with "immediate effect" for supplementing units and working rests days.

Read More

20.38 15/05/2020

Turkey's teenagers allowed to leave homes after 42 days

Turkish teenagers have been allowed to leave their homes for the first time in 42 days, as their turn has come for a few hours of respite from coronavirus lockdowns.

Turks aged 65 and over, and under 20, have been subjected to a curfew for the past several weeks.

This week, the government began allowing them to go outdoors for a few hours as part of a programme of reduced controls.

On Friday, youths aged between 15 and 20 filled parks and main streets and were seen queuing outside shopping centres as the curfew was lifted between 11.00am and 3.00pm.

Some played basketball or football or flew kites in parks, local media reported.

'Its one rule for some, and another rule for others' - Wexford locals concerned as dozens of mourners attend funeral

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Whatsapp A large crowd attended the funeral at St Aidan's Cathedral

Wexford residents have expressed concern about the disregard for social distancing measures after more than 100 mourners gathered outside the cathedral in Enniscorthy town for a funeral

The Requiem Mass of the late Jero Connors was held at St Aidans Cathedral on Friday morning.

With funeral services meant to be limited to less than 10 people during the Covid crisis, as per Government guidelines, locals questioned why so many people were allowed to attend the service.

You read stories about people having to watch loved ones being buried through a phone as theyre not allowed to attend, and yet it seems to be one rule for some, and another rule for others, one local said.

Read More

19:00 15/05/2020

ECDC issuing warning about PIMS

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) have also issued an alert regarding PIMS.

PIMS is a rare paediatric inflammatory multisystem syndrome.

Some 230 suspect cases have been identified across Europe with two deaths and further cases in the US. Seven children thus far are being investigated in Ireland in relation to the disease. The ECDC has advised increased awareness.

Dr Tony Holohan said that this is an unusual condition in children, where there may be 15 cases per 100,000.





18.35 15/05/2020

16 more people with coronavirus have died, the Department of Health has said.

The total number of confirmed deaths from the virus in Ireland is 1,518.

A further 129 new confirmed cases have also been announced, bringing the total confirmed number of cases in the Republic to 23,956.

An additional four deaths have been included in the figures, due to further validation of data.

Data from the Health Protection Surveillance Centre, as of midnight, Wednesday 13th May (23,627 cases), reveals:

 57pc are female and 42pc are male

 the median age of confirmed cases is 48 years

 3,062 cases (13pc) have been hospitalised

 Of those hospitalised, 387 cases have been admitted to ICU

 7,427 cases are associated with healthcare workers

 Dublin has the highest number of cases at 11,557 (49pc of all cases) followed by Kildare with 1,352 cases (6pc) and then Cork with 1,256 cases (5pc)

 Of those for whom transmission status is known: community transmission accounts for 60pc, close contact accounts for 37pc, travel abroad accounts for 3pc





Visit our Covid-19 vaccine dashboard for updates on the roll out of the vaccination program and the rate of Coronavirus cases Ireland

17.19 15/05/2020

Coronavirus Ireland: What do the new Covid-19 rules coming into place on Monday mean?

Expand Close A man walks his dog past a new mural in Dublin's city centre inspired by the new HSE 'Hold Firm' campaign which took it's inspiration from a poem by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire / Facebook

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Whatsapp A man walks his dog past a new mural in Dublin's city centre inspired by the new HSE 'Hold Firm' campaign which took it's inspiration from a poem by President of Ireland Michael D Higgins. Photo: Brian Lawless/PA Wire

IRELAND can start to slowly reopen on Monday after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar said the battle against Covid-19 is going to plan.

He said the movement into Phase One of the roadmap to reopening was reason to hope but its not cause for celebration

We have a long way to go yet. There will be bumps in the road and we have to keep our guard up, he said.

The new message from the Government is to stay at home except for one of these five reasons:

Read More

Why has it taken the Government so long to come up with a face mask policy, and which ones work best?

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All your questions about face masks answered.

Why are face masks set to become an even more common sight from today?

There's a growing consensus that covering our mouths and noses could be an important weapon in our battle against Covid-19.

All this week, the National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) has been discussing face masks in advance of Ireland moving to step one of a five-stage exit from lockdown come Monday.

Read More

WATCH: Face masks: How effective they are and how to wear them safely

Immunologist Prof. Luke O'Neill and Consultant in infectious diseases Dr. Eoin Feeney give their insight into how effective face masks are and how to wear them properly. The use of face masks have been shown to decrease transmission when worn and applied correctly.





16.00 15/05/2020

Live updates from Taoiseach Leo Varadkar at a press conference on easing lockdown restrictions at government buildings:

Safe to proceed with Phase One of lockdown restrictions

But 'not a cause for celebration, have a long way to go yet' the Taoiseach has said

Next review to take place on June 5

Public must stay at home except for five rules: go to work if you cannot work from home, shop for items you need, exercise within 5km, medical reasons or to care for others, meet three other family or friends while social distancing

Additional hygiene measure: use face coverings in enclosed retail outlets and public transport

Homeware stores will not reopen but hardware and garden centres will as well as garden centres, bike repair and electrical shops

Tennis and golf will be allowed

Business Minister Heather Humphreys said:

'Enormous sacrifices' by businesses throughout the country has saved lives

"Critical housing and infrastructure projects need to get back up and running'

Monday is the 'first step' on the pathway out of this crisis but adds that 12bn worth of supports for businesses will be there to make challenges easier

Advice from Health Minister Simon Harris:

'Courage' shown by Irish public has prevented 'catastrophe'

'This is far from over' he said

Increased movement brings increased risk

'Never in our history has there been such a heightened sense of excitement about being able to go to a garden centre' says the minister

But he says opening the garden centre 'isn't the danger - it's what we decide to do when we go there'

Information from the Q+A session:

face coverings are advised to be used on public transport and in retail outlets where you cannot social distance but are not a legal requirement

children under the age of 13 are not recommended to wear face coverings

Dr Tony Holohan says that face coverings are not a 'magic shield'

Horse racing behind closed doors will be allowed to take place

Hardware shops to reopen first before homeware because a new set of curtains or new bedsheets can wait a couple of weeks, according to Minister Harris





15:00 15/05/2020

Backlog of postponed hospital operations could take nearly two years to be cleared

Eilish O'Regan

It could take nearly two years to clear a backlog of postponed surgeries, including operations on cancer patients, which has built up in Irish hospitals due to the coronavirus crisis, according to a major study published today.

The study estimates a backlog of 16,419 surgeries has arisen over 12 weeks as hospitals ordered mass cancellations in a bid to concentrate on coronavirus patients.

Researchers at the University of Birmingham estimate that more than 28 million elective surgeries across the globe could be cancelled as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The modelling study, published in the 'British Journal of Surgery', indicates that each additional week of disruption to hospital services will be associated with a further 2.4 million cancellations.

Read More





14:40 15/05/2020

US doctor warns of further virus revival in winter

A US government whistleblower says that America faces the 'darkest winter in modern history' as he testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee.





14:20 15/05/2020

Primary pupils 'will have to return to school part-time' if Covid rules apply

Katherine Donnelly

Primary school pupils will only be able to return to school part-time in autumn if current social distancing and other public health restrictions are in place, teachers and school managers warn.

After months of closure, with parents struggling to keep learning going at home and children feeling the loss of school, it is a bleak scenario.

But key education stakeholders raised the spectre of schools reopening with reduced numbers at any one time, and individual pupils returning on a half day, day on/off, half week on/half week off or week on/week off basis.

The gloomy picture emerges in separate documents prepared by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and the Catholic Primary School Management Association (CPSMA) for contingency planning discussions around reopening of the education system.

Those talks kicked off for the primary sector - which has 3,200 schools and more than 600,000 pupils, teachers and other staff - this week.

Read More





14:00 15/05/2020

How will Irish house prices be affected by Covid crisis?

Mark Keenan

Uncertainty caused by Covid-19 means those who were about to buy a home will be wondering whether that's a bad idea right now. If property prices fall, then negative equity beckons.

First off, note that asking prices haven't fallen at all thus far. There is no evidence of price cuts in transactions recently completed.

The first reaction of vendors in a crisis is to sit on their hands, not to lower prices.

In the big crash, it took six months before the first vendors cut their asking prices in response to prevailing conditions and no sales.

Right now, the industry is almost shut down. The pause button has been pressed.

Read More





13:40 15/05/2020

Irish people expect lifting of social distancing restrictions to be slow and gradual - Study

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People expect the lifting of social distancing restrictions to be slow and gradual, with most indoor social activities not possible until at least September, according to new research.

The restrictions survey found that most people also believe that the lifting of restrictions should prioritise necessities ahead of leisure activities.

The findings are based on data collected the week before Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced the roadmap to opening society and businesses on May 1.

The study found no evidence that a substantial proportion of the public expected a more rapid lifting of restrictions.





13:20 15/05/2020

Pandemic impact on jobs in Ireland among worst in Europe, says EC study

David Chance

The impact of the pandemic on jobs in Ireland is one the largest in the European Union, far outstripping the impact in richer northern European countries, according to a new study.

The research from the European Commission comes as the Government edges towards a staged relaxation of tough lockdown rules which have worked to contain the spread of coronavirus but which have hit the economy hard, with a million workers now depending on the State for income.

"The sectors that are marked as non-essential and even explicitly closed because of the high contagion risk they involve account for less than 10pc of overall EU employment, but here the variation is much more significant: whereas in Spain, Greece or Ireland it accounts for more than 13pc, in Romania, Poland, Belgium or even Germany it is around or below 8pc," the report said.

The figure for Ireland is 12.67pc of the workforce, the fifth highest level in the EU.

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13:00 15/05/2020

Failure by hospital to report cases sees major leap in infections figure

Eilish O'Regan

A probe is under way into why a hospital failed to report well over 200 positive cases of the coronavirus diagnosed since mid-March until yesterday - causing a big jump in newly diagnosed figures just days before Monday's easing of lockdown.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan said he was only informed yesterday of the large batch of cases from the hospital, which he did not name.

It comes as two more healthcare workers have died, bringing their death toll to seven.

The delayed reporting from the hospital led to a total of 426 new cases being reported yesterday - much higher than in recent days.

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12:40 15/05/2020

All summer rugby union internationals called off due to Covid-19

The summers rugby union international schedule, including Englands tour of Japan, has been postponed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

World Rugby announced on Friday that all fixtures in July would be called off due to Covid-19, meaning Eddie Jones men will not return to the scene of last years World Cup, where they reached the final.

The widespread postponements mean Wales one-Test mission in Japan is also off, as are their two Tests in New Zealand, with Scotlands trip to South Africa and New Zealand, and Irelands to Australia also removed from the schedule.





12:20 15/05/2020

Prepare now for a deadly second wave of infection, Europe warned

Europe should brace itself for a second deadly wave of coronavirus because the pandemic is not over, the World Health Organisation's top official on the continent has warned.

Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, delivered a stark warning to countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions, saying that now is the "time for preparation, not celebration".

Dr Kluge stressed that, as the number of cases of Covid-19 in countries such as the UK, France and Italy was beginning to fall, it did not mean the pandemic was coming to an end. The centre of the European outbreak is now in the east, with the number of cases rising in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus, he warned.

Countries should use this time wisely and start to strengthen public health systems as well as building capacity in hospitals, primary care and intensive care units, he said.

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11:40 15/05/2020

In Amazon city, indigenous chief killed by Covid-19 buried with dance and singing

He had asked them to sing and dance at his funeral, and that is how they said goodbye to Chief Messias Kokama on Thursday.

They sang the Brazilian national anthem in Tikuna, one of the 14 indigenous languages spoken in their ramshackle settlement on the outskirts of Manaus where 2,500 descendants of 35 different Amazon tribes live.

Chief Kokama, of the Kokama tribe, was 53 and died on Wednesday of respiratory collapse and other complications from COVID-19 after a week in the main hospital of Manaus, Brazil's largest city in the Amazon rainforest.

The soaring number of coronavirus cases has overwhelmed the hospitals in Manaus, and the dead are being buried in collective graves at funerals attended by no more than two relatives.

As the leader of the settlement called Parque das Tribos, municipal authorities made an exception to allow his community to gather to pay homage to Kokama after a wake.





11:20 15/05/2020

Norse power... but Garda checkpoint is a surprise final hurdle on epic voyage





Allison Bray

It was not the homecoming he expected.

After being more or less alone at sea since November, while completing an epic solo journey from Norway on a homemade boat in a nod to Viking mythology, Rathfarnham chef Darragh Carroll was stunned to see harbour police and gardai greeting his arrival at Howth pier yesterday.

Despite having the necessary documentation to disembark, he hadn't anticipated the pier would be effectively in lockdown due to Covid-19 - with strict restrictions in place for anyone arriving at the port.

His father David Carroll (58), mother Eunice (55) and brother Cillian (21) were all at the port looking forward to their much-anticipated family reunion.

But instead they spent an anxious few hours worried that Darragh would be refused entry and forced back out to sea..

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11:00 15/05/2020

Chinese official hails 'incomparable' improvement in air quality as virus hits industry

China's air quality saw "incomparable" improvements in the first quarter of this year as a coronavirus outbreak led to rapid declines in industrial activity and transportation, an environment ministry official said on Friday.

The number of "blue sky days" rose by 6.6 percentage points in the first quarter of 2020, said Liu Bingjiang, head of the air pollution office at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

"That was a level we didn't even dare imagine," he said, noting the target for the whole 2016-2020 period was 3.3 percentage points.

China has for several months been grappling with a coronavirus outbreak, which has spread around the world and infected more than 4 million people, forcing governments to impose strict lockdowns, severely hurting economic activity.

With millions staying home, concentrations of small lung-damaging floating particles fell by nearly 15pc in more than 300 Chinese cities in the first three months of the year, according to official ministry data.

Emissions in the city of Shanghai fell by nearly 20pc in the first quarter while Beijing's average emissions levels stood still in the first three months of the year, the data showed.





10:40 15/05/2020

'We were told we're being unreasonable' - more pubs take action against FBD over Covid claims

Expand Close Pictured is Patrick and his wife Aileen Hanley of The Cahore Strand, Cahore, Co. Wexford, which has made a complaint about FBD to the financial ombudsman Picture: Patrick Browne / Facebook

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Whatsapp Pictured is Patrick and his wife Aileen Hanley of The Cahore Strand, Cahore, Co. Wexford, which has made a complaint about FBD to the financial ombudsman Picture: Patrick Browne





Amy Molloy

Pressure is mounting on insurers FBD after one of Irelands most famous pubs became the latest business to issue High Court proceedings against the company.

Seans Bar in Athlone, Co Westmeath is taking action against FBD over its refusal to pay out for business interruption claims during the Covid-19 crisis.

Dublin bar Lemon & Duke, which is co-owned by Irish rugby stars Sean OBrien, Jamie Heaslip, and Rob and Dave Kearney, also initiated legal proceedings against the insurer this week.

Additionally, a senior publican has hit out at the company after FBD provided a written statement earlier this year, seen by Independent.ie, guaranteeing his policy covered coronavirus. However, it is now refusing to pay out.

Meanwhile, the owners of a family-run bar and restaurant have made an official complaint to the financial ombudsman after FBD refused to pay out on a business interruption claim  despite their policy explicitly covering infectious diseases.

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10:20 15/05/2020

Cafes and bars reopen in Australia after lockdown

Restaurants, cafes and bars in Australia's most populous state were reopening on Friday after a two-month shutdown under coronavirus lockdown measures, boosting the federal government's bid to get people back in work and the economy back on track.

The easing of quarantine measures in New South Wales (NSW) state comes just a day after the national statistics office reported unprecedented record high job losses and Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that worse was still to come.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian cautioned people to remain vigilant and maintain social distancing as restaurants, public pools and other businesses reopen under the proviso they limit customers to 10 at any one time.

Meanwhile, the Slovenian government called an official end to its coronavirus epidemic, becoming the first European country to do so, after authorities confirmed less than seven new coronavirus cases each day for the past two weeks.

People now arriving in Slovenia from other European Union states will no longer be obliged to go into a quarantine for at least seven days as was the case from early April, the government said in a statement.

The country of 2 million people, which borders Italy, Austria, Hungary and Croatia, has so far reported 1,464 coronavirus cases and 103 deaths. It declared an epidemic on March 12.





10:00 15/05/2020

Global virus hotspots flare and hospitals are tested as economies reopen

Expand Close People wear masks as they wait for a bus in Los Angeles (Damian Dovarganes/AP) / Facebook

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Fresh coronavirus outbreaks are testing public health networks and the resolve of planners to reopen from pandemic shutdowns.

Japan has pushed ahead with relaxing its state of emergency in most regions, not including Tokyo, Osaka and a few other districts.

In the Philippines, fears of spreading the virus complicated efforts to evacuate tens of thousands of people ahead of a typhoon that swept through overnight without causing major damage.

There was good news from China, where the virus first appeared and where no deaths have been reported in a month. The country confirmed four new cases linked to previous ones in Jilin, in the northeast.

With more than 1.4 million infections and nearly 85,000 deaths, the US has the largest outbreak in the world by far, according to a tally by Johns Hopkins University. Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.4 million and killed over 300,000. Experts say the actual numbers are probably far higher.

Worldwide, the virus has infected more than 4.4 million people.





09:40 15/05/2020

UK manufacturers less confident about swift return to work - survey

British manufacturers think it will take longer to recover from the economic impact of Covid-19 than just a couple of weeks ago, according to an industry survey on Friday.

Three-quarters do not think business will be back to normal within six months, and 36pc think it will take more than a year - twice the proportion two weeks ago, trade body Make UK said.

"It's clear that it is going to be a long road back to anything like normal trading conditions and, despite the lockdown beginning to be lifted, there will be a significant impact on companies and jobs for some time to come," Make UK's chief executive, Stephen Phipson, said.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Sunday that workplaces such as factories and building sites that had not been told to close due to the coronavirus should resume operations where it was safe to do so.





09:20 15/05/2020

'We can't just stop playing sport until a cure' - Philly McMahon torn on inter-county games behind closed doors

Conor McKeon

Philly McMahon is the latest high-profile GAA player to express scepticism about the value of playing inter-county matches in empty grounds.

In an interview for McSport, the Dublin defender insisted: "Inter-county football is obviously very little without crowds and fans. That's what makes the inter-county scene."

Behind-closed-doors games is not an option currently being explored at central GAA level, although it is a potential jump-off point for the resumption of organised sport.

And, as McMahon also pointed out, it may be the only viable option other than sitting idle awaiting the discovery of a vaccine for coronavirus.

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09:00 15/05/2020

State borrows 1.5bn more to fund its swelling deficit

Shawn Pogatchnik

State's treasury has borrowed 1.5bn to help cover the skyrocketing deficit amid record unemployment and emergency Covid-19 spending.

The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) yesterday issued 850m in bonds due for redemption in 2029 and 650m more maturing in 2050.

Both offerings were oversubscribed by institutional investors seeking low-risk debt securities - though at a moderately higher cost to the State than when 2029 bonds were last auctioned on the eve of Ireland's lockdown.

The nine-year bonds offered yields, or interest payouts, barely above zero - just 0.043pc. This was the first time since July 2019 that the NTMA's auction of that benchmark 2029 debt security merited a yield above the zero threshold.

Yields offered to investors to take the 30-year bonds were higher - 0.79pc - reflecting greater perceived risk of default at some point between now and 2050.

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08:40 15/05/2020

Trump vows to replenish stockpile for future pandemics amid criticism of US preparedness

Expand Close President Donald Trump arrives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he vowed to build Americas stockpile of medical equipment in preparation for the next pandemic (Evan Vucci/AP) / Facebook

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Whatsapp President Donald Trump arrives in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he vowed to build Americas stockpile of medical equipment in preparation for the next pandemic (Evan Vucci/AP)





US President Donald Trump has vowed to prepare for future pandemics by replenishing the national stockpile and bringing manufacturing of critical supplies and equipment back to the US.

His comments came the same day a whistleblower told Congress the Trump administration had failed to properly prepare for the current pandemic.

Wouldnt that be nice? Mr Trump said during a visit to a Pennsylvania distributor of medical equipment. My goal is to produce everything America needs for ourselves and then export to the world, including medicines.

Mr Trump had complained about supply chains in a television interview that aired before he left Washington for the trip to Owens and Minor Inc. in Allentown, Pennsylvania.

It was Mr Trumps second trip outside Washington in as many weeks as he tries to convince the public it is time for states to begin to open up again, even with the virus still spreading.





08:20 15/05/2020

Coronavirus puts four million girls at risk of child marriage

Four million girls are at risk of child marriage in the next two years because of the new coronavirus pandemic, a global charity said on Friday, as campaigners warned that the crisis could undo decades of work to end the practice.

Deepening poverty caused by the loss of livelihoods is likely to drive many families to marry off their daughters early, World Vision said.

"When you have any crisis like a conflict, disaster or pandemic rates of child marriage go up," the charity's child marriage expert Erica Hall told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

"If we don't start thinking about how to prevent it now it will be too late. We can't wait for the health crisis to pass first."

Campaigners said the risks were exacerbated by the fact that schools were closed and organisations working to combat child marriage were finding it harder to operate during lockdowns.

The pandemic is also making it more difficult for girls to access reproductive health services which could lead to a rise in teenage pregnancies and increased pressure to marry.





08:00 15/05/2020

Lockdown lifts  but gatherings limited to within 5km

Expand Close Giving virus the boot: A woman walks past a coronavirus mural outside Devitts Pub on Camden Street, Dublin. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire / Facebook

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Whatsapp Giving virus the boot: A woman walks past a coronavirus mural outside Devitts Pub on Camden Street, Dublin. Photo: Niall Carson/PA Wire

Philip Ryan and Tom Brady

Groups of four people living within a 5km radius of each other will be permitted to meet up outside once a day from Monday.

Those meeting up will be required to adhere to social distancing guidelines and stay two metres from those they are with.

People will also be told not to take advantage of the easing of restrictions and warned they can only meet up with small groups of friends and relatives once a day.

The National Public Health Emergency Team (Nphet) yesterday agreed to move into phase one of the plan to reopen the country.

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07:40 15/05/2020

US doctors warned about coronavirus disease in children

The federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has warned US doctors about a serious rare inflammatory condition in children linked with the coronavirus.

In an alert issued on Thursday, the CDC called the condition multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children.

The agencys case definition includes current or recent Covid-19 infection or exposure to the virus, a fever of at least 100.4F (38C) for at least 24 hours, severe illness requiring hospital admission, inflammatory markers in blood tests, and evidence of problems affecting at least two organs that could include the heart, kidneys, lungs, skin or other nervous system.

The name and definition are similar to those used in Europe, where the condition was first reported several weeks ago.

The condition has been reported in at least 110 New York children and in several in other states, with several children having died.





07:20 15/05/2020

Strong typhoon slams into pandemic-hit Philippines

Expand Close Dark clouds envelop the skies in Manila, Philippines (AP/Aaron Favila) / Facebook

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A strong typhoon has hit the Philippines after authorities evacuated tens of thousands of people while trying to avoid the coronavirus risks of overcrowding emergency shelters.

The first typhoon to hit the country this year rapidly gained force as it blew from the Pacific then barged ashore in San Policarpio town in Eastern Samar province around noon local time, weather agency administrator Vicente Malano said.

The typhoon came as the Philippines is trying to fight Covid-19 outbreaks largely by locking Filipinos in their homes and prohibiting gatherings that can set off infections. More than 11,600 infections, including 772 deaths, have been reported in the country.

Typhoon Vongfong, which has maximum sustained winds of 93 miles per hour and gusts of up to 115 mph, was forecast to blow northwestward and barrel across densely populated eastern provinces and cities before exiting in the north on Sunday.

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07:00 15/05/2020

Young adults more likely to have poor mental health during lockdown  survey

Young people are more likely to experience poor mental health during the coronavirus lockdown than older adults, new research claims.

A survey of almost 5,000 UK adults by the Royal Society for Public Health (RSPH) found that indicators of low mood and wellbeing were amplified in young people during the pandemic.

Its research found that 70pc of 18 to 24-year-olds had felt anxious about the future more often than normal, compared with 47pc of over-75s.

Meanwhile, 62pc of the same younger age group reported feeling lonely more frequently, compared with 21pc of those aged 65 to 74.
Charlize Theron has reflected on her first year as a mother with a rare photo of her daughter.

On Friday, the Oscar-winning actor shared a picture of herself and her daughter Jackson to mark the fifth anniversary of the action movie, Mad Max: Fury Road.

The image, which was taken during filming in 2012, shows Theron sitting in a car dressed as the character Imperator Furiosa with her daughter laying on her chest. The star's costumer, Inge Hough, is also featured in the background of the photo.

Recommended Sarah Paulson responds to fans comparing her to Adele

I became a mum right before we started shooting, Theron wrote alongside the image, joking: At least my child will forever have the fun fact of 'I spent most of the first year of my life in a war rig.

Theron rarely shares photos of her children, last posting a snap on social media of her daughter in August 2019.

The photo showed Jackson reaching for an apple from a tree with her face covered by leaves.

We dont wanna leaves the actor wrote in the caption.

Prior to that, the only image of Jackson and her second child, August, whom she adopted in 2015, on the Therons Instagram account is one posted on World Adoption Day in 2016.

Happy World Adoption Day from our family to yours!! If we continue to open our minds and hearts, maybe we will find ourselves in a world where every child has the loving family they deserve, Theron wrote alongside an image showing smiley faces drawn on the palms of her childrens hands.

In December 2019, the star opened up about adopting her children and how they were meant to be" in her life.

I wanted to believe that somehow my child would find me in the way that we were just meant to be, the Bombshell actor told NPR.

Everything that I hoped would happen during my adoption process did happen because these two babies were meant to be in my life  and theyre my children.

That same month, Theron opened up about her daughter being transgender and how important it is that people use the correct gender pronouns for her.

I feel like as her mother, for me, it was important to let the world know that I would appreciate it if they would use the right pronouns for her, Theron told Pride Source.

I think it became harder for us the older she got that people were still writing about her in the wrong pronouns, and also I was still talking about her in the press using the wrong pronoun. It really hurt her feelings. I dont want to be that mum.
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Linkedin Nina Larson (Agence France-Presse) Geneva, Switzerland  Fri, May 15, 2020 10:00 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82e14c 2 Business WTO,global-trade,coronavirus,economic-impact,COVID-19,pandemic Free

The World Trade Organization chief announced Thursday he will step down on August 31, a year before his term ends, despite the COVID-19 pandemic ravaging the global economy.

Roberto Azevedo said it had been a "personal decision" reached with his family, and stressed that he was not leaving to pursue "political opportunities".

"This is a decision that I do not take lightly," Azevedo told member state representatives, according to a written version of his speech.

Azevedo's early departure will come at a time when the coronavirus pandemic has pushed the global economy and international trade into turmoil, facing downturns not seen since the Great Depression.

Global trade, already hit by political tensions and uncertainties around Brexit, is expected to register "double-digit declines" in volumes in nearly all regions this year, the WTO said last month.

The 164-member organization was already in crisis before the pandemic hit, dealing with raging trade wars and scathing criticism by United States under President Donald Trump, who has pushed for reforms of the Geneva-based body.

Referring to Azevedo's announcement, Trump told a White House briefing Thursday that "I'm ok with it," adding "The World Trade Organization is horrible".

'New post-COVID realities'

Azevedo meanwhile said he was "convinced that this decision serves the best interests of this organization."

The 62-year-old Brazilian career diplomat, who became the WTO chief in 2013, suggested that an early change of leadership would help it face "new post-COVID realities".

He also insisted his move would avoid weighing down the WTO's 12th ministerial conference next year with the difficult process of finding his successor.

"My departure in August will give you the time you need to work with my successor -- whoever she or he may be -- to shape the strategic direction for MC12 and the months and years that follow," he said.

He said that the current slowdown in activity due to measures taken to curb the COVID-19 pandemic offered an opportune time to seek his replacement.

EU trade chief Phil Hogan said in a statement that he agreed.

"It is essential that we quickly chart a new path ahead at this critical and uncertain time for trade. It makes sense to proceed now with the succession process rather than wait until next year," he said.

Not everyone agreed the timing was right, however.

Azevedo's expected departure "comes at a very bad moment for the institution, as the trade system has become deeply destabilized," Sebastien Jean, head of CEPII think tank, told AFP.

He pointed to "existing tensions, in particular the scathing criticism from the US president, violations of many agreements, the US-China trade war and the paralysis of the appeals body."

Azevedo, who before his appointment as WTO chief spent five years as Brazil's ambassador to the organization, has enjoyed a reputation as a consensus-builder.

During his first term he dedicated much energy to trying to unblock long-deadlocked trade agreements.

African candidate

The WTO has for nearly two decades failed to conclude the Doha Round of trade liberalisation talks.

However, on Azevedo's watch, WTO members did conclude their first ever multilateral agreement when they reached a deal in Bali in late 2013 on overhauling global customs procedures.

But since his second term began in 2017, countries have failed to reach further multilateral agreements, and the WTO has struggled to deal with a US administration openly hostile to its multilateral approach.

The WTO was forced to put its dispute settlement appeal system on ice last December after Washington blocked the appointment of new judges, preventing it from reaching a three-judge quorum.

US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer meanwhile hailed Azevedo's service.

"Despite the many shortcomings of the WTO, Roberto has led the institution with grace and a steady hand. He will be difficult to replace," he said in a statement.

Many observers are already betting on a candidate from Africa -- and against a WTO insider.

One diplomatic source told AFP that there appeared to be a clear "consensus" that the next leader should not come from "a big economic power", and certainly not from China or the United States, in light of their trade war.
Part music festival, part farmers' market, Recharge 2020 features live in-studio performances from Tones and I, Missy Higgins, Pierce Brothers, the Jezabels, the Black Sorrows, Archie Roach, Thando, Ainslie Wills and more. Hosts Henry Wagons and Myf Warhurst also (virtually) tour Victoria's fresh food markets and showcase local produce to purchase from home.

CERES Fair Food has been delivering organic groceries for the past 10 years, with a network of more than 100 organic, biodynamic and ethical farmers and producers. Order before noon for next-day delivery.

ceresfairfood.org.au

FAMILY

Circa's acrobats tumble, leap and spin their way through the animal kingdom in Carnival of the Animals. Inspired by Camille Saint-Saens' humorous musical suite, they take the form of zebras, kangaroos, elephants and dinosaurs. Circa also presents Don't Don't Try This At Home, a series of videos for budding acrobats.

artscentremelbourne.com.au
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A man died after he was hit by a car while walking on a dark roadway on the far South Side, San Antonio police said.

The man was walking in the roadway near U.S. 181 and Old Corpus Christi Highway in an area where pedestrians are not allowed, police said.
The Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) on Friday listed FBNQuest Merchant Bank N5 billion three-year 10.50 per cent bond on the bourse.

The listing was commemorated with a digital closing gong done due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

Commenting on the listing, Oscar Onyema, NSE Chief Executive Officer, commended FBNQuest Merchant Bank for the debut listing of its N5 billion Series 1 bond on the Exchange.

Onyema said the Exchange would continue to support the bank in meeting its capital raising needs and business objectives.

We also commend all the parties to the transaction.

At the NSE, we are committed to giving issuers and investors a platform to access right-sized capital; even in the toughest of times as well as providing opportunities for secondary market trading activities across multiple asset classes, including equities, bonds and ETFs.

Today, FBNQuest Merchant Bank is a beneficiary of this and we are pleased to welcome them, Onyema said.

Speaking on the transaction, Mr Kayode Akinkugbe, FBNQuest Managing Director, commended market participants for the success of the bond.

We are pleased to announce the listing of the FBNQuest Funding Special Purpose Vehicle Bond on The Nigerian Stock Exchange.

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This is the debut bond issued by the organisation, and the success recorded attests to the degree of confidence investors have in the business.

As a full-service investment bank and asset manager, we advised on the bond issuance and structure, and also leveraged our extensive distribution capability to ensure the success of the transaction, he stated.

FBNQuest Merchant Bank will be the second organisation honoured with a digital closing gong following the maiden edition earlier held in April with Sterling Bank.

The NSE digital closing gong ceremony attests to the resilience of the NSEs technology platforms which have supported Dealing Members in trading remotely without incident via electronic platforms.

In the past weeks, NSE has listed Flour Mills N12.5 billion three-year and N7.5 billion five-year Bonds; Primero BRT Securitisation SPV Plc bond worth N16.5 billion, and several Government bonds worth over N160 billion.

(NAN)
Shelley Davies waits for her delivery at Plants and Friends./Douglas Zimmerman/SFGate

LATEST, May 15, 4:50 p.m. The city of Atwater in Merced County has declared itself a "sanctuary city" for all businesses.

Local law enforcement will not enforce the state's shelter-in-place order, and the city council is letting all businesses  regardless of risk  reopen and implement their own physical distancing measures.

Merced County has 189 confirmed cases of the coronavirus, and a death toll of four. County officials submitted a formal request to move deeper into Stage 2 of Governor Gavin Newsom's reopening plan, but have not yet received approval.

May 15, 4:00 p.m. Here are latest cases and deaths reported on Friday in counties around the Bay Area. These will be updated as new information becomes available.

San Francisco reported one new death and 27 new cases. The total number of cases is 2,026, and the death toll is 36.

San Mateo reported one new death and 39 new cases. The total number of cases is 1,575, and the death toll is 66.

Alameda reported three new deaths and 66 new cases. The total number of cases is 2,300, and the death toll is 82.

Contra Costa reported 11 new cases, increasing its total to 1,100. The death toll remains 33.

Marin reported eight new cases, increasing its total to 287. The death toll remains 14.

Napa reported no new cases or deaths. The total number of cases is 83, and the death toll is three.

Solano reported two new deaths and two new cases. The total number of cases is 410, and the death toll is 16.

May 15, 1:00 p.m. As of Friday afternoon, 22 of California's 58 counties have received approval from the state to move deeper into Stage 2 of California Governor Gavin Newom's reopening plan.

The state's guidelines currently allow for the return of retail and manufacturing with physical distancing measures in place, but individual counties can apply for a regional variance that would let local officials reopen in-person restaurants, offices where teleworking is not possible, and larger spaces such as outdoor museums.

Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Del Norte, El Dorado, Glenn, Humboldt, Lassen, Mariposa, Modoc, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Benito, Shasta, Sierra, Siskiyou, Sutter, Tehama, Tuolumne and Yuba counties have all received clearance to move deeper into Stage 2.

May 15, 12:00 p.m. Starting next Tuesday, Contra Costa County will allow for large outdoor gatherings in spaces such as parking lots where participants remain in their vehicles.

These new guidelines were crafted with religious services in mind, and require that hosts submit a written plan to ensure physical distancing measures are put in place.

"The evidence suggests that the shelter-at-home order and other social distancing measures that we have undertaken as a community are helping to slow the spread of COVID-19 in our area," Contra Costa Board of Supervisors Chair Candace Andersen said. "We must remain cautious, but the time has come for some controlled community gatherings."

Click here to read more.

May 15, 9:30 a.m. By the end of next week, eight of the nine Bay Area counties will have joined the rest of the state in Stage 2 of Govnenor Gavin Newsom's reopening plan.

Here's where all nine counties stand on reopening:

Sonoma

Sonoma joined the rest of the state in the early phases of Stage 2 and allowed for curbside-pickup retail and manufacturing last week. A new health order that took effect on Friday allows for the return of office workspaces where teleworking is not possible, outdoor museums, botanical gardens, car washes, pet groomers, and dog walking services.

In-store retail and dine-in restaurants remain closed for now.

Napa

Like Sonoma, Napa moved into early Stage 2 last week. The county has asked the state for approval to move even further into Stage 2 and bring back in-restaurant dining, indoor retail shopping and office workspaces. Approval is pending.

Solano

The county authorized all "low-risk" businesses to reopen last week. Under the order, a low-risk business is defined as one "that can routinely meet

six-foot physical separation for social distancing, or can implement other physical barriers, except for very brief, incidental periods necessary to accept payment, deliver goods or services."

San Francisco, San Mateo and Marin

All three counties will move into the early portion of Stage 2 on Monday and bring back retail for curbside delivery as well as associated manufacturing and warehouse work. Further steps are unknown at this time.

Alameda and Contra Costa

The two East Bay counties will also move into Stage 2 sometime next week, although an exact date was not given.

Santa Clara

Santa Clara is the lone Bay Area county with no announced plans to soften its shelter-in-place order anytime soon. County health officer Dr. Sara Cody told the Santa Clara Board of Supervisors her county is "not there" yet.

May 15, 8:30 a.m. California has hit another disheartening milestone, passing the 3,000 mark in coronavirus deaths.

The latest report from the California Department of Public Health released Thursday reveals 98 additional fatalities were reported and the death toll now stands at 3,032. New cases also grew steadily with 2,023 positive tests. The state now has 73,164 known cases.

Los Angeles County is the epicenter of the California pandemic and has recorded more than half the state's deaths. The county has 1,659 fatalities and 34,574 cases. Other hot spots include San Diego County with 5,280 cases and 223 deaths and Riverside with 5,204 cases and 246 deaths.

More than 1 million tests have been administered across the state.

Find more details on the latest numbers from California.

Coronavirus in the greater Bay Area: A county-by-county snapshot

ALAMEDA COUNTY: 2,300 confirmed cases, 82 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities

For more information on Alameda County, visit the public health department website.

CONTRA COSTA COUNTY: 1,100 confirmed cases, 33 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities

For more information on Contra Costa County, visit the public health department website.

LAKE COUNTY: 8 confirmed cases

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities

For information on Lake County, visit the public health department website.

MARIN COUNTY: 287 confirmed cases, 14 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail and manufacturing opening May 18

Fore more information on Marin County, visit the public health department website.

MONTEREY COUNTY: 286 confirmed cases, 6 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities

For more information on Monterey County, visit the public health department website.

NAPA COUNTY: 83 cases, 3 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail, manufacturing

For more information on Napa County, visit the public health department website.

SAN BENITO COUNTY: 56 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail, manufacturing, restaurants, shopping malls

For more information on San Benito County, visit the public health department website.

SAN FRANCISCO COUNTY: 2,026 confirmed cases, 36 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail and manufacturing opening May 18

For more information on San Francisco County, visit the public health department website.

SAN MATEO COUNTY: 1,575 confirmed cases, 66 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail and manufacturing opening May 18

For more information on San Mateo County, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CLARA COUNTY: 2,391 confirmed cases, 134 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities

Fore more information on Santa Clara County, visit the public health department website.

SANTA CRUZ COUNTY: 146 confirmed cases, 2 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail, manufacturing

For more information on Santa Cruz County, visit the public health department website.

SOLANO COUNTY: 410 confirmed cases, 16 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: All "low-risk" businesses that can comply with physical distancing guidelines

For more information on Solano County, visit the public health department website.

SONOMA COUNTY: 351 confirmed cases, 4 deaths

What's open beyond essential businesses: Outdoor businesses and activities, retail, manufacturing, car washes, pet groomers, outdoor museums, offices where telework is not possible

For more information on Sonoma County, visit the public health department website.



CORONAVIRUS: WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

Here are answers to your most frequently asked questions about coronavirus

The 2 big reasons why California struggles to control coronavirus

Two SF restaurateurs have more questions than answers over new state guidelines

San Francisco officials outline 5 goals before reopening businesses

WHEN WILL THE BAY AREA REOPEN?

With changes made to state order, here's what you need to know: What's open and closed in California?

Alameda, Contra Costa signal they will enter Stage 2, leaving only Santa Clara under stricter order

Newsom details 4 stages to reopen California businesses
New Delhi, May 15 : The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Madras High Court order for the closure of state-owned liquor vends during the lockdown, as people, while purchasing liquor, blatantly violated social distancing norms.

A bench of Justices L. Nageswara Rao, S.K. Kaul and B.R. Gavai, after considering the appeal of the Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC), stayed the High Court order passed on May 8. "We can only say, it is for the government to consider online delivery...it is up to the government to decide," it said.

Senior advocate Mukul Rohtagi, appearing for the TASMAC, said how can the state do online sales, as it does not have the necessary means. "How can we trust somebody to carry liquor? There will be riots, someone can adulterate liquor. Tamil Nadu is a large state unlike Delhi," he contended before the court.

He insisted that the High Court should not have imposed its own conditions for sale of liquor, and by doing this, entered into the state's domain of policy making. Rohtagi insisted that it was the state's prerogative to decide how to conduct the sale of liquor.

Lawyer P.V. Yogeswaran, representing the petitioners who moved the High Court, said the sale of liquor was not a fundamental right and precautionary measures must be taken in view of the coronavirus outbreak, and the top court should not intervene on the matter.

On Friday, state-owned Tami Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) was directed by the High Court to close liquor shops. The state government, in its plea, said the apex court has refused to entertain a writ petition seeking total ban on sale of liquor, as the same is a policy matter within the domain of state. "The High Court misinterpreted the order May 8 passed by a three member-bench of this court, in which the court declined to direct states to close down liquor stores pending the lockdown and left it to each state's discretion to consider non-direct sale including online sale/home delivery of liquor," said the plea filed in the top court.

The Tamil Nadu government contended that the apex court order recognised states have a broad margin of power to determine whether and how to affect sales of liquor in this lockdown period and therefore, the High Court order is a clear case of judicial overreach. "The court below has pushed the petitioners in a position where the only option available to them is to effect sales through online methods and home delivery and has laid down further directives as to how to effect this," its plea said.

The state government submitted that it is pertinent that online modes of effective liquor sales are not even available in the vast majority of state at present and can only be implemented after following the due procedures under law.

A division bench of the High Court comprising Justices Vineet Kothari and Pushpa Satynarayana, taking note of long queues and assembly of large crowds outside liquor shops, ordered the closure of alcohol vending outlets in Tamil Nadu till the lifting of lockdown. It observed people have blatantly violated the conditions imposed for regulating the crowd in TASMAC shops selling liquor.
MUSKGEON, MI  After high water pushed the Burning Foot Beer Festival off the beach at Lake Michigan, coronavirus has pushed it into a virtual event.

The annual beer festival, slated for Aug. 29, at Heritage Landing on Muskegon Lake, will now take place virtually through the online community platform, Discord, festival co-chair Allen Serio told MLive.

Festival organizers announced the cancellation of the in-person event in a Facebook post Thursday.

We did not come to this decision lightly, but feel it is in the best interest of our brewers, patrons, and committee, the post stated. We are, however, working diligently on developing a virtual experience, which will still allow us to come together in a safe manner and enjoy summers last pour!

The event traditionally features on-site camping, dozens of beer vendors, live music and art installations. Although it has taken place at Muskegons Pere Marquette beach since 2015, festival organizers relocated the event to Heritage Landing earlier this year due to high water.

RELATED: High water levels force popular Lake Michigan beer festival off beach

Serio said Burning Foot festival organizers knew when the COVID-19 pandemic hit Muskegon County that they didnt want to fully cancel the festival altogether.

We saw a lot of our partners in the local festival scene in Muskegon canceling, and we wanted to do something to continue the great time Burning Foot has been, Serio said. We just didnt want to say we werent doing anything. Our IT staff quickly suggested all the things we could do and we just kind of ran with it.

Serio said festival organizers are working to create the virtual festival through Discord, where there will be different online rooms for beer sampling and live music. The festival is working with breweries from around the state that have delivery or to-go services, he said.

Festival organizers plan to finalize details for the virtual festival over the next month and share the details with the public in late June, with tickets going on sale in July, Serio said.

Tickets, which were $50 last year, will likely be less expensive for the virtual event, Serio said.

Last years festival featured 80 breweries serving up more than 400 of the Great Lakes regions best drafts at Pere Marquette Park beach in Muskegon.

The beer-focused beach bash featured a lineup of musical acts on two stages, including 1990s alternative rock bands Everclear and Sponge.

RELATED: Burning Foot Beer Festival brings hundreds to Lake Michigan

Burning Foot is the first Muskegon-area festival to switch to an online format, as popular summer events are canceled amidst the coronavirus crisis.

Other canceled events include the Lakeshore Art Festival, the Electric Forest music festival, the Miss Michigan competition, the Unity Christian Music Festival, and the Michigan Irish Festival.

Muskegon County has reported 435 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 21 deaths with the virus as of Thursday, according to the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

More on MLive:

Michigan Irish Music Festival 2020 canceled due to coronavirus crisis

Muskegon tourism hit by coronavirus uncertainty amid cruise ship cancellations

Lakeshore Art Festival 2020 canceled due to coronavirus crisis

Miss Michigan 2020 canceled due to coronavirus pandemic

Unity Christian Music Festival canceled this year due to coronavirus

Electric Forest 2020 canceled due to coronavirus pandemic
Apple supplier has made some severe safety changes to cope with COVID-19 and its dangerous and lethal effects since work is slowly coming back to full throttle.

Read More: Facebook's New 50-Person Zoom Alternative is Now Available on Desktop and Mobile

Apple's 14th Annual Supplier Responsibility Progress Report

Apple just released its annual audit for its supplier chains, which highlights the new company's policy that increases safety and protection for its employees in its global supply chain during the times of the coronavirus pandemic. Its because they planned to limit the density and enforce strict new adherence to social distancing and said it is "to ensure people are able to return to work safely -- because everyone has the right to a safe and healthy workplace."

The report came with a statement from Apple's senior vice president of operations, Sabih Khan, saying that they planned to limit the density and enforce strict new adherence to social distancing and said it is "to ensure people are able to return to work safely -- because everyone has the right to a safe and healthy workplace."

He ended with, "From the outset, we worked with our suppliers to develop and execute a plan that puts the health of people first."

In February, the company has already warned that the spread in China of COVID-19 would damage its flagship iPhone business, limiting supply and sales of the respected device. Apple also said that it helped health workers as well as others through the crisis; they helped by donations that reached the millions, more than 30 million face masks, and 7.5 million face shields.

Read More: Apple Buys NextVR as Part of Plan to Have Augmented Reality Features

What Are The Changes Apple Implemented?

They include requiring personal protective equipment that should be worn at all times during work and in common areas. Masks, as well as sanitizers, have already been distributed to its workers.

The company will also be sharing what it has learned in the process with others in the same industry as companies are now coping on how to be productive while still taking care of its employees. Best practices, as well as guidelines, will be passed around to make sure everyone is aware and compliant with the new way of working around the coronavirus pandemic.

Khan said, "While COVID-19 has been an unprecedented challenge, we've also drawn hope and inspiration from humanity's renewed focus on the health of our colleagues, friends, and neighbors,"

The audit was based on more than 52,000 supplier employees in over 49 countries from 2019; last year, there were only 30 countries involved.

The tech giant has said that the number of sites participating in the Zero Waste Program, which was introduced in 2015 to reduce manufacturing waste, has increased 53 percent, diverting more than 322,000 metric tons of garbage towards landfills. Suppliers successfully conserved more than 30 billion gallons of freshwater last year, leading to a 40 percent rate of wastewater reuse.

Over 154,700 suppliers employees have participated in the Supplier Employee Education and Development, which provides access to educational opportunities. Over four million employees have availed of this program since its inception in 2008.

Read More: How To Download and Install The Latest Modded Versions of Popular APKs

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
The raging Coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic has left the worlds health systems with scarred memories. Because the disease has already killed hundreds of thousands of people, there is an urgent need for health officials and scientists to continue comparing notes in order to avert an even worse catastrophe. Africans will no doubt be interested in sharing experiences with the Chinese, who brought the outbreak in their country under control fairly quickly, writes *Kimeng Hilton NDUKONG.

The new Coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic continues with its trail of destruction  not only to human lives, but also to world economies. Never has the medical science world witnessed a pandemic that is so difficult to control and that has left every national health system choking. With over 4 million people affected across the globe and more than 277,000 deaths by May 11, 2020, the situation calls for enhanced collaboration and cooperation amongst nations and medical scientists.

China was the first nation to bring the disease under check  when others still considered the pandemic as a non-event! And so China is better placed to share its best practices on handling COVID-19. After having lost 4,633 lives out of the 82,918 people affected by May 11, 2020, today, life in China is returning to near normalcy.

According to Cyprien Kapuku Kabunda, a journalist from the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, serving with the China Radio International French language service, China was able to contain the Coronavirus pandemic fairly quickly for two main reasons  the discipline of the people and respect for their leaders. The Chinese example in handling COVID-19 can be described as the triumph of its Socialist system, notes Kabunda.

He supports his point by recalling that Asians are generally reserved people. It is common for opinion leaders in some countries to spend time arguing while the situation of the pandemic worsens, he says. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, DRC, for example, when the then Minister of Health on March 10, 2020 announced that the country had recorded its first Coronavirus case, few people took him seriously. Many ridiculed the news, saying it was a ploy to secure WHO funding for an imaginary pandemic! Kabunda says with obvious sadness in his voice. And so people continued leading their lives as before, not paying attention to Coronavirus prevention measures  until it became almost too late, the journalist recalls.

On the other hand, he adds, China was also able to tackle the pandemic because of its better infrastructure, such as steady electricity and Internet supply, which enabled people to work from home. This is not the case with Africa, and is the reason why confinement has been a major problem.

Parcels were delivered to people at their doorsteps, with the government ensuring that the vulnerable received something to eat. Most African governments could not afford this. The new Coronavirus has brought to the fore the need for Africa to upgrade its health infrastructure and health systems, Kapuku pleads. This is also an area in which the input of the Chinese and other partners is highly welcome.

An unexpected lesson from the pandemic is that pristine African remedies have given voice to the continent to henceforth provide solutions to international disasters, notes Prof. Fru Asanji Fobuzshi Angwafo III, Director General of the Gynaeco-Obstetric and Pediatric Hospital in Yaounde, Cameroon.

He says budding scientific research in traditional pharmacopoeia has proffered endogenous responses that are beginning to offer a glimmer of hope to Africans in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic. These positive initiatives are begging for concerted efforts and resolve to structure and fund medicinal research and its champions. It is more compelling today to muster the vigour needed to protect African fauna and flora and reward the rigours of scientific distinction, Prof. Angwafo III adds.

At a glance, he continues, one of the lessons the pandemic is teaching everyone is that we are all members of a small village called EARTH. Health systems the world over have been heavily impacted by the pandemic from a structural, human, material and financial standpoint. It is imperative to take a step back to assess the situation thoroughly, the Director General suggests.

It is therefore time to assess how far we have come in fighting Coronavirus, by sharing best practices  even while the pandemic rages on in most parts of Africa and the world. This is with a view to bringing COVID-19 under control as quickly as possible. Like the Chinese did.

*Kimeng Hilton NDUKONG, who is based in Yaounde, Cameroon, is a contributor to Peoples Daily English Language Online Desk. He is a 2017 Fellow of the China-Africa Press Centre.
I was asked earlier this week to briefly sum up the general mood among international residents in southern Spain in these unprecedented times of coronavirus lockdown.

It's interesting when someone thinks that you can put tens of thousands of people all in the same sack and make a sweeping generalisation when the only thing they have in common is that they're not Spanish.

The international/expat/foreign resident (however you like to call it) population is indeed diverse, with a wide range of nationalities, ages, backgrounds, fortunes, professions and myriad other circumstances.

I sat down and wondered how I could possibly speak for everyone in one simple statement, until I realised that there is one thing that links us all. One thing that the international community as a whole is missing now, which is what is perhaps producing more coronavirus-generated unease than among the population in general. Our connections with the rest of the world, including our home countries, have been lost. It's almost as if Covid-19 had eaten its way through the umbilical cord that links us to what was, and maybe for some still is, our home.

While we can keep in contact with anyone we like virtually, we have lost that security of knowing that dozens of airports in the UK and around Europe are just a couple of hours away.

We might not necessarily have wanted to go anywhere this spring, but the idea that we currently can't go beyond our municipal boundary, or that friends and relatives can't just come and see us, is unsettling to say the least.

Some have found themselves literally trapped at the wrong end of that cord, while for others its detachment represents a loss of livelihood. Thousands of jobs here on the Costa del Sol depend precisely on that ability for people to hop onto a plane and be in the sunshine in no time at all.

And now two months after this lifeline was lost there has been mixed news about its return.

First we hear that Spain, and the UK, are going to force anyone coming in from abroad to go into quarantine for two weeks. Not such a big deal at the moment as few are able to come in anyway, but how long will that be in force?

At the same time companies such as Ryanair - responsible for the strength of that lifeline - are announcing that flights will resume from July. Meanwhile Brussels and the travel industry are doing their best to get things moving sooner rather than later.

Everything, though, at the moment, from what time we can go for a walk this evening to when we can fly to London, depends on the announcements the Spanish PM and his ministers deliver every so often on our TV screens, guided wisely - we hope - by those studying the behaviour of a virus.

Soon we'll get that connection back, albeit not quite in the same way, and with it that comfortable feeling that no one's really that far away.

Meanwhile we'll just have to take things one "phase" at a time.




President Hage Geingob of Nambia

Namibias President, Hage Geingob, has announced a five-year ban on buying new cars for top politicians and government officials.

The President revealed the decision was taken in order to channel funds into fighting coronavirus, his office said.

The President has directed that the vehicle fleet of the Namibian government will not be renewed for the period 2020-2025, presidential spokesperson Alfredo Hengari announced in a statement.

No new vehicles will be purchased for members of the executive and public office bearers in the Namibian government.

He said the decision would save some 200 million Namibian dollars (US$10.7 million), which will be directed to urgent priorities, specifically at a time when the country is dealing with the health and economic implications of COVID-19.

Namibian ministers and their deputies each qualify for Mercedes-Benz vehicles upon their appointment.

The president also directed a limit on monthly fuel consumption for top politicians, the government said.

In 2002, then-president Sam Nujoma had banned the use of Mercedes-Benzes, insisting that ministers should ride in Toyota Camry cars.

The southern African country of 2.5 million people has so far recorded 16 cases of COVID-19, with no deaths.
A group of at least 15 people



allegedly attacked a police sub-inspector and two constables with sharp weapons at Antop Hill in central Mumbai after the policemen asked why they were not wearing face masks for protection from coronavirus, an official said on Friday.

The incident took place at Kokhri Agar, Garib Nawaz Nagar on Thursday afternoon, where a police team stopped these people for not wearing masks, the official said.

"Those people entered into an argument with the police team over the issue and attacked the personnel. Over 15 people assaulted three policemen, including a PSI, with sharp weapons," he said.

The three policemen suffered injuries in the incident, the official added.

An offence has been registered against the members of the group on the charge of rioting and other sections of the IPC, including 307 (attempt to murder), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), and also under the COVID-19 rules, he said.

The process to arrest the accused has been initiated, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  The U.S. Air Force has officially reopened the competition for cities that want to become the home for the new U.S. Space Command, with a self-nomination process that could allow dozens of localities to throw their hat in the ring.

Interested parties must make their submissions by June 30, and the Air Force plans to make a final decision in early 2021, according to a letter signed by John Henderson, assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and energy.

Wherever Space Command lands will become home to roughly 1,400 military and civilian personnel, plus a likely number of well-paid contractors and industry representatives  a potential economic boom for which a number of locations are prepared to fight.

There are three minimum criteria that any location must meet:

The location must be within one of the 150 largest metropolitan statistical areas in the U.S., based on 2019 population estimates from the Census Bureau.

The location must be within 25 miles or less of a military base.

The location must have a livability index score of at least 50 points out of 100, based on statistics kept by AARPs Public Policy Institute.

Any area that meets those requirements can make an attempt at landing Space Command, but then it will be individually graded on a 0-100 scale, with points broken down by four categories:

<b>Mission related (40 points):</b> This assessment will look at the available qualified workforce, proximity to mutually supporting space entities, and ability of the eligible locations to provide emergency and incident response requirements, and enable mobility, per the release. Locations that already have a space-focused workforce would seem to have an edge here.

<b>Infrastructure capacity (30 points):</b> Everything from parking spaces and communications bandwidth to security requirements fall under this category, with a special emphasis on judging how well the closest military base will meet requirements for service members medical care, childcare and housing needs.

<b>Community support (15 points): </b>Essentially, this is how judges will rank the local community in terms of school quality, cost of living and access to military support programs, among other factors.

<b>Costs to the Department of the Air Force (15 points):</b> How much will this cost to set up? One-time infrastructure costs, how much construction will cost in the area and the rate of basic housing allowance factor in here. As with the first category, a preexisting infrastructure for space issues could be a benefit.

Story continues

A leaked 2019 memo of potential bases listed four locations in Colorado  Buckley Air Force Base, Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Station, Peterson Air Force Base (the commands temporary home as of now) and Schriever Air Force Base  as well as the Armys Redstone Arsenal in Alabama and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. That list angered a Florida delegation, which began a heavy push to reenter consideration.

The options seemed locked until March, when Space Force Vice Commander Lt. Gen. David Thompson told the House Armed Services Committee that he received instructions to reopen the competition. Days later, Sen. Doug Jones, D-Ala., challenged Defense Secretary Mark Esper on whether the decision to restart the process is based in trying to win votes for Republicans in the November elections.

Esper denied that politics played a role in the decision to take another look at the process, telling Jones at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing in March: Im the one who did it. It was my initiative, simply to make sure that [theres] transparency and buy-in and consent with the process.

In a statement, Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said the revised approach considers the newly established U.S. Space Force emerging organizational structure and analyzes its effects on the limited number of highly specialized personnel and infrastructure required to support both the Space Force and Space Command. Additionally, the approach expands the number of locations eligible for consideration to host the permanent U.S. Space Command headquarters, and provides a comprehensive and transparent analysis before selecting a final location.
By Hyon O'Brien





Fifty years ago, on May 1, 1970, I became an American citizen in a ceremony in Washington D.C. It was a somber moment for me. It dawned on me that I had a responsibility to my adopted country as well as to my beloved Korea.



Fifty years later, I ponder whether I have been a good citizen. And what are the qualities that define a good citizen?



Are we law-abiding?



During this coronavirus pandemic period, we are subject to many emergency orders. Social distancing and wearing masks are among the most urgent. However, about half of the people I see while I am out walking do not comply with these vital measures to prevent the spread of the deadly virus. We know we are in this together. We know total cooperation is needed for it to be successful. I am quite shocked by the nonchalant attitudes of those who disregard the rules.



Do we pay our fair share of taxes?



It grieves me to know that rich people shamelessly open off-shore accounts to avoid taxes at home. Many people seek loopholes to avoid taxes and some shops cheat on sales taxes by reporting less than they collected from customers. Shirking taxes is freeloading on society. We should be happy to pay our fair share.



Are we protecting the environment from climate change?



Do we know how to recycle and reuse to avoid polluting the water and land? Are we practicing every day our share to lessen the impact we humans have on the environment? Why not use mugs instead of plastic or paper cups? Why not bring bags to the supermarkets to avoid using plastic bags? Why is it so difficult to walk or use public transportation whenever possible instead of driving your cars? I have a weekly ceramics group and some of the participants drive to the studio even though they live only a few blocks away. Little things add up.



Are we conscious of the poverty of our neighbors near and far?



For the past 10 years of living in Miami Beach, I have been involved in helping out with a homeless shelter for battered women and their children. I know my help is not enough, but every penny makes a difference. We still continue to support the homeless shelter that my sister is running in Seoul. We used to eat lunch with the homeless people at the shelter most Sundays. Sometimes I was recruited to give sermons (desperate measures for desperate times). In Hong Kong, I extended my hand to help out in the outreach ministry of an Indian missionary couple working with illegal immigrants from Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, and Bangladesh. Some of my friends from the Union Church are still faithfully serving their needs.



Are we helping to educate those who are eager to study but too poor to attend schools?



As many readers may know, for years I have belonged to the Philanthropic Educational Organization sisterhood (called P.E.O.) that was founded 151 years ago by seven women in Iowa with the motto, "Women empowering other women with education." Now we have nearly a quarter million women members in the U.S.A. and Canada. According to its annual report, the P.E.O. has educated more than 100,000 women so far.



Are we participating in the political process for the good of the country?



As justice-oriented citizens we need to critically assess social, political, and economic structures to make a better society. We need to help reduce inequality, protect the environment, and install a better, more inclusive health care system, by actively working to elect good leadership to enact reforming legislation.



How can we be good global citizens?



In times of stress or crisis like the coronavirus pandemic (globally as of May 10, over four million cases and almost 300,000 deaths), we have a natural tendency to look inward. We look to protect our family, and then our town or city, and then our country.



But the pandemic is by its very nature showing us that, with few exceptions, no country is an island. It is self-defeating for any country to try to close itself off and think only of itself in the face of a problem that affects us all. Problems there become problems here. The countries of the world need to find ways to cooperate. I was heartened to read that in mid-April Korea sent 750,000 coronavirus test kits to the U.S.



And this is not just an issue in dealing with COVID-19, which we can hope and expect will be under control within a couple of years. We also have the even bigger, if slower, threats of climate change and ocean pollution, which will be with us for decades if not centuries.



In our human history, there will continue to come times when we must abandon the idea of "my country" to do the right thing for humanity. May we have a clear discernment as to what those occasions are, and may we have the courage to step out and act!



Stay healthy and safe, dear readers. May this long pandemic's isolation time be used by each one of us to reflect and become stronger, better, more loving citizens of the world we all live in!





Hyon O'Brien is a former reference librarian now living in the United States. She can be reached at hyonobrien@gmail.com.


Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto says he isn't sure what Sebastian Vettel will do beyond 2020.

The parties are splitting up after the current unusual 'season', with quadruple world champion Vettel now linked either with retirement or a move to Mercedes or Renault.

"I believe that the decision, with transparency and clarity, shows maturity," Binotto, who is replacing Vettel with Carlos Sainz, told Sky Sport Italia.

"I think it was right for him and for us to do it. What Seb will do in the future, only he knows. But he is a great driver and he will know how to choose the best for him."

He played down reports that Ferrari and 32-year-old Vettel have fallen out badly.

"He ran for six years with us and has Ferrari in his heart now," said Binotto. "After talking with Seb it was clear that we have different short and long-term goals. Sebastian is closing a cycle.

"Relations with him are good, even if when it comes to a separation that is not at all obvious. But the relationship has remained good and the reasoning behind this change has been understood," he added.

"I expect that he will do very well this year, because he is a great professional and he cares a lot. We will have to give him the ideal car to be able to do his best."

Binotto also appeared to play down the prospect of retirement for the German.

"I think he has a lot of passion for this sport," said the Italian. "He will want to race, although he will have to make a series of reflections."

(GMM)
A man on the 47th day of a prison hunger strike over what he says is his "wrongful conviction" for the rape of his daughter has the mental capacity to decide whether he wants to continue to refuse food, the High Court has ruled.

The court heard the man described his daughter as "an unhinged fantasist with a history of making false allegations".

He was jailed in April 2018 for 15 years, with one year suspended, for the rape of his daughter when she was aged between seven and 11.

He claims he is innocent and he will continue to refuse food, though he is taking water and coffee, until his daughter "comes forward and tells the truth".

However, he is also to discuss with his wife what he will do, after a ruling by Ms Justice Tara Burns that he has the mental capacity to make a decision to refuse food.

The prison authorities had asked the court to make certain declarations in relation to his capacity.

Following evidence today, including from two psychiatrists and a psychologist who said he was not suffering from any mental illness, the judge said he had a right to bodily integrity which the courts have found previously "may prevail" over the obligation of the State to preserve life.

Following the decision, the judge urged him to reconsider continuing the strike for reasons including that his wife is a non-national and has no other family here.

His wife is not the mother of the complainant whose own mother, the man's partner, died in 2006.

In 2010, the complainant and her sister were removed from his care and he says that on March 29 last, on what was the anniversary of "10 years of insanity visited upon me by the Irish State," he began his hunger strike.

He maintained his innocence in the Central Criminal Court, where a jury found him guilty, and his failed appeal to the Court of Appeal (CoA).

His counsel Micheal Higgins said notwithstanding that he is seeking a further appeal to the Supreme Court and that he could die on hunger strike before that happens, he wants to continue his protest.

Counsel said the CoA heard evidence that the mans then solicitor had a conversation with the solicitor in which the daughter allegedly was "indicating she had lied".

There was also further evidence of a Facebook conversation with a family friend in which she allegedly said "her father was not a rapist and he did not do those things to me," he said.

The CoA also heard the daughter had visited her father in prison which was important in the context of previous evidence when she said she was in "mortal fear" of him, counsel said.

However, in her evidence to the CoA, notwithstanding those matters, she maintained the original allegations were correct. The CoA dismissed the appeal last year.

In his evidence via video link from prison on Friday, the man agreed with his counsel that in a letter he wrote to the prison governor announcing his hunger strike he said the Irish courts "failed in their duty" to put things right "despite the overwhelming evidence put in front of them".

His daughter was the "only one who can put this right" and he was making a "heartfelt plea" that she "come forward and put on record the absolute truth about the false allegations".

He was taking the hunger strike action as a "sovereign individual" with a right to self determination.

He did not wish to die and would like to spend "my golden years with my wife but I am put in an impossible situation".

He also believed the fact that his daughter had "undergone a number of years of therapy and medication may explain in part the allegations she made."

Asked by the judge what he wanted from the court if she had "a magic wand and could grant his wish" so he would stop the protest, he said it was that his daughter "come forward and tell the truth".

"She continues to run away from it and it is going to impact on her as her conscience develops and she perhaps has children of her own as she gets older," he said.

"She has given herself a life sentence until she faces up to what she has done and exposes the people who put her put to this."

She had built "a whole reality around her'' and has a boyfriend who believes she was abused as a child.

"I guess she does not want to expose herself as being a really horrible person."
14.05.2020 LISTEN

The Governing Board of the National Film Authority today inaugurated the Film Classification Committee in a ceremony at the Tourism Information Centre in Accra.

The inaugural ceremony of the committee was graced by the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Mrs. Barbara Oteng-Gyasi and her deputy as well as some selected stakeholders in the Creative Arts Industry.

According to this reporter, during the inauguration, the Chairman of the National Film Authority, David Dontoh narrated the background of the Authority, specific roles and the progress they have made so far.

He appealed to the general public especially the stakeholders and pundits to be considerate in their criticisms because it is a new baby to wit an initiative that came into existence not long ago.

Veteran actor David Dontoh also urged the public to forward their suggestions to the board since their doors are always opened.

The Film Classification Committee is an instrument under the NFA with the purpose of classifying all audiovisual materials such as movies, television programmes and music videos among others for public viewing.

The committee is headed by popular film producer, Socrate Safo, who is also the Director of Creative Arts responsible for programmes and projects at the Commission for National Culture.

Mr. Safos role, among others, is to spearhead the committee in ensuring an effective classification of films and audiovisual contents that comes into the Ghanaian market and in our media landscape.

Members of the Classification Committee include representatives from the office of the Minister of Tourism, Arts and Culture, Information Service Department, National Commission on Culture, National Film and Television Institute, Film Producers Association, Ghana Police Service, Copyright Office, Christian Council, Federation of Muslim Council, Traditional Religious Authority, Ministry of Gender and Children and Social Protection and the National House of Chiefs
Bengaluru, May 15 : The COVID-19 positive cases in Karnataka have crossed the 1,000-mark with 45 new cases in the past 19 hours. The tally in the state stands at 1032, an official said on Friday.

"New cases reported from Thursday 5 p.m. to Friday noon are 45," said a health official.

Out of the 1,032 cases, 520 are active, 476 have been discharged and 35 deaths have occurred.

In the past 19 hours, Covid cases spiked in Dakshina Kannda, Bengaluru Urban and Udupi.

Of the new cases, Dakshina Kannada reported 15 cases, followed by Bengaluru Urban 13, Udupi five, Bidar and Hassan three each, Chitradurga two and Kolar, Bagalkote and Shivamogga one each.

Kolar, Chitradurga, Hassan and Shivamogga cases had a travel history to Tamil Nadu and Maharashtra.

Except one case with Severe Acute Respiratory Infection (SARI), all others from Dakshina Kannada and Hassan had international travel history to Dubai.

All Bengaluru cases were contacts of earlier cases, 11 of them got infected from positive case no. 653.

Among the new cases, 16 were contacts of the earlier case.

Of the new cases, 32 were men and 13 women, including seven patients above 50 years while 36 were under 40 years.

Meanwhile, 'Green zones' diminished by one in Karnataka to seven in the past 19 hours.

Kodagu, Bengaluru Rural, Raichur, Koppal, Chikkamagaluru, Ramanagara and Chamarajanagar are the green zones with zero active cases.

Of the 1032 cases, 12 per cent patients were senior citizens, 65 per cent men and 35 per cent women with a discharge rate of 46 per cent.

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
The NYPD will no longer target small groups or people who fail to wear protective face masks in public, and will focus on breaking up large gatherings to enforce social distancing, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Friday.

Cops will continue to disperse large groups in the city that are most likely to present a risk of spreading the coronavirus, but will now take a softer approach, the mayor said.

'But we're not going to have the NYPD focus on, you know, two people together or three people together,' he added.

'We're going to focus on when it starts to be more than a handful of people. And we're not going to be having the NYPD enforcing on face coverings.'

NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio said NYPD will no longer target people who are not wearing masks and will focus on breaking up large gatherings

Videos have gone viral showing NYPD officers arresting black men for violating social distancing guidelines. Of the 40 arrests made in Brooklyn since mid-March for the violation, 35 of those have been black residents

The change comes after New York City Police were widely criticized for their harsh social distancing enforcement that has resulted in violent confrontations with members of the public.

Videos have circulated on social media showing scuffles between officers and citizens who ignored rules.

Most recently, video footage captured the moment a woman with a young child was wrestled to the ground and handcuffed as police removed her from a subway station for not wearing a face covering on Wednesday.

De Blasio said police officers will now offer masks to people whose faces are uncovered.

'We want to make this a positive approach,' he said.

Police Benevolent Association head Patrick Lynch said the revised social distancing policy 'will create more problems than it solves'.

'The new policy should be a single sentence: police officers are not responsible for enforcing social distancing or other public health directives', Lynch said in a statement.

Police will soften their approach in enforcing social distancing guidelines in the city after hardline stance led to string of violent incidents

Members of the New York City Police Department Counterterrorism Bureau speak to two women in masks in Times Square during the coronavirus pandemic on May 13, 2020

Some political leaders in the city had urged the mayor to leave most social distancing enforcement to other city departments, saying sending police officers to do the work would lead to confrontations.

The development comes just as Governor Andrew Cuomo welcomed the first loosening of restrictions in many parts of the state and announced that beaches would be allowed to open in time for the Memorial Day weekend - after two months of strict limits on business and social distancing.

State and municipal beaches throughout the state will be allowed to open the Friday before the holiday, but with limits.

Capacity will be restricted to no more than 50 percent of normal, with parking limited to trim crowds.

A woman traveling with her young child through a subway station was forced to the ground by NYPD cops on Wednesday after being busted for not wearing her face mask properly

More than 80 percent of those who were issued summonses for social distancing violations in New York City were people of color

A group of officers pin down 20-year-old Adegoke Atunbi in the video. He later described feeling terrified because he didn't know if he was going to die

Group activities will not be allowed. Picnic areas and playgrounds will stay closed and employees need to wear masks.

It will be up to local governments, Cuomo said, to decide whether to allow municipal beaches to reopen. If they do, they must follow the state's rules.

'If there is a problem, and the locals do not enforce those regulations, we will close those beaches,' the governor added.

In New York City, no plans have been announced to open city beaches or public pools to swimmers, but people can stroll on the Coney Island boardwalk and on the sand as long as they don't go in the water, which is barred when lifeguards are not on duty.

De Blasio said 'we're just not ready' to open beaches, but mayoral spokeswoman Jane Meyer said in an email that city beaches could possibly open at some point this summer.

The state's move comes after New Jersey announced Thursday it was opening beaches for Memorial Day.

'If New York did not open beaches, you would see an influx of people to the Jersey Shore, Connecticut, etc,' Cuomo said.

Construction and manufacturing businesses also reopened in many rural parts of New York and some upstate cities on Friday.

Retail businesses can open, too, but only for goods to be picked up quickly, not for in-store shopping.

New York has extended its shutdown of schools and non-essential businesses for the rest of the state, including New York City and Long Island, through May 28.

Cuomo cautioned, though, that employers need to protect workers by supplying masks and limiting congregation of workers. And he said the limited steps the state is taking to reopen would be reversed immediately if infection rates start to rise.

A mounted officer speaks with a group of children, not all wearing masks, and gathered tightly together at Brooklyn's Domino Park in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

A woman wearing a mask sits in Sheep Meadow, Central Park as temperatures rise amid the coronavirus pandemic in New York City

'Watch what happens to the infection rate, testing rate, hospitalization rate,' he said. 'If those numbers start to move, slow down on the activity level.'

The coronavirus killed 132 New Yorkers on Thursday, Cuomo said.

While the number of patients admitted to hospitals with the virus has been gradually declining, it has increased slightly in recent days an average of 431 per day.

New York City will spend $55million to provide 74,000 free air conditioners to low-income older adults who may be cooped up inside their apartments all summer because of the pandemic, de Blasio said Friday.

'Knowing that low-income seniors are the most vulnerable, we're going to start an initiative right away to get them air conditioners,' de Blasio said.

Other measures aimed at helping New Yorkers survive summer in the era of social distancing will include setting up air-conditioned cooling centers in facilities such as gyms and libraries and opening fire hydrants safely.

'This is all about protecting New Yorkers and helping them through the summer,' de Blasio said.

While parts of upstate New York began a partial reopening on Friday, Cuomo has said that New York City will not begin reopening until mid-June at the earliest.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

Greenhouses are built and ownerless lands are developed in Namangan region of Uzbekistan, Trend reported citing Uzbekistan National News Agency.

To date, 200 hectares of ownerless land area on hilly terrain under Hamid Olimjon agricultural firm has been developed.

"Over 1,000 greenhouses of two acres each are being built for low-income families. The majority of greenhouse complexes assembled from modern lightweight structures are ready. In order to create an irrigation system, a water supply system is being constructed. The construction of a warehouse for storing fruits and vegetables has begun on eight acres," said the report.

In the near future, 1,000 families will be provided with jobs here.

The total cost of this project, implemented by Golden Nuts Namangan LLC is 13 billion soum ($1.3 million). The project is supported by subsidies from the state budget amounting to 4.6 billion soum ($452.046).

Earlier, Farmers' Council of Uzbekistan allocated 1.01 billion soum ($99,674) to 81 owners of farmlands and 1.05 billion soum ($103,519) to 35 farms in Gallyaaral district of Jizzakh region. Funds totaling three billion soum ($295,769) were provided to Yangikurgan district of Namangan region.

In 2020-2022, as an experiment, it is planned to allocate 116,300 hectares of land in Jizzakh region for agricultural production.

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Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
Our mission is to shape the future of medicine by developing safe and efficacious drugs, and powerful research and diagnostic tools, based on our proprietary Affimer and pre|CISIONTM platforms.

Avacta is developing novel cancer immunotherapies combining its two proprietary platforms  Affimer biotherapeutics and pre|CISIONTM tumour targeted chemotherapy. With this approach, the Company aims to address the lack of a durable response to current immunotherapies experienced by most patients. The Companys therapeutics development activities are based in Cambridge, UK.

The Company benefits from near-term revenues generated from Affimer reagents for diagnostics, bioprocessing and research, through a separate business unit based in Wetherby, UK.

The Affimer platform is an alternative to antibodies derived from a small human protein. Despite their shortcomings, antibodies currently dominate markets worth in excess of $100bn. Affimer technology has been designed to address many of these negative performance issues, principally: the time taken, and the reliance on an animals immune response, to generate new antibodies; poor specificity in many cases; large size and cost.

Avactas proprietary pre|CISIONTM targeted chemotherapy platform, releases active drug only in the tumour, thereby limiting systemic exposure and improving the overall safety and therapeutic potential of these powerful anti-cancer treatments. Avacta expects to take its first drug, a targeted form of the standard-of-care Doxorubicin, into the clinic in the middle of 2020.

By combining these two platforms the Company is building a pipeline of novel cancer therapies with the aim of creating effective treatments for all cancer patients including those who do not respond to existing immunotherapies.

Avacta reagents business unit works with partners world-wide to develop Affimer proteins for evaluation by those third parties with the objective of establishing royalty bearing license deals with a particular focus on the diagnostics sector. The Company is also developing a small in-house pipeline of Affimer-based diagnostic assays for licensing.
By Trend

The restriction on entry to boulevards, parks and other recreation places in Azerbaijan's Baku, Sumqayit, Ganja and Lankaran cities, and Absheron district, will be lifted starting from 00:00 (GMT+4) on May 18 under the condition not to gather in groups of 10 people, Trend reports on May 15 citing the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan.

The decision was made based on the current sanitary and epidemiological situation, the number of active patients and the rate of infection.

Taking into account the sanitary and epidemiological situation in Azerbaijan due to the coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19), the total number of infected people in the country and the dynamics of patients' recovery, it was decided to mitigate a number of restrictions imposed under the special quarantine regime.

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Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
Caitlyn Jenner and Sophia Hutchins at the Annenberg Space for Photography's Vanity Fair: Hollywood Calling Exhibit Opening in 2020 (Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Caitlyn Jenners rumoured girlfriend Sophia Hutchins has set the record straight about their relationship, insisting it was never sexual.

The pair have been close for some time and live together, which has sparked speculation about them being an item.

But entrepreneur Hutchins, 24, has now described the relationship she has with Jenner as parental.

Read more: Caitlyn Jenner rules out finding love again

It was never romantic. It was never sexual. It was very much friends, she told the Juicy Scoop podcast.

Sophia Hutchins and Caitlyn Jenner attend Real Love: Relationship Reality TV's Past, Present and Future in 2018 (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Hutchins said the pair met through a hairdresser and that she then started to work with Jenner as a manager, booking some public speaking engagements for her.

"It's very parental, very protective," she said of their connection, which she also described as businessy.

Jenner, 70, became friendly with Hutchins in recent years, after transitioning from male to female.

Caitlyn Jenner attends the Comedy Central roast of Alec Baldwin at the Saban Theatre in 2019 (Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

The former Keeping Up With The Kardashians star was born Bruce and was an Olympic gold medal-winning decathlete before coming out as a trans woman and changing her name to Caitlyn.

She and Hutchins were then seen out and about together on several occasions, posing for pictures on many a red carpet.

When Jenner competed in the last series of Im A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here!, it was Hutchins who jetted out to Australia to welcome her when she was booted out of the jungle.

Read more: Caitlyn Jenner no longer talking politics

Last year, Hutchins told Piers Morgan during an interview that the pair were family.

We have a really special relationship, she added.

I don't think we need to be an item to have a really special relationship so to speak.
TOKYO  Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe lifted a state of emergency in large parts of the country on Thursday but said it would remain in place in Tokyo until the novel coronavirus is contained.

Abe lifted the emergency in 39 of Japans 47 prefectures but left it in force in the capital and in the second-largest urban area of Osaka, as he tries to cushion the economic blow while stopping the virus.

Abe said he would begin work on a second extra budget and as part of the economic stimulus, the government would take more steps to ease corporate funding strains, if needed.

While controlling the spread of the virus as much as possible by acting on the premise that the virus is all around us, we will restore ordinary work and daily life, Abe told a news conference.

The worlds third-largest economy declared the nationwide state of emergency a month ago, urging citizens to reduce person-to-person contact by 80 percent to slow the spread of the virus and ease pressure on medical services.

Economists said normalization would be gradual as the government keeps a wary eye on the possibility of a second wave of infections, as seen in countries such as South Korea and China.

The emergency gives governors more authority to tell people to stay at home and to close schools and businesses, but there is no penalty for non-compliance.

Some non-essential businesses, even in areas hit hard by the coronavirus, have started to reopen, even before Thursdays announcement, and the scope of restrictions has varied across the country.

Osakas governor has announced criteria for gradually lifting some restraints on businesses including eateries and bars.

Three wheels

The 39 prefectures in which the emergency has been lifted account for 54 percent of Japans population but the greater Tokyo area accounts for a third of the economy.

Tokyo is the heart of the Japanese economy. Its like driving a car with three wheels, said Jesper Koll, chief executive of asset manager WisdomTree Japan.

The government is set to add four economists to its advisory panel for combating the epidemic and a review will be conducted again in about a week.

Fast Retailing Co., owner of casual clothing chain Uniqlo, which has started to reopen outlets, said it planned more reopenings from Friday after the state of emergency is lifted.

In Ina city, Nagano  among the 39 prefectures where the emergency was lifted  Kazue Tominari said earlier she would wait and see before re-opening her restaurant, which is now offering take-out only.

It depends on how everyone feels, she said by telephone.

If news comes out about more infections, people will probably go back to self-restraint mode. Until there are effective drugs or vaccines, I dont think we will be able to go back to the way we were before.

Japan has reported 16,120 cases of the coronavirus, not counting infections on a cruise ship that was quarantined in Yokohama port, and 697 deaths, according to public broadcaster NHK.

While Japan has avoided the kind of explosive outbreaks seen in the United States and elsewhere, its testing has also been among the lowest, at 188 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests per 100,000 people, compared with 3,159 in Italy and 3,044 in Germany.

Hardest-hit Tokyo has conducted just 50,000 tests, of which about 5,000 were positive.

Although Japans emergency lacks enforcement powers, mobility data has shown a marked drop in the movement of people.

The government this week reported a 20 percent fall in the number of hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the nine days to May 7, to 4,449. In Tokyo, new cases fell to just ten on Wednesday.
Actor Hrithik Roshan is keeping health and fitness first even during the lockdown. On Friday, he shared a new post on Instagram about how he pulled off a 23-hour fast.

23hour fast. #healthyliving #resilience #disciplineequalsfreedom, he wrote in his post which included a new selfie and a screenshot of an app monitoring his fast. The selfie shows Hrithik winking for the camera. The hair on his temples and in his beard appear to be greying amid the lockdown.

Not just Hrithik, but other actors such as Akshay Kumar, Aamir Khan, Saif Ali Khan and even filmmaker Karan Johar have shared pictures of themselves acing the salt and pepper look for the lockdown. Hrithiks fans were once again impressed by his great looks. Beautiful pic sir, wrote one. Looking handsome, wrote another.

Hrithik is in lockdown with his two sons Hrehaan and Hridhaan and his ex wife Sussanne Khan. He recently made a contribution towards safeguarding the health and safety of the frontline warriors by facilitating the delivery of hand sanitisers to Mumbai Police personnel on duty.

The Mumbai Police thanked the 46-year-old actor for the gesture and tweeted, Thank you @iHrithik for this thoughtful gesture of delivering hand sanitisers for Mumbai Police personnel on duty. We are grateful for your contribution towards safeguarding the health and safety of our frontline warriors. #MumbaiPoliceFoundation.

Also read: Shah Rukh Khans daughter Suhanas photo shoot with mom Gauri goes viral, Ananya Pandey asks if she can borrow the top

Expressing gratitude to the police forces, the War actor wrote in response to the tweet , My gratitude to our police forces, who have taken our safety in their hands. Stay safe. My love & respect to all in the line of duty.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
On Wednesday, Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodinma performed a historic flag-off of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Service as Covid - 19 test center.

Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC) on her official tweeter handle had announced Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services as one of the 24 NCDC certified laboratory network for test of Covid - 19.

Flagging off Covid -19 testing in Imo, Uzodinma commended NCDC for the certification of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services among other test centers for Covid - 19.

Gov. Uzodinma cuts the tape to declare the Centre open

Gov. Uzodinma who came with his deputy Prof. Placid Njoku described the certification as a great feat, especially as it is a private sector initiative. He commended the founder and the Managing Director of the center, Everest Okpara and his staff for the vision.

He commended the Management of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services for their professionalism and requisite technical knowledge to man state-of-the-art diagnostic equipment.

M.D of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services Limited explaining things to Governor Uzodinma, his deputy, Prof. Njoku, NCDC team Leader, Dr. Ndodo and other stakeholders during commissioning of Covid - 19 test center in Imo.

His words: "I am happy that Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services has been certified by Nigeria Center for Disease Control (NCDC). I commend the Managing Director, Everest Okpara, the work force local and foreign. I charge them to do more to battle the monster to ensure that Imo is protected from the scourge.

"This shows that Imo is more than prepared for the battle against the monster called Covid - 19. This feat has really strengthened our preparedness. It has increased our testing capacity and will cut the cost of logistics and the risk of travelling to far distances for test.

M.D of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services Limited explaining things to Governor Uzodinma, his deputy, Prof. Njoku, NCDC team Leader, Dr. Ndodo and other stakeholders during commissioning of Covid - 19 test center in Imo.

"I thank NCDC for working with us and the Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services to ensure that we got it right and finally certified this place as a center."

Dr. Okwu Sebastian, State Coordinator, World Health Organisation, Imo State, reacting to the development, stated: "I am impressed with the facilities and equipment in Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services. The environment and safety measures are commendable.

"I am particularly happy that this is borne out of public-private sector partnership. This is encouraging.

"While today's event has strengthened the State standing to battle Covid-19 in the area of testing, which is the primary aspect of controlling the pandemic we must uphold the hygiene processes to stay safe and not get infected. Wash your hands regularly with soap or use alcohol based hand sanitizer. Do not touch your face, especially when they are not clean. Maintain social distancing and use your facial mask to ensure that you contain your droplets to avoid infecting others. If you are sick, please stay home and if you discover you have symptoms, call the delegates numbers given by NCDC."

Laboratory activities in Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Servicein Progress.

The Managing Director of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services Limited, Okpara thanked the Governor for identifying and working with the establishment to achieve the day's success with a view to partnering to ensure that Imo people are protected against Covid - 19 pandemic.

He also thanked NCDC team led by Dr. Nnemeka Ndodofor for working round the clock with Everight and all the examinations before the certification, encouraging them to continue the patriotic service for the fatherland.

He also commended the team from the World Health Organisation led by the State Coordinator, Dr. Okwu Sebastian for their presence and inputs.

Gov. Uzodinma speaking whith NCDC team leader, Dr Ndodo and MD of Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services

Speaking to newsmen about Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services Limited, the founder and the Managing Director, Everest Okpara stated: "Everight Diagnostic and Laboratory Services Limited was established in 2005 in Lagos State. We came back home in 2013 to contribute towards having a healthy people.

"The idea of setting up center for Molecular Science and Genetic studies was born out of vision. Secondly, we have had to send some special tests abroad and it was a whole lot of cost. In 2016, we started putting the facilities in place. And to the glory of God, we commissioned it in 2019 with both Nigerian professionals and expatriates. The joy of it is that we have been able to expose our medical students to this special area."

https://cdn.thenigerianvoice.com/images/content/515202025657_unknown2.jpeg[/PHOTO]

On their test capacity, he said the center has the capacity of testing 72 samples within 12 hours and 144 samples with 24 hours.

He hinted that the center has the seal of increasing the capacity from 500 to 1000 in a day.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - The Office of the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator in Libya has said it has documented 17 attacks/shelling of health facilities in Libya since early 2020
Tim Smith keeps a pretty straight face when he says he doesnt know what all the fuss is about.

The state Liberal MP has attracted national attention with his colourful outbursts against Labor Premier Daniel Andrews and his response to the COVID-19 pandemic but says he is just doing his job as an opposition frontbencher: confronting the government.

Tim Smith's recent Twitter tirades have drawn attention to the member for Kew. Credit:Paul Jeffers

But the ambitious Smiths interventions, mostly on Twitter where he has described Andrews as a schmuck, dictator and friendless loser, look designed to attract as much attention to the member for Kew as to the Premier or his policies.

Social media is a poor measure of public opinion, but the feedback Smith has received for his online musings on subjects ranging from golf to bats in Yarra Bend Park and his attacks on public health officials has not been positive.
Rising sea levels over the past 120 years are a result of man-made climate change and not variations in the Earth's orbit, a study has found.

Over the last 66 million years, the Earth has both had ice ages and ice-free conditions  both caused by variations in Earth's orbital properties.

However, sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades, threatening to flood many populated coastal cities, communities and low-lying land by the century's end.

This consequence of greenhouse gas emissions also poses a grave threat to many ecosystems and could generate costly damage to infrastructure.

Scroll down for video

Rising sea levels over the past 120 years are a result of man-made climate change and not variations in the Earth's orbit, a study has found

'Our team showed that the Earth's history of glaciation was more complex than previously thought.' said paper author Kenneth Miller of Rutgers University.

'Although carbon dioxide levels had an important influence on ice-free periods, minor variations in the Earth's orbit were the dominant factor in terms of ice volume and sea-level changes  until modern times.'

In their study, the researchers reconstructed the history of sea level changes and glaciations since the age of the dinosaurs ended, around 66 million years ago.

They compared estimates of the global average sea level  based on deep-sea geochemistry data  with continental margin records.

Continental margins, which include the relatively shallow ocean waters over a continental shelf, can extend out hundreds of miles from the coast.

The team discovered that periods of nearly ice-free conditions  such as was found 1713 million years ago  occurred when atmospheric concentrations of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide was not much higher than it is today.

Glacial periods were also found to have occurred at times previously thought to have been ice-free, including from 4834 million years ago.

'Atmospheric carbon dioxide had an important influence on ice-free periods on Earth,' said Professor Miller.

'Ice volume and sea-level changes prior to human influences were linked primarily to minor variations in the Earth's orbit and distance from the sun,' he added.

Sea-level rise has accelerated in recent decades, threatening to flood many populated coastal cities, communities and low-lying land by the century's end. This consequence of greenhouse gas emissions also poses a grave threat to many ecosystems and could generate costly damage to infrastructure

The largest sea-level decline took place during the last glacial period, around 20,000 years ago, when the water level dropped by about 400 feet (around 122 metres).

The ream have concluded that sea-level changes were at a standstill until around 1900, but began rising as human activities began influencing the climate.

The full findings of the study were published in the journal Science Advances.
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By West Kentucky Star Staff

May. 14, 2020 | HICKMAN

By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 14, 2020 | 06:25 PM | HICKMAN

Hickman City Manager David Gallagher says it is past time for Kentucky to open up for business.



Gallagher told KYTN that with retail, restaurants, and other businesses still closed by orders of Governor Andy Beshear, the economic impact is damaging.



He said that the shutdown is hurting local businesses and that the governor has gone way beyond what is necessary and overstepped common sense. He also stressed that citizens of Hickman are hurting, and gave an example of a clothing store not being able to sell clothes because of being shutdown, but people at the same time are able to go to Wal-Mart and buy clothes.



Gallagher was also critical of current policy for the city's restaurants that cannot serve in-person meals. While he said that some restaurants may do "ok" with take out orders, it is not the same as being able to enjoy a meal in a restaurant with friends.



The current phase plans by Governor Beshear will allow retail businesses to begin on May 20th, with restaurants to start in-person dining at 33 percent capacity on May 22nd.
Citywide

Photo: Unsplash

You can leave your umbrella at home through Saturday, but light rainfall is in the forecast for San Francisco later in the week, according to the seven-day forecast from drone-powered weather service Saildrone. The best chance of rain is expected on Sunday at 58%, with the potential for light rainfall of 0.24 inches.

The coming week will also see mild temperatures, forecast to persist through Thursday. Temperatures will reach a high of just 60 degrees on Saturday, with a weekly high of 65 degrees expected on Thursday.

Skies will be cloudy through Saturday, turning clear on Tuesday. Winds are forecast to reach a modest high of 18 mph today, with daily top speeds over 10 mph for the remainder of the week.

This story was created automatically using Saildrone's local weather forecast data, then reviewed by an editor. We also incorporate historic weather data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Click here for more about what we're doing. Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
By Trend

Israeli researchers have developed a serological test to detect COVID-19 antibodies, Tel Aviv University (TAU) in central Israel said, Trend reports citing Xinhua.

The test was developed for a joint research with the Israeli military to examine soldiers' morbidity rates.

The soldiers testing, which began on Thursday, identifies those who have been exposed to the virus, as well as soldiers who have developed antibodies and possibly resistance to the virus.

This will help the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) ensure the operational competence of the units and prepare for another virus outbreak.

The test developed by TAU researchers allows to identify asymptomatic infected population, as well as those previously exposed to the virus.

This test is similar to a regular blood test, providing reliable and accurate results in just an hour.

With this test, antibodies could be detected even months after exposure to the virus and symptom development.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
"There would be four million testing kits available with a week," said Donald Trump during his March 6 photo-op at Centers for Disease Control & Prevention headquarters in Atlanta. "Anybody that needs a test gets a test."

Not even close. Trump's statement was false then as it is now. And worse for our unmasked cheerleader-in-chief, the Food and Drug Administration determined on May 14 that the Abbott Labs' COVID-19 test kits used by Trump deliver too many false negatives.

The testing kit fiasco is just another sign of the White House's failed leadership during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In true Trumping fashion, the president is now playing the deflection card. During his visit to an Allentown medical supply company, Trump said: "Could be that testing is, frankly overrated. Maybe it is overrated."

When he flops, Trump changes the story to divert attention from his ineptitude. His month ago promise of "beautiful" tests for everyone has been transformed into: "What's so hot about testing?"

That is getting very, very old.

Kamala Harris

As America approaches the 90,000-death toll from COVID-19 mark, the president has begun the process of attacking the body count as "fake news" cooked up by the Deep State and his political opponents to deny his re-election.

Health officials say the death toll is actually far greater than the reported numbers as many of those who died during the initial and chaotic COVID-19 surges were not included in the tally.

The nation holds a debt of gratitude to California Senator Kamala Harris, who took a pre-emptive strike against Trump downplaying COVID-19 death toll.

She wrote a letter on May 15 to federal health officials warning of a misinformation campaign launched by Trump to deflate the numbers of deaths attributed to COVID-19 to inflate his re-election prospects.

Harris noted that Trump used this tactic before in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, where there was an extreme undercount of the dead to cover up the failed disaster relief effort.

The Senator said it's incumbent on Heath & Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and FEMA administrator Peter Gaynor "to ensure an accurate and transparent death toll and consistent COVID-19 statistics."

Keeping the COVID-19 death toll legit is the honorable way to remember those lost to the pandemic.

Trump, who shamefully compares his presidency to that of Abraham Lincoln, should try to take the words of the Great Emancipator to heart.

At Gettysburg, Lincoln said: "That we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain."

Lincoln acknowledged the heavy toll of the Battle of Gettysburg, despite the fact that the massive loss of lives did not bode well for his re-election in the Civil War-weary North.

Trump will diminish the death toll from the virus to further his own political career. His "America First" slogan has always been "Trump First."

Looking for a ray of sunshine in the COVID-19 blizzard of bad news, Carnival Corp. says only about 38 percent of its customers have requested refunds on cruises.

The Miami-based company, which has laid off staff, reduced hours and slashed salaries, looks "forward to the day, when appropriate, that once again our ships and crew are delighting millions of people at sea and we can be there for the many nations and millions of people who depend on the cruise industry for their livelihood."

That day may be well down the road as America's top infectious disease doctor, Anthony Fauci, warns of more suffering ahead due to the premature reopening of the economy and ousted vaccine official Rick Bright predicts the "darkest winter in modern history."

More stormy seas may be ahead for Carnival president Arnold Donald's plan to "stagger fleet reentry to optimize demand and operating performance over time."

COVID-19 ranks as the most impactful event in the lives of Gen Z (people born after 1997), according to a poll from Morning Consult.

Nearly eight-in-ten (78 percent) put the virus on top of the list as the most impactful event.

That's ahead of 57 percent for mass shootings (Sandy Hook, Parkland, Las Vegas), 56 percent (September 11 terror attacks) and the election of Donald Trump (55 percent).
Chinese threat actors, tracked as Tropic Trooper and KeyBoy, has been targeting air-gapped military networks in Taiwan and the Philippines.

Chinese APT group Tropic Trooper, aka KeyBoy, has been targeting air-gapped military networks in Taiwan and the Philippines, Trend Micro researchers reported.

The Tropic Trooper APT that has been active at least since 2011, it was first spotted in 2015 by security experts at Trend Micro when it targeted government ministries and heavy industries in Taiwan and the military in the Philippines.

The threat actor targeted government offices, military, healthcare, transportation, and high-tech industries in Taiwan, the Philippines, and Hong Kong.

Since December 2014, the threat actors are using a malware dubbed USBferry in attacks against military/navy agencies, government institutions, military hospitals, and also a national bank.

Recently, we discovered the Tropic Trooper group targeting Taiwanese and the Philippine militarys physically isolated environment using a USBferry attack (the name derived from a sample found in a related research). reads the analysis published by Trend Micro. USBferry has variants that perform different commands depending on specific targets; it can also combine capabilities, improve its stealth in infected environments, and steal critical information through USB storage

The USBferry USB malware could execute various commands on specific the infected system and allow to exfiltrate sensitive data through USB storage.

According to Trend Micros telemetry, attacks that employ USBferry attack are ongoing since December 2014 and has been targeting military or government users located in Asia.

The malware was first mentioned in a PwC report that attributes it to Tropic Trooper APT, but that did not include a detailed analysis.

The attackers would first target organizations related to military or government that implements fewer security measures compared with the real targets, then they attempt to use them as a proxy to the final target. In one case, the hackers compromised a military hospital and used it to move to the militarys physically isolated network.

Trend Micro researchers identified at least three versions of the malware with different variants and components.

Tropic Trooper uses the old way of achieving infection: by ferrying the installer into an air-gapped host machine via USB. continues the report. They employ the USB worm infection strategy using the USB device to carry the malware into the targets computer and facilitate a breach into the secure network environment.

The group used tracert and ping commands to map the targets network

architecture (i.e. tracert -h 8 8.8.8.8 collects the route (path) and measures transit delays of packets across an Internet Protocol (IP) network, while pings allow testing the target networks connectivity).

The attackers attempted to determine if the infected machine has access to the internal network and the target mail portal.

In the absence of network connectivity, the malware collects information from the machine and copy the data to the USB drive.

The experts also discovered that the hackers use different backdoors in a recent attack, including WelCome To Svchost, Welcome To IDShell, and Hey! Welcome Server.

The arsenal of the APT group includes scanning tools, a command-line remote control listener/port relay tool, and backdoor payload/steganography payload execution loaders.

This targeted attack operation can be broken down into four important points. concludes the report. First, putting critical data in physically isolated networks is not an overarching solution for preventing cyberespionage activities. Second, their preferred technique of steganography isnt just used to deliver payloads, but also for sending information back to the C&C server. Third, several hacking tools and components can be used to fulfill attacks in different target networks and environments. These tools and components also have a selfdelete command to make it tricky to trace the attack chain and all the related factors. Lastly, using an invisible web shell hides their C&C server location and makes detecting malicious traffic more difficult for network protection products

Pierluigi Paganini

(SecurityAffairs  Tropic Trooper, hacking)

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Anxiety levels among pregnant women have risen significantly since the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, one of the country's largest maternity hospitals has found.

Pregnant women are most concerned about their older relatives (83%), followed by other children (67%) and their unborn babies (63%).

The study from the Coombe Women and Infants University Hospital in Dublin found that while the women are least concerned about themselves (51%), concern about their health has increased by 34%.

It is clear that the Covid-19 pandemic has caused anxiety among the pregnant population to rise, says the study's main author, Dr Gillian Corbett.

Our patients are least concerned about their own health, but, despite this, over half of women have significant health anxiety and government instruction on social distancing has resulted in major changes in behaviour among pregnant women.

Dr Corbett, a junior registrar at the maternity hospital, says it is crucial that the women receive accurate and up-to-date information.

Pregnant women being under additional pressure may have indirect adverse effects on their physical and mental health, she warns.

The research assesses maternal anxiety caused by Covid-19, changes in behaviour and information sources used by pregnant patients.

Pregnant women made significant lifestyle changes at the onset of the pandemic and before the full stay-at-home guidance was issued.

Seven out of 10 are avoiding all socialising while almost half (47%) have changed the primary method of transportation to avoid contracting the virus.

It emerged that 35% are self-isolating, 32% are not going out to work and 20% are working from home.

When asked about bulk-buying, 66% have stocked up on food, 42% have stocked up on hand sanitiser; 25% of toiletries; 10% on fuel and 9% on personal protective equipment.

After the schools closed 38% of women needed additional support with childcare and almost a quarter could not go out to work because they had no support.

One in 10 received childcare support from the children's grandparents while 6% were sharing childcare with friends or colleagues.

While television is the most used information source (80%), just 16% of the women use social media.

The HSE's website is used by 63% of women while nearly half (49%) got their information from mobile phone applications.

A quarter of women rely on newspapers for information while 17% use the World Health Organisation's website.

Few patients used social media as an information source, which is reassuring given the concerns over distribution of misinformation through social media, said Dr Corbett.

The 71 women who took part in the survey are in the second and third trimester of pregnancy.

The survey was completed during the first two weeks of March before the stay-at-home guidelines were introduced.

Master of the maternity hospital, Professor Michael O'Connell, says the research will inform how patients are treated at the Coombe.

Meanwhile, the National Womens Council of Ireland (NWCI) is conducting an online survey on women's experience of caring during the public health crisis.

NWCI's health coordinator, Dr Cliona Loughnane, says women still carry a disproportionate responsibility for all forms of care in Ireland.

We know that unequal burden of care and household responsibilities can have an impact on your mental health, and that women are especially vulnerable during this pandemic, with the closure of schools and added responsibility of supporting and caring for older relatives factored in," says Dr Loughnane.

The survey that will run for one week can be accessed online.
Ninth Circuit revives church's lawsuit against Calif. abortion insurance mandate

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A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has revived a California churchs lawsuit against a state law mandating insurance coverage for abortion.

Skyline Wesleyan Church of La Mesa sued the California Department of Managed Health Care over letters from 2014 stating that insurance companies could not limit abortion coverage.

Previously, a district court had ruled against Skyline Wesleyan Church of La Mesa in its lawsuit over a state mandate on abortion coverage, arguing that the court lacked jurisdiction and the issue remained hypothetical.

The panel vacated the earlier district court ruling in a unanimous decision released Wednesday, sending the case back to the lower court for further proceedings.

Circuit Judge Michelle Friedland authored the panel's opinion, concluding that Skyline has suffered an injury in fact.

Before the Letters were sent, Skyline had insurance that excluded abortion coverage in a way that was consistent with its religious beliefs, Friedland wrote.

After the Letters were sent, Skyline did not have that coverage, and it has presented evidence that its new coverage violated its religious beliefs. There is nothing hypothetical about the situation.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative law firm that represented the church before the Ninth Circuit, celebrated the panel's decision.

The agency has unconstitutionally targeted religious organizations, repeatedly collaborated with pro-abortion advocates, and failed to follow the appropriate administrative procedures to implement its abortion-coverage requirement, said ADF Senior Counsel Jeremiah Galus.

The 9th Circuit rightly recognized the harm that the state has inflicted on Skyline Church in subjecting it to this unprecedented mandate.

In August 2014, the California Department of Managed Health Care sent an official letter to major insurance providers stating that insurance companies in California could not restrict abortion coverage.

"The purpose of this letter is to remind plans that the Knox-Keene Health Care Service Plan Act of 1975 (Knox Keene Act) requires the provision of basic healthcare services," the letter stated.

" [T]he California Constitution prohibits health plans from discriminating against women who choose to terminate a pregnancy. Thus, all health plans must treat maternity services and legal abortion neutrally."

The announcement led to multiple churches filing legal action against the California Department of Managed Health Care, arguing that the mandate violated their religious objections to abortion.

In January, the Trump administration warned California that it will revoke federal funding over its requirement that all health insurance plans in the state cover abortion.

The Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights warned that California cannot impose universal abortion coverage mandates on health insurance plans and issuers in violation of federal conscience laws.

The Office for Civil Rights concluded that the mandate violated the Weldon Amendment, which bans government agencies from requiring healthcare providers to pay for or refer patients for abortions.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:25:11|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese State Councilor and Defense Minister Wei Fenghe on Friday spoke over the phone with Malaysian Defense Minister Ismail Sabri Yaakob on epidemic prevention and control.

Noting that China has achieved major strategic achievements in containing the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) epidemic and made great contributions to the global pandemic response, Wei said the slandering against China by some politicians from certain countries has severely violated international morality and disrupted global anti-virus efforts.

Wei said Chinese and Malaysian militaries should actively step up pragmatic cooperation in all fields and join hands in safeguarding regional peace and stability while implementing epidemic control measures.

Ismail Sabri spoke highly of China's achievements in fighting COVID-19 and appreciated China's assistance.

Ismail Sabri added that the Malaysian government attaches great importance to the relationship between the two countries and is willing to strengthen cooperation in all fields with China and advance the relations between the two countries and the two militaries. Enditem
US begins offering 1B free COVID tests, but many more needed
From the moment Dexter debuted in 2006, fans were hooked.

Over the course of eight seasons, it told the story of Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), a blood-spatter analyst for the Miami Metro Police Department who doubled as a serial killer. The crime drama was praised throughout its run for its engrossing plot, performances, and character development. But its ending didnt feel like a proper conclusion to many viewers.

Critics have even gone as far as labeling it as one of the worst TV finales in history. But wed like to think it wasnt so bad. Lets analyze the way the show wrapped and why the finale actually makes sense.

Michael C. Hall on the red carpet at an event in September 2013 | Paul Archuleta/FilmMagic

How Dexter ended

In the finale, Dexter pulls the plug on his sister Debras life support after she suffered a serious gunshot wound in the penultimate episode.

Feeling responsible for her death, Dexter separates himself from his girlfriend and son, Hannah and Harrison, in a bid to protect them from him. It seems like he is planning to kill himself when he drives his boat out in the ocean during a hurricane. But we learn that he was just faking his death. He moves to Oregon and starts a new life as a lumberjack.

After eight seasons of build-up, fans expected Dexter to either be captured by law enforcement or meet his death at the hands of one of his enemies. So seeing things pan out this way left them confused, distraught, and with more questions than answers.

The Dexter ending sets the stage for a reboot

Well admit the ending wasnt the most ideal conclusion. But if Dexter was killed off or sent to prison, there would frankly be no room to continue his story. This finale leaves plenty of space for new ideas and a fresh cast and crew. It gives writers a chance to rework the show from the ground up and pursue virtually any kind of plot.

Though Dexter appears to leave his old ways behind, we know he has a psychological need to kill. So it would be interesting to see how his life is now and how hes maneuvering  especially now that he is out of law enforcement and cant access police resources.

Or, if he did somehow manage to control his murderous urges, maybe his past would catch up to him. A Redditor proposed that Harrison could reconnect with Dexter as an adult and eventually uncover his secrets. Or Harrison could grow up to follow in Dexters murderous footprints after witnessing his mom Ritas death  which was something Dexter feared.

Theres also the possibility of Dexter inadvertently doing something that would set the police on his trail again. Heck, writers could even just pretend like the final season never happened. The possibilities are truly endless.

The chances of a Dexter reboot

Producer John Goldwyn told Variety in 2013 that Showtime wouldnt let writers kill Dexter, seemingly in case it ever decided to do a reboot. The topic of a revival has come up multiple times over the years but so far, there are no solid plans to bring the series back.

Its a possibility given how the show ended that we could revisit Dexter, Hall explained to Variety in 2018. I have just yet to, for my part, imagine or hear someone elses idea that makes it feel worth doing. But never say never.
Late last month, Sukrampal had to beg and borrow farmhands from nearby villages to gather his part of the country's largest-ever wheat harvest in Haryana state near New Delhi.

Now the 50-year-old Indian farmer has a bigger problem: how to sell his crops when the three wholesale grain markets serving growers in his hometown of Gharaunda, near the heart of what is known as India's breadbasket, are operating with a skeleton staff.

The country-wide lockdown, introduced in late March to stem the spread of the new coronavirus, has led to a labour shortage across rural India, crimping the harvest and preventing the bagging and movement of it.

The largest crop gathered globally during the pandemic, which is worth more than $26 billion (21.3 billion pounds), according to traders, may serve as a test case for other harvests coming up around the world, including Brazil's main sugarcane and coffee harvests and Southeast Asia's second rice harvests. India is the world's second-largest producer and consumer of wheat behind China.

For Sukrampal, the matter is urgent. He risks spoiling the whole lot if he does not move his produce within the next few days, before the next round of wet weather, as he struggles to keep the moisture content in the wheat below 13% to 14%. Above that, grain is less attractive to buyers and will fetch a lower price. If it gets too wet, it will be worthless.

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 lockdown has severely hit India's more than 7,000 wholesale food markets, which are the only channel for getting food supplies to India's 1.3 billion inhabitants.

"Nearly 90% of labourers aren't around. Last season, there were about 5,000 labourers, and this season there are only 500," said Radhe Shyam, a commission agent at the Gharaunda Grains Market. "We haven't seen anything like this before."

India's wheat farmers sell their grain exclusively by law at these wholesale markets to commission agents, which sell it on to state buyers and private traders. The commission agents usually employ armies of labourers to unload, clean, weigh, pack and re-load millions of wheat sacks onto tractor trolleys that then ferry it to government and private warehouses.

This year, those bustling bourses have emptied, severing the food supply chain in the world's second-most populous country and slashing earnings for millions of migrant labourers who have had to sit out one of the most lucrative periods on the crop calendar when they normally would make up to half their annual income.

STAGGERED SALES

To accommodate the dearth of workers, marketing agents have been forced to stretch out their wheat procurement period from the usual 20 to 30 days to more than two and a half months.

That has cut the daily flow of farmers bringing crops to wholesale markets to about a tenth of normal, commission agents said, raising the risk of spoilage.

It also means delayed payments for growers, who say that will stop them from buying seeds and fertilizers for the next planting window that begins in June.

Restrictions on movement have also delayed purchases by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) - India's state grain stockpiler and top buyer - and kept private traders away altogether, causing a purchasing bottleneck.

That is generating an ever-growing pile of unsold, poorly stored grain that will spoil quickly.

At 106.21 million tonnes, this year's Indian winter wheat crop is second only to China's projected 133.5 million-tonne wheat haul in 2019-2020, which is split between spring and winter wheat varieties and is gathered in two separate harvests.

India's growers are ill-equipped to hold on to such volumes for long, as unlike their western peers most have no on-site storage facilities.

"We don't have any means to store wheat. After a recent spell of rains and hails, I'm worried about the quality of my crop," said Sukrampal, who has left a pile of wheat in the open air on his five-acre plot.

Nearly 85% of India's farmers own less than five acres of land, so even relatively small crop losses, or any delay in payments, can affect their livelihoods.

In addition, farmers say this year's staggered sales schedule to marketing agents means they will have difficulties repaying bank loans, which are also due at this time of year and tied to the annual preparations for summer sowing.

LOST LABOUR

Last month, in the Karnal district of Haryana, Reuters witnessed three wholesale markets which appeared almost deserted because of the absence of migrant workers, who come mainly from poverty-stricken states such as Bihar and Jharkhand in India's east. But the lockdown, which took effect from March 25, prevented them from making their annual trips to the Haryana-Punjab wheat belt for harvest.

Migrant workers can earn about half their annual income of roughly 30,000 rupees ($394.72) during the wheat harvest, which normally tides them over until they return to the crop belts for the rice harvest in October, commission agents and market officials say.

Missing out on that payday means rural spending will likely dip in the coming months.

"Since there's hardly any sale, I've started working as a labourer to compensate for my losses," said Rakesh Kumar, a tea stall owner at a grains market.

BUYER BREAKDOWN

With private traders largely absent from the market due to the lockdown, industry experts say they expect the FCI to buy a large proportion of the wheat crop, adding to India's already-bloated multi-billion dollar food subsidy spending.

The FCI is already saddled with massive crop mounds from last season and will not have enough room to store much new season wheat, according to industry experts. That raises the prospect of rotting crops even as thousands die from malnutrition-related illnesses each year in India.

Wheat stocks at FCI warehouses on April 1, when the new marketing year began, totalled 24.7 million tonnes, according to government data, more than three times the government-fixed target, and roughly a quarter of India's annual demand.

The FCI buys wheat from farmers at a guaranteed price to give them an assured return and meet any shortfall due to unfavourable weather conditions.

If the FCI ends up buying more than 37 to 40 million tonnes of wheat this year, its granaries will overflow by June, said Amit Takkar, chief of brokerage Conifer Commodities.

The government will struggle to export much of that, as the fixed domestic prices have pushed Indian wheat prices about $35 a tonne above the world market, according to industry experts.
Bryan Woolston had a plan when he went to cover the anti-lockdown rally last month at the Kentucky state capitol. He wore a cloth mask because the demonstration was billed as a social-distancing gathering. He went on foot in order to get close.

But then the crowd got rowdy. People started screaming and shouting. Social distancing went out the window. Soon, he was within shoulder-bumping distance of the protesters he was covering.

I should have known better, Woolston, who was shooting the event as a photographer for Reuters, says. I was too close, really. When youre in the field with people who do not believe this virus [poses] a threat, they dont care about stopping its spread.

THE MEDIA TODAY: The many coronavirus conspiracy theories

Journalism currently has no industry standard for how to cover such rallies. Newsrooms and journalists are making it up as they go along, adjusting strategies as the gatherings grow more volatile. Plans vary wildly. Some newsrooms provide guidelines to their reporters and check in with them after events to reevaluate their plans; others simply leave the decisions to individual reporters. Some journalists carry several spray bottles of purifier, while others carry none. Some are wearing N95 masks; others, just surgical or cloth.

Days after the Kentucky rally, the Committee to Protect Journalists issued a safety advisory for reporters covering anti-lockdown protests. The advisory included a set of guidelines, advising reporters to, among other things, maintain a minimum six-foot distance from everyone at all times; wear a mask, preferably an N95; work in pairs, so a colleague can watch your back; identify possible escape routes; and keep on the edge of the crowd, to enable a quick getaway.

Jason Reich, vice president of corporate security at the New York Times, advises that any journalist covering a protest should wear a respirator mask and gloves, and carry surgical-type masks to give to interview subjects. However, he adds, a journalist should not overdo it and show up in PPE gear that resembles a space suit. That would not be appropriate, and it might be antagonistic, he says. Journalists should also set timers on their phones for 15 minutes or less, to remind them to pause, look around, and reassess whether they might be boxed in. And keep an eye peeled for hostile people who arent wearing masks. Those are the people I would avoid, Reich says.

Woolston says he benefited from training in biological hazards in a previous incarnation as an Explosive Ordnance Disposal technician. He understands how to limit cross-contamination. He wears masks, gloves and glasses. He always carries three spray bottles of alcohol-based purifier to methodically sanitize equipment, hands, and car at various stages of the reporting operation. Potentially contaminated items go into plastic bags for cleaning or disposal later.

Before the pandemic, he would shoot an image from different angles and exposures; now, he frames it in his mind, snaps it, and moves out. Hes stopped trying to get names from everyone he photographs. That luxury just doesnt exist anymore, he says. Every minute you linger you might make contact with someone.

Chris Post took a similar approach when he covered reopening protests in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, for WMFZ-TV. He says time, distance, and shielding is his modus operandi.

Post and his reporting partner committed to a short period of time on the ground. Shielding involved N95 masks and sanitizer to wipe off gear. For distancing, they used shotgun microphones. They stayed on the outer limit of the gathering and stepped back if protesters came too close. They constantly looked around and agreed that they wouldnt waste time looking for each other if they became separatedtheyd just meet at the car.

The live shot was complicated. Wearing an N95 mask muffles the voice. So they looked for a safe place for the reporter to take it off, far from anyone who might harass them. The pair chose an elevated wooden deck in front of a shuttered coffee shop. It provided a good view in case someone approached.

Most vital, Post says, is devising a strategy and talking it through to avoid surprises. We planned for the worst-case scenario, he said. Luckily, it never came. Still, theyre ready for next time.

NEW: How the Washington Examiner became a traffic monster

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Judith Matloff teaches conflict reporting at Columbia. Her latest book, How To Drag a Body and Other Safety Tips You Hope to Never Need, publishes May 19.
Washington D.C. (USA) 15 May 2020 (SPS)- Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights and Freedom Now urge the Government of Morocco to immediately release Mohamed Al-Bambary and all political prisoners in light of the growing threat posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, a press release published on R.F.Kennedy Foundation's website Today.

A journalist and Sahrawi activist, Mr. Al-Bambary had reported on human rights abuses committed by the Moroccan government in Western Sahara before his arrest in 2015. He was tortured, denied fundamental fair trial rights, and sentenced to six years in prison in violation of international law.

Despite a decision from the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention in 2018 calling for his release, Mr. Al-Bambary continues to be arbitrarily detained in conditions that jeopardize his life and safety.

The overcrowded and unsanitary conditions Mr. Al-Bambary faces in Ait Melloul prison present a dangerous risk for an outbreak of COVID-19. Currently, he is being held with approximately 45 other prisoners in a cell that is 8 meters by 6 meters, leaving each prisoner only one square meter of space.

Under such conditions, physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19 is impossible. The prison itself is overcrowded at 113 percent of capacity. There is only one doctor available for the approximately 800 persons detained in the complex with him.

The Government of Morocco recognizes the COVID-19 pandemic will likely have a devastating impact on persons in detention. On April 5, 2020, King Mohammed VI of Morocco pardoned 5,654 prisoners on the basis of age, frail health, time spent in prison and good conduct, in an effort to protect them from the COVID-19 outbreak.

However, political prisoners and those detained on the basis of exercising their right to freedom of expression were not prioritized for release. Moreover, the limited steps that Ait Melloul prison has taken in response to the global pandemic are insufficient to protect Mr. Al-Bambary and the other prisoners from an anticipated outbreak.

U.N. experts have called on all governments to release political prisoners and reduce prison populations in light of the anticipated deadly impact of the pandemic in overcrowded and unsanitary prisons. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions Agnes Callamard have called on governments to take urgent action to reduce the numbers of persons detained, especially those detained without sufficient legal basis, such as those imprisoned for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

Dozens of U.N. Special Procedures have also called on all governments to provide appropriate support to persons in detention in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis and to take additional measures to protect those who are at most risk of being disproportionately affected by the crisis.

Given these heightened risks to life and health posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Government of Morocco must urgently act to release Mohamed Al-Bambary in line with the decision of the U.N. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, and to free all political prisoners.

090/500/60 (SPS)

Source: R.F.K Human Rights Foundation
New Delhi: Former underworld don N Muthappa Rai, who had since reformed his ways died in Bengaluru on Friday (May 15, 2020). Rai, 68, breathed his last at the wee hours of 2.30 am at Manipal Hospital, sources confirmed.

Rai had been battling brain cancer and for the past one year. He is survived by two sons. His last rites are likely to be performed at Bidadi on Friday, as per a report by news agency PTI.

The former don was born in Dakshina Kannada's Puttur town, he joined the world of crime at a very young age and had several cases against him, including murder.

In 2002, Rai was deported from the United Arab Emirates and questioned by intelligence agencies but due to lack of evidence he was acquitted.

After reforming his criminal ways he even started founded a charitable organisation named 'Jaya Karnataka'. Rai has appeared in a few films like 'Kanchilda Baale' and 'Katari Veera Surasundarangi'.
Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty and Achieve Peace

By Carl Safina

Henry Holt. 368 pp. $29.99

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At the New Networks for Nature conference in the United Kingdom in 2017, the renowned Scottish wildlife cinematographer Doug Allan described a pod of beluga whales in the Lancaster Sound of the Canadian Arctic swimming beneath him as he snorkeled at the surface. After rolling onto their backs so they could look up at him - their eyes are at the bottom of their heads - one of the whales confronted Allan and "scanned" him from head to flipper. He described how the whale's melon - the mass of adipose tissue at the front of its head used for echolocation and communication - "appeared to wrinkle in frustration, in exactly the same way your or my forehead might wrinkle in frustration" when encountering a curiosity. Allan then complained that no one has yet managed to understand the whales' language.

Carl Safina begins "Becoming Wild," his luminous meditation on the complexity of contemporary animal culture, in the company of someone attempting to do just that: Shane Gero, a zoologist who has devoted his career to observing and analyzing the behavior of sperm whales. Safina visits with naturalists who study three species: the sperm whale, the scarlet macaw and the chimpanzee. He drops an intellectual hydrophone into these seemingly disparate pools to see what information he can elicit. In doing so, he demonstrates the extent to which different species exhibit cultural behaviors that humans historically have associated exclusively with themselves.

We humans glorify our own culture yet have devoted scant attention to the existence of culture among whales and other species. Thomas Beale, a surgeon who sailed on a British whaling ship, wrote in his 1839 book, "The Natural History of the Sperm Whale": "It is a matter of great astonishment that the consideration of the habits of so interesting, and in a commercial point of view of so important an animal, should have been so entirely neglected, or should have excited so little curiosity." Beale was fascinated by the animals' behavior. "All sperm whales, both large and small, have some method of communicating by signals to each other, by which they become apprised of the approach of danger," he wrote. "The mode by which this is effected remains a curious secret."

For hundreds of years, learning how best to kill the whale has been the extent of our interest in its culture. Safina quotes the pioneering whale researcher Roger Payne to explain the ongoing slaughter of the magnificent creatures: "It's as if intelligent aliens arrived from outer space and because we couldn't understand their language, we cooked and ate them."

Safina demonstrates that the three species studied in "Becoming Wild" - all of which have life spans not unlike our own - learn how to live their lives through lengthy education from their elders, just as humans do. Macaws are taught where tasty and nutrition-rich clay lies. Chimpanzees learn which fruit trees are ripening in which order, and even consider changes in the weather when making their calculations. By destroying the sea beds in our continued search for fossil fuel, and filling the deep with noise from explosives and mechanical drills, we interfere with cetaceans' delicate echolocation and therefore their ability to orientate themselves, to feed and to communicate. In wiping out the habitats of the Amazonian scarlet macaw and of the Ugandan chimpanzee, we destroy deep knowledge of vast and complicated landscapes passed down through generations. Orphaned macaw chicks hand-reared and released into the forest lack the cultural knowledge and the dialects of their nest-reared cousins. In other words, those nest-reared cousins weren't born wild, to borrow the title of conservationist Tony Fitzjohn's memoir, "Born Wild: The Extraordinary Story of One Man's Passion for Lions and for Africa"; they became wild.

In this superbly articulate cri de coeur, Safina gives us a new way of looking at the natural world that is radically different from our usual anthropocentric perspective. "Becoming Wild" demands that we wake up and realize that we are intrinsically linked to our other-than-human neighbors. We are not alone in loving our families. Having an aesthetic sensibility, both visual and musical, is both shared and can be perceived by many other species while war-prone humans are not the only ones who would generally prefer to live peaceably with one another. Safina helps us see the profound impact caused by the destruction of other species and their habitats, the inability to live in harmony with one another, and the demonization of environmental scientists battling to preserve our Earth's delicate balance. As Safina puts it in his epilogue: "Can we evolve a culture for a beautiful future on Earth? Only humans can ask that question. Only humans need to. And everything that means anything depends on our answer."

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Norbury is the author of "The Fish Ladder." She lives in London.
India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

Coronavirus lockdown: In two days, 14 migrant workers killed in road accidents

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

New Delhi, May 15: As many as 14 migrants were killed and more than 60 others injured in two road accidents that took place on Wednesday and Thursday while they were on the way to their homes in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In the first incident, among the six people who lost their lives in an accident, a father and his son were killed when an Agra-bound Uttar Pradesh roadways bus hit a group of migrant workers. These workers were walking from Haryana to their home in Bihar's Gopalganj. Of the four injured, two of them are in a critical condition and were taken to hospital in Meerut.

Abhishek Yadav, the accused tried to escape from the spot. But was arrested by the police. Yadav hails from Firozabad and has been booked for alleged rash driving and death due to negligence.

Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

According to survivors and eye-witnesses, the group of workers had set out from Kharera in Haryana on Sunday.

The survivors recalled the incident as the bus rammed into the unaware migrants walking on the sides of the highway. a survivor also said that they were walking for several days and were determined to reach home since they were running out of food and money.

In another incident around 180 km from Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, eight Uttar Pradesh-bound migrant workers were killed and nearly 55 injured when the truck they were travelling, collided with a bus.

Coronavirus pandemic may impact Vijay Mallya's extradition timeline

It is reportedly said that the mishap took place around 3 am when a truck carrying nearly 65 migrant workers from Maharashtra to Uttar Pradesh collided with a bus, which only had a driver, coming from the wrong side on the Guna bypass road.

However, the injured managed to escape from the jaws of death and were undergoing treatment at the Guna district hospital and they did not receive any serious injuries.

It is allegedly said that carelessness of the bus driver caused the accident and a case has been registered against the bus driver and further investigation is underway.
Prison Fellowship Partners with ICPA to Honor Correctional Staff Prison Fellowship Joins International Corrections and Prison Association in Applauding Correctional Staff During Coronavirus Pandemic



NEWS PROVIDED BY

Prison Fellowship

May 15, 2020



WASHINGTON, May 15, 2020 /Christian Newswire/ -- Prison Fellowship, the nation's largest Christian nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, is partnering with the International Corrections and Prison Association (ICPA) in honoring the work of prison and correctional staff during the Coronavirus pandemic.



The ICPA's global #WeApplaud Campaign and its partners will send messages of support to jurisdictions in the United States and across the world to boost the morale of those who work within our prison and probation systems.



"We honor and thank the brave men and women who serve in our prisons across this nation for their hard work, dedication, and commitment," said James Ackerman, President and CEO of Prison Fellowship. "During this unprecedented time, an already challenging work environment has become even more dangerous due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but these courageous workers continue to serve on the frontlines, without hesitation. For that, we are forever grateful."



"During our weekly, online sessions with wardens across the country participating in our programming, we continue to hear about the energy and efforts these corrections officers and other prison staff are putting in each day to keep all those in prison safe," said Sam Dye, Senior VP of National Programs. "We continue to hear many stories of members of the staff stepping up to lead within their facilities to address the issues COVID-19 brings to our correctional system."



During the #WeApplaud Campaign, messages of hope and encouragement will be sent to thousands of prison workers using the hashtags #WeApplaud #CorrectionalStaff #staysafe #C19Prisons.



Prison Fellowship

Prison Fellowship is the nation's largest nonprofit serving prisoners, former prisoners, and their families, and a leading advocate for justice reform. We seek to share the real, living hope of the Gospel with people who long for its power to make them new. Real restoration begins by addressing the cycle of crime on all fronts, in prison and out, and engaging in a cycle of renewal.



For interview requests, please contact Jim Forbes, Prison Fellowship's Director of Communications, at (703) 554-8540 or email him at Jim_forbes@pfm.org.



SOURCE Prison Fellowship



CONTACT: Jim Forbes, 703-554-8540, Jim_forbes@pfm.org



Related Links



https://www.prisonfellowship.org/



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A solicitors' insurer can pursue its application for judgment for 4.9m allegedly outstanding under a 2011 settlement with Bloxham stockbrokers, a High Court judge has ruled.

The January 2011 settlement was made in proceedings over losses suffered by the Solicitors Mutual Defence Fund (SMDF) after investing in a bond which fell 97pc in value.

SMDF, now R&Q Ireland Company Limited by Guarantee, claims it lost almost all of its then reserves of 8.4m due to negligence of Bloxham, which collapsed in 2012.

Its chairman, Patrick Dorgan, said in an affidavit it had to get a 5m guarantee from the Law Society to protect its position, ceased offering indemnity to solicitors in 2012 and is now in run-off. It ultimately had to fund a rescue package of up to 13m and finalised a run-off agreement with R&Q in November 2016.

The insurer applied earlier this year to the High Court for leave to re-enter proceedings, initiated in 2009 against Bloxham, to seek judgment for 4.9m.

Re-entry was opposed by lawyers representing five former Bloxham partners - Arthur Quinlan, Stradbrook Road, Blackrock, Co Dublin; Angus McDonnell, Ballymoney Park, Kilbride, Co Wicklow; Pramit Ghose, St Mary's Road, Ballsbridge, Dublin; Martin Harte, Idrone Terrace, Blackrock, Co Dublin; and Anne Barrett, Shrewsbury Park, Merrion Road, Ballsbridge.

They argued a High Court order of January 31, 2011, made when the settlement was announced, stated the proceedings were "struck out with liberty to re-enter" and the words "struck out" prevented any matter other than the original cause of action being re-entered.

Mr Justice Denis McDonald said the words "struck out with liberty to re-enter" signalled the court was to have a future role and the striking out of the proceedings was "not intended to terminate them entirely", he said.
This article by James Clarke originally appeared on Task & Purpose, a digital news and culture publication dedicated to military and veterans issues.

Nine years ago Will Chesney got an unexpected call: He was to grab his dog and head to Virginia, immediately.

What came next were weeks of exhaustive training as the Navy SEAL and his military working dog, Cairo, prepared for one of the most significant special operations missions in history: Operation Neptune Spear. By May 2, 2011 Cairo and Chesney were on the ground in Abbottabad, Pakistan, taking part in the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden.

Nine years later, on April 21, Chesney published his memoir, No Ordinary Dog. Co-authored by Joe Lyndon, the book is framed as a tribute to the operators Chesney served alongside during his 13-year career in the Navy and to Cairo, the Belgian Malinois who joined him on the Bin Laden raid.

But the same day that No Ordinary Dog was released, the Navy sent a letter to the publisher, St. Martin's Press, taking issue with its use of the Navy Special Warfare insignia, also known as a SEAL trident, on the cover, as Coffee or Die first reported on May 1.

A copy of the letter was provided to Task & Purpose by Chesney's business partner, Mark Semos, a former SEAL and a producer and writer with The Reserve Label.

"This book appears to have the Navy SEALs trident insignia on the cover. You may not be aware that the U.S. Navy has trademark rights in this insignia," reads the letter. "Accordingly, we request that the trident not be included on the cover of the upcoming book."

Though the publisher agreed to remove the trident, the request was met with resistance from both Chesney and Semos. Chesney declined to comment for this article, though Semos provided a screenshot of an email that Chesney sent in response to the Navy's letter.

"I myself earned the right to wear the trident after completing BUDs training in class 246, and while my dog Cairo was unable to officially earn a trident, he was shot in the line of duty on an NSW operation while protecting our team," Chesney wrote in his May 1 email.

"I'm asking to use the insignia in order to honor my dog who was a Navy Military Working Dog and to tell my story, which received DoD approval prior to publication," Chesney added.

Despite Chesney's request that his book be allowed to keep the trident, the Navy refused to budge. On May 6, Chesney received the following email response from Michael Badagliacca at the Office of Naval Research, which oversees the service's trademarks:

We are aware of your credentials as a SEAL and the heroic efforts of Cairo. The Navy appreciates your service and is supportive of Cairos impressive story being told. We recognize that your intentions are honorable, but many bad actors attempt to commercialize on the SEALs good name. As you can appreciate, the trident is sacred to the SEALs and for that reason it is policy to limit its use to Navy-sponsored activities. We think Cairos story is incredible and will inspire others, even without the trident on the cover. We wish you the best of success with the book.

Prior to publication, Semos told Task & Purpose that the book underwent an "extraordinarily onerous" screening process through the Department of Defense that lasted nearly a year and a half to ensure that nothing made it to print that would jeopardize operational security.

This made the Navy's letter all the more unexpected, especially since it came right as the book was published.

"They waited until our publication date to send that cease and desist  that's troubling to me on a bunch of fronts," Semos said.

The Navy, for its part, says that they never issued a "cease and desist letter," but an "educational notice" meant to make the book publisher aware that they were using a trademarked symbol, according to David Smalley, a spokesman for the Office of Naval Research, which oversees the service's trademarks.

"It is important to note that the Navy Trademark and Licensing Offices correspondence to the publishers was not a cease and desist letter," Smalley told Task & Purpose. "Rather, it is an educational notice regarding the Navys trademark rights. The letters intent was to assert the Navys trademark rights and educate the publisher that the SEAL Trident is a symbol of respect and integrity and to refrain from using it on book covers for marketing or decorative purposes."

"The Navys Trademark and Licensing Office issues several notice of rights letters per month regarding the use Navy SEAL trident, the words United States Navy, and other trademark violations that it finds or is alerted to," Smalley continued. "For the most part, companies, publishers and users comply when they receive the educational letters."

For those behind No Ordinary Dog, part of their frustration is that the symbol has been used on similar works.

"My understanding of trademark enforcement is it has to be consistent across the board," Semos said. "It doesn't take much to Google search books about Navy SEALs, and a lot of them use the trident."

Even the most cursory search for "Navy SEAL book" pulls up a dozen such examples.

Of the books referenced above, Smalley told Task & Purpose that they "are examples of why the Navy decided in the fall of 2019 it was time to reach out to many publishers."

"These books were published before the educational letters were distributed," he continued. "The Navy has requested that current and future prints of these books do not include the Trident on the cover. We have received confirmation from several publishers consenting and recognizing the integrity of the SEAL trident."

As for whether changing the cover will have a financial impact, Semos said he was confident "there will be."

"There's going to be, unquestionably, a loss here, but we can't put a number on it because we just don't know what it will be," Semos said.

"All these people have seen the book cover with the trident on it, now when they go to a bookstore as the lockdown is eased, or go to Amazon to purchase the book, they're looking at a different book cover," he continued. "And so in a way, it can lead to a lot of questions: Does the Navy not support this? Does the Navy not support Will? Was there something wrong with Will's service record  which of course there wasn't, he had an exemplary record, and obviously participated in one of the biggest special operations missions in history."

More articles from Task & Purpose:
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:02:46|Editor: huaxia

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N'DJAMENA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese Embassy in Chad on Thursday handed over to the Chadian government medical supplies donated by the Chinese government to fight COVID-19.

The donation included 2,000 N95 medical masks, 10,000 surgical masks, 2,000 medical protective suits, 500 infrared thermometers, 2,000 medical protective glasses, 10,000 medical gloves and 10,000 medical shoe covers, the Chinese Embassy said on social media.

Chadian Minister of Public Health Mahmoud Youssouf Khayal thanked the government and people of China for the donation which came at a time when Chad is fighting the coronavirus with limited resources.

"Cooperation between China and Chad in health matters... supports our country's actions in the fight against the pandemic," the minister told Xinhua.

On Wednesday, the Chinese community in Chad also donated medical supplies to the Chadian government, the Chinese Embassy said.

Chad has so far reported 399 confirmed COVID-19 cases, with 83 recoveries and 46 deaths. Enditem
With every day that passes, Pennsylvanias small business taverns and licensed restaurants move closer to financial ruin. These establishments were among the first businesses to either close or limit services as part of Gov. Wolfs business closure order to fight the spread of COVID-19. They have been told they will not be allowed to resume operations until their counties enter the green phase. Business owners have been deprived of their operations and income, and are facing permanent closure, while many employees have lost their jobs.

On Wednesday the Pennsylvania Senate joined the House of Representatives in almost unanimously throwing a lifeline to help keep taverns and restaurants from sinking faster. House Bill 327 would allow taverns and licensed restaurants to sell mixed spirit drinks to go with a few limitations for quantity, container, and time of day. This gives establishments one more small revenue stream to help them survive.

Every little bit counts. HB 327 in combination with other business saving opportunities can make a difference.

The Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association thanks Sens. Joe Scarnati, Jake Corman, Jay Costa, Pat Stefano and Jim Brewster and the rest of the Senate for their quick bipartisan response and support of Pennsylvanias neighborhood taverns and licensed restaurants.

We urge Wolf to sign this bill as quickly as possible so that our members can soon offer mixed liquor and spirits drinks to go.

Chuck Moran

Executive director

Pennsylvania Licensed Beverage and Tavern Association

Harrisburg
During the 2008 recession, 120,000 teachers lost their jobs, and schools have yet to replace all of them. A recent study from the Learning Policy Institute estimated that the losses could be twice as great, as a result of COVID-19, if education budgets are cut by even 15 percent.The prospect of fewer teachers complicates planning for social distancing, smaller class sizes, distance learning and the extra work it will take to catch up students who have fallen behind. More than 100 bills related to schools have been introduced in May, touching on topics from funding to accessing unsold produce for lunch programs. Some examples:in Louisiana asks the Board of Regents and postsecondary education management boards to recognize the unusual circumstances of the current class of high school graduates and to adopt a flexible and holistic admissions policy for summer and fall 2020 semesters. It notes factors such as ACT and SAT test scores being unavailable, pass/fail grading systems adopted during the pandemic that affect GPAs and the fact that emergency adoption of online instruction has had varying degrees of success.in New Jersey appropriates $1 million for the Department of Agriculture to purchase food products from farmers in the state who are unable to sell their goods due to disruptions in markets and the food chain. The food will be distributed to free and reduced-price school breakfast and lunch programs.in New York would establish a recovery program under which businesses and municipalities could receive monthly grants for income or revenue loss during the coronavirus outbreak. School districts are included in the entities allowed to receive the grants, which cannot exceed $1 million per month.Ohioauthorizes owners of school buses to install a protective barrier around the bus operators seat to reduce exposure to infectious diseases. The director of public safety is to adopt and enforce rules for construction, design and installation of the barriers.Educators are concerned that rural and low-income students who lack high-speed Internet access willif schools find it necessary to rely on distance learning. In North Carolina,appropriates nearly $30 million for the states School Connectivity Initiative in order to maximize eligibility for federal funds., a Minnesota bill, authorizes the sale of $10 million in bonds to fund grants from the states Safe Routes to School Program. Grants support efforts to reduce traffic and air quality near schools, including planning, infrastructure such as sidewalks and trails and bike fleets.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Rufiz Hafizoglu  Trend:

Turkeys export of steel to Kyrgyzstan from January through April 2020 increased by 6.3 times compared to the same period in 2019, making up $1.6 million, Turkish Ministry of Trade told Trend on May 15.

In April 2020, steel exports from Turkey to Kyrgyzstan soared past $1.2 million, which is 26.6 times more compared to April 2019.

From January through April of this year, Turkey exported the steel in the amount of $4 billion to the world markets, which is 18.1 percent less compared to the same period of 2019.

The overall export of steel from Turkey made up 7.8 percent of the country's total export over the reporting period.

In April 2020, Turkey exported the steel in the amount of $903.1 million to the world markets, which is 26.9 percent less compared to the same month of 2019.

Meanwhile, Turkeys steel export amounted to 10 percent of the country's total export.

During the last 12 months (from April 2019 through April 2020), Turkey exported the steel in the amount of $12.9 billion.

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Follow the author on Twitter: @rhafizoglu
The administration of Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf issued a warning Monday to businesses that choose to open in defiance of the pandemic shutdown, saying they could be jeopardizing their insurance coverage.

With several counties in open rebellion against Wolfs restrictions on businesses and movement, Insurance Commissioner Jessica Altman warned that companies that ignore the shutdown order could be putting themselves at risk of having their claims denied.

She said many policies have provisions that exclude coverage stemming from illegal acts or conduct, and could result in denied claims for property damage, protection from liability and other hazards should a business decide to reopen in violation of Wolfs order.

The Facts About Supposed Illegal Acts Exclusions Some states have taken to misrepresenting insurance coverage.

It is the duty of every business and resident in Pennsylvania to ensure that they and the public at large are provided with the maximum level of protection afforded by insurance. Any actions that could potentially create coverage gaps are the antitheses of the civil duty required of all residents during these times of emergency, she said in a written statement.

Republican elected officials in a growing number of counties are planning to move on their own to lift some of Wolfs restrictions, including the Democrats stay-at-home orders and shutdown of businesses deemed non-life-sustaining. The counties assert they have enough testing, equipment and hospital capacity to deal with the coronavirus.

We have heard the pleas of our residents who desire the ability to safely reopen their businesses and safely return to work, said nearly identical letters sent by state lawmakers, county commissioners and others in Lebanon and Schuylkill counties.

Franklin, Lancaster and Dauphin, among other counties, are also indicating they plan to lift pandemic restrictions on their own beginning this week.

President Donald Trump weighed in Monday, tweeting: The great people of Pennsylvania want their freedom now, and they are fully aware of what that entails.

Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Topics Pennsylvania
Democrat politicians intent upon perpetuating the Wuhan virus lockdown  even as more data show that the lockdown is pointless  have resorted to snatching business licenses when the owners refuse to allow their primary asset to wither away because of a useless edict. Revoking permits without due process is a powerful weapon that instantly destroys businesses because it makes the owners criminals if they continue to operate.

In Michigan, power-mad governor Gretchen Whitmer seized 77-year-old Karl Manke's business license when he refused to starve. He has announced that he will keep cutting hair, even without a license:

A Michigan barber intends to continue defying the state's lockdown order and giving haircuts despite officials revoking his professional license. Karl Manke, a 77-year-old barber in Owosso, returned to work on May 4 after the state government forced him to close his shop on March 21. Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has extended the state shutdown order through May 28, but Manke has refused close his business again despite citations from the police and the threat of 90 days in jail and a $500 fine for violating the emergency order. "I'm not closing up; I'm not caving in to this," Manke told The New York Times on Wednesday after the state voided his professional license to be a barber. "I'm not a rabble-rouser and I'm not a scofflaw. I'm a small-town barber. I just want to make my living."

Likewise, in Colorado, Governor Jared Polis seized the license from a restaurant that had the temerity to open on Mother's Day, one of the big business days for restaurants across America.

Keep in mind as you think about governors depriving people of their livelihoods without due process that there is nothing in the Constitution that authorizes this hurdle to earning a livelihood. While you'll be told that licenses exist to protect the consumer, that's rarely the case. The protection standard is relevant only when the consumer cannot understand whether someone is doing a good or, more importantly, a safe job.

For example, consumers will be hard pressed to know whether a structural engineer or a brain surgeon has the necessary skill for the work at hand. A license gives some assurance that the person has at least the required minimum skills to do the job. The same is true for specific permit processes. It makes sense to have a structural engineer check whether your contractor properly installed the supporting beam in your home because you have no idea whether he did, and the consequences for doing it wrong can be drastic and deadly.

Those are the exceptions, though. In most cases, licenses exist for two reasons only: to raise money for the government and to squeeze out competition. Established professionals long ago realized that they can lower competition (and increase profit) if they convince the government (i.e., make substantial contributions to a politician) to mandate a license as a prerequisite for doing the work they do.

Take, for example, black women braiding hair in Louisiana. It's a skill, but not one that implicates consumer health or safety. Nevertheless, those hair-braiding women need a time-consuming, expensive license if they want to earn a living:

Lynn Schofield first learned to braid hair as a child in Ivory Coast, where she watched her mother's hands weave her sisters' dark, wiry hair. She turned a family tradition into a trade, and decades after immigrating to the United States as a 16-year-old, she opened the first of four African hair braiding salons in the New Orleans area in 2000. But three years later, the Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology implemented a rule requiring those who practice African or natural hair braiding to obtain an "alternative hair design permit." The license requires at least 500 hours of training at a cosmetology school, which can cost between $10,000 and $20,000. With many young braiders unable to afford classes, Schofield found herself unable to retain the staff she trained and struggled to find licensed replacements. She closed three shops and entrusted the fourth to her niece,Ashley-Roxanne N'Dakpri, who also made a living braiding hair after moving to the U.S. Now Schofield works in real estate. Despite decades of experience, it's still illegal for her to braid hair for profit in Louisiana without a license.

In too many instances, licensing requirements are a costly scam that empowers government and stifles competition. That tyrannical governors are using revoking licenses without due process as a way to punish people who try to earn a living in the face of increasingly arbitrary lockdown rules is a reminder that, if America wants to get back on its feet economically, a lot of these licenses need to go.

And when it comes to businesses who want to prove to consumers that they're qualified for the job, they can voluntarily get certifications from professional organizations that will prove they meet the highest industry standards. That certificate is good advertising without squashing market dynamics.
Deputy Minister of Health, Dr. Bernard Okoe Boye, has commended the Government of Ghana for doing a good job in controlling the COVID-19 situation.



Dr. Okoe Boye asserted that despite the increasing cases of the pandemic disease, the country's infection and mortality rates remain one of the lowest in Africa and the world at large.



Ghana's confirmed cases of the Coronavirus now stands at 5,530, according to the Ghana Health Service.



This is an increase of 122 positive cases since the last update on Wednesday, May 13.



According to Dr. Okoe Boye, but for the interventions of President Nana Akufo-Addo, the country might have seen a higher case count than what it has currently recorded.



Speaking to host Kwami Sefa Kayi on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme, he held that the government deserves a pat on the back for putting measures in place to safeguard the lives of Ghanaians and also ensuring there are no widespread infections of the virus.



"If you want to judge a country by the number of cases to say the management of the situation has failed, then the whole world has failed. So, you don't make the mistake of looking at absolute numbers and judge a country to be a failure because it has recorded 5,000. What you must look at is what would have happened if the measures were not put in place?"



". . Of the 4,832 active cases, if 2,000 of them become negative in three weeks, do you know what it means? It means this figure once upon a time was only a statistical record. In three weeks, two thousand people from this number who were once upon time positive today might become negative. Now, what it means is that the figure we're having today is transient," he stated.



He also expressed his disagreement with people who think the President shouldn't have lifted the lockdown because of the increment in the case count.



Highlighting the main reasons for a lockdown in a pandemic as the novel Coronavirus, he said; "it was to buy time and have enough knowledge about the virus but at a particular threshold, you start going back to life knowing that the risk is still around, but you reduce the risk with steps and guidelines''.

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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HiFiBiO Therapeutics will take a pioneering approach to clinical development of its pipeline of antibody candidates by using patient stratification biomarkers identified by the company's proprietary Drug Intelligent Science (DIS)

Scientists atHiFiBiO Therapeutics have generated preclinical data packages for novel monoclonal antibodies that demonstrate favorable clinical development profiles as new cancer immunotherapeutic options. The team will present highlights in three poster sessions at the forthcoming American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Virtual Annual Meeting II, June 22-24, 2020. Taken together, these three programs from the HiFiBiO Therapeutics pipeline are evidence of the maturation of the company's unique and comprehensive capabilities to uncover disease mechanisms and indications at the single-cell level; apply a deep understanding of immune system biology to select antibodies that present the best prospects for clinical development; and match these high-quality antibodies to the patients who are most likely to derive benefit.

"We are pleased to have the opportunity to present our work to the oncology research community at AACR and to share our innovative approach to transform the drug discovery and development paradigm by combining a deep understanding of immune-modulation with a world-leading single-cell platform and integrated analytics. By applying this approach over the past two and a half years, we have built a sustainable pipeline with high-quality candidates moving rapidly towards clinical studies," said Liang Schweizer, PhD, President and CEO of HiFiBiO Therapeutics.

The three HiFiBiO Therapeutics pipeline programs being presented at the AACR meeting are:

HFB3010 (OX40)

HFB301001 is a novel, fully human IgG1 class OX-40 agonistic antibody with an optimized pharmacological profile. In contrast to previous anti-OX-40 antibodies, the agonistic activity of HFB301001 is further enhanced in the presence of the endogenous ligand OX-40L, does not result in reduced expression of OX-40 on T cells, and leads to superior anti-tumor activity in a human OX-40 knock-in mouse model compared to a benchmark antibody. Applying innovative biomarker strategy by leveraging its cutting-edge single-cell platform, HiFiBiO Therapeutics is developing the HFB301001 clinical candidate targeting certain patient populations which confer sensitivity towards treatment.

HFB2003 (TNFR2)

HiFiBiO Therapeutics has discovered and is pursuing the development of a first-in-class anti-TNFR2 monoclonal antibody capable of co-stimulating T cell proliferation and inducing strong in vivo anti-tumor immunity. In tumors, TNFR2 is expressed on activated and exhausted T cells. Targeting TNFR2 has the potential to enhance anti-tumor immunity by stimulating T-cell activation and proliferation in the tumor microenvironment. HiFiBiO's CelliGO platform enabled the identification of diverse anti-TNFR2 antibodies that target different epitopes of the receptor. The candidate HFB200301 preferentially binds to TCR-activated primary CD8 and CD4 T cells as compared to unstimulated T cells and enhances CD3/CD28-induced activation and proliferation. Single agent anti-tumor activity comparable to anti-PD-1 was observed in several mouse tumor models at well-tolerated doses. An acute NHP exploratory study revealed no safety concerns for this novel mechanism. The clinical candidate HFB200301 has favorable developability and PK profiles and is currently at CMC development stage.

HFB2009 (Gal-9)

Galactoside-binding lectin Galectin 9 (Gal-9) is a key pleiotropic immunosuppressive modulator present in the tumor microenvironment. High Gal-9 expression has been reported in several cancer types including hematological malignancies such as AML and ALL, as well as in multiple solid tumors. Neutralization of Gal-9 has the potential to enhance anti-tumor immune response in the tumor micro-environment. HiFiBiO Therapeutics has discovered and is pursuing the development of HFB200902, an anti-Gal-9 neutralizing antibody with first-in-class potential in AML and solid tumors. HFB200902 blocks the interaction of Gal-9 with TIM3 and CD44, two receptors that have been described to mediate Gal-9-immunosuppressive signals in effector and regulatory T cells. As a result, HFB200902 inhibits Gal-9 induced Th1 cell apoptosis and Treg expansion. Anti-tumor activity and increased survival were observed as single agent and in combination with anti-PD1 in a syngeneic tumor model.

HiFiBiO Therapeutics will take innovative approaches to clinical development of these and other candidates in its pipeline, by pairing these novel antibody candidates with patient stratification biomarkers identified using the company's proprietary DIS approach. This enables the company's scientists to analyze individual patient cell samples to understand the complex functions and heterogeneity in immune system characteristics and responses among different patient groups, and to define predictive biomarkers that can be used to match the therapeutics to those patients who will most likely benefit from them.

"The challenges of achieving clinical success for immunotherapies are often related to the complex biology of the tumor microenvironment. Our pipeline focuses on targets with roles on multiple immune cell types, and our development strategy hinges on combining candidates with novel biomarkers to ensure a higher probability of clinical success," commented Francisco Adrian, Senior Vice President of Global Research, HiFiBiO Therapeutics.

"Our single-cell technology paired with our unique data analysis capability enables us to identify novel biomarkers derived from particular immune cell types and mechanisms. Using this approach, we should be able to stratify patients using their profiled genotype and phenotype, which predict sensitivity or resistance to treatment with our antibody candidates," said Andreas Raue, Senior Director of Drug Intelligent Science, HiFiBiO Therapeutics.

Registration for the virtual meeting is being offered by AACR free of charge; more information is available at AACR Virtual Annual Meeting II.

About HiFiBiO Therapeutics

HiFiBiO Therapeutics is an emerging multinational biotherapeutics company mobilizing the human immune system to combat disease. The company integrates deep-rooted biological expertise with its comprehensive single-cell profiling technologies to discover and accelerate a pipeline of antibody drugs to treat cancer and autoimmune disorders. In addition, HiFiBiO Therapeutics aspires to address unmet medical needs around the world through open-innovation partnerships with industry and academia. The company features a strong global footprint with cutting-edge laboratories on three continents in Cambridge, Mass., Paris and Shanghai. For more information, please visit www.hifibio.com.

HiFiBiO Therapeutics, the HiFiBiO Therapeutics logo, CelliGO and DIS are trademarks of HiFiBiO and its affiliates.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005229/en/

Contacts:

Sally Jacob

media@hifibio.com

(617) 395-1212
Hollywood star Mark Wahlberg is in early negotiations with Netflix to produce and star in spy movie Our Man in New Jersey.

According to Variety, if the deal is locked Wahlberg would portray a blue-collar 007 James Bond-type character.

Plot details are being kept under the wraps.

Wahlberg will produce with Stephen Levinson, who came up with this inspired idea.

Netflix has also acquired superhero film Ball and Chain, starring Dwayne Johnson and Emily Blunt.

The film is based on the 1990s comic of the same name by Scott Lobdell. Emily V. Gordon has penned the script.

The story revolves around a couple going through a rough phase in their relationship. They have superpowers, which only work properly when they are together.

Johnson and Blunt recently worked on Disney's Jungle Cruise, a family adventure that is scheduled to release in 2021.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Vedantas alumina



refinery in Odishas Lanjigarh has provided seeds to the needy peasants in the area to help them develop a vegetable cultivation plan, a company official said.

The initiative aims to mitigate the effects of COVID- 19 on agriculture and allied activities in the area, the official said.

In the fight against the global pandemic, the alumina refinery is looking at restoring and sustaining the livelihood of the local communities, he said in a statement.

As part of this effort, the Vedanta team has helped develop a vegetable cultivation plan for the local farmers, whose source of income has been impacted adversely by COVID- 19.

Under this initiative, the plant is ensuring availability of good quality seeds of bitter gourd, cowpea, ridge gourd, etc to the local farmers in need, in collaboration with the Agriculture and Horticulture Department of the state, the statement said.

The team has reached out to over 100 farmers in nearby villages, such as Kadamguda, Balabhadrapur, Harekrushnapur, Chhatrapur, Bundel, Kapaguda, Kenduguda, Dengsargi and Basantpadain the first phase of this vegetable cultivation plan, which will help them in the cultivation of vegetables in kharif season.

On this initiative undertaken by the plant, Rahul Sharma, CEO Alumina Business said, "We are committed to enabling our communities to become self-reliant and self- sufficient. As part of this endeavour, we have perceived the need to support the farmers in the areas around our operations to help restore their livelihood."



All support possible is being extended to help the people affected by the pandemic and bring their lives to normalcy. "We are closely working with the government alongside our people and partners to emerge from these trying times stronger together," he said in a statement.

Over 1,00,000 washable cloth masks were prepared through local self-help groups which have been distributed free of cost to the communities in tandem with the district administration.

Over 100 SHG members are being provided free of cost training, sewing machines and raw materials as required, so they have a regular source of income to support their families at this time, when sources of livelihood are scarce, it added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 08:31:03

Amsterdam, the Netherlands  15 May 2020 - Intertrust N.V. (Intertrust or Company), a global leader in providing tech-enabled corporate and fund solutions to clients operating and investing in international business, announces that the Annual General Meeting of 14 May 2020 adopted all voting items on the agenda, including the financial statements for the year 2019.

For more information:

Investors & Media

Marieke Palstra

marieke.palstra@intertrustgroup.com

Tel +31 20 577 1157

About Intertrust

Intertrust is a global leader in providing tech-enabled corporate and fund solutions to clients operating and investing in the international business environment. The Company has around 3,500 employees in more than 30 jurisdictions in Europe, the Americas, Asia Pacific and the Middle-East. Intertrust delivers high-quality, tailored fund, corporate, capital market and private wealth services to its clients, with a view to building long-term relationships. The Company works with global law firms and accountancy firms, multinational corporations, financial institutions, fund managers, high net worth individuals and family offices.

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This article is part of the Free Speech Project , a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

As the pandemic has accelerated, so too has oppression of free speech throughout the world. That worries Steve Coll, dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University and a staff writer at the New Yorker. (He was also among the founding fathers of Future Tense; it launched when he was president of New America, a partner with Slate and Arizona State University in Future Tense.) We cant afford to lose journalism as a court of last resort, he said during Thursdays Future Tense web event, Free Speech Project: Symptoms May Include Censorship, which examined the pandemics impact on free speech around the world. In a conversation with Andres Martinez, editorial director of Future Tense, Coll discussed what we stand to lose if censorship becomes another casualty of COVID-19.

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When governments fail, journalism can succeed. Coll said that without the Indianapolis Stars investigative work, Larry Nassar, the former Michigan State University and USA Gymnastics physician accused of sexually abusing hundreds of young women, may have not been brought to justice. Now smaller media organizations are folding, larger ones are laying off staff, tech companies are taking a larger role in moderating speech, and governments are quelling dissent and expanding surveillance in the name of the crisis. Together, those trends threaten free speech when we need it most.

Although threats against it are as old as free speech itself, Coll said there has been a global shift toward authoritarianism in the 21st century. He described this as a moment when governments arent even trying to pretend to value free speech anymore: Regimes like Turkey and Egypt are jailing more journalists than ever, and attacks on the credibility of independent journalism are on the rise.

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Building on this sentiment, Martinez said that global threats against free speech are a parallel epidemic. As the entire world responds to the coronavirus pandemic, regimes are getting away with rationalizations of national security that would have been challenged in the past, said Coll. President Trumps embrace of populism is a strategy that is echoing throughout the world, he said, citing Philippines President Rodrigo Dutertes efforts to kill press freedom as an example of the impact of the United States surrendering leadership of global human rights promotion.

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Speech isnt dying out everywhere, though: [E]ven as theres a closing of government protections of speech across the world, theres a huge structural opening of speech online, said Coll. The advent of online speech has offered new platforms for expression; Coll pointed out that while dissenters in Egypt may have been taken off the radio, dissidents like Mohamed Ali, now exiled in Spain, can write and share things that would have resulted in his immediate arrest in his home country.

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While online speech was once heralded as a boon to free speech and democracy, it has also created a pathway for viral misinformation. Martinez said that 10 years ago that structural opening was the cause of great optimism  but in more recent years weve been concerned about how these platforms can be weaponized. Now, legitimate concern about misinformation is being weaponized during the pandemic. As an example, Martinez pointed to countries like Vietnam using COVID-19 as an excuse for silencing dissent.

Martinez asked Coll, a former managing editor of the Washington Post, whether tech platforms should impose editorial judgment on online speechwhether, for instance, Mark Zuckerbergs role at Facebook may come to resemble the Sulzberger family helming the New York Times.

Facebook is attempting to preempt regulation by engineering its own system of content moderation and even establishing a free speech oversight panel, but Coll said we should be cautious about giving platforms authority to decide what constitutes permissible speech: Its always the case that policies that are adopted to silence outside voices silence a lot of other voices.

Despite the alarming trends, Coll has hope for the future of journalism. What we think of journalism today at [Columbias School of Journalism] is lashed to the scientific method, has a public function, and seeks to justify its protection in the Constitution, he said.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Lauren Lapkus is sharing exclusive new details about The Wrong Missy, which is now streaming on Netflix. *Adds to queue*

The 34-year-old actress recently sat down for an interview with PureWow, where she discussed her out-of-this-world character, Missy. The film The Wrong Missy is a comedy about a woman who goes on a blind date with a man named Tim (David Spade). Shortly after, she accompanies him on a tropical vacation, but Missy soon learns that he meant to invite someone else.

Although Lapkus confirmed the audition was a pretty simple process, she admitted that she wasnt sure how Missy would be perceived by viewers. I really thought this character was so crazy, and I almost couldnt imagine how it would come across on screen, she told PureWow. I was trying to figure out how far we could actually take her.

For example, Missy gets extremely long acrylic nails in the movie, which feature a hot pink fading into yellow design. Although the scene got cut, Lapkus still had to sport the unfortunate manicure for continuity purposes.

There was a scene where I supposed to mention my nails, she explained. Then that scene got cut, so I had those nails for the entire movie. I dont know if theyre even noticeable, but I had to walk around Hawaii with these crazy nails that are just so unlike my personality in real life.

Lapkus also revealed that she improvised a lot in The Wrong Missy. This meant loosely rehearsing the scenes with her co-star, Spade, before diving into filming. We had a few meetings where we would read through the scenes and sort of loosely rehearsed them, she said. So, we had an idea of everything that was going to happen in the film.

Lapkus went on to say that shes nothing like Missy, who has no problem butting into other peoples lives. So, the actress penciled in me-time at the end of every day to wind down from Missys over-the-top personality.

Story continues

You have to get some moments to be in your room and not talk to anyone for a little bit, she said. It takes a lot mentally, so I found myself needing time alone for sure.

The good news is The Wrong Missy was actually filmed in Hawaii (where the movie takes place), so relaxation wasnt difficult to achieve. I think those Happy Madison guys really have it figured out, she joked. They pick the best destinations for their movies.

If you need us, well be scrolling through pics of Hawaii

RELATED: Space Force, Dead to Me & More TV Shows & Movies Coming to Netflix in May 2020
LANSING, MI -- Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced Friday an executive order that creates a council tasked with creating the road map for how schools in Michigan will safely return to classes during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Im asking this group of state leaders, work together to develop a roadmap and framework for helping us decide when it is safe to return and what that return looks like. Theyll be incorporating all of the public health data we have and all that we have learned and continue to learn about this virus," Whitmer said at a press conference Friday.

The governor said the plan will provide different scenarios for what school openings could look like and will feature recommendations based on the public health reality in Michigan. It will also provide guidance to school leaders about what actions will need to be taken to ensure the safety of students and teachers once they return.

The council will be comprised of 21 to 25 people who will represent K-12 administrators and educators, health experts and community stakeholders. Whitmer said the state has about 1.5 million K-12 students attending 3,500 schools. With 100 days until she estimates the plan needs to be ready, Whitmer says it is of vital importance that the council begin to formulate a plan.

Its crucial that as we think about how this virus can impact our schools in the fall, our students and parents and educators, that theyve got input as to what this could look like and what it should look like, Whitmer said.

However, Whitmer stopped short of saying classes would return in person this fall. Asked if the task forces formation meant schools would definitely reopen in the fall, Whitmer said, Its my hope that we will have some form of in-person instruction then. But she said the facts and actions of the people of Michigan are going to dictate when schools can safely reopen, and she cant say it will happen on a date certain.

The council will also work with Opportunity Labs, an organization that will provide national expertise in pandemic response and school operations, according to Whitmer.

K-12 schools in Michigan have been closed since March 12 when Whitmer initially announced a three-week closure of schools. As the virus spread across the state, Whitmer announced on April 2 that all schools would be closed throughout the rest of the academic school year.

On Friday, state officials announced Michigan has seen 50,079 confirmed cases of the virus and 4,825 deaths associated with it.

The Return to Learning Advisory Council is being funded through the Council of Michigan Foundations, the C.S. Mott Foundation, and other philanthropic organizations according to a press release from the state.

Anyone interested can apply for the Return to Learn Advisory Council by going to the state website and click apply now under boards and commissions.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

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

Complete coverage at mlive.com/coronavirus

Friday, May 15: Latest developments on coronavirus in Michigan

Groups pick sides as legislature, Whitmer head to court over Michigan state of emergency

He has a criminal history and wants to be a Michigan lawmaker. Thursday, he carried a doll in a noose to the state Capitol.
by Sumon Corraya

Caritas Bangladesh is helping 60,000 Rohingya families (200,000 people). We provide for their basic needs like food, housing, medicine, education. Now we have added an awareness programme so that they can be safe from this virus, said a Caritas official. Refugees also get soap, masks, and a leaflet with information on how to avoid the infection.

Coxs Bazar (AsiaNews)  Bangladesh is home to more than 800,000 Rohingya who fled mostly Cox's Bazar in 2017 as a result of persecution in Myanmar. They joined others who arrived over previous years. Now the region has 1.15 million refugees divided in 34 camps.

These refugees now face another threat, the coronavirus. Bangladesh yesterday in fact confirmed the first coronavirus cases in a Rohingya refugee camp, in Cox's Bazar, in the countrys south-east.

Two [refugees] were found to be COVID-19 positive, said Mahbubur Rahman, a local medical doctor. Now the Rohingya community in Cox's Bazar is at enormous risk. If the virus spreads to the wider Rohingya population, it would be impossible to keep it under control. If this happen, The world would see another catastrophe.

The AsiaNews correspondent spoke to some Rohingya refugees. Many say they live in fear of being infected with COVID-19.

Although the Rohingya live in camps, at night some go outside and comeback before the sun rises, said Al-Amin, 25, a Rohingya refugee who works as a volunteer at an NGO-run pre-school. It is very risk for us. Anytime the coronavirus could spread here.

Several NGOs are working hard inside the camps to raise awareness among Rohingya about wearing masks, putting on gloves when going out, washing hands several times a day, and keeping social distance.

Caritas Bangladesh is one of the largest charities operating in Rohingya camps, with a staff of 250, helping some 60,000 families for a total of about 200,000 people. Pintu William Gomes, director of Caritas Bangladesh's Rohingya Response Project, spoke to AsiaNews the charitys work.

We provide for their basic needs like food, housing, medicine, education, he explained. Now we have added an awareness programme so that they can be safe from this virus. Refugees also get soap, masks, and a leaflet with information on how to avoid the infection.

For Pintu, the Rohingya are not much at risk. Since they arrived in Bangladesh, they have lived in a lockdown situation because they cannot officially leave the camps. Only a few Rohingya can leave the camps and if any outsider wants to enter, they would be stopped by guards.

If security ensures that no Rohingya leaves the camps and that no outsider enters, they will be protected from COVID-19. Plus, the NGOs are teaching them to keep social distance and follow safety measures to avoid contagion.

As a development worker, Pintu thinks that, unless a treatment is found, human civilisation will have to coexist with the virus.

If that is the case, we shall have to learn how to live safely whilst coping with this virus in everyday life because we can't keep the lockdown forever. The country needs to go back to work. Without production, the economy will not prosper.

So far, 283 people have died in Bangladesh as a result of the coronavirus. A total of 18,863 people have been infected and 3,361 have recovered.
Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's marriage troubles have been part of the rumor mill for the past days, and it may have a semblance of truth. According to someone within their circle, quarantine is driving them bonkers, and Kim Kardashian JUST feels the need to be alone.

According to Hollywood Life, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West's marriage is being tested by the quarantine. Suddenly unable to go out much, Kim Kardashian is feeling stressed.

Even though Kanye West recently took their four kids to give Kim a break and alone time for herself, it did not help improve things between them.

What it does though, is made Kim Kardashian realize that she craves her alone time. She did not see how much she wants her me time until Kanye West and her kids left for Wyoming for a while.

The insider told Hollywood Life that because of the quarantine, Kim Kardashian and Kanye West have been spending too much time together cooped up in their house that they're starting to get into each other's nerves. Between parenting and striving to engage in some self-care, the two had been "disagreeing more than usual," the source explained.

"They've been trying to take some space from each other, but it's been really difficult. The quarantine has actually been really hard spending so much time in close quarters with all of the kids," the source said.

The kids, 6 being the oldest and the youngest being just 11 months old, can be quite a handful for Kim.

Apart from her mommy duties, she also had to take care of all her other obligations, such as work and law studies!

"She's doing the best she can. It's been a little tough on her to find time to get everything done and take time for herself," the source shared. "Kim is dealing with a lot of stress between the kids and balancing her [law] studies, KKW Beauty, and SKIMS brands. - The quarantine has just added to the stress," the insider added.

As a result, she's craving from space and time away from it all, especially since she got a taste of it just recently.

While Kanye and the kids were away back in April, the short time she was alone made her realize how much she needed it. This quarantine, however, made it virtually impossible not to spend too much time together.

The two are yet to address their breakup rumors, though. Ever since the gossip world had become quite buy in saying the status of their marriage is rocky and complicated, Kim and Kanye seem to have acted deaf and blind to what is being said. In fact, Kim still continues to share family photos and advertise KKW Beauty, Fragrance, and Skims brands across her social media platforms.

West, on the other hand, had been quite quiet on his since March.

Some of the reports quickly spreading, however cited more than just feeling stressed and spending too much together as the real issues behind their marriage troubles. According to a source speaking with US Weekly, Kim is really starting to feel suffocated by a 'super-controlling" Kanye West. She is said to be feeling bothered that Kanye seems to be imposing his views on her.

READ MORE: Kim Kardashian Heartbreak: Kanye West HURTING Wife With THIS!
New Delhi: At a time when India is facing tensions along the border with China and Pakistan, New Delhi will receive a major boost as the first consignment of Rafale fighter aircraft would start getting inducted into the Indian Air Force at Ambala by July-end.

However, the final date for the arrival of the Rafales is yet to be decided and there is a possibility of change due to the coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown in India and France. The arrival of Rafales, 36 of which will arm two IAF squadrons, has already been delayed due to the outbreak of coronavirus COVID-19.

As per schedule, the delivery of aircraft was earlier supposed to have been done by May end but this got delayed due to the COVID-19 crisis.

"The first four aircraft including three twin-seater trainer aircraft and one single-seater fighter aircraft would start arriving by the end of July at the Ambala airbase. The trainers will have the tail numbers of the RB series in honour of the Air Force Chief RKS Bhadauria who played a pivotal role in finalising Indias largest-ever defence deal for 36 Rafale combat aircraft," defence sources told ANI here.

The first aircraft to be flown in is planned to be piloted by the Commanding Officer of the 17 Golden Arrows' squadron along with a French pilot, they said.

According to ANI, the aircraft on their way from France to India would be refuelled by a French Air Force tanker aircraft in the air before they make a stopover in the Middle East. From the Middle East to India, there would be one mid-air fuelling done by the Indian IL-78 tanker before they land in the country.

Meanwhile, the first batch of seven Indian pilots has also finished their training at a French airbase while the second batch would be going to France as soon as the lockdown measures are relaxed in both countries.

Post lockdown, India received the first consignment of equipment from France when a cargo plane landed in Delhi last week and more equipment would arrive in the near future.
A judge has reinstated all charges brought against an Amtrak engineer for his role in a high-speed derailment in Philadelphia that killed eight people.

The ruling Thursday by Superior Court Judge Victor Stabile overturns a lower court's decision last July to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges against Brandon Bostian.

His lawyer, Brian McMonagle, has argued that any mistakes Bostian made did not rise to the level of a crime.

Ruling on an appeal brought by the state attorney general's office, Stabile found the dismissal was based on fact-finding that should happen in a trial, a decision that McMonagle said would be appealed.

Stabile said the lower court's role was only to determine whether the state presented enough evidence to warrant a trial, and prosecutors met that burden, he ruled.

The derailment happened in May 2015, when the New York-bound train jumped the track as it rounded a curve at more than twice the 50 mph (80 kph) speed limit.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators concluded Bostian lost his bearings while distracted by radio chatter about a nearby train that had been struck by a rock.

They found no evidence he was impaired or was using a cellphone.

The case against Bostian has seen a series of reversals of prosecutors' or judges' decisions that the engineer should not be held criminally culpable for what happened that night.

Amtrak has taken responsibility for the crash, agreeing to pay USD 265 million to settle claims filed by victims and their families.

Since the accident, the railroad has installed positive train control technology on its Boston-to-Washington tracks that can automatically slow or stop a speeding train.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
In pausing the Justice Department's efforts to reverse the guilty plea of former Trump aide Michael Flynn, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan this week bolstered a reputation built over 36 years as one of its most probing skeptics on the federal bench.

Sullivan on Wednesday appointed distinguished former federal judge John Gleeson to oppose the department's dramatic request to abandon its two-year-long prosecution and exonerate the former national security adviser. Sullivan also asked Gleeson to examine whether Flynn may have committed perjury by admitting, under oath in December 2017, to lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts and later claiming innocence.

Sullivan's extraordinary action recalled to many his excavation of one the Justice Department's worst scandals a decade ago - the botching of a campaign finance investigation into the late senator Ted Stevens (R-Alaska).

Sullivan's work then won plaudits from former prosecutors and fierce critics of government tactics alike. After overturning Stevens's 2009 conviction of lying on disclosure forms, the judge named a special prosecutor who found that at least two federal prosecutors withheld evidence that would have acquitted the nation's then-longest-serving senator. A third prosecutor committed suicide before the report was completed.

"Judge Emmet Sullivan, to all those who seek, hallow, and do Justice. With the greatest respect and gratitude for your honorable service," one former U.S. prosecutor and white-collar defense appeals specialist wrote to Sullivan in April 2014.

The writer was Sidney Powell, Flynn's current defense attorney. She wrote the tribute when signing and sending Sullivan a copy of her book, "Licensed to Lie: Exposing Corruption in the Department of Justice," the judge recalled in court when she joined Flynn's case last June. The book alleged misconduct by prosecutors investigating the 2001 collapse of the Houston energy company Enron.

To lawyers who practice before him and judicial colleagues who work alongside him, Sullivan's intolerance for official misconduct is a defining characteristic, backed by his plain talk and comfort in the spotlight.

"Judge Sullivan usually gives prosecutors a hard time, not because they've necessarily done anything wrong, but because he holds the government to a very high standard," said Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor who has often appeared before Sullivan, in 2018.

That instinct has played out to Flynn's disadvantage at times, he said.

"And why?" Kirschner said. The defendant was a high-ranking government official who admitted to egregious conduct, he said.

Sullivan, 72, is no stranger to Washington controversies. The D.C.-born son of a police officer, he is a graduate of Howard University School of Law and the longest-serving active federal judge on the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

He was appointed in 1994 by President Bill Clinton after earlier being named by President Ronald Reagan to the D.C. Superior Court and President George H.W. Bush to the D.C. Court of Appeals.

After his start at Houston and Gardner, a storied Washington civil rights law firm that has produced a string of judges, Sullivan became a pillar of the city's criminal justice system. He has played a longtime role on panels overseeing and nominating D.C. judges and coordinating oversight of the District's sometimes troubled jail system.

He also has been named by former Supreme Court chief justice William H. Rehnquist and current U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts to oversight roles for the federal judiciary, including to its committee on criminal law from 1998 to 2005.

In 2016, Sullivan roiled the political waters when he criticized Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's use of a private email address while secretary of state, at one point during a public records lawsuit decrying the "drip, drip, drip" of revelations about her email use. "When does it stop?" he said.

In overseeing the Flynn case, Sullivan finds himself in one of the most tangled thickets yet. Flynn was the first and only former Trump administration aide to plead guilty and cooperate with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's Russia investigation. But after Mueller closed shop last year, the foreign policy adviser reversed course. Flynn began seeking to void his guilty plea to lying about his contacts with Russia's ambassador related to easing U.S. sanctions and about his undisclosed lobbying work for Turkey before President Donald Trump took office.

The Justice Department fought Flynn's attempts until April 30, when a review ordered by Attorney General William P. Barr said Flynn should never have been interviewed in the FBI investigation and therefore any of his lies were immaterial.

Sullivan has a national reputation as a leading judicial advocate for fuller disclosure of evidence by prosecutors to defendants. But so far he has balked at Flynn's argument that he was entrapped. In twice having Flynn admit his guilt in court under oath, Sullivan in 2018 said he did not recall ever taking "a plea of guilty from someone who maintained that he was not guilty, and I don't intend to start today." Sullivan also explicitly said to Flynn "that any false answers will get you in more trouble."

Powell has advocated fiercely for Flynn since taking the former three-star Army general as a client, and bluntly attacked Sullivan's outspokenness as evidence of his bias.

In a June 6 letter to Barr and his deputy, Powell said she was joining Flynn's defense and called for an independent Justice Department review of his case. Powell cited in part Sullivan's "tirade" at the hearing, in which the judge rejected a mutual recommendation of probation because of Flynn's then-substantial cooperation with Mueller's team.

In Powell's letter, later disclosed in a court filing, she said the judge "made clear he intends to send him to prison. Judge Sullivan was completely wrong on the facts of the case."

Others have also griped about the judge's bluntness. In the Stevens trial, Sullivan once said he was prepared to tell jurors that prosecutors had introduced evidence that they "knew was not true" - an instruction he later moderated before giving it to the jury.

"His rulings were all reasonable," U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth, a longtime colleague and a 1987 Reagan appointee, said afterward. "He does wear his heart on his sleeve sometimes, but so do I. . . . It's probably not the first quality that comes to mind when you think of a judge."

In a burglary trial in the mid-1980s early in his career, Sullivan walked off the bench in disgust after a police officer gave conflicting testimony, friend Roscoe C. Howard Jr. has recalled. Sullivan then declared a mistrial because he had prejudiced the case.

"He is passionate, but he understands what he thinks is the right thing, and eventually he does the right thing," said Howard, a former U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.

If the government and Flynn do not prevail, either before Sullivan or a higher court, the result could put the onus on Trump to pardon his former aide. In 2018, the president cheered Sullivan's scrutiny of Flynn's case at the time, when the judge ordered defense lawyers and prosecutors to turn over FBI records detailing agents' interview with Flynn in January 2017. Some Flynn allies, including the president, speculated that the judge was probing possible FBI misconduct.

"I think it's a great thing that the judge is looking into that situation," Trump told reporters at the time.

By last month, Trump reminded reporters of his power to forgive Flynn's crime, if not exonerate him of it.

"I'm not the judge," Trump said, "but I have a different type of power."

Legal experts say Sullivan's actions in recent weeks open the door for proceedings that could help the judge and public understand why Flynn has now insisted he is innocent after earlier admitting guilt under oath.

Former U.S. prosecutor Randall Eliason said that although it is not clear what Sullivan will ultimately do with Flynn's case, the judge loathes double talk, whether from police, prosecutors, defense counsel or the Justice Department.

"Judges," Eliason said, "don't like to be manipulated."

- - -

The Washington Post's Carol L. Leonnig and Matt Zapotosky contributed to this report.
CHARLES CITY -- A Waterloo man wont be getting a new trial for allegedly killing a Grundy Center man in 2017.

District Court Judge Gregg Rosenbladt dismissed Armando Adame IIIs request to throw out a verdict finding him guilty of first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of Michael Bruce Johns, 28.

Authorities said Adame, 29, killed Johns in rural Floyd County following an October 2017 drug deal in Charles City where the two received ibuprofen instead of meth. Johns remained missing for months before his body was found.

A Floyd County jury found Adame guilty in a February trial, and he is currently awaiting sentencing.

Adames attorneys had asked Rosenbladt for a new trial, arguing the jury shouldnt have heard the account of a woman who said she saw Adame and Johns arguing. She also testified Adame had pointed a sawed-off shotgun at her head and said she could settle a debt Johns had with him, according to court records.

In a ruling issued May 8, Rosenbladt dismissed the defense request.

The court also finds that the evidence is relevant to a legitimate disputed factual issue in the case. This whole case involves the defendants anger, mistrust, and impatience directed toward the victim, which was finally culminated in the murder, Rosenbladt wrote in his order.

The defense has also said the verdict was contrary to the weight of the evidence, but the judge noted evidence included Adame had told an acquaintance he shot Johns before Johns remains were discovered as well as an eyewitness who was at the scene of the shooting. Cell phone records showing locations were also part of the evidence.

Adame is currently serving time for a federal firearms violation for possessing the shotgun that killed Johns. He is also facing life without parole for the murder charge. Sentencing has been scheduled for June.

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Market Analysis

Global Covid-19 Analysis on Virgin Coconut Oil Market that estimates great surge for this market with 9.8% CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) during the forecast period between 2017 and 2024. The factors driving the global virgin coconut oil market include an aging population, rising prevalence of various ailments, among the consumers both in the developed and developing economies, rising trend of shifting towards healthy and nutritional food consumption, and high demand from consumers with higher health consciousness. The food industry is also demanding virgin coconut oil to highlight health food being processed by various brands.

Key Players Strategy

The key players in the Global Covid-19 Analysis on Virgin Coconut Oil Market include Healthy Traditions (USA), Greenville Agro Corporation (Philippines), Hain Celestial (USA), Barlean's (USA), NMK Holdings (Pvt) Ltd. (Sri Lanka), Nutiva, Inc. (USA) and SUN BIONATURAL (INDIA) PRIVATE LTD. (India).

Industry Segment

Global Covid-19 Analysis on Virgin Coconut Oil Market has been segmented based on application, distribution channel, type, and lastly region. The application-based segmentation segments this market into cooking, cosmetics, healthcare, and others. Increasing demand for food products is driving the growth of this market. Based on the distribution channel, the market has been segmented into store-based and non-store based. Store-based distribution channels have been sub-segmented into hypermarkets and supermarkets that control the major share of this market due to increasing number of store-based markets and more varieties of products. By types, the market has been segmented into organic, and inorganic. Organic segment holds the major share in the market, and it is increasing the demand of the virgin coconut oils because organic food products are healthier than normal food products.

The regional segmentation of the global virgin coconut oil market segments the market into continent-based regional markets namely Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and the rest of the world (RoW). The Asia Pacific holds the largest market share in the virgin coconut oil market globally, and the report estimates that the Asia Pacific will retain its crown during the forecast period. This region is the largest producer and exporter of virgin coconut oil to other geographical regions. About 60% - 70% of value addition in the coconut oil market has been estimated to happen in the Philippines which can help the market growth over the forecast period. In this region, the key country-specific markets are China, India, Japan, and Thailand, followed by the rest of Asia Pacific.

Access Full Report Details and Order this Premium Report @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/virgin-coconut-oil-market-4130

Regional Analysis

North America is the second biggest regional market. Many key manufacturers of virgin coconut oil have operations in North America. That aids the market growth. The most important country-specific markets in this region are the United States of America (USA), Canada, and Mexico. Europe is also an important market due to the high density of population. Densely populated area means more requirement for food, not just for cooking but also for a catering business. Therefore, the demand for virgin coconut oil is constantly high in Europe. The significant country-specific markets in Europe are France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom (UK), followed by the rest of Europe. RoW segment covers Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, South Africa, and others.

Read more details at: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/infographics

NOTE: Our Team of Researchers is Studying Covid19 and its Impact on Various Industry Verticals and wherever required we will be considering Covid19 Footprints for Better Analysis of Market and Industries. Cordially get in Touch for More Details.
A 108-year-old woman from New Jersey has recovered from coronavirus, and could be the country's oldest Covid-19 survivor.

During her 108-years, Sylvia Goldsholl has lived through both the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, and now the Covid-19 pandemic, over 100 years apart.

Goldsholl is not quite the oldest reported person to have recovered from the coronavirus. A 113-year-old woman in Spain, also originally from the U.S., was reported to have recovered on Tuesday.

'I survived everything because I was determined to survive,' Goldsholl said in an interview conducted over video chat with News 12 New Jersey last week.

Goldsholl, who has recovered fully from Covid-19 having battled with it for a couple of weeks, has lived in a nursing home in Allendale, New Jersey since 2010.

She was moved to an isolation wing at the care home when she was diagnosed.

Sylvia Goldsholl celebrates her 108th birthday shortly before she was diagnosed with the coronavirus. She has since made a full recovery

New Jersey's governor Phil Murphy announced the news of Goldsholl's recovery in a press conference on Thursday.

Later, he tweeted: 'Sylvia Goldscholl is 108 years old. Last month, she tested positive for COVID19 and has beaten it.

'A tremendous life, a tremendous spirit, and a tremendous show of strength. So, to you, Sylvia, we send you all our best for many more years to come,' he wrote.

Goldscholl was born on December 29, 1911. When she was just seven years old, the Spanish Flu took hold of the globe and saw an estimated 50 million people succumb to the virus.

Today, over 300,000 people have now died of Covid-19, which is particularly harmful to anyone over the age of 70 making her recovery even more remarkable.

Goldscholl originally lived in the Bronx in New York, living in the apartment in which she grew up for most of her life, before she moved to New Jersey 20 years ago.

News 12 reported that she didn't particularly want to talk about the coronavirus when she was interviewed, but was willing to reminisce about her family.

'The oldest of four children and I was the smartest one from the bunch,' she said. 'I am a survivor. I've got to come out on the top of every list.'

'They knew that I was a wonder,' she said of her family to NorthJersey.com. 'I met their expectations. I represented them in a very well way.'

When interviewed by News 12 New Jersey, she said that she was a 'survivor', which is particularly true considering she has now survived through both the Covid-19 and Spanish flu pandemics

Goldsholl never married or had kids of her own, but her niece, Nancy Chazen, told the news website that Goldsholl loves her family, and said that she planned to visit her aunt once the pandemic is over.

'She always wanted to have family parties,' Chazen said. 'She thought it was important to stay in touch with the family.'

Chazen also said that Goldsholl had a 'reputation for being an advocate' saying that she used to write letters to government officials about issues she cared about.

One issue in particular Goldholl emphasized was the importance of education, saying: 'My mom was educated in Russia. She wanted very much to be knowledgeable.

'My father came from a very high-class background. I made the best of both. I'm glad I'm where I am,' the 108-year-old added.

Goldsholl is clearly very loved at the care home. When she celebrated her 108th birthday in December, the care home leaders released a statement saying she had become an older sister to many of her neighbors since she had arrived, and enjoyed spending time with the other residents.

In a post on its Facebook page, staff at the care home wrote: 'Our own, Sylvia Goldsholl has become a media darling, grabbing headlines on local TV and print.

'Her story of survival at 108 years of age made the front page of today's Record. Not a shy one, Sylvia is a delight for interviewers. During such tough times Sylvia, is a model of positive perseverance. Congratulations Sylvia!'

At the time, News 12 reported that Goldsholl could be the oldest person anywhere to have survived the coronavirus, however, a 113-year-old woman in Spain, also originally from the U.S., has since been reported to have recovered on Tuesday.

Maria Branyas, 113, is likely to be the world's oldest person to have survived the coronavirus after catching it in April and later testing negative

Maria Branyas, a mother-of-three, survived COVID-19 whilst in the Santa Maria del Tura care home where she lives in the city of Olot, eastern Spain.

Branyas was originally born in San Fransisco in the United States on March 4, 1907, before she moved with her family to Spain in 1915.

She then lived in the Spanish cities of Barcelona, Banyoles, Girona, Calonge i Sant Antoni and Palol de Revardit (all of them in the Catalonia region), and has been a resident in the care home for two decades.

Like Goldsholl, Branyas lived through the Spanish flu pandemic that swept the world in 1918, but also was in Europe during World War I (1914 - 1918) and World War II (1939 - 1945), as well as the Spanish civil war between 1936 and 1939.
The Mandate Trade Union today hosted 11 demonstrations outside all Debenhams stores across Ireland - including at the outlet in Whitewater Shopping Centre in Newbridge.

All participants adhered to social distancing guidelines.

The union said the protests aimed to highlight the injustice faced by more than 1,000 workers who have been told their jobs are gone and that the company does not have sufficient assets to fund their agreed redundancy package.

Debenhams workers in Ireland lost their jobs on the 9th April after management informed staff by email that their stores in Ireland are not expected to reopen and the company was filing for liquidation.

The workers are calling for the parent company, which is still trading online in Ireland and across the UK, to pay the collectively agreed union negotiated redundancy package to all Debenhams workers.

Mandate Trade Union General Secretary John Douglas said:

What has happened to these Debenhams workers is an absolute disgrace. Some of these workers have more than 40 years of service and have literally been discarded by their employer as if they meant nothing to the company. These workers, like all workers, deserve respect, dignity and to have their collective agreement with the company adhered to.

Mr Douglas explained that the workers are currently balloting for industrial action.

Debenhams Ireland acted cynically and opportunistically when they decided to liquidate the company during a public holiday weekend in the middle of a pandemic. Debenhams knew full well it would be difficult for their employees to resist and organise themselves effectively. However, those brave workers have done a tremendous job in making the public aware of their struggle for justice which has garnered incredible national and international support.

He added, We are currently balloting for industrial action and should our members decide to pursue that approach, Mandate will ensure that those 11 Debenhams locations do not go back to business as normal when this pandemic ends. Subsequently, any locations which reopen for business will be subject to picketed protests, whether they are operated by Debenhams or another company.

Mr Douglas has also called on the Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection, Regina Doherty, to intervene in the liquidation process in an effort to save jobs if possible.

He added: Given that the States insolvency fund will be utilized by the liquidation of Debenhams, costing the Irish taxpayer millions in statutory redundancy payments for 1,000 workers, we have asked the Minister to use Ministerial powers under Section 15, of The Protection of Employment Act 1977 which provides that For the purpose of seeking solutions to the problems caused by the proposed redundancies the employer concerned, shall, at the Ministers request, enter into consultations with[her] or an authorised officer.
The visa-free travel issue is not connected with the epidemic developments.

The European Commission has no intentions to revise the conditions of visa-free travel with Ukraine neither in connection with the coronavirus crisis nor for any other reasons.

In an interview with the European Pravda online news outlet, Deputy Director-General of the Directorate-General for Neighborhood and Enlargement Negotiations (DG NEAR) Katarina Mathernova said she had never heard even discussions about this in Brussels. According to the official, the visa-free travel issue is not connected with the epidemic.

The official also said she was also not aware of the threat of visa liberalization for Ukraine for any other reasons.

Read alsoUkraine reveals priority destinations for resuming post-quarantine air traffic

In addition, Mathernova said he could not predict when Ukrainians would be able to travel to the EU again because there is no clarity about the opening of borders even inside the Schengen zone. According to her, the EU created "green lines" for goods, but there are many restrictions in place for passenger traffic.

Earlier, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Ukrainians were unlikely to have issues crossing the border with the European countries after the end of the coronavirus pandemic.
A Long March-4C rocket lifts off from the southwestern Xichang launch center carrying the Queqiao ("Magpie Bridge") satellite in Xichang, China's southwestern Sichuan Province on May 21, 2018. (-/AFP/Getty Images)

Providing Funds or Know-How to Beijings Space Programs Should be Illegal: Report

Congress should do more to block funds and know-how from finding their way into Chinese space programs, according to a report written for a U.S. government commission.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is executing a long-term strategy to exploit U.S. technology, talent, and capital to build up its military space and counterspace programs and advance its strategic interests at the expense of the United States, according to the report for the bipartisan U.S.China Economic and Security Review Commission.

The report recommends several actions to Congress to blunt Chinas growing ambitions in space.

The current laws to protect U.S. technology and prevent U.S. capital from funding Chinas military space programs and activities appear to be inadequate, according to the report, which was published by the Commission on May 11.

Congress should consider passing new laws or enhancing existing laws in order to make it illegal for U.S. government departments and agencies, national labs, universities, companies, fund managers, and individual investors to support Chinas space program and activities, which are inherently military (not civil) in nature.

Virtually all Chinese space programs are dual military-civilian use and the majority are handled by the Chinese military, according to the report, which cites Chinese internal documents as well as U.S. unclassified intelligence reports.

A Long March 5B rocket lifts off from the Wenchang launch site on Chinas southern Hainan island on May 5, 2020. (AFP/Getty Images)

Chinas approach to modernizing its space presence includes an emphasis on military-civil fusion (MCF) and the development of dual-use technology that buoys both military and economic growth. Should Chinas capabilities surpass those of the United States, the erosion of the U.S. militarys ability to contest the PLA in a potential future conflict will be at risk, the report states.

According to Chinese government sources, Chinas national space program is largely managed by the PLA, and Chinese space assets are probably assigned as either military or dual-use (military-civil) assets to be mobilized in the event of a crisis or war.

China has continued to push forward with its space programs in recent years and is now able to boost its coffers by offering low-cost launch services to international customers.

In 2018 alone, China successfully launched 38 space launch vehicles, putting approximately 100 satellites in orbit, according to the report. China expects to carry out more than 40 launches in 2020.

Space is increasingly viewed as a warfighting domain by many nations, including the United States. Satellites are a vital component of the network of communications and sensors that make up a modern warfighting machine.

With space now recognized as the fifth warfighting domain, alongside cyber, air, sea, and land, the United States recently christened its own Space Force.

The Chinese military also appears to be developing counter-space capabilities.

The PLA also has deployed or is developing jamming and cyberspace capabilities, directed energy weapons, on-orbit capabilities, and ground-based ASAT missiles that can deny an adversary unimpeded use of its own satellite systems, the report states.

Testing of kinetic kill vehicles (KKVs), high-powered lasers, co-orbital satellites, electronic jamming, andpossiblycyberattacks have been reported. The opacity surrounding Chinas space programs suggests other clandestine counter-space weapons programs may also exist.

The report calls for an annual Pentagon unclassified report on Chinese military space developments and for the government to keep track of how many doctoral graduates in space-related fields return to China after graduation.

In addition to preventing U.S. research and finance from boosting Chinas space program, the report also recommends steps to boost U.S. space programsby ensuring NASA and aerospace university programs have enough money to nourish homegrown talent.

The report also recommends taking the fight for space superiority to the silver screen.

CCP-controlled entities and front organizations have prioritized the insertion of Beijings space-related propaganda themes into Hollywood blockbusters, the report states. To counter what it describes as authoritarian propaganda and censorship in Hollywood, the report recommends that movies should carry warnings if their content has been coproduced, funded, altered, or otherwise approved by CCP-affiliated entities and Chinas state censors.
T harsus, the British robotics company whose tech underpins the likes of Ocado and Rolls Royce, is working on social distancing tech that could help the UK get back to work.

Bump is a wearable device that uses radio frequency tech to scan for other devices in close proximity in order to alert the wearer when they are getting too close to another employee. This will help people maintain the two-metre social distancing rules.

Employers would also gain insight into how people move throughout the workplace which would be handy if they need to adapt social distancing measures. The technology conforms with all Government HSE policies, GDPR and complements other health and safety strategies.

Brian Palmer, Tharsus CEO, told PA that social distancing at work was vital but difficult for staff and employers.

This is a simple, intuitive and friendly system specifically designed to get people working again by changing the behaviour of individuals and businesses - and in doing so help regenerate our economy," said Palmer.

Tharsus worked with New Zealand-based company Virscient, a specialist in wireless connectivity and IoT to develop the wearable. At the moment, the Bump technology is being trialled at construction sites, manufacturing and distribution centres, and warehouses, though Tharsus says it could be used in offices too. The data the system collates is limited only to the frequency of interactions between devices and is fully encrypted too.

PA

Speaking about the data collection aspect of the device, CTO Dave Swann said employees would need to feel safe using the devices. We all agreed in the early stages of Bumps development that any product needed to help people feel safe. Today, this is as much about protecting privacy as it is helping people keep their distance. We designed Bump with this in mind and to ensure wearers dont need to sacrifice data privacy.

All data is available to an individual business and their team members alike. Everyone knows when the data is collected, why its being collected, and by whom, said Swann.

Following trials, Tharsus hopes to release the Bump devices for commercial sale later in June.

Tharsus isnt the only company working on safety wearables. US-based hardware company Estimote has created a safety wearable that uses bluetooth to scan for other devices and monitor how close they are. If someone later tests positive for Covid-19, the idea is that staff could be alerted straight away if they have come into contact with someone with the virus.

Canadian-based company Proxxi has also created its own Covid wearable called Halo, a band for industrial workforces which buzzes if the wearer comes within two meters of another band.

The need to maintain social distancing is critical to reducing transmission of Covid-19, said Proxxis CEO Campbell MacDonald.
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Vilnius, Lithuania, May 15, 2020  Belarusian authorities should immediately release the journalists detained over their coverage of the countrys political opposition, and let the press work freely, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On May 7, authorities in the eastern city of Mahilou arrested Mikhail Arshynski, a correspondent for the Poland-registered satellite broadcaster Belsat, according to a report by the Belarusian Association of Journalists, a local trade and advocacy group and Barys Haretski, the deputy head of the group, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

The next day, authorities in Mahilou arrested Alyaksandr Burakou, a freelance correspondent for German broadcaster Deutche Welle, and authorities in Hlybokaye, in western Belarus, arrested Zmitser Lupach, a Belsat correspondent, according to that report and Haretski.

On May 9, Mahilou authorities arrested Ales Asiptsou, a correspondent for the independent news agency BelaPan, according to that report.

On May 11 and 12, courts in Mahilou and Hlybokaye charged the four journalists with participating in an unauthorized demonstration over their coverage of blogger and opposition presidential candidate Siarhei Tsikhanouski, and sentenced each journalist to 10 days of administrative detention, according to a statement by the journalists association.

Today, Mahilou authorities arrested Alyaksandr Burakou, a freelance reporter for the human rights organization Viasna, who has the same name as the Deutsche Welle correspondent, also for allegedly participating in an unauthorized demonstration by Tsikhanouski, Haretski said, adding that he will likely be taken to court on May 18.

All the detained journalists had covered Tsikhanouskis campaign events, according to that report and Haretski. Tsikhanouski, a blogger turned opposition politician, traveled the country over the last month, filming videos about political issues that he uploaded to his YouTube channel, where he has more than 180,000 subscribers.

Throwing journalists behind bars for covering an opposition candidates presidential campaign shows how scared Belarusian authorities are of any challenge to their rule, said CPJs Europe and Central Asia program coordinator Gulnoza Said, in New York. Belarusian authorities should release the journalists, stop putting their lives in danger by jailing them amid the spread of coronavirus in the country, and allow them to report on the presidential campaign freely and safely.

On May 11, a court Mahilou ordered Asiptsou to serve 10 days in jail, and the next day ordered Arshynski and Deutche Welles Burakou to serve the same sentence, according to the journalists association report.

A court in Hlybokaye sentenced Lupach to 10 days in jail on May 11, but he was taken from the courtroom to a hospital for treatment for a heart condition, according to that report, which said that he will begin his jail term on May 18.

Haretski told CPJ, the journalists were not participating in the rallies but were doing their job and reporting.

Haretski said the arrests began after Tsikhanouski announced on May 6 he would run for president in the countrys August elections. That day, a court sentenced him to 15 days in jail for illegally holding mass events, according to news reports.

CPJ emailed the press office of the Belarusian Ministry of the Interior for comment, but did not receive any response. CPJ called the ministry, but the person who answered refused to comment.

Editors note: The spelling of the name of human rights organization Viasna has been corrected in the sixth paragraph.
JALALABAD, March 26,2017 (Xinhua) -- Drug smugglers stand handcuffed after being captured during an operation in Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, March 26,2017. Afghan security force members have seized 219 kg drugs and detained eight suspected smugg Image Source: IANS News

New Delhi, May 15 : In a major success in the Vijaywada espionage case, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Friday said it had arrested a key conspirator Mohammed Haroon Haji Abdul Rehman Lakdawala on charge of leaking sensitive information of the Indian Navy to Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence.

An NIA spokesperson said that Lakdawala, a resident of Mumbai, was held from the metropolis on Friday for criminal conspiracy, and under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Official Secrets Act.

The official said that digital devices and incriminating documents were seized from his residence as well.

The official said that Lakdawala had visited Karachi on many occasions to meet his handlers under the guise of "conducting cross-border trade".

"During these visits, he came in contact with two Pakistani spies, namely Akbar aka Ali and Rizwan, who directed him to deposit money into the bank accounts of Navy personnel at regular intervals," he said, adding that the same was done through different means.

The Vijaywada espionage case relates to an international racket involving individuals based in Pakistan and at different locations in India. On December 30 last year, the NIA has taken over the espionage case, ten days after seven Indian Navy personnel and an alleged hawala operator were arrested on charge of leaking sensitive information to the Pakistan intelligence agency.

The police had said that all the arrested officials were in touch with Pakistani women who had befriended them on Facebook. It is alleged that officials were paid through a hawala operator for providing information. The chats between these sailors, who were being used by Pakistanis, were sexually explicit.

The NIA claimed that Pakistan-based spies recruited agents in India for collecting sensitive and classified information regarding locations or movements of Indian naval ships and submarines, and other defence establishments.

According to NIA officials, the women, who honeytrapped the Navy personnel posing as their friends on Facebook, were set up by the Pakistani intelligence operatives. The sailors were later blackmailed and forced to part with sensitive information.

The official said that a probe revealed that a few navy personnel came in contact with Pakistani nationals through various social media platforms such as Facebook, Whatsapp etc, and were involved in sharing classified information in lieu of monetary gains.

"The money was deposited into the bank accounts of these Navy personnel through Indian associates having business interests in Pakistan," he said.

The NIA has so far arrested 14 people including 11 Navy personnel and one Pakistan- born Indian national Shaista Qaiser.
The global Facebook-backed digital currency project Libra has a new supporter: Singapore state investor Temasek Holdings.

Temasek was one of three organizations named Thursday as the latest members to join the initiative by the Libra Association, an independent group based in Switzerland set up to manage the digital currency project. Cryptocurrency investor Paradigm and private equity firm Slow Ventures were the other two new members.

Facebook introduced its vision for libra last year as an alternative global digital payment system where a single token would be backed by multiple fiat currencies. That was promptly criticized by regulators who worried if the project went mainstream, it would drastically alter or undermine their roles and disrupt the financial system, giving Facebook, a company with a history of privacy scandals, control over their citizens' resources.
Usually, major changes to election operations come after months or years of careful planning, with a roll out meant to minimize hiccups and maximize voter education. In New York, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, local boards of elections have been given a matter of weeks to figure out how to complete that Herculean task before the June 23 primaries, after an executive order from Gov. Andrew Cuomo expanded absentee voting to minimize COVID-19 transmission. Local election officials will have to overcome many hurdles, often unprecedented ones, with limited resources.

Other states are also figuring out on the fly how to hold safe and fair elections amid the pandemic, including by using expanded mail-in voting. But New York, thanks to the existing restrictions on who could vote by absentee ballot, has further to go than many others. According to the Brennan Center, absentee ballots accounted for only 4% of total voter turnout on Election Day in 2018. Thats among the lowest proportions nationally. In Florida, which allows anyone to vote by mail, 31% of turnout came through mail ballots. California, which also permits absentee voting for any reason, had an even higher rate of 66%. The states that do a lot of mail voting have had years and years and years to gear up for, and to knock the kinks out of their various systems, Myrna Perez, director of the Brennan Center's Voting Rights and Elections Program, said.

The first task is sending the applications to all eligible voters, as required by Cuomos executive order. For example, the New York City Board of Elections is mailing out 3.6 million applications to voters across the five boroughs. Michael Ryan, executive director of the city Board of Elections, said at a May commissioners meeting that the agency used an existing print vendor contract to mail all those applications out. Ryan added that a national envelope shortage may hinder mail-voting efforts, although there appear to be no news reports of such a national shortage and election officials elsewhere in New York state that City & State spoke with did not raise any concerns about the supply of envelopes. Reports have emerged from other states about some boards of elections running low on absentee voting supplies, including envelopes, locally.

Other boards of elections in the state took similar action, since they do not have the capacity to send that volume of mail on their own. An executive order from Cuomo gave local boards of elections the ability to cut through the traditional red tape around contracting and procurement to make the process go faster. Every county in the state has its own board of elections that run its elections, from president to a town council. They all have a bipartisan leadership structure, with one Democratic and one Republican commissioner. The exception is New York City, which has one Board of Elections for all five boroughs, but 10 commissioners with one Democrat and one Republican per borough.

There are other challenges when it comes to mailing the applications and then the absentee ballots. Nassau County Democratic Elections Commissioner James Scheuerman, who expects his county to send about 600,000 applications, said that covering the cost of return postage as required by the governor is expensive. Nassau County got $1.9 million in the federal COVID funds grant, and that is a bulk of that, Scheuerman said. I believe somewhere between $1 million and $1.4 (million) is going to go just for postage. A recent executive order has mandated that all absentee ballots also include prepaid return postage.

The boards, with a staff that is likely not large enough to handle the workload, then must process what is expected to be a much higher volume of applications and mail unprecedented numbers of ballots. St. Lawrence County Republican Elections Commissioner Thomas Nichols said that his office has a staff of six full-time employees. The most absentee ballots he recalls they had ever received was 3,200 during a general election. This year, if 30% of voters request a ballot, that number could skyrocket to between 16,000 and 19,000. Im not complaining, Im saying thats a monumental challenge for a small staff and a lot of rural counties, Nichols said. He said that his agency received about $126,000 in federal funds, which is expected to cover only about half of the cost of the primaries alone.

Kristen Zebrowski Stavisky, the Democratic commissioner of the Rockland County Board of Elections, said her staff of 20 will likely need additional help, whether those are new hires or borrowing people from other agencies in the county. She said that going through a vendor to mail the applications is helpful, but their return will likely cause a bottleneck at the board that could ultimately affect other board functions. Im not going to have people working on registrations when we have to get the absentees in such a quick time period, Zebrowski Stavisky said. That doesnt mean we stop registrations, but that might mean that gets backlogged and were dealing after the primary with catching up.

Zebrowski Stavisky said Rockland has received $398,000 in federal funding, but said its not enough. Postage for mailing the applications alone will cost $90,000 and given thats just the first step, she said, the pot is shrinking quickly.

To make matters more complicated, the court-ordered return of the Democratic presidential primary means that local boards of elections are essentially running two parallel but separate elections at the same time. In many cases, Democratic voters will receive two different ballots, one for the presidential primary that was originally scheduled for April 28 and one for any congressional, state or local races in their district. In the case of the eight counties that are entirely or partly in the 27th Congressional District in Western New York, boards of elections may have as many as three elections to run, thanks to the special election for that seat being held on June 23 as well.

At poll sites, this can mean separate check-in tables and the need for more machines to process the different ballots. Scheuerman suggested this will be the case in Nassau. As it stands now, its two ballots, which is double everything, which means polls sites get tighter because we have to put extra inspectors in and it leads to confusion, he said.

The state Board of Elections originally decided to cancel the Democratic presidential primary since every candidate other than Joe Biden dropped out or suspended their campaign. After a lawsuit, a judge overruled the decision and reinstated the election. The state appealed the decision, meaning that theres still a chance that the race will get canceled again. Scheurman, Zebrowski Stavisky and Nichols alike said that strictly from a logistical standpoint, calling off the presidential primary again would lift a huge burden off their shoulders.

Voters and candidates hoping for speedy results will likely have longer waits than usual. Secretary to the governor Melissa DeRosa suggested at a May 6 press conference that results in many cases may not be finalized on election night due to large numbers of absentee ballots still trickling in days after the polls close. Local officials agreed, although preliminary election night returns from in-person voting will still be released as usual. Cuomo thus far has not made any changes to how absentee ballots are processed, meaning that boards of elections cannot even open them until over a week after the election because they must first verify who voted in person and share that data across the state to prevent double voting by absentee.

In past years, absentee ballots represented a small sliver of votes cast that were unlikely to sway any but the closest elections. Generally, they follow the poll site votes  if a candidate receives 60% of the vote on election, chances are they will receive about 60% of the paper ballots counted later. But Zebrowski Stavisky said the calculations may be different this year because paper ballots are expected to represent a much higher percentage of the overall turnout. If 30% of the vote isnt available on election night, it would be hard to call the race unless the lead is insurmountably great.

When asked whether an executive order allowing boards of elections to open absentee ballots sooner would be helpful, Nichols suggested such an action would raise constitutional concerns because it might allow some people to vote twice. You cant count absentees until you know where that person has voted, Nichols said. Thats why absentee ballots are held so long in abeyance after the election  we have to make sure that person didnt vote in person somewhere in the state. Zebrowski Stavisky suggested that eventually, the state could figure out how to conduct secure elections while counting absentee ballots sooner if New York eventually made mail-in voting permanently more accessible, but not within the current timeframe  especially given all the other obstacles the pandemic has created.

Counting a large volume of absentee ballots when the time arrives to open them is no small undertaking either. The process can be slow going and existing machines that boards of elections may have cant handle large volumes quickly. Scheuerman said the Nassau Board of Elections recently purchased a new machine that can count 50,000 to 80,000 absentee ballots a day, a significant increase over the current capabilities. He said it would also make workers safer by limiting their exposure to outside ballots.

On top of the logistics of handling the expanded absentee voting, election officials also have poll sites to worry about as well. Boards are purchasing hand sanitizer, plexiglass dividers and personal protective equipment to protect poll workers. Having enough election inspectors at poll sites is another concern. They tend to be older and thus more vulnerable to COVID-19. Officials expect fewer will want to work to protect themselves, potentially leaving polling places understaffed. This could lead to the consolidation of some sites to accommodate fewer workers.

Additionally, policing in-person voting and ensuring that voters are social distancing while standing in line is another concern. DeRosa said that the state is considering dispatching the National Guard to counties that feel they may need extra help ensuring poll site safety, although officials that City & State spoke with said they have not discussed this possibility with the state.

Zebrowski Stavisky, who is also second vice president of the New York State Election Commissioners Association, said she has been in regular contact with the state Board of Elections and fellow commissioners across the state. She said that while it would be impossible for officials throughout the state to be prepared for the upcoming election, she felt everyone she works with is up to task.

But that doesnt take away the fact that, ideally, boards of elections would have at least a year to prepare themselves and educate voters about the change. That this is a presidential year when turnout is highest and boards are under the most stress under normal circumstances does not help either. Were really doing what is essentially close to a vote by mail for the first time, Zebrowski Stavisky said. I would say in my professional career, this is the most daunting challenge.
Ever since I was a child, Ive felt like greatness was in store for me, says Catherine, played by Elle Fanning, in the new Hulu series The Great. Like God himself had spat me forth to land on this earth and in some way transform it. That I was here for a reason, a purpose.

Why did he make you a woman then? asks her maid. For comedy, I guess, Catherine wryly replies.

Set in 18th-century Russia, The Great, which premieres on Hulu on May 15, tells the story of a young Catherine the Great as she enters a disastrous marriage to Emperor Peter III of Russia and eventually succeeds in overthrowing him in a coup. Billed as an occasionally true story, the series takes liberties with the the truth in favor of a darkly humorous, farcical approach; viewers are privy to the sex lives, secrets and debauchery of Catherine, Peter and their inner circle in the Russian court. It wont surprise viewers to learn that series creator Tony McNamara was the co-writer of The Favourite, another historical comedy with a sardonic bent, for which Olivia Colman won an Oscar, for her turn as Queen Anne of England.

The Great is the second TV series about the famed Russian Empress in less than a year; HBOs miniseries starring Helen Mirren took a decidedly more traditional, dramatic approach to adapting Catherines story. But aspects of the new series do nod to real moments in Catherines life, as it tracks her transformation from an optimistic ingenue to a formidable leader. Heres a look at how the series reflects the true story behind Catherines real-life reign.

Catherine the Great led a successful coup against her husband

Portrait of Catherine II of Russia by an anonymous painter | Corbis via Getty Images

Born Princess Sophia Augusta Frederica on May 2, 1729 in Stettin, Prussia (now modern-day northwestern Poland), Catherine married heir to the Russian throne Charles Peter Ulrich in Saint Petersburg, Russia, at the age of 16. To prepare for her new royal life in Russia, she converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, changed her name to Yekaterina Alekseyevna and learned to speak Russian. At the time, Russia was ruled by Peters aunt Elizabeth, and Peter was heir to the throne. The Great plays creatively with the facts here; when Fannings Catherine arrives at the Russian court, Peter is already emperor, a role in which is portrayed as completely inept.

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The couples arranged marriage was instantly an unhappy one, as depicted in The Great, and both had affairs with other lovers. One of the reasons historians know so much about Catherines experiences and feelings during her life is because of the extensive and detailed memoirs she left behind. Her writing described Peter variously as a drunkard, good-for-nothing and an idiot. The Great relies on this interpretation of Peter, played by Nicholas Hoult (also of The Favourite), who is openly obnoxious about having an affair with his best friends wife, forces his advisers to do ridiculous tasks and orders murders on impulse. With the help of her maid and confidante, Catherine starts plotting to overthrow Peter, an objective which quickly emerges as the series central storyline.

Nicholas Hoult and Elle Fanning in 'The Great' | Hulu

In reality, the plot was not set in motion until 1762, when the couple had been married for 18 years. In January of that year, Peter became Emperor after the death of the Empress Elizabeth. A series of military missteps badly damaged his reputation throughout Europe, as well as cementing his unpopularity at home, and the alliances that Catherine had worked to build were betrayed by Peters decisions. Rumors also started to circulate that Peter was planning to get rid of Catherine, and momentum quickly gathered to arrange a coup detat that would force him to abdicate and install her as ruler. A mere six months into Peters reign, in June 1762, Catherine launched her coup with the support of public opinion, the aristocratic class and the military, and was proclaimed Empress by the Russian Church. The same day, Peter was forced to abdicate; eight days later, he was assassinated. Mystery remains as to how he died, although its likely to have been at the hand of one of Catherines supporters.

Catherine wasnt the first female ruler to have claimed the throne of Russia through a coup; Peters aunt Elizabeth had done the same in 1741. But Catherine would go on to rule for 34 years, making her Russias longest-serving female ruler, and she would preside over significant development and modernization of Russia. Much like the reigns of Elizabeth I and Queen Victoria of England, the end of Catherines reign saw her country strengthened and recognized as one of the worlds great powers.

She cared about womens education

Hulu

Women are for seeding, not reading, Peter tells Catherine in The Great. This statement accurately alludes to overarching sentiments of the time: Catherine was expected to provide a male heir for Peter, rather than pursue her own ambitions. In The Great, Fannings Catherine arrives at the Russian Court brimming with ideas to reform education, well-versed in the writings of Enlightenment philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau, but Peter destroys her plan to build a school when he realizes she intends to educate women.

In reality, Catherine was indeed passionate about education, particularly the arts and sciences. Opportunities for women at that time were scarce. In 1764, she issued a decree establishing the Smolny Institute for daughters of the nobility in Saint Petersburg, Russias first educational institution for women. Catherine herself was an avid reader and art collector with literary aspirations. Throughout her reign, she corresponded with intellectuals across Europe, and their ideas helped influence the progressive future she envisaged for Russias culture and society.

She pioneered an inoculation program across Russia

In one episode of The Great, a smallpox outbreak ravages the palace. Learning about the concept of immunization through inoculation, Catherine advocates fiercely for its use, infecting herself with the disease in front of an aghast court. While this scene was fictionalized for dramatic effect, there is more than a kernel of truth to the storyline.

In 1768, countries across Europe were scrambling to find ways to prevent and cure the deadly smallpox disease, a centuries-old parallel to todays race to find a successful vaccine to end the coronavirus pandemic. A British doctor, Thomas Dimsdale, was exploring the method of inoculation, in which a patient is deliberately infected with a mild form of smallpox to guard against future infectionsa precursor to vaccinations as we know them today. Catherine was impressed with his work. At a time when smallpox was sweeping Russia, she invited Dimsdale to the Russian court to perform inoculations on herself and her son, Paul.

While most of her contemporaries saw the treatment as controversial and dangerous, Catherine and her son responded well to the inoculation. Catherines willingness to lead by example was a risk that paid off and led to a mass program across Russia; historians estimate that by 1780, 20,000 Russians had been inoculated, and by 1800, that figure rose to 2 million. Catherine made Dimsdale a Baron of the Russian Empire, and she also ennobled the peasant boy who had provided the smallpox matter used for her own inoculation.

She was a target of gossip

Hulu

Despite Catherines achievements and the complexities of her long reign, sensationalist legends about her have persisted throughout the centuries. The myth that she died while trying to have sex with a horse is categorically untrue, as she died of a stroke in November 1796. Its not even worth discussing, historian Simon Sebag Montefiore previously told TIME.

The Great satirically alludes to the malicious gossip that plagued Catherine both before and after her death. Much was made of her personal and sexual life by her subjects, and by historians in the centuries since then, with some branding her a nymphomaniac. At the time, it wasnt unusual for monarchs across Europe to have multiple affairs and lovers, yet later in her life Catherine drew scrutiny for engaging in relationships with men much younger than herself. Its no coincidence that other powerful female historical figures, including Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn and Catherine de Medici, have also been targets of rumors about their sexual lives rooted in misogyny.

Catherine foresaw the need to write her own story through her memoirs, counteracting rumors that had spread as a result of her rise to power. While the genre of autobiography didnt exist as we know it at the time, historian Monika Greenleaf has said that Catherines writings were a pre-emptive strike against the memoirists and biographers who were eager to write her history for her.
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

The Central Bank of Uzbekistan recorded a decline in salary payments in the country due to the coronavirus pandemic, Trend reports with reference to Central Bank of Uzbekistan.

The quarantine announced in Uzbekistan has had an impact on cash requirements, which in April contributed to significant drop in cash withdrawals by banks, compared to previous months, the report said.

The Central Bank attributes this to decrease in cash requirements for salaries by 1.1 trillion soum ($108.1 million), as well as decrease in international money transfers and decrease in the amount of cash for buying foreign currency.

According to the Central Bank, in April, the share of pensions, social payments, as well as cash withdrawals from bank cards increased, which makes 56.3 percent of the total amount of cash.

In addition, the Central Bank of Uzbekistan notes a decline in the country's economic activity in April 2020.

Due to decline, the volume of receipts decreased by 41 percent compared to March (to 7.9 trillion soum - $776.3 million compared to 13.4 trillion soum - $1.3 billion).

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Linkedin Apriza Pinandita (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 17:00 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd853666 1 National COVID-19,study-from-home,Nadiem-Makarim,Education,Education-and-Culture-Ministry,coronavirus,virus-corona,virus-korona-indonesia,learning-from-home Free

Education and Culture Minister Nadiem Makarim has acknowledged that technological discrepancies between schools have reduced the effectiveness of home-based learning, a program launched to accommodate COVID-19 distancing measures.

The minister said schools in certain regions were progressing slowly and were at risk of being unable to catch up to others academically. Other schools had taken to distance learning through the use of low- and high-tech tools.

We still need time to analyze the overall effectiveness of home-based learning. However, what we do know is we have a lot of anecdotal evidence about challenges surrounding the online learning process, the minister said on Thursday.

He said the effectiveness of home-based learning was related to the educational systems comfort in adopting new technology.

Nadiem said education technology was being adopted at an unprecedented rate as parents, teachers and students adjusted to the demands of distance learning under COVID-19.

It can heavily accelerate technology adoption in education in the future. This is a very encouraging trend.

Read also: Tips from parents on helping children study at home during COVID-19 outbreak

Technology adoption remains a challenge for the Indonesian education system.

A 2019 report issued by global mobile communications industry body GSMA demonstrated a wide digital gap between people living in urban and rural areas. About 45 percent of Indonesians live in rural areas.

Indonesia has 170 million internet users. However, the government has said that digital literacy in Indonesia is still relatively low, causing hurdles for teachers, students and parents wanting to engage in a tech-based education.

Nadiem said he believed there were many possible solutions depending on each schools access to and adoption of technology. He said the government was investigating what would work.

When we return to school after this crisis, well be able to scale up measures that we know are working for certain segments of our educational system, the minister said.
The Peace River Flows: A Daily Devotional for the Followers of Christ: a year-long source of biblical inspiration that accompanies one in their daily walk with Christ throughout the troubles of the world. The Peace River Flows: A Daily Devotional for the Followers of Christ is the creation of published author Teresa Gonzalez, an evangelical Christian whose hearts desire is to bring everyone into the saving grace of the Lord and Savior. After completing training in the Bible Training Center for Pastors, she helps bring others to Christ and walk them to deliverance with the Word of God.

Gonzalez shares, Many years ago, Teresa was encouraged by the Holy Spirit to follow the steps of Jesus. With his guidance, she took a trip through the Gospels, observing the way Jesus taught his disciples. He used his creation to help them understand the things of God and to give them a point of reference that made sense to them. She studied him and hung onto his every word and fashioned herself after him, learning to tell stories by using her experiences to explain biblical truths.

She grew up in the heart of the state of Florida, surrounded by cabbage palm trees and cow pastures where the beautiful Peace River flows. Her childhood home was near the edge of that swamp, and she has fond memories of roaming and playing near the river and still loves watching it flow. One of the things she loves about Jesus is the peace he brings when one trusts in him. She is often amazed at the springs of living water that well up from deep within, that spill out onto those who are near. He has given us a special gift, and her goal for this book is to provide you with a daily dose of the things he has taught her so you will, in turn, make use of his gifts and find comfort in the peace he brings.

You are invited to experience Jesus through a daily excursion into his Word and begin to see your circumstances the way he sees them. By the time you come to the end of this book, Teresa hopes that you break bonds and leave all of your cares to Jesus by learning to trust in him.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Teresa Gonzalezs new book is a profound tool that will help the readers get through whatever troubles them. Spanning for 365 days, every single believer is up for a great and God-centered year ahead!

May this be a key to build a stronger relationship with the Father.

View a synopsis of The Peace River Flows: A Daily Devotional for the Followers of Christ on YouTube.

Consumers can purchaseThe Peace River Flows: A Daily Devotional for the Followers of Christ at traditional brick & mortar bookstores, or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about The Peace River Flows: A Daily Devotional for the Followers of Christ, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Missouri lawmakers on Thursday passed a bill to ban the state from doing business with companies that boycott Israel.

The GOP-led House approved the measure 95-40 on Thursday, the day before their Friday deadline to pass bills this year.

The BDS movement promotes boycotts, divestment and sanctions of Israeli institutions and businesses in what it says is a nonviolent campaign against Israeli abuses against Palestinians. Israel says the campaign masks a deeper goal of delegitimizing and even destroying the country.

The Missouri bill would require companies to sign a contract pledging not to boycott Israel in order to do business with Missouri. It wouldn't apply to contracts worth less than $100,000 or companies with fewer than 10 employees.

At least 27 other states have passed similar policies, according to the

Republican Rep. Holly Rehder led the Senate bill through the House. She said doing anything to support the boycott movement goes against Missouri's economic policies and would be absurd.

The legislature has taken bold action to combat the insidious and hateful BDS movement that singles out Israel and encourages punitive actions against its economy and citizens, said Nancy Lisker, director of the American Jewish Committee St. Louis Region.

But the bill drew bipartisan opposition from lawmakers who said it tramples on Americans' right to free speech through protests.

Republican Rep. Tony Lovasco said awarding business contracts based on political opinions would be incredibly dangerous. He said criticizing a government is not the same as criticizing the people who live in that country.

I am incredibly critical of our government, for example, Lovasco said. I'm not anti-American. I love this country. I dont want to be in a position where my criticism of our government's choices and how our government spends, or in my mind wastes our money, is going to result in my being placed in effectively a blacklist.

The measure now heads to Republican Gov. Mike Parson.

The legislation against boycotting Israel was one of several policies lawmakers approved Thursday in their rush to pass as many bills as possible before their Friday deadline.

HYPERLOOP

One bill would give the Missouri Highways and Transportation Commission the authority to form a public-private partnership to build an ultrafast Hyperloop track connecting St. Louis and Kansas City. Hyperloop technology involves a tubular track through which a train-like pod carries passengers at speeds up to 640 mph. Missouri supporters are now advocating for a test track to be built in Missouri.

DRIVER'S LICENCES

Another provision would allow people to add medical alerts to their driver's license or nondriver's identification. The bill would give people the option to note post-traumatic stress disorder, epilepsy, drug allergies, autism, dementia and other health conditions on their IDs.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) ate some crow on Thursday night, admitting that he was wrong when he claimed earlier this week that President Barack Obama didnt leave his successor with any kind of game plan for a pandemic.

During a Trump campaign chat with presidential daughter-in-law Lara Trump on Monday night, the Kentucky lawmaker blasted Obama for calling President Donald Trumps coronavirus response an absolute chaotic disaster, saying the classless former president should have kept his mouth shut.

McConnell went on to then falsely claim that the Obama administration left the incoming staff in the lurch when it came to dealing with a deadly outbreak.

They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this, he asserted, promoting Lara Trump to respond: Thats exactly right.

Fact-checkers and former Obama staffers immediately pounced, noting that Obamas National Security Council had indeed left the Trump administration a 69-page playbook on how to deal with a pandemic, a document that Politico reported on this past March.

Appearing on Fox News Special Report on Thursday, McConnell was confronted about his remarks by anchor Bret Baier. Noting that ousted vaccine chief Dr. Rick Bright accused Trump of being woefully unprepared for the pandemic during his House testimony on Thursday, Baier played a clip of Bright saying plans were in place for the administration to use but werent followed.

You said that the previous administration didnt leave a plan. They pushed back against that, the Fox anchor stated.

I was wrong, McConnell conceded. They did leave behind a plan. So I clearly made a mistake in that regard. As to whether or not the plan was followed and who is the critic and all the rest, I dont have any observation about that because I dont know enough about the details of that, Bret, to comment on it in any detail.

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The Senate majority leaders initial false claim echoed the presidents rhetoric about Obama leaving him empty-handed on a pandemic response, with Trump going so far as to blame the former president for giving him broken tests for the novel coronavirusa disease that didnt exist before 2019.

Trump, meanwhile, also acknowledged on Thursday that the former administration had indeed left him with a plan. At the same time, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said that the Obama-Biden plan was insufficient and wasnt going to work, without elaborating.

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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, right, meets with U.S. Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo in Jerusalem on May 13, 2020. (Getty Images)

To the editor: I'd like to make two points in response to your reporting on Israel potentially annexing the West Bank.

First, annexation, wise or not, does not kill the two-state solution. The Palestinians' refusals to accept the existence of Israel have done that and made annexation look like the only option. A serious change of heart, like that of then-Egyptian President Anwar Sadat in the 1970s, would open everything up again.

Second, Israeli control over the Jordan Valley has always been understood to be a strategic necessity for any lasting peace. What form it takes could emerge from negotiations  which, however, the Palestinian Authority steadfastly refuses.

Fred Baumann, Mount Vernon, Ohio

..

To the editor: With Secretary of State Michael R. Pompeo recently traveling to Israel, we have one crooked, illegitimate government administration playing to its base and making deals with the other in order to maintain power.

The Palestinian people, then, are the ones who must suffer the consequences, having to live under military occupation and apartheid rule.

Paul McDermott, Los Angeles

..

To the editor: It bears repeating that Judea and Samaria (dubbed the "West Bank" during 19 years of illegal Jordanian occupation) have religious and historic importance to Jews, and strategic importance to Israel. The land was liberated only after Jordan allied with Egypt and Syria in a war instigated with the open intention of destroying Israel.

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his late predecessor Yasser Arafat flatly rejected Israeli proposals that should have led to the establishment of the state they claimed to want (even with the possibility of shared governance in parts of Jerusalem). Abbas rejected the plan formulated by President Trump prior to its release. Instead of negotiating, he incites his people to violence.

As with Trump's moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Israel is signaling to the Palestinians that they can no longer expect everyone to bow to their intransigence.

Toby F. Block, Atlanta
There is just something about the life of a gangster that is very alluring to mere mortals like us. Hollywood, Bollywood, and Netflix shows certainly do their bit to enamour us, but there are a few real-life underworld bosses that just fascinate and charm us. Muthappa Rai was one of them.

 BCCL

Earlier today, on the 15th of May, 2020, the reformed former underworld don breathed his last. People from Karnataka, and particularly Bengaluru know who the guy was and all about his charismatic life. For those of us who dont know much about him, the story of his life seems to be straight out of a gangster film, who, at his prime, had assets worth over Rs 3000 crores.



 BCCL

It almost seems that he was the much classier and more educated version of Ganesh Gaitonde from Sacred Games. The reason we say this is because there are some very eerie similarities in their lives.

 BCCL

Here are 6 facts about Muthappa Rai, the underworld don from Bengaluru, who later went on to become a revered social activist.



Turned To A Life Of Crime By Accident

 Twitter/jayakarnataka

Muthappa started out in life as a clerk with a bank, who on the side had a small bar and restaurant business. Some local goons and a few people of the underworld started demanding protection money. Things turned ugly soon, and they escalated to such a point, where Muthappa had an unfortunate incident, after which he had to give up his peaceful life of that of a bank clerk.



Murdered The Former Don Of Bengaluru In Broad Daylight.

 Twitter/SurreshRai

After the incident at his restaurant and bar, Muthappa came in contact with Bengalurus organised crime gangs, where he worked for some time. Back then, Bengaluru was ruled by M.P Jayaraj, one of the most hardened gangsters, the city had seen. Muthappa killed Jayaraj in broad daylight in front of a number of eyewitnesses. Some reports have claimed that even the police saw the execution of the murder. However, Rai never got arrested for this murder. After this, he proclaimed himself as the boss of all bosses in Bengalurus organised crime and was proclaimed Don. Rings a bell, doesnt it?



Detained By CBI & Other Agencies But Always Acquited

Over the years, several central agencies and state agencies, have detained Rai on a number of occasions. There were a number of arrest warrants that the Karanata Police had issued, but he was never arrested. This also includes the time when in 2008, after he was extradited from the UAE, he was questioned and interrogated by the CBI, IB, and even RAW. However, due to lack of any clarity in his involvement in the crimes he was accused of, and lack of evidence and credible witnesses, he had to be let go. All in all, he was tried for about 20 murders and was acquitted in all of them.

Funded A Film To Play A Role In It

 BCCL

Rai was fascinated with films and always wanted to be apart of the Karnatak film industry. Apparently, he funded two films, one in Tulu, and the other one in Kannada, and acted in both of them.



Social Activism

Rai established his NGO, Jaya Karnataka, in 2000. Over the last 20 years, the organisation enlisted about 7,00,000 volunteers all across the state, who work on a number of issues, ranging from providing potable water in areas where there is no access to conducting awareness drives on environment conservation. They also have a number of educational programmes for children.

A Biopic Starring Vivek Oberoi

Okay, this is a little bizarre. Not the fact that there is a biopic being made on him, but the fact that Vivek Oberoi of all people is portraying the main lead. Remember the last time he starred in a biopic? You know whats even more bizarre, that it was being directed by Ram Gopal Varma. For some unknown reason, the film was never completed on time.

Bollywood, seriously, you need to get someone to make a proper biopic on him.
There's been a notable change in appetite for Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. (NYSE:VSH) shares in the week since its first-quarter report, with the stock down 15% to US$14.44. It looks like a credible result overall - although revenues of US$613m were what the analysts expected, Vishay Intertechnology surprised by delivering a (statutory) profit of US$0.19 per share, an impressive 73% above what was forecast. 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. With this in mind, we've gathered the latest statutory forecasts to see what the analysts are expecting for next year.

View our latest analysis for Vishay Intertechnology

NYSE:VSH Past and Future Earnings May 15th 2020

Taking into account the latest results, the current consensus, from the six analysts covering Vishay Intertechnology, is for revenues of US$2.35b in 2020, which would reflect a perceptible 7.4% reduction in Vishay Intertechnology's sales over the past 12 months. Statutory earnings per share are expected to tumble 26% to US$0.59 in the same period. Yet prior to the latest earnings, the analysts had been anticipated revenues of US$2.50b and earnings per share (EPS) of US$0.74 in 2020. The analysts seem less optimistic after the recent results, reducing their sales forecasts and making a real cut to earnings per share numbers.

Despite the cuts to forecast earnings, there was no real change to the US$16.86 price target, showing that the analysts don't think the changes have a meaningful impact on its intrinsic value. 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. Currently, the most bullish analyst values Vishay Intertechnology at US$24.00 per share, while the most bearish prices it at US$13.00. 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.

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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 7.4% revenue decline a notable change from historical growth of 5.0% 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 6.8% next year. So although its revenues are forecast to shrink, this cloud does not come with a silver lining - Vishay Intertechnology is expected to lag the wider industry.

The Bottom Line

The most important thing to take away is that the analysts downgraded their earnings per share estimates, showing that there has been a clear decline in sentiment following these results. 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.

With that said, the long-term trajectory of the company's earnings is a lot more important than next year. We have estimates - from multiple Vishay Intertechnology analysts - going out to 2022, and you can see them free on our platform here.

However, before you get too enthused, we've discovered 3 warning signs for Vishay Intertechnology 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.
We are all wondering how COVID-19 will end. We will not likely return to normal without a broadly distributed vaccine, which is a bracing proposition. It is also becoming increasingly clear that we will have to find a way to trace transmission and maybe even enforce individual quarantines in the interim.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Opinion

We are all wondering how COVID-19 will end. We will not likely return to normal without a broadly distributed vaccine, which is a bracing proposition. It is also becoming increasingly clear that we will have to find a way to trace transmission and maybe even enforce individual quarantines in the interim.

I want to say that I am not an epidemiologist, nor am I a public health official. As a faculty member within the Centre for Digital Humanities at Brock University, my role is to communicate the social and cultural consequences of digital media, including potential privacy and security risks of software used to limit the effects of COVID-19.

In the coming weeks and months, I expect that we will hear a lot about "contact tracing." Contact tracing involves interviewing patients to collect information on all the people they have had sustained contact with and all the places they have been. It is laborious and error-prone because it is dependent on memory, interviews and detective work.

Because of the scale of contact tracing needed for COVID-19, using cellphones to detect and record proximity appears to be an ideal solution. The Canadian government is exploring contact tracing and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau expressed that "all options are on the table."

Civil liberties in crisis

Before the Canadian government makes decisions that infringe on civil liberties through widespread digital surveillance, we need to think about the concessions we make during a time of crisis. Crises have long been used as an opportunity by governments and corporations to infringe on civil liberties in the name of public safety.

We need only think of the legislative overreach in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the United States, the extraordinary powers granted by the Patriot Act were revealed by whistleblower Edward Snowden when he disclosed NSA and CIA surveillance. Those disclosures shook the country to the core. In Canada, the omnibus Bill C-36 was passed, which contained the Anti-Terrorism Act.

During the post-9/11 period, Canadians learned a lot about phone tracking. In 2017, the Canadian government introduced Bill C-59, which amended the earlier Anti-terrorism Act and acknowledged past legislative overreach.

Contact tracing using digital technology represents an opportunity to battle COVID-19 and reopen the economy, but its application will create unprecedented surveillance infrastructure beyond anything we have seen before.

There is an app for that

In recent days, the federal government has indicated that the provinces will be responsible for managing their plans to reopen their economies, which will result in a patchwork of contact tracing apps across the country. There are risks that such a network of policies, laws and collection techniques will muddy the data about COVID-19 nationally.

By contrast, many countries have turned to nationally mandated mobile applications to automate contact tracing. South Korea, Singapore, Germany and China have all implemented their own digital tools to assist public health officials and trace the spread of COVID-19.

There are several models that Canadians can think about with regard to contact tracing apps. China dealt with this problem first, and chose some rather extraordinary methods. Citizens were allowed to travel between checkpoints based on an app embedded in online payment systems like Alibabas Alipay or Tencents WeChat. Without a green QR code, citizens were not allowed to travel and could face detention for violations.

Currently, the Canada COVID-19 app  a partnership between private health-care software company Thrive Health and Health Canada  allows you to volunteer your location data and self-report symptoms. This volunteer approach was led by Singapores TraceTogether app, which goes a step further by accessing the Bluetooth radio in smartphones to detect proximity.

The limitations of the TraceTogether app include the difficulty of running an app 24 hours a day, which depletes battery life and results in less reliable data.

The Alberta provincial government has recently released the ABTraceTogether app; it is unclear how effective this system will be in the province.

Because the use of digital contact tracing was meant to correct for the errors of human interviews and memory, the partnership between Google and Apple has drawn a tremendous amount of attention. In this case, our phones would eventually detect proximity and duration using a low level operating system process that would allow for 24/7 tracking.

The security and privacy implications are profound.

Regardless of the optimism of the technology news observers, these systems are too complex and lacking in the transparency necessary for legislators to make adequately informed decisions on their implementation.

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There is no reason the general public should trust these corporations to not monetize this system and maintain this surveillance infrastructure after the crisis has passed. While the need for digital contact tracing is clear, Canadians must take steps to protect their personal data.

Non-technical recommendations

It will be important for Canadians to discuss these systems before plans are put in place and laws are passed that may violate the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, particularly with regard to the security of the person. With any luck, the conversation held by Canadians with their provincial leaders and federal counterparts will include the following:

A sunset clause to define when surveillance ends.

A chain of custody agreement for data passed between government, industry and researchers, which includes a process to delete data.

A plan to protect data sovereignty, which ensures that data are subject to Canadian laws and governance structures.

A public use of judicial oversight of government, industry and researchers to ensure the laws we choose as Canadians are followed.

A commitment to corporate accountability if our data are misused, stolen or sold.

Digital contact tracing will likely become central to the governments approach to stifling the resurgence of the virus and reopening the economy.

The complexity of these systems is a risk for the general public who may agree to something that is not well understood. It is critical to inform the public about these risks before governments take extraordinary powers and infringe on our civil liberties.

Aaron Mauro is an assistant professor of digital media at Brock University.

This article was first published at The Conversation Canada: theconversation.com/ca.
Activists Varavara Rao and Shoma



Sen, arrested in the Elgar Parishad case, on Friday sought temporary bail from a special court here, citing the coronavirus outbreak.

They were suffering from multiple ailments and were vulnerable to coronavirus due to their age, both said in their pleas. Rao is 80 years old while Sen is 60 years old.

The special court for National Investigation Agency cases had rejected their similarbail applications in March.

Rao is currently lodged at Taloja jail in neighbouring Navi Mumbai, while Sen is lodged at Byculla Prison here.

There is no medicine or vaccine for COVID-19 and preventive measures advised by medical experts can not be practised in jail, the two activists said.

They also pointed out that several prison inmates have tested positive for infection.

The court posted the matter for hearing on May 22.

Eleven persons have beenarrested in the Elgar Parishad-Maoist link case which was transferred to the NIA by the Centre in January.

The case relates to alleged inflammatory speeches made at Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune on December 31, 2017, which the Pune police claimed triggered violence the next day near the Koregaon-Bhima war memorial. The police also claimed that the conclave was backed by Maoists.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Pakistan's Ruling Party, Powerful Military Accused Of Trying To Roll Back 'Democratizing Laws'

By Daud Khattak, Frud Bezhan May 14, 2020

During his iron-fisted reign, Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf toppled an elected government, dismissed judges, suspended the constitution, and imposed emergency rule.

General Musharraf's bloodless coup in 1999 restored power to the military, which has ruled for around half of the country's 73-year history, staging three coups d'etat.

When Musharraf was forced to resign in 2008 amid widespread protests, Pakistan's new civilian government and opposition parties were united in thwarting attempts by the military to forcibly seize power again.

In 2010, President Asif Ali Zardari enacted sweeping constitutional reforms that undid provisions that military dictators had introduced to tighten their grip on power and legitimize their coups.

Under the 18th Amendment, the president no longer had the authority to dissolve parliament and impose emergency rule on his own. The courts no longer had jurisdiction to validate suspensions of the constitution. And powers were transferred from the presidency to a prime minister and his cabinet.

The amendment also transferred power from the center to the provinces, restored parliamentary democracy, and closed off paths to generals overturning civilian rule.

Now, a decade on from that landmark move, there are fears that the government of Prime Minister Imran Khan, who is backed by the military, is seeking to roll back the changes, which are widely seen as the bulwark of the democratization process in the South Asian nation of 220 million people.

The ruling Tehrik-e Insaf party (PTI) has called for a review to "fix" what it perceives as flaws in the 18th Amendment, including restoring federal authority over legislation and finances.

The government has cited the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, arguing that the amendment has limited the federal government's authority to devise a national strategy to fight the COVID-19 disease. Pakistan had officially registered more than 35,000 coronavirus infections and 770 deaths as of May 14.

Critics and opposition parties accuse the government of using the pandemic as a pretext to undermine the legislation and reassert national clout from the political center.

Michael Kugelman, South Asia senior associate at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, has argued that reining in the amendment would "amount to a demoralizing defeat for the forces of democracy in a nation where such forces have long struggled to secure a sustained foothold."

"The 18th Amendment has long endured as a brave and bold achievement that showcases the very real potential for strong democracy in Pakistan," he said.

'Weak Points'

The ruling PTI party has discussed reviewing and possibly changing the 18th Amendment since coming to power nearly two years ago.

Opposition politicians have accused the powerful military of manipulating the 2018 elections to help the PTI win.

Since the coronavirus outbreak in Pakistan, Khan's government has intensified its criticism of the reforms, which devolved many powers and resources to the provinces.

Information Minister Shibli Faraz warned on May 1 that Pakistan was facing an "unprecedented challenge" from the coronavirus and the amendment had tied the government's hands, lamenting that the federal government could "only issue policy guidelines."

Then Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi said on May 12 that the government did not want to scrap the amendment, but he added that its "weak points should be reviewed and addressed."

The federal government has come under criticism for its perceived mishandling of the outbreak and for only imposing a partial lockdown.

The opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) that runs Sindh Province, which includes the industrial and financial center of Karachi, has imposed a strict lockdown and won praise for its management of the outbreak.

'Undemocratic Elements'

Opposition parties have condemned government calls to review the amendment.

Ahsan Iqbal, a member of parliament and former member of parliament from the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party, told RFE/RL that the federal government has "raised the 18th Amendment issue to hide its poor governance."

The ruling PTI party has come under growing scrutiny over the country's economic performance, which has been exacerbated by the coronavirus outbreak.

Senator Usman Khan Kakar of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party told RFE/RL that any party that backed the rolling-back of the amendment could undermine national interests and, in particular, the interests of minority groups like ethnic Baloch, Pashtun, and Sindhis.

"Repealing or changing the amendment will have serious repercussions," he said.

Afrasiab Khattak, a former senator and a senior leader of the opposition secular Awami National Party (ANP) in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, was one of the framers of the 18th Amendment.

Khattak accused the military establishment of being behind the push for its review.

"The 18th Amendment was a great development in strengthening democracy in Pakistan," he told RFE/RL. "But undemocratic elements, who oppose provincial autonomy, are opposing this amendment."

He said the government was using the coronavirus outbreak as a "lame excuse" to undermine the amendment, adding that if Islamabad was serious about devising a unified strategy in fighting the disease, it could do so through parliament.

The ruling PTI party does not have the necessary two-thirds majority in both the National Assembly and Senate that it would take to repeal or change the 18th Amendment. The government has said it will consult with provincial governments and opposition political parties to review the changes.

Khattak said he feared the opposition parties had "a history of succumbing to pressure from the establishment and there is chance that they will bow before the establishment to bring changes to or repeal this amendment."

'Dangerous' Move

Pakistan's military, which has an oversize role in domestic and foreign affairs, has said it is not opposed to the 18th Amendment.

But analysts suggest the military wants to weaken it because it is affecting the military's ability to influence policy and threatens its control over national resources.

Khan is widely believed to be backed by the army.

The army fell out with Khan's predecessor, Nawaz Sharif, who looked to curb the military's traditional dominance of national politics. Sharif, a three-time prime minister, was removed from office in 2017 after his disqualification by the Supreme Court.

Sharif, who was sentenced earlier this year to seven years in prison on corruption charges, has denied wrongdoing and suggested collusion between the military and courts threw him from power.

Kugelman suggested the military and the ruling party agreed on most issues, and the civilian leadership has been willing to cede policy space to the army.

"The military has a lot of momentum right now, and the PTI government -- unlike the previous government -- has served as an enabling force in the armed forces' growing policy clout," Kugelman said.

"So, this would be an opportune time for the military, using the civilian leadership as a vehicle, to try to make a play for undermining one of Pakistan's most important and democratizing laws of recent times," he said.

Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa, in an off-the-record briefing with journalists in March 2018, was quoted widely as saying that the 18th Amendment was "more dangerous than Sheikh Mujibur Rehman's six points."

Rehman was the founding father of Bangladesh, which gained independence from Pakistan after a devastating war in 1971. His "six points" were a demand for greater autonomy five years before the Bengali war of independence erupted.

The Pakistani military said Bajwa's comments were taken out of context.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/pakistan-s-ruling-party- powerful-military-accused-of-trying-to-roll-back- democratizing-laws-/30612080.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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The Bachelor's Sophie Tieman has revealed she has been diagnosed with viral meningitis after being admitted to hospital on Tuesday for testing.

The 27-year-old told Daily Mail Australia she was left 'scared' and 'alone' after it was initially suspected she had contracted COVID-19.

'I was treated like a COVID-19 patient for 24 hours until my swabs came back negative,' she said.

Horror: The Bachelor's Sophie Tieman (pictured) has revealed she has been diagnosed with viral meningitis after being admitted to hospital on Tuesday for testing. The 27-year-old told Daily Mail Australia she was left 'scared' and 'alone' after it was initially suspected she had contracted COVID-19

Sophie was placed into a 'red zone' within the hospital where she was unable to have contact with her partner Joe.

Medical staff tending to her wore extra personal protective equipment to protect themselves from catching the virus.

'I understand why they need to treat you like this during this period, and totally respect it, but it's quite scary being in the red zone and unable to have any support people with you,' she said.

Sophie also shared her shock at becoming ill as she has been extremely vigilant during the pandemic at maintaining social distancing.

'It's quite scary being in the red zone and unable to have any support people with you': Sophie was initially placed into a into a 'red zone' within the hospital where she was unable to have contact with her partner Joe and medical staff wore extra personal protective equipment

'(We've been) only leaving the house for exercise and to pick up groceries,' she said.

Sophie confirmed she is now 'on the mend' and being looked after by her boyfriend at home.

She finished with a plea for people to be sensible as social distancing restrictions are eased on Friday.

'(We've been) only leaving the house for exercise and to pick up groceries': Sophie shared her shock at becoming ill as she has been extremely vigilant during the pandemic at maintaining social distancing. Pictured with her partner

'You just can't be careful enough during a time like this. If you're feeling even just a little bit sick, stay indoors,' she urged.

Meningitis is a serious illness which causes inflammation of the brain and spinal cord membranes.

On Tuesday, Sophie shared a shocking image of herself lying in a hospital bed wearing a gown and face mask, with a tube inserted into her nose.

Unwell: On Tuesday, Sophie shared a shocking image of herself lying in a hospital bed wearing a gown and face mask, with a tube inserted into her nose

Sophie explained in a post to her Instagram Stories she had been unwell for a week but was initially diagnosed with 'influenza'.

Following several days of treatment, her condition failed to improve and Sophie felt like her 'head was going to explode'.

She had also been suffering from other symptoms including lethargy and neck aches.

Sick: The reality star was admitted to hospital on Tuesday to undergo tests including pathology, a chest x-ray and an MRI scan, before receiving a diagnosis of viral meningitis

The reality star was admitted to hospital on Tuesday to undergo tests including pathology, a chest x-ray and an MRI scan, before receiving a diagnosis of viral meningitis.

Prior to her diagnosis, Sophie revealed she would also be undergoing a spinal tap, which she was 'dreading'.

The procedure involves a needle being inserted into the spine to collect fluid for testing.

Sophie rose to fame on the 2018 season of The Bachelor where she dated Nick 'The Honey Badger' Cummins.

She made it to the final rose ceremony along with co-star Brittany Hockley, but Nick shocked the nation when he chose neither woman and went home alone.
Dublin, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Partnering Terms and Agreements (2014-2020)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



This report provides an understanding and access to the artificial intelligence partnering deals and agreements entered into by the worlds leading healthcare companies.



Global Artificial Intelligence Partnering Terms and Agreements includes:

Trends in artificial intelligence dealmaking in the biopharma industry since 2014

Analysis of artificial intelligence deal structure

Access to headline, upfront, milestone and royalty data

Case studies of real-life artificial intelligence deals

Access to over 350 artificial intelligence deals

The leading artificial intelligence deals by value since 2014

Most active artificial intelligence dealmakers since 2014

The leading artificial intelligence partnering resources

The report provides a detailed understanding and analysis of how and why companies enter artificial intelligence partnering deals. The majority of deals are early development stage whereby the licensee obtains a right or an option right to license the licensors artificial intelligence technology or product candidates. These deals tend to be multicomponent, starting with collaborative R&D, and commercialization of outcomes.



Understanding the flexibility of a prospective partner's negotiated deals terms provides critical insight into the negotiation process in terms of what you can expect to achieve during the negotiation of terms. Whilst many smaller companies will be seeking details of the payments clauses, the devil is in the detail in terms of how payments are triggered - contract documents provide this insight where press releases and databases do not.



This report contains a comprehensive listing of all artificial intelligence partnering deals announced since 2014 including financial terms where available including over 350 links to online deal records of actual artificial intelligence partnering deals as disclosed by the deal parties. In addition, where available, records include contract documents as submitted to the Securities Exchange Commission by companies and their partners.



Contract documents provide the answers to numerous questions about a prospective partner's flexibility on a wide range of important issues, many of which will have a significant impact on each party's ability to derive value from the deal.



For example, analyzing actual company deals and agreements allows assessment of the following:



Story continues

What is actually granted by the agreement to the partner company?

What exclusivity is granted?

What are the precise rights granted or optioned?

What is the payment structure for the deal?

How are sales and payments audited?

What is the deal term?

How are the key terms of the agreement defined?

How are IPRs handled and owned?

Who is responsible for commercialization?

Who is responsible for development, supply, and manufacture?

How is confidentiality and publication managed?

How are disputes to be resolved?

Under what conditions can the deal be terminated?

What happens when there is a change of ownership?

What sublicensing and subcontracting provisions have been agreed?

Which boilerplate clauses does the company insist upon?

Which boilerplate clauses appear to differ from partner to partner or deal type to deal type?

Which jurisdiction does the company insist upon for agreement law?

The initial chapters of this report provide an orientation of artificial intelligence dealmaking and business activities.

Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the report.

Chapter 2 provides an overview of the trends in artificial intelligence dealmaking since 2014, including details of average headline, upfront, milestone and royalty terms.

Chapter 3 provides a review of the leading artificial intelligence deals since 2014. Deals are listed by headline value, signed by big pharma, most active artificial intelligence dealmaking companies. Where the deal has an agreement contract published at the SEC a link provides online access to the contract.

Chapter 4 provides a comprehensive listing of the top 25 most active companies in artificial intelligence dealmaking with a brief summary followed by a comprehensive listing of artificial intelligence deals, as well as contract documents available in the public domain. Where available, each deal title links via Weblink to an online version of the actual contract document, providing easy access to each contract document on demand.

Chapter 5 provides a comprehensive and detailed review of artificial intelligence partnering deals signed and announced since Jan to 2014, where a contract document is available in the public domain. The - Chapter is organized by company A-Z, deal type (collaborative R&D, co-promotion, licensing etc), and specific therapy focus. Each deal title links via Weblink to an online version of the deal record and where available, the contract document, providing easy access to each contract document on demand.

Chapter 6 lists artificial intelligence deals by technology type.

Chapter 7 provides a comprehensive and detailed review of artificial intelligence partnering deals signed and announced since Jan to 2014. The - Chapter is organized by specific artificial intelligence technology type in focus. Each deal title links via Weblink to an online version of the deal record and where available, the contract document, providing easy access to each contract document on demand.

Companies Mentioned



1ST Biotherapeutics

23andMe

A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute

A.I. Squared

A2A Pharmaceuticals

Abramson Cancer Center

AcuraStem

Adapt Analytics

Adaptive Biotechnologies

Adents

Adventus Ventures

Adynxx

Aether

Aiforia Technologies

AKESOgen

Alberta Innovates Bio Solutions

Alberta Innovates Technology Futures

Align Technology

AliveCor

Alliance For Clinical Trials In Oncology

ALS Association

Alverno Clinical Laboratories

American Sleep Apnea Association

Amgen

Amitech Solutions

Analytics Engines

Anthem

ArcherDX

Ares Genetics

Arm

ARUP Laboratories

AstraZeneca

Atomwise

Atrapos Therapeutics

ATUM

Auransa

Auron Therapeutics

Automation Anywhere

Avera Health

AXA PPP healthcare

Ayasdi

BASF

Bausch & Lomb

Bayer

Bay Labs

BCG Digital Ventures

BC Platforms

Becton Dickinson

BenevolentAI

Benson Hill Biosystems

Berg

BERG Analytics

BioBeats

BioBright

Biocept

Biorelate

Bioz

Blackford

BlackThorn Therapeutics

Blockshine Technology

Bloqcube

Body Labs

BrainScope

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Bristol-Myers Squibb

Broad Institute

Brown University

BullFrog AI

C4X Discovery

Cancer Genetics

Cannabics Pharmaceuticals

Cardinal Analytx Solutions

Cardiowise

Caresyntax

Carnegie Mellon University

CAS

Ceapro

Celgene

Cellgen Diagnostics

Centogene

Centre Leon Berard

Certis

Charles River Laboratories

CHDI Foundation

Chemi Pharmaceutical

Children's Hospital of Philadelphia

Children's National Health System

China Oncology Focus

Christian Doppler Research Association

City of Hope

CLEW Medical

Clinical Research Strategies

Clinigen

Cloudera

Cloud Pharmaceuticals

Cognetivity Neurosciences

Cognoa

Cohen Veterans Bioscience

Columbia University

Concerto HealthAI

Consortium AI

Control Flo Medical

COPAN

Covaris

CrystalGenomics

Cures Within Reach

Cyclica

Cytobank

CytoReason

Dacadoo

Dana-Farber Cancer Institute

DarwinHealth

DASH Analytics

Data2Life

Datavant

DEARhealth

DecisionQ

DEEP 6 AI

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/9f50gh

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

CONTACT: CONTACT: ResearchAndMarkets.com Laura Wood, Senior Press Manager press@researchandmarkets.com For E.S.T Office Hours Call 1-917-300-0470 For U.S./CAN Toll Free Call 1-800-526-8630 For GMT Office Hours Call +353-1-416-8900
Hundreds of people have taken part in a rare protest in Turkmenistan to call attention to the government's failure to help repair damage caused by recent wind and rainstorms that devastated eastern parts of the country.

The deputy mayor of Turkmenistan's eastern city of Turkmenabat reportedly came out to on May 14 to meet some of the demonstrators, who gathered to seek help for damage to their homes and a loss of electricity caused by the storms in April and May.

The authoritarian government of President Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov does not tolerate dissent or public demonstrations, making the protest highly unusual.

The website Turkmen.news reported on May 15 that the official, whose name was not given, arrived in the Zhelezhnodoroga district of Turkmenabat accompanied by police to discuss the start of clean-up efforts.

RFE/RL confirmed there was a large protest in that district involving at least several hundred people demanding the government restore electricity that was cut off by the torrential storms.

They also asked for help to clear away debris and pump out water that had collected in basements throughout the district and that continues to damage structures.

A windstorm on April 27 was followed by heavy rains on May 4 and again on May 13. Residents complain that besides damage to their homes, standing water in their basements has brought mosquitoes.

The protest represented the largest demonstration in Turkmenistan since independence in 1991 and comes as the country endures a serious economic downturn that has led to shortages of basic goods and sharp cuts in social benefits.

With reporting by Turkmen.news
After three deadlocked and divisive elections, and a year and a half of political paralysis, Israel was finally swearing in a new government yesterday, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu securing a historic fifth term in office thanks to a controversial power-sharing deal with rival-turned-partner Benny Gantz.

Mr Netanyahu and Mr Gantz, a former military chief, announced last month they would be putting their differences aside, after three hard-fought campaigns, to join forces and steer the country through the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.

It came at the price of the dissolution of Mr Gantz's Blue and White party and reneging on his key campaign promise not to serve under Mr Netanyahu, who has been indicted on corruption charges and faces an upcoming criminal trial.

Their much-scrutinised coalition deal, resulting in the most bloated government in Israeli history and potential clauses to help Mr Netanyahu cling to power, could only come about after the country's Supreme Court ruled it had no legal grounds to block it.

Despite the criticism, Mr Gantz argued that teaming with Mr Netanyahu offered the country its only way out of the prolonged stalemate and prevented another costly election.

The deal calls for Mr Netanyahu to serve as prime minister for the government's first 18 months before being replaced by Mr Gantz for the next 18 months, with their blocs having a similar number of ministers and virtual veto power over the other's major decisions.

The main point of contention has been the newly-created position of "alternate prime minister", a post that could allow Mr Netanyahu to remain in office even after the swap and throughout his corruption trial and a potential appeals process.

There are also deep suspicions about whether Mr Netanyahu will keep his part of the bargain and ultimately cede the premiership to Mr Gantz.

Still, the new position is supposed to enjoy all the trappings of the prime minister, including an official residence and, key for Mr Netanyahu, an exemption from a law that requires public officials who are not prime minister to resign if charged with a crime.

Mr Netanyahu has been indicted with fraud, breach of trust and accepting bribes in a series of scandals involving trading favours with wealthy media moguls.

He denies any wrongdoing and blames the charges on a media-orchestrated plot to oust him.
It's 30 years this month since Archie Roach was thrust into the limelight with debut album Charcoal Lane, a deeply personal story of First Nations people and the stolen generation told through his songs.

Roach, who is a proud Gunditjmara and Bundjalung man, said this week during a pre-recording of songs for Sunday's online Recharge 2020 Festival, he had "no idea what was going on" when he first stepped into a studio all those years ago to lay down vocals for Charcoal Lane.

Archie Roach performs songs from his album Charcoal Lane as part of Recharge 2020 Festival on Sunday, May 17. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

"There's a lot more that goes into recording an album than you think," the 64-year-old said, reflecting on the collaborative process he undertook with Paul Kelly and the late Steve Connolly. "The dedication and how they wanted to do the best for my songs, it's so humbling. I've got a lot of respect for musicians who do such a mighty job ... do their absolute best to make the song great."

The national tour Roach was due to start this month, following the release of his memoir Tell Me Why and accompanying album of the same name, was cancelled like so many other events as the nation grappled with coronavirus. Instead, he came to Melbourne this week from his home near Warrnambool and revisited Charcoal Lane for this weekend's anniversary performance.
The Gurugram administration has constituted a Covid-19 Death Audit Committee (CDAC) to review deaths arising from the coronavirus disease. Several states have such committees, which follow the Indian Council of Medical Researchs guidelines on recording Covid-19 deaths. In Gurugram, as per government records no Covid-19 death has been reported.

Deaths have, however, been reported in a few private hospitals of the city where Covid-19 patients from different states were admitted. Health officials say these deaths have been reported in the respective states to which thje deceased belonged. As these patients were undergoing treatment in Gurugram when they succumbed to the disease, the audit committee will review these cases.

Following the state governments guidelines, we will analyse sequence of events leading to death, conditions antecedent to the immediate cause of the death, onset of the disease, the treatment protocol followed among others. It will help us to understand the treatment requirement and plan management strategies, said Dr Jaswant Singh Punia, chief medical officer, who will be the chairperson of the district committee.

The other members of the committee will be a member of the rapid response team, a general physician or a respiratory medicine specialist, a microbiologist or pathologist, the district immunization officer and a representative of the deputy commissioner. It will also include representative of the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the Indian Medical Association (IMA) .

According to an order of the Haryana government released on Wednesday, each district in the state will have to form such a committee.

In Haryana, 13 Covid-19 deaths have reported, with Faridabad having the highest number deaths, five. Three deaths have been reported in Panipat, two in Ambala, one each in Rohtak, Sonepat and Karnal.

The team will study all the reports, records, and case sheets of the deceased .

Punia said it will be writing to all private hospitals where Covid-19 patients from Haryana or other states underwent treatment. The committee will have to submit the report within 72 hours of death.

In Gurugram, earlier this week two Covid-19 deaths were reported in Civil hospital, sector 10. The health department, however, said the deceased were from Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal were included in the lists maintained by those states.The death of a resident of Delhis Kapashera in Civil Hospital, has been included in the Delhi list, the department added.

A senior stats government official said that Haryana has included in its Covid-19 death toll, cases where the deaths are due to a comorbidity.  Following the government protocol, Covid-19 deaths are counted in a district or state where the patient originally contracted the virus. Many times, patients from other districts and states are referred to big private hospitals and medical colleges.
Ban would hurt food trucks

Editor:

I enjoy owning a food truck serving patrons in Meriden and throughout New Haven County. Over the years, my business has experienced ups and downs as the economy in Connecticut has changed. This year, our small business has been particularly hit hard by Covid-19 and foot traffic has dropped off significantly since people have lost their jobs or are working from home.

Once Connecticut residents can return to work, it will still be a challenge to rebuild my business to what it was up to a few months ago. It will be even more challenging if the state legislature moves forward with a proposed ban on single-use food containers. These polystyrene containers are critical in the food truck business, especially during this pandemic. Food trucks will need to have the most cost-effective options available as we continue providing take-away meals for Connecticut residents.

I urge our state elected officials to reject the proposed ban and help small businesses like mine remain in operation.

Tammi Jordan, Meriden

A fitting tribute

Editor:

What a fine reminiscence of Ted Moynihan! (R-J 5/11) Bryant Carpenters tribute suited Ted to a tee. I knew both Ted and Bryant, then a fledgling reporter, following in his mothers footsteps. I worked as a freelance photographer with the R-J. Both Ted and Bry were natural writers, the words flowed from keyboard to screen, effortlessly, in just the right order.

Bryants piece was from the heart, poignant, with a bit of folksy humor and admiration included. I believe Ted would have enjoyed reading the article. It is one of the finest eulogies Ive come across in some time. So, my advice to Bryant, keep your ink-well full, your quill sharpened. You are a talented scribe.

I conclude with sincere sadness and nostalgia; therell never be another Ted Moynihan. May he rest in peace.

Ernie Larsen, Meriden

Why not Wallingford?

Editor:

Dear Town Council members, one of the things I love about Wallingford is that it's a big small town. We sometimes feel the struggle of a city life, with many underprivileged families and an education system that frankly has a disappointing standing in our DRG, including poor test scores and a relatively high percentage of free and reduced lunch. But as a proud community member, I see us for who we are: a strong community with outstanding teachers, a bustling main street, and a vital small business community. But as an outsider, I don't see that. I see a struggling town that used to have low taxes, with a below-average school district, and blighted pool property. So why am I looking in Wallingford?

Camp at the YMCA is roughly $250 per week. And for the have-nots, the less expensive playground camp is weak at best (did you know that you cannot play on the playground at Playground Camp? It's a liability). In summer, I can't afford daily outings. I can't afford camp. So instead of the daily fight over screen time, which has unavoidably infiltrated our lives on a profound level, I look to community offerings. But if I'm being honest, we didn't visit the pool that much these past few years. It's blighted and unattractive. Half the pool isnt open. Next year my kids will be 9 and 11 and even less interested in a community pool with so little to offer.

At a time when so many people in this town are facing economic hardship, is it not your obligation to keep families in town, spending money, and attracting young families? Not to mention, an affordable option for families to be together during the warm months? I would pay for that. Let them ask, why not Wallingford?

Melissa Bader, Wallingford

So costly a sacrifice

Editor:

As we approach Memorial Day it is apparent we will be observing this day as a community in a very different manner. Due to Covid-19, which continues to have a devastating impact upon our health, our emotional well-being and our economy, the usual ways in which we observe Memorial Day as a community have changed. Our parades have been cancelled, as well as the community services in which we observe this day.

As a result, I would suggest we find other ways to observe Memorial Day, whether that be individually or with family and friends during the long weekend. Perhaps one way to do that would be to visit the various memorials in our communities that recognize those individuals who died while serving our country. Or, perhaps visit gravesites of some of those individuals who gave the most precious thing they had, their lives, while serving our country.

In doing so, we might reflect upon words attributed to Abraham Lincoln to a mother whose sons were reported to have been killed during the Civil War: the solemn pride that must be yours, to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of Freedom.

June Seichter, Wallingford
Bobby Wilson has been named executive director of the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency. The appointment was made following a unanimous vote by the 13-member Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission during a special virtual online meeting Friday. The Commission serves as the governing body of the TWRA.

I am humbled and honored that the Tennessee Fish and Wildlife Commission put their faith and trust in me to lead this Agency into the future, Mr.

Wilson said. I am really excited about going into this new role to be able to continue working with an incredibly dedicated and passionate group of men and women who work for this Agency. I look forward to the challenges that may lie ahead.

Originally joining the TWRA in 1979, Wilson moves into his new position on June 1 after serving as deputy executive director since September 2015. As deputy executive director, he was responsible for the coordination of all field activities for the four TWRA regions and central office programs. As the executive director, he will be replacing Ed Carter, who announced his retirement effective at the end of May.

It is a bittersweet moment for the Commission today as we allow Ed Carter to retire and welcome Bobby Wilson into the role of executive director, said Kurt Holbert, TFWC chairman. Bobbys experience and already longstanding successful career with the Agency and established relationships with local, state and national partners will allow the Agency to remain a national leader in wildlife conservation.

Mr. Wilson began his TWRA career as a part-time fisheries technician. He became manager of Lake Graham in Madison County in 1980 before becoming a fisheries biologist in Region I from 1984-97. He served as assistant chief of fisheries beginning in 1997 before being named chief in the spring of 2010.

He has been active in organizations on the state and national level during his career including the American Fisheries Society, Southeastern Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (SEAFWA), and the Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies (AFWA). He has several leadership roles. and recently was appointed to the Board of Directors for the Recreational Boating and Fishing Foundation (RBFF).

A native of Nashville, he is a graduate of Father Ryan High School. He holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from Tennessee Tech. He and his wife, Molly, have three adult children, sons Hunter and Taylor and daughter Rachel.
Mumbai, May 15 : Actress Shraddha Kapoor's love and affection towards animals is known to many. Now she has shared a post on her social media to support the #LockdownZoos initiative.

Shraddha shared a poem on her social media from the perspective of a caged animal, talking about freedom and life outside of zoos.

"A lot of us are feeling anxious and 'caged' during this lockdown. Imagine being taken away from your family, your home and being locked up for your entire life?" she began her post.

"Animals have feelings just like us. They get depressed when separated from their natural habitats and loved ones. Why should we believe that we have the right to take away their freedom?" She also shared why she chose to support the initiative.

"When @shazamorani asked me to be a part of this cause, I immediately jumped on board because I realized I could lend my voice to those who don't have one. Animals can't speak for them selves, we need to become their voice. I would truly hope that all of you do the same," she wrote.

"'Until one loves an animal, a part of one's soul remains unawakened' - Anatole France," she concluded.

-- Syndicated from IANS
A member of the Ku Klux Klan salutes during a rally in Pennsylvania.

William Thomas Cain/Getty Images

Amid the pandemic, Coloradans have been asked to cover their faces in public, when social distancing isn't possible.

One man was spotted at a grocery store, wearing what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood. It also had a swastika and peace sign on it.

He initially refused to leave so store employees called police, but was gone by the time officers responded to reports of trespassing.

On Monday, a man in Southern California was spotted at a supermarket dressed in a similar hood, but told law enforcement officers that it was "not intended to be a racial statement."

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

As the coronavirus pandemic rages across the United States, people are being asked to cover their faces in public to keep from picking up the infection, when social distancing isn't possible.

But a man in Dillon, Colorado, shocked customers on Thursday when he showed up to a City Market grocery store, wearing what appeared to be a Ku Klux Klan hood that also featured a swastika and peace sign.

The man was asked to leave the shop, but refused, so police were called to the scene, the Summit Daily News reported. He was gone when officers responded around 12:40 p.m. to reports of trespassing, said Police Chief Mark Heminghous, who is seeking the public's help in tracking down the man.

"Right now, they're trying to identify him, contact him and take it from there," Kerstin Anderson, Dillon's director of communications, told the Summit Daily News. "Obviously, we take this kind of action very seriously."

A spokesperson for City Market issued a statement to 9News, saying employees "embrace diversity and inclusion" in their stores and urged customers to do the same.

"Our store leaders are empowered to swiftly and respectfully address anyone who disregards these values, which includes blatant symbols of hate and intolerance," the statement said.

Story continues

A photograph of the man is making the rounds on social media.

This isn't the first time such an incident has occurred.

A man in a Klan hood was seen shopping at a Vons store in Southern California on Monday, CBS News reported.

Charges weren't pressed by the San Diego County Sheriff's Department because the unnamed man said wearing the hood was "not intended to be a racial statement." He claimed to be following the state's order to wear face masks in places of business.

"It was a mask, and it was stupid," he said, per CBS.

Even so, the San Diego County Sheriff's Department said the Santee community was "rightfully disgusted at this man's despicable behavior."

"This incident should serve as a reminder for anyone contemplating wearing or displaying items so closely associated with hate and human suffering that our society does not hold in high regard those who do so," the department said in a statement, CBS reported.

Have a news tip? Email this reporter: rmahbubani@businessinsider.com

Read the original article on Business Insider
Ellwood said the Johnson government is seriously considering reversing its Huawei decision, and several reports back that up. He is leading a parliamentary inquiry that will produce a report aimed at helping the government change its mind and reduce Britains reliance on Chinese telecom tech. The situation has already changed to the detriment of Huawei, Ellwood said. The government is very much alive and aware of the need to move away from the non-trusted telecom vendors.
Heritage Florida Jewish News is accepting nominations for the 2020 Heritage Human Service Award, which will be presented at the annual meeting of the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando in August.

For more than 30 years, individuals who have made major, voluntary contributions of their talent, time, energy and effort to the Central Florida community have been honored with the selection and presentation of this award, said Jeff Gaeser, editor and publisher of the Heritage. Last years recipient was Dick Weiner. Former recipients have included Stuart Farb (2010)), Burt Chasnov (2008), and Bob Yarmuth (2004).

According to Gaeser, Each recipient chose their own path, but made considerable and long-lasting contributions to the Jewish community. Nominees for the 2020 award are individuals who do not look for recognition, but perform tikkun olamrepairing the worldout of internal motivation.

Nominations should be emailed to news@orlandoheritage.com with the subject Human Service Award, or typed on 8 1/2 x 11 paper and sent by mail to Heritage Florida Jewish News, Human Service Award, 207 OBrien Road, Suite 101, Fern Park, FL 32730. Included should be the name and phone number of the nominee, a documented list of his or her accomplishments, and the name and phone number of the nominator(s).

The Heritage is accepting nominations until Friday, June 26.
More than 300,000 people around the world have now died globally from the coronavirus, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University, as the pandemic passed yet another bleak milestone.

More than 4.4 million cases have also been recorded, according to the university's count. Given the varied ways in which different countries report Covid-19 figures and the vast societal impact of the pandemic, the true number of infections and fatalities could be far higher, CNN reported.

More than a quarter of the global deaths - more than 84,000 - have occurred in the United States, where fatalities soared throughout April and continue to climb at a rate of around 1,500 a day. For weeks, the country has suffered more cumulative deaths than any other.

A number of Latin American countries have also reported rapid spikes in infections and deaths in recent days. Brazil, whose President Jair Bolsonaro has repeatedly dismissed the virus' threat, is seeing cases skyrocket and has recorded more than 13,000 deaths. Mexico has meanwhile suffered more than 4,000 fatalities, with significant outbreaks also seen in Ecuador and Peru.

In Europe, which had been battered by the virus shortly before the Americas, some countries are starting to announce more positive steps. Former hotspots Spain and Italy are cautiously moving towards re-opening some businesses and are consistently reporting daily deaths in the hundreds - far lower than in March and early April.

But the outlook is more dire in the United Kingdom, which has seen the most deadly outbreak on the continent, according to official figures.
Highlights Spotify has brought in offers wherein users opting for Premium subscription will get it for three months.

Other offers include an annual subscription for Rs 699 instead of Rs 1189.

Users subscribing for the family plan trial period can also get a subscription for 3 months.

Spotify has brought in a range of offers for its users as a cure for the lockdown blues. The Swedish music streaming company has extended its free premium trial subscription from 1 month to three months. The free one-month offer which is a trial period will now last for three months.

The free three month trial subscription is available until June 30 for individual, student, couple (Duo), and family plans where they can be applied. For Indian users, individual, family and student plans are available.

Spotify has also brought back its annual prepaid plan which comes at Rs 699 for one year. This has been discounted by 51 per cent. Initially, this offer was available at Rs 1189. This plan, too, is available until June 30, Spotify's website stated.

This means the annual pan will save 51 per cent as compared to the monthly plan which comes at Rs 129 for Premium Subscription. For a day the Premium Subscription comes at Rs 13. Or 7 days, it comes at Rs 39. For a month, it comes for Rs 129. For three months, it comes at Rs 389. For six months, it comes at Rs 719.

To get the 90-day subscription, users should head to spotify.com/premium, spotify.com/student, or spotify.com/family, as required. spotify.com/premium will show the available annual plans for users.

Spotify is also offering a family plan for 3 months. Under this offer, 6 premium accounts for family members are available for Rs 179 per month for prepaid users.

Users will have the leverage to cancel their subscription anytime. The USP of this plan is that for one account,six members can use the account. Also there are parental controls provided with the plan.

The first time Premium family users can get the subscription for free.

Users can also switch to any plans of their choice from Spotify Premium.

For users in the US, Germany, Sweden, the UK, Mexico and Brazil, Spotify has curated a list of podcast speakers. A report by Variety stated that for the first quarter of 2020, Spotify forecast total Monthly Active Users of 279 million-289 million and Premium subscribers to be between 126 million-131 million.
CITY OF INDUSTRY, Calif., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In a bid to diversify their ecommerce presence and reseller exposure, ACME Furniture has announced their recent joining of the large item focused Giga Cloud B2B Marketplace, an online arena where suppliers and resellers of furniture and other big, heavyweight items come together and do business on a platform made to accommodate needs unique to bulky products.

ACME Building

Having officially listed over 3,000 SKUs to the Marketplace for wholesale, a majority of ACME Furniture products can now be found on the E-Marketplace, making it a big move for ACME Furniture, gaining instant exposure for their new and classic inventories to a robust community of over 1,000 resellers and joining hundreds of suppliers on the Marketplace. "We see the potential in Giga Cloud Logistics and what they can offer us in terms of growth in the ecommerce sector," states Jean Chen, CEO of ACME Furniture. Being one of the largest furniture suppliers in the United States, this strategic move is set to push this industry heavyweight towards increased market share in the furniture supplier world.

"We are excited about the recent joining of ACME Furniture," states Scott Chorna, Vice President of Business Development at Giga Cloud Logistics. "Our Marketplace is central to what we do. Suppliers around the globe can work with us to get their inventories listed on the Marketplace and stored in our warehouses across the United States, whether they are a North America based or global supplier...we handle of all the details when it comes to transporting and distributing these heavy weight products with our logistics infrastructure, which takes a load off the shoulders of suppliers."

Having a well-rounded business model, Giga Cloud Logistics also provides Last-Mile Delivery services to high profile brands like VIZIO, a leading television supplier in the United States.

Suppliers aren't the only beneficiaries of this B2B Marketplace with resellers also taking part, being able to acquire a variety of products ranging from furniture, to exercise equipment, home appliances and more  as long as it fits the bill of a large heavyweight item that can benefit from Giga Cloud's oversized item focused system. With enticing features like no registration fees or minimum order quantities and high volume rebates on select products, it's no wonder the Giga Cloud Marketplace boasts a reseller count of over 1,000 users and growing, serving as a primed clientele for ACME Furniture to grow.

Media Contact:

Scott Chorna

626-626-4228

[email protected]

SOURCE Giga Cloud Logistics
A bipartisan group of federal lawmakers on Thursday unveiled a plan to compensate essential workers who fall sick of die from COVID-19, modeling the Pandemic Heroes Compensation Act after the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund.

Reps. Carolyn B. Maloney, D-NY, Jerrold Nadler, D-NY, Peter King ,R-NY, and Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-IL, who previously joined forces on the 9/11 compensation fund, introduced the measure during a digital news conference, joined by representatives of the Uniformed Fire Officers Association, Uniformed Firefighters Association, National Rural Letter Carriers Association, and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers.

According to a press release from Rep. Maloney, the Pandemic Heroes Compensation Act would set up a fund for essential workers and their families across all industries, providing financial assistance to help with medical costs, loss of employment, loss of business, replacement services and burial costs.

The announcement comes after individual state actions in at least 13 states that require workers compensation insurers to pay first responders, health care workers and other essential workers submitting COVID-19 workers comp claims to receive benefits without having to prove they were exposed to the virus during the course of their employment. The scope of the occupations covered under such presumptions vary by state.

The proposed federal funding act would:

Create a new website and office developed and administered by a Special Master to assist in the application process.

Maximize compensation for essential workers and their families by simplifying the application process to get those affected back on their feet.

Authorize appropriated funds as needed for five years with the fund permanently closing one fiscal year after the Special Master determines that no additional claims can be filed.

According to the media statement, the compensation application would allow claimants to provide information regarding the extent of their loss for consideration, and eligible individuals would receive compensation no later than 20 days after approval.

Family members who share homes with essential workers and became sick through contact with the essential worker would be eligible to file a claim.

In a media statement, Rep. Maloney, who lead the battle to permanently fund the 9/11 Victims Fund last year, said: On September 11th, it was the firefighters and officers who ran into the burning buildings to save lives. Today, it is hospital workersnurses, doctors, EMS, janitorial staff, pharmacists, technicians and all essential workers. We owe them more than applause at 7 p.m.

In this fight against the coronavirus, it is the first responders, retail workers, transit workers, grocery store clerks, delivery workers, janitorial staff, sanitation workers, mail carriers, hospitality workers, and federal, state and local employees who are on the frontlines, walking in to the fire every day as they risk their health to make sure we are safe, fed, and healthy.
Washington:

Netizens can now ping US President Barack Obama on Facebook just like they do to friends as the White House tries to stay in touch with people and keep up with the changing times using a Messenger bot.

1801: The White House starts to receive mail. 1880: The White House takes its first phone call. 1994: The White House receives email. And today for the first time ever, you can send a note to President Obama by messaging the White House on Facebook, the same way you message your friends, said the White House on its Facebook page while announcing the maiden initiative.

The White Houses Messenger bot, a first of its kind for any government the world over, will make it as easy as messaging your closest friends, Chief Digital Officer of the White House Jason Goldman said.

Every night, President Obama reads 10 letters that were sent to him by citizens and have been a part of his daily routine since taking office in 2009, he said in a statement yesterday.

These 10 letters a day, or 10 LADs as they are known to staff, do more to keep the President in touch with what is happening around the country than just about anything else, Goldman said, adding Obama is not alone in this and that reading letters from the public is a Presidential tradition going back to Thomas Jefferson.

The statement quoted Obama as saying that the letters not only help me to stay in touch with the people who sent me here, or the people who voted against me, but a lot of times they identify problems that might not have percolated up through the various agencies and bureaucracies. And more than once there have been occasions where these letters inspired action on real problems that are out there.

Goldman said: Today, there are more ways than ever for us to communicate. No matter where you are or what time of day it is, its possible to connect instantaneously, in real time, to people all over the world. One of our jobs at the White House is to keep up.

Our goal is to meet people where they are. It is the reason why Obama launched his own Twitter account and First Lady Michelle Obama is on Snapchat, he said, adding it is about creating opportunities for people to engage with their government in new and accessible ways, using the same technologies people already rely on in daily lives.

Face-to-face time is a little harder to come by these days, but technology makes it possible for anyone with an internet connection to send a message to the President and his Administration, he said.

For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
Pocono Raceway is selling tickets for its NASCAR Doubleheader week in late June. But will Pennsylvania be ready to host the event?

Asked about it during Fridays daily coronavirus briefing, Gov. Tom Wolf said its impossible to make a decision yet, throwing doubt on the four-day NASCAR event.

The Tricky Triangle is in Monroe County, which as of Friday remains in the red phase of Pennsylvanias coronavirus shutdown  where the strictest social distancing has been imposed. Nonessential businesses are closed, and gatherings of more than 10 people prohibited.

Forty-nine counties are in or will soon move to the yellow phase, the second level of the three-tiered reopening plan, including neighboring Carbon County. Monroe could soon be in that group as its rate of new coronavirus cases is near what has been deemed acceptable for starting the process.

(Cant see the map? Click here.)

But even under the yellow phase, social distancing is still required and gatherings larger than 25 people are still prohibited.

To have a chance at hosting a large NASCAR event, Monroe County will conceivably need to progress to the green phase by then  but the criteria for doing so and extent of remaining restrictions in that phase are yet to be determined.

This chart shows Gov. Tom Wolf's plan for reopening Pennsylvania, with different regions moving through three phases.

That doesnt mean a complete stop on Pocono events, however. Four area high schools will hold 2020 graduation on the track, where no one will leave their car as grads take a victory lap.

NASCAR, meanwhile, like other sports, halted races due to the pandemic but is set to resume racing Sunday in Darlington, South Carolina.

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.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.
The Kampong Chhnang Provincial Court has charged and sent radio owner Sok Oudom to pre-trial detention on Friday, days after the Ministry of Information revoked the stations media license for exaggerated news reporting.



Chhuon Sivin, a Kampong Chhnang Provincial Court spokesperson, confirmed that Sok Oudom had been charged and sent to pre-trial detention. The spokesperson added that Sok Oudom was guilty of inciting villagers to grab military and state land for private ownership, but provided no other details about the case.



When asked if the case was an impingement on press freedom, Chhuon Sivin did not give a direct answer.



It is your right to say so, but the prosecutor decided to charge him like this, he said.



Long Sitha, the prosecutor in the case, said that the radio station owner was charged under Article 495 of the Criminal Code, again refusing to divulge details of the alleged crime.



Article 495 of the Criminal Code relates to incitement to commit a felony and carries a prison sentence of six months to 2 years. The charge is often employed by prosecutors against critics of the government.

The Ministry of Information on Tuesday revoked the media license for Rithysen Radio News Station on FM99.75 and the stations website for allegedly publishing information which is exaggerated information, contains incitement to violence, provocation to commit discrimination and provocation to cause social insecurity and chaos.



On Wednesday, Sok Oudom was arrested by local police and questioned before being sent to provincial court on Thursday.



Sam Chankea, provincial coordinator for rights group ADHOC in Kampong Chhnang, said the incitement charge was frequently employed by the government to silence critics.

People asked him to report their stories and he just broadcast the stories. It is his right and freedom, Sam Chankea said.

Sok Oudoms wife, Nuth Sovanthou, 36, said villagers had requested the radio station owner to document their land dispute with a local military official on May 12. A day later, she said, the military official filed a complaint and Sok Oudom was arrested.

It is very very unfair, she said. If he reported something wrong, why didnt the accused asked him for an explanation? Why directly arrest him?



Kampong Chhnang provincial police chief Khov Ly told VOA Khmer on Thursday there was a complaint against the radio station, but refused to divulge any details. He only said that Sok Oudoms broadcasts were incitement for people to occupy state land at Phnom Oral Wildlife Sanctuary in Kampong Chhnang province.



Sok Oudom posted stories on the Facebook page named Rithysen Radio News Station, often covering topics such as land disputes and clashes between the people and police officials. He also commented on court cases in the provincial court and even highlighted a local land dispute allegedly involving police officials.
New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 pm at National Media centre on Friday to announce the third tranche of the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan economic package of Rs 20 lakh crore.

On Thursday (May 14) Sitharaman announced the second tranche of measures related to Atmanirbhar Bharat. The FM 2nd tranche of package laid focus on migrant workers, street vendors, small traders, small farmers.

For migrant labour, FM announced additional food grain to all the states/UTs at the rate of 5 kg per migrant labourer and 1 kg Chana per family per month for two months i.e. May and June 2020 free of cost.

She also announced that pilot scheme for portability of ration cards will be extended to 23 states. By that, 67 crore beneficiaries covering 83% of the PDS population will be covered by national portability of ration cards by August 2020. 100% National portability will be achieved by March 2021.

FM said that government will provide interest subvention of 2% for prompt payees for a period of 12 months to MUDRA Shishu loanees, who have loans below Rs 50,000. The current portfolio of MUDRA Shishu loans is around Rs 1.62 Lakh crore. This will provide relief of about Rs 1,500 crore to Shishu MUDRA loanee.

In the second tranche, FM announced Rs 70,000 crore boost to the housing sector, middle-income group through Credit Linked Subsidy Scheme under PMAY (Urban).

Other announcements included Rs 6,000 crore for creating employment using CAMPA funds, Rs 30,000 crore additional emergency working capital for farmers through NABARD, and Rs 2 lakh crore credit boost to 2.5 crore farmers under Kisan Credit Card Scheme.

On Wednesday (May 13) Sitharaman announced the first tranche of measures related to Atmanirbhar Bharat. The FM gave details of 15 new and some enhanced measures to revive businesses. She announced a host of fiscal and regulatory measures for MSMEs, Real Estate, NBFCs, EPF, and Discoms.

Sitharaman has said that the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package is to spur growth and build a self-reliant India. The package was finalised after consulting various stakeholders.

It may be noted that PM Modi in his speech had emphasised that bold reforms are needed to make the country self-reliant so that the impact of crisis such as COVID can be negated in future that ranges from supply chain reforms for agriculture, rational tax system, simple and clear laws. He also pointed that measures must be in place to attract investment and further strengthen 'Make in India'.
As many as 26 Vietnamese people have volunteered to donate part of their lungs to save a critically ill British pilot, Vietnams 91st COVID-19 patient, the National Co-ordination Centre for Human Organ Transplantation has said.

The British pilot, who is Vietnams 91st COVID-19 patient, has been treated at the HCM Citys Hospital for Tropical Diseases.  Photo tuoitrenews.vn

Nguyen Hoang Phuc, deputy director of the centre told the online newspaper zingnews.vn that about 20 people called the centre to register for lung donation and six people contacted the centre via the Facebook fanpage.

All were Vietnamese nationals and had no relationship with the patient in person.

Phuc said the kind gestures were highly appreciated and it would be a source of encouragement for the health sector in trying to cure the patient.

However, doctors said the patient should receive organs from a brain-dead registered donor. Current regulations didnt allow transplant lungs to be donated by most living people. The donated lungs must come from a brain-dead donor.

On Wednesday, a woman and a veteran aged over 40 and 70, respectively, registered to donate their lungs to the patient.

A potential brain-dead donor met the criteria, however, his lungs were found to have an infection and were no longer working.

The British patient, 43, was infected with SAR-CoV-2 in Vietnam on March 19 after visiting the Buddha Bar which subsequently emerged as a COVID-19 cluster in HCM City.

Vietnams 91st COVID-19 patient has been treated at the HCM Citys Hospital for Tropical Diseases. As of Thursday morning, the tests results showed severe solidification and fibrosis of the lungs, making it difficult for oxygen to get into the patients blood.

The patient has since tested negative for the virus. He is completely dependent on Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation (ECMO) and needs blood infiltration.

Dr Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, director of the hospital said the hospital was re-conducting all tests to assess the function of the lungs, heart and organs in the patients body and tests on superinfection bacteria.

Doctors would then conduct professional consultations to review the condition of the patient, he said.

According to the hospital, the treatment cost for the patient has reached more than VN3 billion ($128,550). The lung transplant was estimated to cost between VN1-1.5 billion ($42,850-64,270).  VNS

Watch our video on the lifting of lockdown order in Dong Cuu Village in Hanoi:
EKF and Tosoh Europe N.V. Sign Distribution Agreement for Quo-Test HbA1c POC Analyzer in Middle East and Africa

By HospiMedica International staff writers

Posted on 15 May 2020



Image: EKFs Quo-Test analyzer (Photo courtesy of EKF Diagnostics)

EKF Diagnostics has signed a three-year distribution agreement with (Cardiff, UK) Tosoh Europe N.V. (Tessenderlo, Belgium) for the distribution of its Quo-Test HbA1c point-of-care (POC) analyzer in the Middle East and Africa.



Tosoh Bioscience division is one of the largest global manufacturers of high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) equipment for glycated hemoglobin analysis predominantly in core laboratories. Tosohs analyzers are frequently used to benchmark and validate POC devices such as Quo-Test. As a desktop analyzer designed for simple and reliable HbA1c measurement for monitoring and managing diabetes in POC settings, such as diabetes clinics and doctors surgeries, EKFs Quo-Test analyzer complements Tosohs HPLC technology.



Quo-Test is fully automated and quantifies HbA1c from a 4L sample taken from a finger prick or venous whole blood. Unaffected by most hemoglobin variants, lab-quality results are available within four minutes and reported in IFCC and DCCT standard units. Also facilitating its use as a POC analyzer, step-by-step instructions are displayed on Quo-Tests multi-lingual display, minimizing staff training time and minimizing user-related errors.



EKFs Quo-Test distribution agreement with Tosoh Europe will allow both the companies to work in markets they have previously been unable to access and provide Tosoh Europe with the opportunity to offer new services to suit changing customer requirements. After the initial three-year term for the Middle East and Africa, the distribution agreement has a rolling one-year renewal with the option to extend the agreement into EU countries as required.



We are delighted to partner with Tosoh Europe as they expand their need for point-of-care HbA1c analysis in a time where those suffering from diabetes are at greater risk, said Julian Baines, CEO of EKF. Tosoh is a leading HPLC brand and its analyzers are considered to be the gold standard when validating POC products such as EKFs Quo-Test. For them to choose our analyzer to complement their lab-based HPLC analyzers for HbA1c testing is a great endorsement of our technology.










Judge Sullivan has also asked him to evaluate whether Mr. Flynn committed perjury and should be held in contempt of court.

How might Mr. Flynn have committed perjury?

Mr. Flynn has said under oath multiple times  and signed a statement under penalty of perjury  that he knowingly lied to the F.B.I. agents. When he pleaded guilty in a 2018 hearing, Judge Sullivan questioned him at length about his actions, warning him any false answers will get you in more trouble.

The judge delayed sentencing Mr. Flynn to give him more time to cooperate with the prosecution of his former business partner and put himself in the best possible light. But Mr. Flynn later stopped cooperating, changed lawyers and sought to withdraw his guilty plea.

In a sworn declaration in January, he claimed that he did not lie to the agents and that he had not remembered the details of his phone calls with the ambassador. He said he pleaded guilty only because his former lawyers had advised him to and he feared the consequences if he insisted he was innocent.

What would it mean if the judge found Mr. Flynn in contempt?

Contempt of court can be a crime. Under a Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, federal judges  without the involvement of the Justice Department prosecutors  may fine or imprison people who misbehave in court in a way that impedes the administration of justice.

Judge Sullivan appears to be contemplating deeming Mr. Flynns contradictory statements to him while under oath as such misconduct. That would be highly unusual, some legal experts said, but probably in his discretion.

What is Mr. Barrs argument for dropping the case?

The Justice Department claims that there was no legitimate investigation to justify the F.B.I.s interview of Mr. Flynn, so his lies  if they were lies  were not material ones and thus did not constitute a crime.
Samajwadi Party leaders Akhilesh Yadav on Friday took a dig at the Atmanirbhar economic package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, suggesting that self-reliance and loans do not go together.

The opposition leader posted a make-believe conversation in which a student asks what is meant by a loan and also seeks to know the meaning of self-reliant.

Are loan and self-reliance synonymous, the student asks. I will ask Delhi and tell you, the teacher replies.

Yadav did not elaborate on the teacher-student joke he tweeted in Hindi. But the apparent reference was to the loans announced in the Rs 20 lakh crore self-reliance package to revive the economy hit by the COVID-19 crisis.

Yadav had earlier termed the package a jumla, or empty rhetoric.

What kind of solution is this, he had asked in an earlier tweet.

Farmers are being asked to take loans. This is not the time to talk in the air about the future but to give immediate relief to farmers, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Sullivan has a reputation as a leading judicial advocate for fuller disclosure of evidence by prosecutors to defendants. But so far he has balked at Flynns argument that he was entrapped. In twice having Flynn admit his guilt in court under oath, Sullivan in 2018 said he did not recall ever taking a plea of guilty from someone who maintained that he was not guilty, and I dont intend to start today. Sullivan also explicitly said to Flynn that any false answers will get you in more trouble.
Gov. Phil Murphy formally endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden for president on Thursday.

The backing came at the beginning of an online discussion about the coronavirus with Biden and Democratic Govs. Ned Lamont of Connecticut and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, and five weeks after Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., ended his quest for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Im thrilled to be, with great passion and conviction, a supporter of yours for president of the United States," Murphy told Biden, who hosted the discussion.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

Then Murphy renewed his plea for billions of dollars in federal aid.

The New Jersey governor has not been shy about calling for aid he said would avoid a fiscal disaster and prevent massive layoffs.

Our costs are going up by the minute, Murphy said. Our revenues have fallen off a cliff. Theres nothing that can replace the existential role that the federal government can play.

When Murphy made a similar plea to President Donald Trump at the White House last month, he was he was told that it was a tough question.

However, Biden embraced Murphys request.

Guess what, the very people you want to be able make sure state and local governments will be able to continue to pay and keep on the payroll are the people who are carrying the rest of the country on their backs right now, Biden said.

He endorsed the $3 trillion House Democratic stimulus bill expected to pass Friday, which contains $500 billion in federal aid for states, and wondered why Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., ever suggested that states could go bankrupt.

I find it a little disturbing, Biden said. What are he and the president thinking about?

While Whitmer and Trump have traded barbs with each other, Murphy has chosen not to criticize the president over his response to the coronavirus.

The closest he came during the session was when he said, Its no secret that as a nation and certainly in our state, we did not begin the pandemic with remotely the horsepower and supplies that we needed, though he quickly said he was able to find common ground with the Trump administration.

Republican National Committee spokeswoman Ellie Hockenbury responded to the Biden event by pointing out that Murphy has praised this administrations leadership.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Jonathan D. Salant may be reached at jsalant@njadvancemedia.com.
As the government continues to request people stay home, Noboru Aoki, 72, a rickshaw driver in Kamakura, Kanagawa Prefecture, makes his way around town with his rickshaw six days a week. This, however, is only to maintain his endurance, as he has taken to social media to urge would-be visitors to refrain from coming to the area.

In a typical year, the shopping district, Komachi Street, which connects Kamakura Station and Tsurugaoka Hachimangu shrine, bustles with tourists and sightseers, but these days many of the shops are closed.

"This time last year, [this area] was full of people and pulling my rickshaw was difficult," the 36-year veteran rickshaw driver said while looking out at the quiet town.

In 1984, he left his life as a salaryman behind and began working as a rickshaw driver guiding visitors around Kamakura. However, due to the new coronavirus, the number of visitors has dropped, and since the declaration of the state of emergency, almost all reservations have been canceled. In April, he saw only one customer. "It's gotten difficult now that my income has decreased," he said.

In late April, before the Golden Week holiday period, he took a photo of himself in front of his rickshaw wearing a mask, positioning his arms in the shape of an X, and posted it to Facebook with a caption that read, "Please don't come to Kamakura Shonan."

At that time, the roads along the sea were congested with the cars of tourists, and people were voicing their concerns over the risk of an infection outbreak. To resolve this, now is the time to exercise self-restraint, he thinks.

In order to operate the 80-kilogram rickshaw, he must maintain his stamina. "I want to welcome everyone to the best of my ability once this is all over," Aoki said.
The Mayor of Somalia's capital has warned of hundreds of deaths that he suspects have been caused by the new coronavirus, suggesting that actual death toll may be 10 times higher than official figures. In an address at the beginning of May to the Somali COVID-19 Task Force, Mogadishu Mayor Omar Mohamud Mohamed said that "the highest deaths we recorded in a single day was 49 people and the lowest was 22, and this is just between the 19th of April and the beginning of May."

Given the higher-than-usual death rates for Mogadishu, he said that he calculates that the death toll among COVID-19 infected patients in the capital could be "almost 500 people". According to Johns Hopkins University figures, Somalia has 1,219 confirmed cases of COVID-19 and 52 deaths. The comments by the mayor are echoed by workers in one of the city's largest cemeteries, who said they were preparing more funerals than ever before.

"I remember a few days ago, we were burying between 15 to 25 dead bodies a day, and this has never happened before," said Ali Dhere, a grave digger. Many families in Somalia do not register deaths, but prefer to simply bury their dead on the day they die in accordance with Islamic customs. This makes data on deaths and causes of deaths extremely difficult to tabulate.

Most patients are also more likely to stay at home than seek medical care in a country where many can't afford to be hospitalized. There also just aren't a lot of hospitals, even in Mogadishu, to take care of COVID-19 patients.The Martini Hospital was recently renovated with Italian government funding after housing squatters for decades. Since reopening in February this year, it has mostly dealt with severe cases of COVID-19.

Dr. Abdirizak Yusuf, who works at the Martini Hospital said the facility only has 76 beds, among them 20 ICU beds."The hospital cannot cover the needs of the population of people in Mogadishu," he said. "That is why we need to be planning to open other hospitals. I am very worried that the hospital will be overwhelmed by COVID-19 patients as the virus continues to spread."

Somalia has one of the weakest health systems in the world following the fall of the central government in 1992 and decades of civil war. The country is facing one of the highest case counts in the Horn of Africa region after neighboring Djibouti. For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death. The vast majority of people recover.
African startups have another $100 million in VC to pitch for after Novastar Ventures' latest raise.

The Nairobi and Lagos-based investment group announced it has closed $108 million in new commitments to launch its Africa Fund II, which brings Novastar's total capital to $200 million.

With the additional resources, the firm plans to make 12 to 14 investments across the continent, according to Managing Director Steve Beck. He spoke to TechCrunch on Novastar Ventures' plans for the new fund.

A notable update to Novastar's VC focus is geographic scope. The firm was originally co-founded in Kenya by Beck and British investor Andrew Carruthers and built its first portfolio largely around companies based in East Africa. Novastar Ventures made 15 investments with its first fund, including companies such as Uganda and Kenya-focused energy startup SolarNow and agtech venture M-Farm.

"The second fund is basically the same strategy as the first, but...the biggest difference is that we opened up a second front in West Africa  more particularly to be in and around the entrepreneurial system in Lagos," Beck told TechCrunch on a call.

Before closing its Africa Fund II, Novastar Ventures had already made several investments in West Africa, including leading a round in Nigerian on-demand motorcycle transit startup Max.ng and backing Ghanaian health company, MPharma. Novastar opened an office Lagos in 2019.

On the types of startups Novastar will target with its new fund, the focus is more on mission than industry silos, according to co-founder Steve Beck. "We're sector agnostic. I would describe us more as a segment fund than a sector fund," he said.

"We really try to look for businesses called breakthrough businesses, [Those] that are addressing the biggest problems in the largest markets."

That has led Novastar Ventures to invest in digital companies in education, information access, agtech, mobility and off-grid energy.

Story continues

"Essentially what we're doing is looking for those businesses that are addressing the basic needs, basic goods and services across the true mass markets of the continent," said Beck.

On whether the firm is a dedicated impact fund, Beck said, "The way we characterize ourselves is we're a commercial venture fund with an impact screen."

On investment amounts and types, Novastar Ventures is fairly flexible on ticket size, from seed to later stage.

"We're gonna...have some portfolio companies where we put to work a million dollars or less or we're going to have some where we put $8 or $9 million dollars in through multiple capital rounds. That's...the deployment strategy," Beck said.

Novastar Ventures works closely with its portfolio companies, according to its co-founder.

"We're very active investors and always take a board seat to be close to the entrepreneurs. We often are the first institutional investor that they have."

Africa Top VC Markets 2019

Image Credits: TechCrunch

Startups who want to pitch to the company can reach out to the fund's founders and directors via the website or LinkedIn, according to Beck. He added that Novastar Ventures is recruiting to add another member to its investor team in 2020.

The firm's latest raise and $200 million capital amount creates another high-value fund focused on African startups.

On the high-end of estimates, the continent's tech ecosystem reached $2 billion in VC to startups in 2019, compared to less than half a billion dollars five years ago.

Other large Africa-focused VC shops include TLcom Capital  which closed a $71 million fund in February  and Partech, which doubled its Africa fund to $143 million in 2019. The venture arms of major global companies have also become more active in African tech recently, including that of Goldman Sachs and Visa.
Oil patch lawsuits between landowners and producers ramp up with clockwork predictability when the price of West Texas Intermediate dramatically sinks.

But when the price of crude crashed into the negative range on April 20, oil and gas litigation took an especially sharp turn. Now, oil and gas companies are trying to save themselves as landowners try to protect their royalty income. Here are a few of the latest trends:

Force majeure disputes

Most oil and gas leases include a force majeure clause. This clause allows parties to excuse their obligations under a contract due to events beyond their control, or force majeure events often described as acts of God, acts of war, labor disputes and governmental orders.

While industry friendly form contracts may include lack of market as a force majeure event, landowner friendly forms may specifically exclude market conditions from force majeure. Boilerplate forms that were not the result of individual negotiations, however, are likely to contain boilerplate force majeure language that does not specifically mention the lack of market due to a global pandemic.

As a result, at least one state government (located immediately north of the Red River) asked President Donald Trump to declare the COVID-19 pandemic an act of God in an attempt to aid oil and gas companies in invoking force majeure clauses that use this more general term. Just last week, a Texas oil company invoked its force majeure clause, citing the Russian-Saudi price war as the triggering event.

Media appeal notwithstanding, it remains to be seen whether the law will recognize a unilateral declaration from a government official or company that an occurrence is a force majeure event under a particular contract, a determination that is ordinarily left to the courts.

Shut-in wells

If an oil and gas company cannot delay its performance under an oil and gas lease through a force majeure clause, it may be able to do so by turning to its shut-in clause. This clause typically allows an oil and gas company to shut in a gas well by tendering a pre-agreed amount of money.

Some older form leases, however, may not specifically limit shut-in clauses to gas wells and would allow a company to shut in an oil well, too. There will, nevertheless, be situations where companies shut in wells that primarily produce oil but are capable of producing gas, a move that would lead everyone involved back to the courthouse.

Lease terminations

If an oil and gas company cannot invoke force majeure or shut-in provisions, it may be forced to try to perpetuate the oil and gas lease by marginal production. Generally, companies must produce oil or gas in paying quantities, which roughly means that revenues exceed expenses from operating and marketing oil and gas over a reasonable period of time.

When a barrel of oil costs less than a burger, expenses can quickly exceed revenues. Because many oil and gas companies were operating with little or no profit before the current price collapse, disputes between landowners and producers over whether an oil and gas lease is still producing in paying quantities are likely to proliferate in the near future.

In times like these, when asset value is diminishing, oil and gas companies and landowners alike should seek experienced legal counsel to navigate these developments and maintain maximum value of their assets.

Marble is an oil and gas attorney with Jackson Walker LLP.
Astronauts Begin Quarantine Ahead Of SpaceX Demo-2 Mission To ISS News oi-Sharmishte Datti

SpaceX Crew Dragon spaceship is gearing up for its manned mission, carrying two NASA astronauts to the International Space Station. Ahead of the liftoff, astronauts Robert "Bob" Behnken and Douglas "Doug" Hurley entered have begun their pre-flight quarantine to ensure that the deadly virus doesn't enter the low Earth orbit or space.

NASA Astronauts In Quarantine

The COVID-19 pandemic is sweeping across the globe with the number of positive cases on the rise. AS the pandemic drags on for months now, NASA has decided to continue its schedule of sending astronauts to and from ISS.

Hence, Behnken and Hurley have entered quarantine, which is officially termed as 'flight crew health stabilization'. The quarantine ensures that the astronauts are healthy and won't carry any contagious illnesses to the space station.

"Spending the final two weeks before liftoff in quarantine helps ensure the Demo-2 crew arrives healthy, protecting themselves and their colleagues already on the station," NASA said in a blog post updating the health of the astronauts and launch details.

It should also be noted that, before the global pandemic, all astronauts were sent to quarantine before liftoff and also after they land. It's a practice that NASA has been following since the early Apollo program days.

SpaceX Demo-2 Mission

The SpaceX Demo-2 mission is where the NASA astronauts will be heading to ISS. After years together, this would be the first spaceship made on American soil to carry NASA astronauts to space. The Space Crew Dragon is expected to liftoff on May 27 from NASA's Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida.

Prior to this mission, NASA astronauts relied on the Russian Soyuz spaceship to reach ISS, which would liftoff from Kazakhstan. This is why astronauts entered pre-flight quarantine near the launch site. But now, since the launch would take place in the US, astronauts have two options.

One, astronauts can maintain quarantine conditions at home can stay at home until they leave for KSC, where they must report on May 20. Or they could also stay at NASA's Astronaut Quarantine Facility at Johnson Space Center before they go to KSC. As NASA begins sending astronauts from the US, this procedure will likely be followed henceforth.

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One of the UK's first gay fathers has revealed that he has fathered 17 children in his time, after secretly being an 'international sperm donor' over the years.

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 50, from Manchester, rose to fame in 1999 with he and his then-partner Tony Barlow became one of Britain's first gay couples to father a child through surrogacy.

The millionaire, who is expecting a baby via surrogacy with his boyfriend Scott Hutchinson, has now revealed that this will be his 17th child, the Sun has reported.

He explained that he fathered two children with two different women at the same time as a teenager before realising he was gay, and then had five with his ex-husband before he went on to donate sperm at an international level, with eight donations being successful.

On top of welcoming his own baby this year, Barrie, who currently lives in Florida, says he has donated his sperm to a lesbian couple located in Manchester, who are also expecting a newborn this year.

Barrie Drewitt-Barlow, 50, from Manchester, who rose to fame in 1999 when he became one of the UK's first gay dads, revealed he had fathered 17 children, having had two children before coming out, five children with his former husband Tony Barlow, expecting one child with his current partner Scott Hutchinson, 25 (left) and having led a 'secret international sperm donor' life for many years

'I am the biological dad now actually to 17 children which include my own children and the children I provided sperm for,' Barrie said.

'When I was a teenager I got two women pregnant at the same time - before I realised I was gay. Goodness knows how I didn't know it myself as I was as camp as Christmas!'

Barrie had five children with his former husband Tony Barlow, whom he separated from in 2019. The couple had Aspen and Saffron, 20 in 1999, Orlando, born in 2001 and twins Jasper and Dallas born in 2010.

The prolific sperm donor is awaiting his first child with new partner Scott Hutchinson, 25 years his junior, who will become a father for the first time.

Barrie rose to fame in 1999 when he and Tony were ones of the UK's first gay couples to become parents via surrogacy (pictured then after the birth of baby Saffron and Aspen)

Scott used to date Barrie's daughter Saffron, 20, before Barrie and him started to date in 2019.

The couple have been worried about their surrogate's health during the coronavirus crisis, which has affected 1.45million in the US.

They revealed their surrogate suspected she had contracted COVID-19, and that while she was first carrying triplets, the number of fetuses had gone from three to one.

'I can't pretend we werent devastated, when we discovered our triplets are now one baby, but when there are people all over the world whose IVF has been postponed or cancer or other treatment, we still feel we are very lucky to have a child on the way,' Barry said.

Saying they were expecting a girl, Barrie explained they would be applying for surrogacy as early as next year to make sure their newborn daughter has siblings to play with.

Barrie and Scott entered a romantic relationship after Barrie separated from Tony. Scott used to date Barrie's daughter Saffron, 20 (centre)

The baby is due on October 24, the day of Barrie's birthday, and the couple recently saw a scan of their unborn daughter via Facebook, impatiently waiting to meet her.

Tony, who has had health complications due to a cancer treatment a few years ago, has had reconstructive jaw surgery recently and still lives with Barrie and Scott in Florida.

Barrie joked that he was managing his ten-bedroom mansion with staff, and that it had been chaos, comparing it to the hit movie 'Three Men and a Baby.'

Caring for his kids, ex-husband and boyfriend has left Barrie, who admitted he had not done the washing in years, feeling exhausted.


Thy Kingdom Come offers Pentecost prayer rooms Thy Kingdom Come offers Pentecost prayer rooms

Thy Kingdom Come is an international prayer initiative for the period between Ascension and Pentecost. Here Tim Yau, Pioneer Missioner for the Diocese of Norwich, encourages people to get involved.

Across cultures theres a human inclination to reach out to something bigger than ourselves. As Christians we find that in Jesus. However, western culture seems to have numbed people to that reality, until now.



According to recent Tearfund research, during the Coronavirus outbreak over half of all adults in the UK have turned to prayer. We dont know the who, what, when, where, why or how theyre praying, but I believe that when people pray, they can encounter God.



Thy Kingdom Come (TKC) is about going deeper with God, praying for five to come to faith in Jesus, and being empowered to be effective in sharing his message. Alongside all this, well be creating this year outdoor TKC prayer spaces, with corresponding online space, for people to explore questions about life, spirituality and faith in creative and reflective ways.



These physical and virtual TKC spaces will be a symbol that the Church, although locked out of its buildings, is still active in the community and that God is present and interested in their lives.

For churches, there is an Upper Room resource - a virtual prayer room where churches can take part in continuous prayer alongside international prayer organisation - 24/7 prayer. Inspired by the upper room experience in the book of Acts, where the early disciples gathered to pray, this timely resource encourages churches to go deeper in continuous prayer drawing on the richness of this historic tradition.



All key resources are available as digital downloads on the TKC website. This includes a Prayer Journal with Bible readings, reflections and care actions. It features the Fathers Love illustration from renowned artist Charlie Mackesy on the cover. The Journey with Mary devotional is also available with an accompanying podcast series.



For families, the Digital Family Prayer Adventure Map, created with Missional Generation, will aid children and young people explore prayer in a fun way.



For this years Thy Kingdom Come including prayer and care and new resources for churches, families and individuals, visit www.Thykingdomcome.global



Meanwhile there are now over 225 services being shared digitally across the Diocese of Norwich every week. Churches are live streaming services, hosting virtual groups, and sharing content digitally via YouTube, Facebook, Zoom and others. You can read more about them here .



Bishop Graham is inviting everyone across the diocese to join him at 9pm each evening between Ascension Day and Pentecost in a virtual Compline service. Together with millions of other Christians around the world we will be praying the words of Jesus, 'Thy Kingdom Come'. You can respond to the invitation here.



Pictured above is Tim Yau



Eldred Willey, 15/05/2020
CDFA revised budget for 2020-2021

Sacramento, California - Governor Gavin Newsom submitted a revised 2020-2021 budget proposal to the State Legislature today.

Because of COVID-19, California and economies across the country are confronting a steep and unprecedented economic crisis  facing massive job losses and revenue shortfalls.

The Governors budget reflects that emergency. The administration is proposing a budget to fund our most essential priorities, and to support workers and small businesses as we restart our economy.

Because of the size of the hole, there is no responsible way to avoid cuts. The budget document shows that the most painful cuts will be triggered if the federal government does not pass a package that helps states.

Here are some of items of note for CDFA.

Farm to School: This proposal requesting $10,000,000 in 2020-21, and $1,504,000 GF in 2021-22 and ongoing is sustained as it was in the Governors January budget. The funding would establish six positions to provide baseline and expansion support to the Office of Farm to Forks (CDFA-F2F) California Farm to School Network. This request includes $8,496,000 to be made available for grants to qualifying Local Educational Agencies participating in the farm to school incubator pilot, and it would allow CDFA-F2F to create a roadmap to transformational change in the school food system that supports California farmers, expands food access, and helps achieve the state vision of a California for All.

CalCannabis: The May Revision includes $64,302,000 and 165 positions to continue the implementation of cannabis cultivation licensing and enforcement under the Medical and Adult Use Cannabis Regulation and Safety Act. This will enable CalCannabis to continue planning for consolidation with the three cannabis licensing agencies and work with the State Legislature in the coming year with the goal of establishing the new Department of Cannabis Control in July 2021.

Proposition 12: The May Revision includes $1,443,000 and 6 positions in 2020-21, and $2,818,000 and 15 positions in 2021-22 and ongoing to fund this program on an ongoing basis. The people of California overwhelmingly voted in favor of Proposition 12; in favor of poultry, swine and veal calves raised with strict requirements regarding confinement practices in the production of the products that will be sold in California.

Fairgrounds: The Network of California Fairs has historically supported its own operations through revenue-generating activities with limited supplemental state support. As a result of COVID-19 impacts, fairs are canceling revenue-generating activities and are projected to lose approximately $98 million in revenue between March and June 2020, and revenue loss is expected to continue. Many fairs have little to no reserves and must initiate the layoff process immediately as they may become insolvent. The May Revision includes $40.3 million to support state-affiliated fairs that are projected to have insufficient reserves to pay legally mandated costs that may be incurred during the state civil service layoff process, including staff salary, payout of leave balances, and insurance.

The May Revision eliminates $2,250,000 that was proposed for Cal Expo in the Governors Budget in January, as that is factored into the $40.3 million proposed in the May Revision.

Fresno-Merced Future of Food (F3) Innovation Initiative: The May Revise reduces funding from $33 million to $2 million. The Fresno-Merced Future of Food (F3) Innovation Initiative seeks to develop world-recognized, Climate-Smart Food and Agriculture Systems that provide solutions to chronic economic and environmental challenges within the Central Valley that have been exasperated by the COVID outbreak. The Administration sees this proposal as a unique opportunity to spur new technologies appropriate for all scales of agriculture and job growth within the food and agriculture system that is inclusive and sustainable.

The May Revision eliminates $2,250,000 that was proposed for Cal Expo in the Governors Budget in January, as that is factored into the $40.3 million proposed in the May Revision.

Cap and Trade: Historically, CDFAs Climate Smart Agriculture programs have been funded by auction proceeds from the cap-and-trade program: the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund. The May Revision maintains the Governors Budget program allocations but adds a pay-as-you-go mechanism and certain priority programs, such as the FARMER program. After fulfilling the allocations to these programs, any remaining auction proceeds would be allocated to other programs, including methane reduction and healthy soils, on a proportional basis.

State Water Efficiency and Enhancement Program (SWEEP): The May Revision eliminates $20 million that was included in the Governors Budget in January for SWEEP grants. Although the new fiscal reality prevents SWEEP from being included in this proposed revised budget, the fact is that there are a total of 725 projects funded with past investment of $72 million. That has resulted in significant work to improve resiliency. CDFA will continue to partner with NRCS and other grant programs to promote this kind of on-farm water use efficiency.

Biodiversity: The May Revision eliminates $3,901,000 from CDFAs budget that was authorized in the Budget Act of 2019.
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Tweet of the Week

North Carolina has been granted a federal disaster declaration for storms, tornadoes and flooding that hit the state in February. This declaration will help 18 counties that suffered damages continue to recover and make repairs.https://t.co/KUY6h6hTru  Governor Roy Cooper (@NC_Governor) May 11, 2020

North Carolina is working with local manufacturers to shift their production to make critical medical supplies. In March, Governor Roy Cooper established the state's Task Force for Emergency Repurposing of Manufacturing (TFERM) to increase the amount of protective gear made here at home.said Cooper.TFERM worked with the N.C. Manufacturing Extension Partnership Carolina Textile District , and the Economic Development Partnership of N.C. to identify 300 local companies to help produce critical medical supplies and PPE including face shields, hand sanitizer, cloth masks, gowns and more. Several companies have already filled purchase orders for the state, with more expected in coming weeks.If your company can sell or donate PPE or other critical supplies to the state complete the online COVID-19 procurement form to be considered. Companies making COVID-19 supplies not purchased by the state are referred to SupplyConnector.org Read more about NC companies' contributions to PPE in the Press Release It's important to rely on trusted sources of information about COVID-19. Keep up with the latest information on Coronavirus in North Carolina HERE Texttoto receive general information and updates about COVID-19 and North Carolina's response. Dial 2-1-1 provides free, confidential information and is available 24 hours a day to help you find resources within your community. They can connect you with people and groups that can help with questions about access to food, shelter, health care, employment and child care.Families who need food assistance for their children can texttoto find free meal sites in their communities.Make sure to prioritize your overall wellness and don't hesitate to seek additional help.Optum has a toll-free 24-hour Emotional Support Help Line atfor people who may be experiencing anxiety or stress due to Coronavirus.You can track the disease in real time through the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services' COVID-19 NC Dashboard . It includes detailed information about the state's COVID-19 confirmed cases, hospital capacity and more.Testing is critical to safely ease COVID-19 restrictions. North Carolina doubled testing efforts to 5,000-7,000 tests per day ahead of entering phase one on Friday, but more testing is still neededsaid Cooper.Retail partners like Walgreen's, Walmart and Harris Teeter have started opening testing sites. This week, NC DHHS will begin publishing a list of available testing sites. More information about those sites will be shared this week.Governor Cooper declared May "Mental Health Awareness Month" to acknowledge the stigma tied to mental illness and encourage people to get health care for mental health issues as they would for any other health condition. This is especially important as North Carolinians have made adjustments to slow the spread of COVID-19 that may leave some feeling isolated.1 in 5 adults struggles with mental health challenges in a given year. Take some to check in with your loved ones, especially those who are alone during this time, and spend time outside if you can do so safely."If you need to talk to someone or need help, please call Hope 4 NC at 1-855-587-3463 or visit covid19.ncdhhs.gov/hope Read the Proclamation Many North Carolinians have recently lost health insurance benefits due to the economic effects of COVID-19. If you are in need of health insurance, NCDHHS has created a healthcare option list to help you find options that may work for you and your family. If you recently lost your employer-based insurance, you may qualify for special enrollment programs, and should check your status at healthcare.gov North Carolina is recruiting volunteers and companies to supplement our health care workforce. Hundreds of people have already signed up to help, and we need more. This includes clinical providers such as doctors and nurses, clinical support such as pharmacy and imaging and respiratory care, and facility maintenance and administrative support. If you fit into one of these categories, go to ncdhhs.gov/coronavirus to learn more about how you can help. Health care professionals can also go to terms.ncem.org/TRS/ During this time it is imperative that everyone is informed about what is going on in our state. Governor Cooper's administration has been working to get information and resources translated for the Spanish speaking population in our state. Many of the Governor's press conferences press releases , and executive orders are available in Spanish. Resources are also available in Spanish on the DHHS website.
This article, Wi-Fi is a lifeline in the pandemic. It's harder to get if you're homeless, originally appeared on CNET.com.

It's always hard for Franz Lupo to keep his phone charged, and he's using some of that juice to talk with me. From a San Francisco Bay Area town where he lives in a tent, Lupo tells me over the phone that he typically goes to Starbucks or the local library to restore his battery to full bars.

With these places closed because of the coronavirus pandemic, however, Lupo has come to rely on a carwash with a power outlet he can access after hours.

"It's hard to find a place around here that will let you come in and charge the phone," he said, a hint of Texas drawl in his voice.

The phone, which the 67-year-old got through a federally administered program called Lifeline, helps Lupo stay in touch with a doctor who monitors his heart problem. He also uses his phone to keep in touch with social service workers, some of whom have to stay away due to social distancing requirements even while they're helping Lupo access Social Security payments and his stimulus check. One of the first things he wants to buy when the payments come through is a portable phone charger.

Lupo isn't alone. With most of the US under orders to stay at home, many people are relying on their phones and computers to stay connected to the outside world through the internet. The roughly 550,000 homeless people in the US also need these services but are struggling to protect phones from thieves, keep them charged and connect them to the internet. And many people who aren't homeless still don't have an internet connection where they live.

As a result, people can't access quick information about unemployment benefits, the status of their stimulus check and other vital services millions of people are relying on as the economy reels. People with children are also struggling to keep kids connected to school.

Social services, city governments and libraries are trying to fill the gap by providing tech, internet connections, and important updates about the virus to people who need it. People are accessing Wi-Fi from outside library buildings or with borrowed Wi-Fi hotspots. Electricity is available in some city-sanctioned encampments and at public charging stations.

Just having a phone, like Lupo does, gives people relying on homeless services a big boost, says Jenny Robbins, chief of programs for Contra Costa County Health, Housing and Homeless Services in Northern California.

"When you do have it," she said, "it's amazing what it can do for you."

The need for phones, electricity and internet far outstrips what's available. Robbins says she's holding out hope that wealthy donors in Silicon Valley will step in to help their neighbors who are homeless during the public health crisis, and beyond.

The simple problem of keeping phones charged is especially tough, Robbins says, adding that there's also need for a big-picture solution, like putting charging stations at food distribution centers.

Knowledge and power outlets

Kristen Calvert, a manager with the Dallas Public Library, says one library location is near an emergency shelter in her city and residents often come by the library for help. Even though the library building is closed now, people have continued congregating outside looking for technical assistance, she says. The librarians go out and help them.

Sometimes Calvert helps people navigate an online form, like a woman who needed help submitting information related to her stimulus check. Other times, Calvert or another librarian takes a person's device inside and charges it for them.

It's like an open air reference desk, Calvert says, with one-on-one interactions to help people with questions. "That's who we always are," she said, "but even more so right now."

Internet connections from outside

New York public library buildings are closed, but patrons are accessing the internet from outside. The libraries have seen more than 20,000 Wi-Fi sessions at locations throughout the city since stay-at-home orders took effect in March.

The numbers aren't surprising, since about 20% of New Yorkers don't have home internet or mobile data plans, says Brian Bannon, the Merryl and James Tisch Director of The New York Public Library. The library also had 1,200 Wi-Fi hotspots checked out to families with school-aged children and no home internet when they closed their buildings. (The hotspots then got an upgrade to 20 GB from 3 GB of monthly high-speed data.)

It still isn't enough to connect everyone who needs internet access, Bannon says, adding that it will help to get broadband in more homes as a plan recently adopted by New York City aims to do.

"In the meantime," he said, "we'll leave our Wi-Fi on."

Tech brings independence

Andrew Constantino says internet connections should be a public utility, available to all, including people who are homeless. Constantino is in the process of moving into permanent housing, leaving behind his place in a tiny home village tucked between a fire station and a Boeing airfield in Seattle.

Courtesy of Andrew Constantino

The colorfully painted tiny homes offer people staying at the city-sanctioned village the ability to keep their possessions, including phones and chargers, safe, Constantino says. The security of the village, along with permanent Wi-Fi hotspots from the Seattle Public Library, has helped residents take care of their own needs during the pandemic.

They've been able to research the stimulus program and share information to help residents access their payments, he says, in addition to looking up recommendations from the CDC about COVID-19.

Constantino says the internet gives people independence, adding, "I don't know how you expect those living in poverty, without housing, to take part in society, to become productive members of such, without those basic needs met."

A bridge to housing

From his tent in Northern California, Lupo tells me his phone is also helping him stay in touch with the people helping him apply for housing. In addition to a portable phone charger, he wants to put his stimulus and Social Security money toward a subsidized apartment for seniors.

"I'm trying everything I can to get into one of them," he said.
[May 15, 2020] MPHASE ACQUIRES ASSETS OF CONSUMER ENGAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY COMPANY CLOSECOMMS LIMITED

Gaithersburg, MD, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- mPhase Technologies, Inc. (OTCQB: XDSL) (mPhase or the Company) is pleased to announce the acquisition of the assets of CloseComms Limited (CloseComms), a private United Kingdom company that has developed an application technology platform that helps businesses connect with, learn from, and engage customers beyond their four walls, while protecting the customers data and allowing them to remain anonymous.

CloseComms currently operates under the name 21:32 and has offices in Wales (U.K.) and California (U.S.). CloseComms initial focus is on the quick service restaurant (QSR) market. Under the asset purchase agreement, mPhase will issue 2,666,666 shares of restricted common stock and incorporate the CloseComms assets into a new wholly-owned consumer engagement subsidiary. Full details are available within the Form 8-K filed in conjunction with this announcement. The patented software technology can be integrated into a retailers existing Wi-Fi infrastructure, giving retailers important customer data and enabling AI-enhanced, targeted promotions to drive store traffic and sales. The platform has a proven track record of 33% application retention after 30 days with a substantially lower than industry standard acquisition cost per customer. The technology is in the early stages of its roll-out phase, but has already attracted the interest of leading QSR customers. Notable early corporate clients include Subway, McDonalds, and Nathans; along with NCR as a channel partner. Initial revenue targets include more than a dozen QSRs with a combined footprint in excess of 46,000 locations, representing about 7% of the QSR universe in the U.S. Revenue is generated through a monthly per location subscription model. This technology represents another step in our plan to add synergistic platform technologies with the common themes of recurring revenue, an AI element and open-ended growth potential, explained mPhase CEO Anshu Bhatnagar. The stratgic importance of this acquisition cannot be understated, particularly as it relates to the platform that we are developing in our Travel Buddhi division. CloseComms technology was the missing link in our ability to offer an end-to-end consumer engagement solution. Now, we have complementary AI-enhanced platforms that can connect consumers with products and services they desire at the right time and place, significantly increasing the potential for sales. We believe this will be a winning combination that will be highly attractive to many brands in the consumer space.



The timing of this acquisition is at the front end of a sales cycle that will give mPhase its second stream of high-quality recurring revenue. Longer term, this business is modeled to have a multi-year expansion profile with sequential increases on a quarterly basis as new chains adopt the platform. As a result, the new CloseComms business is expected to have a material positive effect on mPhases current $30 million annual sales forecast. The Company will update this forecast in the coming quarter as 2020 implementation schedules come into focus and are calendarized. About mPhase Technologies

mPhase is a technology driven, innovative development company that creates and commercializes products and applications that impact everyday people. The Company is assembling industry-leading teams specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, software, consumer engagement, and other advanced technologies. Additional information can be found at the mPhase website, www.mphasetech.com . Please follow us on twitter: @mPhase_Tech for the latest updates. Information on the new 21:32 division can be found at 21:32.io. Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains certain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These statements are identified by the use of the words could, believe, anticipate, intend, estimate, expect, may, continue, predict, potential, project and similar expressions that are intended to identify forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements speak only as of the date of this press release. You should not place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements. Although we believe that our plans, objectives, expectations and intentions reflected in or suggested by the forward-looking statements are reasonable, we can give no assurance that these plans, objectives, expectations or intentions will be achieved. Forward-looking statements involve significant risks and uncertainties (some of which are beyond our control) and assumptions that could cause actual results to differ materially from historical experience and present expectations or projections. Actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements and the trading price for our common stock may fluctuate significantly. Forward-looking statements also are affected by the risk factors described in the Companys filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Contacts: Investor Contact:

[email protected]

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New York, May 15 : A senior US diplomat dealing with religious freedom, who is a frequent of India, has said that he was "encouraged" by Prime Minister Narendra Modi's statements urging unity in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Ambassador for International Religious Freedom, Samuel Brownback said on Thursday: "I've been encouraged and we've been encouraged by statements from senior Indian officials really urging a unity, and noting the prime minister stated even that COVID-19 does not see religion, language, or borders, which is certainly true." But Brownback also said during a news briefing: "In India, we've seen reports of unfortunate COVID-related rhetoric and harassment, particularly against the Muslim community. This has been exacerbated by fake news reports, misinformation being shared via social media. There have also been instances of Muslims being attacked for allegedly spreading the coronavirus." He was, however, silent about the Tablighi Jamaat's role in spreading COVID-19 and having large gatherings of people in close quarters after India announced a lockdown on March 24 to contain the pandemic.

Modi had said in social media posts on April 19: "COVID-19 does not see race, religion, colour, caste, creed, language or borders before striking. Our response and conduct thereafter should attach primacy to unity and brotherhood. We are in this together." Replying to a reporter's question if India's leaders were influenced by the US International Commission on Religious Freedom (USICRF) recommendation that the US designate "India as a Country of Particular Concern", Brownback said he did not know why they did it,

"I just noted that it's positive and that's good. And I don't want to always just point to everything's negative." He said that the USCIRF recommendation got "got a lot of interest both here and in India".

He said that the State Department will put out a report "fairly soon, and then we'll - that'll start the time clock on the Secretary's ultimate determinations on Countries of Particular Concern or watch list countries, and the USCIRF recommendation will be noted and has been noted as well".

Brownback also made a strange, unsubstantiated claim about "religious prisoners" in India using the term that describes persons imprisoned solely for practicising their faith, while in India millions of Muslims freely and openly practice their religion.

"I was delighted we had a number of religious prisoners that were released around - was ecstatic about it because I think it probably saved a number of lives. And so the fact that the leadership would say this, great." If that is a claim about members of minority religions being held for actions unrelated to the legitimate practice of religion, it would also apply to the US where Muslims, who are one per cent of the population, make up 9 per cent of prisoners in state custody.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)
Disney announced on Thursday it will be pulling "Frozen" the musical from Broadway after nearly a year as the coronavirus pandemic continues to take its toll on large events and shows, The Washington Post reports.

Why it matters: The show had been financially performing well and was bringing in $1.5 million a week. However, there is a worry that when Broadway comes back there won't be enough people coming to the shows, the Post writes. Most of Disney's Broadway audience is composed of families and people visiting from out of town.

The state of play: "Frozen" first opened in March 2018, and played for 851 performances. That's not much compared to other Disney hits such as "The Lion King," which has been running for 22 years, and "Aladdin," which has been running six years.

Broadway's 41 theaters will remain closed till September 6, but there is no set date when shows will resume.

Disney has been furloughing thousands of workers due to the pandemic.

"This difficult decision was made for several reasons, but primarily because we believe that three Disney productions will be one too many titles to run successfully in Broadways new landscape."

 Thomas Schumacher, president and producer of Disney Theatrical Productions, per the Post

Go deeper: Disney to release film version of "Hamilton" with original cast
Cuomo

AP Photo/Richard Drew

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday announced that New York state's stay-at-home order would be extended until June 13.

In an executive order, Cuomo said the "New York State on PAUSE" policy, put in place in March, would continue. The statewide restrictions had been set to expire Friday.

Cuomo said in a tweet that some regions had met his criteria and could begin to reopen Friday.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo on Thursday announced that New York state's stay-at-home order would be extended until June 13.

In an executive order on Thursday, Cuomo said the state would continue the "New York State on PAUSE" policy, which was put in place in March in response to the coronavirus outbreak. The statewide shutdown was set to expire Friday.

"Both travel-related cases and community contact transmission of COVID-19 have been documented in New York State and are expected to continue," the order says.

"All enforcement mechanisms by state or local governments shall continue to be in full force and effect until June 13, 2020, unless later extended or amended by a future Executive Order," he added.

On Wednesday, however, Cuomo said four New York regions met his criteria to begin lifting lockdowns. In his order Thursday, he said certain regions that met public-health and safety metrics would be eligible for reopening.

"The Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley, the North Country, and Central NY are ready to begin Phase 1 of reopening tomorrow," Cuomo said in a tweet on Thursday. "The others can be UN-PAUSED the moment they hit their benchmarks."

Some regions of New York are meeting the criteria to start reopening, while harder hit areas like New York City aren't there yet.

New York State

New York has been the state hit hardest by the coronavirus pandemic. As of Thursday evening, the state had confirmed more than 343,000 cases and more than 27,000 deaths.

As part of the New York State on PAUSE policy, all businesses deemed nonessential have been closed, and nonessential gatherings have been canceled. The policy also states that people must stay at least 6 feet apart from one another in public and should limit outdoor activity.

Read the original article on Business Insider
B rexit trade talks between the UK and the European Union have hit a stalemate after "very little progress" was made in the third round of negotiations, Britains chief negotiator David Frost has said.

After completing the third round of talks on Friday, Mr Frost said that the "most significant outstanding issues" remain unresolved.

His EU counterpart Michel Barnier also said the results of the negotiations this week were "disappointing", telling a news conference in Brussels that "there was no progress on all the most difficult issues."

It comes after Boris Johnson led the entire Cabinet in flatly rejecting EU demands for Britain to make concessions on Thursday.

Mr Frost said that the "most significant outstanding issues" remain unresolved. / PA

The Government dug in its heels against EU demands that the UK share its fishing waters and obey future European rules on employment and the environment.

Ministers are now planning a stock-take before the next round in June to decide if it is worth carrying on.

Mr Frost said he regrets that they have made very little progress towards agreement on the most significant outstanding issues between us.

He added: It is very clear that a standard Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement, with other key agreements on issues like law enforcement, civil nuclear, and aviation alongside, all in line with the Political Declaration, could be agreed without major difficulties in the time available."

But he insisted the major obstacle to agreement was the EU's insistence on including a set of "novel and unbalanced proposals" regarding a level playing field on standards.

Mr Frost also said it is "hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach" to negotiations on fishing rights.

He said while there had been "useful discussions on fisheries on the basis of our draft legal text" the EU continues "to insist on fisheries arrangements and access to UK fishing waters in a way that is incompatible with our future status as an independent coastal state."

"We are fully committed to agreeing fishing provisions in line with the Political Declaration, but we cannot agree arrangements that are manifestly unbalanced and against the interests of the UK fishing industry.

Boris Johnson's chief Europe negotiator David Frost (left) with his counterpart from the European Union Michel Barnier as talks began on a trade deal / PA

"It is hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement.

Mr Frost called on the EU to change their approach before the next round of talks beginning on June 1.

"In order to facilitate those discussions, we intend to make public all the UK draft legal texts during next week so that the EU's member states and interested observers can see our approach in detail," Mr Frost said.

"The UK will continue to work hard to find an agreement, for as long as there is a constructive process in being, and continues to believe that this is possible."

Meanwhile, Mr Barnier said that the rights of citizens is the priority for both the UK and the EU in negotiations.

Michel Barnier, Brexit chief negotiator for Europe / REUTERS

Speaking at the European Commission press conference, he said: You cannot have the best of both worlds. In parallel to these negotiations, both the UK and the EU have a legal commitment to implement the Withdrawal Agreement.

Here, citizens rights are the priority for both sides and since the very beginning the UK tells us it has some concerns about the treatment of British nationals in the EU.

We yesterday received a letter from Michael Gove. I want to tell you that the commission is very, very attentive to this issue and we have just published guidelines to support all 27 member states to live up to the commitments of the Withdrawal Agreement.

But at the same time, we will also be watching closely to make sure that EU citizens residing in the UK do not face unfair treatment or any kind of discrimination and the European Parliament is particularly attentive to this.

Boris Johnson flatly rejected the EU's demands for concessions. Pictured here with French President Emmanuel Macron / REUTERS

The official said they remained optimistic a deal could be struck.

Asked if there would be a deal, they said: Im optimistic as we all are actually its easy to see how you could do a pretty standard and major free trade agreement quite quickly  theres a good level of understanding  and I think its in both our interests obviously to get to that.

So Im optimistic that in the end that sort of logic can prevail but nobody can be certain of this.

They added: Weve always made clear that if an agreement cant be reached then trading on what we call Australia terms is perfectly doable and satisfactory.

In little over a month, Mr Johnson and EU leaders are scheduled to have a summit, likely over video, to analyse the talks' progress.

Britain officially left the 27-nation bloc on January 31, but remains within the EU's economic and regulatory orbit until the end of the year.

The two sides have until then to work out a new relationship covering trade, security and a host of other issues  or face a chaotic split that would be economically disruptive for both sides, but especially for the UK.

The UK-EU divorce agreement allows for the deadline to be extended by two years, but Mr Johnson's government insists it will not lengthen the transition period beyond December 31.

Most trade deals take years to negotiate, so finishing something as fundamental as this in 11 months would be a Herculean task at the best of times.

Many politicians, experts and diplomats believe it is impossible during a pandemic that has focused governments' resources on preserving public health and averting economic collapse.

If no deal on their future relationship is agreed by then, a cliff-edge economic departure would loom again for Britain, with uncertainly over customs rules, airline slots, financial regulation and other standards.

Both sides are already facing a serious recession because of the pandemic.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 04:49:03

TUV Rheinland Certifies Taiwan's First Outdoor e-Parking System at Nantou Service Area

Phoenix Chen, TUV Rheinland Greater China

Tel: +86 20 28391243

Phoenix.Chen@tuv.com

Sally Chang, TUV Rheinland Greater China

Tel: +886 2 2172 1169

Sally.Chang@tuv.com

Whenever there is a surge in weekend or holiday traffic, it means heavy demand for parking at highway rest areas. People can often be seen circling endlessly in the parking lots for a parking space, wasting time and money. Sometimes, individuals will stop to rest at a service area but then forget where they have parked their car. The Central Region Branch Office of the Freeway Bureau, Ministry of Transportation and Communications (hereafter referred to as CRBO) has taken the lead in installing an e-parking system to help people with their parking needs. The system will alleviate parking stress at rest areas during public holidays and improve the turnover rate for service area parking.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005

TUV Rheinland Certifies Taiwan's First Outdoor e-Parking System at Nantou Service Area (Photo: Business Wire)

The smart parking directions system at the Nantou Service Area was certified after 1.5 months of system verification and testing. TUV Rheinland conducted 42 actual vehicle testing and verification tasks covering license plate recognition for streams of traffic, eTag detection, parking capacity monitoring, software and hardware functionality, and vehicle search functions. The system was validated against the project specifications and a certificate of conformity was subsequently issued on May 14. At the certification ceremony the two parties were represented by CRBO Director Huan-Ju Peng and Kevin Wu, Vice General Manager of Mobility Service, TUV Rheinland.

The purpose of the e-parking system is to help drivers find open parking spaces and to find their cars at rest areas more quickly. What distinguishes the e-parking system at the Nantou Service Area from traditional service areas is its ability to not only monitor traffic volumes but also to dynamically divert and balance traffic based on parking capacity. Vehicles can be directed to suitable sectors so they dont all crowd near the retail area, stop in non-parking areas, or cause traffic jams at intersections while drivers try to find parking.

An outdoor e-parking system is more challenging to design than indoor systems (e.g., the parking lots at department stores or high-rises). Outdoor e-parking must take into account weather, environment, signal transmission, and whether monitoring may be affected by the glare from license plates. The introduction of e-parking at the Nantou Service Area will not only maximize the benefits of eTag but also set a precedent for outdoor e-parking in Taiwan.

The Central Region Branch Office, Freeway Bureau has transformed the Nantou service area into a large outdoor smart parking guidance field on the highway. To ensure that the e-parking system will continue to function correctly once it is formally launched, an international third-party certification body was introduced by the CRBO to verify the system before it is commissioned. The independent verification and validation (IV&V) plan developed by TUV Rheinland helped to ensure that the system will be more suitable for real-world conditions. The system integrates parking directions and management, traffic statistics, and vehicle search functions to get drivers from entrance to exit quicker and safer. If they happen to forget where they have parked their vehicle, they can simply enter their license plate at the traffic condition kiosk in the service area and it will display the vehicles location.

Local cultural motifs such as purple crow butterflies and owls have also been incorporated into the design of the Nantou Service Area. The CRBO will continue to monitor and refine the e-parking systems functionality, safety, and accuracy in order to improve traffic flow and user satisfaction within the service area.

About TUV Rheinland

TUV Rheinland is a global leader in independent inspection services, founded nearly 150 years ago. The group maintains a worldwide presence of more than 20,000 people; annual turnover is EUR 2 billion. Its independent experts stand for quality and safety for people, technology and the environment in nearly all aspects of life. TUV Rheinland inspects technical equipment, products and services, oversees projects, and helps to shape processes and information security for companies. Its experts train people in a wide range of careers and industries. To this end, TUV Rheinland employs a global network of approved labs, testing and education centers. Since 2006, TUV Rheinland has been a member of the United Nations Global Compact to promote sustainability and combat corruption. Website: www.TUV.com

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200514005

TUV Rheinland Certifies Taiwan's First Outdoor e-Parking System at Nantou Service Area
Talks between the European Union and the United Kingdom on their future relationship in the wake of Brexit have ground to a near-standstill despite the urgency for progress before a summit next month.

The UK's chief negotiator, David Frost, said in a statement Friday that we have made very little progress towards agreement on the most significant outstanding issues."



The two sides remain at odds over a range of key issues including fishing and the role of high courts in settling future disputes.

A third week-long negotiation session drew to a close Friday, but so far, just over 100 days after the U.K.'s official exit from the EU, fundamental gaps are still yawning.

It is hard to understand why the EU insists on an ideological approach which makes it more difficult to reach a mutually beneficial agreement," Frost said.

EU negotiator Michel Barnier later told a conference in Brussels that there was no progress on all the most difficult issues." In little over a month, the EU leaders and U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson are scheduled to have a summit, likely on video, to take stock of the talks' progress.

Britain officially left the 27-nation bloc on Jan. 31, but remains within the EU's economic and regulatory orbit until the end of the year. The two sides have until then to work out a new relationship covering trade, security and a host of other issues or face a chaotic split that would be economically disruptive for both sides, but especially for the U.K.

The U.K.-EU divorce agreement allows for the deadline to be extended by two years, but Johnson's government insists it won't lengthen the transition period beyond Dec. 31.

Most trade deals take years to negotiate, so finishing something as fundamental as this in 11 months would be a Herculean task at the best of times. Many politicians, experts and diplomats believe it is impossible during a pandemic that has focused governments' resources on preserving public health and averting economic collapse.

If no deal on their future relationship is agreed by then, a cliff-edge economic departure would loom again for Britain, with uncertainly over customs rules, airline slots, financial regulation and other standards.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
COLUMBIA  South Carolina Supreme Court Donald Beatty signaled this week that he will order in-person jury trials to resume as early as July, a move some lawyers said raises obvious public health questions while the coronavirus continues to spread around the state.

A memo from Beattys office Wednesday requires county officials to come up with a plan for how to safely reopen their courts for trials during the early part of July. That plan must be submitted to state court administration by May 20.

Beatty suspended all in-person trials in mid-March.

Many details are yet to be worked out, but Beattys memo stresses that every countys plan must consider how courtrooms can be safely distanced, sanitized and equipped with special protective gear.

Thats likely to present challenges. Lawyers stress that trials are traditionally conducted in close quarters. Attorneys huddle around tables, jurors sit shoulder-to-shoulder and pieces of evidence are often passed among parties.

As courtrooms across the state have scaled back their operations during the outbreak, the judicial department has allowed for many non-trial hearings to be conducted virtually. But all indications are that jury trials must be done in person.

Ginny Jones, a spokeswoman for Beatty, said he does not expect any remote trials.

Either way, his decision to resume the trials is another signal that Beatty considers it a legal obligation to keep the states courts operating.

The Constitution provides for the right of every citizen to a jury trial, and the South Carolina Judicial Branch must ensure that right is upheld, said Jones.

But for some lawyers, requiring jury trials during a public health crisis raises questions about safety, and whether a defendant could be guaranteed their constitutional rights.

State Rep. Seth Rose, a Columbia trial attorney, expressed a concern that the trials would compel jury duty, potentially forcing folks out of quarantine and into the courtroom.

Theres a big distinction between people choosing to go to a grocery store versus being forced by law to attend somewhere where distancing is not possible, Rose said.

Timothy Kulp, a Charleston attorney, said the chief justice's memo raises myriad questions. If jurors develop symptoms during trial, will the proceeding have to be paused for testing? Might a mistrial be called? Will accommodations be made for the elderly, African Americans and others who have been shown to be at greater risk from COVID-19? What if jurors hasten deliberations and rush to judgment just to escape the court building?

"Could this affect a defendants right to a fair trial?" he asked.

Jones said the courts primary concern is the safety of courtroom employees and the public. The judicial department will distribute clear guidelines to every county before the trials resume, she said.

In his memo to counties, Beatty distributed a juror questionnaire as a guideline for how to screen potential jurors for the virus. The one-page form included five questions.
The Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), alongside the US Coalition have taken control of a bank in Hassakeh and expelled all the employee reports Al-Masdar.

The US-backed forces have seized the Syrian Commercial Bank in the Hassakeh Governorate, and expelled all the employees inside the building and established full control over the site.

According to a field report, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), alongside the US Coalition, attacked the main building of the Syrian Commercial Bank branch of the government located within the gathering of official departments in the southern section of Ghuweiran District, at the entrance of the al-Zohour neighborhood in Hassakeh city.

The building that was controlled by the SDF is located near the Industrial Prison, the Industrial Secondary School, and the Industrial Institute, a source told Sputnik Arabic.

The southern section of the al-Ghuweiran District is where the Industrial Prison is located; this is the same jail that the Islamic State broke out of earlier this month.

The US Coalition and SDF reportedly expelled government officials and students from the Tourism Directorate building, which also includes the hotels tourist high school and the Technical Institute for Tourist and Hotel Sciences in the al-Zuhour neighborhood.

The Commercial Bank building and the Tourism Directorate building were captured by the SDF troops in August 2016 after attacking the sites of the Syrian Arab Army.

However, following the implementation of the Hemeimeem Agreement last year, the building was returned to the Syrian government, which allowed the bank to resume its work.

These developments come amid the arrival of military and logistical reinforcements for the US military to its bases in the governorates of Hassakeh and Deir ez-Zor.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
Nisra figures show there were 77 deaths involving Covid-19 occurred in the last week in Northern Ireland (PA)

A total of 77 deaths involving Covid-19 occurred in the last week in Northern Ireland, the latest data shows.

Of these, 37 occurred in hospitals, 36 in care homes, one in a hospice and three at residential addresses, the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) added.

Up to the period ending May 8, 599 deaths involving Covid 19 occurred: 294 (49.1%) of which took place in hospital, 269 (44.9%) in care homes, five (0.8%) in hospices and 31 (5.2%) at residential addresses or other locations.

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The 274 deaths in care homes and hospices involved 71 separate establishments.

Extra measures have been put in place to bolster care homes, which have seen clusters of coronavirus threatening the most vulnerable, health minister Robin Swann has said.

The comparative number of deaths reported daily by the Department of Health to May 8 was 432.

These figures are based on patients having previously tested positive for the virus, whereas Nisra figures relate to information entered on death certificates, completed by medical professionals.

They may or may not have previously tested positive for the virus.

Based on the date of death registration, Nisra figures show the provisional number of total deaths registered in Northern Ireland in the week ending May 8 (week 18) was 336, 91 fewer than in week 17 but 62 more than the five-year average of 274.

Over the last six weeks, 766 excess deaths  fatalities above the average for the corresponding period in previous years  have been registered in Northern Ireland.
Syracuse, N.Y.  New York continues to uncover more cases of a new coronavirus-related complication in children, Gov. Andrew Cuomo said today.

The state is now investigating 110 cases of the illness, up from 102 on Wednesday. The complication is an inflammatory disorder that can affect multiple bodily systems.

Many children who develop the illness, known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome, end up in intensive care units.

The children with the disorder are testing positive either for the coronavirus itself or the antibodies associated with it, indicating they had been infected previously. The illness can sometimes develop weeks after initial exposure to the virus.

Cases have been found in 16 other states, Washington, D.C. and six European countries, Cuomo said during a press conference at Upstate Medical University in Syracuse.

"We have a situation that is serious," he said. "I expect this is only going to grow."

In New York, the illness has killed a 5-year-old boy, a 7-year-old boy and an 18-year-old girl so far. All the deaths have been in Downstate New York.

Officials believe the syndrome is rare. But parents, Cuomo said, need to be aware of the new complication and watch for symptoms, including:

A fever lasting more than five days

Severe abdominal pain, diarrhea or vomiting

Bloodshot eyes

Skin rash

Other symptoms include a change in skin color to pale, patchy or blue, difficulty feeding in infants or a child too sick to drink fluids, trouble breathing or rapid breathing, racing heart or chest pain, lethargy, irritability or confusion.

Parents who have been exposed to coronavirus or believe their children have been exposed should be especially vigilant. Parents should seek medical care if they see symptoms of the disorder.

Every parent, every child, its your job to understand and protect yourself, Cuomo said. I just urge caution.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Malls cant reopen in Phase 1, but curbside pickup allowed for interior stores

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Contact Kevin Tampone anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-282-8598
Two men have been charged in connection with an armed chase of a teen boy Thursday afternoon in Phillipsburg, police said.

Desmond Steele, of Virginia Beach, Virginia, and Michael McKinley, of Hackettstown, both 18, were issued summons and released pending future court dates, Phillipsburg police said.

Officers were called at about 4:45 p.m. Thursday for reports of a man with a firearm behind the 400 block of South Main Street.

They found the 17-year-old victim who was being chased by the armed man.

The teen reported the confrontation began earlier at Brainard Street Park, when a group fight broke out.

A man later identified as Steele yelled, Im getting my gun and ran to a nearby parked car with several other males, according to police.

The victim said he took off, but a short time later while he was walking on Cedar Alley, a silver car tried to hit him.

Steele got out of the car carrying what appeared to be a rifle, and began chasing the victim, police said.

The victim ran into the backyard of a nearby home; Steele saw the victim and pointed the rifle at him before running away, according to police.

A witness saw Steele point the air gun and then saw him meet with two other males near Jefferson Street, police said. The witness gave a description of the trio and police used footage from the towns surveillance videos.

Police said they began searching the area and a short time later found the trio hiding in the trees near Stockton and Howard streets.

Steele was identified as the suspect with the rifle and McKinley was identified as the driver of the silver car. The third person was a juvenile and police did not say if he was involved in the earlier incidents.

Using the K-9 unit from Washington Township police, officers found a KWA air soft rifle in the area as well, police said.

Steele is charged with unlawfully pointing a firearm, unlawful possession of a firearm, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. McKinley is charged with disorderly conduct.

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Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
Fitbit, which makes wearable devices including fitness-trackers, is shifting its supply chain to make emergency-use ventilators, CEO James Park told CNBC.

The company is submitting its technology to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in the coming days, Park said. A team started working on the ventilators after consulting with physicians, including at Massachusetts General Brigham and Oregon Health & Science University (OHSU).

"There was a lot of concern about the shortage of ventilators and we realized we had expertise already around the supply chain," said Park.

In the U.S., hospitals in some states experienced severe ventilator shortages in March as hospitals rushed to treat the first waves of Covid-19 patients with severe breathing problems. However, the country is facing a surplus of ventilators right now as industries responded to calls from President Trump and other leaders to build more, according to the Associated Press. In addition, some recent medical studies have shown that ventilators are not very effective in preventing deaths in coronavirus patients, causing some doctors to favor less-invasive measures.

Nonetheless, if cases surge again once the country re-opens, demand for ventilators could increase again. Fitbit's Park said the company would build the vents to meet the level of demand, both in the United States and in countries around the world.

"I think one of the advantages for us is that we have the infrastructure and manufacturing capability," Park said. "We already make 10 million (wearable) devices per year, and we plan to leverage that to make deliver product at whatever volumes are needed."

Fitbit sold more than 100 million fitness trackers and other wearables before the company announced it would sell itself to Google for $2.1 billion last November. That deal is still under review.

Fitbit will soon submit plans to the FDA under the agency's Emergency Use Authorization, which would allow the device to be used specifically for Covid-19 patients. A spokesperson said that the company will work with an existing vendor in Taiwan to ramp up the ventilators once the FDA approves its request.
The Trump administration on Friday moved to block shipments of semiconductors to Huawei Technologies from global chipmakers, in an action that could ramp up tensions with China.

The U.S. Commerce Department said it was amending an export rule to "strategically target Huawei's acquisition of semiconductors that are the direct product of certain U.S. software and technology."

The department added the "announcement cuts off Huawei's efforts to undermine U.S. export controls."

The rule change is a blow to Huawei, the world's no. 2 smartphone maker, as well as to Taiwan's TSMC, a major producer of chips for Huawei's HiSilicon unit as well as mobile phone rivals Apple and Qualcomm.

Huawei, which needs semiconductors for its widely used smartphones and telecoms equipment, is at the heart of a battle for global technological dominance between the United States and China.

The United States is trying to convince allies to exclude Huawei gear from next-generation 5G networks on grounds its equipment could be used by China for spying. Huawei has repeatedly denied the claim.

Huawei has continued to use U.S. software and technology to design semiconductors, the Commerce Department said, despite being placed on a U.S. economic blacklist in May 2019.

Under the rule change, foreign companies that use U.S. chipmaking equipment will be required to obtain a U.S. license before supplying certain chips to Huawei, or an affiliate like HiSilicon.

In order for Huawei to continue to receive some chipsets or use some semiconductor designs tied to certain U.S. software and technology, it would need to receive licenses from the Commerce Department.
New Delhi, May 15 : With the Covid-19 pandemic wreaking havoc across the world, including major cities in the US, Europe and Asia, there seems to be place which is ummune this highly contagious virus.

In India, coronavirus is expanding its tentacles in many major cities, and in the backdrop of the incremental steps being taken by the government to move the wheels of the economy, the biggest challenge will be to contain the spread of the virus in the commercial hubs across the country.

Speaking to IANS, Rajni Kant, Director, ICMR-Regional Medical Research Centre, said that it is likely that the virus will hit the commercial hubs in India hard due to the sheer density of population in those areas, which proves to be the just-right environment for the viral infection.

"Look at Dharavi in Mumbai, where many people live in a one-room house and share a single toilet. In this scenario, it is extremely difficult to contain the spread of the virus unless people follow social distancing norms and maintain hygiene. The situation is similar in the commercial hubs across the country where population density is very high," said Kant.

He insisted that some cities seem to be more vulnerable to the spread of the virus and more exposed to its most insidious impact.

The upside of high-density urban agglomeration is considered justifiable in terms of the economies of scale its population provides, but the downside, in the backdrop of the nature of Covid-19 spread, can prove to be disastrous in containing the outbreak of the viral infection.

"After lockdown relaxations, managing the viral infection in commercial hubs will be a crucial challenge," said Kant.

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, these urban spaces can become defenceless whereas these issues may not crop-up in in the rural spaces, he added, citing the large number of positive cases in Maharashtra, Delhi, Gujarat and Madhya Pradesh.

Kant said the pandemic poses risk to people in dense mega cities, where the sheer density of population proves to be an ideal environment for the infection to spread rapidly and hit the public health system in these cities.

On India is set to cross China's Covid-19 tally, Kant said we have a lower mortality rate than China and this comparison is not appropriate.

"Look at the distribution of cases. In China, the majority of cases are concentrated in Hubei province, but in India cases are spread across the country. In China, the government implemented strict lockdown measures, and literally stopped the movement of people out of the province. But in India people are moving, which creates a ground for the virus to spread," said Kant.

Queried on re-strategising the testing model, Kant said, "We are already conducting one lakh tests in a single day, and have also began testing at random to observe if people have developed antibodies against the infection even though they show mild symptoms." (Sumit Saxena can be contacted at sumit.s@ians.in)

Latest updates on Coronavirus (COVID-19)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
GARDAI are urging motorists to ensure their cars are properly secured and locked when parked  even for a short time.

The warning follows a number of recent thefts from parked cars in Limerick.

In one incident, a jumper was stolen from a car which was parked in the city centre.

A lady parked her car near Perry Square, she returned to it a moment later to see a female open the door, reach in and take out her jumper. Now this female was subsequently arrested as she was spotted by gardai wearing the stolen jumper, said divisional crime prevention officer Sergeant Ber Leetch.

In another incident, an air compressor, car starter leads and an NCT exemption letter were stolen from a car which was parked overnight in the Prospect area.

According to gardai, the owner had left his car unlocked overnight and only realised his mistake the following morning,

Never leave your car unlocked, leave nothing in it and physically check it before you leave it to make sure that it is locked, said Sgt Leetch.
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - TransCanna Holdings Inc. (CSE: TCAN) (FSE: TH8) ("TransCanna" or the "Company") today announces that it anticipates a delay in the filing of the financial statements required pursuant to Part 4 of National Instrument 51-102 Continuous Disclosure Obligations (the "Instrument") as a result of the completion by the Company of the recent acquisitions of Tres Ojos Naturals LLC (dba Soldaze), and Lyfted Farms, Inc. in the fall of 2019, both US corporations, as new subsidiaries of the Issuer.

The delay is due to the Company's difficulties in coordinating with the auditor the collection of all of the required data and documentation to complete the audit on a consolidated basis. As well, certain key persons who are needed to complete the audit are being affected by the current COVID-19 pandemic due to self-isolation requirements. During the pandemic the accounting teams had limited access to the office buildings and the required files. " We are working around the clock with our auditors and look forward to filing the audited financial statements in short order" stated Michelle Pillon, the Company Chief Financial Officer.

The Instrument requires that the Company's audited financial statements and MD&A for the fiscal year ended November 30, 2019 be filed by March 29, 2020. The Canadian securities regulators provided a temporary blanket relief to extend the original filing date by 45 days, which the Company has now deemed it will not be able to meet due to the required self-isolation requirements in the United States. The Company and its auditor are in the process of completing the associated audit work to complete these audited financial statements. The Company expects that the audited financial statements and MD&A for the year ended November 30, 2019 (collectively, the "Required Filings") will be completed and filed on or before June 15, 2020.

In connection with the anticipated delays in making the Required Filings within the time periods mandated by the Instrument, the Company has made an application under National Policy 12-203 Cease Trade Orders ("NP 12-203") to the British Columbia Securities Commission, as principal regulator for the Company, requesting that a management cease trade order ("MCTO") be issued. Once granted, the MCTO will restrict all trading by the Company's CEO and CFO in securities of the Company, whether direct or indirect. The issuance of the MCTO will not affect the ability of persons who are not directors, officers or insiders of the Company to trade their securities. The MCTO will remain in effect until the Required Filings are filed or until it is revoked or varied.

The Company confirms that it intends to satisfy the provisions of the alternative information guidelines described in NP 12-203 by issuing bi-weekly default status reports in the form of a news release for so long as it remains in default of the requirement to make the Required Filings. The Company has no material information relating to its affairs that has not been generally disclosed.

About TransCanna Holdings Inc.

TransCanna Holdings Inc. is a California based, Canadian listed, company building Cannabis focused brands for the California lifestyle, through its wholly-owned California subsidiaries.

For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.transcanna.com or email the Company at info@transcanna.com.

On behalf of the Board of Directors

Bob Blink

604-349-3011

Not for Dissemination in the United States or for Distribution to U.S. Newswire Services and Does Not Constitute an Offer of Any Securities Described Herein

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55998
Charleston, South Carolina--(Newsfile Corp. - May 14, 2020) - Charlestowne Premium Beverages Inc. (OTC Pink: FPWM) (the "Company"), is looking to become a significant presence in the premium cannabidiol (CBD) infused alcohol space. With the easing of Covid-19 lockdown restrictions internationally, the company is resuming plans and activities to implement its short-term business goals. These include rekindling distribution partnerships and product development programs.

As countries imposed nationwide lockdowns to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, consumers around the globe unsurprisingly took to alcoholic beverages as a means to improve their lockdown experience. When restaurants and bars were forced to close their doors, shoppers headed to off-premise sites to purchase beer, wine, and spirits, resulting in double-digit growth in alcohol-based products worldwide.

Further, during the Covid-19 pandemic, the premiumization of the sector-whereby consumers buy alcohol at higher prices per volume on average-has continued, as people transfer their onpremise spending to athome consumption. In this sense, it is possible that beyond the rise in the amount of drinking, the growth in the sector is also being driven by consumers looking for higher quality products.

"Looking at the life-changing policies imposed across the world for the past eight weeks, it is encouraging that we have found that spirits industry sales increased during the shutdown period, as well as people's growing interest in premium products. These provide great opportunities for us, while additionally we have noticed that overall product development in the market has lagged. As the world economy re-opens, there is pent up energy to aggressively pursue product development," said Martin D. Ustin, company CEO. "We want to position FPWM to be ready to take advantage of the re-opening. We have noticed that the strongest recent growth is in the premium product sector (where quality counts), and that is at the core of our company philosophy."

Story continues

As a matter of priority, contacts with South American suppliers have been re-established and several new unique product and packaging programs have been rekindled. The Company is finalizing the change approval process with FINRA to complete its official rebranding to Charlestowne Premium Beverages. As business operations resume, FPWM expects to share additional announcements in the coming weeks.

About Charlestowne Premium Beverages Inc.

Charlestowne Premium Beverages Inc (FPWM) is a company that develops, produces, markets, and distributes alcoholic beverages worldwide. The Company's portfolio showcases spirit brands such as Papa Vodka, Crocodile Tears Vodka, Proprietor's Reserve Whiskey, and Lord Proprietor's Special Reserve Whiskey. The company also has wholesaler and import permits from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau,the governing body for spirits in the U.S. under the Department of the Treasury.

To learn more, please visit www.charlestownepremiumbeverages.com and follow us on Twitter at @CharlestowneCB1

Safe Harbor Statement: This release includes "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E and or 27E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 that are based upon assumptions that in the future may prove not to have been accurate and are subject to significant risks and uncertainties, including statements as to the future performance of the company and the risks and uncertainties detailed from time to time in reports filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward- looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Although the company believes that the expectations reflected in its forward-looking statements are reasonable, it can give no assurance that such expectations or any of its forward- looking statements will prove to be correct. Factors that could cause results to differ include, but are not limited to, the company's ability to raise necessary financing, retention of key personnel, timely delivery of inventory from the company's contract manufacturers, timely product development, product acceptance, and the impact of competitive services and products, in addition to general economic

IR Contact:

ir@ctpbev.com

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55835
Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav



Thackeray and NCP patriarch Sharad Pawar on Friday held parleys over the current situation triggered by COVID-19 and measures to be taken to combat the disease in the state.

During the meeting, also attended by some cabinet colleagues of Thackeray, Pawar reviewed the issues pertaining to the Rs 20 lakh special economic package announced by the Centre, the law and order situation, migrant workers, employment and industries, the NCP said.

The NCP is a key constituent in the Shiv Sena-led government in Maharashtra.

The meeting comes just two days ahead of the end of the third phase of the nationwide lockdown imposed to stem the spread of coronavirus which has so far infected more than 27,500 people in Maharashtra - the highest tally for a state.

The Maharashtra government expressed its intent to extend till May 31 the lockdown in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR), Pune, Solapur, Aurangabad and Malegaon, which have emerged as COVID-19 hotspots in the state, a senior official had said on Thursday.

The possibility of extending the restrictions at these places was discussed during a meeting chaired by Thackeray on Thursday.

A review meeting of the Chief Minister and some ministers was held in the presence of MP Sharad Pawar Saheb on the COVID-19 pandemic and steps to be taken to combat it. Due care was taken to observe social distancing in the meeting, the NCP tweeted.

MP Sharad Pawar Saheb took review of the economic package declared by the Centre, problems of migrant workers, employment and industries related issues even as discussion was held (in the meeting) to decide (the states) policy direction, the party said on the micro-blogging site.

Besides the CM and Pawar, the nearly two-hour review meeting was also attended by Home Minister Anil Deshmukh, Water Resources Minister Jayant Patil and Environment Minister Aaditya Thackeray, among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
As many as 17 personnel, including high-ranking police officials, in Ludhiana were sent into isolation after two bodies recovered in crime cases were found positive for coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

While one of the bodies was that of a 15-year-old boy who was allegedly murdered, the other was of an unidentified person, believed to be a migrant in his 40s.

According to the additional deputy commissioner of police (ADCP) Sachin Gupta, the nodal officer for Covid-19, as many as 17 personnel, including deputy commissioner of police (DCP, crime) Simratpal Singh Dhindsa, ADCP (crime) Harish Dyama, ADCP-III Gurpreet Kaur Purewal, ACP (civil lines) Jatinder Kumar Chopra, ACP (Crime-1) Mandeep Sandhu, Division Number 5 station house officer Richa Rani, six members of the staff of Division No 5 police station, two assistant sub-inspectors of Government Railway Police (GRP), and three members of the forensics division, have been asked to remain in self-isolation.

Sources said that these personnel had remained near the body for nearly an hour for carrying out preliminary investigations.

FAMILY OF MURDER VICTIM RUSHED TO ISOLATION

Soon after the test results came, the police swung into action and sealed the street in Janak Puri where the murder victim, Karan Kumar, 15, lived. His family members were also rushed to the hospital and health teams started his contact tracing.

According to the family, Karan had left home on May 11 on the pretext of visiting the market but had not returned. The family tried to find him but failed to do so. The family members claimed that on Friday they learnt Karan was murdered and his body was in the mortuary.

Before we could come to terms with this tragic loss, the health department officials along with the police visited our house and took us to the hospital, said Rajesh Chaudhary, the teens father.

Karans body was found in the demolished quarters of railway colony number 5 on Wednesday. As per the prima facie investigation, Karan was assaulted and then strangled to death.

The development comes a day after 18 RPF personnel tested positive for Covid-19.

Civil surgeon Dr Rajesh Bagga said that the samples of all the persons will be sent for testing as per protocol.

Dr Bagga said that beside the two dead, another person from Sahnewal, who was undergoing treatment at Jalandhar, has tested positive for the virus. He was rushed to a health facility in Ludhiana.

Deputy commissioner (DC) Pradeep Kumar Agrawal said a total of 4,599 samples had been collected in the district, of which reports of 4,186 samples were negative and 146 positive.

Meanwhile, 11 patients, including four students who had returned from Kota in Rajasthan and seven persons who had returned from Nanded, Maharashtra, were declared cured of Covid-19 after their two test results came out negative.
More than six dozen staffers for former Vice President Joe Biden are responding to Tara Reades allegations of sexual assault.

Reade claims Biden pinned her up against a wall and penetrated her with his fingers in the basement of a Capitol Hill office building in 1993, when he was a U.S. Senator from Delaware and she was an aide on his staff. Biden, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, has firmly denied the allegations.

PBS NewsHour said Friday it spoke with 74 former Biden staffers, including 62 women and 20 people who worked for him at the same time as Reade, to get a broader picture of his behavior toward women over the course of his career, how they see the new allegation, and whether there was evidence of a larger pattern.

None of the people interviewed said that they had experienced sexual harassment, assault or misconduct by Biden, and all said they had never heard of any rumors or allegations against Biden until Reade came forward in March. Many said they believe Reades allegation is false, but still believed she should be heard.

Ben Savage, who worked in Bidens Senate office from 1993 to 1996 and had a desk right next to Reade in the mailroom, disputed her claims that she was forced out of her job in retaliation for allegedly filing a sexual harassment complaint. Savage said she was fired for her poor performance in processing constituent mail, a key part of their job, and reported those issues to his boss, deputy chief of staff Dennis Toner.

Of all the people who held that position, shes the only one during my time there who couldnt necessarily keep up or who found it frustrating, Savage told PBS.

Toner told PBS he did not remember Reade but recalled Savage as a good worker who stood out.

Reade declined to be interviewed by PBS, but her attorney said she recalled "a lot of nitpicking regarding her performance in the office but her performance had nothing to do with her termination.

Biden has repeatedly denied Reades allegations, saying theyre flat out false and never happened.

Still, Biden told MSNBC on Thursday that he doesnt expect female voters who believe Reade to support him.

I think they should vote their heart and if they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldnt vote for me, Biden said. I wouldnt vote for me if I believed Tara Reade."

Two of Reades associates have said they had past conversations with her that corroborated aspects of her allegations, but questions have been raised over inconsistencies in her story. Reade accused Biden of uncomfortable and inappropriate touching last year, but did not publicly say he assaulted her until late March, around when he became the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. Reade also said she filed a sexual harassment complaint, but a limited report filed with a congressional personnel office did not explicitly mention sexual assault or harassment.

Megyn Kelly asked Reade last week about apparent contradictions in her past comments about Biden, including online praise in 2017 for Bidens work combating sexual assault.

Ive always been conflicted about Joe Biden," Reade said. I didnt want to talk badly about him. And I wasnt ready to tell my history with Joe Biden at that point at all.
Charges Against FL Pastor Dropped





NEWS PROVIDED BY

Liberty Counsel

May 15, 2020



TAMPA, Fla., May 15, 2020 /Christian Newswire/ -- Today, the criminal misdemeanor charges against Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne, pastor of The River at Tampa Bay Church, were dropped. The Notice of Termination states, in part: "Having reviewed the charge(s) contained in the Criminal Report Affidavit and/or Notice to Appear, the State Attorney's Office informs you that the charge(s) contained therein is/are dismissed and prosecution is terminated as of this date and that the defendant need not appear for any further proceedings in this matter."

Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne was wrongfully arrested at his home on March 30 for holding a church service on Sunday, March 29. The church is in Hillsborough County, Florida.

Pastor Howard-Browne and his wife founded the church in 1996. He also heads Revival Ministries International. He was born in South Africa and has resided in Tampa, Florida since the mid-1990s.

Liberty Counsel represents Pastor Howard-Browne. The Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister previously held a press conference announcing the arrest with the State Attorney, Andrew Warren, present. After the arrest, the State Attorney referred to this unlawful arrest in his campaign for reelection.

Liberty Counsel Founder and Chairman Mat Staver said, "The arrest of Dr. Rodney Howard-Browne was politically motivated. Neither the pastor nor The River at Tampa Bay Church did anything wrong. The arrest and the press conference were outrageous and caught the attention of the nation and the world. As a result of this arrest, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared attendance at churches, synagogues, and houses of worship to be an essential activity. This arrest freed up every church in Florida to meet. We are pleased that all the charges have been dropped. It is now time to move forward with healing and restoration."

Liberty Counsel provides broadcast quality TV interviews via Hi-Def Skype and LTN at no cost.



SOURCE Liberty Counsel



CONTACT: Mat Staver, 407-875-1776, Liberty@LC.org



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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 15:35:35|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- An online visual feast of Chinese stage art performances will kick off Friday evening, amid efforts to enrich people's spiritual and cultural lives during the epidemic, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

A total of 22 plays will be shown in full-length videos on the ministry's portal website, which covers a variety of art categories including operas, dramas, dance dramas and symphony concerts, the ministry said.

Besides some household names such as "The Eternal Wave" and "Yimeng Mountain Range," the show also features an opera performed by literary and art workers from the city of Wuhan to express their gratitude for the support in the anti-virus fight provided by people from all walks of life.

Videos of the performances will be available free on the website through June 8. Enditem
International media-freedom watchdogs are urging Iran to stop jailing members of the press arbitrarily, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic, after a local journalist started serving an 18-month prison sentence in Tehrans Evin prison.

Hassan Fathi, a freelance columnist, began his prison term last week after his appeal in a 2018 criminal case stemming from an interview with the BBCs Persian service was denied, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), a U.S.-based outlet that covers news in Iran.

The Iranian authorities continue to jail journalists although Covid-19 is taking a heavy toll on the country's prison population, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said on May 14.

Iran must stop their absurd practice of imprisoning journalists solely for speaking to foreign media outlets, especially during a pandemic, when any jail term could be a potential death sentence, said Sherif Mansour, Middle East and North Africa program coordinator at the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Fathi was detained in May 2018 after he gave an interview with the BBCs Persian service about the reelection of President Hassan Rohani, according to an interview with the journalist by Iran International.

The Tehrans Revolutionary Court charged Fathi with spreading lies and disrupting public opinion before releasing him on bail, Fathi told the Britain-based broadcaster.

It was unclear when Fathi was initially convicted or sentenced, but a Tehran court early this month rejected his final appeal, HRANA reported.

Also on May 14, RSF quoted the family of Mahmud Shariari, a former national radio and TV presenter, as saying he was transferred last week from Evin prison to a section in a Tehran hospital that is reserved for coronavirus patients.

Shariari has been detained since mid-April for "publishing false information about the coronavirus, the Paris-based group said.

RSF said that imprisoned journalists in Iran have routinely been denied adequate medical care in the past andare now in danger of dying from the coronavirus that is spreading in the prisons.
Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont told CNBC on Friday that the coronavirus pandemic will likely cause more people who live in New York City to consider moving to his state.

"There's no question about it. Phones are ringing off the hook at real estate offices all throughout southern Connecticut," Lamont said on "Squawk Box."

Lamont, a Democrat, said that Connecticut benefits significantly from being in the same "ecosystem" as New York City, which he called "the global capital of the world."

However, he said people who live there but have been working from home for about two months are learning from that experience.

"People are realizing that telecommuting doesn't mean you have to be in New York City five days a week," he argued. "It means that if you have to stay home for a period of time, having a nice little backyard is not a bad way to do it."

Some people have predicted that there will be a mass exodus from New York City, with current residents deciding to flee the city because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

New York City has been a major hot-spot in the U.S. outbreak, with more than 188,000 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University date Friday morning. There have been over 15,000 confirmed deaths from Covid-19 in New York City and another 5,000 classified as "probable deaths," according to the city's health department.

Connecticut, with just over a third of the city's population, has nearly 35,500 total infections with about 3,200 deaths, as total cases nationwide top 1.4 million with over 85,000 deaths, and over 4.4. million total infections globally with more than 300,000 fatalities.

The real estate in areas just outside of New York City has seen increased activity, brokers previously told CNBC, although it remains too early to tell what the long-term trends are.

"I think people will be taking a second look at Connecticut because it has some real advantages here," Lamont said as Connecticut prepares to ease some of its coronavirus-related business restrictions. This coming Wednesday, restaurants, retailers, barbershops and salons in the state can reopen with certain restrictions and safety protocols in place.

"We'll have two or three weeks, we'll see whether people follow the social protocols," Lamont said, noting face coverings at restaurants, for example, and enhanced sanitation. "If it looked like it was working pretty well, June 20 would be our next phase and we'll think about what we do from there."
President Donald Trump made his first presidential stop in the Lehigh Valley on Thursday, where he gave a speech at a 137-year-old company that provides medical equipment to health care facilities in response to the coronavirus.

Pennsylvania is also a key battleground state in the 2020 presidential election.

Here is how the day played out, from Air Force One landing in Allentown, to his speech in Upper Macungie Township, and the response from political opponent and former Vice President Joe Biden.

Air Force One lands in Allentown

Trump landed on Air Force One early in the afternoon at Lehigh Valley International Airport. He was greeted by a small group of dignitaries as media and Secret Service agents observed.

Agents wiped down the stair car while waiting for the presidents arrival. Many on the ground and disembarking from the plane wore masks. The president did not. The motorcade then whisked him to Owens & Minor in Upper Macungie.

People cheer the arrival of President Trump's motorcade at Owens and Minor a medical warehouse in Upper Macungie.Michael Mancuso | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com

Supporters and protesters

Trump supporters lined streets to catch a glimpse of the Republican president en route from the airport to the distribution center, with flags and blaring music making it seem like a parade.

But a protest was also organized, a line of cars that was more akin to a funeral procession. One sign told the president: Wear a mask and go home.

Trumps speech

The president arrived to an appreciative crowd at Owens & Minor in Upper Macungie, a 200,000-square-foot complex that has been distributing personal protective equipment and other medical supplies around the country.

In his speech, Trump outlined plans to ensure adequate supplies going forward, and blamed his predecessor, President Barack Obama, for shortcomings. Trump has been in office three years.

Im determined America will be fully prepared for any of the future outbreaks, Trump said.

He concluded by praising the Easton Assassin, heavyweight champion Larry Holmes.

President Trump prepares to leave in his motorcade after arriving at Lehigh Valley International Airport on May 14, 2020.Saed Hindash | For lehighvalleylive.com

Reactions

Democrats, both locally and regionally, criticized both his response to the COVID-19 pandemic and his presence in Allentown. Lehigh County has one of Pennsylvanias highest densities of coronavirus cases.

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, issued his own statement accusing Trump of trying to divide Pennsylvania instead of doing more to help residents impacted by the virus and subsequent shutdown.

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.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to lehighvalleylive.com.

Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com.
The United States has provided more than $25 million in security assistance to Ukraine this week, according to the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine.

"Despite COVID-19, our security assistance to Ukraine continues! This week, the Office of Defense Cooperation received more than $25 million in night vision devices, thermals, radios, and medical equipment for Ukraine to use in the JFO zone," the embassy wrote on its Facebook page.

The United States stands strongly with Ukraine in support of its sovereignty and territorial integrity in the face of Russian aggression, the embassy stressed.

As reported, the U. United States Agency for International Development (USAID) extended humanitarian assistance to Ukraine from $1.2 million announced earlier to $9.1 million to tackle the coronavirus spread.

ish
SYDNEY, May 15 (Reuters) - Tokyo shares rebounded on Friday after three straight sessions of losses, but logged their first weekly decline in three as investor sentiment took a hit following a deterioration in U.S.-China relations.

The benchmark Nikkei average ended 0.6% higher at 20,037.47, with recently-battered cyclical sectors leading gains. For the week, the index lost 0.7%.

The broader Topix added 0.5% to end at 1,453.77, with more than two-thirds of the 33 sector sub-indexes on the Tokyo exchange finishing higher. For the week, the index fell 0.3% and recorded its first weekly decline in three.

Showing signs of more cracks in the U.S.-China relationship, President Donald Trump said he was very disappointed with China's failure to contain COVID-19 and suggested he could even cut ties with the world's second-largest economy.

Investors now eye Japan's gross domestic product (GDP) data for the January-March quarter, which, according to a Reuters poll, likely shrank for a second straight quarter.

On the demand front, data from Japan Exchange Group showed that foreign investors were net sellers of Japanese stocks last week for the 13th consecutive week, the longest streak ever.

Recently-battered cyclical sectors, mining, sea transport and machinery, were among the top-performing sub-indexes on the main bourse.

Semiconductor-related companies were in demand following a 2.8% gain overnight in the U.S. Philadelphia semiconductor index .

Chipmaking gear manufacturer Tokyo Electron Ltd rose 2.0% and test device maker Advantest Corp climbed 3.3%.

Nissan Motor Co Ltd rallied 3.9% on news reports that the Japanese automaker may be looking at the possibility of closing its Barcelona factory, possibly shifting its production to Renault plants.

Bucking the overall market trend, Mitsubishi Estate Co Ltd tumbled 8.8% after the company cut its full-year dividend outlook and forecast a 25.9% fall in net profit for this business year to March 2021. (Reporting by Tomo Uetake; Editing by Devika Syamnath and Uttaresh.V)
JACKSON, Mississippi -- State and federal officials gathered in Jackson Friday morning at the Mississippi Fallen Officers Memorial Wall to pay tribute to those Mississippi peace officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty.

U.S. Attorney Mike Hurst was joined by representatives from the Mississippi Sheriffs Association, Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police, Mississippi Prosecutors Association and federal law enforcement agencies in presenting the 2020 Mississippi Peace Officers Memorial Ceremony.

Each May 15 is Police Officers Memorial Day, culminating the annual National Police Week. The state ceremony paid tribute to the sacrifice and service of all Mississippi law enforcement officers, while also honoring, remembering and revering those law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the line of duty in 2019.

According to the U.S. Attorneys Office, data from the FBI reported that 89 law enforcement officers nationwide were killed in the line of duty in 2019. Four of those were from Mississippi -- including Biloxi police officer Robert McKeithen.

McKeithen was shot in the back multiple times outside the Biloxi Police Department just over a year ago, May 5, 2019. A U.S. Air Force veteran, McKeithen had been with the Biloxi department for 24 years.

In addition to being honored during Fridays state ceremony, McKeithens name was added to the wall of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The three other fallen Mississippi officers honored Friday were Panola County Constable E. Raye Hawkins; Chickasaw County Deputy Sheriff Jeremy Allen Voyles; and Lowndes County Constable Willie Houston Hoot West.

Even in the midst of the current crisis, while our law enforcement remain on the front lines, it is so important that we continue to thank and honor them publicly for their sacrifice and their service," Hurst said. "This ceremony was just one small act to show our gratitude to and love for them and their families for all that they do for us.

I especially want the families who have lost love ones to know we in law enforcement will never forget your love ones devotion to duty and their commitment to service. You have our eternal thanks, and we forever have your back.

John Bubba Bramlett, District Attorney for the Twentieth Circuit Court, spoke on behalf of all Mississippi prosecutors.

These officers paid the ultimate price, serving and protecting us. Their families made the ultimate sacrifice," Bramlett said. "We pay tribute to those officers, we honor their families, and we salute all the law enforcement officers throughout the state of Mississippi who continue to serve and protect us on a daily basis.

On behalf of all prosecutors across the state of Mississippi to our law enforcement family  we love you, we pray for you, we thank you, and God bless.

Other federal agencies represented at the ceremony included officials from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Agency, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives, Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Secret Service.

As we honor our Mississippi law enforcement officers who have lost their lives in the line of duty, we remember each of them and the sacrifices they made to serve their communities," said Ridgeland police chief John Neal. They wanted to make their communities and this great state a better place. We are eternally grateful for the impact they made in the numerous lives that they touched.

The Hinds County Sheriffs Office and Jackson Police Department provided the color guard for the event.
Life has a way of infallibly coming full circle. As an organisation that began existence on the opposite side of the government fence, the Shiv Sena spent half a century beating up migrants to Mumbai, including the well-off Gujaratis, the middle-class South Indians and the poorer working class North Indians.

Now, as leaders of the state government with the future of Maharashtra in their hands, Shiv Sena chief and Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray is worried about what will happen to Maharashtras economy if migrant labourers leave and never come back. Although, unlike Karnataka, the Maharashtra government is not stopping the migrants from leaving, and the CM even decided to pay for their transport from the chief ministers relief fund, Thackeray's concerns are genuine.

Decades of agitating against migrants has not masked the fact that people from other states were in (mainly) Mumbai because local Maharashtrians were either too lazy or too hoity-toity to take up the jobs the migrants did. With relatively high levels of education, illiteracy is rare among Maharashtrians. This resulted in almost every underprivileged local preferring to work in air conditioned offices as clerks and peons. Working in factories or as taxi drivers or roadside vendors militates against their sense of self-worth. Better education has meant that the local Maharashtrians have managed to take back some of the middle-class jobs that went to South Indians. At the higher levels, barring a couple of industrial houses such as Kirloskars and Garwares and the likes, not many Maharashtrians are enterprising enough.

The absence of a trading class is a centuries' old gap in Maharashtrian society. What it has always had is an upper crust Brahminical class who were traditional moneylenders and, as an extension of that, exploitative of other members of society. As a result, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Maratha warrior king, invited neighbouring Gujaratis to set up shop, trade and fill the gap where the then local populace was either incapable of doing or looked down upon.

That tradition continued during the British regime, with upper crust Gujarati and Marwari, as well as Sindhi, Bohra and Khoja Muslims, setting up textile mills and other labour-intense factories.

Much of this work force was from far off states where levels of literacy and education were poorer than Maharashtra's. In recent years, this gap in the work force has been supplemented by farmers from rural Maharashtra who have been pushed to urban centres after failed crops.

When Shiv Sena founder Bal Thackeray raged against North Indians a few decades back, he knew that if he really threw them out of the state, there would be a void in the blue collar jobs, especially among the factories and mills across Mumbai and Maharashtra. Nevertheless, it was a great vote-catching tactic.

Today, Bal Thackerays son Uddhav Thackeray knows very well that he will never be able to persuade local Maharashtrians to take up the jobs left behind by migrants from other states. This is creating a problem for the Thackeray-led Maha Vikas Aghadi government  what if the migrants do not return to Mumbai in sufficient numbers?

The Union governments indecisiveness and lack of vision and clarity on the problems the migrant workers were facing across India during the lockdown has resulted in enormous physical, economic and emotional stress to the migrants, many who have walked hundreds of kilometres in the scorching heat and under the blazing sun to get to their villages. Such has been the hardship that it will not be surprising if many of these migrants choose to not return to the cities and settle for a less-paying job nearer to their homes.

The recent change in labour laws would also mean that industrialists might consider relocating units to areas where laws are relaxed and labour is cheaper. The towns and villages in the Hindi heartland might benefit at the cost of cities such as Mumbai, Nagpur, Pune, etc.

However, in this changing demographics, there could be a catch. The general law and order situation in Maharashtra, Gujarat and the South Indian states is better than some Hindi heartland states. This is also one of the reasons why many choose to migrate from these states to the better-governed states.

The ultimate outcome of the shift in demographics, however, would depend on how well the North Indian states are able to manage their returning population, and if they are able to control their law and order situation in good measure.

In the meantime, expect the economies of all states to suffer as, south of the Vindhyas, they face a shortage of labour, and, in the north, they are lobbed with a surfeit of jobless individuals which could lead to other societal problems. In Maharashtra, itll be interesting to see how Chief Minister Thackeray tackles the situation.
P eople across Europe are emerging slowly and carefully out of lockdown.

Italians, who have endured one of the world's longest lockdowns, have spent nearly two months couped up at home. They are now in phase two of the country's gradual re-opening and are allowed outside and to visit relatives in different regions. Museums and retailers will open from May 18 and bars, restaurants and hairdressers should follow on June 1.

As in the UK, Italians are being told to socially distance themselves. In Tuscany, for example, residents are required to stay 1.8 metres apart in public spaces and in effort to remind people, the pretty Piazza Giotto in Vicchio near Florence has commissioned some striking artwork.

Designers Caret Studio have created a temporary installation of white squares to form a photogenic grid throughout the square. Called StoDistante (Im keeping my distance), the squares aim to help people judge distances and keep apart from one another.

Piazza Giotto / Caret Studio

Caret Studio says: "The weeks of lockdown have changed our perception of public space, and for our generation it represented the first time we had to fear the collectivity.

"This sense of insecurity together with a prolonged permanence in our private houses, has pushed us to rethink how we could regain possession of the public spaces. StoDistante represents a manifesto of this desire of a new sense of being together."

Take a look at the social distanced artwork in the gallery above.
New Delhi, May 15 : Union Home Minister Amit Shah has hailed the announcement of the Finance Ministry ramping up the agricultural and fisheries infrastructure, saying the unprecedented economic package will "open up new doors." "The Modi government believes that India's welfare lies in the welfare of farmers. This unprecedented assistance given to farmers today shows Modi's foresight to make the country self-sufficient by empowering farmers," said Shah.

Citing examples of Modi government purchasing crops worth Rs 74,300 crore at MSP and crop insurance scheme worth Rs 6,400 cr during the lockdown, Shah said the Centre has shown "sensitivity in odd circumstances".

Referring to Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's cluster-based approach with a decision of Rs 10,000 crore for Micro Food Enterprises, Shah said it will provide an "unprecedented force" to the people associated with small enterprises involving mango, saffron, chilli and bamboo in various fields.

The Centre today also allocated Rs 20,000 cr for fishermen through the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY). This was part of the government economic package to help rejuvenate India's economy. An amount of Rs 11,000-crore out of Rs 20,000 crore is kept for activities in marine, inland fisheries and aquaculture.

Meanwhile, the rest Rs 9,000 cr is for creating infrastructure like fishing harbors, cold chains and markets. Shah said this "will provide new strength to the infrastructure, modernization, productivity and quality of the sector and also generate new jobs".
Just this week, the Fremont Police Department conducted a thorough inspection of Tesla's Fremont, California, factory in order to assess the facility's current safety measures along with the degree of its operations. According to a police spokesperson, the latest news regarding the whole country's standoff with Tesla CEO Elon Musk about the latter's very dramatic and also "incredibly stup*d", according to an article by Gizmodo, refusal to actually comply with a certain order to stop the production amidst the current global pandemic.

For those still not following the topic, Musk has continuously been publicly melting down over the current lockdown orders. The CEO not only tweets bad takes on certain perpetuating myths along with misinformation about the COVID-19 guidelines, but Musk also requires his employees to still show up for work in direct defiance to the orders from certain health authorities.

Tesla's compliance?

The company previously "ceased operations" sometime in March. Earlier this current week, the CEO tweeted that Tesla would actually be "restarting production today" in direct violation of a certain order by the health authorities of the Alameda County, which Musk is now suing over the current measures. The CEO even added that if any of his workers were arrested on-site, "that it only be me."

Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.  Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 11, 2020

The County officials "agreed" to allow Tesla to reopen as early as next week, but only if they are able to comply with specific safety measures along with the current social distancing protocols. This is something that is impossible given the nature of their work.

According to a spokesperson for the Fremont Police Department's statement to Gizmodo by email, the department had actually paid a visit to the very Fremont factory upon the request of the Alameda County Public Health Department in order to ensure that those set measures were being enforced.

These measures are said to include physical distancing, the use of face mask, and screenings. Tesla is not unable to fully operate. CNBC was the first to report this week's strong police inspection.

Read Also: New Law Allows Investigators to Access Your Search History and More Without a Warrant

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk

The spokesperson also stated that it has actually not yet been asked to start an open investigation despite the whole company's obvious defiance of the order in the County of Alameda. The department will soon be passing on its observations to nonother than the county's health department, and if it is found out that Tesla is still not meeting the agreed-upon measures, both of the parties will discuss how "immediate compliance" could possibly be obtained.

The spokesperson also added that the compliance is definitely not possible and the situation would actually head straight to the county's own district attorney's office, which would eventually make a decision as to whether or not they should pursue charges.

In plain terms, if CEO Elon Musk actually violates the law, they will definitely sue him. And if he does it again, despite something to be worked out, this still comes with severe consequences.

The police spokesperson has told Gizmodo that the whole department is currently "not taking enforcement action" due to the "good faith talks" that they had with Tesla regarding the laid out safety plans that were ongoing.

A Tesla employee even reported to the Guardian that the company is using "intimidation tactics" to force employees to work in fear of losing their jobs.

Read Also: Jeff Bezos Could Become the World's First Trillionaire by 2026 Earning over $2,500 Per Second, Thanks to Coronavirus
Largely unseen footage of the funeral and official mourning following the death of Soviet leader Josef Stalin is featured in a new documentary, State Funeral, by Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa. It's being shown on Current Time, the Russian-language network led by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA. The mourning events were held at factories, on collective farms, town squares, and in meeting halls across the Soviet Union.
The Damodar Valley Corporation



(DVC) is looking at tweaking its generation strategy and optimising new plants to manage costs in the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, a company official said on Friday.

The 1,000-MW Koderma Thermal Power Station in Jharkhand, commissioned seven years back, achieved 100 per cent plant load factor (PLF) on Thursday, while adhering to social distancing norms and other safety protocols, he said.

"The company is trying to manage costs. New, efficient plants are being pushed for greater generation over the old and inefficient units," the official told PTI.

DVC's generation on Friday was at 2,800 MW as against its normal output of around 5,000 MW, due to lack of demand amid the nationwide lockdown.

The installed capacity of the state-run company is 7,107 MW.

DVC power stations clocked the highest-ever generation of 36,998 million units (MU) of electricity in the 2019-20 fiscal, officials said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is always a question of how much of the Bravo shows are real. Even the stars themselves accuse their co-stars of staging scenes for their shows. But which Real Housewives were accused and why? Here are four who were accused of staging things for the show.

1. Denise Richards

Kyle Richards, Denise Richards on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills | Nicole Weingart/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank/NBCUniversal via Getty Images

Its not unusual for the Bravo stars to talk about their co-stars with their family members. However, Kyle Richards wasnt buying Denise Richards scene with her daughter, Sami Sheen talking about them on Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.

This feels like a set up to me Clearly Denise had this conversation with her daughter prior to this and decided to have this conversation on camera, Kyle Richards tweeted during the episode Let The Mouse Go!

Denise Richards denied this by tweeting, No Kyle it actually happened on camera twice. Ask our producers.

2. Kelly Dodd

RELATED: RHONY: Sonja Morgan Calls out Housewives That Flee Filming Like Lisa Vanderpump, Denise Richards

Kelly Dodd of the Real Housewives of Orange County previously accused Tamra Judge and Vicki Gunvalson of being stale in an interview. This was after Gunvalson was demoted and Dodd suggested Judge will also probably have the same fate.

Gunvalson responded to this on Instagram. I used to feel sorry for her, now I dont. She is an angry, volatile person, she wrote according to Reality Blurb.

Her comment continued, Regarding her stating we are stale and dont have story lines. Listen up girl! Our lives are always evolving and changing. We dont have storylines. Its a reality show  our reality!! Not fake stories like you.

3. Kenya Moore

RELATED: RHOA: Nene Leakes Claps Back at Haters Saying Her Reads Are Scripted

Kenya Moore previously dated Matt Jordan, but that relationship ended. He claimed him destroying her home was staged. Jordan went on to accuse the Real Housewives of Atlanta star of faking things for the show.

It was a real relationship to me, but I felt like it was strictly for the purpose of a storyline, he told Radar Online. Jordan also accused her of manipulating him.

If producers said, We want to do a scene of you and Matt, she would kiss me and be like, Baby I love you, he claimed. If they said, We want arguing, we are going to argue even if were on good terms.

He claimed that she would plan relationship issues for them. She would book our rooms in separate hotels to make it seem like we really werent together, Jordan said. We would have a few good days and then something would happen. Shes good at keeping me in dark.

Moore was granted a restraining order against him. She then got married to Marc Daly.

4. Lisa Vanderpump

Lisa Vanderpump was accused of leaking stories about her RHOBH co-stars. She decided to clear her name by doing a lie detector test.

Fans and her co-stars couldnt believe it. One fan tweeted, That looked super set up and John Sessa there? So weird. Kyle Richards responded with, I mean I dont think the FBI was behind this.

Erika Jayne was also asked what her thoughts are on the scene on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen. She said the lie detector test was not the way to do it Who does that?

Fans may never know how much of the show is real and if any of it is stage. But these four stars were accused of staging things at one point to clear their name or cause drama.
The North Tongu Member of Parliament has joined calls for President Akufo-Addo to downsize his government owing to the state of the Ghanaian economy.



It is deeply worrying to observe that President Akufo-Addo cannot seem to help himself. Despite widespread public outrage over his penchant for an elephantine-sized government; the number of Presidential Staffers has increased from 28 in 2018 to 36 in 2019. Also, the list of junior political appointees has shot up from 254 in 2018 to 270 in 2019, Ablakwa wrote in a Facebook post hours ago.



His concern comes after the President submitted to Parliament the Annual Report on Presidential Office Staff for January to December 2019 as required by the Presidential Office Act, 1993 (Act 463).



The North Tongu lawmaker is upset with what he described as foggy designations created at the Jubilee House, ultimately to burden the Ghanaian taxpayer.



For example: we have Duke Ofori-Atta presented in the report as Director of Programmes. Then there is Amina Sammo who is Director of Programme. Theres Ouborr K. Kutando, Director of Special Project and then Alexander Gyedu who is Director, Special Projects.



In addition to the controversial portfolio of Minister of State for Public Procurement held by Sarah Adjoa Sarfo, theres listed a Director for Procurement Compliance in the person of Samuel Kwaku Adu. In similar vein, though Alhaji Ibrahim Mohammed Awal continues to function as Minister for Business Development, the tax payer is further burdened with a Director of Business Support named as Franklin Owusu-Karikari.



It is particularly curious as to why the tax payer should be saddled with a full time Overseer of the National Cathedral even though we are told in rather hazy terms that the National Cathedral is a non-state voluntary effort.



Then theres the legion of persons listed as Personal Assistants without stating which specific officials they are assisting.



He contended that the advocacy to amend Act 463 to place a cap on the number of political appointees that should be appointed (311 out of a total staffing of 934) has become even more relevant now than ever.



Perhaps we should be asking President Akufo-Addo to help us better understand exactly what he meant by protecting the public purse, he queried.

Source: kasapafmonline.com









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With zero new COVID cases, Phuket officials maintain total remains 224

PHUKET: The Phuket Communicable Disease Committee today (May 15) reported zero new cases of people infected with the COVID-19 coronavirus, but maintains that the total number of people in Phuket officially confirmed as infected with the virus since the outbreak began remains at 224  despite Deputy Public Health Minister Sathit Pitutecha yesterday publicly announcing that four cases reported as confirmed on Sunday had since been confirmed as not infected.

COVID-19Coronavirushealth

By The Phuket News

Friday 15 May 2020, 01:11PM

Image: PR Dept

The Phuket office of the Public Relations Department of Thailand (PR Phuket) announced through a post on its official Facebook page early this morning that the total number of confirmed cases for the island remains 224.

The Phuket Provincial Health Office, which serves as the Phuket Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) Incident Command Center, confirmed that the islands total number of confirmed cases of infections remains at 224 with its own post just before 11:30am.

The Department of Disease Control under the Ministry of Public Health confirmed just after 12:30pm today that the cases dismissed by Deputy Health Minister Sathit yesterday have not been deducted from the current national tally for the country.

Meanwhile, Patong Police Chief Col Aganit Danpitaksat confirmed to The Phuket News that the 24 officers who worked closely with one of the four reported as infected on Sunday now have been allowed to return home.

The 24 officers were placed under quarantine at the Sleep With Me Hotel as soon as Col Aganit was informed that one of his officers had been confirmed as infected.

All 24 officers are expected to leave [quarantine] today, but they must quarantine themselves at home for another 14 days as a precaution, Col Aganit said.

The 24 officers have been tested for the virus twice, he added.

Both times they all tested negative, he said.

According to the PR Phuket post this morning, so far 10,143 people had been classified as at risk of contracting COVID-19, an increase of 116 on the 10,027 reported yesterday.

Of those, 9,919 were found not infected with the virus.

The PR Phuket report also noted 6,108 people had so far been classified as Persons Under Investigation. Of those, 6,039 had been cleared.

PR Phuket this morning also reported that 69 people remained in hospital, comprising 24 people already confirmed as infected, and 45 people still waiting for test results, a decrease of 23 from the 68 reported yesterday.

So far three people in Phuket have died as a direct result of being infected with COVID-19, including an Australian hotel manager from Khao Lak whose family lived in Nai Harn.

All confirmed COVID-19 cases are receiving hospital treatment, the PPHO noted in their report today.

In its report, the PPHO warned against complacency of contracting the virus.

Although the number of new COVID-19 cases has fallen and some days there are no new cases reported at all, we cannot rely on that because of the incubation period and that a person infected with the disease may not be exhibiting any symptoms. If everyone is not careful, there may be a second wave [of infections], the PPHO said.

The PPHO needs everyone to continue to act in the new normal style [sic] with discipline and consistency. Try to stay home, eat hot food, and use personal items [not share them]. Maintain at least one metre of space from people, wear a face mask and yourwash hands frequently, it added.

In addition, relaxation [of restrictions] in public activities such as exercise has been around for a while, but we have found that some people still do not comply with the specified measures, the PPHO warned.

The PPHO also warned people to be wary of spitting while talking.

We would like to emphasize to the people who use [business] services that they strictly must wear a mask, wash their hands frequently with soap or sanitising gel. They should speak in a normal tone and reduce the use of loud noises, maintain space from other people, refrain from eating in public areas except drinking water, do not spit saliva or phlegm and avoid unnecessarily any persons face or other things around us, the PPHO said.

"Any person who experiences any of the following symptoms  coughing, mucus, sore throat, runny nose, loss of sense of smell, shallow or rapid breathing or a fever  must see a doctor immediately to check for COVID-19, the PPHO urged.
I understand that everything is so different, so to transition over to that medium, it might seem daunting to some and fine for others, Pritchards, who works at Kolling Elementary School in St. John, said. I post my activities online so they can access them that way  but as far as the actually teletherapy piece, theres not as many families that are doing it.
Good Morning America

On the eve of the one-year anniversary of his inauguration, President Joe Biden held a formal news conference at the White House Wednesday, answering reporter questions on his handling of the pandemic, the economy and legislative agenda, characterizing the country as unified -- but not as much as it could be -- and raised eyebrows by saying Russia was likely to invade Ukraine. "It's been a year of challenges, but it's also many years of enormous progress," Biden said to begin, ticking through his administration's successes before fielding questions from reporters. With Biden facing the limits of what he can accomplish with an evenly-divided Senate, unable to get either his signature social spending package or major voting rights reform through Congress in recent weeks, and with the pandemic still raging well into its second, his approval rating in polls has hit an all-time low.
Executive Director of Danquah Institute, Richard Ahiagbah says the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) and former President John Dramani Mahama are a bunch of "disgruntled" entities "trying their maximum best to instigate unnecessary public confusion".



Richard Ahiagbah was reacting to the NDC's claim that the Electoral Commission (EC) plans to rig the 2020 elections for President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo.



The NDC National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has said the EC and the National Identification Authority (NIA) are in cahoots with the incumbent government scheming to rig the 2020 elections and hold on to power at all cost.



But in a statement copied to Peacefmonline.com, Richard Ahiagbah said it is "obvious that the accusations levelled against the Electoral Commission and the President by the NDC, is an attack on President Akufo-Addo to taint his political reputation, and to undermine the electoral process of the country. The NDC connecting the President to an allegation levelled against the EC is a clear sign of a disgruntled opposition party trying their maximum best to instigate unnecessary public confusion.



John Mahama knows that the Electoral Commission is independent and does not consult the President on anything (Mahamas own words in 2016). Why then would the NDC claim that the president is in alliance with the EC to rig the elections, particularly when he stated himself that the president and the EC are separate bodies? the statement further read.



Mr. Ahiagbah also alluded to former President John Mahamas remarks in 2016 about the Electoral Commission.



Ghanas electoral system is one of the best in the world. Note my words, not in Africa, in the world because it has inherent instruments for guaranteeing its integrity, This was the strong declaration about Ghanas electoral system made by John Mahama on November 18, 2016.



His conviction is that the Electoral Commission cannot rig elections. What then is his basis for claims of a possible rig of the upcoming general elections? If Ghana has inherent instruments that ensure the integrity of its elections, as Mahama emphatically stated, how then can it be rigged? Simply because he is now in the opposition, and perhaps scared of losing the elections, suddenly he is claiming the electoral system that he has such strong faith in cannot be trusted? This just shows a dishonest and untrustworthy person who is willing to contradict his own words, even if he knows the truth, to advance his political agenda.



Read below the full statement



Ghanas electoral system is one of the best in the world. Note my words, not in Africa, in the world because it has inherent instruments for guaranteeing its integrity. This was the strong declaration about Ghanas electoral system made by John Mahama on November 18, 2016.



His conviction is that the Electoral Commission cannot rig elections. What then is his basis for claims of a possible rig of the upcoming general elections? If Ghana has inherent instruments that ensure the integrity of its elections, as Mahama emphatically stated, how then can it be rigged? Simply because he is now in the opposition, and perhaps scared of losing the elections, suddenly he is claiming the electoral system that he has such strong faith in cannot be trusted? This just shows a dishonest and untrustworthy person who is willing to contradict his own words, even if he knows the truth, to advance his political agenda.



It is also obvious that the accusations levelled against the Electoral Commission and the President by the NDC, is an attack on President Akufo-Addo to taint his political reputation, and to undermine the electoral process of the country. The NDC connecting the president to an allegation levelled against the EC is a clear sign of a disgruntled opposition party trying their maximum best to instigate unnecessary public confusion. John Mahama knows that the Electoral Commission is independent and does not consult the President on anything (Mahamas own words in 2016). Why then would the NDC claim that the president is in alliance with the EC to rig the elections, particularly when he stated himself that the president and the EC are separate bodies?



Also, the main argument used by the NDC, which is that many citizens have not been issued with the Ghana Cards, and as a result will automatically lead to a rig in the elections, is inaccurate. In the new amendment being sought, there are three provisions; a passport, a national identification card, and a voter registration identification guarantee form completed and signed by two registered voters. This in effect means that contrary to the picture that the NDC is painting, citizens who do not have a passport or the Ghana Card would still be able to vote.



It is very disturbing and rather misleading for the NDC to cause a public confusion regarding the requirements to vote. Instead of embarking on this pointless crusade, it would be most prudent if NDC parliamentarians give their consent to move forward with the new amendment in order to facilitate the electoral process in a timely manner, and to provide voting rights to the over 1 million people who have turned 18 and are unregistered.

Source: Josephine Acheampomaa/[email protected]









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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Two months after schools across the country began to shut down in-person instruction in response to the coronavirus pandemic, almost every state has directed its schools to provide some kind of remote instruction, and asked millions of students to engage in distance learning. But how much instruction are states recommending, and in what form?

Education Week scanned all 50 states publicly available continuous learning directives and guidance documents, tracking trends and identifying points of divergence. Though most states had few requirements for how districts should structure remote learning, some common recommendations emerged around instruction and assessment practices.

Nearly all states that are issuing guidance are focusing on flexibility, given that these times are so odd, said Joseph Hedger, an associate editor at the National Association of State Boards of Education, who analyzed states continuous learning plans in a brief for the organization .

States suggested guidance documents are still constantly evolving, as districts request further direction.

Several research teams, including at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Teaching Systems Lab and at Michigan States Institute for Public Policy and Social Research , analyzed states plans in March and April. Even in the few weeks that have followed, more states have added policies for grading, promotion, and instruction, and have issued new guidance for teaching special education students and English-language learners.

Emphasis on Recommendations, Not Requirements

As the school year draws to a close, its still difficult to know how this guidance has shaped how districts have chosen to conduct remote learning.

Only about half of the states require districts to submit their continuous learning plans for reviewdocuments that outline what platforms and resources districts are using, how theyll serve special populations, how they will monitor engagement or attendance, and how theyll conduct assessments.

What States Require and Recommend on Remote Learning Instruction 17 states recommend specific minimum/maximum times for students to be in remote instruction.

32 have taken steps to release districts from day or hour requirements on instructional time.

22 recommend that teachers hold office hours when theyre available to students and parents. Attendance 20 states dont require districts to track and/or report attendance to the state during closures, though 6 of these have suggested or requested that districts track attendance internally.

18 have directed districts to continue tracking. Grading and Promotion 16 states suggest or mandate do no harm approach to grading, recommending that grades given during the pandemic shouldnt negatively affect a students academic standing.

Most states dont address promotion, or say its a local decision; 11 have policies that encourage promotion to the next grade. Special populations All states have addressed how to provide special education during the closures, but only 37 states provide guidance and/or specific educational resources for English-language learners. Source: Education Week Analysis

There are still a number of states where districts are being recommended, but not required, to develop plans. If you think about that with respect to on-the-ground implications, you could have pretty enormous variation, said Sarah Reckhow, an associate professor of political science at Michigan State University, and one of the authors of the IPPSR report.

In Michigan, for example, many districts didnt have a continuous learning plan until the governor required it by executive order, on April 2, Reckhow said.

And theres some evidence that detailed guidance has influenced districts, even when a plan is not required, said Georgia Heyward, a research analyst at the Center on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington Bothell.

The organization has tracked district responses to school closures. Florida school systems generally have well-developed plans, Heyward said, even though the state only encouragednot requiredthat districts create them. Districts knew that they needed to comply, Heyward said. Its kind of like an effective use of soft power.

Seat-Time Rules Loosened

Almost every state has addressed what seat time will look like in a virtual setting. During the regular school year, most require students to receive 180 days of instruction.

During remote learning, 32 states as of early May had taken steps to release districts from day or hour requirements for instruction. These range from allowing districts to apply for waivers, issuing blanket waivers or suspensions of these rules, or saying that districts will continue to receive funding for days when schools were closed and wont have to make up these days.

Of these, 16 states have made this waiver conditional, requiring that districts submit plans for approval, attestations that theyre providing remote learning, or summary reports of remote learning provided during the closures.

Other states have taken a different approach, saying that distance learning can count toward these instructional time requirements, or providing assurances that districts will continue to receive full funding while they do distance learning.

Asking districts to submit a plan is one of the levers that states can pull, said Heyward. A state could then use that plan to monitor for quality, or to provide some kind of differentiated support, she said. This is the case in Wyoming, where the state plans to monitor districts implementation. Only districts that have carried out their plans can receive a waiver for instructional days.

Those [states] that didnt set any expectation, they were basically saying, Its up to the district. Whatever they decide, were good with that, Heyward said.

Aside from the states that require districts to submit plans, there arent many other requirements for what instruction should look like, said Reckhow. Its mostly guidance, she said.

I think the harder decisions are definitely ahead of us rather than behind us.

Only 17 states recommend the specific minimum and maximum number of hours that students should be engaged in remote learning. These guidelines vary, but generally are progressive through the grade levels, starting with about 30 minutes a day for preschoolers and going up to 3-4 hours a day for high school students.

Kansas was one of the first states to list hour-by-hour time recommendations, and the same schedule has been adopted by at least a handful other states. The state released its continuous learning plan early on during the closures, in mid-March. Kansas department of education saw schools across the country starting to close, and assembled a team of teachers, principals, and administrators before Gov. Laura Kelly made the decision to shut down for the rest of the academic year, said Brad Neuenswander, the deputy commissioner of the division of learning services for the Kansas State Department of Education.

This group, led by two teachers and an assistant superintendent, developed guidelines for hours of instruction with access concerns in mind. Imagine you are a family of four and you have limited internet, and you only have one device. What would this look like? And thats what we went from, common sense, said Cindy Couchman, the assistant superintendent for Buhler Unified School District 313, and one of the groups leaders.

They also developed the plans guiding priorities and philosophy, which emphasize a less is more approach: focus on essential learning, emphasize relationships, be flexible, and extend grace to students and teachers as they may struggle to adapt to a new environment.

In general, states guidance encourages districts to focus on students emotional well-being and immediate needslike school mealsand to plan instruction with equity at the center. The MIT Teaching Systems Labs early analysis noted this trend in late March, and such language has remained even as states update their guidance.

Most states recommend frequent teacher-student interaction, with regular check-ins. A few specify what that means: In Arkansas, Delaware, and Michigan, for example, students should be contacted at least once a week; in Iowa, Minnesota, and Vermont, its every day. Almost half of all states, 22, suggest that teachers set regular office hours so they can be available for student and parent questions.

Moving From Review to Teaching New Material

For the most part, what content to prioritize is left up to districts. But about a third of states, 18, ask districts to focus on covering critical standards, or note that districts can prioritize teaching essential knowledge and skills. While most states do not specify in their guidance which standards fall into this category, a few do. Alabama and Massachusetts have listed essential standards in English/language arts, math, science, and social studies.

When schools first shut down, the Teaching Systems Lab report noted, some states recommended that districts only focus on enrichment and review during the closures, rather than try to continue to progress through the curriculum. But as its become clear that most schools will be closed through the end of the school year, some statesincluding Massachusetts and Pennsylvaniahave changed course, asking districts to teach new material for the rest of the school year.

But even though more states may suggest moving on to new material, students still struggle to access online learning.

The states can play a role, and some have, in bridging the digital divide for districts, said Heyward. Five states and the Virgin Islands have allocated funds to help extend districts capacity to offer devices, she said.

More generally, states encourage districts to find ways to get tech to students, while acknowledging that they should be providing both online and offline options to tailor their schools approach to student needs.

Every state provides a list of links to, or a curated selection of, online resources that districts can choose to use. And in at least 37 states, public broadcasting networks are providing some or all students with distance learning.

By now, every state has issued some guidance on how to provide instruction for students in special education. Still, as noted in the IPPSR report, many of these documents are vague.

Fewer states, 37, have provided guidance and/or specific educational resources for English-language learners.

Do No Harm Approach for Grading

States have also had to plan for the eventual end of the 2019-20 school year, offering guidance as to how students should be graded and whether they should be promoted.

Most states have eased graduation requirements for seniors . But promotion has received less attention. Most states dont address it or they simply say its a local decision. Eleven states include policies that encourage advancing students to the next grade.

Both North Carolina and Delaware suggest that if students were on track for promotion before the shutdowns, students should be promoted. Oregons guidance is even broader, ordering districts not to make any decision that negatively affects course placement, acceptance to honor societies or other future opportunities.

When it comes to gradinganother flashpoint in conversations about what remote learning should look likestates are somewhat more unified in their recommendations.

While most still note that grading is a local decision, many encourage schools to take into account the challenges and inequities students may be experiencing before formally evaluating work.

And some go farther. By Education Weeks analysis, at least 16 states have suggested or mandated a do no harm approach to grading, recommending that, given the pandemic, grades shouldnt negatively affect a students academic standing.

Nine states suggest that districts use pass/fail or credit/no credit grading, instead of an A-F or a numerical scale. Some acknowledge that whatever decision districts make on grading, it has the potential to have a long-lasting impact on students transcripts, especially at the high school level.

But for Oklahoma, this assessment of long-term impact is a reason to give grades, rather than a reason to institute a pass/fail system. Due to the long-term negative implications on grade point averages (GPAs), Oklahomas Promise, NCAA eligibility and other scholarship opportunities, districts are strongly encouraged to continue to issue traditional letter grades in lieu of Pass/Fail (P/F) grading, the guidance reads.

Other statesincluding Indiana, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Mainehave also recommended against or prohibited pass/fail grading.

What If Remote Learning Continues?

Still, many of these recommendationsfrom instructional minutes, to grading policies, to which standards to covermay change next academic year, if school buildings remain closed.

Carmen Ayala, the Illinois superintendent of education, said that the state plans to revise its guidance if remote learning continues into the fall, reshaping stopgap measures into a long-term strategy.

This means that the states policies on grading, which currently states that students grades cant be lowered, may change in the coming school year, she said, in an interview. Initially our position was under an emergency, very difficult, very shocking situation, she said. As we have evolved and we have learned more  we do need to think about what [grading] will look like.

And the recommendations for time spent learning may be extended, she said, especially if instruction is going to count for a grade. The minimum was really, really, really a minimum. I think we had barely an hour for kindergarten, for example, which I think we do need to ... begin to adjust, Ayala said.

In Kansas, the state department has pulled together a new team of educators to work on an updated guidance document, for next school year. Our hope is well be back in school [in] August, but what if theres a second round? Neuenswander asked. The document should be ready by early July, he said.

This time, the group is focused on long-term curriculum planning. Subject-specific experts are identifying the essential standards at different grade levels, and figuring out how to teach and assess those in a competency-based framework, rather than one that requires a certain amount of seat time.

Other states, including Louisiana and Tennessee, have already asked for districts to create plans for the 2020-21 academic year that consider continued distance learning as a possibility.

What that will look likeand how schools plan to address the equity issues that will still exist in the fallis an open question, said Reckhow.

It became very clear that states needed to close schools at some point, and the only situation on the table was distance learning. And it is what it iswell get through the rest of the school year, she said. But the reopening process, and the resources that are going to be required in what may be a very resource-constrained future  I think the harder decisions are definitely ahead of us rather than behind us.
The first wave of long-promised negative ads from the Trump campaign began this week, flooding Facebook pages and television screens in swing states with harsh messages that make unfounded inferences about Joe Biden's mental state and paint the presumptive Democratic nominee as too friendly to the Chinese government.

In May, the Trump campaign has spent or reserved about $7 million on television airtime in local markets, fueling negative ads that repeat xenophobic tropes regarding the Chinese origin of the coronavirus, and unearth positive comments Biden has made about China in the past.

The campaign's ads on Facebook declare "Geriatric Health is No Laughing Matter" or "Joe Biden: Old and Out of It," then use edits of Biden's verbal stumbles and meandering soliloquies to make less-than-subtle suggestions about his mental acuity.

Though President Donald Trump often takes to his Twitter account to skewer Biden as tired and boring, his campaign's expansive digital advertising operation has been almost exclusively focused on raising money and finding new donors online.

Last week, the Trump campaign boasted that it was about to "press fire'' on a dormant arsenal of data-driven digital and TV ads. It plans to spend $10 million on its opening salvo against Biden, a budget first reported by Politico.

As of late last month, the campaign and the Republican National Committee had a $187 million cash advantage over Biden and the Democrats.

By pummeling Biden on China and mental fitness, the Trump campaign is trying to define him early in the general-election race, at a time when many Americans, stuck at home amid the COVID-19 crisis, are even more tuned into screens big and small.

The new ads that focus on China have two lines of attack. One criticizes Biden for saying the president's decision to restrict travel from China because of the coronavirus outbreak was "hysterical xenophobia." But most of the ads highlight statements that Biden made when he was vice president, like "China is not our enemy."

Trump, too, has at times praised China and its president, Xi Jinping, occasionally undermining attempts by aides and his campaign to portray China as villain responsible for the virus.

The Trump campaign is suddenly moving to play catch-up after Democratic groups aligned with Biden have taken to the airwaves to attack Trump, including over his performance in responding to the coronavirus. Two groups, Priorities USA and American Bridge, have spent at least $20 million on anti-Trump ads since March 1.

Trump's campaign has been frustrated with its own aligned super PAC, America First, for not doing more on television during this period of time.

"If this election is about Trump, he probably loses," said Ken Goldstein, professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. "Trump's only hope is to make the election about Biden."

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

The two campaigns did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.

The decision to directly go after Biden's age (at 77, Biden is four years older than Trump) risks a blowback, from older voters and others. One of the ads jokingly depicts Biden in a nursing home, a framing that could draw criticism as more than 28,000 people have died from the coronavirus in nursing homes and similar facilities in the United States.

But the ads targeting Biden's age could be informed by a recent CNN poll that found Trump leading Biden on the question of "stamina and sharpness" by 3 percentage points.

The ads focusing on Biden's age are running only on Facebook, and are running largely in eight battleground states, according to data from the platform: Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida and Georgia. The Trump campaign has spent $660,000 on Facebook ads over the past week.

The campaign also has ads on Facebook attacking Biden for his past statements on China. Others criticize him for proposing policies to help immigrants without legal status.

Running such varied online messages, Goldstein said, was evidence that the Trump campaign was still testing out the most effective lines of attack against the former vice president.

"All of those ads that they put out  one on China, one on verbal missteps and the state of Biden  what they're doing is testing those to see which resonate best with different sorts of people," Goldstein said. "And then whichever ones that work best on Facebook, then, first, you'll see more of them on Facebook. Then they'll fire for effect onto television."
Fallece la destacada periodista Azucena Romani Tafur a causa del nuevo #coronavirus. Por mas de 10 anos laboro en la Agencia Andina y El Peruano Hasta siempre querida Azucena! https://t.co/hFYXqxwy3N pic.twitter.com/sgrc4PZaHT
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Linkedin Paul Handley (Agence France-Presse) Washington, United States  Fri, May 15, 2020 07:45 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82497a 2 World senator,Republican,US,stock-trading,coronavirus,COVID-19,pandemic Free

Republican Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the powerful US Senate Intelligence Committee, stepped down Thursday after the FBI seized his cellphone in a probe of alleged insider stock trading tied to the coronavirus pandemic.

Burr said he informed Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell that he would give up the chairmanship temporarily while the FBI investigation is ongoing.

"The work the Intelligence Committee and its members do is too important to risk hindering in any way," Burr said in a statement.

"I believe this step is necessary to allow the committee to continue its essential work free of external distractions."

Burr is under investigation over whether he used his access to highly classified intelligence to sell stocks in February -- before the coronavirus pandemic struck the US, and while Americans were being told the virus's threat was low.

The Los Angeles Times said federal agents wielding a warrant seized his cellphone late Wednesday at his Washington home, after having first accessed Burr's personal files on his iCloud account.

Dumped stocks, warned donors

One of the most respected Republican senators, the North Carolina lawmaker drew attention after reports showed he had dumped most of his stocks and warned donors of the looming COVID-19 pandemic in February.

At the time President Donald Trump was playing down the danger to the public.

Burr, who receives almost daily briefings from the US intelligence community on threats to the country, wrote in a February 7 opinion piece published on the Fox News website that the US government was "better prepared than ever" for the COVID-19 virus, assuring Americans they were well-protected.

But on February 13 the senator and his wife suddenly sold off between $628,000 and $1.7 million in stocks, the ProPublica media group revealed in March, citing financial filings.

On the same day, Burr's brother-in-law sold as much as $280,000 worth of shares, ProPublica also reported.

Since then stock markets have plunged as the disease swept the world. Some 1.4 million Americans have been confirmed infected and over 85,000 died, more than any other country.

Burr, who receives much of the same intelligence as the White House, clearly had a different private view of the threat than the government's public stance.

Two weeks after Burr's share sales, Trump assured the public that the 15 US coronavirus cases reported at that time could be the peak.

The same day Burr told a private gathering of wealthy donors that coronavirus was a threat akin the 1918 Spanish Flu, which killed tens of millions.

"There's one thing that I can tell you about this: It is much more aggressive in its transmission than anything that we have seen in recent history," he said.

Outraged investors

An FBI investigation of a senior senator is rare and would have been approved at the highest levels of the Justice Department, legal specialists say.

Burr is respected for keeping the Intelligence Committee independent as it investigated Russian meddling into the 2016 election and possible collusion by President Donald Trump's campaign.

He has also refused to rubber-stamp Trump's controversial nominees to important intelligence community positions, amid worries over politicization by the White House.

But his stock sales sparked outrage as millions of investors saw their shares plummet after the pandemic forced a shutdown of much of the global economy.

It also drew attention to at least two other senators who made substantial investment shifts on the eve of the COVID-19 scare, Democrat Dianne Feinstein and Republican Kelly Loeffler.

Feinstein, a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has said her investments are held in a blind trust and that stock sales by her husband, a prominent California financier, were unrelated to the pandemic.

Loeffler, the wealthiest member of Congress, is married to Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman and main owner of the New York Stock Exchange through his company Intercontinental Exchange.

The couple reportedly sold as much as $3.1 million in shares between late January and February 14.

While the FBI has investigated Feinstein's transactions, it is not known if they are also probing Loeffler, who has denied impropriety.
B ritains new antibody test will be rapidly rolled out in weeks, Englands deputy chief medical officer has said.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam said the breakthrough accurate test, which can reveal whether someone has ever had the virus, would be available to the public in the days and weeks to come.

Boris Johnson hailed the new test, developed by Swiss pharmaceutical giant Roche, as a game-changer. Public Health England called it a very positive development.

NHS chiefs have approved the test after officials judged previous attempts as not reliable enough.

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Ministers are understood to hope an immunity certificate from taking the test could hold the key to Britain easing its lockdown further.

Prof Van-Tam said the incredibly important test would be rolled out to frontline health workers in NHS and social care first, before stretching to the general public.

I anticipate that it will be rapidly rolled out in the days and weeks to come  as soon as it is practical, he told the Downing Street press briefing.

Boris Johnson has hailed the new test as a 'game changer' / PA

I also anticipate that the focus will be on the national health service and on carers in the first instance.

Experts believe those who have had Covid-19 develop a degree of immunity, but Prof Van-Tam said it would take time to understand more about immunity

Number 10 said the new antibody test would certainly be available on the NHS, but commercial discussions with Roche are ongoing.

Roche says the test is 100 per cent accurate in showing if someone has previously had the disease and vowed to supply hundreds of thousands each week. PHE approved the test after analysis at the Porton Down lab last week.

Prof John Newton, national coordinator of the UK coronavirus testing programme, said: "This is a very positive development because such a highly specific antibody test is a very reliable marker of past infection.

Listen to The Leader: Coronavirus Daily podcast

"This in turn may indicate some immunity to future infection, although the extent to which the presence of antibodies indicates immunity remains unclear."
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A crowd of President Donald Trump's supporters have rushed at his motorcade in a cheering mob, many without masks as they defied coronavirus social distancing recommendations in shocking scenes from Pennsylvania.

Trump was traveling in the state on Thursday visiting the Owens & Minor Inc. factory, a medical distribution facility that has sent millions of N95 masks and other protective gear to hospitals and health care workers across the country.

Hundreds of Trump supporters, many of them waving flags or holding campaign signs and flags, lined the motorcade route to the plant in Upper Macungie Township, a suburb of Allentown in the Lehigh Valley region.

At the plant itself, there were thousands of Trump supporters, almost all of them holding up their phones to record the moment, as they crowded together chanting 'USA' and 'Four more years'. Dozens rushed in for a closer look at the motorcade as it entered the plant grounds, KYW-TV reported.

President Donald Trump gestures to supporters as his motorcade to drives past on Thursday in Allentown, Pennsylvania

At one point in the motorcade route, Trump's supporters bum-rushed the motorcade in excitement

People line the side of the road waiting for the motorcade with President Donald Trump to drive past on Thursday

While some of the president's supporters were seen wearing masks, the vast majority were not

Supporters line the side of the road waiting for the motorcade of President Donald Trump to drive past on Thursday

Only a small number of the crowd numbers were observed to be wearing face coverings or masks.

In the factory, Trump himself did not wear a mask, marking the second time he wasn't pictured with a facial covering as he traveled outside of the White House.

In his remarks to the workers, Trump praised them for social distancing but expressed nostalgia for the age before it was required.

'All that social distancing. Look at you people all spread out six feet. That's pretty impressive. But we like it the old way a little bit better don't we?,' he said.

People gather outside as US President Donald Trump visits medical supply distributor Owens and Minor Inc. in Allentown

Supporters line the side of the road waiting for President Donald Trump's motorcade to drive past on Thursday

A man salutes as President Donald Trump's motorcade drives past on Thursday in Pennsylvania

A pretzel vendor works the crowd as supporters gather outside the warehouse for Trump's visit

The workers wore matching neon green/yellow company T-shirts with 'Empowering our customers to advance healthcare' on the backs. All wore face masks.

The president, in a rare moment of personal reflection, mentioned his older brother Fred, who died in 1981 at the age of 42 from complications due to alcoholism.

Trump noted his brother attended the nearby LeHigh University.

'When ever I think of this area I think of my brother,' he said.

But he quickly pivoted to some of his more popular political talking points, treating the event more like a campaign rally. The music playing was the same play list that airs at his rallies.

Trump complained the Obama administration left him ill equipped to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

'The cupboards were bare,' he said.

President Trump made the trip to Allentown, Pennsylvania, to thank workers and did not wear a mask

Factory workers listening to the president's remarks wore masks and sat six feet apart

Supporters gather outside the warehouse of medical equipment distributor Owens & Minor prior to a visit by Trump

Supporters gather outside the warehouse of medical equipment distributor Owens & Minor during a visit by U.S. President Donald Trump during the coronavirus outbreak, in Allentown, Pennsylvania

Protesters gather outside the warehouse to express their opposition to Trump amid a crowd of his supporters

He also got a hit in at former vice president Joe Biden, who is the presumptive Democratic nominee. Trump attacked him with his favorite moniker 'Sleepy Joe Biden.'

He attacked Biden's role leading the Obama administration's response to the N1H1 epidemic, better known as the swine flu.

'Most of the N95 were distributed during the N1H1  now you know who says that right? Who says N1H1? Sleepy Joe Biden,' Trump said.

There was scattered laughter among the factory workers.

Trump spoke in a massive warehouse, with wire shelves piled high all the way to the top with medical and cleaning supplies in cardboard boxes of varying sizes.

There was a giant American flag hanging down from the framework at the roof at one end of the building.

A crowd of people look on as the motorcade carrying President Donald Trump passes on the way to a tour of Owens & Minor

Hundreds of Trump supporters, many of them waving flags or holding campaign signs and flags, lined the motorcade route to the plant in Upper Macungie Township

Pennsylvania is a state crucial to the president's re-election. He narrowly won it in 2016

In Pennsylvania, Trump added to the pressure Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is under from home-state Republicans to roll back stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns

Pennsylvania is a state crucial to the president's re-election. He narrowly won it in 2016.

It was Trump's second trip outside Washington in as many weeks as tries to convince the public that it's time for states to begin to open up again, even with the virus still spreading.

Trumps remarks came as federal whistleblower Rick Bright testified before a House panel on Thursday about his repeated efforts to jump-start U.S. production of respirator masks that he says went nowhere.

In Pennsylvania, Trump added to the pressure Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf is under from home-state Republicans to roll back stay-at-home orders and business shutdowns after effectively containing the states outbreak early on.

'We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to start opening things up a bit,' Trump said during a speech at the warehouse. Trump claimed some places in the state had been 'barely affected.'
A doctor and his care home director wife died from coronavirus just 10-days apart, MailOnline can reveal.

Dr James Oniah, a retired radiologist, succumbed to Covid-19 on April 24 while Mary passed away from the virus on May 4.

They both died at King George Hospital in Ilford, East London leaving behind three children as well as other family members and friends who saw them as mum and dad.

Mrs Oniah, 61, is thought to have contracted Covid-19 during her job as a Regional Director for a care home provider before her 79-year-old husband was also struck down.

The couple, who had a son and two daughters, lived in Ilford.

Dr James Oniah, a retired radiologist, succumbed to Covid-19 on April 24 while Mary, a care home director passed away from the virus on May 4

They both died at King George Hospital in Ilford, East London leaving behind three children as well as other family members and friends who saw them as mum and dad

Oke, 25, who still lives at home, told MailOnline that his mother and father were wonderful parents and that the family was still coming to terms with their tragic deaths but said he didn't want to say anymore.

The couples niece Siobhan Livingstone added that her aunt and uncle had truly touched the hearts of many, gone far too soon.

A crowd-funding page has now been set up to raise money for a funeral.

According to a tribute on gofundme.com, James and Mary were a loving, caring and welcoming couple.

The heartfelt message continues: It is believed Mary contracted corona virus in her line of duty as a Regional Director in care homes, and sadly her husband James, a former doctor (Radiologist) also contracted the disease.

Mary was trained as a nurse, as well as a midwife at the University Teaching Hospital (UTH) in Lusaka in Zambia. They ended the fight for their lives against COVID-19 at King George Hospital in London 10 days apart, leaving behind children and a wider network of family and friends who all considered them their mum and dad.

Adding her thoughts, family friend Nila Patel said: These two people were very warm, loving and caring souls. They had an unconditional love never to be forgotten. My deepest condolences to the family.

Dr Oniah worked in a string of hospitals as an agency radiologist but had recently retired. He had studied at the University of Sussex after setting up home in the UK from Onitsha in Nigeria.

Mrs Oniah, 61, is thought to have contracted Covid-19 during her job as a Regional Director for a care home provider before her 79-year-old husband was also struck down. The couple, who had a son and two daughters, lived in Ilford

Oke, 25, who still lives at home, told MailOnline that his mother and father were wonderful parents and that the family was still coming to terms with their tragic deaths and didn't want to say anymore. Pictured: Dr Oniah

Mrs Oniah had worked as a Regional Director for a number of care homes since 2011 but since September 2017 had been working for Maria Mallaband Care Group Limited.

She had studied nursing and midwifery at St Georges and Roehampton University teaching Hospital in South London and palliative care nursing at City, University of London.

Vicky Craddock, operations manager for Maria Mallaband Care Group Limited said: Mary was a valued colleague and friend to many people in our company, she will be sorely missed. Our heartfelt sympathies go out to her family at this difficult time.

On Wednesday Prime Minster Boris Johnson revealed that 144 health workers and 131 care workers had died of Covid-19 as the Government came under fire for not offering enough support to care home staff during the crisis.

The care industry has accused it of rationing testing and protective equipment to focus its efforts on helping NHS hospitals.

Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer called on Boris Johnson, in Prime Minister's Questions, to account for 10,000 'unexplained' deaths in care homes in April which hadn't been factored into Government figures

Meanwhile, analysis by the London School of Econimics claimed yesterday that more than 22,000 care home residents across England and Wales may have already died as a result of the coronavirus outbreak.

Dr Oniah worked in a string of hospitals as an agency radiologist but had recently retired. He had studied at the University of Sussex after setting up home in the UK from Onitsha in Nigeria

Official data yesterday showed almost 9,000 COVID-19-related deaths in care homes had been recorded in the two countries by the start of May.

But researchers at LSE fear that count is a huge under-estimate, and the true toll could be more than twice as high as care home residents taken into hospital before they died were not being counted properly.

https://www.gofundme.com/f/in-memory-of-dr-james-and-mary-nyirongo-oniah
Click here to read the full article.

From its generic title to an ending you can see coming from outer space, Blood and Money follows a path rutted with enough cliches to cover the three million acres of Maine forest land where the film is set. Writer-director John Barr lucked out in getting Tom Berenger, a consummate pro and Platoon Oscar nominee, to play Jim Reed, a Vietnam-era marine and experienced deer hunter. Hes determined to bag a buck on this trip to a New England area so remote and lacking in paved roads that manned checkpoints monitor those who enter and, hopefully, exit.

Naturally, theres trouble ahead for Jim, who drives a custom rig with more than 100,000 miles on it. Metaphor alert: Like the vehicle, Jim is also dragging his ass these days, breathing hard and coughing up blood in the snow. This hunting trip is destined to be his last. And he needs a challenge to meet. Bring on the exposition: It turns out Jim attends AA meetings and harbors guilt about the death of his daughter, as well as the son he hasnt spoken to in years. Barr clumsily piles on all this info through Jims talks with park rangers, game wardens and a waitress named Debbie (Kristen Hager), whose vet husband George (Jimmy LeBlanc) is a fellow AA member unable to drink his military combat experience into oblivion. And, yes, Debbie reminds Jim of his own daughter. Where does a lost soul in the wilderness find a chance at deliverance? Its as close as the radio, which keeps announcing the big story about the local gambling casino being robbed by five criminals who got away with $1.2 million.

More from Rolling Stone

What are the chances Jim will run into those armed and dangerous evildoers and bring them to heel? Have you ever seen a movie? And when Jim stumbles on one of the thieves, a woman he accidentally shot while aiming at a deer, theres a bag of money lying in the snow next to her dead body. Should Jim keep the cash or call in the law? That moral theme has coursed through dozens of films, including 1996s A Simple Plan and 2007s No Country for Old Men. The only difference is that those modern classics were created by artists at the top of their game, and Blood and Money is bottom scraping. Barr, who also serves as films cinematographer, just keeps following Jim as he trudges through the snow and every extant survival platitude about one man alone against daunting odds.

Story continues

Jim, outmanned and outgunned, must take on four younger dudes determined to waste him. Hardly strong, silent types, these chatty bad guys love stating their intentions: Jim Reed, we know you, they shout. Dont make us find your son Steve and his family. Remember those movies where the hero runs out of ammo at a crucial moment? Jim runs out twice. And if you think Blood and Money wont stoop to the tired trope in which the protagonist has to burn money to stay warm in the cold, youd be wrong.

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SANTA FE  Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham said Friday that churches and other religious institutions can operate at 25% capacity this weekend  offering more flexibility than she had initially announced earlier this week.

Lujan Grisham had first planned to allow only up to 10% capacity at churches this weekend, but she said she and other health officials wanted to simplify the order.

Now churches, big box stores and retailers can all operate at 25% of their maximum occupancy, rather than having separate standards for each category.

The new rules apply to most of the state. Just three counties in the northwestern part of the state are exempt from the loosened restrictions announced Friday.

The governor also said Friday that 11 more New Mexicans have died in the states COVID-19 health crisis, pushing the state total to 253.

These are families that didnt get to be in person to say goodbye, Lujan Grisham said, calling it a tragedy.

She also announced that testing had confirmed 164 virus cases, for a total of 5,662 .

Her comments came during a news conference to update New Mexicos coronavirus response efforts, with some New Mexico retailers and churches preparing to open Saturday after being closed for two months.

The governor announced Wednesday that retailers and houses of worship would be able to reopen at limited capacity under a revised public health order thats expected to be finalized today.

However, dine-in restaurants, gyms, salons and movie theaters will remain closed under Phase 1 of the states reopening plan, as the governor said its not yet safe for them to reopen.

Lujan Grisham also announced New Mexicans must wear face coverings when in public unless they are eating, drinking or exercising.

Retailers will not be required to ban customers who are not wearing masks from entering their stores, though some stores could adopt such policies on their own.

The governor acknowledged enforcing the face covering mandate will be challenging, and said the state will rely on extreme positive peer pressure to enforce it.

Masks, MVD

Lujan Grisham said any face covering will do, even a bandana. But for people who want the state to provide a mask, they can request one at cv.nmhealth.org.

Please wear a mask or any face covering, Lujan Grisham said. Its compassionate. It protects others.

The governor also said that state Motor Vehicle Division offices will partially reopen June 1 by appointment for certain services that must be done in person, such as driving tests.

Bed capacity

Human Services Secretary David Scrase said Friday that New Mexico had hit its targeted level of disease transmission  1.15  for mid-May. That means each person whos infected will spread the disease to 1.15 other people.

The transmission rate has been falling throughout most of the state as residents embrace social distancing and stay home.

But Scrase said some medical resources are reaching capacity. The New Mexico hospitals that are designated as hubs for COVID-19 patients now have full intensive care beds, he said, though they are working to expand capacity.

This is tricky  managing this virus, Scrase said.

Elections

Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver urged people to mail in absentee ballots for the June 2 primary election rather than go to the polls in person. But she said people who must vote in person  or who choose to do so  will be required to a mask.

Election workers will also wear masks, and they will disinfect surfaces and pens to limit transmission of the disease.

Economic relief

Lujan Grisham said the states reopening plan calls for moving in phases, spaced at least two or more weeks apart to evaluate the impact on disease transmission.

She said she understands restaurants, in particular, are eager to allow in person dining. That might be possible in early June, Lujan Grisham said.

These are tough, these decisions, the governor said of reopening procedures.

She said she also would push for some of the states federal relief funding to be used to help restaurants and tourism- and entertainment-based business.

Todays news briefing began at 3 p.m. and was broadcast at abqjournal.com and on the governors Facebook page  facebook.com/govMLG.
The federal government has directed the Nigerian Mission in Thailand not to evacuate any stranded individual who fails to pay for his accommodation and feeding charges ahead of repatriation.

This was contained in a letter to the evacuees signed by the Head of Chancery, Nigerian Mission in Thailand, Nicholas Uhomoibhi, and dated May 14, 2020.

As stated in the letter, the evacuees are to pay N297,000 for their accommodation and feeding ahead of their arrival in Nigeria.

Dear prospective evacuees, I am directed to bring to your attention that due to measures that are beyond the control of the COVID-19 local organising team in Nigeria, all evacuees going to Nigeria henceforth are to now pay (for) quarantine, isolation, accommodation centre or hotel before departure and arrival in Nigeria.

In this regard, all prospective evacuees are to note the negotiated rate: Accommodation, N15,000 for 16 days (N240,000);

Feeding, N3,600 for 16 days (N57,000). Total, N297,000.

Kindly note that the rates were negotiated in Nigeria and the embassy has been directed not to airlift any evacuees who fail to pay the fees.

Evacuated

The government has already evacuated about 253 Nigerians from the United Kingdom and 265 others from Dubai, United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the past weeks.

About 160 Nigerians stranded in the United States due to the COVID-19 pandemic also arrived in the country on May 10.

On arrival, all evacuees are quarantined for 14 days before leaving for their respective destinations in the country.

The minister of foreign affairs, Geoffrey Onyeama had on April 23 said some evacuees will be made to cover their bills for services rendered.

Mr Onyeama, while speaking at the daily Presidential Task Force on COVID-19 briefing, said only some stranded students in Khartoum, Sudan, will be evacuated free of charge.

He said such magnanimity cannot be extended to others due to the paucity of funds.

But unfortunately, we just dont have the financial resources. As you can see, there is a huge amount of money that we have to pay for various aspects of the challenge, he said.

It is a source of great regret to the government that we are not in the position to pay. If we have the resources, we would be more than happy to pay for anybody to come home free of charge, pay for their stay in the isolation centre for two weeks.
Quintana Roo will restart some economic activities during the first days of June

Cancun, Q.R.  Quintana Roo will begin its return to economic activities during the first days of June starting with the construction industry. The announcement was made by state governor Carlos Joaquin after his return from Mexico City where he participated in a presidential press conference regarding the regions coronavirus state.

Governor Carlos Joaquin says construction, agriculture and fishing industries will be reactivated first, followed by the gradual reopening of the tourism sector. Even with this announcement, he appealed to state residents to continue abiding by the stay-at-home recommendations.

He said that the resumption of productive activities will be based on the traffic light color system that is being implemented as the new normal. The system was unveiled by President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his cabinet members May 13.

Carlos Joaquin says we will have to resume economic activities in a gradual, staggered manner with preventive measures, with new protocols, even in the way we dress, to continue protecting vulnerable groups.

Quintana Roo Governor Carlos Joaquin says state will begin reactivation during first days of June

He mentioned that tourism will have new protocols for health, public spaces, airport operations, hotels and service providers. Carlos Joaquin reiterated that the order established in the resumption of the activities plan must be followed otherwise infections will return, outbreaks will increase and the number of patients will grow.

We are not ready yet. We must follow the indications of having a gradual, gradual return. The recommendation continues to be stay at home, he stressed, reminding people the state is still in the critical stage.

Approving a relaxation in social distancing, the application of hygiene measures and the mobilization of people causes the infection rates to increase, which will prevent the restart of any of the economic activities, he added.

During his Thursday night address, the governor announced that next week, the resumption of the tourism sector will be addressed, adding that next week, he will hold an analysis meeting with the Secretariats of Tourism and with Labor and Social Welfare of the Government of Mexico, which will also include Baja California Sur, to determine the protocols, procedures and ways to restart tourist activities. He noted that US airlines are in a position to resume their routes and reservations into the Cancun International Airport.
In the fight against COVID-19, the government of India has launched a mobile contact tracing application called Aarogya Setu to help people assess their risk of getting infected with the novel coronavirus and alert authorities if they have come in close contact with an infected person.

Developed by the National Informatics Centre (NIC) under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) and launched on April 2, the app got a big push when Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the nation to download it, saying it is an important step in the country's fight against COVID-19.

Within two weeks of its launch, the app became the fastest app to reach 50 million downloads. It has crossed 10 crore registrations in just 41 days.

The app has alerted around 1.4 lakh users in the country about a possible risk of infection due to proximity to infected persons and helped generate information about 697 potential hotspots in the country, said a report published on May 12.

This application is currently getting a lot of attention, not only because of the purpose it serves but also about data security of its users  a concern, which gained momentum after a French hacker and cybersecurity expert who goes by the moniker Elliot Alderson took to Twitter to raise alarm over alleged security issues in the app on May 5.

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



Hi @SetuAarogya,

A security issue has been found in your app. The privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake. Can you contact me in private? Regards, PS: @RahulGandhi was right  Elliot Alderson (@fs0c131y) May 5, 2020

The hacker looked into the Aarogya Setu app and confirmed Congress leader Rahul Gandhis fear that it was nothing more than a sophisticated surveillance system.

Alderson went on to confirm and tweeted to the government that A security issue has been found in your app. The privacy of 90 million Indians is at stake and asked if they could contact him in private. He ended the tweet with a postscript reading: Rahul Gandhi was right.

He further confirmed that he did receive calls from the NIC and the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (ICERT), both government bodies, within an hour of his tweet.

On May 6, a statement was released from the official Twitter handle of the app on data security issues, saying that no data or security breach has been identified by Team Aarogya Setu. Also, it thanked the ethical hacker for engaging with them.

Not convinced with the statement, Alderson tweeted, We will see. I will come back to you tomorrow.

Since then, union ministers and officials are assuring the safety of the app and counting its success story.

However, with Aldersons claims and other incidents such as hacking of the app by a Bengaluru-based software engineer, many concerns have been raised with respect to possible security gaps in the application.

The concerns include what data can be collected by the app, who can access it, protocol and more. But before moving to these questions, lets understand the background of the app thoroughly.

Why Aarogya Setu?

As mentioned earlier, the Aarogya Setu app is a contact tracing solution introduced by the government of India in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also acts as a one-stop solution for spreading awareness about coronavirus, helping self-diagnose users, providing the latest updates and even to store and display e-pass.

Since its launch, the government has massively emphasised on its use and also made it mandatory under various circumstances, including for public and private sector employees and those living in containment zones. For instance, the Noida administration mandated that all those stepping out in public must have the app on their phones. A similar prescription has been made by the Centre for those who were stranded abroad and are being brought back to India under the 'Vande Bharat' mission.

A version of Aarogya Setu was made available on a model of JioPhone for about five million users on May 14 and will be rolled out for other models in the next few days, Abhishek Singh, President and Chief Executive Officer of National e-Governance Division (NeGD) told news agency PTI. Before this, it was available on both iOS and Android.

The Centre has brought the Aarogy Setu Interactive Voice Response System (IVRS)' for those who do not have smartphones. It is a toll-free service, available across the country, wherein citizens can give a missed call to the number 1921' and they will get a call back requesting for inputs regarding their health, according to the union health ministry.

The inputs provided by citizens will be made part of the Aarogy Setu database and the information will be processed to send alerts to people on the action to be taken to ensure their safety, it said.

How does Aarogya Setu work and what data does the app collect?

After downloading, the app asks for continuous Bluetooth access, GPS location and several data. The data collected by the Aarogya Setu app is broadly divided into four categories:

> Demographic data> Contact data> Self-assessment data

> Location data

This is collectively called response data.

Demographic data comprises information such as name, mobile number, age, gender, profession and travel history. Contact data means any other individual that a given individual has come in close proximity with, including the duration of the contact, the proximate distance between the individuals, and the geographical location at which the contact occurred. Self-assessment data is about the responses provided by that individual to the self-assessment test administered within the app. Location data includes the geographical position of an individual in latitude and longitude coordinates.

As the data is stored in the app, it accesses the Bluetooth of the mobile phone to establish close range proximity between two people and also a GPS log of all the places that the devices had been at a certain interval. When two smartphones with the app installed come in each other's Bluetooth range, the app collects information. If one of the two people has already tested positive, the app will alert the other person and in the process allow the government to trace potential cases.

It further sends instructions to help self-isolate and even provide support if a user develops symptoms.

Which department can access the data from Aarogya Setu?

The response data shall be securely stored by NIC and shall only be shared in accordance with the protocol issued by MeitY, which allows the data to be shared with the Health Ministry, Health Departments of state/union territory governments/local governments, National Disaster Management Authority, state disaster management authorities, other ministries and departments of the central and state governments, and other public health institutions of the central, state and local governments, where such sharing is strictly necessary to directly formulate or implement an appropriate health response.

Researchers can also get access to the data. Wait, what?

Yes. The protocol further empowers the NIC to share response data with Indian universities and research institutions/research entities registered in India only if it is of the view that such access is sought for the purposes of statistical, epidemiological, scientific or any other form of academic research.

They may also share such anonymised response data with other Indian universities or research institutions/research entities registered in India only if such sharing is in furtherance of the same purpose for which it has sought approval to access such data from the expert committee, the protocol states.

Punishment for violators

Any violation of the directions issued by MeitY may lead to penalties as per Sections 51 to 60 of the Disaster Management Act, 2005 and other legal provisions as may be applicable. Penalty clauses under the Disaster Management Act also have provisions for a jail term for officials.

Is the Aarogya Setu app useful?

The Aarogya Setu app has reportedly alerted around 1.4 lakh users in the country about a possible risk of infection due to proximity to infected persons till May 11, serving the purpose it has been developed.

However, the app is people dependent, which means it needs widespread usage and regular self-reporting to be effective. Given the fact that there are bound to be variations in the levels of self-reporting, the efficacy of the app is apparently not foolproof.

What are the concerns being raised over Aarogya Setu?

Initially, Rahul Gandhi raised concerns over the data security of users, as he said that the Aarogya Setu app is a "sophisticated surveillance system, outsourced to a private operator, with no institutional oversight".

However, the issue of the apps data security triggered after Alderson took to Twitter and said, A security issue has been found in your app.

Following this, he made several disclosures regarding the issues he reported about the app in an article, titled, Aarogya Setu: The story of a failure

In the article, he claimed that 49 minutes after his initial tweet, NIC and the ICERT contacted him and he sent them a small technical report.

Few hours after that they released an official statement, he said.



Statement from Team #AarogyaSetu on data security of the App. pic.twitter.com/JS9ow82Hom  Aarogya Setu (@SetuAarogya) May 5, 2020

The statement was summed up by Alderson as Nothing to see here, move on.

He called the app a surveillance system.

A mobile application that sends your GPS coordinates regularly to a server owned by a government is a surveillance system. #AarogyaSetu is a surveillance system, tweeted Alderson.

He further said that Forcing people to install an app, doesnt make a success story. It just means that repression works.

Besides Alderson, a Bengaluru-based software engineer has hacked the Aarogya Setu app. The programmer, who goes by the name of Jay, apparently breached the app's defences in less than four hours. Jay told BuzzFeed; I didnt like the fact that installing this app is slowly becoming mandatory in India. So I kept thinking of what I could personally do to avoid putting it on my phone.

Jay managed to bypass the page that requested personal information like name, age, gender, travel history and COVID-19 symptom checker. He also managed to access the app without giving all the necessary permissions.

Also, former Supreme Court judge, Justice BN Srikrishna, has questioned the use of the Aarogya Setu app over a possible breach of data use. He said this (app) is some kind of patchwork that will cause more concern to citizens than to benefit them.

The former apex court judge said that there was no accountability in the system in case of a data breach in the absence of proper legislation in place.

As NIC is free to share personal data from the app with government departments and public health institutions, it could be used to create permanent government databases containing sensitive personal information about Indian citizens, said New Delhi-based digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation (IFF). It also raised a red flag about the NIC's ability to share anonymised data with Indian universities and research institutions.

Also, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has given two out of five stars to Aarogya Setu. The app reportedly lost points because of the lack of transparency, making the app compulsory and not defining who the data is shared with.

What the government has to say about the safety of Aarogya Setu?

Aarogya Setu is "secure" and there is no privacy breach in it, said Union IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, rejecting charges that the app breaches privacy.

A clarification was released on the alleged data breach in the app, assuring that the app keeps the data safe and private.

Also, a video message was shared by the central government, saying the app is completely safe and the data of the users are fully secure. In the two minutes 39 seconds video, it was explained that the information submitted by a user is encrypted and safely stored in the server.

It further explained that the information about the person is only sent out of the mobile phone to the servers if the person is found to be COVID-19 positive.

The information will not permanently be stored in mobile or server, explained the video.

The captured information gets deleted from the phone in 30 days and from the server after 45 days. In case the user found positive for the novel coronavirus, the information from the server will be deleted after 60 days, the video explained.

Surrounded by allegations of the data breach and its defense by the Centre, the COVID-19 contact-tracing application continues to get popular among Indian masses with the number of downloads increasing exponentially.
Assistance Inspector, Moses Manford Akakpo, Western Regional Public Affairs Officer of the Ghana Immigration Service, told the GNA that information from the Half Assini Command of GIS indicated that the swiftness of the patrol officers, coupled with the cooperation of some concerned community members, resulted in the arrest of the illegal migrants.

Among them were two women and a two-year-old toddler.

He said the migrants were arrested at different locations within the community, adding that investigations revealed that they were unrelated and therefore had accidentally arrived at the Nzemtenu community almost at the same time.

Assistant Inspector Akakpo said samples of the migrants aged between 17 and 33 years were immediately taken for testing and that they have since been put under quarantine awaiting results, which would eventually inform the next line of action by the Municipal Security Council.

The Public Affairs Officer said a similar operation last Wednesday also yielded the arrest of 11 Ivorian nationals at Berlin another unapproved entry point near the Newtown Border Post.

He said the 11 have subsequently been escorted back to the Ivorian security to return home.

Meanwhile, some 12 other ECOWAS nationals were refused entry at Appollenu entry point around the Ghana -Ivory Coast border.

---GNA
The UK's largest doctors' union said teachers' unions are 'absolutely right' to argue it is unsafe for schools to open next month.

Boris Johnson's plan to open schools to Year 1 and Year 6 pupils in less than a month has faced stark criticism from unions - the majority of which have already rejected the proposed June 1 date.

And now concerns have been echoed by The British Medical Association who warned the number of coronavirus cases was still too high to open schools safely.

In a letter to National Education Union general secretary Kevin Courtney on Friday, the BMA council's chair, Chaand Nagpau said: 'We cannot risk a second spike or take actions which would increase the spread of this virus, particularly as we see sustained rates of infection across the UK.

He added: 'Until we have got case numbers much lower, we should not consider reopening schools.'

The letter also said evidence from scientific research looking at the potential- outcomes of starting up schools was not concrete enough to say exactly what would happen.

Mr Nagpau said there is because of the 'relatively small amount of research available and the uncharted territory we find ourselves in'.

In contrast, the Children's Commissioner for England Anne Longfield asked ' unions to stop 'squabbling' because it would be 'extremely damaging' to keep children away from school.

Ms Longfield has urged the sector to aspire for all children to return to school in some form before the summer, and to use school buildings for summer schools and family support over the holidays.

She said: 'We cannot afford to wait for a vaccine, which may never arrive, before children are back in school.

'It's time to stop squabbling and agree a staggered, safe return that is accompanied by rigorous testing of teachers, children and families.'

Her plans were in line with the government's with education secretary Gavin Williamson warning it is 'vital' children get back into classrooms as quickly as possible.

But opponents, including Liverpool city council which revealed it would not be opening its classrooms on June 1 regardless of nationwide guidelines, have demanded proof schools will be safe for children and teachers once they have been reopened.

The founder of one primary school trust, Steve Chalke, warned the criticism was a 'rather middle class' approach that wouldn't help disadvantaged children who needed the structure of the classroom.

Anne Longfield (pictured), the Children's Commissioner for England, called on union leaders to work with ministers to get pupils back to the classroom as quickly as possible

The President of the National Education Union, Amanda Martin, is planning on joining Jeremy Corbyn at a 'virtual rally' to tell activists how they can 'resist' the Government plans, the newspaper also reported.

The moved sparked anger from critics including Richard Holden MP, a former special adviser to the Department of Education who accused Ms Martin of 'putting political activism at the heart of its response to coronavirus'.

Former Labour education secretary Alan Johnson also criticised trade union intransigence, while a string of school leaders and academics spoke up to back the reopening of classrooms next month. Academy schools in particular asked teachers to defy the unions and prepare for a reopening.

Meanwhile teaching unions have demanded the Government models how many black and Asian teachers could die as a result of lifting the lockdown, reported the Financial Times.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson has said getting children back to school was 'vital' for their educational development

It comes as the R Rate, the number of people one infected patient can pass the virus on to, rose from between 0.5 and 0.7 to closer to 0.9. The Government measures aim to keep the rate below one in order to control the spread of the illness.

Some 384 more deaths were announced yesterday taking the total number of people who have died from coronavirus in the UK to 33,998.

There are 237,000 cases in the country, up 3,446 in one day.

Hospital staff are treating just over 9,000 patients a day in England  down from 19,000 a few weeks ago and admissions are now falling by around 2,000 a week, according to head of the NHS Simon Stevens.

Yesterday, the Government's top medical and scientific advisers met union leaders to reassure them the Government's plans to reopen schools on June 1 were safe for children, staff and parents.

But union chiefs dug their heels in and suggested they would continue to advise members to shun preparations for primary school children in England to begin a gradual return next month. They were backed last night by the British Medical Association, the union that represents doctors.

Some 384 more deaths were announced yesterday taking the total number of people who have died from coronavirus in the UK to 33,998

It sets the scene for a major confrontation between the two sides in the next fortnight.

Ministers have drawn up proposals for a phased return that could see children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 start to go back to schools in England on June 1. But unions believe schools cannot be reopened safely and won't engage with the plans.

Mrs Longfield, who represents the rights of children, urged union leaders to 'face reality' and work with ministers to 'make this work' as she warned of the dangers of youngsters missing out on vital education.

The Children's Commissioner, who is independent of government, said: 'I am disappointed that the debate about when some primary school kids can return has descended into a squabble between Government and the teaching unions. All sides need to show a greater will to work together in the interests of children.

'We know that the longer schools are closed the greater the impact will be on social mobility and that many children are really struggling without seeing their friends and the structure that school brings.

'We need to face the reality that, for a number of reasons, there are hundreds of thousands of children who can't access meaningful education at home.'

Yesterday, the Government's top medical and scientific advisers met union leaders to reassure them the Government's plans to reopen schools on June 1 were safe for children, staff and parents (file image)

Mrs Longfield added: 'It is now up to the Government and the teaching unions to work together, along with the many teachers who are not in unions, to find solutions in the best interests of children and make this work.'

Four primary school chains will let children back into the classroom on June 1 Four of the UK's biggest primary school chains have decided to reopen on June 1, it has been revealed. Reach 2, Harris, Oasis and GEP teach a quarter of the UK's children and are planning on following the Government guidance, The Times reported. Sir Steve Lancashire, chief executive of Reach 2, the country's biggest primary multi-academy trust (MAT) with 50 schools, said: 'Our intention is to open all of our schools for the priority year groups, and will do so as long as the rigorous risk assessments we carry out for each school gives us the reassurance we need that we can keep our pupils and staff as safe as possible.' MAT schools work independently from local authorities and are able to set their own rules and regulations. They also cater to some of the country's most disadvantaged children. Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis trust which has 35 primary schools, told the newspaper opposition to reopening was 'rather middle class' and unhelpful for disadvantaged children who were missing lessons. Advertisement

The National Education Union said its views were 'unchanged' after a briefing with the Government's chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty and chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance. Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary, said: 'Very many questions that we asked were not addressed in the time available.'

Mr Johnson added: 'Many of these children would be better off back at school. The early years are crucially important.

'I hope that having sought assurances, the unions will be able to see schools reopen on June 1.'

Unity Howard, director of the New Schools Network, said: 'The actions of the unions are completely unconscionable  now is the time for sensible grown-up debate.'

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'Getting children back to school is vital for their educational development and many schools are already taking steps to welcome back their pupils.'

Deputy chief medical officer Dr Jenny Harries warned of the longer-term health risks to children who did not get a good education.

It comes as Liverpool became the first English city to refuse to return children to school next month.

The Merseyside port's council confirmed that from June 1 only the children of key workers and those deemed vulnerable would be allowed to attend - as they are now.

The local authority rejected ministers plans to restart lessons for some primary age groups before the summer.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Government's plans at the daily press conference, saying: 'I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so - and it is safe to do so.'

Union leaders met the Government's scientific advisers yesterday, but speaking afterwards Kevin Courtney, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said it left many of their questions unanswered.

Earlier this week Liverpool mayor Joe Anderson branded the Government plan 'reckless' and yesterday Steve Reddy, the city's director of children and young people's services, said he was writing to all parents to tell them not to expect schools to reopen for everyone on June 1.

In the letter Mr Reddy said: 'Our guiding principle is that schools can only reopen to other pupils when it is safe to do so and not a moment before.

'Only once we can be sure that schools are safe for both children and staff will they be able to open to more children. The safety of your child, and of our staff, is our top priority.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock defended the Government's plans at the daily press conference, saying; 'I wouldn't support a proposal to start to reopen schools unless it was safe to do so - and it is safe to do so'

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson (pictured yesterday) said getting children back to school is 'vital' for their educational development and he has welcomed the efforts by many schools in England to prepare for a wider reopening

'Some parents have asked me when schools may fully reopen. This will vary from school to school. Each headteacher has to rigorously assess the risks of fully reopening for their particular school.

Downing Street rejects supplying teachers with coronavirus masks Teachers do not have to wear face coverings unless providing care for a child who has come into school with symptoms, Downing Street has said. The idea of teachers being supplied with masks as a way to calm coronavirus transmission fears was rejected this morning. The Prime Minister's official spokesman told reporters: 'Our guidance on face coverings is clear, they are for enclosed public spaces where you come into contact with people you don't normally meet such as crowded shops or public transport. 'Schools do not fall into that category. 'It is rare for a teacher to have to wear PPE, they should only be worn if providing close-contact care for a child with symptoms,' he said. He added: 'Any child with symptoms shouldn't be going into school in the first place.' Advertisement

'The size and layout of the school building, and the availability of staff, will affect their assessments. It will be the case that the schools will do it differently. Your child's headteacher will be in touch with you in due course.'

However at the press conference tonight NHS England's medical director of primary care said many vulnerable children would be better off at school.

London GP Dr Nikki Kanani said that 'risk is relative', adding: 'Some of our children who are more vulnerable need more support, need to be back in school to get the benefit of both the social environment but also the physical space as well.

'It is very important that we carefully get our children back to school because actually that is what is going to be good for them in the long run.'

This morning Wales' First Minister Mark Drakeford told Good Morning Britain 'new cohorts' will not be brought into schools on June 1, although some children would return before the summer.

Mr Drakeford said the Welsh Government would be speaking to parents and staff so they knew everything had been done to make the school environment safe and give them 'confidence to return'.

'We'd like to take a bit longer to do that, we think it will pay off in the end and that's the nature of the way that we would do things in Wales,' Mr Drakeford said.

But academy schools were told to 'start planning to reopen' in June. Leora Cruddas, chief executive of the Confederation of School Trusts, which represents the semi-autonomous state schools stressed that they needed to 'rebuild parental confidence'.

But she said that the June 1 date to restart some primary school classes was just the beginning and not an 'absolute deadline'.

She told The Telegraph: 'My message to headteachers is that we should start planning to reopen.

'The planning needs to take a risk based approach, we need to make a full assessment of the risks which relate to site capacity and number of staff.

'We need to be building parental confidence as far as possible with families. Communication with staff, with parents and with communities is crucial.'

Steve Chalke, founder of the Oasis Trust, which has 35 primary schools across the country, said the trust plans to admit more pupils to its schools from June 1, the date proposed by the Government, saying the closure was disproportionately harming poorer children.

Mr Chalke, whose schools on average have 45 per cent of children eligible for free school meals (FSMs), said: 'The greatest risk to their health, for many of them, is their mental health. They're locked in.'

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis said it was vital pupils were back in classrooms within weeks, both to allow key workers to keep working to save lives from coronavirus and to prevent youngsters missing out on vital learning.

Ministers have drawn up plans for a 'phased' return after the summer half-term, with some junior classes potentially going back from June 1.

'My kids won't be going, not until it's safe' Militant parents are refusing to send their children back to school, saying the Government's plans are not safe. Despite getting letters from schools confirming plans to restart classes, they are planning to keep their youngsters at home. Mum-of-four Lois Smith, 33, from Widnes in Cheshire, told the Mirror Online: 'My kids won't be going, not until it's safe. They aren't going back when there are still hundreds of people dying each day. 'I just think it's ludicrous to even think about sending them back. It's a parent's job to protect their kids, I don't care if I get fined. 'I haven't heard one person say they are going to send their kids in.' Advertisement

However, while most teachers have worked hard to help their pupils during the lockdown, education unions have told the Government to 'step back' from the plans  and urged their members not to co-operate.

Their main concern is over whether schools can safely enact social distancing, even with class sizes limited to 15 or fewer pupils.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis earlier insisted that social distancing can be done in schools.

He said it was vital pupils were back in classrooms to allow key workers to keep working to save lives from coronavirus and to prevent youngsters missing out on vital learning.

Mr Lewis told BBC Breakfast: 'Well I think one of the things teachers are able to do, both in the classroom and outside the classroom, and all of us as parents and people in society, is to continue to educate each other around social distance.

'So yes, even in a school environment I think it is important that we do what we can to encourage and explain and educate around social distancing.'

Minister for Children and Families Vicky Ford this afternoon said the potential reopening of schools to some pupils on June 1 depends on the scientific advice at the time.

In a question and answer session hosted on the parenting forum Mumsnet, she said: 'We will only do this provided that the five key tests set by Government justify the changes at the time, including that the rate of infection is decreasing.

'As a result, we are asking schools, colleges and childcare providers to plan on this basis, ahead of confirmation that these tests are met.

'The confirmation will depend on science advice at that time.'

It came after Mr Williamson demanded unions do their 'duty' and stop their opposition.

Writing for the Daily Mail, he said children need to start returning to classrooms 'in the interests of their welfare and education'.

Children in France, which went into an even stricter lockdown that Britain, have been back at school for a week and those in Germany and Denmark for the better part of a month.

Downing Street this morning also insisted that teachers would not require personal protective equipment to return to work.

Private sector says: We could reopen in weeks Private schools have been working around 'around the clock' using online learning  and are confident of successfully reopening on the Government's timetable. Despite taking a significant financial hit due to the pandemic, fee-paying schools have been leading the way in responding to the challenges, sector leaders said. Top schools including Eton College and the Perse School, Cambridge, have been posting free educational resources which are accessible to all young people. Professor Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said his 1,300 member schools were 'very pleased that there will be limited openings after June 1'. He added: 'They are enthusiastic about the idea that they can see pupils for things like university application discussions and to enable pupils to do those things that can't be done online, like coursework, science practicals and art.' Neil Roskilly, chief executive of the Independent Schools Association, which has more than 500 member schools, said: 'They have been working around the clock on online provision and plans to welcome back pupils to the classroom. 'The huge majority of teachers will be putting their interests first.' Advertisement

The National Education Union (NEU), which has 450,000 members, has described the Government's plans as 'reckless' and advised teachers to 'not engage' with the move.

The NASUWT, the UK's second largest teachers' union, last night threatened to sue school heads if teachers were 'expected to go into a school that is not safe'.

Ministers are concerned that if the unions sabotage a return to school, many of the most disadvantaged youngsters will lose out on vital education.

And there is an acceptance that many parents will be unable to return to work until schools are open again. Mr Williamson said extensive measures had been put in place for a secure return to school, adding: 'Safety comes first.'

Union chiefs have been offered a briefing with the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty this afternoon to reassure them the plans are safe for children, staff and parents.

In his article for the Mail today, Mr Williamson paid tribute to the skills of teachers, saying: 'Parents are doing a fantastic job helping children learn at home, but nothing can take the place of a teacher.'

But he urged unions to do their 'duty' and drop their blanket objections to a June 1 return, saying: 'All of us in education have a duty to work together to get children back to school.'

Robert Halfon, chairman of the Commons education committee, said children from disadvantaged backgrounds faced a 'potential decade of educational disadvantage' unless schools went back soon. He added: 'The unions have got to engage on this.'

In an extraordinary intervention, former Labour education secretary David Blunkett accused the unions of 'working against the interests of children' by continuing to frustrate teachers who are desperate to get back into the classroom.

Lord Blunkett said he was 'deeply critical' of the NEU's approach, saying all sides had to 'work together to get over fear as well as dealing with the genuine risk'.

He told BBC Radio Four's Today programme: 'It is about how can we work together to make it work as safely  we can't 100 per cent  as safely as possible. Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children.'

Lord Blunkett said other workers, such as those in supermarkets, had accepted a level of risk in performing their jobs as he suggested teachers should do the same.

And he said the most disadvantaged pupils were being penalised, adding: 'They will not have tutors to be able to recover, they will not have parents who had higher education, they will rely entirely on us getting back to normal as quickly as possible.'

Boris Johnson ordered the closure of schools on March 18, just days before the wider lockdown.

Many schools have remained open to look after vulnerable children and those of frontline 'key' workers. But in practice, most have only had tiny numbers attending.

Under the Government's plans, children will be placed in small classes and rigorous procedures are being put in place to limit spread of the virus.

Ministers hope to get all primary children back for a month before the summer holidays. Secondary pupils in Years 10 and 12, who have GCSE and A-level exams next year, will go back part time to allow for catch-up sessions with tutors.

Education sources said Mr Williamson was happy for his 15-year-old daughter, who is in Year 10, to go back to school.

Sir Anthony Seldon, former headmaster of Wellington College, said: 'Teachers want to and need to be back in schools. As long as the scientists say they can, it is utterly wrong for unions to try to block and discourage teachers.'

But union leaders yesterday insisted they had grave concerns about an early return to school.

Mary Bousted, joint general-secretary of the NEU, described the bid to reopen schools as 'nothing short of reckless'.

And in a letter last night Patrick Roach, general secretary of the NASUWT, said it was putting schools 'on notice' that they faced potential legal action for 'breach of duty of care and personal injury due to foreseeable risk' if they asked teachers to go back to work too soon.

Gavin Williamson: For sake of all pupils, unions must do duty

By Gavin Williamson, Secretary of State for Education, for the Daily Mail

Rarely do I find myself nodding along in agreement with past Labour ministers but when I heard former Labour education secretary David Blunkett on the radio this week saying why it's important to get the most disadvantaged children back into schools as soon as we can, I thought he was making very good sense.

As Education Secretary, I pay attention when experts give me advice  I'd get into hot water very quickly if I didn't. If, based on the latest scientific advice, we can get a limited number of children back to school, then I believe it's my duty to do all I can to get them back there because being in school with a teacher is the best way to learn.

Of course safety comes first but we must also be aware of the potential damage to a child's education from not getting them back in the classroom.

It is now over seven weeks since schools were restricted to all but a very small number of children and until the rate of infection from coronavirus starts to come down, we cannot bring more students back.

Writing in the Daily Mail, Gavin Williamson called on unions to support moves to start a staged reopening of schools

In that time I've been constantly talking to heads and teachers' unions about how best to open schools in a phased and careful way. Later today I have arranged for union leaders to meet the Chief Medical Officer and other experts so they can be briefed on the scientific advice underpinning our approach.

The good news is that we are now past the peak of the virus. At the weekend the Prime Minister set out his roadmap for recovery and the second step of that plan is to start to get more children back into classrooms. Let me spell out why these proposals have put the interests of all our children first. The best place for youngsters to learn is in school and I have wanted to get more children back there as soon as possible. Parents are doing a fantastic job helping them to learn at home but nothing can take the place of a teacher.

It is known that the first few years of a child's education are so important.

It is during this time that young students begin to develop essential social skills and start to learn the basics that will have a huge bearing on how well they do later in life.

That is why younger children are at the head of the queue to go back to school, along with pupils who will be moving up to secondary school and those older pupils who are going to be sitting their GCSEs and A Levels next year.

Now I want to be clear, this is the first phase of a controlled and careful return to school. It's not happening overnight and it isn't going to happen without schools putting in place a range of protective measures to reduce transmission. The safety of children and their teachers is my No 1 priority.

I know some teaching unions still have concerns, just as I know parents and teachers have some worries.

I intend to carry on talking to all of them and working with them on any issues they may have.

Schools in other nations have achieved started to open following the pandemic. Above are children queuing using traffic cones at a primary school in Strasbourg, France

All of us in education have a duty to work together to get children back to school.

Let me reassure families that we are giving schools all the guidance and support they will need to welcome pupils back.

This includes keeping class sizes small, making sure children stay within small groups, and being rigorous about hygiene, cleaning and staggering break and mealtimes. We're also paying close attention to what they're doing in other countries, such as Denmark, where despite some initial concerns, children are back and adapting, as they always seem to do.

Children thrive and grow in schools best when they're enjoying being with their friends and teachers.

It is time to start bringing some of our children back in the interests of their welfare and education.

But this will be done carefully so it's right for our children, right for your family and those who work in schools and right for our communities.

If Europe can, why can't we? Denmark: Reopened primary schools and nurseries a month ago, and has seen infection rates continue to fall

Children kept in small groups of ten to 12, with minimum contact

Groups arrive at separate times, eat lunch separately, stay in their own playground zones and keep one teacher for all classes

Children sit two metres apart at individual desks and do not share water bottles or stationery Germany: Reopened schools for older children earlier this month and plans to allow younger year groups back in summer term

Students in final year were first back for exams, and told to disinfect their hands with sanitiser and sit at least two metres apart

A pilot scheme sees teenagers are disease-tested every four days, and swab their own throats France: Nurseries and primary schools were allowed back from Monday, with secondary schools to gradually reopen next week

Pictures at one school showed children sitting alone in 'isolation' chalk squares in their playground

Pupils aged 11 to 15 expected to wear face masks  made available for those who do not have them

Class sizes kept to 15 and creches capped at a maximum of ten children per group Arrows placed on the floor to safely guide pupils at a primary school in Paris, France Greece: Expected to reopen next week, but row has broken out over plans to install cameras in classrooms

Government wanted to allow live-streaming of lessons to allow smaller classes, with families deciding if their children attend school or learn from home

But teaching unions and opposition parties have objected over privacy fears and said scheme poses a 'serious risk' to students Sweden: Kept schools open for children under 16 throughout the outbreak

Pupils and teachers with any symptoms were urged to stay at home, and schools and colleges for older teenagers were closed

School premises cleaned at least once a day. Staggered break times, limits on assemblies and spaced out desks and chairs Finland: Allowed children back to school yesterday with strict social distancing and hand-washing rules

Arrival times staggered and unused spaces turned into classes to allow pupils to spread out

Schools will switch between classroom and distance teaching if infections spikes again Norway: Nurseries and primary schools reopened in April amid some opposition, but health experts said there had been no rise in infection rates

Children have been kept in small groups that have a minimum of physical interaction

Other schools and colleges across the country were allowed to reopen this week Switzerland: Allowed primary schools to reopen from Monday

Secondary schools and colleges will be allowed to open next month, provided authorities do not see a rise in infections A teacher wears a face mask with her pupils at a school in Chasne sur Illet, west France Netherlands: Primary schools partially reopened on Monday, along with nurseries, libraries, hairdressers and beauty salons OTHERS: Spain and Italy said schools will remain shut until September

In Ireland schools will remain closed until at least September, but nurseries could reopen in June Advertisement

Teachers' union threatens to SUE school chiefs if staff are put at risk by returning to classrooms too soon during coronavirus lockdown

By Josh White, Education reporter for the Daily Mail

Britain's second-largest teaching union last night threatened to sue school chiefs if teachers are 'put at risk' in the classroom.

The NASUWT, which has 310,000 members, has written to heads, academy bosses and local authorities, outlining their stance.

Along with the National Education Union, the NASUWT has been at the forefront of efforts to delay the reopening of schools until September, but their objections have been described by critics as 'political posturing' and 'scaremongering'.

Darren Northcott, the union's national official for education, told 5Live on Wednesday: 'There's a real risk here that some schools will believe that they can safely open from June 1, when we are very clear that they can't.'

Britain's second-largest education union, NASUWT, has written to schools threatening to torpedo plans for a June 1 reopening. It is headed up by Dr Patrick Roach, right. Its national official for education is Darren Northcott. The union says it has put the government 'on notice'

The union last night ramped up its attempts to torpedo the plans by threatening court action against school bosses, trust chief executives, and local authorities who ignore 'serious health, safety and welfare issues' in the classroom..

It came as the NEU also increased its pressure on ministers. The union said last night:

Teachers should keep online tuition 'to a minimum';

They should not do any online teaching that they feel uncomfortable about;

Teachers are worried about the security of online teaching;

And they should not be expected to carry out routine marking or grading of pupils'work

The NASUWT letter says the union is 'left with no alternative but to put employers and the Government on notice, by reserving our members' legal rights in the context of a tortious claim for breach of duty of care and personal injury due to foreseeable risk, and any other legal recourse available'.

Liverpools' Labour mayor may block return to class Pupils in Liverpool might not go back to school with the rest of England after its mayor warned he would not 'take risks with children's lives'. Joe Anderson vowed to 'resist' reopening after half term unless the city's infection rate had dropped. As of Monday, Liverpool had 1,515 confirmed cases, equivalent to 306 in every 100,000 people  higher than the overall rate in England of 244 per 100,000. Liverpool Mayor Joe Anderson, above Labour councillor Mr Anderson said: 'This is a life and death decision. If we lose one child or one teacher or one teaching assistant or one school cook, that's one too many. Our levels of Covid-19 infections are higher than everywhere else and I'm not about to take risks with children's or teaching staff's lives. Only when we are convinced it's safe for children to return will we allow it.' The ex-social worker, who is running Liverpool from home after he was forced to shield for health reasons, was attacked by some online critics. One tweeted: 'We need 'can doers' to guide us out of this crisis and save jobs and the economy. 'Can't doers' like him should admit they're out of their depth and let others take over.' But Steve Rotherham, the Metro Mayor responsible for the whole region, said: 'Mayor Anderson is right that the safeguarding of our children, teachers and school staff has to be the number one priority.' Advertisement

'The NASUWT is clear that no teacher should be expected to go into a school that is not safe, and until it can be demonstrated that it is safe to do so, we will be continuing to support and advise members on that basis.'

Signed by union general secretary Dr Patrick Roach, the letter concludes: 'The NASUWT recognises that schools and employers have been placed in a situation where the wrong decision will result in people becoming seriously ill and dying, and will therefore appreciate that there can be no compromise on health and safety.

'If this means that schools are unable to open safely before September because they are unable to make arrangements to safeguard their staff and pupils, then that position must be accepted.' Despite undermining ministers' attempts to reopen the country's schools, the NEU says teachers should keep online tuition 'to a minimum' is necessary because face-to-face teaching 'cannot be easily replicated'. It also told members that 'no teacher should be expected to carry out any online teaching with which they feel uncomfortable or in the absence of agreed protocols'.

It is understood some teachers have privacy concerns, and fear their lessons could be recorded or manipulated by pupils. But Professor Barnaby Lenon, chairman of the Independent Schools Council, said: 'There are appropriate safeguarding policies in place and it is all going pretty well. So those pupils who are not receiving online teaching, simply because their teachers think it is risky, have every reason to feel very disappointed.'

The NEU adds that teachers 'should not be expected to carry out routine marking or grading', saying: 'To do so would be to disadvantage those who do not have the resources and support available at home to make that fair.'

For secondary school pupils, many of whom will be facing exams next year, the swingeing union restrictions state that teachers 'should not be asked to personally contact their students daily', except those who are vulnerable.

Neil Roskilly, of the Independent Schools Association, said the NEU's fears about online learning were 'theoretical'. He added: 'There's nothing unsurmountable for schools with good safeguarding policies. Schools are very used to dealing with safeguarding issues.'

A teacher wears a face mask during lessons at a Parisian school. Nurseries and primary schools in the country were allowed back from Monday

Chris McGovern, chairman of the Campaign For Real Education, said: 'Many teachers are being courageous and still working but a minority are enjoying it.'

NEU joint general secretary Dr Mary Bousted said last night: 'The NEU is not against online working. Our members are using online learning to support their pupils. Our guidance is to help them do this safely for themselves and for their pupils.

'Arrangements for online learning must also protect teachers' and children's privacy and ensure children are kept safe while online. The NEU is supporting teachers and families to do the best they can with the resources available to them.'

ANDREW PIERCE: The Corbynite lover of communist Cuba who says the first word she learned was 'strike'

By Andrew Pierce for the Daily Mail

Mary Bousted, head of the National Education Union, sent members to Cuba

A clue as to the political philosophy of Dr Mary Bousted, the teachers' union leader trying to sabotage next month's return to school, can be found in her passion for communist Cuba.

The hard-Left joint general secretary of the National Education Union has authorised spending thousands of pounds of union money to send members on fact-finding trips to the one-party state.

The trips have understandably upset some members because of Cuba's disregard for human rights. A motion from teachers in Lewisham at last year's NEU annual conference demanded an end to their fees being spent on such jaunts.

The motion said: 'Cuba is a police state with no free elections, free speech or free trade unions... The trade union movement is controlled by the state, and the leaders of the single union CTC are appointed by the state and the Communist Party. The right to strike is not legally recognized, and in practice it is denied'

There was no embarrassing defeat of the motion because it wasn't called for debate  in October another NEU delegation is going back for a week-long visit.

It's no surprise, therefore, to find that Bousted backed the last Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn  a man who hailed the Cuban dictator Fidel Castro on his death in 2016 as 'heroic'.

A former president of the TUC, she became one of the most powerful female trade unionists when, in 2017, the Association of Teachers and Lecturers  which she had led for more than a decade  merged with the National Union of Teachers. The combined 450,000 membership makes it the biggest education union in Europe.

Last year, under her joint leadership, the new union demanded the repeal of all legislation designed to curb the past excesses of the trade unions. It passed a motion arguing that flying pickets should be allowed to demonstrate outside school gates and that the closed shop should return, with teachers who refused to join unions dismissed.

Ms Bousted is shown on the picket lines outside Richmond College, London, in June 2011

'The Conservative laws have made solidarity strikes illegal and prevent unions taking political strike action,' stated the motion. 'These laws prevent us striking to defend the NHS [and] the anti-union laws prevent effective picketing.'

Bousted also backed the thousands of schoolchildren who skipped lessons several times last year to join the disruptive Extinction Rebellion environmental protests.

'We stand in full solidarity with all students striking or protesting against climate change [we] oppose any reprisals against students taking action to fight climate change, such as detentions, exclusions. The rights to strike and protest are fundamental democratic rights for students and workers alike,' she said.

When it comes to industrial action, Bousted has form. In 2011 she led the ATL union, which was founded in 1978, into its first national strike as part of coordinated action by unions against the coalition government's plans to change public sector pensions.

'We expect to be taken seriously and to have the political and industrial clout to make sure our voice is heard,' she cried.

It's hard not to hear her voice. During pension and pay negotiations, successive education secretaries held regular meetings with the bosses of the education unions. Perhaps thinking herself the smartest of them, Bousted seemingly did most of the talking whilst regularly picking fights with the minister.

'What I think I am doing is just telling it how it is,' she once said, revelling in her confrontational approach. 'People think I am strident because they don't like what I'm saying.'

She has previously clashed with Michael Gove, who was education secretary in David Cameron's coalition government, over his wish to restore traditional subjects

There was at least one stand-up row with Michael Gove, who was education secretary in David Cameron's coalition government. They clashed over Gove's wish to restore traditional subjects in the classrooms.

An English teacher before she moved into teacher-training, Bousted said she objected to focusing too much on traditional subjects which require pupils to learn material by heart.

'It's outdated, and fails to equip children for life in the modern world,' she said.

'If a powerful knowledge curriculum means recreating the best that has been thought by dead, white men  then I'm not very interested in it.' Bousted wanted less Shakespeare and more works from Caribbean, Indian and Chinese writers. Asked about her rocky relationship with Gove, she said: 'There was a lot of shouting and finger-pointing.'

No fan of Tory education secretaries, she never had any time for Tony Blair's government either  and opposed his drive towards academy schools. One senior Whitehall insider said that she picked fights for the sake of it. 'Mary Bousted regards the Conservatives as her professional, political, and philosophical foe.

'The latest posturing over the lockdown is entirely typical of her tactics.'

The insider added: 'It's all about the union, to hell with the teachers who want to get back in to the classroom  let alone the children. Bousted is typical of the breed of trade unionist who is a middle-class leftist.

'For her, it was school, university, and teacher training, and two decades running a union.' Bousted, 60, the second youngest of eight children, was brought up in Bolton in the 1960s. Her father was the headmaster of a local primary school; her mother, a die-hard Labour supporter, was also a teacher. She jokes that the word 'strike' was one of the first she learned as a child  after climbing onto her father's knee she used to scan the headlines as he read The Manchester Guardian, his daily newspaper.

Given Mary Bousted's determination to confront the Government, it is a word she will only too willingly put into action to try to get her way.
Our appeal to tackle escalating hunger surged past 4m on Friday, thanks to a 250,000 donation from online supermarket chain Ocado and additional support from key food suppliers.

The new landmark  reached in just seven weeks  came as the childrens commissioner for England applauded our Help The Hungry campaign and said we should never accept it as normal for children to go hungry.

Addressing The Independents pledge to raise 10m for The Felix Project, our appeal partner, commissioner Anne Longfield said: For so many children, the initial excitement of unexpected time off school has faded and they are missing friends, structure to their day, learning and a good meal provided.

We should never forget that in this country, in this day and age, sadly it is still possible, indeed a reality, for some children to go hungry, and we should never accept that as normal or just how it is and shrug our shoulders.

I applaud The Independents efforts with this campaign and congratulate them on raising so much.

Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Show all 8 1 /8 Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev was joined by rapper KSI to help hand out food to vulnerable people at the St. Cuthbert's Centre in Ear's Court Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Magic Andy performs a trick for Evgeny and JJ - better known as KSI. Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Evening Standard and The Independent proprietor Evgeny Lebedev was joined by rapper KSI to help hand out food to vulnerable people at the St. Cuthbert's Centre in Earl's Court. Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Cupcakes decorated with Damien Hirst's Butterfly Heart 2020 image were given out to homeless people Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre A man wears an Iron Man mask as he queues up for food during the coronavirus pandemic. Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Conversation at the St. Cuthbert's Centre in Earl's Court. The 30-year-old charity was joined by Refettorio Felix in 2017 through a collaboration with Chef Massimo Botturaas non-profit organisation Food for Soul, creating the current Refettorio Felix at St. Cuthbertas Centre. The centre helps sustain and support vulnerable people Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Evening Standard proprietor Evgeny Lebedev was joined by rapper KSI to help hand out food to vulnerable people at the St. Cuthbert's Centre in Earl's Court Lucy Young Evgeny Lebedev and the rapper Ksi help out at a Felix Project centre Rapper KSI helps hand out food to vulnerable people at the St. Cuthbert's Centre in Earl's Court Lucy Young

The money raised in conjunction with the Evening Standard has empowered The Felix Project to quadruple its deliveries to 40 tons a day, providing a lifeline to the vulnerable in London in the form of more than 2 million meals since we launched in March.

Jo West, head of sustainability at Ocado, which gave seven tons of food to The Felix Project in April, praised Felix for making a tremendous difference to so many people in the most vulnerable situations.

She added: In these unprecedented times, Felix has upscaled to meet the challenge. We couldnt be prouder to donate and help them to get food to people in the most difficult situations.

Another supplier to go the extra mile is Reach Food Service, a provider of premium ingredients to Londons gourmet restaurants, which has donated 10,000.

In addition it has pledged 1 for every home delivery during 2020 of its newly launched Reach My Kitchen initiative  dispensing meat, seafood and poultry ingredients normally reserved for Londons top chefs directly to households  and which it estimates will raise its total donation to 50,000.

Other food-linked organisations that have already supported our appeal include The Daylesford Foundation, which donated 100,000, and Hello Fresh with 25,000.

Critically, food companies have also pitched in with vital food supplies. Richard Smith, supply manager of The Felix Project, said they had really stepped up to the plate.

Some companies have hugely increased their supplies to us, he said. Innocent normally give us five pallets a week but this week we took 24 pallets off them. Same with Muller  their contribution has quadrupled.

Evgeny Lebedev, a shareholder in The Independent, said: Our Food for London Now campaign has raised 4m in just seven weeks. With more than 1,500 reader donations, and the support of London companies, we have reached heights few expected.

We have told the stories of the people who are suffering during this pandemic. The homeless, the unemployed, the isolated. And we have saluted the innovative people who have applied their skills to helping them in this crisis.

The capital has heard our call, but the hunger crisis has not peaked  just look at the grim economic news from this week. We have committed to raising 10m to ensure the food security of Londoners for three years. So well done, but the hard part comes now. 

Here, 11 of Felixs most prolific suppliers (in addition to Ocado) explain why they have chosen to partner with Felix, Londons biggest food surplus distributor.

Felix suppliers and their generous food donations in April:

Hello Fresh

The firm which produces online recipe boxes has donated 39 tons. Laurent Guillemain, its CEO, said: We are proud to partner with Felix during the most extraordinary of times. Helping to care for our communities and the vulnerable is more important than ever and we will continue to support this incredible initiative that helps redistribute surplus food however we can.

Muller

A dairy products company which contributed 17 tons. The managing director of Muller Yogurt and Desserts, Bergen Merey, said: Over three years ago I committed to this genuine cause, having read the story of young Felix. With a 14-year-old son of my own, I felt inspired by this wonderful initiative in his memory.

Reach Food Service

The restaurant and hotel supplier gave 12 tons. Murtaza Lakhani, its owner, said: The twin issues of food waste and hunger are having major impacts on London. We are proud to make a commitment to Felix as well as to supply high quality food stocks and fresh ingredients so that vulnerable families, elderly people and our amazing NHS workers know there is a nutritious meal waiting for them at the end of the day.

Innocent drinks

The company which produces smoothies has donated 11 tons. Its head of refreshment marketing, Suraj Gangani, said: Were proud to have supported Felix in getting our healthy drinks to those whove needed them through this tough time.

Celtic Bakers

The craft organic bakery gave 10 tons. Its spokesperson said: We decided to change the way we approached food waste and engage with just one organisation, The Felix Project. They are an inspiration. We appreciate that the work of Felix will become more critical and widespread now and for the foreseeable future.

The Country Food Trust

A meat supply company that gave 9 tons. Tim Woodward, CEO, said: We are delighted to work closely with Felix. Since we started working with them we have delivered over 32,000 meals and 6,200kg of meat for cooking.

The Caring Foundation

The company behind restaurants including The Ivy, Le Caprice, Scotts and Sexy Fish contributed 8 tons. Richard Caring, its founder, said: During these difficult times we must come together. The fantastic volunteers from Caprice Holdings restaurants and The Ivy Collections have been cooking 20,000 meals a week to supply, in partnership with Felix, some of Londons vulnerable communities. Together we can make a difference.

Oddbox

An online fruit and veg box company which gave 7 tons. Its co-founders, Emilie Vanpoperinghe and Deepak Ravindran, said: We rescue odd and surplus fruit and veg directly from farms. Working with Felix means we can prevent delicious food from going to waste.

Reynolds

The catering suppliers donated 7 tons. Sarah Reynolds, its head of corporate and social responsibility, said: We have partnered with Felix for some years. Together with many of our customers, we have been able to divert surplus food to those who need it most. We are very proud of this relationship.

Marks & Spencer

The supermarket and clothing retailer gave 6 tons. Ryan Kerr, head of M&Ss north London region, said: Through our partnership with community platform Neighbourly, our northwest London stores have donated 3,200 meals to Felix since the start of March to support those who need it most in these communities.

Sainsburys

The supermarket gave 9 tons. Its spokesperson said: We have proudly been working with Felix since 2016. They collect surplus food from 24 of our stores and our online distribution centre and a number of our colleagues have volunteered in London.
Police investigating the death of motorcyclist Harry Dunn have told the teenager's parents that their email saying his alleged US killer is 'wanted internationally' may have been a reference to a European Arrest Warrant.

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn were told the email from Northamptonshire Police sent to them earlier this week 'appeared' to reference the warrant and 'the circulation of Anne Sacoolas on the police national computer and nothing more'.

Harry's parents lodged a complaint with the force over their comments on a reported Interpol Red Notice issued for Anne Sacoolas on Wednesday.

It is understood that authorities have still not categorically denied to Mrs Charles and Mr Dunn the existence of the notice in respect of the American.

Harry Dunn, 19, was tragically killed when his motorbike crashed into a car outside a US military base in Northamptonshire on August 27 last year

Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn were told the email from Northamptonshire Police sent to them earlier this week 'appeared' to reference the warrant and 'the circulation of Anne Sacoolas on the police national computer and nothing more'

The spokesman for the Dunn family said the wording of the original police email made it 'crystal clear' that a Red Notice had been issued for the suspect.

Radd Seiger, Dunn family lawyer, claims police were 'forced' to issue a statement on Wednesday which said: 'We wish to make it absolutely clear that, at no point, has Northamptonshire Police informed the family spokesperson for the Dunns, Radd Seiger, that an Interpol Red Notice has been issued in respect of Mrs Anne Sacoolas.'

MailOnline has approached Northamptonshire Police for comment.

Harry, 19, was tragically killed when his motorbike crashed into a car outside a US military base in Northamptonshire on August 27 last year.

Sacoolas, 42, the wife of a US intelligence official based at RAF Croughton, claimed diplomatic immunity after the crash and fled to her home country.

She was charged with causing death by dangerous driving in December, but an extradition request submitted by the Home Office was rejected by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in January, a decision the State Department called 'final'.

Mr Seiger said the lack of clarity in the statement and the suggestion Mr Seiger had 'made the whole thing up' had caused 'enormous distress' to Harry's parents.

Dunn family spokesman and lawyer Radd Seiger (centre) said the wording of the original police email made it 'crystal clear' that a Red Notice had been issued for suspect Sacoolas

Timeline of events following Harry's death Anne Sacoolas has been charged with causing death by dangerous driving 27 August 2019: Harry Dunn, 19, killed while riding his motorcycle near Croughton, Northamptonshire near the exit to RAF Croughton, when it collided with a car travelling in the opposite direction; 28 August 2019: Suspect Anne Sacoolas is interviewed by police. Northamptonshire police request a diplomatic immunity waiver; 16 September 2019: Foreign Office tells police that the waiver had been declined and that Sacoolas had left the UK on a US Air Force aircraft; 15 October 2019: Charlotte Charles and Tim Dunn take their campaign for justice to the US where they meet with President Trump at the White House. They refuse meet the suspect, who was waiting in a room next door; 31 October 2019: Northamptonshire police interview Sacoolas in the US after requesting permission to do so; 25 November 2019: Dunn's parents submit a judicial review of the Foreign Secretary's actions over the extension of diplomatic immunity to intelligence staff and families at RAF Croughton 20 December 2019: CPS announces that Sacoolas to be charged with causing death by dangerous driving and that it was starting extradition proceedings against her; 10 January: Home Office formally requests the extradition of Sacoolas to face charges in the United Kingdom 23 January: US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo rejects extradition request; 28 April: Charlotte and Tim write a letter to the US Government, urging it to change its mind on the diplomatic immunity granted to Sacoolas; 11 May: An Interpol Red Notice is issued for Sacoolas' arrest. Advertisement

A response sent to Mr Seiger from the office of the Northamptonshire Police and Crime Commissioner said: 'It appears that the reference in this email to "wanted internationally" was a reference to knowledge of the existence of a European Arrest Warrant and the circulation of Mrs Sacoolas on the police national computer and nothing more.'

Mrs Charles said: 'It has been a rollercoaster of a week. We had the good news about the Red Notice on Monday, but were then kicked in the stomach on Wednesday by the police's statement.

'It is an absolute disgrace the way we are being treated. Inhumane and cruel doesn't come close and we are all beside ourselves with stress, worry and anxiety.

'That doesn't appear to be a concern to those in authority. We get all our love and support from Radd, our friends and family, the media and our supporters across the nation and around the world.

'It is they who are keeping us going.

'As for those in authority, they need to have a good long look at themselves.'

Mr Seiger, who practised law for 27 years, said: 'It was Northamptonshire Police's officer who wrote to the parents on Monday using words which to any trained eye like mine, and the parents' leading solicitor and QC, make it crystal clear that a Red Notice has been circulated in respect of Anne Sacoolas.

'There is no doubt about that whatsoever. She is now a fugitive who is to be located and provisionally arrested and returned to the UK to face her charge of causing Harry's death by dangerous driving.

'She is being harboured in the USA by President Trump and Secretary Pompeo.

'The shame of all this is that the CPS, the police and Harry's family clearly all want the same thing, which is what all right-minded and reasonable people on both sides of the Atlantic want, which is simply for Anne Sacoolas to do what any of us would have to do, to answer the charge laid against her. No more, no less.

'Regrettably, we cannot include Boris Johnson's government in that group, given that they unlawfully allowed her to leave and then have been in a desperate battle to keep their breach of legal protocol covered up.

'The parents hate what happened to their son. They do not hate Mrs Sacoolas. They are highly confident that she will get a fair trial when she is back. That is the sort of country and people that we are.'
A quiet spot in your backyard, a thicket or a patch of tall grass  these all are places where fawns have been found. If you do come across a fawn this spring, dont touch it. Theres a very good chance it is right where its supposed to be.

A mother deer will hide her fawn to help protect it from predators, often leaving it unattended to avoid drawing attention to the hiding place. Young fawns have excellent camouflage and lay very still, making it harder for predators to find them.

You may think these fawns have been abandoned, but that rarely is the case. The mother will return periodically to nurse her fawn when she feels it is safe. Your best move is to quietly enjoy the fawn from a distance, because leaving baby animals in the wild ensures their greatest chance for survival.

Its a frequent DNR message that bears repeating: only licensed wildlife rehabilitators may possess abandoned or injured wildlife. Unless a person is licensed, it is illegal to possess a live wild animal, including deer, in Michigan.

Everyone shares the responsibility of keeping Michigans wildlife wild. Additional tips and information on what to do if you find a baby animal are available at Michigan.gov/Wildlife.

Source: Michigan Department of Natural Resources
WATERLOO  Road contractors are moving quickly to complete the final phase of the University Avenue reconstruction project.

Good weather and a traffic-free construction zone have allowed Peterson Contractors Inc. to stay ahead of schedule on the $14.4 million contract to rebuild University from near Ansborough Avenue to U.S. Highway 63.

While PCI has two years to finish the work, which started this spring, most of the heavy lifting could be done in 2020 if Mother Nature continues to cooperate.

As long as the weather continues to hold out  theyre targeting to get mainline paving done this year, said Michelle Sweeney, project manager for the AECOM engineering firm. That means everything from Highway 63 all the way over the the Phase I limit (near Ansborough).

Crews have removed the six lanes of crumbling pavement from Knoll Avenue to U.S. 63 and were dismantling an old railroad bridge that crosses over the Sergeant Road recreational trail. They will be putting back four lanes of pavement, replacing the bridge with a box culvert, and building a trailhead and parking lot south of the culvert.

Sweeney noted the project also lowers the grade of the roadway by 12 to 15 feet, with the excess dirt being spread on the former tree dump site.

Its going to look substantially different, she said. When youre at Fletcher (Avenue) and you look to 63, you used to see the old railroad bridge. Thats all getting cut down and youll be able to see all the way to 63 now.

Crews are also preparing to pave a roundabout at University and Fletcher, the only such intersection included on Waterloos three-mile stretch of University. That roundabout should open in about two months, which will allow PCI to pave the roadway to the west.

The overall $30 million reconstruction of University Avenue in Waterloo was done in three phases, all by PCI.

Work on the first phase, between Ansborough and Greenhill Road, is essentially done. Contractors were finishing up median plantings and installing bus stop shelters this week.

The second phase, from Greenhill west to the Cedar Falls city limits at Midway Drive, is in its second year of work. Crews are installing a water main under Greenhill Road now. That phase is expected to wrap up this fall.

Some of the bridge monuments and enhancements on the Greenhill Road bridge are part of the phase 3 contract and may not be completed until 2021. But paving along the full length of University is expected to be completed this year.

Waterloo is funding the bulk of the project with funds from the Iowa Department of Transportation. Water and sewer funds are covering work related to those utilities, and the Black Hawk County Gaming Association provided a grant to cover some of the more decorative features.

Renderings from Phase 3 of the University Avenue construction project:

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MONTREAL, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Les Ressources Komet Inc. ( Komet  or the  Company ; TSX-V: KMT) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a binding letter of intent under which it will sell all of the issued and outstanding shares of Komet Mali SARL, its wholly-owned Mali subsidiary, to Roscan Gold Corporation ("Roscan"; TSX-V: ROS). Komet Mali SARL owns the Dabia Sud project, comprising 35 km2 of concessions with very promising gold exploration potential and located adjacent to Roscans Kandiole property.

Transaction highlights

1) Set of very promising properties adjacent to Roscan, to the northeast and west of Oklo Resources (OKU AU); 2) Includes the near-surface Kabaya gold deposit containing a NI 43-101 resource of 105,000 ounces of indicated resources and 35,000 ounces of inferred resources that was drilled at an average depth of 80 m; the deposit remains fully open (see Komet press release dated January 21, 2019 and report filed on SEDAR entitled "Dabia Sud Property, Mali, Kabaya Resource Estimate, NI 43-101 Technical Report by SGS Minerals); 3) Several high priority targets on the property, including Kabaya, Disse and Walia; and 4) Disposition price of CAD $ 3.2 million, of which 50% in cash and 50% in Roscan shares, pricing of the shares to be made according to by 5-day VWAP of the Roscan Shares on the TSX-V, calculated as of the day prior to the closing date of the transaction.

Roscan shares issued in the transaction will be subject to a voluntary hold period for 6 months after the closing date. It is also expected that Komet will enter into a voting trust agreement with Roscan pursuant to which it will agree to vote the Purchase Shares in favour of managements recommendations.

The transaction remains subject to customary conditions including signing of a definitive agreement, completion of satisfactory due diligence and receipt of TSX-V approval. Trading in shares of Komet could remain halted until the Company has received final approval from the TSX-V.

Closing of this arms length transaction is slated for May 21, 2020.

Robert Wares, President and Chairman of Komet Resources, stated: This transaction will provide our shareholders with exposure to a well-managed and successful gold exploration company in Mali. With a strong operating history, solid balance sheet and significant experience, Roscans management team is well-positioned to fund and continue to advance the project. The proceeds from this transaction will allow Komet to restructure and proceed with base and precious metal exploration programs in Eastern Canada.

Nana Sangmuah, President and CEO of Roscan, stated, We are delighted to work towards consolidating a key asset in this prolific mining district at a very attractive price for our shareholders. This acquisition will add an attractive mineral resource stage expansion portfolio with an extensive exploration data base which cant be understated. This provides an opportunity for Roscan to achieve new discoveries and delineate new resources in the Dabia Project. The Company is in an excellent financial position to maximize the value of this to be acquired asset and our highly prospective land package in Mali.

Qualified Person

The technical data contained in this news release was approved by Pascal Van Osta, P.Geo., an independent qualified person under the National Instrument 43-101 Standards of Disclosure of Mineral Projects.

More information about the Corporation is available at:: http://kometgold.com.

Investor Relations/information :

Mr. Robert Wares, Chairman and interim President: 514-951-4235 / r.wares@kometgold.com

Cautionary Statements Regarding Estimates of Mineral Resources

This news release uses the terms indicated and inferred mineral resources as a relative measure of the level of confidence in the resource estimate. Readers are cautioned that mineral resources are not mineral reserves and that the economic viability of resources that are not mineral reserves has not been demonstrated. The mineral resource estimate disclosed in this news release may be materially affected by geology, environmental, permitting, legal, title, socio-political, marketing or other relevant issues. It is reasonably expected that the majority of Inferred Mineral Resources could be upgraded to Indicated Mineral Resources with continued drilling. The mineral resource estimate is classified in accordance with the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleums CIM Definition Standards on Mineral Resources and Mineral Reserves incorporated by reference into NI 43-101 (CIM). Under NI 43-101, estimates of inferred mineral resources may not form the basis of feasibility or pre-feasibility studies or economic studies except for preliminary economic assessments. Readers are cautioned not to assume that further work on the stated resources will lead to mineral reserves that can be mined economically.

Forward-looking Statements

This press release contains statements that may constitute forward-looking information or forward-looking statements as set out within the context of security law. This forward-looking information is subject to many risks and uncertainties, some of which are beyond Komets control. The actual results or conclusions may differ considerably from those that have been set out, or intimated, in this forward-looking information. There are many factors which may cause such disparity, especially the instability of metal market prices, the results of fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates or in interest rates, poorly estimated resources, environmental risks (stricter regulations), unforeseen geological situations, unfavourable extraction conditions, political risks brought on by mining in developing countries, regulatory and governmental policy changes (laws and policies), failure to obtain the requisite permits and approvals from government bodies, or any other risk relating to mining and development. There is no guarantee that the circumstances anticipated in this forward-looking information will occur, or if they do occur, how they will benefit Komet. The forward-looking information is based on the estimates and opinions of Komets management at the time of the publication of the information and Komet does not assume any obligation to make public updates or modifications to any of the forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or any other cause, except if it is required by securities laws.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release
(Newser)  Sen. Dianne Feinstein has answered FBI questions about her husband's stock trades and turned over documents. The California Democrat volunteered to be interviewed, a spokesman said. Also, Politico reports, she "provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husband's transactions," the spokesman said. Feinstein's husband is Richard Blum, an investment banker who sold biotech shares at the end of January, shortly before the pandemic sent the stock market plummeting.

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Feinstein has said her assets were placed in a blind trust when she was elected to the Senate in 1992. She was asked "basic questions" by the FBI, a spokesman said, in April. "There have been no follow up actions on this issue," a statement said, per the Sacramento Bee. The senator is one of four who have been under scrutiny for stock transactions made after they'd been briefed on the spreading coronavirus. (Sen. Richard Burr has stepped down as chairman of the Intelligence Committee while his stock deals are investigated.)
Geoffrey Onyeama, minister of foreign affairs, has explained why Air Peace was denied landing rights by Canadian authorities.

An Air Peace flight scheduled to evacuate 200 Nigerians from Canada on Thursday was said to have been cancelled.

In a statement on Wednesday by the airline, it said; The management of Air Peace wishes to announce that its evacuation flight to Canada previously scheduled for May 14, 2020, has been postponed due to logistics issues as communicated to the airline by the Nigerian High Commission in Canada, the statement by Air Peace read.

Once the issues are resolved with the Canadian authorities and a new date is issued by the High Commission, we shall duly communicate same to the public.

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However while clarifying the postponement of the flight on Thursday, Onyeama, said the airline doesnt have licence to undertake commercial flights to that country.

Read Also: Covid-19: No Infected Person Was Onboard Aircraft- Air Peace

This is the case indeed that the Canadian government denied landing rights on the grounds that this particular Nigerian carrier did not have licence to undertake commercial flights to that country and was not known to that country for commercial flights, he said.

Our high commissioner in Canada is engaging with the Canadian government on this issue and were hopeful that we can have the decision reversed.

The argument that hes putting forward, which is a strong argument, is that this is not a regular commercial flight to Canada to take passengers, but that this is an emergency flight and that there is a difference between the two. So, the negotiations are ongoing and we are hopeful that there will be a positive result.
Greater relaxations and flexibility will be seen in the lockdown 4.0, which will begin on Monday, with gradual reopening of the railways and domestic airlines while powers will be given to States and UTs to define their hotspots, officials said on Friday.

Schools, colleges, malls and cinema halls will not be allowed to open anywhere in the country but salons, barber shops and optical shops may be allowed in red zones, barring COVID-19 containment areas.

There will be lots of relaxations and flexibility in the lockdown 4.0 with complete reopening of the green zones, very limited curb in orange zones and strict restrictions only in the containment areas of red zones, said an official privy to the deliberations in the central government.

However, the final guidelines will be issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs only after going through the suggestions of state governments.

The state governments and union territory administrations have been asked to submit their recommendations by Friday.

According to officials, Punjab, West Bengal, Maharashtra, Assam and Telangana wanted the lockdown to be continued, some of them wanted the powers to decide the zoning of districts -- green, orange and red -- as per the COVID-19 situation.

This request of the state governments may be accepted so that they can restrict or allow movement of people or economic activities in a particular place depending on the ground situation, the official told PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Monday, had said that the lockdown 4.0 will have a "completely different form", with new rules.

"No state wants complete withdrawal of lockdown but all want gradual resumption of economic activities," the official said.

Gradual and need-based operations of the railways and domestic airlines are likely to be allowed from next week but full-fledged opening of the two sectors is unlikely to take place immediately.

Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka were among some states which were not in favour of complete resumption of train and air services, at least till May-end, the official said.

The railways have already started special trains to 15 destinations from Delhi and have been running several hundred 'Shramik Special' trains from different parts of the country to various places for transportation of migrant workers stranded due to the lockdown.

The Air India is also engaged in evacuation of thousands of Indians stranded abroad during the lockdown under the 'Vande Bharat Mission'.

Local trains, buses and metro services may start running with limited capacity in non-containment areas of red zones.

Autos and taxis are also expected to be allowed in red zones with restrictions on the number of passengers.

Most of these services will be allowed within the districts in non-containment areas and state governments may be authorised to take a call on their reopening, another official said.

Powers to open markets in orange and red zones may be given to state governments, which may follow the odd-even policy while allowing shops of non-essential goods to open.

E-commerce platforms may be allowed to deliver non-essential items even in red zones, barring the containment areas.

Sale of non-essential items by e-commerce companies have already allowed in green and orange zones.

Maharashtra, which the has highest number of COVID-19 cases and deaths from the virus, wants a strict lockdown measures in Mumbai, its suburbs and Pune, and complete stop of inter-state and inter-district transport of any kind.

Whereas, Gujarat with second highest number of positive cases wants resumption of economic activities in major urban centres.

States which are in favour of opening up of economic activities include Delhi, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala, the official said.

Kerala is believed to have suggested reopening of restaurants and hotels to revive the tourism sector.

Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha, which have seen spike in the COVID-19 cases after arrival of migrant workers, want continuation of lockdown with strict curbs on movement of people.

Lockdown was first announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 24 for 21 days in a bid to combat the coronavirus pandemic. It was first extended till 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.)
Rockies Venture Club, in partnership with Rolf Design Co. has introduced a new look for the 35 year old angel investor group. As RVC expands and achieves more ambitious capital mobilization goals, a unified, modern, and versatile brand identity is necessary; launching this image pays homage to RVCs success over the last 35 years and moves the brand forward toward new growth and expanded community.

The Rockies Venture Club (RVC) is dedicated to accelerating economic development through angel investing. Since 1985, as the longest-running angel group in the United States, RVC supports education and collaboration between angel investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate partners.

Today, RVC is a major player in the Colorado investment ecosystem. RVC and the Rockies Venture Fund have made over 130 investments in 54 companies with a portfolio value of about $25 million. With a new partnership with the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade (OEDIT), RVC has set its sights on expanding angel investing within the state, mobilizing more capital to Colorado companies through investment and syndication.

As RVC expands and achieves more ambitious capital mobilization goals, a unified, modern, and versatile brand identity is necessary; launching this image pays homage to RVCs success over the last 35 years and moves the brand forward toward new growth and expanded community.

Says Peter Adams, Executive Director of RVC: Ten years ago Rockies Venture Club was a single entity with only one outward facing brand. Now, the RVC is a consortium of programs, funds and events that we have built up over the past decade, all of which work synergistically to serve the startup and angel investing community. It is important to have a consistent brand strategy for today and for future initiatives that identifies these programs, but which is built upon the common DNA that drives their aligned missions.

This modular identity unifies the expansive array of RVC offerings and initiatives. A common thread can be identified through all logos in the RVC brand, either through typography, the iconic mountain logo form, or a tagline that communicates affiliation with the RVC. The shape articulates both the promise and commitment to upward growth in knowledge aboutand accessibility toangel capital, and as a symbol that graphically illustrates RVCs roots in the Rocky Mountain region as a launchpad for the future.

For this project, RVC partnered with The Rolf Design Co., a boutique design studio created by Mollie Rolf that serves the Colorado startup community from pitch-deck to re-brand. Their work encompasses graphics and identity, websites and digital experiences, advertising and communications. They believe that great design cannot happen without collaboration, intelligence, passion, and engagement.

RVC is thrilled to share this new brand identity with its community of investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate partners; they look forward to engaging many more as they strengthen economic development and impact in Colorado and beyond.

About the Rockies Venture Club: Rockies Venture Club is the longest-running and one of the largest Angel Groups in the U.S.A.. Founded in 1985, Rockies Venture Clubs mission is to advance economic development by actively connecting the most promising entrepreneurial companies with angel investors, venture capitalists, and other community members. Every year Rockies Venture Club offers over 140 educational programs, mastermind groups, angel forums, and two major conferences for investors, entrepreneurs, and corporate partners.


The Defence Headquarters might have set the Nigerian military up for backlash as it called repentant terrorists clients on Friday. ...





The Defence Headquarters might have set the Nigerian military up for backlash as it called repentant terrorists clients on Friday.





The Coordinator, Defence Media Operations, Maj.-Gen. John Enenche, used the term at a press conference on the operations of the Armed Forces of Nigeria (AFN).





The ex-fighters had killed several civilians, military and paramilitary personnel in Nigerias 10-year long insurgency war.





But the federal government, in what could be described as carrot and stick approach, established a De-radicalization, Rehabilitation and Reintegration programme.





The military boasts that the scheme, under Operation Safe Corridor, had recorded tremendous success.





At the briefing, Enenche said 280 clients have successfully undergone the programme and reintegrated into the society.





He disclosed that 25 of the number were repatriated to Niger Republic.





Presently, 603 clients are due to pass out in June 2020. Other fighters are hereby encouraged to come out of the bush/hideouts to surrender, NAN quoted him as saying.





Enenche noted that surviving Boko Haram and ISWAP members were currently on recruitment drive due to shortage of manpower on their part.





He appealed to parents, traditional rulers, community, opinion and religious leaders, to dissuade their wards and children from succumbing to inducements by the terrorists.





Under Operation Whirl Stroke, Enenche said troops, on May 12, killed four suspected armed herdsmen while responding to a distress call on infiltration at Agasha in Guma Local Government Area of Benue State.





The General announced that the troops recovered two AK-47 rifles, four magazines and 65 rounds of 7.62mm ammunition from attackers.





The general public is hereby requested to continue to provide credible information to the Armed Forces of Nigeria, to facilitate our operations in this regard.





The High Command of the Armed Forces of Nigeria congratulates gallant troops for successes recorded. The AFN remains decisive to end the insurgency and other security challenges in the country, Enenche assured.




Maharashtra deputy Chief Minister



Ajit Pawar said on Friday that the decision on the annual 'palkhi' processions from Alandi and Dehu in Pune district to Pandharpur will be taken after May 30.

Lakhs of devotees undertake 'Wari' (pilgrimage on foot) to the Vitthal temple in Pandharpur in Solapur district from all parts of Maharashtra every year, but the coronavirus pandemic has cast a shadow on the tradition this time.

Pawar, who is guardian minister of Pune district, held a meeting here with the trustees of Alandi, Dehu and Pandharpur temples and senior district and police officials.

"The Wari has special and historical importance in the Warkari sect. It is a centuries' old tradition. We will review the coronavirus situation in the next 15 days and decision will be taken about the palkhi procession after May 30 by taking all the stakeholders in confidence," Pawar said.

Vikas Dhage Patil, one of the chief trustees of Alandi temple, said they will follow the government's guidelines.

"Whatever decision the state government takes, we will welcome it," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
This obituary is part of a series about people who have died in the coronavirus pandemic. Read about others here.

Tendol Gyalzur lost her parents and brother during the 1959 Tibetan uprising and as a child crossed the Himalayas on foot and on horseback to safety. But she returned to Tibet after more than three decades to start the regions first private orphanages, which have taken in more than 300 children.

Mrs. Gyalzur died on May 3 in Chur, Switzerland. She was believed to be 69. The cause was Covid-19, her son, Songtsen Gyalzur, said.

With assistance from the Tibet Development Fund, a Chinese-controlled nonprofit, and using family savings, Mrs. Gyalzur opened Tibets first private orphanage in 1993 in Lhasa, the capital, accepting children from a variety of ethnic groups.
Kalybos

15.05.2020 LISTEN

Kalybos says he has never shared the same girlfriend with his follow comedian, Funny Face.

Funny had earlier alleged that he gave his girlfriend to Kalybos after the skit star showed interest in her.

But responding to the allegation in an interview with Dr. Pounds on Hitz FM, Kalybos stated that the claims are false, suggesting Funny lied to his followers and Ghanaians.

He stated that his girlfriend even laughed at him over the rumour, describing him as cheap if that ever happened.

According to Myjoyonline, the 'Boys Kasa' actor said his family was even hurt by the accusation.

Funny Face had chastised Bismark The Joke, Kwadwo Nkansah Lilwin and Kalybos for allegedly spreading lies about him.

He stated that his colleagues are green with envy and are seeking to tarnish his image.

He threatened to release their 'dirty secrets' should they ever dare him.

But Kalybos told Dr. Poundz that he does not harbour any ill feelings against Funny Face, neither does he have the time to hate on him.

He said he was disappointed when some media platforms ran with the accusations just for the trend without asking for his side of the story.

He, however, applauded a media house for calling for clarification, adding that this is what I call pure journalism.
JACKSONVILLE, FL / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / ParkerVision, Inc. (OTCQB:PRKR), a developer and marketer of technologies and products for wireless applications, today announced results for the three months ended March 31, 2020.

First Quarter 2020 Summary and Recent Developments

Received a favorable claim construction ruling ( Markman Order ) in the U.S. district court case against Qualcomm and HTC in Orlando, Florida. Case is stayed through May 29, 2020 due to COVID-19. Case is currently scheduled for jury trial commencing December 1, 2020.

) in the U.S. district court case against Qualcomm and HTC in Orlando, Florida. Infringement case against Qualcomm and Apple in Jacksonville, Florida, has been stayed pending the resolution of the patent infringement case in Orlando, Florida. Case was originally scheduled for trial commencing August 2020 but was placed on administrative stay due to COVID-19.

Filed an action against Intel Corporation in the Western District of Texas in February 2020, as amended in May 2020, for infringement of ten of the Company's patents.

Filed an action against Chinese TCL Technology Group Corp and its U.S. subsidiary, TTE Technology, Inc. (collectively "TCL") in U.S. district court in the Central District of California for infringement of nine of the Company's patents in May 2020. TCL was reported to be the second largest brand of smart televisions in the United States in 2019.



First Quarter Financial Results

Net loss for the three months ended March 31, 2020 was $7.9 million, or $0.21 per common share, compared to $2.1 million, or $0.07 per common share, for the same period in 2019. $4.0 million of the net loss for the first quarter of 2020 is comprised of non-cash expense for changes in the estimated fair value of contingent payment obligations of $2.2 million and a one-time charge of approximately $1.8 million recognized upon modification of existing warrant agreements and issuance of new warrants. $2.7 million of the net loss for the first quarter of 2020 is comprised of litigation fees and expenses primarily due to the cost of expert reports and fact discovery activities in the Jacksonville, Florida patent infringement case against Qualcomm and Apple, representing an increase of approximately $1.6 million over litigation fees and expenses for the same period in 2019.

Cash used for operations was $1.3 million during the three months ended March 31, 2020, compared to $1.7 million during the same period in 2019.

During the three months ended March 31, 2020, the Company received $1.5 million in proceeds from the sale of debt and equity securities and $0.5 million from the exercise of outstanding warrants.

Jeffrey Parker, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, commented, "We believe that our new patent enforcement program with Goldberg Segalla, who represents us in the recently filed cases against Intel in Texas and TCL in California, is important to broaden our licensing potential to additional companies and markets that are benefiting from products in which our technologies are deployed. I also believe the ability to better focus our resources on the Orlando case against Qualcomm and HTC, in light of the recent stay in the Jacksonville case, is a positive for the Company. The Orlando case includes all of the Qualcomm products accused in the Jacksonville case plus numerous additional products, and the case covers ten years of infringement which is seven years longer than the infringement period in the Jacksonville case."

About ParkerVision

ParkerVision, Inc. has designed and developed proprietary radio-frequency (RF) technologies which enable advanced wireless solutions for current and next generation wireless communication products. ParkerVision is engaged in a number of patent enforcement actions in the U.S. to protect patented rights that it believes are broadly infringed by others. For more information, please visit www.parkervision.com. (PRKR-I)

Safe Harbor Statement

This press release contains forward-looking information. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on any such forward-looking statements, each of which speaks only as of the date made. Such statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties which are disclosed in the Company's SEC reports, including the Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2019 and the Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2020. These risks and uncertainties could cause actual results to differ materially from those currently anticipated or projected.

Contact:

Cindy Poehlman

Chief Financial OfficerParkerVision, Inc.

904-732-6100

cpoehlman@parkervision.com

(TABLES FOLLOW)

#

ParkerVision, Inc.

Balance Sheet Highlights

(in thousands) (unaudited) March 31, 2019 December 31, 2019 Cash and cash equivalents $ 173 $ 57 Prepaid expenses and other current assets 739 622 Property and equipment, net 62 70 Intangible assets & other noncurrent assets 2,982 3,177 Total assets 3,956 3,926 Current liabilities 6,344 6,138 Contingent payment obligations 29,894 26,651 Convertible notes 2,951 2,733 Other long-term liabilities 1,042 1,501 Shareholders' deficit (36,275 ) (33,097 ) Total liabilities and shareholders' deficit $ 3,956 $ 3,926

ParkerVision, Inc.

Summary Results of Operations

(unaudited)

Three Months Ended (in thousands, except per share amounts) March 31, 2020 2019 Product revenue $ - $ 10 Cost of sales - (10 ) Gross margin - - Research and development expenses - 334 Selling, general and administrative expenses 5,495 2,156 Total operating expenses 5,495 2,490 Interest expense (186 ) (62 ) Change in fair value of contingent payment obligations (2,240 ) 458 Total interest and other (2,426 ) 396 Net loss $ (7,921 ) $ (2,094 ) Basic and diluted net loss per common share $ (0.21 ) $ (0.07 ) Weighted average shares outstanding 38,329 29,186

ParkerVision, Inc.

Condensed Consolidated Statements of Cash Flows

(unaudited)

Three Months Ended (in thousands) March 31, 2020 2019 Net cash used in operating activities $ (1,301 ) $ (1,673 ) Net cash provided by investing activities - 6 Net cash provided by financing activities 1,417 515 Net increase (decrease) in cash and cash equivalents 116 (1,152 ) Cash and cash equivalents - beginning of period 57 1,527 Cash and cash equivalents - end of period $ 173 $ 375

SOURCE: ParkerVision, Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589897/ParkerVision-Reports-First-Quarter-2020-Results
Documents that U.S. health officials have released as part of long-delayed specific guidance that schools, businesses, and other organizations can use as states reopen from coronavirus shutdowns. Read more

WASHINGTON  With hundreds of millions of people still seeking advice on resuming their lives safely, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a scant six pages of recommendations Thursday to guide schools, businesses, day-care facilities and others into the next phase of the coronavirus pandemic.

The six checklists  which also address restaurants, mass transit and camps  come days, and in some cases weeks, after many states have begun to lift restrictions on their own. The advice is less detailed than draft recommendations the agency sent to the White House for review last month.

The nation is still awaiting that detailed technical guidance, which the White House has held up and not shared publicly. The delay has left the responsibility for decision-making about reopening to states and localities. It has also left many health experts clamoring for greater transparency.

"We need to unleash the voices of the scientists in our public health system in the United States so they can be heard, and their guidances need to be listened to," said Rick Bright, a former top U.S. vaccine official who testified before a House panel Thursday, decrying the piecemeal approach the Trump administration has taken to the pandemic. "And we need to be able to convey that information to the American public so they have the truth about the real risk and dire consequences of this virus."

Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said a day earlier on the Senate floor that the CDC advice must be released.

"The country needs the guidance of the nation's best medical and scientific experts. These literally are matters of life and death," Schumer said. "And that's exactly why the CDC prepared this guidance. America needs and must have the candid guidance of our best scientists  unfiltered, unedited and uncensored by President Trump or his political minions."

The White House at first shelved the CDC guidelines. When asked about them, the White House said they were "overly specific" and in the process of being revised.

A CDC spokesman said additional recommendations may still come from the agency. The six decision trees were ready for release, so the administration decided to put them out while other guidelines make their way through the review process.

The documents released Thursday are aimed at helping facilities decide if they're ready to open and inform how they do so, he said.

"This was an effort on our part to make some decision trees we thought might be helpful to those moving forward with opening their establishment," the spokesperson said.

But with many states already moving on, it is unclear what impact any additional recommendations might have. And the mixed messages from President Donald Trump and other officials in his administration have left state and local officials struggling with decisions on whether and how to relax public-health restrictions.

Trump has been pushing for states to reopen, and on Thursday he traveled to Pennsylvania to urge its leadership to loosen its coronavirus restrictions, especially in areas he said have barely been affected by the pandemic, part of the president's escalating personal appeal to state leaders to let American life get back to normal.

His visit to the swing state  during which he attacked its Democratic governor, whom Trump views as moving too slowly to reopen  came on the same day that he cheered a "win" in Wisconsin, where a court ruling against stay-at-home orders issued by another Democratic governor led to chaos and scenes of bars packed with people. Trump's us-against-them language underscored the rift with federal scientists who continue to warn against lifting coronavirus restrictions too swiftly amid fears of the potential for a new wave of infections and fatalities.

"We have to get your governor of Pennsylvania to open up a little bit," Trump said of Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat. "You have areas of Pennsylvania that are barely affected, and they want to keep it closed."

Trump also called testing "overrated" as a tool to track and control the virus, even though the White House has moved to a protocol of testing all visitors and requiring most employees to wear masks.

Trump's approach put him at odds with Bright and Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious-disease expert. Fauci testified Tuesday about the need for accurate, widespread testing and further limits on daily life and commerce.

Trump and other Republicans have increasingly criticized Fauci, confusing the federal message at a time when, Bright said, the crisis demands a "single point of leadership."

"And we don't have a single point of leadership right now for this response, and we don't have a master plan for this response," Bright said. "So those two things are absolutely critical."

Bright said prospects were dim for a vaccine anytime soon, echoing Fauci's belief that there will be no fail-safe protection available before schools must make decisions about opening in the fall.

Bright told lawmakers that the United States faces the "darkest winter in modern history" if it does not develop a more coordinated national response to the novel coronavirus before an expected resurgence later this year.

"Our window of opportunity is closing," Bright said before the House Energy Committee's subcommittee on health. "If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based in science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities."

Trump in recent weeks has urged governors to move more quickly in reopening their states, despite safety benchmarks issued by his administration that many have yet to meet.

"The people want to get on with their lives. The place is bustling!" Trump tweeted approvingly after the Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down an extension of restrictions by Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat. The ruling late Wednesday produced a confusing patchwork across the state, with some localities maintaining limits on businesses and activities.

"We're the Wild West," rued Evers during an interview on MSNBC.

The 4-to-3 decision by the high court in Wisconsin limits Evers' ability to make statewide rules during emergencies such as a global pandemic, instead requiring him to work with the state legislature on how the state should handle the outbreak.

By Thursday, many of the reopened Wisconsin bars were dark once again, shuttered as more than a dozen cities and counties that have been hit hard by the coronavirus moved to enact local stay-at-home ordinances.

"Well, that was fun while it lasted," a patron wrote on the Facebook page of Limanski's Pub in West Allis, which briefly opened Wednesday night before Milwaukee County ordered bars and restaurants to remain closed indefinitely to in-person dining and drinking.

Bars in much of greater Milwaukee were closed, including two communities to the south  Racine and Kenosha, cities where COVID-19 cases have surged in recent days. But to the north of Milwaukee, some cities and counties chose to allow bars and restaurants to reopen, though many establishments remained shuttered.

In Grafton, about 20 miles north of Milwaukee in Ozaukee County, the Milwaukee Ale House opened its doors for lunch service at 11 a.m. sharp after weeks of serving takeout and delivery  business that was not nearly enough to pay the bills, according to owner Mike Stoner.

"I take it seriously," Stoner said Thursday afternoon, as he sat at the upstairs bar of his restaurant, which remained mostly empty except for several masked servers and bartenders who stood waiting for customers. "I don't know why things have to be so political, so angry. . . . I am just trying to keep my business alive."

Trump has been aggressively calling for states to reopen even as health officials have sent a more cautious message, urging a data-driven and scientific approach.

In mid-April, the White House unveiled a three-phase plan for a gradual reopening of communities. The blueprint called for states to move forward after they met an initial test of 14 days of declining coronavirus cases and continue to progress as they passed additional safety checkpoints.

But many states, their economies in free fall, ignored the requirements for the first phase and moved ahead. The plan did not include specifics that many state and local officials, business leaders and millions of people sought to help them safely resume a version of their previous lives.

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

The documents released Thursday were reviewed extensively by White House Office of Management and Budget officials who were concerned the initial draft was too burdensome on churches and restaurants, among others.

The CDC removed from an earlier draft a recommendation that no facility open in an area where spread of the virus requires "significant mitigation." But it left a warning against reopening against local or state orders. That puts the responsibility squarely on state and local governments to impose those rules.

"Usually it's the state and local health department that follow CDC's lead and not the other way around," said Matthew Seeger, who has researched crisis communication for the past 35 years at Wayne State University. "It's the latest way the current leadership is putting the onus on states and trying to make this a decentralized structure. That's not how CDC usually works."

Thursday's guidance helps workplaces decide whether to reopen, how to promote hygiene measures such as mask-wearing and hand-washing before they do and how to monitor employees for symptoms of infection, among other advice.

It recommends that restaurants and bars "encourage social distancing and enhance spacing at establishments," in part by "spacing of tables/stools, limiting party sizes and occupancy, avoiding self-serve stations, restricting employee shared spaces, [and] rotating or staggering shifts, if feasible."

It advises mass transit systems to "limit routes to and from high transmission areas" before resuming full service.

No decision tree for faith communities was released. Telling houses of worship how to operate stirred controversy when the CDC's original draft instructions were leaked last month.

Public health experts said the way the Trump administration has rolled out guidelines makes it less likely people will heed them.

"In many ways, this advice is the only medicine we have," Seeger said. "We don't have a vaccine yet. We don't have treatment. All we have is human behavior and that behavior is based on the information people get and whether they will listen to that information."

____

The Washington Posts Holly Bailey in Milwaukee, Moriah Balingit in Lansing, Mich., and Yasmeen Abutaleb and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.
An estimated 133,000 US autoworkers - just over half of the industrys workforce before the pandemic - are expected to pour back into auto plants that will open in the coming weeks.

Amid a wave of layoffs that has sent the US job market into its worst catastrophe on record, tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus.

In addition, parts-making companies began cranking this week to get components flowing, adding thousands more workers.

This makes the auto industry among the first major sectors of the US economy to restart its engine.

About 133,000 autoworkers are expected to return to work within weeks. Workers at the Ford Rawsonville plant in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan, are seen assembling ventilators May 13. Ford will deliver 50,000 ventilators by July 4, but will start making auto parts on Monday

Ford Motor Co., team leader Kyle Lenart (right) inspects a ventilator that the automaker is assembling at the Ford Rawsonville plant. Workers had volunteered to make the hospital equipment during the shutdown

Ford Motor Co., assemblyman Malcolm Brumwell puts together a ventilator that the automaker is assembling at the Ford Rawsonville plant on May 13

Until now, it was mostly hair salons, restaurants, tattoo parlors and other small businesses reopening in some parts of the country.

Looming in the background is an economy decimated by the pandemic.

Nearly three million laid-off US workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, raising the total seeking aid in the past two months to about 36million.

Although some states have begun to let selected businesses reopen, workers are still reporting difficulty getting unemployment benefits. Freelance, gig and self-employed workers are struggling.

Even the auto sector won't see a full return to normal yet, and if people dont start buying vehicles again, workers could be sent home. Yet automakers say theres enough pent-up demand, especially for pickup trucks, to get factories humming again.

That could help states slow the drain on their unemployment benefit funds.

In Michigan, where over one-third of the labor force sought benefits, the fund fell from $4.6billion before the pandemic to $4.1billion on April 30, said Jeff Donofrio, director of the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity.

Some returning auto employees could work part-time and get still some unemployment benefits, but federal programs could cover part of their payments, he said.

Ford Motor Co., line workers are seen assembling ventilators on May 13, after it was converted into a ventilator factory

An autoworker assembles a transmission at the General Motors Transmission Plant in Toledo, Ohio, in May 2010. The auto industry will be the first major US industry to get back to work

Jeep vehicles are parked outside the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit in February 2019, prior to the shuttering of auto factories in mid-March

A worker walks through the parking lot at the Cox Automotive Inc. Manheim Pittsburgh vehicle auctioning location in Cranberry Township, Pennsylvania, May 13

At Ford, where about 47,000 US factory workers will return by next week, theres optimism that consumer demand will accompany them. Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley said the company has seen sales start to recover.

Ford is predicting stronger sales in the future in Europe, China and the US based on data collected from new models equipped with internet modems that show the number of times an engine is turned on and off. The company found a correlation between the number of trips people take and auto sales, with trips increasing as restrictions eased.

'We started to see in early April a change where people started to take more trips,' Farley said Thursday. 'The (sales) decline stopped and our retail sales improved a lot.'

Auto sales in China, where the virus peaked before the US, could be a harbinger of things to come.

China sales fell just 2.6 per cent in April from a year earlier, compared with a 48 per cent free-fall in March.

Production at many plants is nearly back to normal after being shut down in January and February.

Volkswagen, Honda, Mercedes and Ford reported no virus cases among employees since reopening. Fiat Chrysler had two, but said the workers never entered factories.

Things are worse in Europe, where sales plummeted 55 per cent in March and some factories are running at only 40 per cent of capacity.

Mary Lisa Poole works on the assembly line at the Ford Rawsonville plant on May 13. Ford and other automakers are preparing for the reopening of their plants next week, adopting measures to protect their workers

A Ford employee (left) has his temperature checked as he enters the Ford Rawsonville plant May 13. Other safety measures include daily entry screening and no-touch thermometers

A Ford employee (left) shows his COVID-19 daily survey pass and is given a face mask as he enters the Ford Rawsonville plant May 13

Signage at the Ford Rawsonville plant shows the a variety of new safety measures being taken

The pandemic has affected over 1.1million European auto industry workers, almost half the sectors manufacturing jobs. Most are getting paid through government support. A survey of auto parts suppliers shows that a third of executives believe it will take at least two years for the industry to recover.

US sales fell 46 per cent in April compared with a year ago, but analysts are forecasting a smaller decline of 30 per cent in May. Sales have been juiced by incentives, with offers of 0 per cent financing for seven years. Government statistics show auto production dropped over 70 per cent in April.

Pickup trucks are giving automakers the most hope, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president at LMC Automotive, a consulting firm.

From January through April, total auto sales were down 21 per cent, but pickups were only off 4 per cent, he said.

Yet Schuster says automakers could be a little too optimistic. 'Those consumers who are still unemployed are not likely to be making auto purchases,' he said.

Some US automakers, like General Motors, are restarting slowly, only bringing back workers on one shift in factories, some of which ran around the clock before the pandemic. Others, like Subaru in Indiana, have a full complement of employees.

Although companies are taking precautions, one big virus outbreak at an auto plant could send the industry back into hibernation. And the industry could face parts supply interruptions from Mexico, where the government wants to reopen factories despite rising virus cases.

Automakers in the US are requiring employees to fill out questionnaires daily to see if they have symptoms, taking temperatures with no-touch thermometers before workers enter buildings, and requiring gloves, masks and face shields. Theyve also tried to keep at least six feet between workers, staggered time between shifts so workers dont interact, and put up plexiglas barriers when possible.

All the steps were tested on U.S. workers who volunteered to make protective gear and breathing machines while they were laid off. Automakers say they know of no virus cases among workers in the effort.

But Phil Cuthbertson a worker at GMs transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, who will return Monday, said he has mixed feelings.

'I just dont want the whole thing to be pushed on us to go back if its not safe,' he said.

Cindy Estrada, United Auto Workers vice president for Fiat Chrysler, said shes been impressed by the companies safety commitment. But shes sure some workers, especially in the hard-hit Detroit area, will be fearful because family members or co-workers have had COVID-19.

At least 25 UAW members employed by Detroit automakers have died from the virus, although no one is sure if they caught it at a factory.

The union will be watching in case workers get infected, though theres no magic number for when it will try to close a factory, Estrada said.

'If something looks like its becoming a hot spot, then we need to act quickly and make adjustments,' she said. 'No one wants to see that happen.'
For 66 years, when Albert and Wilma Oliver celebrated their anniversary, they were together.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

For 66 years, when Albert and Wilma Oliver celebrated their anniversary, they were together.

But this year, for the first time, with Albert in a personal-care home and with visitor restrictions in force to reduce the spread of COVID-19, the couple will be celebrating apart.

SUPPLIED Albert and Wilma Oliver celebrate Albert's birthday in March.

"It is what it is," 88-year-old Wilma said Thursday. "It is a difficult time for all of us, but any day can be our anniversary  he probably won't know.

"But we've had 67 years together and a lot of people don't get that many. We have to be grateful."

Albert, who celebrated his 90th birthday at the care home in March, just before visitor restrictions were put in place, went to live there more than a year ago because he has dementia.

Heather Johnson, his daughter, said the weeks of not having visitors in person has taken a toll on her dad.

"He knew us then," she said. "He was often talking about family, friends, his life, even his great-grandchildren.

"But the confusion and loneliness he lives now is devastating for us all, especially Dad... he wouldn't be able to name his grandchildren now to save his life."

Johnson said especially hard has been the reduction in the FaceTime phone calls that were put in to replace in-person visits. She said they have dropped from two each week for her, her mother and brothers to just one 15-minute call a week to her mother.

"It is frustrating."

Paul Turenne, a spokesman for the Winnipeg Regional Health Authority, said visitor restrictions are still in place and when they are changed it will be announced either at a press conference or in a news release.

"We recognize that a connection to loved ones plays an important role in the ongoing health and well-being of our personal-care home residents," Turenne said. "Although visitor restrictions are in place to protect residents, patients and health-care staff by preventing the spread of COVID-19, there are exceptions for compassionate and end-of-life reasons, among others."

He said people with concerns about visiting loved ones in WRHA hospitals or personal-care homes should contact patient relations at 204-926-7825 or clientrelations@wrha.mb.ca.

Meanwhile, a woman fighting cancer while her family fought to be with her in St. Boniface Hospital, died alone just two hours after her husband was kicked out by hospital staff.

Cora Krall, 60, died by herself last Friday, just a day after an article in the Free Press described their battle to be with her.

Krall's husband, Greg, said he had finally been let in that day to visit with his wife of 47 years when he was again told to leave.

"They had said her condition had changed so I could come," he said. "I sat with her for eight hours, holding her hand, and at (8:25) they said I had to leave.

"I had been planning to stay there  the last four times she was in hospital I slept there. She had even asked me that afternoon if I was staying tonight and I said absolutely. So when I told my wife, her eyes got huge.

"I told her I'll see you tomorrow, but tomorrow never came."

Krall said what made things even worse was his wife told him, just hours before she died, that someone from the hospital showed her the Free Press article.

"I think that's why they kicked me out  it was because of the article," he said.

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.

Earlier this week, during the province's coronavirus news conference, Lanette Siragusa, Shared Health's chief nursing officer, said the matter is being looked into.

"I personally want to send my sincere condolences to that family. We are investigating a little bit more to find out what happened because we do have exceptions in our visitor guidelines for compassion visiting," Siragusa said.

"The purpose of the guidelines are to make sure we minimize the risk of spreading COVID in those high-risk areas like hospitals and long-term care facilities. I've said all along, and I will continue to say it, is we're not dealing with widgets, we're dealing with people and we have to keep that person-centred approach to what we are doing, even in the midst of a pandemic.

Krall said he will be following up with the hospital and the WRHA about what happened to his wife and her family.

"I will make my displeasure known to help others and to make sure no other family has this problem."

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca
White Castle National Slider Day Virtual Dance Party to Raise Money for the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund

COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 14, 2020 -- White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger restaurant, is sponsoring a virtual dance party tomorrow, May 15, and everyone -- yes, everyone -- is invited to attend.

Every May 15, as part of National Hamburger Month, White Castle honors the burger that made it famous 99 years ago -- The Original Slider -- with its own day, National Slider Day, giving every customer a free Slider. White Castle will continue that tradition this year, but in recognition of the huge impact COVID-19 has had on our lives, it's doing something extra special to celebrate the year's most Craveable holiday.

White Castle will sponsor its first-ever virtual dance party on Friday, May 15, starting at 8 p.m. EST. The party, called "Slider Jam," headlines White Castle's National Slider Day celebration, serving as a way to thank its team members for their work during the pandemic and to raise money for the National Restaurant Association's Restaurant Employee Relief Fund.

Hosted by the DJ duo Dude Skywalker, who are donating their time to the cause, the party will give Cravers and non-Cravers alike an opportunity to live it up for a couple of hours, all from the comfort and safety of their homes, and all for a good cause.

Slider Jam will be viewed on Dude Skywalker's Facebook, YouTube, Instagram and Twitch. By clicking on the Slider Jam link, party guests will see the DJs and be able to chat with new friends and familiar acquaintances in the comments section.

There is no cost to attend the virtual dance party, but White Castle will encourage donations to the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund, which provides grants to restaurant employees who have been negatively impacted by COVID-19. A donation link will be available on each of the streaming platforms. White Castle hopes to raise $10,000 from the party.

"Normally we celebrate National Slider Day by giving away free Sliders, but these aren't normal times, so we're creating something new we think the world is craving," said Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle. "This virtual dance party lets us celebrate and thank our own team members who have worked so hard serving our customers throughout this crisis. It also gives us the chance to support and salute fellow restaurant workers across the country who have experienced hardship because of COVID-19."

In addition to the virtual dance party, White Castle's National Slider Day festivities include:

Free Sliders -- It wouldn't be National Slider Day without free Sliders for all at participating White Castle restaurants. White Castle expects to give away tens of thousands of free Sliders throughout the day. No purchase is necessary, and customers can access the digital coupon on White Castle's website here.

Virtual meeting backgrounds -- Your new go-to virtual meeting backgrounds have arrived! Download White Castle's craveable background images featuring the creative scenes you've had a hankering to showcase in your next virtual meeting. A link to download the images will be shared Friday on White Castle's social media.

#CraveTheGood social campaign -- White Castle created this hashtag and online conversation to feed the social media appetite for good news stories about people helping others and doing good things in their communities.

Discounts for frontline workers -- From May 15 through June 15 , White Castle will offer 20% off all orders made in the restaurants to EMTs, healthcare workers, and grocery store and food retail employees.

"As a family-owned business, White Castle has a heart for hospitality," Richardson said. "We're all about creating memorable moments, and we're looking forward to safely bringing people together for a couple of very special hours of fun and good times."

About White Castle

White Castle, America's first fast-food hamburger chain, has been making hot and tasty sliders as a family-owned business for more than 99 years. Based in Columbus, Ohio, White Castle started serving The Original Slider, made from 100% USDA inspected beef, in 1921. Today, White Castle owns and operates more than 365 restaurants dedicated to satisfying customers' cravings, morning, noon and night and sells its famous fare in retail stores nationwide, in a growing number of international locations, and at military exchanges around the world. The Original Slider, named in 2014 as Time Magazine's most influential burger of all time, is served alongside a menu of creatively crafted sliders and other mouthwatering food options, including White Castle's Impossible Slider, named by Thrillist in 2019 as the "Best Plant-Based Fast Food Burger."
The Screen Actor's Guild Awards are reportedly changing their rules to consider honouring films that did not premiere in theaters.

According to an email sent to studios on Thursday, films that were originally scheduled to be released in theaters that were forced to debut digitally due to the coronavirus pandemic will now be eligible for nomination.

The 2021 awards season has been thrown into chaos due to the coronavirus pandemic, with the Academy Awards reportedly set to be delayed by four months to allow for a wider range of releases.

Big changes: The Screen Actor's Guild Awards are reportedly changing their rules to consider honouring films that did not premiere in theaters

In the email obtained by Variety, SAG are planning to follow temporary new criteria recently set by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

This would allow for films that were streamed or released for purchase on a Video On Demand (VOD) service before being played in theaters to be considered for awards.

The email said: 'We are still revising our film release criteria but will be following the Academys rule change to allow titles with a planned theatrical release to be eligible if streamed or released on VOD first.

'Full language will be announced in June along with the rest of our rules.'

Plans: According to an email sent to studios on Thursday, films that were forced to debut digitally due to the coronavirus pandemic will now be eligible for nomination

It's also thought that past requirements that studios provide a DVD copy for SAG members to view when considering nominations will also be relaxed, with 'digital screeners now permitted during the pre-nom voting phase.'

MailOnline has contacted representatives for SAG Awards for further comment.

It's thought these new guidelines are in light of similar changes made by the Academy regarding eligibility for the 2021 Oscars.

In April it was announced that the board of governors will temporarily freeze the requirement that all films need to have a seven-day run in a theater in a commercial theater in Los Angeles County to qualify for the Oscars.

Doubts: It's also thought that requirements for studios to provide a DVD copy for SAG members to view will be relaxed (2020 winner Joaquin Phoenix pictured)

However these films must have had a schedule theatrical release date that was suspended due to closures caused by COVID-19.

'We're dealing with the unfolding reality of an unanticipated, unprecedented global health crisis and trying to be responsive to what's going on in the world and at the same time support our filmmakers who are in a circumstance beyond their control,' Film Academy president David Rubin told The Associated Press .

Dawn Hudson, the CEO of the Academy, said that they have been in 'constant conversation with all parts of our community from studios to filmmakers to theatre owners' to make decisions that support all.

Currently most US theaters remain closed due to the coronavirus pandemic, after a majority suspended audience screenings in March.

A select few have reopened in some states with strictly social distancing measures, but it remains unclear when a majority will reopen.

The SAGs are one of the more recent ceremonies to appear in Hollywood's annual awards season, with its first ceremony taking place in 1995.

Nominations for the awards come from two committees, one for film and one for television, each with 2100 members of the union selected at random each year.

The full group of members, which can be in the hundreds of thousands, are then asked to vote for each award.

Delayed: On Tuesday it was reported that the 2021 Academy Awards may be postponed to a later date due to a lack of new releases caused by the pandemic

On Tuesday it was reported that the 2021 Academy Awards may be postponed to a later date, having already been scheduled to take place on February 28.

The ceremony is under threat due to the lack of new films amid the global coronavirus pandemic, which has seen studios delay releases and shut down production on new projects.

The Sun report that movie studios have been told this week that there will be a longer release window for their films to be eligible for nomination.

Summer ceremony: According to insiders, organisers for next year's ceremony are in talks to push back the ceremony, which was planned to be held on February 28, by up to four months

The so-called Oscar season usually begins after the summer blockbusters have left cinemas, with major studios releasing their awards season contenders in November and December in the hope they remain fresh in the minds of critics and Academy members, who vote in January.

A movie insider told The Sun that organisers are doing all they can to ensure a ceremony does take place at some point in 2021: 'The Oscars organisers have been in talks for weeks about whether the ceremony can go ahead given so many releases have been pushed back.'

'There would be a mutiny if changes weren't made and the industry could be totally ravaged if film studios held back their offerings until the 2022 ceremony to be eligible.

'What they're proposing is pushing back the ceremony, which was going to take place on February 28, to either late May or early June. Doing this means films forced to postpone their release dates can put them out later this year or in early 2021 knowing they will still be eligible for the Oscars.

'Film studios have been informed of the plans and are now drawing up their release dates accordingly. But with everything still so up in the air, it's all rather tentative at the moment.'

Ready for some glitz and glam: A movie insider has revealed that organisers are doing all they can to ensure a ceremony does take place in 2021 (pictured 2020 winner Renee Zellweger)

The Oscars have been postponed only three times in its 93-year history. In 1938, flooding in Los Angeles led to a one-week delay, while another one-week delay occurred in 1968, due to the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

In 1981, the awards were delayed for a day after the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan.

The ceremony has never officially been cancelled, even continuing throughout World War II.
: Manufacturers of over 50



varieties of spices and masala powders, Sakthi Masala Pvt Ltd has donated Rs 10.10 crore to the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister's Public relief Fund to aid the government's fight against COVID-19 pandemic, the company said on Thursday.

The Tamil Nadu-based group had contributed Rs 5 crore on March 30 and on May 11 another Rs 5.10 crore was donated to the Chief Minister's Public Relief Fund for COVID19 containment and relief efforts of the state government, a press release said.

As many as 66 people have lost their lives due to coronavirus in the state while the cumulative tally of those affected so far due to the contagion stands at 9,764 in the state.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Karen Sherman

1. When it comes to providing state-funded financial aid for college students, Montana ranks 49th in the nation. Do you think the state should contribute more toward higher education funding or should it be the responsibility of the student to fund their own college education?

One of the smartest men I know has an eighth-grade education. He is a millionaire several times over. I believe we need to stop making children believe that college is the only pathway to success. There is currently a huge, and growing, demand for people in the skilled trades. We need to help keep college tuition affordable. However, I believe that needs to be done by a close examination of the institutions themselves and how their funds are being used.

2. Do you think the state of Montana should increase state funding for affordable housing? Why or why not?

There are ways to make housing more affordable without increasing state funding. If cities and counties addressed our constantly increasing property taxes and other fees, as well as burdensome regulations, housing would become more affordable. Government involvement in any sector of the economy creates bureaucratic growth, which results in higher costs. If you want more affordable housing, reduce government involvement.

3. What, in your view, is the largest issue with management of Montanas public lands? What should be done about it?

Forest fires are a concern every year. We need to stop pandering to out-of-state groups who do not understand the necessity of fire mitigation as a strategy to improved forest health. Ignoring responsible fire mitigation techniques is comparable to the unchecked, irresponsible logging operations of the '50s, '60s and '70s, that decimated much of our public land. Montana has a wealth of treasures that we need to both protect and utilize in the most responsible manner possible.

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Rosneft has completely discontinued its operations in Venezuela and withdrawn from all projects in the country, including exploration and production entities, as well as oilfield services companies, Chief Executive Officer of Russias oil major Igor Sechin said.



"In the second quarter of 2020, the Company closed a previously announced transaction to transfer to a company that is 100 % owned by the Government of the Russian Federation all assets in Venezuela, including participation shares in projects of Petromonagas, Petroperija, Boqueron, Petromiranda and Petrovictoria, as well as oil-field service companies and trading operations. Companys operations in Venezuela have been completely discontinued," TASS cited Sechin as saying.



The agreement on the companys withdrawal from Venezuelan projects was closed in April, according to the report.



Rosneft announced plans to discontinue operations in Venezuela at the end of March. A company owned by the Russian Federation will be the owner of Rosnefts assets in Venezuela, a source in the government said earlier.



As a result of the transaction, a 100% subsidiary of Rosneft Group became the owner of 9.6% of the registered ordinary shares of Rosneft. The state-owned Rosneftegaz (50% plus 1 share), Britains BP (19.75%) and Qatars QH Oil Investments (18.93%) are Rosnefts largest shareholders.
SANTA MONICA, Calif.  They arrived at the beach by car, skateboard and on bare feet. They carried Frisbees, cameras and surfboards. They wore running shorts, yoga pants and wetsuits.

Many wore masks.

That was the starkest difference this week apart from a moment in time in March that seems hard to conjure now  before beaches closed and face masks seemed like an extreme and maybe even ineffective protection from coronavirus.

No longer. Masks are now required at Los Angeles County beaches, which reopened Wednesday, to join counterparts in other states that have allowed a somewhat limited return to famed stretches of sand.

You get some side eyes if you dont wear a mask, said Tom Ventura, who sported a light blue face covering with white polka dots while cooling down after his morning run Thursday in Santa Monica.

Along the California coast and in states known for silky sands, warm waters and ample sun, the surf is up along with a new set of rules posted in the time of the coronavirus pandemic.

Beachgoers in LA County have to remain active  walking, running or swimming. No sunbathing. No picnics. No volleyball. Parking lots, piers and a popular 22-mile (35.4-kilometer) bike path that strings together Santa Monica, Venice, Manhattan and Torrance beaches are also closed.

Similar rules are in place throughout the state, as well as in Florida and Hawaii, though masks are not required at many beaches. Tanning and even picnics are permitted in some places, though people are generally told to only spend time with family members and not gather in large groups.

While beaches in South Florida  Miami and Hollywood  remain closed, beaches in Pinellas County on the Gulf of Mexico allow chairs and towels in the sand but limit groups to no more than 10 people. Signs urge people who dont live together to remain 6 feet (1.8 meters) apart.

I think its a little much, especially being outside with the sun and everything, said Britt Mask, a Georgia man on vacation with his family at Indian Rocks Beach, near Clearwater, Florida. I understand why its being done.

In Hawaii, exercise is allowed on beaches on Oahu, but Honolulu police warned people sitting on the sands of Waikiki that they needed to be in the water or moving along.

On the East Coast, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy issued guidance Thursday to officials in shore towns on reopening beaches, directing them to set occupancy limits and spacing requirements. Popular tourist spots like Point Pleasant and Seaside Heights, home of Jersey Shore fame, were opening Friday. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo also announced that beaches will open with limits in time for Memorial Day weekend.

In Greece, with an early heat wave hitting the country over the weekend, more than 500 organized beaches  where umbrellas and lounge chairs are available for hire  were opening Saturday morning, with strict social distancing measures. Free public beaches opened a few weeks ago. Authorities issued warnings when some crowds formed, but beach-goes generally appeared to heed health guidelines.

Beaches closed in many places as stay-at-home orders got stricter after people, who were allowed to exercise, took the opportunity to escape confinement and flocked to the coast on balmy weekends. Public health officials were concerned large gatherings could allow the virus to spread.

Andrew Noymer, a public health professor at the University of California, Irvine, said it was sensible to start reopening beaches and see how it goes. People should make their own risk assessment, but he said the sun helps kill germs and the virus is less likely to spread in the ocean.

We have to start reopening the United States slowly and smartly. We cant just keep everyone locked inside for 12 months, Noymer said. If we cant run on the beach then how on Earth can we go to a restaurant or a movie theater?

A day into the Los Angeles reopening Thursday, turnout was lighter than the day before.

Yesterday was like the first get-out-of-jail-free card, said Peter Moore, who was wearing a white hospital-style mask and walking with his wife and dog. If they open up the parking lots, well see if people are sitting on top of each other. Theres a lot of sand out there.

The biggest challenge for lifeguards was reminding people they needed to wear masks, said Pono Barnes, a spokesman for LA County Fire Department.

Surfer Lana Song, who was overjoyed to be back in the water after the closure upended her morning ritual and led to her gaining 5 pounds (2.3 kilograms), was confused about the mask rule that applies on land but not water. She didnt know where she would put a mask while riding waves.

Mlak Sahli, a student from Saudi Arabia studying public health, said it felt liberating to return even though a police officer shooed her and a friend for sitting on the beach.

A small group of surfers were treated to a rare sight when a pod of about 20 dolphins surfaced and swam by, said Peter Lockwood.

Lockwood said he wasnt concerned about catching the virus in the water.

Not a chance. There was so much air moving there and no one wants to be that close, he said. Everyone wants their own wave.

___

Associated Press writers Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida, and Jennifer Sinco Kelleher in Honolulu contributed to this report.
The MLBs 2020 season has run amuck. But perhaps more importantly, so has the St. Louis areas 2020 car show season!

Twenty-nineteen... ahhh, those were the good ol days  the days when we didnt have to sing Happy Birthday twice every time we washed our hands and the days before we had to wear a mask just to go shopping at the local Walmart. One year later and things sure arent as they used to be.

The photo on this page was taken last year. Dillan was my new TKCS-STL volunteer as Luis, the youngest of our three foster grandsons, was graduating from Collinsville High School and would soon be shipping off to MCRD  the Marine Corps Recruit Depot in San Diego. Luis had served The FIN MAN as a valuable asset to my Take a Kid to a Car Show volunteer over the past nine years and has attended over 100 car shows and cruises during his tenure.

No longer having a foster grandson at home, I knew it would be tough to find a single kid to fill Lous shoes. So, I began a recruiting program in the fall of 2019, and after Dillan signed up (with his mothers permission) in the spring of 2019, this year I had two more volunteers sign up  Ignacio and Edgar.

The four of us started the New Year with a bang at the 2020 New Car Show at the St. Louis ConventionCenter. We saw some of my old friends from the Horseless Carriage Club of Missouris display of vintage cars. The next month Nacho, Eddy and I took a day trip to Lebanon, Missouri for the Its A Gas! petroliana show and swap meet. That was followed one week later by the Gateway Gas and Advertising show in Springfield, Illinois.

And then came COVID-19, and all our future plans for shows and cruises were dashed, at least for the time being.

REMEMBERING YESTERYEARS EVENTS: The featured car, shown here behind Dillan, is a 1965 Dodge Coronet 440 2-door hardtop, owned by Arlyn and Joann Lange of Marine, Illinois. It is decked out in Dark Blue Poly (metallic). The interior is done up in a metallic medium blue which compliments the midnight blue exterior.

The 1965 Dodge Coronet series came in three trim levels, the basic Coronet, the Coronet 440 and the Coronet 500. Seven engine choices were offered starting with a basic 225 cubic-inch Slant-6 which put out 145 hp. The six engines which followed were all V-8 mills of 273, 318, 361, 383 and two 426 c.u. engines, one with a 2-barrel, and the other with a 4-barrel carb  the latter put out a whopping 425 horses!

Now, heres the best part of this story. Arlyn purchased the car brand new when he was 19 years old and has owned it ever since! He and wife Joann dated in the car, and it remained in his family as a daily driver for the first 20 years. One day Arlyn pulled it out, dusted it off and did a total restoration, including having the engine rebuilt.

The Langes didnt restore the car for it to become a trailer queen, rather they drive it to car shows and cruises and occasionally to the grocery store, church or just out for a Sunday drive.

This content was produced by Brand Ave. Studios. The news and editorial departments of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch had no role in its creation or display. For more information about Brand Ave. Studios, contact tgriffin@stltoday.com.

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- Some of the symptoms of the disease parents were asked to watch out were prolonged fever, diarrhoea and difficulty feeding

- New York state governor Andrew Cuomo said his administration was investigating the mysterious disease as it did not show the hallmarks of COVID-19 in children who were diagnosed

- COVID-19 which was first diagnosed in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has infected over four million people and killed at least 300,000 others in 212 countries and territories

A new disease that could be linked to the novel coronavirus in children has emerged leaving health officials alarmed even as the world continues to fight the pandemic.

The condition known as pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome has killed three children in the United States (US) and left dozens others hospitalised.

READ ALSO: Homa Bay: Pregnant women turn to traditional midwives, shun hospitals over curfew fear

The novel coronavirus has killed over 300,000 people worldwide and infected at least four million others. Photo: CDC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Aisha Jumwa resurfaces, lectures Uhuru and Raila for fighting women

New York state led by Governor Andrew Cuomo said his administration was investigating the mysterious disease as it did not show the hallmarks of COVID-19 in children who were diagnosed.

"New York state is now investigating about 100 cases of an inflammatory illness in children that may be related to COVID-19.The ages of these cases range from infancy to age 21."

Some of the symptoms of the disease parents were asked to watch out were:

. Prolonged fever (more than five days).

. Difficulty feeding (infants) or is too sick to drink fluids.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said the mysterious inflammatory disease had left 100 children hospitalised. Photo: Andrew Cuomo.

Source: Facebook

READ ALSO: Raila akutana na kikosi chake huku Jubilee ikikumbwa na masaibu

. Severe abdominal pain, diarrhoea or vomiting.

. Change in skin color; becoming pale, patchy and or blue.

. Trouble in breathing or breathing quickly.

. Racing heart or chest pain.

. Decreased amount or frequency of urine.

. Lethargy, irritability or confusion.

Leading Australian paediatric experts were also investigating the syndrome as Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt said there were known cases in the country, 9News reported.

"We have no known cases or examples of that in Australia so far. The detail, whether it's something which is caused by the disease or comes from it or whether it's been highlighted through the testing process, I will leave that to the medical experts to provide that advice," said Hunt.

COVID-19 which was first diagnosed in Wuhan, China, in December 2019, has infected over four million people and killed at least 300,000 others in 212 countries and territories.

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Former Cleveland Clinic Employee and Chinese "Thousand Talents" Participant Arrested for Wire Fraud

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, May 14, 2020



Assistant Attorney General for National Security John C. Demers, U.S. Attorney Justin E. Herdman of the Northern District of Ohio, and FBI Cleveland Special Agent in Charge Eric B. Smith announced a former Cleveland Clinic employee was arrested yesterday without incident by law enforcement and had his initial court appearance today.

Dr. Qing Wang, a former Cleveland Clinic Foundation (CCF) employee, is charged with false claims and wire fraud related to more than $3.6 million in grant funding that Dr. Wang and his research group received from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

According to the criminal complaint, Dr. Wang knowingly failed to disclose to NIH that he had an affiliation with and held the position of Dean of the College of Life Sciences and Technology at the Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST) and received grant funds from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (CNSF) for some of the same scientific research funded by the NIH grant. As a result, Dr. Wang's false representations and promises led NIH to approve and fund grants to Dr. Wang and his research group at CCF.

It is also alleged that Dr. Wang participated in the Thousand Talents Program, a program established by the Chinese government to recruit individuals with access to or knowledge of foreign technology and intellectual property. As a result of his admission into the TTP, China provided $3 million in research support to enhance the facilities and operations at HUST. Dr. Wang received free travel and lodging for his trips to China, to include a three-bedroom apartment on campus for his personal use. This also occurred at the time Dr. Wang was receiving NIH grant funds yet failed to disclose this affiliation to the NIH.

This case was investigated by the Cleveland Division of the FBI and the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Office of Inspector General and is being prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney's Office  Northern District of Ohio.

A charge is not evidence of guilt. A defendant is entitled to a fair trial in which it will be the government's burden to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Topic(s):

Counterintelligence and Export Control

National Security

Component(s):

National Security Division (NSD)

USAO - Ohio, Northern

Press Release Number: 20-451

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China targets GOP hawks, US firms, states over lawsuits

Global Times

By Chen Qingqing and Li Sikun Source:Globaltimes.cn Published: 2020/5/14 0:33:13 Last Updated: 2020/5/14 11:23:13

Countermoves meant to inflict pain for abuse of litigation

China is extremely dissatisfied with the abuse of litigation by the US against China over the COVID-19 epidemic, and is considering punitive countermeasures against US individuals, entities and state officials, such as Missouri's attorney general Eric Schmitt, who filed a lawsuit against China, seeking compensation for the coronavirus pandemic, sources close to the matter told the Global Times exclusively. At least four US Congress members, including Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, and two entities will be put on China's sanctions list, analysts said.

China won't just strike back symbolically, but will impose countermeasures that will make them feel the pain, analysts said.

Some US lawmakers and state governors as well as attorneys who are also GOP hawks have filed lawsuits against China, alleging that the Chinese government mishandled the epidemic and it caused severe economic consequences in the US.

At least six lawsuits have been filed against China in US federal courts, while some lawmakers have also introduced bills to make it easier to sue China despite legal hurdles and no realistic possibility for US states to achieve their goal. Missouri became the first state in the US to sue the Chinese government. Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit on April 21, claiming that China did little to stop the spread of the virus and "lied to the world about the danger and contagious nature of COVID-19," claiming that Missouri residents may have suffered tens of billions of dollars in economic damage.

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch followed suit in a move that was slammed as "ridiculous" and "absurd" by Chinese officials and experts. The suit allows Mississippians to seek justice and hold China accountable, Fitch was quoted as saying in a report by Fox News on April 25.

Republicans who have been groundlessly accusing China and inflaming the "holding China accountable" political farce will face severe consequences, sources said, noting that the aftermath will also impact the upcoming November elections, while business and trade between Missouri and China will be further soured.

Senators who actively pushed the anti-China bill over the pandemic including Josh Hawley - a Missouri Republican - who came up with the "Justice for Victims of COVID-19 Act" in mid-April, which would strip China's sovereign immunity and permit US citizens to sue the Chinese government for downplaying COVID-19 information. Cotton and Texas Republican Dan Crenshaw also introduced legislation that would allow Americans to sue China over the coronavirus.

When asked about China's punitive measures targeting those GOP politicians and entities, Zhao Lijian, spokesperson of the Chinese Foreign Ministry, told a routine press conference that some people in the US have failed to fight the COVID-19 and failed to live up to the trust of the American people. Instead of thinking about how to improve their work, they have been excessively blaming others and shifting responsibilities while obsessing with political manipulation. Recently, GOP's playbook of attacking China has also been exposed by American media, showing their ill-intentioned tactics, Zhao said.

"Chinese side urged the US side to stop blaming and smearing China, stop pushing forward anti-China bills and stop acts of abusing litigation against China and focus on safeguarding American people's lives and health," he said, noting that such blame game is too absurd, ridiculous, which should be ended.

Abuse of litigation

On April 16, Cotton introduced legislation that would allow Americans to sue China in federal court to recover damages for death, injury, and economic harm caused by the coronavirus. Specifically, the bill would amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act to create a narrow exception for damages caused by China's handling of the coronvirus outbreak. A day later, Republican Chris Smith of New Jersey proposed a similar bill calling for stripping China of its sovereign immunity and allowing Americans to sue the Chinese government, according to his official website. Republican Jim Banks also joined the blame game in condemning the Chinese government's handling of the epidemic.

For those lawmakers, anti-China agendas have almost fully covered their daily routines. In fact, Hawley introduced legislation along with Republican Rick Scott on March 12 to ban all federal employees from using TikTok on government devices. Smith has also been a frequent instigator on China-related topics, particularly on so-called human rights issues. In March 2019, Smith introduced legislation to tackle China's political influence in the US by saying "Beijing's influence operations are sophisticated and threatening."

"American Congresspeople who hold an anti-China stance like Smith have been long-term hawks on China-relevant topics such as Taiwan and Xinjiang. And Republicans like Hawley are also backed by some US defense companies and other companies that compete with Chinese firms," Diao Daming, a US studies expert at the Renmin University of China in Beijing, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The expert also noted that on certain topics, the US Congress is a very complex organization, which is also an opinion-driven organization that sometimes makes irrational decisions often influenced by a small group of people, Diao noted.

Other GOP lawmakers have been actively pushing forward a bill that would facilitate suing China, such as one introduced by GOP Senator Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, Martha McSally from Arizona and Lance Gooden of Texas. Also, Republicans lawmakers from New Jersey - namely, Jim Holzapfel, Greg McGuckin and John Catalano - are introducing a resolution urging US President Donald Trump and US Congress to pass a bill that lets US citizens sue China, media reported.

US lawyer Larry Klayman and his advocacy group Freedom Watch, along with Texas company Buzz Photos, also filed a lawsuit against the Chinese government. The plaintiffs have sought $20 trillion from China.

China has repeatedly stressed that cooperation between China and the US is mutually beneficial while always maintaining the hope that bilateral relations will develop in a healthy direction. However, we cannot back down again and again and tolerate some people who have repeatedly undermined China-US relations, analysts said.

"We must resolutely hit back at those politicians who, for no reason, undermine China-US ties for their own political benefits. For those who promote anti-China legislation, we need to find out what the business ties are between those officials or their families with China," Yuan Zheng, a research fellow at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), told the Global Times on Wednesday.

"We can't just strike back symbolically, but should impose countermeasures that could make them feel the pain," Yuan said.

Impact on elections

For some US states, China's sanctions might have a direct impact on the upcoming elections in November if local Republicans have been targeted by the Chinese government for their groundless accusation against Beijing and endless attacks that put China-US relations in a danger, analysts said.

For instance, China is the third-largest export destination for Missouri, after the UK and Canada, for goods and services in 2019 worth $1.1 billion and $775 million, respectively. Some of the top goods exported to China included oilseeds and grains, meat products, and medicine.

"While the Chinese government makes adjustments to business relations between China and states like Missouri or Mississippi, local economies would likely be under pressure, or special interests of certain officials might be affected," Diao said.

Missouri, together with other states like Michigan, South Carolina and Texas, had taken measures to make it easier for Chinese investment to come in and boost local job growth years ago. For example, in 2013, one week before Chinese company Shuanghui purchased Smithfield Foods, the Missouri legislature amended a law clearing the way for approval.

Hong Lei, then Chinese Consulate General in Chicago, said in a speech in 2017 that Chinese companies invested more than $1.1 billion in Missouri, creating 4,500 jobs.

China could impose the countermeasures on the relevant states represented by those anti-China lawmakers, including measures targeting trade and exchanges, Yuan said. "Those officials should be held responsible for what they said. However, we need to strike a balance between punishing them and not diminishing them all," he added.

Some Missouri companies, for example, have long-term investments in China and are likely to feel severe consequences if China strikes back with punitive measures in response to the coronavirus lawsuit. Emerson Electric, which was founded in Missouri, has significant operations in China, and just opened its largest overseas research and development center in Suzhou, East China's Jiangsu Province in 2019.

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Married At First Sight's Cyrell Paule and Love Island Australia's Eden Dally stepped out in Sydney on Friday to celebrate the launch of ResButler, the world's first COVID-19 compliant restaurant table reservation system.

The happy couple were all smiles at the event and seemed to be enjoying their time together without three-month-old baby Boston.

At one point, Eden and Cyrell were wearing face masks, but they eventually took them off and enjoyed some drinks.

Stepping out: Married At First Sight's Cyrell Paule and Love Island Australia's Eden Dally stepped out in Sydney on Friday for the launch of ResButler, the world's first COVID-19 compliant restaurant table reservation system

The couple couldn't keep their hands off each other and were spotted taking selfies together.

Eden, 27, looked stylish in a pair of very tight blue jeans and a black bomber jacket.

Cyrell, 31, wore black skinny jeans, a white top and a black jacket.

Cute! The happy couple were all smiles at the event and seemed to be enjoying their time together without three-month-old baby Boston

All smiles: Eden and Cyrell couldn't wipe the smiles off their faces during their first dining experience in weeks

Looking good! Cyrell, 31, showed off her post-baby body in black skinny jeans

Great idea! ResButler the world's first COVID-19 compliant restaurant table reservation system

ResButler was founded by Sydney airline and hospitality executive Peter Petroulas.

In a statement, Petroulas said: 'I am excited to have ResButler ready for launch just as the COVID-19 restrictions are beginning to relax here in Australia.

'The system will be able to provide not only customers, but also restaurant owners the reassurance of having people come through their doors where all guidelines will be autonomously followed and guaranteed due to the intelligence and creativity of ResButler which will hopefully restore some normality during these times as well as allow restaurants to plan for the future.'

Safety first! At one point, the couple were spotted wearing face masks

Hygiene: The pair wore masks because they were in the kitchen with the chef

Watch out Manu! The couple showed off their cooking skills as they pottered around the kitchen

Cyrell celebrated her first Mother's Day with her young son, Boston, last week.

In an Instagram post, the former reality star said that while babies were never in her life plan this soon, the 'best blessings come as a surprise' when it comes to motherhood.

'Even to this day I don't know if I'm doing it right. But I'm doing my best. My beautiful family cannot thank everyone enough for the kind words,' she wrote.

Cheers! Eden double-fisted two cocktails as he posed for a photo

Sharing is caring! Eden handed one cocktail to Cyrell and kept the other for himself

Hilarious: The happy couple shared a giggle as they posed in hats together
'Opportunity for a country like India is huge in terms of wealth creation.'

'That's the reason India is an attractive economy for investors.'

Kris Gopalakrishnan, co-founder of Infosys, is the chairman of Axilor Ventures, an accelerator that helps early-stage start-ups succeed.

"I strongly believe that the long-term prospects of IT services are good," Gopalakrishnan, below, tells Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com. The first of a two-part interview:

The prime minister has announced a stimulus package of Rs 20 lakh crore to kickstart the economy. Do you think this will help the economy bounce back?

This is a substantial stimulus package. We need to wait for the details. If the industry gets support from this, especially the SME sector, we will avoid some of the damages from the crisis.

The PM talked about Atma Nirbhar Bharat. Do you think India can emerge as an economically self-reliant country?

I believe, yes.

This belief comes from my experience in the IT industry where we have built world class, export-driven, financially strong and resilient businesses.

This belief comes from the start-up ecosystem where we have built 35+ unicorns (before the virus struck) in a short period of time, in less than 10 years.

Do you feel the lockdown has gone on for too long, and has affected the economy very badly?

As there is no past experience, everybody is trying to figure this out and come up with a right answer. We are experimenting with certain hypothesis, and it is probably a question of balancing life with livelihood.

At the end of the day, it is a political decision.

We see that different governments are taking different decisions, and the future will tell us which is the right path. That will become a pointer to how such crisis should be handled in future.

It is said the MSME sector and start-ups are the most affected because of no economic activity for two months.

It is quite clear that as individuals and businesses, everybody is affected in some way or the other. Some are more affected than the others.

The migrant labourers, the daily wage earners, people who are in the informal sector are more affected than those in the formal sector where by and large, companies have not laid off people or significantly cut salaries. Some have made some minor adjustments, but generally salaries are paid.

When it comes to businesses, those businesses that have debt in their balancesheet are more affected. Their cashflows are affected, hence the inability to pay their employees, suppliers, partners, etc.

Demand has dried up so, there is no revenue coming in.

No economic activity is happening.

So, it all depends on how much money you had in your books before the lockdown. This is going to affect companies at different times. Some companies may have three months's cash, some may have six months's cash and the better ones may have 24 months of cash.

Nobody had prepared for something like this. It was unexpected. Even at the beginning of March, nobody would have thought of a lockdown of this kind.

At that time, we knew there was a virus and checks were happening at airports.

The severity of the pandemic surprised all of us.

Those in the SME sector feel that by the time the lockdown ends, many companies will have to shut shop. Do you feel the situation will be the same for start-ups also?

Start-ups are, in some sense, SMEs only.

It all depends on whether you have the cash to restart the business, pay for your expenses, pay for your employees, etc.

You need cash to restart.

So, what kind of future do you see for start-ups?

This crisis is going to affect businesses and also individuals. That's why the government is the last resort.

The RBI has announced a good monetary policy to increase liquidity to ease the situation from a monetary perspective. But the liquidity is not flowing into the system because many companies are already leveraged.

Now, the government also has come out with a stimulus package. Even if there is more money, it has to go into the hands of companies and individuals. This is where fiscal measures help.

You had said 25% of Indian start-ups would be in trouble if a recovery did not happen in the next six months/

A survey I looked at said that 25% of start-ups had cash only for two months. We are already in May. So, there are going to be failures in start-ups and the SME field.

The government restricting investments from China, has alarmed many start-ups as China has been an investor for many start-ups in India. Do you feel this decision is going to affect Indian start-ups badly?

This is balancing between national security geopolitics and the need for funding.

I think the government will look at fast-tracking investments on case by case basis. So, there is expectation that if investments are coming from China, the government will approve it on case by case basis.

What kind of future do you see for the IT service sector in India because one of the biggest partners, the US, is suffering very badly?

In IT services, there is a shortfall of talent globally. So, I feel the long-term prospects for the sector is very good because demand for IT services will continue to grow as we leverage technology more and more.

We still have significant amount of legacy systems which will have to be simultaneously maintained.

I strongly believe that the long-term prospects of IT services are good.

In the short-term, because the global economy is affected, you will see an impact on the IT services revenue.

You will see an impact on recruitment by the IT services companies also.

But the IT services sector will be less affected than for example, the construction sector or the hospitality sector.

If you look at services as a whole, different sectors are going to be affected differently.

Do you feel the e-commerce space is going to do well hereafter?

It is not just black or white. E-commerce segment was 10% of all the retail, before the Covid situation. Since it is such a small percentage, growth is possible with significant opportunities.

Having said that, in a country like India, during the crisis the kirana stores have done very well. They were the ones that were actually working and supporting the people.

We have always been talking about the huge domestic market in India. Of course, there were complaints of lack of demand before the virus struck. Do you see the domestic market picking up any time soon?

It will take some time. People's incomes have been affected. So, demand will be muted for some time.

People are going to think twice before buying something like a refrigerator or a car.

As and when the economy picks up, people's incomes will rise and the situation will change.

If I look at the Indian economy from 1991 when the economy opened up and today, our middle class which was 50 million has moved to 350 million now. It means 350 million people have become middle class in the last 25, 30 years.

It was expected that it would double to 700 million in the next 20 years.

Opportunity for a country like India is huge in terms of wealth creation which will result in more people buying and consuming more things.

That's the reason India is an attractive economy for investors. That's why it is attracting foreign direct investment in large numbers.

There are very few economies in the world that can continue to grow at 7% to 8%.
A Indianapolis Amazon warehouse worker who died last month has become the seventh employee to die from the COVID-19 from the company.

The company confirmed that the employee, who worked at the IND8 warehouse, died and that they were notified of the staff person's death on April 30.

Many of the workers at the Indianapolis plant first learned of the death through the rumor mill, slamming management for only notifying employees after they were criticized for not telling staff.

'They weren't going to say anything if it wasn't for people asking questions,' an employee, who wishes to remain anonymous, explained to the Verge.

The company confirmed that the employee, who worked at the IND8 warehouse, died and that they were notified of the staff person's death on April 30

An Amazon spokesperson said that the company was made aware of the man's death on April 30 and immediately notified all employees within the building.

'We are saddened by the loss of an associate at our site in Indianapolis, IN,' the company said in a statement. 'His family and loved ones are in our thoughts, and we are supporting his fellow colleagues in the days ahead.'

13 state attorneys have asked for Amazon to provide data on the actual number of COVID-19 cases and deaths, a figure that is difficult to determine given the company's approach to providing those figures.

George Leigh (pictured), an Amazon sort associate and learning ambassador, was the sixth employee to die of COVID-19

Workers at the plant describe the cleaning done at the facility as 'uneven.' They also expressed worry at the policies set in place by Amazon to handle the pandemic.

'Before we had the unlimited UPT [unpaid time off] so if people didn't feel safe, they didn't have to come to work,' said a worker at IND8. 'When that went away, we went from having one hundred twenty five people back to four to five hundred people per shift. It's really crowded.'

Earlier in April, a New York Amazon warehouse staffer died after coming down with the virus at the end of March.

George Leigh, 59, died of coronavirus on April 9 in Long Island after he reportedly began to feel ill in late March.

'We are saddened by the loss of an associate who had worked at our site in Bethpage, New York. His family and loved ones are in our thoughts,' said Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski in a statement.

CNBC News reports that George was a sort associate and learning ambassador at DNY4.

In addition to sorting packages and pallets, George's job involved training new employees.

It's unclear when George contracted the virus, but Amazon said he was last inside DNY4, a distribution center in Bethpage, on March 28.

Pictured: DNY4, an Amazon distribution center in Bethpage, New York, where Georgie Leigh worked before he died on April 9

On that day, George told a manager he was feeling tired and 'needed to go home and rest,' according to George's brother, Todd Leigh.

Amazon has disputed that claim and maintained that George never contacted the warehouse to say he felt sick.

George was soon rushed to Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center after his symptoms became increasingly severe and he said he couldn't breath.

He is survived by one daughter, several grandchildren, his sibling and a mother.

A GoFundMe has been created by George's family to raise money for funeral costs and other expenses.

Amazon said when DNY4 employees spoke to the Leighs, they never said George died of coronavirus and only suggested he may have had it.

But Todd said the Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center medical examiner confirmed that George died of complications of the virus.

Amazon has not revealed how many warehouse employees have died from coronavirus in the United States, but there have been at least five other deaths across the country.

George Leigh,59, is the sixth Amazon employee to die of COVID-19 during the pandemic. Pictured: A demonstrator holds a sign during a protest outside of an Amazon warehouse

Several Amazon warehouse staffers have protested in recent weeks over an alleged lapse in worker safety amid the pandemic

Two were in California, with deaths also in Illinois, New York and Indiana.

The total number of employee infections have also been withheld, prompting Amazon workers to keep an unofficial count of nationwide cases.

It has also sparked a series of protests among staffers who have demanded Amazon implement better safety measures to fight the coronavirus.

Jana Jumpp, an Amazon worker from Indiana who has kept tally of coronavirus cases, said at least 900 employees have contracted the virus. At least 10 had died, she said.

Pressure to reveal the full scope of the coronavirus's impact on Amazon workers has ratcheted up in recent weeks.

On Tuesday, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and Whole Foods CEO John Mackey were asked by 13 U.S. Senators for a state-by-state breakdown of COVID-19 cases at the company's facilities.

Dave Clark, Amazon's Senior Vice President of Operations, told 60 minutes on Sunday that he did not know the total number of infections at the company.

'I don't have the number right on me at this moment because it's not a particularly useful number,' he said, adding that infection rates are 'generally just under' those found in nearby communities.

Todd Leigh told CNBC News that he doesn't agree with Clark's opinion that sharing that data wouldn't be 'useful.'

He believed it's an attempt by Amazon to 'shirk' responsibility for any coronavirus-related infections or deaths during the pandemic.

Dave Clark (pictured), Amazon's senior vice president of worldwide operations, said the total number of coronavirus infections among the company was not a 'particularly useful number'

George (pictured) reportedly began feeling ill in late March and asked to leave his shift at Amazon, but the company said he never alerted them of any illness

George (pictured) is survived by one daughter, several grandchildren, his sibling and a mother

He and other family members have asked Amazon to investigate the circumstances surrounding George's death and the health conditions at DNY4.

Todd revealed he became concerned over his brother's safety in the last remaining weeks of his life.

George continued to work at Amazon during the height of the coronavirus pandemic in New York, which has recorded 343,051 confirmed cases and 22,170 deaths.

The United States has amassed 1,451,477 cases and a shocking death toll of 86,701.

Amazon began providing face masks to employees on April 4 and required all staffers to wear then on April 10.

New York became the country's epicenter for coronavirus cases as early as March.

George managed to obtain a face mask during his last week of work, but Todd suspects his brother was already infected by that point.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos (pictured) was asked by 13 US Senators for a state-by-state breakdown of COVID-19 cases at the company

As a part of his job, George came into contact with new employees nearly every day for training at the Long Island warehouse.

This made it 'almost impossible' to practice social distancing guidelines, said Todd.

Amazon announced that it doubled down on worker safety by lowering to size of new training groups and slowing down the introduction of new workers at warehouse sites.

Additionally, the company introduced deep cleaning at facilities, as well as hand sanitizer and face masks for employees.

Even so, George reportedly felt the multi-billion dollar company could have done more to shield employees from the virus while on the job.

While home sick, George contemplated if he would ever return to his job at Amazon.

'He was so afraid. Before that, he questioned [going to work]. But he had bills to pay, so he said, 'I've got my gloves, I'm going to do my job and try to stay safe'',' Todd said.

Todd has since written a letter to Bezos about his concerns and filed a complaint with the New York Department of Labor.

'What we're really trying to do is shed some light on not just what happened to us, but Amazon's practices,' said Todd.

'If someone at Amazon would just take a minute and look at the situation, they might be able to make a difference. But at this point, the feeling that I get is they don't really care.'
One size doesn't fit all, and



many doctors and other medical staff on the frontline of the fight against COVID-19 in West Bengal are learning this the hard way.

Donning and doffing the armour-the PPE- their defence against the disease, has become a daily struggle for them, with some complaining that their colleagues got infected with the coronavirus because of the wrong size of the battle gear.

Some from the medical fraternity, including those serving in government hospitals, said putting on the personal proctective equipment (PPE) and removing it, particularly the latter, in an incorrect way, exposes them to the risk of contracting the disease.

"There is a process of correctly donning and doffing the PPE. Non-adherence to that process can put a medical staff at risk," a doctor at R G Kar Medical College and Hospital told PTI.

Expressly insisting that he should not be named, the doctor said the coveralls supplied to them often did not match their size.

"We need PPE that match out height and body mass which we don't always get. At times we have to squeeze ourselves into the coveralls and there are times when they hang loosely over us. A little carelessness can leave us sick with the virus," he said.

The doctor said the virus sticks to the outer surface of the coverall and incautious removal of the gear could transfer it to the human body.

Around 150 frontline COVID fighters, including doctors and nurses, have fallen sick with the virus in West Bengal so far.

The doctor said some training was required before a medical professional can wear and remove the air-tight and stifling synthetic clothing correctly.

A PPE consists of a mask or respirator, goggles or face shield, gloves, coverall/gowns (with or without apron), a head cover and a shoe cover. All frontline health workers treating COVID-19 patients should necessarily wear it.

"The causative agent for COVID-19 is transmitted human-to-human mainly through respiratory droplets generated when people cough or sneeze, and also by touching contaminated objects... So PPE is very important for us, and proper donning and doffing is even more important to avoid contamination," another senior doctor at the Nil Ratan Sircar Medical College and Hospital said.

Two doctors in the acute respiratory infections section of the Institute of Child Health could not get PPE because they were too tall, while three lady doctors at NRS Medical College and Hospital treating COVID-19 patients had to make do with oversized personal protective equipment.

Another doctor at R G Kar Medical College Hospital said wearing a tight coverall was risky as even a small tear could let the virus in.

"First, for almost a month we did not get any PPE and then what we are getting is not fitting us. How can you expect us to take the risk. I have purchased at least 7 PPE from the local market at a very high cost. My safety is my priority now," a senior gynaecologist at Basirhat Hospital in North 24 Parganas district told PTI.

Most of these doctors are using PPE for the first time, said a doctor at Beleghata Infectious Diseases Hospital.

In the absence of training on how to don and doff the coveralls, some medical professions have turned to YouTube for help, he said.

"Correctly doffing the gear is very important as it's then that the chances of getting infected are high. As soon as the patient care tasks are over, careful removal of the PPE and discarding it in the receptacle is very crucial.

"While removing them we must pay attention to avoid self-contamination or contaminating the environment with infected equipment. The PPEs must be opened inside out," he said.

West Bengal faced acute shortage of PPE during the early days of the outbreak and decided to get them manufactured in micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in the state. It still has to depend on other states for PPE.

According to a government health bulletin, the state had manufactured 8 lakh PPE till May 14, while orders for 8.50 lakh are pending delivery.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
It was with deep regret that we learned of the death on Monday, May 4, 2020 of Mrs Rosina OConnor (nee Gould), 7 Leo Casey Terrace, Ballymahon, predeceased by her 1st husband Richard Hanlon, her late husband James (Shameen) OConnor, her son Eugene and daughter Martina.



One of the oldest citizens in Ballymahon, Rosina, in her 98th year, was born in 1922 to Emily and William Gould. Her family home was at 113 Kensington Lane, London, she was one of eight children, brothers Billy, Harry and twins Fred and Thomas and sisters Emily, Lily and Nellie. Sadly, Thomas died shortly after birth, Nellie died at 18 months from Meningitis and Emily later died aged 14 with a Rheumatic heart.



From an early age, Rosina had experienced such sadness. As a child, she loved to play hopscotch on the streets in London, she always said they were never bothered by anyone unless the odd horse cart came from the coal wharf.



Things were very different for Rosina growing up. She grew up in a house with no electricity and they all had their own candle in a candlestick going to bed at night. Her mother died when she was 13 and her father when she was 15, she had a few tough years but her story continues.



At 18 she volunteered to join the Air Forces but was turned down due to a heart condition she had, so she found work in a cigarette factory making cigarettes to be sent to soldiers abroad. This is where she met her first husband Richard Hanlon and had two children Carol and Maureen. A few years later Richard passed away.



In 1954 Rosina came to Ballymahon to meet Richards family as she had lost contact with his family from Ireland during the war. After spending some time here she met and married an Irish man James (Shamie) OConnor. She tells of many funny stories and anyone who ever spoke about James mentioned the character he was with a huge heart.



She had 6 children with James, - Elizabeth, Jimmy, Valerie, Eugene, Martina and Nellie. Sadly, Nellie died at birth, Martina when she was 2 and Eugene when he was 40.



Both herself and James loved to dance which she continued to do until she could no longer. She also loved bingo and her scratch cards and enjoyed the odd flutter on the horses, any horse with Rose in the name was backed. Sadly James passed away in 1985.



Rosina was a wonderful mother and great neighbour and loved to bake, all the kids and grandkids have fond memories of going to Nana Rose for some good food and baking. She had many friends and many adventures throughout her time.



She loved to travel and had many trips to Lourdes which she loved to talk about. She was a much-loved and very popular member of Club 91 where she enjoyed waltzing and even when she couldnt waltz anymore she attended the club to listen to the music, she loved all types of music.



She ventured on many trips over the years with the club members and had some great memories and stories. She then went to the Daycare Centre where she loved mixing with everyone and again to listen to music or just play Bingo. She always looked forward to the bus coming each week to collect her. She had amazing style and loved to dress up with her pearls and fancy scarfs.



Rosina loved to read and was still reading the paper at 97 years old, catching up on all the news.



For her 90th birthday she had a short story written about her busy life and Maureen and Carol got this printed for every family member. A very intelligent woman who could talk about every subject and always loved to sit and reminisce about her life. Rosina had 8 children, 16 grandchildren and 22 great-grandchildren who adored her, as she did them, she is known as the Queen or Nana Rose by her family.



The family started a tradition to celebrate her birthday in December in The Rustic Inn and this tradition continued for 15 years, unfortunately the last 2 years she could not attend and Christmas for the family was not the same. Over the years the group got bigger introducing family members, babies and partners every year, she was so proud of each and every member of her family and never forgot a birthday.



Each family member, and indeed her neighbours and friends have such fond memories and her legacy will live on. Indeed, they say, that from now on, on December 12 every year they will come together in memory of a wonderful woman who will never be forgotten, adored by all.



We extend our deepest sympathy to her son Jimmy, daughters Maureen, Carole, Elizabeth and Valerie, sons-in-law, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, nieces, nephews, relatives, neighbours and many friends. May her dear soul rest in peace.
Houston couple Clifford Pugh and John Dascoulias simply wanted to thank local health care workers and those on the frontline. But their Facebook Live sessions, in which they clang pots and pans with kitchen utensils to a catchy tune, have grown into something more.

For 57 days straight, their webcast has hit the social media platform at 8 p.m. sharp. It not only serves as a way to connect with people but for those watching at home, it also provides a steady stream of joy.

We didnt know it would go on for this long, but it has been amazing. We have people tuning in from Houston, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama and Massachusetts, said Pugh. I was surprised by the outpouring of people who really enjoy it. I didn't expect that.

Saying thank you: First-grader featured on Blue Bell boxes hands out ice cream to Houston nurses

Pugh and Dascoulias got the idea when they saw people banging kitchenware from balconies and windows across Europe and other coronavirus hotspots, to show support for frontline health care workers.

The retired couple launched their Facebook Live series from their Montrose balcony on March 19, days before the city went on lockdown to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

We live in a midrise. Our neighbors above and below us periodically join in. They are drumming and banging on a pot. Its been neat, said Pugh.

Pugh and Dascoulias daily five-minute segment starts with a warm greeting, followed by a singalong to a pre-chosen track.

The right song is key.



It has to have something to it that helps people get through the pandemic, said Pugh.

Thus far, their playlist includes Dont Stand So Close To Me by The Police, Im Still Standing by Elton John, Dancing with Myself by Billy Idol and When Will I See You Again by The Three Degrees.

Dascoulias mother Bessie Dascoulias, who lives in Ohio, never misses a session. On her 90th birthday in late March, Dascoulias and Pugh sang along to Birthday by The Beatles in her honor.

It is fun. When you think you are going to run out of songs, people suggest them, said Pugh.

Their audience started with a handful of people, but has since balloneed to more than 100. While Pugh and Dascoulias dont always sing every note on key, their enthusiasm is catching.

Clifford and John are putting on a show. It is delightful, said Houston resident Mary Flood. Those two are a gift to all of those who log on.

Flood was so inspired by Pugh and Dascoulias that she began her own daily pots-and-pans session with her neighbors.

We do it for one minute at 8 p.m. and then I turn on Facebook to watch Clifford and John, said Flood. Its a way to thank people. It is also kind of a safety check. I missed a night because I was watching Mathew McConaughey in "Lincoln Lawyer" and then heard from my neighbors.

They hadnt heard her clanging pots, and wanted to make sure she was all right.

Flood is one of a group of 20 loyal core viewers who watch Pugh and Dascoulias on Facebook every evening without fail. Houstons Craig Hartley is also a regular. He's been tuning in since the first week.

Ive started setting an alarm clock so I dont miss it, said Hartley. It is a real lift to the day. I get a big smile every time.

Pugh and Dascoulias are not sure how long theyll continue their nightly routine. Although the experience has been positive, theyre looking forward to the day they can be with members of their audience in person.

Some might think it is silly. But people are so down and out about the news. Its nice to take five minutes out of the day to celebrate that we are still here. We are still hanging in there, said Pugh. It is fun but it will be fine to end it because it means this is all over. Well have a big dance party all together one day. Hopefully soon.
Who knew how desperate we would become for a haircut during lockdown? Happily for me, I am blessed with a business consultant wife whos also a have-a-go hairdresser.

There is, however, one crucial aspect of barbering that few spouses can cover: psychiatry.

Like a lot of men, I go to the barber for a moan as much as a trim. To sound off about the world and all the injustice in it.

Thats surely why Barber Shop Chronicles was such a hit last year at the National Theatre, and again on tour.

Barber Shop Chronicles (National Theatre at Home, Youtube)

Verdict: Afro follicle frolic

Rating:

A joyful, self-satirising comedy about barber shops  specifically for black men  it captures the way the hairdressers is where we all go for therapy.

Halfway between a sketch show and a sitcom, its not a conventional story.

The procession of characters from Lagos to South London are wonderfully watchable as they spar with each other on the subjects of parenting, language, sex, paternity and what they think it means to be a strong black man.

Inua Ellamss script gets a little bogged down in the second half and could do with more plot to explore themes of colonialism and absent fathers.

But Bijan Sheibanis production is great fun, and there are lots of larger than life motormouths  including Hammed Animashaun as an opinionated Nigerian loverman.

I still hope Ellamss sequel will be a version for women  the Mani-Pedi Chronicles, perhaps.

Bijan Sheibanis production (above is great fun, and there are lots of larger than life motormouths  including Hammed Animashaun as an opinionated Nigerian loverman

Cats (The Shows Must Go On; Youtube)

Verdict: Mangy moggies

Rating:

Andrew Lloyd Webbers Cats had its own kind of barber shop bust-up when it was made into the much-ridiculed super-celebrity film last year. But at least that had the benefit of whizzy computer animation.

In the 1998 recording of the stage show, which Lord Lloyd-Webber is cautiously making available free for 24 hours from 7pm tonight, its more like an Eighties mash-up: Doctor Who meets Pans People from Top Of The Pops, in cathode ray tube format.

If you can remember either of those shows, youll know whether you want to repeat the experience.

Either way, the moulded junkyard set and skin-tight feline costumes  with leg warmers  have a touch of glam rock about them, and at least the childrens party face paint doesnt run.

More crucially, Elaine Paige, in a mangy mink (inset right), shows us how to yodel with restraint in the shows biggest number, Memory.

But this is very much for Cats diehards. Personally, I sit squarely on the dog side of the fence.

Lord Lloyd-Webber is cautiously making Cats available for free for 24 hours from 7pm tonight

The Encounter (barbican.org.uk)

Verdict: Weird but wonderful

Rating:

Much more interesting, from my point of view, was Simon McBurneys one-man psychedelic re-enactment of Loren McIntyres 1969 trip to visit the Mayoruna tribe in the Amazon jungle

Intending to take photos for National Geographic magazine, McIntyre lost not only his belongings, including his watch and camera, but also his sense of self.

As a result, he wound up being co-opted into one of the tribes shamanic rituals involving toad venom and mind travel.

Yes, its all deeply weird. But it remains one of the most extraordinary theatrical experiences of my life.

McBurney is a consummate performer, flying solo with spooky 3D sound and multiple characters to subvert our own sense of self.

In the context of a lockdown this is either a very good idea, or a very poor one.

There is, however, a funny side to it, thanks to McBurneys sense of mischief, and his young daughters frequent interruptions.

If you decide to give it a go, its best enjoyed with high-quality headphones.
The first Hong Kong anti-government protester to plead guilty to the charge of rioting during last year's unrest was sentenced to four years in prison on Friday for a 'direct attack on the rule of law'.

Sin Ka-ho, a 21-year-old lifeguard, was among thousands who surrounded the Legislative Council on June 12 during a pro-democracy rally.

A few dozen protesters, many wearing black and holding a banner reading 'Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times', gathered outside the court today, chanting 'there's no riot, only tyranny'.

China's state broadcaster CCTV released a picture, believed to be of Sin Ka-ho, as it reported about his sentencing on Friday. The photo (above) shows a man wearing a black face mask leaving the Eastern Law Courts Building in Hong Kong on an unspecified date

Mask-donning protesters gather outside the court in Hong Kong to support fellow protester Sin Ka-ho. One of the banners (pictured) says 'Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times'

A family member cries and bid farewell to Sin after he was sentenced four years for rioting. Sin is the first protester to plead guilty to the charge of rioting during last year's demonstrations

Supporters raise their hands up symbolising of the 'Five demands, not one less' to support Sin on Friday. Sin was sentenced to four years in prison for a 'direct attack on the rule of law'

As Sin was driven away in a van, some protesters knocked on its windows and shouted 'Stay strong!'

Sin's family members were seen crying while saying good-bye to a prison van that carried the young man.

Sin's sentencing comes as a Hong Kong exam question reignited a row over academic freedoms in the semi-autonomous city.

The university entrance exam question asked students to assess colonial Japan's occupation of China. It asked students to explain if Japan's invasion from 1900 to 1945 'did more good than harm'.

'Hong Kong's (university exam) question leads students to be traitors,' condemned China's state-run Global Times newspaper on Friday.

Protesters gesture for the 'Five Demands' they give to the Hong Kong government in front of a prison van outside a courthouse today. Sin was convicted for his role in a rally on June 12, 2019

Sin's supporters chase a van as he is driven away from the court. Sin's actions were 'a direct attack on the rule of law', District Court Justice Amanda Woodcock said in the sentencing

The protest at the Legislative Council in June, which Sin attended, was the first of many last year that saw riot police dispersing activists with tear gas and rubber bullets.

The police's act angered moderate Hong Kong people in a pivotal moment for the anti-government movement.

On the day, the demonstrators were trying to stop legislators from giving a second reading to a since-withdrawn extradition bill that would have allowed suspects in Hong Kong to be sent to courts in mainland China for trial.

Subsequent rallies turned more confrontational and broadened their demands for democracy in the Chinese-ruled city amid anger at Beijing's perceived meddling with its freedoms.

Family members cry and bid farewell to Sin's prison van after he was given the jail sentence

Nearly 600 Hong Kong protesters have been charged with rioting, risking up to 10 years in jail

Sin admitted to pushing police barricades and hurling umbrellas and other objects at officers, but denied planning the assaults.

The defendant's actions were 'a direct attack on the rule of law', District Court Justice Amanda Woodcock said in the sentencing, which is seen as potentially laying down a marker for the nearly 600 protesters who have been charged with rioting, risking up to 10 years in jail.

Neither Sin nor his lawyer commented on the sentence.

Sin, a 21-year-old lifeguard, was among thousands who surrounded the Legislative Council on June 12 during a pro-democracy rally. Pictured, protesters shelter under umbrellas during a downpour as they occupy roads near the government headquarters in Hong Kong on June 12

Protesters wearing masks are pictured reacting after police fired tear gas during anti-government demonstrations outside the Legislative Council Complex in Hong Kong on June 12

The protest at the Legislative Council in June was the first of many last year that saw riot police dispersing activists with tear gas and rubber bullets. Pictured, police officers in anti-riot gear holds down an anti-extradition bill protester near the Legislative Council Complex on June 12

Sin has been the only one so far to plead guilty, in a symbolic blow for the protest movement, whose demands include amnesty for all those arrested and the government dropping its characterisation of the protests as 'riots'.

China's state broadcaster CCTV report about Sin's sentencing on Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.

The station said 'rioters occupied roads, gathered to cause trouble and violently assaulted police' on June 12.

The state TV released a picture believed to be of Sin. The photo shows a man wearing a black face mask leaving the Eastern Law Courts Building on an unspecified date.

More than 8,300 protesters in Hong Kong were arrested between June 2019 and mid-May this year. Over 1,600 have been prosecuted, and 595 face rioting charges. Pictured, pro-democracy lawmaker Roy Kwong (central) chants slogans during a demonstration on June 12

Demonstrations are likely to pick up in the summer after a relative lull this year due to social distancing measures taken to fight COVID-19, which has largely been brought under control

Sin's sentencing is seen as potentially laying down a marker for the nearly 600 protesters who have been charged with rioting, risking up to 10 years in jail. Pictured, protesters move roadblocks in the Admiralty area near Hong Kong's Legislative Council building on June 12

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the guarantee of many freedoms not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary. Communist Party rulers in Beijing deny interfering with those freedoms.

The protesters' main demands are universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into police's handling of the demonstrations.

Accusations of police brutality must not be used as 'a weapon of political protest', the police watchdog said in a report on Friday, adding that the city appeared to be getting dragged into an 'era of terrorism'.

More than 8,300 protesters were arrested between June 2019 and mid-May this year. Over 1,600 have been prosecuted, and 595 face rioting charges.

Sin's sentence was reduced from six to four years due to his clear record and guilty plea.

Demonstrations are likely to pick up in the summer after a relative lull this year due to social distancing measures taken to fight the coronavirus outbreak, which has largely been brought under control.
As many as 48 people tested positive for COVID-19 in Odisha on Friday, taking the total number of virus cases in the state to 672, an official of the Health and Family Welfare department said.

The fresh cases were reported from Ganjam and Balasore (12 each), 10 from Puri, 6 from Bhadrak, 3 from Nayagarh, 2 from Jajpur and 1 each from Cuttack, Sundergarh and Deogarh districts.

All the COVID-19 positive cases detected on Friday came from temporary quarantine medical centres and one from home quarantine, the official said, adding they had returned to Odisha recently.

Most of them had returned from Gujarat, West Bengal, Delhi and Maharashtra, the official said.

Of the 30 districts in Odisha, 21 have so far reported COVID-19 cases.

Sources in the Health and Family Welfare department said that a total of 81,919 samples have been tested so far of which 4,769 were tested on Thursday.

With the 48 new cases, the total number of COVID-19 cases in the state rose to 672 of which 511 cases are active and 158 people have recovered while three have died of the disease.

Ganjam district tops the list with 264 cases, followed by Balasore at 102, Jajpur at 90, Khurda at 53, Bhadrak at 46, Sundergarh at 26, Kendrapara at 22, Angul at 15 and Puri 14.

Nine cases have been reported from Mayurbhanj, five from Jagatsinghpur, and four each in Nayagarh, Keonjhar, Cuttack and Boudh districts.

Two cases each have been detected in Bolangir, Deogarh, Kalahandi and Jharsuguda districts and one each in Koraput and Dhenkanal districts.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi: Of late our eyes are witness to a similar picture coming from different parts of the country in which migrant labourers are seen walking on roads and deserted highways. When asked, they relate the same story that they are on the way to their native place. People are, however, confused to see this amid announcements that special trains are being run to facilitate these labourers to reach their native cities.

The issue is complex to understand as political maneuvering is on in a subtle way between the centre and states amid coronavirus lockdown. The example of West Bengal can be taken to understand the matter. Nearly 50 lakh people from West Bengal are working in other states and a large number of these want to return to their home, but the Mamata government has so far allowed only 8 special trains to bring them back, according to Ministry of Railways.

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal said that arrangement of adequate Shramik special trains has been made to facilitate these workers to return to their native state. The state government, however, said the permission has been given for 105 special trains in the next 30 days.

The railways, meanwhile, stated that it can allow as many 105 trains to run in a day but the state needs to grant permission.

If only 105 trains are allowed to run in 30 days, then only 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh labourers will be able to reach their homes. On the contrary, 50 lakh workers from the state are willing to come back. Therefore, a large number of people are resorting to other alternatives to reach their place, and thousands decided to walk down to cover the distance. This is currently happening in most parts of the country.

The Railway Minister blamed the states like West Bengal, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, and Jharkhand of non-cooperation. According to official data, Railways received more than 1,000 approvals from states in the last 15 days to ferry migrants home, with most workers being received by Uttar Pradesh followed by Bihar.

The Uttar Pradesh government allowed 487 special trains followed by Bihar 254, Madhya Pradesh 79, Jharkhand 48, Rajasthan 22, Chhattisgarh 10, and West Bengal allowed only 8 trains. This clearly shows that several states are not interested in bringing back their own people.

According to the Railway Ministry, it has reserved 1200 trains to help migrant laborers reach their native states but are running merely 200 to 300 trains daily. The ministry also stated that it has run more than 1000 special trains for migrant laborers and helped nearly 13 lakh of such people to reach their states in the last 15 days.

It is very strange that in the states from where these workers are coming there is no effort to prevent them, showing the utter failure of these state governments. This has been happening since day one when the lockdown was announced.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had clearly stated that people should stay wherever they are but thousands left from Delhi to go to their native place and nobody tried to stop them.

The same is happening for the past few weeks and migrant workers are seen walking on roads everywhere. These labourers just need assurance that they would be provided with food and other necessary items but state governments have failed to given assurance.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 01:31:27|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that China firmly supports the United Nations and the World Health Organization in playing their due roles in international cooperation against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a telephone conversation with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Xi stressed that China stands ready to work with Hungary and other members of the international community to effectively carry out joint prevention and control efforts and resolutely curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Xi also called for concerted efforts to strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination to jointly address the challenges the pandemic has brought to the world economy.

He noted that during the special period of jointly combating COVID-19, the Chinese and Hungarian peoples have been helping and supporting each other.

China firmly supports the Hungarian government and people in their anti-epidemic efforts, and will continue to provide as much assistance as its capacity allows for the European country, Xi said, adding that he believes that under Orban's strong leadership, the hard-working Hungarian people will surely win the battle at an early date.

Xi pointed out that through the test of the joint fight against the pandemic, the traditional friendship between the two countries will grow even deeper and bilateral cooperation will embrace broader prospects.

He called on the two sides to actively plan the development of bilateral relations after the pandemic, maintain high-level contact, strengthen cooperation in such traditional areas as economy, trade and investment, actively explore cooperation in such new fields as digital economy and artificial intelligence, and promote cultural and people-to-people exchanges.

Xi said he looks forward to meeting with Orban at an early date after the pandemic, so as to help lift the China-Hungary comprehensive strategic partnership as well as cooperation between China and Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) to higher levels.

Orban, for his part, said he congratulates the Chinese people on having successfully contained the COVID-19 epidemic through arduous efforts.

He added that the Hungarian people will not forget and is deeply grateful for the timely assistance China has provided for Hungary's fight against the disease, including urgently-needed medical protective supplies.

Hungary always firmly adheres to the one-China policy, he stressed.

He noted that Hungary and China have carried out good cooperation in high-tech fields, which has promoted Hungary's economic development.

Hungary, he said, is willing to strengthen cooperation with China in such fields as economy, trade and finance, and will continue as always to support and participate in CEEC-China cooperation.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has been successfully folded and stowed into the same configuration it will have when loaded onto an Ariane 5 rocket for launch next year.

Webb is NASA's largest and most complex space science telescope ever built. Too big for any rocket available in its fully expanded form, the entire observatory was designed to fold in on itself to achieve a much smaller configuration. Once in space, the observatory will unfold and stretch itself out in a carefully practiced series of steps before beginning to make groundbreaking observations of the cosmos.

"The James Webb Space Telescope achieved another significant milestone with the entire observatory in its launch configuration for the first time, in preparation for environmental testing," said Bill Ochs, Webb project manager for NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "I am very proud of the entire Northrop Grumman and NASA integration and test team. This accomplishment demonstrates the outstanding dedication and diligence of the team in such trying times due to COVID-19."

This video shows how NASA's James Webb Space Telescope is designed to fold to a much smaller size in order to fit inside the Ariane V rocket for launch to space. The largest, most complex space observatory ever built, must fold itself to fit within a 17.8-foot (5.4-meter) payload fairing, and survive the rigors of a rocket ride to orbit. After liftoff, the entire observatory will unfold in a carefully choreographed series of steps before beginning to make groundbreaking observations of the cosmos. Video credit: Michael McClare (KBRwyle): Lead Producer, Bailee DesRocher (USRA): Lead Animator Credits: NASA Goddard

The testing team's charter is to make sure every piece of hardware and every piece of software that comprise Webb will work not only individually, but as a full observatory. Now that Webb is completely assembled, technicians and engineers have seized the unique opportunity to command the entire spacecraft and carry out the various stages of movement and deployment it will perform when in space. By folding and stowing the spacecraft into the same configuration when it launches from French Guiana, the engineering team can confidently move forward with final environmental testing (acoustics and vibration). After completing the series of tests, Webb will be deployed one last time on Earth for testing prior to preparing for launch.

"While operating under augmented personal safety measures because of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the project continues to make good progress and achieve significant milestones in preparation for upcoming environmental testing," said Gregory L. Robinson, the Webb program director at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. "Team member safety continues to be our highest priority as the project takes precautions to protect Webb's hardware and continue with integration and testing. NASA will continually assess the project's schedule and adjust decisions as the situation evolves."

The James Webb Space Telescope will be the world's premier space science observatory when it launches in 2021. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.

For more information about Webb, visit www.nasa.gov/webb.



Please follow SpaceRef on Twitter and Like us on Facebook.
US President Donald Trump signaled a further deterioration of his relationship with China over the novel coronavirus, saying he has no interest in speaking to President Xi Jinping right now and going so far as to suggest he could even cut ties with the world's second largest economy.

In an interview with Fox Business Network broadcast on Thursday, Trump said he was very disappointed with China's failure to contain the disease and that the pandemic had cast a pall over his January trade deal with Beijing, which he has previously hailed as a major achievement.

"They should have never let this happen," Trump said. "So I make a great trade deal and now I say this doesn't feel the same to me. The ink was barely dry and the plague came over. And it doesn't feel the same to me."

Trump's pique extended to Xi, with whom the US president has said repeatedly he has a good relationship.

"But I just  right now I don't want to speak to him," Trump said in the interview, which was taped on Wednesday.

Trump was asked about a Republican senator's suggestion that US visas be denied to Chinese students applying to study in fields related to national security, such as quantum computing and artificial intelligence.

"There are many things we could do. We could do things. We could cut off the whole relationship," he replied.

"Now, if you did, what would happen? You'd save $500 billion," Trump said, referring to estimated US annual imports from China, which he often refers to as lost money.

The remark drew ridicule from Hu Xijin, editor in chief of China's influential Global Times tabloid, who referred to Trump's much-criticized comments last month about how Covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, might be treated.

"This president once suggested Covid-19 patients inject disinfectants," Hu said on Twitter. "Remember this and you won't be surprised when he said he could cut off the whole relationship with China."

Trump and his Republican backers have accused Beijing of failing to alert the world to the severity and scope of the coronavirus outbreak, which has sparked a sharp global recession and threatened his November re-election chances.

The United States has been hardest hit by the pandemic, according to official data.

China insists it has been transparent, and amid increasingly bitter exchanges both sides have questioned the future of the trade deal.

Opponents of Trump have said that while China has much to answer for over the outbreak, he appears to be seeking to deflect attention from criticism over his response to the crisis.

DANGEROUS BRAVADO

Scott Kennedy of Washington's Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank called Trump's remarks "dangerous bravado."

"Avoiding communication is not an effective strategy for solving a crisis that requires global cooperation. And cutting off the economic relationship would badly damage the American economy," he said.

Under Phase 1 of the trade agreement, Beijing pledged to buy at least $200 billion in additional US goods and services over two years while Washington agreed to roll back tariffs on Chinese goods in stages.

China took some additional steps towards those goals on Thursday, buying US soybean oil for the first time in nearly two years and issued customs notices allowing imports of US barley and blueberries.

An executive from Chinese state agriculture trading house COFCO said China was set to speed up purchases of US farm goods to implement the Phase 1 deal.

The Global Times on Thursday said Beijing was seeking to compartmentalize rising tensions with Washington.

"(China) still hopes that economic and trade issues will not be politicized because that is not good for either side," it quoted Li Yong, deputy chairman of the Expert Committee of the China Association of International Trade, as saying.

While US intelligence agencies have said the coronavirus does not appear manmade or genetically modified, rejecting a theory promoted by some Trump supporters, Trump said in his interview that China should have stopped it at its source.

"Whether it came from the lab or came from the bats, it all came from China, and they should have stopped it," he said.

"It got out of control."
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Ilkin Seyfaddini - Trend:

The Center for Economic Research and Reforms of Uzbekistan conducted a business climate assessment survey in the country, Trend reports with reference to the Center.

The assessment of the survey is based on the methodology of "Business Climate Index" of Germany, developed by the Institute for Economic Research Institute (IFO) in Munich.

The business climate indicator stood at 26 points. This means that the business sentiment of entrepreneurs regarding the current state of their business is moderately positive. The analysis showed that out of 451 businesses, 34 percent assessed their business as "good", 46 percent - "fair" and only 19 percent - "bad".

The indicator of expectations of the prospects of business development for the next 2-3 months amounted to 43 points, that is, reflects a positive attitude. The survey results showed that out of the total number, 52 percent responded "will improve", 33 percent - "will not change", only 14 percent - "will deteriorate".

The indicator of business climate made up 35 points, i.e. its condition in Uzbekistan is assessed as "good". The country's economy is expected to experience rapid development in the next 2-3 months, the report says.

Earlier, the CER published the Business Activity Index (BAI) for April, which showed negative changes not only compared to the previous month but also with the same period last year. The main reason for the decline in the IDA is the introduction of quarantine in all regions of the country in late March 2020.

---

Follow author on Twitter: @seyfaddini
As Connecticut leaders this week unveiled plans to ramp up testing among the most vulnerable communities hit by COVID-19, the number of infections and deaths at senior care facilities continued to rise, data released by the state Thursday shows.

The data showed that as of Wednesday, 1,927 Connecticut nursing home patients died with coronavirus or whose death is suspected to be associated with the illness. Another 276 residents of assisted living facilities have died after falling ill with COVID-19, the data shows.

The data released Thursday marked the first time the governors office released the number of deaths at assisted living facilities, which differ from nursing homes in the level of care they provide senior residents.

Together, the deaths represent roughly 70 percent of the 3,125 COVID-19-related fatalities reported statewide as of Wednesday.

Nursing homes in Connecticut have reported 6,947 confirmed cases of the virus, representing just under 20 percent of the states 34,855 cases as of Wednesday. Confirmed cases of the virus at assisted living facilities account for about 2.5 percent of the statewide total.

Among the nursing homes with the most confirmed and probable deaths was Danburys Saint John Paul II Center, which reported 32 as of Wednesday, up from 30 last week.

East Hartfords Riverside Health and Rehabilitation reported 54 confirmed and probable deaths as of Wednesday. Last week, the facility reported 47.

In Shelton, Bishop-Wicke Health and Rehabilitation reported 31 confirmed and probable deaths associated with the virus by Wednesday, up just one additional virus-linked death since last week.

Lord Chamberlain Nursing and Rehabilitation reported 32 lab-confirmed and probable coronavirus-related deaths, up from 29 last week.

In Torrington, Litchfield Wood reported 31 confirmed probable deaths linked to the coronavirus, one more than was reported last week.

Abbott Terrace Health Center in Waterbury reported 41 confirmed and probable deaths linked to the virus, seeing an increase from 38 reported in last weeks data.

Kimberly Hall North in Windsor reported 43 confirmed and probable deaths associated with the virus, a slight increase from the 40 reported last week.

The new numbers come as the governors office has made a push for plans to increase testing ahead of the May 20 gradual reopen of some businesses.

The state is at risk, the country is at risk for a resurgence, said Dr. Albert Ko, chairman of the epidemiology department at the Yale School of Medicine and an advisor on the governors reopening committee. We know because of the transmissability of this disease.

Ko, who spoke during the governors daily briefing, said a key pillar moving forward will be ensuring access to testing for populations vulnerable to the disease  including those in congregant settings like nursing homes.

We have to protect the people in nursing homes  were doing the same as many other states. New York  you know that theyre screening their nursing home workers to protect their nursing home residents, Ko said, referring to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomos plan announced last weekend to test every nursing home staff member in the state twice a week.

Over the past week, staff from the state Department of Public Health and National Guard have delivered thousands of COVID-19 test kits to nursing homes, according to state officials.

A memo obtained by Hearst Connecticut Media this week details how the state plans for nursing homes to swab all of their residents for the disease and then receive test results from private labs within 24 hours. Once the homes know who has the virus, residents are to be quickly separated to prevent the virus from spreading further.

The governors office said those tests are planned to be completed by the beginning of June, and will be repeated going forward.

Also this week, the DPH publicized a trove of reports from inspections at nursing homes around the state following a series of inspections aided by personnel from the National Guard and federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

At least one facility, Golden Hill Rehab Pavilion in Milford, failed to quickly inform family members their loved one had tested positive for COVID-19, investigators found. The resident later died.

Separately, as the governors office said this week that the state received its largest shipment of protective equipment, nursing home workers still gathered near the capitol building Wednesday to protest what they say are shortcomings in the gear available to them.

In a statement, Pedro Zayas, a spokesman for SEIU 1199NE, a health care workers union representing staff in around 30 percent of the states nursing homes, said workers hoped to show some worn down protective equipment they have had to use in the midst of the pandemic.

Asked about the protest during Wednesdays briefing, Gov. Ned Lamont said nursing homes are responsible for sourcing protective equipment, but the state serves as a backup.

So theres no excuse not to get the masks and the gowns workers deserve, we have the capacity, the governor said.
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Pharma company Cipla declared a profit after tax of Rs 246 crore for the quarter ended March 2020, declining 33 percent YoY due to high base in Q4FY19.

It had a profit of Rs 367.20 crore in the year-ago period, which was bolstered by the company's US business after the launch of generic Senipar during the quarter.

Revenue from operations for the quarter came in at Rs 4,302 crore, a 0.6 percen decline compared to Rs 4,403.98 crore in the corresponding period last year.

North America business revenue fell 25 percent year-on-year to Rs 856 crore and Europe declined 1 percent YoY, while India business registered a 12 percent year-on-year growth at Rs 1,730 crore and emerging markets showed a 2 percent growth.

At operating level, Cipla's earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) plunged 34.1 percent to Rs 633.52 crore and margin contracted 735 basis points to 14.47 percent compared to year-ago.

In the full year (FY20), profit increased 1 percent to Rs 1,547 crore and revenue grew by 5 percent to Rs 17,132 crore compared to previous year.

Company said board approved fund raising upto Rs 3,000 crore by issue of equity shares or American depository receipts or global depository receipts or foreign currency convertible bonds or other securities / financial instruments convertible into equity shares.

Meanwhile, earlier this week, Cipla signed a non-exclusive licensing agreement with Gilead Sciences Inc for the manufacturing and distribution of the investigational medicine Remdesivir.

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for the drug to treat COVID-19 patients.

As part of the agreement, Cipla said it would be permitted to manufacture the API and finished product and market it in 127 countries including India and South Africa under Cipla's own brand name.

Find All Earnings Related News Here

The stock in the past year gained only 2.6 percent and rose 19.2 percent year-to-date. It has rallied 52 percent from March lows as the outbreak of coronavirus once again brought the pharma sector in focus. It has corrected 12 percent in the March quarter.
Friendswood High School's graduation ceremonies have been rescheduled for 7 p.m. June 5 at Challenger Columbia Stadium in Webster, Friendswood ISD announced on May 15.

Previously, the event had been scheduled for July 11 indoors at Grace Community Church at 14505 Gulf Freeway in Houston.
86% of choir members got infected with COVID-19 after church practice: report

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A new report from the Skagit County Public Health Department in Washington state published by the CDC Friday, shows how quickly the coronavirus spread after a choir practice became a superspreader event for the disease that infected 86% of attending members and killed two of them.

Now state health officials say the findings in the report, based on the experience of Skagit Valley Chorale that normally rehearses at the Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church on Tuesday evenings and once a month on a Saturday morning, could have significant implications for future church gatherings.

"It's really important that people realize that by meeting, by gathering, 86% of them could become ill and the results and aftermath of that is hard to fathom," Skagit County Health Officer Dr. Howard Leibrand said in a King 5 report.

The report from the health department showed how the 122-member chorale was likely exposed to a superemitter of the virus who attended choir practice on March 3 and March 10.

One person at the March 10 practice had cold-like symptoms beginning March 7. This person, who had also attended the March 3 practice, had a positive laboratory result for SARS-CoV-2 by reverse transcriptionpolymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing, the report said.

Of the 78 members who attended the March 3 practice, 51 or 65.4% of them got infected with the virus. All but one of the infected individuals from the March 3 practice were among the 60 members who also attended the March 10 practice, 86.7% of them tested positive for the disease. Among the 21 members who only attended the March 3 practice only one of them became ill.

The 2.5-hour singing practice provided several opportunities for droplet and fomite transmission, including members sitting close to one another, sharing snacks, and stacking chairs at the end of the practice. The act of singing, itself, might have contributed to transmission through emission of aerosols, which is affected by loudness of vocalization, the report said.

Certain persons, known as superemitters, who release more aerosol particles during speech than do their peers, might have contributed to this and previously reported COVID-19 superspreading events, the researchers added.

They explained that the findings from this event shows the high transmissibility of the coronavirus as well as the possibility of superemitters contributing to broad transmission in certain unique activities and circumstances.

"They were sitting closely together and spending time there and then they would switch chairs, share snacks, and they might have touched surfaces other people infected touched," Lea Hamner, co-author of the report and communicable disease and epidemiology lead at Skagit County Health told King 5.

All of this activity occurred at a time when Skagit Valley had no reported cases yet even though the first coronavirus case was confirmed in Washington state on Jan. 21.

In a March 23 statement, the Skagit Valley Chorale said that during the dates they were holding rehearsals, schools, restaurants, churches, bowling alleys, banks, libraries, theaters, and other businesses also remained open.

The advice from the state of Washington was to limit gatherings to 250 people. There were no recommendations from Skagit County Health Department regarding meeting sizes, but they did state that people over 60 should avoid large public gatherings, the group said.

Still, the chorales board of directors tried to be careful. They urged all members to stay away from rehearsals on March 3 and March 10 if they showed any symptoms of illness, no matter the cause.

They also advised anyone who felt their health or safety was in jeopardy to not attend.

Each member was left to determine for him/herself whether to attend. At no time was anyone pressured to attend if they were uncomfortable doing so, the group said.

Despite the precautions taken, however, very few of the chorale members were spared from contracting the virus.

As a result of the high transmissibility of the virus the researchers recommend that people avoid face-to-face contact with others, not gather in groups, avoid crowded places, maintain physical distancing of at least 6 feet to reduce transmission, and wear cloth face coverings in public settings where other social distancing measures are difficult to maintain.

Alan Cross, a Southern Baptist pastor in California and the author ofWhen Heaven and Earth Collide: Racism, Southern Evangelicals, and the Better Way of Jesus, argued in a New York Times op-ed Thursday that while some churches are pushing to reopen despite the lack of a vaccine for the coronavirus  and there's no guarantee that there ever will be a vaccine for COVID-19  most churches are taking the virus seriously.

While pastors defying closure orders have grabbed headlines, the reality is that over 90 percent of pastors and church leaders complied with shutdown orders in March and many are still waiting until later in May and into June before resuming public worship  even in states where restrictions are weakening, he wrote. Most pastors that I have engaged with take seriously the responsibility to navigate this national tragedy with wisdom, compassion and patience.

In Alabama for example, even though Gov. Kay Ivey is now allowing churches to resume meeting, many churches in Alabama continue to use online services and plan to wait a bit longer before reopening for in-person services.

The largest church in the state, the Church of the Highlands, will continue to emphasize watching online services and Pastor Chris Hodges, said there were no plans to return to in-person group worship before May 31.

Iveys pastor, the Rev. Jay Wolf, pastor of Montgomery First Baptist who advised her on church safety issues, told AL.com that he believes it will be no sooner than May 31 before in-person services begin. Even then, he said, it might not even be safe for a large church to meet in person.

Bishop Stephen A. Davis, pastor of the 5,000-member Refresh Family Church, formerly known as New Birth Birmingham, told AL.com that right now, We still think its too risky.

Were waiting another couple of weeks just to be safe, Davis said. Just because the state reopens businesses doesnt mean its safe to bring that many people together.
In a bid to jump-start economies broken down by the Coronavirus pandemic, the Baltic states-Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have opened their borders to each other on Friday midnight creating the first 'travel bubble' within the European Union. The citizens and residents of the three sparsely populated Baltic nations will be free to travel within the region, however, anyone entering from outside will need to self-isolate for 14 days.

READ | Trump's Mar-a-Lago club to partially reopen this weekend

'Travel Bubble' opportunity for businesses: PM Skvernelis

Lithuanian Prime Minister Saulius Skvernelis said in a statement that the Baltic 'Travel Bubble' is an opportunity for businesses to reopen, and a glimmer of hope for the people that life is getting back to normal.

The move by the Baltic neighbours comes as the European Commission, the executive branch of the EU, seeks to influence the 27 member states to reopen internal borders and restart wider travel, with safety measures such as face masks on airplanes.

New Coronavirus infections in the three Baltic republics have now slowed to a trickle with none of the countries reporting more than seven new cases on Wednesday, and authorities have loosened lockdowns since late April. The region as a whole has recorded fewer than 150 deaths from the virus infection, far below individual larger eurozone countries such as Italy, Spain, France or Germany.

READ | Trump confirms pulling out US pension fund from China investments

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia  the three poorest members of the eurozone, expect their economies to shrink by between seven and eight percent this year, in line with the rest of the currency union. Lithuania has warned of a 'double-digit' drop if economies are not reopened by the summer.

Estonia has given an emergency loan of 100 million euros ($108m) to Baltic Sea shipping firm Tallink, severely hit by the region's lockdowns, while Lithuania is setting up a state-run facility to provide loans or assume assets of key companies if they do not survive the crisis.

READ | Trump pledges to replenish national stockpile after whistleblower exposes lack for preparedness

The Baltic countries were quick to close their borders and impose lockdown measures to slow the spread of the virus.

Meanwhile, the travel restrictions were eased between Finland and Estonia, as well as between Poland and Lithuania, this week, but only for those on the move for business or education. However, neither Poland nor Finland are rushing to join the full 'travel union with their Baltic neighbours as yet, despite an invitation to do so.

READ | Trump administration ease rules limiting truck driver hours
Proceeds Will Allow Cordoba to Meet Final Option Payment and Vest a 100% Interest in the Alacran Copper-Gold Project

Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Cordoba Minerals Corp. (TSXV: CDB) (OTCQB: CDBMF) ("Cordoba" or the "Company") today announced that it will conduct an offering (the "Rights Offering") of rights to acquire common shares of the Company ("Common Shares") to raise gross proceeds of C$21,500,000.

Pursuant to the rights offering circular (the "Rights Offering Circular") and the notice of rights offering (the "Notice of Rights Offering"), each eligible registered shareholder of the Company residing in Canada and holding Common Shares as at the close of business on June 1, 2020 (the "Record Date") will receive 0.93171762634 of one right for every one Common Share held. All fractional rights will be rounded down to the nearest whole number of rights (each whole right, a "Right"). Each Right will entitle the holder to subscribe for one Common Share at a subscription price of C$0.05 per Common Share (the "Basic Subscription Privilege"). Shareholders who fully exercise their Rights under the Basic Subscription Privilege will also be entitled to subscribe for additional Common Shares, on a pro rata basis, if available as a result of unexercised Rights prior to the Expiry Time (the "Additional Subscription Privilege"), subject to certain limitations as set out in the Company's Rights Offering Circular.

The Rights will be listed and posted for trading on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "CDB.RT" on a "when issued" basis commencing on May 29, 2020 and will expire at 5:00 p.m. (Vancouver time) (the "Expiry Time") on June 25, 2020, after which time unexercised Rights will be void and of no value.

The Company currently has 461,513,218 Common Shares issued and outstanding. If all Rights issued under the Rights Offering are validly exercised, an additional 430,000,000 Common Shares would be issued.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds of the Rights Offering to complete the final remaining payment of US$13,000,000 due no later than June 30, 2020 to the OMNI Parties and will vest a 100% interest in the Alacran mineral title. Remaining proceeds will be used to cover general working capital expenses until the Alacran Pre-Feasibility Study can be re-started following lifting of restrictions from the Government-mandated COVID-19 lockdown in Colombia. Cordoba estimates that it will have sufficient funding for these purposes until Q4 2020.

A Notice of Rights Offering and a rights certificate will be mailed to each registered shareholder of the Company resident in Canada as at the Record Date. Registered shareholders who wish to exercise their rights must forward the completed rights certificate, together with the applicable funds, to the rights agent, Computershare Investor Services Inc., on or before the Expiry Time. Shareholders who own their Common Shares through an intermediary, such as a bank, trust company, securities dealer or broker, will receive materials and instructions from their intermediary.

The Rights Offering will be conducted in all provinces and territories of Canada. However, certain holders of Common Shares in jurisdictions outside of Canada may be able to participate in the Rights Offering where they can establish that the transaction is exempt under applicable legislation. If you are a holder of Common Shares and reside outside of Canada, please review the Notice of Rights Offering, Rights Offering Circular and Notice to Ineligible Shareholders to determine your eligibility and the process and timing requirements to receive and, or, exercise your Rights. The Company requests any ineligible shareholder interested in exercising their Rights to contact the Company at their earliest convenience. A copy of the Notice of Rights Offering, the Rights Offering Circular and the Notice to Ineligible Shareholders are available under the Company's profile on SEDAR at www.sedar.com.

Neither the Rights being offered or the Common Shares issuable upon exercise of the Rights have been or will be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and may not be exercised, offered or sold, as applicable, in the United States absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy the securities of the Company. There shall be no offer or sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration or qualification of such securities under the laws of any such jurisdiction.

Standby Commitment

In connection with the Rights Offering, the Company has entered into a standby commitment agreement (the "Standby Commitment Agreement") with High Power Exploration Inc. ("HPX" or the "Standby Purchaser"), the Company's controlling shareholder. The Standby Purchaser has agreed, subject to certain terms and conditions, to exercise its Basic Subscription Privilege in respect of any Rights it holds, and, in addition thereto, to acquire any additional Common Shares available as a result of any unexercised Rights under the Rights Offering, excluding those falling within the JCHX commitment (the "Standby Commitment"), such that the Company will, subject to the terms of the Standby Commitment Agreement and completion of the Basic Subscription Privilege of JCHX as noted below, be guaranteed to issue 430,000,000 Common Shares in connection with the Rights Offering for aggregate gross proceeds of C$21,500,000.

In consideration for the Standby Commitment, HPX will receive 5-year warrants to purchase 25% of the Common Shares that HPX has agreed to acquire under the Standby Commitment (not including any Common Shares acquired pursuant to its Basic Subscription Privilege or Additional Subscription Privilege), at an exercise price equal to C$0.075 per Common Share.

JCHX Mining Management Co., Ltd. ("JCHX"), an insider of the Company who controls 19.99% of the Common Shares, has entered into a commitment agreement with the Company dated May 15, 2020 pursuant to which JCHX has agreed to exercise the Basic Subscription Privilege under its Rights to acquire 85,998,410 Common Shares and maintain its shareholdings in the Company at 19.99% upon completion of the Rights Offering, providing gross proceeds to the Company of approximately C$4,300,000.

The Standby Purchaser and JCHX are "related parties" of the Company under Multilateral Instrument 61-101 - Protection of Minority Security Holders in Special Transactions ("MI 61-101") because each exercise control and direction over more than 10% of the issued and outstanding Common Shares. The Rights Offering is not subject to the related party rules under MI 61-101 based on a prescribed exception related to rights offerings.

Alacran Pre-Feasibility Study Update

Work continues toward the completion of the Environmental Impact Assessment ("EIA") and the Mining Technical Work Plan (Programa de Trabajo y Obras or "PTO"), both required to secure the necessary Colombian mining approvals for the Alacran deposit. As announced on January 20, 2020, Cordoba has engaged Nordmin Engineering Ltd. ("Nordmin") to manage the work required to complete the EIA and PTO. Due to the detailed technical nature of the work required for the EIA and PTO, Nordmin will also complete a pre-feasibility study ("PFS") for Alacran in compliance with National Instrument 43-101 - Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects ("NI 43-101").

Prior to the COVID-19 lockdown in Colombia, the Company was able to significantly advance fieldwork in areas where mine infrastructure is likely to be located. This included conducting geotechnical test-pits and completing condemnation, geotechnical and hydrological drilling.

Despite the early stage of fieldwork, there have been encouraging findings which could add significant value to the project. These include:

Potential to update the pit design and reduce the waste tonnes removed (i.e., improved stripping ratio) following an initial review of Rock Quality Designation ("RQD") data which indicates that the western wall of the proposed pit might support a steeper wall angle;

Options for relocation of key processing plant infrastructure to maximize gravity assistance with material movement to the Tailings Management Facility ("TMF");

Possibility of co-mingling thickened tailings with waste rock to minimize the waste storage footprint; and

Potential reduction in the earthworks required for pinning the dam-wall foundation, as depth to bedrock is shallower than anticipated in the proposed TMF area.

Ongoing desk-top studies include: investigating pit design options, evaluating infrastructure alternatives, constructing the base hydrogeological model, reviewing the planned geometallurgical drilling program, investigating options for the use of thickened tailings and collecting data from the solar-powered environmental station installed at site.

2020 Annual General and Special Meeting Postponed due to COVID-19 Pandemic

Due to restrictions on public gatherings enacted by both the Federal and Provincial governments in Canada in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and to help protect the health and well-being of its shareholders, employees and other stakeholders, Cordoba has made the decision to postpone its 2020 Annual General and Special Meeting ("AGSM").

As the COVID-19 situation evolves and advice from government and medical authorities is updated, Cordoba will set the new AGSM date and file a notice of meeting and record date on SEDAR (www.sedar.com).

The Company is relying on BC Instrument 51-516 - Temporary Exemptions from Certain Requirements to File or Send Securityholder Materials - published on May 1, 2020, that is providing public companies with temporary blanket relief from certain filing and delivery requirements related to the sending of materials for annual general meetings.

Once a new AGSM date is determined, Cordoba will provide shareholders with the same disclosure documents they would normally receive ahead of an annual meeting, in accordance with applicable legislation.

About Cordoba

Cordoba Minerals Corp. is a mineral exploration company focused on the exploration, development and acquisition of copper and gold projects. Cordoba is developing the San Matias Copper-Gold-Silver Project, which includes the Alacran Deposit and satellite deposits at Montiel East, Montiel West and Costa Azul, located in the Department of Cordoba, Colombia. Cordoba also holds a 25% interest in the Perseverance Copper Project in Arizona, USA, which it is exploring through a Joint Venture and Earn-In Agreement. For further information, please visit www.cordobaminerals.com.

Information Contact

Evan Young +1-604-689-8765

info@cordobamineralscorp.com

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Forward-Looking Statements

This news release includes "forward-looking statements" and "forward-looking information" within the meaning of Canadian securities legislation. All statements included in this news release, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements including, without limitation, statements with respect to the use of proceeds. Forward-looking statements include predictions, projections and forecasts and are often, but not always, identified by the use of words such as "anticipate", "believe", "plan", "estimate", "expect", "potential", "target", "budget" and "intend" and statements that an event or result "may", "will", "should", "could" or "might" occur or be achieved and other similar expressions and includes the negatives thereof.

Forward-looking statements are based on a number of assumptions and estimates that, while considered reasonable by management based on the business and markets in which the Company operates, are inherently subject to significant operational, economic, and competitive uncertainties, risks and contingencies. These include assumptions regarding, among other things: completion of the Rights Offering; general business and economic conditions; the availability of additional exploration and mineral project financing; the supply and demand for, inventories of, and the level and volatility of the prices of metals; relationships with strategic partners; the timing and receipt of governmental permits and approvals; the timing and receipt of community and landowner approvals; changes in regulations; political factors; the accuracy of the Company's interpretation of drill results; the geology, grade and continuity of the Company's mineral deposits; the availability of equipment, skilled labour and services needed for the exploration and development of mineral properties; and currency fluctuations. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate and actual results, and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's expectations include actual exploration results, interpretation of metallurgical characteristics of the mineralization, changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined, future metal prices, availability of capital and financing on acceptable terms, general economic, market or business conditions, uninsured risks, regulatory changes, delays or inability to receive required approvals, unknown impact related to potential business disruptions stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak, or another infectious illness, and other exploration or other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators, including those described under the heading "Risks and Uncertainties" in the Company's most recently filed MD&A. The Company does not undertake to update or revise any forward-looking statements, except in accordance with applicable law.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55932
Museums and aquariums around the world are allowing local zoo animals to wander through. Why? Because the animals are stir-crazy but also it's just cute as can be. See, it's science. Kansas City doesn't want to be accused of NOT having the cutest penguins.
Is China Kepei Education Group Limited (HKG:1890) a good dividend stock? How can we tell? Dividend paying companies with growing earnings can be highly rewarding in the long term. On the other hand, investors have been known to buy a stock because of its yield, and then lose money if the company's dividend doesn't live up to expectations.

Some readers mightn't know much about China Kepei Education Group's 1.9% dividend, as it has only been paying distributions for a year or so. There are a few simple ways to reduce the risks of buying China Kepei Education Group for its dividend, and we'll go through these below.

Click the interactive chart for our full dividend analysis

SEHK:1890 Historical Dividend Yield May 15th 2020

Payout ratios

Companies (usually) pay dividends out of their earnings. If a company is paying more than it earns, the dividend might have to be cut. Comparing dividend payments to a company's net profit after tax is a simple way of reality-checking whether a dividend is sustainable. In the last year, China Kepei Education Group paid out 39% of its profit as dividends. A medium payout ratio strikes a good balance between paying dividends, and keeping enough back to invest in the business. Plus, there is room to increase the payout ratio over time.

In addition to comparing dividends against profits, we should inspect whether the company generated enough cash to pay its dividend. China Kepei Education Group paid out 54% of its free cash flow last year, which is acceptable, but is starting to limit the amount of earnings that can be reinvested into the business. It's positive to see that China Kepei Education Group'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, China Kepei Education Group investors may not have much to worry about in the near term from a dividend perspective.

Story continues

Remember, you can always get a snapshot of China Kepei Education Group's latest financial position, by checking our visualisation of its financial health.

Dividend Volatility

One of the major risks of relying on dividend income, is the potential for a company to struggle financially and cut its dividend. Not only is your income cut, but the value of your investment declines as well - nasty. 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. This works out to be a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of approximately 3.9% a year over that time.

Modest dividend growth is good to see, especially with the payments being relatively stable. However, the payment history is relatively short and we wouldn't want to rely on this dividend too much.

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. China Kepei Education Group's earnings per share have shrunk at 32% a year over the past five years. A sharp decline in earnings per share is not great from from a dividend perspective, as even conservative payout ratios can come under pressure if earnings fall far enough.

We'd also point out that China Kepei Education Group issued a meaningful number of new shares in the past year. Regularly issuing new shares can be detrimental - it's hard to grow dividends per share when new shares are regularly being created.

Conclusion

To summarise, shareholders should always check that China Kepei Education Group's dividends are affordable, that its dividend payments are relatively stable, and that it has decent prospects for growing its earnings and dividend. China Kepei Education Group's dividend payout ratios are within normal bounds, although we note its cash flow is not as strong as the income statement would suggest. Second, earnings per share have been in decline, and the dividend history is shorter than we'd like. While we're not hugely bearish on it, overall we think there are potentially better dividend stocks than China Kepei Education Group out there.

Companies possessing a stable dividend policy will likely enjoy greater investor interest than those suffering from a more inconsistent approach. At the same time, there are other factors our readers should be conscious of before pouring capital into a stock. As an example, we've identified 1 warning sign for China Kepei Education Group that you should be aware of before investing.

We have also put together a list of global stocks with a market capitalisation above $1bn and yielding more 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.
Michael Colby, east region president of Isabella Bank, welcomes JoAnna Keenan as an Isabella Wealth Advisor. Keenan will serve the trust and estate needs of the Great Lakes Bay Region.

I am excited to have JoAnna join our wealth team. She has the personality, knowledge, and experience to help our customers and is a great fit to the Isabella Bank team. The Great Lakes Bay Region and Isabella Bank are fortunate to have JoAnna caring for their trust needs, stated Colby.
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It may not be public knowledge, but the Anambra State Community and Social Development Agency- Additional Financing (CSDP-AF), one of the World Bank assisted projects in the state, has empowered a lot of poor communities in the state without attracting attention to itself.

These communities, scattered across 12 local government areas of the state, are among those considered as economically vulnerable and in dire need of assistance based on the States poverty map. Shorn of basic infrastructure, the communities are almost always in struggle against need  often improvising to get round them. It took the intervention of the Agency to ease some of the pains and get the communities working again.

The areas of intervention by the Agency were as many as these communities, but vary according to their individual needs. The intervention has been mostly in health, education, environment, water, transportation, socioeconomic development etc. Every intervention made was in strict adherence to the World Bank protocol on project execution.

By the end of April this year, the Agency had completed in 53 communities over 147 micro projects out of 182 so far undertaken. The remaining 35 are at various stages of completion.

Among the benefitting communities are Enugwu Aguleri, Amanuke, Awba Ofemili, Inoma, Ndiowu, Ohita, Okpeze, Umueri, Umunankwo, Umumbo etc. Some of these communities either do not have basic infrastructure or where they do are totally in ruin. At Enugwu Aguleri for example the civic centre was in decrepit condition. The Agency had to pull it down at the request of the community and built a new one in its stead. The story is not different in all the communities mentioned above where the Agency intervened to improve the living standard of the people. The case of Amanuke was most pathetic. With its major road halved by gully erosion, access to the community became rather circuitous. A journey of an hour takes perhaps two or more to make. An improvised bridge of long stretch of woods was laid precariously across the sinkhole to ease movement. It took the construction of a feeder road and a box culvert by the Agency to stave off constant mishap on the bridge. Elsewhere the Agency provided the communities, each according to their needs, such projects like teachers quarters, water borehole, corpers lodge, rural electrification, market stalls, box culvert, retaining wall, health centre etc. No community was provided with a project outside of its choice. And no implementation was secured outside of the established protocol.

Although it is not every need of the communities as captured in their expression of interest order has been met due to time constraint and dwindling resources, but suffice it to say that the Agency board has been most diligent and resourceful. Imbued with Governor Obianos philosophy of doing more with less, the board led by the traditional ruler of Nteje, Chief Rowland Odegbo and superintended by Mr. Chudi Mojekwu applied a lot of prudence in the management of the limiting factors.

Unfazed, the management had worked round the clock to pull through the challenges posed by the Covid-19 pandemic. As a matter of fact, time and counterpart cash contributions have been the Agencys major constraints. The latter, especially has been few and far between since the pandemic and its attendant lockdown. But however the challenges and even occasional threat of nature through rain and flooding, project implementation by the Agency has been 80.8% completed. The remaining 18.1% ongoing and 1.1% yet to commence have great promise of completion.

It is fairly right to say that a lot have been achieved through the collaborative efforts of the World Bank and the Agency. First, the economies of the communities since the Agencys intervention had received a shot in the arm. Two, governance and capacity building have been strengthened within the benefitting communities as well as their social capital base. Over 2000 jobs (direct and indirect) have been created in the course of building and managing the projects. More than that, reliable data and information on the developmental needs of the benefitting communities/groups were created as were smart team of community development managers/practitioners for the state public service.

Beyond control of perennial flood menace, provision of portable water supply, building of access road, provision of conducive learning environment and health services, etc which are some of the tangible achievements, the Agency has clocked important mileage in data procurement for use in future development of the state. With the benefit of hindsight, the direct empowerment of the communities reflects the publicly acclaimed Governor Obianos model of development called community-choose-your-project. This has led to faster and more sustainable development. It can be pointed with justice that this pattern of development has not just improved efficiency and effectiveness, but it has handed the ownership of the projects to the communities. The beauty of this is that the projects are jealously guarded and any attempt at violating them vehemently resisted.

It is expected that by the time the Agency is done with implementation of its programs in the communities most of the challenges would have evaporated into a puff of illusive smoke. It is may not easily admitted, but a lot of the development programs of states do not percolate to the communities. What the Agency has done was to isolate the peculiar challenges of the focal communities and solve them. Those it could not solve due to time and resources, it has its data kept for future engagement.

It is assumed that in the next couple of weeks when the pressure of the pandemic would have subsided, implementation of the remaining projects would come through and new ones engaged. The partnership has great promise.

Ejike Anyaduba

Abatete
Kevin Hart was among the star-studded list of celebrities who signed-on to take part in the All In Challenge, a massive fundraiser to help feed Americans affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

And on Thursday, nearly two weeks after Hart's auction ended, the comedian surprised the winner of his auction with a walk-on role in his next movie.

Winner Henry Law was equally excited to learn of the news. What's more, it turns out Law is an anesthesiologist who's been on the frontlines of the COVID-19 battle.

COVID-19 crisis auction: Kevin Hart surprised Henry Law, the winner of his All In Challenge auction, during a conference call

What's more: Law's from Philadelphia and he's a big Philadelphia 76'ers fan, just like Hart.

'Henry, you will be in my next movie. Let me repeat, you will be in my next movie,' an enthusiastic Hart said when he jumped into the call.

'I'm so excited man. I'm so excited to meet you,' an equally excited Law said.

'I don't know if you heard: I live in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. My home city is Philadelphia. I go to Sixers games and see you at the courtside seats.'

Hart, 40, shared that he was happy to deliver the good news that benefits such a good cause.

'I'm a man of my word and that I'm about to make you a star, ooooh,' the comedian yelled into the camera in his trademark delivery.

Making a difference: Hart, 40, offered a walk-on role, with a speaking line, in his next movie for his All In Challenge auction

Hero: It turns out Henry Law is an anesthesiologist who's been on the frontline of the COVID-19 pandemic in Philadelphia

From the driver's seat in his car, Hart proceeded to roll off many of the perks Law will get to enjoy with his role that includes an actual speaking line in the movie, as well as a trailer, car service and five-star hotel.

During the friendly exchange, Hart said he could be the next Lenny Bruce, Denzel Washington or Macaulay Culkin.

'I'd love to be the next Ken Jeong,' he shot back with excitement and laughter, which would fall more in line with Law's back-story. Jeong actually made the transition from being a medical doctor to comedian/actor in the 1990s, which resulted in him landing parts in hit films such as Knocked Up and The Hangover.

Hart went on to thank Law for participating in the All In Challenge.

'Look this makes us friends. I can't wait,' Hart said with his infectious smile still beaming.

Inspiration: During their enthusiastic exchange, Law said he'd 'love to be the next Ken Jeong,' in reference to the actor/comedian who made the transition from medical doctor to acting

Relief effort: Hart is among the many celebrities who signed-on to the All In Challenge that's raising money to help feed Americans affected by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic

Along with his participation in the All In Challenge, Hart also donated $1 million towards the coronavirus relief effort.

Contestants in the All In Challenge can donate as little as $10 to earn a chance to win one of the fan experiences that are being offered by an array of celebrities.

Basically, the more money you donate, the better chance you have to win. The donations and experiences are available at the website: allinchallenge.com.

100% of the money raised through this game/auction will go directly to Feeding America, Meals On Wheels, World Central Kitchen and No Kid Hungry.
The country's foreign exchange reserves surged by $4.235 billion to $485.313 billion in the week to May 8 on account of rise in the foreign currency assets, according to the

In the previous week, the reserves had increased by $1.622 billion to $481.078 billion.

The reserves had touched a life-time high of $487.23 billion in the week to March 6 after rising by $5.69 billion. During 2019-20, the foreign exchange reserves had risen by almost $62 billion.

In the reporting week ended May 8, 2020, the foreign currency assets (FCA), a major component of the overall reserves, increased by $4.233 billion to $447.548 billion.

Expressed in dollar terms, the foreign currency assets include the effect of appreciation or depreciation of non-US units like euro, pound and yen held in the foreign exchange reserves.

The gold reserves rose by $13 million to $32.291 billion in the reporting week, the RBI data showed.

As at end-March, 2020, RBI held 653.01 tonnes of gold, with 360.71 tonnes being held overseas in safe custody with the Bank of England and the Bank for International Settlements, while the remaining gold is held domestically, according to the RBI's recent half yearly report on management of foreign exchange reserves for the period -October-March 2019-20.

In value terms (USD), the share of gold in the total foreign exchange reserves increased from about 6.14 per cent as at end-September 2019 to about 6.40 per cent as at end-March 2020, the report showed.

In the reporting week, the special drawing rights with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) declined by $3 million to $1.423 billion. The country's reserve position with the IMF also dipped by $8 million to $4.051 billion during the reporting week, the data showed.
Twenty-year-old Sachin Pathak, a student of Delhi University, is worried about his final-year exams in July. Reason? His phones keypad is not working. And the phone is to be shared with his siblinganother final-year student of DU. They are residents of Delhis Burari area where father works as a daily wage labourer.

I dont even have a touch-screen phone. How is it possible for me to finish my paper within two hours with such slow Internet and then look for a place where I can scan it and upload it within an hour? The cyber cafes, if open, will have a queue, Pathak, who wants to apply for jobs after getting his degree, said.

I have plans to study via correspondence and apply for jobs to support my family. If the exams are conducted online, I will not be able to score well, he added.

Hundreds of DU students like Pathak posted their concerns on social media on Friday using the hashtag #DUAgainstOnlineExams which had over 48,000 tweets till Friday evening. The Twitter storm comes a day after DU announced that it may conduct an open-book online examination for final-year students if the Covid-19 situation prevented it from holding a regular pen-and-paper examination. Using memes and video messages, students highlighted their concerns about the online open-book examination, including poor Internet connectivity, lack of access to devices, inability to download reading material, risk of impersonation, and lack of familiarity with the open-book examination mode.

While the notification released on Thursday refers to final-year students, first- and second-year students are also anxious about their mode of examination. Harsh Suri, a resident of Kashmir and a first-year student in Hindu College, said, Were stressed because there is no clarity yet. Students from Jammu and Kashmir are neither able to attend their online classes nor download 100 MB reading material on the 2G network. Even laptops dont work on 2G network and we are unable to research for our assignments. How are we supposed to give our exams? Even to tweet against the online exam took me 20 minutes.

Amal K Simon, another final-year student and a resident of Kerala, said, We dont have reading material at home and everything is in Delhi. Besides, we have never appeared for any kind of open-book test before and are not trained for it. So many of my friends from remote areas run the risk of having their job offers rescinded because they will be unable to appear for these exams.

The Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad on Friday submitted a memorandum to DU vice-chancellor asking for wider consultation with all stakeholders and recommending measures like multiple modes of examination and the promotion of intermediate students based on their earlier marks. The Vice-Chancellor was unavailable for comment.

Meanwhile, the varsitys Covid-19 task force constituted to look into academic matters during the pandemic, on Friday, wrote to all principals asking them to compile e-resources to help students. There are many students who dont have their books. So we have asked principals to identify and share e-resources which can be compiled by us and sent to students who can use them, Payal Mago, a member of the task force, said.

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Remember how President George Bush took all that flak from leftists as the flames of 9/11 destroyed the World Trade Center and damaged the Pentagon? It happened as he was by chance reading a story to schoolchildren called "My Pet Goat." He finished the story as the bad news was whispered into his ear, so as not to panic the children.

Now it's President Obama's turn, but it's a lot less innocent.

Just as unprecedented scandal over the weaponization of government is flaming out and licking ever closer to Obama, Obama and his wife Michelle decided to read kids a story, and pontificate a little, in a bid to crank up the awww factor:

According to the Daily Mail:

'Welcome to Live from the Library,' he says. 'Today we thought we'd read you a story.' 'I remember my first trip to the library and how important I felt,' Michelle adds, as an old photo of her and her brother Craig appears on the screen. 'It was around age four. My library card was a key that unlocked a world of knowledge and experiences.' 'Public libraries are essential institutions and thats why we're bring a new branch of the Chicago Public Library to the Obama Presidential Center on the South Side,' Barack adds.

This is pretty ridiculous, given the hugeness of the scandal engulfing him. Instead of hiding or fighting, he's out to change the narrative because he thinks you're stupid.

Bush, at least, had the mitigating factor of not knowing that the catastrophe was going to take place. Obama, on the other hand, seems to know very well that #ObamaGate is trending, and word is getting out about how he weaponized government to spy on and destroy an incoming administration. Instead of hide, he's going for an image makeover as Mr. Marvelous. He's using this heartstring-tugger as his means of deflecting attention from his emerging role in the scandal. After all, he has never been interested in playing Mr. Rogers for us until now.

It's nothing but a bid to spin a new narrative now that the uglier one is getting harder to avoid. Obama's out trying to deflect attention from the scandal of his spying on political opponents for political gain and hope we'll all think of him instead as #GirlDad.

It's part and parcel of how he operates. When news starts making him look unavoidably like a creep, it's time to play Family Man and go out entertaining the kids.

Sound fake? It does to us.

Image credit: YouTube screen shot.
Following the detection of its first omicron case Saturday in Haidian district of Beijing, the Chinese capital locked down certain communities and office buildings just weeks before the Winter Olympics and the Lunar New Year holiday. The city opened 30 emergency testing points in Haidian on Monday as it rushes to contain the spread

Jan 19, 2022 05:37 PM
Probusinessbanks $30 mln claim against ex-CEO of collector agency set for late June

 RAPSI, Vladimir Burnov

10:11 15/05/2020

MOSCOW, May 15 (RAPSI)  The Moscow Commercial Court on June 24 will proceed with an application lodged by Probusinessbank seeking to collect over 2 billion rubles (about $30 million at the current exchange rate) from ex-CEO of Life collector agency Sergey Kalachev sentenced earlier to 6.5 years in prison for embezzlement of the banks funds, according to court records.

The claim reached the court in January but was put on hold because of absence of certain required documents.

Yet in October 2015, the Moscow Commercial Court declared Probusinessbank, the leading financial structure of the Life Group, bankrupt, thus satisfying a claim of Russias Central Bank.

In February 2016, a court ruled to detain several Probusinessbank ex-top managers charged with embezzlement of about 2.5 billion rubles (circa $41 million) owned by the banks clients, among them former vice-president of business development of the bank Vyacheslav Kazantsev, Sergey Kalachev, Nikolay Alekseyev, Marina Krylova, and entrepreneur Oksana Kravchenko.

In April 2017, a court sentenced ex-head of corporate finances department of Probusinessbank Nikolay Alekseyev to 4 years in prison in relation to the case. His case was reviewed separately because he had admitted his guilt.

According to investigators, the defendants conspired to embezzle funds belonging to Probusinessbank. Accomplices are believed to be unidentified managers and employees of the bank. They allegedly used their office positions to enroll their subordinates, employees of the financial group Life, and heads of sham companies.

As a result, Russias Investigative Committee said, fly-by-night companies had been given clearly unrecoverable loans, which were later converted in U.S. dollars and transferred abroad. Although such loans were formally proper, the Committee noted, the documents contained false data.

In 2019, Kazantsev was sentenced to 7 years in a penal colony and fined 800,000 rubles ($13,000); Kalachev was sent behind bars for 6.5 years; ex-head of a bank department Kyrill Artemov was sentenced to 5 years in a penal colony.

Russias Deposit Insurance Agency (DIA) informed in March 2017 that inspection of Probusinessbank assets revealed a 68.5 billion rubles (about $1 billion) shortfall, which DIA sought to recover from the banks ex-managers.

According to the DIA, the banks bankruptcy examination revealed that Probusinessbank top managers funneled fluid assets out of the organization by lending companies, which did not carry on business consistent with credit levels and did not have their own property and corresponding incomes. Moreover, the bank management did not take measures to prevent the financial organizations bankruptcy.
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Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp ended mandatory shelter-at-home orders on April 30. His reasoning for doing so was based in part on the apparent decline in COVID-19 cases reported by the Georgia Department of Public Health. But was Kemp right? Was the number of COVID-19 cases in Georgia really in a decline in the days leading up to the April 30 reopening? The data Kemp consulted to make his decision show an apparent decline. But a later, more accurate picture of the situation in the state reveals something worrisome: The number of cases in Georgia was not actually declining when Kemp lifted his order. Georgia was, and still is, in a plateau-like trajectory, with cases fluctuating day to day, with no strong evidence of a systematic decline.

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To understand this gap, we must go back to April 29. On that date, case data for Georgia appears to show a peak on April 14, followed by a rapid decrease in new cases to nearly zero on April 29 (see top panel of the infographic below). However, the period between April 15 and April 29 should be treated more cautiously. We know that there are lags between infection, confirmation, and reporting. With the benefit of hindsight, we can look at the data available in this same period14 days later on May 13. As is apparent in the bottom panel of the infographic on the blue line, the case report evidence tells a very different story. New cases between April 15 and April 29 fluctuated, but the overall trend suggests COVID-19 was not declining. Instead, the number of newly recorded cases has been about the same since early April.

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There are several reasons the epidemic may appear to be declining, even when cases are steady. First, there are delays between testing and reporting due to the time it takes to transport samples and backlogs in analysis, and then the time it takes to record and report those tests to the state. Second, confirmed COVID-19 cases are usually assigned to the date of symptom onset or the date the test was performed, not the date when the results come back, which could be days to several weeks later.* This means that numbers will constantly be retroactively adjusted. And while this may be acceptable practice in the context of intervention efforts, if we dont acknowledge and account for the delay, it will provide a faulty barometer to those who want to use recent case reports as a real-time measure of the epidemic trajectory.

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One of the criteria in the Opening Up America Again guidelines issued by the White House stipulates that cases should be on a downward trajectory over a 14-day period. But this 14-day period is precisely when case numbers are underreported. The infographic shows that while new cases appeared to be falling between April 15 and April 29 when viewed on April 29, in hindsight, new reported cases were at similar levels in late April as in early April. Notably, the highest recorded number of new cases up to that point was recorded on April 27, days before reopening. It was not clear at the time it was announced that Georgia met the conditions for reopening. Today we know those conditions were not met.

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Given the characteristics of the COVID-19 pandemic, it seems clear that reopening criteria must consider the impacts of lagged data rather than treating the most current (and underreported) data as the basis for confirming a decline in cases. One way to deal with this could be to try to compare gaps in reported cases vs. final totals after reporting windows have passed. Such information could guide hindsight casting and provide improved estimates of real-time cases during reporting windows.

Moving forward, Georgia, and every other state, must prepare long-term strategies to minimize and contain the spread of COVID-19 while fostering safer economic reengagement. The vast majority of the population remains at risk of infection. Mask-wearing, strategic social distancing, approaches to test/trace/isolate, expanding testing to inform strategies, sustained public awareness campaignsall of these are approaches we need to take now.

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If decision-makers in the state of Georgia want to use evidence-based criteria to continue to reopen, they must not conflate reporting lags with actual declines to suit preferred narratives. Instead, they must deal with the evidence as it is, and use evidence-based criteria to take the necessary steps to continue to drive down cases.

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New Zealand, a country of nearly 5 million, has had multiple days of zero cases and has begun to safely reopen many sectors of its economy. Georgia, a state of over 10.5 million, has now had more than a month where cases have held steady, often with 600 to 700 reported cases a day. Furthermore, these case reports are almost certainly a significant underestimate of the true prevalence. Lets not be satisfied with a plateau. Aiming for a real zero is what matters.
KEARNEY  Six (6) new cases of COVID-19 were reported today by Two Rivers Public Health Department, increasing the total to 924 in the seven-county region it serves.

New confirmed cases include:

Buffalo County-2

Dawson County- 3

Kearney County- 1

No other new cases were reported in the Two Rivers district.

Two Rivers is reviewing and reconciling county totals to most accurately reflect current cumulative case numbers in the district. The DHHS dashboard is constructed based on the Two Rivers data set compiled through individual contact investigations. We are continuously working with DHHS to review and revise individual case numbers as they are reported to us, however duplicate tests may often not be immediately identified.
The end of college is supposed to be a blurry, bittersweet mess of memories - late nights in the library, chaotic bar crawls, teary goodbyes with friends, and finally, that pivotal moment when you walk across a stage to "Pomp and Circumstance" in a cap and gown with family members cheering you on.

But the class of 2020 didn't get the end-of-college experience they'd bargained for.

Since the pandemic took hold in the Bay Area, studying in lecture halls came to an abrupt halt as classes pivoted to online learning. Universities asked students to leave campus if possible, and friends departed without getting to say goodbye. Graduation ceremonies have either gone virtual or have been rescheduled to 2021.
HONG KONG - Jan Quinlan had been gearing up for Friday. When it arrived, the fitness instructor had her eyebrows done, put on her favorite white Alo Yoga pants and headed to the barre studio where she works.

There were free bananas with "welcome back" and a smiley face etched on their skins. Bottles of aromatherapy oil-infused rubbing alcohol. With just seven clients permitted, the studio felt more spacious. And the exercise mats were spaced exactly five feet apart.

As she sauntered around the WeBarre Hong Kong room for the first time since its mandatory shutdown six weeks earlier, Quinlan had to stop herself from touching anyone - a key part of barre, a workout inspired by ballet and Pilates in which instructors often correct clients' posture or help them with a stretch.

"You have to keep reminding yourself," said Quinlan, 32. "In some ways, it still feels like a virtual experience."

Fitness instructors are among the pioneers as people around the world begin to navigate a new normal. Life is roaring back in places such as Hong Kong - where official data show just two local cases of the novel coronavirus in four weeks - and offices, gyms, bars, beauty salons and movie theaters are reopening. Yet many restrictions remain and are likely to stay for the long haul.

While officials worldwide seek a balance between reviving their battered economies and preventing harm to public health, the experience of residents and businesses in Hong Kong over coming weeks will guide templates for the post-pandemic world.

After weeks of disruptions and huge financial losses, many here are breathing a sigh of relief as a semblance of normal life returns. Even the rules requiring people to wear masks in many establishments and a ban on groups bigger than eight seem like a decent trade-off.

"It feels like the first day of school!" Hairin Bahren, director of WeBarre Hong Kong, exclaimed to a hopeful client over the phone as the studio got back to business amid a festive atmosphere Friday.

But rules are rules. And the reality is that fitness studios are unable to get fully back on their feet owing to stringent requirements forcing people in classes to be spaced apart.

At WeBarre, government limits on class sizes mean that the over-50 classes on offer from this Wednesday are wait-listed until May 24.

Bahren said revenue had collapsed about 80 percent during the studio's shutdown, even after a shift to virtual classes conducted over the Zoom videoconferencing app.

"At some point, I was looking at the booking system and realized there was literally zero coming in," Bahren said.

A rent reduction, the relatively short duration of the closure and virtual classes have helped blunt the impact. But with restrictions still in place, demand is impossible to meet, and revenue is left behind.

The closure meant severe disruption for Quinlan, who normally teaches five classes a week and also runs WeBarre's marketing strategy. She declined to specify how much her income fell during the shutdown, but in that time, she pivoted to teaching classes virtually and offering Instagram workouts for friends around the world.

WeBarre, which has studios in Singapore and Hong Kong, continues to offer virtual classes, mainly for Singaporean clients who remain under partial lockdown.

That experience offered some new challenges, Quinlan said, including the difficulty of correcting a client's workout form when all she could see through Zoom were specific body parts.

"Usually it is usually just someone's head, or legs," she said. "Energy-wise, there's no comparison, and we feed off each other's energy."

While Hong Kong was never under a lockdown, with only certain types of businesses forced to close, Quinlan and her architect husband, Chris, decided to mark the easing of restrictions with a visit Saturday to neighborhood wine-and-small-plates bar Brut. A process of negotiation ensued over whether they should hug the owner, Camille Lisette Glass, who is also their friend and a fellow barre aficionado.

"Are you hugging?" Jan Quinlan asked Lisette Glass, her arms outstretched and face quizzical. "Or no hugging? Fist bump? Elbow bump?"

The Quinlans sat closely together on high chairs on one side of a two-foot-high Perspex divider erected on a long communal table.

The partitions, another public health measure that remains in gyms, restaurants, bars and local diners, are meant to contain the spread of infections by separating groups of people. Brut had sourced its dividers, in a purple hue, to match the industrial-chic decor.

Though the bar never had to shutter, restrictions in a small premises with just two communal tables and a long bar meant it could only seat 12 people at once, half of capacity, Lisette Glass said.

It's been a "wild few months," she said. Yet things have now spun around in the other direction; from a period with no diners and no profit, the restaurant is now teeming with customers and has a long waitlist for reservations.

"We are constantly fully booked," she said. "It is a little nerve wracking - basically everyone is descending on this city at once."

As the Quinlans ordered their wines from a dizzying array - natural, organic and a rare white blend from New Zealand among them - Lisette Glass warned that some varieties may soon disappear for months. Wines, she said, have been "flying off the shelves" while supply chains have buckled during the pandemic. She has had to order significantly more than usual.

Glass said that Hong Kong restaurants like hers are lucky they never had to fully shutter, unlike bars that only serve drinks, and that restrictions were eased after a month and a half.

But managing demand is a new challenge.

"You are going to see an expansion of businesses all over the city, but I think the key is whether this will be sustained," she added.

After months of working from their 300-square-foot apartment, Chris Quinlan is venturing back to the offices of HOK, an American architecture firm that employs some 70 people in Hong Kong. When his wife taught virtual barre classes, he said, he was relegated to a small stool, the only option for a home office. Propped up against their closet, it did have some back support, he mused.

His firm separated interior designers and architects into teams to reduce the risk of infections, only letting one group come into the office at a time. This week, employees can spend three days in the office, and the company will phase out working from home by the time schools reopen on May 27.

Chris, 31, said he had missed the separation between home and work time, and enjoys the camaraderie of being back in the office despite having to contend with crowded subways and a daily temperature-taking ritual before entering the building. Zoom calls have become part and parcel of business.

Other routines remain on hold, such as business trips, or visits back to see his family, who live outside Chicago.

The Quinlans married in November but have not had a chance to celebrate their honeymoon, which also seems like a dim prospect. Jan's family in London is not expecting her to visit soon, either.

"The reality is that everything is on hold," Chris said. "But we are just lucky that because most of us in Hong Kong played by the rules, we can enjoy some kind of normal life now."

But as thousands cram into Hong Kong's nightlife districts, experts are urging vigilance. With two new cases announced Wednesday without a clear source of infection, can the city avoid the pitfalls of cities where officials may have eased up too soon?

"The virus will not stay out of Hong Kong, it will find a way to get back in," said Ben Cowling, an epidemiologist at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health. "It doesn't make sense to keep the social distancing measures indefinitely, but we should certainly be prepared to bring them back."
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Micro Mobile Data Center Market 2020 Global Industry research report explores analysis of historical data along with size, share, growth, demand, revenue and forecast of the global Micro Mobile Data Center and estimates the future trend of market on the basis of this detailed study. The study shares market performance both in terms of volume and revenue and this factor which is useful & helpful to the business.

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Developing countries in the Europe are expected to project a huge market opportunity for malware analysis vendors. The increasing vulnerabilities, advancements in digital transformation, and others are making a substantial impact on the malware analysis market. The cyber attackers are finding new ways of attacking systems by enhancing their attack capabilities, resulting in increased sophistication of malware attacks, which is a crucial factor driving.

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The threat of massive automated malware creation along with enhancement in obfuscation techniques could considerably reduce the percentage of sample information that can be analyzed by security firms. Thus, the constant change in the attack behavior has resulted in the adoption of a more comprehensive and vigilant malware analysis tool by the enterprises. Such factors are likely to drive the malware analysis market.

Europe malware analysis market is expected to grow at a good CAGR during the forecast period. However, with the increasing adoption of digital technologies such as IoT, Big Data, and AI, throughout business as well as society at large, the growing connectivity of everything has created challenges in terms of compliance, security, and data protection. Thus, addressing new malware trends is propelling the adoption of malware analysis tools driving the malware analysis market.

Europe Malware Analysis MarketSegmentation

Europe Malware Analysis Market By Component

Solution

Service

Europe Malware Analysis Market By Organization Size

SMEs

Large Enterprise

Europe Malware Analysis Market By Deployment

On-Premise

Cloud-Based

Europe Malware Analysis Market By Industry Vertical

BFSI

Government

Healthcare

IT and Telecom

Manufacturing

Others

Europe Malware analysis Market By Country

Germany

UK

France

Italy

Russia

Rest of Europe

Europe Malware analysis Market-Companies Mentioned

AT&T Inc

AO Kaspersky Lab

Broadcom, Inc

Cisco Systems, Inc

CrowdStrike, Inc

FireEye, Inc

Fortinet, Inc

Palo Alto Networks, In

Qualys, Inc

Trend Micro Incorporated

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Hospital admissions for coronavirus have halved since the pandemic's peak, the head of the NHS reveals today.

Writing exclusively in the Daily Mail, Simon Stevens says the fall in demand means the sick should not delay in seeking help for other illnesses.

Hospital staff are treating just over 9,000 patients a day in England  down from 19,000 a few weeks ago. Admissions are now falling by around 2,000 a week.

Sir Simon says we are 'not yet out of the woods' but that hard work, careful preparation and the public's own actions have ensured the NHS has not been overwhelmed by the biggest challenge in its 71-year history.

He says 'we want to see the NHS returning to business as usual' and that people suffering with non-Covid conditions should seek help and 'don't delay'.

However, he sounds a warning on drunk and disorderly behaviour, saying A&E admissions for alcohol intoxication have plunged during the crisis  and no one wants to see those return.

In other developments to the coronavirus crisis today:

Liverpool became the first English city to refuse to return children to school next month as the Government faced a growing row over its plan to restart lessons;

Sadiq Khan was accused of risking lives and forcing people on to the Tube where social distancing is 'impossible' because of a lack of trains after he brought back the central London congestion charge from Monday;

Just 1,500 coronavirus contact tracers had been appointed by the start of this week, a Cabinet minister admitted - despite the government promising to have 18,000 recruited by mid-May;

Number 10 admitted lockdowns could be eased on a region-by-region basis, on the back of promising data that suggested just 24 people a day are being struck down with the coronavirus in London;

Africa will escape a huge death toll from COVID-19 because its population is young and fit - but one in five people on the continent will still catch the coronavirus, the World Health Organisation predicted;

Hopes a coronavirus cure could be on the horizon were raised after an experimental Oxford University jab showed promising signs in trials on monkeys;

Coronavirus has tipped Germany into a recession, with the country suffering its steepest quarterly contraction in more than a decade official data showed.

Hospital staff are treating just over 9,000 patients a day in England  down from 19,000 a few weeks ago according to official figures. Admissions are now falling by around 2,000 a week. Pictured: Paramedics take a patient into St Thomas' Hospital, London

Sir Simon Stevens has sounded a warning on drunk and disorderly behaviour, saying A&E admissions for alcohol intoxication have plunged during the crisis  and no one wants to see those return

The virus death toll rose by 384 to 33,998 yesterday. But Health Secretary Matt Hancock said the number of deaths was 'falling each day in all settings'. He said the UK was past the peak with two thirds of care homes now reporting no cases.

The numbers in hospital with Covid-19 are 13 per cent lower than this time last week, he added. Experts agree there has been a clear decline in fatalities when compared with 626 daily deaths a week ago and 1,152 five weeks ago.

The trend is encouraging for plans for a phased return to school after the summer half term, although Mr Hancock acknowledged it will be 'an incredible challenge'.

And there was less encouraging news yesterday over the so-called R-Rate, which tracks the rate of onward infection of the virus.

This 'R number'  the average number of people infected by someone with the virus  has crept up in the past week to range between 0.7 and 1.0. Anything above 1.0 threatens another surge in cases.

Doctors have warned that heavy drinking is 'crippling' the NHS, with nearly 1.3million patients admitted to hospital as a result of alcohol in England in 2018/19.

Mr Stevens says the public should take the opportunity to reflect on how this could be maintained as a positive legacy of lockdown. 'When pubs and clubs reopen, nobody wants to go back to drunk and disorderly behaviour swelling the numbers at busy A&Es,' he adds.

'We owe it to all those who have given so much in the fight against Covid-19 to ensure that we build an even better, stronger and agile NHS for the future.'

And, on other illnesses, he adds: 'If you do need help, don't delay. Please help us to help you. Whether you are a worried parent of a sick child, or you or loved one have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke.'

He vows that the NHS will 'be moving heaven and earth' to restart vital services for patients who need support. Routine operations will resume but patients and families will be asked to isolate for 14 days first.

Let's not go back to A&Es filled up by drunks when the pubs open, writes NHS Chief Executive SIMON STEVENS

The coronavirus pandemic has tested the NHS and its staff in a way not seen before in its 71-year history. At the peak of this outbreak, hospitals in England were treating around 19,000 patients a day with Covid-19, a virus unknown just a few short months ago.

That has been falling by up to 2,000 patients a week and is now at just over 9,000. But we are not out of the woods and have a difficult path ahead. Continued vigilance will be vital.

However, the NHS has so far risen to the challenge. Thanks to hard work and careful preparation and the publics own action we did not see the health service overwhelmed as happened in some other countries  and as many had predicted would happen here.

And while in the past some have accused the NHS of being inflexible and monolithic, when the virus struck, our nurses, doctors, therapists, engineers, scientists and countless other staff rolled up their sleeves and set about transforming care in a way unimaginable at the start of the year.

'The coronavirus pandemic has tested the NHS and its staff in a way not seen before in its 71-year history. At the peak of this outbreak, hospitals in England were treating around 19,000 patients a day with Covid-19, a virus unknown just a few short months ago,' says Sir Simon Stevens

Hospitals were redesigned to double critical care capacity, with operating theatres and recovery bays repurposed to provide ventilators for the sickest patients with coronavirus.

Barriers between NHS hospital and community services have been erased, and specialist mental health crisis services created.

Local councils, care providers, the Armed Forces, the private sector and volunteers have all pitched in as part of the truly national effort to tackle coronavirus.

Specialist nurses, GPs, local authority public health infection control experts and others are rightly now supporting the nations care homes, which have historically operated independently of the NHS.

And contrary to some commentary, the number of patients discharged from hospitals to care homes each day actually went down, as expanded community services rose to the challenge.

Remote consultations have proved a crucial way of keeping patients and staff safe, and plans to roll them out across the NHS have been achieved in weeks rather than years.

GPs have switched from conducting around nine out of 10 consultations in person to managing more than four out of five remotely. Remote consultations should never replace face-to-face appointments for those who want them but are a useful option for providing convenient and timely care for many.

Hospitals were redesigned to double critical care capacity, with operating theatres and recovery bays repurposed to provide ventilators for the sickest patients with coronavirus

This formidable can do spirit will only be more important in the months and years ahead.

I have personally experienced the way this virus can leave you flat on your back and, thankfully, was among the majority who got through it.

But the tragic truth is that for many, that has not been the outcome. Indeed, my family has sadly lost two people close to us through this terrible virus.

Scientists and clinicians are still working to understand the virus but one thing is now clear: Covid does not hit us all equally. Age, ethnicity and inequality all compound the risk.

And underlying health risks such as obesity dramatically magnify the danger. So one of the legacies of this emergency must be that the NHS  along with wider society  redoubles its efforts to help people live healthier, long lives.

Helping patients who have survived will be a huge job. The first Seacole centre, providing rehabilitation services for those who have had the virus, opened a fortnight to go and we will need more of this.

The health service must also remain able to respond to any future Covid flare-ups. This means keeping at least some of the amazing Nightingale hospitals in reserve, as well as extra hospital and community services. The new NHS partnership with independent hospitals is also continuing to provide extra beds, staff, operating theatres and equipment.

Even then, resuming non-urgent services paused while we dealt with the coronavirus peak will be a challenge.

Patients and their families will need to play their part by isolating for two weeks before an operation.

The Government is working hard to get NHS staff the personal protective equipment (PPE) that they need, and demand for masks, gowns and aprons will go up as we see more patients return for treatment.

So I would like to once again thank on behalf of the whole NHS the generous Daily Mail readers and Mail Force donors who have provided extra kit for colleagues on the health and social care frontline.

This very practical expression of public support for our staff has been hugely welcome everywhere it has been received.

Since the foundation of the NHS in 1948 staff and patients have benefited from the support of volunteers and philanthropists, and the Mail Force campaign upholds that fine tradition.

We know that some people have been deterred from seeking help by fears over coronavirus or because they did not want to be a burden at a busy time.

A&E visits for alcohol intoxication fell by 59 per cent last month. We should reflect on how that could be maintained in the future. When pubs and clubs reopen, nobody wants to go back to drunk and disorderly behaviour swelling the numbers at busy A&Es

Our message to Daily Mail readers today is: If you do need help, dont delay. Please help us to help you.

Whether you are a worried parent of a sick child, or you or a loved one have symptoms of a heart attack or stroke, seek help as you always would. Not coming forward can have serious consequences  now or in the future.

That also applies to those with cancer worries. The NHS has treated as many cancer patients as possible where it has been safe to do so and these numbers will rise as the virus recedes.

But we know from staff on the frontline that far fewer people came forward for cancer checks last month.

While urgent cancer referrals are now picking back up  having doubled over the past three weeks  catching cancers early makes them easier to treat and saves lives.

Over the coming months, the NHS will be moving Heaven and Earth to restart services for patients who need this support.

While we want to see the NHS returning to business as usual there are some changes that patients and staff will welcome.

A&E visits for alcohol intoxication fell by 59 per cent last month. We should reflect on how that could be maintained in the future. When pubs and clubs reopen, nobody wants to go back to drunk and disorderly behaviour swelling the numbers at busy A&Es.

The entire country has mobilised to deal with coronavirus in a way not seen since the Second World War. The NHS was born out of the sacrifice of that conflict.

We owe it to all those who have given so much in the fight against Covid-19 to ensure that we build an even better, stronger and agile NHS for the future.

SAGE reveals dreaded R0 infection rate is rising again to almost one - on the same day officials announced lowest weekly death total since the end of March with 384 more victims

BySam Blanchard Senior Health Reporter For Mailonlineand Connor Boyd Health Reporter For Mailonline

Britain's crucial coronavirus reproduction rate has crept up to the point where the outbreak could spiral back out of control, government scientists today warned - on the same day officials announced the lowest weekly death toll since the end of March, with just 384 more victims.

Experts sitting on Number 10's SAGE panel saying the reproduction rate - known as the R - has risen to somewhere between 0.7 and 1 after officials claimed it was between 0.5 and 0.9 last week.

Officials must keep the number below 1 - meaning each patient infects one other person - otherwise the outbreak will start to grow again.

However, the latest data is three weeks out of date due to a lag in the government's mathematical modelling. The new number does not factor in the slight relaxation of Britain's lockdown measures, announced by Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Sunday.

The virus is still believed to be spreading faster in care homes than in the general community, and the peak of residents' deaths caused by COVID-19 appears to have peaked later than it did in hospitals, suggesting they will continue for longer.

The R is calculated by working out how fast the virus spreads by comparing data including hospital admissions, the number of patients in intensive care, death statistics and surveys to find out how many people members of the public are coming into contact with.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock said in today's Downing Street briefing: 'We're constantly keeping the R under review and it is one of our five tests... we don't think it's above 1, we think it's in a range, so it still meets that test.'

He said the R was an 'incredibly important data point' but was not the only thing politicians were considering as they ease the lockdown. He said a change in the range was 'important to look at' but officials were not re-thinking their decision to start easing lockdown. Dr Jenny Harries, deputy chief medical officer, added that the real goal was to get the number of cases down, and the R was one of a number of ways to track this.

People are pictured exercising in Battersea Park, London, as the Government now allows members of the public to exercise outdoors as often and for as long as they want

Socially-distanced groups of people are seen enjoying their newfound freedoms near Tower Bridge, London, after Prime Minister Boris Johnson loosened lockdown rules this week

The chair of a Parliamentary science committee, Greg Clark MP, said officials should not focus too much on the R and should look at the wider picture. He said: 'It's not clear how the R rate in care homes is relevant to the R rates of people going about their daily business,' adding that the government's figure was clearly skewed by faster transmission in hospitals and nursing homes.

Official Department of Health statistics released today show 33,998 people have died since the outbreak began, meaning today's count marks the lowest seven-day total (2,757) since the week ending Friday, March 27. But other grim projections estimate the real toll could be upwards of 50,000.

It comes as data from the University of Cambridge and Public Health England has suggested that around 12 per cent of all people in England - 6.6million - have had the virus already.

It also estimated that only 24 people are catching the life-threatening illness in London every day, but government scientists are understood to be sceptical that the number of new infections is that low.

WHAT IS THE R, AND HOW DOES THE GOVERNMENT ESTIMATE IT? Every infectious disease is given a reproduction number, which is known as R0 - pronounced 'R nought' - or simply R. It is a value that represents how many people one sick person will, on average, infect if the virus is reproducing in its ideal conditions. The value has been estimated by the Government's Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). They assess data from hospitalisations, intensive care demand, deaths and the number of social contacts people have. Experts use multiple sources to get this information, including NHS hospital admissions, Office for National Statistics and CQC death figures and behavioural contact surveys. Using mathematical modelling, they are able to calculate the virus' spread. But a lag in the time it takes for coronavirus patients to fall unwell and die mean the R modelling is always roughly three weeks behind. Most epidemiologists - scientists who track disease outbreaks - believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, has an R value of around 3. But some experts analysing outbreaks across the world have estimated it could be closer to the 6.6 mark. As an outbreak goes on, the R0 may be referred to more accurately as Re or just R, as other factors come into play to influence how well it is able to spread. Estimates of the COVID-19 R vary because the true size of the pandemic remains a mystery, and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment. As an outbreak progress the R may simply be referred to as R, which means the effective rate of infection - the nought works on the premise that nobody in the population is protected, which becomes outdated as more people recover. Advertisement

Separate statistics published today by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that the coronavirus - which some scientists believe has been spreading in Britain since January - killed more people than cancer, dementia and heart disease combined in April, resulting in the deaths of 27,764 people.

The government's Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M) has this week decided it thinks the R is between 0.7 and 1 by looking at hospitalisation and death rates, among other data.

An R number of 1 means that on average every person who is infected will infect 1 other person, meaning the total number of new infections is stable. If it is higher, the virus spreads faster and, if lower, the outbreak shrinks.

SAGE is confident that the number of infections is not increasing, and is very likely to be decreasing.

Sir Patrick Vallance, chief scientific adviser to the Government, said: 'R is one of the important things you can track to understand an epidemic. If you can estimate R, then you have part of a reliable tool for planning how to combat the virus.

'If the R is higher than one that means this disease is growing exponentially and will keep on spreading to more and more people. To keep R below one and control the virus, it is vital that people stay alert and continue to follow the latest Government guidelines to the letter. In the coming weeks we will update this estimate regularly.'

NHS England today announced that 186 more people had died in its hospitals with the coronavirus, including a 15-year-old.

The 15-year-old has become the 13th person under the age of 20 to die in an NHS hospital since the outbreak began.

The oldest patient in today's statistics was 99 years old and 10 of them, aged between 30 and 94, had been healthy before they was diagnosed with the virus.

All the patients confirmed today had died since April 10.

Scotland announced 46 more people had died in its hospitals, along with 15 in Northern Ireland and nine in Wales.

Almost 230,000 people have been officially diagnosed with the viral disease but the true scale of Britain's outbreak is considerably larger, with government officials suggesting up to 6.6million are likely to have caught it in England alone.

An analysis by Cambridge University and Public Health England (PHE) suggested the disease could be eradicated in the capital within weeks at the current rate of transmission.

And their data - which was fed into No 10's scientific panel, SAGE - estimated up to 20 per cent of Londoners have already been infected. The rate across England is thought to be around 12 per cent.

But the same data also showed the crucial R rate - the average number of people an infected patient passes the virus on to - in London, as well as every other region had already fallen before lockdown on March 23.

People are now allowed to spend as much time outdoors as they want, but must stay at least 2m (6'6") away from anyone they don't live with (Pictured: Dog-walkers in Clapham, south London, today)

An analysis by Cambridge University and Public Health England (PHE) suggested the disease could be eradicated in the capital within weeks at the current rate of transmission (pictured: people at Potters Field near Tower Bridge today)

It suggested the government's social distancing measures introduced a week before, which saw public transport use plummet and millions of Brits work from home instead of risk travelling, slowed the crisis.

The Cambridge-PHE data prompted some MPs to urge the government to commit to lifting lockdown on a region-by-region basis, with one urging ministers to consider it because 'it makes sense from a health perspective'.

The Cambridge team estimated that 1.8million people in London (20 per cent) have already had coronavirus.

They claimed between 10 and 53 people in the capital caught the virus on May 10, the day Boris Johnson announced a slight relaxation of some lockdown rules. The forecast also predicted it would have dropped to below 10 by today but that did not take into account the relaxation.

At the peak of the capital's crisis - calculated to be on the same day lockdown was announced - 213,000 are thought to have caught the infection.

Data shows COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered in London before lockdown was introduced, and it suggested that social distancing measures introduced the week before worked, with millions of Londoners avoiding public transport and opting to work from home. This graph shows the number of daily deaths recorded in NHS hospitals in London (red bars) against the estimated R rate (blue line)

At the peak of the capital's crisis - calculated to be on the same day lockdown was announced - 213,000 are thought to have caught the infection (pictured: Londoners enjoying the sunshine at Clapham Common Park this afternoon)

At the start of the outbreak London was the worst affected part of the UK but the latest numbers suggest it is now ahead of every other area in terms of recovery (pictured: people walking at Potters Field near Tower Bridge today)

The data also broke down the 'attack rate' - the number of people infected in total - for each of the regions in England, saying that around 12 per cent of England had caught the virus in total. They say London has been the hardest-hit region, with around 20 per cent of the capital having caught the disease since Britain's outbreak began to spiral out of control, followed by the North West (14 per cent). In the Midlands and the North East and Yorkshire, the rate is estimated to be 11 per cent. While the team say around one in ten people in the East of England have already had COVID-19. The rate is just 8 per cent in the South East and even lower (5 per cent) in the South West

It calculated that the crucial 'R' reproduction rate has fallen to just 0.4 in the capital, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days.

LOCKDOWN 'COULD BE EASED REGIONALLY' AS DATA SHOWS 24 PEOPLE A DAY CATCHING VIRUS IN LONDON Lockdowns could be eased regionally, Number 10 today admitted on the back of promising data that suggested just 24 people a day are being struck down with the coronavirus in London. Downing Street's official spokesperson revealed some of the government's strict measures to curb the spread of COVID-19 could be eased 'at different rates in different parts of the country'. It comes after an analysis conducted by Cambridge University and Public Health England (PHE) experts suggested the disease could be eradicated in the capital within weeks at the current rate of transmission. And the data - which was fed into No 10's scientific panel SAGE - estimated up to 20 per cent of Londoners have already been infected. The rate across England is thought to be around 12 per cent. But the same data also showed the crucial R rate - the average number of people an infected patient passes the virus on to - in London, as well as every other region had already fallen before lockdown on March 23. It suggested the government's social distancing measures introduced a week before, which saw public transport use plummet and millions of Brits work from home instead of risk travelling, slowed the crisis. The Cambridge-PHE data prompted some MPs to urge the government to commit to lifting lockdown on a region-by-region basis, with one urging ministers to consider it because 'it makes sense from a health perspective'. In response to the speculation, Number 10's official spokesperson said: 'The roadmap that we set out does talk about the fact that we will be responsive to local infection rates and to the other data which is available and that it could lead to some of the measures being eased at different rates in different parts of the country and at the same time it could lead to some measures being re-imposed in different parts of the country but not others.' Leading scientists today described the study - based on death data from PHE, NHS England and regional health officials - as 'robust' but admitted any projections for the future are likely to rise drastically because the current model does not take into account the government's decision to slightly ease the lockdown last Sunday. One epidemiologist argued it was 'extremely unlikely' the number of new cases in London - the hardest-hit part of England - had dropped to as low as 24 and another called for officials to be transparent with the data, arguing it was 'not clear' from the available documents how the group had come to their estimates. Downing Street was today told to ditch its 'we-know-best attitude' and publish more secret evidence underpinning its coronavirus response, with the data being released by Cambridge and not PHE. Number 10 has been repeatedly criticised over the course of the COVID-19 outbreak over an apparent reluctance to release the scientific evidence its experts have provided. Conservative MPs today questioned what other vital information was being kept secret as they demanded a change in tack. Advertisement

Meanwhile, the team's modelling shows only one death occurs in every 160 cases - giving it an infection-fatality rate of around 0.63 per cent. This suggests at the current rate, London's daily death toll would have dropped to a consistent level of zero in three weeks.

Three weeks is how long it can take for a COVID-19 patient to be diagnosed, their condition to become deadly and their death to be recorded.

At the start of the outbreak London was the worst affected part of the UK but the latest numbers suggest it is now ahead of every other area in terms of recovery. In contrast, the North East of England is recording 4,000 daily infections and has an R rate of 0.8, twice that of the capital.

The data - given to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza sub-group on Modelling - suggested COVID-19 kills around 0.63 per cent of people it infects - a similar figure to other estimates from around the world, which would make it around six times deadlier than seasonal flu. But they admitted it could be as low as 0.49 or as high as 0.81 per cent.

The Cambridge-PHE study showed a huge variation between different age groups, warning the virus has an infection-fatality rate of around 16 per cent for over-75s but it is below 0.018 per cent for anyone under the age of 44 - the equivalent of one death for every 10,000 cases.

For people between the ages of 45 and 64, the team said the death rate was around 0.28 per cent while the rate was approximately 1.8 per cent for people aged between 65 and 74.

The data also broke down the 'attack rate' - the number of people infected in total - for each of the regions in England, estimating around 12 per cent of England had caught the virus in total.

They say London has been the hardest-hit region, with around 20 per cent of the capital having caught the disease since Britain's outbreak began to spiral out of control, followed by the North West (14 per cent).

In the Midlands and the North East and Yorkshire, the rate is estimated to be 11 per cent. While the team say around one in ten people in the East of England have already had COVID-19. The rate is just 8 per cent in the South East and even lower (5 per cent) in the South West.

The report also delved into the crucial R rate of each region. It is vital that the number - which is thought to have been between 3.5 and 4 at the start of the crisis - stays below one, otherwise the outbreak will start to rapidly spiral again as people infect others around them at a faster rate.

Other data published yesterday, by the Office for National Statistics, saw officials estimate that around 148,000 people currently have the coronavirus in Britain.

The first round of random public testing identified only 33 positive cases of COVID-19 out of a sample of 10,705 people and estimated a national infection level of 0.27 per cent - one in every 370 people.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, said at yesterday's Downing Street briefing that the data represented 'really quite a low level of infection' in the community.

This suggests that 148,000 people had the virus at any given time between April 27 and May 10, that figure being the middle estimate between a low of 94,000 and high of 222,000. During that time 66,343 people were officially diagnosed.

The data covers only a two-week window does not account for how many people may have had the virus and recovered since the outbreak began.

It found the rate of infection is six times higher in healthcare workers and carers than it is in the general population, the survey found.

While 1.33 per cent of people who worked in patient-facing roles in hospitals or homes tested positive for the virus, only 0.22 per cent of those with other jobs did so.

The coronavirus is infecting people twice as fast in the North East of England than it is in London, real-time tracking of the reproductive 'R' rating shows

VACCINE HOPE AS TRIALS SHOW SUCCESS IN MONKEYS Hopes a coronavirus cure could be on the horizon were raised today after a vaccine developed in Britain showed promising signs in trials on monkeys. The University of Oxford's experimental jab strengthened the immune system in six rhesus macaques without causing any side effects. Within 28 days of being vaccinated, all of the animals had COVID-19 antibodies - produced by the body to give it some immunity from the virus. Researchers said the primates were able to fight off the virus before it penetrated deep into their lungs, where it can become deadly. The promising results come as human trials of the Oxford University vaccine are already underway, with results expected in a month's time. Scientists commenting on the study have described the findings as 'very encouraging', but warn it does not guarantee the same results in humans. They found a single vaccination dose was also effective in preventing damage to the lungs in the study on monkeys and mice. Some of the animals showed antibodies to the virus within two weeks, but all of them had the virus-fighting molecules within 28 days. The researchers found viral loads in the lower respiratory system were significantly reduced in the animals given the vaccine. Advertisement

The numbers announced did not include anyone who was tested in a care home or a hospital, where the statisticians said 'rates of COVID-19 infection are likely to be higher'.

Most official testing, which has picked up a total of 233,151 positive cases over the entire outbreak is being done in hospitals and care homes.

ONS data is soon expected to publish antibody data showing how many people have had the infection already but does not currently have enough data for a reliable estimate.

The current survey, of which this is the first set of data, will be ongoing as part of the government's 'test, track and trace' plan for getting out of lockdown and will be expanded to regular testing in more than 10,000 households.

How deadly the virus really is remains unknown but it is killing huge numbers of people with other health problems such as diabetes, high blood pressure and dementia.

Office for National Statistics data today showed that COVID-19 has become the leading cause of death in England and Wales, killing people at almost triple the rate of dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

In England in April it killed 587 in every 100,000 people, compared to 209 per 100,000 for dementia and 85 for heart disease.

The virus, which causes pneumonia, has killed more people in just two months than long-term lung diseases did in the entire of 2018, the ONS said.

The ONS's data shows that 33,841 people died with the coronavirus between March 1 and April 30 in England and Wales.

Of those patients, 95 per cent (32,143) were killed directly by the virus, it said, which was on par with the total number of deaths from long-term lung disease - such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) - in the whole of 2018.

In a normal year, dementia and Alzheimer's disease are the leading cause of death in England and Wales, accounting for around one in every seven fatalities (12.8 per cent).

Dementia killed 69,748 people in 2018, according to past statistics from the ONS, and COVID-19 has killed almost half as many people in just two months.

One in five of the COVID-19 victims in March and April (6,887) also had dementia or Alzheimer's disease, showing how the virus is most devastating for the elderly and vulnerable.

This has been most noticeable in the nation's care homes, which care for around 400,000 people, approximately three quarters of whom have dementia.

More than a quarter of people to have died in care homes since the beginning of March - 12,526 out of 45,899 - have been linked to the coronavirus.

Even the numbers of people dying without the virus have been pushed up as a result of the pandemic, the ONS figures show.

The Office for National Statistics today revealed that COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in England and Wales in April by a considerable margin - it killed people at almost three times the rate of dementia and Alzheimer's disease

For example the number of 'other deaths excluding COVID-19' in care homes more than doubled on April 11 to 807 from 375 on the same day last year, with 437 coronavirus deaths on top of those.

Sally Warren, director of policy at The Kings Fund health think-tank, said: 'The data indicates the grim toll the pandemic has taken on people living in care homes, revealing a 46 per cent increase in the total number of deaths amongst care home residents in England and Wales compared to the same period last year.

'Whilst we cant yet fully understand all the factors at play, this is yet another worrying finding that should keep our attention firmly on the crisis in our care homes.'

The virus appears to have almost doubled the risk of dying for people living with dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

The ONS report said: 'Compared with the five-year average, the rate of deaths due to dementia and Alzheimer's disease was significantly higher in April 2020, at 208.9 deaths per 100,000 persons compared with 113.8 deaths per 100,000 persons for the five-year average.'

Fiona Carragher, director of research at the Alzheimers Society, said: 'These are horrifying figures for anyone with a loved one with dementia, and show for the first time the true toll of coronavirus.

'Dementia is now the main underlying condition for COVID-19 deaths, accounting for one in five of total deaths.

'And beyond COVID-19, people have been dying from dementia at almost twice the usual rate.

'Right from the start, action to address the challenge has been too slow  and our research this week has found many care homes are still struggling, with over 40 per cent still not confident in their PPE supply.

'We need an urgent plan from Government to guarantee safety and support in care homes, and ministers must now look at long term support for people with dementia living at home, and tackle isolation from friends and families.'People with dementia are dying in unprecedented numbers, the Government must step in right now to prevent further tragedy.'
DACA recipient college students are now in limbo following the pronouncement that they do not qualify for the Education Department relief package, according to a recently published article.

What is DACA?

DACA means Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals and it was created during the administration of former President Barrack Obama. They exist is to protect children of undocumented immigrants from deportation.

This program also helps the DACA recipients to have jobs in the country. However, this program is now on the edge of possibly being terminated. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument regarding the legality of the program.

DACA Recipient College Students Do Not Qualify for a Relief Package

The federal government has allotted an amount of $6 billion to colleges and universities that will be distributed to students who were negatively impacted by the global pandemic. The distribution of education relief was done last month.

The fund was part of the CARES Act that was signed into law by Pres. Trump in March this year. However, many DACA students do not qualify to receive financial aid. In a FAQ released by the Education Department, it says that only students who are eligible for federal financial aid can receive the CARES Act funding.

One of the affected is the California Community Colleges which is consists of 115 colleges and the largest education system in the country that serves an estimated 70,000 undocumented students in which many of them are under the DACA program.

Eloy Ortiz Oakley, California Community Colleges Chancellor, said in another report: "The Department of Education ignored the intent of the CARES Act to give local colleges discretion to aid students most affected by the pandemic, and instead has arbitrarily excluded as many as 800,000 community college students."

She also mentioned: "Among those harmed are veterans, citizens who have not completed a federal financial aid application, and non-citizens, including those with DACA status."

Moreover, the news release also added that students without a high school diploma or GED, and students who are still in high school do not qualify for education relief as well.

California Community Colleges Filed a Lawsuit

There were many instances in the past where there was an attempt to terminate the program. This time, the California Community Colleges filed a lawsuit to the Education Department Secretary Betsy DeVos over the implementation of the education financial relief.

Additionally, the three Democratic lawmakers wrote a letter to Secretary DeVos urging her to change the guidelines which for them is harmful, unauthorized, and significantly restricts the flexibility of the emergency relief to the students.

Sen. Patty Murray said in a report: "Secretary DeVos pushing DACA recipients, undocumented students, and other vulnerable students out of needed relief from the CARES Act is cruel. This virus doesn't discriminate when it comes to the students who are impacted, and our response absolutely shouldn't either."

Meanwhile, the Education Department did not give any comments about the litigation. The Education Department spokeswoman Angela Morabito instead said: "The CARES Act clearly ties eligibility for this funding to Title IV eligibility. Congress could have chosen to include DACA students and other foreign nationals in the legislation, or granted the Department the authority to send this money to noncitizens, but they did neither of those things."

Read related articles:
Blake David Taylor/iStockBy BRANDON BAUER, ABC NEWS



(NEW YORK) -- Documents show that Gregory McMichael's law enforcement certification was suspended and his firearm was taken away in February 2019 due to repeatedly failing to take mandatory training, one year before the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.



He retired a few months later in June 2019.



McMichael, and his adult son, Travis, were arrested on May 7 and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the Feb. 23 shooting death of Arbery, who was jogging in his Satilla Shores, Georgia, neighborhood when confronted by the two men. The arrest came soon after a video showing the fatal confrontation went viral.



This suspension is outlined in Gregory McMichael's personnel records, obtained by ABC News, from his time working in Glynn County, Georgia, as a police officer and investigator in the district attorney's office.



In February 2019, the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) issued McMichael a suspension order for "failure to maintain training for the year 2018." At that point McMichael lost his powers of arrest.



In a "Memorandum of Understanding" signed by McMichael, his boss at the time, District Attorney Jackie Johnson, wrote that McMichael "will not engage in any activity that would be construed as being law enforcement in nature," and, "To that end, Mr. McMichael will not carry a firearm or badge, nor will he operate any vehicle in the motor pool outfitted with lights, siren or police radio equipment."



McMichael previously received a warning in 2014 after failing to finish mandatory firearms and use-of-force courses, and the documents show McMichael repeatedly failed to complete training over the course of several years.



"This situation has been a great embarrassment to me and to Investigator McMichael," Johnson wrote in a 2014 letter to the Georgia POST director. "It has negatively impacted my office, and I have taken measures to ensure that it doesn't happen again."



The personnel records were first obtained by Jacksonville, Florida, TV station WJXT.



McMichael was also suspended in 2006 for an undisclosed infraction. He was hired in July 1982 and worked on the force for 37 years.



He explained his deficient hours in an application where he asked for a training waiver. McMichael explained that he suffered a heart attack in 2006, and dealt with clinical depression for which he needed medical treatment.



In 2009, McMichael and his wife filed for bankruptcy "due to overwhelming medical bills from my surgeries as well as bills from my wife's cancer treatment," according to the waiver. McMichael also stated they were having issues with his daughter that year and that he suffered a second heart attack.



ABC News has reached out to Laura and Frank Hogue, the lawyers representing McMichael, about the suspension, but have not received comment.



The husband and wife team representing McMichael said in a statement Thursday that the public had rushed to judge their client.



"So often the public accepts a narrative driven by an incomplete set of facts, one that vilifies a good person, based on a rush to judgment, which has happened in this case," Laura Hogue said in a statement.



"While the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a tragedy, causing deep grief to his family -- a tragedy that at first appears to many to fit into a terrible pattern in American life -- this case does not fit that pattern," Frank Hogue added. "The full story, to be revealed in time, will tell the truth about this case."



His lawyers will hold a press conference on Friday, and will petition a judge to allow McMichael to be released on bail.



He and his son are currently being held at the Glynn County Detention Center.



Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
he Dormaa Central Municipal Assembly, under the supervision of its Environmental Health Office has relocated greater number of traders at the weekly Tuesday Market at Dormaa-Ahenkro in the Bono Region.



The affected traders have been moved to two Presbyterian School parks within the centre of Dormaa-Ahenkro as a measure to ensure adherence to social and physical distancing protocol to stem the spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19).



They were split into three groups - meat and fish sellers remained at the main weekly market, vegetables and fruits sellers occupied one of the parks, while the root and tuber types of foodstuff sellers were also stationed at the other park.



Mr Justice Owusu Ansah Pobi, the Environmental Health Officer of the Assembly told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview on Tuesday at Dormaa-Ahenkro.



He said some of the relocated traders complained that they did not have sheds as shelters, but authorities had now provided them with canopies in that regard.



Responding to concerns that most of the traders still did not adhere strictly to directives on social and physical distancing and hygiene protocols, Mr Pobi explained that the situation was created by particularly the buyers since two or more traders could encircle a particular trader at time, he added.



The Environmental Health Officer observed that a number of sellers and buyers at the markets had increased because more traders had come from Kumasi after the lockdown.

Source: GNA









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N ew York City is facing a long hot summer in lockdown with a stay-at-home order in Americas biggest coronavirus hotspot now extended until the middle of June at the earliest.

Governor Andrew Cuomo announced the four-week extension to the restrictions in the Big Apple, while easing the shutdown in other parts of the state.

In an executive order signed last night, he declared the state would continue the lockdown put in place in March, and which was due to expire today.

However, he said some central areas that meet public health and safety benchmarks will be eligible for reopening, tweeting: New Yorkers can be proud. Your actions bent the curve.

He announced the move as the states Covid-19 death toll approached 28,000  one-third of the about 86,000 fatalities recorded so far across the US.

A decision on whether non-essential businesses in the city can reopen, including its world-famous museums is to be put off until next month.

Broadway theatres have already said they will not open until September at the earliest.

Meanwhile, protesters carrying toy Nerf guns, left, gathered near armed protesters at the Michigan capitol building in Lansing to protest over the states lockdown.

President Donald Trump has vowed to prepare for future pandemics by bringing the manufacturing of medical supplies back to the US.

Wouldnt that be nice? he said on a visit to a Pennsylvania distributor of equipment.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 04:26:58|Editor: huaxia

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ATHENS, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Greece's Health Ministry announced on Friday 40 new confirmed COVID-19 cases within the past 24 hours, bringing to 2,810 infections the total in the country since Feb. 26 when the first case was registered.

Among the new confirmed cases are 35 residents from a Roma settlement on the outskirts of the city of Larissa, in the region of Thessaly, in central Greece, officials told a regular press briefing.

The authorities decided a 14-day local curfew as part of the emergency measures to be imposed in the area after testing 600 residents.

The same settlement of roughly 3,000 people had been placed in quarantine in early April after a dozen residents tested positive.

Four patients have died in the past few hours, raising the death toll to 160.

The latest count was given as Greece continues to take steps towards normalcy. The country was in full lockdown March 23 until May 4, when the government started to gradually lift restrictive measures.

After the reopening of a few schools and shops in the past few days, as of May 18 shopping malls will also go back to business, two weeks earlier than initial planning, Adonis Georgiadis, Minister of Development and Investments, told Greek national broadcaster ERT on Friday.

Also on Monday, restrictions on travel and transport between different prefectures, including Crete island, will be lifted.

Nikos Hardalias, deputy minister for Civil Protection and Crises Management at the Ministry of Citizen Protection, presented the health protocols concerning ferry transport during Friday's press briefing.

In an attempt to restart sea travel and the tourism sector, a major source of revenue for the country, passengers and crew will have to follow certain rules guided by the need to protect public health.

Ferries will travel with a maximum of 50 percent of their usual passenger capacity and 55 percent if they have cabins. Cabins will be used by one occupant unless that person is traveling with family members or assistants.

All passengers will have their temperatures taken during boarding, the use of cloth masks by passengers and crew is recommended, while a distance of at least 1.5 meters should be maintained for passengers and crew members at any moment.

The new measures will be in effect until June 15 and are going to be evaluated, depending on the course of the pandemic.

Hardalias announced also that a flight ban between Greece and seven countries (Albania, Italy, the Netherlands, North Macedonia, Spain, Turkey and the United Kingdom) has been extended at least until May 31 to protect public health from the further spread of the COVID-19. Until May 31, the few international flights will continue to land only at Athens International Airport.

In addition, Greece's borders will remain temporarily closed to non-EU nationals at least until the end of May, Hardalias said.

"Greece will be able to receive foreign visitors, subject to conditions that ensure public health from July 1," State Minister Giorgos Gerapetritis told ERT. Enditem
Crypto.com has revealed that its MCO Visa card has been approved for introduction across Europe. The news will enable millions of cryptocurrency holders within the EU to utilize the popular Visa card and mobile application. As of May 15, 2020, Crypto.coms MCO card is shipping in Europe.

The metal MCO Visa (NYSE:V) card enables holders to earn up to 5% cashback, disbursed in crypto, every time holders shop in-store or online. In a promotional video released back in March, Crypto.com teased at the introduction of its European service, before tweeting confirmation of the roll-out on May 15. In an accompanying blog post, Crypto.com explains how European residents can apply for a card within the Crypto.com app, with the onboarding process taking around three minutes. Upon taking receipt of the Visa card, shoppers can use it anywhere Visa is accepted, while earning up to 5% cashback on their transactions.

From Monaco to Europe

Formerly known as the Monaco card, Crypto.coms MCO card is now available in the US, Europe, and multiple APAC countries. Cashback ranges from 1-5% across the five tiered MCO cards that are available to order. Up to $120,000 a year can be withdrawn from ATMs using the MCO card. The arrival of the MCO card in Europe will introduce a major player that had hitherto been absent from this lucrative cryptocurrency market.

The majority of crypto debit cards available within the European market are Visa branded, with Mastercards (NYSE:MA) imprint largely absent from the burgeoning vertical. Crypto cards provide a millennial-friendly alternative to the debit and credit cards issued by traditional entities such as American Express (NYSE:AXP) and Citigroup (NYSE:C).

Crypto.com serves as an all-in-one digital currency platform, enabling users to purchase cryptocurrency with zero credit card fee, and to buy, sell, and pay for items using cryptocurrency. It also features a built-in exchange for investors eager to purchase assets at the best possible price, and to be able to offload them easily into a highly liquid market. More than 45 cryptocurrencies are supported by Crypto.com.

Story continues

Straight Swap From GBP and Other Fiat Currencies

After obtaining an MCO Visa card, iOS and Android users within Europe will be able to instantly acquire cryptocurrency in their native fiat currency, including GBP, within the Crypto.com app. In a blog post announcing the news, Crypto.com wrote: Our team is thrilled to share this significant milestone with the Crypto.com community. We would like to take this opportunity to thank the community for the incredible support we received and we look forward to sharing more updates and developments as we work to introduce cryptocurrency to the mass market.

The Hong Kong-headquartered Crypto.com has been eyeing the European market for some time, having first gained a foothold in Asia and then North America. With over one million users, Crypto.com is a giant within the realm of crypto cards. It has achieved this success through a focus on security, compliance, and community engagement. Now that regulatory approval has been granted for Crypto.com to operate across Europe, uptake of its MCO Visa card is expected to be strong within the region, as cryptocurrency holders capitalize on the convenience of being able to spend and send crypto like cash.

Disclosure: None.
15 May 2020

Clear Leisure Plc

("Clear Leisure" or "the Company")

Response to Share Price Movement

The board of Clear Leisure notes the recent rise in the Company's share price and confirms that it is not aware of any reason for the increase.

Discussions with the Mediapolis receiver regarding the transfer of funds have been continuing for several months; however, no conclusions have been reached with regards to these discussions.

There has been no material developments in respect of the Company's other legal cases since the announcement of 6 May 2020.

As previously disclosed, the Company will provide an update to shareholders in respect of these matters in due course.

-ends-

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of EU Regulation 596/2014

For further information please contact:

Clear Leisure Plc +39 335 296573

Francesco Gardin, CEO and Executive Chairman

SP Angel Corporate Finance (Nominated Adviser & Broker) +44 (0)20 3470 0470

Jeff Keating

Leander (Financial PR) +44 (0) 7795 168 157

Christian Taylor-Wilkinson

About Clear Leisure Plc

Clear Leisure plc (AIM: CLP) is an AIM listed investment company which has recently realigned its strategic focus to technology related investments, with special regard to interactive media, blockchain and AI sectors. The Company also owns shareholdings in a number of historic investments primarily in the Italian real estate companies, which it is currently seeking compensation through court action.

For further information, please visit, www.clearleisure.co.uk
Twitter Says Its Employees Will Work from Home Permanently

This week, Twitter told employees their work from home positions are permanent, and there will be no in person invents until at least 2021.

One Business Insider article shared Twitters big announcement: CEO Jack Dorsey told employees via email that they would be allowed to work from home indefinitely, even after COVID-19 shutdowns end.

Dorsey also said that Twitters offices would not reopen until September 2020 at the earliest, according to BuzzFeed News. Like many other big tech companies (including Microsoft and Google), Twitter told employers to work from home in Marchbut the offer does not extend to employees whose jobs mandate that they return to the office, like those tasked with server maintenance.

Like many companies, Twitter has realized that many positions within the company can work from home. The pandemic has proven that we can make it work.

A Twitter representative said that even when offices eventually reopen, when and if employees will come back will be their decision to make. When we do decide to open offices, it also won't be a snap back to the way it was before. It will be careful, intentional, office by office and gradual.

That means that most open roles at Twitter will be remote-optional going forward, Dorsey said.

Twitter will continue to suspend all business travel and will not hold any in-person events for the rest of 2020, said the representative.

While other tech companies like Microsoft and Google have announced lenient work-from-home plans, few go as far as Twitters. On May 7, Google announced its employees would work likely from home for the remainder of 2020, according to a Forbes article. Google employees who need to return to their office can start as early as June or July.

As time continues and the country begins to see how the pandemic unfolds, one thing is for sure: workplaces will never be the same. This might mean more work from home policies, distributed shifts for coming into the office or more.

As the Forbes article said, Technology companies have taken the lead in announcing extended work from home policies. It will be interesting to watch how other industries respond.
Leaders of south-central Vietnams Khanh Hoa Province are likely to approve a proposal for a more robust 2025 master plan that includes an over-sea bridge connecting the citys mainland with a nearby popular tourist island.

Khanh Hoa provincial chairman Nguyen Tan Tuan gave his in-principle approval to several adjustments to the localitys master plan, according to a source close to Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper.

Among the additions to the plan is an over-sea bridge that will connect the city with nearby Hon Tre Island, home to the popular Vinpearl Nha Trang tourist resort.

The amended plan also includes the rezoning of large swaths of land for new pathways, junctions, parking lots, and service buildings near both ends of the bridge.

The Vinpearl Nha Trang resort complex is owned and operated by Vingroup, Vietnams largest conglomerate.

Currently, the only physical link between the tourist island and the mainland is a 3.3-kilometer cable car line run by Vinpearl.

The new plan also envisages a bridge connecting An Vien Urban Area to Hon Ro Residential Area  Nguyen Tat Thanh Avenue.

The province also ordered that renovations be made on various roads and public security interests as required by the Ministry of Public Security, as well as inclusions of the new projects in the 1:500-scale detailed construction model of the 2025 master plan.

The new plan also calls on Khanh Hoa to convert several tourism areas into local residential and commercial areas.

The provincial Peoples Committee commissioned the Department of Construction for counsel on the updated plan before submitting it for official approval from the central government.

Tourism contributes a substantial amount to Khanh Hoas economy, yielding some VND27.1 trillion (US$1.16 billion) in revenue in 2019.

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VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 16, 2020 / Mota Ventures Corp. (CSE:MOTA)(FSE:1WZ:GR)(OTC PINK:PEMTF) (the "Company") announces that it has entered into a binding term sheet (the Term Sheet"), dated May 14, 2020, with Verrian Ontario Limited ("Verrian"), pursuant to which it proposes to acquire all of the outstanding share capital of Verrian (the "Transaction"). The Term Sheet replaces the previous preliminary letter of intent entered into with Verrian on May 11, 2020. Verrian is an arms'-length privately-held company that is focused on delivering and developing products related to addiction reduction, with a focus on alcohol and opiates.

ESTABLISHED EUROPEAN PSYCHEDELIC MEDICINE COMPANY

Verrian owns and operates an EU-GMP, ISO 14001 compliant 110,000 square foot pharmaceutical manufacturing facility in Radebeul, Germany. Verrian purchased the facility from a major global pharmaceutical manufacturer in 2019. Both the facility and equipment are independently appraised at Cdn$10,600,000, including an analytical laboratory, and full pharmaceutical manufacturing suite.

Verrian will operate three distinct business segments:

Pharmaceutical Manufacturing - A portfolio of medical & wellness products

Phyto API - API creation from medical plants

Analytical Testing - European Medicine Agency Standards

PRODUCTS FOCUSED ON OPIATE ADDICTION REDUCTION

Verrian's singular focus is rewiring the mind to overcome addiction through natural medicine. Specifically, the micro dosing of psilocybin demonstrates potential to remove the dopamine reward of addictive substances, potentially diminishing the desire for addictive substances, thereby reducing or eliminating the need for the addictive substance.

To date Verrian has developed two psilocybin products: PSI GEN and PSI GEN+. These Psilocybin products are focused on opiate addiction reduction. As natural psilocybin extracts, from organically cultivated mushrooms, combined with metabolism enhancing natural herbs, they are ideal for individuals commencing micro-dosing and capable of being combined with additional anti-addiction therapies.

All of Verrian's compounds are derived from organic, glyphosate free naturally occurring plants, grown specifically for its own purposes.

GOALS AND VISION

In addition to the the facility and equipment outlined above, Verrian has invested approximately Cdn$2,400,000 in clinical trial design and development of proprietary formulations for its psilocybin trademarked PSI-GEN products, and cannabis products, including trademarked CBDaily and CBNight.

Verrian's world renowned addiction medicine experts are moving ahead to develop new potential treatments for therapy, with rigorous clinical research. Once EU GMP and narcotics handling recertification are secured, capabilities will extend to: specialty pharmaceutical formulations; and psilocybin refinement and production for micro dosing.

"Signing this binding term sheet is an important step towards Mota's goal of becoming a leader in the natural health space. Verrian's significant investment into its licensing, research, equipment and facilities have made it one of the top psychedelic medicine companies. Mota is poised to capitalize on an emerging industry and will continue to expand its North American and European operations to ensure a strong distribution network is in place once this line of product is approved to go to market," stated Ryan Hoggan, CEO of the Company.

The binding Term Sheet contemplates that the Company would acquire all of the outstanding share capital of Verrian in consideration for Cdn$20,000,000, which will be satisfied through the issuance of common shares (the "Consideration Shares") to the existing shareholders of Verrian. The Consideration Shares will be issued at a deemed price of equivalent to the volume-weighted average closing price of the common shares of the Company in the ten trading days immediately prior to the entering into of definitive documentation in respect of the Transaction.

The Consideration Shares will be subject to terms of a thirty-six month time release pooling arrangement, during which time they may not be transferred, assigned, pledged or otherwise traded. The Consideration Shares will be released from the pooling arrangement in tranches, of which ten-percent will be released after four months, fifteen percent after six months, and the balance in five equal tranches every six months thereafter. In addition to the Consideration Shares, upon closing of the Transaction, the Company will arrange for repayment of existing shareholder loans of Verrian totaling approximately Cdn$1,100,000.

The Company is at arms-length from Verrian, and each of its shareholders. The Transaction does not constitute a fundamental change for the Company, nor is it expected to result in a change of control of the Company, within the meaning of applicable securities laws and the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange. Upon completion of the Transaction, an administrative fee of $422,000, payable in common shares of the Company, will be owing to a consultant who assisted with the Transaction.

The Transaction remains subject to a number of conditions, including completion of due diligence, receipt of any required regulatory approval and the negotiation of definitive documentation, which is expected to include warranties, representations, covenants, terms and conditions which are customary and consistent with industry standards for a transaction of this nature, as a well as a mutual break fee in the event of termination. The Transaction cannot be completed until these conditions have been satisfied.

We encourage shareholders and prospective investors to visit the Company's AGORACOM Discussion Forum, a moderated social media platform that enables civilized discussion and Q&A between Management and Shareholders.

About Mota Ventures Corp.

Mota Ventures is an established eCommerce, direct to consumer provider of a wide range of CBD products in the United States and Europe. In the United States, the company sells a CBD hemp-oil formulation derived from hemp grown and formulated in the US through its Nature's Exclusive brand. Within Europe, its Satavida brand of award winning 100% organic CBD oils and cosmetics are sold throughout Spain, Portugal, Austria, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom. Mota Ventures is also seeking to acquire additional revenue producing CBD brands and operations in both Europe and North America, with the goal of establishing an international distribution network for CBD products. Low cost production, coupled with international, direct to customer, sales channels will provide the foundation for the success of Mota Ventures.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

MOTA VENTURES CORP.

Ryan Hoggan

Chief Executive Officer

For further information, readers are encouraged to contact Joel Shacker, President at +604.423.4733 or by email at IR@motaventuresco.com or www.motaventuresco.com

The Canadian Securities Exchange has in no way passed upon the merits of the Transaction, and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release. Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release, which has been prepared by management.

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statement

All statements in this press release, other than statements of historical fact, are "forward-looking information" with respect to the Company within the meaning of applicable securities laws, including with respect to the operations and activities of Verrian, the conditions to completion of the proposed Transaction, and its plans to acquire revenue-producing CBD brands and operations in Europe and North America. The Company provides forward-looking statements for the purpose of conveying information about current expectations and plans relating to the future and readers are cautioned that such statements may not be appropriate for other purposes. By its nature, this information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. These risks and uncertainties include but are not limited those identified and reported in the Company's public filings under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual actions, events or results to differ materially from those described in forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause actions, events or results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that such information will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise unless required by law.

SOURCE: Mota Ventures Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/590122/Mota-Ventures-Enters-into-Binding-Term-Sheet-to-Acquire-110000-Square-Foot-European-Pharmaceutical-Manufacturer-of-Natural-Psilocybin-Products
Paul Chinn / The Chronicle

Officials are banning vendors and weekend parking around Lake Merritt and other Oakland parks to thwart crowds that could spread the coronavirus.

Our parks have become overcrowded on weekends, and for our collective health, we need to give the lake  and our city parks  a break, Mayor Libby Schaaf said Thursday. We hope that the presence of our new park ambassadors will help to remind, educate, and engage the Oakland community around the Alameda Countys shelter-in-place order.
In these situations, the American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that the mother stay 6 feet away from the child. If that is not possible, the academy recommends moms wear masks and make sure their hands are clean when caring for the infant. Those precautions should be taken until the mom has been free of fever for three days and at least seven days have passed since her symptoms first appeared, or shes tested negative for COVID-19 twice.
Thrillseekers have been spotted zooming down a canal on a jetski during coronavirus lockdown.

The mystery pair can be seen on the deserted Bridgewater Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, after going under a bridge.

Allan Woodcock posted the footage on Facebook and people praised them for having a good time during the coronavirus pandemic.

Thrillseekers can be seen zooming down the deserted Bridgewater Canal in Salford, Greater Manchester, on a jetski

A man's voice can be heard in the background saying: 'Someone's on a f***ing jetski on the canal.'

The 17-second clip which was captioned 'Wow only in Salford' has been shared by more than 3,800 people.

Facebook users are enjoying the video of the pair having a good time on the canal.

Allan Woodcock posted the video captioned 'Only in Salford' on Facebook and it has been shared more than 3,800 times

Demarco Rodney commented: 'Who needs Spain when you have Salford.'

Joe Bingley said: 'Doing lockdown the right way.'

Lucy Roberts added: 'Welcome to Miama.'

Andrea King said: 'I remember someone once saying "you should move to Salford".'
Minister for Parliamentary Affairs, Hon. Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu has hit back at Major Osahene Boakye Gyan for threatening a civil war in the country over the legal mandate of the Electoral Commission (EC) to compile a new voters register.



Major Osahene Boakye Gyan (rtd) warned of impending doom should the EC connive with the New Patriotic Party (NPP) to rig the upcoming December polls.



Speaking on Okay FMs Ade Akye Abia Programme on Tuesday, Osahene Boakye Gyan claimed the EC, having a desire to rig the 2020 elections with the tacit assistance of the ruling NPP, is hell-bent on having a new register.



"This party (NPP) won power with the biggest electoral margin; so what has gone wrong?...this morning, i overheard an NPP activist on radio claiming if elections are held today, Nana Addo will be re-elected with someone million, three hundred thousand votes difference. See, the NPP has cooked up the figures already, they are simply looking for the means to legitimize their rigging by undertaking a registration exercise (through the EC)....," he alleged.



The former military capo sounded a note of caution by pointing out that most electoral disputes in Africa have resulted in civil wars and Ghana is not immune to it, and further warned that "should the EC continue to toe the line of their paymasters, it will certainly spell doom for this country."



" . . it is political motivation that led to the dismissal of Madam Jean Mensah as the EC Chairperson by the current administration. They want to beef up the numbers so they can win simply because they don't have confidence in their winning numbers, otherwise they won't tamper with it...But more importantly...post-independence Africa, all crises and civil wars have been on the back of disputed electoral results. What they are doing now, they are driving us into a civil war and if they want it, they will get it," he screamed.



Commenting on the issue on Ade Akye Abia's Thursday Show, the Majority Leader of Parliament dismissed the former military officer's threat.



 . . from our University days, we have accorded him with respect because we saw him as a principled person . . . this I'm being careful with my choice of words . . . I strongly disagree with his comments. He got it wrong; there will be no civil war in the country, he said rather charitably.



He, however, wondered why Major Boakye Gyan could take offense at an NPP activist"s claims that the ruling party will win the next elections by some 1.3 million votes.



When we are about to go for the 2016 polls, the NDC General Secretary, Johnson Asiedu Nketia said they are winning the election by a huge margin because they have about 3 million people voters somewhere....After saying that, did the NDC lose the election? So, if someone says he is a researcher and so NPP will win the next election by 1.3 million, that person is not God, neither is his mouth a gun . . . ," Hon Kyei Mensah Bonsu stated.



Watch his interview in video below





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.

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Neither the COVID-19 pandemic nor the UN Secretary Generals appeal for a global ceasefire has persuaded Moscow to stop fueling an armed conflict in eastern Ukraine.

U.S. Ambassador to the OSCE James S. Gilmore said this during an online meeting of the OSCE Permanent Council in Vienna on Thursday, May 14, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

"Moscows multi-year aggression is a direct challenge to the security of Europe. It is clear that neither the COVID-19 pandemic nor the appeal by UN Secretary General Guterres for a global ceasefire in all conflict areas has persuaded Moscow to stop fueling an armed conflict in Ukraine," he said.

According to the U.S. ambassador, the last week there were numerous ceasefire violations in eastern Ukraine, where Russia-led forces persist in their efforts to undermine a sovereign neighbor.

"We should all be on notice of this escalation that is ongoing and what the potential consequences of that might be. We certainly cant see an implementation of the Minsk Agreements unless theres a ceasefire. Yet, the effort to destroy that ceasefire is escalating and increasing," he stated.

The conflict that Russia has instigated and led in eastern Ukraine puts the lives of thousands in danger. So far in 2020 more than 65 civilians have been wounded or killed in eastern Ukraine.

"In the face of Russias denials, deflection, and disinformation, the collective responsibility of those of us who truly believe in the Helsinki Final Act principles and OSCE commitments is clear. We must hold Russia accountable for acting contrary to Ukraines sovereignty and territorial integrity and for the abuses it has committed in eastern Ukraine and occupied Crimea," the ambassador stressed.

ish
Bengaluru, May 15 : Karnataka would follow the Central government's advice if the lockdown is extended after May 17 though it suggested for continuation of its restrictions only in containment areas, an official said on Friday.

"The state government will abide by the Centre's advice if the lockdown is extended beyond May 17 with more relaxations. We are waiting for it (advice) and guidelines from the Union Ministry of Home Affairs," an official in the Chief Minister's Office told IANS here.

Responding to Prime Minister Narendra Modi's directive after his fifth interaction with Chief Ministers of all states through video conferencing on May 11, Karnataka favoured lockdown curbs even after May 17 in containment zones only and lifting them in other areas, which are free from the infection.

"Our assessment is relaxations will be for more activities in all areas except in red zones or hotspots though wearing mask, washing hands with sanitiser and maintaining physical distance will continue for all everywhere," said the official.

Chief Minister B.S. Yediyurappa wrote to the Prime Minister that the state wanted to do away with red, orange and green zones in all its 30 districts and strictly cordon off only containment areas, the official said.

The state also wants the containment areas or zones limited to 50-100 metres around known clusters and sealed off.

"Commercial activities, including public transport should be allowed in non-containment zones in all districts across the state, with safety norms like wearing mask and maintaining social distancing," said the official.

The state, however, favoured extension of ban on domestic and international travel till month-end to contain the virus spread.

"The state also sought resumption of all economic activities in stand-alone establishments with restriction on malls, cinema halls, dining facilities and centrally air-conditioned buildings," the official said.

The state has decided to place all returnees from overseas and other states by flights, trains, buses and other vehicles in 14-day institutional quarantine and allow them to go home if they test negative later.

All inter-state returnees should have a health clearance certificate from the local authority or designated hospital of the place they are coming through the inter-state border through trains or in buses for mandatory quarantine.

The state has reported 1,056 Covid positive cases till Friday, with 539 active cases, 480 discharged and 36 deaths since the outbreak of the disease.

Karnataka also informed the Union Health Ministry that there was no trace of Covid community transmission across the state and 25 per cent of cases were owing to domestic and international travel history.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will hold a press conference at 4 pm today. This is going to be her third press briefing in as many days.

Sitharaman has been announcing the tranches of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. PM Modi had announced the package during his address to the nation on Tuesday, vowing to make the country atmanirbhar or self-reliant. He said that this will be 10 per cent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product or GDP.

Sitharaman will be holding daily press conferences till Sunday.

Free food grains and pulses for migrants, more jobs for tribals and those in rural areas, and credit to small enterprises, street vendors and small farmers - these were some of the highlights of the second phase of the package which Sitharaman announced on Thursday.

Totalling Rs 3.16 lakh crore, the schemes include 5 kg rice or wheat and 1 kg chana (chickpea) a month, for 80 million migrant families for two months. It will cost Rs 3,500 crore, Sitharaman said at her press conference on Thursday.

A Rs 1,500-crore interest discount scheme aimed at 30 million units, a Rs 5,000-crore special credit facility for five million street vendors, a Rs 6,000-crore Compensatory Afforestation Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA) fund for providing jobs to tribals, a Rs 30,000 core emergency working capital scheme for farmers, a Rs 70,000-crore boost to lower-middle class housing and Rs 2-lakh crore concessional credit offer to 25 million farmers through Kisan Credit Cards were the other thing announced by her.

Sitharaman said that the short-term and the long-term measures are meant to support the poor, including migrants, farmers, tiny businesses and street vendors. Farmers and workers are the backbone of this nation. They serve all of us with their sweat and toil, she said on Thursday.

The first tranche of the package, totalling about Rs 5.9 lakh crore, which was announced by Sitharaman on Wednesday, was mainly focused on providing easy credit facilities to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).
The coronavirus has prompted almost two-thirds of American believers to feel that God is telling humanity to change how it lives, a new poll finds.

While the virus rattles the globe, causing economic hardship for millions and killing more than 80,000 Americans, the findings of the poll by the University of Chicago Divinity School and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicate that people may also be searching for deeper meaning in the devastating outbreak.

Even some who don't affiliate with organized religion, such as Lance Dejesus of Dallastown, Pennsylvania, saw a possible bigger message in the virus.

'It could be a sign, like "Hey, get your act together" - I don't know,' said Dejesus, 52, who said he believes in God but doesn't consider himself religious.

'It just seems like everything was going in an OK direction and all of a sudden you get this coronavirus thing that happens, pops out of nowhere.'

Members of LifeAustin Church worship for the first time in over six weeks at the sprawling 1,500 seat outdoor theater in west Austin, Texas, on May 3. A new survey found that six in 10 Americans who believe in God say coronavirus is a message from God telling people to change

The poll found that 31 per cent of Americans who believe in God feel strongly that the virus is a sign of God telling humanity to change, with the same number feeling that somewhat.

Evangelical Protestants are more likely than others to believe that strongly, at 43 per cent, compared with 28 per cent of Catholics and mainline Protestants.

In addition, black Americans were more likely than those of other racial backgrounds to say they feel the virus is a sign God wants humanity to change, regardless of education, income or gender.

Forty-seven percent say they feel that strongly, compared with 37 per cent of Latino and 27 per cent of white Americans.

The COVID-19 virus has disproportionately walloped black Americans, exposing societal inequality that has left minorities more vulnerable and heightening concern that the risks they face are getting ignored by a push to reopen the US economy.

Amid that stark reality, the poll found black Americans who believe in God are more likely than others to say they have felt doubt about Gods existence as a result of the virus - 27 per cent said that, compared with 13 per cent of Latinos and 11 per cent of white Americans.

But the virus has prompted negligible change in Americans' overall belief in God, with 2 per cent saying they believe in God today, but did not before.

Fewer than 1 per cent say they do not believe in God today but did before.

Most houses of worship stopped in-person services to help protect public health as the virus began spreading, but that didn't stop religious Americans from turning to online and drive-in gatherings to express their faiths.

Americans with a religious affiliation are regularly engaging in private prayer during the pandemic, with 57 per cent saying they do so at least weekly since March - about the same share that say they prayed as regularly last year.

Overall, 82 per cent of Americans say they believe in God, and 26 per cent of Americans say their sense of faith or spirituality has grown stronger as a result of the outbreak.

Just 1 per cent say it has weakened.

Kathryn Lofton, a professor of religious studies at Yale University, interpreted the high number of Americans perceiving the virus as a message from God about change as an expression of 'fear that if we dont change, this misery will continue.'

'When people get asked about God, they often interpret it immediately as power,' said Lofton, who collaborated with researchers from the University of Chicago and other universities, along with The Associated Press, on the design of the new poll.

'And they answer the question saying, "Heres where the power is to change the thing I experience".'

Fifty-five percent of American believers say they feel at least somewhat that God will protect them from being infected.

Evangelical Protestants are more likely than those of other religious backgrounds to say they believe that, with 43 per cent saying so strongly and another 30 per cent saying so somewhat, while Catholics and mainline Protestants are more closely split on feeling that way or not.

However, the degree and nature of protection that God is believed to offer during the pandemic can differ depending on the believer.

Marcia Howl, 73, a Methodist and granddaughter of a minister, said she feels God's protection but not certainty that it would save her from the virus.

'I believe he has protected me in the past, that he has a plan for us,' said Howl, of Portalas, New Mexico.

'I don't know what's in his plan, but I believe his presence is here looking after me. Whether I can survive it or not, that's a different story.'

Among black Americans who believe in God, 49 per cent say they feel strongly that God will protect them from the virus, compared with 34 per cent of Latino and 20 per cent of white Americans.

David Emmanuel Goatley, a professor at Duke University's divinity school who was not involved with the survey, said religious black Americans' view of godly protection could convey 'confidence or hope that God is able to provide - that does not relinquish personal responsibility, but it says God is able.'

Goatley, who directs the school's Office of Black Church Studies, noted a potential distinction between how religious black Americans and religious white Americans might see their protective relationship with God.

Within black Christian theology is a sense of connection to the divine in which 'God is personally engaged and God is present,' he said.

That belief, he added, is 'different from a number of white Christians, evangelical and not, who would have a theology thats more a private relationship with God.'
Brazilian Health Minister Nelson Teich resigned on Friday after just weeks on the job, adding to turmoil in President Jair Bolsonaros handling of an accelerating coronavirus outbreak in one of the worlds worst hot spots.

Teich, whom Bolsonaro had criticised as being too timid in the push to reopen the economy and advocate the use of anti-malarial drugs to fight the virus, said he had decided to resign from his position.

During a news conference on Friday, Teich thanked Bolsonaro for offering him the opportunity to work as the health minister and said he had given it his best, but gave no reason for why he was leaving the position.

The loss of his second health minister in less than a month spurred criticism of the right-wing president from politicians and calls for his impeachment. In Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo, where the disease has pushed public hospitals to capacity, Brazilians banged pots and pans from their windows in protest

Military members of the Brazilian cabinet are pushing for deputy health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an army general on active duty, to become the new health minister, making permanent his interim role, a government source told Reuters news agency.

Teich struggled to reach consensus with state governments over guidelines on reopening their economies, as Bolsonaro has demanded. He expressed surprise at a recent press conference when he learned of a presidential decree allowing gyms, beauty parlours and hairdressers to open for business.

The last straw for Teich may have been Bolsonaros insistence on a wider use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the novel coronavirus, which the minister has resisted due to a lack of scientific evidence.

The United States Food and Drug Administration last month cautioned against the use of the malaria drug, which US President Donald Trump has touted as a game-changer. Medical researchers have found that the drug, first approved in 1955, provided no benefit and potentially higher risk of death for COVID-19 patients.

Teich resigned a day after Brazil reported a record number of new coronavirus cases. He had replaced Luiz Mandetta, who was forced out on April 16 for resisting Bolsonaros pressure to promote hydroxychloroquine and fight state government social distancing orders.

This week, Brazil passed Germany and France in coronavirus cases, with more than 200,000 confirmed diagnoses by Thursday, when the health ministry reported 844 new deaths, bringing the death toll to 13,933.

Brazils President Jair Bolsonaro walking after making a statement announcing the new Minister of Health, Nelson Teich, in Brasilia, Brazil [File: Adriano Machado/Reuters]

Opposition and allied politicians criticised Bolsonaros intransigence. Lawmaker Marcelo Ramos of the centrist Liberal Party said the president would only accept a minister without regard for science-based public health policy.

Congressional opposition leader Alessandro Molon warned that Brazil was heading towards a public health catastrophe and said the president should be impeached.

Bolsonaro does not want a technical minister; he wants someone who agrees with his ideological insanity, like ending social distancing and using chloroquine, Molon, a lawmaker from the Brazilian Socialist Party, said in a statement.

Bolsonaros handling of the coronavirus has been widely criticised globally as he has minimised the severity of the disease and told Brazilians to ignore quarantine restrictions.

Let us pray, former minister Mandetta said on Twitter after Teichs resignation, calling for faith in science and support for Brazils public health system.
The researcher Manel Esteller performs the first massive epigenetic characterization in organoids or 3D cancer cultures and makes the data available to the research community to facilitate new findings on tumor development and progression.

Organoid image by Eduard Batlle Lab IRB Barcelona

Frequently, promising cancer therapies fail when applied to patients in the real clinical setting. This occurs despite many of these new treatments demonstrating promising results at the preclinical stage in the lab. One explanation is that many of the tumor models used in early research phases are established cell lines that have been growing for many decades and in two-dimension (2D) culture flasks. These cancer cells might not completely resemble the features of real tumors from patients that expand into three dimensions (3D).

Very recently, it has been possible to grow organoids in the laboratories, cancer models respecting their 3D structure. We know very little about these cells, and if they actually mimic the conformation of the tumor within the body, particularly the chemical modifications of DNA that are beyond genetics, epigenetics, that dont change genes but control their expression, such as DNA methylation. An article published in the Journal Epigenetics from Taylor & Francis by the group of Manel Esteller, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute (IJC), ICREA Research Professor and Chairman of Genetics in the University of Barcelona, describes the first comprehensive study of the epigenetic landscape of human tumor organoids, validating the use of these samples for cancer research, that could deliver new oncology treatments.

Our article solves an unmet biomedical need in the cancer research field: the characterization of the epigenetic fingerprint of human cancer organoids. Our study shows that these tumor models can be very useful for the biomedical research community and the pharmaceutical companies developing anti-cancer drugs. First, we show that every cancer organoid retains the properties of the tissue of origin: if the samples were obtained from the surgery of a colon or pancreatic cancer, the organoid closely resembles the original primary tumor. Second, there is no contamination of normal cells; thus, the malignant pure transformed cells can be analyzed without interferences. And finally, the 3D organoid cancers are closer to the patient tumors than the commonly used 2D cell lines. Manel Esteller, M.D., Ph.D., Director of the Josep Carreras Leukaemia Research Institute

Two of the most relevant consequences is the open nature of the data obtained with these studies: a large amount of data has been generated to be analyzed with Big Data and made available to the research community. On the other hand, the exchange of samples between researchers is offered to promote more collaborative studies.

We have deposited all the obtained results in easily accessible public databases, and, in this manner, everyone can perform further data mining to produce new cancer discoveries using different biometric approaches or focusing on particular genes. And most importantly, the characterized cancer organoids can be readily obtainable from a reliable provider (the American Type Culture Collection, ATCC), so researchers around the world can use the epigenetic information of these sharable samples to develop their investigations. Concludes the researcher.
An elderly person is the 11th coronavirus-related death reported in Nuevo Laredo, according to municipal officials and the Tamaulipas Health Secretariat.

Local and state officials also announced that Nuevo Laredo recorded three additional cases of COVID-19.

I regret to inform you that the Ministry of Health in Tamaulipas confirms the 11th death by COVID-19 in the city and the (confirmation) of 82 positives in Nuevo Laredo. It is necessary to take extreme hygiene measures. This is the most effective way to decrease the speed of infection. Let us not lower our guard. My heartfelt condolences to the relatives, said Nuevo Laredo Mayor Enrique Rivas Cuellar.

The death recorded was an 86-year-old man while the additional three cases were three women, ages 51, 46 and 44. As of Thursday night, Nuevo Laredo recorded 24 suspected cases and 32 recovered.

Matamoros and Nuevo Laredo are the only two cities with double digits in deaths: Matamoros, 19, and Nuevo Laredo, 11.

Tamaulipas Secretary of Health Dr. Gloria Molina Gamboa said there are 953 confirmed cases and 60 deaths in the state. She and Rivas Cuellar urged the community to stay home.

This will be the only way to protect ourselves and all of us, reduce infections and prevent more deaths, Molina Gamboa said.
The BIS hosts nine international organisations engaged in standard setting and the pursuit of financial stability through the Basel Process.

Read more about BIS committees & associations


Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine McCormack, Leonor Varela, Harold Pinter



The film is based on the 1996 spy novel of the same name by John le Carre, who co-wrote the screenplay. Brosnan played another fictional spy here but of a more realistic variety. Its a dark crooked tale of spies and the shams they create and how unscrupulous operatives take advantage of them. Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) is an MI6 spy working in Panama. He becomes friendly with Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush) an ex-con pretending to be a former Saville Row tailor. Such is his reputation that he makes clothes even for the President. Osnard runs him and while earlier he offers genuine gossip, later he starts inventing most of the stuff. Osnard gets to know that but doesnt care as his superiors are lapping everything up. When Pendel says some hanky-panky around the Panama canal is cooking, Osnard knows he has hit a gold mine. He asks for an exorbitant sum from the CIA, bribes everyone up and down and manages to disappear from the country with a large amount still intact. The tailor, meanwhile, reconciles with his wife but is left with the same financial status when he started.



The Matador (2005)



Director: John BoormanCast: Pierce Brosnan, Geoffrey Rush, Jamie Lee Curtis, Brendan Gleeson, Catherine McCormack, Leonor Varela, Harold PinterThe film is based on the 1996 spy novel of the same name by John le Carre, who co-wrote the screenplay. Brosnan played another fictional spy here but of a more realistic variety. Its a dark crooked tale of spies and the shams they create and how unscrupulous operatives take advantage of them. Andy Osnard (Pierce Brosnan) is an MI6 spy working in Panama. He becomes friendly with Harry Pendel (Geoffrey Rush) an ex-con pretending to be a former Saville Row tailor. Such is his reputation that he makes clothes even for the President. Osnard runs him and while earlier he offers genuine gossip, later he starts inventing most of the stuff. Osnard gets to know that but doesnt care as his superiors are lapping everything up. When Pendel says some hanky-panky around the Panama canal is cooking, Osnard knows he has hit a gold mine. He asks for an exorbitant sum from the CIA, bribes everyone up and down and manages to disappear from the country with a large amount still intact. The tailor, meanwhile, reconciles with his wife but is left with the same financial status when he started.





Director: Ira Sachs

Cast: Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdams



The film is based on the 1953 novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham. Four years after the second world war, Harry Allen (Chris Cooper), a successful businessman, is having an affair with a young war widow Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams). He confides this to his friend Richard Langley (Pierce Brosnan), who intrigued, meets the woman and is smitten by her in turn. Richard finds out that unknown to Harry, his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), too is having an affair with John O'Brien (David Wenham). If either of the two finds out about their respective affairs, it would lead to divorce and that means Harry would ask Kay to marry him. Richard wants Kay for himself and as a result, separately asks both Harry and his wife to invest more in their marriage. Harry feels divorce would be too messy for his wifes finer sensibilities and wants to kill her to spare her the trauma. He almost does so, then discovers that Kay and Richard have become lovers. Later, it is seen that Richard and Kay have married while Harry and Pat want to give each other another chance.



The Ghost Writer (2010)



Director: Ira SachsCast: Chris Cooper, Patricia Clarkson, Pierce Brosnan, Rachel McAdamsThe film is based on the 1953 novel Five Roundabouts to Heaven by John Bingham. Four years after the second world war, Harry Allen (Chris Cooper), a successful businessman, is having an affair with a young war widow Kay Nesbitt (Rachel McAdams). He confides this to his friend Richard Langley (Pierce Brosnan), who intrigued, meets the woman and is smitten by her in turn. Richard finds out that unknown to Harry, his wife Pat (Patricia Clarkson), too is having an affair with John O'Brien (David Wenham). If either of the two finds out about their respective affairs, it would lead to divorce and that means Harry would ask Kay to marry him. Richard wants Kay for himself and as a result, separately asks both Harry and his wife to invest more in their marriage. Harry feels divorce would be too messy for his wifes finer sensibilities and wants to kill her to spare her the trauma. He almost does so, then discovers that Kay and Richard have become lovers. Later, it is seen that Richard and Kay have married while Harry and Pat want to give each other another chance.

Cast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal, Tim Preece, Robert Pugh, David Rintoul, Eli Wallach



The film is an adaptation of a Robert Harris novel, The Ghost. It recounts the tale of a ghostwriter being recruited to write the life story of a former British Prime Minister Adam Peter Bennett Lang (Pierce Brosnan) now living in America. The unnamed writer, played by Ewan McGregor, discovers that the writer who was writing the book earlier was perhaps murdered. And that he might have stumbled across clues pointing out that the British premier was hands-in-gloves with the CIA. The writer puts his doubts before Lang, who denies the accusations. Later, Lang gets assassinated but the writer is still asked to finish the book as it would now be a sure shot bestseller. Upon finishing it, he gathers that the secret lies in the first chapters of the book. Since he now knows the secret, an attempt is made on his life as well. It was a taut thriller having many



Love Is All You Need (2012)





Cast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim Bodnia



The children of Danish hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm), who has recently completed a successful breast cancer treatment after undergoing a mastectomy and American businessman Philip, (Pierce Brosnan) who is a successful exporter of fruits and vegetables grieving the loss of his wife are getting married. They havent met each other before and literally bump into each other on their first meeting. Her car collides with his at the Copenhagen airport and strong words get exchanged. Philip finds Ida irritating while Ida thinks that Philip is rude and mean. Later, they discover that she hasnt come to terms with the fact that her husband has been cheating on her and he still cant get over the death of his wife. They begin to bond over the course of the days leading to the wedding. However, their children arent really sure about the wedding and call it off at the last minute. Idas husband makes a move towards reconciliation. She accepts his overtures at first but later having understood that she no longer loves him, dumps him. She goes to meet Philip at his villa and the two read her latest report together, which turns out to be favourable.



Director: Roman PolanskiCast: Ewan McGregor, Pierce Brosnan, Kim Cattrall, Olivia Williams, Tom Wilkinson, Timothy Hutton, Jon Bernthal, Tim Preece, Robert Pugh, David Rintoul, Eli WallachThe film is an adaptation of a Robert Harris novel, The Ghost. It recounts the tale of a ghostwriter being recruited to write the life story of a former British Prime Minister Adam Peter Bennett Lang (Pierce Brosnan) now living in America. The unnamed writer, played by Ewan McGregor, discovers that the writer who was writing the book earlier was perhaps murdered. And that he might have stumbled across clues pointing out that the British premier was hands-in-gloves with the CIA. The writer puts his doubts before Lang, who denies the accusations. Later, Lang gets assassinated but the writer is still asked to finish the book as it would now be a sure shot bestseller. Upon finishing it, he gathers that the secret lies in the first chapters of the book. Since he now knows the secret, an attempt is made on his life as well. It was a taut thriller having manyDirector: Susanne BierCast: Pierce Brosnan, Trine Dyrholm, Kim BodniaThe children of Danish hairdresser Ida (Trine Dyrholm), who has recently completed a successful breast cancer treatment after undergoing a mastectomy and American businessman Philip, (Pierce Brosnan) who is a successful exporter of fruits and vegetables grieving the loss of his wife are getting married. They havent met each other before and literally bump into each other on their first meeting. Her car collides with his at the Copenhagen airport and strong words get exchanged. Philip finds Ida irritating while Ida thinks that Philip is rude and mean. Later, they discover that she hasnt come to terms with the fact that her husband has been cheating on her and he still cant get over the death of his wife. They begin to bond over the course of the days leading to the wedding. However, their children arent really sure about the wedding and call it off at the last minute. Idas husband makes a move towards reconciliation. She accepts his overtures at first but later having understood that she no longer loves him, dumps him. She goes to meet Philip at his villa and the two read her latest report together, which turns out to be favourable.

Pierce Brosnan, some say, made for the best modern bond. He gave out an air of both humour and danger in his bond films, remaining unshaken and unstirred through all his outings as 007 and winning the approval of the audience. He wasnt the serious Bond that Daniel Craig has become in the current lot of Bond films. But Brosnan wasnt just Bond. He managed to carve out a career for himself doing everything from thrillers to comedies to even musicals. Here are some of his best non-Bond movies down the years thatll surely add to your wishlist of movies to be watched during this quarantine.Director: John McTiernanCast: Pierce Brosnan, Rene Russo, Denis LearyIts a remake of the 1968 film of the same name. Pierce Brosnan plays Thomas Crown, millionaire playboy and thief who steals just for the thrill of it. He successfully steals Monet's painting of San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk from a museum. NYPD Detective Michael McCann (Denis Leary) heads the investigation and hes assisted by insurance investigator Catherine Banning (Rene Russo). Catherine is fascinated by him and he too begins to like her. She correctly surmises that he doesnt need the money and is doing it all for fun. Though they become lovers, she still utilises her intellect to outwit him but hes always just a step ahead of her. He returns the original painting but steals another. Catherine lets that go as it wasnt covered by her employer. She feels she has lost him but taking the flight home, finds him seated behind her. It was a frothy entertainer and went a long way towards breaking Brosnans 007 image.Director: Richard ShepardCast: Pierce Brosnan, Greg Kinnear, Hope Davis, Philip Baker HallBrosnan acted as a jaded hitman who wants out in this thriller comedy. Salesman Danny Wright (Greg Kinnear), and a bored out of his skull hitman Julian Noble (Pierce Brosnan), randomly meet at a bar in Mexico City and soon become friends. When Julian tells Danny what his real profession is, Danny is at first sceptical. But when Julain walks him through a job, coming inches closer to killing a potential victim, he does believe him. They go their separate ways soon but later, Julian turns up at Dannys place in America. He wants Dannys help in executing a last assignment and Danny reluctantly agrees. Later Julian reveals that whom he had just killed was his boss and that means hes now able to retire in Greece. Its shown that Julian leaves behind tickets to Greece in Dannys car for Danny and his wife before disappearing. It was a frothy actioner and was well-liked by the audience and the critics alike.
Andhra Pradesh Education Minister Adimulapu Suresh on Thursday announced that the Class 10 exams will be held in July.

The state government has decided to conduct Class 10 exams in July. However, the exams will be conducted for six papers only instead of 11 papers, said Suresh.

He further said, The exams will be held from July 10 to 15. Physical distance will be maintained during exams. The timings of exams will be from 9.30 am to 12.45 pm.

The schedule of Class 10 exams:

10-07.2020 (Friday) - First language

11-07.2020 (Saturday) - Second Language

12-07.2020 (Sunday)- English

13-07.2020 (Monday) - Mathematics

14-07.2020 (Tuesday) - General Science

15-07.2020 (Wednesday) - Social Studies

16.07.2020 (Thursday) - OSSC Main Language

17.07.2020 (Friday) - SSC vocational course

The education minister also urged the students to use the time and prepare well for the examinations.
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Restaurants are struggling to welcome back diners in the states that have reopened amid the coronavirus pandemic with data showing reservations and walk-in customers are still down at least 82 percent.

Despite some states lifting restrictions and allowing restaurants to reopen as early as late April, data from OpenTable's booking software shows that visits to restaurants in states like Georgia, Texas and South Carolina are still down considerably compared to last year.

Experts have predicted that one in four restaurants will go out of business as a result of the weeks-long lockdown measures put in place by the majority of US states to stop the spread of COVID-19.

In Georgia, restaurant reservations were still down 92 percent on May 13 compared to this time last year.

The state started reopening aggressively on April 27 when it allowed restaurants to reopen for dine-in services with social distancing measures in place, including 10 customers per 500 square feet.

Texas, which allowed restaurants to reopen at a 25 percent reduced capacity from May 1, is still down 83 percent for reservations.

The data shows that people are most willing to eat out again in states like Alabama and South Carolina but reservations are still down 77 percent. In Arizona, there is still a 78 percent drop in bookings.

Despite some states lifting restrictions and allowing restaurants to reopen as early as late April, data from OpenTable 's booking software shows that visits to restaurants in states like Georgia, Texas and South Carolina are still down considerably

The state-wide lockdown put in place across much of the country by late March saw reservations decline by 100 percent as restaurants were forced to close or switch to takeout only. The data shows a slight increase in reservations again at the end of April when several states started lifting their restrictions in a bid to kickstart their economies again

Meanwhile, Utah is down 88 percent, Nebraska is down 89 percent, Tennessee is down 84 percent and Oklahoma is down 79 percent.

The data from OpenTable, which has about 60,000 restaurants on its platform, tracks walk-ins and online and phone reservations throughout the pandemic.

Takeout figures are not included in the data.

It used a sample size of about 20,000 restaurants in various states that typically account for the majority of its online reservations.

Restaurants in most states started seeing a huge decline in the number of reservations in mid-March when COVID-19 infections started spiking across the country.

The state-wide lockdown put in place across much of the country by late March saw reservations decline by 100 percent as restaurants were forced to close or switch to takeout only.

The data shows a slight increase in reservations again at the end of April when several states started lifting their restrictions in a bid to kickstart their economies again.

The trend suggests that even though states are now reopening, there won't be a sharp bounce back for the hard hit hospitality industry, which saw a record five million job losses last month alone.

Restaurants have lost about $80 billion in revenue in March and April, according to estimates from the National Restaurant Association.

Experts have predicted that one in four restaurants will go out of business as a result of the weeks-long lockdown measures put in place by the majority of US states to stop the spread of COVID-19. Pictured above is a restaurant in Houston, Texas, on May 1

The data showed a slight increase in reservations at the end of April when several states started lifting their restrictions in a bid to kickstart their economies again. Pictured above is a restaurant in Murrells Inlet, South Carolina on May 4 - the day restaurants were allowed to reopen

In Georgia (pictured above), restaurant reservations were still down 92% on May 13 compared to this time last year. Restaurants were allowed to reopen in the state from April 27

The owner of the Kneadful Things Bakery & Cafe talks to customers and clears tables on Friday in Corry, Pennsylvania

OpenTable's CEO Steve Hafner has predicted that one in four restaurants won't survive the pandemic's lockdown measures.

'Restaurants are complicated beasts,' Hafner told Bloomberg. 'You have to order food and supplies. You have to make sure you've prepped the kitchen and service areas to be easily disinfected.'

The reopenings started despite health experts warning that lifting restrictions too soon could have dire consequences.

As recently as this week, Dr Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, said that the virus is not yet under control in areas of the nation and urged states to follow health experts' recommendations to wait for signs including a declining number of new infections before reopening.

'I think we're going in the right direction, but the right direction does not mean we have by any means total control of this outbreak,' Fauci said.

Many state governors, concerned about the economic fallout from prolonged lockdowns, have said they would lift restrictions carefully and gradually, requiring businesses to maintain physical distance from customers and clean surfaces frequently.

Here is a list of the 12 states reopening that have seen changes in their restaurant reservations figures:

Alabama

Alabama allowed restaurants and bars to reopen on May 11 with 50 percent capacity.

According to the OpenTable data, reservations have been increasing this week but are still down 77 percent compared to this time last year.

Reservations were non-existent in the state for about six weeks from March 20.

The state's lockdown order was introduced in early April.

Nearly 40 percent of restaurants are now open for reservations in Alabama after restrictions were lifted on May 11. Reservations have been increasing this week but are still down 77 percent compared to this time last year. Alabama allowed restauarants to reopen from May 11

Arizona

Arizona allowed restaurants and coffee shops to reopen for dine-in services on May 11 if they limit occupancy and ensure social distancing for customers.

Reservations immediately increased when the order was lifted but are still down 78 percent compared to this time last year, according to the data.

The state's restaurants saw reservations plummet in late March before the stay-at-home order was initiated on March 31.

Nearly 40 percent of restaurants are now open for reservations in Arizona after restrictions were lifted on May 11. Reservations immediately increased when the state order was lifted May 11 but are still down 78 percent compared to this time last year

Florida

Restaurants in Florida were allowed to offer dine-in services from May 4. They are allowed to offer outdoor seating with six-feet between tables and indoor seating at 25 percent reduced capacity.

Reservations have gradually been increasing since the order was lifted but are still down 83 percent compared to May 2019.

Bookings started dropping off in mid-March - several weeks before the state's stay-at-home order was put in place in early April.

More restaurants have gradually been reopening - now at just over 30% - after they were allowed to offer dine-in services from May 4. Reservations have gradually been increasing since the order was lifted but are still down 83 percent

Georgia

In Georgia, restaurant reservations were still down 92 percent compared to this time last year.

The state started reopening aggressively on April 27 when it allowed restaurants to reopen for dine-in services with social distancing measures in place.

Some of the restrictions include only 10 customers per 500 square feet.

Reservations started dropping off in the state in mid-March prior to the state's lockdown measures being introduced.

Just over 20% of restaurants are now open for reservations in Georgia. Restaurant reservations were still down 92 percent compared to this time last year even after being allowed to reopen from April 27. This chart shows the percentage of restaurants reopening since April 1

Indiana

Restaurants in Indiana were allowed to reopen at 50 percent reduced capacity from May 11.

Reservations have slowly been increasing this week but are still down 85 percent compared to last year.

The bookings dropped off considerably in mid-March when the state's stay-at-home order was introduced.

More than 30% of restaurants are now open for reservations in Indiana. Reservations have slowly been increasing this week but are still down 85 percent compared to last year

Kansas

Restaurants in Kansas were allowed to reopen from May 4 with social distancing measures.

Tables must be limited to parties of 10 or less and be six feet apart. Booths that are back to back are allowed if there are physical barriers between them.

Reservations increased slightly when the order was first lifted and moreso this week. They are still down 88 percent compared to last year.

Bookings dropped off considerably in Kansas around March 12, which coincided with President Trump's national address and travel ban advisory.

Nearly 40% of restaurants are now opened for reservations in Kansas. Restaurants in Kansas were allowed to reopen from May 4. Despite the reservations increasing, they are still down 88 percent compared to last year. This chart shows the percentage of restaurants reopening since April 1

Nebraska

Nebraska was among the few states that never put a stay-at-home order in place but did impose some restrictions, including on restaurants.

From May 4, people could start dining in at restaurants but they must remain six feet apart and everyone must wear masks.

Reservations increased immediately after the order was lifted but is still down 89 percent compared to last year.

Bookings declined suddenly in mid-March - around the time other states started imposing lockdown measures.

About 30% of restaurants are now open for reservations in Nebraska. Reservations increased immediately in Nebraska after the order was lifted on May 4 but is still down 89 percent compared to last year

Oklahoma

Restaurants in Oklahoma were allowed to start offering dine-in services from May 1 if they adhere to strict social distancing and sanitation protocols.

Reservations have gradually been increasing since the beginning of the month. There are now down 79 percent compared to this time last year.

The bookings dropped off considerably in the state from March 12, which coincided with President Trump's national address and travel ban advisory.

Almost 50% of restaurants are now opened for reservations in Oklahoma. Reservations have gradually been increasing since the beginning of the month in Oklahoma. There are now down 79 percent compared to this time last year

South Carolina

Restaurants in South Carolina were allowed to reopen from May 4 with outdoor seating only and strict social distancing.

Indoor dining was permitted from May 8 with a suggested 50 percent reduced capacity. No formal restrictions were in place after May 11.

Reservations have increased considerably in the past few days after all restrictions were lifted.

While the state was among the last to issue a stay-at-home order in early April, bookings started to drop off around March 12, which coincided with President Trump's national address and travel ban advisory.

Just over 40% of restaurants in South Carolina are now opened for reservations. Reservations have increased considerably in the past few days in South Carolina after all restrictions were lifted on May 11

Tennessee

Tennessee's restaurants were allowed to reopen with a limited 50 percent capacity from April 27.

Employees were also made to wear masks and gloves and undergo temperature checks when they arrived at work.

Bookings have been gradually increasing since then but are still down 84 percent compared to last year.

Reservations started to drop off in mid-March after President Trump's national address and travel ban advisory.

The state's stay-at-home order wasn't initiated until April 1.

About 35 percent of restaurants are open for reservations in Tennessee. Bookings have been gradually increasing since Tennessee's restaurants were allowed to reopen from April 27 but are still down 84 percent compared to last year

Texas

Restaurants in Texas were allowed to reopen at a 25 percent reduced capacity from May 1.

Reservations spiked as soon as the orders were lifted but still remain down at 82 percent compared to last year.

Bookings slowly started dropping off in early March prior to the state's stay-at-home order being put in place on April 1.

More than 45% of restaurants are open for reservations in Texas. Reservations spiked as soon as the orders were lifted on May 1 but still remain down at 82 percent compared to last year

Utah

Utah never issued a state-at-home order for residents but did impose restrictions on restaurants.

Dine-in services were allowed to start up again from May 1 with social distancing precautions.

Reservations have been gradually increasing since then but are still down 88 percent compared to May 2019.

Bookings started gradually declining in early March even though the state never introduced stay-at-home orders.
The bar, tavern, or pub is a business establishment that sells alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages. In the United States, you have to be 21 years old to visit a bar. Bars typically attract a young, cosmopolitan crowd and are usually open until the early hours of the morning. There are over 60,000 bars in the United States alone with some dating back to the 17th century. Although most bars and pubs are pretty non-descript, there are a number of world-famous drinking establishments. You may be familiar with places such as Long Bar in Singapore and El Floridita in Cuba, but read on below to find out more of the worlds best-known bars:

10. Dante, New York City, United States of America

Dante, New York City, United States of America. Image credit: Bex Walton/Flickr.com

Dantes in New York was voted the Worlds Best Bar 2019. Situated in Greenwich Village and established in 1915, Dantes was a favorite among the Italian community and went on to attract customers from all walks of life including, Bob Dylan, Whoopi Goldberg, and Jerry Seinfield. In 2015, the bar was taken under new management who revitalised the space, adding modern twists to its decor and produce, but still maintaining the Dante charm that its clientele has loved for decades.

9. Sean's Bar, Athlone, Ireland

Sean's Bar, Athlone, Ireland. Image credit: Serge Ottaviani/Wikimedia.org

Dating back to 900AD, Seans Bar holds the title of the oldest pub in Ireland and could possibly be the oldest surviving pub in the world. The institution remains quintessentially Irish by proving its customers with traditional ale and Gaelic music.

8. Green Dragon Tavern, Boston, United States of America

Green Dragon Tavern, Boston, United States of America. Image credit: John Johnston/Public domain

Although the original Green Dragon Tavern no longer remains (it was demolished in 1854), the pub is arguably the most significant pub in the world. Believed to be the headquarters of the revolution, the Green Dragon was where ideas for some of the most important events in American history were born. It is believed the famous Boston Tea Party took place here in 1773.

7. El Floridita, Havana, Cuba

El Floridita, Havana, Cuba. Image credit: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK/Wikimedia.org

This iconic bar is known for its famous clientele. One of its most famous patrons was the writer Ernest Hemmingway; memorabilia can be found throughout the establishment including, photographs and a life-size bronze statue. El Floridita is also famous for inventing the frozen daiquiri.

6. The Bar Hemingway, Paris, France

Bar Hemingway, Hotel Ritz Paris. Image credit: Pablo Sanchez/Wikimedia.org

Another of one of Ernest Hemingways regular haunts, this sophisticated bar is home to one of the worlds most expensive cocktails: The Ritz Sidecar. Comprising Ritz Fine Champagne 1865 Cognac, Cointreau, and lemon juice, the drink will set you back over $1,500.

5. Long Bar, Raffles Hotel, Singapore, Malaysia

Interior of the Long Bar at the Raffles Hotel. Image credit: Todamo/Shutterstock.com

Long Bar is the birthplace of the legendary Singapore Sling cocktail. In 1915, Ngiam Tong Boon created the pink drink for the ladies who frequented Raffles Hotel. At the time, women were not supposed to drink alcohol, so Boon created a drink that had the appearance of fruit juice. Over 100 years later, the Singapore Sling is world-famous and is still served at Raffles Hotel to this day.

4. Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, Chicago, United States of America

Green Mill Cocktail Lounge, Chicago. Image credit: Kenneth C. Zirkel/Wikimedia.org

The Green Mill Cocktail Lounge has a colorful history. During the Prohibition era, it enticed a number of infamous characters, including mob gangster Al Capone. At the back of the long end of the bar, there still remains a hatch that Capone used to escape the police. After Prohibition ended, the bar became a famous jazz establishment and now holds the longest-running poetry slam night in the country.

3. Harry's Bar, Venice, Italy

Harry's Bar, Venice, Italy. Image credit: Felix Haslimeier from Edinburgh, Scotland/Wikimedia.org

Not only famous for being the origin of the Bellini and Carpaccio, but Harrys Bar is also renowned for having seen a wealth of celebrities pass through its doors. Charlie Chaplin, Alfred Hitchcock, and George Clooney are just some of the names to have regularly drunk at this bar.

2. The American Bar, The Savoy, London, England

The American Bar, The Savoy, London, England. Image credit: Loco Steve/Flickr.com

Situated in the glamorous Savoy Hotel in London, the American Bar is the oldest cocktail bar in Britain. In its 130-year-old history, it has welcomed the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Neil Armstrong, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is said that some of the worlds most iconic cocktails were created here, namely the Prairie Oyster, the Moon Walk, and even the dry martini. The bar has a pervasive menu that features much-loved classics, as well as the Savoy Songbook, which is a list of 20 cocktails inspired by famous songs. Opt for the Electric Lover, based on Princes classic Purple Rain  it has glitter as one of its ingredients.

1. Al Brindisi, Ferrara, Italy

Al Brindisi is the oldest wine bar in the world. Established in 1435, the bar attracted some of the most important figures in the arts and sciences. The Renaissance sculptor Benvenuto Cellini, the painter Titian, and mathematician and astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus often visited the bar. It is said Copernicus developed his heliocentric theory when he lived above Al Brindisi. One of its more recent notable customers is Pope John Paul II, who visited to celebrate the bars 500th birthday.
U.S. Representative Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks at her weekly press conference. Michael Brochstein | Barcroft Media | Getty Images

House Democratic leaders plan to pass a $3 trillion coronavirus package Friday, even as Senate Republicans and the White House pledge to block what would be the largest emergency spending bill in U.S. history. The chamber aims to vote on the legislation by Friday night, along with a rules change to allow voting by proxy during the pandemic. Democrats are expected to pass the more than 1,800-page bill, despite growing unease in the party's right and left flanks. The sprawling proposal addresses Democrats' priorities to combat the economic and health crisis created by the outbreak: relief for cash-strapped state and local governments, another direct payment to Americans, hazard pay for essential workers and money to boost U.S. testing capacity. But it includes some more politically thorny elements, such as a provision to temporarily roll back the cap on state and local tax deductions  a move expected to help higher-income people most.

As Republicans question the need for more immediate fiscal relief, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi describes the bill as an opening proposal in the next phase of the congressional response, which already carries a price tag approaching $3 trillion across four bills. "So now, we're putting our offer on the table. We're open to negotiation," the California Democrat told reporters on Thursday. The Senate has no plans to touch the bill. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Thursday called it "an unserious product from an unserious majority." The Trump administration also issued a veto threat. The efforts to approve more relief come as U.S. Covid-19 cases top 1.4 million, and American deaths from the disease surpass 85,000, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University. As the U.S. unemployment rate spiked to 14.7% in April, states started to lift lockdown restrictions and business closures designed to slow the outbreak. In pushing for more federal relief money, Democrats have cited Wednesday comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who said "additional fiscal support could be costly, but worth it if it helps avoid long-term economic damage and leaves us with a stronger recovery." Despite President Donald Trump's opposition to the current legislation, he would be open to another coronavirus relief bill, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Thursday. Meanwhile, two administration officials told CNBC that the White House would likely support another round of stimulus checks to individuals. On Thursday, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNBC he is "optimistic" Congress can reach a deal on another coronavirus response plan and called for talks with Republicans. Later in the day, McConnell outlined two priorities he wants to see in a bill: provisions to increase testing capacity and legal protections for doctors and businesses as the economy starts to reopen. He called a liability shield  which Democrats have generally criticized  a "red line" in future legislation.
PVR Pictures, the largest theatre chain in India, on Friday said they are disappointed with producers directly releasing their movies on streaming services and bypassing the traditional theatrical route.

The multiplex chain stressed that theatrical experience remains the best medium for audiences to enjoy movies.

"As PVR, we believe that the theatrical release is the best way for audiences to experience the labour and creative genius of our filmmakers. This has been so for decades and not just in India but globally," Kamal Gianchandani, CEO of PVR Pictures, told PTI.

The theatre chain joins its industry counterpart INOX in voicing concern about filmmakers opting for the digital release at a time when theatres are closed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Gianchandani said the ongoing COVID-19 crisis has caused an unfortunate shutdown of cinemas but they are confident when the situation returns to normalcy, people will definitely go to theatres to watch movies.

"We are confident, once we get to the other side of this crisis, there will be enough and more pent up demand from cine goers who have been cooped up at homes for the last many weeks. We are likely to see demand by force on a sustained basis, once we reopen."



He said the exhibitors have asked producers to "hold back their film's release till cinemas reopened".

"Needless to say, we are disappointed with some of our producers deciding to go straight to streaming platform/s, he said.

In an apparent reference to the decision of the makers of "Gulabo Sitabo" to release the film on Amazon Prime Video on June 12, INOX had released a statement on Thursday, expressing its "extreme displeasure and disappointment" over the move.

On Friday, the makers of another film, Vidya Balan-starrer "Shakuntala Devi", announced their decision to release their movie on Amazon Prime Video. Five more films --Tamil legal drama Ponmagal Vandhal, Tamil-Telugu bilingual movie Penguin, Sufiyum Sujatayum in Malayalam, Kannada features Law and French Biryani -- are also headed to Amazon.

There are reports that films such as "Laxxmi Bomb", "Gunjan Saxena", "Indoo Ki Jawaanii", "Coolie No 1" may also follow the digital route.

Gianchandani, however, hoped that filmmakers will continue to favour theatrical release though cinema chains are facing competition from OTT platforms.

"That said, this is not the first time films are being premiered on streaming platform/s. Cinema exhibition has regularly faced competition from new emerging distribution platforms over the last many years, and it has continued to enjoy cine goers patronage and affinity.

"I would also like to use this opportunity to express our appreciation for all the producers who have publicly voiced their support for the theatrical platform and have decided to reschedule their releases to accommodate the reopening of cinemas, he added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The suicide rate in Japan fell by 20% in April compared with the same time last year, the biggest drop in five years, despite fears the coronavirus pandemic would cause increased stress and many prevention helplines were either not operating or short-staffed.

People spending more time at home with their families, fewer people were commuting to work and delays to the start of the school year are seen as factors in the fall. In April, 1,455 people took their lives in Japan, 359 fewer than in April 2019. Suicide has been on a downward trend in Japan since peaking at more than 34,000 cases annually in 2003. Last year saw just over 20,000, and the large drop last month came at a time when there were fears of a fresh spike. New coronavirus infections reached their peak in mid-April in Japan at more than 500 a day, leading the government to declare a state of emergency on 16 April, though the restrictions were less strict than those of other countries. The stay-at-home measures affected suicide prevention organisations, with about 40% of them either shut down or working reduced hours, leading to worries about vulnerable people. Amid the decline in suicide of recent years, there has been an increase among children, with bullying and other problems at school a frequently cited cause. The start of the academic year, in April in Japan, is a particularly stressful time for some, but its postponement due to the pandemic may have saved lives, at least temporarily.aSchool is a pressure for some young people, but this April there is no such pressure,a said Yukio Saito, a former head of telephone counselling service the Japanese Federation of Inochi-no-Denwa. aAt home with their families, they feel safe.aAs for adults, at times of national crisis and disasters, atraditionally, people donat think about suicidea, said Saito, pointing to a drop in cases in 2011, the year of the giant earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdowns at Fukushima.. A large drop in the number of people commuting to offices, where they often work long hours, is also being seen as another contributing factor in the lower suicide rate. However, economic and work pressures are factors. The year after the 1997 Asian financial crisis saw a record rise of nearly 35%. A prolonged economic downturn caused by the pandemic could lead to a rebound in cases, said Saito, who also served as chair of the Japanese Association for Suicide Prevention. - News Time
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-14 17:42:26|Editor: huaxia

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A medical worker takes care of a patient suffering from COVID-19 in an intensive care unit at the National Medical Research Center for Endocrinology in Moscow, Russia, on May 14, 2020. Russia has confirmed 9,974 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising its total number of infections to 252,245, its coronavirus response center said in a statement Thursday. Global confirmed COVID-19 cases topped 4.4 million on Thursday, reaching 4,405,019 as of 12:32 p.m. (1632 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. Global COVID-19 deaths surpassed 300,000 on Thursday, reaching 300,074 as of 12:32 p.m. (1632 GMT), according to the Center for Systems Science and Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. (Sputnik via Xinhua)

MOSCOW, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Russia has confirmed 9,974 new COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, raising its total number of infections to 252,245, its coronavirus response center said in a statement Thursday.

The single-day increase has fallen below 10,000 for the first time over the past 12 days, the center's data showed.

The death toll climbed by 93 to 2,305, while 53,530 people have now recovered, including 5,527 over the last 24 hours, the statement said.

Moscow, the country's worst-hit region, confirmed 4,712 new cases in the past 24 hours, taking its total to 130,716.

Russia's consumer rights and human well-being watchdog said in a statement Thursday that 259,198 people were under medical observation as of Wednesday.

More than 6.1 million lab tests for COVID-19 have been conducted across the country so far, it added.

The number of officially registered unemployed people in Russia reached 1.4 million, twice as many as in early April, President Vladimir Putin said earlier this week.

National paid leave, which lasted for six weeks to contain the spread of the pandemic, ended Tuesday for the whole country and all sectors of the economy.

Russian airlines will receive 23.4 billion rubles (317 million U.S. dollars) in compensation for losses amid the pandemic, the government announced Wednesday.

The Russian government is also considering paying more than 1.6 billion rubles as an incentive to medical workers involved in fighting COVID-19.
Tripoli, Libya (PANA) - Libya's Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Government of National Accord (GNA) has welcomed statements by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg regarding the alliance's readiness to support the GNA, and the fact that "the international community cannot put it in the same balance" with the Haftar camp
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal locked horns on Thursday over the return of stranded workers, with the CM announcing 105 trains to bring them home and the BJP leader accusing the state government of not taking adequate measures. Bringing back migrant labourers and stranded people to Bengal has snowballed into a major political issue, with the opposition BJP and the Union government rapping the state for not doing enough and the Trinamool Congress denying it.

"Towards our commitment to helping all our people stuck in different parts of the country and who want to return to Bengal, I am pleased to announce that we have arranged 105 additional special trains. Over the coming days, these special trains will embark from different states for various destinations across Bengal bringing our people back home," Banerjee tweeted on Thursday morning.

In the evening, Goyal said the West Bengal government was not providing facilities to the migrants to return home and has allowed only seven 'Shramik Special' trains. Despite his appeal to the state government to allow more 'Shramik Special' trains, there has been no response from it, he added.

The ruling Trinamool Congress of West Bengal hit back and accused Goyal of being absent during this monumental crisis. Earlier, the government had given nod for 10 trains to facilitate the return of labourers, patients, tourists and students stranded in other states owing to the lockdown. Three of these 10 trains have reached the state so far.

In her tweet, Banerjee shared a list of 105 trains which would leave from Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka and Rajasthan among others over the next few weeks. The list suggested that three trains would commence their journey from New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore Urban on May 16 and reach New Coochbehar, Howrah and Malda Town respectively the following day.

The government's initiative to ferry stranded people home in trains would continue till June 14. Later, in a series of tweets, Goyal said, "After my statement yesterday, the West Bengal government has woken up from its deep sleep. The government has yet allowed only seven trains for migrant workers... The workers of Bengal are far from their homes, so I had appealed to allow them to run more trains."

West Bengal needs to run 105 'Shramik Special' trains daily to take stranded migrants back home, but "there is unconfirmed news that for the next 30 days they have prepared a list of just 105 trains", he said. "It is a cruel joke with the migrant workers of West Bengal that the government there is not giving them the facility to go to their houses," Goyal said.

The railway minister said, "So far, the government of West Bengal has not allowed eight trains to run, as per its announcement last week." "This is a petty attempt to trick West Bengal's migrant workers, and the government is running away from its responsibility to take the poor labourers home. Uttar Pradesh cleared 400 trains in less than 15 days and brought its migrant workers home. Instead of showing this kind of alacrity, the West Bengal government is preventing the labourers from getting assistance," he said.

Goyal urged the West Bengal government to think about the interests of the workers who have to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state should allow the Railways to run more special trains as soon as possible to take stranded migrants home, he said. The railway minister's statement did not go down well with the TMC, which dubbed it as "cheap politics and an attempt to score political brownie points at the time of crisis".

"The minister has been all but absent during this monumental crisis when millions of poor migrant workers have been abandoned. They've been left to fend for themselves, stuck all over the country waiting for some help from government to safely return to their homes and families," TMC Rajya Sabha party leader Derek O' Brien said.

Leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, however, welcomed the move by the state government and said it should have taken the steps several days earlier. Last week Union Home Minister Amit Shah had flagged the issue of non-cooperation by the West Bengal government in bringing back stranded labourers. The Centre had also rapped the state government over its handling of the COVID crisis in the state.

Also read: Lockdown 4.0: Ball now in CMs' court

Also read: Not allowing trains for stranded migrants injustice: Amit Shah tells Mamata Banerjee
Officers are investigating an incident in Dublin (PA)

Gardai are investigating a shooting incident in north Dublin.

On Thursday night, Coolock garda station received reports of an incident in the Darndale area of north Dublin.

When they arrived at the scene a moped was found on fire.

A short time later a man, aged in his late teens, presented at Beaumont Hospital with apparent gunshot wounds. His condition is not thought to be life-threatening.

Gardai have sealed off two locations in the Darndale area for forensic examination. No arrests have been made and inquiries are ongoing.

Anyone with information is asked to contact the incident room at Coolock garda station on 01-666-4200 or the Garda confidential line on 1800-666-111.
Phi Phi mass cleanup campaign brings island community together

PHUKET: A mass clean-up at Phi Phi Island by more than 100 diver and no-diver volunteers has lifted more than 13 tonnes of waste from the sea, including 338 tyres.

Friday 15 May 2020, 07:19PM

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The mass cleanup campaign at Phi Phi Island has been a huge success in clearing up underwater trash, and bringing the community together. Photo: Thais Da Paz Tavares

The cleanup recommenced yesterday (May 14) after a two-week break, explained Andrew Hewett, General Manager of The Adventure Club dive centre, based on Phi Phi Island.

We collected another 937 kilos [of waste], including 16 tyres yesterday, he said.

The campaign began on Mar 24, Andrew explained.

The Thai government declared that there would be restrictions on travel and business operations to combat the growth of the Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of this all businesses on the Phi Phi islands were closed and much of Thai and foreign workforce that were unable to leave the island were isolated for the coming months, he said.

Social distancing measures were quickly enforced. Travelers and local Thais limited interaction and social gatherings. Many foreigners that were stranded on the islands were from the diving industry and unsure of what the restrictions on travel would mean in regards to renewing visas and ensuring that they were not going to get into trouble if they were unable to extend in time, he added.

Fortunately the Thai government recognised the issues at hand and made the necessary extensions to visitors to the Land of Smiles, regardless of whether a tourist or long-term expat.

Meanwhile it was obvious that this huge workforce remaining on Phi Phi island had nothing but time on their hands so a project was formed by a diving operator on the island to manage volunteer divers to create a remarkable cleanup operation in Tonsai bay around the pier area, Andrew noted.

So on Apr 20, with the permission and support of the local police force and the Phi Phi Island Tourist Association, The Adventure Club initiated a cleanup operation at the pier.

In respect of the rules on social distancing only three groups of five persons per hour were permitted to work at different positions at the pier. Three divers in the water with two persons supporting each group on the surface.

Each team works for one to two hours and then is replaced by another team. This team rotation continues throughout the day. The project is overseen by the manager of The Adventure Club, Tero Kempas, whose job is to ensure that the crews are always maintaining good social distancing and operating safely, Andrew explained.

The main objective of the campaign is to attempt to make the pier area as pristine as possible. Since the pier is the main arrival point for all of the supply boats it means the divers have their work cut out for them, he added.

All manner of materials were brought up: bottles, bags, plastics, concrete blocks. Over the course of nine days the team was able to raise 13,197 kilos of waste, which included 322 tyres.

Yesterday (May 14), those numbers were boosted a further 937 kilos collected, including 16 tyres.

Funding for the work is coming from the Phi Phi Tourism Business Association, the Phi Phi Island Protection and Conservation team, and the Ao Nang Subdistrict Administrative Organisation (OrBorTor), which Andrew noted is the major financial contributor to make the project happen.

The cleanup is part of two different projects under the name Clean PP Today, he explained.

The first part targets cleaning up all wastewater gutters running along the streets. This is the main expense. Salary being paid for the Burmese guys to get the job done, Andrew explained.

The second part focuses on the cleanup at the pier, requiring bin bags and garbage transportation.

COMMUNITY SPIRIT

Andrew pointed out that the local community has been exceptional by supporting the volunteers with food, water and refreshments.

Although the current global COVID situation has shut everyone down, this project has given the Phi Phi Island community an opportunity to come together and make a difference, he said.

Thanks to nearly 100 diver and non-diver volunteers from over 24 countries, devoting their time and energy, when everything settles and travel is resumed, visitors to the Phi Phi Islands are going to find them more beautiful than ever.

Phumipat Phutthipanjapong, owner of Visa Travel Team and a member of the Phi Phi Tourist Business community, praised the efforts by everyone involved. "We are very grateful and we are sharing the same world. Community means everyone. Not just Thai or Foreigner, he said.

Ilze Grinvalde, pro diver volunteer, has been enthused and energised by the project. The cleanup work is bringing a full package of positive emotions. First of all, its the kindness between people, no matter what nationality, age, occupation or social status we have.

Its the feeling of being useful  helping the environment, working together as one team, having the same goal and being able to make a difference and, hopefully, influence the future behavior of people towards respecting nature and the sea.

It is the excitement of having the possibility to be underwater, which for us divers is the most important, calming and needed thing in the world. I feel very inspired to see how well organised this is, how we have people in this community who not only care but are capable of pulling things together, Ilze said.

It gives me the feeling that I am spending the time in lockdown in a meaningful way. It helps me not to go insane with overthinking things, or falling into laziness, self pity or boredom. It gives the purpose for the day and a chance to enjoy seeing people being motivated, dedicated, and excited about doing a good job.

Seeing the extent by which the community is pulling together for the project is inspiring, Ilze noted.

Its incredible to see how the attitude between locals and farangs are becoming more welcoming, supportive, and understanding. I am impressed how Thai government and local people are helping us with so many things  the visas, the food, the medical support.

Understanding and helping by reducing prices, being opened and willing to help with extra requests and needs. If there is one thing this unusual situation is giving us  its the chance to be united. And its a wonderful feeling. I am very grateful to be able to spend this time here, in Thailand, in Koh Phi Phi. It has definitely made me a better, happier, and more supportive person than before. Thank you, Thailand, for that.

Caroline Lecky, the co-owner of Blue View Divers, felt exactly the same. I feel great to be able to do something meaningful during this time. As divers, we must give back to the ocean during this time, as the ocean gives us our livelihood. We feel a certain responsibility to clean the oceans and beaches of this beautiful island.

It feels good to be busy, and rewarding at the same time as the pier area of Tonsai Bay has collected a lot of debris over the years which was impossible to clear until now due to safety issues with ferry and cargo boats when the pier is in use.

It was well organised which meant the social distancing rules that were in force did not impair or impact the work. Working in small groups and in two-hour shifts, meant that many people got to take part without any large gatherings. It was truly amazing to see how much was collected this way.

Dive cleanups usually involve large groups of divers and support team, I dont believe a cleanup has been organised in such a way in Koh Phi Phi before, nor been so effective (since the tsunami cleanup), she wrote.

The feel-good factor does not stop there: The support from the local groups on Phi Phi has been overwhelming. The donations for food, refreshments and drinks for all the volunteers has been amazing.

There are local Thais joining with the divers and local officials helping to coordinate surface support. They are efficient, extremely helpful and organised in sorting, weighing and transporting the trash collected. Local businesses not directly involved have been so kind  the sense of community spirit here is overwhelming and its a privilege to be part of such a great project.

For Tero Kempas, Manager at The Adventure Club, the cleanup has brought much more than relief to marine ecosystem in the area.

Its been a real highlight in the middle of all the sad and crazy COVID-19 stuff. Its wonderful to see how many people want to help and be part of something truly amazing, something big, he said.

I mean Ive been here for nearly 16 years and nothing like this has been done since the tsunami dive camp clean up. Not that nobody wanted to clean the pier area, but its been literally impossible in the middle of the non-stop boat traffic Phi Phi pier normally faces all year around. Its great to see all the volunteers smiles and enthusiasm towards the project every day.

The cleanup campaign has also brought a much-welcome relief to the effects of the COVID situation and being under lockdown, he added.

Its been so much fun to be honest. It gives us all something else to think of, less time to think and worry all the madness that were going through right now.

The clean up also gives us a chance to see our old and new friends without having to feel kind of guilty about it. As we cannot work right now this gives me the feeling that we can still do something meaningful, that were not just killing time and getting bored.

As for the community pulling together for the campaign, Tero said simply, This is something that has honestly surprised me the most. Locals stop you on the street to ask how things are going and how many tyres we have picked up each day and thank us for the effort.

We have received so many donations of different kinds all kinds of Thai food for lunch, energy drinks, iced coffee, fresh fruits and even doughnuts from local restaurants and entrepreneurs who wish to be part of this project. Thats just wonderful!

All the volunteers have been so impressed by all the locals support and involvement. This project has brought a lot of Phi Phi people together. Thats almost as rewarding as cleaning the sea itself!

Andrew himself noted that special mention for making the project a reality must go to Tero Kempas, manager at The Adventure Club, all the international and Thai volunteer divers, the Ao Nang OrBorTor, the Phi Phi Tourist Association, the Phi Phi Island Protection & Conservation team and the Department of National Parks.

He also gave special mention to the following restaurants and groups for donating food, fruits, snacks and refreshments: Aqua restaurant, Bakery Hut, Chao Koh group, Only Bar, Khun Niyom restaurant, and PJeab for her mango sticky rice.

A video of the volunteers efforts can be seen at https://youtu.be/fzfnY3GmLss

Those wanting to support the project can contact Andrew at The Adventure Club PADI 5 Star Instructor Development Dive Center on Phi Island. Tel: 081-9700314, 081-8951334. Email: info@diving-in-thailand.net. Website: www.diving-in-thailand.net The Adventure Club Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/TheAdventureClubPhiPhi
A product called Akwaton multipurpose wipes, which has not been approved by Health Canada, is in circulation in Westman.

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This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

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A product called Akwaton multipurpose wipes, which has not been approved by Health Canada, is in circulation in Westman.

The point of entry is Gambler First Nation.

Akwaton multipurpose wipes, which contain polyhexamenthylene guanidine and are in circulation at Gambler First Nation and possibly beyond, are not approved by Health Canada. (Submitted)

Band member Darlene Labelle Gerula told The Brandon Sun that she became aware the product had resurfaced as part of COVID-19 cleaning supplies in the community, after first being introduced in 2018. A band member told her that Chief David LeDoux, his wife Rose LeDoux and counsellors Kellie LeDoux and Louis Tanner were handing the product out to staff and the community, said Gerula.

When Gerula learned the wipes surfaced again in April this year, she was shocked.

"I was in disbelief," she said.

"I couldnt believe somebody could be so careless. Not even careless, just disregard for human life. I was scared that someone would get seriously ill or die."

Gerula and her husband, Greg Wakin, were asked two years ago by LeDoux and his wife to investigate a possible business opportunity, Gerula said.

Fosfaton Akwaton International Ltd. owner Izabela Jarocka was looking to sell her company, which makes the wipes, as part of her retirement plan. She was asking for $41 million.

The April 2018 business plan states: "The following schedule starting in May 2018, shows the funding required to complete the technology transfer and construction of the new manufacturing plant in Manitoba, either in Brandon or in the Gambler reserve. Sales can start immediately using current Polish plant."

Gerula said she was never able to establish whether the Polish plant existed.

Jarocka wanted $500,000 immediately. Also according to the plan, Fosfaton Akwaton International Ltd. was

incorporated in Manitoba in 2005.

"It owns and produces a natural formulation of Poly Hexa Methylene Guanidine Hydrochloride (PHMGH-FAI), the active ingredient of Akwaton," according to the plan.

The small wipe packages seemed innocuous enough.

"They look like wet naps you get at restaurants," said Gerula.

But as she and Wakin researched, they learned the main ingredient is polyhexamenthylene guanidine phosphate (PHMG-P), and that a similar polymer antimicrobial compound had caused the deaths of approximately 100 people and left hundreds with permanent lung damage when used as a humidifier disinfectant in South Korea. The deaths, due to pulmonary fibrosis, led to a seven-year jail sentence for one company executive, according to news reports.

"We approached Rose LeDoux and Chief Dave LeDoux with our findings and research regarding the dangers of the product," said Gerula, who added she believed at the time LeDoux dropped the idea of purchasing the company.

Polyhexamenthylene guanidine research shows great success as an antimicrobial. There are numerous studies published. One researcher linked with Jarocka, Universite de Saint-Bonifaces Mathias Oule, was written up in the Winnipeg Free Press in 2012. The product, Akwaton, showed promise as a "weapon in war on superbugs."

Thats the year the company made an application to Health Canada for a drug identification number (DIN). They were turned down. To this day, Health Canada has never approved the use of the polymer, according to an email to Wakin dated April 7, 2020.

"Health Canada has never approved a disinfectant or antiseptic containing polyhexamenthylene guanidine as an ingredient," the department stated.

The Brandon Sun has been trying to get answers to questions from the federal government since Monday. Gerula and Wakin had been told by Health Canada that the file had been punted over to Indigenous Services Canada. That department told the Sun to contact Health Canada.

"Thank you so much for your patients (sic). We continue to work diligently with our experts to provide a response to your request, given the complexity and volume of incoming requests we are doing our best to have something for you at the soonest," Health Canada stated Tuesday.

LeDoux has not replied to questions The Brandon Sun sent him Wednesday about whether Gambler invested in the company, or whether he was aware Health Canada had not approved products containing polyhexamenthylene guanidine. The Sun also asked where the wipes have been distributed.

How the product came to be introduced at Gambler First Nation, with Oules endorsement on the package, remains a strange matter. Oule told the Sun he only found out his name was on the product endorsing it two weeks ago. As for Jarocka, she said she didnt sell the wipes to Gambler First Nation. She said they were past their expiry date.

"Instead of throwing them out, I gave it to them. I didnt charge them for anything. Those wipes are no longer existing," she said.

She repeatedly told the Sun the wipes did not exist, that she had told Rose LeDoux to take them to the dump.

Yet, Gambler First Nation member Roxanne Brass, Chief LeDouxs sister, said Rose LeDoux had tried to sell her a box of Akwaton wipes for $12 in 2018. She found them too expensive, so she never purchased them.

Delores Tanner, also a band member and at one time a band employee, said she was given Akwaton wipes in 2019 to use in the communitys recreation centre where Jordans Principle work was taking place.

"We were told to wipe all the toys down, counters, tables," said Tanner.

Jarocka said she purchased the proprietary rights for the polyhexamenthylene guanidine formulation from the Polish government, and that it was in no way similar to the South Korean product used in humidifiers.

In the business plan presented to Gambler First Nation, she stated that two production machines came with that purchase, and that the company had trademark registrations in 49 countries. She told the Sun all that equipment was now in Manitoba.

The proposed plant would produce 2,000 litres per day of a product that would have "health care and medical benefits; and for water purification related to drinking and wastewater treatment."

"I was unable to confirm if she actually had a plant in Poland with machines and the mass production of the product she kept talking about," Gerula said.

"She also made these outlandish statements about how the product was being used in the Mayo Clinic in the United States and that the provincial government was going to pour her product in the Manitoba waterways to eradicate the zebra mussel infestation. We found this statement to be untrue as we discovered the product was not approved for use in Canada."

Both Jarocka and Oule told the Sun a new application for Health Canada approval is in the works. Health Canada, they said, wanted toxicity testing done on live animals. Oules laboratory doesnt have that capacity, so Jarocka turned to researchers in Brazil.

But, Oule said, "The wipes are not usable."

"We are waiting for Health Canada approval. I did not know how and when she gave them to the First Nation."

Jarocka said Health Canada should be ashamed.

"The product has been tested for zebra mussel, has been tested for algae application, has been tested for all the infection diseases, has been tested for everything else, and now the product can be produced. I brought all the machines here to Winnipeg. Now I have to send them back to the U.S. and to different places because we cant put the production in Canada," she said.

"I dont think (Premier Brian) Pallister is going to be happy when hes going to find out."

Jarockas business plan for Gambler First Nation states the target market for the product is Canadian First Nations.

 mletourneau@brandonsun.com

 Michele LeTourneau covers Indigenous matters for The Brandon Sun under the Local Journalism Initiative, a federally funded program that supports the creation of original civic journalism.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 02:28:28|Editor: huaxia

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ALGIERS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Algeria is likely to oblige its populations to wear face masks if the spread of the novel coronavirus persists and the situation is not under control, the Health Minister Abderahmane Benbouzid warned Thursday.

During a working visit to the province of Tipasa, 50 km west of Algiers, the minister pointed out that "it is possible that the Scientific Commission for Detection and Follow-up COVID-19 Evolution would recommend authorities to enforce the compulsory wearing of masks."

Benbouzid said that "the availability of face masks should be guaranteed in case such a decision would be enforced," noting that Algeria's needs for masks are estimated at nearly 10 million units per day.

On May 10, the wearing of a mask became compulsory for shoppers in some provinces, including the capital Algiers.

Health authorities in the country reported 189 new infections in the past 24 hours, bringing the total cases to 6,442, head of the COVID-19 Detection and Follow-up Commission Djamel Foutar told a daily press briefing.

He noted that seven fatalities were registered as the death toll hit 529, while the recovered cases jumped to 3,158 after 100 more patients were discharged from hospitals during the last 24 hours. Enditem
In a veiled reference to a possible Chinese role, army chief General Manoj Mukund Naravane on Friday asserted that Nepals protest against the construction of a border road in Uttarakhand was at the behest of someone else. Indian and Chinese soldiers have scuffled twice along their disputed border in Sikkim and Ladakh this month.

Kathmandu has expressed regret at the inauguration of the road from Dharchula to Lipulekh (the gateway to Kailash-Mansarovar), contending the road passes through Nepali territory. Defence minister Rajnath Singh inaugurated the road, constructed by the Border Roads Organisation (BRO), through video conferencing on May 8.

The area east of Kali (Mahakali) river belongs to them (Nepal). The road that we built is on the west of the river. There was no dispute about that. I dont know what they are agitating about, Naravane said, during an online talk organised by the Manohar Parrikar Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses.

The army chief pointed out that it was very much a possibility that Nepal raised the issue at someone elses behest, adding that there had been no such problem previously.

The BRO built the 80-km stretch at an altitude ranging from 6000 feet to 17,060 feet, creating the shortest route for the Kailash-Mansarovar Yatra. Hundreds of pilgrims travel to the 6,638-metre Mount Kailash, located near Mansarovar Lake in the Tibet Autonomous Region, every year believing that circumambulating the holy mountain brings good fortune.

New Delhi has asserted that the region where the road has been built is completely within the territory of India. The Nepal government summoned the Indian envoy on May 11 to protest the construction of the road, signalling an escalation of the diplomatic row.

The border row erupted months after Nepal was irked by the depiction of Kalapani as part of Uttarakhand in new Indian maps showing the union territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh. Nepal had sought talks to address the Kalapani issue but New Delhi rejected Kathmandus protest, saying the new maps accurately depict Indian territory.

Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli is perceived to be close to China that played a key behind-the-scenes role in bringing together Communist parties to form the government in Kathmandu.

Of late, there have been tensions between India and China along the along the Line of Actual Contol (LAC). Indian and Chinese border troops first clashed in eastern Ladakh near Pangong Lake on May 5 and then in north Sikkim on May 9. Several soldiers on both sides were injured in these incidents, which marked the first major flare-up along the LAC since the 73-day standoff at Doklam in 2017.

Both the army chief and the external affairs ministry on Thursday pointed out face-offs between border troops along LAC occurred because of differing perceptions of the alignment of boundaries that are not resolved.

There was no official response to the remarks from Nepals foreign ministry but people familiar with the developments in Kathmandu said the government was upset by the comments as the Indian army chief also holds the honorary position of the chief of Nepalese Army.

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By WestKyStar Staff

May. 14, 2020 | PADUCAH

By WestKyStar Staff May. 14, 2020 | 04:12 PM | PADUCAH

The former Whaler's Catch neon sign (that has been in sad shape for over five years) was replaced today by a bright new Broussard's Cajun Cuisine sign. "We are delighted with the prospect of light, life and business in our downtown 2nd and Jefferson block," said Beverly McKinley, adjacent property owner and long-time downtown developer. "The parking lot across the street will once again be filling up with Broussard's customers. We've missed all the old Whaler's Catch patrons coming and going these past few years. In this time when we are challenged with day to day business as usual, this is a welcome and hopeful sight."



Ro Morse, original owner of Whaler's Catch, said, "It's exciting to see that old sign be restored as a beacon in our downtown. That's a prominent piece of property that has been empty and waiting for someone to appreciate its potential. The sign first belonged to the liquor store at the corner of 13th and Monroe, next to the original site of Whaler's. In 1986, we bought the liquor store for additional dining space and patio, and kept the cool neon sign. We had the panel repainted from saying Liquor to say Whaler's Catch. It's fitting that the Broussard's owners have repurposed it again. Greer Neon Company in Mayfield made the original changes and they were on site today installing the freshly designed new one. It's a great sign and landmark, hard to miss if you are looking for the restaurant."



John Harris bought the restaurant from Morse in 1991. Following a fire on January 1, 1996, at the 13th Street location, Harris moved the restaurant, oyster bar and market to the corner of 2nd and Jefferson. He restored the historic building and reopened Whaler's at its new downtown location later that same year. In 2014, Harris died and his family closed the business. The property was sold in 2019 to the present owner and developers.



Broussard's plans to open this summer.




Story Highlights 49% approve of job President Trump is doing

31% approve of way Congress is handling its job

Approval of Congress has not been higher since 2009

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For a second consecutive month, Congress' job approval rating remains elevated, at 31%. Congress last had an approval rating of 31% or better in early September 2009, during President Barack Obama's first year in office, when he worked with Democratic majorities in Congress.

The latest congressional approval rating comes from a May 1-13 Gallup poll, conducted as the nation continues to deal with the coronavirus pandemic.

Congress has passed four bills to address the public health and economic harm caused by COVID-19 and is considering further legislation. Gallup found roughly eight in 10 Americans approving of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed in late March to provide relief for businesses and individuals affected by the coronavirus situation. Congress' approval rating for handling the coronavirus situation is 48%, well above its overall approval rating.

President Donald Trump's job approval ratings have also been higher in recent months, including 49% in the current survey, unchanged from the prior measure in late April and tied for the best of his presidency.

Congress' approval rating had averaged 17% for the prior 10 years, considerably below its historical average 30% approval since 1974.

The highest rating Congress ever received was 84% in October 2001, shortly after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Congressional Approval Higher Among All Party Groups

Congress began the year with a 23% job approval rating, and it stayed at about that level through March, before increasing to 30% in the April 1-14 Gallup poll, right after the late March coronavirus relief bill was signed into law. Currently, 39% of Democrats, 32% of independents and 24% of Republicans approve of the job Congress is doing, up at least eight percentage points since January among all groups.

Democrats rate Congress higher than Republicans, even though control of the legislative branch is divided between the Democratic-led House of Representatives and Republican-led Senate. That pattern has generally been the case since Democrats took control of the House in early 2019.

In 2017 and 2018 -- Trump's first two years in office, when he worked with a Republican majority in both houses of Congress -- Republicans rated Congress more positively than Democrats did.

Bottom Line

Although Americans are still mostly negative toward Congress, their opinions of the institution now are the most positive they have been in over a decade. Its work to address the coronavirus crisis has likely contributed to those higher ratings. Congress has begun crafting further coronavirus relief legislation, with the House working on a bill that would provide $3 trillion in additional relief. The Senate and the president agree another relief package will likely be needed, but they disagree with House leaders on the scope and timing of the bill.

View complete question responses and trends (PDF download).

Explore President Trump's approval ratings and compare them with those of past presidents in the Gallup Presidential Job Approval Center.

Learn more about how the Gallup Poll Social Series works.
HURON COUNTY  Agriculture and community involvement make the tip of the Thumb everything it is. Each year residents and visitors look forward to locally harvested fresh fruits and vegetables sold at nearby farmers markets. Due to statewide executive orders and health concerns linked to COVID-19, things have changed this year.

People will more than likely be able to enjoy fresh produce and baked goods at some markets, but might not be able to to shop around for handmade crafts or other items deemed nonessential by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Port Austin Farmers Market

The show will go on in Port Austin, with its market set to open on Memorial Day weekend Saturday, May 23. It will extend through mid-October, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. The market will take place in downtown Port Austin at the intersection of State Street and Lake Street. Board member Erica Bruce said only essential items will be sold. Vendors selling food, plants and personal hygiene products will be on site.

People are expected to follow the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines to help stay safe. Customers must pay by credit card or exact cash, as no change will be given. Face masks are highly recommended, and everyone is asked to follow social distancing guidelines. Hand sanitizing stations will be set up throughout the market.

To learn of any updates, visit the Port Austin Farmers Market Facebook Page.

Harbor Beach Farmers Market

Harbor Beach originally planned on hosting its annual farmers market every Thursday, May 24 to Oct. 11, from 11:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. This date has been pushed back to July.

Kelly Jo Osentoski oversees community promotions and confirmed the chambers current plans to host a market every Friday, starting July 3, from 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Manager of the farmers market Barb Kozlowski sent an email to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessels office, asking for clarification on what could be sold. The AG's response was food only.

We will have no problem running it if we get enough (food) vendors, Kozlowski said.

The market will take place on the lawn of the Murphy Museum.

If interested in becoming a vendor, email Kozlowski at tupperbarb1@gmail.com.

Pigeon Farmers Market

Details surrounding the Pigeon Farmers Market remain vague. It was scheduled to take place every Friday, May through October from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. This is no longer the case. If it does take place, it will not begin until June.

We will know at end of May, Pigeon Historical Society member Duane Wurst said. (We) want to start in June if we can.

It would take place at the farmers market building in downtown Pigeon, located between Village Hall and the history museum.

For more information about the Pigeon Farmers Market, visit the farmers market page on the Pigeon Chamber of Commerces website.

Ubly Farmers Market

Ubly has opted out of putting on a farmers market this year. Community club member Bonnie Irvine said the group thought about selling essential items. However, the market only has four or five committed food vendors present at varying times.

If I were lucky, I would have two at a time, Irvine said.

Instead, she looks ahead to next years farmers market.

Find additional information on the Ubly Community Club Facebook page.

Caseville Farmers Market

Michelle Louwers from the Caseville Chamber of Commerce said they are waiting to see what new government rules and regulations will be before etching anything into stone.

It will not be in May, Louwers said. Possibly June, depending on what they say.

She said they are taking things day-by-day and should know more next week. If the market is held this year, it will take place at the memorial city park.

The chamber of commerce may be reached at email@casevillechamber.com or by phone at 989-856-3818

Sebewaing Farmers Market

Ray Parsons runs the farmers market in Sebewaing and hopes for a late June kickoff. However, he could not be certain and should know more next month.

"I am thinking about starting June 28," Parsons said.

To learn more, call Ray Parsons at 989-977-0052 or checkout the Sebewaing Farmers Market Facebook Page.

The Farmers Market Association has asked that farmers market managers consult their local health departments and the state of Michigan for information related to COVID-19.

The Huron County Health Department can be reached at 989-269-9721.
A businessman accidentally left his camera on while taking a shower during a Zoom conference call with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro.

The embarrassing slip-up happened during a virtual meeting organised by Paulo Skaf, the president of the Federation of Industries of the State of Sao Paulo.

A screen grab of the call shows a shirtless man - reportedly one of the federation's advisers - next to 24 other stone-faced officials.

A businessman accidentally left his camera on while taking a shower (bottom right) during a Zoom conference call with Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro

Bolsonaro (pictured) has been criticised for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Brazil being the worst-hit country in Latin America

It is unclear why the man's shower was in view of his webcam.

Mr Skaf was interrupted by the President who spotted the naked man onscreen, local media reported.

He reportedly said: 'Paulo, there's a colleague there in the last little square. He left, is he okay?'

The Minister of Industry, Paulo Guedes then said: 'There is a guy having a shower there, naked.

'There's a naked guy there, isolating naked at home, great.

'The guy was getting hot with the conversation, so he went to take a cold shower.'

Bolsonaro is said to have responded with: 'Unfortunately we saw. It was a shaky picture but we saw, unfortunately.'

The man who appeared naked has not been identified.

Bolsonaro has been criticised for his handling of the coronavirus pandemic, with Brazil being the worst-hit country in Latin America.

The President has locked horns with state governors for weeks over the lockdowns, saying they are causing more damage through lost jobs than the disease itself.

The President has locked horns with state governors for weeks over the lockdowns, saying they are causing more damage through lost jobs than the disease itself. Pictured: Indigenous people mourn a coronavirus victim in Manaus, Brazil

He recently came out against Governor of Sao Paulo Joao Doria who, along with other state governors in Brazil, declared lockdown in his state to stop the spread of the virus.

Bolsonaro said businesses need to 'play hardball' with Doria as he is 'one man deciding the future of the economy of Brazil'.

Brazil has upwards of 203,00 cases of Covid-19 with more than 13,000 deaths.
The Armenian military has warned Azerbaijan against heightening tensions in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict zone during large-scale exercises which the Azerbaijani army will hold next week.

Azerbaijans Defense Ministry announced earlier this week that the five-day exercises will involve around 10,000 soldiers, hundreds of tanks and artillery systems, and dozens of warplanes and helicopters. It held similar drills in March.

In a statement released on Thursday, the Armenian Defense Ministry condemned the upcoming war games, saying that they pose a threat to the regional security environment. It accused Baku of ignoring United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterress recent call for a global ceasefire so the world can focus on fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

We are calling on the Azerbaijani side to show restraint and honor its obligations to the international community, read the statement.

At the same time we notify that any attempt to move military hardware and personnel close to the Armenian border or the Line of Contact with Nagorno-Karabakh would be viewed as a provocation and have appropriate consequences, it warned.

Truce violations in the conflict zone have decreased significantly since Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinian and Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev met for the first time in September 2018. The two leaders and their foreign ministers have held regular talks since then.

Still, there have been signs of increased tension on the frontlines in recent weeks. Karabakhs Armenian-backed army claimed to have shot down an Azerbaijani military drone on April 21 and said a week later that Azerbaijani forces have fired mortars on its frontline positions for the first time in almost a year.

Meeting with the Azerbaijani army top brass on May 2, Azerbaijans Defense Minister Zakir Hasanov said the likelihood of hostilities has increased dramatically because of what he called Armenian provocative actions. Armenian Foreign Minister Zohrab Mnatsakanian denounced that statement.

The Defense Ministry in Yerevan reported on Wednesday that Azerbaijani troops fired from heavy machine guns at a border village in Armenias northern Tavush province. It released photographs of bullet holes and other damage caused to one of the village houses.

The U.S., Russian and French mediators co-heading the Minsk Group renewed their calls for the conflicting parties to strictly observe the ceasefire and avoid provocative actions in the current environment when they held a joint video conference with Mnatsakanian and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Elmar Mammadyarov on April 21.

Speaking on May 12, Mammadyarov accused Yerevan of hampering progress in Armenian-Azerbaijani peace talks. Azerbaijan is committed to a political settlement of the conflict but negotiations cannot continue endlessly, he warned.

Mnatsakanian rejected Azerbaijani threats of use of force and insisted that the Armenian side is prepared to negotiate a peace deal based on mutual concessions.
DETROIT - A federal appeals court on Friday overturned the murder conviction of a Michigan woman who was accused of setting a fire and then running over her burning husband with her van as he tried to flee their home.

Linda Stermers rights were violated when her attorney failed to effectively challenge key evidence, the court said in a 2-1 decision that found other problems with the trial.

Stermer, now 55, was convicted in Van Buren County in 2010 and sentenced to life in prison. However, she has been free on bond for nearly 18 months while challenging her conviction on constitutional grounds.

In 2007, a fire broke out at the home of Linda and Todd Stermer in Lawrence, in southwestern Michigan. She got into her van to seek help but it got stuck in mud. Her husband was run over by the vehicle, although the cause of death was linked to the fire.

Prosecutors alleged that Stermer doused Todd with gasoline and set him on fire, a day after he learned she was involved in an extramarital affair. Stermer told insurance investigators that Todd had an oil lamp and candles burning in the house.

Stermers trial attorney, Jeff Getting, didnt consult an expert to rebut testimony that the fire was arson, not an accident, the appeals court noted.

There was no reasonable basis for trial counsel not to have consulted a fire expert. ... In a duel, it might be a reasonable choice to elect a sword fight over pistols, but once you choose the latter, it makes no sense to show up without any bullets, Judge Eric Clay said.

In dissent, Judge Jeffrey Sutton said there was no plausible path to overturn the conviction.

The possibility of an accident suspends belief, Sutton said. Two remarkably unlikely events would have to happen: Todd accidentally would have to set the house and himself on fire, and his wife accidentally would have to drive over him in the front yard.

All that was missing, Sutton said, was a film of the mariticide.

Mike Bedford, the prosecutor in Van Buren County, didnt immediately reply to a message seeking comment.

Stermers appellate attorney, Wolfgang Mueller, said she will have expert fire witnesses if Bedford pursues another trial.

I think the prosecutor will realize how bad this case is and dismiss the charges, Mueller said.

___

Follow Ed White at http://twitter.com/edwhiteap
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:02:15|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese researchers reported on Friday that an analysis of sequenced ancient genomes revealed a major episode of admixture of ancient humans in East Asia, suggesting that population movement played a profound role in the early genetic history of East Asians.

Researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences reported in the latest issue of the journal Science online that they retrieved ancient DNA from 25 ancient human remains dating back 9,500 to 4,200 years and one dating back 300 years from sites across China.

They found that Early Neolithic East Asians were more genetically differentiated from each other than present-day East Asians are.

In early Neolithic East Asia since 9,500 years ago, a northern ancestry existed along the Yellow River and up into the eastern steppes of Siberia, while a southern ancestry existed along the coast of the southern Chinese mainland and islands in the Taiwan Strait since 8,400 years ago.

But present-day Chinese from both the north and south share a closer genetic relationship to northern Neolithic East Asians along the Yellow River.

Further analyses showed northern ancestry played a larger role in the genetic admixture. Population movement, particularly from the north along the Yellow River southward, was a prominent part of East Asian prehistory after the Neolithic.

They added that unlike in Europe, influences from Central Asia had no role in the formation of East Asian ancestry, with mixing largely occurring regionally between northern and southern populations in East Asia.

Meanwhile, southern ancestry is found to have extensive influence on other regions. Present-day Austronesian speakers, who live across a wide swath of islands in Southeast Asia and the Southwest Pacific, show a remarkably close genetic relationship to Neolithic populations from the southern coast of China.

The researchers noted this provides evidence that Austronesian speakers today originated from a population derived from southern China at least 8,400 years ago.

Austronesian refers to a family of languages spoken in the area extending from Madagascar eastward through the Malay Peninsula and Archipelago to Hawaii and Easter Island and including almost all the native languages of the Pacific islands.

The researchers said their study highlights the profound impact that population movement and mixture had on human history. Enditem
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 00:02:36|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC) has donated medical supplies worth 36.68 million rupees (about 231,000 U.S. dollars) to Pakistan, helping the country to curb the COVID-19 pandemic, a representative of the bank said Friday.

The medical supplies donated to the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) of Pakistan, which spearheads the country's fight against the COVID-19, include 60,000 surgical masks, 50,000 KN95 masks, 4,000 testing kits, and ventilators, Yuan Baoxin, representative from the ICBC Karachi Branch, said during a donation ceremony held in Islamabad.

Addressing the ceremony, Chairman of the NDMA Muhammad Afzal thanked the ICBC for providing the urgently needed medical supplies especially the ventilators.

During the pandemic crisis, the Chinese government, people and enterprise have come forward to help Pakistan, and the time-tested friendship between the two countries will continue to progress, Afzal said.

"China and Pakistan are 'iron brothers'. Pakistan has provided timely help to China's fight against the COVID-19. It is our enterprise's social responsibility to help the Pakistani people tide over difficulties," Yuan said.

Earlier in April, with the help of the Chinese Embassy in Pakistan, the ICBC organized a video conference, inviting a Chinese medical psychology expert to give psychological guidance related to the COVID-19 to the representatives of overseas Chinese students as well as China-invested enterprises in Pakistan.

The Pakistani government has started to ease the lockdown from Saturday to mitigate the influence of the pandemic and the lockdown on the economy and the poor people. The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has risen to 37,218, with 803 deaths and 10,155 recoveries in Pakistan, according to the data updated by the country's health ministry on Friday. Enditem
Multinationals riding high in Vietnams pharma landscape

A few days ago, multinational corporations (MNCs) officially announced their first-quarter results, with many reporting good performance despite the COVID-19 outbreak. Swiss pharma conglomerate Novartis, French pharmaceutical firm Sanofi, and UK-headquartered GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Reckitt Benckiser have all reported positive results globally.

Particularly, Sanofi reported that the groups total net sales reached EUR8.97 billion ($9.7 billion), up 6.9 per cent on a reported basis, while total gross profit rose 6.1 per cent to EUR6.47 billion ($7 billion).

As demonstrated in the French firms first-quarter report, in the rest of the world consumer healthcare (CHC) sales increased 8.1 per cent to EUR578 million ($626.6 million), driven by double-digit growth in the allergy, cough, and cold (up 17.1 per cent to EUR171 million  $185.38 million), pain (up 13.3 per cent to EUR148 million  $160.44 million), and nutritional (up 12 per cent to EUR108 million  $117 million) categories, supported by continued underlying demand as well as favourable COVID-19 impacts.

These are the segments where Sanofi is said to have performed well in the over-the-counter (OTC) channel in Vietnam between January and March. The success in Vietnam is part of the larger global mosaic of the companys success.

As shown in FPT Securities April pharmaceutical update report, MNCs have been seeing profitable operations in the local pharma market during the first quarter thanks to the robust growth of consumer spending in pharmacies amid the serious development of the pandemic as consumers priority for now is to protect and enhance their safety.

According to market research firm Kantar Worldpanel, Vietnams OTC revenues rose 164-168 per cent on-year in February a large part due to the surging demand for protection masks and hand sanitiser among Vietnamese consumers.

Moreover, a rise was seen in the demand for general medicine such as the cough and cold, pain, and eye drops categories, vitamins, and the nutritional category where the majority of the market is held by MNCs.

As demonstrated in an analysis by Euromonitor International, pharma firms that have market shares of more than 1 per cent in the cough and cold, pain, and fever categories in Vietnam account for 74.1 per cent of the market in the OTC segment in which foreign-made drugs account for 81.6 per cent (Panadol  GlaxoSmithKline, Strepsils  Reckitt Benckiser, Decolgen  United Pharma, Toplexil  Sanofi, and others).

Like Sanofi, the good performance in Vietnam has advanced other MNCs overall global results.

GSK delivered strong first-quarter results. Group sales reached 9.1 billion ($11.26 billion), a 19 per cent increase in annual equivalent rate (AER). Pharmaceuticals sales reached 4.4 billion ($5.45 billion), a 6 per cent increase in AER. Specifically, the pain relief category grew by 65 per cent AER and 68 per cent coupon equivalent rate to 611 million ($756.13 million). On a pro-forma basis, sales grew in the mid-teens per cent-wise, with significant growth of Advil and Panadol reflecting accelerated purchases as a result of COVID-19.

Meanwhile, Reckitt Benckiser saw total sales rise 12.3 per cent to 3.5 billion ($4.33 billion), with like-for-like sales up 13.3 per cent. Reckitt said growth was led by strong demand for many of its hygiene and health products, in particular Dettol, Lysol, Mucinex, Nurofen, and VMS.

In the growth group, Novartis maintained strong operational performance in the first quarter. Accordingly, first quarter net sales from continuing operations grew 13 per cent with double-digit growth in Innovative Medicines and Sandoz.

Sanofi, GSK, Reckitt Benckiser, and Novartis are expanding rapidly in Vietnam to cash in on growing local healthcare demand.

In its latest move, Novartis signed an MoU with the Ministry of Health to enlarge into primary healthcare through commune- and district-level activities for the next two years, and the inauguration of a new legal entity, Novartis Vietnam Co., Ltd. The company inaugurated the new legal entity, becoming one of the first MNCs to transform into a foreign-invested importer, rather than simply holding a representative office in the country.

In a move to develop the OTC business, GSK and Pfizer have closed the deal for a joint venture to combine the parties respective consumer healthcare portfolio. The move creates the worlds largest OTC business with robust iconic brands, including GSKs Sensodyne, Voltaren, Panadol, and Pfizers Advil, Centrum, and Caltrate. OTC is estimated to make up about 30 per cent of Vietnams pharmaceutical market, while the rest belongs to the hospital system or the so-called ethical drugs channel.

MNCs are also gaining the advantage in the local OTC channel as their products are held in higher esteem than locally-made equivalents. Vietnams pharmaceutical market will continue to be on the radar of many more MNCs on the back of growing per capita drug spending of 10.6 per cent on-year to an estimated $53.54 in 2018, with the figure forecast to increase further in the coming time, and double-digit growth forecast in the next five years, reaching an estimated $7.7 billion in 2021 from the current $5 billion.
As Three Square continues its effort to provide emergency food to a growing number of Southern Nevadans in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the organization announced today that Las Vegas Restaurant Week, scheduled for June 8-19, 2020, will now be on-hold and set to return in 2021.



For more than a decade, our culinary community has come together every year to support Three Square and the fight against hunger via Las Vegas Restaurant Week. Now, as restaurants throughout Southern Nevada begin re-opening for business, we hope that anyone who planned a meal out for Las Vegas Restaurant Week, if theyre able, will visit these amazing Southern Nevada restaurants and support them as they welcome customers, said Brian Burton, president and CEO of Three Square Food Bank.

Since implementing the Emergency Food Distribution strategy on March 11, Three Square has increased weekly food distribution from 1 million to 1.3 million pounds  the equivalent of 250,000 meals per week. A complete list of Three Squares emergency food distribution sites and hours of operation is available at threesquare.org/help. This map and list are updated in real-time, ensuring the most current information is available.

Now, in light of current events, our focus as an organization continues to be on the emergency food distribution that gets food into the hands and homes of the thousands of our neighbors who face need and uncertainty like never before, said Burton. When the time is right, well begin planning for Las Vegas Restaurant Week 2021 with hopes to make it the biggest and best yet.



For more information about Three Square, call 702-644-3663 or visit threesquare.org.
Donald Trump recently encouraged Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to once more consider running for the US Senate in Kansas but Mr Pompeo rebuffed the request, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The president spoke to Mr Pompeo about making a bid for the seat during a one-on-one meeting at the White House about two weeks ago, both people said, suggesting that Mr Pompeo could definitely keep the seat for Republicans if he ran.

Mr Trumps request underscores the growing nervousness among Republicans that they could lose control of the Senate in this falls election and that a once safe Kansas seat could now be in play.

The president has received regular updates from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Republican for Kentucky., and other political advisers about the worsening political landscape in the Senate, according to Trump advisers who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private discussions. The president is regularly presented polling data about competitive Senate races.

Its a challenging environment. It has been consistently throughout this cycle. Just look at the numbers. Thats the only conclusion intelligently to read from it, Mr McConnell said to reporters this week.

Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Show all 13 1 /13 Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Everyone Trump has fired or forced out John Bolton Trump claimed to have fired Bolton, his national security adviser, while Bolton claimed he offered to resign. An anonymous White House source that Bolton's departure came as a result of the national security adviser working too independently of the president AFP/Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Anthony Scaramucci Scaramucci lasted only six days in his role as Trump's communications director before being fired by John Kelly, the incoming chief of staff Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Rick Perry Rick Perry announced his resignation just as he became embroiled in the president's impeachment scandal. The White House said Mr Perry was asked by Donald Trump to work with Rudy GIuliani in regards to Ukraine. AP Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Rex Tillerson Tillerson, Trump's first secretary of state, was fired after a series of clashes with the president over policy Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out James Mattis Mattis served as secretary of defense from the beginning of Trump's administration until retiring on 1 January 2019. However, the president later claimed that he had "essentially fired" Mattis Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out James Comey Comey was fired as director of the FBI early in Trump's presidency after serving in the role for four years prior. His dismissal is widely thought to have been related to the Russia investigation Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Reince Priebus Priebus, Trump's first chief of staff, was forced out after six tumultuous months AFP/Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out David Shulkin Veterans affairs secretary Shulkin claims that he was fired, the White House claims that he resigned Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out John Kelly Kelly, Trump's second chief of staff, was forced out after 17 months in office. His departure was a confused affair though it is clear that Trump wanted Kelly out AFP/Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Michael Flynn Flynn lasted 24 days as Trump's national security adviser before being fired for lying to the FBI Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Lee Cisna Cisna served as director of citizen and immigration services between October 2017 and June 2019 before being asked to resign amid a major personnel change in the department of homeland security Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Madeline Westerhout Westerhout served as Trump's personal assistant after leaking private information about his family AFP/Getty Everyone Trump has fired or forced out Mira Ricardel Ricardel was forced out of her role as Deputy National Security Advisor after first lady Melania Trump publicly called for her to be fired

Republicans are defending 23 of the 35 Senate seats up for grabs this fall. They hold a 53-to-47 advantage in the Senate.

Spokespeople for the White House and the State Department declined to comment.

As the calendar closes in on Kansas 1 June primary-filing deadline, a person close to Mr Pompeo said, the secretary is no longer considering running for the seat after weighing it for months last year. Officials say Mr Pompeo, who served as a congressman from the Wichita area for six years before joining the Trump administration in 2017, wants to remain secretary of state out of a concern that he has unfinished business to complete.

The primary focus of his tenure has been dismantling the Iran nuclear deal struck during the Obama administration and a campaign of economic and military pressure against Tehran. Though he has claimed the

administrations policies have made the Middle East more peaceful, Irans nuclear program has only grown more sophisticated following the US withdrawal from the deal and violence against US and coalition forces by Iranian-backed groups has increased.

Mr McConnell has repeatedly tried to convince Mr Pompeo to run for the seat, seeing him as the ideal candidate, according to people close to the majority leader. Mr Trump was initially sceptical of the bid, seeing Mr Pompeo as one of his most valuable and trustworthy members of his Cabinet. Some people close to Mr McConnell were frustrated when Mr Pompeo decided against the bid in January.

There are broader concerns among Republican strategists that the pandemic and Mr Trumps response to the outbreak could make for a perilous political environment this fall for the Grand Old Republican Party (GOP).

Mr Trumps renewed interest in the Senate race probably reflects growing concern that a seat that is normally safely Republican could turn Democratic, said Kansas political observers. The seat is up for grabs following the decision by incumbent Senator, Pat Roberts, a Republican, to not seek reelection.

The party is worried that a Republican hard-liner who is pursuing the seat, former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, may turn off moderate and independent voters, allowing for a rare Democratic victory. Mr Kobach, who in 2018 lost the governors race to Democrat Laura Kelly, is known for his anti-immigrant views and Trumpian braggadocio.

If Kobach wins the nomination, Democrats are saying that they have a chance, said Russell Arben Fox, a political science professor at Friends University in Wichita. Some Republicans are thinking this and theyve been in touch with the president, and theyve been telling him to encourage Pompeo to return home and run. He would easily beat the Democratic nominee whereas thats not a sure thing with Kobach.

Republican anxieties about losing the seat were reflected in two letters sent last month by the Kansas GOP chair Mike Kuckelman, who urged two Republican candidates to drop out of the primary in a widely interpreted effort to consolidate support behind a moderate alternative to Mr Kobach.

Hes concerned that Kobach is so toxic that if he gets the nomination he wont actually win, said Fox, noting that party leaders believe that Rep. Roger Marshall, a more moderate Republican who represents western Kansas, has a better shot at clinching the seat.

Mr Pompeo regularly visited Kansas in 2019 and was consulting with Ward Baker, a prominent GOP strategist close to Mr McConnell. He had fueled speculation by creating personal social media accounts that regularly featured him with his family dog, cheering on sporting events and even drinking beer in his kitchen.

The Washington Post
US lawmaker unveils 18-point plan to hold China accountable for COVID-19 outbreak

International

pti-PTI

Washington, May 15: A top US senator has unveiled an 18-point plan, including enhancing military ties with India, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its "lies, deception, and cover-ups" that led to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The prominent suggestions are moving manufacturing chain from China and deepening military-strategic ties with India, Vietnam and Taiwan.

"The Chinese government maliciously covered up and enabled a global pandemic that has caused misery for so many Americans. This is the same regime that locks up its own citizens in labour camps, steals America's technology and jobs, and threatens the sovereignty of our allies," said Senator Thom Tillis while presenting his detailed 18-point plan on Thursday.

"This is a major wake-up call to the United States and the rest of the free world. My plan of action will hold the Chinese government accountable for lying about COVID-19; sanctioning the Chinese government while protecting America's economy, public health, and national security," he said.

The plan seeks to create a Pacific Deterrence Initiative and immediately approve the military's request for USD 20 billion in funding.

US 'could cut off the whole relationship' with China: Trump

It also calls for deepening military ties with regional allies and expand equipment sales to India, Taiwan and Vietnam. Encourage Japan to rebuild its military and offer Japan and South Korea sales of offensive military equipment, it said.

"Move manufacturing back to the US from China and gradually eliminate our supply chain dependency on China. Stop China from stealing our technology and provide incentives to American companies to regain our technological advantage. Strengthen cybersecurity against Chinese hacks and sabotage," the senator said.

"Prevent American taxpayer money from being used by the Chinese government to pay off their debt. Implement the US ban on (Chinese technology company) Huawei and coordinate with our allies to implement similar bans," he added. The plan seeks restitution from the Chinese government and imposition of sanctions for lying about the virus.

It further said China should be sanctioned for their "atrocious" human rights record. Senator Tillis' plan urges the Trump administration to formally request the International Olympic Committee to withdraw the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing. "Stop China's propaganda campaign inside the United States.

Treat Chinese government-run media outlets as the propaganda proxies that they are," the senator said. Urging the government to investigate the Chinese government's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19, the plan also seeks to investigate America's reliance on China's supply chains and threats to public safety and national security.

"Ensure the independence of the WHO through investigations and reform. Expose and counter China's predatory debt-trap diplomacy targeting developing countries. Increase intelligence sharing on potential pandemics and lead the creation of a watchdog organisation to monitor foreign governments' handling of deadly viruses," Tillis said in his suggestions.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.

There has been increasing pressure on US President Donald Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction. Meanwhile, Senator John Barrasso, in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighted the need to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The virus could have been contained had it not been for the Chinese Government's unscrupulous cover-up. China knew the risk months before the rest of the world; yet Chinese communist leaders destroyed key evidence, they under-reported the number of coronavirus cases, and they misled the world about its deadly, rapid spread," he said.

Asserting that the virus should have been contained in Wuhan, he said tens and tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died as a result of China's failure. Barrasso said the US should encourage its companies to create American and western supply chains. "That way our frontline workers have what they need in the time of crisis," he said.

"Not again, not ever will we be exclusively sourced for critical drugs from China. We should diversify supply and bring home as much of our supply chain as possible," he added.

Congressman Troy Balderson introduced bicameral legislation with Congressman Doug Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham that will hold China accountable for deceptive actions taken by its leaders that led to the spread and subsequent global pandemic.

The COVID-19 Accountability Act authorises President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China if it fails to cooperate with a full investigation led by the US or its allies into the events that lead to the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The number of Ohioan lives needlessly claimed by this pandemic could have been significantly reduced had China taken appropriate measures to control the virus' spread and disclose its severity," said Balderson.

"The United States can't look the other way when China so recklessly compromised worldwide health and the global economy. China and its Communist Party leadership must be held accountable," he said.
Talks between the U.K. and European Union about their future relationship descended into rancor, with both sides blaming each other for the failure to move forward as time runs out to get a deal. The pound slipped.

After a third round of talks broke up on Friday, Britain's chief Brexit negotiator, David Frost, said the two sides had made "very little progress" toward a deal this week. His EU counterpart, Michel Barnier, described the negotiations as "disappointing" and said he wasn't optimistic about reaching a deal.

Frost warned that the two sides won't be able to reach an agreement if the EU persists in its "novel and unbalanced proposals on the so-called level playing field," he said in an emailed statement on Friday. He also criticized EU demands for access to U.K. fishing waters, saying "we cannot agree arrangements that are manifestly unbalanced and against the interests of the U.K. fishing industry."

Just one more round of talks remains before politicians meet in June to decide if it's worth carrying on. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson has threatened to walk away if insufficient progress has been made by then. If he follows through on that threat, Britain could end its post-Brexit transition period on Dec. 31 without a free-trade deal, putting more pressure on an economy already reeling from the coronavirus pandemic.

The level playing field rules would keep the U.K. tied to some European rules, hampering its ability to undercut the bloc in areas such as taxation, state subsidies, workers' rights and environmental standards. Britain says these demands aren't justified and don't reflect the country's new status as an independent country. Barnier described said that for the EU, the demand isn't just a "nice to have, it's a must-have."

"We're not going to bargain away our values for the sake of the British economy," Barnier said at a briefing in Brussels. "Why should we help British businesses provide their services to Europe when we'd have no guarantee that our businesses would get a fair play treatment in the U.K.?" Barnier asked.

The two sides are also at odds over what access U.K. financial services firms will have to the bloc, according a U.K. official. Britain wants to include provisions requiring the EU to give warning if it plans to withdraw so-called equivalence, something the bloc is resisting. London's financial firms have expressed concern that without it their access to the bloc could be suddenly restricted.

Britain says it isn't seeking anything other than a standard free trade agreement, such as the EU has struck with Canada, so it shouldn't be forced into accepting other conditions.

The U.K will next week publish all its draft legal texts for the agreement, Frost said.

"We very much need a change in EU approach for the next round," Frost said. "The U.K. will continue to work hard to find an agreement, for as long as there is a constructive process in being, and continues to believe that this is possible."
A senior official in the Northern Ireland Executive has slammed the Taoiseach for lack of cooperation with Stormont over Coronavirus.

Leo Varadkar's government did not consult or inform the Stormont Executive before announcing school closures, or the Republic's roadmap out of lockdown, with officials in Belfast reportedly learning of the guidelines on the Late Late Show.

"At an official level you have the memo of understanding, which is working well, you have officials working back and forward north and south, sharing data modelling. " the official said.

"At official levels, you can't fault much. Simon Harris and (Stormont Health Minister) Robin Swann are doing well and by all reports are operating in good faith.

"We have a constitutional issue in the north, and we're seeing a departure from London's advice, both in nationalism and unionism when it comes to health, and now it appears the Taoiseach does not want to keep the north in the loop."

There have been a number of official meetings between members of the Executive and Tanaiste and Taoiseach over the last two months, with another scheduled for next week.

However the officials says major announcements around schools and businesses have caused a "scramble" for civil servants trying to manage the border regions with no prior notice.

"The fall down is with the Taoiseach himself, before the announcement of the school closures, which is a big issue in border areas, there was no communication whatsoever," they said.

Before the announcement of the roadmap to lifting restrictions, there was no communication before The Late Late.

"We thought after the first announcement; 'Well, he was in America and it was an afterthought', breakdown in communication is okay once, but once it gets to the second or third time, it's not an accident, you lose credibility after that.

"From an administrative standpoint, it's a pain in the arse.

"The opportunity to get significant cooperation across the island is held up at every level below the Taoiseach."

Regina Doherty Minister for Employment Affairs and Social Protection said at the time of the lockdown announcement, that; "honestly, I don't know why" Northern Ireland ministers were not briefed on the plan.

"I think what our most important task to do after we had our cabinet meeting on Friday was to tell Irish people," she said.

'The island needs synchronicity'

Deputy First Minister Michelle O'Neill spoke with Tanaiste Simon Coveney this week before the Executive briefed the media about Northern Ireland's restrictions, a move that has not yet been reciprocated by Dublin.

"It's damaging connectivity, and now both unionism and nationalism accepts that the island needs synchronicity," the source added.

"Society hasn't faced this kind of crisis in 100 years, so one of the key things is messaging, making sure the public understand, letting people know the outcomes and that's key to managing virus.

"If you want people to hold that message it has to be consistent, we have an open border, people move about, you can't have two sets of messaging.

"The practical outworking of his inability to inform Stormont of key stages means confusion is created, it hurts everyone's efforts, and it's unhelpful and unnecessary."

It's understood that the Stormont Executive will brief Dublin over the weekend about their plans for further loosening of restrictions, however officials within Stormont "are quite aware we won't get the same".
London: Following straight on from the Vijay Mallya case, overlapping issues and common questions will arise inevitably in the extradition hearings for Nirav Modi now underway at the Westminster Magistrates' Court in London. But an odd echo has arisen over identical sections in witness statements presented by the Indian government.

Clare Montgomery, appearing for Nirav Modi after representing Vijay Mallya earlier, pointed out certain examples to the court.

Statements from Supriya Sakhare and Jasmine Makwana, both cited as government witnesses on the critical point whether the Letters of Undertaking (LOUs) from the Punjab National Bank were issued irregularly, contain lengthy identical passages which replicate grammatical mistakes, Montgomery told the court.

She brought up the expression Rs 99 Lakhs each were got prepared thats common to statements from both witnesses. Another expression in common between both statements, that she said also failed properly to attribute actions, was: I asked Shri Joshi who was the caller. This fails, she said, to clarify whether it was Ms Sakhare or Ms Makwana who did the asking.

Such repetition, Montgomery said, strongly suggests drafting and copy-pasting by the investigating agency rather than an accurate recording of evidence by witnesses. It strongly suggests the statements were drafted by the CBI and ED on the basis of their own views rather than recording the words of the witnesses themselves.

The dispute goes back to statements taken and presented under section 161 rather than section 164 of Indias Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC). Section 161 authorises a police officer to orally question anyone acquainted with a case and to make a separate and true record of the statement of each such person whose statement he records.

Section 164 gives the authority to record a statement to a magistrate who must explain to the person making it that he is not bound to make a confession and that, if he does so, it may be used as evidence against him. The magistrate must be satisfied that the statement is being made voluntarily. He must then (under related section 281) make a memorandum of the summary and sign it. The CrPC demands that the whole of such examination, including every question put to him and every answer given by him, shall be recorded in full and the record shall be shown or read to the accused.

Defence for Nirav Modi argues now that statements under section 161 should be inadmissible. These statements, it is argued, offer no information about the circumstances in which they were taken, and are not signed by the witness. Many of the statements that defence for Nirav Modi contests, and that include repetitions, have been recorded under section 161.

The objection from Nirav Modis team is to more than repetition. A large number of statements contain information which does not appear to derive from the witnesss own knowledge, but from information put to them by the investigating agency, Montgomery said. Second, and relatedly, significant evidence is given which is hearsay, and therefore not evidence which the witness can admissibly give.

Helen Malcolm appearing for the Crown Prosecution Service, the official British prosecution agency arguing the case on behalf of the Indian government, told the court that it is accepted that the affidavits of the investigating officers cannot amount to admissible evidence of matters the officers did not witness. It is not, and has never been, suggested that the Government of India response documents are admissible evidence in relation to the courts consideration of prima facie case. However, that does not mean they are of no relevance to the courts prima facie case consideration. Observations made within them in relation to admissible evidence can be taken into account.

Much the same issue was raised by Montgomery in the course of the hearings in the Mallya case. Then too a number of statements from witnesses declared to be independent included large sections that repeated one another verbatim. Chief Judicial Magistrate Emma Arbuthnot who heard the Mallya case made it clear that she was not relying on such submissions as evidence. But, she ruled, there is no reason why the points they (the witnesses) made on the documents could not be taken into account as informed explanations of or commentary on the documents, rather than as evidence of relevant events. The statements were accepted as illustration, not evidence.

Malcolm told the court that the objections being raised now were among issues raised and dismissed in the Mallya case. They effectively stood dismissed in appeal in the High Court as well. Verbatim repetition in witness statements in the Mallya case did not come in the way of the Indian government winning that case in both the district court and the High Court, which on April 20 confirmed the extradition order passed by the magistrates court earlier. Before the Mallya case too, objections over admissibility of statements under section 161 of CrPC have been consistently rejected by UK extradition courts, Malcolm said.

These arguments will now be for magistrate Samuel Goozee to consider when the hearings resume on September 7 for five days. That is when the court is due to consider additional charges presented relating to "causing the disappearance of evidence" and criminal intimidation to cause death. Those issues appear a great deal more serious than that of language repeated across affidavits.

The defence argument is of course not about statements getting their grammar wrong, but about getting the grammar wrong in the same way, and what that suggests. A simple explanation for this was offered to Magistrate Arbuthnot by Mark Summers who appeared for the Indian government in the Mallya case: that it simply was the practice for a junior police investigating officer to hear oral statements and to then record them in his or her own language. And if witnesses appeared to be saying much the same thing, this officer would not feel burdened by a need to write the statements down in different language all over again.

In court these statements could be illustration, not evidence. In police stations these are illustrative of another reality.
Bridgewater Associates, the $165 billion hedge fund founded by Ray Dalio (Trades, Portfolio), disclosed this week that its top five buys for the first quarter were McDonald's Corp. (NYSE:MCD), UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE:UNH), Lockheed Martin Corp. (NYSE:LMT), Phillip Morris International Inc. (NYSE:PM) and Abbott Laboratories (NYSE:ABT).





Dalio, co-chief investment officer of Bridgewater, started the Greenwich, Connecticut-based fund in 1975. According to his LinkedIn profile, Dalio invented "industry-changing" approaches to investing, which include the invention of risk parity, currency overlay and portable alpha. The Bridgewater co-chief investment officer listed several key principles in his book "Principles: Life and Work," including working for what he wanted, coming up with the best independent opinions, avoiding overconfidence and wrestling with reality.

In light of the coronavirus outbreak, with global casualties surpassing 300,000 as of Thursday according to John Hopkins University statistics, Dalio started in March a new series called "The Changing World Order." According to the book's website, Dalio wrote in the introduction that while the times ahead might be "radically different" from the times we have experienced so far, he believes that the times ahead might be like "many other times in history." He added that he studied over the past 18 months "the rises and declines of empires, their reserve currencies, and their markets."

As of first quarter-end, Bridgewater's $5 billion equity portfolio contains 400 stocks, of which 179 represent new holdings. The top three sectors in terms of weight are consumer cyclical, financial services and industrials, with weights of 4.03%, 2.69% and 1.91%.

Story continues

McDonald's

Bridgewater purchased 32,541 shares of McDonald's, giving the position 0.11% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $197.58 during the first quarter.

GuruFocus ranks the Chicago-based fast-food giant's profitability 9 out of 10 on several positive investing signs, which include a high Piotroski F-score of 7 and operating margins that have increased approximately 9.10% per year on average over the past five years and are outperforming over 98% of global competitors.

1d6adc364f22bceb236d586cef5c1d86.png

UnitedHealth Group

Bridgewater purchased 21,977 shares of UnitedHealth Group, giving the holding 0.11% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $276.19 during the first quarter.

deed4a6c0b29141df4075c8c6001e7a0.png

GuruFocus ranks the Minnetonka, Minnesota-based health care plan provider's profitability 9 out of 10 on several positive investing signs, which include expanding operating margins, a five-star business predictability rank and a Piotroski F-score of a perfect 9 out of 9.

977de0ad47377dacceb89baff3c64ae2.png

Lockheed Martin

Bridgewater purchased 15,345 shares of Lockheed Martin, giving the position 0.10% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $394.42 during the first quarter.

5b5ff658746070a6456a1ac3d431e129.png

GuruFocus ranks the Bethesda, Maryland-based defense contractor's profitability 9 out of 10 on several positive investing signs, which include a high Piotroski F-score of 8, expanding operating margins and consistent revenue growth over the past 10 years, as suggested by its three-star business predictability rank.

3156418042bd9e30bccc8a7b93c43946.png

Phillip Morris

Bridgewater purchased 67,447 shares of Phillip Morris, giving the holding 0.10% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $82.53 during the first quarter.

4298f6fb7f35ceb6d692c2dacc7356da.png

GuruFocus ranks the New York-based tobacco company's profitability 8 out of 10 on the back of operating margins that outperform over 88% of global competitors despite contracting over the past five years. Additionally, Phillip Morris has a high Piotroski F-score of 7.

e2ed516cb4210d4a95ed5151e313e169.png

Abbott

Bridgewater purchased 54,586 shares of Abbott, giving the position 0.09% weight in the equity portfolio. Shares averaged $83.67 during the first quarter.

d234312dacc5c78b7f9a46a90610529d.png

GuruFocus ranks the Abbott Park, Illinois-based medical device company's profitability 7 out of 10 on the heels of a high Piotroski F-score of 7 and operating margins that outperform over 77% of global competitors despite contracting over the past five years.

1d54d44abcf6d6ff4f154ff384ee03e6.png

Disclosure: The author has no positions in the stocks mentioned. The equity portfolio considers Bridgewater's holdings in stock equities and does not include the approximately-83% weight in exchange-traded-fund holdings. You can view Bridgewater's holdings in ETF's here.

Read more here:

Andreas Halvorsen's Top 5 Buys in the 1st Quarter

Top 5 Buys of Jeremy Grantham's GMO in the 1st Quarter

Robert Olstein's Firm Buys 4 Stocks in the 1st Quarter







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This article first appeared on GuruFocus.






More students to resume classes in China's Shandong as epidemic wanes

JINAN, May 14 (Xinhua) -- East China's Shandong Province will reopen elementary schools and kindergartens and resume more classes in middle schools, according to the provincial education department on Thursday.

All non-graduating middle and high school students, and pupils from third grade to sixth grade will return to schools between May 18 and May 28, the department said.

First and second-graders, as well as kindergarten students, will return to schools from early June.

Non-final year students of colleges and universities can gradually return to their campuses between May 18 and May 28. The specific reopening date of each school will be announced at a later date.

All schools in Shandong should make targeted plans for epidemic prevention and control and emergency response, according to the department.

Shandong, one of the most populous provinces in China, has a total of 37,700 schools, with more than 19 million students and a teaching staff of 1.5 million.
BERLIN (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 15th May, 2020) The German Foreign Ministry is concerned over the recent escalation of tensions in Libya and is seeking a long-term political settlement of the conflict, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas said following the consultation with his French and Italian counterparts, as well as EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell.

The situation in Libya escalated on April 13 when the Tripoli-based Government of National Accord (GNA) said that it had launched a rapid offensive west of the country's capital and taken control over the cities of Sabratah and Surman. A day later, an official from the GNA's Ministry of Foreign Affairs told Sputnik that Tripoli-based forces had captured the coastal area from the city of Misrata, located to the east of the capital, to the city of Zuwara close to the Tunisian border. In late April, Field Marshal Khalifa Haftar, who is heading the Libyan National Army (LNA), announced the LNA was quitting the Skhirat agreement, which had led to the formation of the UN-backed GNA. He also said that the LNA was now taking control of the country.

"We are witnessing the escalation of hostilities in Libya with concern. We are especially condemning the recent attacks on the downtown and airport of Tripoli, and the increase in the number of civilian victims.

Instead of finally supporting the cessation of hostilities, the parties to the conflict are still mistakenly sure that the conflict may be won by military means. International supporters of both parties are contributing to that via ongoing violations of the UN embargo on arms supplies," Maas said on late Thursday.

The German foreign minister stressed that Berlin's main goal was still to reach a stable ceasefire, a political solution that would involve all groups of the Libyan people, and to preserve the territorial integrity of the North African nation.

"To reach that, it is very important to ensure the resumption of work of the intra-Libyan formats of dialogue, which are a part of the Berlin [settlement] process headed by the UNSMIL [United Nations Support Mission in Libya]," Maas said.

He added that Germany wanted the United Nations to appoint a new special envoy for Libya as soon as possible.

Libya has been torn apart between two rival governments since the US-supported overthrow and assassination of the country's long-time leader Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. The western part of the country, including the capital of Tripoli, is controlled by the UN-backed GNA, while the eastern by the Tobruk-based parliament that is supported by the LNA.
Meghan Markle's former trainer revealed the Duchess of Sussex's true personality when they used to work out together. He even disclosed that they spoke to each other using a different language.

Sympathetic Duchess

In an interview with the Spanish edition of Vanity Fair (per Daily Mail), Meghan's ex-trainer Jorge Blanco -- who also worked side by side with other celebrities such as Chris Hemsworth, Robert Pattinson and Drake -- shared how much he enjoyed training Meghan.

He described the Duchess as someone who was "sympathetic."

Blanco, who hailed from Zaragoza, Spain before moving to Canada, revealed that he and Meghan used to converse in Spanish. He was glad that the actress could speak to him in his native tongue.

The personal trainer, "Spaniard" as he was often called by his celebrity clients, told the magazine that Meghan spoke Spanish with a different accent.

"I had a great time training with her because she is super sympathetic and also speaks Spanish, yes, with an Argentine accent," Blanco shared.

The Duchess was thought to have adapted that Argentinian twang whenever she speaks Spanish because she was able to work in Argentina in her early 20s. She was a junior press officer at the American embassy in Argentina.

Now that Meg is married with Prince Harry though, Blanco said he would be more than happy to train Meghan along with her husband. He then suggested that such scenario isn't impossible, especially with the royals recently moving to Los Angeles.

Meghan Markle's Criticisms

While Meghan's former personal trainer praised her for being sympathetic, her ex-personal assistant said otherwise. In a report by The Mirror, Markle's attitude left her assistant in tears.

Melissa Toubati quit her job as an assistant to Prince Harry's wife because of Markle's intolerable personality. An insider source said that Toubati was always under a lot of pressure. Although she's talented, she left the pivotal role as she couldn't take Meg's royal diva ways.

Several allegations also came out that Queen Elizabeth II warned Prince Harry about how "difficult" Meghan's attitude was. It was back when they were still discussing which tiara she could wear on their wedding day.

An industry videographer also came forward to speak of his experience while working with Markle. He told Daily Mail that Meghan was easy to shoot because she knows exactly how to do her job. However, behind the camera, he admitted that it was like she's a whole different person.

"She was very high maintenance and rude," the videographer said of the Duchess.

He added how difficult and demanding she could be. The unnamed videographer confessed that he was warned by people who had worked with Markle, noting they said she was "a lot."

There have also been a lot of claims that Meghan Markle was mean to the royal staff. In fact, there was reportedly a time she yelled at Kate's staff, which led to the rift between the Royal Fab Four and the Sussexes leaving Kensington Palace.
PR-Inside.com: 2020-05-15 08:00:04

Contact:

Oak Fund Services (Guernsey) Limited

Company Administrator

Attn: Mark Woodall

Tel: +44 1481 723450

Eurocastle Releases First Quarter 2020 Interim Management Statement and

Announces Annual General Meeting on 17 June 2020



Guernsey, 15 May 2020  Eurocastle Investment Limited (Euronext Amsterdam: ECT) today has released its interim management statement for the quarter ended 31 March 2020.

Q1 2020 BUSINESS HIGHLIGHTS

 Adjusted Net Asset Value (NAV) 1 of 12.5 million, or 6.78 per share2, down 1.54 per share vs. 8.32 per share at 31 December 2019 due to:

Valuation declines reflecting the estimated potential impact of COVID-19: 1.62 per share decrease (21%) in the valuation of the remaining three real estate fund investments.

0.08 per share decrease (13%) in the valuation of the remaining three NPL and other loan interests. Positive reserve movements of 0.16 per share.





FY 2019 Q1 CASH Movement Q1 FV Movement Q1 2020  million  per share  million  per share  million  per share  million  per share Real Estate Funds 13.9 7.52 (1.1) (0.58) (3.0) (1.62) 9.9 5.32 Italian NPLs & Other Loans 1.2 0.67 (0.0) (0.03) (0.2) (0.08) 1.0 0.56 Net Corporate Cash3 0.2 0.13 1.1 0.61 0.3 0.16 1.6 0.90 Adjusted NAV 15.4 8.32 - - (2.9) (1.54) 12.5 6.78

CASH & MARKET OUTLOOK

The Company received 1.1 million from its investments in the quarter, the majority of which related to Real Estate Fund Investment I. The Directors have elected to retain these cash proceeds in the Company until there is greater certainty regarding the full impact of COVID-19 on the Italian economy. The cash received in the quarter, along with the cash set aside for reserves, leaves the Company well-capitalised and in a strong position to weather the uncertainty that COVID-19 has created.

The Companys remaining real estate fund investments comprise the following: Interest in a public fund which is in the process of liquidating and whose assets are predominantly comprised of cash. The fund is currently trading at a c.20% discount to its last published NAV. Interests in two real estate redevelopment funds where construction is fully completed. The units are in the process of being sold but suffering delays due to the coronavirus outbreak. Both developments offer luxurious residential apartments with high specification furnishings in the historical city of Rome, Italy.



ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING

The Company will hold its Annual General Meeting on Wednesday, 17 June 2020, at the Companys registered office at 2:00 pm Guernsey time (3:00 pm CET). The meeting will be held in accordance with social distancing and stay at home measures implemented by the States of Guernsey in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Notices and proxy statements will be posted on 27 May 2020 to shareholders of record at close of business on 26 May 2020.

NOTICE:

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of the Market Abuse Regulation 596/2014.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

For investment portfolio information, please refer to the Companys most recent Financial Report, which is available on the Companys website ( www.eurocastleinv.com ).

ABOUT EUROCASTLE

Eurocastle Investment Limited (Eurocastle or the Company) is a publicly traded closed-ended investment company, focused on Italian performing and non-performing loans, Italian loan servicing platforms and other real estate related assets in Italy. On 18 November 2019, the Company announced a plan to realise the majority of its assets with the aim of accelerating the return of value to shareholders. The Company will not currently seek material new investments from the proceeds of the realisation but, will continue to support its existing investments to the extent required in order to optimise returns and distribute cash to shareholders when available (the Realisation Plan). For more information regarding Eurocastle Investment Limited and to be added to our email distribution list, please visit www.eurocastleinv.com .

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS

This release contains statements that constitute forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements may relate to, among other things, future commitments to sell real estate and achievement of disposal targets, availability of investment and divestment opportunities, timing or certainty of completion of acquisitions and disposals, the operating performance of our investments and financing needs. Forward-looking statements are generally identifiable by use of forward-looking terminology such as may, will, should, potential, intend, expect, endeavor, seek, anticipate, estimate, overestimate, underestimate, believe, could, project, predict, "project", continue, plan, forecast or other similar words or expressions. Forward-looking statements are based on certain assumptions, discuss future expectations, describe future plans and strategies, contain projections of results of operations or of financial condition or state other forward-looking information. The Companys ability to predict results or the actual effect of future plans or strategies is limited. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are based on reasonable assumptions, its actual results and performance may differ materially from those set forth in the forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are subject to risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause the Companys actual results in future periods to differ materially from forecasted results or stated expectations including the risks regarding Eurocastles ability to declare dividends or achieve its targets regarding asset disposals or asset performance.







1 In light of the Realisation Plan announced on 18 November 2019, the Adjusted NAV reflects additional reserves for future costs and potential liabilities, which have not been accounted for under the IFRS NAV. The IFRS NAV as at 31 March 2020 is 30.5 million, or 16.48 per share.

2 Per share calculations for Eurocastle throughout this document are based on the outstanding voting shares of 1,851,535 for the period under review.

3 Reflects corporate cash net of liabilities and additional reserves.




Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:16:50|Editor: huaxia

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ADDIS ABABA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Ethiopian Minister of Science and Higher Education (MoSHE) Hirut Woldemariam has hailed the support and assistance by the Chinese government and companies in boosting quality higher education in the East African country.

The Minister was speaking at a donation ceremony organized at MoSHE in Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa later Thursday, when Huawei handed over anti-virus supplies to the ministry, as part of its support to various offices in the country and also to the African Union (AU) in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.

The minister also hailed the support from the Chinese people in such difficult times.

"Of courses, in times like this, we are reminded of how we are inter-related with each other, how we need each other to get over this kind of global crisis."

China as well as Chinese companies and institutions are providing varied forms of support to Ethiopia's endeavor in ensuring quality education, especially at higher-level institutions, said Hirut.

"We have a very long standing cooperation and partnership between the Federal Government of Ethiopia and China. And the partnership is comprehensive in all areas, it is also working very well in the education sector for us," she said.

Hailing the role of scholarships and trainings from the Chinese to Ethiopian professionals in improving quality of education and training in the country, the Minister said, "That is really a great opportunity for us. We are really enjoying the partnership we have with Huawei, and of course with other companies and institutes, institutions in China."

The technical support and assistance, especially from Huawei, in the form of training as well as by donating ICT materials such as lab equipment, laptops, and app software, all significantly contribute to the capacity building in the area, said the minister.

Such kind of support also helps students' job creation in the field, she has added.

Stating that it is the time when the world is now highly dependent on the digital economy and digital innovation, Hirut said university and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) students in Ethiopia will benefited from the opportunities created by the Chinese company.

Commending the support from China and the Chinese companies, the Minister said the country will continue capacity building programs that the Chinese companies are working with and supporting Ethiopia. Enditem
New Delhi, May 15 : The NIA on Friday filed a charge sheet against six people, including three slain Hizbul Mujahideen (HM) terrorists and three arrested over ground workers of the terror group for providing support to Pakistan-based terrorists to kill BJP leader Anil Parihar and his brother in Jammu and Kashmir's Kishtwar.

An NIA spokesperson here said that the anti-terror probe agency has filed the charge sheet against three slain HM terrorists -- Osama-bin-Javid, Haroon Abbas Wani and Zahid Hussain and three OWGs Nisar Ahmed Sheikh, Nishad Ahmed Butt and Azad Hussain Bagwan, all residents of Kishtwar, in a Special NIA court in Jammu.

They have been charged with murder and criminal conspiracy, under the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and the Arms Act.

The National Investigation Agency (NIA) official said that the Parihar brothers were shot at point-blank range outside their house on November 1, 2018 when they were returning home after closing their shop.

The J&K government had earlier constituted a SIT to probe the killings, and based on its findings agreed to transfer the case to the NIA three weeks later.

The NIA official said that accused Sheikh, Butt and Bagwan, all residents of Kishtwar, were arrested on November 20, 2019. He said these three used to provide logistic support to three terrorists Javid, Wani and Hussain, who murdered the Parihar brothers.

The official said that the NIA investigation unearthed a larger conspiracy of these terrorists and the OGWs of HM to try to revive terrorism in the districts of Doda, Kishtwar and Ramban.

"These terrorists not only murdered the Parihar brothers but also carried out three other terrorist acts in Kishtwar in 2019," the official claimed.

He said in furtherance of the said conspiracy led by Jahangir Saroori, Commander of HM in Kishtwar district, the three accused persons devised ways and means to raise funds to sustain the activities of the banned terrorist organisation.

They looted weapons from police or personal security officers, he said.

The official said that Javid, Wani and Hussain were killed in different encounters between the HM cadres and security forces in Ramban and Doda districts in September 2019 and January 2020.
ABC/Randy HolmesTame Impala has shared an 18-minute version of The Slow Rush song "One More Year."

The recording, which is described as a "balearic house reimagining," is streaming now via the London-based online radio station NTS Radio, and was released as part of its Remote Utopias program to raise money for The Global FoodBanking Network amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For what it's worth, the original "One More Year," which opens The Slow Rush, sits at five-and-a-half minutes.

The Slow Rush, the latest album from Kevin Parker's psych-rock project, was released this past February. It also includes the single "Lost in Yesterday."

In March, Parker released an alternate version of The Slow Rush, dubbed The Slow Rush in an Imaginary Place.

Copyright  2020, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
France, After Helping Construct the P4 Lab in Wuhan, Now Suffers From Pandemic

France is among the top 10 countries with the highest death tolls from the CCP virus as the pandemic spreads across the globe.

U.S. President Donald Trump previously announced his intention to thoroughly investigate whether the virus was leaked from the Wuhan Institute of Virologya P4 laboratory that is now the subject of investigation as a potential source of the outbreak. This P4 laboratory was built with the help of France.

As of May 5, confirmed cases of the CCP virus had surpassed 170,000 in

France, with more than 25,000 deaths, giving a potential mortality rate of 14.9%. The President of France, Emmanuel Macron, gave a televised speech emphasizing that France was in the midst of a war with an invisible virus.

Many high ranking french government officials have tested positive for the virus, including the Minister of Culture, a Secretary of State, Members of Parliament, and Mayors.

In March, Patrick Devedjian, a member of the Parliament, died just 3 days after announcing that he had tested positive for the CCP virus. He was the first high ranking french government official to die from the virus.

The Epoch Times Special Edition on the CCP virus points out that the way the virus spreads indicates it has a goal and a purpose: to seek out the CCP in order to eliminate it and the factors associated with it.

We have seen the virus spread vastly in countries and cities that have close ties with the CCP. It has also infected individuals who support pro-CCP activists. Although the France-China diplomatic relationship has been rocky over the past 50 years, both countries still interact on many levels. The Wuhan Institute of Virology, a P4 laboratory, was constructed with extensive assistance from France.

Antoine Izambard, a french journalist, published a book called France-China, Dangerous Liaisons, disclosing that the Wuhan Institute of Virology, which France helped China build, is a replica of the P4 Laboratory in Leon, France. The article written by Antoine Izambard is published on the website Challenges.

It was during the first half of 2003 that the powerful Chinese Academy of Sciences announced in Paris that it wished to acquire a class 4 Pathogen (P4) laboratory which can host the most dangerous viruses on the planet (Ebola, Coronavirus, H5N1). It is used to track down infectious strains in the hope of fighting them and thus protecting tens of thousands of people around the world.

France, which inaugurated in 1999 in Lyon, the P4 Jean Merieux, the largest in Europe, is one of the most advanced countries on the subject. The request from Beijing, however, received a mixed reception within the French State. Alerted by its intelligence services, the government wonders if the technology requested by Beijing will not be diverted to develop bacteriological weapons. These fears are supported by very strong suspicions around the existence of a Chinese offensive biological program.

With the support of then Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin, former President Jacques Chirac signed the political agreement during a visit to China in 2004. Jacques Chirac is a pro-CCP government official who once called on the EU to lift its ban on the shipments of Chinese weapons.

Independent scholar Ge Bi-Dong, who is based in the United States, expressed: Former Prime Minister, Bernard Cazeneuve, once emphasized that he was going to give China 1 million euros to help them and gave them the most advanced technology of Europe.

He continued: They gave a demon the best and most advanced technology  to endanger the whole world. You see now that France has been hit hard by the virus because it assisted the CCP when the CCP was preparing to hurt the world by giving the best technology. Now the demon has come for you, France.

This cooperation was controversial right from the start.

project in Wuhan was originally undertaken by an architectural design firm in Leon, but in 2005, the CCP chose a local design firm, the China IPPR International Engineering Co. Ltd (IPPR), in Wuhan, to be responsible for the project.

This local designing firm has close ties with subordinate branches of the CCPs military which are under the surveillance of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency.

More French government officials revealed to the media that the CCP had broken its promises many times in its cooperation efforts over the last decade. For instance, the CCP promised to build only one lab in Wuhan but broke the promise by constructing many more labs, some of which are highly suspicious. Although the Wuhan P4 Lab was created with the help of France and was given the best technology by the French government, ultimately it was the CCP who had the total control over the P4 Lab.

According to the report published by Radio France, 15 very specialized small and medium enterprises in France gave support to establish the Wuhan P4 Lab, but they were eventually marginalized. The 50 French researchers who had planned to work in Wuhans P4 lab for five years never went there.

Le Figaro, a French daily morning newspaper, described the situation as out of control. Since there are only Chinese researchers in the Wuhan lab, this defeated the original purpose of the contract, which was for the two nations to work together to fight infectious diseases.

Alain Merieux, a French businessman, renounced in 2015 the position of chairman of the joint committee that oversees the project and said that the Wuhan P4 Lab has become a Chinese tool.



Since France was still having other negotiations with the CCP at the time, it accepted the breach of the contract. France feared that stopping the Wuhan P4 lab program would bring economic retaliation from the Chinese Communist Party.

Moreover, the work occurring at other P3 laboratories, also funded by the French Raffarin government, became unclear after the first SARS epidemic, as the CCP refused to clarify the real purposes of the labs. It made people worry that the CCP would also use the P4 lab without disclosing its purpose.

Radio France Internationale, Frances public broadcaster, pointed out that high-ranking government officials who participated in the Wuhan P4 Lab project, such as Chinas so-called good friend, former Prime Minister Raffarin and former Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, who attended the inauguration of the Wuhan lab, have yet to publicly express their opinion about claims that the CCP virus came from the lab.
Washington is continuing to put pressure on Beijing with a CIA report saying that China deliberately notified the World Health Organization (WHO) of the COVID-19 epidemic late, and thereby, gaining time and pace, stockpiled necessary medicines and remedies against coronavirus. As a result of such an unprecedented egoism and disregard for the rest of the world, we have the following picture: China coped with its own infection, while the troubles of the others have not ceased.

As soon as the report was made public, influential senators led by Lindsay Graham took the initiative to impose sanctions on China. Such precocity suggests there was a script. The senators' appeal can further complicate Washington-Beijing relations. The Celestial Empire rejected the allegations, regarding them as cheap misinformation.

However, the U.S. intelligence report has rather curious details, preventing us from treating the Chinese refutation with unconditional trust. In particular, the CIA report says that China was blackmailing WHO, offering it a choice between disclosing information about the coronavirus crisis in December last year - January of this year and financing the organization. Choosing not to lose China's funding, WHO fulfilled the whims of Beijing for some time, ignoring the situation, and even when the coronavirus began its tragic procession on the planet, it continued to hesitate whether to declare it a pandemic or not.

As a result of such criminal deliberation, thousands of people died, which could not have happened if the participants in the flagrant scandal have been more decent. While the WHO pretended that nothing was happening, China has been actively engaged in the acquisition of virus protection agents around the world. From the U.S. intelligence report, we can conclude that allegedly it was these large-scale purchases that aroused certain suspicions and led to closer monitoring and study of what was happening in China those days and projecting this on the situation in other countries. And then the sobering stage came. And when it did, WHO announced a pandemic.

At present, such attacks are not worth much. But almost simultaneously with the CIA, German intelligence also made public something similar on the pages of the influential Spiegel magazine. The publication says that back in January, President Xi Jinping spoke with WHO Director-General Tedros Gebreyesus. The publication said that WHO initially denied this, but failed to address the issue of the intervention of other high-ranking Beijing officials in the organization. Later, WHO recognized the fact of communication between Gebreyesus and the Chinese leader, but said "there was no talk of a pandemic."

The West does not believe that. Its particular irritation is caused by the fact that WHO resists the version that the epidemic originated in a Wuhan laboratory. When announcing the pandemic, simultaneously with this most important statement the WHO managed to draw the attention of mankind to the phrase in the same statement that China was not guilty of the disaster. According to experts, this explains the angry reaction of U.S. President Donald Trump, who announced the suspension of funding to the WHO - well then China can feed this bulky organization itself, which is not just ineffective, but also cynically playing out a winning combination for itself. Despite the fact that the United States seems to have formed an unambiguous opinion or position on this situation.

If earlier Washington spoke more or less carefully, referring to its intelligence services, which in turn did not exclude the possibility that COVID-19 could have originated in the Wuhan laboratory, now this theory has found a rigid construction: the epidemic began in Wuhan, it was spread across China by the inhabitants of this city, and then Beijing hid it for a whole week, which led to sad consequences for the entire world. Now the United States threaten to impose sanctions on China, if it does not provide a complete and clear picture of the "accident" that caused the pandemic.

However, Beijing does not seem to behave like a whipping boy. It hit back, threatening to stop buying Western meat products and impose higher grain tariffs. In contrast to the politico-bureaucratic actions of the United States, China immediately moved to specific measures which may turn out to be very sensitive during the period of general economic decline caused by a pandemic. Thus, the situation may turn into a revision of economic relations between Washington and Beijing, which will have consequences for the whole world. Of course, one could suggest getting some popcorn ready and watch the battle of the titans, but I am afraid this is no time for jokes.
(Photo : Pexels) The new law mandates social media like Facebook and Instagram to remove extremist contents within an hour or pay a hefty fine.

Social media are often used to connect to friends and families, but these platforms are filled with extremist contents these days that promote terrorism, pedophilia, hate, aggravated insults, and discrimination, among others.

France Passes a New Law

Platforms like Facebook and Instagram find it hard to track these contents, more so remove them.

To help fight hateful content, France has now passed a new law that forces these major social media platforms to remove any content relating to terrorism and pedophilia within an hour of notification, according to a report by The Next Web.

Moreover, the law mandates them also to delete any hateful content that promotes sexual abuse, sexual discrimination, and aggravated insults within 24 hours after being notified.

If these social media platforms fail to comply, they will pay a hefty fine of 1.2 million euros or around $1.35 million, which was increased from the initial amount that was only 37,500 euros or about $40,534.

Read Also: [CYBERATTACK] Lady Gaga and Nicki Minaj's Law Firms Targeted by Hackers' Extortion Plot

Not a Good Thing for Freedom of Speech?

Although the move is promising in ensuring that social media platforms are a safe space for every user, especially those who are still young, the law was still met with some criticism from some privacy advocates.

One digital rights organization known as La Quadrature du Net said that the move might actually throttle the people's right to freedom of speech, saying that the new law would only give the authorities unprecedented power on what they think is terrorism.

They think that the police will use that power against demonstrators or that they'll use it to block any website all across the country and say that they have violated the 24-hour rule.

Nevertheless, the social media giant, Facebook, said that this is a good idea.

A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the new law could help in their fight against extremist content, which is their top priority for many years already.

"We have clear rules against it and have invested in people and technology to better identify and remove it. Regulation is important in helping combat this type of [extremist] content. We will work closely with the Conseil superieur de l'audiovisuel and other stakeholders on the implementation of this law," the spokesperson said.

Besides Facebook and Instagram, other social media platforms like Twitter and internet giant Google are also affected by the new law, but as of now, they have not commented on the issue yet.

France is also not the only country that has decided to make such a move against hateful and extremist contents as the European Union previously proposed such guidelines as well.

Read Also: Protect Your Personal Data from Leaking Through Google Firebase; Here's How

Moderators Developed PTSD

Due to these types of contents, content moderators hired by Facebook from third-party moderators developed post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from having to watch videos and contents related to suicide and rape, among others, as reported by The Verge.

Although the social media platform uses AI to remove harmful content, they also hired people to check the contents reported to them.

Now, the company has agreed to pay $52 million, according to BBC, to the content moderators as compensation for the mental health issues they have developed because of the job.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Michigan is down about $3.2 billion in tax revenue this fiscal year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to projections agreed to by the states top economists Friday.

At the states semi-annual Consensus Revenue Estimating Conference - where the state treasurer, budget director and legislative analysts agree to revenue projections that inform the state budget process - officials concluded the state has billions of dollars less than anticipated in previous estimates.

The losses wont stop in the current fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30 - another $3 billion decrease in tax revenue was projected for fiscal year 2021. The group is expected to meet a third time later this year to incorporate additional tax information into the projections, as individuals and businesses were given more time to file this year.

The latest projections indicate Michigan officials will need to fill a multibillion-dollar hole in the state budget even as certain programs are becoming more costly. Analysts said Friday the economic slowdown will likely lead to record-high Medicaid enrollment, costing the state an estimated additional $569 million.

All major tax revenues have trended downward since the coronavirus was first detected in Michigan, but the biggest hits to the budget are sharp declines in both the sales tax and income tax as more people are filing for unemployment and spending less money. Because the state has a balanced budget requirement, the news could mean steep cuts in funding for schools, local governments, roads and more.

To say the numbers we just saw are sobering is probably the understatement of my career, Budget Director Chris Kolb said in a Friday press call.

Related: Michigan set to lose billions in tax revenue as coronavirus hits state budgets nationwide

Kolb said the losses are potentially as bad, if not worse" than the Great Recession and said the state was only able to make it through that with aid from the federal government.

The numbers announced today clearly show that the COVID-19 has had a dramatic impact on state revenues and they present enormous challenges for the state budget, he said. The bottom line is, if were going to save lives and provide critical services to Michiganders throughout this crisis, were going to need flexibility and support from the federal government.

State Treasurer Rachael Eubanks said the coronavirus is at the root of the current revenue shortfall, noting the state will have a clearer picture once all state income tax filings are in.

Economic experts presented a bleak state and federal forecast to lawmakers, House and Senate fiscal agency directors and state treasury officials Friday, although the likelihood that a majority of jobs currently sidelined by COVID-19 will be there once the pandemic subsides provided some cause for optimism.

Michigans heavy reliance on manufacturing and the high number of COVID-19 cases mean the state will likely be hit harder economically than the national average, an analysis from the University of Michigans Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics found.

The forecast concluded Michigan could hit a 22 percent unemployment rate in the current quarter and is expected to recovering about 90 percent of those job losses by the end of 2022, although that forecast came with two big assumptions - that there isnt a major second wave of COVID-19 cases in Michigan later this year, and that Congress approves relief funding for states and local governments to the tune of $600 billion over the next two and a half years.

If either assumption doesnt pan out, economic recovery will likely be substantially slower, said Gabriel Ehrlich, associate director of the Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics.

Asked by Senate Appropriations Chair Jim Stamas, R-Midland, about the economic impact of the ongoing stay-at-home order, Ehrlich said a substantial majority of economic slowdown is likely coming from changes to private behavior that would be going on even without government restrictions.

He cited preliminary data on the restaurant industry in states where restrictions are less strict, pointing out in-person dining is still well below normal levels even in areas where its allowed.

Stamas and House Appropriations Committee Chair Shane Hernandez, R-Port Huron, requested Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issue a new executive budget recommendation for the next fiscal year and meet with lawmakers to come up with ways to reduce state spending for filling the current budget deficit.

Stamas said a $3 billion revenue reduction represents more than 30 percent of the remaining resources in the General Fund and School Aid Fund for the current fiscal year.

The challenge is extremely daunting, Stamas said in a statement. For example, if we cut state employees by 30%, cut the remaining payments to public universities, community colleges and local governments, and cut Medicaid coverage in our state, it would cover just over half of the shortfall. Again, those are just examples to illustrate the gravity of the problem were facing.

At least 31,000 state of Michigan employees are subject to layoff days each pay period starting next week for a savings of $30 million. From May 17 through July 25, most impacted employees will take two unpaid days off each pay period. High-level managers will take one layoff day every other pay period, equating to roughly a 5 percent pay cut.

The state previously laid off more than 2,900 employees for two weeks to save the state $5 million as budget pressures continue. Last Friday, the Secretary of State extended layoffs for people who work in the departments currently shuttered branch offices another week.

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

Additional information is available at Michigan.gov/Coronavirus and CDC.gov/Coronavirus.

Read more Michigan coronavirus coverage:

Michigan to lay off 2,900 state employees amid budget woes caused by coronavirus outbreak

Yes, Michigan is in a recession, and a quick recovery is unlikely

Republicans, Democrats at odds about who should return to work  and when

When and how will it end? Considering the end-game for Michigans coronavirus crisis

6 reasons Michigan has four times more coronavirus cases than Ohio

Michigans deadliest year: Look back at 1918 flu pandemic

Peek Through Time: Flu epidemic of 1918-19 ravaged Jackson, Michigan and world
Breaking from other progressives, Rev. Jesse Jackson is calling to build a natural gas pipeline to serve an impoverished community near Chicago.

Why it matters: This is one example of the complex tug of war between energy affordability and tackling climate change. The tension is poised to grow as America and much of the world careen into pandemic-fueled recessions.

Driving the news: The move puts Jackson at odds with some Democrats and environmentalists who oppose fossil fuels because they drive climate change. The famous civil rights activist says the largely black community is being unfairly cut off from affordable energy.

The intrigue: For several months Jackson has been working with local, state and federal officials in Illinois to get an $8.2 million, 30-mile natural gas pipeline built for a community in a rural part of Illinois 65 miles south of Chicago.

Jackson, who has protested with environmentalists to oppose the Dakota Access oil pipeline, told me in a February interview: I really do support the environmental movement.

However, he said, the people of this community  called Pembroke  have no gas at all and are paying exorbitantly high prices to heat their homes with propane.

When we move to another form of energy, thats fine by me, I support that, Jackson said. But in the meantime, you cannot put the black farmers on hold until that day comes.

Where it stands: The area has about 400 homes, no manufacturing and only a few commercial establishments, said Mark Hodge, mayor of Hopkins Park, a town in the region.

The community is 80% black and has an average annual income of less than $15,000, Hodge said. Thats compared to more than $60,000 nationally.

The region, due at least partly to its rural setting, has never had access to natural gas. The topic is reaching the forefront now because Jackson has been focusing on it since last fall, largely at Hodge's request, the mayor said.

What theyre saying:

Cathy Vanderdyz, a city clerk in the area, said she pays roughly between $500 and $800 to heat her home with propane over the course of a month or two.

Hodge says businesses wont come to the area because heating costs are too high. As for climate change: It's not on my radar at this point, not to say in the future it would not be. My main concern is cutting our energy costs out here.

Hodge said he considered a 137-acre solar farm. He said he was told it would cost $25 million to run an electric line to connect it: So of course we did not move forward with that.

While natural gas is cheaper per unit of energy compared to other forms, the upfront cost is typically a deal-breaker in rural areas not already connected to a pipeline network  regardless of the income level and race of people living there, said Warren Wilczewski, an expert at the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

Because energy prices are roughly the same for everyone, people with lower incomes pay a larger share of their income on energy.

This is especially so in black and Hispanic communities, where poverty rates are higher.

By the numbers: Under current regulations, customers seeking natural gas access often have to pay for at least part of the cost of getting that service.

In this case, the roughly 400 Pembroke households would have to pay $3.25 million of the total estimated $8.2 million pipeline, according to Nicor Gas, the company that would build the project.

That means each household would, on average, have to pay an upfront cost of $8,125 to be connected to natural gas.

This is why propane is viable, Wilczewski said.

What were watching: A bill pending in the state legislature would designate Pembroke as a designated hardship area, which would allow a company (in this case Nicor Gas) to pay for the entire cost of the pipeline, not just part of it.

Nicor would increase natural gas rates throughout its service area to cover costs. With 2.2 million customers in the region, thatd equal about a penny a month, a Nicor Gas spokeswoman says.

The other side: Environmentalists arent fighting this pipeline project, but Tamara Toles O'Laughlin, North America director for 350.org, one of the most influential climate activist organizations in the world, said it fits within the groups mandate to end fossil fuels.

If theres one thing this pandemic is teaching us, its that we need to think about recovery in the long-term and that also means thinking about sustainable energy needs in the long-term, she said, adding she is open to talking with Jackson and others pushing the project.

Go deeper:

Editors note: This story has been corrected to show that it would be natural gas rates (not electricity) that would increase under the proposed bill.
Samsung will slowly shut down its XR service applications over the next few months until theyre completely gone by September 30th. The tech giant says its ending the service, because its rethinking its immersive video distribution method, especially given that Gear VR is no longer available. Samsungs XR ecosystem, which is made up of several apps, gives users a way to view 360-degree images and videos on their phones and links their VR headsets with their mobile devices.

The tech giant has already suspended 360-degree video uploads and premium video purchases, and it wont be rolling out any further updates. Oculus devices will no longer support the Samsung VR Video app starting on June 30th, and the Facebook-owned company will remove the application from its store, as well.

Finally, Samsung will disable all XR user accounts and delete their data on September 30th. On the same day, Samsung Gear VR and Windows Odyssey headsets will stop supporting the companys VR video app. Android devices will also stop supporting the XR mobile app.

The XR ecosystems demise sounds like a blow to those who still have a Gear VR, but Samsungs decision doesnt exactly come as a surprise: Its been backing away from its phone-based VR system since 2019. It launched the Note 10 last year without the ability to support Gear VR headsets. And at an Oculus event  the Gear VR was designed in collaboration with Oculus, if youll recall  company CTO John Carmack admitted that having to use and fit a phone into a headset turned out to be a barrier to wide adoption.
Gold juniors have rallied this year as punters on AIM have looked at ways of benefiting from a resurgent gold price.

The yellow metal is now trading for just below $1,700 an ounce, up from the sub-$1,450 level seen in March, when markets were hit by the initial shock of the coronavirus crisis.

Bank of Americas bullish forecast sees prices soaring as much as $3,000 per ounce.

Resurgent: Gold juniors have rallied this year as punters on AIM have looked at ways of benefiting from a resurgent gold price

'Theres plenty to support the case that gold is going to go much higher, not least the simple truth that the worlds central banks are printing a phenomenal amount of money,' said Mining Capital's Alastair Ford.

While investors have turned to gold as a haven in times of volatility, miners have enjoyed a higher selling price and lower production costs thanks to the weak oil price, driving margins up.

But analysts say that gold majors have low levels of proven and probable reserves, because capital expenditure for exploration has slumped 61 per cent to $9.4billion in seven years.

Thats why the smaller players are in demand. Australia-focused Greatland Gold, which is a mine developer rather than a digger, has seen its shares skyrocket 398 per cent to 9p in the year to date. Ford reckons the company is top of its class, while research house Hannam & Partners believes stock has further still to go and values it at 12.9p.

Ariana Resources, Scotgold, Galantas Gold and Conroy have also been lifted by the rising tide of a buoyant gold price as have Caledonia Mining and Chaarat.

Looking at the wider market, the AIM All-Share index dipped 0.6 per cent to 809, outperforming the FTSE 100 which fell 1.8 per cent

Among the weeks risers, Mosman Oil and Gas rocketed 83 per cent to 0.1p after agreeing a farm-out with Westmarket Oil & Gas for the EP 155 permit application in Australia.

Peer Touchstone Exploration rolled 22 per cent higher to 37p after telling investors its focus on natural gas shields trading from the volatility of oil price.

In the pharma space, ImmuPharma surged 28 per cent to 17p after a study by US-based Emory University Atlanta provided evidence that the drug makers Lupuzor lupus treatment could help to reduce or prevent the occurrence of inflammation seen in coronavirus patients.

Sector-mate Tiziana Life Sciences climbed 23 per cent to 80p after receiving encouraging data from the second phase of trials for its liver cancer treatment Milciclib. The biotech firm is also presenting work at the worlds leading cancer conference, the American Society of Clinical Oncology summit.

Elsewhere, construction services provider Mountfield Group shot up 28 per cent to 1p after winning a 1.2million gig to install raised access flooring at an office in Canary Wharf, London.

Sustainable fuels technology company Velocys accelerated 25 per cent to 3p after its joint development partners British Airways and Shell injected 1million in the Altalto waste-to-fuels project.

Medical products firm Tissue Regenix bobbed 21 per cent higher to 1p after revealing a new generic product line developed in collaboration with an unnamed 'top 10 global healthcare company.'

Fellow manufacturer AorTech International added 15 per cent to 84p after revealing research and development activities have topped board's expectations.

In the mining sector, Karelian Diamond Resources advanced 21 per cent to 2p after it was granted three strategic diamond exploration reservations in Finland.

Instead, fellow miner Tertiary Minerals tumbled 21 per cent to 0.2p after analysis at the Pyramid Gold Project in the US came in lower than those from the historic drill hole, though the miner highlighted the target zone is gold-mineralised.

Oil and gas explorer Alba Mineral Resources shares tripped 21 per cent to 0.05p after the company issued 142.5million shares at 0.04p each, as part of a conversion option being exercised by Bergen Global Opportunity Fund.

Learning centres operator Malvern International slipped 18 per cent to 0.4p after non-executive director Ramasamy Jayapal resigned.

Finally, industrial chains maker Renold fell 13 per cent to 6p after appointing Jim Haughey as its new finance director, whose start date still has not been finalised yet.
Brazilian troops on Thursday carried out a disinfection operation at a shelter for elderly and young people in Rio de Janeiro, while also delighting residents with a music performance.

As part of the project, the Brazilian Army's East Joint Command, in partnership with Rio City Hall, also distributed 1 ton of food aid and 400 masks.

The shelter receives homeless, but also elderly people in need, who are part of the group considered more vulnerable or at risk of being infected by COVID-19.

Brazil has had more than 13,000 COVID-19 deaths, making it the hardest-hit Latin American country, according to a survey by Johns Hopkins University.

The country registered more than 189-thousand confirmed cases, with the actual figure believed to be much higher because of limited testing.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough, that clear up in two to three weeks.

For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia, and could lead to death.
She apologized earlier this week for a series of offensive comments she directed at a Charleston, South Carolina, radio host.

But on Thursday, Southern Charm's Kathryn Dennis was publicly dumped as a brand ambassador by a Charleston-area luxury department store over her remarks which included sending a monkey emoji to Tamika Gadsden.

In a statement posted to Instagram, Gwynn's of Mount Pleasant said: 'As a minority-owned business, Gwynn's and our employees are dedicated to serving all members of our community. Indisputably Kathryn Dennis' comments and statements to Tamika Gadsen do not reflect the values of the Gwynn's brand.'

Southern Charm's Kathryn Dennis has been publicly dumped as a brand ambassador by a Charleston-area luxury department store over her recent racist remarks

The business added: 'Her previous affiliation as a brand ambassador was periodic and on a contract basis. We stand in unity with people of color and with causes that fight to end injustices.'

Dennis, 28, had hit out at Gadsden last weekend after the radio personality tweeted dismay at the decision by a local beauty salon owner to host a 'Trump boat parade'.

The reality star bombarded Gadsden with a series of DMs including a monkey emoji.

Gadsden then shared a screenshot of Dennis's remarks on her Twitter and tweeted: 'This is what happens when a Black woman in #Charleston speaks up against white supremacy in the form of MAGA rallies.'

She went on: 'My comments re: Mylk Bar prompted this @BravoTV 'actor' @KathrynDennis to taunt me with monkey emojis in my DMs. Along with a whole host of other names.'

In a statement posted to Instagram , Gwynn's of Mount Pleasant said: 'We stand in unity with people of color and with causes that fight to end injustices'

'As a minority-owned business, Gwynn's and our employees are dedicated to serving all members of our community. Indisputably Kathryn Dennis' comments and statements to Tamika Gadsen do not reflect the values of the Gwynn's brand,' the retail company said

Dennis, 28, bombarded Charleston radio host Tamika Gadsden with a series of DMs including a monkey emoji after Gadsden expressed dismay at a beauty salon owner's 'Trump boat parade'

Gadsden shared her exchange with Dennis and tweeted : 'This is what happens when a Black woman in #Charleston speaks up against white supremacy in the form of MAGA rallies'

Gadsden also tweeted a screenshot of the Bravo reality star's comments including the offensive monkey emojis

After she was called out on Twitter for her offensive and racist comments, Dennis tweeted out a two-part apology on Monday.

'I want to acknowledge that using a monkey emoji in my text was offensive, and from the bottom of my heart I sincerely apologize to anyone and everyone I hurt. Although the context was not my intention, there are no 'if ands or buts' that excuse me... part 1,' she tweeted.

'Part 2: ....I did not give it thought, and it was and is wrong. I know I am not that person. I know and will do better,' she added.

Gadsden responded with a terse: 'Apology not accepted.'

On Monday, Dennis issued an apology via Twitter acknowledging her texts had been offensive

She pledged to 'do better' in her two-part apology

Gadsden had a terse response

Dennis is the mother of two young children with her ex-boyfriend and former Southern Charm co-star Thomas Ravenel.

The pair were locked in a long and bitter custody battle over their kids following their split.

Dennis has also gone through a well-publicized struggle with drug addiction and undergone rehab treatment.
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If you thought a holiday in a treehouse meant skimping on comfort - think again.

At this jaw-dropping hidden treehouse lodge in Bali  described as an 'experimental treetop boutique hotel, an architectural experience for adventurers'  luxury is abundant.

And there are Instagrammable scenes aplenty. It's an exotic haven that begs to be put on bucket lists for when international travel is back on the agenda.

B-ahhhh-li: Lift Bali comprises three 39ft-tall (12-metre) towers created by cutting-edge architect Alexis Dornier

The park-like setting holds a small sauna, a diminutive but perfectly formed pool and recreational areas

The designs are bold, 'a surreal mix of impermanent industrial structures embedded into a tropical forest'

Called Lift Bali, guests can relax in beautiful four-poster beds, sip sundowners in an eye-catching bar, stretch in an elevated yoga area and lap up the exotic leafy surrounds while reclining in treetop hammocks.

The park-like setting also holds a small sauna, a diminutive but perfectly formed pool and recreational areas.

The property, located in Ubud, is made up of three 39ft-tall (12-metre) towers created by cutting-edge German architect Alexis Dornier.

The designs are bold, 'a surreal mix of impermanent industrial structures embedded into a tropical forest'.

The 'Ernest Hemingway House' features a beautiful four-poster bed. All the rooms have furniture made from recycled timber

If relaxing on a hammock amid tropical foliage is your cup of tea - this is the hotel for you

This is the 'George Orwell House', a twin-level affair with a bathroom on the lower floor and a bedroom with a balcony

There are three towers - the Ernest Hemingway House, George Orwell House and Stanley Kubrik House - and all are accessed via spiral staircases.

As well as king-sized beds, the treehouses also boast luxury bathrooms, private terraces and furniture made from recycled timber.

Each of the three towers has been built using different materials, to give each a unique appearance.

The Alexis Dornier architecture studio said: 'Somewhere stuck in the past and the future, the towers seek to bridge different aspects of Bali into a memorable experience and create a backdrop for pictures to take or keep in mind.

This is the Stanley Kubrik House, which is 'designed to resemble a cube inside'. Views of the forest directly from the bed? Tick

A shot showing the balcony area of the George Orwell House. All the towers are shaded by the surrounding foliage

'Taking advantage of the height on aspects like passive cooling, passive shading through adjacent trees, being away from mosquito shrub and simply enjoying another vantage point was only a few of the design drivers shaping this place.'

There's a total absence of concrete and the towers are all on legs, so they have a 'less invasive footprint and impact, plus they are cost-effective and faster to build'.

The architects added: 'We aimed to create spaces where people could retreat to and be detached and off the ground.

The Ernest Hemingway House is 'a type of traditional vernacular house of the Javanese people'

The architecture studio said: 'Our aim was to create spaces where people could retreat to and be detached and off the ground'

The bar area at Lift Bali, left, which opened last September. Guests access the treehouses via spiral staircases

The Alexis Dornier studio said: 'Taking advantage of the height on aspects like passive cooling, passive shading through adjacent trees, being away from mosquito shrub and simply enjoying another vantage point was only a few of the design drivers shaping this place'

There are plans to extend the hotel  and ideas are welcome. The hotel said in a statement: 'We welcome studios to chip in their ideas in the form of a small competition that we will launch soon. For further information, visit Instagram.com/lift_bali'

Pictured here is the George Orwell House bathroom, which features a huge walk-in shower

'We wanted to evoke a sense of impermanence and allow for other experimental structures to fill in the blanks in the future.

'We are now collaborating with other architects on experimenting with new shapes, materials and organizational ideas  all surrounding the idea of off-the-ground structures.'

There are plans to extend the hotel  and ideas are welcome.

The hotel said in a statement: 'We welcome studios to chip in their ideas in the form of a small competition that we will launch soon. For further information, visit Instagram.com/lift_bali.'

The Lift houses, which cost from 21 a night, are all air-conditioned and come with en-suite bathroom and shower and free Wi-Fi. For more information on the rooms visit liftbali.com.
VAW-117 Carrier Qualifies on Ford, Transitions to E-2D Advanced Hawkeye

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS200514-07

Release Date: 5/14/2020 11:55:00 AM

By Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ryan Seelbach, USS Gerald R. Ford Public Affairs

ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- The Navy's newest and most technologically-advanced aircraft carrier, USS Gerald R. Ford (CVN 78), contributed to another milestone for naval aviation during carrier qualifications (CQ) for the "Wallbangers" of Airborne Command and Control Squadron (VAW-117) May 12.

Ten VAW-117 pilots successfully completed CQ with assistance from the "Greyhawks" of VAW-120 in the operation of the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye. VAW-117 completed 151 catapults and 158 traps over the course of three days. The completion of the CQ prepares VAW-117 for the finalization of their transition between aircraft.

Lt. Cmdr. Jeremiah Caldwell, from Loudoun County, Virginia, a pilot assigned to VAW-117, explained some of the differences between the E-2C Hawkeye and the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye, and how his squadron is making the transition between aircraft.

"The E-2D is our latest and greatest aircraft that has a lot of good equipment and a really good radar that's going to allow us to see our enemies at distances that we really haven't seen before," said Caldwell. "The training process for us is about three years just to get to the fleet, so we are here aboard Ford training fleet aviators that are making the transition from the Charlie to the Delta."

Lt. j.g. Nick Neighbors, from Johns Creek, Georgia, a junior pilot assigned to VAW-117, is one of the squadron's newest pilots and said that he wanted to be a naval aviator since he was young and enjoys every aspect of his job.

"I got picked up for the E-2 community for my initial squadron," said Neighbors. "As I go through the pipeline and learn more and more about the aircraft, it's a great crew to be a part of with a good mission, and it's something that I really enjoy doing."

With the completion of their CQ, VAW-117 is one step closer to being a fully-designated E-2D Advance Hawkeye squadron.

Lt. Cmdr. Justin Porter, from Crowley, Texas, a Naval Flight Officer assigned to VAW-117, said the success of the mission is not just attributed to the pilots who completed the CQ, but also the Ford Sailors who work on the flight deck.

"We've been surprised at the overall efficiency of CQ on the Ford, and because of that we are able to get our CQ done faster and get back to the west coast to finish the next steps for our squadron," said Porter. "This is a new ship, but the deck crew has been awesome getting us around the flight deck very efficiently."

Ford is a first-in-class aircraft carrier and the first new carrier designed in more than 40 years. With more than 2,300 catapult launches and advanced arresting gear landings since commissioning, her tested and proven technology is delivering many improvements to the naval aviation enterprise.

VAW-117 will return to their home station, and begin training and integrating with their air wing for future missions and deployments. The squadron is on track to receive their "Safe for Flight" designation for the E-2D Advanced Hawkeye in July.

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Delhi Social Welfare Minister Rajendra Pal Gautam on Friday said WhatsApp, Facebook, and Twitter were being used to slander people belonging to marginalised castes as well as women, and asked their management to take action against those running "venomous hate campaigns" on the social media platforms.

In separate letters to Twitter India Managing Director Manish Maheshwari, WhatsApp India head Abhijit Bose and Facebook India Vice President Ajit Mohan, Gautam said while the online world has emerged as an influential medium of information in the lockdown necessitated due to coronavirus, social media is also being used in a damaging way.

I have noticed that in recent times organised trends to ridicule and slander marginalised castes and women have increased exponentially, he said.

The minister said that Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter have become a place where casteist slurs are being used against Dalit intellectuals to demean them.

The posts of Dalit intellectuals are being countered by fanatics who have also defamed great leaders like B R Ambedkar, he said.

The minister asked the management of these social media platforms to take action in one of the most strict measures against those who are trying to misuse these platforms by running venomous hate campaigns.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When a deadly disease breaks out and threatens the world, countries are obliged to share laboratory samples and other information to help fight it, right?

Wrong. In 2007, Indonesia refused to give the World Health Organisation samples of an H5N1 influenza strain from an outbreak in the country until it was guaranteed fair access to any vaccines created from the material. Welcome to the world of viral sovereignty.

The ownership of pathogens and related data that emerge in one country is part of a long-standing debate that touches a colonial exploitative nerve: wealthy countries plundering the natural resources  including biodiversity  of poorer nations and profiting from it.

With the coronavirus death toll nearing 300,000, the Covid-19 pandemic has revived the issue of whether countries can claim ownership of pathogens that have emerged within their borders, according to the authors of a paper published in the Policy Forum in Science magazine on Friday.

The problem here is that the international community has failed to reach a consensus on what obligations, if any, countries have to share viruses and share genetic sequence data. That is an incredibly important public health good on the international stage, Dr Mark Eccleston-Turner, who co-authored the paper with Dr Alexandra Phelan, told the South China Morning Post.

Indonesia is not the only country involved in the debate. In 2018, China withheld laboratory samples of the H7N9 bird flu, despite repeated requests from the United States and Britain to share the material, according to media reports. China disputed those reports.

With the virus that causes Covid-19 first identified in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, the cooperation spotlight is again on China, especially as the US has accused Beijing of concealing information about the outbreak, claims the Chinese authorities have angrily rejected.

The genetic sequence data for the new coronavirus that causes Covid-19 was shared by Chinese researchers from Shanghais Fudan University on January 10 and two days later the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention submitted the sequence officially to the WHO.

Story continues

Researchers in several countries have noted that this was a quick turnaround, given that China first informed the WHO of the outbreak on December 31.

But it was researchers in Australia who first sent a physical sample of the virus to the WHO and other laboratories after isolating it from a traveller from Wuhan at the end of January.

Now scientists are concerned that the soured political atmosphere, combined with loopholes in existing international frameworks, could impede the sharing of genetic data and virus samples in the future.

The term viral sovereignty was coined after Indonesia cited the Nagoya Protocol under the UNs Convention on Biological Diversity, a treaty on environmental conservation, as the basis for its sovereignty claim over viruses isolated in the country, according to Phelan, an adjunct professor in global and public health law at Georgetown University.

The WHO tried to resolve the issue with the introduction of the Pandemic Influenza Preparedness Framework in 2011, but the new rules affirmed sovereignty as a legal norm and imposed no direct legal ramifications for not sharing influenza viruses with the WHO. This framework also did not apply to Covid-19, Phelan said.

Other rules like the WHOs International Health Regulations (IHR), require member states to notify the WHO within 24 hours of all relevant public health information on anything that may constitute a public health emergency of international concern.

But those rules do not classify genetic sequence data as health information and physical pathogen samples are not regarded as health information either, according to the Science article.

China ratified rules in 2019 to regulate the international transfer of human genetic materials, but lawyers in this field say that viral materials that do not include human genetic material are unlikely to fall under these rules. China did signal it will strengthen oversight of pathogens and other biological materials with the release of a draft biosecurity law last month.

Katherine Wang, a Shanghai-based partner at Ropes & Gray who focuses on life science regulatory law, said that because the law was in draft form it was not yet clear how this would affect the sharing of pathogenic materials outside China. But it could make this process more complicated, as exports might need to go through a more complicated biosafety vetting process, Wang said.

While the US has accused China of withholding virus samples, the US is also not party to the Convention on Biological Diversity or the Nagoya Protocol, which could have facilitated the transfer of such samples, according to the authors of the paper.

Phelan added that the US allegations did not carry much weight because the genetic sequence data for the virus was shared by China. The reality of modern technologies, a lot of things that we need to find out from a sample, we can do on the basis of that genetic sequence data, she said.

A Swiss laboratory says it has already been able to do just that.

The lab says it has synthesised the new coronavirus genome using the publicly available genetic sequence, although there were difficulties in creating some fragments in the genome and it required a physical virus sample from a patient, according to paper by the Institute of Virology and Immunology in Bern.

But whats at stake, other researchers say, is the scientific cooperation that allowed the sharing of influenza and Covid-19 data. The concern is that political tensions may jeopardise this work without the protection of a legal framework.

Dr Gavin Smith, a professor from Duke-NUS Medical School in Singapore, is active in influenza surveillance, a process that includes researchers from all over the world uploading genetic sequences of viruses to repositories to help monitor potential outbreaks.

Smith said there had been very open sharing of data in previous outbreaks such as H1N1 pandemic, Ebola and Zika and now with Sars-CoV-2, the official name for the virus that causes Covid-19.

Respiratory viruses are not constrained by borders and theres just a moral obligation to be open about the sequence data that we have, he said. A lot of the data sharing is done by the scientists and the clinicians because thats naturally what we do.

Dr Adolfo Garcia-Sastre, a professor of microbiology at Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, was one of the researchers to identify the origins of the 2009 H1N1 flu strain. He said he was concerned that political tensions could affect scientific collaboration.

This pandemic looks like it is creating a lot of tension between different countries in the world that may actually put a strain on the ties that were already put together for having a global surveillance and a direct deposit of influenza virus sequences for everybody, he said.

Garcia-Sastre said that if a country banned scientists from sharing pathogen data, scientific sharing would be at risk. This was not a problem now but it might happen, he said.

This is why Smith in Singapore said that having a formalised agreement on sharing would be useful.

Theres always the possibility, because governments change, that if an outbreak starts in a country where at the political level they dont want to share, and scientists might think were going to share this data anyway. I can see how it would be useful to have something like that formalised, he said.

The authors of the Science article said a quicker solution might be to update the definition of public health information under the IHR to include genetic sequence data and pathogens during potential and actual public health emergencies of international concern. This approach might not require the regulations to be rewritten, said Eccleston-Turner.

So we could have a situation where the WHO operates like a clearing house for viruses, and a clearing house for genetic sequence data, where all member states have to give all their virus samples.

Additional reporting by Robert Delaney

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Today host Allison Langdon told a fast food worker to consider getting a job in a different industry after he raised concerns about workers' safety during COVID-19.

The breakfast presenter made the comment to Laurence Sadler, who works for a national fast-food chain, on Friday morning after he detailed health and safety concerns he had for the industry.

The remark was met with an awkward laugh and silence, before Ms Langdon quickly moved onto the next segment on the breakfast TV program.

Mr Sadler, who is a Hospo Voice union representative, told Daily Mail Australia if every hospitality worker left their job the TV host wouldn't have anywhere to buy a takeaway coffee.

He said: 'There's no jobs. That's just a fact. And also the kind of logic doesn't really weigh up because I'd just told her how bad hospitality was for workers and she's saying if it's so bad, then leave.

'Obviously, the logic there is that everyone would leave because it's bad for everyone then there would be no industry anymore and Allison would no longer be able to get takeaway coffees.

'I've been looking for jobs for ages, but you apply for 500 hospitality jobs and you get two responses, so it's not a very fruitful or rewarding exercise.

'And it's the lowest paid.'

He said he had been bracing for a difficult interview but he was still thrown by the comment at the end.

'I wasn't thrilled, it took me back a bit. It was already quite a hostile interview... it was a bit of a run the mill union bashing piece and I wasn't expecting much more but it was still a bit of a rubbish comment,' he said.

Laurence Sadler, (pictured) who works for a national fast-food chain and is also a Hospo Voice union representative was asked why he didn't just 'get a job in a different industry' after raising concerns about issues in the hospitality sector

'I've been looking for jobs for ages, but you apply for 500 hospo jobs and you get two responses, so it's not a very fruitful not mentally rewarding exercise and it's the lowest paid,' Mr Sadlersaid (pictured top left)

Today host Allison Langdon told a fast food worker to consider getting a job in a different industry after he raised concerns about workers' safety during COVID-19

Figures released on Thursday revealed 600,000 Australians have lost work since the pandemic began, but the figure is thought to be much higher at 1.3million.

Mr Sadler told the Today Show the hospitality sector is already plagued with issues without the added concern of staff contracting coronavirus.

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'Hospitality is a really raw deal for workers. It often exploits the most vulnerable member of our society that is young and migrant workers... It's a really quite a dodgy industry for workers and we need to be vigilant against bosses who are willing to rort the rules to get a profit,' he said.

'Well maybe you should get a job in another industry then,' Ms Langdon said.

'Maybe,' Mr Sadler laughed uncomfortably.

'Yep,' Ms Langdon said after an awkward on-air silence.

Today Host Allison Langdon married Michael Willesee junior in 2008 - the son of the late veteran broadcaster and former Current Affairs Host Mike Willesee.

Mike Willesee was known for his enormous wealth; owning everything from a Rolls Royce to a helicopter and harbourside mansion.

Today Host Allison Langdon (pictured) married Michael Willesee junior in 2008 - the son of the late veteran broadcaster and former Current Affairs Host Mike Willesee

Ms Langdon (pictured) and husband Mike Willesee junior are living in a $2.05million property in the affluent Sydney suburb Bronte according to Propertyobserver.com.au after selling their previous home in Randwick for $1.7million

He bred horses and had an interest in the Sydney Swans AFL team, which even saw him involved in a consortium which bought the team to prevent them from going under, reported the Sydney Morning Herald.

Ms Langdon and husband Mike are living in a $2.05million property in the affluent eastern Sydney suburb Bronte, according to Propertyobserver.com.au after selling their previous home in Randwick for $1.7million.

The United Workers Union which oversees 'Hospo Voice' believes a decision to ease lockdown restrictions will put workers' safety at risk because of a lack of regulated health and hygiene measures.

The breakfast presenter made the comment to Hospo Voice union representative Laurence Sadler (pictured) on Friday morning after he told the Today Show about industry health and safety concerns

The United Workers Union which oversees 'Hospo Voice' believes a decision to ease lockdown restrictions will put workers' safety at risk because of a lack of regulated health and hygiene measures (stock image)

Mr Sadler said 'the rush' to return to jobs is a 'dangerous step' considering COVID-19 is still in the community.

'Social distancing is really impossible for us and that's excluding the risk of an infection from a customer which will only increase now that businesses are reopening,' he said.

The hospitality sector is preparing for a big weekend as many states and territories across Australia begin to ease lockdown restrictions.

New South Wales, Queensland, the Australian Capital Territory, Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Tasmania will all progress plans to reopen cafes, bars and restaurants from today as part of a federal directive to get the economy moving.

Employment data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics released on Thursday revealed Australia's unemployment rate had surged to a five-year high due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Official figures recorded the loss of 600,000 Australian jobs since mid-March, but its' thought to be closer to 1.3 million, reported ABC news.

Woolworths' recruitment website crashed last month after it was flooded with job-hunters laid of across the country.
New York As calls grow nationwide for mandatory coronavirus testing in nursing homes, New York facilities are sounding alarms about the states ambitious new demand to test roughly 185,000 workers twice a week.

Administrators worry there won't be enough kits for an estimated 370,000 tests a week on workers at nursing homes and other adult care facilities, nearly double the total of tests done statewide now on people in all walks of life. The homes also have questioned who will cover an expense estimated around $100 to $150 per test, though the state suggested Thursday the homes could send workers to free state testing sites.

Its the right thing to do, its a good idea, we support it, but the logistics of it and the cost of it need to get thorough consideration, said Neil Heyman, who heads the Southern New York Association of about 60 New York City-area nursing homes. He and the heads of four other nursing home umbrella groups told Gov. Andrew Cuomo in a letter Wednesday that there are a myriad of practical problems that will make it impossible to comply.

Cuomo, a Democrat, says the testing requirement may be a pain in the neck, but its necessary.

We have to be able to say ... when this is over, that we did everything we could to protect people," he said Thursday on WAMC-AM radio.

The COVID-19 virus causes mild or moderate symptoms for most people. But it has killed over 30,000 people in nursing homes and long-term care facilities nationwide  including nearly 5,600 in New York, more than in any other state, according to an Associated Press tally.

West Virginia in late April required testing for all nursing home residents and workers. Other states dispatched the National Guard to help with testing. Some New York homes and their local governments made their own arrangements for blanket testing, sometimes with state help.

But the state didn't require it until Cuomo issued an order Sunday, amid criticism from residents relatives, watchdogs and some politicians over his approach to protecting what he has called the most vulnerable people in the most vulnerable place.

The next day, the White House recommended, but didn't order, testing for all nursing home residents and staffers in the next two weeks. Several states, including Texas and Pennsylvania, have since taken steps to demand or encourage coronavirus testing in nursing homes.

New York's order instructs nursing home operators to test or make arrangements for testing all staffers twice a week  unlike in West Virginia, for instance, where the state health department and National Guard carried out the testing of 28,000 residents and workers.

New York homes that don't comply can face thousands of dollars in fines or lose their licenses. Employees who refuse to get tested can be barred from working until they do.

Nursing home residents' advocate Richard Mollot applauded New York's order.

I do think that there will be challenges to implementation for some at the beginning, said Mollot, executive director of the Long Term Community Care Coalition. But he noted that the federal government has provided some relief funds.

Nursing homes can and should utilize them to pay for resident care and safety, including any unanticipated expenses that might arise from the need for testing, Mollot said.

But nursing homes fret that the state is setting the bar too high.

The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine, which represents more than 50,000 professionals in the field, is very concerned, executive director Chris Laxton said.

Besides the question of paying for the tests, the requirement threatens to make staff shortages, already unsustainable, completely unworkable, and will quickly overwhelm commercial labs, Laxton said.

The state Health Department said Thursday that lab capacity and other issues are still being worked on. Many details will be left to nursing homes and county governments, but the department said it was working to make sure nursing homes have access to free testing at 31 state-run sites.

Still, the head of a group representing about 400 New York nursing homes and assisted living centers said the state National Guard should help provide testing on the facilities' own premises  and the federal government should help pay for it.

Without immediate and urgently needed funding, nursing homes are at a significant disadvantage in responding to this unprecedented health crisis, said Stephen Hanse, president of the New York State Health Facilities Association and the New York State Center for Assisted Living.

Some areas were already getting started with the new testing.

Officials in suburban Rockland County delivered state-provided testing kits Thursday to eight nursing homes.

We are doing everything in our power to help protect residents, said County Executive Ed Day, a Republican. We know how difficult and worrying this situation is.

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City embarks on enormous testing exercise after emergence of new clusters of cases following end of lockdown.

Wuhan, the Chinese city where the coronavirus first appeared late last year, says it has tested more than three million residents for the pathogen since April, as it steps up efforts to test the remainder of its 11 million population, state media reported.

Wuhan will conduct tests on everyone in the city, with the goal of getting a clear number of asymptomatic cases as businesses and schools reopen, the official Xinhua News Agency reported late on Thursday.

The priority will be residents who have not been tested before, people living in residential compounds that had previous cases of the virus, as well as older estates or compounds in densely populated estates, Xinhua said, citing a Wuhan government meeting.

Wuhan reported a cluster of infections over the weekend, the first since an almost total lockdown of the city was lifted on April 8, raising fears of a second wave. The latest cases were previously recorded as asymptomatic, people who had the virus but showed no symptoms.

State media did not say how many people had been tested before April 1.





The first cases of coronavirus were reported among people who worked at a now-closed seafood market in the city in December, but the number of cases grew in January when the first death was reported, and the city was sealed off just before the Lunar New Year.

Reuters news agency, citing an internal document to district officials, reported on May 11 that a city-wide campaign of nucleic acid tests would take place over 10 days.

New cases emerge

Wuhan conducted 1.79 million tests from April 1 to May 13, according to Reuters calculations based on daily reports published by the citys health commission.

The official test number for May 14 will be published on Friday.

Workers in protective suits collect swabs from secondary school students at the Hubei Wuchang Experimental High School in Wuhan before their return to classes on May 6 [cnsphoto via Reuters]

Recently, Wuhan has detected several to more than a dozen asymptomatic infections every day. Although those people are all treated in isolation, they still trigger concern in the community, Xinhua said.

Some experts say the mass testing is unprecedented in scale and shows the level of concern. Others warn on potential testing errors due to the sheer size of the sampling.

On Friday, Chinas National Health Commission reported four new confirmed cases in the mainland for May 14, up from three cases a day earlier.

All of the new cases were locally transmitted and the number of new asymptomatic cases fell slightly to 11 from 12 a day earlier.

The total number of confirmed cases in mainland China now stands at 82,933 while the death toll remained unchanged at 4,633.

China does not include asymptomatic virus carriers in its tally of confirmed cases. It also does not disclose the overall number of asymptomatic cases in the country.
The first breakdown of underlying health conditions among the victims of coronavirus in England shows that a quarter of 22,332 people who passed away since March 31 were diabetic, reinforcing initial data that the disease makes recovery more difficult.

The data from NHS England released on Thursday shows that people with dementia or lung problems are also among those most at risk of dying after contracting the virus. Health officials consider people of Indian and Asian origin in the UK particularly prone to diabetes.

Click here for full Covid-19 coverage

Of the 22,332 people who died in England hospitals between March 31 and May 12, 5,873 (26%) suffered from either type 1 or type 2 diabetes, the figures reveal, adding that the number of dead categorised as Indian rose to 665.

Partha Kar, NHS Englands special adviser on diabetes, said: It is clear that people with diabetes are more at risk of dying from Covid-19. More detailed analysis is currently underway to understand the link between the two, although initial findings indicate that the threat in people under 40 continues to be very low.

The NHS England data complements that of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) released last week, showing significantly higher risk of death from the virus among Indian and other non-white communities than the white community.

The ONS said Indian and other non-white males are 4.2 times more likely to die from a Covid-19-related death and non-white females are 4.3 times more likely than white ethnicity males and females. The UKs Indian-origin population is estimated to number 1.5 million.

The ONS said: People of Bangladeshi and Pakistani, Indian, and mixed ethnicities also had a statistically significant raised risk of death involving Covid-19 compared with those of White ethnicity.

According to Kamlesh Khunti, a medical expert at the University of Leicester, the reasons Indian and other non-white people figure more in the statistics, despite accounting for only 14 per cent of the UK population, include many coming from lower socioeconomic backgrounds, working in public-facing occupations, holding different cultural beliefs and behaviours or being at high risk of diseases such as diabetes and heart disease.
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said the HHS whistleblower, Dr. Rick Bright, should 'show up for the job he has,' after he testifed to Congress that hypertension and stress have kept him out of work since his controversial demotion.

'He takes a $285,000 salary - that's extraordinary for a federal government salary - and he is still on taxpayer-funded medical leave so he can work with partisan attorneys who malign the president,' McEnany said at Friday's press briefing.

President Trump had previously asserted that Bright - who warned Congress that the U.S. could be in for its 'darkest winter' if the administration didn't improve its response to the coronavirus pandemic - should be canned.

Press secretary Kayleigh McEnany was asked if the administration wanted to see HHS whistleblower Dr. Rick Bright return to work at his new position at the National Institutes of Health. McEnany replied that he should 'show up for the job he has'

Dr. Rick Bright testifed before Congress Thursday, warning the U.S. could see its 'darkest winter' if the Trump administration didn't improve its coronavirus response. He also said he hadn't returned to work since his controversial demotion due to hypertension and stress

Bright had previously led the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority, but on April 21 was moved to an undefined role at the National Institutes of Health.

An HHS press release at the time and McEnany on Friday characterized suggested that the transition was a standard job change.

'He was transferred to lead a bold new $1 billion testing program,' McEnany said Friday.

Her comments were almost verbatim to a release sent to reporters from the HHS press office Thursday.

'Rick Bright was transferred from his role as BARDA director to lead a bold new $1 billion testing program at NIH, critical to saving lives and reopening America. Mr. Bright has not yet shown up for work, but continues to collect his $285,010 salary, while using his taxpayer-funded medical leave to work with partisan attorneys who are politicizing the response to COVID-19,' the press release read.

His lawyers put out a statement Thursday explaining that 'contrary to administration talking points, Dr. Bright has never refused to report to NIH, and now that his position there has been identified, he plans to being next week.'

'Dr. Bright is fully prepared to step into this new role unless [Health and Human Services] Secretary Azar honors [the Office of Special Counsel's] request and grants a stay of his reassignment,' the statement read.

Bright had filed a complaint to the OSC prior to testifying before Congress.

In both the OSC complaint and his Congressional testimony, Bright asserted that his removal had been for sinister reasons.

He told Congress that he was immediately locked out of his BARDA email upon being informed of the move.

He said he suspected he was demoted over his resistance to widely approve the use of the Trump-touted anti-malaria drugs hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine to treat COVID-19 symptoms.

'I believe part of the removal process for me was initiated because of a push back that I gave when they asked me to put in place an expanded access protocol that would make chloroquine more freely available to Americans that were not under the close supervision of a physician and may not even be confirmed to be infected with the coronavirus,' Bright said.

Bright hired lawyer Debra Katz, which riled up Republicans because she had been counsel for Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh's sex assault accuser, Christine Blasey Ford.

Katz did not respond to DailyMail.com's request for comment on McEnany's remarks.

Bright hasn't started at NIH, telling lawmakers that he was first out on medical leave and then took vacation time to testify before Congress.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, said he was 'confused' how Dr. Rick Bright could testify before Congress, but not show up to his new position at NIH. Bright testified that he's been battling hypertension and stress since losing his job leading BARDA

'I had a conversation with my physician about my hypertension and weve been managing it over the last three weeks because this has been very stressful to be removed suddenly without explanation for my role and my position. Its a life change for me,' Bright said.

Rep. Markwayne Mullin, an Oklahoma Republican, challenged Bright on how he could be out on sick leave, yet sit before Congress.

'I guess I'm kind of confused here because you say you have hypertension but yet you were able to do these interviews, you were able to make the report and you were able to prepare for this hearing,' Mullin said. 'Yet you're too sick to go into work, but you're well enough to come here, while you're still getting paid by the United States government.'

Bright answered, 'Sir, I've been on medical leave.'

When Mullin asked him why his hypertension was acting up now and not when he was in charge of BARDA, Bright responded, 'I didn't have the level of stress of being removed from my position while I was at BARDA sir.

'This has been very stressful,' the doctor added.
EU to give Ukraine EUR 500 mln in macro-financial assistance after IMF  European commissioner

01:25, 15.05.20 1793

Ukraine has fulfilled all conditions for the next tranche of the EU's macro-financial assistance.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 16:25:38|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China plans to complete its BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) with the launch of its last satellite in June, according to a BDS official.

The final satellite is a geostationary earth orbit satellite of the BDS-3 system, the third iteration of BDS that has already provided positioning and navigation services to global users, said Ran Chengqi, director of the China Satellite Navigation Office, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Thursday.

"The BDS-3 system plans to have 30 satellites, with 29 now in orbit. It will be fully completed in June with the launch of the last satellite," Ran said. "Both the satellite and carrier rocket have been sent to the launch site, and preparations for the upcoming launch are underway."

Chinese scientists started to build the BDS-3 system in 2009. Compared with the BDS-2 system, the technologies of the BDS-3 system have been greatly improved.

According to Ran, the completion of the global system will be announced after the launch. The BDS will offer its users all services, including high-precision positioning and short message communication, which "will bring new highlights to global navigation satellite systems." Enditem
As part of an ongoing Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commissions probe into insider trading conducted by prominent US senators, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents have seized the personal cell phone of North Carolina senator Richard Burr.

A spokesperson for Dianne Feinstein has also confirmed that FBI agents have questioned the California senator regarding her and her husband's selling of up to $6 million worth of stock between January 31 and February 18. Feinstein has maintained her innocence, pleading ignorance as to her husbands actions.

It was revealed by several media investigations as well as senate disclosure forms in March, that senators Burr and Feinstein, as well as James Inhofe and Kelly Loeffler, sought to secure their personal wealth at the expense of society by selling millions of dollars in stock, prior to the markets collapse and after receiving classified intelligence briefings on the emerging threat of the coronavirus beginning on January 24.

Chairman Richard Burr, R-N.C., gives opening remarks at a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing for a nomination hearing for Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, May. 5, 2020. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik, Pool)

As the virus spread unchecked throughout the country, Burr sought to soften the threat of the virus while buttressing the government's preparedness efforts. Burr coauthored an opinion piece for Fox News on February 7 arguing that the United States today is better prepared than ever before to face emerging public health threats like the coronavirus, in large part due to the work of the Senate Health Committee, Congress and the Trump administration.

But when speaking to affluent campaign contributors on February 27, Burr made more direct warnings. Members of the Tar Heel Circle, who pay between $500 and $10,000 in dues, were truthfully warned by Burr, that far from being a minor flu,[COVID-19] is probably more akin to the 1918 pandemic.

In order for a warrant to be executed on a sitting senator, such as Burr, the signature of Attorney General William Barr is required. As Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Burr oversaw investigations into, and suppressed findings that could shed light on, the murderous and illegal activities of the CIA, FBI and NSA. The purpose of the warrant was to obtain phone records and conversations between Burr and his stockbroker, according to reports.

As of this writing, it does not appear that Inhofe nor Loeffler have been questioned by authorities, nor served any warrants, despite both engaging in similar activity as Burr and Feinstein.

According to Burrs senate disclosure forms, he and his wife sold 33 different stocks on a single day, February 13, worth between $628,000 and $1.72 million. The sales represent the most stock Burr had sold in over a year and a significant portion of his estimated $3.1 million net worth according to Opensecrets.org. ProPublica reported last week that Burrs brother-in-law, Gerald Fauth, sold between $97,000 and $280,000 worth of shares the exact same day as Burr. Fauth was appointed by Donald Trump to the National Mediation Board, the federal agency that coordinates labor-management relations within the railroad and airline industries, in 2017.

As with his connected brother-in-law, Fauth chose to divest from several businesses that were soon to see a precipitous drop in stock value, including several major oil companies. Fauth sold $50,000 worth of Chevron; between $1,001 and $15,000 of BP and between $15,001 and $50,000 of Royal Dutch Shell stock.

FBI agents served the now-former chair of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee with a warrant to seize his cell phone at his Washington D.C. home on Wednesday evening. On Thursday, Burr delivered a letter to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell informing him that he would be stepping down as chair of the Intel Committee.

As chair, Burr oversaw the nearly three-year investigation into Russian interference that took place during the 2016 election which supposedly benefited Donald Trump. This fact-free conspiracy theory was promulgated by the ruling class and their servants in the intelligence agencies and Democratic party to channel mass popular opposition to Trump behind a right-wing pro-war campaign to demonize Russia and lay the groundwork for internet censorship and war.

Burr earned Trumps ire by issuing a subpoena for Donald Trump Jr. to testify in front of the committee last year as part of the committee's McCarthyite investigation.

While speaking to reporters on Thursday, Trump insisted that he didnt know about the warrant, or impending seizure of Burrs phone. During a press conference Trump stated that he knew nothing about it. Upon hearing that Burr had resigned his chair position, Trump dryly replied, Thats too bad.
Instagrams efforts to curb health misinformation have done little to stem the flow of conspiracy theories and misinformation about vaccines. The app continues to be a hotbed of anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, which often spread without the promised fact-checks and are further fueled by Instagrams search and recommendation algorithms.



The problem has only escalated during COVID-19 as the coronavirus pandemic has given rise to a new surge of viral disinformation and conspiracy theories, many of which are widely promoted by the anti-vaccination movement. At the same time, many of Facebook's moderators have been unable to work and review reports of potentially rule-breaking content.

Instagrams rabbit hole problem

Like Facebook, Instagram doesnt ban anti-vaccine content, though the company claims it has attempted to make it less visible to users. The company blocks some hashtags and says it tries to make anti-vaccine content harder to find in public areas of the app, like Explore. Yet accounts promoting conspiracy theories and inaccurate information about vaccines dominate the apps search results.

When you search the word vaccine on Instagram, the app recommends dozens of anti-vaccine accounts in its top results. Accounts with names such as Vaccines_revealed, Vaccinesuncovered, vaccines_kill_ vaccinesaregenocide_ and say_no_to_bill_gates_vaccine are front and center. While some of these accounts are popular, with nearly 100,000 followers, others have only a few hundred. Yet Instagrams algorithm consistently recommends these accounts  and not one verified health organization  as the most relevant accounts for the search term vaccine.

Accounts promoting conspiracy theories and inaccurate information about vaccines dominate search results.

Some of these accounts are meant to sow fear  many are aimed at parents  and post clearly spurious claims like vaccines are causing autism rates to skyrocket. Many have pivoted to posting conspiracy theories about Bill Gates and the coronavirus pandemic.

Instagrams recommendation algorithm also pushes users toward accounts spreading conspiracy theories, including those about vaccines and COVID-19.

I made a new Instagram account, searched vaccine, and then followed a few of the top results mentioned above. Within seconds, the app began suggesting I follow more anti-vaccine pages and other accounts peddling conspiracy theories, including QAnon. This isnt a new phenomenon, either. Vice noted last year that Instagrams follow suggestions could easily lead users down an anti-vax rabbit hole. The company said at the time it would look into it, but it doesnt appear much has changed.

Not only do the suggestions still appear, these recommendations are now pushing users toward other fringe conspiracy theories. I only had to follow four anti-vaccine accounts before Instagram began recommending popular QAnon pages, one of which prominently linked to the Plandemic documentary Facebook and others have struggled to successfully banish from their platform. A couple days later, the app sent push notifications recommending I follow two more QAnon pages.

An Instagram spokesperson reiterated that the company aims to make misinformation about vaccines harder to find in public areas of the app.

Searching for specific hashtags can also lead users into a rabbit hole of conspiracy theories.

Searching for #vaccine prompts you to first visit the CDCs website and contains relatively sanitized results, but Instagrams hashtag search recommends other related search terms that are less filtered, including #vaccineinjuryadvocate and #vaccineskillandinjure. (Using the cedilla character instead of a c is a common tactic used by anti-vaccine advocates in order to evade detection, as Coda reported last year.)

Screenshot / Instagram

And when you look at search results for these recommended hashtags, like #vaccineinjuryadvocate, Instagram further suggests more hashtags associated with various other conspiracy theories, including coronavirus conspiracy theories: #plandemic, #governmentconspiracy, #populationcontrol, and #scamdemic. (Instagram has since blocked search results for #plandemic, which had more than 26,000 posts, according to the app.)

Screenshot / Instagram

Instagram's algorithm recommending hashtags associated with conspiracy theories isnt just limited to vaccines either. Search #5G and the app surfaces related hashtags like #fuckbillgates #billgatesisevil #chemtrails and #coronahoax. Other seemingly innocuous suggestions, like #5Gtowers, also lead to conspiracy theories like #projectbluebeam #markofthebeast #epsteindidntkillhimself.

Misinformation on Instagram

None of these are new issues for Instagram, but the photo-sharing apps misinformation problem has often avoided the same scrutiny thats been applied to Facebook. When company officials testified in front of Congress, they downplayed Instagrams role in spreading Russian disinformation. The Senate Intelligence Committees subsequent report found that Instagram was the most effective tool used by the IRA.

The problem, according to those who study it, is that misinformation on Instagram often takes the form of memes and other images that are harder for the companys systems to detect and can be more difficult for the companys human reviewers to parse. And while Instagram is building out new systems to address this, images can be a much more effective conduit for bad actors, says Paul Barrett, the deputy director of NYU's Stern Center for Business and Human Rights.

Disinformation, which would include anti-vaxxer material, is increasingly a visual game. This is not something that's done exclusively or even primarily anymore via big blasts of text, Barrett said. Visual material makes it easy to digest, and something that's not going to seem threatening or overbearing. And I think as a result that makes Instagram appealing.

Yet Instagram has been much slower to deal with its misinformation problem than Facebook. The photo-sharing app didnt implement any fact-checking efforts until last May  nearly three years after Facebook began debunking posts with outside fact-checkers. And the app has only recently moved to make debunked posts less visible in users feeds.

Instagram

And though Instagram, like Facebook, has prioritized coronavirus misinformation it considers harmful, the company doesnt apparently consider anti-vaccine content, which researchers have linked to measles outbreaks and other instances of actual harm, to be as urgent a problem as some coronavirus conspiracies.

We're prioritizing reviewing certain types of content, like child safety, suicide and self injury, terrorism and harmful misinformation related to COVID, to make sure that we're handling the most dangerous issues, Mark Zuckerberg said during a call with reporters to discuss the companys content moderation efforts this week.

When asked whether the company was prioritizing anti-vaccine content given its links to coronavirus misinformation, Facebooks VP of integrity, Guy Rosen, said, Health-related harm is something thats very much top of mind and very much something that we want to prioritize.

An Instagram spokesperson told Engadget the company doesnt bar anti-vaccination content, but noted it has removed some posts with misinformation in response to a deadly measles outbreak in Samoa and a polio resurgence in Pakistan. Officials in both countries have blamed misinformation for rising anti-vaccination sentiment.

In most cases, though, the company doesnt act to remove such content entirely, attempting to make it less visible or adding false information labels when the content has been debunked by fact-checkers.

But fact-checking might not be enough, according to Barrett. Facebook is so outmatched by the scale of the problem, it's almost a little naive to assume that fact-checking is  even if it's done vigorously  that you're going to be able to catch a substantial majority of false information that's being posted on a continuous basis, Barrett says. When you're talking about billions of posts a day, even if you have Facebook's 60 fact-checking organizations around the world, a lot of stuff is going to slip by them.
Electric Ireland & Pieta are launching an urgent appeal for the public to donate at darknessintolight.ie to ensure that Pieta's essential frontline services can remain in operation and continue to be delivered free of charge.

On May 9, it was expected that over 250,000 people would have come together on every continent to walk together highlighting the fight against suicide and self-harm. Darkness Into Light is the main annual source of funding for Pieta.

As the walks cannot now take place as planned in May, a Darkness Into Light 'Sunrise' appeal took place on that day.

This special appeal encourages people to donate what they can to this vital charity and to come together while remaining apart by getting up at 5:30am to watch the sunrise and to show community and solidarity with those impacted by suicide.

Pieta are also asking people to spread the message and offer hope by sharing their sunrise moment using the #DIL2020.

The need for Pieta's lifesaving services is greater than ever as COVID-19 impacts not only on the nation's physical health but its mental health too. As people find themselves worried, anxious, under strain, financially impacted and in many cases isolated and alone, the effect on mental health is significant.

Recent research has also confirmed that 1 in 5 Irish people are experiencing clinically defined levels of depression. Even before COVID-19 the public need for Pieta's services was on the increase, with calls to Pieta's helpline up 49% year on year while text messages to Pieta had increased by 46%.

Elaine Austin, CEO of Pieta said: 'As a result of Covid-19, our helpline has seen an increase in calls from people all over the country who are in crisis right now with many others presenting with high anxiety. Our bereavement counsellors are supporting people who have lost loved ones and who are struggling to come to terms with their loss in a world where friends and family cannot grieve together as a result of the lockdown. Funding from the public has never been more vital to keep Pieta's door open. The Darkness Into Light walk will hopefully take place later in the year, but we can't wait - we're urgently asking people to donate, whatever they can.'

Pieta operates a free 24-hour suicide helpline 1800 247 247. For more information visit www.pieta.ie
Virginia recorded its highest daily total of coronavirus cases in two weeks, just two days before the state is scheduled to enter phase one of reopening.

On Thursday, officials reported 1,067 new cases, the most in a single day and the highest since 1,055 cases were recorded on May 1. There are now more than 28,000 cases and 978 deaths in the state.

According to WHSV, 19.5 percent of recent tests came back positive, a higher proportion than the current state average of 14 percent.

The new figures are concerning, especially with nonessential businesses allowed to open with restrictions beginning Friday at 12.01am, and health officials suggesting a rate of 10 percent or lower before reopening.

However, Virginia is not the only state to see spikes ahead of reopening plans. Texas, Louisiana and Florida are all seeing increases in cases even as their governors push ahead with reopening plans.

On Thursday, Virginia health officials reported 1,067 new coronavirus cases, the most in a single day and the highest since May 1 (pictured)

Northern Virginia is delaying opening until at least May 28 due to a positive test rate of 25% (above)

A demonstrator protesting against lockdown measures in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic in Richmond, Virginia, April 22

The news of the spike in Virginia led to several regions requesting a delay in reopening.

Governor Ralph Northam granted requests for Accomack County, which has the third-highest number of cases, and the City of Richmond.

'As I have said previously, Virginia's Phase One guidelines represent a floor, not a ceiling,' Northam said in a statement.

'I have encouraged local leaders to request exemptions when appropriate, and I am pleased to grant the delays for both Accomack County and the City of Richmond.'

According to WAVY, Accomack, which has a population of about 32,000, has seen its cases mainly come from two chicken plans.

This is similar to states such as Nebraska and Iowa, which have seen infections soar among workers at meatpacking plants.

Surprisingly, the county had nearly 600 more cases than Virginia Beach, the state's largest city with more than 450,000 people, reported WAVY.

Meanwhile, the City of Richmond is in Richmond County, which has the second-highest number of cases.

Zumba Gold instructor, Stacey Zebrowski, center, leads a class at the Shady Grove YMCA on May 15 as Virginia enters phase one of reopening

Northern Virginia is also delaying its opening until at least May 29 because it is so hard-hit.

WAVY reported that the region was reporting a 25 percent positive test rate, while most of the state is seeing a rate of about 10 percent.

In fact, more than two-thirds of Thursday's new cases came from Northern Virginia.

Some officials have said the numbers in Virginia are not to be feared because the state has increased its testing.

On Thursday, Virginia performed 5,467 new tests, inching closer to is goal of 10,000 tests per day.

Additionally, the argument is made that the high number of cases coming out of Northern Virginia are skewing test results.

Other states are also seeing spikes as they prepare to reopen. Louisiana, for example, saw a large increase in COVID-19 cases for second day in a row.

On Thursday, Lousiaina healt officials reported a jump of more than 600 new cases on Thursday, the largest single-day increas

Texas reported its largest increase of daily cases and deaths, but Gov Greg Abbott said he's moving ahead with reopening plans. Pictured: A woman wearing a face mask for protection against COVID-19 passes a business that has reopened in San Antonio, May 14

The state's Department of Health reported a jump of more than 600 new cases on Thursday, the largest single-day increase in Louisiana since May 1

Yet, Governor John Bel Edwards said he is still lifting the state's stay at home order on Friday, May 15.

And, on Sunday, churches and other places of worship are allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity.

Texas reported 1,448 more cases of the new coronavirus Thursday, an increase of about 3% over the previous day, bringing the total number of known cases to 43,851.

Additionally, Texas reported its largest increase of daily cases and deaths.

Officials recorded 1,448 new coronavirus cases on Thursday, a three percent from the previous day, and 58 news deaths, which is a five percent jump from Wednesday.

Yet, Governor Greg Abbott said he is going to announce another set of reopening plans on Monday.

'We're opening Texas as fast as possible while also containing the spread of COVID-19,' he told KETK-TV on Wednesday.

And, in Florida, state health officials reported a total of 43,210 cases of coronavirus and 1,875 deaths.

But the news didn't sway Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to announce the reopening of gyms on Friday, reported Fox 35 Orlando.

Gyms were not supposed to reopen until phase 2 but DeSantis said he thought it was important residents had access to fitness centers.

'First of all, this is a virus, that if you're in good shape, you're probably going to be okay,' he said during a press conference on Thursday.

'So why would we want to dissuade people from going to be in shape?'
Over 4.5 million people have been confirmed to be COVID-19 positive in the world so far. Of these, 1.7 million have recovered and over 300,000 have died.

Over 4.5 million people have been confirmed to be COVID-19 positive in the world so far. Of these, 1.7 million have recovered and over 300,000 have passed away.

Today, China reportedly marked one month with zero new daily deaths by the novel coronavirus infection and Slovenia has become the first European country to declare that they have controlled COVID-19 and there is no need to take any extra precautions in the country anymore. On the other hand, Russia again saw more than 10,000 daily cases on Friday, bringing the total cases in the country to 262,843.

Baltics opened travel bubble, restaurants and bars opened in Australia

The three Baltic countries - Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia have opened their borders and will reportedly allow people to freely travel between the three countries without the need for quarantine. However, a person coming into this region from any other country will have to self-isolate for two weeks.

After two months of lockdown, Australia eased the restrictions by opening restaurants and bars. The country has seen a total of 7,019 cases so far out of which 98 people have died of the disease. However, on Friday, Australia saw around 30 new cases, which is much higher than their recent average of below 20. To prevent another wave of infections, the country is set to ease restrictions in three phases. Some cafes in Sydney are reportedly allowing only 10 people at a time, which is phase one of reopening.

Bulgaria to open shopping malls, Italy to allow free movement, Japan lifted restrictions in some areas

Shopping malls in Bulgaria will open from Monday after the two-month-long lockdown. The country with a population of about 7 million has reported a total of 2,138 cases and 102 deaths so far and had started to ease restrictions in late April.

As per media reports, the Italian government may allow its citizens to travel across the country from June 3 and within the regions from May 18. However, there is still a chance for the draft to be changed before it is approved.

Japan has reportedly lifted the state of emergency in a lot of its prefectures. However, the capital city Tokyo along with Osaka and about six other prefectures will still be closed at least until the end of May. Tokyo saw about 30 new cases on Thursday. Yuriko Koike, the governor of Tokyo reportedly said that the daily cases should be below 20 when businesses open in the area.

Roches new diagnostic tool

After its antibody test, the multinational Pharmaceutical firm, Roche has now reportedly said that it is going to sell an oximeter  Roches v-TAC  which would help the doctors screen for the presence of COVID-19 in patients with breathing problems.

Oximeters are small devices that check the blood gas levels - the amount of oxygen and carbon dioxide - in a persons blood. Many COVID-19 patients reportedly see a drop in their blood oxygen levels (hypoxia), without ever noticing breathing problems. However, the condition can be life-threatening.

For more information, read our article on What is oxygen therapy.

Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health.
The hotel market in Viet Nam this year is expected to face a severe decline in room occupancy due to the COVID-19 pandemic and will not recover until next year, industry experts have said.

A resort in Nha Trang. The hotel market is expected to face a severe decline in room occupancy due to the pandemic and will not recover until next year.  Photo vietnam.travel

Savills Viet Nam said the COVID-19 crisis had seriously disrupted the economy, especially the tourism sector and hotel market.

Many hotels have either suspended operations or temporarily closed to cut costs, and have retained only key personnel to prepare for reopening.

These moves were done to offset the revenue decline in the short term, but many hotel owners are still uncertain about how long it will take for tourism demand to rise again.

Savills said the global economic impact caused by the pandemic would make it more difficult for a full recovery of the hotel industry this year.

Full recovery is likely to take place in 2021, Savills said.

Domestic tourism demand, especially from young travellers, will play an important role in the recovery of the hotel industry, it said.

A report from CBRE Viet Nam said the hotel market in Ha Noi has shown more positive signs than in HCM City.

The four- and five-star hotel segment in Ha Noi is expected to recover more quickly when international businesses resume normal operations, with hotels in Dong Da and Ba Dinh districts preferred by customers.

Domestic guests and international visitors from Northeast Asia will also play a role in the recovery of the hotel market in Ha Noi after the outbreak is under control.

For the hotel market in Ha Noi, if the epidemic is contained by June, the average room rate this year will decrease by 8-13 per cent and the occupancy rate will drop by 46-51 per cent compared to last year, according to CBRE Viet Nam.

If the epidemic is contained in September, the average room rate will decrease by 15-20 per cent, while the room occupancy will fall by 50-55 per cent compared to last year.

For the hotel market in HCM City, CBRE Viet Nam forecasts that if the pandemic is controlled in June, the average room rate this year will fall 10-15 per cent, and the room occupancy will decrease by 40-45 per cent compared to 2019.

If the epidemic is controlled by September, the average room rate will decrease by 17-22 per cent compared to 2019, the room occupancy is also expected to drop by 44-49 per cent over the last year.

The Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism expects a slow recovery post-COVID, and has created two scenarios for the tourism sector this year.

In the first scenario, the number of international arrivals to the country is expected to decrease by 70 per cent this year compared to 2019 if the outbreak is contained in June.

In the worst-case scenario, the number of international visitors will fall by 75 per cent if the pandemic is controlled by September.

In any scenario, this year will see an unprecedented drop in terms of tourist volume, and consequently a plunge in occupancy levels at hotels. The possibility of a global recession due to the outbreak will also negatively impact the hotel market, the Viet Nam National Administration of Tourism said.

Mauro Gasparotti, director of Savills Hotels Asia Pacific, said: Viet Nam hospitality has been affected and this will likely continue into the foreseeable future. However, the hospitality industry is likely to see the fastest and strongest turnout when compared to other sectors.

The countrys high reliance on local travellers and the Chinese and Korean markets could turn out to be an advantage as these groups are expected to be some of the first who are able to travel again, Gasparotti said.

Viet Nam suspended flights from China at the end of January and from South Korea in early March. At the end of March, all international flights were suspended.

With travel restrictions, social distancing measures and reluctance to travel due to the COVID-19 outbreak, Viet Nam saw only 3.7 million international tourist arrivals in the first quarter, a year-on-year drop of 18.1 per cent, while the number of domestic travel trips also saw a decrease of 18 per cent year-on-year.

The Viet Nam National Administration on Tourism estimated a loss of US$5.9-7.7 billion to the countrys tourism from February to April.

Hotels, tour operators and travel agencies were severely impacted during this period. Many hotels had to reduce staff working hours and lay off staff, or temporarily close.  VNS

Asian hotel investors pivot to debt financing as owners look to shore up balance sheets Hotel owners across Asia are seeking greater access to debt financing to bolster cash flows as they face historically low occupancy rates.
Democrats glimpsing a chance to oust Senator Lindsey Graham have launched a new super PAC focused on attacking the South Carolina Republican as he campaigns for reelection in the fall.

The new PAC, Lindsey Must Go, says it has already garnered more than $1 million in commitments and aims to raise $4 million or more from large and small donors, according to Politico.

Grahams Democratic challenger, Jaime Harrison, beat Graham in fundraising during the first quarter with a $7.4 million haul, a record for South Carolina, compared to Grahams $5.7 million. Graham still has $4 million more in cash than Harrison, however.

The group reportedly plans to focus on attacking Graham rather than backing Harrison.

This is not about Jaime Harrison. This is about Lindsey Graham, Jimmy Williams, a spokesperson for the PAC, told Politico.

Harrison has promised to run his campaign sans PAC funds. The new PAC, an outside group, will be co-chaired by Stephen Groves, a senior advisor at a consulting group that worked on Beto ORourkes 2020 bid, and Brice Barnes, who was a senior adviser to Mike Bloombergs presidential run.

Jaime is focused on running his own campaign, which is being historically successful, a campaign spokesperson for Harrison said.

Graham dismissed the fresh effort to oust him after three terms, saying attempts to sell socialism will not be successful in South Carolina.

Try as they might, no amount of liberal out-of-state money from Hollywood celebrities, Democrat[ic] super PACs, and the Clinton political network can successfully sell socialism in South Carolina, Grahams communications director T.W. Arrighi told Politico.

Graham, who chairs the influential Judiciary Committee, has gained a reputation as a frequent defender of President Trump, earning him the vitriol of progressive groups, but has occasionally bucked the president on high-profile issues.

On Thursday, Graham pushed back against Trumps exhortation that he call former President Obama to testify before the Judiciary Committee about efforts by Obama administration officials to unmask former national-security adviser Michael Flynn. Graham said he is greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight.

Story continues

During the confirmation process for Trumps Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, however, Graham emerged as a fierce critic of the acrimonious process, which he said was unfair to Kavanaugh and the most unethical sham since Ive been in politics.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-16 01:41:56|Editor: huaxia

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NICOSIA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The government of Cyprus was advised by its scientific team to proceed to the introduction of further relaxation in coronavirus restrictions following the successful application of initial easing 11 days ago, officials said on Friday.

Health Ministry advisor, virologist Leondios Kostrikis, in announcing a total of 910 COVID-19 cases after three new infections, said the situation after the introduction of the first batch of relaxation measures was very satisfactory.

"For this reason the scientific team suggested today to the political leadership of the country the further relaxation of restrictions," Kostrikis said.

President Nicos Anastasiades presided over a meeting of half of his ministers dealing with the coronavirus epidemic, at which planning was made for the application of the second phase as of May 21.

The plans will go before the Council of Ministers on May 20.

Professor of Epidemiology George Nicolopoulos said ahead of the meeting that no significant impact on the situation had been observed after the introduction of the first easing of restrictions, when 25,000 retail shops opened for the first time after six weeks of a total lockdown.

Education Minister Prodromos Prodromou stated that it was decided to proceed with the most controversial of easing measures, the call back to school on May 21 of all elementary and secondary education pupils following the return to classes of final-year students on May 11.

Kostrikis said that the return of so many students to school at once will present a challenge for education and health authorities.

To minimize dangers, Prodromou said a COVID-19 testing program among students and teachers will be speeded up as of Monday.

As part of the second phase, all restrictions on movement will come to an end, including a night curfew, but gatherings will be allowed only in groups of no more than 10 people.

More shops, including hair salons, barber shops and beauty parlors, betting shops will also resume operation, as well as museums, libraries and archaeological sites.

Ports will also resume operation, though disembarkation from cruise ships will not be allowed.

In a move further ahead, Transport Minister Yiannis Karousos said a ministerial committee, in association with specialists of the scientific team advising the government, will finalize on Monday a plan to resume flights as part of the third phase from June 9 to July 13.

He said the plan will receive final approval from the Council of Ministers at its meeting next week.

Karousos said that tourists arriving in Cyprus will not be quarantined, but added that they will probably be requested to get tested 72 hours before arrival. Enditem
Jacob left behind a loving family who still have questions over how a generally healthy man can be taken into custody and die less than two months later, the suit states. (His widow) brings this lawsuit not only to get answers as to how and why Jacobs life was cut short but to bring to light the constitutionally deficient medical treatment provided to inmates at the Will County Jail.
The Delhi government suggested to the Centre opening of markets, shopping complexes and operation of buses and metro services to start economic activities in the city significantly from May 18 after the third phase of the novel coronavirus-induced lockdown ends.





The suggestions submitted to the Centre on Thursday evening also recommended restarting construction activities and allowing movement of labourers within the city, sources said.

The nationwide lockdown was imposed from March 25 to April 14, then extended to May 3 and again to May 17 to prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus.

There were clear indications of extension of the lockdown with Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday saying that "lockdown-4" will have completely different contours and rules.

On operation of transport services post May 17, the sources said the Delhi government has suggested that taxis with two passengers will be allowed.

In buses, 20 passengers are likely to be allowed to travel with strict social distancing norms, they said.

"The government has suggested that opening of markets, complexes and malls should be allowed in Delhi. However, shops engaged in non-essential items in shopping complexes and malls should be allowed to operate on odd-even basis," a source said.

In next two-three days, the government will come out with a standard operating procedure to allow economic activities from Monday in the national capital.

Earlier in the day, Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal said different economic activities will be allowed in the city from May 18 based on decisions taken by the Centre on lockdown relaxation.

Though the lockdown has been place in Delhi since March 23, malls, theatres, restaurants were shut before that. In the past, Kejriwal had highlighted the adverse impact of the lockdown on the city government's exchequer.

He also said people will have to be ready to live with coronavirus.

"The country, including Delhi, has been closed for the last one-and-a-half months due to the coronavirus-forced lockdown. It was easy to close, but we have to work very hard to open up the economy. We usually do hard work. The coming times are very difficult," Kejriwal said in an online briefing.

On resuming activities from May 18, when the third phase of country-wide lockdown which began on March 25 ends, Kejriwal said he had sought suggestions from Delhiites on lockdown relaxations.

He said most people suggested that schools, colleges, barber shops, spa, salons, cinema halls and swimming pools should not be opened post May 17, and there should be just limited operation of metro services.

Buses, taxis and auto-rickshaws should be allowed to operate in the city but with social-distancing, he said, adding that most market associations advocated opening of markets on odd-even basis.

"Some people said malls can open by allowing opening of one-third shops," he said.

Some suggestions were in favour of closure of hotels, but most of them advocated opening of restaurants through which home-delivery of food and take-away facility can be allowed, Kejriwal said.

The number of containment zones have gone down to 78 in the city.

The Delhi government closed the Ghazipur fruit and vegetable auction yard for two days for sanitisation, after two COVID-19 cases were reported from the wholesale market, leading to fears among traders.

This is the first time that COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Ghazipur mandi, an official said.

The cases at the Ghazipur market comes days after at least 16 COVID-19 cases were reported from the Azadour fruits and vegetable mandi, the biggest wholesale market in Asia.

There are about 450 shops in the Ghazipur mandi and more than 2,500 people work there.

A policeman posted at a police station in southeast Delhi too was infected with the coronavirus.

The Delhi Police has recorded over 100 COVID-19 cases including death of a police constable last week.

In another development, the Haryana government gave an undertaking in the Delhi high court that movement of people engaged in essential services, including government and private doctors, officials of police and courts, will be allowed between Delhi and Haryana on production of e-passes.

The Haryana government had sealed its borders along Delhi. With its functioning affected due to coronavirus, the Delhi University will hold examinations for its final year post graduate and under graduate students from July 1.

If the COVID-19 outbreak does not normalise, it will adopt 'Open Book' mode to conduct the tests.
At least 1,000 Rohingya are stranded at sea as Southeast Asian nations tighten their borders to keep out the new coronavirus, Amnesty International said on Friday, urging action to ensure they were not buried in an "invisible graveyard" at sea.

Rights groups believe at least two boats carrying Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority from Myanmar, are off the coast of the Indonesian province of Aceh, but officials said they had no clear information.

Spokesmen for the Western Fleet of the Indonesian navy as well as Aceh's disaster mitigation agency and search and rescue team told Reuters they were trying to confirm the location of the vessels.

Refugees from two other boats have landed in Bangladesh since mid-April, many starving and emaciated after weeks at sea. Survivors from one said dozens died on board.

Saad Hammadi, from the South Asia Regional Office of Amnesty International, said the refugees could have been sailing for several weeks or even months without food or water, citing information from humanitarian agencies and local news reports.

In a virtual news conference he urged Indonesia and Australia, who chair an anti-people smuggling and trafficking forum known as the Bali Process, to ensure the refugees are allowed to land safely "so that we dont see the sea become an invisible graveyard."

The Australian foreign ministry said it could not immediately comment and a spokesman for the Indonesian foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Rohingya have made perilous voyages to Malaysia, Thailand, and Indonesia for years, fleeing persecution in Myanmar and poverty in refugee camps in Bangladesh.

More than one million live in squalid conditions in sprawling camps in the south of Bangladesh, with as many as a dozen people sharing one shelter and scarce access to soap and water in some areas.

The vast majority fled a military crackdown in Myanmar in 2017 that the U.N has said was executed with genocidal intent. The Myanmar authorities deny genocide, saying it was a legitimate response to attacks by Rohingya militants.
A COVID-19 patient died in Himachal Pradesh on Friday, taking the death toll to four while the number of cases climbed to 77 in the state after two persons tested positive for the infection, officials said.

A 52-year-old coronavirus positive man from Hamirpur died in Mandi on Friday, Special Secretary (Health) Nipun Jindal said.

He had been admitted at Botha's RCH in Hamirpur a few days ago and was referred to Nerchowk's Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Government Hospital (SLBSGMC) in Mandi on Friday, Jindal added.

Hamirpur Medical College principal Dr. Anil Chauhan said the patient had breathing problem and that led to his death at SLBSGMC in Nerchowk.

He was a resident of Hamirpur's Hatli village in Galore area and was admitted to RCH Botha early this week, Chauhan said, adding this is the first death due to COVID-19 from Hamirpur district.

Himachal Pradesh reported two fresh cases of COVID-19 -- one each from Una and Kangra districts -- on Friday, the officials said.

The Una patient had recently returned from Mohali in Punjab and was kept under home quarantine.

The man tested positive after random sampling and will be shifted to a COVID hospital, the officials said.

Special Secretary (Health) said a 22-year-old man from Kangra's Fatehpur tehsil with mild symptoms has tested positive for the novel coronavirus. He returned from a red zone in Delhi on May 8.

There are 34 active cases in the state, while 39 people have recovered from the infection, the officials said.

Fourteen active cases are in Kangra, six in Chamba, four each in Hamirpur and Bilaspur, two each in Una, Sirmaur and one each in Mandi and Shimla, they added.

Earlier, three persons lost their lives due to the novel coronavirus in the hill state.

A 21-year-old man from Mandi's Sarkaghat area died due to COVID-19 in Shimla on May 5.

A 70-year-old Delhi resident woman, who had been staying at the guest house of a factory in Solan's Baddi area, died due to the infection at the PGIMER in Chandigarh on April 2.

A 69-year-old man, who had returned from the US, died of COVID-19 at the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC) in Kangra district on March 23.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 400 fossilized footprints have been discovered in Tanzania, which, according to researchers, suggests a division of labor based sex was practiced by human communities nearly 19,000 years ago.

The historical collection, which consisted of well-preserved foot imprints, was discovered in Engare Sero, located south of Lake Natron north of Tanzania. The tracks are believed to have been created between 5,700 and 19,100 years ago in the Late Pleistocene period.

A look into humanity's past

The study, led by Kevin Hatala, a paleoanthropologist at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, published its findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Along with his team, he stated that the discovery is a "tantalizing snapshot" of the early days of humankind.

The site is home to 408 human footprints and was discovered by Maasai community members who reside nearby.

According to Sciencefocus, 17 tracks of footprints belong to a group of people, made up of 14 female adults, two male adults, and one young male as they traversed in a southwesterly direction, said the researchers.

The theory originates from various calculations, which took into consideration the different sizes and orientations of the prints along with how far they were from each other.

Authors of the study theorize that the females foraged together and were either visited or guarded by the males. The researchers added this resembles modern-day hunter-gatherers such as the Ache and Hadza.

"In the context of modern ethnographic data, we suggest that these trackways may capture a unique snapshot of cooperative and sexually divided foraging behavior in Late Pleistocene humans," wrote the researchers in their paper.

Also Read: Former NASA Scientist Says Rock Samples from Mars May Carry 'Alien Viruses'

Hatala also said that footprint sites are challenging to come by in the human fossil record and contain exciting views of our ancestors.

Co-author of the study and professor at Appalachian State University, Cynthia Liutkus-Pierce, said that the footprints, due to ancient volcanic mudflow from OldoinL'engaigai, an active volcano located in the East African Rift, have been well-preserved. Liutkus-Pierce said the prints were pressed into wet ash, then hardened like concrete.

The co-author also said, "The resilience of the hardened ash helps preserve the details of the footprints despite the natural erosion of the surrounding area over thousands of years."

How did they work together?

USAToday reported that the study theorized foraging females who made the majority of the tracks were gathering close together as they were frequently visited or accompanied by the other males. The publication suggests a sex-based division of labor was present in ancient human communities.

The Hadza group of people make their living without growing food, raising livestock, or being set by rules or calendars. They are a living hunter-gatherer existence that has barely changed fro 10,000 years ago.

The tribe moves their camp frequently and for several reasons, such as conflicts and diseases. The migration also considers dry-season refuges, better hunting grounds, and locations with plentiful harvests for easy pickings.

The Hadza also does not have any tribal or governing hierarchy, which leads to almost all of them being linked genetically to all other groups.

Related Article: Scientists Find Out That a Billion Years is Missing in the Geologic Record, So Where is It?

@ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Goldman Sachs (NYSE:GS) is buying more capacity in the wealth management segment. The investment bank has agreed to buy fintech and financial services company Folio Financial, as confirmed by the latter on its website. Neither the price nor the terms of the transaction have yet been disclosed, although Folio promised to provide further details when the two parties near the close of the deal.

Folio is a Virginia-based company that has several business units, including custodial services and securities trading. All told, it has around $11 billion in assets under custody for registered investment advisors (RIAs).

Although Goldman also confirmed the acquisition, it has not yet made an official statement.

The company will fold Folio into its global markets division. It has a suite of products designed for RIAs, so the acquisition appears to be a move at complementing that business.

This is not the first time in recent history that Goldman has bought out a company active in the wealth management sphere. In 2019, it purchased United Capital for $750 million. It has since folded the once-independent company into its own operations and branded it Goldman Sachs Personal Financial Management.

These acquisitions are part of a broader push by Goldman to diversify its operations away from its traditional investment banking core. For example, in 2016, it launched Marcus, a service described as a "dynamic consumer finance platform." Essentially, Marcus is a bank with familiar and traditional features such as savings accounts, personal loans, and credit cards for qualifying consumers.

On Thursday, Goldman shares essentially moved in concert with the wider stock market, rising to close just over 1.5% higher on the day.
(TNS)  The Hamilton County Health Department has ended its agreement with the 911 Communications Center to share COVID-19 patient data, a move that came as Gov. Bill Lee's administration has drawn criticism for directing the state department of health to share similar information with some law enforcement agencies.At the end of March, the Hamilton County Health Department began sharing "limited data" about patients who tested positive for the virus with 911 dispatchers, according to department administrator Becky Barnes.It's not clear exactly what data was shared, as Barnes declined to respond to further questions and the department hasn't provided a copy of the agreement, but if a call was made from an address on the list, "a respiratory alert flag was noted so first responders would know to wear appropriate PPE" or personal protective equipment, she said.Barnes did not state under whose authority the agreement was made, why the agreement was ended or who ordered it to stop."This will be a change for our EMS responders, but is an important step for ensuring trust and cooperation with our community to ensure contact investigation and tracing efforts," she said.Barnes also did not specify whether the information was relayed through 911 to only emergency medical personnel or to police and firefighters as well.John Stuermer, 911 executive director, did not return a request for comment.Across the state, 911 districts served by the state health departmenrt have been receiving the names and addresses of residents who tested positive for COVID-19 or received treatment for the virus since April 3.Abbey Dennis, spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Commerce and Insurance, which oversees 911 districts, said the goal of sharing the information is to protect first responders but conserve the limited supply of personal protective equipment.First responders can only learn whether a person has tested positive at a specific address. They don't know that person's name unless it's the same person needing emergency care. And only the first responder who was dispatched will know if there's a COVID-19 patient at the scene.As of Thursday, 90 out of 100 emergency communication districts have signed the agreement with the state. The Department of Commerce and Insurance did not return a request to confirm which districts were included.The Tennessee Department of Health, which runs the health departments in 89 of Tennessee's 95 counties, also entered an agreement with the state Department of Homeland Security on April 6 with the purpose of informing the Tennessee Highway Patrol's dispatchers of the identities of COVID-19 patients within each Highway Patrol district.The agreement to share the information directly with police departments and sheriffs' offices came on April 21. An undated agreement was also sent to county jails across the state.Tennessee Department of Health spokeswoman Shelley Walker did not return a request to confirm which jails signed the agreement.Since media reports began to expose the information sharing on Friday, the practice has drawn calls for it to end over criticism for potentially breaching privacy and discouraging people from getting tested, especially when it came to sharing the information with law enforcement.During a press briefing this week, the governor said his office is considering a change in the practice now that protective equipment has become more readily available.As of this week, only two local law enforcement agencies have signed the agreement with the state: East Ridge and Collegedale police departments.
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By this, the fourth and final entry in this series, you should have a grasp of information security basics. Lets take stock of them before continuing down the rabbit hole.

How to Stay Safe on the Internet, Part 1

How to Stay Safe on the Internet, Part 2: Take Canaries Into the Data Mine

How to Stay Safe on the Internet, Part 3: Drive the Black Hatters Mad

Youve examined a variety of attack vectors and ways to close them off. In observing their patterns, youve learned the weak points that are exposed inherently online, and thus require intervention.

Youve learned that any software or operator handling your communication controls it. Information security comes down to breaking this hold. To do that, you either excise intermediaries when that is possible, or you encrypt your connections through them when it isnt.

In the process, you also discovered that humans are bad at devising truly random outputs, so you cant assume that passwords your brain thinks up are random enough. Our most glaring weakness is our tendency to trust our instinctual assessments automatically. This normalcy bias also lowers our guard when people request sensitive information.

Category 2 adversaries are nothing to sneeze at, but their resources are finite. If you armor up enough, they will give up, and move onto an easier comparable target.

In confronting the threat of category 3, everything you have learned ratchets up to a whole new level of paranoia. Category 3 adversaries have functionally unlimited resources for pursuing top targets.

Often called nation-state actors or advanced persistent threats (APTs), they have tax revenue, national sovereignty and the law behind them.

Pontificate With Extreme Prejudice

Before continuing, consider the following.

First, the guidance in this part of our series almost certainly doesnt apply to you. You may find it interesting, and you probably will gain from it. However, statistically, you will never face this level of threat.

If for some reason this guide does apply to you, you are going to need significantly more help than I can provide. At present, I would fail at fending off a nation-state. I dont know anyone who could resist one for more than a month or two, either.

Rather than taking this guide as the authoritative word on defense against nation-states, use it as a jumping off point for further research. I recommend studying the Electronic Frontier Foundations Surveillance Self-Defense manual next, followed by the Open Source Society University degree track.

There are many more worthy resources you should consult, but these are a modest start. As the volume of information implies, you need a thorough computer science background to stand a chance.

Second, even if you practice only the techniques that this piece presents, your operational security (OPSEC) must be impeccable. That is, you will probably fail.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

OPSEC is your discipline in following the security controls prescribed by your threat model. As I noted at the outset of this series, security comes at the cost of convenience, and when you are facing the ultimate threat, the sacrifice of convenience is total.

Thats why the best OPSEC practitioners keep their pursuers at bay only for a few years. So, have a contingency plan for when you fail. Only you will know what that looks like.

So who does this installment apply to? National security or international affairs journalists, for one. This goes doubly for those reviewing classified information or sensitive sources. Secrets are invaluable to nation-states, and they will stop at nothing to hunt down those that leak out.

High-profile political dissidents also can find themselves in nation-states crosshairs. These dissenters advocate policies that governments view as extreme enough to justify silencing by any means.

Finally, military technology researchers should anticipate category 3 attacks. Nation-states compromise engineers developing sources of military or economic advantage all the time, so they can glean a copy of the work and level the playing field.

Trust No Ones  or Zeroes

Its important to understand trust in computing. Here, trust is bad. Specifically, trusting something, like hardware or software or the entity that maintains it, means you have to trust it with handling your data. In a trust relationship, you cant defend against whatever youre trusting: You can only hope it doesnt betray you.

Instead, adopt a no-trust posture. Without trust, you dont have to trust some entity that touches your data. You reach this posture by implementing measures ensuring youre not harmed if the entity tries undermining you.

End-to-end encryption is an example of obviating trust. A VPN, for instance, renders an ISP incapable of snooping on you, so you dont have to trust it.

To stave off category 3, the number of entities you trust must be zero.

Your Adversaries Are in the Army Now

Government adversaries are extremely dangerous because they bring a governments resources to bear.

They have enormous budgets. Deep pockets allow APTs to staff dedicated agencies with hackers. They can afford expensive toys, like supercomputers for brute force attacks, or zero-day vulnerabilities (found on the gray market) for crafting custom exploits.

Another advantage nation-states enjoy is the power to grant their agents legal immunity. To paraphrase technologist Chris Soghoian, just as soldiers can kill people without going to prison, government hackers can compromise you with impunity. Its one of the main attractions for hackers who seek gainful employment.

Finally, government actors can employ legal coercion. Simply put, they can order digital service providers to rat you out. Legally supported actions can range from requests for your data to orders compelling service providers to insert backdoors. Snippets of code inside other programs allow root access to anyone who knows how they work, making it trivial to spy on users.

An exhaustive listing of the techniques nation-state actors actually use is impossible. Few feats are impossible for them. The weapons they array against their targets are a matter of what nation-states are willing to do to nail a target.

With so many targets, its not likely that you, the hypothetical prey, are near the top of an APTs list. Thus, you have an opening: Make it so onerous to attack you that its not worth the strategic payoff. You cant necessarily know what the tipping point is, but if you are sure you are hounded by an APT, you have to try.

With all of that said, lets dive right into countermeasures, and Ill explain along the way what they aim to counter. Defense against category 3 involves two considerations: the tools to use, and the OPSEC required to use them.

This Is My Computer. There Are Many Like It, but This Ones Mine.

The truly ideal approach would be to run your devices through a woodchipper, incinerate the shards in a blast furnace, and throw the remains into the ocean. If thats not an option, read on.

Odds are if you are laboring this ardently to secure your computer, its because you need it for communication. All communication being mediated by some provider, start by picking one that is committed to protecting user privacy.

A good bet is to choose an email provider, chat server, etc., that is incorporated outside your enemys jurisdiction. Your adversary government then has to inveigle the providers government to execute the records request, to which the latter will not always acquiesce.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

The next thing you should do is route all your communications through Tor. Tor is a network designed to make users anonymous by shuffling around all user traffic before routing it to the proper destinations.

Essentially, it puts a VPN on steroids. A VPNs weakness is that a moderately competent attacker can get around it. VPNs are effective against adversaries that can see either the clients connection to the VPN, or the VPN servers connection to the Internet, but not both.

ISPs fit this profile, since they only see your device connecting to the VPN. However, foes at or above the top tier category 2 can observe traffic on both sides of VPNs. If they see your device hit the VPN, and then an instant later see the VPN hit a website, they can put two and two together.

Instead of routing via one proxy, as VPNs do, Tor uses three consecutive proxies. Schematically, your traffic travels from your device to Tor node A, from Tor node A to Tor node B, from Tor node B to Tor node C, and finally from Tor node C to your destination.

Along this path, your connection is triply encrypted: the B-C leg is encrypted with Cs key, the A-B leg with Bs key, and the device-A leg with As key, in that order. This way, although A knows who you are, it doesnt know where youre going. Correspondingly, C will know where your connection is going, but it wont know who made the request.

This makes it difficult to follow your traffic through the Tor network, complicating the correlation attacks that work on VPNs. Oh, and for good measure, Tor switches the nodes you use every five minutes.

Tor offers the Tor Browser, which lets you browse via Tor. However, that protects only your Web browsing, so Im not talking about that. You have to configure your system to route all Internet traffic through Tor. This is too system-dependent to delineate here, but there are guides on how to do this.

Once this is set, though, everything your device sends or receives filters through Tor. Assuming you dont do anything to out yourself (a matter of OPSEC, discussed below), this makes your traffic functionally anonymous.

Using Tor does not preclude a nation-state from spying on you, but it does force it to attack Tor itself instead of demanding records from a third-party or sniffing your connection off taps on the Internet backbone. These sources contain traces of your activity, but are not attributed to you.

Along with Tor, concealing the source of your communications requires MAC address spoofing. A MAC address is a unique hardware serial number for your devices network interface controller (NIC).

Your device NIC bundles its MAC address inside the metadata of every packet it sends. With MAC spoofing, your software substitutes an arbitrary MAC for your hardware MAC in the packet instead. Without this step, a nation-state that knows your MAC address wont be fooled by Tor.

Against high-caliber adversaries, you also have to trade up your encryption to PGP. Despite their learning curve, PGP keys provide some of the most powerful and versatile encryption around.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

In a nutshell, PGP keys work in pairs: One can decrypt anything the other encrypts. If you hand out one of the duo to anyone who wants to communicate with you and keep the other for yourself, anyone can encrypt messages that only you can decrypt.

The strength of PGP keys is that they can encrypt anything, anywhere. Whether its email content, text files, video and audio, or even text posted on the Web, PGP can encrypt it all. Another neat trick is it can sign data to affirmatively attribute it to the keys creator. Properly utilized, PGP will prove highly dependable. Though it has been around since the 90s, to this day it remains unbroken.

Any hope of fending off APTs also means switching to an open source operating system (OS). In practice, this means installing either Linux or FreeBSD on your desktop device (i.e. desktop or laptop). Android isnt good enough (Ill explain later). Open source OSes are not necessarily more secure than proprietary ones, but because their source code is available to the public, it can be audited to discover tampering.

Open source OSes are developed in so many jurisdictions that you are guaranteed to find one outside your adversarys grasp. As with extraterritorial communication providers, OS foreign developers insulate them from legal orders.

Whatever OS you choose, enable full-disk encryption, too. Ive said a lot about encrypting communications  data in transit  but you also can encrypt data at rest. Without encryption, the data on your hard drive is stored in readable form, meaning anyone who snatches your hard drive can see all your files. Encrypting your hard drive protects not just user files like documents, videos, etc. but your OSs core files as well.

Unfortunately, thats still not enough  its not that simple. Think about this: If your computers entire OS on the disk is scrambled, how would your computer know how to boot? The answer is it wouldnt. Thats why, in reality, a small bit of your OSs boot data is unencrypted even under full-disk encryption.

This leaves you open to attack if, say, your adversary deployed a team to break into your home, pop your hard drive out, replace your boot code with its own, and pop it back in. Every subsequent boot, your computer will seem to run normally, but will invisibly execute whatever it is your adversary wants. Not good.

Enter secure boot. Basically, secure boot is a motherboard firmware process that allows a boot only if the signature on the unencrypted boot sector checks out. Most modern computers do this by default, but with the manufacturers key, meaning youre trusting it. Although its tricky, you can create your own encryption key, sign your OSs boot sector, and then flash the key to your secure boot register.

Theres a snag here, too. If your adversary bugs your hardware itself, nothing youve done so far can help you. For that, theres open hardware. This is currently less mature than open source, but it embodies the same concept: transparent specifications allow the detection of tampering.

The vulnerability that open hardware tackles is not theoretical. Its childs play to re-flash a computers BIOS (motherboard firmware) with a backdoored lookalike. Nation-state actors also could somehow breach Intels Management Engine, a tiny, totally opaque OS running underneath your computers OS. If that doesnt work, your government can just intercept your new computer, or get its hands on your existing computer and insert a bug in it.

Although Ive barely scratched the surface of category 3 attack vectors, the fact that all these mitigations are necessary and proportionate should make it clear that these adversaries are no joke.

OPSEC: Sharpening the Warrior, Not the Weapon

OPSEC is the other half of the nation-state threat model. Without unassailable OPSEC, all of your tools are worthless.

First and foremost, ditch your phone. Cellular baseband-equipped devices (collectively mobile devices) are perfectly optimized to track you. For one thing, your mobile device expresses un-spoofable hardware serial numbers as it reports your location to your carrier in real time.

This puts you one legal order way from having your every move exposed. It doesnt matter how secure your desktop device is if your mobile device is nearby. Then theres always that microphone your adversary can turn on.

So, why not just repeat what you did for your desktop? Well, you cant.

One, you cant install fully open source software on it. Its practically impossible to install purely open source Android on a mobile device without proprietary drivers, and by law cellular basebands must contain proprietary firmware for radio frequency compliance.

Two, mobile devices dont allow you to run secure boot with custom keys.

Three, mobile open hardware is not ready for prime time, so you have to trust the hardware.

Finally, architecturally, the SIM is the master of your mobile device, letting it override literally anything you do. With mobile devices brimming with fatal, unavoidable vulnerabilities, the only winning move in this strange game is to not play.

A D V E R T I S E M E N T

Additionally, choose your networks carefully. Obviously, you never should connect from your home network, but dont pin all your hopes on Tor either. Always assume that your IP is exposed. Never log onto the same network twice. Instead, rotate through public networks without leaving a pattern.

Since youll be traveling to use networks, youll also want to practice basic counterintelligence techniques. Be able to tell if youre being tailed in physical space.

Counterintelligence doesnt stop there, though. You also must know how to figure out if your contacts have been compromised. The easiest way to reach someone is through their associates. In the digital context, this usually isnt being turned la spy thriller, but having a device compromised to monitor interactions with you.

The remedy here is to ensure either that your contacts forget you or that they practice everything in this guide along with you. Communication is a two-way street. If your associates fail at any of these steps, the outcome is the same as if you failed.

To the extent that you hope to retain a normal life, you must bifurcate your secure and normal lives strictly. Never transfer any file, message, or other digital artifact between devices, accounts or platforms across this divide.

Moreover, dont behave in similar ways in each life. Patterns like the contents of concurrently open tabs or the order in which you visit sites are enough to identify your unique behavior.

To summarize OPSEC, dont make a move unless youve completely thought it through.

Where the Path Ends, the Wilderness Begins

At this point, Ive said about all I can. The reasons one might face category 3 threats are so numerous and personal that only you can determine how best to apply the tools and techniques herein.

Although there is much left for the category 3 targets to do, everyone who reads this should be equipped to reevaluate your threat models and extend your toolset, no matter the threat you face.

Security is a journey, but only some of the trail is blazed. Good luck, and may you have sharp machetes.
Envoy urges Afghans to persist with peace effort with Taliban after govt said it would resume offensive against group.

The United States on Thursday blamed ISIL (ISIS)  not the Taliban  for an attack on a maternity ward in Afghanistan this week in which 24 people died, including two newborn babies and urged the government to embrace a troubled peace effort with the Taliban.

It was unclear whether the declaration would be enough to reverse a decision by the Kabul government to resume offensive operations against the group.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military on Tuesday to switch to offensive mode against the Taliban following the hospital attack in Kabul and a suicide bombing in Nangarhar province that killed scores of people.

US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad blamed ISIL for both attacks in a statement issued on Twitter, saying the group opposed any Taliban peace agreement and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity, Khalilzad said.

No more excuses. Afghans, and the world, deserve better.

A group affiliated to ISIL claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. No one has claimed responsibility for the hospital attack.

The Taliban denied involvement in the attacks, but the government accused the group of fostering an environment in which terrorism thrives or of working with other armed groups who could have been involved.

The USG has assessed ISIS-K conducted the horrific attacks on a maternity ward and a funeral earlier this week in Afghanistan. ISIS has demonstrated a pattern for favoring these types of heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world.  U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) May 14, 2020

The attacks were another setback to US President Donald Trumps stalled plans to bring peace to Afghanistan and end Americas longest war.

A February 29 US-Taliban deal called for a phased US troop withdrawal and for the Afghan government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when talks were to start.

Intra-Afghan talks have yet to take place and there is some bitterness within the Afghan government, which was not a party to the February 29 deal, that the US undercut their leverage by negotiating directly with the Taliban.

Ghanis decision to revive offensive operations is supported by many opposition figures, who believe Washingtons sole focus is to keep the US troop withdrawal plan on track to help Trump win a second term in the presidential election, which takes place on November 3.
Pushkar Banakar By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Over 1.88 lakh stranded Indians have registered at various missions across the globe to be repatriated as a part of the second leg of the Vande Bharat Mission, the Ministry of External Affairs said.

We are launching the second phase of Vande Bharat Mission from May 16 to 22. In this phase. We will bring back Indians from 31 countries in 149 flights. As of now a total of 1,88,646 Indian nationals have registered on the portal run by the ministry, MEA spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said. An additional 18 countries like Indonesia, Thailand, Australia, Italy, France, Germany, Ireland, Canada, Japan, Nigeria, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Kyrgyzstan, Belarus, Georgia, Tajikistan and Armenia have been included. We are broadening the ambit every week in a phased manner keeping with our quarantine capacity, health protocols, etc.

Air India, meanwhile, opened bookings on Thursday evening on select repatriation flights to be operated from India to the US, the UK, Australia, Frankfurt, Paris and Singapore under phase two of Vande Bharat Mission. Moreover, Air India will also operate special domestic ferry flights for only those passengers who have been repatriated.
Welcome to another episode of the top-rated game show, Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area? Im your host, It Beats the Heck Out of Me.

In the last episode, we met Crystal Chandler, a single mother who was evicted from her apartment in Concord. It turned out fine because she moved to Arizona and bought a house.

In todays episode, the audience will get to know Jenn Oakley, a homeless woman affectionately known as Tennessee Jenn on the street. Shes lived in Oakland for 14 years, moving here from  you guessed it  Tennessee.

Earlier this week, I met Oakley on 10th Street outside of the Lake Merritt Tuff Sheds. She had her face in the hood of her car. It was leaking oil.

Oakleys in a construction-training program and has a full-time security job which pays her about $1,800 per month. Shes lived at the transitional housing site since February. Shes ready to move out, but shes having trouble securing financial help. And she was having trouble getting a meeting with the sites housing coordinator.

Im finding places, but I dont know if I have the income, Oakley, 41, said. Im scared to death Im not gonna be able to pay my rent. Im not saying, Please pay my whole rent for a year. I just need a little help through school.

Yalonda M. James/The Chronicle

Oakley has a clear-eyed understanding of her situation. Shes crunched the numbers. In April, the average one-bedroom apartment in Oakland cost $2,460 per month, according to Rent Jungle, a real estate tracking website.

Listening to her made me think: If someone as dedicated as Oakley is finding it hard to get an affordable apartment, how will Oakland and Alameda County manage to find permanent, affordable housing for the hundreds of people being moved into hotels and trailers because of the coronavirus? And how will the people left on the street to struggle with addiction, mental disorders and lack of opportunity find their way to housing?

It beats the heck out of me.

Weve got a lot of work to do. First, part of Gov. Gavin Newsoms plan for reopening parts of the state includes the criteria that counties will need to show they can temporarily house at least 15% of their homeless residents. Do the math: Alameda County has 8,000 people living on the street, which means 1,200 need to be moved indoors.

Thats on the to-do list of Kerry Abbott, director of the countys Office of Homeless Care and Coordination.

We always had a goal of getting to around that number of (hotel) rooms, so thats the direction weve been headed in, Abbott told me. We currently have 522 under lease, and itll be back up to 530 when we have some room repairs done. Under consideration, we currently have over 700 that we are in some form of negotiation with.

Thats 1,200 people who most likely wont be able to find permanent housing without assistance. Housing navigation is even more complicated now because landlords havent been showing vacant units, according to Darin Lounds, executive director of Housing Consortium of the East Bay. The organization provides housing services and manages transitional sites, including the Lake Merritt sheds and Operation HomeBase, which opened last week in East Oakland.

It was really just to limit exposure to COVID, not having people coming in and out of a unit to view it, said Lounds, referring to landlords. Thats meant that weve had kind of a backlog of folks.

Folks like Oakley. Before the coronavirus, she was in the fourth week of a 10-week training program at Rising Sun Center for Opportunity. The organization provides job training to low-income adults who want careers in the construction industry. Oakley wants to be a heavy equipment operator and mechanic. A hard worker, she was Aprils employee of the month at the security company.

After moving to the Bay Area, Oakley sold insurance. Her slide into homelessness began when her father died in 2009. He was her best friend, she told me.

I just felt like I didnt have anybody to prove anything to, she said. I went nuts, just lost it. I spent all the money he left me. And then I ended up on the streets of Oakland.

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.

She started using methamphetamine. She lost everything, she said.

The whole thing about homelessness is it becomes a lifestyle, and you just live it, she said. When youre doing drugs and having fun, then homelessness can be fun.

In October, she had a stroke in a motel. When she woke up, she said, the right side of her body was paralyzed. After a two-month hospital stay, she began rebuilding her life.

I believe shes ready to have a home again. She simply needs more help than most. And thats OK, because everyone deserves the security that comes from having a stable home.

When I interviewed Oakley, she told me she hadnt showered in four days. Thats because the mobile shower comes to the sheds once a week on Wednesday mornings, a day that Oakleys shift starts at 7 a.m.

The only thing saving me is that during COVID everybody has to wear masks and they cant smell me, she said, laughing.

The day after I inquired about Oakleys housing prospects, she had a meeting with the sites director. Theres a follow-up scheduled for next week, Oakley said. Does this mean shes now a step closer to getting a place?

Cmon, folks, you know my name: It Beats the Heck Out of Me. Wear your mask, and please join us next time on Who Can Really Afford to Rent in the Bay Area?

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Otis R. Taylor Jr. appears Mondays and Thursdays. Email: otaylor@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @otisrtaylorjr
BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- China on Thursday expressed firm opposition to a so-called proposal by a few countries to invite Taiwan as an observer in the upcoming session of the World Health Assembly (WHA), a foreign ministry spokesperson said Thursday.

Spokesman Zhao Lijian said at a routine press briefing the insistence by some countries on discussing Taiwan-related proposals is only aimed at disrupting the assembly's agenda and undermining the joint international response to COVID-19.

Due to the impact of the current pandemic, the 73rd session of the WHA, scheduled from May 18 to 19, will be held via video link, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), with its agenda condensed only to essential issues, such as COVID-19 and the executive board members selection.

"This shows that the goal of the member states is to focus on the international collaboration on the joint response to the pandemic at the upcoming assembly," Zhao said.

On the premise of the one-China principle, China's central government has made proper arrangements for Taiwan's participation in the global health affairs, to ensure its prompt and effective responses to local and global public health incidents, Zhao said.

Taiwan's participation in the assembly must be in accordance with the one-China principle, Zhao said. "The refusals by WHA over the years to Taiwan-related proposals by a few countries fully demonstrate the popular consensus of the international community."
Attitudes are changing on cannabis, and as more states legalize marijuana, whether for medical or recreational purposes, it's clear that it's not a matter of if marijuana will be legalized in the U.S., only when. And while COVID-19 may stall the progress that individual states have been making on legalizing pot, the pandemic could help push forward the prospect of legalizing pot federally. Here's why legalization could take place sooner than expected:

A new industry would accelerate the economy's recovery

According to data as of May 14, as many as 36.5 million people in the U.S. have applied for unemployment benefits over the past two months. The COVID-19 pandemic has hit many industries hard and while many employees will go back to work, some jobs will be lost forever. And the longer it takes for people to find jobs again, the longer it will take for the economy to get back to where it was before the pandemic hit. That's where legalizing marijuana could give the economy a shot in the arm to get it going again.

Legalizing pot would create many new jobs for Americans and could help turn things around for the country. In a recent interview with CNBC, Cresco Labs (OTC:CRLBF) CEO Charlie Bachtell said, "cannabis has to be part of that discussion" when talking about bringing jobs back. And there's good reason for including cannabis in those discussions: The growth potential would be massive.

According to New Frontier Data's estimates from September 2019, the legal pot market in the U.S. could grow to be worth $29.7 billion by 2025. That's nearly three times the $10.3 billion the market was worth in 2018. That growth factors in legal sales from the existing markets that have already legalized pot and it doesn't take into account the possibility of federal legalization. If government officials were to legalize marijuana nationwide, it would increase those estimates significantly. Currently, only 11 states have legalized marijuana for recreational use and there are more than 30 that permit cannabis for medical purposes.

A push for marijuana reform amid the pandemic

A big challenge for the cannabis industry is that many companies have to operate on a cash basis because pot is federally illegal and big banks avoid the industry like the plague out of fear of repercussions from the government. That created a need for legislation such as the Secure and Fair Enforcement (SAFE) Banking Act which would make it easier for banks to do business with the cannabis industry without worrying about running afoul with regulators. However, there hasn't been much traction on the bill since the House passed it last year.

But in a recent coronavirus relief bill, the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions Act, Democrats included the SAFE Banking Act. There's growing support to help the cannabis industry, which regulators have left out of relief programs thus far. In April, Democrats introduced a new bill, the Emergency Cannabis Small Business Health and Safety Act, which would seek to include cannabis companies on future bills and allow them access to relief programs related to COVID-19.

Marijuana is getting on the agenda, at least with Democrats. And as there's more pressure to help turn things around for the economy, Republicans may start to get on board as well.

What does this mean for cannabis investors?

Legalizing marijuana wouldn't just help the economy create jobs, it would instantly create many opportunities for marijuana stocks as well. Chicago-based Cresco Labs is a vertically integrated cannabis company with a presence in nine states across the U.S. On May 7, the company announced it had completed its expansion of a cultivation and manufacturing facility in Pennsylvania that would triple its growing capacity.

Unfortunately, the company is limited to selling whatever products it produces in Pennsylvania to the Pennsylvania market as it's not legal for marijuana to cross state lines. Federal legalization of marijuana would change that, and that could help a company like Cresco Labs, which has a strong presence with retail locations in Ohio, New York, Massachusetts, and Illinois, to manage its supply chain better. That could go a long way in improving the company's cost structure and making profitability more viable over the long term. In 2019, the company reported a net loss of $65.3 million on sales of $128.5 million.

For Cresco Labs and other cannabis companies, legalization would open up many more doors and opportunities. And while COVID-19 will likely make 2020 a difficult year for cannabis companies to survive, it could also help lead to federal legalization of marijuana. If it happens, the trade-off would be well worth it for the industry.
Bill Gates took to social media to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He stated that India's role is pivotal in the fight against coronavirus, in the search for a vaccine and to minimise the social and economic impact of the pandemic. "Thank you for the conversation and partnership, PM Modi. Combating the pandemic requires global collaboration. India's role is key as the world works to minimise social and economic impact, and pave the way to vaccine, testing, and treatment access for all," said Gates.

Gates' tweet came after PM Modi and the co-chair of Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation interacted through video conferencing and discussed the importance of global coordination on research and development as well as on scientific innovation.

Thank you for the conversation and partnership, @narendramodi. Combating the pandemic requires global collaboration. India's role is key as the world works to minimize social and economic impact, and pave the way to vaccine, testing, and treatment access for all. @PMOIndia - Bill Gates (@BillGates) May 14, 2020

PM Modi underscored India's attempts against the pandemic. He said that India is taking an approach involving public engagement through messaging. The PM said that this people-centric approach helped in ensuring physical distancing is accepted, frontline workers are respected and social distancing protocols followed.

The Prime Minister also highlighted to Bill Gates some of the initiatives the government has undertaken such as financial inclusion, last mile delivery of health services, and propagating the importance of cleanliness and hygiene through Swachh Bharat Mission.

PM Modi also thanked the Gates Foundation for its health-related work not only in India but also in other parts of the world. He also sought suggestions from Gates on how to increase India's capacities and capabilities to help the needy.

Bill Gates and PM Modi discussed last-mile health service delivery in rural areas, dissemination of an effective contact-tracing app, scaling up India's pharmaceutical capacity to produce vaccines upon their discovery.

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: World Bank to give India $1 billion in social security fund; COVID-19 cases-81,970

Also read: How effective is Tranche II of FM Sitharaman's economic package?
Youve survived security and the brand new hassles of Covid-related checks. You settle into your seat and do what millions of passengers have done over the years: reach for the in-flight magazine.

Only its not there. A familiar  much-loved, even  part of the travelling experience could soon disappear from seat pockets.

Of all the surfaces you are likely to touch in an aircraft cabin, a magazine is the least likely to harbour any kind of virus. But airlines want to show they are squeaky-clean.

A familiar  much-loved, even  part of the travelling experience, the in-flight magazine, could soon disappear from seat pockets

Take Air Canada, which promises to electrostatically spray cabin interiors, use hospital-grade disinfectant between flights  and remove in-flight magazines from seatback pockets.

Many other airline magazines have been suspended, as much for economic as hygiene reasons (no passengers, no readers). So, if its the end of an era, the era has been a long one.

Airlines have looked for ways to relieve their passengers boredom for as long as there has been commercial aviation.

Imperial Airways used to hand out novels for hops across the globe in the 1920s and 1930s.

An old issue of the British Airways in-flight magazine, High Life, from 1977

Then, in 1952, a bright spark at Pan Am had an idea: why not do our own magazine? The modern in-flight magazine was born.

In 1973, the editor of humorous magazine Punch, William Davis, went to British European Airways (BEA) and said that hed produce a magazine for the airline for free. It just had to share the advertising revenue.

BEA (now BA) liked the idea, but not his title. Times were tough and they thought High Life was too frothy. On the contrary, said Davis, its at times like these that we need a magazine called High Life.

I had the job of taking over from him as editor. My newspaper pals were sceptical: who wants to read a free thing? But flying is a form of lockdown and, as weve all discovered, that gives you some precious time to read.

We were continually told that the in-flight mag was done for when airlines provided hundreds of films and TV channels, when we started using laptops, and when we got onboard wifi.

Throughout, the magazines carried on making huge sums of cash from the advertisers desperate to reach people with money and time on their hands.

Airlines are now using Covid-19 to give customers less, says a former airline marketing boss. To remove something so basic as the magazine is the airline admitting that its squeezing more out of passengers for less.

Hes right. The one UK airline that doesnt offer a magazine in the seatback pocket is, youve guessed it, Ryanair.

It used to have one, and now just hands out a retail magazine  and the seatback pocket has gone, too.
PlanetWatch successful seed round Our ambition is to fill a data gap in air quality monitoring and facilitate the study of correlations between air pollution peaks and potential causes at the local level.

PlanetWatch, a French startup which decentralizes and incentivizes air quality monitoring by leveraging the Algorand blockchain, announced today that it has raised 550k EUR from a mix of private and institutional investors. The round was led by RA.MO.

PlanetWatch will store real-time data gathered from a dense mesh of air quality sensors onto the Algorand blockchain, and subsequently reward contributions to the ecosystem by distributing the PLANET token, a utility token, to sensor owners. Most sensors are installed by individuals inside or outside their homes or carried with them on the go, with additional sensors installed by PlanetWatch in partnership with transport and telecommunications companies, local authorities, etc.

With the World Bank citing air pollution as the fourth largest health risk in the world, and preliminary studies indicating that long-term exposure to high air pollution levels increases COVID-19 death rates, responsible air quality monitoring is a global challenge for governments, regulators, and citizens.

PlanetWatchs high-density network aims to tackle the problem of undetected local air pollution peaks occurring e.g. in urban canyons, where dangerous pollution levels may be reached relatively close to governmental sensors reporting acceptable air quality. In addition, PlanetWatch data will be instrumental to identify air pollution causes at the local level.

Federico Tomassini, CEO of RA.MO, said: "In this era our ambition is also to be part of Social Impact investments and PlanetWatch represent a combination between Technology Innovation and a model of growing the Environmental awareness among the people. This is a culture we aim to contribute to spread".

"This successful financing round enables us to pursue our unique approach to air quality monitoring, which leverages the engagement of responsible citizens together with a top-class technology portfolio said Claudio Parrinello, CEO of PlanetWatch. "Our ambition is to fill a data gap in air quality monitoring and facilitate the study of correlations between air pollution peaks and potential causes at the local level. This is needed because today when cities experience high levels of air pollution, mitigation measures are sometimes ineffective. Typically, road traffic restrictions are enforced, but their impact on air quality is often limited as other pollution sources (domestic heating, industrial plants, open fires, etc.) play a role which is hard to assess due to the lack of high-resolution, real-time data.

PlanetWatchs ability to close a successful round of funding and also deliver a Minimum Viable Product demonstrates the value of their environmental solution on blockchain said W. Sean Ford, COO of Algorand. We have been supporting this project from its inception and we look forward to their full launch in the coming months.

PlanetWatch is the first blockchain company to join the spin-off partnership program by CERN, the largest fundamental physics laboratory in the world. They have recently also joined the Eterna Borderless Venture Studio , a combined initiative led by Eterna Capital, Borderless Capital, and Algorand to support projects looking to build applications on the Algorand platform.

PlanetWatch is currently testing its platform and aims for a full launch during the summer.

About PlanetWatch

Planetwatch, is a high-tech startup based in France, less than a mile away from CERN. By leveraging the Algorand blockchain, advanced data acquisition software developed at CERN and high-performance yet affordable air quality sensors, Planetwatch decentralizes, incentivizes and gamifies air quality monitoring. Planetwatch is going to deploy dense, low-cost air quality monitoring networks delivering real-time data and building the first global immutable ledger for historical air quality data. For more information, visit https://www.planetwatch.io.

About RA.MO

RA.MO is an Italian investment and cultural holding company already known for its drawing collection by 900 Italian artists and Belleville -Typee school with its innovative approach at writing teaching and critical thinking.

About Algorand Inc.

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Washington: The United States on Thursday blamed Islamic State militants  not the Taliban  for a gruesome hospital attack in Afghanistan this week that killed two newborn babies, and it renewed calls for Afghans to embrace a troubled peace push with the Taliban insurgency.

But it was unclear if the US declaration would be enough to bolster the peace effort and reverse a decision by the Kabul government to resume offensive operations against the Taliban.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military on Tuesday to switch to "offensive mode" against the Taliban following the hospital attack in Kabul and a suicide bombing in Nangarhar province that killed scores of people.

US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad blamed Islamic State for both attacks in a statement issued on Twitter, saying the group opposed any Taliban peace agreement and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

"Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity," Khalilzad said.

"No more excuses. Afghans, and the world, deserve better."

An affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. No one has claimed the hospital attack.

The Taliban denied involvement in either attacks, but the government accused the group of fostering an environment in which terrorism thrives or of working with other militant groups who could have been involved, straining US efforts to bring the insurgents and Afghan government together.

The attacks were another setback to US President Donald Trump's stalled plans to bring peace to Afghanistan and end America's longest war.

A Feb. 29 US-Taliban deal called for a phased US troop withdrawal and for the Afghan government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when peace talks were to start.

Intra-Afghan peace talks have yet to occur and there is some bitterness within the Afghan government, which was not a party to the February 29 deal, that the United States undercut their leverage by negotiating directly with the Taliban.

Ghani's decision to revive offensive operations is supported by many opposition figures, who believe Washington's sole focus is to keep the US troop withdrawal plan on track to help Trump win a second term in the November 3 US presidential election.
MDC leader Nelson Chamisa has attacked the Zimbabwean government over the abduction and torture of some of his members, including lawmaker Joanna Mamombe, who were seized by suspected state security agents in Harare on Wednesday and dumped in Bindura on Friday.He said the three are traumatized.
The state government has announced a $2.1 billion package of "congestion-busting" road upgrades, set to include a new arterial for Brisbane's busy outer-northern suburbs.

A "redesign" of the Gateway Motorway, Bruce Highway and Gympie Road interchange near Bald Hills will also be among the changes, along with further upgrades slated for each.

The 'Moreton Connector', shown in pink, has been pitched as part of a $2.1 billion road upgrade package. Credit:Department of Transport and Main Roads

Transport and Main Roads Minister Mark Bailey said the project would "transform Brisbane's northern gateway" and was already backed by money locked in to both state and federal budgets.

The federal government has set aside 80 per cent of the funding allocated for the package, with the state government to contribute the remainder.
Chile's government ordered a mandatory total quarantine for the capital Santiago after a 60 percent spike in coronavirus infections in the previous 24 hours.

"The most severe measure I must announce is a total quarantine in Greater Santiago," home to 80 percent of the country's 34,000-plus infections, Health Minister Jaime Manalich said.

Manalich said the lockdown  including in several areas where earlier confinement measures had been lifted  was necessary after 2,260 new infections and 12 deaths in the last 24 hours.

Chile had until now opted for a selective quarantine strategy in dealing with the pandemic, limiting the measures to areas with high incidence of infection.

City workers disinfect the streets to help contain the spread of the new coronavirus in Santiago. Source: AP

It also has Latin America's highest rate of coronavirus testing  14,000 a day and around 200,000 overall.

However, the government had been increasingly concerned about rising infection numbers across the city of seven million people in the past 10 days, and last week ordered strict new confinement measures in three densely populated areas.

Health workers reported growing rates of infection in early May, just after President Sebastian Pinera's conservative government celebrated the fact that infections were peaking, citing a daily rate of around 500 new cases.

A woman is watched by police after breaching her quarantine instruction. Source: AP

Within a few days, however, officials began to speak of "The Battle of Santiago."

"The month of May is being hard on our country and we have to take appropriate actions at the right time to stop this disease," Manalich said.

He added that the health system was able to cope, as fatalities remain low.

Health authorities said the South American country had 553 ventilators available as of Wednesday, and more units would be added in the coming days.

The minister also announced that the government was imposing a mandatory quarantine on people over 75 years of age in the northern cities of Iquique and Alto Hospicio.

Story continues

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Seven children in Ireland have been investigated for the Kawasaki-like syndrome potentially linked to coronavirus, the chief medical officer (CMO) has said.

Dr Tony Holohan said it would be stretching it to describe them as suspect cases of the inflammatory condition, rather instances where medics considered it as a possible diagnosis.

Addressing the daily Covid-19 briefing, Dr Holohan did not rule out the possibility that there had been other children with similar symptoms in the country.

He said doctors across Ireland had been asked to report any such cases going forward following a request from the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC).

Dr Holohan said the condition was very rare (PA)

The CMO said the ECDC had issued a rapid risk assessment after a number of deaths associated with the condition were reported in New York. He said 230 cases had been identified across Europe so far.

We have had some preliminary examinations here and there are up to seven children thus far who have been identified, whove been investigated for links in relation to this particular disease, he said.

(Its) over a period of time and seven situations in which doctors looking after children might have suspected something like this.

To call them suspect cases, or cases of this, would be stretching things.

Dr Holohan said it was a very rare condition, with an incidence rate of around 15 for every 100,000 children.

The CMO said his advice was directed principally at clinicians, not parents.

This is a rare condition, he said.

This is about considering when other conditions that might explain these symptoms have been ruled out to consider this possibility.

We want clinicians to be more suspicious that this could be, in an unusual set of circumstances with a sick child, a possible explanation, and to report that information.

Dr Siobhan Kennelly, the HSE national clinical adviser, told the briefing that the condition generally impacted very young children.

However, she said adolescent girls could develop an associated syndrome called toxic shock.

We think that this inflammatory illness associated with Covid is probably very rare, she said.
EU Voices 'Particular Concerns' Over Hungary's Coronavirus Laws

By RFE/RL May 14, 2020

The European Union's commissioner responsible for upholding the bloc's values and transparency has expressed deep concern over the situation in Hungary, where right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban was granted sweeping powers under a package of emergency measures aimed at fighting the coronavirus pandemic.

EU Values and Transparency Commissioner Vera Jourova told EU lawmakers on May 14 that as countries begin to ease pandemic lockdowns, "the general states of emergency with exceptional powers granted to governments should gradually be removed or replaced by more targeted and less intrusive measures."

She made the statement during a debate at the European Parliament in Brussels on the rule of law in Hungary amid a spate of detentions in the EU member under the emergency legislation, which introduced potential prison sentences for people who spread false information about the outbreak.

Hungary's parliament, where Orban's Fidesz party holds a comfortable majority, approved legislation on March 30 giving him the right to rule by decree indefinitely.

The package of measures was criticized for lacking a so-called sunset clause to give a clear time limit to the state of emergency.

Jourova said that "the case of Hungary raises particular concerns" and that "on a daily basis, we are assessing whether we can take legal action."

Orban's chief of staff, Gergely Gulyas, told a briefing in Budapest on May 14 that the government could end emergency powers in late June, depending on the evolution of the pandemic.

The May 14 debate in Brussels did not result in binding measures but is likely to further deepen a conflict between the Orban government and the European parliament.

Hungarian police said that 86 criminal investigations into scaremongering have been launched since the emergency legislation was adopted by parliament on March 30.

On May 13, a member of the Momentum opposition party was detained in southern Hungary after posting a message on social media about the government's decision to make hospital beds available for coronavirus patients by throwing out non-COVID-19 patients.

On May 12, a 64-year-old man in the northeastern city of Gyula was held for hours for allegedly "publishing false facts on a social-media site," police said in a statement.

Hungary had no representative at the debate after Orban declined the invitation to attend in person and proposed to send Justice Minister Judit Varga instead -- a move rejected by Brussels. Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs branded the debate a "witch hunt, a show trial."

The European Parliament last month adopted a statement saying Hungary's measures are "incompatible with European values."

The center-right European People's Party (EPP), the European Parliament's biggest grouping, suspended Fidesz from its ranks in March 2019 over concerns over the rule-of-law backsliding in Hungary as well as attacks against the European Commission.

The suspension was extended indefinitely in February, even before the Hungarian lawmakers' move to grant Orban sweeping powers.

Hungary's emergency law also prompted "particular" concern from European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen last month.

While saying EU countries may need extraordinary measures to fight the pandemic, she added: "I am concerned that certain measures go too far -- and I'm particularly concerned with the situation in Hungary."

With reporting by dpa, AP, and AFP

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/european-parliament- to-debate-hungary-s-coronavirus-laws- amid-detentions/30611439.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:18:13|Editor: huaxia

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File photo shows people walking out of the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the second session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) in Beijing, capital of China, March 13, 2019. (Xinhua/Chen Yehua)

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee on Friday held a meeting to discuss the draft government work report, which will be submitted by the State Council to the third annual session of the 13th National People's Congress for deliberation and approval.

Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, presided over the meeting.

Despite multiple challenges China faced in its development last year, the CPC Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core has rallied and led Chinese people of all ethnic groups to achieve the major annual targets and lay a decisive foundation for completing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the meeting said.

Since the outbreak of COVID-19, the CPC Central Committee has been regarding epidemic prevention and control as the top priority, the meeting said.

Putting people's lives and health on the top of the priority list, General Secretary Xi Jinping has led the whole Party, army and people of all ethnic groups to fight a war against the epidemic, through personal command and deployment.

Through arduous efforts, decisive results have been achieved in the fight against COVID-19 to protect the hard-hit Hubei Province and its capital city Wuhan, the meeting said, adding that major strategic achievements have been made in curbing the spread of the virus, with positive results in coordinating the epidemic control and economic and social development.

China is facing unprecedented challenges as the global pandemic and economic situations remain grim and complex, the meeting said.

The meeting stressed resolutely expanding domestic consumption, safeguarding economic development and social stability, ensuring the full completion of poverty alleviation targets as well as building a moderately prosperous society in all respects.

Going forward, attendees at the meeting called for unremitting efforts in implementing regular epidemic prevention and control measures this year, while striving to deliver a good performance in all areas of economic and social development.

The proactive fiscal policy should be more positive, the prudent monetary policy should be more flexible and appropriate, and the employment priority policy should be further strengthened, according to the meeting.

The country should roll out stronger macro policies to stabilize enterprises' development and ensure employment, and should rely on reforms to stimulate market entities' vitality and foster new growth drivers.

China will advance opening-up to a higher level and stabilize the foreign trade and investment, and strive to achieve this year's economic and social development goals, the meeting said. 
The support was in response to a call from the ICRC in Vietnams neighbour for medical supplies for detainees amid the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at the handover ceremony, ICRC Protection Coordinator in Cambodia Chyngyz Rayimbekov underlined that the Embassy of Vietnam was among the first diplomatic offices in Cambodia to respond to the ICRCs call.

The relief will contribute to the fight against the pandemic in Cambodia, he said, adding that the Vietnamese Government has also presented medical supplies to many countries, including the US and European nations.

General Department of Prisons Director-General Chan Kimseng noted that Vietnam has effectively brought the pandemic under control, been recognised as a model for handling the disease, and earned high public confidence.

The Embassy of Vietnam previously handed over a relief package of 60,000 masks and 300 protective suits from the Vietnam Red Cross Society to its Cambodian counterpart.

In early April, Ambassador Vu Quang Minh presented medical supplies, including test kits worth VND7 billion (US$300,000) from the Vietnamese Government and people to their Cambodian friends.
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Pubs, cafes and restaurants reopened across two Australian states on Friday as the country's coronavirus lockdown eased further - albeit with safety precautions still in place.

Eateries and coffee houses in the most populous state of New South Wales - which includes Sydney - opened their doors early to punters, though were only allowed to let ten people at a time inside with social distancing in place.

Pubs followed later, though with the same restrictions including the caveat that those wishing to order a drink must also order food. The measures prompted many to keep their doors shut.

Over in the Northern Territory, which includes the city of Darwin, pubs were also allowed to reopen with no capacity limits - though punters must still order food with their drinks and social distancing must be maintained.

Three friends enjoy a beer over a plate of food at Soy Restaurant in Bondi Beach, New South Wales, after cafes, restaurants and pubs were allowed to reopen with restrictions in place as the country eases lockdown rules

Three women enjoy a glass of wine over pizza at a restaurant in Bondi Beach, New South Wales, as lockdown eased. Eateries are only allowing up to 10 people inside while drinks are only allowed to be served with food

A chef at Speedo's Cafe in Bondi Beach hands over two plates of food for customers who are now allowed to dine in at restaurants following weeks of takeaway only services

A barman pours beers from taps for customers at the Hero of Waterloo pub in Sydney, Australia, after the state of New South Wales was allowed to relax its lockdown rules

Pubs are only allowed to serve drinks with food, can only let 10 people inside at a time, and must maintain social distancing - but even so, the move comes as a welcome respite for many Australians who have been kept at home for weeks

A bartender pours a glass of beer for a customer at a restaurant in Sydney as lockdown measures in New South Wales ease

People also took to parks and beaches in New South Wales to exercise in groups of up to 10 people, which had previously been banned.

Australia has confirmed just 7,019 cases of the virus and 98 deaths, with only a handful of new cases each day. Several states - including Southern Australia and the Australian Capital Territory - have zero active cases.

Places of worship were also allowed to reopen in New South Wales, provided they keep congregations to a maximum of 10 people.

Many Catholic churches across the state opened for private prayer, confession and small-scale masses.

'The celebration of mass is the highest form of Catholic worship and to not be able to physically gather these past two months has been very difficult for Catholics,' Sydney's Archbishop Anthony Fisher said in a statement.

Many Jewish synagogues and other Christian churches decided to keep their doors closed.

The easing of some quarantine measures in New South Wales state came just a day after the national statistics office reported unprecedented record high job losses and Prime Minister Scott Morrison warned that worse was still to come.

'While there isn't too much to be celebrating with the difficult circumstances we face, and particularly yesterday's unemployment numbers, it is welcome sign that we are on the way back,' Morrison said on Friday.

Exercise in outdoor areas in groups of up to 10 people will also be allowed in New South Wales from today, prompting people to return to Bondi Beach despite the rain and cold

Groups of swimmers raced into the cold water on Bondi Beach early in the morning in New South Wales as eased restrictions mean that exercise in groups of up to 10 is now allowed

Swimmers at Bondi Beach strapped on their costumes for a dip in the ocean early in the morning after New South Wales relaxed restrictions on group exercise

Exercise groups also took advantage of Sydney's parks as they enjoyed the first day of relaxed lockdown restrictions

A group of dog walks exchange hugs near Bondi Beach on Friday as lockdown measures ease, allowing people to socialise in groups of up to 10 people

Early morning traffic is seen on the Harbour Bridge in Sydney as people return to work with more businesses allowed to open

Despite the easing of measures, New South Wales premier Gladys Berejiklian has urged people to be cautious, fearing a spike in cases and deaths. Pictured is a sign in Sydney warning people who feel ill to stay at home

In Sydney, locals braved a cold, wet morning to catch up with friends and family over a coffee as cafes, restaurants and bars opened under the proviso they limit patrons to 10 at any one time.

'It is such a treat,' said Jess Best, who met up with a friend in a cafe in the city's eastern suburbs. 'To be able to sit down with other people around and chat to my friend. I can have a normal morning, not hiding away in my home.'

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian cautioned people to remain vigilant and maintain social distancing.

'Easing restrictions has failed in so many places around the world and I don't want that to happen in NSW, I want people to have personal responsibility for the way we respond,' she said.

NSW and Victoria, the country's second most populous state, reported a total of 29 new cases on Friday, a bump up from the recent daily average of fewer than 20.

Officials said on Friday that only 50 people remained in hospital.

Medics have credited lockdown measures adopted in March, including closing the country's borders and ordering people to stay home unless on essential business, with constraining the virus' spread.

State and territory leaders across the country are now rolling out a three-stage plan, following different timetables, to remove lockdown measures.

Morrison wants the bulk of restrictions gone by July to revive a national economy that had experienced more than two decades of uninterrupted growth before the pandemic. Most economists are now forecasting a recession.

A journalist downs a pint live on air as he celebrates pubs being allowed to reopen in Australia's Northern Territory, where crowd limits are not in force

A group of people dining in at Macelleria Restaurant in Bondi Beach, Sydney

A sign at a pub in New South Wales warns people that social distancing must be observed and that only 10 people are allowed inside at any one time as lockdown is eased

Customers sit at a table and stand to buy coffees at a cafe displaying a sign offering free coffees to law enforcement and medical staff in Sydney

A sign advertises dine in services at a cafe in New South Wales after indoor areas were allowed to reopen, provided no more than 10 people are inside at any one time

Customers sit at a restaurant on the first day of eased New South Wales lockdown restrictions

In NSW, schools are slowly reopening, private households will be able to have five guests, public gatherings were expanded to 10 people from two and public swimming pools reopened with a maximum of 10 people allowed in the water.

'It's amazing to be able to swim again,' said Jenny Finikiotis as she emerged from at the Bronte Swimming Club's ocean pool.

'The water is so warm, it's crystal clear and the best it has been all summer, probably because there has been no one here swimming in it.'

In the Northern Territory, where case numbers have been low and there have been no deaths, pubs opened with no restrictions on patron numbers.

'I think I've earned one and I think I lot of territorians out there have earned a beer as well,' Chief Minister Michael Gunner said, pouring a beer at the Cavenagh Hotel in Darwin as the clock struck midday.

Victoria, which reported 21 new cases, is currently retaining most of its lockdown measures.

Morrison is hoping the resumption of some businesses will help get the economy on a firmer footing, a goal that has been partly overshadowed by a diplomatic spat with China, Australia's largest trading partner, over Australia's push for an international inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

China earlier this week suspended the export licences of several of Australia's largest beef processors and proposed tariffs of 80 per cent on Australian barley shipments, in what many viewed as retaliatory actions.

'When it comes to our relationship with China, it is built on mutual benefit,' Morrison said on Friday.
LOS ANGELESWhile sex workers around the world have largely been left behind in government responses to the coronavirus pandemic, in Africa, their situation has been particularly dire. But sex workers in the Ugandan district of Soroti made their voices heard last week when they staged a semi-nude protest outside the local government offices.

Sex work remains illegal in Uganda, but the profession remains widespread, as for many women it provides the only relief from poverty. But since the worldwide coronavirus pandemic sent the country into lockdown, the sex workers who protested Friday say they are in danger of starvation.

We are currently left with nothing to eat and our children are becoming malnourished, one of the sex workers protesting at the Soroti district offices told a reporter. Give us food or else, we shall go after our caring clients that are willing to help instead of starving to death.

Truck drivers bringing food and other vital supplies into the landlocked country have long been a major portion of sex worker clientele in Uganda. But since the coronavirus lockdown, the women have been banned from contact with truck drivers.

The protesters said that despite being prohibited from contact with the truck drivers, they have not received food aid from Ugandas government, and have been left with no means to feed themselves or their families.

Uganda had reported 160 cases of coronavirus infection as of Thursday. Due to the countrys history of deadly epidemics, experts have credited Uganda with being better prepared to deal with coronavirus than many other African countries.

In April, Ugandan scientists announced that they had developed a low cost, quick coronavirus testing kit, that at a cost of just over $1 per test would allow for affordabilty of widespread testing in the country.

But most of the positive tests in Uganda have come from truck drivers bringing shipments over the borders from Kenya and Tanzania. At least 114 have tested positive so far.

In Botswana, a country in southern Africa, sex work is also illegal, and sex workers there, many of whom are migrants, have been excluded from government economic relief efforts, according to a Voice of America report.

"Sex workers are mostly affected because they are dependent on the movement of people. Under lockdown there are no people; nobody is allowed to go anywhere, so in turn they have lost an income," Manda Pule, of the sex workers organization Sisonke told VOA.

But non-governmental organizations have initiated a program to provide food for about 800 suffering sex workers in the country.

"Our priority groups are sex workers, especially non-citizens, because under the Botswana social relief for COVID-19, only citizens are supported with food parcels, Pule said. So, we saw fit that we target sex workers who are HIV-positive, and secondly, those with children and those who are foreigners.

In Kenya  where the legality of sex work varies from region to region  sex workers have demanded that their job be classified as an essential service, which would allow them to continue work during the coronavirus lockdowns.

Photo By Derrick Ndahiro / Wikimedia Commons
In a relief for Punjab, 82 COVID-19 patients were discharged from different hospitals in the state on Friday after they were cured of the infection.

Among cured patients, most of them were pilgrims who had returned from Hazoor Sahib at Nanded in Maharashtra last month, a health official said.

Forty-four patients were discharged in Moga, followed by 21 in Patiala, nine in Gurdaspur, four in Jalandhar, three in Mohali and one in Mansa, taking the state's tally of cured patients to 305, as per the state's medical bulletin.

However, thirteen more persons tested positive for the infection in the state on Friday, as per the bulletin.

Six coronavirus cases were reported in Faridkot, three in Fazilka and one each in Ludhiana, Bathinda, Rupnagar and Fatehgarh Sahib, the bulletin said.

The bulletin added that the cases of 16 Railway Protection Force personnel, who had earlier tested positive in Ludhiana, have been removed from the state's COVID tally as they belonged to Delhi.

With the removal of 16 RPF cases and addition of new cases on Friday, the total COVID-19 in the state now stood at 1,932.

Amritsar continued to top the COVID-19 tally in the state with 297 coronavirus cases, followed by 205 in Jalandhar, 158 in Tarn Taran, 136 in Ludhiana, 122 in Gurdaspur, 103 in SBS Nagar, 102 in Mohali, 100 in Patiala, 92 in Hoshiarpur, 88 in Sangrur, 65 in Muktsar, 59 each in Moga and Rupnagar, 56 in Fatehgarh Sahib, 52 in Faridkot, 44 in Ferozepur, 41 in Fazilka, 41 in Bathinda, 32 in Mansa, 29 in Pathankot, 27 in Kapurthala and 21 in Barnala, as per bulletin.

Of the total cases, 32 have died, as per the bulletin.

One patient is critical and is on ventilator support, it added.

A total of 49,301 samples have been taken so far in the state, of which 44,319 samples are negative and reports of 3,050 samples are awaited.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
(Photo : LUCY NICHOLSON on Reuters ) COVID-19: Cancer Patients Won't Visit Check-ups Anymore; Nvidia Launches AI System for Hospitals (Photo : DEMET ISIL YILMAZ on Reuters ) COVID-19: Cancer Patients Won't Visit Check-ups Anymore; Nvidia Launches AI System for Hospitals

Health officials are now facing another possible health crisis that may affect the United States. Ever since lockdowns and the coronavirus pandemic happened, a much lower rate of cancer diagnoses was conducted from February until March. Due to this, hospitals fear that undetected cancer patients might increase in no time.

Meanwhile, Nvidia releases a new technology to conduct artificial intelligence (AI) in automatically sensing body heat from people coming in and out of hospitals.

COVID-19 affects another disease that kills patients too

Coronavirus did a lot of repercussions in the economy, health, technology, and other industries. But one thing that the pandemic hugely affected was the number of people visiting hospitals. Since COVID-19 is a viral disease, most people decide to stay in their homes and fear the presence of entering a clinical facility.

Cancer patients, for one, get the same thinking. The report says that new skin cancer diagnoses plunged into an 80% lower rate compared to before. This means that a massive number of cancer patients or the ones who have symptoms won't bear to visit hospitals and check-ups anymore due to the pandemic's risk.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (US CDC) announced before that all "elective" in-person visits will be delayed to curb the spread of Coronavirus. Hospitals are prohibited from providing routine check-ups, and cancer screenings said in April.

But this might change soon.

"A consequence of the pandemic has been the under-utilization of important medical services for patients with non-COVID-19-related urgent and emergent health needs," the CDC said. "As the pandemic continues, healthcare systems must balance the need to provide necessary services while minimizing risk to patients and healthcare personnel."

Cancer patients are encouraged to visit hospitals

The American Cancer Society is now encouraging patients to take cancer screenings if they think that the hospitals near them are already safe from the pandemic.

The agency also notifies that cancer researches are now halted amid pandemic.

"It is abundantly clear that the COVID-19 pandemic is having a major impact on cancer research," Dr. William C. Phelps, the society's senior vice president of extramural research, said at the time.

For now, it is still unclear the exact rate of cancer patients within the months of the viral disease.

Nvidia's AI system that senses the spread of the virus in hospitals

To provide additional health protection for all patients visiting hospitals, American technology company Nvidia launches Clara Guardian, a smart hospital AI system to track the spread of infectious disease in a hospital.

This technology can be used to check people with high temperature, social-distancing surveillance, and more.

Clara Guardian and partners like AnyVision and Care.ai are currently deployed in 50 hospitals in countries like China, France, Italy, and Israel, covering 10,000 hospital rooms today.

ALSO READ: COVID-19 Cure Development: 20,000 People to be Exposed To Coronavirus In Human Trials; UV Light Can Neutralize COVID-19

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The popular Pub Street sign in the temple town of Siem Reap shines bright against the night sky. But, nearly all the bars, restaurants, and clubs lining the usually-crowded tourist trap are dark and silent.



Before the novel coronavirus pandemic, massage parlor staffers would try their best to entice tourists to sample the various types of Khmer massages and tuk tuk drivers could be seen animatedly directing travelers to jump into their vehicles. Nowadays, there is an eerie silence resonating through the temple town.



For the last two months, Cambodias most popular tourist destination, and home to the Angkor Archaeological Park, has felt the effects of the viral outbreak that has decimated the global travel industry.



Siem Reaps 130,000 residents are reliant on the tourism business, with the towns streets normally teeming with tourists, vendors, residents, and a melee of vehicles are deserted.

On one such street, Im Srey Mom sat idly at Phsar Chas restaurant scanning the area for potential diners. The empty tables and chairs are indicative of the hardships facing the service sector, especially family-run, and small businesses.

These are no tourists. These are only local people, she said, pointing to the smattering of pedestrians walking around. This has been her daily activity for the past few weeks.



After a local man tested positive in the province in early March, Im Srey Mom closed her restaurant for six weeks, only to reopen this month. She has to earn around $300 a month to pay for overheads, which included electricity costs and rent.

But, the lull in tourist arrivals has hit her revenues hard, causing her to temporarily fire five staff members. Even the vendors outside her restaurant had disappeared. They all have gone home, she said.

News from the Tourism Ministry was not encouraging, providing little solace for the towns residents. Kong Sophearak, at the Tourism Ministrys Statistics Department, said tourist arrivals at the Siem Reap International Airport had dropped nearly 60 percent since the start of the outbreak. The number had dropped in January and February but it was not a sharp drop, he said. The number from April has plummeted even more.



The Tourism Ministry official had little advice for struggling businesses except to recommend they remain safe during the pandemic.

For food vendors, they could provide take away or organize tables to be far from each other, he said. And for hospitality and transportation [businesses] we have to follow hygiene guidelines too.

Not far from the Phsar Chas restaurant, Im Bunlo was standing near his tuk tuk. The 38-year-old was in a similar position to Im Srey Mom; he owned a restaurant, there was a precipitous drop in customers and staff members were let go.

I had a restaurant for around four months before the COVID-19 [outbreak], Im Bunlo said. When the coronavirus arrived, I went bankrupt.

After shuttering the restaurant, he decided to take up the equally precarious job of ferrying people around the town in a tuk tuk. So far, he has had only a few local passengers. Now I drive a tuk tuk instead. I mostly drive Cambodian customers.

At the towns markets, souvenir vendors were facing similar challenges. The lack of tourists meant they too were struggling to provide for their families.



Cha Rady was seated at her mothers souvenir store at the popular and tourist-friendly Phsar Chas market, also known as Old Market. In the absence of any customers, the Siem Reap resident seems to keep busy by arranging and then re-arranging her offerings, which include bags, scarves, and Cambodia-themed clothing.

Before the pandemic, the mother-daughter duo was able to earn at least $100 a day selling curios, trinkets, and souvenirs to tourists. Now, on a lucky day, they earn at best $10 a day. Sometimes no one buys a single thing, she said.

Back at Pub Street, Long Vichet spends most of his days surfing the internet on his smartphone. The tuk tuk driver had not a single customer that day.



Some days I get nothing. I just sit and browse the internet, he said. Today, I have not gotten a single riel.

After a decade of riding a tuk tuk, Long Vichet is now able to earn a maximum of $5 a day. The 32-year-old man is having a tough time dealing with the economic slowdown and is impatiently waiting for the return of domestic and international tourists.
Five Birmingham men have been arrested in connection with a multi-agency probe into a rash of vehicle burglaries and thefts in central Alabama.

The Chilton County Sheriffs Office on Friday announced charges against Courey Jevon Jones, 24, JaJuan Marquis Tanniehill, 19, and Corey Dwayne Bullock Jr., 22.

Beginning last month, said Sheriff John Shearon, law enforcement agencies in Chilton County and beyond began to experience a spate of vehicle burglaries and vehicle thefts. Agencies involved in the extensive investigation include the Chilton County Sheriffs Office, the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, the Clanton Police Department, the Jemison Police Department, the Maplesville Police Department, Moody Police Department, Northport Police Department, St Clair County Sheriffs Office, Jefferson County Sheriffs Office, Birmingham Police Department, Tuscaloosa County Sheriffs Office, Blount County Sheriffs Office, Cullman County Sheriffs Office, Ft. Payne Police Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

Chilton County authorities have charged the trio each with seven counts of unlawful breaking and entering a motor vehicle, three counts of second-degree theft of property, two counts of first-degree theft of property, one count of third-degree theft of property and one count of fourth-degree theft of property. Bond for each suspect is set at $225,000.

Shearon said all three have substantial criminal histories, and authorities are seeking to have their bonds in previous cases in Jefferson County revoked. Additional charges against them are anticipated in other jurisdictions.

Additionally, the sheriff said, Jahmal Rashard Thomas, 21, and Devante Hall, 23, both also of Birmingham, have been arrested by the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office and Birmingham police on charges of being in possession of vehicles stolen out of Chilton County. Thomas remains held in the Jefferson County Jail on $30,000 bond. Hall was arrested Monday and released the same day after posting $5,000 bond.

Several vehicles, firearms, and other pieces of property have been recovered and efforts continue to locate as much of the stolen property as possible. Additional charges and additional arrests are anticipated. A lot of things went into making these cases, Shearon said. Great cooperation between all the agencies involved, a ton of work from all the Investigators, and a lot of cooperation from the community.

Some have actively helped in these investigations but overall the community as a whole has been understanding and supportive of all of our efforts, he said. Weve had all of our investigators working night shifts for about two weeks. They have made numerous trips to Jefferson County recovering property, processing evidence and looking for suspects during the middle of this pandemic.

Shearon said deputies usually assigned to court security, school security and administrative positions were available due to the COVID-19 crisis and pitched in for the investigation. ALEA has provided extra troopers, agents and aviation support as well.

We have stopped a lot of people traveling during the late night and early morning hours in our communities and everyone has been extremely cooperative, he said. We appreciate that more than we can say. 

The extra patrols also resulted in numerous warrant arrests, narcotics arrests, and illegal firearms arrests.

I would also like to send a message to those who would come into our county and steal what our people work for, Shearon said. Just because youre not from here doesnt mean we cant find you. Theres three guys sitting in the County Jail on $225,000 bonds that probably wish they had stayed at home.
Over 300 Indian nationals, including India's former ambassador to the UN Syed Akbaruddin, stranded in the US due to COVID-19 related international travel restrictions are headed home on the second Air India flight from New Jersey, and the sixth flight from the US, to New Delhi and Hyderabad.

From May 9 to May 15, Air India has scheduled seven non-scheduled commercial flights from the US to India facilitating the return of Indian nationals, who could not travel due to COVID-19 restrictions.

The Air India flight departed on May 14 to New Delhi/Hyderabad from the Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey with over 300 passengers.

The flight was the sixth non-scheduled commercial flight from the US to India. The first flight took off from San Francisco on Saturday to Mumbai and Hyderabad.

Akbaruddin, who retired on April 30, is also heading back to Hyderabad on the May 14 flight from Newark.

Home is where the heart is...Farewell to New York & @UN... Heading home, today, with deep gratitude to all who r enabling r return to the lap of Mother India, Akbaruddin tweeted along with a photograph of an Air India plane along with #VandeBharatMission.

The mission is India's biggest ever repatriation exercise to bring back Indians from abroad who are unable to travel home due to COVID-19 related international travel restrictions.

India's Ambassador to the US Taranjit Singh Sandhu tweeted helping our citizens get back home. #VandeBharatMission. Sixth @airindiain evacuation flight from US departs Newark for Delhi and Hyderabad.

The Consulate General of India in New York also said in a tweet that Indian Citizens checking-in for Air India's Second Evacuation Flight from Newark to Delhi/Hyderabad on May 14, 2020. Shubh Yatra.

"We are really grateful to everything that the Indian government has been doing for us, the Consulate General in New York has been so nice and kind. They have been contacting us, they have been reassuring us that everything is fine in this uncertain period of time. The procedures have been conducted so well, we feel so safe. And we are grateful for everybody over here who has come to help us go home. Thank you so much," Shreya and Trisha, who are returning back home to New Delhi said.

The first non-scheduled commercial flight from New Jersey to the Indian cities of Mumbai and Ahmedabad flew on May 10.

Apart from the two flights from New Jersey, two flights were scheduled from Chicago on May 11 (to Mumbai and Chennai) and May 15 (Delhi and Hyderabad) and from San Francisco on May 13 to Delhi and Bengaluru. The solo flight from Washington DC on May 12 flew to Delhi and Hyderabad.

All passengers will be required to undergo medical screening before boarding the flight and only asymptomatic passengers will be allowed to travel. All passengers on arrival in India will be medically screened and would have to download and register on Aarogya Setu app.

Further, all passengers will need to undergo a 14-day mandatory quarantine on arrival in India in institutional quarantine facilities on payment basis as per the protocols framed by Government of India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Franklin Graham praises Elon Musk for reopening Tesla factory in defiance of Calif. bureaucrats

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Evangelist Franklin Graham has expressed his support for Tesla CEO Elon Musks decision to reopen a California manufacturing plant despite local shelter-in-place rules.

The head of the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association and Samaritan's Purse took to his official Facebook page on Monday to voice his opinion on the decision.

I dont know Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, but I like that hes standing up for his rights, which are your rights too, wrote Graham.

Hes been trying to get his car manufacturing plant in California opened back up and get his employees back to work, but the bureaucrats want to keep him shut down even when his competitors in other parts of the country are able to go back to work.

Graham commended the 48-year-old engineer and entrepreneur on his stance, noting that the Tesla head is not afraid to defy these overreaching officials, and hes opening up anyway.

I like his stand!" concluded Graham. "I think the majority of Americans agree that its time to get the country opened back up, as long as its done with caution  dont you?

On Monday, Musk announced on his Twitter account that he was planning to reopen a plant in Fremont, California, despite not receiving authorization from local officials who've ordered most businesses to remain closed as part of the state's response to COVID-19.

Tesla is restarting production today against Alameda County rules, Musk tweeted. I will be on the line with everyone else. If anyone is arrested, I ask that it only be me.

In response, Alameda County released a statement saying officials learned that the electric vehicle manufacturer had opened beyond Minimum Basic Operations.

The county told the plant that it can only maintain Minimum Basic Operations until we have an approved plan that can be implemented in accordance with the local public health order.

We are addressing this matter using the same phased approach we use for other businesses which have violated the order in the past, and we hope that Tesla will likewise comply without further enforcement measures, the county added.

On Wednesday, the county reported on its official Twitter account that officials reviewed Teslas plan and offered additional recommendations during discussions with Tesla representatives. The county expressed an openness to allowing the plant to reopen with certain health and safety conditions being met.

We reviewed the plan and held productive discussions today with Teslas representatives about their safety and prevention plans, including some additional safety recommendations, they said.

If Teslas Prevention and Control Plan includes these updates, and the public health indicators remain stable or improve, we have agreed that Tesla can begin to augment their Minimum Business Operations this week in preparation for possible reopening as soon as next week.

Graham's support of Tesla comes he and others are calling for churches to be granted legal immunity from lawsuits that could come from their decisions to reopen. Churches nationwide are making plans for a soft reopening.

In California, a network of over 3,000 churches has vowed to resume services on Pentecost Sunday, May 31. An earlier nationwide initiative led by the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel encouraged churches to resume services on May 3.
A female nurse at a state-run aged care facility in the central Queensland city of Rockhampton is the state's new case of novel coronavirus overnight.

The state's COVID-19 total increased by two to 1054 on Friday, consisting of a Queensland resident who was diagnosed in Western Australia and was added to the total, along with the new active case.

North Rockhampton Nursing Centre where a nurse tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday night. Credit:Google Maps

Queensland's chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said it was "a case out of nowhere", adding that the nurse at the North Rockhampton Nursing Centre had worked at the facility while unwell.

Authorities believe the nurse contracted the virus during a recent trip to Brisbane and officials believe she was infectious from May 3 and started showing symptoms from May 5.
In the wake of the recent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, the nation's government has defended its offensive counter-terror operation against the Taliban. In a statement, Afghanistan said that in order to keep its people secure and thwart terrorist attacks, it has every right to have a legitimate defensive position against those responsible.

On May 12, two terror attacks took place killing more than 40 people, including two newborn babies. Several gunmen disguised as policemen attacked a Kabul hospital, a part of which is run by international humanitarian organization Doctors Without Borders, killing 16 people.

An official statement read, "Recent terrorist attacks in Afghanistan have widely been condemned by Afghan people and the entire world. In order to keep its people secure and thwart such terrorist attacks, the Afghan government declared its legitimate defensive position against those who claim the responsibilities for such incidents."

As per an Afghanistan media report, Russia reacted to Afghanistan's decision to resume offensive against Taliban saying that this decision will halt the process of peace talks.

Russian Special Presidential Envoy for Afghanistan and Director of the Russian Foreign Ministrys Second Asia Department Zamir Kabulov told TASS that President Ghanis order to launch an offensive against the Taliban (outlawed in Russia) and the suspension of the release of Taliban prisoners will halt the process of launching intra-Afghan negotiations. Afghanistan has not agreed with Kabulov's remark.

A statement issued by Afghanistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs read, "Undoubtedly, any country who would face such attacks ending with the martyrdom of infants and mothers, would take the same position. In fact, the Afghan government has made its best efforts for bringing sustainable peace, and would continue its efforts."

Another statement said that the Afghanistan government took an initiative and developed a peace plan. Ceasefire during the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, immediate commencement of intra-Afghan talks and prisoners release from both sides were clearly mentioned in the plan.

This proposal was shared with the Taliban as well as with regional and international allies. The proposal was firmly endorsed by neighbours and regional and international colleagues, but no positive response came from the Taliban. If the Taliban had positively responded to that proposal, such terrorist attacks, no matter who is responsible for, could have been averted.

The peace process between the US and Taliban has wide support from many countries including Russia and China. Russia hopes to take a lead role in the peace process with the Taliban to counter US influence in the future. It has hosted several meeting with Taliban and representative of the Afghanistan government. China is hopeful that peace will bring the regional change and it will serve its economic interest.

India security expert believes that Pakistan has a deep connection with the Taliban and Pakistan will use its network to minimize India's influence in Afghanistan.
A 17-year-old boy is set to be charged with murder for allegedly helping his 16-year-old online girlfriend kill her mother and brother with special needs by torching their family home.

Kaleo Pangelian was arrested by Douglas County Sheriffs Office at around 4.30pm Thursday and will now face an extradition hearing for his charges in Georgia.

He faces charges for two counts of murder in the deaths of Gerald Walton, 21, and Tasha Vandiver, 46, whose bodies were found in a house fire in Monroe County, Georgia, on February 27.

His girlfriend Candace Walton, 16, was charged in March with arson and two counts of murder for their deaths. It was initially believed she had died in the fire.

Kaleo Pangelian, 17, was arrested in Oregon on Thursday and will face an extradition hearing for his charges in Georgia. Monroe County Sheriff's Office say they have evidence to charge him with two counts of murder in the deaths of Gerald Walton, 21, and Tasha Vandiver, 46

Candace Walton, 16, was charged in March with arson and two counts of murder. It was initially believed she had died in the fire but was found driving her mother's stolen car hours later

One body was confirmed as that of Gerald Walton (pictured left), Candace's 21-year-old brother. The other was later identified as the girl's mother Tasha Vandiver, 46 (pictured right)

Police now believe Pangelian helped Walton to kill her brother and mother before she began her journey to Oregon to start a new life with him.

After a thorough investigation, Monroe County Sheriff's Office Investigators obtained evidence to also charge Candace Walton's boyfriend, 17-year-old Kaleo D. Pangelinan, with two (2) counts of murder, said a statement from Monroe County Sheriffs Office.

Walton was thought to be dead when police found two badly burned bodies in the house fire on Old Zebulon Road around 3:30 a.m. on February 27 and the girl's mother was missing.

Kaleo Pangelinan, 17, was arrested for two counts of murder. His girlfriend Candace Walton is believed to have been on her way to start a new life with him when she was arrested in March and also charged with murder. Pangelinan is thought to have helped Candace with the crime

Candace Walton, 16, (pictured second from right) is charged with murdering her brother Gerald, 21, (right) and her mother Tasha Vandiver, 46, (second from left) in a house fire on February 27 before fleeing to allegedly start a new life with her boyfriend in Oregon

Emergency services who were called to a blaze at a property said the bodies were 'burned beyond recognition'.

Initially, the fire was not believed to be intentionally set.

The other body was identified as her brother Gerald, who has special needs.

Officers reported Vandiver missing and her vehicle, a white 2007 Chevrolet Malibu, unaccounted for.

Emergency services were called to a blaze at a property in Monroe County at around 3.30am on February 27 and found two badly burned bodies they thought to be Gerald and Candace

Authorities said the bodies were 'burned beyond recognition' in the house fire

Candace Walton's motive for the the arson has not yet been released

However, a nationwide lookout for the car led Kentucky police to locate the vehicle later that afternoon more than 450 miles away in McCracken County.

When they pulled the vehicle over, they found Candace alive behind the wheel and heading to Oregon, where her boyfriend Pangelian lives.

Kentucky Sheriff Brad Freeman told the Macon Telegraph that officers found 'some incriminating things' in the car.

Candace Walton was charged with arson, theft by taking, and two counts of murder including the murder of her brother Gerald Walton, 21 (pictured right). The second body found in the fire was later identified as Candace's mother Tasha Vandiver (pictured left)

She was arrested and charged with arson, theft by taking, and the murders of her brother and the unidentified female, who was then thought to be her missing mother. The body was later identified as Vandiver.

The Sheriff confirmed Monroe County investigators had traveled to Kentucky and spoken to the suspect but would not divulge 'what kind of statement she made'.

The motive for the crime has not been released but Walton has since appeared in court and her charges are pending. She has been charged as an adult.

The investigation is ongoing.
Married At First Sight's KC Osborne put on a brave face in Melbourne on Wednesday after being dragged into a bitter feud with her boyfriend Michael Goonan's ex-'wife' Stacey Hampton.

The 32-year-old dance instructor was spotted getting her hair done at the Joey Scandizzo Salon in South Yarra.

She had filed a restraining order against Stacey on May 7, prompting Stacey's best friend Anthony Hess to respond by filing a similar intervention order against Michael on Thursday.

Breaking his silence on the messy affair, Michael, 29, told Daily Mail Australia Stacey and Anthony had made 'multiple threats against' his girlfriend, who was left feeling 'unsafe in her own home'.

Everything okay? Married At First Sight's KC Osborne put on a brave face in Melbourne on Wednesday after being dragged into a bitter feud with Stacey Hampton, the ex-'wife' of her boyfriend Michael Goonan

KC wore leather trousers and high-heeled boots for her trip to the salon, and also carried a $2,000 Givenchy Pandora bag over her arm.

Her outing coincided with exes Stacey and Michael taking their rivalry to the courts.

Bitcoin trader Anthony, who became friends with Stacey, 26, after her ill-fated appearance on Channel Nine's social experiment, filed an intervention order against Michael on Thursday.

Putting on a brave face: KC wore leather trousers and high-heeled boots for her trip to the Joey Scandizzo Salon in South Yarra

Making headlines: Her outing coincided with exes Stacey and Michael taking their rivalry to the courts. Pictured on their MAFS wedding day in September

The interim orders were made by the Melbourne Magistrates Court preventing Michael from going within five metres of Anthony or Stacey, or within 200 metres of Anthony's South Melbourne home.

It came one week after KC had filed a similar restraining order against Stacey.

Michael said that KC had been the victim of targeted harassment and threats from Anthony and Stacey, and that the harassment had left his partner 'too scared to leave her home'.

Bad blood: Stacey's (right) best friend, Bitcoin trader Anthony Hess (left), filed a restraining order against Michael on Thursday

Taking action: It came one week after KC had filed a similar intervention order against Stacey

'Stacey and Anthony have made multiple threats against KC,' he said.

'They've intimidated and harassed KC to the point where she was too scared to leave her own home while I was away on a business trip. No woman should feel unsafe in her own home.

'It's my job to protect and care for KC and I will continue to protect her. This repeated harassment must stop. KC and I want nothing to do with Stacey and Anthony.

'Their continued attacks on us are a poor attempt to remain relevant. We just want to be left in peace so we can get on with our lives.'

In response to Michael's allegations, Stacey told Daily Mail Australia that KC had no grounds for filing an intervention order against her.

She claimed the former Pussycat Dolls backup dancer 'lacked evidence' and was trying to use the 'court system... for media attention'.

'The IVO came as a surprise considering we were friends,' she added.

Drama: In the complaint (pictured), Anthony claimed that Michael had sent him a 'threatening text message' and made 'two threatening phone calls'

When asked if he had filed an IVO against Michael to get back at KC for filing one against Stacey, Anthony said: 'Not at all. I had already planned to. This isn't a war.'

Anthony, 39, is best known for convincing a Sydney magistrate in February to throw out an Apprehended Violence Order brought against him by PR queen Roxy Jacenko.

He was photographed at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Thursday submitting the application for the order against Michael.

In the complaint, Anthony claimed that Michael had sent him a 'threatening text message' and made 'two threatening phone calls'.

The Interim Intervention Order lasts until June 10, when Anthony will have to argue his case again to have it extended and Michael will have the opportunity to put his version of events before the court.

In a screenshot of the expletive-laden message obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Michael threatened Anthony to 'keep his distance' from him.

War of words: In a screenshot of the expletive-laden message (pictured) obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Michael threatened Anthony to 'keep his distance' from him

'I'll give you this, you are a good looking c**t. Though, know I like you. You will see [it] will take an army to rock me,' Michael wrote.

'Make sure the bullet goes straight throw [sic] my head. Because I'll fly charter a jet with the hardest c**ts from Russia just for the banter.

'Trust me to stay your distance. Bikies wanna go me, wear their true colours, I'll always respect the lads.'

KC and Stacey were recently engaged in a social media spat over a plastic toy.

Speaking out: In a statement to Daily Mail Australia, Michael accused Anthony and Stacey of 'harassing' his girlfriend (pictured)

Spat: The two women were recently engaged in a social media spat over a plastic toy. The feud began earlier this month when Stacey (pictured) lashed out at Michael and KC after they uploaded a TikTok video in which they played with her son's Nerf gun

The feud began earlier this month when Stacey lashed out at Michael and KC after they uploaded a TikTok video in which they played with her son's Nerf gun.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, the law graduate said she had left the toy at Michael's house after their split in January and wanted him to return it.

She then accused KC of imitating her style by wearing the same Stuart Weitzman boots that she owns, as well as staying at her preferred hotel in Melbourne, Crown Towers.

Petty feud: In a since-deleted Instagram post, Stacey said she had left the toy at Michael's house after their split in January and wanted him to return it

Frustrated by Stacey's claims, KC responded with her own Instagram rant, saying she did not know to whom the toy belonged.

She also denied she was copying her by wearing Stuart Weitzman boots and staying at Crown Towers.

Daily Mail Australia has contacted KC's representative for comment.
The World Bank on Friday has extended $1 billion package to India amid coronavirus pandemic. World Bank's Country Director for India Junaid Ahmad has said that the the aid will help to protect the poor and vulnerable under Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.

The World Bank has approved one billion dollar package for Indias urban poor and migrant workers during the coronavirus crisis. It will leverage the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana to help protect the poor and vulnerable, said World Banks Country Director for India Junaid Ahmad. The social protection package is in addition to the previous package of one billion dollars allocated to India for COVID-19 emergency response and health systems.

Ahmad said the new funding will ensure that migrants are supported in various states. It will ensure portability so that benefits move with the workers. It will provide a safety net to workers in the informal sector. Nearly 90 per cent of workers are in the unorganised sector, he said.

The funding will underpin support to state governments who will use local administrations, self-help groups and ASHA workers to ensure that safety net is delivered to these citizens. Ahmad said this is a watershed moment for Indian government for two reasons. One, because the government has said there is no divide between lives and livelihoods. The social protection fund will take forward the link between lives and livelihoods.

Also Read: Coronavirus update: Positive cases in India nears 82,000 mark, toll hits 2,649, total 3,967 cases recorded in last 24 hours

Also Read: PM Modi interacts with Bill Gates, discusses Indias public engagement-based approach to fight coronavirus

Two, like MNREGA, it piggybacks on the existing infrastructure of Public Distribution System and the trinity of Jan Dhan, Aadhaar and Mobile (JAM) to bring together Indias 460 systems of social protection. This will create a 21st-century social protection system, said Ahmad adding the upcoming third programme will focus on economic stabilisation of small and medium enterprises.

World Bank announces USD 1 billion social protection package for India linked to Govt of India programmes. pic.twitter.com/a1YpTpAt1O  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

The Word Bank will partner with the Govt of India in three areas  health, social protection and the Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME): Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director for India pic.twitter.com/jISICY9cwn  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

Also Read: Badrinath Temple opens amid COVID-19, entry of devotees prohibited

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Lava Therapeutics B.V., today announced that it has entered into a research and license agreement with Janssen Biotech, Inc., one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson Johnson, to discover and develop novel bispecific antibodies to gamma-delta T cells for the treatment of cancer. The collaboration was facilitated by Johnson Johnson Innovation.

"We are excited to enter into this collaboration with Janssen, a global innovator and leader in the development of new medicines," said Stephen Hurly, chief executive officer of Lava Therapeutics. "We strongly believe in the strength of our bispecific gamma-delta T cell engager platform and are committed to creating highly potent, target-specific therapeutics with increased durability and safety over current T cell-based approaches."

Under the terms of the agreement, Lava Therapeutics will perform discovery and product development activities, and is eligible to receive an undisclosed financial package consisting of an upfront payment and potential development and commercial milestones, and future tiered royalties.

About Lava Therapeutics

Lava Therapeutics, B.V., is developing a proprietary bispecific antibody platform that engages gamma-delta T cells for the treatment of hematological and solid cancers. The company's first-in-class immuno-oncology approach activates V?9Vd2 T cells upon binding to membrane-expressed tumor targets. Lava was founded in 2016 based on intellectual property originating from the Amsterdam University Medical Center, and is backed by Lupus Ventures, Biox Biosciences, Versant Ventures, Gilde Healthcare and MRL Ventures Fund. The company has established a highly experienced antibody research and development team located in Utrecht, the Netherlands (headquarters) and Philadelphia. For more information, please visit www.lavatherapeutics.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005041/en/

Contacts:

Alicia Davis

THRUST Strategic Communications

alicia@thrustsc.com
Geneva, May 15 (UNI) The COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting the need to urgently increase investment in services for mental health or risk a massive increase in mental health conditions in the coming months, according to a policy brief on COVID-19 and mental health issued by the United Nations on Friday.



The impact of the pandemic on peoples mental health is already extremely concerning, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of the World Health Organization. Social isolation, fear of contagion, and loss of family members is compounded by the distress caused by loss of income and often employment.



Reports already indicate an increase in symptoms of depression and anxiety in a number of countries. A study in Ethiopia, in April 2020, reported a 3-fold increase in the prevalence of symptoms of depression compared to estimates from Ethiopia before the epidemic.



Specific population groups are particularly at risk of COVID-related psychological distress. Frontline health-care workers, faced with heavy workloads, life-or-death decisions, and risk of infection, are also getting badly affected psychologically. During the pandemic, in China, health-care workers have reported high rates of depression (50%), anxiety (45%), and insomnia (34%) and in Canada, 47% of health-care workers have reported a need for psychological support.



Children and adolescents are also at risk. Parents in Italy and Spain have reported that their children have had difficulties concentrating, as well as irritability, restlessness and nervousness. Stay-at-home measures have come with a heightened risk of children witnessing or suffering violence and abuse. Children with disabilities, children in crowded settings and those who live and work on the streets are particularly vulnerable.



Other groups that are at risk are women, particularly those who are juggling home-schooling, working from home and household chores, older persons and people with pre-existing mental health conditions. A study carried out among young people with a history of mental health needs living in the UK reports that 32% of them agreed that the pandemic had made their mental health much worse.



An increase in alcohol consumption is another area of concern for mental health experts. Statistics from Canada report that 20% of 15-49 year-olds have increased their alcohol consumption during the pandemic.



The increase in people in need of mental health or psychosocial support has been compounded by the interruption to physical and mental health services in many countries.



In addition to the conversion of mental health facilities into care facilities for people with COVID-19, care systems have been affected by mental health staff getting infected with the virus and the closing of face-to-face services. Community services, such as self-help groups for alcohol and drug dependence, have, in many countries, been unable to meet for several months.



It is now crystal clear that mental health needs must be treated as a core element of our response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, said Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.



This is a collective responsibility of governments and civil society, with the support of the whole United Nations System. A failure to take peoples emotional well-being seriously will lead to long-term social and economic costs to society, he added.



In concrete terms, it is critical that people living with mental health conditions have continued access to treatment. Changes in approaches to provision of mental health care and psychosocial support are showing signs of success in some countries.



In Madrid, when more than 60% of mental health beds were converted to care for people with COVID-19, where possible, people with severe conditions were moved to private clinics to ensure continuity of care. Local policy-makers identified emergency psychiatry as an essential service to enable mental health-care workers to continue outpatient services over the phone. Home visits were organized for the most serious cases. Teams from Egypt, Kenya, Nepal, Malaysia and New Zealand, among others, have reported creating increased capacity of

emergency telephone lines for mental health to reach people in need.



Support for community actions that strengthen social cohesion and reduce loneliness, particularly for the most vulnerable, such as older people, must continue. Such support is required from government, local authorities, the private sector and members of the general public, with initiatives such as provision of food parcels, regular phone check-ins with people living alone, and organization of online activities for intellective and cognitive stimulation.



The scaling-up and reorganization of mental health services that is now needed on a global scale is an opportunity to build a mental health system that is fit for the future, said Devora Kestel, Director of the Department of Mental Health and Substance Use at WHO.



This means developing and funding national plans that shift care away from institutions to community services, ensuring coverage for mental health conditions in health insurance packages and building the

human resource capacity to deliver quality mental health and social care in the community, Kestel added.

UNI XC-BM ACL0704
A woman has admitted killing her newborn baby when she was a teenager and leaving the boy in a basin at a caravan park toilet block in Western Australia almost 25 years ago.

The woman cannot be named because she was just 14 when she committed the crime in Kambalda, in WA's Goldfields region, in July 1995.

Cold Case Homicide Squad detectives had charged her with wilful murder, but on Friday the offence was discontinued and she instead pleaded guilty to infanticide.

A woman has admitted killing her newborn baby when she was a teenager and leaving the boy in a basin at a caravan park toilet block in Western Australia almost 25 years ago (stock)

The woman cannot be named because she was just 14 when she committed the crime in Kambalda, in WA's Goldfields region, in July 1995 (toilet block pictured)

The case will return to Perth Children's Court on July 6 for a status conference.

Detectives last year travelled to regional Victoria to charge the woman, who has other children.

She was extradited to WA but was granted bail and allowed to return to Victoria.

The baby did not have a name, but others have referred to him as Rijul, meaning 'innocent' in Hindi.

Judge Gillian Braddock previously described the case as 'traumatic and tragic', saying the woman was also a victim of crime, as she was 13 when the baby was conceived.

Judge Braddock said the case was unlike anything she had come across before in this jurisdiction.

A man, who also cannot be named, was last year charged with historical child sex offences in connection to the case.

Perth Magistrates Court has heard he was in a relationship with the teenager's mother and she regarded him as her stepfather.
Restaurateur Ronan Ryan is to sell the family home he shares with his wife, former Miss Ireland Pamela Flood, under a deal hammered out with a vulture fund.

The agreement will wipe out a 1.2m mortgage debt Mr Ryan owes to the Tanager fund and will leave the couple in a position to downsize to a new home.

The restaurateur said an agreement had been reached which both sides were happy with.

"It is a huge weight off our minds," he said.

A courtroom battle had been looming between the fund and the one-time proprietor of Town Bar & Grill after he last year consented to a possession order for the Dublin property, only to institute personal insolvency proceedings at the last minute after having a change of heart.

Mr Ryan (49) had been seeking court approval for an arrangement writing off 634,000 of his debts of 1.6m while keeping the family home.

Expand Close The house in Clontarf belonging to Ronan Ryan and Pamela Flood will now be sold, wiping out the couples mortgage debt / Facebook

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Whatsapp The house in Clontarf belonging to Ronan Ryan and Pamela Flood will now be sold, wiping out the couples mortgage debt

But the agreement with Tanager means the matter will no longer proceed.

"It was all amicable. They are happy, we are happy, and it is being sold," Mr Ryan said.

Barrister Ross Maguire of debt management firm New Beginning was involved in brokering the deal.

The couple's home at Mount Prospect Avenue in Clontarf, where they live with their four children, has now been put on the market with an asking price of 695,000.

Mr Ryan said he would still have to resolve smaller debts owed to other creditors, Bank of Ireland and Everyday Finance. These debts have been listed in court filings as 270,000 and 91,000 respectively.

Fashion

Mr Ryan was a successful restaurateur during the Celtic Tiger years, operating Town Bar & Grill on Kildare Street and Bridge Bar & Grill in Dublin's Docklands.

In 2008 he met Ms Flood (48), a former Miss Ireland who presented a number of television programmes for RTE, including fashion magazine show Off The Rails.

But South Bar & Restaurant, a business he opened in Sandyford, was not successful and he got into financial difficulty around the time of the economic crash.

Soon his lender, Bank of Scotland (Ireland), was seeking the sale of the family home and in 2012 he entered an "assisted sale" agreement.

However, according to Mr Ryan, a number of proposed sales fell through because the bank thought it could get a better offer.

"It was one financial decision in 2008 that got me here. It has been a long 12-year fall," he said.

Mr Ryan said there was a "Twitter meltdown" when it emerged in court last September that he had not made mortgage repayments for seven years.

But he said people had only seen "one side" of the story.

Under the "assisted sale" agreement with Bank of Scotland, he did not have to make any further mortgage repayments. He said he was told by the bank it just wanted the asset and repayments were irrelevant.

According to Mr Ryan, the house was close to being sold on a number of occasions but was withdrawn as the bank thought it could get a better sale price.

"Obviously they made the investment and wanted to get it back," he said.

"It looked like we pulled the chute on the sale. But we had nothing to do with it.

"We never fought once. We went with the flow."

Tanager bought the loan in 2014 and matters came to a head again last year when the fund sought and was granted a possession order.

Protection

But it did not get to execute the order after the High Court ruled last October the fund was not entitled to possession.

This was because Mr Ryan had obtained a protective certificate as part of his application for a personal insolvency arrangement, which gave him a period of protection from creditors.

Although he had originally consented to handing over the property, a court later heard he had not known personal insolvency was an option at the time.

The agreement with Tanager means that option is no longer being pursued by Mr Ryan.

Mr Ryan is currently running a contract catering company with his wife, called Counter Culture, and has a takeaway food business.
India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi's $266 billion economic stimulus programme to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic has been all about liquidity measures, with negligible extra budget spending, according to government officials.

The government has announced a variety of steps for small businesses, street vendors, farmers and poor migrants, but they have largely been either credit guarantee schemes or new fund creations to be shouldered by banks and financial institutions.

Coronavirus India News LIVE

A series of measures announced on Friday aimed at helping farmers weather the coronavirus storm, with the biggest being a $13 billion agriculture infrastructure fund. That will be anchored by state-run National Bank for Agriculture and Rural Development (NABARD), with no extra spending by the government.

The government will also amend the Essential Commodities Act to ease restrictions on the trade of farm products, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman told a news conference.

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

But of everything she announced on Friday, the government will spend only 10 billion rupees to 20 billion rupees ($132 to $264 million) in addition to what has already been budgeted, a government official, who did not want to be named, told Reuters.

Total expenditure from announcements made in the last three days would not be more than 920 billion rupees ($12.13 billion), a second official said. The government is due to announce more measures over the weekend.

The government is limiting fiscal spending due to concerns that excess spending could trigger a sovereign rating downgrade, government officials said.

Fitch and Standard & Poor's both have India pegged at an investment grade rating that is one notch above a junk rating, while Moody's Investors Service is the only major rating agency that has India's rating two notches above junk.

Modi had said on May 12 the government would spend 20 trillion rupees in fiscal and monetary measures to support an economy battered by a weeks-long coronavirus lockdown, and markets jumped the following day.

But markets have been subdued since Sitharaman detailed the relatively minimal sums being spent above what is already in the budget for this fiscal year.

"We do not foresee any major immediate benefits of the measures announced today ... The impact on equity markets of today's announcements is likely to be limited," B Gopakumar, CEO and managing director of Axis Securities, said of Friday's measures.

According to Jefferies, the Reserve Bank of India has taken 8 trillion rupees of measures already, which is included as a part of the total package being announced.

Earlier this week, Sitharaman unveiled plans to provide new credit lines by offering bank guarantees on more than $60 billion of loans to small businesses, so-called shadow banks and power companies.

Since April, the government has spent 100 billion rupees to offer work to almost 23 million unemployed people in rural areas under the ongoing rural job guarantee programme, Sitharaman added.

On Thursday, the government said farm loans amounting to 300 billion rupees would be provided as additional emergency working capital to the farmers through NABARD.

The government has also announced free food grain for about 80 million migrant workers for the next two months, and plans to extend an existing scheme for affordable housing to rented housing for migrant workers.

Under lockdown since late March, India has reported about 82,000 confirmed cases of COVID-19 among its 1.3 billion population, with more than 2,600 deaths.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here
Mr. Trump, too, has at times praised China and its president, Xi Jinping, occasionally undermining attempts by aides and his campaign to portray China as a villain responsible for the virus.

The Trump campaign is suddenly moving to play catch-up after Democratic groups aligned with Mr. Biden have taken to the airwaves to attack Mr. Trump, including over his performance in responding to the coronavirus. Two groups, Priorities USA and American Bridge, have spent at least $20 million on anti-Trump ads since March 1.

Mr. Trumps campaign has been frustrated with its own aligned super PAC, America First, for not doing more on television during this period of time.

Indeed, the last incumbent president to run for re-election, Barack Obama in 2012, benefited from an aggressive super PAC. At the time, Mr. Obamas campaign and his allies aired constant negative ads against Mitt Romney, largely with the help of their supportive super PAC. And Mr. Obama was in a much stronger position in that race than Mr. Trump is currently.

If this election is about Trump, he probably loses, said Ken Goldstein, a professor of politics at the University of San Francisco. Trumps only hope is to make the election about Biden.

The Trump and Biden campaigns did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Though the Trump campaign has never shied away from controversial messaging, the decision to directly go after Mr. Bidens age (at 77, Mr. Biden is four years older than Mr. Trump) risks a blowback, from older voters and others. One of the ads jokingly depicts Mr. Biden in a nursing home, a framing that could draw criticism as more than 28,000 people have died from the coronavirus in nursing homes and similar facilities in the United States.

But the ads targeting Mr. Bidens age could be informed by a recent CNN poll that found Mr. Trump leading Mr. Biden on the question of stamina and sharpness by three percentage points.
Welcome to Money Diaries, where were tackling what might be the last taboo facing modern working women: money. Were asking women how they spend their hard-earned money during a seven-day period  and were tracking every last dollar.



Today: a Project Manager who makes $70,000 per year and spends some of her money this week on Nike Flyknit Infinity Reacts.

Occupation: Project Manager

Industry: Creative

Age: 26

Location: Copenhagen, Denmark

Salary: $70,000

Net Worth: $-1,983 (I have a 401(k) that I was contributing to at my previous job in NYC and the last time I checked it had about $12,000ish in it) I dont really keep a savings account either, just sort of keep whatever money is left over in my checking account.

Debt: $13,983 ($6,183 for a student loan, which is down from like $18,000!!!; and $7,800 on my credit card, I know I know)

Paycheck Amount (1x/month): $3,788 (Danish taxes are insane!)

Pronouns: She/her



Monthly Expenses

Rent: $1,137 (for my share in a two-bed, two-bath apartment (total rent is $2,274, split with my boyfriend, S.) the only utility included in water *eye roll*)

Loans: $139 (started paying this amount when I was making less and have just never stopped, I try to pay more when I can)

Internet: $41 (paid for by me in full)

Electric: S. pays

Spotify: $14

Netflix: $9

Gym Membership: $36 (frozen since March due to COVID (dont know when gyms will open again))

ClassPass: $24 (I like to take classes here and there on the weekend)

Phone: $0 (paid for by my work)

NYTimes Subscription: $4

Lunch At Work: $86 (taken out of my paycheck for catered lunch every day)

Apple Care+: $9.99 (was suckered into this after purchasing a new phone and had to buy full price cause my old phone had the smallest of small cracks and therefore $0 trade-in value)

Apple Storage: $0.99

Pillow Sleep Tracking subscription: $2.75

Day One

6:30 a.m.  First alarm goes offnot today, Monday!

7:45 a.m.  Okay up for real this time! This week is the first week that everyone is back in the office since Denmark has started to slowly open up after Easter. AND ITS A SHORT WEEK, HALLELUJAH. For the first two weeks back in the office after Easter we did different team members for different shifts (odd vs. even days) and now were all going back to the office!! Exciting, anxiety-inducing, but mostly just happy to see my colleagues faces in-person  and lets face it, to put on real pants for the first time in weeks. Were still maintaining distance per government recommendation and cant eat together for a while but so far so good! I happily get ready and realize that if I dont start to haul ass Im going to be late!

Story continues

9:06 a.m.  Arrive mostly on-time. My work is pretty flexible in terms of hours. I try to arrive before 9 every day and usually stay until after 5 but if I come in a few minutes later than 9 thats okay. I would be actually on time if I didnt stop downstairs for my morning yogurt & granola  girls gotta eat! $1.16

12 p.m.  Lunchtime!! We have catered lunch every day in the office (American companies need to get in on this!) that is usually an amazing buffet of salads, smrrebrd (open-face sandwiches), a meat entree and a carb of some sort. Because of COVID, were now relegated to eating our pre-packaged lunches at our desk for the foreseeable future which makes me feel sad inside But thankful we even have an office to come back to and work to do while so many are struggling. As usual, lunch is delish! Grilled chicken and bulgar salad that I wolf down while browsing online for a diffuser.

12:45 p.m.  I may have gone a bit crazy online shoppingI get the diffuser, which I definitely needed (not), two new fun nail polish colors that remind me of spring, a metal nail file, and a detangling brush. $95

5 p.m.  Quitting time! One thing thats been challenging to get used to since moving to Denmark is that everyone bikes, EVERYWHERE. I was a sub-par biker at best in the states and now after being here for about a year now, I can report back that I.am still sub-par! That being said, Im happy that Im able to bike and dont have to be on public transport (public transport = germs galore). When Im home, S. preps us a lazy salad of kale, carrots, peas, corn, avocado, onion, green onion (cause regular onion wasnt enough according to him), cherry tomatoes, and cucumber. We also have sweet potato fries on the side because WHY NOT!

7 p.m.  After dinner, we park ourselves on the couch for our nightly routine of Netflix. Were currently watching Parks and Rec because S. has never seen it and is now obsessed! It gives us a nice break from Friends which we usually have on constant loop every night. #PIVVVVVOOOOOTTTT

11 p.m.  So tired I can barely keep my eyes open. Drag myself to the bathroom to shower, wash my face, floss, and brush. Over the last year, Ive gotten more into skincare (I used to be just a Dove Soap and moisturizer girl, which dont get me wrong did me wonders) and have branched out a bit more. My skin is a creature of habit, so when I find something that works well I just dont change it. I wash my face with African Black Soap (I like Shea Moistures brand), followed by Thayers (Rose Petal all the wayyy), Charlotte Tilbury Magic Serum, Origins Ginzing Eye Cream, and finish with Aveeno moisturizer. I resolve that I WILL workout before work tomorrow and plead with S. to push me out of bed when he hears my alarm. Goodnight!

Daily Total: $96.16

Day Two

6:30 a.m.  Ehhhhhits a no from me. I can work out after work and feel like I slept horribly so gonna choose sleep.

9:05  Same ole bike to work, yogurt and granola thang. $1.16

11:45 a.m.  Break from a wall of meetings to eat lunch. I have yet to run into a bad meal during lunchuntil today. TBH, I dont really know what it is but it looks like some type of meat in gravy with potatoes and is just a hard pass from me. Guess my luck has run out? Grab a banana and two Oreo cookies to hold me over. I somehow get the strongest craving for guacamole as Im eating!? Random, I know, but I roll with it and text S. that Im making guac as soon as Im home and that Ill pick up the stuff from the grocery store.

1 p.m.  Ending a meeting with one of my accounts and my boss suggests that we (myself and one of the art directors) record part of what we just presented to the client so we can share it on our company LinkedIn. My mouth says okay, but my brain is immediately dreading it because I HATE hearing my own voice when I speak.

4:45 p.m.  TIME FOR GUAC!! I leave work a bit early and hungry since I didnt eat my lunch today. Head to the grocery store thats downstairs from my office to pick up some tortilla chips, a jalapeno, raspberries, and some pre-made Aperol Spritz in a bottle (?!) that look interesting because if you dont get 20 other things at the grocery store did you even go? $18.67

5:15 p.m.  Bike home and quickly whip up the guac with two avocados, jalapeno, shallots (cause Im feeling fancy), salt, and pepper. We also pull out some leftover salsa we have on the fridge. S. is quite bemused/skeptical at the Aperol Spritz in a bottle but agrees to try it with me! Annnnnnndddd they are not great  really overly sweet. We cut it down with some regular sparkling water which makes it a smidge more drinkableonly a smidge though. I drink it anyway because #whynot. Guac is delicious and I want to make more but S. suggests dinner instead and I begrudgingly agree thats probably the right move.

7 p.m.  Another lazy kale salad from Monday. I promise I eat more exciting than this usually, but Ive been trying to be more mindful of my meals during the week instead of just mindlessly eating/snacking all the time  and also I ate about a pound of guacamole and chips.

11:45 p.m.  Mindlessly scrolling on various social media platforms after dinner and suddenly realize its almost 12! How did that happen!? Also its possible I spend wayyyy too much time on my phone. And by possible, I mean entirely accurate. Do my nightly routine (wash face and floss/brush) and decide to shower in the morning because Im suddenly exhausted. At least I managed to wash and brush \_()_/.

Daily Total: $19.83

Day Three

7:15 a.m.  Wake up to my actual alarm without hitting snooze (this happens about 2% of the time) to squeeze in a shower before work and have to leave a bit earlier today in order to make our all-hands meeting at 9. Also I take the extra time to wish my two friends a happy birthday and make some obligatory Insta story posts. After that, I get in the shower and am out the door by 8, a record!

9 a.m.  Get to work with plenty of time to spare so I leisurely park my bike. I should leave this early all the time, I think to myself while knowing that I will most definitely ignore that advice tomorrow morning. Also, no yogurt and granola today as were having croissants brought in for a farewell for our companys founder.

10 a.m.  All-hands meeting done and its the first one weve done in-person (awkwardly standing apart in our office kitchen) since weve all been back in the office. I didnt realize how much I missed my work colleagues until now! We have lots of laughs and some technical fails while trying to include some colleagues who are still working from home. After the all-hands, I grab a croissant the size of my head and chomp it down while chatting with two colleagues about plans for the upcoming long weekend. Tomorrow is Thursday, but Friday is a holiday in Denmark so its technically our Friday!

12:30 p.m.  Somehow I actually miss lunch today?? I guess its 0/2 for lunches. Rummage around to see what I can eat and there are leftover croissants from breakfast!! I grab one and lather butter and fresh raspberry jam on it and have that with a slice of cheese, a banana, and an apple. Not the most filling but it was delicious so I aint mad at it.

3 p.m.  Office coffee + two more Oreosits that time of day. I also decide that I want to surprise S. with a cute dinner date night tonight. I pre-order two pizzas to be delivered around 7. He will eat literally anything so I order one I know hell want (pepperoni and parma ham) and one that I want (classic cheese with extra Parmesan). $28.55

4:45 p.m.  Bike home and finally do a workout! Ive been having a lot of fun making up my own bodyweight HIIT workouts with random exercises that I can do at home during quarantine and realize that it makes working out about 100X more enjoyable. S. joins me as he usually does and we do three rounds. Afterward, I take what I consider a long shower (10 mins, LOL) Pizza arrives promptly at 7 and we inhale it in about two seconds with some rose we have in the fridge.

9:30 p.m.  After dinner, its the nightly routine of couch and Netflix. I snack on some fresh raspberries and cant stop talking about how these are like natures candy, even though a just had a metric ton of pizza. Both S. and I roll my eyes at me and rightfully so.

11 p.m.  After I floss/brush and more mindless social media scrolling + getting caught up on the news (a few weeks ago I started allowing myself only 20 minutes of news/articles every night and have seen my anxiety decrease tremendously since), I go to bed at a reasonable hour. Tomorrow is our Friday (technically Thursday).

Daily Total: $28.55

Day Four

7:15 a.m.  Alarm, snooze, repeat.

7:45 a.m.  Im up! I pride myself on being able to get ready in 15 minutes or less. I wear only three pieces of makeup every day (Charlotte Tilbury Legendary Lashes, Anastasia Brow Pencil, and very recently added in a very little eyeliner; Charlotte Tilbury Rock n Kohl; to help better define my lashes).

9 a.m.  Yogurt. Granola. You know the drill! $1.16

12:15 p.m.  Time is NOT MOVING. I grab lunch (a delicious bacon and ham quiche!!) to try to break up this snails pace of a day and catch-up on a bunch of Money Diaries while I eat. My favorite pastime is forgetting them for a few days and then reading all the new ones at once and laughing/commiserating with all of the commenters.

3 p.m.  Anddddd the beer has started to come out. Before COVID we had weekly Friday Bars where we all gather in our office kitchen and drink, chat, and eat snaxx. This usually starts around 2 every Friday and is fairly standard across most Danish offices (or so Ive heard from friends working elsewhere). Last Friday, I joined Friday bar and ended up drunk grocery shopping and then passing out on my couch until 11, soooo I pass this time as I have a few errands to run after work.

4 p.m.  Let the long weekend begin! The first thing I do is head to a local running store for a run test. Full disclosure: Im not a runner. AT ALL. But in January along with my pledge for more mindful eating, I wanted to get back into the rhythm of working out more than once every two weeks (looking at you, fall/winter). Running is something that I hate, until Im actually doing it. Its also something that S. and I can do together as well so planning to do at least two runs a week. The last run I went on I had horrible foot and ankle pain and realized that my shoes are 1) not running shoes and 2) offer less than zero support. After a quick run test (and not needing any insoles, hooray!!) I land on a pair of Nike Flyknit Infinity Reacts. These things run TIGHT. Im usually an 8 but I size up to a 9 so I can wear socks with them comfortably. They feel like Im running on clouds so I cant wait to take these out for a real run this weekend. $180

5:15 p.m.  Blissfully happy with my new shoes, I head off to the next errand  meeting S. at the grocery store. We decided to do a shop now since we suspect everything is going to be closed tomorrow due to the random, obscure national holiday. We get potatoes, avocado, tomatoes, milk, yogurt, frozen fries and hash browns, two packs of chicken thighs, cheddar cheese, sour cream, a baguette, apple juice, eggs, butter, and a few other random things. I also get six assorted ciders and S. picks up a six-pack of Tuborg IPAs. In case you missed it, Denmark is EXPENSIVE AF! Groceries are no exception but usually S. and I split this expense right down the middle. If there are more snacks/things that I want, I will just buy them myself and vice versa. It works for us! $45.50

6:30 p.m.  Get home and wipe down the groceries. Ive been doing this since quarantine and will continue doing it just to be on the safe side. Make yet another boring kale salad but also make some of the frozen french fries. S. and I eat together and settle in to watch an old but funny movie, Get Smart.

11:45 p.m.  Same nightly routine. Once Im done, I crawl into bed and open my phone. The first thing I see is a post from Shaun King about how Ahmaud Arberys 26th birthday wouldve been on Friday, May 8th. Im sure many have heard of this story more recently, but Ive been following it for a few months since it first popped up on Shauns page. It absolutely broke me, but I feel a little relief tonight reading that his murderers have finally be arrested. Though I keep in the back of my head, these folks only got arrested because of the uproar and this getting to mainstream media. Now we need a conviction. I knock out sometime around 12:30.

Daily Total: $226.66

Day Five

9:30 a.m.  Finally get to sleep in a bit! S. is already up and out of bed. I wake up in an amazing mood  its warm and sunny and feels like summer. I throw on some workout stuff determined to take out my new running shoes and get sidetracked by deep cleaning our bathroom. Im happy to do this as S. pretty much takes care of all of the day-to-day cleaning (dishes, daily sweeping/mopping, and laundry). Hes still on the job hunt after recently graduating with his MBA so hes happy to take care of the daily stuff while I work and I usually pick up the slack on the weekends.

11:30 a.m.  S. and I land ourselves into a massive fight. Weve been dating for just shy of a year and moved in together in January. That has changed our relationship A LOT. Mostly for the better, but since its still relatively new and the first time were both living with a partner, its hard to realize that there are some things you have to adjust since its not just you to think/worry about anymore. Also being quarantined together for weeks on end earlier in March and April has proven quite tough. We both definitely enjoyed having our alone time before all this COVID stuff so Im sure that hasnt helped things either. We have it out for the next half-hour just venting, but still trying to be respectful of one another.

12:30 p.m.  And that half-hour has turned into an hour but weve made up for now. S. decides that we need some fresh air and to do something together and I agree. We grab our bikes and running shoes and bike over to a nearby trail since its so beautiful out. For the next few hours we alternate between running (new shoes are a godsend!!) and walking. We eventually wander back to our bikes and make our way back home for some reallllyyy late breakfast that is actually a late lunch. On the way, we pass a few grocery stores and we were right! They are all closed for the holiday. Glad we went yesterday.

3 p.m.  Home, showered, and now prepping one of our standard weekend breakfast/brunch/lunch  pancakes and bacon. We believe weve found THE pancake recipe (NYT Every Day Pancakes if anyone is interested, the secret is to whip the egg whites and fold them into the batter!! So light and fluffy and delicious). We eat the food and I collapse on the couch into a nap while S. calls his mom back in LA. He immigrated to the states when he was 15 and his mom and uncles still reside in LA. I think he misses them a lot.

6:45 p.m.  Wake up from my nap in a panic as were meant to have S.s aunt and uncle who live here over for dinner at 7! I jump up and start prepping the food while S. starts to set the table and make sure the apartment is presentable. Im making a honey garlic chicken dish from Tasty (I scroll through this every night just adding recipes to my wish list), roasted balsamic broccoli and carrots with bacon, and freshly mashed potatoes. Its the first time Im making this chicken dish so Im a bit nervous at how it will turn out.

7 p.m.  S.s aunt and uncle arrive and the food is ready about an hour later. The chicken recipe is a hit! We eat and laugh about how S. tried to convince everyone he could hang our bedroom curtains. (Narrator: He definitely could not as we didnt have a drill, ladder or screws lol, we ended up having a wonderful neighbor come help us instead). S.s aunt brought dessert for us and its three, YES THREE, different types of ice cream.

10:30 p.m.  Aunt and uncle leave and S. and I consider going to meet a friend for her birthday but decide against it and just watch Netflix instead. Even though I took a nap, Im still super exhausted for some reason. It must be all the activity from today. I brush, floss, and am out like a light by midnight.

Daily Total: $0

Day Six

10 a.m.  Wake up at a normal hour again (7 is not normal, fight me on this), and feels like Sunday because I had yesterday off. Realize its Saturday and figuratively jump for joy!

11:30 a.m.  S. and I head out to Spar to do another grocery shop for some essentials  chocolate chip cookie fixings. We pick up brown sugar, milk and dark chocolate bars, sparkling water, coconut oil, olive oil, bananas, strawberries, kale, and some peach gummies for good measure. We bike back home (with the grocery bags on my bike since S. has a racing bike) and find out one of the bag handles ripped while I was riding but didnt totally burst. Thanking my lucky stars we didnt lose our chocolate chip cookie stuff in the middle of the street. $46

12:45 p.m.  Back home and making another weekend breakfast/brunch/lunch staple; bacon, runny over-easy eggs (S. calls these over and outs and I laugh every time), avocado, and one mini hash brown each. Eat our food and then lounge around a bit until S. decides he must go jump in the water right at this moment. Its another beautiful day so I suit up (sunglasses and flips) and go with him to just watch and hang out on the dock. I dont jump in because its still not THAT warm here but to each their own. S. comes out and is shivering for a good 10 minutes before warming up in the sun.

2:30 p.m.  Come back upstairs  our apartment sits right on a massive canal and is my favorite thing ever  and whip up the cookie dough. Another Tasty recipe  Chocolate Chip Cookies: Granny Style. While the cookies are doing their thing, my friend, V., texts me that since its so beautiful she wants to get together. I invite her over so we can hang at the dock and drink some cider. She brings wine and I bring down cookies and ciders for us to split. We find a spot sort of away from other people and lounge in the sun for a few hours.

6:30 p.m.  V. and I say our goodbyes with a vow to use the new grills that were just installed by our apartment next weekend. I head back upstairs to make some food for S.  sweet potato bowls (roasted sweet potatoes, sauteed kale with loooots of garlic, sausage, carrots, white onion, rice noodles, plus a generous topping of sriracha and soy sauce. We eat while we watch Friends.

11:45 p.m.  I completely pass out after dinner, oops. Definitely not going to sleep at all tonight. I jump in the shower and do my face wash. Im a little peckish so S. makes us some homemade popcorn with coconut oil, butter and salt. He brings it to bed and we watch more Friends before falling asleep sometime around 3.

Daily Total: $46

Day Seven

11 a.m.  Up but refusing to move so I just lounge in bed on Instagram scrolling my life away (only slightly kidding) and making a new HIIT workout for today. S. gets up and makes us some coffee  bless him. We do the workout for an hour and then I shower while he starts to make the same breakfast from yesterday (were creatures of habit when it comes to breakfast food). I finish up while he showers and we eat together once hes out. I also place an order from IKEA and from another home store here for a few things (velour hangers, rolling pin, sieve, a few more serving dishes on sale, and in-shower hooks) $68

2 p.m.  Lazy Sunday indeed! Weve done little more than lay on the couch and eat. I get a few scoops of the ice cream from Friday with one of the cookies I made and its HEAVEN. I eat it while I chat with my mom and wish her a Happy Mothers Day. She came to visit in March just before all the lockdown stuff, but that honestly feels like a year ago now. She also tells me the flowers and balloons I ordered for her have not arrived yet. Ill give it a few hours before I start panicking and emailing customer service.

5 p.m.  Yesterday night I saw another recipe I wanted to try three-ingredient cheesy drop biscuits. It seems easy enough and we have all the ingredients so I make those and dump them in the oven. While theyre cooking, I try to be proactive and figure out what Im wearing to work tomorrow. Ughhhh cant believe its already Monday again so soon.

6 p.m.  Biscuits are out of the oven and of course Ive already tasted one and theyre delicious!! Will definitely make again but maybe will use a bit less salt next time. These taste almost like the cheddar bay biscuits from Red Lobster, if you know you know. Prep another lazy kale salad.

8 p.m.  Do a quick wash and go to test out my new diffuser. I did a big chop about a year and a half ago and have kept my hair pretty short on the sides and back and much longer/curlier on the top. I really want to grow out my hair but Im at that awkward stage where the top twists and curls fine and is SUPER long but the back and sides look an absolute mess. To remedy this I start looking into flat irons to try to do something a bit different with my hair while it grows out. I find one I like and order it along with some freeze hold gel for my edges and heat protectant spray. $58

10:30 p.m.  Brush and floss and decide NOW is the time I want to paint my nails. I gather my kit (clippers, file and polish) and head to my room. I turn on Season two of Dead to Me (!!!!) and paint away. Didnt entirely think this through since I have to now sit up until my nails dry.

11:45 p.m.  Nails are dry! I head to the kitchen to find S. cleaning the kitchen. Oops was gonna do that before I painted my nails but got sidetracked. I lay back down and turn on Friends to try to lull me to sleep. S. finishes up the kitchen and comes to bed. He goes to brush, floss, and watch the news on his phone (his nightly routine) and I finally zonk out around 12:45.

Daily Total: $126

COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic. Go to the CDC website for the latest information on symptoms, prevention, and other resources.

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A Week In Tri-Cities, WA, On A $55,400 Salary

A Week In San Jose, CA, On A $135,000 Salary

A Week In New York, NY, On A $105,000 Salary
There are 102 candidate vaccines being explored as a means of ending the COVID-19 pandemic, as of April 30. Eight of these have already made it to clinical trials in humans, and another 94 are in the pre-clinical evaluation stage.

These candidates also fall into eight different categories of vaccine development strategy that are being explored. While it still doesnt guarantee success, this is in effect the biological equivalent of hedging our bets in the hope that one of the strategies will pay off.

But if and when a successful vaccine is found, we still have to manufacture enough of it to immunise huge numbers of people all around the world. And how long this will take, and what is involved, will depend on which strategy is found to work, because different vaccines are made in different ways.

Despite arguments about lack of preparedness concerning PPE and testing, the UK has been on the front foot when it comes to identifying suitable candidate vaccines. It is leading the charge to ramp up production, having invested more than any other country in doing so, according to the health secretary, Matt Hancock.

The UKs two leading candidate vaccines, being developed by the University of Oxford and Imperial College London respectively, both use very different approaches that were already under investigation in the lab for other diseases.

Oxfords candidate, ChAdOx1 nCoV-19, uses a genetically modified chimpanzee adenovirus as a vector to carry the genetic sequence of a protein from the COVID-19 coronavirus to the human body. The body can then learn to recognise the coronavirus and start producing antibodies to fight it. This is the same technique the team previously developed for the closely related Mers coronavirus, which showed promise in animal and early-stage human testing.

The Imperial candidate, in contrast, is whats known as a self-amplifying RNA vaccine. It is designed to induce muscle cells to produce the coronavirus protein, which then stimulates the immune system to produce the antibodies.

Usually vaccine development takes years, but human clinical trials for the Oxford vaccine candidate are underway, just three months after the genetic sequence of the coronavirus was released for study. This is thanks to a specialist adenovirus manufacturing platform adapted as part of work by the EPSRC UCL-Oxford Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research Hub (Vax Hub), as well as next-generation gene sequencing methods that have enabled the team to proceed at breakneck speed.

Pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca has announced it will develop, manufacture and distribute the vaccine (if its successful) around the world. But to do this, it will need to find a way to scale up production without critically affecting the supply of other vital vaccines.

Well need millions of doses of COVID-19 vaccine without affecting other vital vaccines. didesign021/Shutterstock

Global manufacturing facilities are adept at producing millions of vaccine doses against influenza, measles and polio. They have strategies in place to step up production at times of increased demand, such as for the annual winter flu season. But we are in unprecedented times, and the global demand for a safe and effective coronavirus vaccine will be on a scale never before seen, likely resulting in key production and distribution bottlenecks.

Vaccine production requires complex manufacturing processes involving the production of living organisms that, in turn, generate the genetically-modified virus on which the vaccine is based. And we must get the manufacturing right. These vaccines will be administered to healthy people to generate immunity to the virus. Any faults would risk their safety and a long-term loss of public confidence.

But there is cause for cautious optimism. As we await the clinical trial outcomes for the Oxford vaccine, behind the scenes there has been a flurry of activity to adapt existing manufacturing technologies and processes to make the adenovirus vector it relies on.

Alongside AstraZeneca, established UK-based viral vector production companies such as Oxford Biomedica and Cobra Biologics have adapted their manufacturing sites. The UK government has launched a vaccine taskforce to coordinate scale-up efforts, funded a 14 million industry-led vaccine manufacturing group and fast-tracked a 65 million Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC).

Vaccine manufacturing process

The manufacturing process for the Oxford vaccine will begin by encoding the coronavirus surface protein into the adenovirus vector. Producer cells, usually human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells, will then be used as mini-factories to produce the vector particles. The producer cells will be grown at scale in a bioreactor, a vessel that tightly controls the environmental conditions to optimise cell growth.

The cells will then be put through a series of steps to purify and concentrate the final adenovirus vector, including filtration and centrifugation (spinning it very fast in order to separate different particles). Finally, the solution will be formulated into a usable product and kept stable by storing it between 2C and 8C.

However, the final concentration of the solution can vary significantly, and it is the lack of an effective manufacturing process to resolve this problem that limits current production on a mass scale. This will be the significant challenge AstraZeneca will face in translating the lab-based Oxford process to something akin to industrial manufacturing.

Importantly, the groundwork for this has already been established by UK engineers and scientists. Sustained, flexible research funding for vaccine manufacture will be critical to mitigate the impact of this coronavirus and prepare for future outbreaks.

Of course, all these efforts will only come into play if the Oxford vaccine (or potentially another in the same category) is found to work. Other vaccine candidates, such as that being developed by Imperial, will require a substantially different manufacturing process. In these unprecedented times, the worlds vaccine experts will have to work with unprecedented speed and innovation to deliver a way to save potentially millions of lives and start returning society to normal.

Qasim Rafiq, Associate Professor of Cell and Gene Therapy Bioprocess Engineering, UCL and Martina Micheletti, Professor of Bioprocess Fluid Dynamics, co-Director of the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Hub,, UCL

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

https://theconversation.com/javascripts/lib/content_tracker_hook.js
Excessive red tape could hold back Australia's economic recovery from the coronavirus downturn, researchers and politicians have told Daily Mail Australia.

On Friday Queensland and New South Wales opened pubs and cafes in a bid to kickstart the economy - but a strict numbers cap of 10 meant many decided to stay shut.

Leisure centres also opened, allowing people to swim in a pool for the first time in weeks, but with a hefty list of restrictions including a cap on numbers and bans on spectators, casual bookings and even showering.

Leisure centres opened, allowing people to swim in a pool for the first time since lockdown in NSW on Friday. Pictured: Charlton Pool in North Manly

On Friday Queensland and New South Wales opened pubs and cafes in a bid to kickstart the economy. Pictured: Speedos cafe in North Bondi

The prohibitive rules are emblematic of excessive regulation in Australia, according to NSW One Nation leader Mark Latham, who believes too much red tape could harm the nation's recovery.

'Our country has become a dictatorship of the health bureaucrats,' Mr Latham told Daily Mail Australia on Friday, referring to public health officials who recommend the coronavirus restrictions.

'We have never heard of these people before but now they have power to control our movements, activities and social life,' he said.

Coronavirus lockdowns are forecast to push the unemployment rate to 10 per cent in June, meaning 1.4million Australians will be out of work.

Typically a rise in unemployment brings increases in suicide, poverty and substance abuse.

Two men observe social distancing protocols whilst having a conversation at Bill and Tony's cafe in Sydney's east

Churches were also allowed to be reopen on Friday with cleaners seen disinfecting handrails outside

'It's time for us to realise that many more people are going to die from this recession than the virus,' Mr Latham said.

'We're getting to the point now where the cure is worse than the disease.'

Mr Latham believes that some restrictions are necessary to keep Australians safe but that current rules in the eastern states are too stringent when other states have relaxed further.

'I can see the 10 people rule being helpful in country towns but many pubs will simply not be able to open because they would incur too many costs,' he said.

More people are going to die from this recession than the virus NSW One Nation Leader Mark Latham

'It's a token measure and it's not going to have much impact. We need a more reasonable number than 10 that will allow pubs to turn a dollar and get people back to work.

'Of course, social distancing should apply but for a bistro that can fit 500, ten customers is simply not enough.'

Meanwhile, Victoria's Labor government - the most hardline in the country on coronavirus rules - has kept cafes and pubs from opening at all.

This has infuriated Opposition MPs who are demanding Premier Daniel Andrews allows more Victorians to get back to work.

James Newbury, Liberal MP for Brighton, told Daily Mail Australia: 'The states across Australia have eased restrictions and allowed businesses to open their doors - but in Victoria, Premier Daniel Andrews is keeping mum and dad small businesses shut.

'This is damaging business viability, stopping people getting back to work, and may lead to a deeper recession in Victoria.'

Coffee time: Two men take a seat outside a cafe as they enjoy a hot drink on Friday morning

Patience: Customers were all rugged up as they waited in line for a cafe in Bondi on Friday

Outspoken Liberal MP for Kew, Tim Smith, added: 'In Victoria, with control freak wowsers like Dictator Dan running the show, you can't even sit down for a coffee, let alone a beer.'

Michael O'Brien, the leader of Victorian Liberal Party, has also been calling for measures to help business get back on track, including a reduction of the payroll tax.

These calls for a freer economy are echoed by researchers at the Institute of Public Affairs who want a raft of wider policy reforms to help businesses get back up and running.

Australia has one of the highest company tax rates and minimum wages in the world as well as strict laws on trading hours for liquor stores, bars and nightclubs, especially in Sydney where lockout laws have all but killed the city's once-vibrant after-dark economy.

The IPA has estimated that red tape costs the Australian economy $176billion a year, or around 10 per cent of GDP, in forgone economic output.

Australia has a reputation for being a nation with lots of rules and regulations. Pictured: Rodd Point in Sydney

Two young women sit outside the Eighty Ate cafe with their dog Hercules in North Sydney after cafes were re-opened

Federal treasurer Josh Frydenberg last week suggested cutting company tax from 30 per cent and other reforms will be considered to stimulate growth.

'What we are doing is looking at how can we continue to compete for capital. Tax rates, flexible work places, infrastructure, deregulation, are all key factors,' he said in a speech on 6 May.

Already during the coronavirus crisis some strict regulations have been lifted to give businesses a boost, such a relaxing trading hours for supermarkets which were allowed to open over Easter and Anzac Day.

'If such rules can be removed without issue it begs the question why they were there in the first place,' said IPA research fellow Dara Macdonald.

Vince Bird swims in a dedicated lane outdoors at Boy Charlton Pool in North Manly

Australia has one of the highest corporate tax rates in the developed world. Pictured: Flight Centre in Brisbane

'Red tape is detrimental to our economy in good times, but in turbulent times such as these excessive regulations and illogical bureaucracy becomes unconscionable.'

Ms Macdonald said pubs and restaurants should be allowed to host more people as long as social distancing is followed.

'Many businesses simply won't open if they are forced to cap numbers of customers regardless of how many people can safely be served.

'There is no reason why a restaurant with table service can't serve as many people as they can fit in the venue at a 1.5 metre distance apart,' she said.

Ms Macdonald said businesses, not bureaucrats, are best-placed to make decisions on how they can safely serve their customers.

'Governments must start to ease the lockdown measures, cut red tape, reduce taxes, and simplify and liberalise industrial relations to get Australians back into work and small businesses operating again,' she said.

On the other hand, the federal Labor Party has argued the economy is less important than protecting Australians from the virus.

'You need to deal with the health emergency first, because by doing that, you will have less economic consequences of the health crisis,' said leader Anthony Albanese.

Similarly, the Business Council of Australia wants to see the economy thrive once more but believes regulations should be respected because health concerns come before the concerns of businesses.

'There can be no trade-off between the health, social and economic recovery,' chief executive Jennifer Westacott said.

A Business Council spokesman told Daily Mail Australia: 'Our focus is not on whether regulations stay in place but rather on how businesses can work best within the guidelines.'

The Northern Territory, which has only had 30 cases of the virus, today opened pubs and clubs with no limit on numbers.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian said today that she was 'looking at opportunities' to relax rules further if businesses present a good case and the health advice allows.

'I don't want people thinking about step two or step three, there will be multiple steps. When we are ready to move on something we will do it.

'If Chief Health Officer Dr Chant thinks something put to her is safe then government will consider allowing more activity in that particular industry. Our focus has to be on getting jobs back.'

Residents in the Northern Territory (pictured) were allowed back to the pub in unlimited numbers today

'We've done well in controlling the health issues but of course we've not done well in dealing with the economic consequences.'

Asked why venues cannot open to more people, the premier said that would increase the risk of the virus spreading.

'We don't want the industry's reputation destroyed, if one or two people spread the virus,' she said.

'Large gatherings are the biggest risk to people getting the virus. That's why we have to move in steps forward.'
SUZHOU, China, and ROCKVILLE, Md., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ascentage Pharma (6855.HK), a globally focused, clinical-stage biotechnology company engaged in developing novel therapies for cancers, chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and age-related diseases, today announced that the latest research progress of the company will be presented at the 2020 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting. Because of concerns about the current coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, this year's AACR annual meeting is being held in two sessions in a virtual format. The first session was April 27-28, and the second session, in which Asentage Pharma is set to present, will be June 22-24.

As the most comprehensive and critically important basic-science cancer research meeting in the world, the AACR annual congress covers the latest discoveries across the spectrum of cancer research.

Ascentage Pharma will report six research results involving multiple cancer types in poster presentations during the meeting. Among them, APG-3526, the company's newest drug candidate, will be presented for the first time.

"The research results we're presenting at AACR represent our further progress in research and development aimed to address unmet clinical needs. The results provide scientific rationale for exploring combination therapies in different mechanisms of action with drug candidates in our apoptosis-targeting pipeline, including APG-2575, APG-115 and APG-1252," said Dr. Yifan Zhai, Chief Medical Officer of Ascentage Pharma. "Combination therapy is playing an increasingly important role in cancer treatment. We hope to make more research and development progress and benefit patients sooner."

Development of APG-3526 as a novel and highly efficacious

MCL-1 inhibitor

Abstract: #2349

Background: MCL-1 is an important anti-death BCL-2 family protein and plays a key role in blocking apoptosis in cancer cells. The MCL-1 gene is located in one of the most frequently amplified loci in various hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. MCL-1 overexpression is implicated as a resistance factor for multiple therapies including widely prescribed microtubule-targeted agents for breast cancers. Therefore, MCL-1 is an attractive therapeutic target for the treatment of cancers. This study explored the chemical synthesis optimization and both the potent antiproliferative and antitumor activity of the lead preclinical compound APG-3526 using multiple in vitro and xenograft models.

MCL-1 is an important anti-death BCL-2 family protein and plays a key role in blocking apoptosis in cancer cells. The MCL-1 gene is located in one of the most frequently amplified loci in various hematologic malignancies and solid tumors. MCL-1 overexpression is implicated as a resistance factor for multiple therapies including widely prescribed microtubule-targeted agents for breast cancers. Therefore, MCL-1 is an attractive therapeutic target for the treatment of cancers. This study explored the chemical synthesis optimization and both the potent antiproliferative and antitumor activity of the lead preclinical compound APG-3526 using multiple in vitro and xenograft models. Results: We have discovered the novel and highly potent MCL-1 selective inhibitor APG-3526, which displays clinically relevant pharmacokinetic properties and elicits potent antiproliferative and antitumor activities via disrupting MCL-1 complex and triggering caspase activation, especially in MCL-1 driven MM models. These results support APG-3526 as a promising MCL-1 inhibitor for further clinical development.

APG-2575, a clinical stage BCL-2 selective inhibitor, sensitizes estrogen receptor-positive breast cancers to

standard therapies in the preclinical models

Abstract: #3472

#3472 Background: Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with at least four categories according to the presence or absence of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression. In ER  breast cancer, anti-estrogen therapies with tamoxifen, or CDK4/6 plus aromatase inhibitors, remain the standard endocrine therapies, whereas the combination of CDK4/6-targeted therapy plus fulvestrant (an ER degrader) follows when the disease progresses on the hormonal therapy. However, drug resistance to the current therapies frequently emerges. Developing more effective treatments becomes an urgent need. Among four subsets of breast cancer, ER breast cancer exhibits the highest BCL-2 expression. Thus, inhibition of BCL-2 which triggers apoptosis of cancer cells may become an effective therapy synergizes the current therapies. APG-2575 is a BCL-2 selective inhibitor currently in clinical trials in patients with hematologic malignancies. Here, in preclinical xenograft models of ER + breast cancer in mice, we evaluated whether APG-2575 enhanced the sensitivity to tamoxifen or CDK4/6-targeted (i.e., palbociclib or palbociclib plus fulvestrant) therapy.

Breast cancer is a heterogeneous disease with at least four categories according to the presence or absence of estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), and human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) expression. In ER breast cancer, anti-estrogen therapies with tamoxifen, or CDK4/6 plus aromatase inhibitors, remain the standard endocrine therapies, whereas the combination of CDK4/6-targeted therapy plus fulvestrant (an ER degrader) follows when the disease progresses on the hormonal therapy. However, drug resistance to the current therapies frequently emerges. Developing more effective treatments becomes an urgent need. Among four subsets of breast cancer, ER breast cancer exhibits the highest BCL-2 expression. Thus, inhibition of BCL-2 which triggers apoptosis of cancer cells may become an effective therapy synergizes the current therapies. APG-2575 is a BCL-2 selective inhibitor currently in clinical trials in patients with hematologic malignancies. Here, in preclinical xenograft models of ER breast cancer in mice, we evaluated whether APG-2575 enhanced the sensitivity to tamoxifen or CDK4/6-targeted (i.e., palbociclib or palbociclib plus fulvestrant) therapy. Results: We demonstrated that Combining APG-2575 with tamoxifen or palbociclib therapies substantially enhanced antitumor activity and overcomes tamoxifen resistance in the preclinical models of ER+ breast cancer, suggesting a novel strategy for the clinical development of BCL-2 inhibitors in ER+ breast cancers.

Combination of BCL-2/BCL-xL dual inhibitor APG-1252 and chemotherapeutics overcomes resistance to osimertinib in EGFR mutant NSCLC in preclinical models

Abstract: #3631

#3631 Background: Osimertinib (AZD9291) is the first-line treatment for EGFR -mutated non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, the majority of patients inevitably develop resistance due to de novo genomic abnormalities, such as C797S mutation, EGFR exon 20 insertion, MET amplification and other unknown mechanisms. Hence, effective therapies to overcome acquired resistance are urgently needed. Inhibition of BCL-2/BCL-xL has been reported to enhance apoptosis in EGFR-TKI resistant cells with low sensitivity to EGFR inhibition. In this study, we evaluated whether the combination of a dual BCL-2/BCL-xL inhibitor APG-1252 and chemotherapeutics could overcome osimertinib resistance in preclinical xenograft models.

Osimertinib (AZD9291) is the first-line treatment for -mutated non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC); however, the majority of patients inevitably develop resistance due to de novo genomic abnormalities, such as C797S mutation, EGFR exon 20 insertion, MET amplification and other unknown mechanisms. Hence, effective therapies to overcome acquired resistance are urgently needed. Inhibition of BCL-2/BCL-xL has been reported to enhance apoptosis in EGFR-TKI resistant cells with low sensitivity to EGFR inhibition. In this study, we evaluated whether the combination of a dual BCL-2/BCL-xL inhibitor APG-1252 and chemotherapeutics could overcome osimertinib resistance in preclinical xenograft models. Results: Combination therapy with APG-1252 and cisplatin or docetaxel exhibited synergistic antitumor activity. The APG-1252 plus docetaxel combination achieved 100% tumor partial regression (PR). Similar results were demonstrated in a patient-derived xenograft (PDX) tumor model derived from an osimertinib-resistant patient with NSCLC harboring 19del-T790M-C797S mutation. Furthermore, the combinations also exhibited enhanced antitumor activity in an osimertinib-resistant PDX model that the resistant mechanism remained unknown. In summary, these results suggest that the combination treatment with APG-1252 and chemotherapeutics can overcome acquired resistance to osimertinib and the combination deserves further clinical evaluations.

Synergy of tyrosine kinase inhibitor HQP1351 and MDM2-p53 antagonist, APG-115, in preclinical models of FLT3 mutant and TP53 wild-type acute myeloid leukemia

Abstract: #3636

#3636 Background: HQP1351 is a novel, orally bioavailable multikinase inhibitor targeting BCR-ABL, KIT, and FLT3. Currently, HQP1351 is in phase II clinical trials in relapsed and refractory chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients by targeting BCR-ABL. Besides, HQP1351 inhibits both wild-type and mutant FLT3 in kinase binding assay. APG-115 is another clinical stage, small molecule MDM2 antagonist. In the present study, we explored the antitumor effect of the combination of HQP1351 and APG-115, and the molecular mechanism in FLT3-ITD and TP53 wild-type acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in the preclinical setting.

HQP1351 is a novel, orally bioavailable multikinase inhibitor targeting BCR-ABL, KIT, and FLT3. Currently, HQP1351 is in phase II clinical trials in relapsed and refractory chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) patients by targeting BCR-ABL. Besides, HQP1351 inhibits both wild-type and mutant in kinase binding assay. APG-115 is another clinical stage, small molecule MDM2 antagonist. In the present study, we explored the antitumor effect of the combination of HQP1351 and APG-115, and the molecular mechanism in and wild-type acute myeloid leukemia (AML) in the preclinical setting. Results: HQP1351 alone exhibited potent antiproliferative activity in FLT3-ITD-mutant and TP53 wild-type human AML cell lines, with nanomolar IC 50 values. In vivo, HQP1351 single agent demonstrated significant antitumor activity evidenced by a markedly reduction of tumor burden and prolonged survival in mice. The activity was enhanced when HQP1351 was combined with APG-115. The combined treatment synergistically downregulated p-FLT3, p-ERK, p-STAT5 and antiapoptotic protein MCL-1, and thus enhanced antitumor effects. Taken together, our data provide scientific rationale for clinical development of the combination of HQP1351 and APG-115 in patients with FLT3-ITD-mutant and TP53-wild-type AML.

Therapeutic potential of IAP inhibitor APG-1387 in combination with PARP- or MEK-targeted therapy, or chemotherapy in pancreatic cancer

Abstract: #3673

#3673 Background: Pancreatic cancers are notoriously difficult to treat. While poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and mitogen/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MEK) inhibitors are making progresses in the clinical development, standard chemotherapy, especially paclitaxel protein-bound particles (Abraxane O ) in combination with gemcitabine, remains as the first line in pancreatic cancer treatment. To further explore the targeted patient populations for APG-1387, a genomic biomarker guided avatar mouse trial (n=2) using pancreatic cancer patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) was conducted to evaluate the combination with PARP inhibitor olaparib in PDXs carrying BRCA1/2 mutations, MEK inhibitor trametinib in PDXs carrying KRAS mutations, or gemcitabine plus abraxane in PDXs with various mutation background.

Pancreatic cancers are notoriously difficult to treat. While poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARP) and mitogen/extracellular signal-regulated kinase (MEK) inhibitors are making progresses in the clinical development, standard chemotherapy, especially paclitaxel protein-bound particles (Abraxane ) in combination with gemcitabine, remains as the first line in pancreatic cancer treatment. To further explore the targeted patient populations for APG-1387, a genomic biomarker guided avatar mouse trial (n=2) using pancreatic cancer patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) was conducted to evaluate the combination with PARP inhibitor olaparib in PDXs carrying mutations, MEK inhibitor trametinib in PDXs carrying mutations, or gemcitabine plus abraxane in PDXs with various mutation background. Results: The results suggest that APG-1387 is promising in pancreatic cancer treatment, ascribing to its potential synergistic antitumor effect by combining with either PARP inhibitors in BRCA1/2 mutant or MEK inhibitors in KRAS mutant pancreatic cancers. In the patients resistant to the above combinations, the combination with the standard therapy may be explored. Overall, the preclinical study provides the scientific rationale for the future clinical development of these combinations in patients with pancreatic cancer and distinct genomic alterations.

Co-targeting BCL-xL and HER2 high expression to overcome apoptosis blockade in gastric cancer

Abstract: #5901

#5901 Background: Gastric cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in the East Asia population. The five-year survival rate is approximately 20% globally. The analysis of gene expression data suggests that anti-apoptotic protein BCL-xL may be the oncogenic driver in gastric cancer as its expression levels are much higher than BCL-2. In this study, we investigated if a clinical stage dual BCL-2/BCL-xL inhibitor APG-1252 would elicit therapeutic activity and associated mechanisms using a panel of gastric cancer patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models. Additionally, we explored if the combination with HER2 inhibition could enhance the antitumor activity in HER2 gastric cancer models.

Gastric cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in the population. The five-year survival rate is approximately 20% globally. The analysis of gene expression data suggests that anti-apoptotic protein BCL-xL may be the oncogenic driver in gastric cancer as its expression levels are much higher than BCL-2. In this study, we investigated if a clinical stage dual BCL-2/BCL-xL inhibitor APG-1252 would elicit therapeutic activity and associated mechanisms using a panel of gastric cancer patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models. Additionally, we explored if the combination with HER2 inhibition could enhance the antitumor activity in HER2 gastric cancer models. Results: The results demonstrate the on-target antitumor activity of

APG-1252, the potential of BCL-xLhigh as a predictive biomarker, and the resistance mechanism conferred by MCL-1. Furthermore, the data provide a scientific rationale for the combined therapy with BCL-xL and HER2 inhibitors to achieve better clinical outcomes in a subset of HER2 gastric cancers.

About Ascentage Pharma

Ascentage Pharma (6855.HK) is a globally focused, clinical-stage biotechnology company engaged in developing novel therapies for cancers, chronic hepatitis B (CHB), and age-related diseases. The company focuses on developing therapeutics that inhibit protein-protein interactions to restore apoptosis, or programmed cell death. On October 28, 2019, Ascentage Pharma was listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited.

Ascentage Pharma has built a pipeline of eight clinical drug candidates, including a novel, highly potent Bcl-2/Bcl-xL inhibitor, as well as candidates aimed at IAP and MDM2-p53 pathways, and next-generation tyrosine kinase inhibitors. The company is conducting more than 30 Phase I/II clinical trials to evaluate the eight drug candidates in the United States, Australia, and China.

Forward-Looking Statements

The forward-looking statements made in this article relate only to the events or information as of the date on which the statements are made in this article. Except as required by law, we undertake no obligation to update or revise publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, after the date on which the statements are made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. You should read this article completely and with the understanding that our actual future results or performance may be materially different from what we expect. In this article, statements of, or references to, our intentions or those of any of our Directors or our Company are made as of the date of this article. Any of these intentions may alter in light of future development.

SOURCE Ascentage Pharma
The New York State Canal Corporation today announced that much of the 524-mile Barge Canal System will open for through navigation of the locks by July 4 as maintenance and construction projects are set to resume on a regional basis under the NY Forward Reopening plan.

Canal Corporation crews and contractors will mobilize to work sites in the Capital Region, Mohawk Valley, Central NY, Finger Lakes, and Western NY regions as those areas reopen, the Canal Corp. announced on its website. Maintenance work that needs to be completed at specific Canal facilities varies by location and locks along the Erie, Champlain, Oswego, and Cayuga-Seneca Canals will open for passage in a staggered fashion.

Shane Mahar, a Canal Corporation spokesman, noted that Lock 0-7 in the city of Oswego will not be opened by July 4, though, as the lock is in the third year of a multi-million renovation project

It will come on line as quickly as possible after July 4, he said.

He added that Lock E-23 in Brewerton, one of the busiest in the entire canal system, will be open by July 4 as will most other locks in the Central New York and Finger Lakes areas.

Mahar said at this point locks in the Capital and Western New York regions will be open as soon as these areas meet the metric to warrant opening under the New York Pause criteria.

The bottom line, he said, is the entire lock system will be opening in segments and the Canal Corporations plan is to have the entire system open to through navigation sometime this summer.

New Yorks canal system includes the Erie Canal, Champlain Canal, Oswego Canal and Cayuga/Seneca canals.

Opening day for the system was supposed to be May 15. However, following Gov. Andrew Cuomos economic pause order, all off-season maintenance and repair work on eight different locks in the system was halted. Most state Canal Corporation workers were sent home March 17 as nonessential personnel.

Pre-season maintenance pump-outsat eight different locks along the system were suspended until further notice. A winter maintenance pump is an operation during which Canal Corporation crews do on the working parts of the lock, i.e. valves, gates, electrical components and concrete. The time it takes to finish the work varies by lock.

Announcements regarding specific lock or regional openings will be communicated through the Canal Corporations Notice to Mariners notification program available at www.canals.ny.gov.

The following is the tentative opening schedule of sections of the canal

Capital Region  NY Forward Reopening Date TBD

 Erie Canal from Lock E-2 in Waterford to Lock E-9 in Rotterdam

 Champlain Canal from Lock C-1 in Waterford to Lock C-12 in Whitehall

Mohawk Valley Region  Locks opening in phases, targeted for between July 4th & August 10th

 Erie Canal Lock E-10 in Cranesville through Sylvan Beach at Oneida Lake

Central NY Region  Locks targeted for opening by July 4th

 Erie Canal from Oneida Lake to Lock E-25 in Mays Point

 Oswego Canal  except Lock O-7 in Oswego

Finger Lakes Region  Locks targeted for opening by July 4th

 Erie Canal from Lock E-25 in Mays Point to Locks E-34/35 in Lockport  except Lock E-26 in Clyde

 Cayuga  Seneca Canal  except Locks CS-2/3 in Seneca Falls

Western NY Region  NY Forward Reopening Date TBD

 Erie Canal Locks E-34/35 in Lockport through Tonawanda

The Canal Corporation noted as maintenance and construction work commences, most boaters, paddlers, and anglers can access sections of the canal system for recreational use today. Mariners are advised that some sections of the canal system will have reduced water levels until such time as the Canal Corporation completes its projects.

Mahar noted that boaters who get on sections of the canal should be aware that are navigation aids (buoys) are currently not in place, but will be installed as the sections in each region open.

He said much of the Mohawk River is currently down in regard to its water level. He said that dams on waterways that feed into the river and normally raise the level for bigger boats each year will be lifted in weeks to come to bring the water level up to summer levels.

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BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

Trend:

Some restrictions remained in force despite the softening of the special quarantine regime in connection with the current sanitary and epidemiological situation in Azerbaijan, the Operational Headquarters under Azerbaijani Cabinet of Ministers told Trend on May 15.

The following restrictions remain in force in Azerbaijan:

- suspension of entry to and exit from the territory of the country by vehicles and planes, except for the cargo transportation;

- a ban on entry to and exit from Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, Lankaran and the Absheron district except for special vehicles, including ambulances, emergency and rescue vehicles, as well as a ban on passenger transportation by vehicles and planes between other cities and districts of the country.
LOUISVILLE, Ky.  Sarah Patrick delivered a healthy baby boy at Baptist Health Louisville over Mother's Day weekend, but the circumstances weren't exactly typical.

For one, she gave birth on the pavement outside the hospital after she and her husband frantically tried to get inside the facility but were met with locked doors.

And in a sign of these pandemic-defined times, her husband, David Patrick, used a face mask to bind the umbilical cord.

In the early hours of May 9, Sarah told her husband that her contractions were a sign that it was time to go to the hospital.

Leaving their two other children at home with grandparents, David and Sarah rushed to Baptist Health Louisville at 3 a.m.

As they tried to enter the Women First pavilion at the hospital, the first set of automatic doors opened, but then the second set wouldn't budge.

"We had no idea why, and it was probably 30 or 40 degrees out," David said.

'Daunting and unsettling': What it's like to give birth in the midst of a pandemic

Sarah (left) and David Patrick with their newborn son, Navi Bond Patrick, who was born Saturday, May 9, 2020, outside of Baptist Health Louisville after the couple were unable to get in to the hospital due to locked doors. Sarah was forced to lie down and deliver Navi on the pavement outside of the hospital.

They tried another set of doors and found them locked. Then Sarah's water broke as she stood on a service road by a parking garage outside the facility.

"We're in the middle of the street, and she can't move," David said. "She nearly collapses in front of the labor and delivery sign."

He said he then helped Sarah lie down before pondering next steps.

"I'm not a doctor. I don't have a number to reach anyone in the building. We're basically in a concrete wilderness," David said. "She's in a lot of pain, and she's ready to get this thing over with."

So he called 911 and quickly explained the situation to a dispatcher, who then proceeded to talk David through the next steps, starting with removing his wife's pants so that the baby could come out.

"I put my phone speaker and set it down. My wife is screaming. ... 'He's coming! He's coming!'" David said. "I suddenly see about a third of the top of my new son's head so I was like, 'Oh my gosh. This is really happening.'"

Story continues

Within 10 to 15 seconds after the newborn's head popped out, David said the rest of the body "just flips out like a fish."

The 911 dispatcher then directed him to wipe the baby's face and mouth, and David said he wrapped his new son in his leather jacket. The newborn was crying, a good sign.

Mom contracted COVID-19 while pregnant: Then she gave birth alone

David Patrick used this COVID-19 face mask to tie off the umblical cord after his wife, Sarah, gave birth to a boy, Navi Bond, outside of Baptist Health Louisville on Saturday, May 9, 2020.

The dispatcher then told David to bind the umbilical cord, so he rummaged through a bag to try to find something, anything to help.

"We both had boots on, so we didn't have shoe strings available," David said. "But my grandmother had knitted COVID-19 masks for the family. I found a mask and rolled it like a really tight tortilla."

Soon after, an ambulance along with several nurses showed up to get Sarah and her newborn son on a stretcher.

"Congratulations, you did wonderful," the 911 dispatcher told David.

Finally inside Baptist Health Louisville, doctors delivered the placenta and helped Sarah recover alongside her newborn son, Navi Bond Patrick, who weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces.

Navi means "prophet" in Hebrew, while Bond refers to James Bond, "one of my all-time favorite franchises," David explained.

And how were Sarah and Navi doing in the hospital after the rather less-than-ideal conditions for birth?

"Breathing fine. Perfectly healthy, and no complications," David said. "It was even the least complicated delivery of the three kids. And for my wife, they asked on a scale of one to 10 what her pain level was, with 10 being the highest, and she said a one and maybe needed ibuprofen. That's all she took."

Sarah (left) and David Patrick (right) with their two children and newborn son, Navi Bond Patrick, who was born Saturday, May 9, 2020, outside of Baptist Health Louisville after the couple were unable to get in to the hospital due to locked doors. Sarah was forced to lie down and deliver Navi on the pavement outside of the hospital. The couple's second child, Asher Patrick, 1, is pictured on the right, and Hadassah Patrick, 3, is pictured in the center.

David added that the Baptist Health nurses and doctors were "wonderful" and that no hard feelings were held after the locked door fiasco.

The hospital's security director came to the couple to apologize for their unfortunate ordeal outside in the cold and to explain how Baptist would take lessons from their experience to help improve in the future, David said.

Baptist Health officials said they were happy everything worked out.

The proud parents and Navi were able to leave the hospital Monday morning and return home to an excited group of siblings and grandparents.

The Patrick's oldest daughter is 3-year-old Hadassah, the Hebrew name for "Esther," and their other son is 1-year-old Asher, named after the Hebrew word for "happy" or "blessed."

Safe at home amid the coronavirus pandemic, the family is left to reflect on a wild few days.

And Navi's birth adds to what was already a busy birthday month for the family, as Sarah also turned 36 on Monday and David turns 30 on May 21.

"Everybody's happy. Everybody's healthy," David said. "We thought we had planned for everything, but obviously there were a couple little holes in the plan."

Reach reporter Billy Kobin at bkobin@courierjournal.com.

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This article originally appeared on Louisville Courier Journal: Louisville woman gave birth outside hospital; COVID-19 mask helped
Back in early March, as we were beginning to enjoy the longer, warmer spring days after the pervading darkness of Swedish winter, we didnt realize that the approach of the new coronavirus was as inevitable as the approach of the sun-lit midsummer evenings. We were just happy that it was no longer dark when my son returned from school, and that we could go for afternoon walks around the nearby lake, where sheets of spring ice still clinked in the wind. My family is still getting used to these seasonal rhythms after our move in 2018 to Sweden, the country of my birth, from a small house in the Houston Heights to a small house on the edge of a lake in Nacka, not far from Stockholm.

COVID-19 did arrive of course, here as everywhere. And as the rest of the world came to a standstill, the Swedes have taken a different approach. With no lockdown restrictions in place and only a few and relatively mild guidelines from the authorities, Swedes are free to soak in the sun at outdoor cafes and parks, or to fill shopping malls, get haircuts and go to the gym, as long as they dont gather in groups larger than 50. The country is getting the attention of Texans itching to reopen the economy fully. Universal health care and guaranteed sick leave, Swedish policies often critiqued by my Texan neighbors, have been all but forgotten  now, Swedes are suddenly a model for freedom-loving Texans. It is true that Sweden has managed to avoid the desperate situations of countries like Spain and Italy  the number of available intensive care beds here are plenty. But on the other hand, per capita deaths are quite high compared to the neighboring Scandinavian countries that went for a more stringent lockdown.

Say what you will about the Swedish coronavirus strategy  it really does offer a large dose of choice to the public. You can choose to mingle with others at the mall or in restaurants if you wish, but on the other hand, if you prefer to follow the stricter guidelines of many other countries, you are equally free to self-isolate, work from home if possible, get groceries delivered, and so on.

But theres a catch. Unlike in Texas, authorities have kept elementary and middle schools open, and worried parents are now facing legal repercussions if they insist on keeping children home.

One could say that this is quite a reasonable model of democratic free choice. Indeed, preserving freedom seems to be an important part of the rationale followed by Swedish authorities. In his recent addresses to the nation, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven has appealed to the personal responsibility of Swedes to persuade them not to travel, or make unnecessary trips on public transportation, and to or stay away from the elderly. That ability to choose is cherished by Swedes, according to And, according to a study at the University of Lund, the majority of Swedes do appreciate this ability to choose for themselves during a global pandemic. Johan Giesescke, former National Epidemiologist and erstwhile mentor to Anders Tegnell, has said in interviews that quarantines can work in countries like China, where the government has the power to control the inhabitants; but that it would be difficult to do this in a an open democracyeven if, as he has also stated, a quarantine would probably be effective.

Besides, as Swedens leading public health scientists underscore, no one in the world can be sure what the best strategy actually is in the current crisis, and each country has to choose what seems best. This emphasis on uncertainty is part of the transparency with which the authorities present themselves, and becomes another factor in the decision to let people make their own choices. Without certainty, how can you justify restrictive, economy-damaging measures?

Paradoxically, though, public health and school agencies seem strangely sure that children do not get infected by the coronavirus, and that they do not spread it. By keeping schools open and upholding Skolplikt  the duty of Swedish parents to protect their childrens well-being by making sure they go to school  the authorities are forcing parents to send kids into what looks to many like a grave danger. Many kids have to navigate various forms of public transportation to get to their schools, within the confines of which very little has been done to comply with the social distancing guidelines. Schools have even been officially declared exempt from the maximum 50 people rule.

So we can choose if we want our eyebrows plucked, but we cant choose to protect our families from an all-pervasive danger by keeping our children home.

Some parents in Sweden, understandably, are not happy about this insistence on the Skolplikt law. More than 2,200 have joined the Facebook group We who are keeping our children home-Covid-19. These are parents who either want to keep their children at home but dont dare, or who are doing so in defiance of the law. The Facebook group Revolt! Protect our population from contagious spread of Coronavirus, at 8,986 members, also sees many postings from such parents. All of them fear the interference of Social Services, which is obliged to investigate any families who do not adhere to Skolplikt.

In normal times, the Swedish Skolplikt law fulfills an important function. It is rightfully grounded in the principle that children s physical and psychological health is the most important thing. Homeschooling is not allowed in Sweden, based on these grounding principles.

In Texas, I saw plenty of homeschooling, and I understand why a parent might choose to forego the admittedly less than excellent public school system in favor of their own efforts. I have even considered the idea myself a few times, when my son has been particularly unhappy with school life and its offerings. It is too hard to do while working full time  but Texas gave me the freedom to choose whether my kids learned at school or at home. No visits from Child Protective Services. No testing to prove they could read and write. A bit scary? Yes. I favor closer oversight to ensure homeschooled children are learning and that they have a healthy home life, and I prize the Swedish commitment to the well-being of children. But I must say that as I stare Skolplikt in the face right now, I feel a great longing for the freedom and responsibility I was granted as a parent in Texas.

For parents who are worried that Swedens Health Authorities are not giving enough consideration to asymptomatic spread, to children as a vectors of infection, or to the case of children who live with relatives in the risk groups, this directive seems outright authoritarian. In a recent radio interview on P1, Ia Almstrom, who is keeping her three children at home despite the possibility of fines, warnings and investigation by the Social Services, stated that she sees herself as a responsible parent who is trying to protect her family. She and the group of parents she represents hope that the Skolplikt can at least for now be turned into Laroplikt, that is, duty to learn rather than duty to attend an educational institution, and calls for authorities to understand that parents have a right to protect their children from danger.

It would have been better if parents could have gotten support from the school authorities rather than threats, Almstrom says, adding that it cant be good from a mental health perspective for families to be made to feel powerless in the face of an existential threat to their loved ones.

How can parents be reassured, when the official health experts themselves keep emphasizing the uncertainty inherent in the situation? We simply dont know enough yet about this virus.

Moving back to Sweden is a decision I dont think I will ever regret. I love the proximity of forest and water to every densely populated area and the burning pyres of May Day, not to mention the generous unemployment benefits and the free health care and education. Texans have a lot to learn from Swedes: that a strong social safety net can go hand in hand with freedom, for example, and that chicken eggs topped with fish eggs are even better.

But thats not to say that Swedes cant take a lesson or two from Texas. Theres good barbecue, of course, but in addition, they could follow the Texas lead and give a little way on compulsory education during a pandemic.

Maya is a writer who earned her Ph.D. in literature and creative writing from the University of Houston.
Some of us could make a party of just the fried appetizers: lightly crumbed salt cod fritters and fluted empanadas, juicy with beef and sweet with raisins. And my new favorite flan, dense and glossed with caramel, can be found here, dispensed like everything else from a roll-up window outside the bar. The colorful chalkboard menu and Cuban salsa music feel like throwbacks to an easier time, but they also transmit hope. The owner prefers you to retrieve your own dinner, by the way. One, it will be less expensive, he says. Two, because state law prohibits the delivery of alcohol by a third party, you can take mojitos to go! 8455 Fenton St., Silver Spring. 301-326-1063. elsaporestaurant.com. Open 4 to 8:30 p.m. Friday through Sunday and 5 to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. Delivery through DoorDash, Grubhub and Uber Eats. Dinner entrees $16 to $18.
While initially only about 100 officers and 1,000 jawans may be inducted for the Tour of Duty, if the government approves the proposal

The Indian Armys proposed internship programme, where it will induct young people for a three-year Tour of Duty, shows some new thinking in our military  one that could benefit both the country and the individuals who sign up. The Army hopes to get a ready flow of young blood to energise the force, and those who join will, by the time they leave at 26 or 27, find the new skills and leadership lessons they have acquired will stand them in good stead in their civilian careers. Since this will be a purely voluntary project and not an Israel-type conscription of the nations youth, the interns should be highly motivated as they would have chosen to get a taste of the military life.

For the Army, the benefits would largely be in the financial aspects. Since there will be no long-term commitment, it hopes to make considerable savings on pay, pensions and other benefits, which it hopes will free up the funds it desperately needs for military modernisation. The 146 per cent increase in defence pay/pensions over the past five years is proving unsustainable, the Army says, as it comprises 56 per cent of the defence budget, leaving less and less for modernisation and day-to-day costs. Almost 80 per cent of the Armys 43,000-strong officer corps are on permanent commissions, and many on short service commissions too extend their 10-to-14-year tenures to serve at least till 54, with full benefits. While initially only about 100 officers and 1,000 jawans may be inducted for the Tour of Duty, if the government approves the proposal, the numbers could be expanded later if the Army finds it is working well. The savings on training costs, besides all other heads, might also be considerable.

For college graduates or young professionals who join as Army interns, it may be win-win situation. Not only will they possibly earn more than in most entry-level jobs, when they leave after three years they will not only have a tax-free lump sum but also have an edge while applying for other jobs or courses like MBA programmes. Plus, of course, the satisfaction of having served their country in uniform.
He's best known for starring in Top Gear and then later, The Grand Tour.

And James May, 57, swapped his supercars for a van for the day in order to volunteer to deliver surplus food on behalf of a local charity organisation.

Wearing a high-vis vest, James was pictured getting stuck in as he drove the van back to the depot after his kind endeavours.

The Grandest Tour: James May swapped supercars for a van as he volunteered to deliver food for local charity The Felix Project amid the coronavirus pandemic

Doing his bit: Wearing a high-vis vest, James was pictured getting stuck in as he drove the van back to the depot after his kind endeavours

He has been working with London charity, The Felix Project, amid the coronavirus pandemic which has seen cash-strapped families struggle to feed their families.

The charity's website states: 'The Felix Project collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold.

'We deliver this surplus food to charities and schools so they can provide healthy meals and help the most vulnerable in our society.

Using time wisely: He has been working with London charity The Felix Project, amid the coronavirus pandemic which has seen cash-strapped families struggle to feed their families

The charity's website states: 'The Felix Project collects fresh, nutritious food that cannot be sold. We deliver this surplus food to charities and schools so they can provide healthy meals and help the most vulnerable in our society'

'We delivered food for 1.63 million meals in April, to help people in need during lockdown.'

James shot to fame as a co-presenter of iconic programme Top Gear, which he starred in alongside Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond from 2003-2015.

He now hosts The Grand Tour alongside Hammond and Clarkson.

An incredible effort: The charity delivered food for 1.63 million meals in April, to help people in need during lockdown

High-vis: James appeared to be getting along well with the rest of the volunteers and looked as though he had no special treatment

Iconic: James is known for starring in Top Gear and The Grand Tour (above) with Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond

In December they appeared in the first of a series of specials called The Grand Tour Presents: Seamen.

The feature-length episode saw the captivating trio head off on an adventure across the waters of Vietnam and Cambodia, where they will captain three very different types of vessels.

In the special, Jeremy, James and Richard headed out on a 800km journey through Vietnam and Cambodia that begins Tonle Sap Lake.

Behind the wheel: James did what he does best as he offered to do all the driving

Light relief: He had a big smile on his face as he conversed with the other workers

No frills: James was dressed casually for the outing in his cargo pants and trainers

During their trip, the trio had to weave their way through a series of challenges and unexpected mishaps as they make their way to the Mekong Delta.

To go on this epic adventure, Jeremy headed out on a Vietnam-era PBR (Patrol Boat River), which most famously appeared in Apocalypse Now.

And Richard channelled his inner Don Johnson by setting off on a Miami Vice style speedboat, while James headed out on a classic 1939 wooden river cruiser.

Superstar: It is not known when filming for his television work will resume but it's clear that James has been using his time off in a good way
USM Army ROTC to hold Virtual Commissioning Ceremony May 19

Fri, 05/15/2020 - 10:04am | By: David Tisdale

The University of Southern Mississippis (USM) U.S. Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC)  Golden Eagle Battalion  will host its first virtual commissioning ceremony live at 11 a.m. Tuesday, May 19 on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/events/3833655733395960/.

Four USM graduates will receive their officer commission at this event. They include the following:

*Chris Ainsworth of Florence, Mississippi  bachelors degree in liberal studies, minor in military science; Basic Officer Leadership Course, Fort Lee, Virginia; first duty station is Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

*Ian Bridson, Overland Park, Kansas  bachelors degree in criminal justice, minor in military science; will attend Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

*Zachary Pulver, Sumrall, Mississippi  bachelors degree in computer engineering technology, minor in military science; Basic Office Leadership Course at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri.

*Christopher West, Brandon, Mississippi  bachelors degree in criminal justice, minor in military science; Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Benning, Georgia and first duty station.

Army ROTC helps train college students to become an officer in the U.S. military. For more information about the Army ROTC program at USM, visit https://www.usm.edu/military-science/what-rotc.php. For more information about this virtual commissioning ceremony, contact Capt. Alex Simon, assistant professor of military science, at alexander.simon@usm.edu.
The Prince William Times is honored to serve as your community companion. To say thank you, we are excited to offer 4 weeks FREE Digital & Print access to all subscribers new and returning alike.

We are dedicated to continuing providing reliable, high quality journalism. This is possible with the trust and support of our subscribers in the community we are proud to serve.
North Wales police commissioner criticises First Minister for not increasing coronavirus lockdown fines

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 15th, 2020

The North Wales police and crime commissioner has criticised the First Minister for not increasing fines for those found breaking coronavirus lockdown rules.

Arfon Jones also called on Mark Drakeford to award police with powers to evict those not staying in primary residences.

Currently, fines in Wales begin at 60 and go up to 120 for repeat offenders. These fines can be reduced to 30 if paid within 14 days.

However, fines in England now begin at 100, reduced to 50 if paid promptly, and can go up to 3,200 for repeat offenders.

Following representations made by chief constables to the Welsh Government asking for parity of fines with England, PCCs for all four forces will now be writing again, despite ministers in Cardiff stating they were not planning to change the fine system.

Mr Jones said: Weve long called for fines as a deterrent for people travelling into Wales and within Wales, but Mark Drakeford has declined to change the fines.

The movement of people from more densely populated areas with higher infection rates to more rural communities is create un-needed tensions.

It feels like communities in North Wales are being left behind and let down, and at a crucial time at that.

The local population is understandably anxious about the prospect of rising infection rates, which is already predicted by the health board due to a later peak than in the more densely populated south of Wales. Our priority is to protect these communities.

The Welsh Government has been asked to comment. A spokesperson is quoted on BBC Wales as saying: We are not planning to change the fine system in Wales at the moment but we are keeping the matter under consideration.
Troops delayed in returning from UN deployment in Lebanon may not be able to see their families for another two weeks after touching down on Irish soil, as it's likely they'll be forced to self-isolate in military barracks.

The Defence Forces press office said it can't rule out such a scenario after confirming that troops flying out to replace them will also have two weeks' less time with their families, because they will be brought into military barracks for self-isolation prior to their departure.

The Covid-19 pandemic has caused a logistical nightmare for the Defence Forces trying to rotate troops on a number of foreign missions, the largest being the UNIFIL deployment of 380 troops in Lebanon.

Extracting the troops became a serious issue after the UN announced on April 5 that they were suspending the rotation of all troops until June 30.

The Irish contingent currently serving in the Lebanon was supposed to return home a month ago but had been unable do so following the UN directive.

However, in the meantime, following lengthy talks between UN headquarters, senior Irish military management, the Department of Defence and Department of Foreign Affairs, the UN has decided to provide a partial exemption for Ireland.

It is now expected that half the troops serving in Lebanon will return home in late June, with the other half coming back in early July. Confirmation of the exact dates are expected shortly.

It is as yet unclear if they will have to operate more flights than normal to rotate the troops by providing social spacing on aircraft, or will a derogation be allowed.

Meanwhile, it is still not clear when former military personnel who had applied to rejoin the Defence Forces will actually be back in uniform.

Many had decided to rejoin primarily to help out with the Covid-19 crisis, but as the lockdown eases some are wondering if there is any point.

In total 651 former members of the Defence Forces applied to rejoin.

The Defence Forces said 614 were former enlisted personnel. Of those 502 were deemed to be eligible to rejoin by senior military management.

In addition, a further 37 former officers also applied and 24 of them were deemed to be eligible. However, two of them have since withdrawn their applications.

Concerns are being raised that more former personnel may follow suit as the delay in bringing them back continues. The Defence Forces press office couldn't say when any of the eligible personnel would be back in uniform. The Covid-19 crisis is making it more difficult to set up medicals, which are needed to ensure those rejoining are fit for duty.

The Defence Forces had already been planning to mount a major recruitment drive to bring back experienced personnel, but this was speeded up because of the pandemic. Those being earmarked for a return to duty were being offered a three-year contract.

Meanwhile, the LE William Butler Yeats today finished Covid-19 testing at Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin and will return to routine security operations at sea.

This completes the Naval Service's use of ships for testing, which started on March 15, in support of the HSE in Dublin and Galway. Over the last nine weeks, Naval Service Ships have helped conduct almost 6,000 tests.

The army will continue to help with testing at the Aviva Stadium.
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CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Tailwind Capital Corporation ("Tailwind") (TSXV: TW.P) is pleased to announce details concerning a proposed qualifying transaction involving a business combination with Kairos Metals Corp. ("Kairos"), a corporation incorporated under the laws of Alberta.Overview of KairosKairos is a reporting issuer incorporated in January 2018 under the laws of the Province of Alberta and currently has 25,266,704 common shares outstanding and no dilutive securities such as options or warrants outstanding. Kairos' principal business is the acquisition and exploration of mineral properties in Chile. Kairos holds a 100% interest in 10,396 hectares of mineral claims through its wholly owned Chilean subsidiary, Compania Minera San Lorenzo Limitada. Those claims are divided into the "Salvadora" and the "Nancagua" claim groups or properties. Salvadora is a prospective copper-gold porphyry property and has been the subject of significant exploration efforts by Kairos since 2014 which includes significant sampling and geophysical surveying together with two exploration drilling programs totalling approximately 2,725 meters of drilling. Kairos has also conducted programs of surface sampling and geochemical analysis on Nancagua which is a prospective high grade epithermal gold-silver property.Summary of the Proposed TransactionTailwind has entered into a non-binding Letter of Intent with Kairos dated May 14, 2020 (the "LOI") pursuant to which Tailwind and Kairos intend to complete a business combination (the "Transaction") to form a new company ("Newco") called "Kairos Metal Corp." or such other name as the Parties may agree. Pursuant to the proposed Transaction, (i) each one (1) issued and outstanding common shares of Kairos (the "Kairos Common Shares") will be exchanged for one (1) common shares of Newco (the "Newco Common Shares") at a deemed price of $0.10 per Newco Common Share; (ii) each one and five-tenths (1.5) issued and outstanding common shares of Tailwind (the "Tailwind Common Shares"), of which 8,000,000 are currently issued and outstanding, will be exchanged for one (1) Newco Common Share; and (iii) each outstanding stock options and agents' options of Tailwind will be exchanged for one stock option or agents' option of Newco on an equivalent economic basis.It is intended that the Transaction, when completed, will constitute Tailwind's "Qualifying Transaction" ("QT") in accordance with Policy 2.4 of the TSX Venture Exchange (the "Exchange"). A more comprehensive news release will be issued by Tailwind disclosing details of the Transaction, including the name change, financial information and reporting issuer history respecting Kairos, the names and backgrounds of all persons who will constitute insiders of Newco, the identity of all controlling shareholders of Newco, and information respecting sponsorship, once an agreement has been finalized and certain conditions have been met, including:i) satisfactory completion of due diligence; andii) execution of the definitive agreement.The Transaction will constitute a Non-Arm's Length Qualifying Transaction as defined by the policies of the Exchange as Al J. Kroontje is a significant shareholder of Tailwind and a director, officer and significant shareholder of Kairos. Tailwind will be seeking majority of the minority approval of the Transaction at a meeting of Tailwind shareholders. Trading in the Tailwind Common Shares has been halted and will be suspended, effective May 21, 2020, for failing to complete a QT within 24 months of its listing. Trading in the Tailwind Common Shares is not expected to resume trading until the Transaction is completed and requisite approvals by the Exchange have been obtained. The Transaction remains subject to approval by the Exchange and if completed Tailwind expects to be listed on the Exchange as a mining issuer.Summary of the Proposed Private PlacementPursuant to the LOI, the parties have agreed to use their "commercially reasonable efforts" to cause Tailwind or Kairos to complete a private placement (the "Private Placement") of subscription receipts exercisable into Newco Common Shares (the "Subscription Receipts") at a price of $0.10 per common share for gross proceeds of a minimum of $600,000 and a maximum of $1,000,000. The Private Placement may be conducted on a "brokered" or on a "non-brokered" basis and the parties may engage an agent or syndicate of agents (the "Agents") for the Private Placement. A commission of up to 7% of the gross proceeds raised may be paid to the Agents or to individual registrants (including selling group members) and payable upon closing of the Transaction. The commission shall be payable may exclude those subscribers that participate in the Private Placement that fall within the list of names submitted by Tailwind or Kairos. Further particulars of the Private Placement will be disseminated in a news release to be issued upon finalization of terms with an agent.Forward Looking InformationStatements in this press release regarding Tailwind's business which are not historical facts are "forward-looking statements" that involve risks and uncertainties, such as terms and completion of the proposed transaction. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results in each case could differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.Completion of the Transaction is subject to a number of conditions, including but not limited to, execution of a binding definitive agreement relating to the Transaction, Exchange acceptance and if applicable pursuant to Exchange requirements, majority of the minority shareholder approval. Where applicable, the Transaction cannot close until the required shareholder approval is obtained. There can be no assurance that the Transaction will be completed as proposed or at all.Investors are cautioned that, except as disclosed in the management information circular or filing statement to be prepared in connection with the Transaction, any information released or received with respect to the Transaction may not be accurate or complete and should not be relied upon. Trading in the securities of a capital pool company should be considered highly speculative.The TSX Venture Exchange Inc. has in no way passed upon the merits of the proposed Transaction and has neither approved nor disapproved the contents of this press release.
New Delhi: The Allahabad High Court on Friday (May 15) gave an important ruling while hearing a petition filed in connection with the prohibition of Azan from mosques in three districts of Ghazipur, Hathras, and Farrukhabad in Uttar Pradesh. The court revoked the order of the District Magistrates of these districts and allowed oral Azans from mosques without using loudspeakers.

A bench of justices Shashi Kant Guipta and Ajit Kumar granted the relief to the Muslim community saying "Azan may be an essential and integral part of Islam" but its "recitation through loudspeakers or other sound-amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion."

The ruling was pronounced on a bunch of pleas, including those of former Union Law Minister Salman Khurshid and Lok Sabha member from Ghazipur, Afzal Ansari, among others.

The HC bench ruled, "We are of the considered opinion that Azan can be recited by Muezzin (mosque caretakers) from minarets of the mosques by human voice without using any amplifying device and the administration is directed not to cause hindrance in the same on the pretext of the guidelines to contain the pandemic COVID-19."

The court directed that under no circumstances can the district administration allow the use of loudspeakers from 10 pm to 6 am, adding that it would be necessary to seek permission from the administration to recite Azan from a mosque through a loudspeaker. It would be illegal to recite Azan through a loudspeaker without the permission of the administration.

The DM of Ghazipur banned Azan from mosques during Ramzan through an oral amid coronavirus lockdown. BSP MP from Ghazipur Afzal Ansari complained against this order by sending a letter to the High Court via email. Along with this, Senior Advocate of Supreme Court Syed Wasim Qadri also filed a petition. A similar case also came from Hathras and Farrukhabad districts.

Senior Congress leader Salman Khurshid also filed a petition in the Allahabad High Court against the similar ban imposed in Hathras and Farrukhabad districts.
Trump has threatened to slap new taxes on American companies like Apple to dissuade them from moving their manufacturing bases from China to countries like India. (AFP Photo)

Washington: President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new taxes on American companies like Apple to dissuade them from moving their manufacturing bases from China to countries like India and Ireland instead of the US amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview, Trump said that taxation was an incentive for the companies to return manufacturing bases to the US.

Apple said now they're going to go to India. They're going to do some production in India away from China, he was asked.

"If they do, you know, we gave Apple a little bit of a break because they're competing with a company that was a part of a trade deal that we made. So it was a little bit unfair to Apple, but we're not allowing this anymore. You know if we wanted to put up our own border like other countries do to us, Apple would build 100 percent of their product in the United States. That's the way it would work, he said.

According to the New York Post, Apple is looking to shift a significant portion of its production to India from China.

Supply lines of many tech companies manufacturing in China were disrupted after the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

These companies have to get on the ball because they're going not only to China. You look at where they're going. They're going to India and they're going to Ireland and they're going all over the place, they make them," Trump said in the interview.

"So, you don't think you need to do anything in terms of incentives," he was asked.

I have to do it, Trump said.

One incentive, frankly, is to charge tax for them when they make products outside. We don't have to do much for them. They have to do it for us, Trump said. Trump said that he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US.

And now they're not fighting. These stupid supply chain that are all over the world, we have a supply chain where they're made in all different parts of the world and one little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up. I said we shouldn't have supply chains. We should have them all in the United States. We have the companies to do it. And if we don't, we can do Apple, China, Coronavirus, Coronavirus Outbreak, Coronavirus Pandemic, COVID-19, India, Manufacturing, NewsTracker, Tax, US that," he added.

Trump has routinely threatened to raise tariffs on consumer electronics during his ongoing trade war with China.
With summer finally on its way, many believe this May long weekend is going to be the ultimate test.

Although the provincial government and many municipalities are actively discouraging any non-essential travel during the COVID-19 pandemic, it isnt illegal  and there are some who want to take a trip to the cottage very soon.

The Manitoulin Island Leadership Coordination Committee, which held its second meeting on May 12, issued a statement urging non-essential travellers to stay home.

We ask that everyone stay home, stay safe, and do not travel onto, or off of, Manitoulin Island, United Chiefs and Councils of Mnidoo Mnising (UCCMM) said in a release.

In line with both federal and provincial guidelines, we are urging people to be sensitive of the vulnerability of many of our Islands population and not to travel onto Manitoulin Island.

The committee, which was originally proposed by UCCMM on May 1, is intended to bring together leaders from different First Nations communities and municipalities from across the Island to create a unified strategy to fight the COVID-19 pandemic.

While the UCCMM originally proposed that the committee should have no more than eight participants, in recent days, they have decided to include leaders from all regions of the Island moving forward.

At the next meeting, scheduled for May 19, the committee will continue to solidify its mandate and determine community representation.

The decision of whether to allow the movement of non-essential travellers has been a hot topic in recent weeks.

Many First Nations communities, including Wiikwemkoong Unceded Territory which declared a state of emergency on April 6, have implemented non-essential travel bans. This means that only essentials services, personnel, and Wiikwemkoong residents with essential travel (like medical appointments) are allowed to continue to travel in and out of the community.

Other municipalities on the Island have chosen to follow the provinces lead.

(NEMI) has taken the position to support the province in terms of deferring to them in how we deal with people travelling. In other words, there is no travel restriction for people to move about on the highways in Ontario, said Alan MacNevin, mayor of the Township of Northeastern Manitoulin and the Islands (NEMI).

We are using messaging and education to try and convince people that it may not be the best idea to come to their seasonal residence and/or visiting, and to encourage them to stay home when they can.

MacNevin, who sits on the COVID-19 leadership committee, referred to non-essential travel as the elephant in the room.

The mayor recently made headlines after sending a letter to the Ministry of Transportation, asking them to reopen Highways 540 and 551 after MChigeeng First Nation established checkpoints on each of the highways to enforce a travel ban in their community.

Theres obviously a huge difference in opinion on the strategies between many of our communities, he said.

I think that all the rain and snow weve been getting lately has so far been a big deterrent for travellers this year. This weekend, when we finally start to get some nice weather, we will see who is able to maintain proper social distancing and remain safe. Hopefully, things go well.

Premier Doug Ford issued a statement on May 7 after a meeting with Ontarios cottage country mayors reiterating the provinces stance on seasonal travel.

We are still battling a terrible virus, so we are asking seasonal residents travelling to their cottages to practice the same public health measures as usual, including no public gatherings, avoiding non-essential travel as much as possible, and continue to practice social distancing, he said.

Cottage country residents are known for their hospitality and normally they would be welcoming tourists with open arms right now. This year, however, they are asking visitors to help them fight the spread of COVID-19 and hold-off travelling to these regions until it is safe to do so.

These comments come about a month after Ford reportedly travelled to his own cottage, albeit briefly.

Ford also publicly stated earlier this month that theres only so long they will be able to hold back taxpayers from visiting their properties.

Were going with Premier Ford where he indicated for cottagers to stay home. Manitoulin Islands hospitals are not equipped to handle a large influx of patients as a result of COVID-19, said Patsy Corbiere, Tribal Chief of the UCCMM.

In April, a fundraising campaign to purchase four new ventilators for the Manitoulin Health Centre (MHC)s two hospital sites in Mindemoya and Little Current met and surpassed its goal of raising $80,000.

Prior to the fundraiser, the hospital reportedly only had two transport ventilators available, according to a letter released by Manitoulin health-care professionals.

There are lots of cottagers here already, but the COVID-19 leadership committee wanted to put out a unified message that non-essential travellers should stay home. We are working together to try and protect Manitoulin Island, said Corbiere.

We have no active cases right now. Once the Island opens up, and summer tourism is in full swing, that could change.

Sudbury resident Rob Lacroix, who has owned a camp on Manitoulin Island for the past 13 years, argues that his desire to visit his piece of paradise is not ignorant or selfish.

I am well aware of COVID-19 and how it can affect some people. I am planning on going to my camp this Victoria Day Weekend, and will do so with the utmost respect and concern for the Island I love, he wrote in a letter to The Sudbury Star (the full letter is one page A8).

I will drive in my private car, with all my food, and stay at my camp, and have no other contact with anyone while there, and drive back home without the need to get gas. There is truly no need to go out and tour the Island as all businesses should be closed under Fords declaration of emergency.

Lacroix added: Have faith in people. No one wants COVID-19 to win, least of all us cottagers, who love the Island as much as you do.
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A total of Rs 6,400 crore of claims have been paid to farmers in the last two months under the Fasal Bima Yojana (crop insurance), said Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

She added that these claims had been paid in the last two months so that the farmers got the insurance money.

A lockdown has been in effect in India since March 25 to prevent the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic across the country.

Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is a crop insurance scheme to protect farmers against losses in crop production due to natural calamities and pest attacks.

Launched in 2016, PMFBY compensates farmers if any of the notified crops fail due to natural calamities, pests and diseases. The scheme seeks not just to insulate farmers from income shocks, but also encourage them to adopt modern agricultural practices.

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

Data from the PMFBY website showed that a total premium of Rs 17,090.87 crore was collected under this scheme for Kharif 2019 season. A total of 18.4 million farmers have been covered under the scheme in Kharif 2019. The sum insured under PMFBY (Kharif 2019) is Rs 1.14 lakh crore.

In FY19, gross incurred claims under PMFBY was Rs 27,550 crore while the premium collected was Rs 20,293 crore.

Unlike previous schemes, PMFBY is open for both farmers who have taken loans (loanee) as well as those who have not (non-loanee). The scheme covers food crops (cereals, millets and pulses), oilseeds as well as horticultural crops.

Here, farmers pay 2 percent of sum insured as the premium for Kharif crops while it is 1.5 percent of the sum insured for Rabi crops.
Coronavirus Outbeak LIVE Updates: The number of coronavirus cases in Ahmedabad district rose to 7,171 after 261 new cases were reported since Thursday night, officials said. Of the 20 COVID-19 patients who died across Gujarat during this period, 14 died at hospitals in Ahmedabad city, said Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi. Death toll in the district thus reached 479.

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At a news conference, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said 8 crore migrant workers will get 5 kgs of grains and 1 kg of pulses free for two months, while 50 lakh street vendors rendered jobless by the lockdown would be given a working capital loan of Rs 10,000 each.

The government on Thursday announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package of free foodgrains for migrant workers, concessional credit to farmers and working capital loan for street vendors as part of the second tranche of fiscal stimulus to heal an economy hit hard by coronavirus lockdown.

While this was the fifth consecutive day of over 3,500 cases being added to the country's overall count, the growth rate of the infection has gradually decreased during this period.

In the biggest surge in COVID-19 infections in Delhi, 472 people tested positive for the novel coronavirus on Thursday, as India's total neared 80,000 with 3,995 fresh cases reported, the second-highest rise in a day.

With 44 deaths registered today, the death toll in Maharashtra due to the contagious coronavirus disease has now breached the 1000-mark and stands at 1019.

Maharashtra on Thursday reported 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day spike so far, taking the states overall count to 27,524, according to state health department data.

Of the 44 deaths recorded in Maharashtra, 25 COVID-19 patients succumbed to the infection in financial capital Mumbai, 10 in Navi Mumbai, five in Pune, two in Aurangabad and one person each died in Panvel and Kalyan.

"While AirAsia India will have face shields, masks, gowns, aprons and gloves as a part of their PPE attire for cabin crew members, Vistara would have a lap gown, face mask and face shield as the new dress code," a source said.

Airlines such as IndiGo, Air India, Vistara and AirAsia India have decided to go with the new attire in order to ensure safety of cabin crew members as they are in close proximity to passengers during flights, the sources said.

Cabin crew members of Indian airlines will have personal protective equipment (PPE) like face shields, gowns and masks as part of their attire on commercial passenger flights when they resume operations, industry sources said.

These flights will operate from 17-28 May as part of the Vande Bharat Mission-II to fly back Indians stranded abroad.

Air India is taking bookings for about 30 outbound flights  mainly from Delhi  for some destinations in the US, Canada, UK, Paris, Frankfurt, Singapore and Australia.

With 46 more people testing positive for the novel coronavirus in Bihar, the total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in the state climbed to 999 on Thursday, a senior official said.

The Hindu quoted the minister as saying, "It was also agreed upon that the lockdown from now on has to be strictly implemented in red zones, especially in containment areas. At the same time, further relaxations could be given in orange and green zones," adding that the recommendation will be sent to the Centre on Friday.

According to a senior minister, a consensus was reached on that the lockdown has to be extended in certain parts of the State, especially in red zones such as the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, Malegaon and Solapur.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray held a meeting with State Cabinet ministers to discuss the COVID-19 situation in the state and the measures needed to be implemented to contain the fast-spreading virus.

The Maharashtra government has called for an extension of lockdown in the State till 31 May, and is likely to send a report to this effect to the Centre by Friday.

The pre-embarkation activities have begun and people are being ferried from different points of Male to the airport where emigration and medical checkup etc. are to be carried out. The ship will depart in the afternoon.

Indian navy ship INS Jalashwa will sail again from Maldives capital of Male on Friday to repatriate around 700 residents of Kerala and Lakshadweep under the Samudra setu mission.

The report also mentioned, that a woman was among the two killed of the total 46 migrant workers in the DCM vehicle. All the injured have been admitted to the Government Medical College Orai.

At least two migrant workers were killed, 14 seriously injured in a road accident in Jalaun, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday night, according to media reports. The incident took place when a DCM carrying migrant labourers was hit by by a vehicle in Girthan village located in NH-27 of Etah police station area, TV9 reported.

Those injured have been admitted to Trauma Centre in Lucknow.

Three migrants were killed, while four injured in a road accident in Barabanki, Uttar Pradesh around 2.30 am on Friday. The incident took place when the labourers were coming Surat in Gujarat and were heading towards Bahraich in Uttar Pradesh.

Of the total 81,970, there are 51,401 active cases, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

India registered 81,970 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday after 3,995 more tested positive across the nation in the past 24 hours. The COVID-19 toll stood at 2,649 with 100 more patients succumbing to the infectious disease.

The COVID-19 recovery rate in India stood at 34 percent after 27,920 patients were discharged as of Friday, according to the recent data released by Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

"Devotees will not be allowed entry into the temple during that time. The decision has been taken in view of the guidelines issued by the centre amid the COVID-19 pandemic," Anil Chanyal, sub-divisional magistrate of Joshimath, said in a statement.

The gates of the Badrinath temple in Uttarakhand were opened at 4.30 am on Friday, news agency ANI reported. Officials said only 27 people, including the head priest, will be allowed at the temple.

Union Minister Nitin Gadkari will address a webinar on 'Impact of Higher Education in the post COVID-19 economy' on Friday from 12.30 pm till 1.30 pm, News18 reported.

The number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Odisha climbed to 672 after 48 more individuals tested positive for the viral infection on Friday, said the state health department.

The second tranche, announced on Thursday, focussed on migrant workers, street vendors, small traders, the self-employed and small farmers.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 pm on Friday. The details of the third tranche of the Centres economic rescue package of Rs 20 lakh crore will be announced.

Hindustan Times quoted Junaid Ahmad, country director, World Bank, as saying, "The project will be crucial to rebalance social security towards urban poor, as much as rural."

The World Bank has approved $1 billion for India as social security technology fund for countrys urban poor and migrant workers. The focus will be to enable India to integrate all of its 400-plus social security schemes at a technology level, the bank said.

During a video conference, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates and Modi agreed that given India's willingness and capacity to contribute to global efforts, it was important for New Delhi to be included in the global discussions for coordinating responses to the pandemic.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and philanthropist Bill Gates on Thursday discussed the global response to COVID-19, and the importance of global coordination in scientific innovation and research to combat the pandemic.

According to the petitioner, currently only those returning from UAE are subjected to rapid antibody test.

A plea was filed in the Kerala High Court seeking COVID-19 testing of all expatriates and other additional safety protocol for those Indians returning from other countries to India, Bar and Bench reported.

Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath conducted a meeting with 'COVID-19 management Team - 11' and other senior officials to review the situation in the state, ANI reported.

The person from the Rohingya community and a local person who lives in the Cox's Bazar district who also tested positive have been isolated, Mahbub Alam Talukder, said the country's refugee commissioner.

Authorities have reported the first positive coronavirus case in the crowded camps for Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh, where more than 1 million refugees are sheltered.

The Indian Railways operated 145 'Shramik Special' trains on Thursday and ferried home close to 2.10 lakh migrants stranded in various parts of the country amid the lockdown enforced in view of the novel coronavirus.

With an increase of 3,967 COVID-19 cases in the past 24 hours, the number of coronavirus cases reached 81,970 cases, according to the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare on Friday.

A Union Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting over COVID-19 is underway at the Health and Family Welfare Ministry. Senior Ministers present in the meeting include Union Health Minister Dr Harsh Vardhan, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, Union Civil Aviation Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai.

As many as 51 COVID-19 patients, including a one-month-old girl and a two-month-old boy, were discharged from different hospitals, following their recovery, said the official.

Two infants were among 51 COVID-19 patients who recovered from the viral infection at Kalyan taluka in Maharashtra's Thane district, Madhuri Phopale, public relations officer of Kalyan Dombivli Municipal Corporation told news agency PTI.

As many as 1,061 personnel of Maharashtra Police including 112 police officers have tested positive for COVID-19 so far. Of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while nine have lost their lives, said the Maharashtra Police.

A total of 74 confirmed COVID-19 cases have been reported from Himachal Pradesh as of Thursday.

A 33-year-old man in Una has tested positive for COVID-19. "The man arrived from Maharashtra and was under institutional quarantine. He is now being sent to Haroli COVID-19 hospital," Dr Raman Kumar, CMO, Una said.

The Maharashtra government has set up two committees at state and district level for better coordinationbetween public and private hospitals in tackling the spread of COVID-19. The decision to constitute the coordination panels was taken on Thursday after a meeting between representatives of the Indian Medical Association ( IMA ) and Maharashtra Chief secretary Ajoy Mehta , according to the government.

On Monday, Yadav was driving through Delhi's Nizamuddin area, when he spotted Rampukar Pandit (as identified by Hindi daily Hindustan). "It was at around 5.15 pm when I saw him sitting by the side of the road a little before the Yamuna bridge. I stopped my car and pulled over near him," he tells Firstpost, adding, "I then rolled down my window and photographed the man before getting out to go and check on him."

"His name was Rampukar  but he didn't tell me that. I only found out a few days later in a newspaper report. At the time, I couldn't even ask him his name," recalls Press Trust of India's chief photo correspondent Atul Yadav, "He was unable to say very much beyond 'udhar (there)'  which is where he was trying to go."

He added: "The people have suggested that movement of buses and metro rails may be started in limited numbers to maintain social distancing."

"We have sent proposals to the Centre. Most people have given a proposal to wear mask in public space and maintain social distancing," said Jain while speaking to reporters.

The Minister emphasized that people are stressing for the resumption of public transportation in limited manner.

Health Minister Satyendar Jain on Friday said that the Delhi government has submitted the proposals to the Centre for the relaxations that people are expecting from the government for the next phase of coronavirus lockdown 4.

A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, SK Kaul and BR Gavai stayed the 8 May order of the High Court after taking note of the appeal of government firm Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) which sells alcoholic beverages in the state.

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Madras High Court order which had asked the Tamil Nadu government to close state-run liquor vends. Following the stay on the high court order by the apex court, the state-owned liquor shops may reopen in the state.

Addressing a press conference in Guwahati, Sonowal said all states were supposed to give their feedback on the extension of the lockdown by Friday, and the Assam government has already conveyed its stand to the Centre.

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday said the state has written to the Centre urging it to extend the ongoing lockdown by two more weeks from 18 May. The third phase of the coronavirus lockdown is scheduled to end on 17 May.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in Karnataka surged past 1,000, with 45 people testing positive, the state health department said on Friday. Total number of positive cases in the state stood at 1,032.

"Of the total 1,032 confirmed cases, there were 520 active cases in the state," the health department said in its mid-day situation update.

With 35 COVID-19 deaths in Karnataka so far, the state has registered a mortality rate of 3.4 percent. On the other hand, as many as 476 patients have been cured of the viral infection, taking the recovery rate to 46.12 percent.

Twenty of the new patients have travel history to Dubai, four to Mumbai and three have returned from Chennai. One patient has a history of severe acute respiratory illness (SARI) and another was from containment zone in Bidar.

Of the 45 new coronavirus cases in Karnataka, 16 were reported in Dakshina Kannada, 13 in Bengaluru Urban, five in Udapi, three each in Bidar and Hassan, two in Chitradurga, and one each in Kolar, Shivamogga and Bagalkote districts.

Imphal East Deputy Commissioner Rangitabali Waikhom said the Jamia Galina Aziz Girls School which was a designated quarantine centre was declared a "containment zone" and the building "completely sealed" as per the Manipur Epidemic Diseases COVID-19 Regulations 2020.

A community quarantine centre in Manipur's Imphal East district was sealed after a man who was lodged in the facility tested positive for COVID-19, an official said on Friday.

"How can we stop it?", the bench, headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao, said that it is up to states to take action.

The plea sought a direction to the Centre to ask all District Magistrates to identify stranded migrant walking on the roads and provide shelter and food to them before ensuring their free transportation to native places.

Rejecting the plea seeking direction to the Centre on transportation of migrant workers stuck in various states due to the nationwide lockdown, the Supreme Court observed that it was impossible for courts to track or stop the movement.

Benchmark indices closed marginally lower after staging a sharp recovery from the intraday losses and the Nifty ended above 9,100-mark. Sensex fell 25.16 points or 0.08 percent to 31,097.73, while Nifty was down 5.90 points or 0.06 percent at 9,136.85 at close amid a volatile session.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the media that the government procured farm produces worth Rs 74,300 crore (as per Minimum Support Price) to improve liquidity for farmers. She also said that funds transfer worth Rs 18,700 crores has been done under PM KISAN Samman Yojna in the past 2 months and PM Kisan Bima Yojna claims totaling 6,400 cr cleared in last 2 months.

In a major announcement, the government extended Operation Greens from Tomatoes, Onion and Potatoes (TOP) to all fruits and vegetables. Operation Greens was a project aimed to stabilise the supply of tomato, onion and potato crops (TOP crops) in India, as well as to ensure their availability around the country, year-round without price volatility.

The first coronavirus case in Slovenia was recorded on March 4 in a returnee from neighbouring Italy. The nationwide epidemic was proclaimed on March 12.

Slovenia has become the first European country to proclaim an end to the coronavirus epidemic. The European Union state's government said on Friday the COVID-19 spread is under control and there is no longer a need for extraordinary health measures. The government says EU residents are free to cross into Slovenia from Austria, Italy and Hungary at predetermined checkpoints, while most non-EU nationals will have to undergo a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

A 71-year-old cancer patient from Noida who was admitted to a Delhi hospital and later tested positive for coronavirus has died, becoming the fourth fatality linked to COVID-19 in Uttar Pradesh's Gautam Buddh Nagar, officials said on Friday. The man, a resident of Sector 150 in Noida, died due to "multiple organ failure" at the government-run Lok Nayak Jai Prakash (LNJP) hospital on Thursday night in the national capital, the officials said.

Tamil Nadu's total tally has crossed the 10,000-mark with 434 new cases emerging today and 5 deaths. The total cases have risen to 10,108 and the total death count in the state has risen to 71. Chennai has recorded 309 cases, taking the total number of cases in the city to 5,947.

However, no new death was reported in Dharavi in the last 24 hours, the official said. The death toll in this slum is 53, the official said.

The tally of COVID-19 patients in Dharavi, Mumbai's biggest slum sprawl, increased to 1,145 on Friday after 84 more persons tested positive for the infection, a Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) official said.

West Bengal reported 10 more fatalities in the last 24 hours alongwith 84 fresh cases. The state health department said that the state's total deaths count has risen to 153.

Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai directs Mumbai Cricket Association to hand over Wankhede Stadium - which hosted the 2011 World Cup final - to be converted into a quarantine facility during the pandemic.

National Human Rights Commission has taken suo motu cognizance of a migrant mother pulling a suitcase with her child sleeping half hung thereon on Agra Highway. Notices issued to Chief Secretaries of Punjab & Uttar Pradesh and Agra District Magistrate

Telangana reported 40 new coronavirus cases on Friday, of which 33 are from Hyderabad alone, India Today reported.

Rajasthan on Friday reported 213 new coronavirus cases. Of these, 23 were reported in Jaipur.

The civic body said the acquisition was of a temporary nature and payments for use of facilities would be done at a later date. It warned the MCA that refusal to cooperate could invite police action for disobedience to official order.

"The said premises will be used for emergency staff of 'A' Ward and quarantine the person whoever is in contact with a positive COVID-19 patient and are not symptomatic," the letter, a copy of which is with PTI, stated.

In a letter, A Ward Assistant Municipal Commissioner Chanda Jadhav said the "hotel/lodge/clubs/college/exhibition centres/dormitories/marriage hall/gymkhana/banquet hall" must be handed over "with immediate effect".

The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation on Friday directed Mumbai Cricket Association (MCA) to hand over some facilities of Wankhede Stadium in the southern part of the metropolis to the civic body to create facilities in connection with the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Nine new COVID-19 cases were reported in Nepal on Friday, taking the total number of cases in the country to 267. 36 people have recovered so far, the Nepal Health Ministry said.

Alert ~ 3 persons tested #COVID19 + in Kamrup Metro. One person is from Sarusajai Quarantine camp, 1 indoor patient of GMCH, & one has migrated to West Bengal. Total cases 89 Recovered 41 Active cases 44 Deaths 2 Migrated 2 Update 11.00 pm/May 15 #AssamCovidCount pic.twitter.com/G8oBI8ppJg

Its like a hurricane came and leveled the entire economy, and now were trying to get it back up and running, said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist for the consultancy Maria Fiorini Ramirez.

The Commerce Departments report Friday on retail purchases showed a sector that has collapsed so fast that sales over the past 12 months are down a crippling 21.6%. The severity of the decline is unrivaled for retail figures that date back to 1992. The monthly decline in April nearly doubled the previous record drop of 8.3%  set just one month earlier.

U.S. retail sales tumbled by a record 16.4% from March to April as business shutdowns caused by the coronavirus kept shoppers away, threatened the viability of stores across the country and further weighed down a sinking economy.

Telangana chief minister K Chandrashekhar Rao has declared that except in four zones in Hyderabad, there are no coronavirus active cases in the state, the CMO was quoted as saying by ANI.

The test by Abbott Laboratories is used daily at the White House to test Trump, key members of his staff as well as any visitor to the White House complex who comes in close proximity to the president or Vice President Mike Pence. Azar commented after the FDA said late Thursday it was investigating preliminary data suggesting the 15-minute test can miss COVID-19 cases, falsely clearing infected patients.

The head of the Food and Drug Administration said Friday his agency has provided new guidance to the White House after data suggested that the test used by President Donald Trump and others every day may be inaccurate and provide false negatives.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Friday the White House still has confidence in a rapid COVID-19 test it has been using despite new data suggesting the test may return false negatives.

A bench of justices Shashi Kant Guipta and Ajit Kumar granted the relief to the Muslim community saying that azan may be an essential and integral part of Islam but its recitation through loudspeakers or other sound amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion.

The Allahabad High Court on Friday allowed the recitation of azan by a single individual in Uttar Pradesh mosques but without using any loudspeaker during the coronavirus-driven lockdown.

Officials say that more than 13,000 people have died of COVID-19 in Brazil, though some experts say the figure is significantly higher due to insufficient testing, and analysts say the peak of the crisis has yet to hit Latin Americas largest nation.

Nelson Teichs resignation was confirmed by the Health Ministry. The oncologist, a former health care consultant, took the job on April 17 under pressure to align the ministrys actions with the presidents view that the economy must not be destroyed by restrictions to control spread of the virus.

Brazils health minister resigned on Friday after less than a month on the job in a sign of continuing upheaval in the nations battle with the COVID-19 pandemic and President Jair Bolsonaros pressure for the nation to prioritize the economy over health-driven lockdowns.

Coronavirus outbreak Latest Updates: The number of coronavirus cases in Ahmedabad district rose to 7,171 after 261 new cases were reported since Thursday night, officials said. Of the 20 COVID-19 patients who died across Gujarat during this period, 14 died at hospitals in Ahmedabad city, said Principal Secretary, Health, Jayanti Ravi. Death toll in the district thus reached 479.

In the latest update, Mumbai had reported 933 cases on May 15, tally the tally to 17,512, while Dharavi saw 84 cases today.

Around 1,576 new coronavirus cases and 49 deaths were reported in Maharashtra on 15 May, taking the total number of cases to 21,467 and deaths to 1,068.

Total 6,564 patients have been recovered/discharged in the state so far, the Maharashtra Health Department said.

Maharashtra chief minister Uddhav Thackeray visited a COVID-19 care centre in Mumbai's Goregaon on Friday. This care centre with 1,000 beds has been established by BMC.

Scores of migrant workers from West Bengal on Friday gathered outside District Magistrate's office in Shivamogga demanding West Bengal government to arrange trains for them. A worker was quoted by ANI as saying, "120 people are stranded here. Govt here is saying Mamta Banerjee is not giving green signal".

Government will amend Essential Commodities Act to enable better price realisation for farmers; Agriculture food stuffs including cereals, edible oils, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato will be deregulated.

The finance minister said that the government will set up a Rs 10,000 crore microfund to help branding and promotion of health foods produced across India.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will announce the third tranche of the mega economic package announced by the prime minister on Tuesday.

The total number of COVID-19 cases in Karnataka surged past 1,000, with 45 people testing positive, the state health department said on Friday. Total number of positive cases in the state stood at 1,032.

The Supreme Court on Friday stayed the Madras High Court order which had asked the Tamil Nadu government to close state-run liquor vends. Following the stay on the high court order by the apex court, the state-owned liquor shops may reopen in the state.

A bench comprising Justices L Nageswara Rao, SK Kaul and BR Gavai stayed the 8 May order of the High Court after taking note of the appeal of government firm Tamil Nadu State Marketing Corporation (TASMAC) which sells alcoholic beverages in the state

Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday said the state has written to the Centre urging it to extend the ongoing lockdown by two more weeks from 18 May. The third phase of the coronavirus lockdown is scheduled to end on 17 May.

Addressing a press conference in Guwahati, Sonowal said all states were supposed to give their feedback on the extension of the lockdown by Friday, and the Assam government has already conveyed its stand to the Centre.

As many as 1,061 personnel of Maharashtra Police including 112 police officers have tested positive for COVID-19 so far. Of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while nine have lost their lives, said the Maharashtra Police.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 pm on Friday. The details of the third tranche of the Centres economic rescue package of Rs 20 lakh crore will be announced.

The second tranche, announced on Thursday, focussed on migrant workers, street vendors, small traders, the self-employed and small farmers.

The World Bank has approved $1 billion for India as social security technology fund for countrys urban poor and migrant workers. The focus will be to enable India to integrate all of its 400-plus social security schemes at a technology level, the bank said.

Hindustan Times quoted Junaid Ahmad, country director, World Bank, as saying, "The project will be crucial to rebalance social security towards urban poor, as much as rural."

India registered 81,970 confirmed COVID-19 cases on Friday after 3,995 more tested positive across the nation in the past 24 hours. The COVID-19 toll stood at 2,649 with 100 more patients succumbing to the infectious disease.

Of the total 81,970, there are 51,401 active cases, according to the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare.

Indian navy ship INS Jalashwa will sail again from Maldives capital of Male on Friday to repatriate around 700 residents of Kerala and Lakshadweep under the Samudra setu mission.

The pre-embarkation activities have begun and people are being ferried from different points of Male to the airport where emigration and medical checkup etc. are to be carried out. The ship will depart in the afternoon.

At least two migrant workers were killed, 14 seriously injured in a road accident in Jalaun, Uttar Pradesh on Thursday night, according to media reports. The incident took place when a DCM carrying migrant labourers was hit by a vehicle in Girthan village located in NH-27 of Etah police station area, TV9 reported.

The report also mentioned, that a woman was among the two killed of the total 46 migrant workers in the DCM vehicle. All the injured have been admitted to the Government Medical College Orai.

The Maharashtra government has called for an extension of lockdown in the State till 31 May, and is likely to send a report to this effect to the Centre by Friday.

On Thursday, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray held a meeting with State Cabinet ministers to discuss the COVID-19 situation in the state and the measures needed to be implemented to contain the fast-spreading virus.

According to a senior minister, a consensus was reached on that the lockdown has to be extended in certain parts of the State, especially in red zones such as the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, Malegaon and Solapur.

The Hindu quoted the minister as saying, "It was also agreed upon that the lockdown from now on has to be strictly implemented in red zones, especially in containment areas. At the same time, further relaxations could be given in orange and green zones," adding that the recommendation will be sent to the Centre on Friday.

Maharashtra on Thursday reported 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day spike so far, taking the states overall count to 27,524, according to state health department data.

With 44 deaths registered today, the death toll in Maharashtra due to the contagious coronavirus disease has now breached the 1000-mark and stands at 1019.

The number of deaths from COVID-19 disease rose to 2,549 and the number of cases climbed to 78,003 on Thursday, registering an increase of 134 fatalities and 3,722 infections in the last 24 hours since Wednesday 8 am, according to the Union Health Ministry.

The number of active COVID-19 cases stood at 49,219 while 26,234 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

Meanwhile, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman addressed the media for the second day in a row, and spelt out more details of the Centre's Rs 20-lakh-crore special economic package. She said the second tranche of economic stimulus package will be for the benefit of migrant workers, street vendors and small farmers.

FM announces concessional credit for farmers, free food grains for migrants

Sitharaman on Thursday announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package comprising free food grains for migrant workers, Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit to small farmers and working capital loan for street vendors in a bid to help those hit hard by the nationwide lockdown.

Together with the Wednesday's Rs 5.94 lakh crore package that mostly comprised off-budget credit line and support to small businesses, shadow banks and electricity distribution companies, the government has unveiled over Rs 9 lakh crore plans out of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to heal Asia's third-largest economy that was seen hurtling towards its first full-year contraction in four decades.

Sitharaman said each of the eight crore migrant workers, who had to leave their workplaces after imposition of the lockdown on 25 March, will get 5 kg grains and 1 kg pulses free for two months.

Also, 50 lakh street vendors who were rendered jobless as the government ordered stay-at-home would be given a working capital loan of Rs 10,000 each to restart their businesses.

For farmers, the finance minister announced a Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit through Kisan Credits Cards, benefiting as many as 2.5 crore farmers.

However, the Congress criticised the economic package as a "jumla" saying it has so far been way short of what Prime Minister Narendra Modi had promised and the entire press conference of the finance minister was classic display of "arrogance, ignorance and insensitivity".

Senior spokesperson of the party Anand Sharma said the country believed that Modi was serious when he made the "dramatic" announcement of giving 10 percent of the GDP as a package to revive the economy and support workers and migrant labourers and that expectations had soared.

"The finance minister's announcement dashed all hopes," he said.

State-wise deaths and cases

India has reported a total 134 deaths deaths since Wednesday morning, of which 54 were in Maharashtra, 29 in Gujarat, 20 in Delhi, 9 in West Bengal, seven in Madhya Pradesh, four in Rajasthan, three in Tamil Nadu, two each in Telangana and Karnataka and one each in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Jammu and Kashmir and Uttar Pradesh.

Of the 2,549 fatalities, Maharashtra tops the tally with 975 fatalities, Gujarat comes second with 566 deaths, followed by Madhya Pradesh at 232, West Bengal at 207, Rajasthan at 121, Delhi at 106, Uttar Pradesh at 83, Tamil Nadu at 64 and Andhra Pradesh at 47.

The toll reached 34 in Telangana, 33 in Karnataka and 32 in Punjab on Thursday. Haryana and Jammu and Kashmir have reported 11 fatalities each due to the respiratory disease while Bihar has registered seven and Kerala has reported four deaths.

Jharkhand, Chandigarh and Odisha have recorded three COVID-19 fatalities each while Himachal Pradesh and Assam have reported two deaths each. Meghalaya, Uttarakhand and Puducherry have reported one fatality each, according to the ministry data.

According to the ministry's website, more than 70 percent of the deaths are due to comorbidities.

According to the health ministry data updated in the morning, the highest number of confirmed cases in the country is from Maharashtra at 25,922, followed by Gujarat at 9,267, Tamil Nadu at 9,227, Delhi at 7,998, Rajasthan at 4,328, Madhya Pradesh at 4,173 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,729.

The number of COVID-19 cases has gone up to 2,290 in West Bengal, 2,137 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,924 in Punjab. It has risen to 1,367 in Telangana, 971 in Jammu and Kashmir, 959 in Karnataka, 940 in Bihar and 793 in Haryana.

Kerala has reported 534 coronavirus cases so far, while Odisha has 538 cases. A total of 187 people have been infected with the virus in Chandigarh and 173 in Jharkhand.

Tripura has reported 155 cases, Assam has 80 cases, Uttarakhand has 72, Himachal Pradesh has 66 cases, Chhattisgarh has 59 and Ladakh has registered 43 cases so far.

Thirty-three COVID-19 cases have been reported from the Andaman and Nicobar Islands.

Meghalaya and Puducherry have registered 13 cases each while Goa has seven COVID-19 cases.

Manipur has two cases. Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh and Dadra and Nagar Haveli have reported a case each till now.

Doubling time has slowed to 13.9 days, says health minister

The doubling time of novel coronavirus cases has slowed to 13.9 days in the last three days and India now has a capacity of 1,00,000 COVID-19 tests per day with nearly 20 lakh carried out till now, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan said.

Vardhan, who visited the National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) in Delhi and dedicated a COBAS 6800 testing machine to the nation, said 14 states and Union territories have not reported any case of the novel coronavirus in the last 24 hours.

These states and UTs are Gujarat, Telangana, Jharkhand, Chandigarh, Chhattisgarh, the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Arunachal Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Goa, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry.

Also, Daman and Diu, Sikkim, Nagaland and Lakshadweep have not reported any cases so far.

Meanwhile, the government has decided to use one time RT-PCR based pooled sampling for COVID-19 screening of migrant workers and returnees from abroad kept in quarantine facilities.

The same testing technique would also be used for monitoring in green zone districts which have reported no cases till now or in the last 21 days, the health ministry said while issuing "Guidelines for RT-PCR based pooled sampling for migrants/returnees from abroad/green zones".

806 shramik special trains brought into operation till now, says Railways

The Railways has operated 806 shramik special trains since 1 May, ferrying home 10 lakh migrant workers who were stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, officials said on Thursday. Of these, Uttar Pradesh received the maximum number of trains followed by Bihar, they said.

"As on 14 May, 2020, a total of 806 'shramik special' trains have been operationalised from various states across the country. More than 10 lakh passengers have reached their home state.

"Trains are being run by the Railways only after concurrence is given both by the state which is sending the passengers and the state which is receiving them," the railways said.

Out of the 806 trains which have been operated so far, 166 are in transit while 640 have terminated at various stations. Sixty-three more are in the pipeline, an official said.

These 806 trains were terminated in various states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

With inputs from PTI
A pair of gigantic gamma-ray bubbles centered on the core of the Milky Way galaxy were discovered by the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope 10 years ago. But how these so-called "Fermi bubbles" arose was a mystery.

Recently, however, researchers at the Shanghai Astronomical Observatory (SHAO) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences have presented a new model that for the first time simultaneously explains the origins of both the Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center biconical X-ray structure, which was discovered in 2003.

According to this model, the two structures are essentially the same phenomenon and was caused by the forward shock driven by a pair of jets emanating from Sagittarius A* (Sgr A*) - the supermassive black hole lurking at the Galactic center - about five million years ago. The study was published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Fermi bubbles are two colossal blobs filled with very hot gas, cosmic rays and magnetic fields. Although they cannot be seen with the naked eye, they are very bright in diffuse gamma-ray emissions. In gamma rays, the Fermi bubbles have very sharp edges and the edges coincide well with an X-ray structure called the Galactic center biconical X-ray structure.

Seeing the very similar edges of Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center biconical X-ray structure, the SHAO researchers realized these structures might share the same origin. Furthermore, the biconical X-ray structure could be naturally explained by the shock-compressed thin shell of hot thermal gas driven by a past energy outburst from the Galactic center.

In previous theoretical models and computer simulations of the Fermi bubbles, two major competing energy sources were proposed, i.e., star formation at the Galactic center and Sgr A*. However, in both models, the Fermi bubbles are explained as ejecta bubbles, while the forward shock is always located much further away from the edge of the Fermi bubbles. In other words, these models could not explain the Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center biconical X-ray structure simultaneously.

In contrast, the theoretical model in this study, proposed by GUO Fulai and his graduate student ZHANG Ruiyu from SHAO, used computer simulations to demonstrate for the first time that the Fermi bubbles and the Galactic center biconical X-ray structure are the same phenomenon.

In this model, the edge of the Fermi bubbles is the forward shock driven by a pair of jets emanating from Sgr A* about five million years ago. "One good thing about this model is that the energy and age of the Fermi bubbles can be constrained by the X-ray observations quite well," said corresponding author GUO Fulai. The age of the bubbles inferred in this study is also consistent with that derived from recent ultraviolet observations of some high velocity clouds along many sightlines towards the bubble region.

The new model indicates that the total energy injected during the Fermi bubble event by the supermassive black hole is close to that released by about 20,000 supernovae. The total matter consumed by Sgr A* during this event is about 100 solar masses.

"Another very interesting thing that we found in our study is that if the bubbles and the biconical X-ray structure share the same origin, they are very unlikely to be produced by star formation or black hole winds," said GUO. Near the Galactic center, the biconical X-ray structure has a very narrow base, while the forward shock produced by star formation or black hole winds can easily propagate to large distances, leading to a base much wider than observed.

In contrast, collimated jets deposit most of the energy quickly to large distances along the jet direction, naturally leading to a narrow base for the shock front near the Galactic plane. The supermassive black hole in our own Galaxy has been very quiescent in recent years without any evidence of current jet activities, but "our study strongly suggests that a pair of powerful jets emanated from it about five million years ago, lasted for about one million years, and produced the gigantic Fermi bubbles still seen today," added GUO.

###
In the wake of the COVID- 19 pandemic, there is a race to find a cure for this novel condition that has put a hold on all aspects of normal daily life as we use to know it. Since the recording of the first case in Wuhan, China on the 31st December 2019, this novel coronavirus has spread throughout the whole world, infecting over 4 million people and causing almost 300,000 deaths as of 13th May 2020. In Ghana, about 5127 people have been infected with 22 deaths over the same period.



New ways of living have been adopted by all no matter where one lives on the planet. Human trials of new vaccines under development have been achieved in record time. The need to prescribe and use off label medication, because of the urgency, lack of treatment and disease-related mortality, has been done all in an attempt to combat this deadly virus.



At this very moment, the pathophysiology of the disease condition is not clearly understood with different theories and understanding being suggested almost every day. This situation complicates the development of a targeted drug to treat the condition. Considering this challenge, scientists have had to depend on the natural variance in the severity of the disease among certain demographics, identification of the factor responsible for the expression of milder forms of the condition in order to develop strategies for containing the disease.



One area which presents the world with opportunity and must be explored in the search for treatment is the field of herbal medicine. So far, many countries are adapting supportive care and non-specific treatment options to relieve patient symptoms. The use of preexisting drugs, hydroxychloroquine in France and USA, antiretroviral in India, plasma transfusion in Canada, herbal teas, and other Traditional Chinese Medical practices in China and herbal preparation from Madagascar.



The latter has shown very low mortality and high recovery rate in patients treated with it albeit a small number. The potential shown by this treatment gives credence to the call for the consideration of traditional and herbal remedies as potential treatment for COVID- 19; a call supported by the World Health Organization. Our current burden is COVID- 19 but there is bound to be another virus, a resistant bacteria or parasite that poses an even greater threat to humanity in the future, hence we cannot ignore the role medicinal plants will play in human health in the future. As is widely known, medicinal plants are not inert but are uniquely complex chemical agents that when applied correctly stands to be beneficial.



Since COVID- 19 is severe in people with comorbidities, medicinal plants that are known in traditional medicine to be used in the management of such diseases as hypertension, respiratory system disease and cardiovascular disease will be beneficial to patients. Some of these very important pharmacological contributions of such plants which have positive outcomes on such comorbidities include their antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, diuretic, kaliuretic, hypoglycemic, and anti-fatigue, nephroprotective effects etc.

I have selected a few of these common plants and their products to highlight this fact: the citrus group of fruits, garlic, hibiscus, clove, ginger, and neem.



The citrus species: orange, tangerines, lemons are commonly known fruits in the World and Ghana. Apart from being a common fruit, orange contains various phytochemicals which give it a long list of pharmacological activities. Some of these constituents are vitamin C which is responsible for its antioxidant, cell repair, and immune-boosting properties. This constituent also aids in the effective utilization of iron in erythropoiesis which in turn raises hemoglobin level. Limonene is another chemical constituent, a cyclic monoterpene, found in the oils from the peels of orange and has been reported to have an antiviral effects. This effect has been demonstrated against avian influenza (H5N1) and against herpes simplex virus type 1 and 2. Alcoholic extracts from the seeds of bitter orange have been shown to inhibit the activity of the influenza virus.



Garlic, Allium Sativa, is a common spice with valuable medicinal properties all over the world. The chemical constituent, quercetin and allicin which are a flavonoid and an organosulfur compound respectively, are found in garlic. These 2 agents have been reported to alter viral genome transcription and inhibit the attachment of enterovirus and influenza virus to host cell. Extracts have shown an antithrombotic effect and an increase in plasma nitric oxide concentration in the general population. These properties were inferred as having the ability to help patients with disseminated intravascular coagulation (DIC) pull out of the crisis.



Hibiscus sabdariffa flower, mostly used in teas by people of all ages, is popularly known for its antihypertensive and antioxidant effects. On the other hand, protocatechuic acid, one of the major phytochemicals in this tea has shown virus inactivating properties on influenza A virus (IAV) and currently used as an inactivating agent in the IAV vaccine production. In vitro assay of extract of hibiscus showed virucidal effect against Herpes Simplex Virus-type 1. The flavonols and polyphenols in the herb have also shown great vasodilation and the ability to inhibit platelet aggregation.



Clove, Syzygium aromaticum, is a spice derived from the unopened flower bud of the plant. It has been used in traditional medicine for the healing of various conditions. The major component of its essential oil, eugenol, has antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, analgesic and anesthetic properties. The viral inhibition property of the extract has been established in hepatitis B, herpes simplex virus 1 and 2.



Another spice of importance is ginger, Zingiber officinale, a common spice used traditionally over time to treat common colds, arthritis and fever. Ginger has shown inhibitory effect on influenza A virus, herpes simplex virus type 2, rhinovirus and human respiratory syncytial virus (RSV). Ginger is also reported to possess anti- inflammatory and antioxidant effect and helps in the treatment of chronic inflammatory conditions.



The last plant, neem, Azardirachta indica, is a tree which has been used to treat various tropical diseases. The healing properties of the plant are exhibited in almost every part. It is used to treat malaria, worm infestation, enteric fever and arthritis. Extract from the tree back has shown significant antiviral activity against Herpes simplex virus type 1. An extraction using the solvent methanol from the leaves have shown virucidal properties against the coxsackie virus B group of viruses. Leaf extracts have also shown anti-hemolysis effect in plasmodium parasite infected mice and at the same time showing thrombolytic effect in albino mice. Neem extract has also shown a dose dependent antipyretic effect.



The instances above are in no way exhaustive but indicate the extent of work undertaken to show that herbal medicines are not placebos but active agents with a lot of potential. They have the capacity to elicit antiviral, antithrombotic, antipyretic, antioxidant and anti-inflammatory effect. Although the current evidence is largely in vitro and in vivo, it goes to emphasize that in this race to drug discovery, we cannot as a society ignore the importance of medicinal plants.



Our current predicament as Africans means that we should critically consider medicinal plants and research into these in search for a cure for COVID- 19 as well as other existing and emerging diseases. There is well documented evidence to support their actions and efficacy as outlined here. This is the start of a very promising drug development.





Author

Justice Ray Prah, Medical Herbalist

Herbal medicine unit

Barnor Memorial Hospital

[email protected]

0244520857

Source: 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
Hungary Prime Minister Victor Orban said Friday that he would give up his far-reaching coronavirus emergency powers later this month, despite fears that the nationalist leader would use the authority to consolidate power.

We expect the government will be able to return the special powers to tackle the coronavirus pandemic to parliament at the end of May, Orbans Facebook page read. The prime minister also took aim at detractors who had accused him of autocracy after Hungarys parliament gave Orban the right to rule by unilateral decree in March.

We successfully defended our homeland and our performance is comparable to any countrys, Orban said after a meeting with Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, who also took extensive emergency powers during the pandemic. We did this within a democratic framework and we will return to the usual parliamentary order.

There was no basis for the criticisms, Orban during the visit to Serbia on Friday. Once they apologize, we also expect their admiration for the success of Hungarys defense [against the pandemic. To date, Hungary has 3,417 confirmed coronavirus infections and 442 deaths among the population of nearly 10 million.

On Thursday, European Union lawmakers asked that Orban be punished for his actions, after the European Parliament passed a resolution last month that singled out Hungarys emergency powers for criticism.

The Union has not taken any concrete measures to sanction [Prime Minister Viktor] Orbans government, Spanish lawmaker Iratxe Garcia Perez told European Commission Vice President Vera Jourova and other EU leaders. And so he continues his action to centralize power, to interfere in the electoral system, to control the news media, education, culture, harassing civil society. Colleagues, this is shameful!

More from National Review
All animals are either warm-blooded, cold-blooded, or somewhere in between. A warm blooded animal, according to Merriam-Wesbter, is one that can maintain a relatively constant internally regulated body temperature that is independent from that of its surroundings.

An animal that is cold-blooded, in contrast, cannot regulate its internal temperature on its own, and maintains a body temperature that approximates its environment.

As a general rule, birds and mammals are warm-blooded, or endotherms. Most of us may simply think of fish when it comes to cold-blooded animals (ectotherms), but there are many more animals that fall into this category.

Here is a look at five animals you may be surprised to learn are actually cold-blooded, and cannot regulate their own body temperature all the time.

5. Crocodiles

Crocodiles basking in the sun. Image credit: Vera Larina/Shutterstock.com

Crocodiles are so large and imposing it can be easy to forget they rely on their surroundings for warmth, and to cool down. Unless they are found in a zoo, they live in tropical climates in the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Australia where the glowing sunshine keeps them comfortably at ease. When temperatures grow too hot, the crocodile can slip into nearby water to cool off.

During dry seasons when it can get extremely hot and there is little water, crocodiles estivate. They also do this if temperatures dip too low. This means they go dormant for long periods of time. Crocodiles do this by digging a burrow into the side of a lake or river bank. The crocs then nestle in and go to sleep, sometimes for three or four months at a time.

4. Bees

Honey bees visiting flowers for nectar. Image credit: Artem Pachkovskyi/Shutterstock.com

As with all insects, bees are cold-blooded. They fly around in spring and summer when temperatures are warm, and use their colony to warm up in winter, or go underground and inside structures.

Honeybees form a thermoregulating cluster inside their hives to survive cold winter months. Solitary bees move inside ceilings and basements to stay warm, and some even burrow underground and stay there for months at a time.

3. Spiders

Spider web in frost. Image credit: ZsuzsannaBird/Shutterstock.com

Spiders have a plethora of interesting properties, and one of them is the ability to survive cold temperatures even though they are cold-blooded creatures.

Contrary to popular belief, spiders do not come into your home in the winter to get out of the cold. The spiders you find in your home are indoor spiders that are able to survive without much water or food. Those outside would not be able to live in these conditions.

Outdoor spiders have been known to survive at about 23F and even lower, because of natural antifreeze they have in them. They stockpile glycol compounds in their bloodstream, which allow them to survive in moderately cold weather. When things get really chilly, however, outdoor spiders seek shelter in tree bark and other good hiding spaces in nature.

2. Arctic Ground Squirrel

An Arctic ground squirrel. Image credit: Lily McWilliams/Shutterstock.com

These last two entries in our list are unusual. The arctic ground squirrel and the madagascar pygmy mouse lemur are both mammals, and technically you may say they are warm blooded. As BBC.com states, however, this label does not really adequately describe what their bodies do in nature. They are both actually heterothermic, meaning that they waver between regulating their own body temperature (warm-blooded), and letting their environment do it for them (cold-blooded).

The arctic ground squirrel is not cold-blooded like a fish or reptile is but it can do interesting things. It lives in the tundra where it can grow quite cold, and it can chill itself considerably.

One study found this squirrel dropped its body temperature to 26.78F (-2.9C) during hibernation. Seeing as winters in the arctic can be extremely cold, being able to cool down this much likely helps the arctic ground squirrel slow its metabolism to survive the winter months. Is it cold-blooded? Yes, sometimes it certainly is.

1. Madagascar Pygmy Mouse Lemur

Pygmy mouse lemur on the tree at night. (Microcebus myoxinus) Madagascar. Image credit: Anna Veselova/Shutterstock.com

As stated above, technically this species is warm blooded, but not really. The madagascar pygmy mouse lemur behaves like a cold-blooded creature for a large portion of each day.

According to BBC.com, this small, big-eyed animal spends about ten hours every day in a state called torpor. When here, its body temperature drops below 44F (7C). This allows the Madagascar pygmy mouse lemur to save considerable energy, just like the arctic ground squirrel does. It is an adaptation of evolution that puts this species somewhere between being cold-blooded and warm-blooded, but not solidly in either group.
Gardai visited a meat factory where a massive cluster of coronavirus has broken out to warn workers that any more breaches of social- distancing regulations will not be tolerated.

The warning came during a multi-agency meeting at the Kepak meat-processing plant in Ballymahon, Co Longford, where 50pc of employees have tested positive for Covid-19.

Gardai have moved to the "enforcement" stage of policing the situation in the district, which means that those now found breaching the restrictions will be arrested.

Senior sources said there had been "huge concern" that a large number of the employees, particularly Brazilian nationals, had been in breach of the strict health regula- tions and travel restrictions in the weeks before the special meeting was organised last Friday.

"There was a grave concern within the community about these young men being in breach of the regulations and it had been going on for weeks, despite more and more people contracting the virus," a source told the Herald.

"You had large groups of young men going to the shops together and congregating outside shops and hanging around the streets.

"Then there was a situation where they continued to car-pool to travel to and from work at the factory, which meant that sometimes up to four to five people from different households were travelling in the same vehicle.

"Considering there was a virus cluster at the factory, all this made for a very grave and dangerous situation.

"The majority of those involved in these breaches were Brazilian nationals, but it wasn't only them."

Last Friday, community policing gardai and senior officers from Longford, senior HSE officials and the chief executive of Longford County Council met with representatives of workers at the Ballymahon factory and the operations manager at Kepak.

"This is a factory where around 150 people have tested positive, so it was very important to have the meeting," the source told the Herald.

"It went very well and there was great co-operation from the company, who have put in place many measures to prevent the spread of the virus.

Message

"There was a Brazilian-born garda who was able to speak to the workers in their native Portuguese and a Polish-born garda who spoke Polish to the Polish workers, as well as a garda born in Slovenia who explained things in Serbian and Italian.

"They were also given key health advice by the specialist registrar in public health with the HSE in the Midlands, and the message really seemed to get through to the workers."

Since the meeting was held, gardai have observed no instances of the Brazilian factory workers breaching Covid-19 laws, and sources said officers were "very happy" with the level of compliance in the past week.

It is understood that a similar meeting was held this week at a meat factory in Athleague, Co Roscommon.
Visakhapatnam, May 15 : A senior police officer of Andhra Pradesh on Friday allegedly committed suicide, police said.

P.V. Krishna Varma, serving as Special Branch Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) at Srikakulam, allegedly hanged himself at his residence on Beach Road in this coastal city.

Varma's wife and son found him dead on their return from a hospital. The officer is suspected to have ended his life due to ill-health.

He was battling a serious lung ailment for the last four years and doctors had advised lung transplant.

"We have registered a case of death under suspicious circumstances. The exact cause of the death will be known after the investigations," said Shanmukha Rao, Inspector of MVP Police Station.

The police officer said the body was shifted to King George Hospital for autopsy.

Varma had served at various police stations in Visakhapatnam and was later promoted as DSP and posted in Srikakulam.
He said the President Akufo-Addo-led Government had shown better leadership than the NDC Presidential Candidate, Mr John Dramani Mahama, and based on that the electorate would renew the mandate of the Government in the December polls.

Addressing a news conference to respond to the NDC allegations in Accra on Thursday, Mr Peter Mac-Manu, the NPP Campaign Manager for the December 2020 Elections, said the Party did not need the EC to rig the polls in its favour, but would campaign to win based on its sound track record.

He recounted some achievements of the ruling government including the Free Senior High School that had enrolled 1.3 million children, employment of 100,000 graduates and the support offered to the ordinary Ghanaian during the COVID-19 pandemic.

These include supply of free water and subsidy on electricity as well as the restoration of industry and the economy.

"So we do not need the EC to rig the elections in our favour. NPP will win the election based on our sound track record," he said.

Mr Mac-Manu noted that all the excuses the NDC was making against the compilation of a new voter's register was premised on the fact that it could not wrest power from the ruling NPP Government based on performance.

He said even though the NPP would support the EC to compile a new voter's register and election management system if the election management body wished to do so, the Party would still contest and win the December polls with or without a new voter's register.

"This is because the Ghanaian electorate have confidence in the ruling NPP government since President Akufo-Addo had shown leadership and sought the welfare of the ordinary Ghanaian over the period of his tenure," Mr Mac-Manu stated.

He recalled that since 1996 the EC had compiled a new voter's register every eight years (that is 1996, 2004 and 2012) with the idea of improving the features of the electoral register to ensure the sanctity of the elections.

He, therefore, posed these questions to the NDC: Why is it that the NDC is against the compilation of a new voter's register that promises enhanced features? What is it about the 2012 Register that the NDC holds it so sacred? What is it that the NDC holds so sacred that if the register is replaced, it will affect the party's electoral fortunes?

Mr Mac-Manu said the NPP was not afraid to face the Ghanaian electorate in the December polls because the Akufo-Addo-led government had distinguished itself over the period and it was evident for everyone to see and make comparison with that of the NDC.

GNA
OTTAWA  A long-awaited program to give temporary agricultural workers a path to citizenship will be launched today, but its tight criteria will exclude many of them, including those who work in Manitoba.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (615 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

OTTAWA  A long-awaited program to give temporary agricultural workers a path to citizenship will be launched today, but its tight criteria will exclude many of them, including those who work in Manitoba.

"Immigration criteria is set up for urban-centric occupations and not rural, farm and food occupations," said Janet Krayden, a spokeswoman for Mushrooms Canada.

The federal Liberals announced the agri-food immigration pilot program last summer, but delayed its launch, set for March, due to COVID-19. It will offer permanent residency to non-seasonal, year-round agricultural workers in Canada who meet certain criteria.

Ottawa will grant permanent status to as many as 8,250 workers over three years. Just as many people can qualify as family members, for a total of 16,500.

But applicants have to pay for an assessment of their home countrys high school degree. They also must pay for a Canadian Language Benchmark-4 language test, a level that involves being able to read a recipe and give driving directions.

"The requirements are fairly high," said Diwa Marcelino, an organizer with Migrante Manitoba.

Seasonal workers, who continue to spend summers in Canada before returning to their home countries, are ineligible for the pilot program.

Yet the Canadian Agricultural Human Resource Council praised the program, saying the sector has lobbied for years to keep workers with skills that agricultural companies need, but whom Ottawa doesnt deem as specialized labour.

"This is what this new program is designed to address," said council head Portia MacDonald-Dewhirst.

Her group found that in 2017, 1,100 unfilled Manitoba agriculture jobs cost the sector $367 million in lost sales. The council believes Manitoba is on track to fall short by 5,300 jobs at the end of this decade, as demand rises for grain, oilseeds, beef and pork.

MacDonald-Dewhirst said her industry has pushed hard to hire Canadians, but recruitment campaigns havent bridged the growing job gap that leads to unharvested food.

Now, COVID-19 travel restrictions make it harder to fly in foreign workers and safely house them, and the coronavirus is disrupting supply chains that import food.

"This is a great time to be doing this project," MacDonald-Dewhirst said of the pilot. "These are people who are here on a temporary basis, and are looking to make Canada their home; theyre excited to do so."

Marcelino fears the program will worsen the exploitation of foreign workers. His group has long advocated that agricultural workers are only safe when they have Canadian citizenship.

"Theres a huge power imbalance employers have over their employees, because their status is dependent on their employment," he said.

Marcelino argued employers will use the pilot program as leverage to make sure workers dont cause a fuss over labour conditions.

"You have this even bigger carrot on a stick that workers are vying for."

Marcelino argued thats especially dangerous during COVID-19, with migrant workers alleging that Alberta meat plants encouraged them to keep working even though they had symptoms, sparking some of the largest coronavirus outbreaks on the continent.

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"Its a disappointment, and I think that Canadians expect more from the government, to provide safe workplaces," he said.

Still, Krayden said Mushrooms Canada knows about hundreds who plan to apply.

She hopes Ottawa will temporarily loosen the requirement to have foreign high school diplomas assessed, as COVID-19 has shut down firms that offer that service.

"Theyve got the skills and experience needed on our farms, and we need them for our food security today," she said.

"They want to stay here, and Canada should let them."

dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca
A ustralians were able to visit restaurants and pubs for the first time today after coronavirus lockdown restrictions were eased in New South Wales.

Cafes, restaurants and places of worship were allowed to reopen with up to 10 people on the condition that they adhere to social distancing rules.

Pubs and clubs reopened for dining purposes, meaning people must be eating to be able to order a drink.

The easing of lockdown restrictions came a day after the national statistics office reported record high job losses.

Customer numbers remained relatively low as rainy weather and ongoing fears about the spread of Covid-19 kept some people indoors.

Jess Best, who met up with a friend in a cafe in the city's eastern suburbs, was keen to take advantage of the new freedoms.

She said: "It's such a treat. To be able to sit down with other people around and chat to my friend.

"I can have a normal morning, not hiding away in my home."

State premier Gladys Berejiklian warned people to take personal responsibility, saying that easing restrictions in some other countries had backfired.

Lets please do our part in keeping everybody safe so that all of us can keep moving forward so that we never, ever go backwards, she said. Thats really, really critical.

Many Catholic churches across the state opened for private prayer, confession and small-scale masses.

The celebration of mass is the highest form of Catholic worship and to not be able to physically gather these past two months has been very difficult for Catholics, said Sydneys Archbishop Anthony Fisher.

Many Jewish synagogues and other Christian churches decided to keep their doors closed.

Raymond Pratt and Lindsay OHea enjoying a pint at the the Landmark Hotel in Darwin, Australia / Getty Images

Schools are slowly opening in New South Wales and private households are now allowed up to five guests.

New South Wales and Victoria, Australia's second most populous state, recorded 29 new infections on Friday.

In total Australia has recorded more than 7,000 cases of Covid-19 and 98 deaths from the disease.

Men run in Bondi Beach amidst the easing of coronavirus lockdown restrictions / REUTERS

Australia has said it will continue to push for an inquiry into the origins of coronavirus, even if it hurts trade relations with China.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison had been accused of playing deputy sheriff to the United States after calling for the inquiry. On Thursday, he brushed off the criticism.

We have always been independent, we have always pursued our national interests, and we always will, he told reporters. We will always be Australians in how we engage with the rest of the world, and we will always stand our ground when it comes to the things that we believe in and the values that we uphold.

China has suspended beef imports from four abattoirs and plans to impose tariffs on Australian barley, after warning the inquiry could harm two-way trade ties.

Agencies contributed to this report.
Captain Sandy Yawn from Below Deck Mediterranean revealed that she was initially hesitant to take part in the nautical docuseries for fear it would destroy her career.

Captain Sandy Yawn |Karolina Wojtasik/Bravo/NBCU Photo Bank via Getty Images

Yawn came to the series as a highly decorated captain. With 30 years under her belt, Yawn earned the prestigious Distinguished Crew Award from the International Superyacht Society. She was also recognized for her quick decision making and heroic efforts when her crew was pursued by pirates in Yemen in 2006.

So when she was approached to be on a reality television series, Yawn admits she paused before agreeing. Of course, now she views that move as a platform to not only educate but motivate others to join the maritime industry.

She worried it would be a career-damaging move

Yawn said the show sort of fell into her lap and producers contacted her. My first thought was its going to ruin my career, she told Boating Industry. Because it wasnt fondly looked after. Because it really exposed a lot.

She obviously reconsidered. Then I thought about it. What I learned if something presents itself, you dont say no to it, she insists. Try it, and if you like it, you do it. And if you dont just step away from it. And thats really what I did.

Yawn is happy she grabbed onto the opportunity. And Im grateful I did because Im getting so many messages about how I inspire people especially women. Anythings possible. I get thousands of messages where they can start.

Yawn even created a special foundation to provide financial support to those who want to get their yachting certification, but cant afford the classes. Shes also planning to work with local schools to educate students about the opportunities in the yachting industry.

Shes mentored many crew members

Viewers saw Yawn mentor bosun Joao Franco on the series. Franco arrived on the show as the lead deckhand but his passion and determination caught Yawns eye. Like all of her crew members, she offered Franco a number of opportunities to hone and expand his skills.

As a result, viewers saw Franco ultimately interviewing for a job as a captain. He landed the position and credited Yawn to getting him where he is today. With Joao, I helped him get a job, Yawn told Decider. I told the owner, do not let him go to sea as captain. You need to put someone with experience because if youre just sitting in a shipyard working on a boat all the time, youre not getting that experience at sea.

She explained what it takes to make it in yachting too. You need to know how to solve problems. You need to know not to rely on your team. With Joao, from what Ive witnessed, is he tries to do everything. Youve got to figure out a finesse where you want the crew to want to do this for you. So how do you do that? Well, I have that formula. He needs to learn it.

Yawn has also offered words of encouragement to other Below Deck crew members like Rhylee Gerber, Abbi Murphy, and Malia White, who now returns at Yawns bosun. White will be the first female bosun featured on the series.

Below Deck Mediterranean season 5 premieres on Monday, June 1 at 9/8c on Bravo.
U.S. Sen. Richard Burr resigned as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, a day after federal investigators seized his cellphone from his home and amid calls for him to also resign his Senate seat.

Senate Majority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., released a statement: Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as chairman of the Intelligence committee during the pendency of the investigation.

We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of (today).

Burr released a statement Thursday:

This morning, I informed Majority Leader McConnell that I have made the decision to step aside as chairman of the Senate Intelligence committee until this investigation is resolved.

"The work the Intelligence committee and its members do is too important to risk hindering in any way. I believe this step is necessary to allow the committee to continue its essential work free of external distractions.

Earlier Thursday, Burr told McClatchy News Service he plans to serve out the remaining 2 years of his term. Burr said during his 2016 campaign he would not seek re-election in 2022.

Its a distraction to a committee thats extremely important to the safety and security of the American people and a distraction to the members of that committee being asked questions about me, so I tried to eliminate that, Burr told McClatchy.

Larry Sabato, director of the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia, said Burrs decision to step down as chairman is the right thing to do, and it demonstrates the seriousness of this unfolding matter.

The Intelligence committee has important duties that cannot appear compromised.

The FBIs seizure of Burrs phone signals that this controversy likely involves more than just a hit job from left-of-center partisans, said Mitch Kokai, senior policy analyst with Libertarian think tank John Locke Foundation.

Seized cellphone

Burrs committee resignation followed reports late Wednesday that his cellphone had been seized by the Federal Bureau of Investigation agents.

Calls have been renewed for the Republican from Winston-Salem to not only step down as chairman of the committee, but also the Senate, amid claims he violated the federal STOCK Act.

Congress passed the Stock Act in 2012, making it illegal for lawmakers to use inside information for financial benefit. Burr was one of three Republican senators to vote against the bill.

The cellphone seizure appears to be tied to U.S. Justice Department and Securities and Exchange Commission investigations into stock sales made in February by Burr and his wife, Brooke.

U.S. Senate financial disclosure documents show Richard and Brooke Burr sold between $628,000 and $1.72 million of their stock holdings in 33 separate transactions on Feb. 13. The publication Roll Call listed his net worth at $1.7 million as of 2018.

The Los Angeles Times first reported Wednesday night, citing an anonymous law-enforcement source, that FBI agents came to Burrs home in the Washington area with a search warrant for the cellphone.

The newspaper said Thursday that federal agents served an earlier warrant on Apple for information in Burrs iCloud account. Agents used that information as evidence to obtain a search warrant from a judge for Burrs phone.

Burr spokeswoman Caitlin Carroll declined to comment on the L.A. Times story.

Not done lightly

CNN reported March 30 that Burr is facing potential Justice and SEC probes into stock sales made Feb. 13  a week before the stock market began its sharp coronavirus-related decline Feb. 20. CNN reported the two federal agencies contacted the FBI as part of their initial steps.

Burr attended a joint Jan. 24 Senate Health and Foreign Relations committee briefing on coronavirus that included the director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

On March 20, Burr requested the U.S. Senate Ethics committee investigate the stock transactions.

Burr released a statement March 20 saying I relied solely on public news reports to guide my decision regarding the sale of stocks on Feb. 13. Specifically, I closely followed CNBCs daily health and science reporting out of its Asia bureaus at the time.

Action by the Senate Ethics committee is not as relevant now that an FBI investigation is under way, Sabato said.

The committee very probably wouldnt take any action until the FBI and, if necessary, the courts had finished, Sabato said. Burr could easily be out of office by then considering he has pledged not to seek re-election in 2022.

Sabato said the fact that the FBI seized Burrs cellphone is unsettling on its face.

But every American deserves the presumption of innocence, so lets wait and see whether there are actually charges filed against Burr and if so, how they are adjudicated.

Trading patterns

For most of the past 7 years, Burr has been a low-volume, modest-value buyer and seller of corporate stocks.

But that changed dramatically over a 14-day period from Jan. 31 to Feb. 13.

Thats when the Burrs conducted two buys and 36 sales, eight of the sells were in the $50,001 to $100,000 range. The sells included shares of three corporations in the hotel and hospitality industry.

Theres no question it was clearly a market change in strategy for Burr in the 2020 stock sales, said Bruce Sacerdote, a Dartmouth College economics professor who released a report in April on the STOCK Acts impact on senators stock transactions.

The Burrs stock trades are based on quarterly and annual filings required by the act.

Overall, the stocks that the Burrs sold this year underperformed the market by 8% between the sale and March 31, according to NPR. This means the stocks performed worse than comparable stocks in the same sector.

Its way above his normal range for trading considering he was average two to three trades a quarter, and he does 38 in one quarter, Sacerdote said.

Since 2013, the Burrs have bought and sold between $639,500 and $1.1 million of stock in companies that make medical devices, equipment, supplies and drugs, according to a ProPublica analysis of his financial disclosures.

Senators are prohibited from pushing legislation in order to directly further their own financial interest, but they can own stocks in industries overseen by committees on which they sit and trade in and out of individual stocks, ProPublica reported.

Public Citizen, a left-leaning think tank in Washington, said Richard Burrs stock trading represents a scandal that shouldnt have happened given the restrictions listed in the STOCK Act.

The group said the two federal investigations and the Senate Ethics committee have a near impossible task: determining whether Burr traded because of what he heard on the news (legal) or what he heard in classified meetings (illegal).

Citing the recent federal sentencing of former U.S. Rep. Chris Collins, R-N.Y., for insider trading, Public Citizen said the STOCK Act can work.

But we cant always rely on a smoking gun, like the insider trading texts that Collins sent.

Theres an easy solution to making sure this never happens again.

Members of Congress shouldnt be able to trade individual stocks at all.

Heads up?

The Feb. 13 stock sales by the Burrs occurred six days after Burr co-wrote an op-ed piece saying America had tools in place to combat COVID-19.

The Jan. 31 to Feb. 13 trading period ended a week before the stock market entered its coronavirus-related roller coaster ride on Feb. 20.

Sacerdote said he believes Richard Burr is arguing that these were market-driven trades, a big shift based on public information, as opposed to private information.

Its actually hard to infer from the data whether Sen. Burr was trading on publicly available information and/or whether he had very fortunate timing.

What I am better positioned to talk about is how his trades have done in the long haul, which is very middle of the road.

Other Burr issues

Burr has faced bipartisan criticism of his actions over the past three months. Those include:

at a Feb. 27 private event that he has not repeated publicly.

Burrs comments carry significant weight in part because he is author of the federal Pandemic All-Hazards Preparedness Act of 2006.

in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington to pharmaceutical lobbyist John Green and a business partner of Green.

The sales price was $900,000  an amount tens of thousands of dollars above some estimates of the propertys value by tax assessors, a real estate website and a local real estate agent, according to the report by ProPublica, an online investigative news outlet.

There is no evidence that Green tried to influence Burrs actions as a senator or discussed any legislation with him specifically, ProPublica said.

But if the town house was sold for more than fair market value, the transaction could be considered as a gift from a lobbyist, which typically would not be allowed under U.S. Senate ethics rules.

Even if a gift is allowed, it typically must be publicly disclosed.

on the same day  Feb. 13  that Burr and his wife conducted 33 sell transactions.

According to a federal Public Financial Disclosure Act filing, Gerald Fauth sold six stocks valued between $97,006 and $280,000.

336-727-7376 @rcraverWSJ

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A row over the alleged under-reporting of Covid-19 infections at one of the countrys largest hospitals has descended into a game of finger-pointing with the HSE and the hospital in question apparently at loggerheads.

On Thursday evening the chair of the National Public Health Emergency Team Dr Tony Holohan informed the public that a hospital had under-reported the number of its infections by a figure of 244.

Dr Holohan said at the time that he would be surprised if the issue was replicated at other hospitals, and that he didnt believe any deaths were involved as part of the under-reporting.

Amid rumours that the hospital in question was the Mater on Dublins northside, that hospital today released a statement saying that it had at all times provided the information that the HSE required and met all legal requirements to report infectious diseases.

All of this information is correct and up to date. We are working with the HSE to understand why the provided data may not have been accurately captured, the statement said.

Its understood that privately senior officials at the hospital are extremely unhappy at the manner in which blame has been laid at their hospitals door, with the impression at that level being that the misunderstanding is an issue for which the HSE is to blame.

The HSE itself said it is not in a position to confirm whether the hospital did or did not report.

That is a matter that is currently under review with the IEHG (Ireland East Hospital Group) Group and the Mater Hospital, a spokesperson said.

Dr Holohan on Thursday had suggested that he believed the issue related to occupational health - in other words, that the issue related to staff infections and not patients.

However, the Mater today said that more than 300 - a figure far in excess of that revealed by Dr Holohan - of its staff have thus far tested positive for the coronavirus, with a further 1,500 having self-isolated.

It said that comprehensive contact tracing on all of its staff who had tested positive had been carried out in line with best practice.

At the start of May the Mater had by some distance the highest number of confirmed cases of Covid-19 of any acute hospital as reported by the HSE.

The issue is the latest sign of strain in the relationship between the Department of Health and NPHET and the HSE itself, after it emerged HSE chief executive Paul Reid had expressed deep displeasure at Dr Holohans decision to announce a target of 100,000 virus tests per week in mid April.

Louise OReilly, Sinn Feins spokeswoman on health, said we need to know that when figures are given that the numbers are accurate before calling for all entities within the health service to clarify that theyre reporting all that they are expected to.

If there is even a hint that we dont have all the information then it is very worrying, particularly for those workers heading back to work on Monday next because theyve been told that its safe to do so, she added.
The devastating toll of the Governments disastrous policy of encouraging care homes to take patients with coronavirus is revealed today.

Grieving relatives told of their agony and anger at losing elderly loved ones because of the strategy, which they say abandoned an entire generation.

Care home managers also complained that they had been pressured into taking the patients.

Until April 16, Government guidelines said patients should be released into care homes even if they had tested positive for covid-19, or without any test at all, a move MPs said beggars belief.

Former engineer Brian Taylor with his daughter Jean Richardson, 63, on his 90th birthday. Mr Taylor, 90, died at Summerfield House Nursing Home in Halifax after coronavirus was brought into the home

The family of great-grandmother Sylvia Williams, 87, said staff at the Elsinor home in Scarborough had not explained how they believe she contracted Covid-19

Great-grandmother Beryl Bettridge was used as a 'sacrificial lamb' to free hospital beds after being sent back to her care home despite having coronavirus, her family said yesterday

Even when carers tried to isolate recently discharged infected residents it still triggered outbreaks that tore through homes, claiming the lives of many more residents.

Despite this, the latest Government policy still allows for some patients who have tested positive for covid-19 in hospitals to be released to care homes, and:

Outbreaks caused by this strategy meant some residents were forced to die alone and in agony because overwhelmed homes did not have enough staff to be with every victim as they passed away.

In an appalling indignity, the surge in fatalities it created meant a death had to be confirmed by care staff FaceTiming overstretched GPs who inspected a dead resident using their phone camera.

One man said his mother was used as a sacrificial lamb to free hospital beds after she was sent back to her care home despite having coronavirus.

The equalities watchdog is considering whether human rights laws were breached by hospitals discharging older patients into care homes.

It wasnt his time, says family of victim aged 90 The daughter of a man of 90 who died at a nursing home after a resident was admitted from hospital with Covid-19 said last night: It was not his time to go. Brian Taylor died at Summerfield House Nursing Home in Halifax at the end of March after several residents fell ill. One resident went into Calderdale Hospital on March 20, tested positive for the virus and was returned to the home. Several others then had symptoms. Mr Taylors daughter, teacher Jean Richardson, was told about the outbreak but was reassured her father was fine. However, the former engineer died, struggling to breathe, over a week later. On April 8 the nurse called to say he was very tired. A doctor checked him the next morning, but the following afternoon staff called to say he was struggling to breathe. When Mrs Richardson got there 20 minutes later, he was dead. Heart failure, diabetes and high blood pressure were listed on his death certificate, but not Covid-19. Mrs Richardson, pictured with her father at left, said: I know he had longer to live. Ill never be sure what happened to him in those last days... because hes not been tested. How did coronavirus get into the home? Manager Carl Stevenson said the home took extra precautions to keep coronavirus out, including excluding visitors before it was required to. He added: The resident was discharged from hospital in line with official guidance and the hospitals policies. They were isolated for 14 days. Calderdale Hospital did not to comment last night. The family of a great-grandmother told of their grief last night following her death from corona after an infected resident was allowed into her care home. Wendy Raine, daughter of Sylvia Williams, 87, pictured, said carers at the Elsinor home in Scarborough told her a week before the virus struck that her mother had no signs of illness. On April 21 the former hotelier was taken to hospital with an infected bed sore. The next morning she tested positive, and died on April 29. Mrs Raine said: The home had been on lockdown for six weeks. Sending people with the disease into care homes is a ticking timebomb. The home manager said there was a policy the home was legally bound to adhere to. Beryl Bettridge was used as a sacrificial lamb to free hospital beds after being sent back to her care home despite having coronavirus, her family said yesterday. Relatives of the great-grandmother, 89, pictured, say they were told when she left Queens Medical Centre in Nottingham she was virus free. But her condition deteriorated after she went back to Eden Lodge Care Home and she died days later on April 26. Her son, Adrian, 58, only found she died of Covid-19 when he couldnt pay his respects at the chapel of rest because shed been infected. He said: They sent my mum out to die. She was a sacrificial lamb. The home told him it would not have taken her if it knew she had the virus. Queens said it followed national guidance. Advertisement

At St Nicholas Care Home in Bootle, Liverpool, 12 residents died after Aintree Hospital discharged two patients to it without testing them for coronavirus. One or two died almost every day over two weeks after the virus ripped through the home.

It had decided to lock down two weeks before official Government guidance to protect its 150 residents.

The policy kept it free of the virus until the hospital asked to discharge two untested patients into its empty beds between March 30 and April 4.

Staff isolated them in line with Government advice at the time, but they  and several other residents  soon showed coronavirus symptoms.

We requested that if we were going to be taking people into the home that they were tested, general manager Jayms Bell said.

We were met with resistance as they werent routinely testing people in hospital who were being discharged.

Aside from taking their word that the person wasnt symptomatic at that time, there wasnt much wiggle room on that. Mr Bell described as traumatic the fact that some of the residents who died had been at the home for 14 years, adding: It has had a massive impact on staff  theyre like their family.

Bosses said it was highly likely that a hospital patient brought coronavirus into the home  but they cannot say for sure thanks to the lack of testing.

The homes operations manager, Adrienne Gresty, said Aintree Hospital wanted the bed  it was almost as if they werent bothered about the impact that would have.

Miss Gresty said she was angry about how the hospital dumped patients in the home without apparent thought or consideration of the consequences, adding: There was not enough consideration that as soon as the virus entered a care home there was going to be a problem.

A manager of a care home in East Sussex, who declined to be named, said she quit following a 30-year career when she was put under constant pressure by hospitals to accept patients with coronavirus.

It led to the contagion tearing through her home  which had previously been free of the virus  killing 30 residents.

The manager said: Covid got so bad that at one point we had four deaths in one day.

It meant we couldnt get round to them at all at same time and one was left to die alone  something we never wanted to happen. It was so undignified.

The final straw for her was when a resident died and the doctor could not come to check the body because the virus was so rife in the home.

She added: We had to FaceTime the GP and hold the phone while shining a torch into the dead residents eyes so he could confirm the death.

It felt like these people just didnt matter.

Government guidelines published on April 2 encouraged care homes to accept discharged patients whether they were showing symptoms or not. Negative tests were not required prior to transfers or admissions from hospitals into care homes.

The policy was designed to free up beds in hospitals.

The Department of Health changed this strategy on April 16 to give more protection.

But the revised policy still states that some patients who have tested positive can continue to be sent to care homes.

It added: They will have been covid-19 tested and have confirmed covid-positive status.

Some care providers will be able to accommodate these individuals through effective isolation strategies or cohorting policies. But campaigners warned that given attempts to isolate these patients in the past appeared to have failed to stop outbreaks, more deaths should be expected as a result of this policy.

The Equality and Human Rights Commission said this week it was considering investigating the legality of discharging possibly infected patients from hospitals into care homes.

A spokesman for Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, which is responsible for Aintree Hospital, said it followed Government guidance at all times in discharging patients to St Nicholas Care Home, adding: Patient care and safety is our priority, and throughout the covid-19 pandemic we have followed the guidance for hospitals and care homes, with clear actions for both, from the Department of Health and Social Care.

The patients involved were not displaying any covid-19 symptoms prior to their transfer to the care home.

In line with national guidance at the time, these patients did not meet the testing criteria, but a health-needs assessment was carried out as required.

The Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment last night.
NEW DELHI: Defence minister Rajnath Singh has approved a Rs 400-crore scheme for creating testing infrastructure in the defence sector, the ministry said in a statement on Friday. Called the Defence Testing Infrastructure Scheme, it will run for five years and envisages the setting up of six to eight modern testing facilities in partnership with the private sector.

The majority of the testing facilities are expected to come up in the two defence industrial corridors (DICs) in Uttar Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, officials said. The scheme, however, will not be limited to setting up facilities in the DICs only.

The scheme is aimed at giving a boost to domestic defence and aerospace manufacturing.

This will facilitate indigenous defence production and consequently reduce import of military equipment and help make the country self-reliant, the statement said, adding that the projects under the scheme will be given up to 75% government funding.

The remaining 25% of the cost will be borne by the special purpose vehicle (SPV) whose constituents will be Indian private entities and the state governments.

The SPVs under the scheme will be registered under the Companies Act 2013 and operate and maintain assets in a self-sustainable manner by collecting user charges, the ministry said. The equipment tested will be certified as per appropriate accreditation, it added.

The draft Defence Production Policy-2018 visualises India as one of the top five countries in the aerospace and defence sectors in the coming years, with defence goods and services accounting for a turnover of Rs 1.7 lakh crore by 2025. It also seeks to drastically reduce Indias dependence on imported military hardware over the next five years.

Despite pursuing the Make in India programme vigorously to reduce military imports, the country was the second-largest arms importer in the world over the last five years, according to data published by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in March.
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Sadiq Khan was today accused of risking lives and forcing people out of their cars and on to the Tube where social distancing is 'impossible' because of a lack of trains after he brought back the central London congestion charge from Monday and jacked it up to 15 from 11.50 in June.

The Mayor of London has also announced that from next month the daily charge, introduced by Ken Livingstone in 2003, will for the first time be imposed on weekends and extended out of rush hour from 6pm to 10pm - just hours after accepting a 1.6billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

But MailOnline can exclusively reveal that Mr Khan dodged London's packed underground system today and was picked up from home in his taxpayer-funded 300,000 armoured Range Rover followed by his Met Police security detail in a 60,000 Land Rover discovery.

Motorists in London will again have to pay the 11.50 congestion charge again from Monday, a fortnight earlier than expected, after it was suspended at the start of the lockdown to make it easier for key workers to get around.

From June 22, when the lockdown is expected to have been eased further by Boris Johnson, the daily congestion charge will rise from 11.50 to 15 - a 30 per cent hike. It will also be enforced seven days a week, and until 10pm, for the first time. NHS workers will be able to claim it back, City Hall said.

The Mayor of London also announced:

TfL will introduce fare rises from January next year. Single tickets will go up by the rate of inflation plus 1% - Sadiq Khan has frozen single fares every year since he became mayor in May 2016;

T emporary measures stopping free travel for 1.5million schoolchildren and only allowing people over 60 or with a disability to travel for free outside peak hours;

Fares on buses - scrapped to help protect drivers from Covid-19 - will be reintroduced from Monday;

The 12.50-a-day Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) charge for older and more polluting vehicles will also return with the 11.50 congestion charge next week.

How is social distancing going to work on the Tube? To avoid passengers cramming on to carriages, Transport for London has asked: Commuters to avoid public transport and travel by bike or on foot

Bosses to stagger start times for their employees

Passengers to wear face coverings and use hand sanitiser

People to to obey the national requirement to maintain two-metre distance between passengers. Signs have been erected at stations urging people to maintain social distancing. TfL has said that the two-metre rule will reduce passenger capacity to only 13 per cent of full functioning. Unlike many European countries which have laid down floor markings signalling where people can stand, it is understood no such plans exist for the Tube. Instead, TfL told MailOnline that British Transport Police will be moving people along. Advertisement

Mr Khan today suggested that today's congestion charge announcement was imposed on him by the government because it was the 'only deal on the table' offered by the Department of Transport. But a spokesman for Number 10 said that the government only asked for the reimposition of the congestion charge and 'the details of how to do it are for TfL and the Mayor.

The Mayor of London, who accepted a 1.1billion grant and 505million loan, said: 'I want to be completely honest and upfront with Londoners  this is not the deal I wanted. But it was the only deal the Government put on the table and I had no choice but to accept it to keep the Tubes and buses running'.

Conservative Mayoral candidate Andrew Bailey accused Khan of lying about the imposition and said the London Mayor was always planning to introduce fare increases.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told MailOnline: 'The Labour Mayor of London seems to be everything he can to sabotage the capital's economic recovery from the Covid-crisis. First it was a lack of public transport services in cahoots with his union paymasters and now this. This risks forcing more people on to the Tube and increasing the rate of infection again. What is Khan thinking? Londoners might wonder whose side he's on.

There is anger and disbelief among Londoners who have been forced to drive to work to protect their family from coronavirus because of a lack of social distancing on public transport. Mr Khan has also been shamed by pictures from European capitals such as Berlin, where 100% of Tube services have been running for weeks with staff on hand to give out free face masks to all passengers.

Sadiq Khan is swept away from his London home in this 300,000 Range Rover today as others crammed on to the Tube

Mr Khan left the house this morning before donning a face covering as he was picked up by Scotland Yard close protection as the row over his decision to hike the congestion charge raged on

The Mayor was followed through the streets of Central London by his security detail in a 60,000 Land Rover discovery.

Catholic Priest Father Grant Ciccone ddposted this picture of the packed Jubilee Line this morning as the first working week as the lockdown eased ends today

Despite Sadiq Khan urging people to stay at home and avoid the Tube, millions are returning to their workplaces (pictured in Canning Town today), the Mayor of London today hiked the price of the congestion charge to 15 and extended it to weekends

A sign is seen on the A4 in London indicating that the congestion charge will resume on Monday, following the outbreak of the coronavirus disease

Traffic coming into London on the A4 was also busy this morning as more and more people return to work if they can't do it at home

Londoners are angry and perplexed at the plans to up the congestion charge when they are being urged to stay away from the Tube

Apple Mobility data shows that travel is down in London since the lockdown began - but is creeping upwards when services are not

TomTom traffic data shows that car travel is up about 4% up each day this week as more people went to work

Sadiq Khan closes large swathes of central London to motorists saying he will create one of the world's largest car-free areas in any capital city London mayor Sadiq Khan says he will create one of the world's largest car-free areas of any capital city by closing swathes of central London to motorists. Mr Khan and Transport for London today announced the London Streetspace programme, which will transform the capital's streets to have a focus on walking and cycling as people returning to work from the coronavirus lockdown try and avoid public transport. The Mayor of London said: 'Many Londoners have rediscovered the joys of walking and cycling during lockdown and, by quickly and cheaply widening pavements, creating temporary cycle lanes and closing roads to through traffic we will enable millions more people to change the way they get around our city.' Exact details have not been announced, nor a time frame. A Transport for London spokeswoman said on Friday afternoon: 'Were working closely with Londons boroughs to determine the final details of the new car-free zones and will confirm exact street locations and timescales once these have been agreed.' Among the scheme's plans is the 'rapid construction of a strategic cycling network, using temporary materials,' which will include routes to reduce crowding on Tube and train lines. Some streets will be switched to walking and cycling only, while others may also have buses. This has been planned for streets between London Bridge and Shoreditch, Euston and Waterloo, as well as Old Street and Holborn. Euston Road's temporary cycle lanes could become permanent while similar measures are also being considered for Park Lane. Advertisement

Sadiq Khan's extraordinary tax rise during the coronavirus crisis came as:

There is growing confusion over the lockdown measures after new data suggests just 24 people a day in London are catching coronavirus;

Boris Johnson wants a health drive to slash obesity after admitting his own 17st weight made his coronavirus bout more severe;

The lockdown will be tested again with more fine weather predicted and towns and villages in national parks or by the coast fearing a flood of visitors. There has also been a rush of people to second homes;

The fierce row between the Government and teaching unions is intensifying as the battle over whether primary schools can reopen on June 1 rages;

Mr Khan, wearing a black face mask, travelled to his office at City Hall in a luxury Range Rover from his South London home as Tube passengers once again struggled to follow social distancing guidelines on packed carriages this morning.

The son of a London bus driver, he is believed to have been forced to travel by car because he is one of Britains most high profile Muslims which has led to threats against him.

Boris Johnson famously cycled to work or used the Tube when he was Mayor, while his predecessor Ken Livingstone also used public transport but was also known for using black cabs.

This morning Mr Khan was masked as he left his house, but neither his driver or front seat companion wore face coverings.

Two armed police protection officers, Who travelled in a follow-up vehicle, also failed to wear masks.

Mr Khan had said Transport for London was hours from going bust and blamed Boris Johnson for no social distancing on trains by easing the lockdown this week.

Downing Street refused to slam Sadiq Khan over the congestion charge return and price rise.

Asked if the 30 per cent rise was fair, the Prime Ministers official spokesman told reporters: We said that people should work from home where they can and avoid public transport wherever possible, including through increased walking and cycling to work.

The congestion charge is an important tool to ensure that emissions in London remain low, and supports better air quality. It only applies in the small area of central London where congestion is most acute and where the roads would come to a halt without it.

TfL has been clear that NHS and care workers will be exempt from the congestion charge.

Tube services will reach 70 per cent of a full service from Monday, Mr Khan has said after a deal with the unions.

But in European cities, including in Coronavirus hit Italy and Spain, has been at 100 per cent for weeks.

A spokesperson for the RMT union told MailOnline: 'People are scared and people are saying "why is it that on Tubes and buses people can break social distancing, but the at the same time the government are trying to keep people apart in parks?".

They added that ramping up transport services to 70 per cent 'is not the issue, the issue is the number of passengers'.

How is Transport for London funded and why did Mayor Khan claim it would go bust without a bailout? Transport for London claims the coronavirus crisis will lead to losses of 4billion and is costing them 600million a month. Its 2.2billion reserves are said to be down to 1.2billion and going down further. To cut costs bosses have put 7,000 staff on the taxpayer-funded furlough scheme. Just under half of TfL's annual 10billion income comes from fares, with 4.9billion spent each year on buses, trains and Tube services. But because of the lockdown this income is down 95 per cent over the last eight weeks and predicted to be low until the autumn as more people work from home, tourists stay away and the nighttime economy being decimated. The next largest source of income is grants from the Government, for which it is paid 3.4billion-a-year, including to pay for building the Crossrail project. TfL also makes 1.2billion a year from the congestion charge, but this 11.50 per vehicle charge has been suspended through the pandemic. It also brings hundreds of millions a year from advertising and renting out shops in its stations. Sadiq Khan has said that TfL may be forced to issue a Section 114 notice - issued when a public body going bust. But Tory mayoral candidate Shaun Bailey, said: 'Sadiq Khan has failed in his job as chairman of Transport for London. Coronavirus highlighted existing structural flaws within TfL's balance sheet - it is not the primary cause. 'It is simply wrong for Sadiq Khan to then use Londoners - and key workers, making critical journeys - as collateral to get a bailout to cover his mismanagement and bad decision making. 'The past four years have proven Khan cannot be handed a blank cheque. As a condition for any bailout, Khan must show Londoners how he will rebuild TfL's finances once the virus recedes'. Advertisement

They said workers would have to 'wait to see' the situation on Monday, but was not optimistic about the two-metre rule being obeyed.

'We have an agreement in writing as part of the Coronavirus Forum with government and rail operators that come Monday, May 18 when services are jacked up, social distancing will be maintained,' they said.

'And we have said to our members that they should not work in conditions where they feel unsafe. That's not a strike, that's their legal right'.

Ministers last night agreed to hand the Labour Mayor a 1.1billion grant plus 505million in loans with 'strings attached' to get London's transport system back up and running - hours after Mr Khan was accused of blackmail and repeatedly asking for 2billion in return for getting services back up to 70 per cent of pre-crisis levels by Monday.

A Government source has attacked Mr Khan as a 'profligate' mayor 'who had let money go to waste' after four years of fare freezes. 'There are a lot of strings attached,' the insider added, including future ticket price hikes and curtailing free travel for the over-60s.

Millions have returned to work this week and the number of passengers on the London Underground is up ten per cent in a week, leading to 'dangerous' conditions because services have been running at as low as 15 per cent of capacity.

Commuter Michael Maggs tweeted a picture of a packed Tube carriage at 6am this morning and said: '@SadiqKhan how we meant to social distance with your terrible service you are running. Had to wait 15 mins to get in this. You are putting lives at risk'.

Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis has said he 'wouldn't' get on a busy tube train.

Mr Lewis told LBC that he 'would probably think about finding a bike and jumping on a Boris bike and cycling across London'.

Asked whether the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan blackmailed the Government into giving more money to TfL, Mr Lewis said: 'Look I think the public around London can inform their own views around the appropriateness of the way the current Mayor acts.

'I would like to make sure and see a Mayor who is focused on delivering for the people of London.'

Pushed on whether there will be exemptions to the 14-day quarantine period for people including business travellers, Mr Lewis said: 'There will be a 14-day quarantine. What we're looking at is the exemptions which are appropriate and are safe to put in place to ensure it is practical as well as safe.'

London: Commuter Michael Maggs tweeted this picture of a packed Tube carriage at 6am this morning and said: '@SadiqKhan how we meant to social distance with your terrible service you are running. Had to wait 15 mins to get in this. You are putting lives at risk'.

Paris: Metro trains have been plastered with stickers showing people where to stand and sit to maintain social distancing, while almost all commuters appeared to be wearing face masks

Milan: Passengers keep safe distance as they ride on the train of the green line of the Metro where trains have been marked up with safe distance stickers

Barcelona: Commuters receive face masks distributed by Red Cross volunteers in a train station in Spain where the lockdown was eased slightly today

Berlin: The BVG network (pictured) and Cologne's KVG network have both been running regular schedules since May 4 and May 11 respectively, while commuters have been encouraged to use them for regular journeys

London's reproduction rate is now just 0.4, with fewer than 24 people becoming infected every day. If cases continue to decrease at the current rate the virus will be virtually eradicated in the capital by June

London's coronavirus R rate was already falling BEFORE lockdown was introduced on March 23 London's R - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - fell from 3 to 2.3 in before lockdown on March 23, most likely because of simple social distancing and home working measures. Deaths hit their peak in April before plummeting by May The coronavirus infection rate in London was already falling before the country went into lockdown, data shows. Analysis by Public Health England and Cambridge University calculated the crucial reproduction rate, known as the R, peaked at 3 in the capital in late February. But the R - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - plummeted to 2.3 in the days before March 23, when the UK shut down and the economy was crippled. It suggests that COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered by simple social distancing and home working measures introduced a week earlier. Epidemiologists tell MailOnline more white collar jobs in London meant more employees were able to abide by the work from home rules and isolate from others, making it easier to shut the virus out of the capital. The analysis also suggests the R in London tumbled below 1 just days after lockdown, when the number of new cases began halving every three-and-a-half days. London's reproduction rate is now just 0.4, with fewer than 24 people becoming infected every day. If cases continue to decrease at the current rate the virus will be virtually eradicated in the capital by June. The team's model says only one death occurs in every 160 cases. This suggests, at the current rate, London's daily death toll will drop to a consistent level of zero in three weeks, which is the average time lag between someone being diagnosed, their condition becoming deadly and their death being recorded. London's crisis is in stark contrast to the rest of the UK, where the R is closer to 1 - the dangerous level at which the disease could spiral out of control again. MPs said last night the data highlights the need to ease lockdown on a region by region basis. Advertisement

Fears have been rising for workers packed on to Tube and buses that are running at a significantly reduced capacity as Boris Johnson encouraged people to go back to work.

Government sources said the mayor had demanded 2billion but was turned down 'several times'. The sides have settled for a 1.1billion package plus 505m in loans which 'will need to be paid back'.

As part of the agreement, TfL will have to restore full services 'as soon as possible' although there is no fixed timetable, and the government will also approve advertising on TfL. 'He will be taking 'stay alert' not 'stay at home',' the source said.

TfL will have to report on staff absences, which are currently said to be running at 20 per cent.

There will also be a central government review of TfL's finances and fares will increase by RPI plus 1 per cent, breaking the Mayor's previous pledge to a freeze on fare rises, according to the source.

'We were always prepared to put money into keeping Tube and bus services running in London and help the travelling public stay safe from coronavirus but we were not prepared to accept ludicrous demands from a profligate mayor, and this money comes with many strings attached,' the source said.

Mr Khan is seeking re-election in the mayoral election postponed to next year although he is the runaway favourite to be turned to City Hall. Any price rise for travel is likely to be jumped upon by some of his opponents, but the Tories claim that his decision to freeze prices for four years fuelled the current TfL cash crisis.

Mr Khan has announced that he will increase Tube services in London to 70 per cent of normal on Monday - but only after threatening to cut Tube, train and bus services unless the Government stumped up cash.

He claimed that TFL would go bust unless the Government hands over cash to fill the 4billion black hole coronavirus has left in its finances because of an 80 per cent plunge in income from fares, advertising and the congestion charge.

But Mr Shapps said that the mayor would have to increase capacity back to 100 per cent 'very quickly as people are starting to travel more, it is very, very important that we do not have overcrowding'.

TfL was already losing millions each month before the coronavirus and is billions in debt after Mr Khan's decision to freeze fares every year since he was elected in 2016. He has also been accused of being too soft on militant transport unions and having the worst average strikes record of any Mayor.

Mayor of London Sadiq Khan (pictured in Downing Street in March) has launched an extraordinary attack on Boris Johnson and also warned he will cut Tube, train and bus services unless the PM agrees an emergency bailout by the end of today

Signs like these have been appearing at Tube stations - but more and more people are following instructions to head to work

The Central Line was dangerously rammed with commuters who had no choice but to go to work in packed carriages

Industry sources have claimed TfL is losing 600million a month during the crisis and wants 2billion in taxpayer-funded support even though bosses have 1.2billion in their cash reserves.

Coronavirus vaccine hope as Oxford University's experimental jab prevents the infection from penetrating the lungs in monkeys Hopes a coronavirus cure could be on the horizon were raised today after a vaccine developed in Britain showed promising signs in trials on monkeys. The University of Oxford's experimental jab strengthened the immune system in six rhesus macaques without causing any side effects. Within 28 days of being vaccinated, all of the animals had COVID-19 antibodies - produced by the body to give it some immunity from the virus. Researchers said the primates were able to fight off the virus before it penetrated deep into their lungs, where it can become deadly. Scientists commenting on the study have described the findings as 'very encouraging', but warn it does not guarantee the same results in humans. They found a single vaccination dose was also effective in preventing damage to the lungs in the study on monkeys and mice. Some of the animals showed antibodies to the virus within two weeks, but all of them had the virus-fighting molecules within 28 days. The researchers found viral loads in the lower respiratory system were significantly reduced in the animals given the vaccine. Advertisement

Mr Khan told LBC: 'Unless the government today gives us confirmation of the grant that we need, the consequences could be quite severe and the implications for all of us will be huge. The only way to balance the books is to cut services'.

Former Tory minister Stephen Hammond, MP for Wimbledon, told MailOnline: 'An extraordinary remark. He is threatening the health of Londoners by saying this sort of thing. We need to get the networks, the Tube and the London suburban network back up to full capacity. the mayor should concentrate on running as big a service as possible so people can travel socially distanced and in as responsible a way as possible.'

There has also been anger over Mr Khan's comments on LBC yesterday morning, with one listener saying: 'He is trying to blackmail the government and yes he is prepared to use the health and safety of London's key workers as collateral for a bailout of his transport service', while another critic tweeted: 'It's blackmail - just as people start to return to work'.

Mr Khan also suggested that the PM is to blame for the congestion on the Tube this week after tearing up an agreement that people would return to work from this coming Monday and bringing it forward a week at two hours' notice.

Mr Khan told LBC: 'Many of our staff are shielding, self-isolating or ill. We got to a stage where plan that we worked out with the Department for Transport and from Monday May 18 we would increase Tube services to 75 per cent and ramp it up again in three weeks. And then on Sunday we were presented with a fait accompli. I was in a Cobra meeting two hours before where he [Boris Johnson] told us this was his plan'.

The Mayor of London revealed that Tube passenger numbers are up 10 per cent today on last week  admitting that thousands more people were trying to get on trains. When asked about the shocking pictures of cramped carriages this morning he said: 'It's deeply upsetting. The reality is that every time somebody interacts with somebody on the street, in a shop or on a train it can increase the spread. That's why we are urging people to stay at home'.

He also said employers should be taking responsibility for the lack of social distancing on public transport, by refusing to accept that 'fear' is a good reason not to come back to work. Mr Khan said: 'Londoners are being told to return to work unless they have a good reason. I can understand when you're on a zero hours contract or your boss is telling you to get to work you may go in. That's why I'm imploring the Government to put pressure on employers to stagger the start to the day I don't want to undo the work'.

Data published by location technology firm TomTom showed there was more traffic in the UK's major cities compared with the previous week.

The congestion level in London at 8am was 19%, up from 16% last week.

Other cities to experience an increase include Belfast (from 12% to 15%), Birmingham (from 9% to 11%), Cardiff (from 8% to 11%), Edinburgh (from 12% to 15%) and Manchester (from 10% to 13%).

The figures represent the proportion of additional time required for journeys compared with free-flow conditions.

The Cabinet Office today refused to comment on claims that they had dropped their transport trends slide from the daily coronavirus press conference over recent weeks to hide the fact many more people were getting into their cars or taking public transport. A spokesman told MailOnline that the slides are online daily  and that are not always shown because ministers and health chiefs may want to 'focus on other things'.

Tube bosses have put up station signs telling commuters to 'go home' unless they are key workers despite Boris Johnson telling millions of Britons to return to work, it was revealed today.

Transport for London's foreboding 'go home' messages came amid the growing row with Downing Street who insist trains must return to normal to revive the economy while the Mayor of London says that 'lockdown has not been lifted'.
(Natural News) By now, you have probably heard the disturbing news that farmers all across America are being told to dump their produce because of an alleged excess, even as grocery stores and food banks run mysteriously low on key staples. Well, there is some good news to share despite all this as many farmers are now turning to direct-to-consumer sales in order to avoid these government dictates.

Many farms that otherwise supply goods to restaurants, amusement parks, cruise lines, and other entities that remain largely closed due to Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdowns are now turning their supply lines into community-supported agriculture (CSA) programs where everyday folks can order the food they need and have it delivered.

In Florida, for instance, farmers are salvaging countless tons of produce that would otherwise rot on the vines in their fields and selling it directly to consumers, many of whom are doing a whole lot more cooking at home these days. And in the sunshine state, the state agriculture department is helping by providing a website portal where buyers can shop with ease.

Using this website, Floridians can search for nearby farms and co-ops that have the items they want and purchase them directly. Some of these farms operate under the monoculture model, meaning they only grow one crop in bulk, while others are biodiverse farms that carry a variety of high-end produce.

Similar changes are taking place in other states, including in areas that have been slower to open back up than Florida, which was among the first in the nation to begin easing its lockdowns.

We feel pretty lucky, says Chris Newman, who runs Sylvanaqua Farms in Virginia.

This small permaculture farm now sells and delivers directly to consumers, including meat items that are increasingly scant at grocery stores. Sylvanaqua is reportedly delivering meat well beyond Virginia into Maryland and Washington, D.C., with meat products being slaughtered directly on the farm.

Business is good, he is further quoted as saying.

Farmers are doing what they can to survive, even at a significant profit loss

In Michigan, Darrin and Barbara Siemen of Prime Land Farm in Harbor Beach have likewise begun selling their meat directly to local residents, using Facebook as an advertising platform.

With many processing plants being shut down right now due to coronavirus, and the uncertainty of future food availability, we thought this was a good way to ensure people we know have access to beef, Barbara wrote to the companys page.

Fourth-generation farmers, the Siemens family works hard to supply not just meat but also milk, sugar beets, corn, and wheat to hungry families across Michigan and beyond. And because of the nature of farming, they have to keep going somehow, regardless of the situation in the world or else they could lose everything.

We dont have the option to take a week off, Darrin is quoted as saying. We are planting and the cattle need milking. When something like this happens, people are thankful for the food. We have to continue on.

Still, the returns are not nearly what they use to be. Darrin says that his family is seeing about 35 percent less return on milk sales, which is well below cost of production, he says.

It is scary and not farm specific, he further added to the local Huron Daily Tribune. Its everybody. I am nervous about bills and how fast markets will come up.

The Siemens family has since applied for a small business loan which Darrin anticipates will be used to supplement his employee payroll.

For more related news on the changes taking place across the country in response to the Wuhan coronavirus (COVID-19) crisis, be sure to check out Pandemic.news.

Sources for this article include:

NYTimes.com

ReturnToNow.net

Forbes.com

MichigansThumb.com

NaturalNews.com
- As part of an economic reprieve package, Italy has agreed to grant half a million migrants the right to work

- The agreement came as the country faces lingering food shortage as crops ripen up with few hards to pick them

- The work permit also includes those that are in the hospitality business of caring for the elderly

- Our Manifesto: This is what YEN.com.gh believes in

In the bid to combat the consequences of coronavirus, Italy will be giving temporary work permit to 500,000 illegal migrants.

The migrants are considered important as they will be helping the country to pick crops and care for the elderly in the country.

The new development was part of the stimulus package agreed by the government on Wednesday, May 13, CBS News reports.

It should be noted that the lockdown measure put in place by the country has affected food security in the nation as harvest ripens up with not enough hands to pick them up as migrant workers have not been able to travel.

READ ALSO: Trevor Noah schools Donald Trump on Covid-19 infection numbers

Italy tries to save its economy amid coronavirus outbreak. Photo source: CBS News

Source: UGC

"The food on our table comes from these fields. Now we must hand over those rights which have been denied to those who work in them," said Peppe Provenzano, minister for the south of Italy.

Another thing worthy of note is that the agreement was part of the about $60 billion stimulus package approved by the minister of agriculture, Teresa Bellanova.

Matteo Salvini, an opposition leader of the League party, has however criticized the move, wondering why illegals are given such right when there are so many Italians looking for jobs.

Meanwhile, YEN.com.gh earlier reported that a Nigerian man with the Twitter name Oluwatimilehin narrated his experience as a coronavirus survivor.

He said coronavirus is indeed big as he appealed to the general public not to take it lightly, asking them to abide by all the protective measures.

READ ALSO: 90-year-old Gaming Grandma says gaming changed her life

Oluwatimilehin said that though he was asymptomatic all through, not many who were admitted were lucky.

He said that he has had to face the stigma regarding his health status, a thing he said he expected to happen.

The Covid-19 survivor, therefore, appreciated all the health officials, the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control, and the government for how they have handled the pandemic so far.

The Nigerian asked people not to put themselves at unnecessary risk in order not to overburden those who are at the frontline, ensuring everything is okay.

Ghana's COVID-19 cases hit 5,127 | #Yencomgh

READ ALSO: Man builds his dream house, shares photos online and inspires everyone

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As the truck travelled south, Yosef Moliso and the other Ethiopian migrants trapped inside its sealed cargo container pounded on the walls for help while struggling to breathe.

By the time border guards in Mozambique stopped the vehicle for inspection, Yosef had passed out, though it could have been much worse: 64 of his fellow migrants were already dead of asphyxiation.

"It was very hot inside, like a fire burning," recalled Yosef, one of just 14 survivors of the ill-fated attempt to reach South Africa, where the migrants hoped to earn enough money to lift their families back in Ethiopia out of poverty.

"If I ever run into the people responsible, I'll grab them and scream at them until the police come."

Ethiopia is one of the top five source countries for the more than four million migrants in South Africa, the continent's most industrialised economy, according to the International Organisation for Migration (IOM).

The deaths in March -- one of the worst such incidents for Ethiopian migrants in recent memory -- spotlighted the dangers faced by thousands of young men who travel along what's known as the "Southern Route" each year.

But the path ahead for the few who survived helps explain why the route remains so popular.

On Friday Yosef and 10 other migrants were scheduled to leave a centre run by the IOM to board buses back to their home regions.

In interviews with AFP, the men said they were happy to be back in Ethiopia, but admitted they had only hazy ideas of how they might support themselves in the future.

"It's not easy to be a young Ethiopian boy, to just sit at home and not have a job. That is what's forcing them to leave," said Sara Basha, programme coordinator for IOM Ethiopia.

"Once they come back home, with incidents like this, they go back to a community where they have nothing again. They're still vulnerable, so frustration might lead them to decide to leave again."

The journey

Tigestu Birhanu, 20, is one of 14 men who survived when 64 Ethiopoan migrants suffocated to death in a shopping container in Mozambique, while trying to make their way to South Africa. He speaks to AFP at a transit centre in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.. By Solan Kolli (AFP)

Tigestu Birhanu was inspired to migrate by one of his cousins, who moved from their home region in southern Ethiopia to South Africa a few years ago.

Tigestu, 20, didn't know exactly what this cousin did, but he knew it was lucrative: The cousin's remittances have helped his family buy a house and a new car.

After the cousin offered to pay Tigestu's way -- other migrants said the going rate on the Southern Route was 200,000 Ethiopian birr, or nearly $6,000 -- the decision was a no-brainer.

Setting off with two men from the same area, Tigestu embarked on months of rough travel -- sometimes walking, sometimes riding on the backs of motorcycles or in trucks.

The group of migrants swelled as the journey progressed.

Food was scarce, and the men often slept outside in "jungles" to avoid detection by the authorities, Tigestu said.

They were guided by a network of smugglers of various nationalities -- a set-up that Basha said complicates efforts to identify and prosecute those who put migrants at risk.

When the migrants first saw the cargo container they were meant to hide inside to cross into Mozambique, many resisted, having heard horror stories of suffocation.

But the smugglers threatened them with machetes, and Tigestu said they had no choice.

Like Yosef, Tigestu lost consciousness before the border guards forced open the container to let the migrants out.

When he awoke in a hospital a few days later, he learned that even though he had survived, the other two men from his home region had not.

Cracking down

Ethiopia is taking steps to curb risky migration to the south -- as well as along similarly dangerous routes east to Saudi Arabia and north to Europe, Basha said.

Officials are trying to strengthen law enforcement's investigative capabilities and collaborate more with neighbouring countries, she said.

Police spokesmen declined to comment on the Mozambique deaths, but IOM officials said Ethiopian officers had recently interviewed the survivors as part of a probe.

Just as important, though, is trying to give young men more opportunities within Ethiopia so they're less desperate to leave, Basha said.

In addition to helping survivors like Yosef and Tigestu get back on their feet economically, the IOM is broadly pressuring Ethiopia to focus more energy on youth unemployment -- a problem that could become even starker because of the economic downturn resulting from the coronavirus pandemic.

As for Yosef and Tigestu, both men said that after surviving their ordeal in Mozambique they had no plans to try their luck as migrants again.

"When I woke up I was very sad about those who died," Yosef said, "and I told myself that it would be better to be a beggar in Ethiopia."
Courtesy Bernice Stafford-Turner

En espanol | Bernice Stafford-Turner, 68, has looked out for her baby brother ever since he was hit by a car at age 3 and suffered a life-altering brain injury.

Two years ago, when it became clear he needed more support than she could offer, Stafford-Turner moved her brother into Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in Richmond, Virginia, where she lives.

Now Fred Stafford, 66, is one of at least 130 residents to have tested positive for COVID-19 in the nursing home, where the coronavirus has claimed at least 49 lives, representing one of the deadliest outbreaks in the nation.

Her brother is asymptomatic, but that doesn't mean Stafford-Turner, a lawyer, is at peace. What if his condition changes or he's infected again?

She worries that he's lonely, that no one is communicating with him. She fears that he isn't being watched, that he might aspirate, that his diaper needs changing. She doesn't think he knows he can push a button to call for help. Even if he does, she says, her brother isn't the sort of person who'd push it.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: A man in Mizoram emerged as an angel to clear the bank loans of four people he never knew.

The reason  he derives joy by doing something for people who need help.

The man offered help on the strict condition that his identity must not be revealed. He did not seek any publicity for his act of benevolence.



He helped close the loan accounts of the quartet  three of them women  by transferring Rs 9,96,365. Except for a very few at the State Bank of Indias (SBI) Aizawl branch, nobody knows who he is.



Three of us at our bank branch have known this gentleman for some time. So, he visited us the other day to tell us about his intention. He said if we select some people who had availed of loan to be self-reliant by mortgaging property but are struggling to repay, he will make the payment. He had limited the help to Rs 10 lakh, the SBI branch Assistant General Manager Sheryl Vanchhong said.



She said they selected four such people who were doing some petty trades but were suffering in the COVID-19 lockdown. Subsequently, the mysterious man had transferred the money online.



Sheryl said the beneficiaries were called the next day and when they arrived, the land documents they had mortgaged were returned. They were perplexed but when everything was revealed, they lost words to thank the unidentified man.

FOLLOW CORONAVIRUS LIVE UPDATES HERE

At their insistence, the bank had requested the man to visit the branch. However, he refused to come as he stood firm against publicity.



The bank had urged the four beneficiaries not to make public the help that came in for them.

However, the only man, Muana L Fanai, took to social media to thank the "guardian angel". He had availed the loan for poultry farming.



He wrote: "I suffered a series of setbacks, which worsened after the novel coronavirus outbreak. This mysterious man cleared my outstanding amount of Rs 2,46,631."



Sheryl said the man is a businessman based in Aizawl.



"This is the first time that he made the help anonymous. He helped a lot of people in the past, she said, adding, "He is an important customer of SBI and well known in our bank circles."
An attorney for a Charlotte man accused of fatally shooting a Kernersville man in 2018 wants Forsyth prosecutors to turn over information about an alleged deal with the getaway driver, who is now the DJ for rapper DaBaby. The attorney said in the motion that she found out the possible deal in an email exchange this month. According to search warrants, the driver admitted his role in interviews with Kernersville police and identified the three men who have been charged in the fatal shooting.
DAYTONA BEACH, Fla., May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Web Daytona, Florida's leading full-service digital marketing agency, has confirmed they will be providing uninterrupted services throughout this uncertain time. As businesses continue to work in unfamiliar settings, digital marketing is becoming more relevant for those trying to stay afloat. The Orlando SEO professionals will continue to bring their clients professional online marketing, as businesses across the country begin to return to normal operation.

Web Daytona, a leading Orlando SEO service provider and digital marketer, continue to provide marketing support to clients throughout difficult business period.

Web Daytona works with clients from various industries, establishing their digital presence with search-friendly websites and online strategies. Their customer support and maintenance services, as well as ongoing monitoring, give businesses the edge they need to stay competitive. This has proved to be especially valuable in recent months, with the business world being forced to adapt to a new way of operating.

Web Daytona CEO, Gary Vela, spoke about the outbreak and the digital marketers' decision to stay operating throughout it: "These are uncertain times. With remote work and collaborating on the rise, companies are rushing to embrace digital channels. We're seeing more businesses than ever creating or updating websites, moving over to e-commerce, and firing up their social media profiles. Being able to adapt right now is important, and Web Daytona is proud to be a part of that digital transformation."

With companies around the world adjusting to a new normal, we see more operations using digital strategies to move their operations online, and for good reason. E-commerce sites offering essentials have reported surges in online traffic over the last three months. Travel websites have experienced a big uptick in traffic, as well, with visitors looking for discounted rates on flights. With these and dozens of other industries bringing in new, unique visits, digital marketing is a handle for business owners to grab onto and leverage this new market.

"It's a new landscape for businesses," added Vela. "And digital marketing is at the center of it. If you are considering digital marketing for your business, or you've been on the fence for some time, there has never been a better time than now."

For further details, contact Duncan Reyneke at [email protected]

About Web Daytona

Web Daytona is a leading name in the Orlando SEO and digital marketing industry. Based out of Daytona Beach, Florida, their focus on effective marketing and sustainable growth is complemented by a love for all things digital. Their portfolio includes cutting edge online marketing services, keeping their clients at the top of their digital game. Discover top-rated local SEO and an innovative new approach to Web Daytona's SEO Audit tool to social media marketing strategies.

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BY FARAI MATIASHE

THE Harare City Council (HCC) is lobbying government to allow it to collect rates in foreign currency from business and corporates that have licences to trade in foreign currency as part of initiatives to strengthen service delivery.

The facility has been granted to the Zimbabwe Revenue Authority, where businesses that are trading in multi-currencies remit their taxes in the same currency, in which the goods have been sold.

Speaking on the state of the city yesterday, Harare mayor Herbert Gomba said the move would enable them to procure plant and equipment that require foreign currency.

The City of Harare appreciates the economic challenges our residents are facing, hence we have tried to ensure that our rates and tariffs remain sub-economic, he said.

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We have, however, explored other revenue generation streams, which we hope to implement next year. Council is also engaging government in a bid to secure authority to charge certain ratepayers, services and products in forex. The city is targeting such businesses to pay for services in foreign currency, as well as those in the diaspora who might want to purchase residential stands, among others, he said.

This will allow council to invest in service delivery initiatives such as procurement of plant and equipment. The above is not peculiar to Harare alone, because some fast-food outlets designated tourism facilities are allowed to charge in forex.

Gomba said they were proposing a 20% infrastructure development tax on property developers when they connect their projects to existing infrastructure, which will give the city money dedicated on infrastructure development.

The mayor called on parliamentarians and councils to work hand-in-hand to push the government to review the current tax laws.

To recover the estimated $800 million owed by ratepayers, Gomba said council was lobbying Parliament to make legislative reforms so as to give them garnishing powers, where they would start using force to get money from individuals and corporates.

He said plans were underway to procure mobile modular water treatment plants to cater for the disadvantaged areas such as Sentosa, which have had perennial water challenges.

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Vatican to introduce temperature checks for public liturgies at St Peter's.

St Peter's Basilica is to reopen to the public on Monday 18 May, following a two-month closure, after undergoing an intensive sanification programme.

People attending public Masses and public liturgies at St Peter's and three other papal basilicas in Rome will have their temperatures checked as part of new church protocols to contain the spread of coronavirus, according to the Holy See press office.

The Vatican is expected to introduce special requirements at the four papal basilicas which, in addition to St Peter's, include St Paul's Outside the Walls, St John Lateran and St Mary Major, all of which are located in Rome but have sovereign, extra-territorial status.

Read also:

Holy See press office director Matteo Bruni told the Catholic News Agency (CNA) that each basilica would adopt measures that reflected their specific characteristics, with thermal temperature scanning expected at least during Sunday Masses and on holy days of obligation. The maximum number of faithful granted entry will be determined by authorities at each basilica, with the flow of people to be controlled by Vatican police, Italian police and church volunteers, according to Reuters news agency. Read also:

Churches around Italy will reopen for public Mass and liturgical celebrations on 18 May, under strict conditions including limiting numbers, social distancing and obligatory face-masks, however thermal screening will not be a requirement.

Reuters reported that although Italy's museums will reopen from 18 May, the reopening of the Vatican Museums will likely be stalled while safety measures are put in place.

Photo Vatican Media
COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Vectrus Systems Corporation, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vectrus, Inc. (NYSE: VEC), announced today that it was awarded a new $45 million fixed-price contract to provide base operations support services at Naval Support Facility Deveselu, Romania. The contract extends through May 2028, including all option periods. This award further expands Vectrus' footprint in Eastern Europe and increases the company's overall position in Europe to eight countries.

"We are proud to have been selected by the U.S. Navy as the converged infrastructure provider of choice to support this strategically important facility," said Chuck Prow, president and chief executive officer of Vectrus. "Deveselu is the first Aegis Ashore Missile Defense Facility that was placed into operation and provides critical support to NATO's overall ballistic missile defense system."

Under the contract, Vectrus will provide various base operations support services, including fire and emergency services, emergency management, materials management, supply services, facility management, facility investment, custodial, utility management, electrical, wastewater, water, transportation services, and environmental services.

"The Deveselu award is our third new contract win with the Navy in 2020 and typifies how our customized growth campaigns, which leverage our exemplary program execution, are expanding our base and adding value," said Prow. "Our revenue base with the Navy grew 45 percent in 2019 as a direct result of our targeted campaign with this important client."

Prow concluded, "This award's contract structure demonstrates how Vectrus plans to increase the fixed price component of our revenue mix, allowing us to apply our program phase-in process discipline and technology enhancements to ultimately lead to higher margin and better client outcomes. We are honored to be a part of such an important mission and look forward to supporting our client with exceptional performance."

For information on career opportunities associated with Deveselu as well as other Vectrus programs, please visit www.vectrus.com/careers.

About Vectrus:

Vectrus is a leading provider of global service solutions with a history in the services market that dates back more than 70 years. The company provides facility and base operations; supply chain and logistics services; information technology mission support; and engineering and digital technology services primarily to U.S. government customers around the world. Vectrus is differentiated by operational excellence, superior program performance, a history of long-term customer relationships and a strong commitment to its clients' mission success. Vectrus is headquartered in Colorado Springs, Colo., and includes about 7,200 employees spanning 148 locations in 26 countries and territories across four continents. In 2019, Vectrus generated sales of $1.4 billion. To learn about career opportunities at Vectrus, visit www.vectrus.com/careers. For more information, visit the company's website at www.vectrus.com or connect with Vectrus on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

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Mike Smith, CFA

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(719) 637-5773

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Mexican cruise ship staff docked Cozumel, returned home

Cozumel, Q.R.  Cozumel mayor Pedro Joaquin confirmed the arrival of 68 Mexican workers from the Disney Cruise Line Thursday. The ship landed with cruise line workers who had been left aboard the ship for more than a month, due to the current health pandemic.

We supervised this repatriation process to ensure it was carried out with the established sanitary measures. Many workers from Mexico City, Puebla, Nayarit and 15 from Quintana Roo will be able to return to their homes and reunite with their loved ones, he said after thanking the Disney cruise company for taking care of the workers.

Cruise ship staff were subject to health protocols by International Health personnel who took temperatures, administered questionnaires and performed an immigration and customs review.

Health officials took temperatures of returning cruise ship workers

The people of Cozumel can rest easy because the repatriation process took place under strict sanitary security measures. The passengers, all crew members, not one tourist, got off the ship to board a local boat which took them to Playa del Carmen from where they will finally be transferred to their places of origin. As a destination, we comply with this humanitarian bridge, but, above all, we are helping nationals to reunite with their families, he explained.

The crew were then loaded onto a waiting ferry where they crossed over to Playa del Carmen. Some were transported to the Cancun International Airport, and others, by ground, to their places of origin. Of the 68 Mexican cruise ship workers returned to the country, 15 were from the state of Quintana Roo.
Many state and local governments across the country have suspended public records requirements amid the coronavirus pandemic, denying or delaying access to information that could shed light on key government decisions.

Public officials have said employees either dont have the time or ability to compile the requested documents or data because they are too busy responding to the outbreak or are working from home instead of at government offices.

The result is that government secrecy has increased at the same time officials are spending billions of dollars fighting the COVID-19 disease and making major decisions affecting the health and economic livelihood of millions of Americans.

Thats raised concerns among open-government advocates.

Its just essential that the press and the public be able to dig in and see records that relate to how the government has responded to the crisis, said David Snyder, executive director of the First Amendment Coalition, a California-based nonprofit. Thats the only way really to avoid waste, fraud, abuse and to ensure that governments arent overstepping their bounds.

The nonprofit Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press has tracked more than 100 instances in at least 30 states and the District of Columbia in which state agencies, counties, cities or other public entities have suspended requirements to respond to open-records requests by regular deadlines or told people to expect delays.

Some governors have issued decrees allowing record requests to be put on hold for as long as the coronavirus emergency continues. Others have extended response deadlines by days, weeks or even months.

Various federal agencies also have said there may be delays in processing public records requests. The FBI temporarily stopped accepting electronic records requests in March, citing the coranvirus, but has since resumed. Its website now says record-seekers can expect delays.

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators has raised concerns and asked the federal Office of Information Policy to outline any steps its taking to protect the publics right to information.

Hawaii Gov. David Ige, a Democrat, issued one of the most sweeping orders, suspending the states entire open-records law in mid-March. Following an outcry among open-records advocates, Ige revised his order last week. The new order still suspends specific deadlines to provide records but encourages agencies to acknowledge and respond to requests as resources permit.

Attorney Brian Black, who helped negotiate the compromise, described Iges original order as extreme and unnecessary.

The public records law exists to give people the ability to hold their government accountable, and without timely access to information, they cant do it, said Black, executive director of the Civil Beat Law Center for the Public Interest in Honolulu.

Honolulu Civil Beat, an online publication financed by the same source as the center, has had a records request related to a public transit board pending since March. It also had sought a document related to a dispute about whether the states airports should be closed to tourists because of the coronavirus.

Public records are a way of validating, corroborating what these elected officials are telling us, said the publications editor, Patti Epler.

The Associated Press also has records requests pending in various states where responses have been delayed because of the coronavirus.

Requests in Pennsylvania

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and the Pennsylvania Office of Open Records have issued similar advice effectively relaxing open-records requirements. They said days when public offices are physically closed because of the coronavirus dont count toward the normal deadlines to respond to record requests.

The Pennsylvania office also posted a notice on its website, stating: Requesters: Unless you have an urgent need to access records, please do not file any new Right-to-Know Law (RTKL) requests at this time.

The Republican-led Legislature has mounted a backlash targeted at Democratic Gov. Tom Wolfs administration. The House overwhelmingly passed legislation last week that would require Pennsylvania agencies to respond to records requests during disaster declarations, even when their physical offices are closed. The bill is pending in the Senate.

Government transparency cannot stop during times of crisis, said the bills sponsor, Republican Rep. Seth Grove.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat, signed a law in March suspending the states seven-business-day deadline to respond to record requests during emergencies, as long as agencies make a reasonable effort, as the circumstances permit.

Republican Sen. Declan OScanlon, one of the sponsors of the new law, said he pushed for it out of concern that county and town officials could be overwhelmed while simultaneously dealing with the virus and trying to respond to requests.

We have to understand theyre human beings behind these requests, and providing some leeway is reasonable, he said.

Governors from Washington to Michigan to Rhode Island also have used their executive powers to waive or extend response deadlines for open-records requests.

Delaware Gov. John Carney changed the regular response deadline of 15 business days to instead allow up 15 business days after the end of his emergency declaration.

The city of Portland, Oregon, also has suspended responses to open-records requests as long as a declaration of emergency is in effect.

Things like that are especially problematic, because we have no idea when these states of emergencies are going to end, said Gunita Singh, an attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, based in Washington, D.C. Who knows how long these individual requesters are going to be waiting to have their public records requests fulfilled?

Even in states where governors have not suspended public records laws, information has sometimes been hard to come by during the coronavirus outbreak.

Californias Constitution includes a right of access to information, specifically stating that the writings of public officials and agencies shall be open to public scrutiny.

Yet Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom declined for a while to release details of a nearly $1 billion contract to buy protective masks from a Chinese company. And numerous California municipalities have stopped or slowed their fulfillment of open-records requests.

The city of Burbank said in an online notice that responses to public records requests by legal deadlines are not essential services.

San Diego County said it was delaying responses to records requests related to the COVID-19 disease but continuing to fulfill ones on other topics.

County spokesman Michael Workman declined to explain the reason for the distinction while adding that staff are focused on essential services for the foreseeable future.

There are some county employees teleworking, so if they can provide requested documents, they do, Workman said.
STATEN ISLAND N.Y. -- Providing you with the latest headlines to start out your day.

Multimedia journalist, Alex Salmieri talks about Mayor de Blasios plan to turn three Staten Island schools into coronavirus testing sites, NYC schools new grading policy, extended Shoprite hours, and a message fro American Idol star Julia Gargano. Watch A.M. with Alex to learn more about todays top headlines

Watch A.M. with Alex to find out more about todays top headlines.

Are you on the frontlines of the coronavirus outbreak? If so we are looking to hear from you. Email asalmieri@siadvance.com
Former vice president Joe Biden appears on a declassified list of Obama administration officials who requested the unmasking of former Trump administration national security adviser Michael Flynn.

The list, obtained by CBS News, shows that Bidens office made its request to see Flynns identity on January 12, 2017  the same day that Washington Post columnist David Ignatius broke news of Flynns calls with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. While the NSA says it cannot confirm that those listed personally saw the information, the list also names former U.N. ambassador Samantha Power, former director of national intelligence James Clapper, former CIA director John Brennan, and former FBI director James Comey.

American citizens whose communications are incidentally picked up in national-security surveillance are protected by law. But they can be unmasked by a select number of U.S. officials, and it is illegal to leak unmasked information or use it for political gain.

SCOOP @CBSNews obtains @RichardGrenell notification to congress declassified unmasking list Flynn between late 2016 and January 2017  Read 3 pages provided by NSA here pic.twitter.com/NozVpQlRn2  Catherine Herridge (@CBS_Herridge) May 13, 2020

Comey revealed in 2018 that he sent FBI agents to interview Flynn in the White House on January 24, 2017, adding that it was something I probably wouldnt have done or maybe gotten away with in a more organized administration. Last month, a filing released in the Flynn case showed handwritten notes from an FBI official that questioned if the goal of Flynns White House interview was to get him to lie, so we can prosecute him or get him fired.

Story continues

A transcript released last week showed Clapper admitting in 2018 that he never saw any direct empirical evidence that the Trump campaign or someone in it was plotting [or] conspiring with the Russians to meddle with the election.

Biden said Tuesday that he knew the FBI had asked for an investigation, but thats all I know about it, when asked about his knowledge of the Flynn case  which the Department of Justice dropped last week after reviewing previously undisclosed exculpatory information. Biden initially claimed he knew nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn, but was forced to backtrack after ABCs George Stephanopoulos pointed out Biden was reported to be in an Oval Office meeting on January 5, 2017, in which Flynn was discussed.

Former President Obamas chief of staff Denis McDonough also requested access to Flynns name on January 5, 2017, the same day as the Oval Office meeting. Former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates said in testimony released with Flynns case dismissal last week that in the meeting, she was so surprised to hear Obama asking about Flynns call with Kislyak that she was having a hard time processing it and listening to the conversation at the same time.

Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell handed over the list to Attorney General Bill Barr last week after declassifying it, but DOJ sources revealed yesterday that they were unlikely to release the list. The documents obtained by CBS News show that Grenell sent the list to Senators Ron Johnson (R., Wisc.) and Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa), who are conducting a probe into Bidens Hunter Bidens business dealings and Joe Bidens diplomatic work.

In a March letter to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Obamas spokesperson claimed Johnson and Grassley were giving credence to a Russian disinformation campaign by asking to see Obama administration records related to certain meetings connected to Ukraine.

More from National Review
The United States has used the concept of the missile gap before. John F. Kennedy used it for his 1958 presidential campaign, even though it is likely he

that it was false to say that the USSR had more missiles than the United States. Little has changed since then.
Piraeus, Greece, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GasLog Partners LP (the Partnership (NYSE: GLOP)), a master limited partnership focused on owning, operating and acquiring liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, announced the election of Pamela M. Gibson, as a Class II Director, at the Partnerships annual meeting of limited partners held today. Ms. Gibson is to hold office until the 2023 annual meeting.

Limited partners also ratified the appointment of Deloitte LLP as the Partnerships independent auditors for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020.

About GasLog Partners LP

GasLog Partners is a growth-oriented master limited partnership focused on owning, operating and acquiring LNG carriers under multi-year charters. GasLog Partners fleet consists of 15 LNG carriers with an average carrying capacity of approximately 158,000 cbm. GasLog Partners principal executive offices are located at 69 Akti Miaouli, 18537, Piraeus, Greece. Visit GasLog Partners website at http://www.gaslogmlp.com.

Contact:

Joseph Nelson

Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +1-212-223-0643

Email: ir@gaslogmlp.com
United Nations, May 15 : Roberto Azevedo has suddenly announced that he was quitting as the head of the World Trade Organisation (WTO) at a time when global commerce is facing a crisis because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the organisation has come under intense criticism.

Azevedo told a virtual meeting of WTO members on Thursday that he was stepping down as director-general on August 31, a year ahead of the end to his second term.

In a statement issued in Geneva, he said that he was leaving office early to give his successor ample time to prepare for the 12th Ministerial Conference of the WTO next year.

The meeting is expected to be crucial to the future of the organisation during a time when the global trade system is showing signs of fraying.

A former Brazilian diplomat and vice-minister for economics and technology, Azevedo became WTO director-general in 2013 and assumed a second four-year term in 2017.

Amid the calls from various sides for changing the WTO, Azevedo spoke of the "new normal" that will emerge from the pandemic and in facing it the organisation has "to be able to respond to members' needs and priorities." UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres's Spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said that the UN head had "great admiration" for his work as head of the WTO.

"The WTO is a critical organization in our global trade environment, and we very much hope that their work, the work of the organization, will continue to be supported," Dujarric added.

Global concerns over the WTO have been magnified during the COVID-19 pandemic when countries around the world, including India, found themselves dependent on China for vital medical supplies.

China has been able to deftly use the WTO to become the world's dominant manufacturer and that has led to calls around the world for rethinking globalisation, the foundation of which is now the WTO.

RSS ideologue KN Govindacharya suggested in interview to IANS that India should reconsider its ties to the WTO and either "tweak it in line with its interests or break it." If India was unable to do either, then it should leave the WTO or it would always remain a ''bazaar'' for the world at the expense of its own products, he said.

US President Donald Trump has criticised the WTO for creating conditions that led to the deindustrialisation of his country and its huge trade deficits, particularly with China.

Trump has in particular attacked the developing country status that has given China a great advantage even as it emerged as the world's second-biggest economy.

At the same time, Washington has used the WTO to deal with trade disputes with India.

The US and India have been embroiled in trade disputes before the WTO and India lost a case in November when a WTO panel ruled against it on a US complaint about export promotion programmes which were considered subsidies.

Earlier in 2007, the WTO sided with the US over on a complaint about India's restrictions on poultry imports and with threats of sanctions for non-compliance, they were finally allowed in 2017.

By inovking the WTO, China is trying to block India's recent investment regulations aimed at foreign attempts to take over some Indian businesses by taking advantage of the economic dislocations caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

India did not specify China, but the regulations spoke broadly of countries having land borders with India.

(Arul Louis can be contacted at arul.l@ians.in and followed on Twitter @arulouis)

-- The story has been published from a wire feed without any modifications to the text
Jordan Flowers never thought he would become a labor leader. Then the coronavirus forced him to risk his life every time he clocked in.

The robotics operator at Amazons Staten Island warehouse helped lead one of the first walkouts at the site  a protest over the company's lack of protective equipment. A month later, even after Amazon scrambled to provide masks and gloves and check employees temperatures, workers continue conducting scattered walkouts to protest what they say are still-risky conditions in warehouses where workers have had the virus.

You risk your life putting in 10 hours every day, said Flowers, 21, who has an autoimmune disease and is at heightened risk for infection. You're surrounded, and you don't know who has it or who touched what to pass it on.

Across the country, the unexpected front-line workers of the pandemic  grocery store workers, Instacart shoppers and Uber drivers, among them  are taking action to protect themselves. Rolling job actions have raced through what's left of the economy, including Pittsburgh sanitation workers who walked off their jobs in the first weeks of lockdown and dozens of fast-food workers in California who left restaurants last week to perform socially distant protests in their cars.

To labor activists and historians, the often-spontaneous job actions echo other moments in the labor movement when alarm about worker safety and public health spurred organizing and reforms in meatpacking plants, New York's garment factories or coal mines.

People's fears of sickness and death are finally stronger than people's fears of their employer, said Daniel Graff, a labor historian at Notre Dame University. It might be a sort of cataclysmic opening.

Labor faces plenty of other hurdles. One involves logistical barriers  organizing generally needs to happen via text or Zoom in the era of social distancing. Workplace protests tend to happen in cars, and labor is operating under the hostile eye of the Trump administration.

Story continues

Basic economics also pose a challenge. Unions typically have more power in times of low unemployment, when its easier for unhappy workers  or striking ones  to find another job. The U.S. unemployment rate is projected to hit 20% soon, a level not seen since the Great Depression.

In the scramble to adjust to the outbreak, some companies that are part of the essential economy are rushing to hire new workers, which may temporarily give current staff some bargaining power. But many economists project more than a year of widespread joblessness, said Jed Kolko, an economist at Indeed.

High unemployment and the end of a tight labor market create "the headwind for more worker power, Kolko said.

Even without that headwind, the labor movement has withered in past decades as employers found new ways to fend off unions. Republican presidents stocked the National Labor Relations Board with members unsympathetic to labor, and the economy became dominated by large companies that are harder to organize and have an increasing array of tools to keep unions at bay. So-called right to work laws that allow workers to opt out of paying union dues have proliferated in more than half the states.

Unions have tried to adapt, targeting some of the biggest employers like Walmart and Amazon with new organizing strategies.

Amazon says it has made more than 150 safety updates to guard against the coronavirus, including enhanced cleaning, disinfectant spraying and providing masks.

We encourage anyone interested in the facts to compare our overall pay and benefits, as well as our speed in managing this crisis, to other retailers and major employers across the country, the company said in a statement.

Only 10.7% of U.S. workers are union members, and they tend to be in the public sector, like teachers or police officers. In the private sector, unions tend toward older-line jobs like utility workers. Only about 1% of restaurant workers are in a union.

Led by the Service Employees International Union, labor has also targeted the fast-food industry seeking not only to gain new members but to force industry-wide concessions that could help all workers, rather than just those who pay dues, such as the Fight for $15 campaign to raise the minimum wage.

Efforts like that may contribute to the increasingly positive image of labor  according to Gallup, nearly two-thirds of Americans had a favorable view of unions last year, the highest since 1999. MIT researchers in 2017 found that 48% of non-unionized workers would join a union if they could.

The battle at McDonald's has shifted from the minimum wage to hand sanitizer.

Laura Pozos, a McDonald's worker in Los Angeles, joined the occasional brief walkout to push for a higher wage and other improvements last year. Now she is on her second week of striking to demand safer conditions at her restaurant. The walkout began after one of the workers she spent the day elbow-to-elbow with in the cramped kitchen was diagnosed with coronavirus. That woman is now on a ventilator.

It's more important now, Pozos, 57, said of her labor activism. We are so scared ... At least give us security.

Last week, McDonalds U.S. president, Joe Erlinger, said the company was requiring franchisees to provide masks and gloves and conduct temperature checks when workers arrive for their shifts. Those changes will roll out to all U.S. restaurants in the coming weeks, he said.

SEIU President Mary Kay Henry said fighting for masks is just a logical extension of other labor struggles.

Every one of these workers thinks of this moment as We cant go back to the way things were before the pandemic,' Henry said in an interview.

Some unions have been able to flex their muscle during the pandemic. Nurses unions have helped hospitals secure masks, gloves and gowns for their workers. Ford, General Motors and Fiat Chrysler closed their U.S. plants on March 18 under pressure from the United Auto Workers union. Those plants remain closed.

I have said for some time that the only litmus test in reopening the economy is whether you would send your son or daughter into the workplace," UAW President Rory Gamble said last week.

Still, other powerful unions have been decimated by mass layoffs. UNITE HERE, which represented 300,000 largely hotel and restaurant workers, said 98% of its members have been laid off. The union has been raising money to help members pay bills, coordinating food banks and pushing Congress to extend health care for laid-off workers.

Nonetheless, the union known for its aggressive tactics is also making plans for when life someday returns to normal.

In the long term, spokeswoman Meghan Cohorst said, we're still going to have to organize and go into new industries.

___

This story has been corrected to show the spelling of the McDonalds workers surname is Pozos, not Pozas.
Mumbai: Three police personnel, including a sub-inspector and two constables, were attacked by a mob with sharp weapons in Antop Hill area in Mumbai after police questioned them for not wearing masks and flouting coronavirus lockdown norms.

The incident took place at Kokhri Agar, Garib Nawaz Nagar at around 6:45 pm on May 14 when a joint team of policemen from the Antop Hill police station and the state SRPF were on patrolling duty. The area, which borders the MHADA colony, is a densely populated slum cluster and has been declared as a red zone for the coronavirus infection.

According to a report, a mob of over 15 people assaulted three policemen, including a PSI, with sharp weapons. All three police personnel suffered injuries in the assault.

An offence has been registered against the members of the group on the charge of rioting and other sections of the IPC, including 307 (attempt to murder), 353 (assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty), 332 (voluntarily causing hurt to deter public servant from his duty), and also under the COVID-19 rules.

A hunt has been started to arrest the accused involved in the attack on the police personnel.
NazariyaQFRG, a queer resource group working on issues of gender and sexuality, have launched a campaign in support of the LGBT*QIA community, calling on them to take pride in themselves. This campaign has been conceptualised and executed by Tonic Worldwide.

Despite the decriminalization of section 377 in India in 2018, the LGBT*QIA community is still often subjected to prejudice and discrimination by the larger society. This stigma holds them back from openly coming out.

Keeping this in mind, NazariyaQFRG launched a campaign Wear Your Pride to support the community, and help them take pride in who they are. It is also an invitation to families, workspaces, and the society at large to be more inclusive of LGBT*QIA+ persons. On the occasion of International day against homophobia, transphobia and biphobia, which is observed on 17th May, the team has launched 8 virtual backgrounds on the popular community video calling app ZOOM. Each of these backgrounds represents one color of the pride flag which is a symbol of the community. The virtual backgrounds have thought-provoking tag lines like Queer and Proud, God said Adam & Eve so I did both, Life gets better together, etc. which can be used during live ZOOM calls. These backgrounds or filters will be the voice of support not only for the community but also for those who stand in solidarity with them. These backgrounds will be further promoted and amplified on other social media platforms too and be available for download. The campaign has also been supported by popular LGBT*QIA influencers and activists like R Balaji, Harrish Iyer- Equal Rights Activist, Zainab Patel- Director inclusion and diversity -KPMG India & Sumit Pawar, founder Q Knit India.

Rituparna Borah, Co-founder, NazariyaQFRG says, These days ZOOM has been one of the popular platforms where webinars are being held, official meetings are taking place and even families are getting together to be with each other during the lockdown. Queer and trans*persons have been talking about non-acceptance, lack of support and invisibilization during this period too. It is an important campaign where not only queer and trans* persons can use the background, but workspaces, families can use these backgrounds to make queer and trans* folks feel welcome and inclusive.
Madhuri Dixit turns 53 this year and continues to be the forever Dhak Dhak girl of Bollywood. The actor went on a long sabbatical after her wedding and move to the US. After she shifted to India with husband Sriram Nene and kids, she has been active in films and TV again. She was seen in two big budget films last year  Kalank and Total Dhamaal.

Madhuri was on the peak of her career when she decided to get married and shift to the US. Heres the lesser known facts about her love life:

Meeting Dr Sriram Nene for first time

Opening about her first meeting with Sriram, Madhuri had told Simi Garewal on her show Rendezvous With Simi Garewal, It was like meeting someone who didnt know me. There was no preconceived notion in his mind. The first time we met he said lets go mountain biking. I had not sat on a bicycle for past 20 years and I was like ok lets go.

When Dr Sriram Nene recognised only one actor at their wedding reception

Sriram didnt realise how big a star Madhuri was until the day of their wedding reception. The actor revealed his reaction was Oh my God, there are so many people. She added, The only star he recognised at our reception was Mr Amitabh Bachchan. He had seen his film when he was in school and there was Amar Akbar Anthony.

ALSO WATCH | PM Modi to Akshay Kumar & Madhuri Dixit: Watch who all lit diyas

Madhuri savoured every minute of being a housewife in the US

Madhuri had revealed on the show how she effortlessly settled into the role of a loving wife. I used to make breakfast for my husband when he was in cardiovascular surgery. I used to wake up at 5:30, make breakfast for him, of course he used to leave for work and I used to go back to sleep for some time. I savoured every minute of it.

Dr Sriram Nenes reaction to Madhuris films

Madhuri, who tied the knot just five months of being in a relationship with Sriram, said, When you are an actress theres a baggage you carry with you. It was not possible in India. He had no idea what kind of a star I was. Madhuri and her mother-in-law tried to make Sriram watch a few films of his star wife but the actor revealed on the show, He was like cant we do something else, go out and do something else.

Also read: Virat Kohli-Anushka Sharmas wedding portrait in living room catches attention of their fans. See pics

What made Madhuri and Dr Sriram Nene fall in love with each other

Opening up about her love life, the Pukar actor told Simi Garewal, I saw a little bit of something myself in him and something totally opposite in him. He would love to fly out of a plane on a parachute and I m like I dont want to do that. In some ways we are totally opposite and I probably fell in love with all that.

Madhuri was also asked about what made Sriram fell in love with her. To this she replied, You always find some similarity when you meet a partner. What he found about me was that I would go out of my way to do something. The fact that I never did mountain biking but I was ready to do it and give it a chance.

Madhuri had also shared a secret of their successful marriage, What is wonderful about both of us is we dont want to change each other and thats what everybody does the moment you get married. I love the way he is and the same is with him.

Follow @htshowbiz for more
By Bonnie Kerness, Jean Ross and Daniel M. McCarey

On April 10th, Gov. Phil Murphy signed Executive Order 124, which creates a mechanism for the temporary release of some state prisoners in an effort to curb the spread of COVID-19 in prisons and in the community. This step was welcomed by people in prison, their families, and advocates throughout New Jersey. However, it does not resolve the dangerous state of affairs for the prisoners who remain in confinement.

If resources are not allocated now to further reduce the prison population, make internal policy and placement changes and provide adequate medical and social services, New Jersey prisons will quickly become death camps.

As human rights advocates, who work closely with incarcerated adults and youth, we are acutely aware of the conditions of confinement in our state prisons.

Every day we hear the increasing despair of prisoners and their families. Cells are overcrowded, prisoners receive superficial medical reviews and are returned with alarming symptoms to living areas infested with vermin. Medical quarantine is interpreted as placing people in solitary confinement. Prisoners have been forced to congregate for meals, served by sick prisoners. Staff are observed reporting to work with worsening symptoms of the virus, and when prisons are short-staffed because of illness, prisoners are locked down.

A wife contacted us terrified because she had not heard from her ill partner in over a week. One mother sought relief for her feverish son who was without a blanket or towel. Getting information about a loved one in the prisons is virtually impossible  unless they die.

Under these conditions, it is impossible to adhere to the recommendations set forth by the CDC for correctional facilities, or even the rules of New Jerseys own Department of Corrections (DOC). By their very design, prisons do not allow for acceptable social distancing, and the DOC policy of forcing people to share cells places large sectors of the prison population at immediate high risk.

Adequate testing, tracking, treatment, humane isolation, sanitary conditions, and necessary protective equipment is practically nonexistent. Prisoners were only recently given masks. This is a recipe for the rapid spread of infection in a context where many are medically vulnerable and medical care has always been deficient.

Tragically, we hear nothing about humane accommodation for the high percentage of prisoners with serious mental illness. Tragically, people in our states custody are given little information about what is happening. Nevertheless, they can see people around them falling out, disappearing and dying.

The United Nations and the U.S. courts have described the conditions of confinement in U.S. jails and prisons as torture. The cages of our prisons are disproportionately filled with black and brown men, women, and youth, often medically, economically, and educationally deprived, many of whom are casualties of this nations drug war.

Unless we consciously and with a sense of urgency radically change the conditions of the prison system, COVID-19 will not only sicken and kill prisoners and staff, it will inevitably spill over into the community, putting all of us at increased risk.

The DOC is more than a set of institutions. It is also a state of mind. That state of mind needs to immediately shift. Keeping people in cages during a pandemic makes all of us less safe. We need action from those in power to both significantly increase in the number of people eligible for release and address the dangerous conditions inside prisons. Anyone who is not released should be provided with sanitation supplies, testing, single cells, comprehensive medical care, and support staying in touch with loved ones.

As advocates and survivors of imprisonment we must be vigilant so that the life and health of those confined in these institutions are protected. Protecting these individuals will benefit the health and wellbeing of us all.

Bonnie Kerness has worked for American Friends Service Committee - Prison Watch Program in Newark since 1976.

Jean Ross, Esq., is a public employee who has worked in human services agencies, for local, county and state governments, and on public boards, commissions and workgroups. She lives in Princeton.

Daniel McCarey, Esq., has worked on criminal legal reform as both a front line legal defense attorney and community organizer for over 10 years. He lives in Maplewood.

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Comet Swan and its 11 million mile long tail will be visible in the night sky from tonight and you may be able to see it with the naked eye, astronomers say.

The ball of ice, discovered in April by astronomer Michael Mattiazzo from Australia, has already passed the Earth but is getting brighter as it approaches the Sun.

It will be best viewed from the southern hemisphere, but those in the northern hemisphere will still be able to see it low on the horizon in the pre-dawn hours.

Swan is currently about 53 million miles from the Earth and is expected to be a 'significant' comet in terms of visibility, according to the European Space Agency.

The space rock, discovered in April by astronomer Michael Mattiazzo from Australia, has already passed the Earth but is getting brighter as it approaches the Sun

The green-tinged ball of ice and dust visits the inner part of the solar system once every 11,597 years and has a long blue tail stretching 10 million miles behind it.

Currently moving from the southern to the northern skies, it is just faintly visible to the naked eye, but current estimates suggest that, by the end of May, it could be significantly brighter  if it survives that long.

The more material ejected from the comet as it warms up on its way towards the sun, the more sunlight it reflects and the more visible it becomes.

Comets are fragile and often break apart as they approach the Sun - this happened to Comet ATLAS last month after it was also predicted to become very bright.

Comet Swan is now entering the 'danger zone' and will reach its closest point to the Sun on 27 May  at this time, the solar heating will be at its maximum

Comet Swan is now entering the 'danger zone' and will reach its closest point to the Sun on 27 May  at this time, the solar heating will be at its maximum.

If it survives it will become more visible in the northern hemisphere, switch to the evening sky and be higher above the horizon, astronomers predict.

Swan will be visible from tonight and through the weekend as a faint and fuzzy dot with a long tail - you'll get a clearer view with binoculars or a small telescope.

Mattiazzo spotted the icy rock, that originated in the outer solar system , while inspecting images on a computer - rather than looking through a telescope.

The images were captured by the Solar Wind Anisotropies (SWAN) instrument on the European Space Agency and NASA Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO).

SWAN captures images in ultraviolet light, including a specific ultraviolet wavelength called Lyman alpha given off by hydrogen atoms.

This allows it to map changes in solar winds but can also be used to spot comets as they are also a source of hydrogen.

Comet Swan currently has a magnitude of 5.4 but could reach a magnitude of 3 by the end of May - the lower the number the brighter the object.

'It is true that estimates are being affected by bright skiestwilight and the Moonbut earlier predictions of magnitude 3 or brighter are now looking optimistic,' says Nick James, Director of the Comet Section at the British Astronomical Association.

Comet ATLAS was also predicted to be visible with the naked eye but this image from the Hubble space telescope shows it breaking apart last month - something that could happen to Swan as it gets closer to the Sun

It is relatively close to the Sun and so can be lost in the glare of the Sun and appears to have stopped getting brighter, according to astronomers.

'I think we'll be lucky if it gets to 4, but who knows?' James told Forbes. 'It could flare up again so it will be worth observing.'

He says comets can do unusual things when they get close to the Sun - so could actually suddenly become bright or even break apart completely.

'We won't really know how it performs until we actually see it go through perihelionit could surprise us,' said James.

The best time to view Swan will be at the end of May if it doesn't break apart first May 15: Visible in the northern hemisphere: low on the horizon May 17: Reaches its minimum elongation from the Sun May 18: In Perseus and at its brightest and visible low in the northeast May 26: Reaches its closest point to the Sun in its orbit and will move from morning to evening sky Advertisement

Using the SOHO spacecraft and its instruments citizen scientists scouring images have helped discover nearly 4,000 comets dotted throughout the solar system.

'It's extremely exciting that our sun-watching observatory has spotted so many comets since its launch in 1995,' says Bernhard Fleck, ESA SOHO project scientist.

'We are eagerly awaiting, along with comet enthusiasts around the world, for the 4,000th discovery, which might happen real soon.'

Swan isn't the only astronomical observation to inspire skywatchers this month - from May 21 to May 23 Venus and Mercury will appear very close together.

This will also be the last time this year for seeing Venus as an evening object - it has been particularly bright in recent weeks.

It is extremely difficult to predict the behaviour of comets that approach the Sun very closely, according to ESA, who say they are hopeful Swan will remain bright.

'If the comet survives, star gazers on Earth should look for it near the bright star Capella in the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer,' ESA wrote.

'This is almost certainly the only time the comet will be visible in our lifetimes: estimates are not yet fully precise, but it is clear that the comets orbital period is measured in thousands or even millions of years.'
SPRINGFIELD  Illinois lawmakers will return to Springfield Wednesday through Friday for the first time in more than two months to take up a state budget and other critical matters while following strict social distancing and public safety guidelines during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Before returning to the capital, lawmakers are being asked to sign a pledge stipulating they will be tested for COVID-19, regardless of whether they have symptoms or have been previously infected. They will also be required to wear face coverings, undergo temperature checks on session days, travel alone and stay in separate hotel rooms, follow social distancing guidelines and avoid extracurricular activities.

The House will meet in the Bank of Springfield Center, a convention center a few blocks from the Statehouse. The Senate plans to meet in the Senate chamber of the Capitol.

Security at the BoS Center will be provided by the Illinois State Police. Everyone entering the building will be required to pass through a metal detector to prevent weapons from being carried into the facility. All people will also be required to wear face coverings and submit to a touchless temperature check. Anyone with a temperature of more than 100 degrees will be required to leave.

The House is also recommending that lawmakers and staff who are at risk of serious illness from COVID-19  people over age 65 or with pre-existing conditions  consider not traveling to Springfield for the special session.

All four regions outlined by Gov. J.B. Pritzkers Restore Illinois reopening plan are on track to move into the next phase of reopening on May 29, according to Illinois Department of Public Health data, including a case positivity rate for each region of less than 20 percent.

Phase 3  titled Recovery  allows offices, retail shops, barbershops and salons to reopen to the public with safety precautions and limited capacity. Mandatory face coverings and social distancing will still remain, as well as the 10-person limit to social gatherings.

Pritzker said that if one county in a region does not meet IDPHs metrics for moving into the next phase, that county would still be allowed if the region as a whole meets the metrics.

There will be some areas that will be a bigger hotspot than another area within a region, he said. But we didnt want to hold back a region because theres one hotspot.

A second benchmark is that a region should have no overall increase in hospitalizations for COVID-like illnesses over a 28-day period. So far in May, Prtizker said, all regions have reported substantial decreases in hospitalization rates:

 18.6 percent decrease in the northeast region;

 35.8 percent decrease in the north-central region;

 44.4 percent decrease in the central region; and

 54.3 percent decrease in the southern region.

The third requirement is that a region have a surge capacity of at least 14 percent of its surgical beds, intensive care unit beds and ventilators. Pritzker said all four regions of the state were meeting that benchmark.

Despite those numbers, Pritzker said Illinois still has not hit its peak in the spread of COVID-19, which was originally estimated to happen in mid-May. He said that because the state has been successful in slowing the spread of the disease, it has also pushed back the time when the peak will occur, which is now expected to happen in mid-June.

Republicans in the Illinois General Assembly on Thursday said they intend to push for changes to Pritzkers reopening plan.

I have heard members from both caucuses suggest this plan should be vetted and revised, Senate Minority Leader Bill Brady, of Bloomington, said in a letter to Senate President Don Harmon (D-Oak Park) released to the media. I also believe this should be done in a public setting, which can be undertaken using available technology and social-distancing protocols when we convene in Springfield.

During a video news conference Thursday, House Republicans argued Pritzkers plan is too restrictive and progress toward a full reopening is too slow.

Rep. Avery Bourne, R-Morrisonville, said she thinks the arrangements of the four regions is arbitrary and that three of the four regions  all except the northeast region, including Chicago  should already be in Phase 3.
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-As he launches female-only Isolation Centre

Understanding major reasons behind agitations by COVID-19 patients across Isolation Centres in the country, governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano state has proposed better strategy to help put that outcry to rest.

He made the observation during inspection and put to use of Daula Female Isolation Centre, Nassarawa local government, Kano, when he notified that everything there was ready for operation, stating that, Everything is ready here. All staff who supposed to work here have already been posted.

Calling the attention of the staff there, he warned that We dont want hear any complaints from any patient here please. You need to understand the psychology of your patients. Provide them with the necessary items they may seek.

The governor acknowledged that, As you may be aware that, there are complaints from some Isolation Centres in some states, it is therefore absolutely necessary to find solution to such agitations.

As a workable strategy he postulates that, Contact your patients from time to time and tell them the situation they are at the moment. Tell them what is expected of them and what they should expect. I think that can help in forming a good patient-health worker relationship.

Explaining that, as a place where patients are idle, with feeling of inconveniences, because they are not with their families and/or parents, so they need to be engaged so that they can have hope. That it is just a matter of time that they would be discharged.

They should be aware about the procedures. That if they are tested negative for the first time, then they should know that there is hope. And when they are tested negative for the second time, then they are due for discharge, he urged.

Arguing further that, when there was no such explanation, patients would not know when next a sample would be taken and when next the result of the samples would be announced to them. From there you begin to see a lot of agitations. We want a situation of cooperation and we want a situation of understanding, he cautions.

On the state front, governor Ganduje assured that, We assure our public that we are really prepared to bring this pandemic down, by the Special Will of Allah. Amd I believe we will soon start observing that. Especially when we are having negative negative negative. It shows we are fighting the positive aspect of it.

The female-only Daula Isolation Centre is 100-bed capacity facility and it is for mild moderate cases.
The measures to control the coronavirus pandemic are being relaxed too quickly and in an uncontrolled manner. Thousands of lives are unnecessarily being put at risk. All over the world, governments place the interests of big business above the health and lives of working people, who are paying a high price for this.

This was evident on May 12 of all days, International Nursing Day. It is the 200th birthday of Florence Nightingale, the statistician and world-renowned pioneer of nursing.

Worldwide, well over 90,000 nurses have been infected with the coronavirus. At least 260 of them have died of COVID-19. These are the official figures presented by the International Council of Nurses (ICN). They are undoubtedly many times too low because numerous countries do not measure these figures or refuse to publish them.

An employee wearing a face mask and gloves is waiting for the next patient behind the door of the corona diagnostic centre in Dusseldorf. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner)

In Germany, too, the full extent of deaths from pandemic is not known. According to the public health body Robert Koch Institute (RKI), more than 10,100 health workers were infected with COVID-19 by May 5, and 16 of them have died. This is according to an RKI report published last week. Since not all coronavirus cases are broken down by occupational groups, this is by no means the complete number.

For five days now, the decisive reproduction rate of the virus has again been above or around the critical value of 1.0 in Germany. The value indicates how many more people an infected person infects with the virus on average during his or her illness. This value, which was 1.13 on Sunday evening, thus indicates that the number of new infections is beginning to rise again significantly.

According to the RKI report, almost 7,500 cases of coronavirus have been reported from refugee facilities, homeless shelters and prisons alone, with the number of deaths among them amounting to at least 31 peoplehere too, with an admitted number of unreported cases.

With the general relaxation of the coronavirus measures, the COVID-19 figures from schools, retirement homes, local transport, industry and the entire working population are inevitably on the rise again. At least 25 construction workers at the Stuttgart 21 tunnel project have tested positive. In a call centre in Bremen, 11 employees have become infected and 50 more could be affected. They were in a too small room, as the company admitted to the media website buten-un-binnen,

The districts with meat industry businesses, where hundreds of slaughterhouse workers tested positive for COVID-19 at the end of last week, are considered true coronavirus hotspots.

Since then, the number of infections in the district of Coesfeld in Munsterland (North Rhine-Westphalia, NRW) has continued to rise dramatically. The Westfleisch slaughterhouse had to shut down operations on Friday after 151 mostly Romanian workers had tested positive for COVID-19. In the entire county, the critical number of new infections per 100,000 inhabitants at the end of the week was 96almost twice the critical limit of 50 new infections per 100,000 inhabitants set by the RKI. In the Munsterland region, including the city of Munster, more than 4,000 people had fallen ill with COVID-19 and 160 had died by May 11.

In Thuringia, the Sonneberg district has proven to be a new hotspot; a hospital with COVID-19 patients is the focus of infection. There, at least 20 employees have become infected with the coronavirus. However, not all 600 employees have been tested yet.

Schooling has proved to be particularly problematic and has been gradually resumed in practically all German states since April 27. No sooner had the schools been opened than reports of coronavirus cases started piling up among pupils from all over Germany, and many individual classes or entire schools have had to close again. This affects, for example, the Nicolaus Kistner High School in Mosbach, near Heilbronn (Baden-Wurttemberg). There, after a confirmed coronavirus case, the school management decided to discontinue classroom lessons until the beginning of the final year examinations.

In Rheingau-Taunus (Hesse), the Theisstalschule in Niedernhausen sent an entire class and three teachers into quarantine after a student tested positive for COVID-19. The Albert Schweitzer School in Offenbach is also affected. Five days after reopening, one pupil fell ill with coronavirus. About 30 people, including three teachers, are now in quarantine there.

In Sinzig in Rhineland-Palatinate, classes for an entire year were suspended when a 17-year-old high school student tested positive for COVID-19. In the same town, testing revealed that an employee at a senior citizens home had also fallen ill with the coronavirus, putting another 52 contacts in the home at risk.

The health department and school management of a grammar school in Dusseldorf, the capital of North Rhine-Westphalia, reacted differently when two students there also fell ill with COVID-19. Only the two affected students were sent to home quarantine. The reason given was that none of their other classmates or teachers was a Category 1 contact person.

At the same time, medical and virologist warnings of lax handling of the virus are increasing. In an interview with the Suddeutsche Zeitung, intensive care physician Matthias Baumgartel from the Nuremberg North Clinic warned urgently against underestimating the virus.

Baumgartel emphasised that numerous patients who died of COVID-19 in his clinic, despite intensive care, had no significant previous illnesses and could certainly have lived for many years or decades. The youngest patient we lost was 38 years oldshe too had no previous illness ... Of course, the older the patients are, the more dangerous the illness is. But even those in their mid-50s have a hard time coping with it if they have intensive care.

In fact, COVID-19 turns out to be not just a lung disease, but a multi-organ disease ... many patients get thromboses, dangerous clots in the blood vessels. A lot of our patients go into liver failure. The kidney is often a problem, and of course the heart. We also experience neurological symptoms: patients with strokes, even younger ones. One patient experienced sudden paralysis.

Baumgartel went on to say that he was surprised every day by the relaxation [of coronavirus measures] of the federal and state governments. Its just going too fast. It was obvious that the initial restrictions had saved thousands of lives because people were not infected and did not have to go to hospital. I can only warn against the recklessness of wanting too much too fast now.

The interview confirms what the World Socialist Web Site has long warned: the ruling class is not only endangering the health of hundreds of thousands of workers and students and their families and friends but also their lives.
Ned Gerard / Hearst Connecticut Media

The Connecticut Post Mall joined Westfield Trumbull and Stamford Town Center in committing to reopen on Wednesday, May 20, about two months after being forced to close under an executive order by Gov. Ned Lamont to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Malls must operate initially at half capacity, with Connecticut Post Mall owner Centennial Real Estate pledging to adhere to sanitary and social distancing rules that remain in effect, including the use of face masks by customers, employees and vendors. Stores and restaurants will offer curbside delivery service for pickup of any orders placed online or through the phone.
First-year CMC nursing student Hannah Schanfarber of Aspen is observed by her on-screen instructor, Karen Hamick, while making a sterile dressing change on a central line. Schanfarber is completing one of the required nursing lab courses in the CMC program. One of Colorado Gov. Jared Polis executive orders relating to COVID-19 permits associate-level nursing students in the state to complete some of the 750 required hours of clinical experience in a virtual format so that they can graduate on time.
With the addition of CampbellWilson, BKD will strengthen whats already one of the largest health care consulting teams in Texas, said BKDs South Region Health Care Industry Leader Chris Clark.

BKD CPAs & Advisors has acquired CampbellWilson, LLPa Dallas-based firm specializing in health care regulatory consulting. This addition becomes effective June 1, 2020, and will help grow BKDs health care practice in the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) market. CampbellWilson will bring its proprietary physician time study system, which assists hospitals in capturing reimbursable expenses on Medicare and Medicaid cost reports. CampbellWilsons staff will join an existing team of nearly 250 professionals in BKDs DFW offices.

With the addition of CampbellWilson, BKD will strengthen whats already one of the largest health care consulting teams in Texas, said BKDs South Region Health Care Industry Leader Chris Clark. Were especially excited about launching the time study system with our clients firmwide, giving us another chance to provide Unmatched Client Service.

CampbellWilson, led by Founder and Managing Partner Manie Campbell, is known for having a fiercely entrepreneurial culture with a strong market presence. With 10 staff members, CampbellWilson built a successful $3 million consulting practice.

BKD has a great reputation in health care, not only in Texas but nationally. Our client base is national as well, so this combination will bring new services to our current clients while also creating some great opportunities for our existing CampbellWilson team, Campbell said.

The firms deep expertise in serving health care providers fits nicely with BKDs extensive health care practice and will allow it to enhance its service offerings to existing clients while strengthening the BKD team.


A concrete block was held over a mans head during a violent attack outside his mobile home in Rathpeacon and today one of his attackers was jailed for two years.

The sentence imposed by Judge Helen Boyle will be added to another three-year sentence being served by Tony Delaney (25) of bay 5, halting site, Spring Lane, Cork.

Delaney pleaded guilty to charges that on October 3 2019 he committed an assault causing harm to Gary Clark at Monard, Rathpeacon, stole his vehicle on same date and attempted to rob him.

Detective Garda Brian Murphy told Cork Circuit Criminal Court that at 2.30am on October 3 last the injured party was alone in his mobile home when a Volkswagen Passat pulled up against the door to prevent him from getting out while others in the car stole his Jeep.

Gary Clark did manage to get out of his home but Tony Delaney attacked him and knocked him to the ground. He was dragged by the hair to a kneeling position and further beaten, the detective said.

When Delaney and the others realised the injured party had recordings from CCTV they demanded the recordings. Det. Garda Murphy said the only reason the attackers did not follow Mr Clark into his mobile home was because they were afraid of three large dogs he had inside.

During the attack, an earring was ripped from the victims ear leaving him with a permanent laceration to his ear. The stolen Jeep was located a week later outside Tony Delaneys residence at Spring Lane halting site.

Judge Helen Boyle said: He was beaten. Towards end of the attack you (Delaney) and others became aware of CCTV and it became a sustained assault. You held a concrete block over him and made very serious threats to him. You have a large number of previous convictions including robbery and this offence was committed while on bail. You are serving three years since February.

You attended at the victims home. It was a sustained assault. It has had long lasting psychological effects. This was an ongoing and determined assault."

The judge imposed a total sentence of three years with last year suspended. Because the offences were committed while on bail, that two-year term is consecutive to the three years he was already serving.
By Heather Russinko

Coders, accountants and many types of small business owners can work from home during the coronavirus lockdown. But not food entrepreneurs like me. At least not in New Jersey, which is the final holdout in a nationwide movement to legalize the sale of home-baked foods.

My cake pops and artisanal bread would be welcome in 49 states and Washington, D.C., but selling them remains illegal in New Jersey. All I can do instead is donate my kitchen creations at charity events, such as bake sales for my sons school in Sussex County.

The contributions make me popular on campus, where people call me the Cake Pop Lady. They light up when they see me carrying my little white boxes full of chocolate-covered treats on lollipop sticks. The attention is nice, but it does not eliminate my need for side income.

As a single mother, bills pile up. People who recognize my baking talent have approached me over the years about catering jobs and other commercial opportunities, but I must turn them down or risk $1,000 fines that I cannot afford.

Thankfully, a nine-year battle to overturn New Jerseys unreasonable restrictions may soon come to an end  and just in time to turn hundreds or thousands of residential kitchens like mine into economic recovery zones for a state hit especially hard in a global pandemic.

Proposed rules from New Jerseys Department of Health, published earlier this month in response to an Institute for Justice lawsuit on my behalf, would allow the direct sale of homemade breads, cakes, pastries, cookies, candy, dried pasta, roasted coffee and other shelf-stable cottage foods. Aspiring home-based entrepreneurs would just need to apply for a permit and complete mandatory food safety training.

Other states provide clues about what would come next. Within two years of adopting similar rules in Minnesota, more than 3,000 small businesses emerged. Institute for Justice research shows that most of these enterprises are led by women, particularly in rural areas with limited economic opportunity.

Cottage food opponents sometimes fret about public health and safety risks, but New Jersey regulators looked into the matter and found no evidence of anyone, anywhere, getting sick from home-baked goods. The states introduction to its proposed rules points to scientific evidence that supports a finding that shelf-stable food prepared in home kitchens is safe for consumers.

As an added assurance during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Food and Drug Administration reports no evidence that the virus is spread through food or packaging. All of these conclusions match my own experiences. I have baked for thousands of people over the years, and no one has ever expressed any health-related concerns.

As a group, cottage food producers are meticulous about health and safety because our customers tend to be friends, relatives and neighbors who meet us face-to-face. They know us, and we must stand behind our work  often literally at bake sale tables.

This is part of the business I love. Food brings people together, even during periods of social distancing. As the World Health Organization and others have expressed: Were all in this together.

Cottage food producers have much to contribute if New Jersey regulators will let them. The clock is ticking on a 60-day comment period ending June 19, and then home bakers will be ready to start their ovens. Cake pops might not fix everything, but chocolate never hurts.

Heather Russinko serves on the leadership board of the New Jersey Home Bakers Association. She lives in Franklin Borough.

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Anyone who suffered through France's two-month lockdown with a toothache or other oral affliction of a non-emergency nature has a hope of licking the pain.

Dental practices around the country are cautiously reopening and accepting appointments after the French government eased restrictions on some businesses, services and public activity.

Yet getting back to work in the age of coronavirus requires caution, especially for over 40,000 dentists in France who are among the health professionals at highest risk of becoming infected.

Because respiratory droplets are a way the virus spreads among people, dentistry demands protecting patients and especially practitioners.

That means not only disinfecting tools and surfaces, but layer upon layer of extra screens, wraps, gloves and masks.

The World Health Organization has recommended specialized face masks for health care providers performing medical procedures such as ventilation and intubation that produce fine, airborne particles, which might transmit the coronavirus.

Drilling teeth for fillings is also known to generate aerosolized viral particles.

Paris dentist Sabrine Jendoubi said the trade-off for safety is the discomfort of additional head and body wear.

A surgical suit is something that we wear in the operating theater. Today, we wear it for everything."



Jendoubi said of the various filtering face masks certified to protect against viruses in the air, she finds the FFP2-rated model "the most complicated, as it's really tight.

"It filters out every virus and bacteria, so it's quite heavy to wear but it protects us and the patients, Jendoubi said.

The additional precautions are also an added expense. An operator of medical clinics and offices in France, Doctocare, told the AP it is costing 50,000 euros (USD 54,000) to supply each of the company's centers with the hygiene and protective equipment recommended by the French government.

We will communicate to the government these difficult adjustments in terms of profitability, but for now we're focused on this public health issue, Carine Benharrous, director of dental operations at Doctocare, said.

The limited distance between the faces of dentists and their patients also is a potential concern, as some experts have theorized that people who get a bigger infectious dose of the coronavirus may become more seriously ill with COVID-19.

In Britain, all routine dental care has been suspended except for telephone consultations and prescriptions.

While dentists in Denmark are returning to their offices, they are wearing protective suits and plastic face shields while tending to patients lying with their mouths wide open.

Cleaning teeth to remove plaque is being done by hand instead of with ultrasonic devices that would increase the risk of producing spit.

Yet in some European countries, dental practices never closed because of the virus.

Dentists in Italy, one of the nations hit hardest by infections and virus-related deaths, reduced their services to take only urgent cases in person, managing other patients by telephone.

Proof that a pandemic wasn't an excuse to avoid an Italian dentist chair was an April 23 photo on Twitter of U.S. Ambassador to the Holy See Callista Gingrich wearing a protective hairnet and paper drape.

A trip to the dentist in Italy during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gingrich tweeted with emoji of an Italian flag and smiley face in sunglasses.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Zoom satellite talk now on YouTube

A video of the talk on amateur radio satellites, EME, Meteor scatter and the International Space Station by Robin Moseley G1MHU given via Zoom on Wednesday, May 13 is now available on YouTube



Watch G1MHU talk on satellites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKjCXepCK_s

The talk was organised by the Denby Dale Amateur Radio Society, their next talk on Zoom will be by the Editor of Practical Wireless, Don Field G3XTT, at 7:30pm BST on Wednesday, May 20, Zoom meeting ID 278 609 9353

https://zoom.us/j/2786099353

http://www.ddars.net/



AMSAT-UK https://amsat-uk.org/
Acquisition International has published the list of AI Business Excellence Awards winners for 2020, and Jetsanza declared Best Travel News & Tips Website - Ghana 2020.

Acquisition International, a prestigious business global magazine which, over the years, has awarded big companies from various business industries across the globe, has revealed the business winners for 2020, declaring Jetsanza.com Best Travel News & Tips Website - Ghana 2020.

The five-year-old website is owned and managed by Ghanaian Travel Blogger Akesse Sanza. Over the years, Jetsanza.com has been a leading travel website in providing travellers with travel news, travel tips, and serves as a resource for information on visa applications.

"This recognition, granted by a well-known international business publication, acknowledges the quality of content produced by Jetsanza, and how they have positively affected many travels. Thanks to AI Magazine, and thanks to readers of Jetsanza.com for the support over the years.", Akesse Sanza said in an appreciation message.

AI Business Excellence Awards, which is in its sixth year, are given solely on merit and are awarded to commend those most deserving for their ingenuity and hard work.

Awards Coordinator Steve Simpson took a moment to discuss the success of the winners: Now in its sixth year, the Business Excellence Awards are the cornerstone of Acquisition Internationals annual celebratory programmes.

Once again, it has been an absolute pleasure to speak to you all and find out how you continue to innovate and create in your respective industries.
Politics aside, many people realized they were largely on their own. Along Bluemound Road in Brookfield, Wis., few stores or restaurants had opened to customers, except for takeout, as of Thursday afternoon.

At Picardy Shoe Parlour, which sells womens shoes and clothing, doors were open for the first time in weeks. The store owner, Russell Levin, wore a mask while waiting for business, but said he would not insist that customers do so. A nearby table held boxes of complimentary disposable masks and gloves.

Ive been in business for 35 years, and Ive never seen anything like this, he said of the economic disruption. Because his customers tend to be over 40, Mr. Levin will now set aside every Monday as appointment only, for customers who do not feel safe in a crowd.

Mr. Levin, who said he was not politically active and considered himself an independent, said he did not think Mr. Evers was acting politically. He has to protect the state, he said. As for himself, he will not be going out to dine or for drinks until the pandemic eases further. He said he would try to support those businesses in other ways.

Kay Nolan reported from Waukesha, Wis., Julie Bosman from Chicago, and Campbell Robertson from Pittsburgh. Emily Shetler contributed reporting from Madison, Wis., Kathleen Gray from Lansing, Mich., and Mitch Smith from Overland Park, Kan. Alain Delaqueriere contributed research.
The Connecticut National Guard saluted medical workers during a flyover Thursday at a number of state hospitals and health-care facilities.

The Guard flew C-130 transport planes across Connecticut as part of what they called 'Operation American Resolve.'

"This is our way of showing appreciation to the thousands of heroes at the front line battling COVID-19. We are humbled by their sacrifices," Maj. Gen. Francis Evon, the Adjutant General of the Connecticut National Guard, said Wednesday before the flyover.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:41:41|Editor: huaxia

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RIGA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The foreign ministers of the three Baltic countries met in Riga on Friday in the first such face-to-face event after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, demonstrating what they described "new normality."

Latvia's Edgars Rinkevics, Lithuania's Linas Linkevicius and Estonia's Urmas Reinsalu gathered here to sign a memorandum of understanding reopening the Baltic states for travel by air, sea, road and rail, and outlining a plan for cooperation in combating the pandemic crisis.

At a joint news conference that followed the ministerial meeting, the Lithuanian foreign minister told reporters that the trilateral meeting sent a message of optimism and hope.

"The meeting is not just a celebration. It is the beginning of hard work. I believe that the public has to receive hope and reassurance of an exit from the COVID-19 crisis. Such signals are really needed now," Linkevicius said.

The Latvian foreign minister indicated that the meeting symbolized the beginning of life in new normality. The novel coronavirus will still be around for some time until a vaccine and treatment are available. In the meantime, new rules are being created.

"While meeting, we follow several restrictions. For instance, we do not shake hands and do not hand the memorandum to each other, we keep the distance. For a while, we all will have to live with such restrictions," Rinkevics said.

The Estonian foreign minister said that the three ministers' meeting in Riga was not meant to encourage mass travel. Travel warnings still remain in place and Baltic health authorities are urging people to follow them, Reinsalu said.

"By gradually phasing out restrictions, we are providing additional guarantees to all Baltic citizens. By doing so, we are demonstrating our commitment to working together. If there is a valid reason to take more steps forward, we will do so because we have full trust in each other. This is the main precondition for taking further measures," Reinsalu said.

The trilateral memorandum of understanding on the reopening of the common borders of Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania has been signed in addition to the Baltic prime ministers' May 6 decision on the resumption of travel within the Baltics and each government's individual resolutions, the foreign ministers said in their joint statement.

The Latvian government on Thursday greenlighted the resumption of passenger traffic with its Baltic neighbors Lithuania and Estonia.

In order to contain the spread of the novel coronavirus, Latvia had temporarily suspended all international passenger traffic via its airports, ports and border crossings since March 17, allowing only some exceptions to repatriate its nationals stuck in foreign countries.

On Thursday, the Latvian government amended its decree on the national state of emergency to allow air, sea, bus and rail travel to and from Lithuania and Estonia to resume as of May 15. Enditem
Police in Harrisburg are preparing for hundreds of protesters to gather again Friday near the state Capitol to oppose Gov. Tom Wolfs lockdown measures to stem the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Capitol police say they dont know how many people will show up since the organizers did not apply for a permit, but Department of General Services Spokesman Troy Thompson said the last rally organized by the same group on April 20 drew an estimated 650 to 750 protesters.

Thats lower than some media reports estimates for the April 20 event that had it drawing 1,000 or more participants.

Organizers said they did ask for a permit, but the Dept. of General Services said they didnt need to have one.

Either way, Harrisburg police said they believe Fridays gathering, led by organizers of the Reopen PA Facebook page, will be smaller than the April 20 rally, which was hosted by Reopen PA and several other groups.

Matt Bellis, one of the organizers of Fridays event, said they hope to attract 10,000 to 15,000 people to convince the governor to allow businesses that have been deemed non-life sustaining to reopen. The governor, however, has said he plans to stick with his Department of Health metrics, including the number of new COVID-19 cases, when deciding which counties can loosen restrictions.

The shutdown is an effort to stop the spread of the coronavirus, which has already infected nearly 60,000 across the Commonwealth and killed at least 4,218 in Pennsylvania, with nearly 70 percent of those deaths coming from nursing home or personal care home residents.

At the time of the first rally, more than three weeks ago, the novel virus had infected 33,232 and killed at least 1,204 in Pennsylvania, including 682 (57 percent) at nursing or personal care homes, according to the Department of Health statistics.

Harrisburg Police Lt. Milo Hooper said the protest on April 20 was peaceful, with no issues, no traffic crashes and no trash left behind.

Thompson said Capitol Police made one arrest April 20 for disorderly conduct, but he did not provide any information on what prompted that single arrest.

Harrisburg police will be working with Capitol Police on Friday and Pennsylvania State Police helped with planning police coverage for the event, Thompson said.

The police will be on-hand to ensure that those individuals exercising their first amendment rights do so in a manner that is peaceful, not disruptive and safe for everyone, Thompson said. As long as the protesters are peaceful and compliant with the security measures in place, things should be fine. Naturally, if there are any crimes or violations of the law that occur, the Capitol Police will take the necessary, appropriate action.

Speakers at the protest are expected to start talking at noon. Police said some protesters last time arrived several hours before the protest.

Fridays event was prompted by some peoples dissatisfaction with the length of the governors emergency lockdown and questions about whether its a proper use of the governors emergency powers. The message of Fridays rally is intended to tell the governor to give up the power and work with the general assembly again, Bellis said.

The governor is a Democrat and the General Assembly is controlled by Republicans, some of whom have recently coordinated efforts to partner with county commissioners to buck Wolfs stay-at-home orders.

As with the April rally, participants are expected to flock to the Capitol steps and drive around the Capitol Complex honking their horns, Bellis said.

To limit excessive traffic and noise in Harrisburgs residential neighborhoods, police will be closing off much of the Capital Area Neighborhood to thru starting at 8 a.m. Friday.

Barricades allowing local traffic only will be placed at the following intersections, as well as other locations as needed, for the duration of the scheduled protests:

2nd & North

2nd & Briggs

Forster & Susquehanna

Forster & Green

Third & North

Forster & Penn

The city of Harrisburg released this map to show road closures and offer routes protesters can use to circle the Capitol.

The city also will be temporarily closing the intersections at 2nd and Forster streets and 3rd and Forster, while encouraging protesters to follow the route of 2nd-to-Forster-to-Third and the Capitol steps.

We respect the right of the protesters to make their voices heard, said Mayor Eric Papenfuse. We ask them in turn to respect the rights of our residents to be safe in their homes and not have to put up with excessive disruptions to their daily routines.

The previous event in April drew not only home-grown protesters, but also out-of-staters and gun rights activists some of whom carried large rifles.

The Capitol is currently largely deserted because of the COVID-19 lockdown. Those expected to attend Fridays rally will be violating Wolfs prohibition against large public gatherings, a measure aimed at curbing the spread of the virus.

Bellis said speakers for the event include state Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin County, who has called for the resignation of state Health Secretary Rachel Levine. Also on tap to speak are state Rep. Russ Diamond, an Annvile Republican, Danny DeVito, a GOP candidate running for a state House seat in Western Pa., and attorney Marc Scaringi, a regular columnist for PennLive and The Patriot-News.

READ: Man facing death battles back from COVID-19 with help of bold new therapy

READ: Stand up with me: Crowd, GOP politicians roar support for central Pa. barber defying COVID-19 closure order
The authorities in Wuhan, Hubei province, have rolled out a new round of mass testing covering the city's entire population after a recent cluster of novel coronavirus infections.

On Thursday, residents from a number of districts in the city, the hardest hit in China by the outbreak, were seen lining up at designated areaseach standing meters apartto receive nucleic acid tests.

In Dongxihu district, where six locally transmitted infections were reported over the weekend, government employees began setting up testing facilities early on Wednesday and were guiding residents to take tests in the afternoon, the district's urban management commission said on Thursday.

In Qiaokou district's Liujiao community, 1,000 residents took tests on Wednesday.

"Our residents are very supportive. We aim at leaving nobody out of the screening," Wang Kaiqi, the community's Party secretary, told Hubei Television.

Yao Hanhua, Party secretary of Qiaokou's Shuichang community, said the mass campaign will enable officials to understand the true scale of undetected infections in each area. "The results will help us take more targeted epidemic control measures," he told Hubei Television.

Wuhan added one new domestic case involving an 89-year-old man on Saturday, the first such case in 35 days. On Sunday, his wife and four other residents of the same neighborhood were found to be infected.

Health experts said the source of new infections came from "past community transmission", according to the city's health commission.

No new confirmed cases have been reported in Wuhan since then, but the city has continued to register new asymptomatic cases.

On Monday, the city's epidemic prevention and control command center released a notice requiring the mass testing campaign be completed within 10 days, and to prioritize key populations and areas, and focus on old or densely populated neighborhoods and those with large mobile populations.

The magnitude of the campaign is unprecedented. During the outbreak's peak, Wuhan rolled out two campaigns to screen the entire city for confirmed and suspected cases, people with fever and close contacts.

After outbound travel restrictions were lifted on April 8, Wuhan completed 275,400 nucleic acid tests within a week, targeting people who intended to resume work or leave the city, and 182 of them were found to be asymptomatic.

Wuhan also rolled out an epidemiologic survey that conducted nucleic acid and antibody tests on 11,000 residents in mid-April. The survey was part of a nationwide effort to evaluate the scale of infections in nine provincial-level regions.
PHILIPSBURG:--- Justice Minister Anna E. Richardson met with Correctional Officers and Management of the Prison and House of Detention in Point Blanche on Wednesday, May 13. The meeting, requested by Correctional Officers, served as an opportunity for them to express challenges and grievances that they have been faced with at the various detention centers.

Since her appointment, the Minister and her support staff have been diligently working to address a number of challenges within the Ministry of Justice, with the detention centers and their staff well-being being a high priority. After hearing their concerns, the Minister reassured the officers that she is actively dedicated to coming up with concrete, long-term solutions for the problems that affect the employees on a daily basis, including the facilities being severely understaffed, poor working conditions and other issues that have struggled to be tended to due to instability in the past. In the coming days, the Minister will be meeting with other Departments employees as well.
Heading to the market to stock up on essentials  groceries, milk, bread  has become anxiety-inducing, time-consuming, and also the only outing most of us get.

Theres all the sanitising, the numbered squares on the ground and socially distanced queues. Still, going to the market feels like a whiff of fresh air in an otherwise exhausting routine of housework and work-from-home that just continues on an unbroken loop, says Baisakhi Chakraborty, 30, a marketing officer in Mumbai.

Many have started looking forward to it with anticipation. If nothing else, we just walk to the Mother Dairy across the street to pick up milk and bread every few days, says Ghaziabad homemaker Piyali Dhar, 49, who is spending the lockdown with her cousin, whom she was visiting when the lockdown was enforced. We are both using the buying of essentials as an excuse to go out. It gives us a chance to dress up a little, take a walk, she says.

Stocking up

Manishita Ghosh, 45, an advertising executive from Kolkata, goes to the market once a week. She prefers the supermarket to the neighbourhood bazaar because things are a little more disciplined there, safer, says her husband Kaniska Chakraborty, 54, a brand consultant.

There is an undeniable element of tension at the market, they both agree. Frayed nerves, shoppers eager to get their turn before a store closes.

But largely it is a chance for responsible socialising, even if it is now with strangers. Some people help each other out with advice on purchases, given that in many cases familiar brands are now missing from the shelves. Others swap recipes, discuss whos delivering ice cream and where one can find some mutton.

At the van that comes to our colony, Ive heard people discussing how prices have gone up, whats available where... Its a change, because these were people who never talked to each other before, Kaniska says.

Another change is coming home with things you rarely ate, either because youre afraid stocks will dwindle, or youre comfort-buying. For many, its ice-cream, biscuits and chips. For Baisakhi, the emotional buys tend to be chocolate. Kaniska remembers buying three dozen eggs at the start of the lockdown. And we dont even eat eggs regularly, he says.

The sanitising routine

Techie Arijit Nag, 37, is among those that just finds the whole thing stressful. He does his shopping early in the mornings, heading out at about 6.45, to avoid queues. It starts with having to get up early. Then arming myself with mask, gloves, etc. I prefer to wear full pants and a full-sleeved shirt, no matter what the weather, he says. Then, as soon as Im out of the house, theres the stress of distancing, not touching my face, not touching my mask.

Then, of course, begins the process of sanitizing everything one has brought home. Such is the fear of infection that I dont even touch the door to lock it. My wife does it once I enter. The clothes I wore to the market are immediately put for a wash and I go for a bath. The provisions are put in a tub to disinfect. The money that left the house is kept in a box for several days to ensure that its well clear of germs before it goes into my wallet, says Nag.

Its exhausting. Often, the post-market ritual takes longer than the time spent at the market.

Still, after a few days spent hunched in front of the laptop and staring at the TV screen, many look forward to the next outing, even if with trepidation.

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TORONTO - Ride-hailing platform Facedrive says it has signed a binding term sheet that could see it nab some of Foodora Canadas assets.

The Toronto, Ont.-based company says if it meets conditions laid out in a to-be-negotiated purchase agreement and gets court approval, it could gain access to 5,500 restaurant partners previously served by Foodora.

Subject to consumer consent, the term sheet may also give Facedrive access to Foodoras customer base.

Facedrive says it expects the transaction to be complete in the next 45 days if it meets all of the conditions.

The term sheet comes after Delivery Hero subsidiary Foodora ceased operations in Canada on May 11 over profitability concerns and began bankruptcy proceedings.

Foodora owes about $4.7 million to creditors including restaurants, but Facedrive thinks their assets will come in handy for the new food delivery network it launched during COVID-19.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.

Correction - May 15, 2020: This article was edited from a previous version that mistakenly said Facedrive is headquartered in London, Ont.
The global quantum sensors market size is expected to grow by USD 79.81 million during 2020-2024. The report also provides the market impact and new opportunities created due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The impact can be expected to be significant in the first quarter but gradually lessen in subsequent quarters with a limited impact on the full-year economic growth, according to the latest market research report by Technavio. Request a free sample report

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005311/en/

Technavio has announced the latest market research report titled Global Quantum Sensors Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

The global quantum sensors market is still in its early growth stage and is attracting significant investments from market participants due to the anticipated growth. Market participants are investing in the development of new products to explore the potential applications of quantum sensing. Government grants to vendors in the market are a major source of investment. For instance, in August 2019, the US Department of Energy (DOE) announced that it would fund a total of USD 21.4 million toward research in quantum information science (QIS) related to both particle physics and fusion energy sciences. A part of the funding will be used for the development of highly sensitive quantum sensors for the detection of rare particles. Similarly, in August 2019, Scottish Enterprise, the National Economic Development Agency of Scotland, announced that it would fund a sum of USD 3.5 million to M-Squared Lasers as an R&D grant. Thus, the increasing investments in the market project a positive outlook toward the global quantum sensors market.

To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR43464

As per Technavio, the use of NV color centers for manufacturing quantum sensors will have a positive impact on the market and contribute to its growth significantly over the forecast period. This research report also analyzes other significant trends and market drivers that will influence market growth over 2020-2024.

Quantum Sensors Market: Use of NV Color Centers for Manufacturing Quantum Sensors

The use of NV color centers for manufacturing quantum sensors is an emerging market trend. NV color centers are highly isolated from environmental changes and perturbations and therefore, are used to manufacture quantum sensors. Scientific research indicates that NV color centers are like a trapped ion technology in which ytterbium ions are trapped or suspended in free space using an electromagnetic force. The trapped ion technology is a major technology that is being researched to develop quantum computing.

"Factors such as the emergence of new applications of quantum sensors, and growing number of strategic partnerships in the market will have a significant impact on the growth of the quantum sensors market value during the forecast period," says a senior analyst at Technavio.

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Quantum Sensors Market: Segmentation Analysis

This market research report segments the quantum sensors market by product (atomic clocks, PAR quantum sensors, gravity sensors, magnetic sensors, and other sensors), application (military and defense, agriculture, oil and gas, automotive, and other applications), and geography (Europe, North America, APAC, MEA, and South America).

Europe led the quantum sensors market in 2019, followed by North America, APAC, MEA, and South America respectively. During the forecast period, the European region is expected to register the highest incremental growth due to factors such as increasing investments in satellite communication and the rising number of satellite launches that are used to gather intelligence as well as enable navigation and military communications.

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Some of the key topics covered in the report include:

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendors covered

Vendor classification

Market positioning of vendors

Competitive scenario

About Technavio

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions.

With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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InterGlobe Aviation slipped 1.18% to Rs 960.40, extending losses for third straight day.

Shares of low-cost airline operator have fallen 4.61% in three sessions from its recent closing high of Rs 1006.85 recorded on 12 May 2020.

Meanwhile, the media reported on 11 May 2020 that Rahul Bhatia, IndiGo's biggest shareholder, is eyeing Australia's second-largest airline Virgin Australia Holdings, which went bankrupt last month amid the coronavirus pandemic.

In an exchange filing made after market hours on 11 May 2020, InterGlobe Aviation said: "We refer to certain media reports stating that IndiGo has expressed an interest in Virgin Australia. We deny the contents of these reports and would like to clarify that the company has not formulated any indicative proposal, nor does it have any interest in this matter."

Co-founded by the British businessman Richard Branson in the year 2000, Virgin Australia folded last month, after reeling under financial distress over several quarters, as COVID-19 pandemic hit tourism and travel across the globe.

Virgin Australia has attracted at least 20 potential buyers as its administrator, Deloitte, races to sell the airline within two months of its collapse. Deloitte is seeking indicative bids by mid-May and binding offers in June, targeting a deal by the end of that month.

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No, we are not reviewing the cute, bold and loyal dog that is usually very wary of strangers. But the concept seems similar. Here, Akita is a security device that is wary of strangers and anyone with a malicious intent who may be eyeing the smart devices in your Internet of Things (IoT) home. All the devices that connect with the internet at some point, can be used by hackers to spy on you or take control of smart home functionality, for instance, or can be the target of botnets, AI powered malware and crypto hijacking.

But why do you need one? Chances are, your home as more smart devices, and by that we mean connected devices, than you probably noticed. A smart TV, media players connected to the TV, smart lights, smart appliances, smart speakers such as Amazon Echo and Google Home, smart displays such as Amazon Echo Show and Google Nest Hub, smart cameras, a water purifier or air purifier that connects with the internet and so on. The thing is, none of these smart devices have any security built in. That is where Akita steps in and adds a layer that analyses the data packets being to and from these smart devices on your networkand immediately raises an alarm if something is amiss. It is priced at Rs 9,000 and one Akita is what you need for an entire home Wi-Fi network.

It looks very complicated. Is it?

It doesnt take long to set up if things go well, but you need to be careful to be doing things right during this process. You need to keep some basics in mind when you do set up Akita. The hexagonal design does come across as rather attractive and cool. First, it needs to be connected directly to the modem that is hooked up to the internet line coming into your home. Use one of the LAN ports on the router (depending on your router, there will be between one to four ports) to connect to the Akitaand plug the ethernet cable into the yellow LAN port on the Akita. This is when you power on the Akita and wait for up to 10 minutes for the server connection to be established with the device. You can, in the meantime, download the Akita app on your iPhone or Android phone (free downloads on the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store) and begin the processing of connecting this with your Wi-Fi network.

You have to scan the QR code on the bottom of your Akita device to set it up. The app will guide you through the process. The one limitation with Akita is that is it only connects with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi networks. That should not be a problem with most recent Wi-Fi routers that allow you to set up an SSID (basically your network name) and it has both 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands enabled. If your router is slightly older or one of the more affordable onesthere should be the option to enable 2.4GHz band. The app will tell you what all networks you can connect to.

Once everything is set up and the server connection is establishedyoull get the blue light on the notification LED on the Akitathe app will list out all the smart devices on your network. Mind you, while Akita itself connects to a 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network, it can and will detect smart devices connected on 5GHz networks as well, as long as the network name or the SSID is the same. Be it Amazon Echo speakers, smart TVs, smart lights, the lot. It is not a very well designed or slick app, but you find your way around soon enough. However, leave the Akita hard-wired to your router anyway for the server connection to remain established and stable.

What does it do?

Akita monitors traffic on each of these devices. If it notices something that is out of the ordinary, which is usually when someone is attempting to do mischief with your smart devices such as smart cameras or smart thermostat, Akita will detect the incoming packets of traffic on the network for intrusion attempts and block access before notifying you. During this time Akita also sends the info from these packets back to its server for analyzing, to verify if its a genuine threat or not.

But I have a Mesh router? Will it work?

Yes, Akita works with traditional single unit routers as well as the newer mesh Wi-Fi systems for larger homes. It worked very well for me with the single unit router, the trusty old Netgear Nighthawk X6 and also the uber-cool Ubiquiti AmpliFi HD mesh system. Both these routers have different styles of controls for enabling and disabling 2.4GHz and 5GHz networks, and it worked seamlessly with both as long as the 2.4GHz network was available for it to scan and connect to.

So, is Akita a firewall?

Well, yes and no. It is a firewall in the sense that it will detect if something is amiss with your IoT gadgets. But that is where it does moreit proactively takes action to analyze and respond to threats. It is also not a firewall in the sense that it isnt a piece of software or an app that you can manually control or install someplace.

Will this change the way I connect to the internet?

Akita runs a Qualcomm QCA9531 processor clocking at 650MHz, with 64MB RAM and a bunch of security software that runs on the device and from the cloudAkita network scanner and monitor, Akita cloud system and more. At no point does Akita have any bearing or impact on your internet speed, or the connectivity of your laptop, PC, phones etc. to your home Wi-Fi network.

Is the protection free forever?

Yes. You have the option to sign up for one of the premium subscription options, but even if you dont, the Akita service and the basic security prowess is available to you. The free plan will give you complete monitoring of all malware, botnets, crypto hijacking and hacking attempts.

There is the Advanced Protection Plan for $3.99 per month that enables access to human assistance in case you need to fix something in your IoT home that has been targeted. And then there is the one-time service that costs $24.95 as a one-time subscription fee that will give you the option of letting the Akita experts fix anything that is flagged or broken in your smart home security protocols.

The Last Word: Your smart home definitely needs this

It was incredible to note that after setting up the Akita for the review process and testing it thoroughly, I had powered it down because not many smart devices were active at the time. The Akita support team sent me multiple emails to remind me that my Akita seems to be offline and in case Im not able to fix it, I should connect with them for help. That is the level of attention to detail which simply adds to the trust factor about a security device designed to keep your smart gadgets safe from those with malicious intent. As a device and as a concept, Akita is quite interesting. It may sound like a complex addition to your smart home ecosystem, but it isnt. in fact, once this is up and running, it needs absolutely no attentiontill it may notify you about something. It is the sort of insurance that I would recommend you get for your smart gadgets. The peace of mind knowing someone is monitoring your smart cameras, smart lights and smart speakers, is priceless.
The advance opens a path toward a new generation of logic and memory devices based on orbitronics that could be 10,000 times faster than today's

In designing electronic devices, scientists look for ways to manipulate and control three basic properties of electrons: their charge; their spin states, which give rise to magnetism; and the shapes of the fuzzy clouds they form around the nuclei of atoms, which are known as orbitals.

Until now, electron spins and orbitals were thought to go hand in hand in a class of materials that's the cornerstone of modern information technology; you couldn't quickly change one without changing the other. But a study at the Department of Energy's SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory shows that a pulse of laser light can dramatically change the spin state of one important class of materials while leaving its orbital state intact.

The results suggest a new path for making a future generation of logic and memory devices based on "orbitronics," said Lingjia Shen, a SLAC research associate and one of the lead researchers for the study.

"What we're seeing in this system is the complete opposite of what people have seen in the past," Shen said. "It raises the possibility that we could control a material's spin and orbital states separately, and use variations in the shapes of orbitals as the 0s and 1s needed to make computations and store information in computer memories."

The international research team, led by Joshua Turner, a SLAC staff scientist and investigator with the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Science (SIMES), reported their results this week in Physical Review B Rapid Communications.

An intriguing, complex material

The material the team studied was a manganese oxide-based quantum material known as NSMO, which comes in extremely thin crystalline layers. It's been around for three decades and is used in devices where information is stored by using a magnetic field to switch from one electron spin state to another, a method known as spintronics. NSMO is also considered a promising candidate for making future computers and memory storage devices based on skyrmions, tiny particle-like vortexes created by the magnetic fields of spinning electrons.

But this material is also very complex, said Yoshinori Tokura, director of the RIKEN Center for Emergent Matter Science in Japan, who was also involved in the study.

"Unlike semiconductors and other familiar materials, NSMO is a quantum material whose electrons behave in a cooperative, or correlated, manner, rather than independently as they usually do," he said. "This makes it hard to control one aspect of the electrons' behavior without affecting all the others."

One common way to investigate this type of material is to hit it with laser light to see how its electronic states respond to an injection of energy. That's what the research team did here. They observed the material's response with X-ray laser pulses from SLAC's Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS).

One melts, the other doesn't

What they expected to see was that orderly patterns of electron spins and orbitals in the material would be thrown into total disarray, or "melted," as they absorbed pulses of near-infrared laser light.

But to their surprise, only the spin patterns melted, while the orbital patterns stayed intact, Turner said. The normal coupling between the spin and orbital states had been completely broken, he said, which is a challenging thing to do in this type of correlated material and had not been observed before.

Tokura said, "Usually only a tiny application of photoexcitation destroys everything. Here, they were able to keep the electron state that is most important for future devices - the orbital state - undamaged. This is a nice new addition to the science of orbitronics and correlated electrons."

Much as electron spin states are switched in spintronics, electron orbital states could be switched to provide a similar function. These orbitronic devices could, in theory, operate 10,000 faster than spintronic devices, Shen said.

Switching between two orbital states could be made possible by using short bursts of terahertz radiation, rather than the magnetic fields used today, he said: "Combining the two could achieve much better device performance for future applications." The team is working on ways to do that.

###

Shen is now a postdoctoral researcher at Lund University in Sweden with a joint position with SIMES at SLAC. Scientists from the Advanced Light Source at DOE's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; the Swiss Light Source at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Sweden; the University of Tokyo and University of Tsukuba in Japan; and the University of Chicago also contributed to this research. Both LCLS and the Advanced Light Source are DOE Office of Science user facilities, and major support for the study came from the DOE Office of Science. Turner's research was supported through the DOE Office of Science Early Career Research Program.

Citation: Lingjia Shen et al., Physical Review B Rapid Communications 101, 201103(R), 12 May 2020
As life returns to a new normal throughout much of the world, health care workers in Yemen fear their war with the novel coronavirus has only just begun.

The introduction of this virus in the current situation will be catastrophic, Dr. Ilan Abdul Haq, a health official in the Taiz governorate, told Al-Monitor. The health system has totally collapsed.

For more than half a decade, Yemen has been embroiled in a conflict pitting the Iran-aligned Houthi rebels against a Saudi Arabia-led military coalition fighting to restore Yemens internationally recognized government. The bitter civil war has left Yemens health care system dangerously overstretched and 80% of the population reliant on some form of humanitarian assistance.

As if the situation werent dire enough, the United Nations is now warning dozens of its major aid programs throughout the country will begin closing down unless urgent funding needs are met. At least $2 billion is required to sustain essential programming through December, the UN said.

Some 80% of services provided by the World Health Organization are on the chopping block. Should the global health agency decrease its services, patients could be forced to travel hundreds of miles for treatment where it remains available.

In a move that could trigger a domino effect, the WHO has started slashing incentive payments for more than 10,000 health care workers across Yemen who would not otherwise earn a living wage.

Some doctors in Hodeidah havent been paid in months, said Dr. Ali Abdullah Al-Ahdal, who runs the health department in the western province. Many have left in search of work elsewhere and hes been forced to hire unqualified staff in their place.

"I see how impatient and angry the employees are, Al-Ahdal told Al-Monitor. We are trying to calm them down.

The COVID-19 crisis is also deepening existing cash concerns at the UNs Population Fund (UNFPA), which helps pregnant women and victims of domestic violence. Faced with a $59 million funding shortage, the UNFPA pulled its services from 140 health facilities on Friday, cutting off 320,000 pregnant women from specialized care.

Nestor Owomuhangi, UNFPA's acting representative to Yemen, said international donors need to chip in. Otherwise, women and girls will die.

The health care situation in Yemen was grim well before the current funding crisis. More than half of all hospitals have been damaged or destroyed during the war. Those that remain functional face severe shortages of critical medicines and personal protective equipment following years of bombing and a Saudi-imposed blockade.

The health system is already on its knees, said Sultana Begum, advocacy manager for Yemen at the Norwegian Refugee Council.

COVID-19 is a double disaster on top of a very difficult humanitarian situation, she told Al-Monitor. What we really need to be doing in a time like this is scaling up aid, rather than scaling back.

The Donald Trump administration, which recently announced a freeze on US funding to the WHO, pledged $500,000 in COVID-19 assistance to Yemen earlier this month. Critics say its far short of whats needed given the current state of health care and the potential for a wider outbreak.

Yemen has so far reported 106 infections and 15 deaths, although the true number is undoubtedly higher. Only four labs across the entire country are capable of testing for the virus.

In Aden, at least 385 people experiencing coronavirus-like symptoms have died in the past week, Save the Children said Thursday, citing local figures. The southern port city, which local officials have declared infested with the virus, is already struggling to treat diseases like diphtheria and measles.

Of particular concern is the mosquito-borne dengue, the flu-like symptoms of which are difficult to differentiate from the coronavirus. The start of the rainy system in April has also worsened Yemens cholera epidemic, already the worlds worst.

Having relied on food aid for years, a large portion of Yemens population is immunocompromised. An estimated 17 million people  more than half of Yemens population  are experiencing crisis levels of acute food security. Around 2 million children under five years old are suffering from malnutrition so severe they require treatment.

The United States and other donors accuse the Houthi rebels of interfering with food distribution and diverting supplies away from those who need it. After slashing $73 million in assistance for that reason in March, the Trump administration announced earlier this month it would provide $225 million in emergency aid for Yemen.

The aid package, officials said, would assist the World Food Program (WFP) with operations in southern Yemen and support critical life-saving NGO activity in the Houthi-held north.

This is what politicization of aid looks like, said Aisha Jumaan, president of the Yemen Relief and Reconstruction Foundation. I want them to define what critical services are. If food to help people who are experiencing famine is not critical, what is critical?

In a letter this week, a group of US senators led by Ben Cardin (D-Md.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.) called on US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Acting USAID Administrator John Basra to clarify whether the United States would be providing any food security to northern Yemen.

Faced with dwindling food stocks, the WFP has scaled back the frequency of deliveries in northern Yemen. Families accustomed to receiving aid monthly now receive food assistance every other month.

The agency, which aims to feed around 12 million people across Yemen, hopes to scale up operations following a virtual donor conference hosted by the United Nations and Saudi Arabia on June 2.

But even if funding requests are met, the new pledges wont mean an immediate restoration in aid, a WFP official told Al-Monitor. Theres a four-month lag time to source and transport food to Yemen.

Yemenis scraping by on meager wages are also having to contend with rising food costs. As worrisome as contracting the coronavirus is, the more pressing concern for many is where their next meal will come from.

Ive heard people say, I rather die of COVID than die of hunger because its going to be a faster death, said Jumaan.
By Rebecca Bird

FLIGHTS into the Turks and Caicos Islands are already available to buy online  despite no official confirmation of when international travel will be resumed.





Passengers from New York, Miami and Fort Lauderdale - which boast some of the highest Covid-19 infection rates in the US  are being sold flights to enter the territory this June.





Lavern Skippings Reynolds of the TCI Airports Authority confirmed they were up for sale, saying it is "a standard for aviation to plan for flights.





This is because they have been "advised by the Government that the lockdown would come to a close as they have indicated, she told the Weekly News on Wednesday (May 13).





"This was done with the initial reopening date then changed accordingly. Should the Government extend the closure, they would have to follow suit accordingly.





On announcing the easing of lockdown restrictions on April 30, Premier Sharlene Cartwright Robinson said international travel would remain closed until at least June 1.





Appearing on a Caribbean broadcast The Week That Was on YouTube on Monday (May 11), Cartwright Robinson explained that the June 1 date is still under review.





"The economy will not come first, health will come first, she stressed in her interview on the CaribUpdateChannel.





"Were a very small country - even first world countries are challenged in their health capacity and being able to deliver all they need - so we are not going to take unnecessary chances without mitigating the risk.





She explained that the date given for the opening of the territorys boarders is tied to the emergency powers which have been extended to that day.





"The opening of the boarders requires quite a bit of work. Not just Government through the preparation of the airport, its also the airlines, its also the hotels and villa sector, and of course transportation is key, all of the cleaning services, all of those things are key.





"Its a whole lot of work so that date remains under review  and we continue to say that to airlines that that date remains under review.





She said that first the Government is looking at the TCIs airports and how they can receive guests.





"We are victims of a really good tourism industry, and achieving social distance even in our airports is going to be a task.





"So were stepping up our screening protocols there at the airport to make sure that that is not a breeding ground for persons arriving or working there.





The Government is fully guided by the Ministry of Health in terms of cleaning of the airport to sanitisation of vehicles, occupancy numbers at hotels, the premier added.





Skippings from the Airports Authority said: "Our team is on hand to work along with them and institute their recommended standards like social distancing signage etc.





The airlines have been given the opportunity to apply for passenger departure flights which JetBlue is taking on currently, she added.




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Market Research Future published a research report on Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment Market Research Report - Global Forecast To 2023. Report gives a clear picture of current market scenario which includes past and estimated future market size. The report provides detail information and strategies of top key players in the industry. The report also gives a broad study about different markets segments and regions.





Market Research Futures (MRFR) report on the global Acute Myeloid Leukemia (AML) Therapeutics Market is expected to grow at a moderate CAGR of 5.3% over the forecast period of 2017 to 2023 and culminate in a value above USD 1 Bn by the end of the assessment period. This type of cancer is comparatively rare and progresses at a rapid pace thus creating significant demand for effective treatment and diagnostic options.





Market Segmentation

The global acute myeloid leukemia treatment market is segmented on the basis of disease type, treatment, and region. By disease type, the market is segmented into promyelocytic, myeloblastic, myelomonocytic, monocytic, megakaryocytic and erythroleukemia.

By treatment, the market is segmented into chemotherapy and hematopoietic stem cell transplantation. The chemotherapy segment is further segmented into post remission and induction.





The regional segmentation of the AML treatment market divides the globe into North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and the Middle East and Africa.





Regional Analysis





Led by the US, North America accounts for the largest share of the global market. The presence of various market-leading players and increasing investments in R&D for drug development drives the market. The region has favorable reimbursement policies and high healthcare expenditure which bring it to the forefront of the global acute myeloid leukemia treatment market. Europe follows the North American market due to a large number of hospitals present in the region combined with high disposable incomes. North America and Europe follow similar growth patterns.





The Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR during the review period due to large unmet potential present in the region. Countries such as India and China are anticipated to drive demand for AML treatment. The rapid growth in the region's economy combined with a growing demand for advanced healthcare is expected to encourage considerable growth for the APAC.





Global Acute Myeloid Leukemia Treatment Market Information; by Disease Type (Myeloblastic, Promyeloctic, Myelomonocytic, Monocytic, Erythroleukemia, Megakaryocytic); by Treatment (Chemotherapy (Induction, Post Remission), Hematopoietic Stem Cell Transplantation) - Forecast to 2023 @ https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/acute-myeloid-leukemia-treatment-market-3223





Key Players

The competitive analysis of the global AML market reveals key strategies used by various leading market players. Prominent players included in the report are Ambit Biosciences Corporation, Novartis AG, Sanofi, Cyclacel Pharmaceuticals Inc., Bristol Myers Squibb, Celgene Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, and Pfizer Inc.





Related Trending Reports

Global Perfusion Imaging Market Research Report Forecast To 2023

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About Market Research Future

At Market Research Future (MRFR), we enable our customers to unravel the complexity of various industries through our Cooked Research Report (CRR), Half-Cooked Research Reports (HCRR), Raw Research Reports (3R), Continuous-Feed Research (CFR), and Market Research & Consulting Services

Contact:

https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/
New Delhi, May 15 : The Delhi government on Friday launched a website, to be functional from Saturday, for registration of construction workers in the city and subsequent and renewals.

The website will help the construction workers who are either not registered with the government or are yet to renew their annual resigrations, Labour Minister Gopal Rai told the media.

The Delhi government on Monday had also decided to provide financial assistance of Rs 5,000 again to the construction workers in the wake of the extended coronavirus lockdown.

There are about 40,000 construction workers registered with the government at present.

"There are many unregistered construction labourers in Delhi along with those whose renewal of registrations is pending. In a bid to resolve this issue, we have launched website 'http://www.edistrict.delhigovt.nic.in/'. From Saturday, the construction labourers can register themselves or apply for renewals," said Rai.

"The website will have several options but for the new registration or renewal, the person will need to select either option no 62 (renewal) or option no 63 (for new registration). In this process the following information will be required: Name, address, contact details, date of birth, self-declaration, address proof, bank account proof, proof of birth and certificate of 90 days of work from an employer or union. Following the submission of these details, an OTP will be sent to the person's mobile number." Rai added that the construction workers will then get a date on which he or she will be needed to physically visit a designated centre to submit original documents.

"Thereafter, the person will get the labour card and can avail of all the facilities." He said there were some doubts regarding who all can register themselves as construction workers.

"According to laws, carpenters, worker grinders, construction site guards, people who work in concrete mixers, crane operators, electricians, comp operators, masons, tiles fitters, welders, coolies and others can apply," said Rai.

Extending assistance to about 40,000 workers in March-April, the Delhi government spent around Rs 20 crore.

"A lot of construction workers are in the city and due to the lockdown, they were not able to find work. So, they were finding it difficult to run their houses. To help them, the government gave Rs 5,000 each to the registered workers. However, now the lockdown has been extended. From Tuesday, the second installation of Rs 5,000 each was credited to their bank account," sRai said.

The Cabinet Minister also said there are a number of workers who want to get registered and the website will help them.
A financial support guideline for the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area has been issued, the central bank said Thursday.



The guideline was jointly issued by the People's Bank of China, the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, the China Securities Regulatory Commission and the State Administration of Foreign Exchange.

Promoting the development of the Greater Bay Area is a major strategic decision made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council, and it is expected to have a significant and far-reaching impact on China's reform and opening-up, the central bank said in a statement.

The guideline put forward 26 specific measures for these five areas: promoting the Greater Bay Area's cross-border trade and facilitating investment and financing, expanding the opening-up of the financial sector, promoting the connectivity of financial markets and financial infrastructure, boosting innovation of the Greater Bay Area's financial services, and preventing cross-border financial risks.

The guideline is expected to help further promote financial opening-up and innovation, deepen the mainland's financial cooperation with Hong Kong and Macao, enhance the role of the Greater Bay Area in supporting and leading the country's economic development and opening-up, and provide strong financial support for building a dynamic and internationally competitive first-class bay area and a world-class city cluster, the central bank said.

Chinese authorities in February 2019 unveiled the outline development plan for the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, aiming to develop the region into a role model of high-quality development.

The Greater Bay Area consists of Hong Kong, Macao and nine cities in Guangdong -- Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the economy hard and the number of Australians furloughed or laid-off from their jobs has reached the hundreds of thousands. Fortunately, tenants concerned about meeting their housing expenses during these tough times have several options.

Workers across Australia have taken the brunt of the economic impact from the COVID-19 pandemic. As social distancing measures were imposed, many workers were pushed out of jobs or had their hours reduced, significantly cutting their incomes. Without a stable source of livelihood, paying for daily expenses  including rent  has become a struggle for many Australians.

Prime Minister Scott Morrisons announcement of a six-month moratorium on evictions last March was welcome news to tenants experiencing financial hardships. But without consistent national guidelines on how this will be implemented, states and territories bore the responsibility of setting the details.

This has resulted in confusion among both residential tenants and their landlords as they are now dealing with different sets of legislation and financial support depending on where they reside.

Recently, Your Investment Property listed the various relief packages states and territories have enacted in support of residential landlords. Heres how different jurisdictions are providing support for tenants.

New South Wales

Half of NSWs $440m relief package has been allocated to residential tenants and landlords. The package aims to keep tenants in their residences over the next six months.

In mid-April, the government has also imposed a 60-day moratorium on new applications for forced evictions due to rental arrears if a person in the house has suffered financial hardship due to the outbreak, meaning there was a reduction of 25% or more in household income.

Legislation for a six-month restriction on evictions followed shortly, with the state government insisting that landlords begin negotiations with tenants who are struggling to make rental payments.

Dispute resolution may also be provided by NSW Fair Trading. Unpaid rent accrues as arrears during the six-month period, but tenants will not be blacklisted.

Queensland

Queensland has implemented a six-month moratorium on evictions due to rent arrears caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Landlords are also prohibited from evicting a tenant if his or her lease expires during the crisis.

The state government will also give one-off payments of up to four weeks rent, maximum of $2,000, for renters who do not have access or ineligible to other financial assistance schemes. Assistance will also be provided for tenants with $10,000 or less in savings.

Victoria

Evictions and rent increases on residential tenancies have been banned in Victoria for six months.

The state government has also released an $80m assistance fund dedicated solely to tenants in hardship. Renters can apply for grants up to $2,000, provided they have gone through mediation or registered their revised agreement with their landlords, and have less than $5,000 in savings. However, tenants are still required to pay at least 30% of their income in rent.

Western Australia

After introducing legislation for a six-month moratorium on evictions and freeze on rent increases, the WA government released a $30m relief package to support tenants during the crisis.

The residential relief grants, which are equivalent to four weeks rent up to a maximum of $2,000, will be paid directly to the landlords. The amount will be provided in addition to rental reductions negotiated between tenants and landlords.

To be eligible, tenants should have lost their job, applied to Centrelink for income support, have less than $10,000 in savings and are paying at least 25% of their income in rent.

South Australia

South Australia has legislated a six-month moratorium on eviction for non-payment of rent due to financial hardship and a ban rent increases. In addition, tenants cannot be blacklisted because of circumstances caused by the pandemic.

The government also has released a $50m tax relief package for residential and commercial landlords, modelled on similar packages in NSW and Victoria.

Under the emergency scheme, landlords will be offered a 25% reduction on their 2019-20 land tax liability on affected properties but would be required to pass on the full benefit of the tax relief to their tenants impacted by COVID-19 restrictions.

Tasmania

Tenants who lost their jobs because of the COVID-19 pandemic cannot be evicted for non-payment of rent until 30 June. The state government will review this measure after 90 days and may decide on an extension.

Australian Capital Territory

The ACT government has enacted a six-month moratorium on evictions and rental increases, and prevention of blacklisting of residential tenants unable to pay rent due to the crisis.

Renters and property owners are encouraged to reach an agreement to delay rental payments if a tenant is not earning income. Any outstanding rent during the moratorium period will be considered tenants debt to their landlords but should be free of interest.

Northern Territory

The NT government has opted against a moratorium on evictions, and instead implemented an extension on negotiating and notice periods between tenants and landlords.

Under the measure, tenants having difficulty paying their rent are given an up to 60-day extension from the current 14-day period to negotiate terms with their landlords. Once the extension ends and the landlord and tenant fail to reach an agreement, a notice period of up to 60 days raised from current 14 days may be imposed by the landlord.
1 million FRANKD tests available from late June

GeneMe, a leading biotech company based in Gdansk, Poland has developed "FRANKD a fast, scalable and reliable mouth swab test for COVID-19 that is completed on-premises in on average 13-25 minutes with no laboratory involvement. The GeneMe FRANKD test has been independently validated with 100% Sensitivity and 100% Specificity by Gdansk University of Technology.

FRANKD requires less time to produce a result than the gold-standard RT-PCR (Reverse Transcriptase Polymerase Chain Reaction) reference test recommended by the World Health Organization. With consent, results are automatically issued on to each individual's secure, free Yoti digital ID app. The test will cost businesses in the region of 10, making it cost-effective to perform mass daily testing and point-of-entry testing at care homes, airports, offices and many other locations.

Dawid Nidzworski Founder and CEO of GeneMe and developer of FRANKD said:

"We are extremely pleased with the quality of the FRANKD test and the contribution it will make towards the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and its damaging effects on public health and society

FRANKD is currently in talks with governments and businesses across Europe to roll out millions of tests over the coming months, enabling key industries to test hundreds of thousands of employees daily, to help understand the spread of the virus and to monitor the infection R factor more accurately.

The test uses a patented enzyme rather than the currently scarce reagents used in RT-PCR tests to rapidly produce a definitive and reliable result. FRANKD is therefore scalable with 5m monthly tests expected from August. Use of a portable machine analyser to amplify the virus within the sample ensures high test accuracy. During June and July, FRANKD tests will be processed using hundreds of existing analyser machines, able to handle 90 tests every 30 minutes, but GeneMe expects affordable bespoke machines to be available from August.

What differentiates FRANKD from other viral testing solutions is that it is suitable for mass testing; 90 people can be tested at a time, every 30 minutes with one device, massively reducing the cost of testing. Testing on-premises by trained staff removes delays and the challenge of getting test samples to lab technicians to process. Independent validation of the FRANKD test is underway and European CE regulatory certification is expected by early June.

Testing care workers daily could dramatically reduce the spread of infection within the care home sector and beyond. Testing passengers prior to passing through airport security could also prevent disease spread during passenger air travel, reducing the need for mass quarantine. Testing all hotel guests and employees daily could allow hotels to reopen at significantly lower risk. A specific web application from Yoti will ensure all 90 tests within a batch are uniquely assigned to the correct owner before entering the analyser machine.

Individuals use the secure, free Yoti digital ID app to link themselves to their test and, with consent, the digital test result is automatically added into the tested person's Yoti. Organisations including the NHS already securely issue digital ID cards using the Yoti app credential management platform. Individuals can present or share their tamperproof, verified details with other parties in seconds including their test result whether in person or online, with a tap of a button or scan of a QR code.

Anti-fraud measures are built into Yoti's reusable digital ID, critically offering much higher trust than is possible with traditional paper and plastic-based identity documents or paper health certificates. Audit receipts are issued securely to both the individual and the recipient individual or organisation when results are shared remotely. The Yoti app is currently available in English, with French, Spanish, Polish and German to be released shortly, followed by further languages.

Kasjan Szemiako CTO of GeneMe and developer of FRANKD said:

"We chose Yoti because of its security, user interface and reputation. We will share the results of the test directly with Yoti to ensure data privacy and enable user control

Robin Tombs Yoti Co-Founder and CEO said:

"We're delighted FRANKD has chosen Yoti to enable individuals to manage their COVID-19 test results securely on their phone. Getting the world of business and sport back up and running safely during this coronavirus pandemic is so important. Get FRANKD with Yoti."

===ENDS===

About FRANKD

Contact colin@nexd.partners or visit www.geneme.eu

GeneMe develops, registers and produces diagnostic kits for the detection of SARS-CoV-2 and over 240 other pathogens. All kits are based on direct virus RNA detection in a sample.

GeneMe uses a special patented enzyme for virus detection.

Test results were validated by the Gdansk University of Technology.

Test Sensitivity results show that the average detection time for a sample containing 1 million viral copies was 12 minutes 45 seconds, and for 10 viral copies was 23 minutes 25 seconds. A German study has reported that an COVID-19 infected individual has an average of 670,000 viral copies per swab during the first 5 days of their illness. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/medrxiv/early/2020/03/08/2020.03.05.20030502.full.pdf

The GeneMe FRANKD test requires less time to produce a result than the gold-standard RT-PCR reference test recommended by the World Health Organization.

Test Specificity results show that no false positives were obtained when testing against 4 other coronaviruses.

FRANKD stands for Fast, Reliable, Accurate, No laboratory and available in a Kit form to be used on-premises Daily.

Dawid Nidzworski one of the Co-founder's of GeneMe is also the creator of the Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine (IBMM).

The Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Medicine (IBMM) is an independent, elite, biomedical research institution. The thematic scope of IBMM activities includes, among others, biotechnology, medicine, diagnostics, molecular biology and material engineering.

More on www.ibmm.pl

About Yoti

Contact Covid19@yoti.com or visit www.yoti.com.

Yoti is a digital ID and credential management platform that allows organisations to verify identities and trusted credentials online and in person. Yoti's products span identity verification, age assurance, document e-signing, access management and biometric authentication.

Yoti is certified to ISO/IEC 27001:2013 for ID Verification Services. Yoti is ISAE 3000 (SOC 2), Type 2 certified for its technical and organisational security processes and is a Secured by Design (Official Police Security Initiative) member company.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005230/en/

Contacts:

FRANKD press

Colin Brown

colin@nexd.partners



Yoti press

Mark Hindle

mark.hindle@yoti.com
BRUSSELS/FRANKFURT/PARIS (dpa-AFX) - U.K. stocks rallied on Friday, with miners and energy companies leading the surge, after China's factory output rose for the first time this year in April, suggesting that the world's second-largest economy is slowly emerging from its coronavirus lockdown. The benchmark FTSE 100 climbed 84 points, or 1.47 percent, to 5,826 after losing 2.8 percent the previous day. Miners Anglo American, Antofagasta and Glencore soared 4-6 percent, while oil & gas company BP Plc rose 1.3 percent and Royal Dutch Shell advanced 2.6 percent. Petrofac, a provider of oilfield services, dropped 1.6 percent after saying it expects the Covid-19 pandemic to result in delays in construction activity and tenders until 2021. Telecoms group BT Group surged 7.3 percent on reports that it was in talks to sell a multi-billion-pound stake in its infrastructure arm Openreach. Bookmaker William Hill jumped 8.3 percent. The company said covenants on a revolving credit facility have been waived for 2020 and reset for 2021. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
Feinstein Denies Involvement in Husbands Cancer Therapy Stock Sales

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a senior Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, has turned over documents to the FBI about her husbands stock sales that she says will show she had no input in his transactions, a spokesman said on Thursday.

Senator Feinstein was asked some basic questions by law enforcement about her husbands stock transactions, as I think all offices in the initial story were, a spokesman for Feinstein said in a statement to media outlets on Thursday.

She was happy to voluntarily answer those questions to set the record straight and provided additional documents to show she had no involvement in her husbands transaction. There have been no follow up actions on this issue.

While the spokesman did not specify the law enforcement agency that contacted Feinstein, The New York Times first reported that the FBI had questioned the senator over the matter.

Feinstein had said in a statement in March: Under Senate rules I report my husbands financial transactions. I have no input into his decisions. My husband in January and February sold shares of a cancer therapy company. This company is unrelated to any work on the coronavirus and the sale was unrelated to the situation.

Feinsteins husband, Richard Blum, is an investment banker who was reported to have sold between $500,001 to $1 million in stock from the California biotech company, Allogene Therapeutics, that develops cancer treatments in January, ahead of the market crash triggered by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, a novel coronavirus that emerged from Wuhan, China.

The sale was reported by Feinstein in her routine Senate financial disclosure forms. Feinsteins office did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) speaks to members of the press at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, on May 7, 2020. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)

The Epoch Times previously reported that stocks held by at least five senate lawmakers were sold in January and February after they receiving sensitive closed-door updates from intelligence officials on the then-emerging threat from the CCP virus, which at that time, hadnt infected many people in the United States.

Feinstein was among them. Between $1.5 million and $6 million stocks with the Allogene Therapeutics cancer therapy company in her name were sold between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18, according to the disclosure forms.

In response to the media reports, Feinstein said that since assuming office, she has always held her assets in a blind trust over which she has no control.

The Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act prohibits lawmakers and their aides from using non-public information obtained through their official duties to make a private profit, including insider trading.

The latest statement from Feinsteins office comes a day after it was reported that Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman, Richard Burr (R-N.C.), will be stepping down as chairman as the FBI investigates his stock sales in the early stages of the CCP virus crisis.

The FBI hasnt responded to a request for comment.

Overall, Burr sold between $628,000 and $1.7 million of his stocks on Feb. 13. The senator denies any wrongdoing, saying that his investment decision were made based on publicly available information.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 20:18:46|Editor: huaxia

Video Player Close

-- South China's Guangdong Province has been endeavoring to ensure anyone who is required to take a test or wants one can get tested for COVID-19 while accelerating its production resumption.

-- By May 11, the economic powerhouse had completed nearly 5.54 million nucleic acid tests for people with high risks of infection and its daily capacity of nucleic acid tests had reached 230,000.

by Xinhua writers Xiao Sisi, Li Laifang and Hong Yihua

GUANGZHOU, May 15 (Xinhua) -- South China's Guangdong Province had carried out 10.41 million nucleic acid tests as of Monday, covering 6.64 million people as the populous province has been on full alert against COVID-19.

The economic powerhouse has been endeavoring to ensure anyone who is required to take a test or wants one can get tested for COVID-19, amid efforts of work and production resumption.

A staff member looks at the label on a sample at a lab in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Feb. 1, 2020. (Xinhua)



LARGE-SCALE TESTING

Every day, there are ambulances and logistics vehicles with samples for COVID-19 tests rushing to Guangzhou KingMed Diagnostics Group Co., Ltd., a leader of the independent clinical lab industry in China. The company undertakes screening tests assigned by hospitals and the government.

"Since Jan. 24, the lab at our Guangzhou headquarters has continuously conducted nucleic acid tests for over 100 days," said Cheng Yating, assistant president of KingMed and general manager of its lab management center. The group's Guangzhou lab had completed tests of more than 2 million samples by Tuesday, with a daily peak of 96,000.

As China's COVID-19 response has entered the phase of regular epidemic prevention and control after winning a decisive outcome in fighting the epidemic, the country is still taking strict measures to prevent a rebound of the coronavirus.

On April 22, a meeting of the leading group of China's COVID-19 epidemic response urged efforts to enhance the testing capability and carry out large-scale nucleic acid and antibody tests, to contribute to implementing targeted prevention and control, protecting people's health, ensuring the reasonable flow of people and comprehensively resuming work and production.

Nucleic acid testing is the prime standard to confirm COVID-19 infections, and the early diagnosis of confirmed and asymptomatic cases is conducive to blocking the spread of the virus, said an official with the Guangdong headquarters for COVID-19 prevention and control.

Staff members do nucleic acid tests at a lab in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Feb. 13, 2020. (Xinhua)

By March, 99.2 percent of major enterprises in Guangdong had resumed operations. In April, the overall economic operations in Guangdong had reached the level of the same period last year, according to the taxation authority.

"For people who come from abroad or return to work, Guangdong has carried out mass screening via nucleic acid tests for key groups. We have done it at an early date and effectively, which plays a key role in epidemic prevention and control," said Wu Jie, with the Guangdong Provincial Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

ENHANCING TESTING CAPABILITY

By the end of Thursday, Guangdong had reported a total of 1,395 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases and 194 imported cases, with two patients still in the hospital.

To meet the needs of testing, the number of approved nucleic acid testing institutions -- hospitals, disease control, and prevention centers, and private companies -- has risen from 135 in the early phase to 251 in Guangdong. The province's daily capacity of nucleic acid tests has reached 230,000.

A staff member puts samples into a centrifuge at a lab in Guangzhou, south China's Guangdong Province, Feb. 13, 2020. (Xinhua)

Guangdong health authorities have also strengthened administration to ensure the quality of testing by third-party institutions and provided technical guidelines for them.

Businessman Ahamed Al-Yafie received nucleic acid testing near his neighborhood after returning to Guangzhou from his vacation in Malaysia three months ago.

"It is very impressive that COVID-19 has been put under control in China while the country has a population of 1.4 billion," said Al-Yafie.

Authorities in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei Province, said Thursday it will expand the scope of nucleic acid testing to strengthen the control of asymptomatic cases after it has already completed over 3 million nucleic acid tests. Enditem

Xu Hongyi, Hu Nayun, and Ma Xiaoran also contributed to the reporting. (Video reporters: Xiao Sisi, Hu Nayun, Xu Hongyi, Hong Zehua; Video editor: Zheng Xin)
Opalesque Industry Update - As economic prospects cloud and volatility returns to all asset classes, investors are looking for alternatives to traditional alternative investments. Meeting this need, the Aaro DLT Multifund launched on May 1, 2020. An industry first, this institutional quality fund of funds aims to capture the growing investment opportunities in DLT / Blockchain-related Technologies and Cryptoassets. The goal is to offer broad exposure to the long term growth of DLT and Cryptoassets, whilst protecting against the markets' short term volatility. This will be achieved by investing across a range of funds with different investment strategies; an approach that provides a strong source of diversification in these fast-moving markets. Aaro Capital's Chief Executive, Peter Habermacher, points out, "We invested our own money successfully in Crypto and also recognised the emerging opportunities associated with Blockchain-related technologies. Our experience showed that the best way to invest in these opportunities is through a professionally run fund of funds approach. None seemed available, so we built our own process based on industry best practise, with proprietary adaptations designed specifically for the DLT / Blockchain and Cryptoasset space." There are exciting opportunities in both areas: DLT / Blockchain: From Finance to Healthcare to Logistics, both incumbents and disruptors are investing heavily in many emerging applications. McKinsey has identified more than 80 powerful use cases across a dozen major industries. According to Gartner Research, the Blockchain industry will deliver more than $3 trillion in value by 2030. This is a powerful growth story and a great long term strategic opportunity. The Aaro DLT Multifund will exploit these exciting developments by using economic analysis to identify the industries and companies whose deployment of DLT / Blockchain will create real value. Aaro will identify the funds, often with a fundamental focus, that are best placed to capture the investment opportunities that will arise. "Investment into DLT / Blockchain technologies and applications is growing rapidly," says Johannes Gugl, one of Aaro Capital's Partners. "Financial institutions and corporations in many different industries, plus governments, are investing in this novel technology at an increasingly fast pace. In 2019, $13 billion was invested in Blockchain projects3 and this is just the beginning." Cryptoassets: There is great short term return potential, provided that the volatility and manager due diligence are approached properly. Cryptoassets are also largely uncorrelated with other asset classes, which makes them powerful as a tool for diversification. Fidelity found that half of institutional investors now view Cryptoassets as having a place in their portfolios. The market is evolving fast, with a growing number of institutional players, such as Brevan Howard and Renaissance Technologies entering the space. More than 500 funds are already active, with over 160 with AuM over $50m. The Aaro DLT Multifund aims to capture the opportunities through funds following investment strategies including fundamental long-short, market neutral, quantitative arbitrage and trend following strategies, each aiming to exploit short to medium term market inefficiencies, as well as the long term growth story. Aaro Capital's Chief Investment Officer, Ankush Jain observes, "This is a remarkable opportunity for investors to participate in this exciting growth story. This is still a young industry whose development is comparable to the early years of the Internet and there will be some big winners. Our aim is to identify and invest in these opportunities in a considered, prudent and risk-controlled manner." Aaro Capital's London-based team combines younger investors, such as CEO, Peter Habermacher and CIO, Ankush Jain with their direct experience of Crypto investments, with senior practitioners from the hedge fund industry such as Peter Rigg, former CEO of HSBC Alternative Investments. The firm also employs DLT / Blockchain experts as well as academic advisors from top UK universities. The Aaro DLT Multifund's approach is based on a unique process which was developed with a major institutional consultant. The process is based on well established methods, with customised adaptations for the analysis of DLT / Blockchain and Cryptoasset funds. Given the evolving nature of the industry and its structures, there is a notable emphasis on operational as well as investment due diligence.
Over the past few months, there have been more than 4.4 million globally confirmed cases of COVID-19 and more than 300,000 deaths connected to the disease caused by the novel coronavirus.

Yet, there are some  a small minority  who contest the fact that there is a deadly, infectious disease spreading around the planet or who object to global efforts to try to minimize the spread and the casualties.

Some have even taken to protesting against some of the lockdown measures.

Experts say there are several reasons that account for skepticism about the pandemic, including:

Mounting frustration as shutdowns continue;

A resistance to being told what to do;

Gaps in a skill psychologists call cognitive sophistication, which helps people discern what's true or false.

While some parallels can be drawn between doubts about the current pandemic and the questioning of anthropogenic climate change or the efficacy of vaccinations, one large difference is that the science around the pandemic is still emerging, said Timothy Caulfied, a Canada Research Chair in health and law policy at the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

"It is different in that here, we have science that is still in flux," he said. "You have public health agencies that are trying to do their best with science that is still emerging."

Mehrdad Nazarahari/CBC

And when officials offer differing advice, as happened when public health and government representatives initially said masks didn't need to be worn by the general public and then later suggested it might not hurt to don them in public, it could erode trust in government, Caulfield said.

Risa Horowitz, a visual and media artist and associate professor in visual arts at the University of Regina, said the mixed messages are coming from all sides, not just the government.

"I have been frustrated by the mixed messaging released by official channels about the use of masks by the general public during the pandemic," she said. "The messaging has shifted a lot since January and is still divergent across channels."

Story continues

WATCH | Some Americans are growing impatient amid economic shutdown:

'This is dizzying'

First, said Horowitz, the public was advised to keep N95 masks for front-line workers and only wear masks if they were ill or caring for someone who was sick.

Then the message shifted to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other public health agencies recommending cloth face coverings for everyone out in public.

Health Canada currently advises that homemade face coverings have not been proven to protect against the virus but can be an additional measure to prevent one's respiratory droplets from spreading to others.

The World Health Organization clarified last month that medical masks should be reserved for health-care workers.

CBC/Radio-Canada

"This is dizzying, and it leads not only to frustration but also to mistrust," said Horowitz. "If the experts we rely on to inform us are not straightforward about the advice offered and the reasons why, people like me end up feeling infantilized and skeptical about all advice given."

Adding to the frustration has been the devastating impact of the economic fallout from the shutdown of businesses and institutions. Canada lost close to two million jobs in April alone and its economy is predicted to shrink by 6.2 per cent this year.

Sorting fact from falsehoods

Caulfield, who studies misinformation and disinformation, said there is trust in science generally but that some people may be using the uncertainty in some aspects of the research to support their position as their frustration mounts with the coronavirus response.

But there's another reason why some people might believe unproven theories about the origins or spread of the virus or behave in ways that put them at risk, such as attending a protest at a time when health authorities are telling people not to congregate.

It relates to something psychologists call cognitive sophistication  or the ability to think rationally about an issue, says Gordon Pennycook, a psychologist and assistant professor at the University of Regina.

"It's not a basis of intelligence," Pennycook said of the term. "There are just some people who are just better at figuring out what's true or false."

Matthew Dae Smith /Lansing State Journal/The Associated Press

There are many factors that come into play when discussing cognitive sophistication: how receptive you are to information presented to you; whether or not you question your intuition; how well you understand probabilities; and how knowledgeable you are about some of the underlying scientific principles.

"You can think about it as having a kind of mental toolbox that can be used to help discern between what's true and false in the world," said Pennycook, who wrote a 2015 paper on the ability to detect falsehoods.

It's those tools that help make people distrustful of theories that seem to fly in the face of common sense or that have been debunked by scientists, such as the claim that putting pepper in soup or injecting disinfectant will stave off COVID-19.

Interpreting the numbers

Caulfield said one of the more challenging things in the fight against misinformation is "scienceploitation," where people peddling pseudoscience use real scientific terms that can lend more credibility to advice.

"It becomes very difficult for the public to tease out what's real and what's not real when you're talking about [things like] the microbiome, and you're talking about quantum physics."

Numeracy and how people process numbers, which is not always rationally, also factors into how facts about the pandemic are interpreted.

"We didn't evolve to immediately comprehend quantities," said Pennycook.

For example, in 2004, an earthquake and subsequent tsunami in Indonesia claimed more than 200,000 lives. It was covered worldwide and elicited heartfelt responses and assistance from governments and people around the globe.

The global death toll from the pandemic has surpassed 300,000 but may not hit a nerve in the same manner among those not directly impacted.

"If this was a natural disaster you would be completely distraught," Pennycook said.

Numbers also come into play in a different way, he said. For example, if there are predictions that millions of people are going to die from COVID-19 and instead it turns out to be hundreds of thousands, some people might reframe that to mean the virus is not as serious as we initially thought when in fact it still poses a significant risk.

Jacques Boissinot/The Canadian Press

The vocabulary of war

Something else to consider is the language used to describe either the virus itself  SARS-CoV2  or the pandemic.

"The metaphors that are being used are really violent, and they're very war-like, and they bring up the idea of threat and uncertainty," said Mehrgol Tiv, a PhD candidate in the department of psychology at McGill University in Montreal.

Terms such as "invisible enemy" or "war" against the virus can make people uneasy, said Tiv.

"It instills a feeling of doom and dread and uneasiness, and some sense of uncertainty as well," she said. "And from the psychological perspective, when people are in situations of uncertainty and fear, there are different things that are driving their behaviours and decision-making processes."

WATCH | Some Canadians hold rallies calling on the government to reopen the economy:
They could work on a Habitat for Humanity home. They could deliver meals one day a week to the seniors in the city. They could do some work with young people in the schools, Brown said. And what I like about a community service day once a week for groups like this, it keeps that group sensitive to the needs of the community, rather than every day, all day, every day, they come to work, thats all they do is enforcement.
The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping

By Samantha Harvey

Grove. 192 pp. $24

---

Insomnia is about chasing the impossible, about lying awake and trying not to focus on the only thing you can think about, occasionally drifting down the slope toward sleep and then - sensing this! - jolting awake once more. Like money, sleep functions on a delicate web of trust, and Samantha Harvey's often brilliant and sometimes frustrating new book anatomizes what happens when we stop believing.

Harvey is a British novelist who has published four novels to critical acclaim but muted sales, and was well on her way to the uncoveted status of writer's writer when in mid-2016, disaster struck. Moving to a new home on a noisy road, and with her equilibrium unbalanced by anger at the United Kingdom's vote to leave the European Union, she stopped sleeping.

"The Shapeless Unease" is subtitled "A Year of Not Sleeping," but this is doubly misleading: First, Harvey suffered for more than a year (it was still happening late in 2018, when she published an essay about it); and second, it wasn't quite not sleeping. Most nights Harvey did sleep, but fitfully, unsatisfactorily, which she deliciously details. The outline will be familiar to anyone who has ever struggled to get to sleep or to get back to sleep: the quantity-surveying (it's still only two o'clock; I can get four hours' sleep if I go now), the going-to-bed routine recommended by sleep experts that only serves to emphasize the problem.

Harvey conveys the hell of insomnia with the precision and passion of one who has come to know it too well. "There's terror when a basic animal need isn't met. At first you fear death, then a worse thing happens - you fear life. You no longer want your life, not on these terms." For her, the body's last job each night has become the thing she dreads all day, right from the moment she wakes up, or more often doesn't wake up. "I go up to bed at night, I get beaten up, I come downstairs in the morning."

The cause of Harvey's sleeplessness was plainly anxiety, an inability of the mind to sit still, initiated by Brexit and the upheaval of a new home but then efficiently self-sustaining. She discussed it with her doctor and therapist and reproduces extracts from these circular, combative conversations, where, if you look hard enough, there's black humor in a champion insomniac being told that it might help if she could learn to relax before bed.

When "The Shapeless Unease" remains focused on its subject, it engages and grips. Harvey complains about the futility of describing the feeling of insomnia, but she does as good a job as you would expect a gifted novelist to at relaying the brain fog, the mind turning in on itself. Her relationship with writing becomes ambiguous: On the one hand, it is impossible ("I sit there and start a sentence and have no idea what word will come next or how I'll find my way to the end of it" - wait, that's not normal?). On the other hand, "writing has saved my life," she writes. "I am sane when I write, my nerves settle."

This may explain why so much of the book contains writing that seems to be there purely for its own pleasure. Harvey fills pages with rants about British jingoism, presumably representative of the flailings of the nocturnal mind, but sounding like an op-ed columnist making bricks without straw. She includes a story she wrote during her period of insomnia, about a man who steals vast sums of money from ATMs, which takes up around one-sixth of the book but seems untethered to the subject.

And she includes numerous digressions of tangential relevance: Buddhism, William James on reason, the limitations of language used by the Amazonian Piraha people. There's no question that these are all beautifully done - particularly a half-page portrait of Harvey's deceased cousin - but the creaks are audible as she tries to link them back to her topic.

More frustrating still is when she gives us tantalizing glimpses of other material which surely must be relevant to the state of mind feeding her insomnia: her ambivalent relationship to being without children; her childhood with a semiliterate father ("first book he ever read was the first book [I] wrote"). And there is nothing on the science of insomnia, nor its cultural history. Harvey does gesture outward a few pages before the end, with discussion of Shakespeare's references to sleep. But, like finally falling into peaceable slumber at 6 a.m., it's just too late.

---

Self is a book critic. He lives in Northern Ireland.
On December 8, 2004 at a military base in Kuwait, then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld came under rhetorical fire from angry Americans who were about to be sent into US-occupied Iraq with antiquated equipment and vehicles protected by little more than scrap metal bolted onto the bottom and sides.

With roughly 800 US troops lost so far, Rumsfeld was pressed by one soldier on what he was doing to prevent him and his comrades from the same fate by addressing shortages of vital equipment such as body armor. Rumsfeld replied: "You go to war with the army you have, not the army you might want or wish to have at a later time.

The Covid-19 pandemic has now killed more than 100 times that number of Americans  who President Trump calls warriors in the battle against the invisible enemy but the 45th President of the United States is drawing inspiration from the 21st Secretary of Defense, even if he is getting Rumsfelds advice a bit backwards.

Hes going to war with the pandemic he wants, not the pandemic he has.

The United States leads the world in the number of people whove been infected by the coronavirus, with 1.45 million of the 4.44 million global confirmed cases occurring within Americas borders. And despite Trumps claim that the US leads the world in testing, the country still trails a number of less-resourced nations in the number of tests performed as a percentage of total population.

Yet Trump is not troubled by seeing the slogan he repurposed from pro-Nazi Americans such as Charles Lindbergh  America First  coming to represent the United States place in the pantheon of countries most devastated by Covid-19.

Sources close to the president say he has all but moved on in his own mind, and views attempts by Democrats and medical experts to change the subject back to combating the ongoing global pandemic as simply a new spin on old attacks by his political opponents (a category which, in his mind, includes most of the federal workforce tasked with stopping the virus from killing more Americans).

A warning on the perils of reopening schools delivered by Dr Anthony Fauci  a 2004 Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient who has advised every president since Reagan? Unacceptable.

Similar warnings by Dr Richard Bright, a less widely known but just as renowned figure in the medical profession who was removed from his job as a top US vaccine development official for warning about the coming pandemic earlier this year? Just the complaints of a disgruntled employee.

And the coronavirus testing cited by most reputable experts as the one thing that is absolutely necessary to combat the spread of Covid-19 absent a vaccine or reliable drug therapies? Overrated and possibly a reason for the high number of coronavirus cases.

We have more cases than anybody in the world, Trump said while speaking in Allentown, Pennsylvania on Thursday. But why? Because we do more testing. When you test, you have a case. When you test, you find something is wrong with people. If we didnt do any testing, we would have very few cases.

So we have the best testing in the world, Trump continued. It could be the testing is, frankly, overrated? Maybe it is overrated. But whatever they start yelling, we want more, we want more. You know, they always say we want more, we want more because they dont want to give you credit.

Instead of heeding the advice of those charged with protecting Americans from the invisible enemy, Trump has moved on by moving backwards in time  to 2017.

Aided by Attorney General William Barr, Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grinell, a pair of Republican Senators, and many prominent figures in conservative media, Trump is trying to revive and rebrand a purported scandal from the earliest days of his administration  one which North Carolina Senator Richard Burr, a Republican who then chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee, said was all created by his then-House counterpart, California Representative Devin Nunes.

Ever desiring of a spectacle, Trump has even called for former President Barack Obama to testify before the GOP-led Senate, though Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham quickly poured cold water on that idea.

This byzantine theory, which Trump has dubbed Obamagate and claims is the greatest political crime (or scam or hoax) in the history of our country, is an outgrowth of an early attempt to undermine the Justice Departments investigation into Russias attack on the 2016 election, something Burrs committee found was conducted with the aim of boosting Trumps candidacy.

It posits that the prosecution of Trumps first National Security Adviser, General Michael Flynn, was a frame-up which began when the US Intelligence Community intercepted phone calls to and from foreign surveillance targets  calls in which Flynn participated.

Under US law, the names of Americans whose calls to or from foreign surveillance targets are intercepted are always masked in transcripts and reports distributed to the Intelligence Communitys customers, otherwise known as the elected officials and advisers tasked with protecting the country from threats.

What Trumpworld wants Americans to view as scandalous is the fact that upon reading those reports, a number of Obama-era officials asked for more information on who was speaking with those foreign surveillance targets.

In their rendering of events, the scandal is not that the president-elects choice for his National Security Adviser was speaking to a foreign adversary with the aim of undermining the sitting presidents actions, but that the sitting president and his advisers, having been briefed on the efforts to undermine, had the temerity to ask who was trying to undermine them.

Brad Moss, a Washington, DC-based attorney who routinely handles intelligence-related matters in his practice, said Trumps claims of a newfound scandal dont match the reality that the then-Republican-led House of Representatives already investigated the matter and found nothing of consequence.

It was [then-South Carolina Representative] Trey Gowdy and Senator [Lindsey] Graham on the Senate side who said they had heard testimony from people like Susan Rice and Samantha Power, and they were satisfied that the unmasking requests were submitted properly, he said.

And sure enough, that's what you got right here  the DNI releases this document, and it says right there: Authorised recipients submitted with proxy, to standard NSA processes.

 Lindsey Graham on Trump's Obama tweet: 'I think it would be a bad precedent to compel a former president to come before the Congress'

But Ned Price, a former CIA staffer who served as a spokesman for the Obama-era National Security Council, said the documents released by Grinell actually make Flynn look worse.

What it says is that a lot of people throughout the executive branch  to include career officials  were concerned by what they were reading, said Price, who is now policy director for National Security Action.

The point of masking and unmasking is that someone's name is not in that report, so it's not that they were unmasking Mike Flynn; they were concerned about the conduct about the activity they were reading about by an unidentified American and concerned enough to take a step that is available to them, where they request to NSA that the identity be unmasked, he continued.

So what Grinell is essentially saying is that all of these individuals  including many career people  were alarmed by the activity of an unidentified American submitted a request, career officials at NSA found their request compelling and agreed with them. Its not that they were unmasking Mike Flynn; they were unmasking an unidentified American who was apparently doing shady business.

Moss opined that the new attempt to make unmasking into a scandal is strictly political and all about the campaign.

It's not even about making the Trump administration or Trump himself look any better, it's just about trying to drag down Biden's approval ratings and drag down his favorables, just like they were able to do with Hillary Clinton, he said.

Where you have a president with historically bad favorables of his own, who needs to pull that straight flush on the river once again come November, he has to do everything he can to flood the zone with whatever information is possible to turn off independents and more moderate Republicans from Joe Biden.

Kel McClanahan, executive director of National Security Counselors, agreed that the goal of Trumps calls for investigations is not to prosecute anybody or to meaningfully reform anything.

The goal is to whip up debate and to distract from other things, in this case [Trumps] horrible performance on the coronavirus, among other things, he said. All of this manufactured outrage is exactly that. It is someone trying to remind you that everybody except him is against you, and he is the only person who can save you from the evil socialists.

McClanahan suggested the only reason that the unmasking issue is once more appearing in Trumpworlds discourse is the fact that Trumps national security team is now largely made up of loyalists seeking to gain his favor rather than explain that theres nothing there.

If you look at why it [the unmasking issue] went away, it went away because the people under Trump, the agency heads and whatnot, were not aggressively toadying for him. [They] just let it quietly die and his attention turned elsewhere, he said.

People like [former DNIs Dan Coats or Joseph Maguire] would never have had anything to do with this, not because they were anti-Trump, but because they were intelligent national security professionals. The former Secretary of Defense [James Mattis] would have had nothing to do with it, [ex-White House Chief of Staff] John Kelly would have had nothing to do with it.

But Price sees a more sinister aspect to Trumps renewed Obamagate crusade  the President is projecting to justify weaponizing the countrys national security apparatus against his adversaries, whether real or perceived.

Donald Trump sees fit to meddle in law enforcement investigations, he sees fit to put his thumb on the scale of justice, and there used to be this inviolable firewall between the worlds of policy and law enforcement, where the two were conducted entirely separately, and policymakers would have no substantive input on investigations or prosecutorial decisions, he said.

After everything that we've seen, that's clearly no longer the case, and I think that President Trump assumes that just because he does these things, his predecessor must have done the same.
West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal locked horns on Thursday over the return of stranded workers, with the CM announcing 105 trains to bring them home and the BJP leader accusing the state government of not taking adequate measures.

Bringing back migrant labourers and stranded people to Bengal has snowballed into a major political issue, with the opposition BJP and the Union government rapping the state for not doing enough and the Trinamool Congress denying it.

"Towards our commitment to helping all our people stuck in different parts of the country and who want to return to Bengal, I am pleased to announce that we have arranged 105 additional special trains. Over the coming days, these special trains will embark from different states for various destinations across Bengal bringing our people back home," Banerjee tweeted on Thursday morning.

In the evening, Goyal said the West Bengal government was not providing facilities to the migrants to return home and has allowed only seven 'Shramik Special' trains.

Despite his appeal to the state government to allow more 'Shramik Special' trains, there has been no response from it, he added.

The ruling Trinamool Congress of West Bengal hit back and accused Goyal of being absent during this monumental crisis.

Earlier, the government had given nod for 10 trains to facilitate the return of labourers, patients, tourists and students stranded in other states owing to the lockdown. Three of these 10 trains have reached the state so far.

In her tweet, Banerjee shared a list of 105 trains which would leave from Maharashtra, Delhi, Karnataka and Rajasthan among others over the next few weeks.

The list suggested that three trains would commence their journey from New Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore Urban on May 16 and reach New Coochbehar, Howrah and Malda Town respectively the following day.

The government's initiative to ferry stranded people home in trains would continue till June 14.

Later, in a series of tweets, Goyal said, "After my statement yesterday, the West Bengal government has woken up from its deep sleep. The government has yet allowed only seven trains for migrant workers... The workers of Bengal are far from their homes, so I had appealed to allow them to run more trains."

West Bengal needs to run 105 'Shramik Special' trains daily to take stranded migrants back home, but "there is unconfirmed news that for the next 30 days they have prepared a list of just 105 trains", he said.

"It is a cruel joke with the migrant workers of West Bengal that the government there is not giving them the facility to go to their houses," Goyal said.

The railway minister said, "So far, the government of West Bengal has not allowed eight trains to run, as per its announcement last week."

"This is a petty attempt to trick West Bengal's migrant workers, and the government is running away from its responsibility to take the poor labourers home. Uttar Pradesh cleared 400 trains in less than 15 days and brought its migrant workers home. Instead of showing this kind of alacrity, the West Bengal government is preventing the labourers from getting assistance," he said.

Goyal urged the West Bengal government to think about the interests of the workers who have to deal with the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The state should allow the Railways to run more special trains as soon as possible to take stranded migrants home, he said.

The railway minister's statement did not go down well with the TMC, which dubbed it as "cheap politics and an attempt to score political brownie points at the time of crisis".

"The minister has been all but absent during this monumental crisis when millions of poor migrant workers have been abandoned. They've been left to fend for themselves, stuck all over the country waiting for some help from government to safely return to their homes and families," TMC Rajya Sabha party leader Derek O' Brien said.

Leader of the Congress party in Lok Sabha, Adhir Ranjan Chowdhury, however, welcomed the move by the state government and said it should have taken the steps several days earlier.

Last week Union Home Minister Amit Shah had flagged the issue of non-cooperation by the West Bengal government in bringing back stranded labourers.

The Centre had also rapped the state government over its handling of the COVID crisis in the state.
Working a little futurism into your interiors doesnt have to mean making every room look like the inside of a fictional spaceship. That kind of retro-futurism guided by the science fiction of the 20th century is feeling pretty over, anyway. Likewise, a bunch of gadgets arent really a look. So what does futuristic style really look like today, especially when we attempt to separate the aesthetics from the technology?

Elegant ceramic pieces from Patricia Urquiola's futuristic SONAR collection, designed for Swiss brand Laufen.

For designer Patricia Urquiola, it looks something like modern sculpture. Its fun, its fresh, and best of all, its still extremely functional. Her new SONAR collection for Swiss brand Laufen introduces a new look for the companys ultra-thin ceramic material SaphirKeramik, which enables the creation of lighter, smoother bathroom design elements without sacrificing durability.

A description on Laufens official website explains: Where once there was the curve, now theres the tight edge-radius. Fuller forms have given way to slim, but robust, des walls; SaphirKeramik [is] a super-strong ceramic material that allows itself to be fashioned along minimal, architectural lines. The further development of the design language of ceramics makes perfect sense, as it is the most hygienic, hard-wearing, and recyclable material in the bathroom. Laufen itself is renowned for maximizing the creative potential of ceramic materials.

A SONAR wash basin from designer Patricia Urquiola and Laufen.

A SONAR wash basin dances among iridescent lights as it balances on textural glass panels.

A revolution in the formal language of ceramics: strong and malleable, SaphirKeramik permits the creation of wafer-thin walls and tight-edge radii of just two to three millimeters while retaining the traditional production process. Its slender profile renders it space-saving, lightweight, and environmentally friendly.

The material is infused with a colorless material called corundum, which is also found in sapphires and has the same bending strength as steel. The result, in this case, is a groundbreaking collection full of wash basins, bath tubs, bidets, and toilets that look like theyre made of the most delicate porcelain.

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The bathroom sinks featured in the SONAR collection are surprisingly slim, thanks largely to their futuristic designs.

A cannettata texture covers the edges of the products, accentuating the volumes severity and allowing for an unconventional refinement, says the Spanish-born, Madrid-based Urquiola. The rigorous geometries accentuate the plans and enhance the movements of the water: the inclined surface of the fund leads toward a transverse slot [that] hides the discharge with a simple gesture.

Cannettata refers to the ribbed texture seen on many of the pieces, which Urquiola adds was inspired the dynamic energy of sound waves and their relationship to water. For the third iteration of SaphirKeramik, Laufen wanted to explore the 3D aspects of the material, asking the designer to play with shapes that havent been seen before in bathroom design.

A large double wash basin featured in the new SONAR collection shines an alluring pink thanks to the refracted light from nearby panels.

These spectacularly colorful panels round out the otherwise all-white SONAR collection.

Just as importantly, the pieces have to fit into compact spaces. Living spaces may continue to stay the same size or get smaller in the coming decades, rather than expanding, and it makes little sense to design fixtures and furniture that feel bulky and out of place within their intended environments. Each piece in the SONAR collection can fit easily into a small urban bathroom, making them accessible to more than just those who can afford luxuriously spacious residences.

For instance, one floor-standing wash basin made entirely out of Laufens revolutionary ceramic hides all of its own plumbing from view, yet manages to stand just over 16 inches at its widest point. The rounded corners make it easy to navigate around within tight spaces, too, resulting in a profile so compact that one double sink ends up taking up about the same amount of space as a single conventional one.

A rounded, white SONAR wash basin, complete with a couple futuristic fixtures for an even cooler effect.

Shimmering transparent panels with iridescent pastel tints top off the collection, some smooth and some with that same corrugated wave-like texture, casting beautiful refractions of colored light around the room. The overall effect is that of a thoroughly modern bathroom  and not a single touchscreen in sight!
M urder, rape and some county lines drug trials could be fast-tracked straight to crown courts as part of attempts to clear a backlog of cases caused by the coronavirus crisis.

About 1,400 serious cases are currently waiting to be passed from magistrates to be heard by a judge and jury. The judiciary is understood to be examining ways in which such cases could be sent straight to higher courts.

A recent surge in arrests of offenders wanted for serious crimes such as county lines drug-dealing and associated violence could add to the trial backlog generated by the lockdown.

Delays in bringing prosecutions can lead to cases being derailed as witnesses decide not to testify or struggle to recall incidents accurately.

A source said police had had more time to pursue serious offenders because fewer crimes were being committed during lockdown.

There has been a huge number of arrests for serious offences in London  Many of those cases will be complex and we need to make sure that the courts are ready, the source said.

Sending serious cases straight to crown courts would also avoid dragging suspects, lawyers and others to often cramped magistrates courts where social distancing is difficult.

Judges summer holidays could also be scrapped and magistrates asked to work in evenings and at weekends.

Other options include extending the number of court sitting days and creating temporary Nightingale courts.

Ministers and judges are understood to be keen for the increased use of video hearings and technology during the lockdown to be continued once restrictions are eased.
(L-R) U.S. President Donald Trump and Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar speak to reporters on his way to Marine One on the South Lawn of the White House on May 14, 2020 in Washington, DC.

A rapid coronavirus test made by Abbott Laboratories could be missing infections because of "user error," Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said Friday.

The White House still has "confidence in the test," Azar said during an interview Friday morning on "Fox Business." "We wouldn't have it on the market" if U.S. health regulators didn't believe it worked.

The comment came a day after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued an alert about the accuracy of Abbott's ID NOW test, saying the test, which is used to screen White House staff, may return a high percentage of false-negative results.

A recent study from New York University, which has not been peer-reviewed, found the test missed a third of samples collected with nasopharyngeal swabs that tested positive with a test from rival Cepheid.

When using samples collected with "dry nasal swabs," the Abbott test missed more than 48% of positive cases, the study said. Both nasopharyngeal swabs and dry nasal swabs are collected from the nostril, but the former is inserted much deeper into the nose.

Azar said Friday that users are not supposed to collect the swabs and then "spend time transporting it" to get to the test. He added the company is currently conducting a post-market study as companies do for any emergency use authorization product.

An Abbott spokesperson said Friday in a statement to CNBC, "While we understand no test is perfect, test outcomes depend on a number of factors including patient selection, specimen type, collection, handling, storage, transport and conformity to the way the test was designed to be run."

"ID NOW is intended to be used near the patient with a direct swab test method," the spokesperson said.

U.S. officials and corporations across America are pouring money into testing, hoping it will give people the confidence to return to work and reopen parts of the economy.

President Donald Trump has recommended states use the test as they start relaxing some of the strict social distancing measures imposed to combat the pandemic, which has infected more than 1.4 million people across the United States as of Friday, according to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

The rapid test from Abbott is one of four on the U.S. market. On Monday, the FDA granted emergency use authorization for Abbott's new coronavirus test that detects Covid-19 antibodies. The tests can indicate whether a person has had Covid-19 and was either asymptomatic or recovered.

The company announced last month that it was working with CVS Health to get its tests "outside of the hospital" and into places such as urgent-care clinics and nursing homes.
The reasons behind a shutdown across Pennsylvania to stem COVID-19 no longer exist and the state should accelerate reopening businesses, U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey said.

Toomey made the comments during a virtual roundtable he hosted Thursday with Congressman Lloyd Smucker (R-11), that included CEO of Penn State Health Steve Massini, the chairman of the Lancaster County commissioners, and two Pennsylvania small business owners.

The comments join a growing movement in the state to allow small businesses to reopen. Supporters of President Donald Trump called for it as they welcomed the president Thursday to the Lehigh Valley. A noon rally to reopen the state is planned today in Harrisburg.

Toomey said the unprecedented and draconian step to close the economy was to slow the spread of COVID-19 so as not to overwhelm hospital capacity.

It was probably the right thing to do, Toomey said.

But its been clear for the past several weeks, "we are not going to overwhelm the capacity of Pennsylvania hospitals. Im not sure about the rest of the country. In Pennsylvania, we have got a lot of capacity to spare, Toomey said. That essential reason for the shutdown no longer exists.

Small businesses that cannot reopen are floundering.

Some of those businesses will fail and they will never be able to come back. Those are livelihoods that are going to be really badly setback for who knows how long, the senator said. Its been my view for sometime now that Pennsylvania is ready to reopen...I think its time to move this along."

Toomey referred to Wolfs modest steps of moving counties from the red stage to the yellow stage, the first pieces to ending the statewide shutdown. As of Friday, 37 counties are in the yellow phase, and it does not include the Lehigh Valley and eastern parts of the state.

Its my hope we will be able to accelerate this process, Toomey said.

Last month, Toomey released his own three-stage plan for Pennsylvania called PA Starts Up Safely," which included actions that have been taken, including restarting construction and hospitals restarting elective procedures.

Smucker, who represents parts of Lancaster and York counties, said the focus should be on reopening the economy safely and responsibly, and based on data.

Nursing home and longterm care facilities have been hard hit by COVID-19, and Smucker said its absolutely critical to focus on the responses at those locations and other hotspots.

We know that prolonged economic shutdown could trigger catastrophic consequences for our nations economy, he said.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com.
The CEO of the Royal Mail Group resigned 'with immediate effect' after a difficult few years. (PA)

Shares in the Royal Mail (RMG.L) fell by almost 1.5% on Friday after the company unexpectedly announced that chief executive Rico Back had stepped down with immediate effect after less than two years in the job.

Back battled with unions over pay at the 500-year-old group, faced shareholder revolts over his compensation, and saw the company relegated from the blue-chip FTSE 100 index (^FTSE).

The company said on Friday that he would be replaced in an interim capacity by Keith Williams as executive chairman and Stuart Simpson as chief executive.

It has been a privilege to lead a company that is so much a part of UK life at this crucial time in its history, Back said.

READ MORE: European stocks climb as factories rebound in China

Rico Back has made a significant contribution to the evolution of our business over his 20 years with us, particularly in building our international parcels business and developing our group strategy, which recognised the urgent need for change to create a sustainable business for the future, Williams said in a statement.

Back had controversially received a 6m "golden hello" on becoming the group's CEO in 2018. His departure comes as the firm faces a huge surge in costs and falling revenue due to the coronavirus crisis.

Costs in its UK parcels, international, and letters (UKPIL) business climbed by 40m (49m) in April, due to overtime and agency fees related to high levels of employee absence, social distancing measures, and the cost of acquiring personal protective equipment for workers (PPE).

Compared to the same month last year, revenue in the UKPIL business fell by 22m in April, following a substantial switch from letters to parcels in the UK.

UK parcel volume rose by 31% and revenue climbed by 20%, even as there were 308 million fewer addressed letters in the month, pushing letter revenue down by 23%.

READ MORE: Crisis measures to cost UK government 132bn this year

Royal Mail is continuing to deliver to 30 million households across the UK, fulfilling a vital role with respect to the collection and delivery of parcels, home testing kits and government information, the company said on Friday.

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The company warned that there was significant volatility in parcel volumes as the coronavirus pandemic spread across its key markets.

Shares in the group fell to a record low in February, after it warned that the industrial relations environment and UK economic uncertainty could prompt continued losses in one of its key divisions.

The company bemoaned the decision of the Communication Workers Union (CWU) to ballot its members for strike action, saying that it could delay progress on its 2024 turnaround plan.
When winter smog takes over Asian mega-cities, more particulate matter is measured in the streets than expected. An international team, including researchers from Goethe University Frankfurt, as well as the universities in Vienna and Innsbruck, has now discovered that nitric acid and ammonia in particular contribute to the formation of additional particulate matter. Nitric acid and ammonia arise in city centres predominantly from car exhaust. Experiments show that the high local concentration of the vapours in narrow and enclosed city streets accelerates the growth of tiny nanoparticles into stabile aerosol particles.

In crowded urban centres, high concentrations of particulate matter cause considerable health effects. Especially in winter months, the situation in many Asian mega-cities is dramatic when smog significantly reduces visibility and breathing becomes difficult.

Particulates, with a diameter of less than 2.5 micrometres, mostly form directly through combustion processes, for example in cars or heaters. These are called primary particulates. Particulates also form in the air as secondary particulates, when gases from organic substances, sulphuric acid, nitric acid or ammonia, condense on tiny nanoparticles. These grow into particles that make up a part of particulate matter.

Until now, how secondary particulates could be newly formed in the narrow streets of mega-cities was a puzzle. According to calculations, the tiny nanoparticles should accumulate on the abundantly available larger particles rather than forming new particulates.

Scientists in the international research project CLOUD have now recreated the conditions that prevail in the streets of mega-cities in a climate chamber at the particle accelerator CERN in Geneva, and reconstructed the formation of secondary particulates: in the narrow and enclosed streets of a city, a local increase of pollutants occurs. The cause of the irregular distribution of the pollutants is due in part to the high pollutant emissions at the street level. Furthermore, it takes a while before the street air mixes with the surrounding air. This leads to the two pollutants ammonia and nitric acid being temporarily concentrated in the street air. As the CLOUD experiments demonstrate, this high concentration creates conditions in which the two pollutants can condense onto nanoparticles: ammonium nitrate forms on condensation cores the size of only a few nanometres, causing these particles to grow rapidly.

We have observed that these nanoparticles grow rapidly within just a few minutes. Some of them grow one hundred times more quickly than we had previously ever seen with other pollutants, such as sulphuric acid, explains climate researcher Professor Joachim Curtius from Goethe University Frankfurt. In crowded urban centres, the process we observed therefore makes an important contribution to the formation of particulate matter in winter smog  because this process only takes place at temperatures below about 5 degrees Celsius. The aerosol physicist Paul Winkler from the University of Vienna adds: When conditions are warmer, the particles are too volatile to contribute to growth.

The formation of aerosol particles from ammonia and nitric acid probably takes place not only in cities and crowded areas, but on occasion also in higher atmospheric altitudes. Ammonia, which is primarily emitted from animal husbandry and other agriculture, arrives in the upper troposphere from air parcels rising from close to the ground by deep convection, and lightning creates nitric acid out of nitrogen in the air. At the prevailing low temperatures there, new ammonium nitrate particles are formed which as condensation seeds play a role in cloud formation, explains ion physicist Armin Hansel from the University of Innsbruck, pointing out the relevance of the research findings for climate.

The experiment CLOUD (Cosmics Leaving OUtdoor Droplets) at CERN studies how new aerosol particles are formed in the atmosphere out of precursor gases and continue to grow into condensation seeds. CLOUD thereby provides fundamental understanding on the formation of clouds and particulate matter. CLOUD is carried out by an international consortium consisting of 21 institutions. The CLOUD measuring chamber was developed with CERN know-how and achieves very precisely defined measuring conditions. CLOUD experiments use a variety of different measuring instruments to characterise the physical and chemical conditions of the atmosphere consisting of particles and gases. In the CLOUD project, the team led by Joachim Curtius from the Institute for Atmosphere and Environment at Goethe University Frankfurt develops and operates two mass spectrometers to detect trace gases such as ammonia and sulphuric acid even at the smallest concentrations as part of projects funded by the BMBF and the EU. At the Faculty of Physics at the University of Vienna, the team led by Paul Winkler is developing a new particle measuring device as part of an ERC project. The device will enable the quantitative investigation of aerosol dynamics specifically in the relevant size range of 1 to 10 nanometres. Armin Hansel from the Institute for Ion Physics and Applied Physics at the University of Innsbruck developed a new measuring procedure (PTR3-TOF-MS) to enable an even more sensitive analysis of trace gases in the CLOUD experiment with his research team as part of an FFG project.
He's been known for his recognizable gel-coated hair since Jersey Shore began airing more than a decade ago.

But Pauly D revealed just how much his appearance has changed during his coronavirus quarantine in a video posted to Twitter on Thursday.

The 39-year-old reality star was barely recognizable thanks to the thick beard he's been growing in recent months.

It's growing on him: Pauly D, 39, revealed the progress he's made on his thick quarantine beard in a Twitter video on Thursday

Pauly had on a gray graphic hoodie and a black New York Yankees cap in the self-shot video.

'Yo, beard's coming in... quite... nicely,' he said between long pauses and he ran his fingers through his well-groomed beard.

'Hi I have a beard.....' he tweeted along with the clip.

His video may also have represented a rare gel-free day for the Jersey Shore star.

Digging it: Pauly had on a gray graphic hoodie and a black New York Yankees cap in the self-shot video. 'Yo, beard's coming in... quite... nicely,' he said between long pauses

Feeling it: He ran his fingers through his beard. The clip also represented a rare gel-free day for him, though he covered up with a hat

The beginning: Pauly previously posted his new bearded look to Twitter on May 1, when it was more of a thick stubble than a full beard

In June, he told People that he sticks with hats when he doesn't feel creating his signature look.

'Ill go out with a hat on, but as far as going out in public with no product in my hair, I bet its been 10 years since Ive done that,' he revealed.

Pauly previously posted his new bearded look to Twitter on May 1, when it was more of a thick stubble than a full beard.

Also on Thursday, he shared another video to TikTok of himself at the gym after working out his muscular physique.

He displayed his lustrous pre-gel hair, before cutting to himself after creating his signature 'do.

Rarely glimpsed: He shared another video of himself sans gel in a TikTok from Thursday

What a difference! Pauly shown with his standard look in New York in 2018

Pauly (full name: Paul Delvecchio) shot to fame with the 2009 premiere of Jersey Shore on MTV, which introduced him and vacation home roommates, including Jennifer 'JWoww' Farley, Nicole 'Snooki' Polizzi, Mike 'The Situation' Sorrentino and Vinny Guadagnino.

The series ran for five seasons through 2012 and spawned multiple spin-offs, including The Pauly D Project, which revolved around his burgeoning career as a DJ.

He rejoined the cast in 2017 for the rebooted series Jersey Shore: Family Vacation, now on its third season.
all dollar figures in US dollars, unless otherwise indicated

VANCOUVER, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Equinox Gold Corp. (TSX: EQX, NYSE American: EQX) ("Equinox Gold" or the "Company") is pleased to report its first quarter 2020 summary financial and operating results. The Company's unaudited condensed consolidated interim financial statements and related management's discussion and analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2020 will be available for download shortly on SEDAR, on EDGAR and on the Company's website. The Company will host a conference call and webcast today commencing at 2:00 pm Vancouver time to discuss the Company's business strategy and objectives, first quarter results and activities underway at the Company's projects. Further details are provided at the end of this news release.

"Equinox Gold had a strong first quarter bolstered by production from our newly acquired assets and achieved record gold production and record earnings from mine operations, despite navigating challenges related to the COVID-19 pandemic," said Christian Milau, Chief Executive Officer. "With more than $350 million of cash on hand, Equinox Gold is in a strong financial position and fully funded for its organic growth plans. Castle Mountain Phase 1 construction is 75% complete, the Los Filos expansion and Santa Luz restart projects are expected to significantly increase production over the course of 2021 and 2022 and we recently completed a positive preliminary economic assessment for development of an underground mine at Aurizona. While the temporary suspension of mining activities at our Los Filos mine in Mexico will affect Q2 production, our other mines have experienced only minimal COVID-19 disruption to date. We remain focused on achieving our growth objectives while continuing to maintain appropriate operational and safety procedures to help protect the health and economic wellbeing of our workforce and local communities."

HIGHLIGHTS FOR THE THREE MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2020(1)

Operational and financial

Proactive response to COVID-19 global pandemic

Completed 3.5 million work hours with three lost-time injuries across all sites

Produced 88,951 ounces ("oz") of gold and sold 82,629 oz of gold (excluding Leagold production prior to the merger close on March 10, 2020 )

) Revenue of $130.0 million

Mine cash costs of $849 /oz (2) and all-in-sustaining costs ("AISC") of $968 /oz (2,3)

/oz and all-in-sustaining costs ("AISC") of /oz EBITDA of $65.3 million (2) and adjusted EBITDA of $49.5 million (2,4)

and adjusted EBITDA of Earnings from mine operations of $43.2 million

Net income of $10.9 million or $0.08 per share

or per share Adjusted net income of $17.1 million (2,4) or $0.12 per share

or per share Cash flow from operations before changes in working capital of $23.2 million

Cash and cash equivalents (unrestricted) of $303.1 million (more than $350 million at May 14, 2020 )

Corporate

Completed at-market merger with Leagold and concurrent $670 million financing package that included:

financing package that included: $500 million senior credit facilities ( $100 million amortizing loan, $400 million revolving credit facility)

senior credit facilities ( amortizing loan, revolving credit facility)

$130 million convertible notes issued to Mubadala Investment Company

convertible notes issued to Mubadala Investment Company

$40 million equity investment

equity investment Added to the GDXJ (VanEck Vectors Junior Gold Miners ETF) on March 20, 2020

Drew the remaining $180 million from the revolving credit facility as a COVID-19 proactive measure

from the revolving credit facility as a COVID-19 proactive measure Issued 2020 guidance (excluding potential impact of COVID-19)

Production of 540,000 to 600,000 ounces of gold (5)



AISC of $1,000 to $1,060 per oz of gold sold (2)

to per oz of gold sold

Sustaining capital of $88 million and expansion capital of $143 million (5)

and expansion capital of

Guidance to be updated when practical

Construction and development

Castle Mountain

Phase 1 construction 75% complete with first gold pour expected in Q3 2020

Phase 2 feasibility study ongoing with planned completion in late 2020

Los Filos expansion

Guadalupe open pit and Bermejal underground development activities continued during the quarter but were suspended at the beginning of April in compliance with Mexican COVID-19 restrictions; first ore anticipated in early 2021

Updating study on new carbon-in-leach plant to incorporate several optimization opportunities to prepare for a project construction decision later this year

Santa Luz restart

Commenced an update and review of costs and engineering for the resin-in-leach plant to prepare for a project construction decision later this year

RECENT 2020 HIGHLIGHTS

Added to the GDX (VanEck Vectors Gold Miners ETF) on April 17, 2020

Received approximately $12.1 million from the issuance of convertible notes and common shares related to a shareholder's anti-dilution right

from the issuance of convertible notes and common shares related to a shareholder's anti-dilution right Received approximately $48.0 million from warrant exercises and issued 9.0 million common shares

from warrant exercises and issued 9.0 million common shares Completed a positive preliminary economic assessment ("PEA") for potential development of an underground mine at Aurizona that could be operated concurrently with the existing open-pit mine, demonstrating potential for both mine life extension and increased annual gold production (6)

Completed updated reserve and resource estimates for Aurizona and Mesquite

Los Filos preparing to safely resume operations following the Mexico Federal Government declaration on May 14, 2020 that mining is an essential activity

_____________________________ (1) The operational and financial results of the assets acquired in the merger with Leagold are included from March 10, 2020 onward. (2) Mine cash cost per oz sold, AISC per oz sold, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization), adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income, and adjusted earnings per share are non-IFRS measures. See Non-IFRS Measures and Cautionary Notes. (3) Consolidated AISC per oz sold excludes corporate general and administration expenses. (4) Primary adjustments were a $10.1 million non-cash gain on change in fair value of warrants and a $22.8 million unrealized gain on gold contracts inherited from Leagold, offset by an $18.3 million unrealized loss on foreign exchange contracts and $6.9 million in expected credit losses recognized in the period. The Company also recorded a $22.1 million unrealized foreign exchange loss in deferred tax expense that affected net income. (5) Guidance for the Los Filos, Fazenda, RDM, Pilar and Santa Luz assets acquired in the merger with Leagold reflects expectations for the period commencing March 10, 2020, the closing date of the merger. (6) The Aurizona PEA is preliminary in nature and includes Inferred Mineral Resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have the economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves. There is no certainty that the results contemplated in the preliminary economic assessment will be realized.

MANAGING COVID-19

Equinox Gold took early precautionary measures at its mine sites and offices to proactively manage issues related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Each of the Company's operations has implemented preventive measures in collaboration with the Company's employees, contractors, local communities and governments to help ensure the health, safety and economic wellbeing of the Company's workforce and local communities. The Company has also evaluated supply chain and other risks at each operation and implemented business continuity protocols so the mines can operate as effectively as possible. The Company's operations have experienced limited disruption to date, with the exception of the Company's Los Filos mine in Mexico at which mining and development activities were suspended at the beginning of April in compliance with a Mexico Federal Government order requiring the temporary suspension of all non-essential businesses. On May 14th the Mexico Federal Government declared mining an essential activity and allowed for the restart of operations on June 1st. The Company is preparing to safely resume operations.

Additional information regarding Equinox Gold's COVID-19 response plan, preventive measures taken to date and the potential impact on operations is available in the Q1 2020 management's discussion and analysis and on the Company's website at www.equinoxgold.com.

The Company drew the remaining $180 million from its $400 million revolving credit facility in late March as a proactive measure given the uncertainty of the potential effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Company's operations. There are no current plans to spend these funds and Equinox Gold remains in a strong financial position with more than $350 million in cash and cash equivalents (unrestricted) at the date of this news release.

OPERATING AND FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR THE THREE MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2020





Three months ended Operating data Unit March 31,

2020(1) December 31,

2019 September 30,

2019 Gold produced oz 88,951 80,176 62,656 Gold sold oz 82,629 80,330 62,379 Realized gold price $/oz 1,574 1,482 1,473 AISC per oz sold(2,3) $/oz 968 848 953









Financial data







Revenue M$ 130.0 119.0 91.9 Earnings from mine operations M$ 43.2 38.5 30.8 Net income (loss) M$ 10.9 (8.5) 8.1 Adjusted EBITDA(3) M$ 49.5 47.9 38.2 Adjusted net income(3) M$ 17.1 20.9 18.2 Adjusted net income per share(3) $/share 0.12 0.18 0.16









Balance sheet and cash flow data







Cash and cash equivalents (unrestricted) M$ 303.1 67.7 45.5 Operating cash flow before changes in M$ 23.2 38.9 37.6 working capital



(1) Q1 2019 results are not presented as they are not readily comparable. During Q1 2019, the Company had only the Mesquite mine in operation. During Q1 2020, the Company had the Mesquite and Aurizona mines in operation and, on March 10, 2020, added four additional operating mines acquired through the merger with Leagold. (2) Consolidated AISC per oz sold excludes corporate general and administration expenses. (3) AISC per oz sold, adjusted EBITDA, adjusted net income and adjusted EPS are non-IFRS measures. See Non-IFRS Measures and Cautionary Notes.

SELECTED FINANCIAL RESULTS FOR THE THREE MONTHS ENDED MARCH 31, 2020

$ amounts in millions, except per share amounts Three months ended March 31, 2020 December 31, 2019 March 31, 2019(1) Revenue $ 130.0 $ 119.0 $ 35.4 Operating expenses

(69.6)

(61.0)

(24.1) Depreciation and depletion

(17.2)

(19.4)

(4.2) Earnings from mine operations

43.2

38.5

7.1 Exploration

(2.6)

(1.7)

(2.9) General and administration

(6.6)

(9.9)

(3.1) Income from operations

33.9

26.9

1.0 Other income (expense)

7.4

(32.6)

(7.3) Net income (loss) before taxes

41.3

(5.7)

(6.3) Tax expense

(30.4)

(2.8)

(2.0) Net income (loss) and comprehensive income (loss)

10.9

(8.5)

(8.3) Net income (loss) per share attributable to Equinox













Gold shareholders, basic and diluted $ 0.08 $ (0.08) $ (0.07)



(1) During Q1 2019, the Company had only the Mesquite mine in operation. During Q1 2020, the Company had the Mesquite and Aurizona mines in operation and, on March 10, 2020, added four additional operating mines acquired through the merger with Leagold. As a result, comparisons of Q1 2020 to the same period in the prior year are not meaningful.

Additional information regarding the Company's financial results and activities underway at the Company's projects are available in the Company's Q1 2020 Financial Statements and accompanying management's discussion and analysis for the three months ended March 31, 2020, which will be available for download shortly on the Company's website at www.equinoxgold.com, on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar.

CONFERENCE CALL AND WEBCAST

Equinox Gold will host a conference call and webcast on May 15 commencing at 2:00 pm Vancouver time to discuss the Company's business strategy and objectives, first quarter results and activities underway at the Company's projects. All participants will have the opportunity to ask questions of Equinox Gold's Chairman, CEO and executive team. The webcast will be archived on Equinox Gold's website until August 15, 2020.

Corporate update commencing at 2:00 pm Vancouver time

Conference call Toll-free in U.S. and Canada: 1-800-319-4610 International callers: +1 604-638-5340



Webcast www.equinoxgold.com

ABOUT EQUINOX GOLD

Equinox Gold is a Canadian mining company with six producing gold mines, a multi-million-ounce gold reserve base and a strong growth profile from two development projects and two expansion projects. Equinox Gold operates entirely in the Americas, with two properties in the United States, one in Mexico and five in Brazil. Equinox Gold's common shares are listed on the TSX and the NYSE American under the trading symbol EQX. Further information about Equinox Gold's portfolio of assets and long-term growth strategy is available at www.equinoxgold.com or by email at [email protected].

CAUTIONARY NOTES AND FORWARD-LOOKING STATEMENTS

Non-IFRS measures

This news release refers to cash costs, cash costs per ounce sold, all-in sustaining costs ("AISC"), AISC per ounce sold, adjusted EBITDA and sustaining and non-sustaining capital expenditures that are measures with no standardized meaning under International Financial Reporting Standards ("IFRS"), i.e. they are non-IFRS measures, and may not be comparable to similar measures presented by other companies. Their measurement and presentation is intended to provide additional information and should not be considered in isolation or as a substitute for measures of performance prepared in accordance with IFRS.

AISC per ounce sold

AISC per gold oz sold is a non-IFRS measure based on guidance announced by the World Gold Council ("WGC") in September 2013 and updated in November 2018. The WGC is a non-profit association of the world's leading gold mining companies established in 1987 to promote the use of gold to industry, consumers and investors. The WGC is not a regulatory body and does not have the authority to develop accounting standards or disclosure requirements. The WGC has worked with its member companies to develop a measure that expands on IFRS measures such as operating expenses and non-IFRS measures to provide visibility into the economics of a gold mining Company. Current IFRS measures used in the gold industry, such as operating expenses, do not capture all of the expenditures incurred to discover, develop and sustain gold production. The Company believes the AISC measure provides further transparency into costs associated with producing gold and will assist analysts, investors and other stakeholders of the Company in assessing its operating performance, its ability to generate free cash flow from current operations and its overall value. Combined AISC does not include corporate G&A.

Technical information

Adriaan (Attie) Roux, Pr.Sci.Nat., Equinox Gold's COO, Doug Reddy, Equinox Gold's EVP Technical Services and Scott Heffernan, MSc, P.Geo. Equinox Gold's EVP Exploration, are the Qualified Persons under National Instrument 43-101 for Equinox Gold and have reviewed, approved and verified the technical content of this document.

Forward-looking statements

This news release contains certain forward-looking information and forward-looking statements within the meaning of applicable securities legislation and may include future-oriented financial information. Forward-looking statements and forward-looking information in this news release relate to, among other things: the duration, extent and other implications of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) and any related restrictions and suspensions with respect to the Company's operations, the strategic vision for the Company and expectations regarding expanding production capabilities and future financial or operating performance, Equinox Gold's production and cost guidance, and conversion of Mineral Resources to Mineral Reserves. Forward-looking statements or information generally identified by the use of the words "believe", "will", "advancing", "strategy", "plans", "budget", "anticipated", "expected", "estimated", "target", "objective" and similar expressions and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "should", "will be taken" or "be achieved", or the negative connotation of such terms, are intended to identify forward-looking statements and information. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements and information are reasonable, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements since the Company can give no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. The Company has based these forward-looking statements and information on the Company's current expectations and projections about future events and these assumptions include: tonnage of ore to be mined and processed; ore grades and recoveries; prices for gold remaining as estimated; development at Los Filos, Castle Mountain, Santa Luz and Aurizona being completed and performed in accordance with current expectations; currency exchange rates remaining as estimated; availability of funds for the Company's projects and future cash requirements; capital, decommissioning and reclamation estimates; the Company's Mineral Reserve and Resource estimates and the assumptions on which they are based; prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services; no labour-related disruptions and no unplanned delays or interruptions in scheduled development and production; all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals are received in a timely manner; and the Company's ability to comply with environmental, health and safety laws. The Company's previously announced guidance is included in this news release and does not account for any possible adverse effects of COVID-19 to the Company's business and results of operations. While the Company considers these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available, they may prove to be incorrect. Accordingly, readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on the forward-looking statements or information contained in this news release.

The Company cautions that forward-looking statements and information involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors that may cause actual results and developments to differ news release materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and information contained in this and the Company has made assumptions and estimates based on or related to many of these factors. Such factors include, without limitation: fluctuations in gold prices; fluctuations in prices for energy inputs, labour, materials, supplies and services; fluctuations in currency markets; operational risks and hazards inherent with the business of mining (including environmental accidents and hazards, industrial accidents, equipment breakdown, unusual or unexpected geological or structural formations, cave-ins, flooding and severe weather); inadequate insurance, or inability to obtain insurance to cover these risks and hazards; employee relations; relationships with, and claims by, local communities and indigenous populations; the Company's ability to obtain all necessary permits, licenses and regulatory approvals in a timely manner or at all; changes in laws, regulations and government practices, including environmental, export and import laws and regulations; legal restrictions relating to mining including those imposed in connection with COVID-19; risks relating to expropriation; increased competition in the mining industry; and those factors identified in the Company's MD&A dated February 28, 2020 for the year-ended December 31, 2019 and its Annual Information Form dated May 13, 2020, which are available on SEDAR at www.sedar.com and on EDGAR at www.sec.gov/edgar. Forward-looking statements and information are designed to help readers understand management's views as of that time with respect to future events and speak only as of the date they are made. Except as required by applicable law, the Company assumes no obligation and does not intend to update or to publicly announce the results of any change to any forward-looking statement or information contained or incorporated by reference to reflect actual results, future events or developments, changes in assumptions or changes in other factors affecting the forward-looking statements and information. If the Company updates any one or more forward-looking statements, no inference should be drawn that the Company will make additional updates with respect to those or other forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Equinox Gold Corp.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 15:23:31|Editor: huaxia

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People have their body temperature measured before entering a zoo in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, May 16, 2020. Uzbekistan has extended quarantine measures until the end of May, while lifting a number of restrictions imposed earlier, the Special Republican Commission to Combat Coronavirus said Friday. (Photo by Zafar Khalilov/Xinhua)

TASHKENT, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Uzbekistan has extended quarantine measures until the end of May, while lifting a number of restrictions imposed earlier, the Special Republican Commission to Combat Coronavirus said Friday.

The quarantine measures to counteract the spread of COVID-19 are extended until June 1, while domestic air and rail links will be partially resumed starting on May 18, the commission said.

When organizing air and rail transportation, the public must comply with all quarantine rules, including limiting the number of passengers, disinfection and other sanitary requirements, it added.

Earlier this month, Uzbekistan introduced red, yellow and green zones in the country depending on the sanitary and epidemiological situation of COVID-19.

Many businesses are allowed to operate and citizens are allowed to drive their vehicles in green and yellow zones starting from May 18.

Also, for the first time since the lockdown was imposed, parks and museums will reopen while sticking to social distancing rules.

Uzbekistan has registered 2,652 confirmed COVID-19 cases with 11 deaths, and 2,136 people have recovered from the disease so far as the country resumed airlifting its citizens from abroad this week.
Xiaomi expects the smart home market in India to grow at a strong pace amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Chinese smartphone major is bringing in its robotic vacuum cleaner in the Indian market from September to tap into this demand.

Xiaomi had started taking orders from potential buyers for 'Mi Robot Vacuum-Mop P' through its crowdfunding platform. It has placed 10,000 units on offer (starting April 17) and has met about 25 per cent of that target so far.

Usually, if the target number of units isn't met, Xiaomi does not ship the product and refunds the amount paid by the buyer.

"We have decided to bring the product to the Indian market, and will start shipping from September onwards. We will take a phased approach and will extend the pre-booking till June 15, where the product can be booked for Rs 17,999," Xiaomi India Chief Business Officer Raghu Reddy told PTI.

He added that between June 16-August 15, the device will be available at a slightly higher price, and after August 15, it will be sold at Rs 24,999.

Reddy explained that the crowdfunding timeline is being extended as it will allow customers in red zones, who may not have been able to place orders given the lockdown to pre-book.

While the booking can be done only on Mi.com currently, the device will be available through the retail channel as well after September, he said.

"We believe a product like this has a huge potential in the current times when the need for social distancing is forcing us to stay indoors," Reddy said adding that people are looking for devices that can help with household chores as they work from home.

He added that IoT (Internet-connected) products are expected to see strong demand in the country.

"We have received over 75 per cent of our orders from the top 10 cities such as Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, New Delhi, Chennai, Pune, Gurgaon, Noida, Ahmedabad and Kolkata. There has also seen active interest from cities such as Coimbatore, Cochin, Jaipur and Bhubaneswar," he said.

Reddy said the company has been growing its ecosystem of Internet of Things (IoT) products in the country with air purifiers, smart lights and water purifiers that can be controlled remotely using a smartphone. While the market is not fully matured yet, it is gaining popularity.

These devices are not manufactured or assembled locally yet. Reddy said it will look at manufacturing IoT-enabled products in India once the market is large enough for such products. Currently, Xiaomi - through its partners - makes products like smartphones, smart TVs and power banks in India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTON  The Supreme Court denied a request on Thursday from two inmates in a Texas geriatric prison to reinstate a trial judges order instructing officials to take steps to protect them from the coronavirus pandemic.

As is the Supreme Courts custom in ruling on emergency applications, its brief order was unsigned and gave no reasons. But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, issued a seven-page statement expressing concern about the plight of the nations prisoners.

It has long been said that a societys worth can be judged by taking stock of its prisons, Justice Sotomayor wrote. That is all the truer in this pandemic, where inmates everywhere have been rendered vulnerable and often powerless to protect themselves from harm. May we hope that our countrys facilities serve as models rather than cautionary tales.

On April 16, Judge Keith P. Ellison, of the Federal District Court in Houston, ruled that the pandemic posed a grave threat to hundreds of prisoners held at the Wallace Pack Unit, a state geriatric prison in Grimes County, Texas.
Edinburgh, May 15 : The financial health of the University of Edinburgh in Scotland was under "serious threat" from the coronavirus pandemic, according to its principal.

Speaking to BBC Scotland on Thursday, Professor Peter Mathieson said that the university's annual income could drop by up to 150 million pounds.

"We're trying to be honest and transparent with our staff, so we've said that at the moment we're looking at things like limiting pay rises and limiting promotions in the next academic year because that will save us money.

"We haven't started talking about redundancies but all universities are looking at their future size and their shape.

"Obviously, if we are receiving smaller number of students and many more of our staff are working from home, which I do anticipate will continue to be the case for some time to come, then we may not need the scale of buildings and facilities that we originally thought we needed," he told the BBC.

The possible impact on staff and wages has already been announced.

Universities across Scotland fear they could lose out on 500 million pounds between them.

Edinburgh, which has an annual income of 1 billion pounds, has running costs, including wages, of around 90 million pounds a month.

The single biggest challenge for the university is the likelihood of a large drop in the number of students from outside Europe, some of whom pay tuition fees of around 30,000 pounds a year, said the BBC report.

The university still does not know how big the drop will be but there have been warnings it could range from a 25 per cent fall to a complete collapse.
TOKYO, May 15, 2020 - (JCN Newswire) - Showa Denko K.K. (SDK; TSE:4004) today announced its 2020 first quarter financial results.- 2020 First Quarter Consolidated Financial Statements and summaryhttps://www.sdk.co.jp/assets/files/english/ir/library/fss2020-1q.pdfThe Company also issued the following supporting release:- SDK Revises 2020 Consolidated Performance Forecast and Dividend Payment Forecastwww.sdk.co.jp/assets/files/english/news/2020/20200515_sdknewsrelease_e.pdfAbout Showa Denko K.K.Showa Denko K.K. (SDK; TSE:4004, ADR:SHWDY) is a major manufacturer of chemical products serving from heavy industry to computers and electronics. The Petrochemicals Sector provides cracker products such as ethylene and propylene, the Chemicals Sector provides industrial, high-performance and high-purity gases and chemicals for semicon and other industries, the Inorganics Sector provides ceramic products, such as alumina, abrasives, refractory/ graphite electrodes and fine carbon products. The Aluminum Sector provides aluminum materials and high-value-added fabricated aluminum, the Electronics Sector provides HD media, compound semiconductors such as ultra high bright LEDs, and rare earth magnetic alloys, and the Advanced Battery Materials Department (ABM) provides lithium-ion battery components. For more information, please visit www.sdk.co.jp/english/.Source: Showa Denko K.K.Contact:Copyright 2020 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved.

Werbehinweise: Die Billigung des Basisprospekts durch die BaFin ist nicht als ihre Befurwortung der angebotenen Wertpapiere zu verstehen. Wir empfehlen Interessenten und potenziellen Anlegern den Basisprospekt und die Endgultigen Bedingungen zu lesen, bevor sie eine Anlageentscheidung treffen, um sich moglichst umfassend zu informieren, insbesondere uber die potenziellen Risiken und Chancen des Wertpapiers. Sie sind im Begriff, ein Produkt zu erwerben, das nicht einfach ist und schwer zu verstehen sein kann.
The National Chairman of the National Democratic Congress (NDC), Samuel Ofosu Ampofo says the party will go all out to stop the 'evil conspiracy' of the ruling NPP whom they have accused of scheming with the National Identification Authority (NIA) and the Electoral Commission (EC) to rig the 2020 General Elections.

At a press conference in Accra on Thursday, May 14, 2020, the NDC Chairman alleged that the President of the Republic immediately after being sworn into office in 2017 imitated plans that will allow him to rig the next election to ensure he holds on to power at the end of his term in office.

He explains that the conspiracy started with the exclusion of the Voters ID card from the requirements of registration for the national ID card by the Akufo-Addo government.

According to him, it was part of a well-calculated scheme to disenfranchise a good number of Ghanaians from acquiring the national ID card (Ghana card), which was to be used subsequently, as one of the registration requirements in the new voters register plan they had long hatched.

It does appear that the President is not concerned about the future of Ghana, its peace, stability, and the survival of democracy. Prior to becoming President, Akufo-Addo had presented himself as the paragon of excellence where democracy and rule of law are concerned. However, since becoming President, all his actions have unfortunately proven that was all talk, not substance, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo said at the press conference.

He continued, Having failed to deliver on his promises to the people of this country and seeing defeat staring glaringly at him, he in conjunction with the Jean Mensah-led EC and the Ken Attafuah-led NIA are desperately scheming to rig the 2020 general elections and hold on to power at all cost. Not even the unusual circumstances we find ourselves in, which require that we pull together for our collective survival as a nation, are enough to deter the actors of this plot from their ungodly act. While our country craves for vital investments and resources to overcome the COVID-19 scourge, President Akufo-Addo, aided by his ever pliable collaborators is bent on wasting huge sums of the taxpayers money to invite trouble for this country.
AFP/Getty

A pair of Senate Republican chairmen earlier this week released a document about the "unmasking" of former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn that they says raises questions about whether Obama administration officials, including former Vice President Joe Biden, sought to "entrap" Mr Flynn and other incoming Trump administration officials in 2016 and 2017.

The National Security Agency (NSA) document released by Homeland Security Chairman Ron Johnson and Finance Chairman Chuck Grassley is part of a broader effort by the GOP to push their "Obamagate" narrative, a phrase popularised by Donald Trump encompassing a wide range of theories that Mr Obama and a cabal of "deep state" intelligence officials sought to kneecap Mr Trump's presidency by targeting his aides, such as Mr Flynn, with criminal probes.

Documents, testimony from ex-Obama officials, and at least one inspector general's report have not shown any evidence to merit the Obamagate theory.

Yet Mr Trump, congressional Republicans, and Fox News have sought to make Obamagate and the unmasking document a defining issue of the 2020 presidential race between Mr Trump and Mr Biden.

What is 'unmasking'?

"Unmasking" is the NSA's term for revealing a previously undisclosed person's identity to authorised national security and intelligence community officials.

The NSA frequently conducts surveillance on the communications of foreign diplomats and people believed to have ties to foreign governments, but redacts identifying information about the person on the other end of phone calls, emails, and other correspondence.

However, some national security officials can request unredacted reports that effectively reveal the identities of those on the other end of communications with the person who is under surveillance.

National security officials seeking such information must provide a written justification for their unmasking request, which is reviewed by NSA agents before any release.

Story continues

Officials cannot ask intelligence agencies to comb their files for a person's name in order to unmask them.

Was Mr Flynn's unmasking related to his previous guilty pleas for lying to the FBI?

That's actually unclear, despite the insinuations of Mr Grassley, Mr Johnson, and others in the GOP.

In December of 2017, Mr Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI on 24 January 2017 at the White House about his contact with former Russian Ambassador to the US Sergey Kislyak just weeks before. At the time, the FBI was probing possible links between Mr Trump's campaign and transition teams and Russia.

Mr Flynn later revoked his guilty plea, arguing he was unfairly targeted by law enforcement. On 7 May 2020, at the direction of Mr Trump's attorney general, William Barr, the Justice Department moved to drop the case against Mr Flynn, saying his alleged lie to FBI agents about his contact with Mr Kislyak on 29 December 2016 and in early January 2017 was not "material" to the FBI's Russia probe.

What the NSA document released by Republican senators earlier this week shows is that Mr Biden, former FBI Director James Comey, former CIA Director John Brennan, and more than a dozen other intelligence officials received access to NSA intelligence reports between 8 November 2016 and 31 January 2017 that unmasked Mr Flynn as the person on the other side of various communications with people whom the agency was surveilling.

The document does not say whether any of those communications recorded by the NSA were Mr Flynn's conversations with Mr Kislyak.

National security and legal experts have speculated since the NSA document release on Wednesday that most  if not all  of the surveillance reports with Mr Flynn's unmasked identity are not related to his contacts with Mr Kislyak.

First, most of the NSA reports on the document pre-date Mr Flynn's phone calls with Mr Kislyak.

And second, multiple FBI officials overseeing the 2016 Russia investigation have testified that the transcripts of Mr Flynn's phone calls with Mr Kislyak emanated from the FBI, not the NSA.

How common is unmasking?

In a word: very.

And the Trump administration has filed unmasking requests at a far higher rate than the Obama administration did, according to figures provided by Mr Trump's own Acting Director of National Intelligence, Richard Grenell.

In 2016, the Obama administration filed roughly 9,200 unmasking requests. In 2017, when Mr Trump took over from Mr Obama, that number crept up to about 9,500. It leaped to roughly 17,000 in 2019 before coming back down to around 10,000 last year.

How does unmasking tie into Obamagate?

Obamagate is Mr Trump's catch-all term for the web of beliefs that Mr Obama was part of a vast network of conspirators who sought to undermine the 2016 Trump campaign by pursuing legal cases against individuals such as Mr Flynn and intentionally beset his presidency with a sham Russia investigation.

The theory maintains that a corrupt cabal of Never-Trump top US intelligence officials  such as Mr Comey and FBI agent Peter Strzok  colluded with the international intelligence community, Ukraine, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and others to create a pretext to investigate the 2016 Trump campaigns ties to Russia by entrapping former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos in a sting operation by providing fake dirt purportedly from Russia on Hillary Clinton.

The FBI's questioning of Mr Flynn on 24 January 2017 over his communications with Mr Kislyak, which led to the criminal charges against him, was just a continuation of that alleged conspiracy, Republican lawmakers and Trump administration officials are arguing.

Again, the NSA document released this week does not necessarily suggest a connection between the unmasking of Mr Flynn and his conversations with Mr Kislyak.

What are the political parties saying about Mr Flynn's unmasking and Obamagate?

Democrats and the Biden campaign have dismissed the NSA's unmasking document and the broader Obamagate theory as an attempt by Mr Trump to gaslight voters ahead of the 2020 presidential election and distract them from his administration's response to the coronavirus crisis.

It's been a mixed bag among Republicans, though most have lent at least some support to Mr Trump's theories.

Mr Trump is publicly urging Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham to call Mr Obama to testify on what he knew about the 2016 Russia investigation and whether he unfairly targeted Mr Flynn and other officials.

"If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama. He knew EVERYTHING," Mr Trump tweeted on Thursday. "Do it... just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!" he wrote, tagging Mr Graham's Twitter account.

But the South Carolina Republican has dismissed the idea of calling Mr Obama to testify, saying that while "no president is above the law," he is "greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight."

Mr Graham also noted potential complications over Mr Obama's executive privilege powers as a former president.

Mr Grassley has suggested that maybe there should be people prosecuted over the treatment of Mr Flynn and others.

Who is probing unmasking and Obamagate theory?

Mr Barr, the leader of the DOJ, has tasked US Attorney John Durham with probing the origins of the 2016 Russia probe and whether it was conducted legally.

That probe began as an administrative review but has since become a criminal investigation. No charges have been filed, and very little information has leaked to the press about Mr Durham's findings so far.

Mr Graham announced on Thursday that his Judiciary panel will begin holding "in-depth congressional hearings" in early June on Mr Flynn's unmasking and the origins of the 2016 Russia investigation.

Mr Graham is breaking his investigation down into three phases: an exploration of the Obama administration's unmasking requests; alleged abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by FBI agents over the course of their 2016 investigation into ties between the Trump campaign and Russia; and whether special counsel Robert Mueller should have been appointed to continue the Russian election interference probe.

Mr Graham and other Republican lawmakers for years have accused the leaders of the FBIs Russia probe of letting political bias influence their investigation, a position that was not substantiated by a report last year from DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Mr Horowitzs report does, however, highlight a rash of issues with how the agents conducted the probe, including problems with their FISA warrant applications.

Read more

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THE ONLY refuse collection truck in Grand Turk went up in flames on Sunday (May 10) completely destroying it and leaving the island without any means to collect rubbish.





The truck was spotted on fire at about 4.30am and the domestic fire service were called and managed to extinguish the blaze by 5.28am. The cause is unknown.





The Environmental Health Department is now seeking quotations from refuse collection contractors to collect refuse in Grand Turk to prevent vector borne disease outbreaks.





In the meantime, residents are encouraged to use the drop box available at the Grand Turk solid waste site.





In a statement on Wednesday (May 12), the department thanked the fire service and other stakeholders who assisted to suppress and quickly extinguish the fire.





"We wish to assure the public that we are committed to safeguarding public health while also creating an environment that is healthy and aesthetically pleasing to both residents and visitors to enjoy.




Thiruvananthapuram: Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on Friday reiterated the demand of the state government to increase the borrowing limit from the current 3 per cent to 5 per cent, amid the coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown.

Because of the lockdown, there has been a drastic fall in the revenue collection and to overcome the financial constraints, we need a hike in the borrowing limit. The Central government has recently increased its borrowing limit to 5.5 per cent but the states limit is still at 3 per cent. Despite repeated requests, the Centre has not bothered to increase the borrowing limit. It is not in line with the basic principles of a Federal system," he said.



The Chief Minister also said there is nothing new in the announcement of the Union Finance Ministers allocation of more money to the states for the welfare of workers working in other states. The amount allocated to the Disaster Relief Fund is just a share of the Centre. The 15th Finance Commission had allocated a central share of Rs 314 crores to Kerala but the state has only half of it, Rs 157 crores.



We have asked the Prime Minister to allow special grants to the states in the context of COVID-19 situation and make this an additional consideration for inclusion in the Second Report of the 15th Finance Commission. It is inappropriate to portray the central contribution to the Disaster Relief Fund as help for COVID-19 prevention," he added.



From the Disaster Relief Fund, the state government has already given Rs 17 crores to district collectors for relief work and Rs 15 crores to the Health Department for buying medical equipment. As per the norms, only 25 per cent of the state's outlay can be spent on relief work and 10 per cent on purchasing equipment. Only this much can be used from SDRF amount. The state is using budgetary amounts to distribute welfare pensions.



Special trains to bring back stranded Keralites from eight states: The CM also announced that the Railways have agreed to arrange trains from eight states to Kerala to bring back the stranded people. Railways have also announced that the Bengaluru-Thiruvananthapuram Island Express is scheduled to operate daily. It is trying to make it a non-AC train.



Meanwhile, five states have granted approval for the return of the migrant labourers from Kerala. 28 trains will be sent to West Bengal from May 18 to June 14. There is growing concern among the students in Delhi that there is no special train to Kerala from there. It is not practical for these students to book online for the special AC trains through IRCTC and moreover, they cannot afford the AC train fare. In this scenario, we are trying to arrange the transport of the students by non-AC trains. The helpdesk in Delhi is coordinating the efforts. We will be able to announce the details of these special trains in a day or two, he added.



Kerala cases: 16 new cases were confirmed on Friday. Five persons from Wayanad district, four in Malappuram district, two each from Alappuzha and Kozhikode districts, and one each in Kollam, Palakkad and Kasargod districts are those who have tested positive. Seven of them have come back from overseas - four from UAE, two from Kuwait and one from Saudi Arabia. Six have returned from other states - four from Tamil Nadu and two from Maharashtra. Three cases have got infected through primary contact.



Meanwhile, no patient under treatment has recovered today. The total number of COVID-19 cases in the state is 576 and 80 patients are currently under treatment in different hospitals with Wayanad district having a maximum of 19 patients.
At the height of the war, he was a loyal servant of his brutal government, producing equipment for his countrys army  but at great risk to his own life, he saved hundreds of men and women doomed for mass extermination by employing them in his military factories. And in 1915  long before the bravery of a man whom every reader is already thinking of  Armenias Oskar Schindler proved that good could still exist amid hatred and terror.

He was a quarter of a century before his time. But Ottoman naval lieutenant Cemil Kunneh was worthy of Schindlers title. He was a patriotic and decorated hero from Turkeys Balkan wars. Yet as his Turkish masters proceeded with the Armenian Holocaust  the deliberate mass annihilation by Turkey of a million and a half Christian Armenians at the height of the First World War  Kunneh sheltered hundreds of these terrified civilians, men and women, some of them half-starved and en route to the death marches on which they were intended to perish.
WINNIPEG, Manitoba, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- DELTA 9 CANNABIS INC. (TSX: DN) (OTCQX: VRNDF) (Delta 9 or the Company), is pleased to announce financial and operating results for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020.



Financial Highlights for Q1, 2020:

 Operating revenues of $11.75 million for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020, up 109% from $5.63 million for the same quarter last year.  Sequential net revenues increased 11% versus $10.59 million for the three-month period ending December 31, 2019.  Gross profit of $4.90 million for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020, up 170% from $1.82 million for the same quarter last year.  Sequential gross profit increased 51% versus $3.23 million for the three-month period ending December 31, 2019.  Gross profit margin improved to 42% for Q1, 2020.  Net income from operations was $2.90 million for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020 versus a loss from operations of $(946,180) for the three-month period ending March 31, 2019.  Sequential net income from operations increased 503% versus $481,121 for the three-month period ending December 31, 2019.  Adjusted EBITDA was $1.65 million for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020 versus an adjusted EBITDA loss of $(1.98 million) for the three-month period ending March 31, 2019.  Also compares with an adjusted EBITDA loss of $(91,760) for the three-month period ending December 31, 2019.  The Company reported an earnings per share of $0.02 for the three-month period ending March 31, 2020.  The Company reported a strong financial position, with working capital of $23.90 million and total assets of $72.05 million.

We were fortunate to be able to maintain continuous operations of our retail stores, wholesale and business to business ("B2B") business units throughout the COVID-19 crisis. This allowed Delta 9 to be one of the few cannabis companies in Canada to report positive net income and adjusted EBITDA results, said John Arbuthnot, CEO of Delta 9. Our company was able to generate increases in sequential quarterly revenue and strong performance in our retail and B2B segments and a general rebound in our wholesale business volumes and wholesale average selling prices.



Q1, 2020 Operational Highlights

 Delta 9 received Health Canada approval for its new purpose-built cannabis processing center which will allow for fully automated bottling, packaging, capping and labelling of its consumer-packaged dried cannabis products. The Company anticipates that once the processing center is operating at capacity it will allow for processing of up to 25,000 kilograms per year of dried cannabis flower material.  Delta 9 completed its final services milestone under an agreement with a micro cultivation partner, Oliver Acres Ltd., (operating as Cypress Craft). As one of the Companys micro cultivation partners, Cypress Craft entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Delta 9 whereby Delta 9 provides services relating to the cannabis production facility design and construction, development of standard operating procedures and sanitation programs, consulting on Health Canada licensing, and other services supporting the acquisition of a Health Canada license.  Delta 9 entered into a second supply agreement with Auxly Cannabis Group Inc. (Auxly) who will supply Delta 9's retail stores with a suite of cannabis 2.0 products including cannabis oils, chocolates, chewables and vape products. This is in addition to the strategic partnership that was signed in September 2018 that included a supply agreement which granted Auxly the right to purchase up to 5,000 kilograms of cannabis and 500 kilograms of cannabis trim per year until July 1, 2030. In exchange, Auxly invested $16.25 million in the Company by purchasing 5,909,090 common shares of the Company, becoming one of Delta 9's early strategic investors.  Delta 9 completed its final services milestone under an agreement with its micro cultivation partner Because You Cann Inc. As one of the Company's micro cultivation partners, Because You Cann entered into a strategic cooperation agreement with Delta 9 whereby Delta 9 provides services relating to cannabis production facility design and construction, development of standard operating procedures and sanitation programs, consulting on Health Canada licensing, and other services supporting the acquisition of a Health Canada licence.

Summary of Quarterly Results:



Consolidated Statement of Net Loss Q2 2019 Q3 2019 Q4 2019 Q1 2020 Revenue $8,886,155 $6,662,137 $10,585,484 $11,753,406 Cost of Sales 5,936,975 4,628,070 7,356,889 6,858,370 Gross Profit Before Unrealized Gain From Changes In Biological Assets 2,949,180 2,034,067 3,228,595 4,895,036 Unrealized gain from changes in fair value of biological assets (Net) 586,366 1,388,863 1,991,398 2,761,873 Gross Profit $3,535,546 $3,422,930 $5,219,993 $7,656,909 Expenses General and Administrative 3,075,803 2,681,388 3,118,669 3,198,840 Sales and Marketing 1,324,537 1,151,158 1,385,700 1,243,115 Share Based Compensation 244,848 215,456 234,503 314,231 Total Operating Expenses $4,645,188 $4,048,002 $4,738,872 $4,756,186 Adjusted EBITDA (Loss) 1 (663,705) (849,760) (91,760) 1,650,398 Income (Loss) from Operations $(1,109,642) $(625,072) $481,121 $2,900,723 Other Income/ Expenses (206,231) (642,190) (696,667) (711,538) Net Income (Loss) $(1,315,873) $(1,267,262) $(215,556) $2,189,185 Basic and Diluted Earnings (Loss) Per Share $(0.01) $(0.02) $(0.01) $0.02

The following chart provides a breakdown of the Companys revenue by segment:



Revenue from the Sale of Cannabis Three-month period ending March 31, 2019 Three-month period ending December 31, 2019 Three-month period ending March 31, 2020 Wholesale Cannabis Revenue $2,935,641 $1,448,992 $2,991,299 Retail Cannabis Revenue 2,437,094 5,050,690 5,854,017 Medicinal Cannabis Revenue 96,560 48,911 58,026 Revenue from Other categories Business to business activities 45,000 3,793,559 2,977,859 Merchandise and cannabis devices 155,071 220,344 166,334 Other 46,737 53,451 64,466 Sub total $5,716,103 $10,615,947 $12,112,001 (Less) Excise Taxes (83,919) (30,463) (358,595) Net Revenue $5,632,184 $10,585,484 $11,753,406

Discussion of Operations:

Key Performance Indicators Q1, 2019 Q2, 2019 Q3, 2019 Q4, 2019 Q1, 2020 Production/ Wholesale Unit Total Grams Produced 418,901 675,233 871,516 1,305,806 1,198,983 Direct Production Cost Per Gram* $1.44 $1.05 $1.08 $0.91 $0.98 Total Cost Per Gram** $1.60 $1.21 $1.21 $1.04 $1.10 Total Grams Released for Sale 185,626 565,599 519,596 718,353 729,085 Total Grams Sold (Medical and Recreational) 399,787 527,693 548,981 416,729 591,080 Avg Selling Price per Gram $7.58 $5.63 $4.19 $3.59 $4.50 Retail Unit Total Grams Sold (Retail) 189,796 282,336 349,410 491,941 692,661 Avg Selling Price per Gram $12.84 $12.42 $12.47 $10.27 $8.45 Number of Transactions Processed 44,885 84,882 108,438 134,132 149,440 Avg Transaction Size $58.27 $41.46 $41.67 $39.29 $45.40 Unique Website Visitors (delta9.ca) 180,774 152,680 150,279 165,415 171,218

*Direct Production Cost per gram includes direct labour, nutrients, utilities, growing materials and supplies costs

**Total Cost per gram includes Direct Production Cost per gram plus processing labour, packaging, bottling, and labelling costs

A comprehensive discussion of Delta 9s financial position and results of operations is provided in the Companys Management Discussion & Analysis for the first quarter ended March 31, 2020 filed on SEDAR and can be found at www.sedar.com .

Q1 Results 2020 Conference Call

Delta 9 has scheduled a conference call to discuss the results for its first quarter ended March 31, 2020. The conference call will be hosted May 15, 2020 at 9:00 a.m. Eastern Time by John Arbuthnot, Chief Executive Officer, and Jim Lawson, Chief Financial Officer, followed by a question and answer period.

Date May 15, 2020 Time 9:00 EST Dial in # 1-888-886-7786 - Toll free North America Replay information: 1-877-674-6060 Replay Password 634784# Available until August 15, 2020

For more information contact:



Investor & Media Contact:

Ian Chadsey VP Corporate Affairs

Mobile: 204-898-7722

E-mail: ian.chadsey@delta9.ca

About Delta 9 Cannabis Inc.

Delta 9 Cannabis Inc. is a vertically integrated cannabis company focused on bringing the highest quality cannabis products to market. The company sells cannabis products through its wholesale and retail sales channels and sells its cannabis grow pods to other businesses. Delta 9's wholly-owned subsidiary, Delta 9 Bio-Tech Inc., is a licensed producer of medical and recreational cannabis and operates an 80,000 square foot production facility in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Delta 9 owns and operates a chain of retail stores under the Delta 9 Cannabis Store brand. Delta 9's shares trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbol "DN" and on the OTCQX under the symbol "VRNDF". For more information, please visit www.delta9.ca.

Disclaimer for Forward-Looking Information

Certain statements in this release are forward-looking statements, which reflect the expectations of management regarding the Companys future business plans and other matters. Forward-looking statements consist of statements that are not purely historical, including any statements regarding beliefs, plans, expectations or intentions regarding the future. Forward looking statements in this news release include statements relating to the Companys expansion plans. Such statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results, performance or developments to differ materially from those contained in the statements, including all risk factors set forth in the annual information form of Delta 9 dated March 19, 2020 which has been filed on SEDAR. No assurance can be given that any of the events anticipated by the forward-looking statements will occur or, if they do occur, what benefits the Company will obtain from them. Readers are urged to consider these factors carefully in evaluating the forward-looking statements contained in this news release and are cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements, which are qualified in their entirety by these cautionary statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company disclaims any intent or obligation to update publicly any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws.
PHILADELPHIA - A judge has reinstated all charges brought against an Amtrak engineer for his role in a high-speed derailment in Philadelphia in 2015 that killed eight people.

The ruling Thursday by Superior Court Judge Victor Stabile overturns a lower courts decision last July to dismiss the involuntary manslaughter and reckless endangerment charges against Brandon Bostian. His lawyer, Brian McMonagle, has argued that any mistakes Bostian made did not rise to the level of a crime.

Ruling on an appeal brought by the state attorney generals office, Stabile found the dismissal was based on fact-finding that should happen in a trial, a decision that McMonagle said would be appealed. Stabile said the lower courts role was only to determine whether the state presented enough evidence to warrant a trial, and prosecutors met that burden, he ruled.

Attorney General Josh Shapiros office said it can move forward in our work to deliver justice.

The families who lost loved ones in this fateful crash and the many passengers who were injured deserve closure, his office said in a statement.

The derailment happened in May 2015, when the New York-bound train jumped the track as it rounded a curve at more than twice the 50 mph (80 kph) speed limit.

National Transportation Safety Board investigators concluded Bostian lost his bearings while distracted by radio chatter about a nearby train that had been struck by a rock. They found no evidence he was impaired or was using a cellphone.

The case against Bostian has seen a series of reversals of prosecutors or judges decisions that the engineer should not be held criminally culpable for what happened that night.

Amtrak has taken responsibility for the crash, agreeing to pay $265 million to settle claims filed by victims and their families. Since the accident, the railroad has installed positive train control technology on its Boston-to-Washington tracks that can automatically slow or stop a speeding train.
The company was added to the Commerce Department's "entity list" last year due to national security concerns, amid accusations from Washington that it violated US sanctions on Iran and can spy on customers. Huawei has denied the allegations.

"There has been a very highly technical loophole through which Huawei has been in able, in effect, to use US technology with foreign fab producers," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross told Fox Business News on Friday, calling the rule change a "highly tailored thing to try to correct that loophole."

The department said the rule is aimed at preventing Huawei from continuing to "undermine" its status as a blacklisted company, meaning suppliers of US-made sophisticated technology must seek a US government licence before selling to it.

TSMC said on Friday it is "following the US export rule change closely" and working with outside counsel to "conduct legal analysis and ensure a comprehensive examination and interpretation of these rules."

Frustration among China hawks in the administration that Huawei's entity listing was not doing enough to curb its access to supplies prompted an effort, first reported by Reuters in November, to crack down on the company that culminated in Friday's rule.

Washington lawyer Kevin Wolf, a former Commerce Department official, said the rule appeared to be a "novel, complex expansion of US export controls" for chip-related items made with US technology abroad and sent to Huawei. But he stressed that chips designed by companies other than Huawei and manufactured with US technology could still be sold to the company without the licence requirement.

While the new rules will apply to chips regardless of their level of sophistication, a senior US State Department official who also briefed reporters on Friday opened the door to some flexibility for the company, echoing reprieves granted to Huawei by the Trump administration previously.

"This is a licensing requirement. It does not necessarily mean that things are denied," the official said, adding that the rule gives the US government greater "visibility" into the shipments. "What are done with those applications, we'll have to see ... Each application will be judged on its merits."

After essentially barring Huawei from buying from US suppliers, the Commerce Department granted licences to some of Huaweis biggest US partners to continue to sell to the company, while also allowing smaller rural telecoms to continue to purchase Huawei equipment to keep their networks up and running.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 14:53:21|Editor: huaxia

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People order coffee at Queen Victoria Building in Sydney, Australia, on May 17, 2020. Sydney began to ease some COVID-19 restrictions from May 15, allowing people to go to some beaches, pubs and eateries for recreational activities. (Xinhua/Bai Xuefei)

SYDNEY, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Sydney began to ease some COVID-19 restrictions from Friday, allowing people to go to some beaches, pubs and eateries for recreational activities, while authorities warned the infection rate could rise if people become complacent.

Australia's state of New South Wales (NSW), of which Sydney is the capital, announced easing on its public gathering rules from Friday allowing a maximum of 10 people to congregate together.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian warned that complacency could see COVID-19 infections rise again as eight new cases were reported overnight, bringing the state's total cases to 3,071.

"For the first time in a long time people will be out of the house for recreation purposes and that means we all have to be vigilant," Berejiklian said.

"Don't assume because you're out and about with people you know, that you can relax on the social distancing -- because you can't."

Some of the most popular beaches managed by Sydney's Randwick City Council, including Clovelly, Coogee and Maroubra will reopen on Friday for recreation activities while authorities stressed that no more than 10 people in a group were allowed at any time on the beach.

"The relaxation of some restrictions means we're taking small, cautious steps towards life as we used to know it but is not an indication that we should become complacent," said Randwick Mayor Danny Said.

According to the new rules, Sydney pubs, restaurants, bars and cafes can have up to 10 patrons eating inside their shops from Friday and the social distancing rules still need to be followed.
Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Friday commissioned a ship and two interceptor boats of the Indian Coast Guard (ICG) in Goa through video conferencing from New Delhi in the backdrop of COVID-19, a step that will boost operational capability of the maritime security agency.

Indigenously built Indian Coast Guard Ship 'Sachet', a patrol vessel, and interceptor boats C-450 and C-451 were commissioned in Goa by Singh via video link.

Speaking on the occasion, Singh said the commissioning of the ships is an important milestone in capacity building of the Indian Coast Guard.

Their commissioning also indicates the growing strength of Indian shipbuilding capabilities, Singh said.

He lauded the efforts put in by the ICG towards the safety and security of the Indian coast.

Safe coasts provide opportunities for economic growth of the country which is essential in nation- building, the defence minister said.

An ICG spokesman said the ship ''Sachet'', the first in the series of five offshore patrol vessels (OPVs), has been designed and built indigenously by Goa Shipyard Ltd (GSL) and is fitted with state-of-the-art navigation and communication equipment, sensor and machinery.

The spokesman said this was first time in the Indian maritime history that a Coast Guard ship was commissioned through digital medium, maintaining the strict protocol of social distancing in the backdrop of the COVID -19 pandemic.

Along with Singh, Ajay Kumar, defence secretary, and D G Krishnaswamy Natarajan, Director General of ICG, were also present on the occasion.

Minister of State for Defence Shripad Naik was present at Vasco facility of Goa Shipyard Ltd at the time of the commissioning.

"The 105 metre ship displaces approx 2350 tons and is propelled by two 9100 KW diesel engines designed to attain a maximum speed of 26 knots, with an endurance of 6000 nm.

"The sustenance and reach, coupled with the latest equipment and system, provides her the capability to perform the role of a command platform and undertake tasks to fulfil the Coast Guard charter," the spokesman said.

The ship is designed to carry a twin-engine helicopter and four high speed boats and one inflatable boat for swift boarding and search and rescue operations, the spokesman added.

It is also capable of carrying limited pollution response equipment to undertake oil spill pollution response at sea, he said.

ICGS Sachet is commanded by Deputy Inspector General Rajesh Mittal and manned by 11 officers and 110 men.

The spokesman said the interceptor boats C-450 and C- 451 are indigenously designed and built by L&T Shipyard, Hazira (Gujarat) and is fitted with latest navigation and Communication equipment.

The two 30 metre boats are capable of achieving speeds in excess of 45 knots and are designed for high speed interception, close coast patrol and low intensity maritime operations, the spokesman said.

The interceptor boats are commanded by Assistant Commandant Gaurav Kumar Gola and Assistant Commandant Akin Zutshi.

The spokesman said the ICG has been a pioneer in inducting indigenous assets which has enabled it to remain operationally available throughout the year.

In continuation of our efforts to maximise the indigenous content in our new assets, the ICG is proud to state that the ships commissioned today, have about 70 per cent indigenous content, thus providing the necessary fillip to the Indian shipbuilding industry, he said.

He said the ship and boats, on joining the ICG fleet, will be deployed extensively for EEZ (exclusive economic zone) surveillance, coastal security and other duties.

"With today's commissioning, the Indian Coast Guard has reached a landmark of 150 ships and boats and 62 aircraft. Further, 40 ships are at various stages of construction at different Indian shipyards," the spokesman said.

Also, 16 Advanced Light Helicopters are under production at HAL, Bengaluru, which will provide the added strength to the surveillance capabilities of the ICG to deal with the ever-dynamic maritime challenges, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

South Lake Tahoe is increasing enforcement of a local order allowing the city to issue $1,000 citations to people who violate the California stay-at-home order, which asks people to stay home except for local shopping and essential needs such as going to the doctor.

Amid the coronavirus pandemic, the city prohibits hotel or short-term-rental owners from renting their properties to anyone except for essential workers. Hotel and home owners who rent their properties illegally to vacationers as well as guests of those properties can both be fined.

South Lake Mayor Jason Collin said the city has issued one citation to a hotel and two to short-term rental owners and will cite more if necessary moving into the Memorial Day weekend.

"We dont want to be fining people," Collin said. "We just want people to stay home right now. We just want to make sure were doing everything to keep our community safe."

Collin added: "I think its important to reiterate that we are a tourism destination. We are a tourism economy and we embrace everyone who comes to Tahoe in this place everyone calls home. But right now, we want to make sure were protecting the community that is here full-time."

Tourists have generally been staying away from Tahoe, but the hotter it gets in the valley, the more the order gets violated, the mayor said.

While the California state order requires people to stay home and implies that traveling for overnight vacations is prohibited, many jurisdictions are issuing additional statements and orders to clarify that short-term rentals can only be rented to essential workers. This includes El Dorado County, where South Lake Tahoe is located, and nearby Nevada and Placer counties.

While the city is stepping up enforcement of short-term rentals, they have relaxed their stance for second-home owners and are now allowing them to travel from other locations to their Tahoe homes.

"If you have a property up here and if you are the owner and you came up to it to work on it or stay in your property, thats allowed," Collin said.

South Lake Tahoe is located in El Dorado County, which has reported 62 coronavirus cases and zero deaths. The county's Lake Tahoe region has 20 cases.

El Dorado County recently obtained approval from the state to move more quickly into Stage 2 of Gov. Gavin Newsom's four-stage reopening plan. Collin said restaurants in South Lake Tahoe are preparing to reopen for dining service and they're being vigilant about physical distancing.

"We eagerly want to move into Phase 2 and we want to make sure we move from Phase 2 into Phase 3," Collin said. "All hands are on deck right now. We need to manage it very well and move forward cautiously. We want to focus on moving forward and not move two steps forward and then four steps back."

Hospitality services and hotels for tourism fall into Stage 3 of the governor's plan and Collin estimates if the region doesn't see a surge in cases, tourism may return by mid-June.

This story was updated on May 15 at 4:15 p.m.

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Sign up for 'The Daily' newsletter for the latest on coronavirus here.

Amy Graff is a digital editor with SFGATE. Email her: agraff@sfgate.com.
How does a Cold War begin? In Washington, an accumulation of anti-Beijing animus hangs like a dark cloud over the capital. Before the pandemic, there was no shortage of experts warning of emergent fault lines between the United States and China. That sense of a looming clash between the 21st century's heavyweights has only accelerated since the novel coronavirus paralyzed much of the world.

In an interview aired Thursday morning by the right-wing Fox Business Network, President Donald Trump floated the idea that the United States "could cut off the whole relationship" with China in the aftermath of the pandemic, in reference to discussions over the lingering trade differences between both countries. He also argued that the economic toll of the pandemic offered further proof that the United States needed to do more to disconnect itself from global supply chains that thread through China.

Trump is not alone in this tough talk - and some of his lieutenants and allies are even harsher. Republican senators are pushing sanctions and new legislation aimed at punishing China for its alleged role in covering up the initial stages of the outbreak. The State Department curtailed visas for Chinese journalists operating in the United States, as part of an ongoing tit-for-tat with Beijing that uses work permits for foreign correspondents as diplomatic game pieces.

Anonymous White House officials went so far as to leak to the media threats to skip U.S. debt obligations to China, a move experts say would be deeply damaging to U.S. credibility on the world stage. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted last month, Americans view China more negatively than they ever have since the organization started surveying anti-Chinese sentiment in this manner in 2005. Some of the anger in Washington reflects election-year posturing, with Trump and the Republicans understandably eager to shift attention away from the administration's mismanagement of the coronavirus crisis.

But many Democrats, including presidential candidate and former vice president Joe Biden, are also keen on taking a more strident anti-Chinese line. And countries elsewhere, including other regional powers in Asia, are also starting to adopt an approach aimed more at directly countering China - which further fuels Chinese nationalism, anchored, as it is, in a long history of foreign encirclement and mistreatment.

Officials in Washington and Beijing periodically insist they don't want a new Cold War, but the geopolitical head winds appear to be blowing in that direction. "When Chinese government officials criticize what they explicitly call a 'Cold War mentality' in the U.S.," wrote Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian of Axios, "they aren't calling for an end to ideological competition or great power rivalry, but rather to U.S. attempts to stymie Beijing's plans."

According to Reuters, an internal report presented by China's Ministry of State Security to the country's top leaders warned that the rising global hostility toward Beijing, engendered in part by U.S. rhetoric, was at its worst levels since the events at Tiananmen Square in 1989. The report allegedly concluded that the United States was bent on undermining the ruling Communist Party of China and viewed the country as an economic and security threat.

"One of those with knowledge of the report said it was regarded by some in the Chinese intelligence community as China's version of the 'Novikov Telegram,' a 1946 dispatch by the Soviet ambassador to Washington, Nikolai Novikov, that stressed the dangers of U.S. economic and military ambition in the wake of World War II," Reuters reported.

That document, along with U.S. diplomat George Kennan's parallel "Long Telegram" from Moscow, are the founding texts of the Soviet-U.S. rivalry that would come to dominate the rest of the 20th century.

Something similar, if not quite the same, seems to be afoot now, according to experts. "I know people get uncomfortable with the terminology, but I do think we have to be honest and call this what it is, and this is the start of a new Cold War," Clete Willems, a former White House trade official, told CNBC. "And if we're not careful, things could get much, much worse."

"We're essentially in the beginnings of a Cold War," Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society, told Business Insider. "We are on a downward slide into something increasingly adversarial with China."

In Washington, a cadre of policymakers fret about the United States' waning (or vanished) military primacy over China. In Beijing, retired generals and organs of its vast military have mused more openly about the prospects and risks of launching a military invasion to reclaim Taiwan.

Conflict of that sort is not in the cards - at least not yet. But the common wisdom that the two countries and their intertwined economies would inevitably get along is also fading.

China's entry into the World Trade Organization nearly two decades ago - which turned the country into an exports-driven economic superpower - was once seen as a towering achievement of globalization. Trump and his allies have cast that moment as a kind of original sin that they seek to redeem, not least in their steady campaign to undermine the WTO and doom it to irrelevance.

"It will be extremely hard to anchor the deteriorating relationship again in this maelstrom," Mikko Huotari, executive director at the Mercator Institute for Chinese Studies, a Berlin-based think tank focused on China, told the Financial Times. "Strategic competition will remain the dominant paradigm. The question is whether it tilts toward permanent and all-out hostility."

Neither side is set to gain from this tense state of play. "Despite the best efforts of ideological warriors in Beijing and Washington," former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd wrote last week, "the uncomfortable truth is that China and the United States are both likely to emerge from this crisis significantly diminished."
Oregon senator Ron Wyden, whose amendment co-sponsored with Mike Lee failed by one vote: REUTERS

An attempt to stop law enforcement agencies from accessing Americans internet histories without a warrant has failed in the US Senate  by a single vote.

Introduced by Democratic senator Ron Wyden and Republican Steve Daines, the measure was an amendment to a bill reauthorising certain lapsed intelligence programmes. While that bill does introduce certain new privacy protections, including a restriction on how cell phone data may be used, many civil libertarians both inside and outside Congress are concerned that it does not do enough to keep Americans safe from excessive surveillance, especially in their online lives.

Speaking on the Senate floor, Mr Wyden put the case to his colleagues that the governments power to gain access to browsing and search history should be curtailed, reminding them that during the current pandemic, tens of millions of Americans staying at home are using the internet more than ever as their only connection to the outside world  including for very private personal reasons that they should be entitled to keep to themselves.

Collecting this information is as close to reading minds as surveillance can get, said Mr Wyden on the floor. It is digital mining of the personal lives of the American people  without this bipartisan amendment, it is open season on anybodys most personal information.

The amendment needed 60 votes to pass, but in the end, only 59 senators backed it. Among the other 41, four didnt vote at all: two Republicans, Lamar Alexander and Ben Sasse, and two Democrats, Patty Murray and Bernie Sanders.

Mr Alexander is in quarantine, and Ms Murray was apparently in transit back to Washington, DC; her office has said she would have voted for the amendment had she been there. Mr Sanders has not yet explained why he did not vote.

The Senate did pass another amendment that bolsters third-party oversight in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court process. Tabled by senators Patrick Leahy and Mike Lee, it passed 79-11. Aside from its substantive content, the Leahy-Lee amendment also means that the overall bill will need to go back to the House of Representatives after it is passed by the Senate, setting up another round of wrangling over its contents.

The house too has its share of privacy advocates in both parties, many of whom share Mr Wydens views on internet surveillance. Speaking of Americans stuck at home during the pandemic, he asked: Dont those Americans deserve some measure of privacy? Dont they deserve better than their governments snooping into the websites they visit? How can this be that the government can spy on them when they are not suspected of doing anything wrong?

And most importantly, how is this okay in America?
Equity benchmark Sensex ended marginally lower after a choppy session on Friday as investors weighed the fiscal impact of the government's economic stimulus.

According to market experts, participants fear that the Rs 20 lakh crore package may not result in direct and immediate boost to demand, raising doubts over the country's economic revival in the near term.

After slumping over 350 points during the day, the 30-share index pared most losses to settle 25.16 points or 0.08 per cent lower at 31,097.73.

Similarly, NSE Nifty slipped 5.90 points, or 0.06 per cent, to close at 9,136.85.

M&M was the top laggard in the Sensex pack, cracking over 4 per cent, followed by Axis Bank, IndusInd Bank, Hero MotoCorp, Sun Pharma and ICICI Bank.

On the other hand, Bharti Airtel, Asian Paints, Tata Steel, NTPC, HUL and Reliance ended with gains.

Besides uncertainty over the effectiveness of the fiscal stimulus package, the spike in COVID-19 cases in the country is weighing on investor sentiment, experts noted.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced a Rs 3.16 lakh crore package comprising free foodgrains for migrant workers, Rs 2 lakh crore concessional credit to farmers and working capital for street vendors in a bid to help those hit hard by the nationwide lockdown.

She is scheduled to announce the third tranche of the government's stimulus package later Friday.

The number of COVID-19 cases in India climbed to 81,970, while the death toll rose to 2,649, according to the health ministry.

Globally, the number of cases linked to the disease has crossed 44.43 lakh and the death toll has topped 3.02 lakh.

Bourses in Shanghai and Hong Kong settled in the red, while Tokyo and Seoul closed with gains.

Stock exchanges in Europe were trading on a positive note in early deals.

International oil benchmark Brent crude futures climbed 2.18 per cent to USD 31.81 per barrel.

On the currency front, the rupee provisionally settled 2 paise lower at 75.58 against the US dollar.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
COLUMBUS, Ohio, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Alliance Data Systems Corporation (NYSE: ADS), a leading provider of data-driven marketing, loyalty and payment solutions, provided an update on its Card Services segment.

In connection with the release of the Company's Master Trust Monthly Noteholder's Statement, the Company is releasing similar metrics for the overall total managed portfolio. The Master Trust data represents a subset of the Company's total managed portfolio, and the Company believes the information presented below provides a more complete view of the Card Services segment.



For the month ended April 30, 2020

For the four months ended April 30, 2020

(dollars in thousands) Average receivables $ 16,791,480

$ 17,918,668 Year over year change in average receivables

1%



7% Net charge-offs $ 102,657

$ 422,871 Net charge-offs as a percentage of average receivables (1)

7.3%



7.1%



























(1) Compares to 6.4% for each of the month and four months ended April 30, 2019, respectively.





As of April 30, 2020

As of April 30, 2019

(dollars in thousands) 30 days + delinquencies - principal $ 870,583

$ 791,625 Period ended receivables - principal $ 15,576,286

$ 16,017,638 Delinquency rate

5.6%



4.9%

About Alliance Data

Alliance Data (NYSE: ADS) is a leading provider of data-driven marketing, loyalty and payment solutions serving large, consumer-based industries. The Company creates and deploys customized solutions that measurably change consumer behavior while driving business growth and profitability for some of today's most recognizable brands. Alliance Data helps its partners create and increase customer loyalty across multiple touch points using traditional, digital, mobile and emerging technologies. An S&P 500, FORTUNE 500 and FORTUNE 100 Best Companies to Work For company headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, Alliance Data consists of businesses that together employ over 8,500 associates at more than 50 locations worldwide.

Alliance Data's Card Services business is a provider of market-leading private label, co-brand, and business credit card programs. LoyaltyOne owns and operates the AIR MILES Reward Program, Canada's most recognized loyalty program, and Netherlands-based BrandLoyalty, a global provider of tailor-made loyalty programs for grocers. More information about Alliance Data can be found at www.AllianceData.com.

Follow Alliance Data on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. Forward-looking statements give our expectations or forecasts of future events and can generally be identified by the use of words such as "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "intend," "project," "plan," "likely," "may," "should" or other words or phrases of similar import. Similarly, statements that describe our business strategy, outlook, objectives, plans, intentions or goals also are forward-looking statements. Examples of forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements we make regarding, and the guidance we give with respect to, our anticipated operating or financial results, completion of strategic initiatives, future dividend declarations, and future economic conditions, including, but not limited to, fluctuation in currency exchange rates, market conditions and COVID-19 impacts related to relief measures for impacted borrowers and depositors, labor shortages due to quarantine, reduction in demand from clients, supply chain disruption for our reward suppliers and disruptions in the airline or travel industries.

We believe that our expectations are based on reasonable assumptions. Forward-looking statements, however, are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from the projections, anticipated results or other expectations expressed in this release, and no assurances can be given that our expectations will prove to have been correct. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, factors set forth in the Risk Factors section in our Annual Report on Form 10-K for the most recently ended fiscal year, which may be updated in Item 1A of, or elsewhere in, our Quarterly Reports on Form 10-Q filed for periods subsequent to such Form 10-K. Our forward-looking statements speak only as of the date made, and we undertake no obligation, other than as required by applicable law, to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, subsequent events, anticipated or unanticipated circumstances or otherwise.

Contact: Investors/Analysts

Tiffany Louder

Alliance Data

214-494-3048

[email protected]





Media

Shelley Whiddon

Alliance Data

214-494-3811

[email protected]

SOURCE Alliance Data Systems Corporation

Related Links

http://www.alliancedata.com


Guwahati: Up until now, 14,919 pigs have died in Assam due to the African Swine Fever (ASF), said state Minister for Agriculture and Animal Husbandry and Veterinary, Atul Bora, on Thursday.

He also said that the death rate of pigs is increasing day by day.

"Ten districts have been affected so far. We are in touch with the Centre and it has assured us help. We have demanded Rs 144 crore for the culling of pigs and compensation," said Bora.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 16)  A factory worker was allegedly beaten black and blue by police officers in General Trias, Cavite on May 12.

Thirty-year old Ronald Campo was arrested for violating quarantine policies in Tropical Village, Barangay San Francisco.

Aside from bruises and wounds all over his body, Campo also sustained a fracture on his skull, his brother Rolando told CNN Philippines.

With the damages incurred, Rolando said his brother is still lucky to survive the alleged mauling of policemen to tell his own tale.

"Nakahiga pa rin, hirap pa ring gumalaw sir. Yung katawan niya kasi sobrang bugbog, lamog na lamog po," Rolando describing his brother currently confined at the General Emilio Aguinaldo Memorial Hospital in Trece Martires City.

[Translation: He is still lying in bed and still hard to move sir. His body was so bruised.]

Rolando took a video of his older brother recalling the incident.

In his narrative, Ronald said he was arrested along with other curfew violators in Tropical Village night of May 12.

They were then brought to the General Trias town plaza where they were ordered to exercise as a form of penalty to their violation.

Ronald said he fell asleep at the plaza until a policeman woke him and another man up and were told that a high-ranking officer wants to talk to them. That's around midnight of May 13.

They were then brought to a dark area near the plaza where they were allegedly beaten up.

"Inaano po nila ako ng batuta, tapos sinusuntok nila ako sa mukha. Nagtatakbo na lang ako. Nasasaktan na po nila ako," he narrated.

[Translation: They were beating me up with a club, then they punched me in the face. I ran, knowing they are hurting me.]

"Tapos tumakbo na lang po ako, sobrang takot ko kasi baka patayin na lang nila ako e. Kaya tumakbo na lang po ako. Humingi po ako ng tulong sa iba."

[Translation: Then I ran and I am so scared because maybe they will kill me. That's why I ran. I sought help from others.]

Ronald said he was caught in a house of an old man, he didn't know where exactly is.

"Tapos inabutan ko na lang, pinagsasasaktan nila ako. Tapos nawalan na ako ng malay noon," his memory ended there until he woke up and was already being treated at the hospital.

[Translation: I remember they are hurting me. Then I lost my consciousness.]

In a Facebook post, Rolando said at 6:00 in the morning of May 13, all persons arrested on May 12 were already allowed to go home... But not Ronald.

A village resident who was also among those arrested told them through a common friend to go to the police station to check on Ronald.

Rolando and his mother went to the police station, his brother was not there.

After some exchanges with policemen on duty, they were told that Ronald was brought to a hospital.

"Ayan na ang naabutan ko sa kuya ko. Basag daw ang bungo sa bandang pisngi. 'Di kami kilala," Rolando said in his post.

[Translation: That's what I saw with my older brother. His skull is broken, near his cheeks. He cannot distinguish us anymore.]

"Nung nakita niya ako sabi niya sakin ng paulit-ulit, 'Sir patayin mo na lang ako.' Bakit ganon na lang kadali sa kuya kong sabihin yun. Kasi kung ganon, sobrang pahirap ginawa sa kanya," Rolando lamented.

[Translation: When he saw me, he said repeatedly "Sir just kill me." Why is it so easy for him to say that. If that's the case, he should have suffered so much.]

Police report

In a police report obtained by CNN Philippines, members of the PNP Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) carried out an operation in Tropical Village at around midnight of May 13.

Ronald was among those arrested. The report said he was under the influence of alcohol.

Upon arriving at the police station, the police reported that Ronald tried to escape by running away.

He allegedly led the police, only identified as Cpl. Barte and Cpl. Villostas, to a chase.

Eventually, barangay tanods were also chasing Ronald until they were able to corner him at a private property.

The report stated "he (Ronald) jumped over a concrete fence but slips his feet and fell down on the pavement..."

When asked about the incident, Cavite Police Chief Col. Marlon Santos denied the allegation of Campo.

"Yung alleged na binugbog e hindi siya binugbog. Pinaninindigan ng chief of police na hindi siya binugbog... Sa kanyang effort na tumakas, umakyat siya ng bubong, dahil sa kalasingan niya, nalaglag siya, una ulo. Tinalon niya ang swimming pool na walang tubig. Nalaglag sa kanal in his efforts to elude arrest," Santos told CNN Philippines over the phone.

[Translation: The alleged victim was not beaten up. The chief of police insisted that he was not beaten up. In his effort to escape, he went to the top of the roof and because he was drunk, he fell with his head first. He jumped into a swimming pool without water. He fell in the canal in his efforts to elude arrest.]

Authorities have filed quarantine violation charges against Ronald at the General Trias Prosecutors Office.

Torture?

International Group Human Rights Watch (HRW) in a statement said what happened to Ronald deserves justice.

"Whoever tortured him to the brink of death need to be investigated and held to account. Torturing somebody like that just because he allegedly violated curfew and allegedly tried to evade the authorities is barbaric and inhumane," said Carlos Conde of HRW.

The group also calls for an in-depth investigation on the matter.
The trial, conviction, and subsequent exoneration of two village officials in a poor region of rural China has raised questions about the extent to which grassroots government workers should be held accountable for poverty alleviation projects that dont pay off.

Yao Minjie and Zhang Lixin, of Duolun county in North Chinas Inner Mongolia autonomous region, were convicted last year of abusing official power to force through agricultural projects they claimed would raise local incomes and tackle destitution, but which ended up posting more than 1.5 million yuan in losses.

However, just as Yao and Zhang were coming to terms with lengthy jail sentences, a higher court abruptly ordered a retrial. Days later, the case was thrown out. The two men had kept their freedom.

Yao and Zhangs legal travails spotlight the vague ways that local-level courts interpret mismanagement issues and abuse of power, as well as the risky decisions many frontline cadres must make in a bid to improve local living standards amid a much-touted nationwide drive to eradicate absolute poverty by the end of the year, a target now menaced by the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Although low-ranking officials spend a great deal of time and energy thinking of ways to improve local industries and meet market demand, in this kind of work, nobody can guarantee that a project will definitely succeed, or comes entirely without risks, said Li Xiaoyun, a professor at China Agricultural University and a member of a key State Council leading group in charge of poverty alleviation.

Switching to sunflowers

Duolun, the county where Yao and Zhang served, occupies part of the vast, empty Inner Mongolian grasslands a five-hour drive north of Beijing. Once considered one of Chinas poorest counties, it was removed from a list of priority areas for poverty relief last month.

According to the county governments latest work report, rural residents in Duolun earned an average annual disposable income of 14,179 yuan ($1,998) in 2018. Although that figure represented a 9.9% increase on the previous year, it is still far lower than the equivalent figure in Chinas major cities. Residents in Beijing earned about 57,000 yuan of disposable income on average in 2017, according to official statistics.

When the poverty alleviation drive took hold in Inner Mongolia in the mid-2010s, Yao was serving as the Communist Party secretary of Xigangou, a township in southwestern Duolun home to some 6,000 people scattered among evocatively named villages like Cows Eye and Big Rock. Zhang, meanwhile, served as the township head.

As Xigangous two highest-ranking officials, Yao and Zhang were responsible for improving livelihoods in the township, where six villages were officially classified as poor. They opted for a dramatic shift in local industry, pivoting away from cattle and sheep farming and toward the cultivation of edible sunflowers, tomatoes and other cash crops, leavened with a dose of tourism. The two men later argued in court that they settled on the strategy after concluding that traditional farming methods were not profitable enough to fulfill poverty alleviation demands.

The sunflowers were supposed to be the stars of the show. In 2015, villages in Xigangou signed contracts with Inner Mongolia Safuwo Agriculture Development Co. Ltd. to supply sunflower seeds to the company at a guaranteed minimum price of 3.5 yuan for every half kilogram. But few expected prices to sink that low; at the time, the market rate for raw sunflowers was about 10 yuan per kilogram, while the seeds typically fetched 14 yuan to 16 yuan per kilo.

The highways of Xigangou became lined with sunflower plantations and vegetable greenhouses. By 2016, more than 1,100 farmers had sown sunflowers across 2,200 mu, an area equivalent to about 370 acres, according to a government work report. Yao and Zhang waited for their initiative to bear fruit.

Plummeting prices

It wasnt long before the plan started to go awry.

By mid-2016, excessive rainfall and poor harvesting conditions slammed the quality of Chinas edible sunflower crop. Procurement prices plummeted to about 3 yuan per kilo.

With sunflower prices suddenly so low, Safuwo refused to buy Xigangous seeds at the agreed minimum price, arguing that the products did not meet quality standards outlined in the contracts. The move decimated the expected earnings of the townships newly minted sunflower farmers.

The problems were compounded by inclement weather, alleged theft of crops by neighboring villagers, and a turbulent tomato market that left many rural dwellers peddling produce at bargain-basement rates just to make back some of what theyd invested.

Additionally, multiple village cadres in Xigangou told Caixin that official mismanagement meant some farmers were only able to reap about a quarter of their sunflower plots during the 2016 harvest.

What had seemed like a progressive approach to local development was rapidly falling apart. A special audit commissioned by the government found that Xigangous economic transformation had in fact incurred losses of 1.5 million yuan. Yao and Zhang, the projects orchestrators, now found themselves in the firing line.

Zhang told Caixin in April that he had not anticipated that the price of edible sunflowers could be once-in-several-decades low. If we had considered every single risk, we wouldnt have been able to do anything, he said.

Tried and convicted

In May 2018, Duolun countys party discipline inspection committee opened an investigation into Yao and Zhang. The following month, both men were removed from their party posts and handed administrative demotions. Later, their cases were transferred to Chinas legal authorities amid allegations that they had abused their official power.

The following January, public prosecutors filed a suit against Yao and Zhang, accusing them of arbitrarily spending 5.4 million yuan of government money to fund unauthorized poverty relief projects in Xigangou, causing operational losses of 2.21 million yuan.

For the defendants, the stakes were high. According to a 2012 legal explanation by Chinas Supreme Peoples Procuratorate, officials convicted of abuse of power and whose actions caused more than 1.5 million yuan in economic damages should be sentenced to between three and seven years behind bars.

The case rested on the extent to which prosecutors could prove that Yao and Zhang had exceeded the limits of their official responsibilities while implementing the poverty alleviation projects.

According to Deng Xueping, a Shanghai-based lawyer who has dealt with Chinas prosecutorial system for many years, abuse of power convictions need to meet four key conditions. First, the accused had to work for the state in an official capacity at the time the alleged crimes took place. Second, their behavior had to exceed the legal limits of their authority. Third, the consequences had to include damages to human life or property. And fourth, there had to be ironclad proof that there was a cause-effect relationship between their behavior and the losses incurred.

Of those conditions, the second and fourth are the most flexible and demand the bulk of scrutiny in any court case, Deng told Caixin.

In court, Yao and Zhang denied all the charges. They admitted to making errors in the course of their work, but argued they tried to correct them out of a genuine desire help local residents, and couldnt have predicted the coming collapse in sunflower prices.

But their defense gained little traction. Prosecutors submitted to the court a special audit report stating that six collectives in Xigangou earned a combined 840,000 yuan from the sales of sunflowers, tomatoes and other agricultural products between January 2016 and May 2019, against operating costs of 2.24 million yuan. When management and sales fees were factored in, the projects made losses of 1.5 million yuan, the report said.

Yao and Zhang argued that neither the accounting firm nor the report they produced had the legal authority to be used at the trial. They also tried to convince the court that the details in another audit were insufficient to bring a criminal case against them and that inspectors focused too strongly on unprofitable ventures and did not account for the actual level of poverty reduction in Xigangou.

To the two mens chagrin, the court disagreed, partly on the grounds that the rural collectives that operated the local farms had verified the document as accurate. Jurors eventually determined that Yao and Zhang had incurred economic losses totaling 2.04 million yuan, of which 1.5 million yuan were directly attributable to the failed sunflower and tomato projects.

Ultimately, the court concluded that Yao and Zhang had implemented changes to Xigangous poverty relief plan without obtaining approval from their superiors, leading to millions of yuan in economic losses that reverberated down to local residents.

In September last year, the two men were convicted of abuse of official power. Yao was sentenced to three years in prison, and Zhang received a four-year suspended sentence. On Feb. 28, a higher court in Xilinhot upheld the verdict on appeal.

An abrupt reversal

After Yao and Zhang received the official appeal verdict, the case took an unexpected turn. Media reports, including an influential article in the Xinhua Daily Telegraph, a newspaper affiliated with the official Xinhua News Agency, questioned the legality of the verdict. The Inner Mongolia government also sent an investigation team to Duolun county to look into the case.

On March 31, the intermediary court in Xilin Gol League, which administers Duolun, launched a retrial on the grounds that a judge had identified a litany of legal errors during the original proceedings.

On April 3, the Xilinhot court determined that the facts of the original case were unclear, reversed the verdict, and sent the case back to Duolun for a retrial.

Five days later, prosecutors in Duolun abruptly threw out the case. The reason given was that there is no proof of criminality or legal grounds for prosecution. Yao and Zhang were suddenly in the clear.

Deng, the Shanghai-based legal expert, told Caixin it seemed likely that Yao and Zhangs cases did not meet all the legal conditions for an abuse of power verdict.

In this case, the so-called poverty-relief capital losses are more likely to be the result of market forces. Even if Xigangou township had completed the approval process prior to implementing the projects, they could still have incurred losses due to changes in the market and other causes, Deng said. In other words, there is no strong cause-effect relationship between the alleged breaches of official power and the losses incurred.

Many frontline government cadres in China are encouraged to be proactive in finding ways to lift local people out of poverty, a fact that the original verdict of Yao and Zhangs case failed to adequately account for, Deng added.

Li, the professor, said poverty alleviation projects in China typically receive funding from the provincial government and are carried out by county-level officials. However, administrative hurdles between county governments and frontline village cadres frequently cause conflicts.

Grassroots officials spend lots of time and energy thinking of ways to improve local industry and meet market demand, Li said. But in this kind of work, nobody can guarantee that a project will definitely succeed or comes without risks.

Contact translator and editor Matthew Walsh (matthewwalsh@caixin.com) and editor Michael Bellart (michaelbellart@caixin.com)
She takes pride in showing off her amazingly toned womanly curves and her beloved pet pooch Colombo on social media.

And on Thursday, Emily Ratajowski gave her 26.3 million Instagram followers a dose of both when she shared a series of photos of herself while out on walk with her dog near her west coast home in Venice Beach, California.

'We got dressed and felt cute,' she wrote in the caption of three pictures.

Man's best friend: Emily Ratajkowski, 28, flaunted her derriere and her beloved pet dog Colombo in a series of photos she posted on Instagram on Thursday

For the walk, the London-born star, 28, flaunted her famously toned figure in tight grey bike shorts, a white crop top and black sneakers.

In two of the snaps, the model-actress turned to her left to showcase her backside as Colombo patiently waited for his mama to strike a few poses.

With her dark brown tresses styled long and flowing to the middle of her back, Ratajkowski flashed a seductive look while looking over her right shoulder.

Seductive: The model-actress also showcased her midriff in another pose with Colombo

Curvy: The London-born star showed off her famously toned figure in grey bike shorts and a white crop top while out walking Colombo near her west coast home in Venice Beach, CA

Ratajkowski also struck a similar pose to her left where she shifted the emphasis from her backside to her toned midriff.

It's likely that husband Sebastian Bear-McClard was the one who snapped the photos, considering they have been seen out walking their dog together since relocating their home quarantine from New York City to Los Angeles last week.

The couple have been documenting their sequester on social media since the outbreak was deemed a pandemic in March.

Passionate: The I Feel Pretty actress also promoted her appearance as a panel member for a piece by Politico that focused on criminal justice reform in the post coronavirus world

Coronavirus crisis: The conversation specifically centered on how prisoners and women are being impacted in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic

Social media butterfly: Ratajkowski has been sharing about her home sequester on social media

The I Feel Pretty actress also took to Instagram on Thursday to promote her appearance as a panel member for a piece by Politico.

The discussion centered on criminal justice reform, specifically in the post COVID-19 world, and how prisoners and women are being impacted in the wake of the pandemic.

The conversation also included Scott Budnick, founder of the Anti-Recidivism Coalition (ARC), Anna Paler, who's the editorial director of Women Rule and April Grayson, the campaign surrogate and statewide coordinator for The Young Women's Freedom Center.

Ratajkowski and Bear-McClard were married in a courthouse wedding in New York City February 23, 2018.

Bi-coastal: Ratajkowski and husband Sebastian Bear-McClard relocated their home quarantine from New York City to Los Angeles last week
New Delhi, May 15 : Re-establishing the value chain, the discoverability of new books, "fortifying the ability to face new exigencies", sustaining reading as a habit and the emergence of a new genre of writing is what Indian publishers are looking at in a post-pandemic world and the lifting of the lockdown it has caused.

"The challenges are many. The lockdown has affected the entire value chain from retailers to the publishers. With hardly any print books getting published for almost two months, it has affected the business of all retailers and damage is irreparable for some. Consequently it has hampered the margins and cash-flows to the distributors and the publishers," Yogesh Sharma, Senior VP, Sales & Marketing at Bloombsury, told IANS.

Noting that healthy cash-flows are the key to investing in new content and authors, and "should the situation not improve soon, publishers will be forced to look at all their investments/expenditure conservatively - most of them are already being cautious", he added.

With no sign of bookshops in malls opening and much lower than normal footfalls expected in stores outside malls, online sales are likely to garner a much larger share of the market vis-A -vis the pre-lockdown period. Thus, "the overall discoverability of new books, which was already a challenge with limited bookshops, will suffer even more", Sharma pointed out.

To prepare for the post-pandemic world, "it is advisable to fortify our faculties to face any new exigencies that may come up," Niti Kumar, SVP, marketing, digital and communications at Penguin Random House India, told IANS.

Some of the key challenges - "how to sustain reading as a habit with every generation, discovering and publishing new talent, widening our readership - will continue to remain relevant irrespective of the times we are in", she added.

One of the difficult challenges in the time ahead "is likely to be that the economy would be cash-strapped - this is going to affect any consumer-facing industry, including publishing", Udayan Mitra, Publisher - Literary, at HarperCollins Publishers India, told IANS.

Trisha Niyogi, CEO of Niyogi Books, pointed out that the world has seen any number of epidemics, pandemics, black death, world wars, recessions, great depressions and what not! It has survived Pearl Harbour, the Hiroshima -Nagasaki holocaust and Auschwitz "and yet human civilization has always bounced back".

"Hence, I guess the present predicament being over, whenever that happens, our publishing activities along with many other business and commercial enterprises, will also bounce back to normal. It may take a little time, a few months at best, but the business of books is not going to be dented seriously," Niyogi told IANS.

A new genre of writing is also likely to emerge in a post-pandemic world.

Contending that it is "the imperative of literature" to engage with the world around it, Meru Gokhale, Publisher, Penguin Press, Penguin Random House India, said: "I have no doubt that the writers of today will engage with this pandemic in the years to come." For some, it will be fiction, and many have said that these times are not too far from some of the dystopias that have been written about.

Outside of dystopian and speculative fiction, "I think there is much to be mined here, perhaps even spawning sub-genres like lockdown romance, lockdown drama and lockdown crime." "I am sure there will also be no dearth of non-fiction that will reflect this age, and perhaps not always directly or exclusively. For example, I think books on business, politics, economy, healthcare and infrastructure will certainly have to update themselves for the post-pandemic world by adding layers and dimensions.

"But we may need the benefit of hindsight, which will take a few years, to truly understand what we are faced with today, and when that happens, I look forward very much indeed to reading some comprehensive, nuanced and detailed works of narrative nonfiction that may help us at long last to come to terms with this," Gokhale told IANS.

Concurring, Mitra of HarperCollins said : "We might see a fair number of non-fiction works dealing with different aspects of the pandemic, from medical, economic, or human interest perspectives; but I think we will also see new fiction emerge out of the pandemic experience and the global lockdown since the Covid onslaught is most certainly a life-changing event, like the Holocaust or 9/11." And yet, there will be continuity.

"We can expect (or hope) the post-pandemic world to be a little quieter and more self-reflective, which might mean that people will turn to literature to make sense of the world more than they did before," Himanjali Sankar, Editorial Director at Simon and Schuster, told IANS.

"Books that help us understand ourselves a little better might be what we prefer going forward - self-help and healing, medicine and healthcare. Or if it all seems too overwhelming one might turn to fiction that takes us completely away from our present reality - thrillers, fantasy, romance," Sankar added.

Non-fiction books dominated the Indian market before the pandemic and while these are seen as more dependable with a definite audience, "what we most likely will see is a growth spurt in certain genres within the category", Milee Ashwarya, Publisher, Ebury Publishing & Vintage Publishing at Penguin Random House India, told.

"I feel books related to self help, mind body spirit, health, lifestyle, popular science, parenting, and business will be sought after by readers. We are already seeing these trends emerging and I feel it will develop further in the coming months," Ashwarya added.

(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at vishnu.makhijani@ians.in)
GREENWICH  Everyone is looking forward to when the coronavirus outbreak is in the past.

And the Greenwich Historical Society is asking residents to share their photos from the past two months  so the events and moments of the pandemic can be recorded for posterity.

For its fourth annual This Place Matters! photo contest, the historical society is calling on all residents to take photos of love being shown during the pandemic and to help document this historic period for generations to come.

First Selectman Fred Camillo helped to officially kick off the photo contest in front of Greenwich Hospital with a plea to all residents to participate by snapping photos of the many ways Greenwich residents and institutions are rising to the occasion in the midst of the pandemic.

Every day I see examples of tremendous generosity and selflessness, by residents and others who work in Greenwich in helping to get through this pandemic, Camillo said. Im honored to help launch this initiative that will showcase and preserve the best of Greenwich at a time of tremendous need.

Everyone who cares about Greenwich and the residents and institutions that make it special are encouraged to snap photos of the people and places that speak to their hearts, the Greenwich Historical Society said in a statement.

Whether its front line responders and staff at the hospital, senior centers and nursing facilities, our first-rate firemen and police, the tireless workers at supermarkets and drug stores working long hours to ensure we have access to food and medications, local restaurants that are offering curbside pickup, and places of worship that are accommodating their followers virtually, and the many instances of neighbors reaching out to help others.

To enter the contest, take photos with a camera or mobile device, then submit them with a brief statement about why they show the best of Greenwich during this pandemic. Visit greenwichhistory.org to find the link for submissions.

Deadline for submissions is July 3. Photos should be high resolution  300 dpi  to be winners.

The Greenwich Magazine art department will select the winners who will be announced at a Founders Day reception on Greenwich Point Park. The top three photos will be published in Greenwich Magazine and displayed at the Greenwich Historical Societys newly reimagined campus.

Now in our fourth year, the stakes are much higher for this contest in showcasing love of town and the character of our residents that consistently makes Greenwich a wonderful place to live, says Debra Mecky, executive director and CEO at the Greenwich Historical Society. All photos will be stored in our archives for an historic record and will help us achieve an important mission in creating strong and meaningful bridges to future generations.

Greenwich Historical Society was founded in 1931 to preserve and interpret Greenwich history. For more information, visit greenwichhistory.org.
A three-year-old Mumbai-based boy is the internets latest hero. Kabeer donated a sum of Rs 50,000 to the Mumbai Police.

According to a report published in the Mumbai Mirror, the little boy had raised a part of the sum by selling cupcakes that he baked at home with the help of his mother.

Giving an insight about how the family got the idea to do something like this, Kabeers father Keshav revealed, that the idea came from their friend based in London. The cupcakes that his son and wife made were sold to neighbours and friends. However, there was no fixed price for a cupcake, so people gave whatever they felt like.

The father of the little boy further revealed that they sold cupcakes for Rs 25,000 and added the remaining sum from their own pocket.

"We sold cupcakes worth Rs 25,000 and added the remaining balance from our own pocket and donated it to Mumbai Police Foundation for the good work they are doing in looking after us during the pandemic. Now, we plan to raise it to a lakh, quoted the daily as saying.

The little boy handed over the cheque to Param Bir Singh, Mumbai Police Commissioner, along with his mother Karishma and father Keshav.

Kabeer also gave a note to the commissioner that read, "Dear Police uncle, thank you for taking care of us. Pls catch the virus and shoot it with your gun. I want to go to meet my nanaa and my friends. You can use the money to buy medicines and lollipops. Love love, Kabeer".

Reacting to the heartwarming gesture, the police commissioner told the daily that he was very touched.

Sharing a video of Kabeers cupcake journey, Mumbai Police in its tweet said:

Look whats baking! This 3 year old little baker Kabeer, had a BIG surprise for @CPMumbaiPolice He made a priceless contribution to the #mumbaipolicefoundation with his hard earned money! Ever seen a bigger heart than that of our wonderful little #coronawarrior ? @kshvjn (sic)".

Video giving an insight to Kabeers journey has been viewed over 20 thousand times and the tweet has crossed 900 likes mark.

Look whats baking!This 3 year old little baker Kabeer, had a BIG surprise for @CPMumbaiPolice He made a priceless contribution to the #mumbaipolicefoundation with his hard earned money!Ever seen a bigger heart than that of our wonderful little #coronawarrior ? @kshvjn pic.twitter.com/h8H8Q3N7uU Mumbai Police (@MumbaiPolice) May 13, 2020

This gesture was lauded by netizens and they were all praises for Kabeer.

A user wrote,  Super Effort @kshvjn Thanks @MumbaiPolice for taking care of us during these trying times!, another person said, So sweet. God bless him and give him more strength and willpower

Twitterati were in praises of the young baker.

Lots of love Shahid Sayyed (@shahidsayyed91) May 13, 2020

Super Awesome Kabeer.. Kavita Sarvaiya (@KavitaSarvaiya) May 13, 2020
The United States is on track to meet its commitment to the Taliban to withdraw several thousand troops from Afghanistan by summer, even as violence flares, the peace process is stalled, and Kabul struggles in political deadlock.

US officials say they will reduce to 8,600 troops by July 15 and abandon five bases.

And by next spring all foreign forces are suppose to withdraw, ending America's longest war. Yet the outlook for peace is cloudy at best.

In the absence of Afghan peace talks, the Trump administration may face the prospect of fully withdrawing even as the Taliban remains at war with the government.

That has concerned some lawmakers, including Rep. Liz Cheney, a Wyoming Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee.

She says the United States needs to keep a military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan to prevent extremist groups like al-Qaida and the Islamic State's Afghan affiliate from forming havens from which to attack the US.

"Withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan won't end the war it will just let the terrorists win," she told The Associated Press.

Some question whether the US-Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, which the Trump administration billed as "a decisive step to achieve a negotiated peace," was instead mainly a withdrawal agreement.

President Donald Trump had campaigned on bringing troops home from foreign wars.

And though the Afghan government publicly supported the deal, it did not participate directly in the negotiations and has not, in Washington's view, capitalized on the chance for peace talks.

"President Trump promised to bring our troops home from overseas and is following through on that promise," the White House said when the Doha deal was signed.

The deal stipulated that the Taliban would start intra-Afghan peace negotiations on March 10, but that has not happened.

The Taliban and the Afghan government also have squabbled over a promised release of each other's prisoners.

"A lot of this boils down to: Was the US-Taliban agreement any kind of serious negotiation at all, or was it just totally a fig leaf to cover abject withdrawal? I suspect the latter," said Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs and a former adviser to US commanders in Kabul.

"It gave away almost all the leverage we had in exchange for virtually nothing," he added.

It looks very much like a situation in which the Taliban have concluded that the Americans are out, and they're going to play out the string and see what happens when we're gone."

The United States has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks and overthrew the Taliban, which was running the country and harboring al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

According to US government auditors, Washington has committed USD 86 billion to support Afghan security forces and is still spending about USD 4 billion a year.

The Trump administration has expressed frustration with the lack of movement toward peace talks, but it has not threatened publicly to pull back from its commitment to fully withdraw.

It did conduct an airstrike against the Taliban in defense of Afghan ground forces in early March just hours after Trump had what he called a good conversation by phone with a senior Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Although the drawdown is required by the Doha agreement, US defense officials had said for many months that they wanted to reduce to 8,600 the approximate number of troops that were supporting Afghan forces and conducting counterterrorism operations when Trump took office.

American officials constructed the Doha agreement mainly as a way of ending US involvement in the war, rather than as an assured path to peace.

The withdrawal is subject to Taliban assurances, but it does not require a peace settlement.

The deal also is seen by the US as a way to enlist the Taliban in the fight against the Islamic State group.

The American military considers the group's Afghan affiliate as a greater threat than the Taliban.

The US agreed to withdraw not just military forces but also all intelligence agency personnel, private security contractors, trainers and advisers.

NATO allied forces also are to withdraw.

The Doha deal was seen at the time as Afghanistan's best chance at peace in decades of war, but the government has since been consumed with political turmoil.

Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah have both declared themselves winners of last year's presidential polls, and each declared himself president.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said that getting out of Afghanistan would advance his aim of devoting more forces to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, which he sees as the No 1 long-term threat to the United States.

Esper has been skeptical of the Taliban's commitment to peace, and on May 5 he said neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government is abiding by the agreement.

Esper said the Taliban should return to the reduced levels of violence that existed in the week before the February 29 Doha signing.

At the time, Ghani put his government forces in a defensive stance, but on Tuesday he ordered a return to the offensive, expressing anger for two attacks, including one that killed 24 people, including infants, at a hospital.
I respect their option to open, because Ive lived in their shoes and felt the pain and the struggle of the last few months, seeing employees struggling to get unemployment, and just watching your bank accounts dwindle away, Kealy said of the bars that opened with gusto and no social distancing. Its good to see that people are going to come back out, but its my job to keep my staff safe.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 06:10:13|Editor: huaxia

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BRUSSELS/COPENHAGEN, May 14 (Xinhua) -- As COVID-19 has made more than 1.8 million people sick and caused over 163,000 deaths in the European Region's 54 countries, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) suggested on Thursday that a vaccine for COVID-19 could be ready in a year at the earliest.

While there is a vaccine hope, there is also a vaccine controversy. France has cried foul after the country's pharmaceutical giant Sanofi said it would reserve first shipments of any COVID-19 vaccine for the United States.

Also on Thursday, the World Health Organization (WHO) Regional Office for Europe warned that the "emergency fatigue" would undermine the gains in fighting COVID-19 and that there was "no room for complacency."

An online dashboard, maintained by the WHO European Region, showed that 1,803,789 confirmed COVID-19 cases had been reported in 54 countries in the Region, with 163,458 deaths as of 10:00 a.m. CET (0800 GMT) on Thursday.

VACCINE HOPE & CONTROVERSY

The Amsterdam-based EMA, an agency of the European Union (EU) responsible for the scientific evaluation, supervision and safety monitoring of medicines in the EU, said on Thursday that a vaccine for the novel coronavirus could be ready in a year under an "optimistic" scenario.

"For vaccines, since the development has to start from scratch ... we might look from an optimistic side that in a year from now, so beginning of 2021," Marco Cavaleri, the EMA's head of biological health threats and vaccines strategy, told an online press briefing.

"The ambition is to try to have such vaccines available in a year from now. This might be possible at least for the frontrunners (of vaccine developers)," Cavaleri said.

"These are just forecasts based on what we are seeing and what we expect might happen. But again I have to stress that this is a best-case scenario, (and) we know not all vaccines that enter into development may make it till the end and will come to the authorization," he added.

In France, a vaccine-related controversy made headlines after Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson told U.S. media on Wednesday that "the U.S. government has the right to the largest pre-order because it's invested in taking the risk."

"The declaration of Sanofi boss has upset the President of the Republic (Emmanuel Macron) because this vaccine must be a global public good...The vaccine should be available to everyone at the same time," an official at the Elysee told French media.

"A vaccine against COVID-19 should be a public good for the world. The equal access of all to the virus (vaccine) is non-negotiable," French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe wrote on Tweeter.

Philippe added that Sanofi's chairman Serge Weinberg had given him "all the necessary assurances" with regard to the distribution in France of any potential Sanofi vaccine.

Sanofi is among dozens of drug companies that are currently working on vaccine projects against COVID-19. One of its projects involves a partnership with Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA), a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services office for preparedness and response.

NO ROOM FOR COMPLACENCY

"Until a vaccine or treatments are at hand for everyone, limiting the virus requires a partnership of people and policymakers," Dr. Hans Kluge, WHO regional director for Europe, told a virtual press conference from Copenhagen.

It has been 16 weeks since they were notified of the first cases of the novel coronavirus in the European Region, Kluge said.

"Today, in the 39 countries that are easing restrictions in the European Region, our behavior remains as important now as ever before," Kluge said. "There's no room for complacency -- remain vigilant."

"Emergency fatigue threatens the precious gains we have made against this virus. Reports of distrust in authorities and conspiracy thinking are fueling movements against social and physical distancing," he warned.

The WHO official said that the risk across all countries in the European Region remains very high and the east of the European Region is seeing continued rising case counts.

Russia, Britain and Spain remained among the top 10 countries around the world reporting the most cases in the past 24 hours, according to Kluge.

Kluge's cautious assessment came one day after a stern warning from another WHO official that the novel coronavirus may never go away.

"This virus may become just another endemic virus in our communities and this virus may never go away," Dr. Michael Ryan, executive director of the WHO Health Emergencies Program, said on Wednesday at a press conference in Geneva. "It is important that we be realistic and I don't think anyone can predict when or if this disease will disappear."

"We may have a shot at eliminating this virus" with the help of a vaccine, Ryan said, adding that the vaccine must then be "highly effective" and "made available to everyone" and that "we will have to use it." Enditem
Shocking footage shows dozens of homeless men sleeping on the floor of a shelter after it 'ran out of beds' amid the coronavirus pandemic.

The video, which was sent to DailyMail.com, was taken inside the Bellevue Men's Shelter in Manhattan this week.

According to the tipster, the all men's shelter has become even more crowded than usual since city officials closed the subway system at night.

'There are no beds,' the source told DailyMail.com, adding that the shelter is short staffed due with only five people compared to its normal 15.

The source said 'people are calling out' because they are afraid of contracting the virus.

Shocking footage shows dozens of homeless men (pictured) sleeping on the floor of a shelter after it 'ran out of beds' amid the coronavirus pandemic

The video, which was sent to DailyMail.com, was taken inside the Bellevue Men's Shelter in Manhattan this week. Some of the men are seen sitting in blue chairs next to large bags of their belongings

In the footage, some of the men are seen wrapped up in what appears to be blankets on the floor

In the footage, some of the men are seen wrapped up in what appears to be blankets on the floor.

Others are seen sitting in blue chairs next to large bags of their belongings. Some are seen with no covering at all as they tried to sleep on steps, chairs and the floor.

None of the men appeared to be wearing masks as they curled up next to one another.

The footage comes just days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that outreach workers had 'engaged' about 362 people leaving stations over the weekend.

He said on Tuesday that 211 people accepted help and of that number 178 went to shelters, with the rest going to hospitals.

'Every single night we're seeing the same things, high level of engagement, large number of homeless individuals being engaged, the majority accepting help,' de Blasio said Tuesday.

'If the first week is any indication this is a game changer. I think it could fundamentally change the future of homelessness in the city for the better.'

But it appears that homeless people are going from sleeping on train cars to shivering on the floors of crowded shelters.

The footage comes just days after Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that outreach workers had 'engaged' about 362 people leaving stations over the weekend

Just last week, New York subway's overnight service was suspended for the first time ever in an 'aggressive' bid to deep clean the system every 24 hours, as police removed thousands of homeless people from trains

Since the pandemic hit ridership has plummeted by more than 90 per cent, with less than 50,000 passengers a day while many homeless New Yorkers count on the trains for shelter overnight

NYPD officers wake up sleeping passengers and direct them to the exits at the 207th Street A-train station on April 30

Officers are seen waking up a passenger who was sleeping on one of the trains on April 30

Last month, officers from the New York City Police Department were seen ordering homeless people off the subways after officials pledged to take action against them sleeping on empty trains during the pandemic.

Photos showed officers wearing masks and gloves as they woke up individuals who were laying down or sleeping in the train cars.

Other images showed the people gathering their belongings as they walked off a train at the 207th Street A train station in Manhattan.

New York City became the epicenter for the coronavirus outbreak in the US on March 20.

The pandemic has forced government officials to suspended New York subway's overnight service was suspended for the first time ever.

Last week, service was suspended between 1am and 5am in an 'aggressive' bid to deep clean the system every 24 hours, as police removed thousands of homeless people from trains.

The subway has effectively run around the clock since it opened in 1904.

But from May 6, all 472 stations were closed overnight while 500 cleaners in hazmat suits surge through the system and decontaminate the subway and halt the spread of coronavirus among riders.

Since the pandemic hit the city, ridership has plummeted by more than 90 per cent, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), which manages the network, to less than 500,000 passengers a day

Normally some 5.5 million people take the subway every day.

With many white-collar workers logging into the office from home, most riders are now 'essential' workers - some 800,000 employees of hospitals, supermarkets, repair personnel and delivery workers, many of them black or Latino, some undocumented migrants.

The city hopes closure will encourage them to find alternative shelter, but many advocacy groups have warned it will worsen the homeless crisis.

Last month, Gov Andrew Cuomo was forced to extend stay-at-home orders to May 15 in a state that has recorded 348,790 coronavirus cases and 27, 251 deaths.

Within the past few weeks, photos and video showing the homeless seeking shelter in the Big Apple's underground transit system have circulated widely on social media, sparking outrage.

At the time, Cuomo said: 'The cars were filthy, they were disgusting, homeless people were there with all their belongings,' said Cuomo, lamenting a 'deterioration' in the conditions of the network.

Cuomo said it was not safe for the homeless people on the trains to be there without protective equipment, nor was it fair to the essential workers who rely on the trains to get to work.

'Any essential worker who shows up and gets on a train should know that that train was disinfected the night before.

'The trains have to be clean,' Cuomo said at the time, adding that the homeless should also be able to get the services that they need.
Offering Comfort in a Time of Crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended the work of Rabbi Jason Kirschner 10, who serves as a chaplain at a New York City hospital.

By: April Johnston Thursday, May 14, 2020 01:47 PM

Rabbi Jason Kirschner 10

At Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, each time a COVID-19 patient is discharged, the opening lines of a Beatles classic play over the public address system.

Here comes the sun

Here comes the sun

And I say, its all right

Its a simple thing, a 15-second respite from the calamity that the novel coronavirus has wrought, but for Rabbi Jason Kirschner 10 and his hospital colleagues, the song has come to represent something more powerful.

It reminds you that things can get better, Kirschner says.

And that is a much-needed feeling for a city that, for the past two months, has been the epicenter of the global pandemic. New York City alone has seen more COVID-19 cases than all but five countries outside the United States, and the number of confirmed and probable virus-related deaths has surpassed 16,000.

The citys healthcare workers have borne the brunt of the burden, working on the front lines of the outbreak as all who are able to shelter at home do. For Kirschner, who serves as the chaplain for two intensive care units and a rabbi for the entire hospital, it has been a kind of terrible honor.

Kirschner, who was a history major with minors in Jewish studies and political science at Muhlenberg, chose chaplaincy because he felt there was no better application of the Jewish faith than to comfort people when they need it the most. But the restrictions that come with serving COVID-19 patients have forced a change in the way he practices.

He cant enter rooms. He cant hold hands. He cant even offer a reassuring smile; its concealed behind the N95 mask all hospital employees are required to wear. Most days, the best he can do is stand outside the door and pray. He has recited Viduithe Jewish deathbed confession prayermore times in two months than he has in the past seven years.

But he knows each prayer, each request honored, brings a sense of comfort, particularly to the families who are unable to visit their relatives. With a few exceptions in the pediatric and maternity wings, hospital visitors have been banned until the virus dissipates.

When I call families, I am met with overwhelming gratitude, Kirschner says.
The Jilin Railway Station is closed temporarily in the aftermath of COVID-19 cluster infections in Jilin city, Northeast China's Jilin province, on May 13, 2020. [Photo by Zhao Wenbin/For chinadaily.com.cn]

President puts emphasis on redoubling disease prevention work across nation

President Xi Jinping instructed local governments on Thursday to keep alert on disease prevention and control to avoid a resurgence of the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Xi made the remark at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. The meeting was presided over by Xi, who is also general secretary of the CPC Central Committee.

The current situation of disease prevention and control is generally good in China, but the situation remains complex abroad and the country still faces arduous tasks in preventing a resurgence of the disease, Xi said.

He warned the country's officials about slackness and required them to continue to closely monitor disease prevention efforts to ensure that the previous achievements are secured.

He instructed the governments of Heilongjiang and Jilin provinces, where infection clusters have been reported recently, to strengthen prevention measures.

The authorities in Hubei province and its capital, Wuhan, should continue to strengthen and improve prevention measures and carry forward testing for the virus, Xi said.

He pointed out that Beijing should strengthen disease prevention during the upcoming two sessions, the annual sessions of the nation's top legislative and political advisory bodies, due to open next week.

The government should guide schools to improve their plans for disease prevention to better safeguard students, Xi said.

Prevention measures in medical institutions should be strengthened to avoid infections in hospitals, and medical treatment services should be resumed in an orderly manner, he added.

Local governments nationwide are required to learn from the lessons of recent cases caused by gatherings of people, and they are urged to plug loopholes in disease prevention.

Officials who fail to implement the CPC Central Committee's decisions will be punished seriously, and prevention measures should be improved, according to the meeting.

Given the overseas situation, related departments should make further efforts to care for Chinese citizens living abroad, improve health services, quarantine arrangements and medical treatment in border regions, and continue to deepen international cooperation on disease prevention and control, according to the meeting.

The meeting also highlighted the importance of deepening supply-side structural reform, making full use of China's domestic demand, and building a new growth model with the mutual development of the domestic and international markets.

According to the meeting, the authorities should make efforts to encourage businesses to resume work and production and return shopping malls, markets and service businesses to their normal level of activity.

The meeting also called for the enhancing of international coordination to jointly maintain the security and stability of international industrial and supply chains.
TORONTO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Canntab Therapeutics Limited (CSE:PILL.CN)(OTCQB:CTABF) (FRA:TBF1.F) (the "Company" or "Canntab"), the leading innovator in cannabinoid and terpene blends in hard pill form for therapeutic applications, is pleased to announce the appointment of Joshi Laxminarayan as Chief Scientific Officer (CSO). In his role as CSO, Mr. Laxminarayan will be responsible for directing Canntab's strategic research and partnership program, and overseeing the Company's ongoing manufacturing and distribution operations.

Mr. Laxminarayan is a pharmaceutical scientist with a successful history of bringing to market a number of pharmaceutical drugs throughout a career spanning over 25 years. Mr. Laxminarayan began his career in India, as a bench chemist, and most recently acted in a consultant role to the Company, as Director of Quality Assurance & Quality Control, where he assisted with the research and development needed to formulate the Company's current product line. His expertise in nano emulsion, extended release, and poorly soluble drug development, has played a crucial role in the Company's research and development with respect to cannabis oil inputs.

"Joshi has played an integral part in helping Canntab strengthen its competitive position and relevance, and distinguish itself in the pharmaceutical industry. His appointment as CSO is expected to evolve as we continue manufacturing, into a position where he can oversee not only our ongoing Research & Development, but also our day to day manufacturing and distribution operations," explains Jeff Renwick, Co-founder and CEO of Canntab. Mr. Renwick continues, "As Canntab enters the next phase of its growth, Mr. Laxminarayan will be invaluable to our continued success, driving us closer to our goal of being the world leader in solid oral dose therapeutic cannabis solutions."

About Canntab Therapeutics

Canntab Therapeutics is a Canadian biopharmaceutical company focused on the manufacturing and distribution of a suite of hard pill cannabinoid formulations in multiple doses and timed-release combinations. Canntab's proprietary hard pill cannabinoid formulations provide doctors, patients and consumers with medical grade solutions which incorporate all the features one would expect from any prescription or over the counter medication sold in Canadian pharmacies. These will include the following formulations: once a day and extended release, both providing an accurate dose and improved shelf stability.

Canntab holds a Cannabis Standard Processing & Sales for Medical Purposes Licence, a Cannabis Research Licence, and an Industrial Hemp Licence from Health Canada.

Additionally, Canntab through its wholly owned American subsidiary is in the process of establishing a CBD manufacturing and distribution business in Florida, USA.

Canntab trades on the Canadian Securities Exchange under the symbol PILL, on the OTCQB under the symbol CTABF, and on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange under the symbol TBF1.

Cautionary Statements

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Certain information in this press release constitutes forward-looking statements under applicable securities laws. Any statements that are contained in this news release that are not statements of historical fact may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements are often identified by terms such as "may", "should", "anticipate", "expect", "potential", "believe", "intend" or negatives of these terms and similar expressions. Forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially, and are based on management's current beliefs, assumptions, and expectations. While Canntab considers these beliefs, assumptions and expectations to be reasonable and based on information currently available, they are inherently subject to significant business, economic and competitive uncertainties and contingencies and they may prove to be incorrect. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements also necessarily involve known and unknown risks, including without limitation, risks associated with general economic conditions, adverse industry events, marketing costs, loss of markets, future legislative and regulatory developments, the inability to access sufficient capital on favourable terms, the medical and recreational cannabis industry in Canada in general, income tax and regulatory matters, the ability of Canntab to execute its business strategies, competition, crop failure, currency and interest rate fluctuations and other risks. Readers are cautioned that the foregoing is not exhaustive. Readers are further cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements as there can be no assurance that the plans, intentions or expectations upon which they are placed will occur. Such information, although considered reasonable by management at the time of preparation, may prove to be incorrect and actual results may differ from those anticipated. Forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. Except as required by law, Canntab disclaims any obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, events or otherwise. Forward- looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

SOURCE Canntab Therapeutics Limited

Related Links

https://canntab.ca/


A total of 1,486 people from Himachal Pradesh stranded in Goa due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown arrived here in a special train on Friday, an official spokesperson said.

The train arrived at Una railway station in the morning, Una Deputy Commissioner Sandeep Kumar said.

This was the second special train bringing back stranded HP residents to their state. Earlier, 642 people from Karnataka returned to HP in a special train on Wednesday.

Two more special trains will bring back more state residents from Maharashtra and Chennai in the coming days, Kumar said.

Of the 1,486 passengers arriving from Goa, 415 were from Mandi, 397 from Kullu, 322 were from Kangra, 128 from Chamba, 80 from Shimla, 53 from Hamirpur, 37 from Solan, 24 from Bilaspur, 20 from Sirmaur, 7 from Una, two from Lahaul-Spiti and one from Kinnaur, he said.

The passengers were provided face masks, hand sanitisers, water and food packets before being sent to their home districts in Himachal Road Transport Corporation (HRTC) buses, Kumar said.

Superintendent of Police Karthikeyan Gokulchandran, Additional Deputy Commissioner Arindam Chaudhary and Additional Superintendent of Police Vinod Dhiman were also present at the station to ensure proper arrangements were in place.

The DC thanked Bhadsali's Radha Soami Satsang Ghar secretary Gurmukh Singh for providing 2,100 food packets to passengers and employees at the railway station.

The returnees will have to remain in quarantine for 14 days, he added.

Neelam Devi from Kangra district's Paprola thanked the state government for making special arrangements that enabled her and her husband along with others to return home. She had gone to Goa to accompany her husband who works there but the couple got stuck due to the lockdown.

The special train was run after Chief Minister Jai Ram Thakur had made a request to Railway Minister Piyush Goyal.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
"Customers liked to go along with the gag," owner Jacqueline Rothe told local tabloid Berliner Kurier.

Local media report that cafes and restaurants in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern were able to reopen at the weekend if strict hygiene measures were adhered to - such as 1.5m spacing between tables.

"It is not the same coffee drinking as before," Rothe told Kurier.

Some Facebook users found the funny side of the hats - which were reportedly only used once, while others thought they were plain ridiculous.

"I laughed heartily. And the customers who took part in it certainly had difficulties enjoying the cake because they had to hold their bellies with laughter," one commenter said

"Funny under other circumstances. Currently ... not funny," another wrote.

Newshub.
The incumbent Head of Executive Committee for Reforms of Ukraine Kyiv Post

Mikheil Saakashvili, chairman of the National Reform Council, explained his position on Ukraine's cooperation with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), noting that his previous statement was misunderstood. The explanations of the politicians were published on his Facebook page.

Saakashvili believes that attempts to withdraw from the IMF program now will suit only Ukraine's enemies but we must strategically move to a situation where the Fund's assistance will no longer be needed.

"I have said many times that Ukraine currently has no alternative to good cooperation, as Ukraine needs money, especially during the crisis, and, moreover, the IMF has played an important role in promoting some of the necessary reforms," Saakashvili said.

As we reported earlier, Mikheil Saakashvili has recently expressed the idea that Ukraine should refuse from the loans provided by the International Monetary Fund.

"I believe that though we are obliged to cooperate with the IMF now... just look how much money they give us. They give us just enough to pay off the external debts. And because of that, we've got to bow to them all the time. During my time in Georgia, I refused from the IMF services," he said.
In his latest commentary published on ThinkAdvisor.com, independent broker-dealer recruiter Jon Henschen observes that for advisors at the three midsize broker-dealers formerly owned by Ladenburg Thalmann and now being merged under Advisor Group ownership, whats most difficult as they look ahead is that their BD ties are relationship driven, and the BD culture matters to them. There are, layers of questions coming up around fees, compliance policies and back-office services.

According to Henschen, those advisors with KMS Financial Services, Securities Service Network and Investacorp who are largely self-sufficient and dont use the back office very often may not feel much impact from these changes. But for advisors who use the back office on a regular basis and have easy access to key staffers whom they rely on, their world will be changing greatly.

(KMS, SSN and Investacorp will become part of Securities America by year-end, while Triad Advisors will remain a standalone BD; Advisor Groups BDs, FSC Securities, Royal Alliance, SagePoint Financial and Woodbury Financial, stay the same.)

Ladenburgs scale has helped with costs for items like Envestnet SMA/UMA expenses. However, shared services between broker-dealers that bring substantial cost savings to the firm are not always a positive development for an advisor at a midsize BD.

Henschen observes that there is a staffing rift between the former Ladenburg BDs and the current Advisor Group BDs, with Ladenburg at about 5:1 and Advisor Group at around 9:1.We knew the ex-Ladenburg firms 5:1 ratio had to go. We just thought it would take six months to a year before that would happen  not three months after the deal closed.

Continuing, Henschen notes that there are layers of questions that now come up, such as costs and compliance policies that have been unique to each of the ex-Ladenburg broker-dealers. For instance, will those policies be standardized with what all the Advisor Group BDs are subject to?

An advisor at KMS, for example, could have a large percentage of investable assets in variable annuities, as long as the products were being sold properly. Will advisors now have a restriction on the percentage of investable assets in these products imposed on them?

Securities Service Network advisors did not impose any payout haircut on the fixed indexed annuity business. Will that change now?

KMS charged an administrative fee of only 2.5 basis points on advisor-directed assets. The other ex-Ladenburg broker-dealers and Advisor Group charged substantially more.

Will that fee be raised to be in line with what the Advisor Group broker- dealers charge? Or will the KMS advisors be grandfathered in and allowed to continue to enjoy these low costs?

Henschen notes that what we view as rushed timing to make consolidation-related changes can be seen as being market-driven. The stock market has dropped in recent months. And more importantly, money market sweep account revenue is now down to near zero  which is painful for all broker-dealers.

Moodys pointed this out when it dropped the credit rating on Advisor Groups junk bonds from B2 to B3 in March. It also lowered its outlook from stable to negative.

In general, private equity firms  including those that own BD firms  have financial engineering down to a science. Thats their nature.

Henschen doesnt know if the Advisor Groups PE owner, Reverence Capital Partners, intends on flipping the broker-dealer network or taking it public.

But in buying the BD group in much better times (and the Ladenburg BDs were bought quite literally at the top of the market), the PEs timeline for doing either could be pushed out much further than what it may have hoped, as talk of an L-shaped recovery gains momentum.

Jon Henschen is founder of Henschen & Associates, a Twin Cities-based firm that matches financial advisors to independent broker dealers. He has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry and has worked as a registered financial advisor in both the independent and wirehouse channels. Jon has been featured in numerous financial publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Reuters, and the New York Post.
Two deputies of Vietnams lawmaking National Assembly (NA) are urging state and NA leaders to review a high-profile murder case in which a death row inmates sentence was upheld by the Supreme Court earlier this month despite alleged violations of due process.

Ho Duy Hai was just 23 when he was convicted of robbing and murdering two female poster workers, aged 21 and 23, at the Cau Voi Post Office in the Mekong Delta province of Long An in January 2008.

The sentence handed down by the Peoples Court of Long An Province in December of that year landed him five years behind bars for the robbery and the death penalty for the double homicide. The verdict withstood an appeal made five months later to the High Peoples Court in Ho Chi Minh City.

Hais initial execution date was set for December 5, 2014 until he was granted a stay by then-State President Truong Tan Sang just one day prior to the sentence being carried out.

Last week, after a three-day cassation trial in Hanoi, a 17-member jury, led by Chief Justice Nguyen Hoa Binh of the Supreme Peoples Court of Vietnam, unanimously turned down an appeal made by the Supreme Peoples Procuracy to void prior judgments and reopen the case for investigation.

The final ruling to uphold Hais sentence was made given the justices opinions that there had been sufficient grounds provided in the lower courts to convict Hai of the charges. The justices also said that the shortcomings exposed in the investigation, prosecution, and trial proceedings of the case did not change [its] nature.

A major hang-up for investigators has a combination of Hais retraction of his confession to the murder and claims made by his family that the original confession was made under duress from law enforcement.

Ho Duy Hai, who was sentenced to death for killing two young female postal workers in Long An Province, Vietnam in 2008, stands trial at a court in this file photo.

Petitions against the courts judgments

Deputy Luu Binh Nhuong, deputy head of the NAs Committee for Peoples Aspirations, recently petitioned Vietnams General Secretary and State President Nguyen Phu Trong and NA Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan to review the case.

According to Nhuong, there has been severe public outcry about the judgment handed down by the Supreme Courts jury, saying that the justices had violated the presumption of innocence and had based their verdict on accusatory thinking and views  a taboo in any criminal justice system.

The lawmaker also noted that while the jury had acknowledged several violations during the investigation, they had assumed the errors wouldnt alter the nature of the case. Procedural errors made by investigators had not been objectively considered by the Supreme Court justices, Nhuong said.

Nhuong also cited questions raised by the general public related to the timing of the crime, the time of the victims deaths, errors made in taking fingerprint and blood samples, and the elimination of other suspects including the victims boyfriends.

Hais 57-year-old mother Nguyen Thi Loan told the local media that the prosecutions case included several inconsistencies, including the fact that no time of death for the victims was ever established, the murder weapons had been misplaced by the forensic team, witness testimonies were inconsistent, and no matching fingerprints had ever been recovered from the crime scene.

According to Nhuong, there is no regulation that allows the 17-member jury to decide whether the appeal decision made by the Supreme Peoples Procuracy was done in conjunction with the law.

As such, Party Chief and State President Trong should instruct relevant authorities to focus on getting to the bottom of the case, he petitioned.

He also suggested the countrys top lawmaker, Ngan, ask the respective chief justices and prosecutors general of the Supreme Peoples Court and the Supreme Peoples Procuracy  Nguyen Hoa Binh and Le Minh Tri  to brief deputies on the case during the NAs upcoming conference on May 20.

The Cau Voi Post Office in Long An Province, Vietnam, where the murder of two young women was committed in 2008, is seen in this file photo. Photo: H.D. / Tuoi Tre

Deputy Le Thanh Van, a member of the NAs Finance and Budget Committee, also sent a petition to the NA.

Van called for either the lawmaking body or its standing committee to exercise supreme supervision over the proceedings of the Supreme Peoples Court at the cassation trial of the case.

In the petition, he claimed the special court had failed to ensure the assurance of impartiality of officials given authority to institute or engage in legal proceedings, according to Vietnams Criminal Procedure Code.

Sharing the same view as Nhuong, the deputy also accused the jury of flouting the presumption of innocence.

He said the jury had imposed an unwritten rule which is not found in the countrys criminal law and criminal procedure by declaring that procedural errors do not change the nature of a case, setting a dangerous precedent that inadvertently encourages violations in criminal proceedings.

Perpetrator left-handed while Ho Duy Hai not

Lawyer Tran Hong Phong, a lawyer for the death row inmates family, said he had sent an application to the state president and had given a new alibi which may prove the innocence of the 35-year-old Ho Duy Hai.

The cut on the neck of a victim revealed that the killer must be left-handed while Hai is right-handed, according to the lawyer who has reviewed the case file, including autopsy reports and the inmates testimonies.

Lawyer Tran Hong Phong, who represents Ho Duy Hai, speaks to the press about new evidence in the case against the man who has been sentenced to death for killing two young female postal workers in Long An Province, Vietnam in 2008 in this photo taken on May 14, 2020. Photo: Hoang Diep / Tuoi Tre

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Linkedin Riska Rahman (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 16:58 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8522cf 1 Business Bank-Rakyat-Indonesia,COVID-19,financial-performance,restructuring,loan Free

State-owned lender Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) has lowered its expectations for its financial performance this year amid the unfavorable market conditions due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the governments loan-restructuring program.

The pandemic has impacted the banks quarterly figures, as its profit dropped slightly to Rp 8.17 trillion (US$550 million) in the first three months of this year, from Rp 8.2 trillion in the same period last year.

BRI finance director Haru Koesmahargyo attributed the decline to unfavorable market conditions that had affected the performance of its subsidiaries, such as insurance firm BRI Life and agriculture-focused lender BRI Agro.

We are definitely revising our bank business plan this year [given the situation], Haru said during a virtual press conference on Thursday.

For example, the bank expects to slash its loan growth target to 5 percent this year from its initial target of 11 percent, according to presentation material obtained by The Jakarta Post. The figure is far lower than last years loan growth of 8.4 percent.

Despite the slight drop in profit, the bank still recorded 9.4 percent year-on-year (yoy) growth in loan disbursement during the first quarter to Rp 882.25 trillion.

The figure is higher than the average industry growth of 7.95 percent during the same period, according to BRI president director Sunarso.

The growth in loan disbursement in the first quarter was mainly driven by the micro and medium retail segments, Sunarso said during the same event.

Loan disbursement for the micro segment grew 12.72 percent yoy during the period, while loan disbursement to the retail and medium segment increased 12.25 percent yoy.

Meanwhile, Sunarso also expected the loan restructuring program that allows debtors, especially micro, small and medium business players impacted by the pandemic, to defer principal and interest payments to banks, would further affect BRIs performance this year.

The restructuring [program] will impact our business on two fronts, namely liquidity and revenue, he said. Delaying loan principal payments will impact liquidity while delaying interest will impact our revenue.

The bank has restructured loans of 1.4 million micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) totaling Rp 101 trillion as of April, according to Sunarso.

Given the situation, the bank expressed hope that the governments plan to place funds in banks could help relieve its liquidity problems this year.

The government recently issued Government Regulation (PP) No. 23/2020 on the national economic recovery program, stipulating that it will carry out efforts to support the recovery of the virus-battered economy. The measures include the placement of funds in certain domestic banks to provide more liquidity.

According to Finance Ministry presentation material obtained by The Jakarta Post, the government might allocate Rp 35 trillion for this purpose.

For the time being, Sunarso said the bank still had ample liquidity despite the turbulent economic conditions.

BRIs capital adequacy ratio currently clocked in at 18.56 percent as of March, while its loan-to-deposit ratio stood at 90.45 percent, below the minimum requirement of 92 percent.

Mirae Asset Sekuritas analyst Lee Young Jun also expects the restructuring efforts to affect the banks net interest margin (NIM).

We believe that additional restructured loans will likely drag NIM down going forward, he said in a research note on Friday, adding that it expected BRIs NIM to decline by 78 basis points this year from 2019s 6.98 percent.

BRIs NIM stood at 6.66 percent in the first quarter of this year, slightly lower than 6.89 percent figure recorded in the same period last year.
The king of Jordan warned in an interview published today of a massive conflict if Israel were to annex parts of the West Bank.

In an interview published by the German newspaper Der Spiegel, King Abdullah said plans to annex West Bank territory this summer and an abandonment of the two-state solution for Israel and the Palestinian territories would hurt the region.

Leaders who advocate a one-state solution do not understand what that would mean, said Abdullah, according to a transcript released by the Royal Hashemite Court. If Israel really annexed the West Bank in July, it would lead to a massive conflict with the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Israel captured the West Bank from Jordan during the 1967 war. Most of the international community considers it occupied Palestinian territory and the future home  along with the Gaza Strip  of a Palestinian state. The West Bank is divided into areas controlled by the Israeli military and the Palestinian Authority. There are also large numbers of Jewish settlements throughout the territory.

Abdullah was asked about the annexation issue because of recent events. In April, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and incoming unity government partner Benny Gantz made a deal to conditionally pursue incorporating parts of the West Bank into Israel starting in July.

The move is dependent on approval from the United States and not jeopardizing any of Israels peace treaties, one of which is with Jordan. The United States has signaled it would support Israel annexing parts of the West Bank under certain conditions.

Abdullah made his opposition to any annexation clear in the interview and reiterated his support for a two-state solution.

The two-state solution is the only way for us to be able to move forward, he said.

Abdullah stopped short of saying he would cancel Jordan's peace treaty with Israel, however.

I don't want to make threats and create an atmosphere of loggerheads, but we are considering all options, he said when asked about this by Der Spiegel. We agree with many countries in Europe and the international community that the law of strength should not apply in the Middle East.

Jordans relations with Israel are controversial in the Hashemite kingdom. Jordan signed its peace treaty with Israel in 1994. Most of Jordans population is of Palestinian origin, with many descending from Palestinians who fled their land after the establishment of Israel. However, amid the annexation talk, Jordanian opposition parties are now calling for a cancellation of the treaty.

Jordan needs to balance its desire for stability with the anti-Israel views of many of its citizens. There is a large movement in Jordan against a gas deal the government signed with a company in Israel, for example.

Abdullah also indicated in the interview that this is more a time for the region to focus on fighting the coronavirus together instead of engaging in a divisive discussion about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Another Friday night in quarantine, another Netflix original movie to watch. This week, everybody seems to be queuing up The Wrong Missy, the latest from Adam Sandlers Happy Madison Production, which dropped on the streaming service May 13.

The off-color rom-com stars David Spade as a man named Tim who thinks hes invited his dream woman on a trip to Hawaii, only to discover he accidentally asked nightmare blind date Missy (Lauren Lapkus) via text. The Wrong Missy is racking up the views, But is the movie  which also features Nick Swardson, Sarah Chalke, Rob Schneider, Molly Sims  any good? Well, that depends on who you ask.

Critics slammed The Wrong Missy

David Spade as Tim Morris and Lauren Lapkus as Missy in The Wrong Missy | Katrina Marcinowski/NETFLIX

RELATED: The Wrong Missy: What Is Adam Sandlers New Netflix Movie About?

Critics didnt exactly fall in love with The Wrong Missy. To be fair, the Tyler Spindel-directed didnt earn the dreaded 0% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (It currently has a critics score of 25%.) But most reviewers had a lukewarm-to-negative reaction.

A writer for the A.V. Club dismissed it as a series of claustrophobically unfunny scenes. The Hollywood Reporter said it was targeted at the limited demographic of middle-aged white guys who dig wish-fulfillment rom-coms.

Some found the films premise outdated and implausible. The New York Times critic, after noting that the movie seemed stuck in the 90s, found it hard to swallow the idea that Tim would be pursued aggressively by three attractive women, despite having the personality of a cabbage.

Other critics were more kind, describing the film as an enjoyable, easy-to-watch distraction.

The Wrong Missy is the top movie on Netflix

RELATED: Netflix Just Sent a Huge Message That They Believe in Adam Sandler

The reviews might have been lackluster, but that didnt prevent The Wrong Missy from dominating Netflixs top 10 most-watched shows and movies. On May 15, it was no. 1 on the streaming service, ahead of the new season of Dead to Me and season 4 of Riverdale.

Plenty of people seemed to appreciate the films lighthearted comedy.

Absolutely fantastic! tweeted one.

David Spade hasnt lost his funniness at all but Lauren Lapkus made this movie what it is, tweeted another. Hilarious.

The divided reaction between regular Netflix users and critics isnt hugely surprising. Happy Madison films have long been polarizing. Some people hate what they see as lowbrow, crude comedies, but others clearly cant get enough.

When will the next Happy Madison movie be on Netflix?

Happy Madison and Netflix have had a fruitful partnership for years. Adam Sandlers production company first teamed up with the streamer for 2015s The Ridiculous 6. That was followed by movies such as Murder Mystery, Sandy Wexler, and The Do-Over.

Next up for Sandler and Happy Madison fans is Hubie Halloween, a comedic whodunit about a community volunteer (Sandler) who finds himself in the middle of a real-life murder mystery in Salem, Massachusetts. Expect the movie sometime later in 2020.

In January 2020, Netflix announced it had signed a new deal with Sandler and Happy Madison Productions for an additional four movies.

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The Sunyani Municipal Assembly has directed all shop and store owners to close their facilities from 0600 hours to 0900 hours and participate in a massive clean-up exercise scheduled on Saturday, May 16 in the Municipality.



A statement signed by Madam Justina Owusu-Banahene, the Sunyani Municipal Chief Executive, and copied to the Ghana News Agency (GNA) on Thursday explained the clean-up exercise was aimed at improving the citys efforts in the fight against the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19).



Its also aimed at positioning the city of Sunyani in readiness to receive the rains and to avoid flooding and other health related ailments, it stated.



In a related development, the Sunyani West Municipal Assembly has distributed 4,000 nose masks to residents in the area to protect them from contracting the COVID-19.



Beneficiaries were mostly market women, commercial drivers, motor riders and the aged in the communities such as Odumase, Nsoatre, Chiraa, Dumasua, Ayakomaso, Fiapre and Mantukwa.



Mr. Martin Obeng, the Sunyani West Municipal Chief Executive who led the Sunyani Municipal COVID-19 taskforce for the distribution exercise advised the beneficiaries to wear the nose masks and wash their hands with soap under running water frequently.



He told them especially the market women to adhere to the social and physical distancing protocols and avoid hand shake.



Mr. Obeng reminded them it was compulsory for everyone to wear the nose-masks in public, saying those who failed to do so commit offence punishable by law.



This is why the Assembly has targeted to distribute as many as 30,000 nose masks to residents free of charge so that no one would have the excuse or justification not to put on the nose masks, he added.



He said contracts were awarded to local manufacturers to sow about 6,000 pieces of reusable nose masks for distribution and advised people who did not get and could not buy some of the nose masks to have patient.



Mr Obeng commended the Sunyani Municipal COVID-19 Taskforce for the high level of commitment shown in curtailing spread of the COVID-19 in the Municipalities.



Superintendent Alhassan said the Taskforce was determined to ensure that residents in the Sunyani and Sunyani West Municipalities complied with all government directives geared towards stemming the spread of the COVID-19.

Source: GNA









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The World Bank on Friday announced a $1-billion programme aiming to integrate Indias 400-plus fragmented social-security programmes for migrant workers hit by the coronavirus pandemic, part of an initiative that seeks to rebalance access to safety nets between rural and urban India.

The Accelerating Indias COVID-19 Social Protection Response Programme will focus especially on making social benefits such as subsidised food under the National Food Security Act, cash transfers and pensions etc, portable so that beneficiaries could access them from anywhere in the country, not just from their home districts, the World Bank said.

Portability simply refers to a digitised, universal and always-on platform, which ensures benefits move along with migrants.

Very clearly, everybody recognises the shock (from the pandemic). The choice is being said to be between lives and livelihoods. This is not a choice the government of India is making, Junaid Ahmad, the World Banks country director, said.

Ahmad said this was a watershed moment in social security of the country because the government had for the first time opened up an important window in the form of the state disaster response fund, which is now linked to social safety.

The Union government had, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, allowed states to use the fund freely without usual approvals to provide social protection.

A widespread lockdown announced on March 24 shuttered shops, factories and construction sites, pushing millions of migrant workers out of jobs.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced free food assistance to 80 million migrant workers that is worth Rs 3,500 core, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modis Rs 20 lakh crore economic package to pull the economy out of a slump.

The first phase of the World Bank operation will be implemented countrywide through the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana (PMGKY).

It will immediately help scale-up cash transfers and food benefits, using a core set of pre-existing national platforms and programs such as the Public Distribution System (PDS) and Direct Benefit Transfers (DBT), the bank said.

Jobless migrant workers, hit by the lockdown, have fallen through the cracks because static social safety nets did not reach them in the absence of portability.

Economist Abhijit Sen, however, cautioned against over-centralising Indias safety net.

If the World Bank wants to streamline our social safety nets, first off, they are getting into very complicated things. The issue sometimes is not so much about how to reach the people as it is about how to get two wings of the government talking, Sen, a former member of the erstwhile Planning Commission, said.

The arguments are on two things, he said.

One, dont over-centralise things. Where the World Bank can intervene and should is portability. Two, if I had to give out a billion dollars, then, I would give very little of that to the federal government and most of it to the states, in fact, more to the municipalities, he said.

More than 90% of Indias workforce is employed in the informal sector, without access to basic savings or pensions, or paid leave from work.

There are large transfers to the rural poor. Look at the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana. The idea is to make social benefits such as food and cash transfers just as easily accessible for urban informal workers and migrants, Shrayana Bhattacharya, the World Bank lead of the project, said.

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STAMFORD, Conn., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- vineyard vines , the lifestyle brand best known for its smiling pink whale logo and 'Every day should feel this good' motto, announced today a roll-out promotion including a 50% discount for all teachers and college and graduate students starting Friday, May 15, a limited-edition Class of 2020 Graduation-inspired product line and the Ultimate Grad Pack Giveaway, where 5 winners will receive a full wardrobe of vineyard vines products. Also, during a graduation season where ceremonies and parties are on hold, vineyard vines co-founders, CEOs and brothers Shep & Ian Murray will be hosting a One-Of-A-Kind Graduation Zoom Party video conference for 12 lucky students.

Here are the details:

Check out @vineyardvines Instagram channel for giveaways to celebrate students and teachers of all grade levels including the chance to attend a One-Of-A-Kind Graduation Zoom Party video conference for 12 lucky students, a once-in-a-lifetime experience for graduates that will be full of surprises. Additionally, students can enter to win the Ultimate Grad Pack, which consists of a wardrobe full of vineyard vines items.

Inspired by these unprecedented times, the special, limited-edition 'Class of 2020' product collection includes a variety of Graduation t-shirts, a Graduation hat and a Graduation Shep Shirt, and is available at www.vineyardvines.com

All Teachers, College and Graduate Students are eligible to apply for the 50% discount on www.vineyardvines.com starting Friday, May 15 and ending Sunday, May 17 .

"During this unique time, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate and support the Class of 2020 as well as the teachers and students that are navigating through the COVID-19 crisis," said Shep Murray, vineyard vines CEO and Co-Founder. "We are blown away by our community and how resilient they are and we want to do what we can to provide teachers and students an Every day should feel this good moment during this pandemic," said Ian Murray, vineyard vines CEO and Co-Founder.

For more information visit vineyardvines.com. Follow along on Instagram @vineyardvines and @vineyardvineswomen for additional details, including giveaways, announcements and more.

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A company best known for its smiling pink whale logo, was founded in 1998 on Martha's Vineyard when brothers Shep and Ian Murray cut their ties with corporate America to start making ties that represented the Good Life. In addition to signature neckwear, vineyard vines offers a variety of clothing and accessories for men, women and children. Products are sold in over 600 specialty and department stores worldwide, through a seasonal catalog at 1.800.892.4982, online at vineyardvines.com and at over 100 freestanding stores.

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As Ridgefield continues to move towards recovery from its COVID-19 pandemic response and with hurricane season just a few weeks away  it goes from June 1 to Nov. 30  the town is looking to improve communications with residents. Its asking for volunteers.

The Town of Ridgefield Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) Public Information Office is looking for volunteers to work on its neighborhood outreach program.

This involves residents volunteering to be the contact person for his/her neighborhood or group of streets  a captain  and receiving communications directly from the public information office to share.

In the event of an emergency, neighborhoods choose their preferred methods of reaching their communities whether it be through email, private Facebook groups, or other ways. If your neighborhood would like to organize and designate a contact person, reach out to ridgefieldpio@gmail.com.

In Ridgefield, CERT volunteers support first responders, the Office of Emergency Management and the Town of Ridgefield. In the past they have been activated for such emergencies as Hurricane Irene, Snow-tober, Hurricane Sandy and any of the micro- and macro-burst weather events the town has experienced.

Ridgefield CERTs were activated in early March to help with the COVID-19 pandemic and have participated in Ridgefield Responds, community wide messaging, distribution of PPE and numerous other behind-the-scenes responsibilities.

Served neighborhoods

The following areas already have a volunteer contact person (captain): Casagmo; Fox Hill Phase I, II, and III; Wooster Heights/Settlers Lane; Dowling Drive, Ridgecrest Drive and Stonecrest Road; Nod Hill and Twin Ridge; Westmoreland; Mimosa; Pleasantview Estates; West Mountain Estates; Twixt Hills; Turner Hill; Prospect Ridge; Rainbow Lake; Quail Ridge I; Chestnut Hill; Mamanasco watershed residents; Pumping Station Road; Ramapoo Road and Arrowhead Lane; Norrans Ridge; Stonehenge Estates; the Ridgefield Knolls; Ritch Drive and Fillmore Lane; Manor Road, Lewis Drive and Shadow Lane; the Presidential park (Jefferson Drive, Lincoln Lane, Adams Road); also Rochambeau, Lafayette Avenue and Washington; Hobby Drive and Circle Drive.

Anyone who would like to be added to the contact list of an already organized neighborhood should email which neighborhood or group he/she is interested in, and send contact information to ridgefieldpio@gmail.com. The information will be forwarded to the neighborhood captain.

CERT advises residents to respond if a neighbor reaches out to them for their contact information if they want to receive such emergency communications from the town.

Message boards

Be aware that in the event that when communications through normal channels breaks down (loss of power and/or Internet) Ridgefield places message boards when possible in central locations within town.

Current message board locations are: Town Hall, the Ridgebury Fire Station, Parks and Recreation Center, Valero Gas Station at the corner of Route 35 and 7, Anconas Wines and Liquors in Branchville and Branchville train station. Some individual neighborhoods also have selected a designated location for postings.

CERT offers a consistent, nationwide approach to volunteer training and organization that professional responders can rely on during disasters, allowing them to focus on more complex tasks.

In Ridgefield CERT volunteers are also part of the Office of Emergency Management policy team and play a key role in the towns emergency operations.
PNC General Secretary, Atik Mohammed has supported calls on the Electoral Commission to begin registration exercise for the compilation of a new voters' register.



The Electoral Commission (EC) was expected to hold the exercise on Saturday, April 18, 2020 but postponed it to a later date due to the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus in the country.



In conformity with the restrictions on public gatherings and partial lockdown in the country, the EC has still not been able to undertake the voters' registration exercise, but since the lockdown has been lifted, there are suggestions for the Commission to go ahead with the exercise.



Addressing the issue on Thursday's 'Kokrokoo' on Peace FM, Atik Mohammed rooted for those calling on the EC to commence the exercise but must ensure the safety of the Ghanaian electorates who attend the registration centres.



He said the Commission should first make available adequate Personal Protective Equipment (PPEs) for their officials and the electorates, enforce the social distancing order and the wearing of nose masks as well as ensuring the electorates strictly adhere to all the preventive protocols before they are allowed to exercise their right to register.



To him, the EC is good to do the registration exercise if only they can protect the electorates and prevent transmissions of the disease.



''We can have an exercise that will smooth, that at the same time will assure of the safety of the Ghanaian electorates',' he stated.





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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The global economy is expected to suffer USD 5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Friday

New Delhi: The global economy is expected to suffer $5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Friday.

Of this, the impact on south Asian gross domestic product (GDP) will be to the tune of $142-218 billion.

"The global economy could suffer between $5.8 trillion and $8.8 trillion in losses - equivalent to 6.4 percent to 9.7 percent of the global GDP - as a result of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, ADB said in a new report subsequent to its economic outlook released in early April.

The GDP in South Asia will also be lower by 3.9-6.0 percent, mainly reflecting the tight restrictions in place in countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, ADB said in is updated assessment of the Potential Economic Impact of COVID-19.

The Manila-headquartered multi-lateral funding agency said that the economic losses in Asia and the Pacific region could range from $1.7 trillion under a short containment scenario of three months to $2.5 trillion under a long containment scenario of 6 months, with the region accounting for about 30 percent of the overall decline in global output.

Click here to follow LIVE updates on coronavirus outbreak

The Peoples Republic of China (PRC) could suffer losses between $1.1 trillion and $1.6 trillion.

In the Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2020 published on April 3, the agency had estimated COVID-19s global cost to range from $2 trillion to $4.1 trillion.

Click here to follow LIVE news and updates on stock markets

Earlier on March 6, it had estimated the economic impact globally ranging from $77 billion to $347 billion (0.1 to 0.4 percent of global GDP).

ADB said its new analysis which expects the global impact of $5.8-8.8 trillion is excluding the impact of policy measures.

The agencys new estimate is more than double the World Banks estimate of 2-4 decline in global GDP, and higher than the IMFs World Economic Outlook estimate of 6.3 percent decline in global GDP.

Governments around the world have been quick in responding to the impacts of the pandemic, implementing measures such as fiscal and monetary easing, increased health spending and direct support to cover losses in incomes and revenues.

Sustained efforts from governments focused on these measures could soften COVID19s economic impact by as much as 30 to 40 percent, according to the new report.

"This could reduce global economic losses due to the pandemic to between $4.1 trillion and $5.4 trillion," ADB added.

The ADB analysis has used a Global Trade Analysis Project-computable general equilibrium model, covering 96 outbreak-affected economies with over 4 million COVID-19 cases.

In addition to shocks to tourism, consumption, investment, and trade and production linkages covered in the ADO 2020 estimates, the new report includes transmission channels such as the increase in trade costs affecting mobility, tourism, and other industries; supply-side disruptions that adversely affect output and investment; and government policy responses that mitigate the effects of COVID-19s global economic impact.

This new analysis presents a broad picture of the very significant potential economic impact of COVID-19, said ADB Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada.

It also highlights the important role policy interventions can play to help mitigate damage to economies. These findings can provide governments with a relevant policy guide as they develop and implement measures to contain and suppress the pandemic, and lessen its impacts on their economies and people.

ADB said that policy makers should work together to quickly limit the pandemic - the longer the containment period, the more difficult and prolonged the recovery will be.

"Strong income and employment protection are critical to support the most vulnerable and avoid long-term economic scarring," it said.

By May 12, the virus had spread to 213 countries and territories worldwide, infecting more than 4 million people and causing more than 2,80,000 deaths, ADB said.

On the impact on wage incomes due to the pandemics, ADB expects it to fall globally especially in the US, the EU, and the UK.

"Globally, labour income will drop between $1.2 trillion to $1.8 trillion. For Asia, the decline in wage income will range from $359 billion to $550 billion - or about 30 per cent of the global drop in wage income," it added.

The report has analysed that the macroeconomic stabilisation packages announced by various countries could raise global GDP by $1.7 trillion to $3.4 trillion (1.9 to 3.7 per cent of global GDP).

For Asia, the macroeconomic stimulus could also add $339 billion to $675 billion (1.3 to 2.5 per cent of the regions GDP).
Based on the Internet of Things, the system was developed in a project supported by FAPESP. Patients can be advised to seek hospital care if they detect a deterioration in clinical signs.

Agencia FAPESP  Developed by Biologix , a startup headquartered in Sao Paulo, Brazil, a sleep apnea home diagnostic and monitoring system based on the Internet of Things can be used for the remote monitoring of individuals with suspected COVID-19 or mild symptoms of the disease. The system can also be used to recommend transfer to a hospital if the patients clinical signs worsen.

Two private hospitals in Sao Paulo, the epicenter of the pandemic in Brazil, will test the technology. The development of the innovation was supported by FAPESP via a project funded under the PIPE/PAPPE Grant program, a partnership between FINEP, the Brazilian governments innovation agency, and FAPESP via its Innovative Research in Small Business (PIPE) program.

Several devices are already available to monitor patients with suspected COVID-19 or mild symptoms, but theyre based on the patients subjective responses. They dont monitor clinical signs as our system does, Tacito Mistrorigo de Almeida, CEO of Biologix, told Agencia FAPESP.

The physical part of the system is a cordless portable sensor, which, when placed on the patients index finger, captures oxygen saturation and heart rate data.

The data are collected in real time by a free smartphone app available for the Android and iOS platforms. The program automatically sends the data to the cloud and to a control panel operated by the medical team responsible for monitoring each patient.

If the system shows a drop in oxygen saturation, the medical team contacts the patient or on-site carer. Low oxygen saturation is one of the main warning signs of a deteriorating condition in the case of both COVID-19 and sleep apnea, in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts.

The team advises immediate hospitalization if, in addition to the data showing a fall in oxygen saturation and heart rate, the patient or carer reports fever, a cough, fatigue and difficulty breathing, which are typical symptoms of infection by SARS-CoV-2.

The system enables the monitoring staff to refer patients to a hospital at the right time, lowering the risk of contagion by interaction with others and, above all, protecting healthcare workers, Almeida said.

The technology can also be used by hospitals, health management organizations and insurers to monitor not only patients with suspected COVID-19 or mild symptoms of the disease but also older people and other members of the groups most at risk of developing a severe form of the disease.

In hospitals, the system can be used to monitor noncritical COVID-19 patients and leave intensive care unit beds free for critical patients, Almeida said.

Adaptability

Biologix is supported by Eretz.bio, a healthtech startup incubator operated by the Albert Einstein Jewish-Brazilian Charitable Society (SBIBAE) that also assists several firms with initiatives funded by PIPE-FAPESP to develop technologies for COVID-19 diagnosis, monitoring and treatment.

Among these are Magnamed, which will supply 6,500 mechanical ventilators to the Ministry of Health of Brazil, and Hoobox, which, in partnership with Radsquare, has developed a system that detects fever remotely.

This ecosystem of healthtech startups has been agile, evidencing a capacity to reconfigure rapidly in order to create solutions for the fight against COVID-19, including technologies that can be used in triage to identify patients who require more urgent treatment, said Jose Claudio Cyrineu Terra, head of innovation at SBIBAE.
Newtown Police Department

NEWTOWN - The former resident arrested across state lines on child pornography possession charges earlier this year has pleaded not guilty.

David Eric Anderson, 51, is facing first- and third-degree child pornography possession charges after Newtown police arrested him in Massachusetts Jan. 16, on a warrant stemming from a seven-year investigation.
An unstable mountain slope has been identified in Alaska that could trigger a catastrophic tsunami within the next year and' likely within 20 years.'

The dangerous event is looming in Prince William Sound and could release millions of tons of rock into Harriam Fiord that would have devastating effects on fishermen and recreationalists in the area.

A public letter signed by 14 scientists warn that the slope is supported by the retreating Barry Glacier, which has succumbed to the effects of climate change.

Warming temperatures have left just one-third of the slope supported by ice, but an earthquake, heatwave or significant rain could prompt the disastrous landslide.

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Prince William Sound is located 60 miles east of Anchorage and is an area of ports and is the location for part of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System.

Steve Masterman, director of the Division of Geological Surveys said his staff has received evidence that the rapid retreat of the Barry Glacier could release millions of tons of rock into Harriam Fiord, triggering a tsunami at least as large as some of the largest in the state's record.

'The most noteworthy of these tsunamis was in 1958, when a landslide entered the Lituya Bay Fiord in Glacier Bay and generated a wave that went 1,700 feet up the opposite side of the fiord,' Masterman said.

'The most recent was at Southeast Alaska's Taan Glacier in 2015, where a wave went 600 feet up the opposite wall of the glacial valley.'

A public letter signed by 14 scientists warn that the slope is supported by the retreating Barry Glacier, which has succumbed to the effects of climate change

Warming temperatures have left just one-third of the slope supported by ice, but an earthquake, heatwave or significant rain could prompt the disastrous landslide

The slope is slowly creeping, but experts are concerned that at any moment it could turn into a fast-moving landslide.

Warming temperatures, earthquakes, significant rainfall and snow are all factors that could speed up the motion.

Climate change may also be a huge player in this catastrophic event, as the northern part of the world is warming twice as fast as anywhere else and resulting in a number of glaciers melting.

'We have only preliminary results showing the potential spread of the tsunami. The effects would be especially severe near where the landslide enters the water at the head of Barry Arm,' the open letter reads.

'Additionally, areas of shallow water, or low-lying land near the shore, would be in danger even further from the source.

To better predict the landslide, scientists are comparing images of the slope taken from 2009 through 2015 and found that the slope has moved 600 feet during the time period

'A minor failure may not produce significant impacts beyond the inner parts of the fiord, while a complete failure could be destructive throughout Barry Arm, Harriman Fiord, and parts of Port Wells.

'Our initial results show complex impacts further from the landslide than Barry Arm, with over 30 foot waves in some distant bays, including Whittier. Field measurements and further analysis could allow us to make these estimates more accurate and specific.'

And the scientists have predicted the landslide could possible occur within the next year and likely within 20 years.

The risk from tsunamis is especially high in Barry Arm and Harriman Fiord.

The team's analysis suggests the slide would completely fill Barry Arm with debris, and generate a tsunami hundreds of feet tall in its outer areas and in Harriman Fiord.

To better predict the landslide, scientists are comparing images of the slope taken from 2009 through 2015 and found that it has moved 600 feet during the time period.

Mylene Jacquemart, University of Colorado, suggests that parts of the slope are still moving, albeit currently at much lower rates than in 2009-15.

Alaska state officials have teamed up with other agencies to install equipment that will monitor the landslide's movement and weather conditions in the area.
HALIFAXMore than 30 faculty members at Dalhousie Universitys law school have signed a letter urging Nova Scotias premier to call an independent public inquiry into the shooting rampage that took 22 lives last month.

On Thursday, Premier Stephen McNeil said a review of the tragedy should be led by Ottawa, with the province providing support and assistance.

However, 33 of the roughly 40 faculty members of the Halifax universitys Schulich School of Law are calling on McNeil today to initiate a public inquiry with broad terms of reference.

They say in the letter the inquirys terms must allow for a critical review of the procedures and decisions employed by police during the April 18 and 19 shootings, and in the months and years leading up to the tragedy.

They also want the inquiry to consider broader social and legal issues that may have been contributing factors, including domestic violence.

The law professors say a former neighbours account earlier this week of the shooters prior violence against his intimate partner and his possession of illegal firearms has increased the importance of announcing a public review.

The premier has said he believes Ottawa should lead the inquiry because the RCMP is a federal police force with national protocols.

However, the professors letter says Nova Scotia is responsible for law enforcement and the administration of justice in the province.

The process that your government sets in motion now must be robust enough to assure Nova Scotians that you are doing all that is in your power to ensure that this will never happen again, the letter says.

RELATED STORIES Canada Nova Scotia premier waiting for federal authorities before determining mass-shooting inquiry

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Three strikes, youre out!

Editor:

In the Friday R-J May 1, 2020 editorial, Gov. Ned Lamont was chastised for failing to abide by the 1975 enacted Connecticut Freedom of Information Act and for an obvious lack of transparency

I wanted to believe that our new Governor was an honest man and would be a good communicator to help heal the deep distrust of government created by his predecessor, Gov. Dan Malloy. I was proven wrong. Gov. Lamont is at it again, now appointing a Boston consulting firm to orchestrate opening business back up in Connecticut, with a price tag of $2 MILLION dollars.

Last summer Gov. Lamont, with billionaire Ray Dalio and his Dalio Philanthropies, created the Partnership for Connecticut to benefit education in the state. Only the problem was that the cooperative would be exempt from our freedom-of-information laws even though tax-payer money would be included in its expenditures.

Then our Governor appointed 47 individuals to advise him on opening up business, called the Reopen Connecticut Advisory Group. They too, according to Gov. Lamont, are exempt from FOIA laws. To make matters even worse, Lamonts Reopen Connecticut Advisory Committee Chair, Indra Nooyi, used to work for the same Boston consulting firm.

So, just to recap, now we learn Gov. Lamont has hired a Boston consulting company without any input from the Legislature, spent $2M at the most inappropriate time and couldnt find enough common wisdom within his own handpicked advisory group of 47 people to tackle the job? Something smells rather fishy. How about Gov. Lamont appoints local leaders to lead the re-opening effort, as they actually know what is going on within our communities since they serve their communities every day. They know what decisions will work to keep us safe and get us back open.Hey Ned, three strikes and youre out!

Lou Arata, Meriden
Samantha and Rebecca Silverman are working together for the first time on the job on what will likely be the hardest assignment of their careers.

The 25-year-old identical twin sisters are both registered nurses working in the COVID-19 unit at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

Typically, Rebecca works in the hospital's medical intensive care unit (ICU) and Samantha works in the cardiac care unit. But when COVID-19 hit the city, the hospital's intensive care units were transformed into COVID ICUs.

PHOTO: Samantha and Rebecca Silverman are identical twin sisters working together as nurses in the COVID-19 unit at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. (Northwestern Medicine)

"Its just nice when youre having a rough day and you can turn around and see Samanthas face," Rebecca told "Good Morning America" in an interview alongside her sister. "Its a stress reliever just to be with each other and see each other throughout these tough days."

"We really are best friends," Samantha said. "Amidst all the craziness of COVID, to be able to work alongside each other is just so lucky for us."

MORE: ER nurse decorates patients' rooms with pictures of loved ones

The two sisters, who have an older sister who is also a nurse at a Chicago children's hospital, began working together on the COVID unit in mid-March.

PHOTO: Samantha and Rebecca Silverman are identical twin sisters working together as nurses in the COVID-19 unit at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. (Northwestern Medicine)

They live close enough to each other that they had always been able to commute to work when their schedules allowed, but now they are working side-by-side to help the hospital's most critical patients during their 12-plus hour shifts.

"You dont know really what youre going to come into work, what youre going to see and what youre day is going to be like," said Rebecca. "Its definitely been rather difficult and just scary in general to be here during this time."

"We just work really well together. We always have," she added of her and her sister's relationship. "Were able to work off one another and help each other in ways that for other people might not be as natural."

"Its physically exhausting. Its mentally exhausting," Samantha said of the work she and Rebecca and their colleagues are doing. "I feel like were all just working really hard and we all need each other right now."

Story continues

PHOTO: Samantha and Rebecca Silverman are identical twin sisters working together as nurses in the COVID-19 unit at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. (Northwestern Medicine)

The sisters said they did not always know that they would end up working in the same career, much less in the same unit.

Samantha knew she wanted to be a nurse from a young age and pursued nursing while in college. Rebecca did not decide on a nursing career until later on in college and completed graduate school before becoming a registered nurse.

MORE: Meet mom and daughter working together as nurses: I have someone that really gets it

Samantha has worked at Northwestern Memorial Hospital for the past three years, while Rebecca started at the hospital about six months ago.

PHOTO: Samantha and Rebecca Silverman are identical twin sisters working together as nurses in the COVID-19 unit at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. (Northwestern Medicine)

The sisters said their nursing colleagues are used to seeing them both around the hospital's hallways now, but the doctors are still adjusting to working with identical twins.

"Its funny, I think, for the doctors," said Rebecca. "Theyll come up to us and talk about a patient when its the other [sisters] patient."

These identical twin sisters are nurses working in the same COVID-19 unit originally appeared on goodmorningamerica.com
One more novel coronavirus patient died in Himachal Pradesh on Friday, the fourth fatality in the hill state.

A 52-year-old man, who tested positive for the novel coronavirus, died in Hamirpur on Friday, Special Secretary (Health) Nipun Jindal said.

He had been admitted at Botha's RCH in Hamirpur a few days ago and was referred to Nerchowk's Shri Lal Bahadur Shastri Government Hospital (SLBSGMC) in Mandi on Friday, Jindal added.

Hamirpur Medical College principal Dr. Anil Chauhan said the patient had breathing problem and that led to his death at SLBSGMC in Nerchowk.

He was a resident of Hamirpur's Hatli village in Galore area and was admitted to RCH bhota early this week, he said, adding that this is the first death due to COVID-19 from Hamirpur district.

Earlier three persons lost their lives due to novel coronavirus in the state.

A 21-year-old man from Sarkaghat in Mandi died due to COVID-19 in Shimla on May 5.

A 70-year-old Delhi resident woman, who had been staying at a factory's guest house in Solan's Baddi, died due to the infection at the PGIMER in Chandigarh on April 2.

A 69-year-old man who had returned from the US died of COVID-19 at the Dr. Rajendra Prasad Government Medical College (RPGMC) in Kangra district on March 23.

Himachal Pradesh reported a fresh case of COVID-19 on Friday, taking the count to 76, officials said.

The patient had recently returned to Una from Mohali in Punjab and was kept under home quarantine.

The man tested positive after random sampling and will be shifted to a COVID hospital, the officials said.

There are 33 active cases in the state, while 39 people have recovered from the infection.

Thirteen active cases are in Kangra, six in Chamba, four each in Hamirpur and Bilaspur, two each in Una, Sirmaur and one each in Mandi and Shimla, they added.

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


Researchers say sea life in the South China Sea continues to suffer damage because of overfishing and a lack of international action to protect the area.

Over the past year, fishing operations from several Asian countries have moved farther out into the 3.5 million-square-kilometer sea, experts and public research suggest. The fishermen are finding more success in deeper ocean waters than in overfished coastal areas.

Ocean coral was further damaged last year as a result of large clam operations and the use of cyanide and dynamite in fishing, researchers said.

China claims most of the South China Sea as its territory. Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also claim parts of the sea. China has angered other claimants in recent years by creating small man-made islands in some disputed areas of the sea and building military equipment on some of the land.

Attention turns to sea life in the waterway every May, when China declares a temporary halt to fishing above the 12th parallel. This is an area that covers waters mostly used by China, but also areas near Vietnam and the Philippines. The yearly fishing ban began in 1995. This year, the ban runs from May 1 to August 16.

Gregory Poling is director of the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, or CSIS. He told VOA that damage to sea life in the South China Sea is clearly worsening. He added, We certainly dont see any evidence that anybody is doing anything about it.

Fishing in the sea quickly expanded in the 1980s and early 1990s, when it reached about 10 million tons per year. Those numbers come from a 2017 study. The lead researchers of the study -- Cui Liang of Chinas Xiamen University and Daniel Pauly from the University of British Columbia -- said fishing activities leveled off after that expansion.

In recent years, boats have been fishing in deeper waters and catching smaller fish. Five years ago, fishing in the South China Sea accounted for 12 percent of the worldwide fish catch, CSIS estimates show.

Herman Kraft is a political science professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He told VOA that coastal areas are already overfished. So, fishing operations from China, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan are moving toward the center of the South China Sea.

The environmental group Global Underwater Explorers says dynamite and cyanide bombing is causing major damage to sea life. Such activities are widespread throughout Asia and the South China Sea, from Indonesia to southern China, the group says on its website.

Large clam harvesting last year by Chinese boats harmed large coral around Scarborough Shoal west of Luzon Island in the Philippines, media organizations in Manila reported.

The World Wildlife Fund said on its website that military groups in the seas Spratly Islands have shot turtles and seabirds and fished with explosives.

The decreasing fish supplies are pushing each country to increase its activities to look harder for what is left, Poling said.

About 4 million Chinese fishing crew members are expected to obey Chinas temporary fishing ban. But crews from countries that dispute those parts of the sea are not likely to do so because they do not recognize Chinas claims.

Im Bryan Lynn.

Ralph Jennings reported this story for VOA News. Bryan Lynn adapted the report for Learning English. Ashley Thompson 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

coral  n. a hard, usually pink or white substance produced by a type of a very small sea animal

level off  phrasal verb. to stop rising or falling and stay at the same level

clam  n. a small sea creature that has a shell in two parts

turtle  n. an animal with four legs and a hard shell that lives mainly in water

cyanide  n. a very strong poision

dynamite  n. a type of explosive
Mayank Singh By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Army Chief General MM Naravane on Friday said that Lipulekh Pass is not a dispute and Nepal has raised the matter at the behest of someone else.

There is reason to believe that they might have raised this issue at the behest of someone else and that is very much possibility, he said.

The Kalapani region is a junction of three countries - India, Nepal, and China. Nepal and India both claim this region as part of their respective territories.

India and Nepal share 1751 km of boundary between them.

Elaborating on the question of the issues raised by Nepal, the Army Chief said, As far as the road to Lipulekh Pass is concerned, I do not see any contradiction in that at all. In fact, the Nepalese ambassador had mentioned that East of Kalinadi belongs to them and there is no dispute in that. The road which we have constructed is on the west side of the river. So I dont know what exactly they are agitating about. As we go ahead there are little issues as to where the trijunction should be. There have never been any problems on this score in the past.

General Naravane was replying to a question after delivering an online talk on 'COVID and Indian Army: Responses and Beyond' in the presence of scholars, academics, and journalists.

Nepal raised the issue after India built a road till Lipulekh Pass and claimed the area to be disputed. But experts and strategists find it not just a recent phenomenon from Nepal but also feel it has Chinese push for the sake of long term strategic military gain.

India inherited the borders from British post-1947 and since then Kali River became the border with Nepal boundary being the East of Kali and west being the Indian border. Also, there have been only two mutually accepted points that remained to be resolved between India and Nepal namely Kalapani (Uttarakhand) and Susta (Bihar).

Dr. Nihar R. Nayak, an expert on Nepal matters, says, Army Chief is factually correct. "Initially, Nepal mentioned two places, Kalapani and Susta, as disputed. Now, they have recently increased it to four by adding Lipulekh and Lympiadhura."

The number of disputed territories is increased every year by Nepal should be resolved amicably through diplomatic means referring historical documents. said Dr. Nayak, who is Research Fellow with MP-IDSA Indias premier think tank in Delhi.

India and Nepal share 1751 km of the boundary between them. All of a sudden in 2015 Lipulekh was introduced from the Nepal side when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was working to revive trade with China and Lympiadhura was introduce in November 2019.

Nepal divides borders with China into the eastern part and western portion and during the 1962 war the Chinese had their major gains on the eastern flank but could not get that much of success in West because of such important locations like the Kalapani.

A strategic thinker said, India had domination in Kalapani area that oversees Burang county in China which has their Taklakot Army position. The push from China is to shift the Indian positions back as Kalapani is a major challenge.
The Tennessee Department of Education is partnering with Trevecca Nazarene University to provide free training on digital learning and teaching to all Tennessee teachers. The self-paced, online training is available for free today through Aug. 1, and will help teachers develop skills for digital learning, including how to design classes for remote instruction, use technology to enhance learning outcomes for all students, and more.As a result of the coronavirus pandemic and related school closures, digital learning has become a critical resource for many districts to deliver academic instruction to students.Teachers are learning to adapt to the new challenges of digital learning and teaching, but they should not have to do it alone, so we are thrilled this resource is available to all Tennessee teachers, said Commissioner Penny Schwinn. We are so grateful to Trevecca for making this training available now to help Tennessee teachers build their digital toolkit to better serve all students.Digital and other distance learning methods will continue to be important for our teachers and students as we look ahead to next school year. This partnership builds on the Departments efforts to support districts and schools during COVID-19 related school building closures with a variety of resources including the PBS Teaching Tennessee programming, ReadyRosie partnership, and Principal Professional Learning Series with University of Tennessee, Knoxville.This training will specifically equip teachers with digital skills to serve student needs and prepare for the next school year, which will be particularly important should digital instruction continue to be necessary. The department plans to release additional resources for teachers in the coming weeks and months.Tennessee educators can register for the free training online here: www.Trevecca.edu/remoteinstruction.This free, online training will help equip Tennessee educators who serve our states K-12 student population with the necessary tools and skills needed for remote instruction, said Dr. Dean Diehl, dean of Treveccas School of Graduate and Continuing Studies. It will also provide a valuable opportunity for teachers to network with other educational professionals who are facing the same challenges and better equip them for the education methods of the future.Teachers will learn a variety of skills to improve digital and blended learning including how to develop online classroom design, demonstrate effective use of instructional technology tools for digital instruction, create supplemental, blended or hybrid content deliveries, apply ADA Compliance and Accessibility for Universal Design, and implement a specialized IEP plan for content creation.Through this professional development course, participants will be able to get hands-on experience and practice what theyre learning through project-based assignments, LaMetrius Daniels, the director of Treveccas Center for Innovative Instruction, said. We want educators to walk away from this class with skills they can immediately put into practice as they build rich digital learning environments for their students.The self-paced, online training will take place in four modules:Module 1: Participants will explore trends in instructional software, online resources, how to use technology for communication between teacher and students.Module 2: Participants will be introduced to learning management systems and explore selecting a learning management system for their environment and how to release the course to students.Module 3: Participants will explore the concept of universal design for learning and learn how to address any problems of exclusion from education, including supporting students with impairments.Module 4: Participants will learn to build engaging, interactive content including video, simulations or animation.For more information about the free training, or to register, educators should visit www.Trevecca.edu/remoteinstruction. For Tennessee Department of Education media inquiries, contact Edu.MediaInquiries@tn.gov.
Casualties Reported as Powerful Car Bomb Blast Hits Capital of Afghan Province of Paktia

Sputnik News

07:08 GMT 14.05.2020

KABUL,(Sputnik) - A car bomb exploded at a square in the city of Gardez, the capital of the eastern Afghan province of Paktia, on Thursday, a Sputnik correspondent reported.

A shop owner in Gardez told Sputnik that the blast was powerful and caused casualties.

According to the spokesman for the Paktia provincial governor, Abdullah Hasrat, the explosion took place near the Afghan National Army (ANA) office at around 8.20 a.m. (03:50 GMT).

A spokesman for the 203rd 'Tandar' (Thunder) Corps, Aimal Mohmand, said the Mazda truck exploded before reaching the ANA office.

"The information is that so far four people have been killed and ten injured, including both civilians and soldiers," Paktia's police chief, Col. Sultan Dawood, told Sputnik.

Meanwhile, according to Tariq Areen, a spokesman for the Afghan Interior Ministry, dozens of civilians were killed and injured in the morning explosion.

He added that the attack was carried out by Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT, terrorist organization banned in Russia) and the Taliban-affiliated Haqqani network.

 Sputnik

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:52:10|Editor: huaxia

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CHANGSHA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Officials and medical experts in central China's Hunan Province Thursday shared anti-epidemic experience with their counterparts in Santo Domingo, capital of the Dominican Republic.

Via a video conference, Chinese officials and experts answered a host of questions on COVID-19, including what major measures China has taken against the epidemic, how to disinfect public places, as well as how to meet the citizens' basic needs amid the epidemic.

China empathizes with the Dominican Republic as it is being hit by the epidemic and is willing to aid its fight against the virus, said Zhang Run, Chinese ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

Carolina Mejia, mayor of Santo Domingo, hailed China's achievements in the fight against the epidemic and appreciated the valuable help from the Chinese side. Enditem
OTTAWA - Provinces looking to reopen their economies will need to scale up and co-ordinate testing and contact-tracing to contain future outbreaks of COVID-19, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 15/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks during a daily briefing on COVID-19 outside Rideau Cottage in Ottawa, Thursday, May 14, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

OTTAWA - Provinces looking to reopen their economies will need to scale up and co-ordinate testing and contact-tracing to contain future outbreaks of COVID-19, says Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

During a call among Trudeau and provincial premiers Thursday evening, the premiers stressed the need for tracing that reaches beyond provincial boundaries as COVID-19 restrictions begin to be eased and people begin to travel more.

This will require collaboration among the provinces on how this work is done  efforts that Trudeau said Friday the federal government is prepared to help with.

"There will be more travel because of a reopened economy and we need to make sure we have coherence in our approach across the country on both testing and contact tracing, which is something we talked about a lot last night," Trudeau said of the Thursday discussion.

But he said a national approach will require the provinces to be willing to work with Ottawa on a collective effort.

Canada's chief public health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said in a news conference of her own that contact tracing is "one of the absolute cornerstones" of Canada's public health strategy in managing the spread of the virus.

While this work is done at the local level, she said the federal government has offered support.

She also noted there have been increasing discussions about technological applications that could help.

"There are some jurisdictions that have begun to try some of this and are sharing some of the lessons," she said.

South Korea has begun aggressively testing and tracing thousands of people who went to bars and nightclubs in Seoul after a cluster of new coronavirus cases emerged in its capital. Some of this tracing has involved contacting telecom companies to gain location information of people who were in those clubs to determine who might have been infected.

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While Canada is looking to work with provinces and different organizations on a national approach to contact tracing, Innovation Minister Navdeep Bains said protecting Canadians' privacy will be central.

"The architecture around privacy principles will be a key feature of any tool that we work with and move forward on," he said.

"As we look at other jurisdictions, we want to be driven by a Canadian solution based on Canadian values and privacy will be front and centre."

Earlier this month, Ontario Premier Doug Ford called for a national plan for contact tracing, noting that each province has been approaching this work differently.

"The federal government is offering to work very closely with the provinces on expanding massively both our testing and our contact-tracing and we certainly hope that the provinces will work with us on that because everywhere across the country, as we reopen, we need to be hypervigilant to possible resurgences of COVID-19," Trudeau said.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 15, 2020.
PEOPLE with defined contribution pension plans are being advised not to panic as their fund has lost value this year.

It comes as the company pension funds of some of the largest companies in the State saw their deficits unchanged in the first three months of the year.

Peter Gray, corporate consulting leader with Mercer, said that members of defined contribution schemes will have likely seen the value of their retirement funds fall since the beginning of the year.

With a defined contribution scheme, employees and employers pay into a fund, with the final pension amount based on the amount put in and the fund performance.

Mr Gray said Mercer has seen an increased level of queries from members and interest in switching investment strategies.

"We would caution against any knee-jerk reactions, especially when the market is so volatile, as it may ultimately only serve to lock in losses."

He said those furthest from retirement have time for markets to recover and those closer to retirement will have benefited from de-risking if they have adopted a lifestyle-investment approach.

Members were strongly encouraged by Mr Gray to seek advice before making any decisions.

Recent figures from Rubicon Investment Consulting show that over the first four months of 2020, Irish pension managed funds have lost an average of 8.5pc.

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In the past twelve months, those funds have delivered a 2.8pc loss on average.

The average managed fund return has been 2.4pc per annum over the past three years.

Mercer said the pension funds of the largest firms in the State saw their deficits unchanged in the first three months of the year.

This is despite the extreme volatility in financial markets caused by the Covid-19 pandemic.

An analysis by Mercer shows that defined benefit pension deficits for Iseq-listed companies have remained unchanged at 1.2bn from year end to the end of March.

A defined benefit pension is one where a specific benefit will be paid to the member when they retire, with the amount based on the number of years an employee has worked and their final salary.

There was a sharp fall in stock markets in the first three months of the year.

But this was offset by a decline in scheme liabilities fuelled by soaring corporate bond yields, according to research by pensions advisers Mercer.

Pension liabilities are the difference between the total amount due to retired scheme members and the actual amount of money the pension scheme has to make those payments.

Liabilities are calculated with reference to the interest on bonds. The higher the rate, the lower the pension liabilities.

Mercer has advised pension fund trustees of DB schemes and sponsors to plan for the possible economic disruption of a second lockdown, or the possibility that the current lockdown will be extended.

The consultants also advised trustees to consider the investment opportunities of buying assets at reduced prices due to the falls in stock markets.
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SEATTLE  The All City Fence building, at 36 S. Hudson St., sold for over $5.6 million, according to King County records.

The buyer was an LLC related to Terreno, the large logistics and industrial REIT, which hasn't filed any plans for the property.





. . .
LaLiga's restart is on the horizon and Barcelona will play the rest of their 11 games starting with a two-point lead over Real Madrid when it does. The feeling is, however, that the team hasn't been playing to its potential since Quique Setien took charge. Messi has spoke to Sport and Mundo Deportivo to discuss the immediate future and he has done so with clarity.

Messi PSG

Midfielder

Argentina

"It could be that the break ends up benefiting us," he told Sport. "But we will see if they can get the competitions going again and we will get rid of the doubts. We will check the level we are at and where we are at when we get going again."

The Argentina was also asked about the future of the team. The transfer market is uncertain but there is one name that remains linked with Barcelona above anyone else. That is Inter Milan's Lautaro Martinez. "I am being honest when I say that I don't know if there were or are negotiations right now for him, I have no idea," he told Mundo Deportivo. "I think I've already said it. Lautaro is an impressive striker, above all because I think he is a very complete number nine. He's strong, dribbles well, scores goals, knows how to protect the ball.. But we will have to see what happens with him and with the others names they are saying."

Strange market for transfer says Messi

The captain of Barcelona says a good eye for a player could help even if there isn't as much money as there once was in the transfer market. "There are a few people at the club who are in charge of the theme of signings and they are the ones who select who they think are best for the team," he said. "It's obvious that the situation we are in will make the market a bit strange and you have to be sure to improve on what we have."

"I think is that manager understood it poorly and they explained poorly what I wanted to say," Messi said about some comments that might have been construed as critical. "What I said was that in the last few games before the break, it seems obvious that they weren't enough to see us win the Champions League. I never doubted the squad that we have and I have no doubt that we can win every competition we are left in. But not in the manner we were playing in. Now, everyone has their opinion, which is fine and they're all respectable. Mine is coming from a place where I am lucky enough to have played in the Champions League every year and I know that it's not possible to win it playing the way we were playing," he told Sport.
Choi Sang-boon is wheeled out of Pohang Medical Center on Friday, ending her two-month treatment in isolation for the coronavirus. Korea Times photo by Kim Jung-hye





Medical workers celebrate Choi Sang-boon's discharge from the hospital on Friday. Korea Times photo by Kim Jung-hye





By Park Si-soo







A woman aged 104 has recovered from COVID-19, becoming the oldest South Korean to beat the deadly virus.







The patient, Choi Sang-boon, was released from Pohang Medical Center, Friday, where she had been treated in isolation for over two months.






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Linkedin (Agence France-Presse)  Fri, May 15, 2020 07:04 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd8235aa 2 Art & Culture ai-weiwei,Rohingya,Myanmar,documentary,China,artist,COVID-19,pandemic,coronavirus Free

The Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei was producing documentaries and directing an opera in Italy when the coronavirus pandemic hit the country.

Weiwei has since moved to Cambridge, England, where he is self-isolating with his family and working on three full-length documentaries.

Details about the forthcoming films are still scarce to this date, although Weiwei has recently discussed his new projects with Phillips Senior Advisor Arnold Lehman as part of the auction house's "ART MATTERS" series.

One the documentaries will focus on the Rohingya refugee crisis, during which over 900,000 Burmese Rohingya were forcibly displaced or fled from the Rakhine state of Myanmar to Bangladesh in 2015.

The film, which will chronicle "a crisis that has almost been forgotten", is currently in the post-production stage and is due to premiere by the end of the year.

Additionally, Weiwei is currently filming a documentary about the current COVID-19 pandemic, whose social distancing restrictions remind him of his three-month detention in Beijing in 2011 on charges of tax evasion.

"There's not two military officers in the room, but otherwise it's the same. It's still isolation from the outside world, but now at least we have internet [and] there's plenty of time for cooking," he told Lehman, also adding that he hopes this new project will make "everyone really understand what it's like to be isolated."

Read also: Artist Ai Weiwei takes aim at state violence in Mexico with Legos

Meanwhile, museums and cultural institutions across the world are scrambling to collect and preserve ephemera, photographs and personal items that capture everyday life in the midst of the pandemic.

Earlier this May, the National Portrait Gallery launched the "Hold Still" initiative in conjunction with Kate Middleton.

The collaborative project invites Britons to submit portraits of their lives under lockdown until June 18, with the museum calling on photographs that respond to the themes "Helpers and Heroes", "Your New Normal" and "Acts of Kindness".

A presentation of selected portraits will be on view on the website of the National Portrait Gallery at a yet-unannounced date in August.

Additionally, the New York Historical Society has launched an open call for the donation of objects, photographs, digital documents and other ephemera that document the global health crisis.

The institution is looking for artifacts such as public signs, flyers for emergency food services, homemade protective equipment and past-time activities adopted in response to stay-at-home guidelines.
Angola, IN (46703)

Today

Light snow this evening giving way to partly cloudy conditions late. Low 12F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%..

Tonight

Light snow this evening giving way to partly cloudy conditions late. Low 12F. Winds NNW at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%.
The world is grappling with a rampaging coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on local and global economies. No nation has been spared the effects of the novel virus which is threatening the existence of our species and deeply ingrained socio-cultural ways. Lockdowns, restriction of movement, ban on gatherings, the need to observe health and safety protocols including donning face masks have become the new normal. Millions of children are out of school and parents with little or no teaching experience have to school their wards on top of dealing with their own anxieties.



It goes without saying that these are challenging times for everyone but for children these new arrangements can be even more daunting.



Domestic Violence



As children are restricted to their homes, most of them easily become victims of domestic violence. Many children suffer from Focus Attention Disorder (FAD) and leaving them at the mercy of parents who are not professionally trained as teachers is a recipe for some sort of abuse. Again, parents who are stressed are more likely to react to their childrens inappropriate behaviors or demands in abusive ways, directly or indirectly. Increased stress levels among parents are often a major predictor of physical abuse and neglect of children says child psychologist Yo Jackson, Ph.D., associate director of the Child Maltreatment Solutions Network at Penn State.



Stress and Depression



For the last two months, children of school-going age have been forced apart, their interaction with friends and school mates cut off abruptly. This situation is especially difficult for only children, their interactions have been restricted to the adults they live with. These sudden changes can hurl children into depression. We shouldnt also forget that some children are also scared of the deadly impact of this COVID 19. They are likely to engage in mind fantasies and are likely to jump into illogical conclusions during this pandemic. For instance, they may be thinking about what will become of them when they lose their parents or loved ones to the virus. Are all my friends safe? Am I going to die too? All these irrational thoughts are likely to plague children during this period.



The fate of 2020 WASSCE and BECE candidates is uncertain. This is a confusing situation and without psychological assistance, candidates preparedness when new dates are announced can be affected. University students have been forced into online lectures, quizzes, and examinations. Even in cities network challenges abound, the cost of data subscriptions is out of the reach of many especially at a time when job losses have become the order of the day.



Bodily Changes/Diseases



Parents must monitor the eating habits of children during this time. Most children are likely to gain weight as a result of mindless eating. Since children are at home and less engaged, they tend to eat more and junk food seem even more attractive at this time. If we all lose sight of eating habits, we are likely to see an incidence and increase in lifestyle diseases such as obesity and diabetes.



Decline in Academic Performance



Since the pandemic started, governments and educators all over the world have responded in stride, finding innovative ways to keep children learning. The Ghana learning television channel launched to help educate children in other to compensate for the loss of contact hours with teachers in school is one such innovation. How helpful are these television learning sessions to the many school-going children who live in areas without televisions or access to electricity? And how do we answer the questions children with access may have while they learn? This situation will likely contribute to the decline in the academic performance of children. Already, parents and guardians are struggling to keep up with their new forced role as educators.



Acquisition of Strange Behaviors



Clearly, in this time of house arrest surfing the internet is going to be the order of the day. Research indicates that the internet is a new and innovative medium that can completely change the lives of people much as television did in the 1950s and 1960, according to Kim Yeora doctoral thesis on The impact of the internet on Childrens daily lives in 2003. Kim argues that the number of kids and teens who are using the internet is growing fast every year. Obviously, children in Ghana today cannot do away with the internet. What are they reading and watching on the internet? Who is controlling what they read and watch on the internet? I strongly believe these questions and many others must be asked during this pandemic. Children are likely to be exposed to novel and dangerous behaviors if surfing the internet is not checked. Some of these foreign behaviors on the internet can have negative repercussions on the moral standards of the Ghanaian child, especially during this period.



Recommendation



Firstly, I strongly recommend parents and guardians make a conscious effort to keep their stress and anxiety levels as low as possible especially during this period. According to Damashek, a Child Psychologist, Anything that reduces stress can reduce the risk for abuse and neglect. Parents must learn not to project their anger, fury, and disappointment on their wards after engaging in heated arguments with their partners. They are children and must not be victims of chaos in the home.



Also, parents who can afford the services of nutritionists must do that as soon as possible. This will help regulate the eating habits of children and the entire family. Those who cannot afford the services of nutritionists should kindly monitor the food their wards eat whiles waiting for this pandemic to be over.

Parents and guardians need to assist their children to engage in cognitive exercises while at home. Cognitive exercises or rehearsals help stimulate the brain and make it active and reduce the chances of memory loss and forgetfulness. Cognitive exercises can be one of the following:



a. Go through childrens Assignment Books and repeat the same assignments they were given when they were in school

b. Give children Mathematics questions to solve.

c. Engage children in discussions that demand a lot of thinking.

d. Buy a lot of storybooks for children to read

e. Children can use this period to learn how to effectively use the computer and can also be assisted to improve their typing skills.



During this period, parents who are perceived to have good child management skills and love their kids most are all going to be tested. Therefore, all parents and guardians must consciously device a strategy that will help them consistently have the welfare of their kids in mind. They shouldnt lose sight of their children. At any point in time, parents should be aware of what their children are engaging in.



Internet usage is not bad. However, the way and manner it is used can make it devastating. Parents and guardians are encouraged to monitor and control what their kids read and watch on the internet. University authorities and management should take into consideration the challenges students are likely to encounter with online lessons and examinations. I recommend a take-home assessment for all students in the tertiary institutions. Modules should be put online for students to read and assessment should be a take-home type. When students are done, they just have to email the assignments to their various lecturers. This I think can drastically reduce the stress level of students.



Counselling Psychologists and other Psychologists should make their services available and free to all school-going children, families, and university students, especially during this period. This is the period when our services are needed most. We should support national efforts to fight this deadly virus. Media houses are encouraged to engage the services of Psychologists in these difficult times.



Religious teachers who handle the children can also assist by intermittently checking on their children as to how they are coping with this pandemic at home. I believe some of these children who will be undergoing some sort of abuse can confide in their teachers which when handled well can ameliorate the condition of such children.



We all have a part to play in making our children feel more comfortable and grow strongly in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. Children are the most vulnerable population in this period and must be protected and not ignored. Their interests and concerns must be at the fore of discussions and I hope all school-going children in Ghana will come out of this pandemic stronger than before.



Rabbi Darko

(Counseling Psychologist)

[email protected]

0242887536









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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Dominique and Leamae King, seniors in Green Bay, Wisconsin, prepared for three Advanced Placement exams this spring. The tests went online due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Submission hiccups, registration problems, outdated computer browsers and plain old human error have dampened the roll-out of online Advanced Placement exams this week, which hundreds of thousands of students are taking at home because of the coronavirus pandemic.

The College Board, which oversees the college-level courses and exams that can grant students college credit, quickly pivoted in March to create shortened, online versions of the tests. They included safeguards for cheating.

And, remarkably, its worked for a majority of students: The College Board said that out of 1.6 million tests taken since testing began Monday, more than 99% have been submitted without a hitch.

But. That remaining 1%  10,000 students or more  is a vocal bunch.

Hundreds of parents and students have complained on the College Board's Facebook page that they were unfairly shut out of exams by faulty technology or other technical errors.

Other school leaders say they've had to fight for low-income students who didn't have computers or high-speed internet to be able to access the exams.

Some parents of students with disabilities questioned whether the at-home exams were inclusive enough.

The concerns are understandable. The stakes for the tests are high: Scoring well on each AP exam means students can get credit for one or two college courses, worth thousands of dollars in tuition. String together a few of the exams, and students can enter college with an entire semester or a full year of entry-level courses under their belts. All for taking college-level classes for free in high school, plus a $94 fee per exam, which is reduced for lower-income students.

More AP exam changes: Helpful for test prep, or more money for the College Board?

Bob Schaeffer, who leads the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, an advocacy group, said hes heard about many students facing technological problems, particularly while attempting to upload their answers.

Story continues

Nearly every computerized test thats introduced has problems during the rollout, Schaeffer said. The notion that the College Board could immediately take a test administered to millions of kids on pencil and paper (and put it) online flawlessly is incredibly arrogant and unrealistic.

After initially dismissing many of the concerns as user errors, College Board leaders turned more sympathetic at the end of the week.

"We share the deep disappointment of students who were unable to complete their exam  whether for technical issues or other reasons," the College Board said in a statement Thursday.

'I was devastated'

Many students encountered problems uploading photos of their work during the exams' 45-minute time frame. The College Board says it's looking into students' "unique circumstances" and that anyone who encountered an issue will be able to take the test again in June.

In Fort Lauderdale, Florida, Julie Laviolette said her daughter successfully uploaded work related to the first part of the AP Calculus exam, then got an error message when she tried to upload work for the second part. After taking the test, she was prompted to register for a make-up exam.

Nathan Chasse, 16, studies at home in New Hampshire for AP exams.

In New Hampshire, Nathan Chasse, 16, sat down Monday afternoon to take the first of six AP exams. He had worked through multiple study books this spring and practiced uploading responses through a portal provided by the College Board before the exams.

But when Chasse tried to submit his answers to the two free-response questions on his AP Physics exam, he couldn't upload the files showing his work within the time allowed. He requested a make-up exam, but misunderstood the terms for doing so. He's now unsure if he's eligible for a retake.

I was devastated, Chasse said. I already had this emotional rollercoaster of it not accepting my responses and then this, and I thought all was lost."

Nathan Chasse, a student in New Hampshire, got this error message during his online AP exam. He couldn't upload his work within the time window and doesn't know if he'll be able to re-test in June.

At Fox Chapel Area High School outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, teacher Kristine Yacamelli said a fifth of her 55 students were unable to upload photos of their written work during the AP Calculus exam Tuesday before time ran out.

Some received error messages after the photos appeared to have been submitted. All 11 now must retake the exam.

Yacamelli understands technology problem happen, especially with the College Board having to change the exams in a matter of weeks. But she's upset that her students who studied hard now must wait a month to test again.

I think thats a lot to ask of a high school senior thats going through a pandemic where everythings been taken away from them," she said. "To add on more studying is frustrating.

More than 9,000 people have signed a petition on Change.org to urge the College Board to let students who encountered technical difficulties resubmit their work rather than retake the tests. The petition was started by Eliana Sisman, the 2020 salutatorian at Yeshiva University Los Angeles Girls School.

"Most of us still have our work and answers saved," the petition says. "The college board can give us time to re-submit after they fix their website."

Major lift to overhaul AP exams

The big problem is testing security. The College Board must ensure the integrity of the exams because colleges award credit for them. But it didn't have much time to plan in the middle of a pandemic.

Trevor Packer, who leads the AP program at College Board, said in April the easiest route was to cancel the exams. But when the company surveyed thousands of students, the feedback was overwhelming, he said: They wanted to take the tests they'd worked for all year.

Students can use this new page to avoid and troubleshoot technical issues during their AP Exams. https://t.co/hxBAtgDexs pic.twitter.com/7AehBZtsju  Trevor Packer (@AP_Trevor) May 13, 2020

That meant the company had to upend its testing format in a matter of weeks. For 65 years, AP has administered exams in schools, with proctors and paper and pencils. Tests are offered in 38 different subjects and traditionally take between 90 minutes and three hours to complete. They're scored on a scale of 1 to 5, and a 3 generally offers a student at least a semester of college credit.

The 2020 exams were turned into shorter, 45-minute versions to be taken at home. They could be open book and open note, but the company would need to guard against cheating and plagiarism and verify students' identities.

'Overwhelmed with the entire process': Students weren't sure how to prepare for the altered AP exams

The exams will continue through next week.

To be sure, millions of students have completed them successfully.

Leamae King, a senior at Preble High School in Green Bay, Wisconsin, and her twin sister, Dominique, took both the AP Calculus and AP Literature and Composition exams without issue in their separate bedrooms.

Both feel confident in their work and thought the format worked well and should, perhaps, be considered for future years if the technological glitches can be worked out.

If it wouldve worked flawlessly for everyone  which probably couldnt have happened  then Id prefer they kept it online, Leamae King said.

Problems for low-income students and those with disabilities?

Beyond technical glitches, some critics have said the College Board did not pay enough attention to the needs of low-income test-takers, who may not have laptops or mobile devices on which to take the tests, or high-speed internet to upload photos in a timely manner, or a quiet place to take the exam.

"The way College Board has thought about this is directed toward middle-class families," said Jennifer Lopez, CEO of a charter school network, Carmen Schools of Science & Technology that serves predominantly low-income students in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

"Our students are faced with caring for young siblings and working and not having home environments in which they can quietly take these exams," she said.

The College Board says it worked with partners to ship both loaner devices and Wi-Fi hotspots to high schools around the country that requested them.

Other parents are concerned about the exams being accessible to their children with disabilities.

In Scottsdale, Arizona, Emily Heetland said her daughter, Mercedes, has dyslexia and is approved for test accommodations, including extra time and for some sections to be read aloud.

But on May 11, several days before she was scheduled to take the AP U.S. History exam, Mercedes received an email from the College Board informing her of an issue affecting her accommodations. The email attributed the problem to a processing error, she said.

Heetlands daughter was given two options: She could take the test on the planned date in May, but she wouldnt get the extra time she needed. Or she could take the test with the accommodation in June.

'No one to help me': Special education families struggle with coronavirus school closures

Heetland said her daughter has studied for months and struggles with recall, so taking an AP test long after class ends might affect her performance. But she also needs the extra time.

Its just not a very sensitive solution, Heetland said.

The College Board, however, says students approved for accommodations by the April 27 deadline received extended time during the primary test period. If they missed that deadline, they were told they could test during the makeup period to receive extended time.

Contributing: Alec Johnson, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Education coverage at USA TODAY is made possible in part by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates Foundation does not provide editorial input.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Coronavirus 2020 AP exam: College Board troubleshooting tech glitches
China on Friday began sharing with India hydrological data for the Brahmaputra river, an annual practice during the monsoon which is crucial for generating information on floods in northeast India, officials said.

The data is being shared from three hydrological stations -- Nugesha, Yangcun and Nuxia -- lying on the mainstream of the Brahmaputra, known as Yarlung Zangbo in China, officials in the Jal Shakti Ministry said.

For the Sutlej river, known as Langqen Zangbod in China, data is shared from a station at Tsada, the official said.

The development comes amid the recent face-offs between the armies of the two countries at the eastern and northern borders of India.

On May 5, around 250 Indian and Chinese army personnel clashed with iron rods, sticks, and even resorted to stone-pelting in Pangong Tso area in Eastern Ladakh. Four days later, there was a similar face-off near Naku La Pass in North Sikkim.

In 2017, China had stopped sharing the data citing that the hydrological data gathering sites were washed away due to floods. It also coincided with the 73-day Doklam stand-off between the two neighbours that took place during the peak monsoon period.

It resumed sharing data from 2018.

India and China have signed an agreement under which Beijing shares hydrological data with New Delhi.

Under the agreement, for the Brahmaputra river, the data is shared by China from May 15. In case of the Sutlej river, the data is shared from June 1.

The data is also shared twice daily until October.

The Brahmaputra originates from Tibet and flows into Arunachal Pradesh and Assam and later drains into the Bay of Bengal through Bangladesh.

The sharing of data is very helpful in generating flood related information for the northeastern states, officials.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
For more coverage, visit our complete coronavirus section here.

The owner of The Tuck Box, a "vintage eatery in a 1927 cottage" on Dolores Street in Carmel-by-the sea has been criminally charged with violating the county's shelter-in-place order by providing table service to customers.

Monterey County has not yet received the go ahead to enter Stage 2 in Governor Gavin Newsom's state reopening plan, which allows for dine-in restaurants to open with social distancing guidelines in place.

Owner Jeffrey LeTowt, who took over operations in 2003, is also accused of failing to wear a face covering while customers were eating and not enacting social distancing rules, per the district attorneys office.

The three misdemeanor charges of refusing to follow a lawful order may result in up to a $1,000 fine and/or six months in prison for LeTowt.

District Attorney Jeannine Pacioni said, "I want to commend all the individuals and businesses who are sacrificing so much to protect our community from this disease. While so many are doing their part, we cannot allow a business to defy these emergency public health orders and risk the progress that our community has made."

Bay City News contributed to this report.

MORE CORONAVIRUS COVERAGE:

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Andrew Chamings is a digital editor at SFGATE. Email: Andrew.Chamings@sfgate.com | Twitter: @AndrewChamings
Coronavirus cases in India and lockdown 4 latest updates: Part of Sena Bhawan in Delhi was shut on Friday after and Indian Army solder tested COVID-19 positive. An official said that the affected are of Sena Bhawan was closed for sanitation and disinfection. He added the "actions as per protocol such as contact tracing and quarantine are in progress." Sena Bhawan is the headquarters of the Indian Army.

India's total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped to 81,970 on Friday, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry. The tally includes, 51,401 active cases, and 2,649 deaths. Maharashtra tops the list with 27,524 confirmed cases, along with 1,019 deaths. Friday (May 15) is the last day for states to send their suggestions regarding lockdown extension post May 17 to Centre. Meanwhile, the global death toll, has soared past the 3.01 lakh mark while over 4.4 million people have been infected with the deadly virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States (US) has confirmed that the Trump leadership has asked for the withdrawal of billions of dollars in American pension fund investments in China as both the countries' relations have deteriorated in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak.

Also Read: Nirmala Sitharaman Press Conference at 4 PM Live Updates: Tranche III of economic package to be announced soon

Also Read: Coronavirus: COVID-19 cases near 80,000; check state-wise tally, deaths

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8.11 pm: Tamil Nadu liquor latest updates

Supreme Court has stayed the Madras High Court order which directed closure of stae-owned liquor shops in Tamil Nadu. With this, Tamil Nadu government has issued an order regarding reopening of government-run TASMAC alcohol shops from Saturday.

7.18 pm: J&K COVID-19 latest updates

Jammu and Kashmir reported 30 new coronavirus cases today. These include 9 new cases from Jammu division and 21 from Kashmir division. Total number of cases in Jammu and Kashmir is now 1,013, including 489 active cases, 513 recoveries and 11 deaths.

30 new #COVID19 positive cases reported in Jammu and Kashmir - 9 from Jammu division and 21 from Kashmir division. Total number of cases in the Union Territory is now at 1013, including 489 active cases, 513 recovered & 11 deaths: J&K Government pic.twitter.com/VIdIIdN5HK  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

6.46 pm: Tamil Nadu coronavirus updates

Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi Palaniswami interacts with industrialists via video conferencing.

Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami holds meeting with industrialists, through video conferencing. #CoronavirusLockdownpic.twitter.com/yVrwwDgSDr  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

6.40 pm: 315 pilgrims from Ladakh will be repatriated from Iran by Mahan Air flight to Delhi tomorrow. "We intend to bring them from Delhi to Leh. So, kindly arrange flights for airlifting them from Delhi to Leh on May 17," Ladakh Divisional Commissioner stated in a letter to Air India.

315 pilgrims hailing from Ladakh are being repatriated from Iran by Mahan Air flight to Delhi tomorrow;we intend to bring them from Delhi to Leh. So, kindly arrange flights for airlifting them from Delhi to Leh on 17 May: Divisional Commissioner, Ladakh in letter to Air India pic.twitter.com/YruVP1rL4u  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

6.31 pm: Maharashtra coronavirus news

CM Uddhav Thackeray visited a coronavirus care facility in Goregaon. This facility has been prepared by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

Maharashtra: CM Uddhav Thackeray today visited a Corona Care Center in Goregaon; this care centre with 1000 beds has been established by BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation). pic.twitter.com/ijsM1McBle  ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

3.58 pm: Karnataka coronavirus latest news

State government announces third economic stimulus package worth around Rs 512 crore, giving relief to maize farmers and incentivising ASHA workers, who are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic from the front.

3.49 pm: Coronavirus cases in armed forces: 11 new cases in BSF in 24 hours

Border Security Force (BSF) recorded 11 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. Since Thursday, 13 (Tripura-10, Delhi -03) personnel have been discharged from hospital after testing negative for coronavirus, BSF said. (ANI reports)

3.38 pm: Coronavirus cases in Delhi: Part of Sena Bhawan sealed after soldier tests positive at Army headquarters

Part of Sena Bhawan was shut on Friday after and Indian Army solder tested COVID-19 positive. An official said that the affected are of Sena Bhawan was closed for sanitation and disinfection. He added the "actions as per protocol such as contact tracing and quarantine are in progress." Sena Bhawan is the headquarters of the Indian Army.

3.28 pm: Coronavirus live updates: Mobile phones can be potential carriers of COVID-19 in healthcare institutions

A group of doctors from AIIMS, Raipur have suggested restrictions on mobile phones in healthcare institutions as they can be potential carriers coronavirus infection. Doctors have said that the mobile phone surfaces are a peculiar "high-risk" surface, that can come in direct contact with a person's face or mouth.

3.17 pm: Delhi lockdown latest update

FIR lodged at Shahdara police station against a landlord demanding rent from a tenant under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code.

3.08 pm: Coronavirus in India latest updates

President Ram Nath Kovind has decided to forego 30% of his salary for a year. He had also contributed his one month's salary to the PM-CARES Fund in March. (ANI reports)

2.59 pm: Rajasthan coronavirus cases: 55 more tested COVID-19 positive

Rajasthan's total count of COVID-19 cases jumped to 4,589 on Friday with 55 more people testing positive for the virus on Friday, said the state health department adding that the active cases and death toll in Rajasthan now stands at 1,818 and 125.

Number of #COVID19 cases has reached 4589 in Rajasthan, with 55 more people testing positive today. Number of active cases & death toll stands at 1818 & 125, respectively: Rajasthan Health Department pic.twitter.com/kmRzyOTXuQ - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

2.49 pm: Delhi coronavirus cases

Delhi recorded 472 fresh COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total count of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Union Territory to 8,470 along with 115 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry. Delhi is the fourth worst-hit UT after Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat (states) in India with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

2.39 pm: Coronavirus live updates: New cases in CISF

14 fresh COVID-19 cases have been detected in the CISF in the last 24 hours taking the total number of coronavirus positive cases in the force to 119.

2.29 pm: Punjab liquor shops: Alcohol stores open in Amritsar

Punjab government has ordered the liquor shops to remain open between 7 am to 6 pm amid coronavirus lockdown.

Punjab: Shops open in Amritsar. State govt has ordered that the shops in the state will remain open between 7 AM to 6 PM. #CoronaLockdownpic.twitter.com/qaMqvzUUFW - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

2.18 pm: Coronavirus cases in Odisha

61 fresh cases reported in the state on Thursday. Odisha's tally now stands at 672, including 158 cured and discharged, and 3 deaths, the state health department said. (Inputs from ANI)

2.08 pm: Maharashtra coronavirus latest updates: Over 1,000 police personnel COVID-19 positive

1,061 personnel of Maharashtra Police comprising 112 officers have been tested COVID-19 positive so far, said Maharashtra Police adding that out of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while 9 died.

1061 personnel of Maharashtra Police including 112 police officers have been tested positive for #COVID19 so far. Out of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while 9 others lost their lives: Maharashtra Police pic.twitter.com/HgNkrDBpeZ - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.59 pm: Liquor shops in Nagpur

Long queues seen outside alcohol stores in Nagpur rural, Maharashtra after they were allowed to open on Friday. District collector Ravindra Thakre has allowed liquor shops to open in rural and municipal council areas of the district.

Maharashtra: Long queues seen outside liquor shops in Nagpur rural after such shops opened here today. District collector Ravindra Thakre has permitted liquor shops to open in rural and municipal council areas of the district. #CoronaLockdownpic.twitter.com/28H7ZaadV9 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.52 pm: Himachal Pradesh coronavirus update

A 33-year-old man in Una has been tested COVID-19 positive. The man arrived from Maharashtra and was under institutional quarantine. He is sent to Haroli COVID-19 hospital, Dr. Raman Kumar CMO Una District, Himachal Pradesh told ANI.

1.43 pm: Karnataka coronavirus cases

45 fresh COVID-19 cases reported in the state from Thursday, 5 pm to 12 pm on Friday. The total count of coronavirus positive cases in Karnataka stands at 1,032 now, said the state health department.(ANI reports)

1.33 pm: Liquor shops in Tamil Nadu

Supreme Court on Friday said that liquor shops can reopen in Tamil Nadu. The apex court stayed the Madras High Court order on shutting of state-run alcohol stores on account of flouting of the COVID-19 guidelines.

1.24 pm: Gujarat lockdown extension update

Shops selling essential commodities like vegetables & grocery reopened in Ahmedabad on Friday after a week.

Gujarat: Shops selling essential commodities like vegetables & grocery reopened in Ahmedabad today after a week. #CoronavirusLockdownpic.twitter.com/Q3tP4N4zTl - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.17 pm: Punjab coronavirus cases

Punjab reported 7 fresh COVID-19 cases on Friday taking the total count to 1,942, said the state health department.

The total number of COVID19 positive cases in Punjab rise to 1942 with 7 new positive cases reported today: Punjab Health Department pic.twitter.com/TCmkivNA21 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.09 pm: Andhra Pradesh coronavirus cases

Andhra Pradesh recorded 57 fresh cases on Friday. The total number of COVID-19 positive cases in the state stand at 2,157 now, said the state government. (ANI inputs)

12.59 PM: Delhi lockdown extension news: Kejriwal govt sends proposal to Centre

Delhi government in its proposal on lockdown 4.0 sent to the central government has suggested movement of buses and metro to resume but in limited capacity. The government has proposed that 25% or 50% malls can be opened.

The government has suggested odd-even for shops.

The government wants shops to open in malls.

Transport opening under social distancing.

Limited capacity in metro, cabs, buses.

DTC buses should ply with 25% capacity.

Malls, restaurants, gyms should not be opened.

12.49 pm: Coronavirus live updates

INS Jalashwa to commence its journey to from Male in Maldives to Kochi in Kerala on Friday as a part of operation 'Samudra Setu'.

12.39 pm: Haryana Roadways bus services resumed today

Haryana government started bus services on selected routes in the state. Buses will ply within in the confines of Haryana.

Haryana roadways bus service resumed today after the state govt decided to start special bus services on selected routes. The buses will ply only within the state. Visuals from Ambala. #CoronaLockdownpic.twitter.com/EQtO2anFE6 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

12.29 pm: Containment zones in Pune

Pune recorded 194 fresh COVID-19 cases on Thursday, taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the city to over 3,000, with death toll past 180. Some relaxations have been given in the non-containment zones in the city, such as furniture, laundry, vehicle repair, footwear and other shops. Some areas such as Kasewadi, Lohiyanagar, Sainathnagar on Satara Road, Tadiwala Road, Nagpur chawl, Laxminagar in Yerawada, Kamgar Putala and Patil Estate are some of the hotspots in Pune.

12.19 pm: Maharashtra lockdown extension in hotspots: Containment zones in Mumbai

The Maharashtra government has decided to extend the lockdown in hotspot areas such as Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, among others until May 31. Areas such as Thane in Navi Mumbai, Mira Bhayander in Kalyan-Dombivali, Ulhasnagar, and Bhiwandi-Nizampur come under the containment zones in Mumbai which recorded nearly 1,000 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. Mumbai, Pune, Thane account for over 23,000 cases or 85% of the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra.

12.10 pm: Coronavirus world updates: Global economy may lose $8.8 trillion due to COVID-19 crisis

The Asian Development Bank(ADB) said on Friday that the global economy could suffer $5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to COVID-19 pandemic. (PTI)

12.04 pm: Tamil Nadu coronavirus cases: 2nd worst-hit state with cases nearing 10,000

Tamil Nadu has become second state with highest number of coronavirus cases after Maharashtra. The state's tally climbed to 9,674 on Friday, with death toll at 66. The state reported 447 new cases in the last 24 hours. While, with 324 new cases in the last 24 hours, Gujarat's COVID-19 tally rose to 9,591 on Friday with death toll at 586. Gujarat is the third worst-hit state following Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with a total of 9674 cases, while Gujarat's tally now stands at 9,591, as per the Union Health Ministry.

11.57 am: Breaking: Earthquake in Delhi

Low-intensity earthquake of 2.2 magnitude hits Pitampura in Delhi, says National Centre for Seismology. (PTI)

Also Read: BREAKING: Another earthquake hits Delhi; check out the details

11.55 am: Uttarakhand coronavirus updates

Watch: Badrinath Temple opened its doors at 4:30 am on Friday. 28 people including the chief priest was present at the temple when its entrance was opened.

#WATCH Uttarakhand: The portals of Badrinath Temple opened at 4:30 am today. 28 people including the Chief Priest was present at the temple when its portals opened. (Video Source: ITBP) pic.twitter.com/Yr6pamv7Kk - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.47 am: Coronavirus latest updates: Union Group of Ministers meet underway in Delhi

Union Group of Ministers (GoM) are currently meeting to discuss and deliberate on COVID-19 crisis. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat also present at the meet.

Delhi: Union Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on #COVID19, underway at the Health Ministry. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat also present. pic.twitter.com/LiCJ7QuKcT - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.39 am: Delhi lockdown latest updates

Migrant workers line up outside a COVID-19 screening centre in Gole Market area. Delhi Cantt SDM Piyush Rohankar informs, "After screening, a medical certificate is provided to the workers. The certificate is necessary to board the 'Shramik Special' trains".

Delhi: Migrant workers queue up outside a #COVID19 screening centre in Gole Market area. Delhi Cantt SDM Piyush Rohankar says, "After screening, a medical certificate is provided to the workers. The certificate is necessary to board the 'Shramik Special' trains". pic.twitter.com/92nFYnrxxj - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.29 am: Coronavirus live updates: $1 billion social protection package for India

The World Bank and India will partner with the Centre in 3 areas- health, social protection, and the MSMEs, informed Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director for India.

India's social protection is pivoted towards migrants, unorganised workers, portability & creating an integration of system. It piggybacks on an existing infrastructure of Public distribution system, Jan Dhan, Aadhar & mobile: Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director for India pic.twitter.com/OsnkfvQNAW - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.24 am:Coronavirus India cases update: Check BusinessToday.In tracker to get state-wise tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths

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 graph.

11.16 am: Coronavirus cases in India live updates: State-wise tally and death toll; check here

Maharashtra is the worst-hit state in India with 27,524 COVID-19 cases and 1,019 deaths

Gujarat follows suit with 9,591cases and 586 deaths

Tamil Nadu is the third worst-hit state with 9,674 cases, and 66 deaths

Delhi is the fourth worst-hit state with 8,470 cases and 115 deaths.

Madhya Pradesh with 4,426 cases, 237 deaths

Rajasthan 4,534 cases, 125 deaths

Uttar Pradesh (UP)-3,902 cases, 88 deaths

Andhra Pradesh-2,205 cases, 48 deaths

Telangana 1,414 cases, 34 deaths

West Bengal-2,377 cases, 215 deaths

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)- 983 cases, 11 deaths

Karnataka- 987 cases, 35 deaths

Kerala- 560 cases, 4 deaths

Bihar-994 cases, 7 deaths

Punjab-1,935 cases, 32 deaths

Haryana-818 cases, 11 deaths

11.06 am: Coronavirus global updates: World Bank to give India $1 billion

The World Bank has announced $1 billion social protection package for India in the view of COVID-19 pandemic. The package will spent on the Centre's social schemes essentialy towards the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to help the poor, migrant workers, farmers under the government's Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.

10.57 am: Uttar Pradesh lockdown: Special trains for migrant workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar on May 16

The Uttar Pradesh administration said on Friday that special trains will be run for migrant workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar district from Dadri and Dankaur stations from May 16.

As per the instructions of the state govt, special trains will be run for migrant labourers in Gautam Buddh Nagar district. The trains will be run from Dadri railway station & Dankaur Railway station. 4 trains will ply for the migrant labourers on 16th May: DM, Gauatm Buddh Nagar pic.twitter.com/Hg3pcaChVK - ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 15, 2020

10.47 am: Coronavirus India live updates: Bill Gates thanks PM Modi after video meet

Philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took to Twitter on Friday to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for their conversation and partnership to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Lauding PM Modi's leadership in tackling the coronavirus crisis in India, Bill Gates said the country's role is "key as the world works to minimize social and economic impact".

Had an extensive interaction with @BillGates. We discussed issues ranging from India's efforts to fight Coronavirus, work of the @gatesfoundation in battling COVID-19, role of technology, innovation and producing a vaccine to cure the pandemic. https://t.co/UlxEq72i3L - Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 14, 2020

10.38 am: Chhattisgarh corona lockdown: Migrant labourers from Maharashtra leave in auto rickshaws for their home states

Auto drivers from Maharashtra are headed towards their home states amid coronavirus induced lockdown. An auto driver told ANI, "I'm without work for last 2.5 months. It's difficult to sustain without money. So, I'm returning to Ranchi, Jharkhand with my family."

Chhattisgarh:Auto drivers from Maharashtra who left the state due lack of work amid lockdown are heading towards their states. An auto driver says,"I'm without work for last 2.5 months. It's difficult to sustain without money. So, I'm returning to Ranchi,Jharkhand with my family" pic.twitter.com/hMUhsGaoUp - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

10.31 am: Coronavirus lockdown updates: Special train from Delhi arrives in Kerala

First special train to Kerala from Delhi reached Thiruvananthapuram railway station carrying 602 passengers on Friday morning. The passengers were screened after they reached the railway station.

First special train to Kerala from Delhi reached Thiruvananthapuram Railway Station with 602 passengers, today. The passengers were screened after they reached the railway station. #COVID19pic.twitter.com/dpt62f4zNO - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

10.26 am: Maharashtra coronavirus latest news: Lockdown extended in Mumbai, Pune, other hotspots until May 31, says report

The Maharashtra government has taken the decision to extend the lockdown in Mumbai, Pune, and other COVID-19 hotspots until May 31, according a report in Mumbai Mirror. The state government is yet to formally announce the decision but will implement the central government's guidelines that will be unveiled in the next 2 days in other areas. The decision to extend the lockdown in these hotspots was taken during a meeting on Thursday attended by Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, and other state cabinet ministers, the report claims.

Also Read: Coronavirus: Maharashtra to continue lockdown in Mumbai, Pune till May 31

10.16 am: Delhi lockdown extension news: Economic activities to be permitted from Monday basis Centre's decision

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said that several economic activities will be allowed in the Union Territory from May 18 (Monday) as per the decision taken by the central government on lockdown relaxation. In a virtual press briefing on Thursday, CM Kejriwal said that many people suggested that schools, colleges, salons, spa, barber shops, cinema halls, and swimming pools should not be opened post May 17. He added that Delhiites in their ideas sent to him suggested that there should be limited operation of metro services, adding that buses, taxis and autorickshaws should be permitted to operate in Delhi but with social distancing.

10.09: Rs 20 lakh crore economic package: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to address media today

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address media for the third time on Friday to unveil the central government's Rs 20 lakh crore special economic stimulus package. She is likely to announce measures for the hospitality sector. F

9.58 am: Tamil Nadu corona cases

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with 9,674 cases. Thte death toll in the state is at 66. Tamil Nadu reported 447 new cases in the last 24 hours.

9.49: Gujarat coronavirus cases

With 324 new cases in the last 24 hours, Gujarat's COVID-19 tally rose to 9,591 on Friday with death toll at 586. Gujarat is the third worst-hit state following Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

9.44 am: Dharavi coronavirus cases

Mumbai's Dharavi, which is Asia's largest slum, recorded 33 fresh cases and 2 deaths on Thursday. With this the total count of COVID-19 cases in the area now stands at 1,061, according to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

9.39 am: Coronavirus cases in Mumbai

Mumbai which is the worst-hit city not only in Maharashtra, but all over India reported around 1,000 new cases and 25 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of virus cases to 16,579 in the city, said the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The death toll in the city stands at 621.

9.34 am: Maharashtra coronavirus cases near 28,000

Maharashtra recorded 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, and 44 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total count of confirmed cases in the state to 27,524 and 1,019 deaths. This is by far the highest count of new cases reported in the state. Earlier, the biggest one-day jump stood at 1,495 recorded on Wednesday.

9.29 am: Gujarat, Tamil Nadu coronavirus cases near 10,000-mark

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with a total of 9674 cases, while Gujarat's tally now stands at 9,591, as per the Union Health Ministry.

9.24 am: India coronavirus recoveries over 34%

India's recovery rate has improved to over 34%. The total number of those recovered in the country now stands at 27,919.

9.17 am: Coroanvirus deaths in India

The country recorded 100 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the total count of toll to 2,649.

9.10 am: Coronavirus cases and deaths in 24 hours

India recorded 3,967 new COVID-19 cases, and 100 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the total count to 81,970 on Friday, as per the latest data by the Union Health Ministry.

9.04 am: India coroanvirus cases cross 80,000-mark

India's total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped to 81,970 on Friday, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry. The tally includes, 51,401 active cases, and 2,649 deaths. Maharashtra tops the list with 27,524 confirmed cases, along with 1,019 deaths.

8.57 am: FM Nirmala Sitharaman third media briefing on Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus likely today

Finance Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to hold a third media briefing on Friday to announce more measures as a part of Rs 20 lakh crore special economic stimulus announced by PM Modi earlier this week. She has already unveiled measures for MSMEs, real estate, individuals, agriculture, discoms, among other vulnerable segments of the economy.

8.49 am: Coronavirus latest: SC to hear PIL over opening Indian airports to receive Indian migrant returnees who are Kuwait amnesty beneficiaries

Supreme Court on Friday will hear a Public Interest Litigation filed to give directions to the central government for opening the Indian airports to receive the Indian migrant returnees who are the Kuwait amnesty beneficiaries detained in the Amnesty Facilitation Centres of Kuwait. From April 16 on wards thousands of Indian Migrants are held up in the Kuwait amnesty facilitation temporary camps for repatriation enduring many difficulties. Kuwait's government had offered free air passage for the amnesty beneficiaries. Advocate Subash Chandran filed the PIL for Thomas Mathew Kadavil, a Migrant Social Activist from Kuwait. Senior Advocate PV Surendranath along with advocates Subhash Chandran KR & Deepak Prakash will be appearing for the Petitioners.

8.45 am: Coronavirus Delhi latest news: No salaries for NDMC doctors for last 3 months; DMC writes to PM Modi

Delhi Medical Association has written to PM Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, and concerned authorities over the issue of non-payment of salaries of doctors of North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) for the last 3 months. Even their arrears have not been paid.

8.37 am: Coronavirus global updates: US threatens to cut off whole relationship with China

US President Donald Trump has on Thursday threatened to cut off all relations with China in the wake coronavirus outbreak which has claimed over 3 lakh lives globally. "There are many things we could do. We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said in an interview. He added that although he has a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he doesn't want to speak with him right now. He further said that he is very disappointed with China. He stated in the interview that the US has repeatedly asked China to allow the international community to go to a Wuhan lab to probe the origin of coronavirus but to no avail. Trump has claimed the virus originated from Wuhan Institute of virology in Wuhan where the COVID-19 outbreak was first detected in December, 2019. According to Johns Hopkins University, over 4.4 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and around 3.01 lakh have died from the deadly infection.

Also Read: Coronavirus effect: Donald Trump threatens to cut off all ties with China

8.30 am: Coronavirus India cases live updates: Check BusinessToday.In tracker to get state-wise tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths

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 graph.
The Presidency of the Council of Europe of Georgia Received a High Assessment - GeorgianJournal
Holly Madison got some fresh air behind a face mask as she ran errands in Los Angeles on Thursday.

The 40-year-old The Girls Next Door star stepped out to make a trip to the post office and grab some McDonald's amid the COVID-19 pandemic quarantine.

While the reality star was wearing both a mask and gloves for part of her outing, she lowered the mask and ditched the gloves after picking up food.

Holly in black: Holly Madison got some fresh air behind a face mask as she ran errands in Los Angeles on Thursday

Madison rocked an all-black look for her outing, with the sole exception of her bright pink glittery face mask.

She rocked a black cut-off sweater that exposed her toned midriff, with matching black pants and black combat boots.

She completed her look with a large black purse as she walked back to her vehicle.

All black: Madison rocked an all-black look for her outing, with the sole exception of her bright pink glittery face mask

Madison recently turned heads and made headlines for posting a photo in a skimpy Princess Leia bikini for Star Wars Day.

'You know what day it is!' she quipped, before showing off her look in the bikini, which she previously posted in April when pondering possible Halloween costumes.

'Who else is thinking about Halloween costumes? I mean, it is April already,' she said in her April Instagram post.

Leia: Madison recently turned heads and made headlines for posting a photo in a skimpy Princess Leia bikini for Star Wars Day

Halloween: 'You know what day it is!' she quipped, before showing off her look in the bikini, which she previously posted in April when pondering possible Halloween costumes

She also opened up in April about the anxiety she felt during the simple act of walking her dog during this COVID-19 pandemic.

'Never thought walking my dog around the block would feel like such a big event,' she began.

'Trying to offset my anxiety by reminding myself of things Im grateful for (theres a lot of them ) and how formerly mundane things feel so special now,' she added.

Dog walk: She also opened up in April about the anxiety she felt during the simple act of walking her dog during this COVID-19 pandemic

'For example, I cant WAIT to get my car detailed again that sounds like the best thing ever right now haha. I hope you and your loved ones are staying safe, I know its rough out there,' she added.

Madison first came into prominence when she moved into the Playboy Mansion in 2001, and became a reality star in E!'s The Girls Next Door, about Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and his trio of girlfriends, Madison, Kendra Wilkinson and Bridget Marquardt.

The show ran for six seasons between 2005 and 2009, though Madison left Hefner and the show in 2008.
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A top United States senator has unveiled an 18-point plan, including enhancing military ties with India, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its "lies, deception, and cover-ups" that ultimately led to the global COVID-19 pandemic.





The prominent suggestions are moving manufacturing chain from China and deepening military-strategic ties India, Vietnam and Taiwan.



"The Chinese government maliciously covered up and enabled a global pandemic that has caused misery for so many Americans. This is the same regime that locks up its own citizens in labour camps, steals America's technology and jobs, and threatens the sovereignty of our allies," said Senator Thom Tillis, presenting his detailed, 18-point plan on Thursday.

"This is a major wake-up call to the United States and the rest of the free world. My plan of action will hold the Chinese government accountable for lying about COVID-19; sanctioning the Chinese government while protecting America's economy, public health, and national security," he said.



The plan seeking to create a Pacific Deterrence Initiative and immediately approve the military's request for $20 billion in funding. It also calls for deepening military ties with regional allies and expand equipment sales to India, Taiwan and Vietnam.



Encourage Japan to rebuild its military and offer Japan and South Korea sales of offensive military equipment, it said.



"Move manufacturing back to the US from China and gradually eliminate our supply chain dependency on China. Stop China from stealing our technology and provide incentives to American companies to regain our technological advantage. Strengthen cybersecurity against Chinese hacks and sabotage," the plan stated.



"Prevent American taxpayer money from being used by the Chinese government to pay off their debt. Implement the US ban on (Chinese technology company) Huawei and coordinate with our allies to implement similar bans," it added.



The plan seeks restitution from the Chinese government and imposition of sanctions for lying about the virus. It further said China should be sanctioned for their atrocious human rights record.



Senator Tillis' plan urges the Trump Administration to formally request the International Olympic Committee to withdraw the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.



"Stop China's propaganda campaign inside the United States. Treat Chinese government-run media outlets as the propaganda proxies that they are," the plan stated.



Urging the government to investigate the Chinese government's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19, the plan also seeks to investigate America's reliance on China's supply chains and threats to public safety and national security.



"Ensure the independence of the WHO through investigations and reform. Expose and counter China's predatory debt-trap diplomacy targeting developing countries. Increase intelligence sharing on potential pandemics and lead the creation of a watchdog organization to monitor foreign governments' handling of deadly viruses," Tillis said in his suggestions.



The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world.

More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.



There has been increasing pressure on US President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.



Meanwhile, Senator John Barrasso, in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighted the need to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act legislation that was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.



"The virus could have been contained had it not been for the Chinese Government's unscrupulous cover-up. China knew the risk months before the rest of the world; yet Chinese communist leaders destroyed key evidence, they under-reported the number of coronavirus cases, and they misled the world about its deadly, rapid spread," he said.



Asserting that the virus should have been contained in Wuhan, he said tens and tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died as a result of China's failure.



Barrasso said the US should encourage its companies to create American and western supply chains. "That way our frontline workers have what they need in the time

of crisis," he said.



"Not again, not ever will we be exclusively sourced for critical drugs from China. We should diversify supply and bring home as much of our supply chain as possible," he added.



Congressman Troy Balderson introduced bicameral legislation with Congressman Doug Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham that will hold China accountable for deceptive actions taken by its leaders that led to the spread and subsequent global pandemic.



The COVID-19 Accountability Act authorises President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China if it fails to cooperate with a full investigation led by the US or its allies into the events that lead to the COVID-19 outbreak.



"The number of Ohioan lives needlessly claimed by this pandemic could have been significantly reduced had China taken appropriate measures to control the virus' spread and disclose its severity," said Balderson.



"The United States can't look the other way when China so recklessly compromised worldwide health and the global economy. China and its Communist Party leadership must be held accountable," he said.
Fidel Davis enjoyed, like so many young men his age, a different sense of freedom on his Ninja motorbike, on which, unfortunately he would meet his demise. (Facebook photo)

Fidel Davis, a 34-year-old resident of Cedars, is this countrys third road fatality for 2020.





Davis died on the spot after he lost control of the motorcycle he was riding, and crashed into a public utility pole along the main road in Biabou, last Monday, May 11.





He was reportedly riding his black and white Ninja bike and travelling towards Georgetown.





One of Davis aunts (who requested not to be named) told THE VINCENTIAN that the family was saddened by his tragic death.





She clarified that his family is originally from the village of Stubbs, but Davis was born in Trinidad and Tobago. His family recently moved from Stubbs to Cedars.





The aunt said that Davis had plans to trade in his bike for either a jeep or a car.





"I thought he had already gotten rid of the bike, until the accident, she stated.





She said that when she first received the news, she did not believe it. It was after a second call that confirmed her nephews death that she accepted the reality.





Davis was the father of two children. He attended the Stubbs Primary School and the St. Clair Dacon Secondary School.





A post-mortem examination is expected to be conducted on the body to ascertain the cause of death.





The other road fatalities for the year are: Lucinda Brackin, 46, who died on the spot when the vehicle in which she was travelling overturned along the main road in Sandy Bay, Sunday 8th March; and Shannel John, 33, who died on the spot along the main road in Rillan Hill, after being hit by a pick-up on Wednesday 18th March.
LIMERICK TD Maurice Quinlivan says the Health and Safety Authority (HSA) need more powers and funding to ensure people can return to work safely.

The Sinn Fein TD, who is his parts spokesperson on workers rights, was speaking with thousands potentially returning to offices, shop floors and other workplaces in the weeks to come as Covid-19 restrictions are loosened.

After raising the issue with Enterprise Minister Heather Humphreys, he said: The HSA have been given a huge task to monitor and enforce compliance with the public health advice, for employees returning to their place of work. Its essential this agency is provided with extra funding, as this is an enormous task on top of their usual workload.

In 2019, figures show the HSA had 104 full-time equivalent staff, something Mr Quinlivan says needs to be increased.

He also warned the HSA cannot be toothless when it comes to clamping down on safety breaches.

I also questioned Minister Humphreys on whether she is satisfied the HSA has strong enough enforcement powers for those businesses who cut corners and do not comply with safety guidelines. Strong powers are needed, not just to enforce the regulations, but also as a deterrent to those thinking of cutting corners. In the vast majority of cases these powers will not be required, as employers will do their utmost to ensure the safety of workers, he said.
Beijing's state broadcaster has suggested that China did not cause the global coronavirus outbreak because it has exported 'very few' cases to other countries.

The China Central Television Station told its audience that most countries' infections had came from 'elsewhere'.

It said that the outbreak in Canada was caused by the United States, the US epidemic had come from Europe and the source of France's crisis remains 'unknown'.

The state-controlled station condemned what it called 'unbelievable lies' from American politicians after some of them suggested that China should be responsible for the pandemic, which has killed more than 300,000 people globally.

Beijing's state broadcaster said in a report on Tuesday that China had exported 'very few' cases to other countries, suggesting the country had not caused the coronavirus pandemic

The origin of the coronavirus remains as one of the most sensitive topics to Beijing and the centre of an ongoing diplomatic dispute between Beijing and Washington.

The US accuses China of covering up the full scale of its epidemic and hiding the virus's origin.

China accuses the US of carrying out 'smear campaigns' and avoiding its responsibilities in containing the disease. A spokesperson also suggested that the virus was planted in Wuhan by the US troops.

US President Donald Trump further hardened his rhetoric towards China on Thursday, saying he no longer wishes to speak with Xi Jinping and warning he might cut ties with Beijing over the rival superpower's handling of the virus.

Chinese state media yesterday said that Beijing could interfere with the upcoming US presidential election in retaliation for Washington's blaming the coronavirus pandemic on Beijing.

US President Donald Trump has said that he no longer wishes to speak with Chinese President Xi Jinping and warning he might cut ties with Beijing over the rival superpower's handling of the virus. Pictured, Trump speaks after a tour of a medical supply company on May 14

Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times claimed that Beijing was drawing a plan of retaliation against the US after some American politicians and states blamed China for the coronavirus pandemic. Chinese President Xi is pictured at a political meeting in Beijing in 2018

The China Central Television Station (CCTV) hinted that China is not the source of the pandemic in a programme aired on Tuesday.

It claimed that Beijing 'effectively cut off the chain of transmission' and had exported 'very few' cases abroad.

The report started by blasting US President Trump for 'targeting China'.

It quoted Trump saying: 'I am not happy with China. They should have stopped this at the source. [They] could have stopped it right at the source.'

The Chinese station argued that China had carried out 'the most comprehensive, severe and thorough control and prevention measures' to tackle the contagion.

The state-controlled station flaunted China's 'most comprehensive, severe and thorough control and prevention measures' to prove it should not be held responsible for the crisis. Pictured, mask-donning patients wait at Wuhan Red Cross Hospital in Wuhan on January 24

The report then cited New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said on Monday that the strain of the coronavirus hitting New York had come from Europe, not China.

Gov. Cuomo did mention how the virus 'attacked us from Europe' at a press briefing. But he also said 'the virus had travelled from China to Europe', which CCTV failed to mention.

The programme went on to listed several countries, including Canada, France, Russia and Australia, which 'did not get the virus from China'.

CCTV quoted New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who said on Monday that the strain of the coronavirus hitting New York had come from Europe, not China. But the station did not report that Cuomo (pictured on May 11) said that 'the virus had travelled from China to Europe'

It claimed that the outbreak in Canada was caused by travellers from the United States, citing the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which in turns cited statistics from 'several Canadian states' without specifying.

CCTV also said the source of France's outbreak remains 'unknown' and that none of the imported cases in Russia came from China.

It added that Australia and Japan had also got the virus from elsewhere, citing the nations' health authorities.

The programme then slammed US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for 'spreading the rumour' that the virus had come from a virus laboratory in Wuhan.

It stressed that China built the Wuhan Institute of Virology in collaboration with France and the lab 'has strict protective measures' in line with the international standard.

Chinese state media labelled the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo 'evil' and 'insane' after he said 'enormous evidence' showed that the coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan lab

Chinese officials decided to build the Wuhan Institute of Virology after the country was ravaged by an outbreak of SARS in 2002 and 2003. A researcher is seen working inside the P4 laboratory at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in Wuhan on February 23, 2017

The Wuhan Institute of Virology (pictured) is affiliated to the Chinese Academy of Sciences

China has been aggressively refuting any reports that refer to it as the birthplace of the pandemic.

The country's experts claimed in January that the virus had come from wild animals sold as food at a market in Wuhan, where the outbreak started in December.

However, in February, Beijing started to change its narrative and suggest that the pathogen might have come from abroad when infections in Europe began to soar.

An investigation carried out by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention showed that the virus had been passed onto humans by wild animals sold as food at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market in Wuhan, state news agency Xinhua reported on January 26

'The epidemic of the novel coronavirus pneumonia indeed took place in China, in Wuhan but it does not mean its source is in Wuhan,' said Dr Zhong Nanshan, the leader of a team of experts appointed by China to tackle the health crisis.

Earlier this month, Chinese state media labelled Pompeo 'evil' and 'insane' after he said 'enormous evidence' showed that the coronavirus had escaped from the Wuhan lab.

Beijing insists the WHO has found no evidence that the novel coronavirus was manmade. It has repeatedly denied the claims that link the virus to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
My daughter remarked the other day that it would be great if we could go back to talking about Brexit again.

Those days seem positively idyllic now, but alas, like the car journeys of her childhood, were not nearly there yet.

The Covid story fills our daily lives, with a relentless stream of media coverage of illness and death, with graphs distorted so as to frighten and confuse, with front page pictures of the victims.

Everywhere is the constant reiteration of the now disproven narrative that the lock up is saving lives.

Our politicians vie with one another to virtue signal their intent to prolong the misery and impoverishment of our people, and of future generations.

Our elderly are told they are being kept alive, but denied all of the simple pleasures which make life worth living-family, friends, society and their religious practices.

Meanwhile, the entire healthy population is under house arrest, policed by the state, but more worryingly by their neighbours in a social media shamefest.

Those who follow the science know that this foul disease is behaving as many such seasonal viral illnesses have done for millions of years.

They travel through communities, and wreak havoc on the elderly and infirm.

In Ireland, the median age of death is 84 years. 86% of those dying have other, often multiple medical problems, like cancer heart disease and strokes.

In most of the community, viral illnesses cause illness and misery to many, but most have a mild illness, recover completely and are conferred with immunity to further infection.

Each death is a personal loss for those left behind, but death is a necessary and inevitable part of the human condition. Many older people do not fear it.

The science also suggests that this virus was in Europe much earlier than previously thought-possibly in December and January, that the peak of deaths was on 8th April, which given an incubation period of 10-14 days, meant the lockup came too late to influence outcomes.

The evidence for this timeline is growing daily, but doesnt seem to have reached the politicians who are deciding the fate and future of our very civilization.

The dire predictions of tens, even hundreds of thousands of deaths in the UK alone were based on computer models which have been heavily criticized by independent statisticians and mathematicians.

The original aim of protecting the NHS, and flattening the curve has been achieved.

But now we see the narrative changing, with dread warnings of second waves and the new normal, indeed no return to an open society until there is a vaccine.

The rules around social distancing, plucked from the ether, without any evidence base are internalized by the population.

The media, which is essentially an arm of government, eagerly reinforces the narrative.

We should realise that the search for a vaccine for HIV/AIDS is now entering its fourth decade. Also safety trials for any vaccine historically take years, and rightly so, given the exposure of entire populations to potential harm.

It is clear, as I pointed out in a previous article for this paper about a month ago, that countries who have imposed lockdowns have outcomes comparable to those who took more moderate steps to protect their people.

Also, since around half of the fatalities occur in the care home sector, the total failure to protect these facilities with whatever resources were available has cost many lives.

It is also clear that the lockup policy is causing at least half of the excess mortality we are seeing, and that this proportion is likely to increase significantly as people are being denied treatment and diagnostics in the other areas.

Heart disease, strokes, cancer and mental health problems havent gone away, but their recognition and treatment have.

Ive been working in the NHS throughout this period.

On my one shift in the GP Covid assessment centre, I counted fifteen staff, including three doctors and many highly skilled nurses, who in a four-hour shift saw three patients, none of whom has Covid.

Hospitals are half empty, highly skilled staff idle.

There are no elective surgical lists, nor routine outpatient appointments, so people wait in pain for surgery or in anxiety and stress for tests to find out if they have serious illnesses such as cancer.

Meantime in the out-of-hours GP service, we see people in mental health crises, deal with people isolated and displaced, those suffering from a relapse of addictions under control for years, and an elderly population terrified and reluctant to seek help, because they have been repeatedly told that their NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed, and because they dread separation from loved ones.

The distress of those families with children with behavioural or learning difficulties, or additional physical needs is truly heartbreaking.

Discussion of the economic consequences of all of this are beyond my remit, but experts say there is not a linear, but exponential effect on the crash which is certainly coming as a result of the almost total cessation of economic activity.

In other words, a four-month lockup isnt twice as bad as a two month one, but many, many times worse.

Here in the developed world we are unlikely to starve, although there will be widespread austerity the likes of which we have not seen in generations.

But in the global south, where millions live on subsistence wages, the abrupt loss of economic activity and markets for produce will cause catastrophic starvation and cost the lives of millions.

Disease is a constant challenge to societies and governments.

But the unprecedented response to this one takes us to uncharted and very dangerous waters.

There is no evidence that the political decision makers have done any intelligent cost/benefit analysis, looking at the big picture of the physical, mental, social and economic outcomes for those whose lives they are entrusted to improve.

They are either inept beyond imagining, or willfully colluding in the destruction of society, especially for future generations.
ISLAMABAD, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The Senate of Pakistan on Thursday unanimously passed a resolution to express gratitude to China for supporting Pakistan during the COVID-19 crisis.

Taking note of China's strong support and timely assistance to Pakistan during the current COVID-19 crisis, the senate, Pakistan's upper house of parliament, expressed its deep appreciation to the Chinese government and the Chinese people for their unflinching role as "all-weather friends" of Pakistan, according to the resolution.

"China's support to Pakistan has helped combat COVID-19 by protecting our people and saving lives as well as providing our health workers with testing kits, protective gears and ventilators at a time when these were badly needed plus sending medical teams," the resolution said.

The resolution was presented by Raja Muhammad Zafar-ul-Haq, leader of the opposition in the senate, and was endorsed by the treasury and opposition benches.

"As 'Iron Brothers,' both Pakistan and China are collectively confronting this 'common enemy,' the Coronavirus, which is a threat to humanity, irrespective of country, race or religion," according to the resolution.

"The Senate feels that this resolution, just prior to May 21, which marks the 69th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Pakistan and China on May 21, 1951, is an auspicious occasion to celebrate the resilience of our time-tested friendship," the resolution read.

Chairman of the Pakistani senate's Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs Mushahid Hussain Syed told Xinhua on Thursday that the unanimous adoption of the resolution is a strong indication that people in Pakistan recognize the Chinese support to the country in difficult times.

The Senate of Pakistan passed a resolution unanimously on Feb. 10 to express solidarity with China over the fight against the COVID-19 outbreak.
As part of the government's third tranche of the Rs 20 lakh crore economic package, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sithraman on Friday launched National Animal Disease Control Programme, with total outlay of Rs 13,343 crore for 100 per cent vaccination of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and pig population in India. This will cover around 53 crore animals, of which 1.5 crore cows and buffaloes have already been vaccinated.

National Animal Disease Control Programme has been launched with total outlay of Rs. 13,343 crores for 100% vaccination of cattle, buffalo, sheep, goat and pig population in India#AatmaNirbharDesh#AatmanirbharBharatpic.twitter.com/cbRer9Bccj a PIB India #StayHome #StaySafe (@PIB_India) May 15, 2020

The FM also announced interest subvention of 2 per cent per annum to dairy cooperatives for 2020-21. The initiative will unlock Rs 5,000 crore additional liquidity, benefitting over 2 crore farmers.

Also read: Rs 1 lakh crore allocated for agri infrastructure, says Sitharaman

The FM said during the lockdown, the overall demand for milk had reduced 20-25 per cent. As a result, 560 lakh litre per day milk is being procured by cooperatives against the daily sale of 360 LLPD. In total, the government has procured 11 crore litre milk, ensuring payment of Rs 4,100 crore. Besides, the government will provide an additional 2 per cent interest subvention on prompt payment or interest servicing.

The Centre will also provide financing facility of Rs 1 lakh crore for funding of agriculture infrastructure projects at farm-gate and aggregation points.

To help the fisheries sector, operations of marine capture fisheries and aquaculture has been relaxed to cover inland fisheries.

Talking about the initiatives taken for the welfare of farmers during the lockdown period, the FM said the fund transfer worth Rs 18,700 crores had been done under PM KISAN in past two months, and that PM Fasal Bima Yojana claims worth Rs 6,400 crores were released.

The government on Thursday announced measures to ensure food security for migrants, extended affordable housing scheme for urban poor and special credit facility for street vendors.

With this, the total package announced so far stands at Rs 16.45 lakh crore, implying residual package of Rs 3.54 lakh crore is left of the total Rs 20 lakh crore package announced, provided the earlier measures announced by the RBI are also included.

Also read: Nirmala Sitharaman Press Conference Live Updates: FM unveils 11 measures for agriculture sector
" " Research suggests that though ground-dwelling dinosaurs were obliterated, a handful of small, feathered dinosaurs survived  and these feathered quail-like creatures were the ancestors of modern birds. Phillip M. Krzeminski

Here's some information you might already know: Not very much can survive the impact of a 6-mile-wide (10-kilometer-wide) asteroid. Ask the dinosaurs. When that happens, the world catches on fire, and most terrestrial creatures buy the farm within a matter of hours. If the impact and fire don't kill them, the resulting "impact winter" blocks out sunlight for a year or two, making it very hard to find food, or indeed muster the will to live.

So, just how many terrestrial species survived the hellscape that resulted from an asteroid landing in Chicxulub, Mexico, 66 million years ago, nobody knows, but the dinosaurs were particularly hard-hit. A new report published in the May 24, 2018 issue of the journal Current Biology suggests that though the non-avian dinos were obliterated, a handful of small, feathered dinosaurs survived  and that these feathered creatures were the ancestors of modern birds.

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Of course, this isn't a new idea  that modern birds evolved from the dinosaurs that survived the last Major Asteroid Ordeal. But the international team of researchers hypothesize that since forests were burned to the ground all over the globe, and wouldn't return for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years, virtually all the birds alive today descended from a few small, ground-dwelling species  probably a bit like modern quail  that didn't rely on tree habitats.

"We drew on a variety of approaches to stitch this story together," said lead author Daniel Field of the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath, in a press release. "We concluded that the devastation of forests in the aftermath of the asteroid impact explains why tree-dwelling birds failed to survive across this extinction event. The ancestors of modern tree-dwelling birds did not move into the trees until forests had recovered from the extinction-causing asteroid."

The research team analyzed pollen grains in the plant fossil record to figure out just how many forests survived the asteroid's impact, and confirmed that the number is pretty close to zero. Pooling what's currently known about modern bird evolution, they were able to model a basic bird family tree going back to the birds that survived this cataclysm. The results of that analysis suggests the common ancestors were probably ground-dwellers.

From that small group of birds sprung the 11,000 species of birds Earth supports today  they're the most diverse group of terrestrial vertebrates this planet's got going.

Now that the researchers have an idea of where birds come from, their next move is to study how they radiated out across the globe and to pinpoint exactly when the forests recovered.

"We are working hard to shed new light on this murky portion of the fossil record, which promises to tell us a lot about how birds and other animal groups survived  then thrived  following the extinction of T. rex and Triceratops," said Field.

Now That's Interesting The researchers suggest the individuals that survived the asteroid probably lived for years on seeds buried in the soil.
Exporters are bracing for more economic threats from Chinese authorities amid escalating tensions between Australia and its largest trading partner over the Morrison governments call for an inquiry into the origins of the coronavirus.

Rollo Crittenden from Crittenden Estate has been exporting wine to China for two years and says Chinese consumers love Australian wine. Credit:Eddie Jim

There are growing concerns within bureaucratic circles about a campaign by Beijing to target Australian producers. China suspended imports from four large red meat abattoirs this week, after threatening to impose severe anti-dumping tariffs on Australian barley exports.

China's ambassador to Australia, Cheng Jingye, warned last month that Australia's coronavirus inquiry push could lead to a boycott by Chinese consumers of Australian exports like wine and beef.

Tony Battaglene, chief executive of industry group Australian Grape and Wine, said he had urged all winemakers who export to China to ensure they are strictly compliant with any Chinese regulations to avoid any punitive action.
TORONTO, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Aleafia Health Inc. (TSX: ALEF, OTC: ALEAF) (Aleafia Health or the Company) announced today that its upcoming annual and special meeting of shareholders (the Meeting) will be held on Tuesday, June 30, 2020 at 10:00 a.m. EDT. The record date for shareholders entitled to notice of and to vote at the Meeting has been fixed as the close of business on May 21, 2020.



Given COVID-19, the Company will be holding the Meeting as a completely virtual meeting, which will be conducted via a web interface. Shareholders will not be able to attend the Meeting in person this year and will be strongly encouraged to vote in advance of the Meeting by proxy. Details as to how shareholders may attend the Meeting electronically and vote electronically will be included in the Companys Meeting materials, which will be posted on SEDAR and mailed in due course.

For Investor and Media Relations, please contact:

Nicholas Bergamini, VP, Investor Relations

1-833-TSX-ALEF (879-2533)

IR@AleafiaHealth.com

LEARN MORE: www.AleafiaHealth.com

About Aleafia Health:

Aleafia Health is a vertically integrated and federally licensed Canadian cannabis company offering cannabis health and wellness services and products in Canada and in international markets. The Company operates medical clinics, education centres and production facilities for the production and sale of cannabis.

Aleafia Health owns three significant licensed cannabis production facilities, including the first large-scale, legal outdoor cultivation facility in Canadian history. The Company produces a diverse portfolio of commercially proven, high-margin derivative products including oils, capsules and sprays. Aleafia Health operates the largest national network of medical cannabis clinics and education centres staffed by MDs, nurse practitioners and educators and operates internationally in three continents.

Innovation, the heart of Aleafia Healths competitive advantage, has led to the Company maintaining a medical cannabis dataset with over 10 million data points to inform proprietary illness-specific product development and its highly differentiated education platform FoliEdge Academy. The Company is committed to creating sustainable shareholder value; the TSX Venture Exchange named Aleafia the 2019 top performing company prior to its graduation to the TSX.

Forward Looking Information
Its back to the beginning for Clear Creek Independent School District graduation ceremonies.

Several weeks ago, the district decided to postpone May graduation ceremonies to July in hopes that the worst of the novel coronavirus pandemic would have passed.

The ceremonies for the districts five biggest high schools were set to be held in the air-conditioned NRG Stadium in Houston, while two alternative schools would hold theirs in the Clear Falls High School auditorium to avoid the summer heat, district spokesperson Elaina Polsen said at the time.

However, on May 5, Gov. Greg Abbott banned indoor ceremonies but said schools could hold outdoor graduations so long as social-distancing measures were kept.

On Friday, the district announced a new plan for graduations.

All the schools will hold their graduations at CCISDs Challenger Columbia Stadium, 1955 W. NASA Blvd.

The dates and times for the graduation ceremonies are:

Clear Lake May 29, 8:30 p.m.

Clear View May 30, 8:30 a.m.

Clear Creek May 30, 8:30 p.m.

Clear Falls May 31, 8:30 p.m.

Clear Horizons June 1, 8:30 a.m.

Clear Springs June 1, 8:30 p.m.

Clear Brook June 2, 8:30 p.m.

Graduates will be limited to having four guests attend the commencements.

John DeLapp is a freelance writer. He can be contacted at texdelapp@gmail.com.
Couriers are essential workers in the UK, but delivery companies are under fire for not looking out for the safety of their employees.

While the coronavirus pandemic has left many employees on furlough or working from home, couriers have been busier than ever.

But some companies in the United Kingdom are being criticised for failing to provide the equipment necessary to ensure the safety of their employees.

Al Jazeeras Sonia Gallego reports from London.
Stefan Dennis on 'This Morning'

Neighbours star Stefan Dennis has said the set of the soap is like a surgery because of the strict social distancing measures.

The Australian soap was the first to resume filming amid the coronavirus pandemic, and Dennis has revealed the set is a very different place to how it used to be, with temperature checks, colour coded teams, a strict no touching policy and crew members clad in gloves and masks.

Read more: Neighbours to resume filming

The actor - who has played Ramsay Streets Paul Robinson since the shows first episode in 1985  said on ITVs This Morning that being back is almost like a 35th birthday present, as the soap is celebrating its 35th anniversary.

But its really weird, he said. On one hand it's fantastic, because weve got the opportunity to go back to work and little did we know, the production of Neighbours has pretty much paved the way with this blueprinted model that were doing now, because were back at work, to pave the way for productions all around the world, not just in Australia and Melbourne.

Stefan Dennis attending the Neighbours turns 30 celebration evening at Cafe De Paris, London (Yui Mok/PA Wire)

He went on: When you walk into the make-up department, its like walking into a surgery, because youve got the make-up artist with rubber gloves and masks and full gowns.

Same with the wardrobe, the costume department Obviously we have to keep the 1.5 metre distance, that is the rule.

It is extremely strict.

Latest coronavirus news, updates and advice

Live: Follow all the latest updates from the UK and around the world

Fact-checker: The number of COVID-19 cases in your local area

Explained: Symptoms, latest advice and how it compares to the flu

Dennis said it was particularly strange for him as his son Declan has bagged a guest role in Neighbours, and the pair couldnt hang out together.

He said: What weve done is weve actually broken the studio up into four groups, four teams which are all colour coded. We cannot cross over and it's really weird, because when my son was working on the show a couple of weeks ago, he was at work and I was at work and I couldnt even see him.

Story continues

Craig McLachlan (Henry), Annie Jones (Jane) and Stefan Dennis (Paul) from 'Neighbours'

The soap has also arranged for temperatures to be monitored.

You can come into the compound as long as you dont get out of your car, but you cant enter the building without being temperature checked by the nurse and given the all clear, he explained.

Dennis suggested that the soap is unlikely to address the pandemic in future episodes, partly because Neighbours shoots three months ahead.

Read more: EastEnders due to start shooting in June

He said: Were hoping that an episode we film today for example, when it goes to air, were certainly hoping the COVID situation has well and truly calmed down and things are well and truly on the way to normal.

I think in the eyes of the producers they dont want to keep carrying on the idea and let everybody move on Thatll be a big no then!

This Morning is on weekdays from 10am on ITV.
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:55 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd862d6d 1 Business imports,exports,trade-balance,trade-deficit,COVID-19,GDP-growth,manufacturing-industry,economic-growth Free

Indonesias imports have fallen for 10 consecutive months in April as manufacturing companies cut production output while consumer demand continues to shrink amid the COVID-19 pandemic, signaling cooling economic activity going forward.

The country recorded US$12.54 billion in imports in April, an 18.58 percent drop from the same period last year. Imports of consumer goods plunged 16.6 percent, while incoming shipments of raw materials and capital goods dropped 19.1 percent and 17.1 percent, respectively, Statistics Indonesia (BPS) announced on Friday.

This will be bad for the national economy because this may risk greater deindustrialization as nobody can be sure whether the industry may be able to produce [normally] again, Indonesian Commerce and Industry (Kadin) deputy chairwoman Shinta Kamdani told The Jakarta Post Friday.

She added that manufacturing companies had cut production as domestic and global demand for non-primary products had fallen significantly.

There is not much we can do unless we control the outbreak immediately and inject a greater financial stimulus for the economy, she said.

The manufacturing industry accounted for almost 20 percent of Indonesias gross domestic product (GDP), the largest among other business sectors. Meanwhile, household consumption contributed to more than half of the economy.

At least 16,400 people in Indonesia have contracted COVID-19 as of Friday afternoon, with the death toll exceeded 1,000, according to official data. The outbreak has forced shops, factories, offices and schools to shut down as part of the governments large scale social restriction (PSBB) policy in several regions, including manufacturing centers Jakarta and West Java.

IHS Markit announced recently that Indonesias Purchasing Managers Index (PMI), a gauge of the nations manufacturing activities, fell to 27.5 from 45.3 recorded in March, the worst decline in the survey's nine-year history. A number above 50 reflects expansion, while one below 50 indicates contraction.

Indonesias trade balance recorded a deficit of US$350 million in April  after booking a surplus a month before  on the back of falling commodity prices and plummeting global demand amid the COVID-19 pandemic, according to BPS data. Exports fell 7.02 percent annually to $12.19 billion.

Mirae Asset Sekuritas Indonesia economist Anthony Kevin said the April trade data painted a reflection of social restrictions implemented by Indonesia and lockdowns in several of its main trading partners.

Indonesias key export markets effectively applied social distancing measures for most of the month, which then led to notable pressures on their manufacturing activities, Kevin said, adding that at home, Indonesian consumers purchasing power also weakened as reflected by the falling imports of consumption goods nearing the Idul Fitri holiday.

We project that demand for consumption goods for the rest of 2020 will remain weak as there wont be any momentum left to jack up demand [after Ramadan], he told the Post over phone interview.

Indonesias private consumption usually peaks during Ramadan and Idul Fitri, which falls from April to May this year.

Household spending grew sluggishly by 2.84 percent yoy in the first quarter from 5.02 percent in the corresponding period last year as millions of people lost their jobs because of the pandemic. Indonesias economic growth slowed to 2.97 percent from 5.07 percent in the same period in 2019.

Maybank Indonesia chief economist Juniman projected that imports would shrink by up to 19 percent and exports to plummet by 10 percent in the second quarter this year amid large-scale social restrictions implemented across the country.

With the ongoing social restrictions and plummeting global demand, we expect the domestic economy to contract by 2 percent to 4 percent in the second quarter, said Juniman, adding that economic recovery and trade activities would depend on the COVID-19 containment progress.

Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said in mid-April that the second quarter would be the hardest quarter this year as economic growth could fall to 0.3 percent and even contract by 2.6 percent before slightly recovering to 1.5 percent to 2.8 percent in the third quarter.

If the difficult situation lasts long enough, there is a possibility of a recession in which Indonesias GDP contracts for two consecutive quarters. This is what were trying to avoid, she said.
Newly appointed Chief of Staff to the President, Professor Ibrahim Gambari, who assumed office today, May 13, has said that he will only be reporting to the President and not to the nation.

Professor Gambari made this statement when he spoke to state house correspondents after attending the Federal Executive Council meeting in the statehouse Abuja.

The 75-year-old diplomat thanked President Buhari for his appointment.

I thank the President of the Federal Republic for giving me the opportunity to serve him and of course, the country, he said.

When asked what Nigerians should expect from him as Chief of Staff, he said

We have not started, Ill have to find out. I dont report directly to the nation, I report to the President.

He pledged to serve the President to the best of his ability.
TORONTO, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Namaste Technologies Inc. ("Namaste" or the "Company") (TSXV: N) (FRANKFURT: M5BQ) (OTCMKTS: NXTTF), an online platform for cannabis products, accessories, and responsible education, today reports that activities impacted by COVID-19 have resulted in an extension in the preparation and filing of the Company's interim financial statements for the quarter ended February 29, 2020 and the related management's discussion and analysis. With global offices, warehouses and related production, the Company is taking extensive essential employee safety measures which have required more time. Further to the news release of April 30, 2020 which referred to COVID-19 Regulatory Relief, Namaste currently expects to file its interim filings for the first quarter ended February 29th on or before June 13, 2020.

This news release is being issued in accordance with the blanket relief of a 45-day extension, provided by Canadian Securities Administrators and Ontario Instrument 51-502: Temporary Exemption from Certain Corporate Finance Requirements, for periodic filings normally required to be made by issuers during the period from March 23, 2020 to June 1, 2020.

The Company's board of directors and its management confirm that they are continuing to work expeditiously to meet the Company's obligations relating to the filing of the first quarter filings.

Other than as previously disclosed by the Company, there have been no material business developments since the date of the Company's most recent filing of its annual financial reports and the associate management discussion and analysis.

About Namaste Technologies Inc.

With headquarters in Toronto, ON, and offices in both B.C. and around the globe, Namaste Technologies is a leading online platform for cannabis products, accessories, and responsible education. The company's 'everything cannabis store', CannMart.com, provides customers with a diverse selection of hand-picked products from a multitude of federally-licensed cultivators, all on one convenient site. Namaste's global technology and continuous innovation address local needs in a burgeoning cannabis industry requiring smart solutions.

Information on the Company and its many products can be accessed through the links below:

NamasteTechnologies.com

NamasteMD.com

Cannmart.com

NamasteVapes.ca

Everyonedoesit.ca

FORWARD-LOOKING INFORMATION  This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable securities laws. All statements contained herein that are not historical in nature contain forward-looking information. Forward-looking information can be identified by words or phrases such as "may", "expect", "likely", "should", "would", "plan", "anticipate", "intend", "potential", "proposed", "estimate", "believe" or the negative of these terms, or other similar words, expressions and grammatical variations thereof, or statements that certain events or conditions "may" or "will" happen. The forward-looking information contained herein is made as of the date of this press release and is based on assumptions management believed to be reasonable at the time such statements were made, including management's perceptions of Namaste's standing in the online marketplace for cannabis products, the Company's transition into a growth phase with a focus on increasing revenues and gross margins while reducing costs, the Company's goal of becoming a leading procurement, processing and distribution company focusing on the Canadian cannabis market, Namaste's beliefs regarding the quality of its management, the strides the Company has taken in its operations and the quality of the brands offered by CannMart, the Company's focus on growing the business profitably, reducing operational burn and continuing to master the mechanism of moving cannabis into the market, safely and reliably, Namaste's beliefs with respect to the timing of its Interim Filings and the results of operations, operational matters, historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other considerations that are believed to be appropriate in the circumstances. While we consider these assumptions to be reasonable based on information currently available to management, there is no assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct. By their nature, forward-looking information is subject to inherent risks and uncertainties that may be general or specific and which give rise to the possibility that expectations, forecasts, predictions, projections or conclusions will not prove to be accurate, that assumptions may not be correct and that objectives, strategic goals and priorities will not be achieved. A variety of factors, including known and unknown risks, many of which are beyond our control, could cause actual results to differ materially from the forward-looking information in this press release. Such factors include, without limitation: risks relating to the Company's ability to execute its business strategy and the benefits realizable therefrom, risks specifically related to the Company's international operations, and risks relating to the market price of Namaste common shares. Additional risk factors can also be found in the Company's current MD&A and annual information form, both of which have been filed under the Company's SEDAR profile at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned not to put undue reliance on forward-looking information. The Company undertakes no obligation to update or revise any forward-looking information, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by applicable law. Forward-looking statements contained in this news release are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release or has in any way approved or disapproved of the contents of this press release.

SOURCE Namaste Technologies Inc.
San Francisco: Ride-hailing app Uber has laid off nearly 3,700 employees or about 14 per cent of its workforce via multiple Zoom calls and each call lasted less than three-minutes, with a common message: "Today will be your last working day with Uber".

Last week, Uber Technologies announced to lay off some 3,700 full-time employees, in a move to reduce operating expenses in response to the economic challenges and uncertainty resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the company`s business.

In video footage obtained by Daily Mail, a company manager said: "Today will be your last working day with Uber," as he informed some of the axed customer-support employees.

"Right now, the rides business is down by more than half due to COVID-19. The difficult and unfortunate reality is there is not enough work for many front-line customer-support employees," Ruffin Chaveleau, head of Uber`s Phoenix Center of Excellence, told the employees.

In a regulatory filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), Uber said due to lower trip volumes in its rides segment and the company`s current hiring freeze, it is reducing its customer support and recruiting teams by approximately 3,700 full-time employee roles.

"With the reality of our rides trips volumes being down significantly, our need for communication operations as well as in-person support is down substantially. And with our hiring freeze, there simply isn`t enough work for recruiters," the company`s CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a letter to staff.

Khosrowshahi also reached an agreement with Uber`s Board of Directors, effective May 2, to waive his base salary for the remainder of the year ending December 31, 2020.

An Uber spokesperson told FOX Business this week: "It`s never easy or uncomplicated to let employees go, and that`s only been more true during this unprecedented period, where we are all working from home across dozens of cities and countries".

"We`ve focused on providing the clearest, most empathetic experience, possible and have put together a strong severance package and other benefits."

The ride-hailing major Uber reported a net loss of $2.9 billion in the first quarter of this year, even as its revenue reached $3.54 billion in Q1 2020 from $3.1 billion a year ago, a growth of 14 per cent.

In Q1 2019, Uber`s net loss was $1 billion, which includes $11 million in stock-based compensation expense.

Uber also announced it is folding its JUMP e-bike and e-scooter business into Lime.

"Our customers will continue to have access to e-bikes and e-scooters in our apps. As part of the transaction, we made an additional convertible note investment of $85 million in Lime," Uber said
Bengaluru, May 15 : Five South Western Railway (SWR) zone special trains ferried 7,477 migrant workers back home to three Indian states amid COVID pandemic, an official said on Friday.

"The first Shramik special train and 49th from SWR left at 4:15 p.m. with 1,520 passengers bound for Gorakhpur," said a SWR zone official.

Friday's second special train with 1,530 migrants departed at 5 p.m. to Bhagalpur in Bihar from Malur, Bengaluru outskirts.

Similarly, a third special train departed Chikka Bannavara station for Gorakhpur in Uttar Pradesh at 6:40 p.m. with 1,440 migrants.

Likewise, fourth special train from Malur station to Barauni in Bihar departed at 7:35 p.m. with 1,549 passengers.

The fifth train from Chikka Bannavara to Agartala in Tripura left at 8:44 p.m. with 1,438 migrants.

The SWR zone has operated 52 special trains to transport migrants back home.

The special trains are being organised following the Union Ministry of Home Affairs granting permission for the movement of stranded migrant labourers, workers, students, tourists and others.

Amid Covid pandemic, the Karnataka government has announced that all inter-state travellers arriving here will be compulsorily placed in institutional quarantine for a fortnight.

"You can stay in government hostels for free of cost or in specific hotels at your own cost. You will not be allowed to go to your homes before 14 days," said an official statement shared by the SWR officials.

To drive home the message to passengers who boarded a special train in Old Delhi railway station for Karnataka on Thursday night, Karnataka Bhavan officials distributed pamphlets in Kannada and English about the quarantine requirements.

Official also sent out text messages to the travellers.

The railway zone has also texted 2.5 lakh people in multiple districts not to walk on the tracks to avoid accidents.
The world needs experts, now more than ever says Professor Lynne Robinson, the academic director of the Faculty of Graduate Studies new OpenThink Initiative.

In a world with a fractured and polarized media landscape, and where anyone with a Twitter handle can broadcast their ideas, universities need to engage the public with information based in evidence and rigorous thought, says Dr. Robinson, a faculty member in the School of Health and Human Performance.

Dr. Robinson says OpenThink is designed to shape Dals next generation of academic advocates with the skills to bring clarity to an increasingly confusing world. Funded by a generous donor, this years cohort of 10 OpenThinkers has attended a series workshops built to equip them with the tools to share their research beyond the confines of campus.

Taught by instructors from Dal and the University of Kings College as well as professionals from NATIONAL Public Relations, the PhD students have learned how to harness social media, write editorials for news publications, pitch and talk to journalists and create infographics.

Diving into important issues



Today (Monday, May 11) sees the launch of the OpenThink Blog, a platform to share their research-based opinions and discoveries on a monthly basis. Their first posts delve into issues that make headlines around the world: sustainability, social justice, health policy, sexualized violence, urban planning, human rights and resilience in the face of the pandemic.

Intellectualizing scary ideas, like trauma, makes me feel better about them, says OpenThinker Tareq Yousef, a PhD student in Medical Neuroscience who wrote his first blog on the brains physiological reactions to stresses like those caused by COVID-19 and our ability to be nurtured back to health.

When I understand whats happening biologically behind the scenes in my brain and other peoples brains during this difficult time it makes me feel better. It helps make sense of a tough reality. So, I hope my post will help other people, as well.

Empowering researchers to make a difference in peoples lives by sharing what they study is the essence of the OpenThink Initiative. With the training and platform to share their ideas and insights, Dr. Robinson says the students are being positioned to become public leaders in their fields with the power to influence public opinion.

Our OpenThinkers represent the excellence of our graduate students across nearly all of the universitys academic disciplines, says Marty Leonard, dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies. Theyre a new generation of researchers committed to making an impact in the world by applying what they learn as they learn it. Im extremely excited to see where they take us.
Remittances from the African diaspora are expected to decline by 23% this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its economic consequences.

This year, the World Bank predicts that remittances from the diaspora to sub-Saharan Africa will fall by 23%. They currently represent 48 billion dollars. The problem is not only African, it is global, according to economist Dilip Ratha who spoke on the World Bank website in mid-April.

The economic crisis in Europe and the United States will make migrant workers a little more vulnerable. Many risk losing their jobs. The flows they generate to Africa are essential.

When migrants send money home, it has a huge effect on poverty reduction. In countries such as Nepal, southern Sudan, Somalia, or Haiti, remittances account for 30% and sometimes 50% of national income.

In some countries, the decline in diaspora transfers will have much more immediate effects for households in Sub-Saharan Africa than the decline in foreign direct investment, or the decline in commodity prices.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) speaks during a campaign rally at the Altria Theatre on February 29, 2020 in Richmond, Virginia.

A group of Senate Democrats introduced legislation Friday to provide grants to nonprofits to bolster hiring efforts as their resources dwindle amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

The bill, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, is meant to equip nonprofits with a strong workforce that can continue to provide essential services to vulnerable Americans.

Nonprofits will be able to apply directly for the grants through the Treasury Department, according to a press release from Klobuchar's office announcing the bill, which is called WORK NOW, or the Work Opportunities and Resources to Keep Nonprofit Organizations Well Act. The hope is the grants will allow nonprofits to retain their workforce or provide jobs for newly unemployed people.

Since government lockdowns began, nonprofits and institutions catering to vulnerable populations like domestic violence shelters, homeless shelters and food banks, have seen steep declines in volunteers and revenue. At the same time, these nonprofits are trying to adhere to social distancing guidelines as they grapple with ways to stay afloat.

In some cases, volunteer shortages have led to higher expenses to maintain the same levels of service.

About 72.5% of nonprofits surveyed said they've seen reduced contributions since the pandemic hit, according to a report released Thursday. The survey, conducted by the Charities Aid Foundation of America, asked about 880 nonprofits around the world to weigh in on how the coronavirus has affected them.

"Nonprofits are on the front lines of this crisis helping millions of Americans in need. From food banks, to shelters, to counseling centers, charitable organizations are doing incredible work to help families put food on their table, provide housing assistance, and serve people with disabilities," Klobuchar said in the release.

"But as demand for their services soars, many of these organizations are struggling financially. At the same time, over 36 million men and women have lost their jobs and are looking for work. We need to help charitable nonprofits keep their doors open, scale their invaluable services, and provide opportunities for unemployed men and women to return to work serving their communities."

The WORK NOW Act is sponsored by Sens. Tom Carper and Chris Coons of Delaware, Ed Markey of Massachusetts, Jeff Merkley of Oregon, Tammy Duckworth of Illinois and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

The outbreak has spread to dozens of countries globally, with more than 4.4 million confirmed cases worldwide and over 302,493 deaths so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University. There are at least 1.4 million cases in the United States and at least 85,906 deaths, according to the latest tallies.
Myanmar: Police arrest people for electrofishing in Ayeyarwady

by AUNG THANT KHAING

May 15,2020 | Source: Myanmar Times

We cooperate in arresting electrofishing boats in the Ayeyarwady dolphin conservation area and then transfer the suspects to the Department of Fisheries to face legal action, he said. While the cause of death of endangered Ayeyarwady dolphins varies, conservationists agree that most were killed by electrofishing and getting entangled in fishing nets.



As battery fishing becomes more popular, the number of dolphin deaths is increasing, said U Han Win, deputy head of the department. Battery fishing is banned under the Myanmar Freshwater Fisheries Law, and those who violate it face fines of K30,000 (US$21), imprisonment of up to three years, or both. Latest records showed there are 79 Ayeyarwady dolphins in the river from Mandalay to Bhamaw township in Kachin State. On May 7, a female dolphin, 7-foot, 3-inches long and an estimated 40 years old, was found dead near Aye Kyun village in Madaya township in Mandalay.



The dolphins, named after the Ayeyarwady River, live along a 373-kilometre stretch north of Mandalay, between Mingun in Sagaing Region and Bhamaw. The Ayeyarwady dolphin protection zone in Mandalay, and in Mingun and Kyauk Myaung in Sagaing Region, was established in 2015. The government declared the section of the river in Sagaing and Kachin a protected zone last August. The Ayeyarwady dolphin is found in discontinuous subpopulations near sea coasts and in estuaries and rivers in parts of the Bay of Bengal and Southeast Asia. Some sub-populations of the dolphin, including the Ayeyarwady, are classified by the IUCN as critically endangered species.
The opposition Democratic Coalition (DK) has called on the interior and justice ministers to testify before parliaments defence and law enforcement committee regarding the case of a man recently detained for spreading rumours about the novel coronavirus epidemic.

The Borsod-Abauj-Zemplen County police on Tuesday said the authorities had launched criminal proceedings against a 64-year-old man in Szerencs, in north-eastern Hungary, on suspicion of spreading rumours concerning the epidemic.



The suspect was detained for saying on social media that the government had deliberately timed the easing of coronavirus-related restrictions to coincide with the peak of the epidemic which he said could result in a massive rise in infections.



DK lawmaker Agnes Vadai told an online press conference that the polices job was not to round up those who disagree with Prime Minister Viktor Orban or [ruling] Fidesz.



She cited the prosecutors office as saying that the man had not committed a crime, but had merely expressed an opinion about the prime minister.



And it was a very clear one  that Viktor Orban is a dictator, Vadai said. She said the case demonstrated how far Hungary has fallen from the rule of law, freedom and Europe over the last ten years.
WASHINGTON  Former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday said Americans who believe Tara Reade's sexual assault allegations against him probably shouldn't vote for him in the Nov. 3 presidential election.

The presumptive Democratic nominee also pushed back hard at the 27-year-old allegations, saying Reade's story has "changed considerably."

Biden made the comments while appearing on MSNBC's The Last Word. Host Lawrence O'Donnell asked what he would tell women who were eager to vote for him in November but now have pause because they believe Reade's allegations.

"I think they should vote their heart, and if they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me. I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade," Biden said.

More: Joe Biden has addressed Tara Reade's sexual assault allegation. Will voters care?

Biden, who has denied the allegations, said he does not remember Reade and that inconsistencies in her account bolster his contention that he did not assault her .

"The fact is that, look at Tara Reade's story. It changes considerably," Biden said, giving a more direct defense than past interviews. "But I don't want to question her motive. I don't want to question anything other than to say, the truth matters."

Reade on March 25 alleged Biden pinned her against a wall in a Senate building when she was then a 29-year-old Senate staffer in 1993 for the then-Delaware U.S. senator. She said he reached under her clothes, groped her and digitally penetrated her without consent.

Last April, Reade said that during her time working for Biden, he touched her shoulders and ran his finger up and down her neck in ways that made her feel uncomfortable but in an interview with "The Union" newspaper, said she didnt consider the acts toward her sexualization. She made no mention of an accusation of a sexual assault in a Senate hallway.

Story continues

Reade said she filed a complaint against Biden with congressional personnel office but that it didn't explicitly mention sexual assault or harassment. The secretary of the Senate denied Vice President Joe Biden's request to release any record of a complaint from Reade, citing confidentiality rules.

In this April 4, 2019, photo Tara Reade poses for a photo during an interview with The Associated Press in Nevada City, Calif. (AP Photo/Donald Thompson) ORG XMIT: WX121

Biden said his conduct toward women has been vetted, including through interviews of "scores of my employees over my whole career."

"This is just totally, thoroughly, completely out of character. And the idea that in a public place, a hallway, I would assault a woman? I mean, it's, anyway, I promise you, it never happened," Biden said.

In an interview last week with Megyn Kelley, Reade said the alleged incident "changed everything about my life" and said Biden should be "held accountable."

"I wish he would (withdraw from the race)," Reade said. "But he won't. But I wish he would. That's how I feel emotionally."

More: What we learned in Tara Reade's interview with Megyn Kelly about the Biden assault claim

Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden campaigns in Philadelphia on March 10, 2020

Reade has said she didn't make the allegations earlier because he didn't want the story to impact her then-teenage daughter, and because she liked Obama. She also said she didn't know how to come forward in a pre-MeToo era.

Reade has said she believes the complaint is stored with Biden's Senates papers at the University of Delaware, but the school has said it won't release the papers until two years after Biden retires from public life. Biden hasn't asked the university to release the records, which he said includes papers such as speeches, policy proposals, position statements and the writing of bills, not personnel documents

Biden's appearance on MSNBC was billed as a "town hall" with Stacey Abrams, former Georgia House Minority Leader and onetime gubernatorial candidate who is now among the possible vice presidential picks the Biden campaign is considering.

Joe Biden, asked whether having Stacey Abrams on TV with him is an audition for her being the VP nominee, touts her record working to protect voter rights.



"Stacey knows what she's doing and she's an incredibly capable person." pic.twitter.com/h3Mqesf2P1  Joey Garrison (@joeygarrison) May 15, 2020

The lengthy side-by-side appearance, which included submitted questions to both from viewers, provided an opportunity to see how they would play out on camera and test their chemistry.

O'Donnell said it was Biden who invited Abrams onto the show. But Biden did not say whether it was audition to be his running mate. He instead touted Abrams' record working to protect voter rights through Fair Fight, the advocacy group that Abrams leads.

"Stacey knows what she's doing and she's an incredibly capable person," Biden said.

Reach Joey Garrison on Twitter @joeygarrison.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Joe Biden: Women who believe Tara Reade probably shouldn't vote for me
Back to work: Cairns sites will have new social distancing and PPE measures when they reopen on Monday

Listed housebuilder Cairn Homes will start re-opening its sites from Monday on a phased basis, the company said yesterday.

Despite the economic uncertainty stemming from the coronavirus, Cairn said interest from institutional investors - so-called cuckoo funds - for homes to lease on the private rental market "has remained robust".

"Despite the impact on the private sales market, the company is continuing to see significant demand from institutional investors in our well located apartment and housing sites in the multifamily PRS market," Cairn said.

Last year, the company - which is largely focused on building houses and apartments in the greater Dublin area - sold around 20pc of homes, in value terms, to such investors.

Since March 28 the majority of building sites around the country have shutdown on the back of government guidelines aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus. From next Monday these restrictions will be eased.

Cairn said it will implement strict new return-to-work protocols across 15 of its sites, and the company has already spent 500,000 on personal protective equipment (PPE).

But the introduction of social distancing measures and the use of PPE will increase the time needed for building work to be completed and drive up construction costs, the company said.

Due to the new processes being introduced, some of its projected closings for this year, particularly on apartment developments, will move into 2021.

Planned work at new sites is now likely to be postponed until later this year.

Cairn is well positioned with gross cash of 156m as at May 13, up from around 57m at the end of last year.

"Despite the most challenging of circumstances, Cairn's healthy financial position and business model will enable us to continue to deliver much-needed new homes in a market of acute under-supply," said Michael Stanley, co-founder and CEO of Cairn Homes.

He warned that given the "productivity challenges and the cost implications for the broader industry in Ireland" there may be a "significantly lower" number of new homes completed in 2020.

Meanwhile, Cairn's closed and current forward-sales pipeline was 863 units as of May 13, this is up marginally from 853 at the beginning of March.

"Our initial assessment is that it would be prudent at this stage to move completions towards 700-800 units for financial year 2020 versus pre-Covid forecasts of 1,300," Robert Eason, analyst at Goodbody Stockbrokers, said.

"However, this ramps up significantly in 2021, underpinned by a well-funded balance sheet, a landbank that is geared towards delivering affordable houses and a clear focus on housing by the next government."

Shares in Cairn were down over 4pc in London yesterday afternoon.
Whilst it may not be a huge deal, we thought it was good to see that the S&U plc (LON:SUS) Chairman & MD, Anthony Michael Coombs, recently bought UK50k worth of stock, for UK16.20 per share. Although the purchase is not a big one, by either a percentage standpoint or absolute value, it can be seen as a good sign.

See our latest analysis for S&U

S&U Insider Transactions Over The Last Year

In fact, the recent purchase by Anthony Michael Coombs was the biggest purchase of S&U shares made by an insider individual in the last twelve months, according to our records. That means that even when the share price was higher than UK15.30 (the recent price), an insider wanted to purchase shares. It's very possible they regret the purchase, but it's more likely they are bullish about the company. We always take careful note of the price insiders pay when purchasing shares. Generally speaking, it catches our eye when an insider has purchased shares at above current prices, as it suggests they believed the shares were worth buying, even at a higher price. The only individual insider to buy over the last year was Anthony Michael Coombs.

You can see a visual depiction of insider transactions (by individuals) over the last 12 months, below. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

LSE:SUS Recent Insider Trading May 15th 2020

There are always plenty of stocks that insiders are buying. So if that suits your style you could check each stock one by one or you could take a look at this free list of companies. (Hint: insiders have been buying them).

Insider Ownership

Looking at the total insider shareholdings in a company can help to inform your view of whether they are well aligned with common shareholders. A high insider ownership often makes company leadership more mindful of shareholder interests. S&U insiders own about UK73m worth of shares. That equates to 37% of the company. We've certainly seen higher levels of insider ownership elsewhere, but these holdings are enough to suggest alignment between insiders and the other shareholders.

Story continues

So What Do The S&U Insider Transactions Indicate?

It's certainly positive to see the recent insider purchase. And an analysis of the transactions over the last year also gives us confidence. Given that insiders also own a fair bit of S&U we think they are probably pretty confident of a bright future. So while it's helpful to know what insiders are doing in terms of buying or selling, it's also helpful to know the risks that a particular company is facing. When we did our research, we found 2 warning signs for S&U (1 is a bit concerning!) that we believe deserve your full attention.

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.
Amid the coronavirus spread in



the country, there is some to cheer from Karnataka's Mysuru district, a hotspot, with all 90 patients having fully recovered and discharged.

"All the 90 COVID-19 positive patients from Mysore District Hospital have been discharged without single mortality.

Thank you for all the support," the Health Department said in a brief statement on Friday.

Sharing the joy, medical education minister Dr K Sudhakar tweeted, "Glad to inform that all 90 COVID19 positive patients in Mysuru Dist Hospital have recovered.

Thanks to doctors, nurses & all CoronaWarriors who worked tirelessly to make this possible.With people support, we can win this fight against Corona."



District Health and Family Welfare Officer Dr R Venkatesh told PTI there were 74 cases in Nanjangud, which were related to a pharmaceutical company Jubilant Life Sciences.

Then there were 10 Tablighis who had not attended the Delhi event but were roaming in Bannur,he said.

There were two international travellers and their primary and secondary contacts, all put together 90 cases, Venkatesh said.

The sleepy town of Nanjangud in the district came into the limelight when one after another 74 cases of COVID-19 came to the fore.

District In Charge Minister of Mysuru S T Somashekar, who holds the cooperation portfolio, cited three reasons for the infection spreading.

Speaking to reporters recently, Somashekar had said, "There could be three reasons.

First is that a 10-member team of foreigners had come to Jubilant(pharmaceutical company Jubilant Life Sciences)



Second is that a team of auditors had come from Delhi and the third is that there was an employee of Jubilant who is learnt to have attended the Tablighi Jamat event in Delhi."



According to Venkatesh, an extensive survey was done in the entire area making sure that every COVID-19 case was traced.

"We conducted an extensive survey in Mysuru and Nanjangud.The containment was very good. The containment at the buffer zone is very important, which should be followed," he said.

While it is believed that people above 50 years and those having medical history are the most vulnerable, the doctors made a point that all of them were cured completely.

There were two patients having Severe Acute Respiratory Illness (SARI) while four patients were above 50, Venkatesh said.

"The treatment method of young and old is different. Their response to treatment is very important," he pointed out.

The district authorities have now taken up a task of second round of survey, focusing on patients with medical history.

"This is our second phase of survey.If we succeed, then there will be no positive cases in the district," Venkatesh added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There is a sneering strain of anti-Americanism that runs through Britains media and polite society. Before regularly visiting and at one point living in the U.S., my understanding of what Americans were like was skewered by Londons pop culture and elite opinion. In brief, it went as follows: Yanks are arrogant beasts who act like the world is theirs for the taking and the rules dont apply to them.

I was delighted to later discover that this is generally not the case. But every once in a while, I am reminded why this mentality pervades high-status British thinking. The diplomatic furor surrounding the death of Harry Dunn is one such example.

In August, Dunn, a British teenager, was hit and killed by a car driven by Anne Sacoolas, the wife of an American government agent working at a U.S. Air Force base in England. She had been in the country for only three weeks and admitted to police officers that she was driving on the wrong side of the road.

Although accidental, it was an egregious death that could have been avoided had Sacoolas not violated the law. There are judicial powers in place to help prevent such incidents from recurring  powers that Sacoolas would have faced. But before Dunn was buried, Sacoolas and her family fled Britain to Virginia, claiming diplomatic immunity.

It is right that foreign government agents and their families are given diplomatic immunity to cover for petty grievances and squabbles  niche parking fines and congestion charges are a common example  but this protection should not be used to cover manslaughter.

Sacoolass decision to escape rather than face the justice of British courts  which are fair and, if anything, astonishingly lenient in levying punishment  smacks of cowardice. At the time, many commentators and Westminster workers were convinced that her immunity would be overturned and that pressure from Britain would induce her return to answer for Dunns killing. After all, we are blessed to share what many gushingly refer to as a special relationship.

Story continues

Now it is clear to all that this relationship is special insofar as it involves only one side committing to its part of the bargain.

Since her escape to Virginia, Londons pursuit of Sacoolas has been met with rejection at every turn. The diplomatic timeline makes for sobering reading. Before the story made headlines, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab telephoned his counterpart Mike Pompeo to express his disappointment at the decision to recover Sacoolas. He also spoke with Washingtons ambassador to Britain, Woody Johnson, to deliver the same message. But the embassy held firm and politely batted away this troublesome politicking.

In October, a photograph of President Donald Trumps briefing notes indicated that the American position was for Sacoolas not to return to the U.K., despite Raabs efforts and a plea from the prime minister to the White House.

Dunns mother, Charlotte Charles  an articulate, brave woman who has fought relentlessly for justice for her son  said at the time that Washingtons position was beyond any realm of human thinking, adding, I dont see the point in Boris Johnson talking to President Trump, or President Trump even taking a call from Boris Johnson if hed already made his decision that if it were to be asked and if it were to be raised, the answer was already going to be no.

Symptomatic of Britains drastic decline on the world stage, we cant even lobby our best mates to return an acknowledged law-breaker in what would likely be a swift court case.

Charlotte Charles is capable of immense standards of mercy and good grace. Barely a month after burying her son, she flew to the U.S. to pursue the justice that Harry deserves. She told a press conference that she was hoping Sacoolas would receive a suspended sentence so that we dont take her away from her children although shes robbed us of one of ours.

That grace was not answered in Washington. The spokesperson for Harrys family alleged that, at a meeting in the White House on October 15, Trump attempted to bargain with the family. According to the spokesperson, the meeting closed with Trump saying that Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin was standing by ready to write a cheque.

Having failed to pay off the family, in January the State Department formally rejected an extradition request from London on the basis of her immunity.

There is one word for this behavior by Americas leadership: contempt. Contempt for British people, our lives, our laws and customs, our readiness to stand with America  often at our own disadvantage  on the world stage; all of this has been swiftly disregarded to protect a woman who stands accused of unlawful killing. This merciless decision, by preventing a trial, condemns a boys grieving family to not knowing what last words he may have said during the 43 minutes he lay waiting for an ambulance.

The Dunn family has maintained its relentless pursuit of justice to little avail, but the case has not disappeared. The latest development comes from Interpol, which has issued a red notice for Sacoolas. If she leaves her native U.S., she will be considered a fugitive from justice.

Sadly, this likely changes nothing. The State Department has reiterated that its position on extradition is final. In this instance, the special relationship feels abusive.

More from National Review
Our state superintendent has announced that this year will count and students will move to the next grade. That makes sense, given the unprecedented conditions were facing. But lets not try to fool ourselves. Our students will have suffered a substantial loss to their knowledge base by the time September rolls around. We cannot simply ignore what has transpired and continue on regular school calendar autopilot. We need to consider alternatives. Why not, for instance, begin schools sooner than normal, say early August, if public health officials deem that safe? If that doesnt appear prudent, why not plan to use some of summer 2021 to catch up?
Glowing Kate Middleton sported a chic updo and a lockdown tan as she and Prince William video-called volunteers from the mental health text service Shout.

The Duke, 37, and Duchess of Cambridge, 38, joined the call to mark the first anniversary of Shout, the UK's first 24/7 crisis text line, which they launched last year with Prince Harry, 35, and Meghan Markle, 38.

The Duchess appeared to be glowing on the call, with an early-summer tan highlighted by her stylish scalloped hemmed white blouse.

During the call, The Duke thanked the five volunteers on the call for their work, saying: 'You guys are the trailblazers, you have been doing a fantastic job keeping Shout moving forward, so well done and thank you for all your hard work; we really appreciate it.'

Kate Middleton, 38, and Prince William, 38, spoke with volunteers from the mental health text service Shout via video call on Wednesday

Speaking over a video call on Wednesday, Prince William and Kate heard from five Crisis Volunteers and the organisations Chief Executive, Victoria Hornby, about how Shout has grown.

The couple are currently isolating with their children Prince George, six, Princess Charlotte, five, and Prince Louis, two, at their Norfolk Home, Anmer Hall.

The Duchess opted for a natural makeup look for the call, with a touch of lip gloss and a sweep of dark eyeliner across her lids.

Meanwhile the royal swept her hair into a stylish up-do, revealing her set of Catherine Zoraidia gold leaf earrings.

In a video clip released from the call, the couple chat with volunteers about how the lockdown has impacted the mental health of NHS workers

The couple spoke about how Shout is playing a vital role as the country continues to deal with the impact of coronavirus and how work on the frontline is affecting health and care staff as well as emergency responders and other key workers.

The volunteers also spoke about how lockdown has impacted young peoples mental wellbeing, including how many are finding it harder to access their usual ways of maintaining good mental health but the difference a supportive text conversation can make.

The service is powered by a team of more than 1,800 trained volunteers who stand ready to speak to anyone at all times of the day and is free on all major mobile networks.

In the past year, it has had 300,000 text conversations, two thirds of which have been with people aged 25 or under.

The Duchess appeared glowing on the call, with her scalloped white top highlighting her early-summer tan

Shout CEO, Victoria Hornby, who also joined the call said: 'In twelve months Shout has become a vital service for thousands of people across the UK who are able to text our volunteers for support, wherever and whenever they need it.

'The fact that Shout has been able to quickly start to help so many people move from a crisis point to a calmer place is down to the skill and dedication of our volunteers and the support we have had from the Royal Foundation of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and our other partners.

'We have seen during the COVID-19 lockdown how young people find it incredibly useful to have a neutral person to listen confidentially to their worries and give independent support, we now want even more people to text 85258, whatever their crisis.'

Crisis Volunteer, Alexis Caught, said: 'The unique support that Shout is able to provide to people in crisis is crucial at all times, but now more than ever it can serve as a lifeline to those most in need - whatever they're going through, big or small.

The Duke and Duchess spoke with volunteers about the significance of reaching out for support for NHS workers

'Without the hundreds of volunteers who give up their time to provide help and reassurance to others, the service simply wouldnt be able to function.

'That is why it was so great to hear The Duke and Duchess speak so positively not only about Shouts work but also encouraging people to get support with their mental health.

'We want to send a very clear message to anyone who is looking for someone to reach out to  we are here to listen to you anytime, anywhere about any problem.

Last month, Shout joined forces with leading mental health charities Mind, Samaritans and Hospice UK to create Our Frontline, a new initiative supported by the Royal Foundation, which provides round the clock mental health and bereavement support to frontline staff and key workers.

Prince William and Kate launched the volunteer service in June last year, and attended a celebration event for volunteers in London in November

This is one of 30 partnerships Shout has formed, enabling charities, local authorities, employers and universities to provide the service to those in need of support.

To raise awareness of the invaluable support that Shout provides, the organisation is today launching a new campaign to promote the text number.

The #Shout85258 challenge will see a host of people forming the shape of the 85258 text number with their hands to create videos to upload on to social media platforms.

To kick off the campaign, one of the Shout Crisis Volunteers who joined the call with The Duke and Duchess, will take over KensingtonRoyals Instagram stories tomorrow with unique content including Q&As and videos from volunteers and others, marking the first time that KensingtonRoyal has partnered with another organisation in this way.

The mental health text service was launched by Kate and Will alongside Prince Harry and Meghan as a joint project

Kate and Meghan have both been praised in the past for their dedication to the joint charity venture which they set up with their husbands last year.

Nancy Lublin, the founder of Crisis Text Line in the US, who sits on the board of the UK charity, told Town & Country in November that the duchesses have been 'four times to the offices, without anyone knowing'.

At the organisation's opening last June, William and Kate, alongside the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, appealed to the public to give their time to the charity.

It is unclear if the pair went together for any of their unannounced trips, or with their husbands.

The video call comes days after a staff member for Crisis Text Line in the US revealed Prince Harry and Meghan had joined their staff meeting

The news comes after Prince Harry and Meghan spoke with mental health workers for the US alternative of the charity, which is called the Crisis Text Line.

Ricky Neal, who works for Crisis Text Line in Atlanta, took to social media on Thursday to share a photo of a staff Zoom call where the duke and duchess were royal guests.

'It's not everyday that Meghan and Harry jump into your staff meeting & champion the work you do! Blessed to still be working during these crazy times!' he said in an Instagram post.
Badrinath Temple opened its portals on Friday, 15 May at 4.30am amid the ongoing coronavirus lockdown

Badrinath Temple opened its portals on Friday, 15 May at 4.30am amid the ongoing coronavirus lockdown. Located in the Chamoli district of Uttarakhand, it is one of the four temples which are part of the Char Dham Yatra and is dedicated to Lord Vishnu. The other dhams are Yamunotri, Gangotri and Kedarnath.

News agency ANI tweeted that 28 people, including the chief priest, were present at the temple when its portals opened. The shrine was decorated with strings of marigold at the time of opening.

The Times of India reported that much like the other three dhams, the first prayer was offered on behalf of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Uttarakhand tourism minister Satpal Maharaj was quoted in the report as saying that presently only religious rituals are being performed at the Char Dham shrines and it is not open for devotees.

"However, we have requested the Centre to open the yatra for people living in green zone districts of Uttarakhand," he added.

Religious ceremonies were also held on Wednesday at the Narsingh temple in Joshimath, ahead of the opening of Badrinath temple. Manujendra Shah, the king of the Tehri royal family, had on 20 April changed the date of opening of the portals of Badrinath as the chief priest was under quarantine after returning from Kerala. This is the first time in history that such a change was initiated.

The doors of Kedarnath Temple were opened on 29 April after a six-month-long winter break.
The Maharashtra government has decided to extend the lockdown in the coronavirus hotspot areas like Mumbai, Pune, Malegaon, Aurangabad and Solapur until May 31.

However, an official decision is awaited, sources told News18. Once the formal decision is made, the state government will send a report to the Centre.

The possibility of extending the lockdown was discussed in a meeting chaired by Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray. The state has reported the highest number of Covid-19 cases and deaths in the country.

A senior minister said it was unanimously agreed upon that the lockdown has to be extended in certain parts of the state, especially in red zones such as the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, Malegaon and Solapur.

"In the rest of the state, the guidelines of the Centre will be implemented when they are announced before the lockdown 3.0 ends on May 17," a state government official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Tuesday, had said a fourth phase of the lockdown will be implemented after May 17, but the rules for it will be very different with many more relaxations likely.

Maharashtra had on Thursday reported 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day spike so far, taking the states overall count to 27,524, according to state health department data.

With 44 deaths registered in last 24 hours, the death toll in Maharashtra due to the contagious coronavirus disease has now breached the 1000-mark and stands at 1,019.

Of the 44 deaths recorded in Maharashtra, 25 COVID-19 patients succumbed to the infection in the financial capital Mumbai, 10 in Navi Mumbai, five in Pune, two in Aurangabad and one person each died in Panvel and Kalyan.
The M240-5 sanitizing tunnel was assembled by Adventure Trail Company Limited (ATLC), a Construction and Engineering Company, and features a five-nozzle beam sensor design.

It works by spraying disinfectant solutions on people thereby killing bacteria and other susceptible pathogens that may be on their bodies and clothes.

Once people enter the sanitizing tunnel, the sensor-activated nozzles in the chamber are initiated and sprayed on with the sanitation solution, thereby disinfecting their person and belongings and eliminating up to 99 percent of viruses and bacteria.

The World Health Organisation recommends that the highest antimicrobial efficacy can be achieved with tunnels with an alcohol content of 60-85 percent.

The M240-5 Sanitizing Tunnel has a spray system containing atomized liquid spray with 63 percent alcohol.

Mr Daniel Vincent Arthur, Head of Engineering, said the sanitizing tunnel was tested and conformed to three national and international standards, including; Household and similar electrical appliance safety (GS IEC 60730) and the Automatic electrical controls for household and similar use.

He said the product ticked all the standards required.

Presenting the certification to Mr Elie Abou Jaoude, the Chief Executive officer of ATCL, Mr Clifford Frimpong, Director of Physical Science Directorate, praised the ingenuity of Ghanaians during the time of crisis.

He said the sanitizing tunnel was suitable for the airports, shops and offices and public places for people to be sanitized as they entered and Ghana would be a safer place for all.

Mr Frimpong pledged the support of the GSA to Ghanaians that came out with inventions, adding that the Authority was ready to back industry to ensure that the country's economy grows.

Commenting Mr Jaoude lauded the assistance from the GSA and expressed the hope that the sanitizing tunnel would go a long way to help protect people from COVID-19.

Professor Alex Dodoo, the Director-General of the GSA, said the use of the sanitizing tunnel is in addition to the observance of the various hygienic protocols, such as washing of hands.

Sanitising Tunnels are common in China, Japan, India and South Korea, where they have been deployed in public places.

---GNA
A good company offers excellent products and services. A great company not only offers excellent products and services but also strives to make the world a better place.



Bayport Savings and Loans PLC has always committed itself to improve the quality of lives of people through appropriate and sustainable corporate social responsibility interventions in communities.



Today, Bayport has expressed its support in the fight against COVID 19 by donating test kits and Personal Protection Equipments, toiletries, and boxes of water worth 100,000 Ghana Cedis to selected hospitals across Ghana.



Bayports donation to these hospitals seeks to complement governments efforts to improve the availability and accessibility of PPEs in the protection of medical professionals in the frontline of this fight. The hospitals that received the donations are Gas East Hospital in Kwabenya in Accra and Kumasi South Hospital in Kumasi.



At a brief ceremony on Thursday, 17th May 2020, at the Ga East Hospital, Bayports Management, led by their CEO, Nii Amankra Tetteh presented the PPEs to the Director of the Ga East hospital.



Speaking to the media after the donation, Nii Amankra Tetteh said that the The COVID 19 pandemic has already affected so many lives and businesses. We hear the call for support, and we are grateful we can contribute in some way to ease the fight.



Nii Amankra also added that This donation is in response to a call for support to help the government mobilize resources and logistics to deal with the pandemic. Businesses cannot be successful when the society around them fails, there is no way we can thrive or head towards our ambition whilst the community we operate in, is under threat.



When asked how the pandemic has affected Bayport Savings and Loans, Nii Amankra indicated that We are all experiencing the full impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and Bayport Savings and Loans is no exception. Bayport kickstarted the year 2020 on a very optimistic note before the pandemic hit our country. Although our output in March and April was not up to expectations, Our performance for the same time last year is better; we believe we are taking the right steps to counter this pandemic making tremendous progress on our digital journey, being financially prudent but most importantly guarding jealously the lives of our colleagues by adhering to the protocols laid down for all of us, to avert the spread of the virus.



This pandemic has disrupted this world in ways never thought possible. At Bayport we welcome also the opportunity it offers to evolve and to grow resilience, but most importantly we will always identify avenues to become meaningful change agents and give back to society. We want to participate meaningfully in the agenda of developing a purposeful, resilient, and healthy society.



Medical Superintendent at the Ga East Hospital, Dr. Ebenezer Oduro Mensah received the items together with some of the medical staff on duty. He was full of appreciation to Bayport and commended the company by saying that On behalf of Ga East Municipal Hospital, Management, staff and all patients currently on admission, we thank Bayport for this generous donation.



He continued that Bayport has brought the hospital items we are in dire need of. We use a lot of face masks, especially the N95 and they always ran out pretty fast because, for most of the patients, the doctors attend to them several times in a day to be able to monitor their progress.



Dr. Ebenezer further said We appreciate the fact the Bayport has come to provide us with these materials that will go a long way in helping the medical staff treat these patients.



The Government cannot do it alone, and it is great to see the private sector coming in to support in battling this pandemic. We look forward to a more lasting relationship with Bayport Savings and Loans even after the COVID 19 has been contained would appreciate your continuous support.





Source: 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.

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Mr Ernest Kofie, Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) for Jomoro has bemoaned the difficulty the Assembly was encountering to get places within the community to quarantine 20 suspected COVID-19 victims whose samples have been sent for testing.



According to him people were afraid to allow the suspected COVID-19 patients to be quarantined in their communities.



Mr Kofie therefore appealed to the Chiefs and Elders within the Municipality to assist the Assembly to get places to be used as quarantine centers.



Mr Kofie said the Public Health Emergency Committee of the Assembly had sent 20 samples of the suspected Covid-19 cases for testing.



The MCE who made this known to the media at Half Assini, said apart from the 20 suspected persons, the committee in conjunction with the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) have also encountered 50 Ghanaians believed to have travelled from Accra and Kumasi crossing through unapproved borders to La Cote D'Ivoire.



The MCE said though the Municipality had not recorded any positive case yet, it would only be prudent for the Assembly to intensify its campaign to sensitize people in the area on the need to adhere to the World Health Organization (WHO) measures on safety protocols to avoid spreading the virus.



He said the Assembly in collaboration with the Member of Parliament in the area, Mr Paul Essien have donated Veronica buckets and nose masks to people in the area.



Mr Kofie lauded health workers, security personnel especially the Ghana Immigration Service (GIS) for their sense of commitment and dedication to duty.



He said as at May 15, 2020 the Western Region had recorded 87 positive cases of COVID-19 with one death and one recovery.



He said Sekondi-Takoradi top the list with 22 positive cases followed by Tarkwa-Nsuaem with 19 positive cases.

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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Several weeks ago, Connecticuts public health commissioner suddenly stopped appearing with Gov. Ned Lamont at his daily briefings on the states response to the coronavirus outbreak.

This week, the governor fired the commissioner.

It was a highly unusual shake-up, given that the state has been one of the hardest hit by the crisis. But Mr. Lamont, a Democrat, had apparently soured on the commissioner, Renee D. Coleman-Mitchell, after a behind-the-scenes struggle over plans to protect residents of nursing homes during the outbreak.

Ms. Coleman-Mitchell had overseen a plan that called for segregating nursing home residents with the virus in long-term care facilities that would house only those who were infected.

But the plan was rejected because it was never vetted with other public health experts, including the state epidemiologist. And it would have required transferring healthy residents out of nursing homes to make room for infected patients, alarming relatives who opposed having family members displaced.
By Trend

The price of Azeri LT CIF Augusta, produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Deepwater Gunashli (ACG) oil field, reached $31.01 per barrel on May 14, which is $0.19 less compared to May 13, Trend reports with reference to the source from the country's oil and gas market.

The price of Azeri LT FOB Ceyhan amounted to $30.04 per barrel on May 14, which is $0.11 less compared to May 13.

Azerbaijan has been producing Azeri LT since 1997 and exporting it via the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) and Baku-Supsa Western Export Pipeline, as well as by rail, to the Georgian port of Batumi.

Azerbaijan also sells its URALS oil from the Russian Black Sea port of Novorossiysk, delivering it through the Baku-Novorossiysk oil pipeline.

The price of URALS with shipment from the port amounted to $28.92 per barrel on May 14, which is $0.37 more compared to May 13.

The cost of a barrel of Brent Dated oil, produced in the North Sea, reached $28.34 per barrel, demonstrating a growth of $0.34.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
A father who told New York cops his six-year-old daughter had been stabbed in an attempted robbery on the Lower East Side has now been arrested for the assault.

Jia Pan, 55, told cops that two men approached him in the early hours of Friday morning near Monroe and Pike street, where they stabbed the youngster while trying to steal from him.

Pan said the robbers held him at knifepoint before making off with his credit card and jewelry.

After an investigation to the events, the NYPD this afternoon placed the 55-year-old under arrest.

Pictured: Monroe Street in New York where Jia Pan, 55, said his daughter was stabbed during a robbery. Police have now arrested Pan and charged him with the attempted manslaughter of his child

Pan said they were walking along Monroe Street when two men held them at knifepoint

The NYPD said that the investigation is ongoing after this morning's stabbing on the Lower East Side

Before Pan was arrested, NBCNews reported the youngster 'got in between the robber and her father when she was knifed.

The alleged robbery took place on Monroe Street, underneath Manhattan Bridge, at 12.05am Friday morning.

Police sources told the New York Post that Pan is now in custody, facing charges of attempted manslaughter, reckless endangerment, assault and endangering a child.

Pictured: Bellevue Hospital in New York City, New York. The six-year-old was rushed to the hospital this morning and is listed in a stable condition

The six-year-old underwent surgery at Bellevue Hospital after the attack and is now resting, sources said. She is expected to make a full recovery.

Though unable to confirm for certain, police said Pan may have been living at a homeless shelter on the Upper West Side.

The investigation is ongoing.
#PeruEstaEnNuestrasManos El presidente @MartinVizcarraC, junto al ministro @victorzamora y la presidenta de @ConcytecPeru, Fabiola Leon-Velarde, supervisan el trabajo que se realiza en el Laboratorio de Biomedicina del @INS_Peru en relacion al analisis de pruebas para COVID-19. pic.twitter.com/P00tEoFoKb
RENO, Nev.  A magnitude 6.5 earthquake struck near Tonopah early Friday morning, the U.S. Geological Survey said, in what was the state's strongest quake in over 65 years.

Two more aftershocks near Tonopah both measuring magnitude 5.4 struck the area a short time later.

There were no immediate reports of damage or injuries in the small town of Tonopah, located about three hours north of Las Vegas.

However, part U.S. 95  the main highway between Las Vegas and Reno  was damaged and closed early Friday, the Mineral County sheriffs office said.

Nevada Highway Patrol photos showed cracks on U.S. 95 that Trooper Hannah DeGoey said were caused by the earthquake. No injuries were reported and crews were working to reopen the highway, DeGoey said.

The Nye County sheriffs office was also checking a report of possible damage to U.S. 95, Capt. David Boruchowitz told KSNV-TV in Las Vegas. Other than that, just a bunch of people shaken up.

The quake first struck just after 4 a.m. local time. It was originally classified as a 6.4 before being bumped up to a 6.5.

It is the largest earthquake to hit Nevada since December 1954, when a 7.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Fairview Peak area, Graham Kent, director of the Nevada Seismological Lab wrote.

A Nevada Seismological Laboratory map showing the location of a magnitude 6.4 earthquake and its several sizable aftershocks near Tonopah on May 15, 2020.

According to contributed reports from the U.S. Geological Survey, residents reported feeling the quake as far east as Salt Lake City, Utah, and as far southwest as San Diego, a 750-mile range of reported impacts.

It really shook a lot of groceries off the shelves, Keith Hasty, an employee at a gas station in Tonopah, told the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Hasty said residents who frequented the store were all talking about the quake.

The quakes, including the 6.5, struck in the desert between Tonopah and Hawthorne, according the a Nevada Seismological lab map of the earthquakes.

Does being woken up by your dog barking at a shaking closet door, thinking in your haze that it was the other dog scratching herself, then a ghost, then a burglar, before finally going ahh, its an earthquake count? https://t.co/EkqMp4F7Bs  Colton Lochhead (@ColtonLochhead) May 15, 2020

We felt that earthquake here at our Sacramento office. Anyone else feel it? #CAwx https://t.co/uDfIOXfg8P  NWS Sacramento (@NWSSacramento) May 15, 2020

If you felt the shaking, you can submit a "felt report" to the USGS here.

Story continues

Contributing: The Associated Press

Sam Gross, The Reno Gazette Journal; Doyle Rice, USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Tonopah, Nevada earthquake: quake, aftershock hit as far as California
Qatars interior ministry has announced that wearing masks will be mandatory for everyone going outside starting on Sunday in the coun...





Qatars interior ministry has announced that wearing masks will be mandatory for everyone going outside starting on Sunday in the country.





The minister disclosed that violators will be fined up to 200,000 riyals ($53,000) or jailed up to three years.





The statement made available on the ministrys Twitter account said those exempted from compulsory mask usage are persons driving alone in a vehicle.





The decision will be effective from Sunday, till further notice.

The tweet read: Starting from Sunday, May 17, 2020, wearing facemasks is mandatory for all upon leaving the house for any reason, except in the case when a person is alone while driving a vehicle. The @MOI_QatarEn is authorized to take necessary measures in this regard.





The decision on Wednesday is effective from Sunday until further notice, with penalties of up to three years in jail and fines of up to 200,000 riyals ($55,000).





Qatar recorded 1,733 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours, bringing its total to 28,272 with 14 deaths.




All economic and financial indicators are positive:

Consolidated turnover of 317.0 million (+11.8%);

EBITDA of 47.6 million (42.3 million in 2019);

EBIT of 38.0 million (33.6 million in 2019);

Profit before tax amounts to 33.9 million (34.2 million in 2019).

Today, the Board of Directors of Reply S.p.A. [MTA, STAR: REY] approved the results as at 31 March 2020.

Since the beginning of the year, the Group has recorded a consolidated turnover amounting to 317.0 million, an increase of 11.8% compared to the corresponding data for 2019.

All indicators are positive for the period. In the first quarter of 2020 the consolidated EBITDA was 47.6 million (42.3 million in 2019), equal to 15.0% of the turnover.

EBIT from January to March, was 38.0 million (33.6 million in 2019), and is equal to 12.0% of the turnover.

The profit before tax, from January to March 2020, was 33.9 million (34.2 million in 2019), equal to 10.7% of the turnover.

The net financial position of the Group on 31 March 2020 is also positive by 159.3 million. The net financial position on 31 December 2019 was positive for 105 million

"The results for the first quarter of 2020 says Mario Rizzante, Chairman of Reply have been very positive, both in terms of revenues and margins. When in March the unexpected explosion of the Covid-19 pandemic caused slowdowns and lockdowns of business in each sector, Reply succeeded in guaranteeing the continuity of activities for every customer. This was achieved thanks to the flexibility of its network model, combined with a working system based for a long time on advanced individual productivity tools and systems distributed entirely in the cloud".

"The economic repercussions of the pandemic on Reply continues Mario Rizzante are not punctually predictable, because they will depend a lot on how companies and governments will react. The next few months will require companies to make a great transformation effort, they will have to manage the restart in a competitive framework completely different from the one they left behind, preparing themselves to deal effectively also with possible new closedown. The scenario is complex, still in progress and very uncertain; but technology and, in particular the cloud, artificial intelligence and all digital components will have a decisive role in shaping our new future".

The manager responsible for preparing the company's financial reports, Giuseppe Veneziano, states in accordance with Paragraph 2 of Article 154-bis of the Consolidated Finance Act, that the accounting information contained in this press release corresponds to the company's records, ledgers and accounting entries.

Reply

Reply [MTA, STAR: REY] specialises in the design and implementation of solutions based on new communication channels and digital media. Reply is a network of highly specialised companies supporting key European industrial groups operating in the telecom and media, industry and services, banking, insurance and public administration sectors in the definition and development of business models enabled for the new paradigms of AI, cloud computing, digital media and the Internet of Things. Reply services include: Consulting, System Integration and Digital Services. www.reply.com

This press release is a translation, the Italian version will prevail.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005245/en/

Contacts:

Media

Reply

Fabio Zappelli

f.zappelli@reply.com

Tel. +390117711594

Investor Relation

Reply

Riccardo Lodigiani

Tel. +390117711594

r.lodigiani@reply.com

Michael Lueckenkoetter

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Tel. +49524150091017
In this article we are going to estimate the intrinsic value of Tianjin Development Holdings Limited (HKG:882) by taking the expected future cash flows and discounting them to their present value. I will use the Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) model. Don't get put off by the jargon, the math behind it is actually quite straightforward.

Companies can be valued in a lot of ways, so we would point out that a DCF is not perfect for every situation. Anyone interested in learning a bit more about intrinsic value should have a read of the Simply Wall St analysis model.

Check out our latest analysis for Tianjin Development Holdings

The model

As Tianjin Development Holdings operates in the integrated utilities sector, we need to calculate the intrinsic value slightly differently. In this approach dividends per share (DPS) are used, as free cash flow is difficult to estimate and often not reported by analysts. Unless a company pays out the majority of its FCF as a dividend, this method will typically underestimate the value of the stock. We use the Gordon Growth Model, which assumes dividend will grow into perpetuity at a rate that can be sustained. For a number of reasons a very conservative growth rate is used that cannot exceed that of a company's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). In this case we used the 10-year government bond rate (1.6%). The expected dividend per share is then discounted to today's value at a cost of equity of 6.4%. Relative to the current share price of HK$1.5, the company appears about fair value at a 8.8% discount to where the stock price trades currently. Valuations are imprecise instruments though, rather like a telescope - move a few degrees and end up in a different galaxy. Do keep this in mind.

Value Per Share = Expected Dividend Per Share / (Discount Rate - Perpetual Growth Rate)

= HK$0.08 / (6.4%  1.6%)

= HK$1.7

SEHK:882 Intrinsic value May 15th 2020

Important assumptions

Now the most important inputs to a discounted cash flow are the discount rate, and of course, the actual cash flows. If you don't agree with these result, have a go at the calculation yourself and play with the assumptions. The DCF also does not consider the possible cyclicality of an industry, or a company's future capital requirements, so it does not give a full picture of a company's potential performance. Given that we are looking at Tianjin Development Holdings as potential shareholders, the cost of equity is used as the discount rate, rather than the cost of capital (or weighted average cost of capital, WACC) which accounts for debt. In this calculation we've used 6.4%, which is based on a levered beta of 0.800. Beta is a measure of a stock's volatility, compared to the market as a whole. We get our beta from the industry average beta of globally comparable companies, with an imposed limit between 0.8 and 2.0, which is a reasonable range for a stable business.

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Whilst important, DCF calculation shouldnt be the only metric you look at when researching a company. The DCF model is not a perfect stock valuation tool. Rather it should be seen as a guide to "what assumptions need to be true for this stock to be under/overvalued?" If a company grows at a different rate, or if its cost of equity or risk free rate changes sharply, the output can look very different. For Tianjin Development Holdings, We've put together three relevant aspects you should further examine:

Risks: As an example, we've found 5 warning signs for Tianjin Development Holdings (1 is potentially serious!) that you need to consider before investing here. Other Solid Businesses: Low debt, high returns on equity and good past performance are fundamental to a strong business. Why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals to see if there are other companies you may not have considered! Other Environmentally-Friendly Companies: Concerned about the environment and think consumers will buy eco-friendly products more and more? Browse through our interactive list of companies that are thinking about a greener future to discover some stocks you may not have thought of!

PS. Simply Wall St updates its DCF calculation for every HK stock every day, so if you want to find the intrinsic value of any other stock just search here.

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.
TEL AVIV, Israel - With the Nazis murdering Jews and ransacking their property outside on the infamous nights of Kristallnacht in 1938, 13-year-old David Toren sat in the sunroom of his wealthy great-uncle in Germany admiring a favourite painting depicting two men on horseback on a beach.

Within a year, Toren would be smuggled out in one of the final Kindertransports, a series of rescues for Jewish children organized by several European countries. Left behind, his family would perish in the death camps and their vast art collection would be seized by Nazis and later traded by unscrupulous dealers.

Toren would serve in the Israeli pre-state militia before moving to America with less than $100 to his name. He went on to build a successful law practice with an office on the 54th floor of the World Trade Center. Many of the early-life possessions he kept there were destroyed in the 9-11 attacks, carried out before he arrived to work that day.

But even as a degenerative eye condition robbed him of his sight later in life, the images of his past never escaped him, and he embarked on a quest to reclaim some of what was lost. He sued the government of Germany for his great-uncles collection and in 2015, after a lengthy saga, recovered the Max Liebermann work Two Riders on the Beach that so moved him in his youth.

He regarded it as justice and felt very strongly about it, said his son, Peter Toren. The art is something that was taken from his family and it was something there was a possibility of getting back. He couldnt get back all the lives that were exterminated.

Toren died on April 19 in his Manhattan home from symptoms of the coronavirus. He was 94. He left behind his son Peter and two grandchildren.

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EDITORS NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from coronavirus around the world.

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Born Klaus-Gunther Tarnowski in Breslau, now part of Poland, Toren and his family at first seemed immune to the rise of the Nazis. His father, a decorated World War I veteran, was a prominent lawyer who was allowed to practice even after the Nazis forbade most Jews from doing so and he published poetry and wrote plays that were performed at local theatres.

But eventually he too was taken away to a concentration camp and came back three weeks later a broken man, according to Peter Toren. He and his wife eventually died in Auschwitz.

Torens great-uncle, the wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann, was forced to flee and the Nazis pillaged his extensive collection. Many of the works ended up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a notorious German art dealer who traded in what the Nazis called degenerate art  works deemed inferior because they were un-German, Jewish or Communist or, as is the case with Impressionist and other Modernist works, did not employ traditionally realistic forms. Still, they were happy to sell the works to help fund their war machine.

Much of Gurlitts collection remained unseen for decades and experts feared they had been lost or destroyed. But a vast horde resurfaced by surprise in 2012 when German authorities raided a Munich apartment belonging to his son Cornelius while investigating him for tax evasion. Paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were discovered.

The reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt, who said he had inherited much of the art from his father, kept more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and 250 more in Salzburg, Austria. The discovery brought renewed attention to the many unresolved cases of looted art that was never returned to original Jewish owners or their descendants. Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014 at age 81, designating Switzerlands Kunstmuseum Bern as the sole heir to a collection worth billions of dollars.

Friedmanns daughter Charlotte died in Auschwitz, leaving Toren as the only descendant to stake a claim. After reclaiming Two Riders on the Beach, Toren tracked down another piece that had oddly made its way to Israel. After a lengthy negotiation he got back Basket Weavers as well, an Impressionist work depicting five boys weaving baskets out of straw.

Peter Toren said his father spent his final years pursuing the art collection and further efforts were ongoing to acquire more than 50 documented antiques seized from Friedmanns collection.

Despite his background, Toren had no problem using his language skills to cultivate German clients in New York, even those with Nazi connections. As a patent attorney, he once represented a Bavarian farm machinery company with ties to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

I asked my father how he could deal with Nazi clients and he told me that if he didnt do the work someone else would, Peter Toren said, before adding. And he charged such clients an unofficial 25% Nazi surcharge.

Torens grandson, Ben, said his grandfather pursued the art collection in retirement with the same unsentimental focus and tenacity as he did in his law career.

The artwork thing gave him a new lease on life, he said. He very strongly felt that these paintings were his paintings and it gave him a lot of purpose.

But he never presented himself as being any kind of victim and he never asked for any pity, he quickly added. He was always fairly stoic in his demeanour, in how he carried himself. His life experience required of him to have a rock-solid exterior. Thats how he presented himself to the world.

____

Follow Aron Heller at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap
To break this self-perpetuating cycle of poor health, D.C. policymakers must improve health-care access and transportation options for residents east of the Anacostia River. The cost of the improvements will be more than offset by the decrease in spending associated with a healthier population. Until access equity is achieved, the 68 square miles of the District will continue to act as two separate states: one with some of the lowest rates of fair and poor health, and one with some of the highest.
FILE PHOTO: Equinor's logo is seen at the company's headquarters in Stavanger

OSLO (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, the Public Investment Fund (PIF), holds a 0.3% stake in oil and gas firm Equinor <EQNR.OL>, the Norwegian firm's public records showed ahead of Thursday's annual general meeting of shareholders.

The stake, worth 1.5 billion Norwegian crowns (120.00 million pounds), makes PIF the 19th biggest owner. The Norwegian government owns 67% of Equinor.

The Saudi fund, which manages over $300 billion in assets, earlier this year bought stakes in Royal Dutch Shell <RDSa.L>, Total <TOTF.PA>, Eni <ENI.MI> and Equinor, a source familiar with the transactions told Reuters on April 9.

PIF's purchases, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, came as demand for oil slumped due to the COVID-19 outbreak, pushing oil shares down.

Equinor's shares dropped to 95.20 crowns on March 16, the lowest level since 2008, but have since recovered to trade at 135.50 crowns on Thursday.

The PIF is Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's vehicle for boosting Saudi Arabian investments at home and abroad.

(Reporting by Nerijus Adomaitis, editing by Terje Solsvik and Nick Zieminski)
The National Green Tribunal Friday expressed concern over the repeated allegations of "tankers mafias" in the city engaged in the extraction of groundwater without any remedial action by the authorities.

The tribunal observed that illegal extraction of groundwater is a criminal offence and directed the authorities to devise effective mechanism for preventing its withdrawal through unauthorised tubewells.

A bench headed by NGT Chairperson Justice Adarsh Kumar Goel directed that a suitable mechanism for preventing extraction of ground water by illegal tubewells needs to be devised and wherever such illegalities found, prompt coercive measures must be taken.

"Illegal extraction of ground water is a criminal offence under the Environment Protection Act. Compensation must be recovered on the formula already laid down. It will be appropriate that Chief Secretary, Delhi calls a meeting of all concerned within one month from today and oversees preparation of an appropriate SOP for fixing responsibility on the subject," the bench said.

The Ministry of Jal Shakti may also take necessary steps in the matter, the bench said.

The tribunal had earlier constituted an independent Monitoring Committee, headed by former Delhi high court judge, Justice S P Garg, to look into the issue.

The Committee had found that 14,231 borewells were illegally operating in Delhi and 15 per cent of the groundwater had reached below 40 meters.

"Depleting of groundwater was also affecting the flow the river Yamuna, the committee said and suggested that subsidy in the form of free water was being misused and to avoid payment of water charges for more than 20,000 litres free water, groundwater was being freely extracted without any remedial action by the authorities.

The tribunal was hearing a plea filed by city resident Rakesh Kumar alleging that water filling plants were being operated without license and supplying contaminated water to the residents at Kashmere Gate here.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A man riding a Lime e-scooter in Berlin, Germany on June 21, 2019. Thomas Trutschel | Photothek via Getty Images

Electric scooter companies are racing to take part in planned U.K. trials after the test window was brought forward to next month, from 2021, as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. U.S. firms Bird and Lime confirmed to CNBC that they are in talks with several local authorities across the U.K. about applying for permission to test their e-scooter rental services, as did European start-ups Voi and Tier. As the U.K. starts to ease its lockdown, the government says it's taking steps to avoid a second wave of cases. The virus can spread easily on public transport, so people are being told to avoid using trains and buses wherever possible. If everyone were to start driving in their cars again, roads would quickly become clogged up and pollution levels would soar. The City of London is banning cars entirely on the busiest roads to help manage the anticipated return of tens of thousands of workers. Fredrik Hjelm, the CEO and co-founder of Sweden-headquartered Voi, said his firm is recruiting a team in the U.K. to work with authorities on rolling out e-scooters. "Right now we have an opportunity to reinvent urban transport and to increase our use of electric vehicles, bikes and e-scooters," Hjelm told CNBC in a statement this week. Voi said it has been talking to Transport for London and London boroughs, as well as Manchester, Salford, Bath, Teeside, Darlington, Hartlepool, Milton Keynes, Birmingham and Edinburgh.

Who's in the lead?

Lime indicated it could be at an advantage in the race to put the two-wheelers on Britain's streets, as it already runs several popular e-bike rental schemes across the country. "We hope to be able to follow this model and partner with boroughs and local authorities to offer our e-scooters as soon as possible," said Alan Clarke, Lime's director of policy and government relations in the U.K. and Ireland. Many countries in Europe have embraced e-scooters but they are still illegal on U.K. roads as a result of a law dating back to 1835. They're also banned on sidewalks. In a bid to clamp down on people riding their own e-scooters, police have issued fines and confiscated e-scooters. However, one small Bird trial has been taking place on private land in London's Olympic Park. Bird argued that this pilot could place it in a good position to gain access to Britain's wider rollout.

Sam Shead

Patrick Studener, head of EMEA at Bird, said: "We've been very fortunate to have the U.K.'s only electric scooter pilot in Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. Over the last year-and-a-half we've had MPs and city officials down to the park to see for themselves the advantages scooters  and specifically Bird  can bring to towns and cities throughout the U.K." "Following the government's announcement on scooter trials, we've had dozens of inquiries from city officials who want to get their cities moving again; congestion and emission free, while maintaining social distancing. We're looking forward to further guidance from the Department for Transport on how and when we can implement our service here." An e-scooter consultation period was due to take place next year in four corners of England  Portsmouth and Southampton, the West of England Combined Authority, Derby and Nottingham, and the West Midlands.

But over the weekend, Transport Secretary Grant Shapps said he was fast-tracking the consultation period to next month and making it nationwide. If the trials are successful, then laws will likely be updated. Shapps said he would be "fast-tracking trials of e-scooters, bringing this programme already underway for next year forward to next month, and extending those trials from four local authorities to every region in the country that wants them in a bid to get e-scooter rented schemes up and running in cities." The trials do not extend to privately owned e-scooters at this stage.

Still early days
The Ector County Health Department has contacted almost 2.5 times as many people through contact tracing of those with the coronavirus than the city of Midland Health Department, despite a higher number of confirmed positives in Midland County.

A public information officer for Ector County reported Wednesday that 1,301 individuals have been contacted by the health department because they came into contact with someone with COVID-19, while the Midland Health Department has contacted 557 individuals, according to Health and Senior Services Manager Whitney Craig.
Next four to six months could be worst of pandemic, warns Bill Gates

Bill and Melinda announce they are divorcing after 27 years of marriage

Indias role a key: Bill Gates thanks PM Modi

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 15: Bill Gates thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the conversation and partnership to combat the coronavirus pandemic and the importance of global coordination in scientific innovation and research.

Responding to PM Modi's tweet, Gates said, "India's role is key as the world works to minimize social and economic impact, and pave the way to vaccine, testing, and treatment access for all."

During a video conference, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation co-chair Bill Gates and PM Modi agreed that given India's willingness and capacity to contribute to global efforts, it was important for New Delhi to be included in the global discussions for coordinating responses to the pandemic.

PM Modi also underlined the conscious approach that India has adopted in its fight against the health crisis.

Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

"Had an extensive interaction with @BillGates. We discussed issues ranging from India''s efforts to fight coronavirus, work of the @gatesfoundation in battling COVID-19, role of technology, innovation and producing a vaccine to cure the pandemic," the prime minister tweeted.

An official statement pointed out that India's approach is based on ensuring public engagement through appropriate messaging.

PM Modi explained how the "people-centric bottom-up approach" has helped win acceptability for physical distancing, respect for front-line workers, wearing of masks, maintaining proper hygiene, and respecting lockdown provisions.

The prime minister also highlighted how some of the previous developmental initiatives taken by the government such as expanding financial inclusion, strengthening last mile delivery of health services, popularising cleanliness and hygiene, drawing upon India's ayurvedic wisdom to enhance people's immunity, helped increase the effectiveness of India's response to the pandemic.

PM Modi appreciated the health-related work being carried out by the Gates Foundation, not only in India but also in many other parts of the world, including for coordinating global response to COVID-19.

PM Modi discusses COVID-19 situation and vaccine to cure it with Bill Gates

He sought suggestions from Gates on how India's capacities and capabilities could be better leveraged for the general benefit of the world.

Some of the ideas that the dignitaries explored in this context included drawing upon India's unique model of last-mile health service delivery in rural areas, dissemination of the effective contact-tracing mobile app developed by the government, and above all by leveraging India's massive pharmaceutical capacity to scale-up the production of vaccines and therapeutics upon their discovery.

In closing, the Prime Minister also suggested that the Gates Foundation could take the lead in analysing the necessary changes in lifestyles, economic organisation, social behaviour, modes of disseminating education and healthcare, that would emerge in the post-COVID world.

He said that India would be happy to contribute to such an analytical exercise, based on its own experiences.

With PTI inputs
Ethiopian Airlines expects a settlement with planemaker Boeing by end of June over compensation related to the 737 MAX grounding in March 2019 following two fatal crashes, CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told Reuters on Friday.

Ethiopian Airlines flight 302 bound for Kenya crashed six minutes after take-off from Ethiopia's capital Addis Ababa, killing all 157 passengers and crew.

It was the second deadly crash of a 737 MAX in less than six months and led to the worldwide grounding of Boeing's top-selling aircraft and a halt in deliveries that airlines have said caused a loss in revenues.

"We have invited Boeing to discuss compensation. It's compensation for the grounded MAX ... there is also compensation for delayed delivery of the MAX that was supposed to come and loss of revenue," Tewolde said in an interview, adding that it expects compensation by the end of June when its fiscal year closes.

Boeing said in a statement that it does not comment on its arrangements with particular customers but will continue to work closely with Ethiopian Airlines and others "to reach a fair and reasonable outcome."

Ethiopian, Africa's largest airline, has decided not to pursue a lawsuit against Boeing over the 737 MAX crash as it remains a "partner" and Ethiopian uses many of its planes, he said, adding the settlement could be in form of cash or supplies of plane parts.

He did not say how much compensation the airline, with four MAX planes in its fleet, was seeking or how many planes it has on order.

The global aviation industry is at a virtual standstill due to the coronavirus pandemic, forcing airlines that were once eager for new jet deliveries to grow their networks to scale back their flying schedules and park planes.

To help it overcome a drastic downturn in passenger revenues, Tewolde said his airline has converted 22 passengers planes to cargo aircraft, stripping out all seats.

"Normally cargo would make 15% of our revenue, but at this time when the passengers revenue is almost gone we are only surviving on cargo," he said.

Demand for cargo has grown mainly to transport personal protective equipment and medical supplies to tackle the virus.

So far Ethiopian had not cancelled any jet purchases despite the collapse in air travel, though several orders, including some from Boeing and Airbus, had been delayed, he said.

Ethiopian made a loss of $550 million between January and April, but Tewolde ruled out seeking a bailout from the Ethiopian government.

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Press Release

15 May 2020

At Airbnb, being a good neighbor strikes at our very foundation as a company. The trust of not only our hosts and guests, but also the communities in which they live, is one of our priorities. It's why we have committed to work with governments around the world to create clear, 21st century rules for short-term rentals. It's why we have partnered with governments and NGOs, as well as destination marketing organizations and local nonprofits, to keep most of the economic benefits of tourism where it happens.

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Now, in the midst of this pandemic, it's also why we are standing up to work with states, cities and other key institutions to provide an invaluable resourceaccommodations for frontline responders.

Last month, we launched Frontline stays, a new program to allow hosts to share their homes with those on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic. Since then, frontline workers have booked more than 100,000 nights in free or subsidized accommodations as part of this initiative.

"Since launching Frontline stays 6 weeks ago, our community has offered over 200,000 places to stay to support the frontline responders fighting the spread of COVID-19," said Brian Chesky, Airbnb Co-founder, CEO and Head of Community. "I am inspired by the generosity of our hosts and grateful for the over 40 partners around the world who have joined us in helping to ensure that we can provide this resource during this time of global crisis."

Airbnb Hosts to Help Provide Housing to 100,000 COVID-19 Responders  Airbnb, Inc.

Partnering with government on Frontline stays

From the moment we launched Frontline stays, we knew that opening doors to first responders alone would not be enoughwe wanted to ensure we could connect those frontline workers to these opportunities as efficiently and simply as possible. With state and city governments leading the on-the-ground response to this crisis, we immediately turned to local officials to connect the dots, with the financial support necessary to be impactful.

In just the past few weeks, we have joined forces with states, cities and counties across the United States and CanadaNew York State, New Orleans, Los Angeles County, Florida, and Torontoto deliver that direct support to those fighting the spread of COVID-19. And today, we are proud to announce that we will now also be deploying our support to another cityBostonwhere we are working with the Boston Medical Center directly, as well as responders affiliated with hospitals across the city.

"I want to thank Airbnb for this opportunity for free housing for the frontline workers who have come to Boston to help battle the pandemic. It's a testament to the fact that we are all in this together and we will get through this by working together." - Marty Walsh, Mayor of Boston.

This month, we also began work with the New York City Fire Department to connect their officersincluding Emergency Medical Services operatorsto hotel rooms via the Airbnb platform and HotelTonight (part of the Airbnb family).

These workers are among the over 100,000 nights booked under this program so far, and all at no cost to themtheir stays have been backed by a personal contribution of up to $5.7 million from Airbnb Co-Founder and CEO Brian Chesky.

"I'm grateful to Airbnb for their generous donation that will provide our healthcare heroes much needed relief with a safe, comfortable place to rest." - Supervisor Kathryn Barger, Chair of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

But the impact of the Frontline staysis hardly limited to the United States and Canadaworking with local governments and nonprofits, we have been able to serve frontline responders all around the world.

In March, we launched Frontline Stays in the United Kingdom where thousands of hosts offered free stays for NHS and healthcare staff. In six weeks, more than 700 stays and 10,000 nights were booked by staff as they carry out their vital work.

March also brought the launch of Frontline stays in Italy, partnering with a local host organisationOspitaMIto oversee the bookings process. In just six weeks, more than 4,000 listings were offered for free by Italian hosts and over 12,000 nights were booked by medical professionals fighting this unprecedented outbreak.

In April, we launched Frontline staysin Malaysia, endorsed by the Ministry of Health. Since then, we have partnered with local grassroots movement Homes4Heroes to match healthcare frontline responders with available stays. Today, free and paid stays can be booked by any COVID-19 frontline responder directly on Airbnb, or through local partners in Malaysia, including Homes4Heroesand to date, hosts across the country have offered over 1,000 places to stay for healthcare staff and first responders.

"The efforts undertaken and goodwill shown by Airbnb in a bid to assist the government especially the healthcare front liners, by providing access to free or subsidized accommodations during the COVID-19 outbreak is highly appreciated." - Dato' Seri Dr Chen Chaw Min, Secretary-General, MOH.

In Latin America, the Frontline stays program has been launched in Mexico in alliance with the Mexican Red Cross, with close to 2,500 nights since booked by frontline responders across the country. We have also activated the program in Colombia to support independent frontline responders, and we are continuing to partner with local health institutions to ensure their workers can access the housing they need.

"We are infinitely grateful to Airbnb and its hosts for being in solidarity with all the frontline responders who are dedicating each day of their lives to fight against COVID-19. Mexico and Mexicans have always shown that by joining efforts and being in solidarity we succeed. I am sure that this occasion will be no exception." - Fernando Suinaga Cardenas, National President of Mexican Red Cross.

Airbnb, Inc.

Frontline stays for working families

In addition to these partnerships with local governments, we were also determined to build on our longtime support of organized labor at this crucial moment. Working familiesincluding hospital custodial and cafeteria staff and health home aidesare among the most impacted by regular exposure to COVID-19, demonstrating a significant need for emergency housing to prevent the further spread of the virus.

Last month, we joined forces with 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East, Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West (SEIU-UHW), Services Employees International Union Healthcare and the New York State Nurses Association to help address that exact need, offering their members some peace of mind and the ability to safeguard their families off the clock.

"1199ers are working hard on the frontlines, fighting to protect their patients from the ravages of COVID-19. Through this partnership with Airbnb, they will have a safe place to rest between their shifts, so they are able to continue to provide quality care to the patients who so desperately need it." - George Gresham, President of 1199SEIU United Healthcare Workers East.

Altogether, 1199, UHW, SEIU Healthcare and NYSNA members across California, Florida, Maryland Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York and Washington, D.C.as well as the Greater Toronto Areawill receive direct access to housing at no cost, via Frontline stays.

Airbnb, Inc.

Hosting on the frontlines

For hosts, opening up their home to medical professionals in need is simply the right thing to do. Airbnb hosts from across the country are housing nurses and other medical professionals often for weeks, and often for free or reduced stays. From New York City to New Orleans and Los Angeles, hosts are stepping up to help others, just as many have previously done so in other cases like natural disasters.

"We have offered our property for free to health care workers and are currently housing two nurses from Pennsylvania. Out of state responders like them are crucial to getting us through this pandemic. We appreciate them and we know that New York City needs them. So this is our way of contributing and we feel it's the right thing to do." - Sam, Superhost on Airbnb, Brooklyn, New York.

"My family and I signed up to participate in the Frontline Stays Program because we want to help keep families safe. A lot of people in our communitya lot of our neighborsare frontline responders. These are people we see at PTA meetings and at the grocery store. How can we not help?" - Catlyn, Superhost on Airbnb, Long Beach, California.

Even when the peak of this crisis is long behind us, we know that our partnership with states, cities and organized labor will be far from over. This will include our Enhanced Cleaning Initiative launched in April, which will support hosts, guests and communities with enhanced cleaning resources and standards, optimized for COVID-19 prevention and prepared with guidance from the former US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy and in partnership with leading experts in hospitality and medical hygiene. As we have demonstrated through this program, we are committed to both ensuring our hosts and guests can easily meet needs and expectations as well as offering a controlled approach for governments and health authorities to reopen travel and reignite tourism economics.

Building on Frontline stays and the Enhanced Cleaning Initiative, we stand ready to continue to work with governments toward our recovery, and the safe and responsible return of travel.
General Sisavath Keobounphanh passed away on May 12. He served as a member of the Lao Peoples Revolutionary Party (LPRP) Central Committee from the 1st to 8th tenures, Secretary of the LPRP Central Committee for the 3rd and 4th terms, and a member of the Politburo during the 4th, 6th, 7th and 8th tenures.

He was also Minister of Agriculture and Forestry and Minister of Interior before serving as Vice President of Laos from 1996  1998 and Prime Minister from 1998  2001. He was also former Chairman of the Lao Front for National Construction (LFNC) Central Committee.

The condolence message wrote that the Vietnamese Party, State and people highly appreciated General Sisavath Keobounphanhs great contributions to the Lao people's past struggle for national independence as well as in the current process of national reform, protection, construction and development.

His death was a huge loss to the Lao Party, State and people, and his family, wrote the message, adding that the Vietnamese Party, State and people lost a close friend and comrade who made very important contributions to establishing, reinforcing and developing the great friendship, special solidarity and comprehensive cooperation between Vietnam and Laos.

The Vietnamese Party, State and people believed that their Lao counterparts will soon overcome this great loss and continue striving to build a more prosperous Laos.

The same day, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh extended his condolences to Lao Minister of Foreign Affairs Saleumxay Kommasith.

President of the VFF Central Committee Tran Thanh Man cabled a message of condolences to Chairman of the LFNC Central Committee Saysomphone Phomvihane.

Chairman of the CPV Central Committee's Commission for External Relations Hoang Binh Quan, and Minister - Chairman of the Government Office Mai Tien Dung also sent messages of condolences to Chairman of the LPRP Central Committee's Commission for External Relations Sounthone Xayachack, and Minister - Chairman of the Lao Government Office Phet Phomphiphak, respectively.
President Trump had been touting an anti-malaria drug, hydroxychloroquine, as a possible game changer in the fight against the coronavirus. Teva was among the companies that made hydroxychloroquine overseas and could export it to the United States. It had already donated millions of hydroxychloroquine pills to American hospitals.

On March 24, Mr. Mignone emailed a former college roommate of Jared Kushner, Mr. Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser. He wrote that Teva wanted the White House to help get the companys hydroxychloroquine supplies out of India and to permit Teva to coordinate with rival drug companies to make and distribute the drugs.

In an ensuing discussion with officials on the White Houses coronavirus task force, Teva positioned itself as a valuable partner in the manufacturing and distribution of potential medical treatments for the coronavirus, according to people familiar with the discussions, who werent authorized to speak publicly about them. (In the weeks since, the results of several studies have dampened enthusiasm for hydroxychloroquine, and Mr. Trump has stopped emphasizing the drug.)

Teva officials said there was no connection between the White House conversation and the yearslong antitrust investigation.

But, said Robert Field, a professor of law and health policy at Drexel University, its hard to believe that Teva does not have that in mind and does not see some kind of absolution in producing a drug that might help us come out of a national nightmare while they are facing quite serious criminal charges.

Ronny Gal, a research analyst who follows the generic drug industry at the brokerage Bernstein, said Teva and other generic companies had seen working with the Trump administration as an opportunity not because more sales of hydroxychloroquine would be profitable  pills cost pennies  but because they want to be viewed as a partner.
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Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Two years ago, Edwina Cisneros volunteered for state Rep. Patricia Roybal Caballeros campaign.

Now shes trying to unseat her.

Democratic voters in House District 13  a patch of southwestern Albuquerque  will choose between Roybal Caballero, now in her eighth year in the Legislature, and Cisneros, a business management professional at Sandia National Laboratories, in the June 2 primary election.

Roybal Caballero is highlighting her experience inside the Roundhouse as an asset during a turbulent time.

Cisneros, in turn, says a new voice would better represent a district that desperately needs improved parks and other amenities.

The winner of the Democratic nomination is set to face Republican Kayla Marshall in the Nov. 3 general election.

Roybal Caballero said that, if reelected, she will continue her push for a $15 hourly minimum wage, regulations to stop predatory lending and other legislative priorities. She said shes a good fit for a district with working-class families.

Thats what I spent my whole life doing, getting things done for my communities, she said.

Cisneros said the district needs a new voice who will fight to secure resources for the district and be a presence at community meetings. Sidewalks and basic infrastructure are in disrepair, she said, and residents need job and shopping locations closer to their neighborhoods.

Roybal Caballero and Cisneros were once on the same side.

Cisneros said she volunteered for Roybal Caballeros campaign in 2018, but lost faith in her after the election. She said she doesnt believe Roybal Caballero  who has faced criticism for spending time in El Paso  is available often enough to respond to constituents.

I realized that if we continue to let her be in office, things just wouldnt get done, Cisneros said. Theyd be the same as theyd always been.

Roybal Caballero said the criticism is hurtful. Its true that she visits family in El Paso, she said, but she maintains a regular presence at community meetings in Albuquerque.

She went to El Paso more frequently in the past, she said, to take care of her elderly parents, and inherited a home there after they died.

It doesnt diminish my commitment or my effectiveness, Roybal Caballero said.

Both candidates support legalizing recreational marijuana, according to their responses to a Journal questionnaire, but they clash on whether to open primary elections to voters unaffiliated with a major party.

Every opportunity to get people to vote is important, Cisneros said in a Journal questionnaire. We should encourage participation from voters not affiliated with a major political party.

Roybal Caballero opposes open primaries.

I believe primary elections, she said, are in place to support the existing party system we have in place, which allows voters to elect candidates best representing their affiliated values and principles.

Roybal Caballero reported a balance of about $9,000 in her campaign account, including recent donations from groups affiliated with Conservation Voters New Mexico and the Albuquerque Teachers Federation. Cisneros had a balance of almost $3,000, but with no recent contributions, according to a report filed this month.
Elections in the occupied Donbas shall only be held once "Ukraine has regained control over the border".

The Trilateral Contact Group on Donbas settlement on Thursday, May 14, held a scheduled meeting via video link, where an upgraded delegation for the first time presented Ukraine, the press service of the President's Office reported.

It is noted that the humanitarian subgroup has continued its work on forming the lists for the next stage of the held persons' swap, as well as the lists of missing persons.

"The Ukrainian side insisted on the mutual release of held persons in the "all for all" format, defined in the framework of the Normandy Four summit of December 9 2019," the report said.

Also, Ukraine noted the provision of access to the Red Cross to those held in temporarily occupied territories.

Read alsoUkraine inviting IDPs to Minsk talks  Zelensky's Office chief

The Ukrainian side emphasized that the elections in the temporarily occupied territories of Donbas shall only be held in accordance with the Constitution and legislation of Ukraine and based on the OSCE Copenhagen criteria, including on the stability of institutions guaranteeing democracy, rule of law, respect for human rights and protection of minority rights, only after Ukraine has regained control over the border.

The Ukrainian side ruled out the possibility of consolidating the special status of the certain areas of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in the Constitution of Ukraine.

Parties also spoke of the need to open new crossing checkpoints along the line of contact, taking into account primarily humanitarian criteria.

"The checkpoint in Zolote is equipped and ready to launch at any time," the Ukrainian delegation noted.

Ukraine also insisted on the access of the OSCE SMM observers to the temporarily occupied territories, noting that, despite quarantine, Ukraine supports the implementation of the mandate of both the observers and representatives of the ICRC.

"The OSCE SMM noted, among other things, significant progress in the implementation of the updated demining plan, in particular the humanitarian one," the report says.

Read alsoFM Kuleba comments on idea of setting up "advisory council" with representatives of occupied Donbas

As UNIAN reported earlier, on May 5, President Volodymyr Zelensky approved the composition of the Ukrainian delegation to the Trilateral Contact Group for the Peaceful Settlement in Donetsk and Luhansk Regions.

Vice Prime Minister, Minister for Reintegration of Temporarily Occupied Territories, Oleksiy Reznikov, was appointed deputy head of the Ukrainian delegation to the TCG. At the subgroup level, Ukraine is now represented by deputy ministers or people's deputies  chairs of the relevant parliamentary committees.

The Ukrainian side also proposed to attract to the work of TCG subgroups as "invited persons" a number of internally displaced citizens forced to leave the occupied areas in Donetsk and Luhansk regions after May 2014.

Head of President's Office Andriy Yermak noted that the participants in the TCG would involve IDPs in discussions, consultation, and coordination of issues stipulated by Minsk agreements.

At the same time, Yermak says any negotiations with representatives of unrecognized quasi-entities in eastern Ukraine are unacceptable.
Abu al-Fadhel Serlak, who was operating as an advisor for the IRGC, was killed in southeastern Idleb, although it is not clear how he died writes Syria TV.

An advisor from Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Abu al-Fadhel Serlak, was killed in the city of Khasser in southeastern Idleb province, the Iranian Fars News Agency announced.

Serlak was defending the Zeinab shrine when he was killed last Sunday, Fars News reported on Tuesday, without providing additional details.

The IRGC has faced increasing Israeli airstrikes over the past two months, especially in April and early May, resulting in the deaths of a number of its fighters.

In March, Iranian media reported the assassination of IRGC leader Brig. Gen. Farhad Deberian in the Sayyida Zeinab area of Damascus. Prior to his death, he had taken over command of military operations in Palmyra.

Asghar Pashabur, a military commander within the Quds Force and Qassem Soleimanis most important assistant in Syria, was also killed in February.

This article was translated and edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
After weeks of escalating tensions over non-payment of airport fees and rent Qantas and Perth Airport have announced they have come to a confidential agreement.

Both parties have been trying to protect cashflow during the pandemic and last Friday Perth Airport announced it was willing to tear up several leases Qantas held at the facility if it didn't start paying $20 million in fees and rent the airport believed had been owed since February.

Qantas and Perth Airport have resolved their issues. Credit:Jason South

Qantas fired back later that day that the move amounted to eviction notices and would see critical FIFO flights cancelled within a fortnight.

The spat prompted a slap on the wrist from WA Premier Mark McGowan who told both parties to "show some leadership".
[May 15, 2020] ReloQuest Inc. Wins Excellence in Technology/Analytics-Corporate, at the Relocate Global Awards UK

SUNRISE, Florida, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- ReloQuest Inc. is honoured to receive the prestigious Relocate Global Excellence in Technology/Analytics-Corporate award. The announcement was made on Tuesday 12 May, at the Relocate Global virtual awards ceremony, hosted by Jayne Constantinis, a business reporter/newsreader on BBC World. The awards celebrate achievement across international management and global mobility. The judging criteria included the attributes of collaboration, innovation, and global mindedness. The awards showcase best practice and honour the best and brightest corporates and suppliers across international management and global mobility from planning a relocation and temporary accommodations to education and technology. Global mobility drives business results but comes with diverse challenges; such as, rapid change, evolving demands, and risk management-as recently seen with the COVID19 pandemic that knows no borders. Can you receive data in real-time to proactively monitor emergencies, weather, or risks that may impact your team? Technology supports GM professionals, who via technological support now have more time combined with predictive analytics to strategize and counsel accurately and efficiently. ReloQuest makes employee travel data accessible. The solution helps relocation and travel managers rapidly locate their employees'. The single source, real-time platform, provides direct communication and supports the continuity of workflow. In times that require increased interaction ReloQuest technology can make a critical impact on accessibility to employees when they need organisational support most. Among the many benefits unique to ReloQuest alone is the largest Global Marketpace of Verified Suppliers, in over 162 countries equating to millions of verified accommodations.



RQ PRO facilitates end-to-end management of a global workforce and offers 24-7 customer service that is second to none. ReloQuest provides a fully transparent resource for global mobility clients and individuals in need of sourcing worldwide temporary accommodations while remaining compliant with corporate guidelines. ReloQuest technology is designed to meet employees' needs while accomplishing client's goals. The technology goes well beyond tracking and exceptional metrics; it offers a collaborative experience; employees who are relocating can get involved in the process while remaining compliant.

Employees/Travellers can view the details of their reservation, welcome information, submit service tickets, notice to vacate, and property reviews-all from their mobile device. Among workflow features on the multi-award-winning platform is Direct ConnectSM ReloQuest's B2E employee self-service innovation. Where employees can: Enter Requests

Review Options

Select Choices

Submit Service Issues, & contact supplier

Receive 24-7 guest support RQ Pro offers direct access to your supply chain along with direct communication. RQ Pro also provides automated features that vastly increase efficiency; such as, consolidated/centralised billing, welcome letters, lease management, plus option, lease, and supplier transparency which eliminates mark-up and supports accountability. About ReloQuest ReloQuest is a business travel solution for companies and employees to search, compare, and book corporate apartments and hotels around the world. The technology simplifies the process of sourcing temporary accommodations while supplying: rapid implementation, 100% transparency, real-time data, substantial cost reduction, direct communication, reported 80% efficiency increases, and 24-7 live support. Dedicated to solving travel and relocation challenges, ReloQuest leads by designing technology firsts serving today's global workforce and the companies that employ them. Contact: Jeana Giordano, [email protected] . Photo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/1168398/virtual_awards_ReloQuest.jpg

Logo - https://mma.prnewswire.com/media/964501/ReloQuest_Logo.jpg

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Brazil's health minister has resigned after less than a month in the job and a day after the country announced nearly 14,000 deaths from Coronavirus.



The sudden resignation of Nelson Teich was announced in a WhatsApp message from the health ministry on Friday morning. He was Brazils second health minister to leave office in less than a month.



Nelson Teich had reportedly criticised a decree issued by President Jair Bolsonaro for allowing gyms and beauty parlours to reopen despite the spike in COVID-19 cases and deaths. Bolsonaro also gave the green light for wider use of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the novel coronavirus, which Teich resisted due to a lack of scientific evidence.



His predecessor, Luiz Mandetta was sacked after disagreeing with Mr. Bolsonaro over social isolation measures, which Bolsonaro dismissed as unnecessary.



Military members of the Brazilian cabinet are pushing for deputy health minister Eduardo Pazuello, an army general on active duty, to become the new health minister, making permanent his interim role, a government source told Reuters news agency.



Nelson Teich resignation comes just days after Brazil passed Germany and France in coronavirus cases, with more than 200,000 confirmed by Thursday with 844 new deaths, bringing the death toll to 13,933.













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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Leading regional telecom group stc has signed a five-year master frame agreement (MFA) with Nokia to further strengthen its strategic partnership.



The agreement aims to expedite buying process of Nokias latest equipment, software and services for stc group to introduce innovative services faster to its subscribers as a pioneer.



This will allow stc companies to seamlessly buy advanced technologies such as 5G, Internet of Things (IoT), IP & Optical network technologies, and customer experience management from Nokias end-to-end portfolio for mobile and fixed networks, said the statement from the Saudi group.



The agreement was remotely signed by Nasser Suliman Al-Nasser, the Group CEO at stc and Rajeev Suri, the President and CEO of Nokia due to Covid-19 pandemic, purely relying on software innovations and demonstrating the power of AR and AI. These technologies enabled virtual signing ceremony in a digital environment.



Al Nasser said: This strategic partnership with Nokia, supports Saudi Vision 2030 focused on leveraging advanced technologies for digital transformation and growth of the country, aligning with stc Rawafed Programme that aims to enhance local content.



We strive to introduce advanced technologies and services faster as a true pioneer and enrich our subscribers lives, he added.



Amr K. El Leithy, SVP for Middle East and Africa market at Nokia, said: "We are committed to bringing our technology innovations to stc in an agile manner, and supporting stc Vision to be a world-class digital leader, empowering innovative services and platforms for digital transformation."



"This agreement is a major milestone in the stc -Nokia strategic ties and is a strong testimony of the solid relationship we have built with STC over the years," he added.-TradeArabia News Service
The Indian Railways has operated 932 Shramik Special trains since May 1, ferrying home 11 lakh migrant workers who were stranded in various parts of the country due to the coronavirus-triggered lockdown, officials said on Friday.

IMAGE: Migrants board a special train at Danapur Railway station to travel to their native places during a government-imposed nationwide lockdown as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus, in Patna. Photograph: ANI Photo

On Friday, railways operated 145 such trains.

Of these, Uttar Pradesh received the maximum number of trains followed by Bihar, they said.

Out of the 932 trains which have been operated so far, 215 are in transit while 717 have terminated at various stations. Sixty-seven more are in the pipeline, an official said.

These 932 trains were terminated in various states like Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and West Bengal.

So far, Uttar Pradesh has given approval for 487 trains, followed by Bihar which has given nod for 254 and Madhya Pradesh for 79 trains.

The number stands at 48 for Jharkhand, 22 for Rajasthan and nine for West Bengal.

Proper screening of the passengers is being carried out before they board the trains, railways said, adding that during the journey, the passengers are given free meals and water.

From Monday, these Shramik Special trains started carrying around 1,700 passengers each, instead of the earlier 1,200, to ferry as many workers home as possible.

While initially these trains had no stoppages, railways announced on Monday that up to three stoppages in the destination states will be allowed. The decision was taken after several state governments made a request in this regard, officials said.

While railways is yet to announce the cost incurred on these special services, officials indicated that the national transporter is spending around Rs 80 lakh per service.

The Centre had earlier stated that the cost of the services was shared on a 85:15 ratio between Centre and states.

Since the Shramik Special train service started, Gujarat has remained the top originating state, followed by Kerala.

Earlier, railways drew flak from opposition parties for charging for these services.

In its guidelines, the national transporter has said the trains will ply only if they have 90 per cent occupancy.

On Monday, a statement issued by the Union ministry of home affairs said railways will now run 100 Shramik Specials every day to facilitate faster movement of stranded workers.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:40:52|Editor: huaxia

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DHAKA, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The number of new COVID-19 infections in Bangladesh rose by 1,202 on Friday, the highest daily increase since March 8, as the total number of cases exceeded 20,000.

Bangladesh earlier recorded the highest 1,162 cases in a 24-hour period on May 13.

Senior Health Ministry official Nasima Sultana told an online media briefing in Dhaka that 1,202 new COVID-19 positive cases and 15 deaths were reported in the last 24 hours across Bangladesh.

She said the number of confirmed infections in the country totaled 20,065 while fatalities stood at 298, and the total number of recovered patients in the country stands at 3,882 including 279 new recoveries on Friday.

According to the official, 8,582 samples were tested in the last 24 hours in scores of labs across the country. Enditem
SILVER SPRING, MD  The number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Montgomery County increased by 22.8 percent, or by 1,443 cases, since May 8, bringing its total to 7,759.

The county's death toll from the disease now stands at 411, the Maryland Health Department reported on Friday. A day earlier, it was 397. On May 8, it stood at 324.

The state, which now publishes the number of "probable deaths," says another 38 people may have died from COVID-19, but were never tested. Health officials will not add those deaths to the official tally until a laboratory can confirm the virus was the cause of death.

Based on the latest figures, Montgomery County continues to have the highest number of deaths. It also has the second highest number of confirmed cases, after Prince George's County, which has 10,791.

Across the state, there are now 36,986 confirmed cases and 1,792 deaths. Another 119, officials say, may have had COVID-19 but died before ever getting tested.

As of Friday, 1,496 people have been hospitalized with the new coronavirus. Of those, 598 are in the Intensive Care Unit (ICU).

Courtesy of the Maryland Department of Health

Courtesy of the Maryland Department of Health

At 5 p.m. on Friday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan's stay-at-home order will be lifted. Hogan said he made the decision after seeing a 14-day downward trend in hospitalizations and deaths.

The Republican governor acknowledged that some parts of the state, like Montgomery County, were not ready to reopen. That's why he's letting local jurisdictions decide when they want to lift coronavirus restrictions.

Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich (D) has already made up his mind, saying he won't reopen the county until he sees:

A consistent decline over a 14-day period in new cases as more testing is conducted

A sustained decrease in the number of daily deaths

A downward trend in hospitalizations rates (and ICU beds in use)

A sustained decrease in the number of COVID-19 patients going to the ER

"Our situation is improving. We are scaling up our testing capabilities and will be able to test more people in more settings," Elrich said. "We are also increasing contact tracing. These efforts will help make our community safer. But we do not meet the measures set out by federal and state guidelines."

Story continues

Elrich said the county shouldn't be fixated on an opening date, since the numbers can still spike.

"You can't set a date and have that date be the most important thing. The most important thing is what happens to the caseloads ... health needs to rule this decision," he said. "We're going to continue to emphasize the importance of physical distancing between people, wearing face coverings, and sheltering in place."

Cases By County

Friday's case count by jurisdiction can be found below. Montgomery County is outlined in bright blue.

Courtesy of the Maryland Department of Health

SEE ALSO:

This article originally appeared on the Silver Spring Patch
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The Supreme Court Friday asked the Centre to treat as representation a plea seeking direction to it to make arrangement for repatriation of Indian migrant workers who were granted amnesty by Kuwait amid COVID-19 pandemic and are living in vulnerable conditions in deportation camps there.

Observing that there seems to be a problem in Kuwait, a bench headed by Justice L Nageswara Rao said that the authority would treat the plea as a representation and dispose it of expeditiously.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench, also comprising Justices S K Kaul and B R Gavai, that adequate arrangements are being made by the government to bring back stranded Indian citizens from abroad and several of them have already been brought back from Kuwait.

The counsel appearing for the petitioner told the bench, which was hearing the matter through video-conferencing, that thousands of Indian citizens are still kept in deportation camps in Kuwait in vulnerable conditions.

The plea, filed through advocate Jose Abraham, has said that Kuwait had granted general amnesty to those who do not have valid residency permits in the country due to difficulties faced on account of the COVID-19 outbreak.

It had said that those granted general amnesty in Kuwait were initially given time till April 30 to make arrangements for leaving the country, failing which they would be subjected to imprisonment.

"However, due to the current lockdown which is in place and international travel restrictions due to outbreak of pandemic COVID-19, the petitioners and similarly placed expats who are beneficiaries of the general amnesty granted by state of Kuwait are unable to return to India and are languishing in detention camps in the state of Kuwait," the plea, filed by four Indian citizens who are in Kuwait, had said.

It had said that due to space crunch in such camps, social distancing is impossible and this makes the petitioners as well as similarly placed Indian citizens vulnerable to coronavirus infection.

The plea had claimed that Kuwait has offered to send back the petitioners along with other similarly placed people to India free of cost and by its own civil airlines.

It had sought a direction to the Centre and other concerned authorities to facilitate flights offered by Kuwait to land at Indian airports and receive all the repatriated beneficiaries of the amnesty.

It had alleged that the petitioners have sent representation to various officials, including the External Affairs Minister and other officials at Indian Embassy in Kuwait, but no action has been taken to repatriate them back to India.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine Dmytro Razumkov congratulates Ukraine on the 30th anniversary of establishment of its parliament and stresses that the beginning of the work of the Verkhovna Rada was the first step towards the proclamation of Ukraine's independence.

"Thirty years ago, on May 15, 1990, the Verkhovna Rada of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic of the 12th convocation, which later became the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine of the 1st convocation, began its work. It was that day that marked the start of work of the Ukrainian supreme legislative body. The commencement of work of this parliament was the first step towards the proclamation of Ukraine's independence. Back then, the parliament adopted the landmark decisions that outlined the development of our country as a democratic state, in which the rights and freedoms of citizens, freedom of speech, religion and the rule of law are inviolable," read the greetings published on the Verkhovna Rada's website.

Back then, according to Razumkov, the principles of political pluralism were laid in the Verkhovna Rada: two blocs of lawmakers were formed - the parliamentary majority and the opposition.

The Law of Ukraine "On State Border of Ukraine" of November 4, 1991 and the Law of Ukraine "On Citizenship of Ukraine" of October 8, 1991 were the first state-building steps. In January-February 1992, the resolutions of the Verkhovna Rada defined the state symbols  national anthem, national flag, and national small coat of arms, the trident," Razumkov noted.

For five years of its work, the first parliament passed more than 1,500 legislative acts.

"But, perhaps, the most important achievement was that the Verkhovna Rada adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine on July 16, 1990 and the Act of Declaration of Independence of Ukraine on August 24, 1991. The Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine completed the formation of the countrys system of legislation, established successful cooperation with parliaments of foreign countries and international organizations," the Speaker stressed.

Razumkov added that parliamentarians had many tasks ahead.

The Speaker of the Verkhovna Rada is convinced that the Verkhovna Rada of the 9th convocation will make a significant historical contribution to the development of Ukraine.

ol
Closure of schools in Maharashtra leads to boys working in fields

Open Enquiry: Ex-Mumbai police commissioner Param Bir Singh yet to appear before ACB

Will schools in Maharashtra reopen next week amid rising Omicron cases? Proposal sent to CM

Maharashtra considers lockdown extension in Mumbai, Pune and other hotspots until May 31

India

oi-Deepika S

Mumbai, May 15: The Maharashtra government likely to extend the lockdown in Mumbai, Pune and other COVID-19 hotspots until May 31.

On Thursday, Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray discussed extending the lockdown in Mumbai Metropolitan Region (MMR) and cities like Pune, Malegaon and Aurangabad till May 31.

The Chief Minister has also directed the state administration to submit a report on what activities can be allowed outside containment zones in cities that fall in the red zone.

The state government is yet to issue any official announcement.

According to reports, a consensus was reached on that the lockdown has to be extended in certain parts of the State, especially in red zones such as the Mumbai and Pune metropolitan regions, Malegaon and Solapur.

"In the rest of the state, the guidelines of the Centre will be implemented when they are announced before the lockdown 3.0 ends on May 17," a state government official was quoted as saying by news agency PTI.

Maharashtra on Thursday reported 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, the highest single-day spike so far, taking the state's overall count to 27,524, according to state health department data.

With 44 deaths registered today, the death toll in Maharashtra due to the contagious Coronavirus disease has now breached the 1,000-mark and stands at 1,019.

Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray among 9 elected unopposed to Council

Mumbai recorded a new high of 991 cases, state health officials said.

Of the total deaths, 25 were recorded only in Mumbai, taking up the city's toll from Wednesday's 596 to 621 and the number of COVID-19 positive patients in the city shot up by a new high of 991 to touch 16,738.

Mumbai's Dharavi slum alone continued to be a major hotspot and a headache for the health authorities, notching 33 new cases, taking the total number of patients to 1,061, and 49 deaths till now.

Besides Mumbai, there were 12 deaths in Navi Mumbai (Thane), five deaths in Pune, and two Aurangabad.

They comprised 31 men and 13 women, and nearly 77 per cent of them suffered from other serious ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, heart problems and asthma.

As many as 1,061 personnel of Maharashtra Police including 112 police officers have been tested positive for COVID-19 so far. Out of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while 9 others lost their lives.

The nationwide shutdown enforced on March 24 has been extended twice, on April 14 and May 4. The third phase will end on May 17.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his address to the nation on Tuesday, had said a fourth phase of the lockdown will be implemented after May 17, but the rules for it will be very different with many more relaxations likely.
COVID-19 has given us many opportunities  the opportunity to catch up on television reruns, the chance not to wear pants all day, and the joy of finding peanut butter in stock on our weekly masked grocery trips. More importantly, it has given us the opportunity to test-drive democratic socialism  a chance to take a spin around the economic block without signing on the dotted line.

Let's be clear: democratic socialism doesn't really exist as a democracy. Let's call it what it is: a planned economy purportedly managed by a few popularly elected folks, but in reality executed by armies of career bureaucrats. Without too much of a deep dive, we all know that "career bureaucrat" typically means an unelected individual lacking economic motivation who doesn't answer to market forces and is virtually impossible to remove from his job. Not all, but most.

While we're kicking the tires of the socialism model, let's ask about that upgrade to government-provided health care. Bernie says we need to eliminate private insurance and regulate prescription drug prices. Essentially, "trust me, we'll put the government in charge of your health care. It'll be much better!" Hmmmm  one of the tires seems to leaking.

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is one of many government-owned and operated health duchies here in the U.S. It's been around for a while, about 75 years, so it should have its act together  after all, it is a finely tuned governmental machine, right? It's so well tuned, in fact, that in spite of its nearly seven-billion-dollar annual budget, its incompetence delayed the rollout of COVID-19 tests by weeks, if not months, costing countless lives.

That's right: like in all good socialist systems, a government agency initially claimed the sole right to manufacture something  in this case, the kits screening for the virus. While wielding this monopoly power, its bureaucrats ignored their own policies while its workers contaminated thousands of tests. It stumbled through a manufacturing meltdown and failed to deliver anything remotely usable. The result? Weeks after letting the government be exclusively in charge of messing up our health testing, private industry was allowed to compete and responded instantly by delivering hundreds of thousands of working COVID-19 tests. Still want the government to be the only provider of our health care?

So much for the tires  let's go for a drive. It's fitting that the democratic socialists  actually, even just regular old Democrats  howled to nationalize General Motors. We were told they shouldn't be making trucks and cars and such. Instead, we were told they should be building the all-important ventilators needed for coronavirus victims. Responding to the outcry, President Trump invoked the Defense Production Act on March 27 and ordered GM to start making them  fast!

Here's where the failed Soviet planned economy model showed up, and the reason we walked right past this red beauty on the lot is because it doesn't run well. While GM was manufacturing thousands of ventilators because of government decree, the states (known as the market) were piling up with them stacked unused in warehouses. New York governor Andrew Cuomo demanded 30,000 of them, but he has so many that he's shipping them to other states that don't need them, either. Ever wonder why it was easy in the '70s and '80s to find decent shoes in the Soviet Union but not bread?

Speaking of Andrew Cuomo, here's another upgrade available on the socialism model: asset seizure. If the folks in charge want something that you have, they just take it. That's right: the state of New York planned to seize ventilators from hospitals outside NYC, leaving those locations to fend for themselves. Remember the stockpile? So what? "We want what you have!" It's sorta like when Lenin used his army to seize land in Russia, only in New York, Cuomo planned to use the National Guard to seize ventilators. In all fairness, Cuomo later pointed out that it wasn't "seizure"; it was "sharing." That word apparently plays better with the Bolshevik crowd!

So now that you've been around the block, how'd that test drive work out? Aren't we fortunate to have this opportunity to shop for an economic system? You know, rev the engine and see how it performs. Well, it's pretty obvious that it never made it out of first gear, but just sign right here, and it can be in your driveway tonight  if it isn't seized...

Kevin Cochrane teaches business and economics at Colorado Mesa University and is a visiting professor of economics at The University of International Relations in Beijing.
Puducherry Chief Minister V



Narayanasamy announced on Friday he would contribute every month 30 per cent of the pension amount he was receiving for having served as an MP.

The senior Congress leader who has been a Rajya Sabha member and also a Lok Sabha MP, was a Minister in the UPA government headed by Manmohan Singh.

He was receiving Rs 45,000 as pension, the chief minister said, adding "I have decided to contribute 30 per cent of the pension amount every month to the COVID-19 Relief Fund in Puducherry to strengthen the financial position of the administration to combat the pandemic."



He also appealed to others to follow suit and help augment the state's funds.

Narayanasamy also hailed President Ram Nath Kovind's announcement to forgo 30 per cent of his salary for the PM CARES fund to combat the pandemic.

The chief minister also urged government staff to extend their cooperation to help the administration wriggle out of the current fiscal crisis due tpcaused by the COVID-19 induced lockdown.

He referred to the salary cut for government staff effected by several States including Kerala, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh and the Tamil Nadu government's move to freeze hike in DA as a measure to fight pandemic.

Narayanasamy said he had written letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to bring the "poor financial position of Puducherry government" to their notice.

"I will seek the Centre's cooperation to help Puducherry recover from the present critical position," he added.

He reiterated his plea to the Centre to provide Rs 5,000 to every poor family so that the poorer sections would have the wherewithal to purchase grains and carry on their life.

Narayanasamy appealed to people in the Union Territory "to learn to live with the virus as the institutions like WHO had already expressed the view that the pandemic would not vanish."



Meanwhile, Lt Governor Kiran Bedi has also announced several austerity measures.

In her WhatsApp message to mediapersons, she said she had put on hold purchase of a new car for the office of Puducherry government in New Delhi.

Bedi said she had been donating one-third of her salary each month to the PM CARES Fund even before the pandemic set in.

Hailing the President for announcing that he would forgo 30 per cent of his monthly salary, she said he had set the right example for the whole country through his gesture.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Kyrgyzstan reported 29 new confirmed COVID-19 cases on Thursday, raising its national tally to 1,111, Trend reports citing Kabar.

Nurbolot Usenbaev, the country's deputy health minister, said that 2 deaths have been registered in the country in the past day, totaling the death rate to 14.

He noted that 10 people were discharged from hospitals after recovery in the last 24 hours. Thus, the total number of recoveries makes 745, including 194 medical workers.

To date, there are 353 patients with COVID-19 being treated in hospitals throughout the country and 3 of them are in intensive care.

A total of 1,532 people who had contact with infected patients are still under medical observation while 5,180 people who had contact with infected patients are under the supervision of doctors in home quarantine.
15 May  Anthony Wong recently clarified that he is not moving to Taiwan - at least not anytime soon - following his previous banter with a netizen who suggested that he emigrated to the island state.

As reported on Mingpao, the actor who spoke to the media following his arrival in Taiwan, shared that he was only there to shoot a TV series, though he will have to go through a 14-day quarantine first.

"I'm not worried about being bored. I can read the script, play sports, practice calligraphy, and cook. Taiwan is so quiet and so comfortable," he said.

For the netizen that suggested that he moved to Taiwan, Anthony said that it would be a good plan.

"Now I don't have any personal safety, no sense of security, the Hong Kong government can't protect you. Everyone is living in fear. I am just an ordinary person. I don't want to live like this," he said.

Anthony then again praised Taiwan, saying that it has a good environment and culture.

My half-brothers suggested that I take back my identity and British status, so now I am using a DNA test to prove my ancestry," he said.

(Photo Source: Mingpao)
Tube train unionists have threatened to refuse to return to work because the plan to increase services to 70 per cent 'directly puts the safety of Underground train drivers at risk'.

London Underground drivers are being advised by their union of their right to refuse to work in circumstances where they are at risk of serious danger.

Aslef said it wanted to see services increase, but only in a way that was safe for staff and passengers.

Pictured: Commuters at Canning Town Tube station in Newham, East London, as some don face masks

Finn Brennan, Aslef's organiser on the Underground, said: 'Despite our objections, London Underground has insisted that, from next week, train drivers revert to working as they did before the Covid-19 crisis.

'They are being told that they can no longer continue to work in the safer way that they have been working over the last six weeks.

'This is because the Government is insisting that Transport for London maximises the service it operates, regardless of the implications for driver safety.

'Forty-two Transport for London workers have already lost their lives to this dreadful disease. The Government appears to regard them as nothing more than collateral damage.

A commuter is pictured, left, at Canary Wharf station in East London and, right, a sign at the station urges people boarding trains to wear masks

'Until now Underground train services have been operated by drivers working to and from depots so that all unnecessary contact with other individuals and passengers is restricted. This has now been stopped, directly putting the safety of Tube train drivers at risk.'

Mr Brennan said Aslef did not believe that London Underground has fulfilled the requirements for genuine consultation with staff and the union.

He added: 'We want to see services increased, but this has to be done in a way that is safe for passengers and safe for staff.

'Consequently, we have advised our members of their statutory right to refuse to work in circumstances where they are at risk of serious and imminent danger.

'Tube drivers have risked their own safety and that of their families to keep services moving for essential workers over the last six weeks.

'Now they are being asked to take unacceptable and unnecessary risks. They are frightened for themselves and frightened for their families.'

To avoid passengers cramming on to carriages, Transport for London has asked:

Commuters to avoid public transport and travel by bike or on foot

Bosses to stagger start times for their employees

Passengers to wear face coverings and use hand sanitiser

People to to obey the national requirement to maintain two-metre distance between passengers.

Signs have been erected at stations urging people to maintain social distancing.

TfL has said that the two-metre rule will reduce passenger capacity to only 13 per cent of full functioning.

Unlike many European countries which have laid down floor markings signalling where people can stand, it is understood no such plans exist for the Tube.

MailOnline has pressed TfL for details on specifics measures to enforce the two-metre rule on the Tube.

Sadiq Khan was today accused of risking lives and forcing people out of their cars and on to the Tube where social distancing is 'impossible' because of a lack of trains after he brought back the central London congestion charge from Monday and jacked it up to 15 from 11.50 in June.

Mr Khan left the house this morning before donning a face covering as he was picked up by Scotland Yard close protection as the row over his decision to hike the congestion charge raged on

Catholic Priest Father Grant Ciccone ddposted this picture of the packed Jubilee Line this morning as the first working week as the lockdown eased ends today

The Mayor of London has also announced that from next month the daily charge, introduced by Ken Livingstone in 2003, will for the first time be imposed on weekends and extended out of rush hour from 6pm to 10pm - just hours after accepting a 1.6billion taxpayer-funded bailout.

But MailOnline can exclusively reveal that Mr Khan dodged London's packed underground system today and was picked up from home in his taxpayer-funded 300,000 armoured Range Rover followed by his Met Police security detail in a 60,000 Land Rover discovery.

Motorists in London will again have to pay the 11.50 congestion charge again from Monday, a fortnight earlier than expected, after it was suspended at the start of the lockdown to make it easier for key workers to get around.

From June 22, when the lockdown is expected to have been eased further by Boris Johnson, the daily congestion charge will rise from 11.50 to 15 - a 30 per cent hike. It will also be enforced seven days a week, and until 10pm, for the first time. NHS workers will be able to claim it back, City Hall said.

Mr Khan today suggested that today's congestion charge announcement was imposed on him by the government because it was the 'only deal on the table' offered by the Department of Transport. But a spokesman for Number 10 said that the government only asked for the reimposition of the congestion charge and 'the details of how to do it are for TfL and the Mayor.

Conservative Mayoral candidate Andrew Bailey accused Khan of lying about the imposition and said the London Mayor was always planning to introduce fare increases.

Tory MP Andrew Bridgen told MailOnline: 'The Labour Mayor of London seems to be everything he can to sabotage the capital's economic recovery from the Covid-crisis. First it was a lack of public transport services in cahoots with his union paymasters and now this. This risks forcing more people on to the Tube and increasing the rate of infection again. What is Khan thinking? Londoners might wonder whose side he's on.
After missing its initial March 19th release date, Konami's TurboGrafx-16 mini will finally make its way to North America on May 22nd. When it becomes available next Friday, you'll be able to pick it up for $100.

At the start of March, Konami delayed the TurboGrafx-16 mini's US and Canadian launch due to the coronavirus pandemic. At the time, the company said the outbreak had caused an "unavoidable suspension" at the facility in China where it was manufacturing the device. There's still no release date for the CoreGrafx mini, the console's European variant. However, Konami said it's keeping an eye on the situation.

The TurboGrafx-16 mini will ship with a single full-sized wired replica controller that connects through USB, as well as more than 50 preloaded games from the 16-bit era. Some of the gems in the collection include Bonk's Revenge, R-Type and Ys Book I & II. If you want to play with a wireless controller, 8BitDo has one coming out on May 20th.

After the TurboGrafx-16 mini's delay, you may be wondering if the pandemic will affect the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5. Currently, that doesn't like it will be the case; both Microsoft and Sony still plan to release their next-generation consoles holiday season 2020.
DETROIT - The state of Michigan will pay seven Detroit student plaintiffs $280,000 each, while Detroit Public Schools Community District will receive $2.72 million to fund literacy-related programming in the settlement of a lawsuit that asserted a fundamental right to a basic minimum education.

Details of the settlement were announced Thursday, May 14, by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in the landmark lawsuit initially filed against Gov. Rick Snyder in 2016.

The governors office announced the settlement early Thursday, three weeks after the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the lawsuit could proceed.

I have always said that every student, no matter where they come from, has a birthright to a quality public education, Whitmer said in a statement. Students in Detroit faced obstacles to their education that inhibited their ability to read  obstacles they never should have faced. In the future, I will remain committed to ensuring paths to literacy for children across Michigan. Todays settlement is a good start, but theres more work to do to create paths to opportunity for our children. I look forward to working with the legislature to provide funding for Detroit schools and districts across the state to help ensure educators and students have the resources they need for success.

Jamarria Hall, a 2017 graduate of Osborn High School and one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit, hopes the settlement will provide new opportunities for students in Detroit.

Today, Im overwhelmed with joy for the opportunities this settlement opens up for students in Detroit," Hall said. "Starting this journey four years ago, parents and students knew we wanted a better education, and now to really be heard for the first time means everything.

In addition to the financial settlement, Whitmer agreed to propose legislation that would provide the Detroit Public Schools Community District with at least $94.4 million in funding for literacy-related programs and initiatives.

Whitmer also will request the Michigan Department of Education advise school districts throughout the state on how they might use evidence-based literacy strategies, initiatives and programs to improve access to literacy and reading proficiency, with special attention to reducing class, racial and ethnic disparities.

The governor will receive recommendations from two Detroit-based task forces - The Detroit Literacy Equity Task Force and The Detroit Educational Policy Committee - created to help ensure quality education for students.

The Detroit Literacy Equity Task Force will be created outside of state government to conduct yearly evaluations around literacy in Detroit and will provide state-level policy recommendations to the governor.

The Detroit Educational Policy Committee will focus on the stability and overall quality of the educational system in Detroi;, the accessibility of quality schooling to all children in Detroit; and school improvement, facilities, teaching, and educational materials. The governor will either create this advisory body or assign an existing body to perform this function.

While there is much work left to be done, todays settlement paves the way for the State of Michigan to fulfill its moral obligation to provide equal educational opportunities to children that have been denied a fair shake for far too long," said attorney Mark Rosenbaum, who represents the student plaintiffs through pro bono law firm Public Counsel. "This victory is their victory, and in this moment the children and their families and the teachers of Detroit have taught a nation what it means to fight for justice and win.

The lawsuit alleged the conditions of Detroit Public Schools are so poor that children are not receiving a minimally adequate education and are being denied access to literacy because of their race, which violates their 14th Amendment rights to due process and equal protection.

In the Sixth Circuit Courts decision, a panel of three judges also dismissed parts of the complaint, stating they had not properly argued their claims of equal protection, due process and theory of compulsory attendance.

The panel sided with the students in the 2-1 decision, however, because they properly argued their central theory that they were denied a basic minimum education, and as a result, were deprived access to literacy.

A review of the Supreme Courts education cases, and an application of their principles to our substantive due process framework, demonstrates that we should recognize a basic minimum education to be a fundamental right, the panel ruled.

The courts decision was a reversal of a prior opinion issued by a federal district judge in June 2018 that found literacy was not a fundamental right. The students filed an appeal the next month.

The suit initially named Snyder, members of the state board of education, the state superintendent of public instruction and other state officials as defendants, later adding Whitmer.

READ MORE:

Detroit students have fundamental right to education, federal appeals court rules

Literacy is not a fundamental right, federal judge in Detroit Schools case says

Detroit students to appeal tragically wrong ruling in literacy lawsuit

Whitmer: State no longer party on Detroit Schools literacy lawsuit
Some COVID-19 patients attempted to escape from the isolation centre in Sobi Specialist Hospital, Ilorin, Kwara State, on Friday, an official has said.

These patients, according to the state government, were imported cases from other states who were intercepted by the COVID-19 task force in the state.

The state government, in a statement from the spokesperson of the COVID-19 response team in the state, Rafiu Ajakaye, said it foiled their plans.

This attempt was promptly foiled leading to arrest and return of the patients who had already scaled the fence, he said without providing the number of patients who attempted the escape.

The government is dismayed that these persons were among the imported cases who intentionally violated the interstate lockdown and came into the state.

Mr Ajakaiye announced that security has been further beefed up at the isolation centre, restating that COVID-19 is not a death sentence.

 there is no reason why anyone would want to escape and put their own lives and the lives of other people at risk.

There have been instances of COVID-19 patients who escaped from isolation centres in Oyo, Delta and Taraba states in the last two months.

The Presidential Task Force (PTF) on COVID-19, in its daily national briefings, decried the rate at which the patients try to avoid treatment.

While addressing questions on the need to stop those who escape from isolation centres, the Chairman of the PTF, Boss Mustapha, explained that most of the facilities now have perimeter fencing.

He said the government is working with relevant authorities to provide security and surveillance at the isolation centres.

Mr Mustapha also explained the danger of absconding because for those set of persons, it is difficult to trace their contacts.

Once your status is confirmed and you are told to self-isolate, it is in your interest and those of your loved ones to subject yourself to that isolation, he said.

According to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), a total of 5162 persons have been infected in the country.

A breakdown of the 5,162 confirmed cases shows that Lagos State has so far reported 2,099 cases, followed by Kano  753, FCT  379, Katsina  224, Bauchi  207, Borno  191, Jigawa  176, Ogun  134, Gombe  124, Kaduna  114, Sokoto  112, Edo  92, Zamfara  73, Oyo  73, Kwara  56, Osun  42, Rivers  33, Yobe  32, Kebbi  31, Nasarawa  29, Plateau  25,:Delta  22, Adamawa  21, Ondo  19, Taraba  17, Akwa Ibom  17, Ekiti  15, Enugu  12, Niger  10, Ebonyi  9, Imo  7, Bayelsa  6, Benue  4, Anambra  2 and Abia  2.
After two months of nationwide lockdowns due to Covid-19, many bookstores are slowly and cautiously reopening as states loosen restrictions.

Barnes & Noble reopened 20 stores last week, bringing the total now open to 51; another 500 B&N outlets are offering curbside pickup. Similarly, some indies are welcoming back customers, while others, even in states that allow in-store traffic, offer curbside pickup only.

Sarah Bagby of Watermark Books, in Wichita, Kans., said that without easily available testing or a vaccine, she cant conduct business safely as she would like. But Kansas declared that nonessential retail stores can reopen, and her customers were eager to return when Bagby opened Watermarks doors last week.

Safety for customers and staff is paramount to Bagby. Watermarks layout has been reconfigured to make it easier for

customers to spread out, and strict safety protocols for staff and customers are in place, with signs explaining the protocols posted throughout the store.

At right is a selection of creative signs posted inside and outside indies in Americas heartland over the past weekincluding one from Watermark ; a polite but firm Minnesota nice sign regarding curbside pickup at Next Chapter in St. Paul; and a sign at Main Street Books in St. Charles, Mo., notifying customers to wait outside until invited in to browse. And then theres a sign from Off the Beaten Path Bookstore in Steamboat Springs, Colo.: the literary reference asking customers to maintain physical distance from one another might be somewhat subtle, but, one would assume, it will be understood by anyone venturing into a bookstore these days.

Signs at Full Circle Bookstore in Oklahoma City instruct customers on the dos and donts of social distancing in the store.

St. Paul, Minn., indie Next Chapter Booksellers posted a sign that politely and firmly asks customers to maintain distance from one another.

Off the Beaten Path Bookstore in Steamboat Springs, Colo. puts a classic literary spin on its signage asking customers to stay six feet apart.

Main Street Books in St. Charles, Mo. has reopened; a sandwich board asks customers to wait outside until they are invited in to browse.

Watermark Books in Wichita, Kans., created vintage-esque signs about safety protocols that it posted throughout the store; this one is inside the store entrance.
Tessa Wittman Receives Spitaleri-Tobin Award at UW

Tessa Wittman

Tessa Wittman, of Laramie, is among three University of Wyoming students to receive the universitys top award for undergraduates.

Wittman, along with Leena Hornlein, from Gilbert, Ariz., and Rivertons Christie Wildcat, is the recipient of the Rosemarie Martha Spitaleri and Tobin Memorial Award.

The award is based on academic excellence and achievement; service to the university; participation and leadership in the community and campus activities; and citizenship qualities.

Wittman will graduate this month with a 3.9 grade-point average as a double major in wildlife and fisheries biology and management, and environment and natural resources, with minors in honors, sustainability, and reclamation and restoration ecology.

A nominator cited Wittman as a model student-scholar who has eagerly sought out opportunities to advance her understanding of environmental challenges through applied research and extensive fieldwork.

Drew Bennett, the Whitney MacMillan Professor of Practice of Private Lands Stewardship, has supervised a UW project with Wittman, and says she is the most outstanding student he has worked with in his eight years of supervising students at three different universities.

Perhaps Tessas most impressive characteristic is her tireless work ethic that is driven by a dedication to the issues she works on, Bennett says. In supervising her research, I have been amazed at how hard she works to understand new and complex ideas. I have come to appreciate her leadership style, in which she leads by example. She embodies a spirit of collaboration that is critical to solving many societal challenges.

Another nominator, Joslyn Cassady, a UW Honors College associate lecturer, says Wittman is able to make connections between seemingly disparate materials and address problems -- and is able to collaborate and generate work that is sensible, insightful and relevant to the pressing environmental challenge.

It goes without saying that Tessa is an impressive student -- strong work ethic, curious, motivated, organized and smart, Cassady says. She always sat in the front row, took in every word and listened meaningfully to students' contributions. It was one of those great courses that was driven by a student who came to class prepared, was simultaneously open minded and opinionated, and who drove thoughtful and lively class discussions.

More than anything, one of her past instructors says, Wittmans character as a hard-working student is what made her stand out among her peers. Professor Peter Stahl taught her in his Reclamation of Drastically Disturbed Lands course.

In my 25 years on the UW faculty, I have not worked with a student with a stronger record of academic accomplishment, active leadership and contributions to the University of Wyoming and the local community than Tessa Wittman, he says.

Wittman, a nontraditional student, has immersed herself on and off campus. She has presented her research work on a national level and was invited to speak at the 100th annual meeting of the American Society of Mammologists, but, because of COVID-19 concerns, the meeting has been canceled.

Wittman has led workshops for others not related to her field of study and has volunteered for projects in the community and in the state, relying on her expertise. She is committed to making a difference for the environment and has received numerous awards for her work.

I remain committed to supporting diversity in our ecosystems and community engagement activities. As an undergraduate, my work has earned recognition from scholarship committees on campus and beyond, she says.

Wittman was UWs first national Udall Scholarship recipient in 13 years, which she says is her most prestigious achievement while at UW. The scholarship recognizes college sophomores and juniors for leadership, public service and commitment to issues related to American Indian nations or to the environment.

I am so grateful to have my scholastic achievements, leadership, dedication to problem-solving and hard work recognized by these awards, she adds.
'The potential of one such LAC engagement going out of control and leading to heavy casualties cannot be ruled out,' warns Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd).

IMAGE: Indian and Chinese soldiers in friendlier times at Nathu La in Sikkim.

Two clashes have occurred between Indian and Chinese soldiers in recent days, one each in North Sikkim and East Ladakh.

These are strange clashes by military standards as no firearms were used and there were no gunshot wounds or blast injuries. Yet five Indians and seven Chinese personnel have been injured and not in any superfluous way.

It had earlier happened 30 months ago in Eastern Ladakh when patrols from both the armies threw stones at each other in another strange military standoff.

It was laughed off then as something much more serious was developing in the Doklam area of East Sikkim involving fully armed troops of both countries in a standoff that lasted 72 days.

Such incidents and standoffs create a spectre of war mongering leading to speculation in the public.

There are complex factors at play in this long developing narrative between India and China which witnesses high notes of potential peace when political leaders meet at informal summits and war drums when the armies clash at the heights along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

The public deserves a simplified explanation of why this happens.

IMAGE: Indian Army officers, right, arrive for a meeting with the Chinese counterparts at the LAC.

India and China have serious differences in the perception of the alignment of their border.

While treaties with intent to achieve peace and tranquility have been signed and continue to be in place, the very first step of attempting to mutually delineate an LAC has remained elusive.

The LAC remains an illusion with both sides having their own perception of it except in Sikkim where the border (not LAC) has been largely accepted with some niggles at a few places.

The areas where disputes exist include Ladakh, Uttarakhand/Himachal-Tibet border and Arunachal Pradesh.

An agreed LAC would obviously help in maintaining the peace between the forces on either side even as the long process of engagement through meetings and consultation continues.

Besides the border war of 1962, India and China clashed in 1967 at Nathu La in East Sikkim leading to considerable loss of life on both sides; the Chinese PLA reportedly suffered far higher casualties.

In 1984-1986 India postured to reinforce its capability to hold Tawang (Arunachal Pradesh) in event of a war with China. The latter responded in early 1987 at Sumdorong Chu while also strengthening its deployment along the LAC in the sector. There was no clash although it seemed almost imminent.

A period of reasonable diplomacy followed with a general absence of aggression at the LAC till about 2005. The intervening period witnessed India's increasing wariness about the potential Chinese attitude in the future, leading then defence minister George Fernandes terming China as India's 'number one threat'.

The setting up of a China Study Group and allocation of resources for the construction of 3,346 km of roads in the border zone remained India's response towards better preparedness at the northern borders.

From 2005 onwards progressive increase in patrol clashes at the LAC has taken place. Each year in the summer months as both sides patrol to their claim lines they are invariably contested by the other due to varying perceptions of the LAC.

Yet China refuses to discuss the delineation of the LAC something that can prevent such clashes and assist in taking forward the political and diplomatic dialogue for eventual resolution. There are reasons for this.

IMAGE: Indian and Chinese border troops conducted the first 'joint tactical exercise' in the Chushul-Moldo area of Ladakh, February 2016. Photograph: PTI

So why is China hell bent at instigating repeated clashes of the kind witnessed in the last two weeks and what does this attitude reflect strategically?

To fully comprehend this, aspects linked to geo-strategy and not too distant a history need to be analysed and understood.

First is the geo-strategic issue.

China remains wary of India's potential as a competitor for power in Asia and the world. It is particularly concerned most about India's geostrategic advantage of sitting atop all major East-West sea lines of communication (SLOCs) through the Indian Ocean.

From the Suez and Persian Gulf to the Straits of Malacca is an expanse of blue waters whose domination in naval terms is most easily affordable from ports and harbours along the Indian coastline or from similar facilities in nations in India's neighborhood; Seychelles, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Chinese energy laden sea traffic from the Persian Gulf region to the Straits of Malacca and then to the East China coast per force has to travel the SLOCs through the Indian Ocean.

It is a discomforting thought for the Chinese considering that its fascinating growth (at one time overheated to 14 percent) is contingent upon the secure movement of not only its energy traffic but also the container based shipping that carries manufactured goods to Europe, Middle East and Africa.

Link the above with the history of China's comprehensive development.

Deng Xiaoping's only apparent error in the formulation of his strategy of 'four modernisations' was in placing the development of the PLA Navy (PLAN) at the lowest rung of priority.

Had the PLAN been accorded higher priority it would today be nearing competition with the US navy; that is still some years away.

Deng's strategy for development of China's comprehensive national power focused upon agriculture, technology and industry with the military at the lowest rung (and PLAN at the lowest priority among the armed forces).

Till the comprehensive national power did not come of age, Deng looked towards peaceful and stable borders, with progressive ramping up of coercion as it neared its goal.

China is aware of India's peaceful and non-aggressive stance but perceives India's geo-strategic location providing it the potential for future power ambitions, alone or in conjunction with other nations.

A developing strategic partnership with the US and possibility of India being a part of larger strategic equation is China's worst fear.

The domination of the entire stretch of the newly coined Indo-Pacific, by a strategic combine with India as a core member does not contribute to China's self-confidence.

For China, India is not an enemy, but it has far too much potential to be one if its strategic ambitions rise or if it partners with China's adversaries.

The Himalayan belt provides the best opportunity to play out China's strategy.

No war and no peace will keep India rooted and focused to its northern borders; its threats historically have come from the land borders and it has rarely ventured to look at its vast maritime zone as a domain of opportunity.

China wishes to keep it that way; nothing like promoting an existing mindset.

The 1962 border war acts as a psychological dampener but contributes to the priority India feels compulsive about to accord to its northern borders.

To enhance that compulsion, China strategises to keep the Tibet region active; maneuvers, exercises, technology and armament demonstrations, all help to build a threat.

This is supplemented by patrol clashes and walk in operations across the perceived LAC. Under the circumstances China possibly perceives that non resolution of the LAC is actually a major psychological advantage.

It also assists in promoting the idea of a possible 'dual front war' and helps dilute Indian military capability against Pakistan in the west which in turn promotes Sino-Pak strategic relations so necessary for China's outreach to the north west Indian Ocean.

India cannot take these Chinese activities lightly and it needs to keep a strategic dissuasion in place given Pakistan's constant pin pricks in the west.

The Indian Army has done well in contesting Chinese claims and cannot accept a condescending attitude nor any form of military bullying. However, the potential of one such LAC engagement going out of control and leading to heavy casualties cannot be ruled out.

Suitable selection of personnel, training and briefing of these outsize patrols is almost a compulsion. It is unlikely that China will wish to expand the ambit of the fallout of such clashes all along the LAC; early containment will be its strategy too.

A Sino Indian border war or something more gives China no strategic gains.

With a degree of risk investment, perhaps what India needs to do is to ramp up its maritime capability and ability to play a role commensurate to its strategic interests in the Indian Ocean.

Its economic engagement with China must continue even as its multilateral approach to security does not shun its increasingly recognised role in the security of the Indo Pacific.

But given all this it should also prepare its public and its forces for increasingly hot summers along the LAC.

Lieutenant General Syed Ata Hasnain (retd), PVSM, UYSM, AVSM, SM, VSM is one of India's most respected commentators on national security.

The general commanded the Indian Army's 15 Army Corps in Kashmir and was known as the 'People's General' in the Kashmir Valley.

General Hasnain is a frequent contributor to Rediff.com.
TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The Honduran Congress has approved a new aerial interdiction law designed to further enhance the countrys ability to combat narco-trafficking in the country and throughout the Western Hemisphere. The new law was championed by President Juan Orlando Hernandez and passed during virtual session of the National Congress on Thursday, May 14,2020.

The purpose of the new law is to establish the rules and procedures for the location, identification, tracking, and interception of illegal aircraft. It allows Honduran officials to employ aircraft tracer cartridges on planes that are reasonably suspected of being primarily engaged in illicit drug trafficking, It will facilitate cooperation with other countries in the region and gives authorities the ability to identify, track and intercept aircraft that enter Honduran airspace illegally.

Luis Suazo, Vice Minister of Security and National Defense and Security Coordinator said, "This law is another important step taken by president Hernandez to fight narco-trafficking here and throughout our entire region. Honduras adjusts and designs its new strategy by creating new mechanisms for combating international drug trafficking. President Hernandezs leadership on this issue has been critical and unparalleled."

The version of the law was passed in 2014 and more limited in scope. The new Aerial Interdiction Law contains more tactics that reflect the changes and enhancements of the fight against drug trafficking.

SOURCE Government of the Republic of Honduras
New Delhi:

Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan was detained again -- third time in seven years -- at Los Angeles airport on Thursday evening in United States.



Khan was stopped by the US immigration officials at the airport and he expressed his disappointment on Twitter.



"I fully understand & respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really really sucks," (sic) the actor tweeted after being detained at the airport.



However, this time around the actor found a good way to kill his time. The brighter side is while waiting caught some really nice Pokemons, the actor tweeted.



"The brighter side is while waiting caught some really nice Pokemons," the 50-year-old actor said in another tweet.

I fully understand & respect security with the way the world is, but to be detained at US immigration every damn time really really sucks.  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) August 12, 2016

The brighter side is while waiting caught some really nice Pokemons.

 Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) August 12, 2016

Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asia in the US Department of State Nisha Desai Biswal has apologised for "hassle" Khan faced at the airport.

"Sorry for the hassle at the airport, @iamsrk - even American diplomats get pulled for extra screening," Biswal tweeted.

Her Twitter account says that the tweets there "are my own".

Sorry for the hassle at the airport, @iamsrk - even American diplomats get pulled for extra screening!  Nisha Biswal (@NishaBiswal) August 12, 2016

US Ambassador to India, Richard Verma also offered appology to Shah Rukh Khan over the detention incident.

"Sorry for the trouble at LAX @iamsrk. We are working to ensure it doesnt happen again. Your work inspires millions, including in the US."

Sorry for the trouble at LAX @iamsrk. We are working to ensure it doesnt happen again. Your work inspires millions, including in the US.  Rich Verma (@USAmbIndia) August 12, 2016

Later, the actor replied to both American diplomats.

No hassle mam.Respect the protocol,not expecting to b above it. Appreciate ur graciousness, its just inconvenient. https://t.co/7QFatghuuu  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) August 12, 2016







No trouble sir, respect the protocol & not expecting 2 b above it. Its just a tad inconvenient. Thx for ur concern. https://t.co/zQspvxnXsl  Shah Rukh Khan (@iamsrk) August 12, 2016

SRK was detained in 2009 and 2012 also

2009

Khan was detained at the Newark Airport in New Jersey for nearly two hours in 2009.

Following the incident, Khan had sought to downplay the "unfortunate procedure" at Newark airport and had said that he would not demand an apology.



April 2012

The Bollywod actor was detained at the White Plains airport near New York for over two hours by immigration officials in April 2012.

Khan was in the US to visit Yale University and was accompanied by Nita Ambani, wife of Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani. He was understood to have been travelling in a private plane.



After the incident in New York, Khan had said, "Whenever I start feeling too arrogant about myself I always take a trip to America. The immigration guys kicked the star out of stardom," Khan had said to the Yale students.

Read More | 9 hilarious tweets you shouldn't miss on SRK's detention in US

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
The next criminal mastermind is coming. This Disney movie is headed straight for its debut on the companys streaming platform and fans of the book series couldnt be more excited. Heres what we know about the Disney+ premiere of Artemis Fowl.

Artemis Fowl premieres on Disney+ during June 2020

Fans of this book series finally have their first look at Disneys film adaptation of Artemis Fowl  and the premiere is closer than some anticipated. For the first time, Disney is telling the story of one criminal mastermind on his fantastic adventure, thanks to the novel originally penned by Eoin Colfer.

I was surprised by how well the mood of the books was captured, and even more than that, the look. Disney managed to somehow recreate almost exactly the pictures that were in my head, author Eoin Colfer said during an interview with Hypable.

This is all the more surprising because they took all their cues from the text apart from a very general conversation I had with the team before the process even started, so such a spot-on adaptation is a little startling; in a very good way, he continued.

This movie will be available for streaming on Disney+ in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK & Ireland, France, Netherlands, and Italy, on June 12. In the meantime, fans can watch other 2020 releases, including Disney and Pixars Onward, which debuted on the streaming platform.

This wouldnt be the first time Disney unexpectedly released movies on Disney+

Artemis Fowl was originally slated for a cinematic premiere. However, due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the company made the decision to release it on its streaming platform.

This wouldnt be the first Disney movie impacted by the pandemic, as Marvels Black Widow originally planned for a cinematic premiere during May 2020. Disneys live-action adaptation of Mulan was originally set to premiere during March. Both have since been postponed.

The company released Frozen 2 on Disney+ sooner than expected. Additionally, the animated Pixar film, Onward went from playing in theaters to being available for purchase digitally, to premiering on Disney+ within a matter of weeks.

Josh Gad at the Academy Awards | ARTURO HOLMES via Getty Images

The cast of Artemis Fowl includes Disney veterans

Disney alumni, including Beauty and the Beast and Frozen 2s Josh Gad appear in Artemis Fowl. Alice Through the Looking Glass actress, Simone Kirby, portrays Mrs. Byrne. The title character, however, is portrayed by newcomer Ferdia Shaw.

With this movie now more accessible for Disney+ subscribers, some users took to social media, sharing their excitement for this upcoming action film. One Twitter user said, Ive waited 20 years for this now I have to wait two months?!

If its based on the first book its about a 12-year old criminal mastermind (and his bodyguard named Butler) making up a plot to steal gold from elves. It might sound childish but its honestly very well worked out lore-wise, really enjoyable, another Twitter user wrote.

Artemis Fowl premieres on Disney+ June 12. To learn more about Disneys streaming platform and to subscribe, visit their website.
A fifth resident of the Frank Tejeda Texas State Veterans Home in Floresville and a resident of a veterans home in El Paso have died of COVID-19, the state agency that oversees the facilities said.

The Floresville home has been hit hard by the virus, and the El Paso death is the first such loss among the eight other veterans homes across Texas. The Texas Veterans Land Board said the Floresville resident died Wednesday, but it released no details about either death. Both residents were men.

The first coronavirus case in the Floresville home appeared April 10, and the veterans homes have been testing staff and some residents for the virus at differing paces. Everyone at all nine homes now will be tested, Karina Erickson, a spokeswoman with the Land Board, said this week.

The veterans home in Amarillo reported its first coronavirus case, that of a staff member, late Thursday afternoon, Erickson said in an email. The staffer was ordered to quarantine for 14 days and wont return to the facility until testing negative.

On ExpressNews.com: Two dead in Floresville state veterans home

The nine homes, owned by the state and regulated by both the Texas Health and Human Services Commission and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Department, are not assisted living facilities but traditional nursing homes. They have 1,437 staff members caring for more than 1,000 people, with an annual budget of $100 million. They are in Amarillo, Big Spring, Bonham, El Paso, Floresville, Houston, McAllen, Temple and Tyler.

The homes provide affordable, long-term medical and personal care in clinical settings for qualified veterans, their spouses and Gold Star parents. Texas has about 1.5 million veterans.

The Floresville home, with 146 residents and 143 staff, has seen 14 residents test positive as of Thursday, including the five who died. The facility now has five positive residents, and four more are hospitalized.. Nine of the 143 staffers have tested positive as well, with seven having recovered.

Erickson declined to release the dates the residents died or say if they had pre-existing conditions, citing federal patient privacy law. The first two victims in the Floresville home were a 75-year-old resident who died April 13 and a man in his 90s who died at a hospital April 21, according to previous San Antonio Express-News reports.

The El Paso home, with 150 residents and 180 staff, has had nine coronavirus cases, including the man who died. Two were still at the home, and six others were hospitalized. Those who remain at the facilities are isolated in separate wings or areas where they receive care from staffers who do nothing else. None have recovered. Some staff there also have tested positive.

The home in Bonham, with 141 residents and 180 staff, has one resident in the hospital.

In an attempt to contain the spread of COVID-19, when clinically indicated, residents testing positive are being transferred from VLB Homes to receive care at VA facilities until stable and appropriate to return to the VLB Homes, Erickson wrote.

The other six homes around the Lone Star State had not seen a case until the staffer in Amarillo came up positive. The home in Temple ordered an employee there, a nurse, to enter isolation last month after a relative fell ill with coronavirus, but the residents all tested negative.

On ExpressNews.com: Editorial: Release COVID data for nursing homes

Those living in the homes pay rent, though the agency didnt provide a typical amount when asked. They must meet VA criteria, require long-term nursing care and be at least 18. Third-party operators manage the homes, which have existed since 2000, with the Land Board overseeing them with an on-site representative in each facility.

The newest facility, the Richard A. Anderson Texas State Veterans Home, opened last year in Houston and has 120 beds, 30 of which are dedicated to memory care.

Legal representatives for all veterans living at the Floresville home were notified by phone last month of the outbreak. Erickson said Thursday that investigations are underway to determine how the residents were infected. She said all the homes have instituted sanitation and social distancing protocols.

Nonessential visitors remain prohibited from entering all Texas state veterans homes, and they had been for nearly a month by the time the first resident tested positive at the Tejeda facility April 10. Staff and vendors are required to undergo temperature checks and are asked if they are showing COVID-19 symptoms before entering the facilities.

While the transition from a vibrant, community-centric home has been difficult for our veterans and we faced considerable pushback against these policies, we strongly believe that these stringent, proactive steps have helped slow the spread of COVID-19 in our veteran homes and have proven to be the right call, Erickson said.

Our veteran homes are exceptionally high-risk facilities during COVID-19, and we are doing everything in our power to ensure the health and safety of Americas finest, Erickson said.

Elder care facilities in the San Antonio area and across the nation have proved vulnerable to outbreaks because of the age and underlying health conditions of residents, among other factors.

The virus swept through Southeast Nursing and Rehabilitation Center in San Antonio, where 19 residents had died through Wednesday after testing positive for the virus.

Another death, reported Thursday, involved a Hispanic man in his 70s living at Legend Oaks West Nursing Home. Of 19 people tested there, 15 had the virus.

The Metropolitan Health District this week confirmed that there had been at least five infections of residents and staff at Advanced Rehab Live Oak, 17 at Rio at Mission Trails on the South Side and nine at Pecan Valley Nursing Home on the South Side.

Sig Christenson covers the military and its impact in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Sig, become a subscriber. sigc@express-news.net | Twitter: @saddamscribe
Head of the Monitoring Unit of the Forestry Commission, Charles Owusu, has condemned the New Patriotic Party (NPP) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) over their political tussle in the midst of the current pandemic confronting Ghanaians.



NDC National Chairman, Samuel Ofosu Ampofo has accused the Electoral Commission (EC) and National Identification Authority (NIA) of being in cahoots with the ruling party to rig the 2020 elections.



At a press conference on Thursday, May 14, 2020, the NDC National Chairman claimed the EC's decision to push for the Ghana card, birth certificate and passport as the primary documents required to register during the voters registration exercise is part of a grand scheme to rig the elections in favour of the New Patriotic Party.



The President seeing defeat staring glaringly at him, he is in conjunction with the Jean Mensa led EC and the Ken Attafuah led NIA desperately scheming to rig the 2020 elections and hold on to power at all cost.



Not even the unusual circumstances we find ourselves in which requires that we pull together for our collective survival as a nation are enough to deter the actors of this plot from their ungodly act, he stated.



The governing party's Election 2020 Campaign Manager, Peter Mac Manu, then fired a sharp riposte.



At a hurriedly arranged press conference on the same day, a few hours after the one organised by their political opponents, he shot back; "the plan of NDC is nothing more than to fabricate grounds for chaos, disunity and fear.



"They are doing this because they don't have a good candidate and a good story to tell the voters in December. It is that record of a rigged leadership under John Dramani Mahama that the NDC must be afraid of bringing back to face the Ghanaian people for their vote, and not the fake conspiracy to rig elections against them," Mr Mac Manu said.



Making his submissions on 'Kokrokoo' on Peace FM, Charles Owusu called on the NDC and NPP to cease fire and unite to fight the Coronavirus pandemic.



According to him, there will be plenty of time for political play when the pandemic is over but for now, the pressing need on the minds of every Ghanaian is how to resolve the pandemic and not who to vote for in the upcoming elections.



Charles Owusu told host Kwami Sefa Kayi that the current situation doesn't call for political banters as the disease doesn't bear political colors neither does is it a respecter of persons or positions.



"Opposition party doesn't lose elections. It's a government in power that loses elections . . . We should take note that we're fighting an invisible enemy, so let's put the politics aside.".



"We don't play politics with a deadly disease. Who has ever been asked for his/her party card at the hospital before?", Charles Owusu questioned and advised that ''if we will defeat this pandemic, unless we all unite and understand that we're fighting against one common enemy and the enemy is COVID-19. I believe we will overcome this pandemic if we come together," he told the host Kwami Sefa Kayi.





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.

Featured Video
Since the COVID-19 infection flare-up in December 2019, the malady has spread to right around 100 nations around the world with the World Health Organization proclaiming it a general wellbeing crisis. The worldwide effects of the coronavirus sickness 2019 (COVID-19) are now beginning to be felt, and will essentially influence the Healthcare Industry in 2020.

Global demand for dural graft is expected to grow significantly, owing to rising burden of neurosurgical diseases leading to increasing cranial and spinal duraplasty, and rapid technological advancements in dural graft products.

Moreover, increasing global neurosurgical workforce, extensive clinical research, and increasing demand for CNS dural repair are responsible for increasing the adoption of dural graft products.

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B Braun

Cousin Biotech,

Natus Medical Incorporated

Tissuemed Ltd,

Vostra GmbH

Stryker Corporation

Medtronic Plc.

Johnson & Johnson,

Aesculap, Inc.

Baxter International Inc

For instance, in 2004, the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that, there were 33,193 neurosurgeons worldwide, including trainees. Whereas, in 2015, this number rose to approximately 49,940 neurosurgeons, with a 4% total growth, worldwide.

Persistence Market Research predicts that, the global dural graft market will exhibit a 6% CAGR during the forecast period (2019-2029).

Key Takeaways of Dural Graft Market Study

By product type, synthetic dural graft along with xenogeneic dural graft are expected to gain traction during the forecast period.

Technological advancements in material science of dural graft products in North America and Europe are expected to contribute to the significant dominance of these regions during the forecast period.

Brain and spine tumor applications are expected to hold more than 50% share in the global dural graft market.

share in the global dural graft market. Synthetic polymer material is expected to gain significant traction and experience 2X demand by 2029.

demand by 2029. Leading dural graft manufacturing companies are partnering with innovative product developers and specialized distributors to strengthen their market position.

Rising healthcare expenditure and increasing neurosurgeon workforce density in East Asia are expected to offer significant opportunities for market growth.

Get To Know Methodology of Report @ https://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/methodology/25285

Increasing scientific evidence from industry-led clinical trials and technological advancements in dural graft products are expected to support the significant adoption of synthetic nanofibrous dural grafts. says a PMR analyst.

Brain and Spinal Tumor Application Dominating Dural Graft Market

Prevalence of CNS tumors due to neurological conditions is growing rapidly. Chiari malformation and spinal cord tumor-related neurosurgical procedures requiring dural grafts for surgeries are becoming more frequent. Growing risk of such neurological conditions demands neurosurgical procedures along with duraplasty for effective and safe treatment outcomes.

For instance, in 2018, more than 50% of dural grafts were used in cranial and spine tumor operations. This high proportion is estimated to continue in the future.

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What Does the Report Cover?

Persistence Market Research offers a unique perspective and actionable insights on the dural graft market in its latest study, presenting historical demand assessment from 2014-2018 and projections for 2019-2029, on the basis of product type (xenogeneic dural graft, synthetic dural graft, autologous dural graft, and allogeneic dural graft), application (brain and spine tumor, traumatic brain and spine injury, cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) accumulation, cerebrovascular accident, epilepsy, and others), material (bovine pericardium, autologous pericardium, synthetic polymers, ligamentum nuchae, and others), and end user (hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, trauma centers, and clinics), across seven key regions.
By William R. Jones





When I saw on YouTube what?Freeman Dyson had to say about Ph.D.s, what I had thought ever?since freshman days was reaffirmed and now had at least one concurrence. I say had because the theoretical physicist and mathematician passed away at 96 this past February. At one time he was a physics professor at Cornell though he had no doctorate, i.e., a Ph.D. Later, Oppenheimer brought him for a lifetime appointment?to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey; "for proving me wrong," in Oppenheimer' words.

In interviews, Dyson spoke:



"I'm very proud of not having a Ph.D. I think the Ph.D. system is an abomination. It was invented as a system for educating German professors in the 19th century, and it works well under those conditions ... But it has become now a kind of union card that you have to have in order to have a job  So I have opposed it all my life without any success at all. . ."

"There is this snobbism among scientists, especially the academic typesThere are scientists in industry who are a bit more broad-minded  The Ph.D. system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery."



Of course Dyson's ideas clashed with the academic hierarchy that had spent decades utilizing scientific jargon to persuade and insure that they receive from the general coffers their share of the system's budget.



Thus funded, staunchly planted them in the jargons of academia and provided a guaranteed foothold in the halls of prestigious colleges. Rest assured, they are not going to surrender their Ph.D. programs, not even for the sake of education. Well, they have the STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) initiative. And, now their most recent sales pitch they are yakking about is STEAM (adding Arts) which the South Korean government apparently eagerly adopted as a national education initiative. You see, the grant money is kept flowing to keep the life blood of the universities and established professors alive. Okay, what's next? There is still more money.to be spent.



I'm eccentric and basically agree with Dyson. However, I wouldn't abolish the abysmal Ph.D. system altogether, but certainly, I would give it a very strong and resolute rectifying tweak. I would attempt to align all Ph.D. programs worldwide. Yep, I know, I'm better off trying to prove another one of Dyson's ideas: "ESP is realbut cannot be tested with the clumsy tools of science."



Or, I could go on about why there should not be tenure, except for the pope and chief justices, of course. Or, why professors should not be addressed as Doctors which became a meme long before the word meme existed.



Or, confront economic disparity and explain why a heating and air-con man (HVAC) is more important to me than let's say a biochemist professor. However, if I wish to retain my position at the university, I'd better not be loud or insistent upon any issue as to compel attention. But, I do say like Dyson said that I, too, am critical of Richard Dawkins' understanding of evolution!





The author (wrjones@vsu.edu) teaches English as a second language and is a chemistry lab coordinator and research technician at Virginia State University.


Hearst Connecticut Media published an article on April 27 (CT delegation calls for federal intervention on coronavirus-related nursing home crisis), which included quotes from members of Connecticuts U.S. Congressional delegation. Unfortunately information provided by Connecticuts representatives was erroneous, and points to a complete lack of understanding of the vital role nursing homes play in the fight against COVID-19.

U.S. Rep. Jahana Hayes states, We cant wait until these numbers are out of control, because based on what we know, these infections will explode. We know it is going to happen, so we need to get ahead of it by being proactive and preemptive.

I am not certain where Rep. Hayes gets her information, because the COVID-19 virus has already exploded. Nor am I certain how she expects to be preemptive; we are battling an extremely contagious disease which disproportionately impacts the most vulnerable in our communities, namely the elderly with comorbidities. Yet our government continues to lag behind in their response  nursing homes have been scrambling for personal protective equipment, testing kits and supplies since this began in the first week of March. The time for Congress to be proactive has long since passed.

U.S. Rep. Jim Himes states, Nursing homes are what brought COVID-19 to our national attention because of the experience in Seattle. One of the stories that will be told when this is over is we didnt learn quickly enough how dangerous nursing homes are. No, nursing homes did not bring us COVID-19. A visitor who had recently traveled abroad brought the virus to the nursing home in question, and Rep. Himes comment on nursing homes being dangerous leaves me nearly speechless.

First, we now understand how extremely vulnerable our senior population is to COVID-19, particularly older individuals who suffer with multiple and chronic illnesses. More importantly, when the presence of COVID-19 was first made known, all efforts were focused on getting personal protective equipment and supplies to hospitals and first responders, with no attention given to senior care and assisted living communities. If Rep. Hayes wanted to be proactive and preemptive, this was the time to do it. However, Congress failed to include this health care sector in the planning process, to the point where nursing homes still have limited supplies of PPE. Our delegation members need to understand this.

Rep. Hayes also states that federal response must include new enforcement to compel nursing homes to employ more trained staff, to ensure that infection control requirements are met. Another gross lack of understanding  this is not an enforcement issue, but an issue of availability of testing and PPE. Second, Rep. Hayes should understand the federal government sets staffing limits by controlling nursing home costs and setting rates of payment well below current operating costs.

She also incorrectly assumes infection control requirements are not being met, and assumes this has helped cause the pandemic to spread. This is an insult to professional clinicians and caregivers who provide care, the ones who serve as surrogate family members, who keep residents content and who sacrifice their own health to treat those infected. They are heroes.

Another member of our Congressional delegation, Rep. John Larson, stated, This virus is attacking our most vulnerable neighbors and thats why we must do everything we can to protect them. But it was our federal government that failed at the outset with the lack of proper planning, and by neglecting to include the full health care spectrum with funding and supplies. I can only imagine the difference it could have made had our government truly worked to get the right resources to our senior communities when the outbreak began.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro is correct when she states, Those bombs are exploding, and federal guidance from our chief federal health agency is nowhere to be found, and They must take action immediately. But Congress and the respective government agencies help no one if they play the blame game, rather than acknowledging they failed in providing the guidance and tools senior communities needed to fight this extraordinary battle.

Nursing homes play a vital role in the health care spectrum and are on the front lines of the war against COVID-19; they care for those who are most vulnerable to this virus and need the tools to carry on this fight. It is time for our state and federal leaders to truly support us as we fight for our residents every day.

David V. Hunter is president and CEO of Mary Wade Home in New Haven.
Shaheed El Hafed, 2 May 2020 (SPS) - Sahrawi President Brahim Ghali affirmed Friday that Algerias continued solidarity with the Sahrawi people confirms its efforts to defend the peoples right to existence, freedom and independence.



Algeria has always sought to ban violence in its circle, setting itself up as a model of loyalty and generosity, as witnessed by its positions of unchanging principles in all circumstances, President Ghali told the press, while welcoming the Algerian delegation of solidarity, led by Minister of National Solidarity, Family and Womens Affairs Kaoutar Krikou, accompanied by head of the Algerian Red Crescent (CRA) Saida Benhabiles.



On this occasion, Sahrawi President affirmed that it is a source of pride for the Sahrawi people to have the camps of pride and dignity on the Algerian soil which expressed from the beginning its support to this people.



This exceptional day of solidarity comes to place the two peoples in the same camp for the same objectives, confirmed by the rooted strong relations, principles and common destiny, added Secretary General of the Polisario Front, pointing out that this is the conviction of all the Sahrawi people in the camps of pride and dignity.



He welcomed the efforts made by the Algerian people and government to support the oppressed peoples, notably in period of crisis, extending his thanks to the officials who supervised the delivery of this aid to their Sahrawi brothers. (SPS)



062/SPS/APS
UPPER PENINSULA  While a lot school projects have students work firmly on the ground, Troy Maust is working on one that has him looking toward the stars.

The USA schools graduate, now a senior student at Michigan Tech, is part of a school project that is constructing two space satellites, one for NASA and one for the Air Force Research Laboratory.

The NASA satellite, called Stratus, is planned to launch out of Cape Canaveral in Florida next spring and will join the International Space Station, located about 200 miles above the Earth, where it will be deployed for use.

The Stratus satellite will gather cloud data using infrared imaging to make improved weather models.

The Air Force Research Laboratory satellite, called Auris, will be measuring interference from other communications satellites. Maust said that one is a bit further behind on development and there is still no set time for launch.

Maust, a computer engineering major with a minor in cybersecurity, joined the project in the spring of 2019. The project is also part of a class students can take at Michigan Tech and more than 200 students and alumni have taken part.

When I first considered it, I was really impressed, Maust said. I thought it was cool that it was students working on a real project, using real science for NASA. Other projects dont have the same scope or gravity as making a satellite thats going to space.

Maust has transitioned into the program manager role over the past year following the graduation of the previous one. He fully assumed the role in January.

Mausts responsibilities for being the program manager include registering people that take part in this, scheduling meetings, making a program schedule, communicating with NASA and the Air Force about the satellites, and writing grant applications to secure project funding.

Work on the satellites has been delayed this year as campus facilities are closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Maust and the other students on the projects are locked out of campus laboratories right now and do not have access to the necessary hardware.

We have tests prepared for as soon as we get access to labs, Maust said.

After gaining all this experience working on satellites, Maust would love to work in the aerospace industry after graduating to continue this work.

Its growing very rapidly, Maust said. Im excited to be looking at jobs in the industry at this time.
Kerala's response to the coronavirus pandemic has been hailed world over. The state has successfully kept the virus in check and has earned admirers for smoothly handling the health crisis.

ANI

The state now face a fresh challenge as it recorded 26 cases in last 24 hours, the highest number of infections since March. This brings the total reported cases of coronavirus in Kerala to 560. Among the total people infected as on date, 491 have recovered and 4 have passed away.



The rise in cases comes at a time when Kerala welcomes back expatriates and people working in other states across India.

Out of the 26 new cases, seven are reported to be middle-east returnees and eight came from other states including Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu. While it poses another risk of new infections rising, the state is ready to tackle it head on.

PTI

As part of the curtailing the third phase of COVID-19 pandemic, Kerala will now set up regional monitoring committees to ensure efficient home quarantine of suspected cases and observe people returning from outside the country and other states.



As per various reports, a ward-level committee led by the ward members will also be formed. The junior health inspectors of the corporation will be the convenors of the ward-level committees.

The state is also strengthening its tracing and quarantine norms as immigrants from the Middle-East and people stranded in other parts of the country started flocking to the state in large numbers.

PTI

To ensure the the state doesn't see a spike in cases, it has tweaked its policies and has given strict instructions to district administrations to enforce track, trace and treat protocol ruthlessly.



People with minor symptoms or those who come from red zones will have to undergo strict protocols to contain a possible third bout of infection.





Kerala was the first state to have reported a coronavirus case in the country in January, when a Wuhan-returned medical student had tested positive.
Photo credit: Getty Images

From Good Housekeeping

When the coronavirus pandemic first touched the United States, most Americans never dreamed that COVID-19 could ravage communities or upheave daily routines as it had done in China and in nations across Europe. The first people to realize the magnitude of the situation, long before the United States became the most impacted sovereignty in the world with more than 1.3 million cases, were those working to keep their fellow Americans healthy. Essential doctors, nurses, and adjacent personnel working in hospitals across the country soon realized their institutions were woefully unequipped to handle a surge of cases in late March and throughout April. As dire as their situation has been, nearly everyone working in the medical field has had their worlds turned upside down  from those safeguarding our nation's elderly to unseen angels fighting on behalf of our youngest, including all those healthcare professionals who continue to treat chronically ill people despite increasing risks to their own safety.



And yet, as the pandemic continues to shape our new reality, these professionals find themselves reflecting on how far they've come. Editors at Good Housekeeping were honored to hear from nine different individuals across the country working to serve unique patients in their own spaces. They're sharing some of the toughest challenges they've each faced over the last few months, and the silver lining that is keeping them going.

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

It's hard. There are definitely days where I don't want to go in. We're scared for these patients, yes, but there's a fear for ourselves going in and knowing that at any moment we could be putting ourselves at risk. I mean, we're elbow deep in these patients' everything, after all.



But the thing that's helped me quite a bit: I have an awesome group of coworkers. And my managers have been great. We have become each other's family, in a way; I haven't seen my parents, I haven't seen my friends ever since I started taking care of these patients, for their safety and because of the risk ... but I know that if I don't go in, that means somebody else is gonna have to take on an extra shift, and it's not fair to them.

Story continues

We are also seeing some patients that are able to get off of the breathing machines and doing better. And that's really uplifting because we only see stories of the negative and the death toll. That's all we see in the news. Being able to see these patients who were on a ventilator for so long, and now they're getting better  they're able to get up, and we're transferring them out to a normal unit and they're recovering. That does make it a little bit easier. Because it gives us all a sense of hope. Erin Dennis, RN, 26, Houston Methodist Hospital, Texas

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

Here's what's struck me throughout it all: Even though most healthcare providers initially set out upon that journey to help people, it's not a career that typically has a high personal health risk. Unlike those that serve in the military, police force, or fire brigade, healthcare providers haven't typically thought that their line of work may put them in harm's way. There are very few illnesses in the course of history that would fit that criteria, and this is likely the first one those of us currently on the front lines have ever seen. We often quote the Hippocratic Oath "Do No Harm" and have never thought before now that the harm may be to us.



Many of us, even on the frontlines, have adapted to change in our roles during this time to help out where we can. I jumped in to help with our own employee health  testing and triaging employees who had an exposure or symptoms. That has been really great to be a part of: Taking care of the workforce. It's actually made me more upbeat and positive on the whole thing.



The public only sees what's on the news and hospital staff only sees those admitted: Both groups only see 'the worst' typically. But for me in Birmingham, between 85 to 90% of those I consult are COVID-positive patients who have mild symptoms, and they stay home to recover. That's the group I've been able to talk with daily, and it's made me much more optimistic over time. Starr Steinhilber, MD, 36, Alabama

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

I have always been a helper: I love to help others and make them happy. It took me going to college for my first degree to figure out I needed something more in life; so I went back to school for respiratory therapy  [But] I've come to realize respiratory therapy is an under-appreciated field in healthcare. We are the ones who manage the ventilators, manage the artificial airways connected to those ventilators, we intubate, place arterial lines  and that just scrapes the surface.



My hope is that students see more exposure about respiratory therapy through news outlets and articles, and if they are considering a career in healthcare, I hope they look a little deeper into respiratory therapy and help grow our field.

I am afraid to come home to my immunocompromised husband, and also afraid to go out in public to get bare necessities, in fear that I will be a carrier and infect others. I can speak for myself when I say I wont ever again take for granted grabbing lunch with a friend, hugging my grandparents, or aimlessly wandering the aisles of TJ Maxx. All of these things seemed ordinary and we thought we could do whenever, and now that we cant, I realize how truly special and not ordinary they are. I will cherish every moment life brings. Cassandra Albrecht, RCP, 29, Ohio

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

Working on a nurse-family partnership in Montgomery County, we quickly adapted to working at home and providing our clients  first-time moms in poverty  regular visits via telehealth. Telehealth allows us to have a call or video conference with each mom for 30 to 90 minutes. I continue to answer their questions about their newborn's health or their upcoming birth during the pandemic, doing my best to provide them up-to-date information and help them find immediate resources in their community.



Ive found strength in witnessing the resilience of the human spirit. These expectant and new moms are resilient and strong, but also scared and in need of guidance to help maintain stability in their homes. Moms in poverty need help accessing food and baby supplies, and we connect them to local community resources in more ways than one. We want to help new moms and their families stay healthy  physically, mentally and emotionally  and to empower them to care for and nurture their babies during this challenging time. Dawn Selby, BSN, RN, 49, Ohio

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

As professionals working in a treatment center, one of the things we always have to kind of have a pulse on is burnout and compassion fatigue. But we're finding new ways to manage this ... my patients are coming in because they have this life threatening disease with addiction. I think it's my passion and also the passion of the people I work with just to continue to meet those needs, no matter what is going on. Now, we don't have more than 10 patients in a group, and we're keeping those groups closer to the patient's residence or dorm, kind of like taking shelter in place.



I can't say that I ever really thought that something like this would happen, but I knew if it would happen, I would be here for that. And I think what keeps me really moving forward, coming in every day and taking the next steps for the patient's needs. It's so important. And, you know, it's important because it's been a part of their story for so long ... That's my passion. I love doing that work with people, and we need to do this work. Maggie Tipton, PsyD, 40, Caron Treatment Centers, Pennsylvania.

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

I 'm a nurse in the pediatric oncology and bone marrow transplant unit at NewYork-Presbyterian Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital. Every day is filled with lots of changes, updates, and of course, some fear. We are trying our best to isolate the virus from our immunosuppressed patients as we continue with their normal treatments. We are still giving chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants as usual, and monitoring and testing any patient who shows any symptoms.



Our patients and families inspire us every day, and have continued to do so. Families that are already fighting childhood cancer are now having to deal with the fear of this deadly virus, and my heart breaks for them. These patients can't just be sent home to self-quarantine and need to still receive all of their treatments. I feel lucky to be young and healthy, and am just trying my best to continue to keep these kids and their families safe.

My team has really come together during this dark time. I feel excited to see my fellow nurses every day and closer to them than ever before. We are being supported by family and friends who send meals and homemade masks, and we are frequently checking in on each other to see how we're feeling  physically and mentally. All the texts, calls, and words of encouragement really help to lift our spirits every day. Erin Dukoff, RN, 27, New Jersey

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

I left my home to serve as an emergency nurse in Fort Lauderdale, FL, where I was working on COVID-19 screenings at a mobile hospital, but my background is in pre-op/post-op at an outpatient GI endoscopy center. My role changed a bit, as I was in Florida to help in an emergency capacity. I checked vital signs on impacted patients, assessed symptoms as well as pertinent medical history, directed patient flow, and got patients to a doctor or nurse practitioner on our site for assessment. I also worked on educating most patients on what they can do to recover at home, and in the most dire situations, I helped them get to the hospital if needed.



Out of my home state, I was far away from my family, and I felt that I couldn't help them during the pandemic. My faith is that God is watching over me, plus lots of prayers from family and friends, and that helped me through.

All in all, I spent nearly three weeks in Fort Lauderdale. I quarantined for three weeks at home before returning to work at my endoscopy center in Brandon. Looking back, I realize the experience helped me learn new things about this novel virus as I served on the frontlines in a historical pandemic. Emily Luther, RN, 40, MS



Photo credit: Hearst Owned

I 've witnessed mega changes as a professor and a psychotherapist in the last few weeks. Surprisingly, I've experienced more pushback to our new normal as a professor; for both the student and the instructor, the transition has been difficult. As for me, my goal is to make it as easy as possible to travel this new road, hoping their education is not only the material pertaining to their studies, but also to the transitions that take place along the path of life.

As a psychotherapist, anxiety, stress, confusion, and the unknown, although common psychological elements having to deal with in the past, they surely are compounded at this time. Therapy in many ways is different  but what I have noticed is that individuals are now more receptive.

What does this reflect for me as a participant in whats going on? It shows me that with whatever transpires in peoples lives, we are capable of being flexible, capable of dealing with change, stronger than we think we are, resilient and can come back to help in bringing things back to the old normal, and yet recognizing that there is no old normal, for we are forever changing. Whatever the change may be, we are able to always put a positive twist onto the most tragic situations. Murray Fullman, PhD, 82, NY

Photo credit: Hearst Owned

Before I even step into work at a long term senior-care facility, I'm screened each day. It entails filling out a questionnaire attesting to your activities outside of work. Some questions pertain to activities of your family members or the people you live with. These questions include whether or not you are working another job in a different facility, or if you've been traveling  plus how you and your family members have felt physically or had any respiratory symptoms. Once completed, a designated staff member then takes your temperature which is entered on the form and both parties sign at the bottom. It's all designed to protect our residents.



That's just to begin with: Many of us are mentally struggling with whats happening around us. We are doing our best to push through, but it's hard not to notice; Casually speaking to three different coworkers and saying 'Hey, how are you holding up?' each time I was met with tears. We are strong, but we are also scared too, along with everyone else. Tension and anxiety is high on the job. At home, people are having nightmares, are scared for everyone around them, and are feeling frightened and exhausted from all the uncertainty.

What Ive learned is that we each individually and as a team are far stronger than any of us ever would have thought possible. I'm also lucky enough to work with my best friend who is also a nurse. To protect our own families, we made arrangements with our families in order for her to basically temporarily move into my home together. My daughters will be able to safely stay with family. This way its one less layer of anxiety we wont need to contend with at the end of every day. Its not an easy choice and its not permanent, but for us and our families, we feel its the safest one. The upside is that if either one of us unfortunately happens to become positive for COVID-19, we have a place to stay and a personal nurse to care for us! I'm extremely grateful to even have such options. Michelle Horn, RAC-CT, 46, Oriol Health Care, MA



TK TK PACKAGE ANCHOR CTA FEATURE?

*With additional interviews by Allie Early and Beth Dreher.

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OMAHA  Omaha Performing Arts, under its Nebraska High School Theater Academy, will offer a free digital Q&A with Omaha native and acclaimed actor, Andrew Rannells. The conversation will take place at 5 p.m. on Thursday on O-pas YouTube and Facebook channel.

Rannells is currently starring in the Showtime series, Black Monday, and appeared in several television series, including HBOs Girls. He is a Tony Award nominated actor who has starred in a variety of acclaimed Broadway productions, including The Boys in the Band, The Book Of Mormonand Hamilton.

This live event, intended for students and teachers, is open to the public. Registration is not required, but questions may be submitted by visiting o-pa.org/online.
Migrants returning to Bihar from other parts of the country must not travel on foot upon entering the state and, in case of non-availability of vehicles, should inform the nearest police station or block headquarters and arrangements will be made to ferry them to their respective destinations, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar said on Friday.

The chief minister made the averment at a high-level meeting he chaired to review the situation in the state following the outbreak of COVID 19 which has affected more than 1,000 people in Bihar and witnessed a spike since migrants began coming back in large numbers following the running of Shramik Specials.

"Nobody needs to travel on foot. Nobody should sneak clandestinely out of fear either. Buses have been deployed at all railway stations and also along the states borders to take people to their respective destinations.

"Those unable to locate these should not proceed on foot but inform the police station or block headquarters nearby. Arrangements will be made for their travel", said the chief minister at the meeting which was attended by senior officials including chief secretary Deepak Kumar.

The chief minister's statement comes in the backdrop of some instances of migrant workers meeting with tragic mishaps outside the state while walking on foot to their home places. On Thursday, a bus had ploughed into a group of migrants in Uttar Pradesh, killing six of them.

The migrants had embarked on an arduous, nearly 1,500 kms long journey from Punjab to their native district of Gopalganj in Bihar.

Moreover, last week 16 migrant workers from Madhya Pradesh were run over in their sleep by a goods train in Maharashtra. The workers had, apparently, fallen asleep on the tracks out of exhaustion.

Pictures of footwear and chapatis scattered on the tracks, depicting the lives that were snuffed out by the accident, had appeared in the media world over.

Kumar also reiterated the need for bringing back all natives of Bihar, who wished to come back, "as soon as possible" since many of them were stuck in hotspots and their staggered return could "aggravate the outbreak in the state".

As per the state health department, at least 358 people who have come from outside Bihar since May 04 have tested positive for the coronavirus. The incidence has been notably high among those coming from Delhi, Maharashtra and Gujarat.

The chief minister, who had recently announced that all migrant workers will get an aid of Rs 500 each in addition to full reimbursement of their travel expenses, which would amount to a minimum entitlement of Rs 1000 for every returnee, also directed officials to keep arrangements in place for the same.

The migrant workers are to get the amount upon completing the mandatory 21 days quarantine period.

In an apparent reference to reports of rumpus at various quarantine centers by migrants over alleged lack of facilities, the chief minister said "proper facilities must be ensured, though the migrants are also requested to maintain decorum".

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Staff at a Myer department store have been forced to self-isolate after an employee tested positive for coronavirus.

The employee had been filling online orders at the store in Melbourne's Highpoint on May 11.

All activities at the store have been stopped and team members have been told to isolate while a deep clean is undertaken, a Myer spokesman said.

Staff at a Myer department store have been forced to self-isolate after an employee tested positive for coronavirus

'As our packing is being undertaken with increased hygiene and safety measures, customers can feel confident with any orders that have been, or will be, fulfilled from this store,' the spokesman said.

Minister for Mental Health Martin Foley said they are investigating how the retail worker contracted the virus.

'They are more than fully cooperating with the public health team when it comes to investigating the contact tracing or issues associated with this particular person.'

Victoria has seen a spike in coronavirus cases with 21 new cases on Thursday night, bringing the state's total to 1543.

The new cases include six people in hotel quarantine and two close contacts connected to the McDonald's Fawkner outbreak.

The McDonald's restaurant reopened for business on Wednesday following a deep clean but 92 staff members remain in isolation.

The first coronavirus case was linked to the restaurant on April 30.

A coronavirus cluster at a Melbourne McDonald's store has jumped to ten

McDonald's Australia CEO Andrew Gregory said the Department of Health and Human Services advised there were two additional cases linked to the restaurant by Thursday morning.

Mr Gregory said there were almost 100 employees at the store and the vast majority of tests had come back negative.

'It's still possible, unfortunately, over the coming days  that we will get a small number of positives,' he said.

McDonald's moved to temporarily close the store after the second worker contracted the virus.

They are now using staff members from other McDonald's stores.
May is National Trauma Awareness month. It serves as a reminder that life is unpredictable, and accidents happen every daysome of which require trips to the hospital and lifesaving blood transfusions. Last year, Layne Waltons afternoon ride on his utility vehicle at his grandparents farm in Indiana turned into a day neither he nor his family will forget. While on his ride, he was ejected from his vehicle, leaving him in need of emergency blood transfusions.

He Lost So Much Blood

That day, it was blood already on the hospital shelf that helped save Waltons life. The accident caused serious injuries including a collapsed lung and lacerated liver. Doctors worked frantically to access a vein to give him the blood that he desperately needed. Without the generosity of blood donors, Walton may not have survived his injuries.

He lost nearly four liters of blood and his doctors said if they had not started the blood transfusions on him, that he would have died, said Kelly Walton, Waltons mother.

A medical team later transported Walton by helicopter to a larger hospital. There, he underwent multiple surgeries and received more than 20 blood transfusions. After nearly four weeks in the hospital Walton was released; now, a year later, he is fully recovered.

There is a Constant Need

Every two seconds in the United States blood is needed to help patients. Type O negative blood is the universal blood type and what emergency room personnel reach for in the most serious situations, when there isnt time to determine a patients blood type.

Unfortunately, because of the critical  and frequent  role they play in trauma situations, type O negative and positive are often in short supply.

Donating Blood Is Lifesaving

Waltons mom has been a blood donor since she was 17 years old and saw the importance of a robust and diverse blood supply while working as an emergency room nurse. I think everyone should try it, they would realize the impact they are having when they donate blood. You dont think about each situation or each person that might need it, she said.

This summer the Walton family will host a blood drive in their sons honor. Layne will also be there to thank donors and share how his life was saved in large part by the selfless act of giving blood.

The Red Cross encourages all eligible individuals, and especially those with type O blood, to make an appointment to give by using the Red Cross Blood Donor App, visiting RedCrossBlood.org or calling 1-800-RED CROSS.

All blood types are needed to ensure a reliable supply for patients. A blood donor card or drivers license, or two other forms of identification, are required at check-in. Individuals who are 17 years of age in most states (16 with parental consent where allowed by state law), weigh at least 110 pounds and are in generally good health may be eligible to donate blood. High school students and other donors 18 years of age and younger also have to meet certain height and weight requirements.

Blood and platelet donors can save time at their next donation by using RapidPass to complete their pre-donation reading and health history questionnaire online, on the day of their donation, before arriving at the blood drive. To get started, follow the instructions at RedCrossBlood.org/RapidPass or use the Red Cross Blood Donor App.
Thomas Maguire, 62, of Bensalem, after voting at Bensalem High School in a special election in Bucks County in March. Maguire was wearing a mask to take precautions because of the coronavirus. Read more

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court on Friday dismissed a lawsuit brought by advocates who sought to extend the states absentee ballot deadlines this year because of the coronavirus pandemic.

That leaves in place the current election law, which requires mail ballots to be received by election officials by 8 p.m. on an election day regardless of when voters put them in the mail. A similar lawsuit over absentee ballot deadlines, backed by national Democrats, is pending in a state court. That case seeks a variety of changes, including an election day postmark deadline.

The advocacy groups sued the state last month, saying the deadlines are generally not unconstitutional, but are this year because the pandemic is leading to delays in mail delivery and slower processing of absentee ballot requests. The plaintiffs are Suzanne Erb, chair of the Disability Rights Pennsylvania board; Disability Rights Pennsylvania; the Barristers Association of Philadelphia; SeniorLAW Center; and SEAMAAC.

They asked the court to allow ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by election day and received within a week after the election, a change that would increase the likelihood last-minute ballots would arrive in time to be counted.

 READ MORE: The legal team that overturned Pa. gerrymandering is suing to relax the states absentee ballot deadlines amid the coronavirus outbreak

State election officials agreed that extending mail ballot deadlines could be a good idea, but argued it was inappropriate for that to come through a court order. The claims are simply too speculative, Secretary of State Kathy Boockvar and other officials said, so a change in policy should come from the legislature, not the courts.

Respondents agree with [the plaintiffs] that extending the deadline for receipt of ballots may be good policy under the circumstances, and, as with any extension, would increase the number of votes that are timely returned," Boockvar and another elections official said in a response to the lawsuit. "This might well increase voters confidence in the midst of a crisis. Without properly alleging a constitutional violation, however, petitioners lack a basis to ask this court to change an election procedure that the legislature has put in place, however welcome that change might be to many stakeholders.

The high court agreed and dismissed the lawsuit, which included a request to immediately change the deadline through a preliminary injunction.

The order was per curiam, meaning it came from the court as a whole and not from individual justices. Justice Debra Todd was not involved in the decision.

President Donald Trumps reelection campaign hailed the decision as a great victory today to protect election integrity. Trump has decried absentee ballots as a vector for voter fraud despite lack of evidence, helping politicize vote-by-mail even as Pennsylvania Republicans urge voters to use it. Trump himself requested a Florida mail ballot this year and voted absentee in New York in 2018.
London, May 15 : Liverpool's world famous ferries across the River Mersey resumed operation as Britain relaxed its COVID-19 restrictions.

The ferries, which transport commuters across the river, have been anchored since the lockdown started.

Operators Merseytravel said demand is expected to increase as people return to work with the ferries providing an important option for cross-river river travel for those that need it, Xinhua news agency reported on Thursday.

But social distancing must still be observed, and government guidance followed, including face coverings where appropriate.

Liverpool Metro Mayor Steve Rotheram said: "We are already seeing more people starting to travel and expect that to continue to increase following the Prime Minister's announcement. So now is the right time to reintroduce ferry services." A ferry service between Liverpool and the shoreline opposite first started in the 12th century by monks rowing passengers across the river and has continued ever since.

During the First World War, a number of the Mersey Ferries were commissioned to carry troops during a naval raid on Zeebrugge in Belgium. The ferries had a shallow draft, allowing them to skim over the mines floating beneath the surface, and were robust enough to approach the heavily defended area.

King George V, British monarch at the time of the war, rewarded the heroic actions of the Mersey ferries by granting them to use the word Royal as part of their names. Ferries such as Royal Daffodil and Royal Iris have been in use ever since.
The images are strikingly modern, yet timeless; classic yet cute; epoch-defining yet intimate. Bravo to the photographer whose portraits of the royal children will not only illustrate the history books, but rewrite them.

Of course, the most astonishing thing about these portraits is that they were taken not by a professional photographer, but by the Duchess of Cambridge herself.

She broke with tradition early in motherhood, releasing her own photos of Prince George. Observers were pleasantly surprised at the quality of the images.

Since then, her skills with the camera have got better and better  to the point where even seasoned professionals are wowed.

Shes got a very good eye and has produced some really lovely images, says former official royal photographer Jayne Fincher, who was one of the late Princess of Waless favourites.

Jenny Johnston spoke to professional photographers about the snaps taken by the Duchess of Cambridge. Pictured: Kate taking photographs of Prince William in Canada in 2011

Shes also got the advantage  the huge advantage  of being their mum. One of the most important things when photographing children is getting that eye contact with them. Thats not a problem for her.

Jayne is herself responsible for some of the most iconic royal shots ever taken.

She captured Princes William and Harry as youngsters (one of her most famous images is of them running into Dianas arms on the royal yacht in Canada in 1991).

She was also commissioned to take portraits of the family at home.

Its perhaps the ultimate accolade for the duchess that Jayne admits to being a little envious of the images Kate has managed to produce.

Remember that the technology has improved immensely, and obviously she doesnt have the pressure of only having a set time to complete a shoot.

'But you do look at the images and think, This is an amateur and shes got better pictures than I ever did.

Greenwich-based photographer Andrea Whelan, who specialises in family portraiture, has taken a keen interest in the duchesss work, and admits she too would have been proud to have taken some of the most recent shots.

Any professional would be, she says.

There are some that are iconic. The shot of Prince Louis finger-painting is technically impressive  getting the hands in focus is important and shows that the photographer knows what theyre about  and the rainbow colours capture not just a family moment, but a national one.

The image of Prince Charles hugging little Prince Louis is gorgeous. Its beautifully lit.

'It captures a side of Prince Charles that we arent used to seeing, which is why its striking and memorable. Id have loved to have taken that picture.

Andrea was particularly struck by the portraits of Princess Charlotte that were released to celebrate her fifth birthday earlier this month.

Kate with her camera at the ready

The duchess studied Art History at St Andrews, she points out.

Well, it shows. The portraits of Charlotte where she was delivering food in Norfolk are stunning. They arent just lovely family snaps, they show that Kate has a great understanding of light. What you are looking at is classic Rembrandt technique.

She singles out one shot  with Charlotte in a gingham dress looking determinedly to the camera, arms folded.

There is a single main light source, and the Rembrandt technique creates a triangle of light on the shadowed side of the face.

'The contrast of light and dark creates a mysterious and moody portrait. Its wonderful to see how it contrasts with portraits from previous years.

In short, these are images taken by someone who knows exactly what they are doing. No luck involved. The duchess herself has spoken of the power of photos in capturing a mood  even a national mood.

At the launch of the virtual gallery project Hold Still, where she appealed to all of us to upload our images of our lockdown experiences, she summed up her love of the art form.

One of the fantastic things about photography is really capturing a moment, so its not stage-setting it, its not setting it up perfectly, its not clearing your house away so youve got the perfect studio set-up.

'Its capturing those moments that feel real to you Thats the power of photography, it can capture a moment and tell a story.

She was modest about her own skills, joking about how she should have taken a picture of her (messy) self after capturing the colourful images of Prince Louis, insisting, I am very much an amateur photographer. I learn along the way, but during this time Ive spent lots of time picking up my camera and taking photographs of the children because they are always around us and were doing stuff together, which has been great.

Kate appealed for everyone to photograph their lockdown experiences at the launch of the virtual gallery project Hold Still, as a lasting testament to the chapter in British history. Pictured: A photograph of Princess Charlotte taken by Kate to mark her third birthday

The images collated as part of this project, which she launched with the National Portrait Gallery, will be a lasting testament to an extraordinary chapter in British history.

Of course, the younger Kate Middleton understood, and was fascinated by, the power of the photograph. At St Andrews she did a dissertation on Alice In Wonderland author Lewis Carroll, who was also a keen photographer.

And all through university, Kate was to be found experimenting with her own photography, and going out of her way to learn from the best.

One of those who became a friend and mentor was celebrity photographer Alistair Morrison, who ran a gallery in Windsor and who is lauded for his portraiture.

In 2007 Kate, by then as famous as any of his subjects, organised an exhibition for Morrison showcasing his images of stars including Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet, Ewan McGregor and Sting.

Yet she had first asked for his advice while she was at university. She came to my gallery and we talked through some of her work, he said in 2007.

She was looking to get a little help. He was immediately impressed by her potential.

She is very, very good, and it shows, he said. She takes beautiful, detailed photographs. She has a huge talent and a great eye. Im sure she will go far.

She has a huge talent and a great eye - photographer Alistair Morrison, her mentor, 2007

How prescient. Perhaps she would have pursued a career in photography whatever, but in terms of finding her dream subjects the duchess struck gold with her own children, and it is interesting that it was through them that her skills were honed.

Its increasingly clear that with the duchesss own photography we are seeing the merging of a mothers desire to capture those special family moments with a more artistic approach.

This is also a woman who knows that every image she allows to be released will be pored over, both now and in decades to come.

The message from Kate, via these photos, is unequivocal: the Cambridge children are like everyone elses  delightful but ordinary.

Whats interesting is that there are no royal trappings, says Andrea Whelan. Her subjects fill the frame. There are rarely any wider lifestyle shots.

'The way she shoots and what she chooses to show us, says a lot. In short, no views of castles or crowns.

Shes releasing images that are more likely to portray the family as people like you and me. Her backgrounds are minimal and clear of distractions, which is key to strong portraits.

Getting formal shots is tricky, though, even for the pros. There are a different set of challenges with every age, says Andrea.

When you are trying to photograph children of different ages together, it can be a nightmare.

Hats off, then, to the duchesss shots of her children together. One of the most loved images is of Prince George as a toddler planting a kiss on baby Charlottes head (see page 42).

Royal photographer who broke the mould While it is true that there have been many quite fusty images of the royal children in past years, there are some delightfully relaxed photos in the archives too. Some astonishing portraits of the Queen and her sister Princess Margaret show them at play. These were captured by a photographer who, like Jayne Fincher, worked hard at gaining the trust of the Royal Family. Lisa Sheridan snapped a photograph of the Queen and her sister Princess Margaret playing with their dogs (pictured) in 1940 Lisa Sheridan, who worked under the professional name Studio Lisa, was involved with the family between 1936 and 1966, and took a particularly striking set of them at home at Royal Lodge, Windsor, in 1940. The images, taken over several visits, showed the sisters gardening, knitting, riding and playing with their dogs. There are also several photographs of the princesses with their parents at weekends, during their brief respites from wartime visits and inspections. Some of these do seem stilted in comparison to todays carefree images of royal children, but at the time they would have been regarded as extraordinarily intimate  and necessary to bolster the national mood during wartime. Later, Lisa returned to capture images of the Queen with her own growing family, including a cheeky Prince Andrew (see top right). Advertisement

Fast forward a few years, and we have Charlotte doing the same with Louis. To capture that tenderness is wonderful, says Andrea.

I think it would be very difficult for a professional to come into that environment and get photographs that are as relaxed.

Jayne Fincher was one of just a handful of professionals who did manage to build a rapport with the royals, first photographing a young Lady Diana Spencer even before her engagement, then on her honeymoon (with Diana famously dressed in tweed, looking relaxed and radiant) and then travelling the world with her and Prince Charles.

She points out that many royals have been interested in photography.

Diana often had a camera with her, and loved to take shots. At home she had a huge collection of photo albums. The royals have their own archives at Windsor for their personal collections.

'The Queen is a keen photographer, as was Queen Victoria. Princess Anne too.

'I travelled a lot with her and she was often taking pictures, mostly of tribal dances. Or horses. I dont ever remember her taking pictures of her children.

While we think of Princess Anne and her brother growing up in formal times, whats striking is how some images of them were informal too, particularly a few taken by Jaynes father, photojournalist Terry Fincher.

You have Princess Anne on a tricycle, and Prince Charles in his corduroy trousers, just being children. They arent that different from the images I captured. Or the ones Kate has done.

One of Jaynes fondest memories comes from being invited to shoot the Wales family at Highgrove back in August 1988.

There were already rumblings that there were problems in the marriage, but Jayne is adamant she did not see them.

What I saw on that day was a loving family. There was banter  Diana was teasing Charles about what he was wearing. The boys were laughing. It was a glorious day. I look back on it fondly.

When photographing children, Jayne always took a bag of toys.

That time Id been to a joke shop and bought props, including one of those arrows that seems to go through the head.

'My abiding memory is of Prince Charles standing behind me with it on, making silly noises, getting the boys to laugh. You can see they were laughing. Thats why.

The image captured that day is one of her finest. William has his arms flung around his mothers neck and both boys are relaxed and happy. Jayne also challenges the idea that Charles was less tactile with the children than Diana.

Take that yacht image of her running to them. There was one of him hugging them too, but the photo of her is the famous one.

Pictured: Lisa Sheridan's portrait of the Queen Mother with Charles and Anne in 1954

Some images really are timeless, and thats the case with some of the Duchess of Cambridges most recent photos, which have been released in black and white. This suggests she is being increasingly confident with her editing, says Andrea Whelan.

The duchess continues to learn from the best  and to pass on her own skills.

One year ago, she was named as the new patron of the prestigious Royal Photographic Society, succeeding the Queen. She has taken part in several workshops for children.

Shes also embraced the challenge of taking portraits of subjects who are not part of her family.

Earlier this year she commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day with a series of portraits of survivors and their families. The shots, in the style of the Dutch artist Vermeer, are highly stylised. Family portraits still, but ones with a specific tone.

Doubtless the duchesss images will continue to captivate. There is one thing about them, though, thats a bit sad. Like all images taken by a doting mother, they lack her in them.

Mums will be familiar with this, says Andrea. Theyre never in their own pictures. I hope someone is snapping her with them too, in those moments.

And as good as the duchess is, there may still be a few challenges ahead.

What she doesnt appear to have done yet is get all three children together, on their own, says Andrea. If she can pull that off, Ill be impressed.

For details on how to take part in the Duchess of Cambridges Hold Still community photography project, visit npg.org.uk/hold-still.
The global chemical company Oxea has officially changed its corporate name to OQ Chemicals as a token of its final integration into the newly formed energy company OQ. Complementing the name change is a new corporate identity, reflecting the potential of the group, and a new website under www.chemicals.oq.com. OQ aims to become a global leading energy company and offers a diversified product mix, including energy, polymers, and oxo chemicals.

"We are committed to provide the same service level and to support the growth and success of our customers," said Dr. Oliver Borgmeier, responsible for the Downstream International Assets at OQ. "Long-term, our customers will benefit from synergies at OQ: We will continue to invest in innovation. In 2021, we aim to add 30 percent to our company's total production capacity for carboxylic acids with a sixth world-scale production plant. For the same year, we plan to bring on-stream additional production capacity for TCD Alcohol that will cover the anticipated global demand for years to come," he added.

Oxea became part of the Oman Oil Company (OOC) in 2013. Since then, numerous growth programmes were initiated and implemented. At the end of 2019, under the leadership of OOC and Orpic Group, nine Oman based companies which were already affiliated formed the new brand identity 'OQ'. "Having one brand globally was highlighted earlier in the integration process as a key enabler for integration. Much of the feedback we received then was that we needed a new platform and a new identity to enable us to come together and create the future company we are all proud of. The choice was also for a new, fresh, bold, and global brand that will represent the new company that we are. So that was OQ!" explained OQ Group CEO Musab Al Mahruqi.

"Our aim with this new company is to develop a unique integrated model for an energy company that delivers sustainability and business excellence. The world will know us for our people, our agility, customer-centric approach and innovation. We have an ambitious growth plan aiming to double our EBITDA in the next ten years and investing over USD 28 Bn in new projects. We will also invest in alternative energy, retail, and gas-to-plastics projects. This will be exciting for our people, our customers, and our communities," he continued.

About OQ Chemicals

OQ Chemicals is a global manufacturer of oxo intermediates and oxo derivatives, such as alcohols, polyols, carboxylic acids, specialty esters, and amines. These products are used for the production of high-quality coatings, lubricants, cosmetics and pharmaceutical products, flavours and fragrances, printing inks and plastics. OQ Chemicals employs more than 1,400 people worldwide and is part of OQ, an integrated energy company with roots in Oman. OQ emerged in 2019 upon the successful integration of nine legacy companies. Operating in 13 countries, OQ covers the entire value chain in the hydrocarbon sector from exploration and production through to marketing and distribution of its products. OQ sells its fuels and chemicals in over 60 countries worldwide. For more information about OQ Chemicals, visit www.chemicals.oq.com.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005026/en/

Contacts:

Media contact

OQ Chemicals GmbH

Thorsten Ostermann

Communications and Press Relations

Phone: +49 (0)2173 9993-3009

communications@oq.com
In a bid to better serve its customers amid the COVID-19 pandemic situation, Cigna Corp. CI is expanding its digital capabilities by providing real-time, personalized support.

These new virtual solutions will help rapidly identify and assist Cigna customers who arrive in emergency room settings with COVID-19 symptoms and also support those who are actively recovering at home.

To aid patients visiting emergency rooms, Cigna has partnered with Collective Medical to detect customers with COVID-19 symptoms. With this information, Cigna Care Advocates can quickly engage these patients, connecting them to programs for supporting whole person health, such as care management, remote patient monitoring and behavioral health assistance.

For those receiving care at home, Cigna provided an interactive digital tool in partnership with Medocity. A simple solution called Medocity for Cigna is developed to allow customers to track their symptoms, connect with care advocates and access behavioral and emotional supportive resources.

Cigna has been very proactive in handling the COVID-19 crisis and took steps to remove exorbitant costs and unnecessary hassles prior to testing. This, in turn, will ensure customers easy access to medications and care through additional telehealth services for medical, behavioral and dental health.

To this end, the companys partnerships with MDLIVE and Buoy Health simplify the processes for individuals to access care. With MDLIVE, earlier this year, Cigna became the first partner to offer virtual care for annual check-ups. And as the COVID-19 crisis evolved, the company temporarily transferred hundreds of its nurses and physicians to MDLIVE for further expanding their capacity. With Buoy Health, in January, it enhanced the latter's capabilities to quickly launch an early intervention tool, which is now available to assess the COVID-19 risks looming on individuals in the United States.

Digital health monitoring gained greater prominence, courtesy of the homebound American populace maintaining social distancing under a pandemic-triggered lockdown. Companies, namely Anthem, Inc. ANTM, CVS Health Corp. CVS and Humana Inc. HUM have an array of developed applications and digital solutions in their portfolios to monitor patients health remotely.

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Year to date, the stock has lost 7.9% compared with the industrys decline of 6.7%.

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Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys exit from the royal family does not mean they can skip out on certain etiquette rules. The Duke and Duchess of Sussex, whose departure went into effect at the end of March, will still be required to obey certain rules when they return to the United Kingdom, including when they bow or curtsy to members of the royal family. With the couple no longer using their royal titles, do any of the royals have to bow or curtsy to Meghan, Duchess of Sussex?

Meghan Markle and the royal family | Chris Jackson/Getty Images

Inside the royal familys curtsy rules

Being a royal seems like a glamorous gig, but each member of the monarchy has to follow a complex set of rules whenever they appear in public. This includes protocols that say when they are supposed to bow or curtsy to other royals.

The rules that regulate how men and women greet members of the royal family are a bit tricky. For starters, a person should bow or curtsy starting with the highest-ranking royal in the room.

Queen Elizabeth is at the top of the royal family rankings and even Prince Philip is supposed to bow to Her Majesty. Following Queen Elizabeth, the rank is linked to the royal line of succession, with Prince Charles being second in order of importance.

Meghan Markle demonstrates that she's mastered the royal curtsy! pic.twitter.com/VyQ3H6Eku6  TODAY (@TODAYshow) December 25, 2017

RELATED: Prince Harry and Meghan Markles Biographer, Omid Scobie, Has Been Secretly Working on Finding Freedom for Over 2 Years

But this is where things get complicated. Those who are born into the royal family have a higher ranking than those who marry a royal. For example, Princess Beatrice, Princess Eugenie, and Princess Charlotte (all of whom are dubbed the blood princesses) have a higher ranking than Camilla Parker Bowles, Kate Middleton, and Meghan.

That changes, however, whenever the wives are with their husbands. So if Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall, and Charles are together at an engagement, then she takes on his rank and even William is expected to bow to her.

The opposite is true when Camilla is alone. In those instances, Camilla offers a curtsy to all of the blood princesses because they outrank her.

Do any members of the royal family have to curtsy to Meghan Markle?

These rules hold true for Meghan as well. According to Womans World, whenever Meghan is in a room with Harry, who is sixth in line to the throne, she takes on his rank and everyone below him gives her a bow or a curtsy.

For instance, if the Sussexes are at an engagement with Queen Elizabeth, Charles, Camilla, Princess Anne, Beatrice, and Eugenie, then Meghan only has to curtsy to Queen Elizabeth, Charles, and Camilla.

Anne, Beatrice, and Eugenie would have to curtsy Meghan because she has Harrys rank. If you take Harry out of the equation, then Meghan would have to curtsy to everyone in the scenario.

These rules are generally followed whenever the royals appear in public together. In private, some of these formalities are likely skipped, especially with the lower ranking royals.

But how does Megxit factor into the curtsy rules?

Harry and Meghans exit from the royal family certainly complicates the rules of etiquette. In Queen Elizabeths announcement about the couples exit, she mentioned that they will no longer use their HRH titles, but she did not say that they lost them.

According to People, since Harrys place in the line of succession remains unchanged, the curtsy rules will likely remain in place.

RELATED: Meghan Markle and Prince Harrys Sussex Royal Still Up and Running, Despite Queen Elizabeths Ban

It all is a bit murky, etiquette expert Myka Meier explained. Now that they are keeping their HRH titles but not using them, the order of curtsy would stay the same as it has been since Meghan married into the family.

When Meghan is in a room with Harry, everyone who is below his rank in the royal family will still be required to curtsy or bow to the former Suits star.

How do Americans greet Her Majesty?

To make things even more complicated, Americans are not required to follow the same etiquette rules as the British when they greet Queen Elizabeth.

Meier revealed that Americans do not have to bow or curtsy to Her Majesty because that is not a custom in the United States. Instead, they can extend their hand for a quick shake and wait for Queen Elizabeth to respond.

Should You Curtsy If You Spot Meghan Markle During Her New York City Vacation? https://t.co/UgXaIi4PI9  People (@people) February 19, 2019

Americans, of course, can always choose to bow or curtsy to members of the royal family, but that is up to the individual.

These rules do not apply to Meghan, however, as she is technically still a part of the royal family.
Ricardo Williamson was 62 years old with at least three chronic medical conditions when he went to state prison in January to serve a one-year sentence for shoplifting.

He died there last Sunday, in the middle of a pandemic, records show.

Its unclear what killed Williamson, who had a history of drug addiction and a lengthy record of more than 40 convictions for shoplifting and other minor crimes. State corrections officials declined to confirm his cause of death, citing medical privacy rules.

I dont know for sure that he died from COVID-19, said Judith Fallon, a deputy public defender in Passaic County, whose office represented Williamson.

But I do know for sure that he shouldnt have died in prison.

An NJ Advance Media investigation published earlier this week found New Jerseys prison system was ill-prepared to deal with the coronavirus crisis, taking weeks to implement basic prevention methods like giving inmates masks and hand sanitizer.

Williamson is one of more than 40 inmates who have died in New Jersey prisons since the start of the global pandemic  in a state with the highest rate of prisoner coronavirus deaths in the country.

Its unusual for shoplifters to serve state prison sentences. An NJ Advance Media review of court records in his case found prosecutors and a Superior Court judge decided to send Williamson to prison as a punitive measure because he was a habitual shoplifter who had repeatedly violated his parole.

At a January sentencing hearing, Williamson and his court-appointed attorney, James Sheehan, told the judge he was a grandfather of eight and a great-grandfather of four, a man with a third-grade education who stole watches and perfume from the Macys at the Willowbrook Mall in Wayne to support his addiction.

I made wrong choices," Williamson told Judge Justine A. Niccollai, according to a recording of the hearing. I want to go back to school to learn to read and write, and spelling, and thats very important.

Williamsons niece, Nina Kemp, said her Uncle Ricky was a wonderful man" who loved to sing for her and her children.

He preferred the classics, she said: Michael Jackson. The Temptations. The OJays.

You had to hear him, she said. He had a nice little soft voice. A real smooth dude.

Kemp said corrections officials never notified Williamsons family about his death. She found out from a reporter.

Dang, I cant believe it," she said. "Uncle Ricky. Im going to miss him.

Court records show Williamson was given a one-year sentence on a single charge of fourth-degree shoplifting for stealing about $200 worth of merchandise. He had no record of violent crimes, but was facing up to five years in prison because of similar additional charges and his violation of parole.

He agreed to the one-year plea deal, but at the January hearing, Sheehan asked the judge to reconsider, citing multiple, unspecified chronic illnesses that required intensive medical care. He asked the judge to sentence Williamson to time served, noting he had already spent four months at the Passaic County Jail.

He has health problems, one in particular that make him particularly vulnerable to an incarcerated setting, Sheehan said.

The prosecutor in the case, Melissa Simsen, argued there were services (in prison) where the defendant can get medical treatment, so I dont think it will be a hardship."

Judge Niccollai told Williamson a year in prison was appropriate because of his lengthy record.

You continue to engage in criminal activity with this condition, so to say, Well judge, I shouldnt have to go to jail because my medical health is fragile and I could get very sick if Im in jail and exposed to other folks who have illnesses,' thats not fair, she said. Thats not something that this court could, quite frankly, consider, because there is a punitive aspect (to the sentence).

That was January, a few weeks before New Jersey was rocked by the coronavirus crisis.

Williamson was sent to the Central Reception and Assignment Facility in Trenton, an intake facility where male inmates go before they are assigned to a regular prison. The facility has logged just one death linked to the coronavirus as of Friday, according to state data.

Williamson never left.

Fallon, the deputy public defender, said that because of his age, health and the nature of his crimes, Williamson should have been the first person released under an executive order signed by Gov. Phil Murphy allowing the temporary release of sick and elderly prisoners to stem the spread of the coronavirus behind bars.

While New Jersey jails moved quickly to furlough hundreds of non-violent inmates following a Supreme Court order in March, civil liberties advocates say prison officials took far too long to implement Murphys executive order.

The Department of Corrections declined to comment.

The Rev. Charles Boyer, the head of Salvation and Social Justice, a New Jersey social justice group, is among the prisoner advocates who have criticized Murphys administration for its response to the pandemic in its prisons.

We made, as a state, a strategic decision that it made more sense to incarcerate him at $50,000 a year rather than figure out why it was that he was shoplifting, Boyer said of Williamson.

He got a death sentence for shoplifting.

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Maverick member of parliament for Assin Central, Kennedy Agyapong has hinted the ruling New Patriotic Party (NPP) of a plot by some NDC members in the upcoming 2020 election.

According to Kennedy Agyapong, the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) have been engaging themselves in meetings in the Ashanti Region on how to win the presidential power this year at all cost.

The member of parliament has observed that the Ashanti Regional NDC had their last meeting in the Ashanti Region at Kotwi off the Kumasi Obuasi Road for their "wicked agender to kill expatriates" in the country as the country heads towards the 2020 general election.

On Accra-based Oman FM, he mentioned that Hubi Yahaya, Faizer Ibrahim, Charles Armani, Yaw Barima, Yamin and others summing up to 25 people were present at the meeting.

Kennedy Agyapong is asking the National Security and the government to act quickly to the supposed intent of the NDC else they will disgrace the government as well as the NPP party.

"The NDC wants to kill and get power and this time, not Ghanaians, they want to kill expatriates, they will follow expatriates to their house and kill them to give a view to the international world that Ghana isn't stable," he revealed on Oman Fm.

Following a statement earlier made by former president John Dramani Mahama regarding the instability of Ghana, Kennedy Agyapong noted that their actions if materialized will vindicate former President Mahama.

He, nevertheless, dared the NDC to take him on if they think his accusations are baseless.

Listen to the audio from 6mins 20secs onwards:
Park Ji Hoon has died at the age of 31.

Recently, the family of the late actor announced on his Instagram account that he passed away on May 11 after battling cancer. They also posted the location and the time of the funeral, which is scheduled on May 15. The family also posted a message with a photo of the funeral bouquets from acquaintances and relatives.

They decided to post the message in case they have missed informing anyone about Park Ji Hoon's passing.

In the message written by his older sister, she deeply thanked everyone for sending their comforting and encouraging words even at the time of a pandemic.

Because of the fans' love and support for the actor, they are not alone in sending their beloved in heaven, and all of Park Ji Hoon's supporters are a huge source of strength for the family. The letter also reminded everyone to be careful of the COVID-19 and stay healthy.

The actor's sister ended her message informing everyone that he is laid to rest in Ilsan Blue Soul Memorial Park, on the third floor, 24th row, and 4th column.

The mourning of the family will take time after the funeral, but thanks to the love and support of their friends and fans of Park Ji Hoon, the family can remain strong.

Park Ji Hoon appeared in the hit 2017 Korean drama "Chicago Typewriter," along with lead stars Yoo Ah In, Im Soo Jung, and Go Kyung Pyo.

We are sending our deepest condolences to the family.
San Francisco is considering approving higher health care rates for more than 47,000 city employees and early retirees starting in July, but workers say they cant afford to pay more during a pandemic and an economic recession.

About two dozen employees and labor leaders spoke against the increases Thursday during a meeting of the San Francisco Health Service Board, saying frontline workers are under economic stress. A San Francisco General Hospital employees voice broke on the phone line talking about how her household has lost income, forcing her to pull her kids out of day care and work 20 extra hours a week.

Supervisor Dean Preston, who sits on the Health Service Board, said that raising rates is highly problematic, especially amidst this health crisis.

Employees bear a fraction of the monthly costs of their health care plans  anywhere from zero to 17%  while the city pays the rest. They have an option of five plans with the cheapest monthly rate for a single person at $48 and the most expensive for someone with two or more dependents at $1,393.

Under proposed changes, nearly 62% of employees with Kaiser Permanente plans would pay 5.8% more. A smaller percentage of city employees on certain Blue Shield of California plans would see rates increase by 3.6% while other Blue Shield members would see rates rise by 6.3%. For a small fraction of workers with UnitedHealthcare plans through the city, rates could rise 9%.

Employees said that in the midst of a pandemic, with economic stresses and an increased demand for health care, the city shouldnt let insurance companies raise rates. Workers and union representatives said the city should protect employees during this pandemic.

Its immoral in a public health crisis, said Rudy Gonzalez, executive director of the San Francisco Labor Council, which represents 130 unions. While we appreciate the designation as heroes, essential workers and disaster workers really need your support.

Workers most strongly protested an alternative plan to raise Kaiser rates by less  5.6%  but to double co-pays for inpatient hospitalization and nearly triple them for outpatient surgery, on par with Blue Shields charges. Most city officials also opposed the idea of raising out-of-pocket expenses for care, and the board agreed not to consider raising co-pays.

The Health Service Board did not vote on the rate increases but agreed to revisit the subject on May 28. The officials need to formalize the plan and send it to the Board of Supervisors for final approval by July.

Kaisers main justification for the increase was higher use of behavioral and mental health services from 2018 to 2019, which raised costs, an insurance consultant explained Thursday.

The proposed rates represent our efforts to sustain and deliver high-quality health care for all our members over the long term, and reflect the expected costs of providing coverage for our members, a Kaiser spokesman said.

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.

Blue Shields main drivers for rate hikes are the rise in provider costs and increases in prescription drug costs, spokeswoman Erika Conner said.

We are committed to ensuring all Californians have access to high-quality health care at an affordable price, she said.

Jessica Shih, a spokeswoman for the San Francisco Health Service System, said the agency shares workers concerns about any increase in rates.

Rate increases are not desired in a normal year, and certainly not in a year where many of our members are impacted by COVID-19, she said, adding that the city agency will work hard, and under the guidance and leadership of our board, to do right by our members.

The proposed rate increases are not drastically different than those of previous years, a city-contracted insurance expert reported Thursday. Kaiser raised rates 5.9% in last fiscal years plan. Blue Shield had increases of 2% last year.

Mallory Moench is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: mallory.moench@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @mallorymoench
Sony has developed an interesting new hybrid technology: An image sensor with AI processing system built into the hardware, making it a single integrated system. The benefits and applications for this are potentially enormous as imagery and code continue to merge.

The idea is fairly simple in concept. You take a traditional CMOS image sensor like you'd find in any phone or camera today and stack it on top of a logic chip that's built not just for pulling pixels off the sensor but for operating a machine learning model that extracts information from those pixels.

The result is a single electronic assembly that can do a great deal of interesting processing on a photo before that photo is ever sent elsewhere, like a main logic board, GPU or the cloud.

To be clear, image sensors already have companion processors that do the usual work of sorting pixels, compressing them into a JPEG, and so on. But they're very focused on performing a handful of common tasks very quickly.

The Sony chip, as the company explains it, is capable of more sophisticated processes and outputs. For instance, if the exposure is of a dog in a field, the chip could immediately analyze it for objects, and instead of sending on the full image, simply report "dog," "grass" and anything else it recognizes.

It also could also perform essentially improvisational edits, such as cropping out everything in the photo but parts it recognizes and has been told to report  only the flowers, but never the stems, say.

The benefit of such a system is that it can discard all kinds of unnecessary or unwanted data before that data ever goes into the main device's storage or processing pipeline. That means less processor power is used, for one thing, but it may also be safer and more secure.

Cameras in public places could preemptively blur faces or license plates. Smart home devices could recognize individuals without ever saving or sending any image data. Multiple exposures could be merged to form heat or frequency maps of the camera's field of view.

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You might expect a higher power draw or latency from a chip with integrated AI processes, but companies like Xnor (recently acquired by Apple) have shown that such tasks can be performed very quickly and at extremely low cost.

While more complex processing would still be the purview of larger, more powerful chips, this kind of first pass is able to produce a huge variety of valuable data and, properly designed, could prove to be more robust against attacks or abuse.

Right now Sony's "Intelligent Vision Sensor" is still only a prototype, available to order for testing but not production. But as Sony is one of the leading image sensor providers in the world, this is likely to find its way into quite a few devices in one form or another.
When our community and society were faced with the life-changing challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Jewish Federation of Greater Orlando stepped up to fill the void brought on by the loss of our normal active lives.

At the onset of the pandemic, the Federation rose to the occasion to bring the essence of Passover into everyones homes and heartsthis included a beautiful virtual Womens Passover Seder hosted by Cantor Jackie Rawiszer, attended by more than 100 women; and a community virtual Seder for first night of Passover, hosted by Yael Weinstein, Federations director of A...
The World Bank has approved US $1 billion for India as social security technology fund for countrys urban poor and migrant workers during the coronavirus crisis.

This takes the total commitment from the World Bank towards emergency Covid-19 response in India to US $2 billion. A US $1 billion support was announced last month to support Indias health sector.

The focus will be to enable India to integrate all of its 400-plus social security schemes at a technology level, the bank said.

The project will be crucial to rebalance social security towards urban poor, as much as rural, said Junaid Ahmad, country director, World Bank.

I think PMs Atmanirbhar mission is very important in terms of directions and India is not making distinction between life and livelihoods in the aftermath of Covid-19, he added.

Of the US $1 billion commitment, US $550 million will be financed by a credit from the International Development Association (IDA) - the World Banks concessionary lending arm and US $200 million will be a loan from the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), with a final maturity of 18.5 years including a grace period of five years.

The remaining US $250 million will be made available after June 30, 2020.

The World Bank said the support in collaboration with the government is aimed at integrating platforms so that people should not have to run around from one place to another to access a myriad of social schemes, said Shrayana Bhattacharya, senior World Bank official.

Last month, the bank had approved a plan to roll out US $160 billion in emergency aid over 15 months to help countries deal with the impact of the global coronavirus pandemic.

The board of the Washington-based development lender announced the first set of fast-track crisis funding, with an initial $1.9 billion going to projects in 25 countries, and operations moving forward in another 40 nations.

India was the largest beneficiary of the first wave of programmes with a facility for US $1 billion.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a Rs 20 lakh crore or $266 billion support package for the economy on Tuesday to help mitigate the damage caused by the coronavirus and the lockdown it has triggered.

Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been announcing the details on the package, equivalent to around 10% of Indias GDP.

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France's oldest surviving former president Valery Giscard d'Estaing is "very upset" by an accusation of sexual assault made by a German journalist and has no recollection of such an incident, his lawyer said on Thursday. French prosecutors this week opened an investigation after claims by reporter Ann-Kathrin Stracke that Giscard d'Estaing, now 94, repeatedly touched her behind in his Paris office after an interview in 2018. Giscard d'Estaing served as president for one term from 1974 until 1981, when he lost out on re-election to Francois Mitterrand. "President Valery Giscard d'Estaing is very upset and hurt by the accusation of sexual assault brought against him by Mrs Stracke, of which he has no recollection," his lawyer Jean-Marc Fedida said in a statement. The lawyer, issuing Giscard d'Estaing's first official reaction to the probe, said the former president had decided not to "feed the polemic" by speaking out on the issue. But the statement said Giscard d'Estaing was confident in the French justice system and had mandated his lawyer to take all action needed against "defamatory attacks that damage his honour". Stracke, 37, told AFP last week she had filed a complaint against the former leader, claiming he had placed his hands on her backside three times while they posed for a photograph together in December 2018, when he was 92. "I decided to tell my story because I think that people should know that a French former president harassed me sexually after an interview," said Stracke, a journalist for German public television WDR. She took her case to Paris prosecutors on March 10 this year, backed by her employer which carried out an independent investigation into her claims. Giscard d'Estaing ushered through a spree of radical reforms as president, legalising abortion, liberalising divorce and reducing the voting age to 18. He sits today on France's Constitutional Council, the body tasked with ensuring that laws conform with the constitution.
Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the U.S. job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus.

Until now, it was mostly hair salons, restaurants, tattoo parlors and other small businesses reopening in some parts of the country. But the auto industry is among the first major sectors of the economy to restart its engine.

With it comes about 133,000 U.S. workers pouring back into assembly plants that will open in the coming week, or just over half of the industry's workforce before the pandemic, according to estimates by The Associated Press.

In addition, parts-making companies began cranking this week to get components flowing, adding thousands more workers.

Looming in the background is an economy decimated by the pandemic. Nearly 3 million laid-off workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, raising the total seeking aid to about 36 million.

Although some states have begun to let selected businesses reopen, workers are still reporting difficulty getting unemployment benefits. Freelance, gig and self-employed workers are struggling.

Even the auto sector won't see a full return to normal yet, and if people don't start buying vehicles again, the workers could be sent home. Yet automakers say there's enough pent-up demand, especially for pickup trucks, to get factories humming again.

That could help states slow the drain on their unemployment benefit funds. In Michigan, where over one-third of the force sought benefits, the fund fell from $4.6 billion before the pandemic to $4.1 billion on April 30, said Jeff Donofrio, director of the state Department of and Economic Opportunity.

Some returning auto employees could work part-time and get still some unemployment benefits, but federal programs could cover part of their payments, he said.

At Ford, where about 47,000 U.S. factory workers will return by next week, there's optimism that consumer demand will accompany them. Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley said the company, using data collected from new Ford models from the past two years, is seeing sales recover.

In Europe, China and the U.S., Ford has found a correlation between the number of trips people take and auto sales, with trips increasing as restrictions eased.

We started to see in early April a change where people started to take more trips," Farley said Thursday.

"The (sales) decline stopped and our retail sales improved a lot. Auto sales in China, where the virus peaked before the U.S., could be harbinger of things to come. China sales fell in 2.6% in April but losses narrowed from the 48% free-fall in March.

Production at many plants is nearly back to normal after being shut down in January and February. Volkswagen, Honda, Mercedes and Ford reported no virus cases among employees since reopening. Fiat Chrysler had two, but said the workers never entered factories.

Things are worse in Europe, where sales plummeted 55% in March and some factories are running only at 40% of capacity. The pandemic has affected over 1.1 million European auto industry workers, almost half the sector's manufacturing jobs.

Most are getting paid through government support. A survey of auto parts suppliers shows that a third of executives believe it will take at least two years for the industry to recover.

U.S. sales fell 46% in April as the virus took hold, but analysts are forecasting a smaller decline of 30% in May. Sales have been juiced by huge incentives, with some automakers offering 0% financing for as long as seven years.

Pickup trucks are giving automakers the most hope, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice president at LMC Automotive, a consulting firm. Through April, total auto sales were down 21%, but pickups were only off 4%, he said.

Yet Schuster says automakers could be a little too optimistic about sales overall. Those consumers who are still unemployed are not likely to be making auto purchases, he said.

Some U.S. automakers, like General Motors, are restarting slowly, only bringing back workers on one shift in factories, some of which ran around the clock before the pandemic. Others, like Subaru in Indiana, have a full complement of employees.

Although companies are taking precautions, one big virus outbreak at an auto plant could send the industry back into hibernation. And the industry could face parts supply interruptions from Mexico, where the government wants to reopen factories despite rising virus cases.

Automakers in the U.S. are requiring employees to fill out questionnaires daily to see if they have symptoms, they're taking temperatures with no-touch thermometers before workers enter buildings, and they're requiring gloves, masks and face shields.

They've also tried to keep at least six feet between workers, staggered time between shifts so workers don't interact, and have put up plexiglas barriers when possible.

All the steps were tested on U.S. workers who volunteered to make protective gear and breathing machines while they were laid off. Automakers say they know of no virus cases among workers in the effort.

But Phil Cuthbertson a worker at GM's transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, who will return Monday, said he has mixed feelings about it. I just don't want the whole thing to be pushed on us to go back if it's not safe, he said.

Cindy Estrada, United Auto Workers vice president for Fiat Chrysler, said she's been impressed by the companies' safety commitment. But she's sure some workers, especially in the hard-hit Detroit area, will be fearful because family members or co-workers have had COVID-19.

At least 25 UAW members employed by Detroit automakers have died from the virus, although no one is sure if they caught it at a factory.

The union will be watching in case workers get infected, though there's no magic number for when it will try to close a factory, Estrada said.

If something looks like it's becoming a hot spot, then we need to act quickly and make adjustments, she said. No one wants to see that happen.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Just 11 days after four students were killed at Kent State University in Ohio in 1970, two black students were killed by police at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

Unrest at both campuses and others across the nation, was spawned by the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War and the fight for civil rights and against racism.

At Jackson State College, according to blackpast.org, a group of African American high school and college students gathered just off campus and began rioting in response to a false rumor that Fayette, Mississippi Mayor Charles Evers, the brother of slain civil rights activist Medgar Evers, and his wife, Nannie Evers, were assassinated. Several white motorists called Jackson Police Department to complain about the African-American rioters throwing rocks at them as they drove by the campus on Lynch Street. The young protesters also started fires and overturned a dump truck.

On May 16, 1970, the Associated Press reported in The Patriot, that the shooting deaths of Phillip L. Gibbs, 21, of Ripley, Miss., a Jackson State student, and James Earl Green, 17, a senior at Jim Hill High School, happened shortly after midnight.

The bullet-riddled windows of Alexander Hall, a women's dormitory at Jackson State College in Jackson, Miss., are shown after two African-American students were killed and 12 injured when police opened fire on the building claiming they were fired upon by snipers, May 15, 1970. The shooting occurred after rioting broke out on the campus. (AP Photo)AP

Police were at Jackson State College because motorists complained that rocks had been thrown at cars passing along Lynch Street, which bisects the campus, and fires had broken out in a dump truck and a pile of rubble.

About 75 officers, including city police and highway patrolmen, were standing near a womens dormitory, facing a crowd of male Negro youths clustered in front.

There was a popping noise. Students said it was the sound of a bottle breaking. Gov. John Bell Williams said: From early reports, it appears the officers were fired upon.

Officers armed with shotguns and rifles opened fire. The fusillade went on for about 25 seconds, with several hundred rounds expended.

Afterward, National Guardsmen in armored personnel carriers moved onto the scene. But Maj. Bob Harper said no weapons were loaded and none was fired and none of the tear gas was used.

Relatives said Green worked at a grocery store at night and apparently was walking home when he stopped at the campus.

Nine other Negro youths were wounded. Four coeds were treated for hysteria. Windows at one end of the rectangular dormitory were blasted out by the gunfire.

The brick wall of the dormitory was thickly pocked with bullet scars.

It was the second straight night that campus unrest had brought police to Jackson State.

College and city officials said they knew of no specific grievance to trigger Thursday nights unrest but demonstrations over civil rights at the campus are fairly common.

Firemen had been sent to the campus earlier to extinguish flames in a pile of rubble. They said rocks were thrown at them. There was a police report of sniping.

Students peer out of the bullet-riddled windows of Alexander Hall, a women's dormitory at Jackson State College in Jackson, Miss., after two African-American students were killed and 12 injured when police opened fire on the building, claiming they were fired upon by snipers, May 15, 1970. The shooting occurred after rioting broke out on the campus. (AP Photo)AP

The president of the college shutdown the campus for the remainder of the semester.

According to the Associated Press, Dr. John A. Peoples Jr., told a student body meeting:

We have gone through a night of agony unparalleled in the history of Jackson State. We have witnessed two of our brethren slain wantonly and determinedly. This will not go unavenged.

We will press hard to see that the culprits are brought to justice, Peoples said. Cooperate with your leaders, keep the faith and we will overcome and prevail.

According to a story on Jackson State Universitys website, at least 140 shots were fired at a distance of 30 to 50 feet. As the shooting started, Students scattered, some running for the trees in front of the library, but most scrambling for the doors of Alexander Hall West. A few students were trampled. Others, wounded, were dragged inside or left moaning in the grass.

When the gunfire ended, Phillip Layfayette Gibbs, 21, a junior pre-law major with a wife, a child and a baby on the way, lay dead 50 feet east of the door. He had been hit four times. Across the street, behind the line of police and highway patrolmen, James Earl Green, 17, was sprawled in front of B. F. Roberts Dining Hall. Green, a senior at Jim Hill High School, had stopped to watch the action on his walk home from work at a grocery store. He had been hit once in the chest. Police later claimed they had taken fire from the direction of B.F. Roberts Hall.

According to that story, There were no arrests in connection with the slayings, and the FBI found no evidence of a sniper. The Presidents Commission on Campus Unrest found police action was an unreasonable, unjustified overreaction.

The area of the shooting today is called the Gibbs-Green Pedestrian Walkway. There also is a monument honor the men and bullet holes in the facade of Alexander Hall remain visible to this day.

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The Egyptian armed forces announced on Friday that it had killed 7 takfiri elements in North Sinai governorate in an operation against terrorist hideouts.

According to a statement, the forces killed a takfiri element during a raid on a terrorist hideout located on a farm, and six other takfiri elements during their attempt to escape.

A 4x4 vehicle and 3 motorcycles without license plates were found at the site.

The forces also found 10 IEDs, which were subject to controlled demolition, and four suicide vests.

Egypt is fighting an Islamist militancy based in the northern part of the Sinai Peninsula that has gained pace since 2013.

Hundreds of security forces have been killed in attacks claimed by militants, while the military has killed hundreds of extremists as part of an extensive campaign.

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This year the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) is to honour four researchers - two women and two men - with the Eugen and Ilse Seibold Prize. Chemist Professor Dr. Shigeyoshi Inoue from TUM, Japanologist Professor Dr. Regine Mathias from Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, materials physicist Professor Dr. Hidenori Takagi from the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart and jurist Professor Kanako Takayama from the University of Kyoto are each to receive the 15,000 award. Through years of dedication, they have successfully contributed to both academic and cultural exchange between Germany and Japan. The Seibold Prize will be awarded for the final time in 2020, since the fund established by Eugen and Ilse Seibold in 1997 will be exhausted following this round of awards.

The choice of two Japanese researchers integrated in the German research system for this year's prize, reflects the new realities of the globalisation of research, the jury noted. "In selecting four prizewinners, the DFG is once again sending out a strong message in support of German-Japanese cooperation," said the chair of the jury, DFG Vice President Professor Dr. Julika Griem. "We believe we have chosen an academically excellent group of individuals who are highly committed to promoting German-Japanese relations, and with the inclusion of two highly qualified women, it also fulfils the DFG's Research-Oriented Standards on Gender Equality." Due to the coronavirus pandemic, the award ceremony for the Seibold Prize will not take place until next year.

Chemist Shigeyoshi Inoue has shown tremendous dedication in promoting exchange and cooperation between Germany and Japan. Born in 1980 in Aichi, he has been awarded fellowships from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and has been working in Germany since 2008. In 2015 he was appointed professor of silicon chemistry at TUM. In 2014 he received an ERC Starting Grant for his work on the synthesis and catalytic applications of NHC-stabilised silylium ylidene ions. Inoue was involved in the Junior Expert Program (JEX) of the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), which enables young managers in research and industry in Germany and Japan to become acquainted with research institutions in the other country.

Regine Mathias, a retired professor at Ruhr-Universitat Bochum, was actively involved in promoting exchange and cooperation between Germany and Japan during her long research career. She enhanced the understanding of both countries through her work on the history of everyday life in modern Japan, always avoiding an exoticisation of the country, and placing its historical development within a global historical context. She was also involved in supporting early career researchers and served on various bodies, including the board of trustees of the JaDe Foundation, which promotes German-Japanese academic and cultural relations, and the board of trustees of the Max Weber Foundation. Mathias was a DFG review board member from 2008 to 2015. She is currently coordinating the development of a Japanese library at the Centre Europeen d'Etudes Japonaises d'Alsace in France.

Hidenori Takagi is well known both in Germany and in Japan for his many contributions to materials physics. He has published pioneering research on metal-insulator transitions, high-temperature superconductivity and quantum magnetism. After researching at Tokyo's RIKEN institute in Tokyo and working as a professor at the University of Tokyo, in 2013 he was appointed director of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research in Stuttgart, at the same time becoming the first Japanese scholar to be awarded a Humboldt professorship. Takagi has won several awards, including the IBM Science Prize, and is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He promotes German-Japanese cooperation by collaborating closely at the MPI with research teams at the University of Tokyo, where he still holds a professorship. This partnership has given rise to joint research projects, staff exchanges and annual workshops.

Jurist Kanako Takayama was appointed professor of law at the University of Kyoto in 2005, becoming one of the youngest female law professors in Japan. Her research deals with questions such as the importance of sympathy in lay participation in penal procedures, crime among the elderly in Japan and criminal penalties for tattoos. In 1998 Takayama received a grant from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and carried out a two-year research visit to the University of Cologne. Since then she has organised German-Japanese conferences for early career researchers in law and has been actively involved in the Humboldt Alumni Association Japan. She is also active in many international, German and Japanese associations and is a member of the Science Council of Japan. She has received an array of awards for her contributions, including the Philipp Franz von Siebold Prize in 2018 and the Federal Cross of Merit in 2006.

The Eugen and Ilse Seibold Prize has been presented by the DFG to Japanese and German researchers since 1997. The prize money comes from a fund set up by Eugen and Ilse Seibold. After this year's awards have been presented, the proceeds of this fund will be exhausted, with the result that the prize cannot be awarded again. Marine geologist Eugen Seibold was President of the DFG between 1980 and 1985. In 1994, he and American environmentalist Lester Brown were awarded the Blue Planet Prize by the Asahi Glass Foundation in Japan - at 400,000 the world's largest environmental prize. Eugen Seibold and his wife, Dr. Ilse Seibold, donated 150,000 of the prize money to the DFG.

###

Further Information

Media contact: DFG Press and Public Relations, Tel. +49 228 885-2109, presse@dfg.de

DFG Head Office contact: Dr. Ingrid Krumann, International Affairs, Tel. +49 228 885-2786, ingrid.kruessmann@dfg.de

More information about the prize and previous winners is available at: http://www.dfg.de/en/funded_projects/prizewinners/seibold_prize
Former Bomet Governor Isaac Ruto has come out to address reports that he was airlifted from Bomet on a helicopter Wednesday morning and dropped at State House for a meeting with President Uhuru Kenyatta.

On Wednesday, a photo was shared widely on Twitter showing a chopper believed to have been sent by the President to pick the anti-DP Ruto politician, with speculations rife that Isaac was all set for a role in Uhurus political realignment.

But in a statement through his Chama Cha Mashinani (CCM) party, Ruto confirmed flying to Nairobi but not to State House.

My attention has been drawn to claims circulating in the social media that I was picked Wednesday by a chopper from my Tumoi residence in Bomet County and flown to State House Nairobi.

I wish to clarify that I indeed flew to Nairobi from Bomet with my wife who is in the essential service sector and who was required for an official engagement by her employer in Nairobi, said Ruto.

He added: I am surprised by the speculation and stories flying back and forth on social media linking my travel to the political realignments in the country.

Ruto added that it is not unusual for him to use helicopters and People should not read too much into this.

But in a statement to newsrooms on Thursday, Rutos aide Kiprotich Samoei said Chama Cha Mashinani Party was working on a political deal with President Uhuru Kenyatta.

He said the post-election coalition deal with Jubilee could be ready as soon as next week.

The Party Leader Hon Isaac Rutto met with the President H.E Uhuru Kenyatta and agreed in principle that the two parties work together in the interest of peace, cohesion and development in the country, said Samoei.

CCM Chairman Mohammed Guleid added: The pact will be deposited with the registrar of political parties for formal signing soon.
Telstra has blamed clumsy construction workers for a widespread internet outage across parts of Melbourne's east, which has made working and studying from home more difficult.

The third-party construction workers caused "significant" damage to Telstra fibre cables in Box Hill while digging and piling, Telstra said. People in the area began reporting problems with their service on Thursday afternoon.

Internet cables were damaged by constructions workers. Credit:Erin Jonasson

It means suburbs in Melbourne's east, including Box Hill and Mont Albert, are experiencing outages to Foxtel, the National Broadband Network, broadband cable service and ADSL.

Telstra has apologised and hopes to get services back up on Friday.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 06:16:58|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said mankind is "so unprepared" for COVID-19, while pointing out that there is not enough humility, unity or solidarity in the world.

Guterres earlier on Thursday brought together the principals of 31 UN system entities in a virtual meeting of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), the longest-standing and highest-level coordination forum of the UN system.

As CEB chair, the secretary-general gave an overview of the state of the world, reflecting on the future of multilateralism, beyond the immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as on the risks brought by the current crisis for human rights, global governance, ethics and international cooperation.

"What is clear today is the fragility of humankind and the planet. With all the scientific progress we still don't know how to deal with a virus, we are so unprepared. It is clear there is not enough humility, unity and not enough solidarity in the world," he said.

With this in mind, the secretary-general brought to the board's attention the UN policy briefs on the effects of COVID-19, released over the past several weeks, as strengthening the fundamental role of the UN as a global platform.

Board members David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned of negative global economic repercussions of COVID-19, with incoming data projecting more adverse scenarios than only four weeks ago, including a high risk of increase in poverty and inequality.

Malpass reiterated the call for a debt moratorium for developing countries and underlined the importance of having a human focus during the recovery. "We need to open the economy in a way that people can rise beyond poverty."

Georgieva, while mentioning the different risks associated with the pandemic, also reflected on some opportunities such as "leapfrogging to a digital world after the crisis" and focusing on low carbon climate resilience.

Recognizing the necessity of a human-centered recovery, CEB principals rallied behind the secretary general's call to action on human rights and related policy brief on "COVID-19 and human rights" and emphasized that responses, which respect and are shaped by human rights, result in better outcomes in beating the pandemic.

CEB members considered the challenges of financing the COVID-19 response while keeping up the pace of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. They joined the UN secretary-general's call for bold climate action to be embedded into all aspects of economic recovery, with recovery packages delivering green jobs and driving sustainable growth.

The board also focused on data as a strategic asset to inform the post-pandemic recovery. The "Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere: With Insight, Impact and Integrity" was introduced as an overarching reference for data-driven leadership.

Furthermore, the principals endorsed a system-wide roadmap for innovating UN data and statistics, an ambitious collective effort by the UN system's chief statisticians to innovate UN data and statistical outputs in support of member states and the international community.

Echoing the UN secretary-general's call for building back better by choosing policies, investments and actions that protect nature and are carbon neutral, CEB members saw the need for a stronger focus on nature across the whole UN system and decided to develop a common approach to integrating biodiversity and nature-based solutions for sustainable development into the UN's policy and program planning and delivery.

The board considered it to be the UN system's collective responsibility to ensure recognition of 2020 as a "Super Year" for nature in which the international community heeded the dramatic warnings -- from the harrowing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the devastation caused by wildfires across the globe -- and seized the opportunity to act decisively to reset humanity's relationship with nature and to set the world on track to a more sustainable future. Enditem
The Australian government spent almost $10 million on 500,000 antibody tests that have been found to be inaccurate at testing for COVID-19.

The federal government confirmed on Thursday it had spent $9.9 million buying 500,000 OnSite antibody tests from MD Solutions, an Australian distributor. It said the tests could still be used in conjunction with further laboratory tests.

An antibody test being used in the US. Credit:Bloomberg

The Doherty Institute for Infection and Immunity ran lab tests on the antibody test kits and found they were far less accurate than claimed, and were not sensitive enough to diagnose an acute COVID-19 case.

Earlier, the government received separate official advice saying the tests could not be used at all in Australia.
The virus was brought by a woman who is a nurse in the boarding school.

Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko has said 81 school children tested positive for COVID-19 in Kyiv's Darnytsia boarding school for girls on May 15.

"A new outbreak of the disease has been recorded in the capital city. Eighty-one persons tested positive in the Darnytsia boarding school for girls today," he said during an online briefing on Friday, according to an UNIAN correspondent.

After an employee contracted the infection, all students and staff underwent PCR tests. A total of 182 people were tested.

"According to test results, 81 persons are sick. In particular, 53 students at the age of seven to 35 and staff (26 females and two males). Three patients were hospitalized, while others remain on self-isolation under the supervision of doctors. Infected students of the institution are in satisfactory condition and receive medical care in a boarding school," said Klitschko.

Read alsoKyiv mayor reports 56 new COVID-19 cases, one fatality in past day

He specified that the virus was brought by a woman who is a nurse in the boarding school.

"Such boarding schools work behind closed doors. No one visits them except staff. Now the Darnytsia boarding facility for girls is on full lockdown. Enhanced disinfection and medical examination are underway, while rescuers and police control the entrance to the premises," the mayor said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Kyiv rose by 56 in the past day.

"In the past 24 hours, the number of Kyiv residents who tested positive increased by 56, including nine healthcare workers. Unfortunately, one case was lethal. As of today, there are 2,068 confirmed COVID-19 cases, including 43 deaths, in the capital city," Klitschko said.
Leon County Crime Stoppers is offering a reward of as much as $500 for information leading to an arrest in the theft of a hunting dog from a rural home.

The dog was taken on May 10 from a home in the 1000 block of State Highway 7.

Authorities are asking anyone with information to call 844-234-TIPS.
Piraeus, Greece, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- GasLog Ltd. (the Company (NYSE: GLOG)), an international owner and operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) carriers, announced the election of six directors at the Companys annual general meeting of shareholders held today.

The elected directors are Peter G. Livanos, Bruce L. Blythe, Donald J. Kintzer, Julian R. Metherell, Anthony S. Papadimitriou and Paul A. Wogan. Each director was elected to hold office until the next annual general meeting of shareholders or until his successor has been duly elected and qualified.

Shareholders also approved the appointment of Deloitte LLP as the Companys independent auditors for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2020 and until the conclusion of the next annual general meeting, and authorized the Companys board of directors, acting through the audit and risk committee, to determine the independent auditor fee.

About GasLog Ltd .

GasLog is an international owner, operator and manager of LNG carriers providing support to international energy companies as part of their LNG logistics chain. GasLogs consolidated fleet consists of 35 LNG carriers. Of these vessels, 19 (14 on the water and five on order) are owned by GasLog, one has been sold to a subsidiary of Mitsui & Co., Ltd. and leased back to GasLog under a long-term bareboat charter and the remaining 15 LNG carriers are owned by the Companys subsidiary, GasLog Partners. GasLogs principal executive offices are at 69 Akti Miaouli, 18537 Piraeus, Greece. Visit GasLogs website at http://www.gaslogltd.com.

Contact:

Joseph Nelson

Head of Investor Relations

Phone: +1-212-223-0643

Email: ir@gaslogltd.com
Jagir came to the U.S. in 2010 as a refugee, first to Missouri and then to Iowa after a friend told him the state has got a lot of money and opportunity, Dide said. For years, he worked at the now-shuttered Tyson plant in Denison, Iowa, and later worked at the Smithfield Foods pork plant there.
Lease signs on almost one-third of Stones Corner shopfronts have prompted concerns as to whether the Brisbane high street will weather the effects of the pandemic.

The community has bid farewell to businesses including a sushi train restaurant, newsagent, photography operations and a cafe.

Brisbane's Stones Corner, a high street in the suburb of Coorparoo, during the global pandemic. Foot traffic has dropped and many "For lease" signs are up. Credit:Jocelyn Garcia

At least 17 "For lease" signs were on display this week in empty sites, while about 60 shops had tenants but were mostly closed.

The precinct, nestled on the corner of Logan and Old Cleveland roads, was a bustling direct factory outlet hub in the '90s before DFO opened near the Brisbane Airport and took much of its custom.
Photos by Fadza Ishak for Yahoo News Singapore

KUALA LUMPUR  Starting from Friday (15 May), several states in Malaysia will allow small groups of Muslims to attend congregational prayers at mosques.

Friday prayers, as well as other types of prayers, will be allowed at mosques and selected suraus (assembly hall for religious gatherings) within the respective states COVID-19 green zones. These gatherings will be limited to between three and 30 people for now, excluding the imam (religious leader).

We visited the Masjid Negara in Kuala Lumpur to witness one of the sessions. This was the first time Friday prayers had been held there in two months.
US President Donald Trump tweeted on Saturday that United States will donate ventilators to India to help the country fight the Covid-19 pandemic.

I am proud to announce that the United States will donate ventilators to our friends in India. We stand with India and @narendramodi during this pandemic. Were also cooperating on vaccine development. Together we will beat the invisible enemy!  Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 15, 2020

The US president tweeted, I am proud to announce that the United States will donate ventilators to our friends in India. We stand with India and @narendramodi during this pandemic. Were also cooperating on vaccine development. Together we will beat the invisible enemy!

Donald Trump said both nations stand with each other in order to defeat the coronavirus pandemic. He also said in his tweet that US and India are cooperating to develop a vaccine. He remains hopeful that both nations will stand together to beat the invisible enemy.

India had also earlier supplied large shipments of hydroxychloroquine to help US fight Covid-19.

US has seen most number of cases and fatalities due to Covid-19. It has recorded more than 87,000 deaths and 14 lakh cases. India crossed China as the nation recorded over 81,500 cases with 2,648 deaths due to Covid-19. Globally, more than 3 lakh people have died from the disease which originated in Wuhan, China.
BRAINTREE, Mass., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- MIB Group, Inc., the life and health insurance industry's most trusted and secure partner for data-driven, risk management services is pleased to announce the election of its new Chairman and Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors for 2020-21, the election of one new Director, the re-election of two incumbent Directors, and the appointment of MIB's new President and Chief Executive Officer to the Board. MIB's Board is composed of 12 independent directors, and one internal director, MIB's President and Chief Executive Officer.



Effective with the May 15th Board meeting, Michael C.S. Fosbury, President and Chief Executive Officer of Columbian Mutual Life Insurance Company will become Chairman, thereby succeeding James E. Hohmann, President and Chief Executive Officer of Members Mutual Holding Company (Fidelity Life Association) who will remain on the MIB Board of Directors as Immediate Past Chair. Bruce Baude, Chief Operations and Technology Officer of CNO Financial Group, Inc. will begin his service as Vice Chairman.

Newly elected to a three-year term on the MIB Board of Directors this May is Sarah VanBeck, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer, National Life Group. Re-elected to a second three-year term on the MIB Board is Dr. Gina Guzman, Vice President and Chief Medical Director, Munich American Reinsurance Company; and Harold B. Rojas, Senior Vice President, General Counsel and Corporate Secretary, The Baltimore Life Companies. MIB's new President and Chief Executive Officer, Brian Winikoff, has also joined the Board of Directors. MIB's other Directors, who will continue to sit on the Board, include Mary J. Bahna-Nolan, Senior Vice President, Head of Product Innovation and Strategy, Pacific Life Insurance Company; David Chadwick, President, Primerica Life Insurance Company; Dean A. Del Vecchio, Executive Vice President, Chief of Operations and Chief Information Officer, The Guardian Life Insurance Company of America; Gregory A. Linde, Senior Vice President, Individual Life, Principal Financial Group; and, Jill Rebman, former Vice President of Professional Services, John Hancock Life Insurance.

"Our Board is comprised of experienced and well-respected leaders in the life and health insurance industries who provide valuable strategic guidance on the evolving needs of our members," said Brian Winikoff. "These planned changes provide continuity and preserves strong and diverse representation on our Board," said Winikoff. "I would like to thank all of our Board members for their service, with special thanks and recognition to our outgoing Chairman, Jim Hohmann, for his leadership and support. I am pleased that Jim will continue to serve as an officer on our Board as Immediate Past Chair, and I look forward to working with Mike Fosbury and Bruce Baude in their new roles as Chairman and Vice Chairman."

Michael Fosbury joined the MIB Board in 2018 and will serve as its new Chairman, 2020-2021. He is President and Chief Executive Officer for Columbian Financial Group (CFG) and has held multiple executive management positions including Chief Operating Officer and Vice President and Chief Investment Officer. Prior to joining CFG, Mr. Fosbury was an investment professional in portfolio management and investment banking. He began his career in the futures and options markets tailoring hedge strategies, and then became an institutional fixed income securities trader before moving to the insurance industry as a fixed income investment portfolio manager. He is a Past Chair of the Life Insurers Council (LIC), a council of LOMA, served as a former Director on the Life Insurance Council of New York (LICONY) Board, and a member of the ACLI Forum 500 Board of Governors.

Bruce Baude joined the MIB Board in 2019 and will serve as its new Vice Chairman, 2020-2021. He is Chief Operations and Technology Officer of CNO Financial Group, Inc., providing strategic leadership over CNO's operations and IT functions. Prior to joining CNO, Mr. Baude was Chief Operating Officer at Univita Health and served as Chief Executive Officer of the Long Term Care Group, the industry's largest third-party administrator for long-term care insurance. Immediately prior, he was President and Chief Executive Officer of ProCard, Inc., a subsidiary of global payments processor TSYS. Mr. Baude was previously with Bank One Corporation, where he held various roles including Chief Executive of Banc One Financial Card Services, a third-party payments processing company. He serves on both the National Board as well as the Greater Indiana Chapter Board of the Alzheimer's Association.

Sarah VanBeck will begin her term on the MIB Board in May 2020. Ms. VanBeck is Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer for National Life Group. Before joining National Life in 2017 as Chief Accounting Officer, Ms. VanBeck served as Senior Vice President and Life & Retirement Controller at AIG, where she entered the insurance industry in 1992 as the Manager of SEC Reporting and Analysis at American General Corporation. She is a Certified Public Accountant, and a Fellow of the Life Management Institute.

About MIB

MIB is the life and health insurance industry's most trusted and secure resource for data-driven risk management services that protect the financial integrity of its members and address their evolving needs. Owned by its members, MIB is uniquely positioned to securely collect and analyze confidential data. MIB services help to detect fraud, errors and omissions on insurance applications; to analyze industry data needed to manage a variety of financial risks; and to make regulatory reporting compliance less onerous and more efficient. As the life insurance industry's experience reporting agent, our MIB Solutions, Inc. subsidiary cost-effectively performs annual data calls for insurers subject to principles-based reserving. MIB Group, Inc., a membership corporation, provides services through its wholly-owned operating subsidiaries, MIB, Inc. and MIB Solutions, Inc. For more information, visit www.mibgroup.com.

Media Inquiries: David O. Aronson, MIB Group, Inc., 781.751.6136, [email protected]

SOURCE MIB Group, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.mibgroup.com


Scientists in the US have started a clinical trial to check how azithromycin works in combination with the pneumonia drug atovaquone.

After hydroxychloroquine (HCQ) and remdesivir, azithromycin has gotten the most attention as a possible treatment for COVID-19. The drug was initially proposed to be given along with HCQ. However, scientists in the US have also started a clinical trial to check how azithromycin works in combination with the pneumonia drug atovaquone.

Meanwhile, a lot of pharmaceutical firms in Gujarat are reportedly moving towards the manufacture of azithromycin and HCQ. Gujarats Food and Drug Control Administration has approved 37 firms to manufacture azithromycin.

Azithromycin

Azithromycin is an antibiotic drug that stops the growth of bacteria. It is used to treat various kinds of bacterial infections including pneumonia, some sexually transmitted diseases, bronchitis and certain infections of the ear, throat, lungs, and sinuses. Azithromycin is sometimes used to treat pertussis. This drug does not work for viral infections like cold or flu according to the US National Library of Medicine.

However, preliminary studies show that azithromycin is effective against the Zika and Ebola viruses.

Some people are allergic to azithromycin and this drug is generally not given to those with liver conditions like jaundice.

Azithromycin for COVID-19 treatment

Various studies have been done so far to test the effectiveness of azithromycin in combination with HCQ for the treatment of COVID-19 patients. In March, a study done in France suggested that azithromycin supplemented the effects of HCQ in reducing viral load in COVID-19 patients.

However, another French study and a study done in the USA said that the combination of the two drugs was ineffective.

The US study is still in the preprint phase and is yet to be peer-reviewed.

On May 14, a press release by the National Institute of Health (NIH) announced that they are enrolling 2,000 people for their clinical trial on the efficiency of HCQ and azithromycin combination. For enrollment in the study, a person should be a confirmed coronavirus patient with symptoms including fever, cough and shortness of breath. The NIH investigators anticipate that pregnant and breastfeeding women and people above the age of 60 with comorbidities will all be enrolled in the study.

Earlier in April researchers at the Translational Genomics Research Institute had started a clinical trial to test the combination of azithromycin with the pneumonia drug atovaquone.

It is a small non-randomised trial, for which the Insitute will enrol 25 people confirmed with COVID-19 infection. All the patients would be given 750mg of oral atovaquone for up to 10 days every 12 hours along with 500mg azithromycin on day 1 and 250mg azithromycin once a day for the following 9 days. The results of the study are to be expected by October 2020.

Atovaquone is an antiprotozoal drug. It blocks the growth of certain protozoans that cause pneumonia. It is also used to treat other parasitic diseases like malaria, toxoplasmosis and babesiosis. In lab studies, atovaquone has shown action against the Zika virus.

Unlike HCQ, atovaquone does not have serious side effects. However, this drug may cause an allergic reaction in some and is not recommended for patients with kidney damage.

For more information, read our article on Drugs that are being repurposed for COVID-19 treatment.

Health articles in Firstpost are written by myUpchar.com, Indias first and biggest resource for verified medical information. At myUpchar, researchers and journalists work with doctors to bring you information on all things health.
NEW YORK, NY / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Forex is a decentralized global marketplace where currencies from all over the world are traded by international investors. It is the biggest and most liquidated marketplace for investment and trade. In fact, there is over $5 trillion in trading volume that takes place every day on the Forex market. An investor who can create the right strategy will dominate this market. Many seasoned Forex investors have had more success at Forex trading than stock trading because of its massive liquidity.

Forex has also been a controversial trading market for decades. A lot of people who attempt to trade currency on the Forex marketplace for the first time will usually fail because they don't understand the trading system. Currency trading is one of the most volatile types of trading in existence. The value of currency changes by the second and trading takes place 24 hours per day, seven days per week. Without a concrete strategy in place, investors have the odds stacked against them.

For this reason, so many new investors are afraid to enter the Forex marketplace. That is why one educational Forex trading firm now offers funding to new traders who want to get a hands-on education in trading currency. It is not play money or virtual money being offered, but rather actual cash assets to trade with on the Forex marketplace.

"We want to help millennials by offering them basic and advanced Forex mentorship," said David Heiple, who is the founder of Foreign Exchange LLC. "The services are administered at our office in the form of seminars. There are standard seminars for new students and advanced seminars for current students who want to advance their training. We plan on doing our seminars globally in the near future as well."

Heiple and Foreign Exchange LLC are offering to place between $25,000 and $50,000 in the Forex accounts of their newest students in order to accelerate their Forex trading careers. This type of offering has never been made before by any other Forex company. "There is a lot of bad criticism surrounding the Forex marketplace and the people who try to educate others about it," said Heiple. "I want to help new investors feel as comfortable as possible without them worrying about getting scammed."

Foreign Exchange LLC is specifically targeting college students who are desperate to earn a passive income, especially during these tough economic times when many of them are out of work. The company offers a step-by-step course and mentorship program in Forex trading and strategizing.

"We guarantee that our students will be put on the right path and learn from a professional source," said Heiple. "Our goal is to see our students succeed. That is why we are offering this unique funding opportunity to them in the first place. There is no risk on their end because they are not investing any of their own capital. If they end up making some losing trades, they are not liable for the losses. That is how confident we are in our training and mentorship program."

To get to know more about Foreign Exchange LLC and what they do, you may give a call on 310-897-3178 or send an email at contact@ForeignExchange.llc.

SOURCE: Foreign Exchange LLC

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589989/Educational-Forex-Trading-Firm-Offers-Funding-To-New-Traders
Coronavirus, the Judgment of God? Catholic Bishop, African American Pastor React to Claims Coronavirus is God's Judgment is on America

NEWS PROVIDED BY

Randall Terry

May 15, 2020



WASHINGTON, May 15, 2020 /Standard Newswire/ -- Pro-life leader and film maker, Randall Terry, has released a new documentary, Pandemic: The Threshing of America.



The premise of the documentary is that the Coronavirus pandemic is a "plague" or "chastisement" for God - in the Scriptural sense - because of the innocent blood that cries from the ground for vengeance.



Below are the reactions of a Roman Catholic Bishop, and an Evangelical Pastor.







The 58 minute film can be seen in its entirety by clicking the video above or by visiting: http://www.randallterry.com.



Permission is granted to post this link on any platform, and permission is granted to transfer the film to any online platform.



The endorsement of these two men is significant because the film takes special aim at Catholic clergy, and African American clergy.

"Since 1988, I have known and respected Randall Terry as a friend and a fearless warrior in the battle for life. St Jerome said, 'Ignorance of the Scriptures is ignorance of Christ.' Randall has been searching the Scriptures for many years as a true believer in the Risen Christ.



"His humble plea to Bishops, Priests, Pastors, Religious, and the laity has been simple: join the fight for our unborn brothers and sisters. Couldn't we all be asking ourselves what more we could be doing for God's babies? Start by watching the documentary Pandemic...and then let's all get to work." -- Bishop Joseph L. Coffey, Auxiliary Bishop for the Military Archdiocese, USA



"Out of the park! A grand slam! What stands out to me is the hard contrast of your theological analysis verses the psychological babble of the mainstream media. You provide a clear, Biblical narrative for the public in Pandemic.



"As a Bible believing and preaching African American pastor, I am especially thankful that you called to task the false shepherds of our day that have enabled black genocide. May the Body of Christ hear this message, and repent, so we can finish our mission to end the killing of babies!" -- Pastor Stephen Broden, Fair Park Bible Fellowship, Dallas, Texas

SOURCE Randall Terry



CONTACT: RandallTerry2020@gmail.com



Related Links



www.RandallTerry.com


The stranded non-resident Indians (NRIs) in the country have urged the Centre to help them get back to countries of their residency citing the threat of losing their jobs and livelihoods due to the delay among other reasons. They say they could be put on empty Air India flights engaged in the worlds biggest evacuation named Operation Vande Bharat.

Some of them say they are separated from their minor children, who are now in dire straits as more than two months have passed. Some others stuck in India are facing innumerable problems and have no idea when they can join their ailing kin.

The NRIs HT spoke to said they are more than 4,000 in numbers and have approached many without results. Around 2000 of these are from the middle-eastern countries, around 1000 from Europe and approximately 800 from the US. They have created WhatsApp and Telegram groups to stay in touch with each other and air their grievances.

I came to my daughter in Bengaluru in March and was planning to leave after two weeks, but by that time the lockdown was announced. My husband, mother and other family members are in Dubai. Dubai has opened up and all offices have started working there, said Kamini Kannan who is settled in Dubai for more than two and a half decades.

What really worries me is that my mother and husband both have health problems. I am totally in the dark, she said.

I came here for my mothers cancer operation. I have a one- and- a-half-year breastfeeding child left with my husband in Qatar. I knocked on many doors to help me get back. My husbands job is also in danger now, said another woman from Kochi who did not wish to be named.

Habeeba Mohammad (31) had left her five children with her husband in Abu Dhabi to attend to her mothers medical emergency in Hyderabad on March 18. What was supposed to be a five-day trip, has stretched to two months.

At least 50 per cent of the stranded NRIs had come to see their ailing relatives like Habeeba. They want the government to hear their woes before its too late.

Meenakshi Chakraborty flew down to Kolkotta for some urgent family work with her 10th grader daughter and got stuck. I am really worried, as my husband, who has underlying medical condition, is staying alone in Dubai. My daughter who has her 10th exams has no books or study material, she said.

Another woman came to Kolkotta to attend her fathers funeral service after leaving her two minor kids with her husband. Initially I thought it will be there for a few weeks. But there is no sign of any resumption of flights. I am really worried, she said.

Minister of state for external affairs V Muraleedharan said the government was aware of their plight. Many such cases came to our attention. We dont have any problem in sending them back but the host country will have to allow flight services. Most of these countries have suspended international flights and are allowing only special ones. Once they begin service, they can go on the first flight. If their visas expire, we will help them in getting extension, he said adding they will have to wait for some more time.

The government specified rules allow Indian nationals with at least a one-year-long visa to book flights for foreign destinations being serviced by Operation Vande Bharat Mission. It also allows Green Card and OCI (Overseas Citizen of India) cardholders to travel. In case of deaths and medical emergencies, Indian nationals holding six months visa can also be allowed to travel provided the conditions imposed for entry of people by the destination countries are met.
Description

GIS  15 May, 2020:  15 May, 2020: The health of Mauritians comes first, but at the same time, we have to keep the balance with the economy making sure that citizens can earn their living and not face the threat of unemployment so that our economy does not face the risk of recession.

This statement was made by the Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of Energy and Public Utilities, M Ivan Leslie Collendavelloo this afternoon, during his intervention on the Covid-19 (Miscellaneous Provisions) Bill and the Quarantine Bill, in the National Assembly, in Port Louis.

He recalled that Mauritius has, since the beginning of February, been in a sanitary emergency and this situation has persisted and the country is still under threat. We can have a resurgence, and, being a small country we must protect ourselves, he emphasised.

Speaking about the two Bills, the DPM pointed out that both have been discussed and have received the contribution of one and all before being introduced in the National Assembly. He reassured that workers rights are not being violated given that Govenment had in fact introduced several measures to alleviate the population, namely by introducing, amongst others, the negative income tax, old age pensions and the minimum wage.

However, this is a time when temporary measures must be taken, the DPM highlighted. Thus, for him, the frontliners are being given the means and powers to protect themselves, the society and Mauritius in order for the country to become a prosperous high-economy.

As regards the public utilities sector, Mr Collendavelloo remarked that Government has given sufficient guaranties on the water sector reform and the population has been disciplined and has supported the actions of the authorities.

#ResOuLakaz #BeSafeMoris

Government Information Service, Prime Ministers Office, Level 6, New Government Centre, Port Louis, Mauritius. Email: gis@govmu.org Website: http://gis.govmu.org Mobile App: Search Gov
Independent Living Movement Ireland (ILMI) is a campaigning, national representative organisation that promotes the philosophy of independent living and seeks to build an inclusive society for disabled people.

Central to the way they work is to ensure that policy decisions that impact on the lives of disabled people have to be directly influenced by those whose lives are directly affected.

Their philosophy can be summed up as: Nothing about us without us! and Rights Not Charity.

Longford man, James Cawley is policy officer at the national Disabled Persons Organisations (DPO).

Mr Cawley said, We at Independent Living Movement Ireland in the face of Covid-19 are busy creating online communities to keep disabled people socially active during this global pandemic.

We have created a number of platforms online at a national level and now we are providing access to community support and training programmes through a number of community platforms with the view to get a Longford one up and running.

These platforms are an opportunity for disabled people to stay socially connected and find out information on supports and services in their local community.

We have guest speakers from mainstream services that give information and talk about what is available to them during Covid-19 and beyond. Our ONSIDE project are doing specific sessions in Cavan/Monaghan, Sligo/ Leitrim, Donegal, Clare and we are now adding Longford to the list.

Covid-19 has presented challenges for us all in terms of daily living so it is hoped that the community platforms online will provide a response to the challenge of social isolation caused by Covid-19, through creating a shared social space for the voices of local disabled adults using Zoom.

For more information or to be a part of the Longford platform contact ILMI Policy officer James Cawley on jamescawley@ilmi.ie.
Just five FTSE 100 companies can boast rising dividends over the past decade and still anticipate at least 2 per cent growth in their dividend this year.

At the top of the pile is Legal & General, which currently delivers a whopping 8.8 per cent yield, while British water utility and waste management company Pennon Group is in second place as the only other company to deliver a yield higher than 3 per cent.

Croda International, Halma, and Spirax-Sacro Engineering make up the remaining three, analysis from Interactive Investor shows.

Only five FTSE 100 companies have achieved a decade of continuous dividend growth

It's an equally bleak picture for the FTSE 250 - just seven companies have achieved annual increasing dividends for the past decade and have forecast at least 2 per cent dividend growth this year.

Leading the pack are investment companies HICL Infrastructure and International Public Partnership, boasting dividend yields of 4.6 per cent and 4.4 per cent respectively.

They are joined by Cranswick, Dechra Pharmaceuticals, Derwent London, Genus, and Safestore Holdings.

The figures come as several traditional dividend paying FTSE 100 stocks announced a full or partial dividend cut, including telecommunications giant BT which announced a suspension of its dividend for two years.

Oil and gas company Royal Dutch Shell was also forced to cut its dividend for the first time in nearly 75 years as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Shell chief executive Ben van Beurden said at the time: 'The world has changed.'

FTSE 100 Company Years of dividend growth Yield (%) Forecast yield (%) Croda International 21 1.8 1.9 Halma 26 0.7 0.8 Legal & General 10 8.8 9.1 Pennon Group 12 3.6 3.8 Spirax-Sacro Engineering 27 1.2 1.2 Source: SharePad/interactive investor

FTSE 250 Company Years of dividend growth Yield (%) Forecast yield (%) Cranswick 16 1.5 1.5 Dechra Pharmaceuticals 16 1.1 1.2 Derwent London 27 2.6 2.7 Genus 13 0.8 0.9 HICL Infrastructure 11 4.6 4.8 International Public Partnership 11 4.4 4.5 Safestore Holdings 10 2.6 2.7 Source: SharePad/interactive investor

Keith Bowman, equity analyst at Interactive Investor, said: 'There aren't many stocks in the FTSE 100 or FTSE 250 index that boast 10 years or more continuous dividend growth and forecast dividend growth of at least 2 per cent - such is the difficulty for investors to source reliable income from shares.

'As strange as it might sound, the recent suspension, cuts and cancellation of dividends from a flurry of UK income stocks has been well received for the most part as a sensible move for long-term business viability.

'But this comes as little solace for investors who rely on dividends from UK plc and further disruptions to dividends payments over the next year now appears inevitable.'

Waste management company Pennon Group boasts 12 years of dividend growth

Investors have been told to avoid knee-jerk reactions and to remain patient during these uncertain times.

Bowman added: 'For most of the past decade, the stock market had been in a bull market which suggested that making money and paying a healthy dividend was easy.

'Then came the Covid-19 outbreak, which has knocked finely tuned company finances off-kilter as quarantine measures to tackle the pandemic continue to put a strain on UK plc's bottom line.

'The real acid test for these dividend stocks is to maintain their growth trajectory in times when it is difficult to gauge the outlook for investments. The parameters of coronavirus have not yet been established.

'While there is some positive news over the rate of transmission and deaths from the virus, coronavirus uncertainty will continue to plague stock markets until an effective treatment or vaccine is found and distributed.'
Representative image

A top US senator has unveiled an 18-point plan, including enhancing military ties with India, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its "lies, deception, and cover-ups" that ultimately led to the global COVID-19 pandemic.

The prominent suggestions are moving manufacturing chain from China and deepening military-strategic ties India, Vietnam and Taiwan.

"The Chinese government maliciously covered up and enabled a global pandemic that has caused misery for so many Americans. This is the same regime that locks up its own citizens in labour camps, steals America's technology and jobs, and threatens the sovereignty of our allies, said Senator Thom Tillis, presenting his detailed, 18-point plan on Thursday.

"This is a major wake-up call to the United States and the rest of the free world. My plan of action will hold the Chinese government accountable for lying about COVID-19; sanctioning the Chinese government while protecting America's economy, public health, and national security," he said.

The plan seeking to create a Pacific Deterrence Initiative and immediately approve the military's request for USD 20 billion in funding. It also calls for deepening military ties with regional allies and expand equipment sales to India, Taiwan and Vietnam.

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

Encourage Japan to rebuild its military and offer Japan and South Korea sales of offensive military equipment, it said.

"Move manufacturing back to the US from China and gradually eliminate our supply chain dependency on China. Stop China from stealing our technology and provide incentives to American companies to regain our technological advantage. Strengthen cybersecurity against Chinese hacks and sabotage," the plan stated.

"Prevent American taxpayer money from being used by the Chinese government to pay off their debt. Implement the US ban on (Chinese technology company) Huawei and coordinate with our allies to implement similar bans, it added.

The plan seeks restitution from the Chinese government and imposition of sanctions for lying about the virus. It further said China should be sanctioned for their atrocious human rights record.

Senator Tillis' plan urges the Trump Administration to formally request the International Olympic Committee to withdraw the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.

"Stop China's propaganda campaign inside the United States. Treat Chinese government-run media outlets as the propaganda proxies that they are," the plan stated.

Urging the government to investigate the Chinese government's cover-up of the spread of COVID-19, the plan also seeks to investigate America's reliance on China's supply chains and threats to public safety and national security.

"Ensure the independence of the WHO through investigations and reform. Expose and counter China's predatory debt-trap diplomacy targeting developing countries. Increase intelligence sharing on potential pandemics and lead the creation of a watchdog organization to monitor foreign governments' handling of deadly viruses," Tillis said in his suggestions.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in China's Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed COVID-19 cases are from the US.

There has been increasing pressure on the President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the COVID-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.

Meanwhile, Senator John Barrasso, in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighted the need to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

"The virus could have been contained had it not been for the Chinese Government's unscrupulous cover-up. China knew the risk months before the rest of the world; yet Chinese communist leaders destroyed key evidence, they under-reported the number of coronavirus cases, and they misled the world about its deadly, rapid spread," he said.

Asserting that the virus should have been contained in Wuhan, he said tens and tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died as a result of China's failure.

Barrasso said the US should encourage its companies to create American and western supply chains. "That way our frontline workers have what they need in the time of crisis," he said.

"Not again, not ever will we be exclusively sourced for critical drugs from China. We should diversify supply and bring home as much of our supply chain as possible," he added.

Congressman Troy Balderson introduced bicameral legislation with Congressman Doug Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham that will hold China accountable for deceptive actions taken by its leaders that led to the spread and subsequent global pandemic.

The COVID-19 Accountability Act authorises President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China if it fails to cooperate with a full investigation led by the US or its allies into the events that lead to the COVID-19 outbreak.

"The number of Ohioan lives needlessly claimed by this pandemic could have been significantly reduced had China taken appropriate measures to control the virus' spread and disclose its severity," said Balderson.

"The United States can't look the other way when China so recklessly compromised worldwide health and the global economy. China and its Communist Party leadership must be held accountable," he said.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 03:16:38|Editor: huaxia

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LAGOS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Nigeria will deploy more air force troops in the northeastern state of Borno to boost the ongoing fight against terror group Boko Haram, the country's Chief of Air Staff Saddique Abubakar said here on Thursday.

At a press conference, Abubakar said the troops will be deployed in Maiduguri, the state capital and epicenter of Boko Haram attacks, to strengthen the military task force.

He told reporters that the Nigerian air force has continued to perform very critical roles in providing the much-needed air support required for ground operations.

Over a month ago, the Nigerian military began massive deployment of troops and war equipment in the northeast for a final showdown with Boko Haram and Islamic State for West Africa.

Abayomi Olonisakin, the country's Chief of Defense Staff and head of the military establishment, has given the final directive to the troops to crush the insurgents in line with an earlier marching order given by President Muhammadu Buhari. Enditem
He proposed to his girlfriend Francesca Farago with a ring pop during the recent reunion special of Too Hot to Handle.

And Australian-born hunk Harry Jowsey, 23, has revealed that the couple are already discussing wedding plans.

Speaking on the podcast Is It Just Me, Harry said the pair are keen to move forward in their relationship despite being apart since February due to COVID-19.

'We're talking about it': Too Hot To Handle star Harry Jowsey, 23, says he is already discussing wedding plans with girlfriend Francesca Farago, 26, after proposing to her with a ring pop

'Yeah, we're talking about getting married,' the 23-year-old said from self-isolation in Los Angeles, while Francesca, 26, remains in Vancouver.

'She better lock this stallion down before it takes [off],' he added with a laugh.

Harry met the Canadian model on the steamy Netflix reality show, which was filmed last year.

In the show's recently aired reunion episode with the cast, he proposed to her via a Zoom call.

'Yeah, we're talking about getting married,' the 23-year-old said from self-isolation in Los Angeles, while Francesca, 26, remains in Vancouver. 'She better lock this stallion down before it takes [off],' he added with a laugh

Keeping it simple: In the show's recently aired reunion episode with the cast, he proposed to her via a Zoom call with a ring pop

He presented her with a blue Ring Pop and told her: 'You've absolutely changed my life. I love you so much and I can't wait to spend forever with you. Do you wanna do this thing? Do you wanna get married?'

After a sustained pause, Francesca finally replied, 'Harry knows I want to marry him, so yes. Of course.'

It comes after Harry told The Daily Telegraph he believed he was 'ready' to settle down with Francesca.

The real deal: Despite the romantic gesture and saying 'yes' to Harry, Francesca recently admitted to Variety magazine that she said they are not engaged and still expects a proposal in person

'I think it definitely just needs to be done in-person, like a proper proposal. So, as of right now, no, we're not engaged, for everyone who's been asking,' she said

'When you know, you know it is the right person and I dont really see myself being with anyone else,' he said.

Despite the romantic gesture and saying 'yes' to Harry, Francesca recently admitted to Variety magazine that she said they are not engaged and still expects a proposal in person.

'I think it definitely just needs to be done in-person, like a proper proposal. So, as of right now, no, we're not engaged, for everyone who's been asking,' she said.

She continued: 'I mean, we kind of are, but I dont know because how do you really decide that via Zoom call? Its hard to say. But we talked about it.

Francesca explained that she joked with him about having getting the Ring Pop as an engagement ring instead of a real diamond, but was not 'prepared' for the proposal in the reunion.

'It was funny, it was cute, I was definitely not prepared for it. It was a cute gesture,' she told the publication.

Too Hot To Handle is available to stream on Netflix.
US Global Maritime Advisory Warns Of Iran's 'Deceptions'

Radio Farda May 15, 2020

In its newly released Global Maritime Advisory (GMA), the U.S. government has advised the world's shipping lines to be vigilant about "Iran's, North Korea's and Syria's deceptions".

The new advisory, prepared by the U.S. Department of State, the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), and the U.S. Coast Guard, and published on Thursday, May 14, is a global guide to alert the maritime industry, and those active in the energy and metals sectors to deceptive shipping practices used to evade sanctions, with a focus on Iran, North Korea, and Syria.

Warning shipping companies that might seek loopholes to circumvent U.S. sanctions, the new advisory has provided useful information and ways for private shipping companies to keep them away from possible sanctions.

In several parts, the new guide has directly named Iran, North Korea, and Syria as countries that are taking various steps to skip the U.S. and international sanctions.

"The advisory also includes best practices for different sectors of the maritime and energy industries, including global commodity traders, maritime insurers, financial institutions, ship owners and flag registries, and others, to assist in their due diligence and mitigation of sanctions risk", the guide says.

Washington officially withdrew from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) or Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers on May 8, 2018, and re-imposed batches of economic sanctions on the clergy-dominated Islamic Republic of Iran.

Since then, in addition to imposing sanctions on some Iranian shipping companies or those affiliated with the Islamic Republic abroad, several foreign shipping companies have also been subject to U.S. sanctions for their oil dealings with Tehran.

The publication of the new guide has coincided with reports saying that several Iranian oil tankers are on their way to Venezuela.

In the last ten days, several U.S. officials have said that the Islamic Republic is providing aid to Venezuela, including in the refinery sector. Venezuela, in return, has delivered a gold consignment that was taken to Tehran by air, the officials have maintained.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/us-global- maritime-advisory-warns-of-iran- deceptions-/30612709.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Seroquel  (quetiapine fumarate, immediate release) and Seroquel XR  (extended release formulation) are atypical anti-psychotic (AAP) medicines with antidepressant properties. The main indications for Seroquel  are the treatment of schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Seroquel XR  is also approved in some markets for major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

Luye Pharma is eager to further develop its strengths in key therapeutic areas, including CNS and oncology, bolstering a competitive portfolio in major international markets to improve capacity for global business operations, and to explore added growth potential. Latin America is one of the emerging markets which Luye Pharma regards as holding promising development prospects. Opportunities for pharmaceutical industry growth in this region are widely recognized.

According to IQVIA, the market size of Latin America's pharmaceutical industry is projected to grow from $55 billion in 2018 to $76 billion in 2023 with a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 7%. Brazil and Mexico are the two largest countries in Latin America, accounting for 70% of the region's pharmaceutical market, seeing year-on-year growth rates of 9.3% and 8.4%, respectively in 2019. Also worthy of mention is that CNS drugs occupy a considerable portion of the pharmaceutical market in Latin America, accounting for $4.5 billion in 2019.

With Moksha8's wealth of experience in promoting CNS drugs in Brazil and Mexico, Luye Pharma believes that its powerful business network and resources in the two countries will lead to strong growth for Seroquel and Seroquel XR. Based on existing mature commercial resources, the partnership will also enable many more of Luye Pharma's new CNS drugs to enter Latin America in the future, accelerating the commercialization of these drugs in the local markets and making them more accessible to local patients.

Currently, Luye Pharma has and continues to build a strong pipeline of CNS drugs covering multiple treatment indications, including depression, Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, Alzheimer's disease, and others, with a number of investigational drugs already in the late clinical trials and NDA phase in the U.S., Europe, Japan and other major global markets. In addition, the company also boasts a number of established products in this field, with business covering over 80 countries and regions, including major pharmaceutical markets such as China, the U.S., Europe, and Japan, as well as many fast-growing emerging international markets. Luye Pharma is determined to build a competitive CNS portfolio together with the upcoming pipeline drugs, generating synergy which will help to accelerate the company's pace of expansion in this therapeutic field.

About Luye Pharma Group

Luye Pharma Group is an international pharmaceutical company dedicated to the R&D, manufacturing and sale of innovative medications. The company has established R&D centers in China, the U.S. and Europe, with a robust pipeline of over 40 drug candidates in China and more than 10 drug candidates in other international markets. Along with a number of new drugs and formulations in the central nervous system and oncology therapeutic areas currently under study in the U.S., Europe and Japan, Luye Pharma has reached high-level international standards in novel drug delivery technologies including microspheres, liposomes, and transdermal drug delivery systems, as well as actively making strategic developments in the fields of biological antibodies, cell therapies and gene therapies, among others.

Luye Pharma is developing a global supply chain of 8 manufacturing sites with over 30 production lines in total, establishing GMP quality management and international standard control systems. With more than 30 products covering the central nervous system, oncology, cardiovascular, metabolism and other therapeutic areas, business is conducted in over 80 countries and regions around the world, including the largest pharmaceutical markets - China, the U.S., Europe and Japan, as well as in fast growing emerging markets.

For more information, please visit: www.luye.cn/lvye_en

About M8 PHARMACEUTICALS

m8 is a specialty pharmaceutical company focused on licensing, marketing and distributing innovative and established therapeutics in the two largest Latin America markets: Brazil and Mexico. m8 is a Montreux Equity Partners portfolio company. Montreux Equity Partners is a private investment firm focused on making growth capital investments in the leading companies of tomorrow. Its portfolio companies address the most compelling trends in global health. The firm is currently investing out of its sixth fund.

For more information, please visit: www.moksha8.com

SOURCE Moksha8; Luye Pharma Group

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As Sayers became more disenchanted with what detective fiction had to offer, her fellow crime queen, Agatha Christie, was perfecting and reinventing the genre. By the late 1930s Christie was such a bona fide celebrity her publishers devised an annual marketing campaign, called A Christie for Christmas, to accompany the release of each new Hercule Poirot and Miss Marple adventure. But her non-series books also arrived with much fanfare, like the propulsive 1938 mystery MURDER IS EASY, (HarperAudio; 6 hours, 57 minutes), which begins on a London-bound train with a happenstance conversation between Luke Fitzwilliam, returning to England from overseas police work, and Lavinia Pinkerton, who confides that shes traveling to Scotland Yard to report a serial killer stalking Lavinias English village; whats more, she predicts who the next victim will be. When her prophecy comes true, Luke goes to the village to suss out the culprit. While Murder Is Easy is good but not superior Christie  there is, perhaps, one devious twist too many  good Christie still makes for excellent listening, thanks to the voice work of Gemma Whelan, who articulates each character with distinction and carries the narrative forward with gentle aplomb.

Raymond Chandler operated on a track entirely parallel to that of his British-born counterparts. An outsider in the Midwest of his birth and the England of his schooling, the failed oil executive eventually found his voice in writing. Specifically, in pulps like Black Mask, where he honed and refined his detective character Philip Marlowe in stories that boiled hard and talked tough. In 1939, THE BIG SLEEP (Audible Studios; 6 hours, 16 minutes) arrived to wide acclaim, as well it should have. Chandlers evocative prose suffuses this detective story of family secrets, craven lies and mysterious deaths with the romance of the Los Angeles cityscapes hed fallen in love with  and has by now transmitted to 80 years worth of readers.

All of which is why I found myself let down by Ray Porters narration. Was that a regional twang I detected, jarring with my innate sense of how Marlowe ought to sound? Never mind that Porter seems to be trying too hard, leaning too far in to the street-smart demeanor when that was always the facade that Chandler hung his work on, barely masking the glorious sentimentality at the heart of his crime fiction.

Chandler and his compatriots Dashiell Hammett and James M. Cain embody that American school of hard-boiled fiction that became one of this countrys best-known literary exports. But there was a third stream, not quite cozy, not quite noir, dominated by women, almost entirely rooted around suspense of the psychological variety.

Patricia Highsmith, from the first, had an unerring sense of what drove ordinary people to the most extreme lengths, the result of which was often murder. STRANGERS ON A TRAIN (Blackstone Audio; 9 hours, 41 minutes), her 1950 debut novel, goes far beyond the ingenious, familiar, oft-copied concept  two brand-new acquaintances resolving to do ones wife in, except one means it and the other doesnt  to lay bare the roots of miserable marriages, of class differences, of obsessive desires. Its a strange, nasty fever dream of a book that still has the power to shock 70 years later.
By Trend

A number of restrictions applied within the special quarantine regime, imposed due to COVID-19, are being softened in Azerbaijan, Trend reports on May 15 citing the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of Azerbaijan.

Based on the current sanitary-epidemiological situation, the number of active patients and the rate of infection, the following rules will be introduced in Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, Lankaran cities and the Absheron district from 00:00 on 18 May 2020:

 the system of leaving the place of residence on the basis of an SMS permit, registration on the icaze.e-gov.az portal, service card or certificate of employment is abolished;

 restrictions on access to boulevards, parks and recreation areas are removed on the condition that people do not gather in groups of more than 10;

 on-site customer service in restaurants, cafes, tea houses, as well as all public catering establishments, is restored from 08:00 to 18:00 (except for the public catering establishments using hookah equipment);

Service in restaurants, cafes, tea houses, as well as all public catering establishments, must be carried out in accordance with the relevant sanitary-epidemiological rules and guidelines introduced by the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan during the pandemic. Adherence to these rules is the direct responsibility of managers and employees of public catering establishments, as well as customers using such services. Violation of the rules creates administrative and criminal liability provided by law.

At the same time, the following rules will be introduced across the country from 00:00 on 18 May 2020:

 the activities of museums and exhibition halls are restored;

 the ban on people aged above 65 leaving their homes is lifted. However, since people aged above 65 are at risk of contracting the COVID-19 virus, it is recommended that they leave home only if necessary. At the same time, it is necessary not to go to crowded places, observe distance and use protective equipment.

The following restrictions remain in place during the special quarantine regime:

 with the exception of cargo transportation, suspension of access to and from the country by land and air;

 with the exception of special purpose vehicles, including ambulances, emergency response, rescue, as well as trucks, suspension of passenger transportation to Baku, Sumgayit and the Absheron district, as well as Ganja and Lankaran cities, and from other cities and districts of the country by land and air;

 suspension of the educational and teaching process in all educational institutions;

 limiting the number of employees working in government agencies in Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja and Lankaran cities and the Absheron district;

 with the exception of ASAN Xidmt and DOST service centers, suspension of collective and individual receptions of citizens in other state bodies;

 with the exception of funeral wakes, prohibition of religious ritual services, as well as the organization of mourning ceremonies in ceremonial halls, tents and other enclosed spaces;

 prohibition of wedding parties;

 suspension of all public events, including cultural and sports events;

 prohibition of services involving the organization of events, including the organization of birthday parties, weddings, engagements and similar ceremonies in a client's home or other places;

 prohibition of gathering in groups of more than 10 people in public places, including streets, boulevards, parks and other places;

 suspension of entertainment activities, including children's entertainment venues (including boulevards and parks);

 with the exception of museums and exhibition halls, suspension of other cultural facilities, as well as cinemas, theaters, gyms;

 with the exception of those with grocery stores and pharmacies in them, suspension of activities of large shopping centers and malls in the country;

 prohibition of the use of hookah equipment in public catering establishments;

 suspension of on-site customer service in restaurants, cafes, tea houses, as well as all public catering establishments in Baku, Sumgayit, Ganja, Lankaran cities and the Absheron district from 18:00 to 08:00;

 prohibition of family visits to patients in medical institutions;

 suspension of sports, health and rehabilitation services (except for medical services in this area);

 massage and bath services.

Activities in the areas allowed to operate during the pandemic must be carried out in accordance with the necessary social distancing and sanitary-epidemiological rules and guidelines provided by the Operational Headquarters under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Azerbaijan.

We emphasize again that the fight against COVID-19 is a long-term process and preventive measures against the disease should become part of everyone's daily life. Therefore, in the current situation with COVID-19, we urge everyone to follow personal hygiene, as well as medical and preventive rules, to leave home only when there is a serious need, to have minimal contact with others in public places, and to comply with existing preventive measures. Due to the current sanitary-epidemiological situation, it is necessary to use protective equipment and maintain social distance, the Operational Headquarters says.

---

Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz
A study conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) has predicted that the coronavirus will infect almost one-quarter of a billion people in Africa during the first year of the pandemic. Unless immediate measures are taken to control the spread of the virus, as many as 190,000 of them are likely to die, the researchers warn.

Study: The potential effects of widespread community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 infection in the WHO African Region: a predictive model. Image Credit: Lorna Roberts / Shutterstock

The predictive modeling study indicated that the risk of exposure and transmission in the WHO African Region is actually lower than in other areas of the world. However, the increase in hospital admissions, as well as the impact on care systems and other health conditions, would place a significant strain on already limited resources and exacerbate the effects of the virus.

Joseph Cabore, Director of Programme Management for the World Health Organization Regional Office for Africa, and colleagues say successful containment measures are essential for the region "as their health systems are not designed to mitigate against the implications of widespread community transmission of SARS-COV-2 [severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2]."

They warn it is essential that countries in the WHO African Region ensure that hospital capacity is increased and that basic emergency care needs are catered for by healthcare services.

The unprecedented and widespread effect of SARS-CoV-2 and the associated coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) have led to considerable efforts being made globally to curb transmission. The impact of the virus extends beyond the number of infection cases and deaths to widespread disruption of health services' ability to provide care in general.

The pandemic has affected every country in the world, with the whole of the globe's population at risk of infection and death. However, transmission rates and health outcomes have differed between countries, which suggests that variations in socio-ecological factors and individuals' susceptibility play a role in influencing infection rates.

Previous predictive models

Forty-seven countries are included in the WHO Africa region, 45 of which had reported SARS-CoV-2 infections as of 29th April.

Many predictive models have been developed to estimate transmission and mortality rates in Africa. However, the models have not sufficiently incorporated the various social, environmental, and health-related factors that differ across different countries in the region, leading to varied projections of viral spread and the severity of its impact.

The model used for the current study

As reported in a study accepted for publication in BMJ Global Health, Cabore and colleagues developed a predictive model that incorporated these factors to improve the accuracy of the estimated effects of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

The model "uses both virus transmission characteristics and country-specific socio-ecological factors to predict the most likely outcome of widespread and sustained community transmission of SARS-CoV-2," writes the team.

What did the study find?

The model predicted that the infection would spread more slowly in Africa than in other countries, causing fewer cases of severe illness and death, owing to differing degrees of individual susceptibility between countries. However, it also predicted that the pandemic would linger for a more extended period and possibly remain a threat for some years.

The estimates suggested that without sufficient control measures being implemented, the exposure risk would be higher in small countries, with Mauritius probably being the most susceptible.

Of the larger countries, South Africa, Cameroon, and Nigeria would be the most at risk, and Nigeria would have the most infections. After Nigeria, the infection number would be highest in Algeria and South Africa. The lowest number of cases would be seen in Mauritania, followed by Seychelles and Eritrea.

The highest proportion of infected people per capita would be seen in Mauritius, Seychelles, and Equatorial Guinea, and the lowest proportion would be seen in Niger, Mauritania, and Chad.

During the first year of the pandemic, about one in four of the region's 1 billion people would become infected, with the number of symptomatic individuals potentially reaching 44 million.

As many as 5.5 million may require hospitalization, 140,000 would have severe disease, and about 89,000 cases would be critical. An estimated 150,000 would lose their lives, but the authors say this number could reach 190,000.

A "limited capacity to mitigate against the disease effects"

Although only 22% of the population would be infected during the first year and the number of severe cases and deaths would be fewer than in other areas of the world, "the increase in hospitalizations and care needs and impacts on morbidity and mortality of other conditions would have significant effects due to limited capacity to mitigate against the disease effects," warns the team.

Some hospitalizations would be required in areas with limited access to healthcare systems, and inadequate testing and collection of data, especially in rural settings, would make response efforts difficult.

"These system capacity challenges highlight the need to ensure the success of the containment measures to avoid the need for mitigation measures that, despite relatively fewer cases expected in the Region, will be difficult to institute," writes the team.

These mitigation measures would place a significant strain on healthcare systems, primarily secondary and tertiary services, and inadequate testing and diagnostic capacity could mean many cases go unidentified in primary care settings.

"The effect of avoiding widespread and sustained community transmission of SARS-CoV-2 is significant, and most likely outweigh any costs of preventing such a scenario," say Cabore and colleagues. "Countries of the WHO African Region need to expand the capacity of particularly their primary hospitals to mitigate implications of widespread community spread of SARS-CoV-2. Basic emergency care needs to be included in primary care systems," the team concludes.
The house of representatives has asked the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) not to be misled by the biased position of Aminu Tambuwal,...





The house of representatives has asked the Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) not to be misled by the biased position of Aminu Tambuwal, governor of Sokoto, over the bill to control infectious diseases.





The green chamber said the governors demand that the bill should be suspended was informed by Tambuwals personal and partisan opposition to the emergence of the current house leadership under Femi Gbajabiamila.





The bill, which among other things prescribes compulsory vaccination of every child in Nigeria against some infectious diseases, has sparked public outcry over possible human rights violation.





On Wednesday, the governors forum had said Tambuwal, its vice chairman and former speaker of the house, briefed them about the bill during their virtual meeting after which they asked that it be suspended to enable more consultation.

must concur with such legislation. But in a statement issued by Benjamin Kalu, the house spokesman, the lawmakers said while they will welcome any contribution the governors have regarding the bill, the constitution does not demand that theymust concur with such legislation.





It is rather surprising that the NGF, in arriving at its decision, relied on an update from the Governor of Sokoto State, who, apart from being a lawyer, is a former Speaker and an ex-ranking member of the House, who should know better and guide the Forum accordingly, Kalu said in the statement issued on Thursday.





We assume that his position was informed by his well-known personal and partisan opposition to the emergence of the current leadership of the house considering his obvious stance in 2015 and 2019 .





Unlike in a constitution amendment matter, where state houses of assembly have a defined constitutional role to play in effecting any review to it, Bills such as the Control of Infectious Diseases are not by our constitution subject of concurrence of state houses of assembly or state governors. We do believe that our respected Governors are aware of this lawful processes of legislation and should not be misguided by a biased position of a former speaker .





Notwithstanding, the House expresses its readiness to work with the Committee raised by the NGF to meet members of the Green Chamber on the Bill. The Governors are our critical stakeholders in nation building, and we understand the importance of working with our Governors at critical moments such as this pandemic period.




The Shopping Centres



Association of India (SCAI) has appealed to Karnataka Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa to allow reopening of malls in the state.

In a statement, the SCAI said it had made a representation to Yediyurappa with a set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and guidelines for reopening of malls.

"SCAI has asserted and collectively with industry captains, endorsed the ability of shopping centres to enforce protocols in a far more efficient manner than many others who have benefited from the relaxation," it said.

While preparing the SOPs, SCAI has held several consultations with captains of the industry as well as adopted global best practices to ensure that the spread of COVID-19 is contained, the statement said.

"The representation holds significance even as the country braces itself for Lockdown 4.0 from May 18. Shopping malls, unfortunately, have not found much favour from the government," the SCAI said.

Malls in Karnataka were ordered to shut from March 15 to curb the spread of coronavirus and have since remained closed due to the lockdown.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Veriest team was instrumental in verifying the devices' safety functions

Petach Tikva, Israel  May 14, 2020 -- Veriest Solutions, a leading international Electronics Design Services house, announced today that its engineers supported Arbe in the development of a series of state-of-the-art automotive radar devices, powering autonomous driving solutions.

Throughout the project, Veriest engineers assisted in verification of the flawless operation of different mission-critical modules  such as the devices' safety processor unit, as well as the System-on-Chip functionality. The work was performed under rigorous automotive quality standards and compliance demands. This required the verification team to work closely with the chip designers to address different challenges, that represent real usage scenarios never before addressed by automotive radar.

Avi Bauer, Arbe's Vice President of Engineering said: "Meeting the required radar functionality including all use cases while maintaining high safety levels is one of the highest priorities at Arbe, so that we can bring unparalleled safety solutions to the automotive market. We are pleased to work with Veriest to verify that our solution is optimized to making zero road fatalities to reality.

Moshe Zalcberg, CEO of Veriest, added: Arbe's team is in the forefront of automotive radar research and development, that adds an important layer of sensing of pedestrians and vehicles, and enables a future of safer driving solutions. Therefore, it is a privilege for us to collaborate with Arbe and to contribute to the verification of safety and SoC functionality of this product family."

About Veriest Solutions Ltd.

Veriest is an international design house providing a range of professional engineering services. Veriests client portfolio includes the full spectrum of globally-established industry leaders, defense companies, and early-stage startups developing high-end chip technology.

Headquartered in Israel, Veriest was founded in 2007 and as of 2013 is a subsidiary of Aman Group  a leading IT company in Israel. Veriests engineering teams in Israel, Serbia and Hungary include expert engineers in ASIC design, design verification, FPGA design, virtualization, embedded software and other technical domains.

For more information, please see the company's website at www.Veriests.com or info@VeriestS.com






Currently, the outstanding dues of discoms towards power generating and transmission companies is to the extent of Rs 94,000 crore, which is expected to come down through the relief package.

Mumbai: Liquidity infusion of Rs 90,000 crore in ailing discoms through PFC and REC by government is a temporary arrangement and might put further pressure on state governments which are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, experts said.

As part of the Rs 20 lakh crore stimulus package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been spelling out various measures for different sectors to help them amid the cornavirus pandemic.

According to the relief package, the sanction of loans to discoms is linked to reforms in state power sector such as promotion of digital payments from consumers, liquidation of outstanding dues from state governments and plan to reduce operational and financial losses by discoms.

Currently, the outstanding dues of discoms towards power generating and transmission companies is to the extent of Rs 94,000 crore, which is expected to come down through the relief package.

"From discoms'' perspective, this liquidity relief scheme through loans would increase their overall interest cost, with impact of 9 paise per unit sold at all India level," ICRA Ratings Group Head Sabyasachi Majumdar said.

"However, the extent of impact would be higher for discoms in states like Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh, which account for more than 80 percent of the overdues to power generating companies," Sabyasachi added.

He further said that the ability of the discoms to pass on this interest cost through tariffs remains uncertain, given that this may not come under the normative working capital interest allowed by the regulators while determining retail tariffs.

"This may result in increase in dependence on state government support. As a result, the book loss levels for the discoms are likely to increase by Rs 27,000 crore in FY2021 from FY2020 becuase of the impact of the lockdown," he added.

It may be noted that in 2015, the government had come up with the Ujjawal Discom Assurance Yojna with an intent to find a permanent solution to the financial mess that the power distribution is in, wherein state governments, which own the discoms, could take over 75 percent of their debt as of 30 September 2015, and pay back lenders by selling bonds.

However, the scheme did not really help the discoms as it only resulted in increasing the total debt burden of the states while the discoms continued to default on payments.

According to Care Ratings, the Rs 90,000 crore credit infusion is a step in the right direction, but it will be necessary to see to what extent the discoms are able to avail the scheme given the ''tied'' nature of this support and requirements of state government guarantee.

"With this measure, the power sector problem is being shifted to the state government and therefore the achievement on reform intent will be a challenge as has been proven time and again," its Senior Director Amod Khanorkar said.

Also, with COVID-19 cases rising drastically despite the lockdown to more than 82,700 and death toll crossing the 2,600 mark, the state governments are diverting their funds and mobilising them towards fighting the pandemic, which leaves lesser scope for them to take on additional financial burden, another analyst stated.

A senior official from Maharashtra state utility Mahadiscom noted that the intent of the initiative is good, but it depends on the financial ability of the discoms to meet the criteria as well as to what extent the state government would be able to take the guarantee needs to ascertained and worked out.

"In the current scenario, despite introducing various initiatives for digital payments, tariff collections have not been achieved to the extend we expected.

"Mahadiscom has already taken various initiatives to reduce our AT&C (aggregate technical and commercial)losses. Also, due to the lockdown, our revenues from the subsiding industrial and commercial consumers have gone down significantly," the official said.

Currently, India''s average AT&C losses are estimated at around 21.4 percent, which the government intends to reduce to less than 12 percent.

While Arunachal Pradesh has the highest AT&C loss of over 58 percent, for Jammu and Kashmir it is more than 53 percent and for Uttar Pradesh it is over 38 percent.

Echoing similar views , Crisil Infrastructure Advisory Senior Director Energy Vivek Sharma noted that the larger issue of discoms'' financial sustainability and turnaround remains a matter of concern.

"This is a short-term measure. Also, appropriate structuring for bond issuance against guarantee will be critical to raise funds in the current tight liquidity scenario," he added.
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Wexford residents have expressed concern about the disregard for social distancing measures after more than 100 mourners gathered outside the cathedral in Enniscorthy town for a funeral.

The Requiem Mass of the late Jero Connors was held at St Aidans Cathedral on Friday morning.

With funeral services meant to be limited to less than 10 people during the Covid crisis, as per Government guidelines, locals questioned why so many people were allowed to attend the service.

You read stories about people having to watch loved ones being buried through a phone as theyre not allowed to attend, and yet it seems to be one rule for some, and another rule for others, one local said.

Up to six gardai were on duty patrolling traffic outside the cathedral.

Meanwhile, a priest who was due to marry two members of the Travelling community before gardai intervened an hour beforehand to stop it going ahead said he didnt realise how many people were going to turn up on the day.

Gardai have raised concerns with the Bishops Office in Co Wexford about patrons adhering to social distancing guidelines after learning that the same priest was due to marry another couple in a separate ceremony next week.

Read More

On Wednesday morning, gardai received reports of a wedding going ahead in Bunclody, Co Wexford and when they arrived at the brides house there were 15 people ready to go and a white limousine outside waiting to take them, a garda spokesman said.

When gardai arrived at the church, there were approximately 10 people there waiting with the groom, he added.

We subsequently rang Fr Laurence OConnor and told him that under no circumstances should the wedding go ahead.

Speaking to the Irish Independent, Fr OConnor said he agreed to the wedding as he understood it would involve small numbers.

He believes gardai may have overreacted.

It was an itinerant wedding and I feel that the assumptions about them and their gatherings probably came into play as the reason for their reaction, he said.

Ive had to postpone this young ladys wedding two or three times and she was very anxious to have it as soon as possible, so she phoned me up on Monday and asked could we go ahead with it on Wednesday.

I decided it was in her best interests to do so, so I made preparations for it and gardai stepped in about an hour beforehand to stop it going ahead.

I asked the lady during the rehearsal the night before who would be attending and she said both families. Originally the idea was that it would just be both families and I said it was important there was going to be social distancing, he said.

Read More

When asked if the other ceremony would be going ahead, Fr OConnor said: Not as a public event anyway.

A spokesperson for the Bishops Office said services of any type are only to be conducted with due regard for the publicly issued statutory guidelines restrictions of no more than ten people.

I can confirm the diocese received a telephone call from gardai in relation to a proposed wedding in Bunclody. The wedding did not proceed, the spokesperson said.

In a return call to the gardai, concern was also expressed to the diocese about a proposed wedding for next week in the same parish.

The diocese made enquiries of the parish in question about this proposed wedding for next week and it has been assured that the only persons who will be in attendance will be the priest, the groom and the bride, and their parents.

The churches of the diocese have remained open for the period of the coronavirus.
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On the morning of May 18, 1980, photographer Robert Landsburg hiked 7 miles from the summit of Mount St. Helens in the Cascades mountain range. As the lens of his camera viewed the snowy cap of the mountain and lush green forests of Skamania County, Washington, Landsburg intended to photographically document the change steadily occurring.

The volcano was quiet. There had been no eruptions for four days. Rolls of gases vented out of fumaroles, pressure escaping. Seismic activity rumbled below, as it had done since late March. Deformation of the northern face continued at a steady rate, the side buckling outward. About 6 miles to the north, the serene Spirit Lake held a handful of homes and cabins, the majority of them empty of their residents. Harry R. Truman, an 83-year-old resident of the area and owner of Mount St. Helens Lodge, had refused to evacuate.

Satellite images captured the massive 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. (NOAA / GOES-3 / Colorado State)

Five miles from the summit, USGS volcanologist and geologist David Johnston was stationed at an observation post. Over the past month or so, he had been the scientist in charge of studying the volcanic gas and urged officials to resist heavy pressure to reopen the surrounding area.

Seismologists hadn't monitored earthquake activity in the Mount St. Helens area until seismometers were installed near the volcano in 1972, and from January 1975 through early 1980, only 44 earthquakes had been recorded in the area. However, on the Ides of March in 1980, several small earthquakes indicated the start of possible volcanic activity, according to the United States Geographical Survey (USGS). From March 15 through March 21, more than 100 temblors occurred within 22 miles of Mount St. Helens.

A view of Mount St. Helens from the northeast of Spirit Lake taken in 1980 before the eruption. (USGS)

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However, it was a 4.2-magnitude earthquake on March 20 just northwest of the summit that caught the attention of seismologists. The quake triggered avalanches from the snowy peak, and activity continued the following day. Monitoring increased, and the United States Forest Service (USFS) closed the mountain above tree line over concern for earthquake-triggered avalanches. By March 24, scientists were convinced that the earthquakes could be the writing on the wall for renewed volcanic activity.

Story continues

Any doubts of this were erased on March 27 when people near the volcano reported hearing a loud "boom" from a steam-driven explosion called a phreatic eruption. The eruption formed from magma rising below the surface and meeting ground water, steam and pressure building up underground before bursting. A black plume from the explosion was observed rising 7,000 feet above the volcano.

As seismic activity intensified and strengthened, the public grew restless. Phreatic eruptions continued, drawing crowds of scientists and tourists. Johnston was one of the first members of the USGS monitoring team to arrive at the volcano, and he was part of the efforts to persuade authorities to limit access to the area.

USGS geologist and volcanologist David A. Johnston with gas-detection equipment. (USGS)

The USGS described a "carnival-like atmosphere" around Mount St. Helens as volcano sightseers gathered around view points such as Silver Lake, about 30 miles away.

On March 31, The Cowlitz County Commissioners declared a state of emergency to address roadblocks and standby in case of orders for evacuations. Public reactions, Vancouver Columbian reported, varied as calls flooded USFS personnel. The calls ranged from people expressing their frustration over not being able to access their cabins within closed areas while members of the press were allowed through to gamblers requesting the number of explosions within the past 24 hours.

On the south shore of Spirit Lake, a lake about 6 miles north of the volcano, local Harry Truman was the only resident of the lakeside who refused to leave his home.

"I think the whole damn thing is overexaggerated ... Spirit Lake and Mount St. Helens are my life ... You couldn't pull me out with a mule team," Truman told the Longview Daily News.

Even after then-Washington Gov. Dixy Lee Ray declared a state of emergency, tourists flocked to Milepost 33 on State Route 504 near the roadblock. Peering eyes took to the skies as well. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) reported 109 planes inside the restricted zone around the volcano on April 3.

A sign along the road leading to Mount St. Helens. Despite protests against the roadblocks, restriction to areas near Mount St. Helens prevented the death toll from reaching the hundreds or even thousands, scientists estimate. (USGS)

Businesses began threatening to sue officials over loss of business as the blockade line shifted. Despite public pressure, Johnston and his USGS monitoring team resisted the idea of reopening certain areas.

"One of the problems we're having ... is that people in the Northwest have never faced this kind of thing before ... I feel the general public really doesn't understand the danger," USFS spokesman Jim Unterwegner said.

During late April, explosions slowed and then stopped. Scientists and officials remained wary, however. Aerial and ground surveys confirmed a bulge about a mile long and one-half-mile wide on the northern side of the volcano. A few scientists, including Johnston, believed this could suggest the volcano would produce a lateral blast rather than an eruption from the center.

The bulge on the northern face of Mount St. Helens before the May 18, 1980 eruption. (USGS)

Two USGS observational posts, Coldwater I and Coldwater II were established to monitor changes and found the bulge on the northern side of the mountain was growing at a rate of 5 to 8 feet per day. Coldwater II was located just 5 miles north of the summit.

A Red Zone was established on April 30, consisting of a boundary from 3 to 7 miles out from the peak. Only scientists, law enforcement and other officials were allowed into this area. Access to the newly established Blue Zone, skirting the area around the Red Zone, restricted access during daylight hours to loggers and property owners with special permits.

Property owners in the Spirit Lake area, which sat in the Red Zone, increased pressure on authorities to allow them access to the homes they had been forced to leave. Some even threatened to converge on some of the roadblocks in numbers and break through. On May 17, in the shadow of a quiet mountain, law enforcement officers escorted about 50 carloads of property owners into the Red Zone to retrieve their possessions, according to the USGS. The civilians who entered the area were required to sign liability waivers at the roadblocks and were asked to leave by nightfall. Authorities had agreed to escort another group at 10 a.m. the following morning.

The next morning, photographer Robert Landsburg was documenting the deformation of the volcano 7 miles away from the summit of Mount St. Helens. About 6 miles to the north of Mount St. Helens, Harry R. Truman remained at his home at Spirit Lake. Five miles from the summit, Johnston was stationed at Coldwater II.

Johnston at Coldwater II on May 17, 1980. (USGS)

At 8:32 a.m., a 5.2-magnitude earthquake struck, causing an avalanche from the walls of the summit crater and destabilizing the northern face of the volcano. The entire north flank quivered before appearing to almost liquify. As the northern face slid from the cone of the volcano in a stony avalanche, a blast broke through the remaining barrier. For the first time in nearly a century, Mount St. Helens erupted.

An ash plume from the eruption of Mount St. Helens on May 18, 1980. According to the USGS, the plume moved eastward at an average speed of 60 mph, the ash reaching Idaho by noon. (USGS)

"Vancouver! Vancouver! This is it!" Johnston transmitted over the radio before the line was cut short.

Ash and debris spewed outward with a force that decimated the densely forested area within about 6 miles of the summit. The scope of the full blast reached about 12 miles out, knocking over nearly all remaining trees. The trees at the outer limit of the blast that survived were left seared.

The blast from the eruption of Mount St. Helens knocked down heavily forested areas near the mountain. (USGS)

About 7 miles away from the summit, Landsburg watched the inescapable wall of ash approach through his camera lens. He snapped a few photos, rewound the film back into its case, stored his camera in his backpack and lay down on top of it to protect the contents.

The pyroclastic flow swept over Landsburg, burying him and his camera bag.

Landsburg, Johnston and Truman were three of the 57 people killed by the eruption. Had Johnston and his monitoring team not resisted heavy pressure to reopen the area, the USGS believes the death toll would have been in the hundreds or even thousands.

Seventeen days later, Landsburg's body was found with the film slightly damaged from the heat, but intact. The photos of the eruption and approaching wall of ash were published in the January 1981 issue of National Geographic.

Slightly closer was photographer Robert Landsburg. After these shots, he used his last moments to rewind the film, wrap his camera in several bags, then lay down on top and wait. (Landsberg's car, right). pic.twitter.com/Tmo90CiAbD  David Burbach (@dburbach) May 18, 2019

About 11 miles away from the summit, photographer Gary Rosenquist had picked up his camera and fired off a series of snapshots as the northern face gave way. He had been camping at Bear Meadows with a few other people, all of whom managed to survive the blast. His photographs of those first 40 or so seconds were later stitched together to create a timelapse of the event.

Time lapse of #MtStHelens eruption made from just 6 pix. DNR has dozens more: https://t.co/VyG033Rtcf #GeologyRocks pic.twitter.com/8EptlKYr61  Washington State Dept. of Natural Resources (@waDNR) May 18, 2016

For days after the eruption, volcanic ash lingered in the air around the area. Residents took up wearing face masks while outside due to possible health threats. Many larger animals that had been in the blast zone, such as bears, deer and elk, had not survived. All fish in Spirit Lake had died, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.

Fifteen-year-old Heidi Havens gives Allen Troup, 16, a kiss as he prepares to board a Spokane City bus, May 27, 1980. Spokane residents have had to wear face masks while outside for nine days now because of possible health threats from volcanic ash sprayed over the area by Mount St. Helens on May 18. Having had them on for so long, some people are obviously forgetting. (AP Photo/Ralph Viggers)

Now, 40 years later, the land decimated by Mount St. Helens is still healing. Animals slowly began to return to the blast zone as new vegetation took root. Parts of the land have not returned to how it was before, however. Mount St. Helens, once the fifth-tallest peak in Washington State, lost about 1,300 feet from its height of 9,677, according to the USGS. The highest part of the crater rim on the southwestern side reaches 8,365 feet in elevation.

Last year, as a commemoration of the 40-year anniversary of the historic eruption, the USGS Library compiled an online exhibit featuring images, reports and other content from the USGS response to the eruption.
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  Philippine National Police chief Archie Gamboa may not relieve Metro Manila top cop Debold Sinas from his post despite the controversy over his birthday gathering last week, his spokesman said Friday.

PNP Spokesperson Bernard Banac told CNN Philippines' The Source that Gamboa and the PNP's Advisory Group has several options in dealing with Sinas and the rest of the cops now in hot water for throwing the National Capital Region Police Office chief a surprise on May 8. They call it a "mananita" or early morning serenade that is said to be a tradition in the command.

Photos that went viral on social media showed a group of cops in casual attire huddled around tables, giving roses to Sinas, and having him blow candles on birthday cakes for the occasion.

"Once the charges are filed and it is found that there is probable cause, the top management of the PNP may exercise options of administratively relieving officials. But theres also the possibility that they may stay for the reason that we are in this public health emergency and we may not have to change top executives in the middle of this fight against COVID-19," Banac said. "These are the thing that will have to be considered by the top management."

The PNP's Internal Affairs Service is set to complete its investigation on the birthday gathering this morning, and is expected to file administrative and criminal charges against Sinas as well as all other cops who took part in the feast, Banac said. Those who organized the surprise bash will be investigated as well for putting together the event that qualified as a mass gathering, which is currently prohibited as Metro Manila remains under enhanced community quarantine.

Banac added that Gamboa now knows there may have been breaches committed during the party, noting that there were definitely more than 10 people at the event as seen from the now-deleted photos posted by the NCRPO's public information office.

Officials will likely be charged for the non-cooperation clause of Republic Act 11332 or the Mandatory Reporting of Notifiable Diseases and Health Events of Public Health Concern Act, as well as violations of RA 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, he added.

The charges may merit a possible suspension and even dismissal from service, depending on the evidence available and the findings of the court, Banac said.

Sinas has since apologized for the incident but claimed he found "nothing wrong" with the gathering, saying proper social distancing and health measures were followed by the guests.

READ: No 'double standards', violations seen: NCRPO chief won't take leave amid birthday feast controversy

RELATED: Incoming Metro Manila police chief vows to bring in anti-crime campaign

As for taking a leave of absence, Banac said it will have to come personally from Sinas and the police officers involved. The NCRPO chief on Thursday said he will not take a leave from his post, unless ordered by Gamboa or President Rodrigo Duterte himself.

Sinas is a third-level officer and is considered a Presidential appointee. The PNP has been tasked to man checkpoints and do regular rounds to apprehend people outside their homes without quarantine passes, as well as those said to be violating physical distancing protocols.

"We would like to assure the public that the PNP is sensitive to the public opinion and all the criticisms and that is why PNP Chief PGen. Archie Gamboa immediately ordered for an investigation on the gathering so that those who may have violated quarantine rules will have to be punished also. This is for justice and fairness to all of us," Banac added, responding to mounting fury towards the PNP official on social media.
Id told readers that when we sold our suburban home, we moved to a quaint Hobbit hole in the Shire among the tiny Hobbits from Lord of the Rings. The journey by pony cart back to northern Illinois is long and treacherous.
Nigeria recorded a total of 193 new infections of the novel coronavirus on Thursday, according to the Nigerian Centre For Disease Control (NCDC).

Following the data released by the agency via its Twitter handle, the countrys total confirmed cases of COVID-19 has now reached 5162.

Lagos recorded 58 new infections with Kano coming close with 46 cases, Jigawa and Yobe states followed with 35 and 12 new cases respectively.

Read Also: Nigerias Infection Toll Drops As NCDC Releases New Data

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Since the outbreak of the disease in the country, 167 persons have died while a total of 1180 persons have recovered and discharged from various isolation facilities across the country.
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Tory MPs have told Downing Street to ditch its 'we-know-best attitude' and to publish more of the secret evidence which is underpinning its coronavirus response after a study suggested London is recording just 24 new cases a day.

Analysis conducted by Cambridge University researchers and Public Health England (PHE) experts suggested the disease could be eradicated in the capital within weeks and 20 per cent of Londoners had already been infected. It also found 12 per cent of people in England may have had the disease and that it kills in 0.63 per cent of cases.

It calculated that the crucial 'R' reproduction rate - the average number of people an infected patient passes the virus on to - has fallen to just 0.4 in the capital, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days.

But the same data also showed the R rate in London and every other region had already fallen before Number 10's unprecedented lockdown on March 23, suggesting COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered by simple social distancing measures introduced the week before which saw public transport use plummet and millions of Brits choose to work from home.

Leading scientists today admitted the study - based on the 'careful use' of death data from PHE, NHS England and regional health officials - was 'robust' but admitted projections for the future are likely to drastically rise because of the government's decision to slightly ease the lockdown last Sunday.

One epidemiologist argued it is 'extremely unlikely' the number of new cases in London is as low as 24 and another called for transparency of the data, saying it was 'not clear' from the available documents how the group had come to their estimates.

The new data - provided to a sub-committee of the Government's SAGE panel of experts - has sparked hopes that the easing of strict measures could be accelerated, perhaps on a regional basis, but the fact the data was published by the university researchers and not by the Government has prompted Tory fury.

Number 10 has been repeatedly criticised over the course of the COVID-19 outbreak over an apparent reluctance to release the scientific evidence its experts have provided. Conservative MPs have questioned what other vital information is being kept secret as they demanded a change in tack.

Steve Baker, the former Brexit minister, told The Telegraph: 'This means the Government really must publish fully and frankly the underlying advice and data, so we can have a full public consultation. All this black box policy-making isn't working for the country.' He said it would be 'far better to get all the data, modelling and advice out in the public domain at the first opportunity' - a position echoed by a number of his colleagues.

One Tory MP told MailOnline: 'There is a feeling that there is a sort of we-know-best attitude and we are not going to give anyone else the information so they can scrutinise or criticise the Government. The more information we have got the better. There is a feeling on the backbenches that the Government doesn't want anyone else butting in.

Another Conservative MP added: 'The policy should always be you put as much information in the public domain as you can. You should trust people with information.'

The Cambridge team estimated that 1.8million people in London (20 per cent) have already had coronavirus. They claimed between 10 and 53 people in the capital caught the virus on May 10, the day Boris Johnson announced a slight relaxation of some lockdown rules. The forecast also predicted it would have dropped to below 10 by today but that did not take into account the relaxation. At the peak of the capital's crisis - calculated to be the same day lockdown was announced - 213,000 are thought to have caught the infection.

Meanwhile, the team's modelling shows only one death occurs in every 160 cases, suggesting at the current rate, London's daily death toll will drop to a consistent level of zero in three weeks, which is how long it can take for a COVID-19 patient to be diagnosed, their condition to become deadly and their death to be recorded.

At the start of the outbreak London was the worst affected part of the UK but the latest numbers suggest it is now ahead of every other area in terms of recovery and it could see all new cases eliminated by June. In contrast, the North East of England is recording 4,000 daily infections and has an R rate of 0.8, twice that of the capital.

Data shows COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered in London before lockdown was introduced, and it suggested that social distancing measures introduced the week before worked, with millions of Londoners avoiding public transport and opting to work from home. This graph shows the number of daily deaths recorded in NHS hospitals in London (red bars) against the estimated R rate (blue line)

The data also broke down the 'attack rate' - the number of people infected in total - for each of the regions in England, saying that around 12 per cent of England had caught the virus in total. They say London has been the hardest-hit region, with around 20 per cent of the capital having caught the disease since Britain's outbreak began to spiral out of control, followed by the North West (14 per cent). In the Midlands and the North East and Yorkshire, the rate is estimated to be 11 per cent. While the team say around one in ten people in the East of England have already had COVID-19. The rate is just 8 per cent in the South East and even lower (5 per cent) in the South West

Analysis by Public Health England and Cambridge University calculated that the 'R' reproduction rate has fallen to 0.4 in the capital, with the number of new cases halving every 3.5 days

This graph, released by the Cambridge-PHE team, plots the number of deaths the academics predicted (black curve) against the actual number of deaths (red dots)

Figures show how the number of observed daily deaths across each region of England has dropped since the crisis peaked at the start of April

Data collected by the researchers suggests more than 700,000 people caught the virus on the peak day in England's crisis, which the team calculated to be March 23. It is now believed to have dropped to below 9,000. Fewer than 1,000 people a day are thought to be getting infected in the East of England. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The team also estimated that London has recorded fewer than 1,000 new cases a day since April 19, and said the number of new cases by May 10 was likely to be no higher than 24. Little more than 1,000 people are still being infected in the Midlands each day, the experts say. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The North East and Yorkshire is currently the hardest hit region, the team calculated. They said they expect the number of daily infections to be around the 4,300-mark. The North West is also still seeing the virus spread, with around 2,400 cases a day, on average. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The team - who provide the numbers to a sub-committee of the government scientific panel SAGE - estimated the new number of daily infections to be 1,260 in the South East and 739 in the South West. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

HOW DEADLY IS THE VIRUS? The Cambridge-PHE team looked at the deaths across England to work out an estimated infection-fatality rate - the percentage of people who will die if they caught the virus. They suggested COVID-19 kills 0.63 per cent of people it infects - a similar figure has been seen around the world, which would make it six times deadlier than seasonal flu. But they admitted it could be as low as 0.49 or as high as 0.81 per cent. AGE GROUP OVERALL 0-4 5-14 15-24 25-44 45-64 65-74 75+ DEATH RATE 0.63% 0.00052% 0.004% 0.0032% 0.018% 0.28% 1.8% 16% SO, HOW DOES IT COMPARE TO OTHER ESTIMATES? 0.1% FLU

FLU 0.19% ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM HELSINKI, FINLAND

ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM HELSINKI, FINLAND 0.37% ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM GANGELT, GERMANY

ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM GANGELT, GERMANY 0.4% ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN

ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN 0.75% EXPERT ESTIMATE FROM REVIEW OF 13 STUDIES

EXPERT ESTIMATE FROM REVIEW OF 13 STUDIES 0.79% ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM NEW YORK CITY

ANTIBODY SAMPLE FROM NEW YORK CITY 1.73% BASED ON AN ESTIMATED 4 PER CENT OF THE UK HAVING HAD THE VIRUS Advertisement

The data - given to the Scientific Pandemic Influenza sub-group on Modelling - suggested COVID-19 kills around 0.63 per cent of people it infects - a similar figure to other estimates from around the world, which would make it around six times deadlier than seasonal flu. But they admitted it could be as low as 0.49 or as high as 0.81 per cent.

The Cambridge-PHE study showed a huge variation between different age groups, warning the virus has an infection-fatality rate of around 16 per cent for over-75s but it is below 0.018 per cent for anyone under the age of 44 - the equivalent of one death for every 10,000 cases.

For people between the ages of 45 and 64, the team said the death rate was around 0.28 per cent while the rate was approximately 1.8 per cent for people aged between 65 and 74.

The data also broke down the 'attack rate' - the number of people infected in total - for each of the regions in England, estimating around 12 per cent of England had caught the virus in total.

They say London has been the hardest-hit region, with around 20 per cent of the capital having caught the disease since Britain's outbreak began to spiral out of control, followed by the North West (14 per cent).

In the Midlands and the North East and Yorkshire, the rate is estimated to be 11 per cent. While the team say around one in ten people in the East of England have already had COVID-19. The rate is just 8 per cent in the South East and even lower (5 per cent) in the South West.

The report also delved into the crucial R rate of each region. It is vital that the number - which is thought to have been between 3.5 and 4 at the start of the crisis - stays below one, otherwise the outbreak will start to rapidly spiral again as people infect others around them at a faster rate.

One leading scientist today disputed the exact number of daily new cases under the Cambridge-PHE estimate.

Dr Sebastian Funk, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said he expected the number was likely 'a little bit higher' than 24.

HOW MANY PEOPLE HAVE CAUGHT THE VIRUS IN YOUR REGION? REGION ENGLAND EAST LONDON MIDLANDS NE AND YORKS NORTH WEST SOUTH EAST SOUTH WEST TOTAL CASES 6,540,000 650,000 1,830,000 1,180,000 935,000 960,000 732,000 265,000 'ATTACK RATE' 12% 10% 20% 11% 11% 14% 8% 5% What is the attack rate? The Cambridge-PHE team used this term to describe the percentage of any given group that has been infected. For example, an attack rate of 20 per cent in London suggests one in five people living in the capital have already had the virus. Why is the rate so different to the estimate given by the government? Sir Patrick Vallance, Number 10's chief scientific adviser, revealed last week that around 4 per cent of Britain may have caught COVID-19. But that was based on preliminary data from an antibody sampling study has developed antibodies against COVID-19. The new Cambridge-PHE model didn't look at blood samples from thousands of people, instead it analysed all deaths reported by PHE and NHS England to work out a rough estimate. One expert told MailOnline: 'The old adage "all models are wrong but some are useful" springs to mind.' How accurate is the above number? The experts gave a range of numbers for each region and settled on their best guess, which was the number quoted above. The full ranges were: ENGLAND: 5,060,000 - 8,480,000 (9%-15%) EAST: 500,000 - 850,000 (8%-13%) LONDON: 1,420,000 - 2,340,000 (16%-26%) MIDLANDS: 909,000 - 1,530,000 (9%-15%) NE AND YORKS: 719,000 - 1,210,000 (8%-14%) NORTH WEST: 743,000 - 1,240,000 (11%-18%) SOUTH EAST: 563,000 - 957,000 (6%-11%) SOUTH WEST: 201,000 - 350,000 (4%-6%) Advertisement

Speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, he said: 'Well, there is some variation around this and there is some uncertainty in this.

'But what we have observed in London is that case numbers and death numbers have come down faster than in other parts of the country - albeit from a considerably higher level.

'So I think it... well, I would say it is a little bit higher than that, but it is probably lower than the rest of the country.' Asked whether the R rate should be looked at regionally, Dr Funk said: 'I absolutely do so, yes.'

Pushed on whether the Government should react to different R rates regionally in policy terms too, he added: 'I think that is something that we will probably have to do going forward.'

But exactly how they came to their results for the R rate in each region is unclear, according to infectious disease expert Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia.

He told MailOnline it was possible the researchers were 'using a model previously designed for influenza', which could make the results 'uncertain'.

It is thought the scientists drew on data from death certificates, as well as NHS and PHE coronavirus test results, to predict the reproduction number.

Professor Matt Keeling, of the University of Warwick, revealed he felt the R value for London was 'extremely low', saying other estimates put it at 0.6.

He added: 'The difference between 0.4 and 0.6 might sound like scientists arguing over small details.

'But these translate to very substantial differences in the rate of decline of cases (or the time for the epidemic to halve).

'If people think London is coronavirus-free that could be dangerous, and could lead to complacency, undermining all the struggles and sacrifices everyone has made.'

Professor Keeling said: 'A relaxation of vigilance could easily see R increasing above one, and a second epidemic wave.

Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, said: 'It is not clear from the easily available documentation what methods and models this group have been using to produce their estimates and predictions.

'Whilst the confidence intervals around both studies are high there does seem to be some importance differences in conclusions drawn from modelling and from surveillance of actual infections in the real world.

A TIMELINE OF THE UK'S COVID-19 LOCKDOWN February 28: Virus started spreading uncontrollably in Britain, according to the World Health Organization. March 3: Government and NHS officially launched campaign urging people to wash their hands more often. March 12: Anyone who developed a fever or a new cough, regardless of whether they got tested for COVID-19, was told to self-isolate for two weeks. March 13: The London Marathon, set to take place on April 26, was rescheduled for October 4. England's top tier of football - the Premier League - is suspended. March 16: Social distancing begins: Public were told to avoid contact with people outside of their homes, to work from home where possible, and to only take essential travel, such as to and from work or medical appointments.

Pubs and restaurants are not forced to close but people are encouraged to avoid them.

Likewise, the Government refused to ban large gatherings and sports events but said police and ambulances would no longer be provided for them. March 16: A report by the Imperial College COVID-19 Response Team, headed by Professor Neil Ferguson, published a report warning that 250,000 people could die if no lockdown was introduced. The Royal Shakespeare Company shuts productions. March 17: The Royal Albert Hall in London is closed until further notice. March 18: Glastonbury Festival 2020 - scheduled for the summer - was cancelled. The British Museum and the Design Museum are closed until further notice. March 20: Major businesses were ordered to close immediately, including gyms, leisure centres, pubs, cafes, restaurants, theatres and cinemas. March 23: Full lockdown introduced: In a speech to the nation Prime Minister Boris Johnson urged everyone to stay at home unless necessary, only leaving to shop, to go to medical appointments or to exercise once per day.

Gatherings of people were banned, regardless of size, and people prohibited from mixing with others outside of their household.

Everyone was told to work from home if possible. Many non-essential workers were forced to stop working if they couldn't do it from home.

Schools shut their doors except to the children of essential workers. March 24: All non-essential businesses, including clothing shops and hairdressers, were ordered to close. Advertisement

'Both approaches are subject to uncertainty and potential biases and it remains to be seen which gives the more precise estimates of actual disease burden.'

He added: 'The results of antibody testing when available will provide additional useful information.'

The government has yet to release any figures from its surveillance sample - but Sir Patrick Vallance, Number 10's chief scientific adviser, said preliminary data had showed four per cent of Britain had developed antibodies to the virus, and that the rate was as high as 10 per cent in London.

Dr Thomas House, from the University of Manchester, said: 'This study uses robust methods to estimate the trajectory of the epidemic in different regions.

'It is not the case that we can tell from this data that the number of new cases in London is down to 24  this was modelling fitted to deaths and predictions will change due to the changes announced last Sunday.'

Prof Sheila Bird, Formerly Programme Leader, MRC Biostatistics Unit, University of Cambridge, who was not involved in this work, said: 'Over-excitement about what may, or may not, transpire later in June is premature.'

The new data has prompted some MPs to urge the Government to commit to lifting lockdown on a region-by-region basis with those areas with a low transmission rate granted more freedom.

The merits of such a move are believed to have been considered by SAGE but there are concerns the approach could lead to confusion.

Tory MP Bim Afolami told the Daily Telegraph: 'If you look at other countries, theyve often adopted regional approaches. If it makes sense from a health perspective, we need to consider it.'

Former Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers added: 'These figures are good news. They show lockdown measures have been working and I think they make the case for further easing of the lockdown in London.

'Its vital that we do find ways to let the economy recover  and London is the powerhouse of the economy.'

Another Tory MP argued against the regional lifting of lockdown, telling MailOnline: It is not a good idea because we have seen with Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales having separate, different policies the confusion it has caused.

Former health minister Steve Brine said that restrictions should be lifted for all areas at the same time because 'the country should move together.'

In London, the rate of infections went from a peak of 213,000 people a day on March 23, to 10,000 cases by April 7, when the lockdown had been in place for two weeks.

Experts now say around 15 per cent of residents in the capital have now had the disease already and may have built up immunity, which makes it harder for the virus to spread and may explain its low R rate of 0.4.

More white collar jobs in London meant more employees were able to work from home and isolate from others, which also stunts COVID-19's ability to infect people, epidemiologists say.

Public Health England's analysis is now being given to local teams and councils to help determine the spread of the virus and level of immunity in their region.

A regional lifting of lockdown would prove useful in allowing Londoners to return to work as a first step to restarting the economy while other regions wait to lower their reproduction rates.

Several rural communities have expressed fury that city dwellers who visit beauty spots could spread the virus this weekend after social distancing rules were partially relaxed.

Rural police and crime commissioners fear locals will lash out at visitors as they try to protect their communities from the deadly bug.

Officers can no longer kick tourists out of hotspots after the PM eased restrictions on where people can travel in England from yesterday.

The team analysed the data of deaths published by PHE and NHS England to work out that the overall fatality rate was around 0.63 per cent - but was as high as 16 per cent for over-75s

The team also showed how the cumulative cases curve has flattened in all of the regions, with it finally starting to bend to an almost flat line across England with an estimated 6.5million cases in total. It also showed how the rate has flat-lined in the East of England, too. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The cumulative number of cases has barely changed since the start of April, according to the projection by the Cambridge-PHE team. In comparison, the rate is still growing at a quicker rate in the Midlands because it is recording more new cases per day than the capital. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The cumulative cases curve is still rising at a high rate in the North East and the North West, according to the projection. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

Charts also show how the cumulative number of cases in the South East and South West has risen over the past few weeks, with exponential growth between March and mid-April. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

There can be a time lag of more than three weeks between someone becoming infected with coronavirus and dying. Symptoms take days - if not weeks - to become life-threatening. The death has to be recorded and reported, and the family notified, in a process that takes days

HOW DOES THE NUMBER OF CASES STACK UP AGAINST THE NUMBER OF DEATHS? There can be a three-week delay between catching the killer virus and dying from the disease, according to top scientists. This is because it can take days for a patient to develop symptoms, and a fortnight for the illness to become life-threatening. If the patient then dies from the illness, the death has to be recorded and reported. This process can take up to six weeks in itself - but often happens within three days. The reporting delay is why it took several weeks for the official figures to show the number of deaths - which peaked at the start of April - was falling. Using these timings, it is possible to make a comparison against the number of deaths occurring currently to the rate of infections happening three weeks ago (April 23). However, it is only an estimate and is not completely accurate because many deaths are recorded in a much quicker time-frame than three weeks. SO, WHAT DOES IT SUGGEST THE DEATH TOLL WOULD BE? ENGLAND Estimated daily cases on April 23: 31,000 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 195 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 47 EAST Estimated daily cases on April 23: 3,670 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 23 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 8 LONDON Estimated daily cases on April 23: 482 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 3 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 4 MIDLANDS Estimated daily cases on April 23: 5,450 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 34 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 4 NE AND YORKS Estimated daily cases on April 23: 9,340 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 58 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 12 NORTH WEST Estimated daily cases on April 23: 6,840 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 43 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 8 SOUTH EAST Estimated daily cases on April 23: 4,000 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 25 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 9 SOUTH WEST Estimated daily cases on April 23: 1,890 Estimated number of deaths on May 13: 11 Actual number of deaths on May 13: 2 Estimated daily cases on April 23: Based on the figure provided by the Cambridge-PHE team for each region. Estimated number of deaths on May 13: Based on one model suggesting that it takes all patients three weeks from catching the virus to dying, which will not be true for all fatalities Actual number of deaths on May 13: Based on figures taken from NHS England for each region, which were released yesterday. Officials warn the true number will increase. For example, data released on Wednesday showed just 40 deaths had occurred in England the day before. This figure was revised to 122 yesterday due to more being recorded. This figure also does not take into account deaths that occurred in other settings. Advertisement

The National Police Chiefs Council was warned there will be a spike in vigilante attacks on houses, cars and people if officers are not out on the beat.

Second home owners in popular resorts such as Devon and Cornwall have already been targeted and in some areas pins and nails have been laid as traps for cyclists.

However, the data suggests that the bigger threat may now be to Londoners who have not had the virus from those elsewhere in the country.

The current 'R' rate for the whole of England is now 0.75. The North East and Yorkshire have the highest infection rate, at 0.8.

Yesterday, it was revealed that eight out of 10 of areas with the highest infection rates in Britain are in northern parts of England.

The small industrial town of Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, has an infection rate of 882 cases per 100,000 - almost double that in Brent (419), the worst-hit part of London.

Boris Johnson has insisted that keeping the R below one is the most important of five tests that must be passed before returning to normal life.

The R is used to measure how fast the disease is spreading, and if it rises above 1, cases would start to grow rapidly and the virus could spiral out of control.

The latest research suggests the R is below 1 in all corners of England, but there is variation between regions.

In the Midlands, the value is believed to be 0.68, but in the South West it is thought to be around 0.76.

The PHE and Cambridge researchers say the R is 0.71 in the East of England, 0.73 in the North West and 0.71 in the South East.

The scientists drew from data from death certificates, as well as NHS and PHE coronavirus test results to predict the reproduction number.

But exactly how they came to their results is unclear, according to infectious disease expert Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia.

He told MailOnline it was possible the researchers were 'using a model previously designed for influenza', which could make the results 'uncertain'.

The Government is doing its own monitoring of R values in the country to help it decide when to end lockdown.

But officials have been accused of not being transparent because they have yet to release regional breakdowns.

Mayors in the North West of England have written to Boris Johnson demanding he make them public.

Andy Burnham and Steve Rotheram said their regions had 'the highest number of new cases last week' and questioned if the easing of lockdown had come too soon for the Greater Manchester and Liverpool City.

Mr Burnham and Mr Rotheram wrote to the PM on Tuesday to say data on the R number needed to be published at a regional and sub-regional level on a daily basis 'as a matter of urgency', according to the BBC.

'We believe this is essential information which will help our residents make informed decisions about the risk and help decide whether they wish to take a more cautious approach to the relaxation of the lockdown rules, given the risk locally', they wrote.

Professor Ian Jones, a virologist at the University of Reading, told MailOnline it was still 'too early' to draw any conclusions from the Cambridge University findings.

He said: 'The level is below one as a result of the lockdown, put simply if you don't bump into anyone, you cannot pass on the virus, even if you have it.

'Evidently adherence to social distancing is not the same everywhere, or at least did not get taken seriously everywhere at the same time, and you've also got to factor in the relative level of susceptible people.

'The key point limiting opening up is that the virus has not changed, it's not weaker or less infectious so we are, in a way, back at a similar point to the beginning of the epidemic.

'What's changed is that everyone is now aware of the situation and most people treat it seriously, so as long as that remains the case the numbers could now be kept under control.

'There may also be some additional side factors such as warmer weather, mask use etc which will all have a percentage effect. But exactly how the R number will develop as lockdown eases is unknown.'

Some scientists and senior ministers have warned the Government against relying too heavily on the R value because it is being 'skewed upwards' by care homes.

Greg Clark MP, the chairman of the science and technology select committee, said the R value was 'irrelevant'.

He told The Telegraph: 'There's a concern that measures that could safely release people back into the community are not being taken because of an irrelevant 'R' number determined by cases in care homes and hospitals.

The graphs show the number of deaths is still rising across England because of a lag in how long it can take patients to die from the virus. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

London's death curve is beginning to flat-line, according to the data, while the cumulative number of deaths in the Midlands is continuing to rise. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The total number of deaths is still rising sharply in the North East and North West, the two regions of England being hit the hardest. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

Data also shows the curves for the cumulative number of deaths in the South East and South West are still rising. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

If the R rate rises above one Britain's outbreak will start to grow again after weeks of shrinking. A rate of 0.5, for example, would mean every 10 infected people pass it on to only five others, while a rate of 1.2 would see them give it to 12

How the 'R' has fallen since lockdown: The reproduction number (shown on the vertical axis) was over 3.5 in the North East and Yorkshire, but has fallen to 0.8 now. In the North West, it was believed to be just below 3.5 at its peak but has now dropped to 0.73. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

The PHE and Cambridge researchers estimate the R was just below 3 in London and the Midlands at its peak. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

In the South East and South West, the R was below 3 at the highest point - but it is now believed to be hovering at around 0.7. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

For the East of England, the reproduction value surpassed 3 at its peak but has dropped to 0.71, the researchers say. For the entire country, the R is believed to be 0.75, on average. The blue lines shows when lockdown was introduced on March 23, and the red line is May 10

LONDON'S CRUCIAL R RATE WAS ALREADY FALLING BEFORE LOCKDOWN The coronavirus infection rate in London was already falling before the country went into lockdown, data shows. Analysis by Public Health England and Cambridge University calculated the crucial reproduction rate, known as the R, peaked at 3 in the capital in late February. But the R - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - plummeted to 2.3 in the days before March 23, when the UK shut down and the economy was crippled. It suggests that COVID-19's ability to spread was already severely hampered by simple social distancing and home working measures introduced a week earlier. Epidemiologists told MailOnline more white collar jobs in London meant more employees were able to abide by the work from home rules and isolate from others, making it easier to shut the virus out of the capital. The analysis also suggests the R in London tumbled below 1 just days after lockdown, when the number of new cases began halving every three-and-a-half days. London's reproduction rate is now just 0.4, with fewer than 24 people becoming infected every day. If cases continue to decrease at the current rate the virus will be virtually eradicated in the capital by June. The team's model says only one death occurs in every 160 cases. This suggests, at the current rate, London's daily death toll will drop to a consistent level of zero in three weeks, which is the average time lag between someone being diagnosed, their condition becoming deadly and their death being recorded. London's crisis is in stark contrast to the rest of the UK, where the R is closer to 1 - the dangerous level at which the disease could spiral out of control again. MPs said last night the data highlights the need to ease lockdown on a region by region basis. Advertisement

'It's not clear how the 'R rate in care homes is relevant to the 'R' rates of people going about their daily business. If people are in a care home, by definition they are not going out into the community and infecting other people.

'But the single 'R' number given out by the Government has been skewed. It cannot reflect the reality outside, and we need to know whether crucial public policy decisions are being based on this number.'

Epidemiologist Mark Woolhouse, a professor at the University of Edinburgh and an adviser to Tony Blair's Government during the foot and mouth outbreak in 2001, described the R as a 'very, very crude number' which was too general to use by itself to decide on policy.

He told the paper he was 'very against' using it as a policy objective in anyway and would be 'unhappy' if it was the deciding factor for lockdown.

It comes after Government data revealed northern towns were now being hit hardest by the coronavirus.

At least 552 people in Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria, have caught COVID-19 since the outbreak began in February, according to the latest Government data.

That gives the small industrial town of 67,000 people, tucked away on the Furness peninsula in the North West, a rate of 882 cases per 100,000 - or 0.88 per cent.

To put this into perspective, Barrow's infection rate is more than double that of Wales (365), triple England's (244) and Scotland's (251) and quadruple the rate recorded in Northern Ireland (220).

Figures show that Cumbria is also home to the area with the third highest infection rate. South Lakeland - east of Barrow-in-Furness - has a rate of 488 cases per 100,000 people.

And the town with the second-highest rate is Lancaster (753), which is located on the other side of Morecambe Bay in Lancashire.

Experts are puzzled as to why this part of the North West has turned into a hotspot for COVID-19 but local public health officials say it may be skewed by higher testing figures.

The University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay Foundation Trust (UHMBT) covers three hospitals treating coronavirus patients - the Furness general in Barrow, the Royal Lancaster Infirmary and the Westmorland general in Kendal in South Lakeland. The trust has recorded 156 deaths, according to NHS England statistics.

At least 552 people in Barrow-in-Furness (pictured), Cumbria, have been infected with the disease since the outbreak began in February

WHAT IS THE R NUMBER? Every infectious disease is given a reproduction number, which is known as R0 - pronounced 'R nought' - or simply R. It is a value that represents how many people one sick person will, on average, infect if the virus is reproducing in its ideal conditions. Most epidemiologists - scientists who track disease outbreaks - believe the SARS-CoV-2 virus, which causes COVID-19, has an R value of around 3. But some experts analysing outbreaks across the world have estimated it could be closer to the 6.6 mark. As an outbreak goes on, the R0 may be referred to more accurately as Re or just R, as other factors come into play to influence how well it is able to spread. Estimates of the COVID-19 R vary because the true size of the pandemic remains a mystery, and how fast the virus spreads depends on the environment. As an outbreak progress the R may simply be referred to as R, which means the effective rate of infection - the nought works on the premise that nobody in the population is protected, which becomes outdated as more people recover. Advertisement

Colin Cox, the director of public health for Cumbria, claims the NHS trust began mass-testing its employees and patients at the end of February and has conducted 'three times' more swabs on average, which 'may explain a fair chunk of it'.

A total 61 people in Barrow have fallen victim to coronavirus, giving it a death rate of 91 for every 100,000  one of the worst outside of London.

Officials are stumped as to why the town has been plagued with so many cases, despite welcoming just a fraction of the tourists compared to the nearby Lake District.

Lee Roberts, deputy leader of Barrow borough council, said the figures were a 'big worry' given that lockdown measures are being relaxed today.

Some of the cases can be traced back to a 'super-spreader' house party before lockdown in March, where at least six people had the virus.

The first person to die from the illness in the town had been at the party, according to The Guardian. But how the disease managed to race around the town and infect hundreds more remains a mystery.

Mr Roberts believes high levels of deprivation are partly to blame for the high infection rate.

An Office for National Statistics (ONS) report this month revealed that people living in the poorest parts of the country are dying at twice the rate of those in the wealthiest regions.

Experts say this is because they are exposed to the virus more because they are more likely to work in jobs that cannot be done from home, live in overcrowded homes and use public transport more.

That gives the small industrial town of 67,000 people, tucked away on the on the Furness peninsula in the North West, a rate of 882 cases per 100,000

WHICH AREAS HAVE THE HIGHEST COVID-19 INFECTION RATES PER 100,000 PEOPLE? Barrow-in-Furness, Cumbria ( 822) Lancaster, Lancashire (522) South Lakeland, Cumbria (488) Ashford, Kent (484) Gateshead, Tyne and Wear (478) Sunderland (478) South Tyneside, Tyne and Wear (448) Middlesbrough (447) Carlisle (431) Brent, London (429) ...AND WHICH AREAS HAVE THE LOWEST COVID-19 INFECTION RATES PER 100,000 PEOPLE? Hastings, East Sussex (47) Mendip, Somerset (50) Torridge, North Devon (51) Rutland, East Midlands (68) West Lindsey, Lincolnshire (80) North Devon (87) North East Lincolnshire (89) Rother, East Sussex (90) South Hams, Devon (91) Arun, West Sussex (91) Advertisement

The poorest in society are also more likely to suffer from underlying health conditions and have compromised immune systems - putting them at an increased risk of falling badly unwell with coronavirus.

COVID-19 testing has been largely reserved only for those who fall seriously ill, with those who have minor symptoms being instead told to isolate at home and wait to get better.

Mr Roberts said: 'Most of Barrow is very compact: 40 to 50 per cent of Barrow is terraced housing and we've got a lot of flats, we've got a lot of deprivation, a lot of health inequalities.'

Figures show that Barrow has high levels of asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) compared with the national average  both of which make COVID-19 symptoms worse.

'We have quite a lot of historic respiratory problems from people who worked in old industry, in the ship yards,' Mr Roberts added.

And the constituency has higher than average numbers of patients with diabetes, high blood pressure and obesity, which are all risk factors for the disease.

Barrow's population is also older than average, with 22.7 per cent of residents aged 65 to 90, compared with the England average of 18.3 per cent.

Coronavirus preys on the elderly, with over-80s 12 times more likely to fall critically ill after catching it, according to some estimates.

But Colin Cox, the director of public health for Cumbria, said the high infection rate may also be skewed by the fact Barrow is testing more people for the virus than other towns.

He told The Guardian: 'The rate of testing in Barrow has been two to three times higher than in many other parts of the north-west, so that will explain a fair chunk of it, but I don't think it will explain all of it.'

Up to 220,000 people in England may have the coronavirus right now, government figures show as a study claims 19 MILLION Brits could have already had the virus without a diagnosis

Up to 222,000 people in England may be infected with the coronavirus right now, according to a government testing survey, while scientists estimate that a third of the population have already had it and recovered.

The first round of random public testing has identified only 33 positive cases of COVID-19 out of a sample of 10,705 people and estimated a national infection level of 0.27 per cent - one in every 370 people.

Professor Jonathan Van-Tam, deputy chief medical officer for England, said at today's Downing Street briefing that the data represented 'really quite a low level of infection' in the community.

This suggests that 148,000 people had the virus at any given time between April 27 and May 10, that figure being the middle estimate between a low of 94,000 and high of 222,000. During that time 66,343 people were officially diagnosed.

And the rate of infection is six times higher in healthcare workers and carers than it is in the general population, the survey found. While 1.33 per cent of people who worked in patient-facing roles in hospitals or homes tested positive for the virus, only 0.22 per cent of those with other jobs did so.

Numbers announced today did not include anyone who was tested in a care home or a hospital, where the statisticians said 'rates of COVID-19 infection are likely to be higher'.

Most official testing, which has picked up a total of 233,151 positive cases over the entire outbreak is being done in hospitals and care homes. But researchers at the University of Manchester have said this is likely huge under-estimate of the number of people who have had the illness already.

Those scientists, who studied the rate of infection in local areas, predicted that 29 per cent of everyone in Britain, more than 19million people, had already caught the infection by April 19, when 73,000 people had been diagnosed.

However, doubts were cast over the accuracy of this by a top scientist because data from other countries shows much lower levels of infection - for example, a study in Spain found evidence of just five per cent of people being infected and even in New York, which was hit worse than the UK, there is no proof that more than a quarter caught the illness.

Britain's own chief scientific adviser, Sir Patrick Vallance, said last week that he thought around four per cent of people in the UK had been exposed so far, rising to 10 per cent exposure in London.

ONS data is soon expected to publish antibody data showing how many people have had the infection already but does not currently have enough data for a reliable estimate.

The current survey, of which this is the first set of data, will be ongoing as part of the government's 'test, track and trace' plan for getting out of lockdown and will be expanded to regular testing in more than 10,000 households.

Its early findings come as the Department of Health today announced 428 more deaths from the coronavirus across the UK, taking the total number of fatalities to 33,614. The real figure is believed to be over 50,000.

The Office for National Statistics estimates that somewhere between 94,000 and 222,000 people in England currently have the coronavirus, putting their average estimate at 148,000. This represents 0.27 per cent of the population, and means approximately one in every 370 people is carrying the virus

Commuters have this week returned to work after Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced plans on Sunday to start loosening lockdown restrictions (Pictured: People walking through a train station in London decorated in tribute to the NHS)

England's top statisticians estimate that 0.27 per cent of the population has been infected with COVID-19 on any given day over the past fortnight - equal to around 148,000 people and certainly between 94,000 and 222,000

The data from the ONS showed that people's age did not appear to have any bearing on how likely they were to be diagnosed with the virus.

It found that approximately 0.32 per cent of people aged two to 19, or 50-69 were infected with the virus, along with 0.26 per cent of 20 to 49-year-olds and 0.23 per cent of over-70s.

Government officials say each person who is infected will pass on the virus to between 0.5 and 0.9 other people, showing that its reproduction rate - the R - is below one, so the outbreak is shrinking.

Research by the University of Cambridge and Public Health England suggests the rates of spread vary across the country, slowing to 0.4 in London and speeding up to around 0.8 in the North East. As long as it can be kept below one and the number of cases is low it should be safe to begin to ease lockdown.

The 33 people who tested positive in the ONS survey came from 30 different households, suggesting they either lived alone or most had managed not to infect the people they lived with. It is not known whether they realised they were ill before they got tested.

The same 5,276 households will be tested regularly to watch how the numbers change, and the scheme will be expanded to 10,000 homes in which everyone over the age of two will be asked to take part in swab testing.

If everyone in the country was able to be tested it could be expected that between one in every 250 and one in every 588 people would test positive. It is impossible to be certain because the sample size is small.

'Our latest estimates indicate,' the ONS report said, 'that at any given time during the two weeks from 27 April to 10 May 2020, an average of 148,000 people in England had the coronavirus (COVID-19).'

Office for National Statistics data suggests there is no significant difference between infection rates across age groups. It is impossible to draw definitive conclusions, however, because only 33 people tested positive across all ages combined

It added: 'All estimates are subject to uncertainty, given that a sample is only a subset representation of the wider population. However, confidence intervals provide us with a range of values that we believe contain the unknown true number of cases testing positive for COVID-19 infection.

'While we estimate that 148,000 people in England would test positive, if we repeated this study many times, 95 per cent of the time the true number of positives would lie between 94,000 and 222,000. This equates to between 0.17 per cent and 0.41 per cent of the target population.'

The figures come as a study from the University of Manchester today claimed nearly one in three Britons has already been infected with the coronavirus.

The first scientific study to analyse case rates at local levels estimated 29 per cent of the UK population had already had the illness by April 19, just 10 days after the peak of fatalities in NHS hospitals.

The academics who led the research said the finding confirms that the majority of sufferers have mild or no symptoms, and are unaware they have been infected.

They calculated rates of infection across the country by using local data and comparing the number of officially diagnosed cases over rolling 10-day periods.

HALF OF BRITONS THINK NORMALITY IS SIX MONTHS AWAY Almost half of Britons now believe it will take at least six months for normal life to resume, data shows. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) quizzed more than 1,300 people about the impact of coronavirus on British society. Results revealed 46 per cent of Britons fear it will take half-a-year before life returns to what it was before the pandemic struck. In contrast, the rate was just 33 per cent among a sample of Brits asked the same question in the week after lockdown was announced on March 23. The data, published today, also revealed three quarters of Britons are worried about the impact COVID-19 was having on their life. And it found eight in ten Brits abided by the government's rules to only leave their home for one form of exercise, medical reasons, shopping, or to work (if they were a key worker). Advertisement

Comparing five days' worth of cases before a date and then the five days after that date gave the scientists an idea of how widely the virus was spreading, they said, and they compared this to the changeable reproduction rate.

They came up with an estimate that there were 237 unrecorded COVID-19 cases for every one that was diagnosed, and then applied this to the 73,000 official cases by April 19, suggesting more than 17million people were infected.

The analysis suggested unreported community infection was more than 200 times higher than official Government figures. This will have reduced since then because the outbreak is now much slower.

But the scientists say the fact a quarter of Britons may already be immune to the illness provides 'light at the end of the tunnel' for coming out of lockdown.

Experts believe that at least half the population - potentially around 60 per cent - will need to have recovered from the virus for herd immunity to start to take effect, in which people would be protected by the fact that the virus cannot spread through people who have had it already.

Lead researcher Dr Adrian Heald, of The University of Manchester, said: 'COVID-19 is a highly infectious condition. It is very dangerous for a small group of people.

'However a much larger group seem to have low or no symptoms and have been unreported. This study tries to provide an estimate of the number of historic infections and gives us all a glimmer of hope that there may be light at the end of the tunnel.

'We show how effective social distancing and lockdown has been. Though this is a tragedy, it could have been far worse.'

The researchers made their estimate after analysing published local authority data in 144 regions in the UK.

This enabled them to calculate the R-value - the average number of people each COVID-19 patient infects - within each local authority area.

They believe each COVID-19 patient infected 2.8 others before the country went into lockdown on March 23.

But they say the reproduction number is now 0.9 or below in every corner of the country thanks to social distancing and the natural consequences of cumulative community infection.

It is vital that this number stays below 1, otherwise the outbreak will start to rapidly spiral again as people infect others around them at a faster rate.

The study, published in the International Journal of Clinical Practice, was carried out by a team from the University of Manchester, Salford Royal Hospital and analytics company Res Consortium.

Dr Heald, who is also a consultant at Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust, added: 'We also demonstrate that like any virus, COVID-19 has taken its natural course and infected a significant percentage of the UK population.

'The more people that are exposed to this - or any - virus, the less easy it is for further transmission to occur.

'Government policy can only moderate the impact using measures like widespread testing, social distancing and personal protective equipment.

'The social and economic impacts of Lockdown have been very difficult. But we believe this analysis may aid policy makers in a smoother transition to reducing social containment and sustainably managing the COVID-19 disease.'

ONLY 4.4% OF FRENCH POPULATION INFECTED A mere 4.4 per cent of the French population - or 2.8 million people - have been infected by coronavirus, a study led by the Pasteur Institute says. Published on Wednesday in the journal Science, researchers say the infection rate in the worst-hit parts of France - the eastern part of the country and the Paris region - is between 9 and 10 per cent on average. 'Around 65 per cent of the population should be immune if we want to control the pandemic by the sole means of immunity', the study says. The rate of infection was measured by the Pasteur Institute as of May 11, the day when France started to unwind its almost two-month-long national lockdown. 'As of a consequence, our results show that, without a vaccine, the herd immunity alone will not be enough to avoid a second wave at the end of the lockdown. Efficient control measures must thus be upheld after May 11', researchers say. Herd immunity refers to a situation where enough people in a population have immunity to an infection to be able to effectively stop that disease from spreading. France's overall death toll from the virus rose to 27,074 on Wednesday, the fifth-highest in the world, and total number of cases officially stood at 177,700, the seventh-highest total. The Pasteur Institute also said the lockdown put in place on March 17 in France led to a drastic decline of the coronavirus' reproduction rate, going from 2.9 to 0.67 over the 55-day virtual standstill of the country. A Spanish study also published on Wednesday showed similar results, saying about 5 per cent of the country's population had contracted the disease and that there was no herd immunity in Spain, also emerging progressively for long lockdown. Advertisement

Dr Heald added: 'This will allow policy makers to avoid a 'one size fits all' approach to pandemic policy.

'That does not consider the variation in both infection rates and impact across localities.'

Mike Stedman, from Res Consortium, said: 'Using our experience working with the NHS on improving patient services, we conducted this work in our own time.

'We felt we could make a valuable contribution to the public and policy makers by calculating the progression in the local and national daily infection rate.

'The figures are not perfect, with the numbers of severely ill patients as a proportion of the total cases being used as a market for estimates of wider infection.

'Only extensive antibody testing could give us a more accurate picture. But as that is only just becoming available, we believe this form of modelling is important in informing the best approach to unlocking the population.'

Dr Heald and Mike Stedman argue that incremental lifting of current social restrictions as soon as possible is vital to minimise further damage to the economy and the impact of prolonged social containment.

However, they add, this must be balanced against containing the current pandemic and minimising future waves of infection.

Dr Adam Kucharski, a professor in infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, said: 'Given how difficult it is to estimate the extent of unreported cases in a population from reported cases alone, it is likely that there is huge uncertainty in the estimates produced by the model used in this paper, and unfortunately this uncertainty is not reflected in the single value quoted in the paper and the press release.

'In addition, we now have direct measurements of infection from antibody testing in several countries, and the values found are generally much lower than the one suggested by this modelling analysis.

'One recent study found 5 per cent had antibodies in Spain overall, another estimated 2 per cent in Luxembourg, another 10 per cent in Geneva.

'Even in areas that have been severely affected by COVID-19, the proportion of the population with evidence of past infection is so far relatively low: 10 per cent in Wuhan, 10 per cent in London, 11 per cent in Madrid, 14 per cent in Gangelt, Germany; 21 per cent in New York.

'The only serological study the authors cite is a study from Santa Clara, California, which has received substantial criticism for likely overestimating the actual extent of infection in the population.

'Given how much antibody data is now emerging, it is increasingly important to focus on measurements rather than just modelling estimates.'

Understanding the number of people who have had the virus in the past can tell scientists more about how deadly it truly is.

Currently, the death rate is unknown because researchers can only compare the numbers of deaths with the number of hospital patients, which will show it to be unrealistically high.

A scientist has warned that around 560,000 people could die from coronavirus if half of Britain gets infected, a leading scientist has warned after results from the government antibody surveillance scheme suggested the virus kills 1.7 per cent of all cases.

Sir Patrick Vallance, Number 10's chief scientific adviser, revealed recently that around four per cent of Britain and 10 per cent of London has developed antibodies against COVID-19.

The estimate - based on data from antibody testing across the home nations carried out a fortnight ago - means only around 2.64million Brits have had the infection. It also suggests the illness kills around 1.21 per cent of all cases, making it around 12 times deadlier than the flu.

However, the infection fatality rate could be even higher, when the thousands of the UK's hidden COVID-19 deaths are included in the tally. Estimates on backdated data from the Office for National Statistics suggest at least 45,550 Britons have actually died - a death rate of around 1.73 per cent.

Infectious disease expert Professor Paul Hunter, from the University of East Anglia, told MailOnline that based on the predicted death rate of 1.7 per cent, the disease could cause up to 560,000 deaths in the UK, if half of the population was infected.

Other global antibody surveillance samples suggest the coronavirus death rate is much lower, between 0.3 and 0.75 per cent of cases. Those studies suggest between six and 12million people have caught the virus in the UK.

Professor Matt Keeling a populations and disease expert at the University of Warwick, said the British data would currently give a 'gross over-estimate of the fatality rate' because it was from so long ago - it was taken before mid-April and would likely only have diagnosed people who were ill weeks before that.

Ministers launched surveillance studies to track the rate of COVID-19 in Britain, with the true size of the outbreak remaining a mystery. Millions of cases have been missed because health chiefs controversially decided to abandon widespread testing early on in the outbreak.

Preliminary data from a separate government surveillance system released in Boris Johnson's 50-page exit plan yesterday suggested that almost 140,000 people in England currently have the coronavirus.

It comes as other official data released by the Office for National Statistics today show almost 10,000 care home residents have now died of coronavirus in Britain, accounting for a quarter of all the country's victims.

Death rate continues to drop: UK announces 428 more coronavirus deaths taking Britain's total official figure to 33,614

Britain's daily COVID-19 death toll dropped again today as the outbreak continues to slow, as officials announced 428 more victims - the lowest jump on a Thursday since the end of March.

Official figures released by the Department of Health show 33,614 coronavirus patients have now died across all settings in the UK, including hospitals and care homes, since the crisis began.

But the count is known to be inaccurate because it only takes into account lab-confirmed cases. Separate figures suggest Britain's real death toll - already the highest in Europe - could be in the region of 50,000.

Health chiefs also revealed a further 3,446 Britons have tested positive for COVID-19, meaning the official number of cases recorded in the UK has topped 233,000 - but the real size is also a mystery.

Ministers have no idea about how many people have been struck down since the outbreak began because of the controversial decision to abandon mass-testing before it spiralled out of control.

More than 2,000 people have now died in Scotland after testing positive for coronavirus, Nicola Sturgeon said at her daily briefing, with 34 more announced from the past 24 hours.

Public Health Wales announced a further 10 deaths, totalling 1,164 in the country, and Northern Ireland a further five, equalling 454.

The remaining 379 deaths occurred in England, which include all settings. NHS England announced 207 deaths from hospitals.

Patients were aged between 33 and 100 years old. Six patients, aged between 35 and 95 years old had no known underlying health condition, meaning they were considered healthy before the virus.

Deaths have been very slowly falling over the past few weeks since the peak struck in mid-April, with fewer fatalities reported in hospitals and care homes every day.

The Government death tally only counts people who have tested positive but has been rationing tests for months.

Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) includes everyone who has COVID-19 mentioned on their death certificate, regardless of whether they were tested for it.

Figures suggests the true number of coronavirus victims in Britain is likely over 44,000 and almost 40 per cent higher than the Department of Health's statistics show.

At least 50,000 more people than usual have died in Britain since the coronavirus outbreak began, statistics show, known as 'excess deaths'.

They take into account not just people who have died of COVID-19 but also those who died without a doctor ever noticing they had the virus, people who died as a result of hospital disruptions, and those who died because of indirect effects of the outbreak.

Office for National Statistics data showed yesterday that 8,315 people have died in care homes in England and Wales with coronavirus listed on their death certificate. But researchers at the London School of Economics suggest this is only around 41 per cent of the total, which could be more like 22,000

ONS has recorded 45,777 more deaths than normal since the beginning of March in England and Wales. Adding data from Scotland and Northern Ireland pushes this total to 50,979, the Financial Times reported.

The backdated ONS data shows almost 10,000 care home residents have died of coronavirus in Britain, accounting for a quarter of all the country's victims.

Researchers at the London School of Economics suggest care home deaths could be more in the region of 22,000.

The care home scandal continues to flare as politicians rally and question the Government's response to the outbreak in the early days.

Former health secretary Jeremy Hunt today condemned the failure to deploy coronavirus tests on patients discharged into care homes.

He insisted checks on patients sent back to care homes was an obvious 'thing that needed to happen'.

The criticism came after an row between Labour's Sir Keir Starmer and Boris Johnson which started at PMQs yesterday.

Sir Keir ambushed Mr Johnson by quoting official guidance that had been in place until March 12  well after coronavirus had started being transmitted in the UK - that said it was 'very unlikely' care home residents would become infected with Covid-19.

Mr Johnson accused the opposition leader of 'selectively and misleadingly' citing the document after the bruising exchange.

The document published at the end of February did state it was not likely there would be infections in care homes because, at that stage, there was no evidence of community transmission.

The advice was withdrawn on March 13, by which time there had been 31 coronavirus-related deaths in England, including one in a care home, according to the ONS.

The issue continues to fall back to caps on testing. NHS chiefs have revealed that it was only on April 15 - after the UK outbreak peaked - that enough capacity was in place to test 'systematically' everyone discharged from hospital.

Although they say only a 'very small number' of asymptomatic patients would have been sent to social care without being checked, the error has been likened to taking death straight into care homes where extremely vulnerable people live.

A Cabinet minister acknowledged the coronavirus crisis in care homes was 'absolutely terrible'.

Communities Secretary Robert Jenrick told BBC Radio 5 Live: 'I don't deny that what is happening in care homes is absolutely terrible. It's a huge challenge. But we are trying to put as much support as we can around care homes.'
Every morning Lakhvindra Singh walks around 1FD village in Sriganganagar district in northern Rajasthan, announcing: School ka samay ho gaya, sab video dekho (Its time for school, everyone watch the video). The 37-year-old government schoolteacher posted secondary school reminds the parents the video has landed in mobile phone of parents and that they should show it to their children.

In eastern Rajasthans Karauli district, around the same time, Rameshwar Bhairwa watches the video with his two children, in Class 1 and 9. The 38-year-old of Azizpur village says he learns with his children. I am lucky to be part of my childrens education. The videos are so interesting that even I like to watch them, he said.

Every morning at 9, videos land in 20,000 WhatsApp grounds across the state through which the education department delivers e-content for digital learning. The groups are named SMILE, acronym for departments initiative called Social Media Interface for Learning Engagement.

Education department has launched several initiatives to ensure continuous learning for all students through digital means in this crisis period. The departments objective is to keep students engaged at home and to prevent learning gaps in this crisis period, said Manju Rajpal, secretary of school education department.

SMILE programme is one of those initiatives. All students of Class 1 to 12 get 30-40 minutes of e-content at 9am in WhatsApp groups of their parents. Children in 13 lakh households and 3.4 lakh teachers are connected with the programme through the WhatsApp groups, Rajpal said.

Government teachers are mandated to call five parents or students every day to motivate the child to watch videos and clear any doubts that they may have in the e-content. Teachers have a personal connect with their students and their calls will add immense value to our efforts in creating impact, the secretary said. Many teachers, like Singh of Sriganganagar, go around the village to remind parents about the video every morning.

On Saturdays, theres a quiz to test e-learning. Panchayat-level education officers (PEEO) have created two groups each; one is for parents and the second, for teachers. The e-content is reviewed by a team of experts at Rajasthan State Council of Education Research and Training (RSCERT), states academic body. The departments digital library currently has over 500 videos and is publically available through the SMILE YouTube channel for any child to access.

Rajpal said the department has received more than 1,000 videos from teachers from every district across grades and competencies since the programme was launched on April 9 during the lockdown to prevent spread of coronavirus disease (Covid-19).

For students who dont have access to internet, the department has launched a radio programme called Shikshavani. This is a one-hour broadcast on 25 stations of All India Radio, which begins at 11am. The content includes interesting stories and recordings on life-skills for children, Rajpal said.

Education minister Govind Singh Dotasara held a video conference on Thursday to review the programmes. More than 4,000 officials of the department attended the review.

We have received feedback from over 2.5 lakh parents, students and teachers on the e-content. 92% students and parents reported to like the material being sent and found it beneficial. 96% teachers reported to like the e-content, the minister said after the meeting.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Rakesh Goswami Rakesh Goswami leads Hindustan Times bureau in Rajasthan. He loves to write on social issues and has been a journalist for 20 years, including 8 years as a broadcast journalist. ...view detail
Local coal-mining companies, long a pillar of the economy, recently laid off hundreds of workers as global energy demands have declined. Mr. Fitzgerald expects that will mean a surge in the uninsured, who already account for 12 percent of the hospitals patients. Wyoming is among 14 states that do not participate in the Affordable Care Acts Medicaid expansion, which provides coverage to low-income Americans.

My concern is that there is more of this in our future, Mr. Fitzgerald said of the layoffs. The global economy isnt going to bounce back to full employment. The demand for what we produce here in northeastern Wyoming will probably be depressed for a while.

His hospital has received $10.1 million from the $72 billion in federal stimulus funds distributed so far to hospitals across the country, which he estimates will offset losses from the past two months but not the higher number of uninsured patients he expects to see in the future.

The Trump administration has earmarked $12 billion in relief funds for hospitals that treated 100 or more coronavirus cases, meant to offset the high costs of caring for patients whose hospital stays could last weeks. Some of that funding will go to Providence Health Systems, which owns 51 hospitals, including the Seattle-area facility that treated the first confirmed coronavirus patient in the United States.

The hospital system has treated 1,200 coronavirus patients, and executives do not yet know whether it will break even on that care. They estimate that, even after accounting for federal stimulus dollars, Providence still lost $400 million in April.

We have been in this situation much longer, because of Seattle being on the forefront of the pandemic, said Ali Santore, the hospital systems vice president for government affairs. We canceled elective surgeries before there was a government order. We had to see so many patients who required more supplies, isolation and nursing. Our labor costs were through the roof.
In nearly over one and half months, a total of 42,259 undertrial prisoners were released from jails across the country during the lockdown period in a move to decongest the prisons in view of the coronavirus outbreak.

An interim report on initiative taken by National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) said that during the period, Uttar Pradesh released highest number of 9,977 undertrials prisoner followed by Rajasthan (5,460), Tamil Nadu (4,547), Punjab (3,698), Maharashtra (3,400), Madhya Pradesh (2,833), Delhi (2,177), Haryana (1,843), West Bengal (1,715) and Chhattisgarh (1,643).

It said during the pandemic the undertrial prisoners were released pursuant to the recommendations of the High Powered Committees constituted by the Supreme Court.

The top court had on March 23, directed all the states and UTs to constitute High Powered Committees which could decide which prisoners may be released on interim bail or parole during the pandemic.

The report said that across the country, a total of 16,391 convicts were released during the period on parole, etc. in pursuant to the recommendations of the High Powered Committees.

Madhya Pradesh topped the chart in releasing most prisoners on parole with number totalling to 3, 577 persons and it was followed by Punjab (3,479), Haryana (2,859), Uttar Pradesh (1,989), Kerala (1,128), Delhi (1,010), West Bengal (488) and Karnataka (405).

Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Uttarakhand, Chandigarh and Odisha released 334, 228, 182, 133 and 103 convicts during the period on parole.

In compliance of the directives of NALSA, State Legal Services Authorities (SLSA) have initiated mechanisms to achieve the target of social distancing in Prisons by taking various measures with the ultimate object of reducing over-crowding in jails, the report said giving the details of activities undertaken by NALSA during the lockdown period.

The report of NALSA said that extraordinary times requires extraordinary measures and pointed out that apart from release of undertrials prisoners and grant of parole to convicts, legal representation has also been provided to 9,558 persons at the remand stage in different States and Union Territories across the country.

It said that the endeavour of NALSA, even during this unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic, is that the poor and the illiterate should be able to approach the Courts of law.

The report said that during the lockdown period, 825 people have approached it with grievances relating to denial of wages/salaries by employers on behalf of themselves as well as, other daily wagers.

Out of the same, 1,822 people were provided with legal aid and assistance by the Legal Services Authorities. The highest number of such cases were reported in Uttarakhand (226) followed by Haryana (221), Punjab (166), Himachal Pradesh (77) and Mizoram (38). Legal aid and assistance was provided in all such cases, it said, adding that legal aid and assistance was provided to 1,018 people of Bihar.

The report also highlighted that in 310 cases legal aid and assistance was provided to tenants facing eviction during the lockdown period and the State with the highest number of cases in which most assistance was sought by the tenants was Uttarakhand (202).

It said that legal aid and assistance was also provided in West Bengal, Haryana, Karnataka which reported 40, 34 and 12 cases respectively.

As per the data, a total of 727 cases relating to Domestic Violence were reported to the Legal Services Authorities in different states/UTs across the country for seeking legal aid and assistance during the lockdown period.

The report said that the highest number of cases were reported in Uttarakhand (144) followed by Haryana (79), Delhi (63), Chandigarh (50), Tamil Nadu (48), Punjab and Uttar Pradesh (47 each) and West Bengal (46).

It said that Odisha reported 37 cases, Chhattisgarh reported 31 cases, Bihar reported 21 cases while, Kerala has 18 such cases, Jammu and Kashmir, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram reported 17 cases each, Maharashtra reported 12 cases and Himachal Pradesh had 10 cases.

Out of them, in a total of 658 cases (90.51 per cent), legal aid and assistance were provided to the women who sought legal aid and assistance on Domestic Violence, the highest being in the State of Uttarakhand (141) followed by Haryana (66), Delhi (63), Chandigarh (50), Uttar Pradesh (47), West Bengal (46), Punjab (34), Odisha (31), Bihar and Chhattisgarh (25 each) and Mizoram (21), the report said.

The report was compiled by NALSA after collecting data from different State Legal Services Authorities (SLSAs). Total of 28 SLSAs have submitted their data while eight SLSAs did not submitted the figures in their respective states.

As a result of committed efforts of stakeholders, the statistics indicates that Legal Services Institutions have so far provided legal aid and assistance in 658 domestic violence cases to women, 42,772 undertrial prisoners, 16,391 convicts, 9,558 persons at the remand stage, 1,882 labourers, 310 tenants, amongst others, NALSA said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
New Delhi, May 15 : Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi on Friday said it aims to manufacture Internet of Things (IoT)-enabled products like robot vacuum cleaner in India once the market is large enough for consuming such products.

When it comes to IoT-based products, Xiaomi TVs are quote popular along with smart bulbs, air purifiers, water purifiers and smart bands.

Apart from TVs, rest of the IoT products are currently being imported.

"Our TVs, smartphones and power banks are locally produced in India. We have 35,000 employees working at our five factories. Similarly, we will start manufacturing our IoT products in India once we are ready and the market is also ready for the same," Raghu Reddy, Chief Business Officer, Xiaomi India, told IANS.

Xiaomi showcased its Mi Robot Vacuum Mop-P' last month in the India market for Rs 17,999. The company will start shipping the robot vacuum cleaner from September 15, and will offer no-cost EMI for as low as Rs 2,999 per month.

It is equipped with 12 different multi-directional sensors and a dedicated Laser Distance Sensor (LDS) navigation system that can scan complex environments accurately and avoid obstacles during the cleaning process - especially at a time when cleaning homes and offices are a huge task in Covid-19 times.

"We are looking forward to launch more and more IoT products in India. Our aim is to make things simple for customers and for this, we unveiled 'Mi Robot Vacuum Mop-P'. The main idea behind launching the product during coronavirus pandemic was to encourage social distancing," said Reddy.

The robot vaccum cleaner was launched on Xiaomi's crowdfunding platform with an aim to sell 10,000 units before bringing it for everyone.

"The way people supported this product, we are confident that it will do well in the India market. We are extending the crowdfunding price of Rs 17,999 for all customers (especially in red zones) till June. Post that, it will be available for pre-order with early bird discounts at a price of Rs 19,999 from June 16 to July 15 and at a price of Rs 21,999 from July 16 to August 15," informed Reddy.

Post-official launch, it will be available at the actual price of Rs 24,999.

The company launched Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 with ENC and Mi Box 4K streaming device in India last week, to expand its IoT product portfolio.
One more person was arrested for his alleged involvement in the recent bank robbery in Mathura and nearly all of the looted money has been recovered, police said on Friday.

The suspect, identified as Parvinder Gautam, was nabbed on Thursday after an exchange of fire with police personnel near Gokul Barrage under Sadar Bazar police station limits, said Mathura SSP Gaurav Grover.

Gautam, the sixth person arrested for the bank robbery, sustained foot injury in the shootout and was admitted in a hospital, the senior superintendent said.

He said Rs 2,51,500 cash, one motorcycle, a pistol and three live rounds were recovered from Gautam who has allegedly confessed to playing active role in the bank robbery.

Five suspects, including a woman, were earlier held and Rs 17,10,000 recovered from them, police said.

The total amount recovered now stands at Rs 19,61,500 against the Rs 21,07,127 looted from the bank on Tuesday, the SSP said.

A gang of armed robbers had on Tuesday looted the Gramin Bank of Aryavart at Damodarpura in Sadar Bazar police station area of Mathura.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Treatment with IFN-2b was shown for the first time to improve virus clearance and decrease levels of inflammatory markers in a cohort of COVID-19 patients

Treatment with antivirals such as interferons may significantly improve virus clearance and reduce levels of inflammatory proteins in COVID-19 patients, according to a new study in Frontiers in Immunology. Researchers conducting an exploratory study on a cohort of confirmed COVID-19 cases in Wuhan found that treatment with interferon (IFN)-2b significantly reduced the du-ration of detectable virus in the upper respiratory tract and reduced blood levels of interleukin(IL)-6 and C-reactive protein (CRP), two inflammatory proteins found in the human body. The findings show potential for the development of an effective antiviral intervention for COVID-19, which is an ongoing global pandemic caused by the novel coronavirus, SARS-CoV-2.

"Interferons are our first line of defence against any and all viruses - but viruses such as corona-viruses have co-evolved to very specifically block an interferon response", says lead author Dr Eleanor Fish of the Toronto General Hospital Research Institute & University of Toronto's Department of Immunology, adding: "This informs us of the importance of interferons for the clearance of virus infections. Treatment with interferon will override the inhibitory effects of the virus."

Fish says that the research team considered IFN- therapy for COVID-19 after they demonstrated interferons had therapeutic benefits during the SARS outbreak of 2002 and 2003. "My group conducted a clinical study in Toronto to evaluate the therapeutic potential of IFN- against SARS. Our findings were that interferon treatment sped up the resolution of lung abnormalities in patients treated with interferon compared with those not treated with interferon" says Fish.

In this study, the authors examined the course of disease in a cohort of 77 individuals with con-firmed COVID-19 admitted to Union Hospital, Tongii Medical College, Wuhan, China, between January 16th and February 20th 2020. The individuals evaluated in this study consisted of only moderate cases of COVID-19, as none of the patients required intensive care or oxygen supple-mentation or intubation. Patients were either treated with IFN-2b, arbidol (ARB), which is a broad-spectrum antiviral, or a combination of IFN-2b plus ARB, and viral clearance was defined as two consecutive negative tests for virus at least 24 hours apart, from throat swab samples.

The researchers demonstrated a significantly different rate of viral clearance for each treatment group and notably, IFN-2b treatment accelerated viral clearance by approximately 7 days. Treatment with IFN-2b, whether alone or in combination with ARB, accelerated viral clearance when compared to ARB treatment alone. IFN treatment was also demonstrated to significantly reduce circulating levels of IL-6 and CRP, whether alone or in combination with ARB. The influence of age, co-morbidities and sex did not negate the effects of IFN treatment on viral clearance times or on the reduction in the inflammatory proteins IL-6 and CRP.

Despite the study's limitations of a small, non-randomised cohort, the work provides several important and novel insights into COVID-19 disease, notably that treatment with IFN-2b accelerated viral clearance from the upper respiratory tract and also reduced circulating inflammatory biomarkers, hinting at functional connections between viral infection and host end organ damage by limiting the subsequent inflammatory response in the lungs of patients.

Fish argues, "Rather then developing a virus-specific antiviral for each new virus outbreak, I would argue that we should consider interferons as the 'first responders' in terms of treatment. Interferons have been approved for clinical use for many years, so the strategy would be to 'repurpose' them for severe acute virus infections."

As an uncontrolled, exploratory study, Fish says a randomized clinical trial is a crucial next step: "A clinical trial with a larger cohort of infected patients that are randomized to treatment with interferon-alpha or to a placebo would further this research".

In the meantime, the findings from this study are the first to suggest therapeutic efficacy of IFN-2b as an available antiviral intervention for COVID-19, which may also benefit public health measures by shortening the duration of viral clearance and therefore slowing the tide of the pandemic.

###

Notes to Editors

Please link to the original research article in your reporting: Interferon-alpha2b treatment for COVID-19 https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01061/full

Corresponding author: Eleanor Fish

Email: en.fish@utoronto.ca

Corresponding Author's Institution: Department of Immunology, University of Toronto

Frontiers is an award-winning Open Science platform and leading Open Access scholarly publisher. Our mission is to make research results openly available to the world, thereby accelerating scientific and technological innovation, societal progress and economic growth. We em-power scientists with innovative Open Science solutions that radically improve how science is published, evaluated and disseminated to researchers, innovators and the public. Access to re-search results and data is open, free and customized through Internet Technology, thereby enabling rapid solutions to the critical challenges we face as humanity. For more information, visit http://www.frontiersin.org and follow @Frontiersin on Twitter.
The United States accused the Islamic State of the gruesome attack on a maternity ward in Kabul which killed at least 24 including two newborn babies. US Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad said in a series of tweets that ISIS has demonstrated a pattern for favouring heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world.

While an affiliate to Islamic State claimed responsibility of suicide bombing in Nangarhar province, no one has yet claimed the attack on Kabuls maternity hospital run by Doctors Without Borders. The unclaimed attacks could jeopardise the peace agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban which was underlined by the diplomat. He said that ISIS-K opposes the peace deal and seeks to encourage Iraq- and Syria-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity. No more excuses. Afghans, and the world, deserve better.  U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad (@US4AfghanPeace) May 14, 2020

Khalilzads statement comes after Afghanistans President Ashraf Ghani ordered to resume offensive mode against the Taliban even after the later denied role behind the horrific attacks. Acting Foreign Minister Haneef Atmar condemned attacks saying such actions will make the nation lose faith in the ongoing peace process.

Read: UN Chief Strongly Condemns 'horrific' Attack On Maternity Hospital In Afghanistan

'Cowardly violence'

Doctors without Borders, also known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), condemned the attacked called it senseless act of cowardly violence. It said that the organisation is devastated after the sickening attack on pregnant women, mothers and their babies at our maternity ward in Dasht-e-Barchi hospital.

MSF said in a statement that medical activities in the maternity ward of Dasht-e-Barchi hospital are suspended for the time being, but not closed. We mourn the loss of several patients and we have indications that at least one Afghan colleague was also killed, the organisation added.

Read: US' Mike Pompeo Condemns 'heinous' Twin Attacks In Afghanistan

Read: India Condemns Terror Attacks In Afghanistan, Calls For Immediate Cessation Of Violence

(Image credit: AP)
With 69 new Covid-19 positive cases reported in Karnataka, the southern state saw the single biggest day rise in cases, even as the cumulative number of those who have tested positive for the virus crossed the 1000-mark. The state till now has recorded 1,056 total Covid-19 positive cases which include 35 deaths and 480 discharges. The total number of active cases in Karnataka stands at 539.

State health department officials said that they were concerned over the fact that nearly a third of the new cases have come from those who have returned from the Gulf region after they were evacuated and brought to Dakshin Kannada and Udupi districts.

On Thursday, Karnataka had sent back about 19 people from Delhi who had refused to quarantine themselves mandatorily for the two-week period as prescribed. The 19 were a part of 1000 passengers who came in the first train from Delhi to Bangalore in nearly two months.

Meanwhile, the state administration received criticism from several quarters after belated visuals appeared on social media of an annual temple fair to Goddess Maramma at Kollagondahalli village in Ramnagar district in which hundreds of devotees participated without any social distancing or masks being worn.

Apparently, villagers prayed to the goddess for elimination of coronavirus but the assembly of several hundred devotees congregating without any precautions being taken has attracted flak.

While the panchayat development officer has been suspended for allowing the temple fair to happen, priest Bore Gowda was arrested on Friday and charged under various sections of the IPC, including disobeying orders of public servant and acts leading to spread of an infectious disease.

Deputy CM C N Ashwath Narayan who is also the district-in-charge minister, however, claimed that the administration was not aware of the festival being held and that strict action would be taken against anybody who had been negligent in their duties.
The Six Nations of the Grand Rivers Elected council has launched the COVID-19 Relief Fund to help ease the increasing financial burden of their ongoing emergency response efforts.

The community declared a Community Emergency on Mar. 12, initiating a series of measures to combat the spread of the coronavirus.

Our response to the COVID-19 has demonstrated our autonomy and the self-determination we rightfully hold over the future and well-being of our members, said Chief Mark Hill. Working with our Emergency Control Group and guided by our own emergency response plan, we have been steps ahead of our provincial and federal partners in our response to the global pandemic.

Elected council said they could not wait for funds to start flowing from Ontario and Canada to take decisive action, stating that the funding they eventually receive does not come close to covering the life-saving measures.

We had to make some tough decisions around the allocation of our communitys resources in the face of this outside threat, said Hill. Were increasingly feeling the effects of those decisions at all levels of our community, but we know its a small price to pay to protect the health and lives of our members.

Theyre hoping their partners and allies within and outside of the community will similarly step up to help with their ongoing pandemic response by donating to the fund.

Donations will be used to purchase much-needed personal protective equipment, medical supplies including equipment to maintain essential pandemic operations as well as food and necessities for many community members who are facing financial challenges.

The fund is being administered by the Royal Bank of Canada and contributions can be made through electronic funds transfer and electronic banking email at: covidrelief@sixnations.ca.
Pursuant to the Document No. 17/2020/MKSG dated 8th May 2020 of

Saigon Optic Company

regarding the cancellation of the shareholder list for attending 2020 Annual General Meeting, Vietnam Securities Depository (VSD) would like to announce as follows:

Cancelling the shareholder list for holding 2020 Annual General Meeting on the record date of 23rd March 2020

Reason for cancellation: Due to the complicated developments of the Covid  19 pandemic, the company decided to change the meeting date of 2020 Annual General Meeting
There were some of us, as there always are, devoted to fighting that fear with good. Some of us wrote letters to elderly people in nursing homes. Some of us adopted dogs from the pound. Some of us sent food to weary hospital employees. Some of us did our jobs, quietly. Some of us kept our heads down and our mouths closed, kept our opinions off social media. Some of us endured suffering, living through the deaths of family members, friends and those who had contributed greatly to our society. We tried to make sense of it by making a contribution, volunteering to go where we were needed or thanking an exhausted grocery store clerk.
New York: Rick Bright, a US government whistleblower recently fired by the Trump administration, delivered a chilling testimony in the Congress on Thursday about the country hurtling into the "darkest winter in modern history" unless there is strong leadership and a master plan to tackle the Covid-19 pandemic -- both of which he said were absent right now.

Bright's testimony came barely 48 hours after America's top infectious diseases expert Anthony Fauci warned in a Senate testimony of suffering and death if US states reopen too quickly.

Bright testified before a Congressional panel on Thursday by which time Covid-19 has killed more than 84,000 people in the US.

America now accounts for the world's highest caseload with more than 1.4 million sickened by the virus since the first case was reported in January.

Bright painted an alarming picture of organisational chaos in the US government after he warned of insufficient mask supply back in January.

According to Bright, America's biggest mask manufacturer was ready to crank up production, but it took five full weeks for the bureaucracy to move.

"The undeniable fact is that there will be a resurgence of (Covid-19) this fall, greatly compounding the challenges of seasonal influenza and putting an unprecedented strain on our health care system," he said.

"Without clear planning and implementation of the steps that I and other experts have outlined, 2020 will be the darkest winter in modern history," Bright said.

Bright tore into America's response and urged the government to allow scientists to be allowed to speak without "fear of retribution".

During his testimony, Bright contradicted nearly every major claim that US President Donald Trump has made so far on pandemic planning and testing in the US.

Bright warned Americans that there is neither a "vaccine plan" nor a "master plan" in the US at the moment.

He called for increasing public education around "simple things" like hand washing and mask wearing in public. "Frankly, our leaders must lead by modelling the behavior," Bright said, without naming US leaders who continue to go maskless in public.

"We need a national testing strategy. The virus is here, it is everywhere. We need to be able to test and isolate," he said in a sobering, five-minute opening statement.

"Pages from our pandemic playbook have been ignored by leaders," Bright said.

"Our window of opportunity is closing," Bright said, adding, "If we fail to develop a national coordinated response, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get far worse and be prolonged, causing unprecedented illness and fatalities."

Trump has dismissed Bright as "a really unhappy, disgruntled guy". Trump's comments on Bright follow after he brushed aside Fauci's warnings earlier this week that premature reopening may "turn the clock back".

Bright claims that he became a target after he urged early efforts to invest in vaccine development and stock up on strategic national supplies.

He said the friction escalated after he opposed widespread use of hydroxychloroquine, a malaria drug that Trump has touted multiple times as a "gamechanger" for treating Covid-19 patients. Bright was removed from his post in late April.

"We still do not have a standardised, coordinated plan to lead us through this response," he said on Thursday.

Echoing Fauci's view, Bright said a 12-18 month trajectory is the most aggressive for vaccine development. Before that, therapeutics will be America's best bet, he said.
Cabinet resigns en masse ahead of reshuffle

ROC Central News Agency

05/14/2020 01:26 PM

Taipei, May 14 (CNA) Premier Su Tseng-chang () announced a mass Cabinet resignation on Thursday, paving the way for a partial government reshuffle after the May 20 inauguration of President Tsai Ing-wen's () second tenure.

Su tendered the mass resignation signed by all Cabinet members during the weekly Cabinet meeting, the last before May 20, when Tsai will officially start her last presidential term.

Su, who will remain as premier after May 20, bowed to all the Cabinet members, thanking them for their hard work and praising them as "the strongest team."

It is understood that National Development Council Minister Chen Mei-ling () will step down, while Minister of Science and Technology Chen Liang-gee () said in a Facebook post later in the day that he will not remain.

(By Flor Wang, Wang Cheng-chung and Matt Yu)

Enditem/J

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A teenage boy was shot multiple times in a drive-by gun attack last night in the latest gangland attack in north Dublin.

Gardai became aware of the shooting in the Marigold Park area of Darndale at 9pm which is around the same time that the 19-year-old victim presented himself to Beaumont Hospital.

It is understood he was shot in the shoulder and leg but his injuries have been described as non-life threatening.

Gardai are investigating if a motorbike found burnt out close to the scene is linked to the attack.

Expand Close Gardai preserve a burnt-out motorbike on Marigold Park in Darndale after a teenage boy who was shot multiple times in a drive by gun attack presented himself to hospital Photo by Steve Humphreys / Facebook

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Whatsapp Gardai preserve a burnt-out motorbike on Marigold Park in Darndale after a teenage boy who was shot multiple times in a drive by gun attack presented himself to hospital Photo by Steve Humphreys

It's believed the victim was in the company of at least one other male at the time of the shooting, in which a machine gun may have been used by a gunman on the motorbike.

Attack

Inquiries are under way to establish a motive in relation to the incident but one line of inquiry is that it may be linked to recent violence in the area, including a brutal stab attack in the locality on Friday afternoon.

In that case, a 38-year-old man was stabbed multiple times in both legs and suffered a broken nose at Marigold Park at 1pm last Friday.

Sources said that a gang of ruthless teenage crack cocaine dealers - who are led by a yob with close links to murdered gun victim David 'Fred' Lynch - were behind the stab attack after the victim was accused of attending slain hitman Robbie Lawlor's funeral.

One line in the probe into last night's attempted gun murder was that it was a revenge attack for last week's stab attack and the intended target was not the teenager who was wounded.

By the time that gardai and paramedics arrived at the scene in the Marigold Park area last night, the victim had already left in a car.

He was still being treated at Beaumont Hospital last night and no arrests have been made in the case which is being investigated by Coolock gardai.
According to Stratistics MRC, the Global Ballistic Composites Market is accounted for $1.32 billion in 2017 and is expected to reach $2.82 billion by 2026 growing at a CAGR of 8.8% during the forecast period. Growing demand in personal protection and rising threat from growing internal and external conflicts are some of the factors fueling the market growth. However, high costs and failure to provide complete protection are hampering the market growth in this region.

Based on Fiber Type, Aramid Fibers has a steady growth during the forecast period due to this are strong synthetic fibers with high heat-resistant properties and it is widely used for the body armor application. By geography, North America holds the largest market share during the forecast period owing to high expenditure by the military industry on protection of security, and severe standards by the U.S. government emphasizing the safety of the defense forces are driving the market growth in this region.

Request For Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/11302

Some of the key players profiled in the Ballistic Composites Market include Honeywell International Inc., BAE Systems, Dupont, DSM, Morgan Advanced Materials, Barrday Corporation, Gurit, Teijin, MKU Limited and Waco Composites.

Matrix Types Covered:

 Ceramic Matrix Composite (CMC)

 Metal Matrix Composite (MMC)

 Polymer Matrix Composites

Fiber Types Covered:

 Glass

 Ultra High Molecular Weight Polyethylene (UHMWP)

 Aramid Fibers

 Other Fiber Types

Applications Covered:

 Helmets & Face Protection

 Vehicle Armor

 Body Armor

 Other Applications

Request For Report Discount: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/discount/11302

Regions Covered:

 North America

o US

o Canada

o Mexico

 Europe

o Germany

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o Italy

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o Spain

o Rest of Europe

 Asia Pacific

o Japan

o China

o India

o Australia

o New Zealand

o South Korea

o Rest of Asia Pacific

 South America

o Argentina

o Brazil

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o Rest of South America

 Middle East & Africa

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o Qatar

o South Africa

o Rest of Middle East & Africa

What our report offers:

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Social media is good for a lot of things -- spying on your high school boyfriend; finding like-minded pet owners; and getting free things from your neighbors.

Its also full of misinformation and misleading memes. Here are three coronavirus-related myths weve seen floating around social media and the truth behind them.

Myth: The state of Oregon can take your kids if you have coronavirus.

The Oregon Department of Human Services is concerned about this myth, which has been spreading like wildfire on social media.

The rumor started after a department transmittal, which DHS said was being misrepresented online.

"We want to be very clear, reads a statement on the DHS website, DHS Child Welfare in Oregon does not identify a parents medical condition as a safety threat and sole reason for removal of children.

We do have the capability, within our current rule and procedure, to work with a legal parent/guardian on a voluntary basis, to make a temporary plan for their child(ren) if they are too ill to care for their children, the statement continues. We would explore all options with a parent/guardian in that circumstance including their friends, family and community resources. If we exhausted all options, we could place their child in foster care.

However, DHS emphasized, this kind of placement is voluntary and doesnt impact custodial rights or involve the child dependency legal system.

We do not want anyone to avoid getting treatment or tested because of a fear that their children would be taken away, said DHS spokesperson Jake Sunderland.

Myth: Masks are actually unsafe.

According to some recent memes and Facebook posts, wearing a mask is actually very bad for your health because it causes you to breathe in carbon dioxide. This is the kind of sort-of science that sounds like it could be true, but according to Snopes, its mostly false.

The myth-busting website says what is true is that excessive carbon dioxide is bad for the human body.

Some people with preexisting respiratory illnesses may face health issues only with prolonged use of tight-fitting masks, such as respirators, Snopes says.

But, most of us are wearing cloth or surgical masks, and not for very long periods of time.

People wearing cloth or surgical masks are in little to no danger of breathing in unhealthy amounts of carbon dioxide, according to Snopes.

Myth: Staying home is ruining your kids immune systems

Emily Oster, author of the popular, science-based pregnancy book Expecting Better, addressed this rumor in her weekly newsletter, ParentData.

Oster said that data showed that kids who had nannies got sick less than kids who went to daycare, and this could be pertinent in a world where many kids suddenly have nannies (parents, juggling many jobs).

She said it was also true that kids who went to daycare get sick less than their peers with nannies during elementary school.

The higher illness burden at young ages seems to translate to less illness later, Oster wrote.

However, she added, I think it would be a mistake to freak out about this.

First, she said, kids will probably return to being with other kids within the next year and will get all the colds they have been missing.

And second?

The data, she said, which shows lower risk of illness in the elementary school years shows that illness rates equalize in middle school.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Chinese lawmakers have drafted a law to order all divorcing couples to complete a '30-day calming period' after the country saw tens of thousands of people applying for separation following the coronavirus lockdown.

Married couples who wish to break up must wait for a month before their request can be officially approved, the bill proposes.

Officials believe the 'cooling-off period' can help partners avoid 'impulsive separation'.

Chinese lawmakers have planned to enforce a '30-day calming period' on all divorcing couples as the country sees tens of thousands applying for separation following the coronavirus lockdown. The picture shows a couple sitting at a park in Guangzhou on May 1

Introducing the 'cooling-off period' will help couples avoid rushing into a divorce and maintain family stability, a judge told state broadcaster CCTV Friday. A newly-wed couple is pictured at a church in Guangzhou, China on May 1

The bill was first proposed in 2018 after the divorce rate in the country had been increasing for the past few years. The growth continued to spike after the coronavirus lockdown, Chinese media report.

During the 30 days, either party can withdraw the application if they regret their decision, according to the draft of China's new Civil Code.

It comes as divorce rates have spiked across China because 'couples spend too much time together during coronavirus home quarantine', officials claimed.

The new proposal is part of a draft for China's new Civil Code, which is due to be reviewed during the annual session of National People's Congress on May 22.

The bill consists of general provisions and laws on property, contracts, personality rights, marriage and family, inheritance, and torts, according to state media Xinhua.

Introducing the 'calming period' will help couples avoid rushing into a divorce and maintain family stability, a judge told state broadcaster CCTV Friday.

'We've noticed in judicial practices that there is a type of impulsive divorces,' said Wang Dan from Beijing's Supreme People's Court.

'If the court just simply prosecutes this kind of divorces, it would not only dissolve the marital relationship but also cause a huge impact on the care and support for the children and elderly.

China saw more than four million marriages falling through last year, official figures revealed. A couple wearing face masks visit the promenade on the Bund along the Huangpu River during China's Labour Day holiday on May 1

'To reduce the number of impulsive divorces, we decided to introduce the "calming period" to the drafted Civil Code,' Ms Wang added.

But the proposed scheme would only apply to couples who are divorcing by agreement, according to the press. Couples who file a divorce in courts will be exempt from the 'calming-period' to protect domestic abuse victims.

It came after China saw more than four million marriages falling through last year, Chinese media report.

Divorce rates in China also spiked following the coronavirus lockdown because 'couples are spending too much time together at home' during self-isolation, officials suggested.

One registry office in Dazhou, Sichuan Province of south-western China saw 300 couples applying for a divorce in the space of three weeks after the lockdown was lifted.

Authorities believe the sharp increase of divorce requests could be caused by the fact that partners have spent too much time in close quarters under quarantine.

'The divorce rate [in the district] has soared compared to before [the coronavirus outbreak],' Lu Shijun, the manager of the marriage registry in Dazhou told the press in March.

Authorities believe the sharp increase of divorce requests could be caused by the fact that partners have spent too much time in close quarters under quarantine. Pictured, a Chinese couple wearing a mask walk in the park in Guangzhou

Officials believe the increase of divorce requests could be caused by people spending too much time in close quarters during quarantine. A couple is pictured applying for a divorce

'Young people are spending a lot of time at home. They tend to get into heated arguments because of something petty and rush into getting a divorce,' Mr Lu explained.

Marriage registration offices in Xi'an of Shaanxi Province in north-western China also saw an unprecedented rise of divorce appointments since re-opening in March, according to reports.

One district office received 14 requests in one day, hitting the upper limit set by the local council, a registration officer told Global Times.

Officials in Fuzhou, Fujian Province of southern China, have adjusted the number of divorce appointments to 10 couples a day after receiving an overwhelming number of requests.
The New Look heels the Duchess of Sussex wore on her royal tour of Pakistan in 2019 are now on sale. (Getty Images)

Yahoo Lifestyle is committed to finding you the best products at the best prices. We may receive a share from purchases made via links on this page. Pricing and availability are subject to change.

The Duchess of Cambridge never fails to impress with her style, whether she is in a glamorous ball gown or more casual ensemble.

Duchess Catherine - who was formerly known as Kate Middleton before marrying husband Prince William - has worn a medley of designer dresses, as well as more affordable high street brands over the years.

During a recent royal engagement, which saw the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge embark on a royal tour in Pakistan in October 2019, she wore a pair of heels from New Look.

The 38-year-old royal wore a long collarless shirt, with white embroidered detail along the hem, complete with matching trousers and pashmina, all made by a local designer Maheen Khan for the royal engagement.

She completed the look with a pair of Pink Suedette Low Heel Court Shoes when she visited a school in central Islamabad.

On a visit to a school in Islamabad during the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge's royal tour of Pakistan, the duchess wore a pair of New Look heels. (Getty Images)

Buy it: Wide Fit Pale Pink Suedette Low Heel Court Shoes | 16.79 (Was 23.99) from New Look

The New Look heels sold out swiftly after she wore them, but have since been restocked.

Now, just months later, the royal-approved shoes are on sale.

The footwear item has been slashed in price, as they have been reduced from 23.99 to 16.79.

The heels boast a pointed toe design, a sturdy block heel, as well as ankle strap detail.

This design is available to buy in two colourways, a pale pink, as well as bright red shade.

Plus they are available in a wide fit design to suit those who need a little more room across the insole, joint and instep.

What we love most is the shoes are vegan, and have been given the seal of approval by The Vegan Society.

There are alternative designs to suit other shoppers preferences, including a round toe heel, and platform designs.

This is not the first time the duchess has worn affordable footwear, as she was previously spotted wearing trainers from Superga and New Balance.
Tamil leaders should raise concerns with President Rajapaksa, not Indian PM Modi, says Sri Lankan Minister 20 Jan 2022 | 1:12 AM Colombo, Jan 19 (UNI) Sri Lankan Minister Udaya Gammanpila said on Wednesday that if parties representing the Tamil-speaking population in the country have any concerns they must raise them with President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, instead of seeking the assistance of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. see more..

Afghan acting PM urges Islamic countries to recognise Taliban regime 19 Jan 2022 | 8:00 PM Kabul, Jan 19 (UNI) The Talibans Prime Minister Mullah Muhammad Hassan Akhund on Wednesday claimed the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan has met the conditions for recognition and called on Islamic nations to take the lead in recognising the IEA. see more..

Nepal's Pashupatinath Temple shuts down due to rising Covid 19 Jan 2022 | 6:56 PM Kathmandu, Jan 19 (UNI) The revered Pashupatinath Temple in Kathmandu has been shut down for devotees from Wednesday due to the rising Covid-19 cases. see more..

Snowfall turns Sahara into winter dreamland 19 Jan 2022 | 5:36 PM Ain Sefra (Algeria), Jan 19 (UNI) For the fifth time in 42 years, snow settled on the sands of Sahara desert in Africa after temperatures dropped below -2C. see more..
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Market Research Future Published a Half-Cooked Research Report on Global Silica Gel Market Research Report- Forecast to 2023

Segmentation:

Covid-19 Silica Gel Market Analysis is segmented into Type, Application and End-Use.

On the basis of Type, the market is segregated into Type A, Type B, Type C, silica-alumina gel, and others.

The market by Application is sub-divided into desiccant, chromatography, food additives, water filtration, and others.

Based on the End User, it is further categorized into oil and gas, pharmaceutical, chemical, cosmetic and healthcare, and others.

Competitive Analysis:

Some of the Prominent Players Operating in the Global Silica Gel Market are are Evonik Industries (Germany), Clariant (Switzerland), Solvay (Belgium), Merck Group (Germany), China National Bluestar Company Limited (China), Fuji Silysia Chemical (China), Nissan Chemical Industries (Japan), DowDuPont (U.S.), Qingdao Haiyang Chemical (China) and Millennium Chemicals (U.S.). among others.

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Silica Gel is used in a wide variety of applications due to their capability of offering a superior and cheap source of desiccant to various end-use industries such as packaging of pharmaceuticals, paints and coatings and water filtration plants among others. The allochroic Silica Gel has the ability to change its color when absorbed moisture from the environment. Therefore, it is suitable for the extensive use of the power systems and transformers.

The Global Silica Gel Market is spanned across five regions of the world namely Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, Latin America, and the Middle East & Africa. Among these, North America holds the major share of the global market and is projected to continue leading owing to the increasing consumption of Silica Gel in the developed pharmaceutical sector. Moreover, the shale boom, especially in the U.S., has augmented the demand for the Silica Gel owing to its use in refining and processing of natural gas and petrochemicals.

Moreover, it is an important part of the dehumidification process of instruments in the petroleum and petrochemical plants. The U.S and Canada are the major countries driving the demand for silica gel in the region. Additionally, the approval from the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for the usage of Silica Gel in medicines and containers is further expected to significantly boost the market growth.

The Asia Pacific market is expected to grow at a higher CAGR. The burgeoning growth in the packaging industry of the developing economies of the region is the major factor attributing to the market growth. Moreover, to cater the growing consumer base, the medium and large players are constantly investing in logistics. Therefore, it is propelling the packaging sector and is adding fuel to the market growth. Furthermore, to counter the adverse effect of moisture and to increase the shelf life of the products, the pharmaceutical and food and beverage industries are increasing the use of silica gel in the packaging of products. India, China, and Japan are the major countries accounted for the growth of the market.

Browse Key Industry Insights spread across 135 pages with 48 market data tables & 13 figures & charts from the report, Silica Gel Market Information: By Product (Type A, Type B, Type C, Silica-Alumina Gel, Others), Applications (Desiccant, Chromatography, Food Additives, Water Filtration) End-Use Industry (Oil and Gas, Pharmaceutical, Petrochemical) and Region  Growth Potential, Price Trends, Competitive Market Share & Forecast 2023 in detail along with the table of contents: https://www.marketresearchfuture.com/reports/silica-gel-market-5151

Europe is another major region in the Global Silica Gel Market and is expected to show a considerable growth over the forecast period. The presence of the major cosmetic and personal care manufacturers in the region is driving the market growth. Germany, France, and the United Kingdom are some of the major countries contributing extensively to the market growth.

A considerable development is expected in the Middle East and Africa over the coming years. The developing oil and gas and petrochemical industries are adding fuel to the market growth. Moreover, increasing government participation for the production of crude oil in large quantity is further expected to increase the market growth. Furthermore, the growing demand for personal care and cosmetics, especially in Saudi Arabia, is expected to amplify the demand of the product.

NOTE: Our team of researchers are studying Covid19 and its impact on various industry verticals and wherever required we will be considering covid19 footprints for a better analysis of markets and industries. Cordially get in touch for more details.

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The German regulator's refusal to exempt Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline from European regulation puts an end to speculations about Germany's attempts to create loopholes for Russian partners.

"This decision of the German authorities actually puts an end to numerous political speculations of last six months that certain forces in Germany allegedly intended to create legislative loopholes for Nord Stream 2 to exempt this controversial project from European legislation," Ambassador of Ukraine to Germany Andriy Melnyk said in a commentary to Ukrinform.

The diplomat stressed that Ukraine, whose economic and political interests are known to be significantly affected by the construction of this pipeline, had "absolute confidence" from the very first minute that Germany would ensure fair and impartial consideration of the possible exemption of Nord Stream 2 from the EU regulation.

Ukraine is very grateful to its German partners for the bilateral consultations on energy issues, during which Ukraine received assurances that the changes in German legislation approved by the Bundestag in November 2019 were in no way and could not be aimed at providing any exceptions to this project.

"Therefore, we consider the decision of the Bundesnetzagentur a kind of triumph in fair consideration of the interests of both interested EU countries and, above all, Ukraine as a future EU member state which highly values the constant strong support and solidarity of official Berlin," Melnyk said.

German regulator  the Bundesnetzagentur  approved its final decision on 15 May 2020 to reject exemption of Nord Stream 2 AG from the EU law for a part of Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline that runs through Germany, according to Article 28b of the federal Energy Industry Act (EnWG).

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The number of people who have died in care homes across Northern Ireland halved in a week, according to most recent official figures.

However, the statistics have been given a cautious welcome by experts who have said they do not provide the full and latest picture of what is happening in care homes.

Hitting out at the measures put in place to protect care home residents during the Covid-19 pandemic, Professor Gabriel Scally issued an excoriating attack on health officials.

Among the failings identified by the public health expert was a delay in the provision of personal protective equipment and widespread testing in care homes.

He was also particularly critical of the decision to admit residents with Covid-19 to care homes, describing it as a "very bad idea".

He said: "I've really been quite shocked and surprised by the revelations that have been coming out about the slack approach with care homes.

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"Clearly care homes were ill prepared for the pandemic, there was a lot of talk early on about protecting older people, of shielding them, cocooning them and other warm phrases, but that just didn't happen.

"I think it is a very, very serious failing and I do also wonder about the fact that so many deaths have taken place in care homes and whether those people received the very best care that they could have.

"We can't blame the staff and we can't blame the patients, all we can do is look to the people in charge of handling the outbreak who should have been taking the decisions to stop this virus."

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In a further damning assessment, Prof Scally, president of epidemiology and public health at the Royal Society of Medicine, said officials were too slow to stop the spread of Covid-19.

He said: "If only at the very beginning, we'd put in place a full lockdown and done more testing and tracing, we would be through this by now.

"We would be where Australia is now where they have opened their bars again."

Prof Scally also criticised the pace at which people are being trained to work in contact tracing, which he said will play a crucial role in lifting the lockdown in Northern Ireland.

His comments come after Health Minister Robin Swann said he is launching a pilot scheme which will see care home staff moving into their premises to help reduce the spread of the virus. Despite this, he has not given a commitment to ban the admission of people to care homes when they are infected with Covid-19.

Figures from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (Nisra) have revealed that 36 people died in care homes in the week ending May 8 - down from 72 the previous week. However, it is not known how many of the 37 people who died in hospital during the week ending May 8 were infected in a care home.

A Department of Health spokesperson said: ""Dr Scally is entitled to his views. We remain focussed on the fightback against Covid-19.

"The people of Northern Ireland deserve great credit for the way the curve was flattened, saving many lives. Protecting care home residents remains a top priority. This has been a major challenge in many countries  including those who adopted different approaches to tackling the virus.

"As the threat from Covid-19 has evolved, so has the local health services response to it. A new contact tracing programme for Northern Ireland is now being taken forward. There will of course have to be lessons learned from the pandemic nationally and internationally."

Leading virologist Dr Connor Bamford, from Queen's University Belfast, said the gap in information and the fact that the figures relate to a week ago make it difficult to assess the current situation in care homes.

"I think it shows that we're moving in the right direction, but it is difficult to say anything with any certainty," he said.

Looking ahead, he said it is crucial that health officials ramp up testing and contact tracing to slow the spread.

"I think we're very much at the mercy of this virus now," he continued.

Earlier this week it emerged that Mr Swann is facing potential legal action over calls for a public inquiry into the handling of the care homes during the pandemic.
Photo: The Train Station Pub

UPDATE: 12:45 p.m.

Dining out in British Columbia restaurants may look a little different once restaurants and pubs start to reopen their doors next week.

On Friday, WorkSafeBC released its industry-specific guidelines for businesses planning to reopen next week, including those for restaurants, pubs and cafes. Restaurants must publicly post their COVID-19 safety plan, but WorkSafe specifically notes that businesses do not need a formal plan in place to begin operation, but are expected to develop it while protecting the safety of your workers.

The most important guidelines revolve around maintaining physical distance between customers, which means having a maximum of six guests at each table and ensuring there is two metres between tables.

While recommendations by the British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association included the possibility of using plexiglass barriers between tables, this has not been mentioned in WorkSafe guidelines, although a barrier at the bar and pay stations is recommended.

The BCRFA also brought up the possibility of employees wearing masks and gloves, but WorkSafe's guidelines only say employers may consider the use of masks if maintaining a two-metre distance from other workers and guests is not possible.

And while it probably goes without saying, the guidelines recommend avoiding handshakes, fist bumps and high-fives with customers.

Rather than have reusable menus that one could contract the virus from, WorkSafe recommends using large digital or chalkboard menus that can be seen from all tables, or consider using disposable menus.

Additionally, things like communal salt and pepper shakers should be removed from tables, and guests should do things like distribute their food around the table when it comes and pour their own water.

Enhanced cleaning procedures, especially in high-touch areas, is also referenced repeatedly in the guidelines.

The full list of guidelines can be found on WorkSafeBC's website here, although the site has had some issues loading Friday, likely due to increased traffic.

ORIGINAL: 10:20 p.m.

Restaurant owners and employees eagerly awaiting the government's guidelines for a safe reopening will have their answers Friday morning.

The province ordered the closure of all in-restaurant dining in March to reduce the risk of spreading COVID-19. WorkSafeBC is expected to release the completed guidelines for reopening those restaurants on its website at 11:15 a.m.

These guidelines were initially set for release Wednesday, but were delayed by two days.

Restaurant owners looking to reopen next Tuesday  the first day they are allowed to  will have the long weekend to ensure their plan aligns with the province's guidelines.

Individual businesses' plans don't have to be approved by WorkSafeBC, but the plans must be posted publicly. The guidelines will largely be enforced on a complaint basis.

On April 30, the British Columbia Restaurant and Foodservices Association presented a recommended set of guidelines to the province, and president Ian Tostenson expects WorkSafe's guidelines to be similar.

I'm pretty certain you'll see the requirement will be around physical distancing and keeping six feet away [from other tables] ... and/or you could elect to put plexiglass in, same effect, Tostenson said.

You might see some staff wearing masks, you might see some staff wearing gloves and masks, particularly clean-up ... It's going to be probably operating at about a 50 per cent capacity.

He added that restaurants will also be enhancing their cleaning protocols and keeping physical distancing in their lineups.

We have a big push on right now, and it's going very well, to all mayors and councils in the province to get creative and open up space on the sidewalks and roadways and alleyways for restaurants to develop patios, Tostenson said.

It meets one criteria of Dr. Henry, which is being outside is safer ... It allows the restaurant to expand on its seating which is otherwise being curtailed inside ... you can't make a go of it at 50 per cent capacity.

Employees who aren't comfortable with the conditions of their work place can bring their concerns to WorkSafeBC, but Tostenson says "it's tricky."

"We're going to see people that don't necessarily want to come back to work, and may say 'I don't feel comfortable in the workspace,' whereas the workspace is perfectly fine, Tostenson said. They have to give the employer a fair chance to do his or her side of the deal, you can't just arbitrarily decide 'I just don't like the way the world is right now, so I don't want to work.' That's basically tantamount to quitting.

Tostenson says he believes some restaurants will reopen on May 19, while others will wait a couple weeks to ensure they can abide by the guidelines. In Kelowna, both The Train Station Pub and Doc Willoughby's Pub have announced they'll be reopening next Tuesday.

It's going to take a bit of time to get it right, but I know there's going to be a lot of integrity, a lot of safety, Tostenson said. There's going to be some pent up demand here, people are dying to go out, and I think they'll be very pleased at the job the industry does in terms of welcoming them back and keeping them safe.
After weeks of being unable to see her uncle in a Richmond, Virginia, nursing home, Precious Turner hatched a plan. With a lockdown on visits to the Canterbury Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center in place since March, she would send pink carnations to every resident inside.

"I just sense that they're feeling really lonely and isolated and that as family members, we can't really talk to them or touch them or get to them," Turner said recently. "And so being able to send this flower is a way to say, 'Hey, I'm thinking about you and you're still in my thoughts and you haven't been forgotten.'"

In the midst of a devastating death toll inside America's nursing homes, Turner's gesture last month represented an early attempt to grapple with one of the unexpected consequences of COVID-19 in nursing homes: the extended isolation of those who have survived. The disease caused by the novel coronavirus has killed more than 26,000 residents in nursing and long-term care facilities.

Most, if not all of the 15,000 nursing facilities around the country have prohibited outside visitors since early March -- federal regulators announced measures directing nursing homes to "significantly restrict visitors and nonessential personnel" on March 13.

PHOTO: An ambulance worker is seen outside the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Richmond, Va., April 16, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters, FILE)

That isolation order seems to have no immediate end in sight, even as the rest of the country begins to hatch plans for a reopening, said Mark Parkinson, who leads the American Health Care Association and National Center for Assisted Living (which represent a combined 11,000 facilities nationwide).

"We know it's been really challenging for family members and we completely understand that," Parkinson told ABC News. "But the challenge with this virus is that you can have absolutely no symptoms and be carrying the virus, and for that reason, we have to be really, really careful about letting untested visitors into the buildings."

Story continues

The decision to cut off nursing home residents from outside visitors was one of the first guidelines imposed by state and federal regulators, and one that was in place well before the coronavirus pandemic began to infect nursing facilities across the U.S.

MORE: White House recommends tests for all nursing home residents

Medical experts credit the move for preventing broader spread. But even with nursing home residents largely cordoned off, the virus has moved effortlessly through many facilities, most likely carried by staff members who were infected but asymptomatic. In some facilities, scores of vulnerable residents housed in close quarters have fallen ill, and many have died.

Last week, the Wall Street Journal reported that the agency that regulates nursing care in the U.S., the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, has begun to circulate drafts of a proposal that would eventually lay out steps for facilities to gradually reopen. For nursing centers that have seen limited exposure to COVID-19, the ability to go 14 days with no new cases may crack open the door for a limited number of visitors, the WSJ report said. For the homes that have experienced the most infections, the bar would be higher.

Seema Verma, the administrator at the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, told reporters that crafting a plan to lift the restrictions has posed unique challenges.

"We want to make sure that whatever we do, that we are putting the health and safety of the nursing home residents at the top," Verma said in an interview Thursday. "That's the most important priority. So we're starting to have those discussions about how we can make sure that nursing homes are safe and that visitors can come back in a safe way."

PHOTO: An ambulance is seen outside the Canterbury Rehabilitation & Healthcare Center in Richmond, Virginia, April 16, 2020. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters, FILE)

Verma said moves toward reopening will ultimately depend on a host of factors for each home, for example: looking at the amount of infection in the surrounding community and seeing what has happened in that specific nursing home. Do they know what the status is of their staff and of the nursing home residents?

Those are the things Verma said everyone is thinking about, and which will factor into how the guidelines are fashioned.

There are strong forces supporting efforts to permit relatives to venture back into these fragile environments. Reestablishing family connections will be "essential for both [the] mental and physical well-being" of long-term care residents, said Richard Mollot, executive director of The Long Term Care Community Coalition, which advocates for residents.

"I think that sooner rather than later we will need to implement protocols for such visits," Mollot said. "First on a limited basis, but more robustly as can be done safely as time goes on."

Advocates for those in long-term care say another important benefit of family visits also cannot be overlooked: the role those visitors play in protecting residents from neglect or abuse. Matt Morgan, a Florida attorney representing families that have filed notices of intent to sue a nursing facility where 16 residents died during the COVID-19 outbreak, said relatives serve as "the eyes and ears" for the elderly.

"If the sons and daughters, the loved ones of the elderly nursing home residents, are not there to see how their loved ones are being taken care of, no one is holding them accountable," Morgan said. "They don't have the ability to enter the facility to make sure that mom and dad are being properly cleaned and being cared for."

MORE: Inside nursing homes, coronavirus brings isolation and 7,300 deaths; Outside, families yearn for news

But as many communities flirt with broader efforts at reopening, any plan to allow visitors back into senior living facilities could be perilous without more ways to ensure the disease is not entering with them, said Kevin O' Neil, a chief medical officer at North Carolina-based Affinity Living Group, which has 140 communities in six states.

"In light of what's happening right now, we're not going to relax visitor restrictions," O'Neil said.

O'Neil, a geriatrician, said that while he and others supervising care in nursing facilities recognize the harmful toll of social isolation, they need to see wider and more available testing before they can allow visitors the kind of access they once had.

MORE: Advocates demand stronger federal action as nursing homes engulfed by pandemic

Mark Gloth, chief medical officer of HCR ManorCare, one of the nation's largest nursing care providers, said his facilities are developing "COVID-19 scores" that help staff evaluate the risk of someone becoming infected, and how they may fare if that occurs. A resident with low risk may eventually be more likely to receive visitors sooner than one with high risk.

One exception that is already being made, Gloth said, is for residents who are at the end of their life, or, as he put it, "actively dying." In those cases, exhaustive efforts are made to arrange visits with loved ones, he said.

"That is one of our missions," Gloth said. "That no one dies alone."

As nursing homes contemplate an eventual return, Parkinson said he believes they should be armed with the same regimen currently in place at the White House: rapid testing of anyone who wishes to enter.

"Until we have on-site testing with immediate results, it's not responsible to have visitors come back into the building," he said.

For Michael McHenry, who has not visited his grandfather at a nursing home in Dresher, Pennsylvania, since mid-March, that could mean a painful wait.

"It's been kind of difficult given the circumstances for both our family and for him," McHenry said. "Right now, we are just happy knowing that he is OK. It's hard on all of us, but we understand the situation. "

As US begins reopening, nursing home residents remain on lockdown originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Primary school pupils will only be able to return to school part-time in autumn if current social distancing and other public health restrictions are in place, teachers and school managers warn.

After months of closure, with parents struggling to keep learning going at home and children feeling the loss of school, it is a bleak scenario.

But key education stakeholders raised the spectre of schools reopening with reduced numbers at any one time, and individual pupils returning on a half day, day on/off, half week on/half week off or week on/week off basis.

The gloomy picture emerges in separate documents prepared by the Irish National Teachers' Organisation (INTO) and the Catholic Primary School Management Association (CPSMA) for contingency planning discussions around reopening of the education system.

Those talks kicked off for the primary sector - which has 3,200 schools and more than 600,000 pupils, teachers and other staff - this week.

The focus for the post-primary sector has been the radical move to calculated grades in place of the Leaving Cert, but discussions on arrangements for reopening the 730 schools involved start next week.

At primary level, the INTO and CPSMA have drawn up formidable checklists outlining issues to be considered.

The CPSMA said in the absence of a vaccine for Covid-19, preparing for a return to school in autumn will be complex, challenging and costly.

It advised "it may be prudent to prepare for a phased return, and a rolling cycle of attendance - either by time, day or weekly - to manage the numbers in a school at any given time".

If a full school reopening is not possible, the CPSMA, which represents management in about 90pc of primary schools, said the Department of Education must develop a structured distance-learning plan for all schools.

The INTO said its entire membership is "up for the challenge of restarting", but wants firm assurances schools are not reopened prematurely and potentially face a second period of closure.

There is "huge concern" among its members about the difficulties in maintaining physical distancing in a primary or special school setting, when compared with shops, factories and other workplaces.

This is especially the case among younger children, including those starting school and some children with special educational needs.

The union shares the CPSMA view on capacity and warned "given the current guidance of physical distancing, it will be necessary in almost all schools to reduce the number of children attending at one time".

If a school cannot provide a safe environment, the INTO said it must remain closed and continue to support pupils learning at home.

The two documents addressed all aspects of life in the country's primary schools, big and small. They want account taken in advance of the return of personal hygiene and school cleaning, minimum distances between desks, any need for personal protective equipment (PPE), as well as support for pupil and teacher wellbeing.

Issues such as staff who may be unable to return because they are in a vulnerable category should also be accounted for. Additional funding will be required to provide the extra resources and supports required across a range of headings, they said.

Among the prerequisites to reopening sought by the CPSMA are a risk assessment in each school covering a range of areas from how many pupils could be accommodated in each classroom to cleaning procedures, hot water requirements and hand sanitisers.

Advance measures required by the INTO include a comprehensive testing and contact tracing system, with priority access to testing for teachers as part of a community testing programme. Once a school is open, the union proposes a system of self-declaration by staff and parents that, to the best of their knowledge they, or there children, have no symptoms of Covid-19, are not in self-isolation or awaiting the outcome of a test.
The Covid-19 related restrictions have forced many of us to stay at home. This has strongly reduced road traffic and economic activities particularly in cities and urban areas where majority of the people live. Consequently, this has also cut down human-induced carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to the atmosphere.

Although this reduction is not strong enough to be globally visible in the atmosphere, at local scale the changes in emissions can be observed.

Carbon dioxide emissions reduced even by 75 percent

The study, which is currently being prepared for peer-review, shows that lockdown has so far reduced carbon dioxide emissions at all cities participating the study. "The reductions range from 8% in a highly vegetated urban area of Berlin, Germany, to 75% in the city centre of Heraklion in Greece," says Professor Dario Papale, Director of the ICOS Ecosystem Thematic Centre and Scientific Responsible for the ICOS activities at Fondazione CMCC - Euro-Mediterranean Center on Climate Change, where he is involved within the research activities of the division dedicated to the study of climate change impacts on agriculture, forests and ecosystem services.

The European cities included in the study are Basel in Switzerland, Berlin in Germany, Florence and Pesaro in Italy, Helsinki in Finland, Heraklion in Greece and London in the UK. The size of reduction varied due to the characteristics of the sampled areas and the stringency of the lockdown restrictions in place. In all cities, there was a clear temporal connection with the restrictions and the emission reduction.

For the local observations, the scientists globally use a technique called eddy covariance, in which the exchange of carbon dioxide between the atmosphere and a particular ecosystem is being measured by equipment installed in towers topping over the area and its vegetation. This allows to see the changes in nearly real-time.

Traffic, vegetation as well as economic and domestic activities affect the reduction

The tower in Heraklion observed the largest reduction, since it is in an area characterized by dense commercial activities and intense road traffic, both of which were completely stopped during the lockdown. In Pesaro, the almost full stop of all traffic reduced the CO2 emissions up to one third of the normal amount. In other cities, such as in Florence, in Basel and in Helsinki, the emissions are a combination of reduced traffic and economic activities, while increased domestic heating and human metabolism partly counterbalance the reduction. In the Basel-B location, however, the traffic is twofold in respect to the Basel-K and for this reason the reduction is larger.

Traffic and the commercial sector cause also a large part of London's emissions - but London differs from Helsinki and Florence due to is residential contribution: normally, the weekday population in daytime central London can increase 10-fold due to the influx of commuters. This was decreased strongly with lockdown.

In Berlin, the moderate reduction in traffic has been counterbalanced by domestic emissions and the presence of vegetation, leading to relatively small fluxes.

Clear connection to restriction orders visible

The connection of lockdown-measures to the emissions and the connected timing can be clearly seen from the figure.

"In some cases (Florence, London and Heraklion) emissions began decreasing even some time before the official lockdown was implemented, when people responded to recommendations to reduce travel and work from home as much as possible," Dario Papale points out.

Dario Papale says that "This is a great example of collaboration among scientists in different countries, which is supported by local authorities who allow us to collect these important measurements. Flux measurements will be very important for monitoring the emission patterns in the coming weeks and months, when private cars will possibly be preferred to public transports to avoid crowds. This might cause a fast growth of emissions that may even exceed those of the pre-lockdown period."

The scientists aim to make further studies based on the data generated from these city towers. While this early analysis paves the way for more in-depth studies, it already shows the importance of having observation towers also in the urban areas. This significance of cities will also grow in the future: already today, some 55% of world's population live in cities, and according to United Nations, the percentage will grow considerably over the coming decades.

The study "Clear evidence of reduction in urban CO2 emissions as a result of COVID-19 lockdown across Europe" was initiated and promoted by the ICOS Ecosystem Thematic Centre (ETC), which is coordinated by the CMCC Foundation and the University of Tuscia. The ICOS ETC is responsible for data collection, quality control and processing in the context of the ICOS Ecosystem Network that is constituted by more than 80 stations in Europe.

###

For more information, read the full article:

Clear evidence of reduction in urban CO2 emissions as a result of COVID-19 lockdown across Europe, written by: Dario Papale, Gabriele Antoniella and Giacomo Nicolini, ICOS Ecosystem Thematic Centre, University of Tuscia and CMCC; Beniamino Gioli and Alessandro Zaldei, Italian National Research Council CNR; Roland Vogt and Christian Feigenwinter, University of Basel; Stavros Stagakis and Nektarios Chrysoulakis, Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas FORTH; Leena Jarvi, University of Helsinki; Eiko Nemitz and Carole Helfter, UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology; Janet Barlow, University of Reading; Fred Meier, Technische Universitat Berlin; Erik Velasco, Independent researcher; Andreas Christen, University of Freiburg, Germany; Valery Masson, Meteo-France

Source of the news: ICOS - Integrated Carbon Observation System
The small European country of Slovenia declared the coronavirus pandemic over on Thursday, after recording single-digit new cases each day over the past two weeks, while New Zealand announced a broad reopening after three consecutive days with no new cases at all. Slovenia is the first European nation to call an end to extraordinary health measures arising from the pandemic. The nation of 2 million people will now roll back most measures put in place to contain the viruss spread; by next week, all bars and restaurants will be permitted to reopen. Slovenia has tamed the epidemic over the past two months.  Today, Slovenia has the best epidemiologic picture in Europe, Prime Minister Janez Jansa told Parliament Thursday.

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New Zealand lifted its national state of emergency on Wednesday, allowing most businessesbars, restaurants, schools, malls, and movie theatersto reopen with some limits on capacity. Social distancing guidelines will remain in the country of 5 million, but life will begin to creak back to normal. We went hard and we went early. We got control of the virus, and now were in a position where we can safely step out of those controls and open our economy back up, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said this week. New Zealand has recorded about 1,500 cases of the virus and 21 fatalities. There is no widespread undetected community transmission in New Zealand. We have won that battle, Ardern announced two weeks ago. But we must remain vigilant if we are to keep it that way.

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Slovenia is on a similar trajectory and had already begun easing certain restrictions; public transport resumed this week and some students will return to school as early as next week. The government will halt financial aid to citizens and businesses at the end of the month. Visitors arriving from other European Union countries will no longer be ordered to quarantine for seven days upon arrival, though a 14-day quarantine will remain in place for non-EU arrivals.

Slovenia, which neighbors hard-hit Italy, recorded its first coronavirus case on March 4 and a week later declared an epidemic, taking swift measures in mid-March to close much of public life, including shops, schools, sporting events, bars and restaurants, and public transport. Over the past two months, with intra-European movement basically halted, Slovenia recorded nearly 1,500 coronavirus cases and 103 deaths. Citizens will still have to follow basic rules to prevent a possible spread of infection, the government said without elaborating, Reuters reports. People have been required to wear masks in indoor public spaces, stand at least 1.5 meters (5 feet) apart and disinfect hands upon entering public spaces.

For more coverage of the pandemic, listen to What Next: TBD.
This years college graduates wont get to take their triumphant walk across the stage. They wont get to toss their caps amid a sea of classmates. Instead, they have to settle for online ceremonies while their diplomas are mailed home. But at least one aspect of the traditional graduation ceremony is being salvaged for the class of 2020: the celebrity keynote address.

As scores of U.S. colleges host virtual graduation ceremonies amid the coronavirus pandemic, many are recruiting famous figures to give commencement speeches over their laptops instead of the lectern. In the first weeks of graduation season, schools have landed speeches from big names including Tom Hanks, Pharrell Williams and Tom Brady. Others are promising appearances from comedians, authors, civil rights leaders and politicians.

At the same time, a growing number of companies are stepping in with their own star-studded events celebrating college graduates across the nation.

On Friday, Facebook is hosting a Graduation 2020 event with commencement speeches from Oprah Winfrey, Awkwafina, Lil Nas X and Simone Biles, among others. YouTube is offering a Dear Class of 2020 celebration headlined by Barack and Michelle Obama, with additional speeches from Lady Gaga, Nobel Prize winner Malala Yousafzai and the K-Pop supergroup BTS.

A separate online event will celebrate graduates at historically black colleges, with speeches from Barack Obama and a host of other stars.

Its all meant to take the sting out of losing such a memorable moment. Schools across the U.S. started canceling or postponing traditional ceremonies in March, to the dismay of graduates who had hoped to celebrate years of hard work. In their addresses, some speakers have used the moment to offer a lesson on lifes curve balls and the need to adapt.

In a video message for Texas A&M Universitys law school, actor Rainn Wilson told graduates he was sorry they couldnt share big group hugs and high fives and kisses on the cheek. But he also said students can learn from that disappointment.

It may also teach a very valuable life lesson not to take anything for granted. To know that things can and will change all the time, Wilson said. The world out there can be incredibly difficult and fraught, and plans change all the time.

Tom Hanks, who survived COVID-19, told graduates at Wright State University that their lives will forever be divided into time before and after the coronavirus pandemic, in the same way that past generations had their lives marked by wars.

You have finished Wright State during the great reset, the great reboot, Hanks said in a video message. You chosen ones are going to form the new structures and define the new realities, and make the new world  the world after all that we have been through.

Hanks message was delivered as a surprise to graduates at the Ohio school. Other colleges have similarly kept quiet about their celebrity speeches until they were shared online, including at Virginias Norfolk State University, which tapped singer and producer Pharrell Williams to give a virtual address.

Even if this is not the norm, you guys and girls still deserve all the praise, Williams said in his message. You stuck it through, you made it and todays your day. And man, you made it at a really crazy time in life.

Some colleges are keeping the same speakers they previously lined up for campus ceremonies, including at Harvard University, which will offer a message from Marty Baron, editor of The Washington Post, and at Ohio State University, which broadcast a virtual address from Apple CEO Tim Cook.

While most campus ceremonies have been canceled or postponed, President Donald Trump recently said he plans to deliver an in-person address at the Military Academy at West Point on June 13. The academy says its bringing 1,000 cadets back to the Annapolis, Maryland, campus for the event.

Trumps presumptive Democratic opponent, Joe Biden, is scheduled to give remarks at a virtual graduation event for Columbia Universitys law school.

Other political figures recruited to deliver virtual speeches include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who will speak to graduates at Smith College in Massachusetts, and Dr. Deborah Birx, the Trump administrations coronavirus response coordinator, who gave a video address for New Yorks Houghton College.

The virtual celebrations have a different look from school to school, with some preparing videos that are recorded in advance and then shared online. Others are holding live events over video conference, in some cases produced by companies promising to replicate the traditional graduation experience.

Some are passing up on celebrity speeches, though, saying the online events arent meant to be an exact replica of the campus event. At Rice University, officials are hosting an online event with no guest speaker. Instead, the school hopes to bring graduates back for a belated ceremony on campus with the previously announced keynote speaker, New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof.

And some others are skipping online events entirely. Officials at the University of California, Berkeley, say they surveyed students and found it was their clear preference to pass on a virtual celebration and aim for a campus celebration later. A message from the university said its too early at this stage of the pandemic to finalize when and how we will mark this milestone.
The supervisor of a



health centre, which was supposed to be made a covid-19 testing centre in Jalpaiguri district, died after allegedly consuming pesticide, police said on Friday.

It is claimed by those close to the deceased that he was facing opposition from a section of the health centre employees after the district authorities asked him to set up a Covid-19 testing centre.

Superintendent of Police Avisek Modi said a suicide note was found from the room of the deceased Debashis Chakraborty who was the supervisor of Ghughudanga Health Centre and a probe has been launched to ascertain the circumstances behind his death.

Chakraborty had allegedly consumed pesticide on Thursday and then jumped into a well on the courtyard of his residence.

He was taken to a nearby hospital where he died, the SP said.

The Indian Medical Association, Jalpaiguri unit, demanded a probe into the death of Chakraborty.

Asked about the claims that he was under stress due to opposition by a section of the staff over setting up of the Covid-19 testing centre, IMA (North Bengal) Coordinator Dr Susanto Roy said, "Covid testing centre is for diagnosis of the disease and not for spreading the virus. This must be clear to everyone.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
When it comes to your business' branding strategy, establishing your company's logo is one of the most critical tasks.

Your logo will be pervasive throughout all of your marketing campaigns, and it's one of the most prominent branding elements that people will think of when someone mentions your company.

Mounting research backs up how important a logo can be to your brand. In fact, a 2019 study from the Journal of Marketing Research found that an effectively designed logo can "influence brand evaluations, purchase intentions, and brand performance."

Your brand's logo should be memorable, versatile, and consistent, all the while giving your audience a sense of what your brand is all about.

Unfortunately, many companies haven't exactly done a great job of keeping those goals in mind when establishing their logo, learning the hard way what it takes to create a positive brand experience through their logo.

Not sure what it takes to create a killer brand logo? To give you a better idea, here are 10 companies that have either failed or flourished in the logo department.

Memorable Logo Designs

KFC's Unique Logo Redesign & Launch

In 2006, KFC launched a new logo, changing the Colonel's appearance so he was pictured with a new, red apron. This was a big deal for the company, as its logo hadn't been changed in over a decade.

So why did they make the decision to revamp their logo? They wanted the image of the Colonel to be clearer and more energizing. The new, rejuvenated logo demonstrated an excitement and readiness to cook and serve.

Even better, KFC launched its new logo with the help of a HubSpot customer, Synergy Events, who constructed the logo from 65,000 one-foot-square tiles laid out in the Mojave Desert, which can be seen from space.

Apple's Perfect Logo Rebrand

Today, we think of the Apple logo as a simple but sleek design, representative of the Apple brand. But it wasn't always that way. The logo originally had a picture of Isaac Newton sitting under an apple tree. Eventually, it was changed into a rainbow picture of an apple. And finally, it changed into the logo we know and love today.

To give you an idea of how the logo has gotten simpler, yet sleeker, here's an image that shows its evolution up through 2015.

And today, this is the Apple logo we see regularly.

Source

Apple is often the model for a great brand experience. The logo evolution demonstrates something that every company wants to convey: simple, inviting, and beautiful. All of the Apple products focus on giving its customers a great experience through a sleek interface.

Google's Successful Rebellion Against Logo Design Best Practices

Surprisingly, some of the classic Google logos have gone against a few standard branding rules. They've used colors that seem to clash with each other. There were a slight drop shadows in older logos, which is something logos aren't supposed to have. It one point, it used a serif font, which is hardly unique, and very rare for a logo to have.

However, Google's logos have been incredibly memorable for breaking the mold and standing out. Here's just one of Google's logos, which was part of its branding til roughly 2015.

And, here's what Google's logo looks like today.

The rest of Google's applications also have fantastic branding, and they really demonstrate what each different Google product means. Furthermore, the different logos closely resemble each other, so it is recognizable that they are all part of the same company:

To learn more about the history behind Google's logo, check out this blog post.

PIXAR's "Out of the Box" Brand Alignment

The 1986 short film Luxo, Jr. inspired the new Pixar logo, which shows the lamp (Luxo, Jr.) as the "I" of Pixar. The animated version of the logo appears at the beginning and end of most the Pixar movies and has become adored by Pixar fans. There is also almost always an animated short at the beginning of Pixar films, another signature experience of the brand.

Marketers can take an important note from the Pixar logo. If you create something that people love and admire, it's memorable. Moreover, Pixar made its logo an experience for its audience by incorporating bonus animated shorts before its expected movie screenings.

FedEx's Fantastic Double Meaning

The FedEx logo is genius, but many people don't realize why. In fact, the FedEx logo says much more than the company's name in purple and orange text. There is also a hidden arrow inside the logo that symbolizes the speed and reliability of the courier service.

Did we just blow your mind? FedEx's logo is a great example of a simple, easy to remember logo that also expresses the mission of its brand. By creating a logo that has a dual meaning, such as the FedEx logo, it is a great way for your company to stand out against the competition and emphasize your value proposition.

Amazon.com's Interesting Hidden Meaning

Amazon.com has created such a recognizable brand that, when anyone needs to purchase something, they will often go to Amazon first. Although they have strong brand recognition, they also have a logo that reiterates just how much Amazon sells. The arrow in the logo points from the "A" in Amazon to the "Z," symbolizing that they sell everything from A to Z. It also looks like a smile!

Critically Panned Logo Designs

In 2010, Gap decided it wanted to change its logo into a more modern version and abruptly announced a new logo.

The clothing company was greeted by backlash from thousands of angry customers in social media, who were attached to the recognizable blue box with 'GAP' written in the center.

For Gap, the saying, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" would've been sound advice. Its customers were already loyal to the original logo.

As marketers, it's important to include your customers in important decisions like changing your logo. Setting up a focus group can help companies view things from their customers; perspective and make more educated decisions. If Gap had taken some of these steps, they might have avoided the social media backlash.

Since this design faux pas, Gap has updated its logo back to the original on its branding.

Starbucks' Potentially Confusing Logo

The Starbucks logo has always had the text "Starbucks Coffee" surrounding an image of a twin-tailed mermaid, also known as a siren in Greek mythology, which is indicative of the company's heritage from the Pacific Northwest. For those who are unfamiliar with the Starbucks logo, the addition of these words has always helped to explain what the logo represents.

However, in 2011, Starbucks updated its logo to get rid of the words and leave the mermaid, in hopes that they had enough brand recognition.

Even though most people know the Starbucks brand, they do not always understand what separates it from other coffee companies. Having an image of a mermaid depict the brand might not enough to demonstrate what sets Starbucks apart. Before you read this post, did you wonder why the mermaid is Starbucks' logo? Our point exactly.

Despite the concerns that the logo didn't properly represent the brand, Starbucks has continued to keep this logo. And, it hasn't majorly impacted their business.

Although Starbucks might have been unscathed from this logo change, it certainly took a major risk. Marketers should remember that no matter how big their company gets, there will still always be people who don't recognize your brand or understand the brand sentiment they're supposed to feel.

Pepsi's "Boring" Logo

Over the years, there have been quite a few changes to the Pepsi logo. Most recently, Pepsi removed the company name altogether and left the image of the ball.

As a result, the company received a lot of backlash for the new logo, which was said to look like a fat belly more than anything else. And truthfully, as Pepsi competes against other, healthier beverages, it needs to get away from that image.

As a marketer, look at your competitors' logos as inspiration. Pepsi has also received a lot of backlash because Coca-Cola has an elegant logo, whereas its logo doesn't have as nice an appeal. Listen to your audience and see what they are looking for from your brand. Then use that inspiration to design your logo.

Animal Planet's Poor Redesign

Animal Planet is known as the go-to place to learn about animals. But the 2008 logo didn't imply that at all. Animal Planet's logo got rid of the elephant and used text, with the letter "M" in animal oddly positioned on its side. Not only did this take away an important visual of an animal, but the new positioning of the "M" also looked awkward and didn't seem to have much meaning to it.

Source

In 2019, Animal Planet refreshed its brand in honor of the channel's 2020 anniversary. The new branding is fun, fresh, sleek, and still demonstrates what the brand offers. It also brings back an elephant, which was in its earliest logo, shown above.

Source

Creating an Effective Logo

One takeaway that we can gain from all of the brands above is that developing a logo can take time and multiple tries. Even brands with top designers, like Google and Apple, took decades to land on a truly memorable and modern logo.

Even if you think you've landed on a perfect design that's classic, memorable, and valuable to your messaging, it can be helpful to look at what brands around you are doing to modernize, evolve, or improve their own designs. This way, when its time for your logo to get a refresher, you'll be ready with some great ideas.

For more on logo design, check out this infographic on 2020 logo trends or this helpful guide to designing your first one.

Editor's Note: This blog post was originally published in July 2012 but was updated for comprehensiveness and freshness in May 2020.
At Quinnipiac, we recognize the sacrifices that current and former military service members have made on behalf of the United States. We've long been committed to helping our nations veterans, active and reserve military and National Guard members reach their educational goals. We partner with both the Department of Defense and Department of Veterans Affairs to provide a comprehensive set of benefits that fit with your military experience.

Whether your mission is advancing your military career, transitioning to the civilian sector or supporting your dependent as they work toward their degree, we are honored to assist you every step of the way.
Stranded Nigerians who have signified interest to be evacuated home due to the global Coronavirus pandemic, have been asked to pay for their two-week quarantine on arrival.



When Nigeria recorded its first case in February, Nigerians abroad asked to be evacuated home. The Federal Ministry of Health in April issued a statement saying it has started the process of evacuation and that those who wish to be evacuated will pay for their flight ticket and will also be placed on a mandatory 14-day quarantine.



Some Nigerians from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), the United States and the United Kingdom have been evacuated and are currently isolation in Lagos and Abuja hotels at the expense of the government.



It appears the Federal government can no longer foot the bill as a new letter sent to stranded Nigerians says henceforth, they will pay their hotel and feeding bills once they arrive Nigeria and go into the mandatory 14-day quarantine.



A copy of the letter sent to Nigerians residing in the State of Kuwait by the Embassy of Nigeria on May 13, 2020, says the evacuees will pay N297,600 for their quarantine in Nigeria apart from the airfares.



The letter, titled Re: Request for evacuation of Nigerian nationals in the wake of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, reads in part-



Further to our notice of 5th April 2020 on the above mentioned subject matter, the Embassy wishes to inform that all intending evacuees are to pay for their quarantine/isolation/accommodation/centre/hotels before departure and arrival in Nigeria.



The negotiated rate is as follows: Accommodation-N240,000 (N15,000 x16 days); Feeding-N57,6009( N3,600 x 16 days). Total- N297,600 (N18,600 x16 days).



All evacuees are to pay the aforementioned amount for their quarantine/isolation/centre/hotels directly to the airline along with their tickets. Evacuees have option to pay in dollars or its equivalent in Naira.



It is important to note that evacuees that do not pay for their quarantine/isolation/accommodation/ centre/ hotels will not be allowed to board the flight.



A letter dated 14th May and sent to Nigerians via the Embassy of Nigeria in Bangkok, Thailand, and signed by the Head of Chancery, Nicholas P. Uhomoibhi, reads in part



I am directed to bring to your attention due to measures that are beyond the control of COVID-19 local organizing team in Nigeria, all evacuees going to Nigeria henceforth are to now pay for their quarantine, isolation, accommodation centre or hotels before departure and arrival in Nigeria



In this regard, all prospective evacuees are to note the negotiated rate below: Accommodation (N15,000 x16 days=N240,000) and Feeding (N3,600 x16 days=N57,600). Total: N297,600 at N18,600 x16 days



Kindly be informed that these rates were negotiated in Nigeria and that the Embassy has been instructed not to airlift any evacuee who fails to pay the above fee.









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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Caleb McDaniel, an associate professor of history at Rice, won a Pulitzer Prize for Sweet Taste of Liberty: A True Story of Slavery and Restitution in America in the history books category. The story follows the life of Henrietta Wood, a freed black woman who was kidnapped back into slavery by Zebulon Ward. She sued Ward in 1870 for damages, and in 1878, a federal jury awarded her $2,500, the largest amount ever awarded by a U.S. court for restitution for slavery. McDaniel, a professor at Rice since 2008, connected over Zoom with Assistant Op-Ed Editor Ana Goni-Lessan to talk about how he discovered Woods story of resilience and what it means for a book about reparations for slavery to win the Pulitzer Prize.

I was amazed that I had not heard of Woods story before because her lawsuit in 1870 was one of the earliest attempts to seek restitution for slavery. What really caught my interest was the fact that she won the case, and when I started the research in 2014, it was at a moment when there were a lot of conversations in the public sphere about the 150th anniversary of the Civil War, confederate monuments in public spaces, Black Lives Matter and reparations. There were lots of cases being made for or against reparations, but this was a largely unknown case of actual restitution that I thought could inform present-day debates. Not every story that historians choose to write about has the bones of a narrative that could interest just anyone. This is a story that illuminated a lot about the time period and the challenges that formerly enslaved people faced in seeking justice after abolition. It was a story that had built-in momentum.

You normally write for other scholars. What was new about writing for a broader audience?

It was challenging for me to think through how to narrate the story that would satisfy academic standards for research but would also appeal to readers who did not know much about the period. It seemed to me that it was a story that could draw anyone in. It has dramatic plot twists, it has an extremely resilient central character. I wanted to inform people who were learning about this subject for the first time, about this history, but in a way that they could relate to a person. Its challenging, but the same kinds of things that we try to do when we write for colleagues are what we try to do when we write for anyone: explain the stakes, show your work and be accountable to the subject matter and the subjects youre writing about.

You got in touch with the descendants of Henrietta Wood. What was that like?

That was one of the most humbling experiences of the whole process. The book is dedicated to a great-great-granddaughter of Henrietta Wood, who unfortunately passed away from cancer before the book was published. Her great-grandfather was the son of Henrietta Wood; he became a lawyer in Chicago and died in 1951. She was 7 when he died, so she had some memories of him. To stand in her living room in 2017 and talk about him shows us how close this history is; its not the distant past. I was talking with someone who was only one step removed from Wood herself, and it demonstrates that this history still has legacies that are very much present. Another descendant I met toward the end of the writing process shared some documents that were crucial to the story. One was a letter that demonstrated that when Wood returned to the Cincinnati area after the Civil War, she attempted to locate family members she had been separated from by sale at the age of 14. Its a poignant illustration of the lengths to which formally enslaved people went to reconstruct their families after the devastation of the domestic slave trade.

The Pulitzer winners this year had a theme. Your book, along with Nikole Hannah-Joness The 1619 Project, Colson Whiteheads book The Nickel Boys, and a special citation honoring Ida B. Wells, are about reparations. Ted Cruz criticized the Pulitzer Prize for The 1619 Project, saying The Pulitzer epically beclowns itself, on Twitter. Have you dealt with similar attitudes about your book?

Im familiar with some of the criticism that has been lobbed at The 1619 Project, but I think the Pulitzer Board was not wrong to recognize women like Wood, Wells and Hannah-Jones. Historically many awards have been given to books about the founding fathers or mainstream national history, and while those are important subjects, too, major awards have not always recognized the important experiences of women, especially black women, or enslaved people. I think Annette Gordon-Reed won a Pulitzer for her biography about Sally Hemings, and Laurel Thatcher Ulrich won for A Midwifes Tale. But many people have been taught American history as the history of men, of white men, the history of well-known figures. Im honored and pleased that the Pulitzer Board recognized women like Henrietta Wood, like Ida Wells, as significant to American history. Hopefully it will encourage more inquiry into chapters of American history that still need to be written. Ultimately I think thats what The 1619 Project is doing, too.

Houstons history of racial inequities has gotten some attention in the last few years with the Sugar Land 95, talks of removing the Spirit of the Confederacy monument in Sam Houston Park and Rice Universitys Task Force on Slavery, Segregation and Racial Injustice. Is Houston actually having a moment where much-needed, yet still controversial, conversations about racial justice and reparations are happening?

I think it is a moment not just in Texas but across the country. Since the shootings at the Mother Emanuel AME church in Charleston, S.C., theres been an ongoing reconsideration about Confederate monuments in public spaces. Weve seen this in Sugar Land where we have the remains of people who were victims of historic injustices like convict leasing. Texas has approved a course of African American history as an elective to be offered in high schools, so thats another encouraging sign that Texans recognize the importance of telling these stories. Theres a connection in a way to the Sugar Land 95, to the history of convict leasing in the book. The man Wood successfully sued for restitution, Zebulon Ward, was an architect of early convict leasing systems in Kentucky, Tennessee and Arkansas. He was representative of that system in the 19th century, so when she won this lawsuit, it wasnt against a random, unknown figure. It was somebody who had become very powerful and wealthy through the exploitation of prison labor in the post-Civil War South. One thing I hope readers of the book ponder is that, on the one hand, she won a significant sum of money that made a material difference for her and her family. But it was also a small amount compared to what Ward could have afforded to pay. So one of the questions of the book is how to think about these sums. She won the largest known amount ever awarded in U.S. court in restitution for slavery, but Ward, on the other hand, passed on a huge estate to his descendants.

One lawsuit wasnt able to address the larger wealth gaps and racial disparities created by slavery and segregation. One of the challenges for me was how to honor the significance of this achievement while also not seeing it as kind of a Pollyannish triumphant ending because there were lots of aspects of slavery and white supremacy that lived on despite this victory in court.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Now that the country is beginning to come out of lockdown, indoor airspace management is becoming a concern in managing the spread of COVID-19 according to Polar Controller. Unlike outdoor airspace, which scatters aerosol droplets over a larger area, indoor particulates hitch a ride on airspace currents, dispersing throughout business establishments.

Indoor airspace management focuses on the pressure and airflow within buildings. Kaleb Zeringue of Polar Controller explains, "When the envelope of a building is met with an imbalance of supply and exhaust air, a positive or negative pressure is created that disrupts normal airflow." Research has demonstrated medium-sized particulates which normally fall quickly to the floor (within 5-feet or 8 minutes) are suspended and blown further than 6-feet.

Airflow primarily refers to the speed and direction of air coming out of the vents. One case has been reported where someone with COVID-19 sitting upwind from 9 others in a restaurant, spread the virus to everyone downwind. In this case, social distancing has little benefit because the medium-size particulates are given an extended life.

According to ASHRAE's Executive Committee in the report Infectious Aerosols 2020, "Transmission of SARS-CoV-2 through the air is sufficiently likely that airborne exposure to the virus should be controlled. Changes to building operations, including the operation of heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning systems, can reduce airborne exposures."

Building science expert, Steve Burcham, suggests that "the hazardous indoor air conditions created by an imbalance in pressure and airflow can be addressed by experienced AC technicians or more comprehensive solutions like AI control technologies from Polar Controller." Polar Controller's AI technology helps maintain the airflow and pressure balance reducing the likelihood for droplets to hitch a ride on indoor air currents. Learn more at http://www.polarcontroller.com/.

Polar Controller is a remote Artificial Intelligence technology for cooling equipment that assists businesses with indoor airspace management, reducing electricity consumption, decreasing the carbon footprint associated with cooling and improving profitability.

Kaleb Zeringue, CEO/CTO for Polar Controller is a master HVAC technician, authority in the field and inventor of the Polar Controller system.

Steve Burcham, COO for Polar Controller, Inc. is a building science expert specializing in airflow management with over 35 years in the field.

Kaleb Zeringue or Steve Burcham are available for interview.

*IMAGE: https://www.Send2Press.com/300dpi/20-0515s2p-polarcontroller-300dpi.jpg

This release was issued through Send2Press, a unit of Neotrope. For more information, visit Send2Press Newswire at https://www.Send2Press.com

SOURCE Polar Controller, Inc.

Related Links

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Risks of a lung transplant in COVID -19





by Victor Cherubim





The medical world had long discovered a transplant for the heart, a kidney transplant, a bypass mechanism for many organs in the human body. They never thought it necessary to find a way for replacement or a bypass for our lungs. The time had come that there were too many "oldies" in Care Homes being spoon fed on an Artificial Life, with carers playing music and dancing and imitating a life they had already lived during their virile days, that this "carnival was over" as their death rate was intolerable, was pressed hard by the Labour Opposition Leader, Sir Keir Starmer, during Prime Ministers Questions.in Parliament yesterday.









Of course, most things are beyond our control. But the things we can do something about are screaming for attention. The initiative to do something should not come out of compulsion or prompting, but that is what we are told is under consideration in faraway Vietnam.





Vietnam Health Ministry held a meeting on 14 May 2020 about a43-year-old British man in Ho Chi Minh City Hospital for Tropical Diseases since he developed fever and cough on 17 March. They decided that the only way to save his life was with a lung transplant.





His life has been on life support and is being treated with antibiotics and dialysis. They said his right lung has collapsed.





His case has been in the public limelight as regular updates are published on state media and many in the country have volunteered to help and wishing him well.





We are now told that 10 people including a 70 year old military veteran has volunteered themselves as lung donors. Prof Nguyen Van Kinh, an infectious diseases specialist said, doctors were considering the option of performing a lung transplant for the patient.





However, another report from abroad stated that Vietnam National Coordinating Centre for Human Transplantation (VNHOT) said current regulations dont allow to transplant lungs donated by most living people.





We are also told that Vietnam has spent more than 5 Billion Dong (US$ 200,000) trying to save him.





Lung transplants have been performed by a medical team in east Chinas Jiangsu province for a patient infected with COVID-19.They have also been performed in Michigan,USA recently.





Risks of a lung transplant in COVID -19





The major risk of a lung transplant, according to specialists, is organ rejection. This happens when your immune system attacks your donor lung as it were a disease. Severe rejection could lead to failure of the donated lung. Other serious complications can arise from the drugs used to prevent rejection.





Doctors in Canada normally prefer keeping a person on the extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine or on dialysis.





Lung transplants are not carried out frequently in UK. This is mainly because of lack of donors





Are we Future Ready?





Not only do science find a correlation between our genetic tendency and our immunology to ACE2 receptors in CORVID-19, but they have traced a Vitamin D deficiency and complication known as a Cytokine storm which occurs when our immune system goes into overdrive, turning not only against the virus but also against our own immune system.





A study has found patients with coronavirus have a severe deficiency of Vitamin D and those who have a blood group A and B are twice as likely to experience potentially lethal complications in their immunology, to be most susceptible to COVID -19. Those with blood group O tests have shown that they have an antibody already built in.





Race for Vaccine





Besides, the race for who develops a vaccine for Coronavirus, there is also the fear that COVID-19 is continually transmuting. It is changing its symptoms, and the fear is that in the process of mutation, it affects not only the vulnerable elderly, but also the young.





Kawasakidisease which overwhelmingly affects young and infants causes inflammation of the blood vessels and in some cases the swelling of the heart. The cause is still not known but studies suggest it is a post infection inflammatory response that is triggered specifically by coronavirus.





This is more so the reason why scientists are racing to find a vaccine. The Pharmaceutical giants Pfizer has begun testing multiple versions of experimental Coronavirus vaccines in health young people in the US last week, the first step in establishing the safety and dosage characteristics for trials.





Moderna Therapeutics platform development based at Cambridge, Mass. USA has received fast track approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for its COVID-19 vaccine candidate mRNA 1273. We are informed it will speed the clinical trials by September 2020.
The Labour Party has formally ruled out joining talks to form a government with Fianna Fail, Fine Gael and the Green Party.

Party leader Alan Kelly today wrote to Micheal Martin and Leo Varadkar to inform them that he would be recommending his parliamentary party not join the talks, which are ongoing in Dublin today. The Fine Gael and Fianna Fail leader had earlier this week written to Mr Kelly to assure him that they would honour the public sector pay deal if Labour was in government.

The letter says that the two larger parties' commitment not to raise income taxes is at the heart of Labour's reluctance to join a government. Mr Kelly also expresses disappointment at the response he received from Mr Martin and Mr Varadkar, saying the two had not addressed his 21 questions.

"It is hard to see how we can rebuild and improve public services without some change in taxation and more extensive borrowing to maintain demand and capital investment in the economy until at least the end of 2021. A lack of clear direction on the Covid-19 pandemic unemployment payment is also of concern to us. Workers in affected sectors that have borne the brunt of the national effort to tackle Covid-19 cannot be left behind in the months to come.

"As there are now detailed negotiations underway on government formation between yourselves and the Green Party, I recommended to our Parliamentary Party today that at this time we would not take part in formal discussions on a Programme for Government.

"It was our united view that your talks with the Green Party should now be given the space and time to reach a conclusion as if successful, such a government would command a majority in the Dail."

However, Mr Kelly does say that if the other parties change their minds on taxation, he would "look forward to hearing" from them.
Police Change Working Methods Amid CCP Virus Outbreak, Facing Higher Risks

Police departments nationwide are grappling with changes the CCP virus has wrought on the way they operate, even as law enforcement agencies report major decreases in crime due to stay-at-home orders.

Officers are facing more risks to their lives as they attend to calls, investigate, and patrol in the streets. They are also required to change their ways of policing and investigating as social distancing and masks changed everything about the way they operate.

There are many sporadic reports from around the countrya Lexington police officer in Holmes County, Mississippi, was shot at by three men and two patrol cars were damaged when police responded to a social distancing violation on May 7.

In another recent incident in Hilltown township in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, an accused rapist who was set free from jail due to the pandemic set off fireworks at officers before setting his house on fire on Tuesday.

As the country slowly tries to limp back to what it was before the pandemic, with empty streets and business predominantly still under lockdown, Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb told The Epoch Times that while everybody is looking at the public health issues arising out of the pandemic, his officers deal with the public safety issues that involve greater risks.

What about the people who are home, who are out of money, who are stressed, bills stacking up, and worse, responding to domestic violence calls, the neighbor problems, to a suicidal subject. And were putting my deputies at risk, far greater risk of responding to those calls, said Sheriff Lamb. The intensity of those calls has been elevated.

Officers exit the makeshift morgue at Lenox Hill Hospital before escorting the body of Glen Ridge New Jersey police officer Charles Roberts in New York City on May 11, 2020. Roberts, age 45, died Monday morning from coronavirus complications. (Cindy Ord/Getty Images)

Policing Has Changed

Cold cases are getting colder. Detectives are struggling to connect with victims through thick masks, and investigators accustomed to wearing plainclothes are digging out their dusty uniforms for patrol duty as the CCP virus pandemic rages.

As far as investigations go, your cases are getting colder, James Dudley, retired Deputy Chief of the San Francisco Police Department, told The Epoch Times, adding that many investigations depend upon building relationships and establishing rapport, which is not happening like before.

He said things that use to happen in-person are now happening over the phone. As an investigator, I always slip to the scene, I always search beyond the cursory search or search that patrol officer didnt pick something that happened that night, said Dudley. A lot of those things cease to be.

Dudley also mentioned that the pandemic has limited the polices outreach with the community. Any community policing effort, any effort to get closer to the community, help the community to reach out to children and the elderly. Now we change distances. We dont do that, he said.

The Snohomish County Sheriffs Office in Washington state told The Epoch Times in an email that its outreach with the community has mostly moved on to social media where it informs the community about the crisis resources available online during the pandemic.

These resources include a care crisis line, a care crisis chat, and a toll-free number for finding food, paying for housing bills, accessing free childcare, or other essential services.

When asked how policing has changed in the county, the spokesperson said: Our deputies implemented many safety procedures to follow CDC guidelines, including wearing PPE, using online reporting when possible, disinfecting uniforms, clipboards, pens, etc.

Authorities say though crime has decreased and ways of policing have changed, enough wrongdoing still abounds to keep police busy, and detective work must still be in-person and hands-on, despite COVID-19. Evidence has to be collected, statements must be taken in person and death notifications need to be made face-to-face.

You put on gloves and you put on masks and youve still got to go out there and do it, said Los Angeles Police Capt. Jonathan Tippet, head of the elite Robbery-Homicide Division.

Police around the country have to put some investigations on hold as they detail detectives to help out with social distance patrols or cover for their colleagues out sick with COVID-19.

I would always go back in the day to get a different perspective, though, a lot of those things have ceased to be because the officers that are working investigations are working high priority cases, he said.

Its worrisome to former New York Police Department Sgt. Joe Giacalone, who is concerned about criminals across the country who will go undetected in the meantime.

That becomes a bigger problem down the road, Giacalone, a former cold case detective who is now a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Investigators prevent further victimization by getting these guys off the streets.

Despite fewer detectives in bureaus, police are finding workarounds and high-profile cases are still getting the necessary attention. The Los Angeles district attorney filed an additional sexual assault charge against disgraced film mogul Harvey Weinstein in April, and investigators in New York continue to delve into an unsolved Long Island serial killer case after they revealed new evidence earlier this year.

A police officer wears a mask amid fears over the spread of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) while standing guard at a Freedom Rally protest in support of opening Florida in South Beach in Miami, on May 10, 2020. (Chandan Khanna/AFP)

Risks of Being at the Frontlines

Being at the frontline during the pandemic makes law enforcement personnel extremely vulnerable to catching the virus. The NYPD COVID-19 Memorial listed 41 officers who lost their lives to the pandemic as of Wednesday.

Officers being called to respond to confined spaces and deal with individuals, have to put hands-on, they might have to separate individuals. You know, they might have to wrestle with individuals and we dont know what their health issues are, said Dudley.

He said police have to do less on the field during the pandemic because under the lockdown a lot of live police response is replaced by interviews on the telephone and electronic reporting.

So in theory, you would have less calls for service but the ones that you do, youre more likely to have contact with offenders or individuals, he said.

Officer Down Memorial Page (ODMP), a charity dedicated to honoring fallen American law enforcement officers, reported a 38 percent increase in the line of duty deaths during April over the same time last yearout of the 32 law enforcement officers who lost their lives in the country in April, 23 died after contacting COVID-19 on duty.

PRESS RELEASE  5/11/2020 It is with deep regret and sorrow that I, Chief Sheila Byron-Lagattuta and the entire Glen    Glen Ridge Police Department     

A compilation of reports on Monday from around the country by PoliceOne listed 50 media reports of such deaths. Reporting on such cases is difficult as the ODMP said, it often takes much longer than normal to make a line of duty death determination due to illnesses such as COVID-19.

Dudley emphasized that despite the risks, police are not fearful. So yes, the potential for danger is there. But police are not afraid. Police are not walking off the job. Police are not operating from a position of fear, he said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

This story has been updated with additional details.
The New York Stock Exchange will partially reopen its normally busy floor later this month after closing it in late March due to the coronavirus.

Stacey Cunningham, president of the NYSE, said Thursday the trading floor will reopen to a subset of brokers the day after the Memorial Day holiday.

The brokers who are allowed to return will have to wear protective masks and follow social-distancing requirements, Cunningham said in a commentary published in The Wall Street Journal.

In addition, they will be required to avoid public transportation in order to limit their potential exposure to the virus. In New York City, there are more than 186,000 confirmed cases of the virus. The city has recorded at least 15,349 confirmed deaths and 5,057 probable deaths from the virus.

As of Wednesday, New York City has only met four of the seven benchmarks required for lockdown restrictions to be lifted as part of Gov Andrew Cuomo's phased reopening plan.

Stacey Cunningham, president of the NYSE (pictured on March 20), said Thursday the trading floor will reopen to a subset of brokers the day after the Memorial Day holiday

The brokers and others who visit the trading floor will have to undergo a screening to check their temperature before entering the building.

Those who don't pass will not be allowed to enter the building until they test negative for COVID-19 or self-quarantine according with federal guidelines, Cunningham said.

Employees of large companies that normally crowd the NYSE trading floor as they oversee the action will largely continue to work remotely, as they have been since March 23, when the NYSE shifted to all-electronic trading as a precautionary step after two people tested positive for COVID-19.

'We opted to close our floor temporarily in the early days of the pandemic to help slow the spread of disease,' Cunningham wrote.

'Two months later, we've learned a lot and are in a position to reopen the floor with vital new safety measures, as we begin working together to restart the US economy.'

She noted that the 'rigid measures' put in place to open the trading floor may become more stringent if the cases of COVID-19 surge.

In New York City, there are more than 186,000 confirmed cases of the virus

The city has recorded at least 15,349 confirmed deaths and 5,057 probable deaths from the virus

The brokers and others (pictured on March 20) who visit the trading floor will have to undergo a screening to check their temperature before entering the building

'Until there's a vaccine for the virus, it's likely that increased activity will bring new cases,' Cunnigham wrote.

'Infections may occur as people venture back to work. Our approach is designed to identify possible cases quickly, which will protect against a broader spread and allow our floor to continue operating.'

Cunningham added that none of the traders or NYSE employees will be required to come into work.

Several thousand brokers and others used to crowd the trading floor of the NYSE as recently as the 1990s.

But in the years since, the rise of electronic trading grew to dominate the action on Wall Street. These days, there are about 500 floor traders at the NYSE.
Some of the worst Kmart hacks ever have been shared online.

As the boredom brought on by lockdown grows, families are coming up with increasingly wacky 'home improvements'.

Photos of the horror hacks have been shared on the popular Facebook page Kmart Unhacks & Roasts, which has a whopping 144,183 followers.

The page's creator says lockdown has created the perfect opportunity for people to show off their worst DIY disasters.

She refers to all failed DIY enthusiasts as Brenda in her posts so as to protect their anonymity.

Here Daily Mail Australia takes a look at some of the best.

A popular failed hack during isolation shows a mother who match contacted all the items in her laundry

Matching washing machine and dryer

One mother decided to cover her washer and dryer with contact, the kind bought at Kmart to cover books or hard surfaces.

Kmart Unhacks & Roasts shared the #contactcrime image which attracted more than 1,000 comment criticising the ugly DIY.

'It looks like everything needs a good clean - this is terrible contact!' one person commented.

'I worked with the police with stolen vehicles and thats how a white stolen car looks after they have fingerprinted it,' another wrote.

'I actually thought it had been gutted by fire and this was a before photo,' someone else wrote.

A family who doesn't use their bath any more transformed the tub into a sofa complete with pillows from Kmart

Bathtub turned sofa

A family that doesn't use their bath thought it fitting to transform their redundant tub into a sofa with pillows from Kmart.

The culprit claims her DIY is 'extremely sturdy' and she is 'pretty happy with it.

'I used plywood, glued foam to the top, topped that with a yoga mat and then covered it all with a shower curtain,' she wrote.

Kmart Unhacks & Roasts fans ridiculed the shocking DIY project.

'That would just be an invitation to my children to sit and chat while I have a shower. Bad enough they follow me into the bathroom as it is without a waiting lounge,' one wrote.

'Hell no. I like my bathroom the way it is- boring. Its the only place my kids dont feel the need to stand or sit beside me. No way I would be doing that; its a flipping invite for an audience!' another commented.

'Maybe she's a mum and made her hiding place from the kids a little more comfortable,' someone joked.

One wife had her husband place wheels at the bottom of an empty cabinet and build an extra shelf on top to create an air fryer station

Air fryer station

One wife had her husband place wheels at the bottom of an empty cabinet and build an extra shelf on top to create an air fryer station.

An image of the DIY shocker shows the cupboard completely empty but topped with not just one, but three air fryers.

'Another wave of stations for things that can go in a cupboard,' Kmart Unhacks & Roasts captioned the image.

The idea was mocked on Facebook with many asking why she would place the air fryers on top rather inside the empty cupboard.

'Why the heck would you need an extra shelf and then leave the cupboard empty,' one person asked.

'For the price they paid for three Kmart air fryers, they could have got one higher quality air fryer,' someone suggested.

'I HATE how people have 'stations' for everything! Things are so much neater put away!' another wrote.

One daughter decided to transform the Kmart side table to redesign as a coffee table for her mother's patio

Meaty-looking coffee table

This Kmart fan thought she was doing her mum a favour when she made a coffee table for her mum's patio.

But unfortunately the end result looked like raw meat rather than a stylish table.

'I added resin to the top and made some coasters which I reversed the colours so white is most prominent and pinks and reds are features,' she wrote.

Kmart Unhacks & Roasts captioned the image, 'I guess Brenda won the meat tray at the pub last night.'

'Honestly at first glance I thought what a lovely piece of marbled steak...' one commented.

'Beautiful piece of marbled wagyu,' another wrote.

'This is a great idea but unfortunately it does look like a slab of meat,' someone else commented.

Bored workers decided to spice things up in the work kitchen and decided to match contact the fridge and microwave

Matching fridge and microwave

Bored workers decided to spice things up in the work kitchen by decorating their fridge and microwave with marble contact.

'Not even Brendas office is immune to it #contactcrime,' Kmart Unhacks & Roasts captioned the image.

'So, does Brenda not know that microwaves even fridges produce heat when running? How to tell your boss you burned the office down because you wanted to make it look neat?' someone questioned.

'I love how it enhances the yellowing on the whiteware,' one sarcastically commented.

One woman struggled to find the wallpaper she wanted so opted to buy quilts and pasted them to the wall

Quilt used as wallpaper

One woman struggled to find the wallpaper she wanted so opted to buy quilts and pasted them to the wall.

'I couldn't find the wallpaper I wanted so I bought a king and single quilt covers and cut the backs off and pasted them to the wall,' the DIY fan wrote.

'I used potato starch to stick them on.

'They only cost me $45 on sale at Spotlight...then you have pillow cases to match.'

The Kmart Unhacks & Roasts called out 'Brenda' saying that matching your pillowcases with your wall 'is not a thing'.

'Could attach the sheet to canvas, hang it on your wall, make a picture, not cover the whole damn wall with bed sheets,' one person wrote.

'I wish there was a product specifically designed for papering walls,' another joked.

Others said the use of potato starch will leave the room with a funky smell and will cause the walls to mould.

'Given the right climate, the mould that grows will be spectacular!' someone commented.

'Has Brenda never smelt the aroma of a rotten potato before coming up with this genius idea?' someone else asked.
Pursuant to the agreements reached by President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and Emir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, a phone conversation took place between Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva and Minister of Transport and Communications of the State of Qatar Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti.

The interlocutors discussed the issues of further high-level contacts, as well as trade, economic and investment cooperation between the two countries, the presidents press service reported on May 14.

Particular attention was paid to the practical implementation of promising investment projects in Ukraine in the field of agriculture, transport and medical infrastructure.

"The total trade turnover between the countries in 2019 amounted to a record USD 90 million - the largest figure since the establishment of diplomatic relations between the countries," Zhovkva said, emphasizing the positive dynamics of bilateral relations.

The deputy head of the Presidents Office stressed that the Ukrainian party was interested in completing the preparations for signing an agreement with the winner of the concession tender for Olvia Sea Port - QTerminals - after lifting quarantine restrictions imposed in Ukraine and Qatar due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As a reminder, the phone conversation between President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky and Emir of the State of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani took place on May 6, 2020.

On January 31, 2020, Deputy Head of the Office of the President of Ukraine Ihor Zhovkva and Minister of Transport and Communications of the State of Qatar Jassim Saif Ahmed Al Sulaiti met in Kyiv in the framework of his visit to Ukraine.

ish
BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- A total of 17.75 million college students in China had taken part in online learning as of May 8 since classes moved online in early February as college campuses were closed due to the COVID-19 epidemic, an official with the Ministry of Education (MOE) said Thursday.

The courses these students attended were remotely delivered by 1.03 million teachers from 1,454 universities across the country, Wu Yan with the MOE said at a press conference.

Online learning has been highly recognized among current college students who grew up in the Internet era, Wu said.

It prompted teachers to focus on fostering students' capabilities for creative and independent learning, he noted.

The new online-teaching methods and practices gained by Chinese universities over the last three months or more are instrumental in the development of higher education in China and even across the world, Wu said.

China also launched two English online learning platforms during the epidemic, making quality educational resources provided by top Chinese universities accessible to hundreds of millions of students and learners around the globe.

A total of 302 English courses including those on medicine, epidemic response, natural science, engineering, and art have been put on the platforms.

As the epidemic dies down in China, schools across the country have reopened or are about to reopen. About 2.9 million college students had returned to campuses as of May 11, according to the MOE.
WASHINGTON  A long-standing political battle over the construction of natural gas pipelines is intensifying amid the pandemic as clean energy advocates increase pressure on government not to let up on climate change.

Democratic attorneys general from 10 states and the District of Columbia are urging the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to stop permitting gas pipelines, LNG facilities and other fossil fuel projects until the end of the COVID-19 crisis.

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed even greater burdens on communities attempting to organize their interests and participate in commission proceedings, the attorneys general wrote in a letter to FERC last week. COVID-19 has required individuals and state and local governments to attend to matters of pressing, existential urgency. The federal government and its agencies, including the commission, must acknowledge that fact, and modify their practices accordingly.

OPPORTUNITY KNOCKS: With oil reeling from pandemic, clean energy looks to capitalize

The moves come as the Trump administration is working on an update of federal environmental rules to limit states ability to block pipelines because of climate change, amid increasing tension about the future of fossil fuels.

Politicians worldwide are moving toward expanding wind and solar energy at the same time investors and banks are pulling back from large fossil fuel projects such as pipelines, export terminals and oil drilling in the Arctic, which cost billions of dollars and can take more than a decade to turn a profit.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, is weighing whether to block Williams Co., based in Tulsa, Okla., from building a 37-mile gas pipeline off his states coastline, as he has done with other pipeline projects running through New York in his bid to get the state carbon neutral by 2050.

This is an unprecedented time, and its fully important what we do here is the old adage of do no harm, said Gillian Giannetti, a staff attorney at the environmental group Natural Resources Defense Council. What we shouldnt be doing is using this opportunity to push through policies or procedures that undercut our environment and climate.

So far, commissioners at FERC, which must sign off on natural gas pipeline and LNG projects, are moving ahead on permitting.

FUEL FIX: Get energy news sent directly to your inbox

In a letter to Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring on Tuesday, Chairman Neil Chatterjee said FERC was taking steps to ensure the public could participate in its proceedings.

It is imperative that the commission continue to operate as close to normal as possible, he wrote, so that the energy sector is well-positioned to contribute not only to Virginias economy but also to the nations economy as a whole.

So far, the push to stop FERC from permitting has yet to catch on in Congress, where last week a group of bipartisan House members including Rep. Lizzie Fletcher, D-Houston, and Rep. Bill Flores, R-Waco, urged Chatterjee to continue FERCs work as normal.

For the natural gas industry, the coronavirus protest by the state attorneys general represents the latest in a campaign by environmental groups and liberal Democrats to shift the United States away from a cleaner-burning fuel that former President Barack Obama once called a bridge to the clean energy of the future.

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And the pressure is not likely to let up soon. Between Trumps move to limit states authority on pipeline projects and environmental groups ongoing campaign to halt the construction of LNG terminals, a rash of litigation is expected over the next 12 months.

FERC is currently weighing whether to hold a rehearing on its decision to approve construction of the Jordan Cove LNG project on Oregons Pacific coastline, which both state officials and environmental groups, including the NRDC, are opposing.

Thats highly likely to go to litigation, Giannetti said. Theres been a growing amount of litigation about what are the boundaries of FERCs obligation, and what it has to consider in terms of the environmental impacts of these projects.

james.osborne@chron.com

Twitter.com/@osborneja
An elderly couple who were gunned down at a veteran's cemetery in Delaware last week had been visiting their son's grave at the time, their heartbroken children have revealed.

Paul, 86, and Lidia Marino, 85, from Elkton, Maryland, have been identified as the victims of a fatal shooting at Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Bear last Friday morning.

Lidia was pronounced dead at the scene while her husband, who was shot in the back of the head, was taken to the Christiana Hospital where he died later that day.

Police later discovered the 29-year-old suspect, Sheldon C. Francis, dead from a gunshot wound about six hours later in a wooded area.

Paul, 86, and Lidia Marino, 85, (far right) from Elkton, Maryland, have been identified as the victims of last week's shooting. Their sons, twins Ray and Paul Jr, (center) said their parents were visiting their brother's grave at the time

The elderly couple were at Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Bear, pictured, last week when they were fatally shot in a 'random act of violence'

It is unknown whether Francis knew his victims, and investigators are yet to release a motive.

The slain couple's surviving children, twins Ray and Paul Jr, 60, are now struggling to come to terms with their parents' senseless murders, which have been called a 'random act of violence,' according to the Newark Post.

Sheldon C. Francis, 29, from Middletown, pictured, was identified as the gunman last week. He was found dead from a gunshot wound a few hours later in a wooded area

The two revealed their mother and father were at the cemetery that morning as part of their daily 'ritual' of visiting their brother Anthony's grave.

Anthony, the couple's youngest son, was born with cerebral palsy and died from complications in March 2017 at the age of 54.

Although Anthony did not serve in the military, cemetery rules allowed his father, a peacetime army veteran in the 1950s, to bury one minor child or child with disabilities at the site.

The parents had been visiting the burial plot every day ever since.

'It was like a regimen. Mom and Dad visited my brother's grave every single day, without fail, unless there was inclement weather. They usually went there in the morning,' Ray the Newark Post on Wednesday.

'I've been trying to figure all this out in my head, but there are some things we are just never going to know,' he added.

When news of the shooting broke last week, Ray's brother Paul Jr, a maintenance manager, was at work at the time.

His parents' were such well-known visitors of the cemetery, coworkers immediately reached out, prompting Paul to immediately call his parents but he did not get a response.

'I went into my office and started watching all of the news about it,' he said. 'I could see my dad's station wagon parked at the cemetery. Then I knew.'

Delaware State Police told the family the gunman had shot the couple with a handgun at a close range.

Vehicles are seen stopped at a roadblock, last Friday, in Bear, Del. Delaware State Police were responding Friday to a report of shots being fired at Delaware's Veterans Memorial Cemetery, according to a police statement

aw enforcement set up a perimeter and search vehicles at an active shooter situation near the Delaware Veterans Memorial Cemetery in Bear on Friday

'He shot our dad in the back of the head and then he shot our mom,' Ray said.

'We don't know if he shot our mom first in front of our dad or if he shot our dad first in front of our mom. We don't even know if they saw him.'

The elderly couple were well into their 80s at the time of their deaths, but their sons said Lidia, a former homemaker and seamstress, and Paul Sr, were very healthy and active and had a least 'five or 10 more years' left.

'I thought they would die from natural causes someday  not be executed by a stranger in a cemetery,' he said.

After a shootout with officers, Francis reportedly fled into nearby woods, Senior Corporal Heather Pepper, a state police spokeswoman, said last week.

Witnesses said he was wearing a black hoodie and was seen running across the grass.

Authorities had used a reverse 911 system to warn area residents that there was an active shooter and that they should shelter in place.

Some of the residents were evacuated as officers hunted for the suspect.

Police later released a statement saying: 'Francis was located deceased at approximately 4:00 p.m., on the date of the incident, in a wooded area located just off of Brennan Blvd., in the development of Brennan Estates, which is adjacent to the grounds of the cemetery.

'This wooded area was where an exchange of gunfire between Francis and officers on scene had taken place at approximately 12:08 p.m. Upon being located Francis was confirmed to have sustained a gunshot wound.

'It is undetermined at this time if the wound was self-inflicted or as a result of the exchange of gunfire.'

No officers were injured in the shooting.

The state-owned cemetery is overseen by the Office of Veterans Services, a division of the Delaware Department of State.
May 15 : Actress Asha Negi shares a sneak-peek into her daily schedule says she is binge-watching Hollywood, South, and Lebanon movies on Netflix. The Pavitra Rishta actress also revealed that she is fond of paintings and loves painting glass bottles.

Asha said, Its good. I have been telling everyone nothing has changed for me as such. Anyways I am feeling the happiest because I love staying at home. I am having fun, I am trying to make most of every day. I start my day by doing basic house works like cleaning and sweeping the floor. After that I cook vegetables, then I eat and wash my dishes. Apart from this, I am also watching a lot of shows, films and also doing paintings. But now as my canvas is over, I am thinking to paint on glass bottles

I like watching films. I dont get stuck in a few films, I keep watching more and more. Recently I have started watching Hollywood films on Netflix and they are quite interesting. I am also a huge fan of foreign films and South Indian films. Lately, I watched Telugu films called Super Delux and Kancharapalem on Netflix. Its a Telugu film, beautifully scripted and shot with simplicity, even the characters have done their roles very precisely. There is one more film which is Lebanon called Capernaum, it is based on a child who is a refugee she added.

Meanwhile, on the work front, Asha debuted on the digital space with Baarish last year. The web series, also starring Sharman Joshi, recently released its second season.

Baarish - When you are in mood for romance is a 2019 web series developed by Ekta Kapoor for video demand platform ALTBalaji & ZEE5. The series stars Asha Negi and Sharman Joshi as protagonists and revolves around their completely opposite personalities and explores their lives.

The series is available for streaming on the ALT Balaji App and its associated websites since its release date.
VANCOUVER, BC / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Zimtu Capital Corp. (TSXV:ZC)(FSE:ZCT1) (the "Company" or "Zimtu") announces it has signed an agreement with IMC International Mining Corp. (IMCX)(IMIMF)(3MX) to provide its ZimtuADVANTAGE program.

ZimtuADVANTAGE is a program designed to provide opportunities, guidance, cost savings and assistance to clients covering multiple aspects of being a public company. The services may include building financial networks, building business networks, shared costs with other public companies, building a social media presence, conference opportunities, media outlets and guidance and special group pricing provided by Zimtu's network of public company professionals. The program provides the flexibility to allow companies to customize the products and services to best support their needs.

About IMC International Mining Corp.

IMC is a junior exploration and development company focused on creating shareholder value through the advancements of its current assets which include the Thane Property in north-central British Columbia, and the Bullard Pass Property in Arizona. Utilizing its heavily experienced management team. IMC continues to source and evaluate assets to provide shareholder value.

The Thane Property covers approximately 206 km2 (50,904 acres) and is located in the Quesnel Terrane of north-central British Columbia. The northern part of the Quesnel Terrane extends from south of the Mt. Milligan Mine northward to the Kemess Mine, with the Thane property located midway between these two copper-gold porphyry deposits. The property includes several highly prospective mineralized areas identified to date, including the 'Cathedral Area' on which the Company is currently focused.

The Bullard Pass Property is comprised of 171 unpatented federal lode claims totaling 3,420 acres and is located in west-central Arizona, northwest of Phoenix, within the Pierce Mining District in Yavapai County. The property has a regional setting typical of detachment fault gold deposits and has geological, mining and metallurgical similarities to the Mesquite Mine in California. The claims are 100% owned by IMC International Mining Corp.

About Zimtu Capital Corp.

Zimtu Capital Corp. is a public investment issuer that invests with the objective of achieving long-term capital appreciation for its shareholders. The Company utilizes its capital base and long-term horizon to invest in unique situations; primarily micro cap, special situations, and illiquid public and private companies. Zimtu Capital companies may operate in the fields of mineral exploration, mining, technology, life sciences or investment. The Company trades on the TSX Venture Exchange under the symbol "ZC" and Frankfurt under symbol "ZCT1". For more information please visit http://www.zimtu.com.

On Behalf of the Board of Directors

ZIMTU CAPITAL CORP.

"David Hodge"

David Hodge

President & Director

Tel: 604.681.1568

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: Zimtu Capital Corp.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/590129/Zimtu-Capital-Corp-Announces-Contract-with-IMC-International-Mining-Corp
AMSTERDAM (JTA)In his native Germany and beyond, Hans Calmeyer is celebrated as a hero who saved more Jews from the Holocaust than Oskar Schindler.

As a jurist for the Nazi German forces in the Netherlands, Calmeyer was put in charge of a small team that evaluated pleas by people who tried to save themselves by disputing their classification as Jews. According to Israels national Holocaust museum, Yad Vashem, Calmeyers actions in his post, which involved accepting many of these pleassome were quite flimsysaved at least 3,000 people.

In 1992, Yad Vashem posthumously recognized...
A judge on Tuesday rejected an appeal by jailed Guatemalan ex-president Otto Perez to be released into house arrest over fears of contracting the coronavirus. The 69-year-old former general has been in custody since 2017 awaiting trial over a massive bribery scandal. He also has a heart condition. Judge Miguel Angel Galvez threw out Perez's petition in a hearing, on the grounds that the former president is being held at an army hospital where there is none of the overcrowding present in other prison facilities. Perez blasted the ruling, telling Guatemalan media he had not linked his request to overcrowding but to the fact that his age and heart condition made him more vulnerable to COVID-19. "Among the vulnerable groups, they are talking about people over 60, and in addition, those with a heart condition, especially heart disease, which is exactly what I have," said Perez. Perez has on several previous occasions tried to have his sentence commuted to house arrest. He was charged in 2017 with racketeering, illicit enrichment and fraud as the mastermind of a multimillion-dollar scheme involving the Central American country's customs duty system. He has been in custody ever since. The former president served from 2012 until he was forced to resign amid grassroots outrage in 2015. Perez, who has also been implicated in other corruption cases, recently had surgery to remove gallstones.
Grammy winner Ariana Grande Instastoried a selfie of her 'tired lil Tim Burton eyes' while in quarantine at her five-bedroom Beverly Hills mansion on Thursday.

However, the 26-year-old pop star was far from make-up free as she had darkened her eyebrows and applied a smattering of faux freckles across her nose.

Ariana - who normally relies on make-up artist Daniel Chinchilla - had also fastened her signature ponytail extension over her elusive natural shoulder-length locks.

'Luv!' Grammy winner Ariana Grande Instastoried a selfie of her 'tired lil Tim Burton eyes' while in quarantine at her five-bedroom Beverly Hills mansion on Thursday

One hour later, Grande (born Butera) braided her hairpiece and she caved in and applied false lashes to her so-called 'sleepy nakey eyes.'

The Florida-born R&B belter - who boasts 334.5M combined followers - captioned her second selfie: 'PSA: The veins beneath my left eyelid are a heart.'

Ariana also Instastoried a snap of one of her 10 dogs - Dachshund-German Shepherd mix Coco - 'wiggling out of her little harness.'

Missing from Grande's side was her quarantine boo - Aaron Kirman Group real estate agent Dalton Gomez - who appeared in her and Justin Bieber's new music video for Stuck With U.

'Sleepy nakey eyes': However, the 26-year-old pop star was far from make-up free as she had darkened her eyebrows and applied a smattering of faux freckles across her nose

Kissy face: Ariana - who normally relies on make-up artist Daniel Chinchilla - had also fastened her signature ponytail extension over her elusive natural shoulder-length locks

She couldn't resist! One hour later, Grande (born Butera) braided her hairpiece and she caved in and applied false lashes to her so-called 'sleepy nakey eyes'

'Love of my life!' The Florida-born R&B belter also Instastoried a snap of one of her 10 dogs - Dachshund-German Shepherd mix Coco - 'wiggling out of her little harness'

It was the first time the former fiancee of Pete Davidson went public with her romance with the tattoo-sleeved SoCal native, whom she's been dating for 'several months' - according to TMZ.

As of Thursday, the duet has raised $32,413 for First Responders Children's Foundation - and both pop stars vowed to match the final amount as well as manager Scooter Braun.

'We just wanted to make something fun that also helps and kind of makes people feel, I think less alone, I guess. Or just like be hopefully somewhat uplifting,' Ariana told Apple Music's Beats 1 host Zane Lowe on Wednesday.

New boyfriend: Missing from Ariana's side was her quarantine boo - Aaron Kirman Group real estate agent Dalton Gomez (L) - who appeared in her and Justin Bieber's new music video for Stuck With U

It's official! It was the first time Grande went public with her romance with the tattoo-sleeved SoCal native, whom she's been dating for 'several months'

'I'm in!' As of Thursday, the duet has raised $32,413 for First Responders Children's Foundation - and both pop stars vowed to match the final amount as well as manager Scooter Braun

The former fiancee of Pete Davidson told Apple Music's Beats 1 host Zane Lowe on Wednesday: 'We just wanted to make something fun that also helps and kind of makes people feel, I think less alone, I guess. Or just like be hopefully somewhat uplifting'

'I think it's also a really literally isolating time for people mentally, too. So just, we wanted to put music out because music is the thing that makes people feel good. It's the thing that speaks most to people's spirits and we just wanted to lift them.'

Grande also teamed up with Oscar-winning songwriter Lady Gaga for the duet Rain on Me, which will appear on her sixth studio album Chromatica dropping May 29.

And while she did tease an upcoming collaboration with Doja Cat, the former Nickelodeon child star told Zane she doesn't 'really feel comfortable putting' an album out during this 'tricky time.'

Rain on Me: Ariana also teamed up with Oscar-winning songwriter Lady Gaga for a duet on her sixth studio album Chromatica, which drops May 29
Are companies relieved of their duty to care for the wellbeing of their employees during this lockdown period? Not so, said Angelique Montalto, Regional Sales Director at SAP Concur.

Organisations owe it to their employees to keep them safe either while working remotely or travelling on official company business. In times of major disruption or heightened risk, companies need to take all necessary measures to ensure they can meet the necessary duty of care obligations and keep their employees informed and away from harm while they are operating on behalf of the organisation.

Duty of care refers to a companys moral and legal responsibility to care for the wellbeing of its employees during the course of business.

In South Africa, duty of care obligations are guided by the statutory requirements of the Occupational Health and Safety Act.

In terms of the act, the CEO of every employer is liable for contraventions and can be fined or criminally convicted if found negligent.

This puts pressure on companies to meet their duty of care obligations, said Montalto.

Businesses should know where their people are, whether far away or close to the office, and must be able to alert employees during a crisis, provide them with any assistance they may need, and keep open lines of communication until everyone is safe.

Montalto believes there are four things companies need to bear in mind during this time to ensure they live up to their duty of care obligations, namely:

1. You need to know where your teams are during a crisis

In one study, 77% of finance leaders said they were not confident they could quickly and accurately locate employees during an emergency. This exposes employees and the employer to significant risk, especially during the types of global crises were experiencing in 2020. Companies need to take all reasonable steps to locate traveling employees and track their progress home until they are brought to safety.

2.You need to be able to communicate with teams throughout a crisis

According to Montalto, companies often fail at communicating with employees that are affected by a crisis.

Organisations need a reliable, secure way to directly and instantly communicate with remote employees to warn them of potential risks, guide them through the crisis and ensure they can get to safety quickly and with as few issues as possible. It is simply not enough to send a static informative message but rather to elevate your duty of care platform to enable bi-directional communication for real-time coverage and protection.

3. Employees notice when companies fall short in their duty of care obligations

Alarmingly, one study found that 41% of employees that were near a natural disaster said they were never contacted by their company at all, said Montalto.

Aside from possibly contravening their own duty of care obligations and opening the company up to legal issues, the experience for the employee is unlikely to lead to greater loyalty or productivity. Considering the importance of employee experience to talent retention and productivity, such companies may suffer reputational damage.

4. There are tools that help companies meet their duty of care obligations

Montalto cites the Concur Locate service within SAP Concur as a powerful tool for capturing and accessing real-time employee location data and communicating directly and securely.

Locate enables companies to reliably communicate with employees regardless of the situation, and gives employers a single tool to monitor employee location and gain intelligence on country-specific travel disruptions or risks. Companies can also mitigate risks associated with business travel by conducting assessments and providing alerts pre-trip, during a journey and after.

In short, Concur Locate provides a powerful employee risk management and safety communication solution that allows you to make sure your employees are safe, no matter where they are.

Organisations will be able to identify risks and assess their impact, pinpoint employees locations and know their travel plans using machine learning, leverage multiple options for two-way communications, and deploy local response teams if necessary.

For more information about how SAP Concurs Locate service can support companies with safeguarding their traveling employees, please visit concur.co.za

To find out more, please complete the form below.
New Delhi: In an important ruling on use of amplifying devices for religious purposes, the Allahabad High Court on Friday held that use of loudspeakers is not an integral part of Azaan or necessary for making Azaan effective since other citizens have a right to not hear what they do not want.

"It cannot be said that a citizen should be coerced to hear anything which he does not like or which he does not require, since it amounts to taking away the fundamental right of other persons...No one has got the right to make other persons captive listeners," said the High Court bench headed by Justice Shashi Kant Gupta.

The court held that there is no constitutional protection to use of loudspeakers for Azaan since "no person has right to take away the right of others" and "use of microphones certainly takes away the right of the citizens to speak with others, their right to read or think or the right to sleep."

The bench said that Azaan may be an essential and integral part of Islam but recitation of Azan through loud-speakers or other sound amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion warranting protection of the fundamental right enshrined under Article 25 of the Constitution of India, which is even otherwise subject to public order, morality or health and to other provisions of part III of the Constitution of India.

"Thus, it cannot be said that a citizen should be coerced to hear anything which he does not like or which he does not require since it amounts to taking away the fundamental right of other persons," it underscored.

The bench was dealing with a clutch of petitions, filed by Lok Sabha MP Afzal Ansari, Congress leader and senior advocate Salman Khurshid and another senior lawyer SWA Qadri.

The chief prayer was that Muslims in the districts Ghazipur and Farrukhabad, should be permitted to recite Azaan through Muezzin by using sound amplifying devices and the restrictions imposed by the administrations should be declared wholly arbitrary and unconstitutional since they do not, in any way, violate the guidelines issued for the containment of the pandemic.

It was also pointed out that the practice of opening the fast by the sound of the Azaan during Ramzan is an Islamic tradition prevailing since the time immemorial. They further said that no religious congregation was taking place in mosques.

The bench, however, noted that while a Muezzin or an Imam can be allowed to recite Azaan from the minarets of the mosques through human voice, use of loudspeakers cannot be permitted.

The Court asserted there is no such religious order which prescribes that Azaan can be recited only through loud-speakers or by any amplifiers.

"The use of microphone is a practice developed by someone and not by the Prophet or his main disciples, and which was not there in the past, and that the microphone is of recent origin and accordingly it could not be said that the use of microphone and loud-speaker is essential and integral part of the Azaan," added the bench.

It added: "Traditionally and according to the religious order, Azaan has to be recited by the Imam or the person in-charge of the mosques through their own voice. Right to religion, by no stretch of imagination, ought to be practised, professed and propagated saying that microphone has become an essential part of the religion."

The High Court this held the restrictions on use of loudspeakers as valid and reasonable.

"It is held that Azaan may be an essential and integral part of Islam but recitation of Azaan through loud-speakers or other sound amplifying devices cannot be said to be an integral part of the religion," concluded the court.
Virginia and Maryland dipped their toes into reopening Friday as governors of both states gave the yellow light for some businesses and houses of worship to carefully restart operations after the deadly coronavirus pandemic forced a shutdown that lasted more than six weeks and wreaked economic havoc across the region.

The changes took effect at midnight in Virginia and will begin at 5 p.m. Friday in Maryland. But with the orders come much trepidation as coronavirus cases continue to rise across the region. Some jurisdictions postponed reopening until new cases decline and testing protocols are improved.

Washington and its suburbs remain in a virtual lockdown. Much of northern Virginia kept stay-at-home orders in place, as did suburban Maryland, where coronavirus outbreaks have been most severe.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser, a Democrat, has ordered the shutdown through at least June 8. Baltimore and Richmond have also remained closed.

The regional shutdown has been devastating for workers and business owners. More than 103,000 jobless claims were filed last week in the District, Maryland and Virginia, bringing the number of people who have sought jobless benefits in recent weeks to 885,000. As reopening began Friday, it provided some socially distanced hope that commerce could make a comeback even it is accompanied by worries.

Penny Papa was the first customer of the day Friday at the T. Ann Nails salon outside Richmond. All that stood between her and new nails was a questionnaire, "Covid-19 Pandemic Nail treatment Consent Form."

"I understand the COVID-19 virus has a long incubation period during which carriers of the virus may not show symptoms and still be highly contagious," it began. "It is impossible to determine who has it and who does not given the current limits in virus testing."

Papa, wearing a flowered mask, did not hesitate to jot her initials beside the chilling statement, but she took an extra precaution.

"I will sign with my own pen," she said.

A 65-year-old homemaker, Papa had no qualms about visiting the salon - a place she puts on par with her dentist's office for spotlessness. But owner Ann Hang had qualms, even with extra precautions that included limiting clients to two at a time and deep-cleaning work stations between uses. Hang wore a mask and plastic face shield as she worked on Papa's nails, which she reached through a small cut-out in the Plexiglass wall between them.

"I think it will be risky. This is very contagious," said Hang, who has two employees who have opted not to return to work. "They want to wait. They're scared."

Hang, who had to keep making rent payments on her storefront during the shutdown, said she had no choice about reopening.

"We can't afford to not open, so we have to be more careful," she said. "We just have to hang on."

Across the Chesapeake Bay, Maryland business owners also rejoiced at the prospect of much-needed income.

Kim Hannon spent Friday morning blasting country music, buying fresh flowers and chilling champagne as she prepared to reopen her Eastern Shore boutique, Ophiridea.

"I am just so excited to reopen, I knew I had to pop some champagne right at 5 p.m. tonight," she said while rearranging furniture. After weeks of watching sales plummet, Hannon planned to broadcast the unlocking of her doors on Facebook Live.

Leaders across the Bay Bridge are on heightened alert for an influx of tourists from more infected areas who might be passing through en route to newly opened Ocean City.

"Businesses know that we are going to be watching them and we want to be successful," said Queen Anne's County administrator Todd Mohn.

The Queenstown Outlet Mall, a major retail hub in the county of about 50,000 residents, planned to reopen at 11 a.m. Saturday. A Little Lovely Coffee House, located in the outlet complex, won't reopen until more neighboring shops decide to do the same, said owner Samantha Zippilli.

"It takes a lot of time for stores to regroup, getting their employees back and reorganizing floor displays while staying safe," she said. "While most of the center is still closed, it makes it hard for us to really open."

When the outlet does reopen, it will have a different look than when it shuttered in March. Signs will explain store capacity and dividers will separate entryways to dictate the flow of traffic. Public seating will be six feet apart and escalators will have markers where people can safely stand, according to details from mall owner Simon Property Group.

Nine miles away, Stacie McGinnes scrambled to get her boutique, Half Glass Full, ready to reopen Saturday morning.

"As soon as I lay my eyes on my customers I will be overjoyed," McGinnes said, her voice breaking. "They will have two really, really happy store owners ready to greet them, though not with the hugs they are used to."

The gradual lifting of restrictions meant a first haircut in weeks for many residents, as barbershops were deemed nonessential in Maryland and Virginia. After a hard month with no customers, there were suddenly many people in search of a trim.

Jim Daugherty pulled up to Lee Christner's Barbershop in leafy downtown Warrenton, Virginia, to find its double doors wide open and the owner standing in the middle of an empty room wearing a clear plastic face shield and clutching a can of sanitizing spray.

"Do you have a waiting line," Daugherty, 60, called from behind a white mask, "or how does this work?"

The owner, Kim, who declined to give her last name to protect her privacy, nodded and pointed at an empty black chair: "Just let me disinfect it first," she said.

Daugherty waited outside as Kim wiped and sprayed the chair, the scissors, the comb, the shaver - everything she had touched while helping the customer just before Daugherty, one of at least half a dozen men whose hair she had cut that morning, the first day barbershops could reopen in Virginia.

Although she tried to give her full attention to Daugherty's curly mop, she was interrupted a few snips in when the phone rang.

"Yes, you can come at 7," she told the phone. "Yes, tonight. Seven o'clock tonight."

For the nine men and women pedaling furiously on stationary bikes in a suburban Richmond YMCA parking lot Friday morning, the return to a group class was a welcome break from weeks of sad, solitary exercise.

"I could hardly sleep last night I was so excited about coming to the Y," said Susan Freeman, 66, who arrived early for her spin class at the Tuckahoe YMCA in Henrico County. "This is like a second home here."

Sign-up for the class opened at 8:30 a.m. the previous morning. Five minutes later, it was booked, said Brandon Rice, the YMCA's wellness director.

"It's awesome," Rice said. "We're so happy to have people back."

The facility had 30-minute classes from 7 a.m. until 7 p.m. Friday, with 30-minute breaks in between to clean equipment. Each class could have nine participants and a teacher, in keeping with the state's 10-person limit on gatherings. Staff members wore their required masks but most members - spaced more than 10 feet apart - opted against the coverings as they huffed and puffed.

In the Maryland and Virginia counties that have begun the reopening process, the emphasis is on caution. Conditions for reopening prioritize safety, social distancing and cleanliness. No one wants another outbreak that will require the tighter restrictions to return.

In Virginia, restaurants already licensed for outdoor seating can reopen at half-capacity with social distancing requirements. Barber shops and hair and nail salons can open for appointments and with strict guidelines. Nonessential retail stores can open with limits on the number of customers allowed in the store. Employees are required to wear face masks, and customers are strongly encouraged to wear them.

While religious organizations can hold services, gatherings must be at 50% capacity and are subject to other safety requirements. Movie theaters, concert venues, amusement parks, bowling alleys and indoor gyms remain closed.

"Virginia will slowly and deliberately ease some of the restrictions, but not all," Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, said.

In Maryland, many similar precautions are in place, although restaurants remain closed for in-person dining. Republican Gov. Larry Hogan is replacing a statewide stay-at-home order with a "safer at home" policy that relaxes some restrictions.

The new policy allows some nonessential retailers to reopen, including clothing and shoe stores, pet groomers, animal adoption shelters, carwashes, art galleries and bookstores. But they must remain at 50% capacity or less, employees must wear masks, and other social distancing restrictions must be observed.

Even with the announced reopening in both states, it remained unclear how many residents would feel safe enough to venture out to restaurants, make hair appointments, shop in retail stores while maintaining appropriate social distance or attend services at houses of worship that have been shut down since mid-March.

The number of new coronavirus infections and deaths in the Washington region continued to rise Friday, as the District and two states combined to report 77 deaths and 2,077 new infections.

- - -

The Washington Post's Rachel Chason, Erin Cox, Antonio Olivo and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.
Two men face charges, including one with first-degree sexual assault, after investigators say multiple young girls in West Virginia were victimized earlier this year.

Both men were arrested Wednesday. Their victims are all girls between the ages of three and 14.

"They were fair game in the eyes of these predators, and when I say predators I truly mean that," Jackson County Sheriff's Department Chief Deputy Ross Mellinger said. "These are the reasons kids have nightmares, these are the reasons why you develop stories of monsters living under the bed."

Dustin Scott Hypes, 34, of Ripley, is charged with two counts of sexual assault in the first-degree, Jackson County court documents show.

According to those criminal complaints, the alleged abuse happened from March through April of this year. The documents also show a history of prior abuse that started as long as five years ago and also involved inappropriate sexual acts.

Another man, Robert Ellis Feltes, 36, of Ripley, faces a criminal invasion of privacy charge, which is a misdemeanor.

Investigators say they recovered 3,841 images and video files that are pornographic in nature  the majority showing young girls. They say Feltes is a neighbor of Hypes.

"It truly is a community circus for sexual misconduct given the nature of where this happened is a very, very target rich environment," Mellinger said. "A lot of different apartment units here, and with the COVID mess going on right now, there are a lot of kids out of school and a lot of kids coming and going and a lot of opportunities for predators like this."

According to the criminal complaint, some of the content was captured from a camera that appeared to be filming a shower through a vent, including images of a nude young girl whos bathing.

Both Hypes and Feltes were arraigned late Wednesday afternoon and awaiting transport to jail.

"These girls are going to take a long time to heal, physically and emotionally, and some of them never do, unfortunately," Mellinger said. "Thats the scary nature of this is that just putting these guys in prison isnt enough."

Investigators say more charges are possible, and there might be more victims that have not yet been identified.
Refuting claims of the Indian Railways that Jharkhand approved only 48 'Shramik Special' trains, Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Friday said the state has given no objection certificate (NOC) for 110 trains, and 50 of them have already reached the state.

In a video message posted on Twitter, Railway Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday had requested the Jharkhand chief minister to provide NOC for more trains so that stranded migrant workers can reach home.

Responding to Goyal's video message, Soren tweeted, "Honorable Mr Railway minister, it appears that you are not being informed properly by your office. We have given NOC for 110 trains in which 50 have reached the state bringing 60,000 migrants."



Railway officials in New Delhi said Jharkhand, a state ruled by a JMM-led coalition, has given approval for 48 trains only, while the number stands at 487 for Uttar Pradesh, 254 for Bihar and 79 for Madhya Pradesh.

Denying the claims, the Jharkhand chief minister said he has reiterated time and again his commitment to bring home all stranded workers of the state.

He has urged Goyal to provide additional trains for Jharkhand so that more and more migrants could return to the state.

"Currently only four to six trains are coming to Jharkhand everyday which is not enough to bring back seven lakh migrant labourers of the state," Soren tweeted.

He also said that the state government wrote to the Centre for clearance of two chartered flights four days ago to bring back 319 workers stuck in Andaman and Nicobar Islands, but has not received any reply so far.

"It has been FOUR days & we are still awaiting necessary clearances/NOC from @PIBHomeAffairs initiate the process. Jharkhand Govt will bear the costs of the flights to Ranchi, if MHA permits us. We need a humane approach now & be sensitive to those who have faced the worst," Soren said in another tweet.

Flights will also be deployed to bring back those stranded outside the country and permission has been sought from the Ministry of Home Affairs, a statement from the CMO said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hamilton police arrested a man overnight, after a shooting outside a Stoney Creek business.

Just before 4 p.m. on Thursday, May 14, 2020, emergency crews were called to a commercial property on Oriole Avenue near the South Service Road for reports of shots fired.

At the time of the shooting, a number of people were inside the business however, none of them reported being injured.

Const. Jerome Stewart said they believe the shooter was targeting the business or the people inside the business. The shooter did not try to get inside, he said.

Its unclear if the shooter was in a vehicle or standing outside the business when the shots were fired, but the suspect fled the scene in a vehicle before police arrived.

Police were in the area gathering evidence for several hours. It was closed off to the public until around 7 p.m.

Detectives identified a suspect and made an arrest around 12:30 a.m. Friday in Hamilton, not near the shooting scene.

A 27-year-old Hamilton man is facing charges of discharge firearm, unauthorized use of a firearm, knowledge of unauthorized possession use of a firearm, possession of weapons dangerous, and careless use, carry, transport and storage of a firearm.

He is expected to appear in court Friday.

The incident comes just days after the citys last shooting, also in Stoney Creek.

In that incident, around 3:30 a.m. May 11 at Lake Avenue Drive and King Street East, a man in his 20s was found with non-life threatening injuries to his lower body. Hamilton police said the man targeted is not co-operating with the investigation.

The latest shooting is one of 17 in Hamilton this year, including four deaths. There were 47 shootings in Hamilton in 2019, with eight deaths.

Anyone with information about the Oriole Avenue shooting is asked to call Acting Det. Sgt. Christian Mukendi at 905-546-2907 or Det. Mario Rizzo at 905-546-2918.

To remain anonymous contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or crimestoppershamilton.com.
UC Riverside scientists have solved a 20-year-old genetics puzzle that could result in ways to protect wheat, barley, and other crops from a devastating infection.

Ayala Rao, professor of plant pathology and microbiology, has been studying Brome Mosaic virus for decades. Unlike some viruses, the genetic material of this virus is divided into three particles that until now were impossible to tell apart.

"Without a more definitive picture of the differences between these particles, we couldn't fully understand how they work together to initiate an infection that destroys food crops," Rao said. "Our approach to this problem has brought an important part of this picture into very clear focus."

A paper describing the work Rao's team did to differentiate these particles was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Inside each of the particles is a strand of RNA, the genetic material that controls the production of proteins. The proteins perform different tasks, some of which cause stunted growth, lesions, and ultimately death of infected host plants.

Two decades ago, scientists used the average of all three particles to create a basic description of their structure. In order to differentiate them, Rao first needed to separate them, and get them into their most pure form.

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Using a genetic engineering technique, Rao's team disabled the pathogenic aspects of the virus and infused the viral genes with a host plant.

"This bacterium inserts its genome into the plant's cells, similar to the way HIV inserts itself into human cells," Rao said. "We were then able to isolate the viral particles in the plants and determine their structure using electron microscopes and computer-based technology."

Now that one of the particles is fully mapped, it's clear the first two particles are more stable than the third.

"Once we alter the stability, we can manipulate how RNA gets released into the plants," Rao said. "We can make the third particle more stable, so it doesn't release RNA and the infection gets delayed."

This work was made possible by a grant from the University of California Multicampus Research Program and Initiatives. Professors Wiliam Gelbart and Hong Zhou of UCLA, as well as graduate students Antara Chakravarthy of UCR and Christian Beren of UCLA, made significant contributions to this project.

Moving forward, Rao is hoping to bring the other two viral particles into sharper focus with the expertise of scientists at UCLA and UC San Diego.

Brome Mosaic virus primarily affects grasses such as wheat and barley, and occasionally affects soybeans as well. According to Rao, it is nearly identical to Cucumber Mosaic virus, which infects cucumbers as well as tomatoes and other crops that are important to California agriculture.

Not only could this research lead to the protection of multiple kinds of crops, it could advance the understanding of any virus.

"It is much easier to work with plant viruses because they're easier and less expensive to grow and isolate," Rao said. "But what we learn about the principles of replication are applicable to human and animal viruses too."
Regulatory News:

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) ("PSH") today announced that it has purchased, through PSH's agent, Jefferies International Limited ("Jefferies"), the following number of PSH's Public Shares of no par value (ISIN Code: GG00BPFJTF46) (the "Shares"):

Trading Venue: London Stock Exchange Ticker: PSH Date of Purchase: 15 May 2020 Number of Public Shares purchased: 50,763 Shares Highest Price Paid Per Share: 1,668 pence 20.22 USD Lowest Price Paid Per Share: 1,616 pence 19.59 USD Average Price Paid Per Share: 1,649 pence 20.00 USD Ticker: PSHD Date of Purchase: 15 May 2020 Number of Public Shares purchased: 13,299 Shares Highest Price Paid Per Share: 20.10 USD Lowest Price Paid Per Share: 20.10 USD Average Price Paid Per Share: 20.10 USD Trading Venue: Euronext Amsterdam Ticker: PSH Date of Purchase: 15 May 2020 Number of Public Shares purchased: 55,554 Shares Highest Price Paid Per Share: 20.40 USD Lowest Price Paid Per Share: 19.70 USD Average Price Paid Per Share: 20.05 USD

PSH will hold these Public Shares in Treasury. The net asset value per Public Share related to this buyback is 31.30 USD 25.48 GBP which was calculated as of 12 May 2020 (the "Relevant NAV"). After giving effect to the above buyback, PSH has 198,076,737 Public Shares outstanding, or 203,913,401 Public Shares calculated on a fully diluted basis (assuming that all Management Shares had been converted into Public Shares at the Relevant NAV). Excluded from the shares outstanding are 12,880,013 Public Shares held in Treasury. The prices per Public Share were calculated by Jefferies.

The number of PSH Management Shares and the one special voting share (held by PS Holdings Independent Voting Company Limited) have not been affected.

About Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd.

Pershing Square Holdings, Ltd. (LN:PSH) (LN:PSHD) (NA:PSH) is an investment holding company structured as a closed-ended fund that makes concentrated investments principally in North American companies.

View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005561/en/

Contacts:

Media

Camarco

Ed Gascoigne-Pees Hazel Stevenson +44 020 3757 4989, media-pershingsquareholdings@camarco.co.uk
Update May 16, 4.35pm:

Karl Boylan has been located safe and well.

Gardai have thanked the public for their assistance.

Friday May 15:Gardai and family 'very concerned' for missing Dublin man

Gardai in Dun Laoighaire have issued an appeal for help to find a missing Dublin man.

38-year-old Karl Boylan went missing from the Monkstown Farm area of Dublin today.

He is described as being 6ft tall with a medium build and short blonde hair.

When last seen Karl was wearing a navy hoodie, khaki green Under Armour Pants and a white Under Armour baseball cap.

Gardai and Karls family are very concerned for his welfare.

Anyone with any information or who can help to find Karl are asked to contact Gardai in Dun Laoighaire on 016 665 000, the Garda Confidential Line on 1800 666 111 or any Garda station.
Nearly every politician ever to enter Congress has a case for being bad at their job. But two of the absolute worst are the heavy-hitters of the Republican Party, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. McConnell spent the Obama administration being more obstructionist than the three weeks of lockdown Hot Pockets sitting in your colon, while Graham is essentially President Trump's footstool.

Both are facing an election year that's been pushed to the backburner by a global pandemic. But there's never been a better time to vote these pricks out, and it looks like both are facing serious challenges for the first time in forever.

Let's look at McConnell's race first. It looks like the candidate to beat in the Democratic Primary (tentatively to be held in June) is Amy McGrath, and seems to have the right kind of energy for Kentucky. She's a former Marine fighter pilot, and career-wise, that's really been the focal point. She unsuccessfully ran for Congress back in 2018 shortly after retiring from the military, and now, depending on the polling you look at, she's in a pretty tight race against McConnell -- occasionally a dead heat tie.

That tight polling is arguably as much a product of his unpopularity as it is her popularity, but that's not to be discounted. Speaking as someone who's lived in Kentuckian border states most of my life, Kentucky is the type of place that eats that kind of "progressive who served" thing right up.
Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, whos led several other unsuccessful impeachment efforts, circulated a memo Friday calling for Gov. Tom Wolfs impeachment over his handling of the coronavirus outbreak.

Metcalfe argues that Wolfs business closure and stay-at-home orders violated citizens Constitutional rights. He also pointed to the administrations lack of transparency, its faltering unemployment compensation system and its oversight of a rising death toll at nursing homes.

Gov. Wolfs orders in response to the COVID-19 outbreak have violated a number of our God-given rights," the Butler County Republican wrote, in a co-sponsorship memo published the same day a second wave of lockdown protesters descended on the state Capitol.

Wolf spokespeople and several GOP sources did not respond to requests for comment.

House Democratic spokesman Bill Patton simply offered: We will give this resolution the attention it deserves.

READ MORE: Coronavirus testing still lags, creating a possible impediment for Pa. reopening efforts

This isnt the first impeachment effort for Metcalfe, a conservative firebrand whose far-right policy positions and flair for the theatrical has drawn cheers and jeers.

In 2014, he led the charge to impeach then-Attorney General Kathleen Kane amid allegations that she abused her office for political reprisal. She was ultimately convicted of felony perjury and other charges and resigned her office but was never impeached.

Metcalfe also sought to impeach Pittsburgh Mayor Bill Peduto last year over the citys gun control laws, another effort that failed to gain much traction.

In Pennsylvania, the last person to be impeached was Supreme Court Justice Rolf Larsen, who was convicted of conspiring to obtain drugs via fraudulent prescriptions. That was in 1994, with the next most recent attempt at impeachment dating back to the 1930s.

Wallace McKelvey may be reached at wmckelvey@pennlive.com. Follow him on Twitter @wjmckelvey. Find PennLive on Facebook.

Read the The hunt for Ray Gricar.

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When your hero takes the time to send a personal letter to you to mark your 5th birthday - they rise a notch in your estimation.

So imagine the smile on little Lucy McArdle's face when President Michael D Higgins wrote to her to wish her a happy birthday.

Lucy met the President and Sabina Higgins during the Fleadh Cheoil and loved him ever since, even buying Peter McDonnell's books, based on the President's dog and cat.

With mum, Samantha, the Duleek Road girl, who starts in Mount Hanover in September, was planning to spend her recent birthday in Dublin, seeing the Phoenix Park, the Aras and Farmleigh.

But the lockdown ruined all that.

Samantha then sent an email to the country's most popular man, telling the story, and he duly sent a personal letter to Lucy, wishing her a happy birthday - much to her amazement!

'She had been planning to go to Dublin for a few months and even the day before her birthday asked could they go, but I had to say no,' her mum stated.

'She was really disappointed, so I sent an email off to the President, hoping I might get an email back, but he sent a registered letter and Lucy was thrilled. It made her day.'

Samantha is amazed at how much Lucy has learned about the President and knows all about his family.

'After meeting him at the Fleadh in Drogheda, she thinks he's great.

'She says she is going to put the letter in a frame and it will take pride of place on the wall.' Samantha added.

Lucy has one sister, Isabella.
Maya Jama is stepping down from her role as BBC Radio 1 Breakfast host.

The corporation confirmed on Friday afternoon that the star, 25, has 'made the difficult decision not to continue her contract' due to other commitments.

Maya said: 'Thanks to all you cuties that tuned into the show. It was so great to hear that we have been getting the largest proportion of under 35s tuning in for our on-demand show via BBC Sounds. So we are going out with a bang! Love you.'

Gone: Maya Jama is stepping down from her role as BBC Radio 1 Breakfast host (pictured on May 2)

Maya, who joined the station in 2018, broadcast her final show on Friday 3 May.

A press release read: 'Exciting commitments later in the year mean that she is not able to dedicate the time needed to her show.

'She has loved every moment of her time at Radio 1 and would like to thank the team for their hard work and friendship during the last two years. '

BBC Controller Popular Music, Lorna Clarke said, 'We'd like to thank Maya for all her commitment and work at Radio 1, and we wish her all the very best with her future.'

Later on Friday, Maya shared an Instagram post, in which she penned: 'My lovees. I've made the very difficult decision not to continue my Radio 1 contract from June...

Announcement: Later on Friday, Maya shared an Instagram post, in which she penned: 'My lovees. I've made the very difficult decision not to continue my Radio 1 contract from June'

Gone: Maya, who joined the station in 2018, broadcast her final show on Friday 3 May

'As you know I have been juggling & There are a lot of exciting commitments happening that would mean I'm not able to dedicate the time needed to my weekly radio show. I've loved every moment of my time at Radio 1...

'I would like to thank the team for their hard work and friendship during the last two years. It's been a JOURNEY, Thanks to all you cuties that tuned into the show...

'Every weekend, it was so great to hear that we have been getting the largest proportion of under 35s tuning in for our on-demand show on BBC Sounds. So we are going out with a bang! Love youuuuu listeners'.

Back then: Maya shared an image of her temporary pass in December

Radio 1 has a temporary schedule in place during the coronavirus crisis with a smaller number of presenters rotating each week. Jordan North and Dev & Alice will be continuing to cover Weekend Morning on Radio 1, on rotation.

The news of Maya's departure comes shortly after it was revealed that she had landed a frontwoman role on her BBC3 show Ibiza Dreams.

The show is described as: 'Follow an ambitious group of young Brits as they embark on a transformational summer: living, working and playing on Ibiza.'
A police officer is under criminal investigation after a 23-year-old man was left paralysed from the waist down when detectives shot him with a Taser gun.

The man was shot in Haringey, North London, as he jumped over a wall and fell while Metropolitan Police officers were trying to arrest him for drug-related offences.

He has been in hospital since, and an officer now faces a criminal investigation for allegedly causing grievous bodily harm following a probe by the police watchdog.

The 23-year-old man was shot on Burgoyne Road in Haringey, North London, on May 4

The sister of the unnamed man told the Guardian: 'There is a great deal of upset. Life has completely changed. He is young. We can't understand how this has happened.'

And David Lammy, the Labour MP for Tottenham, told the newspaper: 'I've met with the family and there is definitely community concern about this incident. We need a full and thorough investigation in how he has ended up with life changing injuries.'

The Independent Office for Police Conduct said its investigators told the officer yesterday that he will be asked for a written account under caution.

The IOPC also told how the officer has also been served with notice of investigation for gross misconduct following the incident on Burgoyne Road on May 4.

IOPC regional director Sal Naseem said the watchdog had examined 'a range of evidence including body worn video, witness statements and medical evidence'.

Desmond Mombeyarara was Tasered in Stretford, Manchester, on May 6, in a separate incident

He added: 'We have taken the decision that this is now a criminal investigation. A criminal investigation does not mean that criminal charges will necessarily follow.

'We understand that many people are concerned about this incident and I want to reassure people that this is being thoroughly and independently investigated.'

The IOPC said its probe followed a mandatory referral from police, which is normal when some is seriously injured following direct or indirect contact with officers.

About 7,000 officers in the Metropolitan Police carry Taser guns  a number that is expected to rise to 10,000 by 2022 which will comprise nearly a third of the force.

It comes as the IOPC investigates a series of incidents involving Tasers and yesterday called for 'greater scrutiny' of their use by officers.

A group of up to 15 people observed Covid-19 social distancing rules as they gathered at a petrol station forecourt in Stretford, Manchester, to protest the other Taser incident, on May 9

Mobile phone footage was widely circulated online which prompted criticism of the police arrest of Desmond Ziggy Mombeyarara in Stretford, Manchester, on May 6.

The video showed an altercation between Mombeyarara, 34, from Old Trafford, and two officers before a Taser was used on a petrol station forecourt.

Three days later a group of up to 15 anti-racism campaigners staged a protest over the incident involving the black 34-year-old and the white police officers.

Mombeyarara was seen standing next to a police car and put down his crying son before moments later he fell to the ground as a Taser was fired by one of the officers.

Protesters outside the petrol station in Stretford demonstrate on May 9 after the Taser incident

The boy then became hysterical and screamed 'daddy'. In court he admitted driving offences but denied two counts of resisting a constable in the execution of duty.

How the use of Tasers is on the rise with 8,000 more to be deployed In March the Home Office confirmed it was spending 6.5million on new stun guns which would allow nearly 8,000 more Tasers to be deployed by police on streets in England and Wales. Some 41 police forces applied for funding. The Metropolitan Police were granted 2,380 more of the weapons, West Midlands Police ordered an extra 250 and Greater Manchester Police applied to buy another 100. At the time Home Secretary Priti Patel said Tasers were a 'vital option in dangerous situations' for officers. In January, it emerged the highest number of Tasers on record were fired by police in a 12-month period - on 2,500 occasions between April 1, 2018 and March 31, 2019. Advertisement

In a third recent incident on May 6, a man was stopped in Southwark in Central London for a drugs search and was 'red dotted' with a Taser.

The IOPC said it was also looking at 'a matter involving West Midlands Police' but said it was unable to provide further information at present.

IOPC director general Michael Lockwood said yesterday that the decision to look at multiple incidents came amid growing concerns about the 'disproportionate' use of the weapon against black people and those with mental health problems.

Mr Lockwood said: 'The IOPC recognises that the use of Taser is important in helping officers respond to often dangerous and challenging situations.

'However, more officers are now carrying Taser and there are growing concerns both locally and nationally about its disproportionate use against black men and those with mental health issues.

'Robust oversight of cases involving Taser is essential for maintaining public confidence in the police use of this kind of force.

'We need transparency around how and when it is used, and a visible demonstration that police forces are learning from their experiences of using it.'

Although unable to comment on the ongoing investigations, Mr Lockwood said: 'I want to reassure those communities that we take these matters very seriously and will be thorough and impartial in looking at what happened.'

Police and crime commissioners had 'an important role in providing community assurance about scrutiny of Taser use', he said, adding that he remained 'concerned that these incidents have caused damage to police and community relations and are impacting on public confidence in police'.

'There must be more research to understand issues of disproportionality as well as assurance and scrutiny of Taser use at a local level - this means oversight, looking at complaints, talking to community members and reviewing this not just when something goes wrong, but 365 days a year,' he continued.

A file picture of a police officer holstering a Taser X26 gun. In January, it emerged the highest number of Tasers on record were fired by police in a 12-month period - on 2,500 occasions

'These incidents have only come to our attention because of the level of injury sustained or via social media.

'Given the number of times Tasers are deployed, there may be other incidents which are not being scrutinised.'

Rosalind Comyn, policy and campaigns officer at human rights group Liberty, said: 'The mass roll out of these weapons on our streets is dangerous and must be stopped now.'

Oliver Feeley-Sprague, from Amnesty International UK - who is part of a National Police Chiefs' Council advisory group on Tasers, said: 'With disturbing Taser cases becoming all too common, we need a thorough review to see whether the current Taser guidance to police officers is actually fit for purpose.'
The Reserve Bank of New Zealand (RBNZ) seems to be determined to keep its promise that it would not make further official cash rate (OCR) cuts for the next 12 months  recently announcing that it decided to keep the OCR at its current level.

The RBNZ explained that it kept the OCR at 0.25% per the guidance issued on March 16, with the decision most likely to remain unchanged until early 2021.

The committees decisions are guided by the Reserve Banks mandate and our decision-making principles on the use of alternative monetary policy instruments, it wrote on the report. The current goal of monetary policy tools is to reduce borrowing rates for New Zealanders, and further OCR reductions at this stage would not be effective in achieving that.
A retired professor in Wales was left shocked after discovering his CCTV had filmed a wallaby bouncing around his street during the night.

Duncan Lewis, 62, was woken up to the sound of a police van slamming its doors in the middle of the night on Wednesday May 13.

When he checked his CCTV saw that the police had been called to catch an escaped wallaby.

In the video the wallaby bounds across Duncans driveway in Cadoxton, Neath, at 12:35am from behind a parked car.

A police officer in a high visibility jacket is seen walking up the road towards the runaway animal.

The wallaby stops in the driveway to watch the officer approaching in.

It then has another look around before hopping off down the driveway.

Duncan said: "I was in bed with my wife, as you do at quarter to one in the morning, sleeping soundly and I heard what sounded like a van door slam.

"So my wife looked out the window and we saw a police van close its doors and drive off.

CCTV footage captured this wallaby bouncing along a street in Cadoxton, Wales, as a police officer tries to recapture the runaway pet

"In the morning my wife decided to check our CCTV footage just to see is there anything we need to be concerned about, about our property.

"I was sat in the kitchen and then I heard a voice shout 'There's a kangaroo on our drive. Oh no, it's not a kangaroo, it's a wallaby.'

"Equally, you know, implausible to find a wallaby in Neath as much as it is a kangaroo."

Duncan said he has been on the lookout for zebra, lions and wildebeest since the wallabys appearance.

The wallaby has time to stop and look around the residential street before hopping off down the driveway of retired professor Duncan Lewis, 62

RSPCA Cymru say wallabys are sometimes kept as pets and are able to survive in the wild in Wales.

A spokesman said: "This is certainly unusual footage which seems to show a wallaby hopping down the road.

"There are some established populations of wallabies in the wild in the UK - but none are understood to exist in Wales."

South Wales Police said the wallaby was returned it to its rightful owner.
The Texas Restaurant Association (TRA) is urging Gov. Greg Abbott to reopen bars and nightclubs across the state as soon as possible.

Gov. Abbott permitted restaurants in Texas to open at 25 percent capacity on May 8. Dining rooms had been closed since March 20 to help slow the spread of the novel coronavirus.

Closings: Dolce Vita, Montrose's longtime favorite pizza spot, to close May 24

However, the states 5,500 bars, closed for 55 days straight, were not allowed to reopen.

The Texas bar industry has lost $630 million in revenue during that time, while the state has lost $42 million in liquor tax revenue, according to the TRA. The closures have affected 75,000 jobs.

In a virtual briefing on Tuesday, TRA officials said they have submitted the Texas Bar Promise, a set of guidelines for bars and customers, to Gov. Abbotts task force in charge of reopening state businesses post temporary closures.

We know the task force is looking at it, they did confirm that, said TRA president and CEO Emily Williams Knight. We are hoping to hear something soon on when they will reopen and what the plan will look like.

The Texas Bar Promise is similar to safety proposals submitted in April by the Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance.

Openings: Longtime New Orleans favorite Acme Oyster House opening in Montrose this fall

The key things in the Texas Bar Promise are social distancing and sanitation, said TRA vice president of government affairs and advocacy Kelsey Erickson Streufort.

Proposed safety measures include: Parties will maintain at least six feet of distance from other parties at all times; no parties will have more than six people; hand sanitizing stations will be available to all customers and employees including upon entry; a designated health and safety manager to enforce social distancing requirements during every shift; and the use of disposable or digital menus.

With his brother Nathan Aguirre, Houston resident Ian Ramirez first opened Rabbits Got the Gun at 708 Hogan St. in December 2019. The bars staff of six workers will be reduced to half when it reopens.

We had to let people go. There is no work, said Ramirez. He estimates a loss of revenue in the six-figure range.

A lot of us in the industry are worried and stressed. It is scary to think that owners may have to shutter their businesses. Its devastating, he said.

Ramirez said guidelines for bars and nightclubs should not necessarily be the same.

"The difference between our small bar and a dance club is extreme. If we reopen at 25 percent capacity, with social distancing, we will be at five to seven people at a time in the bar. We cant make money off that, Ramirez said.

Sharif Al-Amin, who co-owns Monkey's Tail at 5802 Fulton St., said bars should have been able to reopen on May 1, the same day as restaurants.

I dont understand why restaurants were able to open but not bars and nightclubs, said Al-Amin. You should be able to reopen as long as you follow the rules.

To get by during the pandemic, Al-Amin has had to pivot operations at Moneky's Tail, which serves food as well as drinks. The kitchen at the Lindale Park pub reopened on May 1.

Bartenders have shifted from working behind the bar to waiting tables.

Were only seating outside on the patio and the tables are spaced for social distancing, Al-Amin said. Weve added hand sanitation stations and the staff is wearing face masks. We want everyone to feel safe and at ease.

Although revenue is down by a significant amount, according to Al-Amin, no employees have been laid off or furloughed.
Cofepris warns of social media adulterated alcohol sales

Riviera Maya, Q.R.  The Federal Commission for the Protection against Sanitary Risks in Quintana Roo (Cofepris) is asking citizens not to purchase liquor from social networks, saying there is a high risk it is adulterated alcohol.

The warning comes from the Comision Federal para la Proteccion contra Riesgos Sanitarios en Quintana Roo (Cofepris) after several people died from drinking adulterated alcohol. Miguel Pino Murillo, Director de Proteccion Contra Riesgos Sanitarios says people should refrain from acquiring liquor through social networks, mainly Facebook, due to the high risk that the alcohol has been adulterated.

He reminds people that adulterated alcohol puts health and life at risk, which has already happened in other states. Pino Murillo says at the moment, there is no adulterated alcohol found in formal establishments, but they have detected the sale of unregulated liquor being sold through social media.

He says the online social media sales have increased following the countrys shortage of beer and other alcohol products. Pino Murillo added that since these sales are being conducted in non-fixed establishments, the agency cannot supervise the sales that are made through social networks.

Nine men died in the state of Morelos after drinking alcohol purchased online

Earlier this week, the Comision Estatal de Seguridad Publica (CES) of Morelos reported the death of nine people in Telixtac in the state of Morelos after consuming alcohol they purchased online. The nine killed were all males ranging in age from 33 to 54 and all from the town of Telixtac. The nine men died after consuming the adulterated alcohol on May 10 and 11.

On Monday, elements of the municipal police discovered four suitcases filled with alcohol during a sanitary filter check. The Mayab bus was stopped by officials so they could verify the Yucatan passengers were free of coronavirus symptoms, however, they also detected four suspicious suitcases.

Police seize bottles of alcohol on Yucatan bus bound for Quintana Roo

Inside were 60 bottles of alcohol. None of the passengers claimed the baggage. The alcohol was bound for the state of Quintana Roo.
A message posted Tuesday morning, May 14, 2020, on the Facebook page of The Zone gym in St. Joseph notes that it is back to its normal hours. That afternoon, Champaign County authorities served it with a court order to shut down as required by Gov. J.B. Pritzker's stay-at-home order.
GST on textiles will not be increased from 5 to 12 per cent: FM Sitharaman

It is not BJP money: Nirmala Sitharaman on IT raids on 'Samajwadi perfume' trader

Budget Session 2022 to commence on January 31; Union Budget to be tabled on February 1

FM Nirmala Sitharaman to address press conference at 4:30 pm, likely to clear air on Antrix Devas issue

FM Sitharaman on Devas-Antrix issue: Cong has no moral right to speak about crony capitalism

Sitharaman to address media at 4 pm; focus on agriculture

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 15: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address a press conference at 4 pm on Friday. She is likely to announce relief package for agriculture sector in her third briefing on the Rs 20 lakh crore financial package.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman unveiled the second economic package to help alleviate the distress for small farmers, migrant workers, small traders and self-employed people under the "Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant)" campaign announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Coronavirus lockdown: In two days, 14 migrant workers killed in road accidents

The first tranche of the package, totalling about Rs 5.9 lakh crore, which was announced by Sitharaman on Wednesday, was mainly focused on providing easy credit facilities to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).

The Central Government has also started work to prepare for resumption of commercial domestic flights, something that may happen in a staggered manner over the next one month.

Meanwhile, the Covid-19 tally in India inched towards the 82,000-mark on Friday even as state governments prepared to share their draft proposals on exit strategies with the Centre ahead of the end of the third phase of lockdown on May 17.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 03:54:28|Editor: huaxia

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UNITED NATIONS, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Amid reports of rocket fire and civilian casualties in and around Tripoli, the United Nations is calling for a cease-fire in Libya so that the country can focus on fighting COVID-19, a UN spokesman said on Thursday.

There were reports of rockets being fired in Tripoli on Thursday, reportedly causing civilian casualties. Hostilities were also reported near the Tripoli Central Hospital, said Stephane Dujarric, spokesman for UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres.

"Our humanitarian partners say that if Libya is to have any chance against COVID-19, the ongoing conflict must come to an immediate halt. We reiterate our call once again for all parties to the conflict to do everything in their power to uphold their responsibility to protect civilians in accordance with international humanitarian law and humanitarian principles."

Despite enormous challenges, humanitarian partners continue to deliver urgent assistance to people in need, reaching more than 138,000 people so far this year, Dujarric told a virtual briefing.

While acknowledging the generosity of donors, the spokesman said a boost in funding to continue humanitarian programs is urgently required. The Libya humanitarian response plan, which requires 130 million U.S. dollars, is only 14 percent funded, he said. Enditem
Jharkhand Chief Minister Hemant Soren on Thursday said the state government was bearing the transport costs of migrant workers and would bring back all the labourers stranded outside the state in a systematic manner.

Jharkhand was making all efforts to bring back 6.85 lakh migrants held up across the country due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown, the chief minister said.

Click here for full coronavirus coverage

Taking to Twitter, Soren said, The state government is bearing the fares of all the labourers and will continue to do so.

The state government is making all endeavours to bring back the 6.85 lakh stranded Jharkhand residents in (a) systematic manner by coordinating with the Railways and the central government as soon as possible. The chief minister also urged the opposition leaders to urge the Union government to earmark more trains for operations in Jharkhand.

Thanking Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 11 for allowing plying of Shramik Special trains to bring back migrants, Soren had said, But only 21-22 trains have so far come with only 50,000 to 55,000 people returning. Nearly seven lakh people from the state are residing in different parts of the country.
TROY  The Troy Police Department is a runner up in the sixth annual National Officer Safety and Wellness Award program that recognizes police agencies across the country for programs to keep officers safe.

The Troy department was a top finisher in the General Officer Safety category for programs that improve police safety while performing their jobs.

All of the things were doing are trying to make our officers as safe as we can, Deputy Chief Dan DeWolf said Friday.

The National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum announced the awards Thursday evening. The national organization works with the U.S. Department of Justices Bureau of Justice Assistance in presenting the awards. Troy finished second to the Vacaville, California, Police Department.

Troys application included the gym set up at the police station so officers can work out, the annual physical fitness training test, peer counseling program to assist officers dealing with the aftermath of tough cases, proper use of tourniquets and how to safely extract wounded officers from a shooting scene.

Det. Josh Comitale, who along with Officer Chad Klein, was severely wounded in a 2015 shooting incident in Lansingburgh put together the application for the police department.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

DeWolf said the training of the departments officers in the proper application of tourniquets has resulted in five cases in which civilians were assisted and recovered from their injuries.

The Downed Officer training and the focus on trauma treatment was commendable, as were the steps to improve tactical readiness, John Matthews, director of federal partnerships for the National Law Enforcement Memorial and Museum, wrote Chief Brian Owens.

The Troy Police Department will make a video highlighting its officer wellness programs that will be put on the NLEMM website later this year.
Part of Gilead's coronavirus drug donation allocated to Japan FILE PHOTO: An ampule of drugmaker Gilead's remdesivir, which has won emergency approval as a treatment for COVID-19 in Japan

By Rocky Swift

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan has begun treating severely ill COVID-19 patients with Gilead Sciences Inc's <GILD.O> coronavirus drug remdesivir, days after granting emergency approval to the medication the company is supplying as part of its pledged donation.

Japan's approval a week ago of remdesivir as a treatment for COVID-19 followed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's emergency authorization of the antiviral drug on May 1.

At that time, Foster City, California-based Gilead reiterated plans to donate 1.5 million doses of remdesivir - enough to treat at least 140,000 patients - "to help address the urgent medical needs posed by this pandemic around the world."

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on Saturday said Gilead had committed to supply U.S. hospitals with about 607,000 vials of remdesivir, about 40% of the total 1.5 million-vial donation. After doctors had questioned the transparency of the allocation process, the federal agency said state health departments would distribute the intravenous drug.

Gilead has not responded to requests for information about further global allocation plans. Company spokeswoman Seiko Noma confirmed in an email late Wednesday that an undisclosed portion of remdesivir vials have been donated to the Japanese government.

There are far more patients that may benefit from remdesivir than there are doses to go around. Dr. Michael Ison, professor of infectious diseases at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, said in a Journal of the American Medical Association editorial on Thursday.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America on Thursday asked to meet with Dr. Deborah Birx, the White House Coronavirus Task Force coordinator, "to address ongoing questions regarding access to remdesivir and to inform planning for use of the drug." The medical group said uncertainty over those issues was interfering with patient care.

Story continues

Japan Ministry official Yasuyuki Sahara said in an e-mail on Thursday that the U.S. firm's treatment has been distributed to hospitals in Japan since May 11 and is being used for patients in intensive care or on ventilators.

Sahara said the amount of remdesivir delivered by the drugmaker was not public information, and global supplies were "quite limited".

Japan has had about 16,000 infections and 687 deaths from the coronavirus outbreak, much lower than many industrialised nations. The number of serious cases requiring ventilation was 259, according to the latest figures from the health ministry.

The United States has nearly 1.4 million coronavirus infections and almost 84,000 deaths.

With no other approved treatments for COVID-19, interest in remdesivir is growing around the world.

Gilead on Tuesday said it had signed non-exclusive licensing pacts with five generic drugmakers based in India and Pakistan to expand the supply of remdesivir in more than 120 mostly low-income countries in Southeast Asia, Africa and other parts of the world.

Gilead said the drug has improved outcomes for people suffering from the respiratory disease and has provided data suggesting it works better when given in the early stages of infection.

Preliminary results from a trial led by the U.S. Institutes of Health showed remdesivir cut hospital stays by 31% compared with a placebo treatment, although it did not significantly improve survival.

Remdesivir, which previously failed as a treatment for Ebola, is designed to stop some viruses making copies of themselves inside infected cells.

(Additional reporting by Deena Beasely; Editing by Kenneth Maxwell and David Gregorio)
On May 13, the government eased liquidity constraints of the micro, small and medium businesses (MSMEs) and shadow banks (the non-banking financial companies or NBFCs), with an aim to help them weather the COVID-19 downturn.

For MSMEs, this is mainly an emergency credit guarantee line of Rs 3 lakh crore for an estimated 45 lakh units, which can avail of fully-guaranteed loans up to 20 percent of credit outstanding (standard assets) for four years with principal repayments of a years moratorium. A sum of Rs 20,000 crore of subordinate debt assistance in the form of equity support by banks (Rs 4,000 crore of government credit guarantee) will be given to another 2 lakh stressed units. A Fund of Funds with Rs 10,000 crore corpus and 5x leverage will be formed for equity funding for viable MSMEs with growth potential.

These apart, the MSME definition will be changed for scaling-up, i.e. increase in investment limits, adding turnover and removing distinction in manufacturing and services. Market protection or lesser competition was also given by excluding global tenders from public procurement up to Rs 200 crore.

The NBFCs (non-banking financial companies), which are important lending counterparts and fund-starved despite the Reserve Bank of Indias (RBIs) special credit lines due to banks risk-aversion also got liquidity support: a Rs 30,000 crore Special Liquidity Scheme for investing in primary and secondary market transactions in investment grade debt with full government guarantee and Rs 45,000 crore for expanding reach of the December 2019 partial credit guarantee scheme to enable public sector banks for buying high-rated pooled assets from NBFCs with stronger balance sheets  sub-grade debt or AA, unrated papers of lower-rated NBFC borrowers  and increased first loss bearing by the government (20 percent as against 10 percent before).

These credit lines may lessen the risk-disinclination among banks, non-banks and mutual funds. This is long-standing, pre-dates COVID-19 with which it has escalated with sudden closure of six debt funds. It remains to be seen if these measures lessen funding pressures and lower risk premia for the strained and weak shadow banks.

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 liquidity initiatives for the MSMEs should mitigate cash flow pressures on stressed entities. Hopefully, these should also help such production units stay afloat through the prolonged duration of this pandemic. Early signs from March-April data on industrial output and exports are not such a good augur. Seen in conjunction with a longer period, the capacity of the manufacturing MSMEs  these contribute about 45 percent to total manufacturing output and more than 40 percent of Indias exports  to both endure and withstand the savage devastation from the COVID-19 lockdowns is a tentative question.

In March, or pre-lockdown, growth of industrial output collapsed to -16.7 percent, manufacturing output contracted by 21 percent, exports and non-oil and gold imports grew a respective -34 percent and -31 percent. This data, no doubt, represents the production shock that came first from the virus disruptions to global supply-chain networks. Data for subsequent months will capture the supply shocks development into a demand side one caused by the COVID-19 lockdowns of more than one-and-a-half months duration.

However, as the chart below shows, theres a persistent and widespread decline that has depressed industrial output for much longer than this. The dashed vertical lines highlight how feeble and non-lasting were last years uplifts; the peaks are well over two years old. It means that balance sheet pressures have existed longer and have now magnified in unimaginable proportions, duration of which is equally uncertain and unknown.

This trend decline matches the pre-COVID-19 increase in manufacturing slack that, in turn, is connected to exports and global trade. Successive OBICUS surveys (Order Books, Inventories and Capacity Utilisation Survey) of the RBI show that an average 70.4 percent of manufacturing capacities were used in the first three quarters of FY20, a 5 percentage point rise in idleness over three-quarter usage in FY19. Theres even longer evolution of the steady increase in this slack  from 79 percent average use in FY10-12, subsequent sharp drop to the 72-73 percent region until the slight uplift in 2018-19. This trend decline in capacity use synchronises with the post-2012 decline in world trade and Indian export growth, in which the latters share in aggregate output fell from its 17.2 percent peak in FY14 to the 12 percent region over FY16-19.

Theres also little doubt that such trend falls make it hard to recover part of the invested capital and assets, which result in permanent loss of output. The severity of the long duration COVID-19 shock in this weak backdrop and a dire future outlook then does raise serious concerns about lasting damage to output and productivity. Businesses already on edge pre-COVID-19 may simply close shop; low turnover and thin-margin units, as quite many MSMEs tend to be even when viable, could question the wisdom of staying alive by borrowing more, no matter the tenor, guarantee and moratorium.

If these entities perceive depressed domestic and global demand extending over one year -- as all forecasts point to -- they are unlikely to believe that repayment capacities will strengthen or significantly improve over time. Those connected to large-scale manufacturing can already see their only buyers operating at significantly lowered capacities than before.

To what extent such considerations play out, in light of the fact that forthcoming times will show more severe and unparalleled output contractions, is to be looked out for. Meanwhile, credit lines help in limiting financial and real sides from damaging each other.
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We're all yearning for the sense of freedom and rosy-cheeked adventures that come with a camping trip  building fires at dusk, watching the stars, waking up to the sound of lambs bleating.

But how can we protect ourselves and others while holidaying under canvas?

As trips abroad are essentially banned this summer, UK campsites have been inundated with bookings and inquiries as they gear up to reopen with strict protocols in place.

UK campsites have been inundated with bookings and inquiries as they gear up to reopen. From July 4, the Government is aiming for stage three of the lockdown exit plan to kick in  which would allow some of the hospitality industry to re-open, quite possibly including campsites

From July 4, the Government is aiming for stage three of the lockdown exit plan to kick in  which would allow some of the hospitality industry to re-open, quite possibly including campsites. This is dependent on locations being 'safe and enforcing social distancing'.

'Most campsites have large spaces between pitches, so applying social distancing isn't much of an issue,' says Jonathan Knight, founder of Cool Camping. 'But with shared facilities, it's more difficult.

'All of our campsites are increasing the cleaning of shared facilities and supplying hand sanitisers where possible.

'Almost half are going to reduce capacity and a third are planning marked social distancing queues for loos and allocated time slots for showers.'

Marilyn Macalast, of the Coastal Stay campsite near St Davids, Pembrokeshire, is going cashless and limiting facilities to one person at a time. 'We're going to remove every other pitch so there's plenty of space between each one. We're also looking at introducing contactless check-in, by emailing across all the information guests need before they arrive.'

From pitches tucked away in the trees to sites overlooking the ocean, we've tracked down the best UK campsites with stringent measures in place, so you can get back to nature this summer with complete peace of mind.

DREAMY DEVON

Beryl's Campsite in Devon has spacious pitches - most of which are scattered around a large lake

'Panoramic' and 'Snug' are two of the quirky names for the spacious pitches at Beryl's Campsite in Devon, most of which are scattered around a large lake.

Nestled in woods on a hill close to Kingsbridge, in South Hams, the rustic campsite has spectacular views of the coastline. The South West Coast Path can be easily reached from the site, as well as Beesands, a mile-long shingle beach only a five-minute walk away.

Don't miss: Grab a takeaway pizza from The Boat House in nearby Torcross and tuck in on the beach.

New safety measures: Reducing the number of pitches, adding loos and increasing cleaning of shared facilities.

Details: From 8.50 per adult per night (berylscampsite.co.uk).

HAMPSHIRE ESCAPE

Fordingbridge in the New Forest, pictured, is where campers will find the spacious Chapelfield Camping site

Fancy a night sleeping under the stars in the heart of a national park? The spacious Chapelfield Camping site close to Fordingbridge in the New Forest is perfectly positioned for those wanting to spend their days hiking or biking in the wild.

Fire pits can be hired and an on-site pop-up shop keeps guests supplied with freshly baked croissants, plus milk, bread, charcoal and logs.

Don't miss: Spot the famous free-roaming New Forest donkeys and ponies on the five-minute walk to The Fighting Cocks, a cosy pub which specialises in hearty meat dishes.

New safety measures: Opening a second meadow in order to spread out the pitches, adding additional toilets and showers and introducing marked spacing for social distancing.

Details: Pitches from 25 a night (coolcamping.com).

LOVELY LAKES

Irton House Farm in the Lake District has eight spacious pitches that have views over Bassenthwaite Lake, pictured

Complete seclusion can be enjoyed at Irton House Farm in the Lake District, where your only neighbours will be the roaming resident sheep and chickens.

There are only eight spacious pitches across this entire two-acre site, which has magnificent views over Bassenthwaite Lake. Bacon, sausages and eggs can be bought from the on-site farm shop.

Don't miss: Get up at the crack of dawn and enjoy a warming mug of coffee while watching the low-hanging mist over the Bassenthwaite valley gradually disappear.

New safety measures: Making all toilets and showers private and providing customers with cleaning or disinfectant sprays and wipes. Facilities to be cleaned three times a day.

Details: From 26 per pitch (pitchup.com).

WELSH WONDER

Tent treats: Camping at Becks Bay in south-west Wales. The campsite is set just 100 metres from the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park

THE DOS AND DON'TS OF CAMPING ETIQUETTE DO say hello and join in with your fellow campers  from a social distance, of course. DO keep your dog on a lead and little darlings under control. DO apologise to any baggy-eyed neighbours for your snoring. DO be careful where you find your firewood. It's unacceptable to hack into trees. DO be mindful of your parameters. Never cross someone else's pitch to take a short-cut  it's the ultimate camping faux pas, especially in these times. DO take a download of Carry On Camping, the 1969 film starring Sid James and Barbara Windsor. DO make sure you pack a lot of hand sanitiser. DON'T keep up appearances  charmingly dishevelled is the look you're going for. DON'T hog the shower like you have just returned from Glastonbury Festival. DON'T sit on your mobile phone  you have had months locked up indoors to do that. DON'T play the guitar like you're performing at a gig, or blast your boombox. DON'T drink too much and get rowdy. DON'T bring your duvet and a mattress  you'll look like a rookie. DON'T say: 'I wish we were in Spain/France/Italy . . . Enjoy the beauty where you are. Advertisement

Campfires crackle and pop all evening at Becks Bay Camping, set just 100 metres from the Pembrokeshire Coast National Park and the cove known as Becks Bay.

The rustic campsite, close to the quaint harbour town of Tenby, has no electricity and no wi-fi, while the toilets and showers are built into a wooden shed with charmingly mismatched wooden doors.

Don't miss: Walk across the fields to Bubbleton Farm Shop, which sells freshly baked bread and pastries, Welsh cheeses, locally grown vegetables and eggs sold within 24 hours of being laid.

New safety measures: Reducing capacity, adding extra showers and toilets and marking out spacing for social distancing, and increasing the frequency and level of cleaning of the facilities.

Details: From 10 per adult per night (coolcamping.com).

SURFERS' PARADISE

The family-run Atlantic Farm, in the coastal town of Bude, Cornwall, is just a mile from the beach, pictured

Switch off your alarm and enjoy a new wake-up call of cock-a-doodle-doo while staying at family-run Atlantic Farm, in the coastal town of Bude, Cornwall.

The pitches are spacious and lie just a mile from a handful of beautiful sandy surfing beaches and Cornwall's rugged coastline.

Don't miss: The alpacas, sheep and chickens on the walk to the surf breaks and rock pools at Crooklets Beach.

New safety measures: More frequent cleaning of shared facilities, erecting social distancing signage and providing cleaning products for the campers.

Details: From 8 a pitch (atlantic-camping.co.uk).

HIGHLAND FLING

The Findhorn Valley in rural and rugged Morayshire. Here you will find Ace Hideaways, which is set among the trees

Tucked in the Findhorn Valley in rural and rugged Morayshire, Ace Hideaways' camping pitches are spacious and set among the trees.

Each comes with its own fire pit, plus log stools and grills, so guests can gather kindling and logs from the surrounding forest and build a campfire.

The site is also home to Ace Adventures, which offers white-water rafting, canoeing and fishing trips.

Don't miss: Indulge in a delicious cream tea at nearby Logie Steading.

New safety measures: Reducing the number of pitches on site, providing hand sanitiser in shared facilities and increasing signage.

Details: From 9 per adult (acehideaways.co.uk).

INTO THE WILD

The Wardley Hill Campsite on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Pitches are generous and spaced out amid the long grass

A stream trickles through the meadow that is home to Wardley Hill Campsite on the Norfolk/Suffolk border. Pitches are generous and spaced out amid the long grass, ageing oaks and dancing butterflies, while wider areas of mown grass offer more space for larger tents.

Beautifully crafted wooden huts contain composting loos, while solar-powered shower bags can be borrowed if guests would like to forgo the regular facilities on site.

Don't miss: Borrow the campsite's paddle boards and head to the Norfolk Broads.

New safety measures: Reducing capacity, adding more toilets and showers and marking out spacing for social distancing, plus increasing the frequency and level of cleaning of facilities.

Details: Pitches from 8 per adult per night (coolcamping.com).

WALKERS' DELIGHT

Ted's campsite sits on a 60-acre working farm in the rolling Shropshire hills near Ironbridge, pictured

Lambs, donkeys and ducks wander freely around Ted's campsite, which sits on a 60-acre working farm in the rolling Shropshire hills.

The tranquil site has wonderful, sweeping views of the countryside and excellent biking and hiking trails near by.

Don't miss: A cooked breakfast made with freshly laid eggs from Ted's hens.

New safety measures: Reducing capacity and creating individual toilet and shower blocks.

Details: Costs from 15 per pitch (pitchup.com).

PROPERLY CORNISH

The family-run Tremorvu Campsite, pictured, is situated between the beaches of Praa Sands and Porthleven

It's all about windswept coastal walks and Atlantic sunsets at family-run Tremorvu Campsite, situated between the beaches of Praa Sands and Porthleven.

The site's peaceful fields are bordered by hedges that provide protection from the wind. An ancient stone barn with a corrugated roof houses a farm shop, while Helston butcher's, just a ten-minute drive away, supplies meat for barbecue dinners.

Don't miss: Follow the footpath from the campsite entrance to the top of Tregonning Hill, a natural viewing platform for watching the restless waves during sunset.

New safety measures: Reducing the capacity of the campsite, marking out spacing for social distancing in showers and toilets, and increasing the frequency and level of cleaning of the facilities.

Details: Costs from 18 per pitch (coolcamping.com).

DAZZLING SUNSETS

Pencarnan Farm, near St Davids, is just a one-mile walk from the popular surfing beach of Whitesands, pictured, in Pembrokeshire

Generations of the same family have been running Pencarnan Farm, near St Davids, since the 1950s.

The site, which sits on the westernmost tip of Wales, has spectacular views over the sea and direct access to Porthsele beach, a beautiful sandy cove ideal for swimming and kayaking.

The popular surfing beach of Whitesands is a one-mile walk along the coast path or, if you're feeling adventurous, a half-mile swim or kayak from Porthsele.

The farm shop sells wetsuits, as well as logs for beach fires. And a coffee hut opens every day. Pizzas are served above the beach several times a week.

Don't miss: Watch the sun dip below the horizon from Carn Llidi hill, only a 30-minute walk from Whitesands.

New safety measures: Increasing the frequency and level of cleaning of shared facilities and increasing the distance between pitches.

Details: From 12 per adult per night (pencarnanfarm.co.uk).
A heartbreaking video shows the moment a bereaved Nigerian wife, whose husband just died of Coronavirus, cried and begged him to wake up as his body was bundled away for burial.



It was reported earlier this week that Babafemi Adebayo, a Nigerian citizen who lived in Sao Paulo, Brazil, has died from complications related to #Covid19 after a nearly thirteen days battle with the virus.



His wife and mother of his children, Adedoja Ogunwusi, who is from the royal compound of the present Ooni of Ife , Oba Adeyeye Enitan Ogunwusi Ojaja II, is left to mourn him.



In a video recorded shortly after his death, his wife is heard saying: "Babafemi are you sleeping? Please wake up. Your mother is at home, your children are at home, your elder and younger siblings are at home. Please wake in the name of Jesus. Jesus have mercy on me. Jesus, take pity on me.



"Ahhh, Adebayo. Babfemi. I'm calling you. It's me calling you, not someone else. Your wife is yje one calling you. I ask you to wake up in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. In the name of Jesus Christ, I'm calling you.



"It's your body that's being bundled so. Jesus take pity on me. I'm begging you."



Below is a video of his wife expressing her love for him, singing his praise, and begging him to wake up.













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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I think there is going to have to be more regulations at the office, like not everybody can come in at once, or only one from the crew can come inside, or we will have to meet them outside, Gonzalez said. And if we implement that, there is going to have to be somebody who makes sure we stick by it and make it the new norm for a while.
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The 1947 Partition remains the bloodiest, most defining event of modern Indian history. As British India gained independence and was severed in two, tens of millions of people whod had homes for generations in the areas that became India and Pakistan found themselves desperately fleeing to the other country, largely along religious lines. About 15 million people were displaced, many of whom never made it to their new home: Sickening, horrific sectarian violence abounded during the journeys and left up to 2 million people dead.

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So, comparisons to this historic tragedy are not to be made lightly. And if its true, as some are noting, that the current migration crisis in India is its biggest and worst since the Partition, it deserves due attention and action. This crisis is one of the deadliest consequences of the coronavirus pandemics impact on the country, and likely a portent not only for India but perhaps the rest of the world.

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Much like in other countries, COVID-19s effect on India has been in part to starkly lay bare the inequities and injustices that make it the second-most unequal society in the world. One of these is the nations massive informal workforce: the domestic workers, caretakers, door-to-door sellers, street entertainers, fruit stand owners, and many more who make up a vast, unincorporated sector of the Indian economy: more than 90 percent of its total workforce, totaling 450 million people, most of whom make a pittance in wages and earn no benefits even as they contribute to the bustling commerce and livelihood of their communities.

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A large portion of urban Indian residents, both wealthy and not, often hire servants to cook, clean, look after seniors and children, and generally maintain their households. These workers are often women who come from far-off villages and are their often-poor families only financial support. In return for their effort, these laborers get paid by families and perhaps get a small place to stay, although theyre more likely to be housed in a nearby slum. If theyre lucky, they may get treated fondly and like family by their employers, and perhaps have a second home. But more often than not, class systems make for miserable treatment for these workers: The excruciating amount of work required often does not match the compensation, domestic and sexual violence is not uncommon, and laborers may be victims of human trafficking.

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Already ill-treated by their employers and a system that offers them no support, these migrant workers are now further suffering due to the coronavirus, and not just from illness. In part, they can thank the governments creeping response. By early March, India had not yet reported many cases, and earned the World Health Organizations praise. But testing capacity was insufficient for the second-most-populous country in the world, and even as registered cases soon rapidly rose, the figures didnt quite capture the depth of the health crisis. On March 25, as the official case count surpassed 600, Prime Minister Narendra Modi finally instituted a haphazard lockdown, forcing the nations entire population of 1.3 billion indoors. Initially only taking place for 21 days, it was soon continually extended until mid-May, with regions divided into different zones per rate of infection and a gradual reopening planned starting Monday, with some restrictions already eased.

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But as Indias doors and economy closed, too many domestic workers were likewise closed out of their places of employment. Tens of millions have been left without even the small wages they were earning, and no means of staying in their meager living conditions. Thus, they are now attempting to return to their home states and families however they canalthough many cant even afford the fare for trains to expedite the trip from cities like Mumbai and Delhi to states like Jharkhand, Assam, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh. (Indian Railways canceled all travel for June 30 and before, so these are special trains specifically marked for aid and connection purposes that operate on an extremely limited basis, leading to lengthy waits.) So theyre walking, dragging their lifelong possessions and children with them on a brutal expedition, often with no money, basic communication technology, friends to help, or knowledge of places to stop for shelter along the way.

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Abandoned by the employers whose livelihoods theyd kept afloat, with no financial cushion or emergency housing access, these new migrants are now adrift. Wrenching photos abound of them walking across desolate spaces, waiting in crowds for trains, venturing home while suffering and hungry. And as theyre traveling, theyre being neglected and mistreated. Orders to help quarantine the migrants are falling flat; its already impossible for many of Indias poor to socially distance, yet police are brutalizing violators for not adhering to rules in a situation they were forced into, by beating them and spraying them with disinfectant (part of a general trend of police abuse of power during the pandemic). Some migrants have protested this violence, only to face more crackdowns. Some have been killed along the way, struck by cars or buses or trains. So many of these people are not going to make it home, whether they are killed by outside forces or die of starvation. The clashes and loss of life here may not be anywhere near as brutal as the sheer inhumanity of Partition, but the scale of mass death of some of Indias most spurned people is likely to have similarly lasting repercussions.

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So where is the government during all of this? Shortly after the lockdown was first imposed, the Modi administration informed the Supreme Court that it had taken measures to provide food and housing to migrants, enough so that none of them were taking to the streets. This was blatantly false. Widespread food distribution and an economic stimulus intended to help the poor did too little to uplift the majority of down-and-out laborers, and its highly unlikely that even another planned package (mostly aimed at businesses) will be sufficient. And on Friday, the Supreme Court rejected a plea to the government to seek food and shelter for migrants, declaring that such actions should be left to the states.

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When India finally opens back up, the innumerable people who lost their jobs will have no guaranteed reentry. These are no temporary furloughs or structured processes for leave. The vast loss is indefinite, undocumented, and devastating. Many of these workers are illiterate and possess no other education or skills translatable to other fields, valuable as their work actually is to the families they work for and the general running of the economy. People are lost, more so than ever before. They need homes, support, treatment, guided reintegration. But the government is too busy culture warring and bungling the virus response to do anything for them, if it even cares.

All this is taking place before the monsoon season, which may not only bring a second wave of migrants but also add further infrastructure damage, building on top of the devastating climate and environmental emergencies of the past few years, from floods to dried-up food and water supplies to droughts. The next few months are going to be sheer torture, and the biggest mass movement since Partition will no doubt have earth-shaking consequences.
Afghan and foreign security personnel stand guard in front of a hospital after gunmen attacked, in Kabul. (AP)

Washington: The United States on Thursday blamed Islamic State militants  not the Taliban  for a gruesome hospital attack in Afghanistan this week that killed two newborn babies, and it renewed calls for Afghans to embrace a troubled peace push with the Taliban insurgency.

But it was unclear if the U.S. declaration would be enough to bolster the peace effort and reverse a decision by the Kabul government to resume offensive operations against the Taliban.

Afghan president Ashraf Ghani ordered the military on Tuesday to switch to offensive mode against the Taliban following the hospital attack in Kabul and a suicide bombing in Nangarhar province that killed scores of people.

U.S. Special Representative Zalmay Khalilzad blamed Islamic State for both attacks in a statement issued on Twitter, saying the group opposed any Taliban peace agreement and sought to trigger an Iraq-style sectarian war in Afghanistan.

Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity, Khalilzad said.

No more excuses. Afghans, and the world, deserve better.

An affiliate of the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar bombing, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. No one has claimed the hospital attack.

The Taliban denied involvement in either attacks, but the government accused the group of fostering an environment in which terrorism thrives or of working with other militant groups who could have been involved, straining U.S. efforts to bring the insurgents and Afghan government together.

The attacks were another setback to U.S. President Donald Trumps stalled plans to bring peace to Afghanistan and end Americas longest war.

A February 29 U.S.-Taliban deal called for a phased U.S. troop withdrawal and for the Afghan government and Taliban to release some prisoners by March 10, when peace talks were to start.

Intra-Afghan peace talks have yet to occur and there is some bitterness within the Afghan government, which was not a party to the Feb. 29 deal, that the United States undercut their leverage by negotiating directly with the Taliban.

Ghanis decision to revive offensive operations is supported by many opposition figures, who believe Washingtons sole focus is to keep the U.S. troop withdrawal plan on track to help Trump win a second term in the Nov. 3 U.S. presidential election.
Amid the growth of the COVID-19 epidemic in Bolivia, Jeanine Anezs self-proclaimed transitional government is escalating state repression, sending the military into the streets to crush protests by starving workers.

On Monday night, a protest in Kara Kara, a poor neighborhood in the southern part of Cochabamba, Bolivias fourth-largest city, was brutally repressed by the police and the military. Videos showed the security forces firing teargas grenades into working class homes. The demonstrators demanded that they be released from quarantine in order to work and try to provide food for their families. They also called for the fall of Anezs government, imposed by a military coup in late 2019.

The protests continued on the following days in Cochabamba. Residents have blockaded the main avenue of Kara Kara with rocks since Tuesday, and yesterday demonstrators left the southern neighborhoods, marching towards the center of the city, denouncing the governments starvation policies as well as their lack of access to water.

According to Los Tiempos, the mobilization was triggered by the banks imposing charges on outstanding loans. The government said that we would pay the banks after six months of quarantine, but they are already calling us to get the payments in June. How are we going to pay if were not working? one resident said.

These protests express the economic despair that is spreading among the Bolivian working class and peasantry. About 70 percent of Bolivias workers are in the informal labor market and have lost their income amid the pandemic.

For over a month, workers have been demonstrating in Cochabamba and other cities, such as El Alto. The government locked us up, hunger is going to kill us, read a sign in a protest against the quarantine in Riberalta in early April, according to El Pais.

Other protests were registered in La Paz on April 30 by impoverished workers who had been waiting in line for days to receive the miserable bonuses of 500 bolivianos (about US$70) announced by the government, but which have been repeatedly delayed.

In early May, a video circulated on social media showing a policeman from the Special Operations Tactical Unit (UTOP) committing sexual violence against a woman who was arrested along with dozens of other people for violating the quarantine. Asked by journalists why she had left home, she answered, crying: I didnt get any bonus and I left today because it was my day to leave, I went to buy some vegetables.

The Anez government responded to the cries of despair and revolt of the Bolivian population with the creation of a new dictatorial measure designed to exploit the pandemic to further tighten police state control. Decree 4231 criminalizes anyone who spreads in written, artistic or any other procedure that puts at risk or affects public health, generating uncertainty in the population.

Defending the decree, Minister Yerko Nunez said: Citizens who are trying, through social networks, to confuse and misinform should be careful. These are the ones who should be concerned, those who want to divide and confront the Bolivians. Journalists should be tranquil.

This dangerous escalation of state repression, cynically justified in the name of containing the advance of the pandemic, has been accompanied, in addition to the policy of hunger, by an absolute disregard for the health of Bolivians.

The coronavirus is advancing rapidly throughout the country. On Tuesday alone, 275 new cases were registered, and on Thursday the government reported that the total number of cases had risen to over 3,000 and deaths to more than 140. However, more than in any other South American country, the real figures are obscured by the extremely low rate of testing: 655 tests per 1 million people. Infections and deaths are undoubtedly many times higher than the number confirmed.

In hospitals there is a general lack of essential resources, from ventilators to personal protective equipment. Nurses from Montero hospital, who also demonstrated in the streets, exposed through photos and videos on social media how they are forced to wash their disposable gowns to reuse them.

This week, the government approved the use of a vermifuge, Ivermectin, an anti-parasitic drug that has no proven effectiveness in the treatment of COVID-19.

The governments disastrous response was also expressed in a rebellion by thousands of inmates at the Palmasola Rehabilitation Center in Santa Cruz de la Sierra last Monday after the death of at least two inmates from COVID-19. The prison is the largest in Bolivia and is packed with 6,000 people, about 40 percent of the countrys entire prison population, more than 70 percent of them being held without any sentence. The inmates protested, chanting We want to live! before being dispersed by a police invasion.

Recent events demonstrate explicitly that Anez and the Bolivian military have no intention of constituting merely a transitional government, but rather plan to remain in power indefinitely.

General elections, scheduled for May 3, were postponed indefinitely by the Supreme Electoral Court after the first cases of the pandemic. Proposals by the National Assembly to hold the elections within 90 days have been persistently rejected by Anez, who says they can only take place when it is no longer a health risk.

While the government feigns concerns over public health in order to block elections and remain in power, it has already advanced plans to resume activities in many branches of the economy to guarantee capitalist profit interests. Since the beginning of the week, a return to work in the mines, factories and manufacturing, among other strategic sectors, has been approved by a decree issued by the labor minister, overriding quarantine measures imposed by municipalities.

The postponement of the elections in Bolivia serves the interests of the national bourgeoisie and its accommodation with US imperialism, which was underscored by the approval of Donald Trump expressed directly to Anez. I am grateful for the call from the US President, @realDonaldTrump, to express his democratic solidarity with the Bolivian people in the fight against COVID-19 and in the bilateral agenda we have in development, she wrote on her Twitter account.

To defend their most basic right to life, the Bolivian masses are pushed to fight the regime installed by the military coup with US support.

But this task cannot be carried out under the leadership of the Movimiento al Socialismo (MAS) of ousted President Evo Morales and the unions. These institutions are subordinated to and inseparable from the Bolivian national bourgeoisie. Because of that, they have paved the way for Anezs rise to power, abandoning the Bolivian masses to fight the coup in the streets. Their present opposition to the government is based on factions within the Bolivian bourgeoisie and their efforts to reach a grand national agreement that involves those who participated in the coup.

The struggle against the coup regime can be advanced only on the basis of the political independence of the Bolivian working class in alliance with the peasantry, and under an international socialist revolutionary leadership that promotes its unification with the workers of Latin America and the whole world.
MEXICO CITY, MEXICO - Among commodities, none can rival oil in terms of its importance for the global economy. Despite the accelerating push towards renewables, "the black gold" has been the world's most vital energy source since the 1950s and is expected to remain such for decades to come. Its price indicating the state of the global economy and setting the course for future business activity and investments. "Oil prices tend to fluctuate based on demand and supply, but what happened last month was unprecedented even in an industry accustomed to dealing with shocks and uncertainty," comments veteran forex broker Pablo Soria de Lachica. "As May futures contracts headed towards expiry, a supply glut and the lack of storage space pushed the US benchmark, West Texas Intermediate (WTI), into sub-zero territory for the first time in the history of this industry. The slump to minus $40 per barrel on April 20 resulted from a combination of severely depressed demand due to the global pandemic and the failure of oil producers to act quickly to reduce output."

The global economy has slid into a recession after governments around the world issued stay-at-home orders to contain the public health crisis. The International Energy Agency (IEA) painted a vivid picture of the situation in the April 2020 edition of its Oil Market Report as it projected a drop in global demand by 9.3 million barrels a day from 2019 levels, which would reverse nearly a decade of growth. "Around the world, billions of people are affected by one of the worst health crises of the past century. The global economy is under pressure in ways not seen since the Great Depression in the 1930s; businesses are failing, and unemployment is surging. Confinement measures are in place in 187 countries and territories, and although they vary in scope, activity in the transportation sector has fallen dramatically almost everywhere." Pablo Soria de Lachica forecasts that although some countries are easing their restrictions on travel and allowing sectors of their economies to re-open, the world may be facing a prolonged recession, which would keep oil demand and prices depressed.

Another reason for the April crash in WTI futures was the discord among the world's top oil-producing nations, most notably the week-long price war in March between Saudi Arabia and Russia. The devastating market impact of this conflict ultimately forced OPEC members and their allies to reach an agreement in April, committing to a staggered reduction in output for two years. The deal includes a record cut of 9.7 million barrels per day in May and June, with the number declining gradually through to April 2022. While this was a desperately needed step, many believe it will not prove enough to ensure a strong recovery and stability in the oil market, Pablo Soria de Lachica notes. A report by Goldman Sachs analysts described the cuts as "too little and too late," while Chris Midgley, global analytics head at S&P Global Platts, told CNBC that they "won't be enough to bring sustainable, restorative support to oil prices, not unless OPEC goes further."

Pablo Soria de Lachica graduated from Universidad Tecnologico de Mexico (UNITEC) with an MBA, going on to specialize in international trading and ultimately become one of the most prominent forex experts globally. His extensive experience allows him to maximize profits for his clients by combining professional guidance and educational projects. He is currently collaborating with Kartoshka - a company bringing the latest technologies in sales, telemarketing, and customer support.

Pablo Soria de Lachica - Foreign Exchange Specialist: http://PabloSoriaDeLachicaNews.com

Pablo Soria de Lachica Examines the Impact of Argentina's Presidential Elections on its National Currency: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pablo-soria-lachica-examines-impact-031000360.html

Pablo Soria de Lachica Explains the Impact of Argentine Peso Devaluation: https://finance.yahoo.com/news/pablo-soria-lachica-explains-impact-191000044.html

Contact Information:

Pablo Soria de Lachica

Kartoshka

http://kartoshka.global

Pablo@kartoshka.global

(800) 588-3618

SOURCE: Pablo Soria de Lachica

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/589975/Pablo-Soria-de-Lachica-Explains-the-Recent-Unprecedented-Drop-of-Oil-Prices-into-Negative-Territory
Australian PM Announces an Extra $48 Million for Mental Health Response Plan Amid Pandemic

The Australian government announced on Friday an additional $48 million to support its mental health and wellbeing response plan amid the CCP virus pandemic.

Economic recessions severely impact the mental health of citizens and the national cabinet unanimously supported assigning funds to address this in Australia. The federal government will work closely with states and territories in the endeavor, Prime Minister Scott Morrison told reporters in Canberra.

The plan will give more Australians access to services that can assist their mental wellbeing needs amid the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, commonly known as novel coronavirus.

Federal Minister for Health Greg Hunt revealed that the additional $48.1 million investment follows $6.4 billion spent on mental health this year, which includes $74 million invested in the early stages of the response to the CCP virus pandemic.

The mental health response plan will focus on covering three areas: research and data so that officials can see what is happening in real-time, such as suicide rates; community outreach to the vulnerable, in particular the elderly, non-English speakers, Indigenous Australians, and people with pre-existing mental health diagnoses; and communication and general outreach, including a national campaign promoting the message that its okay not to be okay.

All of this is part of a much wider pandemic health response plan, Hunt said.

Earlier in the week, Victorias former chief psychiatrist Ruth Vine was appointed as the countrys first deputy chief medical officer for mental health, working alongside Chief Medical Officer Brenden Murphy.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:10:53|Editor: huaxia

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TOKYO, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The confirmed COVID-19 cases in Japan increased by 50 to reach 16,253, according to the latest figures from the health ministry and local authorities on Friday.

The number excludes the 712 cases from the Diamond Princess cruise ship that was quarantined in Yokohama near Tokyo.

In Tokyo, the epicenter of Japan's outbreak, the number of confirmed COVID-19 cases has increased by nine to reach 5,036, followed by Osaka Prefecture with 1,768 infections.

Kanagawa Prefecture, meanwhile, has recorded 1,249 infections, Hokkaido 999 cases, Saitama 974, Chiba 882, while Hyogo Prefecture has recorded 698 cases of COVID-19, according to the latest figures on Friday.

The health ministry said there are currently a total of 241 patients considered severely ill and are on ventilators or in intensive care units.

The ministry also said that in total, 11,462 people, including 653 from the cruise ship, have been discharged from hospitals after their symptoms improved. Enditem
92% Of Independent Festivals Face Closure says Association

In a statement that resonates in the US and globally, the Association of Independent Festivals has sounded the alarm, warning of a UK independent festival wasteland in 2021 and beyond without decisive help from the government.

According to the AIF, the festival sector at large could be on the hook for refunds up to 800m in total this summer, with more than 90% of the festivals scheduled for 2020 not taking place this year.

Festivals are also grappling with the loss of investments that are not recoupable, with the average independent festival facing average expenses of 375,000, with 98.5% not covered by insurance for cancellation related to Covid-19, the AIF said.

92% Face Closure

A survey of independent festivals said that 92% of organizers said their firms face risk of dissolution as a result of the pandemic and its resultant shutdown of the live sector.

The survey also suggested that the 59% of the people employed in the festival sector may be out of work between September 2020 and February 2021 as businesses come unraveled amid the financial crisis.

As a result of these dire forecasts, the AIF has lobbied the UK Government for a range of measures to assist the sector, including clarity on eligibility for grants and loans, and rolling premises license fees over to 2021 for events that do not take place this year.

Other measures include continuing continued financial support for employees affected by the shutdowns and business support packages until the festival sector can begin planning for 2021.

AIF also called for clear guidance on when guidance about when festivals will be able to operate, and more details on what sort of social distancing measures will be required when events are allowed to resume.

AIFs CEO Paul Beard said:

While the Government has been receptive to AIFs counsel, it has not taken meaningful action to protect our sector. Single event festival companies are seasonal businesses .They need urgent support now and ongoing support after lockdown ends and restrictions are eased. This is not a temporary shutdown of business  it is an entire year of income and trade wiped out.

If support is not offered throughout the autumn, then the sector will face widespread job losses that will seriously inhibit its ability to deliver events in 2021.

There is no safety net for independent festivals, many of which have fallen between the cracks of current Government support measures such as loans and grants. For example, zero percent of AIF members have been able to successfully access the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loans Scheme.

UK festivals are not only an intrinsic, defining part of British culture but also an economic powerhouse that generates hundreds of millions for the economy  we urge Government to recognise them as such.

Next years festival season will hopefully offer much needed relief after a very difficult time for the country.But, for now, these independent businesses need to survive. Otherwise, every year from now could be a fallow year for independent festivals, for the emerging artists they provide a platform for, and the local economies across the UK that they generate income for.

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Snow showers this evening. Becoming partly cloudy later. Low 13F. Winds N at 10 to 20 mph. Chance of snow 80%. Snow accumulations less than one inch..

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Queen Elizabeth II reportedly found a silver lining during the coronavirus pandemic.

Being the head of the British monarchy for 65 years is exhausting, that's why Queen Elizabeth II is spending the lockdown at her favorite royal residence, Windsor Castle.

She and her husband, Prince Philip, is reportedly having dinner together every night, something that wasn't possible, along with the Duke of Edinburgh's preference for the Sandringham estate instead of being in Buckingham Palace.

A source told Vanity Fair, "One of the nicest things for the Queen is that she is getting to spend more time with her husband than she usually would."

The source added, "They have dinner together in the evenings, and I imagine the Queen is of the generation where she dresses for dinner."

Queen Elizabeth II arrived at Windsor Castle on March 13, a week early than her supposed Easter break plans.

On the same day, Prince Philip took off in a helicopter from Sandringham Estate, after living there for the past few months, to head to Windsor Castle.

Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh share the castle with a couple of staff, including the Queen's dressmaker Angela Kelly and confidant Paul Whybrew.

Aside from spending time with the Duke, Queen Elizabeth II has reportedly been riding horses every day, and despite the coronavirus, she is in "excellent spirits."

While the couple is enjoying each other's company, they haven't forgotten about their royal duties.

The head of the monarchy continues to receive the Government's red boxes daily and even holds a meeting weekly over the phone with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

As for reports that say the Queen may never go back to public duties because of the COVID-19, Vanity Fair's sources said that she's planning to get back as soon as she possibly can.

"She can't be seen to be going against official government advice, but it's fair to say she's looking forward to getting back to normal."

The source furthermore said, "It's a delicate line, but I think we will see her doing private audiences again and more of the work we are used to seeing her do in public at some point in the future."

Though palace aides will not comment on what Queen Elizabeth II's fall plans are, events are already being scheduled.

"The idea that we won't see the Queen in public again is certainly not the case. The Queen is planning to come back to work, and when she does, I think we'll see her work harder than ever," the source concluded.

Her Majesty is determined to work harder than ever once the coronavirus lockdown is lifted and wants to continue fulfilling her duties as head of the state.

Queen Elizabeth II also has not suggested that she will not be stepping back.

But it may take a while before she can safely return to Buckingham Palace.

Typically, the Queen would return to the castle in May until she has her summer break in July and spends it in Balmoral Castle.

According to reports, her forced absence is one of the most prolonged periods that she has been kept away from the royal duties in her entire reign.

READ MORE: Meghan Markle, Prince Harry Made Archie's Birthday Super Special By Doing THESE
Spotlight PA is an independent, nonpartisan newsroom powered by The Philadelphia Inquirer in partnership with the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and PennLive/Patriot-News. Sign up for our free weekly newsletter.

By Angela Couloumbis of Spotlight PA and Charlotte Keith of Spotlight PA

HARRISBURG  The legal battle surrounding Gov. Tom Wolfs shutdown order intensified Thursday, with Republicans pushing for an expedited court decision that could force the Democratic governor to disclose records about waivers his administration granted businesses to operate during the pandemic.

Republicans who control the state Senate filed papers in Commonwealth Court seeking a quick resolution to the dispute, which centers around a legislative subpoena for thousands of records related to the waiver process.

For his part, Wolf went on the offensive this week. His administration sent emails  several of which were obtained by Spotlight PA  bearing his signature and warning business owners who had applied for waivers that several entities were seeking records related to their requests.

In many cases, these requests include information that appear to be proprietary or even personal, Wolf wrote in the emails. Nevertheless, various entities  continue to press the administration to disclose this information.

The governor made a similar argument in refusing to comply with the Senate subpoena.

Aside from Republicans, waiver records also have been sought by numerous news organizations  including Spotlight PA and The Inquirer  under the state public records act, which allows personal or proprietary information to be redacted. The state has largely stopped responding to such requests, citing the pandemic.

The email signed by Wolf directed businesses to consent to or challenge the disclosure of their information. In an unusual move, however, the administration did not ask for the responses to be sent to state officials overseeing the waiver process, but rather to Republican Sen. Mike Regan of York County, whose legislative committee approved the subpoena. The message included Regans email address.

In a statement, Regan called the Wolf administrations email wholly inappropriate. His chief of staff also said the office had received quite a few emails from business owners.

It seems a little on the snarky side, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, and a little more personal than it would have been ... if they had directed people to the institution of the Senate or the individual committee. It shows that there might be a little sensitivity.

All of the nearly 43,000 businesses that applied for a waiver received the email, according to an administration spokesperson. About 6,100 were approved.

Casey Smith, spokesperson for the Department of Community and Economic Development, which oversaw the waiver process, said the administration sent the emails to ensure that the interests of these businesses remain protected as the administration makes available information relating to the exemption process.

A reckless release of data, released without the knowledge of businesses, could be disastrous for many members of the business community, and a number of these businesses have already reached out to express their concerns about release of their proprietary information, Smith said.

Smith did not respond when asked why the letter directed responses to Regan.

The developments ratcheted up the already fierce debate over whether the administrations waiver program was fair and transparent. Businesses and elected officials have complained for weeks about the process, which they claim was unevenly applied to businesses in the same industry.

Some companies were issued waivers but had them revoked without explanation just hours before the administration late last Friday made public a list of those that had received the exemptions.

On Thursday, the administration added to that list, publishing names of businesses denied waivers, as well as those that had applied but did not need them to operate. Still, officials have not said what specific criteria were used in considering applications, the arguments applicants made in seeking waivers, and the reasons for why waivers were granted or denied.

The waiver process is now the subject of an inquiry by state Auditor General Eugene DePasquale. On Thursday, DePasquale told reporters that his team will review everything from the criteria state officials used to evaluate waiver applications, to any emails or letters from legislators or lobbyists seeking to influence the process.

He said his office has received more than 100 complaints from businesses, many small or midsize, that believe the waiver process was unfair. It is the largest number of complaints he has ever received at the start of an audit, he said.

Justine Cosley, whose waiver application for her cat grooming business near Pittsburgh was denied, received the email from Wolfs administration on Tuesday.

I have no problem releasing my information, she told Spotlight PA.

Cosleys business supplies cat hair to a company that makes the raw materials for allergy shots, which she says should have worked in her favor. I know this seems like a joke, but it is not, she wrote in her waiver application.

I wouldnt submit anything I was concerned about keeping a secret, she said, adding that she still wanted to understand more about the decision-making process. What did it take to get approved?

In its court filing Thursday, Regans committee cited reporting by Spotlight PA that found the Wolf administration had made last-minute changes to the waiver program, revoking some businesses exemptions without explanation just hours before the list of recipients was made public.

Such inconsistencies raise concerns that [the administration] may be changing, altering, or otherwise manipulating the records that are the subject to this enforcement action while the action is pending adjudication, wrote Matt Haverstick, the lawyer representing Regans committee.

100% ESSENTIAL: Spotlight PA relies on funding from foundations and readers like you who are committed to accountability journalism that gets results. If you value this reporting, please give a gift today at spotlightpa.org/donate.
The country is estimated to achieve an all-time high foodgrains production of 295.67 million tonne in 2019-20 crop year, the fourth consecutive year of record production, buoyed by good rains, the Agriculture Ministry's latest data released on Friday said.

According to the data, the estimated output of foodgrains this year is up 3.67 per cent over the year-ago period and has even crossed its target of 291.10 million tonne, which it had set before the beginning of the 2019-20 sowing season.

Total foodgrains production includes crops grown during both kharif (summer) and rabi (winter) seasons. At present, harvesting of rabi crops is in the final stages amid the COVID-19 crisis.

This is the fourth consecutive year-on-year higher output of foodgrain since 2016-17 crop year (July-June). The previous record was 285.21 million tonne during the 2018-19 crop year.

"The cumulative rainfall in the country during the monsoon season (June to September, 2019) had been 10 per cent higher than the Long Period Average (LPA).

Accordingly, the production of most of the crops for the agricultural year 2019-20 has been estimated higher than their normal production," the ministry said releasing the third estimate of production.

Among all crops, the output of wheat -- the main rabi crop -- is estimated at an all-time high level of 107.18 million tonnes in 2019-20, up from 103.60 million tonne previous year. Harvesting of wheat crop is in the final stage of completion.

Similarly, the output of rice -- the main kharif crop -- is estimated to be a record 117.94 million tonne this year, higher from 116.48 million tonne last year.

At the same time, the production of coarse cereals is estimated to be a record 47.54 million tonne as against 43.06 million tonne in the said period.

Production of maize is pegged at a record 28.98 million tonnes this year, up from 27.72 million tonne in the 2018-19 crop year, but barley output is estimated to lower at 1.59 million tonne as against 1.63 million tonne in the said period.

In case of pulses, total production is estimated to increase to 23.01 million tonne this year from 22.08 million tonne last year. Of which, tur production is pegged at 3.75 million tonnes and chana at 10.90 million tonne for this year.

Foodgrains basket comprises wheat, rice, coarse cereals and pulses.

As far as oilseeds were concerned, total production is estimated to increase marginally to 33.50 million tonne in the 2019-20 crop year from 31.52 million tonne last year.

Among cash crops, the country would see an all-time high production of cotton at 36.04 million bales (of 170 kg each) in the current year, much higher than 28.04 million bales last year. The previous record was 35.90 million bales in 2013-14 crop year.

Meanwhile, sugarcane production is estimated todecline to 358.13 million tonne this year from 405.4 million tonne last year due to fall in production mainly in Maharashtra and Karnataka.

The output of jute is estimated flat at 9.43 million bales (of 180 kg) this year as against 9.49 million bales in 2018-19 crop year, while mesta output is estimated to increase to 4.89 million bales from 3.23 million tonnes in the said period.

Although the third estimate might just be revised after harvest of rabi crops, the final output figures may not be less than what is estimated right now.

The Agricultural Ministry releases four advance estimates of production followed by a final estimate. In fact, the fourth advance estimates are considered as good as the final estimates.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Apple has acquired the virtual reality company NextVR in a deal reportedly worth around $100million.

The purchase is the latest in a string of recent moves that suggest Apple is preparing to expand its business to include virtual reality and augmented reality.

NextVR builds VR software that puts users inside sporting events, concerts and other live events, and had previously created custom experiences for the NBA, WWE, CNN and more.

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Apple confirmed it has acquired NextVR, a company based in Laguna Beach, California that designs virtual reality software to let people attend live events. In the past, NextVR worked with the NBA, NASCAR, Wimbledon, WWE, CNN and more

Apple has confirmed the acquisition, but says it doesn't comment publicly on the reason for purchases nor what immediate plans it has for the company.

Based in Laguna Beach, California and founded in 2009, NextVR had struggled in recent years as the VR market seemed to stagnate, and in 2019 the company laid off 40 percent of its staff after failing to secure Series C funding, according to a report in 9 to 5 Mac.

Apple has been steadily building a portfolio of AR and VR technologies over the last several years.

In 2014, Apple invested in Imagination, the company behind Power VR, a set of virtual reality tools for mobile phones.

In 2016, the company acquired Flyby Media, a developer that created object recognition software that would allow a person's smartphone camera to identify items through the viewfinder.

In 2017, Apple acquired the Canadian AR headset manufacturer Vrvana, in a deal that was reportedly worth $30million

In 2019, Apple released ARKit, a set of development tools for iOS devices that would support developers making augmented reality apps for iPhone or iPad.

Apple has also filed numerous patents for various AR and VR devices and recent reports suggest the company is planning to release a pair of lightweight AR eyeglasses that could sync with 5G models of the iPhone.
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The fast food industry is saturated with household names, from Five Guys to Burger King, KFC to Subway.

However, for the majority of consumers, the term fast food is indisputably synonymous with one particular brand  the red and yellow, American-born, grease machine that is McDonalds.

The franchise was founded by two brothers in the first half of the 20th century and is celebrating its 80th anniversary on Friday 15 May.

With more than 37,000 restaurants in 120 countries across the globe, the chain has come a long way since serving 15 cent hamburgers at drive-in restaurants in the 1940s.

Here is how McDonalds transformed from a family-run business to a global franchise:

Humble beginnings

Very few people likely think twice when they hear the name McDonalds. They may not pause to wonder where the name came from or, more accurately, who it came from.

No, it doesnt come from Old MacDonald who had a farm. It comes from the two brothers who, through their hard work, gave McDonalds its fresh start 80 years ago.

In the late 1930s, the McDonald family, including brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald, otherwise known as Dick and Mac, relocated to California from New England, as told on the McDonald's website.

Their parents, Patrick and Margarete McDonald, had emigrated to the US from Ireland as children, and raised their five children (two boys and three girls) in New Hampshire in poor conditions.

Following their move to California, Dick and Mac McDonald attempted to break into the movie business, obtaining jobs at Motion-Picture Studios, Alan Hess reported in 1986 article "The Origins of McDonald's Golden Arches".

Fortunately, they soon discovered they were far better suited to flipping burgers than they were to mingling with Hollywood stars.

In 1937, their father opened a food stand on Americas famous Route 66, historian Quentin Skrabec wrote.

The Airdrome, as the food stand was called, sold hot dogs, hamburgers and "all-you-can-drink" orange juice, an early iteration of refillable beverages.

Three years after the food stand began operating, the McDonald brothers gave the eatery a rebrand, moving it to a new location in San Bernardino and renaming it McDonalds Bar-B-Que.

As the name indicated, the majority of the items on the menu, which consisted of 25 different food options, were barbecue themed.

However, the brothers noticed that one dish was especially popular among their customers: the hamburger.

This realisation set the cogs turning in their minds, prompting them to simplify their menu with a particular focus on their most favoured item, it stated in the 1994 book Made In America.

With a condensed menu consisting of burgers, potato chips, apple pie, soft drinks and coffee, in 1948 Dick and Mac renamed their establishment for the final time, christening it McDonalds.

In addition to reducing their menu, the McDonald brothers also simplified the way in which consumers were served food at their restaurants, swapping staff who waited on customers at their cars for self-service.

By the mid-20th century, Dick and Mac boasted a flourishing business, planting the seeds for the mass growth of the fast food industry.

However, another mans involvement was key for turning a successful family-run franchise into a bona fide giant.

Capitalising on the franchise

While the McDonald brothers gave the fast food chain its name, fast food tycoon Ray Krocs involvement in the company gave it the boost it needed to achieve unprecedented levels of success for eight decades.

Joining the business in the 1950s, Kroc helped to expand the franchise beyond even his greatest expectations, branching out on a global scale.

However, before joining ranks with the McDonald brothers, the Chicago-born businessman was working as a milkshake salesman.

A recreation of the first McDonalds restaurant opened by McDonalds Corporation founder Ray Kroc in Des Plaines Illinois on 15 April 1955 (Everett/Shutterstock)

Prior to his involvement, the McDonald brothers had already embarked on the process of turning their restaurant chain into a franchise.

They collaborated with a couple of franchisees to make this aspiration a reality, including Neil Fox, Roger Williams and Burdette Landon. All three franchisees worked at the General Petroleum Corporation.

In addition to the culinary side of their restaurant, Dick and Mac had also been placing their focus on the aesthetic vision they had for their business moving forward.

The brothers employed the services of an architect called Stanley Clark Meston, the man behind the famous golden arches that customers see at every McDonalds restaurant today.

Foxs McDonalds stand, which opened in May 1953 in Phoenix, Arizona, was the first to feature the world famous golden arches, while the stand opened by Williams and Landon in Downey, California in August 1953 is the oldest surviving McDonalds restaurant to date.

In 1954, milkshake machine distributor Kroc learnt that eight of his milkshake machines were being used at the McDonalds restaurant in San Bernardino, California, Money reported.

Intrigued by the fast food chain and its business model, Kroc went into business with the McDonald brothers with the aim of further developing their firm.

At the time, McDonalds had six restaurants in operation. However, Kroc aspired to branch out across the entire US, a target that he set about achieving with vigour., beginning with his first McDonald's restaurant, which he opened in Illinois in April 1955.

Fred Turner and Ray Kroc the executive leaders of McDonalds Corporation looking at blueprints of future restaurant (photo ca. 1975) (Photo by Everett/REX)

Kroc enlisted the help of Harry J. Sonneborn, previously vice president of finance for Tastee-Freez, to grow the business.

Sonneborn suggested a novel way of expanding the franchise, which involved buying the real estate on which future chains of the restaurants would be built.

This course of action became known as the Sonneborn model.

The genius of the Sonneborn financial model is that the company financed the property using long-term, fixed rates but passed along variable fees to the franchisees, explained business and investment author Adam Brownlee.

As sales and prices inevitably rose over the years, the franchisees payments to corporate as a percent of sales inflated, while the companys costs remained virtually flat. This model turned McDonalds into a cash flow powerhouse and is still the backbone of the company today.

Krocs initial vision was to open 1,000 McDonalds restaurants, solely in America. However, by 1967 the firm had also opened franchises in Canada and Puerto Rico, setting off a chain of events that would result in the fast food chain boasting more than 37,000 restaurants in 120 countries across the globe.

McDonald's reportedly recorded a net income of over $6bn (4.92bn) in 2019, increasing from the previous year's figure of $5.92bn ($4.85bn).

McDonalds in the headlines

Just like the majority of other food franchises, McDonalds has recently had to adapt to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

In March, it was reported that McDonalds had fully closed all of its UK and Ireland restaurants, having previously offered takeaway and drive-thru services during lockdown.

The company later announced it was carrying out operational tests in preparation for the reopening of restaurants, before stating that 15 UK sites would be reopened for delivery only from Wednesday 13 May.

However, the reopening of the restaurants was not entirely smooth-sailing.

According to several tweets, many customers found that their UberEats app kept crashing when they tried to order from McDonalds.

A spokesperson for McDonalds replied on Twitter by clarifying that the restaurant was experiencing a surge in demand.

Some of our restaurants are currently experiencing very high levels of orders and may not be able to facilitate all delivery requests and deliveries may become temporarily unavailable, they said.

Please do check back soon on UberEats.
Some children from nearby communities at Sherigu in the Bolgatanga Municipality of the Upper East Region have resorted to loitering at a landfill site in the area in search of food and aluminum cans.



The waste products from within the Bolgatanga Township are dumped at the site by trucks from the Bolgatanga Municipal Assembly, Zoomlion Company Limited and the Food and Drugs Authority (FDA) in the Region.



The children, aged between five and 15 years walk on the charred waste without sandals, exposing themselves to sharp objects and broken bottles in their meticulous search for the empty cans and other valuables which they sell.

The Ghana News Agency (GNA) spotted the children when some officials of the FDA, the Environmental and Sanitation Agency, the Ghana Police and Ghana National Fire Service went to the site to dispose off regulated and expired products confiscated from provisions shops, pharmacies, herbal clinics, warehouses, cosmetic shops among others across all 15 Districts of the Region.



Not even the presence of the security personnel could deter the children numbering about 20 away, as they paid deaf ears to warnings and advice from officials, especially Mr Sebastian Mawuli Hotor, the Upper East Regional Director of the FDA, to stay off the site since the environment was not good for their health.



One of the children, about six years old and a pupil of the Apasenaba Primary School who was approaching the site to join his colleagues, told the GNA that he brought his parents cattle to graze around the landfill site, and decided to search for items at the site.



They say a disease has come so no school, he said, and joyfully ran towards his colleagues on the landfill site.



Another boy, about 15 years, said I am here to look for containers to go and sell and buy my school sandals, the boy told the GNA when it tried to educate him on the health risks he was exposed to, that he had over the years loitered on the site and even eaten some products he picked, and never felt sick.



The GNA gathered from members of the community that a child died in a reservoir for liquid waste located on the landfill site a few years ago.



Speaking to the GNA on why the area was not fenced even though concrete pillars were mounted around the site, Mr Joseph Atuura Amiyuure, the Bolgatanga Municipal Chief Executive (MCE) said a sister organisation of Zoomlion Ghana Limited, Waste landfill, was responsible for managing the site.



He said it was a contract between the Assembly and the company, So as they work, Assembly pays but we have a few outstanding bills to pay them, that is the limitation now.



Mr Amiyuure said per information available to him, it appears very soon they will be paid their money. If we had the resources, we would have gone ahead to fence the area and await payment.



The MCE said the area used to be fenced at the time the Assembly operated the site some years ago, but the fence broke down after the company took over management of the site, and reiterated that We are also limited in terms of resources, in relation to payment of bills.

Source: GNA









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Some heads of second cycle institutions in the Bono Region have proposed to central government to ensure that all students are tested for the coronavirus (COVID-19) when schools re-open.



In their opinion, such a move would help those infected by the virus to be isolated and treated.



The heads of senior high schools (SHSs) in the Bono Region made the suggestion during a fumigation exercise by Zoomlion Ghana Limited (ZGL). The exercise is collaboration between Ghana Education Service and ZGL, and it is aimed at dealing with bed-bugs infestation in the schools.



The eight-day exercise began on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 and is expected to cover about sixty-four (64) SHSs in the various districts across the region.



Some of the schools which were covered on the first included John Bosco Vocational Technical, Notre Dame SHS, Secret Heart SHS, Nsutre Vocational Institute, Brekum Presbyterian SHS and Brekum SHS.



Others were Methodist SHS, All For Christ SHS, Wamanafo Senior Technical High School, Mansen SHS, ST. Augustines Senior High, Berekum, Star Business SHS and Gyinigyini SHS.



The second day (Wednesday, May 15, 2020) saw schools including Our Lady of Providence SHS, Drobo SHS, Hidaaya Islamic SHS, Awasuman SHS, Nkrankwanta Community among others.



In an interview with the media, the Assistant Headmaster in-charge of Administration Mansen SHS, Oppong Takyi, indicated that testing students for COVID-19 will prevent the spread of the virus, especially as those infected will easily be identified and quarantined for treatment.



That, he further said, will not create fear and panic amongst the student body in the various SHSHs across the country.



He described the fumigation exercise as timely, adding that it will help a great deal to rid the school of bed-bugs and their attendant health implications.



According to him, his school has had to battle with bed-bugs over the past years, albeit with little success.



In our effort to deal with the bugs, the school sometimes engages people to spray its facilities. Unfortunately, this does not last long as in some cases just after two weeks of the exercise we are caught up again having to battle with bed-bugs, the head of Mansen SHS said.



Against this backdrop, Mr Takyi commended Zoomlion and GES for the initiative.



He, however, made a fervent appeal for the exercise to be conducted frequently.



I thank GES and Zoomlion for this exercise and I am hopeful that it will bring the bed-bugs infestation in the school under control and also kill harmful insects which sometimes find their way to the school compound, he expressed.



What is more, he said with the fumigation of the school, teaching and learning will be conducted in a conducive environment when the school re-opens.



For his part, the Headmaster of Wamanafo Secondary Technical High School, Thomas Asante Armstrong, who also shared in the suggestion of testing students when schools re-open, however, said his school was bedeviled with serious infrastructure issues.



He lamented that his school could not even boast of a staff common room for the tutors, revealing that my teachers have been sitting under a tree and using the place as a staff common room.



Furthermore, he disclosed that his school was grappling with the issue of congestion. This, he noted, was widespread in the classrooms and with the few dormitories that they have.



He, therefore appealed to the ministry of education to come to their aid.



The Headmaster of St Augustines SHS, Berekum, Reverend Father Hubert Asante, was full of praise for GES and Zoomlion.



He called for the fumigation exercise to be done at least every three months, insisting that that will deal effectively with the issue of bed-bugs in the schools across the country.



The exercise saw classrooms, dining halls, dormitories, student mattresses, administration blocks, sick bays, staff members bungalows, etc., of the various schools fumigated.



It would be recalled that the Minister of Education, Dr Matthew Opoku Prempeh, in April this year launched a nationwide exercise to fumigate and disinfect all SHSs in the country in a bid to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus and also deal with bed-bugs infestation.

Source: XYZ









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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Iran FM slams US for making 'foolish' claims on nuclear deal, relevant resolution

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 10:39 AM

Iran's foreign minister slams US officials for making "foolish" claims about the 2015 nuclear deal and the UN resolution that endorsed it, saying it is natural for those who suggest disinfectant injections as a preventive measure against the new coronavirus to claim they are still party to the agreement they have already abandoned.

"Making foolish claims by US officials is nothing new," Zarif told reporters on Wednesday, reacting to remarks by US special envoy for Iran, Brian Hook, who recently said in an address to US presidential contender Joe Biden that "nothing will be left of the JCPOA until you return to it".

Hook referred to the nuclear deal by the acronym of its official name, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Iran signed the deal with six major world states, including the US, in 2015, but Washington under Trump later quit the accord, which was endorsed by UN Security Council 2231.

Biden in an electoral speech had spoken of Washington's conditional return to the JCPOA if he wins the presidential race.

The presidential hopeful said the United States' first condition to return to the JCPOA would be for Iran to renew its commitment to the nuclear deal.

He promised his supporters to reinforce and expand the JCPOA in cooperation with US allies.

"It is none of Brian Hook's business to say 'nothing will be left of the JCPOA.' What is important is between Iran and the JCPOA's remaining parties," Zarif said.

The top Iranian diplomat said that "we have carried out all our measures within the framework of the JCPOA," calling on the remaining signatories of the deal to change their behavior so that Tehran can return to the full implementation of the accord.

He called the JCPOA a "strong document," saying, the Americans will realize in the future that the hostile measures they have taken to undermine the agreement "will be to their own detriment."

Zarif said that Iran has made "considerable" achievements in the field of nuclear energy and "by no means has the JCPOA hindered our progress."

Referring to Trump, who recently drew ridicule by suggesting injecting disinfectant to treat coronavirus, Zarif said "it is not unexpected of those advising people to drink or inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus to come forward and say they are still a party to the agreement after officially leaving it."

Despite no longer being a party to the contract, Washington has recently launched a campaign to extend a UN embargo on the sales of conventional weapons to Iran that is set to expire under the JCPOA this October.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo first announced the intention and Hook told reporters last week, "We are operating under the assumption that we will be able to renew the arms embargo."

Hook also wrote in the Wall Street Journal that "one way or another" Washington would ensure the arms embargo remains. He said the United States has drafted a Security Council resolution and "will press ahead with diplomacy and build support."

Iran has warned the United States that Iran would not accept any violation of the UN Security Council resolution that mandates the lifting of the arms embargo against the Islamic Republic, saying the country was absolutely entitled to the ban's cancellation.

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(Natural News) Chilean President Sebastian Pinera warned on Tuesday that the country would experience its greatest health challenge in decades following a spike in new coronavirus cases across the region. As of late Thursday, the country has a total caseload of 37,040 and 368 deaths, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.

In the capital city of Santiago, Health Minister Jaime Manalich announced a general quarantine to head off new cases. The extraordinary, tough new measures will take effect Friday. The quarantine will also cover people over 75 years of age in the country.

The month of May is proving very tough on our country, he added. The health minister reported that there were over 2,600 new coronavirus cases in the past two days  a 60-percent increase from the start of the week.

The cordon sanitaire will also include the regions surrounding the 6.5 million-strong city. According to local authorities, the edict comes on the heels of a wave of new cases in wealthier parts of Santiago. The coronavirus was first identified among residents returning from trips to Italy and Asia.

Manalich pleaded with residents to take the new measures seriously, and report anyone violating the general quarantine.

In reality, the battle for Santiago is THE crucial battle in the war against coronavirus, he said, adding that the government has done over 313,750 tests, to date.

The minister also sought to allay fears that the countrys health system is on the brink of collapse, saying that patients and essential equipment have been transferred to potential hotspots.

We dont fear a collapse but in the event that these actions were taking work and are respected, Manalich stated. We need the commitment of every citizen, to understands what is at play here and respect all the measures so we dont face a collapse in the system because of a vertiginous increase in cases.

Preparing for the worst

The city is also preparing for the increase in coronavirus-related fatalities that come with a spike in new cases. Local authorities have said that thousands of fresh graves are being dug in Santiagos General Cemetery.

We realize that this is a historical moment and that we may need more graves, because we see whats happened in other countries, cemetery director Rashid Saud told AFP.

To cope with the potential rise in deaths, Saud said that gravediggers were preparing 2,000 fresh graves. Unlike other countries, which have resorted to mass graves to take in dead people and rotting corpses en masse, the individual graves were dug in advance, and in hopes that [they] will not have to use them.

But according to Luis Yevenes, the head of the cemetery workers union, the situation in other Chilean cities is far different than that of Santiago. In particular, he expressed his concern about the lack of capacity in cemeteries in Valparaiso and Vina del Mar in the center, and the cities of Concepcion and Talcahuano farther south.

Meanwhile, both Brazil and Mexico  whose presidents have been pushing to reopen their economies  reported a record one-day rise in new coronavirus cases on Thursday.

Brazil, the hardest-hit country in Latin America, reported 13,944 new cases to bring its total caseload to 203,165, with 13,999 deaths, while Mexico reported 2,409 new infections to bring its total confirmed cases to 42,595, with 4,477 deaths.

Brazil registered a daily record of 13,944 new cases. This brings its total to 202,918 confirmed cases of the virus and 13,933 deaths since the outbreak began, according to health ministry data. However, President Jair Bolsonaro continued to downplay the impact of the pandemic and has pushed for lifting the lockdown in Sao Paolo.

Mexico reported 2,409 new infections, bringing its total confirmed COVID-19 cases to 42,595. An additional 257 coronavirus deaths brought total fatalities to 4,477. (Related: Mexico now cremating the dead on an industrial scale as the coronavirus pandemic reaches staggering number of fatalities all covered up, China-style.)

We are in the most difficult moment of the first wave of the epidemic, explained Hugo Lopez-Gatell, who heads Mexicos coronavirus response. The deputy health minister also warned that the country was still at the peak of its pandemic cycle, with government data showing over half of the hospitals in Mexico City were saturated with coronavirus patients.

Pandemic.news has the latest on the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.

Sources include:

Reuters.com

NewVision.co.ug

ChannelNewsAsia.com
NCP chief Sharad Pawar on Friday



paid a visit to an isolation facility that is being set up on the MMRDA ground here for the treatment of non-critical COVID-19 patients.

Pawar was accompanied by Maharashtra Health Minister Rajesh Tope during his visit to the facility, where 1,000 patients can be treated.

The facility is being constructed by the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) in view of the rise in the number of COVID-19 patients in the city.

"A quarantine facility is being made available on MMRDA ground in Mumbai as part of preventive measures to curb spread of the coronavirus. Reviewed the quarantine facility and situation visiting it along with the states Public Health Minister @rajeshtope11," Pawar tweeted after the visit.

Meanwhile, Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray visited the 1,000-bed Corona Care Centre (CCC-2) at Nesco ground in Goregaon, a statement said.

This facility has been set up in hall numbers two and three. It has 1,240-bed capacity and has oxygen supply facility.

Thackeray expressed satisfaction over the arrangements made at the facility, the chief minister's office (CMO) said in the statement.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Copyright  2020 Albuquerque Journal

SANTA FE  Santa Fe Public Schools is planning on cutting millions of dollars from its operational budget, at least for now.

Superintendent Veronica Garcia presented the plan Thursday in a virtual meeting of the Santa Fe School Board Finance Committee and said the cuts are due primarily to lower enrollment and reductions in some funding sources, and need to be made to cover a $6.36 million deficit in its operational budget.

If approved by the school board, the district would cut around $1.87 million in contracts. Garcia said in an interview Thursday that reduced contracts would include training, facilitation services and printing, but did not specifically list which contracts would be affected. Some contracts would receive only a partial reduction, she said.

She also said a sharp reduction in the number of special education students in the district means contractors providing services to those students, such as physical and occupational therapists, will see a reduction in their contracts.

Cuts would also include eliminating eight positions in the district office, while individual school sites would remain unscathed. The cuts to positions are expected to save the district $780,000, although Garcia did not specify the positions that would be cut, saying those employees had not been notified.

People will take on additional duties, Garcia said during the meeting.

SFPS, like many school districts in New Mexico, has seen continually declining enrollment in recent years. Student enrollment plays a large part in determining the amount of state funding districts receive.

Special education, fine arts materials and funding for employee recruitment are also slated to receive cuts on board approval.

The district will have to approve and submit a budget to the Public Education Department by June 3. However, the budget may change drastically, even after it is submitted.

A special session by the New Mexico State Legislature is expected to take place some time in June in response to decimated state revenues due to a pandemic-induced drop in oil prices.

District leaders say the budget may need to be adjusted if state funding changes significantly.

We may need to come back in July if there are significant movements in the special session in June, Board President Kate Noble said. I think its responsible to think about that.

The board will have to approve the cuts during its next finance study session, which will either be May 26 or 28.
Mr Gbeawu Daniel Y. Nonah, Acting Director of the Department of Social Welfare has attributed the increase in street children in major cities of the country to the breakdown of the extended Family system.



Parents tend to get involved with their community more often than people living alone. What's more, they teach their children at a young age that the only way they can control what kind of community they have is to contribute to it. When parents contribute to their community by donating money or needed supplies.



These were in a statement signed by Mr Nonah and copied to the Ghana News Agency on Friday to commemorate the International day of the Family on the theme; Families in Development.



International Family day is an occasion to celebrate the importance of the family and the benefits from the family and to reflect on how families were affected by changing social and economic trends, and what could be done to strengthen families in response especially during this COVID-19 era.



The statement said the purpose of families was to maintain the well-being of its members and of society.



Ideally, families would offer predictability, structure, and safety as members mature and participate in the community. In most societies, it is within families that children acquire socialization for life outside the family.



Additionally, as the basic unit for meeting the basic needs of its members, it provides a sense of boundaries for performing tasks in a safe environment, ideally builds a person into a functional adult, transmits culture, and ensures continuity of humankind with precedents of knowledge.



The statement said Parents and sibling were the closest and the biggest security in our families.

The kind of person we become depends of the families we grow in. 



It said the theme focused on the importance of the family, the basic social unit called the family was tasked with meeting the basic needs of those family members who could not provide for themselves.



This include; minors, the elderly and disabled, or simply those who can't afford to live by themselves. Basic needs such as food, water, shelter, and clean air are accessible when one or more members can provide these things for the whole family.



Families spend so much time and energy supporting each other through difficult times because of the bonds they've created and nurtured since the time each of them became a part of the family.

The community benefits when the family relieves it of the burden of supporting members of that family.



The statement said Healthy families produced people who made positive contributions to the community too.

Source: GNA









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Nearly 3 million laid-off workers applied for US unemployment benefits last week as the viral outbreak forced more companies to slash jobs even though most states have begun to let some businesses reopen. Roughly 36 million people have now sought jobless aid in just the two months since the coronavirus first forced businesses to close down and shrink their workforces, the government said Thursday.

An additional 842,000 people applied for aid last week through a separate program for self-employed and gig workers. All told, the figures point to a job market gripped by its worst crisis in decades and an economy that is sinking into a deep downturn. The pace of new applications for aid has declined over the past several weeks but is still four times the record high that prevailed before the coronavirus struck hard in March.

The waves of job cuts have heightened concerns that additional government aid, on top of the nearly 3 trillion already allocated, is necessary to sustain the economy. Without another aid package, many economists worry that thousands of small businesses will go bankrupt, leaving millions of the unemployed with no job to return to. And state and local governments, facing huge revenue shortfalls, could be forced to lay off millions more workers and cut services.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this week stressed his belief that Congress should consider providing additional rescue money to avoid prolonging an economic catastrophe. Republicans in Congress are locked in a standoff with Democrats, who have proposed trillions more in aid. Republican leaders say they want to first see how the previous rescue packages affect the economy and have expressed skepticism about approving much more spending now. That sentiment has alarmed some economists.

There really isn't any sign that the labor market is bottoming out yet, said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, the career website. The Trump administration insists that as states reopen, more Americans will shop, dine out and resume other activities, thereby stimulating the economy. But early data suggests it is fear of contracting the virus, even more than shutdown orders, that may be impairing the economy.

Without stronger public health measures, such as widespread testing or a vaccine, economists say such fear will depress growth even as more states reopen their economies. Even though Georgia reopened its restaurants for sit-down dining late last month, Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, said data from the reservation site OpenTable shows that reservations are still 91% below their pre-virus level.

Simply ending lockdowns is not going to be a panacea for these companies," Ozimek said. People aren't going out because they don't feel safe yet." The number of people seeking unemployment benefits actually rose last week in Georgia, as well as in Florida, which has also started to reopen. In Florida, that increase likely reflects a troubled system that caused a belated processing of claims that had been filed earlier.

A few other states that have lifted some restrictions, like South Carolina and Texas, reported declines in jobless claims. President Donald Trump appeared to respond to the report by tweeting, Good numbers coming out of States that are opening. America is getting its life back! In Ohio, shopping malls have reopened for the first time since March but have seen little traffic. Roughly two-thirds of the stores in one mall outside Toledo were still closed Tuesday.

Ozimek pointed to signs that business failures are rising. A study from the Becker-Friedman Institute found that 43% of small businesses have closed, at least temporarily. Other research has found that half of small businesses lack enough cash to survive longer than a month without revenue. Those are the signs that we've stretched the economy too far, and it's starting to tear," Ozimek said.

Also read: Coronavirus impact: Trump pulls out US pension fund from Chinese investments

Also read: US job losses reach Great Depression levels; unemployment rate soars to 14.7%
Agreement over the fast food pay deal that sparked a spate of insults within the union movement has broken down between the union and employer group that negotiated it.

The Shop, Distributive and Allied Employees Association, which represents fast food workers, appeared to have agreed on a deal with employer body Ai Group to trade shift certainty and overtime in a bid to help save jobs at corporate chains like McDonald's that cannot access the federal government's JobKeeper scheme.

A pay fight over workers at fast food restaurants has ended up in the Fair Work Commission. Credit:Craig Hopkins

On Friday, after weeks of negotiations, the SDA said it could not support a clause in the deal allowing for restaurants with a COVID-19 case to close and stand down staff because it believes "paid COVID-19 leave should be available to employees as it is a worker health and safety issue".

SDA national secretary Gerard O'Dwyer said it had "not been a part of the discussions regarding the close-down provision", after a hearing in the Fair Work Commission on Friday.
Parents who refuse to send their children to school after coronavirus restrictions are lifted and classes resume could be slapped with a $1,000 fine.

Mandatory attendance rules will re-introduced in Western Australia requiring students to physically attend school from Monday.

Premier Mark McGowan told reporters on Thursday that children would learn more effectively if they were physically at school.

WA Premier Mark McGowan said parents will be fined if they do not send their children to school without a valid reason

'It's time for all West Australian students to go back to school and go back to the classroom,' he said

'This decision has the support of all stakeholders in the education sector and our health experts.'

Students who are kept home from school will no longer be provided learning materials and will be marked as absent unless they present a valid reason.

'The fines are $1,000 but there is an extensive process that tries to engage families to try and address the absenteeism,' Education Minister Sue Ellery said.

Mr McGowan said exceptions will be granted if a student or a family member is medically vulnerable.

Students who are kept home from school will no longer be provided learning materials and will be marked as absent. Pictured are children in Queensland returning to school on Monday

However, being 'nervous' about contracting coronavirus will not be counted as an exemption.

Western Australia recorded just three coronavirus cases in 14 days as the state slowly emerges from lockdown.

Students were sent back to school in Queensland and New South Wales on Monday as states attempt to loosen restrictions as infection rates decline.

NSW has still limited face-to-face learning to one day per week with normal attendance expected to resume by term three.

Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews announced on Tuesday students would be returning to school in stages.

Prep, Grade 1, Grade 2, Year 11 and Year 12 students will return to class on May 26 while all others will on June 9.
Attorneys for Travis McMichael, charged with murder in the Feb. 23 death of Ahmaud Arbery, implored the public not to rush judgment on the case before knowing all the facts.

We are asking everybody who is following this case.. who are forming opinions without knowing all the facts to just take a breath because all the facts will come out," attorney Robert Rubin told reporters outside of his Decatur, Georgia office on Thursday.

Rubin and Jason Sheffield said they were retained by Travis McMichael on Monday.

According to The Macon Telegraph in Georgia, Gregory McMichael, also charged with murder in the case, has retained attorneys Laura D. Hogue and her husband, Franklin J. Hogue of Macon.

Sheffield said they plan to ask a judge to release Travis McMichael on bond. He expects there will be a virtual bond hearing soon.

Sheffield and Rubin declined to release many details about the case, but said McMichael has a "presumption of innocence."

The legal team representing Arbery's family issued a statement of their own on Thursday.

"We agree with the attorneys for Travis McMichael that the justice system affords all citizens the presumption of innocence and that there shouldn't be a rush to judgment or stereotyping," said S. Lee Merritt, Benjamin Crump and L. Chris Stewart, attorneys for the mother and father of Arbery, "We only wish that their client . . . had provided that same presumption of innocence to Ahmaud Arbery before chasing and killing him."

They added, "The men who ambushed Ahmaud Arbery rushed to judgment . . . Mr. Arbery is the victim and his family was left with a lifetime of pain. The family continues to pray for justice for Ahmaud.

Rubin said they would be reviewing the video and other evidence as well as talking to witnesses.

"Our commitment you and Mr. McMichael is to review everything in this case and not judge anything until we have all the facts," Sheffield said.

Story continues

Days before Arbery was pursued by the McMichaels and fatally shot after being spotted inside a home under construction, neighbors  including one of the suspects  reported an earlier encounter with a person wandering through the open-framed structure.

Owner Larry English found nothing stolen from the site where he's building a home in the Satilla Shores subdivision where 25-year-old Arbery was slain Feb. 23, English's attorney said Wednesday. But she said there had been four or five instances in which unauthorized people entered the property before Arbery was shot.

Nothing was ever taken from the English property, attorney J. Elizabeth Graddy said in a statement Wednesday. She added that Mr. English is deeply distressed by Mr. Arberys death.

Demonstrators gather with signs and masks to protest the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery.

A 911 call more than a week before the shooting

Graddy also shared security camera video from the home site taken Feb. 11, less than two weeks before the shooting, that briefly shows a man walking inside the structure. She said English has been unable to find security video from the prior instances.

Attorneys for Arbery's family have said a man caught on security video from English's home immediately before the shooting was Arbery and the footage shows he committed no crime. It's unknown whether it's also Arbery in the newly released video taken 11 days earlier.

Travis McMichael called 911 on Feb. 11 to report what he considered to be a suspicious man at the construction site, according to audio obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

I was leaving the neighborhood and I just caught a guy running into a house being built, McMichael said during the 911 call, according to the newspaper. When I turned around, he took off running into the house.

Weve been having a lot of burglaries and break-ins around here lately, McMichael told the operator.

English lives far from where the home is being built just outside the port city of Brunswick, 70 miles south of Savannah. Graddy said the night of Feb. 11 he received an alert when motion inside the construction site triggered a security camera. English sent a text message to a neighbor, Diego Perez, asking him to check on the house.

According to Graddy, the neighbor soon sent English a text: The police showed up and we all searched for a good while. I think he got spooked and ran after Travis confronted him. Travis says the guy ran into the house. Let me know if he shows up or if they find him.

Travis McMichael lives near the home English is building. He is charged with felony murder and aggravated assault, accused of firing the three shotgun blasts that struck Arbery at close range. His father, former police officer and district attorney's investigator Gregory McMichael, also has been jailed on the same charges. As of Wednesday afternoon, no attorneys had filed notice with Glynn County Magistrate Court that they were representing the McMichaels.

English declined to comment to the Associated Press when reached by phone Wednesday, instead referring a reporter to his attorney.

Arbery's mother, Wanda Cooper-Jones, has said her son was merely jogging through the subdivision at the time. He lived with his mother roughly 2 miles from the subdivision where he was shot.

More than two months passed before the McMichaels were charged in the case. They were arrested last week soon after the Georgia Bureau of Investigation began looking into the case and cellphone video of Arbery's killing leaked online, causing a national outcry.

According to an incident report by Glynn County police, Gregory McMichael, 64, said he and his son armed themselves and chased Arbery in a pickup truck after seeing him run down their street. Gregory McMichael told police he suspected Arbery was a burglar, and said Arbery attacked McMichael's 34-year-old son before the younger McMichael shot him.

Even if something had have got stolen from my property and it had been Ahmaud, I wouldnt have wanted him to have lost his life for it, English told CBS This Morning.

Brumback reported from Atlanta.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY NETWORK: Attorneys for Travis McMichael say he has "presumption of innocence"
15.05.2020 LISTEN

The Ashanti Regional Security Council (REGSEC) has expressed worry over the rising in COVID-19 disease cases in Obuasi.

Obuasi, a mining community, has become one of the hotspots for the pandemic, according to the latest report released by the Ghana Health Service (GHS).

The development is creating uneasiness and anxiety amongst the populace.

Currently, a team of experts from the GHS is currently at Obuasi trying to assess the situation there to subsequently provide an advisory to government.

The REGSEC has decided to hold an emergency meeting in order to find the way forward over the development, Mr. Simon Osei-Mensah, Chairman of the Council and also the Regional Minister, confirmed this to the media in Kumasi.

Ghana's confirmed COVID-19 cases as of May 14, had increased by 122, bringing the total number of cases to 5,530 with 674 recoveries and 24 deaths.

Sixty-two out of the new cases were recorded in the Ashanti Region, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in the Region to 724.

The Obuasi Municipality and Obuasi East District together have recorded more than 270 cases COVID-19 and one death.

Mr. Osei-Mensah indicated that the Security Council was working with the health experts to tackle the situation head-on, adding that they would make sure that all health guidelines and protocols were adhered to strictly by all and sundry.

Meanwhile, the Obuasi East District Chief Executive (DCE), Ms. Faustina Amissah, has appealed to the government to impose a curfew with the view to containing and minimizing the incidence of COVID-19 in the area.

The citizenry has become very recalcitrant regarding compliance to the laid down social distancing and mandatory wearing of nose masks, she told the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in an interview.

The DCE said the imposition of a curfew had become the only option to restrict the movement of the residents while enforcing the letter all the health protocols.
HOUSTON, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Harvest Oil & Gas Corp. (OTCQX: HRST) (Harvest or the Company) announced today that it has filed a Form 15 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (the SEC) to voluntarily deregister its common stock, par value $0.01 per share (the Common Stock) and suspend its reporting obligations under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the Exchange Act). As a result of the Form 15 filing, the Company will no longer be required to file reports under the Exchange Act, including annual reports on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K.



Due to its recent reverse stock split, Harvests shares are currently quoted and traded on OTC Markets OTCQX U.S. Premier Marketplace (the OTCQX) under the trading symbol HRSTD. Harvest anticipates that its Common Stock will continue to be quoted and trade on the OTCQX under the trading symbol HRSTD through June 8, 2020, after which time it would be quoted and traded on the OTCQX under the trading symbol HRST. However, the Company can give no assurance that trading in the Common Stock will continue in the future on the OTCQX or on any other securities exchange or quotation medium. The Company does not expect deregistration to adversely affect the Companys business operations.

Harvest intends to continue to provide periodic financial information, including continuing to engage an independent public accounting firm to perform an annual audit of its financial statements. In the event that the Common Stock continues to be quoted on the OTCQX, Harvest will provide financial and other business information under the OTC Markets Alternative Reporting Standards. The deregistration of the Common Stock and Harvests transition to the alternative reporting standards of the OTC Market will allow Harvest to reduce costs while continuing to provide periodic financial information to its shareholders.

About Harvest Oil & Gas Corp.

Harvest is an independent oil and gas company engaged in the efficient operation and development of onshore oil and gas properties in the continental United States. The Companys assets consist primarily of producing and non-producing properties in the Appalachian Basin (which includes the Utica Shale) and Michigan. More information about Harvest is available on the internet at https://www.hvstog.com .

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains certain statements that are, or may be deemed to be, forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. All statements, other than statements of historical facts, included in this press release that address activities, events or developments that the Company expects, believes or anticipates will or may occur in the future are forward-looking statements. The Company has based these forward-looking statements largely on its current expectations and projections about future events and financial trends affecting the financial condition of its business. These forward-looking statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, most of which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond its control. Please read the Companys filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Risk Factors in its Annual Report on Form 10-K, and other public filings and press releases for a discussion of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those anticipated or implied in such forward-looking statements. The words believe, may, estimate, continue, anticipate, intend, plan, expect, indicate and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements.

You are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof. The Company undertakes no obligation to correct or update any forward-looking statement, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.

Harvest Oil & Gas Corp., Houston, TX

Ryan Stash, Vice President and CFO

713-651-1144

hvstog.com
Barley crop being harvested on the property in central-west New South Wales. (Greg Wood/AFP via Getty Images)

Chinas Australian Barley Tariff Has No Basis: Graincorp CEO

The CEO of one of Australias largest grain exporters, Graincorp, has said that Chinas proposed tariffs on barley have no basis for being imposed.

His comments come as the barley and meat industries are caught in the middle of escalating trade tensions between China and Australia.

Robert Spurway of Graincorp told The Australian that he would not comment or speculate on the outcome of Australias response to Chinas anti-dumping investigation.

However, he did say, Clearly, it is our preference that there are no tariffs imposed and its our view that there is no basis for them to be imposed.

China is an important customer and we expect it will be an important market for us into the future as well, he said.

He admitted the industrys outlook would be negative if Chinas proposed 80 percent tariffs were implemented.

Any tariffs imposed on agriculture really have an impact in the long term on Australian growers, and Australian growers are very much part of our network and very important to us. Therefore, achieving a desirable outcome is in our interests and their interests.

His comments echo the stance taken by the federal government front bench, who have focused on addressing each issue on its merits.

Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told Channel 10 television on May 14 that the government was preparing a case in response to the investigation.

We will put forward the strongest possible case that we can  to show and provide all of the evidence that is necessary to show that our Australian barley producers price their barley competitively, dont dump it onto the Chinese market, and certainly dont deserve to have duties or taxes or tariffs applied to them, he said.

And that our meat processors provide quality, reliable, safe meat and that they will absolutely adhere to all labelling standards that are required in the future.

Federal frontbenchers including Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne, and Birmingham have avoided associating Chinas economic actions with Australias call to investigate the origins of the virus.

However, outside of the front bench, members of parliament have been vocal in their criticism of the Chinese regime including Senators Sarah Henderson and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, as well as Members of Parliament Barnaby Joyce and George Christensen.

In an unusual move, the Australian Workers Union (AWU)that typically support Laborhave supported the Liberal governments stance, and launched a national campaign on May 14 called We Wont Be Bullied By China.

AWUs National Secretary Dan Walton said: It is critical that the Australian Government holds its nerve against such pressure and enforces its international and domestic rights.

Labor Senator Kimberley Kitching and former Labor leader Bill Shorten have voiced their support of the AWUs stance.
DALLAS  Nearly two dozen lawsuits alleging worker misclassification involving nude and topless dancers have been filed since the beginning of January, according to AVN research.

Each of the federal lawsuits involve at least one exotic dancer who has alleged violations of the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) by alleging the strip clubs misclassified them as independent contractors.

The suits, typically filed as collective actions, seek additional plaintiffs who were violated.

Collective actions under the FLSA are like class actions, but they work differently. In a collective action, the employees who want to be part of the lawsuit must affirmatively opt in by signing a document to that effect.

Gregg Greenberg, a Silver Springs, Md.-based attorney working on behalf of plaintiffs who worked at the Night Trips club in Tulsa, Okla., told AVN that the theme of strip club dancer misclassification lawsuits is the same: The law is very well settled  dancer employees cant be independent contractors.

In research seeking FLSA civil actions since Jan. 1, seven adult clubs offering exotic dancing in Florida were sued over wage violations; another seven clubs in Texas also faced litigation. Four clubs in California faced similar legal claims, as well as venues in Massachusetts, Michigan, Oklahoma and Wisconsin.

In each of the suits filed, exotic dancer plaintiffs alleged clubs broke the law when they failed to pay them an hourly wage, often requiring them instead to pay operators to work there through house fees.

Here are 22 U.S. clubs offering nude and topless dancing that have been sued this year for allegations of worker misclassification (since Jan. 1):

California

Goldfingers Gentlemens Club

Silver Reign

Skin Gentlemens Club

Synn Gentlemens Club

Florida



Booby Trap on the River

Cheetah Hallandale Beach

E11EVEN Miami

Flash Dancer

Mermaids Gentlemens Clubs

Pink Pony

Solid Gold Gentlemens Club



Massachusetts



Kings Inn Premier Gentlemens Club



Michigan



The Fight Club



Oklahoma



Night Trips

Texas



Heartbreakers Gentlemens Club

The Landing Strip

The Palazio

PoleKatz

PTs Mens Club

Stilettos Cabaret

Yellow Rose



Wisconsin



Full Moon Saloon

Since 2005 and through the end of last year, a Bloomberg study found 406 lawsuits by dancers alleging clubs misclassified them as independent contractors. More than half of the cases ended in a settlement.

One of the biggest settlements involved the Spearmint Rhino chain, which paid $13 million to thousands of current and former dancers. Another case that didnt reach trial involved Deja Vu Showgirls, which agreed to pay out $1.5 million to dancers.

Some misclassification cases involving exotic dancers have ended with big jury awards. A Los Angeles County Superior Court jury awarded several hundred dancers at Paradise Show Girls $6.5 million. In another case, operators of Ricks Cabaret in New York were ordered to pay $10.8 million in back wages to 1,900 dancers.

Pictured: Stilettos Cabaret in Fort Worth, Texas.
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

Former Vice President Joe Biden said he wouldn't vote for himself if he believed his accuser Tara Reade, and encouraged people who did believe her to vote with "their heart."

The former vice president and 2020 presumptive Democratic candidate appeared on MSNBC's "The Last Word," on Thursday with Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, who is apparently in talks to be his running mate.

"If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me," Biden said during the MSNBC interview. "I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade. There is no truth to it. I promise you."

First reported by Business Insider, Reade filed a criminal complaint alleging that Biden sexually assaulted her in a congressional hallway when she was a staffer in his Senate office in 1993.

While Biden's campaign and former Senate staffers in Biden's office have denied her allegations, a neighbor of Reade corroborated her story to Business Insider.

Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Former Vice President and 2020 presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden encouraged people who believe his accuser Tara Reade to vote with "their heart," but stated there is "no truth" to her claims.

He appeared alongside Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on MSNBC's "The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell" on Thursday.

"If they believe Tara Reade, they probably shouldn't vote for me," Biden said during the MSNBC interview. "I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade. There is no truth to it. I promise you."

First reported by Business Insider, Reade filed a criminal complaint against Biden, accusing him of sexual assault in a 1993 incident when she worked for his Senate office while in her 20s. The former vice president has consistently denied the allegation.

In the complaint, Reade accused Biden of putting his hands under her skirt and penetrating her with his fingers without her consent in a Senate corridor in 1993. A neighbor of Reade's corroborated her story to Business Insider, saying she was told of the alleged incident several years later.

Story continues

Biden's campaign and several former Senate staffers in Biden's office have denied her allegations, saying they don't remember Reade.

In an exclusive interview Megyn Kelly, Reade claimed that Biden told her "I want to f--- you" during the alleged 1993 assault.

"He said it low, and I was pushing away, and I remember my knee hurting because our knees  he had opened my legs with his knee  and our kneecaps clashed, so I felt that sharp pain," Reade told Kelly.

Biden emphasized during the MSNBC interview that women have a right to be heard, but said, "I give you my word: it never, ever happened," adding that he thinks Reade's story "changes considerably" during retellings.

Read the original article on Business Insider
On Tuesday, the Supreme Court held oral arguments by telephone on expedited petitions by President Donald Trump to block lower court orders that compel his accounting firm, Mazars USA, and two of his biggest lenders, Deutsche Bank and Capital One, to turn over tax returns and other financial documents. The documents relate to transactions that occurred prior to Trumps taking office.

The first case concerns congressional subpoenas served by the House Oversight and Reform Committee, which claims the documents will help formulate appropriate conflict of interest rules, given Trumps complex international financial holdings, and by the Intelligence and Financial Services committees, which are investigating purported foreign influence in the 2016 election.

The second case arose from subpoenas issued by a Manhattan grand jury, which is investigating payoffs made on candidate Trumps behalf to silence women with whom he allegedly had sexual affairs, a potential violation of New York campaign finance laws.

United States Supreme Court Building (Wikimedia Commons)

The decisions to be handed down later this year are widely viewed as potentially historic in scope and impact. They threaten both to undercut congressional authority to rein in the executive branch and create a novel presidential immunity from criminal investigations. Both would be significant steps toward the consolidation of a unitary executive that can wield unchallengeable authoritarian rule.

There are significant layers of the ruling class that want a unitary executive, even in the hands of a sociopath like Trump, to confront the exploding social crisis in the United States and the mounting geopolitical crises facing American imperialism around the world.

The goal of insulating Trump seemed to animate the comments and questions of the five most right-wing justicesChief Justice John Roberts and Associate Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.

There are several facts, however, that stand in the way of quashing the subpoenas. Because the documents relate to Trumps extensive financial dealings before he became president, rather than any conduct while in office, there is no claim of executive privilege. Similarly, because the documents are not communications between Trump and his lawyers, there is no attorney-client protection either.

In fact, the subpoenas are not directed to Trump at all, and he is under no obligation to respond to them. Thus Trump cannot even claim that the burden of complying with the requests for documents would distract him from his presidential duties in administering the executive branch.

Nevertheless, Trumps Supreme Court petitions assert that a sitting president can block everyone with whom he did business before the inauguration from turning over documents relating to their transactions to congressional committees or to grand juries investigating criminal conduct.

All six lower courts that have ruled on Trumps motions to quash the subpoenasthree federal district courts and three United States courts of appealsrejected his breathtakingly broad claim that a sitting president has blanket immunity from congressional and criminal investigations, even subpoenas directed at third parties in possession of documents generated before his or her taking office, because they could be harassing.

Many were surprised when the Supreme Court accepted review, as the lower court rulings were grounded in a series of Supreme Court decisions that have been followed for decades. The principal precedent, decided unanimously in 1974, rejected President Richard Nixons claim of executive privilege and ordered him to respond to federal grand jury subpoenas seeking information about the Watergate burglary and ensuing cover-up. That ruling led directly to the release of incriminating White House tapes, and ultimately to Nixons resignation in disgrace.

The second precedent, also decided unanimously, is the 1997 decision that allowed the Paula Jones civil case for sexual harassment against Bill Clinton, which allegedly occurred long before Clintons elevation to the White House, to proceed while he was still in office. During the deposition that took place as a result of the Supreme Courts ruling, Clinton gave an untruthful response to a question about sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. That became the pretext for an anti-democratic impeachment drive in which the newest Supreme Court associate justice, Brett Kavanaugh, participated as an assistant to Special Prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

On Tuesday, Trumps personal lawyer, Patrick Strawbridge, argued first, lashing out at the House committees for supposedly harassing the president by seeking his financial information from third parties. Chief Justice Roberts forced Strawbridge to concede that Congress must have at least some power to subpoena the presidents personal papers, and summed up the issue as the courts balancing the competing interests on either side.

Most of the ensuing banter between the justices and the attorneys, including both a deputy solicitor general and Solicitor General Noel Francisco himself arguing in favor of Trumps positions, concerned the extent to which the general subpoena power of Congress or a grand jury should be limited when directed at documents relating to a sitting presidents activities before assuming office.

After House of Representatives lawyer Douglas Letter took the position that congressional subpoenas should be enforced so long as they are relevant to a legislative purpose, Roberts asked for an example of a subject that you think is beyond any legislation that Congress could write. When Letter opted not to make up a hypothetical on the spot, and instead responded that Congress legislative power is extremely broad, Roberts responded, [T]hat is not really much of a test. Its not a limitation.

Right-wing Associate Justice Samuel Alito, acting more like another lawyer for Trump than a judge, told Letter he was somewhat baffled that the protection against the use of a subpoena for harassment of the president is simply the assessment whether the subpoena is relevant to some conceivable legislative purpose. Thats no protection, is it? Alito asked rhetorically.

Alitos questioning assumed that the federal judiciary, and ultimately the Supreme Court, needs to protect the president from being harassed by the House of Representatives, even where the harassment consists of nothing more than serving third parties with subpoenas for documents.

Nor was it explained how compelling the production of existing documents regarding a presidents prior financial transactions might constitute harassment. The premise of Alitos question was that the documents contents are embarrassing for Trump.

In any event, according to the powers of oversight granted to Congress by the US Constitution, in principle, the House of Representatives should itself determine whether subpoenaed documents relate to its own legitimate legislative concerns. The Supreme Courts inserting itself and the entire federal judiciary, which is increasingly stacked with Trump-appointed reactionaries, between the House and the executive branch to arbitrate when congressional investigations are too harassing, is itself an anti-democratic infringement on the balance of powers between the three branches of government.

The House was conceived of by the framers as the most democratic of all United States government bodies. Created first by Article 1, Section 2 of the Constitution, its members are elected directly every two years, and are apportioned by population. In contrast, the judiciary, as set forth in Article 3, is the least democratic, as its members are lifetime appointees insulated from any popular vote.

Initiating the second argument, Trumps personal attorney Jay Sekulow told the Supreme Court that Article 2 of the Constitution, which creates the executive branch, gives Trump temporary presidential immunity from any criminal investigation while in office, including grand jury subpoenas for documents served on third parties. The fact that the Supreme Court would even consider whether the president is so broadly exempt from rules of law that apply to everyone else underscores the speed with which basic democratic norms are being dismantled.

Based on the questions and statements made during Tuesdays oral arguments, most commentators expect rulings that will give Trump some, but not all, the protection he seeks. There are multiple countervailing political considerations at play among the nine justices, so predictions about which legal positions will ultimately receive the necessary five votes cannot be made with any accuracy.

Typically, the decisions would be expected before the end of the Supreme Courts current term, shortly before the July 4 holiday. It is not known presently to what extent the COVID-19 crisis will delay resolution. Moreover, the rulings may very well fashion new legal standards, with the cases being sent back to the lower courts for redeterminations, leading to more appeals that will delay any resolution until after the November election.
Plymouth, Massachusetts--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc. (CSE: PRT) (OTC: PLRTF) (FSE: 4XA) (WKN# A2N8RH) ("Plymouth Rock", "PRT", or the "Company") today announced that it has completed the final tranche of the non-brokered private placement (the "Offering") described in its news release of April 13, 2020. In connection with the closing of the Offering, the Company issued an aggregate of 3,718,831 units (the "Units") at a price of CDN$0.15 per Unit for gross proceeds of CDN$557,825. Together with the first tranche, which closed on April 24, 2020, the Company raised aggregate gross proceeds of $1,027,074.75.

Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (a "Share") and one whole transferable common share purchase warrant (a "Warrant"). Each whole Warrant is exercisable to acquire one Share at an exercise price of CDN$0.20 per Share until May 15, 2022.

The Company will pay 7% cash finder's fees in connection with some of subscriptions from subscribers introduced to this Offering

The securities issued under the Offering, and any Shares that may be issuable on exercise of any such securities, will be subject to a statutory hold period expiring four months and one day from the date of issuance of such securities.

Plymouth Rock intends to use the net proceeds of the Offering for commercialization of technology and working capital.

About Plymouth Rock Technologies Inc.

We are on a mission to bring engineering-driven answers to the most critical problems that threaten our safety. We work with government, law enforcement and military to innovate solutions for national security, defense and space systems. The Company is developing the next generation of threat detection solutions, The PRT X1 is a purpose built multirotor Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS). The unit contains an integrated sensor package that combines Thermal detection with 4K HD real-time air-to-ground streaming. Our advanced threat detection methods fuse artificial intelligence with augmented reality interfaces to eliminate human operating error. Plymouth Rock products, both airborne and land-based, will scan for threat items at greater "stand-off" distances than current existing technologies. Our unique radar imaging and signal processing technology creates new opportunities for remotely operated, none intrusive screening of crowds in real time.



Plymouth Rock's other core technologies include: (1) A Millimeter Remote Imaging from Airborne Drone ("MIRIAD"); (2) A compact microwave radar system for scanning shoe's ("Shoe-Scanner").

www.plyrotech.com

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS



Dana Wheeler

President and CEO

+1-603-300-7933

info@plyrotech.com

Investor Information:

Tasso Baras

+1-778-477-6990

Forward Looking Statements

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co-operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. A number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These forward looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions and dependence upon regulatory approvals. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55995
The Indian Navy will be purchasing 21 helicopters to be built in Troy at the Lockheed-owned Sikorsky manufacturing facility, according to government contract information released Thursday.

In addition, the U.S. Navy will purchase three of the MH-60R Seahawk helicopters.

Work is expected to be complete by September 2024. The deal reportedly totals $2.6 billion, according to Naval News.

AL.com coronavirus coverage

Tom Kane, director of Sikorsky Naval Helicopter Programs, said the company looks forward to supporting the Indian armed forces for the next 30 years.

The MH-60R provides a vital capability in the Indo-Pacific region and equips the Indian Navy with a tremendous capability that is ready for operations immediately upon delivery, Kane said.

The MH-60R is billed as the worlds most advanced maritime helicopter, equipped for anti-submarine and anti-surface warfare, special operations, surveillance, and search and rescue.

U.S. Sen. Doug Jones said the deal will protect over 200 jobs at the Troy facility, while providing improved capabilities to one of our partners. Jones lauded the company for its work during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lockheed has continued hiring additional employees and apprentices to accelerate and continue their critical defense contracting work, by providing financial and operational support to vulnerable businesses in the supply chain, by providing personal protective equipment (PPE) and transport for COVID-19 responders, and by delivering meals to those suffering from hunger during this crisis," Jones said in a statement.
This month, in a long overdue change, the Senate finally started holding hybrid hearings, allowing both senators and health experts to appear via videoconferencing as well as in the Senate chamber. This occurred months after other public and private organizations all over the world had already made the transition to remote work. Just last week, the House majority leader introduced rule changes, passed on Friday, allowing the House to follow suit by permitting both remote hearings and remote voting.

While its heartening to see Congress finally making these changes, its also discouraging how long it has taken and how much resistance there has been to moving the legislative process online when lawmakers could  and should  have been meeting via videoconferencing for months. One month after the British cabinets first meeting via Zoom, the U.S. Congress still had no platform or plan in place to enable remote debates or voting. Even now, with remote options slowly becoming available, many lawmakers still meet in person.

The House Committee on Rules in late March issued a report, Examining Voting Options During the Covid-19 Pandemic, which said, By far the best option is to use the existing House rules and current practices. Those current practices include passing legislation by unanimous consent or voice vote if an in-person quorum cant be reached. That seems increasingly likely to occur given how many members of Congress are currently in quarantine because they have either tested positive for Covid-19 or been exposed to someone who is infected. In the event of a recorded vote, the report recommends holding votes open longer than normal and having Members vote in shifts, sanitizing voting stations between uses, and controlling how many people are in the chamber and their proximity to each other.

These may be reasonable precautions, but they are entirely unnecessary because it is nowhere near as difficult or risky to set up a remote voting system for Congress as the report makes it seem. Although off-the-shelf products exist to allow a Member to videoconference their vote, for example, they have not been tested under the sort of pressure they would face from enemy states or other bad actors trying to force the system offline or prevent individual Members from accessing it, the report states. Such a system has to be extensively tested, not used for the first time on must-pass legislation.


Arcc Spaces flagship space at One Marina Boulevard will span 19,000 sq ft on the 20th floor, with sweeping views across Marina Bay and the CBD (Credit: Arcc Spaces)

SINGAPORE (EDGEPROP) - Justin Chen, CEO of flexible workspace operator Arcc Space, has had a front-row seat to the unfolding Covid-19 pandemic, helping him to anticipate, respond and adapt to the many twists and turns of the crisis.

Over the Lunar New Year period at end January, Chen had ensconced himself in Singapore when the number of Covid-19 cases was picking up pace in China. Singapore had only reported 13 positive coronavirus cases at the end of January.

However, Chen flew back to China in March when the number of cases peaked over there, reaching over 80,000 cases as at March 31. There was a push to normalise our business faster [in China], he tells EdgeProp Singapore, over a phone interview from Shanghai.

Since then, China has seen a gradual reopening of its economy, following its success to bring down numbers country-wide. On May 8, the Chinese government announced that recreational venues such as cinemas and museums would be gradually reopened, although mandatory reservations and a limit on numbers would be in place. New outbreaks in China reported over the past two months have mainly been restricted to residential compounds or hospitals.

In contrast, Singapore has seen its cases climb rapidly, totalling 23,787 cases as at May 11. The bulk of cases have largely been due to an outbreak among foreign workers, who are typically housed in packed dormitories. In response, the government has rolled out appropriate measures, ensuring that only essential services operate, and the bulk of the workforce to work from home till June 1.

Ive been fortunate in being able to spend time across both markets during this time, he shares. To date, Arcc Spaces runs in three other key Asian cities  Hong Kong, Kuala Lumpur, and Yangon. The Covid-19 situation has impacted different cities in different ways. Its not just from the way that the governments have responded, but also how the culture has responded to the challenges posed by the pandemic, he says.

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The common breakout space at at 99 Duxton Road (Credit: Arcc Spaces)

Being able to experience firsthand how the situation on the ground was in China helped Arcc Spaces move fast in response to safety precautions in other markets. Even before Singapore upgraded its alert level to Dorscon Orange, Arcc Spaces had already practised safety distancing in its centres at 75 High Street and 99 Duxton Road, says Chen.

Elsewhere in Yangon, Myanmars largest city, where the reported impact has been much lower, measures have included more frequent cleaning schedules and controls in terms of access to the workspace, Chen shares. As at May 11, Myanmar has reported 180 positive Covid-19 cases and six deaths.



One of the meeting rooms at Taikang Insurance Tower, Shanghai (Credit: Arcc Spaces)

What will be the future of work?

Without a doubt, the pandemic has put pressure on many companies to adopt change at an accelerated pace. It has also forced them to rely more on remote working practices such as virtual meetings and conference calls, and forced a shift to online project and workflow management platforms.

Worldwide, Covid-19 has also taken a toll on the internet as people and businesses shift online. Internet service providers in the UK, for instance, reported double-digit increases in traffic amid its lockdown in end-March. This trend was also seen in both Singapore and Malaysia, where internet traffic surged by as much as 60% in Singapore in early April as more employees began to work from home, while Malaysia reported a 23.5% jump in higher internet traffic during the first week of its lockdown period commencing March 18.

Given that the way we work will forever be transformed by the pandemic, Chen describes Covid-19 as the biggest experiment in flexible or remote working. This has challenged a lot of companies to reconsider how they allocate resources, how they plan their real estate strategy and even how they want their people to work  whether its a combination of remote working with in-office options or some other arrangement, he adds.

One thing experts agree on is that the Covid-19 pandemic is not expected to undermine the future of offices or dampen long-term demand for office spaces. Offices are essential to building culture and collaboration, and in fact a number of employees crave separation between home and work life, says Tim Armstrong, head of occupier services and commercial agency, at Knight Frank, Asia Pacific, at a digital press conference on March 31.

In the short term though, office vacancy levels are likely to rise. A flash survey of occupiers conducted by CBRE from late March to early April found that two-thirds of occupiers experienced delays to leasing decisions since the onset of the pandemic. The flexible working sector has also been hit hard, with most players cutting expansion plans.

Amid the post-pandemic recovery, Armstrong expects the hub-and-spoke model, which is typically adopted by larger firms, to trickle down to SMEs. This happens when companies maintain an office front in the CBD for its core staff, and shift backend employees to further office spaces in less prime locations, where rents are typically cheaper.

Chen is optimistic that the flexible workspace industry is in a good position to cater to firms changing office needs. This is core to what flexible working is  being able to provide people with the options to the way they work, while also being a nexus or a community node for people to gather, he says.

The future of work is also moving to a holistic ecosystem where facilities and spaces for events, and dining areas are housed together with an office space, adds Chen. In the workplace, people are not just using the office as a place to work, and in the traditional sense of sitting deskbound, but there are now spaces for learning and development, networking, events, and presentations to key accounts or clients, he explains.



An open pantry helps facilitate dialogue, because people like to gather around food and drinks and mingle: Chen (Credit: Arcc Spaces)

360 approach to the lifecycle of work

The City in Beijing is Arcc Spaces answer to such a shift. Launched in 2016, it is the firms premium offering. The facility comprises four components: Shared office spaces; on-site events and conferencing facilities; an on-site club for c-suite executives; and Hudson, the firms own F&B concept. Chens team in Beijing comprises experts in trades spanning from F&B and events management to operations and office space management.

Chen says the concept caters for a 360 approach to the lifecycle of work, whether someone is coming in the morning to get some focused work done, whether they need to have a space to actually conduct business meetings, whether they are looking to host workshops or events, or whether they need to have a flexibility around project teams.

For example, the Beijing F&B team caters to a wide range of meal options, ranging from business lunches and dinners, to events and canapes, plus everything in between, says Chen.



The Hudson restaurant is Arcc Spaces own F&B concept in Beijing at The City (Credit: Arcc Spaces)

Impact of Covid-19

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, Arcc Spaces occupancy rates in Shanghai, Beijing and Singapore have been pretty stable at 70 to 80%, says Chen. The firms clientele ranges from long-term to short-term clients, with a predominant reliance on MNCs or larger SMEs in all markets. The proportion of the companys corporate customers  occupying a space of 10 workstations and above  currently stand at about 50%, while over 90% of clients take up more permanent arrangements, says Chen.

Although Chen admits some clients have been asking for rent reduction or terminating their contracts earlier, his team has also been fielding 15 to 20% more enquiries because of growing concern or the need for flexibility, a result of rolling out a dedicated recovery package with flexible components.

To understand how clients have been impacted by the crisis, Arcc Spaces has had one-on-one dialogue sessions with customers to offer them bespoke solutions. This can be about downsizing their requirements or making it a little bit more flexible through staggered rentals or take-ups, whether its changing their product offering completely from one where its a flex desk product to one where they are working virtually and we provide them with a network solution instead, he says, explaining that the last item typically involves providing administrative support or call answering and redirecting services.

Arcc Spaces had originally planned to launch its Singapore flagship project in April. Located at One Marina Boulevard, the fourth facility here will span 19,000 sq ft on the 20th floor, with sweeping views across Marina Bay and the CBD.



T

The facility will be a showcase of the best features and practices drawn from Arcc Spaces rich vein of projects and experiences elsewhere. One aspect Chen and his team have worked on is a greater allocation towards events and programming, he says. Such spaces should not just be a big empty room, but actually be paired with hospitality elements, like an open kitchen or pantry. This helps to facilitate dialogue, because people like to gather around food and drinks and mingle, he explains. There has been a lot of intuition around the way things are planned, adds Chen.

But as far as plans go, the pandemic has upended propositions globally. Arcc Spaces has had to postpone its launch till July. Beyond that, there is no denying that the Covid-19 pandemic has hastened the transformation of the workplace. Change in office space is only at its cusp and the reality is that it will very soon be less of a place to just park some desks, says Chen.

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Politburo member Minh lauded Canadas efforts in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, and thanked the Canadian Government for its coordination with and support to Vietnam in organising two fights bring home more than 550 Vietnamese citizens from the country.

He stressed the Vietnamese Governments resolve to contain the epidemic while promoting production and business.

For his part, Champagne congratulated Vietnam on its successes in coping with the pandemic, and thanked the country for its coordination in repatriating Canadians in China in January.

The Canadian minister expressed his hope for further information sharing and collaboration in the epidemic combat through bilateral and multilateral cooperation mechanisms.

The two sides spoke highly of the fruitful bilateral relations across spheres, especially after Vietnam and Canada established a comprehensive partnership in 2017 and began to realise the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

They agreed to step up the exchange of all-level delegations and maintain the existing mechanisms between the two foreign ministries.

The two sides pledged to closely coordinate with each other at regional and international forums during the time when Vietnam works as ASEAN Chair 2020 and a non-permanent member of the United Nations Security Council for 2020-2021.
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Kano state Governor, Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje has launched the second phase distribution of palliative materials to the needy and vulnerable in the state.

Ganduje who lauded the Kano COVID-19 Fund Raising Committee for successful completion of the first phase distribution urged Local Government chairmen across the state to participate fully in the distribution exercise.

Ganduje who promised to resolve disagreements between Kano state chapter of the Association of Local Government chairmen of Nigeria (ALGON) and the Executive Chairman of Kano State Public Complaints and Anti Corruption Commission, Bar. Muhuyi Magaji Rimin Gado, ordered the chairmen to participate in the second phase distribution of COVID-19 Palliatives to the poorest of the poor in the state.

247ureports.com, recalls that Bar. Muhuyi had in a Press Statement revealed that he got complaints that some Local Government Chairmen in the state allegedly diverted palliative materials during the first phase distribution.

Bar. Muhuyi also added that some of the chairmen were already under investigation.

But the chairman of the Kano COVID-19 Fund Raising Committee in charge of the Palliatives, Prof. Muhammad Yahuza Bello, told journalists that his Committee was not briefed by the Kano anti corruption agency over the development.

Reacting to the allegations from the anti corruption agency, Kano ALGON chairman, Lamin Sani came in defence o his colleagues, denying knowledge of any Local Government chairman who diverted palliative materials.

He also conveyed the decision of Kano ALGON members withdrawing their participation in the palliative distribution.

According to him, to our knowledge, no Local Government chairman diverted anything from COVID-19 palliative materials to his personal or political patronage.

Launching the distribution of the second phase of the Palliatives at Coronation Hall, Government House on Thursday, Ganduje ordered the LG Chairmen to renege from their earlier decision of backing out of the palliative distribution.

He urged them to continue to play their roles in ensuring that the poorest of the poor get the government Palliatives.

Ganduje said that already, he has held meetings with the Fund Raising Committee chairman and the anti corruption Executive Chairman, promising that everything will be out under control.

I call on our chairmen of Local Government Areas to go back to their right position and participate in the distribution of the Palliatives. All other issues will be resolved, he added.

He commended the Fund Raising Committee for showing diligence, dedication and transparency in discharging their duties.

I appreciate and thank the Fund Raising and Palliatives Committee for the transparency and honesty displayed in sharing the Palliatives.

I also appreciate and thank the District Heads and Imams who are the chairmen of the Palliative Committees at the Local Government levels.

Ganduje regretted that COVID-19 has done great harm to the world, it has affected our religion, it has affected our economy, it has affected our social life, it has even affected our thinking.

The lockdown has created a lot of social and economic problems to our people. So, it is important we identify the poorest of the poor and help them.

We thank you for completing the first phase. Now, we are going into the second phase. We thank the Federal Government for providing food items. We thank those who contributed their donations to the Fund Raising Committee.
Online restaurant guide and food ordering platform Zomato on Friday said it is going to layoff around 13 per cent of its workforce on account of the impact of Covid-19 pandemic.

The company has around 4,000 employees in different roles.

In a blog post, Zomato Founder and CEO Deepinder Goyal said multiple aspects of the companys business have changed dramatically over the last couple of months and many of these changes are expected to be permanent.

While we continue to build a more focussed Zomato, we do not foresee having enough work for all our employees. We owe all our colleagues a challenging work environment, but we wont be able to offer that to around 13 per cent of our workforce going forward, he added.

Everyone who is impacted will get invites for a zoom call with the leadership team within the next 24 hours, he said.

Goyal said he along with COO and co-founder Gaurav Gupta and CEO Food Delivery Mohit Gupta would be getting on video calls over the next couple of days with impacted employees to walk them through the next steps and help find them jobs as soon as possible.

On the financial support to these employees, he said: All our employees who no longer have any work at Zomato, will continue to be with us at 50 per cent salary for the next 6 months. During this time, outside of the handover period of 1-2 weeks, we expect these folks to spend 100 per cent of their time and energy towards looking for jobs outside of Zomato.

Goyal also said the company will provide them outplacement support and also health insurance for 6 months or as soon as they find another job.

Previously allocated employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) will continue to vest during this period of 6 months, he added.

Goyal also said,Starting June, I am proposing a temporary reduction in pay for the entire organisation. Lower cuts are being proposed for people with lower salaries, and higher cuts (up to 50 per cent) for people with higher salaries.

Zomato expects these cuts to be discontinued as soon as the economy starts getting back on track. I foresee and hope this to be around 6 months from now, he added.
The return of migrant Telugu-speaking labourers from other states, particularly Maharashtra, has led to in a rise of coronavirus disease (Covid-19) positive cases in both Telangana and Andhra Pradesh (AP) over the last 10 days, officials said.

Out of 440 Covid-19 positive cases registered in AP since May 5, 150 were that of Telugu-speaking migrants from various states such as Gujarat, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Odisha, West Bengal and Karnataka, said an official bulletin released by the state nodal officer for Covid-19, Arja Sreekanth, on Friday.

In the last 24 hours alone, 45 out of 102 Covid-19 positive cases reported in AP were that of migrant Telugu-speaking labourers, including 34 and 11 from Maharashtra and Rajasthan, respectively.

Official figures showed that over 8,000 migrant Telugu-speaking labourers returned to their native places. Most of them belong to Anantapur, Chittoor, Nellore, Kurnool and Kadapa districts in AP and they came from different states by special Shramik Express trains arranged by the Centre.

Andhra Pradesh special chief secretary K S Jawahar Reddy told media persons that all those who had tested Covid-19 positive have been referred to dedicated Covid-19 hospitals and others sent to a mandatory 14-day quarantine.

The AP government has been putting out a separate tally for Covid-19 positive migrant labourers for the last two days to make a distinction that these fresh infections are not homegrown.

The segregation exercise will help us determine that these migrant labourers contracted SARS-CoV-2, which causes the disease, in those states from where theyve come back home, said an official in the Covid-19 control room said.

Several vegetable vendors from AP, who visited Koyambedu vegetable market in Chennai -- a Covid-19 superspreader  have tested positive, raising a cause for concern for the AP authorities.

So far, 84 Covid-19 positive cases, including 28 in the last 24 hours, have been reported. All of them are related to those people, who had visited Chennais Koyambedu vegetable market. All the patients belong to Chittoor, Kurnool, Kadapa, Anantapur and Nellore, said the state nodal officer.

In neighbouring Telangana, migrant workers, who started returning to their native places from other states, particularly from Maharashtra, have been found infected.

According to the health bulletin released by the state director of public health and family welfare, G Srinivasa Rao, on Thursday night, 42 Covid-19 positive cases were that of migrant labourers. A majority of the cases were identified among those coming from Mumbai.

State health minister Eatala Rajender said migrant workers from Telangana, who had been stuck in various states, have started returning to their native places.

Some of them have tested Covid-19 positive. The authorities concerned should ensure that all the migrant returnees are tested and those who test positive are referred to dedicated Covid-19 hospitals without any delay, he said.

The minister urged that accredited social health (ASHA) workers should be entrusted with the responsibility to conduct door-to-door surveys.

All symptomatic patients should be immediately referred to a dedicated Covid-19 hospital, he added.

Many of these migrant workers are returning to their villages on their own. Most of these returnees are from north Telangana districts, who had gone to neighbouring Maharashtra in search of work. They may pose risk to others, said a health department official.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:44:45|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping said Friday that China firmly supports the United Nations and the World Health Organization in playing their due roles in international cooperation against the COVID-19 pandemic.

In a telephone conversation with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Xi stressed that China stands ready to work with Hungary and other members of the international community to effectively carry out joint prevention and control efforts and resolutely curb the spread of the coronavirus disease.

Xi also called for concerted efforts to strengthen macroeconomic policy coordination to jointly address the challenges the pandemic has brought to the world economy.
For many students, the implementation of lockdown measures in response to the coronavirus pandemic dashed their hopes of celebrating their graduations in a traditional manner.

In order to boost the spirits of new graduates currently in quarantine at home, Oprah Winfrey is to host a virtual graduation event on Friday 15 May.

Broadcast live on Facebook and Instagram, Winfrey is scheduled to deliver a commencement speech during the event.

If any of the media moguls past statements are to go by, it is likely that she will deliver an empowering, uplifting address for the graduates as they look ahead to their futures.

Recommended Oprah Winfrey and Miley Cyrus to present virtual graduation ceremony

In 2019, Winfrey spoke to graduates at Colorado College about keeping calm ahead of lifes challenges.

Take a deep breath with me right now and repeat this: Everything is always working out for me. Thats my mantra  make it yours, she said.

Everything is always working out for me. Look at how many times you were worried and upsetand now youre here today. You made it.

Ahead of the 66-year-olds commencement speech, The Independent has compiled 11 of her most inspiring quotes from the past, touching upon topics including financial success, self-esteem and the importance of integrity.

1. On the key to financial success

The reason Ive been able to be so financially successful is my focus has never, ever for one minute been money.

2. On the secret recipe to life

The big secret in life is that there is no big secret. Whatever your goal, you can get there if youre willing to work.

3. On reaching your full potential

Every time you state what you want or believe, youre the first to hear it. Its a message to both you and others about what you think is possible. Dont put a ceiling on yourself.

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

4. On taking a moment to reflect

Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.

5. On acknowledging failure

Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.

6. On knowing your worth

When you undervalue what you do, the world will undervalue who you are.

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

7. On doing the right thing

Real integrity is doing the right thing, knowing that nobodys going to know whether you did it or not.

8. On embracing new challenges

Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new centre of gravity. Dont fight them. Just find a new way to stand.

9. On knowing who your true friends are

Everyone wants to ride with you in the limo, but what you want is someone who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.

(Getty Images (Getty Images)

10. On adopting a new perspective

So go ahead. Fall down. The world looks different from the ground.

11. On looking forward to the future

My philosophy is that not only are you responsible for your life but doing the best at this moment puts you in the best place for the next moment.

The 2020 virtual graduation event is due to take place at 11am PST/ 2pm EST/ 7pm BST.
By West Kentucky Star Staff May. 14, 2020 | 04:02 PM | FRANKFORT

Beshear says Kentucky will lift its restrictions on travel and small gatherings ahead of Memorial Day weekend.





Beginning May 22, people can get together in gatherings of 10 or fewer. The previous date for resuming such gatherings had been May 25. He says people need to follow health guidelines at gatherings, and they should be outside whenever possible. People should not share food, drinks, containers, plates, napkins or utensils. They also should follow social distancing rules.



The out-of-state travel ban also will expire on May 22.





The fund is overseen by the Public Protection Cabinet and is administered through a partnership with the Kentucky Community Action Agency. Coleman says the funding will be provided in the form of vouchers which can be used to pay for rent, groceries or utilities. According to Coleman, once you've connected with the Kentucky Community Action Agency, they can provide assistance in many other areas as well, including employment assistance, transportation assistance, affordable housing, senior support, food security, health screenings, parenting classes, and more.





The Kentucky Community Action Agency will review all applications and determine who qualifies. Qualification criteria can be found at the website linked below, beginning at 8 a.m. Friday.

During Governor Andy Beshear's Thursday update, Beshear announced changes to his travel and gatherings ban.Lt. Governor Jacqueline Coleman announced that the Team Kentucky Fund Assistance Application Portal will open on Friday beginning at 8 a.m. Anyone who has been impacted financially by the pandemic is encouraged to visit the website and apply for assistance. There is currently $3 million in the fund that will go towards assisting Kentuckians in need.Beshear announced 199 new cases of the virus in the Commonwealth, bringing the total number of cases to 7,225. The new cases includes three in McCracken, two in Ballard, and one in Christian County. There are currently 385 Kentuckians hospitalized with the virus, with 220 of those in the ICU. As of Thursday there were two new deaths associated with the virus, while 2,712 Kentuckians have recovered.Watch Beshear's complete update here:

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A Delhi Court Friday dismissed the bail pleas of two suspected members of the terrorist outfit, Islamic State in Jammu and Kashmir (IS-JK), who have been booked under the stringent Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act both by the NIA and the Delhi police.

Additional Sessions Judge Dharmender Rana refused to grant the relief to Parvaiz Rashid Lone and Jamshed Zahoor Paul arrested from near the Red Fort in Delhi in 2018.

The court said that from a transcript of a private chat of the accused, it appeared that both of them were allegedly involved in procuring illegal weapons for dreaded terrorists organisations and also allegedly shared the information about movement of army to other terrorists.

From the conversation transcript available on record, it appears that the accused were not only involved in procuring illegal weapons for dreaded terrorists organisations but they also shared information about the movement of the army to other terrorists. Therefore, I cannot concur with the defence counsel that there is no incriminating piece of evidence against the accused, the judge in the order.

The court further said that since one investigating agency (NIA) has not been able to collect incriminating evidence against the accused, therefore the incriminating evidence collected by the other investigating agency (Special Cell of Delhi police) does not deserve to be discarded for failure of the former.

The police had arrested Lone and Paul from near the Red Fort in Delhi in September 2018, allegedly for procuring illegal arms. NIA had registered a separate case based on this.

During the hearing held through video conferencing, Additional Public Prosecutor opposed the bail applications and alleged that both the accused were active members of ISIS (Jammu and Kashmir Branch), a dreaded terrorist organization.

He further alleged that Lone and Paul came to Amroha in Uttar Pradesh for procuring illegal arms to perpetuate the ideology of ISIS and four juveniles apprehended by the police have allegedly admitted to have sold off illegal weapons to them.

The counsel submitted a copy of a private conversation transcript between one Omar Ibn Nazir, allegedly a terrorist killed in Jammu and Kashmir and another conversation between the accused persons and one Abu Duzana, allegedly a dreaded terrorist whom the security forces are looking for.

Advocate Asghar Khan, appearing for both the accused, sought bail on the ground that despite elaborate investigation conducted not only by the NIA but even Special Cell of the Delhi police in the case, no incriminating piece of evidence could be collected against them under the UAPA.

Khan said that after an elaborate investigation conducted by the NIA, no incriminating evidence could be collected against Lone and Paul and they have been granted bail in the NIA case.

Khan told the court that Lone and Paul were falsely implicated in the case and they cannot be booked under the anti-terror law.

The counsel said that they were initially arrested in September 2018 with the allegation of recovery of illegal arms and subsequently upon arrest of another alleged ISIS member Abdul Basit by the NIA in the case, sections of UAPA were imputed against them.

He further said that two innocent men should not be castigated as terrorists.

With respect to the offences under the Arms Act, Khan claimed that the alleged recovery of illegal weapons was from a public place but there is no public witness, no recovery of any video footage or any independent piece of evidence corroborating the case of the prosecution.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
More than 140,000 people in a country hit by the coronavirus pandemic are riding out a typhoon in emergency shelters.

Typhoon Vongfong has dumped heavy rains since it roared ashore on Thursday, with hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people in its path on the coast or in flimsy homes.

The storm hit as tens of millions of Filipinos are hunkered down at home against the coronavirus, but at least 141,700 have had to flee because of the powerful storm, disaster officials said.

Workers clear a road of trees and branches toppled by strong winds from typhoon Vongfong as it passes by Sorsogon province, eastern Philippines on Friday. Source: AP

"We have to wear masks and apply distancing at all times," local police official Carlito Abriz told AFP.

"It's difficult to enforce because they (the evacuees) are stressed. But we are doing our best."

Shelters are being run at half capacity, according to authorities and masks are being provided to people who do not have them, while families are trying to be grouped together.

In an evacuation room, which could shelter up to 40 families before, only four families could be accommodated now as a safeguard against infections.

The occupants should know each other and are required to report any infected villager, Office of Civil Defence director Claudio Yucot told the Associated Press from Albay province in the Bicol region, which has had dozens of coronavirus infections, including four deaths and remains under quarantine.

Our ease of movement has been limited by COVID.

Children wearing improvised face masks take shelter at a school building serving as evacuation centre on May 14. Source: Getty

In the evacuation centres, there are more challenges, he said.

The problem is, many spaces used as storm shelters have been converted into quarantine sites for people suspected to have contracted the coronavirus.

The Phillipines has 11,876 confirmed cases and 790 death according to Johns Hopkins data.

There was no immediate reports of casualties or major damage as authorities surveyed regions where the typhoon has passed.

Fortunately the central region where the storm struck first is not one of the hotspots of the Philippines' outbreak, which has seen more than 11,800 infected and 790 dead.

The typhoons maximum sustained wind has weakened to 125 kilometres per hour with gusts of 165 kph but it remains dangerous especially in coastal and low-lying villages, forecasters said, adding Vongfong was expected to blow out of the countrys north on Sunday.

Story continues

Residents try to salvage belongings amongst their houses destroyed at the height of Typhoon Vongfong in San Policarpio town, Eastern Samar province on Friday. Source: Getty

Common for disasters to overlap in the Philippines

It is not unheard of for disasters to overlap in the Philippines, and some 22,000 people were evacuated from the slopes of the active Mayon volcano ahead of the typhoon's arrival.

Heavy rains in the past have sent landslides of debris cascading down the volcano and onto the communities below, burying and killing those in the way.

Typhoons are a dangerous and disruptive part of life in the Philippine archipelago, which gets hit by an average of 20 storms and typhoons each year.

The storms put millions of people in disaster-prone areas in a state of constant poverty and rebuilding.

A July 2019 study by the Manila-based Asian Development Bank said the most frequent storms lop one percent off the Philippine economy, with the stronger ones cutting economic output by nearly three percent.

The country's deadliest cyclone on record was Super Typhoon Haiyan, which left more than 7,300 people dead or missing in 2013.

with Associated Press and AFP

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Coronavirus in Colorado: Live updates - Nearly 87,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S.; Almost 1.5 million cases
White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on Friday showed off President Donald Trump's plan to battle the coronavirus, holding up two binders of information to compare to them to the paper plan she said the Obama administration left for them.

'This dead packet of paper was replaced by two detailed robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration,' she said at her press briefing.

It was the same pandemic 'plan' that she waved at reporters on Thursday to show President Trump was in control of the coronavirus outbreak and it had been savaged by another report - that she was also holding.

The administration has long been criticized for not responding strong enough to the pandemic. This week they claimed to have a plan all along, as more than 86,000 have died from the disease and 36 million people lost jobs as businesses closed in the wake of the pandemic.

The full details of that plan have not been released to the public.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany showed off the administration's plan to battle the coronavirus, holding up two binders of information to compare to them to the paper plan she said the Obama administration left for them

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany holds up the Obama administration pandemic playbook and criticized President Obama for leaving the national stockpile depleted of medical supplies

McEnany waved around a copy of the 2018 plan and an after-action report from the 'Crimson Contagion' simulation exercise which took place in 2019 -- which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness plan in the other binder.

She left that part out, however.

She said the after action report 'informed President Trump's coronavirus response beginning as early as January.'

She also repeatedly criticized former President Barack Obama, arguing he 'left the stockpile empty and to President Trump to refill it.'

She claimed the Trump administration stocked 92.7 million N95 masks, 133.7 million surgical masks, 22.4 million surgical gowns, 10.5 million face shields and almost 1 million gloves.

'We cleaned up the mess that was very clearly left by President Obama,' McEnany said.

'The Trump playbook and the whole of America response to this pandemic has far exceeded what this administration inherited,' she said and claimed that it 'will become the future playbook I believe for future administrations navigating a pandemic response.'

Trump insisted on Thursday that he did have a playbook to battle the pandemic as a whistleblower testified on Capitol Hill that a 'dark winter' was ahead because of a lack of 'standard, centralized, coordinated plan.'

The president, before he left to visit a medical supply factory in Allentown, Pennsylvania, had McEnany wave before reporters a binder containing the 2018 'Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Ver. 2.0.'

But she was also holding an after-action report from the 'Crimson Contagion' simulation exercise which took place in 2019 -- which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness plan in the other binder.

The simulated scenario tested the capacity of the U.S. federal government and 12 states to handle a severe influenza outbreak originating in China, and warned of a disorganized response, funding shortfalls, and dangerous shortages of ventilators and medical masks.

White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany brandished this binder containing the January 2018 'Pandemic Crisis Action Plan Ver. 2.0.' to prove Trump had a plan for an outbreak

She also carried the 2019 after-action report from the Crimson Contagion wargame, which harshly criticized the federal government's pandemic preparedness

McEnany is seen wielding the Crimson Contagion after-action report. A leaked draft of the report shows that it predicted serious flaws in federal pandemic preparedness

McEnany said of the two binders: 'So what our administration did, under the leadership of President Trump, is do an entire 2018 Pandemic Preparedness Report ... Beyond that, we did a whole exercise on pandemic preparedness in August of last year and had an entire after-action report put together.'

While McEnany didn't offer details on what was in the 2018 Trump 'plan,' the 'Crimson Contagion' report references it on several occasions, pointing out its shortfalls.

For one, the 2018 plan, and another from 2017, 'do not outline the organization structure of the federal government when HHS is designated as the lead federal agency' to handle a pandemic.

The 'Crimson Contagion' after-action report talks of 'confusion' between various federal agencies on the role they would play dealing with this type of crisis.

It also warned that exercise participants were not clear how they would use the Defense Production Act 'to mitigate medical countermeasure and ancillary supply shortages during an influenza pandemic response.'

As well, it said 'there are insufficient funding sources designated for the federal government to use in response to a severe influenza pandemic.'

The report also stated bluntly: 'The current medical countermeasure supply chain and production capacity cannot meet the demands imposed by nations during a global influenza pandemic.'

McEnany told reporters she would further talk about what Trump's plan had been in the Friday briefing.

'We'll have a full update tomorrow for you guys at the briefing  line by line  of how prepared we were for the pandemic,' McEnany said.

McEnany also criticized the pandemic plan left by the Obama administration (above)

McEnany also showed reporters a copy of the 'Playbook for early response to high consequence emerging infectious disease threats and biological incidents,' which was the document the Obama administration left for the Trump administration.

The page was labelled 'table of contents' and had hand writing all over it.

McEnany called the document left by President Barack Obama 'insufficient' and used the occasion to also take a hit at Joe Biden, the Democrats' presumptive presidential nominee.

'The Obama-Biden plan has been referenced. It was insufficient, wasn't going to work,' she said.

Trump complained 'we were given very little' when they took over the White House.

The administration's response came as Dr. Rick Bright, the HHS whistleblower, told lawmakers on Capitol Hill that the Trump administration's slow response to the coronavirus 'put lives at risk.'

'Without better planning 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history,' Bright warned.

'The window is closing to address this pandemic, because we still do not have a standard, centralized, coordinated plan to take our nation through this response,' he explained, when questioned about his dire warning.

Coronavirus has infected more than 1.43 million people in the United States and caused more than 85,000 deaths.

Last week, former President Barack Obama called the Trump administration's response an 'absolute chaotic disaster.

'What we're fighting against is these long-term trends in which being selfish, being tribal, being divided, and seeing others as an enemy - that has become a stronger impulse in American life,' Obama said on a call obtained by Yahoo News.

'And by the way, we're seeing that internationally as well,' he noted, adding 'It's part of the reason why the response to this global crisis has been so anemic and spotty.'

'It has been an absolute chaotic disaster when that mindset - of 'what's in it for me' and 'to heck with everybody else' - when that mindset is operationalized in our government.'

Obama added: 'That's why, I, by the way, am going to be spending as much time as necessary and campaigning as hard as I can for Joe Biden.'

Dr. Rick Bright warned Congress that '2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history' if a strategy isn't deployed to get the coronavisus pandemic under control before fall

Former President Barack Obama (left) blasted President Trump's (right) handling of the COVID-19 pandemic as an 'absolute chaotic disaster'

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell criticized the former president, claiming he didn't leave a plan to fight pandemics when he left the White House.

'They claim pandemics only happen once every hundred years but what if that's no longer true? We want to be early, ready for the next one, because clearly the Obama administration did not leave to this administration any kind of game plan for something like this,' McConnell said.

But former Obama officials have struck back.

'We literally left them a 69-page Pandemic Playbook.... that they ignored. And an office called the Pandemic Preparedness Office... that they abolished. And a global monitoring system called PREDICT .. that they cut by 75%,' Ronald Klain, a campaign adviser to Biden and the former Obama administration Ebola response coordinator, wrote on Twitter last week.

The Obama playbook, which was 40 pages plus appendices, contained step-by-step advice on questions to ask, decisions to make, and which federal agencies are responsible for what, CNN reported.

It also listed the novel coronaviruses as ones to watch that could require a major government response.

The color-coded book addressed a number of issues, including testing, funding, personal protective equipment, emergency declarations, border control measures, diplomacy, the use of the military, public communication, and even mortuary services.
The coronavirus-induced lockdown,



which has severely affected functioning of government and semi -government departments, has led to a significant drop in cases of bribe in Maharashtra, reflected in low number of traps set up by the ACB in the last one-and-a-half months.

The Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), Maharashtra, registered just seven cases of trap in April and only five in the current month (till May 14) at its various units, an official said.

Trap means nabbing a public servant for demanding and accepting illegal gratification like bribe. To prevent corruption, a trap is laid by anti-graft agencies to apprehend public servants (and their private collaborators) while demanding and accepting bribe.

Last year in April, there were 58 bribe cases in which 77 accused persons were involved, whereas in May there were 32 such cases involving 41 accused, he said.

As compared to those two months in 2019, the drop in April 2020 was 88 per cent and in May around 84 per cent till date.

The coronavirus-triggered lockdown came into force in Maharashtra in end-March.

Since January this year, the ACB has laid 211 traps across the state in which more than 290 government officials and private persons were nabbed, the official said.

Last year, there were 326 such cases in the state in which around 430 persons were apprehended, he said.

Overall drop in these cases since January was more than 35 per cent compared to the same period in 2019, he said.

There was only one trap case at Vadgaon in Pune, which related to the lockdown.

A 31-year-old Assistant Police Inspector, Satyajit Adhatrao, posted with the state highway police, was caught while allegedly accepting bribe of Rs 15,000 from two persons on April 30 at Urse Toll Plaza to release their vehicles, he said.

The officer had intercepted two vehicles during the lockdown and demanded bribe to release them, he said.

As migrant workers move out of Maharashtra in private and hired vehicles in large numbers, the highway police has warned its staffers against collecting any money from them.

According to an order, if any official is found collecting money from these vehicle operators, he or she will be dismissed from service.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Well, its not exactly the liberation of Paris, but Phase 1 of Gov. John Bel Edwards reopening order for Louisiana certainly will bring some celebrations  and some changes to Louisianas economic landscape. Not all of the changes will resemble a return to normal.

Same goes for Mayor LaToya Cantrells more constrained reopening order in New Orleans. The mayor is following the broad strokes of the governors plan, but with some tighter restrictions.

Casinos, for example, may reopen with limited capacity under Edwards order, but Cantrell ordered the citys casino to remain closed. Under Edwards order, casinos can reopen half their games, including slots and table games, but they must adhere to the statewide 25% occupancy limit for all businesses.

Another key difference: The governors order allows retailers with interior shopping mall entrances to reopen; Cantrells order keeps them shuttered.

Meanwhile, Jefferson Parish is following the governors order closely.

The 25% capacity limit for businesses reflects guidelines issued by the State Fire Marshal. Businesses across the state must register at opensafely.la.gov in order to reopen. They will receive guidance as the state moves from Phase 1 through Phase 4.

One point on which the governor and local leaders remain aligned  business employees and patrons should wear masks, and everyone must practice physical distancing in public. The mask requirement does not apply to outdoor recreation.

The governor and local leaders also agree that people 65 and older, along with others who are particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 infection, should remain at home as much as possible.

As a 65-year-old, I certainly plan to limit my outings, though I confess I sure miss going out for lunch, a glass of red, or dinner. Is returning to my old habits on a regular basis worth the risk of catching the novel coronavirus? No, but if I can grab an outdoor table, Im all in for an occasional outing  with physical distancing.

My guess is we wont see a massive, sudden return to the way we were. My information is anecdotal, but it seems a lot of restaurants dont plan to reopen right away. Considering the 25% capacity limit, one can understand their hesitation. Its hard enough to make a profit under normal conditions. How can they do it when they have to bring back all (or substantially all) of their employees but can only serve a quarter of their usual meals and drinks?

Just as the stay-at-home orders required everybody to adapt, Americas phased reopening likewise will force significant changes in peoples workplaces, business strategies and economic activities.

In the short space of two months, many people became accustomed to working from home. With COVID-19 still very much a threat to public health, workers and patrons across the nations economic landscape already have changed their habits, expectations and tolerances.

To be sure, many will go right back to the old normal. Many others will not. Yes, were officially reopening now, but dont be surprised if Phase 1 signals more fundamental changes than just being allowed to shop, get a haircut and go out to dinner again.

It could be the start of a whole new kind of normal.
Ben-Gurion University of the Negev's Prof. Gabby Sarusi has developed and is now validating a test that identifies carriers of the COVID-19 virus in less than a minute with greater than 90% accuracy and at a dramatically lower price than any other method available. Clinical trials in conjunction with the Defense Ministry on more than 120 Israelis had a better than 90% success rate compared to Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) tests. The ongoing trials will seek to determine if the test can identify the specific stage of COVID-19 infection as well as its presence.

The breath test device Prof. Gabby Sarusi developed. Image Credit: Prof. Gabby Sarusi

Right from the beginning of the trials, we received statistically significant results in line with our simulations and PCR tests." Prof. Gabby Sarusi, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Prof. Sarusi is also a deputy head for research at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a faculty member of the Electro-Optical Engineering Unit at BGU.

"We are continuing clinical trials and will compare samples from COVID-19 patients with samples from patients with other diseases to see if we can identify the different stages of the COVID-19 infection," according to Sarusi.

Prof. Sarusi developed his chip within the framework of BGUs Coronavirus Task Force, initiated by BGU President Prof. Daniel Chamovitz to harness the resources and ingenuity of the University to tackle the myriad aspects of the pandemic.

How does the test work?

Particles from a simple breath test or throat and nose swabs, such as are already currently used for other tests, are placed on a chip with a dense array of metamaterial sensors that was designed specifically for this purpose. The system then analyzes the biological sample and provides an accurate positive/negative result within a minute via a cloud-connected system. The point-of-care device automatically backs up the results into a database that can be shared by authorities, making it easier than ever to track the course of the virus, as well as triage and treat patients.

The new method is based on the change in the resonance in the THz spectral range imposed by the coronavirus through a THz spectroscopy performed on the device. This spectral range has been employed in recent decades for the fast detection and identification of biological samples.

We asked ourselves, since this virus is just like a nano-particle or a quantum dot with a diameter between 100 nm to 140 nm in terms of its size and electrical properties, can we detect it using methods from the worlds of physics, photonics and electrical engineering. We discovered that the answer is yes, this virus resonates in the THz frequency, and spectroscopy in these frequencies reveals it promptly." Prof. Gabby Sarusi

Each test kit would cost between fifty to one hundred dollars to produce, which is far less than current laboratory testing. Moreover, because the test is electro-optical in nature, rather than biochemical, it is not sensitive to environmental factors that can affect results of current testing methods.

How does it differ from current tests?

Current coronavirus test kits are based on amplifying and identifying the viral RNA sequences, and therefore depend on costly reagents and biochemical reactions. In addition, these PCR-based kits take hours, and in many cases days, to yield results and require logistically complicated shipping and handling of sensitive and infectious biological samples.
Michael Domanico (right), owner of Trump Store, and his wife, Monica Domanico, during their grand opening in Bensalem in February. Read more

The Trump Store, which started as a kiosk in the Neshaminy Mall last year and blossomed into a Bensalem strip-mall storefront in February, now serves as a rally point for Andy Meehan, a Bucks County Republican trying to unseat U.S. Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick in the June 2 primary.

Owner Mike Domanico said he reopened his store Saturday, despite a ban on clothing and accessory shops operating during the coronavirus pandemic. That ban exempts life-sustaining businesses that sell uniforms and accessories/supplies for public safety and health care professionals.

Domanico said he side-stepped the ban by producing and selling non-medical-grade cloth face masks and bandannas emblazoned with President Donald Trumps name. His store, which peddles Trump-branded T-shirts, hats, pen sets, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, and magnets, is also selling two kinds of gloves and containers of bleach.

Im going with that so Im allowed to be open, he said. No problems so far.

Dominique Lockett, a spokesperson for the state Department of Community and Economic Development, said The Trump Store did not apply for or receive an exemption as a life-sustaining" retail store, and that her agency would have needed to review any justification" for reopening.

And any non-life-sustaining sales at the business  like all those Trump t-shirts  would still be prohibited.

In general, retail operations may not be open unless they have an exemption from DCED for life-sustaining activities," Lockett told Clout.

 READ MORE: MORE CLOUT: The Trump campaign has walked away from the Pennsylvania Republican Party as 2020 heats up, sources say

Meehan, in a campaign email Wednesday, declared The Trump Store and Meehan for Congress are reopening Pennsylvania! He plans a rally at the store at 11 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday, and told Clout the events are good both for his campaign and Domanicos business.

Its like a little fantasy-land," Meehan said. "All the Trumpsters show up.

Domanico, who has endorsed Meehan, said a rally last weekend showed Meehan was popular with his customers.

He draws, not a large crowd, but a pretty good amount of people, Domanico said. 'There were 40 or 50 people here."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 15:25:34|Editor: huaxia

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HOHHOT, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Xing Xiaojun was overjoyed by what he saw through the telescope. Several hundred rare birds with a black-hooded head, white body and light grey wings were flying freely on an islet in the wetland.

"The relict gulls returned when the ice began to melt in early April. Some of them have already started nesting," said Xing, director of the administration of the Ordos Relict Gull Reserve in the city of Ordos, north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region.

Last year, over 800 gulls came here, marking the first mass return of the migratory birds in 13 years. "This year, more than 2,000 have come," he said.

The gull is an endangered species and a national first-class protected animal. Most of its population winter in Bohai Bay in China. In spring, the birds fly to northwestern China, Mongolia and Kazakhstan.

"There were once nearly 16,000 gulls in the wetland here, accounting for over 60 percent of its total population in the world. And the water area was as large as 10 square km in the 1990s," he said.

However, since 2006, few nests of the species have been seen because the islets disappeared as the lake shrank.

"The water dried. How could a bird survive here?" recalled Song Qiulian, a herder who lives nearby.

To restore the ecosystem of the wetland, the city has adopted a series of measures in recent years.

In 2018, a water diversion line was put into use, diverting water to the wetland from the Yellow River. So far, a total of 16 million cubic meters of water has been diverted.

Dams and tourism facilities have also been removed to reduce the impact on the birds.

At present, the lake, with its water area up to 8.5 square km, has seen four islets formed and boosted the diversity of birds.

Over the past two years, more than 80 kinds of birds have come here to rest or reproduce. Especially in autumn, over 20,000 migrating birds visited the spot, showed monitoring statistics of the administration.

"We are very much encouraged by what we have seen, which has proved that we have been making efforts in the right direction," said Han Yufei, head of the city's forestry and grassland bureau. "I believe that this place will again become a haven for the birds to rest and reproduce as long as we continue our protective efforts." Enditem
Curious just how far your dollar goes in San Antonio?

We've rounded up the latest places for rent via rental sites Zumper and Apartment Guide to get a sense of what to expect when it comes to hunting down apartment rentals in San Antonio if you don't want to spend more than $1,700/month on rent.

Read on for the listings. (Note: Prices and availability are subject to change.)

Hoodline offers data-driven analysis of local happenings and trends across cities. Links included in this article may earn Hoodline a commission on clicks and transactions.

17803 La Cantera Terrace (Forest Crest)

Listed at $1,605/month, this 1,133-square-foot two-bedroom, two-bathroom residence is located at 17803 La Cantera Terrace.

In the residence, you can anticipate hardwood flooring, a walk-in closet and a dishwasher. The building features a swimming pool. Pet owners, rejoice: This rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly.

According to Walk Score's assessment, the area around this address requires a car for most errands, is somewhat bikeable and has some transit options.

(Take a look at the complete listing here.)

Rogers Road and Hyatt Resort Drive

Next, there's this three-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment over at Rogers Road and Hyatt Resort Drive. It's listed for $1,618/month.

When it comes to building amenities, expect secured entry, a gym, a swimming pool, on-site laundry and garage parking. The apartment also offers granite countertops and a patio. Cats and dogs are not permitted.

According to Walk Score, the surrounding area requires a car for most errands, is somewhat bikeable and has a few nearby public transportation options.

(Check out the complete listing here.)

508 Blanco Road (Beacon Hill)

Then, there's this 1,188-square-foot two-bedroom, one-bathroom unit at 508 Blanco Road that's going for $1,620/month.

In the residence, expect to find central heating, carpeted floors and granite countertops. Pet lovers are in luck: The rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly. There's no leasing fee required for this rental.

According to Walk Score, the area around this address is moderately walkable, isn't particularly bikeable and offers many nearby public transportation options.

(See the full listing here.)

7114 Faith Way (Alamo Farmsteads-Babcock Road)

Finally, check out this 1,368-square-foot three-bedroom, two-and-a-half-bathroom unit that's located at 7114 Faith Way. It's listed for $1,625/month.

When it comes to building amenities, anticipate garage parking, outdoor space and on-site laundry. In the unit, expect to find granite countertops and a mix of hardwood and carpeted floors. Pet owners, you're in luck: The rental is both dog-friendly and cat-friendly. Future tenants needn't worry about a leasing fee.

According to Walk Score, this location isn't very walkable, is relatively bikeable and has some transit options.

(Take a look at the complete listing here.)

Working with a tight budget? Here are the cheapest rentals recently listed in San Antonio.

This story was created automatically using local real estate data from Zumper and Apartment Guide, then reviewed by an editor. Click here for more about what we're doing. Additionally, read on for five marketing tips for real estate agents to showcase local market expertise.

Got thoughts? Go here to share your feedback.
Oil prices have stabilized due to a rebound in demand and the spectacular drop in supply, according to a new report from the International Energy Agency (IEA).

The reopening of major economies is beginning a gradual-but-fragile recover, the IEA said. The extent of global lockdown orders peaked at 4 billion people, but will drop to 2.8 billion people by the end of May.

Global oil demand fell by around 25.2 million barrels per day (mb/d) in April, a month that the agency previously called Black April. For May, demand improves to a fall of 21.5 mb/d compared to the same month a year earlier, evidence that the tepid lifting of restrictions on movement has led to a slight rebound in oil consumption. U.S. gasoline data, for instance, has been inching up this month.

The IEA revised up its global oil demand figure for 2020, projecting a decline of 8.6 mb/d for the year, which is slightly better than the decline of 9.3 mb/d that the agency saw last month. Still, that is the largest decline of demand in the history of the oil market.

But while demand has ticked up, it is the rapid and extreme supply cuts that have pulled oil prices up off of the floor. It is on the supply side where market forces have demonstrated their power and shown that the pain of lower prices affects all producers, the IEA said in its report. We are seeing massive cuts in output from countries outside the OPEC+ agreement and faster than expected.

The agency said non-OPEC countries could lose 4 mb/d by June, with perhaps more to come. And because the OPEC+ deal went into effect in May, total global supply could decline by 12 mb/d in May compared to April. Related: Are Venezuelan Oil Exports Poised For A Comeback?

U.S. shale losses could prove to be more durable. By year-end, however, it is the United States that is the biggest contributor to global supply reductions compared with a year ago, the IEA said. U.S. oil production could fall by 2.8 mb/d compared to year-end 2019.

In @IEAs latest Oil Market Report, the picture is still very bleak for the industry. After Black April, the heaviest demand destruction may be behind us, but huge uncertainties remain. We now forecast global oil demand will fall by 8.6 mb/d in 2020: https://t.co/Z4qkKILJZG pic.twitter.com/UfJR1jPL1X  Fatih Birol (@IEABirol) May 14, 2020

Ultimately, however, the main takeaway from the IEA report was one of a market on the mend, albeit with a long way to go. The agency sees a rapid jump in demand in June and July. Demand doesnt get back to pre-COVID-19 levels this year, but recovers a good portion of demand loss by the end of the year.

However, this somewhat optimistic outlook weirdly discounts the prospect of a second or third wave of global coronavirus infections, the signs of which are already readily apparent. To be sure, the IEA offers caveats about uncertainties, and says that another round of infections poses downside risks to its forecast.

But it isnt the baseline assumption. Our global 2H20 forecast assumes the virus is largely under control at the global level and that containment measures do not return on a significant scale, the report said. Largely under control? No return of containment measures? This is set against a backdrop (at least in the U.S.) where the rate of new infected cases is rising in a lot of places outside of New York, and at the same time, states are moving quickly to lift restrictions on movement.

Meanwhile, on the same day as the IEA report, Dr. Richard Bright, a former top U.S. vaccine official, testified in front of congressional committee, where he warned that the U.S. faced the darkest winter because the federal government does not have a coherent strategy. Our window of opportunity is closing, Dr. Bright said in his opening statement. If we fail to improve our response now, based on science, I fear the pandemic will get worse and be prolonged.

He warned of a resurgence of COVID-19 cases compounded by seasonal influenza later this year. Without better planning, 2020 could be the darkest winter in modern history.

He also warned against putting too much hope in the availability of a vaccine within a 12 to 18-month timeframe.

All of that is to say that even at $25 to $30 per barrel  a once unthinkably low price  crude oil might be getting overvalued. The IEA sees a market steadily on the mend, but thats only true if the pandemic is on its way to some sort of resolution, which, of course, it isnt.

By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com:
The Rabinowitz Courthouse in Fairbanks is seen in this 2011 file photo
Syracuse, N.Y.  Onondaga County officials are working on plans that could reopen one of the countys two beaches by Memorial Day weekend.

But, Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon cautioned today, thats not a certainty as we learn to live with the coronavirus.

We dont have the resources and time to open both of them up, McMahon said today, hours after Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that all state beaches would be open for the Memorial Day weekend.

So that leaves county officials looking at one beach as a possibility, he said.

The county has two beaches: Jamesville and Oneida Lake Shores. McMahon said he went to Oneida Lake Shores earlier today to start to plan for how social distancing might work there.

Its an interesting plan, he said, adding that the countys health commissioner, Dr. Indu Gupta, must approve.

But, he said, If we cant do it safely, were not going to do it.

McMahon also talked today about the Rosamond Gifford Zoo. Its another county-run park but its closed through May by a county order.

Under the states reopening plan, the zoo would likely fall into the last phase of reopening because it can draw so many people from a wide area. Today, McMahon said hes working on a plan that might make it possible to reopen the zoo before that last phase.

McMahon also cautioned that mask wearing, social distancing and hand washing are going to be part of our lives, even after all of New Yorks economy restarts.

This is what life is going to be like for a while, McMahon said.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

CNY will restart business Friday amid questions about some of the details

Pride and despair in a CNY food line for first time: Im telling you that I am afraid

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Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com
WASHINGTON  The attorney general for the District of Columbia is investigating whether a conservative filmmaker nominated by President Trump to lead the independent agency in charge of state-funded news outlets illegally enriched himself with funds from a nonprofit organization he runs, according to a top Democratic senator.

Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, said on Thursday that the office of the attorney general had notified the panel that it was actively investigating allegations that Michael Pack illegally funneled funds from his nonprofit group, the Public Media Lab, to his for-profit film company.

The announcement was a significant setback in the Republican effort to quickly confirm Mr. Pack to lead the United States Agency for Global Media, a drive in which Mr. Trump has personally intervened in a bid to install an ally who would dictate more favorable news coverage of his administration. The agency oversees news organizations that together make up one of the largest media networks in the world, including the Voice of America, whose coverage of the coronavirus pandemic has recently infuriated Mr. Trump.

The president has said that the Senates failure so far to confirm Mr. Pack, who is a close ally of conservative activists and Mr. Trumps former chief strategist, Stephen K. Bannon, was preventing us from managing the Voice of America.
Gardai visited a meat factory in which a massive cluster of coronavirus has broken out to warn workers further breaches of social distancing regulations would not be tolerated.

The warning came at a multi-agency meeting at the Kepak meat processing plant in Ballymahon, Co Longford, where 50pc of employees have tested positive for Covid-19.

Officers moved to the enforcement stage in the district which means those found breaching the restrictions will be arrested.

Senior sources said there had been "huge concern" a large number of the plant's employees - particularly Brazilian nationals - had been in breach of the strict health regulations and travel restrictions in the weeks before the special meeting was organised last Friday.

"There was a grave concern within the community about these young men being in breach of the regulations and it had been going on for weeks despite more and more people contracting the virus," a source said.

Dangerous

"Large groups of young men were going to the shops together and congregating outside shops and hanging around the streets.

"Then there was a situation where they continued to car pool to travel to and from work which meant sometimes up to four to five people from different households were travelling in the same vehicle.

"Considering there was a virus cluster at the factory all made for a very grave and dangerous situation. The majority of those involved were Brazilian nationals but it was not only them."

Since the meeting with community policing gardai, senior officers from Longford, senior HSE officials and the chief executive of Longford County Council, gardai have observed no instances of Covid-19 law breaches.

Officers said they were "very happy" with the level of compliance.
WASHINGTON, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Ryan Kelly, CLCS, a producer with Merit Insurance, A Gallagher Company, of Shelton, Connecticut has been named the 2020 PIA National Young Insurance Professional (YIP) of the Year.

The PIA National Young Insurance Professional of the Year award recognizes outstanding achievement by a young insurance professional. It was sponsored for the 15th year in a row by The Rough Notes Company.

Kelly is Vice President of the Connecticut Young Insurance Professionals (CTYIP) and was named the 2019 CTYIP Agent of the Year and the 2018 CTYIP Director of the Year.

"As a past recipient of the PIA National Agent of the Year award, I understand the commitment and dedication one must give to his clients, insurance carriers, fellow agents and Association to be considered for such a distinguished award," said PIA National Past President Tim Russell. "Ryan shows that commitment and dedication on a daily basis."

Kelly is a personal and commercial lines producer with a focus on life science and tech products, such as medical devices and pharmaceutical manufacturers. He is known for his expertise in the life science and tech products sectors and as a knowledgeable, trusted advisor to independent brokers and agents  delivering innovated solutions to meet their clients' needs.

"Joining the association has helped me develop as an insurance professional," said Kelly. "As a producer, it is a great opportunity to build relationships with your underwriters, surplus-lines brokers and vendors who you rely on to write business. In addition to that, I have found it beneficial to network with other insurance producers."

"It is rare today to find an individual who is truly dedicated to their work, their clients, their family and their community," said Christopher J. Pia, Chairman of the Stratford, Connecticut Town Council and Chamber of Commerce. "Ryan Kelly is that individual. Ryan is a consummate professional. He holds himself and his business to the highest ethical and moral standards and his clients and community are the ones who truly benefit."

Founded in 1931, PIA is a national trade association that represents member insurance agents and their employees who sell and service all kinds of insurance but specialize in coverage of automobiles, homes and businesses. PIA's web address is www.pianet.com.

This press release is online at:

https://pianet.com/news/press-releases/2020/pia-national-names-ryan-kelly-2020-young-insurance-professional-of-the-year

SOURCE National Association of Professional Insurance Agents

Related Links

https://pianet.com/


Police in California arrested three people on child endangerment charges this week after five children were found in the bed of a pickup truck in sweltering weather. (San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department)

5 Children Found in Box Hitched to Truck Without Ventilation, Water: Officials

Police in California arrested three people on child endangerment charges this week after five children were found in the bed of a pickup truck in sweltering weather.

Officials said that the children didnt have ventilation or water.

The San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department wrote that deputies responded to a call near Interstate 40 at a rest stop near Needles, California. They then found the children, aged one to 13, inside a wooden box inside a pickup truck bed.

The victims were left unrestrained in the truck bed with no ventilation, water or air conditioning and outside temperatures were around 100 degrees, officials said in a news release.

Zona Brasier, 39; Kenneth Standridge, 40; and Aushajuan Hardy, 41; were arrested on child endangerment charges. They are all residents of Sacramento, officials said.

The sheriffs office wrote that illegal narcotics, drug paraphernalia, and a shotgun were also located inside the truck, although its not clear where.

Standridge, meanwhile, was also charged with driving under the influence and illegal possession of a firearm, according to the office. Hardy was also charged with having a no-bail warrant out of Sacramento.

Standridges bail was set at $75,000, Brasiers bail was set at $150,000, and Hardy is being held without bail. All three suspects were booked into the Colorado River Station jail, the release said.

The San Bernardino County Children and Family Services is now caring for the children, whose conditions are not known, according to a spokesperson for the agency, the East Bay Times reported.

Other details about the incident are not clear. Needles is located near the Arizona-California border.

Anyone with information regarding the incident is urged to contact Detective Brandon Abell or Detective Tim Preston at the Colorado River Station at (760)326-9200.
ST. LOUIS  Coworking companies here, which have either shut down or pared back operations during the coronavirus outbreak, are now wrestling with questions of how to safely reopen an industry based on shared space. At the same time, they anticipate the crisis could actually grow demand for their services.

Though St. Louis and St. Louis County are beginning to ease some restrictions on Monday, many in the regions coworking industry say they wont ramp up to normal capacity for weeks or months.

Its going to be a slow return, said Patricia Hagen, president and executive director of the T-Rex technology incubator in downtown St. Louis. Which is just fine. I think its the way that it should be.

T-Rex has shut down its coworking during COVID-19 and likely wont reopen it until June. In the meantime, it has offered empty offices to some of its members.

Coworking businesses rent out work space and amenities. They offer access to shared work areas, dedicated desks or private offices. The St. Louis region has at least 20 coworking locations from Fenton to Belleville, catering to members ranging from startup founders and attorneys to engineers or artists. Some coworking members work for small or independent businesses, and others work remotely for larger companies.

During the pandemic, some coworking spaces are allowing members to come in on their own but have cut down staffing, to limit exposure to COVID-19.

WeWork, the biggest company in the St. Louis market, has stayed open, saying some clients are essential businesses. The company has increased cleaning, added hand sanitizer, canceled events, and encouraged social distancing.

Christopher Holt, founder and CEO of coworking veteran TechArtista, said only a small group of members have been using his companys locations since COVID-19 hit the region, and staff have been mostly sent home.

You want to open up, but it doesnt mean theres demand there. People are scared still, understandably, Holt said.

TechArtista, which has branches in the Central West End, The Grove and downtown St. Louis, wont fully reopen this month and likely wont in June, either. Some members are still paying dues, even though they arent using the space.

A good chunk of our community has kids. Even if we opened, they couldnt come in, Holt said.

Holt has plans to add two more locations, but hes put expansion on hold for now.

All kinds of uncertainty

Rob Bowman, a franchisee heading up new coworking locations for New York-based Serendipity Labs, is hoping to open a Clayton site in September, and just opened an office in the Kansas City suburb of Overland Park, Kansas, on May 1.

The timing couldnt have been any weirder, he admitted.

He said he was pleasantly surprised by the number of tenants already moving into the new space, but business has undoubtedly been impacted.

The lease-up wont move as fast as we would like, or as fast as we had planned, but itll move, Bowman said.

Many, like Bowman, are hoping that in the future, companies will allow more employees to seek out alternative work locations like coworking spaces.

Hagen, of T-Rex, said that during past economic downturns, laid-off workers have struck out on their own and started new businesses, which in turn can lead to more demand for coworking spaces.

Bowman said coworking also offers a more short-term option for those hesitant to commit to expansive offices.

Nobody wants to get stuck in a 10-year lease for 30,000 square feet, Bowman said.

But, he added, when it comes to predicting the long-term effects on coworking, the jury is still out.

Theres all kinds of uncertainty. Unfortunately we still dont know what tomorrows going to bring. We dont know how long its going to last, Bowman said. So many businesses are still in that tentative mode about making any long-term decisions.

Nebula, a coworking space off Cherokee Street in south St. Louis, has seen its weekly activity drop by 80%. It has cut down staffing to just a couple of hours each day.

Jason Deem, the founder, said its too soon to say when Nebula will start ramping back up to normal capacity. There have been a few cancellations, but most people are keeping up their memberships.

This is going to be really tough on coworking spaces in the short term, Deem said. But as more companies encourage people and employees to work from home  were expecting that employees will eventually seek out collaborative work spaces.

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>>> Removing difficulties for exporting lychee to Japan

In preparation for the export of the first batch of fresh lychees to Japan, the Plant Protection Department has worked with the northern provinces of Bac Giang and Hai Duong to build a standard planting area.

Japan has authorised the Vietnamese side to inspect the disinfection treatment system of fresh lychee exported from Vietnam under the supervision of the Japanese Embassy in Vietnam.

This year, Bac Giang Province has over 28,000 ha of lychees with an estimated output of over 160,000 tonnes, an increase of 10,000 tonnes year-on-year.

To prepare for the first batch of fresh lychee to be exported to Japan, Bac Giang authorities have coordinated with the Plant Protection Department to select and propose 19 growing area codes for the Japanese sides approval, with a total area of 103 ha and an estimated output of 600 tonnes in the districts of Yen The and Luc Ngan.

Meanwhile, Hai Duong Province has 9,700 ha with an estimated output of 45,000 tonnes. The province has developed 23 lychee and longan growing areas that meet the standards of Japanese, US, Australian and EU markets for plant quarantine and food safety.
Small and micro businesses will be able to avail of up to 10,000 grant aid to help them reopen under a new scheme announced by government.

The 250m Restart Grant can be claimed by businesses who have a turnover of less than 5m, have 50 or fewer staff and have either closed or lost 25% of their turnover since the outbreak of Covid-19.

Businesses can receive a minimum or 2,000 and a maximum of 10,000, equivalent to their council rates bill.

The Department of Business, Enterprise and Innovation said that the grants can be used to defray ongoing fixed costs, for replenishing stock and for measures needed to ensure employee and customer safety.

To avail of the grant, businesses must commit to remaining open or reopen if they have been closed as well as declare their intention to keep on staff who are on the Temporary Wage Subsidy Scheme and remploy staff who are on the Pandemic Unemployment Payment.

Business Minister Heather Humphreys said that the grant was "designed to help small businesses get back on their feet".

Small businesses, whether it be the local hairdresser, cafe or clothes shop, are absolutely vital to the social fabric of our towns and villages throughout the country," she said.

However, lobby group Isme accused the government of "retreating into its cocoon". Its CEO Neil McDonnell said that companies needed liquidity and not more debt.

"If we fail the SME sector and allow a large number to go out of business, the pain down the road for the Exchequer and our public servants will be severe. Government must engage with the SME sector, and start to address its needs, quickly," he said.

Minister Humphreys also reiterated the Governments commitment to pharmaceutical firms here as output from that sector boosted exports in March. According to the CSO, the value of Irish goods exports jumped by 38%, month-on-month, to nearly 16bn in March, and surged 13% year-on-year to just over 42bn in the first quarter.

However, latest figures - showing the eurozone economy fell at a record rate in the first quarter of the year - show the challenge ahead.
Anuja Susan Varghese By

Express News Service

KOCHI: Expecting an early return to normalcy and resumption of business as usual in the Middle East, Gulf-hopefuls stuck in the state have been approaching ICMR- approved private labs for Covid-19 negative certificates, to meet the stipulation set by many companies abroad for employment. Most ICMR-approved private labs are at present collecting swab samples only when referred by concerned doctors through hospitals, and not through direct request from patients.

We have the facility to collect samples but it is not done directly from the patient. If patients arrive for the Covid-19 test, we direct them to get the collection of samples undertaken through the hospital. We do not have PPE kits or testing facility here. We send the samples collected via hospitals to our main centre in Kochi, which has RT-PCR facility of testing for Covid-19, said a staffer at DDRC SRL Services, Thiruvananthapuram. Many Gulf aspirants, as well as people who have already worked in the Gulf, turn up for Covid-19 negative certificate, he added.

We get around 30 samples a day. The number of people approaching us has increased off late. Among the 30 samples, some have been submitted specifically with requests for Covid-negative certificate, he said. With the recent ICMR approval to four private labs in the state, a total of six privately managed labs and 14 government-run labs can now test for Covid-19.

As per guidelines laid down by the UAE, our company had sent me a mail seeking Covid-19 negative certificate. Though I knew fully well that I was not infected, I had no option but to get my swab samples tested and furnish the certificate as sought. I got in touch with the nearest primary health centre and from the doctor there, I went to DDRC in Kochi to get the test done on April 29. I got the result the next day as negative, said Gopakumar, who had arrived from Dubai on March 1 for treatment for a week, but could not return due to spread of Covid-19.



DDRC SRL Diagnostics, Kochi, is one amongst the first private labs in the state to receive ICMR approval for Covid-19 testing. The lab got approval in mid-April. Only here in Kochi do we have the facility of collecting samples from the patient directly for testing. We are geared up with enough PPE kits and masks in our labs for the procedure.

We are as yet to receive any request from patients for Covid-19 negative certificates, said K Unnikrishnan, general manager (Operations), DDRC, Kochi. According to sources, the Covid-19 test costs up to Rs 4,500 in a private testing facility. We have so far tested over 300 samples. We get samples here mostly from hospitals, as they are yet to receive approval from the ICMR for Covid-19 testing at their labs, said a staffer at MIMS Lab Services, Kozhikode.

Private hospitals have come up with a protocol to test all suspected cases as well as those coming from red zones in the state. There should be a clear-cut protocol laid out for hospitals, clarifying the criteria to test for Covid-19, rather than burdening patients at their discretion with the test. They charge a hefty sum, compared to the `200-300 which is charged at government hospitals, said a doctor who did not wish to be identified.
Project SC Butler: Sentence Correction (SC1)

Quote:

Experienced employers recognize that business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers rather than the brilliant and original students that dogmatically adhere to their formulations.



A) rather than the brilliant and original students that



B) rather than are the brilliant and original students who



C) instead of the brilliant and original students who



D) than are the brilliant and original students, who



E) as compared to the brilliant and original students, who

THE PROMPT

Quote:

Experienced employers recognize that business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers rather than the brilliant and original students that dogmatically adhere to their formulations.

rather than

instead of

more

than

THE OPTIONS (in a shortened sentence)

Quote:

A) Business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers rather than the brilliant and original students that are stubborn.



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Wrong

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Quote:

B) Business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers color=#ff0000]rather[/color] than are the brilliant and original students who are stubborn.

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Quote:

C) Business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers C) instead of the brilliant and original students who are stubborn.

More . . . instead of

more . . . than.

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Quote:

D) Business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers than are the brilliant and original students, who are stubborn.



than,

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Students

who

who

Quote:

E) Business students who can assimilate different points of view are more effective as managers as compared to the brilliant and original students, who are stubborn.

than

more

more

The correct answer is D.

NOTES

Xs are more ABC than Ys are ABC.

Xs are more ABC than are Ys

more

than are the brilliant and original students, who

COMMENTS
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Bangkok, May 15, 2020  Myanmar authorities must conduct a swift, thorough, and impartial investigation into the assault of journalist Kyaw Linn and ensure that reporters can work in Rakhine state without fearing for their safety, the Committee to Protect Journalists said today.

On May 13 at about 7:45 p.m., in the Rakhine city of Sittwe, two people on a motorcycle fired a rock from a slingshot hitting Kyaw Linn, a contributing reporter with the local independent news websites Myanmar Now and Development Media Group, in the chest, according to local reports and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email.

The assailants did not identify themselves, but shouted from the motorcycle in Rakhine dialect that, this is enough for death, Kyaw Linn told CPJ. He said the rock did not break any bones, but that he went to Sittwe Hospital for treatment after the attack.

Authorities should conduct a thorough investigation into the attack on journalist Kyaw Linn and determine if the assault was related to his journalism, said Shawn Crispin, CPJs senior Southeast Asia representative. Journalists must be able to report in conflict areas without fear of violent reprisal, and authorities should ensure reporters safety.

Kyaw Linn told CPJ he has frequently reported on the armed conflict between Myanmar military forces and the Arakan Army insurgent group in Rakhine and Chin states, including reporting that has been critical of the Arakan Armys tactics.

He said he usually works from the commercial capital of Yangon but recently returned to his family home in Sittwe due to government restrictions imposed to contain the COVID-19 outbreak.

CPJ called the Sittwe police station for comment, but no one answered.

At least two journalists have recently been charged under the Counter-Terrorism Law for interviewing Arakan Army representatives, as CPJ has documented.
The Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet will be one of the newest must-visit attractions in Switzerlands Vallee de Joux for horological buffs and fans of the brand. Designed as a spiral-shaped form, it is, as watch enthusiasts might have guessed, symbolic of the hairspring or balance spring of a mechanical watch escapement. The Musee Atelier, located at the birthplace of Audemars Piguet, is so-named because two workshops, the Grandes Complications and Metier dArt ateliers, are housed within the spiral-shaped glass pavilion that looks out to the wondrous Risoud forest.

Manufacture d'Audemars Piguet  Audemars Piguet

From what we understand, realising this museum in such a manner was an architectural dream and an engineering nightmare. Designed by BIG (Bjarke Ingels Group) and supported by the Swiss architectural firm CCHE, the spiral is formed using curved glass. There are no [steel] pillars whatsoever, even the steel roof, the green roof, is supported by the glass, says Oliviero Bottinelli, member of the Board, Audemars Piguet and former managing director of Audemars Piguet Asia. Every curved glass panel is different as each has to be cut differently. Whats more, the glass has to withstand the different temperatures of this valley. In winter, it can as cold as minus 20 degrees Celsius and extremely warm in summer. The engineers had to come up with a solution and ensure everything works out fine. The realisation of the museum was complex and it gave our CEO [Francois-Henry Bennahmias] and our internal architects loads of stress.

Oliviero Bottinelli  Audemars Piguet

Though the Musee Atelier is now ready, its public opening, initially scheduled for the end of May 2020, has since been pushed back to the end of 2020 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Audemars Piguet is about complications, he adds. We therefore wanted something complicated and beautiful for our museum. The museum had a difficult birth and now it has been born during a difficult time. Having said this, AP will be there for years to come and this is the beauty of the brand. When I first viewed the design plans, I pictured myself from inside the museum. What I liked was that I could envision the scenery staring back at our watchmakers for the past 145 years in front of me  the comforting green fields and the forest. It is beautiful; changing all the time but yet, never changing at the same time.

Manufacture Workshop Original  Audemars Piguet



There are more than 300 pieces on display that takes visitors through different times of AP, Bottinelli says, brimming with pride. At the heart of the museum [the centre of the spiral] is one of our most complicated pocket watches made in the late 19th century. It is an absolute beauty and not too many people know about it yet. By visiting our museum, one will understand the history and legacy of the brand.

Though the dial is signed Union Glashutte, the super-complication, known as the Universelle astronomical pocket watch, packs more than 20 complications and its movement was made by Audemars Piguet in 1899.



Royal Oak fans will not be disappointed. The museum has a rich showcase of pieces from the Royal Oak, Royal Oak Offshore and Royal Oak Concept collections. When I caught sight of the first Royal Oak of 1972, I immediately think of my uncle, he remembers. I call him uncle  Georges Golay, the CEO and president of the AP board from 1960 to 1987. He took the brand to another level under 27 years of his leadership. The Royal Oak wouldnt be there without him. He had called Gerald Genta and decided that it was what we needed. When the drawing was done, he had to push it through because the board then wasnt entirely convinced by this model.

Complication watch  Audemars Piguet

When I see this and the extra-flat 1978 perpetual calendar automatic, I also think of Georges Golay, says Bottinelli. From the museum, I can even see his house. It became my family home. This house is where I experienced Christmas every year for the first 18 years of my life. When I walk around the museum and even outside it, I remember the times when I was a little boy. The view from the museum, the green fields and the forest brings back childhood memories and powerful emotions.

The Audemars Piguet Foundation is now housed within the Musee Atelier, within the older refurbished historical building previously used for the former museum. Founded in 1992 by Jasmine Audemars, daughter of Jacques-Louis Audemars, the foundations focus is on environmental conservation and it has been involved in providing financial support to more than 133 projects globally, including the preservation of the protected Risoud forest and even activities in Borneo, Indonesia, Thailand and the Kuala Selangor Park in Malaysia. It is little wonder why Jasmine Audemars insisted that the Musee Atelier had to obtain the Swiss Minergie certification ensuring the low-energy consumption within the facility.

There are many things we can do but we have to be selective, Bottinelli states matter-of-factly. The idea for the AP Foundation came from Jasmine Audemars. It was a natural step to take because of what surrounds us  the environment where AP lives. We decided to help the forests first and that led to reforestation activities in Switzerland and elsewhere around the world. We also educate the young and explain why the forests are important and the need to preserve them. Everyday is Earth Day for the AP Foundation.



Like the AP Foundation that promotes environmental conservation, the Musee Atelier Audemars Piguet naturally serves a somewhat similar purpose  and that is preserving the history and legacy of a great brand.



The author dedicates this article to Ornella, Gioia and Stella.
Encores JDH #5 reported strong oil fluorescence, oil cuts, oil shows in mud pit, strong gas kick(s), circulated oil while cementing casing, and the confidential mud log further reconfirms the Company's belief for the well's future production potential. All indications are that the JDH #5 is a Tier I oil producer while the JDH #4A is a gas producer. Encore's JDH #4A has been severely delayed and is currently awaiting connection to a gas pipeline in order to produce gas and/or oil. The Company is entering into an agreement to develop a gas pipeline for the JDH #4A and JDH #5 that should deliver the gas byproduct ~2.1 miles west to an existing gas market and processing facility. This system should provide the Company with improved control oil production rates/volumes in the future.

Tier I horizontal Berea oil wells in this area have reportedly averaged in the range of ~100 - 150 BOPD over the initial 90 days of production with up to an estimated EUR ~100000 - 150000 BOE high-side reserve target estimate per well. Berea oil production from Lawrence County, Kentucky reportedly represents nearly ~20 - 25% of the states total annual oil production.

Encore is extremely confident regarding the drilling results at JDH #5 and super excited about the future Frac, well completion and production operations for this well, said Steve Stengell, Encore's President and CEO. We are learning, perfecting our well plan and working with the brightest minds across the Berea play, added Stengell. "The fact that SEC defined investors (SEC Reg D, 506c) can deduct 100% of their investment against all forms of income (state and federal) further mitigates much of the risk associated with these long-term projects, added Stengell.

Encore is currently operating under a temporary "Covid-19" shutdown / quarantine  Force Majeure (see below disclaimer). Bowling Green remains under quarantine as one of the Covid 19 hotspots in Kentucky. Despite major delays from the shut-down, the Company is making plans for the JDH#5 Multi-stage Frac and Completion Operations, preparing for Gas right-of-way and pipeline at Peters Branch, JDH #6 (survey, well plan), WFC #H1 (Fallsburg) and #NB-2 Strat, and the Roppel #6 (Warsaw oil test  Warren County, Kentucky). The Company also making plans to drill a high-risk ~2000 vertical gas/oil test at Sprouse Ridge, near the Riverside Community in Warren County, Kentucky.

In South Central Kentucky and at the JDH #NB-1A in East KY, the company is restricting production and shipments, as the price for crude has been at all record lows. As it relates more specifically to the Companys field operations (Frac treatments, well completion, etc.), well service companies, court houses (necessary for survey and title), hotels for crews, etc. all remain under a quarantine.

The Company believes oil prices should regain ground from the temporary pullback in production and with strong demand for crude when our economy is reopened during the summer driving season. Encore also believes this glut or temporary washout for oil is good overall for the industry because oil production is finally starting to slow across the globe (i.e. lower future inventories / higher future prices). Again, lower gasoline prices to consumers during the summer driving season should boost the need and use for crude oil (i.e. pint up demand) in the short-term. Be sure to review the below article regarding future oil prices and the target of $65 by year-end.

https://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/What-Will-It-Take-To-See-65-OilAgain-This-Year.html

The Company should resume normal operations soon. We are confident that oil prices will rebound, and that this is the opportune time for investors to participate at a lower price structure and optimize reserves, long-term while receiving a 100% tax deduction. Investors that participate today investment at a lower well cost / price structure with production 6  12 months forward and higher price levels for crude, added Stengell.

Oil and gas investments are subject to a high degree of risk, uncertainty, unpredictability, indefinite delays, loss of investment and are suitable only for SEC defined accredited investors who are sophisticated in making business and investment decisions. No assurances can be made as it relates to production, income, distributions, reserves, cost overruns, profitability, prices, timelines and/or any other estimates.

The SEC definition of an accredited investor is better explained on the SECs website:

https://www.investor.gov/introduction-investing/general-resources/news-alerts/alerts-bulletins/investor-bulletins/updated-3

Qualified SEC defined accredited investors (SEC Regulation D, Rule 506c) can deduct 100% of their intangible and tangible drilling costs against all forms of income (state and federal) with years of potential income from production. These tax savings mitigate a good amount of risk associated with oil and gas drilling, completion and production operations.

For more information regarding this information and/or to see if you qualify as an SEC defined accredited investor to participate, please contact Steve Stengell at (270) 438-9956, steve.stengell@encore-energy.com and/or visit the due diligence section of Encores website: http://www.encore-energy.com/Operations.html

Assumptions, Disclaimer and Cautionary Statement: The information herein may contain forwardlooking statements, and actual results may vary. Words such as "estimate", "will," "intend," "continue," "target," "expect," "achieve," "strategy," "future," "may," "goal," or other comparable words or phrases or the negative of those words, and other words of similar meaning indicate forward-looking statements and important factors which could affect actual results. Forward-looking statements are made based upon Management's current expectations and beliefs concerning future developments and their potential effects upon Encore Energy, Inc. Oil and gas investments involve a high degree of risk, uncertainty and are only suitable for qualified Accredited (SEC Definition) investors who are sophisticated in making business decisions and can bear the financial loss of their entire investment, while delivering a turnkey profit to the Company for proving the prospect development, lease acquisition, drilling, completion, engineering and ongoing production operations. The Company does not provide tax advice and investors should seek the advice of their tax professional. Any tax and/or other information herein is provided for illustration purposes only and may include estimates that are uncertain and subject to change. It is impossible to accurately forecast profitability, production, reserves, income, expenses and timelines for any project. No assurances can be made as it relates to reserves, production, income, profit, prices, timelines and/or other estimates. Actual production and results are beyond the control of management. In the event that commercial production is achieved, it may take many years for the investor to recoup his or her investment. The Company's lease acreage position under is subject to change and includes acreage under lease, Farmout agreement, verbal agreement, renewals, expired terms and any other prospective acreage in which the Company has communicated and/or negotiated with the landowner the leasing of oil and gas rights, now or in the future, and the lease / mineral owner has leased or communicated their intent to lease there mineral lease rights to the Company. It is important for qualified investors to acknowledge the fact that the US government provides them with tax savings (100% IDC tax deduction) to mitigate or at least off-set some of the financial risk associated with domestic oil and gas investments. This is not an offer to sell or buy a security. An offer shall only be made pursuant to SEC Regulation D, Rule 506(c) by a private placement offering memorandum, and this is not a private placement offering memorandum. The COVID 19 Pandemic is defined under Force Majeure which are circumstances beyond the control of all parties, including Encore Management, is legally described as an act of God
A huge fire has broken out at a warehouse in east London.

Twenty crews are battling the blaze which ripped through a warehouse on Alfreds Way, Barking, just after 6.30pm on Friday night.

Huge plumes of black smoke were spotted billowing across the borough.

Some 125 firefighters are at the scene trying to control the fire, with the police and ambulance also in attendance and a helicopter also reportedly scrambled.

Some 20 fire crews are tackling the blaze / @stephhyw/Twitter

Fire crews from Barking, East Ham, Dagenham, Plaistow,Ilford and surrounding fire stations are at the scene and many are expected to remain overnight.

The London Ambulance Service is urging people living in the area to keep windows and doors shut due to the large amounts of smoke being emitted by the blaze.

A spokesman for the LAS said that there were currently no people who had been treated for injuries.

We were called at 7.04pm today (15 May) to reports of a fire at an industrial estate on Alfreds Way, Barking, the spokesman said.

We dispatched an ambulance crew, an incident response officer and our hazardous area response team (HART) to the scene.

We havent treated anyone at the scene but remain there as a precaution.

A London Fire Brigade spokeswoman told the Standard they were attending a fire in a wholesale warehouse.

There are no further details yet about its cause and whether anyone was injured.

The Brigade said it had taken 80 calls over the blaze and that crews were expected to remain on scene throughout the night.

Nearby residents shared dramatic photographs and footage of the fire.

One tweeted: "Absolutely hug fire in a warehouse in Barking, east London. At least 20 fire engines, 5 or more incident response units. At last 15 police cars and vans, at least 10 ambulances. At least 5 undercover cars racing there. Police helicopter up."

The plumes of smoke could be seen from Woolwich in south east London.

Station Manager Jim Smith who is at the scene said: "A warehouse and an adjoining warehouse are alight. Crews are working hard to prevent the fire spreading.

"Firefighters expect to be on scene throughout the night."
Kolkata, May 15 : As the nationwide Covid-19 lockdown is slated to step into its fourth phase, the Mamata Banerjee-led West Bengal government has written to the Centre with suggestions to bring back Bengalis stranded in various foreign countries.

Earlier, the state government had made initiatives to bring home migrant labourers who were stuck in various parts of the country due to the lockdown.

The state administration made arrangements for running as many as 105 additional special trains to bring home all the Bengalis and migrant workers who were stranded in various parts of India due to the Covid-19 induced lockdown.

According to sources in the state home department, suggestions were given with focus on resuming civil aviation services at the Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose International (NSCBI) Airport and on the arrangements of institutional quarantine centres for those coming from outside.

"The government of West Bengal is keen to welcome back its people stranded in different countries and has long back communicated its agreement as well as quarantine arrangement details etc. for special international inbound journeys," the state home department tweeted on Friday.

The initiative taken in this regard to address the problems faced by the stranded people abroad has been noticed.

"We have seen the standard operating procedure (SOP) and the guidelines issued in this regard. It is requested that the said SOP and the guidelines may kindly be maintained strictly to avoid any chance of spread of Covid-19, as initial spread of the infection has been incidentally through foreign returnees only," the home department said in a letter.

The state government also informed the Centre that the required preparations for institutional quarantine facilities for the foreign returnees to West Bengal have been put in place.

The letter was sent by state Chief Secretary Rajiva Sinha to Union Home Secretary Ajay Bhalla with a copy marked to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA).

"It is, however, requested that the details of the passengers reaching Kolkata may kindly be intimated in advance to make other necessary arrangements," it said.
Bernards Townships computers were breached by a ransomware attack discovered Monday night that caused the townships website to go offline, the mayor and administrator said.

Town and police officials are investigating, and have been in touch with state and federal law enforcement authorities, Mayor Jim Baldassare said.

Such a breach typically involves data being seized or locked, and its not released until money, a ransom, is paid.

Pat Monaco, the township administrator, said Thursday afternoon its not known who breached the system or for what reason. "...Were trying to assess whats going on without doing any damage to what we have, he said.

He did confirm a message came with the breach, he did not say what the message said or if it listed any demands.

We continue to dedicate all available resources to recovering from this event and will provide necessary updates as they are received, Baldassare said. As with any investigation, this is a meticulous process, and we thank all of you for your patience and understanding as the forensics work continues."

The mayor said a preliminary review appears to show the towns financial and payroll software systems were not affected, nor were systems used by the recreation department and their Microsoft Office announts. The townships phone system is OK, as are police department systems.

Police Chief Michael Shimsky said the 911 system was not breached.

We also want to emphasize that billing information is not hosted on our network, the mayor said. Its handled by a third-party vendor and the town has not received any reports of an intrusion there.

The township is working with a third-party computer forensics specialists to investigate the breach, Baldassare and Monaco said.

Local governments and school districts have become favorite targets of hackers ransomware attacks, due to often lagging security and a lack of IT staff. Many municipalities and districts have aging computer systems and often use third-party IT vendors for tech support.

The lack of a dedicated staff and few contingency plans often compel municipalities and school districts to pay up to hackers when a ransomware attack is launched, officials say.

Thank you for relying on us to provide the journalism you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a voluntary subscription.

Rodrigo Torrejon may be reached at rtorrejon@njadvancemedia.com.
The CBI has described as a 'big victory' and a 'milestone' the order of a UK court rejecting beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya's application seeking leave to appeal in the country's Supreme Court the verdict clearing his extradition to India in bank fraud case.

The CBI has described as a "big victory" and a "milestone" the order of a UK court rejecting beleaguered liquor baron Vijay Mallya's application seeking leave to appeal in the country's Supreme Court the verdict clearing his extradition to India in bank fraud case.

The 64-year-old businessman had 14 days to file his latest application to seek permission to move the higher court on the High Court judgment from 20 April, which dismissed his appeal against a Westminster Magistrates' Court extradition order certified by the UK Home Secretary.

The latest decision, referred to as a "pronouncement", means that under the India-UK Extradition Treaty, the UK Home Office is now expected to formally certify the court order for Mallya to be extradited to India within 28 days.

"Vide order dated 20.04.2020, a Division Bench of UK High Court has dismissed Mallya's appeal against the lower court order recommending his extradition to face trial in India," CBI spokesperson RK Gaur said.

The decision of the UK High Court of Justice to order the extradition of Mallya is a milestone in the CBI's quest for excellence and a reminder that economic offenders, facing probes in large value frauds, cannot consider themselves as above the process merely because they have changed jurisdictions, he said.

"The judgment also vindicates the painstaking investigation by CBI, especially since Mallya had raised various issues with regard to the admissibility of evidence, the fairness of investigation itself and extraneous consideration, with a view to divert attention from his own acts," the spokesperson said.

He said, "The extradition of Vijay Mallya was sought to face trial in a 2015 case for offences of cheating, criminal conspiracy and abuse of official position by public servants, wherein the allegations of conspiring with public servants and dishonestly defrauding the IDBI bank to the extent of Rs 900 crore."

The agency had filed a charge sheet on the conclusion of the investigation on 24 January, 2017, which was followed by a request for extradition of Mallya on 31 January, 2017. Based on the request, he was arrested by the UK authorities on 20 April, 2017, but was given bail within hours.

The agency successfully waded through a complex legal battle for three years in Westminster Magistrate's Court and then the UK High Court of Justice to convince them on a prima facie case against him as well as compliance of ECHR norms on Human Rights and prison conditions.

"It may be mentioned that vide order dated 10 December, 2018, the Senior District Judge ruled in favour of Government of India and recommended extradition of Mallya to the Secretary of State. The appeal filed by Mallya was thereafter dismissed by the UK High Court on 5 April, 2019, on all five grounds," he said.

UK Division Bench admitted the appeal of Mallya only on one ground, which is "prima facie" case was made out against him or not and was rejected by it after the CBI presented robust arguments to support its case, the spokesperson said.

"The ground of prima facie case was heard by a Division Bench of UK High Court in February'2020 and was decided in favour of Government of India vide order dated 20 April, 2020," he said.

"CBI appreciates the painstaking investigation, the hard work and the meticulous efforts of Investigating Officer Suman Kumar, Additional SP, CBI, in successfully pursuing investigation and extradition proceedings against the fugitive," the spokesperson said.
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Ammonium Phosphates

Industrial Phosphates

Purified Phosphoric Acid

Phosphorus Chloride

Phosphorus Pentoxide

Phosphorus Pentasulfide

Segmentation by application: breakdown data from 2015 to 2020, in Section 2.4; and forecast to 2025 in section 11.8.

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Food Industry

Water Treatment Chemicals

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Flame Retardant Material

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A view of the Confucius Institute building on the Troy University campus in Troy, Ala., on March 16, 2018. (Kreeder13 via Wikimedia Commons)

College Democrats, Republicans Condemn CCP Infiltration at American Universities

In a bipartisan effort rarely seen, the college student organizations of Democratic and Republican parties are joining forces against the Chinese communist regimes long-term campaign to exert influence on American campuses.

The Chinese governments flagrant attempts to coerce and control discourse at universities in the United States and around the world pose an existential threat to academic freedom as we know it, read a joint statement (pdf) from the College Republican National Committee and the College Democrats of America, representing about 350,000 students in over 45 states.

The two student political organizations urged colleges and universities to take immediate actions to counter authoritarian interference from Beijing, citing a list of known and ongoing activities aimed to expand Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) reach and power. They specifically called out Beijing-funded Confucius Institutes, which are still in operation in some 70 schools across the United States.

The Chinese Communist Party has established programs at universities, especially Confucius Institutes, which are proprietary outlets of soft power that promote self-censorship, arbitrarily censor discussion of issues sensitive to the Chinese Communist Party, utilize discriminatory hiring practices, and propagate blatant disinformation, the groups said in the statement, recommending immediate and permanent closure of all Confucius Institutes in the nation.

A Confucius Institute at the University of North Florida in this file photo. The institute has since been closed by the university. (Huang Yuntian/The Epoch Times)

The college student organizations noted in a joint letter that the Chinese Students and Scholars Association (CSSA) is manipulated by the Chinese regime to advance the CCPs own interests at the expense of students individual rights. The organizations cited a 2017 incident, when the CSSA at the University of Maryland played a leading role in bullying Chinese student Yang Shuping, who in her graduation address, praised the fresh air of free speech that she found absent in China but enjoyed in the United States.

Calling the CSSA an illegitimately coerced organization, they demanded the revocation of any organizational or club status afforded to the CSSA. They also called on higher education institutions to completely disclose any financial and academic ties with any Chinese state agencies and proxies, and create systems that would allow students to report violations and other general encroachments upon academic freedom.

While warning against CCP infiltration, the college student organizations also condemned anti-Asian sentiment, violence, and hateful acts.

The Chinese Communist Partys actions pose an immense threat to academic freedom and to human dignity, the joint letter read. It is imperative that we distinguish this totalitarian regime from the Chinese people, whom we must steadfastly defend from abhorrent acts of xenophobia, racism, and hatred.
YEREVAN, MAY 15, ARMENPRESS. All public eateries such as cafes and restaurants are required to screen patrons for fever before letting them in, Deputy Minister of Economy Varos Simonyan said.

Patrons showing flu-like symptoms such as a runny nose, cough or fever will not be allowed to enter the venues, he said.

The businesses are also required to report potential sick customers to the healthcare authorities.

Editing and Translating by Stepan Kocharyan
Officials and experts are sounding the alarm as Malawi shifts to top campaign gear with giant rallies for an unprecedented presidential re-run despite the coronavirus pandemic.

The poor southern African country will hold polls in just under two months after the Constitutional Court overturned the results of last year's controversial election, which handed President Peter Mutharika a second term.

Mutharika garnered just 38.5 percent of the May 21 vote but the Constitutional Court annulled the result, citing "grave" and "widespread" irregularities, including the use of correction fluid on ballot papers

Polling is due on July 2, but could be brought forward to June 23, the electoral commission said this week.

In a blatant defiance of a ban on large gatherings, thousands of elated supporters jostled and shoved shoulder-to-shoulder cheering on their candidates as they handed in their nomination papers last week.

Immediately after that, parties hit the road, attracting huge crowds.

Health Minister Jappie Mhango chided his colleagues on the campaign trail.

"Elections or not, we need people and we cannot be sending them to the grave because we want to win an election.

'We're being careless'

"We're being careless. If the leaders themselves cannot even observe social distancing, who will be telling people ...about the seriousness of the pandemic?" he said.

The WHO has asked candidates to observe social distancing and distribute masks at rallies. By AMOS GUMULIRA (AFP/File)

Coronavirus infections have been slowly creeping in Malawi and now stand at 63, including three deaths, since the first case emerged on April 2.

There is no lockdown but the government has ordered public gatherings to be capped at 100 people.

A court last month blocked the government from imposing a full lockdown because it had failed to announce any measures to cushion the vulnerable.

"We are really concerned with the gathering of people for political rallies," said Health Ministry principal secretary Dan Namarika.

"We have seen huge gatherings, this is would defeat the ... fight against coronavirus," he said.

But for staunch Mutharika supporter Jacqueline Banda, this election is a do-or-die affair.

"Of course, it is important to protect ourselves against COVID-19, (but) I feel that the country is in crisis and we need to win this election," Banda said.

"Coronavirus will come and go but this election is a game-changer. If we lose this election, then we are doomed," she said.

Opposition supporter Thoko Namitowa cast doubt on whether the virus had reached Malawi and said she would not be dissuaded from attending rallies.

"Do we really have coronavirus in Malawi? I doubt! If we had coronavirus here, we would be dying in numbers. In Italy, ... 800 people were dying a day," she said.

Main opposition leader Lazarus Chakwera's party has accused the ruling DPP of breaking the ban on large gatherings and setting a precedent. By AMOS GUMULIRA (AFP/File)

Namitowa said the official infection figures were a ploy by the government "to stop the election from happening".

Mutharika's Democratic Progressive Party's (DPP) secretary general Griezelder Jeffrey declined to react but main opposition leader Chakwera's Lazarus Malawi Congress Party accused the DPP of flouting the virus guidelines first and setting a precedent.

"The government put in place regulations regarding COVID-19 but they are the first ones who broke those same rules. So, how do they expect the rest of us to adhere to these rules?" party general secretary Eisenhower Mkaka said.

Dire consequences

Malawi University of Science and Technology virologist Gama Bandawe warned that the consequences would be dire.

"It effectively leaves us to face the full unmitigated force of the pandemic," he told AFP.

Mutharika appealed the ruling ordering a re-run. By AMOS GUMULIRA (AFP/File)

He said Malawians "will only fully understand the impact once we start to see burial teams and mass graves" because the disease is "deceptively undramatic until it is too late".

Political scientist Michael Jana said the bitter power struggle has seen the country throw caution to the wind.

"If politicians can break these rules willy-nilly, people will also follow suit," said Jana.

The World Health Organization (WHO) has urged politicians to ensure that social distancing is observed and to issue free face masks to rally goers.

"It is very important to keep that physical distance and assuring these events do not become an occasion for the virus to spread further into the population," said Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 23:34:12|Editor: huaxia

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by Xinhua writer Gao Wencheng

BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- One year ago during his keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Conference on Dialogue of Asian Civilizations, Chinese President Xi Jinping urged the international community to "look to culture and civilization to play their role" in meeting common challenges and creating a better future for all.

As the human race is still in the depths of a global fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, Xi's call a year before could not be more relevant today. Countries with different civilizations can and should draw inspiration from humanity's shared values, and form a united front to beat this deadly disease.

Civilizations do share common ground. That is exactly what has been demonstrated in the ongoing global public health crisis.

All across the world, front-line doctors and nurses have been risking their own lives to save those of others. Though they speak different languages and have different skin colors, their shared respect for human lives is unmistakable.

All across the world, governments, businesses and ordinary citizens in different countries have shown their support of each other and rushed to the aid of those struggling in the pandemic.

Not too long ago, Italian President Sergio Mattarella hosted a special concert in his presidential palace to express unity and special friendship with the Chinese people, and Switzerland lit up its famed Matterhorn mountain with projections of the national flags of China, the United States, Japan and many other countries in a show of global solidarity.

Meanwhile, cultural diversity exemplified in this outbreak also provides an opportunity for different civilizations to learn from each other.

Take wearing face masks as an example. While wearing surgical masks has become a commonplace practice in many Asian countries, many in the West initially regarded them as unnecessary. Now that more and more medical professionals and scientists worldwide are recommending using masks in public places, Westerners have started to come around.

Another case in point is a growing role traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) now plays in treating coronavirus infections. While hospitals around the world have mainly used Western medicine during the pandemic, TCM has seen more recognition.

According to the reports of Canadian news outlet The Globe and Mail, Jindrich Cinatl, a German virologist, said, "In Western medicine, we have drugs that attack just a concrete target. With traditional medicine, you can prevent virus absorption to cells, virus replication and so on."

However, the international community should guard against hubris and prejudice that tend to entail misguided judgement during the deadly outbreak, which in turn has already cost a tremendous loss of human life.

When the coronavirus was first reported in Asia, some U.S. politicians saw it as an "Asian virus," and claimed that the coronavirus only attacked the immune system of Asians.

That is a part of the reason why the United States, whose leader once described the pathogen as a "flu," has become the world's epicenter of the pandemic.

Today, as the coronavirus pandemic has already claimed more than 300,000 lives around the globe, the urgency to pool wisdom from different cultures and people worldwide has become more imperative than ever before. Countries in the East and the West should learn from each other to weather this crisis because no civilization has all the answers to defeating COVID-19, humanity's formidable common foe. Enditem
SAN FRANCISCO  Like so many college students who have seen campus life supplanted by a computer screen thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, Allie Larman faces a difficult decision about the fall semester.

Set to enter her junior year at the University of California, Davis, where she is earning a double major in community and regional development and Spanish, Larman returned to her parents home in nearby Albany, Calif., in mid-March, when Gavin Newsom became the nations first governor to issue shelter-in-place restrictions that put an end to in-person instruction.

Larman and nearly 40,000 of her classmates continued their education on Zoom, an online platform few had ever heard of before and that teachers and students alike have found to be a disorienting, two-dimensional substitute.

I feel like Im definitely not learning as much in my classes and Im not having a very good time, Larman told Yahoo News. I really thrive off of being on campus. Seeing all of my friends in my classes really keeps me engaged. I like going to the coffee shop on campus and walking around. I like that routine.

While Larman says that the school did a really good job considering the crazy circumstances, Zoom instruction isnt what she bargained for, and shes considering taking a leave of absence rather than return for another quarter of online offerings.

Dozens of students and their parents have filed lawsuits against colleges and universities this spring seeking tuition reimbursement. (Svetikd/Getty Images)

Im not sure if its worth around $5,000 a quarter [the cost of tuition only, excluding room and board] to attend a Zoom university, Larman said.

Shes not alone. Dozens of students and their parents have filed lawsuits against colleges and universities this spring seeking tuition reimbursement. But the question of value is even more pressing looking ahead. Last week, California State University announced it would hold most of its classes next year online thanks to the coronavirus. That means 500,000 students will have to decide, in Larmans words, whether to attend a Zoom university. If polling on this question is accurate, that could prove ruinous for higher education. A recent survey conducted by the American Council on Education found that nearly 20 percent of students currently enrolled in college are either unsure they will continue in the fall or say they will definitely not do so.

Story continues

And the academic disruption caused by the pandemic has sparked a debate about the future of higher education in America.

Nobody knows what the retention rates are going to be in the fall, Roblin Meeks, associate dean of graduate studies at Manhattans John Jay College of Criminal Justice, told Yahoo News. I think everybody is in a holding pattern. If Congress appropriates money for the states, then it wont be as bad. Its hard to know how much money the campuses are going to have to work with.

John Jay, with 13,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate students, is part of the City University of New York, which receives approximately 60 percent of its funding from the state.

Theres no school in the CUNY system that has a large endowment, Meeks said. Everyone is tuition-driven, so if a bunch of your students dont show up, thats really bad.

Its unclear when restrictions put in place to slow the spread of the coronavirus, which hit New York harder than any other city in the world, will be lifted. While the president of the well-endowed Ivy League Brown University, Christina Paxson, foresees implementing rigorous coronavirus testing, contact-tracing cellphone apps and new social distancing policies in order to lure students back to campus, for colleges in the CUNY system like John Jay, making that transition is harder to envision.

John Jay has 15,000 students and has essentially two buildings with 109 classrooms, and so were a commuter school with a vertical campus. Students have to take the elevator, which is usually packed, Meeks said. Are we going to have packed elevators? What about bathrooms? We dont have huge bathrooms. Brown has different capabilities than CUNY does.

That uncertainty means online instruction is likely to be the new normal at least through next term, especially at urban colleges where Americas economic divide is already apparent.

The class divide is so stark and the need is so great for the students that CUNY serves that I think its going to be really rough for a while, Meeks said. Theres not going to be enough technology. CUNY has a lot of undocumented, first-generation, food-insecure students. It is one of the greatest social engines in the country.

With New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo projecting a $13.3 billion state budget shortfall, and the possibility that students may not be willing to pay tuition for online-only instruction, schools like John Jay are potentially facing an existential crisis.

Scott Galloway, who teaches marketing at New York University, made waves in the educational community last week when he asserted that the value of college has been substantially degraded thanks to the sudden online migration.

Theres the education certification and then theres the experience part of college. The experience part of it is down to zero, and the education part has been dramatically reduced, Galloway told New York magazine.

Looking ahead, Galloway envisions a dramatic shift in the way education will be delivered, with hybrid online and on-campus offerings becoming more entrenched and many lower-tier schools being put out of business. In their place, Galloway sees schools like MIT eventually enrolling a class of 10,000 freshmen through largely impersonal online offerings, an idea that doesnt sit well with Audrey Bilger, the president of Reed College in Portland, Ore.

When we talk about something being degraded, or what are students paying for, I really think that its a mistake to think of college as a product in that way, Bilger said in a telephone interview. We have amazingly talented faculty and a caring and connected staff who get up every day and try to figure out how to give our students an extraordinary learning experience. Its really baked into the Reed model. Our focus really is on the academic program.

Drawn by its small size, reputation for excellence and level of attention it gives to each student, Bilger became the president of the 1,400-student liberal arts college in the fall of 2019.

I fell in love with what happens at a liberal arts college  the connectedness, the relationships, the attention to young people at a foundational stage in their lives, she said.

Seven months into her new role, however, the pandemic struck and Bilger was forced to do the unthinkable, shuttering Reeds picturesque campus and moving classes to the virtual world of Zoom.

Many professors at liberal arts colleges are having their first experience of online instruction, and the disorientation felt by their students is affecting them as well.

When theyre on campus, theyre supported by the camaraderie of the learning community and being in a place where this is what we do together, said Emily Barton, a novelist and creative writing professor at Oberlin College. Once you scatter them, you dont know what environment theyve gone home to. Some of them are very comfortable at home  theyre welcome with their families, their families have enough room, nobodys been financially impacted and theyre able to feed them and give them a good Wi-Fi connection without difficultly. Obviously thats not the majority of students.

Barton noted that her discipline of creative writing is better suited to online instruction than, say, a science course with a lab component. But even so, she misses the subtle interactions with students that dont come across on a screen.

When youre in a room full of people, you can understand more about what theyre feeling. Its difficult to parse that when youre looking at what basically looks like a sheet of forever postage stamps, Barton said. But it depends on what the class is and how its structured in terms of how much value students are getting from it.

Bilger said that while the current plan is to return to in-person instruction in the fall, the college will be guided by the safety and well-being of our students. Ultimately, she said, we are at the mercy of the virus, and that means online courses could continue next year.

We have resources to help us weather this storm, Bilger said of Reeds $579 million endowment, adding, but we hope it doesnt go on for too terribly long.

Online only or not, Reed wont be lowering tuition next year, and so far hasnt seen a drop in the number of students who have preregistered for the fall, Bilger said. While she understands that many undergraduates may be tempted to take a semester or a year off, she thinks predictions of a mass exodus may be overblown given that global travel and business have ground to a halt.

There arent lots of options for anyone right now in terms of alternatives, Bilger said. If students are taking a gap year, its going to be harder to do that in the way that weve thought of gap years in the past.

But Meeks, whose son is a junior in high school, is less certain that starting college makes sense if you cant actually set foot on campus.

If my son got accepted to go to Northwestern or someplace that wants $75,000 but it was just going to be online, I would say, Why dont you just take a year off, or well just do some online courses wherever we want, Meeks said.

Larman sees the logic of postponing returning to college until the experience at least partly resembles what it had been before the pandemic.

I really enjoy college, and I want to save the time I have to make sure I do, she said. That might mean I can take a pause next quarter and save it for a better time.

But schools like Reed, or even a huge, well-funded campus like the University of Michigan, which anticipates losses of up to $1 billion this year alone, cant afford to wait for the dust to settle. They know that their survival at a time when revenue has disappeared will continue to be a struggle until public health officials sound the all clear. So while online instruction may not be ideal when compared with the in-person version, Bilgers goal will be to make sure that Reed elevates it to a level worth paying for, at least in the short term.

This pandemic has only strengthened my belief in the value of what we do and the relational quality of it, Bilger said. As we bring in our new class of students, if we have to be remote from one another, well make use of available technologies and every tool that we can to ensure that students get that personal, connected experience right out of the gate.

_____

Click here for the latest coronavirus news and updates. According to experts, people over 60 and those who are immunocompromised continue to be the most at risk. If you have questions, please refer to the CDCs and WHOs resource guides.

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A Block Development Officer (BDO) in Odisha allegedly abused the migrant workers arriving in the state from Surat in Gujarat.

Some women migrant labourers of Banarpal block in Angul district had reached Bhubaneswar by train from Surat on Wednesday morning. They were taken to a government quarantine centre at Barapada Primary School in Chhendipada block of the district in the afternoon.

As the women migrant workers belonged to Banarpal block, they requested Chhendipada BDO Sunil Kumar Kerketa over phone to make arrangements for their stay at a quarantine centre in their own block. But Kerketa told them to either stay put there or leave for their village on foot.

I did not bring you to the quarantine centre. If you want to stay in the centre you can, or you can walk to your home, the BDO is heard saying in the audio clip that has now gone viral.

This comes a day after another BDO in Odisha was seen misbehaving and insulting a group of migrant workers who had returned from Gujarat.

Baliapal BDO Chhabirani Sahoo hurled abuses at the migrant workers and even flaunted her position when the migrant workers asked for water. A video of the incident was widely shared on social media.

Odishas Panchayati Raj Minister Pratap Jena said on Thursday that he has ordered an inquiry into Sahooss alleged misbehaviour towards the migrant workers. Jena said he has asked the Balasore district collector to probe the incident.
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On May 1, Puerto Ricos Governor Wanda Vazquez Garced issued an executive order allowing for the phased resumption of non-essential commercial and manufacturing activities by May 11. Under the executive order, insurance, real estate and legal services were allowed to resume operations, along with hardware stores, auto repair and sales shops, other appliance repair and installation businesses on May 4. Retail banking operations and medical offices, including dentists and optometrists, were also given a green light to reopen.

The order also allowed for gas stations and pharmacies, which previously had been allowed to operate on a restricted schedule, to resume normal operating hours. Construction and manufacturing at non-essential plants were also allowed to resume on May 11. The government is also planning for a reopening of non-essential retail outlets, restaurants, bars, barber shops and beauty salons before the end of the month.

A woman wears a face mask and gloves at the gas station in San Juan, Puerto Rico. (AP Photo/Carlos Giusti)

In order to reopen or continue operations, businesses are being required to complete a self-certification form attesting to the development of a control plan or risk-management plan. There is to be no official review of said plans. Rather, there is a self-certification form, which consists of 21 questions that require check marks in yes or no boxes, that is to be submitted to the Department of Labor and Human Resources once completed. In other words, businesses have been left to supervise themselves in all matters related to worker safety as the governments regulatory agencies essentially wash their hands of the matter.

Not surprisingly, within businesses that have remained open since the outbreak of the pandemic there has been a rash of workers denunciations of unsafe conditions. The Puerto Rican Occupational Safety and Health Administration (PROSHA) has registered a sharp increase in complaints since March of this year. According to an investigation conducted by the Centro de Periodismo Investigativo (CPI), a collective of investigative journalists that advocates for transparency, the period between March 14 and April 29 saw 680 coronavirus-related workplace complaints filed with the PROSHA.

Of the registered coronavirus-related complaints, nearly 60 were submitted by hospital or health care workers. Significantly, several of the complaints to PROSHA have been leveled against Walmart stores and Banco Popular branches. Walmart and Banco Popular, Puerto Ricos biggest bank, are two of the largest private employers in the territory.

In comments recently made to CPI reporters, a retail worker at a Walmart located in Bayamon, a densely populated town located just southwest of San Juan, described the situation for workers at the store. There is no control of the public entrance and people are entering as if it were normal sales. .. For an employee to get a mask they make us sign a liability release and if we do not sign, we are sent home. The company doesnt just supply masks. This is why several associates have opted to bring their own masks. But as I said, if you dont fill out a release, they send you home. Other workers have denounced these companies for withholding information about positive cases at work sites.

Additionally, several manufacturing outfits that have remained open in Puerto Rico throughout the pandemic have also been exposed for their reckless and criminal endangerment of workers. Employees at an Eaton-Cutler Hammer plant, located in the northern town of Arecibo, have repeatedly denounced the electrical supplies and power management company, which boasts operations in 175 countries and posted $21 billion in revenues during 2019, for not providing PPE or orientation on workplace safety protocols to workers.

Other manufacturing companies with operations in Puerto Rico denounced by workers for unsafe conditions related to COVID-19 include: ABB, Thermo King, Abbott, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Zimmer Bionet and SNL Technical.

In all of these cases, the response of PROSHA, which is itself an agency within the Puerto Rican Department of Labor and Human Resources, has been to require that the cited companies investigate themselves.

PROSHA has been notoriously negligent in intervening on behalf of workers. The last year of comprehensive reports on PROSHA inspections that currently appears on its website is 2014, during which, by the agencys own account, it conducted only 33 inspections out of the 101 cases that remained pending from previous years.

Beyond the criminally complicit role being played by regulatory agencies, capitalist policies during the pandemic are being channeled through quasi governmental agencies such as the Puerto Rico Business Emergency Operation Center (BEOC), which was recently reorganized as the governors economic task force for response to the coronavirus.

Tellingly, the governors economic task force is comprised entirely of representatives of the most powerful sectors of international capital with operations in the colony, including companies that workers have denounced for COVID-related workplace hazards. For example, Ivan Baez, a Walmart executive, and Ignacio Alvarez, president and executive director of Banco Popular, are both members of the governors task force.

Other members of the economic task force include: Jaime Fonalledas, the patriarch of a commercial real estate and dairy dynasty with close ties to US retail interests and the Republican party; Emilio Colon Zavala, an engineering and construction firm executive; Wendy Perry, an executive with the pharmaceutical giant Merck; Zoime Alvarez, vice president of the Puerto Rican Bankers Association; and Eduardo Pagan, an executive of Tote Maritime, the largest shipping monopoly in Puerto Rico.

Significantly, none of the familiar stooges from the union bureaucracies, historically enthusiastic about carrying out their functions in the service of the capitalists, were offered a seat on the task force, even as a measure to preserve appearances.

The rush to restart commercial and manufacturing activities in Puerto Rico takes place within the broader context of a prolonged economic recession dating since 2006, a dramatic surge in so-called public debt, and savage austerity measures imposed by successive administrations which have resulted in the dismantling of education and health care systems and the deterioration of physical infrastructure. Puerto Rico also has a notoriously low labor participation rate that has led to an exodus of over 500,000 residents over the past decade, with 45 percent of its remaining population, including 58 percent of children, living below the poverty line.

The 2016 Promesa Law, enacted under the Obama administration, created a legal framework for debt restructuring under federal bankruptcy courts while imposing a nine-person, Fiscal Control Board (FCB), known locally as la junta, with dictatorial powers that have enabled it to impose even more draconian cuts to social programs and pensions in the island colony. Earlier this year, the FCB expanded on the playbook used during the Detroit bankruptcy proceedings to impose an 8.5 percent cut to the pensions of public sector retirees.

Indeed, an application of this kind of bankruptcy model to restructure the growing debt of states across the US is already being foreshadowed by the political representatives of the ruling class, as evidenced by recent comments by Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

The coronavirus pandemic has only worsened the increasingly dire social conditions imposed upon workers in Puerto Rico. In September of 2017, Puerto Rico suffered a devastating hurricane under a criminally negligent and corrupt administration which cost the lives of nearly 5,000 people.

A year and a half later, social tensions reached a critical point when a leaked chat between government officials brought to the fore rampant and brazen corruption as well as a mafia-style political culture at the highest levels of the administration. Days of massive protests eventually led to the forced ouster of then governor, Ricardo Rossello. Earlier this year, a wave of earthquakes struck several towns along the southern coast of the main island leaving hundreds of families in tent encampments and raising further questions about the mishandling of emergency management and corruption.

Since the outbreak of the current pandemic, Puerto Rico has registered 2,427 positive coronavirus cases and 117 deaths as of May 14. It continues to have one of the lowest rates of testing on the planet, despite previous official statements to the effect that the government would base its strategy for dealing with the health crisis primarily on testing and isolation measures.

In fact, the Puerto Rican Health Department recently stopped updating data on testing in a feeble attempt to cover up the governments reckless abandonment of the health and lives of the workers who it has committed to forcing back to work.

A recent scandal that has led to public hearings in the colonial legislature was provoked when a construction company with ties to the PNP administration, Apex General Contractors, was awarded a $38 million contract via a fast-track process to procure thousands of testing kits from a nebulous company based in Australia, Premedical, whose business activity prior to the pandemic consisted of selling fat-freezing gadgets, ultrasound vaginal rejuvenation and erectile function machines. The testing kit contract was ultimately cancelled.

Just as in other parts of the United States and Latin America, the working class in Puerto Rico is assimilating bitter lessons. Like workers across the globe, they are being forced to sacrifice their health and lives to guarantee capitalist profits. The independent, political organization of the working class, guided by a socialist and internationalist program, has never been more urgent than the present.
Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) said Thursday that it is reinstating two transatlantic flights, with demand for air cargo service driving the push to restore service.

The airline said that beginning May 21, it will operate three weekly round trips between Frankfurt and Atlanta, and three between London and Detroit. The flights will also be available for customer travel.

"Keeping global supply chains open is more important now than ever and these new services will enable suppliers to meet the needs of their customers," Delta Cargo vice president Shawn Cole said in a statement. "We're receiving daily requests for shipments of medical supplies as well as goods that keep businesses in operation. By also opening these services to passengers, we can facilitate essential travel between the U.K., Europe and United States."

Cargo will be transported between Frankfurt and Los Angeles by way of Atlanta and between London and Chicago by way of Detroit. Delta said it is also launching a scheduled cargo-only flight between New York and Mumbai, India, on May 16, which will complement existing cargo-only service between South Korea and U.S. airports.

Delta's decision is a modest positive for the company, and a hopeful sign for airline investors who face significant uncertainty about the industry's future. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused travel demand to all but evaporate, and the airlines could face liquidity issues if demand does not rebound in the months to come.

Delta clearly does not see demand rebounding to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. The airline also said on Thursday that it would retire its fleet of 18 Boeing 777s by year's end. The 777s have some of the longest range in Delta's fleet, and the airline has no other airplane type that can fly some of the 777 pre-pandemic routes without a fuel stop, an indication the airline expects its schedule to be permanently altered by the crisis.

Delta said the restored Frankfurt service will be operated using an Airbus A330-300 aircraft with 31 tons of cargo capacity, while a Boeing 767-300 with 26 tons of cargo capacity will fly to London.
As businesses reopened Friday in more of the U.S., an overwhelming majority of states still fall short of the COVID-19 testing levels that public health experts say are necessary to safely ease lockdowns and avoid another deadly wave of outbreaks, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Rapid, widespread testing is considered essential to tracking and containing the coronavirus. But 41 of the nation's 50 states fail to test widely enough to drive their infections below a key benchmark, according to an AP analysis of metrics developed by Harvards Global Health Institute.

Among the states falling short are Texas and Georgia, which moved aggressively last month to reopen stores, malls, barbershops and other businesses.

As health authorities expand testing to more people, the number of positive results should shrink compared with the total number of people tested. The World Health Organization and other health researchers have said a percentage above 10% indicates inadequate testing. South Korea, a country praised for its rapid response, quickly pushed its positive cases to below 3%.

In other developments:

Democrats began pushing Congress biggest coronavirus relief bill yet toward expected House passage Friday, a $3 trillion behemoth they say a beleaguered country badly needs but Republicans call a bloated election-year wish list. The bill was sure to go nowhere in the GOP-led Senate, let alone reach President Donald Trumps desk, where a promised veto awaited.

President Donald Trump expressed no concerns Friday about a rapid coronavirus test the White House has been relying on to ensure his safety, despite new data suggesting the test may return an inordinate share of false negatives. A preliminary study by New York University researchers reported problems with the test Trump and his deputies have have promoting as a game changer.

American industry suffered the most severe plunge on record last month with factories, mines and utilities battered by the coronavirus pandemic. The Federal Reserve said Friday its industrial production index tumbled a record 11.2% in April.

French nurses and doctors faced off with President Emmanuel Macron at a leading Paris hospital. They are demanding better pay and rethinking of a once-renowned public health system that was quickly overwhelmed by tens of thousands of virus patients. A nurse confronted Macron at the Pitie-Salpetriere Hospital, saying shes using a long-expired surgical mask and would like a pay raise, not a bonus. Medics peppered him with grievances.

Shuttered sectors of New Yorks upstate economy will begin inching back to life Friday with more construction, manufacturing and curbside retail pickups allowed in parts of the state miles away from pandemic-stricken New York City. The smaller cities and rural regions of upstate New York have been spared the brunt of the coronavirus outbreak. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is allowing those areas to gradually reopen first, industry by industry.

Along the California coast and in states known for silky sands and ample sun, the surf is up along with a new set of rules to prevent the spread of coronavirus. Los Angeles County beaches reopened this week requiring masks on the beach and rules that people be exercising or moving.

An American cargo pilot who acknowledged poor judgment in breaking a quarantine order to buy medical supplies became the first foreigner imprisoned in Singapore for breaching its restrictions meant to curb the coronavirus. FedEx pilot Brian Dugan Yeargan, of Alaska, was sentenced to four weeks Wednesday after he pleaded guilty to leaving his hotel room for three hours to buy masks and a thermometer, says defense lawyer Ronnie Tan.

For more summaries and full reports, please select from the articles below. Scroll further for helpful tips, charts tracking testing and more.

This coverage is being provided free as a public service to our readers during the coronavirus pandemic. Please support local journalism by subscribing.
The criteria were developed by Health Ministry experts, namely epidemiologists and virologists.

Ukraine's Health Minister Maksym Stepanov says the Kyiv subway may reopen on May 25 if all coronavirus-related quarantine rules are observed.

"I would like to stress that we will deliver very detailed proposals regarding the stages of quitting the quarantine, which will be stipulated in a government decree  all criteria are considered there without exception: under what conditions, in particular, city transport services and the subway may be relaunched. If these criteria are met, that is, if Kyiv meets these criteria, then we do not see any problem," he said during an online briefing on May 14, according to an UNIAN correspondent.

Read alsoInfrastructure minister opposes Kyiv subway reopening on May 25

Stepanov said the criteria had been developed by Health Ministry experts, namely epidemiologists and virologists.

Later, the Health Ministry's press said on Facebook, citing Stepanov, that the ministry would allow the Kyiv subway to resume work on May 25.

"In response to Kyiv Mayor Vitaliy Klitschko's request sent to the Cabinet of Ministers for relaunching the subway from May 25, the Health Ministry gives the green light if all epidemiological indicators allow and all the criteria for this stage of easing [the quarantine] are met," it said.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko on May 13 called on the government to green-light the relaunch of the subway in the capital city from May 25. According to him, the city has been facing massive traffic jams as more people have started commuting after some lockdown-related curbs were lifted on May 11. The mayor emphasized that the city's authorities insisted on resuming the work of the subway in usual mode. This will redistribute the flow of passengers and normalize the operation of all public transport services in the capital.

However, Head of the Main Department of Ukraine's State Food Safety and Consumer Protection Service Oleh Ruban told the Segodnya newspaper that subways in Ukraine would be relaunched no earlier than on June 1 amid a decrease in the number of COVID-19 patients.

However, some restrictions on passengers' admission will remain in place; among them are such quarantine-related rules as social distancing, wearing personal protective gear, and regular deep-cleaning of subway stations.

There will also be curbs on the number of passengers. "For example, no more than 100 people will be allowed to enter subway cars, while the departure of each train from the station will be monitored," he said, adding that the figure is approximate.

The limitations may be the following: there should be 10 square meters of space per person in subway cars or there should be a distance of 1.5 meters between two persons.

The authorities also plan to involve police officers and municipal guards in handling passenger flows at subway stations and in subway cars.

"Yes, there will be problems with people standing in lines and with crowds of people in the [subway] cars. But technically, all this can be regulated if we explain [the rules] to citizens in advance," Ruban added.

As UNIAN reported earlier, Ukraine's Cabinet of Ministers in March introduced a nationwide quarantine to counter the spread of coronavirus infection, after which the lockdown regime was extended until May 11.

On May 4, the government further extended the lockdown until May 22, having lifted some quarantine-related curbs from May 11.

In particular, hair, nail, beauty salons, dentists, lawyers, offices of notaries, auditors, psychologists were allowed to reopen.

The subway service is available in three Ukrainian cities, namely Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro.
National Assembly (NA) General Secretary Nguyen Hanh Phuc, on behalf of the NA, presented gifts of medical supplies to international parliaments and inter-parliamentary organisations during ceremonies held from May 11-14.

At a hand-over ceremony

The donations were handed over to the Ambassadors to Vietnam of Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Belarus, Belgium, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, France, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Spain, the UK, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Malaysia, Japan, India, Australia, New Zealand, Cuba, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Morocco, and Turkey; and representatives of the EU Mission to Vietnam.

The support is hoped to help the countries effectively deal with the COVID-19 pandemic.

Speaking at the hand-over ceremonies, NA General Secretary Phuc highlighted the fruitful relations between Vietnam and the countries, especially the development of parliamentary cooperation between the Vietnamese NA and the countries parliaments at both bilateral and multilateral levels.

He updated participants on efforts of the Vietnamese Government and people to contain the spread of the COVID-19, while emphasizing the importance of international cooperation and solidarity in the work.

Vietnam has always been a responsible member of the international community, and is willing to share its experience and join hands with other countries in controlling the epidemic, he affirmed.

For their part, representatives of foreign diplomatic agencies praised the effectiveness of COVID-19 prevention and control in Vietnam over the past time, and thanked Vietnam for the valuable assistance.

They hoped that the multifaceted cooperation between Vietnam and their countries, especially parliamentary cooperation, will be further strengthened in the time to come./.VNA
The battle over President Trumps financial records landed in the Supreme Court this week as the justices heard arguments on whether the firms that have handled Trumps finances must turn over documents to the House and New York District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., each of which has issued a valid subpoena.

The court should insist that these subpoenas finally be respected.

After the Democrats won a House majority in 2018, committees issued subpoenas to Mazars USA, an accounting firm, and Deutsche Bank, which lent money to Trumps businesses. The president sued to prevent these firms from complying. Despite failing to convince lower courts that the House subpoenas should be ignored, the document handover was delayed while the dispute is litigated.

Meanwhile, Vance convened a New York grand jury to investigate potential violations of state law, which also subpoenaed Mazars. Once again, Trumps lawyers failed to convince any lower courts that Mazars should refrain from turning over its documents, but the subpoenas remain unenforced.

Trumps lawyers argue that the House has no legitimate legislative purpose but wants to turn itself into a law enforcement body. But then, in fending off the district attorneys subpoena, Trumps lawyers turn around and argue that the Constitution allows only Congress, not state or federal law enforcement officers, to hold the president to account while he is in office. The upshot is that nobody could hold the president responsible for wrongdoing he may have committed before he took his oath.

In fact, both the House and Vance have legitimate claims. Congressional subpoena power is broad, stemming from both its oversight and lawmaking roles, which are often linked. Even if House lawmakers intend primarily to scrutinize Trumps financial history, judges must not discount the possibility that their findings could lead to new laws  say, White House ethics rules, campaign disclosure requirements or sanctions designed to dissuade foreign actors from influencing the next election. The nation has a paramount interest in a well-informed Congress.

Vances case is even easier. Trump relies on a Justice Department policy that the president cannot be charged while in office to argue states cant charge, either. Even if that logic held, it would not imply that state prosecutors cannot seek evidence. Vance points out that if he is denied the power to subpoena even third parties for records relating to the presidents history, that could equate to granting the president permanent immunity for past crimes, as evidence might be uncollected or lost during the presidents tenure.

The Supreme Court previously declared that President Bill Clinton had to comply with coercive process in the Paula Jones lawsuit, a federal civil case that concerned his activities before he took office. The justices cannot easily turn around and declare Trump immune from state criminal judicial process regarding his past behavior.

In neither the House nor the Vance case is the president himself required to do anything. Compliance would not burden the executive branch or implicate privileged material. It would mainly offend Trumps unease with any and all scrutiny.

 Washington Post
A federal appeals court allowed California to enforce its voter-approved requirement of background checks for purchasers of ammunition on Thursday and said the state was likely to win reversal of a judges ruling that the law violated the constitutional right to bear arms.

The checks, similar to those required nationally for firearms bought from a licensed dealer, were part of Proposition 63, a gun-control initiative sponsored by then-Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom and approved by 63% of the voters in 2016. It did not take effect until last summer, and was promptly challenged by the California Rifle & Pistol Association, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association..

In a preliminary injunction order April 23, U.S. District Judge Roger Benitez of San Diego said, Criminals, tyrants, and terrorists dont do background checks. The background check experiment defies common sense while unduly and severely burdening the Second Amendment rights of every responsible, gun-owning citizen desiring to lawfully buy ammunition.

He also said 16% of legally qualified ammunition buyers had been wrongly rejected since the background checks took effect.

The Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco put Benitezs ruling on hold April 24 while it considered the case. On Thursday, the three-judge panel said the state had presented an adequate argument to justify leaving the law in effect during its appeal.

Second Amendment rights are not unlimited, said the panel, which included Judge Daniel Collins, an appointee of President Trump. The other two judges, Jacqueline Nguyen and Barry Silverman, were appointed by Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.

Citing the courts 2014 ruling upholding San Franciscos ban on hollow-point bullets that explode or splinter on contact, the panel said the right to purchase ammunition, like the right to buy guns, can be subject to reasonable government restrictions.

The court also said the background-check requirement had been in effect more than nine months before Benitez ruled, and during that period Californians could purchase ammunition lawfully and with minimal delay.

In a separate case last year, Benitez ruled unconstitutional a California ban on buying or selling high-capacity gun magazines, those holding more than 10 cartridges, but agreed a week later  after a flurry of gun purchases  to put his ruling on hold while the state appealed.

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.

Supporters of the background check law said it usually took about five minutes for a licensed dealer to conduct. Attorney General Xavier Becerra, whose office defended the law in court, said it had prevented more than 750 individuals from illegally purchasing ammunition.

Violent criminals and people with serious mental illnesses shouldnt be able to get their hands on ammunition, Becerra said in a statement.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko

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Press Release

May 15, 2020 TOLENTINO: USE PTV4 TO MAXIMIZE THE REACH OF DEPED DISTANT LEARNING PROGRAM With the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic affecting the country's education system, Senator Francis "Tol" Tolentino urges the Department of Education (DepEd) to partner with PTV4 and the National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) to boost the reach of DepEd's distance learning program in a bid to educate more students. During the Senate Committee on Basic Education's hearing, Tolentino said the government-owned television station PTV-4 is instrumental in strengthening distance learning. "The PTV-4, as a free TV channel, is an ideal platform especially to students who don't have internet access at home," the lawmaker said. Tolentino likewise asked NTC Deputy Commissioner Engr. Edgardo Cabarios to coordinate with the DepEd to make this a reality. "Dapat kumikilos na ang NTC and act as a bridge between PTV-4 and DepEd," said Tolentino, adding that countries like China and Kenya are using their respective state-owned television stations as platform for distant learning for maximum reach. "Sa China at Kenya ginagawa iyan. Nagpapalabas ng mga program doon para matuto mga bata," said Tolentino stressed. Cabarios, for his part, agreed with Tolentino's proposal, saying the NTC will issue a circular or memorandum on the matter. The lawmaker also proposed that educational shows that will be carried by PTV-4 be also shown in school gymnasiums, with the observance of proper social distancing, for wider reach. The committee, Chaired by Sen. Sherwin Gatchalian, also tackled two of Tolentino's other measures - Senate Bills No. 1457 and 1458. In his Senate Bill No. 1457, Tolentino wants to give the sitting DepEd Secretary the power to defer opening of classes and shorten the start of school year during emergencies and calamities. If enacted into law, Tolentino's Senate Bill No. 1458 will empower the DepEd Secretary to shorten the school year and mass promote the students during calamities and emergencies. The DepEd also briefly tackled the expansion of the basic education curriculum, which is the subject of Tolentino's Senate Bill No. 1460. "Sana po naisama natin ang Senate Bill No. 1460 sa pagdinig dahil malaki ang maitutulong nito para maresolba ang problema," said Tolentino. In Senate Bill No. 1460, Tolentino wants the DepEd to develop a national education policy framework for online or broadcast learning delivery. Under the measure, the expansion may include distance education and online learning, to address current and future developments that would require the recalibration of the "in-person" school system.
BARRIE, Ontario, May 15, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- MediPharm Labs Corp., (TSX: LABS) (OTCQX: MEDIF) (FSE: MLZ) ("MediPharm Labs" or the "Company") a global leader in specialized, research-driven pharmaceutical-quality cannabis extraction, distillation and derivative products, is pleased to announce that its subsidiary, MediPharm Labs Australia Pty. Ltd. ("MediPharm Labs Australia") has secured its first European white-label cannabis supply agreement with Therismos Limited ("Therismos"), a subsidiary of Cannaray Limited ("Cannaray").



Under the three-year agreement, MediPharm Labs Australia will supply a range of cannabis oil products that meet the high-quality standards set by the German Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices that requires all medicinal cannabis products be manufactured under Good Manufacturing Practices ("GMP").

Cannaray, a leading UK-based medical cannabis and CBD lifestyle product company, recently acquired Therismos, a specialist pharmaceutical company with licences to import, handle, and distribute controlled drugs in various European countries.

"We are pleased to be working with a supply partner that can meet our strict requirements for laboratory controls, quality, reliability, traceability and scale. MediPharm Labs mirrors the qualities we seek in a medical supply partner," said Scott Maguire, Chief Executive Officer, Cannaray. "We note in particular that both of MediPharm Labs' production facilities have achieved GMP certification, thus guaranteeing high-quality pharmaceutical products. Cannaray's goal is to provide patients with high-quality, naturally derived medical products and become a European leading importer and distributor of such products. The MediPharm Labs relationship is one significant step forward in achieving this goal."

MediPharm Labs Australia is licensed by the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (the "TGA") meeting internationally recognized GMP requirements. Since the TGA has entered into a mutual recognition agreement with the European Union, MediPharm Labs Australia's GMP certification has positioned it well to serve the needs of Cannaray as it expands its presence in Europe.

"Cannaray is the gold standard in its growing part of the European market and to be chosen as their white-label partner is a coup for MediPharm Labs Australia," said Pat McCutcheon, CEO of MediPharm Labs. "With the growing recognition of CBD's therapeutic benefits, Cannaray is in the right place at the right time with an outstanding product portfolio and a highly engaged team of professionals. We look forward to participating in their growth."

Also under the agreement, Therismos will purchase - within the United Kingdom and Ireland - certain formulations and dosage forms. The products will be supplied under branding designated by Therismos. The agreement is conditional on confirmation from the German Institute for Drugs and Medical Devices that the products meet specified quality and regulatory requirements.

The European Market: Growing a New Marketplace

Europe is widely recognized as one of the world's most difficult medical cannabis markets to enter because of its strict and varied regulatory framework and rigorous quality requirements often requiring GMP products. As medical cannabis markets continue to liberalize, Europe is also one of the world's most promising markets. European public acceptance of the benefits of medical cannabis legalization is gradually spreading, according to the Fifth Edition of Prohibition Partners' European Cannabis Report from February 2020. Prohibition Partners also estimated in that same report that the total European legal market, which includes medical cannabis and recreational cannabis, could be valued at almost US$2.5 billion by 2024 up from an estimated US$0.3 billion today.

MediPharm Labs Australia: GMP certified, ready to serve global markets

In May 2020, MediPharm Labs was granted its GMP Certification and Licence to Manufacture Therapeutic Goods, allowing storage of cannabis resin as an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient ("API") and to engage in labelling, storage and release for supply as a Medicine Manufacturer of Oral Liquids within its specialized facility, which was designed to replicate the high-quality standards of the Company's Canadian production facility. It features multi-phase supercritical CO 2 extraction equipment, clean rooms and testing laboratories.

MediPharm Labs Australia completed and celebrated its official facility opening in December 2019 when it also received State Licences for cannabis substances from the Department of Health and Human Services in Victoria, Australia. Under these State Licences, MediPharm Labs Australia is allowed to manufacture, store and supply cannabis products and medicines and, for research purposes, test cannabis at its facility. MediPharm Labs Australia also has its Cannabis Manufacturing Licence from the Australian Office of Drug Control (ODC) under the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967. MediPharm Labs Australia holds ODC Import and Export Licences, allowing the import and export of cannabis resin and extracts, bulk medicinal cannabis oil and finished medicinal cannabis products.

About Cannaray

Cannaray is a leading European cannabis company stratifying medical cannabis and a CBD lifestyle brand. Using its full portfolio, Cannaray is committed to making a positive impact on global health and prides itself on creating products backed by research, science and the latest-generation technology. Cannaray's assets include European import and distribution licences for medical cannabis, an alliance with Newey Limited, the largest potted plant grower in the UK, as well as a full range of CBD products. Cannaray has a Scientific Advisory Board composed of Key Opinion Leaders from the UK and Ireland covering pain, palliative care, haematology and neurology. These Key Opinion Leaders guide the Company's medical strategy around research, novel delivery forms and advance product development.

About MediPharm Labs

Founded in 2015, MediPharm Labs specializes in the production of purified, pharmaceutical quality cannabis oil and concentrates and advanced derivative products utilizing 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, they formulate, consumer-test, process, package and distribute 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 commercialization of its Australian Extraction facility. MediPharm Labs Australia was established in 2017.

For further information, please contact:

Laura Lepore, VP, Investor Relations

Telephone: +1 416.913.7425 ext. 1525

Email: investors@medipharmlabs.com

Website: www.medipharmlabs.com

Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Information:

This news release contains "forward-looking information" and "forward-looking statements" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of the applicable Canadian securities legislation. All statements, other than statements of historical fact, are forward-looking statements and are based on expectations, estimates and projections as at the date of this news release. Any statement that involves discussions with respect to predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions, future events or performance (often but not always using phrases such as "expects", or "does not expect", "is expected", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", "plans", "budget", "scheduled", "forecasts", "estimates", "believes" or "intends" or variations of such words and phrases or stating that certain actions, events or results "may" or "could", "would", "might" or "will" be taken to occur or be achieved) are not statements of historical fact and may be forward-looking statements. In this news release, forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, the successful performance of the agreement and shipping of products thereunder as planned; the projected expansion of the cannabis market and growing consumer demand; performance of the agreements as intended and disclosed herein; and Cannaray's position in the European cannabis market and MediPharm Labs' participation in their growth. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon a number of estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, political and social uncertainties; the inability of MediPharm Labs to obtain adequate financing; the delay or failure to receive regulatory approvals; and other factors discussed in MediPharm Labs' filings, available on the SEDAR website at www.sedar.com. There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on the forward-looking statements and information contained in this news release. Except as required by law, MediPharm Labs assumes no obligation to update the forward-looking statements of beliefs, opinions, projections, or other factors, should they change.

All information contained in this press release with respect to Cannaray and Therismos was supplied by Cannaray for inclusion herein.
COVID-19 disruption will lead to 28 million surgeries cancelled worldwide

Up to 28 million elective operations could be postponed

Over 28 million elective surgeries across the globe could be cancelled as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic  leading to patients facing a lengthy wait for their health issues to be resolved, a new study reveals.

The CovidSurg Collaborative has projected that, based on a 12-week period of peak disruption to hospital services due to COVID-19, 28.4 million elective surgeries worldwide will cancelled or postponed in 2020.

The modelling study, published in the British Journal of Surgery, indicates that each additional week of disruption to hospital services will be associated with a further 2.4 million cancellations.

Led by researchers at the University of Birmingham, researchers collected detailed information from surgeons across 359 hospitals and 71 countries on plans for cancellation of elective surgery. This data was then statistically modelled to estimate totals for cancelled surgery across 190 countries.

The researchers project that worldwide 72.3% of planned surgeries would be cancelled through the peak period of COVID-19 related disruption. Most cancelled surgeries will be for non-cancer conditions. Orthopaedic procedures will be cancelled most frequently, with 6.3 million orthopaedic surgeries cancelled worldwide over a 12-week period. It is also projected that globally 2.3 million cancer surgeries will be cancelled or postponed.

In the United Kingdom, the National Health Service advised hospitals to cancel most elective surgeries for 12 weeks. It is estimated that this will result in 516,000 cancelled surgeries, including 36,000 cancer procedures. These cancellations will create a backlog that will need to be cleared after the COVID-19 disruption ends.

If, after the disruption ends, the NHS increases the number of surgeries performed each week by 20% compared to pre-pandemic activity, it will take 11 months to clear the backlog. However, each additional week of disruption will lead to the cancellation of an extra 43,300 surgeries, significantly extending the period it will take to clear the backlog.

Mr. Aneel Bhangu, Consultant Surgeon and Senior Lecturer at the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery at the University of Birmingham commented: During the COVID-19 pandemics elective surgeries have been cancelled to reduce the risk of patients being exposed to COVID-19 in hospital, and to support the wider hospital response, for example by converting operating theatres in to intensive care units.

Although essential, cancellations place a heavy burden on patients and society. Patients' conditions may deteriorate, worsening their quality of life as they wait for rescheduled surgery. In some cases, for example cancer, delayed surgeries may lead to a number of unnecessary deaths.

Dr. Dmitri Nepogodiev, Research Fellow at the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery at the University of Birmingham said: Each additional week of disruption to hospital services results in an additional 43,300 surgeries being cancelled, so it is important that hospitals regularly assess the situation so that elective surgery can be resumed at the earliest opportunity.

Clearing the backlog of elective surgeries created by COVID-19 will cost the National Health Service at least 2 billion. The Government must ensure that the NHS is provided with additional funding and resources to ramp up elective surgery to clear the backlog.

Notes to editors:

For more information, interviews or an embargoed copy of the research paper, please contact Tony Moran, International Communications Manager, University of Birmingham on +44 (0)782 783 2312. For out-of-hours enquiries, please call +44 (0) 7789 921 165.

Country-level data on cancelled elective surgery is available in the study manuscript for 190 countries. This data is split in to 15 specialties providing a comprehensive overview of the local impact of COVID-19 on surgery.

The CovidSurg Collaborative is a research network focussed on the impact of COVID-19 on surgical care. Over 5,000 surgeons from across 120 countries are participating in the CovidSurg programme. The Collaborative is leading two cohort studies collecting patient-level surgical outcomes data; currently data on 7,500 patients have been entered by 440 hospitals worldwide.

This study was led by CovidSurg Collaborative members based in the United Kingdom, Benin, Ghana, India, Italy, Mexico, Nigeria, Rwanda, Spain, South Africa, and the United States.

The University of Birmingham is ranked amongst the worlds top 100 institutions, its work brings people from across the world to Birmingham, including researchers and teachers and more than 6,500 international students from over 150 countries

The National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) awarded 7 million to the University of Birmingham to establish the NIHR Global Health Research Unit on Global Surgery. This unit is engaged in conducting multi-country randomised controlled trials testing interventions to reduce SSI across a range of low- and middle-income countries. It has established sustainable partnerships with the aim of leveraging global policy change: Benin - University of Abomey-Calavi, Cotonou; Ghana - University of Development Studies, Tamale; India - CMC Ludhiana, Punjab; Mexico - Hospital Espanol, Veracruz; Nigeria - Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos & Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals, Ile-Ife; Rwanda - University of Rwanda; University Teaching Hospital, Kigali; South Africa - Chris Hani Baragwanath Academic Hospital, Johannesburg;

The NIHR is the UKs largest funder of health and care research. The NIHR:

Funds, supports and delivers high quality research that benefits the NHS, public health and social care

Engages and involves patients, carers and the public in order to improve the reach, quality and impact of research

Attracts, trains and supports the best researchers to tackle the complex health and care challenges of the future

Invests in world-class infrastructure and a skilled delivery workforce to translate discoveries into improved treatments and services

Partners with other public funders, charities and industry to maximise the value of research to patients and the economy
[May 15, 2020] Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP, a Leading Securities Fraud Law Firm, Announces Investigation of Abbott Laboratories (ABT) on Behalf of Investors

Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP ("GPM"), a leading national shareholder rights law firm, today announced that it has commenced an investigation on behalf of Abbott Laboratories ("Abbott" or the "Company") (NYSE: ABT) investors concerning the Company and its officers' possible violations of the federal securities laws. If you suffered a loss on your Abbott investments or would like to inquire about potentially pursuing claims to recover your loss under the federal securities laws, you can submit your contact information here or contact Charles H. Linehan, of GPM at 310-201-9150, Toll-Free at 888-773-9224, via email [email protected] or visit our website at www.glancylaw.com tolearn more about your rights.



On May 14, 2020, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that early data "suggest[s] potential inaccurate results from using the Abbott ID NOW point-of-care test to diagnose COVID-19 . . . and [that] the test may return false negative results." On this news, Abbott's share price fell sharply during intraday trading on May 15, 2020.

Follow us for updates on LinkedIn, Twitter, or Facebook. Whistleblower Notice: Persons with non-public information regarding Abbott should consider their options to aid the investigation or take advantage of the SEC (News - Alert) Whistleblower Program. Under the program, whistleblowers who provide original information may receive rewards totaling up to 30 percent of any successful recovery made by the SEC. For more information, call Charles H. Linehan at 310-201-9150 or 888-773-9224 or email [email protected]. About GPM Glancy Prongay & Murray LLP is a premier law firm representing investors and consumers in securities litigation and other complex class action litigation. ISS Securities Class Action Services has consistently ranked GPM in its annual SCAS Top 50 Report. In 2018, GPM was ranked a top five law firm in number of securities class action settlements, and a top six law firm for total dollar size of settlements. With four offices across the country, GPM's nearly 40 attorneys have won groundbreaking rulings and recovered billions of dollars for investors and consumers in securities, antitrust, consumer, and employment class actions. GPM's lawyers have handled cases covering a wide spectrum of corporate misconduct including cases involving financial restatements, internal control weaknesses, earnings management, fraudulent earnings guidance and forward looking statements, auditor misconduct, insider trading, violations of FDA regulations, actions resulting in FDA and DOJ investigations, and many other forms of corporate misconduct. GPM's attorneys have worked on securities cases relating to nearly all industries and sectors in the financial markets, including, energy, consumer discretionary, consumer staples, real estate and REITs, financial, insurance, information technology, health care, biotech, cryptocurrency, medical devices, and many more. GPM's past successes have been widely covered by leading news and industry publications such as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Reuters, the Associated Press (News - Alert), Barron's, Investor's Business Daily, Forbes, and Money. This press release may be considered Attorney Advertising in some jurisdictions under the applicable law and ethical rules. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005521/en/

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On the morning of April 3, after racing to build an online platform, the bank BBVA USA began accepting applications for the emergency small business loan program known as Paycheck Protection. Everything went smoothly  for four hours.

Thats all the time it took for the avalanche of applications to exceed the number the bank estimated it could process before the funding ran out. BBVA temporarily paused the portal as thousands of small businesses tried to tap into the federal relief program.

We had reached our limit, said Elizabeth Dobers, who oversaw the team of more than 100 engineers, developers and other employees who built the online platform in three days.

BBVAs experience in the first round of funding for the Paycheck Protection Program not only provides insight into the huge need created by the economic crash caused by the coronavirus pandemic, but also the difficulty the federal government has had getting money into the hands of people who desperately need it.

More than a month after the Paycheck Protection Program began accepting applications, and more than two weeks after Congress replenished the programs funding, many Houston-area businesses are still waiting for aid. Forty percent of Houston-area businesses who have applied for loans have yet to receive them, according to a survey conducted by the Greater Houston Partnership, a business-financed economic development group, the last week of April. That has left small businesses that have not reopened facing difficult day-to-day decisions.

Anna Elmore, who pledged to keep her spas small staff of five on the payroll throughout the shut down  it lasts for spas until May 18  had hoped she would receive a Paycheck Protection Program loan in time to make her rent and payroll by April 15. Instead, she put Light and Tight Medispas expenses on her credit card.

PPP: Oil companies that bought back their stock got $15.5 million in government coronavirus funds

Because I know that that money is coming, she said, Im just going to bite the bullet.

But on April 20, she received an email from Bank of America saying that her application could not be submitted to the federal government until it approved more funding. (Congress did about a week later.)

Im very disheartened and disgusted, she said. Ive gotten a mortgage quicker than this.

Unclear rules

Congress has authorized $649 billion for the program, which provides low-interest loans to small business and forgives the loans if most of the money is used to keep employees on the payrolls. The demand for loans depleted the programs initial $349 billion by April 16, leaving small businesses in limbo for 11 days until Congress appropriated another $310 billion.

Money has not been the only problem. Unclear rules created confusion about who qualified for the funds and glitches in the federal electronic system accepting applications slowed down the process.

At BBVA USA, Dobers had no illusion about how tough it would be to connect small businesses with Paycheck Protection Program funding as quickly as possible. Typically, it takes the bank months to develop and roll out online applications, not days.

Problems cropped up even after BBVAs portal was up and running. The bank was having difficulty getting people to upload documents, at first because its document upload button did not work and then because customers were bypassing the step in their hurry to finish their application.

BBVA rushed to remove the bug and add prompts reminding clients that their application could not be processed without the proper paperwork.

The Small Business Administration, which oversees the federal program, had its own problems stemming from the fast-and-furious roll out. Many details regarding eligibility  whether independent contractors qualified, for example, or how to count seasonal employees  were not cleared up until after applications opened.

We didnt get clear direction from the SBA until the night before, Dobers recalled. Even after we launched, guidance was changing.

So far, more than half a dozen updates to the Paycheck Protection Program rules have been released, with the most recent rule  exempting students employed by federal work-study programs from company headcounts  coming out May 8.

Frustrating delays

Then, when Congress released the additional money for the second round of funding, the Small Business Administrations electronic system was slow to accept applications, often flashing error messages or timing out.

PPP: Loan program is short-term fix, not cure-all, for business

This has left us with applications in hand and no way to process them to put much-needed money in the hands of millions of small businesses in need, Dobers wrote in an email on April 27, the first day the new funding was made available.

While many small businesses have encountered a frustrating series of delays, several high-profile companies have drawn fire for successfully securing Paycheck Protection Program funds. While the program roughly defined small businesses as companies with 500 or fewer employees, Congress carved out exceptions, including for restaurant chains and other franchise businesses.

For example, Lubys, which employs 6,133 full-time employees, according to public filings, received a $10 million loan. It was able to qualify as a small business because none of its locations employ more than 500 people.

Lubys did not respond to requests for comment.

But Mala Sichuan Bistro, a restaurant that saw sales plunge by a third, was originally denied from the program because of confusion surrounding whether employees with green cards could be covered. (All employees can be covered if their principal place of residence is the United States.)

It has since reapplied, but the holdup meant the restaurant did not receive funding during most critical period when government orders required it to close its dining rooms.

Its owners, Cori Xiong and Heng Chen, remained hopeful that funding will come through. Even though dining rooms have reopened, fewer diners will be allowed at any given time, meaning reduced revenues for the foreseeable future.

Round Two

But BBVA reports it has received even more applications for the second round of Paycheck Protection Program funding than it did for the first. So far it has shepherded $2.2 billion in loans through the application process. Roughly $121 billion was left in the fund as of May 8, according to the SBA .

That suggests more of the funds are going to smaller companies, which need less money than big chains. In the first round, during the first 10 days, the average loan was $239,000, with 57 percent of money going to loans of $1 million or more.

Since the funding was replenished, loans have averaged $73,000, with 31 percent of the money doled out in loans of $1 million or more.

The funding has lasted longer than we initially anticipated, Dobers wrote in an email, but with latest reports putting the funds at over half depleted, we expect the second round of funding to be wrapped up within a few weeks.

rebecca.schuetz@chron.com;

twitter.com/raschuetz
The Bihar School examination board (BSEB) is expected to announce the results of class 10 or matriculation examinations within a few days. Talking to Hindustan Times on Friday, a BSEB official, on conditions of anonymity, said that the evaluation process of the answersheets of matric students is almost over and the board is expected to declare the results within a week.

BSEB chairman Anand Kishor had earlier informed HT that the Bihar board class 10 result is likely to be declared after May 20.

Also Read: BSEB likely to declare Class 10 results after May 20

After the evaluation is completed, the marks will be compiled by the board and topper list will be prepared.The top 10 rank holders will be called by the board for physical verification.

This year, the board will conduct the toppers interview through video conferencing due to coronavirus pandemic. The video conferencing is expected to be conducted in coming two to three days.

Also Read: Bihar Board 10th paper evaluation begins tomorrow, will take 7 days to finish work, says BSEB chairperson

BSEB is using advance software to prepare database and result which is 15 times faster than other software. This software was designed by Information Technology department of the board, the board official had earlier said.

BSEB has resumed evaluation of remaining answersheets on May 6 across 169 evaluation centres in the state.

Over 15 lakh students have taken the matriculation exam held across 1368 exam centres, which was conducted from February 17 to February 24.

BSEB has already declared result of intermediate examination on March 24.
Pig producers' views are needed on NFU Mutual's African swine fever (ASF) insurance over fears that not enough farmers are being covered.

The National Pig Association (NPA) is seeking views on the product as swine fever continues to present a 'very real threat' to the UK pig industry.

NFU Mutual launched the insurance for pig producers whose premises are directly affected by an outbreak.

The rural insurer revised the product recently, including significantly reducing the premium.

The NPA said that although there had been some interest in the insurance, NFU Mutual has so far had 'little uptake' from pig producers.

NFU Mutual staff working on the insurance said there does not appear to be any issues with the product itself, which feedback suggests is fit for purpose.

But many producers may not feel the threat to their businesses is currently high enough to warrant taking out the insurance, the NPA explained.

The group warned, however, that NFU Mutual could close the scheme if the UK pig industry does not utilise it.

In this case, it would not be re-opened, even if the ASF risk significantly increased, the rural insurer warned.

NPA chief executive Zoe Davies said pig producers' feedback on the product is 'urgently needed'.

We have always believed that ASF insurance could be a very useful tool for pig businesses," she said.

"We would not like to see the scheme scrapped at this stage, which is why we are seeking a more thorough understanding of potential uptake across the industry.

Of course, the decision at business level will be based on a number of factors, including perceived risk."

She said it is important to highlight that despite the current focus on Covid-19, ASF is continuing to spread globally and remains a threat to the UK pig sector.

Swine fever is now only 10km from the German border in Poland and cases continue to be reported in numerous European, Asian and African countries.

Elsewhere, the virus has just been reported in India for the first time.

Once global travel returns to something like normality, the risk of further spread will be heightened again, Ms Davies said.

Last June, ASF was found in meat seized by port authorities in Northern Ireland before entering the country, the first time the virus has been detected in the UK.

Pig producers can let their views heard by emailing NPA@NPAnet.org.uk.
Because more numbers equate more power and influence, Muslims from all walks of life have made clear that the act of procreating is a form of jihad. Thus, in the U.K., Muslim hate fanatics plan to take over Britain by having more babies and forcing a population explosion, a report revealed back in 2008: The swollen Muslim population would be enough to conquer Britain from inside.

A Christian Eritrean volunteer and translator who worked in migrant centers in Germany, and was often assumed to be Muslim by the migrants, asserted that Muslim migrants often confide in her and tell her about their dislike towards Christians, and that a number of the Muslim migrants she has spoken to have revealed a hatred for Christians and are determined to destroy the religion. As to how they plan on accomplishing this, Some women told me, We will multiply our numbers. We must have more children than the Christians because its the only way we can destroy them here.

There is, however, an even more sinister and largely unknown way of prosecuting this procreation jihad -- a way of killing two birds with one stone: seize and seed non-Muslim women with Muslim babies. Doing so depletes the infidels ranks of women and the non-Muslim babies they might have birthed, while simultaneously increasing both for Islam.

As the aforementioned procreation jihad account from Germany might suggest -- where female Muslim migrants revealed a hatred for Christians and are determined to destroy the religion -- Christians are especially being targeted in this manner.

In Nigeria, for instance, which is roughly half Muslim, half Christian, thousands of Christian girls have been abducted, forced into Islam, married off and transformed into incubators of future jihadis. Put differently, the nearly three hundred Christian Chibok girls who made headlines in 2015 -- some of whom were brainwashed to cut the throats of Christians -- are the tip of the iceberg. As the Hausa Christian Foundation of Nigeria, a human rights group, recently explained:

The case of abducting Christian Girls and their forceful conversion to Islam as well as forcing them into marriage has become a water shed issue in Northern Nigeria The moment these girls are abducted, they are subjected to all manners of evil just to take control of their minds. Once they took hold of their minds, these girls will only do everything they are asked to do. While the parents fight for the release of their daughters, these abductors continue to sexually abuse these girls, hypnotized [subliminally influenced] their food, drinks, clothes, where they sleep, perpetually evoke evil spirit upon them to the point that these girls completely lost their minds and never think of going back to their home. Usually, the moment a Christian girl is abducted they ensure that they get married to her within one or two weeks. She will be sexually abused even before the marriage to make the parents give up on her when she becomes pregnant.

In the same statement, the Hausa Christian Foundation made this very telling remark:

The incessant kidnapping of the Christian girls and the forceful conversion to Islam is another form of Jihad in the 21st Century. They have two major aims for doing that: To inflict pain on the parents of the girl and the Christian community; and to impregnate the girl to add to their claims that Islam is the fasted growing religion in the world. They are doing it on purpose.

The statement went on by sarcastically wondering how unclean infidels [kidnapped Christians] can be used to advance such a holy and clean religion like Islam... But we know what the religion is all about. Everything is welcome no matter how evil and inhumane, as long as it will help Allah, especially the killings, the attacking, kidnapping, raping and enslaving of Christians.

The same phenomenon prevails wherever Christian minorities live alongside Muslims. In Egypt, countless Christian girls have been abducted for the very same reason -- to bring them into the fold of Islam, diminish the numbers of the infidels, and increase that of the Muslims. The schemes often take elaborate and complex forms. Most recently, an unknown woman posing as a Coptic nun, along with an unknown man posing as her monk assistant, were exposed by the Coptic pope as frauds that were using their religious garb to get near and win the trust of young Christian girls.

In 2017, an ex-kidnapper who admits he was in a network actively targeting Coptic girls for years before he left Islam, explained the systematic and sophisticated process in Egypt:

A group of kidnappers meets in a mosque to discuss potential victims. They keep a close eye on Christians houses and monitor everything thats going on. On that basis, they weave a spiders web around [the girls]. I remember a Coptic Christian girl from a rich, well-known family in Minya. She was kidnapped by five Muslim men. They held her in a house, stripped her and filmed her naked. In the video, one of them also undressed. They threatened to make the video public if the girl wouldnt marry him. The kidnappers receive large amounts of money. Police can help them in different ways, and when they do, they might also receive a part of the financial reward the kidnappers are paid by the Islamisation organisations. In some cases, police provide the kidnappers with drugs they seize. The drugs are then given to the girls to weaken their resistance as they put them under pressure. I even know of cases in which police offered help to beat up the girls to make them recite the Islamic creed The Salafist group I knew rented apartments in different areas of Egypt to hide kidnapped Coptics. There, they put them under pressure and threaten them to convert to Islam. And once they reach the legal age, a specially arranged Islamic representative comes in to make the conversion official, issue a certificate and accordingly they change their ID. If all goes to plan, the girls are also forced into marriage with a strict Muslim. Their husbands dont love them, they just marry her to make her a Muslim.

Although such networks have been around since the 1970s, they reached their highest levels now, in the era of President Sisi, the former kidnapper added.

In Pakistan -- another Muslim majority nation where the kidnap, rape, and forced conversion of Christian girls is endemic -- the Asian Human Rights Commission said this in a 2011 report:

The situation is worse with the police who always side with the Islamic groups and treat minority groups as lowly life forms. The dark side of the forced conversion to Islam also involves the criminal elements who are engaged in rape and abduction and then justify their heinous crimes by forcing the victims to convert to Islam. The Muslim fundamentalists are happy to offer these criminals shelter and use the excuse that they are providing a great service to their sacred cause of increasing the population of Muslims.

Even in Indonesia -- once known as the quintessential moderate Muslim nation -- last year a report found that a new form of persecution is on the rise -- Christian girls are being targeted by Muslim men Influential leaders are literally training young men to target Christian girls to impregnate them. The report continues:

They target them to try and sort of diffuse the spread of Christianity because the family of the Christian girl is so ashamed [of the impregnation] theyre forced into marrying that daughter into a Muslim family and the Muslims who are being trained to do this, they understand that. Thats why theyre doing that Once girls are married into the Muslim families, theyre often cut off from or abandoned by their families and they face even more difficult circumstances. In some cases, girls are the second or third wife of their persecutor and they have few freedoms.

In the end, all these overlooked and/or abandoned Christian girls transformed into Muslim baby producing factories are part of the equally overlooked procreation or demographic jihad, which will see that one out of every three people on earth is Muslim by 2070.

Raymond Ibrahim, author most recently of Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Shillman fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a distinguished senior fellow at the Gatestone Institute.
ACCRA  A regional humanitarian response hub in Ghana, established by the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) to facilitate COVID-19 response efforts is now fully operational, with the first flights taking off on 14 May. The Accra regional hub is part of a global hub-and-spokes system of air links for dispatching essential medical and humanitarian cargo and transporting health workers to the front lines of the pandemic.

Accra, which was already vital for the dispatching of critical supplies to countries in west and central Africa, is launching humanitarian response flights to Nigeria, Chad, Mali, the Central African Republic, Uganda, Tanzania and Ethiopia, enabling health and humanitarian personnel to rapidly reach areas where they are most needed in a context of limited commercial transport and travel restrictions.

WFP is extremely grateful to the Government and people of Ghana for hosting the regional cargo and passenger aviation hub which is needed to sustain humanitarian operations that millions of vulnerable people across Africa are depending on during this pandemic, said Rukia Yacoub, WFP Representative and Country Director in Ghana.

This is the second time in recent years that Ghana is supporting global efforts to address health crises in Africa. In 2014, Accra was the headquarters of the UN Mission for Ebola Emergency Response (UNMEER), which was vital to curbing the deadly virus outbreak.

UNMEER was hosted in the WFP-managed United Nations Humanitarian Response Depot (UNHRD) located at the Kotoka International Airport, the same facility which is hosting the regional cargo and passenger aviation hub for the COVID-19 response.

The hub mainly serves United Nations agencies, non-governmental organizations and, is operated under stringent measures to prevent transmission of COVID-19.

The United Nations World Food Programme is the worlds largest humanitarian organization, saving lives in emergencies, building prosperity, and supporting a sustainable future for people recovering from conflict, disasters and the impact of climate change.
Patrice (McLain) Schneck, former Spearmanite, is working on cataloging an old family album dating from 1850-1930 from the Cator Collection and Charles and Caroline Broadhurst.



The miscellaneous 650+ photos consist of the Old Cator Family, Hull England and Zulu Hansford County, Texas.



The photos also include documents and various certificates.



This is an interesting letter from the Charles and Carolyn Cator Broadhurst Collection sent to the Cator Brothers--Jim and Bob-- Hansford County pioneers (Patrice's great great uncles) in 1888.



Patrice is the daughter of Don and Gwen (Cator) McLain.



You can view this treasure of photos, letters and documents

and

and
Industry News

Zoom Lurches Forward on Security with New Acquisition

Videoconferencing marvel Zoom Video Communications has acquired Keybase, a secure messaging and file-sharing service. Zoom officials said the technology developed by Keybase would speed up the company's plans to add end-to-end encryption that could scale with Zoom adoptions in an era when school, work and family events are being handled remotely as a response to coronavirus lockdowns.

Zoom is in a hurry. In recent weeks, the company has faced a litany of complaints regarding what has been perceived as a lax security stance. Alongside advantages (simple setup and the cost  free) the program has seen increased scrutiny for several reasons: "Zoom-bombing" made headlines when people invaded meetings they weren't invited to; privacy policies have seemingly given the company permission to do whatever it wants with the personal information collected; encryption has turned out to be fairly nonexistent; and the company's URL has become a popular choice of cyber criminals who have registered Zoom-like domain names in hopes of wooing phishing victims. For a while New York City Public Schools expelled Zoom from its remote classrooms, though that ban ended last week with the introduction of a customized version of the program.

To address security concerns, in April, the company announced a 90-day security plan "to better identify, address and fix issues proactively." The company has been jumping on improvements. In March it set up a dedicated K-12 privacy policy and updated its overall privacy policy. It also published guidance to help users address gatecrashers. And it came clean in a blog post on "facts around Zoom and encryption."

"There are end-to-end encrypted communications platforms. There are communications platforms with easily deployable security. There are enterprise-scale communications platforms. We believe that no current platform offers all of these. This is what Zoom plans to build, giving our users security, ease of use and scale, all at once," said Eric Yuan, CEO of Zoom, in a statement. "The first step is getting the right team together. Keybase brings deep encryption and security expertise to Zoom, and we're thrilled to welcome [Keybase Co-founder and Developer] Max [Krohn] and his team. Bringing on a cohesive group of security engineers like this significantly advances our 90-day plan to enhance our security efforts."

The latest acquisition puts Krohn in charge of Zoom security. Terms of the purchase were not made public.

Currently, according to the company, audio and video content flowing between Zoom nodes  those devices running the Zoom app  is encrypted at each sending client device. It gets decrypted when it reaches a recipient's device. However, encryption keys are generated by Zoom's servers, at least for the latest version of the software (Zoom 5.0). The users don't have absolute control over that part of the encryption process.

In the "near future," the company reported, Zoom would offer an end-to-end encrypted meeting mode for paid accounts. As a company article explained:

"Logged-in users will generate public cryptographic identities that are stored in a repository on Zoom's network and can be used to establish trust relationships between meeting attendees. An ephemeral per-meeting symmetric key will be generated by the meeting host. This key will be distributed between clients, enveloped with the asymmetric keypairs and rotated when there are significant changes to the list of attendees. The cryptographic secrets will be under the control of the host, and the host's client software will decide what devices are allowed to receive meeting keys, and thereby join the meeting."

That end-to-end encryption plan won't work when users have phone bridges, cloud recording or non-Zoom conference room systems, the company warned. But the encryption keys "will be tightly controlled by the host, who will admit attendees."

Zoom said it would also be taking additional steps on the security front:

Working with users to make reporting easier when unwanted attendees show up, but without monitoring meeting contents itself;

Committing to not building a mechanism that would allow for live meetings to be decrypted; and

Committing to not building "cryptographic backdoors to allow for the secret monitoring of meetings" or having Zoom employees attend meetings without being part of the participant list.

Zoom said that it would publish a draft cryptographic design on Friday, May 22, 2020 and then host discussions with "civil society, cryptographic experts and customers."
JACKSON, MI James Henry Cooper-Robertson was a big man, eclipsing many of the elderly residents he cared for as a nurse at the Highland Assisted Living and Memory Care facility in Jackson.

The only thing larger than his stature was his big heart and kind soul and always being able to put a smile on residents faces as he cared for them, his mother Katrina Cooper-Oliver said.

He was my only child and a good boy, she said. Residents loved him. He always made them smile and could get things out of them no other nurse could. They just always liked him more.

The smiles ended in the early morning hours of March 6 when Cooper-Robertson, 25, was found shot and unresponsive outside Duffys Food & Spirits, 751 N. Waterloo St., in Jackson.

He was pronounced dead shortly after arriving at Henry Ford Allegiance Health, and his death is ruled a homicide by the Jackson Police Department, which is investigating.

What led up to the fatal shooting are still unclear, police said, adding they did identify the suspected killer as Franky Joseph Ackley, 23.

Two months after the shooting, Ackley still has not been found and an arrest warrant for open murder and felony firearms is still active, Jackson Director of Police and Fire Services Elmer Hitt said.

Suspect identified in fatal shooting outside Jackson bar

A week after the fatal shooting, Michigan saw its first confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus, which eventually led to the state ordering the closure of thousands of business and for residents to stay home in self-quarantine.

It was a bad day for everyone at Highland when he was taken from this world, Mike McElroy, owner of Highland Assisted Living and Memory Care said. He was a good kid loved by all and what happened to him was a needless senseless act. It was hard to believe this could happen to him, to someone who was so kind.

Before graduating from Jackson High School in 2012, Cooper-Robertson took classes at the Jackson Area Career Center under its certified nursing assistant program, learning how to properly care for the elderly.

He used what he learned, alongside his mother, to take care of his grandmother, Nellie Mae Cooper, until she died in late 2013 at age 75.

She called him pumpkin and she loved him so much, Cooper-Oliver said.

Cooper-Robertson was a man of faith, worshiping God and helping where he could at the First Evangelist Ministries in Jackson.

He is survived by his mother, sister Ashley Johnson, brother Anthony Shield, aunt Willye Dawkins-Baker, uncles Gregory Cooper, James Cooper, Morris Cooper, Bishop Roger Jones and multiple cousins, nieces and nephews.

Anyone with information about the shooting or who knows of the whereabouts of Ackley is asked to call Det. Robert Noppe at 517-206-3993 or leave an anonymous tip with Crime Stoppers at 855-840-7867.

More from The Jackson Citizen Patriot:

Restoration, fundraising planned for Waterloo Farm and Dewey School museums

Memorial Day fireworks at Cascades canceled amid coronavirus pandemic

Medical marijuana shops can now sell recreational product in Jackson
The central government on Friday reminded states and union territories that it was their responsibility to ensure that migrant workers were not left to walk on highways or along the railway tracks or cycle their way home when permission has been given to organize transport for their commute.

The union home secretary Ajay Bhalla wrote to the chief secretaries of states that they should follow up on Centres advise to counsel migrants and put them up in relief camps, if they are found walking on highways or along the railway tracks.

However, the movement of migrant workers, walking on roads, railway tracks and travelling in trucks, is still being noticed in different parts of the country, the home secretarys letter says.

The letter says it is now up to the state governments to widely disseminate information about the travel arrangements being made to take migrant workers home and to persuade/counsel them not to walk home.

With the cooperation of States/UTs, Ministry of Railways is running more than 100 Shramik Special Trains per day and is ready to arrange additional trains as per their requirements, the letter says.

The HT Guide to Coronavirus COVID-19

At least 16 migrant workers were crushed to death earlier this month while they were sleeping on the railway tracks near Aurangabad in Maharashtra while walking back to their village in Madhya Pradesh. In another incident, nine workers were killed and 50 others injured when their truck collided with a bus on a highway in Guna district on Thursday.

Also Read: 56-year-old migrant dies on road to home, another dies after police lathicharge

Six migrant workers were run over by a speeding bus on the Delhi-Saharanpur highway in Uttar Pradesh early on Thursday and another three migrant workers were crushed by a vehicle in Barabanki in the small hours of Friday.

Several other tragic incidents involving migrant workers walking home have been reported in the past couple of weeks.
A health worker vaccinates a woman against the flu.

Faced with the threat of Covid-19, the world needs a vaccine, and fast. But typical timelines for vaccine development are years, even decades, long.

Thats why some epidemiologists are calling for so-called challenge trials to speed things up. When researchers test vaccines, they typically inject thousands of people with either the vaccine or a placebo, then wait months or years to see who gets sick. Challenge trials present a faster alternative: A few hundred people are given either placebo or the vaccine, and then deliberately are exposed to the virus.

Challenge trials have previously been used to choose the right dosage of vaccines or pick between candidates ahead of larger trials. But they havent been used to validate vaccines ahead of widespread useat least, not since the first vaccine ever created in 1796, whose methods wouldnt meet todays ethical standards.

Currently, more than 10,000 people have said they would volunteer for a challenge trial. But no vaccine shortcut is straightforward. Here are some of the challenges to making challenge trials work for Covid-19.

Timing

Based on what we know about Covid-19 infections, scientists would have to wait just three weeks after infecting their participants to start collecting results, says Peter G. Smith, co-author of a Journal of Infectious Diseases article on Covid-19 challenge trials. Within a month or maybe two of starting the trial, he expects scientists to have final results. Overall, he estimates challenge trials would be at least four months quicker than standard trials.

The pace of a standard trial, on the other hand, depends on local infection rates. And given protective measures such as self-isolation, a large coronavirus vaccine trial that simply waited for people to get sick might never finish, says Smiths co-author Nir Eyal, a professor of bioethics at Rutgers University. A coronavirus study that started in Wuhan, China, for example, might now peter out given the low number of cases there. This was a major issue in testing Ebola vaccines; trials in Liberia and Sierra Leone had to be abandoned because there werent enough patients to complete the study.

Story continues

But while challenge trials themselves are faster, it still takes considerable work to prepare for them. Scientists need to grow supplies of the virus, test it in animals, and get it certified for human use. Then they need to determine a dosage that mimics a natural infection, but is less dangerous than a severe case. To be safe, they would start testing low doses and gradually increase how much is used. This just doesnt happen overnight, says Holly Fernandez Lynch, a medical ethics professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

Stanley Plotkin, whose research contributed to the development of vaccines for rubella, rabies, and polio, says hes speaking with the US Food and Drug Administration and World Health Organization about whether theyll consider evidence from challenge trials. If they do, scientists should start working to develop the Covid-19 strain immediately. Unless we start now, challenge studies will be useless. It has to be something we start making now, he says.

Plotkin also raises the possibility that, in areas where contagion is extremely high, standard vaccine trials could advance extremely quickly. If the usual way of doing things moves faster, then challenge studies may not be necessary, he says.

Efficacy

Deliberately infecting trial participants with a deadly disease is morally questionable. Even more so when only a portion of them will receive a vaccine. So a Covid-19 challenge trial would only recruit young, healthy people who are more likely to survive. Smith and his co-authors propose enrolling healthy people aged 20-45.

But, of course, that means a challenge trial would only show how a vaccine works within that limited age group. Even if a vaccine worked in young people, there would be no guarantee it would work in the same way for elderly people, says Smith. Older people have weaker immune systems, and its common for vaccines to be less effective in elderly people, he says.

Testing vaccines in young people could also make it difficult to determine whether they work at all. Many vaccines dont prevent infection altogether, but limit the severity of symptoms, and Smith says symptoms would likely be the main readout for efficacy in a challenge trial. If only a tiny proportion of people in their twenties to mid-forties show symptoms after theyre infected, challenge trials would have to enroll far greater numbers of participants to show a clear effect.

Plotkin suggests an alternative: Focus on immune responses, not symptoms. In this kind of challenge trial, the end point would be whether the blood of vaccinated participants includes the same antibodies as people who have been naturally infected. It wouldnt directly answer the question of whether a vaccine prevents clinical symptoms. But it could help keep minimize the number of participants needed in the earliest stages of research.

Safety

A challenge trial can tackle the question of a vaccines efficacy. But because of its small sample size, its unable to give clear information about the other crucial trait of a vaccine: safety.

The authors of the Journal of Infectious Diseases article suggest that, if a challenge trial had good results, it should be followed by a larger study to assess short-term safety and efficacy in different age and risk groups. It could test around 3,000 people, and take a matter of months.

That plan still wouldnt provide information about long-term risks, and no vaccine could be formally approved based on such studies. But it could allow wider use of the vaccine in real-world studies, with scientists continuing to collect data on effectiveness and safety. Challenge studies would give crucial info that would allow the FDA to permit vaccine use, perhaps under some sort of emergency clause, before giving a license later based on an accumulation of information derived from widespread use, says Plotkin.

In such circumstances, those who receive the vaccine would have to be clearly told that the vaccine is still going through testing procedures, and make a personal choice about whether to be vaccinated. To be absolutely safe, monitoring the long term effects of vaccines takes considerable time. You have to balance that against the millions who will die in the meantime, says Smith.

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After navigating the stock market crash in March and the rally in April, it's easy to slip into the short-term mindset of panicking over losses and celebrating gains. Instead, we should look ahead and scoop up strong players whose shares have suffered only temporarily and stocks that may protect our portfolios during the next market crash.

It is also wise to diversify, investing in a variety of sectors to better insulate your investments.

With those parameters in mind, here are three stocks to consider investing in.

1. Bristol Myers Squibb

Pharmaceutical giant Bristol Myers Squibb (NYSE:BMY) has the opportunity for major growth ahead thanks to the acquisition of Celgene late last year. The company now has nine prescription-based products that generate more than $1 billion in annual sales each. Through the deal, Bristol Myers Squibb gained access to valuable assets such as blockbuster cancer drug Revlimid.

Revlimid sales climbed 13% in the first quarter compared to the same quarter last year under Celgene, to $2.9 billion, to become Bristol Myers Squibb's top-selling drug. The acquisition also offered Bristol Myers Squibb a valuable boost to its drug pipeline, with the possibility of six product launches in the near term. That represents more than $15 billion in potential sales. In the first quarter, Bristol Myers Squibb also saw strength in drugs that were already part of its portfolio prior to the Celgene deal. Anticoagulant Eliquis posted a 37% gain in sales as the company's second-best-selling drug.

Bristol Myers Squibb has surpassed analysts' earnings per share estimates for the past four quarters, and annual revenue has been climbing since 2015. The stock is down 4.9% for the year and is trading near its lowest in relation to book value since 2011. This offers a great entry point for a pharmaceutical company that is set to deliver increased revenue in the years to come.

2. Target

Revenue at Target (NYSE:TGT) has been on the rise since 2017, and the retail giant has aggressively expanded and adapted to the market to ensure future gains. These efforts include an increased digital presence, more pickup and delivery offers, and added investment in a strong portfolio of owned brands. Target has warned investors that profit may be lower in the next earnings report due to the coronavirus outbreak. While its stores have managed to remain open as essential businesses, shoppers have been buying fewer higher-margin items like clothing as they opt for essentials. But this is a temporary situation.

Target increased digital sales by more than 25% for the sixth straight year in 2019, when it posted a 29% gain. And order pick-up, drive-up, and Target's shipping service grew more than 90% last year. As for owned brands, Target has grown its children's clothing line Cat & Jack into a multi-billion-dollar brand. Earlier this year, it launched activewear brand All in Motion, focused on inclusivity in sizing and style and, of course, affordability. Once the coronavirus downturn has passed, this brand may be an interesting growth driver.

Target's shares have slipped 9.7% this year, and they are trading at about 18 times trailing 12-month earnings, lower than peer Walmart, which trades at 23 times earnings. At this level, Target is a good buy for the long-term investor.

3. Clorox

Clorox (NYSE:CLX), a well-known maker of cleaning products, is unsurprisingly one of the stock market winners during the current health crisis. The stock has gained 33% this year. As consumers focus on keeping their environment clean as the coronavirus circulates, sales have surged for Clorox's products. Clorox posted a 32% increase in sales of cleaning products and a 71% increase in pre-tax earnings in its fiscal 2020 third quarter. The company reported overall sales growth of 15% for the period. This sort of quarter is exceptional for Clorox. Annual sales have been growing since 2015 but in the low single digits. For example, sales rose by 1% in fiscal 2019.

But there are two reasons to add Clorox to a long-term portfolio. The coronavirus has made consumers more keenly aware of the power of cleaning when faced with a health crisis, and we may see more extensive use of wipes and other products well into the future. And Clorox is a Dividend Aristocrat, having raised its dividend for at least 25 consecutive years. The company recently declared a quarterly dividend of $1.06 per share.

Once the effects of the coronavirus outbreak have passed, Clorox still is likely to deliver steady -- albeit slower -- revenue gains. The stock is at an all-time high, so you may want to wait for share weakness before investing. But whether you buy now or later, Clorox makes a good addition to your portfolio ahead of the next market crash.
Mark Mosley was charged with robbery and denied bail

Two men have been charged with robbing an unemployed man who had a syringe held to his neck after he collected his dole money.

The alleged victim was foll-owed from the GPO and "lured" down a side street, where he was threatened with a needle and had his cash and phone taken, a court heard.

Mark Mosley (28) and Glenn Douglas (20), who were arrested hours later, appeared before Dublin District Court charged with robbery.

Mr Mosley, with an address at a north city centre hostel, was refused bail, while Mr Douglas was granted bail subject to independent sureties.

The prosecuting garda told Judge Flann Brennan the incident happened at Harbour Court, off Abbey Street Lower, on Monday.

He said force was used during the robbery, in which the man had a syringe held to his neck and he suffered minor facial injuries.

It was alleged he was foll-owed after he received his social welfare payment at the GPO and lured to the location, where he was robbed of 125 and his phone.

Footage

The alleged victim described his assailants and CCTV footage was viewed.

The accused were wearing similar clothing, the garda said. He objected to bail in both cases.

It was not alleged that Mr Douglas played the major part, his solicitor John Quinn said, in applying for bail.

The garda said it was alleged that both men used physical violence and had their own part in the robbery.

Judge Brennan granted Mr Douglas bail in his own bond of 500, with two independent sureties of 500, or cash in lieu.

Mr Mosley was presumed innocent, his solicitor Kate McGhee said. She said the CCTV was not "fantastic quality" and nobody could be identified.

The garda said it showed Mr Mosley's face and he recognised him. The money and phone were not found.

Mr Mosley could live with his aunt in the Glin estate in Coolock if granted bail, Ms McGhee said.

He was "absolutely denying" the charge, she added.
The Tomball ISD Board of Trustees hosted a meeting through Zoom and teleconference call Tuesday evening to approve a general pay increase of 2% of the midpoint value in the district pay schedules for the 2020-2021 fiscal year, among other considered agenda items.

For the most part, most (neighboring districts) are just going 1% and we saw our opportunity to get a little bit of an edge on the other districts and wanted to continue with what we had done with our salary study, Tomball ISD chief financial officer Jim Ross said via Zoom.

ON HOUSTONCHRONICLE.COM: Houston ISD board OKs step toward earlier start date, keeping contract with scrutinized charter

A lot of Tomball Independent School Districts budget work for the upcoming fiscal year is having to be done online in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. On May 11, the school board held its first virtual workshop for the 2020-21 budget. Ross said the projected total revenue is $157 million, $10 million higher than the 2019-20 budget.

Ross said that with a decrease in the M&O tax rate, down three cents from last year at 94 cents, theres an increase in the I&S Tax Rate, up three cents from last year at 35 cents, keeping the total tax rate at $1.29; the same as the previous year.

The recommended general pay increase of 2% was built into the preliminary budget, along with equity adjustments, with a cost of approximately $2.9 million. The starting salary for new teachers will be $56,000 with benefits.

CLASS OF 2020: Tomball ISD in-person graduation ceremonies to be held at Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion

When looking at teachers needed for growth, Tomball ISD needed over 70 to fulfill necessities.

Right now, we want to bring in 75 new teachers for growth and to decrease our student to teacher ratio, Ross said.

In addition, the district is holding eight teaching positions for growth during the year or other needs that may come up. Ross said theyve got those built in the budget to have a cushion to adjust wherever they see a need for additional teachers. The district needs another 71 other staff members for a total of 154 new staffing district-wide which totals $9.5 million.

The district was also challenged with construction projects as far as the expenses associated with the opening of new facilities in 2020-21, like Grand Oaks Elementary School, an aquatic center at Tomball Memorial High School, and other campus additions. Ross said staffing costs for opening Grand Oaks Elementary total $2.8 million.

He also said new facilities will substantially increase operating costs.

Following this next year, well open up everything that we were building with the Bond 17 funds, Ross said. Thats going to have a huge impact on our budget as far as next year.

The board is scheduled to have a second budget workshop meeting in June with a likely vote on a budget also expected sometime next month.

We have to adopt it before the end of the fiscal year, Ross said. The very latest we can adopt the budget is June the 19th but we are required to have a hearing prior to that which is open to public comment.

alvaro.montano@chron.com
Its collapse follows other retail bankruptcies this month including J. Crew, the Neiman Marcus Group and the designer mens clothing brand John Varvatos. But J.C. Penney represents the biggest casualty by far based on the number of locations. Its more than 800 stores are anchors at many American malls, with nearly 85,000 employees.

The filing was expected after J.C. Penney failed to make an interest payment on its debt in April to maximize financial flexibility, and then skipped another payment last week. The stock of the retail chain, which is based in Plano, Tex., has been trading below $1 per share for most of this year, Sapna Maheshwari and Michael Corkery write.

The companys sales have steadily shrunk in recent years to $10.7 billion for the year ended Feb. 1, when it posted a net loss of $268 million from continuing operations. At the time, it said it had 846 stores in the United States.

A decade ago, J.C. Penney was still seeing declines, but its sales were $17.6 billion and it posted income of $249 million from continuing operations. Back then, it had more than 1,100 stores and 154,000 employees.
Alone at the bar is Tony Gibney of Gibneys in Malahide. (pic by Fintan Clarke)

A Malahide pub owner has said he remains 'optimistic' about the future of his business, despite having been forced to close some weeks ago due to government restrictions surrounding COVID-19.

Tony Gibney, owner of Gibney's of Malahide, has said that despite the recent closure of his business, he is confident the popular public house will recover from the recent closure.

Speaking to The Fingal Independent recently, Mr Gibney outlined some of issues now being faced by the pubs industry: 'It's obviously affecting everybody that's working for us. We've a lot of people working here full-time and part-time, and most of them are on the government COVID-19 scheme. But for some staff across the country maybe, they may feel they're better off on that 350 payment.

'Really we're trying to put a strategy together for getting back to work, so we plan to have meetings with our staff to see how best to go forward.

'The government have put forward a time-frame to bring something forward quicker or slower, depending on how results are going from a health point of view, and to be honest I think that's fairly sound.'

Mr Gibney said: 'With businesses, it's costs, and that's the same for everybody in hospitality.

'If we don't open till August that will be five months of the best business months, and that's the same for most people in the service industry in Ireland.

'So the government should be at least halving the rates, because there's no way that people who are opening in August will make up half their turnover in the year.'

Mr Gibney said he fully supports proposals put forward by the Licensed Vintners Association and the Vintners' Association of Ireland, which would see measures put in place for pubs to reopen before Aug 10.

He believed, he said, that the two bodies have gone 'a long way to satisfy the government', and that the proposed measures would be prove workable and allow pubs to open sooner than planned.

Speaking of how he believed Gibney's of Malahide would get through the current crisis, the Malahide pub owner said: 'I'm more optimistic than most people in the sense that I think we can bounce back, because

'I think we're a community pub in a community setting.

'While we won't get everything right, we can get most things right and look after our customers and our staff as best we can. I think we will come through this and out the other side.'
A top US senator has unveiled an 18-point plan, including enhancing military ties with India, to hold the Chinese government accountable for its lies, deception, and cover-ups that ultimately led to the global Covid-19 pandemic.

The prominent suggestions are moving manufacturing chain from China and deepening military-strategic ties India, Vietnam and Taiwan.

Follow latest updates on coronavirus here

Also Watch | Covid update: Automated test machine; USA vs China again; Germany 100 bn loss

The Chinese government maliciously covered up and enabled a global pandemic that has caused misery for so many Americans. This is the same regime that locks up its own citizens in labour camps, steals Americas technology and jobs, and threatens the sovereignty of our allies, said Senator Thom Tillis, presenting his detailed, 18-point plan on Thursday.

This is a major wake-up call to the United States and the rest of the free world. My plan of action will hold the Chinese government accountable for lying about COVID-19; sanctioning the Chinese government while protecting Americas economy, public health, and national security, he said.

Also read| Covid-19: What you need to know today

The plan seeking to create a Pacific Deterrence Initiative and immediately approve the militarys request for USD 20 billion in funding. It also calls for deepening military ties with regional allies and expand equipment sales to India, Taiwan and Vietnam.

Also Watch l India to overtake China in covid cases today and why we still lag in testing

Encourage Japan to rebuild its military and offer Japan and South Korea sales of offensive military equipment, it said.

Move manufacturing back to the US from China and gradually eliminate our supply chain dependency on China. Stop China from stealing our technology and provide incentives to American companies to regain our technological advantage. Strengthen cybersecurity against Chinese hacks and sabotage, the plan stated.

Prevent American taxpayer money from being used by the Chinese government to pay off their debt. Implement the US ban on (Chinese technology company) Huawei and coordinate with our allies to implement similar bans, it added.

The plan seeks restitution from the Chinese government and imposition of sanctions for lying about the virus. It further said China should be sanctioned for their atrocious human rights record.

Senator Tillis plan urges the Trump Administration to formally request the International Olympic Committee to withdraw the 2022 Winter Olympics from Beijing.

Stop Chinas propaganda campaign inside the United States. Treat Chinese government-run media outlets as the propaganda proxies that they are, the plan stated.

Click here for complete coronavirus coverage

Urging the government to investigate the Chinese governments cover-up of the spread of Covid-19, the plan also seeks to investigate Americas reliance on Chinas supply chains and threats to public safety and national security.

Ensure the independence of the WHO through investigations and reform. Expose and counter Chinas predatory debt-trap diplomacy targeting developing countries. Increase intelligence sharing on potential pandemics and lead the creation of a watchdog organization to monitor foreign governments handling of deadly viruses, Tillis said in his suggestions.

The coronavirus, which first emerged in Chinas Wuhan city in December last, has killed over 3,00,000 people with 4.3 million confirmed cases across the world. More than a quarter of all confirmed Covid-19 cases are from the US.

There has been increasing pressure on the President Trump, in the last several weeks, to take action against China as lawmakers and opinion-makers feel that the Covid-19 spread across the world from Wuhan because of Chinese inaction.

Also read| Billions of dollars: Trump withdraws US pension fund from China investments

Meanwhile, Senator John Barrasso, in a speech on the Senate floor on Thursday, highlighted the need to update the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) legislation that was put on hold by the coronavirus pandemic.

The virus could have been contained had it not been for the Chinese Governments unscrupulous cover-up. China knew the risk months before the rest of the world; yet Chinese communist leaders destroyed key evidence, they under-reported the number of coronavirus cases, and they misled the world about its deadly, rapid spread, he said.

Asserting that the virus should have been contained in Wuhan, he said tens and tens of thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of people worldwide have died as a result of Chinas failure.

Barrasso said the US should encourage its companies to create American and western supply chains. That way our frontline workers have what they need in the time of crisis, he said.

Also read| Not happy right now: Trump rules out US renegotiating trade deal with China

Not again, not ever will we be exclusively sourced for critical drugs from China. We should diversify supply and bring home as much of our supply chain as possible, he added.

Congressman Troy Balderson introduced bicameral legislation with Congressman Doug Collins and Senator Lindsey Graham that will hold China accountable for deceptive actions taken by its leaders that led to the spread and subsequent global pandemic.

The Covid-19 Accountability Act authorises President Donald Trump to impose sanctions on China if it fails to cooperate with a full investigation led by the US or its allies into the events that lead to the Covid-19 outbreak.

The number of Ohioan lives needlessly claimed by this pandemic could have been significantly reduced had China taken appropriate measures to control the virus spread and disclose its severity, said Balderson.

The United States cant look the other way when China so recklessly compromised worldwide health and the global economy. China and its Communist Party leadership must be held accountable, he said.
Sen. Dianne Feinstein's (D-Calif.) spokesperson has confirmed she answered questions from the FBI over stock trades her husband made before the U.S. markets took a dive due to the coronavirus pandemic  but Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-Ga.) is refusing to say if she was contacted as well.

Reports emerged earlier this year Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) sold stocks while he was receiving briefings on the coming COVID-19 coronavirus crisis, and federal agents have now seized his cellphone. Numerous other senators also sold stocks around the same time as Burr, including Feinstein, as The New York Times reported she and her husband sold between $1.5 million and $6 million in stock in the biotech company Allogene Therapeutics between Jan. 31 and Feb. 18.

Feinstein denied being involved in the sales, with a spokesperson at the time saying, "All of Senator Feinstein's assets are in a blind trust" and "she has no involvement in her husband's financial decisions." On Thursday, Feinstein's spokesperson confirmed to NBC News that she answered questioned from the FBI and provided authorities with documents. Her aides also said this questioning occurred in April and that there have been "no follow up actions on this issue," per The Washington Post.

Loeffler, who is a much closer ally of President Trump's than Burr, and her husband also sold stock around the same time after she was briefed on the coronavirus, although she says the decisions were made by investment advisers. But asked Thursday if she's been contacted by the FBI, Loeffler wouldn't say, and when asked by CNN if she has, a spokesperson didn't directly address the question, instead saying, "No search warrant has been served on Sen Loeffler. She has followed both the letter and spirit of the law and will continue to do so."

More stories from theweek.com

The pre-election number Trump's team reportedly fears the most is the COVID-19 'body count'

The conservative victimhood complex has made America impossible to govern

5 scathingly funny cartoons about America's risky reopening


For Immediate Release

Chicago, IL  May 15, 2020  Zacks Value Investor is a podcast hosted weekly by Zacks Stock Strategist Tracey Ryniec. Every week, Tracey will be joined by guests to discuss the hottest investing topics in stocks, bonds and ETFs and how it impacts your life. To listen to the podcast, click here:

(https://www.zacks.com/stock/news/925240/are-the-bank-stocks-deals)

Are the Bank Stocks Deals?

Welcome to Episode #190 of the Value Investor Podcast

Every week, Tracey Ryniec, the editor of Zacks Value Investor portfolio, shares some of her top value investing tips and stock picks.

The financials are one of the larger sectors in the S&P 500 and dominate the Russell 2000, small cap index. The banks, both big and small, make up the majority of the sector.

But the bank stocks have plunged, with some taking out their previous 2020 lows.

And most are still paying their dividends.

Could the banks be stock deals?

5 Big Banks That Have Plunged

1. JPMorgan Chase JPM is considered the top tier of the big US banks. But even with that, shares are still down 40% year-to-date and look like they want to test the March lows. 2020 earnings are expected to fall 52%. Is it a bargain here?

2. Wells Fargo WFC shares are at 9-year lows and trade under their March lows, now down 59% year-to-date. Its yielding 8.5% and it is paying out the dividend on June 1. Earnings are expected to plunge 82% year-over-year. Are the shares too risky to buy?

3. Comerica CMA is a regional bank with business in Texas and Michigan. It has big exposure to energy, however, with it being 3.3% of total assets. Earnings estimates have been crushed down to $1.33 from $6.76 just 90 days ago. Thats a year-over-year earnings decline of 83%. Should Comerica be on your short list?

4. PNC Financial PNC shares have fallen 40% year-to-date. It hasnt yet retested the March low. Earnings are expected to fall 47.5% from 2019. Shares are trading with a forward P/E of 16.7. Is it cheap enough to jump in?

Story continues

5. Bank OZK OZK shares have lost 38% year-to-date. This is the cheapest of these 5 banks, on a P/E level, with a forward P/E of just 13.3. Yet earnings are expected to fall 53% year-over-year. Is it time to take a look?

What else should value investors know about buying bank stocks?

Tune into this weeks podcast to fine out.

Today's Best Stocks from Zacks



Would you like to see the updated picks from our best market-beating strategies? From 2017 through 2019, while the S&P 500 gained and impressive +53.6%, five of our strategies returned +65.8%, +97.1%, +118.0%, +175.7% and even +186.7%.

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Tracey Ryniec is the Value Stock Strategist for Zacks.com. She is also the Editor of the Insider Trader and Value Investor services. You can follow her on twitter at @TraceyRyniec and she also hosts the Zacks Market Edge Podcast on iTunes.

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Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Inherent in any investment is the potential for loss. This material is being provided for informational purposes only and nothing herein constitutes investment, legal, accounting or tax advice, or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a security. No recommendation or advice is being given as to whether any investment is suitable for a particular investor. It should not be assumed that any investments in securities, companies, sectors or markets identified and described were or will be profitable. All information is current as of the date of herein and is subject to change without notice. Any views or opinions expressed may not reflect those of the firm as a whole. Zacks Investment Research does not engage in investment banking, market making or asset management activities of any securities. These returns are from hypothetical portfolios consisting of stocks with Zacks Rank = 1 that were rebalanced monthly with zero transaction costs. These are not the returns of actual portfolios of stocks. The S&P 500 is an unmanaged index. Visit https://www.zacks.com/performance for information about the performance numbers displayed in this press release.



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JPMorgan Chase Co. (JPM) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Comerica Incorporated (CMA) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Wells Fargo Company (WFC) : Free Stock Analysis Report



Bank OZK (OZK) : Free Stock Analysis Report



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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 16:24:56|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Chinese mainland on Friday issued a circular requiring coordinated efforts to support the development of Taiwan-funded enterprises and advance Taiwan-funded projects amid the coronavirus epidemic.

Jointly released by the National Development and Reform Commission, the State Council Taiwan Affairs Office and eight other agencies, the circular lists 11 measures.

The measures are as follows:

-- Continue to help and support Taiwan-funded enterprises in resuming work and production.

-- Coordinate efforts to advance major Taiwan-funded projects.

-- Actively support Taiwan-funded enterprises in increasing investments and expanding production capacity.

-- Facilitate Taiwan-funded enterprises to participate in the construction of new-type and traditional infrastructure.

-- Support Taiwan-funded enterprises in maintaining stability in foreign trade.

-- Guide Taiwan-funded enterprises to explore the domestic market.

-- Fully implement tax break policies.

-- Step up financial support for Taiwan-funded enterprises in epidemic control and business and manufacturing resumption.

-- Fully support and meet the reasonable land use needs of Taiwan-funded projects.

-- Support the development of small- and medium-sized Taiwan-funded enterprises.

-- Actively serve Taiwan-funded enterprises.

The measures are set to provide Taiwan businesspeople and enterprises with increased development opportunities, and beef up support for their investments and business development on the mainland.

The circular, according to authorities, comes among efforts to implement decisions and plans made by the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the State Council to coordinate coronavirus epidemic control and economic and social development and further implement the "31 measures" and "26 measures" that the Chinese mainland rolled out in 2018 and 2019 respectively to promote cross-Strait economic and cultural exchanges and cooperation. Enditem
A new eatery is coming to Midland this summer  Jersey Mikes Subs.

The new franchise was recently announced on Facebook by Great Lakes Bay Construction and the Center City Authority pages. It is being opened by Saginaw Township resident and Midland native Jason Yatch.

Jersey Mike's Subs is a fast-casual sandwich franchise with more than 2,500 locations open and under development nationwide. The first store was opened in New Jersey in 1956.

Yatch said the restaurant is known for its subs, with the most popular being the Original Italian sub and a hot Mikes Famous Philly sandwich. Other menu items include the Jersey Shores Favorite, the Big Kahuna Cheese Steak and Stickball Special.

We do utilize a lot of fresh ingredients, Yatch said. For example, we do work with a lot of local produce providers for our lettuce and our tomatoes which are basically prepared in the facility daily. We are known for our red tomatoes.

However, it was the culture and leadership of the company that drew Yatch to the franchise. He said hes been in a media career for more than 20 years but said its always been a dream of his to go out on his own. He said his journey with Jersey Mikes Subs started a year and a half ago.

As someone who was born and raised in Midland, Yatch said hes looking forward to reengaging with the Midland community and bring a fantastic brand to town.

I really enjoy the people of Midland Jersey Mikes is notoriously known for giving back and so we not only want to basically serve the community of Midland, but we also want to make sure that were giving back to the community as well. he said.

Yatch also said in response to the coronavirus pandemic, Jersey Mikes held a fundraiser to support Feeding America, raising more than $2 million in one day.

The new sub shop will be located at 1917 S. Saginaw Road, next to Tim Hortons in Midland. Yatch said he remembers when the location was Dawn Donuts, sharing a fond memory of going there on Saturday mornings with his dad to get a dozen doughnuts.

I have some great memories in that building, he said.

The tentative grand opening is mid-July and Yatch said a Facebook page for the eatery will go live about a month before opening.

To learn more about the company, visit https://www.jerseymikes.com/

This article was updated to more accurately state the amount raised by the company during its fundraiser was more than $2 million, rather than more than $1 million.
Long-running soap opera Neighbours has resumed filming with social distancing measures in place to limit the spread of coronavirus.

Photos taken on set in Melbourne earlier this week show the cast and crew keeping at least 1.5m apart from each other.

In one scene, actress Bonnie Anderson kneels beside a co-star as he lies on the ground playing an injured character.

Keeping their distance: Long-running soap opera Neighbours has resumed filming with social distancing measures in place to limit the spread of COVID-19. Pictured: two actors exchanging dialogue while standing about two metres apart

The crew surrounding them guide the blocking of the scene to ensure both actors maintain an appropriate distance.

Another picture shows two actors exchanging dialogue while standing about two metres apart. The camera and sound operators are similarly positioned.

Although the actors cannot film intimate scenes or stage fights, the drama on Ramsay Street will continue throughout the pandemic.

The new normal: In this scene, actress Bonnie Anderson kneels beside a co-star as he lies on the ground playing an injured character. The crew surrounding them guide the blocking of the scene to ensure both actors maintain an appropriate distance

Making it work: Although the actors cannot film intimate scenes or stage fights, the drama on Ramsay Street will continue throughout the pandemic

Actor Ben Hall, who plays Ned Willis, told Digital Spy last week that scripts had to be rewritten to accommodate the COVID-19 restrictions.

He said: 'There's been hundreds, if not thousands, of changes by the script department to make sure there are less people in each scene, and also that there is no kissing, hugging, touching of any sort.

'So, if you are in a relationship in Neighbours  it's going to be a socially distanced relationship.'

Production was temporarily shut down in March following a coronavirus scare on set.

'Thousands of changes': Actor Ben Hall (top left corner, in the red shirt) told Digital Spy last week that scripts had to be rewritten to accommodate the COVID-19 restrictions

After a few weeks off, filming resumed in late April with several precautions in place, including temperature checks and social distancing.

Only cast and crew are allowed on set and must follow strict hygiene measures.

Neighbours executive producer Jason Herbison told The Daily Telegraph: 'It is our goal that impact to the screen will be minimal. We love a challenge and so far, we have found creative solutions to every issue.'
Lindy Ursos response (May 12) to my op-ed (May 5, Coronavirus lawsuit is irresponsible, selfish, and unethical) made me realize we agree on two things.

First, we are both sad. Mr. Urso because he believes I fail to see the importance of protecting rights in this time. Im sad because Mr. Urso seemingly reacted to my piece without reading it.

I understand the importance of upholding our laws, especially in this time. However, I also understand that doctors and health care professionals are telling us that upholding every right will lead to more unnecessary loss of life. I am willing to temporarily forego some freedoms for my health and the health of my fellow Americans. Mr. Urso is not. I think that speaks more to his entitledness than mine, even if I am a millennial.

Second, I have a lot to learn in the next year of law school. If I did not, I would be graduating now. Where we may differ though, is whether Mr. Urso has a lot to learn about professional responsibility. I also do not know Mr. Urso, so I cannot speak to whether his piece is indicative of his character. If it is, I should remind him that name-calling does not align with the Model Rules of Professional Conduct. In 1998, Sandra Day OConnor gave a speech at Washington University School of Law in which she spoke to the pervasive civility problems in Mr. Ursos profession, one that I will be joining in just a year. In describing how civility problems increased over the years she said, lawyers far too often breach their professional obligations to other lawyers ... When the lawyers themselves generate conflict, rather than focusing on the dispute between the parties they represent, it distorts our adversarial system.

Referring to me as an entitled millennial or woefully ignorant (on Twitter), Gov. Ned Lamont and his fellow governors as King Lamont and his fellow consortium of communist(s) or using other dramatic language distorts from the issue at hand: the lawsuit is unethical.

I do not believe our governor is cherry-picking who can earn a living and provide for their families. Governor Lamont is attempting to save the lives of Connecticut residents who, without proper precaution, would drown in medical debt or die. Even the White House has mask requirements. Its a temporary price to keep each other safe.

Mr. Urso believes science shows unequivocally that masks do nothing to help prevent the spread of the disease, even though the Mayo Clinic, World Health Organization, and Center for Disease Control have said otherwise. It would be interesting to know which medical professionals he has spoken to or if he, instead, is supplementing his own knowledge. While the Epidemic of 1918 did not look exactly like this, the government employed the same principles: distance the healthy from the sick. The difference now is the incubation period of COVID-19 is vast. Many of us have no way of knowing if we are no longer healthy or asymptomatic. If unknowing people carrying the disease were not in quarantine, they would be out spreading the disease, endangering the lives of those trying to live and provide for their families. The government engaged in quarantine-like mandates in 1918 and Mr. Ursos fear of the bottom of the slippery slope was never realized. There is no reason to believe it will in this case.

Mr. Urso said he does not seem to understand why someone like me would be concerned about the lawsuit. My top reason is because I care about other people. But, Mr. Urso also asks for costs and such other relief as (the) Court deems fair and equitable. Read: taxpayer money. Every resident of Connecticut should be concerned about paying for frivolous, unethical lawsuits.

Maggie Koester, who grew up in Greenwich, is a second-year student at George Mason Law School.
Aizawl, May 15 : The Mizoram government is likely to extend the lockdown till May 31 to check the spread of Covid-19 infection, an official said on Friday.

According to an official of the Health and Family Welfare department, in principle, the state government is keen to extend the lockdown.

"Chief Secretary Lalnunmawia Chuaungo on Friday held a meeting with various stakeholders to finalise the conditions and guidelines of the fourth phase of lockdown beyond May 17," the official who did not want to be identified, told IANS.

He said that the formal announcement about the fourth phase would be made on Saturday or Sunday.

Most political parties and a large number of organisations, including those of NGOs, churches and doctors, during a meeting on Thursday strongly wanted extension of the lockdown.

The Chief Secretary, who is the chairman of the Covid-19 taskforce group, would finalise the modalities of the lockdown.

Chief Minister Zoramthanga, who presided over Thursday's meeting, had said that extension of lockdown was very vital to protect the safety of people although the state has been declared green zone after its lone patient recovered on May 9.

The 50-year-old Christian pastor, who had tested positive for coronavirus on March 24 on his return to Aizawl from Amsterdam, via Delhi and Guwahati on March 16, was discharged from the hospital last week after he recovered from the disease.

Health officials in Aizawl said four people, including two women, from Mizoram tested Covid-19 positive in Maharashtra in the third week of April. All the four, three of them cancer patients, were staying at Mizoram House in Mumbai along with their relatives.

A doctor from Mizoram, who worked at a Meghalaya hospital, also tested coronavirus positive in Shillong on April 14.

All these people are now stable.
Some have more dollars than sense, they say, so even companies that have no revenue, no profit, and a record of falling short, can easily find investors. But as Warren Buffett has mused, 'If you've been playing poker for half an hour and you still don't know who the patsy is, you're the patsy.' When they buy such story stocks, investors are all too often the patsy.

In the age of tech-stock blue-sky investing, my choice may seem old fashioned; I still prefer profitable companies like Lenenergo (MCX:LSNG). Even if the shares are fully valued today, most capitalists would recognize its profits as the demonstration of steady value generation. Conversely, a loss-making company is yet to prove itself with profit, and eventually the sweet milk of external capital may run sour.

See our latest analysis for Lenenergo

Lenenergo's Earnings Per Share Are Growing.

If a company can keep growing earnings per share (EPS) long enough, its share price will eventually follow. That means EPS growth is considered a real positive by most successful long-term investors. Lenenergo managed to grow EPS by 16% per year, over three years. That's a good rate of growth, if it can be sustained.

Careful consideration of revenue growth and earnings before interest and taxation (EBIT) margins can help inform a view on the sustainability of the recent profit growth. Lenenergo shareholders can take confidence from the fact that EBIT margins are up from 23% to 27%, and revenue is growing. That's great to see, on both counts.

You can take a look at the company's revenue and earnings growth trend, in the chart below. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers.

MISX:LSNG Income Statement May 15th 2020

While it's always good to see growing profits, you should always remember that a weak balance sheet could come back to bite. So check Lenenergo's balance sheet strength, before getting too excited.

Are Lenenergo Insiders Aligned With All Shareholders?

As a general rule, I think it worth considering how much the CEO is paid, since unreasonably high rates could be considered against the interests of shareholders. For companies with market capitalizations between 30b and 118b, like Lenenergo, the median CEO pay is around 75m.

Story continues

The Lenenergo CEO received total compensation of only 369k in the year to . This could be considered a token amount, and indicates that the company does not need to use payment to motivate the CEO - that is often a good sign. While the level of CEO compensation isn't a huge factor in my view of the company, modest remuneration is a positive, because it suggests that the board keeps shareholder interests in mind. It can also be a sign of a culture of integrity, in a broader sense.

Does Lenenergo Deserve A Spot On Your Watchlist?

As I already mentioned, Lenenergo is a growing business, which is what I like to see. Not only that, but the CEO is paid quite reasonably, which makes me feel more trusting of the board of directors. So I do think the stock deserves further research, if not instant addition to your watchlist. Still, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Lenenergo .

Of course, you can do well (sometimes) buying stocks that are not growing earnings and do not have insiders buying shares. But as a growth investor I always like to check out companies that do have those features. You can access a free list of them here.

Please note the insider transactions discussed in this article refer to reportable transactions in the relevant jurisdiction.

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.
United Airlines Wants Back Into China But Regulatory Hurdles Remain

United Airlines wants to resume passengers flights to China as soon as next month but is waiting on governments in Beijing and Washington, D.C. to allow it, an executive told employees Thursday during a virtual town hall meeting.

In early February, United suspended flights to its four China destinations  Shanghai, Chengdu, Beijing and Hong Kong  just before the Trump Administration banned many foreign nationals from visiting the United States, if they recently had visited China. Since then, the Chinese government has placed strict limits on incoming flights from foreign airlines, capping them at one flight per week.

We are working with Washington, D.C. and China to figure out when we can reinstate passenger flights, Chief Commercial Officer Andrew Nocella told employees. We are ready to go. We are ready to get all the necessary regulatory approvals to make that happen.

Overall, Nocella said, Uniteds international business is struggling, and the carrier plans to be judicious in resuming long-haul flights, with many not returning until September or later, depending on demand.

But United sees some opportunity in China it does not see elsewhere. If the China flights return, they will join London, Sydney, Frankfurt, Tel Aviv, Sao Paulo and Tokyo as short-term cornerstones of the airlines long-haul network.

Importance of China

Under normal circumstances, United is the largest U.S. carrier to China, and the country is of strategic importance to the airline. Many corporate customers in the San Francisco area, such as Apple, Oracle, Google, Facebook, and Cisco, rely on United for its flights to Asia, and may need access to factories and offices abroad even during a pandemic.

Last year, United told employees Apple spent $150 million with the airline, including $35 million on just one route  San Francisco to Shanghai. At the time, Apples second most popular route was San Francisco-Hong Kong.

Story continues

To serve these customers, United had targeted next month for the resumption of some San Francisco-China service. It is now selling San Francisco to Beijing and Shanghai beginning on June 20, but Nocella said the airline may not make its deadline.

We are going to have to make the decision very soon to pull it off the schedule because we dont have the rights to fly to China in June, he said. But we still have high hopes for July.

The airline continues to fly cargo from China, Nocella said. It operates four flights per day to Chinese airports, via Tokyo-Narita, he said.

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A reboot of the gangster classic Scarface is set to be directed by Italian filmmaker Luca Guadagnino.

Deadline reports that Guadagnino - who was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Call Me By Your Name - has been picked by Universal Pictures to helm the project.

However, there is no official word yet on while be playing the role of Tony Montana in the 1983 movie starring Al Pacino, which is itself a remake itself of the original 1932 film produced by Howard Hughes.

Reboot: In the classic 1983 movie, Al Pacino Antonio "Tony" Montana, who arrives in 1980s Miami with nothing and rises to become a powerful drug lord.

That 1932 version sees Italian immigrant Antonio "Tony" Camonte (Paul Muni) taking over as the crime boss for the City's Sout Side.

In the classic 1983 movie, directed by Brian De Palma and written by Oliver Stone, Pacino Antonio "Tony" Montana, who arrives in 1980s Miami with nothing and rises to become a powerful drug lord.

The Pacino version is regarded as somewhat as a cult classic as initial reception from critics was negative due to its excessive violence and profanity.

Director: Luca Guadagnino - who was nominated for a Best Director Oscar for Call Me By Your Name - has been picked by Universal Pictures to helm the project.

There was also backlash at the time, as some Cuban expatriates in Miami objected to the film's portrayal of Cubans as criminals and drug traffickers.

The new imagining of the gangster story will be set in Los Angeles, with a script written by Joel Coen and Ethan Coen, who have been attached to the project for at least three years.

Meanwhile, Guadagnino is also expected to be making a sequel to his hit to Call Me By Your Name, titled Find Me, which will reunite stars Timothee Chalamet and Armie Hammer who played lovers in the movie.

Notorious: The 1983 movie received backlash at the time, as some Cuban expatriates in Miami objected to the film's portrayal of Cubans as criminals and drug traffickers.

Call Me By Your Name bagged an impressive four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, and a win for the legendary James Ivory who adapted the screenplay from the 2007 Andre Aciman novel.

Guadagnino is no stranger to remakes, having directed the 2018 version of Suspiria, which was inspired by the 1977 classic Italian horror film of the same name directed by Dario Argento.
BEREA, Ohio -- A manager at OhioGuidestone, 202 E. Bagley Road, hid herself in a locked gym May 11 during a commotion among residents at the behavioral health treatment center.

Police were called to OhioGuidestone at about 7 p.m. regarding unruly juveniles there. When police arrived with a K-9, several girls were screaming profanities, trying to break property and fighting with staff members.

A 12-year-old resident taunted and threw various items and pieces of food at the K-9. Police handcuffed the girl and placed her in a cruiser, where she eventually calmed down.

Police asked to see the manager on duty. Staffers said she had locked herself inside the gym when the ruckus started and refused to leave. Police spoke to the manager, who said she didnt know how to control the girls.

The manager agreed to come out of the gym and helped calm the girl in the cruiser. Then the manager retreated to the kitchen. Police coaxed her outside again to speak to the girl in the cruiser.

Assault

In a separate incident at OhioGuidestone, a 16-year-old resident was taken to Southwest General Health Center in Middleburg Heights at about 5 p.m. May 8 after she was attacked by four other residents.

According to OhioGuidestone workers, the incident started when the girl pushed a staff member. This angered four other girls, and the five girls started fighting.

A staff member tried to break up the fight and was hit in the face by one of the girls. Additional staff members arrived to stop the fighting. They found loose hair, which they believed was ripped from the head of one of the girls, on the floor.

By the time police arrived, calm had been restored. The 16-year-old complained of a possible head injury.

Read more from the News Sun.
 Flash

China is actively carrying out cooperation with the international community in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, and introducing its experiences in dealing with the coronavirus, said Zeng Yixin, vice minister of the National Health Commission (NHC), at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on Friday.

The NHC has continuously held information sharing sessions with the international community, Zeng said. Over the past week alone, the commission talked over the phone and via video links with health minister from Central and Eastern Europe, Germany, the U.K., Japan, and South Korea. It also held technical communication with African countries, during which China introduced its experiences in dealing with the novel coronavirus.

China also attaches great importance to cooperation with the WHO and the G20, implementing initiatives put forward by the two international organizations, said Li Mingzhu, an official of the Department of International Cooperation of the NHC.

A group of experts from the WHO visited Wuhan in January, and a joint China-WHO expert team later visited Beijing, Sichuan, Guangdong, and Wuhan in February, Li said.

The WHO never asked to visit a specific lab in China, and thus allegations that China denied WHO experts a visit to labs in Wuhan are not factually based, Li said.

As of Friday, China has dispatched a total of 21 teams of medical experts to 19 countries to support their fight against COVID-19, Li said.
Union Minister for Human Resource Development Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank on Thursday said that teachers who have completed the recruitment process of Navodaya Vidyalaya will get appointment after lockdown.

While interacting with teachers across the country through webinar, the Minister expressed his gratitude to all the teachers for spreading awareness relating to COVID-19 among the students and society at large.

In response to a question, he said, The examination date of NET will be announced very soon. He also announced that teachers who have completed the recruitment process of Navodaya Vidyalaya will get appointment after lockdown.

Giving a message of Acharya Devo Bhava, union minister, through his webinar, appealed to all the teachers to perform their duties and ensure academic welfare of students even in the lockdown situation.

In India, the importance of a Guru has always been more than God and that is why we should respect all the teachers keeping the spirit of Acharya Devo Bhavah. In this crisis, the teachers also acted like frontline workers and their work is highly appreciated, he said.

The Minister also mourned the death of a teacher of primary school in Delhi due to Corona Virus.

While replying to the question regarding opening of schools post lockdown, the Minister informed that the school administration and teachers will carry out the various tasks such as defining specific roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders at the school level, defining and establishing Health and Hygiene and other Safety Protocols or Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) before and after opening of schools, redefining or readjusting School Calendar and Annual Curriculum Plans, ensuring smooth transition of students from home-based schooling during lockdown to formal schooling and ensuring emotional well-being of students.

He added that school will prepare checklists to ensure they dont miss out anything. CBSE will be sharing the checklists soon. (ANI)
Governor Andrew Cuomo is extending the stay-at-home order for several parts of the state, including New York City, Long Island, Hudson Valley and Albany.

The original stay-at-home order expired Friday. ABC7 New York reported that businesses in unaffected regions - The Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley, the North Country and Central NY - have begun to reopen as a result.

Mr Cuomo said that he wanted to ensure the state's reopening was intelligent and safe.

"You have to reopen intelligently and you have to reopen in a calibrated way. Nobody says 'Don't reopen.' They say, 'be intelligent about the way you reopen. Follow the data. Follow the science. Follow the facts. Follow the metrics,'" Mr Cuomo said.

In addition to meeting Mr Cuomo's metrics for reopening, regions also have to ensure at least a third of hospital and ICU beds are available and that health professionals are conducting expansive contract tracing to track the spread of the coronavirus.

Mr Cuomo said that the "New York State on PAUSE" policy would stay in effect for New York City and Long Island until 28 May. The enforcement powers of the PAUSE policy will continue until June 13, 2020 with the possibility of extension.

In New York City, the police will still enforce bans on gatherings of six or more. Thus far, the NYPD has deployed nearly 2,300 units meant to enforce social distancing, with every department dedicating one car specifically tasked to respond to social distancing complaints.

There have been 22,170 coronavirus deaths in New York since the state first began reporting on 4 March. Of those, some 15,000 occurred in New York City.

Even if New York City reaches its reopen metrics, Mayor Bill DeBlasio warns things won't be returning to normal anytime soon.

Mr DeBlasio said there is no guarantee that permits for outdoor events - like barbecues and pools - will be issued, and he may refrain from reopening public beaches and pools as well.
As part of our #LockdownLessons series, Bizcommunity is reaching out to South Africa's top industry players to share their experience of the current Covid-19 crisis, how their organisations are navigating these unusual times, where the challenges and opportunities lie, and their industry outlook for the near future.

Adele Naidoo, head of human resources at JoJo

What was your initial response to the crisis/lockdown and has your experience of it been different to what you expected?

Comment on the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on your organisation or economy as a whole.

How is your organisation responding to the crisis?

Comment on the challenges and opportunities.

How has the lockdown affected your staff? / What temporary HR policies have you put in place regarding remote working, health & safety, etc.

How are you navigating physical distancing while keeping your team close-knit and aligned?

How have you had to change the way you operate?

Any trends youve seen emerge as a result of the crisis?

Your key message to those in the sector?

What do you predict the next six months will be like?

We chatted to Adele Naidoo, head of human resources at JoJo, to get her take.We were approached by the Department of Water & Sanitation to supply water tanks to water stressed communities across the country on the day of lockdown. Initially, there was a lot of uncertainty about what was required to stay in operation in order to deliver on the government promises during the state of the nation address.Despite the challenges to get the required permits to transport our tanks and for our factories to stay operational, the organisation maintained the higher purpose of our business top of mind, we are - JoJo - for water for life. This helped to focus the team to settle down, get the right things in place, and deliver what we promised. The reality remained that our country needed our water tanks to fight the virus.I dont believe anyone could have prepared for this experience, we maintain our agility and try our best to navigate obstacles as they are presented.Although JoJo was still allowed to operate, as we have been classified as an essential service, we could only supply government and businesses that were also essential services. Our largest customer base is the end consumer who buys his/her tanks from a building materials merchant  and this market was unable to operate under Level 5 lockdown.We could not access our main customer segment, which has had a severe impact on our business. Despite our relatively low sales, we remain positive and grateful that we were able to provide a vital service during this time.The government was decisive in calling the lockdown  well done. It now has to be decisive in exiting the lockdown  as quickly as practical. The impact on JoJo financially has been severely negative, and we are way more fortunate than other sectors who have not been able to trade at all.It has been a balancing act between our responsibility to limit the spread of Covid-19 on the greater population whilst still ensuring the well-being and safety of our staff.Considering the uncertain realities the country was facing, our MD Grant Neser was very clear from the onset that no-one would be forced to work. Thus, during the initial phases of the pandemic, our staff were presented the choice of whether or not to remain behind to work with the commitment from management that they would not be limited by their individual choices. We ran operations at 30% capacity, and job roles and grades fell away as administrative staff and managers joined the various factories to deliver on our promises.Through the UIF schemes, company advances on pay and annual leave, as well as some costs savings, we managed to guarantee full pay for the month of April, and have committed to staff that any pay cuts would be delayed as long as operationally possible and that retrenchments would be the last resort.From an external perspective, we launched a campaign reminding SA of the innovators and innovations in our own country. Necessity is the mother of invention and South Africans have dreamed up some of the greatest ones on the planet. In these uncertain times, we wanted to celebrate South Africans who have dreamed and innovated, who have found solutions that have changed our country and the world. No matter how tough things are, South Africans find a way. Weve profiled Umgibe Farming, EnviroSan, face shields from Wits University, the speed gun  go look.Challenges - Remote working was initially a challenge, however after daily calls over Zoom, a lot of patience and a very tired IT manager, we have adapted quite well for an organisation that never had need for such applications prior to lockdown.Lack of information from government on the details is particularly challenging. There is very little consistent information on the rule changes. It requires our teams to be highly flexibly and patient with one another as we navigate the different regulations. We may not be perfect, but enthusiasm and the right attitude has been a winning combination.Opportunities - The crisis provided many leaders within the organisation to rise to the occasion and display talents and characteristics that may have previously been overlooked.It has provided us with an opportunity to move out of our comfort zones and experiment with new technologies and innovations.One of the ones we are proudest of is a partnership with EnviroSan that has created a rapid response handwash station. It is basically self-closing and self-cleaning taps and basins that are fitted into a JoJo tank. The City of Cape Town has already installed some and we are working with Unicef WASH to install others (95 installed in Cape Town, 20 in Gauteng, eight in Eastern Cape, and busy rolling out to other provinces in partnership with Unicef WASH and Envirosan). For JoJo, this is about partnerships and collaboration during a time of need.JoJo has retained much of its culture from starting out as a family business. Despite our challenges and fears, the crisis has made us stronger. We had a job to complete, so unilateral responsibilities fell away. We re-branded ourselves the Disaster Management Team.At the outset we had to clearly define the new Covid-19 rules for working at your normal place of work, working from home and not working. In addition, we had to advise that staff would be expected to be able to accommodate moving between each status at short notice.In week one we had managers across the eight factories document their individual stories and experiences which was compiled in our marketing department and later shared with the entire organisation. It boosted morale and validated our sense of togetherness.We have weekly wellness check-ins with all staff and try as far as possible to leverage off the different skill sets within our teams to assist one another through this journey. For example, many employees initially felt quite isolated, not being accustomed to working from home. We implemented a mentorship programme with the assistance of our sales consultants who are more accustomed to this way of working. They check in on staff members and provide tips and techniques on how to better manage the new working environment.Parents have felt the pressures of working from home, balancing their own work, school work and household chores. We have started up an initiative where staff members, who are not core at this time, provide a 30-minute reading session to fellow employees children that may require some downtime. Parents then have this period to use for themselves while their children are read to over Zoom. This is rotated if a parent needs more time.As a manufacturing company, we have always applied good health & safety practices. The virus has presented the challenge of mask wearing which is not necessarily a South African tradition or JoJo practice for that matter, especially for the entire day. We have weekly meetings with safety teams and maintain strict rules to control access to our plants and also maintain strict hygiene protocols with awareness, procedures and control mechanisms.We are very accustomed to hugging one another when we see each other, thus social distancing is a challenge. We have established little games at the office to ensure people are maintaining social distance protocols by marking the floors for safe and non-safe zones. We have a small penalty of R5 if someone is caught not adhering to the rules. The kitty that we are building will go into a feeding scheme of that branchs choice. We have also tried to keep some stability in maintaining some form of tradition by still celebrating birthdays and graduations with the entire team, half on site and the other half over Zoom.New health & safety procedures like temperature checking and heightened sanitisation practices which forced us to create an ultra-awareness around our operational environment and how we interact with one another.The video and teleconferencing capability has been significantly enhanced at JoJo and the new tools such as Zoom and MS Meetings have been a real enabler. It has actually enhanced our collaboration and engagements with larger and broader team meetings, especially when we need to communicate important lockdown decisions.Work from home and the remote meeting capability has been a real eye-opener. There is no doubt that JoJo and the business world will take advantage of these new developments. We predict significantly less local business travel and an increase in people working from home  maybe not every day but certainly when presence in the corporate office is not required.Be sensitive to and aware of the Covid-19 threat. Manage the risk appropriately. Stay positive, look for solutions, lobby constructively and look for ways to get not only our sector, but the entire economy back to work  the sooner the better.Hopefully, we will get the economy running at reasonable capacity by the end of May. Higher risk sectors will take longer to recover. But recover we must, we have no choice  humankind have to live their lives in the presence of pathogens.The damage to the entire world and South African economy will be significant, the degree is dependent on how quickly we exit lockdown. Closer to home, although a JoJo tank is more of a necessity than a luxury, the reality is that the disposable income of South African consumers will drop materially and that will influence their ability to buy a tank when needed. In short, very tough for the next two months with a slow improvement thereafter.
For a long time, some American politicians and organizations, out of ulterior motives, have stirred up trouble based on hearsay, knitting the conspiracy theory about the origin of COVID-19 and trying to hold China accountable for the pandemic and claim compensation from the country.

On May 12, Lindsey Graham, Chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on the Judiciary, even introduced the so-called COVID-19 Accountability Act to instigate chaos again, showing a total disregard for the law.

A major infectious disease outbreak is classified as a public health emergency as well as a force majeure in terms of legal theories.

From the aspect of substantive law, the existing international legal system hasnt specified in any way that the country where a virus has been first discovered should assume responsibility.

It is widely known that the virus came into being purely by accident and it is obviously unfair to falsely accuse pandemic-hit regions and people and cause secondary damage.

According to procedural law, the principles of sovereign equality and immunity indicate that the courts in one country have no right of jurisdiction over the sovereign act of a foreign government to prevent and control the epidemic.

The Charter of the United Nations (UN) stipulates the principle of sovereign equality. Equals have no sovereignty over each other, said the Roman law. The doctrine from ancient Rome has formed the basis of state immunity in the course of history and been supported by the judicial practice of the sovereign states nowadays.

A sovereign state is thus exempt from the jurisdiction of foreign national courts, a right protected by the international law rather than a gift given by foreign government.

It should also be noted that the estoppel principle of the international law requires countries to be consistent in applying the rules. As some U.S. politicians found no legal grounds for butting in Chinas anti-pandemic attempts, they didnt simply give up.

To justify their accusations against China, they intend to amend the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act of the U.S., a commitment of the country to sovereign immunity.

Such a move will not only impair the logic and operation of the international law, but trigger global sovereign litigation, causing chaos in the international legal system and putting a strain on international relations.

Many legal experts in the world have made remarks to expose the true faces of some U.S. officials behind such clumsy tricks.

Some American politicians have claimed that the novel coronavirus originates from a lab in Wuhan, China, yet they fail to provide any evidence, said Lawrence Gostin, Professor of Global Health Law at the Georgetown University of the U.S.

Facts should matter, instead of unfounded allegations made by some media and individuals, noted Armin von Bogdandy, Director at the Max Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law and International Law, adding that he disagrees that China has to pay the damages.

Peter Hilpold, Austrian legal expert as well as Professor of International Law at the University of Innsbruck in Austria, pointed out that the unconfirmed claims from the U.S. has damaged Chinas reputation and for this, China could also claim compensation from America.

The law has to be based on evidence and facts. To find out the origin of the virus is a serious scientific problem as well as a professional issue that needs to be tackled with reason, which makes it necessary to listen to and respect the opinions of scientists and professionals.

There is a general consensus in the international scientific community that the novel coronavirus is neither man-made nor genetically engineered.

With the further investigation and research into the virus, the pandemic turns out to happen much earlier than people thought in many countries. Experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) made it clear that the source of the virus couldnt be determined yet.

The joint statement of 27 well-known medical experts from 8 countries recently published on The Lancet and Nature, both authoritative journals in the world, and the reports released by professionals from America, Australia and Britain have also confirmed that the virus wasnt man-made.

Faced with such facts, some Americans have already become a laughingstock for their embarrassing and untenable accusations.

Despite feeble arguments, some U.S. officials still refuse to halt the farce of trying to hold China responsible and claim damages. It is evident that they are plotting to politically blackmail China through the presumption of guilt.

Tom Ginsburg, Professor of International Law at the University of Chicago, pointed out that many right-wing politicians in the U.S. are focusing on Chinas problem to whitewash their own mistakes.

Justice naturally inhabits a mans heart. By falsely accusing China, the U.S. is openly undermining international rule of law, which is meant to protect fairness and justice, not to be used as a tool by some U.S. officials to politically blackmail other countries.

To quote an ancient Chinese saying, Turn inward and examine yourself when you encounter difficulties in life. Amid the global epidemic, the U.S. government needs to reflect on itself, give priority to safeguarding the life security and physical health of its people, and stop harming both itself and others.

(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by Peoples Daily to express its views on foreign policy.)
(Natural News) Plastic waste has unfortunately become ubiquitous in oceans and rivers today, posing a serious environmental hazard to marine creatures, ecosystems and people. In a bid to mitigate the ever-growing pollution of the worlds oceans, researchers from Australia have developed a way to clean water sources of microplastics without harming the microorganisms that live in them.

Using tiny coil-shaped, carbon-based magnets, or carbon nanosprings, the researchers aimed to degrade the microplastics into much smaller, innocuous pieces that dissolve in water. Details of their study were published in the journal Matter.

Microplastics are pervasive pollutants. These substances often come from cosmetic products like the exfoliating beads in many facial washes or from larger debris like plastic bottles and food trash littering the beach. Imperceptible to the naked eye, microplastics are essentially too small to be sifted through mechanical water treatment.

What makes microplastics dangerous is that they adsorb organic and metal contaminants as they travel through water, then release these toxic substances into the organisms that consume them, moving up the food chain steadily until they eventually land on someones plate.

Senior author Shaobin Wang, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of Adelaide, explains that their carbon nanosprings are strong and stable enough to break these microplastics down into compounds that do not pose such a threat to the marine ecosystem. Related: Due to extreme pollution of the worlds oceans, sea anemones are now eating microplastics.)

To degrade the microplastics, Wang and her team needed to generate short-lived chemicals called reactive oxygen species, which trigger chain reactions that can cut the microplastic molecules into tiny, harmless, water-soluble segments. However, these reactive oxygen species are often produced using toxic heavy metals like iron or cobalt, which make them unsuitable for use in an environmental setting.

The solve this problem, the researchers decided to use carbon nanotubes as a greener alternative to the toxic heavy metals. They laced these carbon nanotubes with nitrogen to help generate reactive oxygen species.

Molded like springs, the carbon nanotube catalysts were able to get rid of a substantial portion of microplastics in only eight hours while staying stable themselves in the harsh oxidative conditions required to degrade microplastics. The researchers credited this stability to the nanotubes coiled shape, which also maximized their reactive surface area.

The researchers also noted that with the addition of a modest quantity of manganese, which was buried far from the surface of the nanotubes to keep it from leeching into water, the microscopic coils became magnetic.

Having magnetic nanotubes is particularly exciting because this makes it easy to collect them from real wastewater streams for repeated use in environmental remediation, explained co-author Xiaoguang Duan, a chemical engineering research fellow at the University of Adelaide.

The researchers are now working on producing carbon nanosprings that can work on microplastics of different compositions, shapes and origins. They also want to ensure that any chemical compound generated as an intermediate or byproduct of microplastic decomposition is non-toxic. In addition, the researchers aim to explore the possibility of these intermediates or byproducts being harnessed by the microorganisms affected by microplastics as alternative energy sources.

If plastic contaminants can be repurposed as food for algae growth, it will be a triumph for using biotechnology to solve environmental problems in ways that are both green and [cost-efficient], Wang said.

Do your part in minimizing plastic pollution in the environment today. Visit Environ.news to learn more.

Sources include:

Nanowerk.com

Cell.com

Bustle.com

Link.Springer.com
Just half an hour before he was slated to swear in his fifth government on May 14, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu surprised everyone by announcing that he was putting the ceremony on hold. In doing so, he placed the entire Israeli political system into yet another state of uncertainty.

While the swearing-in ceremony was only postponed until May 17, this strange development not only impinged on the festive mood that comes with the occasion but also raised fears in the Blue and White party that Netanyahu has decided to rip the whole agreement up at the very last moment. Was Netanyahu signaling that he would prefer a fourth round of elections instead?

This certainly wasnt what Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz had hoped to see as the start of a new government, certainly not after so many weeks of exhausting coalition negotiations with Netanyahu, not to mention all the major concessions Gantz had made.

Netanyahu did call to explain that he hadnt finished doling out all the Cabinet portfolios and other important jobs to the members of his Likud party, and that he needed a little more time. Surprised by this, Gantz demanded that the new government be sworn in anyway, even if it happens in the middle of the night. But Netanyahu made it clear to Gantz that this would be impossible, at least as far as the prime minister was concerned.

In response, Gantz said he was withdrawing his resignation as speaker of the Knesset. That way he would still have a bargaining chip in any future dealings with Netanyahu, especially if it turns out that the prime minister is reneging on his agreement to form a unity government.

The drama in the Knesset began in the afternoon, when Netanyahu had some difficulties divvying up ministries among senior Likud members. Some, including several who were left with no job at all, grumbled bitterly that they would boycott the swearing-in ceremony. According to current plans, the new Cabinet will consist of 34 ministers, earning it the dubious title of Israels most wasteful government ever. To make matters worse, this is happening while the coronavirus ravaging Israel leaves the country facing the most serious economic crisis in all its history.

While half the ministries were given to the Blue and White party, the other half were reserved for the right-wing bloc as a whole. This resulted in a dire shortage of positions for Likud loyalists.

Gantz already met with the members of his own party to distribute the various ministerial portfolios and committees among them. In contrast, Netanyahu was forced to reject the demands of senior Likud Knesset members who considered themselves candidates for top positions. In other words, Gantz had plenty of jobs to hand out, and green young Knesset members of the Blue and White party were suddenly informed that they would serve in Cabinet positions in the new government. Among the happy recipients of this promotion was Pnina Tamano Shata, who will be the new minister of immigration and absorption. At just 36 years old, she will be the first Ethiopian woman to serve in a Cabinet position in Israel.

But Netanyahu was too busy with Secretary of State Mike Pompeos visit to Israel on May 13 to focus on doling out portfolios. This left top Likud ministers wandering about in a state of uncertainty. Netanyahu was ignoring them, and it wasnt even certain that they would be given a Cabinet portfolio at all. For example, Regional Cooperation Minister Tzachi Hanegbi has long been a staunch Netanyahu loyalist. But he was so furious that he hadnt even been called for a meeting with the prime minister that Hanegbi announced in the media that he has no plans to participate in the swearing-in ceremony. Deputy Defense Minister Avi Dichter, a former head of the Shin Bet, did the same. And all of this was happening while the Knesset was completing the final preparations for the swearing-in ceremony.

At this point, Netanyahu apparently realized that he would not have time to resolve all the personal crises plaguing his party, so he decided to postpone the swearing-in ceremony.

As if the chaos in the Likud wasnt enough for Netanyahu, all of this coincided with the final breakdown of coalition negotiations between Netanyahu and the right-wing Yamina party. It all ended with a bang when the partys leaders said Netanyahus offer was humiliating. The partys chairman, Defense Minister Naftali Bennett, then called a press conference to announce that it would be joining the opposition.

The confluence of all these bizarre events gave the launch of Israels 35th government the look and feel of a Turkish bazaar. And it was happening to a self-proclaimed reconciliation government, intended to heal societys wounds after three contentious elections.

While this is not the first time that ministerial appointments have been delayed until a new government is actually sworn in, there is no precedent for such an arbitrary postponement of the swearing-in ceremony. But what really sticks out in all this is the obvious misgivings and lack of trust between the two men, Gantz and Netanyahu, who are supposed to lead Israel for the next four years.

Their partnership is already getting off on the wrong foot. If Gantz really trusted Netanyahu, he would not have been in such a hurry to withdraw his resignation as Knesset speaker. The problem is that the relationship between the Blue and White party chairman and the prime minister is currently being maintained through guarantors and legal agreements.

Should everything go according to plan, the new government will be sworn in the afternoon of May 17. Netanyahu will then serve officially as prime minister for the next year and a half. At that same swearing-in ceremony, Gantz will be sworn in as the alternative prime minister. This is part of a larger coalition agreement to ensure that Netanyahu does, in fact, leave the prime ministers post when his term is over.

But will all this really happen? Based on the most recent events surrounding this unity government, Netanyahu will be suspected for the next 18 months of trying to find some way to break up his partnership with Gantz at the very last minute in order to prevent him from taking over as prime minister.

Netanyahu is a super-politician par excellence. He spent the last year and a half proving that he knows how to extricate himself from the most impossible situations. He is a survivor who has no qualms about eliminating his political rivals so that he can remain prime minister, even though he has already been indicted for bribery. In contrast, Gantz is a political novice in every sense of the term. He will have a hard time fighting back against Netanyahu, especially when Netanyahu has the home-court advantage. If Gantz learned anything over the last few weeks, negotiating with Netanyahu, it is that the prime minister is sophisticated, creative and even politically cruel. This realization hardly fostered a sense of trust in the man. Gantz knows now whom he is up against.

The really important question is how the two men will run the government, especially since Gantz has so little trust in Netanyahu. Before he knows it, the state budget will be brought before the Knesset for its approval. At the same time, Netanyahu is expected to advance his annexation plan for the Jordan Valley and West Bank settlements, despite the opposition of several Blue and White members. These points of friction will accompany this new government from day one. The problem is that the governments very existence will depend on Gantzs ability to foster a sense of trust and common vision with Netanyahu. That is sorely lacking right now.
/ -- Infosys (NYSE: INFY), a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting, has been selected by GLOBALFOUNDRIES (GF), the world's leading specialty foundry, as its partner for the company's Digital Transformation program. Through this partnership, Infosys will provide expertise and analytical solutions to optimize the overall efficiency and agility of GF's manufacturing and business operations.

The partnership will enable GF to seamlessly transform its legacy solutions and adopt advanced cloud capabilities to rationalize existing workloads, thereby realizing GF's digital strategy through process automation while achieving lower cost of ownership and ensuring compliance requirements. It will also help GF derive value and insights from the data generated across its globally dispersed operations. GF will leverage Infosys' domain expertise and industry experience to transform and optimize GF's IT assets to scale its digital capabilities. Infosys will also enable GF's internal teams with next-gen digital skills to help co-deliver great user experiences across the enterprise.

Anand Swaminathan, EVP and Global Industry Leader - Communications, Media and Technology, Infosys, said, "Together with GlobalFoundries we are embarking on an industry leading digital transformation program. By harnessing the power of private and public cloud, we will assist GlobalFoundries in transforming their manufacturing and corporate operations to deliver more value to their clients while lowering cost of ownership. We are excited to partner with them on this digital leadership program which we believe will set a new benchmark for the industry."



Thomas Weber, SVP Global Supply Chain and Integrated Manufacturing Information Technology, GlobalFoundries, said, "As the leading specialty foundry, with a global footprint, we are committed to accelerating our digital transformation to differentiate and create more value for our clients. Partnering with Infosys will equip our teams with next-gen skills and accelerate our transformation journey through automation and innovation."



About InfosysInfosys is a global leader in next-generation digital services and consulting. We enable clients in 46 countries to navigate their digital transformation. With nearly four decades of experience in managing the systems and workings of global enterprises, we expertly steer our clients through their digital journey. We do it by enabling the enterprise with an AI-powered core that helps prioritize the execution of change. We also empower the business with agile digital at scale to deliver unprecedented levels of performance and customer delight. Our always-on learning agenda drives their continuous improvement through building and transferring digital skills, expertise, and ideas from our innovation ecosystem.

Visit www.infosys.com to see how Infosys (NYSE: INFY) can help your enterprise navigate your next.

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Certain statements in this release concerning our future growth prospects, financial expectations and plans for navigating the COVID-19 impact on our employees, clients and stakeholders are forward-looking statements intended to qualify for the 'safe harbor' under the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, which involve a number of risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in such forward-looking statements. The risks and uncertainties relating to these statements include, but are not limited to, risks and uncertainties regarding COVID-19 and the effects of government and other measures seeking to contain its spread, risks related to an economic downturn or recession in India, the United States and other countries around the world, changes in political, business, and economic conditions, fluctuations in earnings, fluctuations in foreign exchange rates, our ability to manage growth, intense competition in IT services including those factors which may affect our cost advantage, wage increases in India, our ability to attract and retain highly skilled professionals, time and cost overruns on fixed-price, fixed-time frame contracts, client concentration, restrictions on immigration, industry segment concentration, our ability to manage our international operations, reduced demand for technology in our key focus areas, disruptions in telecommunication networks or system failures, our ability to successfully complete and integrate potential acquisitions, liability for damages on our service contracts, the success of the companies in which Infosys has made strategic investments, withdrawal or expiration of governmental fiscal incentives, political instability and regional conflicts, legal restrictions on raising capital or acquiring companies outside India, unauthorized use of our intellectual property and general economic conditions affecting our industry and the outcome of pending litigation and government investigation. Additional risks that could affect our future operating results are more fully described in our United States Securities and Exchange Commission filings including our Annual Report on Form 20-F for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2019. These filings are available at www.sec.gov. Infosys may, from time to time, make additional written and oral forward-looking statements, including statements contained in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and our reports to shareholders. The Company does not undertake to update any forward-looking statements that may be made from time to time by or on behalf of the Company unless it is required by law.

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Some question whether the US-Taliban agreement aimed at bringing peace to Afghanistan was mainly just a withdrawal deal.

The United States is on track to meet its commitment to the Taliban to withdraw several thousand troops from Afghanistan by mid-July, even as violence flares, the peace process is stalled, and Kabul struggles in political deadlock.

US officials say they will reduce to 8,600 troops by July 15 and abandon five bases. By the second quarter of 2021, all foreign forces are supposed to withdraw, ending the USs longest war. Yet the outlook for peace is cloudy at best. In the absence of Afghan peace talks, the administration of US President Donald Trump may face the prospect of fully withdrawing even as the Taliban remains at war with the government.

That has concerned some lawmakers, including Representative Liz Cheney, a Republican and member of the House Armed Services Committee.

She says the US needs to keep a military and intelligence presence in Afghanistan to prevent groups like al-Qaeda and the ISILs Afghan affiliate from forming havens from which to attack the US

Withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan wont end the war  it will just let the terrorists win, she told The Associated Press.

Serious negotiation?

Some question whether the US  Taliban agreement signed in Doha, Qatar, on February 29, which the Trump administration billed as a decisive step to achieve a negotiated peace, was instead mainly a withdrawal agreement. Trump had campaigned on bringing troops home from foreign wars. And although the Afghan government publicly supported the deal, it did not participate directly in the negotiations and has not, in Washingtons view, capitalised on the chance for peace talks.

President Trump promised to bring our troops home from overseas and is following through on that promise, the White House said when the Doha deal was signed.

The deal stipulated that the Taliban would start intra-Afghan peace negotiations on March 10, but that has not happened. The Taliban and the Afghan government also have squabbled over a promised release of each others prisoners.

A lot of this boils down to: Was the US -Taliban agreement any kind of serious negotiation at all, or was it just totally a fig leaf to cover abject withdrawal? I suspect the latter, Stephen Biddle, a Columbia University professor of international and public affairs and a former adviser to US commanders in Kabul, told the Associated Press.

It gave away almost all the leverage we had in exchange for virtually nothing, he added. It looks very much like a situation in which the Taliban have concluded that the Americans are out, and theyre going to play out the string and see what happens when were gone.





The US has been the prime backer of the Afghan government since it invaded the country soon after the September 11, 2001, attacks and overthrew the Taliban.

According to US government auditors, Washington has committed $86bn to support Afghan security forces and is still spending about $4bn a year.

The Trump administration has expressed frustration with the lack of movement toward peace talks, but it has not threatened publicly to pull back from its commitment to fully withdraw. It did conduct an air attack against the Taliban in defence of Afghan ground forces in early March just hours after Trump had what he called a good conversation by phone with a senior Taliban leader, Abdul Ghani Baradar.

Although the withdrawal is required by the Doha agreement, US defence officials had said for many months that they wanted to reduce to 8,600  the approximate number of troops that were supporting Afghan forces and conducting counterterrorism operations when Trump took office.

US officials constructed the Doha agreement mainly as a way of ending US involvement in the war, rather than as an assured path to peace. The withdrawal is subject to Taliban assurances, but it does not require a peace settlement.

The deal also is seen by the US as a way to enlist the Taliban in the fight against the ISIL (ISIS) group. The US military considers the groups Afghan affiliate as a greater threat than the Taliban.

The US agreed to withdraw not just military forces but also all intelligence agency personnel, private security contractors, trainers and advisers. NATO allied forces also are to withdraw.

The Doha deal was seen at the time as Afghanistans best chance at peace in decades of war, but the government has since been consumed with political turmoil. Ghani and his rival Abdullah Abdullah have both declared themselves winners of last years presidential polls, and each declared himself president.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper has said that getting out of Afghanistan would advance his aim of devoting more forces to the Asia-Pacific region to counter China, which he sees as the number one long-term threat to the US.

Esper has been sceptical of the Talibans commitment to peace, and on May 5 he said neither the Taliban nor the Afghan government is abiding by the agreement.

Esper said the Taliban should return to the reduced levels of violence that existed in the week before the February 29 Doha signing.

At the time, Ghani put his government forces in a defensive stance, but on Tuesday he ordered a return to the offensive, expressing anger for two attacks, including one that killed 24 people, including infants, at a hospital.

An Afghan mother feeds a newborn baby who survived the recent attack by gunmen on a Doctors Without Borders (Medecins Sans Frontieres, or MSF) clinic, at the Ataturk Hospital in Kabul, Afghanistan. At least two newborns, 12 mothers, and several nurses were killed and 16 others were wounded in the attack [Haroon Sabawoon/Anadolu]

The Taliban denied responsibility and the US has blamed the ISIL affiliate in Afghanistan for the attack. The Taliban on Thursday said it had carried out a suicide bombing as retaliation for having been falsely accused by Ghani.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Campbell, indicated the US stance has not changed.

Consistent with the agreement, the US military will continue to conduct defensive strikes against the Taliban when they attack our [Afghan] partners, he said Wednesday. As the secretary of defence stated recently, this is going to be a windy, bumpy road, but a political agreement is the best way to end the war.
Taiwan Health Minister Chen Shih-chung holds a news conference on Taiwan's efforts to join the World Health Organization (WHO) in Taipei, Taiwan, Friday. / Reuters-Yonhap



By Yi Whan-woo



A group of senior U.S Congress members has asked Korea, among 55 countries, to support Taiwan joining the World Health Organization (WHO) despite China's opposition.



Analysts said Friday this may test Korea again in its attempts to strike a balance between the U.S. and China, following the heightened Washington-Beijing standoff over the response to the COVID-19 pandemic.



In a letter released May 8, Chairman Eliot Engel and ranking member Michael McCaul of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, and Chairman James Risch and ranking member Robert Menendez of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations argued that "diseases know no borders."



The 55 countries include Australia, Germany, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Sweden and Vietnam.



The lawmakers argued Taiwan's long record as a reliable partner on global health and its significant resources and expertise were "assets from which the world could and must more fully benefit."



The four Congress members also argued that Taipei was regularly invited to annual World Health Assembly (WHA) meetings from 2009 to 2016, until Beijing pressed the WHO and other international organizations not to allow it to attend their meetings in accordance with its "One China" policy.



"Such blatant prioritization of Beijing's political interests over the health and safety of Taiwan and the rest of the world has grave consequences," the lawmakers said.






Severe T-Storms, Damaging Winds Moving Through Berkshires

One of the big weather stories on #Friday will be the #severe thunderstorm threat across the Northeast into the Ohio Valley, basically from Boston to Columbus. The main threat from these #thunderstorms will be damaging winds but hail and a tornado or two are also possible. pic.twitter.com/dSXdhQsw05  National Weather Service (@NWS) May 14, 2020

After two nights of frost, it was 61 degrees on Main Street in North Adams on Thursday night.

You think, ahhh, spring has finally arrived! Warm evenings, buds popping, birds chirping.

Well, the weather is never easy in the Berkshires. Yet another storm front will batter the region with torrential rain and damaging winds  but it will be warmer!

The National Weather Service in Albany, N.Y., is forecasting severe thunderstorms capable of damaging winds and hail Friday afternoon and the possibility of an isolated tornado.

There will be scattered thunderstorms moving across the region between 1 and 5 and a much stronger line of storms that will cross the Berkshires during the evening until about 10 p.m.

"Thunderstorms will erupt Friday afternoon ahead of a cold front across parts of Ohio, northwestern Pennsylvania and upstate New York then charge east and southeastward into portions of New England, the lower Hudson Valley and central and eastern Pennsylvania into the early evening hours," AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Joe Lundberg said.

"The warmth and humidity that will help to fuel these strong storms will come just a day and half after widespread frost and even some freezes in parts of the interior Northeast."

This severe storm blast will be followed by plenty of sunshine this weekend and temperatures in the 70s in the region and higher to the south. Get out and about  but not too close  because another storm system will hit the region on Sunday night because another low pressure system will be parking itself over the region and bringing plenty of rain, especially in central and South Berkshire.

"A key difference to this pattern from the pattern we're just exiting is that nighttime lows will be much warmer," said Lundberg. "It's not an Arctic air mass but rather a large pocket of cool and moist air, so frosts and freezes will not be a returning concern."

Lundberg says the weather conditions will improve toward Memorial Day weekend, the "unofficial start of summer," with warmer air and sunshine.

Severe Storm Threat Continues.



Expected warm and humid air today....temps spiking 75 to 80 thus afternoon.



Clusters of cells may form 3 to 5pm....the main squall line 5 to 7pm....

Main threat damaging winds, some large hail in any discrete supercells, and a few rotating storms pic.twitter.com/MLHjxwxiYG  Steve Caporizzo (@SteveCaporizzo) May 15, 2020

The line of organized T-Storms is predicted to hit central MA between 6 & 9 pm. CT between 8:30-11pm. Northern NJ between 9-11 pm. The line of storms weaken as they pass through CT & Lower Hudson Valley. pic.twitter.com/7i6JHB4brw  New England Weather (@SouthernNewEng1) May 15, 2020

Risk for severe storms today as isolated T-storms develop initially between 4-8pm becoming more widespread from 8-11pm. Main concerns will be damaging wind gusts and hail, especially in western New England, where an isolated tornado cannot be ruled out. pic.twitter.com/UwZ1Q9VVBa  Jason Doris (@Doris_Weather) May 15, 2020
The Aztecs, an ancient tribe in Mexico, were once a dominant force at the beginning of the 13th century. According to an encyclopedia entry they are Nahuatl-speaking civilization and occupied what is now central and southern Mexico. No one knows the exact origins of the Aztec tribesmen. Researchers believe their tribe began as a group of hunter-gatherers in their homeland Aztlan-a place which translates to "White Land" in the Aztec language.

In 1428, the Aztecs formed a successful alliance with two powerful tribes to defeat most of their adversaries and conquer the capital of the Tepanec tribe. By the 16th century, the Aztecs were established in over 500 states and ruled over 6 million people-including the residents living in the remote area of Xoconochco.

Xoconochno was named on a sour-tasting cactus that still grows on the mountain slopes to this day. The region was located in a remote area, which meant it received fewer visitors and merchants, making it a more secluded province.

Daring long-distance traders called the pochteca often visited the remote area to trade goods. They bought luxury goods back to the Aztec heartlands. Due to the region's trading opportunities, the Aztec Empire considered Xoconocho more and more important.

The territory was largely responsible for producing cotton clothing, bird feathers, animal skins, and cacao. Its rich soils allowed the Aztecs to sustain large populations and amass great bounties. Cacao was the Xoconochco people's prized possession.

The crop had plenty of uses in ancient Mexico. It was used in chocolate production and as a medium of exchange. It was also very important in religious rituals. Through trading routes, Izapa, a city in the heart of Xoconochco, rose to prominence. The Ancient Mayas, who called the region Zaklohpakab, was one of the region's trading partners.

Many archeologists and historians believe the 260-day calendar was invented in the city. The calendar spread through merchants and traders throughout the rest of ancient Mexico and would later be used in many cultures.

Located between the Sierra Madre de Chiapas and the Pacific Ocean, Xoconochco, which is known as Soconusco, partnered with the Aztec emperor Ahuitzolt in 1486. The territory was an abundant area in ancient times and was described as one of the oldest Mesoamerican settlements.

Ahuizolt, the Aztec Empire's eighth ruler, was known far and wide for planning and overseeing great improvements to the Aztec capital's civic-ceremonial center. He was noted in history as the strongest military leaders of the time. The elites of the Xoconochco region were impressed that they sent word through their trading networks expressing a desire to form an alliance with the Aztec Empire.

The elites formed a secret deal with the young and vibrant emperor. They vowed to become loyal subjects of the empire and offered to aid Ahuitzolt to conquer the northern and eastern lands if the Aztecs would help them.

The region began to decline at around 400 BC. Some speculate the powerful alliance between the township and the empire fell through. No one knows whether the Xoconochco allies were defeated in their quest to conquer ancient Guatemala and Honduras. History also does not have a record if they ever tried to take control of the Mesoamerican lands.

According to tribute and taxation documents, the people of Xoconochco rebelled against imperial authority before the Spanish Conquest dismantled the old trading routes and the political structures of the Aztec Empire.

Today, archeologists are still searching for the site where they believe, the Aztec town set up its military garrison. Most believe the site is located in Soconusco Viejo or Las Gradas. Despite multiple excavations and uncovered artifacts, researchers are still unable to pin down exactly where the prominent trading powerhouse was established.

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Health care workers in Illinois are still struggling to get the face masks and protective gowns that they need, Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ill.) told Axios' Mike Allen at a virtual event on Friday.

Why it matters: Only New York and New Jersey are reporting more coronavirus cases than Illinois, per Johns Hopkins data. The state has reported almost 4,000 deaths, per the state's health department.

Watch the event.
Photo credit: whitney strosnider

From Good Housekeeping

Whitney and Cary Strosnider, 27 and 30 respectively, live and work in Richmond, Virginia. The married couple didn't meet on the job, but they're both working on the frontlines within VCU Health during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Believe it or not, the risk factor associated with my line of work in the hospital hasn't really changed too much during the novel coronavirus pandemic  I'm usually exposing myself to potentially dangerous pathogens and viruses on a daily basis. I'm a medical technologist at VCU Health in Richmond, Virginia, where I work in a laboratory processing the samples that my colleagues on the floor are collecting from patients. Before, I'd spend my days coordinating routine blood-drawn tests, from lipid panels to thyroid tests, and scanning samples for things like influenza. I come into contact with hundreds of patient samples that are potentially infectious in their own way. These days, however, I'm not as frenzied or as slammed as others in my hospital, despite an overwhelming sense of urgency that pervades the air.



There's a significant drop in the volume of patient samples and test orders I'm processing every day  but almost all of my tasks involve COVID-19 test kits or related plasma-rich samples on the hunt for a cure. When doctors and nurses test patients for COVID-19, these swabs come directly to my lab. At the onset of the pandemic, I was mostly arranging for these test kits to be processed in other labs across the state, or sending urgent cases to another lab a few floors below me. Then, my lab transitioned to work on isolating important serums from blood samples, as well as extracting other blood materials from patient's samples. Once the medical community learned that antibodies might be harvested from donors' blood, we then were approached by Virginia's state-run department of health to help run antibody testing for Virginia residents. I'm also working on some preliminary tests on early forms of COVID-19 medicinal treatment, to ensure patients won't have adverse side effects down the road.

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Photo credit: whitney strosnider

In the end, however, this might all pale in comparison to the healthcare workers who are actually face-to-face with patients in need of dire assistance  including my husband, Cary. He's a touch older than me at 30 years old (I'm 27 myself), but we both started working in the healthcare field around the same time, after I first met him when I was a freshman in college.



Unlike my role in the lab, his work as a flight paramedic didn't always put him at high risk of contracting viral diseases. That's changed now, and he's airlifting potentially infected people who are in dire need of urgent medical care to the same hospital I'm also working in, putting him at a much higher risk than I am. He never knows if the patient he's helping into his helicopter is sick with COVID-19 for sure, but he's wearing extra personal protective equipment (PPE), including gowns, gloves, and face masks, in addition to flight suits and helmets.

We're both isolating ourselves from family, friends, and anyone outside of our group of colleagues  and even though I'm worried about Cary, I can't help but feel like our commitment to our work is exactly what brought us together in the first place.



I like to joke that medical emergencies have always been a part of our relationship. Cary and I first met while we were at Virginia Tech, where we also attended the same church services, too. I was a freshman at the time, and he was wrapping up his accounting degree as a senior, but it never brought him the same passion he had while volunteering as an EMT in high school. Our first date was as unorthodox as you could get; Cary was actually my brother's friend first, so I didn't even know he asked me on a real date until my brother informed me Cary had asked him for permission to do so. And then the date didn't even actually happen because Cary ended up in the emergency room that night  go figure.

Cary worked his way up to becoming a paramedic while I continued my studies, first working as a 911 first-responder as well as hospital transport for clinical patients in his area. But his real dream was always to move from regular emergency response to a specialized response, to join a specialized flight paramedic squad responsible for dire cases across the state. He's doing many of the same tasks he was doing in ambulances before, but now it's thousands of feet up in the air in the back of a helicopter. After the first two years of our marriage, he actually landed a coveted spot on a flight squad in Richmond, and we both found our own calling in the city.

Despite just how different our roles on the frontline actually are, we're both working on very small, specialized teams, and I've taken just as many preventative precautions as Cary's flight team has since the pandemic began. Because I'm analyzing highly infectious samples every single day, we are taking new precautions with respiratory samples. I'm used to a lab coat and gloves, but I'm also utilizing face masks and shields more than ever before  and we've upped our sterilization routine in the lab to be completed every four hours instead of the standard eight.

But PPE isn't enough to keep us safe from potentially infectious COVID-19 aerosols being released in the air around us. We're only opening those samples in a biological safety cabinet, which looks exactly like what you'd think it does; a big sealed-off glass box with a vent attached, where we can only use our hands to work. The hood pulls any infectious air away from the work space, just so that it doesn't come back up into our faces. This space is essential for processing COVID-19 tests, but it's just one of the many tools we're using in the lab as the race for a new form of treatment goes on. We've heard that some of the preliminary drugs being used to treat COVID-19 patients may actually impact a certain enzyme that is naturally produced by our bodies  glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase, to be exact. The test my lab is currently working on is making sure any drugs used to treat COVID-19 aren't impacting this enzyme, which could produce adverse side effects that could be detrimental to patients.

My team and I need more than a biological safety cabinet to keep steady in our laboratory. Understandably, everyone working in the hospital all has a lot to worry about right now  I'm not the only one with family in direct danger, after all. The hospital has instituted a new health check that has nothing to do with taking temperatures or asking us to sanitize our hands and belongings. When we come into work every morning, we flash a thumbs-up sign to hospital personnel if we are healthy and ready to work  mostly, though, it's a sign that we're mentally sound to come in for another day of a new reality. In addition to any physical concerns, if we're not feeling well emotionally, our managers have told us they'll give us the time off that we need. I haven't taken any time just yet, but I might if I need to, if something happens down the line. For my colleagues outside of the laboratory, on the other hand, flashing that thumbs up might be harder than ever.

To say that nurses are doing a fantastic job is a gross understatement, as the challenges they face are tremendous. Patients in my hospital can't have any visitors right now, even if they are being treated for an emergency, non-COVID-related issue. There are only a few very specific exceptions to that rule, as a patient would have to be really bad off to have a limited visit right now. But it feels like every patient is indeed really suffering, right? So nurses have stepped up to do everything they can to combat that hopeless feeling of you being separated from all of your loved ones. That's in addition to pulling up their sleeves to do everything they can to minimize symptoms, despite the fact that we don't really have a solid form of treatment just yet.

The hospital has since installed a few phones on floors that patients can use, but at first, I heard our nurses were the ones to use their own personal devices so patients can FaceTime with their families, or call them when they really need to. I don't even think they questioned it at first; they simply made the connections happen that needed to, crucial moments for a family that can't come in and see their loved ones. Those stories were really inspiring to me.

Photo credit: Courtesy: Misty Rodda Photography

Even though I'm not out on the floor, I can tell you that everyone who is taking care of these patients directly has stepped up in ways that people couldn't even imagine. The sheer impossibility of logistics in a hospital right now could easily overrun any one of us; gone are the days of order and process, as most things are sped up due to the urgent state of someone's health. These caregivers have been so patient with me, and with everyone in the lab. Even though mistakes have been made  last week, a sample was misplaced, for example, which caused a massive delay  they're very patient with us and the communication is so inspiring. No one is complaining.

Like these nurses and others I work with, Cary has also said nothing of the new dangers associated with his job. Some of his colleagues have expressed concerns about their own safety being around potentially infectious patients in the tiny cab of their helicopter  but Cary has been putting his life on the line as a paramedic for as long as I've known him. Nothing has changed for either of us, except that this pandemic has made us stronger in our faith, and reaffirmed how much we love and cherish each other.

Of course, there are days that Cary and I both feel stressed and anxious about how things will turn out. We're doing everything we can to keep all of our loved ones safe, but is there a chance one of us could be impacted in the future? And what about all the months ahead, after initial bouts of social distancing? Lots of people have concerns about Virginia's governor instituting stay-at-home orders through June 10, and others are concerned that it won't be long enough. I see the validity in both sides. It's most important to protect the population that's most at risk, and from what I've seen, it's typically the elderly population. But I also do think that we need to transition into a more sustainable way of life for everyone in the state. As we move past the initial shock of the pandemic unfolding, and as laboratories like mine continue to work on finding the next steps of better treatment or a possible vaccine, I hope the focus will be on how long-term care facilities will rethink how they work in the future, and all of the at-risk population, really. I think we can't just jump back to normal.

Whatever comes our way, I know Cary and I will work through it. It might sound crazy for some, but this has been a time of renewal and rejuvenation for our marriage. Weve both been working really long days, and sometimes Im not home until 11:30 p.m. But when were home together, there are no distractions. Before this all happened, it was easy for my work schedule to clash with my personal life  some weeks, it truly felt like we were just ships in the night passing by each other. But this crisis has inexplicably allowed us to spend more time together at home instead of running from one activity to the next.

My two focuses in life are to love God and love the people around me. I chose a career in the medical field so I would have the opportunity to serve hundreds of people on a daily basis. And I'm grateful that I still have the opportunity to do so. I know that this pandemic has impacted so many people's careers and livelihoods, their dreams, too. I used to resent the weekends and second shift hours that I work. Now, when so many have lost their jobs and have had tragedy impact their own families, I can't help but feel grateful for how stable my life is at the moment in spite of it all. I hope others can find their own sense of stability to focus on, too.



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San Francisco Bay Area-based music venue Ivy Room has filed a class action lawsuit on behalf of California-based music venues against a major insurance provider, saying the venues were wrongfully denied coverage for losses resulting from public health shutdowns related to COVID-19 despite having paid premiums for business interruption policies.

Ivy Room is represented by California-based Gibbs Law Group, as well as Cohen Milstein Sellers and Toll PLLC. The firms are reviewing potential claims on behalf of small business owners throughout the country who have been affected by insurance companies refusal to pay.

Ivy Room, located in Albany, is a historic neighborhood bar and music venue that hosts national and local acts. The lawsuit alleges, among other things, that First Mercury Insurance Co. acted in bad faith by categorically denying claims from music venues arising from Californias mandated interruption of business services. According to the complaint, First Mercury denies the claims with little or no investigation and without regard for the interests of policyholders.

The American Property Casualty Insurance Association, the largest trade group representing P/C insurers, has argued if insurers are forced to pay for losses that are not covered under existing insurance policies, the stability of the sector could be impacted and that could affect the ability of consumers to address everyday risks that are covered by the property casualty industry.

Britains Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) aims to get business interruption insurance policies examined by a court as soon as July, a member of a policyholder action group said on Thursday.

Business interruption policies were generally not designed to provide coverage against communicable diseases, according to a statement in March from the National Association of Insurance Commissioners.

Insurance works well and remains affordable when a relatively small number of claims are spread across a broader group, and therefore it is not typically well suited for a global pandemic where virtually every policyholder suffers significant losses at the same time for an extended period, the NAIC statement reads. While the U.S. insurance sector remains strong, if insurance companies are required to cover such claims, such an action would create substantial solvency risks for the sector, significantly undermine the ability of insurers to pay other types of claims, and potentially exacerbate the negative financial and economic impacts the country is currently experiencing.

Topics Lawsuits Carriers California COVID-19
Life in quarantine has meant canceled plans for many people  and none moreso than high school students, whove had to give up in-person classes, extracurricular activities, graduation traditions and all those senior year social gatherings, from homecoming to prom.

But Jenna Bush Hager and Michelle Obama had some good news for students this week  theyre getting their prom after all!

Former first lady Michelle Obama and Jenna Bush Hager greeted quarantined students with some good news  theyre getting a virtual prom! (TODAY)

The former first lady is the co-chair of the nonprofit, nonpartisan group When We All Vote, an organization devoted to making sure every American is registered to vote in the fall. This year, When We All Vote teamed up with MTV for a 2020 Prom Challenge event that promised to reward the 20 high schools that launched the most impactful voter registration programs with funding for their proms.

Thats still happening  but the prom is going to look a little different than anyone expected.

Related: Need a dose of good news? TODAY brings you one good thing each day to lift your heart and make you smile.

Jenna gathered some of the winning students together for a video call and surprised them with her special guest.

I am so thrilled to meet all of you, she said to students representing their respective schools. I wish it could be in person. I know we all wish that was the case. But I love listening to your stories, the dedication you have to our country and making sure that every voice is heard.

Then she gave them the chance to hear a voice  and see a face  they werent expecting.

Please welcome, Mrs. Obama!

Michelle Obama (TODAY)

Im just blown away by your commitment and your focus and the level of articulation youre showing on this issue, Obama, 56, told the teens. I know this has been a tough time for you guys. I know youre feeling a lot of stress right now. Getting used to online classes ... Ive got young people in my house. My kids have been doing this same thing, but you guys are missing out on a lot of major milestones because of this quarantine.

And that, she said, just doesnt seem fair.

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These high school students didn't know what was in store for them. (TODAY)

So today I wanted to just drop in to share a little of what I hope is good news with all of you, she added. Were coming together to throw you and students across the country a virtual prom, OK?

And while a virtual prom might not sound quite as sweet as the real deal, Obama assured the students they have something to look forward to.

This is going to be amazing, she insisted. This isnt just going to be any old prom. We all  at MTV, my team  we called a lot of our friends, and so were going to have a lot of special guests and performances and a lot of surprises. So this is going to be off the hook.

Just like her own prom was back in 1982.

Throwing it back to my 1982 prom night and this pink satin, polka-dotted dress.



Join the #PromChallenge with @WhenWeAllVote and @MTV and tell us what your school is doing to register students to vote. You could get a free prom for your school! Learn more: https://t.co/ggVjRpS3CU pic.twitter.com/x5lP0LHOUf  Michelle Obama (@MichelleObama) February 18, 2020

It might not be what you were envisioning for this special occasion, she added. I promise you that it will be a night that youre going to remember.

And when it came to the all-important topic of voting, she reminded them that the future of your communities and our countries are in the hands of young people like you all  no pressure  but were counting on you.

Obama also told them that shes counting on them to get ready for their prom, which will take place May 22, in style. Everyone can watch the event on MTV's YouTube page.

I cant wait to see you at prom, she said. Im going to look cute. I hope you are, too!
Falun Gong practitioners perform the exercises at a rally commemorating the 20th anniversary of the persecution of Falun Gong in China, on the West Lawn of Capitol Hill on July 18, 2019. (Samira Bouaou/The Epoch Times)

US Officials Celebrate Resilience of Spiritual Group Persecuted in China

Officials worldwide sent letters in support of the spiritual practice Falun Gong and commended its adherents for weathering decades of brutal persecution in China.

Falun Gong, also known as Falun Dafa, an ancient meditation discipline with moral teachings centered on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, was first introduced to the public on May 13, 1992, in the city of Changchun in northeastern China. May 13, which is also the birthday of the practices founder, Li Hongzhi, is now recognized as World Falun Dafa Day.

Every year, practitioners in more than 90 countries around the world celebrate the occasion.

Lawmakers from the United States, Canada, Germany, and Australia joined in the commemoration.

A compilation of recent proclamations from officials around the world to honor World Falun Dafa Day. (The Epoch Times)

This day recognizes the millions of people around the world that have found this ancient Chinese culture practice to be key in addressing stresses and anxiety of modern-day life, Rep. Dwight Evans (D-Pa.) stated in a letter.

Tamara Jansen, a Conservative Party member of Canadas Parliament, wrote, Though the festivities are taking place in a different form this year, the Falun Dafa principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance are being honored and celebrated.

Falun Gong practitioners take part in a rally calling for an end to the persecution of Falun Gong in China, on Capitol Hill in Washington, on June 20, 2018. (Edward Dye/The Epoch Times)

State Senator Tom Killion (R-Pa.) called the practice a powerful mechanism for relieving stress and healing, and expressed appreciation for the group enriching his constituent communitys diversity, while Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) said Falun Gong serves as a positive example to the world.

Meanwhile, a request for the U.S. flag in front of the Capitol building in Washington to fly in honor of World Falun Dafa Day on May 13 came from Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), and the mayor of St. Peters, a city in Missouri, proclaimed May 13 to be the citys Falun Dafa Day.

The U.S. flag that flew in honor of World Falun Dafa Day in front of the Capitol building in Washington on May 13, 2020. (York Du/The Epoch Times)

On World Falun Dafa Day, we strive to uphold the universal tenets of truthfulness, compassion, & forbearance, ideals that are fundamental to the expression of the Falun Gong faith, Sam Brownback, the U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, said May 13 in a message of support on Twitter.

City of Keller Proclamation for Falun Dafa Day (PDF)

City of Keller Proclamation for Falun Dafa Day (Text)

The celebration has been overshadowed for years by the continuous persecution of adherents in China. Since July 1999, hundreds of thousands of adherents have been thrown into prisons, labor camps, and brainwashing centers amid the atheist Chinese regimes sweeping persecution campaign.

Minghui, a U.S.-based website that tracks the persecution of Falun Gong in China, has documented nearly 4,500 Falun Gong practitioners who died due to the Chinese regimes campaign, although it said the true death toll is likely far greater.

The persecution has continued unabated despite the pandemicaround 750 practitioners were harassed or arrested by authorities in the month of March alone, according to the website.

Pat McGrail, mayor of Keller city in Texas, sees a similarity in the regimes persecution of faith and its handling of the pandemic.

The evil nature of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] is now in full view on the world stage, having covered up the initial outbreak of the coronavirus and even punishing the good people of China who wanted to make the truth known, further demonstrating its disregard for human rights, he wrote.

Some lawmakers also called attention to the ongoing atrocity of forced organ harvesting in China. Last year, an independent peoples tribunal in London found that the spiritual group was the main source of organs for Chinas state-sanctioned organ transplant industry, and that forced organ harvesting had taken place on a significant scale.

Cong Gerald Connolly Letter on Falun Dafa Day (PDF)

Cong Gerald Connolly Letter on Falun Dafa Day (Text)

In 2016, the U.S. House of Representatives unanimously passed a resolution condemning the human rights violation, calling it one of the great crimes of the 21st century.

Rep. Ron Wright (R-Texas) said he hoped to work with Falun Gong adherents to end religious persecution and the forced organ harvesting by the CCP.

Sylvester Turner, mayor of Houston, Texas, said the practitioners determination and courage to stand up for their values has shown the world the value of life and the beauty of human dignity.
Insults. Threats. Bullying. On Monday, May 11, Gov. Tom Wolfs video statement featured all three. Wolf launched these salvos against his fellow Pennsylvanians  local elected officials, job creators, and workers in eight counties  seeking to provide for themselves and their families. He called them cowards and deserters for assessing local risks and daring to think for themselves.

We expect name-calling and temper tantrums on a schoolyard playground. But from the governors office, we expect leadership. Leaders dont keep people in the dark. Since the COVID-19 crisis began, however, Wolf has thumbed his nose at calls for transparency while taking actions that are decimating Pennsylvanians livelihoods.

The truth is, Wolf has only himself to blame for the legitimacy crisis he now faces.

Last week, state House lawmakers  including 90 Democrats  voted unanimously to force Wolf to follow transparency guidelines, especially regarding his notorious business waiver process. This legislation upholds the states Right-to-Know law, which the governor effectively suspended. In response, Wolf lashed out at lawmakers and condemned the bill, saying, Im trying to be transparent!

Meanwhile, Wolf engages in transparency theater. After withholding a list of business waiver recipients for weeks, he suddenly rescinded certain waivers just prior to releasing the list, hiding many recipients from public scrutiny. Auditor General Eugene DePasquale has launched an audit of the waiver process. A state Senate committee subpoenaed the Wolf administration for related information, then took him to court when he refused to honor the subpoena.

The only thing transparent about Wolf is his attempt to cover up who received waivers and how he granted them.

With trust undermined, local officials are bucking Wolfs color-coded reopening plan to do what they believe is best for their constituents. Franklin, Lebanon, Lancaster, and Schuylkill counties announced they would begin the reopening process without Wolfs approval. Perry, York, and Adams county officials have insisted Wolf change their reopening status, and lawmakers in Mifflin and Juniata counties have also demanded reconsideration.

Sheriffs and District Attorneys in Cumberland, Greene, Beaver, York, and Perry counties declared they will not enforce Wolfs shutdown orders. And Huntingdon County Commissioners say businesses will not be cited for reopening. Lawsuits from business and community leaders seek damages in federal court over Wolfs handling of the crisis.

Given historic unemployment levels of more than 25 percent and warnings that 60 percent of small business could face permanent closure, these demands for a responsible reopening should come as no surprise.

In response, Wolf threatened to strip businesses of their licenses and cut emergency funding for Pennsylvanians facing unemployment and financial ruin. He justified dropping the hammer on his own citizens by saying it will save lives, but theres even reason to question whether hes achieving that fundamental goal.

Wolfs wholesale ban on elective surgeries, for example, is predicted to cost lives. The UPMC hospital system flouted the ban after they came nowhere close to reaching their capacity. Deaths of despair from drugs, alcohol, and suicide are predicted to spike by up to 150,000 because of the recession and unemployment caused by prolonged business shutdowns.

Even worse, on Wolfs watch Pennsylvanias nursing homes account for 70 percent of pandemic-related deaths. From the beginning of this crisis, we heard that seniors were most at risk, yet the Wolf administration never implemented a plan to protect nursing homes, which have seen more than 2,000 deaths. Only after a Senate committee hearing did Wolf reverse course and focus on nursing homes.

State Health Department data shows hospitals havent been overwhelmed and the number of serious cases is subsiding. County leaders recognize their residents need to earn a living while mitigating COVID-19, just as hospitals recognized they couldnt abandon their patients other needs because of the pandemic.

When mistakes are made, a true leader owns up to them and explains how the problem will be fixed. A true leader also accepts critique and changes course when necessary. But when faced with a challenge from his fellow Pennsylvanians who believe they can protect lives while preserving livelihoods, Wolf chose finger-wagging threats over reasonable solutions.

Being governor can be a tough job  especially in a crisis. But this is what Wolf signed up for. If Gov. Wolf wants to be a true leader, he should apologize to those he insulted, come together with lawmakers and local leaders to address their concerns, and develop a plan that treats everyone with the dignity they deserve.

Nathan Benefield is vice president and COO of the Commonwealth Foundation (www.commonwealthfoundation.org), Pennsylvanias free-market think tank.
By PTI

MALE;: India extended a USD 150 million foreign currency swap support to the Maldives on Tuesday to help the strategically important Indian Ocean island nation mitigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The swap facility was extended under USD 400 million currency swap arrangement signed between India and the Maldives in July last year. The currency swap facility is part of the USD 1.4 billion economic package announced by India for the Maldives during the state visit of President Ibrahim Mohamed Solih in December 2018, according to an official statement.

Done deal! #India has extended USD 150 million foreign currency swap support to @MMA_Maldives under the USD 400 mn. bilateral agreement signed in July 2019.The arrangement was activated to help mitigate the financial impact of #COVID19 @abdulla_shahid @faya_i @MEAIndia @RBI  India in Maldives (@HCIMaldives) April 28, 2020

The Maldives is the only country, other than Bhutan, which has been extended the USD 400 million currency swap facility, it said. "Done deal! India has extended USD 150 million foreign currency swap support to @MMA_Maldives under the USD 400 mn bilateral agreement signed in July 2019. The arrangement was activated to help Flag of Maldives mitigate the financial impact of COVID-19," India's High Commission in Maldives tweeted.

India stands shoulder-to-shoulder with the Maldives in tackling the global COVID-19 pandemic and providing financial stability. India is also considering extending the validity of the currency swap facility by one year, the statement said.

India's decision to activate the currency swap arrangement comes a week after Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke with President Solih on the "health and economic challenges" the COVID-19 pandemic poses for the island nation.

India will stand by its close maritime neighbour and friend in this challenging time, Modi said in a tweet after speaking with Solih. Modi paid a two-day visit to the Maldives in June, his first bilateral trip after his re-election for a second term.

He also visited the Maldives in November 2018 to attend President Solih's swearing-in ceremony.
London:

Reserve Banks outgoing Governor Raghuram Rajan, whose outspoken views have often been seen as being critical of the government, feels whatever he will say on Prime Minister Narendra Modi will be problematic.



Rajan, whose tenure at RBI has been marked with several controversies triggered by his comments on issues ranging from tolerance debate to the governments flagship programme Make in India, was asked to describe Modi in a televised rapid-fire like interview with BBC.



I think I will pass on that question. Whatever answer I give will be problematic, so I will just pass, said the on-leave professor of finance at Chicago University, who will return to academia after end of his three-year term at RBI on September 4.



After his decision to return back to academia, there have been voices suggesting that his candid public speeches were one of the aspects which made the government uncomfortable about reappointing Rajan for another term.



Some of the controversial speeches made by him include the one where he quoted American political philosopher Francis Fukuyama to question whether strong governments can really help a country or in defence of tolerance in the middle of a debate started by the killing of a Muslim man over suspicion of storing beef, or questioning the premise of the high-octane Make in India campaign.



Rajan, a former IMF Chief Economist, also ruled out joining politics. I think that is one place where my wife overrides everything and her answer is no, he said on joining politics.



Asked how he feels about being on the list of Indias most desirable men, the 53-year-old Governor quipped: I wish they had done it when I was 25.



Rajan described himself as a boring guy and said he being described as Rockstar Banker is an overblown statement.



In an earlier TV interview, Rajan had said he was open to staying a bit longer at RBI to complete the unfinished work of bank clean-up, but was perfectly happy to go.

For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. - When Pirate's Bone Burgers reopens Saturday, Chef Zaid Consuegra says the dining room will stay closed to customers. The kitchen at the plant-based restaurant in the Crossroads Arts District has been closed since March because of COVID-19. Consuegra said they had to furlough their staff of twelve.
A table of family photos show just how busy Princess Tatiana and Guillermo Sierra have been the past couple of years. Nestled among the picture frames filled with smiling faces and happy people are images from three weddings all in the same family in a six-month period.

Tatiana and Guillermo -- she's the princess ascended from Russian and Austrian royalty and he's the Mexico-born investment banker who saw her standing in front of a downtown business office one day -- fill many of those photos that capture their dazzling wedding in Mexico City that entertained 420 guests for nearly a week in April 2017.

Princess Tatiana, 33, was lured to Houston from San Francisco for a job as an architect at Gensler, the massive architecture firm with offices all over the world. She recently branched out on her own, with her Tatiermo Design firm that will handle architecture and design primarily in restaurants, hotels and mixed-use high rises.

Guillermo, 33 and a Wharton Business School graduate, moved to Houston for an energy-industry related job. The investment banker is now head of the midstream advisory group at Macquarie Capital.

On April 29, 2017, the couple wed in an elaborate ceremony with friends and family -- many of them Princess Tatiana's royal relatives, aunts, uncles and cousins from monarchies all over the world. Because so many people would be coming to Mexico City from elsewhere, their families hosted people as they arrived in guided tours of historical and cultural sites during the day and group dinners in the evening.

"When we decided have it in Mexico it was our first realization that we cannot ask people to come all the way here and not show a little bit more of what Mexico has to offer," he said. "Everybody has an idea of what it looks like ... people were surprised at the food, culture and history. There's a lot to see and do."

The Russian Orthodox ceremony -- Tatiana is Russian Orthodox and Guillermo is Catholic -- has two parts. First, the bride and groom meet at the door of the church for their betrothal, where they ask to be united by Christ. Then, the actual marriage is conducted in the center of the church, with those attending standing throughout the hour-long ceremony, Guillermo explained.

The couple exchanges rings three times before putting them on their fingers, signifying that in married life the weakness of one is compensated by the strength of the other -- the imperfections of one by the perfection of the other.

There's a crowning ritual in which the couple offer their love to God freely and voluntarily; three prayers are said and then the crowns are placed over the heeads of the bride and groom to symbolize their place in God's kingdom.The princess is the great-granddaughter of the last emperor and empress of Austria, Karl and Zita, the Habsburg dynasty that ruled parts of Europe for nearly 600 years. They were deposed in 1918 at the end of World War I. Princess Tatiana's mother Princess Anna Maria Galitzine, an archduchess, was born in Belgium, where they still have family. Tatiana's father, Prince Piotr Galitzine, is part of Russian aristocracy; royals there fled the country in the Russian Revolution.

Princess Tatiana's parents live in Houston, where her father is the chairman and CEO of TMK IPISCO, a Russian-owned gas and pipe-making company. Piotr Galitzine moved the firm's U.S. headquarters to Houston from suburban Chicago in 2013.

Two of Tatiana's sisters -- Xenia Galitzine de Matta and Maria Galitzine -- live in Houston as well. Her other siblings, a sister and two brothers, live in London, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Guillermo's parents, Guillermo Sierra Sr. and Rosalba Uribe, live in Houston, and his father, a developer, owns Europa Homes.

Guillermo said he's from a normal, middle-class family in Mexico, but it wasn't meeting and marrying a princess that changed his life so much, it was getting a scholarship to attend the prestigious business school that gave him so many career opportunities.

Tatiana and Guillermo met by chance; she was standing on the sidewalk outside the downtown Houston building where she worked. Guillermo was headed to his bank for personal business; crossing the street he spotted the willowy blonde.

He struck up a conversation and invited her to have coffee with him. From there they had dinner and discovered they had dozens of mutual friends. It turned out that the husbands of many of her girlfriends were his friends.

But Tatiana, who has lived all over the world, was already planning her next move -- to London. Their courtship was quick and after six weeks, Guillermo told her that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

A more formal proposal with a dazzling, round 4.5 carat ring came soon after.

"We were engaged a year and a half, and of that we spent a year, five months and 29 days planning the wedding," Guillermo said, laughing. "And when I say "we" I mean me and her mom."

They chose Mexico because it was meaningful to both of their families.

"Mexico used to be ruled by Maximilian, who was a Hapsburg. So Guillermo's from Mexico City, and it was the perfect combination of both of our families and heritage in the same place," Tatiana said. (Maximilian was installed as emperor of Mexico by Napoleon Bonaparte in the 1860s.)

While Tatiana and Guillermo wed in April, two of her siblings -- a brother and a sister -- got married in June and September.

"We were so happy when Sunday brunch came along," Tatiana said of the week of events leading up to their nuptials. "My poor mother. It didn't help that my brother (Dimitri) got married two months after that in Belgium and a sister (Maria) got married two months after that in Houston.

While Tatiana grew up knowing her family's place in world history, she and her siblings -- their parents, too -- never publicized their famous family connections. But she's always understood what it means to be royal, and the obligations it carries to help others.

"My life is completely normal unless we are invited to royal weddings. My mail sometimes says 'Princess Tatiana'. What was weird was when I went from 'Princess' to 'Mrs.' I had been a princess all my life," she said.
NEW DELHI: The government of Assam has written to the Centre urging it to extend the coronavirus COVID-19 lockdown by two more weeks beyond May 17.

Confirming this, Assam Chief Minister CM Sarbananda Sonowal said, We have sent our written recommendation that we want this lockdown to be continued.

The third phase of the coronavirus-induced nationwide lockdown is scheduled to end on May 17.

Addressing a press conference, Sonowal said all states were supposed to give their feedback on the extension of the lockdown by Friday, and the Assam government has already conveyed its stand to the Centre.

The state has also conveyed its views on the relaxations it wants in the fourth phase of the lockdown, Sonowal said.

"Let the Government of India take a view on that. I don't want to say much about this now. All the states have written to the Centre, which will take a decision on the extension," he added.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi had on Monday dropped indications of another lockdown with fewer restrictions in a video conference interaction with 30 chief ministers, many of whom were wary of lifting Lockdown 3.0 scheduled to end on Sunday.

Amid surging COVID-19 cases, states like Maharashtra, Telangana, Bihar, Punjab, West Bengal and Assam are opposed to lifting the restrictions. After the meeting, Goa Chief Minister Pramod Sawant said that lockdown 4.0 will start from May 18.

Seeking to shift the focus on containment zones in the coming days, PM Modi said he is of the firm view that measures needed in the first phase were not needed in the second phase. Similarly, the measures needed in the third phase will not be needed in the fourth phase, he added as he stressed the need for social distancing.

The Prime Minister requested all the chief ministers to share with him a broad strategy on how they would deal with the lockdown regime in their states by May 15.
Schools in areas where there is a higher proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) residents should be allowed to open later, council leaders have said.

The Local Government Association (LGA) is calling for some schools in England to be given greater flexibility over reopening as they argue some communities are at higher risk of Covid-19.

Official data shows that black men and women are more than four times more likely to die from a coronavirus-related death than white people.

The LGA is calling for councils to be given more powers to close schools if testing indicates clusters of new Covid-19 cases.

Schools in areas where there is a higher proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic (BAME) residents should be allowed to open later, councils have said. The Local Government Association is calling for some schools in England to be given greater flexibility over reopening as they argue some communities are at higher risk of Covid-19. (Posed by models)

The Government has faced increasing pressure from education union leaders and MPs to release the science behind its plans to send children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 back to school from next month. (Stock image)

And it says the Government should urgently publish the scientific evidence underpinning the decision to reopen England's schools to more pupils from June 1.

The Government has faced increasing pressure from education union leaders and MPs to release the science behind its plans to send children in Reception, Year 1 and Year 6 back to school from next month.

Osama Rahman, chief scientific adviser at the Department for Education (DfE), said that there was a 'low degree of confidence' in evidence suggesting that children transmit Covid-19 less than adults.

Mr Rahman also told MPs on Wednesday that it was not the DfE's decision to reopen schools in England to three primary school year groups from June 1. He said it was decided by the Cabinet.

Former Labour education secretary Lord Blunkett said he was 'surprised' by union leaders' attitude towards reopening schools. 'I am being deeply critical of the attitude. It's about how can we work together to make it work as safely as possible. Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children,' he said

Education unions said they are due to attend a briefing on Friday afternoon with the Government's scientific advisers to go through the decision to reopen schools in England.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union (NEU), said: 'We agree with the LGA that publication of the scientific advice is vital to help provide reassurance to the public.'

Black people up to four times more likely to die from Covid than white people, figures show Black people are four times more likely to die from coronavirus than white people, according to figures released in early May. Government statisticians analysed the number of all Covid 19-related fatalities in England and Wales between March 2 and April 10. Data showed the risk of dying from the coronavirus was 'significantly' higher among some ethnic groups compared to white people, when age was taken into account. After accounting for health conditions and differences in factors such as income, the risk for black people was still almost twice as high. The reasons behind the findings remain largely 'unexplained', said the Office for National Statistics, which collected the data. The report did not look into whether people from BAME backgrounds are more likely to be infected in the first place. It comes amid an urgent Number 10 investigation into the disproportionate impact of Covid-19 on black and minority ethnic Britons. Advertisement

She added: 'We have concerns that a wider opening of schools, too early, poses a lot of unanswered questions about the risks in poor communities.

'The DfE has not done nearly enough thinking about the emerging evidence about the racial disparities of the epidemic and what it means for schools with diverse pupil populations.'

Appearing on Radio 4's Today programme with Dr Bousted on Thursday, former Labour education secretary Lord Blunkett said he was 'surprised' by union leaders' attitude towards reopening schools.

He said: 'I am being deeply critical of the attitude. It's about how can we work together to make it work as safely as possible. Anyone who works against that in my view is working against the interests of children.'

He added that while middle-class children are continuing to learn during lockdown, it is pupils from the most deprived families who are missing out.

'The children of the highly educated, of the well-off, of the better informed have been getting some form of education over the last few weeks,' he said.

'It's only one in seven of the most vulnerable children who are actually getting educated  some children are actually getting nothing.'

Meanwhile, Cllr Judith Blake, chair of the LGA's Children and Young People Board, said: 'We know parents are anxious about sending their children back to school or nursery.

'Plans to reopen schools and early years settings must focus on reassuring parents that it will be safe for children to return to school.

'Publication of the scientific advice is vital to help provide that reassurance. The safety of staff, parents and families is absolutely paramount.'

The Government's Covid-19 recovery strategy said its ambition was for all primary school children to return to school before the summer holidays for a month 'if feasible'.

But the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT), whose members are mainly in primary schools, has advised school leaders not to plan for a full reopening from July at present.

On Wednesday, MP Layla Moran, the education spokesperson for the Liberal Democrats, called on the Government to publish all the scientific advice that informed the decision to reopen schools.

Education Secretary Gavin Williamson said: 'When you have medical and scientific advice that is saying it's the right time to start bringing schools back in a phased and controlled manner, it seems only the right thing to do and the only responsible thing to do.'

Addressing MPs in the House of Commons, the minister said he was 'more than happy' to share the advice they had received from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage).

He added that he had asked scientific advisers 'to give briefings' to the sector to help them understand the decision behind reopening schools.
Virginia Giuffre alleges the Duke of York had sex with her on three occasions. Photo: BBC

Prince Andrew's accuser Virginia Giuffre has warned Jeffrey Epstein's alleged associates "you took our freedom, now we're going to take yours", in a trailer for a new film on the disgraced financier.

Netflix's four-part series 'Jeffrey Epstein: Filthy Rich' explores how convicted sex offender Epstein used his wealth to carry out his abuse.

The documentary, which streams on May 27, will feature first-hand accounts from a "sisterhood of survivors".

It will also look at Epstein's "Gatsby-like" existence and raises questions about how he died in jail last year.

The trailer talks of a "spiderweb of people" involved with billionaire paedophile Epstein and includes the image of Andrew with his arm around a young Ms Giuffre.

She has claimed she was trafficked by Epstein and alleges the Duke of York had sex with her on three occasions, including when she was under age.

He categorically denies any form of sexual contact or relationship with her.
The spiralling cost of subsidising the wages of millions of workers could push Britain's budget deficit well above 300billion, the Treasury watchdog has warned.

The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed the outlook for public finances has deteriorated rapidly, with the estimated bill for rescuing the economy mounting by 20billion in the last few weeks.

As it emerged that 441,000 self-employed workers had claimed subsidies worth 1.3billion on the first day of a new bailout scheme, the OBR spelled out the staggering cost of the Government's rescue measures.

The Office for Budget Responsibility revealed the outlook for public finances has deteriorated rapidly, with the estimated bill for rescuing the economy up by 20bn in the last few weeks

In its latest report, it predicted that ministers face a budget deficit of 298.4billion this financial year but warned it could be significantly higher.

This is because it has not included the cost of extending the Job Retention Scheme for furloughed employees until the autumn, which it said push the bill up to 84billion.

In the Budget in March, the OBR forecast a deficit of 55billion this year.

A few weeks ago, the watchdog raised this to 273billion  which would already be the highest since the Second World War  as the cost of the pandemic started to pile up.

But it now estimates measures to prop up the economy during the crisis will cost 123billion this year, 20billion more than it predicted last month, pushing the deficit even higher.

The OBR stuck by its initial prediction that the economy would shrink by 35 per cent in the second quarter before bouncing back by 27 per cent between July and September.

And it also kept to its prediction that unemployment will more than double to 10 per cent in the second quarter, as more than 2m people are thrown out of work.

The staggering burden on the public finances will fuel fears that taxes will have to rise to pay the debt, and that the Covid-19 crisis will usher in another era of austerity.

The staggering burden on the public finances will fuel fears that taxes will have to rise to pay the debt, and that the Covid-19 crisis will usher in another era of austerity

The possibility of tax rises and spending cuts was raised this week in a leaked

Treasury report, which has caused alarm among some Tory MPs who believe this will hamper any recovery. The Treasury report warned the deficit could be 337billion this year, even higher than predicted by the OBR.

But yesterday Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey doubled down on claims that the Government's vastly expensive bail-out package would help Britain's economy bounce back quickly after the end of the lockdown.

Speaking at a conference, he suggested policies like the Job Retention Scheme would 'preserve people's livelihoods and incomes and prevent a bigger rise in unemployment'.

The Bank has warned the UK is facing its worst recession in 300 years but insisted it will recover strongly next year.

Bailey said: 'There is reason to believe if the recovery operates in the way I suggest, we can imagine a lot of jobs and a lot of activity will come back at the point when the restrictions are lifted and people get confident about going about their daily lives and their jobs.'

The mounting deficit predicted by the OBR is mainly due to Chancellor Rishi Sunak's decision to extend the Job Retention Scheme until the end of October.

It had been due to finish at the end of May, and the OBR estimated it would cost 42billion.

But the watchdog said extending the lifeline to the end of July will push the bill up to 63billion, and that extending it to October could cost another 21billion.

Latest figures show that 7.5m workers have been signed up by their employer for the Job Retention Scheme, which pays 80 per cent of their salaries up to 2,500 a month.

The sister scheme for self-employed workers was launched on Monday, with HMRC swamped with applications.

The OBR has estimated this lifeline will cost the Exchequer 10.5billion.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday announced a financial package for the poor and vulnerable sectors which he said will help them tide over the coronavirus pandemic.

The package is worth Rs 20 lakh crore, which the Prime Minister said is 10 per cent of the countrys Gross Domestic Product or GDP. In his address to the nation, PM Modi said that details of the package will be shared in the coming days.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has been doing just that. In two days since the announced, she has held two press conference in which the finance minister has been announcing the parts of that package.

Day 1:

In her first press conference on Wednesday, Sitharaman announced schemes totalling about Rs 5.9 lakh crore. The first tranche focused on providing easy credit facilities to micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) and non-banking finance companies (NBFCs).

She also announced a fund for debt-laden electricity distribution companies or discoms, a partial wage support scheme (for two months) for small companies and ways to put more cash in the hands of people. This was in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modis Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan, a bid to make India self-reliant to revive the economy which has been battered by a prolonged lockdown since March 25 to check the spread of Covid-19.

Day 2:

Unveiling the second tranche at a media briefing on Thursday, Sitharaman said that it focusses on small enterprises, street vendors and small farmers.

Totalling Rs 3.16 lakh crore, the schemes announced yesterday include 5 kg rice or wheat and 1kg chana (chickpea) a month, for 80 million migrant families for two months (which will cost Rs 3,500 crore). The schemes also provide a Rs 1,500-crore interest discount scheme aimed at 30 million units, a Rs 5,000-crore special credit facility for five million street vendors, a Rs 6,000-crore Compensatory Afforestation Management & Planning Authority (CAMPA) fund for providing jobs to tribals, a Rs 30,000 core emergency working capital scheme for farmers, a Rs 70,000-crore boost to lower-middle class housing and Rs 2-lakh crore concessional credit offer to 25 million farmers through Kisan Credit Cards.

The Rs 20 lakh crore package includes a Rs 1.7 lakh crore package already announced on March 26 and monetary measures aggregating to around Rs 5.7 lakh crore taken by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) since March 27.
Iran's FM Zarif likens Trump's 'disinfectant' advice to nuclear deal argument

05/15/20

Source: Tehran Times

TEHRAN - Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has likened Washington's JCPOA argument to U.S. President Donald Trump's suggestion to inject disinfectant to treat coronavirus patients. "Those who muse about injecting disinfectant to 'clean' the coronavirus, also argue that they are a 'participant' in a UN Security Council Resolution endorsing a deal that they long ago 'ceased participating' in," Zarif tweeted on Thursday. "Their own words. If only Kafka were around," he added.

Those who muse about injecting disinfectant to "clean" the coronavirus, also argue that they are a "participant" in a UN Security Council Resolution endorsing a deal that they long ago "ceased participating" in. Their own words.



If only Kafka were around. pic.twitter.com/hYZ2z6EyKv  Javad Zarif (@JZarif) May 14, 2020

During a daily briefing last month, Trump hinted that "disinfectant" can be used to cure people infected with the coronavirus.



"I see the disinfectant that knocks it out in a minute, one minute. And is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning," the president said.



Trump, appearing to refer to the disinfectant idea, continued to say, "You see it gets in the lungs and it does a tremendous number [on the] lungs, so it would be interesting to check that."



"We're going to have to use medical doctors, but it seems interesting to me."



Last month, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Washington technically remained a "participant" in the deal in order to use a mechanism embedded within the accord to make the UN maintain an arms embargo on Tehran.



U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook also told reporters, "We are operating under the assumption that we will be able to renew the arms embargo."



In similar remarks earlier on Thursday, Zarif said that making "foolish" claims by U.S. officials is nothing new.



Referring to Trump, Zarif said, "It is not unexpected of those advising people to drink or inject disinfectants to fight the coronavirus to come forward and say they are still a party to the agreement after officially leaving it."



Observers say the United States would face a messy battle if it tries to trigger a return of sanctions, which includes the arms ban on Iran.



Hook wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that "one way or another" Washington would ensure the arms embargo remains. He said the United States has drafted a Security Council resolution and "will press ahead with diplomacy and build support."



A resolution needs nine yes votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain to be adopted by the 15-member Security Council. Russia has already signaled it is opposed to extending the arms embargo.



"If American diplomacy is frustrated by a veto, however, the U.S. retains the right to renew the arms embargo by other means," Hook wrote, citing the ability of a party to the Iran nuclear deal to trigger a so-called snapback of all UN sanctions on Iran, which includes the arms embargo.



Also, in comments targeting Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, Hook said "nothing will be left of the JCPOA until you return to it."



In response, Zarif said, "It is none of Brian Hook's business to say 'nothing will be left of the JCPOA'. What is important is between Iran and the JCPOA's remaining parties".
On the day Attorney General William Barr moved to drop criminal charges against former national security adviser Michael Flynn  again winning the adulation of Donald Trump, the US president  he was paid a special visit.

Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence and one of Mr Trumps most combative defenders, arrived last Thursday at the Justice Departments headquarters clutching a brown leather briefcase. A Fox News camera was pre-positioned at the entrance on 10th Street NW, seemingly tipped off to record footage of the dramatic scene.

Mr Grenell carried a list he had declassified of former Obama administration officials, including former vice president Joe Biden, who had sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references in intelligence documents that turned out to be of Mr Flynn. During a brief meeting with Mr Barr, Mr Grenell turned over the list of names, setting off a chain reaction that led Republican senators to publicly release it on Wednesday in what they claim is a monumental scandal.

The practice, known as unmasking, is commonplace in government. But in the case of Mr Flynn, Mr Trump and his allies used the list of names to claim Mr Obama, Mr Biden and their appointees deliberately sought to sabotage the incoming Trump administration as part of a long-running conspiracy they have dubbed Obamagate.

We sort of have the smoking gun because we now have the declassified document with Joe Bidens name on it, Senator Rand Paul, Republican for Kentucky, said on Thursday.

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Mr Bidens campaign maintains that his actions were entirely appropriate and that the declassified document shows he followed normal intelligence procedures.

With Mr Trump suffering political damage for his management of the coronavirus pandemic less than six months before the election, the presidents government appointees and allies in Congress are using their powers to generate a political storm aimed at engulfing Mr Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee, and Mr Obama, whom polls show is the nations most popular political figure, making him a potent threat to Mr Trump as a Biden surrogate.

Another objective is to rewrite the history of the Russia investigation as Trump has long sought, by casting Mr Flynn as a martyr wronged by nefarious bureaucratic elites.

These efforts are being amplified by wall-to-wall coverage on Fox News Channel and elsewhere in conservative media, where this week Flynn coverage has rivaled, and at times overshadowed, news about the pandemic, even as the US death toll from the novel coronavirus climbed past 85,000.

And in a remarkable turn on Thursday, Mr Trump urged Congress to call Obama to testify and even suggested those involved  including Mr Biden and two longtime Trump antagonists, former FBI director James Comey and former CIA director John Brennan  go to prison.

Im talking with 50-year sentences, MrTrump said in an interview with Fox Business Network that aired Thursday. Its a disgrace whats happened. This is the greatest political scam, hoax in the history of our country. . . . People should be going to jail for this stuff. 

Mr Trump added, This was all Obama. This was all Biden. These people were corrupt  the whole thing was corrupt  and we caught them.

Mr Biden has denied any wrongdoing. The newly revealed list shows that roughly three dozen government officials, including Biden, Brennan and Comey, may have received Flynns name in response to a request to reveal the identity of a US person anonymously identified in an intelligence report.

Mr Biden acknowledged attending a Jan. 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting with Obama and other officials at which the counterintelligence investigation into Flynn, then Trumps designee for national security adviser, was discussed. But he said he knew nothing else about the topic when pressed Tuesday on ABCs Good Morning America.

This is all about diversion, Mr Biden said, ascribing a motive to Trump. This is a game this guy plays all the time. The country is in crisis. . . . He should stop trying to always divert attention from the real concerns of the American people.

Mr Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said the unmasking list underscores the breadth and depth of concern across the American government  including among career officials about Mr Flynns interactions with officials from Russia and other foreign governments. Mr Bates also accused Republicans of abusing their government powers to act as arms of the Trump campaign.

Mr Trump has been distracted recently from managing the pandemic by fixating on Mr Flynn and related matters, ranting in private about the Russia investigation, complaining about Mr Comey and others in the FBI, and making clear he wanted to talk in the run-up to the election about law enforcement targeting him, according to one adviser who spoke with the president last week.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows has been focused extensively on the Flynn situation and has discussed it regularly with Mr Trump, seeing it as vindication of his long-held skepticism toward the Russia probe, according to two senior administration officials.

Mr Paul framed the unmasking as an opportunity to counter the Democratic-led impeachment of Mr Trump for allegedly using his office to pressure the Ukrainian government to investigate Mr Biden.

What it seems to indicate is that high-ranking members, including Joe Biden, used the power of government to go after a political rival  and if that storyline sounds familiar, well, we heard that sort of story line from the other side for over a year, Mr Paul said.

Mr Trump has branded the saga Obamagate, a slogan he has tweeted or retweeted 14 times in the past five days. When asked Monday what crime he was accusing Mr Obama of having committed, Mr Trump could not say beyond some terrible things happened. Pressed a second time, Mr Trump admonished a Washington Post reporter for asking.

You know what the crime is, Mr Trump said. The crime is very obvious to everybody. All you have to do is read the newspapers, except yours.

Obamagate morphed in just one week from a fringe cause pushed on social media and podcasts by Mr Trumps allies  including former National Security Council staffer Sebastian Gorka and conservative legal commentators Joseph diGenova and Victoria Toensing, among others  to a centrepiece of Mr Trumps reelection message.

In Mr Trumps political orbit, advisers had been quietly readying a renewed political war over the Russia probe for weeks, but the Justice Departments move last on Thursday to drop charges against Mr Flynn flipped the switch.

Its a constitutional scandal because all of these people acting together at the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA decided they were either going to prevent [Trump] from being elected, diGenova said during an 29 April podcast. If that failed, Mr diGenova said the Obama team was determined to frame Trump and make him look like a Russian agent. Nothing gets bigger than that. This is a kind of perfidy and sedition that should never be tolerated.

Mr Flynn had pleaded in 2017 to lying to the FBI, admitting multiple times in court, under oath, that he was guilty of the crime. But as the months wore on, Mr Flynn changed his legal teams and went on the attack against the Justice Department  alleging a bevvy of misconduct, including that the agents who interviewed him had set him up to lie.

Mr Barr, acting on the recommendation of Jeff Jensen, the US attorney in St Louis, agreed to ask a judge to dismiss the charges. The departments legal rationale  essentially, that the FBI did not have good reason to interview Mr Flynn in the first place and thus his misstatements were not relevant  was criticised by some legal observers as a contorted way of helping a Trump ally.

But the move won Mr Barr praise from Mr Trump and many on the right, who immediately sought to rewrite the narrative about Mr Flynn  whom Mr Trump said he had fired as national security chief because he had lied to Mike Pence, the vice president, as well as to the FBI  and hailed him instead as a hero.

At the same time, other allies of the president were labouring to resurrect a long-dormant line of attack on the case: that intelligence officials in the Obama administration sought to remove the cloak of anonymity from references to Mr Flynn in intelligence documents.

Unmasking is common. Many intelligence documents are distributed with identities concealed to protect the privacy of US citizens, though certain officials can ask that the protection be removed to help them better understand what they are looking at.

Still, Mr Trump and his allies are attempting to turn it into a scandal.

This is something Trump is very good at, said Joyce White Vance, a former US attorney in the Obama administration. He takes things that are the normal course of business  like, for instance, people who are authorised for unmasking so they can make sense of intelligence data  and turn them into something suspicious. It becomes an us-versus-them moment.

Mr Grenell sent an email on 3 May about unmasking requests related to Mr Flynn to the National Security Agency, which routinely receives and approves thousands of unmasking requests each year, including during Mr Trumps term. General Paul Nakasone, the NSA director, responded the next day with a list of US officials who may have received Mr Flynns name following a request to unmask it in an intelligence report.

There was no indication that the people who requested the unmasking knew that Mr Flynns name would be the one revealed. Nor, the NSA advised, was it clear that every official on the list actually saw a report with Mr Flynns name, or that they made the request themselves. Staffers often make unmasking requests on their bosses behalf, said people who have been involved in the process.

The list showed that a broad range of officials obtained information about Mr Flynn, from the CIA and the FBI to the Treasury Department and the US mission to the United Nations. Mr Biden, or possibly a staff member acting on his behalf, made his unmasking request that revealed Mr Flynns name on 12 January 2017.

The document does not make clear why Mr Biden or any other official had requested the unmasking in the first place, nor does it indicate that Mr Flynn had engaged in communications that alerted intelligence officials to investigate his contacts with foreigners.

Last Thursday, when Grenell showed up at the Justice Department to deliver the list to Mr Barr, the visit and Fox News apparent knowledge of it took some senior officials there aback. Mr Grenell, who had been ambassador to Germany before assuming the intelligence post on a temporary basis, has long associated with some of Mr Trumps most vocal right-wing supporters and has earned plaudits from the president for his tweets attacking journalists.

Shortly after the visit, according to Justice Department officials, Mr Grenells office seemed to be intimating to reporters that it would be up to Mr Barr or his underlings to decide whether to release the document.

That, in the view of the Justice Department leadership, was not accurate, since the department did not create the document and Mr Grenell, not Mr Barr, had declassified it.

The information is not ours to release, Justice Department spokesman Kerri Kupec said on Tuesday on Fox News. She explained that Mr Grenells office owns that document. They declassified that document. So if they choose to put that out there, theyre more than welcome to do so.

Ultimately, Republican Senators Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin asked for the list and then released it on Wednesday.

Mr Trump and his allies were prepared to pounce.

Almost all of us who are involved or follow this have the facts of this case memorised, said Rudy Giuliani, Mr Trumps personal lawyer during the Russia investigation. So its natural to want to talk about the requests to unmask Flynn and really look at whether these people were engaged in a conspiracy to get Flynn out.

Conservative media in turn have been abuzz this week with anger about Mr Flynns treatment and criticism of US District Court Judge Emmet Sullivan, who is overseeing the Flynn case and must approve the dismissal of the charges. Judge Sullivan has appointed a retired federal judge to oppose the Justice Departments position and explore where Mr Flynn should be held in contempt for lying to the court.

The hatred for Donald J. Trump is as strong and intense as ever, and it is flavouring and directing and influencing what everybody in that town is saying and doing about virtually everything theyre saying and doing, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh told his listeners this week.

Fox News legal analyst Gregg Jarrett, whose books about the Russia probe have been touted by Trump, theorised on Thursday on Fox & Friends that the Obama administration went after Flynn with a vengeance because he had been determined to expose the Russia hoax.

Two people involved in Mr Trumps reelection campaign said the effort was designed not only to weaken Biden, but also to tarnish Mr Obama, who is likely to be a visible surrogate for Mr Biden this fall. Mr Obama had the highest approval rating, at 60 per cent, of all living political figures tested in a recent Republican National Committee poll of voters in 17 battleground states. Biden and Pence tied for second at 47 percent.

Revealing the ways Mr Trump hopes to benefit politically from the issue, Mr Trump sent a fundraising plea to supporters on Thursday declaring, Oh how the tables have turned. After an investigation he dubbed the Russian Collusion Delusion, Mr Trump wrote, the unmasking list shows Sleepy Joe is the GUILTY one.

Also on Thursday, Mr Trump took to Twitter to urge Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, Republican for South Carolina, to call Mr Obama to testify about the matter.

He knew EVERYTHING, Trump wrote. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!

Mr Graham responded with a statement saying the committee would begin hearings on this and related matters in June, but that he is greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight.

Both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other, Mr Graham said. If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.

The Washington Post
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - Tudor Gold Corp. (TSXV: TUD) (FSE: TUC) (the "Company" or "Tudor Gold") is pleased to announce that Mr. Eric Sprott has exercised all his outstanding Tudor Gold common share purchase warrants ("Warrants") for total proceeds to the Company of $2,915,625.

Pursuant to the Warrants exercise, Mr. Eric Sprott, through 2176423 Ontario Ltd., a corporation which is beneficially owned by him, exercised a total of 2,164,584 Warrants at an exercise price of $0.50 per common share ("Share") expiring June 6, 2020 and a total of 3,333,333 Warrants at an exercise price of $0.55 per Share expiring July 18, 2020.

Following the completion of the Warrants exercise, Mr. Sprott beneficially owns and controls 25,687,919 Shares, representing approximately 17.5% of the issued and outstanding Shares on a non-diluted basis. Prior to the Warrants exercise, Mr. Sprott beneficially owned and controlled 20,190,002 Shares and 5,497.917 Warrants, representing approximately 13.9% of the issued and outstanding Shares of the Company on a non-diluted basis, and 17.1% on a partially diluted basis.

The Shares were acquired by Mr. Sprott for investment purposes and with a long-term view of the investment. Mr. Sprott may acquire additional securities of the Company including on the open market or through private acquisitions or sell securities of the Company including on the open market or through private dispositions in the future, depending on market conditions, reformulation of plans and/or other relevant factors.

Walter Storm, President and CEO, stated: "I am very pleased with the continued interest and support of Tudor Gold by Mr. Eric Sprott. The Company is very well positioned to execute the ambitious program, created by Ken Konkin, our experienced Vice President Project Development. We are looking forward to successfully completing a large program and significantly advancing the Treaty Creek project this year and beyond."

About Tudor Gold

Tudor Gold is a precious and base metals explorer with properties in British Columbia's Golden Triangle, an area that hosts producing and past-producing mines and several large deposits that are approaching potential development. The 17,913 hectare Treaty Creek project (in which Tudor Gold has a 60% interest) borders Seabridge Gold Inc.'s KSM property to the southwest and borders Pretium Resources Inc.'s Brucejack property to the southeast. The Company also has acquired a 100% interest in the Electrum Project, earn in options and 100% interests in other prospective projects located in the Golden Triangle area.

"Walter Storm"

Walter Storm

President and Chief Executive Officer

For further information, please visit the Company's website at www.tudor-gold.com or contact:

Catalin Kilofliski

Director Corporate Development and Communications

Tel. 604-559-8092

Email: catalin@tudor-gold.com

or

Carsten Ringler

Manager Investor Relations

Phone: +49 1726918274

E-Mail: carsten.ringler@tudor-gold.com

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Statements regarding Forward-Looking Information

This news release contains "forward-looking information" within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation. "Forward-looking information" includes, but is not limited to, statements with respect to the activities, events or developments that the Company expects or anticipates will or may occur in the future, including the completion and anticipated results of planned exploration activities, and plans to derive mineral resource estimates. Generally, but not always, forward-looking information and statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates", or "believes" or the negative connotation thereof or variations of such words and phrases or state that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved" or the negative connation thereof.

Such forward-looking information and statements are based on numerous assumptions, including among others, that the Company's planned exploration activities will be completed in a timely manner. Although the assumptions made by the Company in providing forward-looking information or making forward-looking statements are considered reasonable by management at the time, there can be no assurance that such assumptions will prove to be accurate.

There can be no assurance that such statements will prove to be accurate and actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from the Company's plans or expectations include risks relating to the actual results of current exploration activities; fluctuating gold prices; possibility of equipment breakdowns and delays; exploration cost overruns; risks associated with the interpretation of data regarding the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; the uncertainty of the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits and the risk of unexpected variations in any mineral resources, grade and/or recovery rates; availability of capital and financing; general economic, market or business conditions; regulatory changes; timeliness of government or regulatory approvals; and other risks detailed herein and from time to time in the filings made by the Company with securities regulators.

Although the Company has attempted to identify important factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in the forward-looking information or implied by forward-looking information, there may be other factors that cause results not to be as anticipated, estimated or intended. There can be no assurance that forward-looking information and statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated, estimated or intended. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements or information.

The Company 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 except as otherwise required by applicable securities legislation.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55933
Maduro: Guaido Hammered Out Venezuela Coup at the White House in February

Sputnik News

07:42 GMT 14.05.2020

President Maduro's accusations that the plan to overthrow him was hatched in the heart of American democracy are apparently based on the testimony of one mercenary who got arrested after a botched raid this month.

Opposition leader Juan Guaido had discussed a sea invasion in Venezuela during a visit to the White House, President Nicolas Maduro claimed in a televised speech on Wednesday.

"It was at the White House on 4 February of this year, 2020, where Juan Guaido met with Jordan Goudreau, head of [private security firm] Silvercorp, by order of Donald Trump to articulate the plan of attack," Maduro said.

He added that "it would be very easy to verify Goudreau's presence" at the White House between 2019 and 2020 and "in which room he met with Guaido".

Guaido, the US-backed self-declared leader of Venezuela, did visit Washington, DC on 4-5 February, where he even attended Donald Trump's State of the Union address. Trump welcomed him as Venezuela's "true and legitimate" leader and called Maduro a "tyrant", but there is no evidence so far that Maduro met Goudreau at the time.

The boat incursion

Venezuelan authorities this month thwarted an incursion of dozens of armed men on high-speed boats in the northern coastal state of La Guaira, code-named Operation Gideon. Eight of the raiders have been killed and at least 48 others, mostly Venezuelan army deserters, have been arrested.

Maduro's accusations appear to stem from the interrogation of one arrested dissident, Antonio Sequea, who testified that Jordan Goudreau had told the mercenaries about a White House meeting he had with Guaido. According to Sequea, the goal of the operation was to bring down the president and fly him to the United States, which offered a $15-million bounty for his capture.

Raiders' testimony

Among those arrested also were two US citizens, Luke Denman and Airan Berry. Denman, a Texas native, said in a video aired on Venezuelan TV that the contract for the operation had been signed by Juan Guaido. He did not bring up any meeting at the White House.

Denman also recounted that Goudreau, a US military veteran, was receiving orders directly from Donald Trump; the mercenary had expected to receive between $50,000 and $100,000 for his role in the incursion.

Goudreau stated that he was hired by Guaido and that the latter signed an 8-page "general services" contract with Silvercorp in October 2019. Guaido, who led another unsuccessful coup in April 2019, maintained that he was not involved in the incursion, although a copy of the $213-million contract shared with The Washington Post by the Venezuelan opposition appears to contain his signature.

Goudreau is said to have been investigated by US law enforcement officials, though it remains unclear whether any charges will be pressed against him since the Trump administration does not recognise Maduro's government. Donald Trump, who said last year that "all options" would be on the table to remove Maduro, denied responsibility in the raid.

 Sputnik

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National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien (R) speaks, flanked by US Attorney General William Barr, during the daily briefing on the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House on April 1, 2020, in Washington, DC. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)

US Will Not Be Intimidated by Chinese Regimes Bullying: National Security Adviser

White House national security adviser Robert OBrien warned on May 15 that the United States would not cave in to bullying attempts by the Chinese regime.

His remarks were in response to threats by Chinese state-run media that the regime would sanction U.S. lawmakers who have been critical of Beijings handling of the CCP virus outbreak.

The move shows that Chinas attempting to bully not just smaller countries, which is well known, but even the United States, OBrien said on the radio program The Hugh Hewitt Show.

The United States doesnt take well to that sort of diplomacy, he said. That wont go over well for the Chinese.

Hawkish Chinese state-run newspaper Global Times ran a report on May 14, citing analysts, that at least four U.S. Congress members, including Josh Hawley and Tom Cotton, and two entities will be placed on Chinas sanctions list.

The report later cites several bills introduced by Republican lawmakers, including Dan Crenshaw (Texas) and Rep. Chris Smith (N.J.), that would allow Americans to sue China over its role causing the pandemic. It also criticized the attorney-generals of Missouri and Mississippi who have filed lawsuits against the Chinese Communist Party.

OBrien said he believed the impact of any potential sanctions on those lawmakers are zero, quipping that, I dont think they were planning on vacationing in Wuhan anytime soon.

Theyre going to have the support and the admiration and the love of their fellow citizens, he added. Theres no question about it.

The lawmakers themselves have shrugged off the threats, some with humor.

Hawley, in a tweet reply to the Global Times article, said, China does this mean my site visit to the Wuhan lab is off?

Cotton was similarly unperturbed: Brb. Finding a new communist country with gross human rights abuses to do business in. Bonus points if they unleashed a global pandemic on the world, he wrote in a tweet.

Brb. Finding a new communist country with gross human rights abuses to do business in. Bonus points if they unleashed a global pandemic on the world. https://t.co/QJU5KKxhTC  Tom Cotton (@SenTomCotton) May 15, 2020

Crenshaw, in a tweet, responded: Were not intimidated. Were not backing down.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday announced details of second tranche of the Rs 20 lakh crore coronavirus economic package. It focussed on providing liquidity support to farmers, street vendors and food relief to migrant workers. There were also announcements made for affordable housing sector, Mudra-Shishu borrowers, and employment generation for tribals.

It also included Rs 30,000 crore Additional Emergency Working Capital Funding for farmers through NABARD for post-harvest (Rabi) and current Kharif crop requirements in May and June. This is over and above Rs 90,000 crore to be provided by NABARD through the normal refinance route during this year. It is expected to benefit around 3 crore farmers - mostly small and marginal ones who have inadequate financial resources. NABARD will extend this additional refinance support of Rs 30,000 crore for crop loan requirement of Rural Cooperative Banks and Regional Rural Banks (RRBs) which are the main source of credit. "Due to the COVID-19 crisis, NABARD might face difficulty in raising money from the market. So, on April 17, RBI has given a line of credit support to NABARD of Rs 25,000 crore at repo rate to refinance during this Kharif season. We expect RBI might give another Rs 30,000 crore liquidity support to NABARD to ease the stress and cost of borrowing," said a SBI's Ecowrap report.

Also read: Sops for migrant labourers and farmers are fine, but are they enough?

Now this announcement covers two aspects - one the rabi harvest and second, the beneficiaries (mostly small and marginal farmers) who are expected to avail this additional emergency fund.

Encouraged by high water levels in reservoirs and increased moisture content in soil due to delayed withdrawal of the southwest monsoon, farmers had increased the area under various rabi crops quite sharply. The acreage under rabi crops increased to 66 million hectares during the 2019/20 rabi season against the usual acreage of 62-64 million hectares. But as the saying goes 'Man proposes, God disposes'. Unseasonal rains in the last week of March had damaged part of the standing crop. On top of this, coronavirus lockdown was announced in the middle of harvesting and procurement season, impacting procurement activity. The CMIE has estimated 147.2 million tonnes of rabi food grain production during 2019/20, which is 2.3 per cent higher than 143.9 million tonnes that was produced during the previous rabi season. However, it is lower than the advance estimate of 149.6 million tonnes for 2019/20 released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers' Welfare in February 2020.

And now the beneficiaries: around 3 crore farmers, mostly small and marginal. The total number of small and marginal farmers in the country, as per Agriculture Census, 2015-16, was 12.6 crore, but this extra funding fails to cover even one-fourth of them. It's hard to ignore their dominance either, as these small and marginal holdings (0.00-2.00 hectare) cumulatively constitute 86.1 per cent of the total holdings in 2015-16 while their share in the operated area stood at 46.9 per cent. Moreover, banks share in outstanding loans of agricultural households is close to 43 per cent. As per the Situation Assessment Survey of Agricultural Households (NSS 70th Round), the share of institutional loans increases with increase in land possessed. For the agricultural households covered in the lowest size class of land possessed (less than 0.01 hectares), only about 15 per cent of the outstanding loans were from institutional sources (government, co-operative society, bank). The share was about 79 per cent for the households belonging to the highest size class of land possessed (more than 10 hectares).

Agricultural credit disbursement continues to be dominated by commercial banks (76 per cent) while the share of RRBs has remained constant at 12 per cent. Cooperative banks have gradually lost out to commercial banks and their share in credit flow has declined over the years to reach 12 per cent in 2018-19, as per NABARD's annual report 2018/19. At the aggregate level, banks have been able to achieve the sub-target of small and marginal farmers under priority sector lending, though a large proportion of small and marginal farmers have not been covered by scheduled commercial banks (SCBs). As per PSL Returns (2015-16), only 40.90 per cent of small and marginal farmers could be covered by SCBs.

Also read: Farmer loan disbursals in FY21 running woefully short of target

Approximately, 30 per cent of agricultural households still avail credit from non-institutional sources. RBI's Internal Working Group to review agricultural credit report pointed out that the probable reasons could be that their credit demand might be for consumption purposes or they could be tenant farmers, sharecroppers and landless labourers who are not able to offer collateral security to avail institutional credit, or they are involved in unviable subsistence agriculture, or banks don't find them credit worthy. As a result, these farmers find it convenient to borrow money from non-institutional sources due to easy accessibility.

The agricultural credit policies designed and implemented in India are mainly supply driven through targeted ground level credit, interest subvention scheme and directed lending by the way of regulatory prescription under Priority Sector Lending guidelines. "However, agricultural sector still faces challenges such as lack of capital formation, regional disparity, dependence of farmers especially small and marginal farmers, tenant farmers, landless labourers and share croppers on non-institutional sources of credit at significantly higher rates, non-realisation of the fair price for agricultural produce causing farmers' distress and farm loan waivers impacting credit culture and weakening state finances," the report added.
The Duke of Cambridge spoke to Imams and representatives from the Al-Noor and Linwood mosques about how their community is doing, 14 months on from the terrorist attacks in March 2019.
Aerosol boxes  clear plastic boxes with hand holes which are designed to protect doctors and nurses from coronavirus  have been hailed as life-savers and been rushed out to hundreds of hospitals around the world.

But a study led by a number of Melbourne doctors has found that instead of shielding medical staff from infectious droplets the devices could actually put them in more danger and threaten the lives of their critically ill patients.

Aerosol boxes have received plenty of glowing media coverage - but do they work? Associate Professor David Brewster and Dr Jonathan Begley demonstrate one of the devices. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Cabrini Hospitals deputy ICU director David Brewster said researchers set out to find whether the aerosol boxes could be helpful. Instead, they found they were unsafe.

Realistically, they shouldn't be used now, he said.
MEMOIR

We Cant Say We Didnt Know

Sophie McNeill

ABC Books, $34.99 We Cant Say We Didnt Know poses a direct challenge to any reader: do not stop reading, do not look away. TV journalist Sophie McNeill is blunt: our epoch is failing. Ubiquitous outrage will land on the latest celebrity gaffe while the great humanitarian disasters vanish into the bowels of our social media feed. McNeill demands more as she takes the reader through her work in the Middle East over the past decade. Sophie McNeill at a 2016 Houthi rally in Yemen. She hopes people will no longer look away from what's happening in other countries. Credit:Sophie McNeill The result is not pretty but how could it be? We visit the pulverised rubble of East Aleppo and the skeletal Yemeni population, the desperate refugees dreaming of Germany and the women fleeing the Saudi kingdom. The unnamed and silent throng behind the nightly news anchor are revealed. Their stories range from life under the relentless inconvenience and fickle legislation in Gaza to the Sarin gas attacks on children in Damascus. McNeills gaze is unwavering  locked on ordinary people at the depths of deprivation.

Geopolitical actors can be cynical to the point of psychopathic, as in the case of Russia and Syria, enacting systematic murder on a civilian population, then waging an information war to cover it up. Barack Obamas realpolitik manoeuvring, then Donald Trumps hamfisted and showy plays do little to alleviate suffering while the UN is bureaucratic, feckless and broken, undermined by Chinese and Russian veto power. McNeill does not spare Australia. Our distant but distinct role casts our leaders and government as either unable to grasp crises or attempting profit from them. Credit: The catalogue of desperate civilian suffering contrasts sharply with our meagre refugee policy. This posture relies on the average Australians loose grasp of the events McNeill has covered, the running subtext of her motivation to publish: Ignorance is no excuse and silence is akin to culpability. When heroes do emerge. they are regular people: the nurse saving lives with surgery learned on YouTube; the Damascus-based hacker ensuring a robust platform records events; the medical staff refusing to leave the ersatz operating theatre while Syrian president Bashar al-Assads bombers roar overhead.
Canada Beware the Steely Claws of the Chinese Regime

Commentary

The Calgary Zoo is sending Panda bears Er Shun and Da Mao, originally slated to remain through 2024, home to China. I say home because Pandas are never sold to zoos. China leases Pandas out in order to control their scarcity and to ensure China is the sole supplier of bamboo, Pandas principal source of energy (about 18 kg a day each).

Given the five-fold profit China stood to make on the recent deal to provide Canada with 130 million N95 masksthough failing to deliver mostI hate to think what that bamboo is costing the zoo.

Seems Im not alone in my anger at the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for taking advantage of Canadas vulnerability in a dire situation for which the CCP is largely responsible. A new Angus Reid poll tells us that Canadians views of China are in apparent freefall, with only 14 percent holding a favourable view of that country. Only 12 percent of us want closer trade ties with China; only 14 percent approve of telecom giant Huaweis involvement in Canadas 5G wireless network; and 75 percent prefer that human rights and the rule of law dominate our dealings with Xi Jinpings regime rather than economic interests. These numbers are a dramatic plunge from 2017, when 48 percent of Canadians held favourable views toward China.

Ordinary Canadians are beginning to comprehend the true nature of the CCP. They understand that our governments refusal to acknowledge the regimes ruthless self-interest and sprawling political ambitions as a threat to our national security is making us all victims of Beijings hostage diplomacy. Many of us can see that the tactics may have changed, but the ideology of communism is as implacable as ever in its existential drive for controland not just control of its near neighbours, as some wistful western China-watchers would like to believebut the West itself.

The virus of communism isnt new, but decades of sympathy with Marxism among tenured radicals whose students never learn the truth about communism (they are taught it was socialism in a hurry), have radically weakened our cultural antibodies to its pathogens. In the early Cold War with the Soviet Union, when Marxisms acolytes in the intelligentsia had not yet colonized the universities, the West was able to build up herd immunity to its evils. That disappeared in the next generation.

The West enjoyed certain advantages in the Cold War. Our economy was not dependent on supply chains controlled by Moscow, as we are now by Beijing. We didnt cooperate with the Soviets in scientific projects, as we do now with the CCP. The Soviets managed to steal some research secrets through espionage, but in bits and pieces. It was nothing like the wholesale dissolution of borders in data theft that China has been effecting for years.

The Soviets did manage to infiltrate the universities, unions, intelligence services, and even presidential circles in the United States, but it happened in spite of official opposition, not with the complicity of national leaders. The Joseph McCarthy saga stands out as a bridge too far in the outing of Soviet fellow travellers, but that didnt mean penetration wasnt a problem. Moreover, we were all terrified of the Bomb and believed that there were circumstances in which the Soviets might use it.

China has the Bomb too, but the CCP doesnt need to use it as a threat when there are so many other ways to conquer their perceived enemy. It helps when the designated enemy is so fearful of appearing racist that their leaders often walk on diplomatic eggs with the CCP.

CCP propaganda has apparently convinced many western governments, including Canada, that the regimes rise is inevitable and irresistible. Our government seems to fear economic punishment if we criticize harsh CCP actions in Hong Kong, or press too forcefully on the subject of imprisoned Canadian hostages Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor, or speak up for the persecuted Falun Gong and Ughyurs, or push back against Huaweis 5G demands.

But economic punishment is unlikely to happen. The United Kingdom, Norway, South Korea, Sweden, and Australia have all had spats with China in the last 10 years and all been threatened, but in each case exports to China continued to rise. Last year, China found a phony pretext to ban imports of our beef and pork to punish Canada for detaining Chinese telecom executive Meng Wanzhou on a U.S. arrest warrant. But lo, when China found itself in a food deficit, the ban was lifted.

In the Angus Reid poll cited above, when Canadians were asked whether they agree or disagree that the Chinese government has been transparent and honest about the COVID-19 situation in that country, a wide majority either disagreed or disagreed strongly. They are correct in their view. The evidence is in on the CCPs lack of transparency, to put it mildly. But our government is not acting in accordance with what they know.

Still, the poll was extremely embarrassing for Trudeau, and seemed like a nudge toward some gesture of self-respect. Last week, Canadas ambassador to China, Dominic Barton, surprisingly projected a tougher tone, calling for a rigorous review of the WHOs handling of the pandemic when the crisis is over. But when asked at his May 13 daily news briefing to elaborate, Trudeau undermined Bartons message: Its totally normal that we be asking questions about how different countries are behaving, including China, he said. Different countries? But China is the only country whose behaviour has been so calculatedly irresponsible as to cry out for formal investigation. In that one stroke, Trudeau assured the CCP the ambassadors stern tone was form, not essence.

The Mandarin Chinese word kowtow is universally understood as an act of deep respect demonstrated by prostration. It also spells out who is the boss of whom. In refusing to express displeasure with the CCPs handling of the coronavirus, as in so many other things, our leaders are kowtowing to the Party and acknowledging its hegemony.

Pandas look so cuddly its easy to forget they are still bears, with a bears steely claws. The details on just how penetrating and how deeply embedded CCP claws are in Canadas viscera can be found in veteran foreign correspondent and seasoned China hand Jonathan Manthorpes revelatory 2019 book, Claws of the Panda: Beijings Campaign of Influence and Intimidation in Canada. Depressing as it is, I urge Canadians to read it.

It doesnt matter how often or how low our leaders kowtow to appease the Panda. The Pandas appetite is never satiated. To the greedy CCP, Canada is nothing more than a vast unguarded forest of bamboo, theirs for the taking.

Barbara Kay has been a weekly columnist for the National Post since 2003, and also writes for other publications including thepostmillennial.com, Quillette, and The Dorchester Review. She is the author of three books.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
The main gateway to an important junction in the modern Silk road, Almaty Airport will be the 15th airport in TAVs global network.

A member of Groupe ADP, TAV Airports signed a share purchase agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Almaty Airport, together with its consortium partner VPE Capital. The agreement comprises the acquisition of the airport and associated businesses for 415 million USD. TAV Airports share in the consortium will be no less than 75% and the share transfers will take place upon closing with the completion of all legal prerequisites and procedures. Located in the southeast of the country and an important stop on the ancient Silk Road, today Almaty is a strategical junction along the One Belt One Road project, connecting China-Central to West Asia. Kazakhstan leads Central Asia in economic growth and generates roughly 60% of the regions GDP.

TAV Airports President&CEO Sani Sener said: Were happy to add Almaty Airport, which is a main transit hub between Asia and Europe, to our portfolio. Almaty is strategically located on the modern Silk Road, established from China to Europe and Africa through air transport. Kazakhstan is the largest country in the region -both geographically and economically- and Almaty is the largest city in the country controlling 20% of Kazakhstans GDP. We believe theres a significant potential for growth in Almaty Airport, and drawing upon our extensive know-how, well work towards realizing this potential to the fullest.

The base of the flag carrier Air Astana, Almaty Airport served 6.4 million passengers in 2019, with a 13% increase compared to the previous year. Bek Air, SCAT Airlines and Qazak Air also use Almaty as their base. In 2018 the airport served 58K cargo (70% of all cargo in Kazakhstan) with substantial increase potential.
The global tally for novel coronavirus infections surpassed 4.5 million Friday, according to US-based Johns Hopkins University.

The universitys running data shows that the global death toll from the virus has reached 304,835, with the number of recoveries exceeding 1.61 million.

The US remains the hardest-hit country by the pandemic with around 1.42 million diagnosed cases and 86,386 deaths.

It is followed by the UK with 34,077 fatalities and Italy with 31,610 deaths.

A total of 27,459 people in Spain have lost the battle against the virus, followed by France with 27,428 fatalities.

Meanwhile, Russia has the second-highest number of cases at nearly 263,000, followed by the UK, Spain, and Italy.

China, ground zero of the virus, has registered 84,031 cases so far and its death toll continues to stand at 4,637.

Overall, the virus has spread to 188 countries and regions.

Despite the rising number of cases, most people who contract the virus suffer mild symptoms before making a recovery.
A special train carrying 496



people from New Delhi arrived in Bhubaneswar on Friday, officials said.

Altogether 1,503 people boarded the train in New Delhi and the rest of the passengers got down at Bokaro, Jamshedpur, Hijli (Kharagpur), an East Coast Railway (ECoR) spokesperson said.

A number of people who bought tickets for the fully air-conditioned train did not turn up, he said.

The returnees were stamped with indelible ink mentioning the quarantine period on their right hand after arrival.

The 496 passengers who deboarded at Bhubaneswar underwent screening, officials said, adding that this was the first such train to arrive here from the national capital.

Security personnel were deployed to guide the passengers wile moving out of the platform, they said.

Among the passengers were children and a pregnant woman, officials said.

"Arrangements have been made for their onward journey, a senior railway official said.

State officials present at the railway station verified the particulars of the returnees as all of them are required to remain in home quarantine.

Several buses and app-based cabs were also arranged for the returnees to take them to their respective destinations.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A home that was the studio of an exiled Soviet artist, the residence of college presidents, and a home for boys is on the market for the first time in more than three decades.

Built in 1869, the Victorian home on Route 9H in Claverack, NY, is for sale for $1.7 million. To call it a fixer-upper is a bit of an understatement.

It's basically a bunker. I mean, even in the interior, walls are brick, so the structure is quite sound, says the listing agent, Alan Weaver.

It's quite a sound building, but it is a shellthere's no kitchen and no bathrooms. It's 7,300 square feet of basically raw space.

Weaver estimates that a full restoration will run about a million dollars.

The seller is Mihail Chemiakin, a famous Russian artist who at one time was subjected to mandatory psychiatric treatment because his ideals and artwork did not conform to those of the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government exiled him in 1971, and he went to Paris. Eventually, he moved to New York and bought this home in 1987.

Interior Alan Weaver

During restoration work on the home, the attic and roof caught fire.

It basically destroyed the interior, because the roof collapsed onto the second floor, Weaver explains.

The building has a new roof, he says, but the area that was the turret has a hole in it, the homes only major structural problem.

Fire damage Alan Weaver

Chemiakin used the lower floors of the main house as his studio. He lived from 1998 until 2008 in a separate building on the property, once an auditorium, and then he moved to France.

A total of six structures lie on the 12-acre property, including four houses.

Multiple structures Alan Weaver

While living on the property, Chermiakin created works in a variety of media. They can be seen all over the world, including inside Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg, in New Yorks SoHo, in Venice, and in Moscow.

Many supplies, sculptures, and other works are still in the home, but are not part of the sale.

Sculptures Alan Weaver

It all gets packed up and shipped to France, Weaver says.

The agent told us there arent many interior photos of the main home, because it's dotted with pieces of unpublished artwork, and Chermiakin wouldnt allow Weaver to take any photos that would become public.

Everyone who wants to see the house wants it with the artwork, but no," he explains. "There is one mural on the property that he did that will stay at the property, but not all of the sculptures.

Several large sculptures on the property will wind up in France, but the area would make a great art walk for the new buyer, Weaver suggested.

In the 1990s, the artist began visiting Russia again and exhibiting his art and working in theaters there.

The auditorium on the property was once used for activities for the boys' boarding school and is in pretty good condition, Weaver says. The outdoor patio on the auditorium contains several artistic and architectural elements that are part of the sale.

Auditorium Alan Weaver

Auditorium patio Alan Weaver

The main house is the only building that remains of Claverack College, a school that operated from 1779 until it closed in 1902. After that, the building served as a home for boys, an orphanage known as the Lulu Thorley Lyons Home, as well as a summer retreat for disabled children.

Historic postcard of the main building realtor.com

The home is on a main road, but is nevertheless secluded.

Youre right in the hamlet of Claverack, which is an historic little hamlet," Weaver says. "Theres really nothing theretheres a post office and a gas station.

He notes that the location, which offers views of the Catskill Mountains, is about 15 minutes from the town of Hudson, NY, and two hours from New York City.

Weaver says that many people have looked at the property with the idea of developing it.

Its a challenge, because all the buildings need work in some form or another," he says.

"It is a daunting task, and I'm not going to say it'll be easy, but I think it would be worth it for someone that has a vision to do something with the property. It's well worth the investment.

Door Alan Weaver

Additional structures Alan Weaver

Additional structure Alan Weaver

Stairway Alan Weaver

The post New York Spread of Exiled Soviet Artist Is for SaleSculptures Not Included appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com.
After biting his tongue for a week, San Antonio Food Bank President Eric Cooper added his voice Friday to the growing chorus of criticism of the U.S. Department of Agricultures decision to award multimillion-dollar food distribution contracts to companies with little to no experience in the industry.

We are having to teach them our business to meet our needs when its not my job to make them profitable, said Cooper, referring to San Antonio-based CRE8AD8 LLC.

The event management company is owned by Gregorio Palomino, who received a $39.1 million deal to participate in the USDAs $1.2 billion Farmers to Families Food Box program.

Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdues out of the box program has commercial distributors buying dairy, meat and produce thats in huge surplus because restaurants, hotels and schools across the country were forced to close by the coronavirus pandemic. After the food is secured, it then needs to be packaged into family-size boxes for distribution to food banks and other nonprofits to be picked up by those in need.

The trouble is, CRE8AD8 has never done this.

Most of the food is perishable and requires refrigerated space for storage and refrigerated trucks for transportation from the farms to the warehouses and from the warehouses to the food banks.

Now Playing: See the viral video of San Antonio's Food Bank that changed the narrative of the coronavirus pandemic. Video: Kin Man Hui San Antonio Express News, William Luther San Antonio Express News, Michel Fortier

For Palomino, that mean acquiring and handling more than 1 million pounds of food. To be packed in 750,000 individual boxes that will need to be kept cold. Transported over hundreds of miles of highway, maybe thousands, if its sent as far as Arizona and Utah, which are included in his seven-state contract. And it all has to be done by June 30.

Its going to be a steep learning curve.

This doesnt set well with Cooper, whos essentially having to train Palomino while Cooper and his staff already are under high pressure with double the usual number of people seeking help from the Food Bank.

Standing in an Alamodome parking lot Friday, where the Food Bank had just delivered supplies to 1,482 households during its latest mass distribution, Cooper questioned the wisdom of going with novices like CRE8AD8 and rejecting so many experienced food distributors, including San Antonios River City Produce.

On ExpressNews.com: Industry experts slam USDA for awarding contracts to inexperienced companies

Other inexperienced companies that received contracts included Yegg Inc., a California firm that offers business finance solutions.

Coopers comments echoed those of food industry advocates and nonprofit leaders who publicly groused about the contracts earlier this week.

The USDA extended a contract to an underdog, someone they are betting on might be able to pull this off, rather than an industry standard, Cooper said of CRE8AD8. And I am OK with working with anyone that can provide us food. But that gamble sometimes is too great when it comes to feeding families.

Bet on the Spurs, dont bet on the New York Knicks, right? If you are going to gamble in Vegas, at least do some research.

For his part, Palomino has sought to ease concerns.

Our values align with the San Antonio Food Bank. Thats food safety, food handling and helping families, this is our priority, too, he said. Our goal is to source from local and regional, small minority farmers and suppliers, and work closely with partners such as the San Antonio Food Bank.

Some may look at this as a gamble, and to that I say  were all-in.

He pointed out he has partnered with Iverson Brownell, a certified executive chef whos an experienced San Antonio caterer, on fulfilling the contract.

Brownell, he said, is leading our efforts in distributing the food boxes.

Brownell has extensive experience in the food industry, Palomino said, from food preparation at the Sundance Film Festival to his work at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece.

The USDA didnt respond to a request for comment on Coopers concerns.

On ExpressNews.com: San Antonio Food Bank pins hopes on new USDA food box program

Cooper has his doubts about whether CRE8AD8 and other newcomers to food distribution can pull it off.

Industry experts like H-E-B havent seen disruptions in the supply chain like this in forever, so for an underdog to be fighting in that environment, Im hugely skeptical, said Cooper, who had kept his concerns in check until Friday.

Cooper has led the Food Bank for 20 years. Hes also worked at food banks in Utah and Dallas during his 25-year career in the industry.

Even a savvy veteran like Cooper is struggling with logistics during the pandemic.

I tried to get forklifts rented. I tried to get vehicles rented. I am in the industry, and I cant get it done, he said.

As of Friday, Palomino still lacked the required government license to operate a produce company.

According to a USDA spokesperson, bidders for the food box program contracts must have or acquire a PACA license, which the USDA says on its website is proof to your customers and suppliers that you are a serious business person who can be trusted to honor the terms of your contracts.

Palomino said he is working on getting the license.

There is a lot at stake here, Cooper said. Its important people understand the families in these lines are counting on us. They are counting on the volunteers to show up. They are counting on other San Antonians to support this mission. The city, the Alamodome, the police, they are all here to make sure it works, that people get fed.

Palomino said he wants the same thing.

We won this award based on our ability to quickly execute this program, both safely and effectively, from farmers to trunks, essentially, he said, referring to contactless food distribution events where volunteers put food items in the trunks of vehicles waiting in line. The USDA recognized our ability to execute their initiatives, and we accept their confidence.

Cooper said he hopes the USDA decides against doing a second phase for the food box program.

Keep those dollars for feeding families and helping agriculture, but do it with a more proven program like SNAP, he said, referring to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.
Gerbers 2020 Spokesbaby Makes History As the First Adopted Tot Ever Chosen

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In a presentation at the Book Manufacturers Institutes Spring Management Conference delivered via videoconference, analysts were optimistic about the recovery of the printing sector and the overall economy despite the severe impact of the pandemic and subsequent lockdown.

BMI executive director Matt Baehr presided over the video conference call which attracted about 44 participants. In an online presentation analysts David Wilaz and Ron Davis reported that over the last 30 days, the printing sector has taken a substantial hit. Overall printing is down about 50%, except for package printing, down only about 15% due to the rising demand for all kinds of nonbook products. And of course, millions of American jobs have been lost, including about 1.3 million manufacturing jobs.

Early in the year, things were looking great, according to Wilaz. As fears of the pandemic began to grow in the U.S. in early March, he said book sales in certain categories spiked upwards, driving sales in childrens nonfiction, games and activities, and medical history.

Both analysts were optimistic about the possibility of a fairly quick revival of both the printing sector and economy overall. They foresee a short-term downturn of about 10 months and a return to positive growth hopefully by early next year. Davis said the current downturn is not structural like 2009. We think there will be jobs to return to on this one, Davis said.

He said that the relief offered by the stimulus package along with pent up demand from consumers chafing under the lockdown will drive recovery. Wilaz cited a Washington Post survey of workers laid off or furloughed due to the pandemic, in which 77% of respondents said they expected to return to work when the economy reopened.

Davis expects a return to growth in printing in the books category as well as in packaging, labels and wrappers. He described books as one of the better sectors during the pandemic.

Both analysts were unclear about the pandemics impact on individual workers on factory floors, and it was unclear how plants were dealing with social distancing directives. They noted that different states had differing criteria for reopening, although they cited reports about the use of glass barriers and Covid-19 testing in workplaces where testing is available.

Kent Larson of Bridgeport National Bindery in Massachusetts, said his workplace was up and running, now redesigned for safety around social distancing. Workers, he said, are allowed to opt-out if they are concerned about coming into work. BNB workers, he said, use masks and gloves on the work floor in addition to social distancing. He also said it was important for plants to be more concerned about human values than just business. He said BNB was operating as close to business as usual as is possible while trying to be safe.

Looking down the road toward reopening the economy, both analysts cautioned manufacturers to monitor the virus infection rates as states ease up the lockdown. They also took note of the continuing shortage of Covid-19 testing, and pointed out the troubled financial state of the Postal Service.

While the analysts acknowledged that "challenges remain" and that there will be "shakeouts and mergers and we'll lose some firms," they expect the beginnings of a rebound by the end of the year. Davis encouraged manufacturers to stay positive about your family, your employees and your own health. Use the forced downtime, he said, to rethink your business models. There will be new waves of opportunity, print processes and new efficiencies, he said. There will be new ways to utilize employees, new ways to cut cost, and new ways to increase sales. The U.S. still has the strongest, most viable economy and political system in the world. In the end, we will persevere.
Isabella Carlstrom has spoken candidly about her pregnancy as she prepares to welcome her first child with retired AFLW star Moana Hope.

The pregnant model, who is due to give birth in November, revealed on Thursday she was starting to feel better after a difficult first trimester.

'I honestly felt like I was dying in that first trimester. It is another level of exhaustion that I've never experienced before,' she said in an Instagram Q&A.

'Another level of exhaustion': Isabella Carlstrom (left) has spoken openly about her pregnancy as she prepares to welcome her first child with retired AFLW star Moana Hope (right)

'The other thing that I really suffered from badly was migraines. I just got hammered with them. I got three in a week and it was just so bad,' she added.

Isabella explained that her body had gone through many changes in recent months.

She said: 'As soon as I got pregnant, my breasts started getting bigger and I wasn't really up for working.

'And also due to COVID-19, it wasn't really safe for me to be in contact with people so I've really just been at home which has been nice for how I've been feeling, but I have so much respect for women who work through it.'

'I really suffered badly from migraines': The model revealed in an Instagram Q&A on Thursday she was starting to feel better after a difficult first trimester

Isabella announced on Wednesday she was expecting a child with wife Moana.

She shared a photo of the couple to Instagram and wrote: 'It's time to be mummas! We feel so incredibly grateful to be able to share this news. I am pregnant and Mo and I are expecting our little one in November.

'It's been a beautiful journey and I can't believe we're finally at this point. It wouldn't have been possible without the amazing team at Monash IVF, so a huge thank you to them. I'm so excited to raise our child with you, beautiful.'

Congratulations! Isabella announced on Wednesday she was expecting a baby with wife Moana, who used to play for Collingwood and North Melbourne in the AFL Women's league

The former Collingwood and North Melbourne AFLW player also shared the exciting news on her own Instagram account.

'I don't yet have the words to fully explain how happy we are. It's a dream come true for us and in November we get to meet our little person,' Moana told her followers.

'You have helped make this dream a reality. Holding this in for 13 weeks has been so bloody hard. My heart is exploding.'

Growing family: 'It's time to be mummas! We feel so incredibly grateful to be able to share this news,' she told her Instagram followers

The couple married in Melbourne last August, 10 months after Isabella proposed.

In March this year, Moana revealed that their first 'couple of' rounds of IVF had not been successful.

'It is completely normal. We reset after every time we give it a go and then we try again,' she said at the time.

'I think that if you let what is going on [with COVID-19] get to you I think mentally you are already putting yourself in a bad, negative place. We are staying positive.'
ARLINGTON, Va., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Join NESTLE TOLL HOUSE in celebrating National Chocolate Chip Day the NESTLE TOLL HOUSE way  by bringing people together to make fun memories in the kitchen!

From social media challenges to virtual happy hours, one thing is clear: America's creativity has switched into overdrive as we're all on the look for out-of-the-box ways to connect during social distancing. NESTLE TOLL HOUSE is ready to help satisfy America's creative appetite with the "Remix the Original Contest," a friendly (and delicious) baking idea competition featuring the original NESTLE TOLL HOUSE morsels.

Starting today, National Chocolate Chip Day, NESTLE TOLL HOUSE is looking for the most original and creative bakes, treats, and snacks America can offer  literally any delicious idea using NESTLE TOLL HOUSE morsels is fair game  to compete in a bracket-style tournament. One grand prize winner will be determined through several rounds of consumer voting. Chocolate Chip Brownie Hummus? Chocolate Bacon Praline? Dessert Lasagna? Nothing is off limits, as long as it includes delicious NESTLE TOLL HOUSE morsels.

Join the competition on Instagram. It's easy to enter!

Follow @nestletollhouse on Instagram

Look for our contest announcement post

Like that post, tag a friend and share your most creative recipe idea in a single comment that starts with "My contest entry:"

NESTLE TOLL HOUSE will look at each valid entry and select eight ideas to compete in the Remix the Original Contest bracket

For the creative bakers and recipe idealists who earn a spot in the Remix the Original Contest bracket  there's a lot on the line. The winning entry will receive a prize box from NESTLE TOLL HOUSE with a year's supply of morsels, baking gadgets, and major bragging rights. The winning concept will also be developed into a recipe by the NESTLE TOLL HOUSE Head Pastry Chef and featured on the NESTLE TOLL HOUSE website, www.VeryBestBaking.com! If you can dream it and it gets the votes, NESTLE TOLL HOUSE can make it.

The contest will be open for submissions starting at 10:00 a.m. EST on National Chocolate Chip Day, May 15, and will remain open until May 20 at 11:59 p.m. EST.

NESTLE TOLL HOUSE will share the tournament bracket on May 26, 2020. Join the fun and vote for your favorite recipe ideas via NESTLE TOLL HOUSE's Instagram stories. Public voting will remain open until May 28. Check back on June 1 to see the grand prize winner!

About NESTLE TOLL HOUSE

NESTLE TOLL HOUSE, a brand that America trusts, has delivered high-quality products for 80 years. With a variety of morsels, refrigerated cookie doughs and ready-to-eat edible cookie doughs, NESTLE TOLL HOUSE has created opportunities for families and friends to make memories together in the kitchen. Want to stay on top of all the latest NESTLE Toll House news and recipes? Sign up for our emails and get NESTLE Toll House recipes.

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. Open to legal residents of the 50 United States and DC, 18 years of age or older. Begins at 10:00:01 a.m. ET on 5/15/2020 and ends at 11:59:59 p.m. ET on 5/20/20. Official Rules. Void where prohibited. Sponsor: Nestle USA, Inc.

SOURCE Nestle USA
A bitter legal fight over almost $500,000 in old bank notes found in a construction site has taken a turn after it was revealed the money was wrapped in Chinese newspapers.

Excavator operator Warren Bruggy and labourer Daniel Boyd found the cash in October last year while working in the Gold Coast and immediately handed it in to police.

Despite their honesty the pair were suddenly sacked by their boss - who is also claiming the money under ancient 'finders keepers' laws.

Joining them in the complicated legal stoush is the landowner and developer, and a man who claims his father Stephen Ma buried it to avoid paying tax.

A bitter legal fight over almost $500,000 in old bank notes found in a construction site has taken a turn after it was revealed the money was wrapped in Chinese newspapers

Excavator operator Warren Bruggy and labourer Daniel Boyd found the cash in October last year while working in the Gold Coast and immediately handed it in to police

They money was found wrapped in a black plastic bag inside a plastic container

According to Supreme Court documents Peter Chan, Stephen Ma's brother-in-law who used to own the property, has claimed in 1993 he once saw Mr Ma bundle $50 and $100 notes into a black plastic bags.

He also claimed Mr Ma asked him to keep the bundles of cash at his house but refused, 9news reported.

'He didn't want to deposit it into a bank account to avoid taxation,' Mr Chan told police.

In his affidavit, he also claimed Mr Ma's home was filled with Chinese newspapers which were circled and marked in various places in pen for seemingly no reason.

Morrison Construction Services claimed the money could not have been Mr Ma's as he 'lacked the capacity and ability to have earned an amount of money as large as $476,630'.

The group alleged Mr Ma 'threw away, and therefore abandoned, the cash found at the property'.

A bitter legal fight has erupted over almost $500,000 in old bank notes found in a construction site by two tradies

The men who initially found the cash claimed the owner 'disclaimed possession of those items removed during excavation'.

While bitter legal is ongoing, Christine Smyth, a leading lawyer specialising in inheritance, wills and estates, has warned none of the claimants could end up with the cash.

She said if the court came to the conclusion that none of those people were entitled to the money, it would go to the Queensland state government or into general revenue for the Federal Government.
After months of speculation about whether President Donald Trump would pardon his former national security adviser Michael Flynn, the Justice Department relieved the president of that responsibility by deciding to abandon its prosecution. The government has filed a motion to dismiss the charges against Flynn, and Judge Emmet Sullivan must now decide whether to grant that motion. Sullivan raised eyebrows earlier this week by ruling that he will accept amicus briefswritten arguments by third partieson the matter. That ruling was prompted by a group of former Watergate prosecutors, who had asked his permission to file a brief arguing against the governments motion to dismiss the charges. In addition to accepting these briefs, Sullivan appointed former federal Judge John Gleeson to argue against the governments motion and to explore whether Flynn has opened himself up to perjury charges since asking to withdraw his guilty plea.

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Sullivans decision has prompted some serious backlash among conservatives, with some calling his decision politically motivated and others stating that he acted unethically. Flynns lawyers have objected to allowing amicus briefs on the governments motion, saying that allowing those briefs to be filed violates the U.S. Constitutions separation of powers. None of these arguments is convincing.

First, Sullivans decision is not unethical. Judicial ethics rules do not prohibit judges from hearing legal arguments from people who are not parties to a case. Nor does it matter that Sullivan had previously rejected motions by third parties to file briefs in this case. Because the defense and the prosecution are both trying to get the case dismissed, neither of them will let Sullivan know the weaknesses of each others arguments. And so amicus briefs will be more helpful to Sullivan than they were before, when he was receiving briefs on opposing sides of issues.

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Second, allowing amicus briefs does not violate the separation of powers. Amicus briefs are incredibly common in the appellate courts, and while they may be less common in the federal trial courts, they are hardly unheard-of. The U.S. Supreme Court routinely appoints lawyers to argue in place of the prosecution when the government refuses to defend a conviction or a sentence on appeal. Sometimes those appointed lawyers even win. The weakness of the separation of powers argument is underscored by the fact that Flynns lawyers cite only a lone dissent from Justice Antonin Scalia, rather than an actual Supreme Court decision, in support of their constitutional claim. (They oddly claim that Scalias dissent has won the day even though no subsequent Supreme Court decision has adopted it.)

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Third, it is far from clear that Sullivan is motivated by politics. When he discovered that federal prosecutors improperly withheld evidence in the corruption trial of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens, he was incredibly outspoken in his criticism of the Justice Department. He even went so far as to appoint a private lawyer to investigate and recommend whether any of the federal prosecutors should be punished for criminal contempt. When Sullivan ordered that investigation, President Barack Obama was in office and Eric Holder was the attorney general. That suggests Sullivan is more likely motivated by distrust of federal prosecutors than by politics.

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While the arguments against Sullivans decision to allow amicus briefs are pretty silly, whether he canor shoulddeny the governments motion is not clear. Ordinarily, judges will not stand in the way of a prosecutor who decides to dismiss criminal charges against a defendant rather than take a case to trial. That is because the decision whether to prosecute an individual is a core executive power. But Flynns case progressed further than just prosecution: He had already pleaded guilty and was awaiting sentencing. In other words, his case had reached the point where judicial power was needed, not just executive power.

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Prosecutors have the power to negotiate guilty pleas with criminal defendants, and federal judges arent involved in that process. But once it comes time for the defendant to actually plead guilty, the judges participation is necessary. A judge has to accept a defendants plea in order for the conviction to be valid, and she can do that only after making sure that the defendants decision to plead guilty is voluntary and that there are facts to support the conviction. Judges almost always accept plea bargains, but they do sometimes reject them.

Prosecutors will sometimes ask a judge to dismiss charges even after a defendant has been convicted. In some situations, the judge must grant the motion, even if she doesnt agree with it. But it isnt clear whether the Flynn prosecution is one of those situations, or whether Sullivan has the authority to reject the governments motion. That legal question will doubtlessly be explored in the amicus briefs Sullivan receives.

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Ordinarily, a prosecutors effort to overturn a conviction is a sign that the prosecutor takes her role as a minister of justice seriously. For example, earlier this week Rachael Rollins, the district attorney in Boston, asked the Massachusetts Supreme Court to vacate the convictions of dozens of people who pleaded guilty to drug charges. Laboratory tests conducted after the defendants were convicted showed that the substances they possessed werent actually illegal drugs, and so Rollins has asked that the convictions be set aside because these people are actually innocent.

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As the Rollins example illustrates, a prosecutors effort to undo a conviction is ordinarily something to celebrate. We should want prosecutors to revisit old cases when new information comes to light, and we should want them to help erase convictions when that information suggests that a defendant is innocent. That is what the Justice Department says it is doing in Flynns case. The motion to dismiss Flynns charges says that the Justice Department conducted a review of all the facts and circumstances of the case and that the Department no longer believes that the Government can prove either the relevant false statements or their materiality beyond a reasonable doubt.

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But the new information in Flynns case doesnt prove his innocence the way the drug tests proved the innocence of the Boston defendants. He lied to the FBI, which is a crime. Although Flynn now says that he is innocent, he admitted that he lied to the FBItwiceunder oath, in open court. And Sullivan had already ruled on the materiality question as well. In light of this, it is hard to understand how the Justice Department can now claim that it doesnt think it can prove its case; it already proved it. And while the new information that has been uncovered may make the FBI look bad, it doesnt include any information suggesting that Flynn is factually innocent.

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Nor do the Justice Departments actions seem to be about trying to right an injustice. Some of the tactics that were used against Flynn are distasteful: Law enforcement didnt tell Flynn he should speak to a lawyer before his interview with the FBI. And prosecutors had enormous leverage to pressure Flynn to plead guilty, including possible criminal charges against his son. But the tactics that law enforcement used when interviewing, charging, and negotiating a plea bargain with Flynn are indistinguishable from actions that are taken every day in federal criminal prosecutions. Attorney General Bill Barr hasnt appointed anyone to review any of those other cases. He hasnt questioned the motives that prompted any other convictions for lying to federal officials. And his office hasnt sought to reverse any of those convictions.

It would be great to see all defendants given more protection, subject law enforcement to more scrutiny, and revisit the wisdom of prior convictions whenever defendants say they didnt actually commit a crime. But only Michael Flynn is getting this special treatment. The Justice Department should not have one set of procedures for friends and allies of the president and another set of procedures for everyone else. Thats not justiceits injustice.
Libya rebels attack Tripoli's main hospital

Iran Press TV

Thursday, 14 May 2020 10:07 AM

Libyan rebels loyal to military strongman Khalifa Haftar have struck the main hospital of the capital, Tripoli, the Libyan army says.

According to a statement carried by Turkey's state Anadolu news agency, the Libyan Army said that the rebels launched a rocket attack on Tripoli Central Hospital and some civilian settlements on Thursday morning.

Libya's Health Ministry said in a separate statement that at least 14 civilians had been wounded in the attack, warning that the hospital would not be able to offer services due to the attack.

The ministry said that posed a major threat to the battle against the COVID-19 pandemic, which as of Thursday had infected 64 people and claimed the lives of three others in Libya.

The rebels, however, denied attacking the hospital.

According to the United Nations (UN), seven health centers in Libya have been struck a dozen times since the beginning of this year.

Since 2014, two rival seats of power have emerged in Libya, namely the internationally-recognized government of Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj, and another group based in the eastern city of Tobruk, supported militarily by Haftar's rebels.

The strongman, who is primarily supported by the United Arab Emirate (UAE), Egypt, and Jordan, launched a deadly offensive to capture Tripoli, the seat of the government, in April last year. His forces have been bogged down on the city's outskirts.

Government forces recently liberated several towns that had been occupied by the rebels in the northwest. Haftar's rebels have been intensifying a pushback by escalating attacks on the capital.

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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 10:31:51|Editor: huaxia

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HANOI, April 15 (Xinhua) -- Vietnam's Ministry of Health on Friday morning confirmed 24 new cases of COVID-19 infection, bringing the total in the country to 312, with no deaths reported.

The 24 new patients, aging from 24 to 48, were on a same flight from Russia to Vietnam on Wednesday, said the ministry, noting that they are now treated in the northern provinces of Thai Binh and Quang Ninh.

Vietnam has 131 suspected cases with over 12,000 being monitored and quarantined, while 260 had totally recovered from the COVID-19 as of Friday morning, according to the Ministry of Health. Enditem
Staff file photo

The Friday night scene at some San Antonio bars may look like the normal start of the weekend, but the public will not be allowed in.

A few local bars will turn on lights, blare music, remove boards from their windows and invite employees inside as part of a social media campaign to show solidarity. The Texas Bar and Nightclub Alliance launched the "Turn Up the Lights" campaign to let patrons know their bars will be ready to serve them when the time comes, according to a news release. The event was also designed to raise awareness that their businesses "can no longer sustain" under the closures.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 20:51:21|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China has always been active and open to share the pathogenic microorganism strain of novel coronavirus within the framework of the World Health Organization (WHO) to promote the development of vaccines, test kits and medicines, said a Chinese health official Friday.

"China has no conservation and hesitation in sharing the COVID-19-related information," said Zeng Yixin, deputy head of China's National Health Commission (NHC) at a press conference held in Beijing Friday.

China has made prompt, sufficient and frequent communications with the United States between health officials, CDC directors and experts to combat the pandemic, Zeng said.

Rebuking U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo's allegations on China's handling of virus samples, Liu Dengfeng, an NHC official told the press conference that Pompeo's claims were an interpretation without context.

China has shared many influenza virus strains of high pathogenicity to countries including the United States, Japan, Canada, and Russia under the WHO framework to prevent global flu pandemic in recent years, Liu said.

The NHC immediately initiated relating research after the epidemic occurred and made the identification of the pathogen its primary task facing a pneumonia outbreak of unknown cause, Liu said.

"We kept high alert to the virus in such a case, and issued clear requirements on the collection, transportation, experimental use and destruction of the pathogen based on experts' opinions to prevent the virus samples from being leaked and ensure biosecurity," Liu said.

The NHC released a guideline on Jan. 3 to prevent biohazards caused by an unknown virus in laboratories based on the law on prevention and control of infectious diseases and other regulations, Liu noted.

The NHC also issued a directive to further strengthen biosafety management in laboratories as part of the measures to combat the epidemic, Liu said, stressing that the virus samples should be destroyed or transferred to professional preservation institutions if the laboratories do not meet biosafety standards to keep the samples according to Chinese laws and regulations. Enditem
Voter registrations are also up over 2008, Fajman said. In 2008 there were about 285,000 registered voters in Lake County, which at the time had a population of about 494,954. This year there are about 360,000 registered voters in Lake County, despite a decrease in population, which is now at about 484,766.
YEREVAN, MAY 15, ARMENPRESS. Armenian foreign minister Zohrab Mnatsakanyan held a telephone conversation on May 14 with the United Arab Emirates minister of foreign affairs and international cooperation Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Armenian MFA told Armenpress.

The Armenian FM congratulated his UAE counterpart on Ramadan, wishing success and good health, and lasting peace, welfare to the good people of the United Arab Emirates.

The ministers discussed the problems caused by the novel coronavirus and the national and international actions taken to eliminate the socio-economic consequences of the virus. Introducing the steps taken by the Armenian government, as well as the programs, the FM thanked the UAE government for the humanitarian aid provided to Armenia to tackle the spread of coronavirus.

The officials praised the traditional relations, political dialogue and the visible dynamics of cooperation between the sides in trade and other areas, reaffirming their mutual readiness to continue the steps aimed at deepening and enriching the bilateral agenda.

The Armenian and UAE FMs also touched upon the situation in the region and the steps to deepen the cooperation on issues of mutual interest.

During the phone talk the ministers also discussed a number of issues of the international agenda.

Editing and Translating by Aneta Harutyunyan
Some regions of New York state can begin reopening Friday, but that doesnt mean life is returning to normal yet.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Thursday that Central New York can join four other regions  the Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, North Country and Southern Tier  in phase one of the states Un-PAUSE plan. The first phase includes resuming construction, manufacturing, curbside retail and some other businesses, but social distancing and other public health rules still apply to slow the spread of coronavirus.

Phased opening does not mean the problem has gone away," Cuomo said in Syracuse on Thursday. It means we have controlled the problem because of what we did and because of our individual responsibility and individual actions and that has to be maintained and I would urge local governments to be diligent about the business compliance and about individual compliance.

Those compliances, officially extended through May 28, include a ban on all non-essential gatherings of individuals of any size for any reason (e.g. parties, celebrations, games, meetings or other social events).

But after two months of staying at home, many are still wondering: When can I visit family? Have a birthday party for grandma? Let children play with other kids in the neighborhood?

Cuomo hasnt answered those specific questions, but has emphasized patience and safety.

Just be cautious, be diligent. Wear a mask, wear gloves, stay away from gatherings  I know theyre inconvenient, but God forbid, you know, just God forbid," the New York governor said Thursday. "Ive talked to too many families whove lost people. Ive talked to too many people whove lost people who were not supposed to be lost to this virus.

Onondaga County Executive Ryan McMahon has similarly urged caution amid Covid-19 risks.

We need to be smart, McMahon said Thursday after Cuomo confirmed CNY could begin phase one of reopening. Were going to be a little more together now and theres going to be more contact, so lets not take the success we have had as community for granted."

Under phase one, non-essential travel is still restricted, and practicing social distancing and wearing face masks in public are also still required. People are encouraged to wash hands and practice good general hygiene.

As of Thursday, more than 343,000 cases of Covid-19 and 22,170 related deaths have been confirmed in New York state. Hospitalizations, intubations and deaths have declined statewide for weeks since the virus peaked in April.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

Study: Social distancing slows coronavirus spread, but doesnt stop it

CNY will restart business Friday amid questions about some of the details

CDC releases guidelines for reopening schools, childcare, camps, bars, restaurants

In-store pickup allowed in NYs Phase 1 reopenings: What does it mean?
Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today chaired a consultation devoted to the strategic development of agriculture, as reported the news service of the Government of Armenia.

In this context, specialists of the Central Bank presented the project for the establishment of an investment fund in the agriculture sector and the goals of the project, as well as the actions for introducing the mechanisms for development of the sector. The project proposes measures for development of agriculture, including the foundation of an agricultural technologies park under the principle of the public-private partnership.

The Central Banks representatives also touched upon the process of granting agricultural loans and reported that, as of March 2020, compared with the same period in 2019, the volume of loans has grown by 20.3%, and in April 2020  by 4.6%, compared with early 2020.

Summing up the consultation, Prime Minister Pashinyan assigned to present a roadmap for establishment of the mentioned fund that will describe the goals and potential outcomes of the fund in more detail. The governments goal is to make agriculture profitable and export-oriented, he said, attaching importance to the organizing of discussions with farmers who have made achievements in the sector.
Radhika Batra, a Delhi-based doctor engaged in manufacturing personal protection equipment to deal with coronavirus in India, Kenya and Nigeria, is one of five recipients of funding by a global forum of young leaders called One Young World.

Partnering with the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation and United Way to launch Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund, the organisers said on Friday that the fund is supported by Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Emma Watson, among others.

Batra founded non-profit organisation Every Infant Matters, which in response to the pandemic is leveraging its network of partners to provide resources to at-risk people in India and Kenya, with plans to expand operations to Nigeria, the fund organisers said.

In India, the organisation provides protective materials (e.g. hand sanitisers, face shields, gloves, N-95 masks) to frontline personnel, including doctors, nurses, and hospital workers such as housekeeping and sanitary staff, ambulance drivers, and security guards.

Each project is allocated between 5,000 and 10,000 dependent on what is enough to ensure they are able to carry out their services, the organisers said, adding that the fund currently stands at 175,000.

Besides Batra, the four recipients are Rinesh Sharma (Fiji), Heidy Quah (Malaysia), Achaleke Christian (Cameroon) and Jolyon Layard Horsfall (UK).

Ella Robertson of One Young World said: Young leaders are part of the most connected, informed and resourceful generation in human historyWe now need to ensure they have the funds needed to tackle some of the largest issues created by Covid-19.

The fund organisers said statistics from 1,000 young leaders globally show that 72% have volunteered to help others during this pandemic. The fund has been established to provide the immediate distribution of finance to young leaders on the frontlines of the Covid19 response, with donations distributed across countries and sectors.

Jayathma Wickramanayake, UN special envoy for youth, added: The Covid-19 Young Leaders Fund is exactly the bold action that is required to champion young people who are so bravely combatting the coronavirus on the frontlines.

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Seven further charges have been laid against a man accused of abducting a 12-year-old girl from a skatepark in Sydney's north and sexually assaulting her at his nearby home.

Police say the girl left the skatepark in Thornleigh willingly with Brett John Callaghan, 37, on April 29, "thinking she was in the care and custody of somebody ... she felt safe with", child abuse and sex crimes squad head Detective Superintendent John Kerlatec said at the time.

Brett Callaghan has been charged over the alleged incident. Credit:Police Media

"We will allege that once they left in the car and went to a home at Dural, she was sexually assaulted."

Mr Callaghan appeared in Parramatta Local Court on Thursday, when police charged him with offences including aggravated intentionally doing a sexual act with a child, grooming a child for unlawful sexual activity and drugging her, bringing the total number of charges to 10.
Now place the tip of the coiled corkscrew part of your wine key (also called the worm) in the center of the cork, at about a 30 or 45 degree angle. Push in and twist, while bringing the worm straight up, pointing down into the bottle. Keep pushing the worm into the cork (this is the eek eek eek part for Hitchcock movie fans) until the last part of the coil remains above the cork. If your wine keys lever has two parts, use the middle one for leverage and pull the cork far enough out so that you can switch to the end of the lever. If your lever has only one segment, you may need to twist the worm out of the cork a little bit to get a grip, as it were. The two-part lever offers more stability and is less likely to break the cork as you pull it out of the bottle.
Some nine years after Irans powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) deployed military advisers and fighters to Syria to prop up the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, Israeli and U.S. officials have said Tehran is reducing its presence in Syria.

Analysts told RFE/RL that amid the reports of a movement of forces, there are no indications Iran is changing its regional strategy, which is driven by political, ideological, and security interests.

Israeli military officials said recently that Tehran has pulled some of its forces from Syria and evacuated military bases near the border with Israel due to an increase in Israeli air strikes on Iranian targets.

Israel does not discuss its military operations but officials have vowed to maintain pressure on Iran with Defense Minister Naftali Bennett saying on May 5 that "Iran has nothing to do in Syria[and] we won't stop before they leave Syria.

Speaking earlier this week at a virtual event, U.S. special envoy for Syria James Jeffrey said Tehran has been scaling back its presence in Syria, which he linked to tough U.S. sanctions that have crippled Irans economy.

Lack Of Cash

The coronavirus pandemic has also hit the Islamic republic hard -- officially infecting more than 116,000 people and killing nearly 7,000 -- and record-low oil prices have added to Irans economic challenges.

On the military front, the January 3 assassination by the U.S. military of top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani -- who led the regional activities of the powerful IRGC -- has dealt a heavy blow to the Islamic republic.

We do see some withdrawal of Iranian-commanded forces. Some of that is tactical because they are not fighting right now, but it also is a lack of money, said Jeffrey at a May 12 panel hosted by the Washington-based Hudson Institute.

But analysts say there are no signs Iran is quitting Syria, the only Arab country that sided with the Islamic republic during the 1980-1988 war with Iraq.

Tehran has been key in providing Syria with financial and military assistance in the country's nine-year-long civil war while using Syrian territory to push forward its regional goals.

Raz Zimmt, an Iran analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS) in Tel Aviv, told RFE/RL that comments by Israeli officials about an Iranian withdrawal from Syria are very much exaggerated, partly due to political considerations.

"In fact, the number of cargo flights between Iran and Syria seem to [have] increased since April 2020," he said. "It is, therefore, a tactical withdrawal or redeployment at most, rather than an Iranian withdrawal from Syria."

Zimmt said that since the beginning of its involvement in Syria, the IRGC has adapted its modus operandi to the circumstances at hand.

"For example, we have seen in the past that when Israel increased its air operations against Iranian targets in Syria, Iran shifted some of its activity to the northern parts of Syria and the Syria-Iraq border to protect its targets from Israeli attacks. There is no doubt that in the last two years Iran has been reducing the IRGC presence in Syria, which is much less required than before," he added.

Local Hires

Zimmt said that while the number of IRGC forces has decreased from a few thousand to a few hundred, Tehran has continued to recruit Syrians and Shia fighters to hold the Iranian forces' places.

Iran has always favored using local proxies over direct military involvement," he said. "It is less risky for Iranian fighters and cheaper.

He said U.S. sanctions have to some extent restricted Tehrans ability to assist its allies in the region. But that does not mean a change of course.

"Our experience with Iran has shown that economic considerations have never been the main engine in its regional policy," he said. "Iran has continued to assist its allies and intervene in the region even under severe economic constraints, because it considers its regional involvement and influence a vital national interest."

Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington who has closely monitored IRGC activity in Syria, said he is not aware of credible reports about an Iranian military withdrawal from Syria.

What I see is troop movements within Syria: from Deir al-Zor to a larger headquarters in Palmyra, along with some other tactical moves in the wake of the latest round of Israeli air strikes, he said.

Speaking earlier this week, former Israeli military intelligence chief Amos Yadlin questioned reports about a full Iranian pullout from Syria.

"The Iranians are not leaving -- I am not buying this argument," Yadlin was quoted by The Jerusalem Post as saying, adding that Tehran could be relying increasingly on Shi'ite militia in Syria.

Haaretz strategic blogger Shemuel Meir, a former analyst with the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and a Tel Aviv University researcher, says IDF briefings about Iran have reported a decrease in organized Iranian military forces and the evacuation of military forces from Syria, which is separate from the Shiite fighters the IRGC has recruited.

He said Iran could be adapting its policies to a changing reality on the ground.

It is still too early to definitely determine, but it is possible that this is an indication of what the future will bring: the possibility of a dramatic reduction in the Iranian presence in Syria but without relinquishing Lebanon, which is the core of Irans interests, Meir said.

Speaking on May 8, U.S. Assistant Secretary for Near Eastern Affairs David Schenker suggested that Israeli attacks on Iranian assets are making Irans presence in Syria increasingly costly.

Iran has been persistent in its efforts to establish this beachhead basically on Israels border and to bring in advanced weaponry and assets targeting Israel and moving equipment, of course, through Syria to Hizballah [in Lebanon] with this sort of land bridge, he said.

And we see repeatedly, often times with no claims of responsibility, that these assets are being hit with great regularity, just pounded, and it would make sense at a certain point that Iran would want to cut its losses and downsize its presence there just because its increasingly costly to them in terms of life and property, he added.
The U.S. Space Force now has an official flag.

It was presented during a closed-door ceremony Friday in front of President Donald Trump, becoming the first new service flag in more than 72 years, the White House said.

"Space is going to be the future," Trump said during the event, according to pool reports.

"We're now the leader in space."

Officials in attendance included Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, the new branch's chief of space operations and head of U.S. Space Command, and Chief Master Sgt. Roger Towberman, senior enlisted adviser to the Space Force. Other attendees included Defense Secretary Mark Esper, Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley.

"It's a very historic moment," Esper said.

"The United States has been a spacefaring nation for decades, but we know there are adversaries in the last several years that have weaponized space," he said. "They've made it a warfighting domain. And so with the establishment of Space Force and establishment of Space Command, the United States is now doing what it needs to do to protect our assets in space and ensure that space remains the heavens by which we not only protect America, but we sustain our economy, we sustain our commercial capabilities, we sustain Americans' way of life."

The official flag of the U.S. Space Force. (Courtesy U.S. Space Force)

Related: More Than 2,000 Airmen Have Applied to Join Space Force

The flag bears the image of the Space Force seal. Raymond noted that the North star is uppermost on the design, signifying "our core value, our guiding light."

The seal was unveiled by Trump in a tweet in January. While the central delta symbol reminds many of the "Star Trek" Starfleet Command logo, it has a military history.

"The Delta Wing evokes historic ties to the earliest days of the U.S. Air Force space community, and symbolizes change and innovation," according to a fact sheet provided with Friday's pool report. "Dark and light shades of grey within the delta embody the 24/7 operations of the Space Force, while the placement and upward orientation of the delta reveals the central role of the Space Force in defending the space domain."

Officials in January noted the delta was used as early as 1942 by the U.S. Army Air Forces and in early Air Force space organization emblems dating back to 1961.

Each element of the design has meaning, according to the Space Force. The globe "represents the terrestrial home of the U.S. Space Force and it's support to the joint warfighters," the fact sheet states. "The elliptical orbit (around the globe) signifies defense and protection from all adversaries and threats emanating from the space domain. It also represents ongoing interagency cooperation and allied partnerships."

The North star also represents "security and alludes to a constant presence and vigilance in space now and in the future," it adds.

"Two clusters of small stars represent the space assets developed, maintained, and operated by the U.S. Space Force. The three larger stars symbolize the organize, train, and equip functions of the Space Force," according to the fact sheet.

The Space Force flag was made by artists from the organization within the Defense Logistics Agency that makes all the president's personal flags.

The Space Force opened an application window May 1 for eligible active-duty personnel to transfer into the service, starting with Air Force personnel. The Space Force days later also launched its first official commercial to attract recruits.

As of this week, the organization has received thousands of requests, officials told Military.com.

"As of May 13, the U.S. Space Force has received more than 2,000 applications from airmen in both organic and common [Air Force Specialty Codes] volunteering to transfer to the new service," Space Force spokesperson Lynn Kirby told Military.com on Wednesday.

The sixth military service, which was signed into existence by Trump on Dec. 20, 2019, is currently operating with the aid of 16,000 airmen detailed on a temporary basis from what was formerly known as Air Force Space Command.

Although individuals were assigned in December, applying means Air Force officers would commission into the Space Force -- making them permanent Space Force members -- while enlisted members would re-enlist directly, officials have said.

The service's application window closes May 31.

-- Oriana Pawlyk can be reached at oriana.pawlyk@military.com. Follow her on Twitter at @Oriana0214.

Read More: F-22 Crashes Near Eglin Air Force Base; Pilot Ejects Safely
On Sunday, The Inquirer published the number of documented COVID-19 cases in nursing homes within the city of Philadelphia. The data paints a staggering, grim picture of the toll this pandemic has taken on our elderly: At least 25% of all nursing home residents are infected, leading to more than 500 long-term care facility deaths that account for more than half of the citys coronavirus fatalities.

The extreme challenges that nursing homes  whether for-profit or nonprofit, high Medicaid or high private-pay  face in controlling COVID-19 is well-documented: Elderly residents with multiple conditions are particularly susceptible to this virus, and the low-tech, high-touch care that makes quality of life for our residents as good as possible is exactly what allows it to spread. Social distancing is not an option.

I am the medical director at Renaissance Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center in West Philly. Even before we had any suspected cases, our entire building had to be treated. Staff have to don face masks and eye protection as they enter and keep it on all day. Residents have to stay in their rooms with all group activities canceled. But even with the very best protective measures in place, the virus is aggressive, and it may enter and spread. Although we restricted visits, ended group activities, and barred any outside vendors or workers from going beyond our lobby, we became the first nursing home in the city with a reported COVID-19 case.

 READ MORE: The U.S. is still failing older communities in nursing homes | Expert Opinion

As a geriatrician who has worked in nursing homes for almost 20 years, for me, the case numbers have names. At Renaissance, staff members and I have had to mourn the loss of those who have been in our care for years. We know their families. We know what makes them laugh and when they like to nap. When they die, we cry with the family, and we feel the loss as an irreplaceable, empty hole in our community. Then we continue to show up and care for the patients who we have grown to love. But to continue doing so, we need your help.

Being the citys first nursing home with a reported COVID case, we were able to get immense support from the Philadelphia Department of Public Health and Penn Medicine for adequate testing, PPE, and clinical support. With this support, we could control our outbreak, and have not had any additional deaths or positive cases in over a month.

However, other nursing homes have not had the same successes, and they need more coordinated government and local support than ever before. Nursing homes need adequate testing, personal protective equipment, and staffing support. The scope of the problem should lead to action that can still save lives. This is not going to be a short pandemic for nursing homes. As long as there is community spread, nursing homes will have to stay locked down and get help when outbreaks occur.

 READ MORE: Coronavirus is ravaging New Jerseys nursing homes | Expert Opinion

In addition to support on a systems level, the incredible staff that work inside nursing homes also need appreciation. Nursing home staff are health-care heroes. We must not forget that these hardworking staffers are frontline heroes who deserve recognition and support.

Donate PPE to nursing homes, or write notes of encouragement. Donate funds to allow staff to use private transportation instead of public transportation to decrease exposure. Repurpose a hobby, like sewing, to provide gowns for nursing home staff. If you are a small business like a restaurant, donate goods or services like meals. This would mean so much to nursing home morale.

When you read a number like 544 confirmed long-term facility resident deaths, as the city reported Thursday, I hope that instead of shaking your head and placing blame, you instead think, How can I help? to turn this disaster around. Now, more than ever, nursing homes need your compassion.

Joshua Uy is an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Pennsylvanias Perelman School of Medicine. joshuauy@pennmedicine.upenn.edu
10 Alleged MS-13 Gang Members Charged in Subway Killing, Other Murders

Ten alleged members of the notorious MS-13 gang have been arrested on charges including murder, attempted murder, and murder conspiracy, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced on Thursday.

Federal prosecutors brought the charges against 10 men accused of being part of the violent street gang, also known as Mara Salvatrucha, in connection to three murders, including a fatal shooting on a subway platform that was captured on video last year.

The murders and crimes of violence allegedly committed by these defendants are trademark MS-13 offensescold-blooded, senseless, and brutally violentand pose a grave danger to the residents of our communities, U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue of the Eastern District said in a statement.

10 alleged MS-13 members and associates charged with murder, attempted murder, murder conspiracy and firearms offenses https://t.co/u8rcQV67xr pic.twitter.com/uZIGsiekFv  ICE (@ICEgov) May 14, 2020

Ramiro Gutierrez, 27; Tito Martinez-Alvarenga, 20; and Victor Lopez, 21, were charged on Feb. 3, 2019, for the murder of Abel Mosso, 20, on a subway platform in broad daylight.

The trio allegedly believed the 20-year-old was a member of the rival 18th Street Gang in Brooklyn and assaulted him on a subway before dragging him onto a subway platform in Flushing, Queens, and shooting him in the head.

Before shooting Mosso, Gutierrez allegedly shouted in Spanish, Nobody get involved. Were MS-13, were going to kill him.

MS-13 members do all they can to propagate a violent, deadly image as a gang, FBI Assistant Director-in-Charge Sweeney said in a statement. Their calculation that shouting the gangs name out in front of people on a subway platform will prevent anyone from interfering with a man being brutally beaten and murdered boggles the mind.

The second killing involved Andy Peralta, a 17-year-old who was beaten, stabbed, and strangled to death by MS-13 member Juan Amaya-Ramirez and two others in April 2018 in a Queens park, after he was mistaken for a rival gang member. The trio allegedly believed Peralta was a member of the gang Latin Kings because of a tattoo of a crown on the victims chest.

Victor Alvarenga, the third victim, was fatally shot multiple times in the body and head in Queens in November 2018. He was approached by MS-13 members Douglas Melgar-Suriano, Jairo Martinez-Garcia, and another associate as he was walking down the street near his home.

According to court documents, Melgar-Suriano shot Alvarenga in the head and body, and Martinez-Garcia shot him once more as he lay on the pavement. The pair suspected of killing Alvarenga were, according to court papers, promoted within MS-13 after his murder.

One defendant was arrested Wednesday in Maryland; five were arrested Thursday, four in New York and one in California; and four were already in detention, Donoghue said.

MS-13 is considered one of the top transnational organized crime threats in the United States, and has been blamed for dozens of killings since 2016, with President Donald Trump describing its members as animals and thugs.

Related Coverage Why the MS-13 Gang Is So Violent

MS-13 is believed to have been founded as a neighborhood street gang in Los Angeles in the mid-1980s by immigrants fleeing a civil war in El Salvador. El Salvadors Supreme Court defined the gang as a terrorist group in 2015, allowing courts there to give tougher sentences to its members.

The president has vowed to crack down on criminal gangs, particularly MS-13, and has blamed the violence and gang growth on lax immigration policies. Violence committed by the gang, including the 2016 slayings of two teenage girls, helped spark an aggressive effort by the FBI and the DOJ to dismantle the gang.

Eight of the defendants are scheduled to be arraigned Thursday in Brooklyn federal court. Saracay-Lopez is set to make his initial appearance in the Central District of California, while Martinez-Laras initial appearance is in the District of Maryland.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
A pilot successfully ejected from a US Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jet that crashed during a training flight in Florida Friday, military authorities say.

The $150million F-22 was part of the 325th Fighter Wing based at Eglin Air Force base in northern Florida, about 40 miles east of Pensacola.

The crash took place around 9:15am northeast of the base on a training range, and there was no damage to people or property when the jet hit the ground, the Air Force says.

An Air Force F-22 Raptor fighter jet similar to the one shown here at Eglin Air Force base crashed at the Florida base on Friday

Eglin Air Force Base is located in northern Florida, about 40 miles east of Pensacola

The sprawling Eglin reservation covers hundreds of thousands of acres across Northwest Florida, USA Today reports.

No explanation was given for the crash.

The pilot was taken to the Eglin base hospital for observation. He was in stable condition in the company of friends and family.

It was not immediately clear whether the crash caused any fire on the ground. Wildfires have consumed hundreds of acres in recent days and remain a threat due to hot, dry and windy conditions.

The F-22 flight was not part of a flyover scheduled Friday morning to honor frontline workers battling the coronavirus outbreak, an Air Force spokesperson tells USA Today.

A F-22 Raptor fighter jet flies at the 2008 Joint Services Open House airshow at Andrews Air Force Base

The crash prompted Eglin base officials to recall four jets that were already in the air for the flyover, says a spokesman from Tyndall Air Force Base, which is about 90 miles south near Panama City.

The aircraft that crashed and those in the flyover  another F-22 along with an F-35 fighter jet and two T-38 training jets  are among aircraft originally assigned to Tyndall.

The jets were moved to Eglin before and after Hurricane Michael in 2018, which left Tyndall in ruins.

Friday's crash means that the Air Force now has only 185 F-22 Raptors left of the 195 aircraft built by Lockheed Martin, according to Forbes.

With the way the Air Force has distributed their remaining F-22s - including those used for training and test planes - this now leaves 17 of the stealth fighter jets as 'backup' planes.

Prior accidents in 2004, 2009 and 2010 destroyed three F-22s, while other jets were taken out of service due to old age of the airframes.

Each F-22 costs about $150million and the overall cost to develop, produce and upgrade the fighter jets was $67billion. The jets were built between the mid-1990s and December 2011.

Defense officials decided not to reorder the Raptors, leaving the Air Force to start acquiring F-15s from Boeing in 2020, after a 16-year break.

F-22s are considered so top secret that all of its cockpit instruments and displays are classified, so no photos of its interior have been confirmed.

Unlike other fighter jets, US officials banned the sale of F-22s to other countries, including allies, in 1998, as a way to prevent the stealth technology from being obtained by Russia and China.
Union member Dave Pedersen, a volunteer coordinator at the Manteno home who identified himself as an Army veteran, said the homes residents benefit from the support of veterans groups and donations that residents of some private homes might not see. He praised the response from the home and its staff but added: I think the anxiety level for most staff is definitely higher than normal.
Coast Guard had shared an input stating "anti-national elements may try to attack or infiltrate along the coast" in May.

Porbandar: Following the Indian Coast Guard's input about a possible infiltration, fishermen in Gujarat have been asked to remain alert and inform the

authorities about any suspicious person or boat.

In a letter to fishermen associations on Thursday, the Porbandar office of assistant director of fisheries said the Coast Guard had shared an input stating "anti-national elements may try to attack or infiltrate along the coast" in May.

In the wake of these inputs, the department has asked fishermen to remain vigilant and inform the local marine police or Coast Guard if they see any suspicious activity, person or boat near any landing point along the coast. Fishermen can call the toll-free numbers of the marine police and coast guard, the letter stated.

The department has also asked boat owners to ensure that fishermen wear their identity cards and venture into the sea with their original documents.

Fishermen were also directed to avoid getting close to the International Maritime Boundary Line or No Fishing Zone.

"Advisories are issued to the associations whenever the Coast Guard shares such inputs. We then pass on this information to our fishermen and ask them to remain alert," said Jivan Jungi, president of Fishermen Boat Owners' Association.
A tractor-trailer driver died Thursday after driving off U.S. 101 north of Bandon, troopers say.

Donald Games failed to negotiate a curve, went off the highway and hit a tree, the Oregon State Police said, citing an early investigation.

The semi caught fire, troopers said. Firefighters put out the blaze.

Games, a 53-year-old Coos Bay resident, suffered fatal injuries, troopers said.

No other vehicles were involved in the crash, according to the state police.

-- Jim Ryan; jryan@oregonian.com; 503-221-8005; @Jimryan015

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Bali, the resort island popular with backpackers, was always seen as a fertile ground for the coronavirus as millions of foreign tourists flock to its beaches. But it is today being touted as a model by Indonesian authorities in tackling the pandemic.

The success in curbing the virus has come with the help of about 1,500 traditional village committees with considerable sway over the majority Hindu residents, according to Governor Wayan Koster. The island with a population of 4.2 million has reported just four virus-related deaths and 343 confirmed cases for a fatality rate of 1.2%, far below the national average of 6.5%.

"A lot of people were previously very worried that Bali would be badly hit by covid-19 as it's the largest tourist destination in Indonesia," Koster said in a phone interview. "But so far, the facts show a totally different picture."

Bali's relative success in containing the virus may give it a head start in luring visitors back when international travel resumes and revive its tourism-dependent economy. It's also in sharp contrast to the widely criticized efforts at the national level, which have led to deaths swelling to more than 1,000 and officials now warning the disease may infect almost 100,000 before starting to ease.

While no deadline has been set for reopening the island to tourists, Koster says a strategy is ready but it will be rolled out after Bali completely recovers from the pandemic. The island along with Manado, and Batam are among places where the government is planning to ease restrictions, Coordinating Minister for Maritime Affairs and Investment Luhut Pandjaitan said Thursday.

Officials tapped the influential village committees and Hindu beliefs to ensure residents stayed at home and no outside visitors were permitted to avoid wider infections after a British tourist with covid-19 was the first in Bali to succumb to the virus in early March. People were also asked to perform certain Hindu rituals for protection, which mandated them to obey local leaders, according to Governor Koster.

"The villages in Bali know who gets in or out and who has left the village for good," said Achmad Sukarsono, a senior analyst at Control Risks. "This system works well there but can't be replicated anywhere else. It has helped the local government to control the outbreak."

Few other places in Indonesia, an archipelago of 18,000 islands, have a village structure similar to Bali where leaders hold as much sway over a population of its size. Then there's also a lack of testing, with President Joko Widodo calling for scaling up the nation's diagnostic capacity, saying the daily testing of 4,000 to 5,000 specimens was "far below our target."

The province didn't impose more punishing social distancing rules such as ban on mass gatherings and curbs on public transport unveiled by the central government and followed in places such as Jakarta and West Java. But it locked down three villages following local community infections from returning migrant workers. Authorities are prepared to handle the return of thousands of migrant workers, including from cruise ships, in the coming weeks, Koster said.

"The villages have a very strong influence on the community. Whatever the elders in the villages said, people will abide," said Ngurah Wijaya, adviser to the Bali Tourism Board. "This has enabled the government to impose its policies down to the community level effectively."

Bali's triumph on the virus front is not limited to suppressing new cases or limiting loss of lives. The recovery rate from Covid-19 in the island is more than 66%, compared with national average of 22%. Three labs in the island can now test almost 500 specimens a day, as opposed to sending samples to cities outside the province initially. That allows authorities to speed up contact tracing and isolation, Koster said.

But the revival of its tourism industry to the pre-pandemic period is far from assured. A decision on protocols to be followed in re-opening the business will be decided in consultation with elected local leaders and community and religious heads, Koster said. The island is home to hotels operated by industry leaders such as Marriott International Inc., Wyndham Hotels & Resorts Inc. and Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc.

Bali, famous for its beaches, scenic terraced rice paddy fields and temples, saw foreign tourist arrivals slump 22% to 1.04 million in the first quarter from a year ago, according to official data. The island received a record 6.2 million foreign tourists last year.

"Balinese also realized that tourism is the source of their living, so we need to take care of ourselves in order to gain the trusts and confidence from the visitors," Wijaya said. "That's probably a key differentiation that Bali has compared with the other regions."
The violence of May 12 have led the government of President Ashraf Ghani to officially end the defensive posture by the Afghan military

Evidently, the atmosphere of mistrust between the government in Kabul and the Taliban is complete. This cannot but further complicate the prospects of a so-called intra-Afghan dialogue. AP Photo

Since the Americans signed a peace agreement with the Taliban on February 29 to bring to an end the relentless violence that has afflicted Afghanistan for the past 18 years, there are few signs of encouragement in the big picture. Last Tuesdays ghastly attack on a maternity clinic inside a Kabul hospital, in which hours-old infants and their mothers, besides nursing staff, were killed, was only one of several painful incidents of that terrible day. In Nangrahar in eastern Afghanistan, a funeral procession for a police commander was attacked by a suicide bomber and many lives were lost. Another violent attack also reportedly took place in the Khost province of eastern Afghanistan.

The violent incidents of May 12 have led the government of President Ashraf Ghani to officially end the defensive posture by the Afghan military, which had been dictated by common sense in the wake of the February agreement. The Taliban too have issued a threat, suggesting that they are mobilised and have the resources to deal with any contingency. Improbably, they have sought to point a finger at the Ghani government for the recent attacks.

Evidently, the atmosphere of mistrust between the government in Kabul and the Taliban is complete. This cannot but further complicate the prospects of a so-called intra-Afghan dialogue in which the various political constituencies within the country, along with the government, were to negotiate a roadmap for peace with the Taliban.

The pitch had been queered by the government raising questions about the releasing of as many as 5,000 battle-hardened Taliban prisoners as a prelude to intra-Afghan talks. It is this which has led the Taliban to accuse the Ghani government of being the architect of the recent violence in the expectation of prolonging its life, which may be suddenly extinguished if the talks with the Taliban led to a feasible roadmap for normality.

Islamic State-Khorasan (or so-called ISIS-South Asia) had taken the dubious credit for attacking Kabuls most famous gurdwara in March. It also acknowledged carrying out the Nangrahar attack on the funeral procession on Tuesday.

However, neither ISIS-K nor the Taliban have claimed responsibility for the grisly hospital attack. In fact, the Taliban have denied a role in this. But it is noteworthy that the militant group has not gone so far as to condemn the attack, like other domestic political constituencies, the UN Security Council, and leading countries, including India, have done.

For long, the Taliban, and more recently ISIS-K (also known as Daesh), have been perceived as being active recipients of patronage of the Pakistani military and the notorious ISI. Overall, it is likely to be Islamabads endeavour to retain as much influence as possible in any framework for future talks by bringing the Afghan government as well as civil society to its knees through violent attacks carried out by its proxies in the face of which ordinary Afghans remain helpless and confounded.

The Taliban will truly be making a new beginning if they begin to act on the same side as the Afghan military by taking on Pakistan and its proxies on the political chessboard and the battlefield. India, instead of acting only in Americas shadow, can begin to take initial steps in the direction of that denouement.
The Mater Hospital in Dublin was today named as the facility which is being investigated for allegedly delaying the reporting of around 244 cases of the coronavirus.

It emerged yesterday at a Department of Health briefing that one hospital has not reported a large batch of cases since mid March.

Chief medical officer Dr Tony Holohan who received the figures yesterday afternoon said he was going to investigate the incident.

However, in a statement today the Mater hospital said it has reported all cases of Covid-19 positive results to the relevant authorities on a daily basis.

At all times the Mater Hospital provided the information that the HSE required and met all legal requirements to report infectious diseases.

 All of this information is correct and up to date. We are working with the HSE to understand why the provided data may not have been accurately captured.

The hospital said it also carried out comprehensive contact tracing on every single member of staff who tested positive for Covid-19 through our occupational health department in line with best practice.

 In excess of 300 staff at the Mater have tested positive for Covid-19 and a further 1500 have self-isolated following contact tracing to protect patients, fellow staff and the public - despite the enormous impact this has had on our operations, it said.

The Minister for Health Simon Harris said he awaiting a report on the matter.

"It absolutely clear there is a legal requirement to disclose. The legislation is very clear on who that burden of reporting rests with, and I think it's very disappointing that this happened.
[May 15, 2020] COVID-19 Will Have Limited Impact on Worldwide Telecommunications Services and Pay TV Spending in 2020, According to IDC

Worldwide spending on telecommunications and pay TV services will reach nearly $1.6 trillion in 2020, a decrease of 0.8% compared to 2019, according to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Telecom Services Tracker. IDC (News - Alert) expects the decline to continue in 2021, but at a somewhat lower degree. The telecommunications services industry is proving to be one of the most resilient sectors of the global economy during the COVID-19 crisis. The anti-pandemic measures imposed by many governments that have forced people to stay at home and reduce face-to-face interactions have increased the consumption of telecom services. However, the economic impact from shutting down businesses, higher unemployment, frozen tourist activities, and reduced consumer spending on non-essential products and services will have a negative impact on the market. The mobile segment, the largest segment of the market, will post a slight decline in 2020 due to lower revenues from roaming charges, less mobile data overages due to the stay-at-home situation, and slower net additions, especially in the consumer segment. Fixed data services spending will increase by 2.9% in 2020 as the need for more fixed Internet connectivity determined by the "great lockdown" is likely to help this segment maintain growth. Spending on fixed voice services will continue to decline and will take an additional hit due to the pandemic as users will likely drop fixed voice services for savings purposes. Fixed IP voice will survive longer as the service is included in bundles in most cases. Pay TV services will be boosted by the lockdown, but also affected by the economic downturn, so the spending in this category is expected to decline slightly. In 2020, telecom services spending will drop in all geographic regions. The largest market, the Americas, will see a tiny decline of 0.04%. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Asia/Pacific (including Japan) will dip more primarily because of the larger price-sensitive audience in the low-income countries of Africa and Asia. Growth is not expected in EMEA or Asia/Pacific before 2022 as the users in emerging markets are expected to remain cautious about spending for some time.







Global Regional Services Revenue and Year-on-Year Growth (revenues in $B) Global Region 2019 Revenue 2020 Revenue 2020/2019 Growth Americas $623 $623 0.0% Asia/Pacific $471 $465 -1.4% EMEA $480 $474 -1.2% Grand Total $1,574 $1,561 -0.8% Source (News - Alert): IDC Worldwide Semiannual Services Tracker 2H 2019

In addition to the table above, a graphic illustrating IDC's five-year telecom services forecast by geographic region is available by viewing this press release on IDC.com. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed some trends in the global telecom services market. Operators have quickly adapted to the forced changes in customer behavior and temporarily pushed aside some earlier priorities. "As the 5G revolution is being put on hold or delayed by the pandemic, the already proven technologies and business cases will keep the ball rolling in these uncertain times," said Kresimir Alic, research director with IDC's Worldwide Telecom Services team. "Hosted VoIP/UCaaS, collaboration tools, SD-WAN, IoT, along with network optimization and increased reliability will keep consumers and businesses connected during the tough days of pandemic and global recession." About IDC Trackers IDC Tracker products provide accurate and timely market size, vendor share, and forecasts for hundreds of technology markets from more than 100 countries around the globe. Using proprietary tools and research processes, IDC's Trackers are updated on a semiannual, quarterly, and monthly basis. Tracker results are delivered to clients in user-friendly excel deliverables and on-line query tools. For more information about IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Telecom Services Tracker, please contact Kathy Nagamine at 650-350-6423 or [email protected]. Click here to learn about IDC's full suite of data products and how you can leverage them to grow your business. About IDC International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. With more than 1,100 analysts worldwide, IDC offers global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. IDC's analysis and insight helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based technology decisions and to achieve their key business objectives. Founded in 1964, IDC is a wholly-owned subsidiary of International Data Group (IDG), the world's leading tech media, data and marketing services company. To learn more about IDC, please visit www.idc.com. Follow IDC on Twitter (News - Alert) at @IDC and LinkedIn. Subscribe to the IDC Blog for industry news and insights: http://bit.ly/IDCBlog_Subscribe. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005321/en/

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F ewer than 24 people are catching coronavirus each day in London, according to a report on new modelling.

Public Health England and Cambridge University research suggests that the capital's "R" reproduction rate has fallen to 0.4, down from about 2.8 before the lockdown started.

According to the Cambridge's MRC Biostatistics Unit, the city's "R" rate is the lowest in the country, having once been the worst affected in terms of coronavirus-related hospital admissions.

The research showed that for every 10 people who are infected, they are likely to pass it onto four people.

The number of new cases in the city are halving every 3.5 days, and less than 24 transmissions are said to be currently occurring daily, according to the Telegraph's report on the same modelling.

The "R" rate is a measurement of the number of people an infected person passes the disease to.

At the peak of the outbreak on March 23, the rate of infections in the capital was 230,000 a day. This dropped to around 10,000 on April 7 after the lockdown was enforced.

London was at one point the epicentre of the UK's outbreak.

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The North East and Yorkshire, together, now have the highest rate of any region, with 0.8. The region is seeing around 4,320 infections a day, it was reported.

The nationwide rate of infection appears to be slowing, with academics at the University of Cambridge reporting that the R rate was now firmly under 1.0.

This is a goal the Prime Minister set in order to keep gradually releasing the lockdown in the coming months.

According to the modelling, the English region with the highest R rate is the North East and Yorkshire, with a transmission rate of 0.8.

It comes as critics are looking to drive ministers back on their plans to ease parts of the lockdown.

Despite the new figures, the Government faces fresh pressure from council leaders and Labour over its steps to return the country back to a sense of normality.

Leaders of local authorities and unions chiefs have accused ministers of going too fast on its plans to reopen schools and want more local control over their return.

Labour has taken aim at the Government's track-and-trace plans, warning ministers its team of contact tracers should be close to three times the size of the operation currently being installed.

The Local Government Association (LGA) has said schools should be allowed to make their own decisions about reopening, especially in areas where there is a higher proportion of black, Asian and minority ethnic residents.

Councillor Judith Blake, chairwoman of the LGA's children and young people board, said parents were "anxious" about sending their children back to school and said more needed to be done to reassure families.

Prime Minister Mr Johnson, when announcing his plans for taking England out of lockdown, said Reception, Y1 and Y6 pupils could go back as soon as next month.

And Education Secretary Gavin Williamson this week said medical and scientific advice was "saying it's the right time to start bringing schools back in a phased and controlled manner".

But the LGA is calling for some schools, in consultation with councils, to be given greater flexibility locally over reopening as they argue that some communities are at higher risk.
A Hoboken man was arrested Wednesday after police say he groped two women in separate incidents just minutes apart.

David Pruitt, 40, was charged with two counts of criminal sexual contact, Hoboken Lt. Danilo Cabrera said Friday.

A woman called Hoboken police at 12:12 p.m. Wednesday and told responding Police Officer Officer Liana Palladino that she and her sister had returned from a jog when a man, later identified as Pruitt, grabbed her buttocks as she entered her apartment building in the area of Third and Washington streets.

The alleged victim told Palladino that the same man approached her and stood within inches of her prior to her run.

After groping the woman, Pruitt, who said nothing during the incident, walked northbound toward Fourth Street, Cabrera said.

Pruitt was spotted by the alleged victim at Third and Washington streets and he was arrested by Sgt. Christopher LaBruno and police officers Jason Montalvo, and Wilfredo Gomez, who had arrived to assist with the investigation.

Some 25 minutes later Police Officer Anthony Fesken responded to the Hoboken University Medical Center on a report that a man had touched the buttocks of a hospital employee while was walking with a fellow employee on Fourth Street near the hospital.

Police determined that Pruitts second offense occurred minutes after the first one, Cabrera said. When the employees returned to the hospital, they were told by the a security officer that Pruitt had entered the emergency room and used the bathroom and the water fountain.
Listed online retailer Kogan has acquired furniture seller Matt Blatt in a $4.4 million deal, relaunching the company as an online-only retailer after the coronavirus crisis forced it to seek a buyer.

Kogan announced the deal to investors on Friday morning, saying it had acquired the company's intellectual property and goodwill, with chief executive Ruslan Kogan telling The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald he was excited to have the "iconic" brand in his stable.

Adam Drexler, the founder of Matt Blatt, revealed last month he was on the lookout for a buyer after the coronavirus crippled the business. Credit:Peter Rae

"We've got [Matt Blatt's] four decades of know-how and a really respected brand, and we've got our digital expertise and supply chains that we've perfected. So with those combined, we think we can kick arse in this space," he said.

Matt Blatt was founded in 1981 by Adam and Deborah Drexler and is well-known for its replica furniture pieces, which have attracted controversy over the years including a lawsuit from prominent American design company Herman Miller.
Kenyan health workers will down their tools beginning Monday next week if the government will not have intervened by Sunday.

The Kenya Health Workers Union Society claims that the government and council of governors have neglected the welfare of health workers on the frontline of coronavirus pandemic.

Led by Kenya National Clinical Union Chairman Peterson Wachira, they claim medics are overexposed and not protected from COVID-19. They said their push to get involved in the fight against the deadly virus has fallen on deaf ears.

At this time that the leadership are not ready to address the grievance of foot soldiers ..we have been here severally..its not that we have no business to attend to, Wachira said on Thursday.

This pandemic is an emergency but if you are not treating health workers as the forefront soldiers and you are treating them as normal people then it is a sad day,  he added.

Additionally, the workers said no training has been offered besides being subjected to poor working conditions.

The medics want the ministry of health to recognize the burden of the current health crisis and help medics in fighting the disease.

They stated that they have no option but to stay at home given that a lack of protective equipment has left some medical workers infected.

As the health care workers union, the strike we called is going to begin on Monday so that we can have some time and focus on things to be done.

Health CAS Mercy Mwangangi said that they are in talks with the health workers to find a solution before Monday.
Migrants from Maharashtra headed towards Uttar Pradesh and Bihar have become a law and order and coronavirus issue for the Madhya Pradesh government.

Thousands of migrant workers went on a rampage after traffic was jammed on the National Highway 3 on Thursday. They pelted stones at the police after waiting for nine hours for food.



Violence erupted in Sendhwa on Madhya Pradesh-Maharashtra border as the promised arrangement for food and transportation for them did not materialise.



Cellphone videos from the spot showed hundreds of people, screaming and running on the shoulder beside the highway.





"People here are travelling with month-old babies. The Maharashtra government sent us here, but our own government is holding us up. We have been here since last night, hungry and thirsty," said Sunit Mishra, who works in Pune. The hapless people are stranded in a jungle with no security. "No one cares about us," said Mishra who wants to go to Satna.



District Collector Amit Tomar said, "The stone-pelting took place as some migrants felt after the buses left, there would not be any more vehicles for those left behind, but we reassured them and calmed them down."



The migrants were sent to transit points in different districts in 135 buses from the border, he said.



"The administration is providing facilities like food, water, shelter to labourers who are coming in their own vehicles or through other conveyances and providing facility of buses to others who are entering Madhya Pradesh walking from Maharashtra's border," said Tomar.



The restive migrants had resorted to violence last week too. On May 3 over a thousand workers staged a protest in Barwani after the district was sealed. More than 300 people were booked for last week's violence. The cases were not pursued though.



Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has appealed to the labourers to have patience, saying they will be transported free of cost by buses after medical checkups and a meal.



The Madhya Pradesh government, he said, will ensure that every labourer reaches home. ItA is not just about transporting the labourers to their destinations. It is also about ensuring that the other states allow them to cross into home states. Both Uttar Pradesh and Bihar take a long time to let the people in. say the state government officials.



Sendhwa is a crucial stop for the migrant labourers from Maharashtra taking the road to go to Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. Every day, thousands of migrants pour into town, from where they take buses and trucks for the onward journey.



The maximum pressure is at Bijasan Ghat on the border of Sendhwa, where 5,000 to 6,000 labourers reach every day.
National Endangered Species Day is observed on the third Friday of May. This year the day falls on May 15. The main idea behind observing this day is to raise awareness about endangered species and how to protect them. According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature, no less than 40 per cent species of animals, insects and plants are at the risk of extinction across the globe.

This year due to the coronavirus pandemic, organisations like Endangered Species Coalition have decided to observe the day virtually by conducting various online activities.

While the pandemic has locked the majority of people in their houses, a lot of uncommon and endangered animals which are usually not seen at common places have been spotted.

Take a look at these animals that were spotted across the World after COVID-19 lockdown was imposed:

A small Indian civet was spotted in Meppayur, Kozhikode district, Kerala. According to the authorities, the nocturnal mammal would have possibly come from the forest areas in Western Ghat.

This is a Small Indian Civet. Things which I can confirm; Video is real (not animation). Was never posted before Wednesday on Internet. Sources say it is from Kozhikode. It looks sick. Quite possible was in captive & released. It is found there normally also. That's it. https://t.co/5ginqdxxJx Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) March 27, 2020

A video of the deer was shared on March 27. According to the person who uploaded it, the animal was spotted at an empty road that divides sector 9 and sector 10 in Chandigarh.

Sec 9 - 10 dividing road Chandigarh, Nature Re-Claming it's territory. pic.twitter.com/Glt1i3Rd7Y Mohammad Ghazali (@ghazalimohammad) March 27, 2020

A nilgai was spotted roaming around outside a mall in Noida sector 18, Uttar Pradesh. Indian Forest Officer Praveen Kaswan had shared the clip on the social media and had said that sighting of a nilgai is common in Noida.

Again Nilgai are natural to Noida. In surrounding area there are a lot of them. They often get hit by traffic. https://t.co/lnU6oFZIP0 Parveen Kaswan, IFS (@ParveenKaswan) March 27, 2020

These are rare species of turtles which are said to have returned to Thai beaches for the first time in two decades. These turtles are the largest sea turtles in the world.

11 leatherback turtle nests for the 1st time in 2 decades in deserted Thai beaches. The tourism has collapsed, but freed up the beaches for WL.Leatherback is the largest sea turtles, endangered in Thailand. Listed as vulnerable by IUCN. pic.twitter.com/0Lokk7a0nA Susanta Nanda IFS (@susantananda3) April 20, 2020

Wild boars or wild pigs were spotted roaming around in Israels Haifa region. The city lies at the foot of the Carmel Mountains, which happens to be a natural habitat for boars, foxes, jackals etc. It is most likely that the animal would have come from there.

The endangered mammal was spotted in Frances Calanques National Park. Fin Whales are extremely rare to find in the reserves water. Further, these are also the worlds second-largest animal.
WOODLAND PARK, N.J.  She sat in shock in her Toyota Camry, gripping the steering wheel with white knuckles, her 16-year-old son beside her. A second earlier, an SUV had sped up in the Carvel parking lot and slammed into the drivers side of her car  intentionally.

They sat stunned as the SUV reversed to do it again. As she heard the revving of the engine, she thought this might be the day they die.

You get into that mode. How am I going to protect my kid? Im thinking next hes going to pull out a gun and were going to get shot. Its the craziest feeling, said the 39-year-old woman, recounting the April 21 attack on Franklin Street in Nutley.

The Bergen County woman did not know her terrorizer, had never seen him before that day when she stopped at an ice cream shop. Inside the store, she said, he started screaming anti-Muslim slurs, calling her a terrorist and saying he hated her.

She told him, "You're calling me a terrorist, but here you are terrorizing me." She asked those in the store, Arent you going to do anything? she said.

A Bergen County woman speaks out about being attacked on May 9, 2020. She asked not to be identified because she fears for her safety.

She thought the encounter would end when she left the store. But according to the woman, as she drove out of the parking lot, the SUV exited an entrance-only driveway, waited for her approaching car and then struck it, twice.

Township police arrested Michael Morrison, 55, at his Nutley home later that day, charging him with aggravated assault, bias intimidation and other crimes.

The woman shared her story publicly for the first time in an interview this week. She asked to not be named to protect her family's safety.

She said it's not the first time she's been accosted because of her faith  visible for all to see because she wears a niqab, a traditional Islamic veil that covers her face except for her eyes.

Her car was struck with such force, she said, that she continues to suffer from wrist, elbow, hip and back pain weeks later, while her son has shoulder and knee pain. Then there's the emotional toll  the fear she feels for herself and her family as someone who is a visible member of the Muslim faith.

Story continues

The incident comes amid a rise in reported hate crimes across New Jersey and the rest of the U.S. targeting people for their perceived race, ethnicity or religion. New Jersey reported 561 bias crimes last year, for the third consecutive annual increase.

Hate rhetoric in politics, media and online forums has targeted Muslims and, many believe, has put them squarely at risk. Thats especially true for women who may be more identifiable because of how they dress.

On the same day as the Nutley incident, Amani al-Khatahtbeh, a Muslim candidate for Congress in central Jersey, got a phone call at her parent's home in East Brunswick from a man spouting slurs and threats of violence against her and her family.

The mother in Nutley, who was born in the United States and converted to Islam, said she did not want to be viewed as a victim.

Im only doing this because I want to show the injustice that happens against Muslims, she said. I want to show what really happens to Muslim women, to Muslims period. I want to be a voice.

Michael Morrison, of Nutley remains at the Essex County jail after being charged with bias intimidation and making terroristic threats.

Born in New York City and raised in Florida, the woman said she grew up Christian and attended Methodist services before branching out to explore other religions. It was Islam that struck a chord.

She converted 10 years ago and started wearing the niqab three years later. The niqab, she felt, was never an obstacle. She attended college in New Jersey, where she became vice president of service for the school's National Honor Society and president of the Muslim Student Association.

After graduation, she started a business making and selling natural bath and body products. Three years ago, the woman founded a nonprofit to help foster children in New Jersey, organizing a summer camp program and back-to-school supply drives, she said.

At times, she has felt peoples stares in public, but she does not judge. They could be looking at her because they are curious or interested, and not necessarily because they mean harm, she said.

The first time she was attacked was earlier this year while she was shopping at a grocery store in Lyndhurst. She said she was browsing shelves when a woman approached and started yelling that she was disgusting and should go back to her country. Then the woman grabbed a shopping cart and started shoving it into her.

It never really crossed my mind somebody would do something like that, she said. I am from this country.

I was so shook, I couldnt even press record on my phone to record it, she added. After, I felt so bad that I couldnt handle that situation. I look at myself like a strong woman. This was one of those times in my life that I felt I wasnt in control.

She called police but without witnesses, it was one word against another and there was not much they could do, she said.

So when she was attacked in April, she had the foresight to take a photo of the other driver's license plate. She said he told her that he hated her and wanted to kill her. She said he thought the worst he might do was tailgate her car.

A Bergen County woman who wishes to remain anonymous speaks out about being attacked while getting ice cream. Shown on Saturday May 9, 2020.

I definitely thought we were going to die. Everything he was saying, his threats, he was trying to do what he said he would do, she said.

She said he tried to strike a third time, but she was able to move her car by then. After he fled the scene, she said she asked witnesses if they could stay to talk to police.

Morrison remains in jail at the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark.

"We cannot comment about open cases except to say that anyone charged with a crime is innocent until and unless they are proven otherwise," said Jennifer Sellitti, a spokeswoman for the state Public Defender's Office, which is representing Morrison.

Along with the bias and assault counts, he faces charges of making terroristic threats, unlawful possession of a weapon  his car  and possession of a weapon with an unlawful purpose.

Morrison appeared May 1 in Essex County Superior Court, but the judge ended proceedings after the defendant began shouting that he didn't recognize the court's jurisdiction, according to Katherine Carter, the prosecutor's spokeswoman. Morrison was ordered to undergo a mental health evaluation.

Morrison pled guilty to terroristic threats in a 2014 case in which he threatened to kill another person, according to court records. He was sentenced to two years of probation.

The Bergen woman said the stress of last month's attack has exacerbated her asthma. Insurance wont cover damage to her car because it was an intentional act and not an accident, she said.

She worries about her son: He always acts like he's the one who has to protect me or take care of me. I dont know how he feels. Hes a teenage boy.

She considers herself a social person, noting her involvement in community organizations and charitable work. But for now, she doesn't want to go out much.

I am Muslim, she said. I have faith in Allah. Thats a huge part that helps me get through this. It keeps me going and helps me understand and process this.

Follow Hannan Adely onTwitter: @adelyreporter

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Muslim woman feared for her life during alleged bias attack in NJ
A 27-year-old woman doctor on Covid-19 duty, who contracted the virus while treating patients at a government hospital in north Delhi, was allegedly humiliated, intimidated and sexual harassed by her neighbour, who even locked her in her south Delhi flat in Vasant Kunj, when she returned home from an isolation facility on Wednesday.

On Thursday, a case of wrongful restraint and sexual harassment under sections 342 and 509 of the Indian Penal Code was registered against the neighbour at the Vasant Kunj South police station on the doctors complaint, said deputy commissioner of police (southwest) Devender Arya.

We have started the probe into the case and its in the preliminary stage. The neighbour will be asked to join the investigation. Further action will be taken accordingly, said a senior police officer who asked not to be named.

The doctor could not be reached her comment and repeated calls and text messages to her cellphone numbers went unanswered.

Since a sexual harassment charge is included in the case, the doctors name and other details that can reveal her identity have been withheld by the police.

The doctor said in her complaint that after being discharged from the isolation centre, she returned home on Wednesday. Around 4.30pm, her neighbour on the ground floor came to her the first floor flat and began screaming and hurling abuses at her, saying she was Covid-19 positive and could not stay there.

...even after explaining to him that I have two confirmed negative test reports and have been satisfactorily discharged from the isolation centre, he did not stop screaming at me, the doctoradded in the complaint.

The doctor alleged that when she asked him to talk to the president of the residents welfare association (RWA), the neighbour latched her door from outside and shouted, I will see how you step out and will make sure you leave this place. Call whoever you want to.

The RWA president said the doctor informed her about the matter and she in turn alerted the Vasant Kunj Souths station house officer (SHO), who sent a beat officer.

The neighbour said he has apologised to the doctor and the police for his aggressive behaviour. He claimed that he was unaware that the doctor had been on Covid-19 duty and objected only because she had returned home after just a week in quarantine.

The doctor was shifted to the quarantine facility on May 6. I was surprised when she returned on May 13 because as per my knowledge, a Covid patient is quarantined for at least 14 days. I was concerned for my wife and childrens safety, so I protested. Later, I realised my mistake and apologised to her, he said over phone.

The RWA president, however, said the neighbour was aware of what was happening. A WhatsApp group was created to post updates from the day the doctor tested positive for the virus, the president added.

She said that after the doctor tested positive, authorities recommended a home quarantine as is usually done in the case of mild cases.

But we knew that many residents would object to that. So the authorities were requested to shift her to an isolation facility. The doctor also willingly shifted herself there. But neighbours humiliating her and not allowing her to live in her own house even after she has recovered from the disease is not justified, the RWA president said.

On April 22, in the backdrop of persistent attacks on health care workers in the front line of the battle against Covid-19, the Centre approved an ordinance to make such attacks a cognisable and non-bailable offence, expedite the investigation; imprison those convicted by up to seven years; and impose stringent penalties on vandalism and damage to property.

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Fifteen people who have returned to Uttarakhand from other states during the ongoing evacuation process have turned Covid-19 positive in the state.

According to government officials, till Friday evening, over 2.12 lakh registrations had been made on the state website for return to Uttarakhand.

Of these, the state government under its evacuation process has so far brought back 82, 834 people through trains and buses. Over 6000 people have returned to the state in their own vehicles.

In case of people from other states stranded in Uttarakhand, 33,990 have registered with the government for return to their respective states. Of these, 16,229 have been sent to their respective states.

On Friday two persons person tested positive for Covid-19, one in Dehradun and other in Pauri Garhwal, taking the tally of total cases to 80 in Uttarakhand. Of 80 cases, 50 people have recovered so far, leaving 29 active cases in the state.

With the fresh case, Dehradun now has a total of 40 cases and 11 active cases. With the latest case, the doubling rate in the past seven days in Dehradun district has reduced to 29.86 from 167.38 days on Tuesday.

JC Pandey, public relations officer (PRO) state health department said 29 year old man from Dehradun tested positive at the testing lab in All Indian Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), Rishikesh.

This man had come with his mother from Delhi. His mother had tested COVID-19 positive on May 13, he said.

Pandey said another 25 year old man from Pauri Garhwal tested positive at AIIMS Rishikesh. He said the man had returned from Gurugram Haryana.

Of 80 cases in the state so far, Dehradun has reported the maximum 40 Covid-19 positive cases followed by 16 in US Nagar, 12 in Nainital, 7 in Haridwar, 2 from Almora, 2 from Pauri Garhwal and one from Uttar Kashi

Uttarakhand has nine containment zones including five in Dehradun followed by two in Haridwar and one each in Nainital and US Nagar.

Authorities in Uttarakhand are worried over many people returning to the state testing positive for Covid-19. Last week, chief minister Trivendra Singh Rawat had even acknowledged that the state was faced up with a big challenge because many of those returning to the state are likely to be infected.

The state is expecting at least 2-2.25 lakh migrants to return of which about 25,000 are expected to be infected, the chief minister had said during a Facebook live session.

On May 13, even Uttarakhand high court, while expressing concern over many migrants returning to the state testing Covid-19 positive, had sought reply from the state and Central government on whether each person returning to the state was also being medically examined as thermal screening is not enough and whether antigen tests, or any other rapid tests, could be performed on people returning to the state.

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A French court on Wednesday scrapped all charges against a man who helped migrants enter the country illegally, closing the final chapter in a case that defined so-called "crimes of solidarity".

The French Appeals Court in Lyon on 13 May annulled all charges against olive farmer Cedric Herrou who helped some 200 migrants cross the border from Italy.

In August 2017, Herrou, who lives in Breil-sur-Roya, near the French-Italian border, was given a four-month suspended sentence for facilitation of irregular entry.

According to the French Code of Entry and Stay of Aliens and Right of Asylum (CESEDA,) any person who directly or indirectly assists  the entry, movement or residence of an irregular non-national in France is punished with a fine of 30,000 euros and five years in prison.

Herrou had brought the migrants to his home and allowed them to camp there. He also helped shelter some 50 Eritreans in a defunct railway building.

On 6 July 2018, the French Constitutional Council initially ruled that this crime of solidarity as Herrou's actions were dubbed, was against the principle of brotherhood.

But in December that same year, the Cour de Cassation -- France's court of final appeal -- overturned Herrou's conviction and sent the case back to the appeals court in the city of Lyon which on Wednesday voided all charges.

The Constitutional Council has since ruled that people cannot be prosecuted for "crimes of solidarity".

"Reason and the law has triumphed," said Sabrina Goldman, a lawyer on the case.

"Why focus on someone who did nothing but help? How can what he did be regarded as anything other than a humanitarian act?"

Implications for Europe

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a statement on "Reason and the law has triumphed," said Sabrina Goldman, a lawyer on the case.

"Why focus on someone who did nothing but help? How can what he did be regarded as anything other than a humanitarian act?"

Human rights watchdog Amnesty International said in a statement on its website that the ruling will have implications throughout Europe for the criminalisation of "acts of solidarity".

"Cedric Herrou did nothing wrong, he simply showed compassion towards people abandoned in dire conditions by European states," Amnesty's Rym Khadhraoui was quoted as saying. Most European countries have rules on illegal immigration carrying similar penalties.

For instance facilitating unlawful entry or transit of an alien into Austria carries a penalty of up to 5,000 euros and two years imprisonment, while prison terms in Greece can go up to ten years for a similar offence and Latvia imposes a prohibitive 47,000 euros and 7 years of community service, only topped by Luxemburg where the fine can be 50,000 euros.

Britain has the heaviest prison sentence for people helping undocumented immigrants to stay: 14 years.

French law should now be amended to ensure that only people smuggling, which entails a material benefit, is regarded as an offence, excluding humanitarian assistance, Khadhraoui added.

(With agencies)
I got as far as the doorway and then realized that they didnt have any PPE to put on, she said, referring to personal protective equipment. She decided the risk of bringing the virus home to her family was too great and said a prayer and a goodbye to her mother from the doorway instead.
Irish racing will return behind closed doors at the earlier date of June 8 after Horse Racing Ireland (HRI) made a successful proposal to government to resume sooner than had initially been expected.

Taoiseach Leo Varadkar announced two weeks ago that "behind closed doors" activities would resume in Phase Three (June 29) of his five-phase plan to ease lockdown restrictions amid much outrage from those in the Irish racing industry.

HRI have successfully lobbied to bring that date forward by three weeks, however, with Fine Gael TD Peter Burke making the declaration on Twitter this afternoon that racing will now return during Phase Two on June 8.

"Horse Racing to return behind closed doors with strict protocols from June 8th. Much needed certainty for the sector," Longford/Westmeath TD Burke said in a Twitter post.

Today had been billed as D-Day for HRI in their attempt to reach a compromise with the government and it seems to have been a successful one with Burke tweeting the positive result during a cabinet meeting earlier today, although HRI are yet to confirm the news.

The racing industry had been hit exponentially at every level by the Coronavirus but a return to action would be hugely welcomed by trainers, jockeys, stable staff and everyone involved in racing.

Horse Racing Ireland chief executive Brian Kavanagh has expressed the sport's gratitude to the government, saying: "We are grateful to be one of the sectors permitted to go back to work and acknowledge the responsibility on everybody in racing to ensure the events are run in a safe way.

"We know from our own experience in March when we safely ran 10 meetings behind closed doors - and from what is happening in other countries like France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and America - that racing can be staged safely within the requirements of social distancing.

"With significant input from the IHRB's chief medical officer Dr Jennifer Pugh, we have strengthened the HRI Covid-19 protocols and so, while race fixtures will return in Ireland on June 8, they will be very different from what people will have experienced before."

Only key personnel will be allowed to attend meetings and all will be subject to advance health screening as well as temperature checks on arrival.

Face coverings will be mandatory for many attendees including jockeys, stalls handlers, medical professionals and security staff, while social distancing will be strictly enforced by a dedicated Covid-19 protocol officer at each fixture.

Kavanagh said: "We will publish our full protocols tomorrow (Saturday) and will require any key personnel necessary to run a race fixture to read the document in full.

"There must be full compliance with these protocols and to assist the industry in becoming familiar with the changed workplace, a series of webinars on the Covid-19 Protocols will be announced next week.

"On Sunday we will release a revised fixture list up to the end of June, including confirmation on when the Classics, traditionally scheduled for this time of year, will be run."

Racing restarted in Germany last week and France staged its first meeting on Monday, while in Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and certain American states, the industry has continued to operate behind closed doors. The British Horseracing Authority plans to resume racing on June 1, subject to Government approval.

Kavanagh expects professionals to be pleased by the news, but warned that racedays will be "stripped back events" when they return.

He added: "I would like to acknowledge the constructive engagement with the Government throughout the consultative process through the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed and his officials.

"It was reassuring that the importance of horse racing as an industry was fully appreciated. The industry supports 29,000 jobs in rural Ireland, and we are the third largest producer, and largest exporter, of thoroughbreds in the world, all of which depends on racing taking place on track.

"The decision to allow racing to resume behind closed doors will be welcomed within the industry. For Flat racing in particular, but also for a significant portion of the National Hunt population, there is a seasonal and cyclical nature to the industry and these are key months in the trade and export of horses with proven form on the race track, as well as a vital period in the sales season.

"These will not be race meetings as you might traditionally imagine them, rather stripped back events which will determine the best horses in various categories, a vital factor for the breeding industry. Attendance will be kept to an absolute minimum and Covid-19 protocols will be strictly enforced."
Not all children in a class will be able to attend school together when they reopen due to physical distancing, and a school must remain closed if it cannot provide a safe environment for students and staff.

Distance learning also looks like it will remain a feature of teaching for the time being, according to the Irish National Teachers Organisation (INTO).

"Given the current guidance of physical distancing, it will be necessary in almost all schools to reduce the number of children attending at one time."

In a submission to the Department of Education, the teachers' union says its priority in reopening primary schools will be given to the safety and health of staff, pupils and parents. We seek firm assurances that schools are not reopened prematurely and then might face a second period of enforced closure, which would only compound an already difficult situation.

Schools must also be given enough notice to carry out suitable safety assessments. Teachers in special schools have also raised very specific health concerns, both for themselves and their pupils. "Guidance and support will be urgently required by schools in these cases."

INTO members are also very concerned about the effects of lockdown on young students. When schools reopen additional resources will be required to address social, emotional and behavioural needs that might have been exacerbated since the schools closed.

The INTO also raised concerns around teachers with childcare responsibilities should creches fail to reopen in advance of schools, teachers who are at risk, teachers who are pregnant, and teaching principals.

Additional funding will also be required to cover the costs of deep cleaning schools, and for improved hygiene practices like access to warm water, soap, hand gel and disposable paper towels. There is "clear acknowledgement" that it is not possible to observe physical distancing in a school as it is elsewhere, the submission added. "This is a matter which is of huge concern to our members."

Appropriate measures must be put in place to help children with this including smaller class groups, floor markings, removal of furniture, arrangements for assembly, dismissing and playing, one-way access systems, and toilet access. "This will pose huge organisational challenges for schools and clear communication with parents will be necessary."

Formal consultation on reopening schools has now begun with the Department of Education. Talks are expected to continue throughout the summer.
Shock waves are rippling through Torontos gay community as word spreads about the murder of a well-known and well-liked local DJ.

Peter Elie, known as DJ Blue Peter, held down the decks for more than 20 years at a number of bars and clubs in the Church-Wellesley area as well as abroad.

For more than two decades, scores of partiers flocked to his legendary Sunday night drag show party at Woodys on Church. People started dropping off flowers and mementos on the bars front steps late Thursday afternoon once Elie was identified as Torontos latest homicide victim.

(Peters death) was really senseless. He was the sweetest. He always saw the good in people, said bar manager Dean Odorico, who also called 52-year-old Elie a good friend.

Its absolutely tragic.

Odorico said lots of calls and messages were coming in to Woodys from people devastated by Elies untimely death.

All the performers are heartbroken. He was so patient with them, so welcoming, said Odorico, who said he suspects  and hopes  his dear friend was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Aside from being a DJ, Odorico said Elie was also a skilled video producer who excelled in working with sound, lighting and special effects. Odorico also said Elie was good at organizing and coordinating events and performances.

I would expect under normal conditions lots of people would gather at Woodys and other bars in the Gay Village to mourn his death, he shared.

The 519, a city organization dedicated to advocacy for the inclusion of LGBTQ communities, shared a statement with toronto.com that it posted on Facebook on Thursday evening.

The 519 grieves with our Church Street community this evening after learning of the loss of Peter Elie. DJ Blue Peter was the heart and soul of many of our gathering spaces for over 20 years, where he shared his passion for music and bringing our communities together, the note read.

As a community, we will remember the vibrance he brought to The Village over the years.

The 519 is also encouraging anyone from the queer community who is struggling with Elies death to visit its website for more information about counselling and other supports, including over-the-phone crisis support.

In an email to toronto.com, Coun. Kristyn Wong-Tam said she spoke to a number of community members Thursday evening about the tragic loss and said everyone is very shocked by Elies death.

This loss is hard especially since our community is already going through such difficulties, she wrote, adding people are a bit reluctant to speak because his death has been deemed a murder.

Shortly after 2 a.m. Thursday, Toronto police responded to a call for a small fire in the laundry room of an apartment building near Balliol and Yonge streets, south of Davisville Avenue.

Once on scene, they located Elies lifeless body with obvious signs of trauma.

The homicide squad was called in to investigate.

Late Thursday morning, police released images of a person of interest. This individual, a man, was last seen wearing a dark jacket with red-and-black checkered pyjamas.

Investigators are advising anyone who sees this man to not approach him, but instead to call 911 immediately.

Anyone with information is asked to contact police at 416-808-7400, or Crime Stoppers anonymously at 416-222-8477 (TIPS) or online at 222tips.com.

Joanna Lavoie is a reporter with toronto.com. Reach her via email: jlavoie@toronto.com
Global oil prices showed gains on Friday with a fall in U.S. stocks after 15 successive weeks of increases and on concerns over a second wave of COVID-19.



International benchmark Brent crude was trading at $31.95 per barrel at 6.45 GMT on Friday, up from $29.52 per barrel on Thursday.



American benchmark West Texas Intermediate was trading at $28.28 at the same time on Friday compared to $25.58 a barrel on Thursday.



In the U.S., commercial crude oil inventories posted their first decline last week since January after 15 successive weeks of increases. Inventories decreased by 700,000 barrels against the market expectation of a rise of 4.1 million barrels, Anadolu Agency reported.



Signs of a gradual rebalancing in the global oil market can be seen, although these are still fragile, according to the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) on Thursday.
ATLANTA, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, the North American Talc Subsidiaries of Imerys (Imerys Talc America, Imerys Talc Vermont, Imerys Talc Canada), along with Imerys SA ("the Group") and Imerys Talc Italy SpA1, filed a joint Plan of Reorganization ("the Plan") and related disclosure statement ("the Disclosure Statement") in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware as part of the chapter 11 bankruptcy cases initiated on February 13, 2019. The Plan outlines a proposed path forward to emerge from chapter 11 having addressed historic talc-related liabilities.

The North American Talc Subsidiaries believe that the Plan provides a favorable solution for all stakeholders, including representatives of current and future claimants in talc-related litigation, while effectively defining a path forward for the impacted talc businesses. The Plan provides that if the necessary approvals are obtained, the Talc Subsidiaries will emerge from the chapter 11 process and the Group will be released from all existing and future talc-related liabilities arising out of the Talc Subsidiaries' past operations, as such liabilities will be channeled into a dedicated trust.

Concurrent with the filing, the North American Talc Subsidiaries are initiating a sale process for substantially all of their assets under Section 363 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. The North American Talc Subsidiaries are not seeking to liquidate their assets, but anticipate pursuing a sale as a going concern. No stalking horse bidder has been identified. Imerys SA is entitled to participate as a bidder in any sale process, but will not serve as a stalking horse. Pursuant to the terms of the proposed Plan, all undisputed claims of suppliers against the filing entities are expected to be paid in full.

Subject to approval of the Plan by the requisite number of talc claimants, Imerys Talc Italy intends to file for voluntary chapter 11 protection in order to benefit from the same global and permanent protections of historic talc-related liabilities as the North American Talc Subsidiaries2.

The Filing Companies are targeting confirmation of the Plan in October of this year and emergence from chapter 11 protection before the end of 2020.

Giorgio La Motta, President, Imerys Talc America, Imerys Talc Vermont, and Imerys Talc Canada, commented, "This is a significant step in the North American Talc Subsidiaries' path towards emergence from chapter 11. The Plan represents a favorable outcome for the North American Talc Subsidiaries' stakeholders and will enable us to move forward free of historic talc-related liabilities."

Representatives appointed by the bankruptcy court to represent the existing and future potential talc-related claimants have agreed to the terms of the Plan, and will be preparing a letter to accompany the solicitation documents indicating their support of the Plan, and advocating for the support from those entitled to vote on the Plan. A hearing to consider approval of the Disclosure Statement is scheduled with the Court for June 30, 2020. Following Court approval of the Disclosure Statement, the Filing Companies will distribute the Plan and Disclosure Statement to voting creditors for their consideration.

This press release is not intended as solicitation for a vote on the Plan. The Plan and the Disclosure Statement and any exhibits, when filed, will be available online at https://cases.primeclerk.com/imerystalc .

The Filing Companies filed voluntary petitions for reorganization under chapter 11 of the United States Bankruptcy Code on February 13, 2019. This action was taken to safeguard their long-term business interests and address historic talc-related liabilities in the United States.

The Filing Companies are advised in this matter by Latham & Watkins LLP and Alvarez & Marsal.

About Imerys Talc America

Imerys Talc America is the leading talc producer on the American continent, with operations in Montana, Vermont, and Texas. The company supplies premium-quality, talc-based solutions to a wide variety of industrial applications including paints, plastics, ceramics, rubber, paper, agriculture, adhesives and sealants, building products, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

About Imerys Talc Canada

Imerys Talc Canada is a leading talc producer on the American continent, with operations in Timmins and Penhorwood. The company supplies premium-quality, talc-based solutions to a wide variety of industrial applications including paints, plastics, ceramics, rubber, paper, agriculture, adhesives and sealants, building products, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals.

Press Contact

The Levinson Group

[email protected]

202-244-1785

1 Imerys Talc Italy has been named in a few talc-related lawsuits in the United States.

2 Imerys Talc Italy's business is not included in this sale and will remain part of the Group throughout and after closing of the chapter 11 proceedings.

SOURCE Imerys Talc America
Australia's lowest paid workers face a longer wait for a pay rise after the industrial umpire raised the prospect that any increase in the minimum wage could be delayed for businesses on JobKeeper.

The suggestion, which would create a temporary two-tiered wage system, would give relief to struggling businesses dealing with revenue falls of at least 30 per cent compared to last year.

Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry boss James Pearson wants no minimum wage increase this year. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

But some of the nation's largest business representatives, including the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, have said there should be no wage rise at all in light of disastrous job figures, which showed about 600,000 people lost their jobs in April.

"With Australia facing an unprecedented economic and jobs crisis, we simply cannot afford to increase the price of retaining and regaining jobs in 2020," the chamber's chief executive James Pearson said on Thursday.
Emergency teams raced Friday to prevent a coronavirus "nightmare" in the world's largest refugee settlement after the first confirmed cases in a sprawling city of shacks housing nearly a million Rohingya.

There have long been warnings the virus could race like wildfire through the cramped, sometimes sewage-soaked alleys of the network of 34 camps in southeast Bangladesh.

Most of the refugees have been there since around 750,000 of the Muslim minority fled a 2017 military offensive in neighbouring Myanmar for which its government faces genocide charges at the UN's top court.

Local health coordinator Abu Toha Bhuiyan initially said on Thursday two refugees had tested positive. The World Health Organization (WHO) later said one case was a local man.

On Friday, another senior health official said two more Rohingya had tested positive -- a 42-year-old woman and a 30-year-old man.

It was unclear if they had been in contact with the first two cases.

Mahbubur Rahman, the chief health official in the local Cox's Bazar district, said news of the infections had sparked "panic" in the camps.

The 35-year-old Rohingya man, whose positive result was announced Thursday, lives in Kutupalong, the largest of the camps. He sparked a manhunt at one point after he fled before police found him around four hours later.

"We are worried. He can spread the disease in the camps," community leader Abdur Rahim told AFP.

Rahim said the man is believed to have been infected in a hospital in a nearby town where he took his injured brother for treatment.

WHO spokesman Catalin Bercaru told AFP that "rapid investigation teams" were being deployed.

Rahman, the health official, said an entire block in one camp, housing around 5,000 people, was shut off, and that all contacts of the men were being traced and would be brought to isolation centres.

"We have locked down the block, barring anyone from entering or leaving their homes," he said.

Rahman said they would ramp up coronavirus testing to "at least" 100 per day from just five to 10 at present.

Bercaru said that since February, the entire health sector had been "working round the clock" to increase capacity for testing, isolation and treatment, as well as to train health workers and talk to communities.

The UN refugee agency said that 12 severe respiratory infection treatment centres were being established locally, and that up to 1,900 intensive care beds, five quarantine centres, and 20 isolation facilities were planned.

Humanitarian groups would also help with visits by health workers to people inside the camps plus home deliveries of food and fuel.

"We call on additional international solidarity and support to ensure an adequate response for this particularly vulnerable population," a UNHCR statement said.

- 'Thousands may die' -

In early April authorities had locked down Cox's Bazar -- home to 3.4 million people including the refugees -- after a number of COVID-19 cases.

Bangladesh restricted traffic in and out of the camps and forced aid organisations to slash manpower by 80 percent.

The country of 168 million people is under lockdown and has seen a rapid rise in coronavirus cases in recent days, with almost 19,000 and 300 deaths as of Thursday.

Senior US official Sam Brownback, who has visited the refugees said it was inevitable the virus would reach the "incredibly crowded" camps and spread "very rapidly".

Daniel Sullivan from Refugees International called it the "realisation of a nightmare scenario".

Shamim Jahan at Save the Children said there was the "very real prospect that thousands of people may die", with "no intensive care beds" in the camps.

- No internet, many rumours -

Bangladesh has also been criticised for cutting the internet in the camps, which has restricted access to reliable information and spread false rumours.

"I have been calling on the Bangladeshi government to give internet access. It just seems to me ludicrous that they're not," Brownback told reporters in Washington.

With little prospect of being able to return to Myanmar -- where army operations persist in Rakhine state -- many of the refugees have in desperation tried to escape in rickety vessels.

Last month around 60 died in a boat stranded at sea for two months after being denied entry by Malaysia and Thailand because of coronavirus restrictions, survivors said.

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Indian citizens wait at San Francisco International Airport to board a special flight returning them to Mumbai. Several thousand Indian nationals, stranded in the U.S. amid the COVID-19 pandemic, are being evacuated by the Indian government. (photo courtesy of the San Francisco Indian Consulate)
Congratulations, imumumbai.com got a very good Social Media Impact Score! Show it by adding this HTML code on your site:

Imumumbai.com scored 72 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 25 Jan 2015, you can refresh this analysis whenever you want.

This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared the imumumbai homepage on Twitter + the total number of imumumbai followers (if imumumbai has a Twitter account). The total number of people who shared the imumumbai homepage on Google Plus by a google +1 button. The total number of people who shared the imumumbai homepage on Delicious. The total number of people who shared the imumumbai homepage on StumbleUpon. This is the sum of two values: the total number of people who shared, liked or recommended the imumumbai homepage on Facebook + the total number of page likes (if imumumbai has a Facebook fan page).

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PAGE TITLE Welcome To IMU,MUMBAI CAMPUS DESCRIPTION KEYWORDS OTHER KEYWORDS mumbai, campus, mumbai campus, maritime, imu mumbai, imu mumbai campus, chanakya



The keywords meta-tag found in the head section of the homepage. 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. The title found in the head section of the homepage. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator) is the address of the site.

Domain and Server

DOCTYPE XHTML 1.0 Transitional CHARSET AND LANGUAGE UTF-8 DETECTED LANGUAGE English English SERVER Microsoft-IIS/7.5 (ASP.NET) OPERATIVE SYSTEM Windows Server 2008 R2 Windows Server 2008 R2

Operative System running on the server. The language of imumumbai.com as detected by CoolSocial algorithms. Type of server and offered services. Character set and language of the site. Represents HTML declared type (e.g.: XHTML 1.1, HTML 4.0, the new HTML 5.0)

Site Traffic trend during the last year. Only available for sites ranked <= 100000 in the world.

Referring domains for imumumbai.com by MajesticSeo. High values are a sign of site importance over the web and on web engines.

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FACEBOOK PAGE LINK FOUND FACEBOOK PAGE www.facebook.com/pages/Indian-Maritime-University-IMU/146399235402008 DESCRIPTION LIKES PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT PAGE TYPE TIMELINE PAGE NO TIMELINE

The total number of people who tagged or talked about website Facebook page in the last 7-10 days. Facebook Timeline is the new layout of Facebook pages. The type of Facebook page. The description of the Facebook page describes website and its services to the social media users. The URL of the found Facebook page. A Facebook page link can be found in the homepage or in the robots.txt file. The total number of people who like website Facebook page.

Twitter account link

TWITTER PAGE LINK FOUND TWITTER PAGE twitter.com/#!/imumumbai DESCRIPTION IMU ACCOUNT CREATED ON 26 Apr 2012 LOCATION Mumbai TWEETS 0 FOLLOWERS 15 LISTED 0
Police arrest Cancun man for rape of a minor

Cancun, Q.R.  A man from the city of Cancun was arrested by police after a complaint was filed against him for the crime of rape. The Office of the Attorney General of the State of Quintana Roo reported that Cancun police officers complied with an arrest warrant against Saul S.

The State Attorney says Saul S was wanted for rape of a minor of reserved identity. His arrest took place after prosecutors were successful in presenting evidence that implicated the accused. He was taken into custody in SM 250 and transferred to police facilities where he will remain to face criminal proceedings.
TACOMA, Wash.  A federal judge has granted early discovery in a copyright infringement lawsuit filed by MindGeek after it claimed that operators of the tube site YesPornPlease.com made available 3,078 of its copyright-registered scenes.

MindGeek, which operates one of the largest portfolios of adult film content, said in its suit that the content poached and posted comprises more than 6,395 separate URLs and features scenes from Reality Kings, Brazzers, MOFOS, Babes.com and Twistys, among numerous other brands.

YesPornPlease, in the past few years, has built a steady audience with its adult tube fare, averaging more than 96 million hits per month, with the largest percentage being U.S. viewers.

Despite repeated takedown requests, YesPornPleases operators systematically refuse to comply with them, MindGeek said in its suit originally filed last month.

MindGeek is seeking maximum statutory damages of $150,000 with respect to each work infringed, or $462 million, plus attorneys fees, in total.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle ordered a motion for early discovery to identify the Does and connect the dots through subpoenas to its U.S. providers, such as PayPal Inc., Domain Protection Services, Name.com Inc., Cloudflare Inc., Namecheap.com, Tucows Domains Inc., Internet Security Research Group and Comodo Inc.

Early discovery was needed in the copyright claim because MindGeek attorneys dont have any information on the John Doe defendants, with the exception of their business contacts.

It appears that the YesPornPlease website is hosted by a company in Russia, but it is currently unknown where the owners and operators are located, court documents filed by MindGeek counsel said.

While the copyright infringement on YesPornPlease is obvious and blatant, the owners and operators of the website have gone to great lengths to hide their identities.

MindGeek counsel said that YesPornPleases elaborate infringement operation uses a sister site, VShare.io, to upload content. In order to do that, a user is required to first upload the video on VShare.io, where the user must copy the URL assigned to the video by VShare and paste the link on YesPornPlease.com, the suit said.

Vshare also has an affiliate program, the suit noted, enabling users to earn money based upon number of views of a video posted by that user.

The encouragement for users to earn increased posting limits comes with a monetary reward, the suit said. When posting a video on the VShare website, users are further informed of an affiliate program whereby they can earn money.

The scheme to monetize infringement on the YesPornPlease site may not be obvious to the general observer, MindGeek said in the suit.

Instead of static banner advertisement, upon viewing videos on the YesPornPlease site, the user will be periodically shown [a geo-targeted] pop-up advertisement, MindGeek said.

MindGeek, which filed the federal lawsuit in Tacoma, Wash., said that YesPornPleases operators conduct was egregious and willful and causing serious harm.

Under the guise of acting as a distributor of user-generated content, defendants in fact are directly and knowingly involved in the trafficking of tens of thousands of pirated works  including thousands of works owned by [MindGeek division] MG Premium, the suit said.

Moreover, though defendants are not service providers, not engaged in the storage of content at the direction of users, and thus are not entitled to any of the safe harbors afforded under Section 512 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.

Jason Tucker, president of Battleship Stance, an industry-leading copyright management and enforcement company who was involved in the MindGeek investigation of YesPornPlease, told AVN, Operators of websites who show blatant disregard to content owners by ignoring copyright laws and the takedown process should expect to be targeted."

The operator has caused significant harm to some of the world's most well-known brands, Tucker said. A commitment to resolve this should be expected.

YesPornPlease.com today rerouted its portal to a site named Porngo.com.

AVN was unable to reach its operators for comment.
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Nurses and doctors from India may get a golden chance to get permanent citizenship of United States with a new proposal in the Congress looking to to meet the stretched needs of the healthcare sector.

In an interaction with Moneycontrol, David Cantor, Head of Foreign Medical Professional Practice Group, Davies & Associates, spelt out the contours of the Healthcare Workforce Resilience Act.

"The highlights of the proposed legislation are that would provide 40,000 green cards readily available for qualified nurses and physicians. There is no cap per country," he added.

Cantor explained that the waiting period for a green card could be as high as 10 years. However, once this legislation goes through, eligible healthcare professionals could get a nod in even a month.

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 longer a healthcare professional has waited for a green card, the sooner he/she would be eligible under this route once the legislation is passed," he added.

Also Read: Live updates from the COVID-19 outbreak in India

US lawmakers want to utilise the unused green cards so that highly-skilled physicians and nurses are able to help the country fight the pandemic. Here, 25,000 nurses and 15,000 doctors of foreign origin would be eligible for a green card.

The total confirmed COVID-19 positive cases have 1.45 million in the US with 86,571 deaths reported so far.

According to the Act, the immigration visas will be issued in order of priority dates and not be constrained to the per-country limitation.

Hence, technically it is possible that 40,000 individuals of Indian origin including doctors and nurses get a permanent residency of the US to help handle the COVID-19 crisis.

"Anyone who is doing medical work related to COVID19 would get a priority in getting a green card once the proposed legislation is passed," he added.

While there are no official numbers, industry estimates suggest that 20 percent of the 2.9 million nurses in the United States are of Indian origin. Further, out of 1.5 million doctors in the United States, those of Indian origin are said to constitute about 5 percent.

On April 22, 2020, US President Donald Trump had signed an executive order halting immigration for green card seekers for 60 days. This, he said, was done to protect the jobs of American citizens laid off during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Trump had said the temporary halt on issue of green cards would ensure that Americans are the first in line for jobs when the economy re-opens.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here
Asked for comment, a Trump campaign spokesman, Tim Murtaugh, replied: Every election is a choice. Voters will be able to choose between President Trumps record of success and Joe Bidens dismal record as a Washington, D.C., swamp monster.

Ms. OMalley Dillon said that in coming weeks the campaign will intensify its efforts in critical swing states, with plans to have leadership in place by next month as part of an effort to build out the relatively skeletal staff that powered Mr. Biden through the primary. She promised a number of significant announcements in coming days on how the team is growing and emphasized a commitment to hiring diverse senior leadership.

Ms. OMalley Dillon also sketched out the Biden campaigns view of the battleground map, echoing the candidate, who privately told supporters at a virtual meeting of his finance committee on Thursday that he expected a major expansion of the playing field, according to two participants.

She indicated that the campaign sees Arizona, Texas and Georgia as being in play. She is particularly bullish, she said, on Arizona, a traditionally red state. An accompanying slide described the Biden strategy in Arizona as a mix of persuading Romney-Clinton voters and others who have moved toward the Democratic Party recently, as well as increasing turnout among Latino voters and voters under 30.

She also said that the campaign intended to roll out a new website.

A night earlier, Mr. Biden again addressed the biggest controversy his campaign has faced in the general election to date, saying that he did not remember Tara Reade, the woman who has accused him of sexual assault, and adding that Americans probably shouldnt vote for me if they believe the accusation, which he has strenuously denied.

I think they should vote their heart, he said on MSNBC, asked about his message to voters who had been inclined to support him but believed the Reade allegation. I wouldnt vote for me if I believed Tara Reade.

Ms. Reade, a former Senate aide, has said that Mr. Biden assaulted her in 1993. In the interview Thursday night Mr. Biden said that womens claims of assault should be taken seriously but should also be vetted, as he sharpened his questioning of Ms. Reades accusation.
Greece is preparing to reopen its beaches to eager locals tomorrow ahead of the country's hugely-popular tourist season this summer.

Greece - a destination favoured by British holidaymakers - was put on a six-week lockdown in March in a bid to slow the spread of deadly coronavirus.

Businesses were shut as soon as the country recorded its first Covid-19 death and travel to the islands, such as Mykonos and Santorini, was restricted.

But organised beaches - those with ticketed entrances and organised sunbeds - are set to reopen tomorrow following official advice.

Greece is preparing to reopen its beaches to eager locals tomorrow ahead of the country's hugely-popular tourist season this summer. Pictured: Workers prepare a beach near Athens

Greece (a beach being raked near Athens, pictured) - a destination favoured British holidaymakers - was put on a six-week lockdown in March in a bid to slow the spread of deadly coronavirus

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the 'best-case scenario' is for Greece to 'open for business' from foreign travellers on July 1.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Greece is 'at a better starting point than other countries to receive a large number of tourists' but stressed this summer would not be like the last.

It follows the announcement that normally year-round hotels and restaurants are to resume operation in Greece on June 1 with strict distancing rules.

Businesses were shut as soon as the country recorded its first Covid-19 death and travel to the islands, such as Mykonos (pictured) and Santorini, was restricted

Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis said the 'best-case scenario' is for Greece to 'open for business' from foreign travellers on July 1. Pictured: Workers install wooden paths on a beach near Athens

Other tourist resorts are expected to open on June 8, Greek Health Minister Vassilis Kikilias said Thursday.

The government's fast-acting regulations to slow the spread of the virus likely account for Greece having one of the lowest death rates in Europe.

A total of 156 have died from coronavirus in Greece, which has a population of 11 million.

Out of over 2,700 cases, just two were on the island of Mykonos.

Government spokesman Stelios Petsas said Greece (Mykonos, pictured) is at 'at a better starting point than other countries to receive a large number of tourists'

Souvineer shop owner Nikos Degaitis (pictured) wonders whether it is worth resuming business at all under such strict rules

Mr Mitsotakis said on Thursday: 'We will find a way to bring people over safely.

'I estimate it will be a totally different story from late July.'

The EU this week revealed its plan to kick-start the continent's ailing tourism industry in time for the summer holidays.

Transport including plane journeys should be restarted 'as a matter of priority', the European Commission said on Wednesday in advice to the bloc's 27 member states.

The government's fast-acting regulations to slow the spread of the virus likely account for Greece (a cafe in Mykonos, pictured) having one of the lowest death rates in Europe

The Greek government has announced a support package of around 24 billion euros, including EU funds, to help shore up the economy. Pictured: A closed shop in Mykonos

Measures should be brought in to keep passengers safe, including requiring masks, limiting passenger numbers, and reorganising airports and stations to maintain social distancing.

The Greek government has announced a support package of around 24 billion euros, including EU funds, to help shore up the economy.

With tourism accounting for 12 per cent of national output, Greece is expected to sink into a 10 per cent recession this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

The Greek finance ministry says the downturn can be limited to 4.7 per cent, but the jobless rate will approach 20 per cent.

Souvineer shop owner Nikos Degaitis wonders whether it is worth resuming business at all under such strict rules.

Last year, some 700,000 people were employed in the Greek tourism sector overall between June and September. Pictured: A municipal worker in Mykonos

An elderly woman wearing a protective facemask buys fresh fish at a fisherman stand in the old port of the Greek Cycladic island of Mykonos

'Even if I open up, I will be scared to serve and help customers,' says Degaitis, who has run his souvenir shop for 65 years.

'I can't stand this sort of thing, wear a mask, keep two metres (apart), it's better that the shop is closed and for me to go to bed,' he adds.

'The rules are too tough, all the routines will change, how does one respect the rules in such a tiny street?' wonders his grandson George Dasouras.

In April, the Hellenic chamber of hotels said the sector calculated a 4.46-billion-euro ($4.9-billion) loss of revenue because of the virus this year, with over 45,000 jobs at risk.

Last year, some 700,000 people were employed in the Greek tourism sector overall between June and September.

Ministers are attempting to save what is left of Europe's lucrative summer tourist season. Pictured: The usually-bustling Paradise beach in Mykonos

On Paradise, one of Mykonos' world-renowned beaches, turtledoves have replaced the dusk-to-dawn scrum of tanning bodies.

'Last year, we had 600 to 700 sunbeds. As far as things stand today, we don't even have one,' says Damianos Daktilidis, owner of the Tropicana beach club.

'I have not calculated the percentage of losses, we don't want to calculate, we hope that the year will be salvaged from July (onward),' he adds.

Ministers are attempting to save what is left of Europe's lucrative summer tourist season - worth an estimated 130billion - with the continent almost certainly heading into a deep recession.

The EU this week revealed its plan to kick-start the continent's ailing tourism industry in time for the summer holidays. Pictured: Workers prepare a beach in Mykonos

But commissioners are only able to issue guidance to member states, and it will not be up to individual countries which measures to adopt.

The commission's over-arching advice is that EU countries with similar rates of coronavirus infections and comparably strong health care systems should begin lifting border measures between each other.

Even with restrictions easing, social distancing rules would apply, and the EC is recommending that robust disease monitoring measures are put in place.

That would include good testing capacity and contact tracing - so that people have the confidence to return to hotels and camping sites abroad.
:The New Delhi bound



Rajdhani Superfast Special embarked on its return journey from here on Friday night with around 295 passengers.

.The train left the Thiruvananthapuram railway station at around 1945 hrs, railway sources said.

All passengers were asked to reach early and ensure they have their e-ticket and e-pass.

By 3 pm, the passengers began coming to the station,and the check-in process went off smoothly.

Health screening was done after which they were allowed to board the train.

The train is expected to reach Ernakulam Junction, the second stop, at 2310 hrs and leave for Kozhikode, which is the last stop of the train in Kerala.

The special train will be touch Mangalore, Madgaon, Panvel, Vadodara and Kota before reaching New Delhi on May 17.

It had reached here this morning with around 1000-odd passengers, of whom seven were shifted to hospitals following symptoms of COVID-19 infection.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Your Office

Many professionals commute to another state for work. Working from home during the pandemic has raised the question of which state then gets to tax that income.

The test is necessity versus convenience. If you simply dont want to commute to the office, working from home is for your convenience and the state where your office is continues to collect its income tax. But if you cannot go to the office in another state because of a stay-at-home order, shouldnt the state where you are working from home collect that tax?

The answer could set up a battle between states.

Ms. Hovanessian normally works in Midtown Manhattan, but she is telecommuting at her home in northern New Jersey because of lockdown orders. New Jersey has said it will not impose a tax on the income of people who usually work in another state but are now working from home.

But this is not broadly the case. New York has not issued guidance on what it might do, said Mr. Sprechman of JPMorgan. He added that New York could continue to tax residents of other states who normally worked in New York but were now working from home. Likewise, the city could continue to tax residents of New York State who typically work in Manhattan. That could get messy.

New York could tax you for the days you continued to work from home as a matter of convenience, he said. Youre relying on official sources for that information telling you when you can go back to work.

States often give a credit for income tax exacted by another state, but what if there isnt a state income tax to credit? Say North Carolina assesses an income tax, but your home state is Florida, where there is no income tax. The taxpayer is out of luck, said Lisa R. Featherngill, managing director and head of legacy and wealth planning at Abbot Downing.

The situation is worse still for doctors, nurses and other emergency personnel from other parts of the country who went to New York to help. Their income could be taxed at higher rates.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 15, 2020) - American Aires Inc. (CSE: WIFI) (the "Company" or "Aires") is pleased to announce record sales during the month of April 2020.

For the month of April 2020, Aires had record sales of $252,431 CAD (unaudited) compared to sales of $172,672 CAD (unaudited) in March 2020, a 46.2% increase month over month.

Aires is also pleased to announce it sold 2,311 units, representing a 40.1% increase in units sold over the comparative month ended April 30, 2019. Units sold include the Aires Shield Pro, Aires Defender Pro and Aires Guardian.

It is noteworthy that these sales figures for April 2020 were achieved organically. As reported on April 24, 2020, with the Aires automated e-commerce platform now operational, Aires has embarked on a gradual advertising and marketing spend to increase product awareness and consumer sales.

"We are certainly pleased with the percentage increase in our April sales and the monthly growth that we are experiencing. We see April's results as a proof of concept that our model, which is highly scalable, is working very well and we are seeing consumer demand translate into sales," commented Dimitry Serov, President and CEO. "As we look to increase our ad spend, we anticipate an increase in sale with a time lag for the ad spend to translate into sales of 4 to 6 weeks which is very much in line with our forecast and past experience."

About American Aires Inc.

American Aires is an Ontario based technology company that is focused on the research, development and implementation of innovative technology solutions to allow consumers to safely engage with electronic products of the 21st century. The Company is currently engaged in the business of production, distribution and sales of products intended to protect persons from the harmful effects of electromagnetic emissions, which is produced from electronic devices such as cell phones, Wi-Fi routers, tablets and electric cars to name a few. The Company has developed a technology that restructures and transforms electromagnetic field haze into a more biologically-compatible form to reduce the harmful effects of electromagnetic radiation. The Company's current principal products are the Shield Pro, Aires Defender Pro and Aires Guardian.

For more information please visit www.airestech.com, or contact:

Dimitry Serov, President & Chief Executive Officer

Email: dimitry@airestech.com

Phone: (905) 482-4667

Investor Relations:

Samina Deen, Head of Partnerships

Email: samina@airestech.com

Phone: (416) 320-1634

wifi@airestech.com

Certain information set forth in this news release may contain forward-looking statements that involve substantial known and unknown risks and uncertainties. All statements other than statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements, including, without limitation, statements regarding future financial position, business strategy, use of proceeds, corporate vision, proposed acquisitions, partnerships, joint-ventures and strategic alliances and co-operations, budgets, cost and plans and objectives of or involving the Company. Such forward-looking information reflects management's current beliefs and is based on information currently available to management. Often, but not always, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "predicts", "intends", "targets", "aims", "anticipates" or "believes" or variations (including negative variations) of such words and phrases or may be identified by statements to the effect that certain actions "may", "could", "should", "would", "might" or "will" be taken, occur or be achieved. A number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors may cause the actual results or performance to materially differ from any future results or performance expressed or implied by the forward-looking information. These forward-looking statements are subject to numerous risks and uncertainties, certain of which are beyond the control of the Company including, but not limited to, the impact of general economic conditions, industry conditions and dependence upon regulatory approvals. Certain material assumptions regarding such forward-looking statements may be discussed in this news release and the Company's annual and quarterly management's discussion and analysis filed at www.sedar.com. Readers are cautioned that the assumptions used in the preparation of such information, although considered reasonable at the time of preparation, may prove to be imprecise and, as such, undue reliance should not be placed on forward-looking statements. The Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise its forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise, except as required by securities laws.

No securities regulatory authority has either approved or disapproved of the contents of this news release. The Shares have not been, nor will they be, registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or any state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States, or to or for the account or benefit of any person in the United States, absent registration or an applicable exemption from the registration requirements. This press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy any common shares in the United States, or in any other jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful. We seek safe harbour.

Neither the Canadian Securities Exchange nor its Market Regulator (as that term is defined in the policies of the Canadian Securities Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

Not intended for distribution to United States Newswire Services or for dissemination in the United States. Any failure to comply with this restriction may constitute a violation of United States Securities laws.

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55981
Courthouses in most of California have closed their doors. Law school classrooms are empty. Jury trials are on hold. Major law firms nationwide are slashing their payrolls. But suits are still being filed and crimes are being charged. The coronavirus pandemic has damaged the business of law, like most other businesses, but it hasnt diminished many Californians need for lawyers.

Like most crises, the pandemic is spawning new legal clashes  for example, between employers and workers, insurers and shuttered businesses, regulators and property owners. And on the criminal side, between those who want to keep accused wrongdoers behind bars and those who want them released. On the flip side, corporate mergers and acquisitions are down, so lawyers in those areas are seeing less work.

My sense is that labor and employment practices, whether union-side or management, have plenty of clients in need of legal advice and representation, said Michael Rubin, a San Francisco attorney who represents workers. Plaintiffs-side consumer lawyers dont seem to have slowed down at all. Environmental issues are just as pressing as before.

Victims rights advocates have seen little downturn.

In a lot of respects we are busier than weve ever been, said Micha Star Liberty, whose small Oakland firm represents individuals suing schools, hospitals, doctors and other professionals for physical or sexual abuse. She is also the president of the 4,000-member Consumer Attorneys of California.

Other subsets of legal practice are also flourishing.

Tech, privacy and real estate are very big  and employment, said Cari Brunelle, whose company handles public relations for law firms in multiple fields. Another hot practice is bankruptcy.

Overall, though, lawyers and their firms are hurting financially, just like any businesses affected by the reeling U.S. economy and declining day-to-day transactions.

According to the online legal publication Law360, as of Friday, 126 major law firms nationwide were cutting their budgets. More than half had reduced lawyers salaries and trimmed or eliminated summer-employment programs for law students, while 14 laid off employees and 31 put staff on temporary furloughs, suspending their pay but often maintaining their health coverage.

More than 64,000 people lost their jobs in the U.S. law profession last month, said the Recorder, another legal publication. And the legal service website Clio reported that 49% of the consumers it surveyed in April said that if they encountered a new legal problem, they would probably wait to seek help until the pandemic had subsided.

Work has dried up in many (law) practice areas, said Brunelle. Financial services, large industries, hospitality, retail, so many (businesses) going under. Firms servicing them are being hit hard.

One such firm, which apparently has avoided the worst blows so far, is Davis Wright Tremaine, a 566-lawyer firm that is based in Seattle and has an office in San Francisco. It has reduced pay by 6% to 15%  with the biggest cuts for top executives  and has put 8% of its non-lawyer staff, such as clerks, secretaries, receptionists and legal assistants, on furlough, with health benefits. It has also scaled back its summer law-student program.

Theres not a lot of deals that are closing or starting up in lawyer-heavy transactions such as corporate mergers and acquisitions, said Jeff Gray, a managing partner. He said the firm hasnt been harmed as much as others because it has a diverse practice, with many cases involving government regulation of its clients. Regulatory agencies havent shut, and theres a fair amount of work, he said.

Thats also true for businesses suing insurance companies that have decided business-interruption coverage in their policies does not apply to losses from closures caused by the coronavirus.

Weve been retained by hundreds of businesses large and small, said attorney Adam Levitt, whose Chicago firm has asked federal courts to consolidate and transfer all such cases to Chicago. The firm has also filed suit in San Francisco seeking refunds of activity fees for University of California and California State University students  a gymnasium fee makes no sense if the campus gym is closed, Levitt said  and is expanding its nationwide staff of 20 lawyers.

The economic slowdown hasnt reduced the demand for representation of individuals with grievances against institutions, said Liberty, the Oakland attorney who handles claims of physical and sexual abuse and heads the statewide organization of plaintiffs lawyers.

People who have been harmed have time to look for lawyers and talk to lawyers where they didnt before, Liberty said. At the same time, she said, the court system has completely broken down in California  trials are on indefinite hold, civil cases take a back seat as courts conduct limited business, and some ailing clients may even die before their cases can be heard, drastically reducing the potential damages their estates might recover.

There also will be consequences for court staff, like clerks and bailiffs. No large-scale staff cutbacks have been reported so far, but that seems certain to change with Gov. Gavin Newsoms revised budget Thursday, which proposes massive funding reductions to offset the states suddenly looming virus-inflicted $54 billion budget deficit. The cuts include 10% to court operations funding in 2020-21 and 5% for the following year, partly offset by an added $50 million for the expected surge in filings when courts start to reopen.

Chief Justice Tani Cantil-Sakauye called the deficit sobering and said the judiciary would work with Newsom and the Legislature to try to maintain service to the public. No one wants to turn away those coming to our courts to seek justice, she said in a statement.

Criminal lawyers still have their hands full, even without jury trials. The drop in crime rates hasnt halted new criminal cases, and elimination of bail for many charges hasnt ended hearings over whether newly arrested defendants should be held in jail. Pleas must still be entered, cases investigated and witnesses interviewed, under conditions posing new challenges.

Normally, I sit right next to my client in court, said Alexandria Carl, a San Francisco defense lawyer who took part in an in-person preliminary hearing earlier this month. We have close contacts ... a lot of whispering, communication that we like to keep quiet, which is difficult to do from 6 feet away in an open courtroom. And speaking through a mask made it harder for the court reporter to hear and transcribe her words, Carl said.

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.

In pre-pandemic times, during prosecution testimony at pretrial hearings a defendant would tap me on the shoulder or pass me a note, saying what this witness said was not accurate, said Elizabeth Camacho, who manages felony cases at the San Francisco public defenders office. Now they cant do that. So we came up with a walkie-talkie system by pushing a button on a hand-held receiver to transmit whispers between lawyer and client.

Whenever criminal trials resume, Camacho said, theyll still be impacted by the virus and the surrounding fears.

Will the jury want to listen or will they be so worried that they will be unable to process the evidence? she asked. Masks, social distance  where will they deliberate? This is really a scary time for clients who are in custody awaiting trial.

A somewhat reassuring answer came from Randy Sue Pollock, a defense lawyer in Oakland just back from a two-month trial in Lexington, Ky., which she said was the only criminal jury trial in any U.S. federal court during the pandemic. Her client, from Los Angeles, was acquitted of charges involving a shipment of drugs to Kentucky.

When courts were shutting down in mid-March, the trial had been under way for three weeks, and jurors wanted to keep going, Pollock said. She said the judge gave the jury additional seats to allow spacing and constantly cleaned her hands while presiding, unmasked. Masks were made available to the jurors, but only one wore them and the others donated them to frontline workers, Pollock said. She said the jury deliberated in a large room for nine days.

Its a miracle that we got to a verdict and no one got sick, Pollock said.

San Francisco Public Defender Mano Raju said his office is as busy as ever, investigating cases, interviewing witnesses and preparing for future trials. District Attorney Chesa Boudin is spending time on the front lines, negotiating and arguing cases in courtrooms or remotely, and getting a closer look at the position to which he was elected in November.

Im a trial lawyer, said Boudin, a former deputy public defender. I love being in court. I miss it. His focus now, he said, is keeping my staff safe, keeping morale up, (in) a tremendously stressful period.

Berkeley lawyer Cliff Gardner represents defendants appealing their convictions and hasnt seen a slowdown yet, but he expects one in a few months because of the suspension of jury trials. Visits with clients in prison are also suspended, but they can still exchange letters, and thank goodness we still have the United States Postal Service.

Those of us who have work are happy to have it, Gardner said. Theres a lot more serious problems than ours right now.

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: begelko@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @BobEgelko
The study has been conducted by the Madhya Pradesh forest department.

Bhopal: Does environment play a role in curbing incidence of pandemic in an area? A study by Madhya Pradesh forest department has led to some interesting findings linking forest cover to incidence of pandemic in a region.

More the forest cover, less incidence of pandemic, the preliminary findings by the study indicated.

We have noticed that the areas with more forest cover per thousand population in the state have reported less incidence of pandemic than those with less forest cover per thousand population, the study has found.

It is an observation supported by facts and figures. More studies should be done in the field to link environment with outbreak of pandemic. It may be a forest remedy to the pandemic, Rajneesh Singh, spokesman of state forest department, told this newspaper on Thursday.

The observation was based on the study on forest cover percentage in each district, its availability per thousand of people, and spread of pandemic in these areas intensity of which are marked by Red, Orange and Green Zones.

Indore, Bhopal, Ujjain, Khargone and Morena where forest cover per thousand people is less than 100 hectares, have witnessed high incidence of pandemic pushing them into Red Zones of coronavirus outbreak.

Interestingly, districts like Betul and Chhindwara which enjoyed high density forest cover, have reported less incidence of pandemic bringing them into Orange Zone, notwithstanding the fact that they bordered Red Zone districts of Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra.

In fact, districts such as Balaghat, Shahdol, Panna, Anuppu and Umaria which have high density of forest cover and also witnessed return of migrants in thousands in the past one month are in Green Zone reporting little or no incidence of pandemic.

From the data, it appears that immunity of people living in areas having better forest cover is more than those living in areas with less forest cover, the preliminary findings of the study indicate.

Madhya Pradesh has reported 4,251 coronavirus positive cases and 232 deaths. Total 42 out of 52 districts in the state have so far been affected by the pandemic.
Kentucky churches were able to hold Sunday services in person last week after a federal court halted the Kentucky governor's ban on mass gatherings including in-person religious services on May 10.

It was after weeks of holding virtual services only during the coronavirus outbreak and more churches will have services this week physically following CDC guidance of social distancing and hygiene guidelines.

U.S District Judge Gregory F. Van Tatenhove made the ruling Friday against the Democratic governor Andy Beshear's orders and this was two weeks ahead of his reopen date of May 20.

The lawsuit was on behalf of Tabernacle Baptist Church in Nicholasville, which filed the lawsuit to meet in person during services Sunday, after the state's Attorney General Daniel Cameron, a Republican, joined the case last week.

Churches, including Tabernacle Baptist, stopped holding in-person services after stay-at-home orders were issued on March 19 and 25. The judge found Beshear's orders "beyond what was reasonably required for the safety of the public," according to Fox News.

"If social distancing is good enough for Home Depot and Kroger, it is good enough for in-person religious services which, unlike the foregoing, benefit from constitutional protection," the judge wrote in the court's order.

"The Constitution will endure," Van Tatenhove added. "It would be easy to put it on the shelf in times like this, to be pulled down and dusted off when more convenient. But that is not our tradition. Its enduring quality requires that it be respected even when it is hard."

King's Way Church in Ashland is spending this week preparing for their first Sunday back in church, WSAZ News Channel reported.

"We have spaced all of our seating, the rows to 6 feet apart. When people enter the church building on Sunday, we are asking to seat each family unit together, and then between each family unit will be three chairs, which are roughly about 6 feet," said Lauren Fannin, King's Way Church Media Coordinator.

"I encourage all houses of worship to prayerfully and carefully consider when it is the right time to resume in-person services consistent with health guidelines. Although these rulings protect the religious liberty of Kentuckians, we must continue to do our part to protect the health of our fellow citizens by reopening carefully," said Cameron.
By Tom Hals

May 15 (Reuters) - Businesses are urging U.S. lawmakers to shield companies from what they fear could be a flood of lawsuits by workers and consumers blaming employers for exposing them to the new coronavirus.

But so far, court records show few such cases have been filed and some legal experts say the threat of liability is exaggerated because of the difficulty of proving where someone was infected.

"Those cases havent materialized and I doubt they will," David Vladeck, who teaches civil procedure at the Georgetown University Law Center, said on Tuesday at a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on a liability shield for businesses.

As of Wednesday, only 45 of 1,018 coronavirus-related lawsuits were personal injury or medical malpractice cases against a business, the areas of most concern for trade groups. The analysis was based on a case tracker by the Hunton Andrews Kurth law firm.

Of the 45 cases, 28 were against Princess Cruise Lines . The rest were against three other cruise lines, two meat processing companies, Walmart Inc, a senior living facility operator, two care centers, a hospital and a doctor's group.

Congress appeared to be heading for a legislative standoff this week with Democrats demanding another stimulus package to help support a shattered economy and Republicans pushing to protect businesses from lawsuits.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said he wanted to "make sure opportunistic trial lawyers are not lurking on the sidewalk outside every small business in America, waiting to slap them with a lawsuit the instant they turn the lights back on."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce and retail and leisure trade groups told Congress that the novel coronavirus and the patchwork of evolving health guidance from state and local authorities created legal uncertainty for companies.

Some state and local governments having eased restrictions imposed to combat the spread of the virus, which has infected more than 1.4 million people and led to at least 85,000 deaths in the United States, according to a Reuters tally https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS-USA/0100B5K8423/index.html.

A liability shield would give businesses the confidence to reopen without the looming threat of lawsuits by customers or employees who get COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. Protections would not be available for companies guilty of gross negligence, recklessness or willful misconduct.

Story continues

Consumer groups have argued that current law provides adequate protection for businesses that act in good faith.

Removing the threat of liability would discourage Americans from returning to work, dining out and resuming other activities, the consumer groups said.

Since the first case related to coronavirus was filed on March 9, the vast majority of the lawsuits filed in state and federal courts are unrelated to someone suing a business for COVID-19 exposure, according to the case tracker.

About a third of the cases filed have been brought by prisoners seeking release from a coronavirus-hit facility. Hundreds more have been brought by businesses, mostly over insurance coverage or contracts.

There are 197 class actions, largely brought by consumers, stemming from disputes over insurance, lending, tuition and ticket refunds.

"The idea of a mountain of liability is grossly exaggerated," said Paul Bland, the executive director of Public Justice, a litigation advocacy group.

Harold Kim, president of the U.S. Chamber Institute for Legal Reform, said that surveys have shown businesses are worried about lawsuits and the number of cases is rising.

"Enacting targeted and temporary liability protections for these businesses shouldn't depend on how many lawsuits are filed right now," Kim said.

Remington Gregg of the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen said he doubts that consumer litigation will increase sharply when the economy reopens.

Proving that a person was exposed at work or a business, rather than during their commute or grocery shopping, is legally difficult.

"Lawyers don't want to take losing cases and lawyers know how difficult it is to prove these claims," Gregg said. (Reporting by Tom Hals in Wilmington, Delaware Editing by Noeleen Walder and Grant McCool)
The Carnival Glory about to dock at the Kingstown Cruise Ship Berth last Saturday, May 9. (Photo Source: Beauty of SVG)

Ninety-two (92) sailors were repatriated to Vincentian shores last Saturday (afternoon) by the Carnival Cruise Line Company, via its liner Carnival Glory, which docked at the Cruise Ship Berth, Kingstown.





Health Officials reported, subsequent to their disembarkation and the stipulated testing, that two of the sailors were found, on rapid testing, to have been exposed to COVID-19.





The report also stated, "The Health Services Subcommittee has commenced further testing on those two (2) crew members and their four counterparts, to determine whether or not they have active COVID-19 infections. All six have been quarantined in a government approved facility, until definitive PCR COVID-19 testing can be completed. The other eighty-six (86) crew members have commenced fourteen (14) days of mandatory quarantine in their private homes, apartments and guest houses.





A May 12 release from the National Emergency Management Organisation (NEMO), on behalf of the National COVID-19 Task Force, disclosed that, "All PCR COVID-19 tests done on the Carnival Cruise Line crew members were negative. The affected Crew members will be released from quarantine within the next twenty-four (24) hours after final medical checks.





Meanwhile, THE VINCENTIAN understands that the passports of the sailors will be held by Immigration until the end of successful quarantine.





Readers will recall the impasse that developed between the Government of St. Vincent and the Grenadines and Carnival Cruise Line over the repatriation of Vincentian sailors employed on that Cruise Line ships. This resulted in the sailors being quarantined for well over a month, on cruise liners belonging to Carnival Cruise Line.





While there were stumbling blocks to the sailors return home that originated in the USA, there were demands being made by the government that did not appeal to the cruise line.





Original plans to fly home the sailors were eventually aborted in favour of a mutually acceptable negotiated arrangement as per the use of a liner.





On Tuesday, PM Gonsalves reminded listeners to the Shake-up Programme, of the imminent arrival of other cruise line sailors.





"Id spoken in relation to Disney which coming on the 20th with 25 of them, and of course the big number 400 with Royal Caribbean. But we got word this morning [May 12] that Carnival has found 9 Vincentians on ships off Barbados, he said.





"They had told me originally had 112 persons, but when they finally dotted off the numbers, they said 91/92. So it is clear that  others may well join up, eh and they want to bring those tomorrow [May 13]. They would come under the same protocols, Gonsalves added.





Previous to the arrival of the Carnival Cruise Line sailors, some twenty-two (22) Vincentian workers had returned from the British Virgin Islands (BVI) on Wednesday, May 6th, 2020.





They landed at the Argyle International Airport (AIA), having been transported by an aircraft belonging to the fleet of the local airline One Caribbean.





According to health officials, of the 22 persons who returned from the BVI yesterday, 18 were allowed to quarantine in their homes or in pre-arranged accommodation for that purpose, and four were sent to a quarantine.




CALGARY - Albertas energy regulator has cited clean-up concerns in blocking the sale of sour gas wells, pipelines and other facilities from an energy giant to a much smaller company.

In a decision released Thursday, the regulator said Calgary-based Pieridae Energys attempted purchase of the southern Alberta assets from Shell Canada goes against the intent of environmental laws.

The issue was seen as a test case of the regulators determination to avoid clean-up costs for energy facilities falling to the taxpayer.

In its written decision, the Alberta Energy Regulator said it wasnt happy with how the deal would have split the liability for cleaning up the sites, especially at a pair of gas processing plants. The terms of the sale would have had Shell responsible for existing contamination and Pieridae on the hook for future problems.

The scope and extent of the contamination at the site is not well known and is not well described in the applications, the decision said. To date, the contamination at the sites has not been fully understood.

Without knowing that, the regulator said, it would be impossible to know which company would have been responsible for what.

In its written decision, the Alberta Energy Regulator said the deal would have split the liability for cleaning up the sites





The decision also said the company that made the mess should clean it up.

Shell is the polluter, said the decision. The ... applications appear to request that the AER, by way of approval, override or at least significantly dilute Shells obligations.

The AER is of the view that it cannot, by way of approval, carve up and redistribute fundamental regulatory obligations in a manner that is contrary to or inconsistent with (the law).

The two companies agreed to the deal last summer. It involves 284 wells, 66 facilities and 82 pipelines in the southern Alberta foothills.

It came shortly after the regulator had promised a closer eye on such licence transfers to ensure purchasers are able to cover reclamation costs. At the time, Pieridaes market value was less than the price of the Shell assets and its stock value was less than a dollar.

The number of energy facilities left unreclaimed by struggling producers has boomed in recent years. As of May 14, Alberta alone had more than 10,000 unreclaimed wells, pipelines, facilities and sites.

In April, the federal government pledged $1.7 billion for such so-called orphan wells in Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia, although they are supposed to be reclaimed by an industry-funded group.

The energy regulator said the two companies were free to restructure their deal and try again to get the licence transfers approved.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.

 By Bob Weber in Edmonton. Follow him on Twitter at @row1960.

Companies in this story: (TSXV:PEA)
Technavio has been monitoring the industrial girth gear market and it is poised to grow by USD 23.97 mn during 2020-2024, progressing at a CAGR of almost 1% during the forecast period. The report offers an up-to-date analysis regarding the current market scenario, latest trends and drivers, and the overall market environment.

This press release features multimedia. View the full release here: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005452/en/

Technavio has announced its latest market research report titled Global Industrial Girth Gear Market 2020-2024 (Graphic: Business Wire)

Technavio suggests three forecast scenarios (optimistic, probable, and pessimistic) considering the impact of COVID-19. Please Request Latest Free Sample Report on COVID-19 Impact

The market is concentrated, and the degree of concentration will accelerate during the forecast period. Ashoka Machines Tools Corp., DB Santasalo Sarl, FLSmidth Co. A/S, Kumera Corp., Nippon Chuzo K.K., P. van der Wegen Gears, SEW-EURODRIVE GmbH Co KG, Siemens AG, SYMMEN, and The KCP Limited are some of the major market participants. To make the most of the opportunities, market vendors should focus more on the growth prospects in the fast-growing segments, while maintaining their positions in the slow-growing segments.

Improvement in girth gear manufacturing technologies has been instrumental in driving the growth of the market. However, increased demand for refurbished girth gear segments might hamper market growth.

Industrial Girth Gear Market 2020-2024: Segmentation

Industrial Girth Gear Market is segmented as below:

End-user Cement Mining Chemical and Petrochemicals Metal Fabrication Others

Geography APAC Europe North America MEA South America



To learn more about the global trends impacting the future of market research, download a free sample: https://www.technavio.com/talk-to-us?report=IRTNTR43615

Industrial Girth Gear Market 2020-2024: Scope

Technavio presents a detailed picture of the market by the way of study, synthesis, and summation of data from multiple sources. Our industrial girth gear market report covers the following areas:

Industrial Girth Gear Market Size

Industrial Girth Gear Market Trends

Industrial Girth Gear Market Industry Analysis

This study identifies growing investments in solid waste management as one of the prime reasons driving the industrial girth gear market growth during the next few years.

Industrial Girth Gear Market 2020-2024: Vendor Analysis

We provide a detailed analysis of around 25 vendors operating in the industrial girth gear market, including some of the vendors such as Ashoka Machines Tools Corp., DB Santasalo Sarl, FLSmidth Co. A/S, Kumera Corp., Nippon Chuzo K.K., P. van der Wegen Gears, SEW-EURODRIVE GmbH Co KG, Siemens AG, SYMMEN, and The KCP Limited. Backed with competitive intelligence and benchmarking, our research reports on the industrial girth gear market are designed to provide entry support, customer profile and M&As as well as go-to-market strategy support.

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Industrial Girth Gear Market 2020-2024: Key Highlights

CAGR of the market during the forecast period 2020-2024

Detailed information on factors that will assist industrial girth gear market growth during the next five years

Estimation of the industrial girth gear market size and its contribution to the parent market

Predictions on upcoming trends and changes in consumer behavior

The growth of the industrial girth gear market

Analysis of the market's competitive landscape and detailed information on vendors

Comprehensive details of factors that will challenge the growth of industrial girth gear market vendors

Table Of Contents :

Executive Summary

Market Landscape

Market ecosystem

Value chain analysis

Market Sizing

Market definition

Market segment analysis

Market size 2019

Market outlook: Forecast for 2019 2024

Five Forces Analysis

Five Force Summary

Bargaining power of buyers

Bargaining power of suppliers

Threat of new entrants

Threat of substitutes

Threat of rivalry

Market condition

Market Segmentation by End-user

Market segments

Comparison by End-user

Cement Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Mining Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Chemical and petrochemicals Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Metal fabrication Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Others Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Market opportunity by End-user

Customer Landscape

Geographic Landscape

Geographic segmentation

Geographic comparison

APAC Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Europe Market size and forecast 2019-2024

North America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

MEA Market size and forecast 2019-2024

South America Market size and forecast 2019-2024

Key leading countries

Market opportunity by geography

Market Drivers

Market Challenges

Market Trends

Vendor Landscape

Vendor landscape

Landscape disruption

Competitive scenario

Vendor Analysis

Vendors covered

Market positioning of vendors

Ashoka Machines Tools Corp.

DB Santasalo Sarl

FLSmidth Co. A/S

Kumera Corp.

Nippon Chuzo K.K.

P. van der Wegen Gears

SEW-EURODRIVE GmbH Co KG

Siemens AG

SYMMEN

The KCP Limited

Appendix

Scope of the report

Currency conversion rates for US$

Research methodology

List of abbreviations

About Us

Technavio is a leading global technology research and advisory company. Their research and analysis focus on emerging market trends and provides actionable insights to help businesses identify market opportunities and develop effective strategies to optimize their market positions. With over 500 specialized analysts, Technavio's report library consists of more than 17,000 reports and counting, covering 800 technologies, spanning across 50 countries. Their client base consists of enterprises of all sizes, including more than 100 Fortune 500 companies. This growing client base relies on Technavio's comprehensive coverage, extensive research, and actionable market insights to identify opportunities in existing and potential markets and assess their competitive positions within changing market scenarios.

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They came to kill mothers.

That was the chilling assessment of a Doctors Without Borders representative in Afghanistan after gunmen stormed a maternity ward of a public hospital supported by the humanitarian organization in the west of the capital Kabul earlier this week.

They went through the rooms in the maternity, shooting women in their beds. It was methodical. Walls sprayed with bullets, blood on the floors in the rooms, vehicles burnt out and windows shot through, Frederic Bonnot, the organizations head of programs in Afghanistan, said in a statement Thursday.

Image: An Afghan policeman keeps watch (Omar Sobhani / Reuters)

The attack on the Dasht-e-Barchi Hospital on Tuesday rocked Afghanistan, a country ravaged by four decades of war, that is no stranger to senseless loss of life.

The total death toll of the attack remains unclear, as does who is responsible for the attack.

Fifteen women and one man were killed, according to the Afghan Health Ministry. A spokesperson for the Interior Ministry said two infants were also among the dead.

Figures shared by Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French name Medecins Sans Frontieres, suggest that 24 people died and at least 20 more were injured, a majority of them patients.

Afghan Vice President Amrullah Saleh has blamed the Taliban for the attack, although the militants have repeatedly denied that they were involved.

"Neither the Taliban hands nor their stained consciousness can be washed of the blood of women, babies and other innocent in the latest senseless carnage," Saleh tweeted Friday.

However, America's special representative for Afghanistan reconciliation, Zalmay Khalilzad, said Thursday that the U.S. government had assessed that the Islamic State militant group was responsible for the attack on the maternity ward, as well as a separate assault at a funeral ceremony earlier this week.

He said the branch of ISIS that operates in Afghanistan and Pakistan opposes an agreement between the Afghan government and the Taliban, and seeks to encourage sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria.

Story continues

The hospital is in a neighborhood that is home to many members of Afghanistan's Hazara community, a mostly Shiite Muslim minority that has been attacked by ISIS in the past. The Taliban has lately moved away from its fierce anti-Shiite rhetoric.

The Taliban also steadfastly deny they target civilians. However, according to the United Nations, the group was responsible for almost half of the more than 10,000 civilians who were either injured or killed in Afghanistan last year.

Khalilzad was instrumental in Washington's signing of a landmark deal with the Taliban in Qatar in February that aims to end Americas longest war. The agreement, which has seen America begin to draw down troops from the war-torn country, was meant to pave the way for the Taliban to enter into peace talks with Afghan government officials, representatives of the opposition and members of civil society.

Image: A mother breastfeeds her newborn (Rahmat Gul / AP)

However, progress has stalled in recent months as a planned exchange of thousands of prisoners between the Afghan government and the Taliban has broken down because the government, which was not party to the Doha pact, has declined to release the Taliban prisoners as quickly as was suggested in the U.S. deal.

Tension has also arisen over the identification of prisoners and over which Taliban prisoners should be released first, with the government opting for the sick and the elderly who are less likely to return to the battlefield.

Mudslinging and accusations of wrongdoing have been the norm for months in Afghanistan, but the attacks on the maternity hospital and a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar province Tuesday have made the prospect of peace feel even more remote.

Following the attacks, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani announced that he had asked Afghan security forces to switch from "defensive" to offensive mode and appeared to blame the Taliban for one of the attacks.

"Today at the government hospital in Kabul and in [the] funeral in Jalalabad, people witnessed Taliban and Daesh terror, he said Tuesday, referring to ISIS by its Arabic acronym, without specifying which group he blamed for which attack.

ISIS later claimed responsibility for the Nangarhar attack, according to Flashpoint Intelligence, a global security firm. However, the firm said Friday they had yet to receive any claims of responsibility for the hospital attack.

The Taliban on Friday emphatically condemned the bloodshed saying attacks on clinics, funerals and public infrastructure have no place in our policy.

In response to being blamed for the hospital attack, the Taliban claimed responsibility Friday for a truck bomb attack Thursday outside a military compound in Paktia province in the east of the country. The attack killed five civilians and injured 24, according to the Afghan Defense Ministry.
Workers at Amazons six mammoth French warehouses won some concessions from the company in late March: After hundreds of employees threatened to walk out unless the company better protected them from the novel coronavirus, or COVID-19, the internet giant strengthened social distancing measures, provided masks and hand sanitiser, and took employee temperatures.

But that was not enough for workers like Jean-Francois Berot, who a few weeks later felt like his colleagues were still too close for comfort, putting themselves at risk to fulfil orders for items as trivial as nail polish.

To track all live updates from the coronavirus pandemic, click here

People kept coming to work feeling worried about being exposed to a mortal danger, said Berot, 50, who works at a warehouse south of Paris.

Unlike in the United States, where Amazon has spent years successfully beating back unionisation efforts, Berot could do something about it. He had a union behind him.

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

Berots union successfully sued Amazon last month, in what has become the most prominent labour showdown the retailer has faced since the coronavirus outbreak. A French court ordered Amazon to stop delivering non-essential items as part of measures to protect worker health. The company responded by closing its French warehouses and putting 10,000 employees on paid furlough until at least May 18. On May 13, Amazon said it would include an independent expert in its review of virus protocols, a concession to unions.

The case, now headed to the French supreme court, tests Amazons ability to sidestep the demands of workers who are fulfilling the surge in orders the pandemic has produced for Amazons business. It is also emblematic of why Amazon, based in Seattle, has battled to keep unions out of the company, especially in the United States, its biggest market.

Unions in the United States have made few inroads after years of campaigns. But in Europe, national labour laws require companies to deal with them, even if employees arent members. With more than 150,000 deaths in Europe from the coronavirus, the groups are leveraging the crisis to reassert influence and press Amazon harder on workers rights.

The only way to push Amazon to action is through confrontation, Berot said. Were working in conditions that pose a risk to our safety. Workers voices must be heard.

Amazon defended its response to the virus, saying it had put in place more than 150 changes at its warehouses, including providing masks, temperature checks, hand sanitiser, increased time off and higher pay. It expects to have more than $4 billion of COVID-related expenses in the current quarter.

We respect everyones right to express themselves but object to the irresponsible actions of some labour groups who have spread misinformation and made false claims about Amazon during this crisis, said Stuart Jackson, an Amazon spokesman. The actions of a few people do not reflect the views of many  and do not always reflect reality.

Amazon has not disclosed how many warehouse workers have contracted COVID-19 in Europe, but cases have been reported in France, Germany, Italy, Poland and Spain.

The disease has exposed long-simmering challenges Amazon has faced in the region. In Italy, it has resisted worker demands for years, including in 2017, when the company initially refused to attend a government-moderated negotiation with unions over conditions at a warehouse near Piacenza. In March, as the virus spread, Italian workers held an 11-day strike until the company added safety policies, including more time for employees to wash their hands during shifts and the creation of a health and safety committee.

In Germany, where workers sought stringent social distancing in warehouses, Amazon is entangled in a seven-year battle against one of the countrys largest unions, Ver.di, which has fought to negotiate a collective-bargaining agreement. Spanish unions, which also called for stronger anti-virus measures, have gone on strike during busy holiday periods in recent years to demand higher wages.

The labour activism hasnt stopped the company from dominating Europes online retail market.

In France, where the Chief Executive, Jeff Bezos, inaugurated the companys fledgling website in 2000 with a glitzy Parisian bash featuring 11 party boats moored symbolically in front of the National Library, Amazon is now the leading online seller.

The company reported $75.5 billion in global sales in the latest quarter, up 26 percent from a year earlier. In 2019, revenue from its online store was roughly 32 billion euro ($34.5 million) in Europe, where it has websites tailored to many other countries on the continent, too, including Britain, Germany, Italy, Spain and the Netherlands. It also operates warehouses in lower-cost Eastern European countries.

Amazon is such a force that the European Commission is investigating to see if it has broken antitrust laws.

Follow our full coverage of the coronavirus pandemic here

The companys continued financial success in Europe shows it can coexist with unions, said Christy Hoffman, General Secretary of the UNI Global Union, a Swiss-based federation of unions across 150 countries that helps organise international labour campaigns against Amazon.

She pointed to Spain, where despite a strained relationship, Amazon worked with local union leaders on new warehouse safeguards to limit the spread of the virus. In Italy, unions overcame the resistance from Amazon in 2018 to win increased pay for night work and more consistent schedules, including some weekends off.

That is the important lesson, Hoffman said. They are running relatively smoothly.

As its legal battle in France drags on, Amazon is tapping its warehouses in Germany, Italy and Poland to fill orders by French consumers, minimising the fallout from the dispute.

Amazon shuttered the French warehouses after a court ruled April 15 that it hadnt adequately consulted the employee works council, which includes union members, on coronavirus safety protocols. Unions also complained that warehouse employees faced unnecessary health risks packing items like beauty products and DVDs while the government told citizens to hunker down for safety.

The court restricted Amazons sales to essential items and threatened steep fines for non-compliance, leading Amazon to close the warehouses to avoid the financial risk.

Amazon lashed out when a French appeals court upheld the ruling, saying the union lawsuit was not about safety but rather certain unions leveraging the process of formal procedural consultation with works councils for their own agenda.

The company is appealing those court decisions in Frances Supreme Court.

In France, the temporary warehouse closings have driven a wedge between unions and some employees fearful of job losses. Around 15,000 people signed a petition last month urging the reopening of the sites.

Priscilla Soares, 32, a French warehouse employee who started the campaign, said Amazon addressed safety issues after doing too little initially, but that unions didnt take the improvements into account.

She added that unions were bullied on Facebook by unhappy employees who want to return to work. I dont think the unions really represent our interests, she said. People say that this is their fault.

For Berot, the battle with Amazon reminds him why he became a union member. He said he was never interested until he sustained repetitive-stress injuries in his arms and shoulders a few years into his job.

After returning from disability leave, Berot said managers pressed him to increase productivity. When workers with similar injuries whose productivity fell were threatened with firing, he said he decided to join Sud-Solidaires, Frances biggest industrial labour organisation, to advocate for improved work conditions.

When the coronavirus hit, Berot said unions previous experience suggested they should demand a comprehensive response. He disputed a statement by Amazon that the company had worked closely with the workers committee on coronavirus safety plans, saying that when unions sought stricter sanitary protocols, Amazon listened but didnt always incorporate them.

Wed say, theres a problem. Theyd say, its not that bad, he said. Thats how the dialogue is.

In its statement, Amazon said it has an open-door policy with workers who are encouraged to push us to be better, and always do.

While Berot is heartened that Amazon will now bring in an independent expert to assess safety protocols, he said he expected it would hardly be the last fight unions mount.

Amazon says its safety first, he said. But their priority is business.

c.2020 The New York Times Company
Which sectors will bounce back fast? Which will lag? Has the consumer changed forever? Here are some answers.

"Blanket reopening of businesses far too risky. Capacity constraints to hit consumption. Learn to do more with less.

We have got used to these headlines. Now lets get down to brass tacks.

How are they weaving in these insights into their future course of action?

Are companies taking note of the changing demand trends?

Devangshu Dutta, chief executive officer of retail consultancy Third Eyesight, addresses the key question of cutbacks which will drive both business decisions and the consumer behaviour.

On the consumer side, many have lost their jobs or taken paycuts. So future prospects will be weighed in before spending, he says.

It is for this reason that he sees premium products bouncing back the quickest because consumers who buy them are not affected that severely as some of the others.

Clothing as a category may take a serious hit as it is one of the major discretionary purchases made by consumers, adds Dutta.

On the list of categories facing cut-backs, he adds discretionary spending like eating out or watching movies or travel-related products and services.

Now the flipside. The brands in some of these categories see opportunity despite this shift.

Take quick service restaurant chain Pizza Hut for example.

We are already in the process of adapting ourselves to this new normal.

"Deliveries will continue to see an uptick and we are geared to handle that surge with technology upgradations, oven-to-home contactless processes and delivery centric value deals, says Neha, director marketing, Pizza Hut India.

The company, she adds, is also confident that dine-in will pick up subsequently as consumers will seek moments of togetherness and look forward to the sheer delight of eating out.

Dutta, too, talks about these social needs bringing back demand even if there is a delay.

The fact is that with restrictions in place you start feeling frustrated.

"Look at what happened outside the booze shops in the country.

"The long queues that you see are not just about alcohol its also about going out.

"So revival of demand will happen and companies will have to keep in mind that if you are cutting back, dont cut back into the muscles and bones, he says.

Harminder Sahni, founder and MD, Wazir Advisors, contests the prevalent view that malls will see lesser footfall whenever they are allowed to open.

According to him, malls will see better reception because they can be trusted to provide a more hygienic and controlled environment compared to open markets.

The immediate changes in consumer behaviour, adds Sahni, is larger basket sizes as few would like to venture out frequently for shopping needs and there will be greater dependence on new household appliances.

In the previous issue, this section had discussed how categories such as dishwashers are finding traction.

BS Strategy spoke to Samsung India on these changing behaviour patterns and how the consumer electronics major is gearing up to react to those.

Raju Pullan, senior vice-president, consumer electronics business, Samsung India, says, In the past one month, we have received thousands of queries from consumers across the country as to how they could buy our digital appliances as they felt the need to equip their homes with the latest technology while they stayed home and worked from home.

Giving specific examples, he says that many, including those in tier-II and tier-III cities as well as in rural areas, have evinced interest in its bigger smart TVs, 5-in-1 smart convertible refrigerators and hygiene team washing machines as their needs are changing.

One, they are doing much of the housework that was outsourced earlier themselves.

Two, these consumers want to upsize as a bit of indulgence once the lockdown restrictions are relaxed.

Besides what will be sold a key question is, how they would be sold.

Weighing in on this aspect, Siddharth Shekhar Singh, an associate professor of marketing at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and Mohali, makes a bold observation on how much online has gained: One thing is clear that people are going to buy more things online.

"This means that the pace at which online retail was moving will accelerate and it will find uses in other areas also.

"It has leapfroggged to the next level - a level it would have otherwise taken five years to reach because the consumer now knows that the costs are often low, services are efficient and tracking is possible.

Some companies have learnt to synergise their online and offline capacities.

So earlier, if the product was supplied to the consumer from a warehouse of the ecommerce company, manufacturers will now explore the feasibility of shipping it from a dealer who is close to the consumer as this reduces the shipping time and is useful in working around inter-zonal restrictions.

But if more operations move online, commercial real estate can be a serious casualty.

On how the sector will cope with the demand slump, Anuj Puri, chairman, Anarock Property Consultants, acknowledges that the coronavirus has thrown a serious spanner in the works of this lucrative real estate segment but warns that working from home is obviously not a catch-all solution - many business verticals and functions still require employees to work in an office setting.

A large chunk of work needs constant monitoring and professional infrastructure which only an office setting can provide, he says.

On how cutbacks will have an impact on the business side, Dutta says that there, the economic impact of not only COVID but the pre-COVID excesses will also unroll now.

Many business decisions like opening a new store, were taken without substantiating whether there was any demand; now companies will be more cautious about it.
When the COVID-19 outbreak began in China, UN Human Rights immediately saw the potential dangers for neighbouring Democratic People's Republic of Korea (more commonly known as North Korea, hereafter "DPRK").

Although, at the time of writing, the DPRK had not officially recorded any cases of COVID-19, UN Human Rights holds grave concerns for the human rights consequences that the virus  and measures taken to prevent its spread - will bring to a population which is already suffering.

Signe Poulsen is the Representative for UN Human Rights in Seoul, in the Republic of Korea. From Seoul, the UN Human Rights team is monitoring the situation for people inside the DPRK.

How has COVID-19 affected your work?

In late February, when the number of infections in the Republic of Korea (ROK) was rapidly increasing, there was not much information about how to respond. As a precautionary measure, our staff who had possibly been exposed in locations where the virus had spread, started working from home. Later, we extended this to most of the team, in line with the ROK Government's guidelines on physical distancing. The Seoul office was the first in UN Human Rights to begin working remotely.

Since January, we have worked closely with people from the DPRK living outside of the country and with civil society organisations, particularly those with contacts inside the country, to gather up-to-date information. Individuals and organisations working on human rights did not have access to the DPRK even before the pandemic, so they are skilled at working in this way. Working remotely is also something that the Seoul office has always been required to do due to a lack of access to the DPRK, so we were well-placed to do so even when the movement restrictions were put in place. We contact our partners by phone on a weekly basis, and we also monitor information in the DPRK state media, and in international media.

At the same time, we have adjusted our other activities. Staff continue to work from home, and schools remain closed, while the Government is continuing measures to contain the spread of COVID-19.

What is UN Human Rights doing to protect the rights of people during this pandemic?

Our office in Seoul monitors and analyses the situation in the DPRK. Based on the information we gather, we provide recommendations for addressing the situation to member states, to other UN agencies, to the DPRK authorities and to other relevant stakeholders. We report to the Human Rights Council as well as the General Assembly. The High Commissioner and Special Rapporteur on human rights in DPRK have both called for a relaxation of sanctions that could impact the health sector in DPRK.

In addition, we are raising awareness of how human rights can help protect all people, but in particular the most vulnerable. We have translated key documents into Korean, allowing easier access to information about the human rights implications of COVID-19.

What are the main human rights issues at stake in the DPRK in the COVID-19 response?

What we see is that the response to COVID-19 has exacerbated an already extremely difficult situation for many people in the DPRK, due to the increased restrictions on movement within the country and across borders. The country's health system is also very weak, especially for the rural populations.

The DPRK was the first country to close its borders in response to COVID-19, and the authorities distributed information about preventing spread of the virus. But the COVID-19 response risks make a desperate humanitarian situation even worse. Prior to the COVID-19 crisis, the general population was already struggling for survival, with around 40 per cent of people food insecure and facing other economic hardship. The closing of the border with China has led to a further deterioration in the situation, as trade is severely limited.

Many people who were already in a desperate situation are no longer able to meet their basic needs. We are particularly concerned for the most vulnerable  detainees held in cramped conditions, as well as people who are not able to access adequate health care, or those who do not have access to enough food, a safe source of water, or who cannot afford to buy masks and soap.

Given the poor state of the health care system and that a significant part of the population may be suffering from malnutrition, our major concern is that a large-scale outbreak of the virus risks a far higher mortality rate than in neighbouring countries.

Biggest challenges and lessons learned thus far during the pandemic?

As with everything, it is very difficult to know the full situation in the DPRK. Restrictions on information, on access to the country, and on people's right to raise concerns mean that we do not know everything. Nevertheless, we do have some reliable information, including about increasing economic hardship. Working with partners in civil society makes our information stronger.

Another big challenge is the situation that COVID-19 has created for people from the DPRK who seek to escape from the country. Most of these are women who escape across the border with China. With the closure of the border, and with the risk of contracting COVID-19, it has reportedly become almost impossible to leave the DPRK.

Why is it important to stand up for human rights during this pandemic?

This is a global pandemic, which requires global responses. While it is difficult to respond in the DPRK, empowering people to become active in local and national governance, making better use of technology, and redistributing resources in more equitable ways, are all methods which are crucial to the response and beyond. More immediately, it is critical that countries, including the DPRK, work together as part of the international community, to help those in greatest need.

15 May 2020




Here are todays top news, analysis and opinion at 9 PM. Know all about the latest news and other news updates from Hindustan Times.

Supreme Court stays Madras HC order, paves way for opening liquor shops in TN

The Supreme Court on Friday paved the way for reopening of state-owned liquor vends in Tamil Nadu by staying a Madras High Court order which had ordered their closure on the grounds that there was violation of guidelines, such as social distancing, meant to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Read more

Delhis Covid-19 death toll rises to123, city reports 425 fresh cases taking tally to 8,895

Delhi reported 425 new Covid-19 positive cases in the last 24 hours taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the national capital to 8,895 including 5,254 active cases and 3,518 patients who have recovered, according to data from the Delhi health department. Read more

Ensure migrants dont travel on foot: CM Yogi Adityanath to officials

Chief minister Yogi Adityanath on Friday asked state officials to set up teams in every police station area to ensure that no migrant worker travels on foot or bike or in any unsafe mode in Uttar Pradesh. Read more

Elephant uses a stick to scare away angry rhino. Watch incredible video

Theyre two huge animals and it would be hard to pick which would win in a battle between them. This video shows just that - an interesting fight between an elephant and a rhinoceros. Its not just the fight that makes the clip interesting. Read more

This is Diljit Dosanjhs yummy and easy cheat day pancake recipe

With government mandated lockdowns in place on account of the coronavirus pandemic, we are seeing the domestic side of our beloved Bollywood celebrities. Read more

Migrants walk of despair continues despite Shramik trains: Whos to blame?

Migrant labourers in the country continue to walk back to their native villages. This despite the government arranging special Shramik trains for transporting stranded migrant labourers. So are why migrant labourers still on the road desperately trying to reach their native villages? Who is to blame for the plight of the migrant labourers? Watch Congress Gourav Vallabh & BJPs Charu Pragya discuss the issue with Hindustan Times Chetan Chauhan & Aditi Prasad. Watch here
Mr. Khalilzad maintained that the Islamic State had targeted both the hospital and the funeral procession and said that he was eager to see any evidence that the Afghan government could provide that would indicate otherwise.

He acknowledged that the Taliban had not fully ended its attacks, including a truck bombing on Thursday that killed at least five people near a military court. But Mr. Khalilzad said the group had not explicitly violated an earlier agreement to ease hostilities that was a condition of opening direct peace talks with the government.

We are saying that they are violating the spirit if not the letter, given that commitment that all sides will try to reduce violence, Mr. Khalilzad said.

It is not clear when talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government might begin. They were initially scheduled for March, after the Taliban signed a preliminary agreement with Washington that focused largely on withdrawing American troops in exchange for assurances that Afghanistan would not be used as a launching pad for terrorist attacks against the United States.

Since then, the Taliban and the Afghan government have sparred over the pace of releasing the others prisoners. Mr. Khalilzad said a new date for holding the talks was under discussion, but would not say when.

The American military is still on track to draw down its forces in Afghanistan to roughly 8,600 troops, Jonathan Hoffman, a Pentagon spokesman, said Friday. That benchmark was outlined in the deal with the Taliban but was also a longtime goal for Gen. Austin S. Miller, the commander of the U.S.-led mission in Afghanistan. The current American troop number in the country is just under 12,000.

The surge in violence has called the peace deal into question  and with it, American credibility in Afghanistan, said Michael Rubin, a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute policy center.
Farmers have been urged to act quickly following confirmation from the Scottish government that the tenants amnesty will be extended by six months.

Farmers yet to notify landlords of any farm improvements were set to lose out on compensation claims if they had not taken advantage of the amnesty which had a deadline of 12 June.

That deadline has now been extended, but tenants and landlords are still being urged to act quickly.

The amnesty allows landlords and tenants to rectify any outstanding issues around notification of tenants improvements which should qualify for compensation when the tenancy comes to an end  in a process known as Waygo.

Rural surveyor Davidson & Robertson worked with NFU Scotland to provide a free Waygo Helpline to support farmers and landlords looking to capitalise on the amnesty.

Head of policy at NFU Scotland, Gemma Cooper said for those who have left things late, the helpline advises on starting the process.

The initiative has already helped a number of tenants and landlords and the 0131 449 6212 number is still available to help with any amnesty related queries.

"It remains vitally important that both parties in a rental agreement take advantage of this process where they can.

"Setting the record straight will not only help the tenant at waygo but make things easier for the landlord as well," Ms Cooper said.

She added that it is important that tenants and landlords understand that whilst the 12 June deadline is extended, tenants still need to act quickly.

"The extension is the last possible date for using the formal notice process required to safeguard parties legal position.

Despite the original looming deadline, many landlords and tenants across Scotland have still not taken advantage of the amnesty.

NFU Scotland members can take advantage of the Waygo helpline  0131 449 6212, whether making initial enquiries or looking for advice having already started.
The first chartered flight rescuing hundreds of Hong Kong residents from Indias coronavirus lockdown has been earmarked for this weekend, although thousands more remain stranded without knowing when they can return.

The government said on Wednesday that a flight had been tentatively scheduled for Sunday that would prioritise Hongkongers located in New Delhi and the surrounding areas with special requirements, which included pregnant women, children and those with illnesses, as well as family members travelling with them.

Immigration officials are still confirming numbers but believe more than 200 passengers will be on the flight. Sources involved in the repatriation said on Wednesday that 260 passengers would leave New Delhi aboard an Air India flight, expected to depart at 11.05pm on Sunday.

Passengers will bear the cost of the journey, which is capped at HK$8,000 (US$1,032) per person. There is the possibility of another flight from Mumbai, the Post has learned.

However, thousands remain in the South Asian country, which has recorded 74,000 coronavirus cases and 2,400 deaths, without any information about when further flights will be arranged.

Hong Kongs Immigration Department and Security Bureau had said they were in the process of helping some 3,600 Hong Kong residents in India, which has been under national lockdown since March 24.

Among those desperate to return to Hong Kong are families struggling with medical needs, unaccompanied minors staying with grandparents hoping to be reunited with their parents in the city, and students wanting to get back to school.

Some of those stranded said they felt neglected by a government that had previously arranged flights for residents stuck in Japan, Pakistan, Peru and the mainland Chinese city of Wuhan.

Sudhanshu Malhotra and his wife Priya Goswami, who have lived in Hong Kong for five years, hope to catch Sundays flight from New Delhi.

They were supposed to return to Hong Kong on March 13 after arriving in India over Lunar New Year in January, and have not left the flat they are sharing with Sudhanshus brother in 50 days.

Story continues

So far, we have had eight flights cancelled, the 36-year-old said. If we don't get this flight we dont know when we will go home.

Amid the lockdown, a lack of local transport in India threatens to stop some Hongkongers from getting on the flight even if they are selected.

Airlines have told at least one Hong Kong citizen there were no domestic flights available to those who were not Indian nationals.

Although Sam Lo, who has been stranded in Bangalore since early March, was cleared by the Immigration Department to take Sundays flight back to Hong Kong, he has not been able to secure a seat on the domestic flight to get to New Delhi this week.

An Indian national helped me check with the airline, and the airline said the domestic flight is only for Indians, said Lo, who works in the textile industry.

Hong Kong Immigration Department said there are only two cases in the southern regions of Bangalore and Chennai, so they said they likely will not send a separate flight there.

Local trains were fully booked, he added, while a private taxi could cost more than HK$10,000.

To make things worse, the diabetics insulin medication ran out in March and Lo can only get hold of blood pressure tablets on prescription, with access to local pharmacies increasingly difficult during the lockdown.

The medicine Ive got now is only to prolong my life literally, because I still cannot get hold of insulin medication in the end, he said.

A policeman in Ahmedabad, India, clamps down during the Covid-19 lockdown. Photo: Amit Dave

Civic Party lawmaker Jeremy Tam Man-ho said many of those trapped in the South Asian country were Indian people holding Hong Kong identity cards, with at least 250 of them carrying a Hong Kong passport.

Accusing officials of stalling the arrangement of flights, Tam said: I believe the Hong Kong government wants to buy more time, so hopefully everything will be overtaken by events.

The government said it had been liaising with the Consulate General of India in Hong Kong, and was in touch with several airlines as it explored ways of getting the civilians home.

A spokesman said it would arrange flights to assist in the return of the Hong Kong residents subject to the circumstances, adding it had to consider Indias lockdown restrictions and capacity in the citys quarantine facilities.

The Department of Health has said all Hong Kong residents arriving from Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Nepal and South Africa must stay in quarantine for 14 days after undergoing compulsory testing on arrival. All returnees from India will stay at the Chun Yeung Estate in Sha Tin for two weeks.

Explaining its decision to send Hong Kong residents arriving from India into government-run quarantine centres rather than staying at home, as was the policy for other arrivals, the Department of Health said testing levels in India and other countries were relatively low, which could mean those with mild symptoms or without any at all were not reflected in official figures.

After reviewing the capacity of quarantine centres, the Department of Health will adopt a prudent approach for these returnees, a spokesman said.

Kavita Khosa, a 57-year-old who has lived in Hong Kong for 33 years and is among the thousands left in limbo, said she understood the need for caution but called out the disparity in the governments approach to different countries, adding: This is about equality.

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MUSKEGON, MI - Construction is expected to begin next week on the first condominium, valued at $600,000, at the Hartshorn Village development on Muskegon Lake that will encompass access to the citys public marina.

An update on the project to build up to 55 condominiums was provided to members of the Downtown Development and Brownfield Development authorities on Tuesday, May 12.

Although the entire project may see up to 55 homes spread across several phases, the initial phase involves 10 to start on Western Avenue property that was once the employee parking lot of the Shaw-Walker Co., Douglas DeHaan, owner of DeHaan Homes, told members of the authorities.

Twenty condominiums have been approved for that parcel.

The first home will be a custom design of about 3,500 square feet and was purchased for about $600,000 by a couple from Lansing, DeHaan said.

We were a little bit shocked that the first client custom designed a home (of) this caliber, but they were very excited about it, DeHaan said.

DeHaan Homes is one of the partner businesses behind the project along with Smith Equities.

Two other home plots are reserved, and there have been inquiries from locals and out-of-towners who primarily are from outside the state, DeHaan said. He estimates that a quarter of all buyers will be investors, and that the rest will be homeowners. About 75 percent of homeowners will use the condos as second homes, he added.

Home values will be from the high-$300,000 range to $500,000, he said.

The one-, 1 1/2- and two- story homes will be spaced 12 feet apart and include a garage. Units will be predesigned or can be customized according to a fixed, 26-by 48-foot footprint, DeHaan said.

The entire development will include access to the adjacent Hartshorn Municipal Marina, with residents given right of first refusal to slips in the city-owned marina. Plans are to develop a pool and clubhouse that will be shared by marina members and condo residents.

It was announced on Wednesday, that Hartshorn marina will not open this summer due to high water issues in combination with uncertainty surrounding the citys ability to conduct necessary repair work during the COVID-19 work slowdowns.

The city first approved plans for the condo project in March 2019, two years after the city sold the property to the developing entity, known as Harbor West LLC.

Developers have a purchase option with Ted Fricano, owner of Fricanos Muskegon Lake, on the balance of the property, which stretches across multiple parcels constituting just over three acres at 1000, 1010 and 1060 W. Western Ave.

DeHaan said that initial inquiries had been strong, but delays in the projects start had made it hard to stay connected with potential buyers.

Theres been a lot of interest, but its been hard to communicate what were going to do and when were going to do it," DeHaan said. But we wanted to have product up this summer and stick a stake in the ground and show that were here and were excited.

Ground broke on infrastructure in February. Construction was able to continue even through the states ban on construction work due to coronavirus because the engineering and excavation work was considered essential infrastructure, DeHaan said.

Sewage and water utilities are connected, but electric utilities are still pending a contract, DeHaan said.

The citys Brownfield Redevelopment Authority on Tuesday approved the projects application for a tax capture on the first 10-unit parcel that would offset some project costs. That tax incentive now heads to the city commission for official approval.

The incentive, which facilitates development on contaminated sites, will support some construction costs, and $3.5 million in repairs and improvements to the public marina.

It is expected that the developers will apply for additional Brownfield incentives on the additional parcels within the development.

DeHaan said that workers will also reconnect a portion of the Lakeshore bike path, which was moved to accommodate the project, by Memorial Day.

Read more on MLive:

Muskegon marina will not open this summer due to high lake levels

Hartshorn Marina condo project in Muskegon underway, but delayed

City approves plans for Muskegon Lake condos with marina access

Muskegon lets new condo management firm in on operations of city-owned marina
Proms have been cancelled.

While high schoolers will miss the big party, fancy dresses and tuxedos, for some students, the real party takes place after the prom with a weekend-long house rental or stay in a hotel with a big group of friends.

That was the plan for students from Lacey Township High School and Toms River North High School before the coronavirus shutdown.

Dozens of students from Lacey made reservations at the Twilight Motel in Wildwood for the weekend of June 5. Nearly 100 students from Toms River North made a similar reservation for the weekend of May 29, according to parents from the two schools.

But when the pandemic canceled the proms, many of the kids and their parents wanted a refund from the motel.

From Lacey, 68 students made reservations for $150 each, said Robert Lawrence, the father of one of the students.

The confirmed total was $10,200, he said, noting he was still surveying other parents.

Michelle Rosenthal, the mom of one of the Toms River students, put the cost at $14,550 for her schools 97 students.

Both parents said the motels owner, Kathleen Mangini, refused to give refunds but instead offered the students a new but unspecific date in the future.

Mangini says she has been accommodating and the virus isnt her fault.

I gave them prime season. Do you know how many dollars I have lost? she asked. The point is Im making the ultimate sacrifice here.

The parents disagree, and now its a dispute that crosses town and county lines and has the two sides telling conflicting stories.

MAKING THE RESERVATIONS

Lawrence, the Lacey Township parent, said students started making reservations in January.

The Twilight Motel owner started taking cash only deposits for the full amount of the stay  a definite red flag for any adult, Lawrence said, noting the students, not parents, handled the payments.

Most of the students were 16 or 17 years old at the time the reservations were made, he said.

Most students received small pieces of paper for their deposits with no dates of stay, just an amount collected and a room number, he said, adding that none of the parents or students he spoke to signed a contract. No parent signed off on this procedure with a signature to my knowledge.

He noted online listings for the motel say guests under age 21 can only check in with a parent or official guardian.

When Gov. Phil Murphy shut down the state, the students took a wait-and-see approach, he said. But when the governor announced school would stay closed for the rest of the academic year, students started to ask for refunds.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Businesses that are open | Homepage

She refused, saying she spent all the money on her Mercedes payments  yes, she actually typed this as a response to a parent  refurbishments and a new hotel office, among other things, and stated there is no money left for refunds, Lawrence said. He shared with NJ Advance Media text messages that support his claims.

Lawrence said when he contacted Mangini on May 8, she accused me of being selfish and heartless.

Later that day, Lawrence said, Mangini told him she was working on a plan to split the students into two groups to come down on future dates, depending on the governors guidelines.

A few days later, Lawrence said, Mangini left him a voicemail saying she had offered the kids a June 29 date while others received a July 1 assignment.

The only problem is she hadn't contacted most or all of the kids, Lawrence said. Most of the kids and parents just want a refund now.

Lawrence said during a May 11 phone call that he recorded, Mangini said a refund wasnt part of the contract, although Lawrence says there was no contract.

The students and parents from Toms River North shared a similar story.

Michelle Rosenthal, a Toms River parent, said their first contact about a refund was on April 26.

The owner denied a refund stating that `she spent the money already, she said, noting they also sent a refund request in writing.

She said none of the parents and students she spoke to said they have a contract.

A number of the receipts have 17-year-olds as the recipient, she said. How is it legally possible for them to enter into a contract if they are minors? How did she allow this if her motel policy is that a parent/guardian must be there to check in if the person is under 21? No parents were going.

Rosenthal said she realizes the motel is in a bad situation because of the virus and its no ones fault that this is happening, but she believes the students are due a refund.

She said the future is too unknown to book another date.

WHAT THE LAW SAYS

Businesses across the country are suffering, trying to figure how they can open under modified shutdown rules.

Thats clear on the Jersey Shore as much as anywhere. Most Shore businesses  motels, restaurants, amusement parks and more  make most of their annual income during the summer.

While Gov. Murphy is allowing a modified opening for beaches on May 22, exactly how people can socially distance is still in question.

Any delay in opening could be devastating to Shore businesses.

That includes prom weekend outings attended by seniors, many of whom are still minors. Some establishment require a parent to cosign or otherwise take responsibility for the students.

The age of majority in New Jersey is 18, said Andrew Berns, chair of the commercial litigation and employment department at Einhorn, Barbarito, Frost & Botwinick in Denville.

He said there are some exceptions to minors entering into a contract, such as for medical care, food and housing. But other contracts with minors, he said, would usually be unenforceable, he said.

A minor can also repudiate a contract he or she entered into before turning 18, he said.

It is nice to offer the kids other weekends but if it is not workable for the group or even if it is acceptable for some of the kids and parents, if someone cannot or does not want to participate, they should be offered a refund, even if they have to wait for the payment, Berns said.

NJ Advance Media showed Berns the receipts the students received when they made the reservations, and Berns said they are unlikely to be construed as contracts.

A BUSINESS PERSPECTIVE

When reached about the dispute, Twilight Motel owner Kathleen Mangini she was offering alternative dates to the groups but she also cited a contract that she refused to provide.

The parents told NJ Advance Media the students only had receipts, not contracts.

Mangini later said in a text: I actually dont have a contract with them Mostly with them its a verbal contract that is in line with the written contracts Ive had with other groups.

Mangini said her business, and others in the town, are in grave financial need.

This is Wildwood. Here we dont get stimulus packages. We are seasonal. We dont qualify for stimulus or bailouts or nothing, she said.

She confirmed the money she collected from the students was already spent on winter bills.

Mangini said her cash flow is hurting because spring is the time when she usually takes reservations for the summer and fall, but the phone stopped ringing after the coronavirus outbreak.

She said shes trying to make it right and that families are trashing her business on social media and on sites like Yelp! and Trip Advisor. An examination of those sites found reviews  dating before the pandemic  in which some consumers complained Mangini would yell at customers and more.

Theyre actually coming. They have a date, she said.

Of the Lacey students, Out of 81 kids I have 69 kids coming and there are three other rooms that told me 99% they are coming, she said.

"I was told to give Toms River a few days," she said, noting she will contact them on Monday.

The parents disputed that, reporting that Mangini had previously been unclear about dates but an hour after Mangini talked to a reporter, parents started getting texts with assigned dates.

They also disputed the numbers.

Lawrence, of the Lacey group, said he tallied the responses of the Lacey students and parents: 12 said they would take a new date but not one dictated by the owner; 12 said they were undecided; 12 hadnt responded yet; 32 said they wanted a refund and none said they had given the motel a firm yes. He said rooms for the June 29 replacement date normally go for $99 online, so the owner would still be making out by charging my group $300 a night for the same room.

Of the Toms River North group, Rosenthal said some students reported Twilight set a new date for June 13 without asking if the students were available.

I have not had any parents saying their seniors are going, Rosenthal said. Parents I have spoken with do not want their seniors going during this time with the COVID-19 restrictions in place and kids not being able to hang together.

So what happens next? Its a scene we will see all across the Jersey shore.

How many residents  and their children  will be ready to hit the boardwalks and beaches?

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Karin Price Mueller may be reached at bamboozled@njadvancemedia.com.
Swear words. Expletives. Gaalis.

We all have our favourites - iconic insults and horrendous phrases that slip out every time something terrible happens. Whats interesting, however, is the way were introduced to the wild, unrestrained and often liberating world of foul language.

While many of us learn the ropes while were busy at school, a fundamental part of our expletive education comes from none other than cinema.

 Marvel

Which is why Buzz Bingos comprehensive ranking of swear words in Hollywood is so interesting. Not only do we get to see which kinds of movies have scripts that would knock our grandparents unconscious, but now we also know what to watch if we want to blow off some steam and join in. After all, who doesnt feel like mouthing off a few choice cuss words every now and then?



Heres a list of Hollywoods most infamously offensive movies of all time:

1. The Wolf of Wall Street

Number of Expletives: 715

Top Quote: Let me give you some legal advice: Shut the f*ck up!

In this Martin Scorcese magnum opus, John Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) goes from penny stocks and righteousness to IPOs and a life of corruption in the late 80s.

Excess success and affluence in his early twenties as founder of the brokerage firm Stratton Oakmont warranted Belfort the title "The Wolf of Wall Street" - along with that of one of the most foul-mouthed casts in film.

2. Uncut Gems

Number of Expletives: 646

Top Quote: I'm not a f*ckin' athlete, this is *my* f*ckin' way. This is how *I* win.

Another film rife with New Yorks characteristically colourful language, the film charts big-shot jeweller Howard Ratner (Adam Sandler), and his high-stakes dealings with business, family and deadly adversaries on the path to the perfect score.

3. Casino

Number of Expletives: 606

Top Quote: This motherf*cker, you believe this? Two f*cking days and nights! F*ck me? *F*ck me?* You motherf*cker!

Joe Pescis best-ever performance - fight me. This Scorsese classic (Im sensing a pattern here) dives deep into the murky underworld of corrupt casinos - with an incredible ensemble cast willing to lie, cheat, and steal their respective ways to the top.

4. Jay And Silent Bob Strike Back

Number of Expletives: 509

Top Quote: Don't f*ck with the Jedi Master, son.

If you're the type of moviegoer who gets uptight hearing countless F-Bombs and explicit sexual discussion, youre a bit depraved and will absolutely enjoy the hell out of this early 2000s classic.

This movie has my vote for the most ridiculous, over-the-top and hilarious road trip movie of all time.

5. Fury

Number of Expletives: 489

Top Quote: Next German you see with a weapon you rake the dog shit outta him, I don't care if it's a baby with a butter knife in one hand and momma's left t*tty in the other.

Dialling things up on the serious scale, this WW2 tale of a tank (and the soldiers in it) is as heartbreaking as it was jarring and action-packed, and also has some truly brutal lines that cant be missed, especially when its Brad Pitt whos delivering them.

6. Straight Outta Compton

Number of Expletives: 468

Top Quote: Motherf*ckers tryin' to tell us what the f*ck we can't say. This N.W.A.!

Hardcore beats, lyrical genius and the social turmoil of 1980s west-coast gang violence were brought to the fore in this no-holds-barred retelling of one of hip-hops greatest tales ever told - the rise and fall of rap legends N.W.A.

7. Summer of Sam

Number of Expletives: 467

Top Quote: "Hurt me? Don't you even f*ckin' lay a pinkie on me! I'll get him to kick your ass and then I'll f*ck 'em! You linguine d*ck motherf*cker."

Spike Lee's take on the Son of Sam murders in New York City during the summer of 1977, centring on the residents of an Italian-American Northeast Bronx neighbourhood who live in fear and distrust of one another, is glorious.

Complete with accurate portrayals of the colourful local lingo. This one really gets creative with the cussing, no doubt.

8. Nil by Mouth

Number of Expletives: 432

Top Quote: Now, I'd stand there looking at this f*cking old man, you know, my dad, you know, in that chair, that horrible f*cking chair with the shiny, worn-out arms. I should've burnt the f*cking thing.

Gritty, dark and perhaps depressing, this tale of working-class struggles in 90s London brings up tough choices and moral grey lines - several of which are knit together by Gary Oldmans fantastic acting and a script thats as dirty as it is heartbreaking.

9. Reservoir Dogs

Number of Expletives: 418

Top Quote: Listen kid, I'm not gonna bullshit you, all right? I don't give a good f*ck what you know, or don't know, but I'm gonna torture you anyway, regardless.

No introductions needed here - Tarantinos timeless tale of a bank heist gone terribly wrong is one of the most quotable films of the late 20th century, and in no small part due to the hilariously on-point work from Hollywoods King of Dialogue.

10. Beavis And Butt-Head Do America

Number of Expletives: 414

Top Quote: Agent Hurly, I want you to give this scumbag a cavity search. I'm talking Roto-Rooter. Don't stop until you reach the back of his teeth.

Made during the adult animated comedy heyday of the '90s, this film captures a very particular glimpse of America - one thats mercilessly parodied and paraded naked for all to see - with some of the most hilarious lowbrow humour of the era on showcase.
The Panorama investigation into government provision of PPE kit for NHS staff has sparked 793 complaints over alleged bias.

The flagship BBC1 current affairs programme featured interviews with a string of medical workers who were also Left-wing activists.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden wrote to BBC director general Tony Hall with his concerns about this and another incident, asking the TV chief to 'uphold the highest standards in relation to integrity and impartiality'.

The Panorama investigation into government provision of PPE kit for NHS staff has sparked 793 complaints over alleged bias (file image)

A number of doctors and nurses that Panorama decided to interview were long-time supporters of the Labour Party but the programme was accused of giving the impression that they were neutral healthcare workers.

The programme, titled Has The Government Failed The NHS?, made a series of damaging claims about the Government's handling of the Covid-19 crisis.

The BBC has previously defended the programme and those it interviewed.

Culture Secretary Oliver Dowden (pictured) wrote to BBC director general Tony Hall with his concerns about this and another incident, asking the TV chief to 'uphold the highest standards in relation to integrity and impartiality'

In a statement it said: 'We don't consider it is accurate to claim they are all Labour activists, and we don't believe that their political views would invalidate their direct experiences of risking their lives on the frontline, and their fears that they are inadequately equipped.

'Their concerns have been reflected by the British Medical Association and the Royal Colleges, as well as the dozens of NHS workers who provided their testimony to the Panorama team in the course of their research.'

The BBC added that the programme had raised 'legitimate questions' about the Government's role in making sure NHS workers were provided with PPE.

The latest complaints update by the BBC also revealed a complaint against The Andrew Marr Show on BBC1 had been upheld. This related to 'inaccuracy about the Government's record on early release of prisoners'.
Kolkata, May 15 : Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from West Bengal, Arjun Singh, on Friday wrote to Governor Jagdeep Dhakhar, alleging state-sponsored conspiracy against him by the Mamata Banerjee-led state government.

Singh, in a letter, also requested to the Governor to direct the state government to initiate a departmental enquiry against Barrackpore Commissioner of Police Ajay Thakur, one of his officers Rajesh Ghosh and other police personnel for allegedly being a part of the conspiracy.

According to him, a team of over 35 police personnel, led by Thakur, allegedly tried to harass him Thursday night.

"The team of police personnel arrived last night and started roaming in and around my office in a suspicious manner. When intercepted by my security officer-in-charge, Thakur stated that he had come to serve notice to Sanjeet and Nitu Singh, who are residents of Jagatdal, as witnesses in a criminal case," Singh told IANS.

Singh, who was a four-time Trinamool Congress legislator from Bhatpara assembly constituency since 2001, had joined BJP before the 2019 Lok Sabha polls. He had also won from Barrackpore Lok Sabha seat on a BJP ticket defeating Trinamool heavyweight and former Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi.

The BJP MP said when he demanded the said notice from the Barrackpore Police Commissioner, the latter directed his detective department's sub inspector Rajesh Ghosh to issue the notice.

"In interest of the public, I have decided to become vocal against the wrong doing of the CM, who due to her obdurate and insecure nature, targeted me out of sheer political vengeance," he said in the letter to the Governor.

He further claimed that under the CM's instruction, the police had lodged more than 75 false and fabricated cases in order to implicate and defame his public image.

A senior Trinamool leader declined to comment on the matter.

"I don't want to comment anything on Arjun Singh. I am not the official spokesperson of Trinamool Congress. But I have heard about his letter to the Governor this morning. I don't feel like commenting on it at all," party MP Sougata Roy said.
HOLYOKE  The inpatient beds at Providence Behavioral Health Hospital in Holyoke are an essential service, and and operator Mercy Medical Center has to provide a more detailed plan of how and where people can get help if its to complete its plan and close those beds, according to a decision issued Friday by the state Department of Public Health.

Under the states ruling, Mercy and parent company Trinity Health of New England must submit a more detailed plan for state regulators before closing the facility, outlining how it will provide the services deemed essential. That plan is due in 15 days.

If the plan is acceptable, Mercy can close the beds.

Health care facilities are often able to close after submitting the follow-up reports, said Joe Markman, a spokesman for the Massachusetts Nurses Association, which represents workers at Providence. Only in times when there is significant community pressure are closure plans abandoned.

Unions representing workers at Providence, advocates, and patients and their families plan to continue their advocacy, he said.

As part of its shutdown plan submitted months ago, Mercy said it can provide services at Trinity-owned hospitals in Connecticut: Mount Sinai Hospital in Hartford and Johnson Memorial in Stafford Springs.

State Rep. Aaron Vega, D-Holyoke, called the idea of sending people to Hartford a slap in the face at a hearing last month and reiterated his opposition in an interview this week. The distance is just too far to travel, he said, especially for people who dont live in the Springfield/ Holyoke corridor on Interstate 91.

State regulators said Friday they want to know more about how patients will reach the alternative hospitals and how patients will know if out-of-state hospitals will take insurance, especially MassHealth.

The plan which you are required to submit must address methods of transportation for patients who need access to inpatient care after the closure of the hospital as well as family and friends who wish to visit and will now have to travel out of the Holyoke/Springfield area, the letter reads.

The plan must have travel times for both peak and off-peak travel times.

Mercy and Trinity must also tell the state if those alternate facilities do or do not have capacity in space and resources to handle increased patients. They have to back that up with details.

The state health department also wants to know how Mercy plans to address language barriers and cultural concerns.

Mercy and Trinity said the reason it was closing is because it cannot hire psychiatrists. State regulators demanded Friday that Trinity and Mercy back that up and include details as to the steps taken by the hospital to fill psychiatrist positions over the course of the last year.

Mercy plans to lay off 202 employees at Providence when it permanently closes all 74 of its inpatient psychiatry beds there at the end of June.

The shutdown will leave the region even more short of needed inpatient psychiatric services. Providence is the only pediatric inpatient psychiatric unit in the region.

Mercy filed a WARN notice about the pending layoffs under the federal Worker Adjustment and Retraining Act with the state Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development May 1. The state Labor Department made the notice public earlier this week.

Providence Behavioral Health has a total workforce of 466 employees.

Baystate Health and Holyoke Medical Center each have their own separate proposals to build their own new inpatient psychiatric facilities with as-yet-unnamed for-profit partners. But both proposals are at least two years away from being completed.

Holyoke Medical Center plans to build a 100-bed inpatient behavioral health hospital on its existing campus.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Holyoke Medical Center has continued to work with its partners on the design of the new behavioral health hospital on its campus, wrote spokeswoman Rebecca MacGregor. The finalized plans are expected to be ready for submission to local and state officials within the next two months. Once approved, the project will take approximately 14 to 18 months to complete.

Baystate has proposed a $30 million inpatient behavioral health hospital and those plans continue to move forward. Baystate has not made final its decision on where the facility will be built.

Related Content:
Darryl Ospring at her home in San Jose. After news of COVID-19 deaths in February, Ospring began to wonder if the Jan. 22 death of her mother, Marjorie Waggoner, 98, could also have been caused by the virus. (Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times)

It was early February when signs of something alarming turned up in the heart of Silicon Valley. Santa Clara County emergency rooms had a surge of patients with flu-like symptoms. Yet 30% of them tested negative for influenza, triple the usual rate.

Something else was making people sick.

That something, some researchers now suspect, was COVID-19, which lurked in the San Francisco Bay area for weeks before anyone suspected it had arrived in the United States. Efforts to trace the virus backward in time, however, have been frustrated by roadblocks: delays in setting policies for testing the dead, a single national lab able to do that work, and a fractionalized coroner system that creates large blind spots in the hunt for origins of the pandemic.

It took 11 weeks of looking elsewhere and lab delays before health officials confirmed that a San Jose woman died Feb. 6 of COVID-19  making her the first documented death from the virus in the United States.

It was another week before California health authorities followed through on an April 22 promise by the governor and instructed coroners to look for more missed cases.

Weeks later, aside from the work already begun in Santa Clara County, there is no evidence any coroner is yet doing that. Some coroners are not even sure they have autopsy samples from the right organs and preserved the right way.

"If I can't send proper tissue, I can't test, said Sacramento coroner Kim Gin.

Others are unsure they have the legal right under state law to open closed cases.

"Going back is research, which is a violation without authorization," said San Mateo coroner Robert Foucrault, putting him in disagreement with other coroners interviewed by The Times.

Even if they begin sending samples to the only lab in the United States available to them for testing autopsy tissue for COVID-19, the majority of California medical examiners and coroners consider hospital deaths and other medically-attended deaths outside their jurisdiction. Coroners are responsible for determining the cause of death for those who die outside the medical system, such as homicides or people found dead in the street, though state law includes contagious disease deaths under their authority.

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"Yes, COVID-19 is a contagious disease constituting a public hazard, but the hazard has been mitigated in these [hospital] deaths," said Dr. Christopher Young, the Ventura County medical examiner. By identifying patients with the virus, Young said, hospitals alert family members and prevent further exposure.

But cases examined by The Times illustrate how easily the virus slips past the medical system, leaving its victims to die at home. They include Alfonso Ye, a 25-year-old pharmacy technician who sought treatment for a high fever and fainting spells at a San Diego hospital on March 17. He tested negative for influenza and was diagnosed with a viral infection in his lungs, and was sent home with acetaminophen and ibuprofen. He died in his mother's house seven days later; the coroner determined that COVID-19 had been the cause of death.

Researchers believe there is a large undercount of COVID-19 fatalities. The CDC this week released findings that more than 5,300 people might have died in New York City from March to May of undiagnosed COVID-19. Yale researchers calculate one out of three COVID-19 deaths in New York are missed, and that by April nearly 1,000 Californians died of the virus without its detection.

COVID-19 cases are spread unevenly in California, clustering in parts of the state and skipping others. Yale study author Daniel Weinberger said such "noise" in the state-level data likely masks what is happening in individual regions like Santa Clara County.

The search for missed cases is crucial to discovering the origin of the virus in the United States and understanding its rate of spread and deadliness. It also feeds public policy and politics. California this week began basing decisions on allowing counties to reopen shuttered businesses on whether they have had any diagnosed COVID-19 deaths in the prior two weeks.

"If we have incorrect numbers, if we're undercounting both deaths and infections, we're going to make bad public health decisions about reopening," said Judy Melinek, a pathologist whose contract work includes Alameda Countys coroners office. She advocates aggressive efforts to test backward in time for the virus.

"And then if we have bad numbers, it also means once we were open, we're not going to pick up the secondary surge."

Melinek reviewed the autopsy of Patricia Dowd, the 57-year-old woman who death at home is currently considered the first COVID-19 fatality in the United States. She said the degree of damage to Dowd's heart muscle indicates the virus had ravaged her body for weeks. That put Dowd's infection on a timeline that suggests she was exposed to the virus in early January, within a week of Chinas Dec. 31 announcement of a never-before-seen virus causing people to become ill in Wuhan City.

Genetic studies currently surmise the virus made the hop  likely from bats  to humans as early as late November 2019.

Efforts to contain the virus in late January through U.S. airport screening failed. A CDC report says that of more than 12,000 travelers arriving in California from China, the state was aware of only three that developed COVID-19. The state could not say if the majority of travelers escaped the virus  they had vanished off the radar.

A UC San Francisco researcher said the presence in Santa Clara County of a telltale genetic mutation in SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, suggests the area was an early entry point on U.S. soil, arriving in California before or at the same time as the first case the U.S. did detect  in a 30-year-old man who flew from Wuhan to Washington on Jan. 19.

Dr. Charles Chiu cautioned against the notion of a single "patient zero" setting off the U.S. outbreak.

"We're thinking that what happens is that you have viruses of different lineages that get constantly introduced through travel," Chiu said. "You can think of it as sparks being thrown off by a flame. Some of the sparks may catch, and some of the sparks may be put out very early.

The Times found that cases of Santa Clara County residents seeking treatment for flu-like symptoms also surged in early February, the week that Dowd died.

Thirty percent of them tested negative for influenza, triple the usual rate.

It is possible they were sick with other common diseases. No information was available on testing those patients for other viruses circulating at the time, such as rhinovirus, the common cold.

But directly across the bay in San Francisco, the University of California, San Francisco hospital says 10% of those who sought treatment there for flu-like symptoms in February and March had COVID-19. They were, in fact, more likely to have COVID-19 than influenza, rhinovirus or metapneumovirus, UCSF researchers said in a recent study.

The Times also analyzed death records reported to the Santa Clara County medical examiner. They show a spike in pneumonia and influenza-related deaths in early March, a week before the county began also seeing increased deaths from COVID-19. The surge rose far above the number of similar deaths during the flu season the year before.

At the time, however, federal and state policies restricted who was eligible to be tested for COVID-19. The danger was believed to be limited to exposure to foreign travelers.

Santa Clara County Medical Examiner Dr. Michelle Jorden, who answered questions by email, said her pathologists suspected as early as February they were handling COVID-19 deaths.

Jorden said her office waited a month, running tests to rule out influenza and other pathogens, before sending the samples to the CDC in mid-March.

Other Bay Area pathologists were taken by surprise by the discovery of a COVID-19 death nearly three months before. They said Jorden had not warned neighboring counties of the suspected COVID-19 deaths.

The discovery has spurred epidemiologists, pathologists and microbiologists already working within their own disciplines to understand the hidden spread of COVID-19.

The populace at large is pressing other questions  when is it safe to lift quarantines, and whether a horrible bout with flu last winter was really COVID-19.

Darryl Ospring suddenly wondered anew about the rapid death of her mother.

Marjorie Waggoner, 98, lived in an assisted living facility in San Jose. She was remarkably healthy but suffered memory loss from Alzheimers disease. On Jan. 8, she grew tired, lost her appetite, and soon developed a cough, then a fever. By Jan. 22, Waggoner was dead, the cause attributed to "complications" of neurodegenerative disease.

"I was in shock to see how quickly my mother was attacked by something," Ospring, said. "And it confused everybody."

Ospring received her mothers ashes and, with the news about Dowd, something else.

Questions.

"At the time I thought, Gosh, Im so glad she passed away quickly and missed all this COVID-19. Now Im thinking she probably did have it."

Marjorie Waggoner, 98, in a photo taken at a San Jose assisted living facility the day before she died. She had been well until 10 days before, then developed fever and a cough. (Waggoner Family)

At an April 22 press appearance, the day after news of Dowds death, Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a directive for other California county coroners to look for other early deaths by the virus.

A Times investigation shows that it was a week before the directive was actually issued, asking for testing of cases from Dec. 17 through March 16, but excluding hospital deaths after March 4 or deaths of those who had been to China.

Even now, the search has yet to begin.

Coroners and medical examiners including the one in Los Angeles County said they are waiting for local health departments to decide which cases to test. Approval must then be sought from the state Department of Public Health and the CDC  which pathologists said currently operates the only lab in the United States conducting such testing, outside of the military.

Los Angeles County's medical examiner is swabbing selected cases for the virus, and so far has detected COVID-19 in 30 deaths. It has sent the CDC a single tissue sample, to check for COVID-19 in a case where the nasal swab results were inconclusive. Case files analyzed by The Times show cause of death has yet to be determined for more than 480 people who died in the past two months. What is already very clear is a dramatic surge in deaths at home  up 30% over 2019.

Early on, the CDC appeared to warn coroners against sending samples that had been preserved more than two weeks. The federal agency clarified its guidance last week to say the limitation applies only to tissue immersed in formalin, a lab mixture of formaldehyde and water.

Neither the CDC nor the California Department of Public Health answered repeated questions about postmortem testing. The state health department also did not respond to requests for public documents under Californias Public Records Act.

A similar request to Santa Clara County also was refused. A lawyer for the county said it was "not in [the] public interest" to spend time producing copies of communications between the county, state and the CDC, nor to provide the pathology reports that had been returned to the county.

(A public records audit by The Times showed that in the first two months of the COVID-19 pandemic, the state health department rejected or failed to respond to every record request related to the virus. The agency told one news organization that emails with the CDC and health departments were exempt from disclosure.)

There is no uniform policy at a national or state level on testing the dead for COVID-19.

Californias policies have taken shape over the past two months in a fragmented system of medical examiners and elected sheriff coroners.

Decisions on whether to test the deceased run the spectrum, from test-practically-everyone to test-practically-no one. Two counties, Fresno and Stanislaus, said they had each tested a single deceased person for the virus.

Other medical examiners said they began routine swab tests for COVID-19 in early March but limited them to those who had flu-like symptoms or were found dead on the street.

Tissue testing has the capability of revealing if COVID-19 was killing patients "that we just didn't know at the time because we weren't looking," said Dr. Jen Dien Bard, the virology lab director at Children's Hospital in Los Angeles. However, she said she did not believe there was much demand in the United States for postmortem tissue testing of COVID-19.

Elsewhere in the world, hospital lab directors are actively testing past patient samples to look for the hidden spread of COVID-19, and conducting their own tests using diagnostic kits already widely available in the United States.

In Milan, Italy, a lab director said he used a test kit bought from Salt Lake City to confirm COVID-19 in tissue from the tongue of a past cancer patient.

Outside of Paris, another researcher used similar testing on preserved respiratory samples to find COVID-19 in a 42-year-old fishmonger treated in December for flu-like symptoms  thus establishing that France had its first confirmed COVID-19 patient days before China publicly acknowledged the virus.

Other deaths show all too well how easily COVID-19 infections slip through the medical system, with disastrous results.

The week after Patricia Dowd died, a 69-year-old San Jose hotel security guard succumbed at home, dying outside of the medical system. His COVID-19 infection also was not confirmed until April.

Even as he died, a 68-year-old woman who lived nearby suddenly began to tire, then cough. Azar Ahrabi came home from an urgent care clinic with prescriptions for two antibiotics, said her son, Amir. Antibiotics are used to control bacterial, but not viral, infections.

She was hospitalized the next day, but it was days before an infectious disease specialist came on scene and insisted Ahrabi be tested for COVID-19.

She died soon after, Santa Clara Countys first official death from a virus that had been killing residents for a month.
A wedding planner accused of conning people out of thousands of pounds has apparently been spotted working in a number of takeaways in Hull.

Dana Twidale has also been accused of continuing to try and swindle money out of her alleged victims on social media by using a number of fake names.

Mrs Twidale disappeared last year after being accused of duping couples hoping to tie the knot out of hundreds of pounds.

Dana Twidale, accused of swindling couples in Yorkshire out of cash as a wedding planner, has been spotted working in different takeaways in Hull

Couples across Yorkshire told how they were apparently conned by Mrs Twidale. One bride said she had paid 'well over 2,000' to the former wedding planner and was left distraught when she turned up to find an empty marquee two days before her wedding.

Police and the reporting agency Action Fraud began to investigate Ms Twidale, 42, after complaints from engaged couples, catering and event hire firms and DJs.

Mrs Twidale has not been charged, although it is believed she has been questioned by officers in connection with the allegations.

A number of lovestruck men also say the mother-of-four defrauded them out of large sums. Mr Twidale, 45, says he lost 4,000 and a suitor who met her via the Tinder dating app claimed he gave her 10,000 for her mothers funeral  only to find out that her mother was still alive.

In September last year, Mrs Twidale was spotted sunning herself in Benidorm, Spain. And in January 2019 , she was apparently spotted in Bransholme's North Point Shopping Centre wearing a Canada Goose jacket.

Her former husband Carl (left) claims she is back trying to scam brides on Facebook

In March, one of Mrs Twidale's alleged victims said she was told the wedding planner had been quizzed by police on fraud allegations. Humberside Police had previously said that they believed Mrs Twidale fled the UK and logged her as a missing person.

It is thought she is now back in Hull, working in takeaways across the city and has settled with a new boyfriend.

Her former husband, Carl Twidale, who split from his ex-wife in 2016, claims she has been trying to scam brides on Facebook after allegedly infiltrating a group set up to support victims who say they were conned by her last year.

Mr Twidale said: 'I'm aware she has been using about six or seven different names and she's currently going by the name of Grayson. 'She has been going into the Facebook group set up for her victims as a wedding planner and she is posing to help people that she has conned herself.

'She is conning new customers and people that she has already conned before and it's disgusting - it's absolutely vile.

'She is still out there and is still using fake emails and several fake Facebook accounts. She is still scamming people but she will trip up.'

Mrs Twidale, a mother-of-four, was spotted sunning herself in Benidorm, Spain, last January

Mrs Twidale is alleged to have conned couples tying the knot out of thousands of pounds

Mr Twidale claims his ex-wife is going by the fake names Alaya, Grayson and Dino.

He also accuses her of using her first name Dana along with a variety of made-up surnames.

Mr Twidale says he has faced threats from people because of his estranged wife's actions but he is determined to carry on fighting in the hope that she is punished.

He said: 'I'm not a disgruntled ex and it's not about that - I'm still gunning for justice for everybody because she is just carrying on with her life and people in that Facebook group can't believe what is going on.

'She is a law unto herself - I don't think she has any scruples and there is nothing anyone can say which will make her realise what she is doing is wrong.'

Mr Twidale says a Channel 4 documentary team have approached him about his wife with This Morning also getting in contact with a view of sharing the story.

Mrs Twidale is understood to have gone on the run but is now back in the UK and settled

Mrs Twidale wants to find his ex-wife so she can face up to the allegations made against her

He also claims a private investigator is also looking into his ex-wife's whereabouts. Speaking to her alleged victims, Mr Twidale said: 'I just want to say to everybody out there who has been fiddled, please hold on. We will get to the bottom of this and hopefully justice will prevail.

'We need to keep on top of this because she will slip under the carpet. Don't give up because people will get bored of it but we need to keep it going.

'If we can spread the message and word about her to Manchester, Leeds, Gravesend in London - wherever else she has done weddings, one person out of 100 might remember something that sounds familiar.'

Anyone who has been affected should contact Humberside Police on 101 or Action Fraud which is also investigating.
By John Miller

ZURICH (Reuters) - As Europe gingerly eases its coronavirus lockdowns, many governments are scrambling to buy antibody tests to find out how many of their citizens were infected, in the hope that will help them craft strategies to avoid a second wave of COVID-19 cases.

But exactly how - or even if - the information will be of use remains unclear, raising the risk that public funds and government time are being wasted.

Switzerland, home of diagnostics powerhouse Roche which has developed its own COVID-19 antibody test, is one of the countries holding back from the dash to place orders.

"The government up to now has not bought any antibody tests," a Federal Health Ministry spokesman told Reuters on Thursday.

"Their ability to inform us remains simply too uncertain for them to be part of an easing strategy," he said, referring to the relaxation of restrictions, such as on free movement.

That hasn't stopped makers of antibody tests including Roche, U.S. rival Abbott, Germany's Siemens Healthineers, as well as Chinese suppliers, from receiving a flurry of orders and expressions of interest from governments.

On Thursday, Britain announced it was talking to Roche about getting hundreds of thousands of its tests per week, describing them as a potential "game changer".

That's after Germany said last week the Swiss drugmaker would sell it three million tests in May and five million a month thereafter.

So concerned about its ability to secure supplies, Finland is making its own tests.

The Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) initially began using tests from "a European vendor" it declined to name, but switched strategy on learning the supplier couldn't guarantee timely delivery for 30,000 tests it wanted this year.

"Availability was questionable so we couldnt continue down that road," THL's chief researcher Arto Palmu told Reuters, adding initial assessments of the accuracy of its domestic version judged it "at least as good" as commercial options.

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BEING FAIR

Antibody tests are designed to detect immune-system proteins that people develop in response to an infection, and which typically are a sign of some protection against catching the disease again.

Accuracy, or specificity, is everything, however, since false-positive tests could give people a false sense of security if they believe they had the disease and have some immunity, when in fact they may never have been infected.

The United States had to tighten rules on the tests it allowed, for fear of fraud under initially lax regulations meant to speed assays to market.

Roche has said its tests have 99.81% specificity.

Abbott has said the specificity and sensitivity of its test are 99.5% and 100% respectively.

Italy's DiaSorin has said its Liason XL test has 97.4% sensitivity and 98.5% specificity.

There are other tests out there, too.

Denmark, one of Europe's first countries to re-open schools, on Monday started its first antibody study, which includes testing 2,600 people, using a kit from China's Wantai.

The Dutch Health Ministry said on May 5 it had ordered one million kits, also from Wantai.

Italy has picked Abbott to supply 150,000 kits.

Roche declined to comment on differences in numbers of tests being delivered to various countries, but said its goal was to be "fair".

It does not want to become embroiled in a political row like Sanofi SA did when it said the United States would be the first to get its COVID-19 vaccine, should it prove successful.

"We have one price for the test worldwide," a Roche spokesman said. "We are working with customers, non-profit and government organizations and regulatory bodies to make sure our tests have the greatest patient and community impact."

A Siemens Healthineers spokesman said there were currently several large national tenders for mass antibody testing ongoing in which the company was participating.

'NO EVIDENCE'

Not all countries are quite so far along.

In Hungary, for instance, a government spokesman said on Thursday it had no information about plans to do broad antibody testing.

Cillian De Gascun, head of Ireland's national virus laboratory, told a news conference the country was evaluating and validating tests and, if all goes well, could have some by June.

But being slow off the mark may not be disadvantage, as there is currently little agreement over what countries should do with the information provided by the tests.

Some, such as Chile, have floated the idea that "immunity passports" - potentially allowing free movement - could be issued to those who have had COVID-19 and recovered, given they may be protected from re-infection.

But the World Health Organization has cautioned against such passports, saying there was "no evidence" people who have recovered from the virus cannot catch it again.

German Health Minister Jens Spahn also said last week the idea of confining people just because they don't have specific antibodies raised ethical questions.

For Switzerland, the strategy is the same as in countries such as South Korea and Taiwan that have had some success in containing COVID-19 - test anyone who shows symptoms, trace everybody who has been in contact with an infected person, and require them to isolate until they are clearly free of disease.

(Reporting by John Miller in Zurich, Ludwig Burger in Frankfurt, Guy Faulconbridge in London, Alicja Ptak in Warsaw, Stine Jacobsen in Copenhagen, Anne Kauranen in Helsinki, Krisztina Than in Budapest, Anthony Deutsch in Amsterdam, Crispin Balmer in Rome, Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Thomas Escritt in Berlin; Editing by Mark Potter)
New Delhi: As the number of coronavirus COVID-19 cases in India keeps rising steadily, the Ayush Ministry has come up an 'Ayuraksha Kit' to save the officers of the Delhi Police from further infections.

The campaign, a joint venture between Delhi Police and the Ayush Ministry is called 'Corona se jung, Delhi Police ke sang'. The ministry is preparing atleast 80 thousand kits for the personnel of the Delhi Police.

The kit comprises four things:

1) A 'Kadha' concoction (Herbal Tea)

2) 'Sanshmani' tablet (made from Giloy)

3) Oil to be used as nasal drops

4) Pack of Chyawanprash

Here's how to use the items to prevent COVID-19 infection:

* The 'kadha' concoction has to be taken twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening).

* Two 'Sanshmani' tablets are to be taken twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening).

* Two drops of oil down the nose to be used twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening).

* Chyawanprash 1 teaspoon twice a day (once in the morning and once in the evening).

While, police departments of other states too are demanding this kit which includes the concoction. The Ministry of Ayush working with Ayurveda Institute of respective states in an effort to make these kits available to them.

According to Dr. Tanuja Nesari, Director of All India Ayurved Institute, the demand for this kit has come from many departments including the BSF and the Income Tax.

The rise in popularity is because of Prime Minister Narendra Modi who had appealed to the public to drink the 'kadha' made by the Ministry of Ayush which purportedly helps in fight against coronavirus. Since then, the demand for the kadha at the National Institute of Ayurveda has witnessed a huge spike.

Even the World Health Organisation (WHO) has given up in terms of finding a suitable treatment for COVID-19.

In such a situation, this 'kadha' can prove to be a panacea in the matter of protection from corona. The Ministry of AYUSH is also taking feedback from the people who have been drinking this herbal brew.
Watertown, NY (13601)

Today

Cloudy skies. A few flurries or snow showers possible. Low 4F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph..

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MPs have rejected an amendment to protect farmers from lower-standard food imports despite the government's previous commitments to safeguard the industry.

The Agriculture Bill - the biggest reform of British farming since 1945 - was put before MPs on Wednesday (13 May) for the final time as it reached the Report Stage and Third Reading.

Farming groups have campaigned extensively during the past year for parliament to include a number of important amendments.

One of these is an ask for the Bill to uphold British farmers' high standards in any future trade deals that the UK makes with third countries.

But this amendment, tabled by Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee Chair Neil Parish, was rejected by MPs.

Mr Parish said it was 'disappointing' and that many in the Commons' now have 'grave concerns' over the direction of travel the Bill is going in.

Although disappointing to lose on #NC2, there are clearly many colleagues who have grave concerns about the direction of travel. I am glad we were able to put this firmly on the record tonight. I know @UKHouseofLords will have been watching carefully.  Neil Parish MP (@neil_parish) May 13, 2020

NFU Cymru responded to the amendment rejection with 'significant disappointment'.

Unfortunately, without this amendment the bill lacks any formal requirement to uphold our farming production standards as we negotiate trade deals and in our general trade policy," president John Davies said.

"The bill should ensure that agri-food imports are produced to at least equivalent environmental, animal welfare and food safety standards as those required of producers in the UK."

There now could be a 'very real risk' that British farmers are undermined by agri-food products produced to standards which would be illegal in the UK.

Mr Davies added that the UK cannot have a trade policy which requires farmers to compete against food produced to lower standards.

"Regrettably the bill will now leave the House of Commons without the amendments that we would like to have seen," he said.

"We will now focus our lobbying efforts on securing the amendments that we need to see at the House of Lords stages.

The Bill includes the development of a scheme to provide financial rewards for farmers who boost the environment and improve animal welfare.

While the RSPCA applauded those measures, the charity said it is 'disappointed' that MPs did not vote to protect farmers from lower welfare imports.

"Any measures to raise our standards will be undermined if we are allowing in produce from animals reared to lower welfare standards, including in systems that would be illegal here," said David Bowles, head of public affairs.

This Bill has missed an unique opportunity to ensure our higher animal welfare standards are protected."
Salaries of many contractual employees of the Delhi State Cancer Institute got deducted while they were in quarantine due to a "software glitch", but the issue has been sorted, Health Minister Satyendar Jain said on Friday.

He said this in response to a question during a press interaction and assured that "all such employees will get their due salaries".

"I have come to know about the issue and there was some software glitch. The due salaries of all those contractual staff will be paid," Jain said.

The Delhi health minister reiterated that in the times to come, one will have to "learn to live with the coronavirus".

"There was a time when we all thought that this pandemic will be over by May 1 due to summer. But, now, as seen in the Latin American countries also, the pandemic is increasing. The temperature in these countries runs very high. This shows that we have to learn to live with COVID-19," he said.

The coronavirus death toll in Delhi has mounted to 123, even as the total number of COVID-19 cases reported in the national capital rose to 8,895 on Friday with 425 fresh cases, authorities said.

Delhi recorded 472 new cases on May 14, which is the highest single-day spike in COVID-19 cases here so far.

But, Jain said, the numbers should be seen in terms of percentage rise, which is "less".

"Yesterday, in India, the growth rate of COVID was five per cent, and earlier there was a time when the growth rate was 20 per cent. I believe that the numbers should be seen in terms of the percentage increase," he said.

Some of the cases are coming from the containment zones and some cases are coming from outside the containment zones, the minister added.

Talking about the Delhi government's stand on resumption of economic activities, he said the government felt there should be a "balance" between the fight against COVID and economic activities.

"We are fighting against COVID-19 with full effort but now we have to again start the economic activities, therefore, the measures should be followed. When the lockdown was imposed at that time we were not prepared to fight this pandemic, but now we have prepared ourself to fight this pandemic," he said.

The government had sought suggestions from people on areas in which easing can be done during Lockdown 4.0.

Jain said the main suggestions made were regarding wearing of masks at public places and maintaining social distancing all the time.

Based on the suggestions received, the city government has forwarded its views to the Centre, he added.

"People have also suggested that public transportation should start, for example buses and metros with limited capacity. I want to repeat that in the last two months, we have learnt various lessons from COVID-19. If we wear a mask, maintain social distancing and wash hands regularly, then people will be 90-95 per cent safer," Jain said.

People have suggested that malls in the city could be re-opened in the limited capacity of either 25 per cent or 50 per cent, he told reporters.

There is also a suggestion that markets should be opened again following either odd-even rules or only three days a week, Jain said.

On the plight of migrants, the minister said the Delhi government was providing food to nearly 10 lakh poor people every day.

"I will say that there are two kinds of situation. One is the migrant labourers of Delhi, and second is the migrant labourer of other states who are passing through Delhi.

"For migrants here, the government has arranged stay and food across Delhi. Any such person you meet can be sent to the nearby shelter of the Delhi government. We are providing lunch and dinner to nearly 10 lakh poor people every day," he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Trial Begins Of Russian Couple Charged With High Treason Over Wedding Photos

By RFE/RL's Russian Service May 14, 2020

KALININGRAD -- A Russian couple charged with high treason have gone on trial for photographs taken at their wedding five years ago and published online that allegedly revealed the identity of a security operative.

Konstantin Antonets and Antonina Zimina were detained in July 2018 in Russia's Baltic Sea exclave of Kaliningrad.

Zimina's father, Konstantin Zimin, told RFE/RL on May 14 that the Kaliningrad Regional Court had held preliminary hearings into the case several days ago behind closed doors.

He added that his daughter and son-in-law rejected the charge.

"There were two hearings held in the utmost of secrecy, the second of which was held without the defendants and their lawyers in the courtroom. At this point, there is no information about the process. I know that the next hearing will be held on May 28," Zimin said.

Zimin's comments were the first indication that the trial had begun in a case that made headlines in February after the Kommersant newspaper initially reported about it.

Zimina's parents told RFE/RL at the time that the Federal Security Service (FSB) suspected their daughter and her husband of providing the intelligence agency in the Baltic state of Latvia with information about a Kaliningrad FSB officer.

According to Zimina's parents, among the guests who attended the couple's wedding in April 2015 was an FSB counterintelligence officer, Maksim Denisenko, who was their daughter's friend and former university classmate.

At the wedding, Denisenko spoke openly about his employer, offered "assistance if need be," and handed out business cards and posed for photographs with guests, Zimina's parents said.

The parents also told RFE/RL that their daughter's friends from Latvia and Lithuania also attended the wedding.

Kommersant reported in February that some videos and photographs from the wedding were later published on social media and were eventually included in an unspecified Baltic television program, prompting the FSB to open a criminal investigation.

Russian military and intelligence agencies have grown increasingly concerned about social media and how content posted online by soldiers, officers, or security personnel to platforms such as Facebook or VK, Russia's Facebook equivalent, can be used to identify people, their affiliations, or even military movements.

Last week, President Vladimir Putin signed a decree banning members of the armed forces from carrying smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets capable of recording and storing information while on duty.

Source: https://www.rferl.org/a/trial-begins-of-russian- couple-charged-with-high-treason-over- wedding-photos/30611540.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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PALO ALTO, Calif., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- I Peace, Inc. (CEO: Koji Tanabe), a Palo Alto-based biotech start-up focusing on Nobel Prize-wining technology "induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC)" began manufacturing clinical-grade iPSCs. We are now officially taking orders for custom manufacturing of clinical-grade iPSCs from institutions around the world.

On March 11, 2020, the company received a license to manufacture clinical-grade cells from Japan's Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare for its cell manufacturing facility located in Kyoto, Japan. The Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency (PMDA) audited I Peace's GMP facility Peace Engine-Kyoto and reviewed facility operation, sanitization, cell culturing, Quality Control, and maintenance standard operating procedures (SOPs) among others as part of the approval process to manufacture clinical-grade cells.

Leveraging deep regulatory expertise across both the United States and Japan along with a strong intellectual property position, I Peace is now manufacturing clinical-grade iPSC lines and has officially started to serve as a contract development and manufacturing organization for clinical-grade iPSCs. While the iPSCs are manufactured in Japan, the cells can be shipped globally.

I Peace plans to further expand production capacity by building a system capable of manufacturing thousands of clinical-grade iPSCs annually using our automated technology.

iPSCs are adult cells that are reprogrammed to an embryonic stem cell-like state by introducing special factors (genes). iPSCs are able to become any type of cells in the body and proliferate almost indefinitely, like an embryonic stem cell. Unlike embryonic stem cells, iPSCs can be made from mature cells in the body, such as skin or blood cells, from anyone. iPSC-derived cell therapy generated from a patient's own cells minimizes the risk of immune rejection and is expected to change the course of regenerative medicine, drug discovery, and personalized medicine.

Background of Obtaining the Manufacturing License

Demand for clinical-grade iPSCs has surged in the past two years with various iPSC-derived cells entering clinical trials across the world. However, there are very few facilities worldwide that can manufacture clinical-grade iPSCs. In Japan, facilities that produce clinical-grade iPSCs for cell therapy must comply with the Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine.

With the license from the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, we are now officially able to serve as a contract manufacturer of clinical-grade iPSCs. We will expand accessibility and availability of clinical-grade iPSC lines so clinical research institutions can select the most appropriate iPSC line for each of their specific clinical research, taking into account differentiation propensity and other factors.

One of our strengths lies in our core proprietary technology which enables mass production of distinct clinical-grade iPSC lines simultaneously in a single room, using a miniaturized plate aided by robotic technology. Our facility is equipped with fully-closed automated iPSC manufacturing system and it meets the safety standards set by the Japanese Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine.

Envisioning a world where iPSCs are accessible to all, I Peace, Inc. will continue to develop innovative technologies to accelerate therapeutic applications of iPSCs.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Name of Cell Processing Center: I Peace, Ltd. (Peace Engine-Kyoto)

License Facility Number: A5190004

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Key Takeaways

Our cell manufacturing facility (Peace Engine-Kyoto) is compliant with the Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine in Japan .

. Peace Engine-Kyoto has been approved as a cell manufacturing facility that can produce clinical-grade iPS cells by the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Japan .

. I Peace is now able to serve as a Contract Manufacturing Organization as well as manufacture its own clinical-grade iPSCs globally.

About I Peace, Inc

I Peace, Inc. was founded in 2015 at Palo Alto, California, USA by Dr. Tanabe, who earned his doctorate at Kyoto University under Nobel laureate Dr. Yamanaka. I Peace's mission is to alleviate the suffering of diseased patients and help healthy people maintain a high quality of life. I Peace's proprietary manufacturing platform enables the fully-automated mass production of discrete iPSCs from multiple donors in a single room. Increasing the available number of clinical-grade iPSC lines allows our customers to take differentiation propensity into account to select the most appropriate iPSC line for their clinical research at significantly reduced cost. Our goal is to create iPSCs for every individual that become his/her stem cell for life.

Founder, CEO: Koji Tanabe

Since: 2015

Head Quarter: Palo Alto, California

Japan subsidiary: I Peace, Ltd. (Kyoto, Japan)

Cell Manufacturing Facility: Kyoto, Japan

Web: https://www.ipeace.com

SOURCE I Peace, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.ipeace.com


Chinas major economic indicators showed modest signs of recovery in April from record lows earlier in the year as the country shook off the impact of the coronavirus epidemic and business activity picked up, official data showed Friday.

Fixed-asset investment declined at a much more moderate pace last month and industrial output bounced back into expansionary territory for the first time this year, reports released by the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) show. Although retail sales continued to decline on a year-on-year basis, the pace of the drop was less than half that of March.

Chinas economic growth was already slowing before the coronavirus outbreak started spreading across the country in January. But activity collapsed in February and early March as government efforts to contain the spread of the coronavirus shuttered businesses across the country. With the epidemic now largely under control inside the country, economic activity is recovering and domestic supply and demand are improving. But the country is now at risk of a second shock as overseas demand slumps and disruption to global supply chains hits production.

The government has repeatedly expressed its concern about the economic recovery and pledged to continue supporting companies struggling to resume normal business operations. Although policymakers have announced a raft of monetary and fiscal measures to aid the corporate sector and support low-income households, many economists expect further measures will be unveiled during the delayed annual meeting of the National Peoples Congress (NPC), the countrys legislature, which starts on May 22. The gathering will also approve Chinas main economic policies and targets for this year, including the goals for gross domestic product (GDP) growth and the budget deficit, which have yet to be formally announced.

Economic challenges

We expect the much-awaited NPC meeting to set a clearer easing policy stance for the rest of the year, albeit with the government de-emphasizing GDP growth target significantly, UBS AG economists led by Wang Tao wrote in a note Friday. For policy and target details, we expect a higher fiscal deficit and special local government bond issuance, more tax and fee cuts, more spending on vulnerable groups and infrastructure, easier tone on M2 (money supply) and TSF (total social financing) with no specific targets, more RRR (reserve requirement ratio) cuts and policy rate cuts, acceleration of hukou and land reform and more opening-up, IP protection and innovation.

In a statement (link in Chinese) on the data, the NBS said Chinas economic operation is gradually returning toward normalization. At the same time, it should also be noted that the current overseas epidemic is still spreading, and the stable recovery of the domestic economy still faces many challenges.

Fixed-asset investment, a key driver of domestic demand that includes government-led infrastructure spending, fell 10.3% year-on-year (link in Chinese) in the first four months of 2020, NBS data show, broadly in line with the median estimate of a 10% drop from a Caixin survey (link in Chinese) of economists. The rate of decline narrowed from the 16.1% drop in the first quarter, and a record low 24.5% fall in the first two months. The NBS only releases cumulative figures for investment.

Infrastructure investment, which consists of spending on the construction of roads, railways and other public facilities, shrank 11.8% in the first four months, narrowing from a 19.7% decline in the first quarter. The decline in investment in real estate development moderated to 3.3% year-on-year (link in Chinese) in the first four months from a 7.7% drop in the January-to-March period, NBS data showed. The improvement reflected more significant policy support, economists with Oxford Economics said in a research note.





Value-added industrial output, which measures production by factories, mines and utilities, bounced back into expansionary territory for the first time this year with an increase of 3.9% year-on-year (link in Chinese) in April. That compares with a 1.1% year-on-year decline the previous month.

Retail sales, which include spending by households, governments and businesses, fell 7.5% year-on-year (link in Chinese) in April, an improvement on the 15.8% decline the previous month but steeper than the median forecast of a 5.9% drop in Caixins survey of economists.





The countrys surveyed urban unemployment rate rose to 6% (link in Chinese) in April, up 0.1 percentage points from the previous month, NBS data show. Thats the second-highest reading in available data going back to January 2017 and marginally below the record 6.2% rate reported for February 2020, according to NBS figures compiled by data provider CEIC. The surveyed rate in 31 major cities was 5.8% last month, up 0.1 percentage points from February and the highest since the data series began in June 2013, NBS said.

Economists at Goldman Sachs said that because the 6% unemployment rate is only 0.8 percentage points higher than the level before the pandemic started, it doesnt reflect the full extent of labor market slack as it doesnt capture migrant workers or the 18.3% of employed workers currently not working.





The number of migrant workers who have returned to work at the end of April has reached about 90% of the normal level in previous years, Liu Aihua, an NBS spokesman, said at a briefing Friday, but she acknowledged (link in Chinese) that the pressure on employment is still relatively large, and there are still many difficulties in the production and operation of enterprises. Overall, the economy has not yet returned to its normal level of activity, she said.

Chinas economy shrank 6.8% year-on-year in the first three months of 2020, the first quarterly contraction since the data series began in 1992, as the coronavirus pandemic devastated manufacturing and consumption.

Liu from the NBS said the government is confident about an improvement in the second quarter, though the economy is still facing challenges from the ongoing pandemic. She reiterated the central governments previous pledges of boosting domestic demand and employment to help the recovery.

Guo Yingzhe contributed to this report.

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com) and editor Nerys Avery (nerysavery@caixin.com)

Caixin Global has launched Caixin CEIC Mobile, the mobile-only version of its world-class macroeconomic data platform.

If youre using the Caixin app, please click here. If you havent downloaded the app, please click here.
If I may take this opportunity to thank my Longford Association-Dublin colleagues and friends and the members of the Longford Association in London for their invaluable support with their kind messages and attendance at the funeral of our sister, Margaret McKenna, Knockloughlin, Longford whose sad and unexpected death occurred in January.

We, as her family, were well aware of Margarets rich attributes, but through the eyes of her and her husband Seans wonderful array of friends, those facets of her character were corroborated over and over again on the occasion of her reposing and funeral, adding vivid colour to what we already knew.

Margaret was a fun loving character who retained her often giddy sense of humour all through her life, even as her circumstances changed and set her challenges she just couldnt have foreseen. I know she wouldnt wish me to canonise her, but if goodness could be measured it would be off the scale in her case: Margaret exuded love  love of family, love of people and love of life; and she possessed a big hearted generosity and a capacity for genuine warmth and friendliness. Her humanity was always plain to be seen and, for her, any form of cynicism was another country.

Margaret was diagnosed with MS 26 years ago, a devastating diagnosis for anyone, but for someone who loved to dance it was all the more disheartening. As her illness progressed over the years with the attendant loss of physical capacity, her ability to come to terms with the unfamiliar world she was facing was truly impressive. But with the help of her devoted and loyal husband, Sean, of 53 years, she managed heroically.

I wouldnt like to suggest it was easy  there had to be difficult times as she and Sean, both, coped with a kind of new normal, so to speak. I suppose the biggest change in Margarets circumstances came 11 years ago when she had to use a wheelchair to get around, but she and Sean, as her main carer, ultimately accommodated even this with the important practical help of their son, Michael.

Throughout it all, Margarets sterling qualities remained intact. She had a remarkable dignity and a great sense of herself. She retained a continuing interest in her appearance and had a lovely sense of style. She loved her hair dos and her make up , including her favourite face creams which left her skin forever young.

To visit her and Sean and their little dog, Tootsie, in their home was therapeutic when it could have been otherwise: it was a happy and humorous space with a palpable sense of contentment with their lives. What you got from Margaret in that setting and on the telephone was gratitude for every day; and Sean was never without a smile. Its little wonder they had so many wonderful friends of long standing, including those they made over their 25 year membership of the MS society in Longford, a wonderfully supportive organisation.

Everyone who visited their home in a professional capacity became fast friends and werent just there to provide a service which they always did in exemplary fashion. They included Helen and Joan, her longest serving carers at 10 years, and all the wonderful carers from Irish Home Care and Home Instead (too numerous to mention), who were co-ordinated by Pauline.

Mary Mulligan helped her in so many ways, including doing regular physio, and she completely trusted Josephine and Ursula with her hair and Marie with her make up: Margaret just couldnt hide her fastidiousness! Dr Mel Gorman was her good and caring doctor since before her illness, and was always ready to attend her at home.

Margaret was blessed with a real faith which sustained her through all her travails; she looked forward to Mass from St Mels cathedral on her PC and she loved the first Fridays when her parish priest would visit her at home. Her faith and prayerfulness were built on an early example in the home, well remembered here: last year Margaret answered a series of questions for a young neighbouring student, Casey Rowley, for her school project. To Caseys enquiry about changes shed noticed in religion in Ireland, she spoke (non judgmentally) about the fact that a lot of people had stopped going to Mass now; and relating her early childhood experiences, she said the rosary was said in our house every night and if you wanted to go out beforehand, you had to say a decade of the rosary to be let out. Mammy, God bless her, had trimmings longer than the rosary, praying for this and that and the other, The Congo, the holy souls. She was a great woman to pray.

Her funeral Mass in Ennybegs was celebrated by Fr Vincent Connaughton, a long standing friend of Margaret and Sean, who gave a wonderful homily which included nice personal insights into Margaret and her life; concelebrating were Fr Casey PP, Killoe, Fr Willie Courtney, our cousin; Fr James Mc Kiernan ADM, Longford and Fr Peter Burke. Adding greatly to the celebration of her life was the beautiful music of Mel and Helena Crowe.

Margarets parting has left a huge void in all our lives: her life partner of 53 years and best friend, Sean; Michael, their son; daughter-in-law, Angela; grandchildren, Conor and Ciara and great grandson, Tommy. Her death so soon after our brother Joes in October, has added greatly to our sorrow, eased at important moments, thankfully, by wonderful memories of them both.

Ar dheis De go raibh a h-anamacha dilis.
NSW Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock is being called on by a member of her own government to intervene in a fractured council that is in the midst of court action between the CEO and five councillors.

The Land and Environment Court granted Armidale Regional Council chief executive Susan Law an urgent interim injunction against the cohort after they tried to move a motion to have her sacked earlier this week.

NSW Local Government Minister Shelley Hancock has been called on to intervene in a regional council's dispute.

Agriculture Minister and Northern Tablelands MP Adam Marshall called on Ms Hancock to investigate the council, saying the relationships between the governing body, the executive and the community, had deteriorated to the point where the situation was "irretrievable".

"It is obvious to even the most casual observer that the elected body is fractured and split into two distinct camps who have been unable to resolve their differences," Mr Marshall said.
Its a constitutional scandal because all of these people acting together at the Obama Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA decided they were either going to prevent [Trump] from being elected, diGenova said during an April 29 podcast. If that failed, diGenova said the Obama team was determined to frame Trump and make him look like a Russian agent. Nothing gets bigger than that. This is a kind of perfidy and sedition that should never be tolerated.
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Linkedin Adrian Wail Akhlas (The Jakarta Post) Jaka  Mon, May 18, 2020 11:30 611 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84a31d 1 Business Indonesia,COVID-19,crisis,Kadin,recovery-funds,shinta-kamdani,Jokowi Free

The government should boost economic recovery spending to Rp 600 trillion (US$40.17 billion) to help businesses cope with the economic impacts of the COVID-19 crisis, as many businesses only have enough cash flow to maintain their operations for the next two months, a business lobby group has said.

Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Kadin) deputy chairwoman Shinta Kamdani said the current budget for the economic recovery program would be insufficient to support businesses, adding that many would run out of money by June.

The government stimulus spending is far too small and will not be enough for businesses to survive, Shinta said during an online discussion on Thursday. Businesses ability to cope with the crisis is very limited as their cashflow will only last until June.

The government has said that it would allocate Rp 150 trillion to fund the countrys economic recovery. However, in recently leaked Finance Ministry documents, the stated budget was Rp 318 trillion, more than double the initial plan, as the government plans to provide bailout funds for state-owned enterprises (SOEs).

President Joko Jokowi Widodo should boost spending to about Rp 600 trillion for economic recovery, Rp 600 trillion for social safety net programs and another Rp 400 trillion for the health system, she said.

We need faster financial stimulus to prevent further damage, or the government could just gradually reopen the economy, Shinta said, adding that if the government was unable to provide a significant financial stimulus, then we should really think about an exit strategy.

The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered massive layoffs, with around 6 million people losing their jobs, according to Kadin data. This is far higher than the between 2 million and 3.7 million people projected by the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas).

Some 1,680 hotels have been temporarily closed, while only 10 percent of transportation businesses are still operating as the outbreak has had a severe impact on the tourism and transportation industries, Shinta added.

The government issued Government Regulation (PP) No. 23/2020 on the national economic recovery program to support, maintain and strengthen businesses, stipulating state capital injections for ailing state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and loan subsidies for small businesses, among other things.

The countrys gross domestic product (GDP) fell to a 19-year low of 2.97 percent in the first quarter, as emergency measures were taken by the government to halt the spread of COVID-19 crippled almost all sectors of the economy.

In the worst-case scenario, the government expects the economy to contract 0.4 percent this year from 5.02 percent growth in 2019.

The government is mulling a plan to begin easing COVID-19 social restrictions in June to allow businesses to resume operations gradually.

However, some believe that reopening the economy would be premature, as Indonesia had yet to flatten the infection curve. The national COVID-19 task force reported on Thursday that the virus has infected more than 16,000.

Chief economist David Sumual of Bank Central Asia (BCA), the countrys largest private bank by market value, warned that reopening the economy too soon might trigger a second wave of infections, and that the government needed to be extra careful in easing social restrictions.

However, prolonged social restrictions will take a greater toll on the economy, David said recently. We might see temporary layoffs become permanent layoffs and more people falling into poverty if the partial lockdown continues [for much longer].
The Auditor-General has pointed out gaps in Ghanas payroll system that contributed to over GHS 564 million being paid as unearned salaries.

These gaps were highlighted in the Auditor-General's report on the nationwide payroll and personnel verification audit as of June 2018.

Of the 522,478 persons believed to be active employees on the payroll, 7,823 remained unaccounted-for at the end of an enumeration exercise to verify employees.

The Audit Services payroll validation first revealed 12,563 unaccounted-for employees before attempts to verify the various employments.

The report recommended that the Controller and Accountant General ensure the termination of the unaccounted- for employees on the payroll as well as the full recovery of the unearned salaries from the affected persons by the relevant Ministries, Departments and Agencies.

The report also noted Salary Grade Mismatches of some 1,200 employees when compared with their actual grades on their appointment because employees are not appropriately placed.

The most affected employees here were Ghana Education Service staff.

We could also not substantiate the actual grades of 10,034 employees. These employees failed to present for our inspection, their appointment/promotion letters during the enumeration exercise. According to some of the affected employees, mostly GES staff, they were not issued with letters when they were promoted.

There were also instances of discontinued Staff maintained on the payroll owing to failure by CAGD [Controller and Accountant General] to act on feedback from respective management heads.

The report noted that some 6,307 employees declared as discontinued through the ESPV system, continued to receive unearned salaries.

The payroll system had also not been properly configured to terminate automatically, records of employees who attain the statutory retirement age.

Our review showed that, names of 84 employees who had attained the statutory retirement age and had no contract extension, were still on the payroll. To ensure full compliance with the provisions of the Constitution, we urged CAGD to ensure proper configuration of the payroll system, the report noted.

The issue of employees with questionable academic credentials was also highlighted.

The report described 19,203 academic certificates presented during the enumeration exercise as fraudulent.

But a total of 7,407 out of the 19,203 suspicious certificates were confirmed to be genuine and 62 found to be fake.

Owing to the challenges encountered by the universities in querying our data, they were unable to confirm the outstanding 11,734 certificates, the report said. Audit Observation

As part of observations, the Audit Service said there were systemic deficiencies which in our view were partly caused by the weak oversight on the activities of various IPPD Coordinators across the country. Below are some of our observations.

It also said there was weak control in the placement of staff on their correct salary grades.

According to the report, heads of respective MDAs/MMDAs in response to this observation were able to provide evidence in favour of only 43 of the affected employees.

They further stated that, they only get to know of their status through the publication of the list of successful candidates by their respective district offices after interviews.

Funds to be recovered

The report notes GHS 564,234,442.74 as being the total unearned salaries and Auditor General plans to recover the monies for payment into the Consolidated Fund.

Out of the amount, total unearned salaries relating to unaccounted-for employees was GHS 467,634,792.00 and payments to discontinued employees totalled GH87,560,632.53.

Though we have the intention to disallow the continuous existence of the 7,823 employees who could not be accounted for on the payroll, we have delayed exercising this mandate owing to the unusual times in which we are, following the outbreak of the novel Coronavirus pandemic. We plan to exercise this mandate and ensure the recovery of GH467,634,792 unearned salaries immediately after the spread of the Coronavirus is contained, the Auditor-General said in its report.

---citinewsroom
Northern Ireland's politicians need to have more courage to spell out when businesses can exit lockdown, a leading hotelier said.

Bill Wolsey furloughed large numbers of staff as his Beannchor hospitality group shutted its bars and hotels during the coronavirus pandemic.

He said the enormous cost to the country could see people having to work longer for their old age pensions, and warned livelihoods depended on clear guidance around reopening dates.

The hotelier added: "It is important for us that we get some sort of clarity as to when we can move forward and it needs our politicians to have more courage."

Mr Wolsey has spent decades in business and his bars survived the most violent years of the Troubles.

His group's portfolio includes the luxury Merchant Hotel in Belfast city centre, Bullitt Belfast, The National and The Dirty Onion.

The businessman said: "I have come across in the bad old days when you were shut down due to one event or another, one bomb scare or tragedy.

"I have come across in my career when people were frightened to come into city centres or towns. I have come across that, but in 45 years of being in business I have never made anyone redundant, I have never laid off anybody."

The forced shutdown to limit the spread of the virus has devastated the hospitality industry and threatened thousands of jobs. A 25,000 grant aimed at the hospitality industry has been introduced.

Mr Wolsey said in the Republic some hotels were booked out for August after ministers there set dates on projected reopening.

Stormont ministers have said they will be guided by science on when to ease the restrictions rather than setting "caveated" dates.

Many businesses have criticised politicians for not outlining when they hope five stages of easing the restrictions will happen. Pubs are expected to be amongst the last to reopen.

Mr Wolsey said: "This is really worrying, it is hugely emotional and we need some sort of clarity so that we can get that message to people who have worked for us, so they can get on with their lives." The government's furlough scheme, which Mr Wolsey has used for his staff, has been extended to October, but a contribution from businesses is expected this summer.

Mr Wolsey asked how that could happen if premises were still shut. He said publicans recognised the need to protect health.

"If they are saying that you need to maintain social distancing, coming into summer, why not give us footpaths or roads outside premises which are lying empty?

"We are sensible people, but we need some sort of clarity. This is an opportunity to have some clever thinking."

He said nobody had been discussing how the enormous cost to the economy would be paid for. "Nobody has said we will put retirement ages back, taxes will be increased and there will be a freeze on all sorts of wages.

"The media have not put these questions to the politicians."
Workvivo, an employee communications platform founded only three years ago, has raised $16 million in a Series A funding led by Tiger Global, which is best known for large growth-oriented rounds.

Also participating is Frontline Ventures and Enterprise Ireland, previous investors. The Series A round follows on from a seed round late last year, bringing its total funding to just over $17.5 million.

In the last couple of months it's become quite obvious to millions of people during the COVID-19 pandemic that working remotely online was going to figure in their future. So companies that have products that make that transition easier have skyrocketed in value, even if this was probably an overall long-term trend. But how to reproduce that elusive company culture online? That is much harder.

Solutions like Jive or Facebook Workplace have come along, but Workvivo has taken a different approach to creating an internal communications platform designed to engage and connect with employees.

Founded in Cork, Ireland, the platform is known for creating a sense of community and belonging to the organization, the kind of which you might get from a highly engaged Facebook group that you were a fan of. Through web, desktop and a mobile app, Workvivo allows employees to read and post content to an activity feed, as well as 'like,' share and comment in the same way they might on Facebook. Its in the same ecosystem as Slack, but where Slack doesnt do culture" so well. Netgear, TELUS International and Cubic Telecom are among the many companies now using it.

The Cork-based company, founded by John Goulding and Joe Lennon, bootstrapped from the start. Goulding said in a statement: The move to remote working has been significantly accelerated by recent events. Its now more important than ever that employees are able to effectively communicate and remain engaged with each other and with the business. Workvivos communication platform helps organizations connect and engage with their employees regardless of location, bringing the culture alive and aligning everybody with what the organization is trying to achieve.

Story continues

He said the funding will be used largely for sales and marketing as well as product development. This is typical of growth-funding rounds such as this.

In an interview with TechCrunch, he denied the funding was precipitated by the global pandemic, but more by the longer-term trend of remote working.

In a sign that this is almost certainly the case, remote-working advocate Eric Yuan, founder of Zoom, previously invested last year.

Gallup estimates 70% of employees globally are disengaged" at work and this costs the worldwide economy $450 billion annually. And who can blame them when their company intranets are usually so dull.
Biocon declined 1.27% to Rs 331.05 after consolidated net profit declined 42.3% to Rs 123.40 crore on a 3.4% rise in net sales to Rs 1581 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

Biocon's consolidated EBITDA stood at Rs 382 crore in Q4 March 2020, declining 11% from Rs 431 crore in the same period last year. EBITDA margin slipped to 23% in Q4 March 2020 from 28% reported in Q4 March 2019.

Research & development expenses jumped 36% to Rs 125 crore in Q4 March 2020 over Q4 March 2019.

The small molecules business reported a revenue growth of 15% to Rs 541 crore in Q4 March 2020 led by steady API sales and strong growth in Generic Formulations. While the API business faced challenges in the Latin America region it continued to do well in India, APAC and EU driven by its statins and immunosuppressants portfolio.

The Biologics segment reported a decline of 21% to Rs 357 crore in Q4 March 2020 after reporting three consecutive quarters of robust performance. The company said decline in segment is due to operational challenges related to COVID-19 and less than expected contribution from our partners. Biocon said it expects the business to normalize by Q2 September 2020 as it continues to pursue growth through strong biosimilars portfolio in many markets across the globe.

Biocon's Branded Formulations business continued to face challenges. For Q4 March 2020, business revenue stood at Rs 117 crore posting a decline of 12% over Q4 March 2019. The company said both supply side and demand side challenges on account of the nationwide lockdown in India impacted business. Biocon clarified that UAE based joint venture entity, Neo Biocon, faced significant business challenges in the last fiscal resulting from a price reduction mandated by the Ministry of Health, UAE. The company said that the joint venture partner came under investigation for governance issues which is likely to have a reputational impact on the JV. Subsequently, Biocon has decided to to wind up the JV entity.

Commenting on the results, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Executive Chairperson, stated: Q4FY20 witnessed a muted growth of 6% with revenues at Rs 1,644 crore due to operational challenges including one-time COVID-19 related impact on our Biologics business. Small Molecules and Research Services businesses, however, delivered robust growth of 15% and 14%, respectively. On a full-year basis, we reported a revenue growth of 15% led by a strong performance by Biologics which grew by 29%, Small Molecules by 18% and Research Services by 10%. We believe that the Biologics business will recover in Q1FY21 and fully normalise from Q2FY21. For FY20, EBITDA at Rs 1,765 Crore reported a growth of 15%. Net Profit, before exceptional item, at Rs 760 Crore reported a 4% growth. Core margins were strong at 33% with EBITDA margin of 27% and Net Profit margin of 11%.

Biocon's consolidated net profit fell 6.98% to Rs 698.63 crore on a 15.5% increase in net sales to Rs 6,367.20 crore in the year ended March 2020 (FY20) over the the year ended March 2019 (FY19).

Biocon is an innovation-led global bio-pharmaceuticals company. Biocon has developed and commercialized novel biologics, biosimilars, and complex small molecule APIs in India and several key global markets as well as generic formulations in the US and Europe

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The Richard Scrushy episode of Netflixs docuseries Trial by Media that documents the federal fraud trial of the former HealthSouth CEO has a cast of characters that rivals any scripted drama: the ostentatious chief executive that lives a life of luxury and is accused of fleecing Wall Street and lining his own pockets by fudging the companys financials; the flamboyant attorney representing him; and the self-portraying country lawyer with a killer instinct in the courtroom.

King Richard, the episodes title, delves into how Scrushy used media appearances and a self-produced morning talk show to turn public opinion in his favor in time for his federal trial and eventual acquittal.

While the outcomes trial was a favorable one for Scrushy, he lost his second courtroom battle to the government in his bribery trial involving ex-Gov. Don Siegelman. Scrushy was found guilty of bribery Siegelman with $500,000 in exchange for a seat on the Certificate of Need Review Board, the state agency that had oversight over HealthSouth.

Trial by Media briefly touched on Scrushys courtroom defeat in the Siegelman case, adding that he became a small business consultant in the Houston area after being released from federal prison. And after Scrushy was found civilly liable for the HealthSouth fraud, his prized possessions, including three homes and pricey artwork, were liquidated.

Heres what the other cast of characters in King Richard have been up to since the end of the HealthSouth fraud case against Scrushy:

Donald Watkins

PHOTO BY CHRISTINE PRICHARD--Donald Watkins, a lawyer for Richard Scrushy, talks on his cell phone as he approaches the Hugo Black Federal Courthouse on the first day of opening arguments. phph

The larger-than-life Birmingham civil rights attorney was credited with crafting both Scrushys legal and media strategies. Scrushy turned to Watkins as his lead attorney because high-profile lawyers in New York and Washington advised Scrushy not to talk to the media and Scrushy thought that was a losing tactic while Watkins encouraged Scrushy to seek out reporters. Watkins was a showman in the courtroom, wrapping himself in the American flag while delivering his closing argument to the jury.

While Scrushys acquittal was arguably the pinnacle of Watkins legal career, his downfall was equally as great. In November 2018, Watkins was indicted on federal fraud charges himself along with his son, Donald Watkins Jr. He was charged with using money investors gave to his biofuel company for personal use, including paying off taxes, loans, alimony and buying clothing.

In a trial worthy of its own Netflix treatment, Watkins was found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison on March 2019.

Jim Parkman

Photo by Jacquelyn Martin 6/28/05 -- Richard Scrushy (cq) defense attorneys , Jim Parkman (cq) left, and Donald Watkins (cq), right, speak to the press at a press conference following the acquittal of former HealthSouth CEO Richard Scrushy on Tuesday June 28, 2005. Scrushy was acquitted today on all 36 charges of fraud. phph

The Dothan native who portrayed himself as a country lawyer with memorable expressions  the line about his grandmother telling him a pancake always has two sides no how matter small it is was fabricated, he concedes in the documentary  was a key figure in the case.

While prosecutors were bogged down with explaining complex financial statements in court, Parkman realized the defense needed compelling stories to win over the jury.

Parkman found those stories in Aaron Beam and Bill Owens, two HealthSouth CEOs who Parkman grilled under cross examination. It was Parkmans cross of Beams extramarital affair  which poked holes in Beams credibility  that caused Beam to scurry out of the courtroom. Parkman also cross-examined Owens to raise suspicion that the CFO may have been responsible for orchestrating HealthSouths fraud, not Scrushy.

Parkman took the Scrushy case to further his legal career, and it certainly helped. The attorney later landed former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick as a client after Kilpatrick was charged with corruption.

Parkman has since returned to Dothan, where he still practices law at his firm, Parkman White. The firm also has a Birmingham office.

Alice Martin

Martin was the George W. Bush-appointed U.S. attorney for Alabamas Northern District when charges were filed against Scrushy. She was the public face of the prosecution during the trial and portrayed Scrushy as a greed-filled executive who cooked the companys books to prop up its stock price and his own wealth.

Martin resigned from the position in June 2009 under then-President Barack Obama, as is customary when a new president takes over.

The federal prosecutor later had a stint as chief deputy attorney general for then-Alabama Attorney General Luther Strange before setting her sights on public office, announcing her candidacy for Alabama attorney general in 2018 as a Republican. Martin lost in the primary.

She now is the CEO of Martin Legal & Compliance Services, where she advises clients on internal investigations and white-collar criminal defense strategies.

Aaron Beam

Aaron Beam, left, a former executive at Birmingham's HealthSouth Corp., is one of five CFOs who blew the whistle on the company's CEO, Richard Scrushy.(AL.com file photo/Bernard Troncale)

The former HealthSouth chief financial officer was one of five CFOs that Scrushys defense targeted as being behind the companys fraud.

Beam, who co-founded HealthSouth, took the stand to testify that Scrushy ordered him and other financial executives to fudge numbers so that HealthSouth would beat Wall Street earnings estimates.

But Scrushys defense poked holes in Beams testimony when Parkman asked him if he had an affair  Beam admitted he did  and then Parkman used that to discredit Beam.

The former CFO was brought to tears during his interview in the documentary  pointing out that he went to prison for the companys fraud while Scrushy was acquitted.

Beam is now a motivational speaker and lectures on corporate ethics, according to his website. He also released a book, HealthSouth: The Wagon to Disaster in 2009.

This story was updated to reflect that Alice Martin was chief deputy attorney general under Luther Strange, not Steve Marshall.
The State Of Emergency Will Not Be Extended in Georgia - GeorgianJournal
Charities cannot cope indefinitely with the huge spike in demand for help caused by the coronavirus pandemic, the head of Britains largest network of food banks has warned.

Emma Revie, chief executive of the Trussell Trust, said millions of families across the UK had suffered from a sudden income shock since the lockdown began and needed more financial support from government to ensure they did not go hungry.

The food bank chief told MPs on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee that the Trussell Trust and a coalition of anti-poverty charities had written to the chancellor demanding an emergency income support scheme.

She said the pandemic has had an instantaneous and profound impact on food poverty. There was an 81 per cent increase in emergency food parcels given out during the last two weeks of March compared to the same period in 2019.

Warning that the enormous level of need was likely to continue, she said: If would be false of me to say we can continue to meet indefinitely an unspecified level of increased demand.

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The Independents Help The Hungry campaign is seeking to raise 10m for the food surplus charity The Felix Project so it can provide food for NHS staff, the poor and elderly who are unable to afford supplies or remain stuck at home for health reasons.

The Trussell Trust chief said food aid charities had done incredible work since the beginning of the outbreak, and said more than 50 per cent of food banks had adapted to the lockdown by doing home deliveries.

However, Ms Revie argued that unless the government strengthened the financial safety net, the UK would continue to see the kind of destitution that drives people to food banks.

She added: The problem is people falling into financial hardship. The answer to financial hardship is not food. We are treating one symptom of an underlying problem  The issue we must be focusing on reducing the flow of people into foodbanks.

Advocating a cash-first approach, Ms Revie said: If were identifying families in financial hardship  the most straightforward and dignified response is to provide them with the cash.

The Independents proprietor Evgeny Lebedev delivers 600 meals to Great Ormond Street (Hannah Harley Young)

The coalition of charities  including the Childrens Society and the Joseph Rowntree Foundation  want the government to agree to an income support package that would raise benefits going to families and stop the five-week wait for initial universal credit payments.

Praising the supermarkets for boosting the amount of produce provided to food banks over the past two months, Ms Revie warned the increased supply could not last forever.

Without the support of the major retailers, the last eight weeks would have been almost impossible for our food banks to meet demand, she said. But that is unsustainable and is not necessary in the best interests of those retailers, longer-term, to provide food for free to food banks to distribute.

 Help the Hungry: Olivia Colman visits The Felix Project

Lindsay Boswell, chief executive of FareShare, told MPs at the select committee hearing that his own organisation had been supplying food to an extra 1,200 food banks, hostels, refugee centres and other small groups since the pandemic began.

There has been a 134 per cent increase in the volume of food flowing through our system, Mr Boswell said, praising the farmers, wholesalers, supermarkets and restaurants providing surplus produce to the organisation.

The Independent is encouraging readers to help groups that are trying to feed the hungry during the crisis  find out how you can help here. Follow this link to donate to our appeal campaign in London in partnership with the Evening Standard.
Beaches in France and Italy opened on Saturday for the first weekend since the countries eased coronavirus lockdowns, while football fans awaited the return of major league action with Germany's Bundesliga set to kick off. The reopenings are a major sign of returning normality for countries hit hard by the pandemic, which has killed more than 307,000 people, infected over 4.5 million, wrought vast economic havoc and brought life to a halt. But as countries lift restrictions to boost their stagnant economies, there have been widespread fears of a second wave of infections that could plunge the world back into lockdown. Such fears have delayed the return of team sport -- where it is almost impossible for players to practise social distancing measures -- and all eyes will be on Saturday's Bundesliga matches. The games will be held without spectators and players will have to follow strict hygiene guidelines -- former Chelsea striker Salomon Kalou was suspended by Hertha Berlin just for shaking hands with team-mates. "The whole world will be looking at Germany, to see how we get it done," said Hansi Flick, the boss of league-leaders Bayern Munich. "If we manage to ensure that the season continues, it will send a signal to all leagues." Russia has announced its own football league will return next month and pushed ahead with plans to lift restrictions despite recording its highest daily death toll on Saturday, with 119 fatalities. Spain's Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez said on Saturday the country would extend its state of emergency for "about a month", until the transition out of lockdown is completed. In France, the first weekend after the most strict measures were lifted saw many venture out into the spring sunshine. "I really missed nature," 55-year-old doctor Lise Balmes said of walking through a forest outside Paris. - Here comes the sun - With the European summer fast approaching, governments are moving to help their key tourism industries to salvage something from the wreckage. Italy, one of the nations worst hit by COVID-19, announced it would reopen to European holidaymakers from June 3 and scrap quarantine requirements for arrivals. Parasols and sunloungers have started to appear on Italy's coastlines and Greece will open some of its air and sea links from Monday. Malls opened in the Philippines' capital Manila on Saturday, but saw only a trickle of customers. "It looks like people are not too excited to come back. Maybe all their money is gone," said shoe shop employee Kristine Grape. However, for some the cautious easing of restrictions has not been enough. Major German cities on Saturday will see the latest of a growing wave of protests against the country's lockdown measures. The demonstrations have been mired in controversies over conspiracy theories, anti-Semitism and extremism. In a sign of rising tension, a mock tombstone was found in front of Chancellor Angela Merkel's electoral offices, apparently to protests against the lockdown, police said Saturday. - Vaccine hopes - One hope of avoiding a dreaded second wave has been a vaccine, and US President Donald Trump voiced hope late on Friday that one would be available by late 2020 -- a timeline deemed unrealistic by many experts. "We are looking to get it by the end of the year if we can, maybe before," Trump told reporters at the White House as he discussed America's "Operation Warp Speed" effort in the global race for a vaccine. This timeline is more aggressive than the one-year scenario put forward by European scientists. The hunt for a vaccine for a disease that the World Health Organization (WHO) says may never disappear has also threatened to become a source of tension between the globe's haves and have-nots. The virus itself is having an uneven effect on communities around the world. New research on Saturday showed that people living in the most deprived areas of Britain are more than four times likelier to test positive than those living in the richest neighbourhoods. - 'No celebration' - The pressure to ease lockdowns has mounted as the catastrophic economic effects of the virus have become clearer. In the United States, the world's worst-affected country with more than 87,000 deaths and 1.4 million cases, industrial production plunged 11.2 percent in April, the largest drop in a century. Department store JCPenney, a retail institution which has not turned a profit since 2011, on Friday became the latest US business to file for bankruptcy. "May will not be a month of celebration. Nor will June. Nor July. Nor probably the rest of this year," warned Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail. With 36.5 million Americans -- more than 10 percent of the population -- now out of work, Trump has been keen to ease lockdown measures as he seeks re-election in November. Some areas are resisting. Lockdown measures in New York City have been extended until May 28. In the US House of Representatives, Democrats narrowly pushed through a $3 trillion rescue package late on Friday -- but Republicans have vowed to block the package in the Senate, which they control. Since emerging in the Chinese city of Wuhan late last year, the novel coronavirus has affected almost every country in the world. The WHO has warned Africa, which has so far been spared the worst, could have 231 million people infected and up to 190,000 die. Besides its health and economic toll, the pandemic has also caused political ructions. The latest fallout was in Brazil, which lost its second health minister in a month as Nelson Teich resigned. An official said the resignation was due to the minister's "incompatibility" with right-wing President Jair Bolsonaro's approach to fighting the country's spiralling COVID-19 crisis. burs-dl/jxb Celebrations in the waters off French Riviera city of Nice -- it is first weekend since France reopened its beaches Germany's Bundesliga returns with the Schalke 04-Borussia Dortmund derby among the six matches scheduled Saturday Beaches are open again across much of France as the country eases its coronavirus restrictions Malls opened in the Philippines' capital Manila on Saturday US President Donald Trump, flanked by senior helath officials, launches the high-powered 'Operation Warp Speed' initiative which he says could deliver a vaccine by the end of the year A world map showing official number of coronavirus deaths per country, as of May 16 at 1100 GMT
Head of the executive committee of the National Reforms Council under the President of Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili, and head of the Office of the President of Ukraine, Andriy Yermak, during a video conference discussed the possibility of cooperation with the ambassadors of the G7 countries.

"Together with Andriy Yermak, we've hold a Zoom conference with G7 ambassadors and told them about the National Reforms Council's plans. We received support and discussed the possibilities for cooperation," Saakashvili wrote on his Facebook page on Friday.
Haryana Roadways bus

Haryana: Lockdown continues in India due to corona virus However, arrangements have been made to run trains to take home the migrants who are far from home.

Only those who are perfectly fine will be able to go home. Those with symptoms of corona virus are not allowed to go.

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PhotoRoadways buses have started operating in Haryana on selected routes from today. This decision has been taken in view of the difficulties faced by the people.

Tickets are being booked through online portals. Social distance is also being taken care of in this journey. Roadways bus service started from several districts including Panchkula.

The first bus from Panchkula bus stop to Sirsa left at 8 am. Passenger thermal scanning was also done at the bus stop. All the passengers had arrived by 6 am.

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File PhotoPeople who have been stranded for a long time expressed happiness when the bus service started. Buses are being operated on 9 routes from Panchkula including Sirsa, Narnaul, Rewari, and Hisar.

Trains will run from Saturday (May 16) for migrant workers living in Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh. In the first phase, the workers of Bihar will be taken to their state. The District Magistrate has issued notice that the vehicles are being driven on the directions of the state government.

Train servicesThe four trains will run from May 16 at Dadri and Dunkur railway stations in Gautam Budh Nagar district in which the migrant workers of Bihar will get the facility to go home.

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The first train will leave Dadri station for Aurangabad station at 11 am. The second train from this station will leave Sasaram (Rohtas) at 3 pm.
Government officials have expressed mounting concerns for how the COVID-19 virus could diminish voter turnout during the 2020 presidential election.As a partial solution, a handful of states have turned to Internet voting pilot programs: New Jersey, Delaware and West Virginia have all recently launched pilots, most of which are limited in scope and focus mainly on alleviating barriers for disabled and overseas voters.However, the computer science community  long critical of internet voting  sees the programs as a slippery slope towards a looming security risk.David Dill, a computer science professor at Stanford University, is one of the prolific naysayers. Having spent much of his career researching holes in software code, Dill said that there is just simply no way to ensure that devices and apps are free of malware that might manipulate a voter's choices. Similarly, a hacker from an adversarial foreign government could always theoretically hack their way into these systems and change or manipulate votes."Between your keyboard and your vote going into an electronic ballot box on the other end of the Internet, there are a lot of bad things that could happen," he said. "This problem is not fixable, at least not in practical terms."Cybersecurity and national security organizations tend to agree with that assessments. A joint statement provided toby the FBI, EAC, NIST and the Department of Homeland Security's CISA, all warn against the wholesale embrace of such technologies."While there are effective risk management controls to enable electronic ballot delivery and marking, we recommend paper ballot returns as electronic ballot return technologies are high-risk even with controls in place," the statement reads.Many Internet voting pilots use vendor products that company representatives say have been aptly tested, but being certain of such security can be difficult, experts warn.The Delaware program uses Democracy Live, a Seattle-based vendor that allows voters to mark and submit their vote from their own devices, including phones and laptops. Democracy Live could not be reached for comment at the writing of this article, but has argued in other media appearances that its cloud-based product had been through a rigorous process of security testing.Dill is less than impressed with claims like this."Doing a security evaluation is a hard process, and responsible companies don't make guarantees," he said. "They don't say, 'This is guaranteed to be secure software.' They will say, 'We did the following things, and we didn't find any problems in the software.' Or, more frequently, 'We found these problems with the software and you can mitigate them in the following ways.'""But I know without the security evaluation that it's not possible to make this stuff secure," he concluded.Marian Schneider, president of Verified Voting, agrees that such voting practices are simply not a risk worth taking because, "in general, the Internet is not a secure place," she said."There are threats to online transactions every day. Commercial retailers, online banking, all of those organizations that offer their services spend hundreds of millions of dollars protecting their networks and yet still have losses," she said. "Additionally, we are coming off the 2016 election in which the consensus of the security community is that a nation-state attacked us and attempted to interfere in our election."As a result, use of this technology could have serious implications for the democratic process and national security, she said."Any wholesale adoption of Internet voting is just an invitation to bad actors to attack our elections again," Schneider went on. "There would be two results of that: No. 1 is that they could potentially change the outcome of the election, but the second impact of that is that it would create serious doubt about the election results. And we don't need that right now."A little like a vampire, this idea has been around for a long time and refuses to die, said Barbara Simons, former president of the Association for Computing Machinery, who has been a longtime critic of Internet voting, as well as overly mechanized voting systems, generally."This [Internet voting] idea has been around for a very long time," Simons said, explaining that she was originally asked to sit on a study group on Internet voting way back in the 1990s, at which point she deduced that it was a "terrible idea."There are numerous secure alternatives to this idea, she added. The most straightforward alternative, even for the disabled community, is vote-by-mail, she said."Given the threat of the virus, vote-by-mail seems like the safest way for voters to cast their ballots in November," Simons said, while noting that not all states are going to be able to move to vote-by-mail due to the expense and preparation necessary."It's a major undertaking if it has not already been set up. So there also has to be a focus on making the polling places secure," she said. "That's going to require a lot of planning  we need to have large spaces, masks and gloves for poll workers and voters as well  and preparations so that people can go to the polls without fear of being sick.""I believe its doable, but it's going to require a lot of planning and money, and I'm not hearing a lot about that right now," she said.
Hailing the third tranche of stimulus focussing on the agriculture and allied sector, farm industries and experts on Friday said the government has finally decided to "bite the bullet" by announcing long overdue big market reforms that would benefit both farmers and consumers.

In the third set of measures under the COVID-19 package, the government on Friday announced a slew of measures for the agriculture sector, including a Rs 1.63 lakh crore outlay, and amending the stringent Essential Commodities Act (ESA) to remove cereals, edible oil, oilseeds, pulses, onions and potato from its purview.

Also, a new law will be framed to give farmers the option to choose the market where they want to sell their produce by removing inter-state trade barriers and providing e-trading of agriculture produce.

"The last three of the 11 measures announced by the Finance Minister are bigger than the first eight. This should have been done in the first term of the Modi government. With three big measures, the government finally bites the bullet," noted agricultural economist Ashok Gulati told PTI.

It's a bold reform and announcing it now shows that the government wants to convert this COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity for farmers. But it should be implemented in letter and spirit, he said.

The last three measures related to deregulation of agriculture commodities from the Essential Commodities Act (ECA), imposition of stock limits only during emergencies, giving marketing choice to farmers and allowing private participation will benefit both farmers and consumers, he added.

Echoing views, EY India Partner Satyam Shivam Sundaram said that deregulation of mandis is a "very bold step" and it was due for a long time.

"We will get to know more as we see the fine-prints come out. When considered along with farm gate infrastructure and proposed investments in the value chain, it would go a long way in helping farmers realise 25 to 30 per cent higher income, depending on the produce," he said.

Ajay Kakra of PwC India also mentioned that the decision to amend the ECA is a correct measure to ensure supply chain continuity and trade flows in the event of short supplies and exceptional circumstances. In an event like COVID-19, this will be helpful to control supply chain disruptions.

Industry chamber CII Director General Chandrajit Banerjee said that the amendment of the ECA and the agricultural marketing reforms proposed by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman are indeed "heartening".

"We hope that the states fall in line with these changes. What is also critical is that these changes are being supported by substantial allocation of funds including Rs 1 lakh crore for the development of agricultural and food processing infrastructure," he said in a statement.

The agricultural sector has been subjected to a host of restrictions which are no longer relevant, and this has hindered the marketing and price realisation of agricultural products, he added.

Deloitte India Partner Anand Ramanathan said the announcements will help improve farmer realisations and also help them build better market linkages for their produce.

The removal of cereals from the ECA, the agricultural marketing policy changes being made to facilitate direct sale to aggregators and the assistance being provided to enhance food processing and post harvest infrastructure in proximity to farm gates are excellent formulations which will help farmers, he added.

Agri-tech firm AgriBazaar co-founder and CEO Amith Agarwal said the announcement of Rs 1 lakh crore Agri Infrastructure Fund will significantly contribute towards mitigating post-harvest losses and wastage by giving a fillip to scientific storage facilities and also, help the small farmers earn additional income by way of value-added agri-produce.

"In the immediate term, it will provide an impetus for the agri sector to come out of the COVID-19 shock, while in the long run it will secure India's food security and supply chain in a self-sufficient manner. Today is a great day for India's small farm owners," he added.

Food services firm Elior India CEO Sanjay Kumar said, "The steps taken by the government in order to empower the marine and agriculture sectors is appreciated. In order to go local to global, the stimulus and capital funds should be used for bringing in value addition for fishery and agricultural products to gain advantage in international markets and boost exports."



However, with regards to price assurance for farmers, there is a need for an assured demand for consumption, he said.

"Hence, we look forward to an announcement regarding reduction in tax on consumption and GST rate that will in turn drive consumption. Also, we hope that input tax credit is restored as this will help ensure the success of the finance minister's initiative in streamlining and supporting the development of infrastructure in the food supply chain," Kumar noted.

Tasty Dairy Specialities Chairman Atul Mehra said the measures announced will help in reviving the agriculture, dairy, fisheries and allied sectors, taking closer to the Prime Minister's vision of 'self reliant' country.

"India is one of the largest milk producers in the world, and the suggested initiatives and reforms will help India to go to the next level. This will help the country to make a mark internationally with the higher quality dairy products...," he said.

Animal husbandry infrastructure development fund and national animal disease control programme are few of the noteworthy initiatives among others which will help in long term development, Mehra added.

These are going to fulfill the aim of doubling farmers' income and establishing our products in the international market, he added.

Krishi Network Platform CEO Ashish Mishram said making the agri-produce market more competitive by minimising controls and democratising access is definitely the biggest reform agri sector needs at the moment.

"It is a welcome move, and should be backed with the new APMC act soon," he said.

The finance minister also talked about devising ways so that farmers could have an idea of harvest time prices, he said adding that this is a complex technological problem, the government should collaborate with farmer tech platforms for this.

Welcoming the measures, FINDOC Executive Director Nitin Shahi said, "Government has been offering loans and moratorium till now, actual demand of the industry is to reduce taxes and direct benefits for the economy to revive.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A boy in Cincinnati wakes up in the night to hear striking piano music  alive, exciting, he would describe it decades later  emanating from a gathering his parents are having downstairs. He goes to investigate and sees George Gershwin himself at the piano.

The music sticks with the boy, and 58 years later, having become a rich man, he sinks his money into developing a Gershwin musical, Crazy for You. His Broadway producing debut, it opens in 1992, becomes an international hit and wins the Tony Award for best musical.

That is the biographical arc of S. Roger Horchow, who died of cancer on May 2 at his home in Dallas. Except that it leaves out the part about being a pioneer in the mail-order luxury goods business, which is where all that Crazy for You money came from.

Mr. Horchows death, at age 91, was announced by his family in a statement.

In 1971, after a decade at Neiman Marcus, Mr. Horchow founded the Horchow Collection, a mail-order business aimed at the middle and upper-middle classes that sold jewelry, housewares, furniture, clothes and more. He sold the business to Neiman Marcus in 1988 for $117 million.
BEIJING, May 14 (Xinhua) -- The 16 temporary hospitals in Wuhan, the Chinese city hit hardest by the COVID-19 epidemic, have played an important and indispensable role in the prevention and control of the disease, a Chinese health official said Thursday.

During the lockdown of Wuhan, a total of 16 public venues such as exhibition centers and gymnasiums were converted into temporary hospitals to treat patients with mild symptoms and isolate the source of infections amid strained medical resources.

During their operation from Feb. 5 to March 10, over 12,000 patients were admitted and no deaths or nosocomial infections were reported in the facilities, said Song Shuli, a spokesperson for the National Health Commission, at a press conference in Beijing.

Over 8,000 medical workers from across the country had worked in the makeshift hospitals, battling the epidemic along with local medical personnel, according to Song.

After the outbreak of the virus, Wuhan faced mounting pressure in terms of providing enough hospital beds, Song said.

The central authorities made the resolute decision to set up temporary hospitals, she said, adding that the first batch of temporary hospitals was set up within only 29 hours and provided 4,000 beds.

The temporary hospitals are like dams built before the virus further spreads, said Ma Xin, vice president of the Shanghai-based Huashan Hospital of Fudan University, at the press conference.

The 16 temporary hospitals were able to provide nearly 15,000 beds in total which outnumbered the growth of patients, said Ma, stressing that the temporary hospitals helped to isolate, admit and treat all COVID-19 cases.

Before these hospitals, a large number of confirmed cases were quarantined at home and stayed in their communities, which could easily lead to clustered infections in families and communities, Ma explained.

The temporary hospitals also admitted many mild cases that were transferred from the designated hospitals, leaving more hospital beds for severe cases, said Ma.

"They helped to balance and coordinate the medical resources in Wuhan," he added.
Microsoft MSFT recently entered into an agreement to acquire 5G specialist Metaswitch Networks.



The acquisition will strengthen the companys cloud offerings by leveraging Metaswitchs portfolio of cloud-native services that include 5G voice, data and communications solutions for telecommunication companies. Nevertheless, the financial terms of the deal have been kept under wraps.



Microsofts cloud platform  Azure  will be utilized to scale and deploy Metaswitchs software solutions. However, Microsoft has stated that it will continue to maintain its hybrid and multi-cloud models, which indicates that Metaswitchs solutions will be available on other cloud platforms as well.



Shares of Microsoft have returned 14.5% in the year-to-date period compared with the industrys rise of 7%.

Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus

Microsoft Corporation Price and Consensus

Microsoft Corporation price-consensus-chart | Microsoft Corporation Quote

Efforts to Strengthen 5G Edge Computing Capabilities



Metaswitchs acquisition has positioned Microsoft to capitalize on the accelerated deployment of 5G and gain robust traction among telecom customers. Markedly, Metaswitch boasts a strong client base that comprises major tech players like Atos, Cisco and Dell, among others.



Moreover, the company has stated that Metaswitchs solutions are complementary with Affirmed and will thus provide Microsoft with cross-selling opportunities between both acquired companies.



Recently, the company acquired Affirmed Networks to gain access to the latters fully virtualized, cloud-native 5G core and mobile edge computing offerings. The buyout is expected to strengthen Microsofts telecom focused cloud solutions.



Microsoft also partnered with AT&T to accelerate innovation for new 5G, cloud, and edge computing solutions. AT&Ts domestic 5G capabilities combined with Azures cloud computing expertise will help them develop robust solutions for their mutual customers.



Additionally, the transition to 5G is forcing telecom operators to ditch their legacy systems in favor of cloud based solutions. As a result, Microsofts expanding portfolio of cloud solutions bodes well for its prospects.



Further, social distancing and work-from-home trends stemming from the COVID-19 outbreak is driving demand for high-speed connectivity and networking at the edge. This is expected to boost adoption of Microsofts solutions among telecom carriers and other network communication players.



Competitive Scenario



Microsofts cloud peers, including Amazon AMZN and IBM IBM arent far behind when it comes to strengthening their footprint in the growing edge computing market, backed by 5G transition. Per data by Grand View Research, the global edge computing space is expected to reach $43.4 billion by 2027 at a CAGR of 37.4%.



Recently, IBM announced it is leveraging Red Hats OpenShift platform to develop solutions like IBM Telco Network Cloud Manager, which will aid telecom operators in modernizing their networks and improve efficiency. Notably, IBMs solutions have already been adopted by Bharti Airtel to build its open cloud network to support 5G operations in India.



IBM is also collaborating with Samsung and telecom operator M1 to develop and test Industry 4.0 solutions using 5G and edge computing for Singapore's Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA).



Notably, Amazons cloud computing division Amazon Web Service (AWS) introduced AWS Wavelength, which combines AWS compute and storage with a 5G network to improve the efficiency of infrastructure deployment. Moreover, by placing resources at the edge of the network, the solution will be able to reduce latency significantly.



In March, Alphabets GOOGL Google Cloud announced a new strategy to aid telecom companies in monetizing their 5G network services, by leveraging the edge computing capabilities of the Google Cloud platform.



Markedly, Google Cloud has partnered with AT&T to build a portfolio of low latency 5G edge computing solutions for companies across industries like retail, manufacturing and transportation.



Nevertheless, Microsofts deep focus toward strengthening cloud offerings is likely to strengthen its market position in the edge computing market on the back of latest efforts in the sapce.



Zacks Rank



Microsoft currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.



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Any vaccine to fight the new coronavirus will not be ready for use for at least two years, the chief executive of Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, which no longer makes vaccines itself, told a German newspaper. Novartis sold its vaccine business in 2015 to GlaxoSmithKline, one of many companies around the world now racing to make a drug. Some companies are already testing vaccine candidates on humans.

"The results of the first clinical studies on the vaccine candidates should be available in autumn," Novartis CEO Vas Narasimhan told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). "If everything goes as we hope, it will take 24 months before we have a vaccine." For instance, Moderna Inc has sped up plans for its experimental COVID-19 vaccine and said it expected to start a late-stage trial in early summer.

But experts have said no vaccine is expected to be ready for use until at least 2021, as they must be widely tested in humans before being administered to hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people to prevent infection. Narasimhan, who headed development at Novartis's vaccine business before the Basel-based company concluded it was too small to keep and should be unloaded, said producing enough vaccine for the world would also be a challenge.

He said building a new factory usually took three or four years. "That's way too long," he told FAZ. "We have to use the existing production network to produce large quantities quickly."

Also read: Coronavirus vaccine update: PM-CARES funds India's efforts; Oxford sees some positive results

Also read: Coronavirus live updates: Lockdown 4.0! SC allows liquor sale in Tamil Nadu; India's COVID-19 cases-81,970
A turtle is recovering after a 12-inch-long (30cm) long piece of plastic pollution was extracted from its intestines and pulled out of its backside.

The green sea turtle was found struggling to walk after being washed ashore in Rayong, eastern Thailand, on May 10.

Locals contacted the rescue service who tool the creature to the Marine and Coastal Resources Research and Development Center in Bangkok.

Eye-watering footage shows a veterinarian slowly pulling the thin strip of plastic bag out of the poor creature's behind.

Scroll down for video

A shot of the vets pulling the length of plastic pollution from turtle's backside in the disturbing footage

The creature appears distressed as the plastic is gently extracted from its cloaca, its posterior orifice used for defecation, reproduction and even a process called 'cloacal respiration' for disposing of carbon dioxide.

THE GREEN TURTLE The green turtle is one of the largest sea turtles and the only herbivore among the different species. Green turtles are in fact named for the greenish color of their cartilage and fat, not their shells. Green turtles are found mainly in tropical and subtropical waters. Like other sea turtles, they migrate long distances between feeding grounds and the beaches from where they hatched. Classified as endangered, green turtles are threatened by over-harvesting of their eggs, hunting of adults, being caught in fishing gear and loss of nesting beach sites. Source: WFF Advertisement

The plastic bag had been affecting the turtle's digestion, causing it to become constipated.

The veterinarian said the extraneous rubbish stuck inside the turtle would have eventually caused it to die had it not been removed.

'The plastic garbage that people throw out washes into the seas, where it becomes highly dangerous for the animals,' he said.

'They eat the the plastic without knowing that it is not edible then it slowly kills them.'

Unlike other sea turtles, the green sea turtle is predominantly herbivorous and feeds on algae or marine grasses.

It's possible that the unfortunate creature mistook the foot-long piece of garbage for an extra big morsel of sea grass.

The turtle is being nursed back to health and rehabilitated before staff release it back into the ocean.

Plastic garbage as Rayong beach, eastern Thailand. The green sea turtle was found struggling to walk after being washed ashore in Rayong on May 10.

The green sea turtle (Chelonia mydas), which inhabits warm coastal waters around the world, is listed as an endangered species by the IUCN red list, the world's most comprehensive inventory of the global conservation status of biological species.

It is now protected from exploitation in many Asian countries after historically being captured and killed for its meat.

However, the species is still threatened by fishing nets, harvesting of eggs and a loss of habitat, as well as the substantial presence of plastic in our oceans.

Between 4.8 and 12.7 million tonnes of plastic enter the ocean each year, according to figures published in the journal Science.

Green turtles are threatened by overharvesting of their eggs, hunting of adults, being caught in fishing gear and loss of nesting beach sites

According to a more recent study, turtles eat plastic waste in the ocean because it ends up smelling like food thanks to an algae coating  leading to the animals clogging up their insides.

Ocean plastics in the ocean trap microbes and algae, which break down releasing a food-like odour, accordinfg to US experts writing in Current Biology.

A 2018 report published in Scientific Reports found that there was 20 per cent chance of death for a turtle who ingested just one piece of plastic  a figure that rises to 50 per cent if they ingested 14 pieces.
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The pandemic has brought the film industry to a standstill, leaving many director uncertain when they can get back to work. The last few weeks have been particularly hard for filmmakers from marginalized communities, especially those from poorer socioeconomic backgrounds.

No one probably knows this struggle better than award-winning documentarian Stanley Nelson (The Black Panthers: Vanguard of the Revolution, Freedom Riders) and writer-producer Marcia Smith. The pair, who co-founded Harlem-based non-profit Firelight Media have been conducting outreach within their creative community. Using surveys and focus groups, the organization has been evaluating how filmmakers of color can move forward in an even more unstable economic environment than they are accustomed to.

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We did a survey and held several one-on-one conversations, with the purpose of trying to get a handle on how they were dealing with the current situation, what they thought of the future, and how we could play a role, said Smith. Much of the response was concern about access to emergency funds because a lot of independent filmmakers earn their living by working non-film related jobs, and now theyve lost those jobs.

Firelights services are in-demand now more than ever. These include one-on-one financial consultations with filmmakers, and webinars on how to receive funds via the CARES Act, which contains $376 billion in relief for workers and small businesses. The webinars alone have drawn over 2,600 filmmakers so far.

Its been stunning to us, because we didnt really understand that there was that kind of demand out there, said Smith. Many of them are 1099 workers who do not have banking relationships, and dont know about LLCs. So we provide hands on assistance to help them take advantage of these SBA funds. And we recently started connecting filmmakers with bookkeepers, because one of the common needs that has emerged in the process is that people dont have their records in very good order.

Story continues

Given that people of color are experiencing more serious illnesses and death due to COVID-19, as philanthropic resources are stretching to a maximum, many filmmakers in the Firelight network have been directly affected. Veteran documentarian Byron Hurt, who has lost family members to COVID-19, been seeking completion funds for his documentary on the culture of hazing in America when the pandemic broke out. Now, he said, the situation has made it even more difficult for him to get the money he needs.

One thing that Ive seen happen is that funding organizations are reallocating resources to fit the needs of the filmmaking community, Hurt said. But most organizations have limited funding. So, if theyre funding artists to help them survive, or theyre suddenly shifting their funding to support films that directly address COVID-19-related issues, then thats going to have an impact on filmmakers whose subjects are not really aligned with that. This is one of the ways that it impacts filmmakers like me.

A public speaker who has benefited from relief funds and loans, Hurt is now concerned that the pandemic will put his main source of income in jeopardy, when schools are set to open in the fall.

In the short term, Im okay, but I think time will tell if filmmakers of color have had an equitable share in some of the available resources, he said. Im part of a filmmaking community that is in limbo. There are a lot of questions that we are grappling with right now. But what I do know is that filmmakers of color need to document the impact that COVID-19 is having on their communities, because I dont know if anyone else will.

Cecilia Aldarondos feature length documentary, Landfall, on the aftermath of Hurricane Marias devastation of Puerto Rico in 2017, was set to premiere at the 2020 Tribeca Film Festival. The festival was postponed due to the pandemic, leaving her film in a state of arrested distribution.

Its incredibly paradoxical and frustrating to me to have made a film thats actually deeply relevant to this moment, that may not find a home, Aldarondo said.

She lamented what she sees as an industry more concerned with the plight of the larger players. Where is the voice of the independent filmmaker in this moment, especially independent filmmakers of color? Ive been seeing a lot of press, approaching this crisis from the center of power, whether its big studios or big streamers, and not necessarily asking what we are dealing with, she said. I worry that indie filmmakers will just disappear from the landscape. And people of color often get hit first and hardest.

Unlike Hurt, Aldarondo is not as anxious about her finances because shes a full-time professor at Williams College, in Williamstown, Massachusetts. Currently on sabbatical, she expects to be teaching again in the fall. However, her income means that shes not eligible for much of the emergency relief that other filmmakers have been able to take advantage of, even if she needs it.

Loira Limbals feature documentary Through the Night, about a 24-hour day care facility in New Rochelle, NY, was also scheduled to premiere at Tribeca last month. Limbals mother and sister were both sick with COVID-19, although they are currently recovering.

A single mother with two children, Limbal said she was most concerned about how shes going to get her film about three working mothers out into the world. She was hoping to put a spotlight on three women as essential workers in a COVID-19 environment: a pediatric ER nurse, an employee at a grocery store supplier, and an owner of a daycare center.

Im black, an immigrant and from New York, and I grew up poor, and the people that are being killed by this thing, or are getting sick, or losing their jobs, are literally like my mother, my sister, my neighbors, and the people in my film, said Limbal, a full-time employee at Firelight. Im a sole provider to two kids, which means I need a job and health insurance. And I am even now more reminded of just how much the industry is not at all reflective of me and my community. Even within the documentary film community. All of the people that I know are being literally crushed by this thing. And it seems like no one really cares.

For Limbal, its not just a matter of how she will now get her film out, but how she can ensure that its target audience  African American and Latina women, as well as single mothers and caregivers  is able to see it. That has left her pondering questions of accessibility, privilege and communal resources.

Its one thing if your film is on Netflix because a lot of people have Netflix accounts, but if you have a small, independent film that nobody has really heard about, its such a heavy lift to get people to see it, especially single mothers and people of color who maybe wont sit and watch a feature film and then join a panel conversation as an edifying, cultural event, during a pandemic, she said.

All of that has led Firelight Media to up its game. In March, the organization announced The William Greaves Fund, which will comprise of seven to 10 grants of up to $25,000 annually, for filmmakers from racially and ethnically underrepresented communities.

One thing were finding is that most independent filmmakers are just that, theyre independent, and they dont have a huge support network, especially filmmakers of color, Nelson said. So when you tell them that theres money available from the SBA, theyre confused on what to do. And while youre helping them try to figure out their situation, the moneys all gone before they can even submit an application.

Nelson agrees that disasters like the one the country is currently experiencing often lay bare the question of whose lives matter more, and which lives are more at-risk and expendable.

The important thing we have is community, and I think communities of color know this, so we have to take care of one another because the people at the top arent necessarily looking out for us, he said. Thats not necessarily going to put food in our mouths or money in the bank, but what it can mean is that we know who are friends are, and we know who our community is.

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(Reuters) - Technologists and health officials around the world are racing to develop smartphone apps to trace who has been in contact with carriers of the novel coronavirus.

Contact-tracing, a disease control tactic that traditionally relies on patients' memories of their movements, identifies people they might have infected so they too can be isolated.

FIRST GENERATION APPS THAT USE BLUETOOTH TECHNOLOGY

Bluetooth is a short-range radio technology used for things like connecting wireless headphones to a smartphone. It detects when another Bluetooth signal is near and can estimate the distance between devices -- making it a good tool for contact-tracing.

Singapore's TraceTogether, launched in March, was the first Bluetooth-based contact-tracing app. When a person tests positive for COVID-19, health authorities can look at the person's Bluetooth history and, in Singapore's case, call all the people on that list and order them to quarantine.

Countries that have launched similar Bluetooth apps include Australia, Malaysia and the United Kingdom.

But these apps face obstacles. Most of the population has to use them if they are to be effective. On Apple's iPhone, the app has to be open at all times for it to work, which is a drain on the battery. Apps may fail to record some encounters between iPhones and devices running Googles Android operating system, or between pairs of older Android devices.

APPS THAT WILL USE THE APPLE-GOOGLE BLUETOOTH APPROACH

The two tech giants said last month they would build special software to make Bluetooth apps work better. At first, this will be a tool that developers can integrate in their apps. That is due out in coming days.

Later this year, Apple and Google will include the tool in software updates, meaning users can log contacts without having to download an app.

The two companies set strict privacy rules. Apps cannot collect any personal data, including where contacts happened. Contact data is stored only on the phone, and when a user is confirmed as infected an anonymous notification about possible exposure will go directly to other phones.

Story continues

In France, Norway, Britain and the United States, governments complained this is too limiting, as they won't be able to see where disease clusters are. But given the challenge of making apps work smoothly without the Apple-Google tools, the Norway, U.K. and some governments in the U.S. told Reuters they are now considering giving up on collecting location data.

Many European countries including Germany and Italy have agreed to go with, or shown interest, in the Google-Apple approach, with a Swiss-led consortium, DP-3T, leading the way.

APPS THAT USE PHONE LOCATION DATA

The GPS satellite system, as well as cellphone towers, make it possible for governments and network operators to track smartphones and many other types of mobile phones. Using a database, health authorities can then see when and where a person who tested positive crossed paths with other people.

The data isn't perfect: GPS can be inexact in a crowded high-rise, for example, and cell-tower data varies in precision. Systematic use of such data to track people is invasive and thus anathema to many people and governments.

Still, Ghana, Iceland, India, Israel, Norway and the several U.S. states have rolled out apps that use location data.

APPS THAT GO BEYOND CONTACT TRACING

Some countries, notably China, have developed apps that collect personal health data, travel and other information useful for disease control and identifying individuals at risk. Chinese citizens must carry a "health code" app that rates their risk level to enter shops or ride on trains, for example.

India's app has similar functions, and Colombia told Reuters it hopes to launch an app with a "digital passport" feature.

Private companies around the world may also require such apps for people to return to work.

OBSTACLES TO EFFECTIVE CONTACT-TRACING APPS

It remains unknown whether Bluetooth-based contact-tracing apps will be effective. The early apps still only have limited adoption and are hampered by their lack of the Apple-Google technology. A major concern is that apps will log an overwhelming number of erroneous contacts. Privacy worries could limit uptake of the apps and make them ineffective.

OTHER METHODS OF HIGH TECH CONTACT-TRACING

Many law enforcement and spy agencies can track people without consent via phones, surveillance cameras and other methods. Such techniques have been used in China for COVID-19 tracking. Israel uses such systems also for that purpose, though not without controversy.

Commercial "spyware" companies have also tried to sell their systems for COVID-19 tracking.

(Reporting by Jonathan Weber in Singapore and Paresh Dave in San Francisco, Editing by William Maclean)
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Linkedin Ryan Arcadio (Inquirer.net/Asia News Network)  Fri, May 15, 2020 17:07 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd855256 2 Entertainment Simon-Cowell,Scooby-Do,Movie,film,SCOOB,Zac-Efron Free

Simon Cowell will be appearing alongside his 6-year-old son, Eric, in an upcoming Scooby-Doo animated movie titled Scoob!.

The music mogul made the announcement on his Instagram page on Tuesday alongside a still from the film. The sneak peek shows an animated version of Cowell sitting beside the fictional characters Velma Dinkey, Daphne Blake, Fred Jones, Shaggy Rogers and Scooby-Doo.

He also posted a photo of him and Eric in a recording booth. Cowell explained that he watched the animated TV series as a child and was thrilled to be watching it again with his son.

So when we got asked to be in the new [Scooby-Doo] movie @SCOOB!, it was the quickest yes Ive ever said, he added.

Cowell also hinted at a part of the movies plot, saying, We never really got to find out how Scooby and Shaggy met the rest of the gang and now we do. While Cowell will be appearing as himself in the upcoming film, Eric will be lending his voice to a character named Ben, a young tourist in Greece.

Read also: The films skipping theaters and heading straight to streaming

Cowell later joked about how he felt working with his son in a report by Mirror on the same day.

Oh, its a nightmare working with Eric, Cowell was quoted as saying. Hes so competitive.

He was better than me and he knows that because he had a part  so when I was terrible, he was fantastic, he added. But it was so much fun. I mean, really so much fun.

Along with Cowell, the upcoming film will also star Hollywood actors Zac Efron, Amanda Seyfried, Mark Wahlberg and Gina Rodriguez. Scoob! will be available for streaming on services such as Apple TV, Amazon Prime Video and the Google Play Store on May 15.

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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
Financing facility of Rs 1,00,000 crore will be provided for funding agriculture infrastructure projects at farm-gate and aggregation points

New Delhi: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday announced setting up of a Rs 1 lakh crore agri infrastructure fund for farm-gate infrastructure.

This fund will be used for setting up cold chains and post-harvest management infrastructure, she said while announcing the third tranche of COVID-19 relief package.

"Financing facility of Rs 1,00,000 crore will be provided for funding agriculture infrastructure projects at farm-gate and aggregation points. Impetus for development pf farm-gate and aggregation point, affordable and financially viable post-harvest management infrastructure," says Sitharaman.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman informed the media that the government procured farm produces worth Rs 74,300 crore (as per Minimum Support Price) to improve liquidity for farmers.

She also said that funds transfer worth Rs 18,700 crores has been done under PM KISAN Samman Yojna in the past 2 months and PM Kisan Bima Yojna claims totaling 6,400 cr cleared in last 2 months.

She also announced a Rs 10,000 crore scheme for formalisation of micro food enterprises (MFE). The scheme will be launched to help 2 lakh MFEs by adopting cluster-based approach such as mango in Uttar Pradesh, kesar in Jammu & Kashmir, bamboo shoots in North-East, chilli in Andhra Pradesh, tapioca in Tamil Nadu. This fund would help in reaching untapped export markets in view of improved health consciousness.

She said that unorganised MFEs units need technical upgradation to attain FSSAI food standards, build brands and marketing. The scheme will help two lakh MFEs attain the goals.

The existing micro food enterprises, farmer producer organisation, self-help groups (SHGs) and cooperatives will be supported. The scheme is expected to improve health and safety standards, integration with retail markets among others.

Sitharaman announces Rs 20,000 cr for aqua culture, infrastructure for fisheries to help raise fish production, exports.

To promote herbal cultivation in India, the government has commited Rs 4,000 crore. The move is aimed at increasing herbal cultivation to 10 lakh hectare in 2 years. A corridor of medicinal plants will also come up across banks of River Ganga.

In a major announcement, the government extended Operation Greens from Tomatoes, Onion and Potatoes (TOP) to all fruits and vegetables. Operation Greens was a project aimed to stabilise the supply of tomato, onion and potato crops (TOP crops) in India, as well as to ensure their availability around the country, year-round without price volatility.

Rs 500 cr allocated for beekeeping initiatives to benefit 2 lakh beekeepers in rural areas, says Sitharaman.

On Thursday, Sitharaman said that migrant workers who do not have either central or state PDS cards would be given free food grain supply for next two months among others.

The ministers announcements on Wednesday (day 1) included six measures for the MSME ssector, two for EPF, two for NBFC and MFI sector, one for discoms, one for contractors, one for real estate sector, and three tax measures.

The Prime Minister had on Tuesday announced a Rs 20 lakh crore special economic package for the country to become 'self-reliant' and deal with COVID-19 crisis.
Twenty-six Israelis arrived home May 14 after almost three months in Morocco. Exhausted, they thanked all the parties involved in the operation to bring them back.

Several weeks ago, a few dozen Israeli tourists and businesspeople both Jews and Arabs  who had been spending time in Morocco were trying to return home. At the time, Israels Foreign Ministry was engaged across the globe in operations to rescue Israeli tourists stuck because of the coronavirus pandemic. The ministry helped bring back Israelis from Costa Rica, Peru and Colombia, from Australia and New Zealand, and even from Kenya.

Morocco, however, presented an especially complicated case. The North African country has no diplomatic ties with Israel. Israeli citizens are allowed to visit and can get a visa upon arrival. But the Israeli El Al carrier cannot land there.

A surprising solution was proposed by the United Arab Emirates, which offered to take the Israelis stranded in Morocco on a plane it was going bring home its own nationals on. Jerusalem agreed immediately, but then Rabat blocked the initiative. Moroccan authorities were angered that they were not consulted in advance about the joint flight. And so, the Israelis stayed put.

The Israeli group got desperate. Morocco imposed confinement in several cities, first until April 29, and then prolonging it until May 20. Thousands of people were detained and fined for not respecting social distancing restrictions. By mid-April, 12 members of the Moroccan Jewish community died of COVID-19; this is a huge number when it comes to a community of just 2,000 to 3,000 people. The community apparently was hit when the virus was unknowingly brought to Morocco from France by French-Moroccan Jews who attended a grand wedding in early March in Morocco's coastal city of Agadir.

Some Israelis also died from COVID-19 in Morocco. The matter was brought to the attention of a former Jerusalem mayor, Knesset member Nir Barkat, who decided to find a solution at all cost. Barkat contacted Israeli-American Miriam Adelson, who is the publisher of the Israel Hayom newspaper, who agreed to help. Israels National Security Council also got involved. The original idea was to fly the Israelis directly to Tel Aviv from Casablanca, but this did not work out. In the end, the Israelis were allowed to take an Air France flight to Paris, even though Paris-Tel Aviv flights had essentially ended. From Paris, a private plane charted by Adelson brought the Israelis home.
President Donald Trump inquired how long Ukraine would be able to resist Russian aggression without US assistance during a 2018 meeting with donors that included the indicted associates of his personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

"How long would they last in a fight with Russia?" Mr Trump is heard asking in the audio portion of a video recording, moments before he calls for the firing of US ambassador to Ukraine, Marie Yovanovitch.

She was removed a year later after a campaign to discredit her by Mr Giuliani and others, an action that was part of the Democrats' case arguing for removal of the president in his Senate impeachment trial.

A video recording of the entire 80-minute dinner at the Trump Hotel in Washington has been obtained by the Associated Press news agency.

It contradicts the president's statements that he did not know the Giuliani associates Lev Parnas or Igor Fruman, key figures in the investigation who were indicted last year on campaign finance charges.

On the recording, a voice that appears to be Mr Parnas's can be heard saying: "The biggest problem there, I think where we need to start is we got to get rid of the ambassador."

He later can be heard telling Mr Trump: "She's basically walking around telling everybody, 'Wait, he's gonna get impeached. Just wait.'"

Mr Trump responds: "Get rid of her! Get her out tomorrow. I don't care. Get her out tomorrow. Take her out. OK? Do it."

Ukraine came up during the dinner in the context of a discussion of energy markets.

Meanwhile, a lawsuit accusing Mr Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel was revived yesterday by a federal appeals court.

The lawsuit brought by the state of Maryland and the District of Columbia alleges Mr Trump has violated the US constitution by accepting profits through foreign and domestic officials who stay at the Trump International Hotel.

The ruling from the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond could jumpstart efforts by the two jurisdictions to obtain financial records showing how much state and foreign governments have paid the Trump Organisation to stay at the hotel and hold events there.

A lower court judge approved more than three dozen subpoenas issued to the General Services Administration - the administrator of the lease on the hotel - and other government agencies, but the subpoenas were put on hold while Mr Trump's appeal was pending.

Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh and District Attorney General Karl Racine - both Democrats - said they expect the case to return to US District Court in Maryland, where a judge could lift the stay on the subpoenas.

But both Mr Frosh and Mr Racine said they think it's likely the Trump administration will ask the Supreme Court to hear the case.

A spokeswoman for the Department of Justice said the DOJ is reviewing the ruling, but did not comment on whether it will seek review by the high court.

The lawsuit was filed almost three years ago. US District Judge Peter Messitte refused to dismiss it, but his ruling was overturned by three judges of the 4th Circuit.

They found Maryland and the District of Columbia lacked standing to pursue their claims against the president.

But it was overturned yesterday by the full court of 15 judges. In a 9-6 ruling, the court found the three-judge panel overstepped its authority when it ordered Judge Messitte to dismiss the lawsuit.

"We recognise that the president is no ordinary petitioner, and we accord him great deference as the head of the Executive branch.

"But Congress and the Supreme Court have severely limited our ability to grant the extraordinary relief the president seeks," Judge Diana Gribbon Motz wrote for the majority in rejecting Mr Trump's request to dismiss the lawsuit.

The six judges who disagreed wrote a scathing dissenting opinion, saying the lawsuit should be thrown out.
The Member of Parliament for Assin Central Kennedy Agyapong ever since he became an MP says he has never abused his credentials despited his vituperations on radio and Television.

In A2zgh.com's daily report, the 'say it as it is' lawmaker alleged that the opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is planning to destabilize Ashanti Region through the killing of expatriates.

According to the loudmouth Kennedy Agyapong, NDC have been engaging themselves in meetings in the Ashanti Region on how to win the presidential power this year.

The NDC wants to kill and get power and this time, not Ghanaians, they want to kill expatriates, they will follow expatriates to their house and kill them to give a view to the international world that Ghana isnt stable, he revealed.

In yet another report, the Assin Central MP revealed how the National Democratic Congress (NDC) is also planning to murder the majority leader in Parliament Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu.

Ken Agyapong has observed that in the NDC's first meeting, it emerged that Abronye DC, Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu and himself will be murdered but it was unsuccessful.

He continued that Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu will be invited to chair a meeting by bodybuilders in the Ashanti region and that will be the end of his life.

"Some bodybuilders and macho men will invite Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu to chair a meeting that will aim at bringing peace in this year's election so if he agrees, there would be chaos during the meeting and he will be shot," he revealed.

He, however, warned Osei Kyei Mensah Bonsu who us also the MP for Suame Constituency that he should be wary of any meeting from bodybuilders in the Ashanti Region that aims to bring peace during, before and after the election.

Listen below...
Tinaa Dattaa, who became popular with the show Uttaran, is stuck in Goa since the past two months because of the lockdown. She says that she can't wait for the lockdown to be lifted to return to Mumbai.

Talking about the same with the Times of India, Tinaa revealed that she spends a week every month in Goa, practising yoga at Aashka Goradia and her husband Brent Goble's yoga centre. But this time, her stay got extended due to the lockdown. She came to Goa on March 13, 2020 and when she was to return, the nationwide lockdown was announced.

Tinaa's parents were worried and wanted her to fly to Kolkata a few days before the lockdown. The actress told the leading daily, "However, I didn't feel right about it. I live in a joint family - my dadi is 95 and my uncle is 65. I couldn't risk their health by exposing myself to the virus during travelling. So, I refrained from going to my hometown (Kolkata). I miss them. They miss me, too, but I can't take any chances."

She further added, "If I have to look at this situation positively, I am happy that I am quarantined here, in a palatial home. It could have been claustrophobic in Mumbai. To be honest, I was fine when the first lockdown was announced. However, I panicked after it got extended. I was worried sick about the plants at my home in Mumbai, as no one can go and water them. I love my plants. They are my most favourite companions, and I love talking to them." She added that Aashka has been a great friend and has been comforting and motivating her throughout.

The Uttaran actress revealed that she has started to love baking. She feels that it is extremely therapeutic and lifts her mood almost instantly.

Also Read: Sonal Vengurlekar In Financial Crunch As Producers Didn't Pay Her Money; Make-Up Man Offers Help
Amnesty International says mobile courts are being used to extort alleged defaulters of lockdown violations in parts of the country su...





Amnesty International says mobile courts are being used to extort alleged defaulters of lockdown violations in parts of the country such as Kaduna and Kano states.





Speaking during a webinar organised by the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) on Thursday, Osai Ojigho, AI director in Nigeria, said the watchdog has been receiving complaints of such extortion.





The webinar which was titled, Human rights and law enforcement during the COVID-19 lockdown, reviewed human rights issues concerning the pandemic.





Ojigho also said it is unacceptable for the mobile courts to prosecute citizens without them having access to lawyers.





If people are charged to court, they also need legal services. And part of the problem is that lawyers have not necessarily been grouped as essential services, she said.





When you talk about access to justice, it includes the rights of access to lawyers for defence. The courts shouldnt be prosecuting cases without lawyers.





also received reports about people being asked to offer bribes. We have seen it abused before the COVID-19 lockdown and it is even worse now. We havealso received reports about people being asked to offer bribes.





What international human rights law says is that whatever provisions you make must have three provisions; they must follow legitimacy, must be legal and must be reasonably justified.





The right to have legal representation to a fair trial is sacrosanct. The state attorneys-general should be advising their principals on how to carry out these prosecutions.





A lot of thoughts should also go into involving the ministries of justice providing such services for people charged in these courts.





Anthony Ojukwu, executive secretary of the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), said the commission had earlier reported 29 cases of extra-judicial killings committed by security agencies.





During the first two weeks of lockdown, we had 18 extra-judicial killings, and more in the second round, making it a total of 29 extrajudicial killings, he said.





He said to curb the killings, the Nigeria police force must begin to employ less force in their operations such as use of rubber bullets during violent protests as done in other countries.




Dhaval Patel, the editor of Gujarati Face of Nation news website, was arrested on May 11 and charged with sedition for publishing a report that alleged Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani may be replaced for mishandling the Covid-19 response. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Indian affiliates; the Indian Journalists Union (IJU) and the National Union of Journalists- India (NUJ-I) condemn the arrest and call on authorities to drop all charges against him.

Dhaval Patel, the editor of Gujarati Face of Nation news website, was arrested on May 11 and charged with sedition for publishing a report that alleged Gujarat Chief Minister Vijay Rupani may be replaced for mishandling the Covid-19 response. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) and its Indian affiliates; the Indian Journalists Union (IJU) and the National Union of Journalists- India (NUJ-I) condemn the arrest and call on authorities to drop all charges against him.

Patel was detained at his residence after the Ahmedabad police registered a First Information Report (FIR) on May 8 against the editor under Section 124(A) of the Indian Penal Code and Section 54 of the Disaster Management Act. The FIR accuses the article of being baseless and inciting instability and atmosphere of fear during the pandemic.

The Face of Nation on May 7 published a report suggesting Chief Minister Rupani may be replaced by Union Minister Mansukh Mandviya as the senior figures in the BJP were unhappy with his performance on Covid-19 pandemic management.

If convicted of violating Indias Sedition Law, Patel could face life imprisonment. If he is convicted of spreading false claims amid the pandemic, he could be sentenced to two years in jail under the Disaster Management Act.

Earlier, Delhi police summoned Delhi based Indian Expresss reporter Mahender Singh Manral for questioning on May 10 for his news reports about the alleged doctoring of an audio clip attributed to Tablighi Jamaat chief Maulana Saad. Also, during the lockdown, Himachal Pradeshs journalists faced FIRs and harassment for their alleged violation of the Indian Penal Code and the Disaster Management Act for their coverage during the Covid-19 lockdown.

IJU said: The Indian Journalists Union (IJU) expresses grave concern over rising cases of State governments intimidating, harassing and detaining journalists by misusing the sedition law as well as Disaster Management Act. We urge the authorities to drop all charges against journalists who are risking their health and lives to report on Covid-19.

NUJ-I said: The arrest is arbitrary and amounts to a blatant misuse of law. NUJ-I demands the immediate and unconditional release of the journalist.

IFJ said: Attempts by state governments including that of Gujrat state to criminalize journalism on spurious charges is not acceptable. IFJ calls on the authorities to drop all charges against Patel.
The number of confirmed fatalities from coronavirus so far across the world reached 300,000 Thursday.

According to worldometer.info, more than 4.4 million infections have been recorded, leading to the death of 303,438 as of the time of reporting.

Meanwhile, the true number of infections and fatalities could be far higher, giving the varied ways in which countries conduct tests and report COVID-19, the CNN reported.

Experts believe the death toll might even be twice the current figure as many people die without being tested.

Countries have continued to report inadequate testing kits for potential patients of COVID-19, a strain of coronavirus which has continued to defy science.

Nonetheless, the soaring death toll captures a world brought to a halt by a virus that paralysed the global economy with governments scrambling to reopen to avoid further crises.

It came as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that the virus may never go away with United Nations Human Rights Commissioner, Michelle Bachelet, cautioning countries against the lifting of lockdowns imposed to contain the spread of the disease.

Nigeria is one of the countries that have replaced its total lockdown with a dusk to dawn curfew (8 pm to 6 am) nationwide.

But since easing the lockdown about a week ago, Nigerias coronavirus cases and resultant deaths have continued to increase, surpassing 5,000 cases on Thursday as world powers, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany and Russia still struggle to contain the contagion.

READ ALSO:

Europe is still the worst-affected region with the combined death toll in the U.K, Italy, Spain, France, Germany, and Russia approaching 140, 000, almost half the global total to demonstrate the high price nations can pay if the virus outstrips the capacity of a countrys health care system.

The United States which already has the highest number of reported infections in the world  over 1.4 million  is the country with the highest death toll of more than 86, 000.

Africa

Coronavirus has slowly but steadily started gaining a foothold in Africa, a continent once perceived as one of the safest grounds for the disease.

More than 3, 000 people have died in the continent of over a billion people, including the former Chief of Staff to President Muhammadu Buhari; the former president of the Republic of the Congo, Jacques Joachim Yhombi-Opango; Somalias former prime minister Nur Hassan Hussein among dozens of health officials.

Though the tally is still relatively low compared to global figures, it has doused the debate on the continent having some kind of immunity against Covid19 due to its sunny temperature.

There are no longer coronavirus-free countries in Africa as of May 13 as governments are now rushing to reinforce measures to contain the spread of the disease, knowing that their fragile health systems will be swiftly overwhelmed if the disease spreads in large clusters.
New Delhi/London, May 15 : The extradition trial of the Indian fugitive diamantaire Nirav Modi in a case of financial fraud and money laundering worth $2 billion, has been adjourned by the court in the UK till September 7.

Sources in London said District Judge Samuel Goozee, who presided over the trial at Westminster Magistrates' Court on Thursday, said at the end of a four-day partial hearing of the case that the trial will be resumed, hopefully, after the restrictions imposed on the movement of people due to the coronavirus pandemic would have been eased.

The diamond merchant, who was arrested by Scotland Yard in the UK in March 2019 on an extradition warrant by India over charges of fraud and money laundering, had been attending the court using a videolink from his prison in Wandsworth, London. He is to appear at the court on June 11 again via videolink for his 28-day call-over remand hearing, sources said.

In the extradition case, the government of India investigative agencies Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and Enforcement Directorate (ED), seeking Nirav Modi's extradition are being represented by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) in the UK.

On Thursday, the CBI submitted in the court, video recordings of Nirav Modi's death threats to "dummy directors" associated with companies linked to him if they testified against him. On the first day of the five-day hearing, on Tuesday, the prosecution told the court that the Indian fugitive used 13 companies in the UAE and six in Hong Kong for the purpose of round tripping money.

The businessman has applied for political asylum after his bail was denied five times in the UK.
Having chalked up five years with insurance giant Allianz, John Berry (pictured) is now ready to make the next step in his career moving into the chief risk officer role.

Berry will oversee the risk management framework for Allianz Holdings and Allianz Insurance UK, and will have direct management of the risk function at Allianz Insurance UK.

Berry, who joined the firm back in 2015 in the role of senior retail actuary, has held a series of positions including head of pricing, personal lines, and director, underwriting and technical for personal lines. He has been in the role of interim chief risk officer since the turn of the year after Karina Schreiber returned to Germany to take on a new role with Allianz SE.

I am delighted that John has joined our management board to take on the role of chief risk officer for Allianz Holdings and Allianz Insurance, said Allianz CEO John Dye. He has a fantastic track record of delivering results for our business and brings a wealth of experience to the position. His appointment demonstrates that we have an excellent talent pool which allows us promote from within.

The appointment remains subject to regulatory approval.
Horrific details emerge of Tuesdays attack on Afghan hospital that killed 24 people, including babies and mothers.

As armed men rampaged through an Afghan hospital on Tuesday, shooting dead mothers and babies, a group of pregnant women hid in a room with one of them about to give birth.

The mother was in pain but was trying not to make any sound, said a midwife who helped deliver the baby girl and sever the umbilical cord with her bare hands.

She even put her finger in the newborn babys mouth to stop her from crying, the woman told the AFP news agency by phone on Friday, her voice still shaking three days after the attack.

The raid in the maternity ward of Kabuls Barchi National Hospital left 24 people dead, including newborns, mothers and nurses.

There were 26 mothers in the hospital on the morning gunmen posing as members of the Afghan security forces burst in, said the Doctors Without Borders (MSF) charity, which runs the maternity ward.

Eleven of them were killed during the hours-long attack, including three in a delivery room with their newborn babies. Five others were wounded.

At least six babies lost their mothers in an attack that sparked international outrage.

Another 10 sheltered in safe rooms, which are common in Afghanistan and are often armoured to protect the occupants from gunfire or rockets.

Women gave birth during attack

The midwife, who spoke to AFP on condition of anonymity, also rushed to one of the safe rooms when the emergency siren went off.

As she and some of the women huddled inside, they could hear gunshots as the attackers went from room to room throughout the hospital.

Then one of the women began to give birth.

We helped her with our bare hands, we had nothing else in the room except some toilet paper and our scarves, the midwife said.

When the baby was born, we cut the umbilical cord using our hands. We used our headscarves to wrap the baby and the mother.

As the terrified women tried to stay quiet, they could hear the gunmen outside asking them to open the door. But we knew they were not [security force members], she said.

Three gunmen were later killed by Afghan security forces.

After the attack, 18 babies were taken to another hospital for treatment  some of them carried from the scene by heavily armed soldiers.

No group has claimed the attack, but the United States has blamed the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL or ISIS) for it.
Homegrown mobile devices maker Lava International on Friday said it is shifting its China operations to India following recent policy announcements by the government.

The company plans to invest Rs 800 crore over the next five years to scale up its mobile phone development and manufacturing operations in the country.

"We had around 600-650 employees in China for product design. Now we have shifted designing to India. Our sales requirements for India were met from our local plant.

"We used to partially export mobile phones from China to the rest of the world, which will now happen from India," Lava International Chairman and Managing Director Hari Om Rai told PTI.

During the lockdown period, Lava met its export demand from China.

"My dream is to export mobile devices to China. Indian companies are already exporting mobile chargers to China. The production linked incentive scheme has ended our disability factor vis-a-vis export from China. Therefore entire operations will now be carried from India," Rai said.

The government in April notified three schemes involving total incentives of around Rs 48,000 crore to boost local electronics manufacturing and create 20 lakh direct and indirect jobs by 2025.

The notification included production linked incentive scheme (PLI). Under the scheme, electronics manufacturing companies will get an incentive of 4 - 6 per cent on incremental sales (over base year) of goods manufactured in India and covered under target segments over a period of five years.

"We are working on a plan to invest Rs 800 crore over the next five years to scale up our operations," Rai said.

The production of mobile phones in the country has surged eight-times in the last four years, from around Rs 18,900 crore in 2014-15 to over Rs 2 lakh crore in 2019-20. The country's demand is almost completely met through domestic production.

The government estimates that through the PLI scheme, domestic value addition for mobile phones is expected to rise to 35-40 per cent by 2025 from the current level of 20-25 per cent and generate additional 8 lakh jobs, both direct and indirect.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
CLEVELAND, Ohio  The $8.5 million Greater Cleveland COVID-19 Rapid Response Fund on Friday announced $908,000 in grants to 20 organizations on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic.

Since the funds creation in mid-March, 73 partners have granted more than $4.7 million to 85 nonprofit groups and organizations. The latest round of grant recipients includes:

Food & Shelter

Asian Services in Action, Inc. ($20,000): To provide emergency food assistance, basic needs and small business support for immigrant and refugee populations across the organizations Northeast Ohio service area.

Bellaire Puritas Development Corporation ($32,000): For the Community Essential Needs Collective, a collaborative effort between Bellaire-Puritas Development Corporation, The Bountiful Basement at Blessed Trinity Church, Neighborhood Family Practice, and St. Paul AME Church Pantry to distribute emergency food resources, public health information and cleaning supplies and emergency assistance to families in the West Park neighborhood.

Burten, Bell, Carr Development, Inc. ($65,000): To prepare and distribute hot meals and care packages containing PPE, hygiene products and cleaning supplies to homebound residents in Clevelands Buckeye-Shaker Square, Buckeye-Woodhill, Central and Kinsman neighborhoods.

Family Pride of Northeast Ohio ($30,000): To support the immediate needs of individuals and families throughout Geauga and Lake counties who are clients of this behavioral health organization including access to food, technology, and emergency shelter and housing support, as well as resources for families to keep kids physically and emotionally healthy.

Front Steps Housing and Services ($75,000): For food, supplies and staffing to serve the growing needs of its clients, who are formerly homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders.

Greater Collinwood Development Corporation ($16,000): To safely scale up its provision of free food packages to residents in need.

Harvard Community Services Center ($40,000): To serve homebound adults and families across the Lee-Harvard, Miles and Seville neighborhoods through the mobile delivery of care packages containing food and basic hygiene items.

Lakewood Community Services Center ($34,000): For staffing needed to continue its zero- contact food delivery and distribution system for individuals and families in Lakewood who are facing food insecurity.

MidTown Cleveland ($30,000): For bulk meal purchases from AsiaTown restaurants, providing a direct infusion of business to locally owned restaurants while serving the needs of food insecure residents.

The Phillis Wheatley Association ($65,000): For staffing, food and other basic supplies to continue to provide meals and critical services to older and disabled adults in the core city of Cleveland. PPE

Salaam Clinic of Cleveland ($25,000): To purchase personal protective and infection control equipment and additional technology resources that will allow the clinic to resume operations providing health care services to the uninsured and underinsured population of Northeast Ohio.
Nicole Trunfio rushed her nearly three-month-old daughter, Ella Wolf, to hospital with a fever on Wednesday.

And on Friday, the 34-year-old told fans that they're back home 'safe and sound'.

The Australian-born model shared a series of adorable photos to Instagram, snuggling up to her baby girl at their Texas mansion.

'Safe and sound!' Nicole Trunfio, 34, is back home with daughter Ella Wolf, after the nearly three-month-old was rushed to hospital with a fever on Wednesday

'Back home safe and sound with my little twin, lookin reeeaaal cute in her adorable new sleeping bag (sic),' Nicole penned online.

'Loving baby snuggles during quarantine, makes me want 500 more,' she continued alongside the hashtag 'mum life'.

Nicole shared three near-identical photos cuddling up to little Ella, who looked adorable in her bear onesie 'sleeping bag'.

Fresh-faced Nicole was simply radiant, also drawing attention to her two-year-old daughter Gia's red ribbon in her hair.

Doting mother: The Australian-born model shared adorable photos to Instagram cuddling up to little Ella at their Texas home

Her pride and joy: Nicole also shared a number of precious photos to Instagram Stories, cradling Ella, with the caption 'melt machine'

The jewellery designer also posted a number of precious photos to Instagram Stories of herself cradling Ella, with the caption simply titled 'melt machine'.

Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Nicole revealed the urgency of 'breaking quarantine' for the first time in two months, to rush Ella to the hospital.

Taking to Instagram at the time, she shared photos of their short stay, including a picture of herself wearing a face mask, and little Ella being treated by a doctor.

Breaking quarantine: On Wednesday, Nicole 'broke quarantine' and donned a face mask to rush Ella to hospital

Nicole wrote in the caption: 'I ended up putting on a brave face and taking my brand new baby with a 102 fever (38 Celsius) to the E.R.'

'It was the first time I broke quarantine in 2 months,' she continued, adding it was 'every mom's worst nightmare'.

The mother-of-three said she was particularly worried because going to the hospital could put her family at risk when she and Ella returned home.

Hospital: Nicole said she was concerned that going to the hospital could put her family at risk of COVID-19 when she and Ella returned home

She continued: 'I was told by our GP to pack my bags because I might be there for a few days, I felt like I was going into the eye of the storm.'

But the doting mother was able to get her daughter promptly treated and return home safely.

Nicole went on to thank Dell Children's Hospital in Austin, Texas for the 'best hospital experience'.

Grateful: Luckily, the hospital had 'extreme' safety measures in place that ensured safety. Nicole thanked the hospital for their care and said, 'you made me feel safe, you took care of my baby and made her laugh, and took extreme measures to make sure I came home COVID free'

Thankful: Nicole also thanked hospital staff for 'risking their lives every day to make we have essential care during this crazy time'

'You made me feel safe, you took care of my baby and made her laugh, and took extreme measures to make sure I came home COVID-free.

She also praised the hospital for the protocols in place that ensured patient safety.

'Thank you to all the staff that work and risk their lives every day to make we have essential care during this crazy time,' she added.

New addition: Nicole and her musician husband Gary Clark Jr. welcomed Ella on February 21

Nicole and her musician husband Gary Clark Jr. welcomed Ella on February 21.

The couple, who tied the knot in 2016, are also parents to five-year-old son Zion, and two-year-old daughter Gia.

The family are currently in lockdown at their home on their ranch in Texas, in the US.
The awards showcase best practice and honor the best and brightest corporates and suppliers across international management and global mobility from planning a relocation and temporary accommodations to education and technology.

Global mobility drives business results but comes with diverse challenges; such as, rapid change, evolving demands, and risk management-as recently seen with the COVID19 pandemic that knows no borders. Can you receive data in real-time to proactively monitor emergencies, weather, or risks that may impact your team? Technology supports GM professionals, who via technological support now have more time combined with predictive analytics to strategize and counsel accurately and efficiently.

ReloQuest makes employee travel data accessible. The solution helps relocation and travel managers rapidly locate their employees'. The single source, real-time platform, provides direct communication and supports the continuity of workflow. In times that require increased interaction ReloQuest technology can make a critical impact on accessibility to employees when they need organizational support most.

Among the many benefits unique to ReloQuest alone is the largest Global Marketplace of Verified Suppliers, in over 162 countries equating to millions of verified accommodations.

RQ PRO facilitates end to end management of a global workforce and offers 24-7 customer service that is second to none. ReloQuest provides a fully transparent resource for global mobility clients and individuals in need of sourcing worldwide temporary accommodations while remaining compliant with corporate guidelines.

ReloQuest technology is designed to meet employees' needs while accomplishing client's goals. The technology goes well beyond tracking and exceptional metrics; it offers a collaborative experience; employees who are relocating can get involved in the process while remaining compliant.

Employees/Travelers can view the details of their reservation, welcome information, submit service tickets, notice to vacate, and property reviews-all from their mobile device.

Among workflow features on the multi-award-winning platform is Direct ConnectSM ReloQuest's B2E employee self-service innovation. Where employees can:

Enter Requests

Review Options

Select Choices

Submit Service Issues, & contact supplier

Receive 24-7 guest support

RQ Pro offers direct access to your supply chain along with direct communication. RQ Pro also provides automated features that vastly increase efficiency; such as, consolidated/centralized billing, welcome letters, lease management, plus option, lease, and supplier transparency which eliminates mark-up and supports accountability.

About ReloQuest

ReloQuest is a business travel solution for companies and employees to search, compare, and book corporate apartments and hotels around the world. The technology simplifies the process of sourcing temporary accommodations while supplying: rapid implementation, 100% transparency, real-time data, substantial cost reduction, direct communication, reported 80% efficiency increases, and 24-7 live support. Dedicated to solving travel and relocation challenges, ReloQuest leads by designing technology firsts serving today's global workforce and the companies that employ them.

Contact: Jeana Giordano, [email protected].

SOURCE ReloQuest, Inc.

Related Links

https://www.reloquest.com


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If youre one of the people eyeing the remote island of New Zealand after seeing it effectively eliminate Covid-19, why not treat yourself to the countrys most expensive property?

The gobsmacking super penthouse is the crown jewel of Aucklands latest luxury development, the Pacifica, and has just hit the market for NZ $40 million (thats roughly $23.9 million, thanks to the blessed exchange rate). If it sells at that price, it will likely become the most expensive recorded sale of a single-family home in Kiwi history, eclipsing a seven-bedroom Auckland mansion that sold for $39 million in 2013.

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Boasting more than 200 apartments85 percent of which have already soldthe boutique highrise spans a lofty 584 feet and will be the tallest residential tower in New Zealand when complete. The piece de resistance is, of course, the 13,000 square-foot penthouse, which occupies the entire 53rd and 54th floors and offers incredible 360-degree overlooking the Waitemata harbor.

The penthouse is currently a warm shellits exterior is complete but its interior is unfinishedwhich means the new owner can choose to either tackle the interior themselves or leave it to the buildings developer Hengyi Pacific (NZ) Ltd. If its the latter, the proposed floor plan sees the first floor with an open-plan dining room, living room, lounge and kitchen, which comes with a separate butlers kitchen, plus a conservatory, media room, office, boardroom and library. Not to be outdone, the second floor offers five bedroomsincluding a generous master suite that covers a full corner of the toweralong with a gym, sauna and spa.

The best part? When it comes to buying, therell be virtually no red tape. Typically, New Zealand requires foreign buyers to obtain Overseas Investment Office approval before buying a house, but all units in the Pacifica are exempt from that restriction, Bloomberg reports.

Story continues

Ready for a seachange? The listing is represented by Jason Gaddes and Scarlett Wood of New Zealand Sothebys International Realty, and you can find out more information here.

Check out more pictures of the penthouse below:

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Disgraced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is seen for the first time since his early release from prison because of coronavirus - and he's already flouting quarantine.

An ankle monitor could be seen poking out of the bottom of the 71-year-old fraudsters pants as he met up with family in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C on Thursday.

Manafort was freed Wednesday after his lawyers argued he was especially vulnerable to COVID-19 behind bars because of his age and a litany of health complaints that require 11 different medications per day.

But, as these exclusive images taken by DailyMail.com reveal, the portly felon did not seem too worried about the possibility of infection when he enjoyed a close quarters catch-up with his daughter and grandson.

Neither Manafort's lawyers, nor the Federal Bureau of Prisons have disclosed the precise terms of his release into home confinement one year into a seven and half year sentence for bank fraud and tax evasion.

Disgraced former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort is seen for the first time since his early release from prison because of coronavirus - and he's already flouting quarantine

Manafort was freed Wednesday after his lawyers argued he was especially vulnerable to COVID-19 behind bars because of his age and a litany of health complaints that require 11 different medications per day

But, as these exclusive images taken by DailyMail.com reveal, the portly felon did not seem too worried about the possibility of infection when he enjoyed a close quarters catch-up with his daughter and grandson

An ankle monitor could be seen poking out of the bottom of the 71-year-old fraudsters pants as he met up with family in a Virginia suburb of Washington D.C on Thursday

Manafort was seen playing in the back yard with a little boy believed to be his grandson, at one point pushing the youngster on a swing

Neither Manafort's lawyers, nor the Federal Bureau of Prisons have disclosed the precise terms of his release into home confinement one year into a seven and half year sentence for bank fraud and tax evasion

Manafort was due to leave prison in November 2024 but his lawyers argued for his early release saying a combination of old age and health issues, including a recent 'cardiac event' and a bout of bronchitis, made him especially vulnerable to COVID-19. They added that he takes 11 prescription medications daily, eight of which are relevant to his risk of succumbing to the virus in custody. He appeared in court in a wheelchair last year after facing 'significant issues' with his health

Stay-at-home convicts are typically restricted to one location unless they have permission to visit a doctor, go to church or other limited activities.

But DailyMail.com can reveal that Manafort was at two different addresses Thursday: a residential apartment building where he appears to be living and at his youngest daughter's suburban home, half a mile away.

The fraudster and his wife Kathleen, 66, drove over to the four-bed property where 34-year-old Andrea Manafort lives with her husband Christopher Shand, arriving around 2pm in a swish Land Rover Discovery.

Manafort, notorious for his sharp suits and lavish fashion choices that once included a jacket made from ostrich, wore khakis, designer boat shoes and a mint green Ralph Lauren shirt for the family reunion that lasted until 8pm.

He and Kathleen wore surgical-style face masks but Manafort was seen playing in the back yard with a little boy believed to be his grandson, at one point pushing the youngster on a swing.

The state of Virginia is still subject to a strict executive order that banned gatherings of more than ten people, closed schools and left all non-essential stores shuttered.

Governor Ralph Northam also urged Virginians 'to limit all non-essential travel outside the home' and told citizens with chronic health conditions or aged 65 or older to self-quarantine.

That advice seemed similarly lost on redhead Kathleen, 66, who left her daughter's house briefly to take a box home and came back minutes later carrying two red peppers.

Sporting a pronounced gut and a little more grey hair than before his incarceration in March 2019, Manafort did not exhibit any obvious ill-effects from his time behind bars

Manafort wore khakis, designer boat shoes and a mint green Ralph Lauren shirt for the family reunion that lasted until 8pm

The felon is notorious for his sharp suits and fashion choices that once included a $15,000 jacket made from ostrich (left). He also spent lavishly on outerwear jackets and suits from high-end stores. According to one invoice, he spent a total of $15,195 to buy just four suits and two trousers - among other purchases

Manafort pleaded guilty to further related charges in a separate case in Washington, D.C., though none of his crimes pointed towards any collusion, nor did they relate to his stint as Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign chairman (pictured in 2016)

The couple, who have been married for the past 42 years, left after dinner and went straight back to their apartment building, a few blocks away.

Sporting a pronounced gut and a little more grey hair than before his incarceration in March 2019, Manafort did not exhibit any obvious ill-effects from his time behind bars.

The veteran lobbyist was convicted the previous August of tax evasion, failure to report foreign bank accounts, engaging in unregistered lobbying for foreign entities and witness tampering after he came under the scrutiny of special counsel Robert Muellers Russia probe.

He pleaded guilty to further related charges in a separate case in Washington, D.C., though none of his crimes pointed towards any collusion, nor did they relate to his stint as Trump's 2016 Presidential campaign chairman.

Manafort was due to leave prison in November 2024 but his lawyers argued for his early release saying a combination of old age and health issues, including a recent 'cardiac event' and a bout of bronchitis, made him especially vulnerable to COVID-19.

They added that he takes 11 prescription medications daily, eight of which are relevant to his risk of succumbing to the virus in custody, where it is far harder to adequately social distance.

'Mr. Manafort is at a high risk of contracting COVID-19 at FCI Loretto due to his age and pre-existing health conditions, and it is imperative that Mr. Manafort be transferred to home confinement immediately in order to minimize the likelihood of Mr. Manafort contracting or spreading the potentially fatal disease,' his lawyer Kevin Downing wrote last month to authorities.

Manafort was due to leave prison in November 2024 but his lawyers argued for his early release saying a combination of old age and health issues, including a recent 'cardiac event' and a bout of bronchitis, made him especially vulnerable to COVID-19

Governor Ralph Northam also urged Virginians 'to limit all non-essential travel outside the home' and told citizens with chronic health conditions or aged 65 or older to self-quarantine. That advice seemed similarly lost on redhead Kathleen, 66, who left her daughter's house briefly to take a box home and came back minutes later carrying two red peppers

The fraudster and his wife Kathleen, 66, drove over to the four-bed property where 34-year-old Andrea Manafort lives with her husband Christopher Shand, arriving around 2pm in a swish Land Rover Discovery

DailyMail.com can reveal that Manafort was at two different addresses Thursday: a residential apartment building where he appears to be living and at his youngest daughter's suburban home, half a mile away

Pre-COVID, stay-at-home convicts were routinely fitted with ankle tags that triggered alarms if they strayed anywhere from 50 to 150ft from where they were supposed to be

'Given the growing number of cases in Pennsylvania and increasing challenges in testing inmates and staff potentially exposed to COVID-19, it is only a matter of time before the infection spreads to staff and inmates at FCI Loretto, at which time it may be too late to prevent high-risk inmates, such as Mr. Manafort, from contracting the potentially deadly virus.'

The federal Bureau of Prisons agreed, despite there being no recorded cases of coronavirus infection at FCI Loretto, a former monastery and low security facility federal in west-central Pennsylvania where Manafort was quietly collected on Wednesday morning by Kathleen and another unidentified family member.

Around 2,500 prisoners have been switched to home confinement since the start of the pandemic, which has infected 2,322 federal inmates and killed 52 nationwide.

Pre-COVID, stay-at-home convicts were routinely fitted with ankle tags that triggered alarms if they strayed anywhere from 50 to 150ft from where they were supposed to be.

However US Attorney General William Barr has acknowledged that the Bureau of Prisons currently only has enough resources to closely monitor freed cons who pose a risk to public safety.

Manafort is the latest of a number of high-profile inmates with connections to the President who have had their jail stints cut short because of coronavirus. Stormy Daniels' former attorney Michael Avenatti, who was convicted of attempting to extort $20 million from Nike, has been granted home confinement for 90 days

Michael Cohen, 53, the president's former lawyer who brokered hush money payments with women including Stormy Daniels, is due to be released at the end of May

Manafort is the latest of a number of high-profile inmates with connections to the President who have had their jail stints cut short because of coronavirus.

Michael Cohen, 53, the president's former lawyer who brokered hush money payments with women including Stormy Daniels, is due to be released at the end of May.

Daniels' former attorney Michael Avenatti, who was convicted of attempting to extort $20 million from Nike, has been granted home confinement for 90 days.

COVID-19 has spread rapidly through prison populations and accounts for huge percentages of some states total case counts.

In New York City, inmates from Rikers Island were released early in the pandemic amid fears they would be unfairly exposed if they had to remain behind bars.

Officials at the time said they were faced with a dilemma of protecting public health and protecting society.

AG Barr ordered federal prisons to maximum their release efforts where they could and states have taken their own steps to reduce prison populations.
Mumbai, May 15 : Veteran politician and Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) President Sharad Pawar on Friday urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi to consider a plea by the sugar industry to increase the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of sugar and help bail out the industry reeling under the Covid-19 crisis.

In a letter to the Prime Minister, Pawar referred to a memorandum submitted by the Maharashtra State Cooperative Sugar Factories Federation Ltd (MSCSFFL), detailing how the crisis has gripped the sugar industry.

The MSCSFFL's demands include increasing the MSP of sugar by Rs 300 per quintal, from Rs 3,450 to Rs 3,750, along with a grade-wise increment.

It has also suggested certain other immediate relief measures in view of the worsening Covid-19 crisis. They include, provision of funds for clearing export incentives and buffer stock expenses pending since the past two years and payment of one-time grant of Rs 650 per tonne on average sugarcane crushed during the past two years.

The sugar body has also demanded conversion of outstanding working capital into short term loan and rescheduling of all term loans for 10 years with a moratorium of two years on the lines of the Mitra Committee recommendations.

Treating sugar mills' distilleries as strategic business units and on stand alone basis, the banks should finance the ethanol projects sanctioned under the Interest Subvention Capex Scheme announced by the Centre in 2018, the MSCSFFL urged.

"I shall be grateful if you personally look into the matter and initiate necessary relief measures to resolve the crisis which has worsened due to the pandemic," Pawar said in hisletter to the Prime Minister.

The NCP chief has forwarded the MSCSFFL's detailed memorandum to Modi in this regard, said a party spokesperson.
Los Angeles: Alexander Downer's role in sparking what US President Donald Trump called "the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA" is set to be examined by a powerful US Senate committee.

Former foreign minister Alexander Downer in Canberra last year. Credit:Getty

Lindsey Graham, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, announced on Thursday he would lead in-depth hearings next month into the FBI's counterintelligence probe into the 2016 election.

The FBI launched the covert probe into Trump-Russia links in July 2016 after Downer alleged former Trump aide George Papadopoulos told him at a London bar Russia might use damaging information on presidential candidate Hillary Clinton ahead of the November 2016 election.

"The Judiciary Committee will begin holding multiple, in-depth congressional hearings regarding all things related to Crossfire Hurricane [the FBI probe] starting in early June," Graham said.
PHOENIX - Several Arizona casinos were partially reopening Friday with new sanitizing protocols and social distancing measures about two months after they closed to help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Harrahs Ak-Chin Hotel and Casino in Maricopa and Fort McDowell Casino near Fountain Hills were reopening partially Friday morning as Republican Gov. Doug Duceys stay-at-home order expires. Three casinos the Gila River Indian Community runs in the southern part of the greater Phoenix metropolitan area were set to resume partial operations at midday.

The Ak-Chin Tribal Council earlier approved the reopening of its casino, with slot machine banks arranged to allow for social distancing and limited seating at blackjack tables. Poker, keno and bingo games were not resuming yet.

We look forward to welcoming back our casino guests, Robert Livingston, the casinos general manager, said in a statement.

Footage taken from above by an ABC15 news helicopter Friday morning showed several hundred people lining up outside the Ak-Chin casino. The customers, mostly middle aged and elderly, including a few on motorized scooters, appeared to be respecting social distance with large spaces between each other. Few were wearing masks.

Along with social distancing and sanitizing measures, the casino that belongs to the Fort McDowell Yavapai Nation will conduct temperature checks using handheld scanners and thermal cameras. Anyone with a reading over 100 degrees will be denied entry.

On its website, Gila River Hotels & Casinos is encouraging visitors to RECLAIM YOUR FUN at the Lone Butte and Wild Horse Pass casinos near Chandler and the Vee Quiva in Laveen.

The Gila River site said casinos would have new non-smoking sections on slot machine floors that observe social distancing and hard plastic shields had been installed in key areas including the cashier cage and some dining venues. Hand sanitizing stations were being prepared at entrances and social distancing will be encouraged throughout.

Visitors will be asked whether they have any symptoms like a fever or dry cough and will be encouraged to wear masks. Fewer people will be allowed in the gaming areas at the same time.

Buckys & Yavapai Casinos in Prescott Valley announced this week they will reopen June 1.

Mazatzal Hotel & Casino in Payson has extended its shutdown, but did not specify a reopening date. The website for the Desert Diamond Casinos in Glendale, Tucson and Sahuarita does not say when they will reopen.

Talking Stick Resort and Casino and Casino Arizona near Scottsdale previously announced they would remain closed through May. They said the owner and operator was fully compensating staff during the closure.

Cliff Castle Casino in Camp Verde and Twin Arrows Casino Resort in Flagstaff say they will remain closed for now.

Arizonas Department of Gaming has said each casinos decision to close is being decided by the individual sovereign tribal nations.

Casinos remain closed in Las Vegas and the rest of Nevada, where the economy is heavily dependent on gambling and tourism in general. Nevada gambling officials last week approved rules to limit customers, keep gamblers spaced apart from each other and disinfect dice and cards when the states casinos do reopen.

But Democratic Gov. Steve Sisolak has said gambling venues will not be among businesses restarting activities during the first phase of Nevadas reopening.

For most people, the new coronavirus causes mild or moderate symptoms, such as fever and cough that clear up in two to three weeks. For some, especially older adults and people with existing health problems, it can cause more severe illness, including pneumonia and death.
(Newser)  President Trump is used to taking flak from his political enemies. On Friday, it came in the form of a brutal editorial in one of the oldest medical journals in the world, notes NPR. "Americans must put a president in the White House come January, 2021, who will understand that public health should not be guided by partisan politics," says the unsigned piece in the Lancet. It calls the US response to the pandemic "inconsistent and incoherent" and accuses the White House of being "obsessed with magic bulletsvaccines, new medicines, or a hope that the virus will simply disappear." In reality, "only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency."

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The editorial also accuses Trump of helping turn the CDC into a shell of its former self at a time when the world needs its guidance. The Washington Post adds some context: "It is not uncommon for medical journals to run signed editorials that take political stances, but rarely do publications use the full weight of their editorial boards to call for a president to be voted out of office." The Week notes that New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman called the editorial "stunning" in an appearance on CNN. "I don't think I have ever heard of such a thing from a medical journal." The White House had not responded to the criticism at the time of this writing. (Read more President Trump stories.)
TORONTO, ON / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / AurCrest Gold Inc. (the "Company" or "AurCrest") (TSXV:AGO) is pleased to announce that the Company has signed a Purchase Agreement and a Gross Revenue Royalty Agreement dated May 15, 2020 with Star Royalties Ltd. ("Star Royalties") to sell a 16% gross revenues royalty (the "Royalty") to Star Royalties.

AurCrest was paid $155,000CDN by Star Royalties pursuant to the Purchase Agreement whereby Star Royalties acquired the right to the Royalty on all funds received by the Company arising from the monetization of carbon offsets derived from a forest-based GHG emission sequestration project referred to in the Company's Press Release dated May 11, 2020. The Royalty is governed by a Gross Revenue Royalty Agreement which also contemplates a right of first refusal for Star Royalties to acquire an interest in AurCrest's annual revenue share from any carbon sequestration project within the overall Lac Seul Forest management unit.

For further information on the GHG emission sequestration project, please refer to the Company's Press Releases dated August 19, 2019 and December 13, 2019.

About AurCrest Gold Inc.

AurCrest is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of gold properties. AurCrest has a portfolio of properties in Ontario, which include the Richardson Lake and Bridget Lake gold properties.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

AurCrest Gold Inc.

Christopher Angeconeb

President and C.E.O

(807) 737-5353

christopherangeconeb@gmail.com

Ian Brodie-Brown

Director of Business Development

(416) 844-9969

ianbrodiebrown@gmail.com

Forward Looking Statement:

Some of the statements contained herein may be forward-looking statements which involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties. Without limitation, statements regarding potential mineralization and resources, exploration results, and future plans and objectives of the Company are forward looking statements that involve various risks. The following are important factors that could cause the Company's actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward looking statements: changes in the world wide price of mineral commodities, general market conditions, risks inherent in mineral exploration, risks associated with development, construction and mining operations, the uncertainty of future profitability and the uncertainty of access to additional capital. There can be no assurance that forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate as actual results and future events may differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. AurCrest undertakes no obligation to update such forward-looking statements if circumstances or management's estimates or opinions should change. The reader is cautioned not to place undue reliance on such forward-looking statements.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

SOURCE: AurCrest Gold Inc.

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/590027/AurCrest-Gold-Sells-16-Royalty-to-Star-Royalties-on-Boreal-Forest-GHG-Emission-Sequestration-Project
82 mm mines hit the Ukrainian positions in Donetsk and Luhansk regions

82 mm mortar mine in the ground, Donbas Open source

On May 14, Russian mercenaries violated the ceasefire in Donbas seven times. The Joint Forces Operation HQ reported that on Thursday evening.

In Donetsk region, the enemy opened fire from grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms. Pro-Kremlin argmed gangs attacked the areas of Pisky and Avdiivka. 82 mm mines landed at Ukrainian positions near Verkhnyotoretske.

In Luhansk region, hostile forces landed attacks on Khutir Vilny, Orikhove and Zaitsevo. They used 82 mm mortars, mounted anti-tank grenade launchers, heavy machine guns and small arms.

None of Ukrainian soldiers were wounded or killed in action during the day.

On May 13, Ukraine's combat veteran, Army Special Forces officer lost his life in an incident that occurred in Donetsk region.

Leonid Kharchenko, the former serviceman of military reconnaissance of the self-styled Donetsk People's Republic (DNR) is now in custody in Donetsk city. BBC reported this, specifying that the man has been one of the suspects in the MH17 case.

On March 11, the occupant government of the DNR took Kharchenko in. Two months after that, on May 11, the arrest was extended until July 2020.

According to BBC, Kharchenko's comrades assume he was taken to custody to prevent capture by Ukrainian special services.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 18:27:24|Editor: huaxia

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ISTANBUL, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The Turkish coast guard rescued 30 illegal immigrants off Turkey's Aegean coast, local media reported on Friday.

Turkish teams rescued the migrants with different nationalities near the Menderes district of Turkey's western province of Izmir, the Haberturk daily said.

Wearing protective suits, gloves, and facial masks against the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Turkish teams took the temperatures of the migrants before taking them into a coast guard boat, the photos of the coast guard showed.

The Aegean Sea was once the main route for migrants trying to sneak into Europe via Turkey. A deal was signed between Turkey and the European Union in March 2016 to curb the flow of illegal immigration.

Hosting over 3.7 million Syrian refugees in its territory, Turkey earlier announced that it could no longer cope with the issue alone, and urged European countries to take more responsibility. Enditem
As students in Kenya were waiting for the government to announce when schools would re-open from a longer than usual April school holidays due to the COVID-19 pandemic, they were asked to stay home for an additional four-week period.

The situation is the same in many other countries. Across the African continent, an estimated 297 million students have been affected by school closures as a result of the pandemic.

Globally, school closures due to COVID-19 have affected 1.29 billion students in 186 countries, which is 73.8 per cent of the worlds student population, according to the UN Education Science and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Never before have we witnessed educational disruption on such a scale, UNESCO Director-General Audrey Azoulay said recently.

Despite the challenges of limited access to internet connectivity, electricity or computers, countries are keeping learning active through various remote learning methods such as radio and television programmes, on addition to online platforms and social media.

Online learning

In Egypt, Ghana, Liberia, Nigeria, Morocco, Rwanda, South Africa and others, a number of schools and universities have moved some of their programmes to online platforms and have encouraged students to get connected.

The University of Ghana, for example, has trained its lecturers on how to put together online classes, while negotiating with telecom companies to grant free internet data, usually capped at 5G, for the students.

Victoria, 21, one of the millions of young people in Ghana impacted by school closures said: I stay connected, getting myself busy with online lectures, having interactions with friends.

Victoria told UNICEF that she avoids crowded places and prefers to stay safe at home. I also try to learn new things I havent done before  getting used to cooking, reading more books. Sometimes dancing if I have to, just to take off the stress and not feel very bored at home.

In Nigeria and Morocco, the governments have created online repositories with education materials for teachers and parents, while the Rwanda education board has set up a dedicated website to support learning and provide educational content, as well as assessment tests. The website also enables teachers and parents to communicate.

However, due to low internet connection, expensive data and an urban-rural digital divide, online classes alone are unable to cater for all students. This creates the risk of leaving millions of students in Africa behind. In sub-Saharan Africa, UNESCO says 89 per cent of learners do not have access to household computers and 82 per cent lack internet access.

At the launch in March of the Global Coalition for Education, World Health Organization (WHO) Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said: We are working together to find a way to make sure that children everywhere can continue their education, with special care for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged communities.

The UNESCO and UNICEF-led initiative of international organizations, civil society and private sector partners aims to ensure that learning continues. It will help countries mobilize resources and implement innovative and context-appropriate solutions to provide learning remotely by leveraging on hi-tech, low-tech and no-tech approaches.

Radio schools

Countries are increasingly also promoting remote learning through traditional mass communication tools such as radio, and sometimes television. Radios wide reach and relatively low need for technical know-how makes its deployment faster and easier than scaling up internet connections.

With assistance from UN agencies such as UNICEF, UNESCO, the World Bank and others, countries are quickly scaling up their radio and TV programmes or launching new initiatives.

For example, Ghanas public broadcasters have rekindled dormant programmes on tv and radio for high school students. Similar programmes are running in Madagascar and Cote dIvoire.

In Senegal, the governments efforts are encapsulated in a catchy slogan: Ecole fermee, mais cahiers ouverts, meaning school is closed but learning goes on.

Radio Okapi, an UN-sponsored radio network in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), launched Okapi Ecole (Okapi School) - a twice-daily remote learning programme for primary, secondary and vocational school students.

In Rwanda, UNICEF is working with the Rwanda Broadcasting Agency to produce and air nationwide basic literacy and numeracy classes. UNICEF identified more than 100 radio scripts from around the world focusing on basic literacy and numeracy that could be adapted to align with Rwandas school curriculum. The same support is being provided to Malawi.

In Cote d'Ivoire, UNICEF has been working with the Ministry of Education on a school at home initiative that includes taping lessons to be aired on national TV.

Looking beyond COVID-19, the Association of African Universities (AAU) sees an opportunity for local universities to explore expanding technology-based platforms for teaching, learning and research. Still, challenges such as network infrastructure, data prices and access to adequate digital equipment will need to be addressed for this to be a continent-wide success.

For more information on COVID-19, visit www.un.org/coronavirus

Africa Renewal
The Yemeni army has announced that several Houthi fighters have been killed and wounded in clashes in the al-Bayda governorate.

The clashes were reported after United Nations Yemen envoy Martin Griffiths told the UN Security Council (UNSC) that the warring parties have made a significant progress towards agreeing to a ceasefire.

On Thursday, Griffiths gave the government of Yemen and the Houthi rebels  who have been fighting for more than five years  draft proposals on a nationwide ceasefire, humanitarian and economic measures, and the urgent resumption of the political process.

The Houthis have yet to comment on the incidents.

Yemen has been mired in conflict since the Houthi group removed President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadis government from the capital, Sanaa, in 2014.

A Saudi-led military coalition in 2015 intervened in a bid to restore the government.

Yemen is divided between the Saudi-backed government in the south and the Iran-aligned Houthi movement that controls Sanaa and most large urban centres.

Tens of thousands of Yemenis, including civilians, are believed to have been killed in the conflict, while another 14 million are at risk of starvation, according to the UN.
Rajasthan's Minister for Social Justice and Empowerment Bhanwarlal Meghwal was on Friday airlifted to a private hospital in Gurgaon for further treatment.

A special plane took off for Gurgaon from Jaipur Airport on Friday morning.

Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot and health minister Raghu Sharma were present at the airport when the flight departed. Gehlot has wished Meghwal a quick recovery.

Earlier admitted at Sawai Man Singh Hospital in Jaipur, Meghwal had to be shifted after Asthma specialist Dr. Virendra Singh and the minister's family members expressed their desire to get him treated at the Gurgaon hospital.

Meghwal was hospitalised on Wednesday night after suffering a paralytic stroke.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Hospitals unable to keep pace with the volume of new patients. Political leaders taking to their beds. The morgues overflowing. This isnt Milan, London or New York during the 2020 coronavirus crisis. It was Paris in 1832 during the great cholera pandemic. Although it sickened people from Asia to the Americas, cholera had particularly dramatic effects in France: in just a few months, the disease killed 20,000 Parisians and over 100,000 people in the country as a whole. As the novel coronavirus now threatens social stability and scrambles political calculations, Frances reaction to this earlier medical crisis has important implications for our own moment.

Much like COVID-19 today, cholera exacerbated economic and social inequality. In the early 1830s, the Industrial Revolution drew large numbers of poor workers to Paris, where they lived in squalid conditions in the heart of the citythe densely packed neighborhoods around Notre-Dame Cathedral, the Tuileries Palace and the former site of the Bastille. These slums became breeding grounds for cholera, a bacterial infection that was spread by poor sanitation. Since, then as now, many wealthy residents fled the city at the first sign of the outbreak, the disease seemed to target the poor.

Soon class tensions reached, quite literally, a fever pitch. The rich blamed the poor for spreading the disease, while the poor thought that the rich were trying to poison them. In this climate of fear and animosity, the suffering Parisians directed their anger at the government.

King Louis-Philippe had come to power following the Revolution of 1830, which ousted the Bourbon monarchy for a second time. (The first time was during the Revolution of 1789, what most people think of as the French Revolution.) More liberal than his Bourbon cousins, Louis-Philippe was a compromise candidate, raised to the throne by business leaders who feared that the revolutionaries would try to institute a republic. It quickly became apparent, however, that the new king enjoyed a very narrow base of support. He was hated by the arch-conservative aristocrats on the right, who thought he had usurped the crown from the Bourbons. And he was hated by supporters of a republic on the left, who thought he had co-opted the revolution they had led.

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Louis-Philippes poor handling of the cholera crisis brought these political tensions to a boil. Attempting to quell conspiracy theories, his chief of police proclaimed that the government had not poisoned the drinking waterbut that miscreants may have done so. He had intended to allay the peoples fears, but wound up stoking them instead. At the same time, the governments tin-eared hygiene campaign infuriated already-starving workers by recommending sobriety and moderation in food consumption as safeguards against the disease. In a particularly odd nod to superstition, the Queen sewed flannel belts for the poor, promising that these useless talismans would provide immunity. Like today, the peddling of false remedies by those in power only added to the confusion and despair.

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Political tensions mounted when the Prime Minister, Casimir Pierre Perier, died of the disease on May 16, 1832. Perier was despised by the working class for his brutal suppression of a strike by silk workers just one year prior. Louis-Philippe outraged the masses by giving Perier a state funeral, but refusing to bestow the same honor on General Lamarque, a beloved hero of the Napoleonic Wars who died from cholera a few weeks later. Ignoring the kings orders, angry protesters attempted to carry Lamarques coffin to the Pantheon, the traditional resting place of Frances great men. Soon barricades had sprung up throughout the central quarters of the city and another revolution loomed. Victor Hugo would make this republican revolt the climax of his epic novel Les Miserables.

Meanwhile, the right-wing supporters of the Bourbons took advantage of the political chaos to stage a coup of their own. Denouncing the disease as Frances punishment for 50 years of revolutionary upheaval, the duchesse de Berry, mother of the 11-year-old Bourbon heir, launched a bloody civil war to reconquer her sons kingdom. Dressed as a peasant boy, the 4-ft.-7 duchess commanded a guerrilla army in the far west of France, promising that a return to Frances legitimate monarchy, along with strict obedience to the teachings of the Catholic Church, were all that was needed to restore stability and health to the nation.

However, if the first lesson of 1832 is that pandemics create opportunities for those on the political margins, the second is that people often prefer the devil they know. As fans of Les Miserables remember, government troops stormed the revolutionary barricades with relative ease. And the duchess was captured after being betrayed by a trusted confidant. Both uprisings ultimately failed because the French public refused to rally to the side of the rebels. Despite his unpopularity and mishandling of the crisis, Louis-Philippe managed to hang on to power during the cholera outbreak because neither side that opposed him offered a convincing alternative to his flawed leadership.

Those who seek to unseat President Trump in the next election should take heed. Trumps divisive and halting response to the health emergency will not automatically lead to his defeat in November. Incumbency counts more than ever in a crisis, as Louis-Philippe realized the morning after the barricades fell, when he rode through the cholera-ravaged city triumphantly on horseback. If things improve, Trump will surely take credit. And if they worsen, the American people may still prefer not to take a chance on the new. But the example of the cholera outbreak of 1832 also offers Trumps opponents hope, in the form of guidance for what a real leader should do in a crisis.

Showing compassion for the poor and minority communities that have been particularly hard hit by the coronavirus, and proposing concrete plans to alleviate their suffering, would be a good place to start. A leader should forcefully reject conspiracy theories, not feed them through the dissemination of false information. A leader should not reserve honors for political supporters or deny aid to those on the other side. Most importantly, a leader should listen to scientific experts.

The public deserves better than flannel belts. The French were not able to summon such a leader in 1832, but this does not have to be the case today.

Basic Books

Maurice Samuels is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French at Yale University and the author of The Betrayal of the Duchess: The Scandal that Unmade the Bourbon Monarchy and Made France Modern (Basic Books).
Canada and the U.S. are working on an agreement to extend closing their border to nonessential travel during the coronavirus pandemic, a Canadian government official said Wednesday.

The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name to discuss the talks, said it is too early to lift the restrictions, which are set to expire next week.

The Trump administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government announced a 30-day extension of the restrictions last month.

The two neighbors had agreed on April 18 to extend border restrictions until May 21 as cases of the disease continued to rise in both nations. Canada is now pressing for the measures to remain until June 21.

The official, who was not authorized to be quoted by name to discuss the talks, said it is too early to lift the restrictions, which are set to expire next week. Canada is looking to extend border closures with the U.S. until June 21

President Trump has said that the U.S.-Canada border will be among the first borders to open and that the U.S. and Canada are doing well in handling the pandemic.

But many Canadians fear a reopening. The U.S. has more confirmed cases and deaths from COVID-19 than any country in the world, though its per capita numbers are well below many other nations.

The U.S. and Canada agreed in March to limit border crossings to essential travel amid the pandemic. Nearly 200,000 people cross that border daily in normal times.

Americans who are returning to America and Canadians who are returning to Canada are among those who are also exempted from the border closure

Essential cross-border workers like healthcare professionals, airline crews and truck drivers are still permitted to cross. Truck drivers are critical as they move food and medical goods in both directions. Much of Canada's food supply comes from or via the U.S.

Americans who are returning to America and Canadians who are returning to Canada are among those who are also exempted from the border closure.

Chad Wolf, acting Department of Homeland Security secretary, said on Wednesday that restrictions across the borders with Canada and Mexico would likely be extended.

Speaking to reporters in San Diego, Wolf said officials from Canada and Mexico were willing to continue the measures 'at least in the short term.'

Chad Wolf, acting U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary, said on Wednesday that restrictions across the borders with Canada and Mexico would likely be extended

Separately, a Mexican government source said an extension for a limited period seemed likely.

On Tuesday, the chief Canadian public health officer said the United States - where cases are increasing steadily - presented a risk.

News of the request for a 30-day extension was first reported by Canada's Globe and Mail newspaper.

The agreement allows the flow of goods across a border that stretches 5,525 miles (8,891 km) and is a crossing point for one of the world's largest bilateral trading relationships.

Canada sends 75 per cent of its exports to the U.S. and about 18 per cent of American exports go to Canada. The U.S. Canada border is world's longest between two nations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said talks about the border 'are going well and we're confident about being able to continue to keep Canadians safe'

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said talks about the border 'are going well and we're confident about being able to continue to keep Canadians safe.'

The total Canadian death toll edged up by just over 3% to 5,209 from 5,049 on Tuesday, official data showed on Wednesday. The data are another sign the outbreak in Canada is slowing whereas the situation in parts of the United States is more challenging.

The Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec neighbor the state of New York, a U.S. epicenter of the disease. Canadian officials have been repeatedly pressed about the potential risk posed by arriving truck drivers.

Theresa Tam, Canada's chief public health officer, said on Tuesday the coronavirus 'could take off rapidly' unless extreme caution was exercised about relaxing the ban.

'The United States being one country that still has cases and is still trying to manage outbreaks ... presents a risk to Canada from that perspective.' (Reporting by David Ljunggren and Ted Hesson; Additional reporting by Bhargav Acharya in Bengaluru, Susan Heavey in Washington, Dave Graham in Mexico City, Steve Scherer and Kelsey Johnson in Ottawa; and Kristina Cooke in Los Angeles; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Peter Cooney)
The US Navy awarded Boeing a nearly $2 billion contract Wednesday to provide Saudi Arabia with 650 new land attack cruise missiles, as well as to upgrade existing ones by the end of 2028.

The Pentagon also said it contracted the aerospace giant to build 402 Harpoon anti-ship cruise missiles for Riyadh, as well as 53 Harpoon missiles for Qatars government by 2026.

Why it matters: The announcement comes in the wake of news last week that the Pentagon is pulling two Patriot missile defense batteries out of Saudi Arabia, which Washington deployed in response to a September drone and cruise missile attack on the kingdoms Abqaiq and Khurais oil facilities. The US blamed Iran for the attack.

Whats next: The Pentagon is looking to free up assets to counter China, but the Trump administrations pressure on Iran and, in conjunction, support for Saudi Arabia and Israel, are unlikely to let up any time soon. The Trump administration accuses Tehran of exploiting the 2015 nuclear deal to expand its conventional ballistic missile program. American officials have said Irans Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has provided missile technology to the Houthis in Yemen and to militias in Iraq. And the Houthis have fired a number of ballistic missiles toward Saudi Arabia in retaliation for the kingdoms involvement in Yemens civil war.

US envoy for Syria Jim Jeffrey has also said the Trump administration intends to prevent such weapons proliferation into war-torn Syria by supporting Israels airstrike campaign against Iranian targets there.

Know more: Read our piece on the US decision to pull two Patriot missile defense batteries out of Saudi Arabia.
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Linkedin Galih Gumelar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 18:02 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd85e6d7 1 National Constitutional-Court,Perppu,judicial-review,COVID-19,state-budget,embezzlement Free

Even after convincing lawmakers to enact an executive order on the countrys pandemic response, the government still faces scrutiny from civil groups claiming the order gives officials the opportunity to embezzle state funds.

A contentious regulation in lieu of law (Perppu), which the House of Representatives endorsed on Tuesday, allows the state to increase spending for programs related to the national COVID-19 response.

The resulting law will justify any state move to extend the budget deficit beyond the legal cap of 3 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP), alerting critics to possible misappropriation.

Three civil society groups have already tried challenging the emergency provisions at the Constitutional Court, vowing to continue pushing back on what they see as malicious intent.

Read also: Perppu on COVID-19 aid puts graft fight at stake

They include the Alliance of the Nations Children (AAB), the Indonesian Anticorruption Community (MAKI) and an unnamed group comprising 24 plaintiffs, including public figures Din Syamsudin and Amien Rais.

The groups insist that the order shields state officials responsible for fiscal and monetary measures from legal charges behind the argument that they acted in good faith, as explicitly stipulated in Article 27 of the law. Any fallout would be considered an economic cost and not state losses, possibly absolving the officials of any corruption charges.

But the judicial reviews they filed last month might be aborted, with the court set to drop all challenges once President Joko Jokowi Widodo signs the law and legal scrubbing is complete.

The Perppu will turn into a law, so the court can no longer proceed with our previous lawsuits. We would like to, therefore, file another judicial review against the upcoming law, AAB leader Damai Hari Lubis told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

We find Article 27 to be evil, and it must be removed because it undermines antigraft efforts in the country.

Damai said the provision needs to be challenged because it fails to define what indicators for state budget allocation fall within the criteria of goodwill, arguing that it violates Article 79 of the 2014 Government Administration Law, which calls for the state to uphold accountability and transparency.

The article is open to interpretation and could even override the 2001 Corruption Crimes Law, he added.

Read also: House grills govt over unconstitutional Perppu

MAKI coordinator Boyamin Saiman said he would file a new judicial review to the court, having prepared a 53-page lawsuit document to support his groups case.

The unnamed group of plaintiffs will be doing the same, said Ahmad Yani, one of the collectives defense lawyers.

Constitutional Court spokesman Fajar Laksono said the court was still processing the previous challenges to the Perppu because the President had yet to sign it into law.

But once the legal scrubbing is complete, the public can [take it back] to the court, he said.

The court resumed trial over the Perppu case on Thursday, two days after the House passed the Perppu as a Law.

Despite increasing pressure on the incoming provision, the government was adamant that the law does not intend to grant impunity to state officials caught misappropriating state funds.

Read also: Indonesias COVID-19 stimulus playbook explained

Law and Human Rights Minister Yasonna Laoly said anyone who under any circumstances misappropriated the state budget would still be charged under the 2001 Corruption Crimes Law.

Article 27 only provides a legal guarantee for state officials to promptly issue a policy to mitigate the negative impacts of COVID-19 on the economy, Yasonna said in a statement.

We should not forget that Article 1 of the 2001 Corruption Crime Law stipulates that those who have embezzled from state funds relating to disaster relief can face the death penalty.

Since the President declared the pandemic a national disaster, state officials who [commit any such act] can be charged with the aforementioned article.
Armenian News - NEWS.am presents a daily digest of Armenia-related top news as of 15.05.2020:

 A total of 4,044 COVID-19 cases have been confirmed in Armenia with 1,666 recoveries and 52 deaths. 2,304 patients with COVID-19 are currently undergoing treatment. In total, 37,476 tests have been completed. Thus, Armenia has 184 new cases and 94 recoveries in a day, the health ministry tweeted.

Regarding the latest death cases, the patients were 68, 81, and 82 years old, and had pre-existing chronic diseases.

 Public activist Narek Malyan has been summoned to the Yerevan police special department.

He was summoned after his Facebook post. "I will not spare "mother and child" among the sellers of the blood of the victims of the [Armenian] Genocide, after which Soros [member] Hranush Kharatyan, Soros [member] Harutyun Marutyan and his daughter Arpenik Marutyan, feeling threatened for their lives, have turned to law enforcement," he wrote earlier on his Facebook.

Malyan noted that they did not avoid reporting to the police and were ready to answer all questions.

 Judge David Grigoryan has been charged with committing official forgery, Armenian Special Investigation Service reported.

The judge of the Yerevan court of general jurisdiction David Grigoryan, with the assistance of the secretary of the court hearings, Gor Vardanyan, committed official forgery back in 2018.

The case was submitted to the prosecutor to approve and send it to court.

 Russian MFA spokesperson Maria Zakharova says Moscow is closely following the talks between Yerevan and Baku over the exchange of captives.

According to her, this issue is always on the agenda of talks over the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

She recalled that Moscow had adopted a decision on relatives visits to prisoners in 2019 and that Armenia and Azerbaijan have been returning each others captives ever since. The MFA spokesperson also noted the talks over the exchange of the other captives continue with the support of the OSCE Minsk Group and added that Moscow is closely following the process.

 A 9-year-old child fell from the second floor of a building in Armenia's Vanadzor town.

The child was ambulanced to Vanadzor hospital in critical condition, where, after receiving first aid, was helicoptered to Yerevan, shamshyan.com reported.

The child's condition remains severe but stable, as the kid sustained numerous injuries, including cranial.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 12:12:40|Editor: huaxia

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NEW DELHI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- The total number of COVID-19 cases in India surpassed the 80,000 mark, reaching 81,970 in the country, and the number of COVID-related deaths rose to 2,649 on Friday, said the official data issued by the federal health ministry.

The ministry said 100 new deaths due to COVID-19, besides fresh 3,967 positive cases were reported since Thursday in the country.

"As on 8:00 a.m. (local time) Friday, 2,649 deaths related to novel coronavirus have been recorded in the country," reads information released by the ministry.

On Thursday morning the number of COVID-19 cases in the country was 78,003, and the death toll was 2,549.

According to ministry officials, so far 27,920 people have been discharged from hospitals after showing improvement.

"The number of active cases in the country right now is 51,401," reads the information.

Friday marks the 52nd straight day of ongoing Lockdown across the country announced by the central government to contain the spread of the pandemic.

The Lockdown, announced on March 25, was on May 1 again extended for the second time until May 17. Enditem
It was a rush to the finish line for gyms and fitness centers on Thursday.

Gov. Steve Bullock announced a week ago that movie theaters, museums, pools, fitness centers and gyms could reopen Friday, requiring them to follow a list of specific directives meant to keep patrons safe and stall the spread of COVID-19.

Shara Overstreet, the managing partner at Granite Health and Fitness, has been working for the past week to get ready. She and her staff have created systems to keep surfaces clean and maintain the requisite social distance between patrons.

"We're definitely ready," she said. Granite's members "are super ready."

A lot of people are ready to work off their "COVID 15," Overstreet said with a smile, referring to the extra weight some have put on during the pandemic.

Under the governor's order, gyms and pools can operate at 50% capacity, so Granite invested in an electronic check-in system for members that will cap admittance.
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The 9th Imo State House of Assembly led by Rt. Hon Chiji Collins, representing Isiala Mbano State Constituency, was inaugurated in June 2019 by former Governor Emeka Ihedioha. Chiji Collins emerged the Speaker after he defected from the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). He decamped from the PDP to the All Progressives Congress (APC) in January 2020 after the removal of former Governor Emeka Ihedioha on Tuesday, January 14, 2020. He has since retained his position as the Speaker of the House. Few months into office as the Speaker of the House, Imo people woke up to the worrisome headlines that the Speakers university and NYSC certificates were forged. The House set up an adhoc committee in November 2019 to investigate the matter.

Sadly, the allegation resurfaced few weeks again with greater momentum. This time it was raised by a former member of the House, Hon. Lawman Duruji, from Ehime Mbano State Constituency. The fresh accuser said the Speaker was inducing the House Committee to bury the matter. He said: Quote me, Chiji parades fake credentials, his PhD is fake and he also forged NYSC exemption certificate. Why has he refused to publish his certificate for public scrutiny? No amount of delay tactics and intimidation can save him this time.

The Speaker had denied the allegations, insisting that all his credentials were verifiable. He said that the NYSC had cleared him on the said allegations and challenged his traducers to take him to court if they knew otherwise. My educational certificate has been in the public domain since 1992 when I ran for the Senate. They are verifiable and the whole world has gone to pick it up. The university I attended, Nigerians are still there till tomorrow. So, the school I went to is not a hidden school, he said. The Speaker had also in December 2019 offered $100,000 to anyone who was willing to travel to Italy with him to verify his university certificate.

Both the Speaker and Duruji are now in court on this matter. The Speaker is in the suit filed on his behalf by his lawyer, KC Nwufo (SAN) praying the High Court of Imo State to award him N1bn damages against Duruji over alleged libel and criminal defamation of his character. He said in his suit: To say that the claimant forged his certificates and bribed Appeal Court judges knowing the same to be untrue and without any foundation is not only dishonest and reckless but is calculated and politically designed to malign and blackmail the Speaker for political and monetary gains (sic).

We cannot say who is right or wrong on this matter because it is now before the court and it is left for the court to determine the issues canvassed before it. However, we are worried about the twists and turns the matter has gained in the media, with particular reference to the opinion canvassed by Mr. Sam Onwuemeodo, where he made certain points we consider untoward. In the piece captioned: SPEAKER COLLINS & THE CERTIFICATES FORGERY ALLEGATION: WHAT GOV. UZODIMMA URGENTLY NEEDS TO DO, Onwuemeodo made five major points. He said that in the instant case the onus of proof lies on the Speaker. He also said that the Speaker should put an end to the matter by presenting his certificate to the public and resign as the Speaker of the House. Not done, he urged Governor Hope Uzodimma to prevail on the Speaker to resign.

Unbiased analysts would see that the Speaker had done enough to prove his innocence on the matter. We think the Speakers traducers are making conjectures. This makes the burden of proof lie with the accusers, especially because the accusation is of a criminal nature. In that case the accuser must prove his case beyond a reasonable doubt. To seek to transfer the burden of proof to the accused is to play to the gallery and to reinforce the thinking in some quarters that the accusers are only interested in the ouster of the Speaker, and nothing more.

The nature of the accusation against the Speaker and the effrontery of the accusers do not warrant the Speaker to show his certificates as a solution to the problem. We say this because the issue on the table is not that the Speaker does not have a certificate. If that was the case he could have waved one, saying as it were: This is my certificate. But that is not the case. The problem is that the accusers said he forged his certificates. By this they mean that he has the certificates but they are forged, fake. On this premise, we do not think that the Speaker presenting his certificates would make any sense to his accusers. Rather, his accusers would quickly dismiss it as those forged certificates.

The Speakers accusers have unwittingly rendered him helpless. It appears the accusers know more than the Speaker knows about his certificates. The solution, therefore, is heading to the court of law. That is what the Speaker has done. No one plays hide-and-seek game before the court. You do so at your own peril. That is why the Speakers decision to head to the court is highly commendable. Let his accusers come forward with what they know.

It would be unfair in the circumstance to ask the Speaker to resign when no crime has been established against him. Asking him to resign would mean that we have already convicted him on hearsay. That is not what our laws provide. You cannot convict a man without granting him fair hearing. And it is even criminal to convict a man in our minds and go ahead to execute the conviction.

For purposes of comparison, we recall that a former governor of Imo State was vilified on the claim that he did not have classmates. Consequently, some people challenged him to show his classmates. In my community when it is said that someone does not have classmates or did not break a chalk, it means that the person did not go to school. No one in the government then knew that the accused should showcase his classmates, or course mates to resolve the matter. On the contrary, after some years we learnt that the accused had bagged a doctorate degree. We do not dabble into matters we do not understand all the sides, or have all the facts. We do not have the authority to question certificates we cannot authenticate. So we watched as the accusation lasted, especially since the matter dwelt largely on hearsay.

There is hardly a government that is devoid of embarrassing moments. Governments do not wield the big stick because they want to avoid embarrassment. We recall also that the unresolved JPROSS contract scandal remains one of the embarrassing moments in the history of Imo State. Under the Okorocha administration, the Deputy Governor, Sir Jude Agbaso, was removed from office in circumstances that brought embarrassment to the state. The second Deputy Governor who was Okorochas buddy for decades, Prince Eze Madumere, was equally removed from office in circumstances that brought shame to the state. It is on record that throughout the country, Okorocha remains the only Governor that had the office of Deputy Governor Designate. These were embarrassing moments at the time.

We applaud Governor Hope Uzodimma on his stance in this matter. As a Distinguished Senator, he understands the meaning of the Theory of Separation of Power. Not intervening in the matters concerning the Legislature is a display of his rich democratic credentials. We urge him to disregard the argument that he should resolve the matter by prevailing on the Speaker to resign. It has no basis in morality and the law. It has no precedence either. The matter is before the court of law. Let the accusers mean what they say and prove their case against the Speaker.
President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, left, and CDC Director Robert Redfield, right, at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta on Friday, March 6, 2020. (Hyosub Shin/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP) Read more

WASHINGTON - The meager guidelines for safely reopening the country released this week are the latest sign of the Trump administration's efforts to sidelinethe Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the increasing tension between the White House and the world-renowned public health agency.

With Americans waiting for expert advice on how to resume a semblance of normal life during the pandemic, the CDC released just six short decision trees Thursday while the rest of its lengthy proposal remains under review at the White House, where it has been for weeks.

Instead of assuming its traditional lead role in a public health crisis, the 74-year-old agency has become just one of many voices providing often contradictory instructions to a confused and imperiled public.

"Punishing the agency by marginalizing and hobbling it is not the solution," the venerable British medical journal The Lancet noted Friday in a stinging editorial that called the U.S. response "inconsistent and incoherent."

"Only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency."

Increased friction between the White House and the CDC was predictable as President Donald Trump, who often takes a dim view of scientific expertise, campaigns to revive the moribund economy.

But White House officials also said they are frustrated by what they consider the agency's balky flow of data and information, the leak of an early version of the CDC's reopening recommendations and the agency's crucial early failure to create and roll out a test for the virus, according to three administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal disagreements.

Last month, the government awarded an unusual $10.2 million contract to a Pittsburgh information technology company, TeleTracking Technologies, to collect data on available hospital beds, hospital capacity, covid-19 patients and deaths caused by the coronavirus - information it already receives from the CDC.

The White House-led task force also is sparring with public health experts, both inside and outside the CDC, about whether covid-19 death counts collected and disseminated by the CDC are inflated.

Some in the White House, including coronavirus task force coordinator Deborah Birx and Trump's chief of staff, Mark Meadows, have begun to take aim at the leadership and communication skills of the CDC's director, Robert Redfield.

"We should be thought partners," one official said. "The CDC is not fulfilling requests, they're not collaborating and they're disorganized. They're not speaking with one voice."

One senior administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss these problems, said the soft-spoken, deeply religious Redfield has few allies in the rough-and- tumble internal politics of the Trump administration. During a task-force meeting last week, he apologized for the leak of the reopening recommendations from his agency, an earnest gesture seen by others as a sign of weakness.

"He just has no power over his agency. He has no loyal politicals. He is a man on an island," that person said.

 FAQ: Your coronavirus questions, answered.

Redfield did himself no favors with Trump's inner circle when he told The Washington Post on April 21 that a second wave of covid-19 disease this winter could be more challenging than the first because it will coincide with flu season. Redfield was forced to appear at a White House briefing that day to soften his remarks, after Trump surprised the agency by publicly demanding a new statement.

A spokeswoman for the CDC declined to answer questions for this story. Most officials who agreed to discuss the tensions between the White House and the agency asked for anonymity to address sensitive relations between government agencies.

Trump spokesman Judd Deere said "the White House and CDC have been working together in partnership since the very beginning of this pandemic to carry out the President's highest priority: the health and safety of the American public. The CDC is the nation's trusted health protection agency and its infectious disease and public health experts have helped deliver critical solutions throughout this pandemic to save lives.

"We encourage all Americans to continue to follow the CDC's guidelines as state and local leaders implement the president's data-driven phased approach to responsibly opening up America."

In task force meetings, however, Birx has questioned whether the CDC death count is inflated. In early April, the agency revised its methodology to include deaths probably attributable to covid-19, the disease caused by the virus, along with fatalities confirmed by laboratory tests. Supporters of the president have publicly expressed the same doubts.

During a task force meeting early this month, a heated discussion broke out between Birx and Redfield over the CDC's system for tracking virus data, according to four people present for the discussion or later briefed on it.

"There is nothing from the CDC that I can trust," Birx said, according to two of the people.

Experts such as Anthony Fauci, the task force's top infectious disease specialist, have said the number of covid-19 fatalities is likely undercounted.

Fauci took that position publicly at a Senate hearing Tuesday. Asked by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., about whether the official death toll - listed at more than 85,000 Friday - was 50 percent too low, Fauci said: "I'm not sure, Senator Sanders, if it's going to be 50 percent higher. But most of us feel that the number of deaths are likely higher than that number."

In an interview, Robert Anderson, chief of the mortality statistics branch at the CDC's National Center for Health Statistics, said he is also confident the number of U.S. covid-19 deaths is undercounted.

"I think the evidence points to the fact that we're underestimating rather than overestimating," said Anderson, whose agency is part of the CDC. "The system is designed to collect data on causes of death, not on whatever condition the person might have had."

As recently as April 7, Birx herself took an expansive position on counting covid-19 deaths. At a White House briefing, she said anyone who tests positive for covid-19 and dies should be counted as a covid-19 death, regardless of whether he or she had underlying conditions.

"The intent is, right now, that . . . if someone dies with covid-19, we are counting that as a covid-19 death," she said.

The strain between the White House and the CDC was noted Friday by the venerable British medical journal The Lancet, which wrote in an editorial that "punishing the agency by marginalizing and hobbling it is not the solution . . .

"Only a steadfast reliance on basic public health principles, like test, trace, and isolate, will see the emergency brought to an end, and this requires an effective national public health agency."

The agency was sidelined soon after Nancy Messonnier, director of the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases, warned the public Feb. 25 that the virus could soon change everyday life dramatically. The stock market plummeted on her remarks, enraging the president as he returned from a trip to India, several senior administration officials have said.

Messonnier, who had played a leading role until then, was moved off the response, sending a chill through the agency, three current and former officials said. The next day, Trump named Vice President Mike Pence head of the task force, replacing Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, whose agency oversees the CDC.

The CDC, which has not held a briefing since early March, has repeatedly asked the White House to resume its sessions for the media, according to two senior administration officials, but has not received permission, and has finally given up.

The White House also pushed back when the CDC recommended that all Americans wear face masks when they go out in public. Aides to Pence were particularly resistant, only wanting to demand masks in "hot spot" areas. Trump undermined the advice when he announced it, saying he would not comply.

More conflict has accompanied the White House's delay in moving on the detailed CDC recommendations that describe how houses of worship, schools, day care facilities and other places might safely reopen. Top officials viewed those guidelines as overly prescriptive and many of them were challenged during a robust editing process that involved the task force, the Office of Management and Budget and the Domestic Policy Council.

Now, as Trump has promised a reignited economy heading into the November election, the CDC is in the awkward position of producing the information Trump wants least - the reminder that the covid-19 death rate has plateaued at nearly 2,000 per day.

The government may be pursuing other ways to collect information through its contract with TeleTracking, which has not previously been reported.

On March 29, Pence wrote hospital administrators across the country, instructing them to file daily reports on the spread of covid-19 to the CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network, which collects information on health care-associated infections and other issues.

The network's website has two new "modules" that hospitals and long-term care facilities such as nursing homes can use to report critical information about patients, staffing and beds. The section for long-term care facilities also offers a spot for reporting on supplies and personal protective equipment.

"The data we are now asking you to report is necessary in monitoring the spread of severe covid-19 illness and death, as well as the impact to hospitals," Pence wrote.

But on April 6, public records show, the government hired TeleTracking to do some of the same things. The $10.2 million, six-month contract, which was not competitively bid, requires the company to set up a "covid-19 rapid deployment plan for real-time health care system capacity reporting," according to a copy of the contract listed on the Federal Procurement Data System website.

The company was hired by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, part of the Department of Health and Human Services.

On April 10, Azar wrote to hospital administrators again, offering them several options for reporting daily information: via TeleTracking, through the CDC site, straight to HHS through an IT vendor or by publishing it on the hospital's website.

"The completeness, accuracy and timeliness of the data will inform the covid-19 task force decisions on capacity and resource needs to ensure a fully coordinated effort across America," Azar wrote.

An HHS spokeswoman said not every hospital was using CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network and the addition of TeleTracking is capturing additional data.

"Both TeleTracking and CDC's National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN) are tools to help hospitals input data in to HHSProtect," the agency's new "streamlined data collection platform," she said in a statement.

Information from across the federal government, state, local and tribal governments, health care facilities and colleges and universities is used to "gain insight into how covid-19 is spreading, and how the federal government can best apply resources to mitigate and prevent spread," she said.

Chris Johnson, president of TeleTracking, said his company was hired to help HHS collect more data on the capacity and availability of beds in U.S. hospitals, as well as about covid-19 cases.

"My belief is that, given the fragmented nature of health care, there are people that report in many different ways," Johnson said. "And what they're trying to do is reach as many as possible." He said more than 4,000 hospitals are using TeleTracking to report their daily data.

Richard Jackson, a professor emeritus at the University of California-Los Angeles Fielding School of Public Health, who also worked at the CDC, said it is "unprecedented that you'd set up a competing system separate from the CDC. To set up a competing process to do this would appear to really undermine the CDC."

The decision to award the contract was not made at the task force level and was not briefed to the coronavirus task force, said two people with knowledge of the regular meetings.

But the adviser and a senior administration official said Trumps son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner and many of his allies do not trust government agencies and prefer to work with officials in the private sector.
The next Chinese New Year will begin on Feb. 12, 2021. It will be the year of the Ox. The first real publishing season since the pandemic started will begin at about the same time. In America and elsewhere, I suspect, it will be the year of the Diary.

Writers in lockdown are, like everyone else, feeling pale and postoperative. The pandemic has thrown a spanner into best-laid plans. A diary, as soldiers, prisoners and invalids have long understood, can be a good way to write oneself out of a bad spot.

The Chinese novelist Fang Fang lives in downtown Wuhan, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak. After that city went into quarantine in January, she began keeping an online diary about her experience. Wuhan remained shut down for 76 days, and is still struggling to return to anything resembling normalcy.

In her diary, Fang Fang wrote about quotidian things: food, pets, sleep, friends. She talked about weeping, and about her countrys mental health. Her diary provided a daily catharsis. She monitored newspapers and the internet, keeping tabs on what was happening outside her small housing project.
My flights to Geneva for a ski holiday over Easter were cancelled by easyJet due to coronavirus.

It offered me the chance to rebook or vouchers but I do not have any future travel plans, so wanted my money back.

I followed some links on its site for cancelled flights, which took me through to an EU 261 flight compensation form that I filled in.

However, I have now got an email back saying that I am not entitled to anything under EU 261, but can have vouchers or rebook future flights.

Is it right that I cannot claim compensate and how do I get a refund?

One passenger tried to claim compensation for his cancelled flights through the EU261 law

Grace Gausden, This is Money, replies: Since the outbreak of the coronavirus has stalled nearly all flights in and out of the country and led to widespread cancellations, passengers have been trying to claw their money back.

By law, those who booked with an airline and had their flight cancelled directly are entitled to be fully recompensed in cash, as opposed to a credit voucher or the option to rebook alternative flights.

However, many airlines have not followed this and instead tried to force customers to rebook or take a voucher, causing uproar from those who just want their money back.

When you weren't presented with the option for a cash refund by EasyJet, you followed the cancelled flight links you could find and applied to claim compensation through the EU261 law, as you didn't just want the vouchers or to rebook.

Officially named EC 261/2004, this law was put in by the European Commission place to protect passengers rights.

It allows customers to make claims for compensation if something goes wrong with their flight, for example, if a flight is cancelled or there is a long delay.

If you qualify under EU 261, an airline is obligated to pay you flight cancellation compensation of up to 510.

The law has helped hold airlines to account for practices that had seriously disadvantaged customers in the past, such as overbooking and failing to keep adequate parts sourcing and maintenance plans in place at airports.

The EU regulation, EU 261, gives passengers the right to be reimbursed for flight cancellations

In your case, the EU regulation, EU 261, gives passengers the right to be reimbursed for flight cancellations, on top of their refund or rebooking, providing certain criteria are met.

However, one of the escape clauses for airlines to avoid paying compensation is when a flight is cancelled due to extraordinary circumstances like 'technical difficulties' or 'operational circumstances'.

Unfortunately, this was not clearly defined when the law was written but over time it has been developed into things that the airline could not reasonably forsee as being at risk of happening and planning for.

The coronavirus pandemic is being classed as an extraordinary circumstance and therefore you will not qualify for the compensation.

Nonetheless, you are still entitled to your money back in full and not a voucher or rebooking.

A spokesperson for EasyJet replies: As confirmed by the European Commission, EU261 compensation is not payable if the cancellation of the flight is due Covid-19, because it's an event outside of airlines' control.

Customers on cancelled flights can transfer to an alternative flight free of charge, or receive a voucher for the value of their booking online, or claim a refund through our contact centre.

Customers may also submit a claim in writing via a new dedicated refund webform, online.

If someone wants a refund instead of a voucher they are entitled to ask for their money back

Mark Woloshak, Slater and Gordon dispute resolution lawyer, replies: Despite Covid-19 and the hardship created by the pandemic, the law still applies and you are entitled to a refund.

Anyone with tickets for cancelled flights, leaving from and/or arriving at anywhere inside the European Union, is entitled to refund under EU 261, as well as contractual law.

Many airlines are offering vouchers, instead of cash refunds, for passengers to use on future flights. If, for whatever reason, a person would like a refund instead of a voucher they are entitled to ask for their money back. However, persuading an airline to comply can be more of a challenge.

To receive a refund the passenger will need to email, phone or write to the airline and request their money back. The timeframe in which a person should expect their money back is not specified, but described as whatever is reasonable. This may be specified flight contracts but shouldnt be longer than 28 days.

If the money still isnt refunded, or the airline refuses, a person could make a complaint to their airline involved.

Coby Benson, Flight Delay Compensation Solicitor at Bott and Co said: The first thing to note is that theres a difference between compensation and a refund.

The airline does not have to provide any compensation (which is usually between 250 and 600 because the circumstances are extraordinary. However, the airline is always obliged to provide a refund when the flight is cancelled.

The law is absolutely clear, the refund should be provided within seven days.

If the airline breaches this law then the passenger can use Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), but only if they dont get a refund after 8 weeks.

They could also issue court proceedings and this should be quicker than ADR, although theres a fee to pay the court, so its slightly riskier.

Grace Gausden adds: If you do want to get your money back, the best thing to do is to contact an airline direct.

Some have online forms that you can fill out for a refund, including Ryanair and now Easyjet, whilst others you have to contact by phone, such as British Airways.

When you first tried to get your money back, EasyJet had temporarily removed its cash refund option online. It is now back.

Whilst filling out the form is relatively easy, passengers have been warned that their refunds may take a while to filter through due to the large volume of requests airlines are receiving.

If the airline does not have an ADR provision a person can complain to the Civil Aviation Authority.

If the airline refuses a refund and your flight cost over 100 and was bought with a credit card, you can claim against the credit card provider.

The Consumer Credit Act provides that where finance is provided to purchase goods or services, a claim lies against the finance provider (in this instance the credit card provider) as well as the supplier if the goods or services are defective.

If the flight cost less than 100 and was purchased with a debit card, the cash back scheme that operates on some debit cards may enable you to claim a refund.

In addition, you might also be able to claim on your holiday insurance policy. You may also find that the airline has ATOL protection if it ceases to trade.

If none of these options are successful you could begin proceeding in a small claims court - but this should always be a last resort.
India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

Coronavirus outbreak: Uttar Pradesh records more than 2,000 recovery, 1.5 lakh tests

India

oi-Ajay Joseph Raj P

Lucknow, May 15: Uttar Pradesh on Thursday marked a new high in terms of the recovery of coronavirus patients. According to the Health Ministry, 2,072 patients have been discharged so far from hospitals after their recovery. It can be seen that the recovery rate, which has been increasing steadly, stood at 53.10 per cent on Thursday.

The recovery rate also got reflected in the number of active cases which dropped to 1,742 on Thursday after hitting the highest of 1,914 ten days earlier.

About 50 per cent of the districts in the state have more cases of recovery in comparison to their active cases.

Coronavirus lockdown: In two days, 14 migrant workers killed in road accidents

Also, it can be seen that Uttar Pradesh is now under the grip of coronavirus. Chandauli was the only district of the 75 districts in Uttar Pradesh, where no single case of COVID-19 was registered.

Earlier, Uttar Pradesh saw 116 new cases of COVID-19, that pushed the state tally to 3,758. Out of these, 2,514 cases have been reported from Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow, Meerut, Noida, Saharanpur, Firozabad, Ghaziabad and Moradabad.

Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

According to officials, four more people died of COVID-19 in the state on Wednesday, raising the death toll in Uttar Pradesh to 86. Out of these four, two died in Moradabad, and one each in Sant Kabir Nagar and Gautam Buddha Nagar.

On Friday, the Health Ministry said that the number of COVID-19 positive cases in Uttar Pradesh reached 3,902, while 2,072 people have recovered from the pandemic in the state. 88 have died from the infection.
A slow and steady flow of elective surgeries has resumed at Victoria's major public hospitals, but senior doctors say they are still bracing for a surge of coronavirus patients as social interaction increases.

Surgeries like endoscopies, heart-valve replacements and joint replacements are already under way at hospitals, including the Royal Melbourne Hospital and Monash Medical Centre.

Head of the intensive care unit at the Royal Melbourne Hopsital, Associate Professor Chris MacIsaac. Credit:Joe Armao

The Royal Melbourne Hospital never stopped providing critical category one and two surgeries during the peak of the pandemic, but it has now reinstated category three surgeries, such as hysterectomies and hip and knee replacements.

The state government has given the go-ahead for up to 25 per cent of operations put on hold during the peak of the coronavirus crisis but is yet to give a clear indication of when hospitals will reinstate surgeries at full capacity.
Speaker after speaker told lawmakers Thursday that more opportunities to vote by mail and more early voting will help the statewide elections in September and November proceed with minimal risks of COVID-19 transmission.

But on the specific details of how to do that -- whether to mail ballots to every voter or only those who request one, how long in-person early voting periods should last, and how polling places should be spread out to maintain social distancing -- there was frequent disagreement.

The Legislatures Election Laws Committee did not take immediate action Thursday after hearing testimony from a range of stakeholders. When it does, its members will need to balance competing preferences from the states top elections official, municipal leaders, and their own colleagues, all with the clock ticking and Secretary of State William Galvin hoping to begin printing ballots as soon as June 2.

"The window to pass it in a timely manner is certainly shrinking," John Rosenberry, Galvins legislative director, said at the committees virtual hearing Thursday.

At least eight different COVID-19 election reform bills are before the committee, plus a proposal Galvin unveiled last week that has not yet been submitted as its own standalone legislation. All target reforms to election processes for the Sept. 1 state primary election and Nov. 3 general election, but they diverge on key details.

The biggest gap is over how the state should handle mail-in voting, a practice that will allow voters to exercise their democratic rights while decreasing crowds at polling places as a public health precaution.

Several of the bills, including one filed by the committees co-chair Rep. John Lawn (HD 5075), would require officials to mail ballots to every eligible voter in Massachusetts, which they could fill out at home and send back to clerks to be counted.

Supporters of that practice argued Thursday that it is the best way to reduce barriers for voters and that, by cutting out the application process, eases some of the burden on local election officials.

Imagine what might happen when 98 percent of the people who normally vote in a primary submit a request to their clerks (for mail-in ballots), said Sen. Becca Rausch, who filed a similar bill (S 2654) that also establishes Election Day as a holiday. Thats a tremendous number of ballot requests to process.

Congressman Joe Kennedy III kicked off the hearing by throwing his support behind the idea of universal mail-in voting, warning that the right to vote is vulnerable to being damaged by the pandemic without action from state lawmakers.

No-fault absentee ballots just arent going to be good enough, Kennedy said. Seven days of early voting is not good enough. Mailing ballots to some, but not all, is not good enough.

That idea rankled some stakeholders, however.

Galvin previously flagged concerns that election officials would not know which primary ballot to send unenrolled voters, who make up the largest segment of the electorate. Billerica Republican Rep. Marc Lombardo, a member of the committee, cautioned that proactive mailing could raise concerns about election security.

Boston Mayor Martin Walsh said at Thursdays hearing that if municipalities had to mail the ballots, they would face significant financial strain and workforce resource issues.

A lot of what Im talking about is staffing and making sure we have appropriate staffing for this, because weve never seen the potential magnitude of mail-in ballots were going to see in this years elections, Walsh said.

Other bills before the committee still aim to authorize widespread voting by mail without the same mandate to reach the full electorate.

A proposal from Sen. Cynthia Creem (S 2653) would make mail-in ballots available to all eligible voters, not just those who qualify for absentee ballots under existing law, so long as they submitted a formal application. She said sending ballots to voters who request them as her bill suggests would be feasible for both upcoming statewide elections, but that universal mail-in voting in the September primary is impossible."

I realized there are too many obstacles standing in the way for that to happen and too little time to fix them for that to happen in September," she said.

One bill from Rep. Jeffrey Roy and Sen. Adam Hinds (H 4699) that the duo described as a compromise would require state officials to mail every voter an application for a ballot, an approach they said addresses Galvins concern about sending the proper primary voting materials.

The lawmakers, like several of their colleagues, called for the secretarys office to use federal COVID-19 election relief funding outlined in the CARES Act and for funding previously made available in the 2002 Help America Vote Act to offset the mailing costs.

The need to protect the health and safety of our citizens should not be compromised by the price of a postage stamp, Roy said.

Galvin unveiled his proposal last week, suggesting a system in which voters could request a mail-in ballot electronically or in writing with no excuses needed. Early voting would be offered before the primary -- which would be a first for the state -- for seven days and before the general election for 18 days.

That, too, drew some concerns: Walsh said the 18-day early-voting period would begin just two days after the close of voter registration, meaning the citys ability to process voter applications in time for the start of early vote will certainly be compromised.

Pressure is growing to find consensus and make some changes to the states election system before the summer arrives. Local and state election officials say they need additional funding to grapple with new challenges, such as ensuring poll workers have personal protective equipment.

Under Galvins current guidance, voters could request absentee ballots because of the COVID-19 pandemic, but many advocates called for an expanded system outlined in statute so that election departments can prepare and avoid the long lines or logistical hurdles observed in other states that have conducted springtime elections amid the pandemic.

Regardless of what we do, were going to see an increase of absentee balloting from the current rate of 3 to 5 percent to 70, 60, 80, 90 percent, said Pam Wilmot, executive director of Common Cause Massachusetts, which supports universal vote-by-mail. When you add on the request process, its astronomical.

Mail-in voting will be broadly allowed for special elections on the horizon under a law Gov. Charlie Baker signed in March. On May 19, voters will elect senators for the Plymouth and Barnstable District and for the Second Hampden and Hampshire District, and on June 2, they will choose representatives in the Third Bristol District and the 37th Middlesex District.

All four districts are without representation after their former lawmakers resigned mid-term.

Asked about proposals for September and November mail-in voting during a Thursday press conference on the COVID-19 outbreak, Gov. Charlie Baker replied, Honestly, I havent spent any time thinking about it at all.

The governor, who has been focused on managing the COVID-19 crisis, then said the upcoming special elections, though, will require ballots being cast by mail as outlined in the law he signed in March.

There would be no way to have those elections other than to have some sort of mail-in capacity for them, Baker said.
UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet on Friday called for removing or suspending sanctions against Iran to help the country in its ongoing fight against the coronavirus, Trend reports citing Irna.

In an interview with France 24, she urged the US to lift sanctions on Iran and Venezuela, stressing that the sanitary situation called for such a move in order to save lives.

Bachelet added that the medical exemptions to those sanctions touted by the Trump administration were too narrow and said only a suspension or a lifting of the sanctions would have a real impact.

The UN human rights chief voiced concern that some governments were taking advantage of emergency powers, lockdowns and curfews to further stifle dissent and crack down on political foes, human rights defenders and journalists.

Bachelet also warned that if Israel were to annex the West Bank, as the new government plans to do, this would be an "unacceptable" violation of international law.

She also said she was deeply worried about the worsening situation in Libya, noting that the warring parties had ignored the call for a ceasefire and admitting that the UN's efforts were unsuccessful for now.
Horse Racing Ireland today welcomed the confirmation from the Government that race fixtures in Ireland can resume behind closed doors on June 8.

A statement from HRI details that only key personnel necessary to run the fixture will be permitted to be on site where they will be subject to strict Covid-19 protocols. All those in attendance will be subject to health surveying in advance and thermal temperature screening on entry.

We are grateful to be one of the sectors permitted to go back to work and acknowledge the responsibility on everybody in racing to ensure the events are run in a safe way, said Brian Kavanagh, Chief Executive of Horse Racing Ireland.

We know from our own experience in March when we safely ran ten meetings behind closed doors  and from what is happening in other countries like France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and America  that racing can be staged safely within the requirements of social distancing.

With significant input from the IHRBs chief medical officer Dr Jennifer Pugh, we have strengthened the HRI Covid-19 protocols and so, while race fixtures will return in Ireland on June 8, they will be very different from what people will have experienced before.

Among the new protocols that will be enforced when fixtures restart behind closed doors in Ireland are:

1. Only key personnel will be permitted to attend race fixtures

2. All attendees will be subject to health screening in advance and thermal temperature screening on arrival  anyone presenting with elevated temperatures will be denied access and instructed to consult with their GP

3. Mandatory wearing of face coverings for many attendees including jockeys, stalls handlers, medical professionals, security staff, those working inside etc

4. Social distancing will be strictly enforced by a dedicated Covid-19 protocol officer at each fixture

Kavanagh continued to say that, We will publish our full protocols tomorrow and will require any key personnel necessary to run a race fixture to read the document in full. There must be full compliance with these protocols and to assist the industry in becoming familiar with the changed workplace, a series of webinars on the Covid 19 Protocols will be announced next week.

On Sunday we will release a revised fixture list up to the end of June, including confirmation on when the Classics, traditionally scheduled for this time of year, will be run.

Racing restarted behind closed doors in Germany on May 7 and in France on May 11, while in Australia, Japan and Hong Kong the industry continued operating behind closed doors. In Britain, the British Horseracing Authority plans to resume racing on June 1.

I would like to acknowledge the constructive engagement with the Government throughout the consultative process through the Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine, Michael Creed and his officials. It was reassuring that the importance of horse racing as an industry was fully appreciated. The industry supports 29,000 jobs in rural Ireland, and we are the third largest producer, and largest exporter, of thoroughbreds in the world, all of which depends on racing taking place on track, added Kavanagh.

The decision to allow racing to resume behind closed doors will be welcomed within the industry. For Flat racing in-particular, but also for a significant portion of the National Hunt population, there is a seasonal and cyclical nature to the industry and these are key months in the trade and export of horses with proven form on the race track, as well as a vital period in the sales season.

These will not be race meetings as you might traditionally imagine them, rather stripped back events which will determine the best horses in various categories, a vital factor for the breeding industry. Attendance will be kept to an absolute minimum and Covid-19 protocols will be strictly enforced.
TAIPEI, Taiwan - With just 440 covid-19 cases and seven deaths, Taiwan looks to have conquered the coronavirus. Its 24 million residents have not faced a lockdown; schools, shops and offices have remained open, and the capital's sidewalks, subways and shopping areas are bustling.

Taiwan has won praise for its effective response and donations of medical equipment, including millions of face masks - the fruits of a campaign to combine health diplomacy and relief with an effort to bolster Taiwan's international image.

"Because of the success in dealing with coronavirus, I think we face a new situation in our diplomacy and we have a lot of new friends, new partners and new possibilities," Joseph Wu, Taiwan's foreign minister, said in an interview.

One symbol of recognition remains elusive: an invitation for Taiwan to observe next week's World Health Assembly. Despite a growing pro-Taiwan coalition backing their inclusion, health officials in this self-ruled democracy remain sidelined from the World Health Organization's decision-making body at the urging of China's government, which claims sovereignty over Taiwan and has sought to sever its international contacts.

With Washington and Beijing vying for influence within global organizations, the United States, joined by European allies and other democracies, has led calls for WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus to invite Taiwan. That's happened alongside some of the closest official U.S. contacts with Taiwan since Washington switched diplomatic recognition to Beijing in 1979.

"We'll be working very closely with the State Department and with the U.S. Health Department on our effort knocking at the door of the World Health Organization," said Wu, extolling "unprecedented" U.S. support.

The WHO has said any decision on Taiwan's participation must come through a resolution passed by the assembly. Taiwan and the United States have insisted Tedros has the power to unilaterally invite Taiwan, but he has declined to affirm this.

- - -

When Taiwan learned of a mysterious pneumonia in the Chinese city of Wuhan, officials moved quickly, worried about a repeat of China's initial coverup of the 2003 SARS epidemic.

Taiwan began screening incoming passengers from Wuhan on December 31, the day its health ministry emailed the WHO noting reports of atypical pneumonia, including "patients in isolation," in Wuhan. Taiwan says the email was a warning about the risk of human-to-human transmission - and that the WHO ignored it. The WHO has denied this, saying the email did not explicitly mention transmission.

While China and the WHO downplayed the risk of human-to-human transmission, Taiwan took no chances. It ramped up face-mask production and enacted widely lauded contact tracing and testing regimens after confirming its first covid-19 case on Jan. 21. Taiwan has not recorded a case of local transmission since April 12.

In March, as the pandemic swept the world, Taiwan began plotting its own relief efforts while embarking on a diplomatic gambit to highlight its longtime exclusion from the WHO and other international bodies.

Taiwanese leaders, including President Tsai Ing-wen and the foreign ministry, started promoting the hashtag #TaiwanCanHelp on Twitter. That message resulted from debates among officials who considered less-assertive alternatives, such as #TaiwanCares, that would have de-emphasized Taiwan's exclusion from the WHO.

"We cannot cure these disasters alone. We need to prepare for the pandemic together," said Wang Ting-yu, a lawmaker in the ruling Democratic Progressive Party.

Taipei has found a willing partner in the United States. Taiwan's foreign ministry and the American Institute in Taiwan, the U.S. representative office, agreed in March to directly cooperate in research and development of tests, medicines and vaccines and to exchange medical supplies. The pact precipitated a rush of U.S.-Taiwan cooperation that has led to cabinet-level talks, including an April telephone call between Taiwan health minister Chen Shih-chung and U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar.

"It's a rare opportunity for Taiwan," said Bonnie Glaser, director of the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "Countries rarely pay attention to Taiwan and why it's successful. Why shouldn't Taiwan showcase its expertise?"

In March, President Donald Trump signed the Taiwan Allies International Protection and Enhancement Initiative (TAIPEI) Act, a bill expressing U.S. support for Taiwan and its relationships with other countries. This month, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called on countries to back Taiwan's participation as an observer at the assembly, and urged Tedros to extend the invitation. The WHO's lawyer said Monday the organization has "no mandate" to invite Taiwan as many member states have "divergent views" over its participation.

The American Institute in Taiwan said in an email that China's objections to Taiwan's participation "deny the world access to Taiwan's considerable expertise on global health matters, and serve to reinforce [China's] reputation as undermining transparency and accountability."

Taiwan has provided supplies and health assistance not only to friendly states, but to countries in Asia, Africa and South America that have close ties with China. It has routed face-mask donations to China-friendly African countries through the Vatican, one of Taipei's few diplomatic allies, and held an online medical seminar with doctors from countries that have recently switched ties from Taipei to Beijing, including the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. A recent Twitter campaign for Taiwan's participation in the assembly gained a push from Twitter users in India, Thailand and Hong Kong.

"We feel we're being seen by the world," Wang said.

- - -

But as Taiwan wins support it risks backlash from Beijing, especially as the outreach coincides with the Trump administration's push to blame China's government for the pandemic.

"We don't want to be accused of meddling between U.S.-China relations," Wang said. "The U.S. conflict with China, they have their own problems. In Taiwan, we have our own problem with China. Sometimes, separating it is quite difficult."

Officials concede Taiwan is unlikely to be invited to observe the assembly. Wu said the WHO appeared to be "tightly controlled" by China.

The WHO has denied accusations it collaborated with China to delay issuing a warning about covid-19, and Tedros has said the body's praise of China's handling of the outbreak was not designed "to appease anyone." Last month, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian dismissed criticism of Beijing's influence in the WHO as "smear and rumor-mongering."

Taiwan attended the assembly as an observer from 2009 to 2016, the result of negotiations between China and then-President Ma Ying-jeou, whose administration was friendlier toward Beijing. These invitations ceased once Tsai, whom China's communist leadership has characterized as a dangerous "separatist," took office in 2016.

Peter Chang, who served as Taiwan's health attache to the WHO in Geneva during the SARS outbreak, said Taiwan was nevertheless unable to participate in as many assembly functions as other observers, and interactions with WHO officials took the form of email exchanges and clandestine encounters.

Taiwan's fraught relationship with the WHO turned openly hostile in April, when Tedros accused Taiwanese Internet users and its foreign ministry of targeting him with racist attacks. The ministry denied this and announced a shipment of 6 million masks to countries in Asia, Europe and the Americas.

"Taiwan, during this pandemic, has been an embarrassment for WHO," said Chi Chun-huei, a professor at Oregon State University's College of Public Health and Human Sciences who has held seminars and offered health advice to colleagues in the United States.

But Taiwan's full participation in health affairs remains hindered by politics, and Beijing has accused Taiwan, without citing evidence, of using the pandemic to "seek independence."

Lee Che-chuan, a senior researcher at the state-funded Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, said Taiwan's exclusion is an affront to its desire to receive help and help others.

"The only way Taiwan can stay away from Beijing's rebuttal or retribution," he said, "is to keep quiet and do nothing."

- - -

Rauhala reported from Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.
Coronavirus wasnt Sylvia Goldsholls first run-in with a pandemic. She was a 7-year-old girl living in New York City during the Spanish Flu epidemic more than a century ago. Shes seen the Great Depression, both World Wars, and survived much more.

And now she can add COVID-19 survivor to her list of accomplishments.

Goldsholl, who has lived in the Allendale Community for Senior Living for 10 years, earned a shoutout and personal call from Gov. Phil Murphy on Thursday.

A tremendous life, a tremendous spirit, a tremendous show of strength, a tremendous role model for the rest of us, he said during his daily press briefing.

Goldsholl may be the oldest in the country to survive the virus  she beats the 108-year-old New Mexico man by a few months  though a 113-year-old woman in Spain recently recovered from the virus is likely the oldest in the world to beat COVID-19.

Sylvia Goldscholl is 108 years old. Last month, she tested positive for #COVID19 and has beaten it.



A tremendous life, a tremendous spirit, and a tremendous show of strength. So, to you, Sylvia, we send you all our best for many more years to come. pic.twitter.com/Wds6NCc1qj  Governor Phil Murphy (@GovMurphy) May 14, 2020

I survived everything because I was determined to survive, she told News 12 New Jersey. (Both times an NJ Advance Media reporter called, she was napping. Nurses said she was exhausted from her newfound popularity.)

The staff at Allendale called Goldsholl the model of positive perseverance.

Shes in a good place. When the governor called her, he jokingly extended her to be the leader of his next campaign. And she said, yes, yes, yes, and accepted immediately, said nursing home administrator Michael Brienza.

Goldsholl was infected with the virus in April, and had to stay in isolation for weeks. Since then, shes been an inspiration for nurses and fellow Allendale residents  and likely nursing home residents across the country.

Long-term care facilities, often filled with a vulnerable, elderly population who require close care, have become a hot spot for the virus.

CORONAVIRUS RESOURCES: Live map tracker | Newsletter | Homepage

At least 38% of all confirmed coronavirus deaths in the state have come at the states 527 nursing home and long-term care facilities. The number of deaths at these facilities is larger  5,259  when suspected but not confirmed coronavirus cases are also included. A total of 27,374 residents at long-term care facilities have contracted the virus.

"We are accustomed to viewing our seniors as vulnerable, particularly during this pandemic. They are. But, isnt it also remarkable that from our seniors we find so much strength, wisdom, and resilience. Thats a lesson for us all, said nursing home president Timothy Giancarlo.

Goldsholl, the eldest of four siblings, attributes her longevity to her familys love, Brienza said. She lived in her New York City home until moving across the Hudson River 20 years ago.

"Shes very fixated on her family, the love provided by her parents and her siblings. She wishes the world would really understand that its all due to love," he said.

Although Goldsholl uses a wheelchair, shes full of energy, nursing home staff said. She acts as the big sister of her fellow residents, often speaking up or being the life of a party during bingo.

Murphy on Friday noted speaking to the Bronx native was like speaking to John Lennon  she kept repeating All you need is love.

She literally spelled out the word love, L-O-V-E, while talking with Governor Murphy. I mean, shes just awesome," Brienza added. Shes hysterical. She loves the attention. Shes a ham.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Sophie Nieto-Munoz may be reached at snietomunoz@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her at @snietomunoz. Have a tip? Tell us. nj.com/tips
The Resident Doctors' Association (RDA) of the AIIMS here has written to the institute director, urging him to consider giving a stipend to the foreign national residents who have been working "relentlessly at the hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic".

In a letter, the AIIMS RDA said the foreign national residents are not given a salary at the premier institute, despite PGIMER, Chandigarh giving a salary to the foreign residents there.

"We would like to bring to your attention that foreign nationals are deprived of salary in AIIMS despite PGIMER, Chandigarh providing salary and thereby, fulfilling the promise made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Prime Minister of Nepal, KP Oli,"AIIMS RDA president Dr Adarsh Pratap Singh and general secretary Srinivas Rajkumar T said in the letter.

"We would be delighted if AIIMS considers providing a stipend to the foreign national residents working relentlessly with utmost dedication in AIIMS during the COVID-19 pandemic. As much delighted as we are from the thoughtfulness of AIIMS regarding this matter, we have also accepted the harsh reality of its protracted process, as it has already been two years since the directive of PM Narendra Modi in this regard," they said.

In the letter, the RDA said there is this exigent need of the same in order to pull through this dismal situation, even more so that they can take their minds off this pecuniary issue and focus on other responsibilities affixed to a doctor.

"While the needful for the salary is under process, we request you to release an interim salary to foreign nationals to boost their morale and ensure that their basic needs are met with," they said.

In a letter to the prime minister on April 5, the AIIMS RDA had said amendments should be made in the rules so that the foreign doctors are paid their salaries. The foreign doctors, irrespective of their nationality, are "working tirelessly and under a similar stress", they had said.

Around 70 foreign doctors say they are relying on money borrowed from their colleagues.

According to them, the authorities should at least release their stipends as they have been serving Indian patients despite their financial crises.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
WASHINGTONA federal appeals court in Virginia on Thursday revived a lawsuit accusing U.S. President Donald Trump of violating the Constitution by profiting from his Washington hotel, a decision that will most likely lead the Justice Department to appeal to the Supreme Court to keep the plaintiffs from gathering evidence in the case.

We recognize that the president is no ordinary petitioner, and we accord him great deference as the head of the executive branch, the majority opinion from the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said. But Congress and the Supreme Court have severely limited our ability to grant the extraordinary relief the president seeks.

The 15-member appeals court in Richmond met in December to consider whether a three-judge appellate panel had wrongly dismissed the lawsuit over the Trump International Hotel brought by the District of Columbia and the State of Maryland. The local jurisdictions were about to begin evidence gathering when the panel threw out the case.

The Justice Department asked the full appeals court to either uphold the panels ruling or allow the department to appeal the lower-court judges procedural rulings against the president, an emergency form of relief that is rarely allowed when a case is in midstream.

The attorneys general for the District of Columbia and Maryland are arguing that Trumps interest in the hotel violates the Constitutions bans on accepting benefits or emoluments from state or foreign governments. Government officials from Maine to Saudi Arabia have patronized the 263-room luxury property.

The local jurisdictions claim they have standing to sue because the Trump hotel competes with hotels and convention centres in their areas.

The Justice Department contends that the president cannot be sued for violating the emoluments bans without the express authorization of Congress and that the plaintiffs want to engage in a fishing expedition for documents for blatantly political reasons.

The appeals court split 9-6 over the decision. The two dissenting opinions and one concurring opinion revealed a wide gap between the justices. Eight of the nine judges who favoured allowing the lawsuit to go forward were appointed by Democratic presidents. The ninth, Chief Judge Roger Gregory, was a recess appointment by president Bill Clinton and then was reappointed by president George W. Bush. All those in opposition were appointed by Republican presidents.

Writing for the majority, Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, who was appointed by Clinton, said Trump was asking for a drastic form of emergency relief on the grounds that the lower-court judge had abused his discretion and committed serious legal errors.

But she said that Judge Peter J. Messitte of the U.S. District Court in Greenbelt, Md., had issued detailed written opinions, had applied the correct legal standards and had not acted arbitrarily. So the appeals court had no authority, she said, to halt the case.

In a dissenting opinion also signed by five other judges, Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson III, who was appointed by president Ronald Reagan, said the court was allowing itself to be used as a political tool to harass the president.

Can we not see the political cloak we are asked to don? he wrote. No federal court has ever allowed a party to sue the president under the domestic emoluments clause.

He added, Would it not be fair for our fellow Americans to suspect that something other than law was afoot?

In yet another opinion, four judges in the majority fired back.

The publics confidence and trust in the integrity of the judiciary suffer greatly when judges who disagree with their colleagues view of the law accuse those colleagues of abandoning their constitutional oath of office, wrote Judge James A. Wynn Jr., who was appointed by president Barack Obama.

Brianna Herlihy, a Justice Department spokeswoman, said the appeals court erred by not even considering the merits of the presidents defences. She said the department intends to seek further review in the Supreme Court. Legal experts said the department would most likely request an administrative stay of the case while it prepared its appeal.

Karl A. Racine, the attorney general for the District of Columbia, and Brian E. Frosh, the attorney general for Maryland, applauded the decision. The Fourth Circuit ruled that President Trump is subject to the same rules of the legal system as everyone else, they said in a joint statement.

The lawsuit over the hotel has progressed significantly further than two similar emoluments cases working their way through other courts.

The Supreme Court is already weighing two cases on whether the powers of the presidency protect Trump from prosecutors and House committees seeking information about his business affairs. The courts decision could have bearing on the emoluments cases.

Just blocks from the White House, the Trump International Hotel has been a magnet for lobbyists and for state, federal and foreign officials seeking to influence the president or those within his circle. The Trump Organization, which is owned by Trump and managed by his eldest sons, operates the hotel.

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Rev. Choon Lim, World Mission's regional liaison for East Asia and his wife Yen Hee Lim have had the longtime dream of connecting past and present mission workers in Korea by the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A) into reality by publishing "Korean-English Dictionary of Presbyterian Missionaries in Korea 1884-2020," on March 27 in Korean.

This book chronicles who came to Korea and what they did as Presbyterian missionaries in Korea over the past 136 years according to Presbyterian Mission. Beginning with Dr. Horace Newton Allen and Frances Ann Allen, who arrived in 1884 as Korea's first Protestant missionaries, it highlights about 1,000 missionaries through the decades including Kurt Esslinger and Hyeyoung Lee, who are serving today.

The couple has served PC(USA) as mission co-workers since 1991, and Choon has been in the role of a relational bridge connecting global partners in South Korea, North Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan, and Taiwan with the PC(USA).

Since they began their third mission appointment in 2012, serving in Seoul, Korea, this historical compilation has been in Lims' heart and mind. As there was no such official guidebook in Korea, many Korean Presbyterians have asked the Lims about the life and work of missionaries in their country wanting to learn more about their Christian ancestors.

Choon reflected on Presbyterian Mission that they couldn't stop crying while gathering information about the former missionaries. "Those who came to Korea in the early years sacrificed their lives to spread the gospels' Good News to the Korean people, as the living conditions in Korea at that time were very poor," He said. "They had to face all kinds of diseases and had to learn the difficult Korean language," Yen Hee said.

The book has two main sections of lists of missionaries' names alphabetically, along with brief biographical information and the other list of the missionaries according to the year they arrived in Korea

"The timing of the publication of the book, during the COVID-19 pandemic, is a reminder of the importance of staying connected," the Lims said.

"Remembering how you became a Christian is essential in the Christian faith and in life. Often, they said, finding your Christian roots can give you strong faith to persevere during the difficult times of life," they added.

Choon Lim founded the Korean Presbyterian Church of Indianapolis, Ind., which began in the Lims' home and celebrated its 40 years of foundation recently. Choon became a deacon, elder, pastor, and a mission co-worker of PC(USA) to Korea and Taiwan. After serving World Mission for 30 years, he will retire at the end of 2020.
BALTIMORE, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Men of color in the United States are at an increased risk of prostate cancer and other prostate conditions, and despite advances in diagnosis and treatment, disparities still remain. The AUA will showcase three new studies during a special event for media on Friday, May 15 at 11:30 a.m. Dr. Robert Waterhouse will moderate this press session, which will feature in-depth presentations from the authors of the following abstracts:

A Pilot Study to Compare a Community Health Worker-led vs a Physician-led Intervention for Prostate Cancer Screening Decision-Making Among Black Men (#PD53-10): Community health workers (CHWs) play an important role in assisting African American men with complex health decision-making, according to researchers in New York. This study compared the impact of prostate cancer screening educational sessions led by CHWs vs. those led by physicians. While there was no significant difference in decisional conflict reduction by group, the CHW-led group showed significantly greater improvement on knowledge post-intervention, suggesting these workers are effective in assisting African American men with complex health decision-making.

Trends in Prostate Cancer Mortality, Stage, and Survival by Race/Ethnicity and Area Socioeconomic Deprivation, United States, 1950-2017 (#MP64-11): Ethnic minorities and men in more deprived areas may have lower access to and use of prostate cancer screening and treatment, according to California researchers. Using the national mortality database, researchers computed prostate cancer mortality rates for major racial and ethnic groups from 1950-2017, analyzed socioeconomic disparities and disparity trends in disease stage and survival. Higher deprivation levels were associated with higher prostate cancer mortality, with gradients being the steepest for African Americans and American Indians/Alaska Natives.

Disparities in BPH Progression: Predictors of Presentation to the Emergency Department in Urinary Retention (#PD29-07): African American and Hispanic males are more likely to present to the emergency department for acute urinary retention (AUR) than other groups, suggesting they may be undertreated  or untreated  for benign prostatic hyperplasia or other lower urinary tract symptoms. Researchers used the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project State Emergency Department Databases to identify a broad cohort of men in Florida aged 45 years or older who presented to the ER with AUR between 2005 and 2015. The patients identified were older, with the mean age as 72.2 years (10.6 years older than those with non-urologic complaints); were more likely to be African American or Hispanic; were more likely to have Medicare insurance; and were more likely to live in more urbanized areas.

"Race and ethnicity are observed as significant factors associated with disparate higher incidence and poorer outcomes for some urologic conditions including prostate cancer and BPH. Although the biologic behavior of certain benign and malignant disease may have racial differences, socioeconomic disparity creates another critical driver for adversity," said Dr. Waterhouse. "It is imperative to dedicate resources to not only increase access for persons subjected to socioeconomic deprivation, but to expand it in a way that leads to diagnosis and treatment of urologic disease at earlier stages with better decision support to drive better results."

About the American Urological Association: Founded in 1902 and headquartered near Baltimore, Maryland, the American Urological Association is a leading advocate for the specialty of urology, and has nearly 22,000 members throughout the world. The AUA is a premier urologic association, providing invaluable support to the urologic community as it pursues its mission of fostering the highest standards of urologic care through education, research and the formulation of health care policy.

PD53-10

A pilot Study to Compare a Community Health Worker-led vs a Physician-led Intervention for Prostate Cancer Screening Decision-Making Among Black Men

Natalia Martinez-Lopez, Danil V. Makarov, Shannon Ciprut, Theodore Hickman, Helen Cole , Zachary Feuer, Michael Fenstermaker, Heather Gold, Stacy Loeb, Joseph E. Ravenell

Introduction: Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths amongst men in the US and harms Black men disproportionately. The majority of U.S. men are uninformed about many key facts important to make an informed decision about prostate cancer. Lower Prostate Specific Antigen knowledge (PSA) may be associated with certain vulnerable populations and lower PSA utilization. Most experts agree that it is important for men to learn about these problems as early as possible in their lifetime. A community-based decision aid is feasible and efficacious in improving several measures indicative of high-quality decision making. This pilot study compared the impact of Community Health Worker (CHW)-led vs a Physician-led educational session with a decision aid on prostate cancer screening knowledge, screening decisional conflict, and participant's perceptions of the intervention.

Methods: 118 Black men recruited in eight community-based settings attended a prostate cancer screening education session led by either a CHW or a physician. The session was based on a decision aid previously validated in black men. Participants completed pre- and post-surveys to assess knowledge and decisional conflict. Participant perceptions about the intervention were also assessed. The survey incorporated a revised version of the Decisional Conflict Scale, where higher scores indicated greater conflict. Differences in correct answers and decisional conflict scores were compared between the two groups using linear regression.

Results: There was no significant difference in reduction in decisional conflict by group (0.49 physician-led vs 0.62 CHW-led, p=0.127). The CHW-led group showed significantly greater improvement on knowledge post- intervention (change of 2.6, sd=2.81 vs 5.1, sd=3.19, p<0.001). However, those in the physician-led group were more likely to agree that the speaker knew a lot about PSA testing (p<0.001) and were more likely to trust the speaker (p<0.001).

Conclusions: A CHW-led intervention on prostate cancer screening improved prostate cancer knowledge and equally decreased decisional conflict compared to a physician-led intervention, suggesting CHWs can effectively assist black men with complex health decision-making in community-based settings.

Funding Source: NYU Perlmutter Cancer Center

MP64-11

Trends in Prostate Cancer Mortality, Stage, and Survival by Race/Ethnicity and Area Socioeconomic Deprivation, United States, 1950-2017

Gopal Singh, Isaac Kim Jr., Alison Kim

Introduction: In 2019, prostate cancer is estimated to be the most common cancer in men and the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States. Temporal disparities in prostate cancer outcomes are not well analyzed. This study examines racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in US prostate cancer mortality, stage of disease at diagnosis, and survival from 1950 through 2017.

Methods: Using the national mortality database, we computed age-adjusted prostate cancer mortality rates for major racial/ethnic groups from 1950 to 2017. Census-based deprivation indices were linked to national mortality data to analyze area socioeconomic disparities in prostate cancer mortality from 1992 to 2016. The deprivation indices were linked to the Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) database to analyze disparity trends in stage of disease and patient survival. Log-linear models were used to estimate annual rates of change in mortality by race/ethnicity and deprivation level.

Results: Racial disparities in prostate cancer mortality widened between 1950 and 2017. In 1950, black men had 6% higher mortality than whites, with the relative risk of mortality among black men increasing to 151% higher in 2001 and 103% higher in 2017. During 1950-1993, prostate cancer mortality increased by 0.42% annually for whites and by 2.26% per year for blacks. During 1994-2017, prostate cancer mortality declined for all ethnic groups with the steepest decline among blacks and the slowest decline among American Indians/Alaska Natives and Hispanics. Although prostate cancer mortality declined for all groups, socioeconomic disparities in mortality persisted or widened between 1992 and 2016. Compared to men in the most affluent quintile, men in the most deprived group had 8% higher prostate cancer mortality in 1992-94 and 16% higher mortality in 2012-16. Higher deprivation levels were associated with higher prostate cancer mortality with the gradients being steepest for American Indians/Alaska Natives and blacks. During 2000-2016, patients in the most deprived decile were 27% more likely to be diagnosed with late-stage prostate cancer and had lower survival than patients in the most affluent decile (10-year survival rate = 85.8% vs 90.7%).

Conclusions: Marked inequalities in mortality, stage, and survival may partially reflect a larger proportion of late-stage prostate cancer diagnoses and possibly lower access to and use of prostate cancer screening and treatment among men in more deprived areas and ethnic minorities.

Funding Source: None

PD29-07

Disparities in BPH Progression: Predictors of Presentation to the Emergency Department in Urinary Retention

Parth M. Patel, Sarah E. Sweigert, Marc Nelson, Gopal Gupta, Marshall Baker, Francois Modave, Kevin T. McVary

Introduction: Lower urinary tract symptoms (LUTS) associated with benign prostatic hyperplasia (LUTS/BPH) is an age-related process that can progress to acute urinary retention (AUR). Currently, no studies have evaluated what groups of patients present to the ED with AUR, the regional distribution, or the socioeconomic and demographic factors therein. We utilized a population-level administrative dataset to retrospectively evaluate patients who presented to the emergency room with AUR secondary to BPH.

Methods: Using the Healthcare Cost and Utilization Project (HCUP) State Emergency Department Databases (SEDD), we conducted a retrospective cohort study of patients who presented to emergency departments in Florida between 2005 and 2015. Male patients above 45 years of age who presented with diagnosis codes for both AUR and LUTS/BPH were considered. Information was collected on age, race/ethnicity, primary insurance, and rural-urban commuting area (RUCA) codes.

Results: The mean age for patients presenting with AUR was 72.2 years, 10.6 years older than those presenting for non-urologic complaints (p < 0.001). A significantly higher proportion of AUR patients had Medicare insurance (68.9% versus 41.7%, p < 0.001). Greater proportions of the AUR patients belonged to urban RUCA codes (93.2% versus 91.3%, p < 0.001). On multivariable analysis adjusted for measured confounders, all covariates of interest demonstrated significance. The risk of presenting to the ED for AUR from LUTS/BPH increased with age, with the 75-85 year age-group at the highest risk (OR 15.96, p<0.001). Other factors associated with presentation to the ED with AUR included African-American (OR 1.15, p<0.001) or Hispanic (OR 1.75, p<0.001) race, Medicare (OR 1.27, p<0.001) or private (OR 1.33, p<0.001) insurance, and urban RUCA codes (OR 1.31, p<0.001).

Conclusions: Male patients older than 45 who presented to the ED for AUR with BPH were more likely to be older, of non-white race, have Medicare or private insurance, and live in more urbanized areas. We surmise that African-American and Hispanic patients may be untreated or undertreated for BPH in the outpatient setting, resulting in an increased risk of presentation to the ED with AUR.

Funding Source: None

SOURCE American Urological Association

Related Links

http://www.auanet.org/


W ith New Zealanders finally able to have their hair cut again after recent relaxations in lockdown rules, one national politician decided to do something rather drastic to mark the occasion.

Chris Bishop, the National Party MP for Hutt South, this week unveiled the "Bishmullet" - his own personal take on the retro hairstyle.

He had promised to rock the "business at the front, party in the back" style if a social media post attracted 1,000 likes. It quickly did.

Now, he's using the distinctive look - possibly with the help of some extensions - to raise money for a local baking charity, with a promise to keep his long, dark locks as they are for an extra 24 hours for every $1,000 raised.

Mr Bishop is aiming to raise $10,000 for charity for sporting the retro look / @Jasonwalls92

Overall, Mr Bishop is aiming to raise $10,000. To date, he has raised more than $3,600.

Mr Bishop meanwhile said on his GiveALittle fundraising page that he plans to wear his hair-do "everywhere" he goes, including in New Zealand's legislature, where he represents his constituency in New Zealand's North Island.

"The Bishmullet will attend Parliament, it will come with me as I get coffee, it will be with me as I take [his dog] Ladyhawke for evening walks along the Petone Esplanade - so long as the money keeps coming in!" he said.

"Let's raise heaps of money for Good Bitches Baking, allowing them to continue to make life a little easier for Kiwis in need, and have a bit of fun while doing it."

Some of Mr Bishop's colleagues meanwhile offered a few select words about his efforts, with one jokingly describing the look as "unbelievable" while addressing Parliament.

Footage of the humorous incident was later shared by Mr Bishop on his Twitter page.

Other colleagues were somewhat less complimentary, however, with fellow MP Brett Hudson reportedly questioning how the "abomination of a 'do' [can] be permitted in the House".
Around 1,000 people from Kashmir who were stranded in Uttar Pradesh due to the coronavirus lockdown were sent back to their homes in a special train from Aligarh, officials said on Friday.

The people, largely students, were stuck in Aligarh, Gautam Buddh Nagar and another couple of places in western UP and they left in the train Thursday night for Udhampur, the officials said.

"Around 700-800 stranded Kashmiri people from Aligarh, largely students from the Aligarh Muslim University (AMU), around 150 from Noida and Greater Noida, and some from areas near Aligarh were onboard the train," IAS officer Narendra Bhooshan, UP government's nodal officer for migrants stuck in Delhi, Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh, told PTI.

A few days ago, Kashmiri people, including scores of students, stranded in Agra due to the nation-wide lockdown, were sent back to the Valley in buses by the district administration, according to officials.

The coronavirus-induced lockdown, which came into force on March 25, has triggered the movement of thousands of people across the country including the migrant workers and daily wage earners amid restricted outdoor activities.

While lakhs of migrant workers have returned to UP during the pandemic, several from outside stranded in the state also set off on journeys back to their native places, including Jammu and Kashmir.

There are 1,773 cases active in 72 districts of UP. So far, 2,080 patients have been fully treated.

A total of 3,945 COVID-19 positive cases have been reported from 75 districts of the state so far, Principal Secretary, Health and Family Welfare, Amit Mohan Prasad said in Lucknow.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Jobless claims jumped higher for the eighth week in a row, but the rate of people filing unemployment claims is decreasing from its April peak.

Nationally, close to 3 million more people filed new claims for unemployment for the week ending May 9, according to numbers released Thursday by the U.S. Labor Department, higher than the 2.5 million that stock traders and analysts had expected, but pushing the total to 36 million since the pandemic exploded in March.

In Michigan, another 47,438 people filed new jobless claims for the week ending May 9.

The state labor department announced Wednesday that 1,717,555 have filed jobless claims since the pandemic sparked historic layoffs and furloughs driven by stay-at-home orders and the shuttering of businesses deemed non-essential by the state. Those numbers include those who have applied for benefits as well as those whose claims are pending.

In all, Michigan has paid out $5.62 billion in unemployment money  whether for long-term layoffs or short, temporary furloughs  to 1,374,751 workers in Michigan.

The number of jobless claims in the state system indicates that many who have received unemployment benefits have been on short-term furloughs, although the majority are experiencing extended joblessness.

The state labor department said county-by-county unemployment numbers wouldnt be available this week, but will resume next week.

The trend in most Michigan counties since Feb. 22 shows jobless claims spiked higher beginning with the week ending March 21 and continued to climb through April 25 to more than a million active claims in the state system before falling back slightly the week ending May 2 to more than 90,000.

Locally, continuing jobless claims in the state system through the week of May 2, the last week that county numbers are currently available, were 118,714 in Macomb County, 113,270 in Oakland County, and 178,580 in Wayne County.

Oakland County was also looking forward to release of county by county unemployment numbers with manufacturers and suppliers scheduled to resume operations.

Our expectation is that we would see a slight improvement in the week to week numbers but I dont have anything anecdotally to support that, said Bill Mullan, spokesman for Oakland County government.

The waves of job cuts have heightened concerns that additional government aid, on top of the nearly $3 trillion already allocated, is necessary to sustain the economy. Without another aid package, many economists worry that thousands of small businesses will go bankrupt, leaving millions of the unemployed with no job to return to. And state and local governments, facing huge revenue shortfalls, could be forced to lay off millions more workers and cut services.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell this week stressed his belief that Congress should consider providing additional rescue money to avoid prolonging an economic catastrophe.

Republicans in Congress are locked in a standoff with Democrats, who have proposed trillions more in aid. Republican leaders say they want to first see how the previous rescue packages affect the economy and have expressed skepticism about approving much more spending now. That sentiment has alarmed some economists.

There really isnt any sign that the labor market is bottoming out yet, said Daniel Zhao, senior economist at Glassdoor, the career website.

The Trump administration insists that as states reopen, more Americans will shop, dine out and resume other activities, thereby stimulating the economy. But early data suggests it is fear of contracting the virus, even more than shutdown orders, that may be impairing the economy. Without stronger public health measures, such as widespread testing or a vaccine, economists say such fear will depress growth even as more states reopen their economies.

Even though Georgia reopened its restaurants for sit-down dining late last month, Adam Ozimek, chief economist at Upwork, said data from the reservation site OpenTable shows that reservations are still 91% below their pre-virus level.

Simply ending lockdowns is not going to be a panacea for these companies, Ozimek said. People arent going out because they dont feel safe yet.

The number of people seeking unemployment benefits actually rose last week in Georgia, as well as in Florida, which has also started to reopen. In Florida, that increase likely reflects a troubled system that caused a belated processing of claims that had been filed earlier.

A few other states that have lifted some restrictions, like South Carolina and Texas, reported declines in jobless claims.

President Donald Trump appeared to respond to the report by tweeting, Good numbers coming out of States that are opening. America is getting its life back!

In Ohio, shopping malls have reopened for the first time since March but have seen little traffic. Roughly two-thirds of the stores in one mall outside Toledo were still closed Tuesday.

Ozimek pointed to signs that business failures are rising. A study from the Becker-Friedman Institute found that 43% of small businesses have closed, at least temporarily. Other research has found that half of small businesses lack enough cash to survive longer than a month without revenue.

Those are the signs that weve stretched the economy too far, and its starting to tear, Ozimek said.

State and local governments, which cut nearly 1 million workers in April, are running out of money and collectively posing a threat to the national economy. The recession will likely produce the sharpest plunge in state tax revenue since the center began tracking such data in the early 1970s, said Lucy Dadayan, senior research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center.

About two-thirds of the states have reported data for April, with most showing worrisome declines. Californias tax revenue fell 65% compared with a year earlier. New Jerseys dropped 59%, Pennsylvanias 51%. Sales tax revenue has shrunk as consumer spending has tumbled. And income taxes have been diminished by the widespread job losses.

Spending by states and localities plays a vital role in the national economy: It amounted to $2.33 trillion last year  11% of the U.S. gross domestic product. States and localities employed nearly 20 million workers in February.

In the meantime, jobless workers in some states are still reporting difficulty applying for or receiving benefits. These include free-lance, gig and self-employed workers, who became newly eligible for jobless aid this year.

Kelly Kelso, a stage crew member in Nashville, filed for unemployment aid after her company, Live Nation, canceled all summer tours. She has no idea when touring will resume. She applied in late March but hasnt received a single check. And she cant get answers.

Ive probably called a hundred times and been disconnected every time, Kelso said.

Kelsos partner is a self-employed musician who finally began receiving unemployment benefits after five weeks. But for the couple, who have a 5-year-old son, money is scarce. Their landlord is demanding rent.

The latest jobless claims follow a devastating jobs report last week. The unemployment rate soared to 14.7% in April, the highest rate since the Great Depression, and employers shed 20.5 million jobs. A decades worth of job growth was wiped out in a single month.

Even those figures failed to capture the full scale of the damage. Many workers in April were counted as employed but absent from work but should have been counted as temporarily unemployed.

Millions of other laid-off workers didnt look for a new job in April, likely discouraged by their prospects in a mostly shuttered economy, and werent included, either. If all those people had been counted as unemployed, the jobless rate would have reached nearly 24%.

Most economists have forecast that the official unemployment rate could hit 18% or higher in May before potentially declining by summer.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 17:54:07|Editor: huaxia

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COPENHAGEN, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen on Thursday spoke on the phone with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi to discuss the COVID-19 battle and green strategic partnership, according to a release from the PM's office on Friday.

The two heads of government agreed to strengthen their exchange of technical experience in dealing with the coronavirus crisis and to increase overall health cooperation between Denmark and India, said the statement.

In addition, the prime ministers agreed to significantly strengthen the relationship between their two countries across a number of sectors, to develop a green strategic partnership between the nations. Enditem
Militant vegans branded a local butcher a 'murderer' and 'scumbag' when they defaced the front of his shop, causing 2,000 of damage.

Activists targeted Matt Whittle's business in Nottingham on Tuesday night.

The trio used spray paint to daub phrases like 'Kill butchers', 'murderer' and 'meat = murder' as well as swear words on the front of Meat 4 U.

Spray paint was used to daub phrases like 'Kill butchers', 'murderer' and 'meat = murder' as well as swear words on the front of Meat 4 U in Nottingham

Three masked activists were caught on CCTV outside the store, which was forced to close for a day after the attack

Meat 4 U in Nottingham was vandalised on Tuesday night, pictured left, but has since been cleaned up and has reopened for business today, pictured right

They also smashed the main window, slashed the canopy and put glue into the locks.

But Mr Whittle, who runs Meat 4 U with business partner Nicholas Henshaw, wouldn't let their criminal actions close his store.

Matt Whittle, pictured, said he'd lost a day of trade as a result of the incident

The 42-year-old spent all of yesterday fixing the damage before opening up as normal today.

The father-of-three said: 'We're back open as normal but we've lost a day's trade and a bit of elbow grease but you've got to get on with it.

'Vegan rights activists have claimed responsibility. They've put it all over their website.

'It was a surprise to us because we've never had trouble with them before. But I guess we're just an open target in the main square.

'The police station is just at the back of us and they've even bragged about doing it just in front of the police station.

'The ironic thing is we don't kill animals here. I personally hate abattoirs - I went to one when I was 14 and I hated it. I don't like killing animals but at the end of the day this is my business and people eat meat.

'There are a lot of students in Nottingham. They're probably students and mummy and daddy are paying for their education. They haven't got any responsibilities and don't care but I've got three kids at home.'

Mr Whittle, who has been a butcher since he was 13, said he doesn't have an issue with vegans and said many vegans themselves have got in touch to say they condemn the group's actions.

Shop owner Matt Whittle said: 'I'm 99.9% it's a lad and two girls - you can tell from the CCTV'

Mr Whittle said much of what the activists wrote was 'ironic' as animals are not killed at the store

Nottinghamshire Police says it is investigating the criminal damage and appealing for witnesses

He added: 'At the end of the day it's the same as with anything. If you want to do something then do it but don't force your opinion on others. Each to your own.

'If that's what you want to do then fine I haven't got a problem with that but don't go and vandalise my shop.

'I'm 99.9% it's a lad and two girls - you can tell from the CCTV. We've had a tip off from another vegan who sent us the picture of the guy taking a selfie when they're vandalising the shop. I've spoken to him by text and he said it wasn't him.'

Mr Whittle said he has been analysing his CCTV footage which shows the incident happened around 9.48pm on Tuesday night, and can make out three figures.

Activists Liberate or Die posted images of the attack and a statement that they had received, however they denied any involvement in the incident.

The statement said: 'Economic sabotage is a really important tool in the arsenal of animal liberationists. We need to hit these scumbags on every level and destroy the businesses that profit off the killing of animals. By smashing their glass we are smashing their profits.

'Anyone can do this. The reason we post these actions is to inform and motivate others to do more. If we hit these industries at every level and consistently their insurance goes up and ultimately insurers won't want to touch them.

'We also send a clear message with these actions.'

A spokeswoman for Nottinghamshire Police said: 'We're investigating an incident of criminal damage at a shop in Beeston.

'We received a call just before 6am [on Wednesday] that Meat 4 U in High Road had been vandalised.

'It's believed to have happened overnight. Windows have been smashed, blinds slashed and spray paint has been used on the shop front.

'Officers have begun enquiries and are appealing to anyone with any information that could help to contact us on 101 quoting incident 78 of 13 May, you can also call Crimestoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111.'
TEL AVIV, Israel  With the Nazis murdering Jews and ransacking their property outside on the infamous nights of Kristallnacht in 1938, 13-year-old David Toren sat in the sunroom of his wealthy great-uncle in Germany admiring a favorite painting depicting two men on horseback on a beach.

Within a year, Toren would be smuggled out in one of the final Kindertransports, a series of rescues for Jewish children organized by several European countries. Left behind, his family would perish in the death camps and their vast art collection would be seized by Nazis and later traded by unscrupulous dealers.

Toren would serve in the Israeli pre-state militia before moving to America with less than $100 to his name. He went on to build a successful law practice with an office on the 54th floor of the World Trade Center. Many of the early-life possessions he kept there were destroyed in the 9/11 attacks, carried out before he arrived to work that day.

But even as a degenerative eye condition robbed him of his sight later in life, the images of his past never escaped him, and he embarked on a quest to reclaim some of what was lost. He sued the government of Germany for his great-uncles collection and in 2015, after a lengthy saga, recovered the Max Liebermann work Two Riders on the Beach that so moved him in his youth.

He regarded it as justice and felt very strongly about it, said his son, Peter Toren. The art is something that was taken from his family and it was something there was a possibility of getting back. He couldnt get back all the lives that were exterminated.

Toren died on April 19 in his Manhattan home from symptoms of the coronavirus. He was 94. He left behind his son Peter and two grandchildren.

____

EDITORS NOTE: This is part of an ongoing series of stories remembering people who have died from coronavirus around the world.

____

Born Klaus-Gunther Tarnowski in Breslau, now part of Poland, Toren and his family at first seemed immune to the rise of the Nazis. His father, a decorated World War I veteran, was a prominent lawyer who was allowed to practice even after the Nazis forbade most Jews from doing so and he published poetry and wrote plays that were performed at local theaters.

But eventually he too was taken away to a concentration camp and came back three weeks later a broken man, according to Peter Toren. He and his wife eventually died in Auschwitz.

Torens great-uncle, the wealthy Jewish industrialist and art collector David Friedmann, was forced to flee and the Nazis pillaged his extensive collection. Many of the works ended up in the hands of Hildebrand Gurlitt, a notorious German art dealer who traded in what the Nazis called degenerate art  works deemed inferior because they were un-German, Jewish or Communist or, as is the case with Impressionist and other Modernist works, did not employ traditionally realistic forms. Still, they were happy to sell the works to help fund their war machine.

Much of Gurlitts collection remained unseen for decades and experts feared they had been lost or destroyed. But a vast horde resurfaced by surprise in 2012 when German authorities raided a Munich apartment belonging to his son Cornelius while investigating him for tax evasion. Paintings by artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Henri Matisse were discovered.

The reclusive Cornelius Gurlitt, who said he had inherited much of the art from his father, kept more than 1,200 works in his Munich apartment and 250 more in Salzburg, Austria. The discovery brought renewed attention to the many unresolved cases of looted art that was never returned to original Jewish owners or their descendants. Cornelius Gurlitt died in 2014 at age 81, designating Switzerlands Kunstmuseum Bern as the sole heir to a collection worth billions of dollars.

Friedmanns daughter Charlotte died in Auschwitz, leaving Toren as the only descendant to stake a claim. After reclaiming Two Riders on the Beach, Toren tracked down another piece that had oddly made its way to Israel. After a lengthy negotiation he got back Basket Weavers as well, an Impressionist work depicting five boys weaving baskets out of straw.

Peter Toren said his father spent his final years pursuing the art collection and further efforts were ongoing to acquire more than 50 documented antiques seized from Friedmanns collection.

Despite his background, Toren had no problem using his language skills to cultivate German clients in New York, even those with Nazi connections. As a patent attorney, he once represented a Bavarian farm machinery company with ties to the infamous Nazi doctor Josef Mengele.

I asked my father how he could deal with Nazi clients and he told me that if he didnt do the work someone else would, Peter Toren said, before adding. And he charged such clients an unofficial 25% Nazi surcharge.

Torens grandson, Ben, said his grandfather pursued the art collection in retirement with the same unsentimental focus and tenacity as he did in his law career.

The artwork thing gave him a new lease on life, he said. He very strongly felt that these paintings were his paintings and it gave him a lot of purpose.

But he never presented himself as being any kind of victim and he never asked for any pity, he quickly added. He was always fairly stoic in his demeanor, in how he carried himself. His life experience required of him to have a rock-solid exterior. Thats how he presented himself to the world.

____

Follow Aron Heller at www.twitter.com/aronhellerap
Debates over when and how to reopen our society are raging right now. To aid our state and local policymakers, the Mackinac Center for Public Policy and the Michigan Chamber of Commerce recently published a set of guiding principles.

Protecting public health and promoting a strong economy need not be competing goals. Public health is rightfully a top priority for policymakers, though it involves more than preventing the spread of the new coronavirus. Physical and mental health are also harmed by recessions; we need a strong economy to fuel job creation, philanthropy and public services.

While many important decisions are being made in Lansing, state government wont be the driving force behind our recovery. The real energy will come from the private sector.

Were already seeing ways that businesses across the state have shifted their operations to contribute to the needs of Michiganders during this pandemic. Here in Midland, businesses like Dow, DuPont, Savant Group and Three Rivers Corporation have stepped up to provide needed items like hand sanitizer and personal protection equipment. Entrepreneurs and workers have proven their ingenuity and flexibility during the crisis, and they can continue to do so during the recovery. Thats not to say government doesnt have a role, but businesses will generate the jobs needed for the recovery, as well as much of the tax revenue needed by governments.

Government can speed up the economic recovery by empowering individuals and businesses. Throughout this crisis, weve seen the state relax certain regulations, such as certificate of need laws for hospitals and occupational licensing. Removing these restrictions, even temporarily, has helped. The same approach can be used in the recovery.

Policymakers should hesitate to show favoritism in their chosen solutions, such as giving taxpayer subsidies to select industries. Instead, the governor and legislators should focus on policies that broadly help people.

Another lesson: The economy should not and cannot be centrally planned. Gov. Gretchen Whitmers confusing and inconsistent executive orders are a case in point. For instance, landscapers are once again permitted to work, as long as theyre following social distancing guidelines. While this is a great step, other workers who engage in a similar level of human contact, including roofers and painters, were not given the same freedom to work. These arbitrary restrictions create confusion and despair.

Public officials must be transparent, especially when the rules are in flux. Michigans Freedom of Information Act says that we are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government. This is particularly important in these months of crisis: The state is wielding extraordinary powers to limit normal economic and social activities, and policymakers should frequently and willingly explain the rationale of these decisions.

It is inspiring to see people in this community support one another. Whether its a group of individuals sewing masks, a T-shirt shop helping other local businesses or a business owner donating meals to children struggling during this uncertainty, Midland has stepped up to the plate. As we strive to regain a sense of normalcy and reopen our society, Im confident that hardworking Michiganders will help us come out of this crisis stronger than ever before.

Michael J. Reitz is the executive vice president of the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and educational institute located in Midland.
By Express News Service

TUMAKURU: A family of five from Tumakuru including a seven months pregnant woman are stuck in Abu Dhabi, with all their efforts to reach out to the authorities having gone in vain.

Mechanical engineer Mohan Raj, his pregnant wife and two-year-old son from Sampige in Turuvekere taluk hoped that their ordeal would end soon as relief flights from Dubai have begun operating to various destinations in India.

They had applied to the Indian embassy to board a flight home but received no response at all. Mohan Raj's aged in-laws who had gone there to take care of their pregnant daughter also got stranded.

"The priority has been given to those in Dubai but like us seven other families in Abu Dhabi including three pregnant women have been stranded and some of their visas have also expired," Mohan Raj informed The New Indian Express.

He claimed that tweets to Chief Minister B S Yediyurappa and the central minister D V Sadananda Gowda also did not fetch results.

"We are hoping to board the next flight which is slated to take off on May 17. We request the CM and the minister to help us as we are ready to land at either Bengaluru or Mangaluru," he appealed.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Harbor traffic is down and container ships dont queue up at Ambrose Channel like they did before the pandemic, says Steven Kalil. The president of Caddell Dry Dock Co. can say one thing for sure, however -- the Left Coast Lifter is right at home on Staten Island.

Have you spotted this crane berthed on barge on the North Shore? Its certainly hard to miss. At 328-feet high the Left Coast Lifter stands among the highest points on the boroughs shoreline. When driving down North Burgher Avenue or winding around Richmond Terrace, its boom appears to dangle over the roadways. But the height is deceiving as the structure actually towers over the 103-year old shipyard, one of the largest full service shipyards in the New York metropolitan area.

In the business of transportation, the Caddell crew are essential workers. Painting, repairs and fine tuning continues on several Staten Island ferries and other ships.

We never shut down, said Kalil. Although with no public projects happening in the pandemic the Left Coast Lifter is left unemployed.

Its fine. Its sitting there. Theres no work for it. Its staying there for awhile, said Khalil.

The Left Coast Lifter is 30-stories high. Here it appears to tower over Richmond Terrace at North Burgher Avenue.

Some fun facts about this coastal fixture that arrived on Staten Island in the fall. The Left Coast Lifter is whats called a dumb barge, moved by a tug to its new assignments. The 30-story structure draws 22 feet of water and packs over five miles of cable. About a month ago, engineers from the company that owns it, TZC, came to start it up. Kalil caught a glimpse of the wiring and engine room. He was impressed.

The cranes official name is Left Coast Lifter because it was fabricated on the West Coast, born in an Oregon shipyard. Its resume includes rebuilding of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 2009 and reconfiguration of the formerly named Tappan Zee Bridge. Coming to the Empire State via the Panama Canal it was christened the I Lift NY crane as part of the re-branding of the Gov. Mario M. Cuomo Bridge.

That was its last assignment -- and one for the books. The barge cleared the Tappan Zee seemingly by a hair during the Neap Tide, a phenomenon that happens during quarter moons where there is a tiny difference between high and low tides.

Left Coast Lifter has become a welcome fixture at Caddell, says Kalil -- a little bit of familiar comfort in these uncomfortable times.

Pamela Silvestri is Advance Food Editor and food critic. She is a proud native of Staten Island who appreciates the boroughs shoreline and harbor traffic.
STORY LINK UKs Refusal to Extend Brexit Deadline Leaves the Pound Japanese Yen (GBP/JPY) Exchange Rate Lower

Pound Sterling Japanese Yen (GBP/JPY) Exchange Rate Falls as the UK Not Keen to Compromise on Brexit

The Sterling outlook remains negative as the latest round of Brexit negotiations this week didnt show any signs of progress in key areas.

Its clear that it is going to be a long road back to anything like normal trading conditions and, despite the lockdown beginning to be lifted, there will be a significant impact on companies and jobs for some time to come.

Japanese Yen (JPY) Rises as US Reignite Tensions with China

I don't know whether it's because the world's got other things to concentrate on, like Covid-19, or maybe the world's got used to the rhetoric.

Pound Japanese Yen Outlook: Will Japans Economy Enter a Technical Recession?

Like this piece? Please share with your friends and colleagues:

The Pound Sterling Japanese Yen (GBP/JPY) exchange rate slumped by around -0.5% this morning. This left the pairing trading at around 130.7370.Sterling suffered losses on Friday as weak data due to the coronavirus crisis and Brexit fears continued to plague the currency.GBP fell against the Yen after Boris Johnsons government reiterated its refusal to extend the current Brexit period beyond December.Added to this, Johnsons government said it was not keen to compromise with the European Union on trade negotiations.Commenting on this, Ipek Ozkardeskaya, a senior analyst at Swissquote Bank said:Meanwhile, GBP continued to suffer losses after survey data revealed that British manufacturers were not as confident about the swift return to work.The survey from Made UK revealed manufacturers believe it will take longer to recover from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, compared to just a few weeks ago.Around three-quarters expect business will not be back to normal within a period of six months. Added to this, around 36% of those surveyed by Made UK expect it will take more than a year to return to some sort of normality.Commenting on this, Stephen Phipson, Make UKs chief executive stated:The Japanese Yen made gains against the Pound on Friday as reignited trade tensions between the US and China caused little reaction.US President Donald Trump escalated tensions with China overnight after stating the United States may cut all ties with China over the coronavirus pandemic.Some analysts expect markets are used to the US Presidents rhetoric, and according to Kiwibank dealer, Mike Shirley:However, the safe-haven Japanese Yen was able to make gains against the Pound as worried investors flocked back to safety on the threat of a second wave of coronavirus infections.The Yen was able to remain steady against the US Dollar (USD), although edged lower this week after US Federal Reserve officials said the bank was unlikely to take rates into negative territory.Looking ahead, the Japanese Yen (JPY) could suffer some losses against the Pound (GBP) following the release of growth data.If Japans GDP slumps in the first quarter of 2020 following a contraction in the final quarter of 2019, it will dampen Yen sentiment as the economy would be in a technical recession.However, Sterling could give up some of its earlier gains against the Yen following the release of Tuesdays unemployment data.If Marchs unemployment rate rises higher than expected, it will weigh on the British currency and leave the Pound Japanese Yen (GBP/JPY) exchange rate flat.

International Money Transfer? Ask our resident FX expert a money transfer question or try John's new, free, no-obligation personal service! ,where he helps every step of the way, ensuring you get the best exchange rates on your currency requirements.

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China Literature (HKG:772) shareholders are no doubt pleased to see that the share price has had a great month, posting a 36% gain, recovering from prior weakness. The full year gain of 21% is pretty reasonable, too.

Assuming no other changes, a sharply higher share price makes a stock less attractive to potential buyers. 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). So some would prefer to hold off buying when there is a lot of optimism towards a stock. Perhaps the simplest way to get a read on investors' expectations of a business is to look at its Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio). A high P/E ratio means that investors have a high expectation about future growth, while a low P/E ratio means they have low expectations about future growth.

Check out our latest analysis for China Literature

How Does China Literature's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?

China Literature's P/E of 34.62 indicates some degree of optimism towards the stock. You can see in the image below that the average P/E (13.8) for companies in the media industry is lower than China Literature's P/E.

SEHK:772 Price Estimation Relative to Market May 14th 2020

Its relatively high P/E ratio indicates that China Literature shareholders think it will perform better than other companies in its industry classification. Clearly the market expects growth, but it isn't guaranteed. So investors should delve deeper. I like to check if company insiders have been buying or selling.

How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios

P/E ratios primarily reflect market expectations around earnings growth rates. That's because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the 'E' in the equation. And in that case, the P/E ratio itself will drop rather quickly. Then, a lower P/E should attract more buyers, pushing the share price up.

China Literature increased earnings per share by 8.4% last year. And its annual EPS growth rate over 3 years is 175%.

Story continues

Remember: P/E Ratios Don't Consider The Balance Sheet

It's important to note that the P/E ratio considers the market capitalization, not the enterprise value. In other words, it does not consider any debt or cash that the company may have on the balance sheet. Hypothetically, a company could reduce its future P/E ratio by spending its cash (or taking on debt) to achieve higher earnings.

Such expenditure might be good or bad, in the long term, but the point here is that the balance sheet is not reflected by this ratio.

Is Debt Impacting China Literature's P/E?

With net cash of CN5.0b, China Literature has a very strong balance sheet, which may be important for its business. Having said that, at 14% of its market capitalization the cash hoard would contribute towards a higher P/E ratio.

The Verdict On China Literature's P/E Ratio

China Literature has a P/E of 34.6. That's significantly higher than the average in its market, which is 9.6. EPS was up modestly better over the last twelve months. And the healthy balance sheet means the company can sustain growth while the P/E suggests shareholders think it will. What is very clear is that the market has become significantly more optimistic about China Literature over the last month, with the P/E ratio rising from 25.5 back then to 34.6 today. If you like to buy stocks that have recently impressed the market, then this one might be a candidate; but if you prefer to invest when there is 'blood in the streets', then you may feel the opportunity has passed.

Investors have an opportunity when market expectations about a stock are wrong. People often underestimate remarkable growth -- so investors can make money when fast growth is not fully appreciated. So this free visualization of the analyst consensus on future earnings could help you make the right decision about whether to buy, sell, or hold.

But note: China Literature may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with strong recent earnings growth (and a P/E ratio 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.
A Tauranga CBD accommodation provider who housed vulnerable community members in lockdown, says they are ready to welcome corporate travellers into their apartments as the country moves to level 2.

With the return of some domestic travel under level 2 restrictions, businesses and tourist areas remain cautiously optimistic that Kiwis will book holidays and restart corporate travel.

Quest Tauranga Central and Quest on Durham remained open for those needing emergency housing amid the lockdown.

Bay of Plenty Tourism CEO Kirstin Dunne says the impact of COVID-19 on the tourism industry has been significant, but she commends Quest Tauranga for doing what they could during lockdown.

I applaud Quests Tauranga properties for swiftly pivoting their business by providing accommodation to our communitys most vulnerable and, in doing so, retaining staff.

The manaakitanga and care shown by local Iwi and hapu in Te Moananui a Toi (the Coastal Bay of Plenty) for the hotel guests is exemplary.

Quest Apartment Hotels group general manager Adrian Turner says Quest would not have been able to provide this assistance without the help of the local Iwi.

This combination of forces has pivoted the local Tauranga Strand CBD toward success and will be the same in the other regional areas in which Quest has properties.

He adds that the Tauranga area is slowly rising back to rates seen at the beginning of the year, which is a good sign that it will soon thrive again.

Tauranga Chamber of Commerce chief executive Matt Cowley says Tauranga will likely continue its long-term population growth trends beyond the immediate pandemic.

With the continued steps toward innovation, infrastructure and with the new ideas created in light of the lowering alert level, Tauranga will become one of the best small cities in the area. With safety in mind, we cannot wait to welcome travellers back.
A second wave could coincide with seasonal flu or measles, making it potentially much worse - Telegraph

European countries should brace themselves for a deadly second wave of coronavirus infections because the pandemic is not over, the World Health Organisations top official in Europe has said.

In an exclusive interview with The Telegraph, Dr Hans Kluge, director for the WHO European region, delivered a stark warning to countries beginning to ease their lockdown restrictions, saying that now is the "time for preparation, not celebration".

Dr Kluge stressed that, as the number of cases of Covid-19 in countries such as the UK, France and Italy was beginning to fall, it did not mean the pandemic was coming to an end. The epicentre of the European outbreak is now in the east, with the number of cases rising in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, he warned.

Countries should use this time wisely and start to strengthen public health systems as well as building capacity in hospitals, primary care and intensive care units, he said.

"Singapore and Japan understood early on that this is not a time for celebration, it's a time for preparation. That's what Scandinavian countries are doing  they don't exclude a second wave, but they hope it will be localised and they can jump on it quickly, said Dr Kluge.

He also warned that a second wave could coincide with an outbreak of other infectious diseases.

Im very concerned about a double wave  in the fall, we could have a second wave of Covid and another one of seasonal flu or measles. Two years ago we had 500,000 children who didn't have their first shot of the measles vaccine," he said.

Many experts, including England's chief medical officer, Professor Chris Whitty, have warned that a second wave of the pandemic could be even deadlier than the first, pointing to the 1918-20 Spanish flu pandemic as evidence.

When the Spanish flu first emerged in March 1918, it had the hallmarks of the typical seasonal illness  but it then came back in an even more virulent and deadly form in the autumn, eventually killing an estimated 50 million people.

Story continues

Troop movements at the end of the First World War are thought to have accelerated the spread of the disease, which also had a third and fourth wave although these were not as devastating.

"We know from history that in pandemics the countries that have not been hit early on can be hit in a second wave," said Dr Kluge. "What are we going to see in Africa and Eastern Europe? They're behind the curve  some countries are saying: 'We're not like Italy' and then, two weeks later, boom! They can unfortunately get hit by a second wave, so we have to be very very careful."

In the last couple of weeks, many European countries have started unlocking their shuttered economies and allowing some resumption of normal life.

Earlier this month, the Spanish population was allowed to exercise outside for the first time in seven weeks, and restaurants in some areas of Germany have reopened. In France, people will no longer need travel permits to explain why they have left home.

Staff at a Berlin restaurant prepare to reopen following the lockdown - Reuters

But in the absence of an effective treatment for the virus, or a vaccine, Dr Kluge said any lockdown had to be accompanied by rigorous public health measures including comprehensive contact tracing and testing.

A pilot NHS contact tracing app was launched on the Isle of Wight last week, with the Government saying it would be rolled out to the rest of the country by the end of the month if it proves successful.

The number of tests being carried out has been growing slowly but is still not at the 100,000-a day-level promised by Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary. Analysis by the Telegraph shows that around 80,000 tests a day are being carried out.

Dr Kluge said the lack of a treatment or vaccine meant any easing of lockdown restrictions had to be done "gradually and carefully", adding: "People think lockdown is finished. Nothing has changed. The full disease control package has to be in place. That's the key message."

He said that he hoped the pandemic had shown that health should now be at the top of the political agenda.

"We always thought that health was the driver of economic prosperity, but it's worse  where there's no health, theres no economy," he added. "This is a lesson that cannot be forgotten.

"Public health deserves its place at the top of the agenda. And sometimes when a leader has suffered personally, it helps," he added.

Protect yourself and your family by learning more about Global Health Security
Senior Life receives $20K donation

SM Energy on Thursday presented a $20,000 donation to Senior Life Midland that will go toward its COVID-19 relief fund, said Executive Director Kathleen Kirwan-Haynie.

This will greatly help us out with the efforts we have put into place, she said. We have seen a lot of challenges. ... Our seniors are struggling. (W)e have a community partner that steps up and tells us they want to help and asks how. It is really amazing our community sees how important this effort for Meals on Wheels is, as well.

SM Energy maintenance foreman Gilbert Navarro said it has been great to give back to seniors because they are living history and can give wisdom during times of trouble.

This year we decided to go a different route and support a lot of small organizations, Navarro said. We wanted to help the whole community this year. We started with $100,000 giving it out to four or five organizations to help right off the bat.

--Jacy Lewis

United Way launches Senior Support Service

United Way of Midland recently launched Senior Support Service for coronavirus efforts. The purpose of the project is to ensure that the needs of seniors, those who are homebound and other vulnerable populations are met during the COVID-19 crisis.

Services include:

--staffing a call center to take calls and make referrals to those who need specific services;

--obtaining and delivering food for those who are homebound and/or cannot get out; and

--provide timely follow-up calls to those who have called for assistance.

Senior Support Service will work in conjunction with Senior Life Midland, Casa de Amigos, the Area Agency on Aging, 211 and other local organizations. United Way is seeking COVID-19 funds through the city of Midland.

The call center number is 432-260-7288. For more information visit uwmidland.org.

WTFB meets challenge grant

The West Texas Food Bank has met the challenge match provided by the Silva Law Group and the Permian Basin Trial Lawyers Association and in doing so, has sufficient funds to provide 1.2 million meals, according to a press release from the nonprofit.

The food bank reached its goal of raising $100,000, which will be combined with the matching funds of $100,000 and the additional $100,000 already donated by the Silva Law Group and the association.

Buffalo Wild Wings to reopen

All Buffalo Wild Wings locations in the state of Texas will reopen its dining rooms on Wednesday, according to a press release from the restaurant chain.

The following steps will be taken in accordance with federal, state and local guidelines:

--All high-touch point areas will be cleaned with increased frequency.

--Tables and chairs in the dining room and bar areas have been removed or specific tables/sections will not be in use to allow for a minimum of 6 feet between guests.

--Single-use, disposable menus and condiments will be provided.

--Single-use cutlery and beverage cups will be provided to all guests upon request.

--Wellness checks will be conducted upon team members arrival for their shifts.

--Buffalo Wild Wings will continue to serve guests via delivery and takeout through the Buffalo Wild Wings app or BuffaloWildWings.com. BOGO Wing Tuesday and BOGO Boneless Thursday deals will be offered via dine-in, take-out and delivery.
Bazaar Corporate Radar | Feb 22, 2021, 12:00 AM IST

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Bazaar Corporate Radar is your window into the minds of top CEOs, Boardrooms, global economists, fund managers and sector analysts. If it?s making news, you?ll find it on Bazaar Corporate Radar.
As many as 2,241 Indian and Nepalese citizens, who were stranded at the border due to the Covid-19 lockdown, were allowed to go to their respective countries on Thursday, officials in Bahraich and Lakhimpur Kheri said on Friday.

In Bahraich, the exchange took place at Rupaidiha on the India-Nepal border through which 1,024 Indian nationals and 723 Nepalese citizens were allowed to go to their countries, superintendent of police, Bahraich, Vipin Kumar Mishra said.

Bahraich district magistrate Shambhu Kumar said these 1,074 Indian citizens would now be kept at shelter homes in Nanpara and Motipur tehsil. They would be screened, he added.

In Lakhimpur Kheri, 322 stranded Nepalese nationals were taken to the Gaurifanta border by bus and 140 Indian citizens were brought back to India through the same border, officials said.

The step was taken after Lakhimpur Kheri district SK Singh held talks with the Nepalese authorities. The Nepalese citizens have already completed their quarantine in India.

Meanwhile, Lakhimpur Kheri district magistrate SK Singh, along with superintendent of police Poonam, visited the district court premises and took stock of sanitisation measures, thermal scanning of visitors and other health protocols being observed there.
At least 117 lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender persons were murdered in Mexico in 2019, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's first year in office, which saw 34,582 total homicides in the country.

According to a report published by gay rights organization Letra S, 2019 assassination figures of LGBT people eclipsed 2018 totals by 27 percent.

'In the vast majority of cases, the sexual orientation and gender identity of the victim had something to do' with the killings, Letra S director Alejandro Brito said in an interview with EFE published Friday.

The report also found that during the last five years, 441 members of the LGBT community have been murdered in Mexico.

At least 117 members of the LGBT community were murdered in Mexico in 2019, an increase of 27 percent from the previous year. A total of 441 lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people were assassinated in the last five years. File photo from November 11, 2018 shows members of the LGBT community who separated from a migrant caravan that traveled through Mexico

Alejandro Brito, director of Mexico-based Letra S gay rights organization, said that members of the LGBT community have been targeted in the country due to their 'sexual orientation and gender identity'

At least 26 gay persons have been killed during the first four months of 2020, including 20 transgender women. Among the other victims were two lesbians and four gay men.

'They are trying to live their lives in the most open and normal way possible and this may awaken in certain sectors with a marked machismo, or fundamentalist sectors, or refusal to express sexual and gender diversity publicly,' said Brito.

The report, which was released ahead of International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia, noted that 64 transgender women were killed last year. As many as 36 victims were identified as gay men.

A drag queen in wedding dress and rainbow umbrella at a 2018 LGBT+ parade in Mexico City

Supporters [photographed above July 1, 2019] wave gay pride rainbow flags during a rally on the one-year anniversary of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador's election, in the Zocalo, Mexico City's main square

Contestants in the Miss Transgender Beauty pageant from the states of Jalisco, Sonora and Nuevo Leon competed in swimsuits during the July 27, 2019 event in Mexico City

At least nine of the victims murdered in 2019 were LGBT activists and six were public figures. Two migrants from Central America were also killed.

Brito said some of the murders can be linked to criminals who persecute homosexual men and other suspects who kill transgender sex workers.

Brito added that innocent victims have been caught in the middle of disputes between business owners preyed on by criminal organizations.

'We have also seen the number of LGBT people who are victims of organized crime grow, either because they work, for example, in LGBT bars and criminals retaliate because they do not pay [extortion fees), they come and massacre [them], he said.
A logo of Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. (TSMC) is seen at its headquarters in Hsinchu, Taiwan, on Aug. 31, 2018. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters/File Photo)

Taiwan Semiconductor Maker to Set Up $12 Billion Plant in Arizona

'High-tech chips will be Made in America once again,' Mike Pompeo said

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation (TSMC), the worlds biggest contract chipmaker, said it will build a $12 billion factory in Arizona, creating over 1,600 jobs and boosting the Trump administrations efforts to reduce dependence on foreign-based supply chains of key technologies.

The TSMC facility in Arizona will increase U.S. economic independence, bolster our safety and competitiveness, and strengthen our leadership in high-tech manufacturing, said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, in a statement.

The Taiwanese company, which at an estimated market capitalization of over $255 billion is the worlds most valuable semiconductor maker, said it intends to initiate the investment in 2021, and will be developing a state-of-the-art five-nanometer semiconductor fabrication foundry. The chips it makes can be used in high-end defense and communications devices.

With TSMCs commitment, high-tech chips will be Made in America once againthe nation where the semiconductor industry was invented, Pompeo said.

These chips will power everything from artificial intelligence to 5G base stations to F-35s, he added.

Pompeo also said the deal strengthens bilateral relations with Taiwan, which he called a vibrant democracy and force for good in the world.

The Taiwanese chipmaker said the plan was to build the plant over nine years and that, when completed, it will be able to process up to 20,000 silicon wafers per month.

This project is of critical, strategic importance to a vibrant and competitive U.S. semiconductor ecosystem that enables leading U.S. companies to fabricate their cutting-edge semiconductor products within the United States, TSMC said in a statement.

The move appears to be a win for the Trump administrations efforts to wrestle global tech supply chains back from China.

It comes as President Donald Trump has stepped up criticism of the Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) trade practices and Beijings handling of the outbreak of the CCP virus, the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan and causes COVID-19.

Trump has long pledged to bring manufacturing back from overseas and now a steep economic slump brought on by the global pandemic is driving a government-wide push to end the practice of U.S. companies offshoring production to China and, more broadly, to reduce Americas foreign supply chain dependency.

We have a supply chain where theyre made in all different parts of the world, Trump said in an interview with Fox Business Maria Bartiromo that aired Thursday.

And one little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up, Trump said, adding, We should have them all in the United States.

U.S. Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross touted the deal as another indication that President Trumps policy agenda has led to a renaissance in American manufacturing.

TSMC is a major supplier to U.S. tech giants such as Apple and Qualcomm, as well as Chinese firms like Huawei. Washington has put Huawei, which has links to the CCP, on a trade blacklist over allegations that it poses a security threat, which the company denies.

Credit Suisse and JP Morgan analysts cited by Reuters believe that by announcing an investment in the United States, the Taiwanese chipmaker hopes the Trump administration might drop or delay plans to require an export license for semiconductors made by U.S.-designed chip-making technologies. The proposed new rule would let the Commerce Department block the sale of TSMC-made chips to Huawei, which accounts for around 14 percent of the Taiwanese companys semiconductor sales.

While it is hard to be certain, we believe that TSMC announcing a U.S. Fab could remove the threat of further Huawei restrictions in the very near-term at least, JP Morgan analysts said.

Eric Sayers, an Asia security expert and adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security think-tank, told the Financial Times that TSMCs decision highlights the companys intention to support the development of an advanced, U.S.-based microelectronic ecosystem.

Remaining the leader in this industry will be critical to future economic and military competitiveness, he told the publication. At a geopolitical level, I cant think of a better big idea for tying the US and Taiwan together than working to ensure the free world stays the leader.

Reuters contributed to this report.
Vijay Mallya, the high-flying owner of now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, on Thursday lost his application seeking leave to appeal his extradition to India in the UK Supreme Court, setting a 28-day clock on his removal from the UK.

New Delhi: Painstaking and meticulous investigation and countless visits to London by CBI officer Suman Kumar finally bore fruit after three long years in the bank fraud case against flamboyant businessman Vijay Mallya.

Mallya, the high-flying owner of now-defunct Kingfisher Airlines, on Thursday lost his application seeking leave to appeal his extradition to India in the UK Supreme Court, setting a 28-day clock on his removal from the UK.

The extradition case pertains to the alleged bank fraud of Rs 900 crore in IDBI Bank. The embattled liquor baron also faces probe in another case related to alleged fraud amounting of more than Rs 9,000 crore in a consortium of banks led by State Bank of India.

Kumar was assigned the case against Mallya, known for his ostentatious lifestyle and who had made his way to the Indian Parliament as a Rajya Sabha member, as the DSP of Banking Frauds and Security Cell, Mumbai in October, 2015.

Kumar is now an additional superintendent of police in the country's premier investigation agency.

Mallya was facing the media heat as his failing aviation company was finding it difficult to pay staff salaries and retain premium services it had promised to its customers with clamour for booking him increasing day by day, sources in the agency had said.

It was a tricky situation for the CBI as the lending banks did not file any complaint against Mallya in spite of serious allegations of fraud against him, they said.

The agency decided to go ahead and used its source-based information to register the first FIR against Mallya related to Rs 900 crore alleged loan fraud against him. And Kumar was entrusted with the probe.

The officer, who joined the agency as a 23-year-old sub-inspector, by then had an impeccable record as an ace investigator of white-collar crimes winning the CBI gold medal for best investigating officer in 2002 handed over by then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2004.

Fifty-five-year-old Kumar, honed in traditional CBI style of investigation, had also received the Police Medal for Meritorious Service in 2008, outstanding investigator in 2013 and the President's Police Medal for Distinguished Service in 2015 when he took over the case.

In 2016, Mallya escaped the country causing an embarrassment to the agency and triggering an uphill legal battle in the courts of the United Kingdom to bring him back.

The then additional director Rakesh Asthana took over the case as the Chief of the Special Investigation Team. He and Kumar proved to be a potent team investigating the case, making rounds of London to ensure not a single hearing is missed and coordinating with the Crown Prosecution Service which was representing the case in courts in London.

The job was difficult as India had an abysmal record in succeeding in extradition cases in Europe, especially the United Kingdom. The case was fought by the Crown Prosecution Service with active support from the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate.

Kumar ensured a concrete case of fraud is established and a charge sheet is filed in India to make a strong case for Mallya's extradition. It was imperative that India had a case against Mallya which was punishable in laws of the United Kingdom.

Through his exhaustive probe, Kumar managed to establish alleged fraud and money laundering in his probe for which charge sheets were filed in India.

"We were not contesting a trial there. We had to convince the courts that a prima facie case is made out to justify extradition to India," a senior officer said.

The findings reached by Kumar in his probe managed to achieve a conclusive argument in support of extradition of Mallya to India which culminated in the UK High Court denying him the leave to approach the Supreme Court to challenge his extradition.

Kumar was lauded by the CBI for his efforts in the case.

"CBI appreciates the painstaking investigation, the hard work and the meticulous efforts of Investigating Officer Suman Kumar, Additional SP, CBI in successfully pursuing investigation and extradition proceedings against the fugitive," the agency spokesperson said.
Thirty municipal areas account for 79 per cent of India's coronavirus infection caseload, the Group of Ministers on COVID-19 was informed on Friday, as the death toll in the country due to the disease rose to 2,649 and the total tally of cases climbed to 81,970.

IMAGE: Women passengers wearing masks amid concerns over COVID-19 outbreak, arrive at New Delhi Railway Station to board a train for their destinations. Photograph: Arun Sharma/PTI Photo

An increase of 100 deaths and 3,967 cases was recorded in the last 24 hours since Thursday 8 am, according to the Union health ministry.

The number of active cases stood at 51,401 while 27,919 people have recovered and one patient has migrated, it said.

"Thus, around 34.06 per cent patients have recovered so far," a senior health ministry official said.

As cases continue to rise, the GoM deliberated on the containment strategy and management of COVID-19, as well as the measures being taken by the Centre and various states.

At the 15th meeting of the high-level GoM held, under the chairmanship of Union health minister Harsh Vardhan, a detailed presentation on the current situation due to the coronavirus outbreak, both globally and in India, was made, according to a health ministry statement.

The GoM was informed at the meeting that worldwide, the total COVID-19 cases stand at 42,48,389 with 2,94,046 deaths and fatality rate of 6.92 per cent, whereas in India, the fatality rate is pegged at 3.23 per cent.

It was also informed that "there are 30 municipal areas which constitute 79 per cent of India's caseload", the statement said.

A total of 27,920 people have been cured of the disease with 1,685 in the last 24 hours, taking the recovery rate to 34.06 per cent, the ministry said.

"It was also highlighted that the impact of the lockdown was seen on the doubling rate which improved from 3.4 days in the pre-lockdown week to 12.9 days in the last week," it said.

At the meeting it was stressed that the focus of COVID-19 management strategy needs to be on the states with the highest number of confirmed cases and fatalities as well as on treatment and case fatality management, for which timely detection and contact tracing were the best way forward, it said.

The GoM was also apprised about various recommendations of the Centre for containment zone management pertaining to indicators, root causes and action required.

These have been shared with the states and union territories, the ministry said.

Civil aviation minister Hardeep Singh Puri, external affairs minister S Jaishankar, minister of state for home Nityananda Rai, minister of state for shipping, and chemical and fertilizers Mansukh Lal Mandaviya, and minister of state for health Ashwini Kumar Choube were present at the meeting.

On health infrastructure preparedness, the GoM was told that as on Friday, a total of 8,694 facilities comprising 919 dedicated COVID-19 hospitals, 2,036 health centres and 5,739 care centres with a total of 2,77,429 beds for severe and critical cases, 29,701 Intensive Care Unit (ICU) beds and 5,15,250 isolation beds, are available.

Also, 18,855 ventilators are now available to combat the virus, the health ministry said.

The Group of Ministers was also informed that domestic manufacturers have reached a daily production capacity of nearly three lakh personal protective equipment and an equal number of N-95 masks which is sufficient to meet the nation's requirement in the near future.

Moreover, ventilator manufacturing by domestic manufacturers has also started and orders have been placed.

The Centre has provided 84.22 lakh N-95 masks and 47.98 lakh PPE to states, union territories and central institutions.

Indian Council of Medical Research director general Balram Bhargava informed the GoM that the testing capacity has increased in the country to 1,00,000 tests per day through 509 government and private laboratories.

The number of RT-PCR tests for detection of COVID-19 in India crossed the two million mark on Friday, ICMR officials said.

A total of 20,39,952 samples have been tested as on May 15 at 9 am in the country with 92,911 tests being conducted since Thursday 9 am, Dr Rajnikant Srivastava, ICMR's head of Department of Research Management, Policy Planning and Communication in Delhi said.

The GoM was also apprised about the efforts of the ministry of external affairs and the civil aviation ministry in cooperation with state governments to prepare a staggered timeline of flights to bring back Indian citizens stranded abroad.

"In Phase-1 of the exercise, around 12,000 Indians have been brought back and quarantined in the respective states," the health ministry said.

Union health minister Vardhan, meanwhile, has appealed to all states and union territories to ban sale of smokeless tobacco products and spitting in public places in line with the orders of the Rajasthan and Jharkhand governments to prevent the spread of coronavirus infection.

In a letter to all state health ministers, he said smokeless tobacco users have a tendency to spit in public places or otherwise and therefore, increase health risks especially those of spreading contagious diseases like COVID-19, tuberculosis, swine flu, encephalitis and others.

In another significant development, with COVID-19 cases continuing to rise in South-East Asia, the WHO cautioned countries in the region to take "evidence-informed action" and conduct careful assessment of the local epidemiology before winding down the health and social measures taken to combat the virus.

The region has nearly 1,22,000 cases and 4,000 deaths due to COVID-19. In India, the death toll rose to 2,649 and the number of cases climbed to 81,970, according to latest data.

Countries in the region are in various transmission scenarios and the cases are increasing. In every transmission scenario, the core public health measures remain - rapidly detect, test, isolate, care and trace contacts, said Dr Poonam Khetrapal Singh, Regional Director, WHO South-East Asia.

Fatalities continued to rise in India with 100 more deaths since Thursday. Of the 100 deaths, 44 were in Maharashtra, 20 in Gujarat, 9 in Delhi, 8 in West Bengal, five each in Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, four in Rajasthan, two each in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka and one in Andhra Pradesh.
Essential that 24 hour turnaround in test and trace system is ready before autumn flu season hits

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 15th, 2020

Welsh Government has published more of the scientific and technical research, and evidence they have received to form a response to the pandemic in Wales.

The latest advice document from the Technical Advisory Cell (TAC) has been published, although public now it is ten days old.

The Cell is co-chaired by Dr Orford and the nameless Deputy Director for Technology and Digital.

Despite being asked for a list of who is in the Cell twice, Welsh Government just say: Membership is drawn from Welsh Government, Public Health Wales, Cardiff University and Swansea University. A range of experts from different disciplines are included covering public health, health protection, medicine, epidemiology, modelling, technology, data science, statistics, microbiology, molecular biology, immunology, genomics, physical sciences and research.

The TAC is a conduit and interpretation group, interpreting UK Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) outputs into a Welsh context, relay relevant information and questions from Welsh Government to SAGE as well as feed the information to groups such as Local Resilience Fora.

The four page document outlines a Wales-wide picture with no split between the north and south, despite it being reiterated several times recently the virus is spreading at different rates.

The TAC notes measurements from NHS Wales and data monitoring including a weekly survey of 500

individuals, show that the infection is slowly receding in Wales and people are broadly complying with the social distancing regulations, however the latter is the verdict before the tone change in England seen by many in Wales.

The report notes, Estimates of adherence to current measures is estimated to be between 60% and 70%. There continues to be strong support for the measures in Wales (and in the UK), and most people in Wales continue to follow the social distancing guidelines.

However reporting ten days ago it does note, There are signs that the public may be getting tired of lockdown and may be starting to reduce their compliance. The most recent survey data shows continuing compliance, but with signs that is falling.

Although the situation may have changed in the last week or two, the report states it is too early to say if there is weakening compliance.

There is some insight to how the test and trace system could work, with the aim to isolate contacts of a possible positive index case as soon as possible.

At least 80% of contacts of an index case would need to be contacted for a system to be effective, along with those told to isolate actually following the rules, that is stated as required for the system to be effective.

An ideal setup would see isolation only taking place once it is confirmed a positive index case exists, however that relies on there being a very quick turnaround on a test. To start with the system will have suspected index cases isolating along with identified contacts, even if the test results for the index case are not yet available. Contacts could be released from isolation if the index case tests negative.

Currently it appears there are no plans to test the contacts of an index case, as there is insufficient evidence to determine if that would significantly impact the epidemic compared with isolation alone.

A timeline, mixed with a warning, is also included It is considered essential that the testing capability (i.e. <24hr turn-around of index case tests) is reached before the autumn/winter flu season when a large number of those reporting symptoms may not have COVID-19.
This semester, many students discovered a new type of college experience after their campuses shut down amid the coronavirus pandemic. As one of those students, my commute has been reduced to the time it takes for me to boot up my laptop, my classrooms have transformed into Zoom calls and many class conversations now take place on discussion boards. Tackling internships has also become a new kind of challenge in this virtual era. For many students, myself included, internships are a vital way to learn and gain experience outside of the classroom in the fields they're studying. This semester, I'm interning at CNBC Make It as an editorial intern. It's a position I started in person, and though I'm typing from home today, the work itself is largely unchanged. I still check my emails daily, research topics and reach out to sources from home. Despite not working in a traditional office environment, I still wanted to make the most of the experience. I also spoke with Barbara Safani, owner of Career Solvers, a career management firm based in New York City, about how students can make the most of any virtual internship experience.

Some tasks are easier to complete from home than others, Safani told me. Work that requires analysis, research, communication or preparation of documents can be well-suited for a remote internship. But ultimately, "really any internship can work at home, as long as the person doing the internship is receiving some sort of consistent guidance and feedback from somebody on staff," she says. I have found this to be true during my experience at CNBC Make It. The work challenges are the same regardless of whether I'm at home or in the office. Two things that have made a huge difference for me while working from home are transparency from my supervisor and helpful feedback on my ideas and work. Even across a significantly longer distance, I haven't struggled with miscommunication. Here's what it's been like to transition to a virtual internship and tips for how to be a great intern, even from a distance.

The perks of a virtual internship

When I think about the time I spent in office, I always go back to the first day of my internship. I'd been surprised to feel my ears pop in the elevator as it climbed up some thirty stories high and still recall the feeling of trepidation that set in as it halted abruptly for me to exit. My new desk was adorned with a welcome sign and offered a view of the surrounding skyscrapers. The day started with an office tour that turned into a blur of warm welcomes and introductions. I did my best to memorize the many names I heard and chart a map of the office layout in my mind. But it wasn't long until I adjusted to office life. I checked in with the coworkers who who sat closest to me and slowly learned about how they each contribute to Make It. When I compare the experience of working in an office versus working remotely, what I miss the most is all the little incidental conversations I had: small talk by the coffee machine and by-the-way questions that don't happen as frequently now. Today, my desk is a dining room table and my cats have become my coworkers. But I've still learned a lot and found advantages to working remotely. I'm able to focus on the digital aspects of my work with fewer distractions, and I've become a more effective communicator during non-visual interactions. I word my questions carefully and really think about how they will be perceived before I ask them.

Safani agrees that there are a number of advantages to virtual internships. For tech-savvy students, this is a great opportunity to showcase your technological skills and provide support for your coworkers, she says. Shy or introverted students might benefit from working remotely because you won't face "all of the same kind of visual representation of office life and power." "It creates a very even playing field," Safani says. "In some ways, it might help somebody who is somewhat introverted or shy because it might be less intimidating. If they're comfortable with the virtual environment, that's going work to their advantage." Transitioning from working in a traditional office environment to working remotely wasn't easy, but I was able to problem solve and adapt along the way. Soon, this new type of work setting started to feel abundantly more natural to me.

How to succeed in a virtual internship

This summer, many students will be embarking on virtual internship experiences. Here are three tips for making the most of your program, regardless of what field you will be working in. 1. Show that you already know how to work remotely If you are applying to virtual internships right now, a remote interview is the perfect opportunity to showcase how you've adapted to a virtual learning environment at school, since many of the skills you've gained studying remotely will be transferable to a remote professional experience, Safani says.

People applying for internships need to view it from the lens of, 'How do I prove to an employer that I can work remotely and be successful? And what are the examples I have to prove that?' Barbara Safani Career Solvers, Owner

"In any interview, it's all about showing what experience the candidate has in the past that will help benefit them when they go to a new company," Safani says. "The twist on it now is that people applying for internships need to view it from the lens of, How do I prove to an employer that I can work remotely and be successful? What are the examples I have to prove that?" 2. Focus on communication It might be easy to feel discouraged if you didn't anticipate this type of internship experience when you applied. But it doesn't have to be any less exciting just because it's online, Safani says. Focus on making the most of the learning experiences available and communicate clearly with your new team members, she says. Even though you aren't working together in person, interns can prove themselves as valuable team members by thinking proactively about how they can approach tasks and problems and by showing that they are able to take on additional responsibilities and challenges.
Muhammad fired anyway  two shots, one of which went through Hayess left armpit, the other of which grazed his arm. Hayes, who is developmentally disabled and functions at the cognitive level of a child, according to his attorney Gabriel Hardy, fled and later was treated at a hospital and released. The incident didnt make much if any news at the time, in large part because no one was gravely hurt in what the Chicago Police Departments initial statement blandly referred to as an armed confrontation.
Senator Susan Collins is fighting for her political life with a new television ad that says in a time of crisis, real leaders step forward. Others disappear.

The ad touts that the Maine Republican co-wrote the Paycheck Protection Program thats provided $2.5 billion in forgivable loans to more than 26,000 small businesses in the state. It doesnt mention that she also allowed special interests and big donors to access the Paycheck Protection Program, or PPP.

All it took was three little words.

Collins acknowledged in a radio interview on Maine broadcaster Mike Violettes radio show Wednesday morning that she was one of the senators whod worked to include an exception in the bill that allowed big hotel and restaurant chains to receive PPP money as long as they had fewer than 500 employees per physical location.

Noting that the initial draft of the PPP did not have that carve-in for chains, Common Causes Beth Rotman, an expert in money and politics, told the Daily Beast, Essentially a combination of wealthy special interests together with well-placed contributors at a critical moment bought a revision to our stimulus package that defined small business as including big business because they owned large franchises made up of hundreds of smaller entities. They were following the law they helped write.

An examination of contributions to Collins for Senator, and to her leadership PAC, during the first quarter of 2020 reveals $13,000 in contributions in mid-to-late February from the American Hotel and Lodging Association PAC, the Hilton Worldwide PAC, and the International Franchise Association.

Those contributionsa fraction of the money shes raised is this cyclecame before the PPP bill was under consideration, as the economic damage the virus would inflict became clear in March. After the bill was passed later that month, hotel and restaurant chains of all sizes moved quickly to secure the forgivable loans, sparking public outrage. A Pennsylvania investment firm that owns the Ritz-Carlton Coconut Grove in Miami applied for as many as 48 of the taxpayer-backed loans, according to the Orlando Sentinel.

Story continues

At the end of April, the CEO of the American Hotel & Lodging Association co-wrote an op-ed for the Bangor Daily News with the CEO of Hospitality Maine, declaring that Maine hoteliers, and the industry at large, are lucky to have Collins advocating on our behalf and stopping just short of endorsing her re-election bid as Maines tourist industry struggles to adapt to COVID-19.

Collins office did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

In her interview with Violette on Wednesday morning, Collins said that  I was able to get an exception included in the bill. And I think its made a real difference to some of our restaurants and hotels in Maine that are locally owned and needed that kind of relief.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio, who also pushed for those three little words, had tweeted on Monday, April 20 that his legislative intent was to help small franchisees, and that the Treasury Department should correct the imbalance.

Nobody disputes that the hotel industry has been especially hard hit by the pandemicnine times worse than it was after 9/11, according to the op-ed in the Bangor Daily News. But the issue with the PPP was about who should get emergency funding from the government, and who were the free riders. Some like Shake Shack and the LA Lakers that took money quickly returned it, shamed by the publicity. The Treasury Department issued new guidelines to emphasize that companies with access to capital in ways that small businesses do not have should back away from the government trough, though not all of those companies have backed away.

According to The Washington Post, publicly traded companies received more than $1 billion in PPP funds meant for small businesses. They included 43 companies with more than 500 workers, and several recipients prosperous enough to pay executives $2 million or more.

By releasing an ad crediting herself as the creator of the PPP, Collins is betting that voters in Maine will remember the good things about it: that the government acted quickly and was able to set aside partisan feelings to get money to people that needed it.

Shes hoping voters wont blame her for the fact that so many of the loans went to big businesses with deep pockets instead of the mom-and-pop businesses she likes to tout.

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A 49-year-old Mumbai man, suspected to be key conduit in touch with Pakistan spies in the Visakhapatnam espionage case, has been arrested for paying off navy personnel, the National Investigation Agency said on Friday.

Mohammed Haroon Lakdawala used to travel to Karachi in Pakistan for cross-border trade. During one of these visits, he came in contact with two spies Akbar and Rizwan who arranged with him to make deposits into the bank account of navy personnel at regular intervals, an NIA statement said.

The NIA had taken over the probe in late December.

The spy ring was busted much earlier by the Andhra Pradesh police that had been working along with central intelligence agencies. The security agencies dubbed it Operation Dolphin Nose, a reference to the hill next to the Eastern Naval Command in Visakhapatnam where naval offices and a residential complex are located.

In all, 14 people including 11 navy personnel and a Pakistani-born Indian national Shaista Qaiser have been arrested in this case.

According to the NIA, Pakistan-based spies recruited agents in India to collect sensitive and classified information regarding movements of naval ships, submarines and location of other defence establishments.

The navy personnel had mostly come in contact with Pakistani nationals through various social media platforms such as Facebook and WhatsApp etc. The payments were made via Lakdawala.

Investigators had earlier told Hindustan Times that the navy personnel, mostly sailors, had not revealed any significant information and were paid between Rs 5,000 and Rs 10,000.
J.C. Penney is planning to file for bankruptcy protection, people familiar with the matter tell CNBC.

Its advisors are currently working on a bankruptcy filing that could come early Friday morning, they said. They cautioned there is still a chance that final negotiations between the retailer and its lenders spill into the weekend and delay the filing.

J.C. Penney employed roughly 90,000 full-time and part-time employees as of February. It is working on a plan that would contemplate closing 180 to 200 stores while in bankruptcy. The retailer had 846 department stores as of February.

The Plano, Texas-based retailer is planning on filing for bankruptcy in Corpus Christi, Texas, the people said. It has been negotiating with its first lien lenders a $450 million loan to finance the bankruptcy, which would require the troubled retailer to hit certain goals to receive the second half of it, CNBC previously reported.

Because it is working so quickly to finalize its bankruptcy documents, it may not get them all done in time to draw from the initial funds its first day in bankruptcy. As such, it may need to wait until a June 2 court hearing to begin drawing from the loan, the people said.

The people requested anonymity because the information is confidential. A spokesperson for J.C. Penney declined to comment.

In filing for bankruptcy, J.C. Penney will join fellow department stores Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores as victims of the pandemic, which has forced their doors shut but whose ailments far predated the virus. Department stores have struggled to maintain a foothold in U.S. retail, as brands sidestepped them by selling to shoppers directly, and shoppers have abandoned the mall in which many are based.

Sales at J.C. Penney have fallen annually since 2016. Its roughly 846 store footprint is less than a quarter of its store base in 2001, and its nearly $11 billion in sales the last fiscal year are almost a third of its sales that year.

The retailer dates back to 1913, when James Penney converted a chain of 34 stores into the J.C Penney company. J.C. Penney offered rural America their first depot, providing farmers and others a one-stop-shop to buy essential goods at bargain prices. The retailer broke ground by eschewing credit, based on Penney's belief it is better to charge customers what they could afford without them having to take on debt.

By 1928, it worked its store base up to 1,000 stores  a year before the company went public, and the Great Depression.

In the 1960s, it sets its eyes on suburban America and headed to the mall, where suburban America was shopping. It pushed into affordable fashion, which it promoted in 1,000-page catalogs it launched 1963, decades after then-rival Sears had come out with its own.

By 1994, the retailer had $20.4 billion in retail sales, with net income nearing $1 billion.

In later years, though, it struggled to compete against Walmart's rise. As a department store, it never quite caught up to Macy's. When activist investor Bill Ackman disclosed a stake in the company in 2010, he believed he could cement the retailer's role as a department store power player.

Ackman joined the board and brought in Ron Johnson, who previously oversaw Apple's retail division, as CEO. Many of Johnson and Ackman's ideas, like creating "store-within-a-store" concepts proved visionary, but they were rolled out too quickly, analysts said at the time. Customers abandoned the retailer. J.C. Penney reported a nearly $1 billion loss during Ron Johnson's first full year in the role.

Johnson eventually stepped down, and J.C. Penney took out a $2.25 billion loan to shore up its finances.

Over the next decade, J.C. Penney has fought to stabilize its balance sheet, all the while competing with changes in shopping behavior as Americans abandoned the mall.

It brought in Jill Soltau, former CEO of Jo-Ann Stores in October 2018. Soltau had begun to try to revitalize J.C. Penney and bring it back to its roots: focusing on customer service, apparel and low prices.
US hopes to have one or more vaccines ready by January  a timeline that outpaces that given by many health experts.

The United States government plans to stockpile hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines that are under development to combat the novel coronavirus with a goal of having one or more vaccines ready to deploy by the end of the year as part of Operation Warp Speed, administration officials said on Friday.

We think were going to have a vaccine in the pretty near future, President Donald Trump said at a news conference. If there is no vaccine by the end of the year, the problem will go away at some point  It may flare up  but were gonna put out the fire.

Trump named Moncef Slaoui, former pharmaceuticals executive, and Gustave Perna, a four-star US general, to head the project.

Efforts to develop a vaccine began in January, Trump said during the news conference when asked how a vaccine  which most health experts have said would to take up to 18 months to develop  could be deployed so quickly.

Administration officials are hopeful. Weve got over 100 vaccine candidates that have been discovered, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar told Fox Business Network.

What were doing now is were narrowing those down to the core group that were going to place huge multi-hundred-million-dollar bets on and scale massive vaccine domestic production so that we, by the end of the year, we hope, would have one or more safe and effective vaccines and hundreds of millions of doses.

The disease caused by the coronavirus, COVID-19, has killed nearly 86,000 people in the US as of May 15, according to a Johns Hopkins University tally. There are more than 1,420,000 people infected there.

Dr Anthony Fauci speaks remotely during the Senate Committee for Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions hearing on the coronavirus [Win McNamee/Reuters]

The White House has set a target of having 300 million vaccine doses by the end of 2020. No such vaccine for this pathogen has been approved, though a number are under development, and producing and distributing an effective vaccine are seen as key steps to jumpstarting the US economy.

The US is facing unemployment rates that rival the Great Depression as businesses have shed jobs at unprecedented levels since March and retail purchasing has plummeted.

Fringe and far-right groups have organised protests across the US, demanding an end to lockdown restrictions intended to slow the spread of the virus. Many are armed and some bear racist imagery.

Trump has acclaimed efforts to reopen, calling protesters good people.

The Trump administration is championing its partnership with the private sector in efforts to fight the virus in order to reopen sections of the country, including schools and universities, by the fall (which starts in September).

Weve got to use the full power of the US government and the private sector here to compress all of those (drug trial) timelines, reduce inefficiency in development and use the power of the US government to produce at risk, scale hundreds of millions of doses of vaccines even while were running the clinical trials to prove theyre safe and effective, Azar said.

However, infectious disease expert Dr Anthony Fauci, who directs the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in Senate testimony on Tuesday the idea that there will be a vaccine available by next fall, when schools and universities resume classes, was a bridge too far.

Trump called the comments unacceptable.
Richa Sharma By

Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Passengers arriving from West Asia, or the Middle-East, brought in the maximum number of COVID-19 cases in India, according to an analysis by researchers from IIT-Chennai based on assessment of an online airline database. Flights arriving from seven airports in the region, mainly Dubai, carried the highest number of infected passengers to India until the country suspended international flights on March 24 midnight.

The importation risk indices of the individual countries for various airports show the West Asian nations were followed by the UK, Italy and the US. India had registered 657 cases till March 25, of which 62% were imported cases. While 300 infected passengers arrived from West Asian/Gulf countries, the second highest number, 50, was from the UK.

The countries selected for importation risk index calculation were China, France, Germany, Iran, Italy, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Thailand, the UAE, the UK and the US  which together constituted 70 per cent of the total infected cases.

Sachin S Gunthe and Satya S Patra from IIT-Chennais Department of Civil Engineering assessed FLIRT, an online airline database, for more than 800 airlines, over 180,000 flights and 39.9 million passenger seats during March 4-25. They used data from government organisations for 10 countries to screen the flights and passengers from 24 airports connecting international airports.

Their findings revealed that contrary to perception, travellers from China posed the lowest risk, which is evident from the fact that while cases were on the peak in China, India was least affected. The number of cases started exhibiting a sharp increase only after European countries and US recorded a large number of infected cases, according to the analysis. The airports in West Asian countries, particularly Dubai, being one of the largest transit hubs for international passengers, those arriving from there might have posed a higher risk of getting infected with the virus.

Suggesting that any future disease/infection screening at the airports should critically assess passengers from major transit hubs, the analysis pointed out that as of March 4, India had started thermal screening passengers from 12 countries but no West Asian/Gulf country was among those.
It is unfortunate that he is being declared a national hero after his burial. However, this does not take away the honour that has been bestowed upon him. The Covid-19 has made processes much more difficult as we are working remotely as we practise social distancing. Messages may take time to be heard and acted upon. However, we thank the family for doing such a splendid job in giving the late general a befitting send-off. His place at the National Heroes Acre shall be always known and he will not be forgotten for the works he has done.
Amid the coronavirus-induced lockdown, Delhi Development Minister Gopal Rai on Friday launched an online portal where construction workers can register themselves with the government.

At present, there are around 40,000 construction workers registered with the Construction Workers' Welfare Board headed by Rai.

In a statement, the minister said construction workers can register themselves at http://www.edistrict.delhigovt.nic.in/



There is also a facility of renewal of registration through the portal.

Rai said there are many unregistered construction labourers in the national capital.

"In a bid to solve this registration and renewal-related issues, we have launched a portal. From Saturday, the construction labourers can register for a new application or renewal," he said.

Earlier this week, the Delhi government had decided to provide financial assistance of Rs 5,000 again to the construction workers in the wake of the lockdown.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The number of COVID-19 cases in



Pune district touched 3,567 on Friday with 141 new cases being detected in the last 24 hours, health officials said.

With five deaths on Friday, the toll from the infection reached 186, they added.

"Of the 141 cases, 121 were reported in Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) limits, which now has 3,106 patients. Four cases were found in neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad, which now has 184 cases. The number of cases in rural, civil hospital and Pune Cantonment Board areas increased by 16, taking the number to 277 in these parts," an official said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ramadan night bazaar in anticipation of Hari Raya in Singapore. There are no such bazaars this year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-e)

SINGAPORE  Muslims in Singapore should refrain from making traditional Hari Raya visits this year and avoid gatherings across households, said the Islamic Religious Council of Singapore (MUIS) on Friday (15 May).

While the number of COVID-19 cases in the community has fallen since the circuit breaker began on 7 April, Muslims here should still abide by the national restrictions on gatherings in public and private spaces, said the council in a media release. Hari Raya Aidilfitri, which marks the end of the Ramadan fasting month, falls on 24 May.

Visits to loved ones in different households, especially elderly family members, should be deferred until restrictions on visits are lifted, except where important care-giving is required, said MUIS. It added that those going out to purchase festive items should do so individually and keep their trips as short as possible.

Speaking at a virtual press conference addressing the Hari Raya celebrations and the deferment of this years Haj pilgrimage, Minister-in-Charge of Muslim Affairs Masagos Zulkifli said that three considerations came into play in deciding the changes.

The first was the contagious nature of the virus and how even pre-symptomatic cases can unknowingly spread it. Second was that fact that seniors  those above the age of 50  are vulnerable not only from the direct impact of the disease itself, but also long-term damage.

The third factor is that there is no cure currently available, or even in the next few months, for those infected with COVID-19.

Noting that the authorities are particularly concerned about the welfare of seniors, the Ministry of Healths director of medical services Kenneth Mak said, A single COVID-19 patient who is not even aware he may be infected, and having minimal symptoms, may attend a gathering. And as a result of close contact within the gathering, then spawn a cluster as he spreads infection to others, and in turn that may set up a new wave of community infections.

Story continues

In Singapore, 95 per cent of all (COVID-19) deaths have been seniors. Nearly one in six seniors who are diagnosed with COVID-19 have developed severe symptoms and have required intensive care in the hospital, he added.

Thus far, 21 infected people in Singapore have died due to complications arising from the coronavirus.

Eve of Hari Raya

Regarding the takbir prayer gatherings at mosques on the eve of Hari Raya, MUIS said that Muslims here will recite these prayers in their own homes with family members as mosques will continue to be closed.

The prayers will be led by Singapores Mufti Nazirudin Mohd Nasir and asatizah (religious teachers) via  YouTube Live on SalamSG TV, Facebook (FB) Live on Muis FB and the FB pages of mosques. This is the first time the prayers are being conducted here in such a fashion.

Following the live online takbir, the Mufti will address the community on SalamSG TV concerning how the community can fulfil its religious duties during Hari Raya amid the COVID-19 situation. He will be joined by former Mufti Fatris Bakaram and President Halimah Yacob, who will be a special guest.

Morning of Hari Raya

While Muslims here normally visit mosques on the morning of Hari Raya to perform prayers and listen to a Hari Raya sermon, this will also be done at home this year.

Adherents can join in the live takbir via the Warna 94.2 FM or via the Facebook pages of local mosques. Following the traditional Aidilfitri prayers at home, Mufti Nazirudin will lead a live Hari Raya sermon, which will be broadcast over radio and online channels such as SalamSG TV  another first for Singapore.



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DUBLIN, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- The "Impact on Consumer Behavior in the Americas: COVID-19 Survey Snapshot" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The publisher is carrying out weekly consumer surveys in 11 countries between 25th March and 31st May 2020, to track consumer sentiment and shopping behavior during the Coronavirus (COVID19) pandemic. The sample size is 500 respondents per country, per week.



The two countries in scope for the Americas are Brazil and the USA. Questions are consistent every week, and cover consumer opinions about COVID-19, buying behavior and product choices and impact of the Coronavirus (COVID19) outbreak on consumers' lifestyle and activities. This report summarizes the key findings from responses in week 3.



Key Highlights

Over half of Americans (52%) and Brazilians (53%) are extremely concerned about the coronavirus outbreak. The US now has the most confirmed cases globally, which will undoubtedly be contributing to concern amongst citizens. Whilst in Brazil , it is expected that the true number of COVID-19 cases in much higher, due to a lack of testing and failure to report cases. This uncertainty will continue to cause concern amongst citizens.

, it is expected that the true number of COVID-19 cases in much higher, due to a lack of testing and failure to report cases. This uncertainty will continue to cause concern amongst citizens. 66% of Brazilians are now spending more time browsing social media than before the COVID-19 outbreak, with an enormous 31% saying they spend all day using social media.

Unsurprisingly, the figures for fast food/casual restaurants reads very similar to fine-dining. A vast majority of Brazilians and Americans have stopped going or are going significantly less to casual restaurants. However, 8% of Brazilians and 11% of Americans are going to casual restaurants more frequently then before the coronavirus epidemic.

The Consumer Survey shows that Brazilian tourists favor Western and South American products, over those from China , Asia and Africa . European products are seen as the most trustworthy with 83% respondents finding them reliable, closely followed by the USA with 82%.

Scope of the report:



This report provides an insight into how the coronavirus pandemic is shaping consumer sentiment in Brazil and the USA .

and the . It summarizes key findings from the survey's responses and offers insight into how destinations and industry players can adapt to meet changing demands and needs.

Key report benefits:



Gain access to primary survey data results.

Understand how the coronavirus pandemic is changing consumer attitudes.

Assess how you can adapt your business plans and strategies to better meet these changing needs.

Key Topics Covered:



Americans and Brazilians are equally concerned about COVID-19

Brazilians hold high value in the trustworthiness of a product/service

International and domestic travel plans have been affected similarly

There is an opportunity for businesses to take advantage of social media marketing

In Brazil and the US, online reviews and blogs are assuming greater importance

and the US, online reviews and blogs are assuming greater importance People are visiting fine-dining restaurants less frequently in both markets

There is still a small demand for fast food/casual restaurants

Consumers want to know what companies are doing with regards to COVID-19

About the Survey

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/hvvknu

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

Media Contact:

Research and Markets

Laura Wood, Senior Manager

[email protected]



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The Press Club of India on Friday condemned the slapping of sedition charges on an editor of a Gujarati portal and the reported filing of 10 FIRs against six journalists in Himachal Pradesh, saying such actions are a "blot on our democratic aspirations".

In a statement, the Press Club of India (PCI) said going on the basis of a "string of seemingly malafide actions" against journalists by BJP-run states and the Centre-controlled Union Territories, it calls on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Union Home minister Amit Shah and BJP president J P Nadda to step in to bring "sanity to the proceedings".

"The latest media victims of deplorable police actions evidently in cahoots with the ruling party- emerge from Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh," the PCI said.

In Gujarat, a senior and well-known journalist who heads a portal has had an FIR registered against him on grounds of sedition and under the Disaster Management Act, the statement noted.

His alleged fault was to publish a story hinting that the top leadership in New Delhi was contemplating change of chief minister in Gujarat as the incumbent has failed to offer guidance in the fight against the coronavirus pandemic, it said.

"It is clear that an example has been sought to be made of this editor. Other newspapers in Ahmedabad which followed up on the same important news have so far not been threatened," the PCI said.

It is strange that in this case, policemen should arrogate to themselves the right and the authority to be arbiters of the validity of political news and developments, it said, adding that this is how "police states operate".

Referring to the second incident of press freedom infringement, the PCI said in Himachal Pradesh, six journalists from various districts of the state have reportedly had as many as ten FIRs registered against them.

"The reason for this unwanted police attention is that the journalists in question have reported on the plight of migrant workers and on the shortcomings of the state authorities in dealing with relief in the fight against COVID-19," it said.

These are legitimate areas of enquiry for journalists and examples of high-handed and irregular behaviour by those in authority, the PCI said.

"Before these cases in Gujarat and HP, the administration and police in Uttar Pradesh, J&K and Delhi had already presented shocking examples of suppression of the media so that their questionable actions do not get to be known to the wider world," it said.

"We condemn such actions. They are a blot on our democratic aspirations," the statement said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
[May 15, 2020] SPIN Brings Backs Original Founder, Bob Guccione, Jr., as New Ownership Looks to Revitalize the Music Publication

Next Management Partners, a digital media investment firm with a focus on ad tech and digital media, is bringing back publishing veteran Bob Guccione, Jr. to SPIN, the music publication he founded in 1985, to tap into his talent as a cultural disruptor. Acting as a creative advisor to SPIN in a hands-on capacity, Guccione is returning 23 years after having sold the magazine in 1997 for $43.5 million. A music industry innovator with a genius brand vision, Guccione will be working closely with SPIN's editorial and executive teams. Guccione's return signals Next Management Partners' first major move since acquiring SPIN's business, property, and assets from Billboard in January. "We are incredibly excited to do something that no previous owners of SPIN have ever done: Bring back legendary SPIN founder Bob Guccione, Jr.," said Jimmy Hutcheson, CEO of Next Management Partners. "Bob is one of the brightest minds in the creative and publishing arena and is responsible for building SPIN into a force to be reckoned with in pop culture. The SPIN brand and IP library are second-to-none thanks to Bob and his creative brain trust. SPIN will be expanding into manynew initiatives including licensing, and furthering content development with Bob's help and leadership."



"I'm tremendously excited and flattered to have been asked to help," Guccione said. "I believe in Jimmy's vision for the business and Daniel's vision for the editorial rejuvenation. SPIN needs to be part of setting the conversation, not just following it, and now it will again," says Guccione, who is already working with Kohn on expanding SPIN's pan-cultural coverage. SPIN is having an incredible first quarter with a growth in online traffic. In 2020, SPIN's online audience grew upwards of 60%. Its new Instagram Live series, called "Lullaby Sessions," features artists such as John Doe, Andrew McMahon, Alec Benjamin, and Shawn Colvin.

SPIN has several major rollouts slated for summer months. It will continue to do cutting edge monthly digital covers, original videos, and the kind of news-making, in-depth reports and interviews with artists and people shaping our world that the magazine was known for under Guccione's leadership. SPIN recently signed a deal with REVOLT, the multiplatform Hip Hop content brand owned by entrepreneur and artist Sean "Diddy" Combs, to handle sponsorships and specialized content integrations. For more information about Next Management Partners' acquisition of Spin from Billboard: Billboard - The Hollywood Reporter Media Group sells SPIN Guccione and Hutcheson are both available for interviews upon request. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005092/en/

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Nigerias Minister of Aviation, Hadi Sirika, has given aviation agencies a 45-day ultimatum to relocate to Abuja, Nigerias capital city.

The minister noted that the directive is due to the need to reduce the cost of governance and manage scarce resources.

The ministry confirmed the development in a tweet Friday.

Minister of @fmaviationng Sen.@hadisirika has given the @FAAN_Official @NAMANIGERIA @NigerianCAA other, 45 days within which to relocate their corporate Hqrts in Lagos to the Federal Capital Territory, Abuja in line with the Presidential directives given in 2012, the ministry said in a tweet Friday.

The affected aviation agencies include the Nigerian Civil Aviation Authority (NCAA), Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria (FAAN), among others.

A letter dated May 4, 2020 with the reference number: FMA/PMD/7061/T/4 with the head: Relocation of Aviation Agencies Headquarters to Abuja, signed by Muhammad Shehu, Director, Human Resource Management on behalf of the ministry gave the agencies 45 days to relocate their headquarters to FCT.

The letter stated that the directive to move to Abuja had been on since 2012. It directed the chief executive officers of the agencies to comply immediately.

READ ALSO:

The letter read in part: I am directed to remind you of the presidential directive issued in 2012 requesting agencies under the ministry to relocate their corporate headquarters to the Federal Capital Territory for efficient and effective coordination and enhanced service delivery between the ministry and its agencies and to note that, eight years after the directives, the agencies are yet to comply.

Accordingly, considering the current situation and the economic impact worldwide, as well as the need to reduce the cost of governance and manage the scare resources in a sustainable way, it has become imperative and further to the Honourable Ministers directives (copy attached) to request that you facilitate and complete the relocation exercise of your corporate headquarters to Abuja within the next 45 days, in line with earlier directives.

Mr Sirika argued in the letter that the relocation of the agencies headquarters out of Lagos would enhance efficiency and service delivery between the ministry and them.
TORONTO - Some of the most active companies traded Thursday on the Toronto Stock Exchange:

Toronto Stock Exchange (14,509.66, up 6.45 points.)

Centric Health Corp. (TSX:CHH). Health care. Down half a cent, or 2.08 per cent, to 23.5 cents on 19.6 million shares.

Manulife Financial Corp. (TSX:MFC). Financials. Down 14 cents, or 0.86 per cent, to $16.10 on 19.1 million shares.

Enbridge Inc. (TSX:ENB). Energy. Down $1.04, or 2.36 per cent, to $43.00 on 10.7 million shares.

Monarch Gold Corp. (TSX:MQR). Materials. Down four cents, or 14.04 per cent, to 24.5 cents on 10 million shares.

Cenovus Energy Inc. (TSX:CVE). Energy. Unchanged to $4.94 on 9.8 million shares.

Bombardier Inc. (TSX:BBD.B). Industrials. Up half a cent, or 1.18 per cent, to 43 cents on 9.2 million shares.

Companies in the news:

Aurora Cannabis Inc. (TSX:ACB). Up 91 cents or 11 per cent to $9.20. Aurora Cannabis Inc. says it incurred a $137.4 million net loss in its third quarter, down from the $1.3 billion it reported the quarter before. The Edmonton-based cannabis company says the period ended Mar. 31 saw improvement because the quarter before it had a $762.2 million goodwill impairment charge and $210.6 million impairment charge on intangibles and property, plant and equipment. Net revenue rose to $75.2 million from the $56 million it accrued the quarter before.

WildBrain Ltd. (TSX:WILD). Up one cent to $1.11. WildBrain Ltd. continues to see advertising-supported video streaming to be a big part of its future growth despite current conditions affecting the company and industry, chief executive Eric Ellenbogen told analysts Thursday. Those conditions prompted WildBrain to record a $184.5-million writedown of goodwill and a third-quarter loss, due to the impact on advertising revenue from YouTubes changes to targeted ads as well as potential impacts of the COVID-19 economic slowdown. The one-time charge resulted in WildBrain reporting a loss of $221.7 million or $1.30 per share. That compared with a year-earlier net loss of $18.4 million or 14 cents per share.

Brookfield Asset Management Inc. (TSX:BAM.A). Down 57 cents or 1.3 per cent to $43.06. Brookfield Asset Management Inc. sees investment opportunities growing in the coming months as the economy bounces back somewhat less than many expect. A slower recovery will mean more companies need capital and investment from firms like Brookfield that have been preparing for an economic shift, Brookfield chief executive Bruce Flatt told a conference call Thursday to discuss the companys latest results. The COVID-19 pandemic helped push the company into a first-quarter loss of US$US$157 million compared with a profit of nearly US$1.26 billion in the same quarter last year.

Quebecor Inc. (TSX:QBR.B). Down 18 cents to $28.69. Quebecor Inc. reported a $131.6-million profit for the first quarter and a 2.7 per cent increase in revenue compared with the same time last year despite feeling the initial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and economic slowdown. The telecommunications and media company, which operates the Videotron internet and wireless business and the TVA broadcasting network, said Thursday its network successfully absorbed a substantial increase in traffic since the crisis began. Chief executive Pierre Karl Peladeau said Quebecor helped its customers stay connected during the pandemic, by removing data caps on internet services and opening access to a news channel.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 14, 2020.
The Bihar government on Friday served



ultimatum to 28 doctor teachers/senior residents/tutors, both regular as well as contractual, for being unauthorisedly absent from duty for more than 15 days and asked those on contract to join the duty within three days failing which their service will be terminated.

The Health department will take disciplinary action against the regular doctor teachers under relevant sections of Disaster Management Act, 2005 and Epidemic Disease Act 1897, a department release said.

At a time when the department is working day and night to fight against the coronavirus pandemic, the 28 doctors/sr residents/tutors have been found unauthorisedly absent from the duty, it said.

The health department had issued orders on March 13 and April 5 cancelling all types of leaves- except study and maternity leave of medical officers including those appointed on contract, nurses, paramedical staff and fourth grade employees in order to contain the spread of coronavirus.

"The department had warned the doctors, who remained absent from the duty, to join service at their respective place of postings. Despite the warning, these doctors remain absent from the duty defying the order," it said.

So, the department has given these contractual employees three days time to resume duty failing which their service will be considered as terminated for being unauthorisedly absent for more than 15 days, the releaae said.

Meanwhile, the health department has served a show cause notice to Dr Anil Kumar Singh asking him to explain why not his service (contractual) be terminated and medical registration cancelled due to his unprofessional attitude in the treatment of an eight year old girl, who died later at SKMCH, Muzaffarpur.

In the show cause, it has been stated that Singh, who is posted at Community Health Centre at Runnisaidpur block of Sitamarhi district, did not follow the treatment of the girl as per protocol set for JE/AES disease despite the Community centre being quipped with all medicines and equipment required for the treatment.

The minor girl Chandni Kumari, a resident of Kalyanpur in Aurai block of Muzaffarpur district, was rushed to the centre on May 11 in a serious condition, the release said adding the doctor did not give her right medicines and referred her to SKMCH, Muzaffarpur, where she died on May 13.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
A family member cries and bid farewell to a prison van after pro-democracy protester Sin Ka-ho has been sentenced four years for rioting, in Hong Kong, China, on May 15, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

First Hong Kong Protester to Admit to Rioting Gets 4 Years Jail

HONG KONGA 21-year-old Hong Kong lifeguard, the first pro-democracy protester to plead guilty to the charge of rioting during last years unrest, was sentenced to four years jail on May 15 for a direct attack on the rule of law.

Sin Ka-ho was among thousands who surrounded the Legislative Council on June 12 in a bid to stop lawmakers from giving a second reading to a since-withdrawn bill that would have allowed extraditions to mainland China.

A few dozen protesters, many wearing black and holding a banner reading, Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of our times, gathered outside the court, chanting, theres no rioters, only tyranny.

As Sin was driven away in a van, some protesters knocked on its windows and shouted, Stay strong!

The protest at the Legislative Council was the first of many last year that police cleared with tear gas and rubber bullets, angering moderate Hong Kong people in a pivotal moment for the pro-democracy movement.

Protesters demands broadened to include calls for greater democracy amid anger at what they say is Beijings meddling with the citys autonomy.

Sin admitted to pushing police barricades and hurling umbrellas and other objects at officers, but denied planning the assaults.

Supporters chase a prison van after an anti-government protester Sin Ka-ho has been sentenced four years for rioting, in Hong Kong, China on May 15, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

The defendants actions were a direct attack on the rule of law, District Court Justice Amanda Woodcock said in the sentencing, which is seen as potentially laying down a marker for the nearly 600 protesters who have been charged with rioting, risking up to 10 years in jail.

Neither Sin nor his lawyer commented on the sentence.

Sin has been the only one so far to plead guilty, in a symbolic blow for the protest movement, whose demands include amnesty for all those arrested and the government dropping its characterization of the protests as riots.

Hong Kong, a former British colony, returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the guarantee of keeping its freedoms, many of which are not enjoyed on the mainland, including an independent judiciary.

Supporters raise their hands up symbolizing of the Five demands, not one less to bid farewell to a prison van after protester Sin Ka-ho has been sentenced four years for rioting, in Hong Kong, China on May 15, 2020. (Tyrone Siu/Reuters)

The protesters main demands are universal suffrage and an independent inquiry into the polices handling of the demonstrations.

Accusations of police brutality must not be used as a weapon of political protest, the police watchdog said in a report on Friday.

More than 8,300 protesters were arrested between June 2019 and mid-May this year. Over 1,600 have been prosecuted, and 595 face rioting charges.

Sins sentence was reduced from six to four years due to his clear record and guilty plea.

Demonstrations are likely to pick up in the summer after a relative lull this year due to social distancing measures taken to fight the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, which first began in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. Hong Kong, the virus has largely been brought under control.

By Sharon Tam and Jessie Pang. Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.
New Delhi, May 15 : The year was 2002 and it was a typical lethargic Sunday. Even as Delhi's ruthless summer dared one and all, the Yamuna, impregnated with froth, flowed quietly. Kashmiri artist Inder Salim went to the river with a surgical knife, some cotton, anti-septic and a host of still and video cameras. As he amputated the little finger of his left hand, throwing it in the dead river, the intense pain gave way to a certain completeness. Titling this performance as 'Dialogue With Power Plant, Shrill Across a Dead River', Salim stunned one and all.

Now, 18 years later, one of the country's foremost performance artist is locked in a small apartment in the capital, and again has that desire to feel entirety. In what seems like SOS calls, the artist, taking old sarees and rags, turning them into flags and using text-as- material on fabric, with the wind against the backdrop of blue sky is talking about not just his own alienation in wake of the lockdown, but also issues like uncertainty, alienation, possessions, migrants walking home and what the future holds... "But that is not all, I am also finishing my book of poems 'Jaren Effect: Poems from Kashmir and Elsewhere'," he tells IANS.

Planning to hold a major exhibition that will also include the innumerable flags that he has made in this period and hoisted from his rooftop, once the lockdown is over, Salim is pleased that they (the flags) have not only managed to communicate to other artists but also taking the social media by storm. "Yes, a senior theatre director is also sharing them with her students during her online classes, and they are going viral. I think the peculiar part of the situation in face of the pandemic is that the artists are almost being forced to look into their insignificant details in their spaces they occupy. A little piece of abandoned old brush and a dry colour tube have suddenly become precious." Insisting that this is the time to think how transcendental is hand-in-glove with the empirical at a very molecular level, he adds that we will witness many solidified narratives to describe the political and real take a heavy beating in the new world that emerges after the lockdown. "The stone is now exposed to a melting trickle, which is likely reshaping it for a new look. Our eyes may be there to feel it in the future or not, but things have remarkably changed at every level. Remember, the images of migrant workers walking home will haunt us for a very long time. How come there is no social movement to help the millions walking with their families on roads without any cover? Where have all the NGOs gone?" Talking about how more and more artists are showing their latest creations on social media during these times, Salim argues, "This is a time when we understand the idea of a peculiar 'touch' in art, which can happen both virtually and literally with equal intensity".

For someone who bid farewell to his easel and paints quite some time back, performance art will always remain edgier. "The best part is that it is like a suspension bridge between varied art forms and diverse ideas of life. It has this unique ability to provoke the artists and the audience in equal measure and is not confined by any set rules. But remember, it is not theatre. Here, every error is as inclusive to the act as each planned part." It is now late evening, and he has taken out his recording equipment to capture the sound of birds on his balcony. Interjected with Kabir playing in the background, he says, "You won't believe it, but I can now hear the the koel singing in the middle of night. And some people still assume that the world will remain the same..."
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 00:47:45|Editor: huaxia

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ISLAMABAD, May 14 (Xinhua) -- Pakistan on Thursday emphasized on the implementation of the agreement between the United States and the Taliban for Afghan peace, amid spike in violence in Afghanistan.

"Pakistan believes that the U.S.-Taliban Peace Agreement has provided a window of opportunity to the people of Afghanistan to work together for the ultimate aim of peace and reconciliation in Afghanistan. We hope that the Peace Agreement is implemented in its entirety so that it leads to the next stage of Intra-Afghan negotiations," Aisha Farooqui, spokesperson of the Pakistani Foreign Ministry said at her weekly briefing.

Farooqui was asked to offer comments about the Taliban rejection of calls for humanitarian ceasefire and Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani's order to security forces to end active defense position and resume offensives on militant groups including the Taliban.

She said there is no proposal under consideration by Pakistan to host intra-Afghan negotiations in Islamabad but said efforts are underway to help get the intra-Afghan negotiations initiated, which is the next logical step after the signing of the U.S.-Taliban peace agreement.

"We hope that these efforts are successful at the earliest," Farooqui said, adding Pakistan and Afghanistan share the ultimate objective of a peaceful and stable Afghanistan.

"Pakistan has always supported a peaceful, democratic, united, stable and prosperous Afghanistan connected with the region. Both countries maintain regular contact on issues of mutual concern. Pakistan hopes that a lasting peace will be established in Afghanistan," the spokesperson said.

The Taliban and the United States signed the agreement in Qatar in late February, which paves the way for withdrawal of all foreign troops.

The agreement faces challenges as the intra-Afghan dialogue that was scheduled to start on March 10 could not start due to differences over the release of 5,000 Taliban prisoners. Enditem
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Linkedin Alya Nurbaiti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 14:38 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd846ccb 1 World Indonesia,United-Nations,Human-Rights-Council,human-rights,fishing Free

The Indonesian government has officially asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to pay attention to alleged human rights violations in the fishing industry.

The call was made in light of the alleged exploitation of four Indonesian crewmen aboard the Chinese fishing vessel Long Xin 629, which led to the death of the sailors between December 2019 and April this year.

The government is serious about probing the alleged exploitation of Indonesian crewmen. We have reported this case to the UN Human Rights Council, presidental spokesman for legal affairs Dini Purwono said in a statement on Thursday.

Dini said Indonesian representative to the UN Hasan Kleib had asked the council to watch over human rights abuses in the fishing industry during a discussion held in Geneva on May 8, which talked about global efforts to provide human rights protection in handling COVID-19.

She further said the government demanded the councils role in providing protection to vulnerable groups that often went unnoticed, such as crewmen aboard fishing vessels.

Read also: Indonesian sailors deaths on Chinese fishing vessel raise questions about working conditions

Protection for workers in the fishing industry is important as the industry is one of the key industries of the global food chain, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Meanwhile, the police are currently pursuing the labor agent alleged to have committed human trafficking.

The polices Criminal Investigation Agency is investigating the case as a crime of human trafficking, Dini said.

Earlier this week, a video featured on South Koreas Munhwa Broadcasting Corporation (MBC) showed a group of men throwing an orange body bag, which is believed to contain the dead body of an Indonesian crew member, off a fishing vessel.

MBC reported four Indonesian sailors registered to Long Xing 629 had died allegedly after reportedly enduring poor working conditions. Two unidentified Indonesian sailors told MBC that crew members allegedly were only allowed to take short breaks every six hours, had almost no time to sleep and were made to drink filtered seawater. (aly)
Although different medical experts are continuously looking for any medication or therapy that can help coronavirus patients, COVID-19 still has no cure, and it can take months until a vaccine arrives.

Nevertheless, it appears there is one simple thing people can do to help avoid severe viral infection and increase your chances of survival.

The Link Between The Vitamin D and COVID-19

All you need to do is increase your intake of vitamin D through supplements or basking in the sun every morning--the best source of vitamin D and free as there have been several studies that link vitamin D to the coronavirus infection and how severely it can affect a person.

TechTimes has previously reported a study led by Northwestern University that shows patients who had lower vitamin D levels were usually those who had a higher mortality rate.

"Our finding suggests that Vit D may reduce COVID-19 severity by suppressing cytokine storms in COVID-19 patients," wrote by the researchers in their paper published in medRxiv.

The researchers also found out that people with lower vitamin D levels have a mortality rate of 17.3%, which is higher than the 14.6% mortality rate of patients with normal vitamin D levels.

Another researcher from Oregon State University also believes that taking supplements rich in vitamins C and D could actually help in boosting the immune system, which could then help in preventing severe COVID-19.

Read Also: COVID-19: Breakthrough Coronavirus Drug Could Help in Re-Opening Countries as it Might Provide Temporary Immunity

How Does it Help Against the Coronavirus Infection?

But how does it help, and how can people get sufficient levels of vitamin D to avoid severe coronavirus infections?

The CEO of Mend Urgent Care and ER physician, Dr. Anthony Cardillo, spoke with KABC in Los Angeles via Skype to explain the recent studies linking vitamin D insufficiency to higher mortality rates and higher chances of having severe COVID-19.

"Vitamin D is a phenomenal molecule in our bodies," Dr. Cardillo said. "Vitamin D does boost and modulate the immune system."

He also said that it is a pro-hormone, which then turns into a molecule and is capable of going throughout the body.

The physician also explained that experts in China started realizing that the people who were the sickest for a longer time had the lowest levels of vitamin D among other coronavirus patients that they were handling, which backs up recent studies showing the same results.

It may also mean that those who were sick and were hospitalized likely had low levels of vitamin D as well.

Read Also: COVID-19 Cure Development: 20,000 People to be Exposed to Coronavirus in Human Trials; UV Light Can Neutralize COVID-19

How to Elevate Vitamin D Levels

Overall, Dr. Cardillo suggested that we should all start to supplement ourselves with vitamin D to reduce the overall risks of getting the viral infection or to at least decrease the chances of becoming critically ill.

The physician also recommended that people go out in their backyard to soak some sunshine.

He also suggested going out and taking a walk but warned that it's still essential to practical physical distancing to avoid getting infected.

Fatty fishes and fortified milk and cereals are also great ways to elevate vitamin D levels.

Nevertheless, he warned that we should only take 1,000 to 2,000 i.u. of vitamin D each day as it is possible for people to overdose on it.

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
Scientists in Bengaluru have developed a textile coating that can stop the novel coronavirus from adhering to cloth, protective gear, gowns and other surfaces. The germicidal molecule may provide frontline healthcare workers better protection amid the pandemic.

While the chemical compound  based on quaternary ammonium salts  has been showing good lab results at two Bengaluru-based research centres, scientists are in talks with chemical manufacturing companies to scale up production of this compound.

"It is a germicidal coating which has shown resistance to the virus by neutralising bacteria or viruses when applied on fabrics. It neutralises anything that has a membrane, and all bacteria and a large number of viruses have membranes," said Prof Satyajit Mayor, Director at the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) told CNN-News18.

However, scientists said that it is imperative to calculate the extent of its use before an official announcement to prevent creating "a false sense of security." However, Mayor said, "If it turns out as effective as we suspect it would, then it is easily deployable and it can continuously inactivate the virus."

While the chemical coating might not help patients who have already been infected by the virus, the advance aims to mitigate the risk of spreading from material surfaces like cloth. It might become useful, especially for healthcare and sanitation workers and save them from contracting the deadly virus.

Dr Praveen Kumar Vemula, Association Professor at the Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine (InStem) and lead researcher of the study, says that there are two ways to use the coating.

"One is through the molecule which is in a solution form. The solution can be applied on cloths like masks or coats and then put on a heat treatment which helps the molecules get attached. Two, a fabric which has been pre-attach to this compound can be given to manufacturers who stitch them into gloves or coats. We have found in our studies that the molecule stays efficient with at least 25 rounds of the washing cycle," he said.

Dr Vemula, however, warns against letting the coating have direct contact with skin. He said research on possible adverse effects on the skin is being conducted and noted that it till proper clearance.

"It is not a compound that can be applied like an ointment. In fact, we don't know its effect on the skin yet. So unless we do trials, we would prefer it is not associated with the skin. It doesn't affect animal skin, we know, but for human skin, we will have to do far more trials. We think many people like sanitation workers could widely use it since this disinfection agent by them will prevent them from infecting others," Prof Mayor added.

Since the primary aim of the coating is for enhancing the quality of PPEs, the product is expected to hit the markets in about four months after passing regulatory approvals.

"A mask worn by a healthcare worker is only a physical barrier. If there are viruses on it, it can be active for as long as seven days. But if you coat it with this chemical compound, then not only does it act as a physical barrier but it completely kills the virus after it comes in contact with it," Prof Vemula said.

The reusability of the cloth enhances, especially at the times of acute shortages of PPE, he added.

The advance comes amidst fears of sanitation workers who are dealing with discarded masks may be at higher risk of contracting and then spreading the virus in communities after coming in contact with infected masks and gloves.
As China reopens, factories fire up but jobs gloom keeps consumers at home Employee works at a factory of the Zhejiang Headway Communication Equipment Co in Huzhou

By Kevin Yao and Gabriel Crossley

BEIJING (Reuters) - China's factory output rose for the first time this year as the world's second-largest economy slowly emerged from its coronavirus lockdown, although consumption remained depressed amid increased job losses.

Industrial production climbed 3.9% in April from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, faster than the 1.5% increase forecast in a Reuters poll of analysts and following a 1.1% fall in March.

After months of lockdowns, China is reopening its economy as the outbreak on the mainland comes under control. The production of oil, coal, metals and electricity all increased as plants restarted operations in April.

However, China continues to face major challenges in its services sector, particularly retail, and as the pandemic sweeps the rest of the globe, affecting other major economies and trading partners.

Of particular concern for policymakers ahead of next week's annual meeting of parliament is the prospect of a spike in unemployment, which poses significant political risks for the nation of 1.4 billion.

"Overall, this set of data shows only small and gradual improvements in economic activity, which could upset markets as China is seen as the 'first out' economy from COVID-19," said Iris Pang, Chief Economist for Greater China at ING.

China's economy shrank for the first time since at least 1992 in the first quarter, as restrictions to curb the spread of the virus shut down factories and shopping malls.

Although much of the economy has reopened, many manufacturers are struggling with reduced or cancelled overseas orders as global demand falters. Earlier this week, data showed producer prices falling at their sharpest pace in four years, as industrial demand weakened.

While exports unexpectedly rose in April, driven in part by demand for medical supplies, imports saw a sharper-than-expected dive, signalling weak domestic demand.

More telling was a collapse in export orders seen in various factory surveys for April, which has significant implications for the industrial sector, a major employer in China.

Story continues

Liu Aihua, a spokeswoman for the National Statistics Bureau, said unemployment pressure remained "relatively big".

China's surveyed unemployment rate for April was 6.0%, slightly higher than the previous month.

Of greater focus are China's migrant workers, who are a significant part of the workforce and often not counted in official data.

Liu said the number of migrant workers who had returned to their cities of employment from their home towns in April was at 90% of levels seen in previous years.

However, Julian Evans-Pritchard, Senior China Economist at Capital Economics, said that figure is probably closer to 80%, suggesting true unemployment is double the official rate.

SOGGY CONSUMPTION

Those unemployment pressures are likely to strain household finances and drag on consumption.

Consumer spending remained weak in April with retail sales falling 7.5%, faster than the forecast 7.0% decline and extending the tumble in the first three months of the year as shops and restaurants across the country closed.

Fixed-asset investment fell 10.3% in January-April, compared with a forecast 10.0% fall and a 16.1% decline in January-March.

Private sector fixed-asset investment, which accounts for 60% of total investment, fell 13.3% in January-April, compared with an 18.8% decline in the first three months of the year.

China's property sector, however, showed some resilience with real estate investment quickening in April while property sales fell at a much slower pace, providing some relief for authorities.

Facing an uphill battle to revive growth, legislators are expected to unveil fresh stimulus measures to spur domestic demand at the annual parliament next week.

"Policymakers have signalled that further stimulus is in the pipeline, which should continue to boost infrastructure construction and industrial output," said Evans-Pritchard. "But the recovery in consumption and service sector activity is likely to remain more drawn out."

(Reporting by Kevin Yao, Huizhong Wu and Gabriel Crossley; Editing by Sam Holmes)
The dailies on Friday, May 15, have widely reported on the ongoing political cards being played by President Uhuru Kenyatta to bring new allies on board as rift between him and his deputy William Ruto continues to widen.

Stories on coronavirus pandemic and the challenges it continues to pose to the country and across the globe have also been given prominence.

READ ALSO: Buruburu man who died in car fire secretly transferred KSh 10K from wife's bank account

Kenyan newspapers for May 15. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Truck driver who tested positive in Uganda tests negative in Kenya

1. The Star

The publication confirms reports that former Bomet governor Isaac Rutto met with President Uhuru Kenyatta and discussed a possible political merger.

According to the newspaper, Rutto said his deal with Uhuru would be open to the public as soon as next week.

The move by the president to rope in the Chama Cha Mashinani (CCM) leader is seen as part of his elaborate plan to completely sideline Deputy President William Ruto but still retain significant support in Rift Valley region.

Already Jubilee Party has signed a post-election coalition agreement with KANU whos party leader, Gideon Moi, is Ruto's main challenger in Rift Valley.

The Star newspaper for May 15. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

READ ALSO: Homa Bay: Polisi ashtakiwa kwa kuwapora wakazi nyakati za kafyu

2. Daily Nation

The daily reports on ODM leader Raila Odinga's call for radical changes within the leadership of his party in both the Senate and National Assembly.

Raila is said to have held a four-hour meeting with his key allies to deliberate on the changes to ensure only those loyal to the opposition outfit are retained in leadership roles.

Those who attended the meeting included Senate minority leader James Orengo, National Assembly's minority leader John Mbadi, Minority whip Junet Mohamed, party Secretary General Edwin Sifuna and Director of Political Affairs Opiyo Wandayi among others.

The move, according to the newspaper, is aimed at ensuring the party has a loyal team of leadership in both Houses to steer the implementation of the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI) which is set to be implemented as soon as the pandemic is contained.

Daily Nation newspaper review for May 15. Photo: UGC

Source: UGC

3. Taifa Leo

The Swahili publication reports on the war of words pitting Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) Secretary-General Wilson Sossion against Education CS George Magoha.

Sossion is accusing Magoha of leaving out the teacher's umbrella in the newly formed task force to relook at the possibility of reopening schools amid coronavirus pandemic.

The KNUT boss claimed the CS has been sidelining the teacher's union in pertinent issues despite the fact that they were major stakeholders in the sector.

Magoha has remained adamant the team he appointed would continue with its work undisturbed by the protests fromKNUT.

The Star newspaper review for May 15. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

4. The Standard

The top page of the publication is splashed with images of Kenya's key political players who are deemed to be Uhuru's new dream team ahead of 2022 political showdown.

They include Raila Odinga, Gideon Moi, Kalonzo Musyoka and now former Bomet governor Isaac Rutto.

The four leaders are said to have been in constant communication with the president and also amongst themselves in preparation for a major political realignment in the coming days.

Though not captured on the newspaper's top page image, FORD Kenya's leader Moses Wetangu'la is also said to be part of the team that is looking forward to working with Uhuru.

Earlier in the week, Gideon met Kalonzo and reportedly held a similar session with Wetangu'la.

The Standard newspaper for May 15. Photo: UGC.

Source: UGC

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I have to provide for my husband and seven children - Beatrice Ouma | Tuko TV.

Source: TUKO.co.ke
General Secretary of the Peoples' National Convention and convener of the Mass Action Committee (MAC), Atik Mohammed is calling for an enhanced public education on the impact of COVID-19 in the country.



Atik Mohammed expressed deep worry over the attitude of some Ghanaians who blazingly disregard health protocols to curb the spread of the disease.



Speaking on Peace FM's 'Kokrokoo' programme on Thursday, the PNC General Secretary believed, to achieve the purpose of the public education, the government must show the nation the enormity of the pandemic disease to deter people from flouting protocols.



'If people get to understand the full impact of this disease, I'm sure they will have a rethink," he stressed.



To Atik Mohammed, the State authorities responsible for the public education are being ''very romantic with our education. That's how I see it. We present it as though it's not a scary case. The reason why we succeeded in our fight against HIV/AIDS is that we made it very scary. The advertisement about AIDS even made virgins feel threatened''.







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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It has come to my attention that the Ministry of Finance has instructed the Ghana Revenue Authority (GRA) to reverse the 50% benchmark value reduction against which duties paid by importers at Ghanas ports are calculated.



I have also seen a letter from the GRA dated May 4th, 2020 addressed to the Minister of Finance in which the Authority listed Companies to be affected by the new revenue measures, and assurances to the Minister of GRA's full compliance.



This move, if carried through as instructed by the Finance Minister, is illegality as it has not been sanctioned by Parliament.



Indeed, under the law, the only institution that can grant the imposition or the variation of tax is Parliament. Article 174(1)(2) is unambiguous as stated under Chapter 13 of the Constitution 1992. In relevant part, the article states as follows:



(1) No taxation shall be imposed otherwise than by or under the authority of an Act of Parliament.



(2) Where an Act, enacted in accordance with clause (1) of this article, confers power on any person or authority to waive or vary a tax imposed by that Act, the exercise of the power of waiver or variation, in favour of any person or authority, shall be subject to the prior approval of Parliament by resolution.



It is important to admit the challenges government is facing in meeting its revenue projections amidst Covid-19. However, efforts by government to reverse any negative economic trends must be undertaken under the law.



I am aware that Sections 67 & 68 of the Customs Act, 2015 (Act 891), when read together with the Harmonized Systems Code based on Section 66 of the same Act gives the GRA the mandate to vary, but that variation upwards or downwards can ONLY be done if prior Parliamentary approval is sought pursuant to Article 174(2) of the Constitution, 1992. It is important to add that the sections under the Customs Act give the basis or discretion for determining values but that should not be used surreptitiously to vary the effective tax imposition or burden without recourse to Parliament.



The approval of Parliament in the variation of taxes is a condition precedent as anticipated in article 174(1) and any failure to comply with this condition even in the face of the novel challenges of COVID is an illegality that cannot be countenanced by any adherent of the tenets of the Rule of Law.



The levying or variation of taxes are ipso facto, matters of strict law and same must not be breached or side-stepped in the midst of governments efforts at mobilizing financial resources to meet its 2020 fiscal year projections.



In the light of such clear constitutional provisions, it is inconceivable that the Minister of Finance would be seeking to vary tax measures by mere administrative fiat as in this case.



The Ministry of Finance must, therefore, take immediate curative steps to ensure that proposals to vary the imposition of benchmark values receive parliamentary approval in compliance with the Constitution.



Signed:



Rockson-Nelson E.K. Dafeamekpor, Esq.

MP-South Dayi

Member:

Const., Legal and Parliamentary Affairs &

Judiciary Committees.

Source: Rockson-Nelson E.K. Dafeamekpor, Esq. MP-South Dayi









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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The French cosmetics giant has stepped up its commitment to the emancipation of women with the recruitment of Gambian activist Jaha Dukureh as its new international ambassador. An activist in the fight for women's rights, and even more so in the fight against female genital mutilation (FGM), of which she herself was a victim, Jaha Dukureh has been honored with numerous awards for her remarkable contribution to these causes. Here is a look back at the selfless journey of an exemplary young woman, who is only 31 years old.

Having supported women for decades, L'Oreal is strengthening its commitment to the cause with several initiatives in 2020. A case in point is the creation of the L'Oreal for the Future program to support organizations and charities that help women in highly vulnerable situations. Another major initiative is the appointment of Jaha Dukureh as the new international ambassador for L'Oreal Paris. Although the brand has a history of working with committed spokespersons, it has never before called on such a prominent activist in the fight for women's rights.

Jaha Dukureh was only one week old when she was subjected to female genital mutilation (FGM) and only 15 years old when she was taken to the United States for an arranged marriage. Two years later, the young woman managed to dissolve the marriage, went to school, obtained a degree, and then, at only 24 years of age, launched Safe Hands for Girls, a nonprofit organization that works to end FGM and child marriages while providing support for victims.

Named as a UN Women Regional Goodwill Ambassador for Africa, listed as one of the world's 100 most influential people by Time magazine in 2016, nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018, and a winner of a L'Oreal Paris Woman of Worth award, Jaha Dukureh has made a major contribution to bringing global resonance to the cause of women, but that's not all. Her commitment has also led to the banning of FGM in the Gambia.

Self-esteem and assertiveness, commitment, and emancipation are values that led L'Oreal Paris to make Jaha Dukureh its new global ambassador. She joins the brand's many spokespeople, including Cindy Bruna, appointed at the end of April, who is herself a campaigner for the inclusion and emancipation of women.

"I am officially part of the @lorealparis family! Today I became the newest international spokesperson for the brand...Thank you L'Oreal for believing in me and showing the world that we are all worth it," Jaha Dukureh posted on her Twitter account.
After launching the first three Spotify Original podcasts in India last December, the audio streaming platform now has an additional 12 podcasts. Predominantly non-fiction content, these podcasts explore news, heroes across communities, candid conversations, and a slice of life in India. Spotify has also added content from radio channels Radio City and Big FM, and Aawaz.com, an Indian podcasts and spoken-word audio network; all of this will be exclusively available on the platform.

The 12 new podcasts include the recently launched originals such as Special Mission with Gul Panag, Maha Bharat with Dhruv Rathee, Zindagi Unplugged, Our Last Week with Anuvab & Kunaal, Off Script with Salil, with a total of over 200 episodes, all of which are already live. Several of these Spotify Original podcasts have regularly featured on the apps podcast charts in the country, including Zindagi Unplugged, Off Script with Salil, and Special Mission with Gul Panag, with listeners not just in India, but also in the US, the UK, and Australia, among other countries.

Amarjit Batra, Managing Director at Spotify India, said, It has been heartening to see the growing traction for podcasts on our platform in India. Weve continuously analysed what users are listening to, and gradually commissioned Original podcasts that our local users relate to, and want to engage with. Much of this content is non-fiction, but we are also open to fiction. Besides the original content, we now have exclusive access to over 600 hours of content from Radio City, Big FM, and Aawaz.com, giving our growing listener base more reasons to make podcast listening a habit.

Over the year, Indian listeners have been consuming lifestyle-based content with Society & Culture emerging as the top genre on the platform. The top 10 podcasts showcase this trend, being mostly themed around self-improvement and motivation, including The Ranveer Show, On Purpose with Jay Shetty, TED Talks Daily, Sadhguru, 7 Good Minutes Daily Self-Improvement, among others. There is also a healthy dose of comedy with some of the more popular podcasts being Simple Ken, VIEWS with David Dobrik and Jason Nash, Office Ladies, Conan OBrien Needs A Friend and The Misfits Podcast. Additionally, recent times have seen users streaming News, Health & Fitness and Kids & Family content, as well as podcasts with the words cooking or recipes in the title or description.

Creating high quality podcasts is a relatively new phenomenon in India, and at Spotify, we are keen to work with committed creators and production houses to bring relevant, local content for not only listeners in India, but also for our millions of users across 78 other markets. Weve already worked with over 20 creators for Spotify Original podcasts in India, and have brought global best practices to them, increasing operational and creative efficiencies, added Amarjit.

Spotify has over one million podcast titles on the platform today. In India, the company already has several more original podcasts and subsequent seasons of successful podcasts lined up over the remaining year.
In this article MSFT

Wall Street got a fresh look at the retail sector Friday morning, with April sales posting another record drop. Restaurants, bars and nongrocery retailers are just starting to reopen in parts of the country  with varying levels of safety measures in place. In Washington, the House is set to vote on a new $3 trillion relief bill, and sources tell CNBC the White House would likely support a second round of stimulus checks for Americans. The coverage on this live blog has ended  but for up-to-the-minute coverage on the coronavirus, visit the live blog from CNBC's Asia-Pacific team. Global cases: More than 4.5 million

Global deaths: At least 305,395

US cases: More than 1.4 million

US deaths: At least 86,744 The data above was compiled by Johns Hopkins University.

7:30 pm: 'All bets are off' if another U.S.-China trade war sparks, Cramer says

7 pm: NFL to allow teams to begin re-opening facilities as soon as Tuesday

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports | Reuters

The NFL on Friday issued a memo to teams letting them know they will be allowed to begin re-opening facilities as early as Tuesday. Teams will be allowed to re-open facilities located in regions where state and local governments allow it. Teams will be limited to 75 people maximum at their facilities, and initially, coaches and most players will not be allowed to return. "This first phase of reopening is an important step in demonstrating our ability to operate safety and effectively, even in the current environment," NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell said in the memo. Salvador Rodriguez

6:26 pm: J.C. Penney files for bankruptcy as pandemic deepens retailer woes

The long-struggling retail chain J.C. Penney has thrown in the towel and filed for bankruptcy, as the closure of nonessential businesses due to the coronavirus pandemic has compounded the company's existing problems. J.C.Penney's sales have fallen for the past four years and its footprint has shriveled to lass then a quarter of its store base in 2001. The company is the latest major retailer to file for bankruptcy, following Neiman Marcus and Stage Stores. Spencer Kimball, Lauren Hirsch

5:55 pm: Americans still have questions about their stimulus checks

Around 130 million Americans have received their stimulus checks, the IRS announced this week. However, many individuals still have questions about when they will receive their payment, CNBC's Lorie Konish reports. Delays in receiving a check could be related to the IRS not having your direct deposit bank account details or having incorrect information related to your account. It could also just be related to the process itself--it could take up to five months for all of the paper checks to be mailed. Hannah Miller

5:45 pm: Stay-at-home orders expire in multiple states

Jackie Guarneri of Hudson enjoyed beers with friends at Jonesy's Local Bar on the first day of the bar reopening in Hudson. Bars, restaurants and everything else is reopening in Wisconsin after the state Supreme Court struck down the state's stay-at-home order Thursday May 14, 2020 in Hudson, Wisconsin. Jerry Holt | Star Tribune | Getty Images

Arizona, Louisiana and Maryland lifted their stay-at-home orders Friday, but still have certain social-distancing guidelines in place. Ohio reopened personal care services, while Utah will allow sports games to restart on Saturday with spectators who practice social-distancing. However, other parts of the country are taking smaller steps on their way to recovery. Washington, D.C., which has a stay-at-home order that includes the closure of nonessential businesses through June 8, announced that academic and educational retailers can apply for waivers that would allow to them to partially reopen with curbside pickup. For more on states' reopening progress, click here.Hannah Miller

5:36 pm: Investors await the impact of reopening on the economy

Investors are focusing on states' reopening progress as they try to gauge whether lifting restrictions is helping to improve the economy. Until investors have a stronger idea of how the economy will fare once the country has reopened, stocks could face choppy trading, CNBC's Patti Domm reports. Data arriving next week in the form of housing reports and earnings release could provide important insight. Hannah Miller

5 pm: Real estate CEO says NYC will overcome crisis

4:35 pm: Mercedes-Benz plant to idle operations

A worker uses a tool on a Daimler AG Mercedes Benz M-Class vehicle at the company's international assembly plant in Vance, Alabama. Luke Sharrett | Bloomberg | Getty Images



Daimler said its Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama, which was among the first U.S. factories to reopen last month following Covid-19 shutdowns, would once again idle beginning next week due to a supplier parts shortage. "The management is monitoring the situation diligently and will decide on short notice to start operations as soon as possible," the company said in an emailed statement. The shutdown highlights one of the major issues facing automakers as they begin to reopen facilities. Their elaborate network of suppliers that produce many of the tens of thousands of parts that go into a vehicle might not be able to sustain production due to shortages or closures of their own. The Mercedes-Benz plant reopened April 27 after the company idled the operations due to the coronavirus pandemic on March 23. The Detroit automakers as well as Toyota Motor have cited the need for their suppliers to be up and running ahead of them in an attempt to avoid a false restart that would lead to plants temporarily closing again. General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler are expected to begin producing vehicles at their assembly plants starting Monday. Toyota started reopening production operations this week. Michael Wayland

4:13 pm: Stocks rise slightly, but post big weekly losses

The market ended Friday's volatile session up slightly with the Dow Jones Industrial Average climbing 60 points and the S&P 500 up 0.4%. The Nasdaq Composite eked out a 0.8% gain. Still, the major equity averages posted big weekly losses amid trade worries and weak economic data. The Dow and the S&P 500 both shed more than 2%, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 1.1% this week. Yun Li

3:51 pm: More companies are filing for bankruptcy amid the pandemic

Companies across multiple industries have been pushed into bankruptcy because of the coronavirus. There were 560 commercial Chapter 11 filings in April, a 26% increase from last year, according to the American Bankruptcy Institute. Big names in retail like J. Crew and Neiman Marcus have entered bankruptcy proceedings after having to close stores amid the pandemic. Energy companies like Whiting Petroleum cited low oil demand stemming from the outbreak as a factor in their bankruptcy decisions. Meanwhile, other companies like J.C. Penney and Hertz teeter on the verge of a potential filing as the virus continues to spread economic uncertainty. Hannah Miller

3:36 pm: Food delivery fees capped temporarily in some cities to help struggling restaurants

Cities across the country are imposing limits on the fees that third-party delivery companies like DoorDash and Grubhub can charge restaurants for the duration of the pandemic. Jersey City, Seattle and San Francisco capped delivery fees through emergency orders last month, and New York City could be the next to follow the trend. Restaurants typically pay between 15% to 30% on orders placed with delivery providers, eating into their razor-thin profits.

Delivery companies say that limits on commission fees just passes along the cost of delivery to consumers, leading to reduced orders for the restaurants it was supposed to help and hurting their delivery drivers' earnings. Amelia Lucas

3:22 pm: Doctors struggle to access patients' medical information, even in pandemic

Even in the midst of the pandemic, doctors say that there are still challenges in accessing their patients' medical information. It takes a lot of time and energy, in particular, to move records from one vendor to another. Medical experts say this is causing unnecessary waste and creating delays in care. The CEO of one of the largest vendors, Epic Systems, told CNBC at Healthy Returns that interoperability has been an ongoing challenge. "We can't send a fax to someone who doesn't have a fax machine, so you can't interoperate with someone who doesn't interoperate," Epic CEO Judy Faulkner said. Christina Farr

3:02 pm: Phones are 'ringing off the hook' at southern Connecticut real estate offices, governor says

Connecticut Gov. Ned Lamont told CNBC that the phones at real estate offices in the southern part of the state are "ringing off the hook," as people from New York City consider a move due to the Covid-19 pandemic. "People are realizing that telecommuting doesn't mean you have to be in New York City five days a week," the Democrat argued on "Squawk Box." "It means that if you have to stay home for a period of time, having a nice little backyard is not a bad way to do it." Kevin Stankiewicz

2:54 pm: NYSE parent mum around FBI investigation of Senate stock sales

The corporate parent of the New York Stock Exchange won't say whether it's given information to the FBI about stock sales of its CEO, Jeff Sprecher, and his wife, Sen. Kelly Loeffler. Loeffler, a Georgia Republican, said Thursday that she has turned over documents and other information to the FBI, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee. The FBI is eyeing sales of stock valued at more than $1 million by her and Sprecher, along with accounts related to three other senators, in the weeks before the coronavirus outbreak shut down the United States. Sprecher is CEO of The Intercontinental Exchange, or ICE, which in addition to owning the Big Board operates other financial marketplaces. ICE declined to comment when asked if it has shared any documents with federal criminal investigators. He and Loeffler deny any wrongdoing, saying their sales of stock before the coronavirus-sparked meltdown of markets were done by financial managers without any input from the couple. Dan Mangan, Thomas Franck and Christina Wilkie

2:49 pm: Vice to lay off 155 people, as CEO calls out Big Tech

Vice Media will reportedly lay off about 155 people globally as the coronavirus heightens pressure on media outlets. CEO Nancy Dubuc wrote in an employee memo announcing the layoffs that she placed some of the blame on Big Tech companies taking hold of digital advertising growth. "We grew our digital business faster than anyone at a time when we believed that as more pies were baked, we'd keep getting a slice," she wrote. "But we aren't seeing the return from the platforms benefiting and making money from our hard work. Now, after many years of this, the squeeze is becoming a chokehold. Platforms are not just taking a larger slice of the pie, but almost the whole pie... 36,000+ lost jobs in journalism is enough to take your breath away," she added. Jessica Bursztynsky

2:41 pm: U.S. air travel is on the rise but still down more than 90%

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

U.S. airports are busier this month compared with April, but air travel demand is still a fraction of the same point last year, as the coronavirus keeps many potential customers home. In the first 14 days of May, close to 2.5 million people passed through U.S. airports, according to the Transportation Security Administration, an increase of 63% from the same period in April. But even with that surge, the number of travelers is still down more than 92% from a year ago. Air travel generally perks up in the spring and summer  the peak period for vacation travel and when airlines generate the bulk of their revenue. Leslie Josephs

2:35 pm: Four states will reopen restricted beach access for Memorial Day weekend

A person sunbathes while wearing a protective mask on May 13, 2020 in the Coney Island neighborhood in the Brooklyn borough in New York City. Stephanie Keith | Getty Images

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said New York state will reopen its beaches for Memorial Day weekend in coordination with New Jersey, Connecticut and Delaware, although reopened waterfronts will have to limit capacity to 50% and maintain social distancing guidelines. Public pools will remain closed, he said. Cuomo said his rationale behind the decision was to work in conformity with surrounding states, such as New Jersey, which he said were planning to open beaches. He said he was concerned that there would be millions of New Yorkers crowding the Jersey Shore and other waterfronts. Local jurisdictions had the right to keep their beaches closed if they felt it wasn't safe, Cuomo said. Jane Meyer, a spokesperson for New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, said in an emailed statement that the city's beaches "will not open on Memorial Day." Earlier on Friday, de Blasio said the city would ramp up patrol of the city's beaches this weekend and added that beaches and pools in the city are "not in the cards right now." Noah Higgins-Dunn

2:15 pm: How the three types of Covid-19 tests work and why each is important

2 pm: Trump says U.S. will overcome crisis with or without a vaccine

Dr. Anthony Fauci (R), director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, looks on as U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks about coronavirus vaccine development in the Rose Garden of the White House on May 15, 2020 in Washington, DC. Drew Angerer | Getty Images

President Donald Trump downplayed the need for a coronavirus vaccine, claiming at a White House press conference that the deadly virus will "go away" eventually. "Vaccine or no vaccine, we're back," Trump told reporters. "We are starting the process. In many cases, they don't have vaccines and a virus or a flu comes and you fight through it." Experts and political leaders alike have said that the U.S. won't be able to recover from the pandemic until a vaccine is widely available. There are more than 100 vaccines under development globally, according to the World Health Organization. Trump said Friday that 14 of those candidates are being looked at closely. Scientists warn they are still learning about the deadly virus, including how the body's immune system responds once a person has been exposed to it. The answers may have large implications for vaccine development, including the time frame in which a vaccine can be deployed to the public. Berkeley Lovelace Jr.

1:50 pm: WHO raises alert on mysterious inflammatory disease in children that may be linked to coronavirus

Woman with children wearing protective masks as a preventive measure against the coronavirus COVID-19 on street in Kyiv, Ukraine on March 31, 2020. Maxym Marusenko | NurPhoto via Getty Images

The World Health Organization called on all doctors and health leaders across the globe to "be on the alert" for cases of a rare inflammatory disease in children that may be linked to the coronavirus. World health officials are hearing reports of a rise in cases of an inflammatory disease similar to Kawasaki disease in several countries, including the United States and Italy. As researchers struggle to find more information about the mysterious illness, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, urged the need to understand the extent of the inflammatory syndrome's association with Covid-19. Jasmine Kim

1:40 pm: NYC begins to prepare for a hot summer with residents still under quarantine

Subway passengers wearing protective masks ride the F train in the Brooklyn borough of New York, U.S., on Monday, April 20, 2020. Holly Pickett | Bloomberg | Getty Images

All the activities New Yorkers love about summer, like barbecues, picnics, ball games and days at the beach or by the pool, are going to be different "for the foreseeable future," New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said at his daily press briefing. The city is preparing for the upcoming hot weather, which reached historic high temperatures last year, as it continues to follow strict social-distancing guidelines to prevent the spread of Covid-19. Officials plan to spend $55 million to provide approximately 74,000 air conditioners to all low-income seniors, de Blasio said. He said that beaches and pools are "not in the cards right now" and the city is working toward providing "misting oases" in seating areas as an alternative. Sports venues, auditoriums and other large venues may also be turned into cooling centers, he said. "This is going to be a different summer than any summer we've experienced in the history of New York City," de Blasio said. Noah Higgins-Dunn

1:23 pm: New York State residents get another 30-day break on medical, student loan debt

New York state residents who owe the state medical or student loan debt that is in collection have been given a 30-day extension on paying those debts. Payments will be frozen until June 16 for those types of debts that have been referred to the attorney general's office. After that, the office will assess whether an additional extension is needed. The attorney general is also accepting applications to freeze other debts that are owed to the state and referred to its office for collections. The application can be found online. The move comes as more than 2 million New York residents have applied for unemployment in the past two months. Lorie Konish

1:15 pm: House Democrats push to pass $3 trillion coronavirus relief bill

House Democratic leaders forged ahead with trying to pass a $3 trillion coronavirus aid package that has no chance of becoming law. The bill, which would top a $2 trillion March law as the biggest emergency spending plan in U.S. history, includes relief for state and local governments, another direct payment to Americans and hazard pay for essential workers. Despite some opposition from the Democratic Party's left and right flanks, the pandemic response legislation cleared a procedural hurdle on Friday afternoon. The House is expected to pass it by Friday night. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has criticized the measure as a Democratic wishlist. President Donald Trump has threatened to veto it  though the White House says he would be open to a different relief bill. Jacob Pramuk

12:53 pm: San Francisco retailers given guidelines for reopening on Monday

A customer enters a CVS Health Corp. store with signs displaying "Sorry We Are Out Of Masks" in San Francisco, California, U.S., on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2020. David Paul Morris | Bloomberg via Getty Images

New guidelines from the San Francisco Department of Public Health give insight into how the city's partial reopening of retailers will look on Monday. San Francisco currently plans to allow nonessential retailers to open with curbside pickup and for manufacturing that supports retail to resume operations. Retailers are not allowed to have more than 10 employees on site at one time and will need to have clear access to a sidewalk, street, parking lot or alley for pickup. Retail businesses located inside a shopping center cannot reopen unless they have an exterior door. The health department estimates that 90% of small business retailers can reopen under these conditions. Customers arriving for pickup will have to wear masks. Manufacturing, warehousing and logistics that support retail businesses can resume as long as they have no more than 50 employees on site at one time. These businesses must also follow social distancing guidelines and implement a health and safety plan. Hannah Miller

12:33 pm: Coronavirus could change TV advertising forever

The advertising industry could change dramatically as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. The TV Upfronts, an opportunity for broadcasters to win commitments from advertisers, were canceled this year as the coronavirus delays television production and causes uncertainty for marketers, CNBC's Julia Boorstin reports. Advertisers may be turning toward investing their marketing dollars in digital platforms rather than long-term TV buys. Hannah Miller

12:15 pm: Senate Democrats introduce a bill to boost nonprofit workforce

Four Senate Democrats introduced a bill that aims to give grants to struggling nonprofits that are losing their workforces because of the coronavirus. The bill, introduced by Sens. Amy Klobuchar, Brian Schatz, Ron Wyden and Sherrod Brown, will encourage nonprofits to apply for grants issued by the Treasury Department in order to rehire laid-off workers or hire newly unemployed people. Across the country, nonprofits have been struggling to stay afloat as the pandemic persists. Shelter-in-place guidelines have forced nonprofits and institutions catering to vulnerable populations to suffer steep declines in volunteer service and revenue. Yelena Dzhanova

11:47 am: Manhattan rental market takes a hard hit from pandemic

A Chelsea Tower rental apartments billboard. Jeff Greenberg | Getty Images

New rentals in Manhattan plummeted by 71% last month, reflecting the serious blow the coronavirus has dealt to New York City's rental market. Manhattan's vacancy rate is now at its highest level in 14 years as people leave the city for more spacious suburbs, CNBC's Robert Frank reports. In order to keep tenants, landlords are making concessions like waiving one month's rent and reducing security deposits. Hannah Miller

11:20 am: 'It's just become a survival game,' fourth-generation cattle rancher says

With major meat plants still closed even after President Donald Trump's executive order to keep them open and low cattle prices on top of that, many cattle ranchers in the U.S. are bleeding money and having to make hard decisions. Fourth-generation cattle rancher Brett Kenzy says he is six weeks late on his loan payments after he was unable to sell his cattle on April 1. For the week ending on May 9, meat production  including beef, veal, pork and lamb  was down 31% from the same time the previous year, according to the USDA. [T]he executive order had essentially no impact," Derrell Peel, a livestock economist at Oklahoma State University tells CNBC Make It. The problem may be that many plants are struggling to find healthy workers as many fall sick and others are fearful of getting the virus, according to reports. If this continues, Kenzy believes "meat rationing will occur, definitely" during the summer months. Jade Scipioni

11:15 am: Mexico to allow auto production to restart

Employees work on the assembly line of the Tiguan model, at the Volkswagen car plant in Puebla, central Mexico in 2018. PEDRO PARDO | AFP | Getty Images

After days of uncertainty, Mexico will allow automakers and suppliers to resume production as early as next week as long as safety protocols are implemented to protect workers from Covid-19, according to updated guidelines released by the Mexican government. Safety protocols, according to the guidelines, are expected to include adjustment of workspaces and production processes, as well as the establishment of entryways, sanitization and hygiene practices determined by the health ministry. All are similar to measures already being established in U.S. and Mexico factories by automakers.

Without Mexico production reopening, it was unclear whether U.S. production could successfully resume next week for General Motors, Ford Motor and Fiat Chrysler. Despite President Donald Trump's "America First" policies, the U.S. auto industry heavily relies on Mexico for parts and vehicle production. The guidelines have been changed at least three times this week, including Thursday when the government said production could not begin until June 1. Michael Wayland

11:00 am: Abbott test missing infections may be due to 'user error,' Azar says

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said a coronavirus test used to screen White House staff could be providing inaccurate results due to "user error." He added the White House still has "confidence" in the test even after a recent study from New York University found it may return a high percentage of false-negative results. U.S. officials and corporations are pouring money into testing, hoping it will give people the confidence to return to work and reopen parts of the economy. The Abbott test is one of four on the U.S. market. On Monday, the FDA granted emergency use authorization for Abbott's new coronavirus test that detects Covid-19 antibodies. The tests can indicate whether a person has had Covid-19 and was either asymptomatic or recovered. Berkeley Lovelace, Jr.

10:55 am: Boston Dynamics' dog-like robot being used for social-distancing patrol

Boston Dynamics' dog-like robot, Spot, is being used in a park in Singapore to help encourage social distancing during the coronavirus pandemic.

Marc Raibert, the company's founder, told CNBC the robot can operate itself but in Singapore, there is a human who is operating it. "The robot isn't really enforcing in Singapore. It's just giving people information and encouraging them," he said. "There's a human nearby who can do whatever enforcement they decide is appropriate." Kevin Stankiewicz

10:45 am: Fed's Kaplan calls for a 'dramatic national initiative for testing'

Despite the fact that tens of millions of Americans have lost their jobs as the U.S. economy went into freefall amid the pandemic, the U.S. could still pull off a relatively quick recovery if it does just one thing right, Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert Kaplan said, according to a Reuters report. "If we made a dramatic national initiative for testing  and I mean dramatic ...that could help create the V," he said in an online interview with local public TV station KERA. Kaplan was referring to a "v-shaped recession," which is characterized by a sharp decline in output followed quickly by a steep ramp back up. Terri Cullen

10:28 am: Number of new US cases remains persistently steady

9:58 am: Microsoft and UnitedHealth offer free app to screen employees for coronavirus

UnitedHealth Group and Microsoft's ProtectWell coronavirus symptom screener UnitedHealth Group and Microsoft

UnitedHealth Group and Microsoft are launching a coronavirus screening app for U.S. employers, called ProtectWell, that provides daily symptom checker to help clear employees to go to work, or directs them to be tested if they are at risk for infection. As companies grapple with new safety requirements to prevent Covid-19 infection when they bring employees back to the workplace, health care and tech companies are rolling new services to connect employers with reliable testing resources, advise them about establishing testing protocols for workers in different jobs, and manage the health privacy regulations surrounding the new safety measures. UnitedHealth and Microsoft are providing their app free of charge, but for diagnostic companies and health systems providing reopening health services provides a new business opportunity to offset some of the losses caused by the moratorium on non-emergency care due to the pandemic. The aim is to instill confidence in workers that they're protected on the job, and through widespread testing help provide a better framework to contain the spread of the virus, so that consumers safe about going back out into their communities. Bertha Coombs

9:43 am: Curve edges up in U.S. and Singapore

9:33 am: Fewer borrowers are asking for mortgage relief, but bailout improvements could change the pace

The pace of borrowers still piling into government and private lender mortgage relief programs is finally slowing. However, a change in the way borrowers are required to pay back that relief, could make the programs more enticing over the next few months. Approximately 4.7 million homeowners were in so-called forbearance plans, as of May 12, up from a revised 4.5 million the week before, according to Black Knight, a mortgage data and analytics company. The vast majority are in the government's plan, which was set up as part of the CARES Act, the first coronavirus relief legislation. Diana Olick

8:45 am: Norway could extend travel restrictions to Aug. 20

Norway is likely to extend restrictions on international travel until Aug. 20, Prime Minister Erna Solberg said, according to Reuters. The country has advised against traveling across borders unless necessary and has asked any residents returning from abroad to quarantine for 10 days. Non-Norwegians are largely barred from entering the country, Reuters reports. Sara Salinas

8:32 am: Denmark records zero Covid-19 deaths in 24 hours

A covid-19 infected patient, who has been hospitalised for a month, talks with medical staff at the lung medical unit at Bispebjerg Hospital in Copenhagen Denmark on May 7, 2020 amid the new coronavirus pandemic. Olafur Steinar Gestsson | AFP | Getty Images

Denmark recorded zero deaths related to Covid-19 in the past 24 hours for the first time in more than two months, Reuters reported. The Scandinavian country confirmed 78 new cases to bring the national tally to 10,791. The death toll stands at 537, and the number of hospitalizations across the country fell by 10 to 137, according to Reuters. Sara Salinas

8:30 am: Retail sales plunge 16.4% in April

Zoom In Icon Arrows pointing outwards

April retail sales fell a record 16.4%, as the coronavirus pandemic largely kept brick-and-mortar shops closed. Economists polled by Dow Jones expected sales to plunge by 12.3%, compared with a previous record drop in March. Nonessential businesses were shuttered in wide swaths across the country during the crisis. Some states are just starting to reopen shops and nongrocery retailers for business or for curbside pickup. Sara Salinas

7:42 am: Former FDA chief on what experts know about unique symptoms in children

7:37 am: Drive-ins offer haven for moviegoers, as traditional theaters stay shuttered

Cars line up at the ticket booth to enter the Ocala Drive-in Theatre, one of the few Florida movie theaters permitted to operate during the COVID-19 stay-at-home order. Half of the parking spaces are roped off, providing 10-12 feet of social distance between each vehicle, and food orders are delivered to cars by servers wearing protective masks and gloves. Paul Hennessy | Barcroft Media | Getty Images

Once a dying piece of Americana, drive-ins have become a haven for moviegoers during the coronavirus pandemic. While traditional movie theaters have been closed due to social distancing restrictions, drive-ins have been able to show films. Although, it's estimated that only 30 are open out of the 330 locations still operating. Jim Kopp, owner of the Family Drive-in Theater in Stephens City, Virginia, said his theater keeps cars 10 feet apart and all of his ticketing and concession sales are now done online or through an app. "It has changed the way we are doing business in that everything is online," he said. "It is a contactless type of process." The drive-ins restrooms are also sanitized after each use, which has led to longer-than-average lines. Sarah Whitten

7:30 am: Slovenia becomes first European country to call an end to the coronavirus pandemic
Metro Manila (CNN Philippines, May 15)  The Philippines now has 12,091 cases of the coronavirus disease as the Department of Health confirmed 215 new infections on Friday.

The agency reported in its 4:00 p.m. bulletin that 123 more people recovered from the viral illness, bringing the total number of survivors to 2,460.

Meanwhile, 16 more patients died from the disease. The death toll is now at 806.

Majority of the country's COVID-19 cases are in Metro Manila. Of the newly reported infections, 144 or 67 percent are in the capital region.

Metro Manila will be under a modified enhanced community quarantine starting Saturday. More businesses are allowed to reopen but most people are still ordered to stay home.

READ: What daily life would be like in areas under modified ECQ, GCQ

Laguna province and Cebu City will also be placed under MECQ. Other local government units have appealed for stricter lockdown rules in their areas as coronavirus cases continue to rise.

While more people may be allowed outside, health authorities call on the public to continue practicing social distancing measures to prevent further spread of the virus.

Carlito Galvez Jr., chief implementer of the National Task Force on COVID-19, said the country now has a stable supply of personal protective equipment to shield frontliners handling infected patients, with more deliveries coming.

Some 2,245 healthcare workers have contracted the disease, with 779 recoveries and 35 deaths.

The country's 30 testing laboratories can now process up to 14,500 samples per day. The government aims to scale testing capacity up to 30,000 tests daily by the end of the month.

Among Filipinos abroad, a total of 2,331 have contracted COVID-19. The Department of Foreign Affairs said more recoveries than infections are being reported.

The agency recorded no new fatalities among infected overseas Filipinos for the second consecutive day on Friday. The death toll stood at 269 while recoveries rose to 789.

The government allows overseas Filipino workers to return to the country, but they can only go home once cleared after a 14-day quarantine.
MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI  A local chain of nonprofit thrift stores has reopened for in-person business, highlighting confusion over what constitutes an essential retail operation during COVID-19.

Hopes Outlet Ministries, which operates four thrift stores in Muskegon, Muskegon Heights, Grand Haven and Whitehall, reopened some store doors to the public on Tuesday, April 28, according to its social media. As of this week, all locations are open. Customers may peruse clothing and furniture Mondays through Fridays, and no mask is required, one store worker told an MLive reporter.

But statewide, nonessential retail stores remain closed under Gov. Gretchen Whitmers stay-at-home order, which restricts movement and some business operations in an attempt to quell the spread of COVID-19. Retail businesses can provide curbside pickup and delivery, but most cannot open their doors for general shopping.

Kathy Tabor, the missions director, told MLive that the stores reopened in accordance with exemption 9(d) of the revised April 24 order, which states that Workers and volunteers for businesses or operations (including both religious and secular nonprofit organizations) that provide food, shelter, and other necessities of life for economically disadvantaged or otherwise needy individuals, individuals who need assistance as a result of this emergency, and people with disabilities count as critical infrastructure workers.

Proceeds from the thrift stores sales support the ministrys other services, such as a food pantry at its Muskegon Heights location, 2424 Glade St., and about 75 percent of visitors to the retail locations are economically disadvantaged, Tabor said.

In general, thrift stores are not allowed to be open under the stay-at-home order, said Dale Rietberg, an attorney with Grand Rapids Varnum law firm who specializes in nonprofit and religious organizations.

Theres no blanket exemption for thrift stores, even if theyre affiliated with religious organizations or 501(c)3 nonprofits, Rietberg said.

However, the exemption cited by the ministry makes clear that elements of an organizations work  such as a food pantry  are permitted, he said.

I dont believe that it gives carte blanche exemption for an entire thrift store, he said. Just because it provides financial support to a church, or even to a food pantry, it doesnt get exempt.

Other local religious thrift stores, including DIBS! On Resale, which supports West Michigan Christian Schools, and the Muskegon Rescue Mission Thrift Stores, remain closed.

And while some regional Goodwill locations have reopened for donation drop-off, and they operate an e-commerce presence, all remain closed to in-person shoppers. Calls to Goodwill Industries of West Michigan went unanswered.

Because the Hopes Outlets mission exists entirely within the stores, in order to provide low-cost or no-cost items to low-income people - such as clothing for children and infants for less than one dollar apiece, sometimes given away freely when needed - Tabor said that, by definition, the stores fulfill a critical function during a time of great need.

Weve had people come in, visibly emotional, about needing to purchase these items and being unable to do so, she said. Our whole mission is to support those who present at our retail establishments.

Local law enforcement agencies are ultimately the ones to check in on compliance with the statewide orders, said Meegan Holland, vice president of marketing and communications for the Michigan Retailers Association, a trade group.

Clothing stores can be open for curbside delivery and online sales, said Holland. Those who are open, who insist on opening, what we tell them is, Look, if you feel that a slice of your business falls under the essential aspects that the governor has laid out, and that you fall under that essential definition, and you open...you need to be able to defend that decision.

Tabor said that local law enforcement has visited the stores, and said that cashiers must wear face masks. Tabor added that the stores have other safety precautions in place, including having front-of-store employees in masks; cleaning carts after each use; and maintaining social distance at the cash register.

But compliance is not always so clear-cut. In the case of do-gooder entities, elements of their operations may ultimately support needy individuals. Another exemption in the stay-at-home order supports the provision of items necessary to maintain the safety, sanitation, and basic operation of residences, which can include some of the home goods sold at a thrift store, for example.

Still, Rietberg urges caution when navigating those nuances.

To the extent you have a soup kitchen or a food pantry, I would think that would quite clearly satisfy the orders exemptions, he said. But to the extent youre selling used household items, maybe you can make an argument, but I dont think that was the intent.

Its tough for anyone to get their arms around all the angles on this, he added. Maybe they should consult with their legal counsel.

Tabor said the missions board of directors is aware and supportive of their ongoing operations. The stores shut down for five weeks to honor the stay-at-home orders, she added, and the mission decided to proceed with caution as the curve of COVID-19 cases in the community began to flatten.

We feel its important to care for the burdens of others, she said. This isnt the time to abandon that. Why would we abandon helping those in need now?

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.

Use disinfecting wipes or disinfecting spray cleaners on frequently-touched surfaces in your home (door handles, faucets, countertops) and carry hand sanitizer with you when you go into places like stores.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has also issued an executive order requiring people to wear face coverings over their mouth and nose while inside enclosed, public spaces.

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 on MLive:

Downtown Muskegon development moving forward as construction resumes

Health officials see light at end of the tunnel for coronavirus crisis in Muskegon County

Dangerous syndrome in kids linked to COVID-19 under review in Michigan after 17 cases confirmed

Work begins on first $600K condo at Hartshorn Village on Muskegon Lake
Amid the flurry of announcements surrounding the reopening of Oregons mostly rural counties, it might come as a surprise to many urban residents: Gov. Kate Brown will allow virtually all retail stores across the state, including in the Portland metro area, to reopen for business starting Friday.

That includes furniture stores, art galleries, jewelry shops and boutiques  stores that she specifically ordered closed in March.

Their reopenings could prompt a spate of other businesses to restart again -- stores that Brown never officially ordered to close but did so on their own to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus or because foot traffic took a steep dive when customers heeded the governors March 23 order to stay at home except for essential tasks such as grocery shopping.

Starting Friday, the governor also is allowing childcare centers across Oregon  previously restricted to serving the children of essential workers  to care for all children. The state has said children of essential workers must get priority. Summer school and youth programs also can start up statewide, with some restrictions. Summer day camps will be allowed, but overnight camps wont.

Theres still plenty thats unclear about how the governors reopening plans will affect the metro area specifically. Heres what we know:

What exactly has the governor said?

When Brown announced last week that shed allow individual counties to apply to enter a Phase I reopening, some Oregonians apparently took that to mean that the state might give permission to mostly rural counties with few cases of COVID-19 to restart and that Multnomah, Washington and Clackamas counties, with a noticeably higher level of infections, would hold off on reopening.

But it has since become clear that some level of reopening  businesses such as furniture stores and boutiques  automatically will be allowed in the Portland area and statewide.

Counties that want to go a step further, for instance allowing sit-down customers at restaurants, must get the states permission. So far, 33 of the states 36 counties have applied. Multnomah, Clackamas and Washington counties havent yet sought that level of reopening.

The governor said Thursday the state has granted permission to 31 of the 33 counties to enter Phase 1. They will be allowed to reopen restaurants and bars for dine-in patrons, gyms, health clubs, hair salons, nail salons and shopping malls starting Friday  with many restrictions.

Residents in those counties approved for Phase 1 also will be allowed to hold gatherings of up to 25 people.

What businesses can open in the Portland area and statewide?

The governors office has said all retail businesses can reopen in the metro area, but said those in indoor and outdoor malls cant.

That appears to mean retail stores in shopping centers such as Washington Square and Clackamas Town Center must remain shuttered, and the same holds true for outdoor venues such as the Streets of Tanasbourne or Bridgeport Village. The governors press office said retailers in strip malls are allowed to reopen.

Standalone furniture stores, such as IKEA, also have gotten the green light. An array of small shops -- specifically boutiques -- have, too.

The governors spokeswoman, Liz Merah, said (a)ny of the retail businesses that were prohibited from operating because of the governors March 23 stay-at-home order can resume operations. But the governors executive order issued later Thursday carves out just one exception: cosmetic stores.

What remains to be seen is how soon businesses which voluntarily closed days before the governors March order -- such as Powells Books or IKEA -- will reopen. Some might not yet feel its safe.

Whats not changing?

Throughout Browns stay-at-home order, grocery stores, pharmacies, banks, credit unions and gas stations always have been allowed to remain open.

Restaurants and bars have been allowed to offer take-out service.

Hospitals and medical clinics remained open for urgent procedures and some offered nonurgent care if it didnt require any personal protective gear, such as masks. Starting May 1, the governor reversed that order and allowed hospitals, medical and dental clinics and veterinary offices to restart elective procedures that required masks or other protective gear.

Public schools are still closed statewide.

Whats still off-limits in the Portland area?

In addition to indoor and outdoor malls, restaurants and bars are still prohibited from offering dine-in service.

Cultural, civic or faith gatherings of more than 25 people are still banned, too. Social gatherings of more than 10 people are forbidden. Smaller groups are allowed if participants physically distance themselves.

Can I leave the Portland area to get a haircut in another county or visit the beach?

The governor said Thursday the answer is no, although it doesnt appear she plans to enforce that.

Brown asked Portland-area residents to hold tight and resist the urge to drive to another county to get a haircut, dine out at a restaurant or visit a tourist sites.

I know this is really hard," Brown said. "I know many of us are really wanting to get our hair done, get our haircut, whatever you need to do, but we are asking folks in the metro area to be thoughtful of their fellow Oregonians and to stay home and limit their travel to essential need. ... We obviously dont want to overwhelm the rest of Oregon by traveling outside the metro area.

Brown also said police wont be stopping Portlanders who are heading out for a visit to the coast, but she asked that metro area residents respect her direction, which is meant to lessen the spread of COVID-19.

If retail stores can reopen, can I leave my home to go window shopping?

Thats unclear. Brown said Thursday during a news conference broadcast on the internet that her order still stands for the Portland metro area: Residents should stay at home and venture out only for essential tasks.

We are asking people to stay at home in the metropolitan area," Brown said.

But if retail stores have the governors permission to reopen, is the governor saying its OK to leave home to shop for jewelry, toys or other non-essential items?

Merah, the governors spokeswoman, later pointed to the governors order, which grants permission for people to leave for consumer needs." But the order also says (w)henever possible, Oregonians should travel the minimum distance necessary to or from a home, residence, or workplace.

Are there new rules for stores that open for business?

Yes. Retailers must focus on maintaining at least six feet of distance between people and employees, limit occupancy so stores dont get too crowded and frequently sanitize commonly touched surfaces, among other measures.

That includes wiping down fitting rooms door knobs and seats after a customer uses them. If stores do open fitting rooms, customers should wash or sanitize their hands before and after trying on clothes.

There are no scientific data to indicate that clothing items are a major means of spread of the coronavirus, reads a document written by the Oregon Health Authority offering guidance to retailers. Any risk from this exposure is likely to be very low. Items that have been in a fitting room can be set aside for a day or longer if the retailer is concerned about perceived risks from clothing that has been tried on by customers.

The health authority also advises stores that they can take additional precautions with returns.

When processing returns, employees should wash hands or use hand sanitizer before and after handling items, the agency states. Retailer may set items aside for a day or longer if concerned about perceived risks of exposure.

Stores must not allow customers to try on items that are worn on the head, such as sunglasses, scarves and headbands.

Employees must wear face coverings or masks, which must be provided by employers. Customers are strongly encouraged to wear face coverings, too.

-- Aimee Green; agreen@oregonian.com; @o_aimee

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
Ryanair has announced 250 job losses at their offices in Dublin, as well as in the UK, Spain and Poland as the airline battles against a dramatic drop in customers due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Those who are losing their jobs are a combination of probation/fixed-term contract ends, resignations and redundancies, the company said.
A number of special needs children and their mother have launched a High Court action claiming that the laws and regulations governing who is entitled to disabled parking permits breaches their constitutional rights.

The action arises after the mother, who is the young children's full-time carer, applied for, but was refused a Disabled Person's Parking Permit.

Derek Shortall Bl for the family, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, told the court that the permit was needed on health and safety grounds as it would allow the mother find parking much quicker and closer to essential services.

It would also limit the amount of time the children, some of whom who need to be restrained when travelling, spend in the car.

Counsel said under the Section 35 of the 1994 Road Traffic Act and Article 43 of the 1997 Road Traffic Regulations, which regulate parking of vehicles and the issuing of disabled person's parking permits a disabled person Is defined as somebody with walking difficulties.

The children, in this case, can walk, but counsel said have been diagnosed with various conditions, including sensory difficulties, autism and ADHD.

Due to their complex conditions, their behaviour can be challenging. Counsel said some of the children have no sense of danger and can bolt from the car once it stops.

A second adult is generally required when the family take a trip in the car, which it is claimed can be extremely difficult for the family.

Counsel said it is the applicants case that the rules and regulations governing who is entitled to the permits are too rigid, disproportionate, impermissibly wide and discriminatory.

Under the current laws, there is no power to create different categories of disabled persons, it is argued.

It is also claimed the rules and regulations challenged are unconstitutional and contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights because they discriminate against and exclude the children's mother from getting a disabled person's parking permit.

The proceedings are against the IWA Ltd trading as the Irish Wheelchair Association, the Minister for Transport, Tourism and Sport, Ireland and the Attorney General.

Counsel told the court the IWA are the entity designated by the government to make decisions on applications for permits.

Counsel said last February the family applied for, but was refused, a permit. The IWA counsel said wad very apologetic about its decision but said that as the rules currently stand it could not grant the family the permit.

Counsel added that agencies including the HSE are supportive of the family's application for the permit.

In their action, the applicants seek an order disallowing the IWA's decision not to grant the family a disabled parking permit.

They also various seek declarations including that sections of the 1994 Road Traffic Act, and 1997 Traffic and Parking regulations are repugnant to Articles 15 and 40 of the constitution.

The matter came before Mr Justice Michael Quinn, who directed that the application for leave be heard on notice to the respondents.

The case will return before the court later this month.
The founders of Q have hosted talks promoting what experts say are unfounded claims that alternative health methods such as practicing gratitude and consuming essential oils can combat or even prevent contracting the novel coronavirus, sparking pushback from at least one ally of the group.

The talks took place on platforms affiliated with Gabe Lyons and his wife, Rebekah, both of whom are influential evangelical Christian authors and speakers. The two founded Q, which is described on its website as a learning community that mobilizes Christians to advance the common good in society. The organization hosts an annual conference that resembles TED Talks and features prominent Christian speakers, as well as business leaders, politicians and entertainers. Videos of the talks and affiliated podcasts are distributed via apps to digital devices such as Apple TV.

Lyons recently hosted two coronavirus-themed conversations with Joshua Axe, who is listed as a chiropractor and nutritionist on his website, which sells a wide variety of alternative health supplements such as essential oils. The website does not describe Axe as an expert on epidemiology, but it does boast that his company, Axe Wellness, has won accolades in Tennessee. The nature of his practice is unclear: the states Department of Health lists his chiropractic license as expired as of 2013.

The first conversation occurred on a February 28 episode of the Rhythms for Life podcast, a reference to Rebekah Lyonss book Rhythms of Renewal, which is described as outlining methods to overcome anxiety with daily habits that strengthen you mentally and physically.

In the podcast conversation with Gabe Lyons, Axe downplayed the threat of the novel coronavirus by claiming weve actually had worse threats in the past; suggested the pharmaceutical industry and the media benefit from driving fear around the pandemic; and claimed he has complete confidence that he could either avoid infection from the coronavirus or defeat it in a few days by boosting his immune system through alternative methods such as ingesting ginger tea and oregano oil.

Im in complete confidence that if Im exposed to the coronavirus that either I wont get it, or if I do get it, that, hey, it will be a few days and Ill be fine afterwards, he said. Because when your immune system is strongGod designed our bodies to fight viruses. And thats the thing: For me, its an attitude and mentality of faith over fear.

Axe did not discuss vaccines other than to argue that pharmaceutical companies are developing a vaccine around the pandemic and that there is a big industry there.

At no point did Gabe Lyons challenge Axes claims, which appear to be directly refuted by a statement published on the website of the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health, operating underneath the National Institutes of Health. (It was to this statement that the NIH directed an inquiry from Religion News Service when asked to comment on the contents of Axes talks.)

The media has reported that some people are seeking alternative remedies to prevent or to treat COVID-19, the statement reads. Some of these purported remedies include herbal therapies, teas, essential oils, tinctures, and silver products such as colloidal silver. There is no scientific evidence that any of these alternative remedies can prevent or cure the illness caused by COVID-19.

Rebekah Lyons posted about Axe on Instagram shortly after his appearance on the podcast, saying Who do you call to get insight on boosting immunity in light of the Coronavirus? (Axe) of course!

Gabe Lyons hosted Axe again during the Q 2020 Virtual Summit that took place April 22-23, featuring speakers such as conservative commentator Eric Metaxas, theologian Tim Keller, and hip-hop artist Lecrae. Axe was originally listed in a session titled Fighting Pandemics but, according to correspondence acquired by RNS, appears to have changed the segment to Building Immunity after encountering pushback from independent researcher Jake Dockter.

Neither Gabe Lyons nor Axe returned RNS requests for comment or to verify the exchange.

Axes presentation at the conference occurred immediately after a short question-and-answer session between Gabe Lyons and a physician on the topic of the coronavirus. Q 2020 featured multiple segments that appeared to follow a similar setup: two differing or opposing perspectives on one topicsuch as a later debate between Metaxas and columnist David French on whether Christians should vote for Donald Trump.

After the Q&A with the physician, Lyons introduced Axe by asking, Is all our confidence going to be in future medicine or vaccines, or is there anything we can be doing as peopleis there any way in which we can live, and the way God has designed usto fight off viruses?

Axe then launched into an 18-minute talk in which he promoted herbal and natural forms of medicine, argued that positive emotions are crucial to health, suggested the media has caused more disease than helped people by promoting fear during the pandemic and declared the ultimate way to protect yourself and your family during any health crisis is to put your faith in God and follow the health principles laid out in the Bible.

Axe also criticized White House coronavirus response coordinator Anthony Fauci by putting up a slide in which he quotes the doctor as saying our Ultimate Hope is a vaccine.

A vaccineagain, thats not the ultimate solution, Axe said. The ultimate solution is God, and also, secondarily, supporting this body God has given us, strengthening our immune system so we can fight off not only this virus, but every virus were exposed to in the future.

The precise origin of the Fauci quote is unclear. While the White House adviser has said similar things in the past, there is no indication he capitalizes ultimate hope or that the phrase is meant to be a religious reference.

The segment triggered minor backlash from some viewers on Twitter and from Tearfund, an evangelical Christian relief and development agency based in the United Kingdom. A vice president of Tearfund USA, the groups US-based arm, spoke at a previous Q gathering and was listed as one of the 2020 speakers as well.

The Q Ideas forum brings together many perspectives, which we value, read a tweet from the group. But in this case we were extremely disappointed. As soon as the talks streamed we immediately raised our concerns with them. We hope theyll exercise better judgment in the future.

[Editors note from CT: A Q&A on the Q site includes the caveat that participants may encounter perspectives they disagree with. At Q, we pride ourselves on providing Christian leaders with a wide range of viewpoints on every issue we cover, so that you can be sure youre getting a full perspective. This means you might not agree with every talk or speaker you see on Q Media, but thats the pointwe want to help you see the complexity of each issue so that, whatever your viewpoint, you can engage this cultural moment well.]

According to Gabe Lyonss exchange with Dockter, the head of the National Institutes of Health, Dr. Francis Collins, was also reportedly invited to address the Q conference. But Dockter told RNS that he contacted Collins to raise questions about Axes appearance on the same program. According to correspondence obtained by RNS, Collins responded: Many thanks for providing this information, which certainly gives me pause.

Collins did not speak at the Q 2020 conference; his office did not respond to requests from RNS to verify the authenticity of the emails or the invitation to speak.
As people stranded in other



states are returning to the city in special trains every day, the Kolkata Municipal Corporation (KMC) is setting up three new quarantine centres to cope with the surge, an official said on Friday. A centre that can accommodate 400 people is being readied at New Town in the eastern fringes of the city, while another with a capacity to lodge 300 is coming up at Anandapur area, in the southern parts of city.

Another one that can house 200 people is being set up at Howrah. "With rise in number of migrant labourers, patients and tourists coming back to the state in special trains and buses, we are setting up these facilities," the official said. The largest centre being built on the premises of the Central Forensic Science Laboratory was inspected by Municipal Affairs Minister Firhad Hakim, who is also the chairman of the KMC's Board of Administrators, earlier this week. This centre and the one at Anandapur can start functioning within a week, the official said.

The Howrah facility will be readied in 10 days. "We may need more such facilities and search is on to find buildings where quarantine centres can be set up, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The first report about the Nokia 6.3 claimed that it will be powered by a Snapdragon 67x-series SoC, but a new insider source now claims that the phone will actually be have the more capable Snapdragon 730 at its core.

The insider claims to have a prototype of the device in hand and has shared a few additional details. The camera will be a quad setup with a 24MP main sensor, a 12MP ultrawide and a pair of 2MP sensors - one depth and another macro.

Finally the source claims the Nokia 6.3 will have a fingerprint scanner inside the power button. According to him, the Nokia 6.3 will be a compact phone made with single-handed use in mind.

The Nokia 6.3 should arrive sometime in Q3. Its predecessor, the Nokia 6.2 was released in October last year.

Source
Questo comunicato e stato pubblicato piu di 1 anno fa. Le informazioni su questa pagina potrebbero non essere attendibili.

Hyperimmune globulin are immune globulins whose solutions are high in antibodies and offer protection against specific diseases that offer protection by providing passive immunity. Passive immunity are achieved through hyper immune globulin by administrating purified antibodies which provide immediate, and short-term protection against the disease. Hyperimmune globulin closely resemble to intravenous immunoglobulin however they are isolated from plasma source donors that have concentration of antibody against specific antigen or invading pathogen. Some new and foreign antigens against which hyperimmune globulins are being developed or available in the market include tetanus toxins, hepatitis B, rabies etc. Administrating hyperimmune globulin could supplement "passive" immunity to the patient against any agent/antigen. On comparison, a vaccine takes longer time to provide immunity to patient while hyperimmune globulin are known to provide quick and short-lifespan immunity. However, hyperimmune globulin may have serious side effects, whose usage is taken very cautiously.

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Today, most hyperimmune globulin preparations are vaccine administered for providing full protection. Some manufacturers produce a limited quantity of large vials of some hyperimmune globulins for treatment rather than for prophylactic use. The number of cases requiring such large therapeutic doses are quite limited and few. Most hyperimmune globulin preparations are produced by commercial companies. No governmental fractionators are involved as because the need to use specific plasma can be assessed only by commercial organizations. Although the need for hyperimmune globulin products have gone down in recent years, sales remained steady, as the usage is relatively confined to stable and matured markets. Industrialized countries in particular the Europe and North American Region, human plasma-based hyperimmune globulin products are used. Most of the hyperimmune preparations are still administered mostly through intramuscular route for targeting acute and chronic conditions.

The global hyperimmune globulin Market is segmented on the basis of product, form type, application and end user

On the basis of product type, the Global Hyperimmune Globulin market is segmented into:

Immunoglobulins for Hepatitis B

Immunoglobulins For Rabies

Immunoglobulins for Tetanus

Rho(D) Immunoglobulins

Others

On the basis of application type, the Global Hyperimmune Globulin market is segmented into:

Immunodeficiency

Autoimmune Disease

Acute Infection

On the basis of form type, the Global Hyperimmune Globulin market is segmented into:

Powdered Form

Liquid Form

On the basis of end user, the global Hyperimmune Globulin is segmented into:

Government Institutions

Private Sector

Other

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The global market for hyperimmune globulin is expected to grow a healthy CAGR over the forecast period and is expected to reach a substantial growth. Increase incidence of cancer requiring substantial use of hyperimmune globulin modulators is expected to drive the market growth. Besides in developed regions, the market of hyperimmune globulin is expected rise due to increase prevalence of autoimmune disease, increase incidence of cancer, rabies treatment and many other immuno-genetic complications.

On the basis of region, the global hyperimmune globulin market can be segmented into seven key geographies: North America, Latin America, Europe, East Asia, South Asia, Oceania and Middle East & Africa. Europe is expected to dominate the global hyperimmune globulin market with largest revenue share. The regions hyperimmune globulin market dominance is attributed majorly due to the growing geriatric population. High rate of adaptation of hyperimmune globulin towards immunomodulatory treatment in hospital and other healthcare centers across Europe is anticipated to push the hyperimmune globulin growth in the region. North America especially U.S which invests aggressively in healthcare, is also expected to contribute significantly to the hyperimmune Globulin market share as majorly passive immunity is preferred choice amongst physicians in the region. From East and South Asia, China, Japan and India, are expected to register top markets in the region, whereas Brazil and Mexico from Latin America are also anticipated to contribute significantly to the hyperimmune globulin market. The key factor to the regions market growth in hyperimmune globulin is mainly due to increase in healthcare awareness amongst the people and also rise in peoples disposable income.

Some of the market players in hyperimmune globulin globally include Hualan Bio, CSL Behring, Shanghai RAAS, Grifols, CNBG, Biotest, CBPO, Emergent (Cangene), Sichuan Yuanda Shuyang, Kedrion, Kamada and ADMA Biologics

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The report covers exhaustive analysis on:

Global Hyperimmune Globulin segments

Global Hyperimmune Globulin dynamics

Historical actual market size, 2013 - 2017

Global Hyperimmune Globulin size & forecast 2018 to 2026

Global Hyperimmune Globulin current trends / issues / challenges

Competition & companies involved

Global Hyperimmune Globulin drivers and restraints

Regional analysis includes

North America

Latin America

europe

East Asia

South Asia

Oceania

Middle East & Africa

Highlights report:
From home, they are to complete a self-screening questionnaire that asks whether they have fever, cough, sore throat, diarrhea or other symptoms associated with the highly contagious and potentially deadly COVID-19 illness caused by the coronavirus. One question asks whether their temperature was above 100.4 degrees when it was taken before coming to work. Others ask if they have traveled by airplane within the past 14 days or have been in close contact with a person who has a confirmed case of COVID-19 or are awaiting test results. If the response is "yes" to any of the questions, they are to call in absent.
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Linkedin Norman Harsono (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta  Fri, May 15, 2020 14:01 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd84342c 1 Business PLN,board-of-directors,SOEs,state-owned-enterprises,SOE-Minister,erick-thohir Free

State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) Minister Erick Thohir decided to shuffle state electricity company PLN's board of directors in a shareholders' meeting on Tuesday following a recent shake up of railway company PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI).

The company, in a statement issued after the meeting, announced that Bob Saril had been chosen as the new customer management and commerce director, Muhammad Ikhsan Asaad as the new megaproject director, Muhammad Ikbal Nur as the new corporate director and Rudy Hendra Prastowo as the new primary energy director.

Read also: State-owned enterprises scramble to repay debts in time

Bob and Ikhsan previously headed PLNs operations in East Java and Jakarta, respectively. Rudy was previously acting president director of PLNs coal supplier subsidiary PT PLN Batubara.

Meanwhile, former corporate planning director Syofvi Felienty Roekman was appointed human capital director.

The minister also expanded the authorities of several regional directors. Sumatra regional director Wiluyo Kusdwiharto saw his authority expanded to include Kalimantan, while Sulawesi and Kalimantan regional director Syamsul Huda will now supervise Sulawesi, Maluku, Nusa Tenggara and Papua.

PLN remains committed to providing the best service for all customers and achieving a 100 percent electrification rate, said PLN executive vice president for corporate communication I Made Suprateka.

Read also: Government to delay dividend collection from SOEs as pandemic hits businesses

PLN also removed strategic procurement director 2 Djoko Abumanan, strategic procurement director 1 Sripeni Inten Cahyani, human capital management director Muhamad Ali and Maluku, Sulawesi, Maluku, Papua and Nusa Tenggara regional director Ahmad Rofiq from the board.

Earlier this month, Erick also replaced PT KAI president director following the announcement of the ministry's plan to restructure major state companies.

The ministry introduced the restructuring program to improve profitability of state-owned companies as increases in some companies asset growth has not be proportional to their profit growth.
AptarGroup, Inc. (NYSE:ATR) shareholders might be concerned after seeing the share price drop 12% in the last quarter. Looking further back, the stock has generated good profits over five years. It has returned a market beating 59% in that time.

Check out our latest analysis for AptarGroup

To quote Buffett, 'Ships will sail around the world but the Flat Earth Society will flourish. There will continue to be wide discrepancies between price and value in the marketplace...' One way to examine how market sentiment has changed over time is to look at the interaction between a company's share price and its earnings per share (EPS).

Over half a decade, AptarGroup managed to grow its earnings per share at 4.6% a year. This EPS growth is slower than the share price growth of 9.7% per year, over the same period. So it's fair to assume the market has a higher opinion of the business than it did five years ago. That's not necessarily surprising considering the five-year track record of earnings growth.

You can see below how EPS has changed over time (discover the exact values by clicking on the image).

NYSE:ATR Past and Future Earnings May 15th 2020

We know that AptarGroup has improved its bottom line lately, but is it going to grow revenue? If you're interested, you could check this free report showing consensus revenue forecasts.

What About Dividends?

When looking at investment returns, it is important to consider the difference between total shareholder return (TSR) and share price return. Whereas the share price return only reflects the change in the share price, the TSR includes the value of dividends (assuming they were reinvested) and the benefit of any discounted capital raising or spin-off. Arguably, the TSR gives a more comprehensive picture of the return generated by a stock. We note that for AptarGroup the TSR over the last 5 years was 71%, which is better than the share price return mentioned above. The dividends paid by the company have thusly boosted the total shareholder return.

Story continues

A Different Perspective

We regret to report that AptarGroup shareholders are down 8.8% for the year (even including dividends) . Unfortunately, that's worse than the broader market decline of 0.6%. 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. On the bright side, long term shareholders have made money, with a gain of 11% per year over half a decade. It could be that the recent sell-off is an opportunity, so it may be worth checking the fundamental data for signs of a long term growth trend. 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. Take risks, for example - AptarGroup has 1 warning sign we think you should be aware of.

We will like AptarGroup better if we see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider 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.
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- An effective Covid-19 vaccine, if it ever arrives, should be treated as a public good for the whole of society. Every continent has been struck by the virus bar Antarctica.

But the combination of national self-interest and pressure for the pharmaceutical industry to turn a profit is already triggering a geopolitical bust up over who actually gets access to the vaccine first. Its a reminder that the spoils of drug research arent equally divided. The system is ripe for a rethink.

Already, the French government is hauling its national drug-making champion Sanofi over hot coals after the company suggested that the U.S.  and not Europe  would be first in line to get access to its proposed vaccine if it works out. The reason, according to Chief Executive Officer Paul Hudson, is that the U.S. was first to contribute funding to the project. Unacceptable, came the reply from French Junior Economy Minister Agnes Pannier-Runacher. The head of Sanofis French business quickly sought to defuse the tension by promising that an effective vaccine would be available to all. But this debate isnt going away. French President Emmanuel Macron plans to meet with Sanofi officials next week to discuss the issue. Elsewhere, AstraZeneca Plc is prioritizing the U.K. in its own vaccine project.

On the surface, Sanofis stance seems logical enough. The cost of researching a vaccine is between $500 million and $1 billion, according to a 2015 paper by physician and consultant Stanley Plotkin. If the U.S. taxpayer is willing to foot the bill, shouldnt they reap some of the reward? Drugmakers know this is a vaccine that will have to be sold in bulk, and not at an eye-wateringly expensive price  Johnson & Johnson, for example, says its own plan is to produce the one its working on at cost, or about 10 euros ($10.81). Given some kind of prioritization is going to be necessary as production ramps up to millions of doses, it may as well start with those that funded the project, according to Sam Fazeli, senior pharmaceutical analyst at Bloomberg Intelligence.

Story continues

But Paris has a point, too. Sanofis vaccine is not produced in a vacuum. The company benefits from European shareholders, employees, factories  and tax credits. Its worth noting that research and development funding in France is the second-most generous as a share of GDP among countries tracked by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, at 0.4%. (The U.S. comes in tenth.) Thats largely thanks to tax-incentive schemes awarded to companies like Sanofi to the tune of 150 million euros every year. French taxpayers might wonder why that shouldnt be taken into account.

Simply rapping Sanofi on the knuckles isnt going to be a durable solution, though. The risk is that, if countries take turns in shoving their way to the front of the line, the result will be a kind of vaccine trade war along national lines. That would make a mockery of the World Health Organizations plea to view vaccines as a common public good, and would also echo the damaging scramble for masks and medical equipment that set European countries against each other. If France were to get hold of a vaccine first, would Italy or Greece get the same access?

It would be more productive if European countries backed up their indignation by working together more to take on the financial risk of vaccines. Then they could divide the spoils more equally. There is no reason why the European Unions 27 countries couldnt come up with their own version of the U.S.s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority and match the Trump administrations deep pockets. The EUs recent $8 billion vaccine fundraising is one good example, and its joint procurement vehicle for medical equipment and vaccines another.

The broader the cooperation, the more chance countries have to level the playing field with big pharmaceutical companies. Drugmakers have for decades focused on lucrative new treatments protected by patents, often putting them out of reach of people in developing countries. New organizations are fighting this: The United Nations-backed Medicine Patent Pool, for example, has licensed patented HIV drugs for manufacture by generics companies at lower cost. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations has also brought together countries to fund vaccine research.

The pandemic has revealed a lot of problems in the pharmaceutical supply chain, from a dependence on emerging markets for vital drug supplies to a lack of interest in potentially unprofitable vaccine research. If the opportunity here is to ensure life-saving drugs get the funding they need, taxpayers around the world  not just in France or the U.S.  should also get better access to them.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Lionel Laurent is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering Brussels. He previously worked at Reuters and Forbes.

For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion

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2020 Bloomberg L.P.
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Linkedin Charles Beraf (The Jakarta Post) Ende, East Nusa Tenggara  Fri, May 15, 2020 09:47 614 fc6853813033f564188675f8bd82dc67 3 Opinion live-streaming,online-mass,prayer,Christian,new-normal Free

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Catholic dioceses across the country have closed their churches and suspended mass in compliance with the governments health protocol. Live streaming and lately the TV live broadcast of mass has become a novel alternative to worshipping.



The new normal has in particular attracted many followers (viewers, subscribers and likes) and could be monetized, which is spectacular but only shows its profane nature.



I am not saying that online mass may liturgically raise a problem in terms of eroding the participation of worshippers in celebrations. We should realize that real rituals in any religion are never generic and never exist in books or media. Nothing on a YouTube channel, for example, is a ritual.

Rituals only occur with real people at real times in real places. This may seem too obvious to mention, but sometimes people think rituals are contained in books of rituals or in spectacles of rituals someone watches. These are not rituals at all but are only a guide for possible future rituals.

Read also: Churches turn to livestreaming, suspend activities to support social distancing

In Christianity, there are many different rituals (community-based prayers, pilgrimage, Eucharist, novena and so on) in which Christians worship God, ranging from praying at home to attending a church service. These rituals, either personal or communal, require them to participate or to get involved (to attend). This means those attending liturgical rituals are real participants who play roles as required by the church.



Participation is important as it creates a personal relationship between God and the believers. It can challenge Christians to become more mature and seless. By participating in rituals, each Christian gears toward a maturation of faith.



To understand that point more deeply, we can compare liturgical rituals with theater. Distinctions between them are salient.



In theater, there are performers on the one hand and on the other hand, audiences. Both audiences and performers are more or less radically separated from each other, always in function, almost always in space, often clearly marked off by raised stages, curtains and so on.



The defining characteristic of audiences in contrast to performers is that they do not participate in the performance: they watch and they listen.



On the contrary, all those present in a ritual are participating in it. It is obviously not to claim that they all have the same or equivalent parts to play. Their roles may, in fact, be highly differentiated. There are obvious differences between initiators and initiates in rites of passage, between priest and lay people, but through their different roles they participate together in ritual.



Specifically, Catholic usage clearly recognizes differences in the participating roles of those present in stating that the priest presides over the mass, whereas the lay people celebrate it, for instance, by singing hymns.



Obviously, the priest has much more to do than do his parishioners, but their participation  and this seems true of all rituals  requires of them something more than passivity. Parishioners may be called upon to sing, dance or kneel in liturgical performances. Such acts, in addition to expressing whatever particulars they represent, indicate to performers that they are indeed participating and not merely watching.



Based on the explanation, we ought to realize that real rituals occur only to real people in real places. Thus, live-streamed rituals on YouTube cannot be categorize as real rituals; they are only a spectacle.

Read also: Amid coronavirus, God goes online to reach worshippers

Such a spectacle might be guiding people to pray, but not at the same time, be participants of it. Thus, if a parish priest, for example, asks his parishioners to participate in an online mass, at the same time, he also erodes the celebration and diminishes the liturgical participation.



Another example, in Lio, Flores, East Nusa Tenggara, local people held an annual traditional ritual called keti uta (harvesting vegetables) organized by all the tribes of the village. Participants are mosalaki (tribe leaders) and ana kalo fai walu (tribe members). During the ritual, mosalaki and ana kalo fai walu are obliged and tied by their customary law. Their participation affirms either the relationship among them or their relation with Dua Nggae (Supreme Being).



Villagers who do not belong to any tribe or who are just assigned to that village can contribute, for example, by donating rice or erecting tents, but they are not allowed to participate. They are just ana tua embu nona (sympathizers).



Such a traditional practice is enough to show the difference between participants and sympathizers or between celebrants and spectators or between rituals and contributions. The live-streamed celebration, therefore, is not a real ritual, just a spectacle. It might be attracting many followers, but the followers are just spectators, not participants.



Not only in Christianity, in Islam and other religions, rituals require participants, not spectators. During the COVID-19 pandemic, which has prevented believers from going to their places of worship, the best way of participating in a ritual is praying at home.

***

Catholic priest, member of the Forum for Coastal Customary People (FORMAT-P) and social researcher working for Detukeli Research Center in Flores, East Nusa Tenggara

Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the official stance of The Jakarta Post.
WASHINGTON  A Republican senator with access to some of the nations top secrets became further entangled in a deepening FBI investigation as agents examining a well-timed sale of stocks during the coronavirus outbreak showed up at his home with a warrant to search his cellphone.

Hours later, Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina stepped aside Thursday as chairman of the powerful Senate Intelligence Committee, calling it the "best thing to do." Burr has denied wrongdoing.

"This is a distraction to the hard work of the committee and the members, and I think that the security of the country is too important to have a distraction," Burr said. He said he would serve out the remainder of his term, which ends in 2023. He is not running for reelection.

The search warrant marked a dramatic escalation in the Justice Departments investigation into whether Burr exploited advance information when he unloaded as much as $1.7 million in stocks in the days before the coronavirus caused markets to plummet. Such warrants require investigators to establish to a judge that probable cause exists to believe a crime has occurred.

The warrant was confirmed by two people familiar with the matter, including a senior department official. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss an ongoing investigation.

Burr faces no public accusations by the government that he exploited inside information received during briefings. But the search warrant immediately affected the standing inside Congress of the influential Republican, who has earned bipartisan support for leading a congressional investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign  work that sometimes rankled President Donald Trump and his supporters.

News of the warrant also underscored the public scrutiny surrounding the stock market activities of multiple senators and their families around the same time.

On Thursday, a spokesman for Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., said she was asked "some basic questions" by law enforcement about sales her husband made and had voluntarily answered questions.

RELATED: Wuhan reopened last month. Now, new coronavirus infections spark fresh restrictions and fear

RELATED: Coronavirus has caused grocery store prices to skyrocket; heres what costs the most now

A spokesperson for Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler, a new lawmaker from Georgia who records show sold hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of stock in late January and February, said no search warrant had been served on her, and that Loeffler "has followed both the letter and spirit of the law and will continue to do so."

In Burr's case, the search warrant was served on a lawyer for him, and FBI agents went to the senator's home in the Washington area to retrieve the cellphone, the Justice Department official said. The decision to obtain the warrant was approved at the highest levels of the department, the official said.

Alice Fisher, a lawyer for Burr, noted that Burr called for an ethics inquiry into the stock sales once they were disclosed. She said Burr stepped aside as chairman "to allow the Committee to continue its essential work free of external distractions" and said the senator has "been actively cooperating with the government's inquiry, as he said he would."

"From the outset, Senator Burr has been focused on an appropriate and thorough review of the facts in this matter, which will establish that his actions were appropriate," Fisher said in a statement.

Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House before traveling to Pennsylvania on Thursday, said he was unaware that Burr was leaving his intelligence post.

"I know nothing about it  never discussed it with anybody," Trump said. "That's too bad."

Senate records show that Burr and his wife sold between roughly $600,000 and $1.7 million in more than 30 transactions in late January and mid-February, just before the market began to dive and government health officials began to sound alarms about the virus. Several of the stocks were in companies that own hotels.

Burr has acknowledged selling the stocks because of the coronavirus but said he relied "solely on public news reports," specifically CNBC's daily health and science reporting out of Asia, to make the financial decisions.

Senators did receive a closed-door briefing on the virus on Jan. 24, which was public knowledge. A separate briefing was held Feb. 12 by the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, of which Burr is a member. It's unclear if he attended either session.

He was first elected to the Senate in 2004 and chaired the Senate Intelligence Committee as it conducted its own investigation into Russian election interference in the 2016 presidential election. The committee last month month issued a report supporting the conclusion by U.S. intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered on Trump's behalf.

As chairman, Burr has access to the most sensitive classified information that is provided to Congress. Along with Republican and Democratic leadership and the top lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee, Burr is part of the group of eight lawmakers in Congress who receive the highest level classified briefings.

His decision to leave the chairman position surprised fellow members of the committee.

Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he respected Burr's decision, adding that "he's entitled to a presumption of innocence just like anybody else."

"The best I can tell, he is trying to do the right thing by the Senate, and I appreciate it," Cornyn said.

It's unclear who will take Burr's place. The next several Republican members in seniority are already chairmen of other committees, though they could choose to switch.

Next in seniority is Idaho Sen. James Risch, who told reporters on Thursday that he didn't know whether he would keep his current perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or move to the intelligence panel. Following him is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who heads the Senate Small Business Committee. He said that he wasn't aware that Burr was stepping aside and that the decision on who takes over for Burr was up to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

Maine Sen. Susan Collins, chairwoman of the Senate Aging Committee, is third in line.

The Los Angeles Times first reported the search warrant.

___

Eric Tucker, Michael Balsamo and Mary Clare Jalonick of The Associated Press wrote this story. AP writers Lisa Mascaro, Colleen Long and Padmananda Rama contributed to this report.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:54:43|Editor: huaxia

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TBILISI, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Georgia will terminate its state of emergency on May 22, with some restrictions remaining in place to cope with the COVID-19, Georgian Prime Minister Giorgi Gakharia announced on Friday.

"After a deep epidemiological analysis, the Georgian government decided not to prolong the state of emergency after May 22," said Gakharia at a briefing in Tbilisi.

But some restrictions that epidemiologists consider necessary for risk control will be maintained, he added.

The prime minister also said that the parliament will discuss how to manage COVID-19 without declaring a state of emergency in the country.

On March 21, Georgia announced a state of emergency across the country which lasted until April 21, in an effort to counter the coronavirus pandemic. In April, the country decided to prolong the state of emergency till May 22.

The number of COVID-19 cases in the country reached 671 on Friday, according to the Georgian government. Enditem
BAKU, Azerbaijan, May 15

By Nargiz Sadikhova - Trend:

A total of 118 new coronavirus cases were reported in Kazakhstan by May 14, 2020, Trend reports with reference to Kazakhstans Ministry of Healthcare.

The daily cases increase was 2.1 percent. Some 185 more people completely recovered, and were discharged from the hospitals, whereas two people passed away: woman born 1958 and a man born 1977.

The total number of coronavirus cases confirmed in Kazakhstan since the virus was first confirmed in the country amounted to 5,689 cases. This includes 2,531 people who recovered from the coronavirus, and 34 patients who passed away.

Distribution of overall coronavirus cases in Kazakhstans regions:

Total infected Total recovered Total deaths Nur-Sultan city 1 173 518 5 Almaty city 1 689 567 9 Shymkent city 255 166 6 Akmola region 114 95 4 Aktobe region 213 62 Almaty region 191 106 Atyrau region 474 130 East Kazakhstan region 56 20 1 Zhambyl region 201 100 1 West Kazakhstan region 279 130 Karaganda region 212 129 3 Kostanay region 72 36 1 Kyzylorda region 232 183 Mangystau region 141 31 1 Pavlodar region 154 108 2 North Kazakhstan region 36 29 Turkestan region 190 121 1 TOTAL 5 689 2 531 34

The first two cases of coronavirus infection were detected in Kazakhstan among those who arrived in Almaty city from Germany on March 13, 2020.

The outbreak of the coronavirus began in the Chinese city of Wuhan (an international transport hub), at a fish market in late December 2019.

The World Health Organization (WHO) declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11. Some sources claim the coronavirus outbreak started as early as November 2019.

---

Follow the author on twitter: @nargiz_sadikh
Israel is slowly emerging from the Corona crisis. As I said in a radio interview last week, Israel is the canary in the coalmine. Measures taken to arrest the spread of the coronavirus and prevent an even wider outbreak were recognized internationally as being bold (some felt too much so) early on, with progressively severe restrictions going into place, somewhat ahead of the curve of many other countries. Now, as we emerge, the world will look at us as how to do it well, or how to learn from our mistakes.

Medically, while were not out of it yet by far, the total number of people infe...
Venezuela announced Thursday that its troops had captured 39 army deserters on the Colombian border, saying they were part of a recently derailed plot to overthrow President Nicolas Maduro. "We have captured 39 deserters trying to enter by the Colombian border," Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino told state television. Padrino said those arrested were "part of the general scheme" to overthrow Maduro, linking them to a failed sea-borne raid two weeks ago that Caracas said was backed by the United States and Colombia. Thursday's arrests bring to 91 the number of people detained in what Venezuela said was a botched incursion. The raid -- which Maduro alleged on Wednesday had been planned in the White House -- saw men landing in early May at Macuto, less than an hour from Caracas. Eight attackers were reportedly killed in the incident. Among the detainees are two former US soldiers, Luke Denman, 34, and Airan Berry, 41, who have been imprisoned and charged with "terrorism, conspiracy, illicit trafficking of weapons of war and (criminal) association." They could face between 25 to 30 years in prison. The others implicated in the case are Venezuelans. The left-wing Maduro government claims the plan was to remove him from power and allow opposition leader Juan Guaido -- recognized as the interim president by the United States and 50 other nations -- to take control. Padrino did not provide further details about the alleged "deserters" arrested Thursday, or explain why they would have tried to enter Venezuela by land almost two weeks after the failed sea incursion.
The Governor of Adamawa State, Ahmadi Fintiri, alongside security officials, on Friday, visited Tingna community in Lamurde Local Government Area where people were reportedly killed in a bloody ethnic clash on Wednesday.

PREMIUM TIMES had earlier reported how witnesses claimed that at least five persons were feared killed in the ethnic violence in the community.

The police command in Adamawa also confirmed the incident but said they have not officially recorded any death case except one injured person.

Police Public Relations Officer, Adamawa command, Suleiman Yahaya, who spoke with PREMIUM TIMES on the phone said the state commissioner of police and other security chiefs, including the brigade commander just returned from the town after accompanying the state governor to access the situation there.

We just returned from Tingna together with his excellency the governor, the commissioner of police, the brigade commander, the NSCDC commandant and I can confirm to you that the situation has been brought under control, he said

Secondly, we have left our police operational team there to ensure the situation remains normal, he added. Thirdly, the commissioner of police directed men of the criminal investigation department to find out the remote cause of this problem in Tingna.

The PPRO also confirmed that the conflict had caused the displacement of some residents.

He said about 23 women and children, that were displaced by the crisis have been moved to an IDP camp in Lafiya town where the governor directed that they should be cared for.

The PPRO denied that people died in the communal fight.

He said, only one person sustained injury. We are yet to record any death case, neither have the police seen any corpse. But our men are there and they are to conduct an investigation from now till morning to ascertain the number of casualties or if there are any death case.

The Tingna clash came two weeks after a similar conflict had erupted in the same community.

PREMIUM TIMES had published a report on May 2 that rampaging herders attacked and razed down two densely populated settlements  Suwa and Burukutu villages  also in Lamurde local government.
Potential National Australia Bank Limited (ASX:NAB) shareholders may wish to note that the Group CEO, Ross McEwan, recently bought AU$737k worth of stock, paying AU$15.51 for each share. That certainly has us anticipating the best, especially since they thusly increased their own holding by 950%, potentially signalling some real optimism.

Check out our latest analysis for National Australia Bank

The Last 12 Months Of Insider Transactions At National Australia Bank

Notably, that recent purchase by Ross McEwan is the biggest insider purchase of National Australia Bank shares that we've seen in the last year. So it's clear an insider wanted to buy, even at a higher price than the current share price (being AU$15.46). Their view may have changed since then, but at least it shows they felt optimistic at the time. To us, it's very important to consider the price insiders pay for shares is very important. Generally speaking, it catches our eye when insiders have purchased shares at above current prices, as it suggests they believed the shares were worth buying, even at a higher price.

Over the last year, we can see that insiders have bought 86.44k shares worth AU$1.6m. On the other hand they divested 1000 shares, for AU$24k. Overall, National Australia Bank insiders were net buyers during the last year. They paid about AU$18.63 on average. These transactions suggest that insiders have considered the current price attractive. The chart below shows insider transactions (by individuals) over the last year. If you click on the chart, you can see all the individual transactions, including the share price, individual, and the date!

ASX:NAB Recent Insider Trading May 15th 2020

National Australia Bank is not the only stock that insiders are buying. For those who like to find winning investments this free list of growing companies with recent insider purchasing, could be just the ticket.

Insider Ownership of National Australia Bank

I like to look at how many shares insiders own in a company, to help inform my view of how aligned they are with insiders. I reckon it's a good sign if insiders own a significant number of shares in the company. Insiders own 0.04% of National Australia Bank shares, worth about AU$20m. This level of insider ownership is good but just short of being particularly stand-out. It certainly does suggest a reasonable degree of alignment.

Story continues

So What Does This Data Suggest About National Australia Bank Insiders?

The recent insider purchases are heartening. And an analysis of the transactions over the last year also gives us confidence. Given that insiders also own a fair bit of National Australia Bank we think they are probably pretty confident of a bright future. 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. Case in point: We've spotted 4 warning signs for National Australia Bank you should be aware of.

Of course National Australia Bank may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of high quality companies.

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.
Toronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - May 14, 2020) - Clean Air Metals Inc. (TSXV: RAU.H) (formerly Regency Gold Corp.) ("Clean Air" or the "Company") is pleased to announce the completion of its previously announced reverse takeover transaction (the "Transaction") pursuant to the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange ("TSXV"). In connection with the completion of the Transaction, Clean Air filed a filing statement dated May 5, 2020 (the "Filing Statement") in support of its application to the TSXV to become a "Mining Issuer" (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSXV). The Filing Statement has been filed on SEDAR under the Company's issuer profile at www.sedar.com. Readers are encouraged to review the Filing Statement for full details on the Transaction.

The Transaction

Pursuant to the terms of the definitive option agreement dated January 6, 2020, as amended January 27, 2020 (collectively, the "Option Agreement") entered into between the Company and Benton Resources Inc. ("Benton") (TSXV: BEX), the Company has now completed the acquisition of an option (the "Option") to acquire a 100% right, title and interest in and to the Escape Lake Property (the "Escape Lake Property").

Pursuant to the terms of a definitive share purchase agreement dated January 6, 2020 (the "Pan Agreement") entered into between the Company and Magma Metals PTY Ltd. ("Magma"), the Company has now completed the acquisition of 100% of Panoramic Resources Limited's indirect subsidiary, Panoramic PGMs (Canada) Ltd. ("Pan Subsidiary"), which owns the Thunder Bay North Project (the "TBN Project"). Pan Subsidiary is now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Clean Air. In consideration of the acquisition of Pan Subsidiary, Clean Air agreed to pay to Magma, over a three-year period, an aggregate of C$9 million, C$4.5 million of which was paid on closing of the Transaction.

Story continues

The Escape Lake Property and the TBN Project are collectively referred to as the "TBN Property".

In connection with the acquisition of the Option and the completion of the Transaction, and in accordance with the terms and conditions of the Option Agreement, the Company, among other things: (i) granted to Benton a 0.5% net smelter return royalty from production on the Escape Lake Property and a 0.5% net smelter return royalty from production on any mineral claims comprising the TBN Project over which a net smelter royalty has not previously been granted; and (ii) issued to Benton an aggregate of 24,615,884 common shares (the "Consideration Shares") in the capital of the Company.

Concurrent Financing

In connection with the Transaction, the Company completed a private placement of subscription receipts (each, a "Subscription Receipt") on February 11, 2020, led by Paradigm Capital Inc. and Sprott Capital Partners LP (the "Co-Lead Agents") on behalf of a syndicate of agents, including Red Cloud Securities and Mackie Research Capital Corporation (together with the Co-Lead Agents, the "Agents") pursuant to which the Company issued an aggregate of 75,000,000 Subscription Receipts for gross proceeds of $15,000,000 (the "Offering").

The gross proceeds of the Offering less certain expenses of the Agents and other commissions (the "Escrowed Proceeds") were held in escrow on behalf of the subscribers for the Subscription Receipts by Computershare Trust Company of Canada (the "Escrow Agent"), pursuant to the terms of a subscription receipt agreement (the "Subscription Receipt Agreement") entered into on February 11, 2020 among the Company, the Co-Lead Agents and the Escrow Agent. As part of the completion of the Transaction, the Company and the Co-Agents delivered a joint notice to the Escrow Agent on May 13, 2020 confirming satisfaction of the applicable escrow release conditions, at which time each Subscription Receipt was automatically converted into one unit (a "Unit") of the Company, and the Escrowed Proceeds were released to the Company. Each Unit is comprised of one common share of Clean Air (each, a "Unit Share") and one-half of one common share purchase warrant of Clean Air (each whole common share purchase warrant, a "Warrant"). Each Warrant is exercisable by the holder thereof for one common share of the Company (each, a "Warrant Share") until February 11, 2022 at an exercise price of $0.30 per Warrant Share, subject to adjustments in certain events.

The net proceeds of the Offering were and will be used to fund the cash portion of the consideration payable to Magma in respect of the acquisition of the TBN Project, to fund drilling for the TBN Property, and for general corporate purposes.

The securities issued upon conversion of the Subscription Receipts are subject to a statutory hold period until June 12, 2020, in accordance with applicable securities laws.

The securities offered have not been, and will not be, registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act"), or any U.S. state securities laws, and may not be offered or sold in the United States or to, or for the account or benefit of, U.S. persons (as defined under the U.S. Securities Act) absent registration or any applicable exemption from the registration requirements of the U.S. Securities Act and applicable U.S. state securities laws. This news release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy securities in the United States, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any jurisdiction in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful.

TSXV Approval and Resumption of Trading

Trading in the common shares of the Company was previously halted on October 15, 2019 at the request of the Company in connection with the announcement of the Transaction. The Transaction remains subject to final approval by the TSXV and fulfillment of all of the requirements of the TSXV in order to obtain such approval including, among other things, submission and acceptance of all documents requested by the TSXV in its conditional acceptance letter and payment of all outstanding fees to the TSXV. Until final approval of the TSXV is obtained and a Final Exchange Bulletin is issued, trading in the common shares of Clean Air will remain halted; however it is expected that trading will resume on or about May 22, 2020. Upon resumption of trading, the common shares of Clean Air will trade under the symbol "AIR" and Clean Air will be listed as a Tier 2 Mining Issuer.

Name Change

Prior to the completion of the Transaction, the Company changed its name from "Regency Gold Corp." to its current name, "Clean Air Metals Inc." in accordance with the provisions of the Canada Business Corporations Act.

Grant of Options

Concurrently with the completion of the Transaction, the Company granted an aggregate of 7,565,000 options ("Options") to purchase common shares of the Company (each, an "Option Share"), exercisable at a price of $0.20 per Option Share for a period of five (5) years from the date of issuance, to certain directors, officers, employees and consultants of the Company. The Option Shares issuable upon exercise of the Options are subject a four-month statuary hold period from the original date of grant.

Management of Clean Air Metals

The following individuals comprise the current Board of Directors and management of Clean Air, in the capacities listed below. Brief biographies of the current management team are as follows:

Abraham Drost, M.Sc., P. Geo., CEO and Director - Mr. Drost is a Professional Geoscientist (Ontario) and a graduate of the University of Waterloo (B.Sc) and Queen's University (M.Sc.). Mr. Drost is a former President and Director of Sabina Gold and Silver Corp., former President and Director of Gold X Mining Corp. and former CEO, and Director of Mexican Gold Corp. Mr. Drost is a former Chairman of Premier Gold Mines USA Inc. and the former CEO and founding Director of Premier Royalty Inc., prior to the sale to Sandstorm Gold Ltd. He was a former CEO and then Director of Mega Precious Metals Inc. at the sale to Yamana Gold Inc. Mr. Drost was most recently CEO and Director of Carlisle Goldfields Ltd. at the sale to Alamos Gold Inc. He previously served as Regional Land Use Geologist with the Ontario Geological Survey, promoting exploration best practices for junior mining companies on aboriginal traditional territories.

Kelsey Chin, CPA, CGA, Chief Financial Officer - Ms. Chin is a Chartered Professional Accountant, Certified General Account and a graduate of the University of British Columbia (B. Com.). Ms. Chin has over 15 years of experience in audit, finance and accounting within the mining, exploration, healthcare and technology industries. She has served as a director and executive officer for numerous publicly traded companies where she was responsible for all aspects of financial services, financial reporting, corporate governance, and has led numerous financings, mergers and acquisitions to successful completion. As chief financial officer of various publicly-listed companies, Ms. Chin is intricately familiar with accounting principles and preparing financial statements and disclosure documents within the mineral resources industry.

James Gallagher, P. Eng., Chairman and Director - Mr. Gallagher is a Professional Engineer and seasoned mining executive with a 35-year track record of optimizing operational performance, leading successful projects and consulting with global scope. Mr. Gallagher was most recently the President and CEO of North American Palladium Ltd. ("NAP"). During his 6 year tenure at NAP, Mr. Gallagher rebuilt the senior management team, introduced advanced technologies and mining methods at the Lac des Illes Mine and achieved an operational and financial turnaround that made the Lac des Illes Mine one of the largest and lowest cost underground mines in Canada, culminating in the 2019 sale of NAP for $1 billion to Impala Platinum. Prior to NAP, Mr. Gallagher spent 24 years with Falconbridge Ltd., in a variety of operational and project management roles and eight years as Global Director of Mining for Hatch, leading one of the largest mining EPCM teams in North America. Mr. Gallagher is a Director and chair of the Health, Safety and Technical committee for Harte Gold, serves on the Board of Directors of the Ontario Mining Association.

Dawn Evans-Lamswood, MSc, P.Geo, VP Exploration - Ms. Evans-Lamswood's career spans two decades of exploration experience exploring the Voisey's Bay district after joining the Archean Resources drilling team in 1995, immediately following the discovery of the Ovoid Zone. Her career continued in the area with Inco and its successor company Vale Inco, recently retiring with the position of Exploration Manager, Brown Field Exploration, Vale North Atlantic. Ms. Evans-Lamswood has co-authored numerous publications on the Voisey's Bay deposit and district.

Carson Phillips, M.Eng., VP Corporate Development - Mr. Phillips is a mining executive with over a decade of experience with a focus on precious metals. He was also an initial founder and director of Ecuador Gold & Copper Corp. which was subsequently acquired by Lumina Gold Corp. in 2016. Carson has a degree in Business Administration from the University of British Columbia (Okanagan) as well as a degree in International Business from Hogeschool Zeeland in the Netherlands. Mr. Phillips has also completed a Master of Engineering in Mine Economics & Finance from the University of British Columbia in 2014.

Dean Chambers, P. Eng., ICD.D., Director - Mr. Chambers is a Professional Engineer and financial executive with over 35 years of business, technical and financial experience. In 2017, Mr. Chambers retired as Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer at Sherritt International Corporation, a major international resource company. Mr. Chambers' career as a senior executive in the mining and chemical industries also includes progressive positions with The Dow Chemical Company, Falconbridge Limited and Dynatec Corporation. Most recently, Mr. Chambers served four years on the Board of Directors and chaired the Audit Committee of North American Palladium Ltd. leading up to its successful sale to Impala Platinum in 2019. Mr. Chambers holds the ICD.D designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors. Mr. Chambers also serves on the Industrial Advisory Committee for the Engineering and Management program at McMaster University.

MaryAnn Crichton, P.Eng., MBA, Director - Ms. Crichton is a Professional Engineer and senior executive with over 30 years of international business experience in financing; project development; environmental, social and governance ("ESG")/Corporate Social Responsibility ("CSR") and strategy. Ms. Crichton holds B.Sc. (Chemical Engineering) from the University of Alberta and an MBA from the Ivey Business School at Western University. She spent most of her career as Global Director of Management Consulting for Hatch Ltd. ("Hatch"), a global engineering, advisory and construction firm working in the mining, metals, and infrastructure and energy industries. Prior to joining Hatch, she worked in private equity and the resource and chemical industries. In 2017 and again in 2020, Ms. Crichton was elected to the Board of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada ("PDAC") and is currently a member of both their Governance and Nominations Committee and CSR/Diversity and Inclusion Working Group. In 2018, she was elected to serve as PDAC's representative on the Board of Mining Matters.

ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS

"Abraham Drost"

Abraham Drost, Chief Executive Officer of Clean Air Metals Inc.

For further information, please contact:

Abraham Drost, Chief Executive Officer of Clean Air Metals Inc.

Phone: 807-252-7800

Email: adrost@cleanairmetals.ca

Website: www.cleanairmetals.ca

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Cautionary Note

The information contained herein contains "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of applicable securities legislation. Forward-looking statements relate to information that is based on assumptions of management, forecasts of future results, and estimates of amounts not yet determinable. Any statements that express predictions, expectations, beliefs, plans, projections, objectives, assumptions or future events or performance are not statements of historical fact and may be "forward-looking statements." Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of risks and uncertainties which could cause actual events or results to differ from those reflected in the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks related to the TSXV listing, risk related to the failure to obtain adequate financing on a timely basis and on acceptable terms; risks related to the outcome of legal proceedings; political and regulatory risks associated with mining and exploration; risks related to the maintenance of stock exchange listings; risks related to environmental regulation and liability; the potential for delays in exploration or development activities or the completion of feasibility studies; the uncertainty of profitability; risks and uncertainties relating to the interpretation of drill results, the geology, grade and continuity of mineral deposits; risks related to the inherent uncertainty of production and cost estimates and the potential for unexpected costs and expenses; results of prefeasibility and feasibility studies, and the possibility that future exploration, development or mining results will not be consistent with the Company's expectations; risks related to commodity price fluctuations; and other risks and uncertainties related to the Company's prospects, properties and business detailed elsewhere in the Company's disclosure record. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned against attributing undue certainty to forward-looking statements. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date hereof and the Company does not assume any obligation to update or revise them to reflect new events or circumstances, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Actual events or results could differ materially from the Company's expectations or projections.

NOT FOR DISSEMINATION OR DISTRIBUTION IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

To view the source version of this press release, please visit https://www.newsfilecorp.com/release/55929
With more than 10,000 reads, Standardbred Canada's digital Twos In Training Report, released on our website on May 1 and brought to you by TROT Magazine, has been very well received throughout the industry.

With quotes from 20 Canadian trainers on 99 of their brightest two-year-old students, and by as many as 35 of North America's leading sires, people have been given a welcome look inside the barns of some of harness racing's next stars.

Now we're pleased to announce that along with Hoofbid -- the new app that is revolutionizing the way to buy and sell horses online -- Standardbred Canada has added some new content to the report.

Revisit the publication now (on pages 8/9) to read our new 'Million Dollar Babies' interview with Tony Alagna and Marcus Melander, in regard to the only two Standardbred yearlings (Maverick & Damien) to ever sell in North America for $1 million or more.

We've also included links to two new videos for you to see -- one of Maverick, showing what a natural he was from day one, in a clip of him jogging one morning last fall, and one of Damien, showing what a character he is, playing with his blanket one recent day in his stall at the Melander Stable.

Thank you for reading. Enjoy, and please stay safe.

A FEW BRIEF TIPS WHEN READING THE NEW PUBLICATION:

To enlarge the magazine/publication, simply click on the enlarge to fullscreen button at the bottom right of the toolbar .

Click anywhere on any advertisement to go to that companys website.

Click anywhere on any of the COSA Fantasy & TROT Fantasy Stable pages to be able to enter your own stable for that contest.

Click on the video image in the top right corner of page 10 to view the video.

To enlarge the magazine/publication, simply click on the button at the bottom right

May2020TwosReport

On May 1, 2020 our world is a different place than its ever been in our lifetime. We dont need to go into numbers or details to explain that statement.

One of the fallouts of this new reality is the pause that has been put on our shared passion of Standardbred racing. We all miss harness racing desperately, and many have been hit both emotionally and financially by this stoppage -- not to mention those that have been hit physically by the Coronavirus itself.

Another fallout of this situation we find ourselves in, is the fact that there will not be a printed May issue of TROT Magazine coming to you in the mail this month, and considering that a recent survey of Standardbred Canada members showed that close to 90 percent of them feel strongly about receiving their issue of TROT each month, we know thats not good news at any time.

We take great pride in the fact that TROT has been sent to you monthly for more than 45 years now, and after approximately 544 straight issues were not pleased at all that it has come to this. The biggest problems currently affecting the printing of the magazine are the uncertainty of the availability of our print-house, and the question of Canada Posts current dependability during the pandemic. Therefore, the decision was recently made by Standardbred Canada that a May 2020 issue of TROT was not to happen, and for that we truly apologize. (Please note that all private subscribers have had their subscriptions extended by two months).

Its not all bad news though, because what weve done for you instead is create something new and different -- a digital publication that weve filled with pages and pages of what many horsepeople love, as we present you with the inside scoop on 99 of the most promising two-year-olds in Canada, trained by 20 of our most prominent trainers. In the interviews conducted, with a focus on their Canadian-sired freshmen first, the trainers have shared with us some of the back stories on the progeny of 35 different sires from all across North America.

In this special publication, we also interviewed some of the people that run Canadas three biggest stallion farms -- Seelster, Winbak & Tara Hills -- to find out their thoughts on the effects of COVID-19 on breeding, racing and the upcoming 2020 yearling sales.

Weve included an interactive poll question for you to participate in as well, and share with you the video, and story behind it, of the Canadian Standardbred that has been viewed on Facebook nearly 2,000,000 times!

Please stay safe, and enjoy Standardbred Canadas special Twos In Training Report, brought to you by your friends at TROT Magazine.
ACCG, Georgias County Association, recently awarded county officials with certificates for completing requirements in the Lifelong Learning Academy. Recipients were recognized for their achievements in a special announcement sent to the ACCG membership. Catoosa County Commissioners Charlie Stephens and Chuck Harris were honored for successfully completing the core requirements in the Lifelong Learning Academy.

I appreciate the opportunity ACCG has provided to help me sharpen my skills in ways that will benefit the people I serve, said Commissioner Stephens. The better we are prepared to face our challenges, the better place Catoosa County will be to live, work and play.

The Lifelong Learning Academy is a valuable resource that brings experienced county leaders together with visionaries from the University of Georgia to help solve the challenges we all face, said Commissioner Harris. This is a tremendous resource for me and ultimately the citizens in my district.

ACCG and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia have collaborated for more than two decades to provide county officials with supplemental training and educational tools in the Lifelong Learning Academy. With abundant courses to choose from, every county official has a tailor-made learning experience that allows them to excel in specific areas of expertise, said officials.

County officials are faced with many challenges and ever-evolving circumstances under which they must govern Georgias local communities, said Dave Wills, ACCGs executive director. The Lifelong Learning Academy was created to help them navigate those challenges. I commend county leaders such as Chuck Harris who take full advantage of educational opportunities to further their knowledge on how to better serve their communities.

The Lifelong Learning Academy was created with input from county commissioners who identified courses based on the issues and decision-making challenges regularly faced by county officials. To ensure the course requirements and curriculum remain relevant and engaging, the ACCG Lifelong Learning Committee  comprised of county commissioners and staff from both ACCG and the Carl Vinson Institute of Government at the University of Georgia  meet regularly to review and adjust accordingly. Through this collaborative approach, the Lifelong Learning Academy has been successful in equipping county officials with the necessary skills to meet the needs of their constituents, said officials.
Amid the soaring tensions between Washington and Havana, a senior Trump administration official reportedly said that the US is considering returning Cuba to its list of a state sponsor of terrorism. While speaking to an international media outlet, the official said that there is a convincing case that Cuba should be placed back on the US blacklist as it is continuing to back the socialist Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and giving refuge to the leaders of Colombias ELN rebel group.

The official also said that a decision on Cubas re-listing might come to be the end of the year. The statement of the senior Trump administration official comes after the US government on May 13 said that it had put the Communist-ruled island back on a separate list of countries that do not cooperate fully with its efforts to counter-terrorism. However, Havana, which has long denied any link to terrorism, reportedly dismissed the US state department announcement as suspicious.

READ: President Trump Eyes Older Voters In Florida For Any Sign Of Hesitation

If the US designates Cuba as a state sponsor of terrorism, Cuba will be placed in the company of Iran, North Korea, Syria and Sudan. The US also carries the potential for sanctions and trade restrictions and blacklisting the island would further rollback the detente that former US President Barack Obama orchestrated between the old Cold War foes. While Obamas decision to formally remove Cuba from the terrorism list in 2015 was an important step towards restoring diplomatic ties, Trumps toughened stance has gone down well in the large Cuban-American community in South Florida.

Meanwhile, it is reportedly believed that any decision to put Cuba on the list would take into account Havanas support for Maduro, whose 2018 re-election was also considered a sham by most Western countries. The US-government reportedly also indicated him and much of his inner circle in March on charges of narco-terrorism conspiracy, corruption and drug trafficking.

READ: Austrian Princess Maria Galitzine passes Away In Houston At The Age Of 31

US considering to designate Venezuelas services as terrorist organisations

Moreover, while speaking to the media outlet, the official reportedly said that the US government was also considering designating several of Venezuelas services as terrorist organisations as they believe that they had alleged links to drug trafficking. The deliberations on whether to re-list Cuba are reportedly focused heavily on legal questions required to justify naming a country a sponsor of terrorism. The official said that the figuring into the discussions is also Cubas refusal of Colombia's request to extradite ELN leaders after the group claimed responsibility for an attack at a Bogota police academy in January 2019 that killed 22.

According to an international media outlet, the re-listing of Cuba would have heavy symbolic meaning for Havana, which had chafed for decades under the U.S. designation. Although it is still unclear, however, if re-listed the designation carries a prohibition on U.S. economic aid, a ban on U.S. arms exports, controls on dual-use items with military and civilian applications, and a requirement that the US oppose loans to Cuba by international financial institutions such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

(Image: AP)

READ: US Blames Islamic State For Gruesome Attack On Kabul's Maternity Ward

READ: Mike Pompeo Condemns China-linked Hacking Into COVID-19 Research In US
[May 15, 2020] AM Best Revises Outlooks to Negative for Ansvar Insurance Limited

AM Best has revised the outlooks to negative from stable and affirmed the Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) and the Long-Term Issuer Credit Rating of "a-" of Ansvar Insurance Limited (Ansvar) (Australia). The Credit Ratings (ratings) reflect Ansvar's balance sheet strength, which AM Best categorises as very strong, as well as its adequate operating performance, limited business profile and appropriate enterprise risk management. In addition, Ansvar's ratings factor in rating enhancement from Ecclesiastical Insurance Office plc (EIO). The negative outlooks reflect recent deterioration in the company's key underwriting and operating performance metrics, driven by unfavourable underwriting results due to reserve strengthening related to liability exposures for physical and sexual abuse (PSA) claims, discount rate movements and several catastrophe events. Ansvar reported a return-on-equity ratio of negative 4.5% for 2019, a notable deterioration from its five-year average of 5.1% (2014-2018). Whilst the combined ratio improved in 2017 and 2018, with the company reporting technical profits in both years, technical performance deteriorated in 2019 and into the first quarter of 2020. Financial market volatility further strained operating performance in the first quarter of 2020. Ansvar's balance sheet strength is underpinned by risk-adjusted capitalisation, as measured by Best's Capital Adequacy Ratio (BCAR), which was at the strongest level in 2019, and is expected to remain at least at a very strong level over the medium term. The company has a low-risk investment portfolio, with assets invested in cash and high-grade fixed-interest securities. Partially offsetting factors in the balance sheet strength assessment include Ansvar's modest capital base relative to the product risk of its insurance portfolio, as well as its high reinsurance dependence for its property insurance. Ansvar is a small niche insurer that provides general insurance products to its target customer groups in Australia, including care, community, faith, educationand property owners. Its core product offerings are commercial property and casualty. Whilst Ansvar has a long-established presence in its niche segments in which it leverages its strong expertise and reputation, this advantage is offset somewhat by the company's limited control over distribution. This is due to its reliance on non-affiliated intermediary channels, as well as strong competitive pressures in the Australian general insurance market.



Ansvar's ratings incorporate rating enhancement from EIO, a U.K.-based insurance group that specialises in providing commercial insurance to the faith, heritage, charity, education and real estate markets. The rating enhancement reflects Ansvar's integration with the group's operations and strategic contribution in terms of value proposition. In addition, Ansvar receives explicit reinsurance support from EIO, including a shared global catastrophe excess of loss program and a newly implemented intra-group PSA reinsurance cover protecting Ansvar against adverse development in this portfolio. Ratings are communicated to rated entities prior to publication. Unless stated otherwise, the ratings were not amended subsequent to that communication.

This press release relates to Credit Ratings that have been published on AM Best's website. For all rating information relating to the release and pertinent disclosures, including details of the office responsible for issuing each of the individual ratings referenced in this release, please see AM Best's Recent Rating Activity web page. For additional information regarding the use and limitations of Credit Rating opinions, please view Guide to Best's Credit Ratings. For information on the proper media use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best press releases, please view Guide for Media - Proper Use of Best's Credit Ratings and AM Best Rating Action Press Releases. AM Best is a global credit rating agency, news publisher and data analytics provider specialising in the insurance industry. Headquartered in the United States, the company does business in over 100 countries with regional offices in New York, London, Amsterdam, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore and Mexico City. For more information, visit www.ambest.com. Copyright  2020 by A.M. Best Rating Services, Inc. and/or its affiliates. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. View source version on businesswire.com: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20200515005337/en/

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LONDON - Belly Mujinga was working at London Victoria train station March 22 when a man approached her and a colleague and spat and coughed at them. He said he had the novel coronavirus.

Days after the attack, both women became sick, according to British media reports. Two weeks later, Mujinga, 47, died of the coronavirus. She left behind an 11-year-old daughter, Ingrid, who her father says has barely said a word since.

Because of the coronavirus restrictions in place in Britain, only 10 people were allowed to attend Mujinga's funeral.

The assault on both rail workers and Mujinga's death became the subject of a flood of public grief and anger in the United Kingdom, amid a national conversation about when and how to reopen after almost two months of lockdown.

British Transport Police confirmed Tuesday it had launched an investigation into Mujinga's death, calling on anyone with information about the incident to come forward. Her photos plastered the front pages of British newspapers Wednesday as donations spiked on a fundraising page created to help support her family.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson called her death "tragic" and said the incident was "utterly appalling."

Speaking to ITV News, Mujinga's husband said she returned from work on the day of the assault "feeling very sad." While it is impossible to say for certain when or how she contracted the virus, her job, like that of many deemed essential, put her in harm's way. Her family told the broadcaster that in the days before her death, she was moved from the ticket office to a more public-facing role on the station concourse, despite preexisting health conditions.

Mujinga's union, the Transport Salaried Staffs' Association, said she was "a vulnerable person" and classified as high risk because of health issues "known to her employer."

The union is now questioning why Mujinga remained assigned to work on the front lines of the pandemic in the days before she died. "There are serious questions about her death; it wasn't inevitable," the union said in a statement.

Mujinga's cousin also claims the bosses knew of her health condition. "They didn't take any notice," she told ITV London, adding that Mujinga reported the spitting incident to her employer after it happened.

Govia Thameslink Railway, the company for which Mujinga worked, said it was "devastated" by her death and offered its sympathies to her family. In a statement released Tuesday, it said that at the time of the spitting incident in March, the company was following the government advice that personal protective equipment for workers "was not required."

It is now reviewing its guidelines on rail staff protection.

Reports of deliberate spitting and coughing at others in public during the pandemic are not limited to the U.K.

In the United States, Detroit bus driver Jason Hargrove complained about a female passenger whom he said openly coughed while onboard his vehicle. He began feeling ill days after the incident and died of the coronavirus a week later.

His death occurred as bus drivers in Detroit and across the United States were expressing concern over whether officials were doing enough to protect public transportation workers from the virus.

In Britain, Mujinga's family says they are worried about the health and safety of other staff members who continue to work on the front lines during a global pandemic that has so far claimed over 33,000 lives in the United Kingdom - putting the country second behind the United States in terms of total deaths worldwide.

A total of 26 bus workers in London have died of covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, according to the BBC. With Britain preparing to begin to emerge from its nationwide lockdown, questions of workplace safety will only become more pressing.

On Sunday, Johnson began encouraging those who work in construction and manufacturing to return to their jobs but maintained that public transport should be avoided.

Video shared on social media in recent days shows hundreds of commuters cramming into train carriages - some wearing face coverings, others opting not to. The scenes have sparked outrage and arguments that England is moving too fast, too soon. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have all rejected Johnson's change in messaging - from "stay at home" to "stay alert" - a clear sign they are going to follow their own path when it comes to easing lockdown restrictions.
Colorado police are zeroing in on a new area in their search for Suzanne Morphew after the discovery of a 'personal item' that is believed to belong to the missing mom.

Morphew, 49, has not been seen since she set out on a bike ride from her home in Maysville on Sunday afternoon. Her neighbor reported her missing just hours later and search efforts began 'immediately'.

Morphew's bike was recovered late Sunday night, but there were no other clues as to her whereabouts despite the deployment of drones and sniffer dogs.

However, the discovery of Morphew's personal item on Thursday may now help with a break in the case.

Police have not disclosed what the item is, but say it was found near the junction of County Road 225 and Highway 50 - around 500 meters from Morphew's home. A trail is located close by.

Morphew, 49, has not been seen since she set out on a bike ride from her home in Maysville on Sunday afternoon . On Thursday, a 'personal item' thought to belong to the mom-of-two was discovered near a trail a short distance from her home

Police have not disclosed what the item is, but say it was found near the junction of County Road 225 and Highway 50 - around 500 meters from Morphew's home. A trail is located close by

More than 50 people are now combing the immediate area trying to find anything else that may belong to Morphew. Highway 50 has been temporarily closed amid the search.

The discovery of the item comes after Morphew's family offered a $200,000 reward for her safe return with 'no questions asked'.

It remains unclear whether Morphew was at home alone before she set off on Sunday's bike ride. Her husband, Barry, was reportedly out of town at the time. The couple are parents of two adult daughters.

The FBI has been called in to assist in the search operation as well as personnel from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze told KRDO on Thursday evening: 'I can't say whether the circumstances of her disappearance are suspicious and I can't share what we've found.'

The FBI has been called in to assist in the search for Morphew . Her bike was recovered on Thursday

Morphew's husband, Barry (left), was reportedly out of town some 150-miles away in Denver when she went missing

Suzanne and Barry Morephew lived in Maysville, a small community close to the larger town of Salida. ABC 13 filmed vision of Highway 50

Spezze declined to comment when pressed on whether Morphew's husband is cooperating with authorities in their investigation.

However, he has pledged a $100,000 reward for any information that leads to her safe return. That sum was matched by a family friend, bringing the reward total to $200,000.

'The $200,000 means that we'll do whatever we can to get her back safely. No questions asked,' Morphew's nephew, Trevor Noel, told DailyMail.com.

'We are progressing and are NOT slowing down the search,' Noel added.

Barry has pledged a $100,000 reward for any information that leads to Suzanne's safe return. That sum was matched by a family friend, bringing the reward total to $200,000 (pictured: Suzanne with her two daughters)

Noel has set up a Facebook page, Find Suzanne Morphew, to help spread the word of his aunt's disappearance. He has also set up a GoFundMe page to help support family members and sustain their independent search.

'We are strong and so is Suzanne,' Noel said. 'We're searching tirelessly and know that she is resilient and tough. We will find her and bring her home. Suzanne, we love you!

'She's a beloved family member, and we want her back. Everyone in the family, we love her, we want her back.'

Barry and Suzanne Morphew are pictured in a photo shared on social media. He has not commented publicly since his wife's disappearance

Meanwhile, locals have taken to the Chaffee County Sheriff's Office Facebook page to express their worry over Morphew's disappearance.

'She is truly the sweetest, loving soul I know. Praying without ceasing for her return home,' one wrote.

Another stated: 'Hoping she is located quickly. I've seen her and her husband at the gym. They're wonderful people.'

FBI investigators have also joined the ongoing search effort. Anyone with information on Morphew's whereabouts should call a tip line set up by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation at (719) 312-7530.
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Timing is everything, and it turns out Grand Seiko and Watches of Switzerland were right on the mark when they announced the launch of their first collaboration in the new Toge Special Edition timepiece. Months ahead of the current global pandemic, the Japanese watchmaker and the U.S.s largest watch retailer had been working on developing AR technology to allow potential clients to virtually try on the watch from the comfort of their own homes. And as it turns out, as of todays launch, nearly everyone in the world is sheltering within the confines of their own residence indefinitely.

You can size the new timepiece up on your wrist on the @grandseikousa, @grandseikouk, @watchesofswitzerland_offical and @mayorsjewelers Instagram pages from your phone. Simply head to one of the pages and click on the smiley face icon right above the photos, then tap the Toge Special Edition image, click try it and flip your camera so its facing your wrist then pinch and zoom for different views. You can also rotate the watch with your fingers for a view of its exhibition caseback. Its entertaining and easy and while Watches of Switzerland says it only has plans right now to use the AR technology with Grand Seiko, the Japanese watchmakers says it plans to develop the technology further in the future.

More from Robb Report

I think that is something that is capturing a lot of attention right now and thanks to the development of this first phase we will develop it further with other products, Brice Le Troadec, president of Grand Seiko Corporation of America, told Robb Report. We might create our own app at some pointright now, we are using it only through Instagram. But I think the quality is great and the experience is fun. We want to bring it to the next level.

Story continues

While AR is a nifty tool as a preview, its impossible to capture the exquisite dial work and polishing on a Grand Seiko timepiece without seeing it in person. The new Toge timepieces dial takes inspiration from the 2014 SBGJ005 model, which hasnt been reintroduced on another watch until now. Its texture, like many Grand Seiko models before it, takes inspiration from the ridges of Mt. Iwate, the largest mountain in the Iwate prefecture in Northern Japans Morioka city. The area is also home to the Shizukuishi watch studio where the watch was assembled and adjusted in the hands of just 20 craftsmen and women, who specialize in making Grand Seikos 9S series mechanical calibers. (A new studio in the same region, designed by the renowned architect Kengo Kumadesigner of Tokyos Olympic stadiumwill open in the near future and be home to the new Grand Seiko Studio Shizukuishi.)

Its hunter green hue is also a nod to the classic British racing car color in homage to Watches of Switzerlands U.K. heritage and its name, Toge, means mountain pass in English, referring to the steep winding alpine roads favored by car enthusiasts.

The dial is housed in the same case design as Grand Seikos bestselling SBGM221 model and comes equipped with the 221 components that make up its 9S66 movementan automatic watch with a 3-day power reservevisible through the caseback. The 39.5 mm by 13.7 mm case is topped off in the brands signature Zaratsu polishing technique, known for its distortion-free mirror finishing.

The Grand Seiko x Watches of Switzerland Toge Special Edition SBGM241 ($5,200) hits on many of the hallmarks of the Japanese watchmaker that have achieved its recent cult-status stateside. Grand Seikos skyrocketing success was, no doubt, the impetus for the collaboration. Its grown exponentially for us, David Hurley, executive vice president of the Watches of Switzerland Group, told Robb Report. The group was introduced to the brand just two years ago. At that time we decided to do a pop-up together in Soho, but going forward, its an all-doors brand for us in the U.S. Weve added it to stores in the U.K and potentially more to follow.

For now, you can purchase the new Toge timepiece at watchesofswitzerland.com, watches-of-switzerland.co.uk, or the Watches of Switzerland-owned mayors.com. It is available for pre-order now and will be delivered in July. It is not a limited edition, but will be limited to production with an estimated initial offering of 200 watches split between the U.S. and the U.K.

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SHELBY TOWNSHIP, MI  A Michigan police department took to Facebook today to joke about its response to invasive murder hornets.

The pun-filled post from Shelby Township Police Department says that police are using a SWAT team to set up a sting operation after being contacted about the 2-inch long, honeybee-killing hornets.

RELATED: Murder Hornets found in U.S. are 2-inch killers that emerge in spring

The post also clarifies that the department will not respond to hornet calls  unless the hornets are breaking the law by driving a stolen car 100 mph down the freeway.

In that case, police would respond, and they would be super mad.  Mad  as  a  hornet  even.

The post concludes with a laughing emoji and this sign off: Sorry, I'll see myself out.

And before you ask....NO, we do not respond for hornet calls. Unless they are driving a stolen car 100 mph down the... Posted by Shelby Township Police Department on Friday, May 15, 2020

In the first two hours, the post garnered more than 350 reactions and 60 comments - many thanking the department for the laugh.

Murder hornets  the worlds largest hornet  have not been confirmed in Michigan. Small numbers of the Asian insect have been found in Washington state. The hornets emerge from the ground in the spring to feast on honeybee nests, but the venom delivered by its sting can also be fatal to some people, the Associated Press reports.

READ MORE:

Police ask college students to stop partying so officers can avoid humans

Star Wars villain not a suspect in search for hooded man who damaged ATM, police say
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Linkedin Raj Persaud (The Jakarta Post)  Sat, May 16 2020

While many countries continue to grapple with escalating COVID-19 outbreaks, two have declared theirs effectively over: New Zealand and Iceland. It is no coincidence that both countries governments are led by women.



New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern and her Icelandic counterpart Katrin Jakobsdottir have both received considerable  and well-deserved  praise for their leadership during the COVID-19 crisis. But they are not alone: of the top ten best-performing countries (in terms of testing and mortality), four  Estonia, Iceland, New Zealand, and Taiwan  have woman leaders. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen have also been commended for their pandemic leadership.



Women account for less than 7 percent of the worlds leaders, so the fact that so many have distinguished themselves during the COVID-19 crisis is noteworthy. But thats not all. Some of the worst-performing countries are led by unapologetically old-fashioned mens men. Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaros entire persona channels a retrograde masculinity and a patriarchal view of women. Accordingly, he has called the virus a measly cold, boasting that he wouldnt feel anything if infected.



In the United Kingdom  which has recorded the most COVID-19 deaths in Europe  Prime Minister Boris Johnson also has a history of sexist comments. Like Bolsonaro, Johnsons first instinct was to minimize the threat COVID-19 poses, though he changed his tune after being infected and ending up in an intensive-care unit.



Its the same story with United States President Donald Trump. A leader who came to power gloating about powerful mens ability to assault women sexually  which he and his supporters dismissed as locker-room banter  Trump has often worn his misogyny like a badge of honor. He, too, has consistently downplayed the COVID-19 crisis, focusing instead on making China pay for allowing the virus to spread beyond its borders.



Just as leaning into masculine stereotypes seems to correlate with poor pandemic responses, many observers seem to believe that woman leaders success may be rooted in their traditionally feminine qualities, such as empathy, compassion, and willingness to collaborate. Forbes called Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solbergs televised address to her countrys children an example of the simple, humane innovations that are possible under female leadership.



This reading is outdated, reductive, and simply wrong. Trump and his ilk may act tough, but ultimately their leadership is an incompetent charade of bluster, vacillation, and self-aggrandizement. High-performing female leaders, by contrast, have been resolute, assessed the evidence, heeded expert advice, and acted decisively.



Following the mantra go hard and go early, Ardern imposed a strict lockdown four days before New Zealands first COVID-19 death. Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen introduced more than a hundred public-health measures in January  when the World Health Organization was still casting doubt on the possibility of human-to-human transmission.



If traditionally feminine traits dont explain female leaders strong performance in times of crisis, what does? The answer may be related to the path women take to power, which is generally more demanding than that faced by men. In particular, it may be linked to the glass cliff phenomenon, whereby women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions that are risky and precarious.



Research into the glass cliff began with the finding that, before appointing men to their boards, companies in the Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 Index typically experienced stable share prices. Before appointing a woman, however, those same companies often experienced five months of poor share-price performance. Another study found that companies listed on the UK stock exchange tended to increase gender diversity on their boards after experiencing big losses.



A similar tendency can be seen in politics. Margaret Thatcher became leader of a Conservative Party in crisis, and prime minister after a winter of discontent. Archival analysis of the 2005 UK general election found that female Conservative Party candidates tended to contest seats that would be significantly more difficult to win (judged according to their rivals performance in the previous election).



Ardern also got her break by being thrust onto a glass cliff: she became the leader of New Zealands Labour Party in 2017 after poor polling forced her predecessor to resign. A mere two months later, she became the countrys youngest prime minister in 150 years.



According to the researchers, the glass cliff may appear because organizations are more willing to challenge the status quo when the status quo isnt working. The visible difference of having a woman in charge could also reassure stakeholders that change is happening. As for the women, they may be more likely to accept leadership positions in times of crisis because they have fewer opportunities to reach the top. They cant simply wait for an easier post to open up.



Regardless of why it happens, the fact is that by the time a woman reaches the heights of corporate or political power, she is likely to have overcome massive hurdles. With men, that is possible, but far from guaranteed. Johnson (who was fired from multiple jobs for lying) and Trump (with his meticulously documented history of business failures, including several bankruptcies) never seem to run out of second chances. These leaders paths to power are characterized more by plush cushions than glass cliffs  and it shows.



While many factors are shaping outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic, leadership is undoubtedly one of the most important. It should surprise no one that, by and large, it is the leaders who have already had to prove themselves who are the most effective. That very often means they are women.

______

London-based psychiatrist and the coauthor, with Peter Bruggen, of The Street-wise Guide to Getting the Best Mental Health Care

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Maybe it's all this talk about the Leaving Cert, but these days I find myself getting flashbacks from school. Nothing spectacular, nor even interesting - just utterly forgettable memories that bubble up and pop in the pandemic silence.

"If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?" arrived like unsolicited mail into my head on Tuesday. I had to google where it came from.

The papers are full of the latest news on government formation. Not much has changed in three months, to be honest.

The only striking thing seems to be the speed at which Fianna Fail and Fine Gael TDs are announcing their deeply held concerns about the policy pursuits of the Green Party.

Everyone wants to find a problem for which the Greens are proposing a solution.

Their demands are "contrary to the national interest" decried a junior minister, who is visited by the ghost of St Patrick each night to give him exclusive rights to what is actually in the national interest.

"Our core values and policies need to be reflected," added a Fine Gael backbencher.

I had to google what those are too.

I discovered the sort of catch-all, ambitious values and policies it would be hard to find fault with. Find me a serious politician these days who will argue against equality, security and hope - or jobs, climate action, Slaintecare and rural development.

Which brings me back to Shakespeare and, naturally, 'The Merchant of Venice', where the conflict between selflessness and self-interest is central.

The pool of votes to fish from, particularly in rural areas, has depleted for the two parties and now this dramatic competition for the hearts and minds of rural Ireland is under way. The Green Party is to blame, of course.

Fine Gael and Fianna Fail felt the discontent on the doors during the election. Both parties' traditional voting families gave their votes to Sinn Fein, the Greens or Independents.

It suits some people to peddle a narrative of a persecuted and endangered rural Ireland. The politics of division is easier than unity. There is a narrative emerging of two different Irelands, as if we don't all live under the same sky, breathe the same air and risk the same losses.

If you prick a beef farmer by making him destitute, does he not bleed? If you poison a river with silage effluent, do fish not die?

This is where selflessness, not self-interest, is needed most. The whole country needs a stable and selfless government, one that is willing to be imaginative and constructive, not petty and partisan.

In some parts of Dublin, you'd swear farmers were actively feeding cows baked beans to destroy the ozone layer faster, and in some parts of rural Ireland there is a sense that at any moment Catherine Martin is going to appear on a bicycle and harpoon a whole herd of cattle.

Both of these things are obviously ridiculous, but fear and confusion are useful tools if you want to disrupt and divide a country. The only people who benefit from that narrative are the philosophies on the margins - the extreme left and extreme right, and of course, Sinn Fein, which has been banished from any constructive discourse on government formation (as if that's going to make the party less popular).

Right now, people don't care about your petty political gripes, your faux outrage or your chest-thumping defence of traditional values.

They want action, progress and, yes, they want change - pursuing the same political agendas won't wash and trotting out the same tired tropes just makes people look for an alternative to vote for.

The national interest is subjective, apparently - and politically speaking it seems it's very much dependent upon your constituency.

It's all well and good to condemn environmental policy reform as a rural TD, and mutter darkly about how interfering with traditional farming will happen "over my dead body".

Similarly, urban TDs can blithely dismiss the rural way of life as somehow backwards, unprofessional or even cruel.

Politicians who stoke these divisions in their own area, covetous for votes, are the least useful in government formation. They lack the spine to stand up for any true national interest, they lack the intellect to convince their electorates of the merits of change, and they lack the ambition to attract reluctant voters to a progressive cause.

Where are the ideas, the innovations, the dynamic, unifying proposals? Being divisive is unsustainable, and each time you divide people your sphere of influence gets smaller and smaller.

Believe it or not, rural Ireland is not a homogeneous group of hill-billies, unwilling to change - and urban Ireland is not a gang of heathen vegans, desperate to take away your herd number. Politicians would be wise to set aside their petty parochialisms and adopt a unified approach to government formation.
The highlights:

15 more people have been diagnosed with COVID-19.

3 more people have died in the past 24 hours.

There have been a total of 2,392 cases and 135 people have died.

1,885 people have recovered.

58 people are in hospital, 12 of them in the ICU.

No new community outbreaks.

No new outbreaks in long-term care homes.

15 outbreaks continue in long-term care homes, 4 in acute care.

Superior Poultry Plant in Coquitlam reopens.

Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry is asking British Columbians to avoid travelling during the long weekend as new cases of coronavirus continue to appear.

The May long weekend may be the "unofficial" start to summer but this summer will be different, Henry said.

"This year, with the risk that we continue to have in our communities across this province, we need to look at plans on a much narrower frame," she said.

"Let's make this our summer of care and consideration for our families, our communities and our province. A summer for us all to remember to be kind, to be calm and to be safe."

Although this would usually be the time of year to plan summer activities in advance, Henry said to think of the next couple weeks instead of months as COVID-19 continues to pose a threat.

Instead of travelling to other communities this weekend, she suggests hiking at a local park, visiting a farmers market or having a picnic.

On Thursday, B.C. Parks reopened facilities like front and backcountry trails, beaches, picnic areas, washroom facilities and boat launches for day use.

Campgrounds are set to reopen June 1.

On Tuesday, the province will enter the second phase of its gradual reopening plan.

WorkSafeBC is working with the province to create guidelines for different sectors, as they prepare to reopen, to ensure staff and customers are safe.

Henry acknowledged that while some businesses and consumers are eager for the gradual reopening, hesitation remains.

She said the province is "not going to get everything perfect" as it reopens, but that it's doing everything it can and is learning from other parts of the world during this extraordinary circumstance.

Story continues

"I think it's going to be something we're going to have to work through together," Henry said.

"We're just going to have to take it slowly and err on the side of caution the best we can."

Surgeries being rescheduled

B.C. has the capacity to test 7,000 people a day and anyone who has symptoms of COVID-19 can be tested.

It's still not known how the virus will behave in the future or how long immunity might last for those who have recovered, and B.C. does not have "herd immunity" to prevent transmission of the virus, Henry said.

B.C. has not had any cases of Kawasaki Syndrome that are related to COVID-19. The rare inflammatory illness can be an effect of the body's reaction to viruses and other infections and has been linked to children's deaths in the U.S.

Two serology tests have been approved for use in Canada and B.C. is currently validating which test it will want to use, Henry said.

The province will be closely watching what happens in the next two weeks in terms of the virus spreading, she added.

Until more questions can be answered through antibody testing or an eventual vaccine, measures like physical distancing will remain in place in some capacity in stores and on public transit, she said.

The number of people in hospital and critical care is coming down, said Health Minister Adrian Dix.

However, the occupancy rate in hospitals has gone up slightly  a sign, he said, that health care resources are being used for needs other than COVID-19.

The province is also working to reschedule 6,883 surgeries that were cancelled or postponed. People awaiting surgery will be contacted, Dix said.

Several outbreaks over in Fraser Health

On Thursday, Fraser Health provided updates on several COVID-19 outbreaks in the region.

The health authority rescinded the closure order it enforced on April 24 at Superior Poultry Processors in Coquitlam. An outbreak at the plant sickened more than 60 people, but it has met the requirements of the order and has reopened.

Plexiglass shields have been installed between workers, production has been slowed and PPE is being used, said Dr. Martin Lavoie, chief medical health officer for Fraser Health.

There remain two active cases at Mission Institution, where 120 inmates tested positive for coronavirus. There have been no new cases at the federal prison since May 1.

An outbreak at the Worthington Pavilion Rehabilitation Unit, an acute care site in Abbotsford, has been declared over. Outbreaks have also been declared over at Swedish Assisted Living Residence in Burnaby and Chartwell Cedarbrooke Retirement Residence in Mission.

In April, Fraser Health issued an order for gyms and fitness centres to close. Lavoie said the health authority is considering lifting that order "in the very near future," but that details on how to reopen safely are still being worked out.

Fraser Health is also beginning to reschedule elective surgeries that were postponed.

If you have a COVID-19-related story we should pursue that affects British Columbians, please email us at impact@cbc.ca
This article is part of the Free Speech Project , a collaboration between Future Tense and the Tech, Law, & Security Program at American University Washington College of Law that examines the ways technology is influencing how we think about speech.

More than three years into their war against online misinformation, technology companies are losing the battle against the spread of coronavirus-related falsehoods on social media platforms. Merchants of mistruth, from state-level actors (like China, Russia, and Iran) to individual conspiracy theorists, are hampering public health efforts by flooding online platforms with disinformation and misinformation. Technology companies are making some efforts to staunch this infodemic, but they have been stymied by shelter-in-place orders that have idled the vast armies of content moderators that usually police their platforms.

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Its time for a different approach to dealing with the scourge of coronavirus-related misinformationone that leverages the most powerful and dangerous features of online platforms to advance the cause of public health. At this time of crisis, we should harness the very behavioral advertising techniques that have been so widely misused in recent years to help us combat the coronavirus.

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Instead of simply taking down false and misleading content once it has been posted, technology companies could also offer up their best and brightest to help public health authorities deploy microtargeted ad campaigns to promote compliance with measures to combat the transmission of COVID-19. With the help of digital marketers who know a thing or two about crafting convincing messages, health officials can develop ads about coronavirus-related health measures that are designed to appeal to different target demographics. The very location-aware features developed by companies such as Google and Facebook that are so controversial for their privacy impacts could then be used to assess the effectiveness of these messages in promoting measures such as social distancing. This data, in turn, could be used to redouble our efforts to disseminate public health messages that meet their audiences where they are.

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Closing the partisan gap in the wearing of masks in public places is one among a range of potential targets for such ad campaigns. Since mid-April, the CDC has been recommending the use of masks or other face coverings in public settings where social distancing is difficult to maintain, such as at grocery stories. Yet according to a recent poll conducted by political scientists at Syracuse University and the University of CaliforniaIrvine, only 53 percent of Republicans report wearing a face mask in public, as compared with 75 percent of Democrats and 63 percent of others. The gap between Democrats and Republicans in mask wearing is widest at the middle of the income distribution but narrows at the bottom and the top.

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To be clear, rates of mask use are much too low across the political spectrum. In the right hands, however, this information about partisan and other demographic patterns in mask use could be leveraged to devise a series of ad campaigns that are designed to appeal to Republicans, Democrats, and independents across the income spectrum. Just as political parties and candidates create different microtargeted ad campaigns to appeal to different demographic slices of the electorate, so too can these techniques of persuasion be used to promote compliance with public health measures during the current pandemic.

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In recent years, many politicians, advocates, and others have urged regulation of the behavioral advertisingbased business model that undergirds Big Tech generally and social media specifically. That discussion is premised on the notion that these techniques are dangerous because they are effective. For years, large technology companies have been tracking our every move online, using the data we give them when we access their free online services to power tools that let advertisers barrage us with ads that are precisely targeted to appeal to us. These behavioral advertising tools are not only implicated in Russias campaign to interfere with the 2016 election, but they have been used by landlords and employers to engage in prohibited discrimination by targeting their ads at people of certain races or genders, while excluding others. If indeed these tools are so effective at influencing our behavior that they can swing elections, then what better time than the middle of a pandemic to use these powerful tools in the service of the public good?

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Using these techniques to combat the coronavirus might seem unsavory, but it is a useful complement to methods such as contact tracing that are needed to protect against new COVID-19 spikes as stay-at-home orders are lifted. While contact tracing (whether analog or digital) seeks to reduce the spread of a disease by identifying all those who have come in contact with an infected person so that they can be treated or isolated, effective targeted advertisements can stop the spread by convincing people who wouldnt otherwise follow public health guidance to get with the program. In so doing, such campaigns would redeploy the existing machinery of surveillance capitalism against COVID-19 and thereby reduce the need to create new systems of surveillance to combat the current pandemic.

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At some future date when COVID-19 no longer completely dominates the political discourse, we may well decide through our legislative processes that the harms caused by the ad-supported business model that predominates on the internet today are so grave that we must regulate it out of existence. That is a conversation that we should have in due course, but it is not one that we are capable of having in the midst of the current pandemic. Until that time comes, we have little to lose in using tools that our adversaries continue to use against us to defeat the threat posed by the coronavirus to our health and the vitality of our society.

Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University that examines emerging technologies, public policy, and society.
Proposal for Taiwan to attend WHA aims to disturb assembly: FM

Global Times

Source:Global Times Published: 2020/5/14 19:18:41

China strongly opposes some countries' proposals to allow Taiwan island to attend this year's World Health Assembly (WHA) as an observer, as such proposals aim to disturb WHA procedures and damage international cooperation against the COVID-19 pandemic, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson stressed on Thursday.

The remarks were made when spokesperson Zhao Lijian was asked for a response to moves of some countries including Swaziland and Nicaragua, which proposed to the World Health Organization that the island of Taiwan should attend this year's WHA as an observer.

The island's participation in the assembly should be carried out according to the one-China principle, Zhao said.

Zhao clarified that the island's observer status from 2009-2016 was based on communication between the two sides across the Straits and agreement of all WHO members. However, after the Democratic Progressive Party took office on the island, they stubbornly insist on Taiwan independence, thus the political basis for Taiwan's observer status had diminished.

He noted that the Chinese central government has made proper arrangements for the island's participation in global public health issues to make sure it can timely respond to public health emergencies happening within the island or around the world.

There is no such problem with Taiwan being left as a loophole in the global anti-pandemic battle, Zhao stresses.

The World Health Assembly is scheduled to take place from May 18-19 via online teleconferencing. The assembly's convening period is largely shortened due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It will touch upon critical topics including the pandemic situation and committee elections, according to Zhao.

Swaziland and Nicaragua are two of several remaining countries that keep "diplomatic ties" with Taiwan island, according to the island government's website.

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Newmarch House was battling severe shortages of expert staff and personal protective equipment as it struggled to try to contain a devastating COVID-19 outbreak at the aged care facility.

Grant Millard, chief executive of Anglican Community Services which runs the home near Penrith, said his team had found it impossible to get enough registered nurses into the facility in the early days of the outbreak and had been unable to source sufficient personal protective equipment (PPE) for all staff.

Grant Millard, CEO of Anglican Community Services says Newmarch House struggled with severe shortages. Credit:Janie Barrett

He said NSW Health had a policy of wanting to contain the outbreak to the home, and had provided specialists under a 'hospital in the home' policy.

But he said "if it is 'hospital in the home', then it [state health] needs to provide the arms and legs to provide hospital-like service  we didn't get them from state health," Mr Millard said.
Note: Empire State Development clarified May 15 that orthodontists are allowed to open for emergencies only.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo urged New Yorkers on Thursday to see their doctors if they need medical attention, telling reporters in a Syracuse visit that medical offices can stay open during the coronavirus pandemic.

You know, people who need medical attention, or medical treatment, should go get it, Cuomo said in a response to a question at Upstate Medical University.

The only restrictions are on dentists, orthodontists and chiropractors, who must limit patient visits to emergencies, according to the governors office and Empire State Development.

Cuomos comments raised eyebrows because some medical professionals shut down their offices when the governor ordered non-essential businesses to close statewide on March 20.

The only medical professionals directed to close their businesses were cosmetic surgeons, who had been affected by a separate ban on elective surgeries. That ban has now expired in most counties in Upstate New York.

Cuomo said Thursday that doctors have continued to see patients throughout the pandemic while taking precautions against the virus and practicing social distancing.

The governor visited Syracuse to announce that a five-county region of Central New York can begin reopening its economy Friday. Under the first phase of that plan, nothing will change for doctors and medical offices.

The restrictions on dentists and chiropractors will likely be lifted in the second phase (in about two weeks if all goes well) as professional service providers are allowed to return to normal business, according to Cuomos office.

Heres a list of New York medical professionals who have been permitted to continue opening their offices:

Audiologists

Cardiologists

Chiropractors (emergencies only)

Dermatologists

Dentists (emergencies only)

Eye doctors

Family physicians

Non-emergency radiology and imaging: mammograms, colonoscopies

Orthodontists (emergencies only)

Orthopedists

Podiatrists

Psychiatrists

Physical and occupational therapists

Substance abuse treatment providers

Urologists

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Malls cant reopen in Phase 1, but curbside pickup allowed for interior stores

Reopening NY: See new guidelines, safety plan templates, more for phase one companies

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

Got a tip, comment or story idea? Contact Mark Weiner anytime by: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751
CALGARY, AB / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Magnus Asset Corporation (formerly known as "Tailored Return Asset Company Ltd") (the "Company" or "Magnus") announces that the Company has received a Certificate of Amendment dated December 5, 2019, from the Government of Alberta, Registrar of Corporations, acknowledging the change of name of the Company from Tailored Return Asset Company Ltd. to Magnus Asset Corporation.

The Company also announces that, as a result of conditions resulting from the Covdid-19 outbreak, it has been unable to complete its year-ended December 31, 2019, audited financial statements, in a timely manner. As a result of follow-up with the Alberta Securities Commission and, subject to the filing this press release today, the Company has been granted an extension to file its December 31, 2019 Financial Statements, with its Management Discussion and Analysis, and Form 45-106F16, to June 14, 2020.

On Behalf of the Board,

"Glen Vause"

Glen Vause

Director & CEO

Further information about the Company can be found on SEDAR (www.sedar.com) or by contacting Glen Vause, Director & CEO of the Company at 3720 - 8th Avenue NW Calgary, Alberta T2N 1E1 or John A Versfelt at 1 604.527.8146.

Magnus is a non-reporting Issuer, distributed under the Offering Memorandum Exemption in Alberta. The Alberta Securities Commission does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this news release.

This news release may contain forward-looking statements including but not limited to comments regarding the timing and content of upcoming work programs other business transactions timing. Forward-looking statements address future events and conditions and therefore, involve inherent risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from those currently anticipated in such statements.

SOURCE: Magnus Asset Corporation

View source version on accesswire.com:https://www.accesswire.com/590127/Name-Change-and-Delay-Of-Filing-Financial-Statements-Relying-on-Blanket-Order-51-517-BO1-517-Alberta-Securities-Commission
Gov. Andrew Cuomo has officially extended New York states coronavirus shutdown for two more weeks, though some regions can begin reopening Friday.

The New York governor issued a new executive order late Thursday extending New York State on PAUSE to May 28. The statewide stay-at-home order, which also closed non-essential businesses and banned social gatherings, initially began in March and was scheduled to expire Friday.

Both travel-related cases and community contact transmission of Covid-19 have been documented in New York State and are expected to continue, Cuomo said in the order.

The new order also extends Cuomos emergency powers until June 13, unless later extended or amended by a future Executive Order.

Regions can begin reopening before May 28 if they meet seven criteria based on CDC guidelines: a 14-day decline in hospitalizations or under 15 new hospitalizations on a three-day average; a 14-day decline in hospital deaths; new hospitalizations under two per 100,000 residents; 30% of hospital beds reserved for a spike in Covid-19 cases as well as 30% ICU beds; 30 per 1,000 residents to be tested for coronavirus monthly, based on weekly averages; and 30 contact tracers for every 100,000 people.

Five NYS regions, including Central New York, have met those requirements and can begin phase one of reopening Friday. That phase includes construction, manufacturing, curbside retail, and some agriculture, forestry and hunting-related businesses.

The Finger Lakes, Southern Tier, Mohawk Valley, the North Country, and Central NY are ready to begin Phase 1 of reopening tomorrow, Cuomo wrote on Twitter. The others can be UN-PAUSED the moment they hit their benchmarks.

The five remaining regions, which include Western New York, the Capital District and New York City, are all in the red with four or five benchmarks met as of Friday morning.

Central New York, which includes Cayuga, Cortland, Madison, Onondaga and Oswego counties, was in the yellow with six benchmarks earlier this week, but was given the green light on Thursday after ramping up testing.

As of Thursday, more than 343,000 cases of Covid-19 and 22,170 related deaths have been confirmed in New York state. Hospitalizations, intubations and deaths have declined statewide for weeks since the virus peaked in April.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

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In-store pickup allowed in NYs Phase 1 reopenings: What does it mean?
JERSEY, CHANNEL ISLANDS / ACCESSWIRE / May 15, 2020 / Serinus Energy plc ("Serinus", "SEN" or the "Company") (AIM:SENX, WSE:SEN) is pleased to report that at the Annual General Meeting of shareholders ("AGM") held on 15 May 2020, all resolutions were duly passed. The voting results for the Ordinary Resolutions and Special Resolution presented to shareholders in the Proxy Statement and Notice of Meeting dated 20 April 2020 were as follows:

Voting Results

Ordinary Resolution Votes For Votes Against Votes Withheld Number Percent (%) Number Percent (%) 1. Financial Statements 124,433,175 99.99 7,000 0.01 0 2. Re-appoint L. Redziniak 124,433,175 100.00 0 0.00 7,000 3. Re-appoint J. Auld 124,440,175 100.00 0 0.00 0 4. Re-appoint E. Barker 124,433,175 99.99 7,000 0.01 0 5. Re-appoint J. Causgrove 124,433,175 99.99 7,000 0.01 0 6. Re-appoint D. Jakubowicz 124,440,175 100.00 0 0.00 0 7. Re-appoint A. Fairclough 124,440,175 100.00 0 0.00 0 8. Re-appoint BDO 124,440,175 100.00 0 0.00 0 9. Auditor Remuneration 124,433,130 99.99 7,045 0.01 0 10. Allot Relevant Securities 124,440,175 100.00 0 0.00 0

Special Resolutions Votes For Votes Against Votes Withheld Number Percent (%) Number Percent (%) 11. Allot Equity Securities 124,440,130 100.00 45 0.00 0 12. Market Purchases 124,440,130 100.00 45 0.00 0

Note: A vote "Withheld" is not a vote in law and is not counted in the calculation of the proportion of the votes "For" and "Against" shown.

About Serinus

Serinus is an international upstream oil and gas exploration and production company that owns and operates projects in Tunisia and Romania.

For further information, please refer to the Serinus website ( www.serinusenergy.com ) or contact the following:

Serinus Energy plc Jeffrey Auld, Chief Executive Officer Andrew Fairclough, Chief Financial Officer Calvin Brackman, Vice President, External Relations & Strategy +1 403 264 8877 WH Ireland Limited (Nominated Adviser and Joint Broker) Katy Mitchell Harry Ansell (Broker) Lydia Zychowska +44 (0)20 7220 1666 Arden Partners plc (Joint Broker) Paul Shackleton / Dan Gee-Summons (Corporate Finance) Fraser Marshall (Equity Sales) +44 (0) 20 7614 5900 Camarco (Financial PR - London)

Billy Clegg

Owen Roberts +44 (0) 20 3781 8334 TBT i Wspolnicy (Financial PR - Warsaw) Katarzyna Terej +48 22 487 53 02

Translation : This news release has been translated into Polish from the English original.

Story continues

Forward-looking Statements This release may contain forward-looking statements made as of the date of this announcement with respect to future activities that either are not or may not be historical facts. Although the Company believes that its expectations reflected in the forward-looking statements are reasonable as of the date hereof, any potential results suggested by such statements involve risk and uncertainties and no assurance can be given that actual results will be consistent with these forward-looking statements. Various factors that could impair or prevent the Company from completing the expected activities on its projects include that the Company's projects experience technical and mechanical problems, there are changes in product prices, failure to obtain regulatory approvals, the state of the national or international monetary, oil and gas, financial , political and economic markets in the jurisdictions where the Company operates and other risks not anticipated by the Company or disclosed in the Company's published material. Since forward-looking statements address future events and conditions, by their very nature, they involve inherent risks and uncertainties and actual results may vary materially from those expressed in the forward-looking statement. The Company undertakes no obligation to revise or update any forward-looking statements in this announcement to reflect events or circumstances after the date of this announcement, unless required by law.

This information is provided by RNS, the news service of the London Stock Exchange. RNS is approved by the Financial Conduct Authority to act as a Primary Information Provider in the United Kingdom. Terms and conditions relating to the use and distribution of this information may apply. For further information, please contact rns@lseg.com or visit www.rns.com.

SOURCE: Serinus Energy PLC





View source version on accesswire.com:

https://www.accesswire.com/590024/Serinus-Energy-PLC-Announces-Result-of-AGM




The first batch of 8,400 cartridges will be arriving today, says Director of Public Health Tarivonda
Representative image

Pakistans fiscal deficit will be significantly worse than projected this fiscal year, with the fallout from the novel coronavirus pandemic pushing millions into unemployment and poverty, according to government estimates reviewed by Reuters.

Pakistan began a phased lifting of its countrywide lockdown last week despite a rising rate of cases  a move pushed primarily by fears of an economic meltdown. The country has reported 35,788 COVID-19 cases and 770 deaths.

Due to a shortfall in revenues; re-prioritising of expenditures and increase in public spending, the post-pandemic fiscal deficit could reach as high as 9.4% against an earlier projection of 7.4%, one of the finance ministry documents seen by Reuters said.

Two government officials told Reuters on condition of anonymity that in recent meetings on the financial situation there were fears the deficit could even hit double digits.

That is higher than the previous upper estimate of 9% predicted by Pakistans finance chief Abdul Hafeez Shaikh in a May 8 interview with Reuters.

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

Shaikh said on Thursday it is hard to give specific numbers given the pandemics uncertainty, although the economy is to likely contract -1% to -1.5%.

We think that right now where were is likely to worsen, he said addressing a webinar.

The impact on workers and poorer people is also stark, with estimates that the poverty headcount will rise from 24.3% to a base case of 29%, and a worst-case scenario of 33.5%, the documents said.

At least 3 million people will lose their jobs - 1 million in the industrial sector and 2 million in services.

The documents noted that Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, an autonomous research organisation set up by the government, has projected job losses could reach 18 million.

Tax collection dropped sharply by 16.4% in April, the internal estimates showed.

They also stated that exports are likely to fall by $2.8 billion to $3.8 billion, with a negative impact on remittances from the Middle East, United States and Europe, which are likely to remain around $20 billion to $21 billion against $21.8 billion in 2019.

However, a slump in imports will cut Pakistans current account deficit to $4.5 billion in the fiscal year, from $13.8 billion in 2019.

The estimates say the economy will contract 1.5% for financial year 2020 against a rise of 3.29% in 2019.

Pakistan has already rolled out a 1.24 trillion Pakistani rupee ($7.71 billion) stimulus to support the economy and cash handouts to the poor.

Moodys on Thursday placed Pakistans local and foreign currency long-term issuer B3 ratings under review for downgrade, citing a potential default on private sector debt.

External help

Officials say Pakistan is confident of getting at least $5.4 billion in external financial help, including $1.386 billion already received from the IMF as rapid financing to mitigate the coronavirus losses, and a debt rescheduling of $1.8 billion from G20 countries.

That is aside from money expected from the IMFs three-year $6 billion support programme the country entered last year, according to two officials familiar with the situation.

Our external finance outlook appears to be very good at the moment, one of the top officials told Reuters. Our expectation and our assessment is very positive.

The officials said Pakistan was receiving $500 million in coronavirus-related support from the Asian Development Bank, and around $1 billion from the World Bank, that will also carry forward another $700 million in projects from last year.

Pakistan has also requested long-time ally China to roll over payments related to the power projects set up as part of Belt and Road initiative.

Finance chief Shaikh is to present a budget in two weeks aimed at finding ways to generate revenues and cut expenditures.
Yemeni Southern Secessionists Seize Control Over Several Positions in Abyan Province  Source

Sputnik News

04:04 GMT 14.05.2020(updated 04:08 GMT 14.05.2020)

CAIRO (Sputnik)  The forces of Yemen's Southern Transitional Council (STC) have established control over several positions in the southern Yemeni province of Abyan, a Yemeni military source said on Thursday.

A source said that the STC had attacked the government troops and seized their positions east of the town of Zinjibar. The clash has left six people dead and 15 more injured.

On Wednesday, the Yemeni government called on the STC to stick to the Riyadh deal.

In late April, the STC introduced self-governance in the country's southern provinces and declared a state of emergency in those areas. The secessionists accused the internationally recognized government of failing to implement the 2019 peace agreement in the Saudi capital of Riaydh, while the government said that the council was destabilizing the situation in southern Yemen. There were also reports about clashes between the government troops and the STC forces in Abyan.

The STC was created in 2017. The secessionist movement is backed by the United Arab Emirates, which is part of a Saudi-led coalition that has launched an air campaign against the Shia Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.

In November 2019, Yemen's internationally recognized government, headed by President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi, signed a peace deal with STC aimed at putting an end to military confrontation. Apart from other things, the Riyadh agreement envisioned that the secessionists should return military facilities and state institutions, which they had previously seized in Yemen's south, to the government.

 Sputnik

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The Mrs. Files looks at history through a contemporary lens to see what the honorific Mrs. means to women and their identity.

About two years ago, when we started going through the millions of photos in The New York Times archives for the Past Tense archival storytelling project, we noticed something puzzling. In one of our files, Frida Kahlo was identified as Mrs. Diego Rivera. In another, Ray Eamess name was scrawled in pen next to her husbands, which was typewritten. When we went looking for pictures of June Carter Cash, the card catalog directed us to Cash, Johnny & Mrs.

How a woman earned the right to be referred to by her own name seemed to be as varied as the lives themselves. On many cards for Coretta Scott King, who stepped to the fore after the assassination of her husband, her name was typewritten over a splotch of white-out, covering what we believe read King, Rev. Martin Luther Jr.  just above the familiar letters Mrs.
Although travel lockdowns have severely impacted oil demand, Smith says efforts to limit supply will support price normalisation. Instead of reaching peak oil, Smith says, the industry has reached the inflection point. Pricing should recover over the medium term, he says. Meanwhile, other investors, including the socalled value investors, are taking a different approach. While they acknowledge prices may bounce back in the short term, they see the oil sector in structural decline and a poor longterm investment. Even after coronavirus, some say, the potential for reduced levels of international travel, more people working from home and the growing uptake of electric vehicles will hasten oils demise. "Cheap oil and cheap coal basically drove the second industrial revolution," Hyperions chief investment officer Mark Arnold says. "We think the second industrial revolution is coming to an end and technology, renewables and EVs [electric vehicles] will be the next stage." Loading Hyperion sold its stock in BHP around seven years ago and the $7 billion investment firm has since bought a stake in Tesla. According to Arnold, oil is an older world business and its role in global markets will diminish in the next 5 to 10 years as lower battery prices and improving technology will see autonomous, electric vehicles becoming the dominant mode of transport.

Weve got demand destruction going on, Arnold says. Globally, probably the consensus view is that oil has decades and decades of reasonably high prices once you get through COVID19. But we think its [fall] is going to happen much quicker. Mark Arnold, the chief investment officer for Hyperion, says the rise of electric vehicles will hasten oil's demise. Credit:Glenn Hunt At the same time, says Arnold, rising investor awareness around climate change risks will push the financial sector further away from fossil fuels in general. Climate change is slowly filtering through to the finance world, he says. Its definitely talked about more these days than it was a few years ago and people are now considering where capital is allocated. Loading

Investors can profit from oil in two ways. Either through buying futures contracts or acquiring shares in oil producing companies. Futures contracts are risky at the best of times, but when the US benchmark oil price, West Texas Intermediate, dropped into negative territory last month, it was especially bad news for hedge funds, energy traders and index players. Exchange traded funds (ETF) provider Betashares oil futures ETF has lost over 78 per cent in returns over the past three months and its buyin price has reached record lows of below $3 per share, down from $54 when the fund was launched in 2011. Betashares chief executive Alex Vynokur says demand for the fund has flatlined and an updated product disclosure statement warns the ETF may have to be terminated if prices fall into negative territory again. Investors should exercise caution in light of the unprecedented volatility and heightened risk in the global oil market, a stark message on Betashares website warns. Alex Vynokur, CEO of Betashares. Credit:Dominic Lorrimer According to Mike Henry, the head of Australian mining giant BHP, which operates Victorias Bass Strait oil fields in a joint venture with ExxonMobil, investor concerns about oils place in a carbonconstrained future have been elevated by the coronavirus crisis. However, under most scenarios, the world will still be consuming massive amounts of oil, he says, until at least the middle of the century. Lets frame this: even low-case forecasts are for the world to consume another trillion barrels of oil over the next 30 years, said Henry earlier this week. And thats relative to 900 billion over the past 30 years.

Conservative estimates predict natural oil fields would decline at about 3 per cent a year, meaning that unless demand fell consistently at a rate greater than that, the world is going to need investment in fresh supply which will support prices, he said. I have to say, its hard to see demand falling year in, year out at greater than 3 per cent per annum. Australia produces some oil but far greater amounts of LNG, last year overtaking Qatar as the worlds top LNG exporter. As LNG is tied to the oil price with about a threemonth lag, the extent of the impact for ASX energy producers are yet to be fully felt. Revenue from LNG sales, one of the countrys most lucrative exports, could fall from $50 billion to as low as $30 billion in the 2021 financial year, according to an analysts from energy consultancy EnergyQuest, and the shelving of tens of billions of dollars' worth of investment spending in new projects had "national economic implications". Representatives for Australian oil and gas producers say the "double whammy" hit from the economic impact of coronavirus and the near recordlow oil prices are causing an "incredibly challenging time" for the sector. "The price weakness will remain a constraint on the local oil and gas industry as the COVID19 threat diminishes and the broader economy begins to recover," says Andrew McConville, of the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association.

"But our industry is accustomed and geared to cyclical commodity prices." Energy demand  and oil demand with it  will return as travel restrictions and economic activity resumes, according to McConville, who adds that Australian producers emerged leaner and fitter from the price falls of five years ago. In Australia and around the world, the future of oil and gas companies is increasingly becoming the focus of shareholder activists groups, such as the environmental group Friends of the Earth's subsidiary Market Forces, which has been lobbying the nations top superannuation funds and other large investors. Research prepared for The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, which compares the value of nine oil producing companies to the ASX300, shows oil stocks have consistently underperformed over the past decade and it's a trend campaigner Will van de Pol says should give super funds further impetus to divest from the sector. Clearly the economic justification is not there and it hasnt been there for quite some time now, he says.

[The research] really shows the recent pandemic has merely exacerbated a trend thats been going on for some time now. Sunsupers chief investment officer Ian Patrick said the $70 billion fund had not made short-term changes to its exposure to oil during the crisis but acknowledged demand would phase out as the world moves towards a carbon-reduced world. Whether peak oil is today or in the next decade, I dont know. Five per cent of global emissions come from oil wells to refining, thats a reasonable proportion, he says. The fund has no plans to divest in major oil players, which Patrick adds have green transition plans in place. In the past week, oil prices have lifted slightly on the back of encouraging signs that output is falling. But investors remain cautious, wary of the fact that the pandemic is far from over with the risk of a second wave of infections still in the picture.
Residents of Uyghur-Majority County in Xinjiang Ordered to Report Others Fasting During Ramadan

2020-05-14 -- Residents of the mostly Uyghur-populated Makit (in Chinese, Maigaiti) county in northwest China's Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been ordered to report anyone discovered to be fasting in observance of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, according to sources.

For years, Uyghurs in the XUAR have been prohibited from fully observing Ramadan due to religious persecution and restrictions imposed by the Chinese government, which has in many cases banned Uyghur civil servants, students and teachers from fasting during the holy month.

In certain areas of the region, access to mosques is more tightly controlled and restaurants are ordered to remain open, while Uyghur retirees are often forced to pledge ahead of Ramadan that they won't fast or pray to set an example for the wider community and to assume responsibility for ensuring others also refrain.

While speaking with official sources in several different prefectures to learn more about what kinds of restrictions are in place during Ramadan, which is observed between April 23 and May 23 this year, RFA's Uyghur Service learned that implementation varies widelywith clear regulations against fasting in some locales and few in others that have already had effective bans in place for several years.

In one example of an approach to stamping out observance of Ramadan, authorities have ramped up a propaganda campaign against fasting in Kashgar (Kashi) prefecture's Makita county in which some 83 percent of the population is Uyghurwhere residents have been informed that they are required to turn in any friends or relatives who take part.

RFA recently spoke with a Uyghur employee of the Makit county government who said that residents have been told that they could face punishment for fasting, including being sent to one of the XUAR's vast network of internment camps, where authorities are believed to have held up to 1.8 million Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities since April 2017.

"Propaganda on Ramadan is prevalent in the counties, townships, and villages," she said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"Taking part in Ramadan practices is propagated as a form of religious extremism."

A Uyghur village leader in Makit, who also declined to be named, told RFA county-level authorities had issued a notice during a special meeting ahead of Ramadan which "said not to fast."

Ordered to report

The reasoning behind the county campaign is to uphold "national security," a Uyghur government employee of a township in Makit explained to RFA.

"If they fast, then they'll gather to eat, and if they gather, then they'll disturb the societythey'll threaten national security," she said. "That's why we propagate against keeping Ramadan."

But the employee said, "it's already been two or three years that people haven't been fasting" in her village and that "everyone knows [not to], so they just naturally don't."

When asked what residents should do if they discover someone fasting, the employee said they should report them to authorities.

"If we find people observing Ramadan, we'll inform the responsible officials in the villages and townships," she said.

"[We should tell] the county police, but since we haven't found anyone fasting in our township, we haven't reported anyone yet."

RFA also spoke with an official in Kashgar's Peyziwat (Jiashi) county who said his township had instituted mandatory attendance at a daily dawn flag raising ceremony as well as evening political studies, which he said was part of a bid to prevent residents from fasting because those are the only times of the day that they are allowed to eat, according to Muslim tradition.

"Since we started the flag raising ceremony, neighbors' surveillance of one another has been strengthened, so nobody is able to make time to break the fast," he said.

"The evening political studies start at 9:30 p.m. and end at 11:30 p.m., and they are held at the neighborhood committee."

A Uyghur officer at the Beimen District Police Station in the XUAR capital Urumqi told RFA that while residents there have not been ordered residents to report one another for fasting, authorities are keeping a close eye on who is observing Ramadan and keeping a record of their activities.

"Yes, there are [special guidelines in place for Ramadan]  [but] our boss us instructed us not to talk about that over the phone," he said.

When asked whether there is a register of people who are fasting and attending mosques during the holy month, the officer said, "yes, there is."

"We have a special police unit assigned to keep track of that," he added.

Fasting for empathy

Last month, to mark the start of Ramadan, Uyghur exile groups urged the international community to speak out on behalf of members of their ethnic group enduring persecution in the XUAR.

In particular, they called on Muslims around the world "to keep the Uyghur people in their thoughts and prayers during the holy month of Ramadan and to call on their respective governments to demand that China immediately ceases its religious persecution of Uyghurs."

The Munich-based World Uyghur Congress (WUC) noted that Muslim-majority nations and leaders have been "shamefully silent" on the situation in Xinjiang, urging them "to reconnect with the beliefs and values they hold and to do what is right by demanding China stop its crimes against humanity against Uyghurs."

Washington-based Campaign for Uyghurs (CFU) pointed out that for Muslims, "fasting reminds us of the suffering, struggle, and pain of otherswe put ourselves in the shoes of those less fortunate."

"Therefore, we ask you to do the same. Remember the Uyghurs who are ripped away from their families, those who are persecuted for their peaceful religion, and those who continue to be prisoners with no crime."

Mass incarcerations in the XUAR, as well as other policies seen to violate the rights of Uyghurs and other Muslims, have led to increasing calls by the international community to hold Beijing accountable for its actions in the region, which also include the use of advanced technology and information to control and suppress its citizens.

Last year, at the Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom in Washington in July, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo called the internment camps in the XUAR "one of the worst human rights crises of our time" and "truly the stain of the century."

Reported by Shohret Hoshur for RFA's Uyghur Service. Translated by Elise Anderson and Alim Seytoff. Written in English by Joshua Lipes.

Copyright  1998-2020, RFA. Used with the permission of Radio Free Asia, 2025 M St. NW, Suite 300, Washington DC 20036. For any commercial use of RFA content please send an email to: mahajanr@rfa.org. RFA content May not be used in a manner which would give the appearance of any endorsement of any product or support of any issue or political position. Please read the full text of our Terms of Use.

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President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new taxes on American companies like Apple to dissuade them from moving their manufacturing bases from China to countries like India and Ireland instead of the US amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

In an interview with Fox Business News, Trump said that taxation was an incentive for the companies to return manufacturing bases to the US.

Apple said now they're going to go to India. They're going to do some production in India away from China, he was asked.

"If they do, you know, we gave Apple a little bit of a break because they're competing with a company that was a part of a trade deal that we made. So it was a little bit unfair to Apple, but we're not allowing this anymore. You know if we wanted to put up our own border like other countries do to us, Apple would build 100 per cent of their product in the United States. That's the way it would work, he said.

According to the New York Post, Apple is looking to shift a significant portion of its production to India from China.

Supply lines of many tech companies manufacturing in China were disrupted after the deadly coronavirus outbreak in the Chinese city of Wuhan.

These... companies have to get on the ball because they're going not only to China--...--You look at where they're going--...They're going to India and they're going to Ireland and they're going all over the place, they make them," Trump said in the interview.

"So, you don't think you need to do anything in terms of incentives," he was asked.

I have to do it, Trump said.

One incentive, frankly, is to charge tax for them when they make products outside. We don't have to do much for them. They have to do it for us, Trump said. Trump said that he wants to bring manufacturing back to the US.

And now they're not fighting. These stupid supply chain that are all over the world, we have a supply chain where they're made in all different parts of the world and one little piece of the world goes bad and the whole thing is messed up. I said we shouldn't have supply chains. We should have them all in the United States. We have the companies to do it. And if we don't, we can do that," he added.

Trump has routinely threatened to raise tariffs on consumer electronics during his ongoing trade war with China.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
All of those ads that they put out  one on China, one on verbal missteps and the state of Biden  what theyre doing is testing those to see which resonate best with different sorts of people, Mr. Goldstein said. And then whichever ones that work best on Facebook, then, first, youll see more of them on Facebook. Then theyll fire for effect onto television.

In May alone, the Trump campaign has spent or reserved about $7 million on television airtime in local markets, fueling negative ads that repeat xenophobic tropes regarding the Chinese origin of the coronavirus, and unearth positive comments Mr. Biden has made about China in the past.

The campaigns ads on Facebook have taken their own dark turn. Its videos on the platform declare Geriatric Health is No Laughing Matter or Joe Biden: Old and Out of It, then use selective edits of Mr. Bidens verbal stumbles and meandering soliloquies to make less-than-subtle suggestions about his mental acuity.

The Biden campaign said Friday that the negative ad campaign was evidence that Mr. Trump was struggling with the impact of the coronavirus.

After watching Donald Trumps approval rating plummet week after week as his historic failures to confront coronavirus are laid bare, his panicked campaign is now inventing conspiracy theories in order to distract from the harsh reality: Almost 90,000 Americans are dead, and many of those lives could have been saved had Trump acted early, said T.J. Ducklo, a spokesman for the Biden campaign.

The Trump campaigns ads that focus on China have two lines of attack. One criticizes Mr. Biden for saying the presidents decision to restrict travel from China because of the coronavirus outbreak was hysterical xenophobia. But most of the ads simply highlight statements that Mr. Biden made when he was vice president, like China is not our enemy.

Mr. Trump, too, has at times praised China and its president, Xi Jinping, occasionally undermining attempts by aides and his campaign to portray China as a villain responsible for the virus.
Kylie Jenner enjoyed another impromptu photoshoot at her ultra-luxurious home in LA this Friday.

The 22-year-old billionaire kicked off her weekend in style, showing off her toned abs in a casual cute fleece set.

Kylie let one side of her tank top fall off her shoulder as she pouted for the camera.

Weekend warrior: Kylie Jenner stunned as she showed off her toned center in new pics shared to Instagram Friday

Planting her hands on her waist, Kylie emphasized her slim center.

The makeup mogul went with neutral tones for her makeup, playing up her cheekbones with perfectly placed bronzer. Her brown locks were slicked back to show her honey-hued highlights in the front.

Though the youngest Kardashian/Jenner sister was indoors, she still hid her eyes behind some dark shades.

In the background you could see the ultra modern decorating of her eight-figure 'resort complex' in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles.

Babe in beige: The 22-year-old billionaire let one side of her tank top fall off her shoulder as she pouted for the camera

Home, sweet home: Kylie picked up the 19,250 square foot home for $36.5million late last month, adding another property to her impressive portfolio

Fancy living: The home features a 24/7 guardhouse, several bars, a gym, and two guest apartments for her closest pals

Kylie picked up the 19,250 square foot home for $36.5million late last month, adding another property to her impressive portfolio. She also owns three homes in Calabasas and another in Beverly Hills.

The home features a 24/7 guardhouse, several bars, a gym, and two guest apartments for her closest pals.

Given the luxurious amenities, Kylie been more than happy to abide by stay at home orders with daughter Stormi.

The other day the mother-of-one shared a clip of her little girl learning an important lesson in patience.

Happy together: Given the luxurious amenities, Kylie been more than happy to abide by stay at home orders with daughter Stormi

Play time: Kylie shared a shot of her little girl in the play room later that day

Worth the wait: The other day the mother-of-one shared a clip of her little girl learning an important lesson in patience

Social experiment: Kylie put out a bowl of candy, telling Stormi she could have three pieces if she waited until her mom came back from the other room. The two-year-old was a master at restraint, waiting until mom came back for her reward

Kylie put out a bowl of candy, telling Stormi she could have three pieces if she waited until her mom came back from the other room.

Though the sweets were tempting, the two-year-old practiced restraint.

'Ooh! Chocolates,' Stormi said softly while leaning over the bowl, before sitting back up and singing, 'Patience, patience!'

The only child excitedly shouted and jumped up and down as her mom returned from the bathroom, giving her some candy.

Stormi is Kylie's only child. She co-parents the little one with on-off boyfriend Travis Scott.
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y.  A second defendant has admitted guilt for his role in a mugging seven months ago in Port Richmond in which a victim was beaten and knocked to the ground.

Xavier Browning has pleaded guilty to attempted second-degree robbery stemming from the Nov. 1, 2019 incident.

Browning, then 29, was among three defendants charged in the case.

The others are John Turner, of Port Richmond, who was 32 when arrested, and Terrence Ravenell, 48, of West Brighton.

The robbery occurred at about 2:15 a.m. on Heberton Avenue near Ann Street, said a criminal complaint.

The defendants kicked a 33-year-old man and punched him in the face, causing the victim to fall, police and the complaint said.

They continued battering the man while he was on the ground, said the complaint.

The victim suffered injuries to his right eye that included a cut, bruising, redness and pain, the complaint said. He also experienced bruising and swelling to the right side of his torso.

Items snatched from him included a wallet, iPhone 7 and Veterans Credit Card, said the complaint.

The defendants were indicted on felony charges of robbery and grand larceny and misdemeanor counts of assault and petit larceny.

Two months ago, Turner pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court, St. George, to the assault charge.

In doing so, he admitted to intentionally injuring the victim, but said he did not steal anything.

He also said he was with Browning at the time.

In exchange, Turner was sentenced to five months in jail.

Turner had already served the time then, factoring in good behavior while incarcerated.

Browning pleaded guilty on Wednesday in state Supreme Court, St. George, to resolve his case.

He was sentenced then to a year in jail, and an eight-year protection order was issued in the victims favor.

Attorney Matthew Zuntag represented Browning.

Ravenells case is pending. He has denied guilt.

He has a criminal history.

Ravenell has served two prior prison stints, show online records of the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.

In 1995, he was sentenced to three to six years for weapon possession and attempted criminal drug sale on Staten Island, those records said.

More recently, in 2009, he was sentenced to five years behind bars for an attempted-burglary conviction in Brooklyn, said the documents.
Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh worried about "chaos" if members of the electoral college were able to vote as they pleased. (J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)

The Supreme Court on Wednesday was asked to rule that members of the electoral college have the right not to cast their votes for the presidential candidate who won their state, even if they are required to do so by state law. The court must reject that claim.

Mondays oral arguments involved so-called faithless electors who emerged in two states following the 2016 election. In Washington, three electors were fined for voting not for Hillary Clinton, who carried the state, but for former Secretary of State Colin Powell. In Colorado, where Clinton also won the popular vote, Micheal Baca was removed as an elector after he tried to vote for then-Gov. John Kasich of Ohio.

There had also been a public campaign to persuade electors to reject Donald Trump. The argument was that the framers of the Constitution intended electors to cast their votes in what Alexander Hamilton called circumstances favorable to deliberation. But the electoral college as Hamilton envisaged it hasnt existed for most of American history.

Fortunately, several justices indicated that they were loath to hand down a ruling that would upset the long-established understanding of the electors role. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh asked during the argument in the Washington case whether the court ought not to be guided by what he called the avoid-chaos principle of judging.

But shouldnt the justices rule not on pragmatic grounds but on the basis of what the Constitution requires? Of course, but the original overarching goal of the Constitution was to entrust states to appoint electors in whatever manner their legislatures saw fit. The states subsequently decided, rightly, on a more democratic approach, awarding electoral votes on the basis of the popular vote in their state. The court should respect that decision by allowing states to punish or replace electors who go rogue.

The alternative is a situation in which electors could be lobbied to vote for a candidate who didnt carry their state  conceivably the winner of the national popular vote but just as likely someone else, as occurred in these cases.

Twice in the recent past the electoral college has installed in the White House candidates who lost the national popular vote. Thats why this editorial page has called for its abolition. As a stopgap measure, we also have supported Californias decision to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact in which participating states pledge to award their electoral votes to the candidate who wins the national popular vote. (The compact wouldnt go into effect until it included enough states to constitute a majority of 270 electoral votes.)

The electoral college is a blot on American democracy. But allowing electors to disregard their states popular vote would make the system even less democratic.
*The war in Yemen is not really escalating. It is a low intensity conflict that is not going anywhere but is now spreading here and there. The latest i...

11 hours ago
Kolkata, May 15 : Staff hired as workers at Kolkata's INOX Swabhumi have been protesting on social media, alleging that they have not been paid salaries and their contracts have been terminated.

The workers also took to staging peaceful protest outside the theatre with placards that read: "We are INOX employees. We have no salary. What will we eat?" They also alleged that they cannot share their complaints on the official page of INOX Leisure Ltd as their profiles have been blocked. Videos of the theatre's staff, standing with placards in hands, are doing the rounds on Facebook and Twitter, where they talk about their helpless condition and urge for help.

However, when IANS contacted INOX, the multiplex chain informed the protesting workers were not employees of INOX. Rather, the multiplex chain had roped them through the manpower resourcing firm, INNOV Source.

"None of the personnel posting on social media are employees of INOX Leisure Ltd, but employees of the manpower resourcing firm INNOV Source, which is owned by multi billion dollar venture capital fund Samara Capital. INOX's contractual agreement with the company was valid only till 31st March 2020, and the same was duly communicated and acknowledged by INNOV Source. INNOV Source has been misrepresenting the facts with its own employees, and not making salary payments to them inspite of being a Rs 1300-crore company with over 70,000 employees nationwide. INOX has expressed its strong objection to the same and has demanded INNOV Source to convey the truth to its own employees and pay their salaries," said an INOX official statement.

The workers, however, do not seem to be aware of the entire situation, going by some of their social media comments.

Srikanta Ghatak, whose Facebook profile describes him as an Operation Associate at INOX Swabhumi Kolkata, shared in a post written in Bangla, "I humbly request you all to help us. A private company like INOX is not treating us as human beings. They have made their staff work so hard but are now denying salaries. They have a turnover of crores but they don't feel it necessary to pay their staff the minimal salary during this lockdown. Please stand by us and spread the word." Ghatak shared a photo of an aged employee standing with a placard in his hand which reads, "No salary, no food, 89 INOX Swabhumi staff".

He captioned: "Nemai uncle has been serving INOX Swabhumi for the last 12 years. His salary was only Rs 10,000, which the company didn't pay. How much will you save by denying this meager? You are forcing them to commit suicide. INOX, please hear us out and stop terminating our contracts. A lot of us do not have smartphones and hence cannot access or raise their voice on social media. Is this what they get in return for their loyalty?" A video shared on a Facebook page, titled 'Protests against companies for termination n no salary', shows four men in uniforms standing in a row. They express in Hindi: "Namaskar. We are employees of INOX Swabhumi. We are operation associates. We are protesting against the company. We have not being given our salary amid this coronavirus pandemic and lockdown. The company is also rusticating us. Please share this video and help our words reach the honourable Prime Minister and Chief Minister." Babai Mondal, whose Facebook profile reads "Engineering Supervisor at INOX Leisure Ltd", shared a photo on the abovementioned page. In the photo, Mondal stands with a placard, with this slogan in Bangla: "I am a worker at INOX. I have no salary. What will I eat?" Another employee, Dinesh Singh shared a photo on Facebook where he can be seen standing with his two kids, placard in hand. He wrote: "Served INOX for the last 10 years as an operation associate (O.A.) but in this time of corona (COVID-19), the company has left us. Even our third party contract has been discontinued by Inox. Now what will we do? We have no getting salary this month."
Managers fired 19 employees from a furniture distribution center in North Bergen, more than one-third of the staff, on March 27.

Why those workers were let go is now the subject of a federal labor investigation.

Layoffs and firings are now the reality for more than 1 million New Jerseyans. But workers at CORT Furniture say they were fired because they tried to unionize, not because of the pandemic.

Edwin Egee, a spokesman for the National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency that certifies labor unions and enforces U.S. labor law, confirmed that regional staff members are investigating and could hold a hearing in June or July. Egee declined to comment on the workers claims.

When the managers of CORT Furniture, owned by Warren Buffets Berkshire Hathaway, told each worker that their position was being eliminated, they said it was because the pandemic caused a slowdown in business.

Workers tell a different story. Several weeks before the mass firing, they signaled their intention to unionize. The workers said those who were fired were among the most active in the effort.

One of the key pieces of evidence for their case, workers said, is the fact that CORT hired outside delivery drivers, allegedly to replace the CORT drivers. CORT would typically hire outside contractors in the summer, but not March, workers said. Workers filed for an election March 10 and less than a week later contractors were at the warehouse, according to records and interviews.

Workers also said they had raised concerns that the company wasnt doing enough to protect them against the coronavirus, even presenting management with a petition. They said they never received face masks or coverings to protect themselves, even though some workers were delivering and moving furniture in New York City, the epicenter of the coronavirus outbreak in the U.S.

Now, union leaders with the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Local 814, allege the firings occurred, in retaliation for their support of Local 814 and while continuing to use outside vendors to perform bargaining unit work. In other words, union busting, said Julian Tysh, the political coordinator for Local 814.

Union leaders also briefed both Gov. Phil Murphy and Sen. Cory Booker about the situation.

In a statement, Thomas Pietrykoski, a spokesman for Booker, said the senator fully supports the CORT workers and attempted to meet with CEO Jeff Pederson about the matter.

We will continue to work with our constituents to ensure that the workers voices are heard and their right to organize is protected," Pietrykoski said.

Murphys office declined to comment.

Its not a question that the coronavirus has ravaged New Jersey businesses. But the situation at CORT Furniture raises questions about whether the company used the crisis to its advantage, experts say. In a pandemic, employers may be able to claim economic hardship more easily.

But, said James Cooney, a former trial attorney with the labor board and current Rutgers professor, Its going to come down to why were those particular workers selected.

When asked if he would answer specific questions related to the firings and workers allegations, CORTs District General Manager Dominic Sardilli, who oversaw the North Bergen facility and was involved in the firings, said: Absolutely not.

Adam Keating, an attorney representing the company before the labor board, also declined to comment. And Kelly Maicon, a company spokeswoman, declined to comment, too.

Workers who spoke with NJ Advance Media said those who were fired were among the strongest supporters of unionizing, or had raised workplace concerns with management. Derryck Reddens, a delivery driver turned order picker whos been with the company for 21 years, said he was a union supporter and had raised safety concerns with management. Like other workers, he was never given a mask to wear at work and said, at 60 years old, he was afraid of getting sick.

Anything that came in on the truck, we were breathing it in, Reddens said.

One of the central issues in the dispute is whether CORT did indeed fire the workers for economic reasons. Workers said CORT had used contractors in the past, but only for big contracts or during the summer. March, they said, was an average month, no busier or slower than usual.

The contracted drivers began working two weeks before the firings, according to records and interviews, and NJ Advance Media reviewed documents showing contractors continuing to work for at least a week after firing. One contractor, L M C Trucking, confirmed that CORT recently contracted his company for deliveries.

Before the firings, in mid-March, managers had tried to dissuade workers from voting for the union, multiple workers said in interviews. Corporate officers from the companys Washington D.C. headquarters and others visited the facility to meet with workers and tell them a union wouldnt solve their concerns. And behind a glass window of an office, managers played two different slideshows on a loop, both attempting to intimidate workers.

Even if the labor board rules in the workers favor, said Rebecca Kolins Givan, associate professor in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, it could take months or even years, depending on the appeal process, before workers get their jobs back or any of the back pay theyd be owed. And, she added, the company will have likely succeeded in quashing a future union drive, either at the North Bergen facility or across the entire company.

Today, Anthony Salcedo, one of the fired drivers, his wife and two children, are getting by in Jersey City on his unemployment payments and their stimulus checks. Getting fired was demoralizing, he said, because he was trying to improve his working conditions.

Basically its either you dont fight for your rights and you stay with the company, or you fight for your rights and you lose your job," he said. We were fighting because we wanted whats right for us."

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

J. Dale Shoemaker is a reporter on the data & investigations team. He can be reached at jshoemaker@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @JDale_Shoemaker.
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In a dramatic change in stance, InterGlobe Enterprises, the largest shareholder of IndiGo, has confirmed its interest in Virgin Australia.

In a statement on May 15, InterGlobe said it had signed an agreement to participate in the sale process of Virgin Australia.

"As regards Virgin Australia, InterGlobe Enterprises has signed an agreement to participate in the sale process and is bound by the confidentiality requirements of that agreement," the company said.

It declined to share further details.

The announcement comes less than a week after IndiGo clarified to the exchanges that it 'does not have any interest.'

"We deny the contents of these reports and would like to clarify that the Company has not formulated any indicative proposal, nor does it have any interest in this matter," InterGlobe Aviation, which operates IndiGo, had said.

Virgin Australia, co-founded by British businessman Richard Branson, had filed for bankruptcy in April, after its request to the Australian government for a financial aid, was turned down. The disruption caused by COVID-19 had accentuated its already frail financial condition, including a debt of $4.2 billion.

Later on May 16, IndiGo, responding to Moneycontrol story, clarified to the exchanges that "InterGlobe Enterprises Private Limited is a separate legal entity and is a shareholder in the company."

The airline added it is "not party to or involved in any proposal of InterGlobe Enterprises Private Limited in relation to the sale of Virgin Australia."

The suitor

Now after confirming its interest, InterGlobe will have to ready its arsenal as it competes with up to another 20 suitors who have lined up for Virgin Australia.

Bloomberg reported that Deloitte, the airlines administrator, expects eight indicative offers. Out of these, three will be shortlisted and will to submit a binding offer.

Interestingly, InterGlobe seems to be up against alternative asset management companies, private investment firms and private equity players. No other airline, at least till now, has confirmed its interest.

The suitors include Brookfield Asset Management Inc, Bain Capital and BGH Capital.

Shortlisted bidders are expected to put in bids by June 12.

The story has been updated to include IndiGo's clarification
STOCKHOLM  Its noon here, and from the window of my home office I can see my two daughters playing in the yard at their preschool across the street. I reach for my phone to text my best friend, a nurse who lives in Westport, Conn., to share some family trivia I just discovered. She has been hunkered down in her home with her husband and their two young daughters since March. Shes beginning to wonder what they will lose first  their jobs or their minds.

Guess what my great-grandmothers name was? Josephina Corona. From Italy, I write. Unlike my friend, I am not forced to stay at home. No, the coronavirus has not spared Sweden. As of Thursday weve had over 28,500 confirmed cases of Covid-19 and at least 3,500 people have died.

Leaders around the world have declared war against the coronavirus. But that type of aggressive bombast would not resonate in a nation that has enjoyed two centuries of peace. Instead, our country has opted for a more measured approach, which has drawn attention, even from President Trump, who said, Sweden did that  the herd.

Contrary to what many believe, herd immunity isnt a part of the Swedish strategy. Rather, the idea is to slow the spread of the virus enough to avoid overwhelming the countrys health care system and to mitigate the effects on the economy and peoples lives. Life here has changed, but it hasnt ground to a halt.
South America host two of the largest countries in the world. Adding to the list of violence and poverty cases, another obstacle that many nations in this region are encountering is the coronavirus pandemic. The pandemic had put a huge weight on the shoulders of the countries in these regions with the widespread stay-at-home orders, lockdowns, quarantines, social distancing, and other COVID-19-related concerns. Additionally, their economies are now being challenged for its survival amid the pandemic.

However, have you ever wonder how the top richest South American country was doing before the pandemic? Here are the top riches South American country reported before the coronavirus pandemic hit the world:

Chile

On top of the list is Chile with an income per capita of $27,058. Based on an article, the people of Chile have the privilege to live good living standards in their well-developed economies. Also, the article reveals that it is one of the most developed countries in South America in terms of economic freedom, globalization of businesses, and human development. This means that the country of Chile has a higher capability of providing better living environments for its people. Also, the low rate of homicides in this South American country proves that it is a safe place to live in and a safe destination for those who want to travel to any South American nation. Also, the article reveals that it sources its riches from mining operations, manufacturing, and more.

Uruguay

With a per capita income of $24,051, Uruguay takes second place as the richest country in the South American region. According to an article, the main source of trade in the country includes wool, beef, dairy products, and crops. These trading activities had led to the country's economic growth over the years. Based on the article, the country has focused on investing in its health care system and education. Additionally, the article reveals that it has been also following human rights policies for its people.

Additionally, an article reveals that the country has a good number of the middle class. Also, the country is not burdened with corruption issues and the press is given the needed freedom to inform the country's citizens about news and other important information.

Check these out:

Argentina

Argentina is third on the list with a $20,425 per capita income. Aside from its famous cattle products, other things make this South American deserve to be part of the top three on the list.

Argentina has vast fertile lands that make the country's agricultural sector prosper and help lead the country into becoming one of the top richest countries in South America. Additionally, the country's gas and lithium reserves help the energy sector of the country prosper, according to an article. Also, the country's high-tech businesses and manufacturing firms can provide employment opportunities to their citizens.
President Donald Trump said that he could cut off the relationship with China and that includes the trade agreement that worth more than $500 billion, according to a recently published article.

U.S.-China Trade Agreement

Early this year, the U.S. and China signed a trade agreement which is expected to strengthen the economic relationship of the two economic giants in the world. The agreement is the result of long talks and discussions between the two countries.

Last year, China Commerce Ministry spokesperson announced that both U.S. and the Chinese government have agreed that they will lift the imposed tariffs simultaneously that worth $11 billion. Additionally, the American government agreed to this provided that both countries will remove the same amount at the same time.

However, this trade agreement seems to be affected because of the global pandemic that stained the relationship between the two countries. It has been reported many times that if China was only being transparent in reporting the existence of the new coronavirus early last year, the contagion could be controlled.

Meanwhile, China is doing their part as well by helping other countries around the world to combat COVID-19 like sending their medical experts and giving personal prtective equipment to the healthcare workers.

President Trump Said that He Could Cut Off the Relationship With China

Peter Navarro, the White House Trade Adviser, already said in the previous week that COVID-19 is more important than the trade agreement. This is also what is on the mind of Pres. Trump who believed that China has somehow mishandled the virus.

Now, the more than $500 billion trade agreement between the U.S. and China is now on the brink. Pres. Trump said during an interview that he may consider halting it with Washington and Beijing amid the pandemic.

However, this decision takes time because China is one of the biggest partners of U.S. in terms of economic trade before the agreement. Trump said in the same interview : "There are many things we could do. We could cut off the whole relationship. Now if you did, what would happen? You'd save $500 billion if you cut off the whole relationship."

Moreover, Trump is referring to the $500 billion worth of imports from China in 2018. He said this because of the President's disappointment on how China contained and controlled the virus which originated from Wuhan.

Now, the Trump administration is thinking about making a proposal to possibly punish or ask for financial compensation from China because of failing to provide more information about the new coronavirus.

Moreover, there are many investigations conducted to determine the source of the virus particularly in China. However, the allegation against China is not yet proven.

Sen. Tom Cotton from Arkansas said: "There's no question that Xi Jinping and senior officials in the Chinese Communist Party were pressuring the [World Health Organization] all the way back to December to undersell the risk of this virus.'

He also added: "Look, they knew in China early on, probably as early as the early days of December, that this virus was both highly contagious among humans and it was very deadly for certain people. Yet they wanted to save face."

It can also be remembered in the previous report of Latin Post that China did not report immediately to the World Health Organization the presence of SARS-like virus at that time within 24 hours which violates the WHO revised health and safety guidelines to avoid the pandemic.

Read related articles:
Soboliev added he would provide all evidence independently collected in the case.

Kyiv Regional City Council member and restaurateur Viacheslav Soboliev has appealed to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky with a request to help investigate an assassination attempt on his life, as a result of which his three-year-old son was shot dead.

"I don't know who covers up for the masterminds behind an attempt on me and who was involved in the death of my son, but I know for sure that all culprits will see well-deserved punishment. I've got enough facts and eyewitness evidence to this end. But, unfortunately, there is no trust in law enforcement agencies," he wrote on Facebook.

Soboliev added he would provide all evidence he had independently collected in the case.

"Therefore, I am addressing our president. I am ready to provide you with all information that I have managed to collect over this time. Believe me, it's enough to stop the ongoing lawlessness and prevent new killings," he said.

Read alsoTwo suspects in attempt on Soboliev's life, his son's murder served with charge papers (Video)

As UNIAN reported earlier, unidentified perpetrators on December 1, 2019, opened fire on a Range Rover outside a Kyiv restaurant.

Besides Viacheslav Soboliev, an assassination target, who was driving the car, his three-year-old son was also in the car. The toddler was killed in the incident.

On December 2, 2019, Kyiv police arrested a group of suspects.

On April 30, 2020, another suspect was charged in the case.
Digitalization holds the key to growth of businesses, be it brick-and-mortar or purely web-based. This is why technology giants are rushing to bring the majority of the worlds population together through Internet connectivity.

Big techs such as Facebook, Inc. FB, Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN and Alphabet Inc. GOOGL have been scaling up their efforts to provide Internet services around the world, particularly to rural and remote areas.

Let us thus take a look at some of these projects and note which companies may benefit from the expansion of Internet connectivity.

Facebooks Massive Undersea CablesAroundAfrica

The social media giant is building a huge underwater cable around Africa, in order to bring Internet connectivity to the continents 1.3 billion inhabitants.Facebook has partnered with companies such as China Mobile, South Africas MTN, Frances Orange and Britains Vodafone along with local network operators on the project, dubbed 2Africa, per a CNBC report.

The company has given the responsibility of building the subsea cable to Nokia-owned cable systems provider Alcatel Submarine Networks. The cable is expected to be 37,000 kilometers or about 22,991 miles long. The cable will connect 23 countries in Africa, the Middle East and Europe, Facebook said.

Alphabets Loon and Equiano

Alphabets project for providing Internet services to remote and rural areas could be just a few weeks away from launching its first commercial service in Kenya. Project Loon, which uses high-altitude balloons to offer Internet connectivity, has been tested extensively by the company. The project is part of the companys many moonshot projects that are moving toward providing real commercial services.

Another project by Alphabets Google is building a new subsea cable called Equiano to connect Africa with Europe, since it boosts its cloud computing infrastructure. Equiano is Googles third private international cable. According to the search engine giant, Equiano will be the first subsea cable to integrate optical switching at the fiber-pair levelinstead of the traditional approach of wavelength-level switching.

Story continues

Google said that a contract to build the subsea cable with Alcatel Submarine Networks was signed in fourth-quarter 2018. The first phase of the project, which connects South Africa with Portugal, is expected to be completed in 2021.

Amazons Satellites for Low-Cost Internet Connectivity

Amazon is looking toward a space-based web service. The companys Project Kuiper plans to launch more than 3200 satellites into space to offer low-cost Internet services around the globe.

In fact, Amazon is one of the key players in a bankruptcy bidding game for the assets of the OneWeb satellite venture. OneWeb has 74 satellites launched into orbit to prepare for providing high-speed Internet service, starting in the Arctic and then going around the world. In March 2020, the company filed for bankruptcy when Japans SoftBank Group, a major backer, withdrew its funding because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Should Amazon manage to secure the satellite venture, it would certainly have an edge over other companies in the arena of offering Internet services.

Digital Population as of the End of April 2020

According to a report by Statista, the number of active Internet users as of the end of April 2020 was 4.57 billion, accounting for 59% of the global population. Speaking in terms of countries, China, India and the United States led the way with the highest number of Internet users.

3 Stocks to Buy

We have hand-picked three stocks that could gain significantly from the aforementioned Internet projects. All of these stocks carry a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) and have gained since the beginning of this year. You can see the complete list of todays Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

Services of Netflix, Inc. NFLX are in high demand around the world, owing to its streaming shows and unique content. Increased Internet access could further boost the stock. Shares of the company, which belongs to the Zacks Broadcast Radio and Television industry, have gained 36.6% so far this year against the industrys decline of 0.2%.

Netflixs expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 55.9%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the companys current-year earnings has moved 6.3% north in the past 60 days.

Activision Blizzard, Inc. ATVI is a developer of video games for mobile, PC and console. Shares of Activision Blizzard, which belongs to the Zacks Toys - Games - Hobbies industry, have gained 22.8% so far this year compared with the industrys rise of 6.8%.

Activision Blizzards expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 18.7%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the companys current-year earnings has moved 7.7% north in the past 60 days.

Shares of Microsoft Corporation MSFT, which belongs to the Zacks Computer - Software industry, have gained 14.5% so far this year compared with the industrys rise of 7%.

Microsofts expected earnings growth rate for the current year is 19.8%. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the companys current-year earnings has moved 1.2% north in the past 60 days.

Zacks Top 10 Stocks for 2020

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By PTI

NEW DELHI: The global economy is expected to suffer USD 5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to the coronavirus pandemic, Asian Development Bank (ADB) said on Friday.

Of this, the impact on south Asian gross domestic product (GDP) will be to the tune of USD 142-218 billion.

"The global economy could suffer between USD 5.8 trillion and USD 8.8 trillion in losses - equivalent to 6.4 per cent to 9.7 per cent of the global GDP - as a result of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic," ADB said in a new report subsequent to its economic outlook released in early April.

The GDP in south Asia will also be lower by 3.9-6.0 per cent, mainly reflecting the tight restrictions in place in countries like Bangladesh, India and Pakistan, ADB said in is updated assessment of the Potential Economic Impact of COVID-19.

The Manila-headquartered multi-lateral funding agency said that the economic losses in Asia and the Pacific region could range from USD 1.7 trillion under a short containment scenario of three months to USD 2.5 trillion under a long containment scenario of 6 months, with the region accounting for about 30 per cent of the overall decline in global output.

The People's Republic of China (PRC) could suffer losses between USD 1.1 trillion and USD 1.6 trillion.

In the Asian Development Outlook (ADO) 2020 published on April 3, the agency had estimated COVID-19's global cost to range from USD 2 trillion to USD 4.1 trillion.

Earlier on March 6, it had estimated the economic impact globally ranging from USD 77 billion to USD 347 billion (0.1 to 0.4 per cent of global GDP). ADB said its new analysis which expects global impact of USD 5.8-8.8 trillion is excluding the impact of policy measures.

The agency's new estimate is more than double the World Bank's estimate of 2-4 decline in global GDP, and higher than the IMF's World Economic Outlook estimate of 6.3 per cent decline in global GDP.

Governments around the world have been quick in responding to the impacts of the pandemic, implementing measures such as fiscal and monetary easing, increased health spending and direct support to cover losses in incomes and revenues.

Sustained efforts from governments focused on these measures could soften COVID-19's economic impact by as much as 30 to 40 per cent, according to the new report.

"This could reduce global economic losses due to the pandemic to between USD 4.1 trillion and USD 5.4 trillion," ADB added.

The ADB analysis has used a Global Trade Analysis Project-computable general equilibrium model, covering 96 outbreak-affected economies with over 4 million COVID-19 cases.

In addition to shocks to tourism, consumption, investment, and trade and production linkages covered in the ADO 2020 estimates, the new report includes transmission channels such as the increase in trade costs affecting mobility, tourism, and other industries; supply-side disruptions that adversely affect output and investment; and government policy responses that mitigate the effects of COVID-19's global economic impact.

"This new analysis presents a broad picture of the very significant potential economic impact of COVID-19," said ADB Chief Economist Yasuyuki Sawada.

"It also highlights the important role policy interventions can play to help mitigate damage to economies. These findings can provide governments with a relevant policy guide as they develop and implement measures to contain and suppress the pandemic, and lessen its impacts on their economies and people." ADB said that policy makers should work together to quickly limit the pandemic - the longer the containment period, the more difficult and prolonged the recovery will be.

"Strong income and employment protection are critical to support the most vulnerable and avoid long-term economic scarring," it said.

By May 12, the virus had spread to 213 countries and territories worldwide, infecting more than 4 million people and causing more than 2,80,000 deaths, ADB said.

On the impact on wage incomes due to the pandemics, ADB expects it to fall globally especially in the US, the EU, and the UK.

"Globally, labour income will drop between USD 1.2 trillion to USD 1.8 trillion. For Asia, the decline in wage income will range from USD 359 billion to USD 550 billion - or about 30 per cent of the global drop in wage income," it added.

The report has analysed that the macroeconomic stabilisation packages announced by various countries could raise global GDP by USD 1.7 trillion to USD 3.4 trillion (1.9 to 3.7 per cent of global GDP).

For Asia, macroeconomic stimulus could also add USD 339 billion to USD 675 billion (1.3 to 2.5 per cent of the region's GDP).
Hello readers,

I am a journalist. I report for Onlinekhabar from Birgunj, the recent epicentre of coronavirus infection in Nepal. I know you believe in Onlinekhabar, and not disappointing with your expectation is a part of my duty. Accordingly, as a front liner, I have been reporting to you the latest updates about the Covid-19 outbreak here. I have not compromised my responsibility even if it means to risk my own health.

I live with my wife, Kalpana, and son, Sukrish, in Birgunj. Kalpana would frequently advise me to avoid outdoor meetings since the outbreak began. Others also had the same suggestion. But, of course, we had to go outdoors; we had to report the latest updates to you.

I may not have been able to follow the WHO guidelines for safety, but I was as cautious as I could have been. While coming back home from reporting, I used to wash my hands carefully with soap and water before going in.

On April 12, three Indians tested positive for the coronavirus in Birgunj for the first time. Since then, the number of infected cases went on increasing, requiring me to be more active in reporting. The risk increased; so did my responsibility.

On April 26, the Narayani Hospital in Birgunj discharged four Covid-19 patients. Scores of journalists had gathered on the hospital premises; I was one of them, cautiously maintaining distance as far as possible.

Last Saturday, on May 9, I travelled to Jitpur of neighbouring Bara district to attend a Nepal Army function. During the function, I was informed that one more Covid-19 case was confirmed in Birgunj. I rushed back to file the report.

While I was busy preparing another report for the day, one of my friends telephoned me to ask if I would like to undergo a PCR test for the coronavirus. I agreed and telephoned the hospital to check if we could go there to give the swab samples. The hospital staffer said all the staff responsible for collecting samples were away. I asked my friend to wait for around one hour, but he did not agree. Instead, he immediately came to my apartment in his car. We went to local Inarwa Chok where the samples were being collected from the locals. We also gave our samples.

Then, we resumed our work, not paying much attention to the test report. We were confident that the hospital would inform us at the right time.

This Sunday afternoon, I learned that a local journalist, Tiwari Yadav, was misbehaved by police. I telephoned my friend to inform about itbut learned that he was already at the District Police Office. I also rushed to the DPO. Again, I was too cautious to maintain a distance from other journalists there.

On Tuesday morning, I joined a demonstration of the Federation of Nepali Journalists against the misbehaviours on Yadav. I went to a local grocery store while returning.

In the lockdown, my daily routine had changed slightly. I had managed to look after my sons studies. His school has started online classes. A teacher had given him a reading assignment the previous day and asked me to record his reading and send the record to him. After coming back home from the protest and grocery, I made him read the text, recorded it, and sent it to the teacher. Then, I wrote a report about the protest and emailed it to the Onlinekhabar office, Kathmandu.

By that time, Onlinekhabar had already published the updated tally of Covid-19 cases in the country that 57 new cases were confirmed including 39 in Birgunj. Now, my job was to collect more information from the local sources to elaborate on the report.

While I was telephoning some of my sources, my colleague, Raj Kumar Shrestha from Onlinekhabar central office telephoned to alert me about the increased risk.

Meanwhile, my sources were not picking up my calls. After repeated attempts, Narayani Hospitals Dr Udaya Narayan Singh talked to me, but he did not have any new information. After around 30 minutes, the hospitals medical superintendent, Dr Madan Upadhyaya, also answered my call.

Sir, do you have an idea where the new cases are from?

Please prepare yourself. We will call you soon.

Prepare? For what?

Yes. Prepare. 

Its funny.

Instinctively, I said, Its funny. But, it was not funny anymore. He said, You need to be kept in isolation. Please prepare yourself. I am checking for new information.

Desperately looking for any newsworthy information, at first I wondered why the official was joking with me. But, in a few seconds, I realised he was rightand I had to be isolated. Hanging up the call, I told Kalpana and Sukrish about the latest news.

Kalpanas face wore a gloomy look immediately, but she regained her calm, Dont worry, hubby! I will heal youjust with hot water. Sukrish, because he was still a child, did not care much about it.

In the meantime, the chief of the District Police Office, SP Ganga Panta, telephoned me, Did you check your report?

I had not lost my calm. I said, Yes, at first I thought Dr Upadhyaya was just kidding. But now, its confirmed.

I was happy that she called me at a time when all the journalists in the district, including me, were protesting the police action (against Tiwari Yadav).

Then, I informed my parents in Makawanpur, my office team, and close friends about my report. Scores in Birgunj had already learned about me.

My phone kept on ringing. Most of the callers made efforts to console me and boost my morale. Unable to pick all the calls, I wrote a status on Facebook that I was fine, but that invited additional calls.

I prepared myself to be admitted to the hospital, but the hospital team did not arrive to take me there on time. I reached the hospital at 8:45 pm on Tuesday.

I was taken to the gynaecology ward of the hospital as it has now been converted into an isolation ward. Arriving there, I wanted to wash my hands, but a tap there was not working. I called the staff I had known, just to make them switch on the tap. We, the patients, were told to fill in all buckets and jugs available there as the tap cannot be kept open all the time.

While keeping the water in a filter there, we found it was leaking. We tried another filter, but that was also not different. We did not have any alternative to drinking unfiltered water.

Mosquito nets, soaps, toothbrushes, and pasteseverything was ready for us. But, the bedsheets were worn out. Fortunately, I had brought another one from my home though I forgot to bring my pillow.

At 10, we were served dinner. Ideally, it should have consisted of dal, bhat, and tarkari (lentils, rice, and curry respectively), but all dal and bhat had been used while the plate arrived at my bed. I only got a plate of curry, too hot for my tongue.

Meanwhile, my phone was still ringing. I was already tired of answering everyones call, but still tried to answer them all. The entire ward was abuzz with noises as many other patients were being admitted till 11 pm.

At midnight, I went to the toilet before hitting my bed. There, I found a lizard trapped inside the pan. Seeing that tiny creature struggling to come out, I found myself in the same positionlocked down, struggling to come out. I concluded that the lizards risk was more dangerous than mine. Hence, I rescued it out of the pan before I answered my call of nature.

Today is my fourth day in this isolation ward. Everything is fine here. I am confident that I will come out of this ward, just as fine as I always am. But, I still wonder where and when I did a mistake that made me infected. As a journalist always moving here and there in the search of news, it pains so much to be restricted in a bed.
New Delhi: Market opened lower on Friday led by decline in auto stocks and banking stocks.

Sensex dropped 119.36 points to 31,003.53 in opening session while the NSE Nifty slipped 10.25 points to 9,132.50.

Major losers in the Sensex pack were M&M, HCL, Maruti, ITC, Heromoto Corp, TCS, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank, HDFC Bank, IndusInd Bank, Bajaj Auto and Sun Pharma, falling upto 3.37 percent. On the other hand, ONGC, Tata Steel, Bharti Airtel, HDFC, NTPC, Titan, Nestle, L&T, HUL and RIL were the major gainers, rising upto 2.30 percent.

In the previous session on Thursday, the 30-share index settled 885.72 points or 2.77 per cent lower at 31,122.89 amid weak global cues and investors' tepid response towards the stimulus package.

Investor wealth eroded by Rs 1,99,619.9 crore on Thursday due to the weakness in equity market, with the BSE Sensex plummeting 886 points.
Through the 1840s, Leitrim was one of the most disturbed counties in Ireland. Although the years after the Famine were marked by increasing prosperity, the unrest over land did not disappear.

New tensions emerged over land, rent, unemployment and wages, and farmers were the target for over 60% of all crime and 27% of homicides.

Dispossessed labourers were in conflict with their former landlords, and the new, smallholding tenants were in conflict with their new landlords. Such was the level of disturbance in Leitrim that it was one of the few counties to produce intense sectarian convulsions in 1852



Coercion, crime and sectarian convulsions

As the land clearances gained pace, evictions increased and those who took over the homes and lands of evicted tenants were often subject to abuse, their new homes burned or wrecked. Some were murdered.

In 1851, two threatening letters were found in the house of Obadia Mee in Mohill directing him to clear out of that country or to expect the same death as Brooks', a farmer who had been brutally murdered.

The notices also threatened landowner William Lawder and the bailiff, Henry Huston, with similar treatment, for presuming to stock the country with Co. Cavan Protestants. Apparently a number of those who took over lands of evicted tenants were from Co. Cavan and were now daily suffering injuries from their new neighbours.

Sometimes labourers were targeted and threatened to get at the landholders.

In one instance, workers on their way to Francis Nisbetts farm in Gubadoriss were warned by a gang, armed and firing shots, not to work for under a shilling a day or to mark the consequences.

These aggressions were usually carried out by organised Secret Societies and gangs like the Molly Maguires.

According to the court there was a gang of able-bodied robbers committing outrages every night in the town and neighbourhood who carry out their depredations without the least fear of molestation.

Conspiracy to murder Lord Clements was uncovered

After two particularly brutal murders, the priest in Mohill pronounced a curse for five years on all those who joined these groups. In 1853, a conspiracy to murder Lord Clements was uncovered.

In November, The Boyle Gazette reported that private information had led to a warrant being issued against a Hugo Reynolds of Gortletteragh, as the person who had offered 5 to a certain person to commit the murder. But Reynolds was so effectually secreted, that it took three months for him to be found and committed to the county prison in Carrick-on-Shannon.

However, by 1860, the increased prosperity of the area was matched by a reduction in crime. In 1861, Thomas Larcom safely asserted that the County has largely shared in that general decrease of crime which has, for years past, been taking place throughout the country.

In February 1870, Judge Keogh opened the Leitrim Assizes in Carrick-on-Shannon by telling the Grand Jury that, I am happy to inform you that your duties on this occasion will be very light . . . It is very satisfactory that your county is entirely free from the crimes of a seditious or treasonous character.

The murder of William OBrien

This was not entirely true. Only months earlier, a murder widely accepted as an agrarian crime, occurred on the evening of 29th October 1869.

William OBrien, a local landowner, left Mohill at 11pm and was within sight of his home on the hill of Drumdoo when he was brutally murdered. OBrien owned 90 acres, had 300 head of cattle and held a healthy balance of 1,000 cash in the bank.

The Irish Times connected his murder with a misunderstanding over property in Sligo for which he acted as agent, and it was certainly known that OBrien had won ejectments against two or three families at the recent Quarter Sessions at Ballinamore.

The Express newspaper reported that OBrien was found in a ditch within forty perches of his own house, having apparently been killed from a gunshot wound in his neck, but the head presented such a mangled and shapeless mass that no distinct wound could be traced. OBriens body was not found until the Friday morning.

It had been cast face downwards and concealed under a bramble hedge. The search party of more than twenty policemen failed to find the body for nearly a full day, and only came across it when OBriens dog was heard howling and found lying across its masters body.

The Irish Times reported that the murder had created a profound sensation here, and went on: The circumstances of atrocity attending it are so un-Irish and so seldom to be found in connection with even the worst agrarian crimes that one is perfectly appalled at their recital. The paper named the accused parties as four McLaughlins, two Reynoldses, two Flynns, Michael Kavanagh and James Mullany.

It reported that the ten men were being held in Carrick-on-Shannon, since there was such a scene of excitement in Mohill when the prisoners were brought into town that the magistrates were dreading an attempt at rescue

Fiona Slevin grew up and went to school in Mohill and currently lives in Dublin. She recently published a new, expanded edition of her book, By Hereditary Virtues: A history of Lough Rynn, described by Brendan Kennelly as a well-researched and beautifully written book; a marvellous read, and by Prof. Michael L. O'Rourke, TCD as the classic local history. See www.loughrynn.net.
By Express News Service

CHENNAI: Recording a dip for the first time in 10 days, the State reported 447 COVID-19 cases on Thursday and two deaths, taking the Statewide tally to 9,674 and toll to 66. As many as 363 of the 447 cases are from Chennai, which now has 5,637 cases.

Our aggressive testing policy, early diagnosis, proper treatment protocol and clinical management have helped keep the mortality rate at just 0.67 per cent, said Health Minister C Vijayabaskar. Experts have heaped praises on the State for testing such a large number of people, he said in a televised briefing.

The State currently has 58 labs, and has tested over 2.9 lakh samples till date.

Meanwhile, an expert team appointed by the government said that considering the present situation, it was of the opinion that the lockdown must be lifted only in a phased manner. Testing must be increased further, to ascertain the pattern of spread, said ICMR scientist Prabhdeep Kaur, who is part of the panel. Based on this, steps must be taken for contact tracing and isolation.

The State government is now faced with a new challenge as people stranded in other States and countries have begun returning home, Vijayabaskar noted.Today, 1,706 are coming back from Delhi by train. Another 1,100 will come on Saturday. A team of 400 has been formed to quarantine and test all of them, he said. The government is also revising its treatment, testing policies on the advice of rapid response teams, and this is helping the State, he added.

During the screening 22 people who returned from Maharashtra and two from Qatar tested positive on Thursday.All persons returning to the State must be rigourously tested to avoid anymore clusters, said P Kugananthem, a member of the experts panel. The expert committee has recommended special attention for patients with co-morbid conditions. The two deaths reported on Thursday  a 43-year-old man and a 45-year-old woman  were patients with co-morbid conditions, admitted to the RGGGH in Chennai.
Three California residents have been arrested on child endangerment charges after deputies say they discovered five children riding inside a wooden box attached to the back of a pickup truck without water or ventilation in 100-degree weather.

Officers with the San Bernardino Sheriff's Department received a report at around 2pm about 'small children riding in the bed of a pickup truck inside a small crate' that had been observed on Interstate 40 west of the town of Needles on the California-Arizona border.

Deputies responded to the scene and found the children, ranging in age from one to 13, sitting in the makeshift box without access to water or air conditioning, and without seat belts.

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San Bernardino sheriff's deputies are seen examining a makeshift wooden box where they found five children, ages one to 13, riding in 100-degree heat on Wednesday

When the officers searched the rest of the vehicle, they allegedly found illegal narcotics, drug paraphernalia and a shotgun.

According to a relative, the children were en route to Oklahoma some 1,600 miles away to live with their aunt after their mother had become homeless.

A relative said suspect Zona Brasier, 39, was moving her nieces and nephews to Oklahoma after offering her homeless sister to raise them there

After being rescued from the overheated box, the children were released into the custody of the San Bernardino County Children and Family Services.

The three adults who were in the truck were identified as the children's maternal aunt, Zona Brasier, 39; Kenneth Standridge, 40, and Aushajuan Hardy, 41.

The sheriff's department did not reveal the nature of the relationship between the three suspects.

Standridge was arrested on suspicion of child endangerment, being a felon in possession of a firearm and driving under the influence, and was in custody in lieu of posting bond on $75,000 bail.

Brasier was arrested for investigation of child endangerment. She was being held on $150,000 bail.

Hardy was on Post Release Community Supervision and named in a no-bail felony warrant, and was in custody on suspicion of child endangerment and held on the warrant.

Brasier's step-brother, Dale Madden, told the station CBS13 that the woman was moving the children from Sacramento to Oklahoma after offering their other sister to raise them for her, away from a troubled home environment.

Brasier's step-brother Dale Madden said he could not believe that his sister would put the children in a box without water or ventilation in the scorching heat

'I just couldnt believe it,' Madden said of the conditions in which his nieces and nephews were found. 'One hundred-degree heat, I mean youre going toward Arizona?'

Madden added that he feels sad for the children, but he insisted that his step-sister's heart was 'in the right place.'

He also claimed that when the children first left Sacramento they were in the cab of the truck. It is unclear when or why they were moved into the box.
Dehradun: After a long winter break, the doors of Badrinath temple in Uttarakhand were opened at 4:30 am on Friday (May 15, 2020). Only a handful of people were present during the 'kapat opening' ceremony due to the ongoing nationwide lockdown.

The temple was beautifully decorated with flowers as the temple and its surroundings were decked with quintals of marigolds. Religious ceremonies were held inside the temple premises before it got opened for the devotees. As per ANI reports, 28 people including the Chief Priest was present at the temple when its portals opened.

As per an estimated figure registered last year, around 10,000 pilgrims visited the shrine last year on the first day of its opening. State Chief Minister Trivendra Singh Rawat and Governor Baby Rani Maurya are expected to offer prayers in the temple after its reopening.

Earlier, the portals of Badrinath temple in Garhwal Himalayas were scheduled to open on April 30 but was delayed due to lockdown. The decision to reschedule the opening of the temple gates was taken in view of circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic, Dharmadhikari of the Badrinath temple Bhuvan Chandra Uniyal said.

Badrinath, situated between the two mountains named Nar and Narayan on the left bank of the Alaknanda river, is also famous for its picturesque locales.
A gas turbine developed by Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction is seen above. Doosan plans to put hundreds of employees on paid leave to reduce fixed costs amid a mounting deficit. Courtesy of Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction



By Kim Hyun-bin



Doosan Heavy Industries & Construction, which has been struggling to stay afloat is planning to further slim down its workforce to cut costs amid a mounting deficit.



In addition to a second round of voluntary retirements, Friday, the company is seeking to further cut personnel expenses by placing hundreds of employees on paid leave.



The company has been struggling to stay afloat and is under growing pressure to sell off assets in return for aid from its creditors, however, the process has been prolonged and the company is trying to save costs wherever it can.



"We are receiving voluntary retirements through today, but if the number of applicants is not sufficient we will need to put a certain number of employees on leave," a Doosan Heavy official said Friday.



The paid leave is expected to start May 21 and run through Dec. 31 this year  employees will receive 70 percent of their current salary.



Those born after 1960 are being considered for the leave, and 261 technicians are supposedly on the list.



Industry watchers believe these employees will be forced to retire soon after the paid leave ends.



"This does not mean the company will shut down our Changwon plant," an official from Doosan Heavy said. "We are operating with the same number of employees as several years ago when company's performance was thriving, now things are slow we can't operate with the same capacity."



The company announced it would accept up to 2,600 voluntary resignations between February through March during the first round, but only 650 people applied. To further reduce fixed costs, Doosan Heavy kicked off the second round of voluntary resignations from April 11 to May 15. The company hopes to save up to 200 billion won through the personnel restructuring. Industry watchers believe it will need to cut up to 1,500 employees.



Meanwhile, the company recorded an operating profit of 65.4 billion won for the first quarter, a decline of 82 percent from 322.4 billion won in the same period last year, the company said, Friday. Total sales recorded 3.83 trillion won similar to that of the year before.


DETROIT - Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the U.S. job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus.

Hey there, time traveller!

This article was published 14/5/2020 (614 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

In this May 10, 2011 photo an autoworker assembles a transmission at the General Motors Transmission Plant in Toledo, Ohio. Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the U.S. job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Rick Osentoski)

DETROIT - Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the U.S. job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus.

Until now, it was mostly hair salons, restaurants, tattoo parlours and other small businesses reopening in some parts of the country. The auto industry is among the first major sectors of the economy to restart its engine.

About 133,000 U.S. workers  just over half of the industrys workforce before the pandemic  are expected to pour back into auto plants that will open in the coming week, according to estimates by The Associated Press. In addition, parts-making companies began cranking this week to get components flowing, adding thousands more workers.

Looming in the background is an economy decimated by the pandemic. Nearly 3 million laid-off U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, raising the total seeking aid in the past two months to about 36 million. Although some states have begun to let selected businesses reopen, workers are still reporting difficulty getting unemployment benefits. Freelance, gig and self-employed workers are struggling.

Even the auto sector won't see a full return to normal yet, and if people dont start buying vehicles again, workers could be sent home. Yet automakers say theres enough pent-up demand, especially for pickup trucks, to get factories humming again.

FILE - In this Feb. 26, 2019, file photo, Jeep vehicles are parked outside the Jefferson North Assembly Plant in Detroit. Defying a wave of layoffs that has sent the U.S. job market into its worst catastrophe on record, at least one major industry is making a comeback: Tens of thousands of auto workers are returning to factories that have been shuttered since mid-March due to fears of spreading the coronavirus. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, File)

That could help states slow the drain on their unemployment benefit funds. In Michigan, where over one-third of the labour force sought benefits, the fund fell from $4.6 billion before the pandemic to $4.1 billion on April 30, said Jeff Donofrio, director of the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity. Some returning auto employees could work part-time and get still some unemployment benefits, but federal programs could cover part of their payments, he said.

At Ford, where about 47,000 U.S. factory workers will return by next week, theres optimism that consumer demand will accompany them. Chief Operating Officer Jim Farley said the company has seen sales start to recover.

Ford is predicting stronger sales in the future in Europe, China and the U.S. based on data collected from new models equipped with internet modems that show the number of times an engine is turned on and off. The company found a correlation between the number of trips people take and auto sales, with trips increasing as restrictions eased.

We started to see in early April a change where people started to take more trips," Farley said Thursday. "The (sales) decline stopped and our retail sales improved a lot.

Auto sales in China, where the virus peaked before the U.S., could be a harbinger of things to come. China sales fell just 2.6% in April from a year earlier, compared with a 48% free-fall in March. Production at many plants is nearly back to normal after being shut down in January and February. Volkswagen, Honda, Mercedes and Ford reported no virus cases among employees since reopening. Fiat Chrysler had two, but said the workers never entered factories.

Things are worse in Europe, where sales plummeted 55% in March and some factories are running at only 40% of capacity. The pandemic has affected over 1.1 million European auto industry workers, almost half the sectors manufacturing jobs. Most are getting paid through government support. A survey of auto parts suppliers shows that a third of executives believe it will take at least two years for the industry to recover.

Ford Motor Co., team leader Kyle Lenart, right, inspects a ventilator that the automaker is assembling at the Ford Rawsonville plant, Wednesday, May 13, 2020 in Ypsilanti Township, Mich. The plant was converted into a ventilator factory, as hospitals battling the coronavirus report shortages of the life-saving devices. The company has promised to deliver 50,000 by July 4. Lenart is volunteering to make ventilators at the plant outside Detroit that, beginning Monday, will phase back into producing automotive components. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)

U.S. sales fell 46% in April compared with a year ago, but analysts are forecasting a smaller decline of 30% in May. Sales have been juiced by incentives, with offers of 0% financing for seven years. Government statistics show auto production dropped over 70% in April.

Pickup trucks are giving automakers the most hope, said Jeff Schuster, senior vice-president at LMC Automotive, a consulting firm. From January through April, total auto sales were down 21%, but pickups were only off 4%, he said.

Yet Schuster says automakers could be a little too optimistic. Those consumers who are still unemployed are not likely to be making auto purchases, he said.

Some U.S. automakers, like General Motors, are restarting slowly, only bringing back workers on one shift in factories, some of which ran around the clock before the pandemic. Others, like Subaru in Indiana, have a full complement of employees.

Although companies are taking precautions, one big virus outbreak at an auto plant could send the industry back into hibernation. And the industry could face parts supply interruptions from Mexico, where the government wants to reopen factories despite rising virus cases.

Automakers in the U.S. are requiring employees to fill out questionnaires daily to see if they have symptoms, taking temperatures with no-touch thermometers before workers enter buildings, and requiring gloves, masks and face shields. Theyve also tried to keep at least six feet between workers, staggered time between shifts so workers dont interact, and put up plexiglas barriers when possible.

All the steps were tested on U.S. workers who volunteered to make protective gear and breathing machines while they were laid off. Automakers say they know of no virus cases among workers in the effort.

But Phil Cuthbertson a worker at GMs transmission plant in Toledo, Ohio, who will return Monday, said he has mixed feelings.

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I just dont want the whole thing to be pushed on us to go back if its not safe, he said.

Cindy Estrada, United Auto Workers vice-president for Fiat Chrysler, said shes been impressed by the companies safety commitment. But shes sure some workers, especially in the hard-hit Detroit area, will be fearful because family members or co-workers have had COVID-19. At least 25 UAW members employed by Detroit automakers have died from the virus, although no one is sure if they caught it at a factory.

The union will be watching in case workers get infected, though theres no magic number for when it will try to close a factory, Estrada said.

If something looks like its becoming a hot spot, then we need to act quickly and make adjustments, she said. No one wants to see that happen.

____

AP reporters Joe McDonald in Beijing, Carlo Piovano in London, Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tenn.; John Seewer in Toledo, Ohio; Mike Householder in Ypsilanti Township, Michigan; David Eggert in Lansing, Michigan; and Mary Esch in Albany, N.Y.; contributed to this report.
Mfume said he has no specific legislation that he plans to pursue at the moment. But he said he would push to increase mobile testing for the coronavirus in his district. He also said he would use social media and mass mailings to keep constituents informed about ways to avoid the virus.
Randy Leach knew exactly what color he wanted his 1969 Mustang to be -- candy apple red. The 17-year-old high school senior was in the process of restoring the vintage car and couldnt wait to take it out for a spin.

He loved that car, Randys mother, Alberta Leach, told Dateline. He was so excited to have it restored. But he never got to see what it looked like all finished. He never got to drive it.

Randy Leach at age 17 in 1988 (Kansas Bureau of Investigation)

In April 1988, Randy was just a week away from graduating from Linwood High School in Linwood, Kansas when he disappeared from a classmates graduation party.

He had a really bright future, Alberta said. But somehow it ended that night. And we still dont know why.

Randy is the only child of Harold and Alberta Leach. Born three weeks early, Randy was a tiny little baby, according to Alberta. But he grew fast, she said, and was 62 by the time he was a teenager.

He was such a good child, Alberta said. Even though he was an only child, he wasnt selfish or spoiled. He was always kind to everyone he met.

Randys parents also describe him as a hard worker, an entrepreneur and fast learner. Alberta told Dateline that Randy was just five years old when he learned to use a riding lawnmower. Around that time, the family moved to a farm on the outskirts of Linwood, Kansas in rural Leavenworth County, where Harold and Alberta still reside today. Growing up, Randy loved all animals and raised pigs on the farm.

He just loved being on the farm, Alberta said. He was always fishing at our pond with his cousin. And he worked on lawnmowers with Harold. They would take apart lawn mowers and put them back together. He was really smart.

Randy Leach (Age progressed to 29) (Kansas Bureau of Investigation)

Two days before Randy disappeared, his parents bought him a lawn mower as a graduation gift.

His plan was to mow lawns all summer for money and then go to trade school in the fall, Alberta said. He mowed a ladys yard, and ours, that day the day he disappeared. It was the last time we ever saw him.

Story continues

On the evening of April 15, 1988, Randy drove his mothers 1985 Dodge 600 4-door sedan with Kansas license plate LVJ8721 to Stouts Convenience Store and then to nearby De Soto, Kansas to check on his Mustang that was being restored, Alberta told Dateline.

Randy then drove to the graduation party which was being held about five miles away from his familys home. It is not known exactly what time he arrived at the party.

Witnesses told authorities there were approximately 70 to 150 guests at the party and that there was significant alcohol and drug use there. It is unclear if Randy consumed alcohol or did any drugs. Randys mother told Dateline she later became aware there was a bad crowd at the party, but said she was sure that her son was not into drugs.

Early reports stated Randy possibly left the party around 2 a.m., but it is not known if anyone actually saw him leave, Alberta said. He never made it home.

When Alberta and Harold woke up around 6 a.m. Saturday morning to find Randy wasnt home, they knew something was wrong. He had a curfew and it was not like him to miss it. They feared he had been in a car accident and called one of his friends. But no one had seen or heard from him since the party.

Randy Leach (Age progressed to 44) (Kansas Bureau of Investigation)

A missing persons report was filed that day and the search began for Randy and his car. Alberta told Dateline that local authorities initially believed Randy left on his own.

I didnt believe that for a second, Alberta said. It didnt make any sense. He wouldnt have done that. He wouldnt have left his Mustang behind. And he had a bank account with money in it from selling his pigs. It has never been touched.

According to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI), an investigation determined that Randy did not leave on his own and that he was a victim of foul play.

The KBI and the Leavenworth County Sheriffs Office have since been jointly investigating Randys disappearance, according to Leavenworth County Undersheriff Jim Sherley.

Randys case is still open and we follow all tips and information we receive, Undersheriff Sherley told Dateline. Wed like to find a conclusion as well as closure for the family.

Undersheriff Sherley told Dateline the case is a complicated one due to the lack of physical evidence and the fact that several potential witnesses are now deceased.

For years, rumors and stories circulated about what could have happened to Randy. According to Randys parents, one of the rumors was that Randy had been abducted and killed by a Satanic cult in the Linwood area. They told Dateline that there was a report that Randys body was spotted in a cave nearby. Undersheriff Sherley told Dateline authorities searched the area but no trace of Randy was found.

For years, Randys father Harold continued to search the caves for any evidence that Randy had been there.

Undersheriff Sherley told Dateline authorities have followed up on every piece of information having to do with Randys disappearance, but nothing has panned out yet.

Even 32 years later, he said they are still receiving new information in Randys case.

If we can just get one good break, it may be the piece we need to solve this case, Undersheriff Sherley said. This is the only case like it here in this county and were committed to solving it.

Randys parents are in their 70s now, but have never given up the search for their only child.

Weve been through a lot, Alberta told Dateline. But we dont know any more now then we knew back then. And thats frustrating.

Alberta and Harold have spent three decades trying to get attention for Randys case, but said they are frustrated with the lack of development.

Weve tried so many different things over the past 32 years, Alberta said. Weve fought with the KBI and Leavenworth County. We went to court to get the records and were denied. It just feels like were not getting anywhere.

In 2019, Alberta and Harold requested that Kansass new governor, Laura Kelly, appoint an out-of-state special master to lead a cold-case task force formed specifically to re-investigate Randys disappearance.

Kellys communications director, Ashley All, told the Lawrence Journal-World that the governor couldnt grant such a request.

While Governor Kellys thoughts are with the Leach family, she does not have the legal authority to require a new investigation or appoint a special master, All said in an email.

Alberta said that while she feels defeated, she vows to never give up on her son.

With the help of media coverage and social media, Alberta hopes someone who knows something about Randys whereabouts will come forward.

A Facebook page In Search of Randy Leach was created to share memories of the teen and to bring in tips and information that may solve the case.

After this many years, wed hope that someone would come forward, Alberta said. But we think theyre scared. And we just want them to know that any kind of information would make a difference. They dont need to be scared.

As the 32nd anniversary of Randys disappearance came and went and April, and his 50th birthday nears, Alberta and Harold strive to keep his memory alive at that same house on their farm in Linwood.

The suit Randy never got to wear at graduation still hangs in the closet. His prized 1969 Mustang is now fully restored - a vibrant candy apple red. Just how he wanted. His father takes it out for a spin now and then, as a way to remember Randy.

Randy would have turned 50 years old this July, Alberta said. We know hes gone, but we still want to know where he is. We want to bury our son and finally have peace. Were still fighting for him.

Randys family is offering a $25,000 reward for information leading to Randys whereabouts. A Governor's Reward is also being offered in the amount of $5,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person(s) responsible for the crime.

Anyone with information on Randys case is asked to call the Leavenworth County Sheriffs Office at 913-682-5724 or the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at 1-800 KS CRIME.
The US has relaxed regulations to allow doctors on the H-1B work visa to practice telemedicine and help local hospitals to meet the surging demand for healthcare professionals due to the coronavirus pandemic in America, the worst hit country by the COVID-19 outbreak.

The US has nearly 1.45 million cases of confirmed COVID-19 cases and over 86,000 people have died due to the highly contagious disease.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) has issued new guidelines enabling physicians holding the H-1B visas to practice telemedicine and providing local hospitals with the necessary flexibility to meet increased demand for medical treatment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The H-1B visa is a non-immigrant visa that allows US companies to employ graduate-level workers in specialty occupations that require theoretical or technical expertise in specialised fields, which include dentistry.

The updated guidelines come after a bipartisan group of lawmakers urged the USCIS to permit doctors with the H-1B visas to make select changes to better assist in the coronavirus response efforts. Medical facilities, particularly those in rural regions, rely on the H-1B visa programme to fill critical vacancies.

As part of the visa approval process, employers must identify where and for how long the visa holder will work. Any changes to a visa holder's status must be approved by the USCIS.

The site-specificity for work authorisation has prevented physicians holding the H-1B visa from transferring to facilities that are overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients or are experiencing staff shortages due to the quarantine requirements.

A group of lawmakers in a letter to the USCIS said that these physicians are also unable to provide treatment through telemedicine programmes, which have provided much-needed surge capacity to underserved and rural areas during this pandemic.

"As a result of this advocacy, the USCIS changed its policy, enabling doctors with the H-1B visas to practice telemedicine and permitting them to transfer to overwhelmed facilities. In our community's time of need, we must ensure our healthcare providers are fully empowered to treat patients in our region, said Republican Congressman John Katko.

Meanwhile, the American Dentist Association (ADA) on Thursday requested that the federal government extend the current 60-day grace period for unemployed or furloughed dentists with H-1B visas to 180 days during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"Dentists who are in the United States on H-1B visas are worried that they may lose their status and be forced to go back to their home country, ADA President Chad P Gehani and ADA Executive Director Kathleen T McLoughlin wrote in a letter to Joseph Edlow, deputy director for policy at the USCIS.

This will prevent them from returning to the important work of improving the oral health of Americans when dental offices reopen, they wrote in the letter dated May 11, a copy of which was released to the press.

The Department of Labour and Department of Homeland Security do not keep statistics on the number of US dentists with the H-1B visa, though ADA estimates have suggested that there are about 1,200.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, many dental offices are closed or are only seeing emergency patients. They are doing so in order to slow community spread, preserve medical supplies, and relieve emergency departments from seeing dental patients. As a result, dentists are being furloughed or laid off through no fault of their own, the letter said.

In the meantime, the Cato Institute, a Washington-based think-tank, on Thursday urged the Trump administration not to ban H-1B visas, as it is being reported in a section of the American media.

Halting the H-1B visa system will do enormous harm to the portion of our immigration system most like the merit-based system supported by President Donald Trump in healthier times. For the sake of American innovation, don't close the H-1B visa, it said.

In a separate news, Breitbart Network, reported that fortune 500 companies are rushing a federal agency to extend work permits for thousands of H-1B visa workers as the administration officials argue over visa curbs that would help Americans regain jobs lost in the coronavirus crash.

Facebook asked and got continuing approval extensions for 611 of its H-1B visa-workers from the staff at the USCIS agency, Breitbart said, adding that Apple got 647 extensions, Microsoft got 903 and Amazon got 1,245 extensions from the USCIS.

An analysis by the Center for Immigration Studies of data released last Friday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that both native-born Americans and immigrants (legal and illegal) suffered a massive increase in unemployment in April.

The unemployment rate for native-born Americans jumped to 14 per cent in April 2020, up from 3.8 per cent in February before COVID-19. Among immigrants, the rate was 16.4 per cent in April, up from 3.6 per cent in February, said the report released here on Thursday.

"There were 18.2 million unemployed natives and 4.3 million unemployed immigrants in April, a 250 per cent increase for the native-born and 320 per cent increase for immigrants since February," it said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
HOUSTON, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Era Group Inc. (NYSE: ERA) is pleased to announce the 10-year service anniversary of its Search and Rescue (SAR) program in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico. Collaborating with Priority 1 Air Rescue ("P1AR"), an internationally recognized leader of SAR services, the Company pioneered the establishment of its commercial air ambulance and search and rescue offering in the United States in 2010. The Company also established the first light SAR program in Suriname in 2017.



The Companys SAR program is the only medially licensed provider in the Gulf of Mexico that offers Advanced Life Support (ALS) medical expertise as well as full SAR services day or night. Within the last few months, the program has completed numerous emergency evacuations with probable or known cases of COVID-19, in addition to other various emergency taskings in the Outer Continental Shelf.

To date, the Companys SAR program has completed over 1,500 day and night missions, including night vision goggle hoists offshore, for more than 80 different companies operating in the Gulf of Mexico. The Company has maintained an impeccable safety record despite the challenging operating conditions present during many SAR missions.

The Companys SAR program has received many industry accolades, including the 2017 Helicopter Association International (HAI) Salute to Excellence Airbus Helicopters Golden Hour Award. The annual award is presented to those who have advanced the use of helicopters in the vital mission of air medical transport.

Eras SAR program and supporting team members are some of the best in the world, said Paul White, Senior Vice President, Commercial. We are extremely proud of the dedicated team members who provide these potentially life critical services day in and day out during these very difficult times.

Brad Matheson, President of P1AR states, Ever since we joined forces with Era in 2010, we have found the perfect collective synergy by leveraging our unique and complementary fields of expertise to create a highly efficient and effective world-class Advanced Life Support Air Ambulance SAR service. Our O&G partners and customers are very committed to the well-being of their offshore workers, and managing risk requires a broad-spectrum approach to consider not only the SAR capability but also the quality and level of emergency medical care.

About Era Group

Era is one of the largest helicopter operators in the world and the longest serving helicopter transport operator in the U.S. In addition to servicing its U.S. customers, Era provides helicopters and related services to customers and third-party helicopter operators in other countries, including Brazil, Chile, Colombia, India, Mexico, Spain and Suriname. Eras helicopters are primarily used to transport personnel to, from and between offshore oil and gas production platforms, drilling rigs and other installations. In addition, Eras helicopters are used to perform emergency response services, firefighting, utility, VIP transport and other services. Era also provides a variety of operating lease solutions and technical fleet support to third party operators. To learn more, visit our website at www.erahelicopters.com .

About Priority 1 Air Rescue

P1AR, commonly referred to as the " One Stop SAR Shop " is solely focused on Helicopter SAR, Air Ambulance, and Tactical Training and Operations. With over 18 years of experience, and Search & Rescue Tactical Training Academies (SART/TAC) in the USA and France, P1AR has provided industry-leading synthetic and live flight mission training to well over 6,000 commercial, government, and military aircrews, on 26 helicopter types in 25 countries worldwide. P1AR also delivers and maintains dedicated aircrew staffing 24/7/365 comprised of Advanced Life Support SAR Paramedics, Hoist Operator/EMTs, and Helicopter Rescue Swimmer/EMTs, to support world class emergency aeromedical and SAR response for commercial operators performing Commercial Oil and Gas, Government and Military DOD SAR and Air Ambulance services.
She bowed out of Made In Chelsea in 2012 to launch her very own swimwear collection.

And Kimberley Garner set pulses racing earlier this week as she slipped into one her latest designs for an impromptu photoshoot.

The television personality, 29, flaunted her tanned and toned figure in a plunging black lace-up corset swimsuit.

Strike a pose: Kimberley Garner set pulses racing earlier this week as she slipped into one her latest swimwear designs for an impromptu photoshoot

Kimberley teased a hint of cleavage thanks to the neckline, which plunged down to the naval, while the high-rise cut of the bottom of the swimsuit highlighted her pert derriere.

The former reality star draped a silk dressing gown over her shoulder and showed off the one-piece from different angles in her knee-high snakeskin print boots.

Styling her blonde hair in beachy waves, Kimberley captioned the racy post: 'One of my own designs, made in London.

Sizzling display: The television personality, 29, flaunted her tanned and toned figure in a plunging black lace-up corset swimsuit

Cheeky: Kimberley flaunted a hint of cleavage thanks to the neckline, which plunged down to the naval, while the high-rise cut of the bottom of the swimsuit highlighted her pert derriere

'So happy I decided years ago to make my swimwear collection in the UK, it's much more expensive but at a time like this I feel it's so important and shines through to be a fully British brand.

'Keeping our UK economy moving. I hate when other company's make as cheap as they can abroad for their own gain. My designs are all Made in London and I'm proud of that.'

Kimberley also showcased one of her brighter pieces on Instagram on Thursday.

Bikini babe: Kimberley also showcased one of her brighter pieces on Instagram on Thursday

The star left little to the imagination as she slipped into a red swirled patterned one-piece, which also boasted a plunging neckline and high-rise cut on the thong bottoms.

The reality star had to forego her usual beach set-up as she isolates at her home in Kensington, London during lockdown.

Kimberley splits her time between her homes in London and Miami after purchasing a dream pad in the coastal city in December 2018.

Speaking to MailOnline about her home last year, she explained: 'I worked very hard last year and had even moved home for a few months to save money.

'I really had my head down working to concentrate on goals, but achieved it on New Year's Eve, praise God, and flew over here. Completed the sale on the plane over.'

Reflecting on her property empire, the designer admitted it is a world away from the hustle and bustle of her busy life in London.

'It's right on the beach, and really is a dream come true,' she explained. 'I am over doing the interior design, going for a beachy chilled vibe for the place.

'I won't be moving there [permanently], as London is one hundred percent home, but really overjoyed and proud to have achieved it.'
Flanderss book isnt just smart and diverting but also brave, our reviewer wrote. Its good to be reminded that in the 1650s the grandest drawing rooms of London held very large beds, with no hint of impropriety; this was public furniture.  Good, too, to remember the deep meaning of curtains and how a few hundred miles could change it entirely. In Germany, they were the mark of an orderly household with not too much light, but in the Netherlands Calvinists were apt to let their goods, the signs of Gods favor, be seen from the street. Flanders leads a house tour that traverses continents, centuries and social classes. No detail is too small, no ceiling too high to escape her scrutiny.

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Home Comforts: The Art and Science of Keeping House, by Cheryl Mendelson

Mendelsons 72-chapter, information-crammed, yellow-spined bible of domestic life has been a presence on bookshelves since 1999. For years, it was a staple at bridal showers and the perfect gift for a niece who just signed a lease on her first apartment. The recipient would skim the table of contents, exclaiming over the chapters he or she (but, lets face it, usually she) couldnt wait to read  Stimulating Beverages, Electrical Safety, Beds and Bedding  and then onto the shelf the book would go. Now is the time to pull it down. Mendelson not only teaches you how to clean your refrigerator, launder your clothes and make sense of your vacuum cleaner attachments, she does so with a sense of humor and a were all in this together vibe. Which is exactly what we need right now.

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At Home: A Short History of Private Life, by Bill Bryson

Bill Bryson is best known his jaunt on the Appalachian Trail (chronicled in A Walk in the Woods) and road trips (The Lost Continent, In a Sunburned Country). In At Home, he takes a spin through history without leaving his own property  a former rectory built in 1851, nestled in an English village. Room by room, from the larder to the dining area all the way down to the cellar, he pauses to put everything from buttons to building materials into context. Our reviewer wrote, If you have any interest in furniture, food, fashion, architecture, energy or world history, chances are youve stumbled across some (or all) of the information Bryson has on offer.  But while Bryson may not have done much original research, it takes a very particular kind of thoughtfulness, as well as a bold temperament, to stuff all this research into a mattress thats supportive enough to loll about on while pondering the real subject of this book  the development of the modern world.
To help people access various



services under the e-Courts project, an e-Sewa Kendra was opened inside the Orissa High Court premises here on Friday.

Chief Justice Mohammad Rafiq and senior-most judge of the High Court Kumari Justice Sanju Panda inaugurated the facility in the presence of the Advocate General, office bearers of Orissa High Court Bar Association and several other members of the bar.

A similar facility for the district court of Cuttack was also opened and sources said e-Sewa Kendras are also going to be made functional in a phased manner at other district courts and sub-divisional courts in the state.

A virtual e-Sewa Kendra is also being created through Orissa High Courts website for those who cannot physically attend the facilities in the courts, the sources said.

The e-Sewa Kendras will help litigants and advocates in having online access to case status, facilitating attendance in courts via video conferencing, getting digital copies of judgements and orders, among others.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
The Congress on Friday accused the government of being "insensitive" towards farmers and demanded that the prime minister and the finance minister apologise for neglecting them in the COVID-19 economic package.

Congress chief spokesperson Randeep Surjewala said the so-called Rs 20-lakh crore package for offsetting the economic fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic has proved to be a "jumla package" and reflects the "voodoo economics" being followed by the prime minister and the finance minister.

He said the government has not put a single penny in pocket of farmers or farm labourers through the package and claimed that farmers have lost over Rs 50,000 crore this Rabi season.

"One thing is absolutely clear that the so-called Rs 20-lakh crore economic package has proved to be a jumla package. It reflects the 'voodoo' economics being followed by the prime minister and the finance minister," Surjewala said at a press conference through video-conferencing.

He said the prime minister and the finance minister only talk big things and indulge in headline management, but have done nothing concrete for farmers or any other section of society.

Surjewala said the farmers have lost Rs 21,000 crore by distress sale of wheat far below the minimum support price (MSP) and an equal amount through other crops like chana, sarson and masoor, while anoher Rs 10,000 crore was lost through distress sale of vegetables and fruits.

He claimed that since the markets were shut and farmers have to sell at distress prices as the government was buying only 26.5 per cent of the Rabi crop at MSP.

"Neither farmers nor farm labourers will benefit from these jumla announcements of the finance minister. Today, farmers and farm workers are frustrated and disappointed," he said.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Friday gave details of the third tranche of the Centre's economic package, announcing relief for agriculture and allied industries.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi earlier this week announced a cumulative package of Rs 20 lakh crore (nearly 10 per cent of GDP) to provide relief to various segments of the economy battered by coronavirus lockdown.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Members of Virgin's frequent flyer program will finally be able to use their points after having their points frozen for four weeks.

The company announced customers could use their hard-earned points from Friday.

However, they can only use the points on discounts for Virgin flights rather than redeeming them to buy gift vouchers, wine or electronics as the company's Rewards Store remains frozen.

The discounts apply to flights from September 1, 2020.

And the failed airline will need to find a new buyer before the flights are guaranteed. State and federal governments also need to lift the ban on inter-state travel.

Virgin Australia has limited the purchase of retail gift cards using points to once a day under the changes made last week

Virgin Australia, which was already struggling with $5billion in debt before coronavrius grounded its planes, was the first in Australia to fold amid the crisis

A Velocity spokeswoman told The Australian they were hopeful domestic travel restrictions and state and territory border lockdowns would be ease by September.

'We look forward to sharing more offers with our members as we emerge from the COVID-19 crisis and travel resumes more broadly,' she said.

One-way domestic reward flights begin at 7,800 Velocity Points in economy class and 15,500 Velocity Points in business class, plus taxes, fees and charges.

Virgin Australia has been fighting for survival since the coronavrius pandemic saw its planes grounded.

The airline was already struggling with $5billion in debt when the travel industry was brought to a crashing halt in March with Australia closing its border.

The company was placed in administration last month with administrators at Deloitte tasked with finding a buyer.

It is hoped Deloitte will have a better sense of which parties are interested in buying the beleaguered airline, when non-binding indicative offers are made on Friday.

The Queensland state government could emerge as a serious contender after submitting a plan to rescue Australia's second carrier through either a direct equity stake, a loan, guarantee or another financial tool.

Virgin Australia employees are seen at Sydney Airport, in Sydney, Tuesday, April 21 after the company announced it would go into administration

This has come even as the federal government has refused to bail out Virgin Australia, with Deputy Prime Minister and Transport Minister Michael McCormack saying the solution must be market, not government, led.

The airline has debts of nearly $7 billion and its creditors are expected to be asked to accept a 'haircut', or payment of less than they are owed, to keep the airline operational.

It stood down 8,000 staff last month to try and stay afloat but went into freefall on the back of strict coronavirus travel bans.

The company is 90 per cent foreign owned with Singapore Airlines, Etihad Airways and Chinese conglomerates HNA Group and Hanshan owning 80 per cent between them while Richard Branson's Virgin Group still owns 10 per cent.

More than 15,000 jobs, many based in Queensland, are at risk should a decision be made to carve off assets to service the airline's debts.

The administrators have stated their intention to agree a deal with a buyer by the end of June.
A Pakistani court has set a child pornographer free on bail, two years after he was convicted of the heinous crime with seven years imprisonment in the country's first such case.

The Federal Investigation Agency's special court in 2018 convicted Saadat Amin, 45, under Section 22 of Prevention of Electronic Crime Act 2016 and imposed Rs 1.2m fine on him.

According to the FIA, it was the first-ever conviction in any child pornography scam in Pakistan.

The Lahore High Court on Thursday suspended Amin's sentence and ordered his release on bail.

In an appeal before the court, Amin's counsel advocate Rana Nadeem Ahmad argued that the investigation held by the FIA was faulty as it failed to arrest or investigate the alleged foreign agent in Norway and present the victim children before the court.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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The global market for protein expression should grow from $1.8 billion in 2017 to $3.1 billion by 2022 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.3% from 2017 through 2022.

Report Scope:

This research report presents an in-depth analysis of the global market for protein expression by system type, products and services, applications, end users and regional markets. The report includes key protein expression systems that are incorporated in several therapeutic treatment methods. It discusses the role of supply chain members from manufacturers to researchers. The report provides an in-depth analysis of key companies operating in the global market for protein expression. A patent analysis focuses on describing technological trends across periods of time and regions, such as the U.S., Europe and Japan.

Request for Report Sample: https://www.trendsmarketresearch.com/report/sample/11593

The protein expression market is mainly segmented into the following system types: prokaryotic expression systems, mammalian cell expression systems, insect cell expression systems, yeast expression systems, cell-free expression systems and algal-based expression systems. This market is further segmented based on products and services into reagents, expression vectors, competent cells, instruments and services. The market study details end users and applications, and ongoing activity in the research and development area. The market is segmented by region into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world (ROW). Companies profiled in this report include Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., Merck KGaA, Promega Corp., Agilent Technologies, GenScript, Takara Holdings Inc., Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., Qiagen N.V., Lonza and others.

Report Includes:

 45 data tables 34 additional tables

 An overview and in-depth analysis of the global markets for protein expression technologies

 Analyses of global market trends with data from 2016 and 2017, and projections of compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) through 2022

 Discussion on perfusion approaches and supporting practices such as continuous bio manufacturing, and digital and model-based controls

 Identification of key market dynamics and the factors impacting the global market for protein expression and its sub-segments

 Regional dynamics of the global protein expression market and analysis of trends and opportunities in major regions covering North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the rest of the world (ROW)

 A relevant patent analysis focuses on describing technological trends across periods of time and regions, such as the U.S., Europe and Japan

 Detailed analysis of the cloning technologies, production of recombinant proteins and problems associated with protein production

 Assessment of major stakeholders, product portfolios and recent developments and the competitive landscape among market leaders

 Company profiles of leading global payers, including Agilent Technologies, Bio-Rad Laboratories Inc., Merck KGaA, Promega Corp., GenScript, Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., and Qiagen N.V.

Summary

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Protein expression is a technique where three processestranslation, transcription and posttranslational modificationplay a vital role in the various applications, including biologics production, therapeutic protein production and research application. There are three types of recombinant protein expression methods. These include in vivo protein expression, in vitro protein expression and chemical protein synthesis. It is critical to have access to a variety of expression tools to ensure the successful expression of the required target protein.

Based on the functional need in the host cell, proteins can be modified, regulated and synthesized in different living organisms. These proteins need a specific intracellular environment to achieve the required secondary and tertiary structures. Some proteins also require post-translational modifications or insertion into a cellular membrane to attain the proper functioning of the protein. In addition, the production of some proteins could also be toxic for the well-being of the host. Hence, there is no single solution for the successful production of different types of recombinant proteins.

In this report, the protein expression market is studied through different perspectives. The market is analyzed through the products and their applications in the treatment of several chronic diseases. The protein expression market is categorized into six types based on system type: prokaryotic expression system, mammalian cell expression system, insect cell expression system, yeast cell expression system, cell-free expression system and algal-based expression system. The prokaryotic expression system registered a revenue of REDACTED in 2016 and is poised to increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of REDACTED throughout the forecast period. Its revenue is projected to reach REDACTED by 2022.

The global market for protein expression based on products and services is segmented into five categories: reagents, expression vectors, competent cells, instruments and services. The reagents segment has dominated the global market for protein expression and is anticipated to do so during the forecast period. This segment accounted for a revenue of REDACTED in 2016, registering a CAGR of REDACTED; this revenue is expected to reach nearly REDACTED by 2022.

By geography, the global market for protein expression is divided into North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Rest of World (ROW). North America held the largest market share in 2016 and accounted for REDACTED, growing at the CAGR of REDACTED during the analysis period. It is anticipated that market will reach nearly REDACTED by 2022. Europe held the second-largest market share of the protein expression market globally. It accounted for REDACTED in 2016 and is expected to reach REDACTED by 2022 at a CAGR of REDACTED. The Asia-Pacific market accounted for REDACTED in 2016 and is expected to reach REDACTED by 2022 at a CAGR of REDACTED. ROW includes Brazil, Saudi Arabia, and South Africa. The ROW protein expression market accounted for REDACTED in 2016 and is expected to reach REDACTED by 2022 at a CAGR of REDACTED.

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The May 7 gas leak in the LG polymers plant in Vizag killed a dozen and injured over 1,000. With the situation now under control, the fear of crisis of the magnitude of the Bhopal gas tragedy repeating itself has ebbed. But the accident reminds us of Indias inadequate legislative framework for dealing with industrial accidents.

In the aftermath of the Bhopal gas leak, various legislations dealing with industrial accidents were passed  for example, the Environment Protection Act 1986; the Hazardous Waste (Management and Handling) Rules for Management; Storage and Import of Hazardous Chemicals in 1985, and the Factory Act, 1948 was amended in 1987. But big gaps still remain.

The Public Liability Insurance Act, 1991 (PLI Act) was brought about to ensure that the victims of such accidents are adequately compensated  and immediately. In fact, in the Bhopal tragedy, the Union of India (UoI) took over the litigation from the individual victims, and also enacted the Bhopal Gas Leak Disaster (Processing of Claims) Act, 1985. The dispute was eventually settled with the Union Carbide being ordered to pay $470 million. This settlement, without consulting the victims, was challenged by a Public Interest Litigation (PIL) in the case of Charan Lal Sahu. But the court rejected the PIL, and proceeded on to uphold the compensation under the Claims Act, 1985.

With the settlement money being inadequate, and inconsistencies in the number of victims of the tragedy, the compensation amount is under debate even now, some 36 years after the incident. A curative petition is pending before the Supreme Court (SC).

The inadequacy of the compensation under the PLI Act, which is the only legislation we have for compensating victims of tragedies such as Bhopal and Vizag, is best highlighted by the amount offered. In case of death or permanent disability, the compensation offered is 25,000 along with a maximum of 12,500 towards medical expenses, and, 6000 in case of property damage. In case of loss of wages, the victim gets 1,000 per month for three months.

To meet such liabilities, factory owners must take an insurance cover, but it is capped at 50 crore, irrespective of the size of the unit. These limits were set in 1992. Three decades later, the compensation amount remains the same.

In the common law of torts (developed through judgments in England, and followed in India in the absence of any statutory law), there are two general principles of liability.

One, strict liability, which makes the owner of the industry dealing with hazardous substances accountable for any injury to the full extent, subject to certain exceptions like an act of god.

Two, absolute liability, which recognises no exceptions and, irrespective of faults, makes the owner liable for any injury to the full extent. The principle of absolute liability was adopted by the SC in the MC Mehta case in 1987.

By prescribing a limit on liability and curtailing the extent of the general legal principle of damage quantification under absolute liability, the PLI Act acts as a statutory regime that helps industry owners rather than victims.

In 1992, an Environment Relief Fund was established by amending the PLI Act. However, the notification of the fund, and framing of its rules, took 16 years. So far, the government has not announced any steps to utilise the fund.

Victims can also approach the National Green Tribunal (NGT) for compensation and under Section 15 of the NGT Act, 2010, it can award compensation in addition to PLI Act.

On May 8, the NGT proceeded to take suo motu cognisance of the Vizag leak, and imposed an interim penalty of 50 crore on the company. The order read:  Leakage of hazardous gas at such a scale adversely affecting public health and environment, clearly attracts the principle of Strict Liability against the enterprise engaged in a hazardous or inherently dangerous industry. Such an entity is liable to restore the damage caused under the Environment Law, apart from other statutory liability.

But NGT appears to have proceeded on a diluted principle of liability i.e Strict Liability and not Absolute Liability.

Clearly, with industrialisation and a growing number of industries using hazardous substances, our legislative framework has not been able to keep pace with the changing times. It is also mired in the old-fashioned, one-dimensional outlook that considers compensation only in monetary terms, disregarding all other facets like mental and physical well-being and rehabilitation of victims, their medical care, and suitable employment. But with a meagre compensation and inadequate insurance provisions, the system fails even in its monetary aspects.

It is time the policymakers overhaul the current rehabilitation laws to ensure the protection, dignity, and well-being of citizens.

Amit Anand Tiwari is an Advocate on Record in the Supreme Court

The views expressed are personal
The first female inmate to die in federal prison of coronavirus has been pictured, along with the daughter she delivered via cesarean section days before she died, while on a ventilator.

Andrea Circle Bear, 30, died on April 28, about a month after she was hospitalized while serving a 26-month sentence for maintaining a drug-involved premises.

She is the 29th federal inmate to die in the Bureau of Prisons custody since late March. In total, 52 inmates have died from the virus.

Circle Bear was first brought to FMC Carswell, a federal prison medical facility in Fort Worth, Texas, on March 20 from a local jail in South Dakota.

Andrea Circle Bear (pictured) died on April 28 in Fort Worth, Texas, and became the first woman to die in federal prison of coronavirus

Circle Bear gave birth to her newborn daughter, Elyciah (pictured) while hospitalized and on a ventilator

As a new inmate in the federal prison system, she was quarantined as part of the Bureau of Prisons' plan to slow the spread of the coronavirus.

As of Thursday, more than 2,300 federal inmates have tested positive for COVID-19. About 1,800 of those inmates have recovered.

She was taken to John Peter Smith Hospital on March 28 for 'potential concerns regarding her pregnancy,' but was discharged from the hospital the same day and brought back to the prison, officials said.

Three days later, prison medical staff members decided she should be brought back to the hospital after she developed a fever, dry cough and other symptoms, according to the Bureau of Prisons.

Andrea Circle Bear, 30, died on Tuesday, about a month after she was hospitalized at John Peter Smith Hospital (pictured ) while serving a 26-month sentence for maintaining a drug-involved premises

Circle Bear (pictured) was re-admitted into a John Peter Smith Hospital after developing symptoms of COVID-19, including a fever and dry cough

Circle Bear, who at the time was seven months pregnant, was put on a ventilator and told by doctors she had pneumonia.

She called her grandmother, Clara LaBeau, one last time before she died.

'I prayed with her, and we said our goodbyes,' LaBeau of South Dakota told Buzzfeed News.

'We loved each other, and she said to tell her children that she loved them and that was the last time I talked to her.'

According to LaBeau, Circle Bear believed she first contracted coronavirus while being transferred to FMC Carswell.

She reportedly stood outside in the cold, with no jackets or protection, at some point during her transfer and might have encountered the virus then.

One day after being placed on a ventilator, Circle Bear would give birth to her daughter, Elyciah, by way of C-section.

'I was not thinking she was going to deliver because she was admitted for pneumonia,' said LaBeau.

Circle Bear's pregnancy made her high risk for the virus, but she would not be considered priority for release under the Bureau of Prisons and Justice Department guidelines on releasing prisoners to home confinement to help stop the spread.

She was already on a ventilator when an expanded home confinement memo was handed down by the Justice Department in early April.

Circle Bear would not be officially diagnosed with COVID-19 until April 4.

Circle Bear (pictured) was a mother-of-five who struggled with substance abuse, but worked to get clean for her family

During the final phone call, LaBeau said a doctor intervened and asked if she would be able to care for Circle Bear's daughter when she was born.

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LaBeau had assumed the doctor meant when the newborn was originally due in May.

'I didn't know until the next day when she delivered that she was on a ventilator,' said LaBeau.

'I asked if (Andrea) knew about her having her baby, and they said, no.'

BOP did not disclose information about the baby's health.

Attorney General William Barr ordered the increased use of home confinement and the expedited release of eligible inmates by the Bureau of Prisons, with priority for those at low- or medium-security prisons - starting with virus hot spots.

Under the Bureau of Prisons guidelines, the agency is prioritizing the release of those who have served half of their sentence or inmates who have 18 months or less left and who served at least 25% of their time.

Circle Bear, of Eagle Butte, South Dakota, had been sentenced in January after she pleaded guilty in federal court.

The charges stemmed from incidents in April 2018 when she 'unlawfully and knowingly used and maintained a place for the purpose of distributing methamphetamine on the Cheyenne River Sioux Indian Reservation,' the Justice Department said.

She was arrested after selling methamphetamine to a confidential informant twice for $850.

LaBeau said Circle Bear and her five children were living with her at that time.

Circle Bear struggled with substance abuse, said LaBeau, but had worked to get clean.

Circle Bear hoped to return to her children after her prison sentence in Texas, but was afraid of traveling out of state and away from her loved ones.

'She was afraid and crying,' LaBeau said, of her last phone call with Circle Bear.

The five children were sent to live with their grandfather while Circle Bear was in prison.

LaBeau, a full-time worker in her 70s, has taken custody of baby Elyciah.

She doesn't believe Circle Bear had any idea she would give birth so early.

'If she knew that I'm sure she would have said something,' said LaBeau.
WASHINGTONSenate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr on Friday submitted the final report in the panels three-year Russia investigation to the intelligence community for a declassification review. The move came hours before he was to temporarily step aside as chairman of the panel.

The report on the panels counterintelligence findings  including whether President Donald Trumps campaign co-ordinated with Russia  marks the conclusion of its Russia probe, which it first launched in January 2017. But the panel did not immediately release any of the findings and instead asked the intelligence community to quickly allow the release of a declassified version of the report.

Burr said Thursday that he would temporarily give up his chairmanship after federal agents examining his recent stock sales showed up at his home Wednesday with a warrant to search his cellphone. Friday was his last day in the position.

The Justice Department is investigating whether Burr exploited advance information when he unloaded as much as $1.7 million (U.S.) in stocks in February, days before the coronavirus pandemic caused markets to plummet. Burr has denied any wrongdoing.

The final submission brought an unceremonious end to the yearslong investigation that occasionally landed Burr, a North Carolina Republican, in trouble with his own party. It had been the final known investigation of Trumps 2016 campaign and Russia that was still active.

Burr worked closely with the top Democrat on the panel, Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, on a bipartisan basis to uncover Russias attempts to sow chaos in American elections. The committee had particular success in pushing social media companies to publicly reveal that Russia had used their platforms for misinformation and to make subsequent reforms to prevent such interference in the future.

Committee members have remained quiet on the panels conclusion on whether Trumps campaign co-ordinated with Russia. But Burr has said several times that he has seen no evidence of such collusion, a conclusion that would be in line with the House Intelligence Committees own Russia report in 2018. It is unclear if the panels Democrats would endorse such a determination, even though the first four reports from the Senate committee were bipartisan.

Former special counsel Robert Mueller also investigated whether the Trump campaign co-ordinated with Russia. Muellers report, released in April 2019, identified substantial contacts between Trump associates and Russia but did not allege a criminal conspiracy between his campaign and the Kremlin. Mueller also examined about a dozen possible instances of obstruction of justice and said he could not exonerate the president on that point.

The Senate panel also sent its other four reports to the intelligence community for declassification and in some cases waited years for a response. In the other cases, however, the panel released its general findings first.

The prior reports looked at Russias social media interference, election security, the response of the Obama administration to the Russian meddling and the intelligence communitys 2017 assessment that Russia had intervened in Trumps favour. The committee endorsed that assessment in a bipartisan report this year.

Burr will continue to serve on the committee, and the panels work will continue as usual, including a vote next week to approve the nomination of Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe as director of national intelligence. The committee will vote on Ratcliffes nomination Tuesday, according to a committee aide who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss it before it was announced.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has not yet said who will temporarily replace Burr as chairman. Next in seniority is Idaho Sen. James Risch, who told reporters on Thursday that he didnt know whether he would keep his current perch as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee or move to the intelligence panel.

Following him is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who now heads the Senate Small Business Committee. Maine Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Aging Committee, is third in line.

___

Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Michael Balsamo in Washington contributed to this report.
There is a powerful moment in the new drama Never Rarely Sometimes Always that haunts you long after the film is over.

Pregnant teen Autumn is talking to a counsellor at an abortion clinic about her relationship history and sexual encounters and answers tick-box questions from the multiple choice of the four possible answers in the title.

It becomes increasingly clear that some terrible things have happened to her, as the restrained distress shows on newcomer Sidney Flanigan's face.

And it is this stark but compassionate look at the experience of a teenage girl in America that seems best to encapsulate the realist drama.

"When I first read it I was kind of surprised to see that it was a film about abortion," Flanigan says.

"I remember when I first read it I thought to myself, 'I can't believe I haven't seen this movie already', and so it was kind of exciting thinking about the idea of getting to bring to the screen a story that seemed so powerful."

She plays 17-year-old Autumn, who lives in a town in rural Pennsylvania where the state's parental consent laws mean there is no question of being able to get an abortion and no chance of getting help from her family.

After some hesitant but harrowing attempts to end the pregnancy herself, she confides in her cousin Skylar, played by Talia Ryder, and the pair scrape the money together to get a bus to New York, where she can terminate her pregnancy in secret.

"I'm only 21 but I feel like I haven't seen that story on screen at all," Flanigan says.

"I feel there are not enough stories that are about women in general, that are an accurate representation of friendships.

"Most movies that deal with friendships are usually like a bunch of girls having fun, going out.

"Most movies, if they were about a bunch of girls in New York City, it would be like a totally different story - but these two girls go to New York City and it's bleak and scary and the dynamic between the two girls is so different to the way women are usually portrayed, it's so much more realistic."

Indeed the relationship between Autumn and Skylar is one of quiet, often wordless, compassion, while the men in the film lurk on the periphery for the most part, offering unwelcome attention and micro-aggressions, while their threat hangs heavy over everything.

"Eliza (Hittman, the director) has said that rather than creating one single antagonist, she wanted more environmental and larger-seeming antagonists," Flanigan says.

"There are all these different men who represent all the different levels of ways men can create a hostile environment, whether they mean to or not.

"They can be intentionally aggressive but sometimes there can be those micro-aggressions - they don't realise they are doing it, but it's just because a lot of men are not raised to really see their faults or there is that whole 'boys will be boys' notion growing up and boys aren't taught to take responsibility and know boundaries so they can be quite invasive sometimes."

And while the film is a drama, and never vocalises a political viewpoint, it's significant that it is being released at a time when access to abortion is being increasingly restricted in the US and Roe v Wade, the landmark decision of the US Supreme Court which determined a woman's right to choose, is under assault.

"It's only become more urgent since the film was shot," Flanigan says.

"I remember coming home after the shoot and seeing articles about the Heartbeat Bill (which makes abortions illegal as soon as the embryonic or fetal heartbeat can be detected) being introduced, which is the six week ban.

"I was like, 'Man, I just got home from making this movie and now they are doing all this'.

"It just feels like the walls are closing in, especially after I made this film.

"I've always been passionate about a number of issues but this one has become a priority because it also concerns me personally and my family and my friends and it's just really scary.

"I think this is the most under threat Roe v Wade has ever been because it's not like it's gone but it might as well be because there are so many obstacles now it might as well not even exist.

"They have kind of made it obsolete and it's just scary. I'm lucky enough to be in New York state where it's not really something I have to worry about so much but I can't even imagine what it must be like being a woman in Texas or something and having that kind of fear." The film starkly lays out the fact that sometimes it's not just getting the procedure done that is a challenge for some young women, it's the cost of travel and hotels that come from crossing state lines.

"There are so many factors at play, besides just being able to get it in general," Flanigan says.

"Having clinics or health centres near you and money is such a huge issue, and a lot of women are kept in poverty because of that and it's this vicious cycle because women might be too poor to travel and get that procedure done and then they have a child that they don't know how to take care of and that child is stuck in poverty.

"It's a vicious cycle and that is how they keep all these people in poverty. They say that wealthy women will always have access, no matter what they do. It's one of those really terrible, sobering realities that I think our governments don't really care about their people."

Does Flanigan want US lawmakers - who are by and large, old, white and male - to see the film?

"If our politicians saw this movie, I don't think they would have any empathy. I think they have bigger interests in mind.

"I think it's very intentional what they do to women. I think they want us to feel scared and cornered, and honestly I do not trust these old white guys at all.

"Personally, I would really like it to be something that teenagers get to see. I think it would be so cool if they would allow them to show it in schools or something, like in sex education classes.

"The first step in reducing these unintended pregnancies is to give them access to education and to birth control so that they know their rights and take more responsibility."

Never Rarely Sometimes Always is now available on Amazon Prime Video, Google Play and iTunes
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May 15, 2020

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/PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Pre COVID-19 pandemic, the American Dental Association reported that every 14 seconds someone visits the emergency room with a dental need. Dental clinics are struggling to stay open across the country due to practices being limited to emergencies only, and there is an influx of people visiting the hospital with a dental health crisis. To help keep people out of the emergency room during these unprecedented times, CEO of Performance Partners and Virtual Support Solutions,, launched US Dental Triage, a 24/7 hour national hotline for people experiencing a dental emergency. Additionally, the campaign has partnered with Employee Retention Benefits, along with dental practices to donate face masks and PPE to first responders."Our country is experiencing a period of deep uncertainty and our emergency rooms are already overwhelmed and not equipped to handle definitive dental care," says Bonanno. "We launched US Dental Triage for those who are having challenges finding someone to treat them or are going into emergency rooms and becoming at risk of contracting the coronavirus."For those who are experiencing a dental emergency, US Dental Triage urges people to call its 24-hour hotline at (800)-700-0908. The company has more than 50 team members on staff to connect callers experiencing urgent dental needs with an office that is open and available to see the patient right away. Once matched with a dentist, the patient will have the opportunity to do a virtual consultation to talk about his or her symptoms and ensure that the issue warrants an emergency visit.Patient health and safety are US Dental Triage's top priorities for those seeking help. The prevention of the spread of infectious diseases is already part of regular dental practice for all doctors in its network. New protocols to existing safety precautions include a dental staff member escorting patient directly to a pre-sterilized room. The dentist and dental assistants will be wearing gloves and masks, and every patient will be isolated from any others seeking medical attention on the premises."Finding US Dental Triage was essential to my health. I needed to have a tooth pulled and I really wasn't sure of where to go because all the dental offices I called went to voicemail," said dental patient,. "After calling the US Dental Triage hotline, they immediately connected me with a dental office that was nice and clean, and I felt completely safe while there."The campaign is also actively encouraging dental practices to get involved with their efforts to donate face masks and PPE equipment to first responders. In May, US Dental Triage will be donating over 50,000 masks in cities such asand"Our doctors are thrilled to partner with US Dental Triage to help healthcare workers on the frontline," says US Dental Triage Partner Dentist, Dr.from West Coast Oral Surgery. "Through our new partnership we are able to not only assist patients in need of oral health care, but also help our local heroes protect themselves during the pandemic through the donation of N95 masks, gloves and other PPE equipment.""We are also providing a solution to dentists and their teams through our sister company, Virtual Support Solutions (VSS), which allows us to give support to their practices during these challenging times," says the former Executive Director of the Arizona Dental Association and Virtual Support Solutions Director,. "We are able to add them to the US Dental Triage Network and offer virtual call rollover at any hour of the day or night, so they don't miss any emergency calls. Patients can avoid a scary trip to the ER through this platform to safely and effectively be treated for their urgent dental needs in a dentist's office. Dental practices also have the opportunity to gain referrals through new patients who call in and don't currently have a dentist."VSS will pre-screen the patients and provide tools for the dentist to conduct virtual consultations and make appointments as an extension of the dental office. It is currently accepting dentists who would like to become part of their dental referral network and is a free service to join. For more information, dentists can visit dentalvss.com or call (844)-222-9565.For additional information about US Dental Triage, to find out more about what qualifies as a dental emergency, or to get connected with a dentist, call (800)-700-0908 or visit usdentaltriage.com.About US Dental Triage For those experiencing a dental emergency, US Dental Triage offers people a way to skip the emergency room by calling their 24-hour hotline at (800)-700-0908. The company has over 50 team members on staff to connect callers experiencing urgent dental needs with an office that is open and available to see the patient right away. Once matched with a dentist, the patient will have the opportunity to do a virtual consultation to talk about their symptoms and ensure that the issue warrants an emergency visit. For additional information on US Dental Triage, visit them online at usdentaltriage.com.About Virtual Support Solutions Virtual Support Solutions provides expert support to doctors and their teams in areas where virtual support can produce the most reliable and consistent results. The company offers call rollover, appointment generation and reimbursement support. They are currently accepting dentists who would like to become part of their network. For more information dentists can visit dentalvss.com or call (844)-222-9565.SOURCE U.S. Dental Triage
Welcome to the home for real-time coverage of European equity markets brought to you by Reuters stocks reporters. You can share your thoughts Joice Alves (joice.alves@thomsonreuters.com) and Julien Ponthus (julien.ponthus@thomsonreuters.com) in London and Stefano Rebaudo (stefano.rebaudo@thomsonreuters.com) in Milan.

ON THE RADAR: TOP NEWS FROM SWITZERLAND! (0648 GMT)

European are set to open about 1% in the black this morning with two big news headlines coming from Switzerland.

Good news first: Swiss drugmaker Roche will start selling a new digital diagnostics product that it says may simplify and accelerate screening of patients with breathing problems during the COVID-19 pandemic.

On the grim side, Switzerland's luxury group Richemont expects "headwinds in the months ahead" due to the new coronavirus as it reported annual profit falling by two thirds.

In terms of market price action, there's already some moves in Frankfurt with GEA and Varta strongly up in premarket trade after their results.

On the M&A front, BT shares should get a lot of attention after the FT reported it is in talks to sell a multi-billion pound stake in broadband network operator Openreach.

Probably some relief that Finland's top utility Fortum beat expectations and said it would stick to its dividend policy.

French manufacturing and minerals group Imerys, whose North America talc unit filed for bankruptcy after being drawn into cancer lawsuits, said it had reached an agreement to resolve those talc-related liabilities.

Interesting trading update by William Hill which shows how COVID-19 is hitting the betting industry: 57% plunge in total net revenue for the weeks since coronavirus lockdowns were imposed in Europe and North America.

On that note, Eutelsat reported a 4.4% slump in third-quarter revenues as postponed sport events and reduced travel hit earnings.

In the battered oil industry, Petrofac warned it was now assuming most new projects would be delayed until 2021.

Story continues

(Julien Ponthus)

*****

MORNING CALL: EUROPE SET FOR 4% WEEKLY LOSS (0545 GMT)

The STOXX 600 is set for a 4% weekly loss at the moment, its worst performance since the peak of the coronavirus crash in mid-March.

European futures are however currently trading in positive territory, exposing the change in sentiment which has lifted Asian shares after a weak open last night.

While fresh fears of a U.S./China trade war were weighing on markets earlier, oil prices rose are extending gains with data showing demand for crude picking up in China.

The industrial output of the world's second biggest economic power rose 3.9% in April from a year earlier, an encouraging sign for European countries hoping to return to growth as they slowly try to get over coronavirus lockdowns.

(Julien Ponthus)

***** (Reporting by Stefano Rebaudo, Joice Alves and Julien Ponthus)
Pubs and restaurants forced to close during the coronavirus pandemic may never reopen their doors, industry experts warned.

Grim predictions showed that a quarter of cafes and eateries are likely to go bankrupt thanks to months of little to no businesses.

Across Australia, businesses were forced to shut their doors on March 23 as COVID-19 cases rose across the country.

But eight weeks later, and with the infection rate plummeting, many are being offered the option to open up - but some simply can't afford it.

Industry expert Wes Lambert, chief executive of the Restaurant and Catering Industry Association, said he 'only expects 75 per cent of businesses to survive'.

A shut down cafe for sale in Mollymook on the NSW south coast (pictured on April 7) after businesses across the country were hit by COVID-19 restrictions

A group of women are seen enjoying drinks as they wait for their food at the Darwin Hotel on Friday (pictured) as restrictions were lifted

'We expect thousands of hospitality businesses to close due to this crisis but we are optimistic for the future,' he told the Herald Sun.

'Our advice (is) its better to stay open for takeaway and delivery, to keep contact with your customers and community, than to try and shut and re-open on the other side.

'Once those doors close, more often than not they close for good.'

This is despite the federal government's $130 billion wage subsidy scheme, JobKeeper, which does not include casual workers - many of whom work in hospitality.

Victorian businesses are particularly at risk, after it became the only state that didn't move to reopen restaurants and pubs.

A normal busy restaurant in the tourist town of Hahndorf in the Adelaide Hills is seen empty on March 31 (pictured) with industry leaders warning many may never reopen

Three women are seen walking in Melbourne on Thursday (pictured) wearing face masks, with the country suffering the crippling economic impact of the coronavirus crisis

A closed sign is seen in a shopfront in Sydney's Newtown on May 7 (pictured) after thousands of businesses were forced to close

The state's premier Daniel Andrews has not indicated when such businesses can be opened, but it won't be before May 31.

Of the nearly 900,000 businesses that have signed up for JobKeeper, more than a quarter are in Victoria.

Speaking on Friday, after restrictions were relaxed in much of the country, Mr Morrison thanked the businesses which chose to open.

'As businesses and cafes and others are opened up this weekend, those businesses know that just ten patrons at a time wont necessarily be a profitable patronage for them to really sustain that,' he said.

'(But) theyre backing themselves, theyre backing their staff, theyre backing their communities and theyre backing their country.

Some hospitality leaders said they worry a customer limit may not be financially viable (pictured, a worker wearing a face mask in Melbourne on May 9)

A bar in Melbourne is seen shut up on Thursday (pictured) as state officials in Victoria refused to reopen businesses

'I want to commend them for that brave step theyre taking this weekend  good on you for reopening.'

But thousands did decide to keep their doors closed, saying that opening for limited numbers of people would not be financially viable.

Hospitality giant Merivale confirmed it would stick to operating on a takeaway-only policy until restrictions were eased further.

Matthew Karagiannis, who works at the company's Palmer & Co bar in Sydney, said there were still concerns about staff safety.

'Everyone is conscious working in hospitality of the risk if the virus continues to spread,' he told The Australian.

Two friends are seen enjoying a large glass of white wine as they went to the Chow restaurant in Darwin on Friday (pictured)

A bar manager is seen emptying the fridges at Melbourne's Notting Hill pub on March 23 (pictured) with Victorians still unsure when bars will reopen

Merivale runs several Sydney stalwarts, including Mr Wongs, Mimis, Tottis Bondi, The Paddington and Lotus.

Australia's unemployment rate has surged to a five-year high following the COVID-19 business closures, with many more people not counted in the official statistics.

The jobless rate soared from 5.2 per cent in March, before the coronavirus shutdowns of non-essential businesses, to 6.2 per cent in April.

This is the highest level since September 2015 as a record 600,000 Australians either lost their job or gave up looking for one.

In the Northern Territory, eager beer lovers flocked to the pubs and delighted landlords flung upon their doors as coronavirus restrictions were finally lifted on Friday.

Women are seen in their droves getting their nails done for the first time since March 23 at Cre8tive Nails in Darwin (pictured) on Friday

The territory hasn't recorded a single new case of deadly COVID-19 since April 6, nearly six weeks ago.

Territorians were keen to celebrate their successful battle against the virus, and flocked to pubs, restaurants, cafes and gyms.

In Victoria and South Australia, people still aren't allowed to have a beer in a pub or restaurant.

It is being left up to each state to decide when the federal government's three-step coronavirus restriction lifting plan will be put into place.

In New South Wales, restaurants, bars and cafes were allowed to open on Friday with a ten-person limit and social distancing.

Punters also need to buy a meal to get alcohol.

Restaurants forced to close in Sydney (pictured on March 24 after lockdown began) may never reopen, experts warned

There are fears that many businesses forced to close during the COVID-19 pandemic lockdown may never reopen (pictured, empty tables at a cafe in Sydney on Friday)
The Health and Safety Executive (HESNI) has received almost 1,000 complaints from employees who feel their concerns over Covid-19 safeguarding are not being addressed.

Of the 981 complaints received since March 16, the Executive investigated 661 and referred 325 to other appropriate bodies such as Environmental Health teams.

Causeway Coast and Glens councillor Kathleen McGurk urged the HSENI to use its powers of enforcement under the 1978 Health and Safety at Work Order.

She said: Whilst COVID-19 is primarily a public heath issue, there is a duty on all employers under the existing Health and Safety legislation to ensure their workplace is safe from risks and protect employees against harm so far as reasonably practical.

HSENI currently has power to issue prohibition notices where employers fail to carry out this duty. I welcome that HSENI want to take a collaborative approach with employers to help them adjust to the current COVID-19 risks.

However, where employers do not take appropriate mitigation measures to ensure their employees safety and continue to operate with as business as usual approach, HSENI must act to enforce the legislation.

I have been contacted by employees who have felt unsafe going to work at businesses where social distancing measures cannot be put in place.

I acknowledge that many businesses have done great work to setup up new systems and procedures, to ensure all employees returning or continuing to work have been protected, however it is important that all employees feel safe and HSENI has a role to play in this.

The comments come after HSENI made a presentation to Stormonts Economy Committee, at which Robert Kidd, HSENI Chief Executive said employees should first raise concerns with the organisation or trade unions.

Where employees feel their concerns are not being addressed, they should report it to the HSENI, who will look at all compliance and enforcement measures available to them.

Cllr McGurk added: The message here is still Stay Home. Save Lives. Businesses should be adhering to this where social distancing at work is not possible.
The coronavirus pandemic has already upended teachers lives, banishing them from their classrooms to teach students from home.

Now, as a grueling school year nears its end, some New Jersey teachers are receiving a cruel reward: A pink slip, courtesy of the crushing economic weight of the crisis.

Facing a Friday deadline to notify those teachers who wont be brought back next year, many districts have already told non-tenured educators they wont be offered a contract for the fall until schools know just how badly their finances will be hurt by COVID-19, said Richard Bozza, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators.

And those decisions might only be a precursor to a summer of painful budget cuts forced by an almost certain decrease in state funding.

I think any significant cuts are going to be severe (for schools), and roughly 80% of school district budgets are people costs, Bozza said. Nobody wants to be a doomsdayer, but there is only so much you can do.

School districts built their 2020-21 budgets based on state funding figures announced in February, when New Jerseys revenues were healthy. But Gov. Phil Murphys administration now projects a $10 billion drop in revenue projections through next year, leaving state aid in question.

How much funding will districts lose? How much help will the federal government offer? How much will expenses rise if schools have to supply masks and check every students temperature next fall?

Everybody is very uncertain, Bozza said. And that uncertainty produces anxiety."

With so much uncertainty ahead, some districts decided to take the cautious approach of telling non-tenured teachers they cant offer them a new contract right now, but schools will try to bring them back when funding becomes clearer, Bozza said.

Murphys administration is required to provide a more detailed revenue projection by May 22, which will help guide school districts expectations for the fall. Bozza expects districts will have a better idea by mid-June whether they need to lay off teachers or other staff, although there are so many unanswered questions that its impossible to predict how deep the cuts might go.

That ambiguity leaves teachers in limbo as they finish the final month of an emotionally taxing school year.

Its worrisome, and its heartbreaking, said Susan McBride, president of the Bergen County Education Association. Because a lot of teachers are putting their hearts and souls into what they are doing.

The New Jersey Education Association, the states largest teachers union, called for a cooperative response with lawmakers, similar to the deal the NJEA recently struck to lower state and local health care costs.

While we dont know the full scope of the budget challenges ahead, we know they will be significant and we know it will take all of us, working together, to protect children from being harmed, spokesman Steve Baker said.

Even as statewide unemployment claims skyrocketed in March and April, many public school employees have been immune until now. A state law passed in April directed districts to continue paying employees salaries and benefits, even if their jobs were not needed for remote learning.

Empty buildings and parked buses have helped schools lower some costs. However, those gains have been mostly wiped out by unexpected expenses like deep cleanings and investments in technology and wireless internet access for students, said Robert Zywicki, superintendent of Mount Olive Township Schools.

Anyone who thinks that school districts are saving money on this, its not true, Zywicki said.

Instead, districts expect they will need every penny as they anticipate a budget crunch that could resemble the impact of the Great Recession and have long-lasting ramifications for students.

Murphys original 2021 budget proposal called for about $10.5 billion in direct aid to K-12 schools, accounting for roughly 25% of the governors $40.9 billion spending plan. But the near-lockdown measures ordered to prevent the spread of the deadly coronavirus have crippled the states finances, including income and sales tax collections, the states two biggest revenue sources.

The state now predicts a $2.8 billion revenue loss for the current fiscal year and a $7.3 billion hit for 2021.

It is a tough pill to swallow, said G. Kennedy Greene, superintendent of Newton Public Schools. I think we are all in for a situation that is probably even going to be worse than it was back in 2010 when we lost considerable state aid in the first year Gov. [Chris] Christie was in office.

School districts are planning for a reduction in aid while also juggling a series of unknowns, said Susan Young, executive director of the New Jersey Association of School Business Officials.

One proposal in the state Legislature could temporarily hurt school finances by allowing municipalities to delay making property tax payments to districts. Another plan would help districts, authorizing government furloughs to curb payroll expenses while school employees collect higher pay through enhanced unemployment benefits.

And then theres the possibility of more federal relief money, which is either a lifesaver or a political pipe dream depending on whom you ask.

Given that uncertainty, districts took different approaches to the May 15 deadline.

Some informed non-tenured teachers they cant offer a new contract, at least not now, and they hope to bring them back if their budgets allow, Bozza said. Others decided not to make decisions until they receive an update on their state aid.

Newton Public Schools already planned to cut three teachers before the coronavirus hit and didnt want to risk losing more until it has no choice, Greene said.

It is a real chicken or egg kind of thing, he said. If the budget shortfalls dont happen, you end up losing some really key staff members who maybe go find jobs elsewhere.

Mount Olive renewed teachers in the hope that additional federal money will help offset any losses in state aid, Zywicki said.

It is wait and see, but there is a lot of stress and anxiety over what June to August will bring, he said.

Zywickis biggest fear?

That Murphy cuts state aid even more than expected when he delivers his updated budget proposal in August, he said.

Funding cuts are especially problematic as districts expect expenses to rise if and when students return for in-person instruction in the fall.

Personal protective equipment and social distancing requirements will likely force spending that wasnt in schools original budgets, Bozza said. And many students who have been remote learning since March will need extra academic support along with enhanced counseling.

Bozza is skeptical federal aid would make up for the losses that could come in the state budget, he said.

Schools can still lay off staff at any time, once state and federal revenue sources become more certain, although there may be a contractual requirement for severance pay, Bozza said. He expects some districts will struggle to close budget gaps without slashing teachers. Nearly 200 districts were already losing state aid before the coronavirus, and some had already approved staff cuts.

No district wants to cut teachers, but a decade of trimming around the edges has left few options, he said.

We are kind of out of the bag of tricks, if you will, Bozza said.

McBride said she had not yet heard of any sweeping COVID-related staff cuts in Bergen County. She hopes any layoffs will be minimal.

After the year teachers have been through, losing their jobs would be devastating, she said.

I think when people write about this period of our history, I think they will come to see what a crucial role educators played in the emotional stability of our students, she said.

Our journalism needs your support. Please subscribe today to NJ.com.

Adam Clark may be reached at adam_clark@njadvancemedia.com. Tell us your coronavirus story or send a tip here.
A spokesman for the Israeli army accuses Nasrallah of the assassination of Mustafa Badreddine, while Nasrallah hit back saying that Israel was threatened by Syria writes Al-Masdar.

The Israeli Army spokesman, Avichay Adraee, accused Hezbollahs Secretary-General, Hassan Nasrallah, of killing military commander, Mustafa Badreddine, in Syria in 2016.

Adraee said via Twitter that Nasrallah and the late commander of the Quds Force, Qassem Soleimani, who was assassinated by the United States on Jan. 3, 2020, in Iraq, masterminded the killing of Badreddine at Damascus International Airport.

I expected Nasrallah to tell the truth to the Lebanese, Hezbollah and Shiite activists and the Badreddine family, but he continued to lie, Adraee tweeted.

Nasrallah kills the man and attends his funeral. Every time Hezbollah fails, he blames another party and removes it from his path, so it happened with the Prime Minister of Lebanon, Rafik Hariri, and with Mustafa Badreddine, he added.

Adraees comments came in response to a speech by Nasrallah in which he said that Israel had wagered on armed groups in southern Syria and had repeatedly failed since 2011.

The Israelis and those with them lost their war in Syria and they are now targeting new dangers after these losses. They attack everything related to the manufacturing of missiles in Syria because of the threat this poses from the axis of the resistance, the Secretary-General said.

Nasrallah expressed his confidence that the Israelis see in Syria a future threat, and they are concerned about the presence of Iran and the factions of the resistance there.

He said: The Zionist entity is terrified of developments in Syria, which may take it into unaccounted adventures.

Nasrallah said that there are no Iranian military forces in Syria, but rather there are Iranian advisors and experts.

He added that in Syria there have been Iranian advisers and experts since 2011, in more numbers than before the war, but there are no Iranian military forces.

This article was edited by The Syrian Observer. The Syrian Observer has not verified the content of this story. Responsibility for the information and views set out in this article lies entirely with the author.
Centre of value chain

As the national carrier, Vietnam Airlines (VNA) has operated nearly 20 special flights to repatriate Vietnamese citizens from countries affected by the coronavirus outbreak. The carrier also transported nearly 26,000 tonnes of goods, including medical supplies, electronic components, automobile parts, garments, footwear and seafood, from late February to late April so as to lend a helping hand in the joint efforts to contain the outbreak and maintain economic connections.

According to the International Aviation Transport Association (IATA), the aviation sector urgently needs government support because of its central position in the value chain, which would help it to lead the post-outbreak recovery by connecting various sectors of the economy. The organisation estimates that each job in the aviation industry supports up to 24 other jobs in the value chain of the travel and tourism industry.

Prior to the outbreak, VNA cooperated with tourism authorities to promote the culture and people of Vietnam abroad, helping to draw more and more foreign visitors to the country. It is estimated that 80% of international arrivals to Vietnam come by air. During the 2008-2018 period, more than one third of international visitors to Vietnam used VNA services.

Aware of its role in recovering the health of the tourism industry, and the economy in general, VNA has worked with tourism authorities to establish a set of criteria for safe travel and researched post-outbreak scenarios to create product packages and prepare resources to meet consumer and business demand.

As soon as the government eased social distancing measures, VNA launched three promotional programmes and discussed with its partners about overcoming the crisis together to make a rapid and effective recovery.

No delay

VNA Deputy General Director Le Hong Ha said that with 70% of its passengers being tourists, the carrier has identified a tight-knit connection between aviation and tourism, especially during this difficult time. In the future, VNA will increase the capacity of its domestic routes to prepare for the recovery of the aviation market in Vietnam.

The IATA has forecast that passengers in the Vietnamese aviation market will plunge by up to 45%, equivalent to 32 million, while revenue will plummet by US$4.35 billion, with nearly one million related jobs affected by the outbreak.

Following the restoration of domestic routes, VNA is planning for the resumption of international flights when the pandemic is better curbed so as to create attractive products, boost tourism demand and revive the Vietnamese aviation industry more quickly.

As international passenger flights remain suspended, VNA is keeping itself abreast of the latest coronavirus developments in other countries and devising proactive recovery plans so that its resumption will not be delayed in comparison with its competitors.
Shanghai children share stories amid COVID-19

By:Wu Qiong | From:english.eastday.com | 2020-05-15 18:07

Shanghais students spent a prolonged winter holiday this year. During the home isolation period, they used the time to learn more life skills and develop their hobbies. Some have documented their lives and thoughts during the past two months via artworks, speeches and creative performances, to show how they are trying to live a happy and enriched life despite the harrowing epidemic.

While sharing their daily lives at home, the children also took the chance to pay tribute to the frontline workers fighting the coronavirus, such as medics, community workers and anti-epidemic experts.

A total of 129 works have been selected from hundreds of entries. Click here to find more about their stories https://space.bilibili.com/505645422/channel/detail?cid=128654

(Scan the QR code to see the works.)

On May 18, juniors of secondary schools and the fourth and fifth graders of elementary schools in Shanghai will resume classes. Senior students already returned to schools on May 6.

(Video editors: Cao Ting, Intern Jiang Meiqing)
No nurse would want to attend to a patient on the floor because they would have to bend or squat before attending to them, Dr. Nabil Dekpeh, the Medical Superintendent for the Wa Municipal Hospital has said.



He said hospital facilities were compelled to accommodate patients on mattresses on the floor to manage congestion at the facilities.



Dr. Dekpeh said this in an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Wa on Thursday on the congestion of the maternity ward at the hospital, which had compelled the facility to accommodate some of the patients on the floor.



There are two options, either we tell them (the pregnant women) to go back or we give them mattresses to lie on the floor, so we decided to let them lie on the floor. It is done at every hospital when there is congestion, he explained.



Pregnant women at the Maternity Ward of the Hospital are compelled to lie on the floor due to the congestion of the facility causing a public outcry.



However, the medical superintendent noted that they did not just allow any patient to lie on the floor, but those who went through self-delivery, while those who were critically ill and pregnant women who went through surgery were made to lie on the bed.



He added that most of those patients who were made to lie on the floor stayed at the facility for less than 24 hours, mostly ten-twelve hours, and were discharged.



Dr. Dekpeh also explained that the congestion was intermittent, saying there are times that you will see empty beds there (the maternity ward) for about three days or even a week.



He indicated that the facility still served as a referral centre for some health centres in the municipality even though the new Regional Hospital was operational.



He observed that the new Regional Hospital had come to reduce the burden on the facility as some of the patients were referred to that facility.



Dr. Dekpeh also blamed the congestion at the facility on the inadequate personnel at some of the District Hospitals, which forced those hospitals to refer special cases to the Wa Municipal Hospital.

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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RIVERSIDE, Calif. -- An international research team led by scientists at the University of California, Riverside, has observed light emission from a new type of transition between electronic valleys, known as intervalley transmissions.

The research provides a new way to read out valley information, potentially leading to new types of devices.

Current semiconductor technology uses electronic charge or spin to store and process information; the associated technologies are called electronics and spintronics, respectively. Some semiconductors contain local energy valleys in their electron band structure that can be used to encode, process, and store information, giving rise to a new kind of technology called valleytronics.

"Valleytronics provides an alternative route to engineer information systems besides the conventional electronics and spintronics," said Chun Hung "Joshua" Lui, an assistant professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Riverside, who led the research on intervalley transitions in monolayer tungsten diselenide (WSe 2 ). "Our new work can speed up the development of valleytronics."

Monolayer WSe 2 is a promising valleytronic material because it possesses two valleys with opposite dynamic characteristics in the band structure. Moreover, this material can interact strongly with light, holding promise for optically controllable valleytronic applications.

Excitons

When monolayer WSe 2 absorbs a photon, a bound electron can be freed in a valley, leaving behind an electron vacancy, or hole. As the hole behaves like an electron with positive charge, the electron and hole can attract each other to form a bound state called an exciton. Such an exciton, with both its electron and hole in the same valley, is called an intravalley exciton. Current exciton research in monolayer valley semiconductors focuses predominantly on intravalley excitons, which can emit light.

An electron and a hole in opposite valleys can also form an exciton, called an intervalley exciton, which is a novel component in valleytronics. The law of momentum conservation, however, forbids an electron and a hole in opposite valleys from recombining directly to emit light. As a result, intervalley excitons are "dark" and hidden in the optical spectrum.

The UCR-led research team has now observed light emission from intervalley excitons in monolayer WSe 2 . The team found that although the intervalley excitons are intrinsically dark, they can emit a significant amount of light with the assistance of either defects or lattice vibrations in the material.

"The scattering with defects or lattice vibrations can compensate for the momentum mismatch between an electron and a hole in opposite valleys," Lui said. "It allows us to observe the light emission of intervalley excitons."

"Although the process involves scattering with defects or lattice vibrations, the intervalley light emission is circularly polarized," said Erfu Liu, a postdoctoral researcher in Lui's lab and the first author of the research paper. "Such circular light polarization allows us to identify the exciton valley configuration. This optically readable valley configuration is crucial to making intervalley excitons useful for valleytronic applications."

Trions

Besides the excitons, monolayer WSe 2 also hosts trions, which consist of two electrons and one hole or two holes and one electron. Trions also have well-defined valley configurations for valleytronic applications. Compared to the charge-neutral excitons, the motion of trions can be controlled by an electric field due to their net electrical charge.

A trion can generally decay through two paths. For example, for a trion consisting of an intravalley electron-hole pair and a hole in the opposite valley to decay, the electron can choose to recombine with the hole in the same valley or with the hole in the opposite valley. This gives rise to two different trion decay paths with intravalley and intervalley electron-hole recombination. The intravalley trion decay has been much studied, but the intervalley trion decay has not been reported thus far.

The UCR-led team has shown intervalley trion decay for the first time.

"Although a trion can decay through either intravalley or intervalley decay, the two transitions have the same energy and can hardly be distinguished in the optical spectrum," Lui said. "But when a magnetic field is applied, the energies of the intravalley and intervalley transitions will become different."

The team carried out the experiments at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory in Tallahassee, Florida. They show both the intravalley and intervalley decay paths of the trions.

"Our results provide a more complete, multipath picture of trion dynamics in monolayer WSe 2 ," said Jeremiah van Baren, a graduate student in Lui's lab, who shares equal authorship with Liu. "They build on the existing single-path description of trions in 2-D materials and are key to furthering trion-based valleytronic science and technology."

The research paper, published in Physical Review Letters, is titled "Multipath optical recombination of intervalley dark excitons and trions in monolayer WSe 2 ." Related results were recently reported by two other research teams led by scientists at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the University of Washington.

###

Lui, a recent recipient of the National Science Foundation's prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award; Liu, and van Baren were joined in the study by Nathaniel Gabor of UC Riverside; Ching-Tang Liang and Yia-Chung Chang of the Research Center for Applied Sciences at the Academia Sinica in Taipei, Taiwan; and Takashi Taniguchi and Kenji Watanabe of the National Institute for Materials Science in Tsukuba, Japan.

The University of California, Riverside (http://www.ucr.edu) is a doctoral research university, a living laboratory for groundbreaking exploration of issues critical to Inland Southern California, the state and communities around the world. Reflecting California's diverse culture, UCR's enrollment is more than 24,000 students. The campus opened a medical school in 2013 and has reached the heart of the Coachella Valley by way of the UCR Palm Desert Center. The campus has an annual statewide economic impact of almost $2 billion. To learn more, email news@ucr.edu.
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TSX/NYSE/PSE: MFC SEHK: 945

TORONTO, May 14, 2020 /PRNewswire/ - Manulife Financial Corporation (NYSE: MFC) (the "Company") today announced that it has priced a public offering in the United States of U.S.$500 million aggregate principal amount of 2.484% senior notes due 2027 (the "Notes") at a public offering price of 100%. The offering was made pursuant to a preliminary prospectus supplement, dated May 14, 2020, to the Company's registration statement declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission (the "SEC") on December 10, 2019.

The Company intends to use the net proceeds from the sale of the Notes for general corporate purposes, including future refinancing requirements.

BofA Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets Inc., Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC, J.P. Morgan Securities LLC and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC are acting as joint book-running managers for the offering.

This release does not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or jurisdiction in which such an offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to registration or qualification under the securities laws of any such state or jurisdiction. A prospectus supplement and the accompanying prospectus related to the offering have been filed with the SEC and are available on its website at www.sec.gov. Copies of the prospectus supplement and accompanying prospectus, when available, may be obtained by contacting J.P. Morgan Securities LLC, 383 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10179, Attention: Investment Grade Syndicate Desk  3rd Floor, or by calling at (212) 834-4533.

The securities will not be offered or sold, directly or indirectly, in Canada or to any resident of Canada.

About Manulife

Manulife Financial Corporation is a leading international financial services group that helps people make their decisions easier and lives better. With our global headquarters in Toronto, Canada, we operate as Manulife across our offices in Canada, Asia, and Europe, and primarily as John Hancock in the United States. We provide financial advice, insurance, and wealth and asset management solutions for individuals, groups and institutions. At the end of 2019, we had more than 35,000 employees, over 98,000 agents, and thousands of distribution partners, serving almost 30 million customers. As of March 31, 2020, we had $1.2 trillion (US$0.8 trillion) in assets under management and administration, and in the previous 12 months we made $30.4 billion in payments to our customers. Our principal operations are in Asia, Canada and the United States where we have served customers for more than 155 years. We trade as 'MFC' on the Toronto, New York, and the Philippine stock exchanges and under '945' in Hong Kong.

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By Katie Lauer

San Jose Spotlight

Alone in her hospital room at night, Augustina "Sally" Armendariz kept the light on to counter the loneliness and fear she felt at Kaiser Permanente San Jose Medical Center, where she spent four days battling COVID-19 last month.

The 77-year-old lifelong Santa Clara County resident and 60-year community activist is a fighter by nature, but she said she had never experienced anything close to the exhaustion and uncertainty of the novel coronavirus, which had claimed 129 lives in the county and 2,745 across California as of this weekend.

"When you're there for days, you wonder," Sally said. "It's the anticipation of, 'What's really going to happen to me?' It's a weird feeling, you don't know if you're gonna make it out of there."

After three days of waiting, she was approved for a COVID-19 test on April 7 after experiencing mild symptoms, including a fever and difficulty breathing. She was hospitalized 11 days later after her oxygen levels dropped, she developed viral pneumonia and was unable to eat or drink, eventually shedding around 20 pounds within two weeks.

"They told me that I was positive, and it only got worse," she said. "You can't eat nothing - not even a teaspoon of water, because the water tastes like salt. You can't talk, you can't walk, you can't do anything. It's just horrible."

Sheltering at home since Santa Clara County Public Health Officer Dr. Sara Cody's first mandate, Sally doesn't know exactly how she contracted the illness. It could have come from a bank ATM, the grocery store or from her daughter, Rebeca Armendariz, who had delivered food, diapers and other resources around the community each Friday prior to her mother's diagnosis.

"It just comes along with the territory, and I think my mom would agree," Rebeca said. "In her activism throughout her life she's been threatened before, but we really did feel like we were going to lose her (to COVID-19), and that was scary."

But Rebeca was diagnosed with the virus, too.

Rebeca said her mom's positive status brought more guilt, fear and panic than her own positive test result. Working as a union representative for the County Employees Management Association, which represents more than 2,300 public servants from janitor supervisors to nurses, she was able to take time off and paid family leave, but the pressure of being a caretaker for herself and her entire family took its toll.

She had a less-severe sickness but still battled chills, fatigue and gastrointestinal tract issues, as well as physical manifestations of stress and anxiety days after re-testing negative for the virus. Now with both on the mend, Rebeca, 45, is thankful for Kaiser in San Jose, especially hearing stories of denials for testing at the county-owned St. Louise Hospital just north of their home.

"If anybody knows my mom, she's a firebrand. This virus is a beast, the way that it took her out," she said. "We all got together as caregivers; we didn't sleep so we could watch her breathe. But even more than that, the community really enveloped us in love and support. I can't say it enough, but I think that's what really saved our lives."

Esperanza Cid was one of hundreds of family, friends and Gilroy residents who worked to keep the Armendariz family well. An organizer of the GoFundMe that has raised more than $5,000 so far, the Gilroy Unified School District employee said it was a way to give back to the family that has helped vulnerable populations regionally for generations, especially those experiencing homelessness and immigrants, including Cid's parents decades ago.

"It happened to someone that was really going to be the pillar and a leader in our community for the most vulnerable," Cid said. "Rebeca was the person that was going to be able to (be a bridge to) people who didn't have resources, so her being down in the most critical time in our community - the sentiment was, 'You did this for so many people at a magnitude that you'll never realize, so we'll be there for you.'"

The Armendariz family received gifts of citrus fruits, flowers, teas, toilet paper, sanitizer, phone calls, prayers and nopales - a favorite traditional Mexican cactus dish Sally dreamt of when heading home from the hospital. The financial, medical and emotional support lifted concerns of paying rent, buying groceries and covering copays for the list of treatments, Rebeca said.

Sally no longer needs the oxygen and walker. Motivated to see her family again, especially her 3-month-old great grandchild, she's heeded all medical advice - including taking the controversial drug hydroxychloroquine, which she said helped - and surpasses twice the recommended work in physical therapy, just because she loves a challenge.

"You have to have a little faith, first of all in our creator and then in the medical staff that's taking care of you," Sally said. "They're doing the best they can and you know they have families too, but they're risking their life to help your life. They're all angels sent from God, they are so good."

Now home, she still feels tightness and pressure in her chest, but she's talking, walking and cracking jokes again. Even so, a team of pharmacists, doctors and respiratory therapists call twice a day checking in and giving advice for care, while her phone is inundated with personal calls and messages.

"I think about it and I want to cry," she said. "There's nothing they haven't brought us. If I live to be a million years, I'll never ever be able to thank all these people for the love they showed."

Before she's out of the woods from this case of COVID-19, concerns of possibly getting it again haven't stopped her from getting ready to get back to work. As part of the nonprofit Community Agency for Resources, Advocacy and Services in Gilroy, Sally's already been working from home with her computer and keyboard set up to the TV, as the community copes with increased issues within schools, families, law enforcement and unemployment.

"Let me tell you, I'm ready to go back to the office, but my family and doctor won't let me," she said. "People come in and send messages that they need help, and we have to give them the help. Landlords are trying to evict people, people can't pay the rent, and we need to be getting attorneys down here to help them."

There's also a lot of community health education to do, they both agreed, especially as Latino men have recorded disproportionally high death rates in the county, and concerns continue for farm workers who often lack unemployment benefits. Many who had health benefits before the pandemic lost that coverage if they lost their jobs.

"This is a stark reminder to union members that we always fight to maintain and improve the benefits that we do have," Rebeca said. "But on the flip side, I'd love to be in a country and world where our ability to live and survive and thrive isn't tied to a job, isn't tied to a system that is based on somebody's arbitrary evaluation of the merits of your work."

But even as these medical, financial and survival concerns are hitting nearly every sector of every community, neither of the Armendariz women think the pandemic will bring necessary changes to the political lens of health care. That's why they're gearing up to get back to work and help - as soon as they physically can.

"You just keep organizing and hope that our story, our suffering, our work will lead people to that road of understanding," Rebeca said. "We faced death with this virus. We fought it off, together and with our community. We're ready to help others do the same."

This story was originally published by San Jose Spotlight. Please use the following link when sharing: https://sanjosespotlight.com/south-bay-activists-spent-lifetime-fighting-for-worker-rights-then-they-got-covid-19/

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.
The lesson from the Great Recession is that when crisis strikes, even the quickest legislative response tends to be too slow and that needs tend to linger, while the environment for putting together policy solutions gets more challenging, said Jacob J. Lew, who was a Treasury secretary in the Obama administration. Putting those programs on autopilot would have helped, he said.

Automatic stabilizers for programs like unemployment insurance, food stamps and fiscal relief for states through Medicaid would make us more resilient, and that would make it easier to recover from severe economic shocks, Mr. Lew said. And importantly, the spending would automatically disappear when its no longer needed. It doesnt have the risk of hanging around for too long.

The bill that Mr. Beyer wrote with two Democratic senators, Jack Reed and Michael Bennet, would have maintained expanded unemployment insurance benefits for workers in states based on a tapered system in which benefits would have been more generous in states where the unemployment rate remained high. Those benefits would have eventually gone away as the jobless rate fell.

Lets not have a partisan fight to turn on and turn off help to people when the economy goes south, Mr. Beyer said. How elegant to have something that turns on when you need it and turns off when you dont need it.

But in terms of political prospects of these policies, there is a Catch-22.

The pandemic-induced economic crisis created political room for major policy action, but in some ways the fact that the economy is in free fall makes automating the response harder politically. With a stratospheric unemployment rate that the Congressional Budget Office forecasts will remain very high through at least the end of next year, the fiscal cost of benefits pegged to the jobless rate is quite high.

By contrast, if Congress had put in place benefit triggers tied to the unemployment rate back when the jobless rate was 3.5 percent and there was no recession on the horizon, the cost estimate would have been much lower  but there would have been no urgency to act.

This being an election year adds another wrinkle. One advantage of tying social assistance to economic data is that Congress can act without knowing which political party might benefit in the future. Its not clear which party would be set to gain advantage in this case, and its even possible Democrats and Republicans alike could benefit.
Many times such incidents happen in the world, which is difficult to believe. Something similar happened in 2016. Egypt Airbus-320, a passenger plane of Egypt Airlines from the world's most modern airport to the city of Cairo, flew with a total of 66 people and suddenly disappeared from the sky. Months have passed since this mysterious incident happened, but so far no clue has been found.

Egypt Airlines' passenger plane Airbus-320 flew from Paris on May 18, 2016, to the city of Cairo, Egypt. In this flight of four hours, the ship had also completed the journey of 3 hours 40 minutes and the floor was just 20 minutes away. But suddenly this ship lost contact with the traffic centre. After this, it is lost in the air. Many things happened about its disappearance, but nothing of the ship could be known. It was first estimated that the aircraft may have been hijacked by the terrorists, but then later no such signs were found. After this, it was again believed that the plane may have crashed somewhere. A search operation started again regarding this. For many months and in many countries, the aircraft went on the investigation, but nothing was touched.

The conversation started at the airport of both countries regarding the disappearance of this ship. Shortly thereafter, a statement by French President Francois Hollande comes out that there is no hope of missing Airbus. No theory can be dismissed about this disappearance. It can also be some kind of terrorist action or an accident. According to the information, a total of 66 people were onboard the aircraft, including 10 crew members including 56 passengers. The ship was about to reach its destination in 20 minutes but it suddenly got out of the radar. After this, many attempts were made to make contact with this plane but all failed. Till now nobody has known anything about this plane.

Biggest gold statue of Buddha is situated in this country

Facebook Will Give You Rs 77 Lakh just develop this system

Child teaches a lesson to car driver for throwing bottle on road
Help.org, a trusted online resource for individuals who struggle with addiction and their loved ones, has announced the Best Rehab Facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada for 2020. The informational guide recognizes the top 7 rehab facilities based on cost, treatment options, location, accompanying services and more.

According to recent studies, drug overdose is the leading cause of death among people under age 50. In Las Vegas, deaths related to opioid abuse increased significantly from 2011 to 2015. Substance abuse among adolescents is also escalating in Las Vegas with 55 percent of high school students reported using alcohol, 38 percent reported using marijuana, 8 percent reported using prescription drugs without a valid prescription, and 2 percent reported using heroin. With the growing need for accessible and high-quality rehab programs, Help.org has developed a unique ranking process to help connect individuals with treatment providers that meet their needs.

The Help.org research team analyzed thousands of facilities across the country and then identified the most cost-effective and highest rated programs in larger cities like Las Vegas. Each facility was evaluated based on rehabilitation services, treatment approaches, cost, special programs for unique demographics and ancillary services. The website also provides information about drug use and side effects as well as educational articles. For a detailed listing of the Best Rehab Facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada please visit https://www.help.org/drug-and-alcohol-rehab-centers-in-las-vegas-nv/

2020 Best Rehab Facilities in Las Vegas, Nevada (in alphabetical order)

Co Occurring Program Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health

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702-486-6000

Community Counseling Center

714 East Sahara Avenue Suite 103 Las Vegas, NV 89104

702-369-8700

Desert Hope

2465 East Twain Avenue Las Vegas, NV 89121

702-789-6203

Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center

211 Judson Avenue North Las Vegas, NV 89030

702-399-2769

Southern Nevada Adult Mental Health Co-Occurring Program

6161 West Charleston Boulevard Las Vegas, NV 89146

702-486-6000

Vitality Unlimited Restoration Counseling Services  Satellite Office

6885 West Charleston Boulevard Las Vegas, NV 89117

702-629-7799

Westcare Nevada, Inc. Community Triage Center

930 North 4th Street Las Vegas, NV 89101

702-383-4044

ABOUT HELP.ORG

Help.org is an online resource for individuals who struggle with addiction and their loved ones. The website provides the latest research through scientifically proven methods, community recovery resources as well as information about local financial assistance. Help.orgs team of researchers, activists and writers work together with addiction counselors and other professionals to offer useful and accurate resources to help individuals seeking recovery. To learn more, visit https://www.help.org/.
Taxpayers will get the benefit of 28 acres of prime Dublin 4 land as the Religious Sisters of Charity receive exactly 1 for gifting lands in the city worth at least 200m.

The lands, which the Sisters announced last week they were gifting to the Irish people, are the sites of several important hospitals including St Vincent's.

The 200m estimate is based on the value of the land alone and does not include any assets built on the land, which would make the gift much more valuable.

The congregation will receive exactly 1 for land at Elm Park, incorporating St Vincent's University Hospital and St Vincent's Private Hospital, as well as over three acres at St Michael's Hospital in Dun Laoghaire.

It will receive the nominal sum from a new body called St Vincent's Holdings CLG when the nuns transfer their shareholding in St Vincent's Healthcare Group to the company, which will be registered with the Charities Regulator as a not-for-profit company with charitable status governed by Irish Company Law.

The Religious Sisters of Charity (RSC) are the sole shareholders of St Vincent's Healthcare Group.

The Irish Independent has learned that the wording of the Vatican's Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life's approval granted the Irish nuns "permission to transfer the entire issued share capital of St Vincent's Healthcare Group to St Vincent's Holding for the nominal sum of 1".

The document states: "Permission granted."

This approval enables the nuns to move forward with the transfer of their ownership of St Vincent's Healthcare Group site to St Vincent's Holdings CLG.

The RSC congregation said they "will not be involved in any way" in the new independent entity, St Vincent's Holdings CLG, and therefore they could not comment on its future structure regarding directors and management.

Meanwhile, the new National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park will be "a special-purpose company which will be set up under the auspices of the 2016 Mulvey agreement to ensure a single system of clinical and operational governance on the Elm Park campus", a spokesperson for St Vincent's Healthcare Group said.

The RSC also stressed the new hospital would not be subject to the Catholic Church's canon law as claimed by some commentators last week following their announcement they had secured Vatican agreement for the alienation of the land.

The Government has said the announcement by the congregation and the Vatican approval removed "any remaining concerns" that there could be a religious influence at the new National Maternity Hospital.

"All matters relating to St Vincent's Holdings CLG including structure, directors and management should be directed to St Vincent's Healthcare Group," a spokesperson for the Religious Sisters of Charity said.

St Vincent's Healthcare Group confirmed the nuns would have no role in the new holding company. "The RSC are transferring their shares in St Vincent's Healthcare Group to St Vincent's Holdings CLG (SVH CLG) therefore the RSC will not have any input or control over the management or operations of St Vincent's Holdings CLG, St Vincent's Healthcare Group and its hospitals," it said.

As a holding company, the oversight role of St Vincent's Holdings CLG is, according to St Vincent's, to advance healthcare by promoting medical education, medical research and patient care in all areas of medicine through St Vincent's Healthcare Group and its hospitals.

According to St Vincent's Healthcare Group (SVHG), as detailed in the Mulvey agreement of November 2016, the new National Maternity Hospital at Elm Park will have clinical and operational independence from other hospitals in the group.
New Delhi, May 15 : Only about 1 per cent of GDP or Rs 1.9 lakh crore of relief measures remain to be announced by the Centre in the coming days as calculations show that most of the allocated amount which added up to 10 per cent of GDP has already been exhausted.

"We expect the government to announce the remaining Rs 1.9 trillion of measures (1 per cent of GDP) over the next few days," Prachi Misha of Goldman Sachs wrote in a research.

Goldman Sachs noted that including the measures announced on Thusday, Rs 8.4 trillion worth of relief measures have been announced during the last two days.

Taking into account the Phase 1 stimulus package of Rs 1.7 trillion announced in March, as well as the measures taken by the RBI to infuse liquidity into the system between February and April, which based on calculations amount to Rs 8 trillion and are likely to be included in the Rs 20 trillion figure, we expect the government to announce the remaining Rs 1.9 trillion of measures (1 per cent of GDP) over the next few days, Goldman Sachs said.

Following up on Wednesday's announcement of Rs 5.9 trillion relief measures, the Finance Minister on Thursday unveiled another round of details on the Rs 20 trillion fiscal package, amounting to a total of Rs 2.5 trillion or 1.2 per cent of GDP. The measures particularly focused on migrant workers, small farmers, street vendors, and small traders.

Brokerage firm, Jefferies said in a research that the fiscal package 2 has nothing substantial. The Rs 3.2 trillion package announcement on Thursday was unexciting. The details for Rs 16-18 trilion (8-9 per cent of GDP) are now known and the net hit to the central government fiscal is 1 per cent of GDP.

Over the last week, G Sec yields have moved up by only 10 bps, implying that the market expects heavy RBI intervention. With the bulk of the fiscal announcements now behind, focus will likely shift to economic recovery indicators and lifting of the lockdown, which will be a gradual process.

The government announced 9 measures with focus on welfare measures for bottom-of-pyramid population. Most of these are extension of old schemes, Jefferies wrote.

Citi Research said in a note that liquidity windows might be inadequate to support economic recovery in then absence of demand stimulus.

The government and the RBI have now provided more than Rs 13 trillion (6.5 per cent of GDP) in liquidity and credit support to various segments of the economy which will help avert major demand decline from defaults in vulnerable entities. However, given lower demand and income visibility, some of the better positioned borrowers might not avail the various liquidity facilities. Moreover, easy credit amid low structural demand could accentuate the NPA issues plaguing the financial system. It is essential for remaining stimulus measures to ensure that the supply side shock does not morph into a demand side shock.

Citi said the government has reiterated commitment towards labour codes to protect workers. The government would continue to work on the four labour codes (one bill passed and others under different stages of parliamentary process) that would facilitate protection and formalization of the labour force. Moreover, to support urban migrant workers, the government would improve the availability of affordable rental housing particularly for migrant workers through the PPP route.
'Sad day for Italian culture' with death of Ezio Bosso.

The internationally acclaimed Italian composer, concuctor and pianist Ezio Bosso died today at his home in Bologna.

He was 48 years old and had been suffering from a neurodegenerative disease since 2011, forcing him to give up playing the piano last year.

Despite his illness however he continued to play, compose and direct until relatively recently.

Italian culture minister Dario Franceschini paid tribute to Bosso: "A profound and generous man, an explosive artist capable of transmitting the joy of playing and passion for music."

Franceschini said he was deeply saddened by Bosso's death, describing it is a "sad day for Italian culture."

Last year Rome city council voted to confer honorary citizenship on Bosso, in recognition of his "artistic excellence, as an ambassador of Italian musical culture around the world."

The recipient of prestigious awards both nationally and internationally, Bosso was director of numerous orchestras including the Accademia Nazionale di S. Cecilia in Rome.

Foto Fraioli / Auditorium Parco della Musica
My line, You pick your risks, Ill pick mine, was aimed at those people who choose to judge anyone who doesnt follow their every decision. I do not wear a mask in every public situation. If requested or mandated, of course. Or if I feel I could endanger others who are vulnerable. Otherwise, it depends on the circumstance. I dont judge others who choose to not wear one, though I may stand further away from them.
The BJP on Friday hailed the finance minister's announcement for the agriculture sector, asserting that it is a "liberation day" for farmers who will now have the "right to right prices" as it will create an enabling environment for them to get best results for their produce.

Welcoming the decisions announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, BJP president J P Nadda described the proposed amendments to the Essential Commodities Act, 1955, and the APMC Act, among other measures, as "far-reaching" agricultural reforms and lauded Prime Minister Narendra Modi for these "very effective" decisions.

"Today's announcements will hugely benefit farmers and enhance their incomes," he said.

Senior BJP leaders and Union ministers Prakash Javadekar and Ravi Shankar Prasad lauded the package.

Prasad said all the decisions announced in the last few days as part of the Rs 20 lakh crore special package is aimed at "rejuvenation" of India during the COVID-19 crisis and have one recurrent theme, which is "compassion" for the poor and marginalised, farmers and the MSME sector, with an aim to empower them and turn the challenging time into an opportunity.

"Today is liberation day for farmers," Javadekar told PTI and added that it was a 70-year-old demand of farmers that they should get the choice of whom to sell their produce as they were bound so far to go to a particular agency.

This "exploitation" will now be over and farmers can sell their produce by their choice, he said.

The Essential Commodities Act was promulgated in 1955 when there used to be scarcity of food, which is not the case now.

"We should not tie farmers to unnatural conditions and deprive them of their fair chance to get good price outside or within the country. That will be done.

"They will have the right to right prices as a farmer will not only choose his buyer but also the method. In any industry, nobody monitors sale but it was done in agriculture. It was discouraging," he said.

Prasad said the announcement made on Friday focuses on creating a resurgent infrastructure for farming, dairy, animal husbandry and fishing.

In an apparent rejection of criticism from some quarters that the central government has not handed over cash to the poor in this time of crisis, he noted that over Rs 52,000 crore has gone into hands of the needy through direct benefit transfer and other digital mode of payments.

Over Rs 1,000 crore was delivered by postmen through Aadhaar-enabled payments to the remotest regions of the country, Prasad said.

Javadekar said the announcements made in the last three days address immediate problems and also correct many wrongs done in the past.

Large sections of the needy population, including farmers, senior citizens and women, have been given cash by the government, he said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
US President Donald Trump has threatened to slap new taxes on American companies to dissuade them from moving their manufacturing bases from China to countries like India and Ireland, instead of their own, amid the Covid-19 pandemic. In an interview with Fox Business News, Trump said taxation was an incentive for companies to return manufacturing bases to the US. Apple said now theyre going to go to India.

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Wagner Marseille, superintendent of the Cheltenham School District. The district and its teachers union have a new contract that gives teachers raises, but allows the district to renegotiate in the event of budget trouble. Read more

The Cheltenham school board has approved a new three-year contract with its teachers union that grants raises each year  but with a coronavirus-induced caveat that some say could become more common for school districts in the wake of the pandemic.

If the Montgomery County districts financial situation worsens, it will be able to reopen the contract  which will cost $3.1 million over three years  under provisions agreed to by the union and approved by the board this week.

Among the circumstances that would trigger a reopening of the contract: if the districts projected tax collection rate falls by more than 3% from the year before, or if its primary source of state aid shrinks by $300,000. The districts budget for next year is about $122 million.

I dont believe there is a more comprehensive reopener provision in any Commonwealth of Pennsylvania collective bargaining agreement, said Jeff Sultanik, a lawyer who represents school districts, including Cheltenham, in contract negotiations.

As the pandemic upends the economy, jeopardizing school budgets, Sultanik said he expected other districts to pursue similar agreements. Otherwise, negotiating more than a one-year contract becomes very difficult," he said.

 READ MORE: Schools brace for budget cuts as the coronavirus wreaks havoc on the economy

The agreement grants raises in the first, second, and third years, of 2%, 2.94%, and 2.58%, retroactive to July 1, 2019. But it also specifies that if the districts financial situation deteriorates, triggering the reopening, the district and union will have 45 days to renegotiate the salaries.

If they cant agree, the issue will go to binding arbitration, with limitations to protect the districts finances.

For the district, which had been negotiating with the union since January 2019, we knew the ground had shifted dramatically" when the coronavirus hit, said Joel Fishbein, the school board vice president. He and President Julie Haywood credited the union with incredible flexibility in reaching an agreement.

The union represents about 400 teachers. Salaries for this school year start at $45,916 to $67,585 depending on the teachers education and certification level, and top out at $85,157 to $117,281.

This was a long process, but were glad we were able to reach an agreement that lets the parties work together cooperatively moving forward, including if provisions reopening the contract kick in, said Amy Rosenberger, a lawyer for the union.

The agreement also includes changes to health care insurance that save the district money, and language allowing for flexible scheduling at middle and high schools  changes that were being discussed before the pandemic, and that wouldnt go into effect until the 2021-22 school year, Haywood said.

Other districts in the midst of contract negotiations include Philadelphia, where the district has projected a $1 billion budget hole over five years as a result of the pandemic.

 READ MORE: Philadelphia teachers union president Jerry Jordan fends off challengers, but progressives make gains

Of whether Cheltenhams contract would serve as a template for others, this is not a one size fits all," Rosenberger said. "Its hard to predict how this might play out in other districts in the area or across the state.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman (File image: Reuters)

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on May 15 announced a Rs 1 lakh crore financial assistance to fund Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate and aggregation points.

The announcements were part of the third tranche of the economic stimulus package that the PM announced in his May 12 address to help India become self-reliant in the wake of the novel coronavirus pandemic.

For this, the government will immediately create an Agri-Infrastructure Fund amounting Rs 1 lakh crore, FM Sitharaman said.

This fund will be used for setting up cold chain infrastructure and financially viable post-harvest management infrastructure, she 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

This financing facility apart from funding Agriculture Infrastructure Projects at farm-gate and aggregation points will also assist Primary Agriculture Cooperative Societies, Farmers Producer Organisations, agriculture entrepreneurs, start-ups among other agri-focused institutions.
True Wireless Earbuds market has grown rapidly in the last couple of years, thanks to affordable offerings from various companies. No company wants to remain behind and as a result, we have true wireless earbuds from almost every smartphone OEM. In India, the segment is getting interesting with time as major smartphone OEMs such as Xiaomi and realme have released their affordable TWS earbuds. realme launched its first TWS offering realme Buds Air in India back in December. Now after a long wait, Xiaomi has finally launched its first TWS Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 in India. realme Buds Air and Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 are priced INR 3,999 and INR 4,499 respectively.

We have been using both for last few months now and in this post, we will be comparing both in details, we used Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 unit bought from ShareSave which runs a different firmware as compared to India units, but before diving into comparison lets have a look at specifications of both.

Realme Buds Air specifications,

Bluetooth 5.0 (AAC/SBC codec) to connect to Android and iOS devices

12mm driver and LCP advanced multi-layer composite

diaphragm

diaphragm Touch controls for call control, track change, Google Assistant

Dual microphones for environmental noise cancellation, voice control

Infrared sensor for intelligent wear detection so it automatically pauses when you remove them

R1 chip for low-latency gaming mode

realme Link App support

4.5g per headset, Case Dimensions: 51.345.3 mmx25.3 mm; Case weight:42.3 g

3 hours of standalone playback, 17 hours with the case, USB Type-C charging for the case to charge in 2 hours, 10W Qi wireless charging

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 specifications,

Bluetooth 5.0 (LDHC/SBC/AAC codes) to connect to Android and iOS devices

14.2mm drivers

Touch controls call control, and Google Assistant

Dual microphones for noise cancellation, voice control

Infrared sensor for intelligent wear detection so it automatically pauses when you remove them

Semi-in-ear design to fit your ear canal, making it comfortable to wear and doesnt fall off easily.

Each headset weigh just 4.5 grams, Case weighs 50 grams

4 hours of standalone playback, 14 hours with the case, USB Type-C charging for the case to charge in 1 hour

Design and Build Quality:

realme Buds Air and Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 both feature semi-in-ear design inspired by Apple AirPods, thats the first thing youre gonna notice as soon as you pick up any of these.

realme Buds Air has a refined design with gentle curves while Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 has sharp edges, be it earbuds or charging capsule so realme Buds Air are easy to carry around in pockets but realme Buds Air does wobble a little and often fall off when placed on a flat surface which isnt the case with Mi True Wireless Earphones 2.

realme Buds Air has a glossy finish while Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 has a matte finish and is less prone to scratches and fingerprint compared to realme Buds Air. realme Buds Air charging capsule measures 51.3 x 45.3 x 25.3 and weighs 42.3 grams, on the other hand, Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 charging capsule weighs 50 grams.

These earbuds are completely made of plastic but realme Buds Air and Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 both features half-in-ear design but these fit well in the ear and do not fall off accidentally even if you shake your head, so there shouldnt be any problem if you plan to use these while workouts or running.

Each earbud weighs under 5grams, thanks to the plastic construction and you wont even notice that youre wearing it. Neither of the companies have mentioned anything about IP rating or water-resistant rating but you can use these while running or gym sessions without any worries.

You wont find any company branding anywhere on the earbuds, and both the companies have gone for branding on the charging capsule only. The charging capsules have an LED Light that glows white/red on Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 and green/yellow/red on realme Buds Air. You wont find any LED on the earbuds in either of realme Buds Air or Mi True Wireless Earphones 2.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 is only in white color as of now and it might be an issue for some since white picks up dirt easily. realme Buds Air is available in white, black and yellow colors, and users can pick a color based on their preference, we wish Xiaomi has also launched a black variant of Mi True Wireless Earphones 2.

We personally found Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 more comfortable as compared to realme Buds Air when used continuously for around a couple of hours. With that said, some might find realme Buds Air more comfortable and vice versa due to half-in-ear design, as a design can simply not be comfortable for all.

To sum it up, Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 felt more comfortable compared to realme Buds Air. Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 have better and sturdy build compared to realme Buds Air, our realme Buds Air retail unit got a small crack near charging port even with after being handled very carefully.

realme Buds Air Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Finish Glossy, prone to scratches Matte Design Gentle Curves, easy to carry Sharp Edges Weight 42.3 grams 50 grams Color White, Black, Yellow White

Connectivity, Pairing, and Controls:

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2, as well as realme Buds Air, support Bluetooth 5.0 and as per the companies, the connection range is around 10 meters. During our testing, we found the connection range to be good. Despite having Bluetooth 5.0 support, these can only be connected to one device at a time.

The pairing processes are fairly easy and intuitive for both of these, I will not go much into specifics in this comparison post. Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 support pop-up pairing for devices running Android 10 based MIUI 11, but realme Buds Air also has support for Google Fast Pairing.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2, as well as realme Buds Air, both feature an infrared sensor on each earbud so the music playback stops as soon as either of the earbuds is removed from the ear and playback resumes as soon as you put it back in the ear.

The earbuds have a touch-sensitive area, you can find the supported features and their functions in the tables below.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Left earphone (L) Right earphone (R) Answer/disconnect a call Double tap Double tap Play/Pause Double tap Launch Voice assistant Double tap

realme Buds Air Left earphone (L) Right earphone (R) Play/Pause / Answer a call Double tap Double tap Next Song Triple tap Triple tap Launch Voice assistant Press and hold Press and hold End/decline a call Press and hold Press and hold Enter/exit Gaming Mode Press and hold

realme Buds Air has realme Link app support, which is the official app for realme AIoT products. Users can check the battery status of individual left and right earbuds and can customize gestures as per their preferences. realme Link app doesnt provide you the functionality to adjust the volume but you can jump between tracks which is impossible on Mi True Wireless Earphones 2.

To sum it up, the pairing process is fairly easy and the connection range is good on both the earbuds. realme Buds Air has an advantage over Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 due to realme Link app support. The touchpads on the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 feel more responsive compared to the realme Buds Air probably due to the thick stem on Mi True Wireless Earbuds 2, but the ability to jump between the tracks is certainly a big convenience on realme Buds Air.

realme Buds Air Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Bluetooth 5.0 5.0 Pairing Google Fast Pairing Pop-up Pairing for Android 10 based MIUI Wear Detection Yes, auto play/pause Yes, auto play/pause Track change Yes Not possible Volume Adjustment No No App Support realme Link No app support

Audio Quality and Call Performance:

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 packs a larger 14.2 mm driver compared to 12 mm drivers on the realme Buds Air. The Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 supports LHDC Hi-Res audio codec for HD sound quality on supported devices along with AAC and SBC codecs which realme Buds Air have support for SBC and AAC.

Coming to Audio, we found realme Buds Air louder as compared to Mi True Wireless Earphones 2. You will find noise leaking issues on both realme Buds Air as well as Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 due to the semi-in-ear design.

Though there is no complaint when it comes to audio quality, both these earbuds are capable to deliver good sound experience. We found the bass on the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 little underwhelming (our unit doesnt run Indian firmware), but on realme Buds Air you will feel better bass when listening to low-frequency audio.

In almost every department we found realme Buds Air sound better compared to Mi True Wireless Earphones 2, be it vocals, dynamic range or handling treble.

We noticed some latency on Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 as you would expect with any wireless audio product but nothing major, though it might be an issue if you plan to use these while playing battle royale games. The low-latency gaming mode on realme Buds Air comes handy for such gaming since it reduces the latency by up to 50%, and it does make a difference.

realme says that it the normal 243.8ms latency was reduced to 119.3ms in the gaming mode during internal testing. This is achieved by real-time dual-channel transmission and the R1 chip. You can enter the gaming mode by simply a long press on both left and right earbuds. You get an engine revving noise, and when you exit there is a musical chime.

The call quality is good on realme Buds Air as well as Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 due to the Environment Noise cancellation as well as a secondary noise-canceling mic on the top of the stem. The primary microphone sits at the bottom of the stem, so its closer to the mouth and captures voice well. Even in a noisy environment, the person on the other end didnt complain of the call quality and was able to hear me properly.

realme Buds Air Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 Driver size 12 mm 14.2 mm Low-latency mode Yes No Audio Codecs SBC, AAC SBC, AAC and LHDC Environment Noise Cancellation Yes Yes

Battery Life:

Xiaomi claims a battery life of 4 hours on a single charge, and up to 14 hours of battery life with the case while realme claims a battery life of 3 hours (at 50% volume) on a single charge and up to 17 hours (at 50% volume) with the case. During our testing, we found the battery life on Mi True Wireless Earphones on par with the company claims, as it lasted for 3 hours 27 minutes on 100% volume while realme Buds Air lasted for 2 hours and 10 minutes on 100% volume.

You can check the battery status of the realme Buds Air as well as Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 in the status bar of your smartphone in case your smartphone runs on Android 8.1 or later version of Android. Alternatively, you can also check the battery status of realme Buds Air earbuds with realme Link app.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 earbuds take about 40 minutes to charge from 0 to 100 while realme Buds Air earbuds take about same time to charge from 0 to 100. Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 support quick charge which is clearly an advantage over realme Buds Air.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 charging capsule can charge the earbuds almost three times, so in total, you can expect a battery life of about 12-13 hours easily at 100% volume. realme Buds Air charging capsule can also charge the earbuds almost three times, resulting in a battery life of about 8-9 hours at 100% volume.

Mi True Wireless Earphones 2, as well as realme Buds Air have a USB Type-C charging port at the bottom. Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 takes about an hour to get fully charged while realme Buds Air takes about 2 hours.

An LED light can be found on the Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 charging capsule, the LED glows in red color while charging and LED goes off as soon as the case is fully charged. The LED light on the realme Buds Air charging capsule lights up in green, orange, and red to indicate the charge left.

To sum it up, the battery life on Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 is good and significantly better as compared to realme Buds Air. realme Buds Air has an advantage due to wireless charging support but quick charging on Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 makes up for it. Xiaomi may not have gone with the wireless charging to keep the cost low. If battery life is your priority, pick Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 over realme Buds Air without thinking twice.

realme Buds Air Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 App Support to check battery life Yes No Charging port USB Type-C USB Type-C Wireless Charging Yes, 10W Qi certified No Quick Charge No Yes Battery Capacity (Earbuds)  30mAh Battery Life (Earbuds) 2 Hour 10 Minutes 3 Hour 30 Minutes Charging Time (Earbuds) 40 Minutes 40 Minutes Battery capacity (Capsule)  250mAh Battery Life (Including Charing Capsule) 8-9 Hours 12-13 Hours Charging Time (Capsule) 2 Hours 1 Hour

Conclusion:

You can not really go wrong with either of these, we could have wholeheartedly recommended realme Buds Air over Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 had it better build and battery life.

If youre someone who needs low latency gaming mode, app support, and convenience of wireless charging but can compromise on battery life and build quality, you should go with realme Buds Air. In case you decide to buy realme Buds Air, do yourself a favor by getting official realme Buds Air Iconic case or some other case to save it from scratches and cracks.

Mi True Wireless Earphones have a really impressive build, Hi-res LHDC Audio codec, quick charge support, and really good battery life but dont sound as good and loud (our Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 unit runs a different firmware as compared to Indian units) as realme Buds Air and lack low latency mode, app support and wireless charging. You can check out our full reviews of Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 and realme Buds Air.

Availability and Pricing

realme Buds Air is available on flipkart and realme.com for a price of Rs. 3999, while Mi True Wireless Earphone 2 is available on amazon.in, mi.com, and Mi Home stores at a price of Rs. 4499. As an early-bird offer, Xiaomi is selling Mi True Wireless Earphones for Rs. 3999 till 17th May. Mi True Wireless Earphones 2 can also be purchased from ShareSave for approx Rs 4,500 with one-year official warranty.

Thanks, Sai Milind for sharing screenshots!
SAUL LOEB

The judge in the case against former national security adviser Michael Flynn announced Wednesday that he has appointed a retired judge as an amicus curiae to examine whether there is any reason why Flynn should not be held in contempt of court for perjury. Though Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, the DOJ set off a firestorm of criticism by filing a motion earlier this week to dismiss charges against him.

Judge Emmet Sullivan is also asking the former district court judge, John Gleeson, to argue against the Department of Justices decision to drop charges against the former Trump adviser. Before becoming a judge, Gleeson was well-known for prosecuting mafiosoes, including securing a conviction for Gambino boss John Gotti on racketeering and murder charges.

Gleeson has already offered his public opinion of the motion to dismiss. He wrote in a recent op-ed in The Washington Post, The departments motion to dismiss the Flynn case is actually just a requestone that requires leave of the court before it is effective...There has been nothing regular about the departments effort to dismiss the Flynn case. The record reeks of improper political influence.

He continued, If prosecutors attempt to dismiss a well-founded prosecution for impermissible or corrupt reasons, the people would be ill-served if a court blindly approved their dismissal request.

Flynn, a retired Army Lieutenant General, served as Trumps first national security adviser for less than a month in 2017. He later twice pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI during interviews about his work with the Turkish government and contacts with Russian officials. Claiming that corrupt agents in the bureau set him up, he has since sought to withdraw his plea.

In 2018, Sullivan told Flynn at his sentencing, arguably, you sold your country out. In the motion to dismiss, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia wrote, continued prosecution of this case would not serve the interests of justice.

Story continues

President Donald Trump and many of his allies had repeatedly protested the charges against Flynn and claimed they were part of a witch hunt against the president. Critics have accused Trump of exerting undue influence and Attorney General William Barr of bending the DOJ to the president's will. Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-NY), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said the pair are eroding the long tradition of impartiality of the DOJ in their push to exonerate former aides. Nadler described the attempt to withdraw charges against Flynn as evidence of a politicized and thoroughly corrupt Department of Justice.

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Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast / Photos Getty

MOSCOWThe babies are adorable, all pink and polished in white t-shirts with their names emblazoned on them, but more than 50 infants arrayed in row upon row of cribs in a Kyiv hotel are at the center of a huge scandal in Ukraine.

They were born to surrogate mothers, and the parents who arranged for their births cannot get to them because of the global COVID-19 lockdown, according to a video originally posted in late April by a Kyiv-based company called BioTexCom. It has made a businesswhat looks almost like an industryout of surrogacy. Unsurprisingly, Ukrainian bloggers have mocked it as a baby factory, and called the hotel a warehouse for the goods.

The situation is a source of enormous frustration and pain for parents scattered around the world. Couples from the United States, Mexico, Great Britain, China and many other countries are trying to get to Ukraine to see their newly born children, only to face the trauma of cancelled flights or refused visa requests.

BioTexCom, based in Kyiv, is one of several clinics providing hundreds of Ukrainian surrogate mothers for foreign parents for $20,000-$30,000, which is a fraction of the cost American parents might pay for surrogacy at home, and which bypasses laws in many countries that make surrogacy illegal.

In the video BioTexCom's lawyer assures parents and the public around the world that the companys babysitters take good care of the babies 24/7: Every day they spend some time with the children in the open air and bathe them. One of the BioTexCom babysitters adds cheerily, We have 46 babies in our hotel. It is difficult for us but we handle it well. And there are more on the way, were told.

In the slickly produced video, the babysitters are feeding some babies, while others are screaming, of course, and despite the pastel palette, it could be a typical scene from a Soviet or post-Soviet era Labor Home. Typically those had wards for 30 to 40 mothers and baby rooms where mothers could not go and where dozens of infants were kept for the first three to six days of their lives.

Story continues

Ukraine Is Americas New Adoption Mecca

Ukraines Ombudswoman for Human Rights, Lyudmila Denisova, said at a news briefing on Thursday, that as many as 51 babies are now staying without their parents at the Venice Hotel in Kyiv, all of them born at BioTexCom.

Talking with this clinic I found out that there are 100 babies waiting for their parents in various centers of reproductive medicine, Denisova said. They say that by the end of the quarantine we wont have hundreds but thousands of such babies.

To solve the issue for the parents of the Venice Hotel babies and the hundreds more due to be born in Ukraine in coming months, Denisova said she has reached out to Ukraines National Police, the Ministry of Health and Ministry of Social Policy. The necessary arrangements are being done to protect the babies rights, she said, but the parents rights are not so clear.

For years, Ukraine has been known as Europes surrogacy capital. For thousands of young Ukrainian women who may be living on $200 to $300 a month, carrying someone elses baby for nine months seems a good way to earn from $13,000 to $20,000.

But even before the pandemic, some foreign parents were left in limbo, complaining about corruption, issues with citizenship, and poor management.

Surrogacy is not illegal in Ukraine but it is not guided by any law or state regulation either, which is a problem, says Daria Kaleniuk, executive director of Ukraines Anti-Corruption Action Center. Many poor young women who try to get paid for bearing a baby are treated terribly, and may undergo labor in the worst conditions.

The BioTexCom video is explicitly intended to pressure the Ukrainian government and the governments of the parents country to reach an agreement allowing them to pick up their babies. But the publicity may have backfired.

We see many people calling to ban commercial surrogacy and international adoption altogether, Katerina Sergatskova, the founder of Zaborona media project told The Daily Beast. That would be a sad solution for thousands of children.

Their future would almost certainly be bleak. According to the latest report by UNICEF, the pandemic may push an additional 6.3 million Ukrainians below the poverty line, including 1.4 million children. An example of what happens when foreign adoptions are banned has been given by Russian President Vladimir Putin, who barred them in 2012 to retaliate against the United States for legislation he didnt like. Today, more than 40,000 Russian children live in orphanages.

It appears a few parents have managed to get through all the obstacles erected by Europe and Ukraine during the pandemic. In a video posted by BioTexCom on May 6, a couple identified as Maria and Andreas describe their ordeal of getting all the necessary documents under horrific circumstances.

After the news about their situation was aired on Swedish television, they say, an enormous sponsor called offering to help pay for a private jet so they could make it to Kyiv before their twin babies were born. As of last week they were still in quarantine in a Kyiv hotel, feeling totally exhausted by the stress: Weve been so tired, its been such a hard fight to find a way to get here, with a lot of anxiety, search for information, contacts, our brains are really tired, said Maria. Hopefully we will get through this quarantine before the babies are born.

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A central claim of the Mueller investigation into supposed Russian interference in the 2016 US Presidential Election was the allegation that Russian agents hacked the server of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) and passed emails on to WikiLeaks.

These emails, published by WikiLeaks in July 2016, revealed that the DNC had conspired to undermine Bernie Sanders campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination. The supposed Russian connection was baldly asserted ad-nauseum by the Democratic Party, US intelligence officials and dutifully repeated ever since by the corporate media, even after Muellers investigation collapsed.

Protestors hold up a banner demanding freedom for Julian Assange [Photo: AP Photo/Frank Augstein]

As the World Socialist Web Site commented at the time, this was always a politically motivated lie, designed to distort the American working class rejection of warmongering Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, discredit WikiLeaks, and advance an anti-democratic palace coup against Donald Trump. No evidence was ever provided for these assertions besides the say-so of anonymous members of the intelligence community.

Newly released testimony given to the House Intelligence Committee (HIC) confirms that these intelligence officials and Democratic Party operatives were deliberately spreading a lie. The source of the claim that Russian agents had hacked the DNC server was cyber security company CrowdStrike, hired by the Democratic Party to investigate its data breach. But, when interviewed by the HIC in December 2017, CrowdStrike President Shawn Henry admitted they had no good evidence that data was even hacked from the DNCs server, let alone that Russian hackers had done so.

His testimony has been covered up for more than two years. According to journalist Aaron Mate, in September 2018 the HIC voted unanimously to release the transcripts of witness interviews (including Henrys). But in March 2019, Democratic Representative Adam Schiffwho was one of those conducting the interview with Henryordered the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) to withhold the documents from White House lawyers intending to review them for executive privilege. Schiff refused to release the transcripts until a few days ago, after Trump ally and acting ODNI Director Richard Grenell threatened to release them himself.

Henrys statements to the Intelligence Committee make repeated reference to indicators and circumstantial evidence of a hack, but these cannot disguise the fact that no hard proof could be produced. He makes this admission in several of his answers to Committee members questions:

We did not have concrete evidence that the data was exfiltrated [moved electronically] from the DNC, but we have indicators that it was exfiltrated.

There are times when we can see data exfiltrated, and we can say conclusively. But in this case it appears it was set up to be exfiltrated, but we just dont have the evidence that says it actually left.

Theres not evidence that they were actually exfiltrated. Theres circumstantial evidence but no evidence that they were actually exfiltrated.

There is circumstantial evidence that that data was exfiltrated off the network We didnt have a sensor in place that saw data leave. We said that the data left based on the circumstantial evidence. That was the conclusion that we made.

As for the allegation that agents of the Russian state were responsible for this Schrodingers hack, Henry simply told the Intelligence Committee what he believed to be the case.

There are other nation-states that collect this type of intelligence for sure, he said, but thewhat we would call the tactics and techniques were consistent with what wed seen associated with the Russian state.

CrowdStrikes internal investigation saw activity that we believed was consistent with activity wed seen previously and had associated with the Russian Government.

CrowdStrike has multiple ties to pro-Democratic Party sections of the US elite, hellbent on an aggressive confrontation with Russia.

Before joining the company, Henry himself was an executive assistant director at the FBI while Mueller was director. CrowdStrikes co-founder Dmitri Alperovitch is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a leading think-tank for American imperialism. And, as Mate reports, the declassified testimony confirms that the company was hired to investigate the DNC data breach by Michael Sussman, a lawyer at Perkins Coie. The same law firm, with ties to the Democratic Party, hired intelligence company Fusion GPS to produce the infamous Steele dossiera collection of uncorroborated gossip alleging Trumps connections with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In 2016, CrowdStrike wrongly accused Russia of hacking into Ukrainian military technology.

FBI Director James Comey nevertheless described the company as highly respected in his testimony to the Mueller investigation. While CrowdStrike was carrying out its investigation into the DNC breach, the FBI did not look too closely at its work. Director James Comey told Congress in 2017, that the Bureau never got direct access to the [DNC] machines themselves.

CrowdStrike, he continued, shared with us their forensics from their review of the system.

From Henrys testimony, however, it is clear that CrowdStrike were allowed to be selective with the information they shared. According to him, the company provided the FBI with a couple of actual digital images out of in excess of ten, I think. Otherwise, CrowdStrike simply provided their own evaluations the results of our analysis based on what our technology went out and collected.

Last summer, Consortium News reported on a legal exchange between Trump ally Roger Stone and the Justice Department. Their communications revealed that CrowdStrike never provided the FBI with a final forensic report for its investigation, only three redacted drafts.
Prasanta Mazumdar By

Express News Service

GUWAHATI: Myanmar on Friday handed over 22 long-wanted insurgents from Manipur and Assam to India.

This is the first time that Yangon has acted on the request of New Delhi to hand over insurgents from the Northeast.

Twelve of the insurgents are from Manipur. They belong to groups such as United National Liberation Front (UNLF), People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak (PREPAK), Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) and Kanglei Yawol Kanna Lup (KYKL).

Of the remaining 10, five are from the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (NDFB-S) and as many others from Kamatapur Liberation Organisation (KLO).

Defence sources said that the insurgents were brought in a special plane.

The plane carrying the insurgents first had a stopover in Manipur capital Imphal. After handing over the 12 rebels from the state to the police there, the plane flew to Guwahati. Assams Director General of Police Bhaskar Jyoti Mahanta confirmed the plane landed in Guwahati where rest of the rebels were handed over to the state police.

The extremists include NDFB (S) home secretary Rajen Daimary, Sanatomba Ningthoujam of UNLF, and Pashuram Laishram of PREPAK.

The handing of the insurgents over to India by Myanmar is possibly the result of backdoor diplomacy, a defence source told this newspaper.

In January last year, the military of Myanmar had carried out a series of operations against militants from Indias Northeast. A number of them were apprehended. Some were also jailed.

Most militant groups in the Northeast operate from the soil of Myanmar, considered as a safe haven. They have their camps there where they impart training to the newly-recruited members.
Not that President Donald Trump would ever go to a Guns NRoses concert, but it doesnt look like hed be invited anyway.

First clue was probably last weeks Twitter spat between the bands frontman, Axl Rose, and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin over the handling of the coronavirus pandemic.

Turns out that wasnt a one-off because the band dropped the second clue Wednesday by offering a Live N Let Die With COVID 45 shirt for purchase on its website.

The shirts go for $25 with all proceeds reportedly going to the MusiCares COVID-19 Relief Fund.

Trump visited an N95 mask factory in Arizona last week while not wearing a mask. Music was playing in the background.

The song?

Guns N Roses Live and Let Die.

More: In Allentown, Trump suggests Pa. should reopen faster, talks plans to replenish the national stockpile
Sailors on Destroyer USS Roosevelt Join in Arctic Circle Ceremony

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS200514-10

Release Date: 5/14/2020 4:04:00 PM

From U.S. 6th Fleet Public Affairs

ARCTIC CIRCLE (NNS) -- Sailors aboard Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile Aegis destroyer USS Roosevelt (DDG 80) participated in a ceremony to become "Blue Nose" Sailors, May 3, days after the ship crossed over the Arctic Circle.

The "Order of the Blue Nose" is a Navy tradition dictating that when Sailors cross into the Arctic Circle, they enter the realm of Boreas Rex, King of the North. The only way to be accepted into the order is to successfully complete his list of challenges.

Roosevelt Sailors worked to complete the various trials before requesting Boreas Rex, played by Roosevelt's Command Master Chief James Kuroski and Chief Warrant Officer Matthew Hicks, deem them a "Blue Nose."

"Completing the Blue Nose ceremony was an exhilarating experience for the body and mind and soul," said Kuroski. "Operating above the Arctic Circle, where US Navy warships have not exercised in 30 years is an honor that is not lost on this crew."

10 crew members designated "Blue Noses" from previous Arctic operations were integral in planning and leading the ceremony for their shipmates.

"Being able to carry on the traditions of the Navy and pass those down to junior Sailors who will do the same throughout their careers brings an overwhelming sense of pride for myself and the team that organized the ceremony," said Chief Cryptologic Technician (Technical) Thomas A. Davis. "It was an inspiring time for me in my career to see such a small group of Sailors work together to plan and execute a ceremony that will be forever be remembered by over 300 Sailors."

The Blue Nose ceremony is one of several Navy traditions marking unique locations Sailors have been. The tradition means a lot to the Sailors who participate and become part of the exclusive orders.

"Being in the Navy for over 19 years now, I have had the great pleasure of going through two glorious ceremonies roughly 18 years apart," said Information Systems Technician First Class Russell T. Elliott. "The Shellback ceremony, though coveted in what goes on in that ceremony, has a small group of members as well as the Blue Nose.

"Now that I am both, I can say with great pride that I belong to two small groups in the Navy of brotherhood. [These ceremonies] bring the crew together as a family, and everyone now has a story to tell their children, grand-children, even great grand-children one day."

During the ceremony, the crew completed tasks assigned by Boreas Rex and his subjects, and even included the ship in the ceremony as participants painted their names on the ship's bull nose.

"It was a really cool experience," said Gas Turbine Systems Technician (Electrical) Fireman Christian E. Griffith. "They had an obstacle course all set up, and at the end we were officially blue noses. We even got to sign the ship in blue paint."

"Team Roosevelt came together and met every challenge that Boreas Rex and his subjects presented with the competitive grace that speaks to the professionals that stand watch on these deck plates! We could not be more proud of each and every one of these outstanding Sailors." said Kuroski.

The ship's presence in the Arctic Circle reinforced the United States' commitment to regional security and stability, as well as the Navy's ability to deploy to many different environments on short notice, and the value of having forward-deployed naval forces available to operate in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations.

Roosevelt is on patrol in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in support of regional allies and partners, and U.S. national security interests in Europe and Africa. Roosevelt will replace USS Carney (DDG 64) as one of four forward deployed naval forces (FDNF) in Spain.

U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa.

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Being named valedictorian is especially significant for Grissom. A product of west Baltimore, the history major said people discounted her and made assumptions about her abilities because of her origin. Being named valedictorian confirms for her that how one begins does not determine how one ends.

"I am incredibly proud of my Baltimore roots and I hope this moment serves as evidence that inner city youth should not be underestimated," she said. "As a first-generation college student, I am incredibly blessed to have a village of amazing mentors, teachers, family members, friends, neighbors, professors and church members who have supported me throughout my life's journey. I would not be where I am today without them, and this honor is as much theirs as it is mine."

Michelle Hite, Ph.D., associate professor of English and director of the Honors Program, is one of those mentors. Even though Grissom was never one of her students, Dr. Hite's mentorship helped shape her intellectual life at Spelman.

"Kendra sought me out after hearing me speak and wanted to learn more about my intellectual journey and how to build a life rooted in ideas," said Dr. Hite. "Through Kendra's example, students can observe the intellectual sovereignty that serious academic work demands. Though no instructor gave Kendra an assignment to seek me out or to create rich and meaningful intellectual experiences for herself, she did it anyway. Grad school is built for just such a renegade. I'm proud of her and look forward to having her as a professional peer one day soon."

The recipient of the Clio Outstanding History Graduating Senior Award, Grissom is a member of the Phi Alpha Theta and Phi Beta Kappa Honor Societies and a UNCF Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. She served as a mentor in the Ford First Gen Scholars Program, was an ambassador of the Spelman College Museum of Fine Art and worked with the Spelman College Glee Club. Following graduation, Grissom will continue her studies at Johns Hopkins University, where she plans to pursue a Ph.D. in history. Her overall goal is to become a professor at a historically Black college or university, making history more accessible while actively working to impact change in public education.

Following in the footsteps of her mother and aunts, McClam is a fourth generation HBCU graduate. Choosing to attend Spelman was the best decision of her life, she said, because she learned the power of persevering after failure.

"I always had the goal of maintaining high scholastic excellence throughout my Spelman career. Every semester, I made a pact with myself to maintain a good balance between my academics, extracurricular activities and time with my friends," she said. "Many opportunities I received, I got on my second or third try. Spelman taught me how to pick myself up after I fall. This honor means the world to me and to my family."

McClam credits professors like Jeanne T. Meadows, Ph.D., associate professor of international studies and director of the International Affairs Center, with helping her throughout her Spelman career. Dr. Meadows expects that through her work, McClam will bring to life Spelman's mantra, "A Choice to Change the World."

"Jasmine's native intelligence, her strong academic skills, and her calm and decisive demeanor are clearly impressive," said Dr. Meadows. "She understands the approaches needed to address the social, economic and political issues in national and international settings. She is very aware of the exigencies of life that divide people and has demonstrated an ability to work to overcome them."

Having worked closely with McClam over the course of the past two years, DeKimberlen J. Neely, Ph.D., an associate dean in the Office of Undergraduate Studies, said McClam is destined for greatness.

"Over the past two years, Jasmine has consistently demonstrated that she is open to constructive feedback and willing to be pushed beyond her limits with good energy," said Dr. Neely. "Jasmine is a thought leader who leads with humility and keen insight. It has been an honor to work with her."

McClam, an international studies major, has traveled abroad to various countries across Latin America. In 2019, she was named a finalist for the Harry S. Truman Scholarship, and was inducted into Spelman's chapter of Phi Beta Kappa. She was a 2020 Charles B. Rangel International Affairs Fellowship finalist, a Mickey Leland Endowed Scholar and the recipient of the Thomas R. Pickering Foreign Affairs Fellowship. As part of the fellowship McClam will attend the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University where she will pursue a graduate degree in international affairs. Her overall goal is to become an assistant secretary of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs within the U.S. Department of State.

Graduate Tribute 2020

Spelman will celebrate the success of the Class of 2020 at a formal in-person Commencement ceremony, which will be held at a later date. To celebrate the stellar work of the Class of 2020, the College will host virtual events organized to honor its more than 480 graduates.

The weekend of celebrations will kick-off at 6:30 p.m. Friday, May 15, with a discussion between Spelman Student Government President Nia Page, C'2020, and two-time Grammy-nominated recording artists Chloe x Halle on @Spelman_College, the institution's official Instagram channel. At 7 p.m., the event will segue from a conversation to a live performance by the duo in tribute to Spelman students on the @ChloexHalle Instagram platform, where they will perform music from their upcoming album.

The virtual celebration will continue at 1 p.m. Saturday, May 16, with the Spelman Senior Salute live streamed on Spelman.edu and the College's official Facebook page. Filled with tributes and surprises, the live stream is an opportunity for the entire Spelman community to commend the graduates via #SpelmanGrad20 and #SpelmanSeniorSalute.

More information about graduate tributes can be found via Spelman Senior Salute.

About Spelman College

Founded in 1881, Spelman College is a leading liberal arts college widely recognized as the global leader in the education of women of African descent. Located in Atlanta, the College's picturesque campus is home to 2,100 students. Spelman is the country's leading producer of Black women who complete Ph.D.s in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). The College's status is confirmed by U.S. News and World Report, which ranked Spelman No. 57 among all liberal arts colleges, No. 22 for undergraduate teaching and No. 6 for both innovation and social mobility among liberal arts colleges, and No. 1 for the 13th year among historically Black colleges and universities. The Wall Street Journal ranked the College No. 3, nationally, in terms of student satisfaction. Recent initiatives include a designation by the Department of Defense as a Center of Excellence for Minority Women in STEM, a Gender and Sexuality Studies Institute, the first endowed queer studies chair at an HBCU, and a program to increase the number of Black women Ph.D.s in economics. New majors have been added, including documentary filmmaking and photography, and partnerships have been established with MIT's Media Lab, the Broad Institute and the Army Research Lab for artificial intelligence and machine learning. Outstanding alumnae include Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, Starbucks Group President and COO Rosalind Brewer, political leader Stacey Abrams, former Acting Surgeon General and Spelman's first alumna president Audrey Forbes Manley, actress and producer Latanya Richardson Jackson, global bioinformatics geneticist Janina Jeff and authors Pearl Cleage and Tayari Jones. For more information, visit www.spelman.edu.

SOURCE Spelman College

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Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry on Thursday urged the European Union to intensify its efforts to stop foreign intervention and uproot the terrorist organizations in Libya.

Shoukry's remarks came in a phone conversation with Minister for Foreign and European Affairs in Malta Evarist Bartolo.

Shoukry stressed "the peaceful solution is the only way for settling the ongoing conflicts in the war-torn country," adding the EU should take more effective measures to stop foreign intervention and eliminate the terrorist organizations and its supporting parties to avoid dangerous repercussions on the security and stability of the Eastern Mediterranean countries.
Geneva

The head of the World Trade Organization said Thursday he will leave his post a year before his term expires, a mid-term resignation he called a "personal decision."

Roberto Azevedo, a former diplomat from Brazil, said he will step down on Aug. 31, cutting short a seven-year tenure marked by pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, who accused the Geneva-based trade body of an anti-U.S. bias and other complaints.

Azevedo told a special meeting of WTO delegations, "It is a personal decision  a family decision  and I am convinced that this decision serves the best interests of this organization."

The 25-year-old trade body has never had to fill a vacancy for the director-general post before that term expired, and under WTO rules, a selection process is to begin as soon as possible.

The Trump administration accused the trade body of a bias against the United States and of letting China get away with what it called unfair trade practices.
By Express News Service

NEW DELHI: Based on the suggestions sent in by Delhiites, the Arvind Kejriwal government has proposed opening of all markets and shopping malls on an odd-even basis post May 17.

ALSO READ| Delhi citizens demand COVID-19 lockdown restrictions to be lifted with safeguards

Government sources said that the CM's appeal to people inviting suggestions on relaxing the lockdown restrictions received a massive response. Based on peoples suggestions, the government has sent a proposal to the Centre recommending that public transport like buses, metro, autos and taxis be allowed to ply, with strict adherence to social distancing norms being ensured.

Kejriwal is in favour of lifting the lockdown despite all 11 districts in Delhi falling in the Red Zone. The odd-even idea, however, has not found favour with many. "Opening shops in odd-even pattern is not practical. When customers come to the markets, they like to go to several shops. Odd- even will not work," said Sanjay Bhargava, president of Chandni Chowk Sarv Vyapar Mandal.

Jai Prakash, North MCD standing committee chairman, said the idea is impractical for congested markets like Sadar Bazaar, where lanes are just three-six feet wide.

ALSO READ| Delhi sees another highest single-day case record of COVID-19 with 472 people testing positive

Cook tests positive: Supreme Court judge, kin isolate

A Supreme Court judge on Thursday self-quarantined himself along with his family after their cook tested COVID-19 positive, according to the sources. The cook, who was on leave since May 7, tested positive on Thursday.

Do not open markets, says BJP leader

"The government could wait for at least a week as big festival is approaching during which it will be difficult to prevent people from crowding the markets," said Delhi BJP ex vice-president Jai Prakash
By Baek Byung-yeul







Cho Yong-joon, founder and ex-chairman of Hankuk Fiber / Korea Times file

Cho Yong-joon, 90, the founder and former chairman of defense products maker Hankuk Fiber, has tainted the reputation of the company as he recently turned himself in at a local prosecutor's office to confess to embezzling company money, according to prosecutors and a source close to the matter, Friday.







The Miryang Prosecutors' Office said it recently received a letter of surrender from Cho in which the 90-year-old founder confessed to embezzling 8 billion won ($6.5 million) in company funds.







Cho wrote he misappropriated the money by purchasing carbon fibers from a supplier at a higher price than the average market value and pocketing the difference starting in 2012. Upon receiving the confession, prosecutors launched an investigation.







Born in 1930, Cho founded Hankuk Fiber in 1972. He retired from the chairman's post at a general shareholders' meeting in March 2019.







A source knowledgeable on the matter said Cho reportedly suffers from Alzheimer's disease and added his indiscreet behavior has caused the company problems.







"Cho voluntarily surrendered to the prosecutor saying he needs to be punished for embezzling company money. But it turned out that he was suffering from Alzheimer's disease. Because of his erratic behavior, now Hankuk Fiber is on an emergency footing," the source said.







Based in Miryang, South Gyeongsang Province, Hankuk Fiber is a manufacturer of defense products, aircraft components, interior materials used for trains and glass-reinforced plastic (GRP) pipes. The company is currently co-chaired by Cho Gye-chan, the second son of the founder, and Choi Jong-il.







In 2019, the company posted sales of 173.8 billion won ($141.3 million) and an operating profit of 12.9 billion won ($10.5 million), according to data provided by the Financial Supervisory Service.







The Korea Times contacted Hankuk Fiber multiple times for comment, but the company did not respond.


Open source

483 new cases of coronavirus infection have been observed in Ukraine on May 14. Since the epidemic reached Ukraine, the overall number of cases already made 17,330. Maksym Stepanov, the Healthcare Minister of Ukraine reported that at the online briefing.

According to the Ministry's Centre for Public Health, as of 9 a.m., May 15, there have been 20 new lethal cases (476 in general, since the beginning of the epidemic). Another 330 people recovered over the day (4,473 in general). The Minister also claimed that on May 14, the number of performed PCR tests has reached the record over the entire period of the epidemic in Ukraine (8,996).

Currently, most of the cases are observed in Chernivtsi region (2,600), Ivano-Frankivsk region (1,188), Kyiv region (1,094), Rivne region (1,074) and Kyiv city (2,068).

The data from the occupied territories of Donetsk and Luhansk region, as well as the occupied Crimea is not available.

Earlier, we reported that Ukraine has turned to the ODIHR, asking to follow the human rights protection situation in the temporarily occupied territories in Donbas and Crimea. In conditions of the raging Covid-19 pandemic, these violations are an increasingly common thing in these areas.

This is mentioned in the statement by Yevhen Tsymbaliuk, the permanent reperesentative of Ukraine in the international organizations based in Vienna. The official made this statement during the 1267th session of OSCE Permanent Council, UNN news agency wrote.

Thus, Ukraine urged OSCE to follow how much Russia lives up to the ODIHR's recommendations.
Proposals from two groups of companies seeking to build three new prisons for lease to the state were opened today in a conference call by officials with the Alabama Department of Corrections.

However, the details in those proposals wont be publicly known until the contracts are approved.

The proposals came from:

Alabama Prison Transformation Partners, which includes Star America; BL Harbert International; Butler-Cohen; Arrington Watkins Architects; and Johnson Controls, Inc.

CoreCivic, which includes CoreCivic; Caddell Construction; DLR Group; and R&N Systems Design.

ADOC previously released the names of the two groups, which are called developer teams. There were initially four developer teams in the running, but Corvias and GEO Group dropped out. Each team submitted technical and financial proposals as part of their transmission packages. Gov. Kay Iveys office said the proposals were for construction of at least two new mens prisons.

In a conference call at 10 a.m. from Montgomery, Kate Jessip with the ADOC opened the proposals using what she said was a secure, password protected system. The opening took place by conference call because of COVID-19 precautions. No questions were taken during the short call.

Officials from BL Harbert International, CoreCivic, Legislative Services Agency and the Southern Poverty Law Center listened into the call with members of the media.

On Thursday, Iveys press secretary, Gina Maiola, said the proposals are contract negotiations that are not subject to the states open records law as everything within these proposals is subject to change.

The request for proposals says the total cost of the lease payments for the three prisons would be up to $88 million a year for 30 years. The prisons would be designed to hold a total of 10,000 inmates, just under half the current inmate population. Some existing prisons would close.

Iveys office said the recommendation and evaluation process should last at least six weeks, with an announcement of the developer team later this summer. Financial terms should be announced in the fall.

The decision to keep the proposals confidential is not new. It was included in the request for proposals the ADOC issued in December, stating that "any proposal information received in response to the RFP, will not be subject to public disclosure until final contracts have received all necessary approvals.

Two top lawmakers said Thursday the process should be more open and the Ivey administration should release more information about the proposals.

In a statement today, Ivey vowed she "will not rest until we have an acceptable solution to this problem, which cannot be ignored and will not go away on its own.

The dire need for new prisons becomes more prevalent and evident with each passing day," Ivey said. It is no secret that our current facilities, which were constructed decades ago, are structurally failing, no longer can safely house inmates, and simply cannot provide the critical, 21st-century programming and rehabilitative services this population desperately needs to successfully reenter society.

Alabama leaders have talked about building new prisons for at least the last four years. The Ivey administration is using a different approach than her predecessor Gov. Robert Bentley, by seeking private developers who would finance and build the prisons and then lease them to the state, which would operate them.

Ivey announced the plan to build three new mens prisons last February, saying her administration intended to fix decades-old problems in Alabamas overcrowded and under-staffed prisons.

Those issues grew more urgent in April 2019 when the Department of Justice reported that violence, weapons, drugs, and poor supervision in Alabamas mens prisons created conditions that violated the Constitution. The report also cited the incredibly poor physical shape of the prisons.
Assam has been losing around Rs



1,000 crore every day because of the COVID-19 induced lockdown, Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal on Friday said, quoting a survey by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII).

Migrant workers returning to Assam will be trained to develop their skills and absorbed in the state, the chief minister said.

Terming the Rs 20 lakh crore special financial package announced by the Centre a "game-changer", he said around 24 lakh people in over one lakh micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) in the state will immensely benefit from it.

"This package will change the current economic scenario of the country towards growth. The Centre and states are facing huge problems due to the halt in economic activities on account of the lockdown," he said.

Asked about the losses Assam has incurred since the lockdown was announced in late March, Sonowal said the state has not calculated any estimate as of now on this aspect.

"The CII did a survey and they told us that Assam lost Rs 1,000 crore daily. We are going by their survey as they are experts in such studies," he added.

On the Central package, the chief minister said the state government will devise a road map to utilise the funds for the MSME units in consultation with all the stakeholders, including the owners and industry bodies.

"In Assam, 99.9 per cent of the industries are MSME units, which contribute 39 per cent of the state's GDP. The package announced by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will benefit Assam tremendously," he added.

The Central government on Wednesday announced a Rs 5.94 lakh crore package, including Rs 3 lakh crore of collateral-free automatic loans to boost MSMEs.

Sonowal also expressed happiness that around 2,000 sick units of the state will be benefitted from the fund announced for stressed units by the Centre as part of the package.

A subordinate debt of Rs 20,000 crore for stressed units, a Fund of Funds for equity infusion of Rs 50,000 crore, and revision in the definition of MSMEs are among the steps announced by the government to help MSMEs recover from disruptions caused by the coronavirus-related lockdown.

Sonowal said the state has urged the Centre to declare Assam as an investment destination for the foreign companies willing to come and invest in India after the coronavirus situation eases.

Asked about the migrant labourers returning to Assam from different parts of the country, he said the state considers them as assets, and not liabilities.

"They are a skilled force and we will absorb them. I have already instructed the industry minister to impart training for additional skills to them. The Economic Advisory Committee formed to frame guidelines will also consider this aspect," Sonowal said.

He said around 6.5 lakh people have registered so far in the helpline for the stranded people, but the exact number of migrant workers is not known immediately.

On alleged corruption in selecting beneficiaries under the Pradhan Mantri Kisan Samman Nidhi (PM-KISAN) scheme, Sonowal said an inquiry has been initiated and all the guilty will be punished.

The scheme provides a payment of Rs 6,000 per year in three equal instalments of Rs 2,000 to beneficiaries.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
There was no announcement from the government on guaranteeing a minimum basic income, which is the need of the hour. The announcements on portability of ration cards and affordable rental housing to workers are for the long and medium terms. Migrant workers need immediate relief.

IMAGE: A girl offers water to her sibling as migrants rest during their travel towards their native place, during the ongoing COVID-19 nationwide lockdown, at Anand Vihar in New Delhi. Photograph: Manvender Vashist/PTI Photo

Experts called for more measures to take care of the needs of migrant workers from the central government that announced a set of measures on Thursday.

There are two types of migrant workers that may need further assistance - ones who have gone back to their home states and are in search of jobs and the other set that are still stranded in cities with no income and resources, experts said.

The piece-meal approach adopted by the central government to deal with the COVID-19 crisis will be of little help.

"Migrant workers need immediate relief. There was no announcement from the government on guaranteeing a minimum basic income, which is the need of the hour, lawyer and activist Anjali Bhardwaj said.

Bhardwaj, who has been helping migrant workers since the national lockdown was imposed in March, had moved the Supreme Court, along with activist Harsh Mander, seeking a direction to the Centre and states on payments of minimum wages to all migrant workers.

The announcements on portability of ration cards and affordable rental housing to workers are for the long and medium terms.

"These are welcome steps, but workers need immediate relief, Bhardwaj said.

She said the government should universalise the distribution of foodgrain, as a targeted scheme leaves scope for exclusion, as has been witnessed during the lockdown.

Migrant families that are not covered under the National Food Security Act or any state government scheme will be provided 5 kg of grain and 1 kg of chana per month.

The benefit will be passed on to 80 million migrants for two months, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday.

How did the Centre arrive at the 80 million figure? Who will be considered a migrant for availing this facility? We will have to wait for the fine print, Bhardwaj added.

XLRI Jamshedpur professor and labour economist KR Shyam Sundar said the Inter-State Migrant Workers Act of 1979 already had a provision that required every contractor to provide suitable residential accommodation to workers.

One of the key issues faced by migrant workers during the lockdown was their inability to afford house rent or get proper accommodation.

Sitharaman emphasised that the workers who have returned to the villages will be given jobs through the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) and the Centre has already written to states in this regard.

Radhicka Kapoor, senior fellow at Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), suggested that the government frame an urban employment guarantee programme to incentivise migrant workers to return to cities, along with increasing the number of days per household for work under MGNREGA scheme.

Reverse migration will compound the agrarian distress in the absence of non-agricultural jobs in villages.

"It will affect income levels and to avoid the problem of crowding, MGNREGA needs to be strengthened.

"The government can increase the number of days, Kapoor said.

The MGNREGA scheme provides at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.

However, the number of household members willing to work in villages might rise because of the reverse migration.

We require an urban employment generation scheme, especially looking at the difficulties faced by workers in returning home and the level of unemployment that will follow.
Two people and a dog had to be rescued from an 8-metre sailboat that was sinking fast, 30 miles south of Cap Blanc, in Llucmajor.

The 112 Emergency Services were called at dawn and Salvamento Maritimo launched a rescue operation to save the crew and transfer them to Puerto Portals, where SAMU 061 Personnel were waiting to check them out.

The South African man and German woman had sailed the Berzanne from Croatia to the Azores under a French flag. On the return trip they stopped at Motril and Cartagena but got into difficulties near the Balearic Islands.

Salvamento Maritimo said that a problem with the rigging prevented the crew from sailing and that the sea was very rough with waves of up to three metres.

The 'Salvamar Acrux from Puerto Portals was made ready to tow the ship, but by the time Salvamento Maritimo arrived at the scene the 'Berzanne' was on the point of sinking so they concentrated on rescuing the crew.

The couple are residents of Austria and are hoping to get a flight home from Palma, according to the Guardia Civil.
Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian's Regular Press Conference on May 15, 2020

2020/05/15

CCTV: Experts in Hubei Province had discussions with Palestinian health professionals via video link yesterday. Can you give us more details on that?

Zhao Lijian: On May 14, medical and disease control experts from Hubei Provincial Health Commission, Wuhan Municipal Health Commission, the Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan and other medical institutions had discussions via video link with their Palestinian counterparts on COVID-19 diagnosis and treatment, epidemic prevention and control, resumption of work and production and other topics. The video conference, which has yielded good results, is the third one hosted by China for expert exchange between China and Palestine. The Palestinian side thanked China's arrangement and believed this video conference will help Palestine in fighting the virus and enhancing preparedness.

I'd like to stress that China has always been Palestine's good friend and partner. This video conference demonstrates our traditional friendship. It is also China's concrete action in building a community with a shared future for mankind, and working with regional countries in response to the pandemic. After COVID-19 broke out, Chinese and Palestinian leaders exchanged messages of sympathies. China provided masks, protective suits, test reagents and other materials to Palestine, and shared know-how with Palestinian experts via video link.

As the pandemic is still spreading, the international community should attach importance to the life and health of the Palestinian people, respond to the anti-epidemic concerns from refugees in and outside Palestine as well as their hosting countries, and give concrete assistance to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), which has long been providing humanitarian aid and support for Palestine. As a responsible major country, China will continue to support to the best of its ability Palestine and regional countries in defeating the virus at an early date.

AFP: US President Trump said yesterday he might cut the relationship with China. Does China have any comment on his remarks?

Zhao Lijian: A steady and growing China-US relationship serves the fundamental interests of the two peoples and is conducive to world peace and stability. At present, China and the US should strengthen cooperation to prevail over the pandemic at an early date, and focus on saving lives, and resuming economic development and production. This, of course, calls for the US and China working together towards the same goal.

China News Service: We understand that the DPP authorities are soliciting support for Taiwan's participation in the 73rd World Health Assembly, claiming there will be a "gap" in global anti-epidemic efforts if Taiwan is not able to participate. A handful of countries including the US are asking the WHO to invite the Taiwan region to attend as an observer and pushing for WHA discussions of this proposal. I wonder if you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: Lately I have commented repeatedly on the so-called participation of the Taiwan region in the WHA. Since COVID-19 broke out, Taiwan's DPP authorities have been busy making political manipulation and hyping up so-called "Taiwan's participation in the WHA" on international occasions. Their true intention is to seek independence under the pretext of the pandemic with the help of some Western countries. We firmly oppose their futile attempts.

The participation of the Taiwan region, which is part of China, must be handled in accordance with the one-China principle. This is also a fundamental principle enshrined in UNGA Resolution 2758 and WHA Resolution 25.1. Since the DPP came to power in 2016, it has obstinately adhered to the separatist position of "Taiwan independence" and refused to recognize that both sides of the Taiwan Strait belong to one and the same China. As a result, the political foundation for the Taiwan region to participate in WHO has ceased to exist. The DPP authorities are the only party to blame for the region being unable to take part in the WHA. The DPP understands that only too well.

The Chinese Central Government always attaches great importance to the health and well-being of our compatriots in the Taiwan region. In January, the Central Government hosted Taiwan experts traveling to Wuhan to observe epidemic containment efforts on the ground. As of May 15, the Central Government has sent 152 notifications on COVID-19 to the Taiwan region. Since 2019, under the one-China principle, altogether 24 Taiwan experts in 16 groups have participated in WHO technical activities. The claim of a "gap" in global anti-epidemic efforts is simply not true, as Taiwan has unimpeded access to epidemic information.

According to the consensus reached by the WHO Executive Board, this year's agenda will cover only essential items like the COVID-19 pandemic and Executive Board election. This reflects the shared wish of member states to focus on international cooperation on COVID-19 at this WHA. The WHA has for many consecutive years rejected a handful of countries' proposals relating to the Taiwan region, demonstrating the shared international commitment to the one-China principle, an overriding trend that cannot be challenged. The few countries that insist on discussing the proposal relating to the Taiwan region are only aiming to politicize the health issue to seek selfish political gains even at the expense of hijacking the WHA and undermining global anti-pandemic cooperation. Their attempt will inevitably disrupt the WHA proceedings and international cooperation, which will be firmly rejected by the vast majority of the international community.

Associated Press of Pakistan: Yesterday the Senate of Pakistan passed a resolution unanimously, commending China's decisive and timely measures to combat the novel coronavirus under the leadership of President Xi Jinping and appreciating its valuable support for Pakistan. It also stressed that the virus is a common enemy for all and shall not be politicized or used to stigmatize China. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: I'm glad to take this question from a Pakistani friend.

China appreciates the adoption of the resolution by the Senate of Pakistan. Since the start of the outbreak, China and Pakistan have supported each other and worked together closely to fight it. We will never forget that at a critical moment in China's fight against the virus, Pakistan pooled resources nationwide and supported China with medical supplies. The Chinese government has also sent medical teams, provided many batches of grants, and actively mobilized all sectors of society to donate funds and goods to support Pakistan. This proves that China and Pakistan are true friends and good brothers sharing weal and woe.

The virus knows no borders or races. To smear and stigmatize other countries is to sabotage and disrupt international cooperation against it. The facts are crystal clear, and justice always prevails. We highly appreciate Pakistan's objective and just position on this issue and would like to continue to uphold the vision of a community with a shared future for mankind, strengthen cooperation with the international community including Pakistan and work together to win the ultimate victory in the global fight against COVID-19.

CCTV: Some Western media, like those in the US and the UK, have been reporting for several days on "Russia faking its COVID-19 death rate". Russia refuted such allegations multiple times. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: We have noted that some Western media have been hyping up the issue of COVID-19 death rate in Russia, to which the Russian side has made clear its opposition.

China firmly supports Russia's efforts against COVID-19 and believes that under the strong leadership of President Putin, the Russian people will achieve the final victory against the pandemic.

China believes that solidarity and coordination and mutual support is the most powerful weapon against the virus. The international community has come to a critical juncture in this fight, giving us more reasons to join hands and tide over the trying time together, instead of jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers at others.

Tass: Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Thursday that Moscow considers the issue of China's accession to the New START Treaty completely contrived because it will pull China into bilateral Russian-US mechanisms. "Meanwhile, accession of closest allies of the US to these negotiations, the UK and France in particular, remains our priority", she said. According to the spokeswoman, Russia has officially proposed to the US to extend the New START for five years without any preconditions to gain time for joint evaluation of the contemporary challenges and threats in this field. How do you comment on this statement?

Zhao Lijian: The extension of the important New START Treaty, the only existing bilateral arrangement between the US and Russia on nuclear disarmament, has grabbed the attention of the international community. This issue bears not only on the Russia-US strategic security relationship but also global strategic stability.

China has no intention to take part in a trilateral arms control negotiation. The US and Russia, with the largest nuclear arsenals in the world, should earnestly fulfill their special and primary responsibility in nuclear disarmament, extend the New START Treaty, significantly slash their nuclear stockpiles, and create conditions for other nuclear states to join multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations.

Xinhua News Agency: The global spread of COVID-19 has halted many people-to-people exchange programs and led to more events online. Under such circumstances, on the 44th International Museum Day, which falls on May 18, China's museums and media groups plan to initiate a relay of live events. The online broadcasting platform of Xinhua News APP will live-stream all these events. This is quite a creative way to promote civil cultural exchanges between China and the rest of the world. What do you think of it?

Zhao Lijian: I have also noted that as people tend to avoid face-to-face meetings and switch to the internet for more and more of our daily activities due to COVID-19, online lifestyles have been flourishing. As you said, for the upcoming 2020 International Museum Day, China's museums and media have thought out of the box and decided to hold a relay of events online. In this way, museum-goers around the world will be able to appreciate at home the Chinese culture, experience the latest trends in China's museums, and have a virtual tour of all aspects of the Chinese society. We wish this event a success.

Beijing Youth Daily: US diplomatic missions in ASEAN countries have been re-posting an article entitled Southeast Asian Nations Challenge China over Maritime Claims, which says Southeast Asian countries are confronting China's claims of rights and interests in the South China Sea. I wonder if you could comment on that?

Zhao Lijian: We have also noticed this article. It's just a patchwork of distorted pieces with faulty logic. I don't want to waste too much time refuting it.

By re-posting such an article on their official platforms, certain country has exposed its ill intention to resort to political maneuvers with the South China Sea. We urge the relevant side to stop sowing discord between regional countries. It should avoid undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea or disrupting international anti-epidemic efforts.

The Paper: According to Canada's Globe and Mail, Canada's Ambassador to China Dominic Barton told a session of the Canadian International Council that he backs a "rigorous review" of the World Health Organization and the spread of the novel coronavirus once the worst of the pandemic is over. Chinese diplomats have adopted a heavy-handed approach around the world, damaging its global soft power. What is your comment?

Zhao Lijian: I have noted relevant report. We have checked and found it to be not factual. We note that since the start of the outbreak, the Canadian side has on many occasions expressed its readiness to cooperate with the international community to fight against the virus on the basis of science and evidence.

As for reviewing COVID-19 responses, the Chinese side has made its position clear many times. I will not repeat it. As for China's diplomatic policies, it is not our tradition to be belligerent and aggressive and we will never go down the path where a powerful state turns hegemonic. We always stay committed to the independent foreign policy of peace and promote equal-footed and friendly exchanges, which has won high acclaim from the international community. We hope that the relevant media will report China and China-Canada relations objectively instead of through biased lenses, and stop making false reports.

Reuters: Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company is going to invest $12 billion in the United States to build a new factory. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said this is an important move at a time China when China is competing to dominate cutting-edge technology and control critical industries. Does China believe this investment is another part of US strategy to delink the Chinese and US economies?

Zhao Lijian: As a general rule, we don't comment on the production or business layout of any company.

We have said many times that cooperation between China and the US in various fields like economy, trade and investment is in nature mutually beneficial. We stand to gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Decoupling or severing relations will lead nowhere. We urge the US to abandon the obsolete Cold War and zero-sum game mindset and correctly view exchanges and cooperation with China in the fields of science and technology, economy and trade, and work to enhance China-US mutual trust and cooperation.

Beijing Daily: According to the Daily Beast, the Washington Post and some other US media, sources from the US CDC said that the White House, considering the current number of US fatalities too high, has pressed the CDC to change how they count coronavirus deaths, so that lower death tolls will be reported. I wonder if you have any comment?

Zhao Lijian: We noted those reports. I'll leave it to the US side to answer.

PTI: My question relates to the Pakistan's Diamer-Bhasha dam project. Spokesman of India's Ministry of External Affairs said yesterday, "Entire territory of the Union Territories of Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh have been, are and will continue to be integral and inalienable part of India"; "We have consistently conveyed our protests and shared concerns with both Pakistan and China on all such projects in the Indian territories under Pakistan's illegal occupation." What's China's reaction?

Zhao Lijian: China's position on the Kashmir issue is consistent. The economic cooperation between China and Pakistan aims to boost local economic growth and improve people's livelihoods for the benefit of all.
Los Angeles: Journalists who have thin skin might want to think twice about reading Soledad O'Brien's Twitter feed.

Media critic: Soledad O'Brien. Credit:AAP

The former CNN anchor who now runs her own New York-based production company has used her social media account (@soledadobrien) to take her peers to task before her 1.2 million followers.

She frequently berates the New York Times and CNN for headlines and takes that she believes normalise President Trump's often unpresidential behaviour (the term "racially insensitive" to describe racist statements is a particular target).

Hypocrisy doesn't escape her, such as the time former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was given a going-away party by the correspondents she often lied to during briefings. ("Why would the lady from Politico organise a reception for the very person who undermined their jobs?")
Workers walk outside the Tesla Inc. Gigafactory in Shanghai, China, on Friday, Nov. 1, 2019.

Tesla has zeroed in on two locations in Texas and Oklahoma as possible homes for a new final assembly plant, according to a source intimately familiar with the site search.

This week Tesla representatives visited two locations in Tulsa, Oklahoma, to see if they would be the right place for the company's fifth Gigafactory. Another possible location for Tesla's next plant is Austin, Texas, a source familiar with the search told CNBC.

The website Electrek previously reported Tesla CEO Elon Musk had decided the next Gigafactory will be in Austin, citing unnamed sources.

A spokesperson for Tesla declined to comment on questions about the company's search for a location of the next Gigafactory.

Both Tulsa and Austin meet the requirements for Tesla's next final assembly plant, which Musk has said will be the company's "Cybertruck" Gigafactory. The midsized cities have strong manufacturing workforces and their location in the central U.S. would help support vehicle production for states in the Midwest and Eastern U.S.

While Tulsa and Austin are two cities being considered for the next Gigafactory, Tesla may also be evaluating other locations around the country.
The US Senate has approved a bill calling on President Donald Trumps administration to toughen its response to Chinas crackdown on the Uighur Muslim minority.

The bipartisan bill, introduced by Republican Senator Marco Rubio, calls for visa and property-blocking sanctions against Chinese officials responsible for the repression of Uighurs and other Muslim groups in the countrys western region of Xinjiang.

The legislation comes amid criticism of Chinas internment of more than a million Uighurs and other Turkic Muslim groups in camps that China says provide vocational training.

The Republican-led Senate passed the bill by unanimous consent, without a roll-call vote. Passage sends the measure to the Democratic-led House of Representatives, which must approve it before it is sent to the White House for Trump to sign into law or veto.

The move comes amid steadily worsening relations between the US and China over the coronavirus, with Washington blaming the government in Beijing for the pandemic.





China denies mishandling the outbreak and has condemned moves to pass legislation in support of the Uighurs as malicious attacks and a serious interference in its internal affairs that would affect bilateral cooperation.

In a Twitter post, Rubio called the Chinese governments treatment of the Uighurs grotesque and said the bill would hold the Communist Party accountable. The bill specifically singles out a member of Chinas powerful Politburo as responsible for gross human rights violations against them.

Chen Quanguo, party secretary for Xinjiang, is in the upper echelons of Chinas leadership and Beijing has warned in the past of retaliation in proportion if he were targeted.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the Senate move.

Republican James Risch, who chairs the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, and its senior Democrat, Bob Menendez, called Thursdays move an important step in countering the totalitarian Chinese governments widespread and horrific human rights abuses.

They urged the House to take up the legislation quickly and send it to the president to be signed into law.

Passage welcomed

Global Uighur rights groups also welcomed the bills passage, with the World Uyghur Congress hailing it as a moment of great hope in a time of despair.

Once a law, not only will it set a precedent for other countries, but it will especially send a strong signal to the Chinese govt that their human rights violations against the #Uyghurs will no longer be tolerated, tweeted Dolkun Isa, president of the WUC.

''Once a law, not only will it set a precedent for other countries, but it will especially send a strong signal to the Chinese govt. that their human rights violations against the #Uyghurs will no longer be tolerated.''

-WUC President @Dolkun_Isa.  WorldUyghurCongress (@UyghurCongress) May 14, 2020

The Uyghur Human Rights Project echoed the sentiment in a statement, saying the passage of the bill was an important milestone in developing a response to the Uighurs plight and that US leadership will help ensure other nations take similar steps.

The Senate bill also calls on US companies or individuals operating in the Xinjiang region to take steps to ensure their supply chains are not compromised by forced labour there.

It also directs the president to control the export of goods that could provide China with a critical capability to suppress privacy, freedom of movement and other basic human rights.

Rubio cosponsored a separate bill in March aimed at preventing goods made from forced labour in Xinjiang from reaching the US.
The Covid-19 pandemic took shape and spread as a disease of the rich. But by the time we are anywhere close to even grasping what we can do (or not do) about it, our clueless institutional response will have pushed many  who were content to just get by  into life-threatening penury.

A distressing present and a grim future is what millions of Indians are facing today. On Wednesday, even the government acknowledged this. During an online meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar said:  many will not come out of ...
The former police detective whose actions in the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery in Georgia were defended as a citizen's arrest was stripped of his law enforcement certification and power to arrest a year before the deadly encounter, according to personnel records acquired by The Washington Post.

Gregory McMichael's certification was suspended in February 2019 after repeated failures to complete required training, according to documents from the Brunswick Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office, including a warning in 2014 that McMichael had neglected to finish mandatory firearms and use-of-force courses.

McMichael, 64, and his son Travis McMichael, 34, were arrested last week and charged with murder and aggravated assault in Arbery's death, more than two months after the fatal shooting. Arbery's family says the 25-year-old black man was out for a jog when he was chased by the McMichaels, who are white and were armed.

Gregory McMichael told police they believed Arbery was involved in local burglaries. A video shows a man who is believed to be Arbery entering a house under construction moments before the shooting, though the property owner says nothing was taken.

The case, which reignited national conversations about policing and race after a video of Arbery's death went viral, has been passed to four different prosecutors. Two recused themselves because of past professional connections with the elder McMichael, who worked for the Glynn County Police Department and the Brunswick Judicial Circuit, both of which have jurisdiction over the neighborhood where Arbery was killed.

One of those prosecutors, George Barnhill of the Waycross Judicial Circuit, took the unusual step while recusing himself of writing a letter to the local police department arguing that the McMichaels' actions were lawful under Georgia's citizen's arrest and self-defense statutes because they thought Arbery was a burglary suspect.

Before Barnhill's recusal, Jackie Johnson, district attorney for the Brunswick Judicial Circuit, recused herself in February because McMichael had been an investigator in her office from 1995 through 2019.

Two Glynn County commissioners have said that Johnson's office told police investigators to refrain from arresting the McMichaels in the hours after Arbery was killed, an allegation Johnson has denied.

Gregory McMichael's personnel documents provide an incomplete account of his employment history with Glynn County, but they indicate that he was stripped of his powers to arrest people on at least two occasions: once beginning in January 2006 - because of an undisclosed infraction the previous year - and again in February 2019, when the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) issued a suspension order for "failure to maintain training for the year 2018."

McMichael retired in June, four months after the suspension of his law enforcement certification. He is being held at the Glynn County Detention Center, along with his son, and could not be reached for comment. It is unclear whether he has an attorney.

The standards and training council notified district attorney Johnson, then McMichael's boss, that McMichael had fallen short in various types of training hours in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010. McMichael did not complete the mandated use-of-force and firearms training in at least three of those years, according to the records.

"This situation has been a great embarrassment to me and to Investigator McMichael," Johnson wrote in a June 2014 letter to Mitch Jones, the Georgia POST director. "It has negatively impacted my office, and I have taken measures to ensure that it doesn't happen again. Please accept my sincere apology."

Johnson did not respond to numerous emails and phone calls to her office.

McMichael applied for a waiver for the missed training hours, citing numerous health issues he and his wife had suffered between 2006 and 2009.

"Again I do not offer this information as an excuse, I knew full well that I was responsible for attending the proper amount of training but failed to do so," McMichael wrote in his waiver application to the training council. "The years 2006 through 2009 were a very difficult period in my life. I allowed the difficulty of the situation to cloud my judgment."

McMichael's waiver was granted in 2014, according to the county personnel records, and he was permitted to continue serving as an investigator in Johnson's office.

But problems arose again five years later, leading to his law enforcement certification suspension in February 2019.

Special Investigation 147 NY dams are 'unsound,' potentially dangerous Thousands of dams have not been inspected in over 20 years.

In a memorandum later that month, McMichael agreed to give up his badge and weapon and was reclassified as a non-sworn employee, assigned to work in the Camden County District Attorney's office until his retirement in June 2019.

A February 2019 memo signed by McMichael and other officials in the district attorney's office stated he "will not engage in any activity that would be construed as being law enforcement in nature."

"To that end, Mr. McMichael will not carry a firearm or badge, nor will he operate any vehicle in the motor pool outfitted with lights, siren or police radio equipment," the memo stated.

But McMichael's law enforcement instincts appeared to kick in when he saw Arbery running down a residential street on Feb. 23. He told police he ran to his bedroom to get a handgun, got in a truck and drove after Arbery.

Conflicting narratives have been presented of what Arbery was doing in the minutes before he was killed. Relatives say he was an avid jogger. Prosecutors said he had been trespassing in a home under construction. McMichael's statement to police mentions previous burglaries.

Larry English, the man who owns the home under construction, said he had installed three motion-activated cameras to keep tabs on the property. On Wednesday, his attorney released a statement noting that the cameras had captured people inside the home on four or five occasions beginning in October, though nothing was ever stolen or damaged.

English received a text message from a neighbor, Diego Perez, on Feb. 11 asking if he had seen a person on the surveillance camera, according to the statement. Perez said, "Travis confronted him."

English reviewed the footage, but said he doesn't know who is on the video, according to the statement. Perez could not immediately be reached for comment.

English said he met Travis McMichael only once, last summer when the two had a "neighborly chat about work on the property," but English never asked him to look after his house. He met Gregory McMichael after Arbery was killed, when McMichael approached him on the property and asked about the video from the day of the killing, according to the statement.

"Mr. English did not maintain the conversation," the statement says.
The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) is accusing the Electoral Commission (EC) and the National Identification Authority (NIA) of devising means to deny about 11 million Ghanaians the chance to vote in the upcoming 2020 general elections.



The plans, the National Chairman of the party, Mr Samuel Ofosu Ampofo believes, were to rig the elections in favour of the incumbent New Patriotic Party (NPP) government.



He explained that the decision by the EC to use only the Ghana Card and passport as the only required documents to get registered as a voter in the country was a calculated plan by the Akufo-Addo administration to rig the upcoming elections.



Press conference



Mr Ampofo who was addressing a press conference in Accra at the party's headquarters on Thursday, May 14, 2020, titled: The Electoral Commission's ploy to rig the 2020 general elections, in concert with the National Identification Authority, said many Ghanaians were not able to register for the Ghana card, and that many Ghanaians also do not have a passport, the other requirement.





He said according to the data of the NIA, out of about the 17.3 million people who are 18 years and above and who are said to have been captured by the NIA during its registration exercise, only 6.5 million have been issued with the Ghana card.



That, Mr Ampofo explained, means that "almost 11 million (62 per cent) of eligible voters will have to go through the sworn oath option to be able to register for a voters' ID, if the register for the 2020 general elections materialises."



According to him, due to the cumbersome nature of the processes those who do not have the Ghana card and passport would have to go through, many people will not be able to go through all the processes to get registered as voters.



He said the NIA was set up with the mandate to issue national ID cards and manage the National Identification System (NIS) as per the National Identification Authority Act, 2006 (Act 707), pointing out that subsequently, the National Identity Register Act, 2008 (Act 750) was passed to govern the functions and operations of the NIA.



Amendment of Acts



That, he said, upon extensive consultations with all stakeholders, including political parties, the following registration requirements such as birth certificate, voter identity card, drivers license, passport or a baptismal certificate were provided under section 8 of Act 750 to establish ones eligibility to be registered by the Authority for a national ID card.



Mr Ampofo noted that the the exclusion of the voters ID card from the requirements of registration for the national ID card by the Akufo-Addo government, was part of a well calculated scheme to disenfranchise a good number of Ghanaians from acquiring the national ID card (Ghana card), which was to be used subsequently, as one of the registration requirements in the new voters register plan they had long hatched.



As we predicted, the Ghana Card registration process by the NIA has been very slow such that till date, the process which commenced with a pilot late 2017 and was supposed to be completed in one year, has been able to register only 11,062,055 out of about 19 Million Ghanaians (15 years and above) who are eligible to be registered. Even more bizarre is the fact that, out of this 11 million Ghanaians who have been registered, only 7,074,048 have been issued with cards (per NIAs own website https:nia.gov.gh) as at 2nd May, 2020), he explained.



Backdoor



He said in spite of several assurances made in Parliament and in the media by the President, the Head of NIA and Electoral Commission that the Ghana Card is not going to be used for the 2020 elections, the government and the Commission are currently pushing a legislation in Parliament to make the Ghana Card and Ghanaian passport the main breeder documents for registration as a voter, thus excluding the use of the Commissions' own existing voters ID card.



According to Mr Ampofo, The objective is to disenfranchise a significant number of persons in NDC strongholds in furtherance of the Jean Mensa-led ECs grand scheme to rig the 2020 general elections for the New Patriotic Party.



He was of the view that the EC boss mission and motivation was to please President Akufo Addo and ensure his re-election for a second term.



He said President Akufo-Addo was not concerned about the future of Ghana, its peace, stability and the survival of democracy, adding that Having failed to deliver on his promises to the people of this country, and seeing defeat staring glaringly at him, he in conjunction with the Jean Mensa-led EC and the Ken Attafuah-led NIA are desperately scheming to rig the 2020 general elections and hold on to power at all cost, Mr Ampofo stated.

Source: Daily Graphic









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YEREVAN, MAY 15 ARMENPRESS. 690 coronavirus infected patients in Armenia have developed pneumonia, ARMENPRESS reports Healthcare Minister of Armenia Arsen Torosyan told azatutyun.am.

35 are in critical situation, 65 in serious situation and 11 are switched to artificial ventilation devices, Torosyan said.

He noted that the numbers with pneumonia grows together with the growth of patients, but the number of patients in critical or serious situation remains relatively stable, which is a good indicator.

The number of patients switched to artificial ventilation devices is near 10, we never recorded more cases, I mean 11 is the highest number we have ever recorded, the Minister said.

A total of 4044 cases have been recorded in Armenia by May 15, 1666 of which have recovered.

Edited and translated by Tigran Sirekanyan
Some graduates will still savor the traditional ceremony as some states and communities choose to allow life to return to normal. But it seems fitting that a medical school would take extra care in protecting its graduates, many of whom will be dispersing to begin residencies and, in many cases, join the cadre of those fighting for the lives of covid-19 patients. Wading into the pandemics petri dish would be a daunting prospect for anyone, but especially for recent graduates who must immediately face worst-case scenarios that could infect or kill them.
Jaipur, May 15 : Even as Tonk simmers after a gang rape, another minor in Rajasthan was again similarly assaulted in Alwar by three youths who filmed the act and assaulted her threatening her against reporting the incident.

Relatives of the Class 9 student said the police took two days to register any complaint.

Officials confirmed that the offence was reported in Bhiwadi on May 10, but it was only on May 13 that the police filed the complaint, said the girl's father.

In his complaint, the father said that his daughter went to her uncle's house on May 10 at around noon. When she did not return for a long time, they got worried and started searching for her. In the meantime, they received a call that their daughter was admitted to a private clinic and they should take her back home.

After returning home, the girl revealed her traumatic experience and said that as she was going to her uncle's place, three youths at a shelter home stopped her, bashed her up and took her to a deserted room where they gang raped her and filmed the act.

When she protested and threatened them to get them booked, they banged her head to the wall after which she fell unconscious. She found herself in a private clinic after gaining consciousness.

Meanwhile, DSP Women Cell, Bhiwadi, Prem Bahadur said that the three accused have been detained.

Former Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje has condemned the incident. Raje tweeted: "After Tonk, the rape of a minor in Alwar reveals the fake claims made by the state government pertaining to women security in state.

"The deteriorating law and order situation in state shows that police and administration have lost their grip.." A few days back, a minor was gangraped in Tonk after which the National Human Rights Commission sent notice to state government on May 12. The role of many officials including a doctor is under scrutiny regarding misquoting of the victim's age and commenting on her character.

Local MLA Kanhaiya Lal Chuadhary and MP Sukhbeer Singh Jaunpuriya staged dharna with Sara Samaj and submitted memorandum to SDM in the name of chief minister. Police then took her statements again in the presence of her sister.

Col Kirori Singh Bainsla has warned of staging a huge protest if the Tonk victim does not get justice. "Gurjar Samaj shall come out on streets if justice is not served to the victim. We want strict punishment against the accused. Why was the case registered a day later? he questioned.
Clean-Slate, All-In-One Design Provides Gigabit-Class Wireless Branch Solution With Performance And Investment Protection For Seamless Upgrade to 5G

BOISE, Idaho, May 15, 2020, the global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions, today announced the Cradlepoint E3000 Series, the industry's first 5G-Optimized, all-in-one wireless edge router for enterprise branch deployment. The clean-slate design optimizes performance and investment protection, enabling customers to deploy a wireless wide-area network (Wireless WAN) today using the latest LTE and Wi-Fi technology and seamlessly upgrade to 5G in the future.



The current coronavirus pandemic has fueled an already growing demand for agile and rapidly deployable wireless WANs based on LTE for primary connectivity. The new Cradlepoint E3000 Series directly targets this burgeoning market. According to a new Worldwide 5G and 4G LTE Router Forecast from IDC, the combined market for enterprise branch, mobile, and IoT wireless routers and gateways will reach $2.98 billion by 2024.

Packaged as part of the Cradlepoint NetCloud Enterprise Branch Service, the E3000 Series utilizes the latest multi-core, wireless system-on-chip technology to deliver compelling price/performance relative to traditional wired branch routers. The all-new, all-in-one design provides a mid-sized, enterprise-class "branch-in-a-box" solution. In a compact footprint, the E3000 contains an embedded Gigabit-Class LTE modem, integrated Wi-Fi 6, gigabit Ethernet ports for WAN/LAN connectivity, and expansion slots accommodate a secondary LTE modem module today with 5G modem and Bluetooth 5.0 modules slated for later in 2020.

The powerful E3000 can run processor-intensive WAN edge features within the NetCloud Service at gigabit speeds, including BGP routing and application-aware SD-WAN and security functions, such as firewall, analytics, IPS/IPS and content filtering. It also supports customizable services like Wi-FI guest portal and IoT edge computing capabilities.

The Cradlepoint E3000 Series is ideal for branch-oriented industry sectors that need the flexibility and freedom of primary wireless connections with robust WAN and LAN networking and security capabilities. These include retail stores, restaurants, healthcare clinics, financial services locations - such as banking, insurance, and tax preparation - construction sites, and field service offices.

"Initial SD-WAN deployments have been focused primarily on fixed Internet economics" said Lee Doyle, principal analyst at Doyle Research. "The next phase of WAN transformation broadens the definition of a 'branch' and will include an expanded role for LTE and 5G to drive Wireless WAN solutions. The Cradlepoint announcement expands its solutions to enable the transformation to a Wireless WAN."

Protect Your Investment With The Most Paths to 5G

According to a recent survey by Infosys of 850 industry practitioners and leaders across the US, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand, 90% are actively investigating business cases, defining use cases, or defining service portfolios based on 5G technology. The implications are clear: any IT executive that is planning a WAN edge technology refresh needs to have a defined pathway to 5G or risk having to rip-and-replace before the investment is fully depreciated.

Cradlepoint provides the most pathways from LTE to 5G in the industry. In February, the company introduced its W-Series 5G Wideband Adapter , the first 5G solution purpose-built for the enterprise. The E3000 Series is 5G Optimized and engineered to be a companion branch router for the W-Series, interconnecting over a high-speed 2.5Gbps Ethernet port. Pairing it with a W2000 indoor unit gives customers a complete wireless WAN solution for low-band and mid-band (Sub-6) 5G while paring with the W4005 outdoor unit delivers high-band (millimeter wave). Additionally, the E3000 expansion port will accommodate the new MC500 field-upgradable 5G modular modem (Sub-6) planned for early Q1 in 2021.

"Cradlepoint is committed to being the first and best choice for enterprise Wireless WAN and 5G solutions," said Todd Krautkremer, Chief Marketing Officer at Cradlepoint. "We believe, as do many of our customers and partners, that Wireless WAN is the next big networking wave, driven by the emergence of 5G. The Cradlepoint E3000 Series, powered by NetCloud, is the latest addition to our next-generation of 5G-capable solutions, its design provides customers with no-compromise Gigabit-Class LTE performance and the most paths to a 5G future."

The Cradlepoint NetCloud Service for Enterprise Branch with the new E3000 Series Router is available today, with pricing starting at $2,023. While optimized for wireless WAN and 5G, it supports the broadest range of wired and wireless connections for both WAN and LAN of any edge router in its class, and at a breakthrough price point:

Wired and Wireless WAN Connectivity Options

Embedded Gigabit-Class LTE modem (CAT 18)

2.5Gbps Ethernet WAN port

Gigabit Ethernet WAN port

SFP/SFP+ fiber WAN port

Expansion port for secondary Gigabit-Class LTE or primary 5G modular modem (future)

Wired and Wireless LAN Connectivity Options

9 - gigabit Ethernet ports with 4 Power over Ethernet (PoE) capable

Integrated Wi-Fi 6 access point

Expansion slot for Bluetooth 5.0 module (future)

For more information on the NetCloud for Enterprise Branch plan and the new Cradlepoiint E3000 wireless edge router, please visit https://cradlepoint.com/products/branch .

IDC, Worldwide 5G and 4G/LTE Router/Gateway Forecast, 2020-2024: Stronger Focus on Cellular Solutions at the Enterprise Edge, Doc # US46208020, May 2020

About Cradlepoint

Cradlepoint is a global leader in cloud-delivered LTE and 5G wireless network edge solutions for branch, mobile, and IoT networks. Cradlepoint NetCloud, the personification of our Elastic Edge vision, is a subscription-based service with purpose-built endpoints that delivers a pervasive, secure, and software-defined Wireless WAN edge to connect people, places, and things over LTE and 5G cellular networks. More than 20,000 enterprise and government organizations around the world - including 75 percent of the world's top retailers, 50 percent of the Fortune 100, and first responder agencies in 25 of the largest US cities - rely on Cradlepoint to keep critical fixed and mobile sites, points of commerce, field forces, vehicles, and IoT devices always connected and protected. Major service providers use Cradlepoint solutions as the foundation for innovative managed services. Founded in 2006, Cradlepoint is a privately held company headquartered in Boise, Idaho, with a development center in Silicon Valley and international offices in the UK and Australia.
Reza Estakhrian | Getty Images

If you want to solicit a furious stare from a doctor, ask them about their electronic medical record systems. Studies have shown that electronic health records are directly attributable to the growing problem of physician burnout because of the time spent filling out fields in these systems for hours, even after a grueling day of seeing patients. Even more troubling, doctors are still struggling to access medical information about their patients, particularly if that patient was seen at a hospital or clinic that uses a different medical record vendor. This is a problem that could have been solved years ago. In 2009 federal policymakers set aside about $35 billion in taxpayer revenue to digitize paper-based systems. The hope was to make it easier for doctors to access their patients' medical histories in a few clicks. And by moving clinical information from paper to an electronic format, researchers could use that information to better understand human health. A number of medical record companies blossomed, in large part because hospitals needed a vendor to manage their patients' medical information. Rather than build technologies that would be interoperable, many of these companies built vast empires by hoarding that information. "It's almost unconscionable," said Dr. Julia Adler-Milstein, an associate professor and director of the Center for Clinical Informatics and Improvement Research at UC San Francisco, who has studied the problem for years. "The government spent billions digitizing records, but patients are still experiencing breakdowns in accessing their medical record in 2020." Today, in the midst of a major health crisis, there are still major challenges for doctors to access patient records. When Dr. Vincent Rajkumar, a Minnesota-based oncologist, hears from a patient who sought care at a hospital that uses a different medical record system, he knows it'll take a lot of work. He'll typically work with his patients (who by that point usually have been diagnosed with cancer) to call up their previous hospital and/or clinics to ask for the records. These records will often arrive in a PDF format. Rajkumar will then manually upload them, a process that could lead to delays in making vital treatment decisions for his patient. Many doctors believe that Epic could be doing more to solve the problem, but its CEO Judy Faulkner told CNBC at the Healthy Returns virtual summit earlier this week that it's a challenge when other vendors don't want to interoperate.

Judith Faulkner, CEO of healthcare IT giant Epic Systems. Source: Epic Systems

Faulkner told CNBC's Bertha Coombs that Epic was one of the "originators" of interoperability. Faulkner said that in the early 2000s she heard about a patient that her husband  a doctor  was treating. The patient had left his care and moved to another city. That hospital couldn't easily access her records, and she died. And he (Faulkner's husband) kept saying, "If they had had her record, they would have known what to do. It was easy." Faulkner described facing institutional resistance from the powers that be, including trade associations that oversee the various vendors, but said she moved ahead regardless with an interoperability framework for hospitals using Epic. And doctors agree that it has gotten easier to share records with other hospitals using Epic. "It's been a night-and-day improvement on that front," notes Rajkumar, who's worked with Epic systems for several years. "If your patient is coming from another site that has Epic, I can see everything immediately  even labs done yesterday."

Not a solved problem

But the medical records interoperability question is by no means a solved problem. It's still a challenge for patients to freely move their records between systems, and data-blocking is still a routine occurrence. To combat that, the Department of Health and Human Services recently finalized a rule that aimed to make medical records accessible through application programming interfaces, or APIs. The rule is also designed to make it easier for hospitals to share patient records with other medical offices or hospitals. Epic initially publicly opposed that rule, pointing to patient privacy holes, but the legislation passed shortly before the pandemic. In a statement, the company later clarified that it felt the government "listened carefully" to its concerns, and that it would support the goal of "putting Americans in control of their health information."

Portions of the rule now have been delayed to make it easier for providers in the midst of the coronavirus. Once the bill does move forward, it could take several years for the full brunt of the changes to take effect. Patient groups and advocates largely have rallied behind it. For them it's a huge undertaking to request their medical information and have to carry it around in paper bags or on CD-Roms. Before she passed away earlier this year, serial entrepreneur and cancer patient Leila Janah advocated for medical record interoperability, noting that in her case she had to fly to a cancer conference to get all of her oncologists to look at the same source of "ground truth." The rule is largely designed to make it easier for patients to access their own records and share that with a hospital or app developer. But doctors say that it still remains a big challenge for hospitals to share data with hospitals using any other system that isn't Epic. Or really for any two different vendors, Epic or otherwise, to connect. Faulkner noted at the Healthy Returns event that other vendors could, in theory, connect to the Epic system. "We can't send a fax to someone who doesn't have a fax machine, so you can't interoperate with someone who doesn't interoperate," she said. "Well, we got frustrated with not being able to interoperate with a health system that couldn't interoperate. So we said, 'Let's stop thinking of that as an excuse, they can't interoperate, and figure out what we can do to make it  them interoperate.'" Epic has a tool called Share Everywhere to allow other systems to connect into Epic, she said. But doctors stress that it remains a big challenge to do that in practice. "It takes gymnastics to get an Epic system to talk to a non-Epic system," said Aaron Miri, the chief information officer at Dell Medical School and UT Austin. Miri said one of the big remaining challenges is that there's no unique number or code to identify a specific patient. So an Aaron Miri in another vendors' system could be a different Aaron Miri. Figuring that out creates a headache for hospitals and delays in accessing the records. "It gets real complicated quickly," he said. Hospital execs like Miri say they are desperate for the situation to change, but it hasn't yet because of financial incentives. "I think it'll continue until there's strong enforcement and some kind of unique way to identify a patient," he said. "The reality here is that your medical information is big business  and it should be big business."

Why it matters
On the Turkish capital's bridges and bus stops, Ankara mayor Mansur Yavas urges wealthier residents to help poorer citizens during the coronavirus pandemic by paying off their debts to grocers. "Kindness is more contagious than disease," the advert proclaims, showing a large black book with the word "paid" in red. Despite a government block on donation campaigns by Yavas and Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu in March, they have continued to help those in need. The mayors, representing the main opposition CHP in an alliance with a smaller nationalist party, won the two biggest cities last year. Their success and growing popularity mean they are now seen as potential rivals to President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The interior ministry has launched investigations into the mayors and the government insisted donations must go through its "National Solidarity" campaign. It has so far raised around two billion Turkish lira ($290 million) in the country which is hard hit by the outbreak with over 144,000 cases and 4,007 deaths. The mayors' success was the first time in 25 years Erdogan's ruling AKP or its predecessors were not in charge of Ankara or Istanbul. Erdogan refused to accept Imamoglu's initial victory in March 2019, and called for a re-run, citing corruption in the counting. Imamoglu won again with a bigger majority. Deputy CHP chairman Seyit Torun said the government was "really disquieted" by the municipalities "fulfilling their responsibilities". "During elections, they claimed CHP municipalities would cut people's assistance, and would do this and that," said Torun, who is in charge of CHP's local administrations. "They slandered us," he told AFP, adding: "But now the truth is out there." - Popular - Erdogan suggested the municipalities made moves "which had been attempted by the PKK (Kurdish militants)" and the group blamed for the 2016 failed coup. Both are outlawed as terrorist organisations in Turkey. "There is no point in having a state within a state," Erdogan said last month, accusing the mayors of acting illegally and showing off. But the AKP's Cevdet Yilmaz denied any political motives behind the government's actions, telling foreign media Thursday: "We want them to work in coordination, not in isolation, from other initiatives." Kemal Cokakoglu, Ankara municipality's deputy general secretary, refused to be drawn on politics but insisted Yavas' campaign was not illegal. "A city of around six million doesn't have even a second, a minute, or an hour to show off, or the luxury either," Cokakoglu told AFP. While Imamoglu garnered more press attention, a Metropoll survey quoted by local media said Yavas was the most trusted politician after the health minister and the science committee leading the COVID-19 response, ahead of Erdogan in fourth place. By managing the crisis well, the municipalities have become an "open threat" to the government's future, said Seren Selvin Korkmaz, Istanbul Political Research Institute director. She said the government sought to "consolidate its own base" by targeting the opposition and changing the agenda, and by creating an "us" versus "them" situation. The signs were already not good for the mayors before the crisis, with attempts by the government to limit municipalities' powers and block decision-making processes. Erdogan is aware of the impact a successful mayor can have, after winning the seat in Istanbul in the 1990s before his party's national success in 2002. - Utility bills paid - But Imamoglu and Yavas have raised substantial funds. Imamoglu's "pay it forward" campaign for outstanding utility bills obtained around 15 million lira ($2.1 million), a week after its launch early May. The Ankara municipality followed suit with a website called "One Heart Ankara", where wealthier citizens can pay the water bills of struggling families, top up their travel cards or donate money to people who have lost their jobs. As the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan began last month, Yavas sought financial donations to "give iftar" (the evening fast-breaking meal). Despite a cyber attack when it first came online, the municipality reached its goal to provide nearly 265,000 meals after over 35,000 people donated. On an industrial estate in Ankara, several fully protected women and men cook the meals for poor families and older citizens who are unable to leave their homes. Korkmaz said the call to pay off debts and utility bills allowed the mayors "to respond to the daily needs of citizens". In Ankara's Altindag district, shop owner Mudaver Uygur said a debt of around 5,500 lira ($790) was paid off by two unknown individuals in cash on Wednesday. "We had more debts but wrote them off thinking we wouldn't get the money," he added. "May God bless (Yavas)." Shop owner Mudaver Uygur shows the book where he notes money owed him by costumers -- wealthier ones have stepped into the breach to pay off debts worth hundreds of dollars in some cases Volunteers in protective gear prepare fast-breaking meals during Ramadan -- just one initiative to help those in need despite a government block on donation campaigns by opposition mayors The government has insisted funds raised through the opposition mayors' donations campaign go through its own "National Solidarity" campaign -- though the ruling party denies any political motive Ankara metropolitan municipality's deputy general secretary Kemal Cokakoglu insisted the opposition mayor's efforts were not illegal and refused to get into party politics
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Looking for a day of family fun this weekend from the comfort of your own home? The New York Transit Museum has just the thing for you!

On Saturday, May 16, starting at noon, the New York Transit Museums seventh annual Party on Wheels family fundraiser will take place digitally, celebrating all things buses, trains and transit.

The event, sponsored by Transit Wireless, offers kids of all ages a way to engage in mass transit through kid-friendly activities like sing-a-longs, costumed characters, puppet shows, transit-themed art and virtual tours of the museums vintage train cars.

I am incredibly thankful to be able to welcome everyone to the Transit Museum virtually and look forward to the day when we can once again welcome visitors in person. In the meantime, well meet you where you are -- even if that means bringing the museum into your home. Were grateful for your support as we continue the tradition of this beloved family fundraiser, said Museum Director Concetta Bencivenga.

Families interested in participating should register online, with 100% tax-deductible donations for the event starting at $50.

Proceeds from the annual family fundraiser go toward the Transit Museums educational programs, which provide unique and engaging transit-based activities for approximately 25,000 New York City students and teachers each year.

OTHER VIRTUAL PROGRAMMING

Earlier this month, the museum announced a host of new digital programs to engage transit-lovers of all ages, including online exhibits, weekly discussions and educational resources.

Available online exhibits include Grand by Design, exploring the history of Grand Central Terminal, and Bringing Back the City: Mass Transit Responds to Crises, examining the work of New York City transit workers in preparing for and responding to major crises, including 9/11 and Hurricane Sandy.

Transit enthusiasts can participate in the museums weekly slate of Digital Discussions, which feature a range of transit-based topics, including cartography, sustainability, immigration and the history of different modes of transportation, such as ferries, bridges, tunnels and electrified elevated train lines.

Young transit lovers are invited to participate in Transit Tots, a twice-weekly virtual program where children join museum educators to sing songs, read transit-themed books, do arts and crafts and participate in movement exercises. Transit Tots is available at 10:15 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

The museum has also released various remote learning resources, giving students an opportunity to learn about the citys transit history through videos, images and online workshops.

The New York Transit Museum will continue to offer new digital content in the coming months, with those interested urged to sign up for the museums weekly newsletter and follow the museum on social media.

The New York Transit Museum meets you where you are. said Bencivenga. While our doors are closed, were here. Join us for Party on Wheels, tune in to Transit Tots, use our online series of family workshops to learn together as a family!
EAGLEVILLE  Montgomery County officials on Thursday reported 11 more COVID-19 deaths and 143 new positive cases of the virus.

Meanwhile, the state Department of Health reported it has distributed the investigational antiviral medication remdesivir to some local hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19.

The 11 latest COVID-19 deaths included individuals who ranged in age from 54 to 97 and the deaths bring the countys death toll to 454 since March 7, when the first two cases of the virus were identified in the county, Commissioners Chairwoman Dr. Valerie Arkoosh said Thursday during a daily news briefing to update the community about the pandemic.

To date, 251 females and 203 males have died from the virus in the county.

Arkoosh added 398 of the total 454 deaths were individuals who resided in long-term care facilities, comprising about 88 percent of the total deaths.

The 454 total deaths were confirmed positive COVID-19 cases through the use of lab tests.

Arkoosh said 202 other deaths in the county have been listed as probable COVID-19 deaths. Those are deaths that list COVID-19 as a cause of death on a death certificate but in which there was no laboratory confirmation of the virus.

Additionally, officials reported a total of 143 new positive cases of the virus on Thursday, bringing the countys total number of cases to 5,523 since March 7. Eighty-eight of the latest individuals to test positive resided in long-term care facilities in the county, one was from the Norristown State Hospital and the remaining 54 were other residents in the community, according to officials.

The new positive cases included 66 males and 77 females who ranged in age from 14 to 99 and the individuals were residents of 31 municipalities. To date, all 62 of the countys municipalities are home to individuals with COVID-19. Bryn Athyn reported its first case of the virus on Thursday, becoming the last municipality to do so.

Arkoosh reported the county continues to have beds available at the countys nine hospitals.

Our hospital beds are stable. We still have individuals numbering in the high 200s hospitalized with 32 percent of those individuals requiring ventilators, said Arkoosh, who was joined at the news briefing by fellow commissioners Kenneth E. Lawrence Jr. and Joseph C. Gale.

State Department of Health officials said the state has distributed the investigational antiviral medication remdesivir to several county hospitals to treat patients with COVID-19.

According to state officials, those local hospitals and the number of vials of the drug they are to receive included: Abington Memorial Hospital, 36; Albert Einstein at Elkins Park, 18; Lansdale Hospital, 18; Main Line-Lankenau Hospital, 36; Main Line-Bryn Mawr Hospital, 18; Chestnut Hill Hospital, 18; Holy Redeemer Hospital and Medical Center, 18; and Einstein Medical Center-Montgomery Hospital, 18.

The federal government distributed the first shipment of 1,200 doses to the state on Tuesday and the entire allotment was shipped to 51 Pennsylvania hospitals this week, according to state Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine.

The department is working to give our hospitals every opportunity to treat patients with COVID-19, Levine wrote in a press release. It is important to note that there is limited information on the safety and effectiveness of using remdesivir to treat people in the hospital with COVID-19. However, it was shown in a clinical trial to shorten the recovery time in some people, which is why the Food and Drug Administration has authorized the emergency use of the medication for treatment.

The hospitals that received the first shipments were determined based on the number of COVID-19 patients at the hospital over a recent seven-day period, and the severity of the illness of those patients, based on whether they are on a ventilator.

Remdesivir is given to a patient intravenously once per day for up to 10 days, depending on how critically ill the patient is, according to health officials. The federal Food and Drug Administration has said remdesivir may help decrease the amount of coronavirus in a patients body, which may help them get better faster.

Officials said they continue to monitor coronavirus data from the 75 long-term care facilities in the county that are licensed by the Pennsylvania Department of Health as well as from other congregate care settings in the county, for a total of about 620 facilities.

As of Thursday, 93 of the facilities reported positive COVID-19 cases among residents and staff. Specifically, officials reported there are 1,610 cases among residents of the facilities and 597 cases among staff at the facilities, for a total of 2,207 positive individuals.

Gale, the lone Republican on the three-member commissioners board, once again broke with his colleagues and criticized the pandemic response by Gov. Tom Wolf and Levine, particularly when it came to addressing long-term care facilities.

There is no question that Governor Wolf and Secretary Levine have been a complete and utter failure since this pandemic began. Nearly 70 percent of the deaths in Pennsylvania are from long-term care facilities. Over 80 percent of the deaths in Montgomery County are from long-term care facilities. It should not have been this way, Gale said.

Instead of quarantining the infected residents of nursing homes, Gov. Wolf quarantined the healthy residents of Pennsylvania with a Draconian stay-at-home order, Gale added.

Officials said testing opportunities continue to be available in Lansdale, Whitpain and Norristown.

The drive-thru site at the central campus of the Montgomery County Community College in Whitpain is open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily as testing supplies allow. Registration for each days appointments will open at 8 a.m. daily and will remain open until all available spots are filled. Individuals can register online at www.montcopa.org/COVID-19

The drive-thru site will be open on Friday but will be closed on Saturday. The site will reopen for testing on Sunday.

Individuals who do not have access to the internet or do not have an email address can call 610-631-3000 to register for a testing appointment.

Between April 16 and May 11, the drive-thru site tested 4,871 individuals. To date, officials have received results for 4,716 individuals, 652 of whom tested positive for the virus. Officials said that comes out to about a 13.8 percent positive rate, which is a reduction from the highest positive rate of 24 percent that was recorded during the first week of April.

This downward trend is a result of the many personal sacrifices that so many of you have made over these last weeks. Its taken time to get to this point where there is a downward trend, said Arkoosh, adding its important for residents to continue to sit tight and maintain social distancing so that we may continue this trend.

Because given the amount of virus that is still in our midst, it would be very easy for this trend to reverse, Arkoosh said.

A walk-up community-based testing site for Norristown residents is located on the parking lot of the Delaware Valley Community Health Norristown Regional Health Center, 1401 DeKalb St. The free testing is provided by appointment only from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Monday through Friday.

Norristown residents can register for testing by calling 610-592-0680 starting at 8:30 a.m. daily.

The Rite Aid Pharmacy located at 1856 N. Broad St. in Lansdale also is offering no-cost testing for anyone over 18. Officials said appointments for the tests may be scheduled online by visiting www.riteaid.com/pharmacy/services/COVID-19-testing
The Oakley City Council unanimously approved a cooperation agreement with Wayfarer to evaluate the viability of this proposed on-demand transit system touted as a new standard in the post-pandemic world.Small autonomous electric cars running on narrow fixed guideways could someday shuttle passengers to and from the California Bay Area BART and Amtrak stations and other locations, and Oakley could be one of the first cities to test that pilot program.The Oakley City Council unanimously approved a cooperation agreement with Wayfarer, doing business as Glydways Inc. , to evaluate the viability of this proposed on-demand transit system touted as a new standard in the post-pandemic world. When completed in east Contra Costa County, it would take up to three passengers riding in small individual cars from Oakleys yet-to-be-completed Amtrak train station to the Antioch BART station with stops in between, possibly at the Contra Costa Logistics Center , a job hub now being built.Riders at individual boarding bays would enter personal pods that would be steam-disinfected after each use, while point-to-point journeys would minimize infection risks, according to the firm.The South San Francisco-based company also is in talks with Richmond, San Jose and other cities to develop transportation systems, and Glydways car pathways are envisioned in Alameda, San Francisco and Santa Clara counties.Under the agreement with Oakley, the city would have no direct financial obligation other than staff time involved in the ongoing research and implementation of the pilot program, City Manager Bryan Montgomery said.Glydways proposes a phased, design, build, finance, operate and maintain structure for its project, with financing a mix of debt and equity, and operations and maintenance paid for through ridership and other revenue.In an earlier interview, Mayor Kevin Romick said the goal of the system is to provide choices.The benefit is it would be moving people that first and last mile, he said, referring to the distance between the Amtrak train platform and the Logistics Center. Randell H. Iwasaki , executive director of the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, said transportation needs to be reinvented to remain relevant to provide safe, accessible, cost-effective ways to move people.I think theres a lot of potential for technology to help solve the first- and last-mile problem, he said, referring to the problem of getting commuters from their homes to BART and other points like job centers.As commuters search out personalized mobility options, the Contra Costa Transportation Authority believes that Glydways scalable, lightweight, Automated-Transit-Networks-based technology has the potential to provide a personalized experience while also supporting environmental efforts to reduce the number of vehicle miles traveled by solo drivers, Iwasaki said. Eliot Temple of Glydways said the firm couldnt be happier to be working with Oakley where an expansive new job center is underway.We have pretty much chosen Contra Costa County, he said. The Contra Costa Transit Authority has a unique team of folks there.  They are one group of people that will see this through and get this done.The proposed transit system is estimated to cost $20 million per mile to build and 25 cents per passenger per mile to run it, according to the proposal.The unit economics are extremely low-cost, so the system pays for itself in years and operates almost at a profit, so there are no subsidies necessary, nothing like that, Temple said. Glydways on-demand system can move up to 10,000 people per hour, all traveling on bicycle-lane-sized paths in battery-operated vehicles that measure 3.7 feet wide, 5.9 feet tall and 9.8 feet long. And wait times are seconds, not minutes, he said.The autonomous pods will undergo proof of concept testing at Concords GoMentum Station , a testing ground for such cars, and the pilot program at Oakley or at other potential sites would come after that, he said.
Black and white Tegu lizard (Salvator merianae) at Iguazu Falls, the waterfalls of the Iguazu River on the Brazil Argentina border.

Kike Calvo/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Argentine black and white tegu lizards, which can grow up to four feet long and weigh more than 10 pounds, are an invasive species in Georgia.

The reptiles can reproduce quickly, have few predators, and are posing a major threat to some of Georgia's protected species.

Georgia Department of Natural Resources' Wildlife Resources Division is trying to eradicate the species from the state and is asking the public to report any sightings of the lizard.

Visit Insider's homepage for more stories.

Large lizards are invading Georgia and pose a major threat to native wildlife, state officials have warned residents.

Argentine black and white tegu lizards, which can grow up to four feet long and weigh more than 10 pounds, have been spotted in Georgia for years, and officials are now trying to eradicate the species from the state.

"They eat just about anything they want," retired Georgia Department of Natural Resources' Wildlife Resources Division biologist John Jensen said in a 2019 video about the lizards.

Argentine black and white tegus are native to South American countries, including Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and their namesake Argentina. They can live up to 20 years, and can survive colder months through a reptilian version of hibernation, according to Georgia's Department of Natural Resources (DNR) website.

It is unknown exactly how many tegus are in Georgia, but they don't yet pose a threat to people or household pets.

They're known to eat fruit, pet food, and the eggs of ground-nesting birds and small mammals like gopher tortoises and American alligators, which are both protective species. They can also displace animals by taking their burrows.

A black and white tegu.

Georgia DNR

"Tegus are predators that do not belong here. We're asking residents in the area to report them, which helps us assess the problem and remove tegus," Daniel Sollenberger, a senior wildlife biologist with DNR's Wildlife Conservation Section told Insider.

Story continues

"It also helps if they can provide photos," he continued. "People unfamiliar with tegus might mistake native animals such as juvenile alligators and even fence lizards with these invasive reptiles."

Female tegus can lay about 35 eggs a year, and the lizards don't have many predators, meaning they can multiply quickly, according to Georgia's DNR website.

Jensen with a black and white tegu.

Georgia DNR

"Although not considered aggressive toward people, tegus will defend themselves if threatened," the website says. "They can react fast and lash with their tails. They have sharp teeth and claws and strong jaws."

Tegus have been established in Florida for years, and in recent years have been spotted in Toombs and Tattnall counties in Georgia. Officials are hoping to eradicate the species from the state by trapping and humanely euthanizing them.

Georgia's DNR is asking anyone who sees a tegu to report it to the agency and urged anyone who has kept them as a pet to contact reptile adoption organizations.

Because tegus are an invasive species, people can also kill them on private property if necessary.

"If you are able to safely and humanely dispatch of the animal, we encourage that and we want that information too," Jensen said in his video about the lizards.

This article has been updated.

Read the original article on Insider
Iran's Zarif Dismisses Trump, Hook Threats Over Sanctions

Radio Farda May 14, 2020

Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif on Thursday lashed out at President Donald Trump and the Special Representative on Iran Brian Hook's threats to trigger a return of all United Nations sanctions if the arms embargo under the Iran nuclear agreement is not extended in October.

Hook wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that the United States is ready to "snap back" sanctions and has drafted a Security Council resolution and "will press ahead with diplomacy and build support" to ensure that the arms embargo will remain.

"What Mr. Hook has said about nothing remaining from the JCPOA is none of his business. What matters is [what decisions are made by] Iran and the remaining parties to the JCPOA," Zarif said on Thursday and added: "We have carried out all our measures within the framework of the JCPOA" while calling on the remaining parties to change their "behavior" so that Tehran can return to the full implementation of the JCPOA.

U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew from the JCPOA in May 2018 and called the agreement negotiated by the Obama administration "the worst deal ever." However, the United States now says that it can trigger a return of not only the arms embargo but all U.N. sanctions as a participant in JCPOA.

Commenting to reporters on Thursday about the United States' status in the nuclear agreement with world powers officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Zarif called the U.S. position "very stupid" and said it was not surprising "that those who tell people to drink disinfectants not to catch coronavirus are claiming to be a party to an agreement that they have officially and in writing withdrawn from".

Zarif also retorted to Hook's remarks on the nuclear agreement's dissolution before the next U.S. presidential race. In recent comments addressing Joe Biden on May 10, Hook had said that even if Biden won the presidential race, "nothing would be left of the nuclear deal" to return to by the time of the next U.S. president is in office. Biden has promised his supporters to reinforce and expand the JCPOA in cooperation with U.S. allies.

A U.N. Security Council resolution to reinstate sanctions on Iran requires nine yes votes and no vetoes by Russia, China, the United States, France or Britain. Iran is counting on Russia and China to veto any U.S move to pass a resolution.

Source: https://en.radiofarda.com/a/iran-s-zarif -dismisses-to-trump-hook-s-threats-over- sanctions/30611737.html

Copyright (c) 2020. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave., N.W. Washington DC 20036.

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Ulster Unionist leader Steve Aiken has said a border in the Irish Sea is now a certainty and he has asked the Government to urgently outline its plans to support Northern Ireland businesses.

It was revealed at Stormont earlier this week that physical posts were set to be installed at ports in Belfast, Larne and Warrenpoint.

Secretary of State Brandon Lewis told MPs he was determined there would not be an Irish Sea border and Northern Ireland would continue to have unfettered access to the UK market, but a number of local politicians do not believe that is possible.

SDLP MP Claire Hanna said that Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill must be assertive in demanding that London extend the transition period.

The details for the physical posts were revealed by Sinn Fein junior minister Declan Kearney during a committee meeting on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson had pledged that there would be no trade barriers between Northern Ireland and Britain.

Expand Close UUP leader Steve Aiken PA / Facebook

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But Mr Aiken said: "We now have it in the clearest of terms that there will be an Irish Sea border come January 1, 2021.

"The UUP had warned that this was sadly inevitable if we continued on the direction of travel set in December 2017 that the UK Government has allowed to continue.

"It is unforgivable that we have ended up here. For all the big talk and bluster, Northern Ireland will now have to deal with border control posts at our ports and airports.

"This places a huge burden on businesses here, who will be expected to be prepared for the changes in just over seven months amidst the crisis many are currently facing due to Covid-19.

"We urgently need to hear from the UK Government on how they are going to assist Northern Ireland in getting ready for this.

"We didn't ask for it, nor do we want it. We should not be expected to bear the cost. The Northern Ireland Executive must make a case for mitigation and for an urgent road map from HMG on how they are going to ensure that businesses in Northern Ireland are not disadvantaged by what they have agreed to."

Ms Hanna said: "After months of denying that there would be an Irish Sea border, the Government now must provide guidance to businesses on what to expect with these checks, which are happening in less than eight months.

"This is coming as businesses are fighting for their lives because of coronavirus. It is not a time for uncertainty.

"The First and Deputy First Ministers should be requesting that the transition period is extended. The Executive are not passengers in all of this. They are a player in the withdrawal agreement."

TUV leader Jim Allister said the revelation that the Government would put in place detailed plans with the Executive for physical posts at ports would present a "major test of their mettle" for unionist ministers.

"No unionist could agree to the imposition of such posts at Larne, Belfast and Warrenpoint. Not only would they represent a serious assault on our place within the UK, but they would create a barrier between us and our single biggest market in the rest of the UK," he said.

"Quite apart from the constitutional ramifications, it simply doesn't make economic sense."

Mr Lewis told the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee at Westminster that the Government remained "determined there will not be a border down the Irish Sea." He said: "We want to make sure there is unfettered access for Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is part of the UK's single market. It is important it remains that way. It is important that we trade both ways."
Mumbai, May 15 : Amid the ongoing COVID-19 lockdown as multiplexes remain shut, the streaming platform Amazon Prime Video is going all out in a bid to revolutionise the way we might watch films in the future.

After confirming the Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Gulabo Sitabo for a digital release recently, the OTT platform now announces six more highly-anticipated Indian films, including Shakuntala Devi starring Vidya Balan, for digital premieres over the next months.

All these films will directly go to Amazon Prime bypassing traditional theatrical release.

Across five Indian languages, apart from the above-mentioned Hindi releases, the direct-to-home menu features the Tamil legal drama Ponmagal Vandhal starring Jyotika, the Keerthy Suresh starrer Penguin (Tamil and Telugu), Sufiyum Sujatayum (Malayalam) starring Aditi Rao Hydari, Law (Kannada) starring Ragini Chandran and Siri Prahlad, and Danish Sait's next film French Biryani (Kannada).

The movies will premiere on the streaming platform over the next three months and will be available in 200 countries and territories worldwide.

Ponmagal Vandhal (Tamil) will release on May 29. The legal drama is written and directed by JJ Fredrick, and produced by Jyotika's husband, Tamil superstar Suriya, along with Rajsekar Karpoorasundarapandian. In fact, as reported earlier by IANS, the Tamil Nadu Theatre And Multiplex Owners Association threatened to ban all releases featuring Suriya, or produced by his banner 2D films, in the wake of this decision to release "Pon Magal Vandhal" directly on the popular OTT platform.

Much awaited @KeerthyOfficial s #Penguin will now be the first Telugu/Tamil OTT release which was earlier planned for theatres. To premiere exclusively on @PrimeVideosINon 19th June, 2020. pic.twitter.com/V7fDJ9XOPk  BARaju (@baraju_SuperHit) May 15, 2020

However, that does not seem to deter others. "Penguin (Tamil and Telugu) will go live on June 19. The film is written and directed by Eshavar Karthic. The film is produced by Stone Bench Films and Karthik Subbaraj. While Law (Kannada) is slated for June 26, French Biryani (Kannada) will release on July 24.

Shoojit Sircar's Gulabo Sitabo will release on June 12.

The release dates of Shakuntala Devi and Sufiyum Sujatayum are yet to be announced.

"We're taking this one step further, with seven of India's most-anticipated films premiering exclusively on Prime Video, bringing the cinematic experience to their doorstep," said Vijay Subramaniam, Director and Head, Content, Amazon Prime Video, India.

"Indian audiences have been eagerly awaiting the release of these seven films, and we are delighted that we will now be premiering these movies for our customers -- who can enjoy watching these from the safety and comfort of their homes and on a screen of their choice," said Gaurav Gandhi, Director and Country General Manager, Amazon Prime Video India.

Meanwhile, exhibitors are naturally not pleased with Amazon Prime's unprecedented move.

As part of a long press statement issued on Thursday evening, and without naming any film or production house in particular, the multiplex chain INOX stated: "The decision of production house to deviate from the globally prevalent content windowing practice is alarming and disconcerting. Cinemas and content creators have always been into mutually beneficial partnerships, where one's action provided fillip to another's revenues."

-- Syndicated from IANS
PLAINWEILL, MI -- The JBS meat production facility near Plainwell is ramping up production after several weeks of long lists of absences and decreased production, union representatives said.

In April, the first cases of COVID-19 were reported among JBS workers, sparking anxiety among the workers and outrage among animal advocates.

So many workers took sick days the plant was shut down for two days, said John Cakmakci, president of United Food and Commercial Workers Union (UFCW) Local 951 that represents Michigan workers.

In an effort to keep employees safe and still working, the union negotiated a $600 bonus and an extra $4 an hour.

Two weeks ago, the union also negotiated that all employees 60 and older be sent home with paid time off and full benefits, Cakmakci said. He estimated this applied to 30-40 employees out of the 1,300 workers at the Plainwell plant.

Although the virus has infected people in all age groups, it is most fatal in adults older than 60 with compromised immune systems.

The union has also secured staggered breaks, face shields and plexiglass dividers. Cakmakci said it was disappointing that it took a pandemic to push forward safety measures the union suggested previously.

In the end, its a lot safer place to work than it use to be, he said.

With the safeguards in place, the plant plans to ramp up to full production by July, Cakmakci said.

Cameron Bruett, spokesperson for JBS, could not confirm a timeline for the plant to return to full production.

We expect operations to normalize over time as absenteeism rates decline in response to the preventive measures in place at the facility, Bruett said.

The health department has continued to work with JBS and is monitoring the curve seen in data on COVID-19 cases involving JBS workers, said Lindsay Maunz, public information officer with the Allegan County Health Department.

On April 27, the number of positive cases of COVID-19 among JBS workers rose to 86, the Allegan County Health Department reported at the time.

There have been two new cases since the 86 were reported, Cakmakci said.

Maunz said no new cases had been reported to the health department and deferred to JBS for more specific questions.

Bruett declined to give a number of cases among the Plainwell employees when asked by MLive.

Given the evolving nature of this situation, we are not attempting to report the number of impacted team members, he said. We are continuing to partner with the state and local health department and communicate directly with our team members.

After reviewing the initial outbreak, JBS found that not all of the positive cases were current employees. Some patients cited JBS as their last employer during their COVID-19 test, Cakmacki explained.

More on MLive:

Michigan coronavirus cases spike, officials cite testing backlog

Dangerous syndrome in kids linked to COVID-19 under review in Michigan after 17 cases confirmed

Hundreds tested for coronavirus as Kalamazoo County continues drive-thru program

37 students, 9 staff members test positive for coronavirus at Lakeside Academy
(Newser)  First came the warnings from Europe, then the US. Next came the deaths. Now, the CDC is officially warning doctors to be on the lookout for a rare mystery illness in children that is thought to be linked to the coronavirus. Previously described as an inflammatory ailment similar to Kawasaki disease or toxic shock syndrome, the condition now has an official name: multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children, or MIS-C. In the health alert to physicians, the CDC says that in order to diagnose MIS-C, a person under the age of 21 must have a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher for at least 24 hours, inflammation in the body, problems with at least two organs, and evidence of COVID-19whether that's a positive test or recent exposure to a confirmed case. More than 123 cases have been reported in at least 19 states so far, NBC News reports; one 12-year-old with MIS-C reportedly survived a heart attack.

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"The CDC is requesting healthcare providers report suspected cases to public health authorities to better characterize this newly recognized condition in the pediatric population," the alert says, though it notes that it's unknown whether adults might also develop the syndrome. "There is limited information currently available about risk factors, pathogenesis, clinical course, and treatment for MIS-C," the alert warns. A link between the inflammatory condition and the coronavirus has been suspected, but the Guardian reports that Italian doctors recently found the first clear evidence confirming there is such a connection: Out of 10 children treated for the syndrome between mid-February and mid-April, eight tested positive for virus antibodies. Doctors say the virus can't be ruled out in the other two cases, as faulty tests could be to blame. (Doctors say this is often the first sign when a child has the coronavirus.)
Ermoupoli is possibly the most extraordinary town in Greece. Theres no maze of alleys, no whitewashed houses and no heaps of tangled fishing nets in the harbour.

What you get instead is a busy city, whose broad squares, grandly domed churches and pastel-coloured mansions look more Italian than Greek.

Ermoupoli is the capital of Syros, an island of 22,000 souls in the middle of the Cyclades. New fast catamarans started docking there last year, which is how tourists discovered it  they use it as a pit stop between Mykonos and Piraeus, the main port of Athens.

Ermoupoli, pictured, is the capital of Syros, an island of 22,000 souls in the middle of the Cyclades

Italianate Ermoupoli is Syross biggest attraction. It was established in the 1820s by refugees from the ravaged islands of Chios, Psara, Kasos and Crete during the Greek War of Independence. They were canny traders and shipbuilders whose industry turned Ermoupoli into the principal Greek port until the rise of Piraeus.

They built stately homes in the prevailing neoclassical style, and decorated churches with heirlooms. One of them turned out to be quite a sensation.

Papa Kostas, the parish priest of the church of the Dormition of the Virgin, is keen to recount the story. It was March 1983, the first day of Lent, and George Mastoropoulos, the archaeologist, was cataloguing the icons brought to Syros.

He was cleaning them carefully until he started jumping around like a child. Papa Kostas, he said, you have a veritable treasure here.

What Mastoropoulos had revealed below the grime of the centuries was the signature of El Greco. I look at his Dormition, painted in Cretan style when the master was in his 20s, and Im glad that it didnt end up in a faceless museum but remained in the loving care of Papa Kostas.

A quick stroll from the church leads me to the central Miaouli square, dominated by the town hall and its long, monumental stairway.

I continue through streets paved with marble to the Apollo theatre, built in the style of the Teatro San Carlo in Naples.

I pass the church of St Nicholas the Rich, a domed basilica on Corinthian columns, and end up high above the town, on a cove crowned by a string of palazzos.

Greek chic: Ano Syros is full of narrow alleys. The medieval town is on a steep hill overlooking the harbour

The next day, I climb up to the medieval town of Ano Syros, on a steep hill overlooking the harbour.

Its here, in the old capital, that I finally discover those characteristic claustrophobic lanes, pelagic panoramas and white-washed houses.

Once again, Syros ignores the rulebook: the monastery belongs to the Capuchins, while the churches feature organs, polychromatic statues, wooden confessionals and teachings by Pope Francis.

A priest in the Church of St George explains: Ermoupoli is Orthodox, but the rest of Syros is Catholic. The island used to be under the protection of the Pope. Now we celebrate Easter together on the Orthodox dates by special dispensation from the Vatican.

No surprises, though, when it comes to the beaches. From Ermoupoli a bus runs a circuit of the southern shore, where the sands are toffee-hued and the water transparent.

Tourists use Syros, pictured, as a pit stop between Mykonos and Piraeus, the main port of Athens

The most developed resort is the golden crescent of Galissas, where Im welcomed at the highly celebrated restaurant Iliovasilema. It serves Greek cuisine with a creative twist: sea-urchin salad, fennel flan, beef cheek orzotto.

Another popular resort is Kini, a compact fishing village with a pleasingly quiet harbour, where I board a boat with Syros Adventures for a day trip to the northern beaches.

Our final stop is Grammata, a sheltered bay with iridescent waters. I decide to follow the shore around a rocky promontory where shipwrecked sailors have carved messages of gratitude since ancient times.

Not dressed for hiking, I slip and wreck my flip flops  a disaster, as Im left barefoot on sharp rocks. A Greek couple on a sailing boat spot my predicament and throw me a pair of sandals  that miraculously fit  so I can complete my walk. Keep them, they shout, refusing my offers of money. Its you who needs them.

So thats how I remember Syros. Idiosyncratic and eccentric the island may be, but its soul belongs to an old-fashioned Greece where acts of generosity to strangers are still part of daily life.
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-12 19:52:54|Editor: huaxia

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MANILA, May 12 (Xinhua) -- The Asian Development Bank (ADB) on Tuesday said it has approved a 100 million U.S. dollar loan to the government of Mongolia to mitigate the severe health and economic impacts of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

"I commend the government on its response to the COVID-19 outbreak, which has kept the number of COVID-19 cases low in Mongolia," ADB President Masatsugu Asakawa said in a statement.

However, Asakawa said "the crisis is putting a strain on the economy and the threat to public health remains serious."

ADB's assistance will help fund critical support to vulnerable people and businesses, and assist the government in managing the economic impact and responding to the health and social protection needs the pandemic has created, he added.

The Manila-based bank said the COVID-19 is triggering a severe economic slowdown in Mongolia.

ADB announced a 6.5 billion U.S. dollar initial package to address the immediate needs of its developing member countries as they respond to the COVID-19 pandemic on March 18.

Later in April, the bank expanded its response with another 13 billion U.S. dollars in resources, which brought the total size of ADB's response package to about 20 billion U.S. dollars. Enditem
(Newser)  Few states are rebooting quicker than Texas, where stay-at-home orders expired May 1. With cases still rising, including single-day highs of 1,458 new cases and 58 deaths Thursday, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott has defended the pace by pointing out that Texas 1,200 deaths are still behind similarly big states, including California and Florida. But on the cusp of even more restrictions ending Monday, including clearing gyms to reopen, a political confrontation is growing over attempts by big cities to keep some guardrails. The dispute underscores the gulf between Democrats who run city halls and GOP leaders who call the shots in the capital in Texas, where unlike in other states, the governor's orders supersede all local mandates during the pandemic, the AP reports.

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State Attorney General Ken Paxton, a Republican, this week lashed out at the cities of Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio over what he called "unlawful" local orders that are tougher than restrictions prescribed by Abbott. Some counties and cities have "grossly exceeded state law to impose their own will on private citizens and businesses," Paxton said. City leaders said their local orders, which include more stringent emphasis on face coverings in public and restaurant protocols that aren't strictly enforced, don't conflict. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego says he asked the governor for a few more weeks to assess data before restrictions are lifted. "Im not fighting his plan, Im fighting his timing, Samaniego says. "It looks like it would work for us months from now."

(Read more Texas stories.)
A summery Judgement.

Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said he expects right fielder Aaron Judge to be fully recovered from his cracked right rib sometime this summer.

I always felt it was more likely that we wouldnt see Judge until the summertime, Cashman said on a video chat Thursday benefitting Family Centers, which gives money to Fairfield County, Conn., residents suffering through the coronavirus pandemic.

On the same call, Cashman said he believed the players union and owners would end their battle over player compensation and that there would be a 2020 season.

Judges injury was discovered March 6. The Yankees believe it occurred last September when he was diving for a catch. He worked out with the pain all winter, but only reported the pain to the team for the first time in late January, just before spring training started.

Doctors struggled to discern why he felt pain in his shoulder and pectoral muscle until they finally discovered a cracked right first rib.

Cashman called Judges pain threshold (Derek) Jeter-like.

He never complains, the GM said. He always pushes through. He never shares that something is bothering him. So, obviously, that's why, when he did show up in the spring and said something's been bothering him, it was an uh-oh moment because he really does not ever complain about anything and he didn't complain in the winter time either.

Judge was expected to have a CT scan on his rib this week. The team expects hell need another after that.

Cashman said that doctors figured Judge might not return until the summer but that it was possible he could heal more quickly.

But the healing properly these areas, with this particular injury, this is something thats going to be more challenging, Cashman said. But mind over matter with Aaron Judge. Always felt that he would still be ready by Opening Day, when it was the real Opening Day back in the day (March 26). But with the COVID situation  hes healing. Weve had multiple MRI imaging that shows the healing and well continue that process that will hopefully continue to show that expected healing moving forward. Once we resume play, were excited to believe that hes going to rejoining us at full capacity.

Please subscribe now and support the local journalism YOU rely on and trust.

Brendan Kuty may be reached at bkuty@njadvancemedia.com.
The United States on May 14 blamed extremist Islamic State militants for two deadly attacks this week, urging the Afghan government to not let them derail a fragile peace process with the Taliban.

The U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Twitter that the United States assessed that the Islamic States Afghan affiliate carried out the "horrific attacks on a maternity hospital in Kabul and a funeral ceremony in Nangarhar Province.

ISIS (Islamic State) has demonstrated a pattern for favoring these types of heinous attacks against civilians and is a threat to the Afghan people and to the world, he said.

Afghan President Ashraf Ghani ordered the military to go on the offensive against the Taliban and other militant groups following the two attacks on May 12 that killed at least 56 people. He accused all militant groups of ignoring repeated calls to reduce violence.

Khalilzad said the Islamic State opposes peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban and seeks to encourage sectarian war as in Iraq and Syria.

Rather than falling into the ISIS trap and delay peace or create obstacles, Afghans must come together to crush this menace and pursue a historic peace opportunity, Khalilzad said.

It was unclear whether the U.S. position would help revive peace efforts or alter Ghanis calculation to start an offensive.

The Taliban, which has denied involvement in either attack, reacted to Ghani's statement on May 13 by saying it was "fully prepared" to repel any military offensive.

In the first attack, three gunmen stormed a maternity hospital in Kabuls mostly Shi'ite neighborhood of Dasht-e Barchi before security forces killed them. At least 24 people, including babies, women, and nurses, were killed.

Separately, a suicide bomber targeted a funeral for a police commander in the eastern province of Nangarhar, killing at least 32 people. The Islamic State claimed credit for the attack.

No group claimed credit for the attack on the maternity hospital, but the Shiite neighborhood where it is located has been frequently targeted by Islamic State militants.

The Taliban signed a landmark deal with the United States in February meant to pave the way for direct talks between the militant group and the Western-backed government in Kabul after more than 18 years of war.

But the Taliban has ramped up attacks in recent weeks despite a pledge to reduce violence, a tactic that may be employed to strengthen its negotiating position and appease some commanders.

Meanwhile, Islamic State militants also continue to conduct deadly attacks on Afghan security forces and civilians.

The core peace plan is for U.S. and foreign troops to withdraw from Afghanistan following an intra-Afghan deal in exchange for guarantees from the Taliban not to allow the country to become a haven for transnational terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Al-Qaeda aiming to strike abroad.
An armada of tankers filled with Saudi crude heading to American shores is raising concern that tanks may fill again just as a US glut shows signs of easing.

Over 30 tankers laden are set to arrive in the US Gulf Coast and West Coast during May and June, according to ship tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. The more-than 50 million barrels of Saudi crude on the water threaten to disrupt a positive supply development: US crude stockpiles declined for the first time since January and inventories at the Cushing, Oklahoma storage hub contracted by the most in months.

The expected Saudi deliveries could push US inventories back to builds depending on their timing, said Sandy Fielden, director of oil and products research at Morningstar Inc. If the shipments land at a rate that isnt balanced by falling production or an uptick in exports, then well see a domestic build.

The oil industry has been on edge for months with onshore and offshore storage capacity levels tested worldwide due to ballooning oil inventories spurred by the Covid-19 demand slowdown. On the US West Coast, crude stockpiles are less than 5 million barrels short of reaching the regions storage capacity.

Data from the Energy Information Administration this week showed US crude production dropped for a sixth straight week to the lowest in nearly a year. But even though output is steadily declining, there are still volumes being produced that may have to jostle with Saudi deliveries for storage space.

If all the Saudi tankers unload, the crude they carry will offset during May almost all of the production reductions from March levels, effectively maintaining the current high storage filling rates, Paola Rodriguez-Masiu, a senior oil market analyst at Rystad Energy, said in a note.

Very Large Crude Carries, or VLCCs, headed for the US Gulf include Shaybah, Hong Kong Spirit and Dalma, ship tracking data show. Tankers en route to the Pacific Coast include Sea Jade and Sikinos I. The vessels, mainly supertankers, will deliver over 45 million barrels of Arabian crude to Gulf buyers and at least 7 million to Pacific users. The volume of oil arriving in May and June is equal to nearly a third of all Saudi crude delivered to the US last year.

West Coast crude stockpiles are currently at 58.2 million barrels. The inventory picture is brighter on the US Gulf Coast, Americas refining belt. Crude inventories there are 88 million barrels shy of reaching total storage capacity.

Still, the market is witnessing delays in discharging Saudi oil. For some ships, it has taken about two weeks to unload cargoes, about twice the usual time to finish the job as small ships that are needed to unload have become increasingly scarce.

Oil imports from Saudi Arabia are not set to slow down anytime soon even as the kingdom deepens its production cuts and raises prices for June supply. Plus, a true demand recovery worldwide isnt expected for at least another year.
The stimulus packages announced by the government so far to mitigate the economic impact of COVID-19 will dent the fiscal deficit by 0.6 per cent of the GDP or Rs 1.29 lakh crore in the ongoing financial year, said a report by State Bank of India (SBI).

With the announcement of an economic package focussing vulnerable sections of the society on Thursday, the government has so far provided a stimulus totalling Rs 16.45 lakh crore.

This implies that the remaining nearly Rs 3.54 lakh crore of the Rs 20 lakh crore package announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on May 12 is yet to be announced.

All in all, the direct fiscal hit after the announcement of three packages is only 0.6 per cent of GDP at approximately Rs 1.29 lakh crore. However, support has been provided to the needy by facilitating their access to food and credit.

Of the total announcement of Rs 3.16 lakh crore (on Thursday), the total cash outlay for the Government will be around Rs 14,50014,750 crore. The impact of Thursday's package on fiscal deficit is expected to be a miniscule at 0.07 per cent of GDP, SBI's 'Ecowrap' report said.

It further said the recent crisis has shown how important it is for a huge country like India to have an infrastructure which promotes inter-operability between States and the Centre.

"The mission mode implementation of One Nation One Ration Card is a step in the right direction. So is making available the portability of welfare benefits for migrant workers and those having no ration card.

"The changes in labour laws that are being mulled over in Parliament if implemented properly could bring positive changes in the status of the labourers in this country," it said.

The Centre and States should, however, work in tandem to achieve these objectives within the mandate of overall labour welfare, the report stressed.

As per the Economic Survey of India 2017, the magnitude of inter-state migration in India was close to 9 million annually between 2011 and 2016, while Census 2011 pegs the total number of internal migrants in the country (accounting for inter and intra-state movement) at a staggering 139 million.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Ana de Armas has been joined at the hip with her boyfriend Ben Affleck for the past two months.

But on Friday the Knives Out actress was seen all by herself as she walked her small white dog in Los Angeles.

This comes the day after the beauty from Cuba was seen kissing the father-of-three in a music video made by Puerto Rican rapper Residente.

Ana alone: Ana de Armas has been joined at the hip with her boyfriend Ben Affleck for the past two months. But on Friday the Knives Out actress was seen all by herself as she walked her small white dog in Los Angeles

The 32-year-old rising star who can be seen in two new movies in November - Blonde about Marilyn Monroe and the next James Bond Film No Time To Die - was in all black.

The Una rosa de Francia star had on a black T-shirt with matching drawstring pants that were gathered at the hem.

Instead of high heels the former resident of Madrid wore black and white Converse sneakers.

Dark for spring: The 32-year-old rising star who can be seen in two new movies in November - Blonde about Marilyn Monroe and the next James Bond Film No Time To Die - was in all black

The standout of the El Internado TV series - which aired from 2007 to 2010 - added several pieces of gold jewelry including a watch, bracelet, ring and necklace.

Her long brunette hair was worn down and parted in the middle.

And the Hispania vet held on to her cell phone as she modeled a pink and light blue face mask to help stop the spread of COVID-19.

LA look: The Una rosa de Francia star had on a black T-shirt with matching drawstring pants that were gathered at the hem. Instead of high heels the former resident of Madrid wore black and white Converse sneakers

Natural look: The standout of the El Internado TV series - which aired from 2007 to 2010 - added several pieces of gold jewelry including a watch, bracelet, ring and necklace. Her long brunette hair was worn down and parted in the middle

Nearly 3,000 people have died in the state of California from the coronavirus. In Los Angeles county, there are 1,700 deaths. The death toll for the US is over 86,000 and worldwide it is over 300,000.

Any also seemed to be social distancing because no other people were seen on the residential street with her.

The day before she was seen kissing her man in a celebrity-filled video.

Ben and Ana locked lips, with the Cuban actress caressing the back of his head as they made out.

She had on a simple tan tank top, while he was dressed in a bluegray graphic T-shirt.

Fresh: This comes the day after the beauty from Cuba was seen kissing the father-of-three in a music video made by Puerto Rican rapper Residente

The video, Antes Que El Mundo Se Acabe, which translates to Before the World End, featured 'More than 100 kisses around the world,' according to its description.

The seven-minute video also included some emotional kissing from Zoe Saldana and her husband Marco Perego, Ricky Martin and his husband Jwan Yosef, Bad Bunny and Gabriela Berlingeri and the Los Angeles Philharmonic Music Director Gustavo Dudamel and his wife, Spanish actress Maria Valverde.

The featured kissers, both famous and not, all sent in their videos from wherever they were located at the moment.

Vacation: Ben and Ana appear to have filmed their clip around April 30, when they traveled to Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert to celebrate her 32nd birthday

Ben and Ana appear to have filmed their clip around April 30, when they traveled to Joshua Tree National Park in the Southern California desert to celebrate her 32nd birthday.

Ana shared multiple photos from the idyllic celebration to her Instagram that day, including a selfie of her and Ben embracing in the same outfits.

She also posted a photo of her looking ecstatic over her decked-out chocolate birthday cake.

Perfect day: Ana shared multiple photos from the idyllic celebration to her Instagram that day, including a selfie of her and Ben embracing in the same outfits

Ben and Ana first met on the set of their upcoming thriller Deep Water last fall.

A source told People that they had an 'instant connection' while filming the movie.

'They had great chemistry right from the start,' the source said of Ben and Ana, who play a couple in the movie from Fatal Attraction director Adrian Lyne.

'Ben always seemed very relaxed and happy around Ana, but at the time there were no signs of romance. He was very focused on making a fantastic movie.'

The two took their relationship public in March when they were seen enjoying a vacation in Costa Rica and Ana's native Cuba.

So much PDA: They were also seen checking out the view from their balcony

Ben later revealed he'd shot some of the photos the actress posted to Instagram when he playfully asked for a credit in the comments.

The couple star as a married couple who have fallen out of love in their upcoming film.

Despite seeming to not care about her romantic trysts, Ben's character plays a dangerous game of cat and mouse with her suitors.

The story, based on the novel of the same name by Patricia Highsmith, was previously adapted into the French film Eaux Profondes starring Isabelle Huppert and Jean-Louis Trintignant.

Bond time: In November she will appear in the 007 movie No Time To Die with Daniel Craig

When Ben isn't spending time with Ana, he's usually with his three children, Violet, 14, Seraphina, 11, and Samuel, eight.

He shares the children with his ex-wife Jennifer Garner, 47, whom he was married to from 2005 until their separation in 2015.

Despite the breakup of their marriage, both parents have managed to maintain a positive relationship, and they regularly come together to support their children at school events and special occasions.
A man who had recently returned from Mumbai was found coronavirus positive in Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur district, an official said on Friday.

Resident of Haridwar village under Barsati Police Station area, the man drives an autorickshaw in Mumbai and had come here on May 2, District Magistrate Dinesh Kumar Singh said.

His sample was sent for testing on May 10 and in the report received on Friday, he was found to be coronavirus positive, the DM said.

The health and district administration is taking all necessary steps and his village has been sealed, the DM added.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Like many other parents, Michael Rossi is adjusting to a new normal.

Hes working from home a lot more. His children are home for the rest of the school year.

These days, hes balancing being a dad along with making films.

His latest effort for the American Experience series is Mr. Tornado, which will premiere at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 19, on New Mexico PBS.

With American Experience, they conceive of all sorts of film topics, he says of working on the series. Once they get the funding in place, they will reach out to a filmmaker.

With Mr. Tornado, Rossi got the opportunity to learn more about Tetsuya Theodore Ted Fujita, a Japanese-American scientist who devoted his life to unlocking the mysteries of severe storms.

Fujita is most widely known for creating the Fujita Scale, or F-Scale, of tornadoes destructive power.

His unique, forensic analysis of the aftermath of destructive forces, born out of the ashes of the worlds first atomic bombs, enabled him to map science onto a phenomenon thought to be unknowable, forever changing our understanding of tornadoes.

As a boy in Japan, he studied astronomy to help predict rushing tides while hunting for clams. He next devoured the sciences at Meiji College of Technology, studying engineering, geology and physics, all while continuing his amateur meteorological experiments. He envisioned a lifetime of scientific research in his beloved homeland, but World War II changed everything.

After the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fujita took part in an analysis of the damage caused by the explosions. The impressions left from the rubble of Nagasaki and Hiroshima would later influence one of his greatest contributions to studies of severe weather.

Once I got to know him and his work, about a year had passed, Rossi says. Here I was with this legacy of his work, sifting through his ideas and his scientific thinking. It was an intimidating thing.

Rossi says he had to get enough information and then begin to peel back the layers to the story.

He was so hyper-focused, Rossi says of Fujita. That, to me, was at the center of the story. He had an inquisitive mind, and that was amazing to me. Up until his final days, he was trying to find patterns.

Rossi says Fujitas story is full of mystery.

You never knew where he was going, Rossi says. Hes a little bit risky, and hes drawn to nature. We also go into how much the impact of World War II had on his interests. He went for everything. If it were complex, that didnt slow him down. To chase tornadoes, thats the ultimate science challenge.

ON TV

The American Experience series Mr. Tornado will air at 8 p.m. Tuesday, May 19, on New Mexico PBS. The documentary tells the story of Japanese-American scientist Tetsuya Theodore Ted Fujita.
Maureen May, a nurse at Temple University Hospital and president of the PASNAP union, says her colleagues are making do with one surgical mask per day. Read more

This story was produced as part of a joint effort among Spotlight PA, LNP Media Group, PennLive, PA Post, and WITF to cover how Pennsylvania state government is responding to the coronavirus. Sign up for Spotlight PAs newsletter.

HARRISBURG  The states largest nurses union says health-care workers dont have essential face masks, access to testing, and other safety measures, even as hospitals push to restart elective procedures and some lawmakers try to speed up Pennsylvanias reopening.

The union also claims the state is being misinformed about the situation on the ground from hospitals.

In a letter to Health Secretary Rachel Levine, the Pennsylvania Association of Staff Nurses and Allied Professionals (PASNAP) said hospitals are sitting on stockpiles of industry-standard N95 respirators while leaving nurses to risk their lives with inadequate, lower-quality masks.

Its not about the quantity of [personal protective equipment] locked away in a closet, but whether the hospitals are handing out the PPE to staff, Mark Warshaw, co-executive director for PASNAP, wrote in the letter, which was obtained by Spotlight PA and WITF-FM.

The state has tasked the Hospital and Healthsystem Association of Pennsylvania  a member organization and registered lobbyist for hospital chains  with a number of responsibilities, including enforcing mutual aid agreements to share supplies and making sure workers have what they need.

Warshaw said in the letter the hospital association is telling state officials that protective equipment is not an issue at the moment while failing to mention that hospitals have resorted to severe rationing of PPE. The union represents 8,400 nurses across the state, with many of its leaders working in Philadelphia and surrounding counties that have been hit hard by the virus.

A spokesperson for the state Health Department declined to respond to whether officials were being misinformed, but said Levine appreciates the concerns raised in this letter.

A spokesperson for the Hospital and Healthsystem Association did not address the claims raised in the letter, but said hospitals are following the states guidance on safety measures and sharing supplies with one another when facilities face a shortfall.

Early in the COVID-19 response, hospitals received shipments of personal protective equipment to help equip staff for dealing with presumed and confirmed COVID-19 patients, spokesperson Rachel Moore said. While we have seen some improvements in the supply chain, some areas remain under strain as additional cases continue to spread and the wider global market supply continues to trail demand.

Since March 6, the state Health Department has required hospitals to report, three times a day, the expected number of days remaining N95 respirators will last, the expected number of days remaining other PPE will last, and the number of employees unavailable for work, spokesperson Nate Wardle said in an email. Each of these reporting items are so the department can assist those facilities in need.

The letter does not contend that facilities lack supplies or that they arent following Centers for Disease Control and Prevention pandemic guidelines. But those crisis mode standards have given hospitals an excuse and enabled them to ignore basic protections and safety standards for health-care workers, and we are the ones suffering, Warshaw said.

Pennsylvania health-care professionals are scared, exhausted, starting to get sick, and some are dying, he wrote in the letter. These front-line warriors read the guidance that hospitals receive from your department and believe that [it is] written solely to protect hospital interests at the expense of their health and safety.

Gov. Tom Wolf began shutting down the states economy and ordering residents to stay home in March to keep hospitals from becoming overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients. The state has largely avoided that worst-case scenario, leading Levine to allow hospitals to perform elective procedures as long as those facilities can still help patients sick with COVID-19.

However, Levine said the state won't give masks or other protective equipment to hospitals that start those procedures.

Until issues with PPE rationing and a lack of testing are resolved, the nurses union said, it vehemently opposes hospitals restarting elective procedures  something that has been a priority for health systems because the procedures generate 30% to 50% of revenue.

Nationwide, hospitals have suffered financial losses expected to total $200 billion for the four-month period from March through June, according to a recent American Hospital Association report.

Warshaw said conditions remain unsafe for health-care professionals, and resuming elective procedures will put further strain on limited resources.

The action of reopening elective surgeries and procedures is a huge contradiction to the declared crisis status, Warshaw said in the letter. If the reason they cant follow normal protections and safety standards is their declaration that they are in a crisis, then they cant reopen elective procedures."

The nurses union is calling for regular in-hospital testing for nurses, mandatory notifications for health workers who have been exposed, quarantine procedures for health-care workers exposed to someone who was sick, and more protective equipment, including at least one new N95 mask each day.

The Health Department declined to say whether it would consider these requests.

At Temple University Hospital in Philadelphia, nurses in the infant intensive care unit are making do with one surgical mask per day, according to Maureen May, a registered nurse in the unit who is also president of the nurses association.

Nurses are given a somewhat more protective KN95 mask after someone has tested positive for COVID-19, May said. But by that point, health workers and other patients in the hospital already would have been exposed to the coronavirus.

And those KN95 masks do not meet longtime safety standards because they are not fitted like the more protective N95 respirators, May said. Some health-care workers at Temple told The Inquirer these masks are falling apart as they wear them.

May recently assisted with a stat cesarean section where the mother was COVID-19 positive, and said she had to scramble to mold a KN95 mask to her face when every second counted and lives were on the line.

If I were to practice what I practiced today two months ago, or pre-pandemic, I would be considered a reckless nurse, May said. So Ive had to lessen my standard, and compromise what I know is the right thing to do.

Temple University Hospital did not respond to a request for comment.

Nurses are being told that they need to accept the lower safety standards because the hospital is in crisis mode, May said. At the same time, she said, health systems are telling state officials that everything is under control.

A lack of face masks isnt the only problem. Another nurse in the unit recently got sick with COVID-19 and ended up in intensive care, May said, and none of the nurses coworkers were notified even though they all had been in close contact. May and her colleagues only learned the nurse was sick when that nurse notified them.

I believe we have lost faith in any system that is around us, May said. The federal government has failed us. The state has failed us.

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Kormakurs system was only possible because of Icelands rigorous testing policies. Netflix, too, was heavily involved, with executives testing Kormakurs methods. The streaming giant financed the extra costs associated with the safety protocols and paid the cast and crews salaries when they were shut down.

First, under the system, Kormakur and his entire 80-person cast and crew were tested. Then, each morning, everyone entering the set had their temperature scanned. Catering was turned into individual boxed meals. Doorknobs, toilets and other surfaces were sanitized on the hour. Most everyone except the actors wore masks, and the makeup artists and production designers were gloved. So much for protecting the environment, he quipped.

Production has been up and running now for four weeks. And though Kormakur and the other directors filming the series have yet to try a scene involving any close contact or intimacy, its continued without incident. (Kormakur says they will address those scenes once restrictions loosen further. If that doesnt happen in time, they will retest actors before filming them. Iceland is currently reopening in phases.)

Two crew members who went to the set with elevated temperatures wound up testing positive for Covid-19. They were both sent home to self-isolate for two weeks, and no one else became infected.

Our methods worked, he added. We caught two people who in another case would have been working with this virus without knowing it. He added, I think if you can create filters in society then you can help find the virus and stop it. Whether its film companies or other companies.

When I spoke with Kormakur, only three Covid-19 patients remained hospitalized in Iceland. Now, Kormakur and the Iceland government are looking at bringing foreign crews into the country to bolster production. He says he could isolate them in empty hotels and get them all tested so they could begin work, a scenario he thinks could help restore Icelands struggling economy.
Documents show that Gregory McMichael's law enforcement certification was suspended and his firearm was taken away in February 2019 due to repeatedly failing to take mandatory training, one year before the fatal shooting of Ahmaud Arbery.

He retired a few months later in June 2019.

McMichael, and his adult son, Travis, were arrested on May 7 and charged with murder and aggravated assault for the Feb. 23 shooting death of Arbery, who was jogging in his Satilla Shores, Georgia, neighborhood when confronted by the two men. The arrest came soon after a video showing the fatal confrontation went viral.

This suspension is outlined in Gregory McMichael's personnel records, obtained by ABC News, from his time working in Glynn County, Georgia, as a police officer and investigator in the district attorney's office.

MORE: Ahmaud Arbery died from multiple gunshot wounds, autopsy finds

In February 2019, the Georgia Peace Officer Standards and Training Council (POST) issued McMichael a suspension order for "failure to maintain training for the year 2018." At that point McMichael lost his powers of arrest.

In a "Memorandum of Understanding" signed by McMichael, his boss at the time, District Attorney Jackie Johnson, wrote that McMichael "will not engage in any activity that would be construed as being law enforcement in nature," and, "To that end, Mr. McMichael will not carry a firearm or badge, nor will he operate any vehicle in the motor pool outfitted with lights, siren or police radio equipment."

McMichael previously received a warning in 2014 after failing to finish mandatory firearms and use-of-force courses, and the documents show McMichael repeatedly failed to complete training over the course of several years.

PHOTO: Gregory McMichael in a photo released on May 7, 2020, after his arrest in Georgia. McMichael and his son, Travis McMichael, have been charged with murder in the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery. (Glynn County Sheriff's Office)

"This situation has been a great embarrassment to me and to Investigator McMichael," Johnson wrote in a 2014 letter to the Georgia POST director. "It has negatively impacted my office, and I have taken measures to ensure that it doesn't happen again."

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The personnel records were first obtained by Jacksonville, Florida, TV station WJXT.

McMichael was also suspended in 2006 for an undisclosed infraction. He was hired in July 1982 and worked on the force for 37 years.

He explained his deficient hours in an application where he asked for a training waiver. McMichael explained that he suffered a heart attack in 2006, and dealt with clinical depression for which he needed medical treatment.

In 2009, McMichael and his wife filed for bankruptcy "due to overwhelming medical bills from my surgeries as well as bills from my wife's cancer treatment," according to the waiver. McMichael also stated they were having issues with his daughter that year and that he suffered a second heart attack.

ABC News has reached out to Laura and Frank Hogue, the lawyers representing McMichael, about the suspension, but have not received comment.

PHOTO: Demonstrators watch a parade of passing motorcyclists riding in honor of Ahmaud Arbery at Sidney Lanier Park on May 9, 2020 in Brunswick, Ga. Arbery was shot and killed while jogging in the nearby Satilla Shores neighborhood on Feb. 23. (Sean Rayford/Getty Images)

The husband and wife team representing McMichael said in a statement Thursday that the public had rushed to judge their client.

"So often the public accepts a narrative driven by an incomplete set of facts, one that vilifies a good person, based on a rush to judgment, which has happened in this case," Laura Hogue said in a statement.

"While the death of Ahmaud Arbery is a tragedy, causing deep grief to his family -- a tragedy that at first appears to many to fit into a terrible pattern in American life -- this case does not fit that pattern," Frank Hogue added. "The full story, to be revealed in time, will tell the truth about this case."

His lawyers will hold a press conference on Friday, and will petition a judge to allow McMichael to be released on bail.

He and his son are currently being held at the Glynn County Detention Center.

Gregory McMichael, ex-police officer charged with killing Ahmaud Arbery, had service weapon suspended in 2019 originally appeared on abcnews.go.com
Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 14:06:12|Editor: huaxia

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BISHKEK, May 15 (Xinhua) -- Kyrgyzstan reported on Friday 29 new COVID-19 cases, raising its total tally to 1,111.

Deputy Health Minister Nurbolot Usenbaev said that two patients, a 55-year-old man and an 84-year-old woman, have died over the past day, rasing the total fatalities to 14.

Both patients were in intensive care, and had chronic diseases, he added.

Usenbaev noted that 10 patients were discharged from hospitals after recovery in the last 24 hours, bringing the total number of recoveries to 745, including 194 medical workers.

To date, there are 353 patients with COVID-19 being treated in hospitals throughout the country and three of them are in intensive care.

In addition, 1,532 people who had contact with infected patients are still under medical observation, while 5,180 people who had contact with infected patients are under the supervision of doctors in home quarantine. Enditem
LAPD

A man killed Thursday by Los Angeles police in the Harbor Gateway area had fired a bullet into a door in his family's home and threatened his sister before officers arrived, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner identified the man Thursday as Anthony Ysaac, 26, and found he died from multiple gunshot wounds.

According to police, officers responded to the 700 block of W. 123rd Street shortly before 1 p.m. after a caller reported gunfire. The caller's neighbor, police said, had "stated her son had a gun and was attempting to kill her daughter."

Officers managed to reach Ysaac on the phone and "learned that he was armed with a gun and had fired a round into a door inside the residence," police said.

"In addition, the suspect was refusing to allow his sister to exit the location."

Officers fatally shot Ysaac after he exited the home with a revolver, police said. He was pronounced dead at the scene. No officers were injured.

As is standard in fatal police shootings, the incident is now under investigation by the police department's Force Investigation Division, with monitoring by prosecutors and the police inspector general. Findings of the investigation will be reviewed by Police Chief Michel Moore and the Police Commission, a civilian panel that oversees the department.

The incident occurred two days after the department released a major report on the use of force by officers in 2019, which saw the fewest police shootings in 30 years. There were 12 fatal shootings by police last year.

Thursday's fatal shooting was the fourth involving LAPD officers this year and the third in the last month.

Officers fatally shot two men in two separate incidents last month in South Central: one who police alleged pulled out a gun after an attempted traffic stop and another who they alleged pulled out an "edged weapon."
The National Industry Court on Thursday issued an order permitting one of the senior officers illegally dismissed by the Nigerian Army, Abdulfatai Mohammed, to initiate committal proceedings against the Chief of Defence Staff, Gabriel Olonisakin, following the generals refusal to show evidence that he transmitted the affected officers appeals to President Muhammadu Buhari.

The army had in June 2016 forced 38 officers to retire from service. But most of them were illegally removed from service, PREMIUM TIMES investigation showed and the industrial court has repeatedly held.

Paragraph 09.02(e) of the Harmonised Terms and Conditions of Service for Officers, 2012 (revised)  provides that any officer compulsorily retired or dismissed can appeal to the president through the Chief of Defence Staff within 30 days.

Following the armys illegal action, 22 of the affected officers exploited this window and petitioned the president through the defence chief, Mr Olonisakin, via a July 2016 letter referenced CDS/6/1/A.

However, they are concerned Mr Olonisakin has refused to transmit their petition to the president as required by the law. PREMIUM TIMES investigations, that involved a review of relevant laws and interviews with officials, showed Mr Olonisakin and army chief, Tukur Buratai, originally carried out the illegal dismissal for reasons that smirked of high-level arbitrariness, pettiness, witch-hunting and partisanship by authorities of the army.

Most of the officers were never queried, or indicted by any panel as prescribed by law.

The order on Thursday, granted by Sanusi Kado, a judge at the headquarters of the industrial court in Abuja, now means Mr Olonisakin is legally obligated and duty bound to transmit Mr Abdufatais appeal to the president for administrative review with proof of doing so.

Background

The case started two years ago when Mr Abdulfatai approached the court for an order of mandamus to compel the Chief of Defence Staff to forward his letter of redress to the Commander-in-Chief, Mr Buhari and show proof of doing so to the court.

This was after we never got any reply to our letter of redress to Mr President, Mr Abdulfatai told PREMIUM TIMES by phone on Friday. We have still not gotten any reply till date.

Then, a ruling was given by Edith Agbakoba, industrial court judge, that the defence chief should send the appeal for administrative review to the President. and accordingly show proof to the court that he had made the transmission.

READ ALSO:

The CDS in their characteristic disregard for court orders and impunity failed to comply with the court order, Mr Mohammeds lawyer, Abdul Mohammed told PREMIUM TIMES.

This forced us to again approach the industrial court for an order to bring committal summons against Gen Olonisakin as the person occupying that office of CDS. This new case was assigned to Justice Sanusi Kado.

The honourable justice has now granted our prayer as requested which is to bring committal proceeding against Olowonisakin being the occupier of the position of CDS that flouted the court orders.

This judgment allows us to serve a personal summons on Gen Olowonisakin so he can come to court to explain why a committal order should not be made against him committing him to prison for not obeying the earlier order of Justice Agbakoba.

Thus, Agbakobas order is the basis of this new order of Justice Lado, the lawyer explained.

The military has consistently maintained silence over its several judicial losses after it illegally dismissed its officers.

This development is particularly unfortunate considering that this officer (Mr Mohammed) was a Commanding Officer in the North East theatre of operation risking his life for his country but his Commander in Chief and nation failed him by never responding to his cry whether for good or bad, Mr Mohammed, the lawyer, lamented.
The IEA expects crude stockpiles to shrink by about 5.5 million barrels per day in the second half of 2020.

Oil prices settled higher on Thursday after the International Energy Agency (IEA) forecast lower global stockpiles in the second half of 2020, although worries remain that a second surge in coronavirus infections could occur in coming months.

Crude prices have ticked up in the last two weeks as some countries relaxed coronavirus restrictions to allow factories and shops to reopen.

West Texas Intermediate crude for June delivery rose 9 percent to settle at $27.56 a barrel in New York. Brent for July settlement improved 6.7 percent to end the session at $31.13 a barrel.

The market rebounded from Wednesdays losses, when United States Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell warned of an extended period of weak economic growth.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits totalled a seasonally adjusted 2.98 million for the week ending May 9, the US Department of Labor said on Thursday. While that was down from 3.18 million in the prior week and marked the sixth straight weekly drop, claims remain astoundingly high.

Gasoline demand correlates pretty well with the employment level, and its hard to see gasoline demand come back much more than it already has, said John Kilduff, partner at Again Capital LLC in New York.

US crude inventories fell for the first time in 15 weeks, the EIA said on Wednesday, with a fall in US crude stockpiles of 745,000 barrels to 531.5 million barrels in the week to May 8.

On Thursday, the IEA again forecast a record drop in demand in 2020, although it trimmed its estimate for the fall, citing measures to ease lockdowns.

As demand increases, the IEA expects crude stockpiles to shrink by about 5.5 million barrels per day in the second half of 2020.

While these supply and demand dynamics are certainly capable of boosting prices [in the] near term, a potential record level of global crude supply will remain as a force to be reckoned with, Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch and Associates in Galena, Illinois, said in a report.

The Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) said on Wednesday that it expected 2020 global oil demand to shrink by 9.07 million bpd, a deeper contraction than its previous forecast of 6.85 million bpd. OPEC also said it expected the second quarter to see the steepest decline. In response, Saudi Arabia deepened its planned cuts for June, reducing output by nearly 5 million barrels per day.

The Saudis going from market wreckers to market makers again and leading by example has sent a very supportive message, Kilduff said.

The US Commodities Futures Trading Commission warned exchanges and brokerages on Thursday that they should be prepared for volatility and possible negative pricing for certain contracts as expiration approaches next week.
Wise Words of Wisdom: a captivating book of wise words that desires to reinforce a persons spiritual devotion to God and reminds them of His unconditional love and mercy for all. Wise Words of Wisdom is the creation of published author Mark Spain, a religious elder with an associate degree in computer technology, a bachelors degree in computer science, a masters degree in cybersecurity.

Spain shares, As I conclude this book, my desire is to inspire people to think about where they are right now in life and change it. I want people to change their lives for the better by using wisdom. I want people to start asking a question or two before making important life-changing decisions. I want people to know there is a difference between being smart and being wise. All my life I have been around people who were smarter than me, and yet, I was always labeled the wise one. Why? Smarts are linked to a person that has book-knowledge, they are able to retain what they read above most people. They also test well. That makes them champion in that arena. Being wise or having wisdom is the ability to know what to do in many situations instantaneously.

Having wisdom and using it can keep you out of trouble. Wisdom can take you further in life than you can ever imagine. The big question is how I can obtain such wisdom. I only know of one way. Some people may disagree, but I will reveal it to you. The King James Bible says in James 1:5, If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

Now I want everyone to know is that when you receive wisdom from God, that does not make you infallible. None of us are perfect except the Lord. Please know this in my closing that with great wisdom comes great responsibility. People will flock to you for many different reasons. When a person has wisdom, others want it or want to pervert it. Be wise, be inspired, but most of all, be an agent of change in your life and others.

Published by Christian Faith Publishing, Mark Spains new book is sure to fill readers with resounding and uplifting virtues that reflect the benevolence of the Lord that graces life with bountiful blessings.

This book also strives to fulfill a believers holistic transformation and strengthening of belief and foundation in Christ.

View the synopsis of Wise Words of Wisdom on YouTube.

Consumers can purchase Wise Words of Wisdom at traditional brick-and-mortar bookstores or online at Amazon.com, Apple iTunes store, or Barnes and Noble.

For additional information or inquiries about Wise Words of Wisdom, contact the Christian Faith Publishing media department at 866-554-0919.
Meth that Son La police seized from suspected trafficker Mua Thi Dai.  VNA/VNS Photo

SON LA  Police in the northern province of Son La on Thursday arrested a woman for allegedly smuggling meth in Moc Chau Plantation Town in Moc Chau District.

Police seized 11,735 pills containing methamphetamine, one motorcycle and other evidence.

The suspect was named as Mua Thi Dai, born in 1996, residing in San Cai Hamlet, Long Luong Commune, Van Ho District in Son La Province.

Mua admitted to police that she bought the meth along the border and planned to sell it in other provinces. She was caught on the way to distribute the narcotics.

Police are investigating the case.

Long Luong Commune is 15km from the Laos border and is a known drug haven in northern Son La Province. Many of the 5,200 residents of Long Luong, most of them ethnic Mong, have family in Laos.

About 300km from Ha Noi, Son La province is notorious as a drug hotspot, with around 1,000 cases and hundreds of kilograms of narcotics seized every year.

In June 2018, Long Luong Commune drew public attention when two drug kingpins were shot dead during a four-day raid involving more than 300 police officers.  VNS
Royal Mail killjoys have banned a fun-loving postman from wearing a fancy dress costume of a dog biting his bum - because it's 'insensitive'.

Michael Nelhams, 51, who has been delivering mail to the people of Mabelthorpe, Lincolnshire for the last 18 years, donned a range of hilarious outfits to cheer up residents on his daily rounds during the lockdown.

But he was ordered to stop wearing a pair of inflatable trousers with a dog biting the rear after Royal Mail received a complaint.

Royal Mail killjoys have banned Michael Nelhams (pictured), who delivers in Mabelthorpe Lincolnshiret, from wearing a fancy dress costume showing a dog biting his bum - because it's 'insensitive'

The popular postie (pictured), who has two daughters, four step-children and eight grandchildren, said: "I'm still going out in fancy dress, (but) not wearing the dog-biting-bum costume

His bosses said more than 2,000 posties are attacked by dogs each year and staff should show 'sensitivity' when choosing fancy dress outfits.

The postie, who has two daughters, four step-children and eight grandchildren, said: 'I'm still going out in fancy dress, but not wearing the dog-biting-bum costume.

Postie Michael Nelhams pictured left with wife Nina right

'I'm keeping the spirit of my customers and making many people smile in these hard times in lockdown.'

Locals have rallied to the defence of the popular postie.

Writing on a public community Facebook page, Steven Jubb said: 'I can't believe someone has actually complained about that.

'What they should be doing is thanking them for doing a fantastic job.'

Missy Sparrow added: 'Why ruin it for the kiddies and those of us who love to see a bit of happiness in our village?'

Stuart Hurren added: 'Shame really, as posties are doing their best at making something good at a very difficult time.

'They're putting themselves at risk every day by visiting all the houses.

Royal Mail received a complaint about the costume and said more than 2,000 posties are attacked by dogs each year (Michael Nelhams pictured)

Since the lockdown Michael has worn a range of hilarious outfits including a giant whoopee cushion (pictured), a post box, a chicken and a donkey

'If having a laugh helps make their job easier and brings a smile to everyone's face, what's the harm? Killjoys!'

Since the lockdown Michael has worn a range of hilarious outfits including a giant whoopee cushion, a post box, a chicken and a donkey.

Mum-of-three Lindsey Roughan, 33, said: 'Seeing Michael's crazy outfits is the highlight of the day for my kids. They absolutely love seeing him.

Locals on Facebook have rallied to the defence of the popular postie (pictured)

'When I heard he'd been ordered to stop wearing the dog bite one I thought it was a joke. He was only trying to make people laugh after all.'

A Royal Mail spokesperson said: 'Over the last few weeks we have been inundated with messages and pictures from our customers across the country in praise of the extra lengths our postmen and women have been going during the coronavirus crisis to raise spirits, and money, for local charities.

'We know that local communities really value what our postmen and women are doing in these challenging times, and we're really proud of them.

'On very rare occasions, we have asked colleagues to show sensitivity in their choice of costumes.

'Last year saw 2,484 dog attacks on postmen and women across the UK, some resulting in serious injury.'
White House reporters line up to get tested for the coronavirus on Tuesday. Los Angeles Times reporter Noah Bierman, right, speaks with Jeff Mason, a reporter for Reuters. (Doug Mills / Pool Photo)

Anyone who has seen a post-apocalyptic movie knows that a desolate White House offers a ripe backdrop for end times.

That was my overwhelming impression when I reported from the White House this week for the first time since March. Anxiety seemed to lurk at every temperature check and socially distant encounter.

Almost everyone I passed talked about the coronavirus that had infected two staffers in the West Wing, thus breaching the supposedly secure offices and residence of the most powerful man on the planet.

A masked Secret Service agent spoke fatalistically on the phone about her exposure. TV crews and photographers who usually trade pop culture references and practical jokes worried aloud about vulnerable relatives.

Many of the 17 television stalls on the driveway, which normally blast live shots around the world, sat vacant or sparsely staffed. The James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, often crammed with more than 100 chattering reporters, was nearly empty most of the day, and many of the small office bureaus sat dark and abandoned.

Officials in suits still walked briskly across the 18-acre campus, but there were fewer of them. Months after most of the country shut down, the White House last week urged more of its employees to work from home. Only a skeleton staff now comes in.

President Trump speaks with reporters on the South Lawn of the White House as Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar looks on. (Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

And while public health officials have pleaded with Americans to wear masks, the White House only directed its staff  from senior national security aides to the cleaning crew  to do so this week.

Some now cover their faces with dark Lycra masks, studded with small American flags or other dressy coverings. President Trump still does not.

Reporters are expected to work in dangerous places. I just never figured the White House to be among them.

But it was my turn on Tuesday to serve as print pool reporter, the eyes and ears for news organizations around the world. The job, which rotates among 31 media companies, is especially crucial in the coronavirus era, when fewer correspondents can safely fit in the cramped 18th century building, and truth itself sometimes seems under siege.

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I'm not one of the doctors, ambulance drivers, grocery clerks or countless others who have risked their lives  often for low pay  to help others during this perilous time, and I'm grateful for all they do. I'm also acutely aware that covering the White House is cushy work: I ride on Air Force One and am a witness to history.

Still, going to the White House was unnerving. On May 8, Katie Miller, the spokeswoman for Vice President Mike Pence, and frequently a spokeswoman for the White House coronavirus task force, had tested positive. One of Trump's personal valets, assigned from the Navy, had tested positive a day earlier.

One after another, senior officials who had contact with them began putting themselves in semi-quarantine. The White House began daily testing for the president, vice president, plus their senior aides and guests. Trump said he and Pence were only speaking by phone in case either was infected.

Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, insisted the White House "is probably the safest place that you can come to."

I wasn't reassured. If Trump's valet caught the virus, who was safe? In the days before my visit, I ground my teeth more than usual at night, and woke from stress dreams about infecting my family.

After weeks working mostly at home, it felt strange to put on a tie and jacket  as well as my mask  and drive down the capital's semi-deserted streets to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

Lafayette Park, normally bustling with tourists and demonstrators, is quiet during the coronavirus crisis, with just a single protester in a tent. (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

Across the street, Lafayette Park was silent except for a lawnmower. It usually bustles with selfie-taking tourists, office workers and shouting protesters. I saw only one, who apparently lived in his tent, and he had added a handwritten sign to his patchwork of antiwar bumper stickers: Wash Your Hands! Take Care of Each Other.

It turned out to be a good day to return. The White House had decided to start daily testing for the 13 print, news wire, radio and television pool reporters, a change from the sporadic tests of the past.

At the security booth, a member of the White House medical unit asked me a battery of questions about my health and took my temperature  twice. She didnt give me a readout, just an all-clear.

A sign at one of the Secret Service gates to the White House. (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

A new sign hung at the Secret Service hutch. "STAY SAFE," it urged in large type between the White House logo and a reminder to keep six feet from others. "Thank you for practicing social distancing," it said in small italics.

Mask still on, I passed through the metal detectors, walked down the long driveway and into the back of the press room, where two medics approached me with swabs.

Three to five seconds, each nostril, sir, one said.

The swab tickled as it penetrated deep into my nasal cavity. But it did not hurt. I suppressed a sneeze, fearing it would arouse suspicion.

About 45 minutes later, Judd Deere, the deputy press secretary, told me that none of the 13 pool members had tested positive. But it was short-lived comfort.

A preliminary study by New York University, reported by Bloomberg News, found that the Abbott ID NOW test used by the White House may fail to detect as many as half of positive cases.

In addition, a couple dozen journalists who enter the White House press area every day will not be tested daily because they are not in the pool that has the closest contact with the president.

A sign at the White House. (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

It was a slow day, and I stayed outside as much as possible to avoid mixing with other reporters or touching the doorknobs, furniture or really anything. Though the briefing room looks impressive on television, its actually small and dank, built over a former swimming pool.

The reporters' work spaces can barely fit a laptop. The last time I was print pool, in March, the White House had installed a hand-sanitizing machine next to the poolers desk, creating a magnet for passersby.

Good luck trying to keep six feet apart in these conditions.

A Secret Service agent normally mans a desk at the entrance to the West Wing. Now the desk also holds a wooden box of masks, a jug of hand sanitizer and a sign warning those who enter to cover their faces.

Most staffers I saw wore them. The few exceptions included two senior aides who appeared on camera representing the president.

Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany didn't wear one at her afternoon briefing. She said she did not want her voice muffled on camera and said she kept a safe distance from reporters while at the lectern.

I wasn't as comfortable. I not only wore my mask. I scrubbed my seat in the briefing room with disinfectant.

Earlier, national security advisor Robert C. OBrien spoke unmasked to reporters after a Fox Business Network interview on the driveway. He said he would don one when he returned inside.

Were doing what we can to socially distance. We're using hand sanitizer or you're using a mask on a pretty regular basis, so we're being as careful as possible, he said.

The day's news was in the Senate, where Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top immunologist, was testifying via video link from home because he had self-quarantined after Pence's aide got infected. Fauci warned of the danger of trying to open the country prematurely."

At her press briefing, McEnany tried to square Faucis admonitions against "needless suffering and death" with Trumps claim that we have met the moment and we have prevailed," an odd boast given the more than 80,000 American deaths so far.

Photographers and TV crew members pass the time between assignments outside the White House briefing room. (Noah Bierman / Los Angeles Times)

As the day wore on, anxiety gave way to boredom. Trump spent much of his day tweeting angrily but, in a rarity, did not take questions from the press.

It was cold but sunny outside, and four photographers and a TV crew relaxed on lawn chairs while blasting Van Halen, the Rolling Stones and the Steve Miller Band on an iPhone. They used a silver reflecting umbrella as a sun shield and put their feet up on equipment cases.

A few yards away, another photographer tried to use his iPhone to mimic an announcement on the press room speakers that a "lid" had been declared, meaning the White House planned no more news events for the day and reporters could go home.

If not for the contagion in the building that represents American might around the world, it could have been a day at the beach.
USS Donald Cook Applies Lessons for Second Trip to Arctic

Navy News Service

Story Number: NNS200514-08

Release Date: 5/14/2020 12:07:00 PM

From Lt. j. g. Sarah Claudy and Lt. j. g. Teresa Meadows, Destroyer Squadron 60 Public Affairs

NAVAL STATION ROTA, Spain (NNS) -- The Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile Aegis destroyer USS Donald Cook (DDG 75) on May 11 concluded operations in the Barents Sea as part of a second mission above the Arctic Circle.

Donald Cook operated above the Arctic Circle as part of a Surface Action Group (SAG) with fellow Forward-Deployed Naval Forces-Europe (FDNF-E) ships USS Porter (DDG 78) and USS Roosevelt (DDG 80). NATO partner Royal Navy frigate HMS Kent (F 78) also participated in the operation, while USNS Supply (T-AOE 6) provided logistics support.

This was Donald Cook's second visit to the Arctic in less than a year. In October 2019, the crew operated in the High North for the first time, followed by a historic port visit to the Faroe Islands. The 2019 Arctic trip prepared the crew for its recent operations in the Barents Sea.



After the ship's first visit, Cmdr. Kelley Jones, commanding officer of Donald Cook, spoke with Admiral James G. Foggo III, commander, U.S. Naval Forces Europe and Africa, during a podcast interview.

"What distinguishes [U.S.] 6th Fleet from other areas of the world is that it's a relatively small geographical space, where we encounter diverse operations, operational environments, and regional actors," said Jones.

In the podcast, she referred to experiences working with Black Sea partners and being shadowed by Russian forces. While 6th Fleet operations can certainly still be described as diverse, it seems that High North ventures are quickly becoming part of the Fleet's routine.

As Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 60's veteran Blue Nose, or a ship that has crossed north of the Arctic Circle, Donald Cook had several lessons learned for first-time Blue Noses Porter and Roosevelt.

The first, and most obvious, was to dress for the weather. Temperatures in the Arctic are much colder than crewmembers are used to, especially compared to the weather in their homeport of Rota, Spain. The average air temperature for the Arctic operations was 38 degrees Fahrenheit, while water temperature remained near 35 degrees. To protect from the cold and snow, most lookouts opted to wear full-body insulated jumpsuits, called "pumpkin suits" due to their bright orange color.

Donald Cook's team also improved upon off-ship communications capabilities. At such high latitudes, satellite coverage presents many challenges in the communications arena, as Donald Cook experienced during her first Arctic visit. A major difference between the destroyer's first and second visits, however, was the need to establish communications between the SAG vessels.

The ships of DESRON 60 primarily conduct independent operations, so establishing reliable circuits between the units comprising the SAG provided great training and demonstrated how effective ships can be as a group. It was one of the many ways Donald Cook benefitted from the multi-ship training experience.

Even with Donald Cook's previous experience in the High North, ship life above the 66th parallel still comes with new and sometimes bizarre experiences. In contrast to the early sunsets and late sunrises during Donald Cook's Arctic visit in October, sunsets and sunrises this May were almost nonexistent. A quartermaster remarked there were no sunset or sunrise times indicated in the astronomical data software used onboard for navigation.

The crew had mixed reactions to the virtually constant daylight, with some watch-standers enjoying the extra hours and others missing their usual sunsets.

"It completely confused me to have bright daylight during the midnight to 3 a.m. watch," said Boatswain's Mate Seaman Onyx Maldonado. "It helped me stay awake, though!"

After the SAG operations, but before leaving the Arctic Circle, Donald Cook held a traditional Blue Nose ceremony to induct crewmembers who were not aboard during the last Arctic visit. Sailors who had never before sailed into the Arctic completed a series of challenges that ended with "Aurora, Queen of Snows," played by Jones, painting their noses blue and deeming them official Blue Noses.

During his podcast conversation with Jones, Foggo related his own experience with the Blue Nose ceremony.

"Your story about Blue Nose and the Arctic Circle north of 66, it's compelling because I did that on my first boat," said Foggo. "I still have the certificate framed on the wall of my study."

The SAG's presence in the Barents Sea was a tangible reinforcement of the United States' commitment to regional security and stability. U.K. involvement also made the operation a demonstration of NATO interoperability and mutual growing interest in the High North region.

Donald Cook, forward-deployed to Rota, Spain, is on its 10th patrol in the U.S. 6th Fleet area of operations in support of U.S. national security interests in Europe.

U.S. 6th Fleet, headquartered in Naples, Italy, conducts the full spectrum of joint and naval operations, often in concert with allied, joint, and interagency partners, in order to advance U.S. national interests and security and stability in Europe and Africa.

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Bengaluru, May 15 : Karnataka would reward women healthcare warriors Rs 3,000 each for their selfless and spirited service in the fight against coronavirus, state chief minister B.S. Yediyurappa said on Friday.

"The state government will give each of the 40,250 Asha (Accredited Social Health Activist) workers Rs 3,000 as one-time benefit for their yeoman service in the fight against the COVID-19. Rs 12 crore has been earmarked for them," Yediyurappa told reporters a day after the state cabinet approved the proposal.

As frontline warriors against the deadly disease, thousands of Asha workers are engaged in the healthcare of COVID-hit patients across the southern state and are helping hundreds of doctors, nurses and paramedics in containing the infection.

The community of Asha workers was set up by the Union Health Ministry in 2005 as part of the National Rural Health Mission.

"Asha women are working in designated hospitals across the state where COVID patients are treated. They are also engaged in field work for contact tracing, testing and looking after those in isolation wards of state-run hospitals under observation," a health department official told IANS.

Asha workers are paid an average Rs 7,000 per month by the state government with the Centre contributing two-third of it.
Scientists at the World Health Organization (WHO) say nearly a quarter of a billion people in Africa could contract coronavirus within the first year of the pandemic.



But they think more people will survive it than in the US and Europe because so many Africans are young.



Their study, published in BMJ Global Health, says between 150,000 and 190,000 Africans could die from Covid-19.



It says 5.5 million people would need hospital treatment, overwhelming services already struggling to treat malaria, tuberculosis and HIV.



Coronavirus has been relatively slow to spread in Africa but has already taken hold in camps for displaced people in South Sudan.

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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(Photo : Gretta Blankenship from Pixabay) Google Nest Doorbell owners worry for their privacy as a stranger's porch randomly popped at a Google Nest Hub.

Smart security systems and tools like the Google Nest Doorbell helps guarantee our homes are safe, regardless of whether we are in or not. But many Nest Doorbell users fear for their safety and privacy these days as there was a disturbing report wherein a stranger's house suddenly popped on a Google Nest Hub.

Google Nest Doorbell Feed Randomly Appeared

According to a report by TechRadar, Reddit user The_Mustard_Tiger said that a Nest Hello Doorbell feed suddenly appeared on their Google Nest Hub.

However, the owner was confused as first of all, someone was walking up the front door of a house they did not recognize, and secondly, they don't own a Nest Doorbell, which only means that the feed came from a stranger's home and Nest Doorbell.

They also thought at first that it was an ad, but soon realized that was not the case.

Because of this incident, some raised concerns over the security of the Google Nest Doorbell and thought that if it could broadcast to a stranger's Google Nest Hub, there might be some possibility that an indoor Nest camera might broadcast the feed to Nest Hubs around the world.

The news outlet tried to reach out to Google regarding the issue, but they haven't issued a comment yet.

Read Also: Child Abuse Handbook Circulates on Dark Web; Parents Warned as Lockdown Puts Children at Risk for Online Predators

Google Reached Out

Nevertheless, a Google employee did reach out to the Reddit user and sent out a direct message, but the user did disclose what the message included.

According to the author of the subReddit thread, they merely asked what time zone they were in, the firmware and build information of their device, if the video randomly popped up, and whether the device was newly bought or not or whether it was gifted.

The Reddit user did say the device was newly bought.

As of now, it seems like Google is doing some investigation about this incident.

Are We Really Safe?

Some people have reason to panic over a small incident since Google Nest was involved in a sextortion scam earlier this year when hackers took advantage of some Google Nest users.

In a report by CNBC back in January, the hackers would contact victims and say that they would have illicit and private recordings of the victim and would tell them to pay up or would reveal the recordings to the internet.

However, the videos that the hackers use to convince their victims did not come from a breach, meaning the videos did not actually come from the victims' Google Nest cameras, but it was enough for owners to think the worst.

The news came at a time when worrying videos of hackers and criminals gaining access to security devices like Google Nest and Amazon's Ring cameras.

Last year, Ring was also under fire due to a large data breach that exposed the personal data of around 3,000 owners.

To help their patrons feel more comfortable with their safety and privacy, Google now requires all Nest users to enable the device's two-factor authorization.

According to the internet giant, this "helps prevent someone from signing in to your account in the Nest app without your permission."

Read Also: Protect Your Personal Data from Leaking Through Google Firebase; Here's How

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
(Newser)  When Gerald Ford pardoned Richard Nixon, it was seen as a way for the United States to heal and move on from Watergate. So, if Joe Biden became president and Donald Trump faced any charges, would he do the same? That would be a no, as would any attempt to halt any potential investigations into Trump, the former vice president told MSNBC on Thursday. "It is not something the president is entitled to do, to direct a prosecution or decide to drop a case," Biden said on Lawrence O'Donnell's The Last Word, per the AP. "It's a dereliction of duty." He also referenced Bill Barr and his role in the Justice Department, noting that "the attorney general is not the president's lawyer. It's the people's lawyer," per NBC News. "We never saw anything like the prostitution of that office like we see it today."

story continues below

The Inquisitr notes that legal experts believe Trump could face charges when he leaves office, possibly based on the campaign finance brouhaha surrounding his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, or on pending lawsuits against him. Biden also told O'Donnell that he wasn't involved in any "Obamagate," a supposed conspiracy by the Obama administration to entrap former national security adviser Michael Flynn. "I was never a part or had any knowledge of any criminal investigation into Flynn while I was in office, period," Biden said, per NBC. "Not one single time." O'Donnell also brought up the sexual assault allegations against Biden by Tara Reade, and although Biden once more denied them, he said people needed to "vote their heart." "If they believe Tara Reade they probably shouldn't vote for me," he said. "I wouldn't vote for me if I believed Tara Reade." (Read more Joe Biden stories.)
A 40-year-old American missionary from Maryland, Kodiak pilot, and IT specialist for Idaho-based Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF), Joyce Lin, died in a plane crash on Tuesday delivering COVID-19 supplies to a remote village in Indonesia.

She was transporting rapid test kits, food, and school supplies to a village in Papua. MAF spokesman Brad Hoagland said, she took off from Sentani International Airport at 6:27 a.m. and made a call two minutes later. According to local police, a search-and-rescue team found her Kodiak 100 airplane crashed into nearby Lake Sentani and discovered her body from about 40 feet under the water.

A Papua police spokesman, Ahmad Musthofa Kamal, said Lin seemed to have technical problems two minutes after takeoff. She sent out a call and requested a return to the airport but the control tower lost contact with her.

Lin was an experienced pilot and a certified instructor. David Holsten, president of MAF said, "Our hearts are broken as we grieve her death, but we are also encouraged knowing that she gave her life to work that she absolutely loved doing."

He added, "Joyce embodied so much of what we love to see in MAF staff. She was following a call from God to serve others. Joyce was invested in the local culture and maintained a deep connection to her family, friends, and supporters around the world. She was professional in her IT work and in her flying, and well-loved by those she served."

She joined the Christian ministry after earning two degrees in engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Then she earned her Master of Divinity degree at Gorden-Conwell Theological Seminary.

Keith Doyle, who works in the IT department at Gordon-Conwell said "She was a very competent pilot, top class. She had a lot of joy about her. She had a lot of joy about her. She was quiet, but very thoughtful and very methodical. She was a brilliant engineer and you could see that in her thinking. There was never any rashness or impulsiveness."

Lin is quoted as saying in her online memorial, "I am privileged to be serving the many churches and missionaries in Papua who continue to reach out to isolated villages so that people can be both physically and spiritually transformed."
OUAGADOUGOU (Reuters) - A Burkina Faso prosecutor has launched an investigation after 12 people died during the same night in detention cells, hours after they were arrested for suspected terrorism-related offences in a town in the east of the country.

The case comes weeks after advocacy group Human Rights Watch said it believed Burkina Faso security forces summarily executed 31 unarmed detainees during operations against Islamist militants.

The prosecutor, Judicael Kadeba, said in a statement late on Wednesday the incident took place the town of Fada N'Gourma, around 220km (137 miles) east of the capital Ouagadougou.

He said 25 people were arrested during the night of May 11 - 12 by Burkina Faso security and defence forces for suspected terrorism in a village in the Fada N'Gourma area.

"Unfortunately 12 of them died during the same night in cells where they were being held," Kadeba said.

Burkina Faso has been battling armed Islamist insurgents, some with ties to al Qaeda and Islamic State, since 2017.

The militants have strengthened their foothold in the northeast and eastern parts of the country around the tri-border region with Niger and Mali, known as the Liptako-Gourma region.

HWR said in April the militants have killed more than 300 civilians in Burkina Faso, while the government has killed several hundred men for their alleged support of the groups.

Burkinabe officials have promised to investigate similar allegations in the past, but rights group say the government has not done enough to hold perpetrators accountable.

(Reporting by Thiam Ndiaga; Writing by Bate Felix; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)
Syracuse, N.Y.  New hospitalizations due to coronavirus in New York rose slightly on Wednesday, but remain at their lowest levels since March.

The three-day average of new hospitalizations due to the virus was 420 yesterday, up from 416 the day before. Thats down sharply from a peak of over 2,000 in late March and early April, including multiple days over 3,000.

The last time the average was below 500 was March 20.

READ MORE: We made it: Central New York can start to reopen Friday, Cuomo says

Another 157 people in the state died due to the virus on Wednesday. The statewide death toll is now 22,170. The total was less than 1,000 in late March.

New deaths have been declining since reaching a peak of 800 on April 14, according to revised state data. They fell below 500 on April 22, below 400 on April 29 and below 300 on May 3 for the first time in weeks.

Single-day deaths have been below 200 for four days straight.

New York now has 343,051 confirmed cases of the virus, including 2,390 new cases.

Total hospitalizations due to the virus fell to 6,706 on Wednesday, the second day in a row theyve been below 7,000. At their peak in April, total hospitalizations spent days over 18,000.

The net changes in hospitalizations and intubations were negative again on Wednesday, as they have been for weeks.

The more positive trends show the states efforts to control the virus are working, Cuomo has said.

Cuomo first closed nonessential businesses and schools in New York in March to help slow the spread of the pandemic. He said earlier in May that schools in the state will remain closed through the end of the current academic year.

The current shutdown order on businesses lasts through Friday. Five regions of the state, including Central New York, have met the requirements to start a slow reopening of their economies beginning that day.

MORE ON CORONAVIRUS

Coronavirus in NY: Cases, maps, charts and resources

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Someday restaurants in CNY will reopen. What will that look like?

How do I get a contact tracing job in NY? Work from home in coronavirus battle

Complete coronavirus coverage on syracuse.com

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There are five million antibody test kits currently on standby for the NHS because of a second test if you have got the coronavirus was approved by health officials today.

Read More: Trials Begin to Test Hydroxychloroquine and Azithromycin in Fight Against COVID-19





Public Health England Approved the New Test

One of the giant pharmaceutical companies, Abbot, has been given approval by the Public Health England as spotting 100% of those who had the coronavirus in their system. The test would be the second antibody that will be ratified in two days.

The approval of a kit made by Roche Diagnostics, Abbot last night, said that it had already begun shipping out the equipment to NHS laboratories nationwide in preparation for the massive tests to be given out to the first recipients within just a few days.

A spokesperson from the firm said that it has the capacity to provide five million tests in a span of one month within the United Kingdom "with immediate effect."

After weeks of disappointments, the test created by Abbot is the first to be given the green light to be ratified as accurate by the Public Health England. The tests are able to detect whether someone who has had the coronavirus and then recovered, which could mean that they may be already immune.

Already, the Department of Health is having talks with both firms about incorporating the kits into their own testing programs. While the NHS staff will most likely get access first, the soon will be sure to follow. The Abbot test is already being sold for private use, which would cost the customer around 69 or $84.

Read More: WHO: Coronavirus 'May Never Go Away,' and We Will Have to Learn to Live with It

Important Things To Note

PHE has said that the ratification of the two tests performed saw a "very positive development." Both of the tests are going to be used as a "test, track, and trace" program, which will be launching later next week. Scientists, as well as researchers, have stressed that although the two tests offer valuable information about who was infected, it is still not clear what proportion of them will be immune to the virus once again.

The hopes for these kits would help bring back the norm for people and could be a sign for them to work once again. Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, has ordered 3.5 million tests, but it turns out that the best of them could only spot about 70% of those who had been infected.

The tests resolve that the problem is using proven-lab based technology rather than using "pregnancy-test" style kits, which Hancock has previously hoped for would be a success. Abbot tests produce fewer false positives, which would be crucial against the fight against COVID-19.

Professor Matt Keeling from the University of Warwick said, "This could be a complete game-changer.' It is expected that both tests will eventually be available for free as part of the national testing program, though it is not clear whether people will be able to simply order them."

Read More: 20,000 People Signed Up to be Exposed to COVID-19 in Human Trials: UV Light Can Potentially Block COVID-19 Infections

 2021 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.
JERUSALEM (JTA)The United States is ready to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and other parts of the West Bank with conditions, the U.S. ambassador to Israel told an Israel newspaper.

In an interview with the Israel Hayom daily, David Friedman said Israel must freeze building in other parts of the West Bank and prepare to reenter peace negotiations with the Palestinians on the basis of the Trump peace plan.

The plan requires the Israeli prime minister to agree to negotiate with the Palestinians in good faith for four years, which Benjamin Netanyahu has already a...
Hitting out at West Bengal Governor Jagdeep Dhankhar over his tweet lauding the Centre's economic package, the TMC on Friday said he should contest the next state Assembly polls on a BJP ticket.

The governor, earlier in the day, hailed Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his "efforts to mitigate the woes of farmers" across the country and urged Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee to join the Centre's PM-Kisan scheme.

"Applaud efforts @narendramodi to mitigate wows of FARMERS. MIGRANTS and STREET VENDORS. PM-KISHAN beneficiary farmers will get 2 lac crore concessional credit boost through KISAN CEDIT CARDS. Street Vendors will get initial working capital Rs 10,000," he said in a tweet.

Dhankhar, who had been vocal about the state government's alleged combative approach towards the Raj Bhavan, termed the economic package announced by the Centre as a "farsighted game changer package".

"Migrants will get FREE RATION for TWO MONTHS: 5 Kg grains per person & 1 Kg chana per family per month Urge @MamataOfficial to adopt PM-KISAN so farmers get assistance through KISAN CREDIT CARDS. Already 70 lac farmers have lost seven thousand crores due to non adoption," he added.

Reacting to Dhankhar's statement, senior Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader and MP Kalyan Banerjee said the tweets show that the governor is functioning as an agent of the BJP and suggested that he contest next year's state Assembly polls on a ticket from the saffron party.

"The Hon'ble Governor of West Bengal @jdhankhar1, your tweet depicts that you have become absolutely Central Govt. employee and acting as an agent of your political party BJP. The economic package declared yesterday produces nothing and frustrates the mind of the people of Bengal," he wrote on Twitter.

Underlining that no relief is in the offing for the poor people of Bengal, the TMC leader said the governor is acting at the behest of Union Home Minister Amit Shah.

"I understand your limitation and you have to carry on the flag of BJP at Raj Bhawan.

"I have never seen a senior advocate like you after becoming Hon'ble Governor has become the conduit pipe of the Central Govt. and for any political party. You can continue your act as per dictates of @AmitShah and the BJP. I invite you to contest ensuing assembly election so that you can get a befitting reply from the people of West Bengal," Banerjee said.

The chief minister had, on Wednesday, slammed the Centre claiming that its special economic package is a "big zero" and has nothing for the states.

She had also said the Centre is "misleading people" amid the COVID-19 crisis.

The Bengal government and the Raj Bhawan had, over the past two months, frequently engaged in acrimonious exchanges over the state's handling of the COVID-19 situation.
At ten thirty on the morning of Thursday, February 13, Hugo Gurdon, editorial director of the Washington Examiner, opened his daily editorial meeting. About half a dozen senior editors were squeezed into his office at the end of a vast newsroom just a few blocks from the White House. Gurdon, tall and slender in a light-blue sweater and pressed tan slacks, looked every bit the DC insider at the top of his game.

In Gurdons world, all was well, bordering on perfect. The website he had overseen for the past six years had blossomed into the second-biggest right-wing news site in the country, behind FoxNews.com. His growing editorial empire included a slick new magazine, newsletters, videos, podcasts, and live events. His news operation was producing more than a hundred articles a day.

But then, at almost the exact moment the meeting was taking place, Mediaite, a media and politics site, published a story exposing some of the Examiners inner workings. Within a day, CNNs Oliver Darcy followed up with a more detailed article.

Both stories contained embarrassing details surrounding the recent departures of two of Gurdons key lieutenants: managing editor Toby Harnden and breaking news editor Jon Nicosia. The articles were based substantially on audio recordings Nicosia had secretly made that captured Harnden making offensive remarks about colleagues. Nicosia himself was fired in an unrelated incident, telling CNN that it was because he wasnt going along with Harnden and that he was pushing back against his policies.

CNNs story in particular dented Gurdons public image. The article categorized the Examiners newsroom as one of terror and bullying and strongly suggested Gurdon knew of the problems.

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While no one would deny that Gurdon was the person most responsible for shaping the Examiner into a conservative-media juggernaut, another side of him shifted into focus. He was portrayed as a distant and hands-off manager who had ignored the bad behavior of subordinates as long as traffic increased.

Some Examiner journalists I spoke to characterized Gurdon as a down-to-earth guy whose focus on high-level corporate and editorial duties kept him from associating closely with staff. But most saw a taciturn editor who preferred the isolation of his glass-enclosed office or frequent meetings with his head of audience development Jennifer de FreyreYingling.

Gurdon quickly announced an internal investigation into the allegations. The Examiner is home to a dedicated and talented team of professionals, he wrote in an email to CJR on February 28. We have zero tolerance for any unacceptable, unsupportive or unprofessional behavior.

The investigation, led by Denvers Investigations Law Group (ILG), has now been completed; the company will have the results later this spring. But several former female staffers who had registered complaints to management over the past several years told me they were never contacted by ILG.

MANY MEDIA WEBSITESconservative, liberal, and mainstreamhave succeeded in recent years by doing almost anything to increase traffic. Gurdon is perhaps the most successful exemplar on the right, embracing a model of the newsroom as an editorial factory. Leaving aside its robust opinion section, the rest of the Examiner website is peppered with lots of short, easy-to-digest, fast-to-produce news stories.

In 2014, when Gurdon took over, an average of about forty stories a day were being published. By 2019, the site was publishing a hundred and twenty. Younger reporters on the breaking news teams produced up to eight pieces daily, often pegged to a newsmakers tweet or pundits gaffe on a talk show, while beat reporters churned out about three based on more enterprise reporting.

From January 2019 through March 2020, the Examiner accomplished what no other major conservative website was able to do: generate fifteen consecutive months of year-over-year gains in unique visitors, according to an analysis of Comscore data published on my website TheRighting. Traffic wasnt just steadily inching upward; it was skyrocketing. That helped push the Examiner in front of other well-known right-wing media outlets, including the Washington Times, Breitbart, the Daily Caller, and National Review.

Gurdon, sixty-three, is British and began his career at the Jersey Evening Post in the early 1980s, then became a stringer in Sudan for the Financial Times. By 1987, he was working at the right-leaning Daily Telegraph, holding a variety of posts, including foreign correspondent. He says he was one of the Telegraphs most prolific editorial writers, publishing more than a hundred pieces a year. From there he jumped to North America, becoming managing editor of Canadas National Post. Following a four-month stint at the conservative Competitive Enterprise Institute, he joined The Hill in 2003 as editor in chief and executive vice president. He remained there for the next eleven years.

The Examiner launched in 2005 as a free metropolitan-DC daily print paper with a focus on local news and sports. In 2013, the newspaper was scrapped and a website created with a right-leaning take on politics and policy. A year later, Gurdon was hired.

The fit was ideal on several levels. Gurdons deep-rooted right-wing beliefs were not only aligned with the Examiners long-standing philosophies, they were a necessary quality to lead a conservative newsroom with national ambitions. (Gurdon describes his product as straight news with conservative views, built to have a broad appeal to right-leaning audiences.) Gurdon had impressive journalism chops and a clear record of accomplishment at major media brands, even if liberal members of New Yorks chattering media class had probably never heard of him. He mostly avoided the Georgetown cocktail parties, preferring to paint in his spare time at his home in Bethesda, Maryland.

Soon after Gurdons arrival at the Examiner, traffic became an obsession. Journalists were schooled in the finer points of search engine optimizationthe art of writing for Googles algorithms, rather than for readersto ensure that Examiner stories would appear higher in search results. As part of that effort, Gurdon shifted the sites focus to breaking news and enterprise reporting and expanded the newsroom staff by a third in his first year. The newsroom now employs one hundred twenty people.

Bob Cusack, editor of The Hill, worked under Gurdon there for more than a decade. He credits the Examiners success to Gurdons ability to broaden the websites appeal to an audience beyond the Beltway and to assemble a talented group of journalists.

Hes a good story generator with a strong news sense, Cusack says of Gurdon. Hes not an easy boss. He wants production.

TWO OF THE KEYS to that production were Harnden and Nicosia, the editors accused of abusive or inappropriate behavior. Harnden, a fellow Brit and Fleet Street veteran, was hired as managing editor at the Examiner in 2018. Nicosia joined the following year as breaking news editor. Editorial output increasedas well as complaints about the workload and the newsroom environment.

Harnden could be a stern taskmaster. He tended to express himself profanely, without filter, to subordinates. Some insiders say he contributed to a sexist and hostile work environment that existed even before he arrived, in 2018. Harnden, in an email to me, disputed this. He said he had hired and promoted women and men of various backgrounds and had never had a problem with either. I have never discriminated against anyone, he wrote. While Gurdon takes pains today to point out that a supportive workplace was the companys highest priority, ex-staffers contacted for this story believe that he turned a blind eye to grievances as long as traffic grew. Women, in particular, felt the brunt.

While no one charged Gurdon with misbehavior, they hold him responsible for permitting the atmosphere to continue. And without a dedicated human resources person in Washington to handle complaintsthe function was left to chief financial officer Kathy Schaffhauser, who left at the end of Aprilsome employees felt powerless and vulnerable.

If concerns are raised, we look into them and take whatever action seems merited, Gurdon wrote in response to CJR inquiries.

In the weeks following the publication of the CNN and Mediaite stories, current and former staffers speculated about Gurdons future at the Examinerespecially as declining traffic became a subject of conjecture. But the brutal fact is that the numbers are unaffected. In the last two full months for which data is available since Mediaite broke the storyFebruary and March of 2020traffic had risen 115 percent and 129 percent compared to the same months in 2019, according to Comscore.

In response to CJRs questions, Ryan McKibben, president and chief executive of Clarity Media Group, said via email, Hugo Gurdon continues to have our support and he is doing a tremendous job leading the Washington Examiner.

ICYMI: California newsrooms know how to prepare for disasters

This story has been updated with new details of Nicosias departure.

Has America ever needed a media watchdog more than now? Help us by joining CJR today

Howard Polskin is the president and chief curator of TheRighting, a website that aggregates stories from right-wing media outlets on a daily basis to inform mainstream and liberal audiences. The site, which was launched in 2017, also tracks and analyzes traffic to conservative websites on a monthly basis.
Ben Ungermann was noticeably absent from Thursday night's immunity challenge on MasterChef Australia: Back to Win.

Eagle-eyed fans scanned the gantry for the muscular chef, eventually coming to the conclusion he had been 'kicked off' the show after his arrest during filming.

Some viewers were baffled by the lack of acknowledgement that he'd gone, while others said they would miss their favourite contestant.

Where did he go? Ben Ungermann was noticeably absent from Thursday night's immunity challenge on MasterChef Australia: Back to Win

'Okay but tea time - where is Ben? Has he been kicked off?' one fan tweeted.

'I'm trying to scan the gantry to see him... I wonder if his absence will be explained on the show?' another asked.

'I'm very sad. Regardless of the reason why Ben had to leave I know it's coming. It's like waiting for the other shoe to fall,' a third viewer wrote on Facebook.

'I will admit in his original season I thought of him as "the ice cream guy", a one-note wonder. But this time around I've fallen in love with his talent in all areas. I wish him all the best in life.'

'Best wishes to Ben': Eagle-eyed fans scanned the gantry for the muscular chef, eventually coming to the conclusion he had been 'kicked off' the show after his arrest during filming

'The incident with him must have happened [before the episode was filmed]. Such a shame and it's Katy night,' a disappointed fan wrote.

Another joked: 'Channel 10 confirmed he was on a "toilet break" the whole time. They called me last night and told me.'

Fans are eagerly awaiting Sunday's episode to see whether Ben returns, or if his exit from the competition will be addressed.

'The incident with him must have happened': Viewers concluded that Ben's arrest must have happened right before Katy Perry (centre right) filmed her guest appearance. Pictured with judges Andy Allen (left), Melissa Leong (centre left) and Jock Zonfrillo (right)

It comes after MasterChef producers reportedly held crisis talks in March following Ben's arrest over a personal matter during filming.

Executives called the show's editors into an 'emergency meeting' and told them to 'cut him out the best you can', according to New Idea.

The incident apparently came as a shock to network bosses, with a source saying: 'No one could have imagined something like that would ever happen.'

Emergency meeting: It comes after MasterChef producers reportedly held crisis talks in March following Ben's arrest over a personal matter during filming

Ben himself has acknowledged his infrequent appearances on screen, saying in an Instagram post that 'it's up to MasterChef' what happens in the editing suite.

News of Ben's arrest surfaced on March 20, prompting a spokesperson for Endemol Shine to issue a brief statement to the media.

'We can confirm Ben Ungermann has left the MasterChef Australia competition. As this is a police matter, we will not be making further comment.'

MasterChef continues Sunday at 7.30pm on Channel 10
New Delhi, May 15 : Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel has written to Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting the Centre for proper provision in SDRF (State Disaster Response Fund) for the payment of expenses incurred on interstate travel of migrant workers and others travelling within the state.

Baghel has requested the Prime Minister to give appropriate instructions to the Ministry of Home Affairs in this regard.

Baghel in his letter to Modi said that more than 1.50 lakh migrant workers and other persons of Chhattisgarh are stranded in other states and are anxious to return to their home due to the circumstances arising out of the lockdown.

"Workers have started returning from other states and more than 27,000 workers have returned to Chhattisgarh by their own means and bus facilities provided by the state government. Apart from this, the process of bringing back about 1.32 32 lakh workers through rail and buses has started from May 11," Baghel added.

The Chief Minister said that there is currently no provision for the workers to pay the expenses incurred in rail and bus transport from SDRF.

"The state government has also decided to provide food, water and bus facilities till state border to workers going to other states via Chhattisgarh. Large amount is expected to be spent in transport and other facilities of workers," Baghel wrote.

Baghel has written that Covid-19 has been classified as a 'national disaster' by the government of India so as per NDMA the amount should be disbursed.

The Chief Minister said that a large amount is likely to be spent in transport and other facilities of the workers. In these circumstances, proper provision should be made in the SDRF for the payment of inter-state transport of workers and other persons and transportation expenses from one place to another within the state.
Local real estate developers are longing for the end of the pandemic to sell their newest projects Photo: Le Toan

In the context of the economic challenges caused by COVID-19, real estate market is also struggling. In order to successfully sell products, many developers are applying online purchasing methods and IT applications.

Vinhomes JSC is one of the developers who have launched an online real estate trading floor connecting investors and homebuyers via smartphones. With the motto Stay home  Buy home, this online trading floor provides homebuyers with information on property location, planning, and promotions.

CenGroup, meanwhile, is selling its products via livestream and the Cenhomes technology database, where homebuyers receive updates on a projects progress and all related information without having to visit in person.

Many other developers are actively promoting their projects on social media. Tran Anh Group is using YouTube to sell its products through various promotions. For example, homebuyers can now sign a home-purchase contract having paid 15 per cent of the propertys value. Normally, the required percentage is 30 per cent.

Dai Phuc Land is offering homebuyers to sign a purchasing contract after paying 25 per cent of the total value, down from the previous 30 per cent. Homebuyers are also allowed to pay the remainder over 24 months instead of adhering to the projects schedule.

Many real estate leaders said that the most important thing for their companies now is how to survive and overcome the pandemic, and then resume operations as fast as possible. To this end, a number of developers have frozen their activities, restructured human resources, and cut unnecessary costs.

In another side of the coin, economist Nguyen Dinh Anh expected that the price of real estate will recover and even increase after the epidemic is controlled. With a large, growing population and the governments open policy for foreign buyers, the demand for housing in Vietnam should rise in the future, Anh said.

Anh added that the pandemic is something of a natural thermometer to reward and give opportunities to businesses which are strong enough to survive. Consumption will mainly focus on projects owned by prestige investors, whose properties will increase in value. When the crisis is over, there is sure to be a limited supply of prestige projects, Anh said.

Nguyen Huong, CEO of Dai Phuc Land, claimed that the ongoing health emergency will prove to be a short-term problem, whereas the demand for housing will be long lasting. This would explain the markets recent downturn, but it will soon rally and come back even stronger when the worst is over.

Meanwhile, Le Hoang Chau, chairman of the Ho Chi Minh City Real Estate Association, said that COVID-19 is a test for the economy, living environment, and healthcare services. All of the factors will have a big impact on investment decisions, he said.

As more foreigners becoming involved in Vietnams property market, more than five million overseas Vietnamese provide remittance of approximately $16-17 billion a year. With this in mind, it is clear that the market remains very attractive, Chau added.
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has pulled a lot of shady stuff in her time in President Trumps Cabinet. But her latest action may take the cake for brazen, underhanded political malfeasance.

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is using the $2 trillion coronavirus stabilization law to throw a lifeline to education sectors she has long championed, directing millions of federal dollars intended primarily for public schools and colleges to private and religious schools.

To put it simply, after a lifetime of humiliation and failed attempts, in both her home state of Michigan and nationally, to get private and religious school voucher programs passed into law, Ms. DeVos is using the worst health emergency in our nations history to use federal funding for voucher programs that favor private and religious schools across the country, many of dubious legitimacy, and drawing rebukes for exploiting congressional relief efforts.

Here are some of the schools that Betsy DeVos has made sure received federal relief funding, in spite of Congressional guidance that these funds be directed toward low income students and communities:

The Bergin University of Canine Studies in California, whose founder said its $472,850 allocation was a godsend.

The Wright Graduate University for the Realization of Human Potential, a private college in Wisconsin that has a website debunking claims that it is a cult, received about $495,000.

Gods Bible School and College in Ohio, whose vice president for academic affairs is named Aaron D. Profitt (that is not a joke).

Meanwhile, public education officials in several states are pointing out that DeVos decision to not consider income levels when determining to whom or where these funds are sent is a violation of Congressional guidance that stipulates the funding should be used to help students and schools who are most disadvantaged.

Educators are pleading with the department to revise or rescind the guidance. In Montana, school officials estimate that compliance would shift more than $1.5 million to private and home schools, up from about $206,469 that the schools are due under current law. In Louisiana, private schools would receive at least 267 percent more funding, and at least 77 percent of the relief allocation for Orleans Parish would be redirected, according to a letter state that education chiefs sent to Ms. DeVos. The Newark Public Schools in New Jersey would lose $800,000 in federal relief funds to private schools, David G. Sciarra, the executive director of the Education Law Center, said in a letter to the governor of New Jersey asking him to reject the guidance. Pennsylvanias education secretary, Pedro A. Rivera, protested to the department that under the guidance, 53 percent more money would flow from most disadvantaged to more advantaged students in urban districts like Philadelphia, while rural districts like Northeast Bradford would see a 932 percent increase. School districts can  and should  ignore this guidance, which flouts what Congress intended to do with the CARES Act: support students who need it the most, said Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Daniel A. Domenech, the executive director of AASA. Indiana has announced it would not enforce the guidance. In a memo, its superintendent of public instruction, Jennifer McCormick, a Republican, said the state ensures that the funds are distributed according to congressional intent and a plain reading of the law. I will not play political agenda games with COVID relief funds, she said on Twitter.

Its worth mentioning that the Republican-controlled Senate has refused to support previous voucher funding requests from Ms. DeVos since she has been in office, and that both of her prior attempts to move voucher legislation into law in Michigan were defeated soundly. Yet she continues to find ways to force these unconstitutional and backdoor voucher programs into the federal governments approach to education funding.

And she knows that vouchers are deeply unpopular with votersso she uses lots of euphemisms to describe them so that folks dont really now what shes really talking about. Terms like: tax credit scholarships, and freedom scholarships, and microgrants, and opportunity grants.

The bottom line here is that the most unpopular Cabinet member of one of the most unpopular presidents in our nations history is using the worst public health emergency in our history as a country to weaken, destabilize and ultimately destroy our nations public schools.

And the cherry on this rancid school choice sundae? The program also stands to benefit virtual education companies that Ms. DeVos has personally invested in.

Dont let her do it. Tell your representatives in the House and Senate that you support public education, and tell Betsy DeVos to keep her hands off of our schools.
WOODLAND PARK, N.J.  An alarm blared as Patricia Landers, who suffers from dementia, opened the door of a Florham Park assisted living center shortly before midnight and walked out, wearing her bathrobe. The facility did not call police for 39 minutes.

That lag time gave Landers a chance to get far away. After a four-hour search, police found her about three miles from the facility, in neighboring Madison. Family members said in an interview with NorthJersey.com and the USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey that she told them she had been frightened the entire time. They said she had bruises from falling.

The family filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Brookdale at Florham Park and its parent company, one of the largest operators of long-term senior living facilities in the nation, alleging the home didnt provide the level of care it promised for residents with dementia.

The lawsuit comes amid a pandemic that has exposed weaknesses in the eldercare system, raising questions about staffing levels at long-term care facilities and complaints about inadequate communication with family members.

Brookdale Senior Living, based in Tennessee, has more than 800 long-term care facilities in 45 states, according to its website. A company spokeswoman wrote in an email that Brookdale does not comment on legal proceedings and doesn't discuss individual residents.

Patricia Landers' family was told she was negative for COVID-19. Then they were told it was a mistake.

Patricia, the family said, managed to walk away from the Florham Park facility four times over several months. And the home allegedly told relatives that she tested negative for COVID-19 last month  when in fact the test came back positive, according to the family.

I thought my mother was going to die, said Judy Aiello of West Orange, one of Patricias four daughters.

Family members said that the home had promised them 24-hour security and a staff trained to deal with residents who have dementia. The family said it provided neither. And they said they routinely called the home to ask about their mother but their messages were not returned.

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Patricia, 83, is now living in another facility after recovering from pneumonia and having another test for the virus, which was negative, her family said. Several family members agreed to discuss her care this week, including a daughter, Amy, and her husband Nils Lofgren, a musician and songwriter who has performed with Bruce Springsteen and Neil Young.

Lofgren, who lives in Arizona, said the pandemic hit home when his mother-in-law went missing from the assisted living facility last month.

Our anxieties, fears and worries went sky high, he said. "We thought Pat was in a safe place because that is what they promised.

'Understaffed' and 'undertrained'

Brookdale reported to the state a total of 310 COVID-19 cases and 58 deaths in 10 facilities in New Jersey as of May 13. Its Florham Park campus has had 10 cases, a relatively low number, and no deaths. There have been almost 27,000 COVID-19 cases at long-term care facilities in the state and more than 5,000 fatalities.

"I will say that we work hard to maintain an open and constructive dialogue with families about their loved one and the best way that we can work together to help each resident live their best life in their community," Brookdale's spokeswoman, Heather Hunter, wrote.

Andrew Miltenberg and other attorneys representing Patricias family said in court papers that the Florham Park facility was "consistently understaffed, and the staff that was there, was undertrained and either unwilling or incapable of providing the requisite level of care promised by Brookdale and required by Ms. Landers conditions.

A federal class-action suit settled last year alleged staffing problems at the company's Florida facilities, saying they were the result of the parent companys policies. The suit said Brookdale misled families by telling them staffing was based on assessments of its residents. Instead, the suit charged, it was set by the corporation and based on profit, leaving homes unable to meet residents needs.

The company settled another federal lawsuit after a Michigan woman with dementia froze to death in 2011 when a fire door closed behind her, locking her out of the building, according to court filings. South Carolina court records show a pending lawsuit against the company related to another woman with dementia who allegedly walked out of a facility in 2016 and was killed by an alligator.

'She was scared'

Patricia Landers raised four daughters as a single mother in West Orange, working as an executive secretary for 27 years. She taught sewing classes, and she helped people learn to read and write English at the local library. She volunteered at a local hospital.

She recovered from non-Hodgkins lymphoma, her family said, but chemotherapy left her with lung problems. She had a heart murmur and osteoporosis. Her family moved her into Brookdale in January, lured by the promise that it was equipped to take care of residents with dementia.

The family said in court papers that Patricia didnt get medicines and treatments she needed. She complained of being pushed up against the walls by staff members, the lawsuit said, and relatives said they noticed bruises during visits. The receptionist refused to put them through to staff and took messages that were never returned, the documents said.

My mother kept telling us she was scared and the girls were mean, Amy Aiello Lofgren said.

Patricia Landers (right) with her family (from left to right) daughter Amy Aiello Lofgren, sister Judy Corvelli, and son-in-law Nils Lofgren

A Brookdale employee called the family about the alleged abuse and urged them to file a complaint, the lawsuit said.

The employee was aware of the staffs abusive and improper behavior with residents, yet could not control them, and was not getting help from Brookdale management in fixing the situation, the suit said.

Patricia walked out of the home three times between Feb. 18 and April 5, according to the suit. Police found her the last time after a concerned citizen reported a woman walking down the road in a bathrobe.

After that incident, she was moved to a memory care section of the home, an area that was supposed to be more secure for people with dementia. Three days later, on April 8, she escaped for a fourth time.

A police report said she tried to get out at first by using a chair to smash a glass window. A staff member escorted her back to her room and went to another area to call the family, the report said. The lawsuit said Judy Aiello spoke to her mother by phone and calmed her down before the staff "left her unsupervised."

Minutes later, Patricia opened an exit door and triggered an alarm. The door does not immediately open, according to police.

One must hold the push bar in for an extended period of time which will activate a very loud audible alarm, the report said, adding the door can be opened after several seconds of the alarm sounding.

The alarm went off at 11:58 p.m. Police said they were called at 12:37 a.m. Then the Morris County Sheriffs K9 unit arrived and Judy Aiello said family members joined the search.

Patricia was found in Madison, the police report said. Court documents said she was wearing her bathrobe and it was 4 a.m.

Patricia Landers (l;eft) with daughter Amy Aiello Lofgren.

The family agreed to move her back to Brookdale temporarily while they looked for a new home. The suit said Brookdale promised Patricia would have 24-hour care by "skilled nurses" from an outside agency trained in dealing with dementia. Instead, the suit said, they were aides who lacked such training.

Days later the agency told the family the aides were now unavailable, according to the suit. Brookdale called one day later with the news, the family said.

Meanwhile, Patricia was given a COVID-19 test at the insistence of her family, though at the time she didnt have symptoms. The family said staff members told them on April 16 that the test was negative.

Hours later, the home called to say it didnt have an aide to watch Patricia that night but was looking for one, the family said. Judy Aiello said she received another call four minutes later from a doctor saying her mother needed to be transferred to a psychiatric hospital. She said she wasnt given an explanation.

The hospital staff stunned the family by telling them that the COVID-19 test from days before, which they had been told was negative, showed Patricia had contracted the virus. The hospital later told the family that Patricia had developed pneumonia.

I thought there was no way my mothers going to make it through this, Judy Aiello said.

Two weeks later, Patricia had recovered, and another COVID-19 test came back negative. Now, she's staying at a CareOne facility in Livingston where the family said shes been happy, and asking them to bring her books to read by her favorite author, Harlan Coben, a writer of mystery thrillers.

Follow Abbott Koloff on Twitter: @abbottkoloff

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Coronavirus crisis; NJ woman escaped nursing home 4 times, suit says
Times reporter Molly Hennessy-Fiske gets instructions before having an antibody test to check for the coronavirus so she can enter the COVID-19 unit at United Memorial Medical Center in Houston last week. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)

We set out to cover a COVID-19 unit the same way we have reported from war zones: by planning our entry and exit strategy.

Before I even entered United Memorial Medical Center with Times photographer Carolyn Cole to report this Column One, we discussed with Dr. Joseph Varon what type of protective equipment we would need. Then we offered to supply it ourselves. The L.A. Times had already trained us and provided protective masks, disposable coveralls made of Tyvek, gloves and shoe covers.

But Varon said the Houston hospital had enough protective gear to outfit us. And he preferred we use their N95 masks and other equipment. His only stipulation was that we bring in and take out as little as possible from the unit, pretty much just cameras and a notebook. We agreed.

At the doctors urging, before we arrived in the morning to spend the first of two days at the hospital, we shed our watches and other jewelry. We left our phones in our cars. We brought disposable bags to carry our few belongings. In them were extra shoes so we could bag the pairs we wore in the COVID unit before we returned home.

We arrived to find more than a dozen cars lined up outside the hospital for free drive-through COVID-19 testing, a grim reminder of the pandemic. We had to knock on the hospitals normally automatic double doors and have a nurse buzz us in. Varon met us with medical student Alan Araiza, who lead us to the first of several tent-like zippered plastic entrances.

Araiza took our pictures, which would hang over our protective suits so patients could see what we looked like under all the protective gear. Varon gave us papery disposable scrubs and directed us to the first of several sealed chambers. There we each changed and left our street clothes bagged for our return.

Varon met us in the final chamber before the COVID units nurses station. There we all pulled on white Tyvek suits, gloves, shoe covers and surgical masks. Once inside, we were greeted by a half-dozen nurses and medical students gearing up to venture into the units main hallway, where eight patients were awaiting morning rounds.

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Before we joined them, Varon explained, he needed to make sure we didnt have COVID.

One of the medical students pricked my pointer finger, then Carolyns. He added a drop of each of our blood to a boxy white rapid test kit. Lines on the test kit window would show if we either had COVID or had antibodies from having had the virus.

Carolyn tested negative, just as she had previously. But I had never been tested. I worried that after weeks covering the pandemic I might be positive. We watched the line appear on my test: I, too, was negative.

We could proceed on morning rounds, once we garbed up.

Nurses helped us pull plastic gowns over our Tyvek suits. We added extra shoe covers, gloves, N95 masks and face shields that fogged when we breathed. We received our photos, laminated and strung on ribbons, to hang around our necks.

Dr. Joseph Varon, the doctor in charge of the COVID-19 unit at United Memorial Medical Center in north Houston, left, along with Times photographer Carolyn Cole, center, and Times staff writer Molly Hennessy-Fiske. (Los Angeles Times)

The outfit felt as hot and confining as a scuba suit. Varon and his medical team wore even more gloves and masks than we did since they would be touching and examining patients.

One at a time, we unzipped the chamber at the entrance of the COVID unit and entered. The first thing I saw in the hall was a machine that looked like an air conditioner pumping air through ducts out of the unit to maintain its negative pressure, isolating the airborne virus.

At first, I struggled to hear what Varon and other members of his team were saying, their voices muffled by masks and face shields. Each time I leaned in to hear them or a patient, I worried I was getting too close.

Unlike in other COVID wards I had spoken to doctors and nurses about, the patients here were not on ventilators  they could talk to us from behind their surgical masks. I spoke to each patient we visited, identifying myself, asking about themselves and their care. A couple declined to talk or be photographed. But most wanted to tell us how they were feeling and what they thought of the hospital. All were eager to return home.

We entered the unit twice that first day: first for morning rounds, then for the afternoon admission of a COVID patient from the emergency room. We would return a second day to see the late shift. Each time we followed the same entry and exit procedures, with one exception.

The first time we left the unit, entered the nurses station and began to strip off our outer layer of gear, I mistakenly threw my N95 mask in a hazmat bin. Because Varon had told us not to worry about protective gear, I thought they wanted me to discard the mask, too. But N95 masks are precious. Araiza gave me another one, but cautioned that I should save it. He handed me a permanent marker so I could write my name on it.

I wore that mask for the rest of the day.

From the nurses station, we entered a room where we shed our paper scrubs and set aside our shoes to take a shower with antibacterial soap before reclaiming our street clothes and masks. At our cars, we bagged our shoes and anything else we had taken into the hospital.

Once I got home, I would enter the laundry room and follow the same routine I had when covering churches or other sites where I may have been exposed to the virus: I would bag my shoes, load my clothes into the washer and shower again.

But as I drove home from the hospital at dusk, I wasnt thinking about cleaning up. I was distracted by the sight of so many Texans doing the exact opposite of what I had spent the day doing.

Texas had lifted restrictions on parks and businesses. After a day spent paranoid about protective gear and social distancing, it was surreal to see scores of people of all ages crowded together on trails and restaurant patios. Almost none wore masks.
It didnt have to be this way

Dr. Rick Bright, a top government scientist, went before Congress on Thursday and connected some of the dots of the U.S. response to the coronavirus pandemic. They did not add up to a pretty picture.

Top Trump administration officials, he said, failed to heed early warnings to stock up on masks and other supplies to combat the crisis, and failed to level with the public about the severity of the threat. As a result, he said, lives were endangered, and I believe lives were lost.

Testifying before a House health subcommittee, Dr. Bright said the coronavirus outbreak would get worse and be prolonged if the U.S. did not swiftly adopt a national testing strategy.

He said the government also needed to develop a vaccine distribution plan right away to avoid shortages. Theres no one company that can produce enough for our country or the world, he said. Its going to be limited supplies.
Actor Vicky Kaushal, who will be turning 32 on May 16, will be celebrating his big day amid the coronavirus pandemic. The actor said that he will be celebrating it quietly with his family.

I never thought that wed be in a situation where things literally come to a standstill. Leave alone a birthday in lockdown, I never even imagined a lockdown before, he told Mumbai Mirror.

Talking about quiet birthdays in his childhood, he said, There were no cell phones to take selfies and record the event, nor peer pressure to post them. It was just about having a good time with friends. Those simple days from my childhood are special.

The actor also addressed the fact that Karan Johar's multi-starrer period drama Takht, which was supposed to go on floors from May, had to be postponed due to the lockdown.

However, the actor said that he had no complaints as staying at home safe is a luxury for him. Look at what people, who are away from home or dont have a home, are going through, including the frontline workers of the pandemic. By staying home, we can help flatten the curve, he said.

The actor also has a few other films in the pipeline. Apart from Takht, he will be seen in Sardar Udham Singh biopic by Shoojit Sircar, which is currently in post production. He will also star in Meghna Gulzar's Sam, the biopic of Field Marshall Sam Manekshaw. Apart from that, he will be seen in The Immortal Ashwatthama by his Uri director Aditya Dhar.

Follow @News18Movies for more
When Ohio State University in Columbus held a pandemic-conscious virtual commencement ceremony this month, Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook gave a video address to a safely spaced crowd in parking lots outside.

The appearance of caution was deceiving.

The real action was blocks away, said Emily Foster, a university retiree: Student parties raged on lawns, porches, alleys and even rooftops for three days in plain violation of the state's shelter-in-place order -- and without interference from police. Foster called to complain, concerned that coronavirus would spread in the neighborhood and beyond as students returned home.

Police wouldn't act. "I was told that they were concentrating on education, not enforcement," Foster said.

As U.S. states revive, it's been left to local governments to enforce new rules on how to contain covid-19. Ill-equipped, understaffed and with limited powers, few are ready to police face masks and social distancing. That weakness was highlighted this week when Tesla CEO Elon Musk steamrolled Alameda County, California, which couldn't stop him from reopening his factory more than a week before it was initially allowed.

As of Thursday, all but five U.S. states had either already begun reopening or were scheduled to, many of them with rules meant to keep residents safe. Scientists warn that unregulated commerce will mean a death toll that soars far above the 85,000 fatalities in the U.S. so far.

"We need really detailed guidance from the federal government, which still leaves the issue of whether local governments have the capacity to enforce the rules," said Ashish Jha, director of Harvard University's Global Health Institute. "In areas that don't have the capacity to enforce things like crowd limits in bars, you are going to see outbreaks. And the impact of that is going to be substantial and severe."

More than half of cities expect to cut services, including police, according to the National League of Cities and the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Counties are even more vulnerable because they oversee health departments, hospitals, nursing homes, emergency medical services and coroners, "which unfortunately are in high demand," said Teryn Zmuda, chief economist at the National Association of Counties. By July 2021, counties will lose $114 billion in revenue and incur an additional $30 billion in costs because of covid-19, she said.

Now, underfunded health departments accustomed to policing the isolated restaurant health-code violation are responsible for making sure people are far enough apart in all of them. Police and sheriff's deputies are being asked to crack down on crowds without proper protective equipment.

Law enforcement "wasn't ready for this," said David Mahoney, the sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin, who is the incoming president of the National Sheriffs' Association.

Opponents of lock-down orders have been quick to play up incidents like the fining of a surfer using a closed California beach and an undercover sting of a woman doing nails in her Texas home. But those are exceptions.

In fact, many agencies are reluctant to get tough. Mahoney said tough enforcement drains resources from fighting crime and can damage community relationships.

"Everything I do is based on relationships, on gaining trust and legitimacy," said Mahoney. "It is my personal belief that taking a heavy-handed approach would be counterproductive."

New York City police have been accused of using excessive force and targeting minorities while enforcing social distancing and face-mask rules. "This situation is untenable," said Police Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch. Officers have received no practical guidance, he said, "leaving the cops on the street corners to fend for ourselves."

In California, which had one of the strictest stay-home policies, police officers in Los Angeles haven't arrested anyone for violating the order against large gatherings. Nor have officers in Sacramento, where "education remains our primary goal," said Police Officer Karl Chan. The same "education-first direction" stands in Portland, Oregon, said Police Bureau spokesperson Nola Watts.

In Tennessee, local officials lack any clear-cut authority: Republican Governor Bill Lee called his reopening order a "pledge" because it's voluntary. Restaurants are urged, not ordered, to seat diners safely apart and to keep bars closed.

Good public-health enforcement has two elements: health departments and public-safety agencies, said Oscar Alleyne, chief program officer for the National Association of County and City Health Officials in Washington.

Health agencies can order quarantines, license facilities, inspect them for compliance and shut them down for violations, he said. Public-safety agencies enforce orders that violators ignore. The division of labor has broken down in the pandemic, with states ordering far broader mandates and parts of the public resisting restrictions.

Local health departments have fewer personnel to respond. Nationally, they've lost 50,000 workers in a decade. Cincinnati's has cut 40% of its workforce during the current pandemic."The idea that local health departments are going to be able to go out and do these inspections on an ongoing basis isn't real," Alleyne said.

Health agencies have also found themselves short of respect.

Musk, the Tesla CEO, opened his production factory Monday despite a request from the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency. President Donald Trump tweeted out encouragement for Musk,and Governor Gavin Newsom described the problem as a "county issue" without taking a side.

By Wednesday, the county had backed down, giving the already-open factory permission to operate.

Musk is just the most high-profile rebel. In Los Angeles, police have been forwarding reports of businesses operating outside the rules to City Attorney Mike Feuer. His office has filed 60 criminal complaints, more than half against stores selling vaping supplies, pot, cigars and cigarettes. The city cut water and power to one particularly recalcitrant offender.

"Those stores are clearly not essential to the basic functioning of our life right now," Feuer said.

Some openings are political. A Dallas beauty salon owner refused to close her salon and was sent briefly to jail. It earned her celebrity status among conservative Republicans; a policy reversal from Texas' Governor Greg Abbott; a televised haircut for Senator Ted Cruz -- and more than $500,000 for her own GoFundMe campaign.

Refusal to enforce the rules has become a badge of honor for some politicians. In North Carolina, the Johnston County sheriff has refused to enforce limits on church attendance. A sheriff in Racine County in southern Wisconsin refused to enforce that state's stay-home order -- now struck down by the state supreme court -- calling it a violation of individual rights. So did a sheriff in Douglas County, Illinois. And in Greeley, Colorado, the Weld County health department is allowing restaurants to open in violation of Governor Jared Polis's rules.

Rhode Island Governor Gina Raimondo ordered the public to wear masks or risk fines beginning May 8, drawing a quick response from a police union.

"Our officers work every single day to bridge the gap with our community and earn their trust," wrote Jedidiah Pineau, president of the Warwick Fraternal Order Of Police Lodge 7.

"We will not stand idly by and allow Governor Raimondo's overreaching order to tear that bridge down," he wrote. "And we will certainly not be a part of it by enforcing this order against our community."
The WHO said initial reports hypothesized that this syndrome, which can cause high fever and swelling in blood vessels, may be related to Covid-19 .

World health officials are increasingly hearing about cases of an inflammatory disease similar to Kawasaki disease in a few countries, including the United States and Italy, Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove, head of WHO's emerging diseases and zoonosis unit, said during a news conference at the agency's headquarters in Geneva.

Doctors and world leaders need "to be on the alert" for cases of a rare inflammatory disease in children that may be linked to the coronavirus, the World Health Organization said Friday.

"We need more information collected in a systematic way because with the initial reports, we're getting a description of what this looks like, which is not always the same," Kerkhove said. "And in some children, they tested positive for Covid-19 and other children have not. So we do not know if this is associated with Covid-19."

Kerkhove said officials raised the alert among the WHO's global clinical network, which is a group of clinicians across the world dealing with Covid-19 patients.

Working with the network, the WHO has developed a preliminary case definition and a case report form for PMIS, according to WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus.

"I call on all clinicians worldwide to work with your national authorities and WHO to be on the alert and better understand this syndrome in children," Tedros said.

Early in the outbreak, researchers and infectious disease experts said the virus appeared to be sparing children while hitting the elderly and those with underlying health conditions particularly hard.

Since then, researchers have learned much more about the virus, including that children do get it and can die from it, even without underlying conditions that tend to worsen symptoms. Most kids report mild respiratory symptoms, namely fever, dry cough and fatigue. However, some children can become seriously ill.

In New York, local health officials are investigating 110 cases of the disease they are calling pediatric multisystem inflammatory syndrome. So far, 16 other states across the U.S. and six European countries are also investigating the disease.

World Health Organization officials said last month that they were investigating whether the coronavirus causes Kawasaki disease in children after several cases cropped up in Europe.

As health officials struggle to find more information about the mysterious illness, Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the WHO's emergencies program, urged the need to understand the extent of the inflammatory syndrome's association with Covid-19.

"This is a new disease," Ryan said. "When new diseases cross the species' barrier, they very often don't have what you call a primary target organ."

There have been reports of respiratory syndromes, cardiovascular syndromes and neurological syndromes as a result of a Covid-19 infection because the virus can attack different types of organs, according to Ryan.

He said researchers don't know whether these syndromes, including PMIS, are directly associated with the coronavirus and their attack on human cells or if they're a result of the body's immune response to the virus.

"In many emerging diseases we see both happen," Ryan said. "The virus itself can cause damage and sometimes the immune response to the virus itself can cause damage."

There's still a lot to learn and uncover on "what's causing what," in order to develop countermeasures and therapies to reduce the impact of this disease in children, he added.
The National Democratic Congress (NDC) Member of Parliament (MP) for North Tongu in the Volta region, Samuel Okudzeto Ablakwa, says former President John Dramani Mahama will break his silence on the 5million Airbus Scandal which has taken international dimension.



Mr. Mahama has been fingered, with a British tabloid, The Sun, virtually nailing him as Government official 1 in the scandal.



Mr. Mahama is said to be linked to a network of corrupt deals.



Speaking on Onua TV recently, Ablakwa says Mahama had actually commented on the saga through the former Attorney General.



You instruct your lawyer to talk for you, according to him.



It would be recalled that on Friday, February 1, UKs Royal Courts of Justice found Dutch firm Airbus SE guilty of paying bribes in shady deals in some countries including Ghana, South Korea, Mexico, Colombia and Malaysia.



For Ghana, the scandal involved government officials in 2011 and 2015 who negotiated for the deal with Airbus agents including Samuel Mahama believed to be a brother of former President John Mahama.



Between 2009 and 2015 an Airbus defence company engaged Intermediary 5, a close relative of a high ranking elected Ghanaian Government official (Government Official 1) as its BP in respect of the proposed sale of three military transport aircraft to the Government of Ghana, the ruling on Ghanas deal read in part.



A number of Airbus employees knew that Intermediary 5 was a close relative of Government Official 1, who was a key decision maker in respect of the proposed sales. A number of Airbus employees made or promised success-based commission payments of approximately 5 million to Intermediary 5.



President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo immediately referred the matter to the Office of the Special Prosecutor (OSP) with Martin Amidu, the Special Prosecutor launching a formal investigation into the scandal.



In February he announced he had summoned four people including British Actor Phil Middlemiss and Samuel Mahama and released their passport details online.



Dead Silence



The NDC flagbearer and former President John Mahama has refused to talk on the Airbus scandal since the story broke with The Sun linking him strongly to the bribery scandal.



During a recent visit by fishermen from the Western region to the NDC flagbearer private residence in Accra, Mr Mahama cleverly avoided the Airbus issue even when his guests had asked him for his position on it.



The fishermen had asked for clarification and his position on the scandal since it mentioned his administration.



They said they were confused about the Airbus saga and that the former president should clear the air, but he dodged the question and rather launched into a tirade against the government.



Its not Mahamas first time of dodging corruption issues linking him directly.



Litany of cases abound including the Ford bribe, Bugri Naabu car bribery scandal and the Brazilian Embraer jets scandal which was a subject of investigation.



When the Ford Expedition dashed to him by a Burkinabe road contractor allegedly in exchange for contracts, the former President maintained silence on the case up till today.



When he allegedly bribed then NPP Northern regional chairman, Daniel Bugri Naabu with cash and Mitsubishi Pajero in the heat of the 2016 electioneering campaign he ignored the raging issue pretending as nothing has happened.



In the Embraer case, when Martin Amidu dropped the hint that former President Atta Mills ordered investigation into the case because his then Vice President John Mahama had corrupted himself stopping the transaction, Mahama never opened his mouth on the case.



There are several other corruption cases Mahama featured prominently but failed to answer them typical of him.

Source: Daily Guide









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KANSAS CITY, Mo., May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- COVID-19 is not the first and will not be the last epidemic that countries will face. Resilience to future crises depends on actions taken now, as well as on policies, institutions and capacity put in place during normal times. Let us ensure this threat is not a missed opportunity to achieve our vision of universal access to water, sanitation, and hygiene.

As leaders, this is our chance to save lives. Matt Damon and Gary White, alongside WaterEquity Managing Director, Paul O'Connell and Water.org President, Jennifer Schorsch pledge their support for the Leaders' Call to Action.

"During this extraordinary public crisis, we know that the people we serve have the least access to services and face the greatest risk of infection. We strongly support Sanitation and Water For All and the Leaders' Call to Action on COVID-19 to benefit everyone, everywhere."  Matt Damon, co-founder Water.org & WaterEquity

"Water.org is proud to stand beside our sector leaders and stakeholders to highlight the urgent need to prioritize water and sanitation now. Financing sustainable solutions that strengthen services and systems for all will allow us to emerge stronger and more resilient to future shock. Invest in water today."  Jennifer Schorsch, President Water.org

"The COVID-19 global pandemic highlights the critical need for increased investment to accelerate access to safe water and sanitation for all. If we are to reduce the impact of this and future pandemics, we must ensure these two vital needs are met."  Dr. Paul O'Connell, Managing Director WaterEquity

"Water touches everything, and this pandemic is no exception. The frontline defense is handwashing, made possible by safe water. Let's make water, sanitation, and hygiene available to everyone to prevent the spread of diseases today and to support the health and resilience of our global community tomorrow."  Gary White, CEO and Co-founder Water.org & WaterEquity

Water.org is an international nonprofit organization that has positively transformed more than 29 million lives around the world with access to safe water and sanitation. Founded by Gary White and Matt Damon, Water.org pioneers market-driven financial solutions to the global water crisis. For more than 25 years, we've been providing women hope, children health and families a future. Learn more at https://water.org.

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SOURCE Water.org; WaterEquity

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Times are weird -- for everyone. Thats why The Oregonian decided to launch a new live show and podcast where we check in some of Oregons favorite people to see how they are doing while the coronavirus pandemic rages on.

The show is called At Home with The Oregonian.

Our first episode premiered Thursday afternoon on Facebook Live and featured Emmy Award-winning Beavertonian Ian Karmel.

Karmel is co-head writer for The Late Late Show with James Cordon and stars in a new CBS show called Game On. He also hosts a podcast with his friends called All Fantasy Everything.

He sat down with us to discuss important questions like, which Blazer would you most like to be quarantined with, and what are some of the upsides of being forced to stay in.

You can watch on The Oregonians Facebook or YouTube page, or listen anywhere you find podcasts.

-- Lizzy Acker

503-221-8052, lacker@oregonian.com, @lizzzyacker

Subscribe to Oregonian/OregonLive newsletters and podcasts for the latest news and top stories.
South Australia has completely eliminated coronavirus from the state.

There are no known active cases of COVID-19 in SA as of Friday after the state went without any new cases for more than a week.

A total of 439 people have been diagnosed with coronavirus in South Australia but there are no longer any active cases.

The Australian Capital Territory is also free of the virus and no new cases have been recorded since April 30.

Western Australia has just seven active cases left and hospitals are now coronavirus free after the last person being treated for COVID-19 tested negative on Thursday night.

The Royal Adelaide Hospital is treating no COVID-19 patients as there are no active cases in the state as of Friday

Despite there being no active cases in her state, SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier (pictured) said people should still practice social distancing

Despite there being no active cases in her state, SA Chief Public Health Officer Nicola Spurrier said it would be wrong to consider it 'coronavirus-free'.

'COVID-19 is still in the world, we're still getting cases in other states,' Professor Spurrier said.

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

'If we relax completely, and we don't keep doing social distancing, once we get a couple of cases it will spread incredibly rapidly.

'We can see that's happened in other countries, so we all have to continue to play our part.'

SA Premier Steven Marshall agreed, saying: 'We can't take our foot off the brake, we've got to do everything we can to keep everyone safe in South Australia.'

In South Australia, there have been 439 cases of COVID-19, which have resulted in four deaths.

Of the 439 infected, 435 have recovered - a recovery rate of 99 per cent.

The last COVID-19 patient in a WA hospital was cleared of the disease in Thursday night.

WA Premier Mark McGowan said eliminating the disease from hospitals was 'a significant achievement for our state' during a press conference on Friday.

'We have no confirmed COVID-19 patients in our hospitals,' Mr McGowan said, according to ABC News.

'The person who was in ICU up to yesterday remains in hospital, but is no longer positive for COVID-19. We wish that person very well in their recovery.'

The COVID clinic at the Royal Perth Hospital. Western Australia has eliminated COVID-19 from all of its hospitals after the last person being treated for the disease recovered on Thursday night

There are still seven active COVID-19 cases in WA but they are isolating at home rather than hospitals

As of Friday, there have been a total of 554 confirmed cases of COVID-19 in WA, which have resulted in nine deaths.

Of the 554 confirmed cases, 538 people have recovered - a total of 97 per cent.

The latest case of COVID-19 in WA came on Thursday. In the last week, there have been just three new cases of coronavirus in the state.

The ACT has had no active cases of coronavirus since April, becoming the first state or territory to do so.

The Northern Territory only has two active cases left as residents returned to pubs and restaurants on Friday.

Queensland currently has 22 active coronavirus cases while Tasmania is dealing with 22 instances.

Meanwhile, in the more populous Victoria there are 112 active cases.

New South Wales, the worst affected state still has 419 active cases of coronavirus.
In this recent video from WIRED, Dr. Seema Yasmin, pandemic expert and former epidemic intelligence service officer, examines the 2011 film Contagion and compares the Hollywood feature to the current COVID-19 pandemic.

The film got a lot of things right - and became a trending movie on streaming services once the real pandemic hit - but plenty of the movies main points were pure fiction. Yasmin combs through the picture, offering her professional insights.

See the full video here.
The threat of the novel coronavirus was enough for health care worker Sharon Rodriguez to finally start preparing her estate.

For years, there always seemed to be a good excuse to delay the uncomfortable task of deciding how her affairs would be handled upon her death  until she saw an offer for free legal services in a newsletter from her employer.

While the contagious virus continues to spread, health care workers are at increased risk of catching it.

In Bexar County, they make up 18 percent of confirmed cases  though one reason may be that theyve also been among the most extensively tested for the virus in the area.

On ExpressNews.com: 1 in 5 coronavirus patients in Bexar County work in health care

I think it did put a fire under me, and I thought I better go ahead and do this, said Rodriguez, a 53-year-old patient care coordinator at University Health Systems Robert B. Green Campus.

Shes worked for the county-owned hospital district as a nurse for the past 23 years. On Sunday, the downtown facility she works at will reopen for same-day surgeries after being shuttered by state orders for two months.

Rodriguez said she was relieved to find that through this program, she could go over everything with an attorney through email and get the forms notarized at work. And it was free.

When her father-in-law died, even though he had a will in place, it still took a year in court to work out his estate.

I dont want that to happen to my family, she said. That would be the worst.

The San Antonio Legal Services Association is offering the program at UHS and Christus Santa Rosa Health System. The aim, officials at the nonprofit said, is to give health care personnel some peace of mind.

About 600 hospital employees will be matched with volunteer attorneys who can help them write a will and other necessary estate planning documents, executive director Sarah Dingivan said.

The attorneys also will help draft a power of attorney; medical power of attorney; physicians directive, which grants someone legal authority to make medical decisions for a patient if they become incapacitated; and a HIPAA release, which allows the hospital to share medical information with loved ones.

On ExpressNews.com: Taylor: Thy will be done (and you really should get it drawn up right now)

SALSA, formerly called the Community Justice Program, was a division of the San Antonio Bar Association for 20 years. But in August, the group became an independent organization focused on pro-bono work for people with limited means and at-risk populations.

The 501(c)(3) helps draft legal documents for Habitat for Humanity homeowners, veterans and overflow clients from the Texas RioGrande Legal Aid office.

After the city and county stay-at-home orders went into effect, it transitioned to an online operation working remotely, with help from a recent $18,000 grant from the Texas Bar Foundation.

Dingivan said the funds will help with the groups next big project, which focuses on setting up volunteer attorneys with clients experiencing tenant rights issues.

Its incredible how fast our legal community responded, said SALSA board president Robert Soza, a litigation attorney.

He said that soon after the group decided to offer the longstanding program directly to hospital workers, the number of attorneys willing to volunteer skyrocketed from 40 to 350 within five days.

The cost of preparing these end-of-life legal documents vary, but range between $3,000 and $6,000.

Fewer people are engaging in estate planning than in prior years, with more people saying they cant afford or dont know how to get a will, an annual survey by Caring.com shows.

In 2020, less than one-third, or 32 percent, of adults in the study said they have a will or living trust.

Dingivan said its critical people get their affairs in order, particularly those whose jobs put them at risk.

Its not just for people who have millions of dollars, she said.

Still, its not a fun process to go through or think about, and she believes people put it off for that reason.

Theres the fear of the unknown, and you start thinking about whats going to happen when youre not there, she said.

Laura Garcia covers the health care industry in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. To read more from Laura, become a subscriber. laura.garcia@express-news.net | Twitter: @Reporter_Laura
Two weeks ago we heard the bombshell that Connecticut stands at the edge of a $7 billion cliff over the next three years, that being the amount of revenue the state could lose in the coronavirus recession.

Then Sen. Mitch McConnell, the Trump enabler-in-chief and majority leader in the U.S. Senate, declared that hell ski naked down Whistler Mountain before he allows the feds to bail out those irresponsible states that find themselves in a hole.

So it looked bad for the home team on the budget front until now, when we open up a report from Moodys Analytics to find  hold on tight  Connecticut has landed in the top tier of states able to withstand the aforementioned recession.

Make no mistake, all states face a fiscal hell over the next 14 months unless McConnells feds agree to loosen the reins, which may happen. More on that in a minute.

Connecticut, for example, would see $2.35 billion in vaporized tax receipts, or 12 percent of the fiscal 2019 total, plus the state would need to spend $300 million more on health care for the newly poor  and thats in a moderate recession scenario.

But everything is relative in the world of finance and economics, and those numbers, bad as they seem, place Connecticut tied with Wisconsin for No. 15, with No. 1 being good and No. 50 being bad.

Then we have the emergency reserve, or rainy-day fund, which, at $2.5 billion, is among the largest reserves of any state as a percentage of the total budget. Kick that in, and Connecticut comes out at No. 6 among states least hard hit by the coronavirus recession in the rest of fiscal 2020 and through fiscal 2021, which ends in 14 months.

I had to clean my glasses and lean into the screen when I saw our ranking plant Connecticut in the green band  not red, not yellow  among states in the Moodys COVID-19 stress test. When it comes to budget health, we just dont think of ourselves as green in any way except with envy for those high-growth, anti-union states that have so far owned the 21st century.

New York, New Jersey and Illinois, our fellow residents in the nursing home of fiscal life, find themselves on the bottom of the Moodys stress test. But guess what? Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, South Carolina and lots of other red- and high-growth states are down there too  along with McConnells Kentucky.

That led Gov. Ned Lamont to quip on Wednesday, when he mentioned the impending Moodys report, I think its hopeful that well get some kind of a supplemental through.

Supplemental, as in federal aid in one of the add-on coronavirus stimulus packages. McConnell is up for re-election, hint, hint.

So, which scenario is right? The 3-year, $7 billion hole that Connecticuts official state revenue forecasters predicted on April 30, or the status as one of the fiscally healthiest states heading into a Grand Economic Reopening that might lead to recovery?

The answer is a little bit of both.

First of all, the Moodys report only extends out for 14 months, not the full three years. And in the severe recession scenario, Moodys predicts Connecticut will fall short by $3.1 billion  almost exactly what the Connecticut forecasters said will happen.

Its possible well be okay for that first 14 months and then revert back to our old spot in the red band, with an unsustainable set of long-term liabilities for pensions and heath care.

But Im more optimistic than the state forecasters, whose job is to be ultra-cautious, in order to avoid what happened so many times in recent years: a downward surprise. Connecticuts mix of industries  heavy on defense manufacturing, insurance, health care and education  is somewhat stronger in this recession than, say, the energy or tourism sectors.

This gives us a fair amount of stability compared to some of our peers, Lamont said.

Beyond that, that $2.5 billion surplus we built up, which will briefly grow to $2.8 billion this summer, is based mostly on stock market and dividend gains. Well take a hit there in 2020, but with the Federal Reserve basically printing $3 trillion, the markets will recover faster than the real economy, according to UConn economist Fred V. Carstensen.

And even beyond that, much of the $7 billion in shortfalls can be vaporized with a few policy changes, such as postponing $350 million-a-year in extra cash for cities and towns, and a similar-sized transfer of money to the transportation fund.

Did I mention tolls? If we need to raise taxes as a result of a federal failure to bail out states, not launching broad highway tolls wont just be stupid, it will be criminal.

Moodys predicts a pick-up in fiscal 2022, with states losses falling by half overall, though the report didnt give specifics. And Connecticut is the only state in the Northeast, and one of only two east of the Mississippi River along with Georgia, in that green band of seven states.

Sen. Cathy Osten, D-Sprague, one of the upper chambers budget experts, is less optimistic. Shes worried about consumer confidence remaining in the dumps until we have a widely available vaccine, and shes worried that this time around, the middle class  especially in her Eastern Connecticut region  is harder hit than normal.

The unemployment map indeed shows deep red in her part of the state, much of it driven by furloughs and layoffs at the tribal casinos.

I dont think its going to start picking up until 23, Osten said, referring to the state revenue picture, not necessarily the casinos in her district.

Even that would be better than the dour, $7 billion scenario.

For now, even in a split decision, we bask in a moment of fiscal glory the likes of which Connecticut hasnt seen in a generation. Enjoy the relative bliss and wait a few days before thinking of the decline that will inflict real pain and force hard choices here and in all the other states, and around the world.

dhaar@hearstmediact.com
Local people from a village situated on a cliff in Liangshan Yi Autonomous Prefecture of southwest China's Sichuan province recently moved into their new houses.

"I have never dreamed of living in such a nice house," said a villager, who was excited to enter the new community.

A total of 84 households from the "cliff village" resettled into their new community during May 12-14, with plans to integrate the village into a tourism development project.
French Member of Parliament of the La Republique En Marche (LREM) party Laetitia Avia speaks during a session at the French National Assembly in Paris, on July 3, 2019. (Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) (Photo credit should read STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP via Getty Images)

Frances lower chamber of the parliament has voted in favor of a controversial law against hate speech on social networks and online platforms. As I described last year, online platforms will have to remove within 24 hours illicit content that has been flagged. Otherwise, companies will have to pay hefty fines every time they infringe the law.

What do they mean by illicit content? Essentially, anything that would be considered as an offense or a crime in the offline world is now considered as illicit content when its an online platform. Among other things, you could think about death threats, discrimination, Holocaust denial

For the most extreme categories, terrorist content and child pornography, online platforms must react within an hour.

While online hate speech has been getting out of control, many fear that online platforms will censor content a bit too quickly. Companies dont want to risk a fine so they might delete content that doesnt infringe the law just because theyre not sure.

Essentially, online platforms have to regulate themselves. The government then checks whether theyre doing a good job or not. Its just like banking regulators. They check that banks have implemented systems that are efficient, and they audit those systems. I think thats how we should think about it, Frances digital minister Cedric O told me in an interview last year.

There are multiple levels of fines. It starts at hundreds of thousand of euros but it can reach up to 4% of the global annual revenue of the company with severe cases. The Superior Council of the Audiovisual (CSA) is the regulator in charge of those cases.

Germany has already passed similar regulation and there are ongoing discussions at the European Union level.
More and more migrants are crossing, Europe is closing its ports and no humanitarian ships are carrying out rescues. As the coronavirus pandemic dominates headlines, activists fear the Mediterranean is the scene of an overlooked "tragedy". A handful of migrant landings have taken place in recent weeks, including 79 people who arrived last weekend in Italy -- a country under fire even before the outbreak for refusing to allow private vessels carrying migrants to dock. International organisations and NGOs say the situation is bleak, as all rescue operations were ceased as of last week. "If there is no help at sea and countries drag their feet to rescue and allow people to disembark, we're going to end up with a fairly serious humanitarian situation," said Vincent Cochetel, special envoy for the central Mediterranean with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). He estimates that 179 people have died in the area since January. Italy and Malta closed their ports at the beginning of April as the pandemic hit Europe hard. At that time, only two rescue boats were in operation -- the Alan Kurdi vessel run by the German NGO Sea-Eye, and Aita Mari chartered by the Spanish organisation Maydayterraneo. Both have now been grounded by the Italian coastguard for "technical" problems, a move denounced as unjustified by campaign groups. Meanwhile Malta's Prime Minister Robert Abela said last month that he was under investigation for his role in the death of at least five migrants who tried to sail from Libya to Italy. A Maltese patrol boat allegedly cut the cables of the migrant dinghy's motor. - More departures - The situation is all the more dire, Cochetel said, as departures from the Libyan coast have nearly quadrupled compared with the same period a year ago, with 6,629 attempts to reach Europe between January and the end of April. The number of departures from Tunisia had more than doubled, Cochetel said. "Whether or not there are (rescue) boats at sea, it has no influence on departures -- this period of coronavirus has amply proven that," he said. He said that "75 percent of migrants in Libya have lost their jobs since the lockdown measures, which can lead to despair". Sophie Beau, general director of SOS Mediterranee, a French-based NGO that charters a rescue boat called the Ocean Viking, questions the motives behind the withdrawal of the two vessels. "Two boats one after the other, it really raises questions about why they were seized," she said. The Ocean Viking will return to sea "as soon as possible" despite the "criminalisation" of aid groups, Beau said. "It's very dramatic... and counter to international maritime law, which requires us to help anyone in distress as quickly as possible," Beau said. "Now, as there are no witnesses, we don't know the extent of the possible tragedy taking place" in the Mediterranean, she added. - 'Invisible shipwrecks' - The central Mediterranean "remains the most dangerous maritime migration route on Earth," the International Organization for Migration warned. "In the current context, risks that invisible shipwrecks are occurring out of sight of the international community have grown," it said. Beau warned that "managing the epidemic, closing ports and borders... in addition to these constraints, there is also the lack of a coordinated mechanism," referring to the agreement on the distribution of migrants between European countries after they have disembarked. The agreement was drawn up in Malta at the end of 2019 but has been slow to materialise. In a joint letter sent to the European Commission and reviewed by AFP, the French, Italian, Spanish and German interior ministers called for the establishment of a "solidarity mechanism" for "search and rescue" at sea. "Currently, a handful of member states carry an excessive burden, which shows a lack of solidarity and risks making the whole system dysfunctional," they said in the letter. Pending a European agreement, and in the absence of humanitarian vessels, 162 migrants are currently stranded at sea on two tourist vessels. Members of the Spanish NGO Maydayterraneo prepare to sail back to the Aita Mari rescue boat with around 90 migrants in February A picture released by German migrant rescue NGO Sea-Eye shows an operation to rescue people in distress off the Libyan coast in April Two migrants are pictured on board the Aita Mari vessel in February after their rescue in international waters
On Friday, the Trump administration issued new rules barring Huawei, the Chinese telecommunications giant, and its suppliers from using U.S. technology.

At about the same time, China, citing the urgency of the pandemic, demanded that the United States promptly pay its delinquent United Nations assessments, which by some calculations now exceed $2 billion. China, the second-biggest financial contributor to the U.N. budget behind the United States, fully paid on May 1. The United States responded by saying it customarily pays assessments at years end and that China was eager to distract attention from its cover-up and mismanagement of the Covid-19 crisis.

The cycle of tit-for-tat statements and actions is solidifying longstanding suspicions in Beijing that the United States and its allies are bent on stifling Chinas rise as a global economic, diplomatic and military power.

Hard-liners are calling on Beijing to be more defiant, emboldened by the Trump administrations efforts to blame China for the rising death toll in the United States. Moderates are warning that Beijings strident responses could backfire, isolating the country when it most needs export markets and diplomatic partners to revive its economy and regain international credibility.

Now, the clash with the United States over the pandemic is fanning broader tensions on trade, espionage and other fronts  disputes that could intensify as President Trump makes his contest with Beijing a theme of his re-election campaign.

There are warning signs the relationship could worsen. The trade truce that Mr. Trump and his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, reached in January could fall apart, despite recent pledges to keep to its terms. Other tensions, including those over Taiwan and the South China Sea, are also flaring.
Migrants working in the informal sector have felt the bulk of the negative impact of the lockdown that has been in place in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19

Migrants working in the informal sector have felt the bulk of the negative impact of the lockdown that has been in place in order to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

Over the past few weeks, there have been many horror stories of migrants walking hundreds of kilometres from the big cities to their hometowns. Some have even died along the way. The Central government, up until now, has largely been a distant observer to the pain of the migrants, with the state governments doing the bulk of whatever little that has been done to alleviate their pain.

In the second part of the so-called Rs 20 lakh crore economic package that was unveiled yesterday, the Centre has tried to do a few things for the migrants:

First, migrants who are not beneficiaries of the foodgrain offered under the National Food Securities Act or any of the schemes run by state governments will be provided five kilograms of free foodgrain along with one kilogram of chana per family per month, for a period of two months. This will cost the Centre Rs 3,500 crore. The government expects eight crore migrants to benefit from this programme. Given that an average family in India has five members, this move is likely to benefit 1.6 crore families.

Many experts have said that the government should have come up with this programme in late March, when the migrant crisis first started to come to the fore. That's a fair point. Also, just coming up with the programme doesn't solve the problem. The state governments have been made responsible for the implementation of this programme along with the identification of migrants and full distribution and providing detailed guidelines.

Identification of the true beneficiaries is the tricky bit in any government programme in India and this programme is not going to be any different. Implementation will be the key part here and hence, the quality of delivery will vary across states. Having said that, some benefit is much better than no benefit at all.

Second, the national roll-out of the 'one nation, one ration card' scheme was also announced. The aim is to achieve a 100 percent national level portability by March 2021. What does this mean? As things stand now, a family with a ration card is allowed to buy foodgrain at subsidised prices from fair priced shops operating under the public distribution system. Under the National Food Securities Act, these shops sell rice at Rs three per kilogram, wheat at Rs two per kilogram and coarse grains at Re one per kilogram.

The subsidised grains are available at a designated fair price shop for a family. The trouble is if someone in a family moves from one state to another, this facility is no longer available. The 'one nation, one ration card' scheme aims to correct for this problem so that subsidised foodgrain is available all across the country. Hence, if an individual moves from Bihar to Delhi for work, he can still access his family's quota of foodgrain.

This is not a new scheme. It was announced in June 2019 and was partially rolled out in January this year. It was operational on a limited scale as of April. A news report in Business Standard points out that after April, seven more states were added to the list. The interesting thing is that the earlier date for full coverage was June 2020. Now it's slated for March 2021.

A major challenge to implement this scheme will be the divisibility of ration. A ration card is issued to a family and not an individual. Hence, if one member of the family is working outside the state in which the ration card is issued, how does s/he access a part of the ration there? This will be a key issue to sort out. Also, with cardholders having the ability to buy foodgrain anywhere in the country, ensuring supply will be a challenge. Having said that, any new system comes with its own set of challenges which need to be tackled. Hopefully, things will work out here.

While 'one nation, one ration card' is a great move, it was already in the works. It doesn't do anything to improve the immediate condition of people moving from cities to their hometowns, due to the negative impact of the lockdown.

Third, the government plans to launch a scheme under the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana to provide affordable rent options to the migrant labour/urban poor. The details for this scheme will be issued soon. Just the fact that the government is looking at affordable renting as a viable living option deserves kudos in a country obsessed with owning a home.

Having said that, this is a general reform and doesnt really have anything to do with the current problems being faced by migrants in cities and those walking away.

Fourth, the government also talked about states and Union Territories being advised to provide works to migrant workers as per provisions of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS). It said that "40 to 50 percent more persons enrolled" under MGNREGS "compared to May last year". Data suggests that the average days of employment provided per households has gone up in comparison to the past. During the course of this financial year, on an average, 12.8 days of work per household has been provided.

All in all, the government has tried to do a little bit for the migrants, but it is nowhere near enough. A recent story in Mumbai Mirror points out that truck-drivers were charging Rs 4,000 to 5,000 per seat from migrants wanting to leave Mumbai and go North. Of course, social distancing norms in this case go totally for a toss. Taking this into account, it would have just made more sense if the government had simply run many more trains and let people move. The social distancing norms on a train would have been much better anyway. This would have been of genuine help to migrants looking to go home.

Also, the moves announced on Thursday do nothing to alleviate the immediate pain of migrants, which is that they are short of money. In fact, one thing that could have easily been done was to deposit Rs 1,000 each for three months in every Jan Dhan account and not just Jan Dhan accounts of women, as has been done. The total number of Jan Dhan accounts stand at 38.41 crore. This move would have cost the government around Rs 1.15 lakh crore and would have gone a much longer way in alleviating the pain of the migrants and the poor in the country than the so-called Rs 20 lakh crore economic package.

The need of the hour is to put more money in the hands of people, not hope that they borrow and spend more, as is the case currently.

The author has written the Easy Money trilogy
A McDonald's restaurant has closed due to coronavirus and the employee who tested positive was a relative of another infected fast food worker.

The employee from Craigieburn McDonald's, in north Melbourne, is related to a worker from the Fawkner McDonald's that has become a coronavirus cluster.

A McDonald's spokesperson said: 'The Craigieburn employee has been identified as an extended relative of one of the previously announced COVID-19 positive cases at Fawkner,' The Age reported.

A McDonald's restaurant in Craigieburn, north Melbourne, (pictured) has closed down after a worker tested positive for coronavirus

The infected employee was an 'extended relative' of a worker from the McDonald's in Fawkner (pictured) where there is a COVID-19 cluster

'Out of an abundance of caution we have immediately closed the restaurant. All Craigieburn employees have been instructed not to return to work for 14 days and advised to be tested.'

'We have spoken with the employee and confirm they are self-isolating at home with little to no symptoms,' the spokesperson said.

The Craigieburn employee last worked at the restaurant on Tuesday May 12 and had not worked at the Fawkner restaurant.

McDonald's said they had engaged an external contractor to deep clean the Craigieburn restaurant.

The coronavirus outbreak in Fawkner was linked to two new Victorian cases overnight and brought the total number of cases in the cluster to 10.

Four employees at the Fawkner store and six of their close contacts have tested positive so far.

McDonald's is waiting on test results from four workers while 93 other employees have tested negative.

The McDonald's restaurant in Fawkner has been reopened with staff from a different outlet.
Braving the scorching heat, migrant workers from Jammu walked thousands of kilometres to return to their native places in Uttar Pradesh, accusing the government of ignoring their predicament.

With all their possessions slung over their shoulders, 150 migrant workers began their homeward journey on foot on Thursday, after being stranded in Jammu for several days due to the coronavirus-induced lockdown.

"No one bothers about us. We started the journey on foot from Jammu and trekked several kilometers but nobody stopped us anywhere to ask us where we were going?" Surinder, a resident of Gorakhpur in UP, said.

"We have no water and food. No vehicle or bus has stopped for us. We have been left to the mercy of God," he said.

Accusing the government of ignoring their grievances, the migrant workers, who hail from Uttar Pradesh, said if Kashmiri students and labourers can be brought back in buses and trains from UP, Rajasthan, Haryana, Punjab and Himachal Pradesh, why can't they be sent to their native places in the same buses or trains?



"Kashmiri students and workers were brought back with best possible facilities but we were being ignored by the government, Tahirdin, a native of Meerut, said.

PTI spotted many of these workers in Kathua searching for buses to take them to their respective homes in Gorakhpur, Meerut and Lucknow.

"During the past two months, I tried to leave Jammu five times to go to my home district but police brought me back. We have run out of money and there are no jobs available right now, Gulshan Kumar, a resident of Gorakhpur, said.

(This story has not been edited by Business Standard staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
By Nava Cohen

Being a good corporate citizen means protecting employees well-being first and foremost. But some businesses showed their unwillingness to modify their way of working despite health risks for their employees.

While experts recommend social distancing to help lower the transmission rate of the coronavirus and avoiding overcrowding hospitals, a few overconfident Silicon Valley executives are in denial and expect business to continue as normal. Tesla CEO Elon Musk minimized the health threat and called on employees to be present at work despite a shelter-in-place order from Alameda County enacted on March 16. This strategic ignorance of health risk despite the coronavirus crisis seems to be socially irresponsible.

Essential workers who dutifully show up to work are often ignored by their own employers despite their valorization and recognition by the public and politicians. Workers at several companies, including Amazon and MacDonalds say their workplaces lack safety measures, that their employers have focused on the financial aspects instead. These battles between management and labor could persist beyond the crisis. Customers and regulators may punish companies for unsafe working conditions.

While companies primary mission is to make a profit, they also need to demonstrate that they have an ethical conscience, especially in times when their stakeholders lives are at risk. What about the businesses that used to talk about their social values or those who used to spend part of their profit on social issues, from global warming to treating fairly their employees? What about them now? The corporate citizenship action is expected now more than ever in the form of closing businesses, requiring employees to work from home, or taking the necessary measures to protect essential workers at the very least.

Making decisions that adhere to corporate values embraced just months ago is more credible in a time of crisis when companies face extraordinary financial challenges and pressures from investors. Doing business as usual to avoid inconvenience and financial harm seems both unethical and dangerous for our collective safety. Recording losses due to the coronavirus outbreak is expected, but not reorienting the companies to the emergency response needed will have severe consequences for firms Corporate Social Responsibility, or CSR, reputation. In contrast, companies that embrace their responsibilities and make contributions to society are likely to improve their reputations and cultivate customer loyalty.

The corporate action is scrutinized more than ever by society. This is a new challenge for firms and, at the same time, an unprecedented opportunity for CEOs to show their true social responsibility despite dramatic financial consequences. This could perhaps be seen as a litmus test.

Fortunately, there are several incredible examples of responsible responses from companies of all sizes reaching out to care for their customers, employees, and communities. Some companies are trying to support their workers by providing paid sick leave and financial assistance to employees or expanding their back-up childcare programs for essential workers.

AT&T, Chipotle, Kroger and Lowes have provided both bonuses and wage increases to hourly employees. Charter Communications has permanently increased its hourly workers wages. Other corporate initiatives are aimed at supporting customers and communities in which firms operate.

Grocery stores across the country such as Walmart, Whole Foods Market and Trader Joes are setting aside shopping time for their most vulnerable customers. Many major banks as Ally Bank, TD Bank or PNC Bank are deferring payments for mortgages. Several energy and utility companies are suspending service disconnections and shutoffs for non-payment for the foreseeable future, including PG&E, and American Electric Power.

Some businesses are also working with non-profit organizations to provide emergency supplies. Wells Fargo and Kraft Heinz respectively donated $175 million and $12 million to help communities and to make sure people have access to food. Johnson & Johnson, the multinational pharmaceutical corporation based in New Brunswick, also announced the company was donating $50 million, aimed at helping health workers on the frontline of containing the pandemic.

Some companies are donating critically-needed medical products to relieve pressure on the medical supply chain. 3M supplied New York and Seattle with a half-million N95 respirator masks to address the shortage of medical equipment. TeleBrands Corporation, a New Jersey-based company, donated hand sanitizers, totaling $450,000, to the New York City Police Department.

The safety measures companies take as our economy reopens in the coming weeks and months are important in ensuring that people are protected from future waves of coronavirus. Not doing business as usual and delivering assistance to workers and consumers is the way for firms to be socially responsible in those days, which will be remembered after the coronavirus crisis has passed.

Nava Cohen, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Accounting at New Jersey City Universitys School of Business.

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GHARAUNDA: Late last month, Sukrampal had to beg and borrow farmhands from nearby villages to gather his part of the countrys largest-ever wheat harvest in Haryana.

Now the 50-year-old Indian farmer has a bigger problem: how to sell his crops when the three wholesale grain markets serving growers in his hometown of Gharaunda, near the heart of what is known as Indias breadbasket, are operating with a skeleton staff.

The country-wide lockdown, introduced in late March to stem the spread of the new coronavirus, has led to a labour shortage across rural India, crimping the harvest and preventing the bagging and movement of it.

The largest crop gathered globally during the pandemic, which is worth more than $26 billion, according to traders, may serve as a test case for other harvests coming up around the world, including Brazils main sugarcane and coffee harvests and Southeast Asias second rice harvests. India is the worlds second-largest producer and consumer of wheat behind China.
JNS)As the worlds attention has been focused on combating the spread of the coronavirus for the past two months, presidential primary campaign politics in the United States has been put on the backburner. Former Vice President Joe Biden has all but sealed the 2020 Democratic nomination, and has gained the endorsements of several Democratic and left-wing Jewish groups, such as J Street and the Democratic Majority for Israel. Initial polling indicates a close race this November.

Nevertheless, given the uncertainty over the coronavirus pandemic, especially as the virus has taken a heavy...
The Minority Leader in Parliament, Haruna Iddrisu is asking Ghanaians to stop the Electoral Commission (EC) from going ahead to compile a new voters register for the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections.

The Electoral Commission has presented to Parliament a Constitutional Instrument to amend C.I 91 to make Ghana card and passports the only form of identification before one could be captured onto the yet to be compiled new voter's register.

Haruna Iddrisu in a statement issued on Friday, May 15, 2020, said if the Electoral Commission succeeds with the intended amendment and proceeds to compile the new voters register, millions of Ghanaians will be disenfranchised.

I am therefore calling on Ghanaians to resist this blatant attempt by the Commission to amend or change the citizenship laws of Ghana through the backdoor by using an inferior Instrument to amend an Act of Parliament or by extension the Constitution intended to disenfranchise Ghanaians thereby denying them their fundamental right to vote as provided by the Constitution.

The Electoral Commission also intends to include facial recognition as part of the properties the new voters register will have.

But according to Mr. Iddrisu, the EC has failed to submit a Constitutional Instrument (CI) to Parliament for same.

But the most shocking revelation is that the Electoral Commission has not brought to Parliament a Constitutional Instrument for the purpose of capturing the facial details of prospective voters.

NDC accuses EC, NIA of conniving to rig 2020 polls for NPP

The opposition National Democratic Congress (NDC) on Thursday, May 15, accused the governing New Patriotic Party (NPP) of conniving with the Electoral Commission and the National Identification Authority(NIA) to rig the 2020 elections.

According to the party, activities of the NIA and the Electoral Commission ahead of the 2020 polls are all geared towards making this possible.

The NDC argues that, out of the over 17 million individuals who have registered for the Ghana card, only some 6 million have received their cards, a development the party claimed could disenfranchise many Ghanaians.

Find below the full press release from Haruna Iddrisu:

CONSTITUTIONAL INSTRUMENT ON THE COMPILATION OF A NEW VOTERS REGISTER

We appear to be in interesting times! The Electoral Commission is saying that it is determined to compile a new voters registration to be used for the 2020 Presidential and Parliamentary elections in Ghana contrary to good counsel from Civil Society and well-meaning Ghanaians.

Their justification for the compilation of a new register is that the existing voters register is bloated and does not make room for facial recognition as a necessary concomitant to the biodata collected of existing voters on the register.

To prepare for the new register, the Electoral Commission has introduced into Parliament Constitutional Instrument No. 126 (Public Elections (Registration of Voters)(Amendment) Regulations, 2020) intended to amend Sub-regulation (3) of Regulation 1 of the Public Elections (Registration of Voters) Regulations (C.I. 91). Sub-regulation (3) of Regulation 1 of C.I. 91 establishes the primary documents required for verification of a person who presents herself or himself for registration as a voter.

The Electoral Commission, by the proposed amendment is seeking to limit primary documents to only the Ghanaian passport and a national identification card issued by the National Identification Authority.

A voter identification card, which derives its legitimacy from the constitution and particularly Article 42 of the Constitution of Ghana, 1992, is excluded from the list of primary documents.

But the most shocking revelation is that the Electoral Commission has not brought to Parliament a Constitutional Instrument for the purpose of capturing the facial details of prospective voters.

Facial recognition has far-reaching consequences for the enjoyment of fundamental rights of citizens and especially privacy rights. Technological determinism can have disastrously invasive negative effects on the lives of the citizens of this country. The failure of the Electoral Commission to avert its mind to the need for Regulations to guide this exercise is disconcerting!

Another critical omission by the Commission is the lack of or limited consideration or thought given to the consequences of the proposed amendment in C.I. 126. It will have the effect of unsettling the Citizenship laws of Ghana.

The Citizenship Act,2000 (Act 591) presumes a person born on or before 6th March 1957 to be a Ghanaian provided either parent or grandparent was born in Ghana. Therefore to establish whether a person is prima facie a Ghanaian, one needs to look at the person's birth certificate.

Unfortunately, the Electoral Commission will have none of this! The Commission has unwittingly changed the presumption, and any person who appears at the registration centre without a passport or a national identification card issued by the National Identification Authority is presumed not to be a Ghanaian unless two people can vouch for that person.

In effect, a child who was born to parents and has a passport but whose parents have no passports or a national identification card issued by the National Identification Authority will have to be vouched for by the child. The child will impliedly confer Ghanaian citizenship on his parents contrary to the express provisions in the Constitution, 1992 and the Citizenship Act, 2000, Act 591.

I am therefore calling on Ghanaians to resist this blatant attempt by the Commission to amend or change the citizenship laws of Ghana through the backdoor by using an inferior Instrument to amend an Act of Parliament or by extension the Constitution intended to disenfranchise Ghanaians thereby denying them their fundamental right to vote as provided by the Constitution.

---citinewsroom
A Commercial Court in Accra (High Court Division) has given a construction firm the authorisation to attach immovable and movable property of Regent University College of Science and Technology for auction to defray debt of 1,284,080 dollars and 2,139,789 Ghana cedis the University owe.



On May 13, this year, the Courts bailiff served a Fieri Facias against the Universitys movable and immovable property over the debt it owned Obokom Construction Civil Engineering Limited.



The move by Obokom Construction Civil Engineering Limited is to execute the judgement of the Court delivered in March 2019 against the University.



The Construction firm, through a competitive process, entered into contract on April 10, 2014 with the University to construct a six storey multi-purpose building for it. The facility was completed and handed over in May 2016 to the University.



A brief on Execution of Judgement made available to the Ghana News Agency in Accra on Thursday explained that the university would start paying the construction firm after a years grace period.



When the University was due to pay, it failed to honour its obligation.



Meanwhile the construction firm used its own resources worth One million Ghana cedis in 2015 to guarantee a loan it obtained from then Unicredit Ghana to enable it to pay the claimant.



The Regent University College of Science and Technology issued six post-dated cheques, which were dishonoured and as a result the financial institution used the construction companys deposit of one million Ghana cedis to offset part of the debt.



This led to a court action between the Construction Company and Unicredit and judgement delivered in October 2019.



After several notices served on the University to pay its debt had failed, the construction firm instructed its lawyers to proceed to court and judgement was entered in favour of the construction firm in March 2019.



Based on that, a payment plan was drawn but the University made one payment thereby defaulting in the payment plan per the court orders.



Three separate meetings were also held by parties but no payment was made.



Obokom Construction Civil Engineering Limited opted to apply for a Fieri Facia on the Immovable and moveable property of the University.

Bailiffs therefore proceeded to attach the Universitys property.



This makes way for an auctioneer to value the property to offset total debt of 1,284,080 dollars and 2,139,789 Ghana cedis.

Source: GNA









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The act of publicly raising these "lawfare" ideas sets the stage for Ukraine to also advance its position on the future status of Russian-occupied Crimea.

Moscow's continuing efforts to reduce the Black Sea to the status of a de facto Russian lake have forced Ukraine to seek increasingly inventive means of pushing back. Recently, some Ukrainian commentators have begun calling for a Timor Sea-type resolution for the territorial delimitation of the Black Sea that would involve Georgia and other littoral states as well as the Russian Federation.

Additionally, some have called on Kyiv to come out strongly in favor of the position, floated by the Turkish government, that a new canal bypassing central Istanbul would not fall under the terms of the 1936 Montreux Convention, effectively annulling that nearly century-old accord, reads an article on the Jamestown Foundation website.

These exchanges have so far remained mostly at the level of expert commentaries rather than official declarations. Yet, they provide a window into the thinking in Kyiv, where officials are clearly hopeful that they can invoke international law against the Russians. The act of publicly raising these "lawfare" ideas sets the stage for Ukraine to also advance its position on the future status of Russian-occupied Crimea. Indeed, a revision of Montreux cannot help but provide Ukraine with new possibilities to enlist Western support.

Read alsoRussia calls Ukrainians in Crimea "foreigners", treads on land ownership rights

Bohdan Ustimenko, a leading Ukrainian specialist on the legal issues surrounding the Black Sea, recently argued that Ukraine, in order to secure a delimitation of the Black Sea, must insist on international backing for "forcible conciliation" in defining that body; and to this end, it must involve Tbilisi, which also has an interest in defining the sea border. The first use of the international legal mechanisms Ustimenko favors  which is allowed for by the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) treaty  was in 2016, when UN-mandated negotiations led to Australia recognizing a delimitation agreement with East Timor.

The Ukrainian expert argued that by invoking this precedent, "we will have more opportunities to show the international community what is occurring in the Black Sea and how crudely Russia is violating our rights; and at the same time, this will allow us to more effectively achieve success in international bodies because the procedure of conciliation, in fact, takes place under the aegis of the United Nations".

The initial response from Moscow was outrage at the suggestion that the UN rules applied in this case with regard to Russia. UNCLOS rules do allow for arbitration, but before they can be applied, Kira Sazonova of the Russian Academy of Economics and State Service says, there will have to be agreement on the status of Crimea because sea borders are defined relative to the ownership of the littoral areas. Given that Kyiv and Moscow have irreconcilable differences on that point, any talk of international hearings is, at a minimum, premature.

Given this division, Moscow would seem well-positioned to block any moves toward a UN tribunal on the delimitation of the Black Sea.

In contrast, Ukraine has reason to be more hopeful about Turkey's plans to possibly de facto annul the Montreux Convention as a result of its construction of a canal that does not pass through Istanbul and thus, some have argued, would not fall under the convention. The 1936 convention limits the number and tonnage of naval vessels belonging to non-littoral states in the Black Sea at any one time. Nikolai Mikhalchenko, the honorary president of the Ukrainian Academy of Political Sciences, speaks for many in Kyiv that abolishing or circumventing Montreux would be enormously beneficial to Ukraine. As such, he contends, the country should actively support Ankara, if the latter pushes to exclude the new bypass canal from Montreux's limitations.

Read alsoCrimean children taught Russia didn't invade Crimea  rights group

Russia's attitudes toward Montreux are complicated. On the one hand, Moscow often argues that it is vital to the defense of the post-World War II order that the Vladimir Putin administration wants enshrined permanently. But on the other hand, the Russian government dislikes those provisions of Montreux that some in Moscow see as limiting the Kremlin's ability to project force into the Mediterranean; as such, it has considered seeking its modification.

But now, seeing Ukraine's possible moves to more closely coordinate its position on the Black Sea and the Montreux Convention with Georgia as well as Turkey, Russia's own position on Montreux is likely to harden. So for the foreseeable future, Moscow appears committed to backing the status quo rather than allowing Kyiv (or Ankara) to change anything.
The Chief Medical Officer Dr Tony Holohan has said he believes the non-reporting of some Covid-19 cases from the Mater Hospital is likely an isolated incident.

The Dublin hospital said it met all its legal requirements after 244 positive cases from as far back as March were only reported yesterday.

All the cases, some of which date back to mid-March, were reported to the Health Protection Surveillance Centre in one go on Thursday.

In a statement the hospital said it had reported all cases of Covid-19 positive results to the relevant authorities on a daily basis.

At all times the Mater Hospital provided the information that the HSE required and met all legal requirements to report infectious diseases, the statement added.

All of this information is correct and up to date. We are working with the HSE to understand why the provided data may not have been accurately captured.

The Mater Hospital has also carried out comprehensive contact tracing on every single member of staff who tested positive for Covid-19 through our occupational health department in line with best practice.

In excess of 300 staff at the Mater have tested positive for Covid-19 and a further 1,500 have self-isolated following contact tracing to protect patients, fellow staff and the public  despite the enormous impact this has had on our operations.

The HSE has begun an investigation into what happened.

Dr Holohan said reporting has been very strong to date.

He said: "The investigation that the Chief Executive of the HSE is going to conduct will establish that. I'll be honest and say that I'd be surprised if we have another incident like that.

"I think that reporting has been very comprehensive across hospitals, community centres and services all the way through this, I think we've got good reliable data to base our decisions on.

"The additional issue that was raised yesterday has no implications in terms of our assessments of the disease."
An academy chief has called opposition to the reopening of schools 'rather middle class' and said it could pose great risk to children 'stuck in a council block, with no fresh air, no exercise and little or no nutritious food.'

Steve Chalke, founder of one of England's biggest academy trusts, Oasis Charitable Trust, has suggested attempts to stop children going back to primary schools on June 1 could have a detrimental effect on disadvantaged pupils.

Over the past week a fierce debate as to whether children should return to school after the summer half-term has exploded between the schools, government and teaching unions.

Steve Chalke, founder of one of England's biggest academy trusts, Oasis Charitable Trust, said attempts to stop children going back to primary schools in June was 'rather middle class'. Picture: Stock

Boris Johnson ordered the closure of schools on March 18, just days before the national lockdown was introduced, with many remaining open to look after vulnerable children and those of frontline key workers.

Under new government plans to ease the country out of lockdown, children in reception, Year 1 and Year 6 could start back on June 1 with smaller class sizes, of no more than 15, with procedures in place to limit the spread of the virus.

Yesterday Education Secretary Gavin Williamson demanded teachers union do their 'duty' and stop their blanket objections to the proposed phased return.

In response Britain's second-largest teaching union, NASUWT, threatened to sue school chiefs if they put teachers 'at risk'.

The union, which has 310,000 members, wrote to headteachers, academy bosses and local authorities to outline their stance.

In the letter the union said: 'No teacher should be expected to go into a school that is not safe and until it can be demonstrated that it is safe to do so we will be continuing to support and advise members on that basis.'

Of the 35 schools within Mr Chalke's trust, 45 per cent of children are eligible for free school meals.

He told The Times staying away from school could pose greater to risks to these pupils.

Mr Chalke said children from disadvantaged background would be at greater risk if they were to miss more school due to a delay in reopening. Picture: Stock

He said: 'The greatest risks for many of our children are being stuck in a council block, with no fresh air, no exercise, little or no nutritious food.'

The Oasis boss suggested many pupils would also be at a disadvantage from missing lessons because many of them 'live in cramped conditions with little digital access' making it difficult for them to learn effectively online.

Despite his comments, Mr Chalke added that his school would not force pupils or staff to attend and stated that he respected the union's stance.

In attempt to ease the tensions, union chiefs have been offered a briefing with the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty this afternoon to reassure them the plans are safe for children, staff and parents.
Stamping of boarding passes suspended as flight operations set to resume

India

oi-Vicky Nanjappa

New Delhi, May 15: In a bid to resume flights, the Government has started to lay the groundwork in terms of safety and policy measures.

The Bureau of Civil Aviation has issued a circular doing away with security personnel stamping boarding passes of flight passengers at airports. "In view of the prevailing situation of COVID-19 pandemic and countermeasures being taken to contain its spread by touch/contact, it has been decided to dispense with the procedure of stamping the passengers' boarding pass, after completion of pre-embarkation security check of the concerned passenger, till further order," the circular read.

Domestic flights expected to operate from May 19

Further, a draft standard operating procedure has been circulated among the various stake-holders. These include downloading the Aarogya Setu application, increasing the passenger reporting time at airports and mandatory web check-in.

The final SOP is yet to be issued. Suggestions had been sought on a draft discussion paper from the airlines and airports and the same have now been received, a spokesperson of the Ministry of Civil Aviation said.

Officials said that it was necessary to also have the states on board. Initially, it was decided to allow flights in the green zones. However, most of the traffic centres in the country are either in the red or orange zone. In the first phase, the government is likely to allow only Air India to operate. This would be mainly aimed at domestic repatriation, which will be on the lines of the Vande Bharat International mission.
Even as most Americans spent the past two months hiding indoors, Damion Campbell has been rushing into retail and grocery stores in Columbia, South Carolina, each day.

The 45-year-old owns an information technology company, and his clients rely on him to keep their cash registers operating. Just a few months ago, Campbell didn't think much about touching surfaces that may not have been washed for days or longer, or chatting with employees while he does his work.

But now, Campbell finds himself applying his military training to his civilian job. In the age of the novel coronavirus, that means stocking up on disinfectant wipes, always wearing a mask and never staying in one location for more than an hour, he said.

"You keep your head at the swivel, be aware of your surroundings, and avoid patterns," said Campbell, referring to lessons he learned as a Marine deployed to Iraq nearly two decades ago. "You are constantly looking over your shoulder."

With tens of millions of Americans preparing to return to work as more states relax stay-at-home orders, Campbell's experiences offer a preview of the new challenges that businesses and employees will soon face as commerce begins reopening in a new era of anxiety and apprehension.

A Washington Post-Ipsos poll of more than 8,000 adults in late April and early May found that nearly 6 in 10 Americans who are working outside their homes were concerned that they could be exposed to the virus at work and infect other members of their household. Those concerns were even higher for some: Roughly 7 in 10 black and Hispanic workers said they were worried about getting a household member sick if they are exposed at work.

Nearly 1 in 3 Americans - and over half of those with jobs - have continued to leave the house for work at least once a week as the virus has spread and states have issued stay-at-home orders, the poll found. More than one-third of people still going to work said they or a household member has a serious chronic illness, and 13% said they lack health insurance themselves.

Nearly 8 in 10 Americans leaving home to work said their employers were doing enough to keep them safe, with a similar majority saying their work is "essential" and about 7 in 10 feeling appreciated for it.

But more than a third said they had probably been exposed on the job already.

"I was really sick, with all the symptoms back in late January," said Bud Benedix, 60, a truck driver from suburban Chicago who was never tested for coronavirus, but believes it was circulating in the United States far earlier than official estimates. "Where I could have got it? I have no idea."

The Post-Ipsos poll found that amid stay-at-home orders, people who continued to commute each day worked in a wide array of industries. Health-care workers accounted for 10% of people still leaving for work, 7% apiece worked in sales and office and administrative support, and another 6% prepared food. Blue-collar workers left home for work at higher rates than others, including those performing installation, maintenance and repair, transportation and construction.

Of the nearly half of employed Americans who were not going to an office or job site, nearly 9 in 10 are in white-collar industries.

As those workers now prepare to start leaving their homes, follow-up interviews with poll respondents revealed a host of concerns about how they will stay safe on the job. They worry about using mass transportation, how they will interact with colleagues and clients, and whether they could bring the virus home to other family members, including those who suffer from preexisting health conditions.

Denise Gonzalez, a 34-year-old landscape designer in Santa Ana, California, has been largely isolated in her house with two elderly parents, including her diabetic mother, since Gov. Gavin Newsom, D, ordered residents to stay home in early March.

Gonzalez wonders whether her office will establish protocols for the field crews who used to frequently come in and out of the office in between jobs.

"I think there is going to have to be more regulations at the office, like not everybody can come in at once, or only one from the crew can come inside, or we will have to meet them outside," Gonzalez said. "And if we implement that, there is going to have to be somebody who makes sure we stick by it and make it the new norm for a while."

In Wisconsin, preschool teacher Andrea Velasquez has also been staying home due to the closure of schools in her state, making only brief excursions to pick up supplies.

Velasquez, 42, does not think she will have to return to work until at least the fall, but she already wonders how her job will be different when she is back in the classroom.

Some things, Velasquez expects, won't be that different. Most preschool teachers are already diligent about frequently washing their hands and sanitizing, she noted.

But when it comes to other fundamental parts of the job, such as interacting with parents and other teachers, Velasquez is still waiting for state and local educational associations to issue extensive guidelines for how to stay safe.

"In the past, a lot of teachers have gone to work sick because they feel guilty if they stay home," Velasquez said. "Some kids have, too, and we all have to learn how to change that and follow new protocols."

Some Americans who have already gone to work caution that those about to follow them should be prepared for added stress.

Hannah Rodriquez, 23, has been reporting to her job as a lab technician in Minneapolis. Her employer has implemented additional safeguards, such as checking employees' temperatures when they arrive.

But Rodriquez said working around colleagues amid a pandemic has proved to be "more exhausting" than she would have expected. In addition to the heightened concern about how to best to protect her own health, Rodriquez said she finds it challenging to sift through the varied opinions that her co-workers have about whether the virus is dangerous.

"You have some people really anxious and really upset about what is going on, and others who think it's a huge overreaction," Rodriquez said. "That makes it even more stressful for everybody."

Although there has been at least one coronavirus case reported in most U.S. counties, Americans have different perspectives on returning to work.

In Fargo, North Dakota, Stephanie Pearson, 30, noted her county has had only 76 confirmed coronavirus cases, and it has lower density than many major American cities. And as a healthy, young adult, the engineer said she may be among the first to be called back to work when her office reopens.

"I think we all will just have to use our best judgment, as to what is right for our personal situations," Pearson said. "I sit in a fairly large cubicle, so I do not have any concerns about returning."

But in northern Virginia, a government employee who would identify himself only by his first name, Olufemi, is worried that he won't be able to safely get to his job in the Washington. Olufemi already had a fever earlier this year, which he believes he could have contracted while riding the subway to work.

"I worry if you take the Metro, you run a high risk of being exposed to it," said Olufemi, adding he could not afford to drive to work every day when he factors in the cost of parking downtown. "And even if you don't take the Metro, when you go into buildings, how many people are you going to come into contact with on the elevator on a daily basis?"

In recent weeks, many cities and states have begun urging, and in some cases mandating, that residents wear a protective face covering when outdoors. Some employers are also expected to require employees to wear face masks in office settings.

The Post-Ipsos poll found mask-wearing is scattershot at workplaces: 35% of people leaving home to go to work reported wearing a mask at all times, 39% said they wore a mask some of the time or occasionally, and 26% never wore one.

More than 4 in 10 women said they wore a mask all the time at work, compared with about 3 in 10 men.

An 81% majority of Americans said workers at businesses that are open should be required to wear masks, a figure that dips to 73% among those who have been leaving home for work during the outbreak. Almost as many support mask requirements for customers.

Brett Giordano, 47, works as a commercial helicopter pilot in Trophy Club, Texas, and he still flies clients a few times a week.

Giordano said he will wear a face mask while flying if a client asks him to, but he usually doesn't see the virus as a major threat to his health. He believes state governments are overreacting by shutting down business and mandating mask use.

"If someone came aboard sneezing and coughing, I might say, 'I think you need to get looked at,' " Giordano said. "But it's kind of hard to fly with a mask on, because talking into the microphone with one is kind of hard."

The poll also provides the first nationally representative look at what actions employers are taking to protect workers.

Over 8 in 10 Americans going to work said they approved of how their employer was handling the coronavirus outbreak. Another wide majority, 85%, said their employers encouraged workers to stay home if they were feeling ill. A smaller majority, 59%, said their employers reduced the numbers of workers required to come into work since the outbreak began.

Just over 7 in 10 said their employer provided them with face masks, more than 8 in 10 were provided hand sanitizer, and roughly 9 in 10 had access to soap and water for hand-washing.

Rikki Johnson, 58, works in the records unit of a prison in central Virginia that holds about 700 inmates.

Although prisons nationwide have struggled with large outbreaks in recent weeks, Johnson said his facility so far has no reported cases.

Prison administrators have been diligent in making "people wear face masks, stay socially distanced" and give employees staggered or limited shifts to reduce the chances that they could come in contact with the virus, said Johnson, who lives in Orange County in the Shenandoah foothills.

Johnson worries, however, that too many other businesses will try to reopen too quickly, potentially endangering essential workers like himself who have been commuting to work each day.

"I think governors and federal officials need to map out a better plan, including more testing," said Johnson, 58. "I think our plan right now is a bit like 'Helter Skelter' and like gambling with dice."

Johnson is African American, and the poll found that black and Latino Americans were more worried than white workers about the conditions they will face in the workplace. Nearly half of black men think they may have already been exposed to the virus at work, compared with just over 3 in 10 white men.

Campbell, the former Marine, believes he may have been exposed to coronavirus when he took a series of work-related trips in February, including to New York.

But he never developed symptoms, was never tested, and isn't about to let down his guard down now.

"The biggest thing you got to learn is that you can't control somebody else," said Campbell, who has been stocking up on gallon-sized jugs of hand sanitizer.

- - -

The Washington Post-Ipsos poll was conducted April 27 through May 4 through Ipsos's KnowledgePanel, a large online survey panel recruited through random sampling of U.S. households. Overall results in The Washington Post-Ipsos poll among the sample of 8,086 U.S. adults have a margin of sampling error of plus or minus one percentage point. The error margin is 2.5 points among the sample of 2,302 people who reported leaving to go to work at least once in the past week.

- - -

The Washington Post's Scott Clement and Alauna Safarpour contributed to this report.
The kings of Angkor Wat may have inadvertently caused the downfall of their own vast empire by seizing land from local farmers, a new study claims.

Researchers studying the ancient Khmer civilisation, which thrived in modern-day Cambodia for 600 years, wanted to discover the reason for its 15th-century decline.

The abandonment of Angkor has long puzzled historians, with many attributing it to the 1431 AD invasion by Thai forces, though this is hotly debated.

Angkor was the capital city of this now-extinct culture, and the iconic Angkor Wat temple was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II.

But later, in the 1400s, kings sitting on the throne once occupied by the great Suryavarman II saw their empire crumble and eventually disappear.

Researchers believe one of the main reasons for the collapse of Khmer civilisation was a move away from independent farming to a centralised approach.

Farms were once owned and run by the middle classes, allowing people and families to support their local community which revolved around a small temple.

However, rulers increasingly made it harder for people to own land, with farming becoming an occupation reserved for the elite and, eventually, becoming totally centralised.

This shift to a state-run approach would have been more efficient at feeding a large population, but made it very rigid and unable to cope with rapid change.

It is believed that when the centralised system was tasked with feeding all of the Khmer civilisation in the face of monsoons and droughts, it failed.

This may have led to the steady and ill-fated decline of Khmer society, according to a new study.

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Relative point density of temples on the landscape (based on the centroid of temples). The study found that temples were built lose to these water sources, which were built by the kings

Angkor was the capital city of this now-extinct culture, and the iconic Angkor Wat temple (pictured) was built in the early 12th century by King Suryavarman II

Khmer society relied heavily on farming and developed sophisticated methods to grow crops throughout the Middle Ages.

Agriculture was the backbone of the society and the very reason the rulers accrued such incredible wealth.

The kings invested early on in an irrigation system capable of sustaining huge fields of crops.

Dr Sarah Klassen from the University of British Columbia and Damian Evans, an archaeologist at Ecole francaise d'Extreme-Orient in France, studied the Cambodian site.

Writing in an article on the website Sapiens, they say: 'The scale of the hydraulic system is perhaps unparalleled in the preindustrial world.

'They built channels that were over 20 km [12 miles] in length and 4060m [130 - 196ft] wide, above-ground reservoirs thousands of acres in size, and a vast network of walled fields used for flooded rice agriculture.

'The largest of these were constructed by kings.'

Using LIDAR (a 3D laser light scanning technique) the researchers studied the ground around Angkor to reveal what the floor-plan of the city would have been like during the peak of Khmer society.

'The generated maps reveal both areas of dense occupation with city blocks and streets, and lower-density areas with scattered community temples, sometimes marked by little more than a scatter of bricks or just a faint impression of a mound with a moat around it,' the researchers write.

The scientists focused on the locations of the newly-discovered temples, which were small and would have been the focal point of the localised community of farmers.

A machine learning algorithm was developed to date each temple (pictured, every temple in Angkor and when it was built) as well as parts of the vast irrigation system, including ponds, moats and reservoirs

The abandonment of Angkor has long puzzled historians, with many attributing it to the 1431 AD invasion by Thai forces, though this is hotly debated. Angkor was the capital city of this now-extinct culture, and the iconic Angkor Wat temple was built in the early 12th century

Pictured is a mocked up map of Angkor. The insets depict the regular grid of the epicenter (top left) and a temple community (bottom left) at the same scale. The move towards epicentres and away from localised temple-based communities may have contributed to the demise of Khmer civilisation

Khmer society collapsed slowly, scientists believe Angkor, the ancient capital of the Khmer empire, suffered a gradual decline rather than a sudden, catastrophic demise, a new study suggests. The abandonment of Angkor has long puzzled archaeologists and historians, with many attributing it to the 1431 AD invasion by Thai forces. But a slow and prolonged exodus of its inhabitants has been found dating back to the start of the 14th-Century. A decline in human activity on the land over a few decades was discovered by scientists who examined soil and sediment in the region. A major flood is also believed to have contributed to the settlement's final collapse and abandonment. 'The historical record is effectively blank for the 15th century at Angkor,' said Dan Penny from the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney who took part in the study. 'We don't have a written record that tells us why they left or when or how. Everything that survived is carved on stone.' Advertisement

A machine learning algorithm was developed to date each temple as well as parts of the vast irrigation system, including ponds, moats and reservoirs.

The study found that temples were built close to these water sources, which were built by the kings.

Writing in Sapiens, they say: 'What was strange was that we found a severe decrease in the number of new temple foundations on the landscape during the 11th and 12th centuries, right when the kings were constructing major projects like Angkor Wat, hospitals, and extensive road networks.'

The explanation for why the number of temples being built dropped when large projects were being undertaken by the rulers lies in a series of inscriptions relating to land ownership and disputes.

They reveal that, in the early days of Khmer civilisation, land belonged to all echelons of society.

'However, by the mid-11th century, free males of middle rank were no longer referenced in the context of land transactions or the foundations for new temples,' the researchers say.

'By the 12th century, even free males of higher rank were referred to as temple personnel or workers rather than as landowners.

'It seems the land was increasingly concentrated into the hands of the evermore wealthy.

'First the middle class was squeezed out, and then even the upper class lost their lands to the state.'

'Our results indicate that, over time, autonomous temple communities are replaced by large, state-sponsored agricultural units in an attempt by the state to centralise production,' the researchers say in their study, published in the Journal of Anthropological Archaeology.

While this was happening, Angkor was reaching the height of its powers and by the 13th century there were lots of people living in small areas, forming cultural epicentres.

The move to centralisation coincided with a steady economic and cultural decline that lasted for centuries.

The centralised system may have been unable to cope with a booming population, changing politics and extreme weather such as monsoons and droughts.
London's Infobip Opens US Headquarters

During COVID-19, and as more businesses use communications solutions to stay connected, Infobop experienced an increased demand for its services. In a move to provide its technology platform for more businesses in the U.S., the company has opened a new headquarters in Jersey City.

Infobip, a company with global headquarters in London and offices located across the globe, provides messaging solutions for customers via the cloud. Its first location in the U.S., company officials said, was chosen based on being an up and coming tech hub and its close proximity to many carriers in New Jersey. The company also said the location provides easy access to the New York City market and while still tapping into the New Jersey tech talent in the area.

The new 5,000-square-foot office at 111 Town Square Place will begin the companys plans to expand further into the U.S.

It has already hired 16 employees to work at the new location. Yuri Fiaschi, vice president of global sales commented on the new headquarters saying, Infobip has recently become Tier 1 in the American market, which means it is fully connected with the major wireless carriers.

Due to COVID-19 stay at home restrictions, some of these new employees may be working from home for the time being but plans to plan to double the number of employees throughout the year are in place.

We are now looking forward to becoming an active member in the local community once we can physically be in our office, Fiaschi said. With that said, we are still impacting the community in a positive manner by generating new jobs and providing support for government and health care institutions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

To do its part during the pandemic, Infobip is currently offering free access to its technology for health care and government entities.

Protecting public health can be just a message or alert away  and we want to make sure our healthcare and government institutions are able to share critical information, updates and advice in a timely manner that will help keep people safe, said Fiaschi.

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Edited by Maurice Nagle


By Richard Pennington





"It's too early to declare victory." This is what I tell my friends in the U.S., Lebanon, Bolivia, Romania, Canada and the Philippines who express admiration for the Korean government's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic over the last three or four months.



The Blue House, the Ministry of Health and Welfare, and the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) implemented a comprehensive epidemic control program. Private entities like Kogene Biotech, Seegene, SolGent and SD Biosensor developed accurate tests, and they were quickly put to use.



If there is now cause for guarded optimism, this may be traced to Korea's leaders having listened to the scientists and experts; our own Anthony Fauci. Dr. Fauci, you may know, is the widely respected American who is trying to guide a reluctant President Donald Trump onward through the COVID-19 fog.



Korea's success in "flattening the curve" of deaths and new cases has been lauded the world over. But in this contentious society, there are always naysayers. I have a friend whose anonymity must be preserved, so I will call him Mr. Park. He moans, groans and complains constantly.



This man, born in 1939 and the owner of a master's degree from Syracuse University, is an unabashed right-winger. I have no problem with conservative people, as some of my views are conservative, some liberal and most middle of the road. Mr. Park, however, opposes the government  which he regards as hopelessly left-wing, indeed communist  for the sake of opposing.



I'm glad he has a good sense of humor because I sometimes kid him about his knee-jerk ways. Furthermore, I tell him that despite being more than 80 years old, he is politically immature.



I would not want to stereotype, but he is of the generation that reveres Park Chung-hee; seeing the big little man's daughter deposed in 2017 still gnaws at Mr. Park and his friends, all of whom are on the far right. So they want nothing more than to do the same to President Moon Jae-in who, they claim, is in cahoots with Kim Jong-un of North Korea. They want him impeached and jailed, and the sooner the better.



In spite of abundant evidence to the contrary, Mr. Park insists that Moon has made numerous missteps about COVID-19. He is suspicious to the point of paranoia about the numbers put out by the KCDC. "Fake news," he says, suggesting that I am naive to believe what I see, hear and read.



You can imagine his unhappiness with the result of the April 15 elections. (Other countries have postponed elections due to the epidemic, but with all the precautions in place Korea went ahead.)



The turnout of 66.2 percent was the highest in 28 years, and Moon's Democratic Party of Korea and its satellite party Civil Together scored a landslide victory by taking 180 of the 300 seats in the National Assembly. Voters appear to have affirmed Moon's handling of COVID-19, but not in Mr. Park's opinion. When he rants about how the election was rigged, I wave him off. We have to agree to disagree.



Robust self-assertion is a fine thing, but not during the middle of a global pandemic that is far from over. "There is no better time than now to set aside political opinions," I tell Mr. Park. "Stop criticizing and be positive for the moment. Do it for the sake of the country you love so much."



I give you two examples of how Korea has grown politically mature in recent decades. The first is the move from military to civilian control in 1987, and the second is how the police evolved from fearsome, baton-wielding men to friendly people who keep the peace and help their fellow citizens. These steps were not easy, but they were necessary, and Korea is a better place as a result.



What, then, constitutes political maturity? It is being able to look at any situation in a calm and relaxed manner. It is also the willingness to consider others' thoughts and opinions, and to realize that we do not have all the answers all the time.



Put differently, political immaturity is the determination to wear blinkers, to refuse to engage in reasoned debate and to insouciantly say, "I'm right, and you're wrong." Political immaturity shows a lack of emotional intelligence, as seen in my octogenarian friend.



Here is what politically mature people ought to do around election time. Choose a candidate, help him or her during the campaign, tell friends why he or she deserves a spot in the National Assembly, and vote. If he or she wins, fine. If not, however, accept the result with equanimity.



Congratulate the winner and pledge to support him or her because this is what's best for Korea. Also, realize the obvious fact that governing in the modern age is not easy and that mistakes or failed policies are bound to happen; they do not merit savage scorn and threats of removal from office.



Finally, lest any readers think I favor liberals over conservatives, not so. Some of the most closed-minded people I have ever known reside on the left side of the political spectrum. They smugly vilify their opponents no less than Mr. Park does.





Richard Pennington (raput76@gmail.com), a native of Texas in the U.S., works as an editor at a law firm in southern Seoul. He has written 22 nonfiction books, including "Travels of an American-Korean, 2008-2013." He is the director of an NGO, the Committee to Bring Jikji Back to Korea.






Mr Kwaku Agyeman-Manu, Minister of Health has stated that government is yet to pay the extra allowances of frontline health workers engaged in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.



The Health Minister made the disclosure on Thursday in Accra during question and answer time at the meet the press series, organised by the Ministry of Information to give an update on the COVID-19 pandemic.



Responding to a question that staff of the Noguchi Memorial Institute for Medical Research (NMIMR) of the University of Ghana, who were involved in conducting the COVID-19 testing, had not being paid their extra-allowances for frontline health workers, Mr Agyeman-Manu said it was an unfortunate situation and that it looked like some wrong information had got into the Institute.



He said, he was sending his Chief Director to Institute to join with Professor Abraham Kwabena Annan, the Director of NMIMR to explain (things to the staff).



So far this extra allowance the President announced to be paid to frontline health workers has not been paid to anybody yet, Mr Agyeman-Manu stated.



He noted that all the heads of the health service providers-the Christian Health Association, Ghana Health Service, the quasi-government health institutions, the teaching hospitals and all their chief executive officers had signed an agreement and sent to the Minister (of Health) that they should hesitate a little bit for them to continue to dialogue with their own staff; the nurses and the doctors until they agreed on arrangements with their workers.



Noguchi cannot be left behind, we are adding their clinical academy consultants, the university lecturers, who practice medicine in the teaching hospitals; they are all part of it, including; some veterinary people who have even been testing. But we haven't paid anybody. And then last night it came out that Noguchi people are complaining that we have paid the allowances to people and we have left them behind.



This cannot be true. We haven't done anything. And I want to assure Noguchi staff that we will never leave them behind. This is a battle that we are fighting together where they are, is even more obvious.. Their contributions levels are high so we can't leave them behind. And anytime we do this analysis they will get their fair share of these allowances, he added.



Responding to a question on personal protective equipment (PPE) being distributed to health facilities, Mr Agyeman-Manu said there were plans in place to ensure their sustainability.

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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Melbourne restaurant owners who are trying to work out when and how to reopen say the stigma of a coronavirus cluster linked to their premises would be the final straw for already-struggling businesses.

While they wait to hear from the Victorian government on details around opening for in-house dining  probably some time in June  business owners are also preparing to be judged by their ability to manage a COVID-19 outbreak.

Hotel Lincoln owner Iain Ling, with his daughter behind him, says the onus will fall upon restaurants when they re-open. Credit:Simon Schluter

When the Lincoln in Carlton closed in March, it was, to owner Iain Lings knowledge, the first time in 165 years that the pub had shut for an extended period.

Mr Ling said he would feel a greater responsibility, nearing on pressure, once it reopened to customers because were a contact industry  we cant do what we do via Zoom.
Sen. Kelly Loeffler, R-Ga., her husband Jeffrey Sprecher participate in Loefflers swear-in reenactment for the cameras in the Capitol on Monday, Jan. 6, 2020.

Intercontinental Exchange, which owns the New York Stock Exchange, refused to say Friday whether it has given federal law enforcement agencies information related to stock sales by CEO and Chairman Jeff Sprecher and his wife, Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler.

Intercontinental Exchange formally declined to comment after a flurry of news about a probe into stock sales in trading accounts related to four senators.

That news included Loeffler revealing that she has given documents and information to the Department of Justice, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Senate Ethics Committee about the sales from accounts she had with Sprecher.

Those sales came in the weeks before financial markets plunged as the Covid-19 pandemic spread in the United States.

Intercontinental Exchange has not said in regulatory filings that either the company or Sprecher are the subject of criminal or civil probes or have turned over information to investigators about the CEO's trades.

The FBI and Department of Justice appears to be eyeing trades by Loeffler and Sprecher, as well as by Sens. Richard Burr, R-N.C., and Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., and by the husband of Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif.

Accounts connected to those senators cumulatively sold millions of dollars worth of stock in the weeks before financial markets crashed in late February as Covid-19 cases in the United States began spiking.

Starting on Jan. 24, Loeffler and Sprecher sold stocks over the next three weeks that were valued at between $1.3 million and $3.1 million, according to disclosure reports filed by the senator.

All four senators say they did nothing wrong, and that the trades were not connected to non-public information they received.

That includes private briefings for lawmakers in January and early February by top federal health officials who warned senators about the potential impact of the coronavirus outbreak before the United States began seeing large numbers of officially reported cases.

Sprecher and Loeffler's sales began on the same day that Loeffler attended a senators-only briefing on the coronavirus.
 Flash

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Thursday said mankind is "so unprepared" for COVID-19, while pointing out that there is not enough humility, unity or solidarity in the world.

Guterres earlier on Thursday brought together the principals of 31 UN system entities in a virtual meeting of the UN System Chief Executives Board for Coordination (CEB), the longest-standing and highest-level coordination forum of the UN system.

As CEB chair, the secretary-general gave an overview of the state of the world, reflecting on the future of multilateralism, beyond the immediate response to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as on the risks brought by the current crisis for human rights, global governance, ethics and international cooperation.

"What is clear today is the fragility of humankind and the planet. With all the scientific progress we still don't know how to deal with a virus, we are so unprepared. It is clear there is not enough humility, unity and not enough solidarity in the world," he said.

With this in mind, the secretary-general brought to the board's attention the UN policy briefs on the effects of COVID-19, released over the past several weeks, as strengthening the fundamental role of the UN as a global platform.

Board members David Malpass, president of the World Bank Group, and Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, warned of negative global economic repercussions of COVID-19, with incoming data projecting more adverse scenarios than only four weeks ago, including a high risk of increase in poverty and inequality.

Malpass reiterated the call for a debt moratorium for developing countries and underlined the importance of having a human focus during the recovery. "We need to open the economy in a way that people can rise beyond poverty."

Georgieva, while mentioning the different risks associated with the pandemic, also reflected on some opportunities such as "leapfrogging to a digital world after the crisis" and focusing on low carbon climate resilience.

Recognizing the necessity of a human-centered recovery, CEB principals rallied behind the secretary general's call to action on human rights and related policy brief on "COVID-19 and human rights" and emphasized that responses, which respect and are shaped by human rights, result in better outcomes in beating the pandemic.

CEB members considered the challenges of financing the COVID-19 response while keeping up the pace of implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals. They joined the UN secretary-general's call for bold climate action to be embedded into all aspects of economic recovery, with recovery packages delivering green jobs and driving sustainable growth.

The board also focused on data as a strategic asset to inform the post-pandemic recovery. The "Data Strategy of the Secretary-General for Action by Everyone, Everywhere: With Insight, Impact and Integrity" was introduced as an overarching reference for data-driven leadership.

Furthermore, the principals endorsed a system-wide roadmap for innovating UN data and statistics, an ambitious collective effort by the UN system's chief statisticians to innovate UN data and statistical outputs in support of member states and the international community.

Echoing the UN secretary-general's call for building back better by choosing policies, investments and actions that protect nature and are carbon neutral, CEB members saw the need for a stronger focus on nature across the whole UN system and decided to develop a common approach to integrating biodiversity and nature-based solutions for sustainable development into the UN's policy and program planning and delivery.

The board considered it to be the UN system's collective responsibility to ensure recognition of 2020 as a "Super Year" for nature in which the international community heeded the dramatic warnings -- from the harrowing impact of the COVID-19 pandemic to the devastation caused by wildfires across the globe -- and seized the opportunity to act decisively to reset humanity's relationship with nature and to set the world on track to a more sustainable future.
The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study that says nearly a quarter of a billion people will be infected. Authors of the research, published Friday in the journal BMJ Global Health, predicted a lower infection rate than in other parts of the world like Europe and the US, with fewer severe cases and deaths. But while they said many African nations had been swift to adopt containment measures, they warned that health systems could still quickly become overwhelmed. "Our model points to the scale of the problem for health systems if containment measures fail," said the authors. The study comes amid stark warnings that COVID-19 threatens a health emergency in developing nations where fragile health systems are already struggling with an array of other chronic diseases. Experts at the World Health Organization's Africa office modelled likely rates of exposure to the virus and infection in the 47 countries under its regional remit, which excludes Djibouti, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Somalia, Sudan and Tunisia. Some 231 million people, or 22 percent (with a range of 16 to 26 percent) of the one billion people in the region were expected to be infected in the 12 month period -- most of them showing few or no symptoms. But an estimated 4.6 million people would need to be admitted to hospital, while 140,000 would have severe COVID-19 infection and 89,000 would be critically ill. That would lead to some 150,000 deaths (between 83,000 and 190,000) the study suggested. The modelling estimates what would happen for each country over the period of a year from the beginning of widespread and sustained community transmission. - Smaller countries threatened - Researchers warned that surging hospital admissions for COVID-19 would divert already limited resources to tackle major health issues in the region, such as HIV, tuberculosis, malaria and malnutrition, worsening the impact of coronavirus. "The region will have fewer deaths, but occurring more in relatively younger age groups, amongst people previously considered healthy ?- due to undiagnosed non-communicable diseases," the report said, adding that these trends were already emerging. The researchers said they expect the virus would likely circulate within the region for longer than other countries, possibly for several years. Transmission was estimated to be greatest in small nations, with Mauritius found to have the highest risk of exposure. Of the region's large countries, South Africa, Cameroon and Algeria were also in the top ten for exposure risk. The authors calculated this risk by looking at each country's "gathering factor" (including family size and population density), people's likely ease of movement, sanitation and hygiene practices. They also included weather. It is not known if warmer temperatures slow down the spread of COVID-19, though some research has suggested it has that effect on other coronaviruses. Researchers factored in each country's measures to control the spread of the virus, including physical distancing. They also looked at health risk factors -- proportion of the population over 65, HIV prevalence (as a proxy for chronic communicable conditions) and diabetes (as a proxy for non-communicable chronic illness). The report assumed that some 88 percent of people would not know they had the virus, with either mild symptoms or none at all, while four percent would suffer severe or life-threatening illness. They called for countries to rapidly boost healthcare capacity, particularly in primary hospitals. This month the United Nations said the number of deaths from AIDS-related illnesses in sub-Saharan Africa could double if the provision of healthcare to HIV sufferers is disrupted during the coronavirus crisis. People queue while waiting their turn to be tested for COVID-19 by Kenya?s Ministry of Health in the Kawangware slums of Nairobi An elderly man, a resident of the sprawling township of Alexandra in Johannesburg, is tested for COVID-19 The new coronavirus could kill 150,000 people in Africa in a year unless urgent action is taken, according to a WHO modelling study Members of the medical staff at the Mohammmed V military hospital, wear a protective masks and caps as they wait for patients, in the Moroccan capital Rabat
Dublin, May 14, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The "Prevalence of Opioid Use Disorder in 23 Major Markets 2019-2029" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.



Opioid use disorder is defined as a problematic pattern of opioid use leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, typically manifested by one of the following within a 12-month period, taking larger amounts of opioids or taking opioids over a longer period than was intended. As a result of the increased death toll largely in western parts of the world because of opioid misuse of prescription drugs such as fentanyl, heroin continues to be crisis which affects public health as well as social and economic welfare.



This report provides the current incidence for Bell's palsy across 23 Major Markets (USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, Ireland, Brazil, Turkey, Mexico, Denmark, Argentina, Australia, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, The Netherlands, Poland, Russia, India, Switzerland, Austria) split by gender and 5-year age cohort. Along with the current prevalence, the report also contains a disease overview of the risk factors, disease diagnosis and prognosis along with specific variations by geography and ethnicity.



Providing a value-added level of insight from the analysis team, several of the main symptoms and co-morbidities of opioid use disorder have been quantified and presented alongside the overall prevalence figures. These sub-populations within the main disease are also included at a country level across the 10-year forecast snapshot.



Main symptoms and co-morbidities for the disease include:

Drowsiness

Inability to control opioid use

Uncontrollable cravings

Changes in sleep habits

Weight loss

Frequent flu-like symptoms

Lack of hygiene

Isolation from family and friends

New financial difficulties

Change in volume of tears/saliva that the individual may produce

This report is built using data and information sourced from the proprietary Epiomic patient segmentation database. To generate accurate patient population estimates, the Epiomic database utilises a combination of several world class sources that deliver the most up to date information form patient registries, clinical trials and epidemiology studies. All the sources used to generate the data and analysis have been identified in the report.



Key report benefits:



Story continues

Quantify patient populations in global opioid use market to target the development of future products, pricing strategies and launch plans.

Gain further insight into the incidence of the subdivided types of opioid use and identify patient segments with high potential.

Delivery of more accurate information for clinical trials in study sizing and realistic patient recruitment for various countries.

Provide a level of understanding on the impact from specific co-morbid conditions associated with opioid use

Identify sub-populations within opioid use which require treatment.

Gain an understanding of the specific markets that have the largest number of opioid use patients

Key Topics Covered

Cause Of The Disease

Risk Factors & Prevention

Diagnosis Of The Disease

Variation By Geography/Ethnicity

Disease Prognosis & Clinical Course

Key Comorbid Conditions/Features Associated With The Disease

Methodology For Quantification Of Patient Numbers

Additional Data Available On Request

Top-Line Prevalence For Opioid Use Disorder

Features Of Substance Abuse In Patients

Opioid Use, Heroin Use And Prescription Use

Co-Morbidities Associated With Opioid Use Disorder

Abbreviations Used In The Report

Other Services & Solutions

Reports & Publications

Online Epidemiology Databases

Online Pharmaceutical Pricing Database

References

Appendix

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/3js3m3

About ResearchAndMarkets.com

ResearchAndMarkets.com is the world's leading source for international market research reports and market data. We provide you with the latest data on international and regional markets, key industries, the top companies, new products and the latest trends.

Research and Markets also offers Custom Research services providing focused, comprehensive and tailored research.

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India's third Covid wave likely to peak on Jan 23, daily cases to stay below 4 lakh: IIT Kanpur scientist

India registers 3,967 cases, 100 deaths in 24 hours; tally nears 82,000-mark

India

oi-Deepika S

New Delhi, May 15: India has registered over 3,900 cases and 100 deaths in 24 hours taking the coronavirus case tally past the 80,000-mark on Friday morning. The death toll, meanwhile, climbed to 2,649.

According to the health ministry, there are 51,401 active cases in the country, while 27,919 patients have been cured and discharged. So far, 2,649 patients have succumbed to the infection, while one migrated.

The highest number of confirmed cases in the country are from Maharashtra at 27,524, followed by Tamil Nadu at 9,674, Gujarat at 9,591, Delhi at 8,470 Rajasthan at 4,534, Madhya Pradesh at 4,426 and Uttar Pradesh at 3,902.

The number of Covid-19 cases has gone up to 2,377 in West Bengal, 2,205 in Andhra Pradesh and 1,935 in Punjab. It has risen to 1,414 in Telangana, 994 in Bihar, 987 in Karnataka, 983 in Jammu and Kashmir and 818 in Haryana.

On Thursday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Thursday unveiled the second economic package to help alleviate the distress for small farmers, migrant workers, small traders and self-employed people under the "Atmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant)" campaign announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Coronavirus outbreak: Odisha, Bihar facing new challenges as migrants carry virus along

The Central Government, has also started work to prepare for resumption of commercial domestic flights, something that may happen in a staggered manner over the next one month, senior government and industry officials said.

Globally, over 4.4 million people have been infected with the novel coronavirus, while the number of deaths have crossed 3 lakh. The World Health Organisation has warned that the new coronavirus may never go away.
Forecasting a growing need for flexible, digital services, in light of so much telework and uncertainty about in-person interactions, CivicPlus has launched a new software suite to help state and local governments stand up those services on the fly.The Kansas-based integrated communications software company announced its latest product, CivicOptimize, earlier this month. According to a news release , the centerpiece of CivicOptimize is a piece of low-code software called Productivity, with which government IT staff who have only a basic familiarity with hand-coding can build custom workflows, mobile applications and software integrations for digital services.Jonathan Wiersma, the companys vice president of marketing and strategy, toldthat Productivity is the companys first use of low-code development and the only tool in the CivicOptimize suite so far, with more to come. He said for governments looking to either create new online portals or augment what they have, Productivity is a faster and more flexible option than the companys more bespoke software, with more potential use cases.CivicPlus website lists a dozen: license applications and renewals, custom reservation or check-out processes, public service sign-ups, inspections and audits, collection of submissions, payments, bids, purchasing management, incident reporting, pet adoptions, inventory management and community outreach activity tracking.Its not necessarily just to stand up services online but maybe, if theres two services online that I have to consume in a single interaction  like getting a permit and an inspection  then you can stand up a citizen-facing application quickly that bridges that process end to end, Wiersma said.As Wiersma tells it, low-code software development is the key. An explanation of low-code development on CivicPlus website promises faster time-to-market without the need to hire a programmer  in effect, giving non-technical staff a visual interface to create applications using drag-and-drop, basic data and logic.Low-code is a must-have now, because its a changing world where I need to stand up a system quickly, or change a system quickly. All the articles we saw around trying to hire a COBOL developer, and then redevelop something in COBOL  thats not quick, Wiersma said. But also, potentially, the environment is changing rapidly. What if we reopen and then we close again, and reopen and close again, and I have to keep tweaking the systems for the different environments that Im in? Thats a tough lift, if I have to keep changing back and forth, and Im trying to code all those changes.In a public statement, CivicPlus CEO Brian Rempe reiterated that Productivity is a tool for cities who havent fully made the transition to digital services, but need to do so in order to reopen during a pandemic.We understand that municipalities need to reopen for business and do it fast with a digital, ready-to-use solution that they can deploy online today, he said. So, thats what were offering.Wiersma said many of CivicPlus future announcements will feature low-code tools that will be API-first, able to integrate with anything they need to, ready to be configured out-of-the-box by the client or with help from CivicPlus. He said the next phase of updates will focus on making it easier to integrate with off-the-shelf tools, and offering customers a library of pre-built apps to choose from.
To the editor:

COVID-19 has caused eight deaths in the Midland area in the last two months. Per the Midland Daily News, we have one to seven deaths (obituaries) in the Midland area every day. I think this governor is killing our economy just to look good in the Detroit area. She took a 10% salary cut while the small businesses and the working folks took a 100% cut. Yes, the government is helping but that is what the typical Democrat wants. They want to provide you with just enough money to control you but not enough to achieve the American Dream. Im sure small businesses and the unemployed are hurting even with the government handouts. I would like to see the small businesses get together and defy this governor by opening up their businesses. We still have a Constitution and Bill of Rights. I would hope there is a lawyer out there that would fight for you. If we dont get open, socialism will take over America and we will not have the freedom that we enjoy today.
(Corrects May 15 story to remove reference to Charan Singh being the chairman of SelectQuote in paragraph 9)

May 15 (Reuters) - SelectQuote Inc said on Friday it was looking to raise about $342 million in an initial public offering that could value the owner of the insurance policy comparison website at more than $3 billion.

The company will offer about 18 million shares at between $17 and $19 per share, with selling stockholders offering another 7 million shares, taking the overall amount expected to be raised to about $475 million.

Overland Park, Kansas-based SelectQuote allows consumers to compare insurance policies for life, auto and home insurance from providers including American International Group, Prudential Financial Inc and Liberty Mutual.

While using websites to compare and buy insurance products is commonplace around the world, the U.S. insurance industry has been slower to embrace technology as means of bypassing traditional insurance brokers.

SelectQuote's IPO filing comes as the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to lower rates for many insurance lines, giving policyholders the opportunity to switch insurers at their next renewal.

For the year 2019, SelectQuote's net income more than doubled to $72.6 million from a year earlier. In the same period, its revenue jumped 44% to $337.5 million. (https://bit.ly/360XxwZ)

Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, Evercore ISI and RBC Capital Markets were among the lead underwriters for the offering.

Entities Associated with Brookside Equity Partners owned around 22% of the company before the offering, SelectQuote said in a filing.

SelectQuote was founded in 1985 by Charan Singh. Tim Danker has been chief executive officer of SelectQuote since 2017, according to the company's website. (Reporting by Abhishek Manikandan in Bengaluru; Editing by Shinjini Ganguli)
Before their reported split, Mary-Kate Olsen and her husband of five years, Olivier Sarkozy, were already having marital problems.

The main issue was their different attitudes towards work.

According to People Magazine, an insider claimed that the French banker wanted his wife to be always available for him.

"She's super career-focused, and he's very French and wanted her to be more available. You can't control a girl who has been on the billionaire track since her 20s," the insider said.

It has gotten so much worse for the couple that Mary-Kate Olsen tried to file for divorce from her husband back in April 17, but because of the coronavirus pandemic, they did not proceed, as TMZ reported. They were already living separately then.

Because of the COVID-19, New York courts were not accepting divorce filings. This is understandable since they have other things to worry about, such as the 21,000 deaths in the state because of the virus.

Olivier stayed on their NYC apartment, and have given Mary-Kate an ultimatum to get her stuff by May 18 or everything will be thrown away.

This caused the fashion designer to file a petition for an emergency Summons and Complaint for divorce, giving her things some protection until May 30.

A divorce petition automatically prevents her from throwing her things out.

Unfortunately, the billionaire fashionista's petition was denied and her divorce was deemed "unessential," in an affidavit copy obtained by People Magazine.

According to the legal document, the application is "an emergency" because Mary-Kate claims Olivier is expecting her to move out of their home on May 18, in the middle of the New York City "being on pause."

"I am petrified that my husband is trying to deprive me of my home that we have lived in and if he is successful, I will not only lose my hope but I risk losing my personal property as well."

Mary-Kate Olsen added that she is not only worried for her own things, but for all also the marital belongings that are in their Gramercy Apartment.

She further claims that the 55-year-old is trying to force her out of their home by not renewing their lease on the apartment, which was also "terminated" with the famous twin's consent.

Though Olivier Sarkozy's lawyers told Mary-Kate to leave by May 18, she asked them for an extension, but have reportedly not heard back from them.

Mary-Kate Olsen thinks that it's not possible for her to move all her belongings given the short period of time given, additionally, since everybody is in the middle of the pandemic.

She said it's also impossible for her to find a new apartment because of the short notice.

However, the 33-year-old has asked to use their home in the Hamptons, the Gramercy Apartment and the apartment on E. 49th street.

Mary-Kate Olsen has also asked that her prenuptial agreement be enforced, and that her future ex-husband will maintain her health and dental insurance for her.

The legal document further states that their marriage has been broken down six months ago.

READ MORE: Mary-Kate Olsen Net Worth: Billions Secure Through 'Ironclad Prenup' After Filing Divorce [DETAILS]
Paul Chuckle arriving at the British Academy Children's Awards at The Roundhouse in London. (Photo by Yui Mok/PA Images via Getty Images)

Paul Chuckle has shaved off his iconic moustache for the first time in nearly 50 years to help raise money for Marie Curie amid the coronavirus crisis.

The star, who grew his facial hair alongside his late brother and comedy partner Barry Chuckle, live-streamed himself giving himself the shave in front of a bathroom mirror.

The 72-year-old told of how he'd had the moustache for 49 years and it had been a long time since he'd had to shave his upper lip.

Read more: Kate Garraway FaceTimes husband in hospital for NHS clap

Upon seeing his reflection after shearing off his trademark, Paul laughed at how white it was underneath due to lack of sun exposure.

Before and after ... #OhDearOhDear My moustache in aid of @mariecurieuk Text NURSE 70544 5 + Standard Network Rate  pic.twitter.com/J1W0QGyxDs  Paul Chuckle (@PaulChuckle2) May 15, 2020

Urging his followers to donate to Marie Curie, he said: "They are doing a great job and keeping pressure off the NHS."

Paul himself told followers back in March that he had been "laid-up" after suffering symptoms of the coronavirus, but has since recovered.

Matching moustaches were an iconic part of the Chuckle Brothers' look on ChuckleVision, which ran for 22 years between 1987 and 2009.

Paul's elder brother Barry sadly died in 2018 at the age of 73 after being diagnosed with bone cancer.

Paul Chuckle and Barry Chuckle of The Chuckle Brothers pose during a photo shoot on November 12, 2009 in Scarborough, England. *** Local Caption ***

The pair's older brother Jimmy Patton, who also appeared in ChuckleVision, passed away almost a year later in 2019.

Paul recently opened up about Barry's death during his stint on BBC show The Real Marigold Hotel.

Read more: Ray Winstone stranded in Italy

He told the camera: "Barry and I were partners for 55 years. He died in 2018. I really miss him. we were very close. I only found out six or seven weeks before he died that hed got cancer at all.

"A few days before he did die, he did say, 'You will carry on, wont you?' I said, Well, Ill try my best, mate'."
Coronavirus cases in India and lockdown 4 latest updates: Part of Sena Bhawan in Delhi was shut on Friday after and Indian Army solder tested COVID-19 positive. An official said that the affected are of Sena Bhawan was closed for sanitation and disinfection. He added the "actions as per protocol such as contact tracing and quarantine are in progress." Sena Bhawan is the headquarters of the Indian Army.

India's total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped to 81,970 on Friday, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry. The tally includes, 51,401 active cases, and 2,649 deaths. Maharashtra tops the list with 27,524 confirmed cases, along with 1,019 deaths. Friday (May 15) is the last day for states to send their suggestions regarding lockdown extension post May 17 to Centre. Meanwhile, the global death toll, has soared past the 3.01 lakh mark while over 4.4 million people have been infected with the deadly virus, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States (US) has confirmed that the Trump leadership has asked for the withdrawal of billions of dollars in American pension fund investments in China as both the countries' relations have deteriorated in the wake of COVID-19 outbreak.

Also Read: Nirmala Sitharaman Press Conference at 4 PM Live Updates: Tranche III of economic package to be announced soon

Also Read: Coronavirus: COVID-19 cases near 80,000; check state-wise tally, deaths

Follow BusinessToday.In for all the latest updates on coronavirus in India and around the world:-

8.11 pm: Tamil Nadu liquor latest updates

Supreme Court has stayed the Madras High Court order which directed closure of stae-owned liquor shops in Tamil Nadu. With this, Tamil Nadu government has issued an order regarding reopening of government-run TASMAC alcohol shops from Saturday.

7.18 pm: J&K COVID-19 latest updates

Jammu and Kashmir reported 30 new coronavirus cases today. These include 9 new cases from Jammu division and 21 from Kashmir division. Total number of cases in Jammu and Kashmir is now 1,013, including 489 active cases, 513 recoveries and 11 deaths.

30 new #COVID19 positive cases reported in Jammu and Kashmir - 9 from Jammu division and 21 from Kashmir division. Total number of cases in the Union Territory is now at 1013, including 489 active cases, 513 recovered & 11 deaths: J&K Government pic.twitter.com/VIdIIdN5HK ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020 6.46 pm: Tamil Nadu coronavirus updates Tamil Nadu CM Edappadi Palaniswami interacts with industrialists via video conferencing. Chennai: Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Edappadi K. Palaniswami holds meeting with industrialists, through video conferencing. #CoronavirusLockdown pic.twitter.com/yVrwwDgSDr ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020 6.40 pm: 315 pilgrims from Ladakh will be repatriated from Iran by Mahan Air flight to Delhi tomorrow. "We intend to bring them from Delhi to Leh. So, kindly arrange flights for airlifting them from Delhi to Leh on May 17," Ladakh Divisional Commissioner stated in a letter to Air India. 315 pilgrims hailing from Ladakh are being repatriated from Iran by Mahan Air flight to Delhi tomorrow;we intend to bring them from Delhi to Leh. So, kindly arrange flights for airlifting them from Delhi to Leh on 17 May: Divisional Commissioner, Ladakh in letter to Air India pic.twitter.com/YruVP1rL4u ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020 6.31 pm: Maharashtra coronavirus news CM Uddhav Thackeray visited a coronavirus care facility in Goregaon. This facility has been prepared by Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation. Maharashtra: CM Uddhav Thackeray today visited a Corona Care Center in Goregaon; this care centre with 1000 beds has been established by BMC (Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation). pic.twitter.com/ijsM1McBle ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

3.58 pm: Karnataka coronavirus latest news

State government announces third economic stimulus package worth around Rs 512 crore, giving relief to maize farmers and incentivising ASHA workers, who are fighting the COVID-19 pandemic from the front.

3.49 pm: Coronavirus cases in armed forces: 11 new cases in BSF in 24 hours

Border Security Force (BSF) recorded 11 fresh COVID-19 cases in the last 24 hours. Since Thursday, 13 (Tripura-10, Delhi -03) personnel have been discharged from hospital after testing negative for coronavirus, BSF said. (ANI reports)

3.38 pm: Coronavirus cases in Delhi: Part of Sena Bhawan sealed after soldier tests positive at Army headquarters

Part of Sena Bhawan was shut on Friday after and Indian Army solder tested COVID-19 positive. An official said that the affected are of Sena Bhawan was closed for sanitation and disinfection. He added the "actions as per protocol such as contact tracing and quarantine are in progress." Sena Bhawan is the headquarters of the Indian Army.

3.28 pm: Coronavirus live updates: Mobile phones can be potential carriers of COVID-19 in healthcare institutions

A group of doctors from AIIMS, Raipur have suggested restrictions on mobile phones in healthcare institutions as they can be potential carriers coronavirus infection. Doctors have said that the mobile phone surfaces are a peculiar "high-risk" surface, that can come in direct contact with a person's face or mouth.

3.17 pm: Delhi lockdown latest update

FIR lodged at Shahdara police station against a landlord demanding rent from a tenant under section 188 of the Indian Penal Code.

3.08 pm: Coronavirus in India latest updates

President Ram Nath Kovind has decided to forego 30% of his salary for a year. He had also contributed his one month's salary to the PM-CARES Fund in March. (ANI reports)

2.59 pm: Rajasthan coronavirus cases: 55 more tested COVID-19 positive

Rajasthan's total count of COVID-19 cases jumped to 4,589 on Friday with 55 more people testing positive for the virus on Friday, said the state health department adding that the active cases and death toll in Rajasthan now stands at 1,818 and 125.

Number of #COVID19 cases has reached 4589 in Rajasthan, with 55 more people testing positive today. Number of active cases & death toll stands at 1818 & 125, respectively: Rajasthan Health Department pic.twitter.com/kmRzyOTXuQ - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

2.49 pm: Delhi coronavirus cases

Delhi recorded 472 fresh COVID-19 cases and 9 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total count of confirmed coronavirus cases in the Union Territory to 8,470 along with 115 deaths, according to Union Health Ministry. Delhi is the fourth worst-hit UT after Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu and Gujarat (states) in India with the highest number of COVID-19 cases.

2.39 pm: Coronavirus live updates: New cases in CISF

14 fresh COVID-19 cases have been detected in the CISF in the last 24 hours taking the total number of coronavirus positive cases in the force to 119.

2.29 pm: Punjab liquor shops: Alcohol stores open in Amritsar

Punjab government has ordered the liquor shops to remain open between 7 am to 6 pm amid coronavirus lockdown.

Punjab: Shops open in Amritsar. State govt has ordered that the shops in the state will remain open between 7 AM to 6 PM. #CoronaLockdown pic.twitter.com/qaMqvzUUFW - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

2.18 pm: Coronavirus cases in Odisha

61 fresh cases reported in the state on Thursday. Odisha's tally now stands at 672, including 158 cured and discharged, and 3 deaths, the state health department said. (Inputs from ANI)

2.08 pm: Maharashtra coronavirus latest updates: Over 1,000 police personnel COVID-19 positive

1,061 personnel of Maharashtra Police comprising 112 officers have been tested COVID-19 positive so far, said Maharashtra Police adding that out of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while 9 died.

1061 personnel of Maharashtra Police including 112 police officers have been tested positive for #COVID19 so far. Out of the total infected police personnel, 174 have been cured while 9 others lost their lives: Maharashtra Police pic.twitter.com/HgNkrDBpeZ - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.59 pm: Liquor shops in Nagpur

Long queues seen outside alcohol stores in Nagpur rural, Maharashtra after they were allowed to open on Friday. District collector Ravindra Thakre has allowed liquor shops to open in rural and municipal council areas of the district.

Maharashtra: Long queues seen outside liquor shops in Nagpur rural after such shops opened here today. District collector Ravindra Thakre has permitted liquor shops to open in rural and municipal council areas of the district. #CoronaLockdown pic.twitter.com/28H7ZaadV9 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.52 pm: Himachal Pradesh coronavirus update

A 33-year-old man in Una has been tested COVID-19 positive. The man arrived from Maharashtra and was under institutional quarantine. He is sent to Haroli COVID-19 hospital, Dr. Raman Kumar CMO Una District, Himachal Pradesh told ANI.

1.43 pm: Karnataka coronavirus cases

45 fresh COVID-19 cases reported in the state from Thursday, 5 pm to 12 pm on Friday. The total count of coronavirus positive cases in Karnataka stands at 1,032 now, said the state health department. (ANI reports)

1.33 pm: Liquor shops in Tamil Nadu

Supreme Court on Friday said that liquor shops can reopen in Tamil Nadu. The apex court stayed the Madras High Court order on shutting of state-run alcohol stores on account of flouting of the COVID-19 guidelines.

1.24 pm: Gujarat lockdown extension update

Shops selling essential commodities like vegetables & grocery reopened in Ahmedabad on Friday after a week.

Gujarat: Shops selling essential commodities like vegetables & grocery reopened in Ahmedabad today after a week. #CoronavirusLockdown pic.twitter.com/Q3tP4N4zTl - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.17 pm: Punjab coronavirus cases

Punjab reported 7 fresh COVID-19 cases on Friday taking the total count to 1,942, said the state health department.

The total number of COVID19 positive cases in Punjab rise to 1942 with 7 new positive cases reported today: Punjab Health Department pic.twitter.com/TCmkivNA21 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

1.09 pm: Andhra Pradesh coronavirus cases

Andhra Pradesh recorded 57 fresh cases on Friday. The total number of COVID-19 positive cases in the state stand at 2,157 now, said the state government. (ANI inputs)

12.59 PM: Delhi lockdown extension news: Kejriwal govt sends proposal to Centre

Delhi government in its proposal on lockdown 4.0 sent to the central government has suggested movement of buses and metro to resume but in limited capacity. The government has proposed that 25% or 50% malls can be opened.

The government has suggested odd-even for shops.

The government wants shops to open in malls.

Transport opening under social distancing.

Limited capacity in metro, cabs, buses.

DTC buses should ply with 25% capacity.

Malls, restaurants, gyms should not be opened.

12.49 pm: Coronavirus live updates

INS Jalashwa to commence its journey to from Male in Maldives to Kochi in Kerala on Friday as a part of operation 'Samudra Setu'.

12.39 pm: Haryana Roadways bus services resumed today

Haryana government started bus services on selected routes in the state. Buses will ply within in the confines of Haryana.

Haryana roadways bus service resumed today after the state govt decided to start special bus services on selected routes. The buses will ply only within the state. Visuals from Ambala. #CoronaLockdown pic.twitter.com/EQtO2anFE6 - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

12.29 pm: Containment zones in Pune

Pune recorded 194 fresh COVID-19 cases on Thursday, taking the total number of coronavirus cases in the city to over 3,000, with death toll past 180. Some relaxations have been given in the non-containment zones in the city, such as furniture, laundry, vehicle repair, footwear and other shops. Some areas such as Kasewadi, Lohiyanagar, Sainathnagar on Satara Road, Tadiwala Road, Nagpur chawl, Laxminagar in Yerawada, Kamgar Putala and Patil Estate are some of the hotspots in Pune.

12.19 pm: Maharashtra lockdown extension in hotspots: Containment zones in Mumbai

The Maharashtra government has decided to extend the lockdown in hotspot areas such as Mumbai, Pune, Aurangabad, among others until May 31. Areas such as Thane in Navi Mumbai, Mira Bhayander in Kalyan-Dombivali, Ulhasnagar, and Bhiwandi-Nizampur come under the containment zones in Mumbai which recorded nearly 1,000 new coronavirus cases in the last 24 hours. Mumbai, Pune, Thane account for over 23,000 cases or 85% of the confirmed COVID-19 cases in Maharashtra.

12.10 pm: Coronavirus world updates: Global economy may lose $8.8 trillion due to COVID-19 crisis

The Asian Development Bank(ADB) said on Friday that the global economy could suffer $5.8-8.8 trillion in losses due to COVID-19 pandemic. (PTI)

12.04 pm: Tamil Nadu coronavirus cases: 2nd worst-hit state with cases nearing 10,000

Tamil Nadu has become second state with highest number of coronavirus cases after Maharashtra. The state's tally climbed to 9,674 on Friday, with death toll at 66. The state reported 447 new cases in the last 24 hours. While, with 324 new cases in the last 24 hours, Gujarat's COVID-19 tally rose to 9,591 on Friday with death toll at 586. Gujarat is the third worst-hit state following Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with a total of 9674 cases, while Gujarat's tally now stands at 9,591, as per the Union Health Ministry.

11.57 am: Breaking: Earthquake in Delhi

Low-intensity earthquake of 2.2 magnitude hits Pitampura in Delhi, says National Centre for Seismology. (PTI)

Also Read: BREAKING: Another earthquake hits Delhi; check out the details

11.55 am: Uttarakhand coronavirus updates

Watch: Badrinath Temple opened its doors at 4:30 am on Friday. 28 people including the chief priest was present at the temple when its entrance was opened.

#WATCH Uttarakhand: The portals of Badrinath Temple opened at 4:30 am today. 28 people including the Chief Priest was present at the temple when its portals opened. (Video Source: ITBP) pic.twitter.com/Yr6pamv7Kk - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.47 am: Coronavirus latest updates: Union Group of Ministers meet underway in Delhi

Union Group of Ministers (GoM) are currently meeting to discuss and deliberate on COVID-19 crisis. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat also present at the meet.

Delhi: Union Group of Ministers (GoM) meeting on #COVID19, underway at the Health Ministry. Chief of Defence Staff (CDS) General Bipin Rawat also present. pic.twitter.com/LiCJ7QuKcT - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.39 am: Delhi lockdown latest updates

Migrant workers line up outside a COVID-19 screening centre in Gole Market area. Delhi Cantt SDM Piyush Rohankar informs, "After screening, a medical certificate is provided to the workers. The certificate is necessary to board the 'Shramik Special' trains".

Delhi: Migrant workers queue up outside a #COVID19 screening centre in Gole Market area. Delhi Cantt SDM Piyush Rohankar says, "After screening, a medical certificate is provided to the workers. The certificate is necessary to board the 'Shramik Special' trains". pic.twitter.com/92nFYnrxxj - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.29 am: Coronavirus live updates: $1 billion social protection package for India

The World Bank and India will partner with the Centre in 3 areas- health, social protection, and the MSMEs, informed Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director for India.

India's social protection is pivoted towards migrants, unorganised workers, portability & creating an integration of system. It piggybacks on an existing infrastructure of Public distribution system, Jan Dhan, Aadhar & mobile: Junaid Ahmad, World Bank Country Director for India pic.twitter.com/OsnkfvQNAW - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

11.24 am:Coronavirus India cases update: Check BusinessToday.In tracker to get state-wise tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths

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 graph.

11.16 am: Coronavirus cases in India live updates: State-wise tally and death toll; check here

Maharashtra is the worst-hit state in India with 27,524 COVID-19 cases and 1,019 deaths

Gujarat follows suit with 9,591cases and 586 deaths

Tamil Nadu is the third worst-hit state with 9,674 cases, and 66 deaths

Delhi is the fourth worst-hit state with 8,470 cases and 115 deaths.

Madhya Pradesh with 4,426 cases, 237 deaths

Rajasthan 4,534 cases, 125 deaths

Uttar Pradesh (UP)-3,902 cases, 88 deaths

Andhra Pradesh-2,205 cases, 48 deaths

Telangana 1,414 cases, 34 deaths

West Bengal-2,377 cases, 215 deaths

Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)- 983 cases, 11 deaths

Karnataka- 987 cases, 35 deaths

Kerala- 560 cases, 4 deaths

Bihar-994 cases, 7 deaths

Punjab-1,935 cases, 32 deaths

Haryana-818 cases, 11 deaths

11.06 am: Coronavirus global updates: World Bank to give India $1 billion

The World Bank has announced $1 billion social protection package for India in the view of COVID-19 pandemic. The package will spent on the Centre's social schemes essentialy towards the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) to help the poor, migrant workers, farmers under the government's Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana.

10.57 am: Uttar Pradesh lockdown: Special trains for migrant workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar on May 16

The Uttar Pradesh administration said on Friday that special trains will be run for migrant workers in Gautam Buddh Nagar district from Dadri and Dankaur stations from May 16.

As per the instructions of the state govt, special trains will be run for migrant labourers in Gautam Buddh Nagar district. The trains will be run from Dadri railway station & Dankaur Railway station. 4 trains will ply for the migrant labourers on 16th May: DM, Gauatm Buddh Nagar pic.twitter.com/Hg3pcaChVK - ANI UP (@ANINewsUP) May 15, 2020

10.47 am: Coronavirus India live updates: Bill Gates thanks PM Modi after video meet

Philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates took to Twitter on Friday to thank Prime Minister Narendra Modi for their conversation and partnership to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. Lauding PM Modi's leadership in tackling the coronavirus crisis in India, Bill Gates said the country's role is "key as the world works to minimize social and economic impact".

Had an extensive interaction with @BillGates. We discussed issues ranging from India's efforts to fight Coronavirus, work of the @gatesfoundation in battling COVID-19, role of technology, innovation and producing a vaccine to cure the pandemic. https://t.co/UlxEq72i3L - Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) May 14, 2020

10.38 am: Chhattisgarh corona lockdown: Migrant labourers from Maharashtra leave in auto rickshaws for their home states

Auto drivers from Maharashtra are headed towards their home states amid coronavirus induced lockdown. An auto driver told ANI, "I'm without work for last 2.5 months. It's difficult to sustain without money. So, I'm returning to Ranchi, Jharkhand with my family."

Chhattisgarh:Auto drivers from Maharashtra who left the state due lack of work amid lockdown are heading towards their states. An auto driver says,"I'm without work for last 2.5 months. It's difficult to sustain without money. So, I'm returning to Ranchi,Jharkhand with my family" pic.twitter.com/hMUhsGaoUp - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

10.31 am: Coronavirus lockdown updates: Special train from Delhi arrives in Kerala

First special train to Kerala from Delhi reached Thiruvananthapuram railway station carrying 602 passengers on Friday morning. The passengers were screened after they reached the railway station.

First special train to Kerala from Delhi reached Thiruvananthapuram Railway Station with 602 passengers, today. The passengers were screened after they reached the railway station. #COVID19 pic.twitter.com/dpt62f4zNO - ANI (@ANI) May 15, 2020

10.26 am: Maharashtra coronavirus latest news: Lockdown extended in Mumbai, Pune, other hotspots until May 31, says report

The Maharashtra government has taken the decision to extend the lockdown in Mumbai, Pune, and other COVID-19 hotspots until May 31, according a report in Mumbai Mirror. The state government is yet to formally announce the decision but will implement the central government's guidelines that will be unveiled in the next 2 days in other areas. The decision to extend the lockdown in these hotspots was taken during a meeting on Thursday attended by Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray, and Deputy CM Ajit Pawar, and other state cabinet ministers, the report claims.

Also Read: Coronavirus: Maharashtra to continue lockdown in Mumbai, Pune till May 31

10.16 am: Delhi lockdown extension news: Economic activities to be permitted from Monday basis Centre's decision

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal has said that several economic activities will be allowed in the Union Territory from May 18 (Monday) as per the decision taken by the central government on lockdown relaxation. In a virtual press briefing on Thursday, CM Kejriwal said that many people suggested that schools, colleges, salons, spa, barber shops, cinema halls, and swimming pools should not be opened post May 17. He added that Delhiites in their ideas sent to him suggested that there should be limited operation of metro services, adding that buses, taxis and autorickshaws should be permitted to operate in Delhi but with social distancing.

10.09: Rs 20 lakh crore economic package: Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to address media today

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman will address media for the third time on Friday to unveil the central government's Rs 20 lakh crore special economic stimulus package. She is likely to announce measures for the hospitality sector. F

9.58 am: Tamil Nadu corona cases

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with 9,674 cases. Thte death toll in the state is at 66. Tamil Nadu reported 447 new cases in the last 24 hours.

9.49: Gujarat coronavirus cases

With 324 new cases in the last 24 hours, Gujarat's COVID-19 tally rose to 9,591 on Friday with death toll at 586. Gujarat is the third worst-hit state following Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu.

9.44 am: Dharavi coronavirus cases

Mumbai's Dharavi, which is Asia's largest slum, recorded 33 fresh cases and 2 deaths on Thursday. With this the total count of COVID-19 cases in the area now stands at 1,061, according to Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

9.39 am: Coronavirus cases in Mumbai

Mumbai which is the worst-hit city not only in Maharashtra, but all over India reported around 1,000 new cases and 25 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total number of virus cases to 16,579 in the city, said the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai. The death toll in the city stands at 621.

9.34 am: Maharashtra coronavirus cases near 28,000

Maharashtra recorded 1,602 fresh COVID-19 cases, and 44 deaths in the last 24 hours, taking the total count of confirmed cases in the state to 27,524 and 1,019 deaths. This is by far the highest count of new cases reported in the state. Earlier, the biggest one-day jump stood at 1,495 recorded on Wednesday.

9.29 am: Gujarat, Tamil Nadu coronavirus cases near 10,000-mark

Tamil Nadu has tipped Gujarat to become the second worst-hit state in India with a total of 9674 cases, while Gujarat's tally now stands at 9,591, as per the Union Health Ministry.

9.24 am: India coronavirus recoveries over 34%

India's recovery rate has improved to over 34%. The total number of those recovered in the country now stands at 27,919.

9.17 am: Coroanvirus deaths in India

The country recorded 100 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the total count of toll to 2,649.

9.10 am: Coronavirus cases and deaths in 24 hours

India recorded 3,967 new COVID-19 cases, and 100 deaths in the last 24 hours taking the total count to 81,970 on Friday, as per the latest data by the Union Health Ministry.

9.04 am: India coroanvirus cases cross 80,000-mark

India's total number of confirmed COVID-19 cases jumped to 81,970 on Friday, according to latest update by the Union Health Ministry. The tally includes, 51,401 active cases, and 2,649 deaths. Maharashtra tops the list with 27,524 confirmed cases, along with 1,019 deaths.

8.57 am: FM Nirmala Sitharaman third media briefing on Rs 20 lakh crore economic stimulus likely today

Finance Nirmala Sitharaman is expected to hold a third media briefing on Friday to announce more measures as a part of Rs 20 lakh crore special economic stimulus announced by PM Modi earlier this week. She has already unveiled measures for MSMEs, real estate, individuals, agriculture, discoms, among other vulnerable segments of the economy.

8.49 am: Coronavirus latest: SC to hear PIL over opening Indian airports to receive Indian migrant returnees who are Kuwait amnesty beneficiaries

Supreme Court on Friday will hear a Public Interest Litigation filed to give directions to the central government for opening the Indian airports to receive the Indian migrant returnees who are the Kuwait amnesty beneficiaries detained in the Amnesty Facilitation Centres of Kuwait. From April 16 on wards thousands of Indian Migrants are held up in the Kuwait amnesty facilitation temporary camps for repatriation enduring many difficulties. Kuwait's government had offered free air passage for the amnesty beneficiaries. Advocate Subash Chandran filed the PIL for Thomas Mathew Kadavil, a Migrant Social Activist from Kuwait. Senior Advocate PV Surendranath along with advocates Subhash Chandran KR & Deepak Prakash will be appearing for the Petitioners.

8.45 am: Coronavirus Delhi latest news: No salaries for NDMC doctors for last 3 months; DMC writes to PM Modi

Delhi Medical Association has written to PM Modi, Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Union Health Minister Dr. Harsh Vardhan, Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, and concerned authorities over the issue of non-payment of salaries of doctors of North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) for the last 3 months. Even their arrears have not been paid.

8.37 am: Coronavirus global updates: US threatens to cut off whole relationship with China

US President Donald Trump has on Thursday threatened to cut off all relations with China in the wake coronavirus outbreak which has claimed over 3 lakh lives globally. "There are many things we could do. We could cut off the whole relationship," Trump said in an interview. He added that although he has a good relationship with Chinese President Xi Jinping, he doesn't want to speak with him right now. He further said that he is very disappointed with China. He stated in the interview that the US has repeatedly asked China to allow the international community to go to a Wuhan lab to probe the origin of coronavirus but to no avail. Trump has claimed the virus originated from Wuhan Institute of virology in Wuhan where the COVID-19 outbreak was first detected in December, 2019. According to Johns Hopkins University, over 4.4 million people have been infected with COVID-19 and around 3.01 lakh have died from the deadly infection.

Also Read: Coronavirus effect: Donald Trump threatens to cut off all ties with China

8.30 am: Coronavirus India cases live updates: Check BusinessToday.In tracker to get state-wise tally of COVID-19 cases and deaths

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 graph.
An exterior view shows the New York-New York Hotel & Casino and the resort's roller coaster in Las Vegas, Nev., on July 8, 2016. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)

How Bad Is It?

Commentary

How bad is it?

That is the question on everyones mind as we come to grips with the economic carnage caused by global economic shutdowns, supply chain disruptions, and ongoing quarantines of million of people. Do we face another Great Depression, or simply a deep recession more like 2008? And equally important, are soft Americans prepared for either? Have we started to process all of this psychologically? Have we really come to terms with the enormity of the situation, with the unprecedented risk posed by business shutdowns? Are Americans so accustomed to a certain material standard of living that they do not understand how fragile it is?

Here is what we know.

Since February, 30 to 40 million of Americans have been thrown out of work. Four or 5 million file new unemployment claims each week. The real unemployment rate is probably more than 20 percent, while the labor force participation rate drops like a stone. In states like Hawaii, unemployment may approach 35 percent. Deutsche Bank economists predict an absolutely staggering 40 percent reduction in U.S. GDP for the second quarter of 2020.

Meanwhile, millions of American households and businesses simply stopped paying rent or mortgages on March 1, and bankruptcies spread across major American retailers like wildfire. Countless small local businesses, many left out of the running for the new Small Business Administration (SBA) loans recently created by Congress, simply will not reopen regardless of what happens over the next few months.

So although we have a sense of how deep the economic damage runs, we can only guess how long it may last.

Will the virus remain a threat, real or perceived, for months or years? And if so, how long will state governments maintain at least partial business lockdowns? Will the U.S. economy enjoy a vaunted V-shaped bounce-back recovery, as promised by Trump administration cheerleader Larry Kudlow? Will it look more like a U, with months or years of stagnation at the bottom? Or worse still, like an L with no rebound in sight?

Looking back at the 2008 crisis provides a sober argument against a quick recovery later this year.

Consider this analogy:

Most roller coasters feature what is known as a lift hill, a chain-driven steep ascent at the beginning which takes nervous riders to the top of of a sharp drop-off. Going over this first hill not only creates the most thrilling moments, but also generates energy to propel the coaster cars farther along the path of the ride. How much farther and faster the ride goes depends on the height of the hill and the mass of the coaster train. Bigger and higher make for a more precipitous fall. Absent some kind of additional mechanical intervention, the coaster never again reaches the height of the initial hill due to simple friction. Congress and the Fed are busy attempting to overcome this friction using government stimulus and central bank liquidity. But per our analogy, the coasters potential energy is highest during the pregnant pause at the peak of the lift hill; its kinetic energy is highest at the bottom of the first drop. No subsequent hill, twist, or turn quite matches the feeling of that first free fall. Recall, from those terrible days of 2008, how a crash gathers speed. At first a few cars on the coaster crest the hill, well before the rest of the train plummets. In mid-September of that year, Lehman Brothers was the first car in the coaster to go over the hill into the abyss. It took a few weeks, until Sept. 29, for investors to fully grasp what was happening and send the Dow plummeting in the largest single-day loss in history. But the Dow did not reach its ultimate low until March 2009. Nine million lost jobs were not recovered until well into the next decade. And U.S. housing prices didnt bottom out until 2012. Crashes are fast, like that first hill on a coaster. Recoveries are not, for the simple reason that production is more difficult than destruction. Although the Great Recession of 2008 lasted eighteen months in official terms, its effects lasted far longer and are still felt today. Its scars remain particularly visible on two bookend generations, millennials and baby boomers. In stark terms, many of the former failed to launch and many of the latter found comfortable retirement out of their grasp. Millions of millennials sought more education and degrees (with resulting debt) to ride out the soft job market; millions of older workers simply gave up and limped along until they were eligible for Social Security. Now both face another crisis just a decade later. How bad will the Great Crash of 2020 be? Even more unsettling is the question of whether it represents a self-inflicted wound, caused by state-mandated business shutdowns which increasingly appear wildly disproportionate to the actual threat posed by the coronavirus. Economist Daniel Lacalle and I will attempt to answer both during a live webinar later this week, particularly in the context of what governments and central banks have done in recent months. The first step in addressing a crisis is understanding how severe it really is.

Jeff Deist is president of the Mises Institute. He previously worked as chief of staff to Congressman Ron Paul, and as an attorney for private equity clients.

This article was originally published on Mises.org.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
Last month, President Trump threatened to cut U.S. funding for polio and every other WHO program over the U.N. agencys coronavirus response, which he called China-centric. In the weeks since, the president and his aides have worked behind the scenes to sideline the WHO. They have also sought to deflect criticism of the United States handling of the crisis by pointing to the WHOs failure to demand more transparency and accountability from China in the earliest stages of the outbreak.
A hospital has secured interim High Court orders allowing it not to resuscitate a brain injured woman, aged in her fifties, with a litany of conditions and a very poor prognosis.

David Leahy BL said it was a grave application for orders permitting clinicians not to ventilate or resuscitate the woman should she suffer cardiac arrest as they considered that would further deteriorate her already very compromised position, was not in her best interests and would not alter her prognosis.

The hospitals treatment plan involved what was likely to be end of life care with ward-based management, conventional oxygen therapy and no ICU admission or CPR, he outlined.

The womans family had expressed opposition to that plan and had argued she should be resuscitated if required, but there was a more recent indication their position may alter and they had sought more information on the hospitals proposals, he said.

The hospitals application was being made in the clinical best interests of the woman and was not based on any consideration of scarce ICU resources, counsel stressed.

On foot of medical reports the woman lacks capacity to make decisions on her treatment, the hospital wanted orders directing an inquiry into whether she should be made a ward of court, he said.

Pending the inquiry, it wanted the interim orders allowing it treat the woman in accordance with what her clinicians considered in her best interests.

Mr Justice Mark Heslin said today he was satisfied the evidence in this "very difficult" case was sufficient to trigger the court's wardship jurisdiction and it was in the best interests of the woman to make the interim orders.

He directed an independent medical doctor to assess the womans capacity and returned the matter to next week. He was told the womans family would participate in next weeks hearing.

In his ruling, the judge noted the doctors considered resuscitation or ventilation would be futile given the woman's condition and prognosis and had potential to worsen that prognosis and cause irretrievable deterioration to her quality of life and unnecessary suffering which was "impossible to justify".

Earlier, outlining the background, Mr Leahy said the woman has severe neurological damage as a result of acquired brain injury, extensive care needs and very compromised capacity. She suffers from a range of conditions, is tube fed, non ambulant, sleeps some 22 hours daily and is doubly incontinent.

She was admitted to hospital from a nursing care unit last March after experiencing respiratory arrest and was ventilated. She was again admitted to hospital earlier this month for surgical reasons and remains there.

Her treating clinician, and an intensive care medicine consultant, were both of the view the woman lacks the necessary capacity to understand and decide on her treatment. Both agreed her prognosis is very poor and that CPR or ventilation should not be administered in the event of cardiac arrest or further respiratory failures.

The hospital wanted to have the necessary legal framework to treat the woman in line with the clinical view as to what is in her best interests and wardship would provide that framework, counsel said.
The federal government says it decided to go ahead with the feeding of school children captured in its Home Grown School Feeding Programme, NHGSFP, despite schools being shut down because of the hardship vulnerable school children were facing at home.The explanation was given by the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs, Disaster Management and Social Development, Sadiya Umar-Farouq at the official launch of the modified scheme in Abuja, held at Kuje Central Primary School on Thursday.

The Gombe State Government says it has lifted the ban on religious activities earlier imposed to check the spread COVID-19 in the State.On April 22, the state government had announced a dusk to dawn curfew across the State.

The Kano state government has opened a females only isolation centre for women suspected for coronavirus, following agitations against existing centres.

According to Governor Abdullahi Ganduje, while inspecting the Daula Females Isolation Centre in Nasarawa Local Government Area on Thursday, everything needed to make the centre work was in place.

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The Department of State Services (DSS) has been ordered to pay N10 million to Anthony Okolie, the man arrested for using the previous phone line of President Muhammadu Buharis daughter. The DSS had arrested Okolie, in July 2019 in Asaba, and when he was released, he sued the DSS, MTN and Hanan Buhari, demanding compensation of N500 million for the violation of his rights, having been in detention for 10 weeks.

Governor of Plateau State, Simon Lalong has issued a warning to escapees from isolation centres in the state to either stay in isolation or risk being prosecuted.

This warning came after reports that at least five inmates of the NYSC Camp isolation centre in Mangu local government area of the state deserted the camp during the week and melted into the community.

Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State, has ordered the sack of a government driver for the mishandling a COVID-19 case and evacuating the victim without following safety protocol.

Also, some top officials of the state Ministry of Health are to be queried on the order of the governor for failing to act with necessary caution in the management of the incident recorded in a video footage which went viral.

Oyo state governor, Seyi Makinde has taken to his official Twitter handle to mourn the demise of his commissioner for environment, Kehinde Ayoola who died after a brief illness.Describing the deceased, Makinde said he has lost a good friend and colleague.

The Nigeria Governors Forum (NGF) has asked the national assembly to suspend the infectious disease bill.

This bill has triggered mixed reactions in the last few days from different quarters of the country.

Former lawmaker, Senator Shehu Sani has reacted to the recent killings by bandits in Kajuru Local government area of Kaduna State.

Recall that on Wednesday, it was reported that bandits killed eight people in a fresh attack in Gonan Rogo, Kufana District, Kajuru Local Government area of Kaduna State.

Nigerias former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar has attacked the government of President Muhammadu Buhari for not slashing the budget by at least 25 percent, saying that Nigeria cannot afford luxuries during this period of austerity.

Abubakar, in a statement said it was to his consternation that despite the crash in the price of oil, and the inability of Nigeria to expand her revenue base through the non-oil sector, the Federal Government of Nigeria had only seen fit to slash the budget by a mere 0.6%, from 10.594 trillion to  10.523 trillion.

Jideofor Adibe, professor of political science says Ibrahim Gambari, chief of staff to President Muhammadu Buhari, will not be able to solve the problem of a cabal in government.

Speaking on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme on Wednesday, Adibe also a columnist says it is normal for such small cliques to exist in any organisation no matter how Democratic it is.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has said that it is possible that the new coronavirus (COVID-19) may never go away.

This was made known by Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization health emergencies program.

Nigerians Are More Interested In Tribe Of New Public Office Holders Than Their Qualifications: Keyamo

The minister of state for labour, Festus Keyamo has lamented that whenever a new public appointment is made, most Nigerians are more interested in the ethnic group of the appointee than his qualification. He made this known via a tweet he sent out on his official Twitter handle on Wednesday.
WASHINGTON - President Donald Trump announced Thursday a plan to reconfigure the government's chronically undersupplied stockpile of emergency gear to help combat the coronavirus pandemic, accelerating manufacturing and broadening the array of supplies it houses.

The president said his administration is launching what he termed a "groundbreaking initiative" to "replenish and modernize" the government's stores of masks, ventilators and other essential pandemic-fighting medical equipment to create a 90-day reserve.

In keeping with his "America First" slogan, Trump and his aides said the manufacturing would be carried out by U.S. companies, diminishing the reliance on foreign factories that have been the stockpile's major sources.

Speaking in Allentown, Pennsylvania, at an Owens & Minor distribution center for medical supplies, the president said "the cupboards were bare" in the federal Strategic National Stockpile when the novel coronavirus arrived in the United States.

"I am determined that America will be fully prepared for any of the future outbreaks, of which we hope there's going to be none," Trump said, standing in front of stacked cardboard boxes, each with a drawing of a medical gown. "Our effort begins by dramatically increasing our reserves."

Neither the president nor senior administration officials who briefed reporters before his remarks addressed the effort's cost. They did not say whether building up the supplies would affect the administration's method for allotting the materials, which has been relatively opaque. And they did not say whether the plan would alter Trump's stance that the stockpile should be a resource of last resort and that states and hospitals should buy whatever protective gear they can on their own.

The adequacy of the federal Strategic National Stockpile and the way supplies have been distributed emerged as a sore point in the Trump administration's response to the escalation of covid-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. The disease has killed more than 85,000 people in the United States.

Long before the coronavirus arrived, the stockpile had been underfunded. In early April, Department of Homeland Security officials acknowledged that stores of emergency gear they'd had in the stockpile were nearly depleted.

Since the pandemic reached the United States, the stockpile's scant supplies have been distributed unevenly, prompting complaints from governors. Trump has bristled at those frustrations. At one point, he said he had told Vice President Mike Pence not to call governors who were dissatisfied. Another day, Trump said, "You know, we're not a shipping clerk."

The stockpile was managed since it was created in the late 1990s by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but responsibility shifted in 2018 to the assistant secretary for preparedness and response at the Department of Health and Human Services. In recent years, the emphasis of officials who oversaw it was on preparations for a terrorist threat, not for a pandemic respiratory virus.

Once Trump declared the coronavirus outbreak a national emergency in March, responsibility for the stockpile shifted again, to the Federal Emergency Management Administration.

During his half-hour speech, Trump blamed the Obama administration for the stockpile's condition, saying his predecessors had "depleted and never fully refilled" it. While that was the case, a pandemic simulation organized by HHS last summer - 2 1/2 years into the current administration - found the government unprepared, in part because of "scarce medical countermeasures such as personal protective equipment."

This year, the White House rebuffed efforts by HHS to secure more money for masks and other emergency supplies.

One senior administration official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the announcement before the president's remarks, said the net effect was that, as the virus reached the United States, the stockpile held one to three weeks' supplies of essential protective equipment, including N95 masks and gowns.

Another administration official said calculations have now been made of how much of each type of equipment is needed to maintain a supply of one, two or three months.

"We will be working to put that on the shelves in a manner so the stockpile is not a singular purchase," the official said. Instead, U.S. manufacturers will keep "production lines warm," the official said, so that they would not have to start from scratch if surges are needed in the event cases of covid-19 spike later.

Another official said that when the pandemic arrived in the United States, the stockpile carried only 28% of the emergency supplies that fighting it requires. It did not carry medicine or testing supplies, the official said, adding that the goal now is to stock "a much broader and deeper set of supplies."

When the coronavirus arrived, the stockpile contained 13 million N95 masks, and the goal now is to have 300 million by the fall and eventually 1 billion. The administration also will seek to increase the supply of gowns from 2 million to 7 million, and to store "millions of milliliters of crucial drugs," an official said.

"Hope we're not going to need it, but it's there," said Trump, who reiterated his eagerness for the country to reopen. "Never again will another president inherit empty shelves or expired products."
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After announcing the release of Amitabh Bachchan and Ayushmann Khurrana-starrer Gulabo Sitabo on June 12, Amazon Prime is now offering more direct-to-digital releases on its platform.

Over the next three months, Amazon Prime will offer exclusive films from Bollywood to south content.

Shakuntala Devi starring Vidya Balan will release on the platform. The release date is yet to be announced. The film is based on the life of mathematician Shakuntala Devi who was also known as the human computer. The film is directed by Anu Menon and produced by Sony Pictures Networks Productions and Vikram Malhotra.

Tamil offering Ponmagal Vandhal starring Jyothika, which had first sparked the controversy regarding direct OTT releases, will now premiere first on Amazon Prime on May 29.

There are a slew of new regional releases that Prime Video is offering on its platform. This includes Keerthy Suresh-starrer Tamil-Telugu venture Penguin will stream from June 19, Kannada film Law from June 26 and French Biryani, another Kannada film, from July 24.

The release date for Malayalam movie Sufiyum Sujatayum, which will also premiere on Prime Video, is yet to be announced.

According to Gaurav Gandhi, Director and Country General Manager - Amazon Prime Video India, it will give a large global release footprint to the newly-announced films that have skipped the theatrical release.

The platform has deep penetration in India, with viewership across over 4,000 towns and cities. Its worldwide reach is in more than 200 countries and territories.

The release of films like Gulabo Sitabo or and Nawazuddin Siddiqui-starrer Ghoomketu on Zee5 has led to a debate on whether or not producers should look at releasing films directly on OTT. This will impact the exhibition industry, already hit hard due to the coronavirus outbreak and halt on film shooting due to the lockdown.

On May 14, multiplex operator Inox issued a statement against the direct-to-digital release announcements, saying that the deviation of production houses from the globally-prevalent content windowing practice was alarming and disconcerting.

As the backbone of the cinematic value chain, this windowing pattern has done wonders in terms of revenues for the content creators and all the other stakeholders, as it offers them the opportunity to extract the best from all available mediums, which includes cinemas, OTT platforms as well as satellite, INOX said in a statement.

While exhibitors have been expressing their disappointment regarding decisions on direct-to-digital releases, trade experts are of the opinion that such a move will not impact the theatre business whenever they resume operations.

Film and trade business analyst Girish Johar has urging all industry players not to call it a war as these are desperate times.

In the long run, OTTs can never be the sole major revenue pie. Cinemas will never be out of fashion. Cinemas bore the brunt during VCR, DVD and satellite days. Now. it is OTT. But, cinema has always come out winner, Johar tweeted.
The Ghana Coalition of NGOs in Health (GCNH) on Thursday called on the Metropolitan, Municipal and District Assemblies (MMDAs) to scale up precautionary measures and strengthen surveillance to stem community spread of the Corona Virus Disease (COVID-19).



The GCNH has observed that community-based infection of the COVID-19 is beginning to show a threat than we imagined, and entreated traditional and religious bodies to support public education and advocacy to fight local transmission.



In an interview with the Ghana News Agency (GNA) in Sunyani, Dr. Gabriel Gbiel Benarkuu, the National Chairman of the Coalition noted the populace still did not understand the use of nose masks and social and physical distancing as a remedy to fight the COVID-19.



Because of this many Ghanaians are still not adhering to the protocols, despite continuous surging of COVID-19 figures, he said and urged the MMDAs to intensify public education and make available enough masks for the masses.



Over the last two weeks the GCNH has the opportunity to visit strategic districts and market centres/lorry stations. We randomly collected data and made observations as well.



There is a huge misconception around the use of the face mask. This is dangerous for Ghana, since proper and consistent use of the nose mask has a great impact on breaking the chain of the spread of the virus, Dr. Benarkuu stated.



He underscored the need for the country to support research into local vaccine experimentation and production for the COVID-19.



Dr. Benarkuu observed with concern that sociological and psychological interventions on the COVID-19 control remained low, and required concerted efforts to contain.



He, therefore, called on the Ministry of Health to support Ghanas Public Health and Socio-Psychological systems with logistics to enable it to function properly.



Intelligence gathered from our networks suggests some religious groups are trying to put pressure on Government to open up, we do not support this at all. Even the science is failing almost governments globally.



Dr. Benarkuu indicated adaptation strategies ought to be properly rolled out to affected families, communities and regions, and appealed to the managers of the COVID 19 Trust Fund, to provide enough funds to the MMDAs.

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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Source: Xinhua| 2020-05-15 21:19:23|Editor: huaxia

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BEIJING, May 15 (Xinhua) -- China on Friday expressed firm opposition to political maneuvers of its Taiwan region as the latter hypes up intention to participate in the upcoming World Health Assembly (WHA), saying the scheme of "seeking independence under the pretext of pandemic response" is doomed to fail.

Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian made the remarks when asked to comment on media reports that Taiwan authorities are lobbying for its participation in the 73rd WHA session, saying its absence will lead to a "gap" in the global fight against the coronavirus. A few countries including the United States have requested the WHO to invite Taiwan as an observer and are pushing for discussions about the proposal.

"Taiwan's participation in the assembly must be in accordance with the one-China principle," Zhao told a routine press briefing, adding the political basis for the region to do so has ceased to exist as its authorities have stuck to separatism since taking office in 2016.

Zhao said the Chinese central government attaches great importance to the health and well-being of Taiwan compatriots, quoting notifications of COVID-19 information to the region, and the attendance to WHO technical activities by their health experts since last year.

"Taiwan has unimpeded access to information about COVID-19, so there is no such thing as a 'gap' in the global fight against the coronavirus," said the spokesperson.

He said the rejections by the WHA over the years to Taiwan-related proposals by a few countries fully demonstrate that the one-China principle represents the popular will of the international community, which "brooks no challenge."

The purpose of a few countries insisting on discussing Taiwan-related proposals is to politicize health issues and serve their own political interests at the cost of compromising global response to the pandemic, Zhao said.

"This will only result in severely disrupting the assembly's agenda and undermining the joint international response to COVID-19, and will meet resolute opposition by the majority of the international community," Zhao added. Enditem
" " The mighty Minotaur is immortalized in a statue in Guanajuato, Mexico. Craig Lovell/Corbis Documentary/Getty Images

The name "Minotaur" summons the image of a man with the head of a bull, a raging hybrid that often serves as a generic stock creature in games and films.

If this is all you know, however, then you don't truly know the Minotaur.

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To understand this creature, sometimes known as Asterion or Asterius, we must confront him where he lives: within the labyrinth of mythology, history and the human psyche.

Before we go further, let's remember the basic myth of the Minotaur, as presented in Hellenic tradition and works such as Ovid's "The Metamorphoses."

The Story of the Minotaur

Once, on the isle of Crete, a king by the name of Minos sought to secure his rule. He prayed to Poseidon for a sacrificial beast he might offer up. But when the sea god sent forth a white bull from the frothing surf, Minos found it too beautiful to sacrifice. Instead, he sacrificed mortal bulls and incurred Poseidon's wrath. The sea god bewitched Minos' wife Pasiphae to fall in love with the Cretan bull, and she soon gave birth to a monstrous hybrid: the Bull of Minos, or the Minotaur.

In A. S. Kline's translation of "The Metamorphoses," Ovid describes the Minotaur as a "strange hybrid creature." And the creature was strange  a "twin form of bull and man" that emerged out of divine wrath and unnatural love. It embodied both shame and sacredness. Minos could only hope to hide  but not kill  the terrifying creature. Thus, Minos employed the master craftsman Daedalus to construct the labyrinth: a tortuous maze that was practically impossible to leave. Here he housed the bellowing Minotaur and fed it the blood of prisoners sent to Crete as tribute by other nations.

Yet all monsters meet their slayer in the end. The Athenian hero Theseus took the place of a tribute sent to Crete, but he befriended Ariadne, the daughter of King Minos. She gave him a ball of string to unwind behind him and details on the twists and turns that would lead him to the strange beast at the labyrinth's heart. There, he slayed the Minotaur and followed the string back to the surface.

That's the gist. Myths, however, emerge from long traditions of multiple tellings. Like the labyrinth itself, the origin of any given myth becomes a twisting, tangled maze that defies easy solution. Just when we think we've emerged from its trappings, we find ourselves  in the words of Ovid  lost to the "windings of alternating paths."

But let's not stand still, lest the Minotaur find us here. Instead, let's first consider the historical significance of the myth.

The Minotaur in History

The story of the Minotaur is intrinsically tied to Crete and the Bronze Age Minoan civilization that thrived there. The early 20th-century British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans actually coined the term "Minoan civilization" as a reference to the mythical King Minos. As such, myth continues to haunt our modern thoughts of these ancient peoples.

You might assume the Greeks believed Crete to be an evil land, full of brutal kings and profane monsters, but this doesn't seem to be the whole story. According to Nicoletta Momigliano, professor of Aegean Studies at the University of Bristol and author of the forthcoming book "In Search of the Labyrinth: The Cultural Legacy of Minoan Crete," Greek attitudes toward Crete were rather ambivalent.

Momigliano emails that mythological Crete was a "strange and contradictory place," where some treatments of King Minos describe him as a wise, Moses-esque figure, and others depict him as the head of a royal household rife with murder, sacrilege and betrayal.

Of course, this latter vision of Minos lingers in modern culture. It's an example of what academic Joseph Campbell, who wrote extensively about mythology, described as "the figure of the tyrant-monster," an archetype of destructive, egoic disruption.

In reality, Momigliano writes, the exact nature of Minoan rule is much debated  and the political system likely changed over the two-millennia long Minoan Age. Scholarly interpretations include both royal rule and a gender-balanced elite class that might be compared to a council or corporation. King Minos, however, isn't the only element of myth largely missing from the discernible history of Bronze Age Crete. The labyrinth is, too.

"There is no building in Minoan Crete that can be described as a complicated maze (i.e., a complicated system of paths or hedges designed as a puzzle through which one has to find a way)," Momigliano writes. "But the ruins of Minoan palaces, especially the largest one, Knossos, can have a labyrinthine appearance."

" " A bull's head, from Knossos, is on display in Heraklion Archaeological Museum in Heraklion, Crete, Greece. Bulls were commonly found in Minoan art, Minotaurs not as much. Lucas Schifres/Getty Images News/Getty Images Europe

Sir Arthur Evans, the excavator of Knossos, equated the structure there with the labyrinth. However, much of Evans' interpretation rests on the linguistic connection between the word "labrys" (double axe) with the prevalence of this motif in the masonry  defining "labyrinth" as the "house of the double axe."

"One should note, however, that the connection between labyrinth and labrys appears to be much more tenuous than Evans suggested," Momigliano writes. "Apart from the linguistic difficulties in relating the two words pointed out by several philologists, one may also observe that, while masons' marks in the shape of a double-axe do appear most frequently at Knossos, they are not exclusive to this site, and other signs are also very common."

What about the Minotaur itself? While no one expects to find literal beast-men amid the Minoan ruins, you might reasonably expect to find images of the creature so associated with the island. Yet, while bulls appear quite frequently in Minoan art  including depictions of humans leaping over the backs of charging bulls  the Minotaur is another story.

"Interestingly and contrastingly, depictions of 'minotaur' images, i.e., of a creature that is half man and half bull, are very rare and relatively late in Minoan Crete," writes Momigliano, "and one may also wonder whether these may be stylized representations of bull leaping, since they appear on tiny seal-stones or seal impressions."

Animal-human hybrid figures factor into multiple traditional and ancient cultures  and Minoan Crete is no exception.

"But there is no prevalence of bulls in these cases," Momigliano writes. "They tend to involve other animals such as birds and goats. So, how exactly one got from Minoan bulls to later Greek representations of the Minotaur is not entirely clear."

The Minotaur in Geomythology

Some writers have proposed that accounts of the Minotaur's subterranean bellowing might have been a way for ancient peoples to explain actual seismic rumblings. This idea is an exercise in what's known as geomythology, a term coined by geologist Dorothy B. Vitaliano in 1968. It is, in essence, the study of alleged references to geological events in mythology. However, this remains an open question, and Momigliano cautions that it gets us no closer to unraveling the mystery of the Minotaur.

"While there are plenty of bulls in Minoan Crete (and earthquakes), Minotaur images are conspicuous by their almost total absence," she writes.

Labyrinth of the Mind

The Minotaur myth likely took many winding, alternating paths to reach its most popular form  and the monster has endured long beyond the empires that birthed it.

"Of course the Minotaur would have had more specific associations for the ancient Greeks (e.g., as an example of punishment for not keeping one's promises to the gods)," Momigliano writes, "But the story of the Minotaur, like many other ancient Greek narratives (and not just Greek narratives) can be and has been endlessly re-imagined to address different aspects of the human condition at different times and in different contexts."

Momigliano's forthcoming book chronicles many of these reinterpretations, ranging from the literary work of Andre Gide to the paintings of Picasso and various forms of performance art. We just can't seem to get enough of this mythic beast.

For the Minotaur is a collision of the human and the bestial  a perfect symbol of the oft-pondered dual nature of man. He is both victim and tormentor. He is the punisher and yet a punishment himself, imprisoned in what Joseph Campbell dubbed as Minos' "house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his monster."

Sigmund Freud equated the labyrinth of the Minotaur with the darkness of the unconscious mind. For Theseus, it is the monster hidden and pursued. For Minos, it is shame secreted away. And for the Minotaur himself, it is an exercise in cruel and inescapable circumstance. We can easily compare the labyrinth to not only the mind, but also to other complex systems.

Likewise, we can look to many examples of in contemporary horror as further reinteractions of the Minotaur in his labyrinth: Chainsaw-wielding Leatherface in his rural Texas death house, Pennywise the Clown in its sewers or even Jaws in its ocean. They are all terrifying entities made more terrifying by the environment they call home.

In the words of Jorge Luis Borges in "The Book of Imaginary Beings," translated by Andrew Hurley, "Indeed, the image of the Labyrinth and the image of the Minotaur seem to go together: it is fitting that at the center of a monstrous house there should live a monstrous inhabitant."

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Wales roadmap for lockdown exit to be published today with warning if it goes wrong we are back where we started

This article is old - Published: Friday, May 15th, 2020

Details will be published later today on how Wales can exit the lockdown measures put in place to help stop the spread of COIVID-19.

First Minister Mark Drakeford is expected to unveil a phased roadmap setting out how Wales will exit lockdown measures which have been in place for eight weeks,

Prime Minister Boris Johnson set out the plan for England in an address on national TV last Sunday.

It triggered confusion across the UK as at no point was it made clear the easing of measures he was announcing were just for England.

Mr Drakeford said previously that Wales will look to use a traffic light system which will make clear when certain cautious changes can be made to lockdown measures.

Interviewed on Sky News this morning, Mr Drakeford said the roadmap will, continue the conversation weve had with people in Wales, about how we can come out of lockdown.

It will suggest as a traffic light system in which we move from lockdown into the red zone, where there will be some small additional things that people will be able to do.

It will look not very different from lockdown but it will be the first cautious step.

We will track those (easing steps) really carefully to make sure that they are not resulting in coronavirus beginning spread again in Wales.

If we succeed in that well move into the amber zone, in the amber zone there will be quite a bit more than people will be able to do.

And again we have that that really carefully monitoring over time, if that is successful, well be in the green zone and in the green zone, life will begin to look quite a lot like it did before coronavirus started, but not completely because until we have a vaccine proper ways of dealing with the disease coronavirus is with us for quite a long time to come.

No timeframe will be published alongside the roadmap, Mr Drakeford said: We debated hard whether it was sensible to provide dates and time zones. In the end, like the Northern Ireland government earlier this week we decided not to do that.

Once you provide a date people get fixated with a date, rather than with a process you have to go through to make sure that it is then safe to take those measures.

The roadmap is a sequence, a phased approach, it will give people in Wales, I think a strong sense of what to expect, but not by trying to tie it to specific dates which in a way gives it a sort of slightly spurious sense of certainty. The First Minister said.

Asked what is prompting Welsh Government to take a different approach than that of the UK Government, Mr Drakeford said: We are focused on making sure that we dont end up losing all the work and all the enormous effort that people have made over the last eight weeks, by doing things that sets coronavirus off circulating in the community again.

In reference to the R number  which measures the rate the virus spreads  Mr Drakeford said, We think weve got only a very small amount of headroom, to begin the process of unlocking our economy and our society.

If we do things too fast the risk is coronavirus will be out there again and well all end up back where we started having to go into lockdown.

So, our approach is a cautious, step by step approach monitoring it all the time to make sure that as we take these measures we are confident coronavirus isnt getting back out of control.

A Welsh Government press conference will be broadcast live at 12.30pm via social media: https://twitter.com/WelshGovernment
A Blue Flag certification is a widely recognised tag granted only after a beach meets with 33 established criteria.

Visitors to Italys famous beaches could be in for a surprise this summer. Umbrellas will be spaced far apart, hand gel will be readily available and even electronic tagging and booking systems have been proposed.

These are just some of the changes resorts are considering to be able to reopen in time for the peak season, as the country slowly emerges from a strict lockdown imposed to contain the coronavirus pandemic.

Despite the challenges, Claudio Ambrogetti, who has run Taorminas Il Delfino beach for the past 15 years, remains upbeat.

This has been a difficult period for our city, but the beach establishments are ready to reopen as soon as we have the guidelines, he said.

Like many bagnini, or beach managers, along Sicilys sun-drenched shores, he is hoping health protocols and distancing rules - which still need to be signed off before shutters can be lifted - will allow trade to start in June, even if it is likely to be local.

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

For small family beach businesses, many already cramped for space, proposals including a minimum 5 metres between umbrellas, one-way tourist-flow systems, hand gel dispensers and regular sanitization of restrooms could prove costly.

Italy, one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic, began easing restrictions, but Italians are still not allowed to travel outside their regions and foreign travel has ground to a halt.

We are ready to reopen, but if tourists do not come back, if borders are not reopened, and if hotels do not fill up, the costs of running a restaurant will be unsustainable, said Salvatore Parisi, owner of Baronessa, one of Taorminas top restaurants.

Brussels is pushing to reopen borders for summer tourism, but governments are likely to have to do so at different speeds.

Italy is heavily dependent on tourism, which accounts for 13% of GDP and employs around 13% of the workforce. It has been hit hard by the pandemic, which forced borders to close, restaurants and hotels to shut and airlines to ground flights.

Italys National Tourism Agency Enit said it would take three years for the industry to recover to 2019 levels.

According to think-tank Nomisma, around 500,000 summer jobs could be at risk this year due to fallout from the virus, while 100 billion euros could be lost as holiday-makers stay away.

Italys roughly 8,000 km-long coastline, home to around 11,000 beach businesses, accounts for 37% of tourist revenue. That share is much higher in islands like Sicily and Sardegna and the less wealthy south.

To date the south has escaped the level of damage suffered by regions in the north, where the virus first struck.

In the Isole Eolie area around Sicily there have been only a handful of cases and authorities there have called for the creation of a Safe Zone to help get tourists back.

Christian Del Bono, chairman of the areas hotel association Federalberghi, said town mayors had sent a letter to Rome to ask to set up tests and health protocols to screen flows.

Noones thinking of making money, our aim at this stage is simply not to go bankrupt, he said.

The rich northern region of Emilia Romagna earns some 13 billion euros from its closely-packed Riviera beaches near Rimini, around 70% of its tourist revenue. Beach owners there are fretting over their livelihoods.

This business is all about shaking hands and hugging people. Now well have to make do with a little wave and a smile of the eyes over a mask, Danilo Piraccini told Reuters.

He has been running the Bagno Milano beach in Milano Marittima with his sister Silvana for years.

Piraccini is hoping to start by June. With foreign tourists virtually out of the picture and distancing rules set to eat into business, he expects some 60% less fare than last year.

Prices may have to rise but costs will go up too since hell need more people to sanitize outbuildings, steward the beach and stop small children getting too close. Insurance costs could also rise if COVID-related risks are to be properly covered.

But anyway we have to open even if it means losing money. We have no choice. The alternative is we lose clients, he said.

Tourism, like other industries, is looking for help.

The Italian government last month approved an emergency scheme to offer over 400 billion euros worth of liquidity and bank loans to firms hit by the coronavirus crisis.

On Wednesday Rome approved a further decree scrapping some tax payments scheduled for June.

But the beach business has traditionally been based on debt and cash flows, and some are concerned delays in processing state-backed loans from banks could create a shortfall.

To manage flows, bagnini are being urged to consider solutions including booking systems and apps to assign time slots and electronic bracelets to count and control beachgoers.

To improve protection, one company has even offered to build plexiglass booths for beach owners to create safe spaces.

Well be coming up with a few innovative measures of our own but the plexiglass idea is out, said Piraccini. You may not get coronavirus, but youll get everything else from sunburn to exhaustion.
Kemira Signs Extension of Bleaching Chemicals Supply Contract with UPM for Pulp Mills in Uruguay The new agreement will include capacity to support the existing pulp mill in Fray Bentos and UPM's new 2.1 million ton per year pulp mill currently under construction in Paso de los Toros. May 15, 2020 - Kemira has signed a long-term agreement with UPM-Kymmene Corporation extending and expanding its current bleaching chemicals supply contract in Uruguay, pending required environmental permitting. The new agreement will include capacity to support the existing pulp mill in Fray Bentos and UPM's new 2.1 million ton per year pulp mill currently under construction in Paso de los Toros. The total Kemira investment is expected to be approximately USD 30 million into the bleaching chemicals plants, part of the chemical island at the UPM Fray Bentos site, expanding capacity for both sodium chlorate and hydrogen peroxide production. "The extension of the contract and investment in this partnership in Uruguay demonstrates our long-term commitment in this very important market," said Kim Poulsen, President, Pulp & Paper at Kemira. "A key element of our Kemira strategy is to grow in pulp and bleaching applications where we have deep rooted global expertise. We help our customers produce stronger, brighter and cleaner pulp". Kemira's chemical island, which became operational in 2007, was the first of its kind at the time. It has consistently demonstrated excellent operational and environmental performance which will be maintained with the additional investment into new, state-of-the-art technology. Kemira is a global chemicals company serving customers in water intensive industries, with a focus on pulp & paper, oil & gas and water treatment. To learn more about Kemira, please visit www.kemira.com . SOURCE: Kemira
NEW YORK, May 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Below are experts from the ProfNet network who are available to discuss timely issues in your coverage area.

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EXPERT ALERTS

Businesses Struggle During Pandemic, Yet Illegal Poaching Thrives

5 Tips to Lighten Your Emotional Load During the Pandemic and Recovery

Employee Assistance Programs and Mental Health

Aviation Litigation

How and Why the COVID-19 Pandemic Affects Higher Education

COVID-19 Meat Supply Crisis and Pivoting Sustainable Meat Distribution

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Businesses Struggle During Pandemic, Yet Illegal Poaching Thrives

Dr. Nicole Benjamin-Fink

Founder

Conservation Beyond Borders

"For many, it's been a time of hardship and pain. Businesses are awaiting an uncertain fate. And yet, the business of killing endangered animals continues to be very lucrative; valued upwards of 20 billion USD annually, it is one of the five most profitable global crimes."

Dr. Nicole is the founder and director of Conservation Beyond Borders. Her goals are twofold: (1) Shape conservation strategies and tactics, and (2) Establish a network of colleges in order to transcend regional conservation effectiveness beyond political borders. Nicole's research focuses on the global poaching crisis, wildlife crime, and the link between the illegal wildlife trade and human trafficking. Nicole applied Bayesian Theory and Game Theory to create mathematical models that predict ecological uncertainty. Her models are used to understand the trade-offs between wildlife needs and stakeholders' objectives in order to optimize wildlife decision-making in complex, real-world contexts when there are limited data and resources. Her publications focus on maximizing informed decision-making concerning endangered species, and the human-wildlife conflict. Visit www.conservationbeyondborders.org.

Website: www.conservationbeyondborders.org

Contact: Michelle Tennant Nicholson, [email protected]

5 Tips to Lighten Your Emotional Load During the Pandemic and Recovery

Robert DeLaurentis

"Peace Pilot," author, Navy Gulf War veteran, founder

Citizen of the World for the World

"1) Build yourself a sanctuary. Whether during quarantine or as you navigate both the new opportunities and uncertainties that come next, you need a quiet, clean, peaceful, and drama-free environment where you can check in with yourself, get grounded, and come back to a baseline of inner calm. Find a room or a nook where you can create this for yourself  a place where you can find silence and be open to what the Universe has for you. Don't overthink it. Instead, focus on removing distractions and easing your resistance to being open. 2) Rally the right team. How many of your friends do you feel really support you and your life goals? I used to have a large group of friends, but many of them seemed to suck my energy dry and leave me depleted, while other simply seemed neutral or indifferent. I left many of these relationships behind to make room for the new people that I would attract that were in better alignment with me and more uplifting. 3) Let go of self-judgment. We all have that voice in our head that makes negative comments and tells us what we "should" do. Give yourself a break. You need all the support you can get, and that includes being your own cheerleader at every opportunity. It's called "self-love" and may be the most important thing any of us learn on the planet as souls having a human experience. 4) Find a mentor. It's difficult to see your own situation when you are down in the trenches. You need someone who has faced similar challenges and can guide you over or around them, depending on the situation. This person will have perspective that you don't. Find the best person you can get. It might cost you some money, but it will be well worth it and will pay off many times over. 5) Embrace a new world. Take action and embrace the new life that citizens of the world are currently presented. It's the Universe's way of shaking things up and giving us new opportunities to grow. To do this, we must sometimes push past our own (or others') considerable resistance."

"Peace Pilot" Robert DeLaurentis is an aviation circumnavigator, author, speaker, pilot, real estate entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Navy Gulf War veteran. He is the founder of the "Citizen of the World for the World" global peace movement to connect humanity through the wonder of flight and the power of courageous action. His latest books include "Peace Pilot: To the Ends of the Earth and Beyond" (coming 2021) and the children's book "The Little Plane that Could." Learn more at Learn more at www.PoleToPoleFlight.com.

Online Press Kit: www.robertdelaurentis.onlinepresskit247.com

Website: www.PoleToPoleFlight.com

Contact: Jennifer Thomas, [email protected]

Employee Assistance Programs and Mental Health

Greg DeLapp

CEO

Employee Assistance Professionals Organization (EAPA)

"Today more than ever, employee assistance programs are the cornerstones of business continuity, particularly as workforces adjust to the "new normal." A programmatic approach to managing stress and improving resilience  and delivered via on-demand telehealth platforms, which is critical as employees shelter in place - should be key components in any business plan - as important to a company's bottom line and its day-to-day operations as its technology."

DeLapp is available to talk about employee assistance programs, mental health, behavioral health, wellness, and work-life balance  particularly as these issues relate to COVID-19.

Website: www.eapassn.org

www.eapa.org

Media contact: Charles Epstein, [email protected]

Aviation litigation

Robert A. Clifford

Founder and Senior Partner

Clifford Law Offices

"Aviation accident claims can involve complex laws and regulations that may make it more difficult for victims to receive compensation. The Montreal Convention, for example, introduced a two-tier liability system that is helpful for accident victims. After the passing of the Convention in 1999, aviation accident victims involved in international flights no longer must prove willful neglect of the air carrier to obtain compensation. Instead, carriers are strictly liable for damages up to $100,000. The goal of the rule was to reduce the timeline of litigation for victims."

Robert A. Clifford is the Lead Counsel in the U.S. federal district court litigation involving the crash of Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302's Boeing 737 Max8 jet on March 10, 2019, in Ethiopia. He is currently representing more than 67 people worldwide in regard to this incident. Clifford has represented those injured or killed in every major commercial airline crash in the U.S. in the last three decades. He is the Founder and Partner at Clifford Law Offices, an award-winning personal injury law firm in Chicago, Illinois and his firm was named Aviation Law Firm of the Year in 2020 by ALM and The National Trial Lawyers. His firm has represented victims of aircraft disasters around the world. His firm has a distinguished reputation for managing complex litigation arising from commercial and private air disasters. He was featured in the March 2020 issue of Chicago Magazine, "The Man Who's Taking on Boeing?"

Website: www.cliffordlaw.com

Media contact: Rachel Baker, [email protected]

How and why the COVID-19 pandemic affects higher education

Raafat Zaini

Research Scientist of Social Science & Policy Studies

Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI)

"Colleges and universities across the country face the threat of closing for good, or end up merging with another institution to stay afloat. Common reasons why institutions are forced into these positions include internal organizational and economic issues, like their inability to keep up with rapid growth, poor management by decision-makers, and friction between faculty and administration while institutional decisions are made. COVID-19 is exacerbating these issues, including prohibiting colleges from growing adequately, providing support to the faculty, staff, and administration, and rising debt due to the commitments in capital investments for facility construction projects. While there's no quick fix to these problems, there are positive ways colleges can massage their internal structure and economics and minimize the risk of closure or a merger, such as slowing down growth, including lowering the amount of students accepted; encouraging a more equal exchange of ideas between faculty and administration during decision-making; and increasing tolerance for organizational dissent among faculty and administration when it comes to impactful institutional decisions. Keeping pace with these tough economic times and providing support to a campus community can help increase an institution's chances for a strong future."

Zaini can speak to how and why the COVID-19 pandemic affects higher education, particularly: colleges' growth; the pressure behind making unilateral administrative decisions and the friction between faculty and administration about how to run an institution; the struggle to support faculty, staff, and administration; and the rising debt due to the commitments in capital investments for facility construction projects.

Zaini has been published in Management Communication Quarterly, Organizational Dissent Dynamics in Universities: Simulations With a System Dynamics Model, and Organizational Dissent Dynamics: A Conceptual Framework. Zaini is a member of the System Dynamics Society and the Academy of Management.

Website: www.wpi.edu

Media contact: Jessica Messier, [email protected]

COVID-19 meat supply crisis and pivoting sustainable meat distribution

Ariane Daguin

CEO and Founder

D'Artagnan

www.dartagnan.com

Kellyn Curtis, [email protected]

"Times like these show our interconnectedness  without restaurants, purveyors like us need to reinvent ourselves to survive. Without purveyors, farmers and processors cannot survive. Without farmers, nobody can survive. That's why as an industry, we need to come together and support each other and protect the supply chain  by doing so, I believe we'll come back even stronger than before."

Ariane can speak to the possible the impact and implications of temporary meat processing plants shutdowns on commodity meat, as well as what she's seeing from her side as a smaller purveyor that is committed to free-range, natural production and sustainable, humane farming practices. For 35 years, Ariane has worked closely with a network of independent farmers, ranchers and processing facilities to ensure food raised right is brought to American tables. In recent weeks, Ariane has pivoted her business model from restaurant sales  which prior to the pandemic accounted for 75% of business  to address the 500% spike in demand from retail and e-commerce. Some ways she's been adapting: - Leveraging restaurant delivery infrastructure and trucks to provide a free local delivery service to the Northeast - Introducing a range of new, home cook-friendly products and cuts to the e-commerce platform - Established a relief fund in partnership with Farm Aid to help small farmers in need - Donated 44,000 pounds of meat to support hunger relief efforts in New Jersey

She is a recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Specialty Food Association and Bon Appetit magazine. She has been named by NJBIZ as Best 50 Women in Business, one of the "Most Creative People in Business of 2014" by Fast Company, "Who's Who of Food and Beverage in America," by The James Beard Foundation. She has been a board member of the French-American Chamber of Commerce and a City Harvest Food Board Member of the James Beard Awards Committee. She is fluent in French.

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Plateau State Government has discharged six more COVID-19 patients from the Jos University Teaching Hospital (JUTH).

The State Commissioner for Health, Nimkong Lar, disclosed this during the update on Combat of COVID-19 briefing at the Government House in Jos on Friday.

He said the patients had clinically improved and tested negative to the disease after their samples were taken for tests.

He said it was part of the new criteria given by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), for the discharge of COVID-19 patients.

The six patients bring to 10 the number of COVID-19 cases so far discharged in the state.

The first index case in the state was discharged on May 7, another three on May 13, while six were discharged today, he explained.

He said 11 confirmed cases were receiving treatment at JUTH, saying they were in stable condition and responding to treatment.

Mr Lar explained that there was a mix up in the number of fresh confirmed cases in Plateau as released by the NCDC on Friday.

Only one case is fresh, the other four were repeat tests of the patients receiving treatment at JUTH, he said.

He said the total number of confirmed cases in the state was 21 and not 25, and that 255 suspected cases of COVID-19 were quarantined at its centres across the state.

In his remarks, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Danladi Atu, said the state government had arrested persons using fake passes during its monitoring exercise on compliance with COVID-19 governments directives.

He said the exercise was to checkmate indiscriminate movement of persons not on essential services and enforce compliance with interstate movements restrictions.

The SSG said commercial motorcyclists were being arrested for conveying travellers using illegal routes into the state.

He said no fewer than 1,000 persons were stranded at the Plateau/Bauchi border because of the governments ban on interstate movement.

He said notwithstanding relaxation of the total lockdown in the state from midnight Thursday to midnight Sunday, governments strict regulations on religious and social gathering still persisted.

According to him, defaulters will be arrested.

Also speaking, the Commissioner for Information, Dan Manjang, urged Plateau residents to adhere to the federal governments curfew of 8pm to 6am, saying the directive was still in place in the state even with relaxed lockdown.

(NAN)
Activists and locals in Kinnaur have asked the ministry of environment, forest and climate change (MoEFCC) to not extend environment clearance to the integrated Kashang Hydro Project.

Around 1,000 environmental activists from across the world and local residents have written to the ministry raising concern over the ecological damage the will be caused due to the project.

They alleged that on April 30 this year, a portion of a mountain near the project caved in destroying apple orchards and killing one Nepali migrant worker in Pangi village.

This area in the high Himalayas, falling in the Satluj Valley, is known for its geological and ecological vulnerability, and is also the site of Stage 1 of the 243 MW-Integrated Kashang Hydropower Project, which is already operational, said a Sushil Sagar Negi, a local and president of Paryavaran Sanrakshan Sangharsh Smiti.

Stage II, III and IV of the project will come up on the same mountain, which will spell doom for our lives, livelihoods and biodiversity, he said.

The MoEFCC had granted an Environment Clearance to the four-stage project back in April 2010 with the condition of 10-year validity.

Only stage I of the project has been completed within the deadline by the Himachal Pradesh Hydropower Corporation Limited (HPPCL), which now is seeking an extension.

The Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) of the ministry is due to discuss the matter today.

Manshi Asher, convener of Himadhara Environment Collective, said that their petition to the Union ministry raises some important points to buttress their demand.

The petition claims that underground blasting and tunnelling for hydropower projects disturb the local geology and soil erosion triggering slope failures and exacerbating landslides in an area, which is already disaster prone.

It alleges that lack of safety compliance and non-accountability by HPPCL means that locals have to bear the cost of the damages to fields, farms, forests and human lives.

The project is a threat to the local ecology, floral and faunal biodiversity as it falls in the Lippa Asrang Wildlife Sanctuary, home to the Himalayan Brown Bear and endangered Snow leopard. The eco-sensitive zone is also rich in floral biodiversity. However, the environment impact assessment report submitted a decade ago does not mention this, villagers alleged in the petition.

They also alleged that it also poses a threat to tribal livelihoods and land-based economy and more than 1,000 families, who depend on horticulture and cultivation of cash crops such as peas, potatoes and kidney beans and forest produce like Chilgoza pines and kala jeera.

The submission also alleges violation of the Forest Rights Act and Tribal Laws. The individual and community rights of Lippa village are yet to be settled despite an NGT order. They said that the project is also financially non-viable due costs overruns in the first phase.

A CAG report has slammed the HPPCL for initiating work without approval from the gram sabha and increasing the financial risk to the project, said the petition.

It submits that the Kashang Project has almost no economic benefits and humongous ecological, livelihood and social costs.

Allowing the project is an invitation to more disasters in the fragile Himalayas, already bearing the load of the climate crisis, it concluded.

Some of the prominent signatories, include Medha Patkar, Prafulla Samantara, Himanshu Thakkar, Ashish Kothari and Roma Malik.

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